ENCYCIQBEDIA
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THE
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
ELEVENTH EDITION
FIRST
SECOND
THIRD
FOURTH
FIFTH
SIXTH
SEVENTH.
EIGHTH
NINTH
TENTH
ELEVENTH
edition, published in three volumes, 1768 1771.
ten 17771784.
eighteen 17881797.
twenty 1801 1810.
twenty 18151817.
twenty 18231824.
twenty-one 18301842.
twenty-two 1853 1860.
twenty-five 18751889.
ninth edition and eleven
lupplementary volume*, 1902 1903.
published in twenty-nine volumes, ipio 1911.
COPYRIGHT
in all countries subscribing to the
Bern Convention
by
THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS
of the
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
A II righti reserved
THE
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
DICTIONARY
OF
ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL
INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME IX
EDWARDES to EVANGELICAL ASSOCIATION
Cambridge, England:
at the University Press
New York, 35 West 3 2nd Street
1910
.
A EL'S
Copyright, in the United States of America, 1910,
by
The Encyclopaedia Britannica Company.
INITIALS USED IN VOLUME IX. TO IDENTIFY INDIVIDUAL
CONTRIBUTORS,! WITH THE HEADINGS OF THE
ARTICLES IN THIS VOLUME SO SIGNED.
A. A.T.
A. C.
A. C. McG.
A. E. G.*
A. E. H.
A. E. H. L.
A. PL*
A F K.
A. P. P.
A. Co.*
A.HL
A. H. 0.
A. H. S.
A. H.-S.
A. J. C.
A. Mw.
ARTHUR AUGUSTUS TILLEY, M.A.
Fellow and Lecturer in Modern Languages, King's College, Cambridge. Author
The Literature of the French Renaissance; &c.
ARTHUR CAYLEY, LL.D., F.R.S.
See the biographical article: CAYLEY, ARTHUR.
ARTHUR CUSHMAN MCGIFFERT, M.A., PH.D., D.D.
Professor of Church History, Union Theological Seminary, New York. Author of,
History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age; &c. Editor of the Historic Ecclesia of
Eusebms.
REV. ALFRED ERNEST GARVIE, M.A., D.D.
Principal of New College, Hampstead. Member of the Board of Theology and .
the Board of Philosophy, London University. Author of Studies in the Inner Life
of Jesus ; &c.
A. E. HOUGHTON.
Formerly Correspondent of the Standard in Spain. Author of Restoration of the -
Bourbons in Spain.
AUGUSTUS EDWARD HOUGH LOVE, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S.
Sedleian . Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Oxford. Hon. .
Fellow of Queen's College. Formerly Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.
Secretary of the London Mathematical Society.
ALEXANDER FISHER. [
Expert Examiner to the Board of Education, London. Gold Medallist, Barcelona. J
Hon. Associate, Royal College of Art. Author of The Art of Enamelling on Metals; \
&c.
A. F. KENDRICK.
Keeper of the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington.
ALBERT FREDERICK POLLARD, M.A., F.R.HisT.Soc. f
Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford. Professor of English History in the University I
of London. Assistant Editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, 1893-1901."]
Author of England under the Protector Somerset; Life of Thomas Cranmer;&c.
Estlenne.
- Equation.
Euseblus: of Caesarea.
Eschatology.
Espartero.
Elasticity.
Enamel.
Embroidery (in part).
Elizabeth, Queen;
Eiuser; Englefleld;
English History (VII. and
XIII.).
Erastus.
REV. ALEXANDER GORDON, M.A.
Lecturer on Church History in the University of Manchester.
ARTHUR HASSALL, M.A.
Student and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford. Author of A Handbook of European
History; The Balance of Power; &c. Editor of the 3rd edition of T. H. Dyer's
History of Modern Europe.
ALAN HENDERSON GARDINER, M.A.
Joint Editor of the New Hieroglyphic Dictionary, Berlin. Formerly Worcester^ Egypt: Ancient Religion.
Reader in Egyptology, University of Oxford.
REV. A. H. SAYCE, Lrrr.D., LL.D. f
See the biographical article: SAYCE, A. H. \
Europe: History (in part).
Elam;
Esar-haddon.
-j Elburz.
Si* A. HOUTUM-SCHINDLER, C.I.E.
General in the Persian Army. Author of Eastern Persian Irak.
REV. ALEXANDER JAMES GRIEVE, M.A., B.D.
Professor of New Testament and Church History at the United Independent J pni.Ho r, . ,..i\
College, Bradford. Sometime Registrar of Madras University and Member of 1 * pl * e u " fan >-
Mysore Educational Service. L
ALLEN MAWER, M.A. r
Professor of English Language and Literature, Armstrong College, Newcastle-on- J BHI.H r\r \
Tyne. Fellow of Gonvilie and Caius College, Cambridge. Formerly Lecturer in ] tn 8na (V.).
English at the University of Sheffield.
1 A complete list, showing all individual contributors, appears in the final volume.
1978
VI
A. McM.
A. H. C.
A. M. Cl.
A.N.
A.Se.*
A. S. C.
A. W. H.*
A. W. R.
C. B.
C. EL
C. E. N. R.
C. F. B.
C. H. Ha.
C. W. C. 0.
C. W. W.
D. G. H.
D. H.
D. J. M.
D. H. W.
D. S. M.*
INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES
ALEXANDER MACMORRAN, K.C., M.A. [
Bencher of the Middle Temple. Author of works on the Local Government Act "j England: X. (in part).
1888; Local Government Act 1894; London Government Act 1899; &c.
AGNES MARY CLERKE.
See the biographical article: CLERKE, A. M.
Encke.
AGNES MURIEL CLAY (MRS WILDE).
Formerly Resident Tutor of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Joint Author of Sources -J Eupatridae.
of Roman History, 133-70 B,C.
ALFRED NEWTON, F.R.S.
See the biographical article : NEWTON, ALFRED.
/ Eider;
I Emeu.
ADAM SEDGWICK, M.A:, F.R.S.
Professor of Zoology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. J Embryology.
Fellow, and formerly Tutor, of Trinity College, Cambridge. Professor of Zoology
in the University of Cambridge, 1907-1909.
ALAN SUMMERLY COLE, C.B.
Assistant Secretary for Art, Board of Education, 1900-1908. Author of Ancient -I Embroidery (in part).
Needle Point and Pillow Lace; Embroidery and Lace; Ornament in European
Silks; &c.
ARTHUR WILLIAM HOLLAND.
Formerly Scholar of St John's College, Oxford.
ALEXANDER WOOD RENTON, M.A., LL.B.
Bacon Scholar of Gray's Inn, 1900.
Einhard.
f Ejectment;
tjUUVI/bA VV UUL JXJLIN1UIN, IVA.n., LlU.U. IT M +
Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court of Ceylon. Editor of Encyclopaedia of the Laws \ *
of England. l Eminent Domain.
REV. CHARLES BOUTELL, M.A. (1812-1877).
Author of English Heraldry; A Manual of British Archaeology; &c.
Effigies (in part).
SIR CHARLES NORTON EDGCUMBE ELIOT, K.C.M.G., C.B., M.A., LL.D., D.C.L. r
Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University. H.M.'s Commissioner and Commander-in-
Chief for the British East Africa Protectorate ; Agent and Consul-General at J Ephthalites;
Zanzibar; Consul-General for German East Africa, 19001904. Formerly Fellow | Esthonia (in part).
of Trinity College, Oxford. Author of Turkey in Europe; Letters from the Far
East; &c.
Founder of the \ Epee de Combat.
English Finance.
CHARLES EDMUND NEWTON ROBINSON, M.A.
Trinity College, Cambridge. Barrister-at-Law, Inner Temple.
Epee Club, London. Author of The Golden Hind; &c.
CHARLES FRANCIS BASTABLE, M.A., LL.D.
Regius Professor of Laws and Professor of Political Economy in the University of
Dublin. Author of Public Finance; Commerce of Nations; Theory of International
Trade. I
CARLTON HUNTLEY HAYES, A.M., PH.D. (~
Assistant Professor of History in Columbia University, New York City. Member^ Ellgenius HI. and IV.
of the American Historical Association.
CHARLES WILLIAM CHADWICK OMAN, M.A., F.S.A. r
Chichele Professor of Modern History, Oxford University. Fellow of All Souls'
College. Fellow of the British Academy. Corresponding Member of the Madrid \ English History (I., II., III.,
Academia de la Historia. Author of The Art of War in the Middle Ages; The Great IV., V., VI.).
Revolt of 1381 ; Warwick the King-maker ; &c.
SIR CHARLES WILLIAM WILSON, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., F.R.S. (1836-1907). f
Major-General, Royal Engineers. Secretary . to the North American Boundary Erzerum (in part)
Commission, 1858-1862. British Commissioner on the Servian Boundary Commis- J ,, . ,. . A'
sion. Director-General of the Ordnance Survey, 1886-1894. Director-General of 1 trzin g an I** Part)',
Military Education, 1895-1898. Author of From Korti to Khartoum; Life of Lord Euphrates (m part).
Clive;&c. I
DAVID GEORGE HOGARTH, M.A. r
Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Fellow
Egin;
of the British Academy. Excavated at Paphos, 1888; Naukratis, 1899 and 1903 ; J ' .
Ephesus, 1904-1905; Assiut, 1906-1907. Director, British
1897-1900; Director, Cretan Exploration Fund, 1899.
DAVID HANNAY.
School at Athens, J
j Ensenada;
Formerly British Vice-Consul at Barcelona. Author of Short History of Royal Navy, J, * . '
1217-1688 ; Life of Emilia Castelar ; &c. \ Espagnols sur Mer.
D. J. MATTHEWS. r
Hydrographer, Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association of the United \ English Channel (in part).
Kingdom, Plymouth.
SIR DONALD MACKENZIE WALLACE, K.C.I.E., K.C.V.O. r
Extra Groom of the Bedchamber to H.M. King George V. Director of the Foreign !*_..*. M n J,, m,t nr *
Department of The Times, 1891-1899. Member of Institut de Droit International J Egy . ptl ** Htstor y
and Officer de 1'Instruction Publique of France. Joint Editor of New Volumes] ( m P art >>
(loth ed.) of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Author of Russia; Egypt and the \ Europe: History (in part).
Egyptian Question ; The Web of Empire ; &c.
DAVID SAMUEL MARGOLIOUTH, M.A., p.Lirr. r Egyp t: History (Mahommedan
Laudian Professor of Arabic, Oxford. Fellow of New College. Author of Arabic \ p fr ; nt f).
Papyri of the Bodleian Library; Mohammed and the Rise of Islam; Cairo, Jerusalem 1 .f_
and Damascus. I Ethiopia.
INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES vii
E. A. S.* EDWARD ANTHONY SPITZKA. f
Professor of General Anatomy, Jefferson Medical College and Hospital, Philadelphia. I Electrocution
Mrmber of Association 01 American Anatomists, American Anthropologists' |
Association, &c. I
E. Br. ERNEST BARKER, M.A. f Electors;
Fellow of, and Lecturer in Modern History at, St John's College, Oxford. Formerly -s Emperor;
FVllow and. Tutor of Merlon College. Craven Scholar, 1895. I Empire.
E. B. T. EDWARD BURNETT TYLOR, D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S. f Klinilfth
See the biographical article : TYLOR, E. B. \
E. C. B. RT. REV. EDWARD CUTHBERT BUTLER, O.S.B., M.A.. D.Lrrr. (Dublin).
Abbot of Downside Abbey, Bath. Author of " The Lausiac History of Palladius," , Ellas,
in Cambridge Texts and Studies, vol. vi.
E. G. EDMUND GOSSE, LL.D. j ggj .^SPS^**"''
See the biographical article: GOSSK, EDMUND W. j EtCd g el EuphS.'
E. Ga. EMILE GARCKE, M.I.vsT.E.E. | Electricity Supply:
Managing Director of British Electric Traction Co., Ltd. Author of Manual of\ ,
Electrical Undertakings; &c.
E. Go. SIR ELDON GORST, K.C.B. /Egypt: Finance (in part).
Sec the biographical article: GORST, SIR JOHN ELDON. I
E. Gr. ERNEST ARTHUR GARDNER, M.A. f Eleusis; Ells; Epidaurus;
See the biographical article: GARDNER, PERCY. \ Erechtheum; Eretria.
E. He. EDWARD HEAWOOD, M.A. f
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Librarian of the Royal Geographical ~i Elgon.
Society, London. I
Ed. M. EDUARD MEYER, PH.D., D.Lrrr. (Oxon.), LL.D. , Eucratides;
Professor of Ancient History in the University of Berlin. Author of Geschichte des "j Euthvdemus
Alterthums; Geschichte des alien Agyptens; Die Israel iten und ihre Nachbarstdmme. I
E. S. P. EDWARD STANLEY POOLE. j Egypt: History (II. in part).
See the biographical article: POOLE, REGINALD STUART. I
E. V. REV. EDMUND VENABLES (1810-1895). f Ember Days and Ember
Canon and Preceptor of Lincoln. Author of Episcopal Palaces of England. \ Weeks.
E. Wo. FIELD-MARSHAL SIR EVELYN WOOD, V.C., G.C.M.G. f .__. . ,, ,
See the biographical article: WOOD, SIR EVELYN. \ fcgypt ' Modern , Arm y-
F. C. C. FREDERICK CORNWALUS CONYBEARE, M.A., D.Tn. (Giessen). f Epiphany;
Fellow of the British Academy. Formerly Fellow of University College, Oxford. 1 Eucharist'
Author of The Ancient Armenian Texts of Aristotle; Myth, Magic and Morals; &c. I
F. G. M. B. FREDERICK GEORGE MEESON BECK, M.A. f Edwin;
Fellow and Lecturer in Classics, Clare College, Cambridge. I Essex, Kingdom of.
F. J. H. FRANCIS JOHN HAVERFIELD, M.A., LL.D. (Aberdeen), F.S.A.
Camden Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford. Fellow of
Brasenose College, Oxford. Fellow of the British Academy. Member of the J Ermine street.
German Imperial Archaeological Institute. Formerly Senior Censor, Student,
Tutor and Librarian of Christ Church, Oxford. Ford's Lecturer, 1906. Author of
Monographs on Roman History; &c.
F. LI. G. FRANCIS LLEWELYN GRIFFITH, M.A., PH.D. r
Reader in Egyptology, Oxford University. Formerly Scholar of Queen's College, J w.-.-*. * . ,
Oxford. Editor of the Archaeological Survey and Archaeological Reports of the | M **P l - An
Egypt Exploration Fund. Fellow ol Imperial German Archaeological Institute. I
F. R. C. FRANK R. CANA. f Ear . J)i . Mode ... , in ...,-)
Author of South Africa from the Great Trek to the Union. \ ^ yP ( P '"
F. R. M. FRANCIS RICHARD MAUNSELL. C.M.G. r
Lieutenant-Colonel, R.A. Military Vice-Consul, Sivas, Trebizond, Van (Kurdistan), I Erzerum (in part);
1897-1898. Military Attache", British Embassy, Constantinople, 1901-1905. 1 Erzlngan (M Part).
Author of Central Kurdistan ; &c. I
F. W. H. FREDERICK WILLIAM MAITLAND, LL.D. f v> ni ,ii.h i
See the biographical article : MAITLAND, F. W. \ g
F. W. R.* FREDERICK WILLIAM RUDLER, I.S.O., F.G.S. f Emerald-
Curator and Librarian of the Museum of Practical Geology, London, 1870-1002. 1 .
President of the Geologists' Association, 1887-1889. I Emer y-
G. C. W. GEORGE CHARLES WILLIAMSON, LiTT.D. r
Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Author of Portrait Miniatu'es; Life of Richard \ Eneleheart
Corway, R.A.; George Engleheort; Portrait Drawings; &c. Editor of new edition 1
of Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engraven.
G. E. REV. GEORGE EDMUNDSON, M.A., F.R. HIST. S. f
Formerly Fellow and Tutor of Brasenose College, Oxford. Ford's Lecturer,
1 909-.' 9 !> Employed by British Government in preparation of the British \ Egmont, Count of.
case in the British Guiana-Venezuelan and British Guiana-Brazilian boundary
arbitrations.
G. G. C.
GEORGE GOUDIE CRISROLM, M.A. r
Lecturer on Geography in the University of Edinburgh. Secretary of the Royal J Europe: Geography and
Scottish Geographical Society. Author of Handbook of Commercial Geography \ Statistics.
Fxlitor of Longman's Gazetteer of the World. I
viii INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES
G. H. C. GEORGE HERBERT CARPENTER, B.Sc. J
Professor of Zoology in the Royal College of Science, Dublin. Author of Insects: ~\ Entomology.
Their Structure and Life. I
G. S. C. SIR GEORGE SYDENHAM CLARKE, G.C.M.G., G.C.I.E., F.R.S. f Eevnt- Miliiarv Oberat
Governor of Bombay. Author of Imperial Defence; Russia's Great Sea Power -A *
The Last Great Naval War; &c. 88 S-
H. A. E. D. HANS A. E. DRIESCH, PH.D., LL.D. f
Giffprd Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, 1907-1908. Author of Die Or- J Embryology : Physiology o;
ganischen Regulationen; Der Vitalismus als Geschichte und als Lehre; The Science 1 Development,
and Philology of the Organism ; &c. I
H. Br. HENRY BRADLEY, M.A., PH.D. f
Fellow of the British Academy. Joint Editor of the New English Dictionary -\ English Literature (I.).
(Oxford). Author of The Story of the Goths ; The Making of English ; &c. L
H. Ch. HUGH CHISHOLM, M.A. f
Formerly Scholar of Corpus Christ! College, Oxford. Editor of the nth edition-^ English History: XII. (in part)
of the Encyclopaedia Britaanica. Co- Editor of the loth edition. L
H. C. R. MAJOR-GENERAL SIR HENRY CRESWICKE RAWLINSON, BART., G.C.B. J Euphrates (in part)
See the biographical article: RAWLINSON, SIR H. C.
H. F. T. REV. HENRY FANSHAWE TOZER, M.A., F.R.G.S. f
Hon. Fellow and formerly Tutor of Exeter College, Oxford. Fellow of the British
Academy. Corresponding Member of the Historical Society of Greece Author of -j Euboea.
History of Ancient Geography; Classical Geography; Lectures on the Geography of
Greece; &c.
H. Ha. HEBER HART, LL.D. f
Barrister-at-Law, Middle Temple. { Estate and House Agents.
H. H. W. REV. HENRY HERBERT WILLIAMS, M.A.
Fellow, Tutor and Lecturer in Philosophy, Hertford College, Oxford. Examining -! Ethics (in part).
Chaplain to the Bishop of Llandaff. L
H. M. R. HUGH MUNRO Ross. f
Formerly Exhibitioner of Lincoln College, Oxford. Editor of The Times Engineering J. English Channel (in part).
Supplement. Author of British Railways.
H. M. R. M. HILDA MARY R. MURRAY, M.A. f _ ,. . T / .
Lecturer on English at Royal Holloway College. \ En S lls h Language (in part).
H. N. G. HARRY NORMAN GARDINER, A.M. f"
Professor of Philosophy, Smith College, Northampton, U.S.A. Editor of Jonathan < Edwards, Jonathan (in par?.
Edwards a Retrospect.
H. R. M. HUGH ROBERT MILL, D.Sc., LL.D.
Director of British Rainfall Organization. Formerly President of the Royal Meteoro-
logical Society. Hon. Member of Vienna Geographical Society. Hon. Correspond-
ing Member of Geographical Societies of Paris, Berlin, Budapest, St Petersburg,
Amsterdam, &c. British Delegate to International Conference on the Exploration
of the Sea at Christiania, 1901. Author of The Realm of Nature; The Clyde Sea
Area; The English Lakes; The International Geography. Editor of British Rainfall.
England : Physical Geograpny
(II., IV.).
H. S. HENRY SIDGWICK, LL.D. f Pfhi .,, / . .A
See the biographical article : SIDGWICK, H. \ Etmcs (in t art >-
H. Sw. HENRY SWEET, M.A., PH.D., LL.D.
University Reader in Phonetics, Oxford. Member of the Academies of Munich, J EsnerantO
Berlin, Copenhagen and Helsingfors. Author of A History of English Sounds since |
the Earliest Period ; A Handbook of Phonetics ; &c. [_
H. van D. HENRY VAN DYKE, A.M., D.D., LL.D. f
Professor of English Literature, Princeton University, U.S.A. Author of The Poetry J Emerson.
of Tennyson; The Ruling Passion; The Spirit of America; &c.
H. W. C. D. HENRY WILLIAM CARLESS DAVIS, M.A.
Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford. Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, 4 Eleanor of Aquitaine.
1895-1902. Author of England under the Normans and Angevins; Charlemagne.
I. A. ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, M.A. r Einhorn, David ;
Reader in Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature, University of Cambridge. President, J Eliiah Wilni
Jewish Historical Society of England. Author of A Short History of Jewish Litera- 1 *..' * ' ,
lure ; Jewish Life in the Middle Ages ; &c. I Ellsna ben Abuyah.
Electrical Machine ;
J. A. P. JOHN AMBROSE FLEMING, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S.
Fender Professor of Electrical Engineering in the University of London. Fellow of
University College, London. Formerly Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. -
r Vice-President ofthe Institution of Electrical Engineers. Author of The Principles
of Electric Wave Telegraphy ; Magnets and Electric Currents ; &c.
Electricity ;
Electricity Supply ;
Electrokinetics ;
Electromagnetism ;
Electrometer ;
Electrophorus ;
. Electroscope ; Electrostatics.
J. A. H. JOHN ALLEN HOWE, B.Sc. r Enir | ftni i . r, f },, (TTT \.
Curator and Librarian of the Museum of Practical Geology, London. Author of J. *
Geology of Building Stones. [ Eocene.
J. A. H. M. SIR JAMES AUGUSTUS HENRY MURRAY, LL.D., D.C.L., Lrrr.D. f -,_ ,,. T
See the biographical article : MURRAY, SIR JAMES A. H. \ En S lisn Language.
J. G. C. A. JOHN GEORGE CLARK ANDERSON, M.A. f
Censor and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford. Formerly Fellow of Lincoln College; < Euyuk.
Craven Fellow, Oxford, 1896. Conington Prizeman, 1893.
INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES
J G. M.
J. C. R.
J. H. F.
J. H. Rs.
J. HI. R.
J. J. T.
J. L.*
J. L.H.
J. M. H.
J. M. Ha.
J. P. Pe.
J. S. F.
J. S. M.
J. T. B.
J. T. C.
J. W. He.
K. S.
L.D.*
L.J.S.
L.V.*
JOHN GRAY MCKENDRICK, M.I)., LL.D., F.R.S., F.R.S. (Edin.).
Emeritus Profeor of Physiology at the University of Glasgow. Professor of "> Equilibrium.
Physiology, 1876-1906. Author of Life in Motion; Life of lielmholli; &c.
JOHN GEORGE ROBERTSON, M.A., PH.D.
ProfcMor of German Language and Literature, University of London. Editor of
the Modern Language Journal. Author of History of German Literature; Schiller
after a Century; OK.
JOHN HENRY FREESE. M.A.
Formerly Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.
' Eulenspiegel.
{ Equites.
I Epheslans, Epistle to the.
Enghien, Duo d',
Electric Waves.
Energetics ;
Energy (HI part).
Epirus.
Erlgena (in part).
REV. JAMES HARDY ROPES, D.D.
Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticjsm and Interpretation, and IVxtrr
Lecturer on Biblical Literature, Harvard University. Author of The Apostolic
Age in the Light of Modern Criticism; &c.
JOHN HOLLAND ROSE, M.A., Lrrr.D.
Lecturer on Modern History' to the Cambridge University Local Lectures Syndicate.
Author of Life of Napoleon I. ; Napoleonic Studies ; The Development of the European
Nations; The Life of Pitt; &c.
SIR JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON, D.Sc., LL.D., Ph.D., F.R.S.
Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics, Cambridge. Fellow of Trinity
College. President of the British Association, 1909-1910. Author of A Treatise-
on the Motion of Vortex Rings; Application of Dynamics to Physics and Chemistry;
Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism ; &c.
SIR JOSEPH LARMOR, M.A., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S.
Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in
Cambridge University. Secretary of the Royal Society. Professor of Natural.
Philosophy, Queen's College, Galway, and in the Queen's University of Ireland,
1880-1885. Author of Ether and Matter, and various memoirs on Mathematics and
Physics.
JOHN LINTON MYRES, M.A., F.S.A.
Wykeham Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford. Formerly
Gladstone Professor of Greek and Lecturer in Ancient Geography, University of
Liverpool, and Lecturer on Classical Archaeology, University of Oxford.
JOHN MALCOLM MITCHELL.
Sometime Scholar of Queen's College, Oxford. Lecturer in Classics, East London
College (University of London). Joint Editor of Grote's History of Greece.
JOHN MATTHEWS MANLY. A.M., PH.D.
Professor and Head of the Department of English in the University of Chicago.
Managing Editor of Modern Philology. Author of The Language of Chaucer's Legend < English Literature (II.).
of Good Women; &c. Editor of Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama;
English Prose, 1137-1800; English Poetry, 1170-1802; &c.
REV. JOHN PUNNETT PETERS, PH.D., D.D. r %Mth
Canon Residentiary, Cathedral of New York. Formerly Professor of Hebrew in the I 17-1.1.. .'
University of Pennsylvania. Director of the University Expedition to Babylonia, 1
1888-1895. Author of Nippur, or Explorations and Adventures on the Euphrates. I Euphrates (in part).
JOHN SMITH FLETT, D.Sc., F.G.S. r
Petrographer to the Geological Survey. Formerly Lecturer on Petrology in Edin- J Epidiorite ;
burgh University. Neill Medallist of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Bigsby 1 Epidosite
Medallist of the Geological Society of London.
JOHN STURGEON MACKAY, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. (Edin.). f
Chief Mathematical Master at Edinburgh Academy, 1873-1904. First President
of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society. Author of Arithmetical Exercises;
Elements of Euclid.
JOHN T. BEALBY.
Formerly^ Editor of the Scottish Geographical -I Esthonia (in Part).
JOSEPH THOMAS CUNNINGHAM, M.A., F.Z.S. r
Lecturer on Zoology at the South-Western Polytechnic, London. Formerly Fellow J _ .
of University College, Oxford. Assistant Professor of Natural History in the | Eel-
University ot Edinburgh. Naturalist to the Marine Biological Association. I
JAMES WYCUFFE HEADLAM, M.A. r
Staff Inspector of Secondary Schools under the Board of Education. Formerly
Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Professor of Greek and Ancient History J Ernest II.
at Queen's College, London. Author of Bismarck and the Foundation of the German I
Empire; &c.
. .
Joint Author of Stanford's Europe.
.Magazine. Translator of Sven Hedin's Through Asia, Central Asia and Tibet; &c
KATHLEEN SCHLESINGER.
Author of The Instruments of the Orchestra; &c.
Archaeology.
Editor of the Portfolio of Musical
Epigonlon ;
Euphonium.
/ Eleutherius ;
I Eugenlus I. and
Louis DUCHESSE.
Sec the biographical article : DUCHESNE, L. M. O.
LEONARD JAMES SPENCER, M.A.
Assistant in the Department of Mineralogy, British Museum. Formerly Scholar of Enstatlte ;
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and Harkn.-8s Scholar. Editor of the Mineral- \ Epidote ;
ogical Magazine. [ Erabescite.
LUIGI VlLLARI.
Italian Foreign Office (Emigration Department). Formerly Newspaper Corre- I
pondent in East of Europe. Italian Vice-Consul in New Orleans, 1006; Phil- I Ete.
adclphia, 1907; and Boston, U.S.A., 1007-1910. Author of Italian Life in Town
and Country; Ac. [
II.
x INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES
M. G. MOSES GASTEK., PH.!?. (Leipzig). /-
Chief Rabbi of the Sephardic Communities of England. Vice-President, Zionist
Congress, 1898, 1899, 1900. Ilchester Lecturer at Oxford on Slavonic and By- J - , . . .,
zantine Literature, 1886 and 1891. President, Folklore Society of England. Vice- 1 ^Ullneseu, IHlChaiL
President, Anglo-Jewish Association. Author of History of Rumanian Popular
Literature; &c.
M. H. S. MARION H. SPIELMANN, F.S.A. r
Formerly Editor of the Magazine of Art. Member of Fine Art Committee of Inter-
national Exhibitions of Brussels, Paris, Buenos Aires, Rome, and the Franco-British I pm! fi< . (; j. nr ,\
Exhibition, London. Author of History of " Punch "; British Portrait Painting] u 'e lcs V n P arl >-
to the Opening of the Nineteenth Century; Works of G. F. Watts, R.A.; British
Sculpture and Sculptors of To-day; Henriette Ronner; &c.
M. Ja. MORRIS JASTROW, PH.D. (Leipzig).
Professor of Semitic Languages, University of Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Author oH Ereshkiga!.
Religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians; &c. L
M. 0. B. C. MAXIMILIAN OTTO BISMARCK CASPARI, M.A. j~
Reader in Ancient History at London University. Lecturer in Greek at Birming- \ Epaminondas.
ham University, 1905-1908. [
M. N. T. MARCUS NIEBUHR TOD, M.A. f"
Fellow and Tutor of Oriel College, Oxford. University Lecturer in Epigraphy. -\ Ephor.
Joint Author of Catalogue of the. Sparta Museum.
M. P. MARK PATTISON. f p r ~,, mll , / A/I A
See the biographical article: PATTISON, MARK.
N. M. NORMAN MCLEAN, M.A. [
Lecturer in Aramaic, Cambridge University. Fellow and Hebrew Lecturer, Christ's -j Ephraem Syrus.
College, Cambridge. Joint Editor of the larger Cambridge Septuagint.
O. E.* OLIVER ELTON, M.A. f
Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. Author ol Modern \ English Literature (III., IV.).
Studies; The Augustan Ages; Michael Drayton; &c.
( England: Topography, Popti-
O. J. R. H. OSBERT JOHN RADCLIFFE HOWARTH M A lalim and Industries (I
Christ Church, Oxford. Geographical Scholar, 1901. Assistant Secretary of the < VT VTTT TY >
British Association. VL > VIII -> lX ->'>
[ English Channel (in part).
P. A. K. PRINCE PETER ALEXEIVTTCH KROPOTKIN. / v . tVtnr ,, a , ,\
See the biographical article: KROPOTKIN, PRINCE P. A. \"
P. La. PHILIP LAKE, M.A., F.G.S. r
Lecturer on Physical and Regional Geography in Cambridge University. Formerly I p.,,.-.. /- 7
of the Geological Survey of India. Author of Monograph of British Cambrian 1 r<ur() P e - veology.
Trilobites. Translator and Editor of Kayser's Comparative Geology.
P. M. T. C. MRS CRAIGIE (" JOHN OLIVER HOBBES "). J PJJ O J George
See the biographical article: CRAIGIE, P. M. T. \
P. S. A. PERCY STAFFORD ALLEN, M.A. J Erasmus (in part)
Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Editor of the Letters of Erasmus. \
R. Ad. ROBERT ADAMSON LLD. f Erlgena (in parf) .
See the biographical article: ADAMSON, R. (_
R. A. S. H. ROBERT ALEXANDER STEWART MACALISTER, M.A., F.S.A. f Ekron;
Director of Excavations for the Palestine Exploration Fund. \ Eleutheropolis.
R. C. J. SIR RICHARD CLAVERHOUSE JEBB, D.C.L., LL.D. /_ .,
See the biographical article : JEBB, SIR RICHARD C. \ Jiur
R. H. C. REV. ROBERT HENRY CHARLES, M.A., D.D., D.LITT. f _, , n i, f
Grinfield Lecturer, and Lecturer in Biblical Studies, Oxford. Fellow of the British j cn> a
Academy. Formerly Professor of Biblical Greek, Trinity College, Dublin. Author 1 Esther: Additions to.
of Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life ; Book of Jubilees ; &c.
R. H. V. COLONEL ROBERT HAMILTON VETCH, R.E., C.B.
Employed on defences of Bermuda, Bristol Channel, Plymouth Harbour and Malta,
1861-1876. Secretary of R.E. Institute, Chatham, 1877-1883. Commanded R.E.
Submarine Mining Batt., 1884. Deputy Inspector-General of Fortifications, 1889--
1894. Author of Gordon's Campaign in China; Life of Lieutenant-General Sir
Gerald Graham. Editor of the Professional Papers of the Corps of R.E. ; also the R.E.
Journal, 1877-1884.
R. J. M. RONALD JOHN MCNEILL, M.A. f Emmet, Robert;
Christ Church,
Gazette, London.
Egypt: Military Operations,
1885-1900.
, .. , .
Christ Church, Oxford. Barrister-at-Law. Formerly Editor of the St James's -j Emmet, Thomas Addis.
R. L.* RICHARD LYDEKKER, F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.G.S. r Eland; Elephant;
Formerly Member of the Staff of the Geological Survey of India. Author of J jjjjj.
Catalogues of Fossil Mammals, Reptiles and Birds in British Museum ; The Deer of 1
all Lands ;&c. [ Equidae.
R. N. RICHARD NORTON. f
Formerly Director of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome, and Pro- -I Etruria (in part).
fessor of History of Art and Archaeology, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania.
R. N. B. ROBERT NISBET BAIN (d. 1909). f Elizabeth Petrovna;
Assistant Librarian, British Museum. Author of Scandinavia: the Political History J vf.t,,f.c Rnrnn- FYip YIV
of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, 1513-1900; The First Romanovs, 1613 to 1723; \ ' ,"'
Slavonic Europe: the Political History of Poland and Russia from 1469 to 1706; &c. I Esterhazy Of Galantha.
INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES
xi
R. S. C.
R. S. P.
R. W.'
R.We.
S. A. C.
StC. S
S. L.-P.
R. G.
1
S. W.
T. A. L
T. Ba.
T. F. C.
T. C. Br.
T. K.
T. K. C.
T. L.H.
T. R. R. S.
T.Se.
W. A. B. C.
W. A. P.
W. B*.
W. C. D. W.
W. C. T.
ROBERT SEYMOUR CONWAY, M.A., D.Lm. (Cantab.).
Profenor of Latin and Indo-European Philology in the Umvemty of Manchesti -r.
Formeriy ProfeMor of Latin, University College, Cardiff, and Fellow of Gonville, and
Caius College, Cambridge.
REGINALD STUART POOLE.
See the biographical article: POOLB, REGINALD STUART.
RICHARD WILLIAMS.
RICHARD WEBSTER, A.M.
Korim-rly Fi-llow in Classks, Pnnceton University.
Uaximianus ; Ac.
Etrurla: Language.
Egypt: History, I. (in part).
Eisteddfod.
Editor of The Elegies of\ Edwards, Jonathan (in part).
STANLEY ARTHUR Coor.
Editor for Palestine Exploration Fund.
Lecturer in Hebrew and Sriac, and
Syria
Hebr
.
formerly Fellow, tonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Examiner in Hebrew and
Aramaic, London University, 1904-1908. Council of Royal Asiatic Society, 1904-
1905. Author of Glossary of Aramaic Inscriptions; The Laws of Moses and the
Cade of Hammurabi; Critical Notes on Old Testament History; Religion of Ancient
Palatine; Ac.
ST GEORGE STOCK, M.A.
Pembroke College, Oxford.
Lecturer in Greek in the University of Birmingham.
STANLEY LANE-POOLE, M.A., Lrrr.D.
Formerly Professor of Arabic, Dublin University, and Examiner in the University
of Wale*. Corresponding Member of the Imperial Russian Archaeological Society.
Member of the Khedivial Commission for the Preservation of the Monuments of
Arab Art, Ac. Author of Life of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe; Life of Sir Harry
Parka: Cairo; Turkey; Ac. Edited The Koran; The Thousand and One Nights;
Ac.
SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER, LL.D., D.C.L.
See the biographical article: GARDINER, S. R.
SIR SPENCER WALPOLE, K.C.B.
See the biographical article : WALPOLE, SIR SPENCER. .
THOMAS ALLAN INGRAM, M.A., LL.D.
Trinity College, Dublin.
SIR THOMAS BARCLAY, M.P.
Member of the Institute of International Law. Member of the Supreme Council
of the Congo Free State. Officer of the Legion of Honour. Author of Problems of
International Practice and Diplomacy; Ac. M.P. for Blackburn, 1910.
Ell (in part);
Elijah (in part);
Ellsha (in part);
Ephod;
Esau.
Essenes (in part).
Egypt: History, II. (in part).
EnellshHistorvrvm TV v\
tory(VIII., IX.,X.).
{ English History: XII (in tart)
/ England: Local Government,
I x - ( P*V.
DR THEODORE FREYLINGHUYSEN COLLIER, PH.D.
Assistant Professor of History, Williams College, Williamstown, Mass., U.S.A.
THOMAS GREGOR BRODIE, M.D., F.R.S.
Professor of Physiology in the University of Toronto.
Experimental Physiology.
Author of Essentials
f Elvira, Synod of;
\ Ephesus, Council of.
'. Epithelial, Endothelial, Glan-
f\ duter Tissues.
THOMAS KIRKUP, M.A., LL.D.
Author of An Inquiry into Socialism; Primer of Socialism; Ac.
REV. THOMAS KELLY CHEYNE, LL.D., D.D., D.Lrrr.
See the biographical article: CHEYNE, T. K.
SIR THOMAS LITTLE HEATH, K.C.B., M.A., D.Sc. (Cantab.).
Assistant Secretary to the Treasury. Formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cam- - Erathosthenes of Alexandria,
bridge. Author of Treatise on Conic Sections; Ac.
REV. THOMAS ROSCOE REDE STEBBING, M.A., F.R.S., F.L.S., F.Z.S. f
Fellow of King's College, London. Hon. Fellow, and formerly Tutor, of Worcester .
College, Oxford.' Zoological Secretary- of Linnaean Society, 1903-1907. Author of
A History of Crustacea ; The Naturalist of Cumbrae ; Ac.
THOMAS SECCOMBE, M.A.
Balliol College, Oxford. Lecturer in History, East London and Birkbeck Colleges,
University of London. Stanhope Prizeman, Oxford, 1887. Assistant Editor of
Dictionary of National Biography, 1891-1901. Author of Tlie Age of Johnson; Ac.
REV. WILLIAM AUGUSTUS BREVOORT COOUDGE, M.A., F.R.G.S., PH.D. (Bern).
Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Professor of English History, St David's
College, Lampetcr, 1880-1881. Author of Guide du Haut Dauphine; The {Range
of the Todi; Guide to Grindelwald; Guide to Switzerland; The Alps in Nature and
in History; Ac. Editor of the Alpine Journal, 1880-1889; &c-
WALTER ALISON PHILLIPS, M.A.
Formerly Exhibitioner of Merton College and Senior Scholar of St John's College,
Oxford. Author of Modern Europe; Ac.
WILLIAM BACHER, PH.D.
Professor of Biblical Science at the Rabbinical Seminary', Budapest. Author of
Die exegetische Terminologie der judischen Trad itionslitteratur ; Ac.
WILLIAM CECIL DAMPIER WHETHAM, M.A., F.R.S.
Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge. Author of Theory of Solution; \ Electrolysis.
Recent Development of Physical Science; The Family and the Nation ; Ac. [
W. CAVE THOMAS. (
Author of Symmetrical Education; Mural or Monumental Decoration; Revised \ Encaustic Painting.
Theory of Light.
Essenes (in part).
Esther.
Entomostraca
! English Literature (V., VI.!
f Elnsledeln;
J Embrun:
I Engadine;
^ Engelberg.
(-English History (XL);
1 Episcopacy; Esquire;
I Europe: History (in part).
Ellas Levita.
Xll
W. E. Co.
W. G.
W. G. M.
W. Hu.
W. M. F. P.
W. 0.
W. P. A.
W. P. P.
W. R. S.
W. W.
W. Wr.
INITIALS AND HEADINGS OF ARTICLES
Rx. REV. WILLIAM EDWARD COLLINS, M[,A., D.D. f _
Bishop of Gibraltar. Formerly Professor of Ecclesiastical History, King's College, 1 Establishment;
London. Lecturer of Selwyn and St John's Colleges, Cambridge. Author of Tlie 1 Eucharist: Reservation.
Study of Ecclesiastical History; Beginnings of English Christianity; &c.
WILLIAM GARNETT, M.A., D.C.L. r
Educational Adviser to the London County Council. Formerly Fellow and Lecturer J .
of St John's College, Cambridge. Principal and Professor of Mathematics, Durham 1 Energy (in part).
College of Science, Newcastle-on-Tyne. Author of Elementary Dynamics; &c. (_
WALTER G. M'MILLAN, F.C.S., M.I.MECH.E. (d. 1904). f V i, ptTnp *.*i
Formerly Secretary of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, and Lecturer on J. *""
Metallurgy, Mason College, Birmingham. Author of A Treatise on Electrometallurgy. { Electrometallurgy.
REV. WILLIAM HUNT, M.A., LITT.D.
President of Royal Historical Society, 1905-1909. Author of History of the English
Church, 597-1066; The Church of England in the Middle Ages; &c.
WILLIAM MATTHEW FLINDERS PETRIE, F.R.S., D.C.L., LITT.D.
See the biographical article: PETRIE, W. M. F.
WlLHELM OSTWALD, D.SC., LL.D.
Formerly Professor of Chemistry at the University of Leipzig. Nobel Prizeman in
Chemistry, 1909. Author of Energetische Grundlagen der Kulturwissenschaft; Die'
Energie; Prinzipien der Chemie; &c.
LiEUT.-CoLONEL WILLIAM PATRICK ANDERSON, M.lNST.C.E., F.R.G.S.
Chief Engineer, Department of Marine and Fisheries of Canada. Member of
the Geographic Board of Canada. Past President of Canadian Society of Civil
Engineers.
WILLIAM PLANE PYCRAFT, F.Z.S.
Assistant in the Zoological Department, British Museum. Formerly Assistant
Linacre Professor of Comparative Anatomy, Oxford. Vice-President of the '
Selborne Society. Author of A History of Birds; &c.
WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH, LL.D.
See the biographical article: SMITH, W. R.
WILLIAM WALLACE.
See the biographical article : WALLACE, WILLIAM (1844-1897).
WILLISTON WALKER, PH.D., D.D.
Professor of Church History, Yale University. Author of History of the Congre-
gational Churches in the United States; The Reformation; John Calvin; &c.
England, Church of.
- Egypt: Art and Archaeology.
Element.
Erie, Lake.
Eli (in part);
Elijah (in part);
Elisha (in part).
Empedocles (in part);
Epictetus (in part) ;
. Epicurus (in part).
Eliot, John.
PRINCIPAL UNSIGNED ARTICLES
Egoism.
Elbe.
Election.
Electoral Commission.
Electroplating.
Electrotherapeutics.
Elevators.
Elginshire.
Elis.
Ellipse.
Elm.
Ely.
Elzevir.
Embalming.
Embezzlement.
Employers' Liability and
Workmen's Compensa-
tion.
Encyclopaedia.
Endospora.
Engineers: Military.
Engraving.
Engrossing.
Epigram.
Epilepsy.
Epitaph.
Equity.
Ericaceae.
Eritrea.
Erysipelas.
Escorial.
Eskimo.
Essex.
Estate.
Etching.
Ethnology and Ethnography.
Etna.
Eton.
Eucalyptus.
Euchre.
Euler.
Euphorbiaceae.
ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME IX
EDWARDES. SIR HERBERT BENJAMIN (1819-1868),
English soldier-statesman in India, was born at Frodesley in
Shropshire on the nth of November 1819. His father was
Benjamin Edwardcs, rector of Frodesley, and his grandfather
Sir John Edwardes, baronet, eighth holder of a title conferred
on one of his ancestors by Charles I. in 1644. He was educated
at a private school and at King's College, London. Through
the influence of his uncle, Sir Henry Edwardes, he was nominated
in 1840 to a cadetship in the East India Company; and on his
arrival in India, at the beginning of 1841, he was posted as
ensign in the ist Bengal Fusiliers. He remained with this
regiment about five years, during which time he mastered the
lessons of his profession, obtained a good knowledge of Hindustani,
Hindi and Persian, and attracted attention by the political
and literary ability displayed in a series of letters which appeared
in the Delhi Gazette.
In November 1845, on the breaking out of the first Sikh War,
Edwardes was appointed aide-de-camp to Sir Hugh (afterwards
Viscount) Gough, then commander-in-chief in India. On the
iSth of December he was severely wounded at the battle of
Mudki. He soon recovered, however, and fought by the side
of his chief at the decisive battle of Sobraon (February 10, 1846).
He was soon afterwards appointed third assistant to the com-
missioners of the trans-Sutlej territory; and in January 1847
was named first assistant to Sir Henry Lawrence, the resident
at Lahore. Lawrence became his great exemplar and in later
yean be was accustomed to attribute to the influence of this
" father of his public life " whatever of great or good he had
himself achieved. He took part with Lawrence in the suppression
of a religious disturbance at Lahore in the spring of 1846, and
soon afterwards assisted him in reducing, by a rapid movement
to Jammu, the conspirator Imam-ud-din. In the following
year a more difficult task was assigned him the conduct of an
expedition to Bannu, a district on the Waziri frontier, in which
the people would not tolerate the presence of a collector, and
the revenue had consequently fallen into arrcar. By his rare
tact and fertility of resource, Edwardes succeeded in completely
conquering the wild tribes of the valley without firing a shot, a
victory which he afterwards looked back upon with more satis-
faction than upon others which brought him more renown. His
fiscal arrangements were such as to obviate all difficulty of
DC. I
collection for the future. In the spring of 1848, in consequence
of the murder of Mr vans Agnew and Lieutenant Anderson at
Multan, by order of the diwan Mulraj, and of the raising of the
standard of revolt by the latter, Lieutenant Edwardes was
authorized to march against him. He set out immediately with
a small force, occupied Leiah on the left bank of the Indus, was
joined by Colonel van Cortlandt, and, although he could not
attack Multan, held the enemy at bay and gave a check at the
critical moment to their projects. He won a great victory over
a greatly superior Sikh force at Kinyeri (June i8),and received
in acknowledgment of his services the local rank of major. In the
course of the operations which followed near Multan, Edwardcs
lost his right hand by the explosion of a pistol in his belt. On
the arrival of a large force under General Whish the siege of
Multan was begun, but was suspended for several months in
consequence of the desertion of Shere Singh with his army and
artillery. Edwardes distinguished himself by the part he took
in the final operations, begun in December, which ended with
the capture of the city on the 4th of January 1849. For his
services he received the thanks of both houses of parliament,
was promoted major by brevet, and created C.B. by special
statute of the order. The directors of the East India Company
conferred on him a gold medal and a good service pension of
i oo per annum.
After the conclusion of peace Major Edwardes returned to
England for the benefit of his health, married during his stay
there, and wrote and published his fascinating account of the
scenes in which he had been engaged, under the title of A Year
on the Punjab Frontier in 1848-1849. His countrymen gave
him fitting welcome, and the university of Oxford conferred
on him the degree of D.C.L. In 1851 he returned to India and
resumed his civil duties in the Punjab under Sir Henry Lawrence.
In November 1853 he was entrusted with the responsible post
of commissioner of the Peshawar frontier, and this he held when
the Mutiny of 1857 broke out. It was a position of enormous
difficulty, and momentous consequences were involved in the
way the crisis might be met. Edwardes rose to the height of
the occasion. He saw as if by inspiration the facts and the needs,
and by the prompt measures which he adopted he rendered a
service of incalculable importance, by effecting a reconciliation
with Afghanistan, and securing the neutrality of the amir and
EDWARDS, AMELIA EDWARDS, HENRY
the frontier tribes during the war. So effective was his procedure
for the safety of the border that he was able to raise a large force
in the Punjab and send it to co-operate in the siege and capture
of Delhi. In 1859 Edwardes once more went to England, his
health so greatly impaired by the continual strain of arduous
work that it was doubtful whether he could ever return to India.
During his stay he was created K.C.B., with the rank of brevet
colonel; and the degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by
the university of Cambridge. Early in 1862 he again sailed for
India, and was appointed commissioner of Umballa and agent
for the Cis-Sutlej states. He had been offered the governor-
ship of the Punjab, but on the ground of failing health had
declined it. In February 1865 he was compelled to finally
resign his post and return to England. A second good service
pension was at once conferred on him; in May 1866 he was
created K.C. of the Star of India; and early in 1868 was promoted
major-general in the East Indian Army. He had been for some
time engaged on a life of Sir Henry Lawrence, and high expecta-
tions were formed of the work; but he did not live to complete
it, and after his death it was put into the hands of Mr Herman
Merivale. He died in London on the 23rd of December 1868.
Great in council and great in war, he was singularly beloved by
his friends, generous and unselfish to a high degree, and a man
of deep religious convictions.
See Memorials of the Life and Letters of Sir Herbert Benjamin
Edwardes, by his wife (2 vols., London, 1886) ; T. R. E. Holmes,
Four Soldiers (London, 1889); J. Ruskin, Bibl. pastorum, iv. "A
Knight's Faith " (1885), passages from the life of Edwardes.
EDWARDS, AMELIA ANN BLANDFORD (1831-1892), English
author and Egyptologist, the daughter of one of Wellington's
officers, was born in London on the 7th of June 1831. At a very
early age she displayed considerable literary and artistic talent.
She became a contributor to various magazines and newspapers,
and besides many miscellaneous works she wrote eight novels,
the most successful of which were Debenham's Vow (1870) and
Lord Brackenbury (1880). In the winter of 1873-1874 she visited
Egypt, and was profoundly impressed by the new openings for
archaeological research. She learnt the hieroglyphic characters,
and made a considerable collection of Egyptian antiquities. In
1877 she published A Thousand Miles up the Nile, with illustra-
tions by herself. Convinced that only by proper scientific
investigations could the wholesale destruction of Egyptian
antiquities be avoided, she devoted herself to arousing public
opinion on the subject, and ultimately, in 1882, was largely
instrumental in founding the Egypt Exploration Fund, of which
she became joint honorary secretary with Reginald Stuart Poole.
For the business of this Fund she abandoned her other literary
work, writing only on Egyptology. In 1889-1890 she went on a
lecturing tour in the United States. The substance of her
lectures was published in volume form in 1891 as Pharaohs,
Fellahs, and Explorers. She died at Weston-super-Mare,
Somerset, on the isth of April 1892, bequeathing her valuable
collection of Egyptian antiquities to University College, London,
together with a sum to found a chair of Egyptology. Miss
Edwards received, shortly before her death, a civil list pension
from the British government.
EDWARDS, BELA BATES (1802-1852), American man of
letters, was born at Southampton, Massachusetts, on the 4th of
July 1802. He graduated at Amherst College in 1824, was a
tutor there in 1827-1828, graduated at Andover Theological
Seminary in 1830, and was licensed to preach. From 1828 to
1833 he was assistant secretary of the American Education
Society (organized in Boston in 1815 to assist students for the
ministry), and from 1828 to 1842 was editor of the society's
organ, which after 1831 was called the American Quarterly
Register. He also founded (in 1833) and edited the American
Quarterly Observer; in 1836-1841 edited the Biblical Repository
(after 1837 called the American Biblical Repository) with which
the Observer was merged in 1835; and was editor-in-chief of the
Bibliotheca Sacra from 1844 to 1851. In 1837 he became pro-
fessor of Hebrew at Andover, and from 1848 until his death was
associate professor of sacred literature there. He died at Athens,
Georgia, on the zoth of April 1852. Among his numerous
publications were A Missionary Gazetteer (1832), A Biography of
Self-Taught Men (1832), a once widely known Eclectic Reader
(1835), a translation, with Samuel Harvey Taylor (1807-1871), of
Kiihner's Schulgrammatik der Griechischen Sprache and Classical
Studies (1844), essays in ancient literature and art written in
collaboration with Barnas Sears and C. C. Felton.
Edwards' Addresses and Sermons, with a memoir by Rev.
Edwards A. Park, were published in two volumes at Boston in 1853.
EDWARDS, BRYAN (1743-1800), English politician and
historian, was born at Westbury, Wiltshire, on the 2ist of May
1743. His father died in 1756, when his maintenance and educa-
tion were undertaken by his maternal uncle, Zachary Bayly, a
wealthy merchant of Jamaica. About 1759 Bryan went to
Jamaica, and joined his uncle, who engaged a private tutor to
complete his education, and when Bayly died his nephew
inherited his wealth, succeeding also in 1773 to the estate of
another Jamaica resident named Hume. Edwards soon became
a leading member of the colonial assembly of Jamaica, but in a
few years he returned to England, and in 1782 failed to secure a
seat in parliament as member for Chichester. He was again in
Jamaica from 1787 to 1792, when he settled in England as a West
India merchant, making in 1795 another futile attempt to enter
parliament, on this occasion as the representative of South-
ampton. In 1796, however, he became member of parliament
for Grampound, retaining his seat until his death at Southampton
on the 1 5th or i6th of July 1800. In general Edwards was a
supporter of the slave trade, and was described by William Wilber-
force as a powerful opponent. By his wife, Martha, daughter
of Thomas Phipps of Westbury, he left an only son, Hume.
In 1784 Edwards wrote Thoughts on the late Proceedings of
Government respecting the Trade of the West India Islands with the
United States of America, in which he attacked the restrictions
placed by the government upon trade with the United States.
In 1793 he published in two volumes his great work, History,
Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies,
and in 1797 published his Historical Survey of the French Colony
in the Island of St Domingo. In 1801 a new edition of both these
works with certain additions was published in three volumes
under the title of History of the British Colonies in the West Indies.
This has been translated into German and parts of it into French
and Spanish, and a fifth edition was issued in 1819. When
Mungo Park returned in 1796 from his celebrated journey in
Africa, Edwards, who was secretary of the Association for
Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, drew up
from Park's narrative an account of his travels, which was
published by the association in their Proceedings; and when
Park wrote an account of his journeys he availed himself of
Edwards' assistance. Edwards also wrote some poems and
some other works relating to the history of the West Indies.
He left a short sketch of his life which was prefixed to the edition
of the History of the West Indies, published in 1801.
EDWARDS, GEORGE (1693-1773), English naturalist, was
born at Stratford, Essex, on the 3rd of April 1693. In his early
years he travelled extensively over Europe, studying natural
history, and gained some reputation for his coloured drawings of
animals, especially birds. In 1733, on the recommendation of
Sir Hans Sloane, he was appointed librarian to the Royal College
of Physicians in London. In 1743 he published the first volume
of his History of Birds, the fourth volume of which appeared in
1751, and three supplementary volumes, under the title Glean-
ings of Natural History, were issued in. 1 7 58, 1 760 and 1 764. The
two works contain engravings and descriptions of more than 600
subjects in natural history not before described or delineated.
He likewise added a general index in French and English, which
was afterwards supplied with Linnaean names by Linnaeus
himself, with whom he frequently corresponded. About 1764 he
retired to Plaistow, Essex, where he died on the 23rd of July
1773. He also wrote Essays of Natural History (1770) and
Elements of Fossilogy (1776).
EDWARDS, HENRY THOMAS (1837-1884), Welsh divine,
was born on the 6th of September 1837 at Llan ym Mawddwy,
EDWARDS, JONATHAN
Merioneth, where his father was vicar. He was educated at
:nmster and at Jesus College, Oxford (B.A., 1860), and after
teaching for two years at Llandovery went to Llangollen as his
father's curate. He became vicar of Aberdare in 1866 and of
Carnarvon in 1860. Here he began his lifelong controversy with
onformity, especially as represented by the Rev. Evan Jones
(Calvinistio Methodist) and Rev. E. Herber Evans (Congrega-
tionalist). In 1870 he fought in vain for the principle of all-
round denominationalism in the national education system, and
in the same year addressed a famous letter to Mr Gladstone on
" The Church of the Cymry," pointing out that the success of
Nonconformity in Wales was largely due to " the withering effect
of an alien episcopate." One immediate result of this was the
appointment of the Welshman Joshua Hughes (1807-1889) to
the vacant see of St Asaph. Edwards became dean of Bangor in
1876 and at once set about restoring the cathedral, and he
promoted a clerical education society for supplying the diocese
with educated Welsh-speaking clergy. He was a popular preacher
and an earnest patriot ; his chief defect was a lack of appreciation
of the theological attainments of Nonconformity, and a Welsh
commentary on St Matthew, which he had worked at for many
yean and published in two volumes in 1882, was severely
handled by a Bangor Calvinistic Methodist minister. Edwards
suffered from overwork and insomnia and a Mediterranean
cruise in 1883 failed to restore his health ; and he died by his own
hand on the 24th of May 1884 at Ruabon.
See V. Morgan. Welsh Religious Leaders in the Victorian Era.
EDWARDS. JONATHAN (1703-1738), American theologian
and philosopher, was born on the 5th of October 1703 at East
(now South) Windsor, Connecticut. His earliest known ancestor
was Richard Edwards, Welsh by birth, a London clergyman in
Elizabeth's reign. His father Timothy Edwards (1660-1758),
son of a prosperous merchant of Hartford, had graduated at
Harvard, was minister at East Windsor, and eked out his salary
by tutoring boys for college. His mother, a daughter of the Rev.
Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, Mass., seems to have been
a woman of unusual mental gifts and independence of character.
Jonathan, the only son, was the fifth of eleven children. The boy
was trained for college by his father and by his elder sisters, who
all received an excellent education. When ten years old he wrote
a semi-humorous tract on the immateriality of the soul; he was
interested in natural history, and at the age of twelve wrote a
remarkable essay on the habits of the " flying spider." He
entered Yale College in 1716, and in the following year became
acquainted with Locke's Essay, which influenced him profoundly.
During his college course he kept note books labelled " The Mind,"
ural Science " (containing a discussion of the atomic
theory, &c.), " The Scriptures " and " Miscellanies," had a grand
plan for a work on natural and mental philosophy, and drew up
for himself rules for its composition. Even before his graduation
in September 1720 as valedictorian and head of his class, he
seems to have had a well formulated philosophy. The two years
after his graduation he spent in New Haven studying theology.
In 1722-1723 be was for eight months stated supply of a small
Presbyterian church in New York city, which invited him to
remain, but he declined the call, spent two months in study at
home, and then in 1724-1726 was one of the two tutors at Yale,
earning for himself the name of a " pillar tutor " by his steadfast
loyalty to the college and its orthodox teaching at the time when
Yale's rector (Cutler) and one of her tutors had gone over to the
Episcopal Church.
The years 1720 to 1726 are partially recorded in his diary and
in the resolutions for his own conduct which he drew up at this
time. He had long been an eager seeker after salvation and was
not fully satisfied as to his own " conversion " until an experience
in his last year in college, when he lost his feeling that the
ejection of some to salvation and of others to eternal damnation
wms " a horrible doctrine," and reckoned it " exceedingly
pleasant, bright and sweet. " He now took a great and new joy
in the beauties of nature, and delighted in the allegorical in-
terpretation of the Song of Solomon. Balancing these mystic
joys is the stem tone of his Resolutions, in which he is almost
ascetic in his eagerness to live earnestly and soberly, to waste no
time, to maintain the strictest temperance in eating and drinking.
On the isth of February 1727 he was ordained minister at
Northampton and assistant to his grandfather, Solomon
Stoddard. He was a student minister, not a visiting pastor, his
rule being thirteen hours of study a day. In the same year he
married Sarah Pierrepont, then aged seventeen, daughter of
James Pierrepont (1659-1714), a founder of Yale, and through her
mother great-granddaughter of Thomas Hooker. Of her piety
and almost nun-like love of God and belief in His personal love for
her, Edwards had known when she was only thirteen, and had
written of it with spiritual enthusiasm; she was of a bright and
cheerful disposition, a practical housekeeper, a model wife and
the mother of his twelve children. Solomon Stoddard died on the
nth of February 1729, leaving to his grandson the difficult task
of the sole ministerial charge of one of the largest and wealthiest
congregations in the colony, and one proud of its morality, its
culture and its reputation.
In 1731 Edwards preached at Boston the " Public Lecture "
afterwards published under the title Cod Glorified in Man's
Dependence. This was his first public attack on Arminianism.
The leading thought was God's absolute sovereignty in the
work of redemption: that while it behoved God to create
man holy, it was of His " good pleasure " and " mere and
arbitrary grace " that any man was now made holy, and that
God might deny this grace without any disparagement to any
of His perfections. In 1733 a revival of religion began in
Northampton, and reached such intensity in the winter of 1734
and the following spring as to threaten the business of the
town. In six months nearly three hundred were admitted to the
church. The revival gave Edwards an opportunity of studying
the process of conversion in all its phases and varieties, and he
recorded his observations with psychological minuteness and
discrimination in A Faithful Narrative of (he Surprising Work of
God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton
(1737). A year later he published Discourses on Various Im-
portant Subjects, the five sermons which had proved most effective
in the revival, and of these none, he tells us, was so immediately
effective as that on the Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners,
from the text, " That every mouth may be stopped." Another
sermon, published in 1734, on the Reality of Spiritual Light set
forth what he regarded as the inner, moving principle of the
revival, the doctrine of a " special " grace in the immediate and
supernatural divine illumination of the soul. In the spring of
1735 the movement began to subside and a reaction set in. But
the relapse was brief, and the Northampton revival, which had
spread through the Connecticut valley and whose fame had
reached England and Scotland, was followed in 1739-1740 by the
Great Awakening, distinctively under the leadership of Edwards.
The movement met with no sympathy from the orthodox leaders
of the church. In 1741 Edwards published in its defence The
Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, dealing
particularly with the phenomena most criticized, the swoonings,
outcries and convulsions. These " bodily effects," he insisted,
were not " distinguishing marks "of the work of the Spirit of God;
but so bitter was the feeling against the revival in the more
strictly Puritan churches that in 1742 he was forced to write a
second apology, Thoughts on the Revival in New England, his main
argument being the great moral improvement of the country.
In the same pamphlet he defends an appeal to the emotions, and
advocates preaching terror when necessary, even to children,
who in God's sight " are young vipers ... if not Christ's." He
considers " bodily effects " incidentals to the real work of God,
but his own mystic devotion and the experiences of his wife
during the Awakening (which he gives in detail) make him think
that the divine visitation usually overpowers the body, a view in
support of which he quotes Scripture. In reply to Edwards,
Charles Chauncy anonymously wrote The Late Religious Com-
motions in New England Considered (1743), urging conduct as the
sole test of conversion; and the general convention of Congrega-
tional ministers in the Province of Massachusetts Bay protested
" against disorders in practice which have of late obtained in
EDWARDS, JONATHAN
various parts of the land." In spite of Edwards's able pamphlet,
the impression had become widespread that " bodily effects "
were recognized by the promoters of the Great Awakening as the
true tests of conversion. To offset this feeling Edwards * preached
at Northampton during the years 1742 and 1743 a series of
sermons published under the title of Religious Affections (i 746), a
restatement in a more philosophical and general tone of his ideas
as to " distinguishing marks." In 1747 he joined the movement
started in Scotland called the " concert in prayer," and in the
same year published An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit
Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in Extraordinary
Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ's
Kingdom on Earth. In 1749 he published a memoir of David
Brainerd; the latter had lived in his family for several months,
had been constantly attended by Edwards's daughter Jerusha, to
whom he had been engaged to be married, and had died at
Northampton on the 7th of October 1747; and he had been a
case in point for the theories of conversion held by Edwards,
who had made elaborate notes of Brainerd's conversations and
confessions.
In 1 748 there hadcome a crisis in his relations with his congrega-
tion. The Half -Way Covenant adopted by the synods of 1657 and
1662 had made baptism alone the condition to the civil privileges
of church membership, but not of participation in the sacrament
of the Supper. Edwards's grandfather and predecessor, Solomon
Stoddard, had been even more liberal, holding that the Supper
was a converting ordinance and that baptism was a sufficient
title to all the privileges of the church. As early as 1 744 Edwards,
in his sermons on the Religious Affections, had plainly intimated
his dislike of this practice. In the same year he had published in
a church meeting the names of certain young people, members of
the church, who were suspected of reading improper books, 2 and
also the names of those who were to be called as witnesses in the
case. But witnesses and accused were not distinguished on this list,
and the congregation was in an uproar. A great many, fearing a
scandal, now opposed an investigation which all had previously
favoured. Edwards's preaching became unpopular ; for four years
no candidate presented himself for admission to the church ; and
when one did in 1748, and was met with Edwards's formal but
mild and gentle tests, as expressed in the Distinguishing Marks
and later in Qualifications for Full Communion (1749) the
candidate refused to submit to them; the church backed him
and the break was complete. Even permission to discuss his
views in the pulpit was refused him. The ecclesiastical council
voted by 10 to 9 that the pastoral relation be dissolved. The
church by a vote of more than 200 to 23 ratified the action of the
council, and finally a town meeting voted that Edwards should
not be allowed to occupy the Northampton pulpit, though he did
this on occasion as late as May 1755. He evinced no rancour or
spite; his " Farewell Sermon " was dignified and temperate; nor
is it to be ascribed to chagrin that in a letter to Scotland after his
dismissal he expresses his preference for Presbyterian to Con-
gregational church government. His position at the time was
not unpopular throughout New England, and it is needless to
say that his doctrine that the Lord's Supper is not a cause of
regeneration and that communicants should be professing
Christians has since (very largely through the efforts of his pupil
Joseph Bellamy) become a standard of New England Congre-
gationalism.
Edwards with his large family was now thrown upon the
world, but offers of aid quickly came to him. A parish in Scotland
could have been procured, and he was called to a Virginia church.
He declined both, to become in 1750 pastor of the church in
Stockbridge and a missionary to the Housatonic Indians. To
the Indians he preached through an interpreter, and their interests
he boldly and successfully defended by attacking the whites
1 Edwards recognized the abuse of impulses and impressions,
opposed itinerant and lay preachers, and defended a well-ordered
and well-educated clergy.
* These were probably not fiction like Pamela, as Sir Leslie
Stephen suggested, for Edwards listed several of Richardson's
novels for his own reading, and considered Sir Charles Grandison
a very moral and excellent work.
who were using their official position among them to increase
their private fortunes. In Stockbridge he wrote the Humble
Relation, also called Reply to Williams (1752), which was an
answer to Solomon Williams (1700-1776), a relative and a bitter
opponent of Edwards as to the qualifications for full communion ;
and he there composed the treatises on which his reputation
as a philosophical theologian chiefly rests, the essay on Original
Sin, the Dissertation concerning the Nature of True Virtue, the
Dissertation concerning the End for which God created the World,
and the great work on the Will, written in four months and a
half, and published in 1754 under the title, An Inquiry into the
Modern Prevailing Notions Respecting that Freedom of the Will
which is supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency.
In 1757, on the death of President Burr, who five years before
had married Edwards's daughter Esther, he reluctantly accepted
the presidency of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton
University), where he was installed on the i6th of February
1758. Almost immediately afterwards he was inoculated for
smallpox, which was raging in Princeton and vicinity, and,
always feeble, he died of the inoculation on the 28th of March
1758. He was buried in the old cemetery at Princeton. He
was slender and fully six feet tall, and with his oval, gentle,
almost feminine face looked the scholar and the mystic.
The Edwardean System. It is difficult to separate Edwards's
philosophy from his theology, except as the former is contained in
the early notes on the Mind, where he says that matter exists only
in idea; that space is God ; that minds only are real ; that in meta-
physical strictness there is no being but God; that entity is the
greatest and only good; and that God as infinite entity, wherein
the agreement of being with being is absolute, is the supreme ex-
cellency, the supreme good. It seems certain that these conclusions
were independent of Berkeley and Malebranche, and were not drawn
from Arthur Collier's Clams universalis (1713), with which they have
much in common, but were suggested, in part at least, by Locke's
doctrine of ideas, Newton's theory of colours, and Cudworth's
Platonism, with all of which Edwards was early familiar. But they
were never developed systematically, and the conception of the
material universe here contended for does not again explicitly re-
appear in any of his writings. The fundamental metaphysical
postulate that being and God are ultimately identical remained,
however, the philosophical basis of all his thinking, and reverence
for this being as the supreme good remained the fundamental dis-
position of his mind. That he did not interpret this idea in a Spino-
zistic sense was due to his more spiritual conception of " being "
and to the reaction on his philosophy of his theology. The theo-
logical interest, indeed, came in the end to predominate, and
philosophy to appear as an instrument for the defence of Calvinism.
Perhaps the best criticism of Edwards's philosophy as a whole is that,
instead of being elaborated on purely rational principles, it is mixed
up with a system of theological conceptions with which it is never
thoroughly combined, and that it is exposed to all the disturbing
effects of theological controversy. Moreover, of one of his most
central convictions, that of the sovereignty of God in election, he
confesses that he could give no account.
Edwards's reputation as a thinker is chiefly associated with his
treatise on the Will, which is still sometimes called " the one large
contribution that America has made to the deeper philosophic
thought of the world." The aim of this treatise was to refute the
doctrine of free-will, since he considered it the logical, as distinguished
from the sentimental, ground of most of the Arminian objections to
Calvinism. He defines the will as that by which the " mind chooses
anything." To act voluntarily, he says, is to act electively. So far
he and his opponents are agreed. But choice, he holds, is not
arbitrary; it is determined in every case by " that motive which as
it stands in the view of the mind is the strongest," and that motive
is strongest which presents in the immediate object of volition the
" greatest apparent good," that is, the greatest degree of agreeable-
ness or pleasure. What this is in a given case depends on a multitude
of circumstances, external and internal, all contributing to form
the " cause " of which the voluntary act and its consequences are
the " effect." Edwards contends that the connexion between cause
and effect here is as "sure and perfect" as in the realm of physical
nature and constitutes a " moral necessity." He reduces the
in equilibrio "; (3) " contingehce ... as opposed to . . . any fixed
and certain connexipn (of the volition) with some previous ground
or reason for its existence." Although he denies liberty to the will in
this sense indeed, strictly speaking, neither liberty nor necessity,
he says, is properly applied to the will, " for the will itself is
not an agent that has a will " he nevertheless insists that the
subject willing is a free moral agent, and argues that without the
EDWARDS, JONATHAN
determinate connexion between volition and motive which he asserts
and the libertarians ileiu , moral agency would be impotutible.
Liberty, he hold*, i simply freedom Trom constraint, " the power
that any one has to do as he pleases." This power man pos-
atme*. And that the right or wrung of choice depends not on the
cans* of choke but on its nature, he illustrates by the example of
Christ, whose acts were necessarily holy, MI truly virtuous, praise-
worthy and rewardable. Kven (KKJ Himself, Edwards here main-
tains, has no other liberty than this, to carry out without constraint
wisdom and inclination.
There is n in i umiij connexion between Kdwanls's doctrine of
the motivation of t lu>uv and t hi- system of Calvinism with which it is
congruent. Similar doctrines have more frequently perhaps been
associated with theological scepticism. But for him the altiTii.it IM-
was between Calvinism and Arminianism, simply because of the
historical situation, and in the refutation of Arminianism on the
assumptions common to both sides of the controversy, he must be
considered completely successful. As a general argument hi-.
account of the determination of the will is defective, notably in his
abstract conception of the will and in his inadequate, but suggestive,
treatment of causation, in regard to which he anticipates in important
respects the doctrine of Hume. Instead of making the motive to
choke a factor within the concrete process of volition, he regards
it as a cause antecedent to the exercise of a special mental faculty.
Yet his conception of this faculty as functioning only in and through
motive and character, inclination and desire, certainly carries us a
long way beyond the abstraction in which his opponents stuck, that
of a bare faculty without any assignable content. Modern psycho-
logy has strengthened the contention for a Axed connexion between
motive and act by reference to subconscious and unconscious pro-
cesses of which Edwards, who thought that nothing could affect the
raind which was unperceived, little dreamed; at the same time.
at least in some of its developments, especially in its freer use ot
genetic and organic conceptions, it has rendered much in the older
forms of statement obsolete, and has given a new meaning to the
idea of self-determination, which, as applied to an abstract power,
Edwards rightly rejected as absurd.
Edwards s controversy with the Arminians was continued in the
easay on Original Sin, which was in the press at the time of his
death. He here breaks with Augustine and the Westminster Con-
fession by arguing, consistently with his theory of the Will, that
Adam had no more freedom of will than we have, but had a special
endowment, a supernatural gift of grace, which by rebellion against
God was lost, ana that this gift was withdrawn from his descendants,
not because of any fictitious imputation of guilt, but because of their
real participation in his guilt by actual identity with him in his
transgression.
The Dissertation on the Nature of True Virtue, posthumously
published, is justly regarded as one of the most original works on
i thics of the 1 8th century, and is the more remarkable as reproducing,
ttith no essential modification, ideas on the subject written in the
author's youth in the notes on the Mind. Virtue is conceived as the
beauty of moral qualities. Now beauty, in Edwards's view, always
consists in a harmonious relation in the elements involved, an agree-
ment of being with being. He conceives, therefore, of virtue, or
moral beauty, as consisting in the cordial agreement or consent to
intelligent being. He defines it as benevolence (good-will), or rather
as a disposition to benevolence, towards being in general. This
disposition, he argues, has no regard primarily to beauty in the
object, nor is it primarily based on gratitude. Its first object is being,
" simply considered," and it is accordingly proportioned, other
things being equal, to the object's " degree of existence." He
admits, however, benevolent being as a second object, on the ground
that such an object, having a like virtuous propensity, " is, as it
were, enlarged, extends to, and in some son comprehends being in
general." In brief, since God is the " being of beings " and com-
prehends, in the fullest extent, benevolent consent to being in
general, true virtue consists essentially in a supreme love to God.
Thus the principle of virtue Edwards has nothing to say of
" morality ' is identical with the principle of religion. From this
standpoint Edwards combats every lower view. He will not admit
that there is any evidence of true virtue in the approbation of virtue
and hatred of vice, in the workings of conscience or in the exercises
of the natural affections; he thinks that these may all spring from
self-love and the association of ideas, from " instinct " or from a
" moral sense of a secondary kind " entirely different from " a sense
or relish of the essential beauty of true virtue." Nor does he recog-
nize the possibility of a natural development of true virtue out of
the sentiments directed on the " private systems " ; on the contrary,
be sets the love of particular being, when not subordinated to being
in general, in opposition to the latter and as equivalent to treating
it with the greatest contempt. All that he allows is that the percep-
tion at natural beauty may, by its resemblance to the primary
spiritual beauty, quicken the disposition to divine love in those
who are already under the influence of a truly virtuous temper.
Closely connected with the essay on Virtue is the boldly specu-
lative VtisfTtation on Ike End for v/hith Cod Created the World. As,
according to the doctrine of virtue, God's virtue consists primarily
in love to Himself, so His final end in creation is conceived to be,
not as the Arminians held, the happiness of His creatures, but His
own glory. Edwards supposes in the nature of God an original
disposition to an " emanation " of His being, and it is the excellency
of this divine being, particularly in the elect, which is, in his view,
the final cause and motive of the world.
Kilwards makes no attempt to reconcile the pantheistic clement
in his philosophy with the individuality implied in moral
government. He seems to waver between the opinion that finite
individuals have no independent being and the opinion that they
have it in an infinitesimal degree; and the conception of " degrees
of existence " in the essay on Virtue is not developed to elucidate
the point. His theological conception of God, at any rate, was not
abstractly pantheistic, in spite of the abstract ness of his language
about " being," but frankly t heist ic and trinitarian. He hem the
doctrine of the trinitarian distinctions indeed to be a necessity of
reason. His Essay on the Trinity, first printed in 1903, was long
supposed to have been withheld from publication because of its
containing Arian or Sabcllian tendencies. It contains in fact nothing
more questionable than an attempted deduction of the orthodox
Nicene doctrine, unpalatable, however, to Edwards's immediate
disciples, who were too little speculative to appreciate his statement
of the subordination of the " persons " in the divine " oeconomy,"
and who openly derided the doctrine of the eternal generation of the
Son as "eternal nonsense"; and this perhaps was the original
reason why the essay was not published.
Though so typically a scholar and abstract thinker on the one
hand and on the other a mystic, Edwards is best known to the
present generation as a preacher of hell fire. The particular reason
for this seems to lie in a single sermon preached at Enfield, Con-
necticut, in July 1741 from the text, " Their foot shall slide in due
time," and commonly known from its title, Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God. The occasion of this sermon is usually overlooked.
It was preached to a congregation who were careless and loose in
their lives at a time when " the neighbouring towns were in great
distress for their souls." A contemporary account of it says that
in spite of Edwards's academic style of preaching, the assembly was
" deeply impressed and bowed down, with an awful conviction of
their sin and danger. There was such a breathing of distress and
weeping, that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and
desire silence, that he might be heard." Edwards preached other
sermons of this type, but this one was the most extreme. The
style of the imprecatory sermon, however, was no more peculiar
to him than to his period. He was not a great preacher in the
ordinary meaning of the word. His gestures were scanty, his voice
was not powerful, but he was desperately in earnest, and he held
his audience whether his sermon contained a picturesque and de-
tailed description of the torments of the damned, or, as was often
the case, spoke of the love and peace of God in the heart of man.
He was an earnest, devout Christian, and a man of blameless life.
His insight into the spiritual life was profound. Certainly the most
able metaphysician and the most influential religious thinker of
America, he must rank in theology, dialectics, mysticism and philo-
sophy with Calvin and Fenelon, Augustine and Aquinas, Spinoza
and Novalis; with Berkeley and Hume as the great English philo-
sophers of the i8th century; and with Hamilton and Franklin as
the three American thinkers of the same century of more than
provincial importance.
Edwards's main aim had been to revivify Calvinism, modifyjng
it for the needs of the time, and to promote a warm and vital Christian
piety. The tendency of his successors was to state the matter
roughly to take some one of his theories and develop it to an
extreme. Of his immediate followers Joseph Bellamy is distinctly
Edwardean in the keen logic and in the spirit of his True Religion
Delineated, but he breaks with his master in his theory of general
(not limited) atonement. Samuel Hopkins laid even greater stress
than Edwards on the theorem that virtue consists in disinterested
benevolence; but he went counter to Edwards in holding that un-
conditional resignation to God's decrees, or more concretely, willing-
ness to be damned for the glory of God, was the test of true regenera-
tion; for Edwards, though often quoted as holding this doctrine,
protested against it in the strongest terms. Hopkins, moreover,
denied Edwards's identity theory of original sin, saying that our
sin was a result of Adam s and not identical with it; and he went
much further than Edwards in his objection to " means of grace,"
claiming that the unregenerate were more and more guilty for
continual rejection of the gospel if they were outwardly righteous
and availed themselves of the means of grace. Stephen West (1735-
1819), too, out-Edwardsed Edwards in his defence of the treatise on
the Freedom of the Will, and John Smalley (1734-1820) developed
the idea of a natural (not moral) inability on the part of man to obey
God. Emmons, like Hopkins, considered both sin and holiness
"exercises" of the will. Timothy Dwight _(i752-i847) urged the
use of the means of grace, thought Hopkins and Emmons pan-
theistic, and boldly disagreed with their theory of " exercises," reckon-
ing virtue and sin as the result of moral choice or disposition, a
position that was also upheld by Asa Burton (1752-1836), who
thought that on regeneration the disposition of man got a new relish
or " taste."
JONATHAN EDWARDS' the younger (1745-1801), second son of
1 Besides the younger Jonathan many of Edwards's descendants
EDWARDS, LEWIS EDWARDS, RICHARD
the philosopher, born at Northampton, Massachusetts, on the 26th
of May 1745, also takes an important place among his followers.
He lived in Stockbridge in 1751-1755 and spoke the language of the
Housatonic Indians with ease, for six months studied among the
Oneidas, graduated at Princeton in 1765, studied theology at
Bethlehem, Connecticut, under Joseph Bellamy , was licensed to preach
in 1766, was a tutor at Princeton in 17661769, and was paster
of the White Haven Church, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1769-1795,
being then dismissed for the nominal reason that the church could
not support him, but actually because of his opposition to the
Half- Way Covenant as well as to slavery and the slave trade. He
preached at Colebrook, Connecticut, in 1796-1799 and then becan e
president of Union College, Schenectady, New York, where he died
on the 1st of August 1801. His studies of the Indian dialects were
scholarly and valuable. He edited his father's incomplete History
of the Work of Redemption, wrote in answer to Stephen West, A
Dissertation Concerning Liberty and Necessity (1797), which defended
his father's work on the Will by a rather strained interpretation,
and in answer to Chauncy on universal salvation formulated what
is known as the " Edwardean," New England or Governmental
theory of the atonement in The Necessity of the Atonement and its
Consistency with Free Grace in Forgiveness (1785). His collected
works were edited by his grandson Tryon Edwards in two volumes,
with memoir (Andover, 1842). His place in the Edwardean theo-
logy is principally due to his defence against the Universalists
of his father's doctrine of the atonement, namely, that Christ's
death, being the equivalent of the eternal punishment of sinners,
upheld the authority of the divine law, but did not pay any debt,
and made the pardon of all men a possibility with God, but not a
necessity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. There have been various editions of Edwards's
works. His pupil, Samuel Hopkins, in 1765 published two volun.es
from manuscript containing eighteen sermons and a memoir; the
younger Jonathan Edwards with Dr Erskine published an edition
in 4 volumes (1744 sqq.), and Samuel Austin in 1808 edited an
edition in 8 volumes. In 1829 Sereno E. Dwight, a great-grand sen
of Edwards, published the Life and Works in 10 volumes, the first
volume containing the memoir, which is still the most complete and
was the standard until the publication (Boston, 1889) of Jonathan
Edwards, by A. V. G. Allen, who attempts to "distinguish what he
(Edwards) meant to affirm from what he actually teaches." In
1865 the Rev. Alexander B. Grpsart edited from original manu-
scripts Selections from the Unpublished Writings of Jonathan Edwards
of America (Edinburgh, 1865, printed for private circulation). This
was the only part of a complete edition planned by Grosart that e\ er
appeared. It contained the important Treatise on Grace, Anno-
tations on the Bible, Directions for Judging of Persons' Experiences,
and Sermons, the last for the most part merely in outline. E. C.
Smyth published from a copy Observations Concerning the^ Scripture
Oeconomy of the Trinity and Covenant of Redemption (New York,
1880), a careful edition from the manuscript of the essay on the
Flying Spider (in the Andover Review, January 1890) and " Some
Early Writings of Jonathan Edwards," with specimens from the
manuscripts (in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society,
October, 1895). In 1900 on the death of Prof. Edwards A. Park,
the entire collection of Edwards's manuscripts loaned to him by
Tryon Edwards was transferred to Yale University. Professor
Park, like Mr. Grosart before him, had been unable to accomplish
the great task of editing this mass of manuscript. " A Study of the
Manuscripts of Jonathan Edwards " was published by F. B. Dexter
in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, series 2,
vol. xv. (Boston, 1902), and in the same volume of the Proceedings
appeared " A Study of the Shorthand Writings of Jonathan
Edwards," by W. P. Upham. The long sought for essay on the
Trinity was edited (New York, 1903) with valuable introduction and
appendices by G. P. Fisher under the title, An Unpublished Essay
of Edwards's on the Trinity. The only other edition of Edwards
(in whole or in part) of any importance is Selected Sermons of Jonathan
Edwards (New York, 1904), edited by H. N. Gardiner, with brief
biographical sketch and annotations on seven sermons, one of which
had not previously been published.
For estimates of Edwards consult : The Volume of the Edwards
Family Meeting at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, September 6-f, A.D.
1870 (Boston, 1871); Jonathan Edwards, a Retrospect, Being the
Addresses Delivered in Connecticut with the Unveiling of a Memorial
were great, brilliant or versatile men. Among them were: his
son Pierrepont (1750-1826), a brilliant but erratic member of the
Connecticut bar, tolerant in religious matters and bitterlv hated by
stern Calvinists, a man whose personal morality resembled greatly
that of Aaron Burr; his grandsons, William Edwards (1770-1851),
an inventor of important leather rolling machinery ; Aaron Burr the
son of Esther Edwards; Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), son of Mary
Kd wards, and his brother Theodore Dwight, a Federalist politician,
a member, the secretary and the historian of the Hartford Con-
vention; his great-grandsons, Tryon Edwards (1809-1894) and
Sereno Edwards Dwight, theologian, educationalist and author;
and his great-great-grandsons, Theodore William Dwight,_ the
jurist, and Timothy Dwi?ht, second of that name to be president
of Yale.
in the First Church of Christ in Northampton, Massachusetts, on the
One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of his Dismissal from the
Pastorate of that Church, edited by H. N. Gardiner (Boston, 1901);
Exercises Commemorating the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the
Birth of Jonathan Edwards, held at Andover Theological Seminary,
October 4-3, 1903 (Andover, 1904) ; and among the addresses de-
livered at Stockbridge in October 1903, John De Witt, " Jonathan
Edwards: A Study," in the Princeton Theological Review (January,
1904). Also H. C. King, " Edwards as Philosopher and Theo-
logian," in Hartford Theological Seminary Record, vol. xiv. (1903),
pp. 23-57; H. N. Gardiner, "The Early Idealism of Jonathan
Edwards," in the Philosophical Review, vol. ix. (1900), pp. 573-596;
E. C. Smyth, American Journal of Theology, vol. i. (1897), pp. 960-964 ;
Samuel P. Hayes, " An Historical Study of the Edwardean Re-
vivals," in American Journal of Psychology, vol. xiii. (1902), pp. 550
fF. ; J. H. MacCracken, " Philosophical Idealism of Edwards" in
Philosophical Review, vol. xi. (1902), pp. 26-42, suggesting that
Edwards did not know Berkeley, but Collier, and the same author's
Jonathan Edwards' Idealismus (Halle, 1899) ; F. J. E. Woodbridge,
" Jonathan Edwards," in Philosophical Review, vol. xiii. (1904)
PP- 393-4 o 8; W. H. Squires, Jonathan Edwards und seine Willens-
lehre (Leipzig, 1901) ; Samuel Simpson, " Jonathan Edwards, A
Historical Review," in Hartford Seminary Record, vol. xiv. (1903),
pp. 3-22 ; and The Edwardean, a Quarterly Devoted to the History of
Thought in America (Clinton, New York, 1903-1904), edited by
W. H. Squires, of which only four parts appeared, all devoted to
Edwards and all written by Squires. (H. N. G.; R. WE.)
EDWARDS, LEWIS (1809-1887), Welsh Nonconformist
divine, was born in the parish of Llanbadarn Fawr, Cardigan-
shire, on the 27th of October 1809. He was educated at
Aberystwyth and at Llangeitho, and then himself kept school
in both these places. He had already begun to preach for the
Calvinistic Methodists when, in December 1830, he went to
London to take advantage of the newly-opened university.
In 1832 he settled as minister at Laugharne in Carmarthenshire,
and the following year went to Edinburgh, where a special
resolution of the senate allowed him to graduate at the end of
his third session. He was now better able to further his plans
for providing a trained ministry for his church. Previoisly,
the success of the Methodist preachers had been due mainly to
their natural gifts. Edwards made his home at Bala, and there,
in 1837, with David Charles, his brother-in-law, he opened a
school, which ultimately became the denominational college
for north Wales. He died on the ipth of July 1887.
Edwards may fairly be called one of the makers of modern
Wales. Through his hands there passed generation after genera-
tion of preachers, who carried his influence to every corner of
the principality. By fostering competitive meetings and by
his writings, especially in Y Traethodydd (" The Essa) ist "),
a quarterly magazine which he founded in 1845 an d edited for
ten years, he did much to inform and educate his countrymen
on literary and theological subjects. A new college was built
at Bala in 1867, for which he raised 10,000. His chief publica-
tion was a noteworthy book on The Doctrine of the Atonement, cast
in the form of a dialogue between master and pupil; the treat-
ment is forensic, and emphasis is laid on merit. It was due to him
that the North and South Wales Calvinistic Methodist Associa-
tions united to form an annual General Assembly; he was its
moderator in 1866 and again in 1876. He was successful in
bringing the various churches of the Presbyterian order into
closer touch with each other, and unwearying in his efforts to
promote education for his countrymen.
See Bywyd a Llythyrau y Parch, (i.e. Life and Letters of the Rev.)
Lewis Edwards, D.D., by his son T. C. Edwards.
EDWARDS, RICHARD (c. 1523-1566), English musician and
playwright, was born in Somersetshire, became a scholar of
Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1540, and took his M. A. degree
in 1547. He was appointed in 1561 a gentleman of the chapel
royal and master of the children, and entered Lincoln's Inn in
1564, where at Christmas in that year he produced a play which
was acted by his choir boys. On the 3rd of September 1566
his play, Palamon and Arcite, was performed before Queen
Elizabeth in the Hall of Christ Church, Oxford. Another
play, Damon and Pithias, tragic in subject but with scenes of
vulgar farce, entered at Stationers' Hall in 1567-8, appeared
in 1571 and was reprinted in 1582; it may be found in Dodsley's
EDWARDS, T. C EDWIN, JOHN
Old Plays, vol. i., and Ancient British Drama, vol. i. It is written
in rhymed lines of rude construction, varying in length and
neglecting the caesura. .\ number of the author's shorter pieces
mre preserved in the Paradise of Dainty Devices, first published
in 1575, and reprinted in the British Bibliographer, vol. iii.;
the best known are the lines on May, the Amanlium Irae, and
the Commendation of Music, which has the honour of furnishing
a stanza to Romeo and Juliet. The Hislorie of Damocles and
Dianise is assigned to him in the 1578 edition of the Paradise.
John Hawkins credited him with the part song " In going to
my lonely bed "; the words are certainly his, and probably
the music. In his own day Edwards was highly esteemed. The
fine poem, " The Soul's Knell," is supposed to have been written
by him when dying.
See Crate's Diet, of Music (new edition); the Shakespeare Sac.
Papers, vol. ii. art. vi. ; Ward, English Dram. Literature, vol. i.
EDWARDS, THOMAS CHARLES (1837-1000), Welsh Non-
conformist divine and educationist, was born at Bala, Merioneth,
on the iind of September 1837, the son of Lewis Edwards (q.v.).
HU resolve to become a minister was deepened by the revival of
1858-1859. After taking his degrees at London (B. A. i86i,M.A.
1862), he matriculated at St Alban Hall, Oxford, in October
1862, the university having just been opened to dissenters. He
obtained a scholarship at Lincoln College in 1864, and took a
first class in the school of Literae Humaniores in 1866. He was
especially influenced by MarkPattison and Jowctt ,who counselled
him to be true to the church of his father, in which he had already
been ordained. Early in 1867 he became minister at Windsor
Street, Liverpool, but left it to become first principal of the
University College of Wales at Aberystwyth, which had been
established through the efforts of Sir Hugh Owen and other
enthusiasts. The college was opened with a staff of three pro-
fessors and twenty-five students in October 1872, and for some
years its career was chequered enough. Edwards, however,
proved a skilful pilot, and his hold on the affection of the Welsh
people enabled him to raise the college to a high level of efficiency.
When it was destroyed by fire in 1885 he collected 25,000 to
rebuild it ; the remainder of the necessary 40,000 being given by
the government Cio,ooo) and by the people of Aberystwyth
(5000). In 1891 he gave up what had been the main work of
his life to accept an undertaking that was even nearer his heart,
the principalship of the theological college at Bala. A stroke of
paralysis in 1804 fatally weakened him, but he continued at
work till his death on the 22nd of March 1000. The Calvinistic
Methodist Church of Wales bestowed on him every honour in their
possession, and he received the degreeof D.D. from the universities
of Edinburgh (1887) and Wales (1808). His chief works were a
Commentary on I Corinthians (1885), the Epistle to the Hebrews
(" Expositor's Bible " series, 1888), and The Cod-Man (" Davies
Lecture," 1805).
EDWARDSVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Madison
county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the south-western part of the state, on
Cahokia Creek, about 18 m. N.E. of St Louis. Pop. (1800) 3561 ;
(IQOO) 4157 (573 forei>m-born); (1910) 5014. Edwardsville is
served by the Toledo, St Louis & Western, the Wabash, the
Litchfield & Madison, and the Illinois Terminal railways, and is
connected with St Louis by three electric lines. It has a Carnegie
library. The city's principal manufactures are carriages, ploughs,
brick, machinery, sanitary ware and plumber's goods. Bitu-
minous coal is extensively mined in the vicinity. Adjoining
Edwardsville is the co-operative village Leclaire(unincorporated),
with the factory of the X.O. Nelson Manufacturing Co., makers of
plumber's supplies, brass goods, sanitary fixtures, &c.; the
village was founded in 1800 by Nelson O. Nelson (b. 1844), and
nearly all of the residents are employed by the company of which
he is the bead ; they share to a certain extent in its profits, and are
encouraged to own their own homes. The company supports a
school, Ledaire Academy, and has built a club-house, bowling
alleys, tennis-courts, base-ball grounds, tic. The first settlement
on the site of Edwardsville was made in 1812, and in 1815 the
town was laid out and named in honour of Ninian Edwards
(1775-1833), the governor of the Illinois .Territory (1800-1818),
and later United States senator (1818-1824) and governor of
the state of Illinois (1826-1830). Edwardsville was incorporated
in i8ig and received its present charter in 1872.
EDWARDSVILLE, a borough of Luzerne county, Pennsyl-
vania, U.S.A., on the north branch of the Susquehanna river,
adjoining Kingston and close to the north-western limits of
Wilkes-Barre (on the opposite side of the river), in the north-
eastern part of the state; the official name of the post office is
Edwardsdale. Pop. (1890), 3284; (1900), 5165, of whom 2645
were foreign-born ; ( 1 9 1 o census) , 8407 . It is served by the electric
line of the Wilkes-Barre & Wyoming Valley Traction Co. Coal
mining and brewing arc the chief industries. Edwardsville was
incorporated in 1884.
EDWIN, AEDUINI or EDWINE (585-633), king of Northumbria,
was the son of Ella of Deira. On the seizure of Deira by ./Ethel-
frith of Bcrnicia (probably 605), Edwin was expelled and is said
to have taken refuge with Cadfan, king of Gwynedd. After the
battle of Chester, in which jEthelfrith defeated the Welsh,
Edwin fled to Roedwald, the powerful king of East Anglia, who
after some wavering espoused his cause and defeated and slew
/Ethelfrith at the river Idle in 617. Edwin thereupon succeeded
to the Northumbrian throne, driving out the sons of ./Ethelfrith.
There is little evidence of external activity on the part of Edwin
before 625. It is probable that the conquest of the Celtic kingdom
of Elmet, a district in the neighbourhood of the modern Leeds,
ruled over by a king named Cerdic (Ceredig) is to be referred to
this period, and this may have led to the later quarrel with
Cadwallon, king of Gwynedd. Edwin seems also to have annexed
Lindsey to his kingdom by 625. In this year he entered upon
negotiations with Eadbald of Kent for a marriage with his sister
/Ethelberg. It was made a condition that Christianity should be
tolerated in Northumbria, and accordingly Paulinus was con-
secrated bishop by Justus in 625, and was sent to Northumbria
with jEthelberg. According to Bede, Edwin was favourably
disposed towards Christianity owing to a vision he had seen at the
court of Roedwald, and in 626 he allowed Eanfled, his daughter
by /Ethelberg, to be baptized. On the day of the birth of his
daughter, the king's life had been attempted by Eomer, an
emissary of Cwichelm,king of Wessex. Preserved by the devotion
of his thegn Lilla,Edwin vowed to become a Christian if victorious
over his treacherous enemy. He was successful in the ensuing
campaign, and abstained from the worship of the gods of his race.
A letter of Pope Boniface helped to decide him, and after con-
sulting his friends and counsellors, of whom the priest Coifi
afterwards took a prominent part in destroying the temple at
Goodmanham, he was baptized with his people and nobles at
York, at Easter 627. In this town he granted Paulinus a see,
built a wooden church and began one of stone. Besides York,
Yeavering and Maelmin in Bernicia, and Catterick in Deira, were
the chief scenes of the work of Paulinus. It was the influence of
Edwin which led to the conversion of Eorpwald of East Anglia.
Bede notices the peaceful state of Britain at this time, and relates
that Edwin was preceded on his progresses by a kind of standard
like that borne before the Roman emperors. In 633 Cadwallon of
North Wales and Penda of Mercia rose against Edwin and slew
him at Hatfield near Doncaster. His kinsman Osric succeeded in
Deira, and Eanfrith the son of ,/Ethelfrith in Bernicia. Bede tells
us that Edwin had subdued the islands of Anglesey and Man, and
the Annales Cambriae record that he besieged Cadwallon (perhaps
in 6.52) in the island of Glannauc (Puffin Island) . He was definitely
recognized as overlord by all the other Anglo-Saxon kings of his
day except Eadbald of Kent.
See Bede, Hist. Eccl. (ed. Plummer, Oxford, 1806), ii. 5, 9, n, 12,
13. '5. 1 6, 18, 20; Nennius (ed. San Marti-, 1844), 63; Vita S.
Oswaldi, ix. Simeon of Durham (ed. Arnold, London, 1882-1885,
vol. i. R.S.). (F. G. M. B.)
EDWIN, JOHN (1740-1790), English actor, was born in London
on the loth of August 1749, the son of a watchmaker. As a
youth, he appeared In the provinces, in minor parts; and at
Bath in 1768 he formed a connexion with a Mrs Walmsley, a
milliner, who bore him a son, but whom he afterwards deserted.
His first London appearance was at the Haymarket in 1776 as
8
EDWY THE FAIR EEL
Flaw in Samuel Foote's The Cozeners, but when George Colman
took over the theatre he was given better parts and became its
leading actor. In 1779 he was at Covent Garden, and played
there or at the Haymarket until his death on the 3ist of October
1790. Ascribed to him are The Last Legacy of John Edwin, 1780;
Edwin's Jests and Edwin's Pills to Purge Melancholy.
His son, JOHN EDWIN (1768-1805), made a first appearance
on the stage at the Haymarket as Hengo in Beaumont and
Fletcher's Bonduca in 1778, and from that time acted frequently
with his father, and managed the private theatricals organized
by his intimate friend Lord Barrymore at Wargrave, Berks.
In 1791 he married Elizabeth Rebecca Richards, an actress
already well known in juvenile parts, and played at the Hay-
market and elsewhere thereafter with her. He died in Dublin
on the 22nd of February 1805. His widow joined the Drury
Lane company (then playing, on account of the fire of 1809, at
the Lyceum), and took all the leading characters in the comedies
of the day. She died on the 3rd of August 1854.
EDWY (EADWIG), "THE FAIR" (c. 940-959), king of the
English, was the' eldest son of King Edmund and JEUgif u, and
succeeded his uncle Eadred in 955, when he was little more than
fifteen years old. He was crowned at Kingston by Archbishop
Odo, and his troubles began at the coronation feast. He had
retired to enjoy the company of the ladies ^Ethelgifu (perhaps
his foster-mother) and her daughter ^Elfgifu, whom the king
intended to marry. The nobles resented the king's withdrawal,
and he was induced by Duns tan and Cynesige, bishop of Lichfield,
to return to the feast. Edwy naturally resented this inter-
ference, and in 957 Dunstan was driven into exile. By the year
956 iElfgifu had become the king's wife, but in 958 Archbishop
Odo of Canterbury secured their separation on the ground of
their being too closely akin. Edwy, to judge from the dis-
proportionately large numbers of charters issued during his
reign, seems to have been weakly lavish in the granting of
privileges, and soon the chief men of Mercia and Northumbria
were disgusted by his partiality for Wessex. The result was
that in the year 957 his brother, the ^Etheling Edgar, was chosen
as king by the Mercians and Northumbrians. It is probable
that no actual conflict took place, and in 959, on Edwy's death,
Edgar acceded peaceably to the combined kingdoms of Wessex,
Mercia and Northumbria.
AUTHORITIES. Saxon Chronicle (ed. Earle and Plummer, Oxford),
sub ann. ; Memorials of St Dunstan (ed. Stubbs, Rolls Series) ;
William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum (ed. Stubbs, Rolls Series);
Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, vol. ii. Nos. 932-1046; Florence of
Worcester.
EECKHOUT, GERBRAND VAN DEN (1621-1674), Dutch
painter, born at Amsterdam on the igth of August 1621, entered
early into the studio of Rembrandt. Though a companion
pupil to F. Bol and Govaert Flinck, he was inferior to both in
skill and in the extent of his practice; yet at an early period
he assumed Rembrandt's manner with such success that his
pictures were confounded with those of his master; and, even
in modern days, the " Resurrection of the Daughter of Jairus,"
in the Berlin museum, and the " Presentation in the Temple,"
in the Dresden gallery, have been held to represent worthily
the style of Rembrandt. As evidence of the fidelity of Eeckhout's
imitation we may cite his " Presentation in the Temple," at
Berlin, which is executed after Rembrandt's print of 1630, and
his " Tobit with the Angel," at Brunswick, which is composed
on the same background as Rembrandt's " Philosopher in
Thought." Eeckhout not merely copies the subjects; he also
takes the shapes, the figures, the Jewish dress and the pictorial
effects of his master. It is difficult to form an exact judgment
of Eeckhout's qualities at the outset of his career. His earliest
pieces are probably those in which he more faithfully reproduced
Rembrandt's peculiarities. Exclusively his is a tinge of green
in shadows marring the harmony of the work, a certain gaudiness
of jarring tints, uniform surface and a touch more quick than
subtle. Besides the pictures already mentioned we should class
amongst early productions on this account the " Woman taken
in Adultery," at Amsterdam; " Anna presenting her Son to the
High Priest," in the Louvre; the " Epiphany," at Turin; and
the " Circumcision," at Cassel. Eeckhout matriculated early
in the Gild of Amsterdam. A likeness of a lady at a dressing-
table with a string of beads, at Vienna, bears the date of 1643,
and proves that the master at this time possessed more imitative
skill than genuine mastery over nature. As he grew older he
succeeded best in portraits, a very fair example of which is that
of the historian Dappers (1669), in the Stadel collection. Eeck-
hout occasionally varied his style so as to recall in later years the
" small masters " of the Dutch school. Waagen justly draws
attention to his following of Terburg in " Gambling Soldiers,"
at Stafford House, and a " Soldiers' Merrymaking," in the collec-
tion of the marquess of Bute. A " Sportsman with Hounds,"
probably executed in 1670, now in the Vander Hoo gallery, and
a " Group of Children with Goats " (1671), in the Hermitage,
hardly exhibit a trace of the artist's first education. Amongst
the best of Eeckhout's works " Christ in the Temple " (1662),
at Munich, and the " Haman and Mordecai " of 1665, at Luton
House, occupy a good place. Eeckhout died at Amsterdam on
the 22nd of October 1674.
EEL. The common freshwater eel (Lat. anguilla; O. Eng.
<E/) belongs to a group of soft-rayed fishes distinguished by the
presence of an opening to the air-bladder and the absence of
the pelvic fins. With its nearest relatives it forms the family
Muraenidae, all of which are of elongated cylindrical form.
The peculiarities of the eel are the rudimentary scales buried
in the skin, the well-developed pectoral fins, the rounded tail fin
continuous with the dorsal and ventral fins. Only one other
species of the family occurs in British waters, namely, the conger,
which is usually much larger and lives in the sea. In the conger
the eyes are larger than in the eel, and the upper jaw overlaps
the lower, whereas in the eel the lower jaw projects beyond the
upper. Both species are voracious and predatory, and feed
on almost any animal food they can obtain, living or dead.
The conger is especially fond of squid or other Cephalopods,
while the eel greedily devours carrion. The common eel occurs
in all the rivers and fresh waters of Europe, except those draining
towards the Arctic Ocean, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
It also occurs on the Atlantic side of North America. The
conger has a wider range, extending from the western and
southern shores of Britain and Ireland to the East Indian Archi-
pelago and Japan. It is common in the Mediterranean.
The ovaries of the eel resemble somewhat those of the salmon in
structure, not forming closed sacs, as in the majority of Teleostei,
but consisting of laminae exposed to the body cavity. The
laminae in which the eggs are produced are very numerous, and
are attached transversely by their inner edges to a membranous
band running nearly the whole length of the body-cavity. The
majority of the eels captured for market are females with the
ovaries in an immature condition. The male eel was first dis-
covered in 1873 by Syrski at Trieste, the testis being described by
him as a lobed elongated organ, in the same relative position as
the ovary in the female, surrounded by a smooth surface without
laminae. He did not find ripe spermatozoa. He discovered the
male by examining small specimens, all the larger being female.
L. Jacoby, a later observer, found no males exceeding 19 in. in
length, while the female may reach a length of 39 in. or more.
Dr C. G. J. Petersen, in a paper published in 1896, states that in
Denmark two kinds of eels are distinguished by the fishermen,
namely, yellow eels and silver eels. The silver eels are further
distinguished by the shape of the snout and the size of the eyes.
The snout in front of the eyes is not flat, as in the yellow eels, but
high and compressed, and therefore appears more pointed, while
the eyes are much larger and directed outwards. In both kinds
there are males and females, but Petersen shows that the yellow
eels change into silver eels when they migrate to the sea. The
sexual organs in the silver eels are more developed than in the
yellow eels, and the former have almost or entirely ceased to take
food. The male silver eels are from nj to 19 in. in length,
the females from i6| to about 39 in. It is evident, therefore,
that if eels only spawn once, they do not all reach the same size
when they become sex,ually mature. The male conger was first
EFFENDI
described in 1879 by Hermes, who obtained a ripe specimen
in the Berlin Aquarium. This specimen was not quite i\ ft.
in length, and of the numerous males which have been identified
at the Plymouth Laboratory, none exceeded this length. The
Urge numbers of conger above this size caught for the market
are all immature females. Female conger of 5 or 6 ft. in length
and weighing from 30 to 50 Ib are common enough, and occasion-
ally they exceed these limits. The largest recorded was 8 ft. 3 in.
long, and weighed i 28 tb.
There is every reason to believe that eels and conger spawn
but once in their lives, and die soon after they have discharged
their generative products. When kept in aquaria, both male
and female conger are vigorous and voracious. The males
sooner or later cease to feed, and attain to the sexually mature
condition, emitting ripe milt when handled and gently squeezed.
They live in this condition five or six months, taking no food
and showing gradual wasting and disease of the bodily organs.
The eyes and skin become ulcerated, the sight is entirely lost,
and the bones become soft through loss of lime. The females
also after a time cease to feed, and live in a fasting condition
for five or six months, during which time the ovaries develop
and reach great size and weight, while the bones become soft
and the teeth disappear. The female, however, always dies in
confinement before the ova are perfectly ripe and before they
are liberated from the ovarian tissue. The absence of some
necessary condition, perhaps merely of the pressure which exists
at the bottom of the sea, evidently prevents the complete
development of the ovary. The invariable death of the fish in
the same almost ripe condition leads to the conclusion that under
normal conditions the fish dies after the mature ova have been
discharged. G. B. Grass! states that he obtained ripe male eels,
and ripe specimens of Muraena, another genus of the family,
in the whirlpools of the Strait of Messina. A ripe female Muraena
has also been described at Zanzibar. Gravid female eels, i.e.
specimens with ovaries greatly enlarged, have been occasionally
obtained in fresh water, but there is no doubt that, normally,
sexual maturity is attained only in the sea.
Until recent years nothing was known from direct observation
concerning the reproduction of the common eel or any species
of the family. It was a well-known fact that large eels migrated
towards the sea in autumn, and that in the spring small trans-
parent eels of 3 in. in length and upwards were common on the
shore under stones, and ascended rivers and streams in vast
swarms. It was reasonable, therefore, to infer that the mature
eels spawned in the sea, and that there the young were developed.
A group of peculiar small fishes were, however, known which
were called Leptocephali, from the small proportional size of
Leptocephali. (By permission of J. & A. Churchill.)
the head. The first of these described was captured in 1763
near Holyhead, and became the type of L. Morrisii, other
specimens of which have been taken either near the shore or at
the surface of the sea. Other forms placed in the same genus
had been taken by surface fishing in the Mediterranean and in
tropical ocean currents. The chief peculiarities of Leptocephali,
in addition to the smallncss of the head, are their ribbon-like
shape and their glassy transparency during life. The body is
flattened from side to side, and broad from the dorsal to the
ventral edge. Like the eels, they are destitute of pelvic fins,
and no generative organs have been observed in them (see fig.).
In 1864 the American naturalist, T. N. Gill, published the con-
clusion that L. Morriiii was the young or larva of the conger, and
Leptocephali generally the young stages of species of Muraenidat.
In 1886 this conclusion was confirmed from direct observation
by Yves Dclagc, who kept alive in a tank at Roscoff a specimen
of L. Morrisii, and saw it gradually transformed into a young
conger. From 1887 to 1892 Professor Grassi and Dr Calandruccio
carried on careful and successful researches into the development
of the Leptocephali at Catania, in Sicily. The specimens were
captured in considerable numbers in the harbour, and the
transformation of L. Morrisii into young conger, and of various
other forms of Leptocephalus into other genera of Muraenidae,
such as Muraena, Congromuraena and Ophichthys, was observed.
In 1894 the same authors published the announcement that
another species of Leptocephalus, namely, L. brevirostris, was
the larva of the common eel. This larval form was captured
in numbers with other Leptocephali in the strong currents of
the Strait of Messina. In the metamorphosis of all Leptocephali
a great reduction in size occurs. The L. brevirostris reaches a
length of 8 cm., or a little more than 2\ in., while the perfectly-
formed young eel is i in. long or a little more.
The Italian naturalists have also satisfied themselves that
certain pelagic fish eggs originally described by Raffaele at Naples
are the eggs of Muraenidae, and that among them are the eggs
of Conger and Anguilla. They believe that these eggs, although
free in the water, remain usually near the bottom at great
depths, and that fertilization takes place under similar conditions.
No fish eggs of the kind to which reference is here made have
yet been obtained on the British coasts, although conger and
eels are so abundant there. Raffaele described and figured the
larva newly hatched from one of the eggs under consideration,
and it is evident that this larva is the earliest stage of a
Leptocephalus.
Although young eels, some of them more or less flat and
transparent, are common enough on the coasts of Great Britain
and north-western Europe in spring, neither eggs nor specimens
of Leptocephalus brevirostris have yet been taken in the North
Sea, English Channel or other shallow waters in the neighbour-
hood of the British Islands, or in the Baltic. Marked eels have
been proved to migrate from the inmost part of the Baltic to
the Kattegat. Recently, however, search has been made for the
larvae in the more distant and deeper portions of the Atlantic
Ocean. In May 1904 a true larval specimen was taken at the
surface south-west of the Faeroe Islands, and another was taken
40 m. north by west of Achill Head, Ireland. In 1905 numbers
were taken in deep water in the Atlantic. The evidence at present
available indicates that the spawning of mature eels takes place
beyond the too fathom line, and that the young eels which reach
the coast are already a year old. As eels, both young and old,
are able to live for a long time out of water and have the habit
of travelling at night over land in wet grass and in damp weather,
there is no difficulty in explaining their presence in wells, ponds
or other isolated bodies of fresh water at any distance from
the sea.
See " The Eel Question," Report U.S. Commissioner of Fisheries
for 1879 (Washington, 1882); J. T. Cunningham, " Reproduction
and Development of the Conger," Journ. Mar. Biol. Assn. vol. ii. ;
C. G. J. Petersen, Report Dan. Biol. Station, v. (1894) ; G. B. Grassi,
Quart. Journ. Mic. Set. vol. xxxix. (1897). (J. T. C.)
EPFENDI (a Turkish word, corrupted from the Gr.
a lord or master), a title of respect, equivalent to the English
sir," in the Turkish empire and some other eastern countries.
It follows the personal name, when that is used, and is generally
given to members of the learned professions, and to government
officials who have no higher rank, such as Bey, Pasha, &c. It
may also indicate a definite office, as Hakim e/endi,cbiel physician
IO
EFFIGIES, MONUMENTAL
to the sultan. The possessive form effendim (my master) is used
by servants and in formal intercourse.
EFFIGIES, MONUMENTAL. An " effigy " (Lat. effigies, from
effingere, to fashion) is, in general, a material image or likeness
of a person; and the practice of hanging or burning people
" in effigy," i.e. their semblance only, preserves the more general
sense of the word. Such representations may be portraits,
caricatures or models. But, apart from general usages of the
term (see e.g. WAX FIGURES), it is more particularly applied in
the history of art to a particular class of sculptured figures, in
the flat or the round, associated with Christian sepulchral
monuments, dating from the i2th century. The earliest of these
attempts at commemorative portraiture were executed in low
relief upon coffin-lids of stone or purbeck marble, some portions
of the designs for the most part being executed by means of
incised lines, cut upon the raised figure. Gradually, with the
increased size and the greater architectural dignity of monu-
mental structures, effigies attained to a high rank as works of
art, so that before the close of the I3th century very noble
examples of figures of this order are found to have been executed
in full relief; and, about the same period, similar figures also
began to be engraved, either upon monumental slabs of stone
or marble, or upon plates of metal, which were affixed to the
surfaces of slabs that were laid in the pavements of churches.
Engraved plates of this class, known as " Brasses " (see
BRASSES, MONUMENTAL), continued in favour until the era of
the Reformation, and in recent times their use has been revived.
It seems probable that the introduction and the prevalence of
flat engraved memorials, in place of commemorative effigies in
relief, was due, in the first instance, to the inconvenience re-
sulting from increasing numbers of raised stones on the pavement
of churches; while the comparatively small cost of engraved
plates, their high artistic capabilities, and their durability,
combined to secure for them the popularity they unquestionably
enjoyed. If considerably less numerous than contemporary
incised slabs and engraved brasses, effigies sculptured in relief
with some exceptions in full relief continued for centuries to
constitute the most important features in many medieval
monuments. In the i3th century, their origin being apparently
derived from the endeavour to combine a monumental effigy
with a monumental cross upon the same sepulchral stone
(whether in sculpture or by incised lines), parts only of the
human figure sometimes were represented, such as the head or
bust, and occasionally also the feet; in some of the early ex-
amples of this curious class the cross symbol was not introduced,
and after awhile half-length figures became common.
Except in very rare instances, that most important element,
genuine face-portraiture, is not to be looked for, in even the
finest sculptured effigies, earlier than about the middle of the
1 5th century. In works of the highest order of art, indeed, the
memorials of personages of the most exalted rank, effigies from
an early period in their existence may be considered occasionally
to have been portraits properly so called; and yet even in such
works as these an approximately correct general resemblance
but too frequently appears to have been all that was contemplated
or desired. At the same time, in the earliest monumental
effigies we possess contemporary examples of vestments, costume, 1
armour, weapons, royal and knightly insignia, and other personal
appointments and accessories, in all .of which accurate fidelity
has been certainly observed with scrupulous care and minute
exactness. Thus, since the monumental effigies of England
are second to none in artistic merit, while they have been pre-
served in far greater numbers, and generally in better condition
than those in other countries, they represent in unbroken
continuity an unrivalled series of original personal representa-
tions of successive generations, very many of them being, in
1 It is well known that the costume of effigies nearly always
represented what was actually worn by the remains of the person
commemorated, when prepared for interment and when lying in
state; and, in like manner, the aspect of the lifeless countenance,
even if not designedly reproduced by medieval " image " makers,
may long have exercised a powerful influence upon their ideas of
consistent monumental portraiture.
the most significant acceptation of that term, veritable con-
temporaneous portraits.
Once esteemed to be simply objects of antiquarian curiosity,
and either altogether disregarded or too often subjected to
injurious indignity, the monumental effigies in England long
awaited the formation of a just estimate of their true character
and their consequent worth in their capacity as authorities for
face-portraiture. In the original contract for the construction
of the monument at Warwick to Richard Beauchamp, the fifth
earl, who died in 1439, it is provided that an effigy of the deceased
noble should be executed in bronze gilt, with all possible care,
by the most skilful and experienced artists of the time; and
the details of the armour and the ornaments of the figure are
specified with minute precision. It is remarkable, however,
that the effigy itself is described only in the general and inde-
finite terms " an image of a man armed." There is no provision
that the effigy should be " an image " of the earl; and much
less is anything said as to its being such a " counterfeit pre-
sentment " of the features and person of the living man, as the
contemporaries of Shakespeare had learned to expect in what
they would accept as true portraiture. The effigy, almost as
perfect as when it left the sculptor's hands, still bears witness,
as well to the conscientious care with which the conditions of
the contract were fulfilled, as to the eminent ability of the artists
employed. So complete is the representation of the armour,
that this effigy might be considered actually to have been
equipped in the earl's own favourite suit of the finest Milan steel.
The cast of the figure also was evidently studied from what the
earl had been when in life, and the countenance is sufficiently
marked and endowed with the unmistakable attributes of
personal character. Possibly such a resemblance may have
been the highest aim in the image-making of the period, some-
what before the middle of the isth century. Three-quarters
of a century later, a decided step towards fidelity in true
portraiture is shown to have been taken, when, in his will (1510
A.D.), Henry VII. spoke of the effigies of himself and of his late
queen, Elizabeth of York, to be executed for their monument,
as " an image of our figure and another of hers." The existing
effigies in the Beauchamp chapel and in Henry VII. 's chapel,
with the passages just quoted from the contract made by the
executors of the Lancastrian earl, strikingly illustrate the gradual
development of the idea of true personal portraiture in monu-
mental effigies, during the course of the i5th and at the
commencement of the i6th century in England.
Study of the royal effigies still preserved must commence in
Worcester Cathedral with that of King John. This earliest
example of a series of effigies of which the historical value has
never yet been duly appreciated is rude as a work of art, and yet
there is on it the impress of such individuality as demonstrates
that the sculptor did his best to represent the king. Singularly
fine as achievements of the sculptor's art are the effigies of
Henry III., Queen Eleanor of Castile, and her ill-fated son
Edward II., the two former in Westminster Abbey, the last in
Gloucester cathedral; and of their fidelity also as portraits no
doubt can be entertained. In like manner the effigies of
Edward III. and his queen Philippa, and those of their grandson
Richard II. and his first consort, Anne of Bohemia (all at
Westminster), and of their other grandson, Henry of Lancaster,
with his second consort, Joan of Navarre, at Canterbury all
convince us that they are true portraits. Next follow the effigies
of Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York, to be succeeded, and
the royal series to be completed, by the effigies of Queen Elizabeth
and Mary Stuart, all of them in Westminster Abbey. Very
instructive would be a close comparison between the two last-
named works and the painted portraits of the rival queens,
especially in the case of Mary, the pictures of whom differ so
remarkably from one another.
As the 1 5th century advanced, the rank of the personage
represented and the character of the art that distinguishes any
effigy goes far to determine its portrait qualities. Still later,
when more exact face-portraiture had become a recognized
element, sculptors must be supposed to have aimed at the
EGAN EGBO
ii
production of such resemblance as their art would enable them
to give to their works; and accordingly, when we compare
effigies with painted portraits of the same personages, we find
that they corroborate one another. The prevalence of por-
traiture in the effigies of the i6th and lyth centuries, when their
an generally underwent a palpable decline, by no means raises
all works of this class, or indeed the majority of them, to the
dignity of true portraits; on the contrary, in these effigies, as
in those of earlier periods, it is the character of the art in each
particular example that affects its merit, value and authority
as a portrait. In judging of these latter effigies, however, we
must estimate them by the standard of art of their own era;
and, as a general rule, the effigies that are the best as works of
art in their own class are the best also and the most faithful in
their portraiture. The earlier effigies, usually produced without
any express aim at exact portraiture, as we now employ that
expression, have nevertheless strong claims upon our veneration.
Often their sculpture is very noble; and even when they are
rudest as works of art, there is rarely lacking a rough grandeur
about them, as exhibited in the fine bold figure of Fair
Rosamond's son, Earl William of the Long Sword, which reposes
in such dignified serenity in his own cathedral at Salisbury.
These effigies may not bring us closely face to face with remote
generations, but they do place before us true images of what the
men and women of those generations were.
Observant students of monumental effigies will not fail to
appreciate the singular felicity with which the medieval sculptors
adjusted their compositions to the recumbent position in which
their " images " necessarily had to be placed. Equally worthy
of notice is the manner in which many monumental effigies,
particularly those of comparatively early date, are found to have
assumed an aspect neither living nor lifeless, and yet impressively
life-like. The sound judgment also, and the good taste of those
early sculptors, were signally exemplified in their excluding,
almost without exception, the more extravagant fashions in
the costume of their era from their monumental sculpture, and
introducing only the simpler but not less characteristic styles
of dress and appointments. Monumental effigies, as commonly
understood, represent recumbent figures, and the accessories
of the effigies themselves have been adjusted to that position.
With the exceptions when they appear on one side resting on
the elbow (as in the case of Thomas Owen (d. 1598) and Sir
Thomas Heskett (d. 1605), both in Westminster Abbey), these
effigies lie on their backs, and as a general rule (except in the case
of episcopal figures represented in the act of benediction, or of
princes and warriors who sometimes hold a sceptre or a sword)
their hands are uplifted and conjoined as in supplication. The
crossed-legged attitude of numerous armed effigies of the era of
mail-armour has been supposed to imply the personages so
represented to have been crusaders or Knights of the Temple;
but in either case the supposition is unfounded and inconsistent
with unquestionable facts. Much beautiful feeling is conveyed by
figures of ministering angels being introduced as in the act of
supporting and smoothing the pillows or cushions that are placed
in very many instances to give support to the heads of the re-
cumbent effigies. The animals at the feet of these effigies,
which frequently have an heraldic significance, enabled the
sculptors, with equal propriety and effectiveness, to overcome
one of the special difficulties inseparable from the recumbent
position. In general, monumental effigies were carved in stone
or marble, or cast in bronze, but occasionally they were of wood:
such is the effigy of Robert Curthose, son of William I. (d. 1135),
whose altar tomb in Gloucester cathedral was probably set up
about 1320.
In addition to recumbent statues, upright figures must receive
notice here, especially those set in wall-monuments in churches
mainly. These usually consisted in half-length figures, seen
full-face, placed in a recess within an architectural setting more
or less elaborate. They belong mainly to the i6th and i?th
centuries. Among the many examples in old St Paul's cathedral
(destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666) were those of Dean Colet
(d. 1519), William Aubrey (1595) and Alexander Nowell(d. 1601).
In St Giles's, Cripplegate, is the similarly designed effigy of John
Speed (d. 1629); while that of John Stow (d. 1605) is a full-
length, seated figure. This, like the figure of Thomas Owen, is
in alabaster, but since its erection has always been described
as terra-cotta a material which came into considerable favour
for the purpose of busts and half-lengths towards the end of the
1 6th century, imported, of course, from abroad. Sometimes
the stone monuments were painted to resemble life, as in the
monuments to Shakespeare and John Combe (the latter now
over-painted white), in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-
on-Avon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Among the more noteworthy publications are
the following: Monumental Effigies in Great Britain (Norman
Conquest to Henry VIII.), by C. A. Stothard, folio (London, 1876);
The Recumbent Monumental Effigies in Northamptonshire, by A.
Il.irtshorne (410, London. 1867-1876); Sepulchral Memorials
(Northamptonshire), by W. H. Hyett (folio, London, 1817) \Ancient
Sepulchral Effigies and Monumental Sculpture of Devon, by W. H. H.
Rogers (410, Exeter, 1877); The Ancient Sepulchral Monuments
of Essex, ed. by C. M. Canton (410, Chelmsford, 1890); and other
works dealing with the subject according to counties. Of particular
value is the Report of tlie Sepulchral Monuments Committee of the
Society of Antiquaries, laboriously compiled at the request of the
Office of Works, arranged (i) personally and chronologically, and
(2) locally (1872). (C. B.;M. H. S.)
EGAN, PIERCE (1772-1849), English sporting writer, was born
in London in 1772. He began life as sporting reporter for the
newspapers, and was soon recognized as the best of his day. In
1814 he wrote, set and printed a book about the relations of the
prince regent (afterwards George IV.) and Miss Robinson, called
The Mistress of Royally, or the Loves of Florizel and Perdila. But
his best-known work is Life in London, or Days and Nights of Jerry
Hawthorne and his Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom (1821), a book
describing the amusements of sporting men, with illustrations by
Cruikshank. This book took the popular fancy and was one of
Thackeray's early favourites (see his Roundabout Papers). It
was repeatedly imitated, and several dramatic versions were
produced in London. A sequel containing more of country sports
and misadventures probably suggested Dickens's Pickttnck
Papers. In 1824 Pierce Egan's Life in London and Sporting
Guide was started, a weekly newspaper afterwards incorporated
with Bell's Life. Among his numerous other books are Boxiana
(1818), Life of an Actor (1824), Book of Sports (1832), and the
Pilgrims of the Thames (1838). Egan died at Pentonville on the
3rd of August 1849.
His son, Pierce Egan (1814-1880), illustrated his own and his
father's books, and wrote a score of novels of varying merit, of
which The Snake in the Grass (1858) is perhaps the best.
EGBO, a secret society flourishing chiefly among the Efiks of
the Calabar district, West Africa. Egbo or Ekpe is a mysterious
spirit who lives in the jungle and is supposed to preside at the
ceremonies of the society. Only males can join, boys being
initiated about the age of puberty. Members are bound by oath
of secrecy, and fees on entrance are payable. The Egbo-men are
ranked in seven or nine grades, for promotion to each of which
fresh initiation ceremonies, fees and oaths are necessary. The
society combines a kind of freemasonry with political and law-
enforcing aims. For instance any member wronged in an Egbo
district, that is one dominated by the society, has only to address
an Egbo-man or beat the Egbo drum in the Egbo-house, or
" blow Egbo " as it is called, i.e. sound the Egbo horn before the
hut of the wrong-doer, and the whole machinery of the society is
put in force to see justice done. Formerly the society earned as
bad a name as most secret sects, from the barbarous customs
mingled with its rites; but the British authorities have been able
to make use of it in enforcing order and helping on civilization.
The Egbo-house, an oblong building like the nave of a church,
usually stands in the middle of the villages. The walls are of clay
elaborately painted inside and ornamented with clay figures in
relief. Inside are wooden images, sometimes of an obscene
nature, to which reverence is paid. Much social importance
attaches to the highest ranks of Egbo-men, and it is said that very
large sums, sometimes more than a thousand pounds, are paid
to attain these dignities. At certain festivals in the year the
12
EGEDE EGERIA
Egbo-men wear black wooden masks with horns which it is death
for any woman to look on.
See Mary H. Kingsley, West African Studies (1901); Rev. Robt.
H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa (1904); C. Partridge, Cross
River Natives (1905).
EGEDE, HANS (1686-1758), Norwegian missionary, was born
in the vogtship of Senjen, Norway, on the 3ist of January 1686.
He studied at the university of Copenhagen, and in 1706 became
pastor at Vaagen in the Lofoten islands, but the study of the
chronicles of the northmen having awakened in him the desire to
visit the colony of Northmen in Greenland, and to convert them
to Christianity, he resigned his charge in 1717; and having, after
great difficulty, obtained the sanction and help of the Danish
government in his enterprise, he set sail with three ships from
Bergen on the 3rd of May 1721, accompanied by his wife and
children. He landed on the west coast of Greenland on the 3rd of
July, but found to his dismay that the Northmen were entirely
superseded by the Eskimo, in whom he had no particular interest,
and whose language he would be able to master, if at all, only after
years of study. But, though compelled to endure for some years
great privations, and at one time to see the result of his labours
almost annihilated by the ravages of small-pox, he remained
resolutely at his post. He founded the colony of Godthaab, and
soon gained the affections of the people. He converted many of
them to Christianity, and established a considerable commerce
with Denmark. Ill-health compelling him to return home in
1736, he was made principal of a seminary at Copenhagen, in
which workers were trained for the Greenland mission; and from
1740 to 1747 he was superintendent of the mission. He died on
the $th of November 1758. He is the author of a book on the
natural history of Greenland.
His work in Greenland was continued, on his retirement, by
his son PAUL EGEDE (1708-1789), who afterwards returned to
Denmark and succeeded his father as superintendent of the
Greenland mission. Paul Egede also became professor of
theology in the mission seminary. He published a Greenland-
Danish-Latin dictionary (1750), Greenland grammar (1760) and
Greenland catechism (1756). In 1766 he completed the transla-
tion begun by his father of the New Testament into the Green-
land tongue; and in 1787 he translated Thomas a Kempis. In
1789 he published a journal of his life in Greenland.
EGER, AQIBA (1761-1837), Jewish scholar, was for the last
twenty-five years of his life rabbi of Posen. He was a rigorous
casuist of the old school, and his chief works were legal notes on
the Talmud and the code of Qaro (<?..). He believed that
religious education was enough, and thus opposed the party which
favoured secular schools. He was a determined foe of the
reform movement, which began to make itself felt in his
time.
EGER (Czech, Cheb), a town of Bohemia, Austria, 148 m.
W.N.W. of Prague by rail. Pop. (1900) 23,665. It is situated
on the river Eger, at the foot of one of the spurs of the Fichtel-
gebirge, and lies in the centre of a German district of about
40,000 inhabitants, who are distinguished from the surrounding
population by their costumes, language, manners and customs.
On the rock, to the N.W. of the town, lies the Burg or Castle,
built probably in the I2th century, and now in ruins. It
possesses a massive black tower, built of blocks of lava, and in
the courtyard is an interesting chapel, in Romanesque style with
fantastic ornamentations, which was finished in the I3th century.
In the banquet-room of this castle Wallenstein's officers Terzky,
Kinsky, Illo and Neumann were assassinated a few hours before
Wallenstein himself was murdered by Captain Devereux. The
murder took place on the 25th of February 1634 in the town-
house, which was at that time the burgomaster's house. The
rooms occupied by Wallenstein have been transformed since 1872
into a museum, which contains many historical relics and
antiquities of the town of Eger. The handsome and imposing St
Nicholas church was built in the I3th century and restored in
1892. There is a considerable textile industry, together with the
manufacture of shoes, machinery and milling. Eger was the
birthplace of the novelist and playwright Braun von Braunthal
(1802-1866). About 3 m. N.W. of Eger is the well-known
watering place of Franzensbad (q.v.).
The district of Eger was in 870 included in the new margraviate
of East Franconia, which belonged at first to the Babenbergs, but
from 906 to the counts of Vohburg, who took the title of margraves
of Eger. By the marriage, in 1149, of Adela of Vohburg with
the emperor Frederick I., Eger came into the possession of the
house of Swabia, and remained in the hands of the emperors
until the i3th century. In 1265 it was taken by Ottakar II. of
Bohemia, who retained it for eleven years. After being repeatedly
transferred from the one power to the other, according to the
preponderance of Bohemia or the empire, the town and territory
were finally incorporated with Bohemia in 1350, after the
Bohemian king became the emperor Charles IV. Several im-
perial privileges, however, continued to be enjoyed by the town
till 1849. It suffered severely during the Hussite war, during the
Swedish invasion in 1631 and 1647, and in the War of the Austrian
Succession in 1742.
See Drivok, Altere Geschichte der deutschen Reichstadt Eger und
des Reichsgebietes Egerland (Leipzig, 1875).
EGER (Ger. Erlau, Med. Lat. Agria), a town of Hungary,
capital of the county of Heves, 90 m. E.N.E. of Budapest by rail.
Pop. (1900) 24,650. It is beautifully situated in the valley of the
river Eger, an affluent of the Theiss, and on the eastern outskirts
of the Matra mountains. Eger is the see of an archbishopric,
and owing to its numerous ecclesiastical buildings has received
the name of " the Hungarian Rome." Amongst the principal
buildings are the beautiful cathedral in the Italian style, with a
handsome dome 130 ft. high, erected in 1831-1834 by the arch-
bishop Ladislaus Pyrker (1772-1847); the church of the Brothers
of Mercy, opposite which is a handsome minaret, 115 ft. high,
the remains of a mosque dating from the Turkish occupation,
other Roman Catholic churches, and an imposing Greek church.
The archiepiscopal palace; the lyceum, with a good library and
an astronomical observatory; the seminary for Roman priests;
and the town-hall are all noteworthy. On an eminence N.E. of
the town, laid out as a park, are the ruins of the old fortress, and
a monument of Stephen Dobo, the heroic defender of the town
against the assaults of the Turks in 1 552. The chief occupation of
the inhabitants is the cultivation of the vineyards of the surround-
ing hills, which produce the red Erlauer wine, one of the best in
Hungary. To the S.W. of Eger, in the same county of Heves,
is situated the town of Gyongyos (pop. 15,878). It lies on the
south-western outskirts of the Matra mountains, and carries on a
brisk trade in the Erlauer wine, which is produced throughout the
district. The Hungarians defeated the Austrians at Gyongyos on
the 3rd of April 1849. To the S.W. of Gyongyos is situated the
old town of Hatvan (pop. 9698), which is now a busy railway
junction, and possesses several industrial establishments.
Eger is an old town, and owes its 'importance to the bishopric
created by King Stephen in 1010, which was one of the richest
in the whole of Hungary. In 1552 Eger resisted the repeated
assaults Of a large Turkish force; in 1596, however, it was given
up to the Turks by the Austrian party in the garrison, and
remained in their possession until 1687. It was created an arch-
bishopric in 1814. During the revolution of 1848-1849, Eger
was remarkable for the patriotic spirit displayed by its in-
habitants; and it was here that the principal campaigns against
the Austrians were organized.
EGERIA, an ancient Italian goddess of springs. Two distinct
localities were regarded as sacred to her, the grove of Diana
Nemorensis at Aricia, and a spring in the immediate neighbour-
hood of Rome at the Porta Capena. She derives her chief
importance from her legendary connexion with King Numa, who
had frequent interviews with her and consulted her in regard
to his religious legislation (Livy i. 19; Juvenal iii. 12). These
meetings took place on the spot where the sacred shield had
fallen from heaven, and here Numa dedicated a grove to~the
Camenae, like Egeria deities of springs. After the death of Numa,
Egeria was said to have fled into the grove of Aricia, where she
was changed into a spring for having interrupted the rites of
Diana by her lamentations (Ovid, Metam. xv. 479). At Aricia
EGERTON EGG
there wms also a Manius Egerius, a male counterpart of Egeria.
lli-r connexion with Diana Nemorensis, herself a birth goddess, is
confirmed by the fact that her aid was invoked by pregnant
women. She also possessed the gift of prophecy: and the
statement (Dion. Halic. ii. 60) that she was one of the Muses
,ie to her connexion with the Camenae, whose worship was
displaced by them.
EGERTON. SIR PHILIP DE MALPAS GREY. Bart. (1806-
1881), English palaeontologist, was born on the 1 3th of November
1806, the son of the gth baronet. He was educated at Eton and
Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1828. While
at college his interest in geology was aroused by the lectures of
W. Buckland, and by his acquaintance with W. D. Conybeare.
Subsequently when travelling in Switzerland with Lord Cole
(afterwards 3rd earl of Enniskillen) they were introduced to
Prof. L. Agassi* at Neufchatel, and determined to make a special
study of fossil fishes. During the course of fifty years they
gradually gathered together two of the largest and finest of
private collections that of Sir Philip Grey Egerton being at
Oulton Park, Tarporley, Cheshire. He described the structure
and affinities of numerous species in the publications of the
Geological Society of London, the Geological Magazine and the
Decades of the Geological Survey; and in recognition of his
services the Wollaston medal was awarded to him in 1873 by the
Geological Society. He was elected F.R.S. in 1831, and. was a
trustee of the British Museum. As a member of Parliament he
represented the city of Chester in 1830, the southern division of
Cheshire from 1835 until 1868, and the western division from
1868 to 1881. He died in London on the 6th of April 1 88 1. His
collection of fossil fishes is now in the British Museum.
EGO. AUGUSTUS LEOPOLD (1816-1863), English painter,
was born on the 2nd of May 1816 in London, where his father
carried on business as a gun-maker. He had some schooling at
Bexley, and was not at first intended for the artistic profession ;
but, developing a faculty in this line, he entered in 1834 the
drawing class of Mr Sass, and in 1836 the school of the Royal
Academy. His first exhibited picture appeared in 1837 at the
Suffolk Street gallery. In 1838 he began exhibiting in the
Academy, bis subject being a " Spanish Girl "; altogether he
sent twenty-seven works to this institution. In 1848 he became
an associate and in 1860 a full member of the Academy: he had
considerable means, apart from his profession. In 1857 he took a
tfnHi"g part in selecting and arranging the modern paintings in the
Art-Treasures Exhibition in Manchester. His constitution being
naturally frail, he went in 1853, with Dickens and Wilkie Collins,
to Italy for a short trip, and in 1863 he visited Algeria. Here he
benefited so far as his chronic lung-disease was concerned; but
exposure to a cold wind while out riding brought on an attack of
asthma, from which he died on the 26th of March 1863 at Algiers,
near which city his remains were buried.
Egg was a gifted and well-trained painter of genre, chiefly in
the way of historical anecdote, or of compositions from the poets
and novelists. Among his principal pictures may be named:
1843, the " Introduction of Sir Piercie Shafton and Halbert
Glendinning" '(from Scott's Monastery); 1846, "Buckingham
Rebuffed "; 1848, " Queen Elizabeth discovers she is no longer
young "; 1850, " Peter the Great sees Catharine for the first
time "; 1854, " Charles I. raising the Standard at Nottingham "
(a study); 1855, the " Life and Death of Buckingham "; 1857
and 1858, two subjects from Thackeray's Esmond; 1858, " Past
and Present, a triple picture of a faithless wife "; 1859, the " Night
before N'aseby "; 1860, his last exhibited work, the Dinner
Scene from The Taming of Uie Shrew. TheTate Gallery contains
one of his earlier pictures, Patricio entertaining two Ladies, from
the Diable boiteux; it was painted in 1844.
Egg was rather below the middle height, with dark hair and
a handsome well-formed face; the head of Peter the Great (in
the picture of Peter and Catharine, which may be regarded as his
best work, along with the Life and Death of Buckingham)
was studied, but of course considerably modified, from his own
countenance. He was manly, kind-hearted, pleasant, and very
genial and serviceable among brother-artists; social and com-
panionable, but holding mainly aloof from fashionable circles.
As an actor he had uncommon talent. He appeared among
Dickens's company of amateurs in 1852 in Lord Lytton's
comedy Not so Bad as we Seem, and afterwards in Wilkie Collins's
Frozen Deep, playing the humorous part of Job Want.
EGG (O.E. aeg, cf. Ger. Ei, Swed. aegg, and prob. Gr. Ma>,
Lat. ovum), the female reproductive cell or ovum of animals,
which gives rise generally only after fertilization to the young.
The largest eggs are those of birds; and this because, to the
minute essential portion of the egg, or germ, from which the
young bird grows, there is added a large store of food-material
the yolk and white of the egg destined to nourish the growing
embryo while the whole is enclosed within a hard shell.
The relative sizes of eggs depend entirely on the amount of the
food-yolk thus enclosed with the germ; while the form and
texture of the outer envelope are determined by the nature of
the environment to which the egg is exposed. Where the food
material is infinitesimal in quantity the egg is either not ex-
truded the embryo being nourished by the maternal tissues,
or it passes out of the parental body and gives rise at once to a
free-living organism or " larva " (see LARVAL FORMS), as in the
case of many lowly freshwater and marine animals. In such
cases no " egg " in the usual sense of the term is produced.
The number of eggs periodically produced by any given
individual depends on the risks of destruction to which they, and
the young to which they give rise, are exposed: not more than a
single egg being annually laid by some species, while with others
the number may amount to millions.
Birds' Eggs. The egg of the bird affords, for general purposes,
the readiest example of the modifications imposed on eggs by
the external environment. Since it must be incubated by the
warmth of the parent's body, the outer envelope has taken the
form of a hard shell for the protection of the growing chick from
pressure, while the dyes which commonly colour the surface of
this shell serve as a screen to hide it from egg-eating animals.
Carbonate of lime forms the principal constituent of this shell;
but in addition phosphate of lime and magnesia are also present.
In section, this shell will be found to be made up of three more
or less distinct crystalline layers, traversed by vertical canals,
whereby the shell is made porous so as to admit air to the
developing chick.
The outermost, or third, layer of this shell often takes the form
of a glaze, as of procelain, as for example in the burnished egg of
the ostrich: or it may assume the character of a thick, chalky
layer as in some cuckoos (Guira, Crotophaga ant), cormorants,
grebes and flamingoes: while in some birds as in the auks, gulls
and tinamous, this outer layer is wanting; yet the tinamous have
the most highly glazed eggs of all birds, the second layer of the
shell developing a surface even more perfectly burnished than
that formed by the outermost, third layer in the ostrich.
While the eggs of some birds have the shell so thin as to be
translucent, e.g. kingfisher, others display considerable thickness,
the maximum being reached in the egg of the extinct Aepyornis.
Though in shape differing but little from that of the familiar
hen's egg, certain well-marked modifications of form are yet to be
met with. Thus the eggs of the plover are pear-shaped, of the
sand-grouse more or less cylindrical, of the owls and titmice
spherical and of the grebes biconical .
In the matter of coloration the eggs of birds present a remark-
able range. The pigments to which this coloration is due have been
shown, by means of their absorption spectra (Sorby, Proc. Zool.
Soc., 1875), to be seven in number. The first of these, oorhodeine,
is brown-red in tone, and rarely absent: the second and third,
oocyanin, and banded oocyanin, are of a beautiful blue, and
though differing spectroscopically give rise to the same product
when oxidized : the fourth and fifth are yellow, and rufous
ooxanthine, the former combining with oocyanin gives rise to the
wonderful malachite green of the emu's egg, while the latter
occurs only in the eggs of tinamous: the sixth is lichenoxanthine,
a pigment not yet thoroughly known but present in the shells of
all eggs having a peculiar brick-red colour. Still less is known of
EGG
the seventh pigment which is, as yet, nameless. It is a substance
giving a banded absorption spectrum, and which, mixed with
other pigments, imparts an abnormally browner tint. The
origin of these pigments is yet uncertain, but it is probable that
they are derived from the haemoglobin or red colouring matter of
the blood. This being so, then the pigments of the egg-shell differ
entirely in their nature from those which colour the yolk or the
feathers.
While many eggs are either colourless or of one uniform tint,
the majority have the surface broken up by spots or lines, or
a combination of both, of varying tints: the pigment being
deposited as the egg passes down the lower portion of the oviduct.
That the egg during this passage turns slowly on its long axis is
shown by the fact that the spots and lines have commonly a
spiral direction; though some of the markings are made during
periods of rest, as is shown by their sharp outlines, movement
giving a blurred effect. Where the egg is pyriform, the large end
makes way for the smaller. Many eggs display, in addition to the
strongly marked spots, more or fewer fainter spots embedded in a
deeper layer of the shell, and hence such eggs are said to be
" double-spotted," e.g. rails and plovers.
Among some species, as in birds of prey, the intensity of this
coloration is said to increase with age up to a certain point, when
it as gradually decreases. Frequently, especially where but two
eggs are laid (Newton), all the dye will be deposited, sometimes
on the first, sometimes on the last laid, leaving the other colour-
less. But although of a number of eggs in a " clutch " as the
full complement of eggs in a nest is called no two are exactly
alike, they commonly bear a very close resemblance. Among
certain species, however, which lay several eggs, one of the
number invariably differs markedly from the rest, as for example
in the eggs of the house-sparrow or in those of the sparrow-hawk,
where, of a clutch of six, two generally differ conspicuously from
the rest. Differing though these eggs do from the rest of the
clutch, all yet present the characters common to the species.
But the eggs of some birds, such as the Australian swamp quail,
Synoecus auslralis, present a remarkably wide range of variation
in the matter of coloration, no two clutches being alike, the ex-
tremes ranging from pure white to eggs having a greenish ground
colour and rufous spots or blotches. But a still more interesting
illustration of variation equally marked is furnished by the
chikor partridge (Caccabis chukar), since here the variation
appears to be correlated with the geographical distribution of the
species. Thus eggs taken in Greece are for the most part cream-
coloured and unspotted; those from the Grecian Archipelago are
generally spotted and blotched; while more to the eastward
spots are invariably present, and the blotches attain their
maximum development.
But in variability the eggs of the guillemot (Lomma troile)
exceed all others: both in the hue of the ground colour and in
the form of the superimposed markings, these eggs exhibit a
wonderful range for which no adequate explanation has yet
been given.
Individual peculiarities of coloration are commonly repro-
duced, not only with this species but also in others, year after
year.
The coloration of the egg bears no sort of relation to the
coloration of the bird which lays it; but it bears on the other
signifi- hand a more or less direct relation to the nature of the
caaceot environment during incubation.
colour. White eggs may generally be regarded as repre-
senting the primitive type of egg, since they agree in this
particular with the eggs of reptiles. And it will generally be
found that eggs of this hue are deposited in holes or in domed
nests. So long indeed as nesting-places of this kind are used
will the eggs be white. And this because coloured eggs would be
invisible in dimly lighted chambers of this description, and
therefore constantly exposed to the risk of being broken by the
sitting bird, or rolling out of reach where the chamber was large
enough to admit of this, whereas white eggs are visible so long
as they can be reached by the faintest rays of light. Pigeons
invariably lay white eggs; and while some deposit them in holes
others build an open nest, a mere platform of sticks. These
exceptions to the rule show that the depredations of egg-eating
animals are sufficiently guarded against by the overhanging
foh'age, as well as by the great distance from the ground at
which the nest is built. Birds which have reverted to the more
ancient custom of nesting in holes after having developed
pigmented eggs, have adopted the device of covering the shell
with a layer of chalky matter (e.g. puffins), or, to put the case more
correctly, they have been enabled to maintain survival after
their return to the more ancient mode of nidification, because
this reversion was accompanied by the tendency to cover the
pigmented surface of the shell with this light-reflecting chalky
incrustation.
Eggs which are deposited on the bare ground, or in other
exposed situations, are usually protectively coloured: that is to
say, the hue of the shell more or less completely harmonizes with
the ground on which the egg is placed. The eggs of the plover
tribe afford the most striking examples of this fact.
But the majority of birds deposit their eggs in a more or less
elaborately constructed nest, and in such cases the egg, so far
from being protectively coloured, often displays tints that would
appear calculated rather to attract the attention of egg-stealing
animals; bright blue or blue spotted with black being commonly
met with. It may be, however, that coloration of this kind is less
conspicuous than is generally supposed, but in any case the safety
of the egg depends not so much on its coloration as on the character
of the nest, which, where protective devices are necessary, must
harmonize sufficiently with its surroundings to escape observation
from prowling egg-stealers of all kinds.
The size of the egg depends partly on the number produced and
partly on the conditions determining the state of the young bird
at hatching: hence there is a great disparity in the relative sizes
of the eggs of different birds. Thus it will be found that young
birds which emerge in the world blind, naked and helpless are the
product of relatively small eggs, while on the contrary young
hatched from relatively large eggs are down-clad and active
from birth.
The fact that the eggs must be brooded by the parent is also a
controlling factor in so far as number is concerned, for no more
pan be hatched than can be covered by the sitting bird. Other
factors, however, less understood, also exercise a controlling
influence in this matter. Thus the ostrich lays from 12 to 1 6, the
teal 15, the partridge 12-20, while among many other species the
number is strictly limited, as in the case of the hornbills and
guillemots, which lay but a single egg; the apteryx, divers,
petrels and pigeons never lay more than 2, while the gulls and
plovers never exceed 4. Tropical species are said to lay fewer
eggs than their representatives in temperate regions, and further
immature birds lay more and smaller eggs than when fully adult.
Partly owing to the uniformity of shape, size and texture of the
shell, the eggs of birds are by no means easy to distinguish, except
in so far as their family resemblances are concerned: that is
to say, except in particular cases, they cannot be specifically
distinguished, and hence they are of but little or no value for the
purposes of classification.
Save only among the megapodes, all birds brood their eggs,
the period of incubation varying from 13 days, as in small passerine
birds, to 8 weeks, as in the cassowary, though eggs of the rhea and
of Strulhio hatch in from 5 to 6 weeks. But the megapodes
deposit their eggs in mounds of decaying vegetable matter or in
sand in the neighbourhood of hot springs, and there without
further apparent care leave them. Where the nestling is active
from the moment of hatching the eggs have a relatively longer
incubation period than in cases where the nestlings are for a
long while helpless.
Eggs of Mammals. Only in the spiny ant-eater, or Echidna,
and the duck-billed platypus, or Ornilhorhynchus, among the
Mammalia, are the eggs provided with a large store of yolk,
enclosed within a shell, and extruded to undergo development
apart from the maternal tissues. In the case of the echidna the
eggs, two in number, are about as large as those of a sparrow.
EGG
similar in shape, and have a white, parchment-like shell. After
ilsion they are transferred by the beak of the mother to a
pouch resembling that of the marsupial kangaroos, and there
they undergo development. The Ornithorhynchus, on the other
hand, lays from two to four eggs, which in size and general
appearance resemble those of the echidna. They are, how-
ever, deposited in a loosely constructed nest at the end of
a long burrow and there brooded. In Marsupials, the eggs
are smaller than those of Echidna and Ornilhorhynchus, and
they contain a larger proportion of yolk than occurs in higher
of Reptiles. The eggs of reptiles are invariably provided
with a large amount of food yolk and enclosed with a firm test or
shell, which though generally parchment-like in texture may be
calcareous as in birds, as, for example, in many of the tortoises and
turtles and in the crocodiles.
Among reptiles the egg is always white or yellowish, while the
number kid often far exceeds that in the case of birds. The
tuatara of New Zealand, however, lays but ten white hard-
shelled, long and oval at intervals between November and
January. The long intervals between the appearance of the
successive eggs is a characteristic feature of the reptiles, but is met
with among the birds only in the megapodes, which, like the
reptiles, do not " brood " their eggs.
Among the Chelonia the number of eggs varies from two to four
in some of the tortoises, to 200 in some of the turtles: while in the
crocodiles between 20 and 30 are produced, hard-shelled and
white.
The eggs of the lizards are always white or yellowish, and
generally soft-shelled; but the geckos and the green lizard lay
hard-shelled eggs. Many of the soft-shelled eggs are remarkable
for the fact that they increase in size after extrusion, owing to the
stretching of the membranous shell by the growing embryo. In
the matter of number lizards are less prolific than many of the
Chelonia, a dozen eggs being the general number, though as many
as thirty may be produced at a time, as in the case of the common
chameleon.
While as a general rule the eggs of lizards are laid in burrows or
buried, some are retained within the body of the parent until the
young are ready to emerge; or they may even hatch within the
oviduct. This occurs with some chameleons and some lizards, e. g.
the slow-worm. The common English lizard is also viviparous.
Normally the young leaves the egg immediately after its ex-
trusion, but if by any chance this extrusion is delayed they
escape while yet in the oviduct.
The majority of the snakes lay eggs, but most of the vipers and
the aquatic snakes are viviparous, as also are a few terrestrial
species. The shell of the egg is always soft and parchment-like.
As a rule the number of eggs produced among the snakes is not
large, twenty or thirty being common, but some species of python
lay as many as a hundred. Generally, among the oviparous
snakes the eggs are buried, but some species of boas jealously
guard them, enclosing them within the coils of the body.
Egfs of Amphibia. Among the amphibia a greater variety
obtains in the matter of the investment of the egg, as well as
in the number, size and method of their disposal. The outer
covering is formed by a toughening of the surface of a thick
gelatinous coat which surrounds the essential parts of the egg.
This coat in many species of salamander using this name in
the wide sense is produced into threads which serve either to
anchor the eggs singly or to bind them together in bunches.
Viviparity occurs both among the limbless and the tailed
Amphibia, the eggs hatching before they leave the oviduct or
immediately after extrusion. The number of young so produced
is generally not large, but the common salamander (Salamandra
mocHloto) may produce as many as fifty at a birth, though fifteen
is the more normal figure. When the higher number is reached
the young are relatively small and weak.
As a rule among the Amphibia the young leave the egg in the
form of larvae, generally known as " tadpoles "; but many
species produce eggs containing a sufficient amount of food
material to enable the whole of the larval phase to be completed
before hatching.
Among the tailless Amphibia (frogs and toads) there are wide
differences in the number of eggs produced, while the methods
by which these eggs arc disposed of present a marvellous
variety.
As a rule vast quantities of eggs are shed by the female into the
water in the form of " spawn." In the common toad as many as
7000 eggs may be extruded at a time. These leave the body in
the form of two long strings one from each oviduct of trans-
lucent globules, gelatinous in texture, and enclosing a central
sphere of yolk, the upper pole of which is black. The spawn of
the common frog differs from that of the toad in that the eggs all
adhere to form a huge jelly-like mass. But in many species the
number of eggs produced are few; and these may be sufficiently
stored with food-yolk to allow of the tadpole stage being passed
before hatching, as in frogs of the genus Hylodes. In many cases
the eggs are deposited out of the water and often in quite
remarkable ways.
Eggs of Fishes. The eggs of fishes present an extremely wide
range of form, and a no less extensive range in the matter of
number. Both among the cartilaginous and bony fishes vivi-
parity occurs. Most of the sharks and rays are viviparous, but in
the oviparous species the eggs present some interesting and
peculiar forms. Large in size, the outer coat or " shell " is in all
cases horn-like and flexible, but differs greatly in shape. Thus
in the egg of the larger spotted dog-fish it is oblong in shape,
flattened from side to side, and has the angles produced into long,
slender tendrils. As the egg is laid the lower tendrils project
from the vent, and the mother rubs herself against some fixed
body. The tendrils soon catch fast in some slight projection,
when the egg is dragged forth there to remain till hatching takes
place. A couple of narrow slits at each corner of the upper end
serve to admit fresh water to the imprisoned embryo during the
later stages of development; when development is complete
escape is made through the end of the shell. In the rays or
" skates," long spines take the place of tendrils, the egg simply
resting at the bottom of the sea. The empty egg-cases of the
rays are often found on the seashore, and are known as "Mermaids'
purses." The egg of the Port Jackson shark (Cestracion) is of
enormous size, pear-shaped, and provided with a spiral flange
extending along the whole length of the capsule. In the Chimaera
the egg is long, more or less spindle-shaped, and produced on each
side into a broad flange having a fringed edge, so that the whole
bears a close resemblance to a long leaf, broad and notched at one
end, pointed at the other. This likeness to the seaweed among
which it rests is doubtless a protective device, akin to that of
protectively coloured birds' eggs.
Among the bony fishes the eggs generally take the form of
small spheres, enclosed within a tough membrane or capsule.
But they present many important differences, being in some
fishes heavy and remaining at the bottom of the water, in other
light and floating on the surface. While in some species they are
distributed separately, in others they adhere together in masses.
The eggs of the salmon, for example, are heavy, hard and smooth,
and deposited separately in a trough dug by the parent and
afterwards covered to prevent them from being carried away by
the stream. In the perch they are adhesive and form long band-
like masses of spawn adhering to water-plants. In the gobies the
egg is spindle-shaped, and attached by one end by means of a
network of fibres, resembling rootlets; while in the smelt the egg
is loosely suspended by a membrane formed by the peeling ofl
of a part of the outer sheath of the capsule. The eggs of the
garfish (Belone vulgaris) and of the flying-fish of the genus
Exocoetus, attach themselves to foreign objects, or to one another,
by means of threads or cords developed at opposite poles of
the egg.
Among a number of fishes the eggs float at the surface of the
sea, often in enormous masses, when they are carried about at
the mercy of tides and currents. An idea of the size which such
i6
EGGENBERG
masses attain may be gathered from the fact that the spaw,
of the angler-fish, Lophius piscatorius, takes the form of a shee
from 2 to 3 ft. wide, and 30 ft. long. Another remarkable featur
of these floating eggs is their transparency, inasmuch as they ar
extremely difficult to see, and hence they probably escape th
rapacious maws of spawn-eating animals. The cod tribe am
flat-fishes lay floating eggs of this description.
The maximum number of eggs laid by fishes varies greatly
some species laying relatively few, others an enormous number
But in all cases the number increases with the weight and age o
the fish. Thus it has been calculated that the number laid by th
salmon is roughly about 1000 to every pound weight of the fish
a 15 ft salmon laying 15,000 eggs. The sturgeon lays abou
7,000,000; the herring 50,000; the turbot 14,311,000; the sole
134,000; the perch 280,000. Briefly, the number is greates
where the risks of destruction are greatest.
The eggs of the degenerate fishes known as the lampreys am
hag-fishes are remarkable for the fact that in the latter they
are large in size, cylindrical in shape, and provided at each
end with booklets whereby they adhere one to another; while in
the lampreys they are extremely small and embedded in a jelly
Molluscs. Among the Mollusca, Crustacea and Insecta yolk
stored eggs of very remarkable forms are commonly produced
In variety, in this connexion, the Mollusca must perhaps be
given the first place. This diversity, indeed, is strikingly illus-
trated by the eggs of the Cephalopoda. In the squids (Loligo),
for example, the eggs are enclosed in long cylindrical cases, oi
which there are several hundreds, attached by one end to a
common centre; the whole series looking strangely like a rough
mop-head. Each case, in such a cluster, contains about 250 eggs,
or about 40,000 in all. By way of contrast the eggs of the true
cuttle-fish (Sepia) are deposited separately, each enclosed in a
tough, black, pear-shaped capsule which is fastened by a stalk to
fronds of sea-weed or other object. They appear to be extruded
at short intervals, till the full complement is laid, the whole
forming a cluster looking like a bunch of grapes. The octopus
differs yet again in this matter, its eggs being very small, berry-
like, and attached to a stalk which runs through the centre of
the mass.
The eggs of the univalve Mollusca are hardly less varied in the
shapes they take. In the common British Purpura lapillus they
resemble delicate pink grains of rice set on stalks; in Busy con
they are disk-shaped, and attached to a band nearly 3 ft. long.
The eggs of the shell-bearing slugs ( Testacella) are large, and have
the outer coat so elastic that if dropped on a stone floor they will
rebound several inches; while some of the snails (Bulimus) lay
eggs having a white calcareous and slightly iridescent shell, in size
and shape closely resembling the egg of the pigeon. Some are
even larger than the egg of the wood-pigeon. The beautiful
violet-snail (lanthina) a marine species carries its eggs on the
under side of a gelatinous raft. No less remarkable are the eggs of
the whelk; since, like those of the squids, they are not laid
separately but enveloped in capsules, and these to the number of
many hundreds form the large, ball-like masses so commonly met
with on the seashore. When the eggs in these capsules hatch, the
crowd of embryos proceed to establish an internecine warfare,
devouring one another till only the strongest survives !
With the Mollusca, as with other groups of animals, where the
eggs are exposed to great risks they are small, produced in great
numbers, and give rise to larvae. This is well illustrated by the
common oyster which annually disperses about 60,000,000 eggs.
But where the risk of destruction is slight, the eggs are large and
produce young differing from the parent only in size, as in the case
of the pigeon-like eggs of Bulimus.
Crustaceans. Among the higher Crustacea, as a rule, the eggs
are carried by the female, attached to special appendages on the
under side of the body. But in some Squillas they are de-
posited in burrows. Generally they are relatively small so that
the young which emerge therefrom differ markedly in appearance
from the parents, but in deep-sea and freshwater species the eggs
are large, when the young, on emerging, differ but little from
the adults in appearance.
Insects, &c The eggs of insects though minute, are also
remarkable for the great variety of form which they present,
while they are frequently objects of great beauty owing to the
sculptured markings of the shell. They are generally laid in
clusters, either on the ground, on the leaves of plants, or in the
water. Some of the gnats (Culex) lay them on the water
Cylindrical in shape they are packed closely together, set on
end, the whole mass forming a kind of floating raft. Frequently,
as in the case of the stick and leaf insect, the eggs are enclosed in
capsules of very elaborate shapes and highly ornamented.
As to the rest of the Invertebrata above the Protozoa the eggs
are laid in water, or in damp places. In the former case they are
as a rule small, and give rise to larvae; while eggs hatched on
land are sometimes enclosed in capsules, " cocoons," as in the
case of the earthworm, where this capsule is filled with a milky
white fluid, of a highly nutritious character, on which the
embryos feed.
Among some invertebrates two different kinds of eggs are laid
by the same individual. The water-flea, Daphnia (a crustacean) ,
lays two kinds of eggs known as " summer " and " winter " eggs.
The summer eggs are carried by the female in a " brood-pouch "
on the back. The " winter " eggs, produced at the approach of
winter, differ markedly in appearance from the summer eggs,
being larger, darker in colour, thicker shelled, and enclosed in a
capsule formed from the shell or carapace, of the parent's body.
" Winter eggs," however, may be produced in the height of
summer. While the " summer eggs " are unfertilized, the winter
eggs are fertilized by the male, and possess the remarkable power
of lying dormant for months or even years before they develop.
The production of these two kinds of eggs is a device to overcame
the cold of winter, or the drying up of the pools in which the
species lives, during the heat of the summer. The power of
resistance which such eggs possess may be seen in the fact that a
sample of mud which had been kept dry for ten years still con-
tained living eggs. In deep water where neither drought nor
winter cold can seriously affect the Daphnias, they propagate all
the year round by unfertilized " summer " eggs.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. For further details on this subject the following
authors should be consulted -.Mammals : F. E. Beddard, "Re-
marks on the Ovary of Echidna," Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc Edin
vol. viii. (1885); W. H. Caldwell, "The Embryology of Monotre-
mata and Marsupialia," Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. vol. 178 (1887);
E. B. Poulton, " The Structures connected with the Ovarian Ovum
of the Marsupialia and Monotremata," Quart. Journ. Micros. Sci.
vol. xxiv. (1884). Birds, Systematic: H. Seebohm, Coloured
Figures of the Eggs of British Birds (1896); A. Newton, Oolheca
Wooleyana (1907); E. Gates, Cat. Birds' Eggs Brit. Mus.
(appearing), vols. i.-iv. published. General: A. Newton, Dictionary
of Birds (1896). Colouring matter: Newbegin, Colour in Nature
(1898). Reptiles and Amphibia: R. Gadow, " Reptiles," Camb.
Nat. Hist. (1901); G. A. Boulenger, "The Tailless Batrachians of
iurope," Ray Soc. (1896). Fishes: Bridgeand Boulenger, "Fishes,
Ascidians, &c.," Camb. Nat. Hist. (1904) ; B. Dean, Fishes Living and
Fossil (1895); J. T. Cunningham, Marketable Marine Fishes (1896).
Invertebrate: G. H Carpenter, Insects. Their Structure and Life
(1899); L. C. Miall, A History of Aquatic Insects (1895); T. R. R.
btebbmg, Crustacea, Internat. Sci. series (1893); M. C. Cooke,
'Mollusca," Camb. Nat. Hist. (1906). For further references to the
above and other Invertebrate groups see various text-books on
Entomology, Zoology. (W. P. P.)
EGGENBERG, HANS ULRICH VON, PRINCE (1568-1634),
Austrian statesman, was a son of Siegfried von Eggenberg (d.
I S94), and began life as a soldier in the Spanish service, becoming
about 1596 a trusted servant of the archduke of Styria, after-
wards the emperor Ferdinand II. Having become a Roman
Catholic, he was soon the chancellor and chief adviser of
r erdinand, whose election as emperor he helped to secure in 1619.
le^ directed the imperial policy during the earlier part of the
iTiirty Years' War, and was in general a friend and supporter of
Wallenstein, and an opponent of Maximilian I., duke of Bavaria,
nd of Spain. He was largely responsible for Wallenstein's
eturn to the imperial service early in 1632, and retired from
>ublic life just after the general's murder in February 1634, dying
EGGER EGLINTON, EARLS OF
1 7
at Laibach. on the tSih of October 1634. Eggenberg's influence
with Ferdinand was so marked that it was commonly said iliai
Austria rested upon three hills (Berge): Eggenberg, Questenberg
and Werdenberg. He was richly rewarded for his services to the
emperor. Having received many valuable estates in Bohemia
and elsewhere, he was made a prince of the Empire in 1623, and
duke of Krumau in 1625.
See H. von Zwiedineck-Siidenhorst, Hans Ulrich, Fiirsl von
Euf***'t (Vienna. 1880); and F. Mares, Beitrdte sur Ceschichte
in Bnukuntrn des Fursten J. U. von Eggenbert ** Kaiser Ferdinand
11. umi ra Wtttdslei* (Prague. 1893).
EGGER. EMILE (1813-1835), French scholar, was born in
Paris on the iSth of July 1813. From 1840 till 1855 he was
assistant professor, and from 1855 till his death professor of
Greek literature in the Facult des Lettres at Paris University.
In 1 854 he was elected a member of the Academic des Inscriptions
and in 1873 of theConseilsupe'rieurdcl'instructionpubliquc. He
was a voluminous writer, a sound and discerning scholar, and his
influence was largely responsible for the revival of the study of
classical philology in France. His most important works were
Essai sur I'histoire de la critique ekes Us Grecs (1849), Notions
tUmeniaires de grammaire comparte (1852), Apollonius Dyscole,
essai sur I'histoire des theories grafnmaticales dans I' antiquitt (1854) ,
Uf moires de I literature ancienne (1862), Memoir es dhistoire
antifHHf el de phiiologie (1863), Les Papyrus grecs du Music du
Louvre et de la Bibliotkeque Imperial (1865), Etudes sur les
IraiUs publics ckex les Grecs et les Remains (1866), L'HelUnisme en
France (1869), La Litterature grecque (1890). He was also the
author of Observations et reflexions sur le dtveloppement de I'in-
leUigence et du langage ckex les en/ants (1879). Egger died in
Paris on the ist of September 1885.
EGG LESION, EDWARD (1837-1002), American novelist and
historian, was born in Vevay, Indiana, on the loth of December
1837, of Virginia stock. Delicate health, by which he was more
or less handicapped throughout his life, prevented his going to
college, but he was naturally a diligent student. He was a
Methodist circuit rider and pastor in Indiana and Minnesota
(1857-1866); associate editor (1866-1867) of The Little Corporal,
Chicago; editor of The National Sunday School Teacher, Chicago
(1867-1870); literary editor and later editor-in-chief of The
Independent, New York (1870-1871); and editor of Hearth and
Home in 1871-1872. He was pastor of the church of Christian
Endeavour, Brooklyn, in 1874-1879. From 1880 until his death
on the 2nd of September 1002, at his home on Lake George, New
York, he devoted himself to literary work. His fiction includes
Mr Blake's Walking Stick (1869), for children; The Hoosier
Schoolmaster (1871); The End of the World (1872); The Mystery
of MeiropolismUe (1873); The Circuit Rider (1874); Roxy
(1878); The Hoosier Schoolboy (1883); The Book of Queer
Stories (1884), for children; The Graysons (1888), an excellent
novel; The Faith Doctor (1891); and Duffels (1893), short
stories. Most of his stories portray the pioneer manners and
dialect of the Central West, and the Hoosier Schoolmaster was one
of the first examples of American local realistic fiction; it was very
popular, and was translated into French, German and Danish.
During the last third of his life Eggleston laboured on a History of
Life in the United States, but he lived to finish only two volumes
The Beginners of a Nation (1896) and The Transit of Civilization
(1000). In addition he wrote several popular compendiums of
American history for schools and homes.
SerG. C. Eggleston, The Pint of the Hoosiers (Philadelphia, 1903),
and Meredith Nicholson, The Hoosiers (1900).
His brother GEORGE CAEY EGGLESTON (1839- ), American
journalist and author, served in the Confederate army; was
managing editor and later editor-in-chief of Hearth and Home
(1871-1874); was literary editor of the New York Evening Post
(1875-1881), literary editor and afterwards editor-in-chief of the
New York Commercial Advertiser (1884-1889), and editorial writer
for The World (New York) from 1889 to 1000. Most of his books
are stories for boys; others, and his best, are romances dealing
with life in the South especially in the Virginias and the
Carolinas before and during the Civil War. Among his publi-
cations may be mentioned: A Rebel's Recollections (1874);
The Last of the Flatboats ( i 900) ; Camp Venture ( 1 900) ; A Carolina
Cavalier (1901); Dorothy South (1002); The Master of Warlock
(1903) ; Evelyn Byrd (1904)1/1 Daughter of the South (1905); Blind
Alleys (1906) ; Love is Ike Sum of it all (1907) ; History of the Con-
federate War (1910); and Recollections of a Varied Life (1910).
EGHAM, a town in the Chertsey parliamentary division of
Surrey, England, on the Thames, 21 m. W.S.W. of London by the
London & South Western railway. Pop. (1901) 11,895. The
church of St John the Baptist is a reconstruction of 1817; it
contains monuments by John Flaxman. Above the right bank of
the river a low elevation, Cooper's Hill, commands fine views over
the valley, and over Windsor Great Park to the west. On the
hill was the Royal Indian Civil Engineering College, commonly
called Cooper's Hill College, of which Sir George Tomkyns
Chesney was the originator and first president (1871). It
educated men for the public works, accounts, railways and
telegraph departments of India, and included a school of forestry ;
but it was decided, in the face of some opposition, to close it in
1906, on the theory that it was unnecessary for a college with
such a specialized object to be maintained by the government, in
view of the readiness with which servants for these departments
could be recruited elsewhere. Part of the organization, including
the school of forestry, was transferred to Oxford University.
Cooper's Hill gives name to a famous poem of Sir John Denham
(1642). A large and handsome building houses the Royal
Hollo way College for Women (1886), founded by Thomas
Holloway; in the neighbourhood is the sanatorium of the same
founder (1885) for the treatment of mental ailments, accommo-
dating about 250 patients. The college for women, surrounded by
extensive grounds, commands a wide view from the wooded slope
on which it stands. The recreation hall, with its fine art collec-
tion, is the most notable room in this handsome building, which
can receive 250 students. Within the parish, bordering the river,
is the field of Runnymede, which, with Magna Charta Island
lying off it, is famous in connexion with the signature of the
charter by King John. Virginia Water, a large and picturesque
artificial lake to the south of Windsor Great Park, is much
frequented by visitors. It was formed under the direction of the
duke of Cumberland, about 1750, and was the work of the
brothers Thomas and Paul Sandby.
EGIN (Armenian Agn, " the spring "), an important town in
the Mamuret el-Aziz vilayet of Asiatic Turkey (altitude 3300 ft.).
Pop. about 20,000, fairly equally divided between Armenian
Christians and Moslems. It is picturesquely situated in a theatre
of lofty, abrupt rocks, on the right bank of the western Euphrates,
which is crossed by a wooden bridge. The stone houses stand in
terraced gardens and orchards, and the streets are mere rock
ladders. Egin was settled by Armenians who emigrated from
Van in the nth century with Senekherim. On the 8th of
November 1895 and in the summer of 1896 many Armenians were
massacred here. (D. G. H.)
EGLANTINE (E. Frisian, egelliere; Fr. aiglantier), a plant-
name of which Dr R. C. A. Prior (Popular Names of British
Plants, p. 70) says that it " has been the subject of much dis-
cussion, both as to its exact meaning and as to the shrub to
which it properly belongs." The eglantine of the herbalists was
the sweet-brier, Rosa rubiginosa. The signification of the word
seems to be thorn-tree or thorn-bush, the first two syllables
probably representing the Anglo-Saxon egla, egle, a prick or thorn,
while the termination is the Dutch tere, taere, a tree. Eglantine is
frequently alluded to in the writings of English poets, from
Chaucer downwards. Milton, in L' Allegro, is thought by the
term " twisted eglantine " to denote the honeysuckle, Lonicera
Peridymenum, which is still known as eglantine in north-east
Yorkshire.
EGLINTON, EARLS OF. The title of earl of Eglinton has been
held by the famous Scottish family of Montgomerie since 1508.
The attempts made to trace the descent of this house to Roger of
Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury (d. 1094), one of William the
Conqueror's followers, will not bear examination, and the sure
jedigree of the family only begins with Sir John Montgomerie,
lord of Eaglesham, who fought at the battle of Otterbourne in
i8
EGMONT, EARLS OF
1388 and died about 1398. His grandson, Sir Alexander Mont-
gomerie (d. c. 1460), was made a lord of the Scottish parliament
about 1445 as Lord Montgomerie, and Sir Alexander's great-
grandson Hugh, the 3rd lord (c. 1460-1545), was created earl of
Eglinton, or Eglintoun, in 1508. Hugh, who was a person of
importance during the minority of James V., was succeeded by
his grandson Hugh (d. 1546), and then by the latter's son Hugh
(c. 1 53 i-i 585) , who became 3rd earl of Eglinton. This nobleman
was a firm supporter of Mary queen of Scots, for whom he fought
at Langside, and of the Roman Catholic Church; his son and
successor,Hugh,was murdered inAprili586 by the Cunninghams,
a family with which his own had an hereditary blood feud. In
1612, by the death of Hugh, the sth earl, the male line of the
Montgomeries became extinct.
Having no children Earl Hugh had settled his title and estates
on his cousin, Sir Alexander Seton of Foulstruther (1588-1661), a
younger son of Robert Seton, ist earl of Wintoun (c. 1550-1603),
and his wife Margaret, daughter of the 3rd earl of Eglinton.
Alexander, who thus became the 6th earl of Eglinton and took the
name of Montgomerie, was commonly called Greysteel ; he was a
prominent Covenanter and fought against Charles I. at Marston
Moor. Later, however, he supported the cause of Charles II., and
fell into the hands of Cromwell, who imprisoned him. His fifth
son, Robert Montgomerie (d. 1684) , a soldier of distinction, fought
against Cromwell at Dunbar and at Worcester, afterwards
escaping from the Tower of London and serving in Denmark.
Robert's elder brother, Hugh, 7th earl of Eglinton (1613-1669),
who also fought against Cromwell, was the grandfather of
Alexander, the 9th earl (c. 1660-1729), who married, for his third
wife, Susannah (1689-1780), daughter of Sir Archibald Kennedy,
Bart., of Culzean, a lady celebrated for her wit and beauty.
Alexander, the loth earl (1723-1769), a son of the 9th earl, was
one of the first of the Scottish landowners to carry out improve-
ments on his estates. He was shot near Ardrossan by an excise
officer named Mungo Campbell on the 24th of October 1769.
His brother and successor, Archibald, the nth earl (1726-1796),
raised a regiment of Highlanders with which he served in America
during the Seven Years' War. As he left no male issue he was
succeeded in the earldom by his kinsman Hugh Montgomerie
(1739-1819), a descendant of the 6th earl, who was created a peer
of the United Kingdom as Baron Ardrossan in 1806. Before
succeeding to the earldom Hugh had served in the American war
and had been a member of parliament ; after this event he began
to rebuild Eglinton castle on a magnificent scale and to construct
a harbour at Ardrossan.
This earl's successor was his grandson, Archibald William, the
i3th earl (1812-1861), who was born at Palermo in the 29th of
September 1812. His father was Archibald, Lord Montgomerie
(1773-1814), the eldest son of the i2th earl, and his mother was
Mary (d. 1848), a daughter of the nth earl. Educated at Eton,
the young earl's main object of interest for some years was the
turf; he kept a large racing stud and won success and reputation
in the sporting world. In 1839 his name became more widely
known in connexion with the famous tournament which took
place at Eglinton castle and is said to have cost him 30,000 or
40,000. This was made the subject of much ridicule and was
partly spoiled by the unfavourable weather, the rain falling in
torrents. Yet it was a real tournament and the " knights "
broke their spears in the orthodox way. Prince Louis Napoleon
(Napoleon III.) took part in it, and Lady Seymour, a daughter of
Thomas Sheridan and the wife of Lord Seymour, afterwards 1 2th
duke of Somerset, was the queen of beauty. A list *of the
challengers with an account of the jousts and the melee will be
found in the volume on the tournament written by John
Richardson, with drawings by J. H. Nixon. It is also described
by Disraeli in Endymion. Eglinton was a staunch Tory, and in
February 1852 he became lord-lieutenant of Ireland under the
earl of Derby. He retired with the ministry in the following
December, having by his princely hospitality made himself one of
the most popular of Irish viceroys. When Derby returned to
office in February 1858 he was again appointed lord-lieutenant,
and he discharged the duties of this post until June 1859. In this
year he was created earl of Winton, an earldom which had been
held by his kinsfolk, the Setons, from 1600 until 1716, when
George Seton, the 5th earl (c. 1678-1749), was deprived of his
honours for high treason. The earl died on the 4th of October
1 86 1, and was succeeded by his eldest son Archibald William
(1841-1892). When this earl died in 1892 his younger brother
George Arnulph (b. 1848) became I5th earl of Eglinton and
3rd earl of Winton.
See Sir W. Fraser, Memorials of the Montgomeries, earls of Eglinton
(i859)-
EGMONT, EARLS OF. John Perceval, ist earl of Egmont
(1683-1748), Irish politician, and partner with J. E. Oglethorpe
in founding the American colony of Georgia, was created earl
in 1733. He claimed descent from the Egmonts of Flanders,
but his title was taken from the place in County Cork where
the family residence stood. Its name of Burton House, and that
of Burton manor which formed part of the family estates, were
a reminiscence of Burton in Somerset, where was the earlier
English family property of his great-great-grandfather Richard
Perceval (1550-1620), Burghley's secret agent, and author of a
Spanish dictionary published in 1591, whose son Sir Philip
Perceval (1605-1647) acquired the Irish estates by judicious
use of his opportunities as commissioner for land titles and of his
interest at court. Sir Philip's son John, grandfather of the ist
earl, was made a baronet in 1661. The first earl of Egmont
(who had been made Baron Perceval in 1715, and Viscount
Perceval in 1723) is chiefly important for his connexion with
the colonization of Georgia, and for his voluminous letters and
writings on biography and genealogy.
John Perceval, 2nd earl of Egmont (1711-1770), his eldest
son, was an active politician, first lord of the admiralty (1763-
1766), and political pamphleteer, and like his father an ardent
genealogist. He was twice married, and had eight sons and eight
daughters. One of his younger sons was Spencer Perceval,
prime minister of England. His eldest son succeeded as 3rd earl,
and the eldest by his second marriage (with Catherine Compton,
baroness of Arden in Ireland) was in 1802 created Baron Arden
of the United Kingdom, a title which subsequently became
merged in the Egmont earldom.
EGMONT (EGMOND), LAMORAL, COUNT OF, prince of
Gavre (1522-1568), was born in Hainaut in 1522. He was the
younger of the two sons of John IV., count of Egmont, by his
wife Francoise of Luxemburg, princess of Gavre. On the death
of his elder brother Charles, about 1541, he succeeded to his
titles and estates. In this year he served his apprenticeship as
a soldier in the expedition of the emperor Charles V. to Algiers,
distinguishing himself in the command of a body of cavalry.
In 1544 he married Sabina, sister of the elector palatine
Frederick HI., and the wedding was celebrated at Spires with
great pomp in the presence of the emperor and his brother Ferdi-
nand, afterwards emperor. Created knight of the Golden Fleece
in 1546, he accompanied Philip of Spain in his tour through the
Netherland towns, and in 1554 he went to England at the head
of a special embassy to ask the hand of Mary of England for
Philip, and was afterwards present at the wedding ceremony
at Winchester. In the summer of 1557 Egmont was appointed
commander of the Flemish cavalry in the war between Spain
and France; and it was by his vehement persuasion that the
battle of St Quentin was fought. The victory was determined
by the brilliant charge that he led against the French. -The
reputation which he won at St Quentin was raised still higher
in 1558, when he encountered the French army under de Thermes
at Gravelines, on its march homewards after the invasion of
Flanders, totally defeated it, and took Marshal de Thermes
prisoner. The battle was fought against the advice of the duke
of Alva, and the victory made Alva Egmont's enemy. But
the count now became the idol of his countrymen, who looked
upon him as the saviour of Flanders from the devastations of
the French. He was nominated by Philip stadtholder of Flanders
and Artois. At the conclusion of the war by the treaty of
Cateau Cambr6sis, Egmont was one of the four hostages selected
by the king of France as pledges for its execution.
EGOISM
The attempt made by King Philip to convert the Netherlands
into a Spanish dependency and to govern it by Spanish ministers
excited the resentment of Egmont and other leading members
of the Netherlands aristocracy. Between him and Cardinal
GranveUa, the all-powerful minister of the regent Margaret of
Parma, there was no love lost. As a member of the council of
state Egmont joined the prince of Orange in a vigorous protest
addressed to Philip (1561) against the autocratic proceedings
of the minister; and two years later he again protested in
conjunction with the prince of Orange and Count Horn. In the
spring of 1 564 Granvella left the Netherlands, and the malcontent
nobles once more took their places in the council of state. The
resolve, however, of Philip to enforce the decrees of the council
of Trent throughout the Netherlands once more aroused their
resentment. Although himself a good Catholic, Egmont had
no wish to see the Spanish Inquisition established in his native
country. Orange, Egmont and others were convinced that the
enforcement of the decrees in the Netherlands was impossible,
and, in January 1665, Egmont accepted a special mission to
Spain to make known to Philip the state of affairs and the
disposition of the people. At Madrid the king gave him an
ostentatiously cordial reception, and all the courtiers vied with
one another in lavishing professions of respect upon him. They
knew his vain and somewhat unstable character, and hoped to
win him over without conceding anything to the wishes of the
Netherlanders. The king gave him plenty of flatteries and
promises, but steadily evaded any serious discussion of the
object of his mission, and Egmont finally returned home without
having accomplished anything. At the same time Philip sent
further instructions to the regent to abate nothing of the severity
of the persecution.
Egmont was naturally indignant at the treatment he had
received, while the terrors of the Inquisition were steadily
rousing the people to a state of frenzied excitement. In 1566
a confederacy of the lesser nobility was formed (Les Gueux)
whose principles were set out in a document known as the
Compromise. From this league Egmont held aloof; he declined
to take any step savouring of actual disloyalty to his sovereign.
He withdrew to his government of Flanders, and as stadtholder
took active measures for the persecution of heretics. But in the
eyes of Philip he had long been a marked man. The Spanish
king had temporized only until the moment arrived when he
could crush opposition by force. In the summer of 1567 the
duke of Alva was despatched to the Netherlands at the head of
an army of veterans to supersede the regent Margaret and
restore order in the discontented provinces. Orange fled to
Germany after having vainly warned Egmont and Horn of the
dangers that threatened them. Alva was at pains to lull their
suspicions, and then suddenly seized them both and threw them
in the castle of Ghent. Their trial was a farce, for their fate had
already been determined before Alva left Spain. After some
months of imprisonment they were removed to Brussels, where
sentence was pronounced upon them (June 4) by the infamous
Council of Blood erected by Alva. They were condemned to
death for high treason. It was in vain that the most earnest
intercessions were made in behalf of Egmont by the emperor
Maiimilian, by the knights of the order of the Golden Fleece,
by the states of Brabant, and by several of the German princes.
Vain, too, was the pathetic pleading of his wife, who with her
eleven children was reduced to want, and had taken refuge in
a convent. Egmont was beheaded at Brussels in the square
before the town hall on the day after his sentence had been
publicly pronounced (June 5, 1568). He met his fate with calm
resignation; and in the storm of terror and exasperation to
which this tragedy gave rise Egmont's failings were forgotten,
and he and his fellow-victim to Spanish tyranny were glorified
in the popular imagination as martyrs of Flemish freedom.
From this memorable event, which Goethe made the theme of
his play Egmont (1788). is usually dated the beginning of the
famous revolt of the Netherlands. In 1865 a monument to
Counts Egmont and Horn, by Fraiken, was erected on the spot
where they were beheaded.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. T. Juste, Le Comte d' Egmont et le comte de Homes
(Brussels, 1862), Lei Pays-Bos sous Philippe II, 1555-1565 ( 2 vote.,
Brussels, 1855); J. L. Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1*84
(3 vols., London, 1856); J. P. Blplc, History of the People of ' the
Netherlands (tr. from Dutch), vol. iii. (New York, 1900); R. Fruin,
Ilet voorspel van den tastifjarigen oorlag (Amsterdam, 1866); E.
Marx, Studien zur Geschichte des ntederldndischen Aufstandes
(Leipzig, 1902). (G. E.)
EGOISM (from Gr. and Lat. ego, I, the ist personal pronoun),
a modern philosophical term used generally, in opposition to
" Altruism," for any ethical system in which the happiness or
the good of the individual is the m.iin criterion of moral action.
Another form of the word, " Egotism," is really interchangeable,
though in ordinary language it is often used specially (and
similarly " egoism," as in George Meredith's Egoist) to describe .
the habit of magnifying one's self and one's achievements, or
regarding all things from a selfish point of view. Both these
ideas derive from the original meaning of ego, myself, as opposed
to everything which is outside myself. This antithesis of ego
and non-ego, self and not-self, may be understood in several
senses according to the connexion in which it is used. Thus the
self may be held to include one's family, property, business, and
an indefinitely wider range of persons or objects in which the
individual's interest is for the moment centred, i.e. everything
which I can call " mine." In this, its widest, sense " a man's Self
is the sum total of all that he can call his " ( Wm. James, Principles
of Psychology, chap x.). This self may be divided up in many
ways according to the various forms in which it may be expressed.
Thus James (ibid.) classifies the various " selves " as the material,
the spiritual, the social and the " pure." Or again the self may
be narrowed down to a man's own person, consisting of an
individual mind and body. In the true philosophical sense,
however, the conception of the ego is still further narrowed down
to the individual consciousness as opposed to all that is outside
it, i.e. can be its object. This conception of the self belongs
mainly to metaphysics and involves the whole problem of the
relation between subject and object, the nature of reality, and
the possibility of knowledge of self and of object. The ordinary
idea of the self as a physical entity, obviously separate from
others, takes no account of the problem as to how and in what
sense the individual is conscious of himself; what is the relation
between subject and object in the phenomenon of self-conscious-
ness, in which the mind reflects upon itself both past and present ?
The mind is in this case both subject and object, or, as William
James puts it, both " I " and " me." The phenomenon has been
described in various ways by different thinkers. Thus Kant
distinguished the two selves as rational and empirical, just as
he distinguished the two egos as the noumenal or real and the
phenomenal from the metaphysical standpoint. A similar
distinction is made by Herbart. Others have held that the self
has a complex content, the subject self being, as it were, a fuller
expression of the object -self (so Bradley); or again the subject
self is the active content of the mind, and the object self the
passive content which for the moment is exciting the attention.
The most satisfactory and also the most general view is that
consciousness is complex and unanalysable.
The relation of the self to the not -self need not to be treated
here (see METAPHYSICS). It may, however, be pointed out that
in so far as an object is cognized by the mind, it becomes in a sense
part of the complex self-content. In this sense the individual
is in himself his own universe, his whole existence being, in other
words, .the sum total of his psychic relations, and nothing else
being for him in existence at all. A similar idea is prominent in
many philosophico-religious systems wherein the idea of God
or the Infinite is, as it were, the union of the ego and the non-ego,
of subject and object. The self of man is regarded as having
limitations, whereas the Godhead is infinite and all-inclusive.
In many mystical Oriental religions the perfection of the human
self is absorption in the infinite, as a ripple dies away on the
surface of water. The problems of the self may be summed up
as follows. The psychologist investigates the ideal construction
of the self, i.e. the way in which the conception of the self arises,
the different aspects or contents of the self and the relation of
20
EGORIEVSK EGRESS
the subject to the object self. At this point the epistemologist
takes up the question of empirical knowledge and considers
the kind of validity, if any, which it can possess. What existence
has the known object for the knowing subject ? The result of
this inquiry is generally intellectual scepticism in a greater or
less degree, namely, that the object has no existence for the
knower except a relative one, i.e. in so far as it is " known "
(see RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE). Finally the metaphysician,
and in another sphere the theologian, consider the nature of the
pure or transcendental self apart from its relations, i.e. the
absolute self.
In ethics, egoistic doctrines disregard the ultimate problems
of selfhood, and assume the self to consist of a man's person and
those things in which he is or ought to be directly interested.
The general statement that such doctrines refer all moral action
to criteria of the individual's happiness, preservation, moral per-
fection, raises an obvious difficulty. Egoism merely asserts that
the self is all-important in the application of moral principles,
and does not in any way supply the material of these principles.
It is a purely formal direction, and as such merely an adjunct
to a substantive ethical criterion. A practical theory of ethics
seeks to establish a particular moral ideal; if it is an absolute
criterion, then the altruist would place first the attainment
of that ideal by others, while the egoist would seek it for himself.
The same is true of ethical theories which may be described as
material. Of the second type are those, e.g. of Hobbes and
Spinoza, which advocate self-preservation as the ideal, as con-
trasted with modern evolutionist moralists who advocate race-
preservation. Again, we may contrast the early Greek hedonists,
who bade each man seek the greatest happiness (of whatever
kind), with modern utilitarian and social hedonists, who prefer
the greatest good or the greatest happiness of the greatest
number. It is with hedonistic and other empirical theories
that egoism is generally associated. As a matter of fact, however,
egoism has been no less prominent in intuitional ethics. Thus
the man who seeks only or primarily his own moral perfection
is an egoist par excellence. Such are ascetics, hermits and the
like, whose whole object is the realization of their highest
selves.
The distinction of egoistical and altruistic action is further
complicated by two facts. In the first place, many systems
combine the two. Thus Christian ethics may be said to insist
equally on duty to self and duty to others, while crudely egoistic
systems become unworkable if a man renders himself obnoxious
to his fellows. On the other hand, every deliberate action based
on an avowedly altruistic principle necessarily has a reference
to the agent; if it is right that A should do a certain action for the
benefit of B, then it tends to the moral self-realization of A that
he should do it. Upon whatsoever principle the Tightness of an
action depends, its performance is right for the agent. The self-
reference is inevitable in every action in so far as it is regarded
as voluntary and chosen as being of a particular moral quality.
It is this latter fact which has led many students of human
character to state that men do in fact aim at the gratification
of their personal desires and impulses. The laws of the state
and the various rules of conduct laid down by religion or morality
are merely devices adopted for general convenience. The most
remarkable statement of this point of view is that of Friedrich
Nietzsche, who went so far as to denounce all forms of self-denial
as cowardice: let every one who is strong seek to make himself
dominant at the expense of the weak.
EGORIEVSK, a town of Russia, in the government of Ryazan,
70 m. by rail E.S.E. of Moscow, by a branch line (15 m.) connect-
ing with the Moscow to Ryazan main line. The cotton mills and
other factories give occupation to 6000 persons. Egorievsk
has important fairs for grain, hides, &c., which are exported.
Pop. (1897) 23,932.
EGREMONT, EARLS OF. In 1749 Algernon Seymour, 7th
duke of Somerset, was created earl of Egremont, and on his
childless death in February 1730 this title passed by special
remainder to his nephew, Sir Charles Wyndham or Windham,
Bart. (1710-1763), a son of Sir William Wyndham of Orchard
Wyndham, Somerset. Charles, who had succeeded to his
father's baronetcy in 1740, inherited Somerset's estates in
Cumberland and Sussex. He was a member of parliament from
1734 to 1750, and in October 1761 he was appointed secretary
of state for the southern department in succession to William
Pitt. His term of office, during which he acted in concert with
his brother-in-law, George Grertville, was mainly occupied with
the declaration of war on Spain and with the negotiations for
peace with France and Spain, a peace the terms of which the
earl seems to have disliked. He was also to the fore during the
proceedings against Wilkes, and he died on the 2ist of August
1763. Horace Walpole perhaps rates Egremont's talents too
low when he says he " had neither knowledge of business, nor
the smallest share of parliamentary abilities."
The and earl's son and successor, George O'Brien Wyndham
(1751-1837), was more famous as a patron of art and an agricul-
turist than as a politician, although he was not entirely indifferent
to politics. For some time the painter Turner lived at his
Sussex residence, Petworth House, and in addition to Turner, the
painter Leslie, the sculptor Flaxman and other talented artists
received commissions from Egremont, who filled his house with
valuable works of art. Generous and hospitable, blunt and
eccentric, the earl was in his day a very prominent figure in
English society. Charles Greville says, " he was immensely rich
and his munificence was equal to his wealth "; and again that in
his time Petworth was " like a great inn." The earl died un-
married on the nth of November 1837, and on the death of
his nephew and successor, George Francis Wyndham, the 4th
earl (1785-1845), the earldom of Egremont became extinct.
Petworth, however, and the large estates had already passed
to George Wyndham (1787-1869), a natural son of the 3rd earl,
who was created Baron Leconfield in 1859.
EGREMONT, a market town in the Egremont parliamentary
division of Cumberland, England, 5 m. S.S.E. of Whitehaven,
oh a joint line of the London & North Western and Furness
railways. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5761. ' It is pleasantly
situated in the valley of the Ehen. Ruins of a castle command
the town from an eminence. It was founded c. 1120 by William
de Meschines; it is moated, and retains a Norman doorway
and some of the original masonry, as well as fragments of later
date. The church of St Mary is a modern reconstruction em-
bodying some of the Norman features of the old church. Iron
ore and limestone are raised in the neighbourhood.
It seems impossible to find any history for Egremont until
after the Norman Conquest, when Henry I. gave the barony of
Coupland to William de Meschines, who erected a castle at
Egremont around which the town grew into importance. The
barony afterwards passed by marriage to the families of Lucy
and Multon, and finally came to the Percys, earls of Northumber-
land, from whom are descended the present lords of the manor
of Egremont. The earliest evidence that Egremont was a
borough occurs in a charter, granted by Richard de Lucy in the
reign of King John, which gave the burgesses right to choose
their reeve, and set out the customs owing to the lord of the
manor, among which was that of providing twelve armed men
at his castle in the time of war. The borough was represented
by two members in the parliament of 1295, but in the following
year was disfranchised, on the petition of the burgesses, on
account of the expense of sending members. In 1267 Henry III.
granted Thomas de Multon a market every Wednesday at
Egremont, and a fair every year on the eve, day and morrow
of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. In the Quo Warranlo rolls
he is found to have claimed by prescription another weekly
market on Saturday. The market rights were purchased from
Lord Leconfield in 1885, and the market on Saturday is still
held. Richard de Lucy's charter shows that dyeing, weaving
and fulling were carried on in the town in his time.
EGRESS (Lat. egressus, going out), in astronomy, the end of the
apparent transit of a small body over the disk of a larger one;
especially of a transit of a satellite of Jupiter over the disk of
that planet. It designates the moment at which the smaller
body is seen to leave the limb of the other.
MODERN: GEOGRAPHY]
EGYPT
21
EGYPT, a country forming the N.E. extremity of Africa. 1
In the following account a division is made into (I.) Modern
Egypt, and (II.) AiuieiH Egypt; but the history from the earliest
times is given as a separate section (III.).
Section I. includes Geography, Economics, Government, Inhabi-
unt. Finance and Army. Section II. is subdivided into: (A)
: ration and Research: (B) The Country in Ancient Times;
Religion: (D) Language and Writing; (E) Art and Archae-
ology; (F) Chronology. Section III. is divided into three main
pmods: (i) Ancient History; (a) the Mahommedan Period; (3)
Modern History (from Mehemet Ali).
I. MODERN EGYPT
BftHtdaries ami Artiu. Egypt is bounded N. by the Mediter-
ranean, S. by the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, N.E. by Palestine,
E by the Red Sea, W. by Tripoli and the Sahara. The western
frontier is ill-defined. The boundary line between Tripoli and
Egypt is usually taken to start from a point in the Gulf of
Soil urn and to run S. by E. so as to leave the oasis of Siwa to
Egypt. South of Siwa the frontier, according to the Turkish
firman of 1841, bends eastward, approaching the cultivated
Nile-land near Wadi Haifa, i.e. the southern frontier. This
southern frontier is fixed by agreement between Great Britain
and Egypt at the 22 N. The N.E. frontier is an almost direct
line drawn from Taba, near the head of the Gulf of Akaba, the
eastern of the two gulfs into which the Red Sea divides, to the
Mediterranean at Rafa in 34 15' E. The peninsula of Sinai,
geographically part of Asia, is thus included in the Egyptian
dominions. The total area of the country is about 400,000
sq. m., or more than three times the size of the British Isles. Of
this area liths is desert. Canals, roads, date plantations, &c.,
cover looo sq. m.; 2850 sq. m. are comprised in the surface of
the Nile, marshes, lakes, &c. A line corresponding with the
30 N., drawn just S. of Cairo, divides the country into Lower
and Upper Egypt, natural designations in common use, Lower
Egypt being the Delta and Upper Egypt the Nile valley. By
the Arabs Lower Egypt is called Er-Rif, the cultivated or fertile;
Upper Egypt Es Sa'id, the happy or fortunate. Another
division of the country is into Lower, Middle and Upper Egypt,
Middle Egypt in this classification being the district between
Cairo and Assiut.
Gmrral Character. The distinguishing features of Egypt are
the Nile and the desert. But for the river there would be, nothing
to differentiate the country from other parts of the Sahara.
The Nile, however, has transformed the land through which it
passes. Piercing the desert, and at its annual overflow depositing
rich sediment brought from the Abyssinian highlands, the river
has created the Delta and the fertile strip in Upper Egypt. This
cultivable land is Egypt proper ; to it alone is applicable the
ancient name " the black land." The Misr of the Arabs is
restricted to the same territory. Beyond the Nile valley east
and west stretch great deserts, containing here and there fertile
oases. The general appearance of the country is remarkably
uniform. The Delta is a level plain, richly cultivated, and
varied alone by the lofty dark-brown mounds of ancient cities,
and the villages set in groves of palm-trees, standing on mounds
often, if not always, ancient. Groves of palm-trees are
occasionally seen besides those around the villages, but other
trees are rare. In Upper Egypt the Nile valley is very narrow
and is bounded by mountains of no great height. They form
the edge of the desert on either side of the valley, of which the
bottom is level rock. The mountains rarely take the form of
peaks. Sometimes they approach the river in bold promontories,
and at others are divided by the dry beds of ancient ' water-
courses. The bright green of the fields, the reddish-brown or
dull green of the great river, contrasting with the bare yellow
rocks, seen beneath a brilliant sun and a deep-blue sky, present
views of great beauty. In form the landscape varies little and
is not remarkable; in colour its qualities are always splendid,
and under a general uniformity show a continual variety.
1 By the Greek and Roman geographers Egypt was usually
assigned to Libya (Africa), but by some early writers the Nile was
thought to mark the division between Libya and Asia. The name
ocean in Homer as Uyumt, but is of doubtful origin.
The Coast Region. Egypt has a coast-line of over 600 m. on the
Mediterranean and about 1200 m. on the Kcd Sea. The Mediter-
ranean coast extends from the Gulf of Sollum on the west to Rafa on
the cast. From the gulf to the beginning of the Delta the coast is
ruck-bound, but slightly indented, and possesses no good harbourage.
The cliffs attain in places a height of looo ft. They are the ter-
mination of a stony plateau, containing several small oases, which
southward joins the more arid and uninhabitable wastes of the
Libyan Desert. The Delta coast-line, composed of sandhills and,
occasionally, limestone rocks, is low, with cape-like projections at
the Nile mouths formed by the river silt. Two bays arc thus formed,
the western being the famous Bay of Aboukir. It is bounded W.
by a point near the ancient Canopic mouth, eastward by the Rosetta
mouth. Beyond the Delta eastward the coast is again barren and
without harbours. It rises gradually southward, merging into the
plateau of the Sinai peninsula. The Red Sea coast is everywhere
mountainous. The mountains are the northern continuation of the
Abyssinian table-land, and some of the peaks arc over 6000 ft. above
the sea. The highest peaks, going from north to south, are Jebels
Gharib, Dukhan, Es Shayib, Fatira, Abu Tiur, Zubara and Ham-
iii. nl. i 1 1 lain.it .1 1. The coast has a general N.N.W. and S.S.E. trend,
and, save for the two gulfs into which it is divided by the massif of
Sinai, is not deeply indented. Where the frontier between Egypt
and the Sudan reaches the sea is Ras Elba (see further RED SEA).
The Nile Valley (see also NILE). Entering Egypt proper, a
little north of the Second Cataract, the Nile flows through a valley
in sandstone beds of Cretaceous age as far as 25 N., and throughout
this part of its course the valley is extremely narrow, rarely exceed-
ing 2 m. in width. At two points, namely, Kalabsha the valley
here being only 170 yds. wide and the river over 100 ft. deep and
Assuan (First Cataract), the course of the river is interrupted by
outcrops of granites and other crystalline rocks, which have been
uncovered by the erosion of the overlying sandstone, and to-day form
the mass of islands, with numerous small rapids, which are described
not very accurately as cataracts; no good evidence exists in support
of the view that they are the remains of a massive barrier, broken
down and carried away by some sudden convulsion. From '25 N.
northwards for 518 m. the valley is of the " rift-valley " type, a level
depression in a limestone plateau, enclosed usually by steep cliffs,
except where the tributary valleys drained into the main valley in
early times, when there was a larger rainfall, and now carry off the
occasional rainstorms that burst on the desert. The cliffs are highest
between Esna and Kena, where they reach 1800 ft. above sea-level.
The average width of the cultivated land is about 10 m., of which
the greater part lies on the left (western) bank of the river; and
outside this is a belt, varying from a few hundred yards to 3 or 4 m.,
of stony and sandy ground, reaching up to the foot of the limestone
cliffs, which rise in places to as much as 1000 ft. above the valley.
This continues as far as 29 N., after which the hills that close in the
valley become lower, and the higher plateaus lie at a distance of
10 or 15 m. back in the desert.
The Fayum. The fertile province of the Fayum, west of the Nile
and separated from it by some 6 m. of desert, seems to owe its exist-
ence to movements similar to those which determined the valley
itself. Lying in a basin sloping in a series of terraces from an altitude
of 65 ft. above sea-level in the east to about 140 ft. below sea-level
on the north-west, at the margin of the Birket-el-Kerun, this pro-
vince is wholly irrigated by a canalized channel, the Bahr Yusuf,
which, leaving the Nile at Derut esh Sherif in Upper Egypt, follows
the western margin of the cultivation in the Nile valley, and at
length enters the Fayum through a gap in the desert hills by the
Xllth Dynasty pyramids of Lahun and Hawara (see FAYUM).
The Delta. About 30 N., where the city of Cairo stands, the
hills which have hitherto run parallel with the Nile turn W.N.W.
and E.N.E., and the triangular area between them is wholly deltaic.
The Delta measures 100 m. from S. to N., having a width of 155 m.
on the shore of the Mediterranean between Alexandria on the west
and Port Said on the east. The low sandy shore of the Delta, slowly
increasing by the annual deposit of silt by the river, is mostly a
barren area of sand-hills and salty waste land. This is the region
of the lagoons and marshes immediately behind the coast-line.
Southwards the quality of the soil rapidly improves, and becomes the
most fertile part of Egypt. This area is watered by the Damictta
and the Rosetta branches of the Nile, and by a network of canals. The
soil of the Delta is a dark grey fine sandy soil, becoming at times
almost a stiff clay by reason of the fineness of its particles, which
consist almost wholly of extremely small grains of quartz with a few
other minerals, and often numerous flakes of mica. This deposit
varies in thickness, as a rule, from 55 to 70 ft.; at which depth it is
underlain by a series of coarse and fine yellow quartz sands, with
occasional pebbles, or even banks of gravel, while here and there thin
beds of clay occur. These sand-beds are sharply distinguished by
their colour from the overlying Nile deposit, and arc of considerable
thickness. A boring made in 1886 for the Royal Society at Zagazig
attained a depth o? 375 ft. without reaching rock, and another,
subsequently sunk near Lake Aboukir (clone to Alexandria), reached
a depth of 405 ft. with the same result. Numerous other borings to
depths of loo to 200 ft. have given similar results, showing the Nile
deposit to rest generally on these yellow sands, which provide a
constant though not a very large supply of good water; near the
22
EGYPT
[MODERN : GEOGRAPHY
A 3
northern limits of the Delta this cannot, however, be depended on,
since the well water at these depths has proved on several occasions
to be salt. The surface of the Delta is a wide alluvial plain sloping
gently towards the sea, and having an altitude of 29 ft. above it at
its southern extremity. Its limits east and west are determined by
the higher ground of the deserts, to which the silt-laden waters of
the Nile in flood time cannot reach. This silt consists largely of
alumina (about 48%) and calcium carbonate (18%) with smaller
quantities of silica, oxide of iron and carbon. Although the Nile
water is abundantly charged with alluvium, the annual deposit by
the river, except under extraordinary circumstances, is smaller than
might be supposed. The mean ordinary rate of the increase of the
soil of Egypt is calculated as about 4j in. in a century.
The Lakes. The lagoons or lakes of the Delta, going from west
to east, are Mareotis (Mariut), Edku, Burlus and Menzala. The land
separating them from the Mediterranean is nowhere more than 10 m.
wide. East of the Damietta mouth of the Nile this strip is in places
not more than 200 yds. broad. All the lakes are shallow and the
water in them salt or brackish. Mareotis, which bounds Alexandria
on the south side,
varies considerably in
area according to the
rise or fall of the Nile;
when the Nile is low
there is a wide expanse
of marsh, when at its
highest the lake covers
about 100 sq. m. In
ancient times Mareotis
was navigable and was
joined by various canals
to the Nile. The coun-
try around was culti-
vated and produced the
famous Mareotic wine.
The canals being neg-
lected, the lake de-
creased in size, though
it was still of consider-
able area in the I5th
and 1 6th centuries, and
was then noted for the
value of its fisheries.
When the French army
occupied Egypt in 1798,
Mareotis was found to
be largely a sandy plain.
In April 1801 the British
army besieging Alexan-
dria cut through the
land between Aboukir
and the lake, admitting
the waters of the sea
into the ancient bed
of Mareotis and laying
under water a large
area then in cultiva-
tion. This precedent
was twice imitated, first by the Turks in 1803 and a second time by
the British in 1807. Mareotis has no outlet, and the water is kept
at a uniform level by means of powerful pumps which neutralize the
effect of the Nile flood. A western arm has been cut off from the
lake by a dyke, and in this arm a thick crust of salt is formed each
year after the evaporation of the flood water. Near the shores of the
lake wild flowers grow in rich profusion. Like all the Delta lakes,
Mareotis abounds in wild-fowl. North-east of Mareotis was Lake
Aboukir, a small sheet of water, now dry, lying S.W. of Aboukir Bay.
East of this reclaimed marsh and reaching to within 4 m. of the
Rpsetta branch of the Nile, lies Edku, 22 m. long and in places 16
wide, with an opening, supposed to be the ancient Canopic mouth
of the Nile, into Aboukir Bay. Burlus begins a little eastward
of the Rosetta channel, and stretches bow-shaped for 64 m. Its
greatest width is about 16 m. Adjoining it S.E. is an expanse of
sandy marsh. Several canals or canalized channels enter the lake.
Opposite the spot where the Bahr-mit Yezir enters is an opening
into the Mediterranean. Canal and opening indicate the course of
the ancient Sebennytic branch of the Nile. Burlus is noted for its
water-melons, which are yellow within and come into season after
those grown on the banks of the Nile.
Menzala greatly exceeds the other Delta lakes in size, covering
over 780 sq. m. It extends from very near the Damietta branch of
the Nile to Port Said. It receives the waters of the canalized channels
which were once the Tanitic, Mendesian and Pelusiac branches.
The northern shore is separated from the sea by an extremely narrow
strip of land, across which, when the Mediterranean is stormy and
the lake full, the waters meet. Its average length is about 40 m.,
and its average breadth about 15. The depth is greater than that
of the other lakes, and the water is salt, though mixed with fresh.
It contains a large number of islands, and the whole lake abounds
in reeds of various kinds. Of the islands Tennis (anciently Tennesus)
MEDfTERRAflE\AN
A 3
3 Longitude East 31 of Greenwich
contains ruins of the Roman period. The lake supports a consider-
able population of fishermen, who dwell in villages on the shore and
islands and live upon the fish of the lake. The reeds are cover for
waterfowl of various kinds, which the traveller sees in great numbers,
and wild boars are found in the marshes to the south. The Suez
Canal runs in a straight line for 20 in. along the eastern edge of the
lake. That part of the lake east of where the canal was excavated
is now marshy plain, and the Tanitic and Pelusiac mouths of the
Nile are dry. East of Menzala is the site of Serbonis, another dried-
up lake, which had the general characteristics of the Delta lagoons.
In the Isthmus of Suez are Lake Timsa and the Great and Little
Bitter Lakes, occupying part of the ancient bed of the Red Sea.
All three were dry or marshy depressions previously to the cutting
of the Suez Canal, at which time the waters of the Mediterranean
and Red Sea were let into them (see SUEZ CANAL).
A chain of natron lakes (seven in number) lies in a valley in the
western desert, 70 to 90 m. W.N.W. of Cairo. In the Fayum province
farther south is the Birket-el-Kerun, a lake, lying below the level of
the Nile, some 30 m. long and 5 wide at its broadest part. Kerun
is all that is left of
the Lake of Moeris, an
ancient artificial sheet
of water which played
an important part in
the irrigation schemes
of the Pharaohs. The
water of el-Kcrun is
brackish, though de-
rived from the Nile,
which has at all seasons
a much higher level. It
is bounded on the north
by the Libyan Desert,
above which rises a bold
range of mountains ; and
it has a strange and pic-
turesque wildness. Near
the lake are several sites
of ancient towns, and
the temple called Kasr-
Karun, dating from
Roman times, distin-
guishes the most im-
Eortant of these,
outh-west of the
Fayum is the Wadi
Rayan, a large and
deep depression, utiliz-
able in modern schemes
for re-creating the Lake
of Moeris (q.v.).
The Desert Plateaus.
From the southern
borders of Egypt to
the Delta in the north,
the desert plateaus ex-
tend on either side of
the Nile valley. The
eastern region, between the Nile and the Red Sea, varies in
width from 90 to 350 m. and is known in its northern part as
the Arabian Desert. The western region has no natural barrier
for many hundreds of miles; it is part of the vast Sahara. On its
eastern edge, a few miles west of Cairo, stand the great pyramids
(q.v.) of Gizeh or Giza. North of Assuan it is called the Libyan
Desert. In the north the desert plateaus are comparatively low, but
from Cairo southwards they rise to 1000 and even 1500 ft. above sea-
level. Formed mostly of horizontal strata of varying hardness, they
present a series of terraces of minor plateaus, rising one above the
other, and intersected by small ravines worn by the occasional rain-
storms which burst in their neighbourhood. The weathering of this
desert area is probably faiily rapid, and the agents at work are
principally the rapid heating and cooling of the rocks by day and
night, and the erosive action of sand-laden wind on the softer layers;
these, aided by the occasional rain, are ceaselessly at work, and
produce the successive plateaus, dotted with small isolated hills and
cut up by valleys (wadis) which occasionally become deep ravines,
thus forming the principal type of scenery of these deserts. From
this it will be seen that the desert in Egypt is mainly a rock desert,
where the surface is formed of disintegrated rock, the finer particles
of which have been carried away by the wind; and east of the Nile
this is almost exclusively the case. Here the desert meets the line
of mountains which runs parallel to the Red Sea and the Gulf of
Suez. In the western desert, however, those large sand accumu-
lations which are usually associated with a desert are met with.
They occur as lines of dunes formed of rounded grains of quartz, and
lie in the direction of the prevalent wind, usually being of small
breadth as compared with their length ; but in certain areas, such
as that lying S.W. and W. of the oases of Farafra and Dakhla, these
lines of dunes, lying parallel to each other and about half a mile
apart, cover immense areas, rendering them absolutely impassable
D
MODERN: CLIMATE)
EGYPT
except in a direction parallel to the lines themselves. East of the
oases of Bahariu and Varafra is a very striking line of these sand
dunes; rarely more than 3 miles wide, it extends almost continu-
ously from Moghara in the north, passing alone the west side of
.rn Oasu to a point near the Nile in the neighbourhood of Abu
Sinibrl having thus a length of nearly 550 m. In the northern
part of this desert the dunes lie about N.\V.-S.I., but farther south
in. line more towards the meridian, becoming at last very nearly north
.and south.
Oaui. In the western desert lie the five large oases of Egypt,
namely, Siwa, Baharia, Karafra, Dakhla and Kharga or Great Oasis,
occupying depressions in the plateau or, in the case of the last three,
large indentations in the (ace of limestone escarpments which form
the western versant of the Nile valley hills. Their fertility is due to
a plentiful supply of water furnished by a sandstone bed 300 to
too ft. below the surface, whence the water rises through natural
fissures or artificial boreholes to the surface, and sometimes to
several feet above it. These oases were known and occupied by the
ti.ms as early as 1600 B.C., and Kharga (q.v.) rose to special
importance at the time of the Persian occupation. Here, near the
town of Kharga, the ancient llebi, is a temple of Ammon built by
Darius I., and in the same oasis arc other ruins of the period of the
raies and Caesars. The oasis of Siwa (J upiter Ammon) is about
150 m. S. of the Mediterranean at the Gulf of Sollum and about
300 m. W. of the Nile (see SIWA). The other four oases lie parallel
to and distant 100 to 150 m. from the Nile, between 25 and 29 N.,
liaharia being the most northerly and Kharga the most southerly.
Besides the oases the desert is remarkable for two other valleys.
The first is that of the natron lakes already mentioned. It contains
four monasteries, the remains of the famous anchorite settlement of
Nitriae. South of the \Vadi Natron, and parallel to it, is a sterile
valley called the Bahr-bcla-Ma, or " River without Water."
The Sinai Peninsula. The triangular-shaped Sinai peninsula
has its base on the Mediterranean, the northern part being an arid
plateau, the desert of Tih. The apex is occupied by a massif of crys-
talline nicks. The principal peaks rise over 8500 ft. Owing to the
slight rainfall, and the rapid weathering of the rocks by the great
range of temperature, these hills rise steeply from the valleys at their
feet as almost bare rock, supporting hardly any vegetation. In
some of the valleys wells or rock-pools filled by rain occur, and
furnish drinking-water to the few Arabs who wander in these hills
(see also SINAI).
[Geology. Just as the Nile valley forms the chief geographical
feature of Egypt, so the geology of the country is intimately related
to it. The north and south direction of the river has been largely
determined by faults, though the geologists of the Egyptian Survey
arc finding that the influence of faulting in determining physical
outline has, in some cases, been overestimated. The oldest rocks,
consisting of crystalline schists with numerous intrusions of granite,
porphyry and diorite, occupy the eastern portion of the country
between the Nile south of Assuan and the Red Sea. The intrusive
rocks predominate over the schists in extent of area covered. They
furnished the chief material for the ancient monuments. At Assuan
:ie) the well-known syenite of Werner occurs. It is, however, a
hornblende granite and does not possess the mineralogical com-
position of the syenites of modern petrology. Between Thebes
and Khartum the western banks of the Nile are composed of Nubian
Sandstone, which extends westward from the river to the edge of the
great Libyan Desert, where it forms the bed rock. The age of this
sandstone has given rise to much dispute. The upper part certainly
belongs to the Cretaceous formation; the lower part has been con-
sidered to be of Karroo age by some geologists, while others regard
the whole formation to be of Cretaceous age. In the Kharga Oasis
the upper portion consists of variously coloured unfossiliferous clays
with intercalated bands of sandstone containing fossil silicified
woods (fi'tiolia Aegyptiaca and Araucarioxylon Aegypticum) . They
are conformably overlain by clays and limestones with Exogyra
Oterwegi belonging to the Lower Danian, and these by clays and
white chalk with Ananchytes mala of the Upper Danian. In many
instances the Tertiary formation, which occurs between Esna and
- >, unconformably overlies the Cretaceous, the Lower Eocene
being absent. The fluvio-marine deposits of the Upper Eocene
and pligocene formations contain an interesting mammalian fauna,
proving that the African continent formed a centre of radiation for
the mammalia in early Tertiary times. Arsinoilherium is the pre-
cursor of the horned Ungulata; while Moeriiherium and Palaeo-
mailodon undoubtedly include the oldest known elephants. Miocene
strata are absent in the southern Tertiary areas, but are present at
Moghara and in the north. Marine Pliocene strata occur to the south
of the pyramids of Giza and in the Fayum province, where, in
addition, some gravel terraces, at a height of 500 ft. above sea-level,
are attributed to the Pliocene period. The Lake of Moeris, as a large
body of fresh water, appears to have come into existence in Pleisto-
cene times. It is represented now by the brackish-water lake of
the Birket-el-Kerun. The superficial sands of the deserts and the
Nile mud form the chief recent formations. The Nile deposits its
mud over the valley before reaching the sea, and consequently the
Delta receives little additional material. At Memphis the alluvial
deposits are over 50 ft. thick. The superficial sands of the desert
region, derived in large pan from the disintegration of the Nubian
Sandstone, occupy the most extensive areas in the Libyan Desert.
The other desert regions of Egypt are elevated stony plateaus,
which are diversified by extensively excavated valleys and oases,
and in which sand frequently plays quite a subordinate part. These
regions present magnificent examples of dry erosion by wind-borne
suml, which acts as a powerful sand blast etching away the rocks
and producing most beautiful sculpturing. The rate of denudation
in exposed positions is exceedingly rapid ; while spots sheltered from
the sand blast suffer a minimum of erosion, as shown by the preser-
vation of ancient inscriptions. Many of the Egyptian rocks in the
desert areas and at the cataracts are coated with a highly polished
film, of almost microscopic thinness, consisting chiefly of oxides of
iron and manganese with salts of magnesia and lime. It is supposed
to be due to a chemical change within the rock and not to deposition
on the surface.)
Minerals. Egypt possesses considerable mineral wealth. In
ancient times gold and precious stones were mined in the Red Sea
hills. During the Moslem period mining was abandoned, and it was
not until the oeginning of the 2oth century that renewed efforts were
made to develop the mining industry. The salt obtained from
Lake Mareotis at Meks, a western suburb of Alexandria, supplies the
salt needed for the country, except a small quantity used for curing
fish at Lake Menzala ; while the lakes in the Wadi Natron, 45 m.
N.W. of the pyramids of Giza, furnish carbonate of soda in large
quantities. Alum is found in the western oases. Nitrates and phos-
phates are also found in various parts of the desert and are used as
manures. The turquoise mines of Sinai, in the Wadi Maghara, are
worked regularly by the Arabs of the peninsula, who sell the stones
in Suez; while there are emerald mines at Jebel Zubara, south of
Kosseir. Petroleum occurs at Jebel Zeit, on the west shore of the
Gulf of Suez. Considerable veins of haematite of good quality occur
both in the Red Sea hills and in Sinai. At Jebel ed-Dukhan arc
porphyry quarries, extensively worked under the Romans, and at
Jebel el-Fatira are granite quarries. At El-Hammamat, on the old
way from Coptos to Philoteras Portus, are the breccia verde quarries,
worked from very early times, and having interesting hieroglyphic
inscriptions. At the various mines, and on the routes to them and
to the Red Sea, are some small temples and stations, ranging from
the Pharaonic to the Roman period. The quarries of Syene (Assuan)
are famous for extremely hard and durable red granite (syenite), and
have been worked since the days of the earliest Pharaohs. Large
quantities of this syenite were used in building the Assuan dam
(1898-1902). The cliffs bordering the Nile are largely quarried for
limestone and sandstone.
Gold-mining recommenced in 1905 at Urn Rus, a short distance
inland from the Red Sea and some 50 m. S. of Kosseir, where milling
operations were started in March of that year. Another mine opened
in 1905 was that of Um Garaiat, E.N.E. of Korosko, and 65 in.
distant- from the Nile.
Climate. Part of Upper Egypt is within the tropics, but the
greater part of the country is north of the Tropic of Cancer. Except
a narrow belt on the north along the Mediterranean shore, Egypt
lies in an almost rainless area, where the temperature is high by day
and sinks quickly at night in consequence of the rapid radiation under
the cloudless sky. The mean temperature at Alexandria and Port
Said varies between 57 F. in January and 81 F. in July; while at
Cairo, where the proximity of the desert begins to be felt, it is 53 F.
in January, rising to 84 F. in July. January is the coldest month,
when occasionally in the Nile valley, and more frequently in the open
desert, the temperature sinks to 32 F., or even a degree or two below.
The mean maximum temperatures are 99 F. for Alexandria and
1 10 F. for Cairo. Farther south the range of temperature becomes
greater as pure desert conditions are reached. Thus at Assuan the
mean maximum is 118 F., the mean minimum 42 F. At Wadi
Haifa the figures in each case are one degree lower.
The relative humidity varies greatly. At Assuan the mean value
for the year is only 38 %, that for the summer being 29 %, and for
the winter 51%; while for Wadi Haifa the mean is 32%, and
20% and 42% are the mean values for summer and winter re-
spectively. A white fog, dense and cold, sometimes rises from the
Nile in the morning, but it is of short duration and rare occurrence.
In Alexandria and on all the Mediterranean coast of Egypt rain falls
abundantly in the winter months, amounting to 8 in. in the year;
but southwards it rapidly decreases, and south of 31 N. little rain
falls.
Records at Cairo show that the rainfall is very irregular, and is
furnished by occasional storms rather than by any regular rainy
season; still, most falls in the winter months, especially December
and January, while, on the other hand, none has been recorded in
June and July. The average annual rainfall does not exceed 1-50 in.
In the open desert rain falls even more rarely, but it is by no means
unknown, and from time to time heavy storms burst, causing sudden
floods in the narrow ravines, and drowning both men and animals.
These are more common in the mountainous region of the Sinai
peninsula, where they are much dreaded by the Arabs. Snow is
unknown in the Nile valley, but on the mountains of Sinai and the
Red Sea hills it is not uncommon, and a temperature of 18 F. at an
altitude of 2000 ft. has been recorded in January.
The atmospheric pressure varies between a maximum in January
and a minimum in July, the mean difference being about 0-29 in.
EGYPT
[MODERN: FLORA. &c.
In a series of records extending over 14 years the mean pressure
varied between 29-84 and 29-90 in.
The most striking meteorological factor in Egypt is the persistence
of the north wind throughout the year, without which the climate
would be very trying. It is this " Etesian " wind which enables
sailing boats constantly to ascend the Nile, against its strong and
rapid current. In December, January and February, at Cairo, the
north wind slightly predominates, though those from the south and
west often nearly equal it, but after this the north blows almost
continuously for the rest of the year. In May and June the prevailing
direction is north and north-north-east, and for July, August,
September and October north and north-west. From the few
observations that exist, it seems that farther south the southern
winter winds decrease rapidly, becoming westerly, until at Assuan
and Wadi Haifa the northerly winds are almost invariable through-
out the year. The khamsin, hot sand-laden winds of the spring
months, come invariably from the south. They are preceded by a
rapid fall of the barometer for about a day, until a gradient from
south to north is formed, then the wind commences to blow, at first
gently, from the south-east; rapidly increasing in violence, it shifts
through south to south-west, finally dropping about sunset. The
same thing is repeated on the second and sometimes the third day,
by which time the wind has worked round to the north again.
During a khamsin the temperature is high and the air extremely dry,
while the dust and sand carried by the wind form a thick yellow fog
obscuring the sun. Another remarkable phenomenon is the zobaa,
a lofty whirlwind of sand resembling a pillar, which moves with
great velocity. The southern winds of the summer months which
occur in the low latitudes north of the equator are not felt much
north of Khartum.
One of the most interesting phenomena of Egypt is the mirage,
which is frequently seen both in the desert and in the waste tracts of
uncultivated land near the Mediterranean ; and it is often so truthful
in its appearance that one finds it difficult to admit the illusion.
Flora. Egypt possesses neither forests nor woods and, as practi-
cally the whole of the country which will support vegetation is
devoted to agriculture, the flora is limited. The most important
tree is the date-palm, which grows all over Egypt and in the oases.
The lower branches being regularly cut, this tree grows high and
assumes a much more elegant form than in its natural state. The
dom-palm is first seen a little north of 26 N., and extends south-
wards. The vine grows well, and in ancient times was largely
cultivated for wine ; oranges, lemons and pomegranates also abound.
Mulberry trees are common in Lower Egypt. The sunt tree (Acacia
nilotica) grows everywhere, as well as the tamarisk and the sycamore.
In the deserts halfa grass and several kinds of thorn bushes grow;
and wherever rain or springs have moistened the ground, numerous
wild flowers thrive. This is especially the case where there is also shade
to protect them from the midday sun, as in some of the harrow
ravines in the eastern desert and in the palm groves of the oases,
where various ferns and flowers grow luxuriantly round the springs.
Among many trees which have been imported, the," lebbek " (Albizzia
lebbek), a thick-foliaged mimosa, thrives especially, and has been
very largely employed. The weeping-willow, myrtle, elm, cypress
and eucalyptus are also used in the gardens and plantations.
The most common of the fruits are dates, of which there are nearly
thirty varieties, which are sold half-ripe, ripe, dried, and pressed in
their fresh moist state in mats or skins. The pressed dates of Siwa
are among the most esteemed. The Fayum is celebrated for its
grapes, and chiefly supplies the market of Cairo. The most common
grape is white, of which there is a small kind far superior to the
ordinary sort. The black grapes are large, but comparatively
tasteless. The vines are trailed on trelliswork, and form agreeable
avenues in the gardens of Cairo. The best-known fruits, besides
dates and grapes, are figs, sycamore-figs and pomegranates, apricots
and peaches, oranges and citrons, lemons and limes, bananas, which
are believed to be of the fruits of Paradise (being always in season),
different kjnds of melons (including some of aromatic flavour, and
the refreshing water-melon), mulberries, Indian figs or prickly pears,
the fruit of the lotus and olives. Among the more usual cultivated
flowers are the rose (which has ever been a favourite among the
Arabs), the jasmine, narcissus, lily, oleander, chrysanthemum,
convolvulus, geranium, dahlia, basil, the henna plant (Lawsonia
alba, or Egyptian privet, which is said to be a flower of Paradise),
the helianthus and the violet. Of wild flowers the most common
are yellow daisies, poppies, irises, asphodels and ranunculuses.
The Poinseltia pulcherrima is a bushy tree with leaves of brilliant
red.
Many kinds of reeds are found in Egypt, though they were formerly
much more common. The famous byblus or papyrus no longer
exists in the country, but other kinds of cyperi are found. The lotus,
greatly prized for its flowers by the ancient inhabitants, is still found
in the Delta, though never in the Nile itself. There are two varieties
of this water-lily, one with white flowers, the other with blue.
Fauna. The chief quadrupeds are all domestic animals. Of these
the camel and the ass are the most common. The ass, often a tall
and handsome creature, is indigenous. When the camel was first
introduced into Egypt is uncertain it is not pictured on the ancient
monuments. Neither is the buffalo, which with the sheep is very
numerous in Egypt. The horses are of indifferent breed, apparently
of a type much inferior to that possessed by the ancient Egyptians.
Wild animals are few. The principal are the hyena, jackal and fox.
The wild boar is found in the Delta. Wolves are rare. Numerous
gazelles inhabit the deserts. The ibex is found" in the Sinaitic penin-
sula and the hills between the Nile and the Red Sea, and the mouflon,
or maned sheep, is occasionally seen in the same regions. The desert
hare is abundant in parts of the Fayum, and a wild cat, or lynx,
frequents the marshy regions of the Delta. The ichneumon
(Pharaoh's rat) is common and often tame; the coney and jerboa,
are found in the eastern mountains. Bats are very numerous.
The crocodile is no longer found in Egypt, nor the hippopotamus,
in ancient days a frequenter of the Nile. The common or pariah
dog is generally of sandy colour; in Upper Egypt there is a breed
of wiry rough-haired black dogs, noted for their fierceness. Among
reptiles are several kinds of venomous snakes the horned viper, the
hooded snake and the echis. Lizards of many kinds are found, in-
cluding the monitor. There are many varieties of beetle, including
a number of species representing the scarabaeus of the ancients.
Locusts are comparatively rare. The scorpion, whose sting is some-
times fatal, is common. There are many large and poisonous spiders
and flies; fleas and mosquitoes abound. Fish are plentiful in the
Nile, both scaled and without scales. The scaly fish include members
of the carp and perch kind. The bayad, a scaleless fish commonly
eaten, reaches sometimes 35 ft. in length. A somewhat rare fish is the
Polypterus, which has thick bony scales and 16 to 18 long dorsal fins.
The Tetrodon, or ball fish, is found in the Red Sea, as well as in the Nile.
Some 300 species of birds are found in Egypt, and one of the most
striking features of a journey up the Nile is the abundance of bird
life. Many of the species are sedentary, others are winter visitants,
while others again simply pass through Egypt on their way to or
from warmer or colder regions. Birds of prey are very numerous,
including several varieties of eagles the osprey, the spotted, the
golden and the imperial. Of vultures the black and white Egyptian
variety (Neophron percnopterus) is most common. The griffon and
the black vulture are also frequently seen. There are many kinds
of kites, falcons and hawks, kestrel being numerous. The long-
legged buzzard is found throughout Egypt, as are owls. The so-
called Egyptian eagle owl (Bubo ascalaphus) is rather rare, but the
barn owl is common. The kingfisher is found beside every water-
course, a black and white species (Ceryle rudis) being much more
numerous than the common kingfisher. Pigeons and hoopoes abound
in every village. There are various kinds of plovers the black-
headed species (Pluvianus Aegyptius) is most numerous in Upper
Egypt; the golden plover and the white-tailed species are found
chiefly in the Delta. The spurwing is supposed to be the bird
mentioned by Herodotus as eating the parasites covering the inside
of the mouth of the crocodile. Of game-birds the most plentiful
are sandgrouse, quail (a bird of passage) and snipe. Red-legged
and other partridges are found in the eastern desert and the Sinai
hills. Of aquatic birds there is a great variety. Three species of
pelican exist, including the large Dalmatian pelican. Storks, cranes,
herons and spoonbills are common. The sacred ibis is not found in
Egypt, but the buff-backed heron, the constant companion of the
buffalo, is usually called an ibis. The glossy ibis is occasionally seen.
The flamingo, common in the lakes of Lower Egypt, is not found
on the Nile. Geese, duck and teal are abundant. The most common
goose is the white-fronted variety ; the Egyptian goose is more rare.
Both varieties are depicted on the ancient monuments; the white-
fronted goose being commonly shown. Several birds of gorgeous
plumage come north into Egypt in the spring, among others the
golden oriole, the sun-bird, the roller and the blue-cheeked bee-eater.
Egypt as a Health Resort. The country is largely resorted to
during the winter months by Europeans in search of health as well
as pleasure. Upper Egypt is healthier than Lower Egypt, where,
especially near the coast, malarial fevers and diseases of the re-
spiratory organs are not uncommon. The least healthy time of
the year is the latter part of autumn, when the inundated soil is
drying. In the desert, at a very short distance from the cultivable
land, the climate is uniformly dry and unvaryingly healthy. The
most suitable places for the residence of invalids are Helwan, where
there are natural mineral springs, in the desert, 14 m. S. of Cairo,
and Luxor and Assuan in Upper Egypt.
The diseases from which Egyptians suffer are very largely the result
of insanitary surroundings. In this respect a great improvement
has taken place since the British occupation in 1882. Plague,
formerly one of the great scourges of the country, seems to have been
stamped out, the last visitation having been in 1844, but cholera
epidemics occasionally occur. 1 Cholera rarely extends south of Cairo.
In 1848 it is believed that over 200,000 persons died from cholera,
but later epidemics have been much less fatal. Smallpox is not un-
common, and skin diseases are numerous, but the two most prevalent
diseases among the Egyptians are dysentery and ophthalmia. The
objection entertained by many natives to entering hospitals or to
altering their traditional methods of " cure " renders these diseases
much more malignant and fatal than they would be in other circum-
stances. The government.however.enforces certain health regulations,
and the sanitary service is under the direction of a European official.
1 A vivid description of Cairo during the prevalence of plague in
1835 will be found in A. W. Kinglake's Eothen.
MODERN: TOU N-;
EGYPT
Ckief Tmms. Cairo (7.*.) the capital, a city of Arabfoundation,
Ls built on the east bank of the Nile, about i. m. above the
point where the river divides, and in reference to its situation
at the head of the Delia has been called by the Arabs " the
diamond stud in the handle of the fan of Egypt." It has a
population (1907) of 654,476 and is the largest city in Africa.
in importance of the cities of Egypt and the chief seaport
exandria (?..), pop. (with Ramleh) 370,009, on the shore of
(he Mediterranean at the western end of the Delta. Port Said
(f.r), pop. 49,884, at the eastern end of the Delta, and at the
north entrance to the Suez Canal, is the second seaport. Between
Alexandria and Port Said are the towns of Rosetta (q.v.), pop.
16,810, and Damietta (?..), pop. 19,354, each built a few
miles above the mouth of the branch of the Nile of the same
name. In the middle ages, when Alexandria was in decay,
these two towns were busy ports; with the revival of Alexandria
under Mchemet Al> and the foundation of Port Said (c. 1860),
their trade declined. The other ports of Egypt are Suez (q.v.),
pop. 18,347, at the south entrance of the canal, Kosseir (794) on
the Red Sea, the seat of the trade carried on between Upper
Egypt and Arabia, Mersa Matruh, near the Tripolitan frontier,
and El-Arish, pop. 5897, on the Mediterranean, near the
frontier of Palestine, and a halting-place on the caravan route
from Egypt to Syria. In the interior of the Delta are many
flourishing towns, the largest being Tanta, pop. 54,437, which
occupies a central position. Damanhur (38,752) lies on the
railway between Tanta and Alexandria; Mansura (40,279) is on
the Damietta branch of the Nile, to the N.E. of Tanta; Zagazig
(34,999) is the largest town in the Delta east of the Damietta
branch; Bilbeis (13,485) lies N.N.E. of Cairo, on the edge of
the desert and in the ancient Land of Goshen. Ismailia (10,373)
is situated midway on the Suez Canal. All these towns, which
depend largely on the cotton industry, are separately noticed.
Other towns in Lower Egypt are: Mehallet el-Kubra, pop.
47,955, '6 m. by rail N.E. of Tanta, with manufactories of silk
and cottons; Salihia (6100), E.N.E. of and terminus of a railway
from Zagazig. on the edge of the desert south of Lake Mcnzala,
and the starting-point of the caravans to Syria; Malaria
(15,142) on Lake Mcnzala and headquarters of the fishing
industry; Zifta (15,850) on ihe Damietta branch and the site of
a barrage; Samanud (14,408), also on the Damietta branch, noted
for its pottery, and Fua (14,515), where large quantities of
tarbushes are made, on the Rosetta branch. Shibin el-Kom
(21,576), i6m.S. of Tanta, is a cotton centre, and Menuf (22,316),
8 m. S.W. of Shibin, in the fork between the branches of the Nile,
is the chief town of a rich agricultural district. There are many
other towns in the Delta with populations between 10,000 and
20,000.
In Upper Egypt the chief towns are nearly all in the narrow
valley of the Nile. The exceptions are the towns in the oases
comparatively unimportant, and those in the Fayum province.
The capital of the Fayum, Medinet el-Fayum, has a population
(1907) of 37.320. The chief towns on the Nile, taking them in their
order in ascending the river from Cairo, are Beni Suef, Minia,
Assiut, Akhmim. Suhag, Girga, Kena, Luxor, Esna, Edfu,
Assuan and Korosko. Beni Suef (23,357) ' s 77 m - f rom Cairo by
rail. It is on the west bank of the river, is the capital of a
mudiria and a centre for the manufacture of woollen goods.
Minia (27,221) is 77 m. by rail farther south. It is also the
capital of a mudiria, has a considerable European colony,
potgciKi a large sugar factory and some cotton mills. It is the
starting-point of a road to the Baharia oasis. Assiut (q.v.), pop.
39,442, is 235 m. S. of Cairo by rail, and is the most im-
portant commercial centre in Upper Egypt. At this point a
barrage is built across the river. Suhag (17,514) is 56 m. by rail
S. of Assiut and is the headquarters of Girga mudiria. The
ancient and celebrated Coptic monasteries El Abiad (the white)
and El Ahmar (the red) are 3 to 4 m. W. and N.W. respectively of
Suhag. A few miles above Suhag, on the opposite (east) side of
the Nile is Akhmim (?..) or Ekhmim (23,795), where silk and
cotton goods are made. Girga (q.v.), pop. 19,893, is 22 m. S. by
nil of Suhag, and on the same (the west) ride of the river. It is
noted for its pottery. Kcna (q.v.), pop. 20,069, is on the east
bank of the Nile, 145 m. by rail from Assiut. It is the chief seat of
the manufacture of the porous earthenware water-bottles used
all over Egypt. Luxor (q.v.), pop. (with Karnak) 25,229, marks
the site of Thebes. It is 418 m. from Cairo, and here the gauge
of the railway is altered from broad to narrow. Esna ( </.;'.), pop.
19,103, is another place where pottery is made in large quantities.
It is on the west bank of the Nile, 36 m. by rail S. of Luxor.
Edfu (q.v.), pop. 19,262, is also on the west side of the river, 30 m.
farther south. It is chiefly famous for its ancient temple.
Assuan (q.v.), pop. 12,618, is at the foot of the First Cataract and
551 m. S. of Cairo by rail. Three miles farther south, at Sin-Hal,
the Egyptian railway terminates. Korosko, 118 m. by river
above Assuan, is a small place notable as the northern terminus
of the caravan route from the Sudan across the Nubian desert.
Since the building of the railway which starts 96 m. higher up,
at Wadi Haifa to Khartum, this route is little used, and Korosko
has lost what importance it had.
Ancient Cities and Monuments. Many of the modern cities of
Egypt are built on the sites of ancient cities, and they generally
contain some monuments of the time of the Pharaohs, Greeks or
Romans. The sites of other ancient cities now in complete ruin
may be indicated. Memphis, the Pharaonic capital, was on the
west bank of the Nile, some 14 m. above Cairo, and Heliopolis lay
some 5 m. N.N.E. of Cairo. The pyramids of Giza or Gizeh, on
the edge of the desert, 8 m. west of Cairo, are the largest of
the many pyramids and other monuments, including the famous
Sphinx, built in the neighbourhood of Memphis. The site of
Thebes has already been indicated. Syene stood near to where
the town of Assuan now is; opposite, on an island in the Nile, are
scanty ruins of the city of Elephantine, and a little above, on
another island, is the temple of Philae. The ancient Coptos
(Keft) is represented by the village of Kuft, between Luxor and
Kena. A few miles north of Kena is Dendera, with a famous
temple. The ruins of Abydos, one of the oldest places in Egypt, are
8 m. S.W. of Balliana, a small town in Girga mudiria. The
ruined temples of Abu Simbel are on the west side of the Nile,
56 m. above Korosko. On the Red Sea, south of Kosseir, are the
ruins of Myos Hormos and Berenice. Of the ancient cities in the
Delta there are remains, among others, of Sais, Iseum, Tanis,
Bubastis, Onion, Sebennytus, Pithom, Pelusium, and of the Greek
cities Naucratis and Daphnae. There are, besides the more
ancient cities and monuments, a number of Coptic towns,
monasteries and churches in almost every part of Egypt, dating
from the early centuries of Christianity. The monasteries, or
ders, are generally fort-like buildings and are often built in the
desert. Tombs of Mahommedan saints are also numerous, and
are often placed on the summit of the cliffs overlooking the Nile.
The traveller in Egypt thus views, side by side with the activities
of the present day, where accident and orient meet and clash,
memorials of every race and civilization which has flourished in
the valley of the Nile.
Trade Routes and Communications. Its geographical position
gives Egypt command of one of the most important trade routes
in the world. It is, as it were, the fort which commands the way
from Europe to the East. This has been the case from time
immemorial, and the provision, in 1869, of direct maritime
communication between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, by
the completion of the Suez Canal, ensured for the Egyptian route
the supremacy in sea-borne traffic to Asia, which the discovery of
the passage to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope had
menaced for three and a half centuries. The Suez Canal is 87 m.
long, 66 actual canal and 21 lakes. It has sufficient depth to
allow vessels drawing 27 ft. of water to pass through. It is
administered by a company whose headquarters are in Paris, and
no part of its revenue reaches the Egyptian exchequer (see SUEZ
CANAL). Besides the many steamship lines which use the Suez
Canal, other steamers run direct from European ports to
Alexandria. There is also a direct mail service between Suez
and Port Sudan.
The chief means of internal communication are, in the Delta the
railways, in Upper Egypt the railway and the river. The railways
are of two kinds: (i) those state-owned and state-worked, (2) agri-
cultural light railways owned and worked by private companies.
Railway construction dates from 1852, when the line from Alex-
andria to Cairo was begun, by order of Abbas I. The state railways,
unless otherwise indicated, have a gauge of 4 ft. 8^ in. The main
system is extremely simple. Trunk lines from Alexandria (via
Damanhur and Tanta) and from Port Said (via Ismailia) traverse
the Delta and join at Cairo. From Cairo the railway is continued
south up the valley of the Nile and close to the river. At first it
follows the west bank, crossing the stream at Nag Hamadi, 354 m.
from Cairo, by an iron bridge 437 yds. long. Thence it continues
on the east bank to Luxor, where the broad gauge ceases. From
Luxor the line continues on the standard African gauge (3 ft. 6 in.)
to Shellal, 3 m. above Assuan and 685 m. from Alexandria. This
main line service is supplemented by a steamer service on the Nile
from Shellal to Wadi Haifa, on the northern frontier of the Anglo-
Egyptian Sudan, whence there is direct railway communication with
Khartum and the Red Sea (see SUDAN).
Branch lines connect Cairo and Alexandria with Suez and with
almost every town in the Delta. From Cairo to Suez via Ismailia
is a distance of 160 m. Before the Suez Canal was opened passengers
and goods were taken to Suez from Cairo by a railway 84 m. long
which ran across the desert. This line, now disused, had itself
superseded the " overland route " organized by Lieut. Thomas
Waghorn, R.N., c. 1830, for the conveyance of passengers and
mails to India. In Upper Egypt a line, 40 m. long, runs west from
Was-ta, a station 56 m. S. of Cairo, to Abuksa in the Fayum mudiria.
Another railway goes from Kharga Junction, a station on the ir.ain
line 24 m. S. of Girga, to the oasis of Kharga. These lines are
privately owned.
In the Delta the light railways supplement the ordinary lines and
connect the villages with the towns and seaports. There are over
700 m. of these lines. The railway development of Egypt has not
been very rapid. In 1880 944 m. of state lines were open; in 1900
the figure was 1393, and in 1905, 1688. For several years before 1904
the administration of the railways was carried on by an international
or mixed board for the security of foreign creditors. In the year
named the railways came directly under the control of the Egyptian
government, which during the next four years spent .3,000,000
on improving and developing the lines. In the five years 1902-1906
the capital value of the state railways increased ffom .20,383,000
to .23,200,000 and the net earnings from .1,059,000 to
E. 1, 475,000. The number of passengers carried in the same period
rose from I2j to over 22 millions, and the weight of goods from
slightly under 3,000,000 to nearly 6,750,000 tons. In 1906 the light
railways carried nearly a million tons of goods and over 6,800,000
passengers.
Westward from Alexandria a railway, begun in 1904 by the
khedive, Abbas II., runs parallel with the coast, and is intended to
be continued to Tripoli. The line forms the eastern end of the great
railway system which will eventually extend from Tangier to
Alexandria.
The Nile is navigable throughout its course in Egypt, and is largely
used as a means of cheap transit of heavy goods. Lock and bridge
tolls were abolished in 1899 and 1901 respectively. As a result, river
traffic greatly increased. Above Cairo the Nile is the favourite
tourist route, while between Shellal (Assuan) and the Sudan frontier
it is the only means of communication. Among the craft using the
river the dahabiya is a characteristic native sailing vessel, some-
what resembling a house-boat. From the Nile, caravan routes lead
westward to the various oases and eastward to the Red Sea, the
shortest (120 m.) and most used of the eastern routes being that from
Kena to Kosseir. Roads suitable" for wheeled vehicles are found in
Lower Egypt, but the majority of the tracks are bridle-paths, goods
bein? conveyed on the backs of donkeys, mules and camels.
Potts ani Telegraphs. The Egyptian postal system is highly
organized and efficient, and in striking contrast with its condition
in 1870, when there were but nineteen post-offices in the country.
All the branches of business transacted in European post-offices are
carried on by the Egyptian service, Egypt being a member of the
Postal Union. It was the first foreign country to establish a penny
postage with Great Britain, the reduction from 2^d. being made in
190*1. The inland letters and packages carried yearly exceed
20,000,000 and foreign letters (30% to Engand) number over
4,000,000. Over 17,000,000 passes yearly through the post. A
feature of the service are the travelling post-offices, of which there
are some 200.
All the important towns are connected by telegraph, the telegraphs
being state-owned and worked by the railway administration.
Egypt is also connected by cables and land-lines with the outside
world. One land-line connects at El-Arish with the line through
Syria and Asia Minor to Constantinople. Another line connects at
Wadi Haifa with_ the Sudan system, affording direct telegraphic
communication via Khartum and Gondokoro with Uganda and
Mombasa. The Eastern Telegraph Company, by concessions, have
telegraph lines across Egypt from Alexandria via Cairo to Suez, and
from Port Said to Suez, connecting their cables to Europe and the
East. The principal cables are from Alexandria to Malta, Gibraltar
and England; from Alexandria to Crete and Brindisi; from Suez
to Aden, Bombay, China and Australia.
EGYPT [MODERN: AGRICULTURE
The telephone is largely used in the big towns, and there is a trunk
telephone line connecting Alexandria and Cairo.
Standard Time. The standard time adopted in Egypt is that of the
longitude of Alexandria, 30 E., i.e. two hours earlier than Greenwich
time. It thus corresponds with the standard time of British South
Africa.
Agriculture and Land Tenure. The chief industry of Egypt is
agriculture. The proportions of the industry depend upon the
area of land capable of cultivation. This again depends upon the
fertilizing sediment brought down by the Nile and the measure in
which lands beyond the natural reach of the flood water can be
rendered productive by irrigation. By means of canals, " basins,"
dams and barrages, the Nile flood is now utilized to a greater
extent than ever before (see IRRIGATION: Egypt). The result has
been a great increase in the area of cultivated or cultivable land.
At the time of the French occupation of Egypt in 1798, it was
found that the cultivable soil covered 4,429,400 acres, but the
quantity aqtually under cultivation did not exceed 3,320,000
acres, or six-elevenths of the entire surface. Under improved
conditions the area of cultivated land, or land in process of
reclamation, had risen in 1906 to 5,750,000 acres, while another
500,000 acres of waste land awaited reclamation.
Throughout Egypt the cultivable soil does not present any
very great difference, being always the deposit of the river; it
contains, however, more sand near the river than at a distance
from it. Towards the Mediterranean its quality is injured by the
salt with which the air is impregnated, and therefore it is not so
favourable to vegetation. Of the cultivated land, some three-
fourths is held, theoretically, in life tenancy. The state, as
ultimate proprietor, imposes a tax which is the equivalent of rent.
These lands are Kharaji lands, in distinction from the Ushuri or
tithe-paying lands. The Ushuri lands were originally granted in
fee, and are subject to a quit-rent. All tenants are under obliga-
tion to guard or repair the banks of the Nile in times of flood, or in
any case of sudden emergency. Only to this extent docs the
corvee now prevail. The land-tax is proportionate, i.e. land under
perennial irrigation pays higher taxes than land not so irrigated
(see below, Finance). The unit of land is Ihefcddan, which equals
1-03 acre. Out of 1,153, 759 proprietors of land in 1905, 1,005,705
owned less than 5 feddans. The number of proprietors owning
over 50 feddans was 12,475. The acreage held by the first class
was i ,264,084, that by the second class, 2,3 56,602. Over i ,6oo,oco
feddans were held in holdings of from 5 to so feddans. The state
domains cover over 240,000 Jcddans, and about 6oo,ooofcddans are
owned by foreigners. The policy of the government is to main-
tain the small proprietors, and to do nothing tending to oust the
native in favour of European landowners.
The kind of crops cultivated depends largely on whether the
land is under perennial, flood or " basin " irrigation. Perennial
irrigation is possible where there are canals which can be supplied
with water all the year round from the Nile. This condition
exists throughout the Delta and Middle Egypt, but only in parts
of Upper Egypt. Altogether some 4,000,000 acres are under
perennial irrigation. In these regions two and sometimes three
crops can be harvested yearly. In places where perennial
irrigation is impossible, the land is divided by rectangular dikes
into " basins." Into these basins which vary in area from
600 to 50,000 acres water is led by shallow canals v hen the Nile
is in flood. The water is let in about the middle of August and
the basins are begun to be emptied about the ist of October.
The land under basin irrigation covers about 1,750,000 acres.
In the basins only one crop can be grown in the year. This
basin system is of immemorial use in Fgypt, and it was not
until the time of Mehemet AH (c. 1820) that perennial irrigation
began. High land near the banks of the Nile which cannot
be reached by canals is irrigated by raising water from the Nile
by steam-pumps, water-wheels (sakias) worked by buffaloes,
or water-lifts (skadufs) worked by hand. There are several
thousand steam-pumps and over 100,000 sakias or shadufs in
Egypt. The fellah divides his land into little square plots by
ridges of earth, and from the small canal which serves his holding
he lets the water into each plot as needed. The same system
obtains on large estates (see further IRRIGATION: Egypt).
MODERN: PRODUCTS]
EGYPT
27
There are three agricultural seasons: (i) summer (stfi), ist of
April to 3 ist of July, when crops are grown only on land under
perennial irrigation; (i) flood (Nili), ist of August to 3Oth of
mber; and (3) winter (sketwi), ist of December to jist
of March. Cotton, sugar and rice are the chief summer crops;
wheat, barley, flax and vegetables are chiefly winter crops;
maue, millet and " flood " rice are tfili crops; millet and
vegetables are also, but in a less degree, summer crops. The
approximate areas under cultivation in the various seasons are,
in summer, 2,050,000 acres; in flood, 1,500,000 acres; in
winter, 4,300,000 acres. The double-cropped area is over
1,000,000 acres. Although on the large farms iron ploughs, and
threshing and grain-cleaning machines, have been introduced,
the small cultivator prefers the simple native plough made of
wood Corn is threshed by a norag, a machine resembling a
chair, which moves on small iron wheels or thin circular plates
fixed to axle-trees, and is drawn in a circle by oxen.
Crops. Egypt is third among the cotton-producing countries of
the world. Its production per acre is the greatest of any country
but. owing to the restricted area available, the bulk raised is not
more than one-tenth of that of the United States and about half
of India. Some 1,600,000 acres of land, five-sixths being in
Lower Egypt, are devoted to cotton growing. The climate of Lower
Egypt being very suitable to the growth of the plant, the cotton
produced there is of excellent quality. The seed is sown at the end
of February or beginning of March and the crop is picked in Sep-
tember and October. The cotton crop increased from 1,700,000
banian > in 1878 to 4,100,000 in 1800, had reached 5,434,000 in 1900,
and wa 6,750,000 in 1905. Its average value, 1897-1905, was over
14,000,000 a year. The cotton exported was valued in 1907 at
2E.2V598.ooo. in 1908 at .17.091,612.
While cotton is grown chiefly in the Delta, the sugar plantations,
which cover about 100,000 acres, are mainly in Upper Egypt. The
cane* are planted in March and are cut in the following January
or February. Although since 1884 the production of sugar has
largely increased, there has not been a corresponding increase in its
value, owing to the low price obtained in the markets of the world.
Beetroot is also grown to a limited extent for the manufacture of
sugar. The sugar exported varied in annual value in the period
1884-1005 from 400,000 to 765,000.
A coarse and strong tobacco was formerly extensively grown, but
its cultivation was prohibited in 1890. Flax and hemp are grown
in a few places.
Maize in Lower Egypt and millet (of which there are several
varieties) in Upper Egypt are largely grown for home consumption,
these grains forming a staple food of the peasantry. The stalk of the
maize is also a very useful article. It is used in the building of the
homes of the fellahin. as fuel, and, when green, as food for cattle.
Wheat and barley are important crops, and some 2,000,000 acres are
sown with them yearly. The barley in general is not of good quality,
but the desert or " Mariut " barley, grown by the Bedouins in the
coast region west of Alexandria, is highly prized for the making of
beer. Beans and lentils are extensively sown, and form an important
article of export. The annual value of the crops is over 3,000.000.
Rice is largely grown in the northern part of the Delta, where the soil
is very wet. Two kinds are cultivated : Sultani, a summer crop, and
Sabatni, a flood crop. Sabaini is a favourite food of the fellahin,
while Sultani rice is largely exported. In the absence of grass, the
chief green food for cattle and horses is clover, grown largely in the
basin lands of Upper Egypt. To a less extent vetches are grown for
the same purpose.
VetftabUt and Fruit. Vegetables grow readily, and their
cultivation is an important part of the work of the fellahin. The
onion is grown in great quantities along the Nile banks in Upper
Egypt, largely for export Among other vegetables commonly
raised are tomatoes (the bulk of which are exported), potatoes (of
poor quality), leeks, marrows, cucumbers, cauliflowers, lettuce,
asparagus and spinach.
The common fruits are the date, orange, citron, fig, grape, apncot,
peach and banana. Olives, melons, mulberries and strawberries are
also grown, though not in very large numbers. The olive tree
flourishes only in the Fayum and the oases. The Fayum also pos-
temet extensive vineyards. The date is a valuable economic asset.
There are some 6,000,000 date-palms in the country, 4,000,000
bane in Upper Egypt. The fruit is one of the chief foods of the
people. The value of the crop is about 1,500,000 a year.
Reset and Dyes. There are fields of roses in the Fayum, which
apply the market with rose-water. Of plants used for dyeing, the
principal are bastard saffron, madder, woad and the indigo plant.
The leaves of the henna plant are used to impart a bright red colour
to the palm* of the hands, the soles of the feet, and the nails of both
hand* and feet, of women and children, the hair of old ladies and
the tails of bones. Indigo is very extensively employed to dye the
1 A kantar equals 99 Ib.
shirts of the natives of the poorer classes, and is, when very dark,
the colour of mourning; therefore, women at funerals, and generally
after a death, smear themselves with it.
Domestic Animals The Egyptians are not particularly a pastoral
people, though the wealth of the Bedouin in the Eastern or Arabian
Desert consists in tlu-ir r.unela, horses, sheep and goats. In the Nile
valley the chief domestic animals are the camel, donkey, mule, ox,
buffalo, sheep and goat. Horses are comparatively few, and are
seldom seen outside the large towns, the camel and donkey being the
principal beasts of burden. The cattle are short-horned, rather
small and well formed. They are quiet in disposition, and much
valued for agricultural labour by the people, who therefore very
rarely slaughter them for meat. Buffaloes of an uncouth appearance
and of a dark slaty colour, strikingly contrasting with the neat cattle,
abound in Egypt. They are very docile, and the little children of
the villagers often ride them to or from the river. The buffaloes are
largely employed for turning the sukius. Sheep (of which the greater
number are black) and goats are abundant, and mutton is the
ordinary butcher's meat. The wool is coarse and short. Swine are
very rarely kept, and then almost wholly for the European inhabi-
tants, the Copts generally abstaining from eating their meat.
Poultry is plentiful and eggs form a considerable item in the exports.
Pigeons are kept in every village and their flesh is a common article
of food.
Fishing. The chief fishing-ground is Lake Menzala, where some
4000 persons are engaged in the industry, but fish abound in the
Nile also, and arc caught in large quantities alone the coast of the
Delta. The salting and curing of the fish is done chiefly at Mataria,
on Lake Menzala, and at Damietta. Dried and salted fish eggs,
called batarekh, command a ready market. The average annual
value of the fisheries is about 200,000.
Canals. The irrigation canals, which are also navigable by small
craft, are of especial importance in a country where the rainfall is
very slight. The Delta is intersected by numerous canals which
derive their supply from four main channels. The Rayya Behera,
known in its lower courses first as the Khatatba and afterwards as
the Rosetta canal, follows the west bank of the Rpsetta branch of
the Nile and has numerous offshoots. The most important is the
Mahmudia (50 m. long),which connects Alexandria with the Rosetta
branch, taking a similar direction to that of the ancient canal which
it succeeded. This canal supplies Alexandria with fresh water.
The Rayya Menufia, or Menuf canal, connects the two branches
of the Nile and supplies water to the large number of canals in the
central part of the Delta. Following the right (eastern) bank of the
Damietta branch is the Rayya Tewfiki, known below Benha as the
Mansuria, and below Mansura as the Fareskur, canal. This canal
has many branches. Farther east are other canals, of which the
most remarkable occupy in part the beds of the Tanitic and Pelusiac
branches. That following the old Tanitic channel is called the canal
of Al-Mo'izz, the first Fatimite caliph who ruled in Egypt, having
been dug by his orders, and the latter bears the name of the canal
of Abu-f-Muneegi, a Jew who executed this work, under the caliph
Al-Amir, in order to water the province called the Shark!, i. From
this circumstance this canal is also known as the Sharkawia. _ From
a town on its bank it is called in its lower course the Shibini canal.
The superfluous water from all the Delta canals is drained off by
bahrs (rivers) into the coast lakes. The Ismailia or Fresh-water canal
branches from the Nile at Cairo and follows, in the main, the course
of the canal which anciently joined the Nile and the Red Sea. _ It
dates from Pharaonic times, having been begun by " Sesostris,"
continued by Necho II. and by Darius Hystaspes, and at length
finished by Ptolemy Philadelphus. This canal, having fallen into
disrepair, was restored in the 7th century A.D. by the Arabs who
conquered Egypt, but appears not long afterwards to have again
become unserviceable. The existing canal was dug in 1863 to supply
fresh water to the towns on the Suez Canal. Although designed for
irrigation purposes, the Delta canals are also used for the transport
of passengers and goods.
In Upper Egypt the most important canals are the Ibrahimia
and the Bahr Yusuf (the River of Joseph). They are both on the
west side of the Nile. The Ibrahimia takes its water from the Nile
at Assiut, and runs south to below Beni Suef. It now supplies the
Bahr Yusuf, which runs parallel with and west of the Ibrahimia,
until it diverges to supply the Fayum a distance of some 350 m.
It leaves the Ibrahimia at Derut near its original point of departure
from the Nile. Although the Joseph whence it takes its name is the
celebrated Saladin, it is related that he merely repaired it, and it is
not doubted to be of a much earlier period. Most probably it was
executed under the Pharaohs. By some authorities it is believed
to be a natural channel canalized. Besides supplying the canals of
the Fayum with summer water, it fills many of the " basins " of
Upper Egypt with water in flood time.
Manufactures and Native Industries. Although essentially
an agricultural country, Egypt possesses several manufactures.
In connexion with the cotton industry there are a few mills
where calico is made or oil crushed, and ginning-mills are
numerous. In Upper Egypt there are a number of factories for
sugar-crushing and refining, and one or two towns of the Delta
EGYPT
[MODERN: COMMERCE
possess rice mills. Flour mills are found in every part of the
country, the maize and other grains being ground for home
consumption. Soap-making and leather-tanning are carried on
and there are breweries at Alexandria and Cairo. The manu-
facture of tobacco into cigarettes, carried on largely at Alexandria
and Cairo, is another important industry. Native industries
include the weaving of silk, woollen, linen and cotton goods
the hand- woven silk shawls and draperies being often rich anc
elegant. The silk looms are chiefly at Mehallet el-Kubra, Cairo
and Damietta. The Egyptians are noted for the making ol
pottery of the commoner kinds, especially water-jars. There
is at Cairo and in other towns a considerable industry in orna-
mental wood and metal work, inlaying with ivory and pearl,
brass trays, copper vessels, gold and silver ornaments, &c. At
Cairo and in the Fayum, attar of roses and other perfumes are
manufactured. Boat-building is an important trade.
Commerce. The trade of Egypt has developed enormously since
the British occupation in 1882 ensured to all classes of the com-
munity the enjoyment of the profit of their labour. The total value
of the exterior trade increased in the 20 years 1882 to 1902 from
19,000,000 to 32,400,000. The wealth of Egypt lying in the culti-
vation of its soil, almost all the exports are agricultural produce,
while the imports are mostly manufactured goods, minerals and
hardware. The chief exports in order of importance are: raw
cotton, cotton seed, sugar, beans, cigarettes, onions, rice and gum-
arabic. The gum is not of native produce, being in transit from the
Sudan. Of less importance are the exports of hides and skins, eggs,
wheat and other grains, wool, quails, lentils, dates and Sudan
produce in transit. The principal articles imported are: cotton
goods and other textiles, coal, iron and steel, timber, tobacco,
machinery, flour, alcoholic liquors, petroleum, fruits, coffee and live
animals. There is an ad valorem duty of 8 % on imports and of about
I % on exports. Tobacco and precious stones and metals pay
heavier duties. The tobacco is imported chiefly from Turkey and
Greece, is made into cigarettes in Egypt, and in this form exported
to the value of about 500,000 yearly.
In comparison with cotton, all other exports are of minor account.
The cotton exported, of which Great Britain takes more than half,
is worth over three-fourths of the total value of goods sent abroad.
Next to cotton, sugar is the most important article exported. A large
proportion of the sugar manufactured is, however, consumed in the
country and does not figure in the trade returns. Of the imports
the largest single item is cotton goods, nearly all being sent from
England. Woollen goods come chiefly from England, Austria and
Germany, silk goods from France. Large quantities of ready-made
clothes and fezes are imported from Austria. Iron and steel goods,
machinery, locomotives, &c., come chiefly from England, Belgium
and Germany, coal from England, live stock from Turkey and the
Red Sea ports, coffee from Brazil, timber from Russia, Turkey and
Sweden.
A British consular report (No. 3121, annual series), issued in 1904,
shows that in the period 1887-1902 the import trade of Egypt nearly
doubled. In the same period the proportion of imports from the
United Kingdom fell from 39-63 to 36-76 %. Though the percentage
decreased, the value of imports from Great Britain increased in the
same period from 2,500,000 to 4,500,000. In addition to imports
from the United Kingdom, British possessions took 6-0% of the
import trade. Next to Great Britain, Turkey had the largest share
of the import trade, but it had declined in the sixteen years from 19
to 15%. France about 10%, and Austria 6-72%, came next,
but their import trade was declining, while that of Germany had risen
from^less than I to over 3%, and Belgium imports from 1-74 to
4 2 7 %
In the same period (1887-1902) Egyptian exports to Great Britain
decreased from 63-25 to 52-30%, Germany and the United States
showing each an increase of over 6-0 %. Exports to Germany had
increased from 0-13 to 6-75%, to the United States from 0-26 to
6-70%. Exports to France had remained practically stationary
at 8-0%; those to Austria had dropped from 6-30 to 4-0%, to
Russia from 9-11 to 8-43%.
For the quinquennial period 1901-1905, the average annual
value of the exterior trade was: imports 17,787,296; exports
18,811,588; total 36,598,884. In 1907 the total value of the
merchandise imported and exported, exclusive of transit, re-
exportation and specie, was .54,134,000 constituting a record
trade return. The value of the imports was .26,121,000, of the
exports .28,013,000.
Shipping. More than 90% of the external trade passes through
the port of Alexandria. Port Said, which in consequence of its
position at the northern entrance of the Suez Canal has more frequent
and regular communication with Europe, is increasing in importance
and is the port where mails and passengers are landed. Over 3000
ships enter and clear harbour at Alexandria every year. The total
tonnage entering the port increased in the five years 1901-1905 from
2.555.259 to 3,591,281. In the same period the percentage of British
shipping, which before 1900 was nearly 50, varied from 40 to 45
No other nation had more than 12 % of the tonnage, Italy, France,
Austria and Turkey each having 9 to 12 %. The tonnage of German
ships increased in the five years mentioned from 3 to 7%. In
number of steamships entering the harbour Great Britain is first
with some 800 yearly, or about 50% of all steamers entering. The
sailing boats entering the harbour are almost entirely Turkish.
They are vessels of small tonnage.
The transit trade with the East, which formerly passed overland
through Egypt, has been diverted to the Suez Canal, the traffic
through which has little to do with the trade or shipping of Egypt.
The number of ships using the canal increased in the 20 years 1880-
1900 from 2000 to 4000, while in the same period the tonnage rose
from 4,300,000 to 14,000,000. In 1905 the figures were: Number
of ships that passed through the canal, 4116 (2484 being British
and 600 German), net tonnage 13,134,105 (8,356,940 British and
2,113,484 German). Next to British and German the nationality
of ships using the canal in order of importance is French, Dutch,
Austrian, Italian and Russian. About 250,000 passengers (includ-
ing some 40,000 pilgrims to Mecca) pass through the canal in a year
(see further SUEZ).
Currency. The monetary system in force dates from 1885, when
through the efforts of Sir Edgar Vincent the currency was placed
on a sound basis. The system is based on the single gold standard.
The unit is a gold coin called a pound and equal to l, os. 6d in
English currency. The Egyptian pound (E.) is divided into loo
piastres, of which there are coins in silver of 20,10,5 and 2 piastres.
One, J, J and -^ piastre pieces are coined in nickel and & and <\
piastre pieces m bronze. The one piastre piece is worth a fraction
over 2 5 d. The A of a piastre is popularly called a para and the
native population generally reckon in paras. The legal piastre
is called the piastre tariff (P.T.), to distinguish it from the i piastre
which in local usage in Cairo and Alexandria is called a piastre.
Officially the $ piastre is known as 5 milliemes, and so with the coins
of lower denomination, the para being i millieme. The old terms
kis or " purse " (500 piastres) and khazna or " treasury " (1000
purses) are still occasionally used. Formerly European coins of all
kinds were in general circulation, now the only foreign coins current
are the English sovereign, the French 20 franc piece and the Turkish
mejidie, a gold coin worth 18 shillings. For several years no
Egyptian gold pieces have been coined. Egyptian silver money is
minted at Birmingham, and nickel and bronze money at Vienna.
Bank-notes, of the National Bank, are issued for E. 100, .50, E. 10,
.5 and E.i, and for 50 piastres. The notes are not legal tender,'
but are accepted by the government in payment of taxes.
The history of the currency reform in Egypt is interesting as
affording a practical example of a system much discussed in con-
nexion with the currency question in India, namely, a gold standard
without a gold coinage. The Egyptian pound is practically non-
existent, nearly all that were coined having been withdrawn from
circulation. Their place has been taken by foreign gold, principally
the English sovereign, which circulates at a value of 97$ piastres.
In practice the system works perfectly smoothly, the gold flowing in
and out of the country through the agency of private banking estab-
lishments in proportion to the requirements of the circulation. It is,
moreover, very economical for the government. As in most agri-
cultural countries, there is a great expansion of the circulation in the
autumn and winter months in order to move the crops, followed by
a long period of contracted circulation throughout the rest of the
year. Under the existing system the fluctuating requirements of
the currency are met without the expense of alternately minting and
melting down.
Weights and Measures. The metrical system of weights and
measures is in official but not in popular use, except in the foreign
quarters of Cairo, Alexandria, &c. The most common Egyptian
measures are the fitr, or space measured by the extension of the
:humb and first finger; the shibr, or span; and the cubit (of three
cinds = 22f , 25 and 26$ in.). The measure of land is thefeddan, equal
;o 1-03 acres, subdivided into 24 kirats. The ardeb is equal to about
5 bushels, and is divided into 6 waybas, and each wayba into 24
rubas. The okieh equals 1-32 oz., the roll -99 ft, the oke 2-75 ft,
the kantar (or 100 rolls or 36 okes) 99-04 ft.
Constitution and Administration. Egypt is a tributary state
of the Turkish empire, and is ruled by an hereditary prince
with the style of khedive, a Persian title regarded as the equiva-
ent of king. The succession to the throne is by primogeniture.
The central administration is carried on by a council of ministers,
appointed by the khedive, one of whom acts as prime minister.
To these is added a British financial adviser, who attends all
meetings of the council of ministers, but has not a vote; on the
other hand, no financial decision may be taken without his
consent. The ministries are those of the interior, finance, public
works, justice, war, foreign affairs and public instruction, 1 and
n each of these are prepared the drafts of decrees, which are
1 To the ministry of public instruction was added in 1906 a depart-
ment of agriculture and technical instruction.
MODERN: LAW]
EGYPT
29
then submitted to the council of ministers for approval, and on
being signed by the khedive become law. No important decision,
however, has been taken since 188.- without the concurrence of
the British minister plenipotentiary. With a few exceptions,
laws cannot, owing to the Capitulations, be enforced against
foreigners except with the consent of the powers.
While the council of ministers with the khedive forms the
legislative authority, there are various representative bodies
with strictly limited powers. The legislative council is a con-
sultative body, partly elective, partly nominative. It examines
the budget and all proposed administrative laws, but cannot
initiate legislation, nor is the government bound to adopt its
suggestions. The general assembly consists of the legislative
council and the ministers of state, together with popularly
elected members, who form a majority of the whole assembly.
It has no legislative functions, but no new direct personal tax
nor land tax can be imposed without its consent. It must meet
at least once in every two years.
For purposes of local government the chief towns constitute
governorships (moaftas), the rest of the country being divided
into mudirias or provinces. The governors and mudirs (heads
of provinces) are responsible to the ministry of the interior.
The provinces are further divided into districts, each of which
is under a mamur, who in his turn supervises and controls the
omda, mayor or head-man, of each village in his district.
The governorships are: Cairo; Alexandria, which includes
an area of 70 sq. m.; Suez Canal, including Port Said and
Ismaiiia; Suez and EI-Arish. Lower Egypt is divided into the
provinces of: Bchera, Gharbia, Menufia, Dakahlia, Kaliubia,
Sharkia. The oasis of Siwa and the country to the Tripoli! :m
frontier are dependent on the province of Behera. Upper
Egypt: Giza, Beni Suef, Kayum, Minia, Assiut, Girga, Kena,
Assuan. The peninsula of Sinai is administered by the war office.
Justice. There are four judicial systems in Egypt: two
applicable to Egyptian subjects only, one applicable to foreigners
only, and one applicable to foreigners and, to a certain extent,
natives also. This multiplicity of tribunals arises from the fact
that, owing to the Capitulations, which apply to Egypt as part
of the Turkish empire, foreigners are almost entirely exempt
from the jurisdiction of the native courts. It will be convenient
to state first the law as regards foreigners, and secondly the law
which concerns Egyptians. Criminal jurisdiction over foreigners
is exercised by the consuls of the fifteen powers possessing such
right by treaty, according to the law of the country of the
offender. These consular courts also judge civil cases between
foreigners of the same nationality.
Jurisdiction in civil matters between natives and foreigners
and between foreigners of different nationalities is no longer
exercised by the consular courts. The grave abuse to which
the consular system was subject led to the establishment, in
February 1876, at the instance of Nubar Pasha and after eight
yean of negotiation, of International or " Mixed " Tribunals
to supersede consular jurisdiction to the extent indicated. The
Mixed Tribunals employ a code based on the Code NapoUon
with such additions from Mahommedan law as are applicable.
There are three tribunals of first instance, and an appeal court
at Alexandria. These courts have both foreign and Egyptian
judges the foreign judges forming the majority of the bench.
In certain designated matters they enjoy criminal jurisdiction,
including, since 1000, offences against the bankruptcy laws.
Cases have to be conducted in Arabic, French, Italian and
English, English having been admitted as a "judicial language"
by khedivial decree of the i?th of April 1905. Besides their
judicial duties, the courts practically exercise legislative func-
tions, as no important law can be made applicable to Europeans
without the consent of the powers, and the powers are mainly
guided by the opinions of the judges of the Mixed Courts.
The judicial systems applicable solely to Egyptians are
supervised by the ministry of justice, to which has been attached
since 1800 a British judicial adviser. Two systems of laws are
administered.- (i) the tfekkemeks, (2) the Native Tribunals.
The mekkemeks, or courts of the cadis, judge in all matters of
personal status, such as marriage, inheritance and guardianship,
and are guided in their decisions by the code of laws founded on
the Koran. The grand, cadi, who must belong to the sect of
the Hiinijis. sits at Cairo, and is aided by a council of Ulema or
learned men. This council consists of the sheikh or religious chief
of each of the four orthodox sects, the sheikh of the mosque of
Azhar, who is of the sect of the Shafi'is, the chief (nakib) of the
Sherifs, or descendants of Mahomet, and others. The cadis are
chosen from among the students at the Azhar university. (In
the same manner, in matters of personal law, Copts and other
non-Moslem Egyptians are, in general, subject to the jurisdiction
of their own religious chiefs.)
For other than the purposes indicated, the native judicial
system, both civil and criminal, was superseded in 1884 by
tribunals administering a jurisprudence modelled on that of
the French code. It is, in the words of Lord Cromer, " in many
respects ill adapted to meet the special needs of the country "
(Egypt, No. i, 1904, p. 33). The system was, on the advice of an
Anglo-Indian official (Sir John Scott), modified and simplified
in 1891, but its essential character remained unaltered. In 1904,
however, more important modifications were introduced. Save
on points of law, the right of appeal in criminal cases was abolished,
and assize courts, whose judgments were final, established. At
the same time the penal code was thoroughly revised, so that the
Egyptian judges were " for the first time provided with a sound
working code " (Ibid. p. 49). The native courts have both
native and foreign judges. There are courts of summary juris-
diction presided over by one judge, central tribunals (or courts of
first instance) with three judges, and a court of appeal at Cairo.
A committee of judicial surveillance watches the working of the
courts of first instance and the summary courts, and endeavours,
by letters and discussions, to maintain purity and sound law.
There is a procureur-gfnfral, who, with other duties, is entrusted
with criminal prosecutions. His representatives are attached
to each tribunal, and form the parquet under whose orders the
police act in bringing criminals to justice. In the markak (dis-
trict) tribunals, created in 1004 and presided over by magistrates
with jurisdiction in cases of misdemeanour, the prosecution is,
however, conducted directly by the police. Special Children's
Courts have been established for the trial of juvenile offenders.
The police service, which has been subject to frequent modifica-
tion, was in 1895 put under the orders of the ministry of the
interior, to which a British adviser and British inspectors are
attached. The provincial police is under the direction of the local
authorities, the mudirs or governors of provinces, and the
mamurs or district officials; to the omdas, or village head-men,
who are responsible for the good order of the villages, a limited
criminal jurisdiction has been entrusted.
Religion. The great majority of the inhabitants are Mahorn-
medans. In 1907 the Moslems numbered over ten millions,
or 91-8% of the entire population. The Christians in the same
year numbered 880,000, or 8% of the population. Of these
the Coptic Orthodox church had some 667 ,000 adherents. Among
other churches represented were the Greek Orthodox, the Ar-
menian, Syrian and Maronite, the Roman Catholic and various
Protestant bodies. The last-named numbered 37,000 (including
24,000 Copts). There were in 1907 over 38,000 Jews in Egypt.
The Mahommedans are Sunnites, professing the creed com-
monly termed " orthodox," and are principally of the persuasion
of the Shafi'is, whose celebrated founder, the imam ash-Shafi'i,
is buried in the great southern cemetery of Cairo. Many of
them are, however, Hanifis (to which persuasion the Turks
chiefly belong), and in parts of Lower, and almost universally
in Upper, Egypt, Mdlikis. Among the Moslems the Sheikh-el-
Islam, appointed by the khedive from among the Ulema (learned
class), exercises the highest religious and, in certain subjects,
judicial authority. There is also a grand cadi, nominated by the
sultan of Turkey from among the Ulema of Stamboul. Valuable
property is held by the Moslems in trust for the promotion of
religion and for charitable purposes, and is known as the Wakfs
administration. The revenue derived is over 250,000 yearly.
The Coptic organization includes in Egypt three metropolitans
EGYPT
[MODERN: EDUCATION
and twelve bishops, under the headship of the patriarch of
Alexandria. The minor orders are arch-priests, priests, arch-
deacons, deacons, readers and monks (see COPTS: Coptic
Church).
Education. Two different systems of education exist, one
founded on native lines, the other European in character. Both
systems are more or less fully controlled by the ministry of public
instruction. The government has primary, secondary and
technical schools, training colleges for teachers, and schools
of agriculture, engineering, law, medicine and veterinary science.
The government system, which dates back to a period before
the British occupation, is designed to provide, in the main, a
European education. In the primary schools Arabic is the
medium of instruction, the use of English for that purpose being
confined to lessons in that language itself. The school of law
is divided into English and French sections according to the
language in which the students study law. Besides the govern-
ment primary and secondary schools, there are many other
schools in the large towns owned by the Moslems, Copts,
Hebrews, and by various missionary societies, and in which the
education is on the same lines. A movement initiated among
the leading Moslems led in 1908 to the establishment as a private
enterprise of a national Egyptian university devoted to scientific,
literary and philosophical studies. Political and religious subjects
are excluded from the curriculum and no discrimination in regard
. to race or religion is allowed.
Education on native lines is given in kuttabs and in the Azhar
university in Cairo. Kuttabs are schools attached to mosques, found
in every village and in every quarter of the larger towns. In these
schools the instruction given before the British occupation was very
slight. All pupils were taught to recite portions of the Koran, and
a proportion of the scholars learnt to read and write Arabic and a
little simple arithmetic. Those pupils who succeeded in committing
to memory the whole of the Koran were regarded as fiki (learned
in Mahommedan law), and as such escaped liability to military
conscription. The government has improved the education given
in the kutlabs, and numbers of them have been taken under the
direct control of the ministry of public instruction. In these latter
schools an excellent elementary secular education is given, in
addition to the instruction in the Koran, to which half the school
hours are devoted. The number of pupils in 1905 was over 12,000
boys and 2000 girls. Grants-in-aid are given to other schools where
a sufficiently good standard of instruction is maintained. No grant
is made to any kuttab where any language other than Arabic is taught.
In all there are over 10,000 kuttabs, attended by some 250,000
scholars. The number of pupils in private schools under government
inspection was in 1898, the first year of the grant-in-aid system,
7536; in 1900, 12,315; in 1905, 145,691. The number of girls
in attendance rose from 598 in 1898 to 997 in 1900 and 9611 in 1905.
The Copts have about 1000 primary schools, in which the teaching
of Coptic is compulsory, a few industrial schools, and one college
for higher instruction.
Cairo holds a prominent place as a seat of Moslem learning, and
its university, the Azhar, is considered the first of the eastern world.
Its professors teach " grammatical inflexion and syntax, rhetoric,
versification, logic, theology, the exposition of the Koran, the
traditions of the Prophet, the complete science of jurisprudence, or
rather of religious, moral, civil and criminal law, which is chiefly
founded on the Koran and the traditions, together with arithmetic
as far as it is useful in matters of law. Lectures are also given on
algebra and on the calculations of the Mahommedan calendar,
the times of prayer, &c." (E. W. Lane, Modern Egyptians). The
students come from all parts of the Mahommedan world. They
number about 8000, of whom some 2000 are resident. The students
pay no fees, and the professors receive no salaries. The latter main-
tain themselves by private teaching and by copying manuscripts,
and the former in the same manner, or by reciting the Koran. To
meet the demand for better qualified judges for the Moslem courts
a training college for cadis was established in 1907. Besides the
subjects taught at the Azhar university, instruction is given in
literature, mathematics and physical science. The necessity for
a reorganization of the Azhar system itself being also recognized
by the. high Moslem dignitaries in Egypt, a law was passed in 1907
creating a superior board of control under the presidency of the
Sheikh el-Azhar to supervise the proceedings of the university and
other similar establishments. This attempt to reform the Azhar met,
however, with so much opposition that in 1909 it was, for the time,
abandoned.
In 1907, of the sedentary Egyptian population over seven years of
age, some 12 % of the Moslems could read and write, female literacy
having increased 50% since 1897; of the foreign population over
seven years of age 75 % could read and write. Of the Coptic com-
munity about 50% can read and write.
Literature and the Press. Since the British occupation there has
been a marked renaissance of Arabic learning and literature in
Egypt. Societies formed for the encouragement of Arabic literature
have brought to light important texts bearing on Mahommedan
history, antiquities and religion. Numbers of magazines and
reviews are published in Arabic which cater both for the needs
of the moment and the advancement of learning. Side by side
with these literary organs there exists a vernacular press largely
devoted to nationalist propaganda. Prominent among these papers
is Al Lewa (The Standard), founded in 1900. Other papers of a
similar character are Al Omma, Al Moayad and Al Cerida. The
Mokattam represents the views of the more enlightened and con-
servative section of the native population. In Cairo and Alexandria
there are also published several newspapers in English and French.
AUTHORITIES. (a) General descriptions, geography, travel, &c
Description de I'Egypte, 10 folio vols. and atlas of 10 vols. (Paris,
1809-1822), compiled by the scientific commission sent to Egypt by
Bonaparte; Clot Bey, Aperfu general sur I'Egypte, 2 vols. (Paris,
1840); Boinet Bey, Dictionnaire geographique de I Egypte (Cairo
1899); Murray's and Baedeker's handbooks and Guide Joanne;
G. Ebers, Egypt, Descriptive, Historical and Picturesque, translated
from the German edition of 1879 by Clara Bell, new edition, 2 vols
(London, 1887) ; Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, Modern Egypt and Thebes
(2 vols., London, 1843); Lady Duff Gordon, Letters from Egypt,
complete edition (London, 1902), an invaluable account of social
conditions in the period 1862-1869; A. B. Edwards, A Thousand
Miles up the Nile (2nd edition, London, n.d. [1889]); Pharaohs,
Fellahs and Explorers (London, 1892); H. W. Mardon, Geography
of Egypt . . . (London, 1902), an excellent elementary text-book;
D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East (London, 1902), contains brief but
suggestive chapters on Egypt; S. Lane Poole, Egypt (London, 1881) ;
A. B. de Guerville, New Egypt, translated from the French (London,
1905) ; R. T. Kelly, Egypt Painted and Described (London, 1902).
The best maps are those of the Survey Department, Cairo, on the
scale of I : 50000 (1-3 in. to the mile).
(b) Administration : Sir John Bowring's Report on Egypt ... to
Lord Palmerston (London, 1840) shows the system obtaining at that
period. For the study of the state of Egypt at the time of the British
occupation, 1882, and the development of the country since, the
most valuable documents' are:
I. Official. The Reports on the Finances, Administration and
Condition of Egypt, issued yearly since 1892 (the reports 1888-1891
were exclusively financial). Up to 1906 the reports were by Lord
Cromer (Sir Evelyn Baring). They clearly picture the progress of
the country. The following reports are specially valuable as ex-
hibiting the difficulties which at the outset confronted the British
administrators: Correspondence respecting the Reorganization of
Egypt (1883) ; Reports by Mr Villiers Stuart respecting Reorganization
of Egypt (1883 and 1895) ; Despatch from Lord Dufferin forwarding
the Decree constituting the New Political Institutions of Egypt (1883);
Reports on the Stale of Egypt and the Progress of Administrative
Reforms (1885); Reports by Sir H. D. Wolff on the Administration
of Egypt (1887). Annual returns are published in Cairo in English
or French by the various ministries, and British consular reports
on the trade of Egypt and of Alexandria and of the tonnage and
shipping of the Suez Canal are also issued yearly.
II. Non-official. Lord Cromer, Modern Egypt (2 vols., 1908), an
authoritative record; Alfred (Lord) Milner, England in Egypt, first
published in 1892, the story being brought up to 1904 in the nth
edition; Sir A. Colvin, The Making of Modern Egypt (1906); J.
Ward, Pyramids and Progress (1900) ; A. S. White, The Expansion
of Egypt (1899) ; and F. W. Fuller, Egypt and the Hinterland (1901).
See also the works cited in History, last section.
(c) Law: H. Lamba, De devolution de la condition juridique des
Europeens en Egypte (Paris, 1896) ; J. H. Scott, The Law affecting
Foreigners in Egypt . . . (Edinburgh, 1907) ; The Egyptian Codes
(London, 1892).
(d) Irrigation, agriculture, geology, &c. : Despatch from Sir Evelyn
Baring enclosing Report on the Condition of the Agricultural Population
in Egypt (1888); Notes on Egyptian Crops (Cairo, 1896); Yacub
Artin Bey, La Pt opriete fonciere en Egypte (Bulak, 1885); Report on
Perennial Irrigation and Flood Protection for Egypt, I vol. and atlas
(Cairo, 1894). The reports (Egypt, No. 2, 1901, and Egypt, No. 2,
1904), by Sir William Garstin on irrigation projects on the Upper
Nile are very valuable records notably the 1904 report. W. Will-
cocks, Egyptian Irrigation (2nd ed., 1899); H. G. Lyons, The
Physiography of the River Nile and its Basin (Cairo, 1906); Leigh
Canney, The Meteorology of Egypt and its Influence on Disease (1897).
Annual meteorological reports are issued by the Public Works
Department, Cairo. The same department issues special irrigation
reports. See for geology Carl von Zittel, Beitrdge zur Geologic und
Paldontologie der libyschen Wuste (Cassel, 1883); Reports of the
"eological Survey of Egypt (Cairo, 1900, et seq.).
(e) Natural history, anthropology, &c. : F. Pruner, Agyptens
Naturgeschichte und Anthropologie (Erlangen, 1848); R. Hartmann,
Naturgeschichtliche Skizze der Nilldnder (Berlin, 1866); Captain
" E. Shelley, Birds of Egypt (London, 1872). (F. R. C.)
1 The place of publication is London unless otherwise stated.
MODERN: INHABITANTS]
EGYPT
The population enumerated at the census taken in April. 1907
was 1 1 ,189,978. In these figures nomad Arabs or Bedouins, esti-
mated to number 97^381, are not included. The total population
was thus returned at 11,287,359, or some 16% more than in
1897 when the inhabitants numbered 9,734,405. The figures
for 1897 compared with 6,813,919 in 1882, an increase of 43.5%
in fifteen years. Thus, during the first twenty-five years
of the British occupation of the country the population in-
creased by nearly 4,500,000. In 1800 the French estimated
the population at no more than 2,460,000; the census of 1846
gave the figures at 4,476,440. From that year to 1882 the
average annual increase was 1.25%. If the desert regions be
iJcd, the population of Egypt is extremely dense, being
about 939 per sq. m. This figure may be compared with that
of Belgium, the most densely populated country in Europe,
589 per sq. m., and with that of Bengal, 586 per sq. m. In
parts of Menufia, a Delta province, the density rises to 1352 per
sq. m., and in the Kena province of Upper Egypt to 1308.
The population is generally divisible into
I The lellahin or peasantry and the native townsmen.
a. The Bedouins or nomad Arabs of the desert.
3. The Nuba, Nubians or Berbcrin. inhabitants of the Nile valley
between Assuan and Dongola.
4* Foreigners,
The first of these divisions includes both the Moslem and
Coptic inhabitants. The Bedouins, or the Arabs of the desert,
are of two different classes: first, Arabic-speaking tribes who
range the deserts as far south as 25 N.; secondly, the tribes
inhabiting the desert from Kosscir to Suakin, namely the
Hadendoa, Bisharin and the Ababda tribes. This group speak
a language of their own, and are probably descendants of the
Blcmmyes, who occupied these parts in ancient times (see
ARABS; BEDOUINS; HADENDOA; BisuARlN; &c.). The Nubas
are of mixed negro and Arab blood. They are mainly agri-
culturists, though some are keen traders (see NUBIA).
Foreigners number over 150,000 and form i% of the total
population. They are chiefly Greeks of whom the majority
live in Alexandria Italians, British and French. Syrians
and Levantines are numerous, and there is a colony of Persians.
The Turkish element is not numerically strong a few thousands
only but holds a high social position.
Of the total population, about 20% is urban. In addition to
the 97,000 pure nomads, there are half a million Bedouins
described as " semi-sedentaries," i.e. tent-dwelling Arabs, usually
encamped in those parts of the desert adjoining the cultivated
land. The rural classes are mainly engaged in agriculture, which
occupies over 62% of the adults. The professional and trading
classes form about 10% of the whole population, but 50% of the
foreigners are engaged in trade. Of the total population the
males exceed the females by some 46,000.
The Coptic inhabitants are described in the article COPTS, and the
rural population under FELLAH. It remains here to describe char-
acteristics and customs common to the Moslem Egyptians
and particularly to those of the cities. In some respects
the manner of life of the natives has been modified by
contact with Europeans, and what follows depicts in
general the habits of the people where little affected by
western culture. With regard to physical characteristics
the Egyptians are of full average height (the men are mostly 5 ft.
8 in. or 5 ft. 9 in ), and both sexes are remarkably well proportioned
and of strong physique. The Cairencs and the inhabitants of Lower
t generally have a clear complexion and soft skin of a light
nsh colour; those of Middle Egypt have a tawny skin, and
the dwellers in Upper Egypt a deep oronze or brown complexion.
The bee of the men is of a line oval, forehead prominent but seldom
high, straight now, eyes deep set, black and brilliant, mouth well
formed, but with rather full lips, regular teeth beautifully made,
and beard usually black and curly but scanty. Moustaches are
worn, while the head is shaved save for a small tuft (called shuiheh)
upon the crown. As to the women, " from the age of about fourteen
to that of eighteen or twenty, they are generally models of beauty
in body and limbs; and in countenance most of them are pleasing,
and many exceedingly lovely; but soon after they have attained
their perfect growth, they rapidly decline." There are few Egyptian
women over forty who retain either good looks or good figures.
" The forms of womanhood begin to develop themselves about the
ninth and tenth year: at the age of fifteen or sixteen they gener-
ally attain their highest degree of perfection. With regard to their
complexions, the same remarks apply to them as to the men, with
only this difference, that their faces, being generally veiled when
they go abroad, are not quite so much tanned as those of the men.
They arc characterized, like the men, by a fine oval countenance,
though in some instances it is rather broad. The eyes, with very
few exceptions, are black, large and of a long almond-form, with
long and beautiful lashes, and an exquisitely soft, bewitching ex-
pression eyes more beautiful can hardly be conceived: their
charming effect is much heightened by the concealment of the other
features (however pleasing the latter may be), and is rendered still
more striking by a practice universal among the females of the higher
and middle classes, and very common among those of the lower
orders, which is that of blackening the edge of the eyelids both above
ami below the eye, with a black powder called ' kohl' " (Lane,
Modern Egyptians). Both sexes, but especially the women, tattoo
several parts of the person, and the women stain their hands and feet
with the red dye of the henna.
The dress of the men of the upper and middle classes who have
not adopted European clothing a practice increasingly common
consists of cotton drawers, and a cotton or silk shirt with _
very wide sleeves. Above these are generally worn a f^?
waistcoat without sleeves, and a long vest of silk, called '
kaftan, which has hanging sleeves, and reaches nearly to the ankles.
The kaftan is confined by the girdle, which is a silk scarf, or cash-
mere or other woollen shawl. Over all is worn a long cloth robe, the
gibbch (or jibbeh) somewhat resembling the kaftan in shape, but
having shorter sleeves, and being open in front. T he dress of the
lower orders is the shirt and drawers, and waistcoat, with an outer
shirt of blue cotton or brown woollen stuff; some wear a kaftan.
The head-dress is the red cloth fez or tarbush round which a turban
is usually worn. Men who have otherwise adopted European
costume retain the tarbush. Many professions and religions, &c.,
are distinguished by the shape and colour of the turban, and various
classes, and particularly servants, are marked by the form and colour
of their shoes; but the poor go usually barefoot. Many ladies of the
upper classes now dress in European style, with certain modifications,
such as the head-veil. Those who retain native costume wear a very
full pair of silk trousers, bright coloured stockings (usually pink),
and a close-fitting vest with hanging sleeves and skirts, open down
the front and at the sides, and long enough to turn up and fasten
into the girdle, which is generally a cashmere shawl ; a cloth jacket,
richly embroidered with gold, and having short sleeves, is commonly
worn over the vest. The hair in front is combed down over the fore-
head and cut across in a straight line ; behind it is divided into very
many small plaits, which hang down the back, and are lengthened by
silken cords, and often adorned with gold coins and ornaments. A
small tarbush is worn on the back ofthe head, sometimes having
a plate of gold fixed on the crown, and a handkerchief is tastefully
bound round the temples. The women of the lower orders have
trousers of printed or dyed cotton, and a close waistcoat. All wear
the long and elegant head-veil. This is a simple " breadth " of
muslin, which passes over the head and hangs down behind, one side,
being drawn forward over the face in the presence of a man. A lady's
veil is of white muslin, embroidered at the ends in gold and colours;
that of a person of the lower class is simply dyed blue. In going
abroad the ladies wear above their indoor dress a loose robe of
coloured silk without sleeves, and nearly open at the sides, and above
it a large enveloping piece of black silk, which is brought over the
head, and gathered round the person by the arms and hands on each
side. A face-veil entirely conceals the features, except the eyes;
it is a long and narrow piece of thick white muslin, reaching to a
little below the knees. The women of the lower orders have the same
out-door dress of different materials and colour. Ladies use slippers
of yellow morocco, and abroad, inner boots of the same material,
above which they wear, in either case, thick shoes, having only toes.
The poor wear red shoes, very like those of the men. "I he women,
especially in Upper Egypt, not infrequently wear nose-rings.
Children, though often neglected, are not unkindly treated, and
reverence for their parents and the aged is early inculcated. They
are also well grounded in the leading doctrines of Islam. Boys are
circumcised at the age of five or six years, when the boy is paraded,
generally with a bridal procession, on a gaily caparisoned horse and
dressed in woman's clothes. Most parents send their boys to school
where a knowledge of reading and writing Arabic the common
tongue of the Egyptians is obtainable, and from the closing years
of the i o.th century a great desire for the education of girls has arisen
(see 5 Education).
It is deemed disreputable for a young man not to marry when
he has attained a sufficient age; there are, therefore, few unmarried
men. Girls, in like manner, marry very young, some at ten years of
age, and few remain single beyond the age of sixteen; they are
generally very prolific. The bridegroom never sees his future wife
before the wedding night, a custom rendered more tolerable than
it otherwise might be by the facility of divorce. A dowry is always
given, and a simple marriage ceremony performed by a fiki (a school-
master, or one who recites the Koran, properly one learned in fiqh,
Mahommedan law) in the presence of two witnesses. The bridal
of a virgin is attended with great festivity and rejoicing, a grandee's
EGYPT
[MODERN: CUSTOMS
wedding sometimes continuing eleven days and nights. On the last
day, which should be that terminating with the eve of Friday, or of
Monday, the bride is taken in procession to the bridegroom's house,
accompanied by her female friends, and a band of musicians, jugglers,
wrestlers, &c. As before stated, a boy about to be circumcised joins
in such a procession, or, frequently, a succession of such boys.
Though allowed by his religion four wives, most Egyptians are
monogamists. A man may, however, possess any number of con-
cubines, who, though objects of jealousy to the legal wife, are tolerated
by her in consideration of her superior position and power over them,
a power which she often uses with great tyranny; but certain
privileges are possessed by concubines, especially if they have borne
sons to their master. A divorce is rendered obligatory by the simple
words " Thou art divorced." Repudiation may take place twice
without being final, but if the husband repeats thrice " Thou art
divorced " the separation is absolute. In that case the dowry must
be returned to the wife.
Elaborate ceremonies are observed at funerals. Immediately on
death the corpse is turned towards Mecca, and the women of the
household, assisted by hired mourners, commence their peculiar
wailing, while fikis recite portions of the Koran. The funeral takes
place on the day of the death, if that happen in the morning; other-
wise on the next day. The corpse, having been washed and shrouded,
is placed in an open bier, covered with a cashmere shawl, in the case
of a man; or in a closed bier, having a post in front, on which are
placed feminine ornaments, in that of a woman or child. The funeral
procession is headed by a number of poor, and generally blind, men,
chanting the profession of the faith, followed by male friends of the
deceased, and a party of schoolboys, also chanting, generally from
a poem descriptive of the state of the soul after death. Then follows
the bier, borne on the shoulders of friends, who are relieved by the
passers-by, such an act being deemed highly meritorious. Behind
come the women relatives and the hired wallers. On the way to
the cemetery the corpse is generally carried to some revered mosque.
Here the funeral service is performed by the imam, and the pro-
cession then proceeds to the tomb. In the burials of the rich, water
and bread are distributed to the poor at the grave; and sometimes
a buffalo or several buffaloes are slaughtered there, and the flesh
given away. The tomb is a vault, surmounted by an oblong stone
monument, with a stele at the head and feet; and a cupola, sup-
ported by four walls, covers the whole in the case of sheikhs' tombs
and those of the wealthy. During the night following the interment,
called the Night of Desolation, or that of Solitude, the soul being
believed to remain with the body that one night, fikis are engaged
at the house of the deceased to recite various portions of the Koran,
and, commonly, to repeat the first clause- of the profession of the
faith, " There is no God but God," three thousand times. The
women alone put on mourning attire, by dyeing their veils, shirts,
&c., dark blue, with indigo; and they stain their hands, and smear
the walls, with the same colour. Everything in the house is also
turned upside down. The latter customs are not, however, observed
on the death of an old man. At certain periods after the burial, a
khatmeh, or recitation of the whole of the Koran, is performed,
and the tomb is visited by the women relations and friends of the
deceased. The women of the peasants of Upper Egypt perform
strange dances, &c., at funerals, which are regarded partly as relics
of ancient Egyptian customs.
The harem system of appointing separate apartments to the
women, and secluding them from the gaze of men, is observed in
Egypt as in other Moslem countries, but less strictly. The women
of an Egyptian household in which old customs are maintained never
sit in the presence of the master, but attend him at his meals, and
are treated in every respect as inferiors. The mother, however,
forms a remarkable exception to this rule; in rare instances, also,
a wife becomes a companion to her husband. On the other hand,
if a pair of women's shoes are placed outside the door of the harem
apartments, they are understood to signify that female visitors are
within, and a man is sometimes thus excluded from the upper
portion of his own house for many days. Ladies of the *ipper or
middle classes lead a life of extreme inactivity, spending their time
at the bath, which is the general place of gossip, or in receiving visits,
embroidering, and the like, and in absolute dolce far niente. Both
sexes are given to licentiousness.
The principal meals are breakfast, about an hour after sunrise;
dinner, or the mid-day meal, at noon; and supper, which is the
chief meal of the day, a little after sunset. Pastry, sweetmeats and
fruit are highly esteemed. Coffee is taken at all hours, and is, with
a pipe, presented at least once to each guest. Tobacco is the great
luxury of the men of all classes in Egypt, who begin and end the day
with it, and generally smoke all day with little intermission. Many
women, also, especially among the rich, adopt the habit. The smok-
ing of hashish, though illegal, is indulged in by considerable numbers
of people. Men who can afford to keep a horse, mule or ass are
very seldom seen to walk. Ladies ride asses and sit astride. The
poorer classes cannot fully observe the harem system, but the women
are in general carefully veiled. Some of them keep small shops, and
all fetch water, make fuel, and cook for their households. Domestic
slavery lingers but is moribund. The majority of the slaves are
negresses employed in household duties.
In social intercourse the Egyptians observe many forms of salu-
tation and much etiquette ; they are very affable, and readily enter
into conversation with strangers. Their courtesy and dignity of
manner are very striking, and are combined with ease and a fluency
of discourse. They have a remarkable quickness of apprehension,
a ready wit, a retentive memory, combined, however, with religious
pride and hypocrisy, and a disregard for the truth. Their common
discourse is full of asseverations and expressions respecting sacred
things. They entertain reverence for their Prophet ; and the Koran
is treated with the utmost resgect never, for example, being placed
in a low situation and this is the case with everything they esteem
holy. They are fatalists, and bear calamities with surprising resig-
nation. Their filial piety and respect for the aged have been men-
tioned, and benevolence and charity are conspicuous in their char-
acter. Humanity to animals is another virtue, and cruelty is openly
discountenanced in the streets. Their affability, cheerfulness and
hospitality are remarkable, as well as frugality and temperance in
food and drink, and honesty in the payment of debt. Their cupidity
is mitigated by generosity; their natural indolence by the necessity,
especially among the peasantry, to work hard to gain a livelihood.
Egyptians, however, are as a rule suspicious of all not of their own
creed and country. Murders and other grave crimes are rare, but
petty larcenies are very common.
The amusements of the people are generally not of a violent kind,
being in keeping with their sedentary habits and the heat of the
climate. The bath is a favourite resort of both sexes and all classes.
They are acquainted with chess, draughts, backgammon, and other
games, among which is one peculiar to themselves, called Mankalah,
and played with cowries. Notwithstanding its condemnation by
Mahomet, music is the most favourite recreation of the people ; the
songs of the boatmen, the religious chants, and the cries in the
streets are all musical. There are male and female musical per-
formers; the former are both instrumental and vocal, the latter
(called 'Almeh, pi. 'Awalim) generally vocal. The 'Awalim are, as
their name (" learned ") implies, generally accomplished women,
and should not be confounded with the Ghawazi, or dancing-girls.
There are many kinds of musical instruments. The music, vocal
and instrumental, is generally of little compass, and in the minor
key; it is therefore plaintive, and strikes a European ear as some-
what monotonous, though often possessing a simple beauty, and
the charm of antiquity, for there is little doubt that the favourite
airs have been handed down from remote ages. The Ghawazi (sing.
Ghazla) form a separate class, very similar to the gipsies. They inter-
marry among themselves only, and their women are professional
dancers. Their performances are often objectionable and are so
regarded by many Egyptians. They dance in public, at fairs and
religious festivals, and at private festivities, but, it is said, not in
respectable houses. Mehemet AH banished them to Esna, in Upper
Egypt; and the few that remained in Cairo called themselves
Awalim, to avoid punishment. Many of the dancing-girls of Cairo
to-day are neither 'Awalim nor Ghawazi, but women of the very
lowest class whose performances are both ungraceful and indecent.
A most objectionable class of male dancers also exists, who imitate
the dances of the Ghawazi, and dress in a kind of nondescript female
attire. Not the least curious of the public performances are those
of the serpent-charmers, who are generally Rifa'ia (Saadia) dervishes.
Their power over serpents has been doubted, yet their performances
remain unexplained; they, however, always extract the fangs of
venomous serpents. Jugglers, rope-dancers and farce-players must
also be mentioned. In the principal coffee-shops of Cairo are to be
found reciters of romances, surrounded by interested audiences.
The periodical public festivals are exceedingly interesting, but
many of the remarkable observances connected with them are
passing away. The first ten days of the Mahommedan
year are held to be blessed, and especially the tenth;
and many curious practices are observed on these days,
particularly by the women. The tenth day, being the anniversary
of the martyrdom of Hosain, the son of Ali and grandson of the
Prophet, the mosque of the Hasanen at Cairo is thronged to excess,
mostly by women. In the evening a procession goes to the mosque,
the principal figure being a white horse with white trappings, upon
which is seated a small boy, the horse and the lad, who represents
Hosain, being smeared with blood. From the mosque the procession
goes to a private house, where a mullah recites the story of the martyr-
dom. Following the order of the lunar year, the next festival is that
of the Return of the Pilgrims, which is the occasion of great rejoicing,
many having friends or relatives in the caravan. The Mahmal,
a kind of covered litter, first originated by Queen Sheger-ed-Dur, is
brought into the city in procession, though not with as much pomp
as when it leaves with the pilgrims. These and other processions
have lost much of their effect since the extinction of the Mamelukes,
and the gradual disuse of gorgeous dress for the retainers of the
officers of state. A regiment of regular infantry makes but a sorry
substitute for the splendid cavalcade of former times. The Birth
of the Prophet (Mohd en-Nebi), which is celebrated in the beginning
of the third month, is the greatest festival of the whole year. For
nine days and nights Cairo has more the aspect of a fair than of a
city keeping a religious festival. The chief ceremonies take place
in some large open spot round which are erected the tents of the
khedive, of great state officials, and of the dervishes. Next in time,
and also in importance, is the Molid El-Hasanen, commemorative
Public
festivals.
MODERN USANCE)
EGYPT
33
of the birth of Hoaain. and lasting fifteen days and nights; and at
ime time is kept the MolUl ol al-!>ilil.i \\ yub. the last sovereign
but two of the Ayyubite dynasty. In the seventh month occur
MoUd of the sayyida Zenab, and the commemoration of the
Miarig. or the Prophet's miraculous journey to heaven. Early in
the eighth month (Sha'bun), the Molid of the imam Shafi'i is ob-
served; ami the night of the middle of that month has its peculiar
customs, being held by the Moslems to be that on which the fate of
all living is decided for the ensuing year. Then follows Ramadan,
the month of abstinence, a severe trial to the faithful; and the
Festival (Al-'id as-saghir), which commences Shawwal, is
,J by them with delight. A few days after, the Kiswa, or new
covering for the Ka'ba at Mecca, is taken in procession from the
citadel, where it is always manufactured, to the mosque of the
Hasanen to be completed; and, later, the caravan of pilgrims
departs, when the grand procession of the Mahmal takes place. On
(he tenth day of the last month of the year the Great Festival
. I al-kabir),or that of the Sacrifice (commemorating the willing-
ness of Ibrahim to slay his son Ismail according to the Arab legend),
doses the calendar. The Lesser and Great Festivals arc those known
in Turkish as the Bairam (q.f.).
The rise of the Nile is naturally the occasion of annual customs,
one of which are doubtless relics of antiquity : these are observed
according to the Coptic calendar. The commencement of the rise
is commemorated on the night of the nth of Baflna, the 171)1 of
June, called that of the Drop (Lelet-en-Nukta), because a miraculous
drop is then supposed to fall and cause the swelling of the river.
The real rise begins at Cairo about the summer solstice, or a few
day* later, and early in July a crier in each district of the city begins
to go his daily rounds, announcing, in a quaint chant, the increase
of water in the nilometer of the island of Roda. When the river
has risen 20 or 21 ft., he proclaims the Wefa en-Nil, " Completion "
or " Abundance of the Nile." On the following day the dam which
closed the canal of Cairo was cut with much ceremony. The canal
having been filled up in 1897 the ceremony has been much modified,
but a brief description of what used to take place may be given. A
pillar of earth before the dam is called the " Bride of the Nile," and
Arab historians relate that this was substituted, at the Moslem
conquest, for a virgin whom it was the custom annually to sacrifice,
to ensure a plentiful inundation. A large boat, gaily decked out,
representing that in which the victim used to be conveyed, was
anchored near, and a gun on board fired every quarter of an hour
during the night. Rockets and other fireworks were also let off,
but the best, strangely, after daybreak. The governor of Cairo
attended the ceremony, with the cadi and others, and gave the
signal for the cutting of the dam. As soon as sufficient water had
entered, boats ascended the canal to the city. The crier continues
.lily rounds, with his former chant, excepting on the Coptic
New Year's Day, when the cry of the WefS is repeated, until the
Salib, or Discovery of the Cross, the 26th or 27th of September, at
which period, the river having attained its greatest height, he con-
cludes his annual employment with another chant, and presents to
each bouse some limes and other fruit, and dry lumps of Nile mud.
The period of the hot winds, called the khamsin, that is, " the
fifties,' is calculated from the day after the Coptic Easter, and ter-
minates on the day of Pentecost, and the Moslems observe the
Wednesday preceding this period, called " Job's Wednesday," as
well as its first day, when many go into the country from Cairo,
" to smell the air. ' This day is hence called Shem en-Nesim, or
" the smelling of the zephyr." The L'lema observe the same custom
on the first three days of the spring quarter.
Tombs of saints abound, one or more being found in every town
and village; and no traveller up the Nile can fail to remark how
every prominent hill has the sepulchre of its patron saint. The
great saints of Egypt arc the imam Ash-Sh3fi'i, founder of the per-
suasipn called after him, the sayvid Ahmad al-Baidawi, and the
sayyid Ibrahim Ed-Desuki, both of whom were founders of orders of
dervishe*. Al-Baidawi, who lived in the lh century A.D., is buried
at the town of Jama, in the Delta, and his tomb attracts many
-"s of visitors at each of the three festivals held yearly in his
Ed-Desuki is also much revereti, and his festivals draw
T, in like manner, great crowds to his birthplace, the town
ik. But, besides the graves of her native saints, Egypt boasts
those of several members of the Prophet's family, the tomb of
the sayyida Zeyneb, daughter of 'AH, that of the sayyida Sekeina,
daughter of Hosain, and that of the sayyida Nefisa, great-grand-
daughter of Hasan, all of which are held in high veneration. The
Dque of the Hasanen (or that of the " two Hasans ") is the
most reverenced shrine in the country, and is believed to contain
the bead of Hosain. Many orders of Dervishes live in Egypt, the
following being the most celebrated: (i) the Rifa'ia. and their
sects the 'llwinia and Saadia; (2) the Qadiria (Kahiria), or howling
dervishes; (t) the Ahmedia, or followers of the sayyid Abmad al-
Baidawi. and their sects the BeyQmia (known by their long hair),
>hinnawta. Snarawia and many others; and (4) the Baramia, or
followers of the sayvid Ibrahim Ed-Desuki. These are all presided
oyej by a direct descendant of the caliph Abu Bekr, called the
etkh EI-Bekn. The Saadia are famous for charming and eating
e serpents, Ac., and the 'Ilwania for eating fire, glass. &c. The
Efyptiant firmly believe in the efficacy of charms, a belief associated
IX. 3
with that in an omnipresent and over-ruling providence. Thus the
doors of houses are inscribed with sentences from the Koran, or the
like, to preserve from the evil eye, or avert the dangers of an unlucky
threshold; similar inscriptions may be observed over most shops,
while almost every one carries some charm about his person. The
so-called sciences of magic, astrology and alchemy still flourish.
AUTHORITIES. The standard authority for the Moslem Egyptians
is E. W. Lane's Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, first
published in 1836. The best edition is that of 1860, edited, with
additions, by E. S. Poole. See also B. Saint-John, Village Life in
Ktyfl (2 vols., 1852); S. Lane Poole, Social Life in Egypt (1884);
P. Arminjon, L'Enseignement, la doctrine, etlavie dans les universitts
musulmanes d'Egypte (Paris, 1907). For the language see J. S.
Willmore, The Spoken Arabic of Egypt (2nd ed., London, 1905);
Spin. i Bey, Grammatik des arabischen Vulgardialektes von Agypten,
Contes arabes modernes (Leiden, 1883). For statistical information
consult the reports on the censuses of 1897 a "d 1907, published by
the Ministry of the Interior, Cairo, in 1898 and 1909.
(E.S. P.; S. L.-P.; F. R. C.)
Finance.
The important part which the financial arrangements have
played in the political and social history of Egypt since 'the
accession of Ismail Pasha in 1863 is shown in the section History
of this article. Here it is proposed to trace the steps by which
Egypt, after having been brought to a state of bankruptcy,
passed through a period of great stress, and finally attained
prosperity and a large measure of financial autonomy.
In 1862 the foreign debt of Egypt stood at 3,292,000. With
the accession of Ismail (q.v.) there followed a period of wild
extravagance and reckless borrowing accompanied by the
extortion of every piastre possible from the fellahin. The real
state of affairs was disclosed in the report of Mr Stephen Cave,
a well-known banker, who was sent by the British government
in December 1875 to inquire into the situation. The Cave
report showed that Egypt suffered from " the ignorance, dis-
honesty, waste and extravagance of the East " and from " the
vast expense caused by hasty and inconsiderate endeavours to
adopt the civilization of the West." The debtor and creditor
account of the state from 1864 to 1875 showed receipts amounting
to 148,215,000. Of this sum over 94,000,000 had been obtained
from revenue and nearly 4,000,000 by the sale of the khedive's
shares in the Suez Canal to Great Britain. The rest was credited
to: loans 31,713,000, floating debt 18,243,000. The cash
which reached the Egyptian treasury from the loans and floating
debt was far less than the nominal amount of such loans, none
of which cost the Egyptian government less than 12% per
annum. When the expenditure during the same period was
examined the extraordinary fact was disclosed that the sum
raised by revenue was only three millions less than that spent
on' administration, tribute and public works, including a sum
f f. lo iS,ooo, described as " expenses of questionable utility
or policy." The whole proceeds .of the loans and floating debt
had been absorbed in payment of interest and sinking funds,
with the exception of 16,000,000 debited to the Suez Canal.
In other words, Egypt was burdened with a debt of 91,000,000
funded or floating for which she had no return, for even from
the Suez Canal she derived no revenue, owing to the sale of the
khedive's shares.
Soon after Mr Cave's report appeared (March 1876), default
took place on several of the loans. Nearly the whole of the debt,
it should be stated, was held in England or France, and at the
instance of French financiers the stoppage of payment was
followed by a scheme to unify the debt. This scheme included
the distribution of a bonus of 25% to holders of treasury bonds.
These bonds had then reached a sum exceeding 20,000,000
and were held chiefly by French firms. The unification scheme
was elaborated in a khedivial decree of the 7th of May 1876,
but was rendered abortive by the opposition of the British
bondholders. Its place was taken by another scheme drawn
up by Mr (afterwards Lord) Goschen and M. Joubert, who
represented the British and French bondholders respectively.
The details of this settlement, promulgated by decree of the tyth
of November 1876, need not be given, as it was superseded in
1880. One of the securities devised for the benefit of the bond-
holders in the abortive scheme of May 1876 was retained in the
34
EGYPT
[MODERN: FINANCE
Goschen-Joubert settlement, and being continued in later settle-
ments grew to be one of the most important institutions in
Egypt. This security was the establishment of a Treasury
of the Public Debt, known by its French title of Caisse de la
Dette, and commonly spoken of simply as " the Caisse." The
duty of this body was to act as receivers of the revenues assigned
to the service of the debt. To render their powers effective
they were given the right to sue the Egyptian government in
the Mixed Tribunals for any breach of engagement to the
bondholders.
The Goschen-Joubert settlement was accompanied by guar-
antees against maladministration by the appointment of an
Englishman and a Frenchman to superintend the
Lj'wfdi? /revenue and expenditure the "Dual Control";
Ooa. ' while a commission was appointed in 1878 to investi-
gate the condition of the country. The settlement
of 1880 was effected on the basis of the proposals made by this
commission, and was embodied in the Law of Liquidation of
July 1880 after the deposition of Ismail. For the purposes
of the new settlement the loans raised by Ismail on his private
estates, those known as the Daira (i.e. " administrations ") and
Domains loans, were brought into account. By the Law of
Liquidation the floating debt was paid off, the whole debt being
consolidated into four large loans, upon which the rate of interest
was reduced to a figure which it was considered Egypt was able
to bear. The Egyptian debt under this composition was:
Privileged debt .
Unified debt
Daira Sanieh loan
Domains loan
22,609,000
58,018,000
9,513,000
8,500,000
98,640,000
The rate of interest was, on the Privileged debt and Domains
loan, 5%; on the Unified debt and Daira loan, 4%. Under
this settlement the total annual charges on the country amounted
to 4,500,000, about half the then revenue of Egypt. These
charges included the services of the Privileged and Unified
debts, the tribute to Turkey and the interest on the Suez Canal
shares held by Great Britain, but excluded the interest on the
Daira and Domains loans, expected to be defrayed by the
revenues from the estates on which those loans were secured.
The general revenue of Egypt was divided between the bond-
holders and the government, any surplus on the bondholders'
share being devoted to the redemption of the capital.
The 1880 settlement proved little more lasting than that of
1876. After a brief period of prosperity, the Arabi rising, the
riots at Alexandria, and the events generally which led to the
British occupation of Egypt in 1882, followed by the losses
incurred in the Sudan in the fffort to prevent it falling into the
hands of the Mahdi, brought Egypt once more to the verge of
financial disaster. The situation was an anomalous one. While
the revenue assigned to the service of the debt was more than
sufficient for the payment of interest and the sinking fund was
in full operation, the government found that their share of the
revenue was altogether inadequate for the expenses of administra-
tion, and they were compelled to borrow on short loans at high
rate of interest. Moreover, to make good the losses incurred at
Alexandria, and to get money to pay the charges arising out of
the Sudan War and the Arabi rebellion, a new loan was essential.
On the initiative of Great Britain a conference between the
representatives of the great powers and Turkey was held in
London, and resulted in the signing of a convention in March
1885. The terms agreed upon in this instrument, known as
the London Convention, were embodied in a khedivial decree,
which, with some modification in detail, remained for twenty
years the organic law under which the finances of Egypt were
administered.
The principle of dividing the revenue of the country between
the Caisse, as representing the bondholders, and the government
was maintained by the London Convention. The revenue
assigned to the service of the debt, namely, that derived from
the railway, telegraphs, port of Alexandria, customs (including
tobacco) and from four of the provinces, remained as befere.
It was recognized, however, that the non-assigned revenue was
insufficient to meet the necessary expenses of govern- p rov i sloat
ment, and a scale of administrative expenditure was ottbe
drawn up. This was originally fixed at .5,237,000,* London
but subsequently other items were allowed, and ^^ ven "
in 1904, the last year in which the system described
existed, it was .6,300,600. The Caisse was authorized,
after payment of the coupons on the debt, to make good
out of their balance in hand the difference between the
authorized expenditure and the non-assigned revenue. If a
surplus remained to the Caisse after making good such deficit
the surplus was to be divided equally between the Caisse and the
government; the government to be free to spend its share as
it pleased, while the Caisse had to devote its share to the reduc-
tion of the debt. This limitation of administrative expenditure
was the cardinal feature and the leading defect of the convention.
Those responsible for this arrangement the most favourable
for Egypt that Great Britain could secure failed to recognize
the complete change likely to result from the British occupation
of Egypt, and probably regarded that occupation as temporary.
The system devised might have been justifiable as a check on a
retrograde government, but was wholly inapplicable to a reform-
ing government and a serious obstacle to the attainment of
national prosperity. In practice administrative expenditure
always exceeded the amount fixed by the convention. Any
excess could, however, only be met out of the half-share of the
eventual surplus reached in the manner described. Consequently,
in order to meet new expenditure necessitated by the growing
wants of a country in process of development, just double the
amount of revenue had to be raised.
To return to the provisions of the London Convention. The
convention left the permanent rate of interest on the debt,
as fixed by the Law of Liquidation, unchanged, but to afford
temporary relief to the Egyptian exchequer a reduction of 5%
on the interest of the debt was granted for two years, on condition
that if at the end of that period payment, including the arrears
of the two years, was not resumed in full, another international
commission was to be appointed to examine into the whole
financial situation. Lastly, the convention empowered Egypt
to raise a loan of nine millions, guaranteed by all the powers,
at a rate of interest of 3 %. For the service of this loan known
as the Guaranteed loan an annuity of 315,000 was provided
in the Egyptian budget for interest and sinking fund. The
9,000,000 was sufficient to pay the Alexandria indemnities, to
wipe out the deficits of the preceding years, to give the Egyptian
treasury a working balance of .500,000 and thereby avoid
the creation of a fresh floating debt, and to provide a million
for new irrigation works. To the wise foresight which, at a
moment when the country was sinking beneath a weight of debt,
did not hesitate to add this million for expenditure on productive
works, the present prosperity of Egypt is largely due.
The provisions of the London Convention did not exhaust the
restrictions placed upon the Egyptian government in respect
of financial autonomy. These restrictions were of two categories,
(i) those independent of the London Convention, (2) those
dependent upon that instrument. In the first category came
(a) the prohibition to raise a loan without the consent of the
Porte. The right to raise loans had been granted to the khedive
Ismail in 1873, but was taken away in 1879 by the firman appoint-
ing Tewfik khedive. (b) Next came the inability to levy taxes
on foreigners without the consent of their respective governments.
This last obligation was, in virtue of the Capitulations, applicable
to Egypt as part of the Ottoman empire. The only exception,
resulting from the Ottoman law under which foreigners are
allowed to acquire and hold real property, is the land tax. (All
taxes formerly paid by natives and not by foreigners have been
abolished in Egypt, but the immunity described constitutes a
most serious obstacle to the redistribution of the burden of
taxation in a more equitable manner.)
'The figures of the debt are always given in sterling. The
budget figures are in E. (pounds Egyptian), equal to i, os. 6d.
MODERN: FINANCE)
EGYPT
35
From the purely Egyptian point of view the most powerful
restriction in this first category remains to be named. In 1883
the supervision exercised over the finances by French and
British controllers was replaced by that of a British official
called the financial adviser. The British government has
declared that " no financial decision shall be taken without his
consent," a declaration never questioned by the Egyptian
government. This restriction, therefore, is at the same time
the chief safeguard for the purity of Egypt's finances.
In the second category of restrictions, namely, those dependent
on the London Convention, were the various commissions or
boards known as Mixed Administrations and having relations of a
quasi -independent character with the ministry of finance. Of
these boards by far the most important was the Caisse. As first
constituted it consisted of a French, an Austrian, and an Italian
member; a British member was added in 1877 and a German and
a Russian member in 1885. The revenue assigned to the debt
charges was paid direct to the Caisse without passing through the
ministry of finance. The assent of the Caisse (as well as that of
the sultan) was necessary before any new loan could be issued, and
in the course of a few years from its creation this body acquired
very extensive powers. Besides the Caisse there was the Railway
Board, which administered the railways, telegraphs and port of
Alexandria for the benefit of the bondholders, and the Dalra and
Domains commissions, which administered the estates mortgaged
to the holders of those loans. Each of the three boards lust named
consisted of an Englishman, a Frenchman and an Egyptian.
During the two years that followed the signing of the London
Convention, the financial policy of the Egyptian government was
n ran directed to placing the country in a position to resume
prtu* full payment of the interest on the debt in 1887, and
** thereby to avoid the appointment of an international
"**> commission. By the exercise of the most rigid economy
in all branches this end was attained, though budgetary equi-
librium was only secured by a variety of financial expedients,
justified by the vital importance of saving Egypt from further
international interference. By such means this additional
complication was averted, but the struggle to put Egypt in a
genuinely solvent position was by no means over. It was not
until his report on the financial results of 1888 that Sir Evelyn
Baring (afterwards Lord Cromer) was able to inform the British
government that the situation was such that " it would take a
cries of untoward events seriously to endanger the stability of
Egyptian finance and the solvency of the Egyptian government."
From this moment the corner was turned, and the era of financial
prosperity commenced. The results of the labours of the preced-
ing six years Jxgan to manifest themselves with a rapidity which
surprised the most sanguine observers. The principal feature of
the successive Egyptian budgets of 1890-1894 was the fiscal
relief afforded to the population. From 1894 onward more
attention was paid than bad hitherto been possible to the
legitimate demands of the spending departments and to the
prosecution of public works. Of these the most notable was the
construction (1898-1902) of the Assuan dam, which by bringing
Bore land under cultivation permanently increased the resources
of the country and widened the area of taxation.
With the accumulating proofs of the financial stability of the
country various changes were made in connexion with the debt
Jt<jjjrw charges. With the consent of the powers a General
, BB(/ , Reserve Fund was created by decree of the 1 2th of July
1888, into which was paid the Caisse's half-share in the
eventual surplus of revenue. This fund, primarily intended as a
ecnrity for the bondholders, might be drawn upon for extra-
ordinary expenditure with the consent of the commissioners of
the Caisse. Large sums were so advanced for the purposes of
drainage and irrigation and other public works, and in relief
of taxation. The defect of this arrangement consisted in the
necessity of obtaining the consent of the commissioners a con-
tent sometimes withheld on purely political grounds. At the
tame time it is believed that but for the faculty given by the
decree of 1888 tospend the General Reserve Fund on public works,
the financial system elaborated by the London Convention would
have broken down altogether. Between 1888 and 1904 about
10,000,000 was devoted from this fund to public works.
In June 1890 the assent of the powers was obtained to thf
conversion of the Preference (Privileged), Domains and Dalrs
loans on the following conditions, imposed at the initiative of the
French government:
i. The employment of the economies resulting from the conver-
sion was to be the subject of future agreement with the powers.
a. The Dalra loan was 10 be reimbursed at 85 %, instead of 80 %,
as provided by the Law of Liquid. it ion.
3. The sales of Domains and Da'ira lands were to be restricted to
E. 300,000 a year each, thus prolonging the period of liquidation
of those estates.
The interest on the Preference stock was reduced from 5 to
3 J %, and on the Domains from 5 to 4 J %. As regards the Dalra
loan, there was no apparent reduction in the rate. of interest,
which remained at 4%, but the bondholders received 85 of the
new stock for every 100 of the old. The capital of the debt was
increased by 1,943,000 by these conversions, while the annual
economy to the Egyptian government amounted at the time of
the conversion to .348,000. Further, an engagement was
entered into that there should be no reimbursement of the loans
till 1905 for the Preference and Dalra, and 1908 for the Domains.
By an arrangement concluded in June 1 898, between the Egyptian
government and a syndicate, the unsold balance of the Daira
estates was taken over by the syndicate in October 1905, for the
amount of the debt remaining, when the Daira loan ceased to
exist. The fund formed by the accumulation of the economies re-
sulting from the conversion of the Privileged, Dalra and Domains
loan was known as the Conversion Economies Fund. The fund
could not be used for any purpose without the consent of the
powers, and the money paid into it was invested by the Caisse in
Egyptian stock. The fund therefore acted as a very expensive
sinking fund, the market price of the stock purchased being above
par. Up to 1904 the consent of the powers to the employment of
this fund for any purpose of public utility was withheld. On the
3 1 st of December of that year the fund amounted to .6,03 1 ,000.
It may be added that besides the General Reserve Fund and the
Conversion Economies Fund, there existed another fund called
the Special Reserve Fund. This was constituted in 1886 and was
chiefly made up of the net savings of the Egyptian government on
its share of the annual surpluses from revenue. Of the three
funds this last-named was the only one at the absolute disposal
of the government. The whole of the extraordinary expenditure
of the Sudan campaigns of 1896-1898, with the exception of
800,000 granted by the British government, was paid out of this
fund a sum amounting in round figures to 1,500,000.
Notwithstanding all the hampering conditions stated, the
prosperity of the country became more manifest each succeeding
year. During the four years 1883-1886, both inclusive,
the aggregate deficit amounted to .2,606,000. In
1887 there was practical equilibrium in the budget, in
1888 there was a deficit of .53,000. In 1889 there was a surplus
of E. 2 1 8,000, and from that date onward every year has shown
a surplus. In 1895 the surplus exceeded, for the first time,
.1,000,000. The growth of revenue was no less marked. " In
1883 the first complete year after the British occupation the
revenue was slightly under 9 millions. This sum was collected
with difficulty. The revenue steadily rose until, in 1890, the
figure of 10 millions was exceeded. In 1897 a figure of over n
millions was attained. Continuing to rise with ever-increasing
rapidity, a revenue of close on 12 millions was collected in 1901
and 1902, in spite of the fact that during the latter of these two
years the Nile flood was one of the lowest on record. In 1903 the
revenue amounted to 1 2$ millions, and in 1904 the unprecedented
figure of .13,906,000 was reached." 1 Yet during this period
the amount of direct taxation remitted reached .1,900,000 a
year. Arrears of land tax to the extent of .1,245,000 were
cancelled. In indirect taxation the salt tax had been reduced by
40%, the postal, railway and telegraph rates lowered, octroi
duties and bridge and lock dues abolished. The only increase of
taxation had been on tobacco, on which the duty was raised from
1 Egypt, No. i (1905), p. 20.
EGYPT
[MODERN: FINANCE
P.T. 14 to P.T. 20 per kilogramme. At the same time the house
duty, with the consent of the powers, had been imposed on
European residents. The fact that during the period under
review Egypt suffered very severely from the general fall in the
price of commodities makes the prosperity of the country the more
remarkable. Had it not been for the great increase of production
as the result of improved irrigation and the fiscal relief afforded to
landowners, the agricultural depression would have impaired the
financial situation. In this connexion it should be stated that
during 1899 the reassessment of the land tax, a much-needed
reform, was seriously taken in hand. The existing assessment,
made before the British occupation, had long been condemned
by all competent authorities, but the inherent intricacies and
difficulties of the problem had hitherto postponed a solution.
After careful study and a preliminary examination of the land, a
scheme was passed which has given satisfaction to the landowning
community, and which distributes the tax equitably in proportion
to the fertility of the soil. The reassessment wascompletedin 1907.
While the country thus prospered it also suffered greatly from
the restrictions imposed by the system of international control.
The cost This system produced a great disproportion between
of inter- the sums available for capital and those available for
national- administrative expenditure. Although the money for
'*"*' public works could be obtained out of grants from
the General Reserve Fund, there was no fund from which to
provide a sufficient sum to keep those works in order. Moreover,
to avoid having to pay half the amount received into the General
Reserve Fund the government was compelled to keep certain
items of revenue and expenditure out of the accounts altogether
a violation of the principles of sound finance. Then there was
the glaring anomaly of allowing the Conversion Economies to
accumulate at compound interest in the hands of the commis-
sioners of the Caisse, instead of using the money for remunerative
purposes. The net result of internationalism was to impose an
extra charge of about i ,750,000 a year on the Egyptian treasury.
All these cumbersome restrictions were swept away by the
khedivial decree of the 28th of November 1904, a decree which
p t received the assent of the powers and was the result
gains of the Anglo-French agreement of April 1904 (see
financial History). The decree did not affect the inability
la>ert y- of Egypt to tax foreigners without their consent nor
remove the right of Turkey to veto the issue of new loans, but
in other respects the financial changes made by it were of a
radical character. The main effect was to give to the Egyptian
government a free hand in the disposal of its own resources so
long as the punctual payment of interest on the debt was assured.
The plan devised by the London Convention of fixing a limit
to administrative expenditure was abolished. The consent of
the Caisse to the raising of a new loan was no longer required.
The Caisse itself remained, but shorn of all political and adminis-
trative powers, its functions being strictly limited to receiving
the assigned revenues and to ensuring the due payment of the
coupon. The nature of the assigned revenue was altered, the land
tax being substituted for those previously assigned, that tax
being chosen as it had a greater character of stability than
any other source of revenue. By this means Egypt gained com-
plete control of its railways, telegraphs, the port of Alexandria
and the customs, and as a consequence the mixed administration
known as the Railway Board ceased to exist. Moreover, it was
provided that when the Caisse had received from the land tax
the amount needed for the service of the debt, the balance of the
tax was to be paid direct to the Egyptian treasury. The Con-
version Economies Fund was also placed at the free disposal
of the Egyptian government. The General Reserve Fund
ceased to exist, but for the better security of the bondholders
a reserve fund of 1,800,000 was constituted and left in the
hands of the Caisse to be used in the highly improbable event
of the land tax being insufficient to meet the debt charges.
Moreover, the Caisse started under the new arrangement with a
cash balance of 1,250,000. The interest of the money lying
in the hands of the Caisse goes towards meeting the debt charges
and thus reduces the amount needed from the land tax. The
bondholders gained a further material advantage by the consent
of the Egyptian government to delay the conversion of the
loans, which under previous arrangements they would have been
free to do in 1905. It was agreed that there should be no con-
version of the Guaranteed or Privileged debts before 1910 and
no conversion of the Unified debt until 1912. Such were the
chief provisions of the khedivial decree, and in 1905, for the first
time, it was possible to draw up the Egyptian budget in accord-
ance with the needs of the country and on perfectly sound
principles.
In the system adopted in 1905 and since maintained, recurring and
non-recurring expenditure were shown separately, the non-recurring
expenditure being termed " special." At the same time a new
General Reserve Fund was created, made up chiefly of the surpluses
of the old -General Reserve, Special Reserve, and Conversion
Economies funds. This new fund started with a capital of
i3,37 6 ,ooo and was replenished by the surpluses of subsequent
years, by the interest earned by its temporary investment, and by
the sums accruing by the liquidation of the Dai'ra and Domains loans.
During 1905 and 10,06 about 3,000,000 was paid into the fund
through the liquidation of the Dai'ra loan. From this fund, which
had a balance of over 12,000,000 in 1906, is taken capital expendi-
ture on remunerative public works in Egypt and the Sudan, and
while the fund lasts the necessity for any new loan is avoided. The
greater freedom of action attained as the result of the Anglo-French
declaration of 1904 enabled the Egyptian government to advance
simultaneously along the lines of fiscal reform and increased ad-
ministrative expenditure. Thus in 1906 the salt monopoly was
abolished at a cost to the revenue of 175,000, while the reduction
of import duties on coal and other fuels, live-stock, &c., involved
a further loss of 118,000, and an increase of over 1,000,000 in
expenditure was budgeted for. The accounts for 1907 showed
a total revenue of .16,368,000 and a total expenditure of
.14,280,000, a surplus of E.2,o88,ooo. The annual growth of
revenue for the previous five years averaged over .500,000.
About one-third of the annual revenue is derived from the land tax ;
customs and tobacco duties yield about 3,000,000, and an equal or
larger amount is received from railways and other revenue-earning
departments. The chief items of ordinary expenditure are tribute
and debt charges, the expenses of the civil administration, of the
Egyptian army (between 500,000 and 600,000 yearly), of the
revenue-earning departments and of pensions.
It will be convenient here to summarize the position of the
Egyptian debt at the close of 1905, that is at the period immediately
following the liquidation of the Dai'ra loan. In a previous table it
has been shown that under the Law of Liquidation of 1880 the total
debt was 98,640,000. In 1883, the first complete year after the
British occupation, the capital of the debt then exclusively held
by the public was 96,457,000. In 1885 the Guaranteed loan, the
nominal capital of which was 9,424,000, was issued, and in 1891
the debt reached its maximum figure of 106,802,000. At that
period the charge for interest and sinking fund was 4,127,000. On
the 3 1st of December 1905 the total capital of the debt was as.
follows :
Guaranteed 3% 7,849,000
Preference 3}% 31,128,000
Unified 4% 55,972,000
Domains 4J%
1,535.000
Total - . 96,484,000
The charge on account of interest and sinking fund was 3,709,000.
Thus the capital of the debt in 1905 stood at almost the exact figure
it did in 1883, although by borrowing and conversion operations
nearly 17,000,000 had in the meantime been added to the capital.
This reduction was brought about by surplus revenue, and by the
operation of the sinking fund in the case of the Guaranteed loan,
while 15,729,000 had been wiped out by the sale of Dai'ra and
Domains property. These figures do not, however, indicate fully the
prosperity of the country, for although the nominal amount of
the capital was practically identical in 1883 and 1905, in the latter
year the Egyptian government or the Caisse held stock (bought
with surplus revenue) to the value of 8,770,000. The amount of
debt in the hands of the public was therefore only 87,714,000, that
is to say 8,743,000 less than in 1883, while the interest charge to be
borne by the taxpayer of Egypt was 3,378,000, being 890,000
less than in 1 883. The charge amounts to about 40 % of the national
expenditure. On the other hand, Egypt is not now weighed down
with a huge warlike expenditure. There is no navy to support,
and the army costs but 7 % of the total expenditure.
AUTHORITIES. A concise view of the financial situation in 1877
will be found in J. C. McCoan's Egypt as it is (London n.d.). Mr
Cave's report is printed in an appendix. The subsequent history
of Egyptian finance is told in the following blue-books, &c. :
Correspondence respecting the State Domains of Egypt (1883); State-
ment of the Revenue and Expenditure of Egypt, together with a List
of the Egyptian Bonds and the Charges for their Services (1885);
MODERN: ARMY]
EGYPT
37
Rrporti on On Finantts of Eryft. by the British agent, yearly from
1888: Comntien . . . rtlatmt to Uu Finance of Ktyft. titned at
London, Uarck 18. 1885 ; Kktdmai decree of Ike tStn November 1904 ;
Comfit gMrol it I" administration det finances, issued yearly at Cairo.
Consult also the works of Lord Cromer, Lord Milner, and Sir A.
Cols in cited under { History, last section. (E. Go. ; F. R. C.)
Tke Egyptian Army.
The fellah soldier has been aptly likened to a bicycle, which
Although incapable of standing up alone, is very useful while
under the control of a skilful master. It is generally
believed that the successes gained in the time of the
Pharaohs were due to foreign legions; and from
Cambyses to Alexander, from the Ptolemies to Antony (Cleo-
patra). from Augustus to the ;th century, throughout the
Arab period, and from Saladin's dynasty down to the middle of
the I3th century, the military power of Egypt was dependent
on mercenaries. The Mamelukes (slaves), imported from the
eastern borders of the Black Sea and then trained as soldiers,
usurped the government of Egypt, and held it till 1517, when
the Ottomans began to rule. This form of government, speaking
generally, endured till the French invasion at the end of the iSth
century. British and Turkish troops drove the French out after
an occupation of two years, the British troops remaining till 1803.
Then Mehemet Ali. a small tobacconist of Kavala, Macedonia,
coming with Albanian mercenaries, made himself governor, and
later (1811), by massacring the Mamelukes, became the actual
master of the country, and after seven years' war brought Arabia
under Egypt's rule. He subdued Nubia and Sennar in 1820-22;
and then, requiring a larger army, he obtained instructors from
France. To them were handed over 1000 Turks and Circassians
to be trained as officers, who later took command of 30,000
Sudanese. These died so rapidly in Egypt from pneumonia 1
that Mehemet Ali conscripted over 250,000 fellahin, and in so
arbitrary a fashion that many peasants mutilated themselves
to avoid the much-dreaded service. The common practice
was to place a small piece of nitrate of silver into the eye, which
was then kept tightly bandaged till the sight was destroyed.
Battalions were then formed of one-eyed men, and of soldiers
who, having cut off their right-hand fingers, were made to shoot
from the left shoulder. Every man who could not purchase
exemption, with the exception of those living in Cairo, Alexandria
and Suez, on becoming 19 years old was liable nominally to 12
years' service; but many men were kept for 30 or 40 years,
in spite of constant appeals. Nevertheless the experiment
succeeded. The docile, yet robust and hardy peasants, under
their foreign leaders, gained an unbroken series of successes in
the first Syrian War; and after the bloody battle of Konia
(1832), where the raw Turkish army was routed and the grand
vitier taken prisoner, it was only European intervention which
prevented the Egyptian general, Ibrahim Pasha, from marching
unopposed to the Bosphorus. The defeat of the Turkish army
t Nizib (Nezeeb or Nisib), in the second Syrian War (1839),
showed that it was possible to obtain favourable military results
with Egyptians when stiffened by foreigners and well commanded.
Ibrahim, the hero of Konia, declared, however, that no native
Egyptian ought to rise higher than the rank of sergeant; and
in the Syrian campaigns nearly all the officers were Turks or
Circassians, as were several non-commissioned officers. In the
cavalry and artillery many of the privates were foreigners,
numbers of the janissaries who escaped the massacre at Stamboul
(1832) having joined Mehemet All's army.
In the reign of Abbas, who succeeded Mehemet Ali, the
Egyptian troops were driven from Nejd, and the Wahhabi
state recovered its independence. The next viceroy, Said, began
J an ardent soldier, but took to agriculture, and at his death
(1863) 3000 men only were retained under arms. Ismail, on
succeeding, immediately added 27,000 men, and in seven years
was able to put 100,000 men, well equipped, in the field. He
sent 10,000 men to help to suppress a rebellion in Crete, and
1 Similar mortality, though on a smaller scale, recurred in 1889,
when Sudanese battalions coming from Sualcin were detained
temporarily in Cairo.
conquered the greater part of the (Nile) Sudan; but an ev
pcdition of 11,000 men, sent to Abyssinia under Prince Hasan
and Rateb Pasha, well equipped with guns and all essentials,
was, in two successive disasters (1875 and 1876), practically
destroyed. The education of Egyptians in continental cities
had not produced the class of leaders who led the fellahin to
victory at Konia.
Ismail's exactions from the Egyptian peasantry reacted on
the army, causing discontent; and when he was tottering on
the throne he instigated military demonstrations against his
own government, and, by thus sapping the foundations of
discipline, assisted Arabi's revolution; the result was the battle
of Tell el-Kebir, the British occupation, and the disbandmcnt
of the army, which at that time in Egypt proper consisted
of 18,000 men. Ismail had collected 500 field-guns, 200 Arm-
strong cannon, and had created factories of warlike and other
stores. These latter were conducted extravagantly, and badly
administered.
In January 1883, Major-General Sir Evelyn Wood, V.C.,
was given 200,000, and directed to spend it in raising a fellahin
force of 6000 men for the defence of Egypt. He was
assisted at first by 26 officers, amongst whom were /,iitio"~
two who later became successively sirdars Colonel
F. Grenfell, commanding a brigade, and Lieutenant H. Kitchener,
R.E., second in command of the cavalry regiment. There were
four batteries, eight battalions, and a camel company. Each
battalion of the ist infantry brigade had three British mounted
officers, Turks and Egyptians holding the corresponding positions
in the battalions of the 2nd Brigade. The sirdar selected these
native officers from those of Arabi's followers who had been
the least prominent in the recent mutiny; non-commissioned
officers who had been drill-instructors in the old army were
recalled temporarily, but all the privates were conscripted from
their villages. The earlier merciless practice had been in theory
abolished by a decree based on the German system, published
in 1880; but owing to defective organization, and internal
disturbances induced by Khedive Ismail's follies, the law had
not been applied, and the 6000 recruits collected at Cairo in
January 1883 represented the biggest and strongest peasants
who could not purchase exemption by bribing the officials
concerned. The difficulties experienced in applying the 1880
decree were great, but the perseverance of British officers gave
the oppressed peasants, in 1885, an equitable law, which has
been since improved by the decree of rooo. General considera-
tions later caused the sirdar to allow exemption by payment
of (Badalia) 20 before ballot. This tax, which is popular
amongst the peasantry, produced in 1906 .150,000, and over
250,000 in 1908. This is a marked indication of the increasing
prosperity of the fellahin. A portion of the badalia is expended
in the betterment of the soldier's position. He is no longer
drafted into the police on completing his army service, but goes
free at the end of five years with a gift of .20. The sirdar is
allowed, moreover, to use 20,000 per annum of the badalia for
the improvement of the education of the rank and file. . As an
experiment the police is now a voluntary service, except in
Alexandria and Cairo, for which cities peasants are conscripted
for the police under army conditions. The recruiting super-
intending committee, travelling through districts, supervise
every ballot, and work under stringent rules which render
systematic bribery difficult. The recruits who draw unlucky
numbers at 19 years of age are seldom called up till they are
23, when they are summoned by name and escorted by a police-
man to Cairo. To prevent substitution on the journey each
recruit wears a string girdle sealed in lead. The periods of service
are: with the colours, 5 years; in the reserve, 5 years, during
which time they may be called up for police service, manoeuvres,
&c. The pay is .3, 143. per annum for all services, and the
liberal scale of rations of meat, bread and rice remains as before
in theory, but in practice the value of pay and food received is
greatly enhanced. So also with the pension and promotion
regulations. They were in 1882 sufficiently liberal on paper,
but had never been carried into effect.
EGYPT
[MODERN: ARMY
The efforts of 48 American officers, who under Gen. C. P. Stone
zealously served Ismail, had entirely failed to overcome Egyptian
venality and intrigue; and in spite of the military schools, with
a comprehensive syllabus, the only perceptible difference between
the Egyptian officer and private in 1879 consisted, according
to one of the Americans, in the fact that the first was the product
of the harem, and the second of the field. Marshal Marmont,
writing in 1839, mentions the capacity of the Egyptians for
endurance; and it was tested in 1883, especially in the and
Brigade, since its officers (Turks and Egyptians), anxious to
excel as drill-masters, worked their men not only from morn
till eve, but also by lamplight in the corridors of the barracks.
On the 3ist March 1883, ten weeks after the arrival of the first
draft of recruits, about 5600 men went through the ceremonial
parade movements as practised by the British guards in Hyde
Park, with unusual precision. The British officers had acquired
the words of command in Turkish, as used in the old army, an
attempt to substitute Egyptian words having failed owing to
lack of crisp, sharp-sounding words. As the Egyptian brigadier,
who had spent some years in Berlin, spoke German fluently,
and it was also understood by the senior British officers, that
language was used for all commands given by the sirdar on
that special parade. The British drill-book, minus about one-
third of the least serviceable movements, was translated by an
English officer, and by 190x5 every necessary British official
book had been published in English and Arabic, except the new
Recruiting Law (1885) and a manufacturing manual, for which
French and Arabic editions are in use. The discipline of the
old army had been regulated by a translation of part of the Code
Napoleon, which was inadequate for an Eastern army, and the
sirdar replaced it by the British Army Act of 1881, slightly
modified, and printed in Arabic.
The task undertaken by the small body of British officers
was difficult. There was not one point in the former administra-
tion of the army acceptable to English gentlemen. That there
had been no adequate auxiliary departments, without which
an army cannot move or be efficient, was comparatively a minor
difficulty. To succeed, it was essential that the fellah should
be taught that discipline might be strict without being oppressive,
that pay and rations would be fairly distributed, that brutal
usage by superiors would be checked, that complaints would be
thoroughly investigated, and impartial justice meted out to
soldiers of all ranks. An epidemic of cholera in the summer
of 1883 gave the British officers their first chance of acquiring
the esteem and confidence of their men, and the opportunity
was nobly utilized. While the patient fellah, resigned to the
decrees of the Almighty, saw the ruling Egyptian class hurry
away from Cairo, he saw also those of his comrades who were
stricken tenderly nursed, soothed in death's struggles, and in
many cases actually washed, laid out and interred by their new
self-sacrificing and determined masters. The regeneration of
the fellahin army dates from that epidemic.
When the Egyptian Army of the Delta was dispersed at
Tell el-Kebir, the khedive had 40,000 troops in the Sudan,
scattered from Massawa on the Red Sea to 1200 m. towards the
west, and from Wadi Haifa, 1500 m. southward to Wadelai,
near Albert Nyanza. These were composed of Turks, Albanians,
Circassians and some Sudanese. Ten thousand fellahin, collected
in March 1883, mainly from Arabi's former forces, set out from
Duem, loo m. south of Khartum, in September 1883, under
Hicks Pasha, a dauntless retired Indian Army officer, to vanquish
the Mahdi. They disappeared in the deserts of Kordofan,
where they were destroyed by the Mahdists about 50 m. south
of El Obeid. In the wave of successful rebellion, except at
Khartum, few of the Egyptian garrisons were killed when the
posts fell, long residence and local family ties rendering easy
their assimilation in the ranks of the Mahdists.
Baker Pasha, with about 4000 constabulary, who were old
soldiers, attempted to relieve Tokar in February 1884. He was
attacked by 1200 tribesmen and utterly routed, losing 4 Krupp
guns, 2 machine guns and 3000 rifles. Only 1400 Egyptians
escaped the slaughter.
The sirdar made an attempt to raise a battalion of Albanians,
but the few men obtained mutinied when ordered to proceed
to the Sudan, and it was deemed advisable, after the ringleaders
had been executed, to abandon the idea, and rely on blacks to
stiffen the fellahin. Then the 9th (Sudanese) Battalion was
created for service at Suakin, and four others having been
successively added, these (with one exception at Gedaref)
have since borne the brunt of all the fighting which has been
done by the khedivial troops. The Egyptian troops in the
operations near Suakin behaved well; and there were many
instances of personal gallantry by individual soldiers. In the
autumn of 1884, when a British expedition went up the Nile to
endeavour to relieve the heroic Gordon, besieged in Khartum,
the Egyptians did remarkably good work on the line of com-
munication from Assiut to Korti, a distance of 800 m., and the
training and experience thus gained were of great value in all
subsequent operations. The honesty and discipline of the
fellah were shown to be undoubtedly of a high order. When the
crews of the whale-boats were conveying stores, the forwarding
officers tried to keep brandy and such like medical comforts
from the European crews, coffee and tea from Canadian voyageurs
and sugar from Kroo boys. The only immaculate carrier was
the Egyptian. A large sum of specie having failed under British
escort to reach Dongola, an equivalent sum was handed to an
Egyptian lieutenant of six months' service, with 10 men, and
duly reached its destination.
Twelve years later the standard of honesty was unimpaired,
and the British officers had imparted energy and activity into
Egyptians of all ranks. The intelligent professional knowledge
of the native officers, taught under British gentlemen, and the
constant hard work cheerfully rendered by the fellah soldiers,
were the main factors of the success achieved at Omdurman on
the 2nd of September 1898. The large depots of stores at
Assuan, Haifa and Dongola could only be cursorily supervised
by British officers, and yet when the stores were received at the
advance depot the losses were infinitesimal.
By nature the fellah is unwarlike. Born in the valley of a
great river, he resembles in many respects the Bengali, who
exists under similar conditions; but the Egyptian character
has proved capable of greater improvement. He is ofEgyp-
stronger in frame, and can undergo greater exertion. tla "
Singularly unemotional, he stood steady at Tell el- soldler -
Kebir after Arabi Pasha and all his officers, from general to sub-
altern, had fled, and gave way only when decimated by the
British field artillery firing case shot. At El Teb, however, in
1884 he allowed himself to be slaughtered by tribesmen formerly
despised, and only about one-fourth of the force under General
Valentine Baker escaped. Baker Pasha's force was termed
constabulary, yet his men were all old soldiers, though new to
their gallant leader and to the small band of their brave but
strange British officers. Since that fatal day, however, many
of the fellahin have shown they are capable of devoted conduct,
and much has been done to raise in the soldiers a sense of self-
respect, and, in spite of centuries of oppression, of veracity.
The barrack-square drill was smart under the old system, but
there was no fire discipline, and all individuality was crushed.
Now both are encouraged, and the men, receiving their full
rations, are unsurpassable in endurance at work and in marching.
All the troops present in the surprise fight when the Dervish
force was destroyed at Firket in June 1896 had covered long
distances, and one battalion (the loth Sudanese) accomplished
90 m. within 72 hours, including the march back to railhead
immediately after the action. The troops under Colonel Parsons,
Royal Artillery, who beat the Dervishes at Gedaref, were so
short of British officers that all orders were necessarily given in
Arabic and carried to commanders of units by Arabs. While
an Egyptian battalion was attacking in line, it was halted to
repel a rush from the rear, and front and rear ranks were simul-
taneously engaged, firing in opposite directions yet the fellahin
were absolutely steady; they shot well and showed no signs of
trepidation. On the other hand, neither was there any exultation
after their victory. It has been aptly said " the fellah would
ANCIENT1
EGYPT
39
make an admirable soldier if he only wished to kill some one!"
The fellaain furnish three squadrons, five batteries, three garrison
artillery companies and nine battalions.
The well-educated Egyptian officer, with his natural aptitude
for figures, does subordinate regimental routine carefully, and
works well when supervised by men of stronger character. The
ordinary Egyptian is not self-reliant or energetic by nature, and,
like most Eastern people, finds it difficult to be impartial where
duty and family or other personal relations are in the balance.
The black soldier has, on the other hand, many of the finest
fighting qualities. This was observed by British officers, from
the time of the preliminary operations about Kosha and at the
action near Ginnis in December 1885 down to the brilliant
operations in the pursuit of the Mahdists on the Blue Nile after
the action of Gedaref (subsequent to the battle of Omdurman),
and the fighting in Kordofan in 1809, which resulted in the death
of the khalifa and his amirs.
Black soldiers served in the army of Mehemet All, but their
fighting value was not then duly appreciated. Prior to the death
of the khalifa, many of his soldiers deserted to join their brethren
who had been captured by the sirdar's troops, during the gradual
advance up the Nile. After 1809 many more enlisted: the
greater number were Shilluks and Dinkas coming from the
country between Fashoda and the equatorial provinces, but a
proportion came from the western borders of the Sudan, and some
from Wadai and Bornu. Many were absolute savages, difficult
to control, wayward and thoughtless like children. Sudanese
are very excitable and apt to get out of hand; unlike the fellahs
they are not fond of drill, and are slow to acquire it; but their
dash, pugnacious instincts and desire to dose with an enemy,
are valuable military qualities. The Sudanese, moreover, shoot
better than the fellahin, whose eyesight is often defective. The
Sudanese captain can seldom read or write, and is therefore
in the hands of the Egyptian-born company quartermaster-
sergeant as regards pay and clothing accounts. He is slow, and
as a rule has little knowledge of drill. Nevertheless he is self-
reliant, much respected by his men, and can be trusted in the
field to carry out any orders received from his British officer.
The most efficient companies in the Sudanese battalions are
apparently those in which the captain is a black and the lieu-
tenants are Egyptians.
In 1908 the Egyptian army, with a. total establishment of 18,000,
consisted of three squadrons of cavalry (one composed of Sudanese)
each numbering 116 men; four batteries of field artillery and a
Maxim battery, horses and mules being used, with a total strength of
1257 of all ranks; the camel corps, 626 of all ranks (fellahin and
Sudanese); and nine fellahin and six Sudanese infantry battalions,
10,631 <>f all ranks. Every battalion receives two additional com-
panies oa mobilization and takes the field with six companies.
The armament of the infantry is Martini-Henry rifle and bayonet ;
of the cavalry, lance, sword and carbine.
There are seven gunboats on the Nile.
The medical department (reorganized in 1883 by Surgeon-Major
J. G Rogers at the time of the cholera epidemic) controls in peace
fourteen station hospitals, and in war furnishes a mobile field hos-
pital to each brigade. There are also veterinary station hospitals.
The supply department controls mills at Tura, Haifa and Khartum.
The stringent system of selecting British officers, originated by the
first sirdar in 1883. is shown by the fact that of the 24 employed in
creating the army, 14 roee to be generals. The competition for
employment in the army is still severe. In 1908 there were 140
British warrant and non-commissioned officers. Four of the fellahin
taioM were officered by Orientals; in the other five, British
oncers commanded. Seven officers were employed with the artillery,
ix with the camel corps. Each of the Sudanese battalions had four
** "fioers, and each squadron of cavalry one. Twelve medical
twoveteriiiary officers are also employed departmentally, as
* officers acting as directors of supply, &c. Since the assump-
M romnnod by the third sirdar. Colonel (afterwards Lord)
:chener, the ordnance, supply and engineer services have been
separately administered, and a financial secretary is charged with
the duty of preparing the budget, making contracts, &c. The total
annual expenditure (500,000.
The reorganized military school system under British control, for
supplying officers, dates from 1887. The course lasts for about two
. and two hundred students can be accommodated. After the
9 ll ?t of the Sudan one-fourth of the cadets in the military
l of Cairo were Sudanese. Later, however, the Sudanese cadets
were transferred to a branch school at Khartum.
The army raised by the first sirdar in January 1883 was highly
commended for its work on the line of communication in 1884-1 NK.s,
.in.l its artillery and camelry distinguished themselves in tin- action
at KirlK-kan in February 1885. Colonel Sir Francis Grenfcll suc-
ceeded General Sir Evelyn Wood in March 1885, and while under
his command the army continued to improve, and fought successful
actions at Gemaiza, Argin, Toski and Tokar. At Toski the Dervish
force was nearly annihilated. In March 1892 Colonel Kitchener
succeeded General Sir Francis Grenfell, and four years later began his
successful reconqucst of the Sudan. In June 1896, owing to the
indefatigable exertions of Major Wingate, a perfected system of
secret intelligence enabled the sirdar to bring an overwhelming
force of 6 to I against the Dervish outpost at Firket and destroy it.
In September 1896 a skirmish at Hafir, with similarly successful
tactics, gave the British commander the possession of Dongola.
On the 7th of August 1897 Colonel Hunter surprised and annihilated
a weak Dervish garrison at Abu Hamed, to which place, by the 3ist
of October 1897, a railway had been laid across tne Nubian desert
from Wadi Haifa, a distance of 230 m., the " record " construction
of 5300 yds surveyed, embanked and laid in one day having been
attained. On the 26th of December 1897 the Italian troops handed
over Kassala to Colonel Parsons, R.A. On the 8th of April 1898
a British division, with the Egyptian army, destroyed the Dervish
force under the amir Mahmud Ahmed, on the Atbara river. On the
2nd of September the khalifa attacked the British-Egyptian troops
at Kerren (near Omdurman), and being routed, his men dispersed;
Khartum was occupied, and on the igth of September the Egyptian
flag was rehoisted at Fashoda. On the 22nd of September 1898
Gedaref was taken from the amir Ahmed Fedil by Colonel Parsons,
and on the 26th of December the army of Ahmed Fedil was finally
defeated and dispersed near Roseires. The khalifa's army, reduced
to an insignificant number, after several unsuccessful engagements
withdrew to the west of the Nile, where it was attacked, on the 24th
of November 1899, after a forced march by Colonel Wingate, and
annihilated. The khalifa himself was killed ; while the victor, who
had joined the Egyptian army in 1883 as aide-de-camp to the first
sirdar, in December 1899 became the fourth sirdar, as Major-General
Sir F. R. Wingate, K.C.B., K.C.M.G.. D.S.O.. &c. (E. Wo.)
II. ANCIENT EGYPT
A. Exploration and Research. Owing to its early develop-
ment of a high civilization with written records, its wealth,
and its preservative climate, Egypt is the country which most
amply repays archaeological research. It is especially those
long ages during which Egypt was an independent centre of
culture and government, before its absorption in the Persian
empire in the 6th century B.C., that make the most powerful
appeal to the imagination and can often justify this appeal by
the splendour of the monuments representing them. Later,
however, the history of Hellenism, the provincial history of the
Roman empire, the rise of Christianity and the triumph of Islam
successively receive brilliant illustration in Egypt.
As early as the i7th century travellers began to bring home
specimens of ancient Egyptian handiwork: a valuable stele'
from Sakkara of the beginning of the Old Kingdom was presented
to the Ashmolcan Museum at Oxford in 1683. In the following
century the Englishman R. Pococke (1704-1765), the Dane
F. L. Norden (1708-1742), both travelling in 1737, and others
later, planned, described or figured Egyptian ruins in a primitive
way and identified many of the sites with cities named in classical
authors. Napoleon's great military expedition in 1798 was
accompanied by a scientific commission including artists and
archaeologists, the results of whose labours fill several of the
magnificent volumes of the Description de I'Egypte. The
antiquities collected by the expedition, including the famous
Rosctta stone, were ceded to the British government at the
capitulation of Alexandria, in 1801. Thereafter Mehemet Ali
threw Egypt freely open to Europeans, and a busy traffic in
antiquities began, chiefly through the agency of the consuls of
different powers. From the year 1820 onwards the growth of
the European collections was rapid, and Champollion's decipher-
ments (see below, " Language and Writing ") of the hiero-
glyphic inscriptions, dating from 1821, added fresh impetus to
the fashion of collecting, in spite of doubts as to their trust-
worthiness. In 1827 a combined expedition led by Champollion
and Roscllini was despatched by the governments of France
and Tuscany, and accomplished a great deal of valuable work
in copying scenes and inscriptions. But the greatest of such
expeditions was that of Lepsius, under the auspices of the
EGYPT
[ANTIQUITIES
Prussian government, in 1842-1845. Its labours embraced not
only Egypt and Nubia (as far as Khartum) but also the Egyptian
monuments in Sinai and Syria; its immense harvest of material
is of the highest value, the new device of taking paper impres-
sions or " squeezes " giving Lepsius a great advantage over his
predecessors, similar to that which was later conferred by the
photographic camera.
A new period was opened in Egyptian exploration in 1858
when Mariette was appointed director of archaeological works
in Egypt, his duties being to safeguard the monuments and
prevent their exploitation by dealers. As early as 1 83 5 Mehemet
Ah' had given orders for a museum to be formed; little however,
was accomplished before the whole of the resulting collection
was given away to the Archduke Maximilian of Austria in 1855.
Mariette, who was appointed by the viceroy Said Pasha at
the instance of the French government, succeeded in making
his office effective and permanent, in spite of political intrigues
and the whims of an Oriental ruler; he also secured a building
on the island of Bulak (Bulaq) for a viceregal museum in which
the results of his explorations could be permanently housed.
Supported by the French interest, the established character
of this work as a department of the Egyptian government
(which also claims the ancient sites) has been fully recognized
since the British occupation. The " Service of Antiquities "
now boasts a large annual budget and employs a number of
European and native officials a director, curators of the museum,
European inspectors and native sub-inspectors of provinces
(at Luxor for Upper Egypt and Nubia, at Assiut for Middle
Egypt and the Fayum, at Mansura for Lower Egypt, besides a
European official in charge of the government excavations at
Memphis) . The museum, no longer the property of an individual,
was removed in 1889 from the small building at Bulak to a disused
palace at Giza,and since 1902 has been established at Kasr-en-Nil,
Cairo, in a special building, of ample size and safe from fire and
flood. In the year 1881 the directorship of the museum was
temporarily undertaken by Prof. Maspero, who resumed it in
1899. The admirably conducted Archaeological Survey of the
portion of Nubia threatened by the raising of the Assuan dam
is in the charge of another department the Survey department,
directed for many years up to 1909 by Captain H. G. Lyons.
Non-official agencies (supported by voluntary contributions)
for exploration in Egypt comprise the Egypt Exploration Fund,
started in London in 1881, with its two branches, viz. the Archaeo-
logical Survey (1890) for copying and publishing the monuments
above ground, and the Graeco-Roman Branch (1897), well known
through the brilliant work in Greek papyri of B. P. Grenfell and
A. S. Hunt; and the separate Research Account founded by
Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie in London (University College)
in 1896, and since 1905 called the British School of Archaeology
in Egypt (see especially MEMPHIS). The Mission archeologique
franqaise au Caire, established as a school by the French govern-
ment in 1881, was re-organized in 1901 on a lavish scale under the
title Institul franfais d'archeologie orientate du Caire, and domi-
ciled with printing-press and library in a fine building near the
museum. As the result of an excellent bargain, it was afterwards
removed to the Munira palace in the south-east part of the city.
An archaeologist is attached to the German general consulate to
look after the interests of German museums, and is director of
the German Institute of Archaeology. The Orient-Gesellschaft
(German Orient-Society) has worked in Egypt since 1901 with
brilliant results. Excavations and explorations are also con-
ducted annually by the agents of universities and museums in
England, America and Germany, and by private explorers,
concessions being granted generally on the terms that the
Egyptian government shall retain half of the antiquities dis-
covered, while the other half remains for the finders.
The era of scientific excavation began with Flinders Petrie's
work at Tanis in 1883. Previous explorers kept scientific aims
in view, but the idea of scientific archaeology was not realized
by them. The procedure in scientific excavation is directed
to collecting and interpreting all the information that can be
obtained from the excavation as to the history and nature of
the site explored, be it town, temple, house, cemetery or individual
grave, wasting no evidence that results from it touching the
endless problems which scientific archaeology affords whether
in regard to arts and crafts, manners and customs, language,
history or beliefs. This is a totally different thing from mere
hunting for inscriptions, statues or other portable objects which
will present a greater or less value in themselves even when torn
from their context. Such may, of course, form the greater
part of the harvest and working material of a scientific excavator;
their presence is most welcome to him, but their complete absence
need be no bar to his attainment of important historical results.
The absence of scientific excavation in Egypt was deplored by
the Scottish archaeologist Alexander Henry Rhind (1833-1863),
as early as 1862. Since Flinders Petrie began, the general level
of research has gradually risen, and, while much is shamefully
bad and destructive, there is a certain proportion that fully
realizes the requirements of scientific archaeology.
Antiquities, Sites, &c. The remains for archaeological in-
vestigation in Egypt may be roughly classified as material and
literary: to the latter belong the texts on papyri and the
inscriptions, to the former the sites of ancient towns with the
temples, fortifications and houses; remains of roads, canals,
quarries and other matters falling within the domain of ancient
topography; the larger monuments, as obelisks, statues, stelae,
&c. ; and finally the small antiquities utensils, clothes, weapons,
amulets, &c. Where moisture can reach the antiquities their
preservation is no better in Egypt than it would have been in
other countries; for this reason all the papyri in the Delta have
perished unless they happen to have been charred by fire. A
terrible pest is a kind of termite which is locally abundant and
has probably visited most parts of Egypt at one time or another,
destroying all dead vegetable or animal material in the soil that
was not specially protected.
In Lower Egypt the cities built of crude brick were very
numerous, especially after the 7th century B.C., but owing to
the value of stone very few of their monuments have escaped
destruction: even the mounds of rubbish which marked their
sites furnish a valuable manure for the fields and in consequence
are rapidly disappearing. Granite and other hard stones, having
but a limited use (for millstones and the like), have the best
chance of survival. At Bubastis, Tanis, Behbeit (Iseum) and
Heliopolis considerable stone remains have been discovered.
In the north of the Delta wherever salt marshes have prevented
cultivation in modern times, the mounds, such as those of
Pelusium, still stand to their full height, and the more important
are covered with ruins of brick structures of Byzantine and
Arab date.
Middle and Upper Egypt were less busy and prosperous in
the later ages than Lower Egypt. There was consequently
somewhat less consumption of the old stone-work. Moreover,
in many places equally good material could be obtained without
much difficulty from the cliffs on both sides of the Nile. Yet
even the buried portions of limestone buildings have seldom been
permitted to survive on the cultivated land; the Nubian sand-
stone of Upper Egypt was of comparatively little value, and,
generally speaking, buildings in that material have fallen into
decay rather than been destroyed by quarrying.
Starting from Cairo and going southward we have first the
great pyramid-field, with the necropolis of Memphis as its centre;
stretching from Abu Roash on the north to Lisht on the south,
it is followed by the pyramid group of Dahshur, the more isolated
pyramids of Medum and Illahun, and that of Hawara in the
Fayum. On the east bank are the limestone quarries of Turra
and Masara opposite Memphis. South of the Fayum on the
western border of the desert are the tombs of Deshasha, Meir
and Assiut, and on the east bank those of Beni Hasan, the rock-
cut temple of Speos Artemidos, the tombs of El Bersha and
Sheikh Said, the tombs and stelae of El Amarna with the alabaster
quarries of Hanub in the desert behind them, and the tombs of
Deir el Gebrawi. Beyond Assiut are the tombs of Dronka and
Rlfa, the temples of Abydos and Dendera, and the tombs, &c.,
at Akhmlm and Kasr es Saiyad. Farther south are the stupendous
'
\
ANIKJl 1TIES]
EGYPT
mini of Thebes on both sides of the river, the temple of Esna, the
ruins and tombs of Ell Kib, the temple of Edfu, the quarries of
Sibil* and the temple of Ombos, followed by the inscribed rocks
of the First Cataract, the tombs and quarries of Assuan and the
temples of Philae.
In Nubia, owing to the poverty of the country and its scanty
population, the proportion of monuments surviving is infinitely
greater than in Egypt. Here are the temples of Debod, the
temple and quarries of Kertassi, the temples of Kalabsha, Bit
cl Wali, DendOr, Gerf Huscn, Dakka, Maharaka, Es-Sebu'a,
'A ml da and Derr, the grottos of Elles ya, the tombs of Anlba,
the temple of Ibrim, the great rock-temples of Abu-Simbel, the
temples at Jebcl Adda and Wadi Haifa, the forts and temples of
.a, the temples of Arnara (Meroitic) and Soleb. Beyond are
the Ethiopian temples and pyramids of Jebcl Barkal and the other
pyramids of Napata at Tangassi, &c., the still later pyramids of
Meroe at Begerawla, and the temples of Mcsauwar&t and Naga
reaching to within 50 m. of Khartum.
Outside the Nile valley on the west are temples in the Great
and Little Oases and the Oasis of Ammon: on the east quarries
and stelae on the Hammamat road to the Red Sea, and mines
and other remains at Wadi Magh&ra and Ser&blt el Khadim in
the Sinai peninsula. In Syria there are tablets of conquest on
the rocks at the mouth of the Nahr el K fib.
Of the collections of Egyptian antiquities in public museums,
those of the British Museum, Leiden, Berlin, the Louvre, Turin
were already very important in the first half of the igth century,
also in a less degree those of Florence, Bologna and the Vatican.
Most of these have since been greatly increased and many others
have been created. By far the largest collection in the world
is that at Cairo. In America the museums and universities of
Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and New York
have collections of greater or less interest. Besides these the
museums of Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester and Oxford are
noteworthy in Great Britain for their Egyptian antiquities,
as are those of St Petersburg, Vienna, Marseilles, Munich,
Copenhagen, Palermo and Athens; there are also collections
in most of the British colonies. Private collections are numerous.
Literary Records. In estimating the sources of information
regarding pre-Christian Egypt, the native sources, first opened
to us by Champollion, are infinitely the most important. With
very few exceptions they are contemporary with the events
which they record. Of the composition of history and the
description of their own manners and customs by the Egyptians
for posterity, few traces have reached our day. Consequently
the information derived from their monuments, in spite of their
great abundance, is of a fortuitous character. For one early
papyrus that survives, many millions must have perished. If
the journals of accounts, the letters and business documents,
had come down to us en masse, they would no doubt have yielded
to research the history and life of Egypt day by day; but those
that now represent a thousand years of the Old Kingdom and
Middle Kingdom together would not half fill an ordinary muni-
ment chest. A larger proportion of the records on stone have
survived, but that an event should be inscribed on stone depends
on a variety of circumstances and not necessarily on its importance.
There may seem to be a great abundance of Egyptian monuments,
bat they have to cover an enormous space of time, and even in
the periods which are best represented, gravestones recording
the name* of private persons with a prayer or two are scarcely
material for history. A scrap of annals has been found extending
from the earliest times to the Vth Dynasty, as well as a very
fragmentary list of kings reaching nearly to the end of the
Middle Kingdom, to help out the scattered data of the other
monuments. As to manners and customs, although we possess
no systematic descriptions of them from a native source, the
native artists and scribes have presented us with exceptionally
rich materials in the painted and sculptured scenes of the tombs
from the Old and Middle Kingdoms and the New Empire. For
Uie Deltaic dynasties these sources fail absolutely, the scenes being
then either purely religious or conventional imitations of the
earlier ones.
Fortunately the native records arc largely supplemented by
others: valuable information comes from cuneiform literature,
belonging to two widely separated periods. The first group is
contemporary with the XVIHth and XlXth Dynasties and
consists in the first place of the Tell el Amarna tablets with
others related to them, containing the reports of governors
of the Syrian possessions of Egypt, and the correspondence of
the kings of Babylon, Assur, Mitanni and Khatti (the Hittites)
with the Pharaohs. The sequel to this is furnished by Winckler's
discovery of documents relating to Ramescs II. of the XlXth
Dynasty in the Hittite capital at Boghaz Keui (see also HITTITES
and PTERIA). The other group comprises the annals and in-
scriptions of the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Assur-bani-pal,
recording their invasions of Egypt under the XXVth Dynasty.
There are also a few references to Egypt of later date down to
the reign of Darius. In Hebrew literature the Pentateuch, the
historical books and the prophets alike contain scanty but
precious information regarding Egypt. Aramaic papyri written
principally by Jews of the Persian period (sth century B.C.)
have been found at Syene and Memphis.
Of all the external sources the literary accounts written in
Greek are the most valuable. They comprise fragments of the
native historian Manet ho, the descriptions of Egypt in Herodotus
and Diodorus, the geographical accounts of Strabo and Ptolemy,
the treatise of Plutarch on Isis and Osiris and other monographs
or scattered notices of less importance. Our knowledge of the .
history of Alexander's conquest, of the Ptolemies and of -fhe
Roman occupation is almost entirely derived from Greek sources,
and in fact almost the same might be said of the history of
Egypt as far back as the beginning of the XXVIth Dynasty.
The non-literary Greek remains in papyri and inscriptions
which are being found in great abundance throw a flood of
light on life in Egypt and the administration of the country from
the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus to the Arab conquest. On
the other hand, papyri and inscriptions in Latin are of the
greatest rarity, and the literary remains in that language are of
small importance for Egypt.
Arabic literature appears to be entirely barren of authentic
information regarding the earlier condition of the country.
Two centuries of unchallenged Christianity had broken almost
completely the traditions of paganism, even if the Moslems had
been willing to consider them, either in their fanciful accounts
of the origins of cities, &c., or elsewhere.
B. The Country in Ancient Times. The native name of
Egypt was Kemi (KM-T), clearly meaning " the black land,"
Egypt being so called from the blackness of its alluvial soil
(cf. Plut'. De Is. et Os. cap. 33) : in poetical inscriptions Kemi is
often opposed to Toshri, " the red land," referring to the sandy
deserts around, which however, Would probably be included
in the term Kemi in its widest sense. Egypt is called in Hebrew
Mizraim, trip, possibly a dual form describing the country in
reference to its two great natural and historical divisions of
Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt: but Mizraim (poetically
sometimes Mz6r) often means Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt
being named Pathros, " the south land." In Assyrian the name
was Musri, Misri: in Arabic it is Mir, j^e, pronounced Ma$r in
the vulgar dialect of Egypt. These names are certainly of
Semitic origin and perhaps derive from the Assyrian with the
meaning " frontier-land " (see MIZKAIM). Winckler's theory
of a separate Musri immediately south of Palestine is now
generally rejected (see, for instance, Ed. Meyer, Die Israeliten
und ihre Nachbarstamme, 455). The Greek AZ-ywrros (Aegyptus)
occurs as early as Homer; in the Odyssey it is the name of the
Nile (masc.) as well as of the country (fern.) : later it was con-
fined to the country. Its origin is very obscure (see Pietsch-
mann in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopitdie, s.v. " Aigyptos ").
Brugsch's derivation from Hakeptah, a name of the northern
capital, Memphis, though attractive, is unconfirmed.
Egypt normally included the whole of the Mile valley from
the First Cataract to the sea; pure Egyptians, however, formed
the population of Lower Nubia above the Cataract in prehistoric
EGYPT
[ANTIQUITIES
times; at some periods also the land was divided into separate
kingdoms, while at others Egypt stretched southward into
Nubia, and it generally claimed the neighbouring Libyan deserts
and oases on the west and the Arabian deserts on the east to the
shore of the Red Sea, with Sinai and the Mediterranean coast
as far as Rhinocorura (El Arlsh). The physical features in
ancient times were essentially the same as at the present day.
The bed of the Nile was lower: it appears to have risen by
its own deposits at a rate of about 4 in. in a century. In the
north of the Delta, however, there was a sinking of the land,
in consequence of which the accumulations on some of the
ancient sites there extend below the present sea -level. On the
other hand at the south end of the Suez canal the land may
have risen bodily, since the head of the Gulf of Suez has been
cut off by a bank of rock from the Bitter lakes, which were
probably joined to it in former days. The banks of the Nile
and the islands in it are subject to gradual but constant altera-
tion indeed, several ancient sites have been much eroded or
destroyed and the main volume of the stream may in course of
time be diverted into what has previously been a secondary
channel. According to the classical writers, the mouths or
branches of the Nile in the Delta were five in number (seven
including two that were artificial): now there are only two.
In Upper Egypt the main stream tended as now to flow along
the eastern edge of the valley, while to the west was a parallel
stream corresponding to the Bahr Yusuf. From the latter
a canal or branch led to the Lake of Moeris, which, until the
3rd century B.C., filled the deep depression of the Fayum, but
is now represented only by the strongly brackish waters of the
Birket el Rerun, left in the deepest part. The area of alluvial
land has probably not changed greatly in historic times. The
principal changes that have occurred are due to the grip which
civilization has taken upon the land in the course of thousands
of years, often weakening but now firmer than ever. In early
days no doubt the soil was cultivated in patches,- but gradually
a great system of canals was organized under the control of the
central government, both for irrigation and for transport.
The wild flora of the alluvial valley was probably always re-
stricted and eventually was reduced ajmost to the " weeds of
cultivation," when every acre of soil, at one period of the year
under water, and at another roasted under the burning heat of a
semi-tropical sun, was carefully tilled. The acacia abounded
en the borders of the valley, but the groves were gradually cut
down for the use of the carpenter and the charcoal-burner.
The desert was full of wild life, the balance of nature being
preserved by the carnivorous animals preying on the herbivorous;
trees watered by soakage from the Nile protected the' under-
growth and encouraged occasional rainfall. But this balance
was upset by the early introduction of the goat and later of
the camel, which destroyed the sapling trees, while the grown
ones fell to the axe of the woodcutter. Thus in all probability
the Egyptian deserts have become far poorer in animals and
trees than they were in primitive times. Much of Lower Egypt
was left in a wilder state than Upper Egypt. The marshy lands
in the north were the resort of fishermen and fowlers, and the
papyrus, the cultivation of which was a regular industry, pro-
tected an abundance of wild life. The abandonment of papyrus
culture in the 8th century A.D., the neglect of the canals, and
the inroads of the sea, have converted much of that country
into barren salt marsh, which only years of draining and washing
can restore to fertility.
The rich alluvial deposits of the Nile which respond so readily
to the efforts of the cultivator ensured the wealth of the country.
Moulded into brick, without burning, this black clay also supplied
the common wants of the builder, and even the palaces of the
greatest kings were constructed of crude brick. For more lasting
and ambitious work in temples and tombs the materials could
be obtained from the rocks and deserts of the Nile valley. The
chief of these was limestone of varying degrees of fineness, com-
posing the cliffs which lined the valley from the apex of the Delta
to the neighbourhood of El Kab; the best quality was obtained
on the east side opposite Memphis from the quarries of Turra
and Masara. From El Kab southward its place was taken by
Libyan sandstone, soft and easily worked, but unsuitable for
fine sculpture. These two were the ordinary building stones.
In the limestone was found the flint or chert used for weapons and
instruments in early times. For alabaster the principal quarry
was that of Hanub in the desert 10 m. behind El Amarna, but it
was obtained elsewhere in the limestone region, including a spot
near Alexandria. A hard and fine-grained quartzite sandstone
was quarried at Jebel Ahmar behind Heliopolis, and basalt
was found thence along the eastern edge of the Delta to near
the Wadi Tumilat. Red granite was obtained from the First
Cataract, breccia and diorite were quarried from very early times
in the Wadi Hammamat, on the road from Coptos to the Red
Sea, and porphyry was brought, chiefly in Roman times but
also in the prehistoric age, from the same region at Jebel Dokhan.
Egypt was poor in metals. Gold was obtained chiefly from
Nubia: iron was found in small quantities in the country and
at one time was worked in the neighbourhood of Assuan. Some
copper was obtained in Sinai. Of stones that were accounted
precious Sinai produced turquoise and the Egyptian deserts
garnet, carnelian and jasper.
The native supply of wood for industrial purposes was ex-
ceedingly bad: there was no native wood long enough and
straight enough to be used in joiners' work or sculpture without
fitting and patching: palm trees were abundant, and if the
trees could be spared, their split stems could be used for roofing.
For boatbuilding papyrus stems and acacia wood were employed,
and for the best work cedar-wood was imported from Lebanon.
Egypt was isolated by the deserts and the sea. The Nile
valley afforded a passage by ship or on foot into Nubia, where,
however, little wealth was to be sought, though gold and rarities
from the Sudan, such as ivory and ebony, came that way and an
armed raid could yield a good spoil in slaves and cattle. The
poverty-stricken and barbarous Nubians were strong and
courageous, and gladly served in Egypt as mercenary soldiers
and police. Through the oases also ran paths to the Sudan by
which the raw merchandise of the southern countries could be
brought to Egypt. Eastward, roads led through the Arabian
mountains to the Red Sea, whence ships made voyages to the
incense-bearing land of Puoni (Punt) on the Somali coast of
Africa, rich also in gold and ivory. The mines of Sinai could be
reached either by sea or by land along the route of the Exodus.
The roads to Syria skirted the east border of the Delta and then
followed the coast from near Pelusium through El Arlsh and
Gaza. A secondary road branched off through the Wadi Tumilat,
whence the ways ran northwards to Syria and southwards to
Sinai. On the Libyan side the oasis of Siwa could be reached
from the Lake of Moeris or from Terrana (Terenuthis), or by the
coast route which also led to the Cyrenaica. The Egyptians
had some traffic on the Mediterranean from very remote times,
especially with Byblus in Phoenicia, the port for cedar-wood.
Of the populations surrounding Egypt the negroes (Nehsi)
in the south (Cush) were the lowest in the scale of civilization:
the people of Puoni and of Libya (the Tehen, &c.) were pale in
colour and superior to the negroes, but still show no sign of
a high culture. The Syrians and the Keftiu, the latter now
identified with the Cretans and other representatives of the
Aegean civilization, are the only peoples who by their elaborate
clothing and artistic products reveal themselves upon the
ancient Egyptian monuments ,as the equals in culture of the
Egyptian nation.
The Egyptians seem to have applied no distinctive name to
themselves in early times: they called themselves proudly romi
(RMT.W), i.e. simply " men," " people," while the despised races
around them, collectively 3'SWT, " desert-peoples," were dis-
tinguished by special appellations. The races of mankind,
including the Egyptians, were often called the Nine Archers.
Ultimately the Egyptians, when their insularity disappeared
under the successive dominations of Ethiopia, Assyria and
Persia, described themselves as rem-n-Kemi, " men of Egypt."
Whence the population of Egypt as we trace it in prehistoric
and historic times came, is not certain. The early civilization
ANTIQL'ITIES]
EGYPT
43
of Egypt shows remarkable coincidences with that of Babylonia,
the language is of a Semitic type, the religion may well be a
compound of a lower African and a higher Asiatic order of ideas.
According to the evidence of the mummies, the Egyptians were
of slender build, with dark hair and of Caucasian type. Dr
Elliott Smith, who has examined thousands of skeletons and
mummies of all periods, finds that the prehistoric population of
Upper Egypt, a branch of the North African-Mediterrancan-
Arabian race, changed with the advent of the dynasties to a
stronger type, better developed than before in skull and muscle.
This was apparently due to admixture with the Lower Egyptians,
who themselves had been affected by Syrian immigration. There-
after little further change is observable, although the rich lands
of Egypt must have attracted foreigners from all parts. The
Egyptian artists of the New Empire assigned distinctive types
of feature as well as of dress to the different races with which they
came into contact, Hittites, Syrians, Libyans, Bedouins, negroes,
&c.
The people of Egypt were not naturally fierce or cruel. In-
tellectually, too, they were somewhat sluggish, careless and
unbusinesslike. In the mass they were a body of patient
labourers, tilling a rich soil, and hating all foreign lands and ways.
The wealth of their country gave scope for ability within the
population and also attracted it from outside: it enabled the
kings to organize great monumental enterprises as well as to
arm irresistible raids upon the inferior tribes around. Urged
on by necessity and opportunity, the Egyptians possessed
sufficient enterprise and originating power to keep ahead of
their neighbours in most departments of civilization, until the
more warlike empires of Assyria and Persia overwhelmed them
and the keener intellects of the Greeks outshone them in almost
every department. The debt of civilization to Egypt as a
pioneer must be considerable, above all perhaps in religious
thought. The moral ideals of its nameless teachers were high
from an early date: their conception of an after-life was ex-
ceedingly vivid: the piety of the Egyptians in the later days
was a matter of wonder and scoffing to their contemporaries;
it is generally agreed that certain features in the development of
Christianity 'are to be traced to Egypt as their birthplace and
nidus.
For researches into the ethnography of Egypt and the neigh-
bouring countries, see W. Max Muller, Asien und Europe nach den
alldf. InuhnJtfH (Leipzig, 1893), Egyptological Researches (Washing-
ton, 1906); for measurements of Egyptian skulls, Miss Fawcett
in Biomelrika (1902); A. Thomson and D. Randalt-Maclyer, The
Ancient Kaeet of the Thebaid (Oxford, 1905) (cf. criticisms in Man,
1905: and for comparisons with modern measurements, C. S. Myers,
Jonrn. A nthropolotical Institute, 1905, 80). W. Flinders Petrie has
collected and discussed a series of facial types shown in prehistoric
and early Egyptian sculpture. Journal Anthropological Institute,
1001 . 248. For Elliott Smith's results sec The Cairo Scientific Journal,
No. 30, vol. iii.. March 1909.
Divisions In ancient times Egypt was divided into two
regions, representing the kingdoms that existed before Menes.
Lower Egypt, comprising the Delta and its borders, formed
the " North Land," To-mek, and reached up the valley to include
Memphis and its province or " nome," while the remainder of the
Egyptian Nile valley was " the South,' Shema
The south, if only as the abode of the sun, always had the preced-
ence over the north in Egypt, and the west over the east. Later
the two regions were known respectively as P-to-res (Pathros),
' the south land," and P-to-meh, " the north land." In practical
administration this historic distinction was sometimes observed,
at others ignored, but in religious tradition it had a firm hold.
In Roman times a different system marked off a third region,
namely Middle Egypt, from the point of the Delta southward.
Theoretically, as its name Heptanomis implies, this division
contained seven nomes, actually from the Hermopolite on the
iouth to the Memphite on the north (excluding the Arsinoite
according to the papyri). Some tendency to this existed earlier.
Egypt to the south of the Heptanomis was the Thebais, called
P-tah-en-Ne, " the province of Thebes," as early as the XXVIth
Dynasty. The Thebais was much under the influence of the
Ethiopian kingdom, and was separated politically in the troubled
times of the XXIIIrd Dynasty, though the old division into
Upper and Lower Egypt was resumed in the XXVIth Dynasty.
If Upper and Lower Egypt represented ancient kingdoms,
the nomes have been thought to carry on the traditions of tribal
settlements. They are found in inscriptions as early as the end
of the Illrd Dynasty, and the very name of Thoth, and that
of another very ancient god, are derived from those of two con-
tiguous nomes in Lower Egypt. The names arc written by special
emblems placed on standards, such as an ibis jt. a jackal
. ^ ^1 A
V ~^V a hare^^, a feathered crown J^_,a sistrum JL>
a blade * ^ , &c., suggesting tribal badges. Some nomes having
a common badge but distinguished as " nearer " or " further,"
i.e " northern " or " southern," have simply been split, as they
are contiguous: in one case, however, corresponding " eastern "
and " western " Harpoon nomes are widely separated on opposite
sides of the Delta. In a few cases, such as " the West," " the
Beginning of the East," it is obvious that the names are derived
solely from their geographical situation. It is quite possible
that the divisions are geographical in the main, but it seems
likely that there were also religious, tribal and other historical
reasons for them. How their boundaries were determined is not
certain: in Upper Egypt in many cases a single nome embraced
both sides of the river. The number and nomenclature of the
nomes were never absolutely fixed. In temples of Ptolemaic and
Roman age the full series is figured presenting their tribute to
the god, and this series approximately agrees with the scattered
data of early monuments. The normal number of the nomes
in the sacred lists appears to be 42, of which 22 belonged to
Upper Egypt and 20 to Lower Egypt. In reality again these
nome-divisions were treated with considerable freedom, being
split or reunited and their boundaries readjusted. Each nome
had its metropolis, normally the seat of a governor or nomurch
and the centre of its religious observances. During the New
Empire, except at the beginning, the nomes seem to have been
almost entirely ignored: under the Deltaic dynasties (except of
course in the traditions of the sacred writing) they were named
after the metropolis, as " the province (tosh) of Busiris," " the
province of Sais," &c.: hence the Greek names Boiwpinjj
vopbs, &c. The Arsinoite nome was added by the Ptolemies
after the draining of the Lake of Moeris (q.v.), and in the later
Ptolemaic and the Roman times many changes and additions
to the list must have been made. In Christian texts the
" provinces " appear to have been very numerous.
See H. Brugsch, Geographische Inschriften altdgyptischer Denk-
maler (3 vols., Leipzig, 1857-1860), and for the nomcs on monuments
of the Old Kingdom, N. de G. Davies, Mastaba of Ptahhetep and
Akhethetep (London, loot), p. 24 et sqq.
King and Government. The government of Egypt was
monarchical. The king (for titles see PHARAOH) was the head of
the hierarchy: he was himself divine and is often styled " the
good god," and was the proper mediator between gods and men.
He was also the dispenser of office, confirmer of hereditary titles
and estates and the fountain of justice. Oaths were generally
sworn by the " life " of the king. The king wore special head-
dresses and costumes, including the crowns of Upper Q anc j
Lower Egypt j* (often united <H ), and the cobra upon his
forehead. Females were admitted to the succession, but very
few instances occur before the Cleopatras. The most notable
Pharaonic queen in her own right was Hatshepsut in the XVIIIth
Dynasty, but her reign was ignored by the later rulers even of
her own family. A certain Nitdcris of about the VHIth Dynasty
and Scemiophris of the XHth Dynasty are in the lists, but are
quite obscure. Yet inheritance through the female line was
fully recognized, and marriage with the heiress princess was
sought by usurpers to legitimate the claims of their offspring.
44
EGYPT
[ANTIQUITIES
Often, especially in the Xllth Dynasty, the king associated his
heir on the throne with him to ensure the succession.
From time to time feudal conditions prevailed: the great
landowners and local princes had establishments of their own
on the model of the royal court, and were with difficulty kept in
order by the monarch. In rare cases during the Middle Kingdom
(inscriptions in the tomb of Ameni at Beni Hasan, graffiti in the
quarries of Hanub) documents were dated in the years of reign
of these feudatory nobles. Under the Empire all power was
again centralized in the hands of the Pharaoh. The apportion-
ment of duties amongst the swarm of officials varied from age
to age, as did their titles. Members of the royal family generally
held high office. Under the Empire Egypt was administered
by a vast bureaucracy, at the head of which, responsible to the
king, was the vizier, or sometimes two viziers, one for Upper
Egypt, the other for Lower Egypt (in which case the former,
stationed at Thebes, .had the precedence). The duties of the
vizier and the procedure in his court are detailed in a long
inscription which is repeated in three tombs of the XVIIIth
Dynasty at Thebes (Breasted, Records, ii. 663 et seqq.). The
strictest impartiality was enjoined upon him, and he was advised
to hold aloof from the people in order to preserve his authority.
The office of vizier was by no means a sinecure. All the business
of the country was overlooked by him -treasury, taxation, army,
law-courts, expeditions of every kind. Egypt was the vast
estate of Pharaoh, and the vizier was the steward of it.
Army. The youth of Egypt was liable to be called upon
for service in the field under the local chiefs. Their training
consisted of gymnastic and warlike exercises which developed
strength and discipline that would be as useful in executing
public works and in dragging large monuments as in strictly
military service. They were armed in separate companies with
bows and arrows, spears, daggers and shields, and the officers
carried battle-axes and maces. The army, commanded in chief
by Una under the Vlth Dynasty for raids in Sinai or Palestine,
comprised levies from every part of Egypt and from Nubia,
each under its own leader. Under the New Empire, when Egypt
was almost a military state, the army was a more specialized
institution, the art of war in siege and strategy had developed,
divisions were formed with special standards, there were regiments
armed with battle-axes and scimitars, and chariots formed an
essential part of the host. Egyptian cavalry are not represented
upon the monuments, and we hear little of such at any time.
Herodotus divides the army into two classes, the Calasiries and
the Hermotybies; these names, although he was not aware of it,
mean respectively horse- and foot-soldiers, but it is possible
that the former name was only traditional and had charac-
terized those who fought from chariots, a mode of warfare
that was obsolete in Herodotus's own day: as a matter of
fact both classes are said to have served on the warships of
Xerxes' fleet.
Arms and Armour. From the contents of graves and other
remains, and the sculptured and painted scenes, an approximate
idea can be obtained of the weapons of the Egyptians at all
periods from the prehistoric age onwards. Only a few points
are here noted. Stone mace-heads are found in the earliest
cemeteries, together with flint implements that may be the heads
of lances, &c., and thin leaf-shaped daggers of bronze. Stone
arrow-heads are common on the surface of the desert. Thin
bronze arrow-heads appear at an early date; under the Empire
they are stouter and furnished with a tang, and later still,
towards the Greek period, they are socketed (often three-sided),
or, if of iron, still tanged. The wooden club, a somewhat primi-
tive weapon, seems to have been considered characteristic of
foreigners from very early times, and, in scenes dating from the
Middle Kingdom, belong principally to the levies from the
surrounding barbarians. The dagger grew longer and stouter,
but the sword made its appearance late, probably first in the
hands of the Sherdana (Sardinian?), mercenaries of the time of
Rameses II. A peculiar scimitar, khopsh J), is characteristic of
the Empire.. Slings are first heard of in Egyptian warfare in the
8th century B.C. The chariot was doubtless introduced with
the horse in the Hyksos period: several examples have been
discovered in the tombs of the New Kingdom. Shields were
covered with ox-hide and furnished with round sighting-holes
above the middle. Cuirasses of bronze scales were worn by the
kings and other leaders. The linen corslets of the Egyptian
soldiery at a later time were famous, and were adopted by the
Persian army. According to the paintings of the Middle Kingdom
in the tombs of Beni Hasan, the battlements of brick fortresses
were attacked and wrenched away with long and massive spears.
No siege engines are depicted, even in the time of the Empire,
and the absence of original representations after the XXth
Dynasty renders it difficult to judge the advances made in the
art of war during the first half of the last millennium B.C. The
inscription of Pankhi, however, proves that in the 8th century
approaches and towers were raised against the walls of besieged
cities.
Priesthood. The priesthood was in a great degree hereditary,
though perhaps not essentially so. In each temple the priests
were divided into four orders (until Ptolemy Euergetes added a
fifth), each of which served in turn for a lunar month under the
chief priest or prophet. They received shares of the annual
revenues of the temple in kind, consisting of linen, oil, flesh,
bread, vegetables, wine, beer, &c. The " divine servants " or
" prophets " had residences assigned them in the temple area.
In late times the priests were always shaven, and paid the greatest
attention to cleanliness and ceremonial purity already implied
in their ancient name. Fish and beans then were abhorred by
them. Among the priests were the most learned men of Egypt,
but probably many were illiterate. For the Hellenistic period
see W. Otto, Priester und Tempel im hellenistichen Agypten
(Leipzig, 1905 foil.).
For ancient Egyptian life and civilization in all departments, the
principal work is Ad. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, translated by
H. M. Tirard (London, 1894), (the original Agypten und dgypti-
sches Leben im Altertum, 2 vols., was published in 1885 at Tubingen) ;
G. Maspero, Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria, translated by A. P.
Morton (London, 1892), (Lectures historiques, Paris, 1890) ; also
J. G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, new
ed. by S. Birch (3 vols., London, 1878). The annual Archaeological
Reports of the Egypt Exploration Fund contain summaries of the
work done each year in the several departments of research.
Of the innumerable publications of Egyptian monuments, scenes
and inscriptions, C. R. Lepsius, Denkmaler aus Agypten und
Athiopien (Berlin, 1849-1859), and Memoirs of the Archaeological
Survey of the Egypt Exploration Fund, may be specified. For
antiquities in museums there is the sumptuous Catalogue general des
antiquites egyptiennes du musee de Caire; lor excavations the
Memoirs of the Egypt Exploration Fund, of the Research Account,
of the British School of Archaeology, of the Liverpool School of
Archaeology, of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, of the Hearst
Egyptian Expedition, of the Theodore M. Davis excavations (Tombs
of the Kings).
Trade and Money. There is little evidence to show how buying
and selling were carried on in ancient Egypt. A unique scene
in a tomb of the IVth Dynasty, however, shows men and women
exchanging commodities against each other fish, fish-hooks,
fans, necklaces, &c. Probably this was a market in the open air
such as is held weekly at the present time in every considerable
village. Rings of metal, gold, silver and bronze played some part
in exchange, and from the Hyksos period onwards formed the
usual standards by which articles of all kinds might be valued.
In the XVIIIth Dynasty the value of meat, &c., was reckoned
in gold; somewhat later copper seems the commonest standard,
and under the Deltaic dynasties silver. But barter must have
prevailed much longer. The precious metals were kept in the
temples under the tutelage of the deities. During the XXVth
and XXVIth Dynasties silver of the treasury of Harshafe (at
Heracleopolis Magna) was commonly prescribed in contracts,
and in the reign of Darius we hear of silver of the treasury of
Ptah (at Memphis). Aryandes, satrap of Egypt, is said by
Herodotus to have been punished by Darius for coining money
of equal fineness with that of the king in Persia: thus coinage
had then begun in Egypt. But the early coins that have been
found there are mainly Greek, and especially Athenian, and it
was not until the introduction of a regular currency in the three
AXTigt'ITIES]
EGYPT
45
mf tali under the Ptolemies that much use was made of coined
Corn was the staple produce of Egypt and may have been
exported regularly, and especially when there was famine in
other countries. In the Tell cl-Amarna letters the friendly
kings ask Pharaoh for " much gold." Papyrus rolls and fine
linen were good merchandise in Phoenicia in the loth century
B.C. From the earliest times Egypt was dependent on foreign
countries to supply its wants in some degree. Vessels were
fashioned in foreign stone as early as the 1st Dynasty. All silver
must have been imported, and all copper except a little that
the Pharaohs obtained from the mines of Sinai. Cedar wood
was brought from the forests of Lebanon, ivory, leopard skins
and gold from the south, all kinds of spices and ingredients of
incense from Somaliland and Arabia, fine linen and beautifully
worked vessels from Syria and the islands. Such supplies might
be obtained by forcible raiding or as tribute of conquered
countries, or perhaps as the free offerings of simple savages
awed by the arrival of ships and civilized well-armed crews,
or again by royal missions in which rich gifts on both sides were
exchanged, or lastly by private trading. For deciding how large
a share was due to trade, there is almost no evidence. But there
are records of expeditions sent out by the king to obtain the
rarities of different countries, and the hero of the Story of the
Shipwrecked Sailor was upon this quest. Egyptian objects of
the age of the XVIlIth Dynasty are found in the Greek islands
and on the mainland among remains of the Mycenaean epoch,
and on the other hand the products of the workshops of Crete
and other centres of that culture are found in Egypt and are
figured as " tribute of the Keftiu " in the tomb-paintings,
though we have no information of any war with or conquest of
that people. It must be a case of trade rather than tribute here
and in like instances. According to the papyrus of Unamun at
the end of the weak XXth Dynastypaymentforcedarwasinsisted
on by the king of Byblus from the Egyptian commissioner, and
proofs were shown to him of payment having been made even
in the more glorious times of Egypt. Trade both internal and
external must have been largely in the hands of foreigners.
It is impossible to say at what period Phoenician traffic by sea
with Egypt began, but it existed as early as the Illrd Dynasty.
In the time of Herodotus much wine was imported from Syria
and Greece. Amasis II. (c. 570 B.C.) established Naucratis as
the centre of Greek trade in Egypt. Financial transactions by
Jews settled at the southern extremity of Egypt, at Assuan, are
found as early as the reign of ArUxerxes.
Hunting, Pishing, ffc. In the desert hunting was carried
on by hunters with bows and arrows, dogs and nets to check
the game. Here in ancient times were found the oryx, addax,
ibex, gazelle, bubale, ostrich, hyena and porcupine, more rarely
the wild ox and wild sheep (O. Iragelaphus). All of these were
considered fit for the table. The lion, leopard and jackal were
not eaten. Pigeons and other birds were caught in traps, and
quails were netted in the fields and on the sea-shore. In the
papyrus marshes the hippopotamus was slain with harpoons,
the wild boar, too, was probably hunted, and the sportsman
brought down wild-fowl with the boomerang, or speared or
angled for fish. Enormous quantities of wild-fowl of many sorts
were taken in clap-nets, to be preserved in jars with salt. Fish
were taken sometimes in hand-nets, but.the professional fisher-
men with their draw-nets caught them in shoals. The fishing
industry was of great importance: the annual catch in the Lake
of Moeris and its canal formed an important part of the Egyptian
revenue. The fish of the Nile, which were of many kinds (includ-
ing mullets, 4c., which came up from the sea), were split and
dried in the sun: others were salted and so preserved. A supply
of tea fish would be obtained off the coast of the Delta and at the
mouth of the Lake Serbonis.
Farming, Horticulture, (re. The wealth of Egypt lay in its
agriculture. The regular inundations, the ease of irrigating the
rich alluvial flats, and the great heat of the sun in a cloudless
ky, while limiting the natural flora, gave immense opportunities
to the industrious fanner. The normal rise of the Nile was
sixteen cubits at the island of Roda, and two cubits more or
less caused a failure of the harvest. In the paintings we see
gardens irrigated by handbuckets and shadufs; the latter
(buckets hung on a lever-pole) were probably the usual means
of raising water for the fields in ancient times, and still are
common in Egypt and Nubia, although water-wheels have been
known since the Ptolemaic age, if not earlier. Probably a certain
amount of cultivation was possible all the year round, and there
was perhaps a succession of harvests; but there was a pause
after the main harvests were gathered in by the end of April,
and from then till June was the period in which taxes were
collected and loans were repaid. Under the Ptolemaic r6gime
the records show a great variety of crops, wheat and barley being
probably the largest (see B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Tebtunis
Papyri, i. 560; J. P. Mahaffy and J. G. Smyly, Petrie Papyri,
iii. p. 205). Earlier the bdti, in Greek 6Xupa (spelt? or durra?)
was the main crop, and earlier again inferior varieties of wheat
and barley took the lead, with boli apparently in the second
place. The bread was mainly made of bdti, the beer of barley.
There were green crops such as clover, and lentils, peas, beans,
radishes, onions, lettuces (as a vegetable and for oil), castor oil
and flax were grown. The principal fruit trees were the date
palm, useful also for its wood and fibre, the pomegranate, fig
and fig-sycamore. The vine was much cultivated in early times,
and the vintage is a subject frequently depicted. Later the
wine of the Mareotic region near Alexandria was celebrated even
amongst Roman epicures. Papyrus, which grew wild in the
marshes, was also cultivated, at least in the later ages: its stems
were used for boat-building, and according to the classical
authors for rope-making, as well as for the famous writing
material. About the 8th century A.D. paper drove the latter
out of use, and the papyrus plant quickly became extinct.
The Indian lotus described by Herodotus is found in deposits
of the Roman age. Native* lotuses, blue and white, were much
used for decoration in garlands, &c., also the chrysanthemum and
the corn-flower.
See chapters on plant remains by Newberry in W. M. F. Petrie,
Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe (London, 1889) ; Kahun, Gurob and
Hawara (1890) ; V. Loret, La Flore pharaonique (2nd ed., Paris, 1892),
and the authorities there cited.
Domestic Animals and Birds. The farmer kept up a large
stock of animals: in the houses there were pets and in the temples
sacred creatures of many kinds. Goats browsed on the trees
and herbage at the edge of the desert. Sheep of a peculiar breed
with horizontal twisted horns and hairy coat are figured on the
earliest monuments: a more valuable variety, woolly with
curved horns, made its appearance in the Middle Kingdom and
pushed out the older form: sheep were driven into the ploughed
fields to break the clods and trample in the seed. The oxen were
long-horned, short-horned and polled. They drew the plough,
trampled the corn sheaves round the circular threshing floor,
and were sometimes employed to drag heavy weights. The pig
is rarely figured and was less and less tolerated as the Egyptians
grew in ceremonial purity. A Variety of wild animals caught in
the chase were kept alive and fed for slaughter. Geese and
ducks of different sorts were bred in countless numbers by the
farmers, also pigeons and quails, and in the early ages cranes.
The domestic fowl was unknown in Egypt before the Deltaic
dynasties, but Diodorus in the first century B.C. describes how
its eggs were hatched artificially, as they are at the present
day. Bee-keeping, too, must have been a considerable industry,
though dates furnished a supply of sweetening material.
The farm lands were generally held at a rent from an overlord,
who might according to times and circumstances be the king,
a feudal prince, or a temple-corporation. The stock also might
be similarly held, or might belong to the farmers. The ordinary
beast of burden, even in the desert, was the ass. The horse seems
to have been introduced with the chariot during the Hyksos
period. It is thought that the camel is shown in rude figures of
the earliest age, but it is scarcely traceable again before the
XXVIth Dynasty. In the Ptolemaic period it was used for
desert transport and gradually became common. Strange to say,
EGYPT
[ANCIENT LAW, ETC.
it is only very rarely that men are depicted riding on animals,
and never before the New Kingdom.
The dog was of many varieties as early as the Xllth Dynasty,
when the greyhound and turnspit and other well-marked forms
are seen. The cat was sometimes trained by the sportsman to
catch birds. Monkeys were commonly kept as pets. The sacred
beasts in the various temples, tame as far as possible, were of
almost every conceivable variety, from the vulture to the swallow
or the goose, from the lion to the shrew-mouse, from the hippo-
potamus to the sheep and the monkey, from the crocodile to the
tortoise and the cobra, from the carp to the eel; the scorpion
and the scarab beetle were perhaps the strangest in this strange
company of deities.
For agriculture see J. J. Tylor and F. LI. Griffith, The Tomb of
Paheri at El Kab, in the Xlth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration
Fund. Together with hunting and fishing it is illustrated in many
of the Memoirs of the A rchaeological Survey of the same society. See
also Lortet and M. C. Gaillard, La Faune momifiee de I'ancienne
Egypte (Lyons, 1905).
Law. No code of Egyptian laws has come down to us.
Diodorus names a series of Egyptian kings who were law-givers,
ending with Amasis (Ahmosi II.) and Darius. Frequent reference
is made in inscriptions to customs andlawswhich were traditional,
and perhaps had been codified in the sacred books. From time
to time regulations on special points were issued by royal decree:
a fragment of such a decree, directed by Horemheb of theXVIIIth
Dynasty against oppression of the peasantry by officials and
prescribing penalties, is preserved on a stela in the temple of
Karnak, and enactments of Ptolemy Philadelphus and Euergetes
II. are known from papyri. In the Ptolemaic age matters arising
out of native contracts were decided according to native law by
Xoo/cpiTcu, while travelling courts of xOTM^TioTai representing
the king settled litigation on Greek contracts and most other
disputes. Affairs were decided in accordance with the code of
the country, TTJS x&P as vopoi, the Greek code, iroXtrocoi VOJMI,
modelled, it would seem, on Athenian law or royal decrees,
irpoffT&jfiara. " Native " law was still quoted in Roman times,
but the significance of the expression remains to be ascertained.
In ancient Egypt petitions were sent to the king or the great
feudal landowners in whose territory the petitioner or his
adversary dwelt or the injury was committed: courts were
composed of royal or feudal officials, or in the New Kingdom
of officials or responsible citizens. The right of appeal to the
king probably existed at all times. The statement of the case
and the evidence were frequently ordered to be put in writing,
the evidence was supported by oath: in criminal cases, such as
the harem conspiracy against Rameses III., torture of the accused
was resorted to to extract evidence, the bastinado being applied
on the hands and the feet. Penalties in the New Kingdom were
death (by starvation or self-inflicted), fines, beating with a certain
number of blows so as to open a specified number of -wounds on
as many different parts of the body (e.g. five wounds, i.e. on
hands, feet and back?), also cutting off the nose with banishment
to Nubia or the Syrian frontier. In the times of the OldKingdom
decapitation was in use, and a decree exists of the Middle King-
dom degrading a nomarch of Coptos and his family for ever
from his office and from the priesthood on account of services
to a rival pretender.
As to legal instruments: contracts agreed to in public or
before witnesses and written on papyrus are found as early as
the Middle Kingdom and perhaps belong to all historic times,
but are very scarce until the XXVth Dynasty. Two wills exist
on papyrus of the Xllth Dynasty, but they are isolated, and such
are not again found among native documents, though they occur
in Greek in the Ptolemaic age. The virtual will of a high priest
of Ammon under the XXIInd Dynasty is put in the form of a
decree of the god himself.
From the time of the XXVth Dynasty there is a great increase
in written documents of a legal character, sales, loans, &c.,
apparently due to a change in law and custom; but after the
reign of Darius I. there is again almost a complete cessation
until the. reign of Alexander, probably only because of the dis-
turbed condition of the country. Under Ptolemy Philadelphus
Greek documents begin to be numerous: under Euergetes II.
(Physcon) demotic contracts are particularly abundant, but they
cease entirely after the first century of Roman rule.
Marriage contracts are not found earlier than the XXVIth
Dynasty. Women had full powers of inheritance (though not of
dealing with their property), and succession through the mother
was of importance. In the royal line there are almost certain
instances of the marriage of a brother with an heiress-sister in
Pharaonic times: this was perhaps helped by the analogy of
Osiris and Isis: in the Ptolemaic dynasty it was an established
custom, and one of the stories of Khamois, written in the
Ptolemaic age, assumes its frequency at a very remote date.
It would be no surprise to find examples of the practice in other
ranks also at an early period, as it certainly was prevalent in the
Hellenistic age, but as yet it is very difficult to prove its occur-
rence. The native contracts with the wife gave to her child
all the husband's property, and divorce or separation was pro-
vided for, entailing forfeiture of the dowry. The " native law "
of Roman times allowed a man to take his daughter away from
her husband if the last quarrelled with him.
Slavery is traceable from an early date. Private ownership
of slaves, captured in war and given by the king to their captor
or otherwise, is certainly seen at the beginning of the XVIIIth
Dynasty. Sales of slaves occur in the XXVth Dynasty, and
contracts of servitude are found in the XXVIth Dynasty and
in the reign of Darius, appearing as if the consent of the slave
was then required. Presumably at this late period there were
eunuchs in Egypt, though adequate evidence of their existence
there is not yet forthcoming. They must have originated among
a more cruel people. That circumcision (though perhaps not
till puberty) was regularly practised is proved by the mummies
(agreeing with the testimony of Herodotus and the indications
of the early tomb sculptures) until an edict of Hadrian forbade
it: after that, only priests were circumcised.
See A. H. Gardiner, The Inscription of Mes (from..Sethe's Unter-
suchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde Agyptens, iv.);
J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records, Egypt, passim, esp. i. 100, 535
et seqq., 773, ii. 54, 671, Hi. 45, 367, iv. 416, 499, 795; F. LI. Griffith,
Catalogue of the John Rylands Demotic Papyri; B. P. Grenfell and
I. P. Mahaffy, Revenue Laws of Philadelphus (Oxford, 1896);
B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Tebtunis Papyri, part i. (London,
1902); Bouche-Leclercq, Histoire des Lagides, tome iv. (Paris,
1907).
Science. The Egyptians sought little after knowledge for its
own sake: they might indulge in religious speculation, but their
science was no more than the knowledge of practical methods.
Undoubtedly the Egyptians acquired great skillinthe application
of simple means to the fulfilment of the most difficult tasks.
But the books that have come down to us prove how greatly
their written theoretical knowledge fell short of their practical
accomplishment. The explanation of the fact may partly be
that the mechanical and other discoveries of the most ingenious
minds among them, when not in constant requisition by later
generations, were misunderstood or forgotten, and even in other
cases were preserved only as rules of thumb by the craftsmen
and experts, who would jealously hide them as secrets of trade.
Men of genius were not wanting in the long history of Egypt;
two doctors, Imhotp (Imuthes), the architect of Zoser, in the
IHrd Dynasty, and Amenophis (Amenhotp), son of Hap, the
wise scribe under Amenophis III. in the XVIIIth, eventually
received the honours of deification; and Hardadf under Cheops
of the IVth Dynasty was little behind these two in the estimation
of posterity. Such men, who, capable in every field, designed the
Great Pyramids and bestowed the highest monumental fame on
their masters, must surely have had an insight into scientific
principles that would hardly be credited to the Egyptians from
the written documents alone.
Mathematics. The Egyptian notation for whole numbers
was decimal, each power of 10 up to 100,000 being represented
by a different figure, on much the same principle as the Roman
numerals. Fractions except were all primary, i.e. with the
numerator unity: in order to express such an idea as & the
Egyptians were obliged to reduce it to a series of primary
ANCIENT SCIENCE]
fractions through double fractions
A+iiiJ+A-J+A+A-J+l+A+A+ih; this opera-
tion was performed in the head, only the result being written
down, and to facilitate it tables were drawn up of the
-;on of 2 by odd numbers. With integers, besides adding
and subtracting, it was easy to double and to multiply by 10:
multiplying and dividing by 5 and finding the i\ value were
also among the fundamental instruments of calculation, and all
multiplication proceeded by repetitions of these processes with
addition, r.f. gX7-(gX JX)+(9X2)+Q. Division was accom-
plished by multiplying the divisor until the dividend was reached;
the answer being the number of times the divisor was so multi-
plied. Weights and measures proceeded generally on either a
decimal or a doubling system or a combination of the two.
Apart from a few calculations and accounts, practically all the
materials for our knowledge of Egyptian mathematics before
the Hellenistic period date from the Middle Kingdom.
The principal text U the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus in the
BritUh Museum, written under a Hyksos king <. 1600 B.C.; un-
fortunately it is full of gross errors, its contents fall roughly into
the following scheme, but the main headings arc not shown in the
EGYPT
47
original:
I. Ari
I. Arithmetic. A. Tables and rule to facilitate the employment
of fraction*.
(a) Table of the divisions of 2 by odd numbers from 3 to 99
(.f . 3 + 1 1 - 1 + M, see above.
(6) Conversions of compound fractions (e.g. !Xt~}+rV). with
rule for finding | of a fraction.
B. The " bread " calculation a division by 10 of the units I to 9.
C. " Completing " calculations.
(a) Adding multiples of a fraction to produce a more convenient
fraction (perhaps connected with the use of palms and
cubits in decoration inaproportionbased on the numbers).
(6) Finding the difference between a given fraction and a given
whole number.
D. Ake' or " mass "-problems (of the form i+- =a, to find the
tktx).
E. Tooun- problems (tooun, " rising," seems to be the difference
between the shares of two sets of persons dividing an amount
between them on a lower and a higher scale).
II. Geometry. A. Measurement of volume (amounts of grain in
cylindrical and rectangular spaces of different dimensions and vice
ftrut).
B. Measurement of area (areas of square, circular, triangular, &c. ,
Mdi
C. Proportions of pyramids and other monuments with sloping
III Miscellaneous problems (and tables) such as are met with in
bread-making, beer-making, food of live-stock, &c. &c.
The method of estimating the area of irregular fields and the
cubic contents of granaries. See., is very faulty. It would be inter-
erting to find material of later date, such as Pythagoras is reported
to have studied.
See A. Eiscnlohr, Ein mathematisches Handbuch der alien Agypter
(Leipzig, 1877) ; F. LI Griffith, " The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus"
in Proceedings of the Soc. of Biblical Archaeology, Nov. 1891, March,
May and June 1894.
Agronomy. The brilliant skies of day and night in Egypt
favoured the development of astronomy. A papyrus of the
Roman period in the British Museum attributes the invention of
horoscopes to the Egyptians, but no early instance is known.
Professor Petrie has indeed suggested, chiefly on chronological
grounds, that a table of stars on the ceiling of the Ramesseum
temple and another in the tomb of Rameses VI. (repeated in
that of Rameses IX. without alteration) were horoscopes of
Rametet II. and VI.; but Mahler's interpretation of the tables
on which this would rest appears to be false. Astronomy played
a considerable part in religious matters for fixing the dates of
festivals and determining the hours of the night. The titles of
several temple books are preserved recording the movements
and phase* of the sun, moon and stars. The rising of Sothis
(Sinus) at the beginning of the inundation was a particularly
important point to fix in the yearly calendar (see below,
Chronology "). The primitive clock 1 of the temple time-
keeper (boroscopus), consisting of a cipoX^yioi' oi i^otma
(Clemens Alex. Strom., vi. 4. 35), has been identified with two
I Formerly transcribed hau or " heap "-problems.
-Inwydras inscribed in hieroglyphic are found soon after the
Macedonian conquest.
inscribed objects in the Berlin Museum; these are a palm branch
with a sight-slit in the broader end, and a short handle from
which a plummet line was hung. The former was held close
to the eye, the latter in the other hand, perhaps at arm's length.
From the above-mentioned tables of culmination in the tombs
of Rameses VI. and IX. it seems that for fixing the hours of the
night a man seated on the ground faced the horoscopus in such a
position that the line of observation of the Pole-star passed over
the middle of his head. On the different days of the year each
hour was determined by a fixed star culminating or nearly
culminating in it, and the position of these stars at the time is
given in the tables as " in the centre," " on the left eye," " on
the right shoulder," &c. According to the texts, in founding or
rebuilding temples the north axis was determined by the same
apparatus, and we may conclude that it was the usual one for
astronomical observations. It is conceivable that in ingenious
and careful hands it might give results of a high degree of
accuracy.
See L. Borchardt, " Ein altagyptisches astronomisches Instru-
ment " in Zeitschrift fur dgyptische Sprache, xxxyii. (1899), p. 10;
Ed. Meyer, Agyplische Chronologie, p. 36. Besides the sun and
in. .on, five planets, thirty-six dekans, and constellations to which
animal and other forms are given, appear in the early astronomical
texts and paintings. The zodiacal signs were not introduced till the
Ptolemaic period. See H. Brugsch, Die Agyptologie (Leipzig, 1891),
pp. 315 et seqq., for a full account of all these.
Medicine. Except that splints are sometimes found on the
limbs of bodies of all periods, at present nothing is known, from
texts or otherwise, of the existence of Egyptian surgery or
dentistry. For historical pathology the examination of mummies
and skeletons is yielding good results. There is little sign of the
existence of gout or of syphilitic diseases until late times (see
MUMMY). A number of papyri have been discovered containing
medical prescriptions. The earliest are of the Xllth Dynasty
from KahQn, one being veterinary, the other gynaecological.
The finest non-religious papyrus known, the Ebers Papyrus,
is a vast collection of receipts. One section, giving us some of
" the mysteries of the physician," shows how lamentably crude
were his notions of the constitution of the body. It teaches
little more than that the pulse is felt in every part of the body,
that there are vessels leading from the heart to the eyes, ears,
nose and all the other members, and that " the breath entering
the nose goes to the heart and the lungs." The prescriptions
are for a great variety of ailments and afflictions diseases of
the eye and the stomach, sores and broken bones, to make the
hair grow, to keep away snakes, fleas, &c. Purgatives and
diuretics are particularly numerous, and the medicines take the
form of pillules, draughts, liniments, fumigations, &c. The
prescriptions are often fanciful and may thus bear some absurd
relation to the disease to be cured, but generally they would be
to some extent effective. Their action was assisted by spells,
for general use in the preparation or application, or for special
diseases. In most cases several ingredients are prescribed
together: when the amounts are indicated it is by measure not
by weight, and evidently no very potent drugs were employed,
for the smallest measure specified is equal to about half of a
cubic inch. Little has yet been accomplished in identifying the
diseases and the substances named in the medical papyri.
See G. A. Reisner, The Hearst Medical Papyrus (Leipzig, 1905),
(XVIIIth Dynasty), and for a great magical text of the Roman
period (3rd century A.D.) with some prescriptions, F. LI. Griffith and
H. Thompson, The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden
(London, 1904).
Literature. The vast mass of writing which has come down to
us from the ancient Egyptians comprises documents of almost
every conceivable kind, business documents and correspondence,
legal documents, memorial inscriptions, historical, scientific,
didactic, magical and religious literature; also tales and lyrics
and other compositions in poetical language. Most of these
classes are dealt with in this article under special headings.
In addition there should be mentioned the abundant explanatory
inscriptions attached to wall-scenes as a secondary element in
those compositions. As early as the Middle Kingdom, papyri are
found containing classified lists of words, titles, names of cities,
EGYPT
[ANCIENT RELIGION
&c., and of nomes with their capitals, festivals, deities and sacred
things, calendars, &c.
To a great extent the standard works in all classes date from
an early age, not later than the Middle Kingdom, and subsequent
works of religion and learning like the later additions were
largely written in the same style. Several books of proverbs or
" instructions " were put in circulation during the Middle King-
dom. Kagemni and Ptahhotp of the Old Kingdom were nomin-
ally or really the instructors in manners: King Amenemhe I.
laid down the principles of conduct in government for his son
Senwosri I., preaching on the text of beneficence rewarded by
treachery; Kheti points out in detail to his schoolboy son Pepi
the advantages enjoyed by scribes and the miseries of all other
careers. Some of these books are known only in copies of the
New Kingdom. The instructions of Ani to his son Khenshotp
are of later date. In demotic the most notable of such works
is a papyrus of the first century A.D. at Leiden.
A number of Egyptian tales are known, dating from the
Middle Kingdom and later. Some are so sober and realistic as
to make it doubtful whether they are not true biographies and
narratives of actual events. Such are the story of Sinuhi, a
fugitive to Syria in the reign of Sesostris [Senwosri] I., and
perhaps the narrative of Unamun of his expedition in quest of
cedar wood for the bark of the Theban Ammon in the XXIst
Dynasty. Others are highly imaginative or with miraculous
incidents, like the story of the Predestined Prince and the story
of the Two Brothers, which begins with a pleasing picture of the
industrious farmer, and, in demotic of the Ptolemaic and Roman
periods, two stories of the learned Sethon Khamois,sonofRameses
II. and high priest of Ptah, with his rather tragical experiences
at the hands of magicians. The stories of the Middle Kingdom
were in choice diction, large portions of them being rhetorical
or poetical compositions attributed to the principal characters.
The story of Sinuhi is of this description and was much read
during the New Kingdom. Another, of the Eloquent Peasant
whose ass had been stolen, was only a framework to the rhetoric
of endless petitions. The tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor in the
Red Sea was a piece of simpler writing, not unpicturesque, of the
marvellous type of a Sindbad story. If all these are deficient
in literary merit, they are deeply interesting as revelations of
primitive mind and manners. Of New Kingdom tales, the story
of the Two Brothers is frankly in the simplest speech of everyday
life, while others are more stilted. The demotic stories of
Khamois are simple, but the " Rape of Inaros' Cuirass " (at
Vienna) is told in a stiff and high-flown style.
In general it may be said of Egyptian literary compositions
that apart from their interest as anthropological documents
they possess no merit which would entitle them to survive.
They are more or less touched by artificiality, but so far as we
are able to appreciate them at present they very seldom attain
to any degree of literary beauty. Most of the compositions in
the literary language, whether old or archaistic, are in a stilted
style and often with parallelisms of phrase like those of Hebrew
poetry. Simple prose narrative is here quite exceptional.
Some few hymns contain stanzas of ten lines, each line with a
break in the middle. There is no sign of rhyming in Egyptian
poetry, and the rhythm is not yet recognizable owing to our
ignorance of the ancient vocalization. In old Egyptian tales the
narrative portions are frequently in prose; New Egyptian and
demotic contain as a rule little else. Hymns exist in both of
these later forms of the knguage, and a few love songs in Late
Egyptian.
See W. M. F. Petrie, Egyptian Tales (2 vols., London, 1895);
G. Maspero, Les Conies populaires de I'Egyple ancienne (3rd edition,
Paris, 1906); W. Max Mtiller, Die Liebespoesie der alien Agypter
(Leipzig, 1899). (F. LL. G.)
C. Religion. i. Introductory. Copious as are the sources of
information from which our knowledge of the Egyptian religion is
drawn, there is nevertheless no aspect of the ancient civilization
of Egypt that we really so little understand. While the youth of
Egyptological research is in part responsible for this, the reason
lies still more in the nature of the religion itself and the character
of the testimony bearing upon it. For a true appreciation of the
chaotic polytheism that reveals itself even in the earliest texts
it would be necessary to be able to trace its development, stage
by stage, out of a number of naive primitive cults; but the
period of growth lies behind recorded history, and we are here
reduced to hypotheses and a posteriori reconstructions. The
same criticism applies, no doubt, to other religions, like those of
Greece and Rome. In Egypt, however, the difficulty is much
aggravated by the poor quality of the evidence. The religious
books are textually very corrupt, one-sided in their subject-
matter, and distributed over a period of more than two thousand
years. The greatest defect of all is their relative silence with
regard to the myths. For the story of Isis and Osiris we have
indeed the late treatise ascribed to Plutarch, and a few fragments
of other myths may be culled from earlier native sources. But
in general the tales that passed current about the gods are
referred to only in mysterious and recondite allusions; as
Herodotus for his own times explicitly testifies, a reticence in
such matters seems to have been encouraged by the priests.
Thus with regard to Egyptian theology we are very imperfectly
informed, and the account that is here given of it must be looked
upon as merely provisional. The actual practices of the cult,
both funerary and divine, are better known, and we are
tolerably familiar with the doctrines as to the future state
of the dead. There is good material, too, for the study
of Egyptian magic, though this branch has been somewhat
neglected hitherto.
2. Main Sources. (a) The Pyramid lexis, a vast collection of
incantations inscribed on the inner walls of five royal tombs
of the Vth and Vlth Dynasties at Sakkara, discovered and first
published by Maspero. Much of these texts is of extreme
antiquity; one incantation at least has been proved to belong
to an age anterior to the unification of the Northern and Southern
kingdoms. Later copies also exist, but possess little independent
critical value. The subject-matter is funerary, i.e. it deals
with the fate of the dead king in the next life. Some chapters
describe the manner in which he passes from earth to heaven
and becomes a star in the firmament, others deal with the food
and drink necessary for his continued existence after death,
and others again with the royal prerogatives which he hopes still
to enjoy; many are directed against the bites of snakes and
stings of scorpions. It is possible that these incantations were
recited as part of the funerary ritual, but there is no doubt that
their mere presence in the tombs was supposed to be magically
effective for the welfare of the dead. Originally these texts had
an application to the king alone, but before the beginning of the
XHth Dynasty private individuals had begun to employ them
on their own behalf. They seem to be relatively free from textual
corruption, but the vocabulary still occasions much difficulty to
the translator.
(b) The Book of the Dead is the somewhat inappropriate name
applied to a large similar collection of texts of various dates,
certain chapters of which show a tendency to become welded
together into a book of fixed content and uniform order. A
number of chapters contained in the later recensions are already
found on the sarcophagi of the Middle Kingdom, together with
a host of funereal texts not usually reckoned as belonging to the
Book of the Dead; these have been published by Lepsius and
Lacau. The above-mentioned nucleus, combined with other
chapters of more recent origin, is found in the papyri of the
XVIIIth-XXth Dynasties, and forms the so-called Theban
recension, which has been edited by Naville inan important work.
Here already more or less rigid groups of chapters may be noted,
but individual manuscripts differ greatly in what they include
and exclude. In the Saite period a sort of standard edition was
drawn up, consisting of 165 chapters in a fixed order and with a
common title " the book of going forth in the day "; this recen-
sion was published by Lepsius in 1842 from a Turin papyrus.
Like the Pyramid texts, the Book of the Dead served a funerary
purpose, but its contents are far more heterogeneous; besides
chapters enabling the dead man to assume what shape he will,
or to issue triumphant from the last judgment, there are lists
II NT RELIGION]
EGYPT
49
of gates to be passed and demons to be encountered in the
nether world, formulae such as are inscribed on sepulchral figures
and amulets, and even hymns to the sun-god. These texts are
for the most pan excessively corrupt, and despite the transla-
tions of Pierrei, Renouf and Budge, much labour must yet
be expended upon them before they can rank as a first-rate
tource.
(<) The texts of the Tombs of Ike Kings at Thebes (XVIllih-
\ \ i h Dyn.) consist of a series of theological books compiled
at an uncertain date; they have been edited by Naville and
Lcfebure. The chief of these, extant in a longer and a shorter
version, is called The book of that which is in the Nether World
(familiarly known as the Am Dual) and deals with the journey
of the sun during the twelve hours of the night. The Book of
Gates treats of the same topic from a more theological stand-
point. The LUanies of the Sun contain the acclamations with
which the sun-god Re was greeted, when at eventide his bark
reached the entrance of the nether world. Another treatise
relates the destruction of mankind, and the circumstances that
led to the creation of the heavens in the form of a cow.
(ft Among the later religious books one or two deserve a
special mention, such as The Overthrowing of Apophis, the serpent
enemy of the sun-god; The Lamentations of I sis and Nephthys
over their murdered brother Osiris; The Book of Breathings, a
favourite book among the later Theban priests. Several of these
books were used in the ritual of feast days, but all have received
a secondary funerary employment, and are therefore found buried
with the dead in their tombs.
(e) The Ritual texts have survived only in copies not earlier
than the New Kingdom. The temple ritual employed in the
daily cult is illustrated by the scenes depicted on the inner walls
of the great temples: the formulae recited during the perform-
ance of the ceremonies are recorded at length in the temple of
Seti I. (XlXth Dyn.) at Abydos, as well as in some later papyri
in Berlin. The whole material has been collected and studied
by Moret. The funerary ritual is known from texts in the Theban
tombs (XVIIIth-XXth Dyn.) and papyri and sarcophagi of
later date; older versions are contained in the Pyramid texts
and The Book of the Dead. Schiaparelli has done much towards
gathering together this scattered material. The ritual observed
during the process of embalmment is preserved in late papyri in
Paris and Cairo published by Maspero.
(/) The magical documents have been comparatively little
studied, in spite of their great interest. They deal for the most
pan with the hearing of diseases, the bites of snakes and scorpions,
4c., but incidentally cast many sidelights on the mythology and
superstitious beliefs. The best-known of these books is the
Papyrus Harris published by F. J. Chabas, but other papyri of
as great or greater importance are to be found in the Leiden,
Turin and other collections. A curious book published by
'A. Erman contains spells to be used by mothers for the protection
of their children. A papyrus in London contains a calendar of
lucky and unlucky days. A late class of stelae, of which the best
specimen has been published by Golenischeff , consists of spells of
various kinds originally intended for the use -of the living, but
later employed for funerary purposes.
(g) Under the beading Miscellaneous we must mention a
number of sources of great value: the grave-stones, or stelae,
especially those from Abydos, which throw much light on funerary
beliefs; the great Papyrus Harris, the longest of all papyri,
which enumerates the gifts of Rameses III. (XXth Dyn.) to
the various temples of Egypt; the hymns to the gods preserved
in Cairo and Leiden papyri; and the inscriptions of the Ptolemaic
temples (Dendera, Edfu, &c.), which teem with good religious
material. Nor can any attempt here be made to summarize
the remaining native Egyptian sources, literary and archaeo-
logical, that deserve notice.
(A) Among the classical writers, Plutarch in his treatise
Contenting Itis and Otiris is the most important. Diodorus also
is useful. Herodotus, owing to his religious awe and dread of
divulging sacred mysteries, is only a second-rate source.
3. The Cods. The end of the pre-dynastic period, in which
we dimly descry a number of independent tribes in constant
warfare with one another, was marked by the rise of a united
Egyptian state with a single Pharaonic ruler at its head. The
era of peace thus inaugurated brought with it a rapid progress
in all branches of civilization; and there soon emerged not only
a national art and a condition of material prosperity shared by
the entire land in common, but also a state religion, which
gathered up the ancient tribal cults and floating cosmical
conceptions, and combining them as best it could, imposed
them on the people as a whole. By the time that the Pyramid
texts were put into writing, doubtless long before the Vth
Dynasty, this religion had assumed a stereotyped appearance
that clung to it for ever afterwards. ( But the multitude of the
deities and the variety of the myths that it strove to incorporate
prevented the development of a uniform theological system,
and the heterogeneous origin of the religion remained irretrievably
stamped upon its face. Written records were few at the time
when the pantheon was built up, so that the process of construc-
tion cannot be followed historically from stage to stage; but
it is possible by arguing backwards from the later facts to discern
the main tendencies at work, and the principal elementary cults
that served as the materials.
The gods of the pre-dynastic period may be divided into two
chief groups, the tribal or local divinities and the cosmic or
explanatory deities. At the beginning each tribe had cimin-
its own particular god, who in essence was nothing cation of
but the articulate expression of the inner cohesion and
of the outward independence of the tribe itself, but
who outwardly manifested himself in the form of some
animal or took up his abode in some fetish of wood or stone.
In times of peace this visible emblem of the god's presence
was housed in a rude shrine, but in war-time it was taken thence
and carried into the battlefield on a standard. We find such
divine standards T often depicted on the earliest monuments,
and among the symbols placed upon them may be detected the
images of many deities destined to play an important part in the
later national pantheon, such as the falcon Horus J&. , the wolf
Wepwawet (Ophois) "fts < tne goddess Neith 3^> symbolized
by a shield transfixed with arrows, and the god Min s vp , the
nature of whose fetish is obscure. In course of time the tribes
became localized in particular districts, under the influence of a
growing central authority, and their gods then passed from tribal
into local deities. Hence it came about that the provincial
districts or nomes, as they were called, often derived their names
from the gods of tribes that settled in them, these names being
hieroglyphically written with the sign for " district " surmounted
by standards of the type above described, e.g. ,d~\> " tne nome
of the dog Anubis," the lyth or Cynopolite nome of Upper
Egypt. In this way a large number of deities came to enjoy
special reverence in restricted territories, e.g. the ram
Khnum in Elephantine, the jerboa or okapi (?) jtvl Seth in
Ombos, the ibis ^fe Thoth in Hermopolis Magna, and of the
gods named above, Horus in Hieraconpolis, Wepwawet in Assiut,
Neith in Sais, and Min in Coptos. As towns and villages gradu-
ally sprang up, they too adopted as their patron some one or
other of the original tribal gods, so that these came to have
different seats of worship all over Egypt. For this reason it is
often hard to tell where the primitive cult-centre of a particular
deity is to be sought; thus Horus seems equally at home both
at Buto in the Delta and at Hieraconpolis in Upper Egypt,
and the earliest worship of Seth appears to have been claimed
no less by Tanis in the north than by Ombos in the south. The
effect of the localization of gods in many different places was to
give them a double aspect; so, for instance, Khnum the god of
Elephantine could in one minute be regarded as identical with
EGYPT
[ANCIENT RELIGION
Khnum the god of Esna, while in the next minute and without
any conscious sense of contradiction the two might be looked
upon as entirely separate beings. In order that there might be
no ambiguity as to what divinity was meant, it became usual,
in speaking of any local deity, to specify the place of which he
was " lord." The tendency to create new forms of a god by
instituting his worship in new local centres persisted through-
out the whole course of Egyptian history, unhindered by the
opposite tendency which made national out of local gods. Some
of the cosmic gods, like the sun-god Re of Heliopolis and of
Hermonthis, early acquired a local in addition to their cosmic
aspect.
In the innermost principle of their existence, as patrons and
protectors of restricted communities, the primitive tribal gods
did not differ from one another. But externally they were dis-
tinguishable by the various shapes that their worshippers ascribed
to them; and there can be little doubt that even in the beginning
each had his own special attributes and particular mythical
traits. These, however, may have borne little resemblance to
the later conceptions of the same gods with which we are made
familiar by the Pyramid texts. Thus we have no means of
ascertaining what the earliest people of Sais thought about their
goddess Neith, though her fetish would seem to point to her
warlike nature. Nor are we much wiser in respect of those
primitive tribal gods that are represented on the oldest monu-
ments in animal form. For though we may be sure that the shape
of an animal was that in which these gods were literally visible
to their worshippers, yet it is impossible to tell whether some
one living animal was chosen to be the earthly tenement of the
deity, or whether he revealed himself in every individual of a
species, or whether merely the cult-image was roughly hewn into
the shape of an animal. Not too much weight must be attached
to later evidence on this point; for the New Kingdom and still
more the Graeco- Roman period witnessed a strange recrudescence
of supposed primitive cults, to which they gave a form that may
or may not have been historically exact. In some places whole
classes of animals came to be deemed sacred. Thus at Bubastis,
where the cat-headed Bast (Ubasti) was worshipped, vast ceme-
teries of mummified cats have been found; and elsewhere
similar funerary cults were accorded to crocodiles, lizards, ibises
and many other animals. In Elephantine Khnum was supposed
to become incarnate in a ram, at whose death the divinity left
him and took up his abode in another. So too the bull of Apis
(a black animal with white spots) was during its lifetime regarded
as a reincarnation of Ptah, the local god of Memphis, and similarly
the Mnevis and Bacis bulls were accounted to be " the living
souls " of Etom of Heliopolis and of Re of Hermonthis respec-
tively; these latter cults are certainly secondary, for Ptah
himself was never, either early or late, depicted otherwise than
in human form, as a mummy or as a dwarf; and Etom and Re
are but different names of the sun-god. The form of a snake,
attributed to many local goddesses, especially in later times
(e.g. Meresger of the Theban necropolis), was borrowed from
the very ancient deity Outo (Buto); the semblance of a snake
became so characteristic of female divinities that even the
word " goddess " was written with the hieroglyph of a snake.
Other animal shapes particularly affected by goddesses were
those of a lioness (Sakhmi, Pakhe) or a cow (Hathor, Isis). The
primitive animal gods are not to be confused with the animal
forms ascribed to many cosmic deities; thus when the sun-god
Re was pictured as a scarabaeus, or dung-beetle, rolling its ball
of dung behind it, this was certainly mere poetical imagery.
Or else a cosmic god might assume an animal shape through
assimilation with some tribal god, as when Re was identified
with Horus and therefore depicted as a falcon.
With the advance of civilization and the transformation of the
tribal gods into national divinities, the beliefs held about them
must have become less crude. At a very early date the anthropo-
morphizing tendency caused the animal deities to be represented
with human bodies, though as a rule they retained their animal
heads; so in the case of Seth as early as the Ilnd Dynasty.
The other gods carry their primitive fetishes in their hands (like
Neith, who is depicted holding arrows) or on their heads (so
Nefertem [Iphthimis] with his lotus-flower). At the same time
the gods began to acquire human personalities. In a few
instances this may have come about by the emphasizing of a
really primitive trait; as when the wolf Ophois, in consonance
with the predatory nature of that animal, developed into a
god of war. In other cases the transitional steps are shrouded
in mystery; we do not know, for example, why the ibis Thoth
subsequently became the patron of the fine arts, the inventor
of writing, and the scribe of the gods. But the main factor in
this evolutionary process was undoubtedly the formation of
myths, which brought gods of independent origin into relation
with one another, and thus imbued them with human passions
and virtues. Here dim historic recollections often determined
the features of the story, and in one famous legend that knits
together a group of gods all seemingly local in origin we can
still faintly trace how the tale arose, was added to, and finally
crystallized in a coherent form.
Osiris was a wise and beneficent king, who reclaimed the
Egyptians from savagery, gave them laws and taught them handi-
crafts. The prosperous reign of Osiris was brought to a premature
close by the machinations of his wicked brother Seth, who with
seventy-two fellow-conspirators invited him to a banquet, in-
duced him to enter a cunningly-wrought coffin made exactly to
his measure, then shut down the lid and cast the chest into the
Nile. Isis, the faithful wife of Osiris, set forth in search of her
dead husband's body, and after long and adventure-fraught
wanderings, succeeded in recovering it and bringing it back
to Egypt. Then while she was absent visiting her son Horus
in the city of Buto, Seth once more gained possession of the
corpse, cut it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them all over
Egypt. But Isis collected the fragments, and wherever one was
found, buried it with due honour; or, according to a different
account, she joined the limbs together by virtue of her magical
powers, and the slain Osiris, thus resurrected, henceforth reigned
as king of the dead in the nether world. When Horus grew
up he set out to avenge his father's murder, and after terrible
struggles finally conquered and dispossessed his wicked uncle;
or, as another version relates, the combatants were separated by
Thoth, and Egypt divided between them, the northern part
falling to Horus and the southern to Seth. Such is the story
as told by Plutarch, with certain additions and modifications
from older native sources. There existed, however, a very ancient
tradition according to which Horus and Seth were hostile brothers,
not nephew and uncle; and many considerations may be urged
in support of the thesis which regards their struggles as reminis-
cences of wars between two prominent tribes or confederations
of tribes, one of which worshipped the falcon Horus while the
other had the okapi (?) Seth as its patron and champion. The
Horus-tribes were the victors, and it was from them that the
dynastic line sprang; hence the Pharaoh always bore the name'
of Horus, and represented in his own hallowed person the ancient
tribal deity. Of Osiris we can only state that he was originally
the local god of Busiris, whatever further characteristics he
primitively possessed being quite obscure. Isis was perhaps the
local goddess of Buto, a town not far distant from Busiris;
this geographical proximity would suffice to explain her con-
nexion with Osiris in the tale. A legend now arose, we know
not how or why, which made Seth the brother and murderer of
Osiris; and this led to a fusion of the Horus-Seth and the Seth-
Isis-Osiris motifs. The relationships had now to be readjusted,
and the most popular view recognized Horus as the son and
avenger of Osiris. The more ancient account survived, however,
in the myth that Osiris, Horus, Seth, Isis and Nephthys (a
goddess who plays but a minor part in the Osiris cycle) were all
children of the earth-god Keb and the sky-goddess Nut, born on
the five consecutive days added on at the end of the year (the
so-called epagomenal days). Later generations reconciled these
contradictions by assuming the existence of two Horuses, one,
the brother of Osiris, Seth and Isis, being named Haroeris, i.e.
Horus the elder, while the other, the child of Isis and Osiris, was
called Harpocrates, i.e. Horus the child.
ANCIENT RELIGION]
EGYPT
The second main dais of divinities that entered into the
composition of the Egyptian pantheon was due to that innate
and universal speculative bent which seeks, and never
fails to find, an explanation of the facts of the external
world. Behind the great natural phenomena that they
perceived all around them, the Egyptians, like other primitive
folk, postulated the existence of divine wills not dissimilar
in kind to their own, though vastly superior in power. Chief
among these cosmic deities was the sun-god Re, whose supremacy
seemed predestined under the cloudless sky of Egypt. The
oldest conceptions represented Re as sailing across the heavens
in a ship called " Manzet," " the bark of the dawn "; at sunset
he stepped aboard another vessel named " Mesenktet," " the
bark of the dusk," which bore him back from west to east
during the night. Later theories symbolized Re in many
different ways. For some he was identical with Horus, and then
he was falcon-headed and was called Hor-akhti, the Horus of
the horizons. Others pictured him to themselves as a tiny
infant in the early dawn, as full-grown at noon, and as an infirm
old man in the evening. When the sky was imagined as a cow,
be was a calf born anew every morning. The moon was a male
deity, who likewise fared across the heavens in a boat; hence
he was often named Chons, " the sailor." The ibis-god Thoth
was early identified with the moon. The stars and planets
were likewise gods. Among them the bright star Sirius was
held in special esteem; it was a goddess Sothis (Sopde), often
identified by the Egyptians with Isis. The constellations that
seemed unceasingly to speed across the sky were named " the
never-resting ones," and the circumpolar stars, which never
sink beneath the horizon, were known as " the imperishable*."
Concerning earth and sky there were many different opinions.
Some thought that the sky was a goddess Nut, whom the god
Show held aloof from her husband Keb the earth, on whose back
the plants and trees grew. Others believed in a celestial ocean,
personified under the name of Nun, over which the heavenly
bodies sailed in boats. At a later date the sky was held to be a
cow (Hathor) whose four feet stood firm upon the soil; or else
a vast face, in which the right eye was the sun and the left eye
the moon. Alongside these fanciful conceptions there existed
a more sober view, according to which the earth was a long
oval plain, and the sky an iron roof supported by the tops of
mountains or by four pillars I I at the cardinal points.
Beneath the ground lay a dark and mysterious region, now con-
ceived as an inverse heaven (Nenet), now as a vast series of
caverns whose gates were guarded by demons. This nether
world was known as the Duat (Dat, Ti-i), and through it passed
the sun on his journey during the hours of night; here too, as
many thought, dwelt the dead and their king Osiris. That great
natural feature of Egypt, the Nile, was of course one of the gods;
his name was Hapi, and as a sign of his fecundity he had long
pendulous breasts like a woman. In contradistinction to the
tribal gods, it rarely happened that the cosmic deities enjoyed
a cult. But there are a few important exceptions: Re in
Heliopolis (here identified with a local god Etom) and in Her-
monthb; Hathor at Dendera and elsewhere. Certain of the
tribal gods early became identified with cosmic divinities, and
the latter thus became the objects of a cult; so, for instance,
the Horns of Edfu was a sun-god, and Thoth in Hermopolis
Magna was held to be the moon.
An extension of the principle that created the cosmic gods
gave rise to a large number of minor deities and demons. Day
and night, the year, the seasons, eternity, and many
similar conceptions were each represented by a god
or goddess of their own, who nevertheless possessed
but a shadowy and doubtful existence. Human
attributes like Taste, Knowledge, Joy and so forth were likewise
personified, no less than abstract ideas such as Fate, Destiny
and others; rather more dearly defined than the rest was Maat,
the goddess of Truth and Right , who was fabled to be the daughter
o( Re and may even have had a cult. Certain gods were purely
functional, that is to say, they appeared at special times to
perform some appointed task, at the completion of which they
vanished. Such were Nepri, the god of the corn-harvest;
Meskhonit, the goddess who attended every child-bed; Tail, the
goddess of weaving. Numberless semi-divine beings had no
other purpose than to fill out the myths, as, for instance, the
chattering apes that greeted the sun-god Re as he rose above
the eastern horizon, and the demons who opened the gates of
the nether world at the approach of the setting sun.
We take this opportunity of mentioning sundry other divinities
who were later introduced to swell the already overcrowded
ranks of the paiHheon. Contact with foreign lands
brought with it several new deities, Baal, Anat and
Resheph from Syria, and the misshapen dwarf Bes
from the south; earlier than these, the Astarte of Byblus,
whom the Egyptians identified with Hathor. In Thebes Ameno-
phis I. and his spouse Nefertari were worshipped as patron gods
of the necropolis many centuries after their death. Two men of
exceptional wisdom received divine honours, and had temples
of their own in the Ptolemaic period; these were Imouthes,
who had lived under Zoser of the IHrd Dynasty, and Amenophis
son of Hapu, a contemporary of the third king of the same name
(XVIIIth Dyn.). The hill of Sheikh Abd-el-gurna at Thebes
was looked upon as a particularly holy place, and was revered
as a goddess. Almost anything that was regarded with awe,
any object used in the divine ritual could at a given moment
be envisaged as a deity. Thus the boat of Osiris (Neshemet)
and those of the sun-god were goddesses; and various wands
and sceptres belonging to certain gods were imagined as harbour-
ing the divine being. Truly it might have been said in ancient
Egypt: of the making of gods there is no end !
For such order as can be discerned in the mythological con-
ceptions of the Egyptians the priesthood was largely responsible.
At a very early date the theological school of Heliopolis
undertook the task of systematizing the gods and the
myths, and it is mainly to them that is due the Egyptian
religion as we find it in the Pyramid texts. Their in-
fluence is particularly conspicuous in the prominent place accorded
to the sun-god Re, and in the creation-legend that made him the
father of gods and men. First of all living things was Re;
legend told how he arose as a naked babe from a lotus-flower
that floated on the primeval ocean Nun. Others held the view
that he crept from an egg that lay on a hill in the midst of a lake
called Desdes; and a third, more barbarous, tale related his
obscene act of self-procreation. Re became the father of the
pair of gods Show and Tefnut (Tphenis), who emanated from
his spittle. They again gave birth to Keb and Nut, from whom
in their turn sprang Osiris and Seth, Isis and Nephthys. These
nine gods were together known as the great Ennead or cycle of
nine. A second series of nine deities, with Horus as its first
member, was invented at the same time or not long afterwards,
and was called the Lesser Ennead. In later times the theory of
the Ennead became very popular and was adopted by most of
the local priesthoods, who substituted their own favourite god
for Re, sometimes retaining and sometimes changing the names
of the other eight deities. Thus locally many different gods
came to be viewed as the creators of the world. Only in two
instances, however, did a local god ever obtain wide acceptance
in the capacity of demiurge: 1'tah of Memphis, who was famed
as an artist and master-builder, and Khnum of Elephantine,
who was said to have moulded mankind on the potter's wheel.
Already in the Pyramid texts the importance of Osiris almost
rivals that of Re. His worship does not seem to have been due
to Heliopolitan influence, and may possibly have been propagated
by active missionary effort. It is apparently through the funeral
cult that Osiris so early took a firm hold on the imagination of
the people; for at a very ancient date he was identified with
every dead king, and it needed but a slight extension of this idea
to make him into a king of the dead. In later times the moral
aspect of his tale was doubtless the main cause of its continued
popularity; Osiris was named Onnophris, "the good Being"
par excellence, and Seth was contrasted with him as the author
and the root of all evil. Still the Egyptians themselves seem
EGYPT
[ANCIENT RELIGION
to have been somewhat at a loss to account for the great venera-
tion that they paid to Osiris. Successive theories interpreted
him as the god of the earth, as the god of the Nile, as a god of
vegetation, as a moon-god and as a sun-god; and nearly every
one of these theories has been claimed to be the primitive truth
by some scholar or another.
Nowhere is the conservatism of the Egyptians more clearly
displayed than in the tenacity with which they clung to the
old forms of the theology, such as we have essayed to describe.
Neither the influx of new deities nor the diligence of the priestly
authors and commentators availed to break down the cast-iron
traditions with which the compilers of the Pyramid texts were
already familiar. It is true that with the displacement of the
capital town certain local deities attained a degree of power
that, superficially regarded, seems to alter the entire perspective
of the religion. Thus Ammon, originally the obscure local god
of Thebes, was raised by the Theban monarchs of the Xllth
and of the XVIIIth to XXIst Dynasties to a predominant
position never equalled by any other divinity; and, by similar
means, Suchos of the Fayum, Ubasti of Bubastis, and Neith of
Sais, each enjoyed for a short space of time a consideration that
no other cause would have secured to them. But precisely the
example of Ammon proves the hopelessness of any attempt to
change the time-honoured religious creed; his priests identified
him with the sun-god Re, whose cult-centre was thus merely
transferred a few hundred miles to the South. Nor could even
the violent religious revolution of Akhenaton (Amenophis IV.),
of which we shall later have occasion to speak, sweep away for
ever beliefs that had persisted for so many generations.
But if the facts of the religion, broadly viewed, never under-
went a change, the interpretation of those facts did so in no
small degree. The religious books were for the most part written
in archaic language, which was only imperfectly understood by
the priests of later times; and hence great scope was given to
them to exercise their ingenuity as commentators. By the time
of the XVIIIth Dynasty some early chapters of the Book of
the Dead had been provided with a triple commentary. Un-
fortunately the methods pursued were as little reasonable as
those adopted by the medieval Jewish Rabbis; instead of the
context being studied as a whole, with a view to the recovery of
its literal sense, each single verse was considered separately,
and explained as an allusion to some obscure myth or as em-
bodying some mystical meaning. Thus so far from simplifying or
really elucidating the religion, these priestly labours tended rather
to confuse one legend with another and to efface the personality
of individual gods. The ease with which one god could be
identified with another is perhaps the most striking characteristic
of later Egyptian theology. There are but few of the greater
deities who were not at some time or another identified with the
solar god Re. His fusion with Horus and Etom has already been
noted; further we find an Ammon-Re, a Sobk-Re, a Khnum-Re;
and Month, Onouris, Show and Osiris are all described as possess-
ing the attributes of the sun. Ptah was early assimilated to
the sepulchral gods Sokaris and Osiris. Pairs of deities whose
personalities are often blended or interchanged are Hathor and
Nut, Sakhmi and Pakhe, Seth and Apophis. So too in Abydos,
his later home, Osiris was identified with Khante-Amentiu
(Khentamenti, Khentamenthes), " the chief of those who are
in the West," a name that was given to a vaguely-conceived but
widely-venerated divinity ruler of the dead. Many factors helped
in the process of assimilation. The unity of the state was largely
influential in bringing about the suppression of local differences
of belief. The less important priesthoods were glad to enhance
the reputation of the deity they served by identifying him
with some more important god. And the mystical bent of the
Egyptians found satisfaction in the multiplicity of forms that
tfieir gods could assume; among the favourite epithets which
the hymns apply to divinities are such as "mysterious of shapes,"
"multiple of faces."
The goal towards which these tendencies verged was mono-
theism; and though this goal was only once, and then quite
ephemerally, reached, still the monotheistic idea was at most
periods, so to speak, in the air. Sometimes the qualities com-
mon to all the gods were abstracted, and the resultant notion
spoken of as " the god." At other times, and especially
in the hymns addressed to some divinity, all other
gods were momentarily forgotten, and he was eulogized tendency.
as " the only one," " the supreme," and so forth.
Or else several of the chief deities were consciously combined
and regarded as different emanations or aspects of a Sole Being;
thus a Ramesside hymn begins with the words " Three are all
the gods, Ammon, Re and Ptah," and then it is shown how these
three gods, each in his own particular way, gave expression and
effect to a single divine purpose.
For a brief period at the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty a real
monotheism, as exclusive as that of Judaism or of Islam, was
adopted as the state religion of Egypt. The young
Pharaoh Amenophis IV. seems to have been fired by * oa ea *~
genuine fanatical enthusiasm, though political motives,
as well as doctrinal considerations, may have prompted him in
the planning of his religious revolution (see also History).
The Theban god Ammon-Re was then supreme, and the ever-
growing power of his priesthood may well have inflamed the
jealousy of their Heliopolitan rivals. Amenophis began his reign
in Thebes as an adherent of the traditional faith, but after a
few years he abandoned that town and built a new capital for
his god Aton 200 m. farther north, at a place now called El
Amarna. The new deity was a personification of the sun's disk.
The name Re was suppressed, as too intimately associated with
that of Ammon; and Ammon, together with all the other gods,
was put to the ban. Amenophis even changed his own name,
of which the name of Ammon formed an element, to Akhenaton,
" the brilliancy of the Aton," and the capital was called Khitaton,
" The Horizon of the Aton." The new dogmas were known as
" the Teaching," and their tenets, as revealed in the poems
composed in honour of the Aton, breathe the purest and most
exalted monotheistic spirit. The movement had, no doubt, met
with serious opposition from the very start, and the reaction soon
set in. The immediate successors of Akhenaton strove to follow
in his footsteps, but the conservative nature of Egypt quickly
asserted itself. Not sixty years after the accession of Akhenaton,
his city was abandoned, its rulers branded as heretics, and the
old religion restored in Thebes as completely as if the Aton had
never existed.
Having thus failed to become rational, Egyptian theology
took refuge in learning. The need for a more spiritual and intel-
lectual interpretation of the pantheon still remained, and gave
rise to a number of theological sciences. The names of the gods
and the places of their worship were catalogued and classified,
and manuals were devoted to the topography of mythological
regions. Much ingenuity was expended on the development of a
history of the gods, the groundwork of which had been laid in
much earlier times. Re was not only the creator of the world,
but he was also the first king of Egypt. He was followed on the
throne by the other eight members of his Ennead, then by the
lesser Ennead and by other gods, and finally by the so-called
" worshippers of Horus." The latter were not wholly mythical
personages, though they were regarded as demigods (Manetho
calls them " the dead," vtnvts); they have been shown to be
none other than the dim rulers of the predynastic age. The
Pharaohs of the historic period were thus divine, not only by
virtue of their connexion with Horus (see above), but also as
descendants of Re; and the king of Egypt was called " the
good god " during his lifetime, and " the great god " after his
death. The later religious literature is much taken up with the
mythical and semi-mythical dynasties of kings, and the priests
compiled, with many newly-invented details, the chronicles of
the wars they were supposed to have waged.
In a similar manner, the ethical and allegorical methods of
interpretation came into much greater prominence towards the
end of the New Kingdom. The Osirian legend, as we have
already seen, was early accepted as symbolizing the conflict
between good and evil. So too the victories of Re over the serpent
named Apophis were more or less clearly understood as a simile of
ANCIENT RELIGION)
EGYPT
53
the antithetical nature of light and darkness. In one text at least
as ancient as the XVllIth Dynasty(the copy that we have dates
only from the Ethiopian period) an ingenious attempt
is made to represent Ptah as the source of all life:
from him, it is said, emanated Horus as " heart " or
" mind " and Thoth as " tongue," and through the
conjoint action of these two, the mind conceiving the design
and the tongue uttering the creative command, all gods and
men and beasts obtained their being. Of this kind of speculation
much more must have existed than has reached us. It is
doubtless such explanations as these that the Greeks had in
view when they praised the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians;
and in the classical period, similar semi-philosophical interpreta-
- altogether supplanted, among the learned at least, the naive
literal beliefs of earlier times. Plutarch in his treatise on Isis
and Osiris well exemplifies this standpoint: for him every god
and every rite is symbolic of some natural or moral truth.
The final stages of the Egyptian religion are marked by a
renewed popularity of all its more barbarous elements. Despair-
ing, as it would seem, of discovering the higher wisdom that the
more philosophic of the priests supposed that religion to conceal,
the simpler-minded sought to work out their own salvation by
restoring the worship of the gods to its most primitive forms.
Hence came the fanatical revival of animal-worship which led
to feud and bloodshed between neighbouring towns a feature of
Egyptian religion that at once amused and scandalized con-
temporary Greek and Latin authors (Plut. De Iside, 72; Juv. xv.
33). Nevertheless Egyptian cults, and particularly those of
Serapis and Isis, found welcome acceptance on European soil;
and the shrines of Egyptian deities were established in all the
great cities of the Roman Empire. Serapis was a god imported
by the first Ptolemy from Sinope on the Black Sea, who soon lost
his own identity by assimilation with Osiris-Apis, the bull revered
in Memphis. Far down into the Roman age the worship of Serapis
persisted and flourished, and it was only when the Serapeum of
Alexandria was razed to the ground by order of Theodosius the
Great (A.D. 391) that the death-blow of the old Egyptian religion
was struck.
' Notes are here added on some divinities who have received in-
adequate or no attention in the preceding pages. For information
as to Ammon, AnubU, Apis. Bes, Bubastis, Buto, Isis and Thoth,
reference must be made to the special articles on these gods.
AESAPHES, in Egyptian Hartkafe, " he who is upon his lake," the
ram-headed god of Heracleopolis Magna, gained an ephemeral
importance during the IXth Dynasty, which arose from his town.
Outwardly, be resembles Khnum. Little is known about him, and
he is seldom mentioned. The burial-place of his priests in later
time* was in 1904 discovered at Abusir el Meleq.
CHOXS, "he who travels -by boat," perhaps originally a mere
epithet of the moon-god loh or Thoth, is chiefly familiar as the third
member of the Thcban triad. As such he is represented as a youthful
god, wearing a skull-cap surmounted by the moon. His cult was
revived ana became popular in Ptolemaic times. A curious story
about the sending of his statue to Mesopotamia to heal a daughter
of the tone of Bakhtan is related upon a stele that purports to date
from the Kamesnde period : it has been proved to be a pious fraud
invented by the priests not earlier than the Greek period.
HATHOE, whose name means " house of Horus,' was at all times
a very important deity. She is depicted as a cow, or with a broad
human countenance, the cow's ears just showing from under a
massive wig. Probably at first a goddess of the sky, she is early
mentioned in connexion with Re. Later she was often identified
with las, and her name was used to designate foreign goddesses
like thaw of Pupni and Bybjus. Unlike most cosmic deities, she
was worshipped in many localities, chief among which was Dendera,
where her magnificent temple, of Ptolemaic date, still stands. " The
seven Hatbors " is a name given to certain fairies, who appeared
shortly after the birth of an infant, and predicted his future.
KIIM-M or KHNOUM, a ram-headed god, whose principal place of
worship was the island of Elephantine (there associated with Satis
and Anukis). but also revered elsewhere, e.g. together with Ncbtu
in Ema. He enjoyed great repute as a creator, and was supposed
to me the potter's wheel for the purpose. In this capacity he is
sometimes accompanied by the frog-headed goddess Hekct.
MOXTH, a hawk-beaded god of the Thebaid : in Thebes itself his
rult was superseded by that of Ammon. but it persisted in Her-
monthis. He was often given the solar attributes, and was credited
as a great warrior.
Mix, the god of Coptos and Panopolis (Akhmim), seems to have
been early looked upon as a deity of the harvest and crops. His
cult dates from the earliest times. Represented as ithyphallic, with
two tail plumes on his head, the right arm upraised and bearing a
scourge. In old times he is identified with Horus: later Ammon
was confused with him, and depicted in his image.
NECHBET (Nekhbi, Nekhebi), the vulture-goddess of El Kab,
called Eileithyia by the Greeks. She gained an ascendancy as
patroness of the south at the time when the two kingdoms were
striving for the mastery. It is as such, in opposition to Buto the
goddess of the north, that she is most often named on the monuments.
NBITH, the very ancient and important goddess of Sais, the Greek
Athene. On the earliest monuments she is represented by a shield
transfixed by arrows. Later she wears the crown of Lower Egypt,
and carries in her hands a bow and arrows, a sign of her warlike
character. In the XXVIth Dynasty, when a line of Pharaohs sprang
from Sais, she regained a prominent position, and was given many
cosmogonic attributes, including the title of mother of Re.
NEPHTHVS, the sister of Osiris and wife of Seth, daughter of Keb
and Nut, plays a considerable rdle in the Osiris story. She sided
with Isis and aided her to bring Osiris back to life. Isis and Nephthys
are often mentioned together as protectresses of the dead.
ONOURIS, Egyptian En-hurt, " sky-bearer," the god of Thinis.
Later identified with Shu (Show), who holds heaven and earth apart.
PTAH, the Hephaestus of the Greeks, a demiurgic and creative
god, special patron of hand-workers and artisans. Worshipped in
Mempnis, he perhaps owed his importance more to the political
prominence of that town than to anything else. He was early
identified with an ancient but obscure god Tenen, and further with
the sepulchral deity Sokaris. He is represented either as a closely
enshrouded figure whose protruding hands grasp a composite sceptre,
the whole standing on a pedestal within a shrine; or else as a
misshapen dwarf.
SAKHMI, a lion-headed goddess of war and strife, whose name
signifies the mighty. She was worshipped at Latopolis (Esna), but
also at a late date as a member of the Memphite triad, with Ptah
as hu-lianil and Nefertem (Iphthimis) as son : often, too, confounded
with Ubasti.
SETH (Egyptian Set, Stb or StS), by the Greeks called Typhon,
was depicted as an animal yvj that has been compared with the
jerboa by some, and with the okapi by others, but which the
Egyptians themselves occasionally conceived to be nothing but a
badly drawn ass. In historic times his cult was celebrated at Tanis
and Ombos. He regained a certain prestige as god of the Hyksos
rulers, and two Pharaohs of the XlXth Dynasty derived their name
Scthos (Seti) from him. But, generally speaking, he was abominated
as a power of evil, and his figure was often obliterated on the monu-
ments. He is named in similes as a great warrior, and as such and
" son of Nut " he is identified with the Syrian Baal.
4. The Divine Cult. In the midst of every town rose the
temple of the local god, a stately building of stone, strongly
contrasting with the mud and plaster houses in which even the
wealthiest Egyptians dwelt. It was called the " house of the god "
( | ' V and in it the deity was supposed to reside, attended
by his " servants " ( | y ) the priests. There was indeed a certain
justification for this contention, even when a contrary theory
assigned to the divinity a place in the sky, as in the case of the
lunar divinity Thoth; for in the inmost sanctuary stood a statue
of the god, which served as his representative for the purposes
of the cult. Originally each temple was dedicated to one god
only; but it early became usual to associate with him a mate of
the opposite sex, besides a third deity who might be represented
either as a second wife or as a child. As examples of such triads,
as they are called, may be mentioned that of Thebes, consisting
of Ammon, Mut and Chons, father, mother and child; and as
typical of the other kind, where a god was accompanied by two
goddesses, that of Elephantine, consisting of Khnum, Satis and
Anukis. The needs of the god were much the same as those
of mortals; no more than they could he dispense with food and
drink, clothes for his apparel, ointment for his limbs, and music
and dancing to rejoice his heart. The only difference was that
the divine statue was half-consciously recognized as a lifeless
thing that required carefully regulated rites and ceremonies to
enable it to enjoy the good things offered to it. Early every
morning the officiating priest proceeded to the holy of holies,
after the preliminaries of purification had cleansed him from
any miasma that might interfere with the efficacy of the rites.
Then with the prescribed gestures, and reciting appropriate
formulae all the while, he broke the seal upon the door of the
shrine, loosed the bolts, and at last stood lace to face with the
54
EGYPT
[ANCIENT RELIGION
god. There followed a series of prostrations and adorations,
culminating in the offering of a small image of Maat, the goddess
of Truth. This seems to have been the psychological moment
of the entire service: hitherto the statue had been at best a
god in posse; now the symbolical act placed him in possession
of all his faculties, he was a god in truth, and could participate
like any mortal in the food and luxuries jthat his servants put
before him. The daily ceremony closed with ablutions, anoint-
ings and a bountiful feast of bread, geese, beer and oxen; having
taken his fill of these, the god returned to his shrine until the
next morning, when the ritual was renewed. The words that
accompanied the manual gestures are, in the rituals that have
come down to us, wholly dominated by the myth of Osiris:
it is often hard to discern much connexion between the acts and
the formulae recited, but the main thought is clearly that the
priest represents Horus, the pious son of the dead divinity
Osiris. That this conception is very old is proved by the fact
that even in the Pyramid texts " the eye of Horus " is a synonym
for all offerings: an ancient tale of which only shreds have
reached us related how Seth had torn the eye of Horus from
him, though not before he himself had suffered a still more
serious mutilation; and by some means, we know not how, the
restoration of the eye was instrumental in bringing about the
vindication of Osiris. As to the manual rites of the daily cult,
all that can here be said is that incense, purifications and anoint-
ings with various oils played a large part ; the sacrifices consisted
chiefly of slaughtered oxen and geese; burnt offerings were a
very late innovation.
At an early date the rites practised hi the various temples
were conformed to a common pattern. This holds good not only
for the daily ritual, but also for many festivals that were cele-
brated on the same day throughout the whole length of the land.
Such were the calendrical feasts, called " the beginnings of the
seasons," and including, for example, the monthly and half-
monthly festivals, that of the New Year and that of the rising
of Sirius (Sothis). But there were also local feast days like that
of Neith in Sais (Hdt. ii. 62) or that of Ammon in southern Opi
(Luxor). These doubtless had a more individual character, and
often celebrated some incident supposed to have occurred in the
lifetime of the god. Sometimes, as in the case of the feast of
Osiris in Abydos, a veritable drama would be enacted, in which
the whole history of the god, his sufferings and final triumph
were represented in mimic form. At other times the ceremonial
was more mysterious and symbolical, as in the feast of the
**
raising of the Ded-column u when a column of the kind was
drawn by cords into an upright position. But the most common
feature of these holy days was the procession of the god, when he
was carried on the shoulders of the priests in his divine boat far
beyond the precincts of his temple; sometimes, indeed, even to
another town, where he paid a visit to the god of the place.
These occasions were public holidays, and passed amid great
rejoicings. The climax was reached when at a given moment
the curtains of the shrine placed on the boat were withdrawn,
and the god was revealed to the eyes of the awe-struck multitude.
Music and dancing formed part of the festival rites.
As with the rites and ceremonies, so also the temples were
early modelled upon a common type. Lofty enclosure walls,
Corned with scenes from the victorious campaigns
of the Pharaoh, shut off the sacred buildings from the
surrounding streets. A small gateway between two massive
towers or pylons gave admittance to a spacious forecourt open
to the sky, into which the people were allowed to enter at least on
feast days. Farther on, separated from the forecourt by smaller
though still massive pylons, lay a hypostyle hall, so called from
its covered colonnades; this hall was used for all kinds of
processions. Behind the hypostyle hall, to which a second
similar one might or might not be added, came the holy of holies,
a dark narrow chamber where the god dwelt; none but the
priests were admitted to it. All around lay the storehouses that
contained the treasures of the god and the appurtenances of the
divine ritual. The temples of the earliest times were of course
Temple*
far more primitive than this: from the pictures that are all that
is now left to indicate their nature, they seem to have been little
more than huts or sheds in which the image of the god was kept.
One temple of a type different from that above described has
survived at Abusir, where it has been excavated by German
explorers. It was a splendid edifice dedicated to the sun-god
Re by a king of the Vth Dynasty, and was probably a close
copy of the famous temple of Heliopolis. The most conspicuous
feature was a huge obelisk on a broad superstructure fl : the
CH
obelisk always remained closely connected with the solar worship,
and probably took the place of the innermost shrine and statue
of other temples. The greater part of the sanctuary was left
uncovered, as best befitted a dwelling-place of the sun. Outside
its walls there was a huge brick model of the solar bark in which
the god daily traversed the heavens.
As the power of the Pharaohs increased, the maintenance of
the cult became one of the most important affairs of state. The
most illustrious monarchs prided themselves no less on the build-
ings they raised in honour of the gods than on the successful
wars they waged: indeed the wars won a religious significance
through the gradual elevation of the god of the capital to god
of the nation, and a large part of the spoils was considered the
rightful perquisite of the latter. Countless were the riches that
the kings heaped upon the gods in the hope of being requited
with long life and prosperity on the throne of the living. It
became the theory that the temples were the gifts of the Pharaoh
to his fathers the gods, and therefore in the scenes of the cult
that adorn the inner walls it is always he who is depicted as
performing the ceremonies. As a matter of fact the priesthoods
were much .more independent than was allowed to
appear. Successive grants of land placed no small l ef ol
portion of the entire country in their hands, and the priests.
administration of the temple estates gave employment
to a large number of officials and serfs. In the New Kingdom
the might of the Theban god Ammon gradually became a serious
menace to the throne: hi the reign of Rameses III. he could
boast of more than 80,000 dependants, and more than 400,000
cattle. It is not surprising that a few generations later the high
priests of Ammon supplanted the Pharaohs altogether and
founded a dynasty of their own.
At no period did the priests form a caste that was quite
distinctly separated from the laity. In early times the feudal
lords were themselves the chief priests of the local temples.
Under them stood a number of subordinate priests, both pro-
fessional and lay. Among the former were the kher-heb, a
learned man entrusted with the copduct of the ceremonies, and
the " divine fathers," whose functions are obscure. The lay
priests were divided into four classes that undertook the manage-
ment of the temple in alternate months; their collective name
was the " hour-priesthood." Perhaps it was to them that the
often recurring title oueb, " the pure," should properly be
restricted, though strict rules as to personal purity, dress and
diet were demanded of all priests. The personnel of the temple
was completed by various subordinate officials, doorkeepers,
attendants and slaves. In the New Kingdom the leading priests
were more frequently mere clerics than theretofore, though for
instance the high priest of Ammon was often at the same time
the vizier of southern Egypt. In some places the highest priests
bore special names, such as the Otter maa, " the Great Seer,"
of Re in Heliopolis, or the Khorp himel, " chief artificer," of the
Memphite Ptah. Women could also hold priestly rank, though
apparently in early times only in the service of goddesses;
" priestess of Hathor " is a frequent title of well-born ladies in
the Old Kingdom. At a later date many wealthy dames held
the office of " musicians " (shemat) in the various temples.
In the service of the Theban Ammon two priestesses called " the
Adorer of the God " and the " Wife of the God " occupied very
influential positions, and towards the Sake period it was by no
means unusual for the king to secure these offices for his daughters
and so to strengthen his own royal title.
5. The Dead and their Cult. While the worship of the gods
ANCIENT RELIGION]
EGYPT
55
tended more and more to become a monoply of the state and
the priests, and provided no adequate outlet for the religious
cravings of the people themselves, this deficiency was amply
supplied by the care which they bestowed upon their dead:
the Egyptians stand alone among the nations of the world in
the elaborate precautions which they took to secure their own
welfare beyond the tomb. The belief in immortality, or perhaps
rather the incapacity to grasp the notion of complete annihilation,
is traceable from the very earliest times: the simplest graves
of the prehistoric period, when the corpses were committed to the
earth in sheepskins and reed mats, seldom lack at least a few
poor vases or articles of toilet for use in the hereafter. In
proportion as the prosperity of the land increased, and the
advance of civilization afforded the technical means, so did
these primitive burials give place to a more lavish funereal
equipment. Tombs of brick with a single chamber were suc-
ceeded by tombs of stone with several chambers, until they really
merited the name of " houses of eternity " that the Egyptians
gave to them. The conception of the tomb as the residence of
the dead is the fundamental notion that underlies all the ritual
observances in connexion with the dead, just as the idea of the
temple as the dwelling-place of the god is the basis of the divine
cult. The parallelism between the attitude of the Egyptians
towards the dead and their attitude towards the gods is so
striking that it ought never to be lost sight of: nothing can
illustrate it better than the manner in which the Osirian doctrines
came to permeate both kinds of cult.
The general scheme of Egyptian tombs remained the same
throughout the whole of the dynastic period, though there were
r,^ many variations of detail. By preference they were
built in the Western desert, the Amente, near the
place where the sun was seen to go to rest, and which seemed
the natural entrance to the nether world. A deep pit led down
to the sepulchral chamber where the dead man was deposited
amid the funereal furniture destined for his use; and no device
was neglected that might enable him to rest here undisturbed.
This aim is particularly conspicuous in the pyramids, the gigantic
tombs which the Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom constructed for
themselves: the passages that lead to the burial chamber were
barred at intervals by vast granite blocks, and the narrow
opening that gave access to them was hidden from view beneath
the stone casing of the pyramid sides. Quite separate from
this part of the tomb lay the rooms employed for the cult of
the dead: their walls were often adorned with pictures from the
earthly life of the deceased, which it was hoped he might still
continue to enjoy after death. The innermost chamber was the
chapel proper: on its western side was sculptured an imitation
door for the dead man to pass through, when he wished to
participate in the offerings brought by pious relatives. It was
of course only the few who could afford elaborate tombs of the
kind: the poor had to make shift with an unpretentious grave,
in which the corpse was placed enveloped only by a few rags or
endostd in a rough wooden coffin.
The utmost care was taken to preserve the body itself from
decay. Before the time of the Middle Kingdom it became usual
_ . . for the rich to have t their bodies embalmed. The
intestines were removed and placed in four vases (the
so-called Canopic jars) in which they were supposed to
enjoy the protection of the four sons of Horus, the
hheaded Mesti, the ape-headed Hapi, the jackal Duamutef
and the falcon Kebhsenuf. The corpse was treated with natron
and asphalt, and wound in a copious swathing of linen bandage,
with a mask of linen and stucco on the face. The " mummy "
thus prepared was then laid on its side like a sleeper, the head
supported by a head-rest, in a sarcophagus of wood or stone.
The operations in connexion with the mummy grow more and
more elaborate towards the end of the Pharaonic period:
already in the New Kingdom the wealthiest persons had their
mummies laid in several coffins, each of which was gaudily
painted with mythological scenes and inscriptions. The costliest
process of embalmment lasted no less than seventy days. Many
superstitious rites had to be observed in the course of the process:
a late book has preserved to us the magical formulae that were
repeated by the wise kher-heb priest (who in the necropolis
per/ormed the functions of taricheutes, "embalmer"), as each
bandage was applied.
A large number of utensils, articles of furniture and the like
were placed in the burial-chamber for the use of the dead jars,
weapons, mirrors, and even chairs, musical instruments and wigs.
In the early times statuettes of servants, representing them as
engaged in their various functions (brewers, bakers, &c.), were
included for the same purpose; they were supposed to perform
their menial functions for their deceased lord in the future life.
In the Middle Kingdom these are gradually replaced by small
models of the mummy itself, and the belief arose that when their
owner was called upon to perform any distasteful work in the
nether world, they would answer to his name and do the task
for him. The later ushebti-figures, little statuettes of wood,
stone or faience, of which several hundreds are often found in a
single tomb, are confused survivals of both of the earlier classes
of statuettes. Still more important than all such funereal
objects are the books that were placed in the grave for the use
of the dead: in the pyramids they are written on the walls of
the sepulchral chamber and the passages leading to it; in the
Middle Kingdom usually inscribed on the inner sides of the
sarcophagus; in later times contained in rolls of papyrus.
The Pyramid texts and the Book of the Dead are the most im-
portant of these, and teach us much about the dangers and
needs that attended the dead man beyond the tomb, and
about the manner in which it was thought they could be
counteracted.
The burial ceremony itself must have been an imposing
spectacle. In many cases the mummy had to be conveyed across
the Nile, and boats were gaily decked out for this purpose.
On the western bank a stately procession conducted the deceased
to his last resting-place. At the door of the tomb the final
ceremonies were performed; they demanded a considerable
number of actors, chief among whom were the f-priest and the
kher-heb priest. It was a veritable drama that was here enacted,
and recalled in its incidents the story of Osiris, the divine proto-
type of all successive generations of the Egyptian dead.
However carefully the preliminary rites of embalmment and
burial might have been performed, however sumptuous the
tomb wherein the dead man reposed, he was never-
theless almost entirely at the mercy of the living for
his welfare in the other world: he was as dependent on a con-
tinued cult on the part of the surviving members of his family
as the gods were dependent on the constant attendance of their
priests. That portion of a man's individuality which required,
even after death, food and drink, and the satisfaction of sensuous
needs, was called by the Egyptians the ka, and represented in
hieroglyphs by the uplifted hands J_J. This ka was supposed
to be born together with the person to whom it belonged, and
on the very rare occasions when it is depicted, wears his exact
semblance. The conception of this psychical entity is too vaguely
formulated by the Egyptians and too foreign to modern thought
to admit of exact translation: of the many renderings that
have been proposed, perhaps " double " is the most suitable.
At all events the ka has to be distinguished from the soul, the bai
(in hierogl vphs^v or >\ ), which was of more tangible nature,
and might be descried hovering around the tomb in the form of a
bird or in some other shape; for it was thought that the soul
might assume what shape it would, if the funerary rites had been
duly attended to. The gods had their ka and bai, and the forms
attributed to the latter are surprising; thus we read that the
soul of the sky Nun is Re, that of Osiris the Goat of Mendes,
the souls of Sobk are crocodiles, and those " of all the gods are
snakes "; similarly the soul of Ptah was thought to dwell in the
Apis bull, so that each successive Apis was during its lifetime
the reincarnation of the god. Other parts of a man's being to
which at given moments and in particular contexts the Egyptians
assigned a certain degree of separate existence are the " name "
EGYPT
[ANCIENT RELIGION
ran, the " shadow " T **, khaibet, and the " corpse "
, khat.
It was, however, the ka alone to which the cult of the dead
was directly addressed. This cult was a positive duty binding
on the children of a dead man, and doubtless as a rule discharged
by them with some regularity and conscientiousness; at least,
on feast-days offerings would be brought to the tomb, and the
ceremonies of purification and opening the mouth of the deceased
would be enacted. But there could be little guarantee that later
generations would perpetuate the cult. It therefore became
usual under the Old Kingdom for the wealthiest persons to make
testamentary dispositions by which certain other persons agreed
for a consideration to observe the required rites at stated periods:
they received the name of " servants of the ka," and stood in the
same relation to the deceased as the priests to the gods. Or
again, contracts might be made with a neighbouring temple, the
priesthood of which bound itself to reserve for the contracting
party some portion of the offerings that had already been used
for the divine cult. .There is probably a superstitious reason
for the preference shown by the dead for offerings of this kind;
no wish is commoner than that one may receive " bread and beer
that had gone up on to the altar of the local god," or " with
which the god had been sated "; something of the divine sanctity
still clung about such offerings and made them particularly
desirable. In spite of all the precautions they took and the
contracts they made, the Egyptians could never quite rid them-
selves of the dread that their tombs might decay and their cult
be neglected; and they sought therefore to obtain by prayers
and threats what they feared they might lose altogether. The
occasional visitor to the tomb is reminded by its inscriptions of
the many virtues of the dead man while he yet lived, and is
charged, if he be come with empty hands, at least to pronounce
the funerary formula; it will indeed cost him nothing but " the
breath of his mouth"! Against the would-be desecrator the
wrath of the gods is invoked: " with him shall the great god
reckon there where a reckoning is made."
The funerary customs that have been described are meaning-
less except on the supposition that the tomb was the regular
dwelling-place of the dead. But just as the Egyptians found no
contradiction between the view of the temple as the residence
of the god and the conception of him as a cosmic deity, so
too they often attributed to the dead a continued existence
quite apart from the tomb. According to a widely-spread
doctrine of great age the deceased Egyptian was translated to
the heavens, where he lived on in the form of a star. This theme
is elaborated with great detail in the Pyramid texts, where it is
the dead king to whom this destiny is promised. It was perhaps
only a restricted aristocracy who could aspire to such high
honour: the <|\ ikh, or " glorified being," who has his place in
the sky seems often to hold an intermediate position between
the gods and the rank and file of the dead. But in a few early
passages the required qualification appears to be rather moral
integrity than exalted station. The life of the dead man in the
sky is variously envisaged in different texts: at one moment
he is spoken of as accompanying the sun-god in his celestial
bark, at another as a mighty king more powerful than Re
himself; the crudest fancy of all pictures him as a hunter who
catches the stars and gods, and cooks and eats them. According
to another conception that persisted in the imagination of the
Egyptians longer than any of the ideas just mentioned, the home
of the dead in the heavens was a fertile region not very different
form Egypt itself, intersected by canals and abounding in corn
and fruit; this place was called the Sokhet Earu or "field of
Reeds."
Even in the oldest texts these beliefs are blended inextricably
with the Osirian doctrines. It is not so much as king of the dead
that Osiris here appears, but every deceased Egyptian was
regarded as himself an Osiris, as having undergone all the
indignities inflicted upon the god, but finally triumphant over-
the powers of death and evil impersonated by Seth. This notion
became so popular, that beside it all other views of the dead sink
into insignificance; it permeates the funerary cult in all its
stages, and from the Middle Kingdom onwards the dead man is
regularly called " the Osiris so-and-so," just as though he were
completely identical with the god. One incident of the tale of
Osiris acquired a deep ethical meaning in connexion with the
dead. It was related how Seth had brought an accusation
against Osiris in the great judgment hall of Heliopolis, and how
the latter, helped by the skilful speaker Thoth, had emerged from
the ordeal acquitted and triumphant. The belief gradually grew
up that every dead man would have to face a similar trial before
he could be admitted to a life of bliss in the other world. A well-
known vignette in the Book of the Dead depicts the scene. In a
shrine sits Osiris, the ruler and judge of the dead, accompanied
by forty-two assessors; and before him stands the balance on
which the heart of the deceased man is to be weighed against
Truth; Thoth stands behind and registers the result. The
words that accompany this picture are still more remarkable :
they form a long negative confession, in which the dead man
declares that he has sinned neither against man nor against the
gods. Not all the sins named are equally heinous according to
modern conceptions; many of them deal with petty offences
against religious usages that seem to us but trifling. But it is
clear that by the time this chapter was penned it was believed
that no man could attain to happiness in the hereafter if he had
not been upright, just and charitable in his earthly existence.
The date at which these conceptions became general is not quite
certain, but it can hardly be later than the Middle Kingdom,
when the dead man has the epithet " justified " appended to his
name in the inscriptions of his tomb.
It was but a natural wish on the part of the Egyptians that
they should desire to place their tombs near the traditional
burying-place of Osiris. By the time of the Xllth Dynasty it
was thought that this lay in Abydos, the town where the kings
of the earliest times had been interred. But it was only in a few
cases that such a wish could be literally fulfilled. It therefore
became customary for those who possessed the means to dedicate
at least a tombstone in the neighbourhood of " the staircase of
the great god," as the sacred spot was called. And those who
had found occasion to visit Abydos in their lifetime took pleasure
in recalling the part that they had there taken in the ceremonies
of Osiris. Such pilgrims doubtless believed that the pious act
would stand to their credit when the day of death arrived.
6. Magic. Among the rites that were celebrated in the temples
or before the statues of the dead were many the mystical meaning
of which was but imperfectly understood, though their efficacy
was never doubted. Symbolical or imitative acts, accompanied
by spoken formulae of set form and obscure content, accom-
plished, by some peculiar virtues of their own, results that were
beyond the power of human hands and brain. The priests and
certain wise men were the depositaries of this mysterious but
highly useful art, that was called hik or " magic "; and one of
the chief differences between gods and men was the superior
degree in which the former were endowed with magical powers.
It was but natural that the Egyptians should wish to employ
magic for their own benefit or self -gratification, and since
religion put no veto on the practice so long as it was exercised
within legal bounds, it was put to a widespread use among them.
When magicians made figures of wax representing men whom
they desired to injure, this was of course an illegal act like any
other, and the law stepped in to prevent it: one papyrus that
has been preserved records the judicial proceedings taken in
such a case in connexion with the harem conspiracy against
Rameses III.
One of the chief purposes for which magic was employed was
to avert diseases. Among the Egyptians, as in other lands,
illnesses were supposed to be due to evil spirits or the ghosts of
dead men who had taken up their abode in the body of the
ufferer, and they could only be driven thence by charms and
spells. But out of these primitive notions arose a real medical
ANCIENT LANGUAGE]
EGYPT
57
science: when the ailment could be located and its nature
roughly determined, a more materialistic view was taken of it;
and many herbs and drugs that were originally used for some
superstitious reason, when once they had been found to be actually
effective, easily lost their magical significance and were looked
upon as natural specifics. It is extremely hard to draw any fixed
line in Egypt between magic and medicine; but it is curious to
note that simple ^'frmft and prescriptions were employed for
the more curable diseases, while magical formulae and amulets
are reserved for those that are harder to cope with, such as the
bites of snakes and the stings of scorpions.
The formulae recited for such purposes are not purely cabalistic,
though inasmuch as mystery is of the very essence of magic,
foreign words and outlandish names occur in them by preference.
Often the magician relates some mythical case where a god
had been afflicted with a disease similar to that of the patient,
but had finally recovered: a number of such tales were told of
Horus, who was usually healed by some device of his mother
Isis, she being accounted as a great enchantress. The mere
recitation of such similar cases with their happy issue was
supposed to be magically effective; for almost unlimited power
was supposed to be inherent in mere words. Often the demon is
directly invoked, and commanded to come forth. At other times
the gods are threatened with privations or even destruction if
they refuse to aid the magician: the Egyptians seem to have
found little impiety in such a use of the divine name, though
to us it would seem the utmost degree of profanity when, for
instance, a magician declares that if his spell prove ineffective,
he " will cast fire into Mendes and burn up Osiris."
The verbal spells were always accompanied by some manual
performance, the tying of magical knots or the preparation of an
amulet. In these acts particular significance was attached to
certain numbers: a sevenfold knot, for example, was more
efficacious than others. Often the formula was written on a
strip of rag or a scrap of papyrus and tied round the neck of
the person for whom it was intended. Beads and all kino's of
amulets could be infused with magical power so as to be potent
phylacteries to those who wore them.
In conclusion, it must be emphasized that in Egypt magic
stands in no contrast or opposition to religion, at least as long
as it was legitimately used. The religious rites and ceremonies
are full of it. When a pretence was made of opening, with an
iron instrument, the mouth of the divine statue, to the accom-
paniment of recited formulae, this can hardly be termed anything
but magic. Similarly, the potency attributed to iA6/t-figures
and the copies of the Book of the Dead deposited in the tombs
is magical in quality. What has been considered under this
heading, however, is the use that the same principles of magic
were put to by men in their own practical life and for their own
advantage.
AUTHOMTIES. An excellent list of books and articles on the
various topics connected with Egyptian Religion will be found in
H. O. Lange's article on the subject in P.O. Chantepie de la Saussaye,
Lekrbiuk der Relitionsgeschifhle (Tubingen, 1905), vol. i. pp. 172-
245. Among general works may be especially recommended A.
Kmua, Die ieypliscke Religion (Berlin. 1905); and chapters 2
and 3 in G. Maspero, Hiitmrc ancienne da peuptes de I'Orient, Its
ongimti, voL L (Paris, 1895). (A. H. G.)
D. Egyptian Language and Writing. Decipherment.
Jtbough attempts were made to read Egyptian hiero-
glyphs to far back as the i;th century, no promise of success
appeared untfl the discovery of the Rosetta stone in 1709
by the French engineers attached to Napoleon's expedition
to Egypt. This tablet was inscribed with three versions,
in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek, of a long decree of the
Egyptian priests in honour of Ptolemy V., Epiphanes and his
wife Cleopatra. The Greek and demotic versions were still
almost perfect, but most of the hieroglyphic text had been
broken away with the top of the tablet; portions of about half
of the lines remained, but no single line was complete. In 1802
D. Akerblad, a Swedish orientalist attached to the embassy
in Paris, identified the proper names of persons which occurred
in the demotic text, being guided to them by the position of
their equivalents in the Greek. These names, all of them foreign,
were written in an alphabet of a limited number of characters,
and were therefore analysed with comparative ease.
The hieroglyphic text upon the Rosetta stone was too frag-
mentary to furnish of itself the key to the decipherment. But the
study of this with the other scanty monuments and imperfect
copies of inscriptions that were available enabled the celebrated
physicist Thomas Young (1773-1829) to make a beginning.
In an article completed in 1819 and printed (over the initials
I. J.) in the supplement to the 4th, sth and 6th editions of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica (vol. iv., 1824), he published a brief
account of Egyptian research, with five plates containing the
" rudiments of an Egyptian vocabulary." It appears that Young
could place the hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek texts of the
Rosetta stone very correctly parallel; but he could not Accur-
ately break up the Egyptian sentences into words, much less
could he attribute to the words their proper sounds. Yet he
recognized correctly the names of Apis and Re, with many
groups for words such as " assembly," " good," " name," and
important signs such as those which distinguish feminine words.
In a bad copy of another monument he rightly guessed the royal
name of Berenice in its cartouche by the side of that of Ptolemy,
which was already known from its occurrence on the Rosetta
stone. He considered that these names must be written in
phonetic characters in the hieroglyphic as in demotic, but he
failed to analyse them correctly. It was clear, however, that
with more materials and perseverance such efforts after decipher-
ment must eventually succeed.
Meanwhile J. F. Champollion " le Jeune " (see CHAMPOLLION;
and Hartleben, Champollion, sein Leben und sein Werk, Berlin,
1906) had devoted his energies whole-heartedly since 1802,
when he was only eleven years old, to preparing himself for the
solution of the Egyptian problem, by wide linguistic and historical
studies, and above all by familiarizing himself with every scrap
of Egyptian writing which he could find. ByiSiShe made many
equations between the demotic and the hieroglyphic characters,
and was able to transcribe the demotic names of Ptolemy and
Cleopatra into hieroglyphics. At length, in January 1822, a
copy of the hieroglyphic inscription on the Bankes obelisk,
which had long been fruitlessly in the hands of Young, reached
the French savant. On the base of this obelisk was engraved
a Greek inscription in honour of Ptolemy Euergetes II. and
Cleopatra; of the two cartouches on the obelisk one was of
Ptolemy, the other was easily recognized as that of Cleopatra,
spelt nearly as in Champollion's experimental transcript of the
demotic name, only more fully. This discovery, and the recog-
nition of the name Alexander, gave fourteen alphabetic signs,
including homophones, with ascertained values. Starting from
these, by the beginning of September Champollion had analysed
a long series of Ptolemaic and Roman cartouches. His next
triumph was on the i4th of September, when he read the names
of the ancient Pharaohs Rameses and Tethmosis in some drawings
just arrived from Egypt, proving that his alphabetic characters
were employed, in conjunction with syllabic signs, for spelling
native names; this gave him the assurance that his discovery
touched the essential nature of the Egyptian writing and not
merely, as had been contended, a special cipher for the foreign
words which might be quite inapplicable to the rest of the
inscriptions. His progress continued unchecked, and before
the end of the year the connexion of ancient Egyptian and
Coptic was clearly established. Subsequently visits to the
museums of Italy and an expedition to Egypt in 1828-1829 fur-
nished Champollion with ample materials. The Precis du systtme
hieroglyphique (ist ed. 1823, 2nd ed. 1828) contained the philo-
logical results of his decipherments down to a certain point.
But his MS. collections were vast, and his illness after the
strenuous labours of the expedition and his early death in 1832
left all in confusion. The Grammaire Igyptienne and Diclionnaire
egyptien, edited from these MSS. by his brother, precious as
they were, must be a very imperfect register of the height of his
attainments. In his last years he was able to translate long
texts in hieroglyphic and in hieratic of the New Kingdom and
EGYPT
[ANCIENT LANGUAGE
of the later periods with some accuracy, and his comprehension
of demotic was considerable. Champollion outdistanced all his
competitors from the first, and had practically nothing to thank
them for except material to work on, and too often that had been
intentionally withheld from him. In eleven years he broke
ground in all directions; if the ordinary span of life had been
allowed him, with twenty or thirty more years of labour he might
have brought order into the chaos of different ages and styles
of language and writing; but, as it was, the task of co-ordination
remained to be done by others. For one year, before his illness
incapacitated him, Champollion held a professorship in Paris;
but of his pupils and fellow-workers, F. P. Salvolini, insincere
and self-seeking, died young, and IppolitoRosellini (1800-1843)
showed little original power. From 1832 to 1837 there was a
pause in the march of Egyptology, and it seemed as if the young
science might be overwhelmed by the storm of doubts and detrac-
tion that was poured upon it by the enemies of Champollion.
Then, however, Lepsius in Germany and Samuel Birch in England
took up the thread where the master had dropped it, and E. de
Roug6, H. Brugsch, Francois Joseph Chabas and a number of
lesser lights quickly followed. Brugsch (q.v.) was the author of a
hieroglyphic and demotic dictionary which still holds the field,
and from time to time carried forward the study of demotic by a
giant's stride. De Rouge (d. 1872) in France was a brilliant
translator of hieroglyphic texts and the author of an important
grammatical work. Chabas (1817-1882) especially addressed
himself to the reading of the hieratic texts of the New Kingdom.
By such labours after forty years the results attained by Cham-
pollion in decipherment were entirely superseded. Yet, while
the values of the signs were for the most part well ascertained,
and the meanings of most works fixed with some degree of
accuracy, few grammatical rules had as yet been established,
the varieties of the language at different periods had not been
defined, and the origins of the hieroglyphs and of their values
had not been investigated beyond the most obvious points.
At this time a rare translator of Egyptian texts in all branches
was arising in G. Maspero (q.v.), while E. Revillout addressed
himself with success to the task of interpreting the legal docu-
ments of demotic which had been almost entirely neglected for
thirty years. But the honour of inaugurating an epoch marked
by greater precision belongs to Germany. The study of Coptic
had begun in Europe early in the i7th century, and reached a
high level in the work of the Dane Georg Zoega (1755-1809) at
the end of the i8th century. In 1835, too late for Champollion
to use it, Amadeo Peyron (1785-1870) of Turin published a
Coptic lexicon of great merit which is still standard, though far
from satisfying the needs of scholars of the present day. In 1880
Ludwig Stern (Koptische Grammatik) admirably classified the
grammatical forms of Coptic. The much more difficult task of
recovering the grammar of Egyptian has occupied thirty
years of special study by Adolf Erman and his school at
Berlin, and has now reached an advanced stage. The greater
part of Egyptian texts after the Middle Kingdom having been
written in what was even then practically a dead language,
as dead as Latin was to the medieval monks in Italy who wrote
and spoke it, Erman selected for special investigation those texts
which really represented the growth of the language at different
periods, and, as he passed ffom one epoch to another, comp'ared
and consolidated his results.
The Neuagyptische Grammatik (1880) dealt with texts written
in the vulgar dialect of the New Kingdom (Dyns. XVIII. to XX.).
Next followed, in the Zeitschrift fur agyptische Sprache und Alter-
thumskunde, studies on the Old Kingdom inscription of Una, and the
Middle Kingdom contracts of Assiut, as well as on an " Old Coptic "
text of the 3rd century A.D. At this point a papyrus of stories
written in the popular language of the Middle Kingdom provided
Erman with a stepping-stone from Old Egyptian to the Late
Egyptian of the Neudgyptische Grammatik, and gave the connexions
that would bind solidly together the whole structure of Egyptian
grammar (see Sprache des Papyrus Westcar, 1889). The very archaic
pyramid texts enabled him to sketch the grammar of the earliest
known form of Egyptian (Zeitschrift d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Gesellschaft,
1892), and in 1894 he was able to write a little manual of Egyptian
for beginners (Agyptische Grammatik, 2nd ed., 1902), centring on
the language of the standard inscriptions of the Middle and New
Kingdoms, but accompanying the main sketch with references to
earlier and later forms. Of the work of Erman's pupils we may
mention G. Steindorff's little Koptische Grammatik (1894, ed. 1904),
improving greatly on Stern's standard work in regard to phonology
and the relationship of Coptic forms to Egyptian, and K. Sethe's Das
Agyptische Verbum (1899). The latter is an extensive monograph on
the verb in Egyptian and Coptic by a brilliant and laborious philolo-
gist. Owing to the very imperfect notation of sound in the writing,
the highly important subject of the verbal roots and verbal forms
was perhaps the obscurest branch of Egyptian grammar when Sethe
first attacked it in 1895. The subject has been reviewed by Erman,
Die Flexion des agyptischen Verbums in the Sitzungsberichte of the
Berlin Academy, 1900. The Berlin school, having settled the main
lines of the grammar, next turned its attention to lexicography. It
has devised a scheme, founded on that for the Latin Thesaurus of
the Berlin Academy, which almost mechanically sorts the whole
number of occurrences of every word in any text examined. Scholars
in England, America and Denmark, as well as in Germany, have
taken part in this great enterprise, and though the completion of it
may be far off, the collections of classified material already made
are very valuable for consultation. 1 At present Egyptologists
depend on Heinrich Brugsch's admirable but somewhat antiquated
Worterbuch and on Levi's useful but entirely uncritical Vocabolario.
Though demotic has not yet received serious attention at Berlin,
the influence of that great school has made itself felt amongst
demotists, especially in Switzerland, Germany, America and
England. The death of Heinrich Brugsch in 1895 was a very severe
blow to demotic studies; but it must be admitted that his brilliant
gifts lay in other directions than exact grammatical analysis. Apart
from their philological interest, as giving the history of a remarkable
language during a period of several thousand years, the grammatical
studies of the last quarter of the igth century and afterwards are
beginning to bear fruit in regard to the exact interpretation of
historical documents on Egyptian monuments and papyri. Not
long ago the supposed meaning of these was extracted chiefly by
brilliant guessing, and the published translations of even the best
scholars could carry no guarantee of more than approximate exacti-
tude, where the sense depended at all on correct recognition of the
syntax. Now the translator proceeds in Egyptian with some of the
sureness with which he would deal with Latin or Greek. The mean-
ing of many words may be still unknown, and many constructions
are still obscure; but at least he can distinguish fairly between a
correct text and a corrupt text. Egyptian writing lent itself only
too easily to misunderstanding, and the writings of one period were
but half intelligible to the learned scribes of another. The mistaken
readings of the old inscriptions by the priests at Abydos (Table of
Abydos), when attempting to record the names of the kings of the
1st Dynasty on the walls of the temple of Seti I., are now admitted
on all sides; and no palaeographer, whether his field be Greek, Latin,
Arabic, Persian or any other class of MSS., will be surprised to hear
that the Egyptian papyri and inscriptions abound in corruptions and
mistakes. The translator of to-day can, if he wishes, mark where
certainty ends and mere conjecture begins, and it is to be hoped that
advantage will be taken more widely of this new power. The
Egyptologist who has long lived in the realm of conjecture is too
prone to consider any series of guesses good enough to serve as a
translation, and forgets to insert the notes of interrogation which
would warn workers in other fields from implicit trust.
Language and Writing. The history of the Egyptian language
is evidenced by documents extending over a very long range of
time. They begin with the primitive inscriptions of the 1st
Dynasty (not later than 3300 B.C.) and end with the latest Coptic
compositions of about the i4th century A.D. The bulk of the
hieroglyphic inscriptions are written in a more or less artificial
literary language; but in business documents, letters, popular
tales, &c., the scribes often adhered closely to the living form of
the tongue, and thus reveal its progressive changes.
The stages of the language are now distinguished as follows :
Old Egyptian. This is properly the language of the Old
Kingdom. In it we have (a) the recently discovered inscriptions
of the 1st Dynasty, too brief and concise to throw much light on
the language of that time; and the great collections of spells
and ritual texts found inscribed in the Pyramids of the Vth
and Vlth Dynasties, which must even then have been of high
antiquity, though they contain later additions made in the same
style, (b) A few historical texts and an abundance of short
inscriptions representing the language of the IVth, Vth and Vlth
Dynasties. The ordinary literary language of the later monu-
ments is modelled on Old Egyptian. It is often much affected
1 Annual reports of the progress of the work are printed in the
Sitzungsberichte of the Berlin Academy of Sciences; see also Erman,
Zur agyptischen Sprachforschung, ib. for 1907, p. 400, showing the
general trend of the results.
NGUAGE)
EGYPT
59
by contemporary speech, but preserves in the main the character
istics of the language of the Old Kingdom.
Middle attd Lite Ef\f>titin. These represent the vulgar speech
of the Middle and New Kingdoms respectively. The former is
found chiefly in tales, letters, &c., written in hieratic on papyri
of the Xlllth Dynasty to the end of the Middle Kingdom; also
in some inscriptions of the XVIIIth Dynasty. Late Egyptian is
seen in hieratic papyri of the XVIIIth to the XXIst Dynasties.
The spelling of Late Egyptian is very extraordinary, full of false
etymologies, otiose signs, &c., the old orthography being quite
unable to adapt itself neatly to the profoundly modified language;
nevertheless, this clumsy spelling is expressive, and the very
mistakes are instructive as to the pronunciation.
Demotic. Demotic Egyptian seems to represent approximately
the vulgar speech of the Saite period, and is written in the
-notic " character, which may be traced back to the XXVIth
asty, if not to a still earlier time. With progressive changes,
this form of the language is found in documents reaching down
to the fall of Paganism in the 4th century A.o. 1 Under the later
Ptolemies and the Roman rule documents in Greek are more
abundant than in demotic, and the language of the ruling classes
must have begun to penetrate the masses deeply.
Coptic. This, in the main, represents the popular language of
early Christian Egypt from the ,jrd to perhaps the loth century
A.O., when the growth of Coptic as a literary language must have
ceased. The Greek alphabet, reinforced by a few signs borrowed
from demotic, rendered the spoken tongue so accurately that four
distinct, though closely allied, dialects are readily distinguishable
in Coptic MSS.; ample remains are found of renderings of the
Scriptures into all these dialects. The distinctions between the
dialects consist largely in pronunciation, but extend also to the
vocabulary, word-formation and syntax. Such interchanges are
found as / for r, tf~ (k, ck) for 2C (dj), final i for final e, a for e,
for o. Early in the 2nd century A.D., pagan Egyptians, or
perhaps foreigners settled in Egypt, essayed, as yet unskilfully,
to write the native language in Greek letters. This Old Coptic,
as it is termed, was still almost entirely free from Greek loan-
words, and its strong archaisms are doubtless accounted for by
the literary language, even in its most " vulgar " forms, having
moved more slowly than the speech of the people. Christian
Coptic, though probably at first contemporary with some docu-
ments of Old Coptic, contrasts strongly with the latter. The
monks whose task it was to perfect the adaptation of the alphabet
to the dialects of Egypt and translate the Scriptures out of the
Greek, flung away all pagan traditions. It is clear that the basis
which they chose for the new literature was the simplest language
of daily life in the monasteries, charged as it was with expressions
taken from Greek, pre-eminently the language of patristic
Christianity. There is evidence that the amount of stress on
syllables, and the consequent length of vowels, varied greatly in
spoken Coptic, and that the variation gave much trouble to the
scribes; the early Christian writers must have taken as a model
for each dialect the deliberate speech of grave elders or preachers,
and so secured a uniform system of accentuation. The remains
of Old Coptic, though very instructive in their marked peculi-
arities, are as yet too few for definite classification. The main
divUoos of Christian Coptic as recognized and named at present
re: Sahidic (formerly called Theban), spoken in the upper
Fbebds; Akhmimic, in the neighbourhood of Akhmim, but
driven out by Sahidic about the sth century; Fayumic, in the
Fayum (formerly named wrongly " Bashmuric," from a province
of the Delta); Bohairic, the dialect of the "coast district"
annerly named " Memphite "), spoken in the north-western
Ddu. Coptic, much alloyed with Arabic, was spoken in Upper
Egypt as late as the isth century, but it has long been a dead
language.' Sahidic and Bohairic are the most important
' In the temple of Philae, where the worship of Isis was permitted
the reign of Justinian, Brugsch found demotic
"""?*** with dates to the end of the sth century.
J * IC dialect*, which gradually displaced Coptic as
im Mpplanted Christianity, 'adopted but few words
dialects, each of these having left abundant remains; the former
spread over the whole of Upper Egypt, and the latter since the
1 4th century has been the language of the sacred books of
Christianity throughout the country, owing to the hierarchical
importance of Alexandria and the influence of the ancient
monasteries established in the north-western desert.
The above stages of the Egyptian language are not defined
with absolute clearness. Progress is seen from dynasty to
dynasty or from century to century. New Egyptian shades off
almost imperceptibly into demotic, and it may be hoped that
gaps which now exist in the development will be filled by further
discovery.
Coptic is the only stage of the language in which the spelling
gives a clear idea of the pronunciation. It is therefore the
mainstay of the scholar in investigating or restoring the word-
forms of the ancient language. Greek transcriptions of Egyptian
names and words are valuable as evidence for the vocalization
of Egyptian. Such are found from the 6th century B.C. in the
inscription of Abu Simbel, from the sth in Herodotus, &c.,
and abound in Ptolemaic and later documents from the beginning
of the 3rd century B.C. onwards. At first sight they may seem
inaccurate, but on closer examination the Graecizing is seen to
follow definite rules, especially in the Ptolemaic period. A few
cuneiform transcriptions, reaching as far back as the XVIIIth
Dynasty, give valuable hints as to how Egyptian was pronounced
in the i$th century B.C. Coptic itself is of course quite inadequate
to enable us to restore Old Egyptian. In it the Old Egyptian
verbal forms are mostly replaced by periphrases; though the
strong roots are often preserved entire, the weaker consonants
and the * have largely or entirely disappeared, so that the
language appears as one of biliteral rather than triliteral roots.
Coptic is strongly impregnated with Greek words adopted late;
moreover, a certain number of Semitic loan-words flowed into
Egyptian at all ages, and especially from the :6th century B.C.
onwards, displacing earlier words. It is only by the most careful
scrutiny, or the exercise of the most piercing insight, that the
imperfectly spelled Egyptian has been made to yield up one
grammatical secret after another in the light brought to bear
upon it from Coptic. Demotic grammar ought soon to be
thoroughly comprehensible in its forms, and the study of Late
Egyptian should not stand far behind that of demotic. On the
other hand, Middle Egyptian, and still more Old Egyptian,
which is separated from Middle Egyptian by a wide gap, will
perhaps always be to us little more than consonantal skeletons,
the flesh and blood of their vocalization being for the most part
irretrievably lost. 1
In common with the Semitic languages, the Berber languages
of North Africa, and the Cushite languages of North-East Africa,
Egyptian of all periods possesses grammatical gender, expressing
masculine and feminine. Singularly few language groups have
this peculiarity; and our own great Indo-European group,
which possesses it, is distinguished from those above mentioned
by having the neuter gender in addition. The characteristic
triliteral roots of all the Semitic languages seemed to separate
them widely from others; but certain traits have caused the
Egyptian, Berber and Cushite groups to be classed together as
three subfamilies of a Hamitic group, remotely related to the
Semitic. The biliteral character of Coptic, and the biliteralism
which was believed to exist in Egyptian, led philologists to suspect
that Egyptian might be a surviving witness to that far-off stage
of the Semitic languages when triliteral roots had not yet been
formed from presumed original biliterals; Seine's investigations,
however, prove that the Coptic biliterals are themselves derived
from Old Egyptian triliterals, and that the triliteral roots enor-
mously preponderated in Egyptian of the earliest known form;
that view is, therefore, no longer tenable. Many remarkable
' In the articles referring to matters of Egyptology in this edition,
Graecized forms of Old Egyptian names, where they exist, are
commonly employed; in other cases names are rendered by their
actual equivalents in Coptic or by analogous forms. Failing all
such means, recourse is had to the usual conventional renderings
of hieroglyphic spelling, a more precise transcription of the con-
sonants in the latter being sometimes added.
6o
EGYPT
[ANCIENT LANGUAGE
resemblances have been observed in the grammatical struc-
ture of the Berber and Cushite groups with Semitic (cf. H.
Zimmern, Vergleichende Grammatik d. semitischen Sprachen,
Berlin, 1898, especially pronouns and verbs); but the relation-
ship must be very distant, and there are no ancient documents
that can take back the history of any one of those languages
more than a few centuries. Their connexion with Semitic and
Egyptian, therefore, remains at present an obscure though
probable hypothesis. On the other hand, Egyptian is certainly
related to Semitic. Even before the triliterality of Old Egyptian
was recognized, Erman showed that the so-called pseudo-
participle had been really in meaning and in form a precise
analogue of the Semitic perfect, though its original employment
was almost obsolete in the time of the earliest known texts.
Triliteralism is considered the most essential and most peculiar
feature of Semitic. But there are, besides, many other resem-
blances in structure between the Semitic languages and Egyptian,
so that, although the two vocabularies present few points of
dear contact, there is reason to believe that Egyptian was origin-
ally a characteristic member of the Semitic family of languages.
See Erman, " Das Verhaltnis d. agyptischen zu d. semitischen
Sprachen" (Zeitschrift d. deutschen morgenl. Gesellschaft, 1892);
Zimmern, Vergl. Gram., 1898; Erman, " Flexion d. agyptischen
Verbums " (Sitzungsberichte d. Berl. Akad., 1900). The Egyptians
proper are not, and so far as we can tell never were, Semitic in
physical feature. As a possible explanation of the facts, Erman
supposes that a horde of conquering Semites, like the Arabs
of a later day, imposed their language on the country, but dis-
appeared, being weakened by the climate or absorbed by the
native population. The latter acquired the Semitic language
imperfectly from their conquerors; they expressed the verbal
conjugations by periphrases, mispronounced the consonants, and
so changed greatly the appearance of the vocabulary, which
also would certainly contain a large proportion of native non-
Semitic roots. Strong consonants gave place to weak consonants
(as VJ) has done to], in the modern Arabic of Egypt), and then
the weak consonants disappearing altogether produced biliterals
from the triliterals. Much of this must have taken place,
according to the theory, in the prehistoric period; but the loss
of weak consonants, of s, and of one of two repeated consonants,
and the development of periphrastic conjugations continued to
the end. The typical Coptic root thus became biliteral rather
than triliteral, and the verb, by means of periphrases, developed
tenses of remarkable precision. Such verbal resemblances as
exist between Coptic and Semitic are largely due to late exchanges
with Semitic neighbours.
The following sketch of the Egyptian language, mainly in its
earliest form, which dates from some three or four thousand years
B.C., is founded upon Erman's works. It will serve to contrast with
Coptic grammar on the one hand and Semitic grammar on the other.
THE EGYPTIAN ALPHABET
= /; so conventionally transcribed since it unites two values,
being sometimes y but often K (especially at the beginning
of words), and from the earliest times used in a manner
corresponding to the Arabic hamza, to indicate a pros-
thetic vowel. Often lost.
v * and (1(1 are frequently employed for y.
(*); easily lost "or changes to y.
l='(y); lost in Coptic. This rare sound, well known in
Semitic, occurs also in Berber and Cushite languages.
w, often changes to y.
<^ = r; often lost, or changes to y. r and / are distinguished
in later demotic and in Coptic.
ra -*i
> distinction lost in Coptic.
= h ; in Coptic UJ (sh) or J) (kh) correspond to it.
= &; generally written with i "I (f ) in the Old Kingdom,
bute => corresponds to kh in Coptic.
f| X distinction lost at the end of the Old Kingdom.
=3 =* (sh).
4 =q; Coptic K.
k\ Coptic K;or(J~',2 , according to dialect,
ffi =gj Coptic K ; or (f.
i; often lost at the end of words.
:^=3 = / (9); often changes to /, otherwise Coptic T I or 3C, <TI
^2 = d; in Coptic reduced to /.
= d (z); often changes to d, Coptic T; otherwise in Coptic 3C.
ROOTS
Egyptian roots consist of consonants and semi-consonants only,
the inflexion being effected by internal vowel-change and the
addition of consonants or vowels at the beginning or end. The
Egyptian system of writing, as opposed to the Coptic, showed only
the consonantal skeletons of words: it could not record internal
vowel-changes; and semi-consonants, even when radicals, were
often omitted in writing.
PERSONAL PRONOUNS
Sing. i. c. iw (?) later wl. PI. I. c. rc.
2. m. kw. 2. c. in.
(. tn.
3. m. *fy, surviving only
in a special
verbal form,
f. S y.
Du.
2. c. iny.
sny.
3. m. in, early lost, 3. c.
except as
suffix.
f. *it surviving
as 3. c.
From these are derived the suffixes, which are shortened forms
attached to nouns to express the possessor, and to verbs to express
the subject. In the latter case the verb was probably in the participle,
so that fdmll-sn, " they hear," is literally hearing are they." The
singular suffixes are: (i) c.-i; (2) m. -k, f. -t; (3) m. -/, f. -.; the
dual and plural have no special forms.
Another series of absolute pronouns is: (2) m. wt, iw; f. fmt, tm;
(3) m. iwt, sw; f. Stt, st. Of these twt, tmt, &c., are emphatic forms.
Many of the above absolute pronouns were almost obsolete even
in the Old Kingdom. In ordinary texts some survive, especially
as objects of verbs, namely, wl, tw, tn, sw, st. The suffixes of all
numbers and persons except the dual were in full use throughout, to
Coptic ; sn, however, giving way to a new suffix, -w, which developed
first in the New Kingdom.
Another absolute pronoun of the first person is Ink, A.ff OK, like
Heb. 'a:*. It is associated with a series for the second and third
persons: nt-k, nt-t, nt-f, nt-sn, &c. ; but from their history, use
and form, it seems probable that the last are of later formation, and
are not to be connected with the Semitic pronouns (chiefly of the
2nd person) resembling them.
DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS
There are several series based on m. p; f. t; pi. n; but n as a
plural seems later than the other two. From them are developed
a weak demonstrative to which possessive suffixes can be attached,
producing the definite and possessive articles (p, t>, n>, " the,"
fy-f, "his," P'y-s " her," &c.) of Middle Egyptian and the later
language.
NOUNS
Two genders, m. (ending w, or nothing), f. (ending f). Three
numbers: singular, dual (m. wl, f. /, gradually became obsolete),
plural (m. w, f. wt). No case-endings are recognizable, but con-
struct forms to judge by Coptic were in use. Masculine and
feminine nouns of instrument or material are formed from verbal
roots by prefixing m; e.g. m-sdm-t, " stibium," from sdm, " paint
the eye." Substantives and adjectives are formed from substan-
nisbe ending iy, ay (e.g. Ar. beled, " city," beledi,
city "). Adjectives follow the nouns they qualify.
belonging to
AM II NT WRITING)
EGYPT
61
NUUER.4LS
7,
3, kml; 4. fdw; 5, dw'; 6. *U (or
jft; 8. 6m; 9. psj; 10. ml. 3. 6. 7, 8 and 9 (?) resemble
Semitic numeral*, io and 30 (m>b) had special names; 40-90 were
named as if plurals of the units 4-9. as in Semitic, \oo.ini; 1000,
J.; 10,000, *; 100,000,
t, w, 3,
The forms observable in hieroglyphic writing lead to the following
classification:
STIONU VERBS. Biliteral . . Of ten showing traces of an ongmal
in. inf.; m early times very
rare.
Trilateral . . Very numerous.
(Generally formed by reduplication.
In Late Egyptian they were no
longer inflected, and were con-
jugated with the help of irv,
WlAK VERBS, ll. gcminatae
ill. gem.
ill. inf.
IV. inf.
. Properly triliterals, but , with the
2nd or 3rd radical alike, these
coalesced in many forms where
no vowel intervened, and gave
the word the appearance of a
biliteral.
. Rare.
. Numerous, m. u>, and HI. ( were
unified early. Some very
common verbs, " do," " give, '
" come," " bring " are irregular.
. Partly derived from adjectival
formations in y, from nouns and
infinitives: e.g. S-16, inf. slpt;
adj. ilpty; verb (4 lit.), slpty.
Many verbs with weak consonants ly, iv, 1 1. inf. (m[w]t), and those
with are particularly difficult to trace accurately, owing to
defective writing.
It seems that all the above classes may be divided into two main
group*, according to the form of the infinitive: with masculine in-
finitive the strong triliteral type, and with feminine infinitive the
type of the ill. inf. The former group includes all except in. inf.,
IY. inf., and 'the causative of the biliterals, which belong to the
second group.
It is probable that the verb had a special form denoting condition,
as in Arabic. There was a causative form prefixing s, and traces of
forms resembling Pitl and Niphal are observed. Some roots are re-
duplicated wholly or in part with a frequentative meaning, and there
are traces of gemination of radicals.
Pseudo-Participle. In very early texts this is the past indicative,
but more commonly it is used in sentences such as, gm-n-f wl 'k'-kwl,
" he found me I stood," i.e. " he found me standing." The in-
dicative use was soon given up and the pseudo-participle was
employed only as predicate, especially indicating a state; e.g. ntr-t
irn-0, " the goddess goes " ; Ito-i md-tl, " thou art prosperous."
The endings were almost entirely lost in New Egyptian. For early
times they stand thus:
Sing.
3. masc.
fern.
2. masc.
feci.
I. c.
Dual wli.
ttlw
PI.
10.
tt.
ttumy.
vtyn.
I, late IP.
tt.
tt.
A
kwl.
The pseudo-participle seems, by its inflexion, to have been the
perfect of the original Semitic conjugation. The simplest form
being that of the 3rd person, it is best arranged like the correspond-
ing tense in Semitic grammars, beginning with that person. There
is no trace of the Semitic imperfect in Egyptian. The ordinary
~ ion is formed quite differently. The verbal stem is here
by the subject-suffix or substantive idjn-f, " he hears " ;
fill, " the king hears." It is varied by the addition of
particles. Ac., ft. In, hr, tu>, thus:
<*-/. " he hears *; idm-w-f, " he is heard " (pi. idm-U-Sn, " they
re heard"); /rfm-ftp-/, "he is heard"; i4m-n-f, "he heard ;
-ttr-f, "he was heard"; also, Sdm-ln-f, i&m-hr-f, ifan-k,-f.
form has special uses, generally difficult to define, fdm-f seems
rather to be imperfect, i&m-n-f perfect, and generally to express the
past. Later, lam-/ is ordinarily expressed by periphrases; but by
the loss of ft, ittm-n-f became itself sdm-f, which is the ordinary past
in demotic. Coptic preserves idjn-f forms of many verbs in its
causative (t.g. TAMJJOIJ " cause him to live," from Egyptian
dl-t-nk-f), and, in its periphrastic conjugation, the same forms of
ft, ^be," and try, ''do. 1 ' With tjm-f (ie&mo-f) was a more
emphatic form (eidjomej), at any rate in the weak verbs.
The above, with the relative forms mentioned below, are suoposcd
by Erman to be derived from the participle, which is placed first for
emphasis: thus, (jm-w An, "hearing is the king"; idjn-f, for
frf"-/y. " hearing be is." This Egyptian paraphrase of Semitic is
just like the Irish paraphrase of English, " It is hearing he is."
The imperative shows no ending in the singular; in the plural it
has y, and later to; cf. Semitic imperative.
The infinitive is of special importance on account of its being
preserved very fully in Coptic. It is generally of masculine form,
but feminine in ill. inf. (as in Semitic), and in causativcs of biliterals.
There are relative forms of ^m-/and s^m-n-f, respectively tym-vi-j
(masc.), f{lm-t-n-f (Tern.), &c. They are used when the relative is the
object of the relative sentence, or has any other position than the
subject. Thus sdjn-t-f may mean " she whom he hears," " she whojse
praises] he hears," she [to] whom he hears (someone speaking],"
ckc. There are close analogies between the function of the relative
particles in Egyptian and Semitic; and the Berber languages
possess a relative form of the verb.
Participles. These are active and passive, perfect and imperfect,
in the old language, but all are replaced by periphrases in Coptic.
Verbal Adjectives. There is a peculiar formation, id_m-ty-fy, " he
who shall hear," probably meaning originally " he is a nearer,"
Wm-/ v being an adjective in v formed from a feminine (0 form of
the infinitive, which is occasionally found even in triliteral verbs;
the endings are: sing., masc. ty-fy, (em. ty-fy; pi., masc. ty-fn, fern,
ty-it. It is found only in Old Egyptian.
Particles. There seems to be no special formation for adverbs,
and little use is made of adverbial expressions. Prepositions, simple
and compound, are numerous. Some of the commonest simple
prepositions are n " for," r " to," m " in, from," frr " upon." A few
enclitic conjunctions exist, but they are indefinite in meaning swt
a vague " but," grt a vague " moreover," &c.
Coptic presents a remarkable ^contrast to Egyptian in the pre-
cision of its periphrastic conjugation. There are two present tenses,
an imperfect, two perfects, a pluperfect, a present and a past fre-
quentative, and three futures besides future perfect ; there are also
conjunctive and optative forms. The negatives of some of these are
expressed by special prefixes. The gradual growth of these new forms
can be traced through all the stages of Egyptian. Throughout the
history of the language we note an increasing tendency to periphrasis ;
but there was no great advance towards precision before demotic.
In demotic there are distinguishable a present tense, imperfect,
perfect, frequentative, future, future perfect, conjunctive and
optative; also present, past and future negatives, &c. The passive
was extinct before demotic ; demotic and Coptic express it, clumsily
it must be confessed, by an impersonal " they," e.g. " they bore
him " stands for " he was born."
It is worth noting how, in other departments besides the verb,
the Egyptian language was far better adapted to practical ends-
during and after the period of the Deltaic dynasties (XXII.-XXX.)
than ever it was before. It was both simplified and enriched. The
inflexions rapidly disappeared and little was left of the distinctions
between masculine and feminine, singular, dual and plural-^except
in the pronouns. The dual number had been given up entirely at
an earlier date. The pronouns, both personal and demonstrative,
retained their forms very fully. As prefixes, suffixes and articles,
they, together with some auxiliary verbs, provided the principal
mechanism of the renovated language. An abundant supply of
useful adverbs was gradually accumulated, as well as conjunctions,
so far as the functions of the latter were not already performed by
the verbal prefixes. These great improvements in the language
correspond to great changes in the economic condition of the
country; they were the result of active trade and constant inter-
course of all classes of Egyptians with foreigners from Europe
and Asia. Probably the best stage of Egyptian speech was that
which immediately preceded Coptic. Though Coptic is here and
there more exactly expressive than the best demotic, it was spoilt
by too much Greek, duplicating and too often expelling native
expressions that were already adequate for its very simple require-
ments. Above all, it is clumsily pleonastic.
THE WRITING
The ancient Egyptian system of writing, so far as we know,
originated, developed and finally expired strictly within the limits
of the Nile Valley. The germ of its existence may have come from
without, but, as we know it, it is essentially Egyptian and intended
for the expression of the Egyptian language. About the 1st
century B.C., however, the semi-barbarous rulers of the Ethiopian
kingdoms of Mcroe and Napata contrived the " Meroitic " alphabet,
founded on Egyptian writing, and comprising both a hieroglyphic
and a cursive form (see ETHIOPIA). As yet both of these kinds
of Nubian writing are undeciphcred. Egyptian hieroglyphic was
carried by conquest into Syria, certainly under the XVIIIth
Dynasty, and again under the XXVIth for the engraving of Egyptian
inscriptions; but in the earlier period the cuneiform syllabary,
and in the later the " Phoenician alphabet, had obtained a firm
hold there, and we may be sure that no attempt was made to substi-
tute the Egyptian system for the latter. Cuneiform tablets in Syria,
however, seem almost confined to the period of the XVIIIth Dynasty.
Although it cannot be proved it seems quite possible that the traders
of Phoenicia and the Aegean adopted the papyrus and Egyptian
hieratic writing together, before the end of the New Kingdom, and
developed their Phoenician " alphabet from the latter about
1000 B.C. In very early times a number of systems of writing already
EGYPT
[ANCIENT WRITING
reigned in different countries forming a compact and not very large
area perhaps from South Arabia to Asia Minor, and from Persia
to Crete and Egypt. Whether they all sprang from one common
stock of picture-writing we shall perhaps never know, nor can we as
yet trace the influence which one great system may have had on
another, owing to the poverty of documents from most of the
countries concerned.
It is certain that in Egypt from the IVth Dynasty onwards the
mode of writing was essentially the same as that which was ex-
tinguished by the fall of paganism in the 4th century A.D. Its
elements in the hieroglyphic form are pictorial, but each hieroglyph
had one or more well-defined functions, fixed by convention in such
a manner that the Egyptian language was expressed in writing word
by word. Although a picture sign may at times have embarrassed
the skilled native reader by offering a choice of fixed values or
functions, it was never intended to convey merely an idea, so as to
leave to him the task of putting the idea into his own words. How
far this holds good for the period before the IVth Dynasty it is
difficult to say. The known inscriptions of the earlier times are so
brief and so limited in range that the system on which they were
written cannot yet be fully investigated. As far back as the 1st
Dynasty, phonograms (see below) were in full use. But the spelling
then was very concise : it is possible that some of the slighter words,
such as prepositions, were omitted in the writing, and were intended
to be supplied from the context. As a whole, we gain the impression
that a really distinct and more primitive stage of hieroglyphic
writing by a substantially vaguer notation of words lay not far
behind the time of the 1st Dynasty.
The employment of the signs are of three kinds: any given sign
represents either (i) a whole word or root ; or (2) a sound as part of a
word ; or (3) pictorially defines the meaning of a word the sound of
which has already been given, by a sign or group of signs preceding.
The number of phonograms is very restricted, but some signs have all
these powers. For instance, i"""""! is the conventional picture of
a draughtboard (shown in plan) with the draughtsmen (shown in
elevation) on its edge: this sign (i) signifies the root mn, " set,"
"firm"; or (2) in the group ^ , represents the same sound as
part of the root mn]}, " good "; or (3) added to the group snt (thus:
AVWW fiaitt^^ shows that the meaning intended is " draught-
o
board," or " draughts," and not any of the other meanings of snt.
Thus signs, according to their employment, are said to be (i) " word-
signs," (2) " phonograms," or (3) " determinatives."
Word-signs. The word-sign value of a sign is, in the first place,
the name of the object it represents, or of some material, or quality,
W
or action, or idea suggested by it. Thus ^ is hr, " face " ; u , a vase
of ointment, is mrfy.t, " ointment "; ' ? is wdb, " turn." Much
investigation is still required to establish the origins of the values
of the signs; in some cases the connexion between the pictures and
the primary values seems to be curiously remote. Probably all the
signs in the hieroglyphic signary can be employed in their primary
sense. The secondary value expresses the consonantal root of the
name or other primary value, and any, or almost any, derivative
from that root: as when CL ~. a mat with a cake upon it, is not
only (ftp, an " offering-mat," but also l}tp in the sense of " concilia-
tion," " peace," " rest," " setting " (of the sun), with many de-
rivatives. In the third place, some signs may be transferred to
express another root having the same consonants as the first : thus
) , the ear, by a play upon words can express not only Sdm, " hear,"
but also sdm, " paint the eyes."
Phonograms.- Only a limited number of signs are found with this
use, but they are of the greatest importance. By searching through-
out the whole mass of normal inscriptions, earlier than the periods
of Greek and Roman rule when great liberties were taken with the
writing, probably no more than one hundred different phonograms
can be found. The number of those commonly employed in good
writing is between seventy and eighty. The most important phono-
grams are the uniliteral or alphabetic signs, twenty-four in number
in the Old Kingdom and without any homophones: later these were
increased by homophones to thirty. Of biliteral phonograms each
expressing a combination of two consonants there were about fifty
commonly used: some fifteen or twenty were rarely used. As
Egyptian roots seldom exceeded three letters, there was no need for
trtlileral phonograms to spell them. There is, however, one triliteral
phonogram, the eagle, ^\ , tyw, or tiu (?), used for the plural ending
_ELNS
of adjectives in y formed from words ending in t (whether radical
or the feminine ending).
The phonetic values of the signs are derived from their word-sign
values and consist usually of the bare root, though there are rare
examples of the retention of a flexional ending; they often ignore also
the weaker consonants of the root, and on the same principle reduce a
repeated consonant to a single one, as when the hoe f\ , {inn, has the
phonetic value (tn. The history of some of the alphabetic signs is still
very obscure, but a sufficient number of them have been explained
to make it nearly certain that the values of all were obtained on the
same principles. 1 Some of the ancient words from which the phonetic
values were derived probably fell very early into disuse, and may
never be discoverable in the texts that have come down to us. The
following are among those most easily explained :
(I, reed flower, value y and ; from U *K\ vfy , y, " reed."
_]c& ^l
(It seems as if the two values y and K were obtained by choosing
first one and then the other of the two semi-consonants composing
the name. They are much confused, and a conventional symbol I
has to be adopted for rendering n.)
- -fl, forearm, value '(y); from . ,'(y), "hand."
', r, " mouth."
\, b.t, " belly."
, mouth,
value r; from
, belly and teats, value ft; from
(The feminine ending' is here, as usual, neglected.)
1. tank,
, slope of earth
or brickwork,
value i ; from
value q ;
I
,$, " tank."
9", " slope,"
' " height."
(The doubled weak consonant is here neglected.)
^f^^f^m
, hand, value d; from
cobra,
value z; from
i, d.t, " hand."
z.t, " cobra."
For some alphabetic signs more than one likely origin might be
found, while for others, again, no clear evidence of origin is yet
forthcoming.
It has already been explained that the writing expresses only
cpnsonants. In the Graeco-Roman period various imperfect-
attempts were made to render the vowels in foreign names and
words by the semi - vowels as also by n. the consonant V
which _ n originally represented having been reduced in speech
by that time to the power of K, only. Thus, IlToXtMoios is spelt
Ptwrmys, Antoninus, 'Nt'nynws or Intnyns, &c. &c. Much earlier,
throughout the New Kingdom, a special " syllabic " orthography,
in which the alphabetic signs for the consonants are generally
replaced by groups or single signs having the value of a consonant
followed by a semi-vowel, was used for foreign names and words, e.g.
' chariot," was written _$^
VIJD, " tower," was written
ma, " harp," was written
non, " Hamath," was written
According to W. Max Muller (Asien und Europa, 1893, chap, v.),
this represents an endeavour to express the vocalization; but, if so,
it was carried out with very little system. In practice, the semi-
vowels are generally negligible. This method of writing can be
traced back into the Middle Kingdom, if not beyond, and it greatly
affected the spelling of native words in New Egyptian and demotic.
Determinatives. Most signs can on occasion be used as deter-
minatives, but those that are very commonly employed as phono-
grams or as secondary word-signs are seldom employed as deter-
minatives; and when they are so used they are often somewhat
differentiated. Certain generic determinatives are very common,
e.g. :
.; of motion.
; of acts involving force.
; of divinity.
1 It seems that " acrophony " (giving to a sign the value of the
first letter of its name) was indulged in only by priests of the latest
age, inventing fantastic modes of writing their " vain repetitions"
on the temple walls.
PALAEOGRAPHY] EGYPT
i ; of * person or a man's name.
(__J ; of building*.
O ; of inhabited place*,
fvxo: of foreign countries.
; club ; of foreigner*.
t; of all actions of the mouth eating and speaking, likewise
silence and hunger.
'.; ripple-lines; of liquid.
r
W ; hide; of animals, also leather, &c.
^J ; of plants and fibres.
9 : of flesh.
t_y_; a sealed papyrus-roll; of books, teaching, law, and of
abstract ideas generally.
In the earliest inscriptions the use of determinatives is restricted
to the sfl, rjfi &c-i >fter proper names, but it developed im-
mensely later, so that few words beyond the particles were written
without them in the normal style after the Old Kingdom.
Some few signs ideographic of a group of ideas are made to express
particular words belonging to that group by the aid of phonograms
which point out the special meaning. In such cases the ideogram
is not merely a determinative nor yet quite a word - sign.
Thus } k -- o ^ k y Semite." <| 3.
" Libyan," &c., but | cannot stand by itself for the name of any
particular foreign people. So also in monogram
conduct.
is im " go,
Orthography. The most primitive form of spelling in the hiero-
glyphic system would be by one sign for each word, and the monu-
ments of the 1st Dynasty show a decided tendency to this mode.
Examples of it in later times are preserved in the royal cartouches,
for here the monumental style demanded special conciseness. Thus,
for instance, the name of Tethmosis III. MN-HPR-R is spelled
(as R' is the name of the sun-god, with customary
deference to the deity it is written first though pronounced last).
A number of common words prepositions, &c. with only one
txMWMvapf are spelled by single alphabetic signs in ordinary
writing. Word-signs used singly for the names of objects arc
generally marked with I in classical writing, as ", 16, " heart,"
*. kr. " face." te.
But the use of bare word-signs is not common. Flexional con-
sonants are almost always marked by phonograms, except in very
early times; as when the feminine word ^^ =z./, "cobra," is
spelled "1. Also, if a sign had more than one value, a phono-
l\
i would be added to indicate which of its values was intended :
1 in 1 V " ** "be." but in f it is fin, "king." Further,
j to the vast number of signs employed, to prevent confusion
of one with another in rapid writing they were generally provided
with " phonetic complements," a group being less easily misread
than a single letter. E.g. 9, in, " command," is regularly written
V ^S. *(*); but T, ht, " white," is written I "V hz(z). This
practice had the advantage also of distinguishing determinatives
from phonograms. Thus the root or syllable hn is regularly written
{Nito avoid confusion with the determinative tfr. Redundance
*~w > * 4
in writing is the rule; for instance, b is often spelled
(b)b<(>). Riliter.il phonograms are very rare as phonetic complements,
nor are two biliteral phonograms employed together in writing the .
radicals of a word. .
Spelling of words purely in phonetic or even alphabetic characters
n, the deter
is not uncommon,
determinative being generally added. Thus
in the pyramidal texts we find jff>r, " become," written 3C in one
copy of a text, in another J?_~. Such variant spellings are very
important for fixing the readings of word-signs. It is noteworthy
that though words were so freely spelled in alphabetic characters,
especially in the time of the Old Kingdom, no advance was ever
made towards excluding the cumbersome word-signs and biliteral
phonograms, which, by a judicious use of determinatives, might well
nave been rendered quite superfluous.
Abbreviations. We find 1 II, strictly >nj z> i standing for the
ceremonial vival -nj tor, inb. " Life, Prosperity and Health,"
and in course of time
was used in accounts instead of
dna, " total."
Monograms are frequent and are found from the earliest times.
Thus 'Jj ', f* mentioned above are monograms, the association
of
monogram is
and J\ having no pictorial meaning. Another common
Q
and
for H-t-Hrw " Hathor."
A word-sign may be compounded with its phonetic complement,
as^TN hz " white," or with its determinative, as rCrf~l hz "silver."
The table on the opposite page shows the uses of a few of the
commoner signs.
The decorative value of hieroglyphic was fully appreciated in
Egypt. The aim of the artist-scribe was to arrange his variously
shaped characters into square groups, and this could be done in great
measure by taking advantage of the different ways in which many
words could be spelt. Thus hs could be written J ^ , hsy w (I|L
k.t-f , hs-n-f . But some words in the classical writing
I 1r I lew.
were intractable from this point of view. It is obvious that the alpha-
betic signs played a very important part in the formation of the
groups, and many words could only be written in alphabetic signs.
A great advance was therefore made when several homophones were
introduced into the alphabet in the Middle and New Kingdoms,
partly as the result of the wearing away of old phonetic distinctions,
giving the choice between * and II,
and
and
' - , w andi/, ^y\ and<^. In later times the number of
homophones in use increased greatly throughout the different
classes, the tendency being much helped by the habit of fanciful
writing; but few of these homophones found their way into the
cursive script. Occasionally a scribe of the old times indulged
his fancy in " sportive " or mysterious " writing, either inventing
new signs or employing old ones in unusual meanings. Short
sportive inscriptions are found in tombs of the Xllth Dynasty;
some groups are so written cursively in early medical papyri,
and certain religious inscriptions in the royal tombs of the
XlXth and XXth Dynasties are in secret writing. Fanciful
writing abounds on the temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman
periods.
PALAEOGRAPHY
Hieroglyphic. The main division is into monumental or epigraphic
hieroglyphs and written hieroglyphs. The former may be rendered
by the sculptor or the painter in stone, on wood, &c., with great
delicacy of detail, or may be simply sunk or painted in outline.
When finely rendered they are of great value to the student in-
vestigating the origins of their values. No other system of writing
bears upon its face so clearly the history of its development as the
Egyptian; yet even in this a vast amount of work is still required
to detect and disentangle the details. Monumental hieroglyphic
did not cease till the 3rd century A.D. (Temple of Esna). The written
hieroglyphs, formed by the scribe with the reed pen on papyrus,
leather, wooden tablets, &c., have their outlines more or less abbrevi-
ated, producing eventually the cursive scripts hieratic and demotic.
The written hieroglyphs were employed at all periods, especially
for religious texts.
Hieratic. A kind of cursive hieroglyphic or hieratic writing is
found even in the 1st Dynasty. In the Middle Kingdom it is well
EGYPT
[HIEROGLYPHICS, ETC.
Sign.
Description
Name.
Word-sign
Value.
Phonetic
Value.
Determinative
Value.
child
hrd (khrod)
youth
^
face
hr (hor)
hr
[hr]
-so-
eye
ir.t (yori.t)
ir
ir
see, &c.
SZ2>
mouth
r (ro)
r
r
a
i-ji
forearm
arm with
stick
(ei)
njjt " be strong '
nfct
[action of hant
or arm]
violent action
^
man with
stick
njjt " be strong "
nfet
violent action
I
lungs and
windpipe
sm;
sm;
^
heart
ib
heart
j
heart and
windpipe
?
nfr
J
sparrow
widgeon
s',.t
sr
s;
s!
evil, worthless-
ness, smallness
<3j
bold-fish
in.t
in
in
^=
tusk
cut branch
(i) ibb " tooth "
(2) hw " taste "
bt
. bh
hw
bh
Ibt]
bite, &c.
wood, tree
CTI3
threshing-
floor
sun
chamber,
house
sp.t
(i) r- " sun "
(2) hrw " day "
pr
sp
(i) sun
(2) division of
time
T
flat land
ibation
vase
hs.t
t.
hs
t.
hs
(boundless hori-
zon, eternity
i
cord on
stick
wz
wz
wz
^7
Basket
nb.t
nb
^*
ooped
basket
?
k
k
^
sickle
?
m-
m-
T
composite
hoe
ire-drill
[mr ?]
mr
z-
mr
Z'
tillage
n
attendant's
sms " follow "
sms
R
equipment
^
mife
ds
ds
cut, prick, cut-
ting instrument
Rosetta stone itself. One of the most char-
acteristic distinctions of later demotic is the
minuteness of the writing.
Hieroglyphic is normally written from right
to left, the signs facing to the commencement
of the line; hieratic and demotic follow the
same direction. But monumental hieroglyphic
may also be written from left to right, and is
constantly so arranged for purposes of sym-
metry, e.g. the inscriptions on the two jambs
of a door are frequently turned in opposite
directions; the same is frequently done with
the short inscriptions scattered over a scene
amongst the figures, in order to distinguish one
label from another.
In modern founts of type, the hieroglyphic
signs are made to run from left to right, in
order to facilitate the setting where European
text is mixed with the Egyptian. The table
on next page shows them in their more cor-
rect position, in order to display more clearly
their relation to the hieratic and demotic
equivalents.
Clement of Alexandria states that in the
Egyptian schools the pupils were first taught
the " epistolographic style of writing (i.e.
demotic), secondly the " hieratic " employed
by the sacred scribes, and finally the " hiero-
glyphic " (Strom, v. 657). It is doubtful
whether they classified the signs of the huge
hieroglyphic syllabary with any strictness.
The only native work on the writing that has
come to light as yet is a fragmentary papyrus
of Roman date which has a table in parallel
columns of hieroglyphic signs, with their hieratic
equivalents and words written in hieratic de-
scribing them or giving their values or mean-
ings. The list appears to have comprised about
460 signs, including most of those that occur
commonly in hieratic. They are to some
extent classified. The bee \lG. heads the list
as a royal sign, and is followed by figures of
nobles and other human figures in various atti-
tudes, more or less grouped among themselves,
animals, reptiles and fishes, scorpion, animals
again, twenty-four alphabetic characters, parts
of the human body carefully arranged from
@ to _A, thirty-two in number, parts of
animals, celestial signs, terrestrial signs, vases.
The arrangement down to this point is far from
strict, and beyond it is almost impossible to
describe concisely, though there is still a rough
grouping of characters according to resem-
blance of form, nature or meaning. It is a
curious fact that not a single bird is visible
on the fragments, and the trees and plants,
which might easily have been collected in a
compact and well-defined section, are widely
scattered. Why the alphabetic characters are
introduced where they are is a puzzle; the order
of these is:-
characterized, and in its most cursive form seems hardly to retain
any definable trace of the original hieroglyphic pictures. The style
varies much at different periods.
Demotic. Widely varying degrees of cursiveness are at all periods
observable in hieratic; but, about the XXVIth Dynasty, which
inaugurated a great commercial era, there was something like a
definite parting between the uncial hieratic and the most cursive
form afterwards known as demotic. The employment of hieratic
was thenceforth almost confined to the copying of religious and other
traditional texts on papyrus, while demotic was used not only for all
business but also for writing literary and even religious texts in the
popular language. By the time of the XXVth Dynasty the cursive
of the conservative Thebais had become very obscure. A better
form from Lower Egypt drove this out completely in the time of
Amasis II. and is the true demotic. Before the Macedonian con-
quest thecursiveligaturesof theolddemotic gave birth to new symbols
which were carefully and distinctly formed, and a little later an
epigraphic variety was engraved on stone, as in the case of the
Three others,
had already occurred
amongst the fish and reptiles. There seems to be no logical aim
in this arrangement of the alphabetic characters and the series is
incomplete. Very probably the Egyptians never constructed a
really systematic list of hieroglyphs. In modern lists the signs are
classified according to the nature of the objects they depict, as
human figures, plants, vessels, instruments, &c. Hprapollon's
Hieroelyphica may be cited as a native work, but its author,
if really an Egyptian, had no knowledge of good writing. His pro-
duction consists of two elaborate complementary lists: the one
describing sign-pictures and giving their meanings, the other cata-
loguing ideas in order to show how they could be expressed in
hieroglyphic. Each seems to us to be made up of curious but per-
verted reminiscences eked out by invention ; but they might some day
prove to represent more truly the usages of mystics and magicians
in designing amulets, &c., at a time approaching the middle ages.
f
*.
!:! n MAI.K.
I ONE SLAG.
& IVORY HAWK.
f. LIMESTONE LION.
12 -HI1 ON A VASE.
EGYPT
EARLIEST EGYPTIAN ART
PLATE I.
a. HEADS ON IVORY TUSKS. 3.
8. IVORY DOG AND GAZELLE.
9. IVORY HANDLE OF KNIFE.
ANIMALS ON BONE COMBS. 5.
10.) WHITE ON RED VASES;
ii.J MEN AND ANIMALS.
13. SHIP ON A WALL PAINTING.
14. IVORY KING.
15. ARCHAIC KING'S HEAD, STUDY IN LIMESTONE. 16.
DC.**
17. HEAD OF KHASEKHEM.
PLATE II.
EGYPT
EARLY EGYPTIAN ART
Photo, Llansell.
19. ANIMALS ON SLATE PALETTE
18. LIMESTONE RELIEF
20. CONQUEROR AS A BUL
21. GAZELLES AND PALM, SLATE. 22. ANIMALS, SLATE. 23. KING NARMER, SLATE PALETTE.
24. IVORY TUSK, WITH ANIMALS.
25. IVORY WAND, WITH ANIMALS.
1< f .f * *
26. WOODEN PANELS OF HESI.
27. RAHOTP AND NEFERT.
28. WOODEN
FIGURE.
I ART]
EGYPT
Demoiu-.
Hieratic.
Hieroglyphic.
tml, "who" . . .
J)
1T2
'
Ky
AM* ("Pharaoh") .
falt-fj
UiWe+J
1MKS)
Pf0 *N^ 10S, f ft
|
f^
ytt. " father " . .
J /
,
L-=*P
U/
.***, "live" . .
G l
^r
7*
-1
dU. " know " . .
&
*3
c^^
'*
kt. " stand " . .
**-
try
^1
*'
etnt. " carry "
*-
^
p
U
u (phon.) . . .
^
4
ft)
KM
j (alph.) . . .
^
h.) . . .
H
T
ft
1
/
U
mulph.) . . .
J>
j
$.
m
(alph.) . . .
-.*
-*
^vs
n
The early scribe's outfit, often carried slung over his shoulder,
Men in the hieroglyph hi. It consisted of frayed reed pens
or brushes, a small pot of water, and a palette with two circular cavi-
in which black and red ink were placed, made of finely powdered
olour solidified with gum. In business and literary documents
* was used for contrast, especially in headings; in demotic,
however, it is very rarely seen. The pen became finer in course of
e, enabling the scribe to write very small. The split reed of the
Greek penman was occasionally adopted by the late demotic scribes.
Egypt had long been bilingual when, in papyri of the 2nd century
..we begin to find transcripts of the Egyptian language into
etters, the latter reinforced by a few signs borrowed from
iemoUc alphabet: so written we have a magical text and a
cope, probably made by foreigners or for their use. The
superiority of the Greek alphabet with its full notation of
Is was readily seen, but piety and custom as yet barred the way
U adoption. The triumph of Christianity banished the old
wn once and for all ; even at the beginning of the 4th century
native Egyptian script scarcely survived north of the Nubian
.nticr at Philae; a little later it finally expired. The following
egnt ngns, however, had been taken over from demotic by the Copts :
-I, from
i:, dem.
6 -*, probably from
J> (Boh.) - *, from
2 (AkhmO-J.from
*;), dem.
O.
. dem.
<1 -/, from
6 *. from
\\ A
/. dem.
U.
, J/, dem. T
(or J), dem . ,_
X -
-U, from
dyt, dem.
For origins of hieroglyphs, see Petrie's Mtdum
Griffith. A Collection of Hierotfyphs (1898);
DLJ
(1892); F. LI.
N. de G. Davies, The
Mastaba of Ptahhetep and
Akhethetep, pt. i. (1900);
M. A. Murray, Sagqara
Mastabas (London, 1905);
also Petite and Griffith,
Two Hieroglyphic Papyri from
Tanii (London, 1889) (native
sign-list); G. Moller, Hiera-
tische Paldotraphie (Leipzig,
1909); Griffith, Catalogue of
Demotic Papyri in the J.
Rylands Collection (Man-
chester, 1909). (F.LL.G.)
E. An and Archaeology.
In the following sections
a general history of the
characteristics of Ancient
Egyptian art is first given,
showing the variation of
periods and essentials of
style; and this is followed
by an account of the use
made of material products,
of the tools and instru-
ments employed, and of the
monuments. For further
details see also the separate
topographical headings (for
excavations, &c.), and the
general articles on the
various arts and art-
materials (for references to
Egypt); also PYRAMIDS;
MUMMY, &c.
General Characteristics.
The wide and complex subject of Egyptian art will be treated
here in six periods: Prehistoric, Early Kings, Pyramid Kings,
Xllth Dynasty, XVIIIth-XXth Dynasties, XXVIth Dynasty
and later. In each age will be considered the (A) statuary,
(B) reliefs, (C) painting.
Prehistoric. The earliest civilized population of Egypt was
highly skilled in mechanical accuracy and regularity, but had
little sense of organic forms. They kept the unfinished treatment
of the limbs and extremities which is so characteristic of most
barbaric art ; and the action was more considered than the form.
(A) In the round there are in the earlier graves female figures
of two races, the Bushman type and European, both probably
representing servants or slaves. These have the legs always
united, sloping to a point without feet (Plate I. fig. i); the arms
are only stumps. The face has a beaky nose and some indication
of eyes. Upon the surface is colouring; red for the Bushman,
with black whisker though female; white for the European
type, with black tattoo patterns. Other female figures are
modelled in a paste, upon a stick, and the black hair is sometimes
made separately to fit on as a wig over the red head, showing
that wigs were then used, Male figures are generally only heads
in the earlier times. Tusks with carved heads (Plate I. figs. 2, 3)
are the earliest, beginning at S.D. (sequence date) 33;' heads
on the top of combs are found, from S.D. 42 to the close of such
combs in the fifties. All of these heads show a high forehead
and a pointed beard ; and such expression as may be discovered
is grave but not savage. In later times whole figures of ivory,
stone and clay are found, with the legs united, and the arms
usually joined to the body. A favourite way of indicating the
eyes was by drilling two holes and inserting a white shell bead
in each. The figures of animals (Plate I. figs. 4, 5) are quite as
rude as the human figures: they only summarily indicate the
1 In the prehistoric age when absolute dating is out of reach a
" sequence dating " by means of the sequence of types in pottery,
tools, &c., has been proposed in Petrie's Diospolis Parva, pp. 4 et
sqq. The earliest prehistoric graves yet known are placed at b.D.
30, and shortly before S.D. 80 the period of the first historic dynasty
is entered.
66
EGYPT
[ANCIENT ART
mature, and often hardly express the genus. They are most usual
on combs and pins; but sacred animals are also found. The
lion is the most usual (Plate I. fig. 7), but the legs are roughly
marked, if at all: the leonine air is given, but the attitude is
more distinct than the form. The hawk (Plate I. fig. 6) is
modelled in block without any legs. The slate palettes in the
form of animals are even more summary, and continually
degraded until they lost all trace of their origin. There are also
curious figures of animals chipped in flint, which show some
character, but no detail.
(B) Reliefs with animal figures belong to the later part of the
prehistoric age. The relief is low, and the form hatched across
with lines (Plate I. fig. 8), a style copied from drawing. There
is more animation than in the round figures. At the close of
this age the fashion of long processions of animals appears
(Plate I. fig. 9) ; some character is shown in these, but no sense
of action.
(C) Drawing is found from the earliest civilization, done in
white slip on red vases. Figures of men are very rare (Plate I.
fig. 10); they have the body triangular, the waist being very
narrow; the legs are two lines linked by a zigzag, as if to express
that they move to and fro. The usual figures are goats and
hippopotami; always having the body covered with cross lines
to express the connexion of the outlines (Plate I. fig. n). This
technique is in every way closely akin to that of the modern
Kabyle. An entirely different mode is common at a later time
when designs were painted in thin red colour on a light brown
ware. The subjects of the earlier of these examples are imitations
of cordage, of marbling, and of basket-work; later there are
rows of men and animals, and ships (Plate I. figs. 12, 13), with
various minor signs. The figures are never cross-hatched as in
earlier drawing, but always filled in altogether. The fact that
the ships have oars and not sails makes it probable that they
were rather for the sea than for Nile traffic, and a starfish
among the motives on such pottery also points to the sea con-
nexion. The ulterior meaning of the decoration is probably
religious and funereal, but the objects which are figured must
have been familiar.
For this whole period see Jean Capart, Debuts de I'art en gypte
(1904; trans. Primitive Art in Ancient Egypt).
The Early Kings, The dynastic race wrought an entire
transformation in the art of Egypt; in place of the clumsy
and undetailed representations, there suddenly appears highly
artistic work, full of character, action and anatomical detail.
(A) The earliest statues of this age are the colossi of the god
Min from Coptos; that they belong to the artistic race is evident
from the spirited reliefs upon them (see below, B), but the
figures were very rude, the legs and arms being joined all in the
mass. The main example of this early art is a limestone head of
a king (Plate I. figs. 15, 16), which is a direct study from life,
to serve as a model. For the accuracy of the facial curves, and
the grasp of character and type, it is equal to any later work;
and in its entire absence of conventions and its pure naturalism
there is no later sculpture so good: as Prof. A. Michaelis says,
" it renders the race type with astounding keenness, and shows
an excellent power of observation in* the exact representation
of the eyes." By the portrait, it is probably of King Narmer or
some king related to him, that is, about the beginning of the
1st Dynasty. The ivory statuette of an aged king (Plate I.
fig. 14) is. probably slightly later. It shows the same subtle
sense of character, and is unsurpassed in its reality. Many ivory
figures of men, women and animals are known from Nekhen
(Hieraconpolis) and Abydos; and they all show the same school
of work, simple, dignified, observant, and with an air which
places them on a higher plane of truthfulness and precision than
later art. There is none of the mannerism of a long tradition,
but a nobility pervades them which has no self-consciousness.
The lower class of work of this age is shown by great numbers
of glazed pottery figures both human and animal. Later in the
Ilnd Dynasty, the head of Khasekhem (Plate I. fig. 17) shows
the beginning of convention, but yet has a delicacy about the
mouth which surpasses later works.
(B) Reliefs abound at this age, and include the most important
evidences of the development of the art. The earliest examples
are those of animals (Plate II. fig. 18) and shells on the colossi
of Coptos. They show a keen sense of form, and the stag's head,
which is probably the earliest, already bears an artistic feeling
wholly different to that of any of the prehistoric works (P.K. iii.
iv.). The carvings on slate palettes appear to begin with work
crudely accurate and forceful, the heavy limbs being ridged with
tendons and muscles (Plate II. fig. 19), but there is more pro-
portion, with the same massive strength (Plate II. fig. 20).
Soon after, with a leap, the artist produced the first pure work
of art that is known (Plate II. fig. 21), a design for its own sake
without the tie of symbolism or history. The group of two long-
necked gazelles facing a palm tree is of extraordinary refinement,
and shows the artistic consciousness in every part; the sym-
metric rendering of the palm tree, reduced to fit the scale of the
animals, the dainty grace of the smooth gazelles contrasted with
the rugged stem, the delicacy of the long flowing curves and the
fine indications of the joints, all show a sense of design which
has rarely been equalled in the ceaseless repetitions of the tree
and supporters motive during every age since. Passing the
various palettes with hunting scenes and animals (Plate II.
fig. 22), we come to the great historical carving of King Narmer
(Plate II. fig. 23). Here the anatomy has reached its limits for
such work; the precision of the muscles on the inner and outer
sides of the leg, of the uniform grip in the left arm, and the tense
muscle upholding the right arm, prove that the artist knew that
part of his work perfectly. The large ceremonial mace-heads
recording the Sed festivals of the king Narmer and another,
belong also to this school; but owing to their smaller size they
have not such artistic detail. With them were found many
reliefs in ivory, on tusks, wands and cylinders. The main motive
in these is a long procession of animals (Plate II. figs. 24, 25)
often grotesquely crowded; but there is much observation
shown and the figures are expressive. No drawing of this age
has survived.
The Pyramid Kings. A different ideal appears in the pyramid
times; in place of the naturalism of the earlier work there is
more regularity, some convention, and the sense of a school in
the style. The prevailing feeling is a noble spaciousness both in
scale and in form, an equanimity based upon knowledge and
character, a grandeur of conception expressed by severely simple
execution. There is nothing superfluous, nothing common,
nothing trivial. The smallest as well as the largest work seems
complete, inevitable, immutable, without limitations of time,
or labour or thought.
(A) The statuette of Khufu or Cheops (Plate III. fig. 29)
though only a minute figure in ivory, shows the character of
immense energy and will; the face is an astonishing portrait to
be expressed in a quarter of an inch. The life-size statue of
Khafre or Chephren (Plate III. fig. 30) is a majestic work,
serene and powerful; carved in hard diorite, yet unhesitating in
execution. The muscular detail is full, but yet kept in harmony
with the massive style of the figure. The private persons have
entirely different treatment according to the character of their
position. In place of the awful dignity of the kings there is the
placid high-bred Princess Nofri (Plate II. fig. 27, Plate III. fig.
31), the calm conscientious dignitary Hemset (Plate III. fig. 32),
the bustling, active, middle-class official, Ka-aper (Plate II. fig. 28,
Plate III. fig. 33), and the kneeling figure of a servitor. The
differences of character are very skilfully rendered in all the
sculpture of this age. The whole figures are stiff in the earlier
time, as the figure of Nes; then square and massive, but true in
form, as Rahotp and Nofri (Plate II. fig. 27); and afterwards
easier and less monumental, as Ka-aper (Plate II. fig. 28). The
skill in beaten copper work is shown by the portrait of the Prince
Mer-en-ra (Plate III. fig. 35).
(B) The reliefs are quite equal to the statuary. The wooden
panels of Hesi (Plate II. fig. 26) show the archaic style of great
detail, with a bold, stark vigour of attitude. Later work is
abundant in the tomb-sculptures of this age, with a fulness of
variety and detail which makes them the most interesting of all
EGYPT
PYRAMID PERIOD.
PLATE III.
zo. IVORY UK I'll HOPS.
31 LIMESTONE OK NEFERT.
w. DIOKIIE OK CHKPHKKN,
33. HKMSKT: LIMESTONE. 33- WOOD (see Fig. 28). 34. SCRIBE: LIMESTONE. 35. MER-EN-RA: COPPER.
\
rr r r
I * 7 r-
jnilfdlllll f
\
36. LIMESTONE SLAB OK KHENT-ER-KA.
Pholo, Bonfils.
37. THE OXHERDS: LIMESTONE.
40. SENWOSRI I.: LIMESTONE RELIEFS: HOTEPA. 41.
PLATE IV.
EGYPT
1400 B. C. TO ROMAN.
Photo, Mansell.
42. AMENOPHIS III. : GRANITE.
43. QUEEN TAIA : LIMESTONE.
45. NEGRESS :
EBONY.
46. QUEEN HATSHEPSUT.
47. KHA-EM-HAT.
Photo, Anderson,
44. RAMESES II. : GRANITE.
48. SETI I.
49. PRINCESSES: FRESCO.
50. FOUR RACES OF MAN.
52. SCENE IN XXVI. DYNASTY.
53- PTOLEMAIC RELIEF.
54. MODELLED HEAD AND
SKULL.
ANCIENT ART)
EGYPT
67
branches of the art. The general effect cannot IK- judged without
a large scene, but the figures of two men and an ox (Plate III. fig.
37) show the freshness and vigour of the style, which is even
higher than this in some examples. The clear, noble spacing of
the surface work is well shown by a group of offerings and
inscribed titles (Plate III. fig. 36).
(C) Flat drawings of this age are rare. Some fine examples,
such as the geese from Medum, show that such work kept pace
with the reliefs; but most of the fresco-work has perished, and
there are few instances of line drawing.
The Xllth Dynasty. This age overlaps the previous in its
style. The end of the last age was in the very degraded tomb
work of the early Xlth Dynasty.
(A) The new style begins with the royal statues, which it seems
we must attribute to the foreign kings from whom the Xllth
Dynasty was descended. These statues were later appropriated by
the Hyksos, and so came to be called by their name, which is a mis-
nomer. The type of face ( Plate III. fig. 38) is thick-featured , full
of force, with powerful masses of facial muscle covering the skull.
The style is very vigorous and impassioned, without any trace of
relenting towards conventional work. The surfaces are not in the
least subdued by a general breadth of style, as in the last period ;
but, on the contrary, revel in the full detail of variety. There is
perhaps no age where nature is so lit tie controlled by convention
in either the living character or its sculptured expression. One of
these kings might well be the founder of the IXth Dynasty,
" Achthoes (Kheti), who did much injury to all the inhabitants,"
" Khuther Taurus the tyrant "; the expression is that of a
Chlodwig or an Alboin. From this type evidently descended
the milder and more civilized kings of the Xllth Dynasty, the
resemblance being so strong that the fierce figures have even been
identified with that dynasty by some. A good example is that of
the statue of Amenemhat (Amenemhg) III. (Plate III. fig. 39).
The style of the Xllth Dynasty may be summed up as clean,
highly-finished work, strong in facial detail; but with neither the
grandeur of the IVth nor the vivacity of the XVIIIth Dynasty.
This passed in the Xlllth Dynasty into a graceful but weak
manner, as in the statues of Sebkhotp (Sebek-hotep) III. and
Neferhotp.
(B) The relief work shows most clearly the rise of the new
style. In the middle of the Xlth Dynasty an entirely fresh
treatment appears; the Old Kingdom work had died out in very
bad sunk-reliefs, the fresh style (Plate III. fig. 41) was a low
relief with sharp edges above the field. It was full of delicate
variety in the surfaces, and of elaborated close-packed lines of hair
and ornaments. By the time of the early Xllth Dynasty, this
reached a perfection of refinement in the detail of facial curves,
with an ostentatiously low relief (P.K. ix. i.), rather on the lines
of modern French work; but the whole with dean, firm outlines,
severely restrained in the expression, and without any trace of
emotion. It is the work of a school, in which high training took
the place of the reliance on nature. Sunk relief was also well used ,
as by Senusert (Senwosri) I. (Plate III. fig. 40). There was a
steady decline during the Xllth Dynasty and onward, but the
same tone was followed.
(C) In some tombs painting only was used, and it followed the
general character of the relief treatment, being more rigid, de-
tailed, and scholastic than the older style.
The XVIIIth-XXtk Dynasties. The obvious, not to say
superficial, character of this age has rendered it one of the most
popular in Egyptian art. The older breadth, fulness, and vigour
have vanished, those great qualities which stamp the immortal
works of early times. The difference is much like that between
the Parthenon and the Niobids, or between Jacopo Avanzi and
Caracci. In this change is the whole difference between the art of
character and the an of emotion; and though the emotional side
is the more popular, as needing less thought to understand it, yet
the unfailing canon is that in every age and land the true quality
of art is proportionate to the expression of character as apart
from transient emotion. This may perhaps apply to other arts
as well as to sculpture and painting. If we accept frankly the
emotional nature of this age, we may admire its graceful outlines,
its vivacious manner, its romantic style, with an occasional
sauciness which is amusing and attractive. It revelled in rich
detail, and close masses of lines, as in wigs and ribbed dresses.
It sported with a seductive Syrian type of face, especially under
Amenophis (Amenhotep) III.; but we find the anatomy giving
way to mere smoothness of surface, for the sake of contrast with
the masses of detail. The romantic element increased, solemn
funereal statues show husband and wife hand in hand; and it
culminated under Akhenaton, who is seen kissing his wife in the
chariot, or dancing her on his knee. An overwhelming naturalism
swamped the older reserves of Egyptian art, and the expression of
the postures, actions and familiarities of daily life, or the instan-
taneous attitudes of animals, became the dernier cri of fashion.
It was all charming and wonderful, but it was the end, nothing
could come after it. The XlXth Dynasty, at its best under
Seti I., could only excel in high finish of smoothness and graceful
curves; life, character, meaning, had vanished. And soon after,
under Rameses II., mere mechanical copying, hard lifeless
routine of stone-cutting, regardless of truth and of nature,
dominated the whole.
(A) In sculpture there is a certain baldness of style at first,
as in the Amenophis I. at Turin or Mutnefert at Cairo. More
fulness and richness of character succeeded, as in Tahutmes
(Tethmosis) III. and Amenophis III. (Plate IV. fig. 42, British
Museum). And the feeling of the age finds greater scope in
private statues, many of which have a personal fascination
about them, as in the seated figures at Cairo and Florence, and
the freer work in wood, of which the ebony negress (Plate IV.
fig. 45) is the best example. The burst of naturalism under
Akhenaton resulted in some marvellous portraiture, of which
the fragment of a queen's head (Plate IV. fig. 43) is perhaps the
most brilliant instance; the fidelity in the delicate curves of
the nose and around the mouth is enhanced by the touch of
artistic convention in the facing of the lips. The only work of
ability in the XlXth Dynasty is the black granite figure
(Plate IV. fig. 44) of Rameses II. at Turin. The ordinary
statuary of his reign is painfully stiff and poor, and there is no
later work in the period worth notice.
(B) The reliefs of the early XVIIIth Dynasty are closely like
the scenes of the tombs in the pyramid age, but soon carving
was superseded by the cheaper painting, and but few tombs
in relief are known. The temples were the principal places for
reliefs; and they steadily deteriorate from the first great example,
Deir el Bahri (see ARCHITECTURE: Egyptian), down to the late
Ramessides. The portraiture is strong and clear-cut (Plate IV.
fig. 46), but somewhat mechanical and without muscular detail:
the sameness is rather more than is probable. There is a good
deal of repetition for mere effect, even in the fine work of Kha-
em-hat (Plate IV. fig. 47), under Amenophis III. That the
artists were conscious of their poverty of thought is shown by
some precise imitations of the style of early monuments. On
reaching the age of Akhenaton, the peculiar style of that school
is obvious in every relief; the older conventions were deserted,
and, for good or for bad, a new start from nature was attempted.
After that the smooth finish of the Seti reliefs at Abydos (Plate
IV. fig. 48) shows no life or observation; and only occasionally
the artist triumphed over the stone-worker, as in the portrait
of Bantanta at Memphis, which is precisely like another head
of her found in Sinai. The innumerable reliefs of the XlXth-
XXth Dynasty temples are only of historic interest, and are all
despicable in comparison with earlier works.
(C) Painting was the art most congenial to this age; the
lightness of touch, abundance of incident, and even comedy,
of the scenes are familiar in the frescoes in the British Museum.
And under Akhenaton this was pervaded by an entire natural-
ism of posture, as seen in the two little princesses (Plate IV.
fig. 49). Drawing continued to be the strong point of the art
after the more laborious sculpture had lost all vitality. The
tomb of Seti shows exquisitely firm line drawing; and the heads
of four races (Plate IV. fig. 50), Western, Syrian, and two Negro,
here show the unfailing line- work which has never been matched
in later times. The artist habitually drew the long lines of whole
68
EGYPT
[ANCIENT ART
limbs without a single hesitation or revoke; and the drawing
of a tumbling girl (Plate IV. fig. 51) shows how credibly such
contortions could be represented. The comic papyri of the
XXth Dynasty have also a very strong sense of character, even
through coarse drawing and some childish combinations.
The subsequent centuries show continuous decline, and in
whatever branch we compare the work, we see that each
dynasty was poorer than that which preceded it. The XXVIth
Dynasty is often looked on as a renaissance; but when we
compare similar work we see that it was poorer than the
XXIInd, as that was poorer than the XlXth. The alabaster
statue of Amenardus of the XXVth is faulty in pose, and
perfunctory in modelling; the resemblance between this
and the head of her nephew Tirhaka is perhaps the best
evidence of truthful work. After this there was a strong
archaistic fashion, much like that under Hadrian; in both
cases it may have arrested decay, but it did not lift the art up
again. The work of this age can always be detected by the
faulty jointing (Plate IV. fig. 52) and muscular treatment.
The elements are right enough, but there was not the vital sense
to combine them properly. Hence the monstrous protuberances
(Plate IV. fig. 53) on relief figures of this age; a fault which the
Greek fell into in his decline, as shown in the Farnese Hercules.
Portraiture, with its limited demand on imagination and lack
of ideals, was the form of art which flourished latest. The
Saitic heads in basalt show a school of close observation, with
fair power of rendering the personal character; and even in
Roman times there still were provincial artists who could
model a face very truthfully, as is shown in one case in which
the stucco head (Plate IV. fig. 54) from a coffin is here superposed
on the view of the actual skull to show the accuracy of the work.
The school of portrait-painting belongs entirely to Greek art, and
is therefore not touched upon here. (See Edgar, Catalogue oj
Graeco-Egyptian Coffins, 48 plates, for this subject.)
Lastly we must recognize the different schools of Egyptian
sculpture which are as distinct as those of recent painting.
The black-granite school in every age is the finest; its seat we
do not know, but its vitality and finish always exceed those of
contemporary works. The limestone school was probably the
next best, to judge from the reliefs, but hardly any statues of
this school have survived; it probably was seated at Memphis.
The quartzite work from Jebel Ahmar near Cairo stands next,
as often very fine design is found in this hard material. The
red granite school of Assuan comes lower, the work being usually
clumsy and with unfinished corners and details. And the lowest
of all was the sandstone school of Silsila, which is always the
worst. Broadly speaking, the Lower Egyptian was much better
than the Upper Egyptian; a conclusion also evident in the art
of the tombs done on the spot. But the secret of the black granite
school, and its excellence, is the main problem unsolved in the
history of the art. (W. M. F. P.)
Tools and Material Products.
Tools (see Illustrations i to in). The history of tools is a
very large subject which needs to be studied for all countries;
the various details of form are too numerous to specify here,
but the general outline of tools used in Egypt may be briefly
stated under general and special types. The general include
tools for striking, slicing and scraping; the special tools are for
fighting, hunting, agriculture, building and thread-work.
Striking Tools. The wooden mallet of club form (i) was used
in the Vlth and XHth Dynasties; of the modern mason's form
(2) in the XHth and XVIIIth. The stone mace head was a
sharp-edged disk (3), in the prehistoric from 3 1-40 sequence date;
of the pear shape (4) from S.D. 42, which was actually in use
till the IVth Dynasty, and represented do'wn to Roman time.
The metal or stone hammer with a long handle was unknown
till Greek or Roman times; but, for beating out metal, hemi-
spherical stones (5) were held in the hand, and swung at arm's
length overhead. Spherical hard stone hammers (6) were held
in the hand for dressing down granite. The axe was at the close
of the prehistoric age a square slab of copper (7) with one sharp
edge; small projecting tails then appeared at each end of the
back (8), and increased until the long tail for lashing on to the
handle is more than half the length of the axe in an iron one of
Roman (?) age (13). Flint axes were made in imitation of metal
in the XHth Dynasty (9). Battle-axes with rounded outline
started as merely a sharp edge of metal (10) inserted along a stick
(10, n); they become semicircular (12) by the Vlth Dynasty,
lengthen to double their width in the XHth, and then thin out
to a waist in the middle by the XVIIIth Dynasty. Flint hoes
(14) are common down to the XHth Dynasty. Small copper
hoes (15) with a hollow socket are probably of about the XXIInd
Dynasty. Long iron picks (16), like those of modern navvies,
were made by Greeks in the XXVIth Dynasty.
Slicing Tools. The knife was originally a flint saw (17), having
minute teeth; it must have been used for cutting up animals,
fresh or dried, as the teeth break away on soft wood. The double-
edged straight flint knife dates from S.D. 32-45. The single-
edged knife (18) is from 33-65. The flint knives of the time of
Menes are finely curved (19), with a handle-notch; by the end
of the Hnd Dynasty they were much coarser (20) and almost
straight in the back. In the Xlth-XIIth Dynasty they were
quite straight in the back (21), and without any handle-notch.
The copper knives are all one-edged with straight back (22)
down to the XVIIIth Dynasty, when two-edged symmetrical
knives (23) become usual. Long thin one-edged knives of iron
begin about 800 B.C. Various forms of one-edged iron knives,
straight (24) and curved (25), belong to Roman times. A cutting-
out knife, for slicing through textiles, began double-edged (26) in
the 1st Dynasty, and went through many single-edged forms
(27-29) until it died out in the XXth'Dynasty (Man, 1901, 123).
A small knife hinged on a pointed backing of copper (31) seems to
have been made for hair curling and toilet purposes. Razors (30)
are known of the XHth Dynasty, and became common in the
XVIIIth. A curious blade of copper (32), straight sided, and
sharpened at both ends, belongs to the close of the prehistoric
age. Shears are only known of Roman age and appear to have
been an Italian invention: there is a type in Egypt with one
blade detachable, so that each can be sharpened apart. Chisels of
bronze began of very small size (33) at S.D. 38, and reached a
full size at the close of the prehistoric age. In historic times the
chisels are about i X |, X 6 to 8 in. long (34). Small chisels set in
wooden handles are found (35) of the XHth and XVIIIth
Dynasties. Ferrules first appear in the Assyrian iron of the yth
century B.C. The rise of stone work led to great importance of
heavy chisels (36) for trimming limestone and Nubian sandstone;
such chisels are usually round rods about J in. thick and 6 in. long.
The cutting edge was about J in. wide for flaking tools (36),
which were not kept sharp, and i in. wide for facing tools (37)
which had a good edge. In Greek times the iron chisels are
shorter and merge into wedges (39). The socketed or mortising
chisel (38) is unknown till the Italian bronze of the 8th century
B.C., and the Naucratis iron of the 6th century. Adzes begin in
S.D. 56, as plain slips of copper (40) 4 to 6 in. long, about i wide
and Jth thick. The square end was rounded in the early dynastic
times, and went through a series of changes down to the XlXth
Dynasty. . Adzes of iron are probably of Greek times. A fine
instance of a handle about 4 ft. long is represented in the IHrd
Dynasty (P.M. XL). The adze (41) was used not only for wood-
work but also for dressing limestone.
Scraping Tools. Flint scrapers are found from S.D. 40 and
onward. The rectangular scraper (42) began in S.D. 63, and
continued into the Hnd Dynasty: the flake with rounded ends
(43) was used from the 1st to the IVth Dynasty (P. Ab. i. xiv.,
xv.). Round scrapers were also made (44). Flint scrapers were
used in dressing down limestone sculpture in the IHrd Dynasty.
Rasps of conical form (45), made of a sheet of bronze punched
and coiled round, were common in the XVIIIth Dynasty,
apparently as personal objects, possibly used for rasping dried
bread. In the Assyrian iron tools of the 7th century B.C. the long
straight rasp (46) is exactly of the modern type. The saw is first
found as a notched bronze knife of the Hlrd Dynasty. Larger
toothed saws (47) are often represented in thelVth-VIth Dynasty,
ANCIENT ART]
EGYPT
69
as used by carpenters. There are no dated specimens till the
Assyrian iron saws (48) of the 7th century B.C. Drills were of
flint (49) for hard material and bead-making, of bronze for wood-
work. In the Assyrian tools iron drills are of slightly twisted
coop form (50), and of centre-bit type with two scraping edges
(51). In Roman times the modern V drill (52) is usual. The
drill was worked by a stock with a loose cap (53), rotated by a
drill bow, in the Xllth to Roman dynasties. The pump drill
with cords twisted round it was in Roman use. The bow drill
(56) was used as a fire drill to rotate wood (55) on wood (57);
and the cap (54) for such use was of hard stone with a highly
polished hollow. The drill brace appears to have been used by
Assyrians in the 7th century B.C. Piercers of bronze tapering
(58), to enlarge holes in leather, &c., were common in all ages.
Fighting Weapons. The battle-axe has been described above
with axes. The flint dagger (59) is found from S.D. 40-56. A
very finely made copper dagger (60) with deep midrib is dated to
between 55 and 60 S.D. Copper daggers with parallel ribbing
(6i)down the middle are common in the Xlth-XIVth Dynasties;
and in the XVIIIth XXih Dynasties they are often shown in
scenes and on figures. The falchion with a curved blade (62)
belongs to the XVIIIth-XXth Dynasty. The rapier (63) or
lengthened dagger is rarely found, and is probably of prehistoric
Greek origin. The sword is of Greek and Roman age, always
double-edged and of iron. The spear is not commonly found in
Egypt, until the Greek age, but it is represented from the Xlth
Dynasty onward; it belonged to the Semitic people (L.D.ii. 133).
The bow was always of wood, in one piece in the prehistoric and
early times, also of two horns in the 1st Dynasty; but the
compound bow of horn is rarely found, only as an importation,
in the XVIIIth Dynasty. The arrow-heads of flint (64-66) and of
bone (68-69) w ere pointed, and also square-ended (67) for
hunting (P.R.T. ii. vi.; vii. A., 7 ; xxxiv.). The copper arrow-
heads appear in the XlXth Dynasty, of blade form with tang
(70); the triangular form (72), and leaf form with socket (71), are
of the XXVIth Dynasty. Triangular iron arrows with tang are
of the same age. Tangs show that the shaft was a reed, sockets
show that it was of wood. Many early arrows (Xllth) have
only hard wood points of conical form. The sling is rarely
shown in the XlXth-XXth Dynasties; and the only known
example is probably of the XXVIth.
Hunting Weapons. The forked lance of flint was at first wide
with slight hollow (73) from S.D. 32-43; then the hollow
became a V notch (74) in 38 S.D. and onward. The lance was
fixed in a wooden shaft for throwing, and held in by a check-
cord from flying too far if it missed the animal (P.N. LXXIIL).
The harpoon for fishing was at first of bone'(75), and was imitated
in copper (76, 77) from S.D. 36 onwards. The boomerang or
throw-stick (78) was used from the 1st to the XXIInd Dynasty,
and probably later. Fish-hooks of copper (79-82) are found from
the 1st Dynasty to Roman times. A trap for animals' legs,
formed by splints of palm stick radiating round a central hole, is
figured in S.D. 60, and one was found of probably the XXth
Dynasty. Fishing nets were common in all historic times, and the
lead sinkers (83) and stone sinkers (84) are often found under the
XVIIIth-XXth Dynasties.
Agricultural Tools. The hoe of wood (85) is the main tool from
the late prehistoric time, and many have been found of the
XVIIIth Dynasty. With the handle lengthened (86) and turned
forward, this became the plough (87 is the hieroglyph, 88 the
drawing, of a plough); this was always sloping, and never the
upright post of the Italic type. The rake of wood (89) is usual in
the Xllth and XVIIIth Dynasties. The fork (oo), used for
tossing straw, was common in the Old Kingdom, but none has
been found. The sickle was of wood (92), with flints (91) inserted,
apparently a copy of the ox-jaw and teeth. The notched flints
for it are common from the 1st to the XVIIIth Dynasty. In
Roman times the same principle was followed, by making an
iron sickle with a deep groove, in which was inserted the cutting
blade of steel (P.E. XXIX.). Shovel-boards, to hold in right (93)
or left hand for scraping up the grain in winnowing, are usual in
the X VHIrh Dynasty, and are figured in use in the Old Kingdom.
Pruning knives with curved blades (94) are Italic, and were made
of iron by the Romans. Corn grinders were flat oval stones, with
a smaller one lying cross-ways (95), and slid from end to end.
Such were used from the Old Kingdom down to late times. In
the Roman period a larger stone was used, with a rectangular
slab (96) sliding on it, in which a long trough held the grain and
let it slip out below for grinding. The quern with rotary motion
is late Roman, and still used by Arabs. The large circular mill-
stones of Roman age worked by horse-power are usually made
from slices of granite columns.
Building Tools. The adze described above was used for
dressing blocks of limestone. The brick-mould was an open
frame, with one side prolonged into a handle (97), exactly as
the modern mould. The plasterers' floats (98) were entirely
cut out of wood. The mud rake for mixing mortar is rather
narrower than the modern form. The square (99) and plummet
(100,101) have remained unchanged since the XlXth Dynasty.
For dressing flat surfaces three wooden pegs (102) of equal length
were used; a string was stretched between the tops of two,
and the third peg was set on the point to be tested and tried
against the string.
Thread-Work. Stone spindle whorls (103) are common in
the prehistoric age; wooden ones were usual, of a cylindrical
form (104) in the Xllth, and conical (105) in the XVIIIth
Dynasty. The thread was secured by a spiral notch in the stick.
In Roman times an iron hook on the top held the thread (106)
as in modern spindles. Needles of copper were made in the
prehistoric, as early as S.D. 48, and very delicate ones by S.D. 71.
Gold needles are found of the 1st Dynasty. Fine ones of
bronze are common in the XVIIIth Dynasty, and some with
two eyes at right angles, one above the other, to carry two
different threads. The copper bodkin is found in S.D. 70.
Netters are common, of rib bones, pointed (107); the thread
was wound round them. Long netting needles were probably
brought in by the dynastic people as they figure in the hiero-
glyphs. Finely-made ones are found in the XVIIIth Dynasty
and later. Reels were also commonly used for net making, of
pottery (108) or even pebbles (i09)with a groove chipped around.
The flint vase-grinders were used in the early dynasties (no),
and also sandstone grinders for hollowing larger vases (in).
Stone-Work. In the prehistoric ages stone building was
unknown, but many varieties of stones were used for carving
into vases, amulets and ornaments. The stone vases were
at first of cylindrical forms, with a foot, and ears for hanging.
These are worked in brown basalt, syenite, porphyry, alabaster
and limestone. In the second prehistoric civilization barrel-
shaped vases became usual; and to the former materials were
added slate, grey limestone and breccia. Serpentine appears
later, and diorite towards the close of the prehistoric ages.
Flat dishes were used in earlier times; gradually deeper forms
appear, and lastly the deep bowl with turned-in edge belongs to
the close of the prehistoric time and continued common in the
earlier dynasties (P.D.P. 19). This stone-work was usually
formed on the outside with rotary motion, but sometimes the
vase was rotated upon the grinder (Q. H. 17). The interior was
ground out by cutters (figs. 1 10.1 1 1) fixed in the end of a stick
and revolved with a weight on the top, as shown in scenes on
the tombs of the Vth Dynasty. The cutters were sometimes
flints of a crescent shape (P. Ab. ii. liii. 24), but more usually
grinders blocks of quartzite sandstone (26-34), and occasionally
of diorite (Q. H. xxxii. Ixii.). These blocks were fed with sand
and water to give the bite on the stone (P. Ab. i. 26). The
outsides of the vases were entirely wrought by handwork, with
the polishing lines crossing diagonally. Probably the first
forming was done by chipping and hammer-dressing, as in later
times; the final facing of the hard stones was doubtless by
means of emery in block or powder, as emery grinding blocks
are found.
In the early dynasties the hard stones were still worked,
and the 1st dynasty was the most splendid age for vases, bowls,
and dishes of the finest stones. The royal tombs have preserved
an enormous quantity of fragments, from which five hundred
7 o
EGYPT
[ANCIENT ART
varied forms have been drawn (P.R.T. ii. xlvi.-liii. 6). The
materials are quartz crystal, basalt, porphyry, syenite, granite,
volcanic ash, various metamorphics, serpentine, slate, dolomite
marble, alabaster, many coloured marbles, saccharine marble,
grey and white limestones. The most splendid vase is one from
Nekhen (Hieraconpolis), of syenite, 2 ft. across and 16 in. high,
hollowed so as to be marvellously light and highly polished
(Q. H. xxxvii). Another branch of stone- work, surface
carving, was early developed by the artistic dynastic race.
The great palettes of slate covered with elaborate reliefs are
probably all of the pre-Menite kings; the most advanced of
them having the figure of Narmer, who preceded Menes. Other
carving full of detail is on the great mace-heads of Narmer
and the Scorpion king, where scenes of ceremonials are minutely
engraved in relief. In the 1st Dynasty the large tombstones
of the kings are of bold work, but the smaller stones of private
graves vary much in the style, many being very coarse. All
of this work was by hammer-dressing and scraping. The scrapers
seem to have always been of copper.
The earliest use of stone in buildings is in the tomb of King
Den (1st Dynasty), where some large flat blocks of red granite
seem to have been part of the construction. The oldest stone
chamber known is that of Khasekhemui (end of the Ilnd
Dynasty). This is of blocks of limestone whose faces follow the
natural cleavages, and only dressed where needful; part is
hammer-dressed, but most of the surfaces are adze-dressed.
The adze was of stone, probably flint, and had a short handle
(P.R.T. ii. 13). The same king also wrought granite with
inscriptions in relief. In the close of the Illrd Dynasty a great
impetus was given to stone-work, and the grandest period of
refined masonry is at the beginning of the IVth Dynasty under
Cheops. The tombs of Medum under Snefru are built with
immense blocks of limestone of 20 and 33 tons weight. The
dressing of the face between the hieroglyphs was done partly
with copper and partly with flint scrapers (P.M. 27). The
most splendid masonry is that of the Great Pyramid of Cheops.
The blocks of granite for the roofing are 56 in number, of an
average weight of 54 tons each. These were out from the
water-worn rocks at the Cataract the soundest source for
large masses, as any incipient flaws are well exposed by wear.
The blocks were quarried by cleavage; a groove was run along
the line intended, and about 2 ft. apart holes about 4 in. wide
were jumped downward from it in the intended, plane; this
prevented a skew fracture (P.T. 93). In shallower masses a
groove was run, and then holes, apparently for wedges, were
sunk deeper in the course of it; whether wetted wood was used
for the expansive force is not known, but it is probable, as no
signs are visible of crushing the granite by hard wedges. The
facing of the cloven surfaces was done by hammer-dressing,
using rounded masses of quartzose hornstone, held in the hand
without any handle. In order to get a hold for moving the
blocks without bruising the edges, projecting lumps or bosses
were left on the faces, about 6 or 8 in. across and i or 2 in. thick.
After the block was in place the boss was struck off and the
surface dressed and polished (P.T. 78, 82). In the pyramid of
Cheops the blocks were all faced before building; but the later
granite temple of Chephren and the pyramid of Mycerinus
(Menkaura, Menkeure) show a system of building with an excess
of a few inches left rough on the outer surface, which was dressed
away when in position (P.T. no, 132).
The flatness of faces of stone or rock (both granite and lime-
stone) was tested by placing a true-plane trial plate, smeared
with red ochre, against the dressed surface, as in modern engineer-
ing. The contact being thus reddened showed where the face
had to be further dressed away; and this process was continued
until the ochre touched points not more than an inch apart all
over the joint faces, many square feet in area. On stones too
large for facing-plates a diagonal draft was run, so as to avoid
any wind in the plane (P.T. 83).
The cutting of granite was not only by cleavage and hammer
dressing, but also by cutting with harder materials than quartz
such as emery. Long saws of copper were fed with emery powder,
and used to saw out blocks as much as 7! ft. long (P.T. Plate
XIV.). In other cases the very deep scores in the sides of the
saw-cut suggest that fixed cutting points were inserted in the
copper saws; and this would be parallel to the saw-cuts in the
very hard limestone of the Palace of Tiryns, in which a piece
of a copper saw has been broken, and where may be yet found
large chips of emery, too long and coarse to serve as a powder,
but suited for fixed teeth. A similar method was common for
circular holes, which were cut by a tube, either with powder or
fixed teeth. These tubular drills were used from the IVth
Dynasty down to late times, in all materials from alabaster up
to carnelian. The resulting cores are more regular than those
of modern rock-drilling.
Limestone in the Great Pyramid, as elsewhere, was dressed
by chopping it with an adze, a tool used from prehistoric to
Roman times for all soft stones and wood. This method was
carried on up to the point of getting contact with the facing-
plate at every inch of the surface; the cuts cross in various
directions. For removing rock in reducing a surface to a level,
or in quarrying, cuts were made with a pick, forming straight
trenches, and the blocks were then broken out between these.
In quarrying the cuts are generally 4 or 5 in. wide, just enough
for the workman's arm to reach in; for cutting away rock the
grooves are 20 in. wide, enough to stand in, and the squares of
rock about 9 ft. wide between the grooves (P.T. 100). The
accuracy of the workmanship in the IVth Dynasty is astonishing.
The base of the pyramid of Snefru had an average variation of
6 in. on 5765 and 10' of squareness. But, immediately after,
Cheops improved on this with a variation of less than 6 in. on
9069 in. and 12* of direction. Chephren fell off, having 1-5
error on 8475, and 33" of variation; and Mycerinus (Menkeurg)
had 3 in. error on 4154 and i' 50* variation of direction (P.M. 6;
P.T. 39, 97, 1 1 1). Of perhaps later date the two south pyramids
of Dahshur show errors of 3-7 on 7459 and i-i on 2065 in., and
variation of direction of 4' and 10' (P.S. 28, 30). The above
smallest error of only i in 16,000 in lineal measure, and i in
17,000 of angular measure, is that of the rock-cutting for the
foundation of Khufu, and the masonry itself (now destroyed)
was doubtless more accurate. The error of flatness of the joints
from a straight line and a true square is but riirth m - on 75 in.
length; and the error of level is only -g^th in. along a course, or
about 10* on a long length (P.T. 44). We have entered thus
fully on the details of this period, as it is the finest age for work-
manship in every respect. But in the Xllth Dynasty the granite
sarcophagus of Senwosri II. is perhaps the finest single piece of
cutting yet known; the surfaces of the granite are all dull-
ground, the errors from straight lines and parallelism are only
about -j-J-fth inch (P. i, 3).
In later work we may note that copper scrapers were used for
facing the limestone work in the Vlth, the Xllth and the
XVIIIth Dynasties. In the latter age granite surfaces were
ground, hieroglyphs were chipped out and polished by copper
tools fed with emery; outlines were graved by a thick sheet of
copper held in the hand, and sawed to and fro with emery.
Corners of signs and intersections of lines were first fixed by
minute tube-drill holes, into which the hand tool butted, so that
it should not slip over the outer surface.
The marking out of work was done by fine black lines; and
supplemental lines at a fixed distance from the true one were
put in to guard against obliteration in course of working (P.T.
92); similarly in building a brick pyramid the axis was marked,
and there were supplemental marks two cubits to one side
(P.K. 14). When cutting a passage in the rock a rough drift-
way was first made, the roof was smoothed, a red axis line was
drawn along it, and then the sides were cut parallel to the axis.
For setting out a mastaba with sloping sides, on an irregular
foundation at different levels, hollow corner walls were built
outside the place of each corner; the distances of the faces at
the above-ground level were marked on the inner faces of the
walls; the above-ground level was also marked; then sloping
lines at the intended angle of the face were drawn downward from
the ground-level measures, and each face was set out so as to
TOOLS]
EGYPT
MALLETS
MACES
7i
6
HAMMERS
6
AXES
13
(__J
HOES
PICK
16
FLINT
KNIVES
18
19 20
22 23
METAL
KNIVES
25
24
CUTTING
-OUT
KNIVES
27 28
29
32
RAZORS
J
31
CHISELS
33
34 S5 36 37 38
40
\L
J
39
ADZES
Note.
The objects are drawn to a scale
unless otherwise described.
SCRAPERS
46
_i_
3O
47
45
i
SAWS f
r\
u
Ancient Egyptian TooU.
EGYPT
[TOOLS, &c
FIGHTING
78
AGRICULTURE .11 S
Note.
The objects are drawn to a scale
of -g- unless otherwise described.
BUILDING
1
105 106 |107
&<^>f\
/
VASE
GRINDING
"1 101
110
109
Ancient Egyptian Tools.
ANCIENT ART]
EGYPT
73
Be in the plane thus defined by two traces at the ends (P.M.
Mil.).
M del-Work. Copper was wrought into pins, a couple of
inches long, with loop heads, as early as the oldest prehistoric
graves, before the use of weaving, and while pottery was scarcely
developed. The use of harpoons and small chisels of copper next
arose, then broad flaying knives, needles and adzes, lastly the
axe when the metal was commoner. On these prehistoric tools,
when in fine condition, the original highly-polished surface
remains. It shows no trace of grinding lines or attrition, nor
yet of the blows of a hammer. Probably it was thus highly
finished by beating between polished stone hammers which were
almost flat on the face. Most likely the forms of the tools were
cast to begin with, and then finished and polished by fine ham-
mering. A series of moulds for casting in the XI Ith Dynasty
show that the forms were carved out in thick pieces of pottery,
and then lined with fine ashy clay. The mould was single, so
that one side of the tool was the open face of metal. As early
as the pyramid times solid casting by (ire perdue was already
used for figures: but the copper statues of Pepi and his son
seem, by their thinness and the piecing together of the parts, to
have been entirely hammered out. The portraiture in such
hammer work is amazingly life-like. By the time of the Xllth
Dynasty, and perhaps earlier, cire perdue casting over an ash
core became usual. This was carried out most skilfully, the
metal being often not g^ th in. thick, and the core truly centred
in the mould. Casting bronze over iron rods was also done, to
gain more stiffness for thin parts.
In gold work the earliest jewelry, that of Ring Zer of the
1st Dynasty, shows a perfect mastery of working hollow balls
with minute threading holes, and of soldering with no trace of
excess nor difference of colour. Thin wire was hammered out,
but there is no ancient instance of drawn wire. Castings were
not trimmed by filing or grinding, but by small chisels and
hammering (P.R.T. ii. 17). In the Xllth Dynasty the soldering
of the thin cells for the cloisonne* inlaid pectorals, on to the base
plate, is a marvellous piece of delicacy; every cell has to be
perfectly true in form, and yet all soldered, apparently simul-
taneously, as the heat could not be applied to successive portions
(M.D. i.). Such work was kept up in the XVUIth and XXVIth
Dynasties. There is nothing distinctive in later jewelry different
from Greek and Roman work elsewhere.
Close and Glass. From almost the beginning of the prehistoric
age there are glazed pottery beads found in the graves: and
glazing on amulets of quartz or other stones begins in the middle
of the prehistoric. Apparently then glazing went together with
the working of the copper ores, and probably accidental slags in
the smelting gave the first idea of using glaze intentionally. The
development of glazing at the beginning of the dynasties was
sudden and effective. Large tiles, a foot in length, were glazed
completely all over, and used to line the walls of rooms; they
were retained in place by deep dovetails and ties of copper wire.
Figures of glazed ware became abundant ; a kind of visiting card
was made with the figure of a man and his titles to present in
temples which he visited; and glazed ornaments and toggles for
fastening dresses were common (I". Ah. ii.). Further, besides thus
using glaze on a large scale, differently coloured glazes were used,
and even fused together. A piece of a large tile, and part of a
glazed vase, have the royal titles and name of Menes, originally in
violet inlay in green glaze. There was no further advance in the
art until the great variety of colours came into use about 4000
yean later. In the Xllth Dynasty a very thin smooth glaze was
used, which became rather thicker in the XVIIIth. The most
brilliant age of glazes was under Amcnophis III. and his son
Akhenaton. Various colours were used; beside the old green
and blue, there were purple, violet, red, yellow and white. And a
profusion of forms is shown by the moulds and actual examples,
for necklaces, decorations, inlay in stone and applied reliefs on
vases. Under Seti II. cartouches of the king in violet and white
glaze are common; and under Rameses III. there were vases with
relief figures, with painted figures, and tiles with coloured
reliefs of captives of many races. The latter development of
glazing was in thin delicate apple-green ware with low relief
designs, which seem to have originated under Greek influence at
Naucratis. The Roman glaze is thick and coarse, but usually of a
brilliant Prussian blue, with dark purple and apple-green; and
high reliefs of wreaths, and sometimes figures, are common.
Though glaze begins so early, the use of the glassy matter by
itself does not occur till the XVIIIth Dynasty; the earlier
reputed examples are of stone or frit. The first glass is black and
white under Tethmosis (Tahutmes) III. It was not fused at a
high point, but kept in a pasty state when working. The main
use of it was for small vases; these were formed upon a core of
sandy paste, which was modelled on a copper rod, the rod being
the core for the neck. Round this core threads of glass were
wound of various colours; the whole could bejeset in the furnace
to soften it for moulding the foot or neck, or attaching handles, or
dragging the surface into various patterns. The colours under
later kings were as varied as those of the glazes. Glass was also
wheel -cut in patterns and shapes under Akhenaton. In latec
times the main work was in mosaics of extreme delicacy. Glass
rods were piled together to form a pattern in cross-section. The
whole was then heated until it perfectly adhered, and the mass
was drawn out lengthways so as to render the design far more
minute, and to increase the total length for cutting up. The rod
was then sliced across, and the pieces used for inlaying. Another
use of coloured glass was for cutting in the shapes of hieroglyphs
for inlaying in wooden coffins to form inscriptions. Glass
amulets were also commonly placed upon Ptolemaic mummies.
Blown glass vessels are not known until late Greek and Roman
times, when they were of much the same manufacture as glass
elsewhere. The supposed figures of glass-blowers in early scenes
are really those of smiths, blowing their fires by means of reeds
tipped with clay. The variegated glass beads belonging to Italy
were greatly used in Egypt in Roman times, and are like those
found elsewhere. A distinctively late Egyptian use of glass was
for weights and vase-stamps, to receive an impress stating the
amount of the weight or measure. The vase-stamps often state
the name of the contents (always seeds or fruits), probably not to
show what was in them, but to show for what kind of seed the
vessel was a true measure. These measure stamps bear names
dating them from A.D. 680 to about 950. The large weights of
ounces and pounds are disks or cuboid blocks; they are dated
from 720 to 785 for the lesser, and to A.D. 915 for larger, weights.
The greater number are, however, small weights for testing gold
and silver coins of later caliphs from A.D. 952 to 1171. The
system was not, however, Arab, as there are a few Roman vase-
stamps and weights. Of other medieval glass may be noted the
splendid glass vases for lamps, with Arab inscriptions fused in
colours on the outsides. No enamelling was ever done by
Egyptians, and the few rare examples are all of Roman age due
to foreign work.
The manufacture of glass is shown by examples in the XVIIIth
Dynasty. The blue or green colour was made by fritting to-
gether silica, lime, alkaline carbonate and copper carbonate;
the latter varied from 3% in delicate blues to 20% in deep
purple blues. The silica was needed quite pure from iron, in
order to get the rich blues, and was obtained from calcined
quartz pebbles; ordinary sand will only make a green frit.
These materials were heated in pans in the furnace so as to
combine in a pasty, half-fused condition. The coloured frit thus
formed was used as paint in a wet state, and also used to dissolve
in glass or to fuse over a surface in glazing. The brown tints
often seen in glazed objects are almost always the result of the
decomposition of green glazes containing iron. The blue glazes,
on the other hand, fade into white. The essential colouring
materials are, for blue, copper; green, copper and iron; purple,
cobalt; red, haematite; white, tin. An entirely clear colourless
glass was made in the XVIIIth Dynasty, but coloured glass was
mainly used. After fusing a panful of coloured glass, it was
sampled by taking pinches out with tongs; when perfectly
combined it was left to cool in the pan, as with modern optical
glass. When cold the pan was chipped away, and the cake of
glass broken up into convenient pieces, free of sediment and of
74
EGYPT
[ANCIENT ART
scum. A broken lump would then be heated to softness in the
furnace; rolled out under a bar of metal, held diagonally across
the roll; and when reduced to a rod of a quarter of an inch
thick, it was heated and pulled out into even rods about an
eighth of an inch thick. These were used to wind round glass
vases, to form lips, handles, &c.; and to twist together for
spiral patterns. Glass tube was similarly drawn out. Beads were
made by winding thin threads of glass on copper wires, and the
greater contraction of the copper freed the bead when cold. The
coiling of beads can always be detected by (i) the little tails left
at the ends, (2) the streaks, (3) the bubbles, seen with a magnifier.
Roman glass beads are always drawn out, and nicked off hot,
with stria tion lengthways; except the large opaque variegated
beads which are coiled. Modern Venetian beads are similarly
coiled. In the XXIIIrd Dynasty beads of a rich transparent
Prussian blue glass were made, until the XXVIth. About the
same time the eyed beads, with white and brown eyes in a blue
mass, also came in (P.A. 25-27, Plate XIII.).
Pottery (see fig. 112). The earliest style of pottery is entirely
hand made, without any rotary motion; the form being" built
up with a flat stick inside and the hand outside, and finally
scraped and burnished in a vertical direction. The necks of
vases were the first part finished with rotation, at the middle
and close of the prehistoric age. Fully turned forms occur in
the 1st Dynasty; but as late as the Xllth Dynasty the lower
part of small vases is usually trimmed with a knife. In the
earlier part of the prehistoric age there was a soft brown ware
with haematite facing, highly burnished. This was burnt
mouth-down in the oven, and the ashes on the ground reduced
the red haematite to black magnetic oxide of iron; some traces
of carbonyl in the ash helped to rearrange the magnetite as a
brilliant mirror-like surface of intense black. The lower range
of jars in the oven had then black tops, while the upper ranges
were entirely red. A favourite decoration was by lines of white
clay slip, in crossing patterns, figures of animals, and, rarely,
men. This is exactly of the modern Kabyle style in Algeria,
and entirely disappeared from Egypt very early in the prehistoric
age. Being entirely hand made, various oval, doubled and even
square forms were readily shaped.
The later prehistoric age is marked by entirely different
pottery, of a hard pink-brown ware, often with white specks
in it, without any applied facing beyond an occasional pink
wash, and no polishing. It is decorated with designs in red line,
imitating cordage and marbling, and drawings of plants, ostriches
and ships. The older red polished ware still survived in a coarse
and degraded character, and both kinds together were carried
on into the next age (P.D.P.).
The early dynastic pottery not only shows the decadent end
of the earlier forms, but also new styles, such as grand jars of
2 or 3 ft. high which were slung in cordage, and which have
imitation lines of cordage marked on them. Large ring-stands
also were brought in, to support jars, so that the damp surfaces
should not touch the dusty ground. The pyramid times show
the great jars reduced to short rough pots, while a variety of
forms of bowls are the most usual types (P.R.T.; P.D.;
P. Desh.)
In the Xllth Dynasty a hard thin drab ware was common,
like the modern qulleh water flasks. Drop-shaped jars with
spherical bases are typical, and scrabbled patterns of incised
lines. Large jars of light brown pottery were made for storing
liquids and grain, with narrow necks which just admit the hand
(P.K.).
The XVIIIth Dynasty used a rather softer ware, decorated
at first with a red edge or band around the top, and under
Tethmosis (Tahutmes) III. black and red lines were usual.
Under Amenophis III. blue frit paint was freely used, in lines
and bands around vases; it spread to large surfaces under
Amenophis IV., and continued in a poor style into the Ramesside
age. In the latter part of the XVIIIth and the XlXth Dynasties
a thick hard light pottery, with white specks and a polished
drab-white facing, was generally used for all fine purposes. The
XlXth and XXth Dynasties only show a degradation of the
types of the XVIIIth; and even through to the XXVth Dynasty
there is no new movement (P.K.; P.I; P. A.; P.S.T.).
The XXVIth Dynasty was largely influenced by Greek
amphorae imported with wine and oil. The native pottery is
of a very fine paste, smooth and thin, but poor in forms. Cylin-
drical cups, and jars with cylindrical necks and no brim, are
typical. The small necks and trivial handles begin now, and are
very common in Ptolemaic times (P.T. ii.).
The great period of Roman pottery is marked by the ribbing
on the outsides. The amphorae began to be ribbed about
A.D. 150, and then ribbing extended to all the forms. The ware
is generally rather rough, thick and brown for the amphorae,
thin and red for smaller vessels. At the Constantino age a new
style begins, of hard pink ware, neatly made, and often with
" start-patterns " made by a vibrating tool while the vessel
rotated: this was mainly used for bowls and cups (P.E.).
Of the later pottery of Arab times we have no precise knowledge.
The abbreviations used above refer to the following sources of
information :
M.D. Morgan, Dahshur;
P.A. Petrie, Tell el Amarna;
P. Ab.
P.O.
P. Desh.
P.D.P.
P.E.
P.I.
P.K.
P.M.
P.N.
P.R.T.
P.S.
P.S.T.
P.T.
P.T. ii.
Abydos;
Dendereh ;
Deshasheh;
Diospolis Parva ;
Ehnasya;
lllahun;
Kahun;
Medum ;
Naqada;
Royal Tombs;
Season in Egypt;
Six Temples;
Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh;
Tanis, ii. ;
Q.H. Quibell, Hieraconpolis.
(W. M. F. P.)
Monuments. The principal monuments that are yet remaining
to illustrate the art and history of Egypt may be best taken in
historical order. Of the prehistoric age there are many rock
carvings, associated with others of later periods: they principally
remain on the sandstone rocks about Silsila, and their age is
shown by the figures of ostriches which were extinct in later
times. One painted tomb was found at Nekhen (Hieraconpolis) ,
now in the Cairo Museum; the brick walls were colour-washed
and covered with irregular groups of men, animals and ships,
painted with red, black and green. The cemeteries otherwise
only contain graves, cut in gravel or brick lined, and formerly
roofed with poles and brushwood. The 1st to Illrd Dynasties
have left at Abydos large forts of brickwork, remains of two
successive temples, and the royal tombs (see ABYDOS). Else-
where are but few other monuments; at Wadi Maghara in Sinai
is a rock sculpture of Semerkhet of the 1st Dynasty in perfect
state, at Giza is a group of tombs of a prince and retinue of the
1st Dynasty, and at Giza and Bet Khallaf are two large brick
mastabas with extensive passages closed by trap-doors, of kings
of the Illrd Dynasty. The main structure of this age is the
step-pyramid of Sakkara, which is a mastaba tomb with eleven
successive coats of masonry, enlarging it to about 350 by 390 ft.
and 200 ft. high. In the interior is sunk in the rock a chamber
24X23 ft. and 77 ft. high, with a granite sepulchre built in the
floor of it, and various passages and chambers branching from
it. The doorway of one room (now in Berlin Museum) was
decorated with polychrome glazed tiles with the name of King
Neterkhet. The complex original work and various alterations
of it need thorough study, but it is now closed and research is
forbidden.
The IVth to Vlth Dynasties are best known by the series of
pyramids (see PYRAMID) in the region of Memphis. Beyond
these tombs, and the temples attached to them, there are very
few fixed monuments; of Cheops and Pepi I. there are temple
foundations at Abydos (q.v.), and a few blocks on other sites;
of Neuserre (Raenuser) there is a sun temple at Abuslr; and of
several kings there were tablets in Sinai, now in the Cairo Museum.
A few tablets of the IXth Dynasty have been found at Sakkara,
and a tomb of a prince at Asstot. Of the Xlth Dynasty is the
POTTERY]
EGYPT
75
EARLY PREHISTORIC
7000-6000 ac.
i T DYNASTY
4800-4500 BC.
vr- DYNASTY
4000- 3300 B.C.
xii 1 - DYNASTY
2800-2500 B.C
XVlii DYNASTY
1500-1350 BC.
XIX DYNASTY
000- HOO BC
XXVI T " DYNASTY
700 500 BC
Fio. 112. Principal Types of Pottery of Ancient Egypt. (Scale I : 20.)
EGYPT
[ANCIENT ART
terrace-temple of Menthotp III. recently excavated at Thebes:
also foundations of this king and of Sankhkere at Abydos. In
the XHth Dynasty there is the celebrated red granite obelisk
of Heliopolis, one of a pair erected by Senwosri (Senusert) I. in
front of his temple which has now vanished. Another large
obelisk of red granite, 41 ft. high, remains in the Fayttm. The
most important pictorial tombs of Beni Hasan belong to this age;
the great princes appear to have largely quarried stone for their
palaces, and to have cut the quarry in the form of a regular
chamber, which served for the tomb chapel. These great rock
chambers were covered with paintings, which show a large range
of the daily life and civilization. The pyramids and temples
of Senwosri II. and III. and Amenemhe III. remain at Illahun,
Dahshur and Hawjira. The latter was the celebrated Labyrinth,
which has been entirely quarried away, so that only banks of
chips and a few blocks remain. At the first of these sites is
the most perfect early town, of which hundreds of houses still
remain. Of Senwosri III. there are the forts and temples above
the second cataract at Semna and Kumma. Of the Hyksos age
there are the scanty remains of a great fortified camp at Tell
el-Yehudia.
In the XVIIIth to XXth Dynasties we reach the great period
of monuments. Of Amasis (Aahmes) and Amenophis I. there
are but fragments left in later buildings; and of the latter a
great quantity of sculpture has been recovered at Karnak.
The great temple of Karnak had existed since the Xlth Dynasty
or earlier, but the existing structure was begun under Tethmosis
(Tahutmes) I., and two of the great pylons and one obelisk of
his remain in place. He also built the simple and dignified
temple of Medinet Habu at Thebes, which was afterward over-
shadowed by the grandiose work of Rameses III. The next
generation Tethmosis II. and Hatshepsut added to their
father's work; they also built another pylon and some of the
existing chambers at Karnak, set up the great obelisks there
and carved some colossi. The obelisks are exquisitely cut in
red granite, each sign being sawn in shape by copper tools fed
with emery, and the whole finished with a perfection of pro-
portion and delicacy not seen on other granite work. One
obelisk being overthrown and broken we can examine the minute
treatment of the upper part, which was nearly a hundred feet
from the ground. The principal monument of this period is
the temple of Deir el Bahri, the funeral temple of Hatshepsut,
on which she recorded the principal event of her reign, the expedi-
tion to Punt. The erasures of her name by Tethmosis III., and
reinsertions of names under later kings, the military scenes, and
the religious groups showing the sacred kine of Hathor, all add
to the interest of the remarkable temple. It stands on three
successive terraces, rising to the base of the high limestone cliffs
behind it. The rock-cut shrine at Specs Artemidos, and the
temple of Serablt in Sinai are the only other large monuments
of this queen yet remaining. Tethmosis III. was one of the
great builders of Egypt, and much remains of his work, at about
forty different sites. The great temple of Karnak was largely
built by him; most of the remaining chambers are his, including
the beautiful botanical walls showing foreign plants. Of his
work at Heliopolis there remain the obelisks of London and
New York; and from Elephantine is the obelisk at Sion House.
On the Nubian sites his work may still be seen at Amada,
Ellesia, Ibrim, Semna and in Sinai at Serablt el Khadem. Of
Amenophis II. and Tethmosis IV. there are no large monuments,
they being mainly known by additions at Karnak. The well
known stele of the sphinx was cut by the latter king, to com-
memorate his dream there and his clearing of the sphinx
from sand. Amenophis III. has left several large buildings
of his magnificent reign. At Karnak the temple had a new
front added as a great pylon, which was later used as the
back of the hall of columns by Seti I. But three new temples
at Karnak, that of Month (Mentu), of Mut and a smaller one,
all are due to this reign, as well as the long avenue of sphinxes
before the temple of Khons; these indicate that the present
Ramesside temple of Khons has superseded an earlier one of
this king. The great temple of Luxor was built to record the
divine origin of the king as son of Ammon; and on the western
side of Thebes the funerary temple of Amenophis was an immense
pile, of which the two colossi of the Theban plain still stand
before the front of the site, where yet lies a vast tablet of sand-
stone 30 ft. high. The other principal buildings are the temples
of Sedenga and of Solib in Nubia. Akhenaton has been so
consistently eclipsed by the later kings who destroyed his work,
that the painted pavement and the rock tablets of Tell el Amarna
are the only monuments of his still in position, beside a few
small inscriptions. Harmahib (Horemheb) resumed the work
at Karnak, erecting two great pylons and a long avenue of
sphinxes. The rock temple at Silsila and a shrine at Jebel Adda
are also his.
In the XlXth Dynasty the great age of building continued,
and the remains are less destroyed than the earlier temples,
because there were subsequently fewer unscrupulous rulers to
quarry them away. Seti I. greatly extended the national temple
of Karnak by his immense hall of columns added in front of the
pylon of Amenophis III. His funerary temple at Kurna is
also in a fairly complete condition. The temple of Abydos is
celebrated owing to its completeness, and the perfect condition
of its sculptures, which render it one of the most interesting
buildings as an artistic monument; and the variety of religious
subjects adds to its importance. The very long reign and
vanity of Rameses II. have combined to leave his name at over
sixty sites, more widely spread than that of any other king.
Yet very few great monuments were originated by him; even
the Ramesseum, his funerary temple, was begun by his father.
Additions, appropriations of earlier works and scattered inscrip-
tions are what mark this reign. The principal remaining build-
ings are part of a court at Memphis, the second temple at Abydos,
and the six Nubian temples of Bet el-Wali, Jerf Husein, Wadi
es-Sebua, Derr, and the grandest of all the rock-cut temple
of Abu Simbel, with its neighbouring temple of Hathor.
Mineptah has left few original works; the Osireum at Abydos
is the only one of which much remains, his funerary temple
having been destroyed as completely as he destroyed that of
Amenophis III. The celebrated Israel stele from this temple
in his principal inscription. The rock shrines at Silsila are of
small importance. There is no noticeable monument of the
dozen troubled years of the end of the dynasty.
The XXth Dynasty opened with the great builder Rameses
III. Probably he did not really exceed other kings in his
activity; but as being the last of the building kings at the
western side of Thebes, his temple has never been devastated
for stone by the claims of later work. The whole building of
Medinet Habu is about 500 ft. long and 160 wide, entirely the
work of one reign. The sculptures of it are mainly occupied
with the campaigns of the king against the Libyans, the Syrians
and the negroes, and are of the greatest importance for the
history of Egypt and of the Mediterranean lands. Another
large work was the clearance and rebuilding of much of the city
of Tell el Yehudia, the palace hall of which contained the cele-
brated coloured tiles with figures of captives. At Karnak three
temples, to Ammon, Khonsu and Mut, all belong to this reign.
The blighted reigns of the later Ramessides and the priest-kings
did not leave a single great monument, and they are only known
by usurpations of the work of others. The Tanite kings of the
XXIst Dynasty rebuilt the temple of their capital, but did little
else. The XXIInd Dynasty returned to monumental work.
Sheshonk I. added a large wall at Karnak; covered with the
record of his Judaean war. Osorkon (Uasarkon) I. built largely
at Bubastis, and Osorkon II. added the great granite pylon
there, covered with scenes of his festival; but at Thebes these
kings only inscribed previous monuments. The Ethiopian
(XXVth) dynasty built mainly in their capital under Mount
Barkal, and Shabako and Tirhaka (Tahrak) also left chapels
and a pylon at Thebes; and the latter added a great colonnade
leading up to the temple of Karnak, of which one column is still
standing.
Of the Saite kings there are very few large monuments.
Their work was mainly of limestone and built in the Delta, and
CHRONOLOGY]
EGYPT
77
hence it has been entirely swept away. TV square fort of brick-
work at Daphnae (q.t.) was built by 1'sammetichus I. Of
Aprics (Haa-ab-ra, Hophra) an obelisk and two monolith shrines
are the principal remains. Of Amasis (Aahmes) II. five great
shrines are known; but the uth.r kings of this age have only
left minor works. The Persians kept up Egyptian monuments.
Darius I. quarried largely, and left a series of great granite
decrees along his Suez canal; he also built the great temple in
the oasis of Kharga.
The XXXlh Dynasty renewed the period of great temples.
Nekhtharheb built the temple of Bchbtt, now a ruinous heap
of immense blocks of granite. Beside other temples, now
destroyed, he set up the great west pylon of Karnak, and the
pylon at Kharga. Nekhtnebf built the Hathor temple and
great pylon at Philae, and the east pylon of Karnak, beside
temples elsewhere, now vanished. Religious building was
continued under the Ptolemies and Romans; and though the
royal impulse may not have been strong, yet the wealth of the
land under good government supplied means for many places
to rebuild their old shrines magnificently. In the Fayum the
capital was dedicated to Queen Arsinoe, and doubtless Ptolemy
rebuilt the temple, now destroyed. At Sharona are remains of
a temple of Ptolemy I. Dendera is one of the most complete
temples, giving a noble idea of the appearance of such work
anciently. The body of the temple is of Ptolemy XIII., and
was carved as late as the XVIth (Caesarion), and the great
portico was in building from Augustus to Nero. At Coptos was
a screen of the temple of Ptolemy I. (now at Oxford), and a
chapel still remains of Ptolemy XIII. Karnak was largely
decorated; a granite cella was built under Philip Arrhidaeus,
covered with elaborate carving; a great pylon was added to
the temple of Khonsu by Ptolemy III.; the inner pylon of
the Ammon-temple was carved by Ptolemy VI. and IX.; and
granite doorways were added to the temples of Month and Mot
by Ptolemy II. At Luxor the entire cella was rebuilt by
Alexander. At Medlnet Habfl the temple of Tethmosis III. had
a doorway built by Ptolemy X., and a forecourt by Antoninus.
The smaller temple was built under Ptolemy X. and the
emperors. South of Medlnet HabQ a small temple was built
by Hadrian and Antoninus. At Esna the great temple was
rebuilt and inscribed during a couple of centuries from Titus
to Decius. At 1 Kab the temple dates from Ptolemy IX. and
X. The great temple of Edfu, which has its enclosure walls and
pylon complete, and is the most perfect example remaining, was
gradually built during a century and a half from Ptolemy III.
to XI. The monuments of Philae begin with the wall of Nekht-
nebf. Ptolemy II. began the great temple, and the temple of
Arhesnofer (Arsenuphis) is due to Ptolemy IV., that of Asclepius
to Ptolemy V., that of Hathor to Ptolemy VI., and the great
colonnades belong to Ptolemy XIII. and Augustus. The
beautiful little riverside temple, called the "kiosk," was built
by Augustus and inscribed by Trajan; and the latest building
was the arch of Diocletian.
Farther south, in Nubia, the temples of Dabod and Dakka
were built by the Ethiopian -Ergamenes, contemporary of
Ptolemy IV.; and the temple of DendQr is of Augustus. The
latest building of the temple style is the White Monastery near
Suhag. The external form is that of a great temple, with
windows added along the top; while internally it was a Christian
church. The modern dwellings in it have now been cleared out,
and the interior admirably preserved and cleaned by a native
Syrian architect.
Beside the great monuments, which we have now noticed,
the historical material is found on several other classes of remains.
These are: (i) The royal tombs, which in the Vth, Vlth;
XVIIIth, XlXth and XXth Dynasties are fully inscribed;
but as the texts are always religious and not historical, they are
less important than many other remains. (2) The royal coffins
and wrappings, which give information by the added graffiti
recording their removals; (3) Royal tablets, which are of the
highest value for history, as they often describe or imply historical
events; (4) Private tombs and tablets, which are in many cases
biographical. (5) Papyri concerning dafly affairs which throw
light on history; or which give historic detail, as the great
papyrus of Ramcses III., and the trials under Rameses X.
(6) The added inscriptions on buildings by later restorers, and
alterations of names for misappropriation. (7) The statues
which give the royal portraits, and sometimes historical facts.
(8) The oslrara, or rough notes of work accounts, and plans
drawn on pieces of limestone or pottery. (9) The scarabs
bearing kings' names, which under the Hyksos and in some other
dark periods, are our main source of information. (10) The
miscellaneous small remains of toilet objects, ornaments, weapons,
&c., many of which bear royal names.
Every object and monument with a royal name will be found
catalogued under each reign in Petrie's History of Egypt, 3 vols.,
the last editions of each being the fullest. (W. M. F. P.)
F. Chronology. i. Technical. The standard year of the Ancient
Egyptians consisted of twelve months of thirty days ' each, with
five epagomenal days, in all 365 days. It was thus an effective
compromise between the solar year and the lunar month, and
contrasts very favourably with the intricate and clumsy years
of other ancient systems. The leap-year of the Julian and
Gregorian calendars confers the immense benefit of a fixed
correspondence to the seasons which the Egyptian year did not
possess, but the uniform length of the Egyptian months is
enviable even now. The months were grouped under three
seasons of four months each, and were known respectively as
the first, second, third and fourth month
I > II - III > I III
of TtTtT O (I'b-t) " inundation " or " verdure," C * p r -t
pro) " seed-time," " winter," and
" harvest," " summer," the = =
O
(shorn)
"five (days)
over the year " being outside these seasons and the year itself,
according to the Egyptian expression, and counted either at
the beginning or at the end of the year. Ultimately the
Egyptians gave names to the months taken from festivals
celebrated in them, in order as follows: Thoth, Paophi, Athyr,
Choiak, Tobi, Mechlr, Phamenoth, Pharmuthi, Pachons, Payni,
Epiphi, Mesore, the epagomenal days being then called " the
short year." In Egypt the agricultural seasons depend more
immediately on the Nile than on the solar movements; the first
day of the first month of inundation, i.e. nominally the beginning
of the rise of the Nile, was the beginning of the year, and as the
Nile commences to rise very regularly at about the date of the
annual heliacal rising of the conspicuous dog-star Sothis (Sinus)
(which itself follows extremely closely the slow retrogression
of the Julian year), the primitive astronomers found in the
heliacal rising of Sothis as observed at Memphis (on July 19
Julian) a very correct and useful starting-point for the seasonal
year. But the year of 365 days lost one day in four years of the
Sothic or Julian year, so that in 121 Egyptian years New Year's
day fell a whole month too early according to the seasons, and
in 1461 years a whole year was lost. This " Sothic period "
or era of 1460 years, during which the Egyptian New
Year's day travelled all round the Sothic year, is recorded by
Greek and Roman writers at least as early as the ist century
B.C. The epagomenal days appear on a monument of the Vth
Dynasty and in the very ancient Pyramid texts. They were
considered unlucky, and perhaps this accounts for the curious
fact that, although they are named in journals and in festival
lists, &c., where precise dating was needed, no known
monument or legal document is dated in them. It is, however,
quite possible that by the side of the year of 365 days a shorter
year of 360 was employed for some purposes. Lunar months
1 Ten-day periods as subdivisions of the month can be traced
as far back as the Middle Kingdom. The day consisted of twenty-
four hours, twelve of day (counted from sunrise to sunset) and twelve
of night ; it began at sunrise.
EGYPT
[CHRONOLOGY
were observed in the regulation of temples, and lunar years, &c.,
have been suspected. To find uniformity in any department
in Egyptian practice would be exceptional. By the decree of
Canopus, Ptolemy III.Euergetes introduced through the assembly
of priests an extra day every fourth year, but this reform had
no acceptation until it was reimposed by Augustus with the
Julian calendar. Whether any earlier attempt was made to
adjust the civil to the solar or Sothic year in order to restore
the festivals to their proper places in the seasons temporarily
or otherwise, is a question of great importance for chronology,
but at present it remains unanswered. Probably neither the
Sothic nor any other era was employed by the ancient Egyptians,
who dated solely by regnal years (see below). An inscription
of Rameses II. at Tanis is dated in the 4Ooth year of the reign
of the god Seth of Ombos, probably with reference to some
religious ordinance during the rule of the Seth-worshipping
Hyksos; Rameses II. may well have celebrated its quater-
centenary, but it is wrong to argue from this piece of evidence
alone that an era of Seth was ever observed.
From the Middle Kingdom onward to the Roman period, the
dates upon Egyptian documents are given in regnal years.
On the oldest monuments the years in a reign were not numbered
consecutively but were named after events; thus in the 1st
Dynasty we find " the year of smiting the Antiu-people," in the
beginning of the Illrd Dynasty " the year of fighting and smiting
the people of Lower Egypt." But under the Ilnd Dynasty
there was a census of property for taxation every two years,
and the custom, continuing (with some irregularities) for a long
time, offered a uniform mode of marking years, whether current
or past. Thus such dates are met with as " the year of the third
time of numbering " of a particular king, the next being desig-
nated as " the year after the third time of numbering." Under
the Vth Dynasty this method was so much the rule that the
words " of numbering " were commonly omitted. It would seem
that in the course of the next dynasty the census became annual
instead of biennial, so that the " times " agreed with the actual
years of reign; thenceforward their consecutive designation as
" first time," " second time," for " first year," " second year,"
was as simple as it well could be, and lasted unchanged to the
fall of paganism. The question arises from what point these
regnal dates were calculated. Successive regnal years might
begin (i) on the anniversary of the king's accession, or (2)
on the calendrical beginning in each year (normally on the
first day of the nominal First month of inundation, i.e.
ist Thoth in the later calendar). In the latter case there
would be a further consideration: was the portion of a
calendar year following the accession of the new king counted
to the last year of the outgoing king, or to the first year of the
new king? In Dynasties I., IV.-V., XVIII. there are instances
of the first mode (i), in Dynasties II., VI. (?), XII., XXVI. and
onwards they follow the second (2). It may be that the practice
was not uniform in all documents even of, the same age. In
Ptolemaic times not only were Macedonian dates sometimes
given in Greek documents, but there were certainly two native
modes of dating current; down to the reign of Euergetes there
was a " fiscal " dating in papyri, according to which the year
began in Paophi, besides a civil dating probably from Thoth;
later, all the dates in papyri start from Thoth.
The Macedonian year is found in early Ptolemaic documents.
The fixed year of the Canopic decree under Euergetes (with
ist Thoth on Oct. 22) was never adopted. Augustus estab-
lished an " Alexandrian " era with the fixed Julian year,
retaining the Egyptian months, with a sixth epagomenal day
every fourth year. The capture of Alexandria having taken
place on the ist of August 30 B.C., the era began nominally
in 30 B.C., but it was not actually introduced till some years later,
from which time the ist Thoth corresponded with the zpth
of August in the Julian year. The vague " Egyptian " year,
however, continued in use in native documents for some centuries
along with the Alexandrian " Ionian " year. The era of Dio-
cletian dates from the 2gth of August 284, the year of his reforms;
later, however, the Christians called it the era of the Martyrs
(though the persecution was not until 302), and it survived the
Arab conquest. The dating by indictions, i.e. Roman tax-
censuses, taking place every fifteenth year, probably originated
in Egypt, in A.D. 312, the year f the defeat of Maxentius. The
indictions began in Payni of the. fixed year, when the harvest
had been secured.
See F. K. Ginzel, Handbuch der mathematischen and technischen
Chronologie, Bd. i. (Leipzig, 1906), and the bibliography in the
following section.
2. Historical} As to absolute chronology, the assigning of
a regnal year to a definite date B.C. is clear enough (except in
occasional detail) from the conquest by Alexander onwards.
Before that time, in spite of successive efforts to establish a
chronology, the problem is very obscure. The materials for
reconstructing the absolute chronology are of several kinds:
(i) Regnal dates as given on contemporary monuments may
indicate the lengths of individual reigns, but not with accuracy,
as they seldom reach to the end of a reign and do not allow for
co-regencies. Records of the time that has elapsed between two
regnal dates in the reigns of different kings are very helpful;
thus stelae from the Serapeum recording the ages of the Apis
bulls with the dates of their birth and death have fixed the
chronology of the XXVIth Dynasty. Traditional evidence for
the lengths of reigns exists in the Turin Papyrus of kings and
in Manetho's history; unfortunately the papyrus is very frag-
mentary and preserves few reign-lengths entire, and Manetho's
evidence seems very untrustworthy, being known only from
late excerpts. (2) The duration of a period may be calculated
by generations or the probable average lengths of reigns, but such
calculations are of little value, and the succession of generations
even when the evidence seems to be full is particularly difficult
to ascertain in Egyptian, owing to adoptions and the repetition
of the same name even in one family of brothers and sisters.
(3) Synchronisms in the histories of other countries furnish reliable
dates Greek, Persian, Babylonian and Biblical dates for the
XXVIth Dynasty, Assyrian for the XXV th; less precise are the
Biblical date of Rehoboam, contemporary with the invasion
of Shishak (Sheshonk) in the XXIInd Dynasty, and the date
of the Babylonian and Assyrian kings contemporary with
Amenhotp IV. in the XVTIIth Dynasty. The last, about 1400
B.C., is the earliest point to which such coincidences reach.
(4) Astronomical data, especially the heliacal risings of Sothis
recorded by dates of their celebration in the vague year. These
are easily calculated on the assumption first that the observations
were correctly made, secondly that the calendrical dates are in
the year of 365 days beginning on ist Thoth, and thirdly that
this year subsequently underwent no readjustment or other
alteration before the reign of Euergetes. The assumption may
be a reasonable one, and if the results agree with probabilities
as deduced from the rest of the evidence it is wise to adopt it;
if on the other hand the other evidence seems in any serious
degree contrary to those results it may be surmised that the
assumption is faulty in some particular. The harvest date
referred to below helps to show that the first part of the assump-
tion is justified.
The duration of the reigns in several dynasties is fairly well
known from the incontrovertible evidence of contemporary
monuments. The XXVIth Dynasty, which lasted 139 years,
is particularly clear, and synchronisms fix its regnal dates to the
years B.C. within an error of one or two years at most. The
lengths of several reigns in the Xllth, XVIIIth and XlXth
Dynasties are known, and the sum total for the Xllth Dynasty
is preserved better than any other in the Turin Papyrus, which
was written under the XlXth Dynasty. The succession and
number of the kings are also ascertained for other dynasties,
together with many regnal dates, but very serious gaps exist
in the records of the Egyptian monuments, the worst being
between the Xllth and the XVIIIth Dynasties, between the
Xlth and the Vlth, and at Dynasties I.-III. For the chronology
before the time of the XXVIth Dynasty Herodotus's history
1 For the " sequence " dating (S.D.) used by archaeologists for
the prehistoric period see above ( Art and Archaeology, ad init. note).
CHRONOLOGY!
EGYPT
79
is quite worthless. Manetho alone of all authorities offers a
complete chronology from the 1st Dynasty to the XXXth. In
the case of the six kings of the XXVIth Dynasty, Africanus,
the best of his excerptors, gives correct figures for five reigns,
but attributes six instead of sixteen years to Necho; the other
excerptors have wrong numbers throughout. For the XlXth
Dvn**tv.
Meyer 1887
(minimum date).
Petrie
1894, &c.
Meyer
1904-1908.
Sethe
I90S-
Breasted
1906.
Petrie
1906.
I.
j
4777
3315
3360
3400
55o
II.
3180
45>4
3110
5247
III.
)
4212
2895
2810
2980
4945
IV.
2830
3998
MM
2720
2900
473
V.
3721
2680
2630
275
4454
VI.
2530
353
254
2480
2625
4206
VII.
> U'-
2300
2475
4003
VIII.
\- S-
3933
IX.
3106
2360
2445
3787
X.
V *Hl
,V'*7
XL
2821
2160
2100
2160
XII.
2130
2778
2OOO
2OOO
JCXKI
3459
XIII.
1930
2565
1791
1788
3246
XIV.
2112
2793
XV.
1780
1680'
2533
XVI.
1928
2249
XVII.
'738
I73I
XVIII.
'53
1587
1580
1580
1580
XIX.
1320
1327
1321
1322
Dynasty Manetho's figures are wrong wherever we can check
them; the names, too, are seriously faulty. In the XVlllth
Dynasty he has too many names and few are clearly identifiable,
while the numbers are incomprehensible. In the Xllth Dynasty
the number of the kings is correct and many of the names can
be justified, but the reign-lengths are nearly, if not quite, all
wrong. The summations of years for the Dynasties XII. and
XVIII. are likewise wrong. It seems, therefore, that the known
texts of Manetho, serviceable as they have been in the recon-
struction of Egyptian history, cannot be employed as a
serious guide to the early chronology, since they are faulty
wherever we can check them, even in the XXVIth
Dynasty whose kings were so celebrated among the Greeks.
There remain the astronomical data. Of these, the Sothic
date furnished by a calendar in the Ebers Papyrus of the
9th year of Amenophis I. (when interpreted on the assump-
tion stated above), and another at Elephantine of an uncertain
year of Tethmosis III., tally well with each other (1550-1546,
1474-1470 B.C.) and with the Babylonian synchronism (not
yet accurately determined) under Amenhotp IV. (Akhenaton).
Another Sothic date of the 7th year of Senwosri III. on a Berlin
papyrus from Kahun, similarly interpreted (1882-1878 B.C.),
gives for the XHth Dynasty a range from 2000 to 1788 B.C.
This (discovered by L. Borchardt in 1899)
began about 1570 B.C., taking what seems to be the utmost
interval that it permits, 220 years have to contain a crowd of
kings of whom nearly 100 are already known by name from
monuments and papyri, while fresh names are being added
annually to the long list; the shattered fragments of the last
columns in the Turin Papyrus show space for 150 or perhaps
180 kings of this period, apparently with-
out reaching the XVIIth Dynasty. An
estimate of 160 to 200 kings would there-
fore not be excessive. The dates that have
come down to us are very few; the only
ones known from the Hyksos period are of a
1 2th and a 33rd year. In the Turin Papyrus
two reign-lengths of less than a year, seven
others of less than five years each, one of ten
years and one of thirteen seem attributable
to the XHIth and XlVth Dynasties. Prob-
ably most of the reigns were short, as
Manetho also decidedly indicates. It is
possible that the compiler of the Turin
Papyrus, who excluded contemporary reigns
in the period between the Vlth and the
XII th Dynasties, here admitted such; nor
is a correspondingly large number of kings
in so short a period without analogies in
history. Professor Petrie, however, thinks
it best, while accepting the evidence of the Sirius date, to
suppose further that a whole Sothic period of 1460 years had
passed in the interval, making a total of 1650 years for
the six dynasties in place of 220 years. This, however,
seems greatly in excess of probability, and several Egypto-
logists familiar with excavation are willing to accept Meyer's
figures on archaeological grounds. To the present writer it
seems that Meyer's chronology provides a convenient working
theory, but involves such an improbability in regard to the
interval between the XII th and the XVIIIth Dynasties that the
interpretation of the Sothic date on which it is founded must
be viewed with suspicion^intil clear facts are found to corroborate
it. Corroboration has been sought by Mahler, Sethe and Petrie
in the dates of new moons, of warlike and other expeditions,
and of high Nile, but their evidence so far is too vague and
uncertain to affect the question seriously. It is remarkable that
no records of eclipses are known from Egyptian documents.
The interesting date of the harvest at El Bersha, quoted by
Meyer in Breasted, Records, i. p. 48, confirms the Sothic date for
the XJIth Dynasty in some measure, but it belongs to the same
age, and therefore its evidence would be equally vitiated with the
other by any subsequent alteration in the Egyptian calendar.
Before the discovery of the Kahun Sothic date, Professor Petrie
seems to offer a welcome ray, piercing the
obscurity of early Egyptian chronology;
guided by it the historian Ed. Meyer, and
K. Sethe have framed systems of chronology
in close agreement with each other, reaching
back to the 1st Dynasty at about 3400 B.C.
To Meyer is further due a calculation that
the Egyptian calendar was introduced in
4241-4238 B.C.* Their results in general
have been adopted by the " Berlin school,"
including Erman. Steindorff (in Baedeker's
&typf) and Breasted in America. Never-
theless many Egyptologists are unwill-
ing to accept the new chronology, the
chief obstacle being that it allows so short an interval for
the six dynasties between the Xllth and the XVIIIth. If
the Xllth Dynasty ended about 1700 B.C. and the XVIIIth
1 Meyer makes XIII. overlap XV. (Hyksos). and XIV. (Xoite),
contemporary with XVI. (Hyksos) and XVII. (Theban).
1 Reisner (Early Dynastit Cemeteries, p. 126), from his work in the
prehistoric cemeteries, believes that Egypt was too uncivilized at
that early date to have performed this scientific feat.
Dynasty.
Wiedemann
1884.
Meyer
1884.
Petrie
1905-1906.
Breasted
1906.
Maspero
1904.
XIX.
1490
1320
(1328), 1322
1350
XX.
1280
1180
1 202
1 200
XXI.
1100
1060
IIO2
1090
XXII.
975
93
952
945
XXIII.
Bio
755
745
XXIV.
720
721
718
XXV.
715
728
715
712
XXVI.
664
663
664
663
XXVII.
525
525
525
525
4*5
XXVIII.
415
4<>5
c. 405
XXIX.
408
399
399
XXX.
387
378
380
Orhus
350
342
342
put the end of the Xllth Dynasty at 2565 B.C.; in 1884 even
Meyer had suggested 1930 B.C. as its minimum date, thus
allowing 400 years at the least for the period from the Xlllth
Dynasty to the XVIIth.
Beyond the Xllth Dynasty estimates must again be vague
The spacing of the years on the Palermo stone has given rise to
some calculations for the early dynasties. Others are grounded
on the dates of certain operations which are likely to have
8o
EGYPT
[HISTORY
taken place at particular seasons of the year so that they can be
roughly calculated on the Sothic basis, others on Manetho's
figures, average lengths of reigns, evidence of the Turin Papyrus,
&c.
Table I. page 79 shows the chronology of the first nineteen
dynasties, according to recent authorities, before and after the
discovery of the Kahun Sothic date.
The dates of the earlier dynasties in this table are always
intended to be only approximate; for instance, Meyer in 1904
allowed an error of 100 years either of excess or deficiency in
the dates he assigned to the dynasties from the Xth upwards.
The other dynasties are dated as in Table II. by different
authorities.
See Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, Bd. i. (Stuttgart, 1884),
Geschichte des alien Agyptens (1887), Agyptische Chronologic
(Abhandl. of Prussian Academy) (Berlin, 1904, with the supplement
Nachtrdge zur dgypt. Chronologic, ib. 1907) ; K. Sethe, " Beitrage
zur altesten Geschichte Agyptens " (in his Untersuchungen, Bd. ih.)
(Leipzig, 1905); J. H. Breasted, Ancient' Records of Egypt, " His-
torical Documents," vol. i. (Chicago, 1906); W. M. F. Petrie, A
History of Egypt, vol. i. (London, 1884), vol. iii. (1905), Researches in
Sinai (London, 1906); G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des peuples
de ['orient (Paris, 1904); A. Wiedemann, Agyptische Geschichte
(Gotha, 1884); articles by Mahler and others in the Zeitschrift fur
dgyptische Sprache and Orientalistische Literaturzeitung (recent
years). (F. LL. G.)
III. HISTORY
i. From the Earliest Times to the Moslem Conquest.
In the absence of a strict chronology, the epochs of Pharaonic
history are conveniently reckoned in dynasties according to
Manetho's scheme, and these dynasties are grouped into longer
periods: the Old Kingdom (Dynasties I. to VIII.), including
the Earliest Dynasties (I. to III.) and the Pyramid Period
(Dynasties IV. to VI.); the Middle Kingdom (Dynasties IX.
to XVII.), including the Heracleopolite Dynasties (IX. to X.)
and the Hyksos Period (Dynasties XV. to XVII.); the New
Empire (Dynasties XVIII. to XX.); the Deltaic Dynasties
(Dynasties XXI. to XXXI.), including the Saite and Persian
Periods (Dynasties XXVI. to XXXI.). The conquest by
Alexander ushers in the Hellenistic age, comprising the periods
of Ptolemaic and Roman rule.
The Prehistoric Age. One of the most striking features of
recent Egyptology is the way in which the earliest ages of the
civilization, before the conventional Egyptian style was formed,
have been illustrated by the results of excavation. Until 1895
there seemed little hope of reaching the records of those remote
times, although it was plain that the civilization had developed
in the Nile valley for many centuries before the IVth Dynasty,
beyond which the earliest known monuments scarcely reached.
Since that year, however, there has been a steady flow of dis-
coveries in prehistoric and early historic cemeteries, and, partly
in consequence of this, monuments already known, such as the
annals of the Palermo stone, have been made articulate for the
beginnings of history in Egypt.
It is probable that certain rudely chipped flints, so-called
eoliths, in the alluvial gravels (formed generally at the mouth
of wadis opening on to the Nile) at Thebes and elsewhere,
are the work of primitive man; but it has been shown that such
are produced also by natural forces in the rush of torrents.
On the surface of the desert, at the borders of the valley, palaeo-
lithic implements of well-defined form are not uncommon, and
bear the marks of a remote antiquity. In some cases they
appear to lie where they were chipped on the sites of flint factories.
Geologists and anthropologists are not yet agreed on the question
whether the climate and condition of the country have under-
gone large changes since these implements were deposited. As yet
none have been found in such association with animal remains
as would help in deciding their age, nor have any implements
been discovered in rock-shelters or in caves.
Of neolithic remains, arrowheads and other implements are
found in some numbers in the deserts. In the Fayflm region,
about the borders of the ancient Lake of Moeris and beyond, they
are particularly abundant and interesting in their forms. But
their age is uncertain; some may be contemporary with the
advanced culture of the Xllth Dynasty in the Nile valley.
Definite history on the other hand has been gained from the
wonderful series of " prehistoric " cemeteries excavated by J. de
Morgan, Petrie, Reisner and others on the desert edgings of the
cultivated alluvium. The succession of archaeological types
revealed in them has been tabulated by Petrie in his Diospolis
Parva; and the detailed publication of Reisner's unusually
careful researches is bringing much new light on the questions
involved, amongst other things showing the exact point at which
the " prehistoric " series merges into the 1st Dynasty, for, as-
might be surmised, in many cases the prehistoric cemeteries
continued in use under the earliest dynasties. The finest
pottery, often painted but all hand-made without the wheel,
belongs to the prehistoric period; so also do the finest flint
implements, which, in the delicacy and exactitude of their form
and flaking, surpass all that is known from other countries.
Metal seems to be entirely absent from the earliest type of
graves, but immediately thereafter copper begins to appear
(bronze is hardly to be found before the Xllth Dynasty). The
paintings on the vases show boats driven by oars and sails
rudely figured, and the boats bear emblematic standards or
ensigns. The cemeteries are found throughout Upper and Middle
Egypt, but as yet have not been met with in the Delta or on
its borders. This might be accounted for by the inhabitants
of Lower Egypt having practised a different mode of dis-
posing of the dead, or by their cemeteries being differently
placed.
Tradition, mythology and later customs make it possible to
recover a scrap of the political history of that far-off time.
Menes, the founder of the 1st Dynasty, united the two kingdoms
of Upper and Lower Egypt. In the prehistoric period, therefore,
these two realms were separate. The capital of Upper Egypt
was Nekheb, now represented by the ruins of El Kab, with the
royal residence across the river at Nekhen (Hieraconpolis) ; that
of Lower Egypt was at Buto (Puto or Dep) in the marshes, with
the royal residence in the quarter called Pe. NekhSbi, goddess of
El Kab, represented the Upper or Southern Kingdom, which
was also under the tutelage of the god Seth, the goddess Buto
and the god Horus similarly presiding over the Lower Kingdom.
The royal god in the palace of each was a hawk or Horus. The
spirits of the deceased kings were honoured respectively as
the jackal-headed spirits of Nekhen and the hawk-headed spirits
of Pe. As we hear also of the " spirits of On " it is probable that
Heliopolis was at one time capital of a kingdom. In after days
the prehistoric kings were known as " Worshippers of Horus "
and in Manetho's list they are the vacves " Dead," and ^poxs
" Heroes," being looked upon as intermediate between the divine
dynasties and those of human kings. It is impossible to esti-
mate the duration of the period represented by the pre-
historic cemeteries; that the two kingdoms existed throughout
unchanged is hardly probable.
According to the somatologist Elliott Smith, the most im-
portant change in the physical character of the people of Upper
Egypt, in the entire range of Egyptian archaeology, took place
at the beginning of the dynastic period; and he accounts for this
by the mingling of the Lower with the Upper Egyptian popula-
tion, consequent on the uniting of the two countries under one
rule. From remains of the age of the IVth Dynasty he is able
to define to some extent the type of the population of Lower
Egypt as having a better cranial and muscular development than
that of Upper Egypt, probably through immigration from Syria.
The advent of the dynasties, however, produced a quickening
rather than a dislocation in the development of civilization.
It is doubtful whether we possess any writing of the prehistoric
age. A few names of the kings of Lower Egypt are preserved
in the first line of the Palermo stone, but no annals are attached
to them. Petrie considers that one of the kings buried at
Abydos, provisionally called Nar-mer and whose real name may
be Mer or Beza, preceded Menes; of him there are several
inscribed records, notably a magnificent carved and inscribed
HISTORY]
EGYPT
81
slate palette found at Hieraconpolis, with figures of the king
and his vizier, war-standards and prisoners. To identify him
with Bezau (Boethos) of the Hnd Dynasty runs counter to much
archaeological evidence. Sethe places him next after Menes and
some would identify him with that king. Another inscribed
palette may be pre-dynastic; it perhaps mentions a king named
" Scorpion."
Tkt OU Kingdom. The names of a number of kings attribut-
able to the 1st Dynasty are known from their tombs at Abydos.
Unfortunately, they are almost exclusively Horus
titles
in place of the personal names by
which they were recorded in the lists of Abydos and
Manetho; some, however, of the latter are found, and prove
that the scribes of the New Kingdom were unable to read
them correctly. Important changes and improvements took
place in the writing even during the 1st Dynasty. The personal
name of Menes i*""* is given by one only of many relics of a
king whose Horus-name was Aha, " the Fighter." Doubts
have been expressed about the identification with Menes, but
it is strongly corroborated by the very archaic style of the
remains. The name of Aha (Menes) was found in two tombs,
one at Nag&da north of Thebes and nearly opposite the road to
the Red Sea, the other at Abydos. Manetho makes the
1st Dynasty Thinite, this being the capital of the nome in which
Abydos lay. Upper Egypt always had precedence over Lower
Egypt, and it seems clear that Menes came from the former and
conquered the latter. According to tradition he founded
Memphis which lay on the frontier of his conquest; probably
he resided there as well as at Abydos; at any rate relics of one
of the later kings of the 1st Dynasty have already been recognized
in its vast necropolis. Of the eight kings of the 1st Dynasty,
three the fifth, sixth and seventh in the Ramesside list of Abydos
are positively identified by tomb-remains from Abydos, and
others are scarcely less certain. Two of the kings have also
left tablets at the copper and turquoise mines of Wadi Maghara
in Sinai. The royal tombs are built of brick, but one of them,
that of Usaphais, had its floor of granite from Elephantine.
They must have been filled with magnificent furniture and
provisions of every kind, including annual record-tablets of the
reigns, carved in ivory and ebony. From a fragment on the
Palermo stone it is clear that material existed as late as the
Vth Dynasty for a brief note of the height of the Nile and other
particulars in each year of the reign of these kings.
The Ilnd Dynasty of Manetho appears to have been separated
from the 1st even on the Palermo stone; it also was Thinite,
and the tombs of several of its nine (?) kings were found at
Abydos. The Illrd Dynasty is given as Memphite by Manetho.
Two of the kings built huge mastaba-tombs at Bet Khallaf near
Abydos, but the architect and learned scribe Imhotp designed
for one of these two kings, named Zoser, a second and mightier
monument at Memphis, the great step-pyramid of Sakkara. In
Ptolemaic times Imhotp was deified, and the traditional import-
ance of Zoser is shown by a forged grant of the Dodecaschoenus
to the cataract god Khnum, purporting to be from his reign, but
in reality dating from the Ptolemaic age. With Snefru, at the
end of this dynasty, we reach the beginning of Egyptian history
as it was known before the recent discoveries. Monuments and
written records are henceforth more numerous and important,
and the Palermo annals show a fuller scale of record. The
events in the three years that are preserved include a successful
raid upon the negroes, and the construction of ships and gates
of cedar-wood which must have been brought from the forests
of the Lebanon. Snefru also set up a tablet at Wadi Maghara in
Sinai. He built two pyramids, one of them at Medum in steps,
the other, probably in the perfected form, at Dahshur, both
lying between Memphis and the Fayum.
Pyramids did not cease to be built in Egypt till the New
Kingdom; but from the end of the Illrd to the Vlth Dynasty
is pre-eminently the time when the royal pyramid in stone was
the chief monument left by each successive king. Zoser and
Snefru have been already noticed. The personal name enclosed
in a cartouche d3 is henceforth the commonest title of the
king. We now reach the IVth Dynasty containing the famous
names of Cheops (?..), Chephren (Khafrfi) and Mycer-
inus (Menkeurfi), builders respectively of the Great,
the Second and the Third Pyramids of Giza. In the
best art of this time there was a grandeur which was
never again attained. Perhaps the noblest example of Egyptian
sculpture in the round is a diorite statue of Chephren, one of
several found by Mariette in the so-called Temple of the Sphinx.
This " temple " proves to be a monumental gate at the lower
end of the great causeway leading to the plateau on which the
pyramids were built. A king Dedefre', between Cheops and
Chephren, built a pyramid at Abu-Roash. Shepscskaf is one
of the last in the dynasty. Tablets of most of these kings have
been found at the mines of Wadi Maghara. In the neighbourhood
of the pyramids there are numerous mastabas of the court
officials with fine sculpture in the chapels, and a few decorated
tombs from the end of this centralized dynasty of absolute
monarchs are known in Upper Egypt. A tablet which describes
Cheops as the builder of various shrines about the Great Sphinx
has been shown to be a priestly forgery, but the Sphinx itself
may have been carved out of the rock under the splendid rule
of the IVth Dynasty.
The Vth Dynasty is said to be of Elephantine, but this must
be a mistake. Its kings worshipped Re, the sun, rather than
Horus, as their ancestor, and the title
son of the Sun '
began to be written by them before the cartouche containing
the personal name, while another " solar " cartouche, containing
a name compounded with R6, followed the title
" king
of Upper and Lower Egypt." Sahur6 and the other kings of the
dynasty built magnificent temples with obelisks dedicated to
R6, one of which, that of NeuserrS at Abusir, has been thoroughly
explored. The marvellous tales of the Westcar Papyrus, dating
from the Middle Kingdom, narrate how three of the kings were
born of a priestess of Re. The pyramids of several of the kings
are known. The early ones are at Abusir, and the best preserved
of the pyramid temples, that of Sahure, excavated by the
German Orient-Gesellschaft, in its architecture and sculptured
scenes has revealed an astonishingly complete development of
art and architecture as well as of warlike enterprise by sea and
land at this remote period; the latest pyramid belonging to the
Vth Dynasty, that of Unas at Sakkara, is inscribed with long
ritual and magical texts. Exquisitely sculptured tombs of this
time are very numerous at Memphis and are found throughout
Upper Egypt. Of work in the traditional temples of the country
no trace remains, probably because, being in limestone, it has all
perished. The annals of the Palermo stone were engraved and
added to during this dynasty; the chief events recorded for
the time are gifts and endowments for the temples. Evidently
priestly influence was strong at the court. Expeditions to Sinai
and Puoni (Punt) are commemorated on tablets.
The Vlth Dynasty if not more vigorous was more articulate;
inscribed tombs are spread throughout the country. The most
active of its kings was the third, named Pepi or Phiops, from
whose pyramid at Sakkara the capital, hitherto known as
" White Walls," derived its later name of Memphis (MN-NFR,
Mempi); a tombstone from Abydos celebrates the activity of a
certain Una during the reigns of Pepi and his successor in organiz-
ing expeditions to the Sinai peninsula and south Palestine, and
in transporting granite from Elephantine and other quarries.
Herkhuf, prince of Elephantine and an enterprising leader of
caravans to the south countries both in Nubia and the Libyan
oases, flourished under Merenrg and Pepi II. called NeferkerC.
On one occasion he brought home a dwarf dancer from the Sudan,
described as being like one brought from Puoni in the time of
the fifth-dynasty king Assa; this drew from the youthful
Pepi II. an enthusiastic letter which was engraved in full upon
the facade of Herkhuf's tomb. The reign of the last-named
king, begun early, lasted over ninety years, a fact so long
EGYPT
[HISTORY
remembered that even Manetho attributes to him ninety-four
years; its length probably caused the ruin of the dynasty. The
local princelings and monarchs had been growing in culture,
wealth and power, and after Pepi II. an ominous gap in the
monuments, pointing to civil war, marks the end of the Old
Kingdom. The Vllth and Vlllth Dynasties are said to have
been Memphite, but of them no record survives beyond some
names of kings in the lists.
The Middle Kingdom. The long Memphite rule was broken
by the IXth and Xth Dynasties, of Heracleopolis Magna (Hnes)
in Middle Egypt. Kheti or Achthoes was apparently
a f avo urit e name with the kings, but they are very
obscure. They may have spread their rule by conquest
over Upper Egypt and then overthrown the Memphite
dynasty. The chief monuments of the period are certain
inscribed tombs at Assiut; it appears that one of the kings,
whose praenomen was Mikere, supported by a fleet and army
from Upper Egypt, and especially by the prince of Assiut, was
restored to his paternal city of Heracleopolis, from which he had
probably been driven out; his pyramid, however, was built in
the old royal necropolis at Memphis. Later the princes of
Thebes asserted their independence and founded the Xlth
Dynasty, which pushed its frontiers northwards until finally it
occupied the whole country. Its kings were named Menthotp,
from Mont, one of the gods of Thebes; others, perhaps sub-kings,
were named Enyotf (Antef). They were buried at Thebes,
whence the coffins of several were obtained by the early collectors
of the i gth century. Nibh&tp Menthotp I. probably established
his rule over all Egypt. The funerary temple of Nebhepre
Menthotp III., the last but one of these kings, has been excavated
by the Egypt Exploration Fund at Deir el Bahri, and must have
been a magnificent monument. His successor Sankhkere
Menthotp IV. is known to have sent an expedition by the
Red Sea to Puoni.
The XHth Dynasty is the central point of the Middle King-
dom, to which the decline of the Memphite and the rise of the
Heracleopolite dynasty mark the transition, while the growth
of Thebes under the Xlth Dynasty is its true starting-point.
Monuments of the Xllth Dynasty are abundant and often of
splendid design and workmanship, whereas previously there had
been little produced since the Vlth Dynasty that was not half
barbarous. Although not much of the history of the XHth
Dynasty is ascertained, the Turin Papyrus and many dated
inscriptions fix the succession and length of reign of the eight
kings very accurately. The troubled times that the kingdom
had passed through taught the long-lived monarchs the pre-
caution of associating a competent successor on the throne.
The nomarchs and the other feudal chiefs were inclined to
strengthen themselves at the expense of their neighbours; a
firm hand was required to hold them in check and distribute the
honours as they were earned by faithful service.. -The tombs of
the most favoured and wealthy princes are magnificent, par-
ticularly those of certain families in Middle Egypt at Beni Hasan,
El Bersha, Assiut and Deir Rlfa, and it is probable that each had
a court and organization within his nome like that of the royal
palace in miniature. Eventually, in the reigns of Senwosri III.
and Amenemhe' III., the succession of strong kings appears
to have centralized all authority very completely. The names
in the dynasty are Amenemhi (Ammenemes) and Senwosri
(formerly read Usertesen or Senusert). The latter seems to be
the origin of the Sesostris (q.v.) and Sesoosis of the legends.
Amenemhe' I., the first king, whose connexion with the previous
dynasty is not known, reigned for thirty years, ten of them being
in partnership with his son Senwosri I. He had to fight for his
throne and then reorganize the country, removing his capital
or residence from Thebes to a central situation near Lisht about
25 m. south of Memphis. His monuments are widespread in
Egypt, the quarries and mines in the desert as far as Sinai bear
witness to his great activity, and we know of an expedition which
he made against the Nubians. The " Instructions of AmenemhS
to his son Senwosri," whether really his own or a later composi-
tion, refer to these things, to his care for his subjects, and to the
ingratitude with which he was rewarded, an attempt on his life
having been made by the trusted servants in his own palace.
The story of Sinuhi is the true or realistic history of a soldier who,
having overheard the secret intelligence of Amenemhe's death,
fled in fear to Palestine or Syria and there became rich in the
favour of the prince of the land; growing old, however, he
successfully sued for pardon from Senwosri and permission to
return and die in Egypt.
Senwosri I. was already the executive partner in the time of
the co-regency, warring with the Libyans and probably in the
Sudan. After Amenemh^'s death he fully upheld the greatness
of the dynasty in his long reign of forty-five years. The obelisk
of Heliopolis is amongst his best-known monuments, and the
damming of the Lake of Moeris (q.v.) must have been in progress
in his reign. He built a temple far up the Nile at Wadi Haifa
and there set up a stela commemorating his victories over the
tribes of Nubia. The fine tombs of Ameni at Beni Hasan and of
Hepzefa at Assiut belong to his reign. The pyramids of both
father and son are at Lisht.
Amenemhe' II. was buried at Dahshur; he was followed by
Senwosri II., whose pyramid is at Illahun at the mouth of the
Fayum. In his reign were executed the fine paintings in the
tomb of Khnemhotp at Beni Hasan, which include a remarkable
scene of Semitic Bedouins bringing eye-paint to Egypt from the
eastern deserts. In Manetho he is identified with Sesostris (see
above), but Senwosri I., and still more Senwosri III., have a
better claim to this distinction. The latter warred in Palestine
and in Nubia, and marked the south frontier of his kingdom
by a statue and stelae at Semna beyond the Second Cataract.
Near his pyramid was discovered the splendid jewelry of some
princesses of his family (see JEWELRY ad init.). The tomb of
Thethotp at El Bersha, celebrated for the scene of the transport
of a colossus amongst its paintings, was finished in this reign.
Amenemhe III. completed the work of Lake Moeris and began
a series of observations of the height of the inundation at Semna
which was continued by his successors. In his long reign of
forty-six years he built a pyramid at Dahshur, and at Hawara
near the Lake of Moeris another pyramid together with the
Labyrinth which seems to have been an enormous funerary
temple attached to the pyramid. His name was remembered
in the Fayum during the Graeco-Roman period and his effigy
worshipped there as Pera-marres, i.e. Pharaoh Marres (Marres
being his praenomen graecized). Amenemhe IV.'s reign was
short, and the dynasty ended with a queen Sebeknefru
(Scemiophris), whose name is found in the scanty remains of
the Labyrinth. The XHth Dynasty numbered eight rulers and
lasted for 213 years. Great as it was, it created no empire
outside the Nile valley, and its most imposing monument, which
according to the testimony of the ancients rivalled the pyramids,
is now represented by a vast stratum of chips.
The history of the following period down to the rise of the New
Empire is very obscure. Manetho gives us the XIHth (Dios-
polite) Dynasty, the XlVth (Xoite from Xois in Lower Egypt),
the XVth and XVIth (Hyksos) and the XVIIth (Diospolite),
but his names are lost except for the Hyksos kings. The Abydos
tablet ignores all between the XHth and XVIIIth Dynasties.
The Turin Papyrus preserves many names on its shattered
fragments, and the monuments are for ever adding to the list,
but it is difficult to assign them accurately to their places. The
Hyksos names can in some cases be recognized by their foreign
aspect, the peculiar style of the scarabs on which they are en-
graved or by resemblances to those recorded in Manetho. The
kings of the XVIIth Dynasty too are generally recognizable
by the form of their name and other circumstances. Manetho
indicates marvellous crowding for the XHIth and XlVth
Dynasties, but it seems better to suggest a total duration of
300 or 400 years for the whole period than to adopt Meyer's
estimate of about 210 years (see above, Chronology).
Amongst the kings of the XIHth Dynasty (including perhaps
the XlVth), not a few are represented by granite statues of
colossal size and fine workmanship, especially at Thebes and
Tanis, some by architectural fragments, some by graffiti on the
HISTORY)
EGYPT
rocks about the First Cataract. Some few certainly reigned over
all Egypt. Sebkhotp (Sekhotp, ox<imp) is a favourite name,
no doubt to be connected with the god of the FayOm. Several
of the Thcban kings named Antef (Enyotf) must be placed here
rather than in the Xlth Dynasty. A decree of one of them
degrading a monarch who had sided with his enemies was found
at Coptos engraved on a doorway of Senwosri I.
In its divided state Egypt would fall an easy prey to the
foreigner. Manetho says that the Hyksos (q.v.) gained Egypt
without a blow. Their domination must have lasted
a considerable time, the Khind mathematical papyrus
having been copied in the thirty-third year of a king
Apophis. The monuments and scarabs of the Hyksos
kings are found throughout Upper and Lower Egypt; those
of Khian somehow spread as far as Crete and Bagdad. The
Hyksos, in whom Josephus recognized the children of Israel,
worshipped their own Syrian deity, identifying him with the
Egyptian god Seth, and endeavoured to establish his cult
throughout Egypt to the detriment of the native gods. It is
to be hoped that definite light may one day be forthcoming on
the whole of this critical episode which had such a profound
effect on the character and history of the Egyptian people. The
spirited overthrow of the Hyksos ushered in the glories in arms
and arts which marked the New Empire. The XVIIth Dynasty
probably began the struggle, at first as semi-independent kinglets
at Thebes. Seqenenrt is here a leading name; the mummy
of the third Seqenenre, the earliest in the great find of royal
mummies at Deir el Bahri, shows the head frightfully hacked
and split, perhaps in a battle with the Hyksos.
The New Empire. The epithet " new " is generally attached
to this period, and " empire " instead of " kingdom " marks its
wider power. The glorious XVlIIth Dynasty seems
to have been closely related to the XVIIth. Its first
task was to crush the Hyksos power in the north-east
of the Delta; this was fully accomplished by its founder Ahmosi
(dialectically Ahmasi, Amosis or Amasis I.) capturing their
great stronghold of Avaris. Amasis next attacked them in
S.W. Palestine, where he captured Sharuhen after a siege of three
years. He fought also in Syria and in Nubia, besides overcoming
factious opposition in his own land. The principal source for
the history of this time is the biographical inscription at El Kab
of a namesake of the king, Ahmosi son of Abana, a sailor and
warrior whose exploits extend to the reign of Tethmosis I.
Amendphis I. (Amenhotp), succeeding Amasis, fought in Libya
and Ethiopia. Tethmosis I. (c. 1 540 B.C.) was perhaps of another
family, but obtained his title to the throne through his wife
Ahmosi. After some thirty years of settled rule uninterrupted
by revolt, Egypt was now strong and rich enough to indulge to
the full its new taste for war and lust of conquest. It had
become essentially a military state. The whole of the adminis-
tration was in the hands of the king with his vizier and other
court officials; no trace of the feudalism of the Middle King-
dom survived. Tethmosis thoroughly subdued Cush, which had
already been placed under the government of a viceroy. This
province of Cush extended from Napata just below the Fourth
Cataract on the south to El Kab in the north, so that it included
the first three nomes of Upper Egypt, which agriculturally were
not greatly superior to Nubia. Turning next to Syria, Tethmosis
carried his arms as far as the Euphrates. It is possible that his
predecessor had also reached this point, but no record survives
to prove it. These successful campaigns were probably not very
costly, and prisoners, plunder and tribute poured in from them
to enrich Egypt. Tethmosis I. made the first of those great
additions to the temple of the Theban Ammon at Karnak by
which the Pharaohs of the Empire rendered it by far the greatest
of the existing temples in the world. The temple of Deir el
Bahri also was designed by him. Towards the end of his reign,
his elder sons being dead, Tethmosis associated
Hatshepsut, his daughter by Ahmosi, with himself
upon the throne. Tethmosis I. was the first of the
long line of kings to be buried in the Valley of the
Tombs of the Kings of Thebes. At his death another son Teth-
mosis II. succeeded as the husband of his half-sister, but reigned
only two or three years, during which he warred in Nubia and
placed Tethmosis III., his son by a concubine Esi, upon the throne
beside him (c. ISOOB.C.). After her husband's death the ambitious
Hatshepsut assumed the full regal power; upon her monuments
she wears the masculine garb and aspect of a king though the
feminine gender is retained for her in the inscriptions. On some
monuments of this period her name appears alone, on others
in conjunction with that of Tethmosis III., while the latter again
may appear without the queen's; but this extraordinary woman
must have had a great influence over her stepson and was the
acknowledged ruler of Egypt. Tethmosis, to judge by the
evidence of his mummy and the chronology of his reign, was
already a grown man, yet no sign of the immense powers which
he displayed later has come down to us from the joint reign.
Hatshepsut cultivated the arts of peace. She restored the
worship in those temples of Upper and Lower Egypt which had
not yet recovered from the religious oppression and neglect
of the Hyksos. She completed and decorated the temple of Deir
el Bahri, embellishing its walls with scenes calculated to establish
her claims, representing her divine origin and upbringing under
the protection of Ammon, and her association on the throne
by her human father. The famous sculptures of the great
expedition by water to Puoni, the land of incense on the Somali
coast, are also here, with many others. At Karnak Hatshepsut
laboured chiefly to complete the works projected in the reigns
of Tethmosis I. and II., and set up two obelisks in front of the
entrance as it then was. One of these, still standing, is the most
brilliant ornament of that wonderful temple. A date of the
twenty-second year of her reign has been found at Sinai, no doubt
counted from the beginning of the co-regency with Tethmosis I.
Not much later, in his twenty-second year, Tethmosis III. is
reigning alone in full vigour. While she lived, the personality
of the queen secured the devotion of her servants and held all
ambitions in check. Not long after her death there was a violent
reaction. Prejudice against the rule of a woman, particularly
one who had made her name and figure so conspicuous, was
probably the cause of this outbreak, and perhaps sought justifica-
tion in the fact that, however complete was her right, she had
in some degree usurped a place to which her stepson (who was
also her nephew) had been appointed. Her cartouches began to
be defaced or her monuments hidden up by other buildings,
and the same rage pursued some of her most faithful servants in
their tombs. But the beauty of the work seems to have
restrained the hand of the destroyer. Then came the religious
fanaticism of Akhenaton, mutilating all figures of Ammon and
all inscriptions containing his name; this made havoc of the
exquisite monuments of Hatshepsut; and the restorers of the
XlXth Dynasty, refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the
queen, had no scruples in replacing her names by those of the
associate kings Tethmosis I., II. or III. These acts of vandalism
took place throughout Egypt, but in the distant mines of Sinai
the cartouches of Hatshepsut are untouched. In the royal lists
of Seti I. and Rameses II. Hatshepsut has no place, nor is her
reign referred to on any later monument. 1
The immense energy of Tethmosis III. now found its outlet
in war. Syria had revolted, perhaps on Hatshepsut's death,
but by his twenty-second year the monarch was ready
to lead his army against the rebels. The revolt, headed
by the city of Kadesh on the Orontes, embraced the ;;;.
whole of western Syria. The movements of Tethmosis
in this first campaign, including a battle with the Syrian chariots
and infantry at Megiddo and the capture of that city, were
chronicled from day to day, and an extract from this chronicle
is engraved on the walls of the sanctuary of Karnak, together
with a brief record of the subsequent expeditions. In a series
1 The history of Hatshepsut has been very obscure, and the
mutilations of her cartouches have been variously accounted for.
Recent discoveries by M. Legrain at Karnak and Prof. Petrie at
Sinai have limited the field of conjecture. The writer has followed
M. Naville's guidance in his biography of the queen (in T. M. Davis,
The Tomb of HatshopsttA, London, 1006, pp. I et seq.), made with
very full knowledge of the complicated data.
8 4
EGYPT
[HISTORY
of five carefully planned campaigns he consolidated his conquests
in southern Syria and secured the ports of Phoenicia (<?..)
Kadesh fell in the sixth campaign. In the next year Tethmosis
revisited the Phoenician ports, chastised the rebellious and
received the tribute of Syria, all the while preparing for further
advance, which did not take place until another year had gone
by. Then, in the thirty-third year of his reign, he marched
through Kadesh, fought his way to Carchemish, defeated the
forces that opposed him there and crossed over the Euphrates
into the territory of the king of Mitanni. He set up a tablet by
the side of that of Tethmosis I. and turned southward, following
the river as far as Niy. Here he stayed to hunt a herd of 1 20
elephants, and then, marching westwards, received the tribute
of Naharina and gifts from the Hittites in Asia Minor and from
the king of Babylon. In all he fought seventeen campaigns in
Syria until the spirit of revolt was entirely crushed in a second
capture of Kadesh. The wars in Libya and Ethiopia were of
less moment. In the intervals of war Tethmosis III. proved to
be a wonderfully efficient administrator, with his eye on every
corner of his dominions. The Syrian expeditions occupied six
months in most of his best years, but the remaining time was
spent in activity at home, repressing robbery and injustice,
rebuilding and adorning temples with the labour of his
captives and the plunder and tribute of conquered cities, or
designing with his own hand the gorgeous sacred vessels of the
sanctuary of Ammon. In his later years some expeditions took
place into Nubia. Tethmosis died in the fifty-fourth year of his
reign. His mummy, found in the cachetic at Deir el Bahri, is
said to be that of a very old man. He was the greatest Pharaoh
in the New Empire, if not in all Egyptian history.
Tethmosis III. was succeeded by his son Amenophis II., whom
he had associated on the throne at the end of his reign. One
of the first acts of the new king was to lead an army into Syria,
where revolt was again rife; he reached and perhaps crossed the
Euphrates and returned home to Thebes with seven captive
kings of Tikhsi and much spoil. The kings he sacrificed to
Ammon and hanged six bodies on the walls, while the seventh
was carried south to Napata and there exposed as a terror to the
Ethiopians. Amenophis reigned twenty-six years and left his
throne to his son Tethmosis IV., who is best remembered by a
granite tablet recording his clearance of the Great Sphinx. He
also warred in northern Syria and in Cush. His son Amenophis
III., c. 1400 B.C., was a mighty builder, especially at Thebes,
where his reign marks a new epoch in the history of the great
temples, Luxor being his creation, while avenues of rams, pylons,
&c., were added on a vast scale to Karnak. He married a certain
Taia, who, though apparently of humble parentage, was held in
great honour by her husband as afterwards by her son.
Amenophis III. warred in Ethiopia, but his sway was
long unquestioned from Napata to the Euphrates.
Small objects with his name and that of Taia are found on the
mainland and in the islands of Greece. Through the fortunate
discovery of cuneiform tablets deposited by his successor in
the archives at Tell el-Amarna, we can see how the rulers of the
great kingdoms beyond the river, Mitanni, Assyria and even
Babylonia, corresponded with Amenophis, gave their daughters
to him in marriage, and congratulated themselves on having
his friendship. The king of Cyprus too courted him; while
within the empire the descendants of the Syrian dynasts con-
quered by his father, having been educated in Egypt, ruled
their paternal possessions as the abject slaves of Pharaoh. A
constant stream of tribute poured into Egypt, sufficient to defray
the cost of all the splendid works that were executed. Amenophis
caused a series of large scarabs unique in their kind to be engraved
with the name and parentage of his queen Taia, followed by
varying texts commemorating like medals the boundaries of
his kingdom, his secondary marriage with Gilukhipa, daughter
of the king of Mitanni, the formation of a sacred lake at Thebes,
a great hunt of wild cattle, and the number of lions the king slew
in the first ten years of his reign. The colossi known to the
Greeks by the name of the Homeric hero Memnon, which look
over the western plain of Thebes, represent this king and were
e '
placed before the entrance of his funerary temple, the rest of
which has disappeared. His palace lay farther south on the west
bank, built of crude brick covered with painted stucco. Towards
the end of his reign of thirty-six years, Syria was invaded by the
Hittites from the north and the people called the Khabiri from
the eastern desert; some of the kinglets conspired with the
invaders to overthrow the Egyptian power, while those who
remained loyal sent alarming reports to their sovereign.
Amenophis IV., son of Amenophis III. and Taia, was perhaps
the most remarkable character in the long line of the Pharaohs.
He was a religious fanatic, who had probably been high
priest of the sun-god at Heliopolis, and had come to
view the sun as the visible source of life, creation,
growth and activity, whose power was demonstrated in foreign
lands almost as clearly as in Egypt. Thrusting aside all the
multitudinous deities of Egypt and all the mythology even of
Heliopolis, he devoted himself to the cult of the visible sun-disk,
applying to it as its chief name the hitherto rare word Aton,
meaning " sun "; the traditional divine name Harakht (Horus
of the horizon), given to the hawk-headed sun-god of Heliopolis,
was however allowed to subsist and a temple was built at Karnak
to this god. The worship of the other gods was officially recog-
nized until his fifth year, but then a sweeping reform was initiated
by which apparently the new cult alone was permitted. Of the
old deities Ammon represented by far the wealthiest and most
powerful interests, and against this long favoured deity the
Pharaoh hurled himself with fury. He changed his own name
from Amenhotp, " Ammon is satisfied," to Akhenaton, " pious
to Aton," erased the name and figure of Ammon from the
monuments, even where it occurred as part of his own father's
name, abandoned Thebes, the magnificent city of Ammon, and
built a new capital at El Amarna in the plain of Hermopolis, on
a virgin site upon the edge of the desert. This with a large area
around he dedicated to Aton in the sixth year, while splendid
temples, palaces, houses and tombs for his god, for himself and
for his courtiers were rising around him; apparently also this
" son of Aton " swore an oath never to pass beyond the
boundaries of Aton's special domain. There are signs also that the
polytheistic word " gods " was obliterated on many of the monu-
ments, but other divine names, though almost entirely excluded
from Akhenaton's work, were left untouched where they already
existed. In all local temples the worship of Aton was instituted.
The confiscated revenues of Ammon and the tribute from Syria
and Cush provided ample means for adorning Ekhaton (Akhe-
taton), " the horizon of Aton," the new capital, and for richly
rewarding those who adopted the Aton teaching fervently.
But meanwhile the political needs of the empire were neglected;
the dangers which threatened it at the end of the reign of
Amenophis III. were never properly met; the dynasts in Syria
were at war amongst themselves, intriguing with the great Hittite
advance and with the Khabiri invaders. Those who relied on
Pharaoh and remained loyal as their fathers had done sent letter
after letter appealing for aid against their foes. But though a
general was despatched with some troops, he seems to have done
more harm than good in misjudging the quarrels. At length the
tone of the letters becomes one of despair, in which flight to Egypt
appears the only resource left for the adherents of the Egyptian
cause. Before the end of the reign Egyptian rule in Syria had
probably ceased altogether. Akhenaton died in or about the
seventeenth year of his reign, c. 1350 B.C. He had a family of
daughters, who appeared constantly with him in all ceremonies,
but no son. Two sons-in-law followed him with brief reigns;
but the second, Tutenkhaton, soon changed his name to Tuten-
khamun, and, without abandoning Ekhaton entirely, began to
restore to Karnak its ancient splendour, with new monuments
dedicated to Ammon. Akhenaton's reform had not reached
deep amongst the masses of the population; they probably
retained all their old religious customs and superstitions, while
the priesthoods throughout the country must have been fiercely
opposed to the heretic's work, even if silenced during his lifetime
by force and bribes. One more adherent of his named Ay, a
priest, ruled for a short time, but now Aton was only one of many
Ul>rORY]
EGYPT
gods. At length a general named Harmahib, who had served
under A khena t on .came to the throne as a whole-hearted supporter
of the old religion; soon Aton and his royal following suffered
the fate that they had imposed upon Ammon; their monuments
were destroyed and their names and figures erased, while those
of Ammon were restored. From the time of Rameses II. onwards
the years of the reigns of the heretics were counted to Harmahib,
and Akhenaton was described as " that criminal of Akhetaton."
Harmahib had to bring order as a practical man into the long-
neglected administration of the country and to suppress the
extortions of the official classes by severe measures. His laws to
this end were engraved on a great stela in the temple of Karnak,
of which sufficient remains to bear witness to his high aims,
while the prosperity of the succeeding reigns shows how well
he realized the necessities of the state. He probably began also to
re-establish the prestige of Egypt by military expeditions in the
surrounding countries.
Harmahib appears to have legitimated his rule by marriage
to a royal princess, but it is probable that Rameses I., who suc-
ceeded as founder of the XlXth Dynasty, was not
clely related to him. Rameses in his brief reign of
two years planned and began the great colonnaded
hall of Karnak, proving that he was a man of great ideas, though
probably too old to carry them out; this task he left to his son
Seti I., who reigned one year with his father and on the latter's
death was ready at once to subdue the Bedouin Shasu, who had
invaded Palestine and withheld all tribute. This task was quickly
accomplished and Seti pushed onward to the Lebanon. Here
cedars were felled for him by the Syrian princes, and the Phoe-
nicians paid homage before he returned home in triumph. The
Libyans had also to be dealt with, and afterwards Seti advanced
again through Palestine, ravaged the land of the Amorites and
came into conflict with the Hittites. The latter, however, were now
firmly established in the Orontes valley, and a treaty with Mutallu,
the king of Rheta, reigning far away in Cappadocia, probably
ended the wars of Seti. In his ninth year he turned his attention
to the gold mines in the eastern desert of Nubia and improved the
road thither. Meanwhile the great work at Karnak projected
by his father was going forward, and throughout Egypt the
injuries done to the monuments by Akhenaton were thoroughly
repaired; the erased inscriptions and figures were restored, not
without many blunders. Seti's temple at Abydos and his
galleried tomb in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings stand out
as the most splendid examples of their kind in design and in
decoration. Rameses II. succeeded at an early age
and reigned sixty-seven years, during which he
finished much that was begun by Seti and filled all
Egypt and Nubia with his own monuments, some of them beauti-
ful, but most, necessarily entrusted to inferior workmen, of
coarse execution. The excavation of the rock temple of Abu
Simbel and the completion of the great hall of Karnak were his
greatest achievements in architecture. His wars began in his
second year, their field comprising the Nubians, the Libyans,
the Syrians and the Hittites. In his fifth year, near Kadesh
on the Orontes, his army was caught unprepared and divided
by a strong force of chariots of the Hittites and their allies, and
Rameses himself was placed in the most imminent danger; but
through his personal courage the enemy was kept at bay till
reinforcements came up and turned the disaster into a victory.
The incidents of this episode were a favourite subject in the sculp-
tures of his temples, where their representation was accompanied
by a poetical version of the affair and other explanatory inscrip-
tions. Kadesh, however, was not captured, and after further
contests, in his twenty-first year Rameses and the Hittite king
Khattusil (Kheta-sar) made peace, with a defensive alliance
against foreign aggression and internal revolt (see HITTITES).
Thanks to Winckler's discoveries, the cuneiform text of this
treaty from Boghaz Keui can now be compared with the hiero-
glyphic text at Karnak. In the thirty-fourth year, c. 1250 B.C.,
Khattusil with his friend or subject the king of Kode came from
bis distant capital to see the wonders of Egypt in person, bringing
one of his daughters to be wife of the splendid Pharaoh.
Rameses II. paid much attention to the Delta, which had been
neglected until the days of Seti I., and resided there constantly;
the temple of Tanis must have been greatly enlarged and adorned
by him; a colossus of the king placed here was over 90 ft. in
height, exceeding in scale even the greatest of the Theban colossi
which he had erected in his mortuary temple of the Ramesseum.
Towards the end of the long reign the vigilance and energy of
the old king diminished. The military spirit awakened in the
struggle with the Hyksos had again departed from the Egyptian
nation; mercenaries from the Sudan, from Libya and from the
northern nations supplied the armies, while foreigners settled in
the rich lands of the Delta and harried the coasts. It was a
time too when the movements of the nations that so frequently
occurred in the ancient world were about to be particularly active.
Mineptah, c. 1225 B.C., succeeding his father Rameses II., had
to fight many battles for the preservation of his kingdom and
empire. Apparently most of the fighting was finished by the
fifth year of his reign; in his mortuary temple at Thebes he set
up a stela of that date recording a great victory over the Libyan
immigrants and invaders, which rendered the much harried
land of Egypt safe. The last lines picture this condition with
the crushing of the surrounding tribes. Libya was wasted, the
Hittites pacified, Canaan, Ashkelon (Ascalon), Gezer, Yenoam
sacked and plundered: " Israel is desolated, his seed is not,
Khor (Palestine) has become a widow (without protector) for
Egypt." The Libyans are accompanied by allies whose names,
Sherden, Shekelesh, Ekwesh, Lukku, Teresh, suggest identifica-
tions with Sardinians, Sicels, Achaeans, Lycians and Tyrseni
or Etruscans. The Sherden had been in the armies of
Rameses II., and are distinguished by their remarkable helmets
and apparently body armour of metal. The Lukku are certainly
the same as the Lycians. Probably they were all sea-rovers
from the shores and islands of the Mediterranean, who were
willing to leave their ships and join the Libyans in raids on the
rich lands of Egypt. Mineptah was one of the most unconscion-
able usurpers of the monuments of his predecessors, including
those of his own father, who, it must be admitted, had set him
the example. The coarse cutting of his cartouches contrasts with
the splendid finish of the Middle Kingdom work which they
disfigure. It may be questioned whether it was due to a wave
of enthusiasm amongst the priests and people, leading them to
rededicate the monuments in the name of their deliverer, or a
somewhat insane desire of the king to perpetuate his own memory
in a singularly unfortunate manner. Mineptah, the thirteenth
son in the huge family of Rameses, must have been old when he
ascended the throne; after his first years of reign his energies
gave way, and he was followed by a quick succession of inglorious
rulers, Seti II., the queen Tuosri, Amenmesse, Siptah; the names
of the last two were erased from their monuments.
A great papyrus written after the death of Rameses III. and
recording his gifts to the temples briefly reviews the conditions
of these troublous times. " The land of Egypt was
in the hands of chiefs and rulers of towns, great and
small slaying each other; afterwards a certain Syrian
made himself chief; he made the whole land tributary before
him; he united his companions and plundered their property
(i.e. of the other chiefs). They made the gods like men, and no
offerings were presented in the temples. But when the gods
inclined themselves to peace . . . they established their son
Setenkhot (Setnekht) to be ruler of every land." Of the Syrian,
occupation we know nothing further. Setenkhot, c. 1200 B.C.,
had a very short reign and was not counted as legitimate, but
he established a lasting dynasty (probably by conciliating the
priesthood). He was father of Rameses III., who revived the
glories of the empire. The dangers that menaced Egypt now
were similar to those which Mineptah had to meet at his accession.
Again the Libyans and the " peoples of the sea " were acting
in concert. The latter now comprised Peleset (the Cretans,
ancestors of the Philistines), Thekel, Shekelesh, Denyen
(Danaoi?) and Weshesh; they had invaded Syria from Asia
Minor, reaching the Euphrates, destroying the Hittite cities
and progressing southwards, while their ships gathered plunder
86
EGYPT
[HISTORY
from the coasts of the Delta. This fleet joined the Libyan
invaders, but was overthrown with heavy loss by the Egyptians,
in whose ranks there actually served many Sherden and Kehaka,
Sardinian and Libyan mercenaries. Egypt itself was thus clear
of enemies; but the chariots and warriors of the Philistines and
their associates were advancing through Syria, their families
and goods following in ox-carts, and their ships accompanying
them along the shore. Rameses led out his army and fleet
against them and struck them so decisive a blow that the migrat-
ing swarm submitted to his rule and paid him tribute. In his
eleventh year another Libyan invasion had to be met, and his
suzerainty in Palestine forcibly asserted. His vigour was equal
to all these emergencies and the later years of his reign were
spent in peace. Rameses III., however, was not a great ruler.
He was possessed by the spirit of decadence, imitative rather
than originating. It is evident that Rameses II. was the model
to which he endeavoured to conform, and he did not attempt
to preserve himself from the weakening influences of priestcraft.
To the temples he not only restored the property which had been
given to them by former kings, but he also added greatly to their
wealth; the Theban Ammon naturally received by far the
greatest share, more than those of all the other gods together.
The land held in the name of different deities is estimated at
about 15% of the whole of Egypt; various temples of Ammon
owned two-thirds of this, Re of Heliopolis and Ptah of Memphis
being the next in wealth. His palace was at Medinet Habu on
the west bank of Thebes in the south quarter; and here he
built a great temple to Ammon, adorned with scenes from his
victories and richly provided with divine offerings. Although
Egypt probably was prosperous on the whole, there was un-
doubtedly great distress amongst certain portions of the popula-
tion. We read in a papyrus of a strike of starving labourers in
the Theban necropolis who would not work until corn was given
to them, and apparently the government storehouse was empty
at the time, perhaps in consequence of a bad Nile. Shortly before
the death of the old king a plot in the harem to assassinate him,
and apparently to place one of his sons on the throne, was dis-
covered and its investigation ordered, leading after his death to
the condemnation of many high-placed men and women. Nine
kings of the name of Rameses now followed each other ingloriously
in the space of about eighty years to the end of the XXth
Dynasty, the power of the high priests of Ammon ever growing
at their expense. At this time the Theban necropolis was being
more systematically robbed than ever before. Under Rameses
IX. an investigation took place which showed that one of the
royal tombs before the western cliffs had been completely
ransacked and the mummies burnt. Three years later the
Valley of the Tombs of the Kings was attacked and the sepulchres
of Seti I. and Rameses II. were robbed.
The authority of the last king of the XXth Dynasty,
Rameses XII., was shadowy. Hrihor, the high priest in his
Thg reign, gradually gathered into his own hands all real
Deltaic power, and succeeded him at Thebes, c. noo B.C.,
Dynasties; while a prince at Tanis named Smendes (Esbenteti)
"rfcf* founded a separate dynasty in the Delta (Dynasty
XXI.). From this period dates a remarkable papyrus
containing the report of an envoy named Unamun, sent to Syria
by Hrihor to obtain cedar timber from Byblus. He took with
him an image of Ammon to bestow life and health on the prince
of Byblus, but apparently no other provision for the journey
or for the negotiations beyond a letter of recommendation to
Smendes and a little gold and silver. Smendes had trading ships
in the Phoenician ports, but even his influence was not greater
than that of other commercial or pirate centres, while Hrihor was
of no account except in so far as he might pay well for the cedar
wood he required. Unamun was robbed on the voyage, the prince
of Byblus rebuffed him, and when at last the latter agreed to
provide the timber it was only in exchange for substantial gifts
hastily sent for from Egypt (including rolls of papyrus) and the
promise of more to follow. The prince, however, seems to have
acknowledged to some extent the divinity of Ammon and the
debt owed by Phoenicia to Egyptian culture, and pitied the many
misfortunes of Unamun. The narrative shows the feebleness of
Egypt abroad. The Tanite line of kings generally had the over-
lordship of the high priests of Thebes; the descendants of Hrihor,
however, sometimes by marriage with princesses of the other line,
could assume cartouches and royal titles, and in some cases
perhaps ruled the whole of Egypt. Ethiopia may have been
ruled with the Thebais, but the records of the time are very
scanty. Syria was wholly lost to Egypt. The mummies from
the despoiled tombs of the kings were the object of much anxious
care to the kings of this dynasty; after being removed from one
tomb to another, they were finally deposited in a shaft near the
temple of Deir el Bahri, where they remained for nearly three
thousand years, until the demand for antiquities at last brought
the plunderer once more to their hiding-place; eventually they
were all secured for the Cairo museum, where they may now be
seen.
Libyan soldiers had long been employed in the army, and
their military chiefs settled in the large towns and acquired
wealth and power, while the native rulers grew weaker and weaker.
The Tanite dynasty may have risen from a Libyan stock, though
there is nothing to prove it; the XXIInd Dynasty are clearly
from their names of foreign extraction, and their genealogy in-
dicates distinctly a Libyan military origin in a family of rulers of
Heracleopolis Magna, in Middle Egypt. Sheshonk (Shishak) I.,
the founder of the dynasty, c. 950 B.C., seems to have fixed his
residence at Bubastis in the Delta, and his son married the
daughter of the last king of the Tanite dynasty. Heracleopolis
seems henceforth for several centuries to have been capital of
Middle Egypt, which was considered as a more or less distinct
province. Sheshonk secured Thebes, making one of his sons
high priest of Ammon, and whereas Solomon appears to have
dealt with a king of Egypt on something like an equal footing,
Sheshonk re-established Egyptian rule in Palestine and Nubia,
and his expedition in the fifth year of Rehoboam subdued Israel
as well as Judah, to judge by the list of city names which he
inscribed on the wall of the temple of Karnak. Osorkon I.
inherited a prosperous kingdom from his father, but no further
progress was made. It required a strong hand to curb the
Libyan chieftains, and divisions soon began to show themselves
in the kingdom. The XXIInd Dynasty lasted through many
generations; but there were rival kings, and M. Legrain thinks
that he has proof that the XXIIIrd Dynasty was contempor-
aneous with the end of the XXIInd. The kings of the XXIIIrd
Dynasty had little hold upon the subject princes, who spent the
resources of the country in feuds amongst themselves. A native
kingdom had meanwhile been established in Ethiopia. Our
first knowledge of it is at this moment, when the Ethiopian king
Pankhi already held the Thebais. The energetic prince of Sais,
Tefnakht, followed by most of the princes of the Delta, subdued
most of Middle Egypt, and by uniting these forces threatened
the Ethiopian border. Heracleopolis Magna, however, with its
petty king Pefteuaubasti, held out against Tefnakht, and
Pankhi coming to its aid not only drove Tefnakht out of Middle
Egypt, but also captured Memphis and received the submission
of the princes and chiefs; in all these included four " kings "
and fourteen other chiefs. According to Diodorus the Ethiopian
state was theocratic, ruled through the king by the priests of
Ammon. The account is probably exaggerated; but even in
Pankhi's record the piety of the king, especially towards Ammon,
is very marked.
The XXIVth Dynasty consisted of a single Saite king named
Bocchoris (Bekerrinf), son of Tefnachthus, apparently the above
Tefnakht. Another Ethiopian invader, Shabako
(Sabacon), is said to have burnt Bocchoris alive. The
Ethiopian rule of the XXVth Dynasty was now firmly
established, and the resources of the two countries together
might have been employed in conquest in Syria and Phoenicia;
but at this very time the Assyrian empire, risen to the highest
pitch of military greatness, began to menace Egypt. The
Ethiopian could do no more than encourage or support the
Syrians in their fight for freedom against Sargon and Sennacherib.
Shabako was followed by Shebitku and Shebitku by Tirhaka
HtSTORYl
EGYPT
(Tahrak, Taracos). Tirhaka was energetic in opposing the
Assyrian advance, but in 670 B.C. Esarhaddon defeated his
army on the border of Egypt, captured Memphis with the royal
harem and took great spoil. The Egyptian resistance to the
Assyrians was probably only half-hearted; in the north especi-
ally there must have been a strong party against the Ethiopian
rule. Tirhaka laboured to propitiate the north country, and
probably rendered the Ethiopian rule acceptable throughout
Egypt. Notwithstanding, the Assyrian king entrusted the
government and collection of tribute to the native chiefs; twenty
princes in all are enumerated in the records, including one
Assyrian to hold the key of Egypt at Pelusium. Scarcely had
Esarhaddon withdrawn before Tirhaka returned from his refuge
in the south and the Assyrian garrisons were massacred. Esar-
haddon promptly prepared a second expedition, but died on the
way to Egypt in 668 B.C.; his son Assur-bani-pal sent it forward,
routed Tirhaka and reinstated the governors. At the head of
these was Necho (Niku), king of Sais and Memphis, father of
Psammetichus, the founder of the XXVIth Dynasty. We next
hear that correspondence with Tirhaka was intercepted, and
that Necho, together with Pckrur of Psapt (at the entrance to
the Wadi Tumilat) and the Assyrian governor of Pelusium, was
taken to Nineveh in chains to answer the charge of treason.
Whatever may have occurred, it was deemed politic to send
Necho back loaded with honours and surrounded by a retinue
of Assyrian officials. Upper Egypt, however, was loyal to Tirhaka,
and even at Memphis the burial of an Apis bull was dated by
the priests as in his reign. Immediately afterwards he died.
His nephew Tandamane, received by the Upper country with
acclamations, besieged and captured Memphis, Necho being
probably slain in the encounter. But in 661 (?) Assur-bani-pal
drove the Ethiopian out of Lower Egypt, pursued him up the
Nile and sacked Thebes. This was the last and most tremendous
visitation of the Assyrian scourge.
Psammetichus (Psamme'tk), 664-610 B.C., the son of Necho,
succeeded his father as a vassal of Assyria in his possessions of
Memphis and Sais, allied himself with Gyges, king of
Lydia, and aided by Ionian and Carian mercenaries,
extended and consolidated his power. 1 By the ninth
year of his reign he was in full possession of Thebes. Assur-
bani-pal's energies throughout this crisis were entirely occupied
with revolts nearer home, in Babylon, Elam and Arabia. The
Assyrian arms again triumphed everywhere, but at the cost of
complete exhaustion. Under the firm and wise rule of Psam-
metichus, Egypt recovered its prosperity after the terrible losses
inflicted by internal wars and the decade of Assyrian invasions.
The revenue went up by leaps and bounds. Psammetichus
guarded the frontiers of Egypt with three strong garrisons,
placing the Ionian and Carian mercenaries especially at the
Pelusiac Daphnae in the N.E., from which quarter the most
formidable enemy was likely to appear. The Assyrians did not
move against him, but a great Scythian horde, destroying all
before it in its southward advance, is said by Herodotus to
have been turned back by presents and entreaties. Diplomacy
backed up by vigorous preparations may have deterred the
Scythians from the dangerous enterprise of crossing the desert
to Egypt. Before his death Psammetichus had advanced into
southern Palestine and captured Azotus.
When Psammetichus began to reign the situation of Egypt
was very different from what it had been under the Empire.
The development of trade in the Mediterranean and contact
with new peoples and new civilizations in peace and war had
given birth to new ideas among the Egyptians and at the same
time to a loss of confidence in their own powers. The Theban
supremacy was gone and the Delta was now the wealthy and
progressive part of Egypt; piety increased amongst the masses,
unenterprising and unwarlike, but proud of their illustrious
antiquity. Thebes and Ammon and the traditions of the Empire
savoured too much now of the Ethiopian; the priests of, the
Memphite and Deltaic dynasty thereupon turned deliberately
1 This, it may be remarked, is the time vaguely represented by
the Dodecarchy of Herodotus.
for their models to the times of the ancient supremacy of
Memphis, and the sculptures and texts on tomb and temple had
to conform as closely as possible to those of the Old Kingdom.
In other than religious matters, however, the Egyptians were
inventing and perhaps borrowing. To enumerate a few examples
of this which are already definitely known: we find that the
forms of legal and business documents became more precise;
the mechanical arts of casting in bronze on a core and of moulding
figures and pottery were brought to the highest pitch of excel-
lence; and portraiture in the round on its highest plane was better
than ever before and admirably lifelike, revealing careful study
of the external anatomy of the individual.
Psammetichus died in the fifty-fourth year of his reign and
was succeeded by his son Necho, 610-594 B.C. Taking advantage
of the helpless state of the Assyrians, whose capital was assailed
by the Medes and the Babylonians, the new Pharaoh prepared
an expedition to recover the ancient possessions of the Empire
in Syria. Josiah alone, faithful to the king of Assyria, opposed
him with his feeble force at Megiddo and was easily overcome
and skin. Necho went forward to the Euphrates, put the land
to tribute, and, in the case of Judah at any rate, filled the throne
with his own nominee (see JEHOIAKIM). The fall of Nineveh
and the division of the spoil gave to Nabopolasser, king of
Babylon, the inheritance of the Assyrians in the west, and he at
once despatched his son Nebuchadrezzar to fight Necho. The
Babylonian and Egyptian forces met at Carchemish (605), and
the rout of the latter was so complete that Necho relinquished
Syria and might have lost Egypt as well had not the death of
Nabopolasser recalled the victor to Babylon. Herodotus relates
that in Necho's reign a Phoenician ship despatched from Egypt
actually circumnavigated Africa, and the attempt was made
to complete a canal through the Wadi Tumilat, which connected
the Mediterranean and Red Seas by way of the Lower Egyptian
Nile. (See SUEZ.) The next king, Psammetichus II., 594-
589 B.C., according to one account made an expedition to Syria
or Phoenicia, and apparently sent a mercenary force into Ethiopia
as far as Abu Simbel. Pharaoh Hophra (Apries), 580-570 B.C.,
fomented rebellion against the Babylonian suzerainty in Judah,
but accomplished little there. Herodotus, however, describes
his reign as exceedingly prosperous. The mercenary troops at
Elephantine mutinied and attempted to desert to Ethiopia,
but were brought back and punished. Later, however, a dis-
astrous expedition sent to aid the Libyans against the Greek
colony of Gyrene roused the suspicion and anger of the native
soldiery at favours shown to the mercenaries, who of course had
taken no part in it. Amasis (Ahmosi) II. was chosen king by
the former (570-525 B.C.), and his swarm of adherents overcame
the Greek troops in Apries' pay (see AMASJS). None the less
Amasis employed Greeks in numbers, and cultivated the friend-
ship of their tyrants. His rule was confined to Egypt (and
perhaps Cyprus), but Egypt itself was very prosperous. At the
beginning of his long reign of forty-four years he was threatened
by Nebuchadrezzar; later he joined the league against Cyrus
and saw with alarm the fall of his old enemy. A few months
after his death, 525 B.C., the invading host of the Persians led
by Cambyses reached Egypt and dethroned his son Psam-
metichus III.
Cambyses at first conciliated the Egyptians and Tespected
their religion; but, perhaps after the failure of his expedition
into Ethiopia, he entirely changed his policy, and his The
memory was generally execrated. He left Egypt so Persian
completely crushed that the subsequent usurpation
of the Persian throne was marked by no revolt in that
quarter. Darius, 521-486 B.C., proved himself a
beneficent ruler, and in a visit to Egypt displayed his considera-
tion for the religion of the country. In the Great Oasis he
built a temple to Ammon. The annual tribute imposed on the
satrapy of Egypt and Cyrene was heavy, but it was probably
raised with ease. The canal from the Nile to the Red Sea was
completed or repaired, and commerce flourished. Documents
dated in the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth years of Darius are
not uncommon, but apparently at the very end of his reign,
88
EGYPT
[HISTORY
some years after the disaster of Marathon, Egypt was inducec
to rebel. Xerxes, 486-467 B.C., who put down the revolt with
severity, and his successor Artaxerxes, 466-425 B.C., like
Cambyses, were hateful to the Egyptians. -The disorders which
marked the accession of Artaxerxes gave Egypt another oppor-
tunity to rebel. Their leaders were Inaros the Libyan of Marea
and the Egyptian Amyrtaeus. Aided by an Athenian force,
Inaros slew the satrap Achaemenes at the battle of Papremis
and destroyed his army; but the garrison of Memphis held out.
and a fresh host from Persia raised the siege and in turn besieged
the Greek and Egyptian forces on the island of Papremis. At
last, after two years, having diverted the river from its channel,
they captured and burnt the Athenian ships and quickly ended
the rebellion. The reigns of Xerxes II. and Darius II. are marked
by no recorded incident in Egypt until a successful revolt about
405 B.C. interrupted the Persian domination.
Monuments of the Persian rule in Egypt are exceedingly
scanty. The inscriptions of Pefteuauneit, priest of Neith at
Sais, and from his position the native authority who was most
likely to be consulted by Cambyses and Darius, tells of his
relations with these two kings. For the following reigns Egyptian
documents hardly exist, but some papyri written in Aramaic have
been found at Elephantine and at Memphis. Those from the
former locality show that a colony of Jews with a temple
dedicated to Yahweh (Jehovah) had established themselves at
that garrison and trading post (see ASSUAN). Herodotus visited
Egypt in the reign of Artaxerxes, about 440 B.C. His description
of Egypt, partly founded on Hecataeus, who had been there
about fifty years earlier, is the chief source of information for the
history of the Saite kings and for the manners of the times,
but his statements prove to be far from correct when they can
be checked by the scanty native evidence. (F. LL. G.)
Amyrtaeus (Amnertais) of Sais, perhaps a son of Pausiris and
grandson of the earlier Amyrtaeus, revolted from Darius II.
c. 405 B.C., and Egypt regained its independence for
I'-* a bout sixty years. The next king Nefeuret
xxxi.' (Nepherites I.) was a Mendesian and founded the
XXIXth Dynasty. After Hakor and Nefeuret II. the
sovereignty passed to Dynasty XXX., the last native Egyptian
line. Monuments of all these kings are known, and art flourished
particularly under the MendesiankingsNekhtharheb(Nectanebes
or Nectanebus I.) and Nekhtnebf (Nectanebes II.). The former
came to the throne when a Persian invasion was imminent,
378 B.C. Hakor had already formed a powerful army, largely
composed of Greek mercenaries. This army Nekhtharheb
entrusted to the Athenian Chabrias. The Persians, however,
succeeded in causing his recall and in gaining the services of
his fellow-countryman Iphicrates. The invading army consisted
of 200,000 barbarians under Pharnabazus and 20,000 Greeks
under Iphicrates. After the Egyptians had experienced a
reverse, Iphicrates counselled an immediate advance on Memphis.
His advice was not followed by Pharnabazus; the Egyptian
king collected his forces and won a pitched battle near Mendes.
Pharnabazus retreated and Egypt was free.
Nekhtharheb was succeeded by Tachos or Teos, whose short
reign was occupied by a war with Persia, in which the king of
Egypt secured the services of a body of Greek mercenaries under
the Spartan king Agesilaus and a fleet under the Athenian general
Chabrias. He entered Phoenicia with every prospect of success,
but having offended Agesilaus he was dethroned in a military
revolt which gave the crown to Nekhtnebf or Nectanebes II.,
the last native king of Egypt. At this moment a revolt broke
out. The prince of Mendes almost succeeded in overthrowing
the new king. Agesilaus defeated the rival pretender and left
Nekhtnebf established on the throne. But the opportunity of
a decisive blow against Persia was lost. The new king,
Artaxerxes III. Ochus, determined to reduce Egypt. A first
expedition was defeated by the Greek mercenaries of Nekhtnebf,
but a second, commanded by Ochus himself, subdued Egypt
with no further resistance than that of the Greek garrison of
Pelusium. Nekhtnebf, instead of endeavouring to relieve them,
tetreated to Memphis and fled thence to Ethiopia, 340 (?) B.C.
Thus miserably fell the monarchy of the Pharaohs, after an
unexampled duration of 3000 years, or as some think far longer.
More than 2000 years have since passed, and though Egypt has
from time to time been independent, not one native prince has
sat on the throne of the Pharaohs. " There shall be no more a
prince of the land of Egypt " (Ezek. xxx. 13) was prophesied
in the days of Apries as the final state of the land.
Ochus treated his conquest barbarously. From this brief
re-establishment of Persian dominion (counted by Manetho as
Dynasty XXXI.) no document survives except one papyrus that
appears to be dated in the reign of Darius III.
See J. H. Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to
the Persian Conquest (New York and London, 1905) ; A History of the
Ancient Egyptians (New York and London, 1908); Ancient Records
of Egypt: Historical Documents from the Earliest Times to the Persian
Conquest, collected, edited and translated (5 vols., Chicago, 1906-1907) ;
W. M. F. Petrie, A History of Egypt (from the earliest times to the
XXXth Dynasty) (3 vols., London, 1899-1905); E. A. W. Budge,
A History of Egypt, vols. i-vii. (London, 1902) ; G. Maspero, Histoire
ancienne des peuples de V orient (6th ed., 1904), The Dawn of Civiliza-
tion, The Struggle of the Nations, The Passing of the Empires (London,
1904, &c.) ; P. E. Newberry and I. Garstang, A Short History of
Ancient Egypt (London, 1904); G. Steindorff, Die Bliitezeit des
Pharaonenreiches (Dyn. XVIII.) (Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1900);
H. Winckler, The Tell el Amarna Letters (Berlin, London and New
York, 1896).
The Conquest by Alexander. When, in 332 B.C., after the
battle of Issus, Alexander entered Egypt, he was welcomed as
a deliverer. The Persian governor had not forces enough to
oppose him, and he nowhere experienced even the show of
resistance. He visited Memphis, founded Alexandria, and went
on pilgrimage to the oracle of Ammon (Oasis of Siwa). The god
declared him to be his son, renewing thus an old Egyptian con-
vention or belief; Olympias was supposed to have been in
converse with Ammon, even as the mothers of Hatshepsut and
Amenophis III. are represented in the inscriptions of the Theban
temples to have received the divine essence. At this stage of his
career the treasure and tribute of Egypt were of great importance
to the Macedonian conqueror. He conciliated the inhabitants
by the respect which he showed for their religion; he organized
the government of the natives under two officers, who must have
been already known to them (of these Petisis, an Egyptian, soon
resigned his share into the charge of his colleague Doloaspis,
who bears a Persian name.) But Alexander designed his Greek
foundation of Alexandria to be the capital, and entrusted the
taxation of Egypt and the control of its army and navy to Greeks.
Early in 331 B.C. he was ready to depart, and led his forces away
to Phoenicia. A granite gateway to the temple of Khnum at
Elephantine bears his name in hieroglyphic, and demotic docu-
ments- are found dated in his reign.
The Ptolemaic Period. On the division of Alexander's
dominions in 323 B.C., Egypt fell to Ptolemy the son of Lagus,
the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty (see PTOLEMIES). Under
these rulers the rich kingdom was heavily taxed to supply the
sinews of war and to support every kind of lavish expenditure.
Officials, and the higher ones were nearly all Greeks, were legion,
but the whole system was so judiciously worked that there was
little discontent amongst the patient peasantry. During the
reign of Philadelphus the land gained from the bed of the lake
of Moeris was assigned to veteran soldiers; the great armies
of the Ptolemies were rewarded or supported by grants of farm
lands, and men of Macedonian, Greek and Hellenistic extraction
were planted in colonies and garrisons or settled themselves
n the villages throughout the country. Upper Egypt, farthest
:rom the centre of government, was probably least affected by
the new influences, though the first Ptolemy established the
reek colony of Ptolemais to be its capital. Intermarriages,
however, gradually had their effect; after the revolt of the
natives in the reign of Ptolemy V., we find the Greek and
Egyptian elements closely intermingled. Ptolemy I. had
established the cult of the Memphite Serapis in a Graeco-
Egyptian form, affording a common ground for native and
Hellenistic worshippers. The greater number of the temples
to the native deities in Upper Egypt and in Nubia (to 50 m. south
HISTORY]
EGYPT
89
of the Cataract, within the Dodecaschoenus) were built under
the Ptolemies. No serious effort was made to extend the Ptole-
maic rule into Ethiopia, and Ergamenes, the Hellenizing king of
Ethiopia, was evidently in alliance with Philopator; in the
next reign two native kings, probably supported by Ethiopia,
reigned in succession at Thebes. That famous city lost all except
its religious importance under the Ptolemies; after the " de-
struction " or dismantling by Lathyrus it formed only a series
of villages. The population of Egypt in the time of Ptolemy I.
is put at 7,000,000 by Diodorus, who also says that it was greater
then than it ever was before; at the end of the dynasty, in his
own day, it was not much less though somewhat diminished.
Civil wars and revolts must have greatly injured both Upper
and Lower Egypt. It is remarkable that, while the building
and decoration of temples continued in the reigns of Ptolemy
Auletes and the later Ptolemies and Cleopatra, papyri of those
times whether Greek or Egyptian are scarcely to be found.
Tkc Roman Period. In 30 B.C. Augustus took Egypt as the
prize of conquest. He treated it as a part of his personal domain,
free from any interference by the senate. In the main lines
the Ptolemaic organization was preserved, but Romans were
gradually introduced into the highest offices. On Egypt Rome
depended for its supplies of com; entrenched there, a revolting
general would be difficult to attack, and by simply holding back
the grain ships could threaten Rome with starvation. No senator
therefore was permitted to take office or even to set foot in the
country without the emperor's special leave, and by way of pre-
caution the highest position, that of prefect, was filled by a
Roman of equestrian rank only. As the representative of the
emperor, this officer assumed the place occupied by the king
under the old order, except that his power was limited by the
right of appeal to Caesar. The first prefect, Cornelius Callus,
tamed the natives of Upper Egypt to the new yoke by force of
arms, and meeting ambassadors from Ethiopia at Philae, estab-
lished a nominal protectorate of Rome over the frontier district,
which had been abandoned by the later Ptolemies. The third
prefect, Gaius Petronius, cleared the neglected canals for irriga-
tion; he also repelled an invasion of the Ethiopians and pursued
them far up the Nile, finally storming the capital of Napata.
But no attempt was made to hold Ethiopia. In succeeding
reigns much trouble was caused by jealousies and quarrels
between the Greeks and the Jews, to whom Augustus had
granted privileges as valuable as those accorded to the Greeks.
Aiming at the spice trade, Aelius Callus, the second prefect of
Egypt under Augustus, had made an unsuccessful expedition
to conquer Arabia Felix; the valuable Indian trade, however,
was secured by Claudius for Egypt at the expense of Arabia,
and the Red Sea routes were improved. Nero's reign especially
marks the commencement of an era of prosperity which lasted
about a century. Under Vespasian the Jewish temple at Leon to-
polis in the Delta, which Onias had founded in the reign of
Ptolemy Philometor, was closed; worse still, a great Jewish
revolt and massacre of the Greeks in the reign of Trajan resulted,
after a stubborn conflict of many months with the Roman army
under Marcius Livianus Turbo, in the virtual extermination of
the Jews in Alexandria and the loss of all their privileges.
Hadrian, who twice visited Egypt (AJ>. 130, 134), founded
Antinoe in memory of his drowned favourite. From this reign
onwards buildings in the Graeco-Roman style were erected
throughout the country. A new Sothic cycle began in A.D. 139.
Under Marcus Aurelius a revolt of the Bucolic or native troops
recruited for home service was taken up by the whole of the
native population and was suppressed only after several years
of fighting. The Bucolic war caused infinite damage to the
agriculture of the country and marks the beginning of its rapid
decline under a burdensome taxation. The province of Africa
was now of equal importance with Egypt for the grain supply
of the capital. Avidius Cassius, who led the Roman forces in the
war, usurped the purple, and was acknowledged by the armies
of Syria and Egypt. On the approach of Marcus Aurelius, the
adherents of Cassius slew him, and the clemency of the emperor
restored peace. After the downfall of the house of the Antonines,
Pescennius Niger, who commanded the forces in Egypt, was
proclaimed emperor on the death of Pertinax (A.D. 193). Sevcrus
overthrew his rival (A.D. 194) and, the revolt having been a
military one, did not punish the province; in 202 he gave a
constitution to Alexandria and the nome capitals. In his reign
the Christians of Egypt suffered the first of their many persecu-
tions. When Christianity was planted in the country we do not
know, but it must very early have gained adherents among the
learned Jews of Alexandria, whose school of thought
was in some respects ready to welcome it. From them y<y< "
it rapidly passed to the Greeks. Ultimately the new
religion spread to the Egyptians; their own creed was worn out,
and they found in Christianity a doctrine of the future life for
which their old belief had made them not unready; while the
social teaching of Christianity came with special fitness to a
subject race. The history of the Coptic Version has yet to be
written. It presents some features of great antiquity, and,
unlike all others, has the truly popular character of being written
in the three dialects of the language. Side by side there grew
up an Alexandrian church, philosophic, disputative, ambitious,
the very centre of Christian learning, and an Egyptian church,
ascetic, contemplative, mystical. The two at length influenced
one another; still we can generally trace the philosophic teachers
to a Greek origin, the mystics to an Egyptian.
Caracalla, in revenge for an affront, massacred all the men
capable of bearing arms in Alexandria. His granting of the
Roman citizenship to all Egyptians in common with 'the other
provincials was only to extort more taxes. Under Decius,
A.D. 250, the Christians again suffered from persecution. When
the empire broke up in the weak reign of Gallienus, the prefect
Aemilianus, who took the surname Alexander or Aiexandrinus,
was made emperor by the troops at Alexandria, but was con-
quered by the forces of Gallienus. In his brief reign of only a few
months he had driven back an invasion of the Blemmyes. This
predatory tribe, issuing from Nubia, was long to be the terror
of Upper Egypt. Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, after an unsuccess-
ful invasion, on a second attempt conquered Egypt, which she
added to her empire, but lost it when Aurelian made war upon
her (A.D. 272). The province was, however, unsettled, and the
conquest of Palmyra was followed in the same year by the
suppression of a revolt in Egypt (A.D. 273). Probus, who had
governed Egypt for Aurelian and Tacitus, was subsequently
chosen by the troops to succeed Tacitus, and is the first governor
of this province who obtained the whole of the empire. He
expelled the Blemmyes, who were dominating the whole of the
Thebaid. Diocletian invited the Nobatae to settle in the Dodeca-
schoenus as a barrier against their incursions, and subsidized
both Blemmyes and Nobatae. The country, however, was still
disturbed, and in A.D. 296 a formidable revolt broke out, led by
Achilleus, who as emperor took the name Domitius Domitianus.
Diocletian, finding his troops unable to determine the struggle,
came to Egypt, captured Alexandria and put his rival to death
(296). He then reorganized the whole province, and the well-
known " Pompey's Pillar " was set up by the grateful and
repentant Alexandrians to commemorate his gift to them of
part of the corn tribute.
The Coptic era of Diocletian or of the Martyrs dates from
the accession of Diocletian (A.D. 284). The edict of A.D. 303
against the Christians, and those which succeeded it, were
rigorously carried out in Egypt, where Paganism was still
strong and face to face with a strong and united church.
Galerius, who succeeded Diocletian in the government of the
East, implacably pursued his policy, and this great persecution
did not end until the persecutor, perishing, it is said, of the dire
malady of Herod and Philip II. of Spain, sent out an edict of
toleration (A.D. 311).
By the edict of Milan (A.D. 313), Constantine, with the agree-
ment of his colleague Licinius, acknowledged Christianity as
having at least equal rights withotherreligions.and when he gained
sole power he wrote to all his subjects advising them, like him,
to become Christians (A.D. 324). The Egyptian Church, hitherto
free from schism, was now divided by a fierce controversy.
EGYPT
[HISTORY
in which we see two Greek parties, rather than a Greek and
an Egyptian, in conflict. The council of Nicaea was called
together (A.D. 325) to determine between the Orthodox and the
party of the Alexandrian presbyter Arius. At that council
the native Egyptian bishops were chiefly remarkable for their
manly protest against enforcing celibacy on the clergy. The
most conspicuous controversialist on the Orthodox side was the
young Alexandrian deacon Athanasius, who returned home to be
made archbishop of Alexandria (A.D. 326). After being four
times expelled by the Arians, and once by the emperor Julian,
he died, A.D. 373, at the moment when an Arian persecution
began. So large a proportion of the population had taken
religious vows that under Valens it became necessary to abolish
the privilege of monks which exempted them from military
service. The reign of Theodosius I. witnessed the overthrow
of Arianism, and this was followed by the suppression of Pagan-
ism, against which a final edict was promulgated A.D. 390. In
Egypt, the year before, the temple of Serapis at Alexandria had
been captured after much bloodshed by the Christian mob and
turned into a church. Generally the Coptic Christians were
content to build their churches within the ancient temples,
plastering over or effacing the sculptures which were nearest to
the ground and in the way of the worshippers. They dp not
seem to have been very zealous in the work of destruction;
the native religion was already dead and they had no fear of it.
The prosperity of the church was the sign of its decay, and before
long we find persecution and injustice disgracing the seat of
Athanasius. Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria (A.D. 415), expelled
the Jews from the capital with the aid of the mob, and by the
murder of the beautiful philosopher Hypatia marked the lowest
depth to which ignorant fanaticism could descend. A schism now
produced lengthened civil war and alienated Egypt from the
empire. The distinction between religion and politics seemed to
be lost, and the government grew weaker and weaker. The
system of local government by citizens had now entirely dis-
appeared. Offices, with new Byzantine names, were now almost
hereditary in the wealthy land-owning families. The Greek
rulers of the Orthodox faith were unable to protect the tillers
of the soil, and these, being of the Monophysite persuasion and
having their own church and patriarch, hated the Orthodox
patriarch (who from the time of Justinian onwards was identical
with the prefect) and all his following. Towards the middle of
the sth century, the Blemmyes, quiet since the reign of Diocletian,
recommenced their incursions, and were even joined in them by
the Nobatae. These tribes were twice brought to account
severely for their misdoings, but not effectually checked. It
was in these circumstances that Egypt fell without a conflict
when attacked by Chosroes (A.D. 616). After ten years of
Persian dominion the success of Heraclius restored Egypt to
the empire, and for a time it again received a Greek governor.
The Monophysites, who had taken advantage of the Persian
occupation, were persecuted and their patriarch expelled. The
Arab conquest was welcomed by the native Christians, but with
it they ceas_ed to be the Egyptian nation. Their language is
still used in their churches, but it is no longer spoken, and
its literature, which is wholly ecclesiastical, has been long
unproductive.
The decline of Egypt was due to the purely military govern-
ment of the Romans, and their subsequent alliance with the
Greek party of Alexandria, which never represented the country.
Under weak emperors, the rest of Egypt was exposed to the
inroads of savages, and left to fall into a condition of barbarism.
Ecclesiastical disputes tended to alienate both the native popula-
tion and the Alexandrians. Thus at last the country was merely
held by armed force, and the authority of the governor was little
recognized beyond the capital, except where garrisons were
stationed. There was no military spirit in a population unused
to arms, nor any disinclination to be relieved from an arbitrary
and persecuting rule. Thus the Moslem conquest was easy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Hellenistic Period. See the special articles
ALEXANDRIA, &c., and especially PTOLEMIES; J. P. Mahaffy, The
Empire of the Ptolemies (London, 1895), A History of Egypt under
the Ptolemaic Dynasty (London, 1899); A. Bouche-Leclercq, Histoire
des Lagides (4 vols., Paris, 1903- ); E. A. W. Budge, A History
of Egypt, vols. vii.-viii. (London, 1902) ; J. G. Miine, A History
of Egypt under Roman Rule (London, 1898) ; E. Gibbon, Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire (edited by J. B. Bury) (London, 1900).
The administration and condition of Egypt under the Ptolemaic
and Roman rules are abundantly illustrated in recently discovered
papyri, see especially the English publications of B. P. Grenfell and
A. S. Hunt (Memoirs of the Graeco-Roman Branch of the Egypt
Exploration Fund) and F. G. Kenyon (British Museum Catalogues) ;
also Mr Kenyon's annual summaries in the Archaeological Report of
the Egypt Exploration Fund. An ample selection of the Greek in-
scriptions from Egypt is to be found in W. Dittenberger, Orientis
Graeci inscriptions selectae (2 vols., Leipzig, 1903-1905).
(R. S. P.; F. LL. G.)
2. Mahommedan Period.
(i) Moslem Cdnquest of Egypt. In accordance with the scheme
of universal conquest conceived by the founder of Islam, an
army of some 4000 men was towards the end of the year A.D. 639
sent against Egypt under the command of 'Amr (see 'AMR-IBN-
EL-Ass), by the second caliph, Omar I., who had some doubt
as to the expediency of the enterprise. The commander marched
from Syria through El-'Arish, easily took Farama or Pelusium,
and thence proceeded to Bilbeis, where he was delayed for a
month; having captured this place, he proceeded to a point
on the Nile called Umm Dunain, the siege of which also occasioned
him some difficulty. After taking it, he crossed the Nile to the
Fayum. On the 6th of June of the following year (640) a second
army of 12,000 men, despatched by Omar, arrived at Heliopolis
(On). 'Amr recrossed the river and joined it, but presently was
confronted by a Roman army, which he defeated at the battle
of Heliopolis (July 640) ; this victory was followed by the siege
of Babylon, which after some futile attempts at negotiation was
taken partly by storm and partly by capitulation on Good Friday,
the 6th of April 641. 'Amr next proceeded in the direction of
Alexandria, which was surrendered to him by a treaty signed
on the Sth of November 641, under which it was to be occupied
by the Moslems on the 29th of September of the following year.
The interval was spent by him in founding the city Fostat
(Fustat), near the modern Cairo, and called after the camp
(Fossatum) occupied by him while besieging Babylon; and in
reducing those coast towns that still offered resistance. The
Thebaid seems to have surrendered with scarcely any opposition.
The ease with which this valuable province was wrenched
from the Roman empire appears to have been due to the treachery
of the governor of Egypt, Cyrus, patriarch of Alexandria, and
the incompetence of the generals of the Roman forces. The
former, called by the Arabs Mukaukis (Muqauqis) from his
Coptic name Pkauchios, had for ten years before the arrival of
'Amr maintained a fierce persecution of the Jacobite sect, to
which the bulk of the Copts belonged. During the siege of
Babylon he had been recalled and exiled, but after the death of
Heraclius had been reinstated as patriarch by Heraclonas, and
been welcomed back to Alexandria with general rejoicing in
September 641. Since Alexandria could neither have been
stormed nor starved out by the Arabs, his motives for surrender-
ing it, and with it the whole of Egypt, have been variously
interpreted, some supposing him to have been secretly a convert
to Islam. The notion that the Arab invaders were welcomed
and assisted by the Copts, driven to desperation by the persecu-
tion of Cyrus, appears to be refuted by the fact that the invaders
treated both Copts and Romans with the same ruthlessness;
but the dissensions which prevailed in the Christian communities,
leading to riots and even civil war in Alexandria and elsewhere,
probably weakened resistance to the common enemy. An
attempt was made in the year 645 with a force under Manuel,
commander of the Imperial forces, to regain Alexandria for the
Byzantine empire; the city was surprised, and held till the
summer of 646, when it was again stormed by 'Amr. In 654 a
fleet was equipped by Constans with a view to an invasion, but
it was repulsed, and partly destroyed by storm. From that time
no serious effort was made by the Eastern Empire to regain pos-
session of the country. And it would appear that at the time of
the attempt by Manuel the Arabs were actually assisted by the
HISTORY]
EGYPT
93
presently restricted to Lower Egypt; Upper Egypt, which was
divided into three provinces, being assigned to Abdallah b. Sa'd,
on whom the third caliph conferred the government of Lower
Egypt also, 'Amr being recalled, owing to his unwillingness to
extort from his subjects as much money as would satisfy the
caliph. In the troubles which overtook the Islamic empire with
the accession of Othman, Egypt was greatly involved, and it
had to be reconquered from the adherents of Ali for Moawiya
(Mo'awiyah) by Amr, who in A.U. 38 was rewarded for his ser-
vices by being reinstated as governor, with the right to appro-
priate the surplus revenue instead of sending it as tribute to the
metropolis. In the confusion which followed on the death of
the Omayyad caliph Yazld the Egyptian Moslems declared
themselves for Abdallah b. Zobair, but their leader was defeated
in a battle near Ain Shams (December 684) by Merw&n b. Hakam
( Mcrwan I.), who had assumed the Caliphate, and the conqueror's
son Abd al-'AzIz was appointed governor. They also declared
themselves against the usurper Merwan II. in 745, whose lieu-
tenant al-Hautharah had to enter Postal at the head of an army.
In 750 Merwan II. himself came to Egypt as a fugitive from the
Abbasids, but found that the bulk of the Moslem population
had already joined with his enemies, and was defeated and slain
in the neighbourhood of Giza in July of the same year. The
Abbasid general, Silih b. Ali, who had won the victory, was then
appointed governor.
During the period that elapsed between the Moslem conquest
and the end of the Omayyad dynasty the nature of the Arab
occupation had changed from what had originally been intended,
the establishment of garrisons, to systematic colonization.
Conversions of Copts to Islam were at first rare, and the old
system of taxation was maintained for the greater part of the first
Islamic century. This was at the rate of a dinar per feddan, of
which the proceeds were used in the first place for the pay of the
troops and their families, with about half the amount in kind
for the rations of the army. The process by which the first of
these contributions was turned into coin is still obscure; it is
clear that the corn when threshed was taken over by certain
public officials who deducted the amount due to the state. In
general the system is well illustrated by the papyri forming the
Schot t-Reinhardt collection at Heidelberg (edited by C.H. Becker,
1906), which contain a number of letters on the subject from
Qurrah b. Sharfk, governor from A.H. 90 to 96. The old division
of the country into districts (nomoi) is maintained, and to the
inhabitants of these districts demands are directly addressed
by the governor of Egypt, while the head of the community,
ordinarily a Copt, but in some cases a Moslem, is responsible
for compliance with the demand. An official called " receiver "
(qabbaf) is chosen by the inhabitants of each district to take
charge of the produce till it is delivered into the public magazines,
and receives 5% for his trouble. Some further details are
to be found 'in documents preserved by the archaeologist
Maqrizi, from which it appears that the sum for which each
district was responsible was distributed over the unit in such
a way that artisans and tradesmen paid at a rate similar to that
which was enforced on those employed in agriculture. It is not
known at what time the practice of having the amount due
settled by the community was altered into that according to
which it was settled by the governor, or at what time the practice
of deducting from the total certain expenses necessary for the
maintenance of the community was abandoned. The researches
of Wellhausen and Becker have made it clear that the difference
which is marked in later Islam between a poll-tax (jizyah) and
a land-tax (khardj) did not at first exist: the papyri of the ist
century know only of the jizyah, which, however, is not a poll-tax
but a land-tax (in the main). The development of the poll-tax
imposed on members of tolerated cults seems to be due to various
causes, chief of them the acquisition of land by Moslems, who
were not at first allowed to possess any, the conversion of Coptic
landowners to Islam, and the enforcement (towards the end of
the ist century of Islam) of the poll-tax on monks. The treasury
could not afford to lose the land-tax, which it would naturally
forfeit by the first two of the above occurrences, and we read of
various expedients being tried to prevent this loss. Such were
making the Christian community to which the proselyte had
belonged pay as much as it had paid when his lands belonged to
it, making proselytes pay as before their conversion, or com-
pelling them to abandon their lands on conversion. Eventually
the theory spread that all land paid land-tax, whereas members
of tolerated sects paid a personal tax also; but during the
evolution of this doctrine the relations between conquerors and
conquered became more and more strained, and from the time
when the control of the finance was separated from the admin-
istration of the country (A.D. 715) complaints of extortion became
serious; under the predecessor of Qurrah, 'Abdallah b. 'Abd al-
Malik, the country suffered from famine, and under this ruler it
was unable to recover. Under the finance minister Obaidallah
b. Habhab (720-734) the first government survey by Moslems
was made, followed by a census; but before this time the higher
administrative posts had been largely taken out of the hands of
Copts and filled with Arabs. The resentment of the Copts finally
expressed itself in a revolt, which broke out in the year
725, and was suppressed with difficulty. Two years ^voH
after, in order that the Arab element in Egypt might
be strengthened, a colony of North Arabians (Qaisites) was sent
for and planted near Bilbeis, reaching the number of 3000
persons; this immigration also restored the balance between
the two branches of the Arab race, as the first immigrants had
belonged almost exclusively to the South Arabian stock. Mean-
while the employment of the Arabic language had been steadily
gaining ground, and in 706 it was made the official language of the
bureaux, though the occasional use of Greek for this purpose
is attested by documents as late as the year 780. Other revolts
of the Copts are recorded for the year 739 and 750, the last
year of Omayyad domination. The outbreaks in all cases are
attributed to increased taxation.
The Abbasid period was marked at its commencement by the
erection of a new capital to the north of Fostat, bearing the
name 'Askar or " camp." Apparently at this time the practice
of farming the taxes began, which naturally led to even greater
extortion than before; and a fresh rising of the Copts is recorded
for the fourth year of Abbasid rule. Governors, as will be seen
from the list, were frequently changed. The three officials of
importance whose nomination is mentioned by the historians in
addition to that of the governor were the commander of the
bodyguard, the minister of finance and the judge. Towards the
beginning olE the 3rd Islamic century the practice of giving
Egypt in fief to a governor was resumed by the caliph MamOn,
who bestowed this privilege on 'Abdallah b. Tahir, who in 827
was sent to recover Alexandria, which for some ten years had
been held by exiles from Spain. 'Abdallah b. Tahir decided to
reside at Bagdad, sending a deputy to Egypt to govern for him;
and this example was afterwards followed. In 828, when
Mamtin's brother Mot asim was feudal lord, a violent insurrection
broke out in the Hauf, occasioned, as usual, by excessive taxa-
tion; it was partly quelled in the next year by Mot asim, who
marched against the rebels with an army of 4000 Turks. The
rebellion broke out repeatedly in the following years, and in 831
the Copts joined with the Arabs against the government; the
state of affairs became so serious that the caliph Mamun himself
visited Egypt, arriving at Fostat in February 832; his general
Afshin fought a decisive battle with the rebels at Basharud
in the Hauf region, at which the Copts were compelled to sur-
render; the males were massacred and the women and children
sold as slaves.
This event finally crushed the Coptic nation, which never
again made head against the Moslems. In the following year the
caliph Motasim, who surrounded himself with a foreign body-
guard, withdrew the stipends of the Arab soldiers in Egypt;
this measure caused some of the Arab tribes who had been long
settled in Egypt to revolt, but their resistance was crushed, and
the domination of the Arab element in the country from this
time gave way to that of foreign mercenaries, who, belonging
to one nation or another, held it for most of its subsequent
history. Egypt was given in fief to a Turkish general Ashnas
94
EGYPT
[HISTORY
(Ashinas), who never visited the country, and the rule of in-
dividuals of Turkish origin prevailed till the rise of the Fatimites,
who for a time interrupted it. The presence of Turks in Egypt
is attested by documents as early as 808. While the governor
rklsh was appointed by the feudal lord, the finance minister
govenors continued to be appointed by the caliph. On the
appointed, d^b o f Ashnas in 844 Egypt was given in fief to
another Turkish general Itakh, but in 850 this person
fell out of favour, and the fief was transferred to Montasir, son
of the caliph Motawakkil. In 856 it was transferred from him
to the vizier Path b. Khaqan, who for the first time appointed
a Turkish governor. The chief places in the state were also
filled with Turks. The period between the rise of the Abbasids
and the quasi-independent dynasties of Egypt was marked by
much religious persecution, occasioned by the fanaticism of
some of the caliphs, the victims being generally Moslem sec-
tarians. (For Egypt under Motawakkil see CALIPHATE, c.
par. 10.)
The policy of these caliphs also led to severe measures being
taken against any members of the Alid family or adherents of
their cause who were to be found in Egypt.
In the year 868 Egypt was given in fief to a Turkish general
Bayikbeg, who sent thither as his representative his stepson
Ahmad b. Tulun, the first founder of a quasi-inde-
Dyaasty. P en dent dynasty. This personage was himself the
son of a Turk who, originally sent as a slave to Bagdad,
had risen to high rank in the service of the caliphs. Ahmad b.
Tulun spent some of his early life in Tarsus, and on his return
distinguished himself by rescuing his caravan, which conveyed
treasure belonging to the caliph, from brigands who attacked
it; he afterwards accompanied the caliph Mosta'In into exile,
and displayed some honourable qualities in his treatment of the
fallen sovereign. He found a rival in Egypt in the person of
Ibn al-Modabbir, the finance minister, who occupied an inde-
pendent position, and who started the practice of surrounding
himself with an army of his own slaves or freedmen; of these
Ibn Tulun succeeded in depriving the finance minister, and they
formed the nucleus of an army by which he eventually secured
his own independence. Insurrections by adherents of the Alids
gave him the opportunity to display his military skill; and
when in 870 his stepfather died, by a stroke of luck the fief was
given to his father-in-law, who retained Ahmad in the lieutenancy,
and indeed extended his authority to Alexandria, which had till
that time been outside it. The enterprise of a usurper in Syria
in the year 872 caused the caliph to require the presence of
Ahmad in that country at the head of an army to quell it; and
although this army was not actually employed for the purpose,
it was not disbanded by Ahmad, who on his return founded a
fresh city called Kata'i', " the fiefs," S.E. of modern Cairo, to
house it. On the death of Ahmad's father-in-law in the same
year, when Egypt was given in fief to the caliph's brother
Mowaffaq (famous for his defeat of the Zanj), Ahmad secured
himself in his post by Extensive bribery at headquarters; and
in the following year the administration of the Syrian frontier
was conferred on him as well. By 875 he found himself strong
enough to refuse to send tribute to Bagdad, preferring to spend
the revenues of Egypt on the maintenance of his army and the
erection of great buildings, such as his famous mosque; and
though Mowaffaq advanced against him with an army, the
project of reducing Ahmad to submission had to be abandoned
for want of means. In 877 and 878 Ahmad advanced into Syria
and obtained the submission of the chief cities, and at Tarsus
entered into friendly relations with the representatives of the
Byzantine emperor. During his absence his son 'Abbas revolted
in Egypt; on the news of his father's return he fled to Barca,
whence he endeavoured to conquer the Aghlabite dominions in
the Maghrib; he was, however, defeated by the Aghlabite ruler,
and returned to Barca, where he was again defeated by his
father's forces and taken prisoner.
In 882 relations between Ahmad and Mowaffaq again became
strained, and the former conceived the bold plan of getting the
caliph Mo'tamid into his power, which, however, was frustrated
by Mowaffaq's vigilance; but an open rupture was the result,
as Mowaffaq formally deprived Ahmad of his lieutenancy, while
Ahmad equally formally declared that Mowaffaq had forfeited
the succession. A revolt that broke out at Tarsus caused Ahmad
to traverse Syria once more in 883, but illness compelled him
to return, and on the loth of May 884 he died at his residence in
Kata'i'. He was the first to establish the claim of Egypt to
govern Syria, and from his time Egypt grew more and more
independent of the Eastern caliphate. He appears to have
invented the fiction which afterwards was repeatedly employed,
by which the money spent on mosque-building was supposed to
have been furnished by discoveries of buried treasure.
He was succeeded by his son Khomaruya, then twenty years
of age, who immediately after his accession had to deal with an
attempt on the part of the caliph to recover Syria; this attempt
failed chiefly through dissensions between the caliph's officers,
but partly through the ability of Khomaruya's general, who
succeeded in winning a battle after his master had run away
from the field. By 886 Mowaffaq found it expedient to grant
Khomaruya the possession of Egypt, Syria, and the frontier
towns for a period of thirty years, and ere long, owing to the
disputes of the provincial governors, Khomaruya found it possible
to extend his domain to the Euphrates and even the Tigris.
On the death of Mowaffaq in 891 the Egyptian governor was
able to renew peaceful relations with the caliphs, and receive
fresh confirmation in his possessions for thirty years. The
security which he thereby gained gave him the opportunity to
indulge his taste for costly buildings, parks and other luxuries,
of which the chroniclers give accounts bordering on the fabulous.
After the marriage of his daughter to the caliph, which was
celebrated at enormous expense, an arrangement was made giving
the Tulunid sovereign the viceroyalty of a region extending
from Barca on the west to Hit on the east; but tribute, ordinarily
to the amount of 300,000 dinars, was to be sent to the metropolis.
His realm enjoyed peace till his death in 896, when he fell a
victim to some palace intrigue at Damascus.
His son and successor Abu'l-'Asakir Jaish was fourteen years
old at his accession, and being without adequate guidance soon
revealed his incompetence, which led to his being murdered after
a reign of six months by his troops, who gave his place to his
brother Harun, who was of about the same age. In the eight
years of his government the Tulunid empire contracted, owing
to the revolts of the deputies which Harun was unable to quell,
though in 898 he endeavoured to secure a new lease of the
sovereignty in Egypt and Syria by a fresh arrangement with
the caliph, involving an increase of tribute. The following years
witnessed serious troubles in Syria caused by the Carmathians,
which called for the intervention of the caliph, who at last
succeeded in defeating these fanatics; the officer Mahommed b.
Solaiman, to whom the victory was due, was then commissioned
by the caliph to reconquer Egypt from the Tulunids, and after
securing the allegiance of the Syrian prefects he invaded Egypt
by sea and land at once. Before the arrival of these troops
Harun had met his death at the hands of an assassin, or else in
an affray, and his uncle Shaiban, who was placed on the throne,
found himself without the means to collect an army fit to grapple
with the invaders. Fostat was taken by Mahommed b. Solaiman
after very slight resistance, at the beginning of 903, and after the
infliction of severe punishment on the inhabitants Egypt was
once more put under a deputy, 'Isa al-Naushari, appointed
directly by the caliph.
The old regime was not restored without an attempt made by
an adherent of the Tulunids to reconquer Egypt ostensibly for
their benefit, and for a time the caliph's viceroy had to quit the
capital. The vigorous measures of the authorities at Bagdad
speedily quelled this rebellion, and the Tulunid palace at Kata'i'
was then destroyed in order that there might be nothing to
remind the Egyptians of the dynasty. In the middle of the year
914 Egypt was invaded for the first time by a Fafimite force
sent by the caliph al-Mahdl 'Obaidallah, now established at
Kairawan. The Mahdi's son succeeded in taking Alexandria,
and advancing as far as the Fayum ; but once more the Abbasid
HISTORY]
EGYPT
95
IkthUHt
/>.. ojir.. .
caliph sent a powerful army to assist his viceroy, and the invaders
were driven out of the country and pursued as far as Barca;
the Fatimite caliph, however, continued to maintain active
propaganda in Egypt. In 919 Alexandria was again seized by
the Mahdi's son, afterwards the caliph al-Qa'im, and while his
forces advanced northward as far as Ushmunain (Eshmunain)
he was reinforced by a fleet which arrived at Alexandria. This
lleet was destroyed by a far smaller one sent by the Bagdad
caliph to Rosetta; but Egypt was not freed from the invaders
till the year IJ.M. when reinforcements had been repeatedly
sent from Bagdad to deal with them. The extortions necessitated
by these wars for the maintenance of armies and the incompetence
of the viceroys brought Egypt at this time into a miserable
condition; and the numerous political crises at Bagdad pre-
vented for a time any serious measures being taken to improve
it. After a struggle between various pretenders to the vice-
royalty, in which some pitched battles were fought, Mahommed
b. Tughj, son of a TulQnid prefect of Damascus, was sent by the
caliph to restore order; he had to force his entrance into the
country by an engagement with one of the pretenders, Ibn
Kaighlagh, in which he was victorious, and entered Fostat in
August 935.
Mahommed b. Tughj was the founder of the Ikshtdl dynasty,
so called from the title Ikshld, conferred on him at his request
by the caliph shortly after his appointment to the
governorship of Egypt; it is said to have had the
sense of " king " in Ferghana, whence this person's
ancestors had come to enter the service of the caliph MotuMm.
He had himself served under the governor of Egypt, Takin,
whose son he displaced, in various capacities, and had afterwards
held various governorships in Syria. One of the historians
represents his appointment to Egypt as effected by bribery and
even forgery. He united in his person the offices of governor
and minister of finance, which had been separate since the time
of the TulQnids. He endeavoured to replenish the treasury not
only by extreme economy, but by inflicting fines on a vast scale
on persons who had held offices under his predecessor and others
who had rendered themselves suspect. The disaffected in Egypt
kept up communications with the Fatimites, against whom the
Ikshld collected a vast army, which, however, had first to be
employed in resisting an invasion of Egypt threatened by Ibn
Raiq, an adventurer who had seized Syria; after an indecisive
engagement at Lajun the Ikshld decided to make peace with
Ibn Raiq, undertaking to pay him tribute. The favour after-
wards shown to Ibn Raiq at Bagdad nearly threw the Ikshld into
the arms of the Fatimite caliph, with whom he carried on a friendly
correspondence, one letter of which is preserved. He is even said
to have given orders to substitute the name of the Fatimite
caliph for that of the Abbasid in public prayer, but to have been
warned of the unwisdom of this course. In 941, after the death
of Ibn Raiq, the Ikshld took the opportunity of invading Syria,
which the caliph permitted him to hold with the addition of the
sacred cities of Mecca and Medina, which the TulQnids had
aspired to possess. He is said at this time to have started (in
imitation of Ahmad Ibn Tulun) a variety of vexatious enactments
similar to those afterwards associated with the name of Hakim,
e.g. compelling his soldiers to dye their hair, and adding to their
pay for the purpose.
In the year 944 he was summoned to Mesopotamia to assist
the caliph, who had been driven from Bagdad by TuzQn and
was in the power of the Hamdanids; and he proposed, though
unsuccessfully, to take the caliph with him to Egypt. At this
time he obtained hereditary rights for his family in the govern-
ment of that country and Syria. The Hamdanid Saif addaula
shortly after this assumed the governorship of Aleppo, and
became involved in a struggle with the Ikshld, whose general,
KSfOr, he defeated in an engagement between Homs and Hamah
(Hamath). In a later battle he was himself defeated by the
Ikshld, when an arrangement was made permitting Saif addaula
to retain most of Syria, while a prefect appointed by the Ikshld
was to remain in Damascus. The Buyid ruler, who was
now supreme at Bagdad, permitted the Ikshld to remain in
possession of his viceroyalty, but shortly after receiving this
confirmation he died at Damascus in 946.
The second of this dynasty was the Ikshld's son Cnjur, who
had been proclaimed in his father's time, and began his govern-
ment under the tutelage of the negro Kafur. Syria was immedi-
ately overrun by Saif addaula, but he was defeated by KfifOr
in two engagements, and was compelled to recognize the over-
lordship of the Egyptian viceroy. At the death of CnjOr in
961 his brother Abu'l-Hasan 'All was made viceroy with the
caliph's consent by Kafur, who continued to govern for his
chief as before. The land was during this period threatened at
once by the Fatimitcs from the west; the Nubians from the
south, and the Carmathians from the east; when the second
Ikshldl died in 965, Kafur at first made a pretence of appointing
his young son Ahmad as his successor, but deemed it safer to
assume the viceroyalty himself, setting an example which in
Mameluke times was often followed. He occupied the post
little more than three years, and on his death in 968 the afore-
mentioned Ahmad, called Abu'l-Fawaris, was appointed suc-
cessor, under the tutelage of a vizier named Ibn Furat, who had
long served under the Ikshldls. The accession of this prince
was followed by an incursion of the Carmathians into Syria,
before whom the Ikshldi governor fled into Egypt, where he had
for a time to undertake the management of affairs, and arrested
Ibn Furat, who had proved himself incompetent.
The administration of Ibn Furat was fatal to the Ikshldls and
momentous for Egypt, since a Jewish convert, Jacob, son of
Killis, who had been in the Ikshld's service, and was ill-treated
by Ibn Furat, fled to the Fatimite sovereign, and persuaded
him that the time for invading Egypt with a prospect of success
had arrived, since there was no one in Fostat capable of organiz-
ing a plan of defence, and the dissensions between the Buyids
at Bagdad rendered it improbable that any succour would arrive
from that quarter. The Fatimite caliph Mo'izz li-dm allah was
also in correspondence with other residents in Egypt, where
the Alid party from the beginning of Abbasid times had always
had many supporters; and the danger from the Carmathians
rendered the presence of a strong government necessary. The
Fatimite general Jauhar (variously represented as of Greek,
Slav and Sicilian origin), who enjoyed the complete confidence
of the Fatimite sovereign, was placed at the head of an army of
100,000 men if Oriental numbers are to be trusted and
started from Rakkada at the beginning of March 969 with the
view of seizing Egypt.
Before his arrival the administration of affairs had again been
committed to Ibn Furat, who, on hearing of the threatened
invasion, at first proposed to treat with Jauhar for the peaceful
surrender of the country; but though at first there was a
prospect of this being carried out, the majority of the troops
at Fostat preferred to make some resistance, and an advance
was made to meet Jauhar in the neighbourhood of Giza. He
had little difficulty in defeating the Egyptian army, and on the
6th of July 969 entered Fostat at the head of his forces. The
name of Mo'izz was immediately introduced into public prayer,
and coins were struck in his name. The Ikshidi governor of
Damascus, a cousin of Abu'l-Fawaris Ahmad, endeavoured to
save Syria, but was defeated at Ramleh by a general sent by
Jauhar and taken prisoner. Thus the Ikshldl Dynasty came
to an end, and Egypt was transferred from the Eastern to the
Western caliphate, of which it furnished the metropolis.
(4) The Fdtimite period begins with the taking of Fostat by
Jauhar, who immediately began the building of a new city,
al-Kahira or Cairo, to furnish quarters for the army which he
had brought. A palace for the caliph and a mosque for the
army were immediately constructed, the latter still famous as
al-Azhar, and for many centuries the centre of Moslem learning.
Almost immediately after the conquest of Egypt, Jauhar found
himself engaged in a struggle with the Carmathians (q.v.), whom
the Ikshldl prefect of Damascus had pacified by a promise of
tribute; this promise was of course not held binding by the
Fatimite general (Ja'far b. Falah) by whom Damascus was taken,
and the Carmathian leader al-Hasan b. Ahmad al-A'sam received
9 6
EGYPT
[HISTORY
aid from Bagdad for the purpose of recovering Syria to the
Abbasids. The general Ja'far, hoping to deal with this enemy
independently of Jauhar, met the Carmathians without waiting
for reinforcements from Egypt, and fell in battle, his army
being defeated. Damascus was taken by the Carmathians, and
the name of the Abbasid caliph substituted for that of Mo'izz
in public worship. Hasan al-A'sam advanced from Damascus
through Palestine to Egypt, encountering little resistance on
the way; and in the autumn of 971 Jauhar found himself
besieged in his new city. By a timely sortie, preceded by the
administration of bribes to various officers in the Carmathian
host, Jauhar succeeded in inflicting a severe defeat on the
besiegers, who were compelled to evacuate Egypt and part of
Syria.
Meanwhile Mo'izz had been summoned to enter the palace
that had been prepared for him, and after leaving a viceroy to
take charge of his western possessions he arrived in Alexandria
on the 3 ist of May 973, and proceeded to instruct his new subjects
in the particular form of religion (Shi'ism) which his family
represented. As this was in origin identical with that professed
by the Carmathians, he hoped to gain the submission of their
leader by argument; but this plan was unsuccessful, and there
was a fresh invasion from that quarter in the year after his arrival,
and the caliph found himself besieged in his capital. The
Carmathians were gradually forced to retreat from Egypt and
then from Syria by some successful engagements, and by the
judicious use of bribes, whereby dissension was sown among
their leaders. Mo'izz also found time to take some active
measures against the Byzantines, with whom his generals
fought in Syria with varying fortune. Before his death he was
acknowledged as caliph in Mecca and Medina, as well as Syria,
Egypt and North Africa as far as Tangier.
In the reign of the second Egyptian Fatimite "Aziz billah,
Jauhar, who appears to have been cashiered by Mo'izz, was
again employed at the instance of Jacob b. Killis, who had been
raised to the rank of vizier, to deal with the situation in Syria,
where a Turkish general Aftakm had gained possession of
Damascus, and was raiding the whole country; on the arrival
of Jauhar in Syria the Turks called the Carmathians to their
aid, and after a campaign of many vicissitudes Jauhar had
to return to Egypt to implore the caliph himself to take the
field. In August 977 'Aziz met the united forces of Aftakm
and his Carmathian ally outside Ramleh in Palestine and
inflicted a crushing defeat on them, which was followed by the
capture of Aft akin; this able officer was taken to Egypt, and
honourably treated by the caliph, thereby incurring the jealousy
of Jacob b. Killis, who caused him, it is said, to be poisoned.
This vizier had the astuteness to see the necessity of codifying
the doctrines of the Fatimites, and himself undertook this
task; in the newly-established mosque of el-Azhar he got his
master to make provision for a perpetual series of teachers and
students of his manual. It would appear, however, that a large
amount of toleration was conceded by the first two Egyptian
Ftimites to the other sects of Islam, and to other communities.
Indeed at one time in 'Aziz's reign the vizierate of Egypt was
held by a Christian, Jesus, son of Nestorius, who appointed as
his deputy in Syria a Jew, Manasseh b. Abraham. These
persons were charged by the Moslems with unduly favouring
their co-religionists, and the belief that the Christians of Egypt
were in league with the Byzantine emperor, and even burned
a fleet which was being built for the Byzantine war, led to some
persecution. Aziz attempted without success to enter into
friendly relations with the Buyid ruler of Bagdad, 'Adod addaula,
who was disposed to favour the 'Alids, but caused the claim of
the Fatimites to descend from 'Ah' to be publicly refuted. He
then tried to gain possession of Aleppo, as the key to 'Irak, but
this was prevented by the intervention of the Byzantines.
His North African possessions were maintained and extended
by 'Ah', son of Bulukkin, whom Mo'izz had left as his deputy;
but the recognition of the Fatimite caliph in this region was
little more than nominal.
His successor Aba 'Alt al-Manftir, who reigned under the
title al-Hdbim bi'amr allah, came to the throne at the age of
eleven, being the son of 'Aziz by a Christian mother. He was
at first under the tutelage of the Slav Burjuwan, whose
policy it was to favour the Turkish element in the army as
against the Maghribine, on which the strength of the Fatimites
had till then rested; his conduct of affairs was vigorous and
successful, and he concluded a peace with the Greek emperor.
After a few years' regency he was assassinated at the instance
of the young sovereign, who at an early age developed a dislike
for control and jealousy of his rights as caliph. He is branded
by historians as the Caligula of the East, who took a delight in
imposing on his subjects a variety of senseless and capricious
regulations, and persecuting different sections of them by cruel
and arbitrary measures. It is observable that some of those
with which Hakim is credited are also ascribed to Ibn Tulun
and the Ikshid (Mahommed b. Tughj). He is perhaps best
remembered by his destruction of the church of the Holy
Sepulchre at Jerusalem (1010), a measure which helped to
provoke the Crusades, but was only part of a general scheme
for converting all Christians and Jews in his dominions to his
own opinions by force. A more reputable expedient with the
same end in view was the construction of a great library in
Cairo, with ample provision for students; this was modelled on
a similar institution at Bagdad. It formed part of the great
palace of the Fatimites, and was intended to be the centre of
their propaganda. At times, however, he ordered the destruction
of all Christian churches in Egypt, and the banishment of all
who did not adopt Islam. It is strange that in the midst of
these persecutions he continued to employ Christians in high
official positions. His system of persecution was not abandoned
till in the last year of his reign (1020) he thought fit to claim
divinity, a doctrine which is perpetuated by the Druses (q.v.),
called after one DarazI, who preached the divinity of Hakim
at the time; the violent opposition which this aroused among
the Moslems probably led him to adopt milder measures towards
his other subjects, and those who had been forcibly converted
were permitted to return to their former religion and rebuild
their places of worship. Whether his disappearance at the
beginning of the year 1021 was due to the resentment of his
outraged subjects, or, as the historians say, to his sister's fear
that he would bequeath the caliphate to a distant relative to
the exclusion of his own son, will never be known. In spite
of his caprices he appears to have shown competence in the
management of external affairs; enterprises of pretenders both
in Egypt and Syria were crushed with promptitude; and his
name was at times mentioned in public worship in Aleppo and
Mosul.
His son Abu'l-ffasan ' Ali, who succeeded him with the title
al-Z&hir li'i'zdz din allah, was sixteen years of age at the time,
and for four years his aunt Sitt al-Mulk acted as regent; she
appears to have been an astute but utterly unscrupulous woman.
After her death the caliph was in the power of various ministers,
under whose management of affairs Syria was for a time lost to
the Egyptian caliphate, and Egypt itself raided by the Syrian
usurpers, of whom one, Salih b. Mirdas, succeeded in establishing
a dynasty at Aleppo, which maintained itself after Syria and
Palestine had been recovered for the Fatimites by Anushtakin
al-Dizbarl at the battle of Ukhuwanah in 1029. His career is
said to have been marked by some horrible caprices similar to
those of his father. After a reign of nearly sixteen years he died
of the plague.
His successor, Abu Tamim Ma' add, who reigned with the title
al-Mostanjir, was also an infant at the time of his accession,
being little more than seven years of age. The power was largely
in the hands of his mother, a negress, who promoted the interests
of her kinsmen at court, where indeed even in Hakim's time they
had been used as a counterpoise to the Maghribine and Turkish
elements in the army. In the first years of this reign affairs
were administered by the vizier al-Jarjara'I, by whose mismanage-
ment Aleppo was lost to the Fatimites. At his death in 1044
the chief influence passed into the hands of Abu Sa'd, a Jew,
and the former master of the queen-mother, and at the end of
H1STORYI
EGYPT
97
four years he was assassinated at the instance of another Jew
(adakah, perhaps Zedekiah, b. Joseph al-Falahl), whom he
had appointed vizier. In this reign Mo'izz b. Badis, the 4th ruler
of the dependent Zeirid dynasty which had ruled in the Maghrib
since the migration of the Fatimite Mo'izz to Egypt, definitely
abjured his allegiance (1049) and returned to Sunnite principles
and subjection to t hi Bagdad caliphate. The Zeirids maintained
Mahdia (see ALGIERS), while other cities of the Maghrib were
colonized by Arab tribes sent thither by the Cairene vizier.
This loss was more than compensated by the enrolment of
Yemen among the countries which recognized the Fatimite
caliphate through the enterprise of one 'All b. Mahommed al-
SuUthi. while owing to the disputes between the Turkish generals
who claimed supremacy at Bagdad, Mostansir's name was men-
tioned in public prayer at that metropolis on the nth of January
1058, when a Turkish adventurer Bas&sirl was for a time in
power. The Egyptian court, chiefly owing to the jealousy of the
vizier, sent no efficient aid to Basaslri, and after a year Bagdad
was retaken by the Seljuk Toghrul Beg, and the Abbasid caliph
restored to his rights. In the following years the troubles in
Egypt caused by the struggles between the Turkish and negro
elements in Mostansir's army nearly brought the country into
the dominion of the Abbasids. After several battles of various
issue the Turkish commander Nasir addaula b. Hamdan got
possession of Cairo, and at the end of 1068 plundered the caliph's
palace; the valuable library which had been begun by l.l.ikim
was pillaged, and an accidental fire caused great destruction.
The caliph and his family were reduced to destitution, and Nasir
addaula began negotiations for restoring the name of the Abbasid
caliph in public prayer; he was, however, assassinated before he
could carry this out, and his assassin, also a Turk, appointed
vizier. Mostansir then summoned to his aid Badr al-Jamall, an
Armenian who had displayed competence in various posts which
he had held in Syria, and this person early in 1074 arrived in
Cairo accompanied by a bodyguard of Armenians; he contrived
to massacre the chiefs of the party at the time in possession
of power, and with the title Amir al-Juyush (" prince of the
armies ") was given by Mostansir complete control of affairs.
The period of internal disturbances, which had been accom-
panied by famine and pestilence, had caused usurpers to spring
up in all parts of Egypt, and Badr was compelled practically to
reconquer the country. During this time, however, Syria was
overrun by an invader in league with the Seljuk Malik Shah, and
Damascus was permanently lost to the Fatimites; other cities
were recovered by Badr himself or his officers. He rebuilt the
walls of Cairo, of more durable material than that which had
been employed by Jauhar a measure rendered necessary partly
by the growth of the metropolis, but also by the repeated sieges
which it had undergone since the commencement of Fatfmite
rule. The time of Mostansir is otherwise memorable for the rise
of the Assassins (?..), who at the first supported the claims of
his eldest son Niz3r to the succession against the youngest Alined,
who was favoured by the family of Badr. When Badr died in
1004 his influence was inherited by his son al-Afdal Shahinshah,
and this, at the death of Mostansir in the same year, was thrown
in favour of Ahmed, who succeeded to the caliphate with the title
al-Mosta'li billdh.
Mosta'll's succession was not carried through without an
attempt on the part of Nizar to obtain his rights, the title which
T ^ he chose being al-Moftafd Kdln alldh; for a time he
"-v-itrt maintained himself in Alexandria, but the energetic
measures of his brother soon brought the civil war to
an end. The beginning of this reign coincided with the beginning
of the Crusades, and al-Afdal made the fatal mistake of helping
the Franks by rescuing Jerusalem from the Ortokids, thereby
facilitating its conquest by the Franks in 1099. He endeavoured
to retrieve his error by himself advancing into Palestine, but
be was defeated in the neighbourhood of Ascalon, and compelled
to retire to Egypt. Many of the Palestinian possessions of the
Fitimites then successively fell into the hands of the Franks.
After a reign of seven years Mosta'll died and the caliphate was
given by al-Afdal to an infant son, aged five years at the time,
who was placed on the throne with the title ol-Amir biahkdm
alldh, and for twenty years was under the tutelage of al-Afdal.
He made repeated attempts to recover the Syrian and Pales-
tinian cities from the Franks, but with poor success. In 1118
Egypt was invaded by Baldwin I., who burned the gates and
the mosques of Farama, and advanced to Tinnis, whence illness
compelled him to retreat. In August 1121 al-Afdal was assas-
sinated in a street of Cairo, it is said, with the connivance of the
caliph, who immediately began the plunder of his house, where
fabulous treasures were said to be amassed. The vizier's offices
were given to one of the caliph's creatures, Mahommed b. Falik
al-Bat&'ihl, who took the title al-Ma'mun. His external policy
was not more fortunate than that of his predecessor, as he lost
Tyre to the Franks, and a fleet equipped by him was defeated
by the Venetians. On the 4th of October 1125 he with his
followers was seized and imprisoned by order of the Caliph Amir,
who was now resolved to govern by himself, with the assistance
of only subordinate officials, of whom two were drawn from the
Samaritan and Christian communities. The vizier was after-
wards crucified with his five brothers. The caliph's personal
government appears to have been incompetent, and to have been
marked by extortions and other arbitrary measures. He was
assassinated in October 1 1 29 by some members of the sect who
believed in the claims of Nizar, son of Mostanir.
The succeeding caliph, Abu'l-Maiman 'Abd al-Majid, who
took the title al-ffdfi% lidin alldh, was not the son but the cousin
of the deceased caliph, and of ripe age, being about fifty-eight
years old at the time; for more than a year he was kept in
prison by the new vizier, a son of al-Afdal, whom the army had
placed in the post; but towards the end of 1131 this vizier fell
by the hand of assassins, and the caliph was set free. The reign
of Hafiz was disturbed by the factions of the soldiery, between
which several battles took place, ending in the subjection of the
caliph for a time to various usurpers, one of these being his own
son Hasan, who had been provoked to rebel by the caliph
nominating a younger brother as his successor. For some
months the caliph was under this son's control; but the latter,
who aimed at conciliating the people, speedily lost his popularity
with the troops, and his father was able to get possession of his
person and cause him to be poisoned (beginning of 1135).
His son Abu'l-Manstir Ismd'il, who was seventeen years old at
the time of Hafiz's death, succeeded him wth the title al-Z&fir
lia'dd alldh. From this reign to the end of the Fatimite period we
have the journals of two eminent men, I 'sfim.-ili b. Muniqdh and
Umarah of Yemen, which throw light on the leading characters.
The civil dissensions of Egypt were notorious at the time. The
new reign began by an armed struggle between two commanders
for the post of vizier , which in January 1 1 50 was decided in favour
of the Amir Ibn Sallar. This vizier was presently assassinated
by the direction of his stepson 'Abbas, who was raised to the
vizierate in his place. This event was shortly followed by the
loss to the Fatimites of Ascalon, the last place in Syria which
they held; its loss was attributed to dissensions between the
parties of which the garrison consisted. Four years later (April
1154) the caliph was murdered by his vizier 'Abbas, according
to Usamah, because the caliph had suggested to his favourite,
the vizier's son, to murder his father; and this was followed
by a massacre of the brothers of Zafir, followed by the raising
of his infant son Abu'l-Qdsim 'Isd to the throne.
The new caliph, who was not five years old, received the title
al-Fd'iz Wnajr alldh, and was at first in the power of 'Abbas.
The women of the palace, however, summoned to their aid Tala'i'
b. Ruzzik, prefect of Ushmunain, at whose arrival in Cairo the
troops deserted 'Abbas, who was compelled to flee into Syria,
taking his son and Usamah with him. 'Abbas was killed by
the Franks near Ascalon, his son sent in a cage to Cairo where
he was executed, while Usamah escaped to Damascus.
The infant Fa'iz, who had been permanently incapacitated
by the scenes of violence which accompanied his accession, died
in 1160. Tala'i' chose to succeed him a grandson of Zafir, who
was nine years of age, and received the title al-Adid lidin alldh.
Tala'i', who had complete control of affairs, introduced the
9 8
EGYPT
[HISTORY
practice of farming the taxes for periods of six months instead
of a year, which led to great misery, as the taxes were demanded
twice. His death was brought on by the rigour with which he
treated the princesses, one of whom, with or without the con-
nivance of the caliph, organized a plot for his assassination, and
he died in September 1160. His son Ruzzlk inherited his post
and maintained himself in it for more than a year, when another
prefect of Upper Egypt, Shawar b. Mujir, brought a force to
Cairo, before which Ruzzlk fled, to be shortly afterwards captured
and beheaded. Shawar's entry into Cairo was at the beginning
of 1163; after nine months he was compelled to flee before
another adventurer, an officer in the army named Dirgham.
Shawar's flight was directed to Damascus, where he was favour-
ably received by the prince Nureddin, who sent with him to
Cairo a force of Kurds under Asad al-din Shirguh. At the same
time Egypt was invaded by the Franks, who raided and did much
damage on the coast. Dirgham was defeated and killed, but
a dispute then arose between Shawar and his Syrian allies for
the possession of Egypt. Shawar, being unable to
invasion. c P e w ' tn tne Syrians, demanded help of the Frankish
king of Jerusalem Amalric (Amauri) I., who hastened
to his aid with a large force, which united with Shawar's and
besieged Shirguh in Bilbeis for three months; at the end of this
time, owing to the successes of Nureddin in Syria, the Franks
granted Shirguh a free passage with his troops back to
Syria, on condition of Egypt being evacuated (October 1164).
Rather more than two years later Shirguh persuaded Nured-
din to put him at the head of another expedition to Egypt,
which left Syria in January 1167, and, entering Egypt by the
land route, crossed the Nile at Itfih (Atfih), and encamped at
Giza; a Frankish army hastened to Shawar's aid. At the battle
of Babain (April nth, 1167) the allies were defeated by the forces
commanded by Shirguh and his nephew Saladin, who was
presently made prefect of Alexandria, which sur-
rendered to Shirguh without a struggle. Saladin was
soon besieged by the allies in Alexandria; but after seventy -five
days the siege was raised, Shirguh having made a threatening
movement on Cairo, where a Frankish garrison had been admitted
by Shawar. Terms were then made by which both Syrians
and Franks were to quit Egypt, though the garrison of Cairo
remained; the hostile attitude of the Moslem population to
this garrison led to. another invasion at the beginning of 1 168
by King Amalric, who after taking Bilbeis advanced to Cairo.
The caliph, who up to this time appears to have left the adminis-
tration to the viziers, now sent for Shirguh, whose speedy arrival
in Egypt caused the Franks to withdraw. Reaching Cairo on
the 6th of January 1169, he was soon able to get possession of
Shawar's person, and after the prefect's execution, which
happened some ten days later, he was appointed vizier by the
caliph. After two months Shirguh died of indigestion (23rd of
March 1169), and the caliph appointed Saladin as successor to
Shirguh; the new vizier professed to hold office as a deputy
of Nureddin, whose name was mentioned in public worship after
that of the caliph. By appropriating the fiefs of the Egyptian
officers and giving them to his Kurdish followers he stirred up
much ill-feeling, which resulted in a conspiracy, of which the
object was to recall the Franks with the view of overthrowing
the new regime; but this conspiracy was revealed by a traitor
and crushed. Nureddin loyally aided his deputy in dealing
with Frankish invasions of Egypt, but the anomaly by which he,
being a Sunnite, was made in Egypt to recognize a FatLmite
caliph could not long continue, and he ordered Saladin to weaken
the Fatimite by every available means, and then substitute the
name of the Abbasid for his in public worship. Saladin and his
ministers were at first afraid lest this step might give rise to
disturbances among the people; but a stranger undertook to
risk it on the 1 7th of September 1171, and the following Friday
it was repeated by official order; the caliph himself died during
the interval, and it is uncertain whether he ever heard of his
deposition. The last of the Fatimite caliphs was not quite
twenty-one years old at the time of his death.
(s) Ayyubite Period. Saladin by the advice of his chief
Nureddin cashiered the Fatimite judges and took steps to
encourage the study of orthodox theology and jurisprudence
in Egypt by the foundation of colleges and chairs. On the
death of the ex-caliph he was confirmed in the prefecture of
Egypt as deputy of Nureddin; and on the decease of the latter
in 1174 (izth of April) he took the title sultan, so that with this
year the Ayyubite period of Egyptian history properly begins.
During the whole of it Damascus rather more than Cairo counted
as the metropolis of the empire. The Egyptian army, which was
motley in character, was disbanded by the new sultan, whose
troops were Kurds. Though he did not build a new metropolis
he fortified Cairo with the addition of a citadel, and had plans
made for a new wall to enclose both it and the double city; this
latter plan was never completed, but the former was executed
after his death, and from this time till the French occupation
of Egypt the citadel of Cairo was the political centre of the
country. It was in 1183 that Saladin's rule over Egypt and
North Syria was consolidated. Much of Saladin's time was
spent in Syria, and his famous wars with the Franks belong to
the history of the Crusades and to his personal biography.
Egypt was largely governed by his favourite Karakush, who lives
in popular legend as the " unjust judge," though he does not
appear to have deserved that title.
Saladin at his death divided his dominions between his sons,
of whom 'Othman succeeded to Egypt with the title Malik al-
Azlz 'Imdl al-ain. The division was not satisfactory to the
heirs, and after three years (beginning of 1196) the Egyptian
sultan conspired with his uncle Malik al-'Adil to deprive Saladin's
son al-Afdal of Damascus, which had fallen to his lot. The war
between the brothers was continued with intervals of peace,
during which al-'Adil repeatedly changed sides: eventually he
with al-'AzIz besieged_and took Damascus, and sent al-Afdal
to Sarkhad, while al-'Adil remained in possession of Damascus.
On the death of al-'Aziz on the zgth of November 1198 in
consequence of a hunting accident, his infant son Mahommed
was raised to the throne with the title Malik al-Man^ur Na$ir
al-din, and his uncle al-Afdal sent for from Sarkhad to take the
post of regent or Atabeg. So soon as al-Afdal had got possession
of his nephew's person, he _started on an expedition for the
recovery of Damascus: al-'Adil not only frustrated this, but
drove him back to Egypt, where on the 2 5th of January 1200 a
battle was fought between the armies of the two at Bilbeis,
resulting in the defeat of al-Afdal, who was sent back to
Sarkhad, while al-'Adil assumed the regency, for which after a
few months he substituted the sovereignty, causing his nephew
to be deposed. He reigned under the title Malik al-'Adil Saif
al-din. His name was Abu Bakr.
Though the early years of his reign were marked by numerous
disasters, famine, pestilence and earthquake, of which the second
seems to have been exceedingly serious, he reunited under his
sway the whole of the empire which had belonged to his brother,
and his generals conquered for him parts of Mesopotamia and
Armenia, and in 1215 he got possession of Yemen. He followed
the plan of dividing his empire between his sons, the eldest
Mahommed, called Malik al-Kamil, being his viceroy in Egypt,
while al-Mu'azzam 'Isa governed Syria, al-Ashraf Musa his
eastern and al-Malik al-Auhad Ayyub his northern possessions.
His attitude towards the Franks was at the first peaceful, but
later in his reign he was compelled to adopt more strenuous
measures. His death occurred at Alikin (1218), a village near
Damascus, while the Franks were besieging Damietta the first
operation of the Fifth Crusade which was defended by al-Kamil,
to whom his father kept sending reinforcements. The efforts of
al-Kamil after his accession to the independent sovereignty
were seriously hindered by the endeavour of an amir named
Ahmed b. Mashtub to depose him and appoint in his place a
brother called al-Fa'iz Sabiq al-din Ibrahim: this attempt was
frustrated by the timely interposition of al-Mu'azzam 'Isa, who
came to Egypt to aid his brother in February 1219, and com-
pelled al-Fa'iz to depart for Mosul. After a siege of sixteen and
a half months Damietta was taken by the Franks on Tuesday
the 6th of November 1219; al-Kamil thereupon proclaimed the
HISTORY]
EGYPT
99
Jihad, and was joined at his fortified camp, afterwards the site
of Mansura, by troops from various pans of Egypt, Syria and
Mesopotamia, including the forces of his brothers 'Isi and
Mas*. With these allies, and availing himself of the advantages
offered by the inundation of the Nile, al-Kamil was able to cut
off both the advance and the retreat of the invaders, and on
the 3isl of August 1221 a peace was concluded, by which the
Franks evacuated Egypt.
For some years the dominions of al-'Adil remained divided
between his sons: when the affairs of Egypt were settled,
al-Kamil determined to reunite them as before, and to that end
brought on the Sixth Crusade. Various cities in Palestine and
Syria were yielded to Frederick II. as the price of his help against
the son of Mu'azzam 'Isa, who reigned at Damascus with the
title of Malik al-Nasir. About 1 231-32 Kamil led a confederacy
of Ayyubite princes against the Seljuk Kaikobad into Asia Minor,
but his allies mistrusted him and victory rested with Kaikobad
(see SELJUKS). Before Kamil's death he was mentioned in public
prayer at Mecca as lord of Mecca (Hejaz), Yemen, Zabld, Upper
and Lower Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia.
At his death (May 8th, 1238) at Damascus, his son Abu Bakr
was appointed to succeed with the title Malik al-'Adil Saif al-din ;
but his elder brother Malik al-Salih Najm al-din Ayyub, having
got possession of Damascus, immediately started for Egypt,
with the view of adding that country to his dominions: mean-
while his uncle Isma'il, prince of Hamath, with the prince of
Horns, seized Damascus, upon hearing which the troops of
Najm al-din deserted him at Nablus, when he fell into the hands
of Malik al-Nasir, prince of Kerak, who carried him off to that
city and kept him a prisoner there for a time; after which he
was released and allowed to return to Nablus. On the 3ist of
May 1240 the new sultan was arrested at Bilbeis by his own
amirs, who sent for Najm al-din to succeed him; and on the igth
of June of the same year Najm al-din entered Cairo as sultan,
and imprisoned his brother in the citadel, where he died in 1 248.
Meanwhile in 1244 Jerusalem had been finally wrested from
the Franks. The administration of Najm al-din is highly praised
by Ibn Khallikan, who lived under it. He made large purchases
of slaves (Mamelukes) for his army, and when the inhabitants of
Cairo complained of their lawlessness, he built barracks for them
on the island of Roda (Rauda), whence they were called Bahrl
or Nile Mamelukes, which became the name of the first dynasty
that originated from them. Much of his time was spent in cam-
paigns in Syria, where the other Ayyubites allied themselves
against him with the Crusaders, whereas he accepted the services
of the Khwarizmians: eventually he succeeded in recovering
most of the Syrian cities. His name is commemorated by the
town of Salihia, which he built in the year 1 246 as a resting-place
for his armies on their marches through the desert from Egypt
to Palestine. In 1249 he was recalled from the siege of Horns
by the news of the invasion of Egypt by Louis IX. (the Seventh
Crusade), and in spite of illness he hastened to Ushmum Tanna,
in the neighbourhood of Damietta, which he provisioned for a
siege. Damietta was taken on the 6th of June 1249, owing to
the desertion of his post by the commander Fakhr ud-din, and
the Band Kinanah, to whom the defence of the place had been
entrusted: fifty-four of their chieftains were afterwards executed
by the sultan for this proceeding. On the 22nd of November
the sultan died of disease at Man^ura, but his death was
carefully concealed by the amirs Lajin and Aktai, acting in
concert with the Queen Shajar al-durr, till the arrival from
Syria of the heir to the throne, Turdnshdh, who was proclaimed
some four months later. At the battle of FariskQr, 6th of April
1250, the invaders were utterly routed and the French king fell
into the hands of the Egyptian sultan. The Egyptian authorities
now resolved to raze Damietta, which, however, was rebuilt
shortly after. The sultan, who himself had had no share in the
victory, advanced after it from Mansura to FariskQr, where his
conduct became menacing to the amirs who had raised him to
the throne, and to Shajar al-durr; she in revenge organized an
attack upon him which was successful, fire, water, and steel
contributing to his end.
(6) Period of Bafrri Mamelukes. The dynasties that succeeded
the Ayyubites till the conquest of Egypt by the Ottomans bore
the title Dynasties of the Turks, but are more often called
Mameluke dynasties, because the sultans were drawn from the
enfranchised slaves who constituted the court, and officered
the army. The family of the fourth of these sovereigns, Ka'a'dn
(Qala'On), reigned for no years, but otherwise no sultan was
able to found a durable dynasty: after the death of a sultan
he was usually succeeded by an infant son, who after a short
time was dethroned by a new usurper.
After the death of the Sultan TOranshah, his step-mother at
first was raised to the vacant throne, when she committed the
administration of affairs to the captain of the retainers, Aibck;
but the rule of a queen caused scandal to the Moslem world, and
Shajar al-durr gave way to this sentiment by marrying Aibek
and allowing the title sultan to be conferred on him instead of
herself. For policy's sake, however, Aibek nominally associated
with himself on the throne a scion of the Ayyubite house, Malik
al-Ashraf Musa, who died in prison (1252 or 1254). Aibek
meanwhile immediately became involved in war with the
Ayyubite Malik al-Nasir, who was in possession of Syria, with
whom the caliph induced him after some indecisive actions
to make peace: he then successfully quelled a mutiny of Mame-
lukes, whom he compelled to take refuge with the last Abbasid
caliph Mostasim in Bagdad and elsewhere. On the loth of April
1257 Aibek was murdered by his wife Shajar al-durr, who was
indignant at his asking for the hand of another queen: but
Aibek's followers immediately avenged his death, placing on
the throne his infant son Malik al-Manftir, who, however, was
almost immediately displaced by his guardian Kotuz, on the
plea that the Mongol danger necessitated the presence of a grown
man at the head of affairs. In 1260 the Syrian kingdom of al-
Nasir was destroyed by Hulaku (Hulagu), the great Mongol
chief, founder of the Ilk ban Dynasty (see MONGOLS), who, having
finally overthrown the caliph of Bagdad (see CALIPHATE, sect. c.
37), also despatched a threatening letter to Kotuz; but later
in the same year Syria was invaded by Kotuz, who defeated
Hulagu's lieutenant at the battle of 'Ain Jalut (3rd of September
1260), in consequence of which event the Syrian cities all rose
against the Mongols, and the Egyptian sultan became master
of the country with the exception of such places as were still
held by the Crusaders.
Before Kotuz had reigned a year he was murdered at Salihia
by his lieutenant Bibars (October 23rd, 1260), who was piqued,
it is said, at the governorship of Aleppo being with-
held from him. The sovereignty was seized by this
person with the title of Malik al-Qahir, presently
altered to al-Zdhir. He had originally been a slave of Malik
al-Salih, had distinguished himself at the battle after which
Louis IX. was captured, and had helped to murder Turanshah.
Sult'an Bibars, who proved to be one of the most competent of
the Bahri Mamelukes, made Egypt the centre of the Moslem
world by re-establishing in theory the Abbasid caliphate, which
had lapsed through the taking of Bagdad by Hulagu, followed
by the execution of the caliph. Bibars recognized the claim of a
certain Abu'l-Qasim Ahmed to be the son of Zahir, the 35th
Abbasid caliph, and installed him as Commander of the Faithful
at Cairo with the title al-Mostattfir billdh. Mostansir
then proceeded to confer on Bibars the title sultan, cmiiphit*
and to address to him a homily, explaining his duties, revived.
This document is preserved in the MS. life of Bibars,
and translated by G. Weil. The sultan appears to have con-
templated restoring the new caliph to the throne of Bagdad:
the force, however, which he sent with him for the purpose of
reconquering Irak was quite insufficient for the purpose, and
Mostansir was defeated and slain. This did not prevent Bibars
from maintaining his policy of appointing an Abbasid for the
purpose of conferring legitimacy on himself; but he encouraged
no further attempts at re-establishing the Abbasids at Bagdad,
and his principle, adopted by successive sultans, was that the
caliph should not leave Cairo except when accompanying the
sultan on an expedition.'
100
EGYPT
[HISTORY
The reign of Bibars was spent largely in successful wars against
the Crusaders, from whom he took many cities, notably Safad,
Caesarea and Antioch; the Armenians, whose territory he re-
peatedly invaded, burning their capital Sis; and the Seljukids
of Asia Minor. He further reduced the Isma'Ilians or Assassins,
whose existence as a community lasted on in Syria after it had
nearly come to an end in Persia. He made Nubia tributary,
therein extending Moslem arms farther south than they had
been extended by any previous sultan. His authority was before
his death recognized all over Syria (with the exception of the few
cities still in the power of the Franks), over Arabia, with the
exception of Yemen, on the Euphrates from Birah to Kerkesia
(Circesium) on the Chaboras (Khabur), whilst the amirs of
north-western Africa were tributary to him. His successes were
won not only by military and political ability, but also by the
most absolute unscrupulousness, neither flagrant perjury nor
the basest treachery being disdained. He was the first sultan
who acknowledged the equal authority of the four schools of law,
and appointed judges belonging to each in Egypt and Syria;
he was thus able to get his measures approved by one school when
condemned by another.
On the ist of July 1277 Bibars died, and the events that
followed set an example repeatedly followed during the period
Kali' Da * tne Mamelukes. The sultan's son Malik al-Sa'id
ascended the throne; but within little more than two
years he was compelled to abdicate in favour of his father-in-
law Kala'un, a Mameluke who had risen high in the former
sovereign's service. The accession of Kala'un was also marked
by an attempt on the part of the governor of Damascus to form
Syria into an independent kingdom, an attempt frequently
imitated on similar occasions. The Syrian forces were defeated
at the battle of Jazurah (April 26th, 1280) and Kala'un re-
sumed possession of the country; but the disaffected Syrians
entered into relations with the Mongols, who proceeded to invade
Syria, but were finally defeated by Kala'un on the 3oth of
October 1281 under the walls of Horns (Emesa).
The conversion to Islam of Nikudar Ahmad, the third of the
Ilkhan rulers of Persia, and the consequent troubles in the western
Mongol empire, let to a suspension of hostilities between Egypt
and the Ilkhans (see PERSIA: History, B), though the latter
did not cease to agitate in Europe for a renewal of the Crusades,
with little result. Kala'un, without pursuing any career of active
conquest, did much to consolidate his dominions, and especially
to extend Egyptian commerce, for which purpose he started
passports enabling merchants to travel with safety through
Egypt and Syria as far as India. After the danger from the
Mongols had ceased, however, Kala'un directed his energies
towards capturing the last places that remained in the hands
of the Franks, and proceeded to take Markab, Latakia, and
Tripoli (April 26th, 1289). In 1290 he planned an attack on
Acre, but died (November roth) in the middle of all his pre-
parations. Under Kala'un we first hear of the Burjite Mame-
lukes, who owe their name to the citadel (Burj) of Cairo, where
3700 of the whole number of 12,000 Mamelukes maintained
by this sovereign were quartered. He also set an example,
frequently followed, of the practice of dismissing all non-Moslems
from government posts: this was often done by his successors
with the view of conciliating the Moslems, but it was speedily
found that the services of the Jewish and Christian clerks were
again required. He further founded a hospital for clinical
research on a scale formerly unknown.
Kala'un was followed by his son Khalil (Malik al-Ashraf
Saldh al-din), who carried out his father's policy of driving the
Franks out of Syria and Palestine, and proceeded with the siege
of Acre, which he took (May i8th, 1291) after a siege of forty-
three days. The capture and destruction of this important
place were followed by the capture of Tyre, Sidon, Haifa, Athlit
and Beirut, and thus Syria was cleared of the Crusaders. He
also planned an expedition against the prince of Lesser Armenia,
which was averted by the surrender of Behesna, Marash and Tell
Hamrlun. The disputes between his favourite, the vizier Ibn
al-Sa'lQs, and his viceroy Baidara, led to his being murdered by
the latter (December I2th, 1293), who was proclaimed sultan,
but almost immediately fell a victim to the vengeance of the
deceased sultan's party, who placed a younger son of Kala'un,
Mahommed Malik al-Na$ir, on the throne. This
prince had the singular fortune of reigning three times,
being twice dethroned: he was first installed on the
1 4th of December 1293, when he was nine years old, and the
affairs of the kingdom were undertaken by a cabinet, consisting
of a vizier ('Alam al-din Sinjar), a viceroy (Kitboga), a war
minister (Husam al-din Lajin al-Rumi), a prefect of the palace
(Rokneddin Bibars Jashengir) and a secretary of state (Rok-
neddin Bibars Mansuri) . This cabinet naturally split into rival
camps, in consequence of which Kitboga, himself a Mongol,
with the aid of other Mongols who had come into Egypt after
the battle of Horns, succeeded in ousting his rivals, and presently,
with the aid of the surviving assassins of the former sultan,
compelling Malik al-Nasir to abdicate inhis favour (December ist,
1294). The usurper was, however, able to maintain himself for
two years only, famine and pestilence which prevailed in Egypt
and Syria during his reign rendering him unpopular, while his
arbitrary treatment of the amirs also gave offence. He was
dethroned in 1296, and one of the murderers of Khalil, Husam
al-din Lajin, son-in-law of the sultan Bibars and formerly
governor of Damascus, installed in his palace (November 26th,
1296). It had become the practice of the Egyptian sultans to
bestow all offices of importance on their own ireedmen (Mame-
lukes) to the exclusion of the older amirs, whom they could not
trust so well, but who in turn became still more disaffected.
Husam al-din fell a victim to the jealousy of the older amirs
whom he had incensed by bestowing arbitrary power on his own
Mameluke Mengutimur, and was murdered on the
1 6th of January 1299. His short reign was marked
by some fairly successful incursions into Armenia,
and the recovery of the fortresses Marash and Tell Hamdun,
which had been retaken by the Armenians. He also instituted
a fresh survey and division of land in Egypt and Syria, which
occasioned much discontent. After his murder the deposed
sultan Malik al-Nasir, who had been living in retirement at
Kerak, was recalled by the army and reinstated as sultan in
Cairo (February 7th, 1299), though still only fourteen years of
age, so that public affairs were administered not by him, but by
Salar the viceroy, and Bibars Jashengir, prefect of the palace.
The 7th Ilkhan, Ghazan Mahmud, took advantage of the disorder
in the Mameluke empire to invade Syria in the latter half of 1 299,
when his forces inflicted a severe defeat on those of the new sultan,
and seized several cities, including the capital Damascus, of
which, however, they were unable to storm the citadel; in 1300,
when a fresh army was collected in Egypt, the Mongols evacuated
Damascus and made no attempt to secure their other conquests.
The fear of further Mongolian invasion led to the imposition of
fresh taxes in both Egypt and Syria, including one of 33% on
rents, which occasioned many complaints. The invasion did not
take place till 1303, when at the battle of Marj al-Saffar (April
2oth) the Mongols were defeated. This was the last time that
the Ilkhans gave the Egyptian sultans serious trouble; and in
the letter written hi the sultan's name to the Ilkhan announcing
the victory, the former suggested that the caliphate of Bagdad
should be restored to the titular Abbasid caliph who had accom-
panied the Egyptian expedition, a suggestion which does not
appear to have led to any actual steps being taken. The fact
that the Mongols were in ostensible alliance with Christian
princes led to a renewal by the sultan of the ordinances against
Jews and Christians which had often been abrogated, as often
renewed and again fallen into abeyance; and their renewal led
to missions from various Christian princes requesting milder
terms for their co-religionists. The amirs Salar and Bibars having
usurped the whole of the sultan's authority, he, after some futile
attempts to free himself of them, under the pretext of pilgrimage
to Mecca, retired in March 1309 to Kerak, whence he sent his
abdication to Cairo; in consequence of which, on the sth of
April 1309, Bibars Jashengir was proclaimed sultan, with the
title Malik al-Mafajffar. This prince was originally a freedman
HISTORY]
EGYPT
101
of Kala'Qn, and was the first Circassian who ascended the throne
of Egypt. Be/ore the year was out the new sultan had been
rendered unpopular by the occurrence of a famine, and Malik
al-Nasir was easily able to induce the Syrian amirs to return to
his allegiance, in consequence of which Bibars in his turn abdi-
cated, and Malik al-Nasir re-entered Cairo as sovereign on the
5th of March 1310. He soon found the means to execute both
Bibars and Salar, while other amirs who had been eminent under
the former regime fled to the Mongols. The relations between
their Ilkhan and the Egyptian sultan continued strained, and the
8th Ilkhan Oeljeitu (1304-1316) addressed letters to Philip the
Fair and the English king Edward I. (answered by Edward II.
in 1307), desiring aid against Malik al-Nasir; and for many
> ears the courts of the sultan and the Ilkhan continued to be the
refuge of malcontents from the other kingdom. Finally in 1322
terms of peace and alliance were agreed on between the sultan
and AbQ Sa'Id the oth Ilkhan. The sultan also entered into
relations with the Mongols of the Golden Horde and in 1319
married a daughter of the reigning prince Uzbeg Khan (see
MONGOLS: Golden Horde). Much of Malik al-Nftsir's third
administration was spent in raids into Nubia, where he en-
deavoured to set up a creature of his own as sovereign, in
attempts at bringing the Bedouins of south-eastern Egypt into
subordination, and in persecuting the Nosaiiis, whose heresy
became formidable about this time. Like other Egyptian
sultans he made considerable use of the Assassins, 124 of whom
were sent by him into Persia to execute Kara Sonkor, at one
time governor of Damascus, and one of the murderers of Malik
al-Ashraf; but they were all outwitted by the exile, who was
finally poisoned by the Ilkhan in recompense for a similar service
rendered by the Egyptian sultan. For a time Malik al-Nasir
was recognized as suzerain in north Africa, the Arabian Irak,
and Asia Minor, but he was unable to make any permanent
conquests in any of these countries. He brought Medina, which
had previously been governed by independent sherlfs, to acknow-
ledge his authority. His diplomatic relations were more extensive
than those of any previous sultan, and included Bulgarian,
Indian, and Abyssinian potentates, as well as the pope, the king
of Aragon and the king of France. He appears to have done
his utmost to protect his Christian subjects, incurring thereby
the reproaches of the more fanatical Moslems, especially in the
year 1320 when owing to incendiarism in Cairo there was danger
of a general massacre of the Christian population. His internal
administration was marked by gross extravagance, which led
to his viziers being forced to practise violent extortion for which
they afterwards suffered. He paid considerable attention to
sheep-breeding and agriculture, and by a canal which he had
dug from Fuah to Alexandria not only assisted commerce but
brought 100,000 feddans under cultivation. His taste for
building and street improvement led to the beautifying of Cairo,
and his example was followed by the governors of other great
cities in the empire, notably Aleppo and Damascus. He paid
exceptionally high prices for Mamelukes, many of whom were
sold by their Mongol parents to his agents, and accustomed
them to greater luxury than was usual under his predecessors.
In 1315 he instituted a survey of Egypt, and of the twenty-four
parts into which it was divided ten were assigned to the sultan
and fourteen to the amirs and the army. He took occasion to
abolish a variety of vexatious imposts, and the new budget fell
less heavily on the Christians than the old. Among the literary
ornaments of his reign was the historian and geographer Isma'Il
Abulfeda (g.t.), to whom Malik al-Nasir restored the government
of Hamath, which had belonged to his ancestors, and even gave
the title sultan. He died on the ;th of June 1341. The son,
Abu Bakr, to whom he had left the throne, was able to maintain
himself only a few months on it, being compelled to abdicate
on the 4th of August 1341 in favour of his infant brother Kuchuk;
the revolution was brought about by Kausun, a powerful Mame-
luke of the preceding monarch. This person's authority was,
however, soon overthrown by a party formed by the Syrian
prefects, and on the nth of January Malik al-Ndjir Ahmad, an
elder son of the former sultan of the same title, was installed
in his place, though he did not actually arrive in Cairo till the
6th of November, being unwilling to leave Kerak, where he had
been living in retirement. After a brief sojourn in Cairo he
speedily returned thither, thereby forfeiting his throne, which
was conferred by the amirs on his brother Ismd'U al-Malik al-
Sdliji (June 27th, 1342). This sultan was mainly occupied
during his short reign with besieging and taking Kerak, whither
Ahmad had taken refuge, and himself died on the 3rd of August
1345, when another son of Malik al-Nasir, named Sha'ban, was
placed on the throne. The constant changes of sultan led to
great disorder in the provinces, and many of the
subject principalities endeavoured to shake off the
Egyptian yoke. Sha'ban proved no more competent
than his predecessors, being given to open debauchery
and profligacy, an example followed by his amirs; and fresh
discontent led to his being deposed by the Syrian amirs, when
his brother ffajji was proclaimed sultan in his place (September
i8th, 1346). l.lajjl was deposed and killed on the loth of
December 1347, and another infant son of Malik al-NSsir, (lasan,
who took his father's title, was proclaimed, the real power being
shared by three amirs, Sheikhun, Menjek and Yelbogha Arus.
During this reign (1348-1349) Egypt was visited by the " Black
Death," which is said to have carried off 900,000 of the inhabit-
ants of Cairo and to have raged as far south as Assuan. Towards
the beginning of 1351 the sultan got rid of his guardians and
attempted to rule by himself; but though successful in war, his
arbitrary measures led to his being dethroned on the 2ist of
August 1351 by the amirs, who proclaimed his brother Sali^ with
the title of Malik al-Saliff. He too was only fourteen years of
age. The power was contested for by various groups of amirs,
whose struggles ended with the deposition of the sultan Salih
on the aoth of October 1354, and the reinstatement of his brother
Ifasan, who was again dethroned on the i6th of March 1361
by an amir Yelbogha, whom he had offended, and who, having
got possession of the sultan's person, murdered him. The next
day a son of the dethroned sultan Hajji was proclaimed sultan
with the title Malik al-Mattf&r. On the 29th of May 1363 this
sultan was also dethroned on the ground of incompetence, and
his place was given to another grandson of Malik al-Nasir,
Sha'ban, son of Hosain, then ten years old. The amir Yelbogha
at first held all real power and is said to have acquired a degree
of authority which no other subject ever held. During this reign,
on the 8th of October 1365, a landing was effected at Alexandria
by a Prankish fleet under Peter I. of Cyprus, which presently
took possession of the city; the Franks were speedily compelled
to embark again after plundering the city, for which compen-
sation was afterwards demanded by Yelbogha from the Christian
population of Egypt and Syria. Alexandria was further made
the seat of a viceroy, having previously only had a prefect.
On the nth of December 1366 Yelbogha was himself attacked
by the sultan, captured and slain. His successor in the office
of first minister was a mere tool in the hands of his Mamelukes,
who compelled him to institute and depose governors, &c., at
their pleasure. In 1374 the Egyptians raided Cilicia and cap-
tured Leo VI., prince of Lesser Armenia, which now became an
Egyptian province with a Moslem governor. On the isth of
March 1377 the sultan was murdered by the Mamelukes, owing
to his refusing a largess of money which they demanded. The
infant son of the late sultan 'Alt, a lad of eight years, was pro-
claimed with the title Malik al-Manftir; the power was in the
hands of the ministers Kartai and Ibek, the latter of whom over-
threw the former with the aid of his own Mamelukes, Berekeh
and Barkflk. An insurrection in Syria which spread to Egypt
presently caused the fall of Ibek, and led to the occupation
of the highest posts by the Circassian freedmen Berekeh and
BarkQk, of whom the latter ere long succeeded in ousting the
former and usurping the sultan's place; on the iglh of May
1381, when the sultan 'All died, his place was given to an infant
brother Hajji, but on the 26th of November 1382, Karkiik set
this child aside and had himself proclaimed sultan (with the title
Malik al-Zahir), thereby ending the Bahrl dynasty and commenc-
ing that of the Circassians. For a short period, however, H&jjl
IO2
EGYPT
[HISTORY
Timur la
Syria.
was restored, when on the ist of June 1389 Cairo was taken by
Yelbogha, governor of Damascus, and Barkuk expelled; Hajji
reigned at first under the guardianship of Yelbogha, who was
then overthrown by Mint ash; Barkuk, who had been relegated
to Kcrak, succeeded in again forming a party, and in a battle
fought at Shakhab, January 1390, succeeded in gaining posses-
sion of the person of the sultan JJajji, and on the 2 ist of January
he was again proclaimed sultan in Cairo.
(7) Period of Burji Mamelukes. Barkuk presently entered
into relations with the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I., and by
slaying an envoy of Timur incurred the displeasure of the world-
conqueror; and in 1394 led an army into Syria with the view
of restoring the Jelairid Ilkhan Ahmad to Bagdad (as Barkuk's
vassal), and meeting the Mongol invasion. Barkuk, however,
died (June 2oth, 1399) before Timur had time to invade Syria.
According to the custom that had so often proved disastrous,
a young son of Barkuk, Faraj, then aged thirteen, was appointed
sultan under the guardianship of two amirs. Incursions were
immediately made by the Ottoman sultan into the territory of
Egyptian vassals at Derendeh and Albistan (Ablestin), and
Malatia was besieged by his forces. Timur, who was at this
time beginning his campaign against Bayezid, turned his atten-
tion first to Syria, and on the 3oth of October 1400
defeated the Syrian amirs near Aleppo, and soon got
possession of the city and the citadel. He proceeded
to take Hamah, Horns (Emesa) and other towns, and on the
2oth of December started for Damascus. An endeavour was
made by the Egyptian sultan to relieve Damascus, but the news
of an insurrection in Cairo caused him to retire and leave the
place to its fate. In the first three months of 1401 the whole
of Northern Syria suffered from Timur's marauders. In the
following year (September 29th, 1402) Timur who had in the
interval inflicted a crushing defeat on the Ottoman sultan, sent
to demand homage from Faraj, and his demand was readily
granted, together with the delivery of the princes who had sought
refuge from Timur in Egyptian territory. The death of Timur
in February 1405 restored Egyptian authority in Syria, which,
however, became a rendezvous for all who were discontented
with the rule of Faraj and his amirs, and two months after
Timur's death was in open rebellion against Faraj. Although
Faraj succeeded in defeating the rebels, he was compelled by
insubordination on the part of his Circassian Mamelukes to
abdicate (September 2oth, 1405), when his brother Abd al-'aziz
was proclaimed with the title Malik al-Mansur; after two
months this prince was deposed, and Faraj, who had been in
hiding, recalled. Most of his reign was, however, occupied
with revolts on the part of the Syrian amirs, to quell whom he
repeatedly visited Syria; the leaders of the rebels were the
amirs Newruz and Sheik MahmudI, afterwards sultan. Owing
to disturbances and misgovernment the population of Egypt
and Syria is said to have shrunk to a third in his time, and he
offended public sentiment not only by debauchery, but by
having his image stamped on his coins. On the 23rd of May
1412, after being defeated and shut up in Damascus, he was
compelled by Sheik MahmudI to abdicate, and an Abbasid
caliph, Mosta'In, was proclaimed sultan, only to be forced to
abdicate on the 6th of November of the same year in Sheik's
favour, who took the title Malik al-Mu'ayyad, his colleague
Newruz having been previously sent to Syria, where he was to be
autocrat by the terms of their agreement. In the struggle
which naturally followed between the two, Newruz was shut up
in Damascus, defeated and slain. Sheik himself invaded Asia
Minor and forced the Turkoman states to acknowledge his
suzerainty. After the sultan's return they soon rebelled, but
were again brought into subjection by Sheik's son Ibrahim;
his victories excited the envy of his father, who is said to have
poisoned him. Sheik himself died a few months after the
decease of his son (January I3th, 1421), and another infant son,
Ahmad, was proclaimed with the title Malik al-Mozaffar, the
proclamation being followed by the usual dissensions between
the amirs, ending with the assumption of supreme power by the
amir Tatar, who, after defeating his rivals, on the 2gth of August
1421 had himself proclaimed sultan with the title Malik al-Zahir.
This usurper, however, died on the 3oth of November of the
same year, leaving the throne to an infant son Mohammed, who
was given the title Malik al-Sdlih; the regular intrigues between
the amirs followed, leading to his being dethroned on the following
ist of April 1422, when the amir appointed to be his tutor,
Barsbai, was proclaimed sultan with the title Malik al-Ashraf.
This sultan avenged the attacks on Alexandria re-
peatedly made by Cyprian ships, for he sent a fleet " w ^
which burned Limasol, and another which took powers.
Famagusta (August 4th, 1425), but failed in the
endeavour to annex the island permanently. An expedition
sent in the following year (1426) succeeded in taking captive the
king of Cyprus, who was brought to Cairo and presently released
for a ransom of 200,000 dinars, on condition of acknowledging
the suzerainty of the Egyptian sultan and paying him an annual
tribute. Barsbai appears to have excelled his predecessors
in the invention of devices for exacting money from merchants
and pilgrims, and in juggling with the exchange. This led to a
naval demonstration on the part of the Venetians, who secured
better terms for their trade, and to the seizure of Egyptian
vessels by the king of Aragon and the prince of Catalonia. In
a census made during Barsbai's reign, it was found that the
total number of towns and villages in Egypt had sunk to 2170,
whereas in the 4th century A.H. it had stood at 10,000. Much
of Barsbai's attention was occupied with raids into Asia Minor,
where the Dhu '1-Kadiri Turkomans frequently rebelled, and
with wars against Kara Yelek, prince of Amid, and Shah Rokh,
son of Timur. Barsbai died on the 7th of June 1438. In accord-
ance with the custom of his predecessors he left the throne to a
son still in his minority, Abu'l-Mahdsin Yusuf, who took the title
Malik al- Aziz, but as usual after a few months he was displaced
by the regent Jakmak, who on the 9th of September 1438 was
proclaimed sultan with the title Malik al-Zahir. In the years
1442-1444 this sultan sent three fleets against Rhodes, where the
third effected a landing, but was unable to make any permanent
conquest. In consequence of a lengthy illness Jakmak abdicated
on the ist of February 1453, when his son 'Othman was pro-
claimed sultan with the title Malik al-Man$ur. Though not a
minor, he had no greater success than the sons of the usurpers
who preceded him, being dethroned after six weeks (March isth,
1453) in favour of the amir Inal al-'Ala'l, who took the title
Malik al-Ashraf. His reign was marked by friendly relations
with the Ottoman sultan Mahommed II., whose capture of
Constantinople (1453) was the cause of great rejoicings in Egypt,
but also by violent excesses on the part of the Mamelukes, who
dictated the sultan's policy. On his death on the 26th of February
1461 his son Ahmad was proclaimed sultan with the title Malik
al-Mu'ayyad; he had the usual fate of sultans' sons, earned
in his case by an attempt to bring the Mamelukes under disci-
pline; he was compelled to abdicate on the 28th of June 1461,
when the amir Khoshkadam, who had served as a general, was
proclaimed sultan. Unlike the other Mameluke sovereigns,
who were Turks or Circassians, this man had originally been a
Greek slave.
In his reign (1463) there began the struggle between the
Egyptian and the Ottoman sultanates which finally led to the
incorporation of Egypt in the Ottoman empire. The Early
dispute began with a struggle over the succession in relation*
the principality of Karaman, where the two sultans
favoured rival candidates, and the Ottoman sultan
Mahommed II. supported the claim of his candidate with force
of arms, obtaining as the price of his assistance several towns
in which the suzerainty of the Egyptian sultan had been acknow-
ledged. Open war did not, however, break out between the
two states in Khoshkadam's time. This sultan is said to have
taken money to permit innocent persons to be ill-treated or
executed. He died on the 9th of October 1467, when the Atabeg
Yelbai was selected by the Mamelukes to succeed him, and was
proclaimed sultan with the title of Malik al-Zahir. This person,
proving incompetent, was deposed by a revolution of the Mame-
lukes on the 4th of December 1467, when the Atabeg Timurbogha
Turkey.
HISTORY]
EGYPT
103
I proclaimed with the title M alik at-Zdkir. In a month's time,
however, there was another palace revolution, and the new
Atibcg Kail Bey or Kaielbai (January 3ist, 1468) was proclaimed
sultan, the dethroned Timurbogha being, however, permitted
to go free whither he pleased. Much of Kail Bey's reign was
spent in struggles with OzQn Hasan, prince of Di&rbekr, and
Shah Siwar, chief of the Dhu'l-Kftdiri Turkomans. He also
offended the Ottoman sultan B&yezid II. by entertaining his
brother Jem, who was afterwards poisoned in Europe. Owing to
this, and also to the fact that an Indian embassy to the Ottoman
sultan was intercepted by the agents of Rait Bey, Bftyezid II.
declared war against Egypt, and seized Adana, Tarsus and other
places within Egyptian territory; extraordinary efforts were
made by Kait Bey, whose generals inflicted a severe defeat on
the Ottoman invaders. In 1491, however, after the Egyptians
had repeatedly defeated the Ottoman troops, Kait Bey made
proposals of peace which were accepted, the keys of the towns
which the Ottomans had seized being restored to the Egyptian
sultan. Kait Bey endeavoured to assist his co-religionists in
Spain who were threatened by King Ferdinand, by threatening
the pope with reprisals on Syrian Christians, but without effect.
As the consequence of a palace intrigue, which Kait Bey was too
old to quell, on the yth of August 1496, a day before his death,
his son Uakommed was proclaimed sultan with the title Malik
al-ffdfir; this was in order to put the supreme power into the
hands of the Atftbeg KinsQh, since the new sultan was only
fourteen years old. An attempt of the Atibeg to oust the new
sultan, however, failed. After a reign of little more than two
years, filled mainly with struggles between rival amirs, Malik
al-N&sir was murdered (October 3ist, 1498), and his uncle and
vizier KdnsOh proclaimed sultan with the title Malik ol-Zdhir.
His reign only lasted about twenty months; on the 3Oth of June
1500 he was dethroned by Tflminbey, who caused Jdn Beldt,
the Atabeg, to be proclaimed sultan. A few months later
TUmdnbty, at the suggestion of Kasrawah, governor of Damascus,
whom he had been sent to reduce to subjection, ousted Jan
Belit, and was himself proclaimed sultan with the title Malik
oi-'Adil (January 25th, 1501). His reign lasted only one hundred
days, when he was displaced by Kdns&h al-Ghuri (April 2oth,
1501). His reign was remarkable for a naval conflict between
the Egyptians and the Portuguese, whose fleet interfered with
the pilgrim route from India to Mecca, and also with the trade
between India and Egypt; KSnsuh caused a fleet to be built
which fought naval battles with the Portuguese with varying
results.
In 1515 there began the war with the Ottoman sultan Selim I.
which led to the close of the Mameluke period, and the incorpora-
tion of Egypt and its dependencies in the Ottoman
** empire (see TURKEY : History). Kansuh was charged
by Selim with giving the envoys of the ijafawid
Isma'il passage through Syria on their way to Venice
to form a confederacy against the Turks, and with harbouring
various refugees. The actual declaration of war was not made
by Selim till May 1515, when the Ottoman sultan had made all
his preparations; and at the battle of Merj Dabik, on the 24th
of August isiS. KinsQh was defeated by the Ottoman forces
and fell fighting. Syria passed quickly into the possession of
the Turks, whose advent was in many places welcome as meaning
deliverance from the Mamelukes. In Cairo, when the news of
the defeat and death of the Egyptian sultan arrived, the governor
who had been left by Kansuh, Tumanbey, was proclaimed sultan
(October lyth, 1516). On the zoth of January 1317 Cairo was
taken by the Ottomans, and Selim shortly after declared sultan
of Egypt. TQmanbey continued the struggle for some months,
but was finally defeated, and after being captured and kept in
prison seventeen days was executed on the isth of April 1517.
(8) The Turkish Period. The sultan Selim left with his viceroy
Khair Bey a guard of 5000 janissaries, but otherwise made few
changes in the administration of the country. The register by
which a great portion of the land was a fief of the Mamelukes
was left unchanged, and it is said that a proposal made by the
sultan's vizier to appropriate these estates was punished with
Tartlih
with tin
limit.
death. The Mameluke amirs were to be retained in office as
heads of twelve sanjaks into which Egypt was divided; and
under the next sultan, Suleiman I., two chambers were created,
called respectively the Greater and the Lesser Divan, in which
both the army and the ecclesiastical authorities were represented,
to aid the pasha by their deliberations. Six regiments altogether
were constituted by the conqueror Selim for the protection of
Egypt; to these Suleiman added a seventh, of Circassians.
As will be seen from the tables, it was the practice of the Porte
to change the governor of Egypt at very short intervals after
a year or even some months. The third governor, Ahmad
Pasha, hearing that orders for this execution had come from
Constantinople, endeavoured to make himself an independent
ruler and had coins struck in his own name. His schemes were
frustrated by two of the amirs whom he had imprisoned and
who, escaping from their confinement, attacked him in his bath
and killed him. In 1527 the first survey of Egypt under the
Ottomans was made, in consequence of the official copy of the
former registers having perished by fire; yet this new survey did
not come into use until 1605. Egyptian lands were divided in it
into four classes the sultan's domain, fiefs, land for the main-
tenance of the army, and lands settled on religious foundations.
It would seem that the constant changes in the government
caused the army to get out of control at an early period of the
Ottoman occupation, and at the beginning of the nth
Islamic century mutinies became common; in 1013 Trouble*
(1604) the governor Ibrahim Pasha was murdered by
the soldiers, and his head set on the Bab Zuwela. The
reason for these mutinies was the attempt made by successive
pashas to put a stop to the extortion called Tulbah, a forced
payment exacted by the troops from the inhabitants of the
country by the fiction of debts requiring to be discharged,
which led to grievous ill-usage. In 1609 something like civil
war broke out between the army and the pasha, who had on his
side some loyal regiments and the Bedouins. The soldiers went
so far as to choose a sultan, and to divide provisionally the regions
of Cairo between them. They were defeated by the governor
Mahommed Pasha, who on the 5th of February 1610 entered
Cairo in triumph, executed the ringleaders, and banished many
others to Yemen. The contemporary historian speaks of this
event as a second conquest of Egypt for the Ottomans. A great
financial reform was now effected by Mahommed Pasha, who
readjusted the burdens imposed on the different communities
of Egypt in accordance with their means. With the troubles
that beset the metropolis of the Ottoman empire, the governors
appointed thence came to be treated by the Egyptians with
continually decreasing respect. In July 1623 there came an order
from the Porte dismissing Mustafa Pasha and appointing 'AH
Pasha governor in his place. The officers met and demanded
from the newly-appointed governor's deputy the customary
gratuity; when this was refused they sent letters to the Porte
declaring that they wished to have M ustafa Pasha and not 'All
Pasha as governor. Meanwhile 'All Pasha had arrived at Alex-
andria, and was met by a deputation from Cairo telling him that
he was not wanted. He returned a mild answer; and, when a
rejoinder came in the same style as the first message, he had the
leader of the deputation arrested and imprisoned. Hereupon the
garrison of Alexandria attacked the castle and rescued the
prisoner; whereupon 'All Pasha was compelled to embark.
Shortly after a rescript arrived from Constantinople confirming
Mustafa Pasha in the governorship. Similarly in 1631 the army
took upon themselves to depose the governor Musa Pasha, in
indignation at his execution of Kltas Bey, an officer who was
to have commanded an Egyptian force required for service in
Persia. The pasha was ordered either to hand over the execu-
tioners to vengeance or to resign his place; as he refused to do
the former he was compelled to do the latter, and presently a
rescript came from Constantinople, approving the conduct of
the army and appointing one Khalil Pasha as Musa's successor.
Not only was the governor unsupported by the sultan against
the troops, but each new governor regularly inflicted a fine upon
his outgoing predecessor, under the name of money due to the
104
EGYPT
[HISTORY
treasury; and the outgoing governor would not be allowed to
leave Egypt till he had paid it. Besides the extortions to which
this practice gave occasion the country suffered greatly in these
centuries from famine and pestilence. The latter in the spring
of 1619 is said to have carried off 635,000 persons, and in 1643
completely desolated 230 villages.
By the i8th century the importance of the pasha was quite
superseded by that of the beys, and two offices, those of Sheik
al-Balad and Amir al-Hajj, which were held by these
p ersonSj represented the real headship of the com-
munity. The process by which this state of affairs
came about is somewhat obscure, owing to the want of good
chronicles for the Turkish period of Egyptian history. In
1707 the Sheik al-Balad, Qasim lywaz, is found at the head of
one of two Mameluke factions, the Qasimites and the Fiqarites,
between whom the seeds of enmity were sown by the pasha
of the time, with the result that a fight took place between the
factions outside Cairo, lasting eighty days. At the end of that
time Qasim lywaz was killed and the office which he had held
was given to his son Isma'll. Isma'il held this office for sixteen
years, while the pashas were constantly being changed, and
succeeded in reconciling the two factions of Mamelukes. In 1 7 24
this person was assassinated through the machinations of the
pasha, and Shirkas Bey, of the opposing faction, elevated to the
office of Sheik al-Balad in his place. He was soon driven from
his post by one of his own faction called Dhu'l-Fiqar, and fled
to Upper Egypt. After a short time he returned at the head of
an army, and some engagements ensued, in the last of which
Shirkas Bey met his end by drowning; Dhu'l-Fiqar was himself
assassinated in 1730 shortly after this event. His place was
filled by Othman Bey, who had served as his general in this war.
In 1743 Othman Bey, who had governed with wisdom and
moderation, was forced to fly from Egypt by the intrigues of
two adventurers, Ibrahim and Ridwan Bey, who, when their
scheme had succeeded, began a massacre of beys and others
thought to be opposed to them; they then proceeded to govern
Egypt jointly, holding the two offices mentioned above in
alternate years. An attempt made by one of the pashas to rid
himself of these two persons by a coup d'etat signally failed
owing to the loyalty of their armed supporters, who released
Ibrahim and Ridwan from prison and compelled the pasha
to fly to Constantinople. An attempt made by a subsequent
pasha in accordance with secret orders from Constantinople was
so far successful that some of the beys were killed. Ibrahim and
Ridwan escaped, and compelled the pasha to resign his governor-
ship and return to Constantinople. Ibrahim shortly afterwards
fell by the hand of an assassin who had aspired to occupy one of
the vacant beyships himself, which was conferred instead on
'All, who as "All Bey was destined to play an important part in
the history of Egypt. The murder of Ibrahim Bey took place
in 1755, and his colleague Ridwan perished in the disputes that
followed upon it.
'All Bey, who had first distinguished himself by defending
a caravan in Arabia against bandits, set himself the task of
avenging the death of his former master Ibrahim, and
y ' spent eight years in purchasing Mamelukes and winning
other adherents. He thereby excited the suspicions of the Sheik
al-Balad Khalil Bey, who organized an attack upon him in the
streets of Cairo, in consequence of which he fled to Upper Egypt.
Here he met one alih Bey, who had injuries to avenge on Khalil
Bey, and the two organized a force with which they returned
to Cairo and defeated Khalil, who was forced to fly to T an t a >
where for a time he concealed himself; eventually, however,
he was discovered, sent to Alexandria and finally strangled.
The date of 'All Bey's victory was 1164 A.H. (A.D. 1750), and
after it he was made Sheik al-Balad. In that capacity he exe-
cuted the murderer of his former master Ibrahim; but the
resentment which this act aroused among the beys caused him
to leave his post and fly to Syria, where he won the friendship
of the governor of Acre, Zahir b. Omar, who obtained for him
the goodwill of the Porte and reinstatement in his post as Sheik
al-Balad. In 1766, after the death of his supporter the grand
vizier Raghib Pasha, he was again compelled to fly from Egypt
to Yemen, but m the following year he was told that his party at
Cairo was strong enough to permit of his return. Resuming his
office he raised eighteen of his friends to the rank of bey, among
them Ibrahim and Murad, who were afterwards at the head of
affairs, as well as Mahommed Abu'l-Dhahab, who was closely
connected with the rest of 'All Bey's career. He appears to have
done his utmost to bring Egyptian affairs into order, and by
very severe measures repressed the brigandage of the Bedouins of
Lower Egypt. He appears to have aspired to found an in-
dependent monarchy, and to that end endeavoured to disband
all forces except those which were exclusively under his own
control. In 1 769 a demand came to 'All Bey for a force of 1 2,000
men to be employed by the Porte in the Russian war. It was
suggested, however, at Constantinople that 'Ali would employ
this force when he collected it for securing his own independence,
and a messenger was sent by the Porte to the pasha with orders
for his execution. 'Ali, being apprised by his agents at the
metropolis of the despatch of this messenger, ordered him to be
waylaid and killed; the despatches were seized and read by 'All
before an assembly of the beys, who were assured that the order
for execution applied to all alike, and he urged them to fight for
their lives. His proposals were received with enthusiasm by
the beys whom he had created. Egypt was declared independent
and the pasha given forty-eight hours to quit the country.
Zahir Pasha of Acre, to whom was sent official information of the
step taken by 'Ali Bey, promised his aid and kept his word by
compelling an army sent by the pasha of Damascus against
Egypt to retreat.
The Porte was not able at the time to take active measures
for the suppression of 'All Bey, and the latter endeavoured to
consolidate his dominions by sending expeditions against maraud-
ing tribes, both in north and south Egypt, reforming the finance,
and improving the administration of justice. His son-in-law,
Abu'l-Dhahab, was sent to subject the Hawwarah, who had
occupied the land between Assuan and Assiut, and a force of
20,000 was sent to conquer Yemen. An officer named Isma'll
Bey was sent with 8000 to acquire the eastern shore of the Red
Sea, and one named Hasan Bey to occupy Jidda. In six months
the greater part of the Arabian peninsula was subject to 'Ali
Bey, and he appointed as sherif of Mecca a cousin of his own,
who bestowed on 'Ali by an official proclamation the titles
Sultan of Egypt and Khakan of the Two Seas. He then, in
virtue of this authorization, struck coins in his own name
(1185 A.H.) and ordered his name to be mentioned in public
worship.
His next move turned out fatally. Abu'l-Dhahab was sent
with a force of 30,000 men in the same year (A.D. 1771) to conquer
Syria; and agents were sent to negotiate alliances with Venice
and Russia. Abu'l-Dhahab's progress through Palestine and
Syria was triumphant. Reinforced by 'All Bey's ally Zahir,
he easily took the chief cities, ending with Damascus; but at
this point he appears to have entered into secret negotiations
with the Porte, by which he undertook to restore Egypt to
Ottoman suzerainty. He then proceeded to evacuate Syria,
and marched with all the forces he could collect to Upper Egypt,
occupying Assiut in April 1772. Having collected some addi-
tional troops from the Bedouins, he marched on Cairo. Isma'll
Bey was sent by 'All Bey with a force of 3000 to check his
advance; but at Basatin Isma'll with his troops joined Abu'l-
Dhahab. 'All Bey intended at first to defend himself so long as
possible in the citadel at Cairo; but receiving information to
the effect that his friend Zahir of Acre was still willing to give him
refuge, he left Cairo for Syria (8th of April 1772), one day before
the entrance of Abu'l-Dhahab.
At Acre 'All's fortune seemed to be restored. A Russian
vessel anchored outside the port, and, in accordance with the
agreement which he had made with the Russian empire, he was
supplied with stores and ammunition, and a force of 3000
Albanians. He sent one of his officers, 'Ali Bey al-Tantawi, to
recover the Syrian towns evacuated by Abu'l-Dhahab, and now
in the possession of the Porte. He himself took Jaffa and Gaza,
HISTORY]
EGYPT
105
the former of which he gave to his friend 2hir of Acre. On the
ist of February 1773 he received information from Cairo that
AbiTI-Dhuh.it> had made himself Sheik al-Balad, and in that
capacity was practising unheard-of extortions, which were
making Egypt with one voice call for the return of 'All Bey.
He accordingly started for Egypt at the head of an army of
8000 men, and on the igth of April met the army of Alm'l-
Dhahab at Salihia. 'All's forces were successful at the first
engagement; but when the battle was renewed two days later
be was deserted by some of his officers, and prevented by illness
and wounds from himself taking the conduct of affairs. The
result was a complete defeat for his army, after which he declined
to leave his tent; he was captured after a brave resistance, and
taken to Cairo, where he died seven days later.
After "All Bey's death Egypt became once more a dependency
of the Porte, governed by Abu'l-Dhahab as Sheik al-Balad with
the title pasha. He shortly afterwards received permission from
the Porte to invade Syria, with the view of punishing "All Bey's
supporter ahir, and left as his deputies in Cairo Isma'Il Bey
and Ibrahim Bey, who, by deserting 'All at the battle of Salihia,
had brought about his downfall. After taking many cities in
Palestine Abu'l-Dhahab died, the cause being unknown; and
Murad Bey (another of the deserters at Salihia) brought his
forces back to Egypt (a6th of May 1775).
Isma'il Bey now became Sheik al-Balad, but was soon involved
in a dispute with Ibrahim and Murad, who after a time succeeded
in driving Isma'il out of Egypt and establishing a joint rule (as
Sheik al-Balad and Amir al-Hajj respectively) similar to that
which had been tried previously. The two were soon involved
in quarrels, which at one time threatened to break out into open
war; but this catastrophe was averted, and the joint rule was
maintained till 1786, when an expedition was sent by the Porte
to restore Ottoman supremacy in Egypt. Murad Bey attempted
to resist, but was easily defeated; and he with Ibrahim decided
to fly to Upper Egypt and await the trend of events. On the
ist of August 1782 the Turkish commander entered Cairo, and,
after some violent measures had been taken for the restoration
of order, Isma'il Bey was again made Sheik al-Balad and a new
pasha installed as governor. In January 1791 a terrible plague
began to rage in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt, to which Isma'il
Bey and most of his family fell victims. Owing to the need for
competent rulers Ibrahim and Murad Bey were sent for from
Upper Egypt and resumed their dual government. These two
persons were still in office when Bonaparte entered Egypt.
Moslem Authorities. Arabic literature being cosmopolitan, and
Arabic authors accustomed to travel from place to place to collect
traditions and obtain oral instruction from contemporary authorities,
or else to enjoy the patronage of Maecenates, the literary history of
Egypt cannot be dissociated from that of the other Moslem countries
in which Arabic was the chief literary vehicle. Hence the list of
authors connected with Egypt, which occupies pages 161-275 f
Suyutf's work, Ifusn al-muhadarah fi akhbdri Misr wal-Qdhirah
(Cairo, 1321 A.R.), contains the names of persons like Mutanabbi,
who stayed there for a short time in the service of some patron ; Abu
Tarn mam , who lived there before he acquired fame as a poet; 'Umara
of Yemen, who came there at a mature age to spend some years
in the service of Fadmite viziers; each of whom figures in lists of
authors belonging to some other country also. So long as the centre
of the Islamic world was not in Egypt, the best talent was attracted
elsewhere; but after the fall of Bagdad, Cairo became the chief seat
of Islamic learning, and this rank, chiefly owing to the university of
Azhar, it has ever since continued to maintain. The following
composed special histories of Egypt: Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam, d. 257
A.M.; 'Aba al-Rabim b. Yflnus, d. 347; Mahommed b. Yusuf
al-Kindi, d. somewhat later; Ibn Zulaq, d. 387; 'Izz al-Mulk
Mahommed al-Musabbihi, d. 420; Mahommed b. Salamah al-
Qoda'i, d. 454: Jamal al-din 'AH al-Qifti, d. 568; lamal al-din
al-Malabl, d. 623; 'Abd al-Lafif al-Baghdadi, d. 629; Mahommed b.
'Abd a!- Aziz al-Idrisi (history of Upper Egypt), d. 640; his son
Ja'far (history of Cairo), d. 676; Ibn Sa'id, d. 685; Ibrahim b.
Wasif Shah; Ibn al-Mutawwaj, d. 703; Mahommed b. Dani'al,
d. 710; Ja'far b. Tha'lab Kamal al-din al-Adfu'i (history of Upper
Egypt), d. 730; 'Abd al-Qarun al-Halabi, d. 735; Ibn Habib,
d. 779; Ibn Duamaq, d. 790; Ibn Tughan, Shihab al-din al-
Aubadi, d. 790; Ibn al-Mulaqqin, d. 806; Maqrizi, Taqiyy al-din
Ahmad, d. 840; Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani, d. 852 ; al-Sakhawi, d. 902 ;
Abu'l-Mahisin b. Taghribirdi, d. 874; Jalal al-din al-SuyQti. d. 911 ;
Ibn Zunbul al-Rammal; Ibn lyls, d. after 928; Mahommed b.
Abi SurOr, d. after 1017; Zain al-din al Karami, d. 1033; 'Abd
al-Ral.im3n Jabarti, d. after 1236. Of many of the Mameluke sultans
there are special chronicles preserved in various European and
Oriental libraries. The works of many of the authors enumerated
are topographical and biographical as well as purely historical.
To these there should be added the Survey of Egypt, called ai-
tuhfah al-saniyyah of Ibn Ji'an, belonging to the time of Kait Bey;
the treatise on the Egyptian constitution called Zubdat Kashf
al-Mamalik, by Khalil al-Zahiri, of the same period; and the
encyclopaedic work on the same subject called $ubfr al-Insha, by
al-Qalqashandi, d. 821.
Arabic poetry is in the main encomiastic and personal, and from
the beginning of the Omayyad_ period sovereigns and governors
paid poets to celebrate their achievements; of those of importance
who are connected with Egypt we may mention Nusaib, encomiast
of 'Abd al-Aziz b. Merwan, d. 180; the greater Nashi (Abu 1- Abbas
Abdallah), d. 293; Ibn Tabataba, d. 345; Abu'l-Raqa'maq,
encomiast of al-Mo'izz, d. 399; Sari' al-Dila ('All b.'Abd al- Wahid),
encomiast of the K.itimitr al-Zahir, d. 412; Xui.ij.it .il i.l.ml.i
(Mahommed b. al-Qasim), encomiast of Ha*kim; "Ah b. "Abbad
al-Iskandari, encomiast of the vizier al-Afdal, executed by Hafiz;
Ibn Qalaqis al-Iskandari, encomiast of the Ayyubites, d. 607;
Muhaddhab b. M.mu-tl, encomiast of the Ayyubites, d. 616; Ibn
Sana' al-Mulk, encomiast of the AyyQbites, d. 658; Ibn al-Munajjim,
d. 626; Ibn Matruh, encomiast of the AyyQbites, d. 654; Baha' al-
din Zuhair, encomiast of al-Salib, d. 656; Ibn 'Ammar, d. 675;
al-Mi'mar, d. 749; Ibn Nubatah, d. 768; Ibn Abi Hajalah, d. 776;
Burhan al-din al-Qira^i, d. 801 ; Ibn Mukanis, d. 864; Ibn Hijjah
al-Hamawi, d. 837. Poets distinguished for special lines are al-
I.lakim b. Dfini' al, d. 608, author of the Shadow-play ; and at-Busiri
(Mahommed b. Sa'id), d. 694, author of the ode in praise of the
prophet called Burdah. The poets of Egypt are reckoned with
those of Syria in the Yatlmah of Tha' alibi; a special work upon
them was written by Ibn Fadl allah (d. 740) ; and a list of poets of
the Ilth century is given by Khafaji in his Raihanat al-aliboa.
The needs of the Egyptian court produced a number of elegant
letter-writers, of whom the most famous were 'Abd al-Rabim b.
'All al-Baisani, ordinarily known as al-Qadi' al-Fadil, d. 596, secretary
of state to Saladin and other Ayyubite sultans; lin.nl al-din al-
Ispahani, d. 597, also secretary of state and official chronicler; and
Ibn 'Abd al-?ahir, d. 692, secretary of state to Bibars I. and succeed-
ing sultans; he was followed by his son Fatl.i al-din, to whom the
title " Secret writer " was first given.
In the subject of law Egypt boasts that the Imam Shafi'I, founder
of one of the schools, resided at Fos^a^ from 195 till his death in 204;
his system, though displaced for a time by that invented by the
Farimites, and since the Turkish conquest by the Hanifite system,
has always been popular in Egypt: in Ayyubite times it was
dominant, whereas in Mameluke times all four systems were officially
recognized. The eminent jurists who flourished in Moslem Egypt
form a very lengthy list. Among the Egyptian traditionalists the
most eminent is Daraqutni, d. 385.
Among Egyptian mystics the most famous as authors are the poet
Ibn al-Fari<f, d. 632, and Abd al-Wahhab Sha rani, d. 973. Abu'l-
Hasan al-Shadhili (d. 656) is celebrated as the founder of the Shadhil i
order; but there were many others of note. The dictionary of
physicians, compiled in the 7th century, enumerates nearly sixty
men of science who resided in Egypt; the best-known among them
are Sa'id b. Bi(riq, Moses Maimonides and Ibn Bait fir. Of Egyptian
miscellaneous wnters two of the most celebrated are Ibn Daqiq
al'-id, d. 702, and Jalal al-din SuyQti.
European Authorities. For the Moslem conquest, A. J. Butler,
The Arab Conquest of Egypt (Oxford, 1902) ; for the period before the
Fatimites, Wilstenfeld, Die Statthalter von Agypten," in Abhand-
lungen der koniglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen,
vols. xx. and xxi. ; for the Fatjmite period, Wilstenfeld, " Geschichte
der Fatimiden-Chalifen," ibid. vols. xxyi. and xxvii. ; for the
Ayyubite period, Ibn Khallilcan's Biographical Dictionary, translated
by M'G. de Slane (London, 1842-1871); for the Mameluke period,
Weil, Geschichte der Chalifen, vols. iv. and v. (also called Geschichte
des Abbasidenchalifats in Agypten), (Stuttgart, 1860-1862); Sir
W. Muir, The Mameluke or Slave Dynasty of Egypt (London, 1896) ;
for the Turkish period, G. Zaidan, History of Modern Egypt (Arabic),
vol. ii. (Cairo, 1889). See also Maqrizi, Description topopaphique
el historique de VEgyple, translated by Bounant (Pans, 1895,
&c.); C. H. Becker, Beitrdge zur Geschichte Agyptens (Strassburg,
1902). (D. S. M.*)
(9) From the French Occupation to the Rise of Mehemet All.
The ostensible object of the French expedition to Egypt was to
reinstate the authority of the Sublime Porte, and suppress the
Mamelukes; and in the proclamation printed with the Arabic
types brought from the Propaganda press, and issued shortly
after the taking of Alexandria, Bonaparte declared that he
reverenced the prophet Mahomet and the Koran far more than
the Mamelukes reverenced either, and argued that all men were
equal except so far as they were distinguished by their intellectual
and moral excellences, of neither of which the Mamelukes had
io6
EGYPT
[HISTORY
Battle of
the Nile.
any great share. In future all posts in Egypt were to be open
to all classes of the inhabitants; the conduct of affairs was to
be committed to the men of talent, virtue, and learning; and
in proof of the statement that the French were sincere Moslems
the overthrow of the papal authority in Rome was alleged.
That there might be no doubt of the friendly feeling of the
French to the Porte, villages and towns which capitulated to
the invaders were required to hoist the flags of both the Porte
and the French republic, and in the thanksgiving prescribed
to the Egyptians for their deliverance from the Mamelukes,
prayer was to be offered for both the sultan and the French army.
It does not appear that the proclamation convinced many of the
Egyptians of the truth of these professions. After the battle
of Ambabah, at which the forces of both Murad Bey and Ibrahim
Bey were dispersed, the populace readily plundered the houses of
the beys, and a deputation was sent from al-Azhar to Bonaparte
to ascertain his intentions; these proved to be a repetition of
the terms of his proclamation, and, though the combination of
loyalty to the French with loyalty to the sultan was unintelligible,
a good understanding was at first established between the
invaders and the Egyptians. A municipal council was estab-
lished in Cairo, consisting of persons taken from the ranks of the
sheiks, the Mamelukes and the French; and presently delegates
from Alexandria and other important towns were added. This
council did little more than register the decrees of the French
commander, who continued to exercise dictatorial power. The
destruction of the French fleet at the battle of the
Nile, and the failure of the French forces sent to Upper
Egypt (where they reached the first cataract) to obtain
possession of the person of Murad Bey, shook the faith of the
Egyptians in their invincibility; and in consequence of a series
of unwelcome innovations the relations between conquerors and
conquered grew daily more strained, till at last, on the occasion
of the introduction of a house tax, an insurrection broke out in
Cairo on the 22nd of October 1798, of which the headquarters
were in the Moslem university of Azhar. On this occasion the
French general Dupuy, lieutenant-governor of Cairo, was killed.
The prompt measures of Bonaparte, aided by the arrival from
Alexandria of General J. B. Kleber, quickly suppressed this
rising; but the stabling of the French cavalry in the mosque
of Azhar gave great and permanent offence. In consequence of
this affair, the deliberative council was suppressed, but on the
25th of December a fresh proclamation was issued, reconstituting
the two divans which had been created by the Turks ; the special
divan was to consist of 14 persons chosen by lot out of 60 govern-
ment nominees, and was to meet daily. The general divan was
to consist of functionaries, and to meet on emergencies.
In consequence of despatches which reached Bonaparte on
the 3rd of January 1799, announcing the intention of the Porte
to invade the country with the object of recovering it by force,
Bonaparte resolved on his Syrian expedition, and appointed
governors for Cairo, Alexandria, and Upper Egypt, to govern
during his absence. From that ill-fated expedition he returned
at the beginning of June. Advantage had been taken of this
opportunity by Murad Bey and Ibrahim Bey to collect their
forces and attempt a joint attack on Cairo, but this Bonaparte
arrived in time to defeat, and in the last week of July he inflicted
a crushing defeat on the Turkish army that had landed at
Aboukir, aided by the British fleet commanded by Sir Sidney
Smith. Shortly after his victory Bonaparte left Egypt, having
appointed K16ber to govern in his absence, which he informed
the sheiks of Cairo was not to last more than three months.
Kleber himself regarded the condition of the French invaders
as extremely perilous, and wrote to inform the French republic
of the facts. A double expedition shortly after Bonaparte's
departure was sent by the Porte for the recovery of Egypt, one
force being despatched by sea to Damietta, while another under
\usuf Pasha took the land route from Damascus by al-Arish.
Over the first some success was won, in consequence of which
the Turks agreed to a convention (signed January 24. 1800),
by virtue of which the French were to quit Egypt. The Turkish
troops advanced to Bilbeis, where they were received by the
sheiks from Cairo, and the Mamelukes also returned to that
city from their hiding-places. Before the preparations for the
departure of the French were completed, orders came to Sir
Sidney Smith from the British government, forbidding the
carrying out of the convention unless the French army were
treated as prisoners of war; and when these were communicated
to Kleber he cancelled the orders previously given to the troops,
and proceeded to put the country in a state of defence. His
departure with most of the army to attack the Turks at Malaria
led to riots in Cairo, in the course of which many Christians were
slaughtered ; but the national party were unable to get possession
of the citadel, and Kleber, having defeated the Turks, was soon
able to return to the capital. On the I4th of April he bombarded
Bulak, and proceeded to bombard Cairo itself, which was taken
the following night. Order was soon restored, and a fine of
twelve million francs imposed on the rioters. Murad Bey
sought an interview with Kleber and succeeded in obtaining
from him the government of Upper Egypt. He died shortly
afterwards and was succeeded by Osman Bey al-Bardisi.
On the 1 4th of June Kleber was assassinated by a fanatic
named Suleiman of Aleppo, said to have been incited to the deed
by a Janissary refugee at Jerusalem, who had brought letters
to the sheiks of the Azhar, who, however, refused to give him
any encouragement. Three of these, nevertheless, were executed
by the French as accessories before the fact, and the assassin
himself was impaled, after torture, in spite of a promise of pardon
having been made to him on condition of his naming his associates.
The command of the army then devolved on General J. F.
(Baron de) Menou (1750-1810), a man who had professed Islam,
and who endeavoured to conciliate the Moslem population by
various measures, such as excluding all Christians (with the
exception of one Frenchman) from the divan, replacing the Copts
who were in government service by Moslems, and subjecting
French residents to taxes. Whatever popularity might have
been gained by these measures was counteracted by his declara-
tion of a French protectorate over Egypt, which was to count
as a French colony.
In the first weeks of March 1801 the English, under Sir R.
Abercromby, effected a landing at Aboukir, and proceeded to
invest Alexandria, where on the 2 ist they were attacked
by Menou ; the French were repulsed, but the English Preach
commander was mortally wounded in the action. On
the 25th fresh reinforcements arrived under Husain,
the Kapudan Pasha, or high admiral; and a combined English
and Turkish force was sent to take Rosetta. On the soth of
May, General A. D. Belliard, who had been left in charge at
Cairo, was assailed on two sides by the British forces under
General John Hely Hutchinson (afterwards 2nd earl of Donough-
more), and the Turkish under Yusuf Pasha; after negotiations
Belliard agreed to evacuate Cairo and to sail with his 13,734
troops to France. On the 3oth of August, Menou at Alexandria
was compelled to accept similar conditions, and his force of
10,000 left for Europe in September. This was the termination
of the French occupation of Egypt, of which the chief permanent
monument was the Description de I'Egypte, compiled by the
French savants who accompanied the expedition. Further
than this, " it brought to the attention of a few men in Egypt
a keen sense of the great advantage of an orderly government,
and a warm appreciation of the advance that science and learning
had made in Europe " (Hajji Browne, Bonaparte in Egypt and
the Egyptians of to-day, 1907, p. 268).
Soon after the evacuation of Egypt by the French, the country
became the scene of more severe troubles, in consequence of the
attempts of the Turks to destroy the power of the Mamelukes.
In defiance of promises to the British government, orders were
transmitted from Constantinople to Husain Pasha, the Turkish
high admiral, to ensnare and put to death the principal beys.
Invited to an entertainment, they were, according to the
Egyptian contemporary historian al-Jabarti, attacked on board
the flag-ship; Sir Robert Wilson and M. F. Mengin, however,
state that they were fired on, in open boats, in the Bay of Aboukir.
They offered an heroic resistance, but were overpowered, and
evacua-
tion.
HISTORY]
EGYPT
107
killed, some made prisoners; among the last was Osman
Bey al-BardlsI, who was severely wounded. General Hutchinson,
BriUWk> informed of this treachery, immediately assumed
r*rj '*m4 threatening measures against the Turks, and in
Mmmt consequence the killed, wounded and prisoners were
**** given up to him. At the same time Yusuf Pasha
arrested all the beys in Cairo, but was shortly compelled by the
British to release them. Such was the beginning of the disastrous
struggle between the Mamelukes and the Turks.
Mahommed Khosrev was the first Turkish governor of Egypt
alter the expulsion of the French. The form of government,
however, was not the same as that before the French invasion,
for the Mamelukes were not reinstated. The pasha, and through
him the sultan, endeavoured on several occasions either to
ensnare them or to beguile them into submission; but
these efforts failing, Mahommed Khosrev tok the field, and a
Turkish detachment 7000 strong was despatched against them
to Damanhur, whither they had descended from Upper Egypt,
and was defeated by a small force under al-Alfi; or, as Mengin
says, by 800 men commanded by al-BardlsI, when al-Alfi had
left the field. Their ammunition and guns fell into the hands
of the Mamelukes.
In March 1803 the British evacuated Alexandria, and Ma-
hommed Bey al-Alfi accompanied them to England to consult
respecting the means to be adopted for restoring the former
power of the Mamelukes, who meanwhile took Minia and inter-
rupted communication between Upper and Lower Egypt . About
six weeks after, the Arnaut (or Albanian) soldiers in the service
of Khosrev tumultuously demanded their pay, and surrounded
the house of the defterdar (or finance minister), who in vain
appealed to the pasha to satisfy their claims. The latter opened
fire from the artillery of his palace on the insurgent soldiery in
the house of the defterdar, across the Ezbekia. The citizens of
Cairo, accustomed to such occurrences, immediately closed their
shops^ and every man who possessed any weapon armed himself.
The tumult continued all the day, and the next morning a body
of troops sent out by the pasha failed to quell it. Tahir, the
commander of the Albanians, then repaired to the citadel, gained
admittance through an embrasure, and, having obtained posses-
sion of it, began to cannonade the pasha over the roofs of the
intervening houses, and then descended with guns to the Ezbekia
and laid close siege to the palace. On the following day
Mahommed Khosrev made good his escape, with his women
and servants and his regular troops, and fled to Damietta by
the river. This revolt marks the beginning in Egypt of the
breach between the Albanians and Turks, which ultimately led
to the expulsion of the latter, and of the rise to power of the
Albanian Mehemet Ali (q.v.), who was destined to rule the country
for nearly forty years and be the cause of serious European
complications.
Tahir Pasha assumed the government, but in twenty-three
days he met with his death from exactly the same cause as that
of the overthrow of his predecessor. He refused the
pay of certain of the Turkish troops, and was immedi-
ately assassinated. A desperate conflict ensued between
the Albanians and Turks; and the palace was set on
fire and plundered. The masters of Egypt were now
split into these two factions, animated with the fiercest animosity
against each other. Mehemet Ali, then in command of an
Albanian regiment, became the head of the former, but his party
was the weaker, and he therefore entered into an alliance with
the Mameluke leaders Ibrahim Bey and 'Osroan Bey al-Bardisi.
A certain Ahmed Pasha, who was about to proceed to a province
in Arabia, of which he had been appointed governor, was raised
to the important post of pasha of Egypt, through the influence
of the Turks and the favour of the sheiks; but Mehemet Ali,
who with his Albanians held the citadel, refused to assent to
their choice; the Mamelukes moved over from El-Giza, whither
they had been invited by Tahir Pasha, and Ahmed Pasha betook
himself to the mosque of al-ZShir, which the French had con-
verted into a fortress. He was compelled to surrender by the
Albanians; the two chiefs of the Turks who killed Tahir Pasha
tpptmr-
mmct of
Mrhtmcl
AM.
were taken with him and put to death, and he himself was de-
tained a prisoner. In consequence of the alliance between
Mehemet Ali and al-BardlsI, the Albanians gave the citadel over
to the Mamelukes; and soon after, these allies marched against
Khosrev Pasha, who having been joined by a considerable body
of Turks, and being in possession of Damietta, was enabled to
offer an obstinate resistance. After much loss on both sides,
he was taken prisoner and brought to Cairo; but he was treated
with respect. The victorious soldiery sacked the town of
Damietta, and were guilty of the barbarities usual with them on
such occasions.
A few days later, Ali Pasha Jazairli landed at Alexandria
with an imperial firman constituting him pasha of Egypt, and
threatened the beys, who now were virtual masters of Upper
Egypt, as well as of the capital and nearly the whole of Lower
Egypt. Mehemet Ali and al-BardlsI therefore descended to
Rosetta, which had fallen into the hands of a brother of Ali
Pasha, and having captured the town and its commander, al-
Bardlsl purposed to proceed against Alexandria; but the troops
demanded arrears of pay which it was not in his power to give,
and the pasha had cut the dyke between the lakes of Aboukir
and Mareotis, thus rendering the approach to Alexandria more
difficult. Al-BardlsI and Mehemet Ali therefore returned to
Cairo. The troubles of Egypt were now increased by an in-
sufficient inundation, and great scarcity prevailed, aggravated
by the taxation to which the beys were compelled to resort in
order to pay the troops; while murder and rapine prevailed
in the capital, the riotous soldiery being under little or no
control. Meanwhile, Ali Pasha, who had been behaving with
violence towards the Franks in Alexandria, received a hatt-i-
sherif from the sultan, which he sent by his secretary to Cairo.
It announced that the beys should live peaceably in Egypt, with
an annual pension each of fifteen purses (a "purse "=500
piastres) and other privileges, but that the government should
be in the hands of the pasha. To this the beys assented,
but with considerable misgivings; for they had intercepted
letters from Ali to the Albanians, endeavouring to alienate them
from their side to his own. Deceptive answers were returned
to these, and Ali was induced by them to advance
towards Cairo at the head of 3000 men. The forces tu es g^~
of the beys, with the Albanians, encamped near him AiiP**ha.
at Shalakan, and he fell back on a place called Zufeyta.
They next seized his boats conveying soldiers, servants, and his
ammunition and baggage; and, following him, they demanded
wherefore he brought with him so numerous a body of men, in
opposition to usage and to their previous warning. Finding
they would not allow his troops to advance, forbidden himself
to retreat with them to Alexandria, and being surrounded by
the enemy, he would have hazarded a battle, but his men refused
to fight. He therefore went to the camp of the beys, and his
army was compelled to retire to Syria. In the hands of the beys
Ali Pasha again attempted treachery. A horseman was seen to
leave his tent one night at full gallop; he was the bearer of a
letter to Osmn Bey Hasan, the governor of Kine. This offered
a fair pretext to the Mamelukes to rid themselves of a man
proved to be a perfidious tyrant. He was sent under a guard
of forty-five men towards the Syrian frontier; and about a
week after, news was received that in a skirmish with some of
his own soldiers he had fallen mortally wounded.
The death of Ali Pasha produced only temporary tranquillity;
in a few days (February 12, 1804) the return of Mahommed Bey
al-Alfi (called the Great) from England was the signal for fresh
disturbances, which, by splitting the Mamelukes into two parties,
accelerated their final overthrow. An ancient jealousy existed
between al-Alfi and the other most powerful bey, al-Bardls!.
The latter was now supreme among the Mamelukes, and this
fact considerably heightened their old enmity. While the guns
of the citadel, those at Old Cairo, and even those of the palace
of al-BardlsI, were thrice fired in honour of al-Alfl, preparations
were immediately begun to oppose him. His partisans were
collected opposite Cairo, and al-Alfi the Less held Giza; but
treachery was among them; Husain Bey (a relative of al-Alfi)
io8
EGYPT
[HISTORY
was assassinated by emissaries of al-Bardisi, and Mehemet Ali,
with his Albanians, gained possession of Giza, which was, as
usual, given over to the troops to pillage. In the meanwhile
al-Alfi the Great embarked at Rosetta, and not apprehending
opposition, was on his way to Cairo, when a little south of the
town of ManOf he encountered a party of Albanians, and with
difficulty made his escape. He gained the eastern branch of the
Nile, but the river had become dangerous, and he fled to the
desert. There he had several hairbreadth escapes, and at last
secreted himself among a tribe of Arabs at Ras al-Wadl. A
change in the fortune of al-Bardisi, however, favoured his plans
for the future. That chief, in order to satisfy the demands of
the Albanians for their pay, gave orders to levy heavy contri-
butions from the citizens of Cairo; and this new oppression
roused them to rebellion. The Albanians, alarmed for their
safety, assured the populace that they would not allow the order
to be executed; and Mehemet Ali himself caused a proclamation
to be made to that effect. Thus the Albanians became the
favourites of the people, and took advantage of their oppor-
tunity. Three days later (March 1 2th, 1 804) they beset the house
of the aged Ibrahim Bey, and that of al-Bardisi, both of whom
effected their escape with difficulty. The Mamelukes in the
citadel directed a fire of shot and shell on the houses of the
Albanians which were situated in the Ezbekia; but, on hearing
of the flight of their chiefs, they evacuated the place; and
Mehemet Ali, on gaining possession of it, once more proclaimed
Mahommed Khosrev pasha of Egypt. For one day and a half
he enjoyed the title; the friends of the late Tahir Pasha then
accomplished his second degradation, 1 and Cairo was again the
scene of terrible enormities, the Albanians revelling in the houses
of the Mameluke chiefs, whose hareems met with no mercy at
their hands. These events were the signal for the reappearance
of al-Alfi.
The Albanians now invited Ahmed Pasha Khorshid to assume
the reins of government, and he without delay proceeded from
Alexandria to Cairo. The forces of the partisans of al-Bardisi
Were ravaging the country a few miles south of the capital and
intercepting the supplies of corn by the river; a little later they
passed to the north of Cairo and successively took Bilbeis and
Kalyub, plundering the villages, destroying the crops, and
slaughtering the herds of the inhabitants. Cairo was itself in
a state of tumult, suffering severely from a scarcity of grain, and
the heavy exactions of the pasha to meet the demands of his
turbulent troops, at that time augmented by a Turkish detach-
ment. The shops were closed, and the unfortunate people
assembled in great crowds, crying " Ya Latif! Ya Latif! " ("O
Gracious [God] ! ") Al-Alfi and Osman Bey Hasan had professed
allegiance to the pasha; but they soon after declared against
him, and they were now approaching from the south; and
having repulsed Mehemet Ali, they took the two fortresses of
Tura. These Mehemet Ali speedily retook by night with 4000
infantry and cavalry; but the enterprise was only partially
successful. On the following day the other Mamelukes north
of the metropolis actually penetrated into the suburbs; but a
few days later were defeated in a battle fought at Shubra, with
heavy loss on both sides. This reverse in a measure united the
two great Mameluke parties, though their chiefs remained at
enmity. Al-Bardisi passed to the south of Cairo, and the Mame-
lukes gradually retreated towards Upper Egypt. Thither the
pasha despatched three successive expeditions (one of which was
commanded by Mehemet Ali), and many battles were fought,
but without decisive result.
At this period another calamity befell Egypt; about 3000
Dells (Kurdish troops) arrived in Cairo from Syria. These troops
had been sent for by Khorshid in order to strengthen himself
against the Albanians; and the events of this portion of the
history afford sad proof of their ferocity and brutal enormities,
1 Khosrev Pasha afterwards filled several of the highest offices at
Constantinople. He died on the 1st of February 1855. He was a
bigot of the old school, strongly opposed to the influences of Western
civilization, and consequently to the assistance of France and Great
Britain in the Crimean War.
in which they far exceeded the ordinary Turkish soldiers and
even the Albanians. Their arrival immediately recalled Mehemet
Ali and his party from the war, and instead of aiding Khorshid
was the proximate cause of his overthrow.
Cairo was ripe for revolt; the pasha was hated for his tyranny
and extortion, and execrated for the deeds of his troops, especi-
ally those of the Delis: the sheiks enjoined the people to close
their shops, and the soldiers clamoured for pay. At this juncture
a firman arrived from Constantinople conferring on Mehemet
Ali the pashalic of Jedda; but the occurrences of a few days
raised him to that of Egypt.
On the 1 2th of Safar 1220 (May i2th, 1805) the sheiks, with
an immense concourse of the inhabitants, assembled in the house
of the kadi; and the ulema, amid the prayers and
cries of the people, wrote a full statement of the heavy betweta
wrongs which they had endured under the administra- Khorshid
tion of the pasha. The ulema, in answer, were desired aa<t
to go to the citadel; but they were apprised of %"*"'
treachery; and on the following day, having held
another council at the house of the kadi, they proceeded to
Mehemet Ali and informed him that the people would no longer
submit to Khorshid. " Then whom will ye have? " said he.
" We will have thee," they replied, " to govern us according to
the laws; for we see in thy countenance that thou art possessed
of justice and goodness." Mehemet Ah' seemed to hesitate, and
then complied, and was at once invested. On this, a bloody
struggle began between the two pashas. Khorshid, being
informed of the insurrection, immediately prepared to stand a
siege in the citadel. Two chiefs of the Albanians joined his
party, but many of his soldiers deserted. Mehemet Ali's great
strength lay in the devotion of the citizens of Cairo, who looked
on him as a deliverer from their afflictions; and great numbers
armed themselves, advising constantly with Mehemet Ali,
having the sayyid Omar and the sheiks at their head, and
guarding the town at night. On the igth of the same month
Mehemet Ali began to besiege Khorshid. After the siege had
continued many days, Khorshid gave orders to cannonade and
bombard the town; and for six days his commands were executed
with little interruption, the citadel itself also lying between two
fires. Mehemet Ali's position at this time was very critical:
his troops became mutinous for their pay; the silahdar, who
had commanded one of the expeditions against the Mamelukes,
advanced to the relief of Khorshid; and the latter ordered the
Dells to march to his assistance. The firing ceased on the
Friday, but began again on the eve of Saturday and lasted until
the next Friday. On the day following (May 28th) news came
of the arrival at Alexandria of a messenger from Constantinople.
The ensuing night in Cairo presented a curious spectacle; many
of the inhabitants, believing that this envoy would put an end
to their miseries, fired off their weapons as they paraded the
streets with bands of music. The silahdar, imagining the noise
to be a fray, marched in haste towards the citadel, while its
garrison sallied forth and began throwing up entrenchments
in the quarter of Arab al-Yesar, but were repulsed by the armed
inhabitants and the soldiers stationed there; and during all this
time the cannonade and bombardment from the citadel, and on it
from the batteries on the hill, continued unabated.
The envoy brought a firman confirming Mehemet Ali and
ordering Khorshid to go to Alexandria, there to await further
orders; but this he refused to do, on the ground that
he had been appointed by a katt-i-sherif. The firing ^ "
ceased on the following day, but the troubles of the granted
people were rather increased than assuaged; murders the
and robberies were daily committed by the soldiery, pMhaUc -
the shops were all shut and some of the streets barricaded. While
these scenes were being enacted, al-Alfi was besieging Damanhur,
and the other beys were returning towards Cairo, Khorshid
having called them to his assistance; but Mehemet Ali forced
them to retreat.
Soon after this, a squadron under the command of the Turkish
high admiral arrived at Aboukir Bay, with despatches confirming
the firman brought by the former envoy, and authorizing
HISTORY]
EGYPT
109
Mehemet All to continue to discharge the functions of governor.
Khonhld at first refused to yield; but at length, on condition
that his troops should be paid, he evacuated the citadel and
embarked for Rosetta.
Mehemet Ali now possessed the title of Governor of Egypt,
but beyond the walls of Cairo his authority was everywhere
disputed by the beys, who were joined by the army of the
silahdar of Khonhld; and many Albanians deserted from his
ranks. To replenish his empty coffers he was also compelled to
levy exactions, principally from the Copts. An attempt was
made to ensnare certain of the beys, who were encamped north
of Cairo. On the i;th of August 1805 the dam of the canal of
Cairo was to be cut, and some chiefs of Mehemet All's party
wrote, informing them that he would go forth early on that
morning with most of his troops to witness the ceremony, inviting
them to enter and seize the city, and, to deceive them, stipulating
for a certain sum of money as a reward. The dam, however,
was cut early in the preceding night, without any ceremony.
On the following morning, these beys, with their Mamelukes,
a very numerous body, broke open the gate of the suburb
al-Husainia, and gained admittance into the city from the north,
through the gate called Bab el-FutOh. They marched along the
principal street for some distance, with kettle-drums behind each
company, and were received with apparent joy by the citizens.
At the mosque called the Ashrafia they separated, one party
proceeding to the Azhar and the houses of certain sheiks, and
the other continuing along the main street, and through the
gate called Bab ZuwCla, where they turned up towards the
citadel. Here they were fired on by some soldiers from the
houses; and with this signal a terrible massacre began. Falling
back towards their companions, they found the bye-streets
closed; and in that part of the main thoroughfare called Bain al-
Kasrain they were suddenly placed between two fires. Thus
shut up in a narrow street, some sought refuge in the collegiate
mosque Barkukia, while the remainder fought their way through
their enemies and escaped over the city- wall with the loss of
their horses. Two Mamelukes bad in the meantime succeeded,
by great exertions, in giving the alarm to their comrades in the
quarter of the Azhar, who escaped by the eastern gate called
Bab al-Ghoraib. A horrible fate awaited those who had shut
themselves up in the Barkukia. Having begged for quarter
and surrendered, they were immediately stripped nearly
naked, and about fifty were slaughtered on the spot;
/* and about the same number were dragged away, with
every brutal aggravation of their pitiful condition, to
Mehemet Ali. Among them were four beys, one of
whom, driven to madness by Mehemet All's mockery, asked for
a drink of water; his hands were untied that he might take the
bottle, but be snatched a dagger from one of the soldiers, rushed
at the pasha, and fell covered with wounds. The wretched
captives were then chained and left in the court of the pasha's
house; and on the following morning the heads of their com-
rades who had perished the day before were skinned and stuffed
with straw before their eyes. One bey and two others paid their
ransom and were released; the rest, without exception, were
tortured and put to death in the course of the ensuing night.
Eighty-three heads (many of them those of Frenchmen and
Albanians) were stuffed and sent to Constantinople, with a
boast that the Mameluke chiefs were utterly destroyed. Thus
ended Mehemet All's first massacre of his too confiding enemies.
The beys, after this, appear to have despaired of regaining
their ascendancy; most of them retreated to Upper Egypt,
and an attempt at compromise failed. Al-Alfl offered his sub-
mission on the condition of the cession of the Fayum and other
provinces; but this was refused, and that chief gained two
successive victories over the pasha's troops, many of whom
deserted to him.
At length, in consequence of the remonstrances of the English.
and a promise made by al-Alfl of 1 500 purses, the Pone consented
to reinstate the twenty-four beys and to place al-Alfl at their
head; but this measure met with the opposition of Mehemet Ali
and the determined resistance of the majority of the Mamelukes,
who, rather than have al-Alfl at their head, preferred their
present condition; for the enmity of al-Bardls! had not subsided,
and he commanded the voice of most of the other beys. In
pursuance of the above plan, a squadron under Salih Pasha,
shortly before appointed high admiral, arrived at Alexandria
on the ist of July 1806 with 3000 regular troops and a successor
to Mehemet Ali, who was to receive the pashalik of Salonica.
This wily chief professed his willingness to obey the commands
of the Porte, but stated that his troops, to whom he owed a
vast sum of money, opposed his departure. He induced the
ulema to sign a letter, praying the sultan to revoke the command
for reinstating the beys, persuaded the chiefs of the Albanian
troops to swear allegiance to him, and sent 2000 purses con-
tributed by them to Constantinople. Al-Alfl was at that time
besieging Damanhur, and he gained a signal victory over the
pasha's troops; but the dissensions of the beys destroyed their
last chance of a return to power. Al-Alfl and his partisans were
unable to pay the sum promised to the Porte; Silih Pasha
received plenipotentiary powers from Constantinople, in con-
sequence of the letter from the ulema; and, on the condition
of Mehemet Ali's paying 4000 purses to the Porte, it was decided
that he should continue in his post, and the reinstatement of
the beys was abandoned. Fortune continued to favour the
pasha. In the following month al-Bardls! died, aged forty-eight
years; and soon after, a scarcity of provisions excited the troops
of al-Alfl to revolt. That bey very reluctantly raised the siege
of Damanhur, being in daily expectation of the arrival of an
English army; and at the village of Shubra-ment he was
attacked by a sudden illness, and died on the 3oth of January
1807, at the age of fifty-five. Thus was the pasha relieved of
his two most formidable enemies; and shortly after he defeated
Shahln Bey, with the loss to the latter of his artillery and baggage
and 300 men killed or taken prisoners.
On the iyth of March 1807 a British fleet appeared off Alex-
andria, having on board nearly 5000 troops, under the command
of General A. Mackenzie Fraser; and the place, Thf
being disaffected towards Mehemet Ali, opened its itriiish
gates to them. Here they first heard of the death "petition
of al-Alfl, upon whose co-operation they had founded otlsor -
their chief hopes of success; and they immediately despatched
messengers to his successor and to the other beys, inviting them
to Alexandria. The British resident, Major Missett, having repre-
sented the importance of taking Rosetta and Rahmanieh,to secure
supplies for Alexandria, General Fraser, with the concurrence
of the admiral, Sir John Duckworth, detached the 3ist regiment
and the Chasseurs Britanniques, accompanied by some field
artillery under Major-General Wauchope and Brigadier-General
Meade, on this service; and these troops entered Rosetta
without encountering any opposition; but as soon as they
had dispersed among the narrow streets, the garrison opened a
deadly fire on them from the latticed windows and the roofs of
the houses. They effected a retreat on Aboukir and Alexandria,
after a very heavy loss of 185 killed and 281 wounded, General
Wauchope and three officers being among the former, and General
Meade and nineteen officers among the latter. The heads of
the slain were fixed on stakes on each side of the road crossing
the Ezbekia in Cairo.
Mehemet Ali, meanwhile, was conducting an expedition
against the beys in Upper Egypt, and he had defeated them
near Assiut, when he heard of the arrival of the British. In
great alarm lest the beys should join them, especially as they
were far north of his position, he immediately sent messengers
to his rivals, promising to comply with all their demands
if they should join in expelling the invaders; and this proposal
being agreed to, both armies marched towards Cairo on opposite
sides of the river.
To return to the unfortunate British expedition. The posses-
sion of Rosetta being deemed indispensable, Brigadier-Generals
Sir William Stewart and Oswald were despatched thither with
2500 men. For thirteen days a cannonade of the town was
continued without effect; and on the 2oth of April, news
having come in from the advanced guard at Hamad of large
no
EGYPT
[HISTORY
reinforcements to the besieged, General Stewart was compelled
to retreat ; and a dragoon was despatched to Lieutenant-colonel
Macleod, commanding at Hamad, with orders to fall back.
The messenger, however, was unable to penetrate to the spot;
and the advanced guard, consisting of a detachment of the 3ist,
two companies of the 78th, one of the 35th, and De Roll's
regiment, with a picquet of dragoons, the whole mustering
733 men, was surrounded, and, after a gallant resistance, the
survivors, who had expended all their ammunition, became
prisoners of war. General Stewart regained Alexandria with the
remainder of his force, having lost, in killed, wounded and
missing, nearly 900 men. Some hundreds of British heads
were now exposed on stakes in Cairo, and the prisoners were
marched between these mutilated remains of their countrymen.
The beys became divided in their wishes, one party being
desirous of co-operating with the British, the other with the
pasha. These delays proved ruinous to their cause; and
General Fraser, despairing of their assistance, evacuated Alex-
andria on the i4th of September. From that date to the spring
of 1811 the beys from time to time relinquished certain of their
demands; the pasha on his part granted them what before had
been withheld; the province of the Fayum, and part of those
of Giza and Beni-Suef, were ceded to Shahin; and a great
portion of the Sa'Id, on the condition of paying the land-tax,
to the others. Many of them took up their abode in Cairo, but
tranquillity was not secured; several times they met the pasha's
forces in battle and once gained a signal victory. Early in the
year 1811, the preparations for an expedition against the Wah-
habis in Arabia being complete, all the Mameluke beys then in
Cairo were invited to the ceremony of investing Mehemet Ali's
favourite son, Tusun, with a pelisse and the command of the
army. As on the former occasion, the unfortunate Mamelukes
fell into the snare. On the ist of March, Shahin Bey and the
other chiefs (one only excepted) repaired with their retinues to
the citadel, and were courteously received by the pasha. Having
taken coffee, they formed in procession, and, preceded and
followed by the pasha's troops, slowly descended the steep and
narrow road leading to the great gate of the citadel; but as
soon as the Mamelukes arrived at the gate it was suddenly
closed before them. The last of those to leave before the gate
was shut were Albanians under Salih Kush. To these troops
their chief now made known the pasha's orders to massacre
all the Mamelukes within the citadel; therefore, having returned
Final ky another way, they gained the summits of the walls
massacre and houses that hem in the road in which the Mame-
ofthe lukes were confined, and some stationed themselves
Luke's*' upon the eminences of the rock through which that
road is partly cut. Thus securely placed, they began
a heavy fire on their victims; and immediately the troops who
closed the procession, and who had the advantage of higher
ground, followed their example. Of the betrayed chiefs, many
were laid low in a few moments; some, dismounting, and
throwing off their outer robes, vainly sought, sword in hand, to
return, and escape by some other gate. The few who regained
the summit of the citadel experienced the same fate as the rest,
for no quarter was given. Four hundred and seventy Mamelukes
entered the citadel; and of these very few, if any, escaped.
One of these is said to have been a bey. According to some,
he leapt his horse from the ramparts, and alighted uninjured,
though the horse was killed by the fall; others say that he was
prevented from joining his comrades, and discovered the treachery
while waiting without the gate. He fled and made his way to
Syria. This massacre was the signal for an indiscriminate
slaughter of the Mamelukes throughout Egypt, orders to this
effect being transmitted to every governor; and in Cairo itself
the houses of the beys were given over to the soldiery. During
the two following days the pasha and his son Tusun rode about
the streets and tried to stop the atrocities; but order was not
restored until 500 houses had been completely pillaged. The
heads of the beys were sent to Constantinople.
A remnant of the Mamelukes fled to Nubia, and a tranquillity
was restored to Egypt to which it had long been unaccustomed.
In the year following the massacre the unfortunate exiles were
attacked by Ibrahim Pasha, the eldest son of Mehemet Ah', in
the fortified town of Ibrim, in Nubia. Here the want of provisions
forced them to evacuate the place; a few who surrendered
were beheaded, and the rest went farther south and built the
town of New Dongola (correctly Dunkulah), where the venerable
Ibrahim Bey died in 1816, at the age of eighty. As their numbers
thinned, they endeavoured to maintain their little power by
training some hundreds of blacks; but again, on the approach of
Ismail, another son of the pasha of Egypt, sent with an army in
1820 to subdue Nubia and Sennar, some returned to Egypt and
settled in Cairo, while the rest, amounting to about 100 persons,
fled in dispersed parties to the countries adjacent to Sennar.
See A. A Paton, History of the Egyptian Revolution (a'vols., 2nd
ed., enlarged 1870); and FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS.
(E. S. P.; S. L.-P.; D. S. M.*)
3. Modern History.
(i) Rule of Mehemet All. Mehemet Ali was now undisputed
master of Egypt, and his efforts henceforth were directed prim-
arily to the maintenance of his practical independence. The
suzerainty of the sultan he acknowledged, and at the reiterated
commands of the Porte he despatched in 1811 an army of 8000
men, including 2000 horse, under the command of his son Tusun,
a youth of sixteen, against the Wahhabis (q.v.). After a success-
ful advance, this force met with a serious repulse at the pass
of Jedeida, near Safra, and retreated to Yembo" (Yambu). In
the following year Tusun, having received reinforcements, again
assumed the offensive, and captured Medina after a prolonged
siege. He next took Jidda and Mecca, defeating the Wahhabis
beyond the latter place and capturing their general. But some
mishaps followed, and Mehemet Ali, who had determined to
conduct the war in person, left Egypt for that purpose in the
summer of 1813. In Arabia he encountered serious obstacles
from the nature of the country and the harassing mode of
warfare adopted by his adversaries. His arms met
with various fortunes; but on the whole his forces
proved superior to those of the enemy. He deposed
and exiled the sharif of Mecca, and after the death of the WahhabI
leader Saud II. he concluded in 1815 a treaty with Saud's son
and successor, Abdullah. Hearing of the escape of Napoleon
from Elba and fearing danger to Egypt from the plans of France
or Great Britain Mehemet Ali returned to Cairo by way of
Kosseir and Kena. He reached the capital on the day of the
battle of Waterloo. His return was hastened by reports that
the Turks, whose cause he was upholding in Arabia, were
treacherously planning an invasion of Egypt.
During Mehemet Ali's absence in Arabia his representative
at Cairo had completed the confiscation, begun in 1808, of almost
all the lands belonging to private individuals, who were forced
to accept instead inadequate pensions. By this cevolutionary
method of land "nationalization" Mehemet Ali became pro-
prietor of nearly all the soil of Egypt, an iniquitous measure
against which the Egyptians had no remedy. The attempt which
in this year (1815) the pasha made to reorganize his troops on
European lines led, however, to a formidable mutiny in Cairo.
Mehemet Ali's life was endangered, and he sought refuge by night
in the citadel, while the soldiery committed many acts of plunder.
The revolt was reduced by presents to the chiefs of the insurgents,
and Mehemet Ali ordered that the sufferers by the disturbances
should receive compensation from the treasury. The project
of the Nizdm Gedid (New System), as the European system was
called, was, in consequence of this mutiny, abandoned for a time.
Tusun returned to Egypt on hearing of the military revolt at
Cairo, but died in 1816 at the early age of twenty. Mehemet Ali,
dissatisfied with the treaty concluded with the Wahhabis, and
with the non-fulfilment of certain of its clauses, determined to
send another army to Arabia, and to include in it the soldiers
who had recently proved unruly. This expedition, under his
eldest son Ibrahim Pasha, left in the autumn of 1816. The war
was long and arduous, but in 1818 Ibrahim captured the Wahhabi
capital of Deraiya. Abdullah, their chief, was made prisoner,
HISTORY]
EGYPT
in
and with his treasurer and secretary was sent to Constantinople,
where, in spite of Ibrahim's promise of safety, and of Mehemet
All's intercession in their favour, they were put to death. At
the dose of the year iSio. Ibrahim returned to Cairo, having
subdued all present opposition in Arabia.
Meanwhile the pasha had turned his attention to the improve-
ment of the manufactures of Egypt, and engaged very largely
in commerce. He created for himself a monopoly in the chief
products of the country, to the further impoverishment of the
people, and set up and kept going for years factories which never
paid. But some of his projects were sound. The work of digging
(1819-1820) the new canal of Alexandria, called the Mahmudiya
(after the reigning sultan of Turkey), was specially important.
The old canal had long fallen into decay, and the necessity of a
safe channel between Alexandria and the Nile was much felt.
Such was the object of the canal then excavated, and it answered
its purpose; but the sacrifice of life was enormous (fully 20,000
workmen perished), and the labour of the unhappy fellahin was
forced. Another notable fact in the economic progress of the
country was the development of the cultivation of cotton in
the Delta in 1822 and onwards. The cotton grown had been
brought from the Sudan by Maho Bey, and the organization of
the new industry from which in a few years Mehemet Ali
was enabled to extract considerable revenues was entrusted
to a Frenchman named Jumel.
In 1820 Mehemet Ah' ordered the conquest of the eastern
Sudan to be undertaken. He first sent an expedition westward
Comqattt (f eo - i8ao) which conquered and annexed the oasis of
Siwa. Among the pasha's reasons for wishing to
extend his rule southward were the desire to capture
the valuable caravan trade then going towards the Red
Sea, and to secure the rich gold mines which he believed to exist
in Sennar. He also saw in the campaign a means of getting rid
of the disaffected troops, and of obtaining a sufficient number of
captives to form the nucleus of the new army. The forces
destined for this service were led by Ismail, then the youngest
son of Mehemet Ali; they consisted of between 4000 and 5000
men, Turks and Arabs, and left Cairo in July 1820. Nubia at
once submitted, the Shagia Arabs immediately beyond the
province of Dongola were worsted, the remnant of the Mamelukes
dispersed, and Sennar reduced without a battle. Mahommed
Bey, the defterdar, with another force of about the same strength,
was then sent by Mehemet Ali against Kordofan with a like
result, but not without a hard-fought engagement. In October
1822 Ismail was, with his retinue, burnt to death by Nimr, the
mek (king) of Shendi ; and the defterdar, a man infamous for his
cruelty, assumed the command of those provinces, and exacted
terrible retribution from the innocent inhabitants. Khartum was
founded at this time, and in the following years the rule of the
Egyptians was largely extended and control obtained of the
Red Sea ports of Suakin and Massawa (see SUDAN: History).
In 1824 a native rebellion of a religious character broke out
in Upper Egypt headed by one Ahmad, an inhabitant of Es-
Salimiya, a village situated a few miles above Thebes. He pro-
claimed himself a prophet, and was soon followed by between
20,000 and 30,000 insurgents, mostly peasants, but some of them
deserters from the " Nizam Gedid," for that force was yet in a
half-organized state, and in part declared for the impostor.
The insurrection was crushed by Mehemet Ah', and about one-
fourth of Ahmad's followers perished, but he himself escaped
and was never after beard of. Few of these unfortunates
possessed any other weapon than the long staff (ncbbut) of the
Egyptian peasant; still they offered an obstinate resistance,
and the combat in which they were defeated resembled a
massacre. This movement was the last internal attempt to
destroy the pasha's authority.
The fellahin, a patient, long-suffering race save when stirred
by religious fanaticism, submitted to the kurbash,
frec 'y us * d bv the Turkish and Bashi Bazuk tax-
gatherers employed by Mehemet Ali to enforce his
system of taxation, monopolies, corv6e and conscrip-
tion. Under this regime the resources of the country were
?/,'"**
impoverished, while the finances fell into complete and incom-
prehensible chaos.
A vivid picture of the condition to which Egypt was reduced
is painted in the report drawn up in 1838 by the British consul-
general, Colonel Campbell:
" The government (he wrote), possessing itself of the necessaries of
hfe at prices fixed by itself, disposes of them at arbitrary prices.
The fellah is thus deprived of his harvest and falls into arrears
with his taxes, and is harassed and bastinadoed to force him to pay
his debts. This leads to deterioration of agriculture and lessens the
production. The pasha having imposed high taxes has caused
the high prices of the necessaries of life. It would be difficult for a
foreigner now coming to Egypt to form a just idea of the actual state
of the country as compared with its former state. In regard to the
general rise in prices, all the ground cultivated under the Mamelukes
was employed for producing food wheat, barley, beans, &c. in
immense quantities. The people reared fowls, sheep, goats, &c.,
and the prices were one-sixth, or even one-tenth, of those at present.
This continued until Mehemet Ali became viceroy in 1805. From
that period until the establishment of monopolies prices have
gradually increased; but the great increase has chiefly taken place
since 1824, when the pasha established his regular army, navy and
factories."
The conclusion in 1838 of a commercial treaty with Turkey,
negotiated by Sir Henry Bulwer (Lord Balling), struck a death-
blow to the system of monopolies, though the application of the
treaty to Egypt was delayed for some years. The picture of
Egypt under Mehemet Ali is nevertheless not complete without
regard being had to the beneficent side of his rule. Public order
was rendered perfect; the Nile and the highways were secure
to all travellers, Christian or Moslem; the Bedouin tribes were
won over to peaceful pursuits, and genuine efforts were made
to promote education and the study of medicine. To European
merchants, on whom he was dependent for the sale of his exports,
Mehemet Ali showed much favour, and under his influence the
port of Alexandria again rose into importance. It was also
under Mehemet Ali's encouragement that the overland transit
of goods from Europe to India via Egypt was resumed.
Mehemet Ali was fully conscious that the empire which he had
so laboriously built up might at any time have to be defended
by force of arms against his master Sultan Mahmud II., whose
whole policy had been directed to curbing the power of his too
ambitious valis, and who was under the influence of the personal
enemies of the pasha of Egypt, notably of Khosrev, the grand
vizier, who had never forgiven his humiliation in Egypt in 1803.
Mahmud also was already planning reforms borrowed from the
West, and Mehemet Ali, who had had plenty of opportunity of
observing the superiority of European methods of warfare,
was determined to anticipate the sultan in the creation of a fleet
and an army on modern lines, partly as a measure of precaution,
partly as an instrument for the realization of yet wider schemes
of ambition. Before the outbreak of the War of Greek Inde-
pendence in 1821 he had already expended much time and energy
in organizing a fleet and in training, under the supervision of
French instructors, native officers and artificers; though it was
not till 1829 that the opening of a dockyard and arsenal at Alex-
andria enabled him to build and equip his own vessels. By 1823,
moreover, he had succeeded in carrying out the reorganization
of his army on European lines, the turbulent Turkish and
Albanian elements being replaced by negroes and fellahin. 1
His foresight was rewarded by the invitation of the sultan to
help him in the task of subduing the Greek insurgents, offering
as reward the pashaliks of the Morea and of Syria.
Mehemet Ali had already, in 1821, been appointed
governor of Crete, which he had occupied with a small
Egyptian force. In the autumn of 1824 a fleet of sixty
Egyptian war-ships carrying a large force of disciplined troops
concentrated in Suda Bay, and, in the following March, Ibrahim
as commander-in-chief landed in the Morea. But for the action
of European powers the intervention of Mehemet Ali would have
1 The work was carried out under the supervision of the French-
man, Colonel S'-vc. who had turned Mahommedan and was known
in Islam as Suleiman Pasha. The effectiveness of the new force
was first tried in the suppression of a revolt of the Albanians in Cairo
(1823) by six disciplined Sudanese regiments; after which Mehemet
Ali was no more troubled with military ententes.
Mont.
112
EGYPT
[HISTORY
been decisive. His naval superiority wrested from the Greeks
the command of the sea, on which the fate of the insurrection
ultimately depended, while on land the Greek irregular bands
were everywhere routed by Ibrahim's disciplined troops. The
history of the events that led up to the battle of Navarino
and the liberation of Greece is told elsewhere (see NAVARINO
and GREEK INDEPENDENCE, WAR OF); the withdrawal of the
Egyptians from the Morea was ultimately due to the action of
Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, who early in August 1828
appeared before Alexandria and induced the pasha, by no means
sorry to have a reasonable excuse, by a threat of bombardment,
to sign a convention undertaking to recall Ibrahim and his army.
Before the final establishment of the new kingdom of Greece,
the Eastern question had late in 1831 entered into a new and
more P eruous phase, owing to the revolt of Mehemet
. against the sultan on pretext of chastising the
ex-slave Abdullah, pasha of Acre, for refusing to
send back Egyptian fugitives from the effects of Mehemet Ali's
" reforms." The true reason was the refusal of Sultan Mahmud
( to hand over Syria according to agreement, and Mehemet Ali's
determination to obtain at all hazards what had been from
time immemorial an object of ambition to the rulers of Egypt.
For ten years from this date the relations of sultan and pasha
remained in the forefront of the questions which agitated the
diplomatic world. It was not only the very existence of the
Ottoman empire that seemed to be at stake, but Egypt itself
had become more than ever an object of attention, to British
statesmen especially, and in the issue of the struggle were in-
volved the interests of Great Britain in the two routes to India
by the Isthmus of Suez and the valley of the Euphrates. The
diplomatic and military history of this period will be found
sketched in the article on Mehemet Ali. Here it will suffice to
say that the victorious career of Ibrahim, who once more com-
manded in his father's name, beginning with the storming of
Acre on the 27th of May 1832, and culminating in the rout and
capture of Reshid Pasha at Konia on the 2ist of December, was
arrested by the intervention of Russia. As the result of endless
discussions between the representatives of the powers, the Porte
and the pasha, the convention of Kutaya was signed on the
I4th of May 1833, by which the sultan agreed to bestow on
Mehemet Ali the pashaliks of Syria, Damascus, Aleppo and
Itcheli, together with the district of Adana. The announcement
of the pasha's appointment had already been made in the usual
way in the annual firman issued on the 3rd of May. Adana,
reserved for the moment, was bestowed on Ibrahim under
the style of muhassil, or collector of the crown
revenues, a few days later.
Mehemet Ali now ruled over a virtually inde-
pendent empire, subject only to a moderate tribute,
stretching from the Sudan to the Taurus Moun-
tains. But though he was hailed, especially in
France, as the pioneer of European civilization in
the East, the unsound foundations of his authority
were not long in revealing themselves. Scarcely a
year from the signing of the convention of Kutaya
the application by Ibrahim of Egyptian methods
of government, notably of the monopolies and
conscription, had driven Syrians, Druses and
Arabs, who had welcomed him as a deliverer, into
revolt. The unrest was suppressed by Mehemet
Ali in person, and the Syrians were terrorized and Ahmed,
disarmed. But their discontent encouraged Sultan d. 1858.
Mahmud to hope for revenge, and a renewal of the
conflict was only staved off by the anxious efforts
of the powers. At last, in the spring of 1839,
the sultan ordered his army, concentrated under
Reshid in the border district of Bir on the
Euphrates, to advance over the Syrian frontier.
Ibrahim, seeing his flank menaced, attacked it at
Nezib on the 24th of June. Once more the Otto-
mans were utterly routed. Six days later, before
the news reached Constantinople, Mahmud died.
Once more the Ottoman empire lay at the feet of Mehemet Ali;
but the powers were now more prepared to meet a contingency
which had been long foreseen. Their intervention was prompt ;
and the dubious attitude of France, which led to her exclusion
from the concert and encouraged Mehemet Ali to resist, only
led to his obtaining less favourable terms. (See MEHEMET An.)
The end was reached early in 1841. New firmans were issued
which confined the pasha's authority to Egypt, the Sinai pen-
insula and certain places on the Arabian side of the Red Sea,
and to the Sudan. The most important of these documents
are dated the I3th of February 1841. The government of the
pashalik of Egypt was made hereditary in the family of Mehemet
Ali. 1 A map showing the boundaries of Egypt accompanied
the firman granting Mehemet Ali the pashalik, a duplicate copy
being retained by the Porte. The Egyptian copy is supposed
to have been lost in a fire which destroyed a great part of the
Egyptian archives. The Turkish copy has never been produced
and its existence now appears doubtful. The point is of import-
ance, as in 1892 and again in 1906 boundary disputes arose
between Turkey and Egypt (see below). Various restrictions
were laid upon Mehemet Ali, emphasizing his position of vassal-
age. He was forbidden to maintain a fleet, and his
army was not to exceed 18,000 men. The pasha was
no longer a figure in European politics, but he continued
to occupy himself with his improvements, real or
imaginary, in Egypt. The condition of the country
was deplorable; in 1842 a murrain of cattle was followed
by a destructive Nile flood; in 1843 there was a plague
of locusts, whole villages were depopulated. Meantime the
uttermost farthing was wrung from the wretched fellahin, while
they were forced to the building of magnificent public works
by unpaid labour. In 1844-1845 there was some improvement
in the condition of the country as a result of financial reforms
the pasha was compelled to execute. Mehemet Ali, who had
been granted the honorary rank of grand vizier in 1842, paid
a visit to Stamboul in 1846, where he became reconciled to his
old enemy Khosrev Pasha, whom he had not seen since he
spared his life at Cairo in 1803. In 1847 Mehemet Ali laid the
foundation stone of the great barrage across the Nile at the
beginning of the Delta. He was barely persuaded from ordering
the barrage to be built with stone from the pyramids! Towards
the end of 1847 the aged pasha's mind began to give way, and
by the following June he was no longer capable of administering
the government. In September 1848 Ibrahim was acknowledged
by the Porte as ruler of the pashalik, but he died in the November
1 THE DYNASTY OF MEHEMET ALL
Mehemet
Alfs
authority
confined
to Egypt.
(ii
'b
d
Ib
i
i
(i.)
b.
Mehemet Ali,
1769, d. 1849.
rahim, Tusun, Ismail,
789, b. 1796, b. 1798,
548- d. 1816. d. 1822.
(iii.) Abbas I.,
b. 1813, d. 1854.
(iv.) Said,
b. 1823,
d. 1863.
Tusun,
d. 1876.
Abdul Halim,
b. 1831,
d. 1894.
Mehemet Ali,
the Younger,
and other
children.
El Hami.
I
Amina (married the Khedive Tewfik).
ned, (v.) Ismail (Khedive), Mustapha Fazil,
858. b. 1830, d. 1895. d. 1875.
(vi.) Tewfik, Hussein Kamil.
b. 1853, d. 1892.
1 1
Hassan. 8 other children.
(vii.) Abbas II.,
b. 1874.
Mehemet Ali.
2 daughters.
Mahommed Abdul,
b. 1899.
Abdul Kader,
b. 1902.
1
4 daughters.
HISTORY]
EGYPT
following. Mchemet Ali survived another eight months, dying
on the 2nd of August 1849, aged eighty. He had done a great
work in Egypt; the most permanent being the weakening of
the tie binding the country to Turkey, the starting of the great
cotton industry, the recognition of the advantages of European
science, and the conquest of the Sudan. (F. R. C.)
(a) from tke Dtaik of Mthemtt Ali to the British Occupation.
On Ibrahim's death in November 1848 the government of Egypt
fell to his nephew Abbas I. (q.v.), the son of Tusun.
'**** Abbas put an end to the system of commercial mono-
JJjJi^* polies, and during his reign the railway from Alexandria
to Cairo was begun at the instigation of the British
government. Opposed to European ways, Abbas lived in great
seclusion, and after a reign of less than six years he was murdered
(July 1854) by two of his slaves. He was succeeded by his uncle
Said Pasha, the favourite son of Mehemet Ali, who lacked the
strength of mind or physical health needed to execute the
beneficent projects which he conceived. Hjs endeavour, for
instance, to put a stop to the slave raiding which devastated the
Sudan provinces was wholly ineffectual. He had a genuine
regard for the welfare of the fellahin, and a land law of 1858
secured to them an acknowledgment of freehold as against the
crown. The pasha was much under French influence, and in
1856 was induced to grant to Ferdinand de Lesseps a concession
for the construction of the Suez Canal. Lord Palmerston was
opposed to this project, and the British opposition delayed the
ratification of the concession by the Porte for two years. To
the British Said also made cpncessions one to the Eastern
Telegraph Company, and another (1854) allowing the establish-
ment of the Bank of Egypt. He also began the national debt
by borrowing 3,203,000 from Messrs Friihling & Goschen,
the actual amount received by the pasha being 2,640,000. In
January 1863 Said Pasha died and was succeeded by his nephew
Ismail, a son of Ibrahim Pasha.
The reign of Ismail (q.v.), from 1863 to 1879, was for a while
bailed as introducing a new era into modern Egypt. In spite
of his vast schemes of reform and the fclat of his
Europeanizing innovations, his oriental extravagance
led to bankruptcy, and his reign is historically im-
portant simply for its compelling European interven-
tion in the internal affairs of Egypt. Yet in its earlier years
much was done which seemed likely to give Ismail a more
important place in history. In 1866 he was granted by the sultan
a firman obtained on condition of the increase of the tribute
from 376,000 to 720,000 by which the succession to the
throne of Egypt was made to descend " to the eldest of thy male
children and in the same manner to the eldest sons of thy suc-
cessors," instead of, after Turkish law, to the eldest male of the
family. In the following year another firman bestowed upon him
the title of khedive in lieu of that of vali, borne by Mehemet Ali
and his immediate successors. In 1873 a further firman placed
the khedive in many respects in the position of an independent
sovereign. Ismail re-established and improved the administra-
tive system organized by Mehemet Ali, and which had fallen
into decay under Abbas's indolent rule; he caused a thorough
remodelling of the customs system, which was in an anarchic
state, to be made by English officials; in 1865 he established
the Egyptian post office; he reorganized the military schools
of his grandfather, and gave some support to the cause of
education. Railways, telegraphs, lighthouses, the harbour
works at Suez, the breakwater at Alexandria, were carried out
by some of the best contractors of Europe. Most important of
all, the Suez Canal was opened in 1869. But the funds required
for these public works, as well as the actual labour, were remorse-
lessly extorted from a poverty-stricken population.
A striking picture of the condition of the people at this period is
given by Lady Duff Gordon in Last Letters from Egypt. Writing in
1867 she said: " I cannot describe the misery here now every day
tome new tax. Every beast, camel, cow, sheep, donkey and horse
is made to pay. The fellaheen can no longer eat bread; they are
living on barley-meal mixed with water, and raw green stuff, vetches,
Ac. The taxation makes life almost impossible: a tax on every
crop, on every animal first, and again when it is sold in the market;
on every man, on charcoal, on butter, on salt. . . . The people in
Upper Egypt are running away by wholesale, utterly unable to pay
the new taxes and do the work exacted. Even here (Cairo) the
beating for the year's taxes is awful."
In the years that followed the condition of things grew
worse. Thousands of lives were lost and large sums expended
in extending Ismail's dominions in the Sudan (q.v.) ^ g
and in futile conflicts with Abyssinia. In 1875 the baaing to
impoverishment of the fellah had reached such a ***
point that the ordinary resources of the country no
longer sufficed for the most urgent necessities of
administration; and the khedive Ismail, having repeatedly
broken faith with his creditors, could not raise any more loans
on the European market. The taxes were habitually collected
many months in advance, and the colossal floating debt was
increasing rapidly. In these circumstances Ismail had to
realize his remaining assets, and among them sold 176,602 Suez
Canal shares to the British government for 3,076,582 l (see
BEACONSFIELD). This comparatively small financial operation
brought about the long-delayed crisis and paved the way for
the future prosperity of Egypt, for it induced the British govern-
ment to inquire more carefully into the financial condition of the
country. In December 1875 Mr Stephen Cave, M.P., and Colonel
(afterwards Sir John) Stokes, R.E., were sent to Egypt to in-
quire into the financial situation ; and Mr Cave's report, made
public in April 1876, showed that under the existing administra-
tion national bankruptcy was inevitable. Other commissions
of inquiry followed, and each one brought Ismail more under
European control. The establishment of the Mixed Tribunals
in 1876, in place of the system of consular jurisdiction in civil
actions, made some of the courts of justice international. The
Caisse de la Dette, instituted in May 1876 as a result of the Cave
mission, led to international control over a large portion of the
revenue. Next came (in November 1876) the mission of Mr
(afterwards Lord) Goschen and M. Joubert on behalf of the
British and French bondholders, one result being the establish-
ment of Dual Control, i.e. an English official to superintend the
revenue and a French official the expenditure of the country.
Another result was the internationalization of the railways and
the port of Alexandria. Then came (May 1878) a commission
of inquiry of which the principal members were Sir Rivers
Wilson, Major Evelyn Baring (afterwards Lord Cromer) and
MM. Kremer-Baravelli and de Blignieres. One result of that
inquiry was the extension of international control to the enor-
mous landed property of the khedive. Driven to desperation,
Ismail made a virtue of necessity and accepted, in September
1878, in lieu of the Dual Control, a constitutional ministry,
under the presidency of Nubar Pasha (?..), with Rivers Wilson
as minister of finance and de Blignieres as minister of public
works. Professing to be quite satisfied with this arrangement,
he pompously announced that Egypt was no longer in Africa,
but a part of Europe; but before seven months had passed he
found his constitutional position intolerable, got rid of his
irksome cabinet by means of a secretly-organized military riot
in Cairo, and reverted to his old autocratic methods of govern-
ment. England and France could hardly sit still under this
affront, and decided to administer chastisement by the hand
of the suzerain power, which was delighted to have an oppor-
tunity of asserting its authority. On the 26th of June 1879
Ismail suddenly received from the sultan a curt telegram,
addressed to him as ex-khedive of Egypt, informing him that
his son Tewfik was appointed his successor. Taken unawares,
he made no attempt at resistance, and Tewfik was at once
proclaimed khedive.
After a short period of inaction, when it seemed as if the
change might be for the worse, England and France summoned
up courage to look the situation boldly in the face, and, in
November 1879, re-established the Dual Control in the persons
of Major Baring and M. de Blignieres. For two years the Dual
Control governed Egypt, and initiated the work of progress
1 Part of this money was devoted to an expedition sent against
Abyssinia in 1876 to avenge losses sustained in the previous year.
The new campaign was, however, equally unsuccessful.
EGYPT
[HISTORY
that England was to continue alone. Its essential defect
was what might be called insecurity of tenure. Without any
Re-esLib- efficient means of self-protection and coercion at its
itshmeat disposal, it had to interfere with the power, privileges
r Dual an( j perquisites of a class which had long mis-
governed the country. This class, so far as its civilian
members were concerned, was not very formidable, because
these were not likely to go beyond the bounds of intrigue and
passive resistance; but it contained a military element who
had more courage, and who had learned their power when
Ismail employed them for overturning his constitutional ministry.
Among the mutinous soldiers on that occasion was a
Arab! gad f e i| a jj officer calling himself Ahmed Arabi the Egyptian.
o//&sJ. He was not a man of exceptional intelligence or
remarkable powers of organization, but he was a
fluent speaker, and could exercise some influence over the masses
by a rude kind of native eloquence. Behind him were a group of
men, much abler than himself, who put him forward as the
figurehead of a party professing to aim at protecting the
Egyptians from the grasping tyranny of their Turkish and
European oppressors. The movement began among the Arab
officers, who complained of the preference shown to the officers
of Turkish origin; it then expanded into an attack on the privi-
leged position and predominant influence of foreigners, many
of whom, it must be confessed, were of a by no means respectable
type; finally, it was directed against all Christians, foreign and
native. 1 The government, being too weak to suppress the agita-
tion and disorder, had to make concessions, and each concession
produced fresh demands. Arabi was first promoted, then made
under-secretary for war, and ultimately a member of the cabinet.
The danger of a serious rising brought the British and French
fleets in May 1882 to Alexandria, and after a massacre (nth of
June) had been perpetrated by the Arab mob in that city, the
British admiral bombarded the forts (nth of July 1882). The
leaders of the national movement prepared to resist further
aggression by force. A conference of ambassadors was held in
Constantinople, and the sultan was invited to quell the revolt;
but he hesitated to employ his troops against Mussulmans who
were professing merely to oppose Christian aggression.
(3) Egypt occupied by the British. At last the British govern-
ment determined to employ armed force, and invited France
to co-operate. The French government declined, and a similar
invitation to Italy met with a similar refusal. England therefore,
having to act alone, landed troops at Ismailia under Sir Garnet
Wolseley, and suppressed the revolt by the battle of Tell-el-Kebir
on the i3th of September 1882. The khedive, who had taken
refuge in Alexandria, returned to Cairo, and a ministry was
formed under Sherif Pasha, with Riaz Pasha as one of its leading
members. On assuming office, the first thing it had to do was
to bring to trial the chiefs of the rebellion. Had the khedive
and Riaz been allowed a free hand, Arabi and his colleagues
would have found little mercy. Thanks to the intervention
of the British government, their lives were spared. Arabi
pleaded guilty, was sentenced to death, the sentence being
commuted by the khedive to banishment; and Riaz resigned
in disgust. This solution of the difficulty was brought about
by Lord Dufferin, then British ambassador at Constantinople,
who had been sent to Egypt as high commissioner to adjust
affairs and report on the situation. One of his first acts, after
preventing the application of capital punishment to the ring-
leaders of the revolt, was to veto the project of protecting the
khedive and his government by means of a Praetorian guard
recruited from Asia Minor, Epirus, Austria and Switzerland,
and to insist on the principle that Egypt must be governed in
a truly liberal spirit. Passing in review all the departments of
the administration, he laid down the general lines on which
the country was to be restored to order and prosperity, and
endowed, if possible, with the elements of self-government for
future use.
1 Lord Cromer, writing in 1905, declared that the movement
" was, in its essence, a genuine revolt against misgovernment," and
" was not essentially anti-European " (vide Egypt No. z, 1905, p. 2).
" '
The laborious task of putting these general indications into a
practical shape fell to Sir Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer), who
arrived as consul-general and diplomatic agent, in slfErel a
succession to Sir Edward Malet, in January 1884. Barlag y
At that moment the situation was singularly like that appointed
which had existed on two previous occasions: firstly,
when Ismail was deposed; and secondly, when the
Dual Control had undermined the existing authority
without having any power to enforce its own. For the third
time in little more than three years the existing authority had
been destroyed and a new one had to be created. But there was
one essential difference: the power that had now to reorganize
the country possessed in the British army of occupation a
support sufficient to command respect. Without that support <
Sir Evelyn Baring could have done little or nothing; with if
he did perhaps more than any other single man could have done.
His method may be illustrated by an old story long current in
Cairo. Mehemet Ali was said to have appointed as mudir or
governor in a turbulent district a young and inexperienced
Turk, who asked, " But how am I to govern these people? "
" Listen," replied the pasha; " buy the biggest and heaviest
kurbash you can find; hang it up in the centre of the mudirieh,
well within your reach, and you will very seldom require to use
it." The British army of occupation was Sir Evelyn's kurbash;
it was well within his reach, as all the world knew, and its
simple presence sufficed to prevent disorder and enforce obedience.
He had one other advantage over previous English reformers
in Egypt: his position towards France was more independent.
The Dual Control had been abolished by a khedivial decree of
1 8th January 1883, andjeplaced by an English financial adviser.
France naturally objected; but having refused to co-operate
with England in suppressing the revolt, she could not reasonably
complain that her offer of co-operation in the work of reorganiza-
tion was declined. But though Dual Control was at an end, the
Caisse de la Dette remained, and this body was to prove a constant
clog on the financial measures of the Egyptian government.
At first the intention of the British government was simply
to restore the power of the khedive, to keep his highness for
some time in the right path by friendly advice, and to
withdraw the British troops as soon as possible. As
Lord Granville explained in a circular to the powers, tio~n.~
the position of England in Egypt imposed on her " the
duty of giving advice with the object of securing that the order
of things to be established shall be of a satisfactory character
and possess the elements of stability and progress." But there
was to be no embarking on a general scheme of reforms, which
would increase unnecessarily the responsibilities of the protecting
power and necessitate the indefinite prolongation of the military
occupation. So far, therefore, as the British government had
a definite policy in Egypt, it was a politique de repldtrage. Even
this policy was not strictly adhered to. Mr Gladstone's cabinet
was as unstable as the public opinion it sought to conciliate.
It had its hot fits and its cold fits, and it gave orders now to
advance and now to retreat. In the long run circumstances
proved too strong for it, and it had to undertake a great deal
more than it originally intended. Each little change in the
administration engendered a multitude of others, so that the
modest attempts at reform were found to be like the letting out
of water. A tiny rill gradually became a boisterous stream, and
the boisterous stream grew into a great river, which spread to
all sections of the administration and ended by inundating the
whole country.
Of the numerous questions awaiting solution, the first to
claim immediate attention was that of the Sudan. The British
government had begun by excluding it from the
problem, and by declaring that for events in these quest i oa .
outlying territories it must not be held responsible.
In that sphere of activity, therefore, the Egyptian government
might do as it thought fit. The principle of limited liability
which this attitude assumed was soon found to be utterly
untenable. The Sudan was an integral part of the khedive's
dominions, and caused, even in ordinary times, a deficit of
HISTORY]
EGYPT
100,000 to the Egyptian treasury. At that moment it was in a
state of open rebellion, stirred up by a religious fanatic who
proclaimed himself a mahdi of Islam. An army of 10,000 men
under an English officer, Colonel William Hicks, formerly of
the Bombay army, otherwise Hicks Pasha, had been sent to
suppress the revolt, and had been annihilated in a great battle
fought on the $th of November 1883, near Obeid. The Egyptian
government wished to make a new attempt to recover the lost
province, and the idea was certainly very popular among the
governing class, but Sir Evelyn Baring vetoed the project on
the ground that Egypt had neither soldiers nor money to carry
it out. In vain the khedive and his prime minister, Sherif Pasha,
threatened to resign, and the latter actually carried out his threat.
The British representative remained firm, and it was decided
that the Sudan should be, for the moment at least, abandoned
to its fate. Nubar, though as strongly opposed to the abandon-
ment policy as Sherif, consented to take his place and accepted
somewhat reluctantly the new regime, which he defined as
" the administration of Egypt under the government of Baring."
By this time the Mahdi was master of the greater part of the
Sudan, but Khartum and some other fortified points still held
out. The efforts made to extricate the garrisons, including the
mission of General Gordon, the fall of Khartum, and the Nile
Expedition under Lord Wolseley, are described below separately
in the section of this article dealing with the military operations.
The practical result was that the khedive's authority was limited
to the Nile valley north of Wadi Haifa.
With the internal difficulties Sir Evelyn Baring had been
struggling bravely ever since his appointment, trying to evolve
out of the ever-changing policy and contradictory
orders of the British government some sort of coherent
line of action, and to raise the administration to a higher
standard. For two or three years it seemed doubtful
whether he would succeed. All over Egypt there was a feeling
of unrest, and the well-meant but not very successful efforts
of the British to improve the state of things were making them
very unpopular. The introduction of English officials and
English influence into all the administrative departments was
resented by the native officials, and the action of the irrigation
officers in preventing the customary abuses of the distribution
of water was resented by the great landowners, who had been,
from time immemorial, in the habit of taking as much as they
wanted, to the detriment of the fellahin. Even these latter, who
gained most by the reforms, considered that they had good
reason to complain, for the defeat of Arabi and the re-establish-
ment of order had enabled the Christian money-lenders to return
and insist on the payment of claims, which were supposed to
have been extinguished by the rebellion. Worst of all, the govern-
ment was drifting rapidly towards insolvency, being quite unable
to fulfil its obligations to the bondholders and meet the expenses
of administration. All departments were being starved, and even
the salaries of poorly paid officials were in arrear. To free itself
from its financial difficulties the government adopted a heroic
remedy which only created fresh troubles. On the advice of
Lord Northbrook, who was sent out to Cairo in September 1884
to examine the financial situation, certain revenues which should
have been paid into the Caisse for the benefit of the bondholders
were paid into the treasury for the ordinary needs of the adminis-
tration. Immediately the powers protested against this in-
fraction of the law of liquidation, and the Caisse applied for a
writ to the Mixed Tribunals. In this way the heroic remedy
failed, and to the internal difficulties were added international
complications.
Fortunately for Egypt, the British government contrived to
solve the international difficulty by timely concessions to the
powers, and succeeded in negotiating the London Convention of
March 1885, by which the Egyptian government was relieved
from some of the most onerous stipulations of the law of liquida-
tion, and was enabled to raise a loan of 9,000,000 for an annual
payment of 135,000. After paying out of the capital the sums
required for the indemnities due for the burning of Alexandria
and the deficits of the yean 1882 and 1883, it still had a million
sterling, and boldly invested it in the improvement of irrigation.
The investment proved most remunerative, and helped very
materially to save the country from bankruptcy and inter-
nationalism. The danger of being again subjected to the evils
of an international administration was very great, for the London
Convention contained a stipulation to the effect that if Egypt
could not pay her way at the end of two years, another inter-
national commission would be appointed.
To obviate this catastrophe the British reformers set to work
most energetically. Already something in the way of retrench-
ment and reform had been accomplished. The public accounts
had been put in order, and the abuses in the collection of the land
tax removed. The constant drain of money and men for th'e
Sudan had been stopped. A beginning had been made for
creating a new army to replace the one that had been disbanded
and to allow of a portion of the British garrison being withdrawn.
In this work Sir Evelyn Wood had shown much sound judgment
as well as great capacity for military organization, and had
formed an efficient force out of very unpromising material
(see the section above on the Egyptian Army). His colleague
in the department of public works, Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff,
had been not less active. By mitigating the hardships of the
corvte, and improving the irrigation system, on which the pros-
perity of the country mainly depends, he had conferred enormous
benefits on the fellahin, and had laid the foundation of permanent
budgetary equilibrium for the future. Not less active was Sir
Edgar Vincent, the financial adviser, who kept a firm hold on
the purse-strings and ruthlessly cut down expenditure in all
departments except that of irrigation (see Finance).
The activity of the British officials naturally produced a certain
amount of discontent and resistance on the part of their Egyptian
colleagues, and Lord Granville was obliged to declare very plainly
that such resistance could not be tolerated. Writing (January
1884) to Sir Evelyn Baring, he said:
" It should be made clear to the Egyptian Ministers and Governors
of Provinces that the responsibility which for the time rests on
England obliges H.M. Government to insist on the adoption of the
policy which they recommend; and that it will be necessary that
those Ministers and Governors who do not follow this course should
cease to hold their offices."
Nubar Pasha, who continued to be prime minister, resisted
occasionally. What he chiefly objected to was direct inter-
ference in the provincial administration and the
native tribunals, and he succeeded for a time in
preventing such interference. Sir Benson Maxwell BHUib
and Mr Clifford Lloyd, who had been sent out to *jjj' v *
reform the departments of justice and the interior,
after coming into conflict with each other were both recalled,
and the reforming activity was for a time restricted to the
departments of war, public works and finance. Gradually the
tension between natives and foreigners relaxed, and mutual
confidence was established. Experience had evolved the working
principle which was officially formulated at a much later period :
" Our task is not to rule the Egyptians, but as far as possible
to teach the Egyptians to rule themselves. . . . European
initiative suggests measures to be executed by Egyptian agency,
while European supervision controls the manner in which they
are executed." If that principle had been firmly laid down
and clearly understood at the beginning, a good deal of needless
friction would have been avoided.
The international difficulty remained. The British position
in Egypt was anomalous, and might easily give rise to inter-
national complications. The sultan might well protest
against the military occupation of a portion of his '^ aal
empire by foreign troops. It was no secret that France problem*.
was ready to give him diplomatic support, and other
powers might adopt a similar attitude. Besides this, the British
government was anxious to terminate the occupation as soon
as possible. With a view to regularizing the situation and
accelerating the evacuation, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff was
sent to Constantinople in August 1885 on a special mission.
On the 24th of October of that year he concluded a preliminary
n6
EGYPT
[HISTORY
convention by which an Ottoman and a British high commis-
sioner, acting in concert with the khedive, should reorganize the
Egyptian army, tranquillize the Sudan by pacific means, and
consider what changes might be necessary in the civil administra-
tion. When the two commissioners were assured of the security
of the frontier and the good working and stability of the Egyptian
government, they should present reports to their respective
governments, and these should consult as to the conclusion of
a convention regulating the withdrawal of the English troops.
Mukhtar Pasha and Sir Henry Drummond Wolff were appointed
commissioners, and their joint inquiry lasted till the end of 1886,
when the former presented his report and the latter went home
to report orally. The remaining stipulations of the preliminary
convention were duly carried out. Sir Henry Drummond Wolff
proceeded to Constantinople and signed on the 2 2nd of May 1887
the definitive convention, according to which the occupation
should come to an end in three years, but England should have
a right to prolong or renew it in the event of internal peace
or external security being seriously threatened. The sultan
authorised the signature of this convention, but under pressure
of France and Russia he refused to ratify it. Technically,
therefore, the preliminary convention still remains in force,
and in reality the Ottoman commissioner continued to reside
in Cairo till the close of 1908.
The steadily increasing prosperity of the country during
the years 1886 and 1887 removed the danger of national bank-
ruptcy and international interference, and induced
Sir Evelyn Baring to widen the area of administrative
reforms. In the provinces the local administration
and the methods of dispensing justice were still scandalously
unsatisfactory, and this was the field to which the British repre-
sentative next directed his efforts. Here he met with unexpected
opposition on the part of the prime minister, Nubar Pasha, and
a conflict ensued which ended in Nubar's retirement in June
1888. Riaz Pasha took his place, and remained in office till
May 1891. During these three years the work of reform and
the prosperity of the country made great progress. The new
Egyptian army was so far improved that it gained successes over
the forces of the Mahdi; the burden of the national debt was
lightened by a successful conversion; the corvee was abolished; 1
the land tax was reduced 30% in the poorest provinces, and in
spite of this and other measures for lightening the public burdens,
the budgetary surplus constantly increased; the quasi-judicial
special commissions for brigandage, which were at once barbarous
and inefficient, were abolished; the native tribunals were im-
proved, and Mr (afterwards Sir John) Scott, an Indian judge
of great experience and sound judgment, was appointed judicial
adviser to the khedive. This appointment was opposed by Riaz
Pasha, and led to his resignation on the plea of ill-health. His
successor, Mustafa Pasha Fehmi, continued the work and co-
operated cordially with the English officials. The very necessary
reform of the native tribunals was then taken seriously in hand.
The existing procedure was simplified and accelerated; the
working of the courts was greatly improved by a carefully
organized system of inspection and control; the incompetent
judges were eliminated and replaced by men of better education
and higher moral character; and for the future supply of well-
qualified judges, barristers, and law officials, an excellent school
of law was established. Later on the reforming activity was
extended to prisons, public health, and education, and has
attained very satisfactory results.
In January 1892 the khedive Tewfik, who had always main-
tained cordial relations with Sir Evelyn Baring, died suddenly,
and was succeeded by his son, Abbas Hilmi, a young
man without political experience, who failed at first
to understand the peculiar situation in which a khedive
ruling under British protection is necessarily placed. Aspiring
to liberate himself at once from foreign control, he summarily
dismissed Mustafa Pasha Fehmi (isth January 1893), whom he
considered too amenable to English influence, and appointed
1 Except in so far as it was necessary to call out men to guard the
banks of the Nile in the season of high flood.
in his place Fakhri Pasha, who was not a persona grata at the
British Agency. Such an incident, which might have constituted
a precedent for more important acts of a similar kind, could
hardly be overlooked by the British representative. He had
always maintained that what Egypt most required, and would
require for many years to come, was an order of things which
would render practically impossible any return to that personal
system of government which had well-nigh ruined the country.
In this view the British agent was warmly supported by Lord
Rosebery, then secretary of state for foreign affairs. The young
khedive was made therefore to understand that he must not
make such changes in the administration without a previous
agreement with the representative of the protecting power;
and a compromise was effected by which Fakhri Pasha retired,
and the post of premier was confided once more to Riaz. With
this compromise the friction between the khedive and Sir Evelyn
Baring, who had now become Lord Cromer, did not end. For
some time Abbas Hilmi clung to his idea of liberating himself
from all control, and secretly encouraged a nationalist and anti-
British agitation in the native press; but he gradually came
to perceive the folly, as well as the danger to himself, of such a
course, and accordingly refrained from giving any overt occasion
for complaint or protest. In like manner the relations between
the British officials and their Egyptian colleagues gradually
became more cordial, so that it was found possible at last to
reform the local administration in the provinces according to the
recommendations of Mr (afterwards Sir) Eldon Gorst, who had
been appointed adviser to the ministry of the interior. Nubar
Pasha, it is true, who succeeded Riaz as prime minister in April
1894, objected to some of Mr Gorst's recommendations, and in
November 1895 resigned. He was succeeded by Mustafa Fehmi,
who had always shown a conciliatory spirit, and who had been
on that account, as above stated, summarily dismissed by the
khedive in January 1893. After his reinstatement the Anglo-
Egyptian condominium worked without serious friction.
The success of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, and the
consequent economic and financial prosperity of Egypt proper,
rendered it possible, during 1896-1898, to recover FasAo<to
from the Mahdists the Sudanese provinces (see Military
Operations), and to delimit in that part of Africa, in accordance
with Anglo-Egyptian interests, the respective spheres of influence
of Great Britain and France. The arrangement was not effected
without serious danger of a European conflict. Taking advan-
tage of the temporary weakness of Egypt, the French govern-
ment formed the project of seizing the Upper Nile valley and
uniting her possessions in West Africa with those at the entrance
to the Red Sea. With this object a small force under Major
Marchand was sent from the French Congo into the Bahr-el-
Ghazal, with orders to occupy Fashoda on the Nile; whilst a
Franco-Abyssinian Expedition was despatched from the east-
ward, to join hands with Major Marchand. The small force from
the French Congo reached its destination, and a body of Abys-
sinian troops, accompanied by French officers, appeared for a
short time a little higher up the river; but the grand political
scheme was frustrated by the victorious advance of an Anglo-
Egyptian force under General Kitchener and the resolute attitude
of the British government. Major Marchand had to retire from
Fashoda, and as a concession to French susceptibilities he was
allowed to retreat by the Abyssinian route. By an agreement
signed by Lord Salisbury and the French ambassador on the
zist of March 1899, and appended to Art. IV. of the Anglo-
French convention of June I4th, 1898, which dealt with the
British and French spheres of influence in the region of the Niger,
France was excluded from the basin of the Nile, and a line
marking the respective spheres of influence of the two countries
was drawn on the map from the northern frontier of the Congo
Free State to the southern frontier of the Turkish province of
Tripoli.
The administration of the Sudan (<?..) was organized on the
basis of an agreement between the British and Egyptian govern-
ments signed on the igth of January 1899. According to that
agreement the British and Egyptian flags are used together,
HISTORY)
EGYPT
117
fnwlmg
and the supreme military and civil command is vested in a
governor-general, who is appointed by the khedive on the recom-
it,, nu-iul.it ion of the British government, and who cannot
be removed without the British government's con-
sent. Neither consular jurisdiction, nor that of the
mixed tribunals, was permitted, the Sudan being made
absolutely free of the international fetters which bound Egypt.
Sir Reginald Wingate, the sirdar of the Egyptian army (in which
post he succeeded Lord Kitchener at the close of 1899) was
named governor-general, and in the work of regeneration of the
country, the officials, British, Egyptian and Sudanese, had the
cordial co-operation of the majority of the inhabitants.
The growing prosperity of Egypt in the opening years of the
joth century was very marked, and is reflected in the annual
reports on the country supplied to the British foreign
office by Lord Cromer. Thus, in 1901 he was able to
declare that " the foundations on which the well-being
and material prosperity of a civilized community
should rest have been laid. . . . The institution of slavery is
virtually defunct. The conte has been practically abolished.
Law and order everywhere reign supreme. The curbash is no
longer employed as an instrument of government." So little
danger to internal peace was apprehended that during this year
Arabi Pasha, who had been in exile in Ceylon since 1882, was
permitted to return to Egypt. This happy condition had been
brought about largely as the result of giving fiscal reform, accom-
panied by substantial relief to the taxpayers, the first place
in the government's programme, and with the abolition of octroi
duties in 1902 disappeared the last of the main defects in the
fiscal system as existing at the time of the British -occupation.
In these conditions the machinery of government, despite its
many imperfections and anomalies, worked smoothly. Land
increased in value as irrigation schemes were completed, and
European capital was increasingly eager to find employment
in the country. The bulk of the fellahin enjoyed a material
prosperity to which they had been strangers for centuries. In
the midst of this return of plenty Lord Cromer (in his report
for 1903) sounded a note of warning:
" As regards moral progress (he wrote), all that can be said is that
it must necessarily be slower than advance in a material direction.
I hope and believe, however, that some progress is being made.
In any case the machinery which will admit of progress has been
created. The schoolmaster b abroad. . . . Every possible facility
and every encouragement are afforded for the Egyptians to advance
along the path of moral improvement. More than this no govern-
ment can do. It remains lor the Egyptians to take advantage of
the opportunities offered to them."
The facilities enjoyed by the British and Egyptian govern-
ments for securing the material if not the moral development
TiiAigii. f Egypt were greatly enlarged in 1904, as the result
Fnmcb of the understanding then come to between France
and Great Britain. The natural irritation in France
arising from the British occupation of the Nile valley,
and the non-fulfilment of the pledge to withdraw the
British garrison from Egypt, which had grown less acute with
the passing of years, flamed out afresh at the time of the Fashoda
crisis, while the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902 led to another
access of irritation against England. During 1 003 a great change
came over public opinion on both sides of the Channel, with the
result that the statesmen of both countries were enabled to
complete negotiations settling many points in dispute between
the two nations. On the 8th of April 1004 a declaration was
signed by the representatives of France and Great Britain which
virtually recognized the dominant position of France in Morocco
and of Britain in Egypt. The chief provisions concerning
Egypt were:
" Ha Britannic Majesty's government declare that they have no
intention of altering the political status of Egypt.
" The government of the French Republic, for their part, declare
that they will not obstruct the action of Great Britain in that country
by asking that a limit o( time be fixed for the British occupation,
or in any other manner.
" His Britannic Majesty's government, for their part, will respect
the rights which France, in virtue of treaties, conventions and usage,
enjoys in Egypt."
Similar declarations and engagements were made by Germany,
Austria and Italy. Annexed to the Anglo-French agreement
was the text of a proposed khedivial decree altering the relations
between Egypt and the foreign bond-holders. With the consent
of the powers this decree (promulgated on the a8th of November
1904) came into operation on the ist of January 1905. The
combined effect of the declaration and the khedivial decree was
great. The first-named put an end to an anomalous situation
and gave a practically valid sanction to the presence of Britain
in Egypt, removing all ground for the reproach that <Jreat
Britain was not respecting its international obligations. In
effect it was a European recognition that Britain was the pro-
tecting power in Egypt. It put a period to a question which had
long embittered the relations between England and France,
and locally it caused the cessation of the systematic opposition
of the French agents in Cairo to everything tending to strengthen
the British position however beneficial to Egypt the particular
scheme opposed might be. Scarcely less important were the
results of the khedivial decree. By it Egypt achieved in effect
financial independence. The power of the Caisse de la Dette,
which had virtually controlled the execution of the international
agreements concerning the finances, was swept away, together
with almost all the other financial fetters binding Egypt. The
Railway and Port of Alexandria Board ceased to exist. For
the first time since 1875 Egypt was free to control her own
revenue. In return she pledged the greater part of the land tax
to the service of the debt. The functions of the Caisse were
restricted to the receipt of the funds necessary for this service.
It was entirely deprived of its former power to interfere in the
machinery of government. Moreover, some 10,000,000, being
accumulated surpluses in the hands of the Caisse after meeting
the charges of the debt, were handed over to the Egyptian
treasury. The Egyptian government was henceforth free
to take full advantage of the financial prosperity of the
country.
In one respect the Anglo-French agreement made no alteration
it left untouched the extra-territoriality enjoyed by Europeans
in Egypt in virtue of the treaties with Turkey, i.e. gy,,,
the system of Capitulations. One of the anomalies of the
under that system had, it is true, been got rid of, for, Capituim-
as has been stated , consular jurisdiction in civil matters """*'
had been replaced in 1876 by that of the Mixed Tribunals. In
criminal cases, however, foreign consuls still exercised juris-
diction, but the main evil of the Capitulations r6gime was the
absence of any proper machinery for enacting laws applicable
to the whole of the inhabitants of Egypt. No change could be
made in any law applicable to Europeans without the unanimous
consent of fifteen foreign powers a state of affairs wholly
incompatible with the condition of Egypt in the zoth century,
" an oriental country which has assimilated a very considerable
portion of European civilization and which is mainly governed
by European methods." It was, however, far easier to acknow-
ledge that the Capitulations regime was defective and had out-
lived its time than to devise a remedy and get all the nations
interested to accept it. The solution favoured by Lord Cromer
(vide Blue-books, Egypt No. i (1906), pp. 1-8, and Egypt No. i
(1907), pp. 10-26) was the creation of a council distinct from the
existing native legislative council and assembly composed of
Europeans, which should have the power to pass legislation which
when promulgated by the Egyptian government, with the assent
of the British government, would bind all foreigners resident in
Egypt. Every reservation for the benefit of British subjects
should enure for the benefit of subjects of other powers. The
jurisdiction exercised by consuls in civil and criminal affairs
Lord Cromer proposed should cease pari passu with the provision
by the Egyptian government, under the powers conferred by
the treaty required to set up the new council, of courts having
competence to deal with such matters, various safeguards being
introduced to prevent injustice in criminal cases. As to civil
cases the proposal was to make permanent the Mixed Tribunals,
hitherto appointed for quinquennial periods (so that if not
re-appointed consular jurisdiction in civil cases would revive).
n8
EGYPT
[HISTORY
While the removal of ancient jealousies among the European
powers interested in Egypt helped to smooth the path pursued
by the Egyptian administration under the guiding
hand of Great Britain, the intrigues of the Turks and
movement, the danger of a revival of Moslem fanaticism threatened
during 1905-1906 to disturb the peace of the country.
A party had also arisen, whose best-known leader was Mustafa
Kamel Pasha (1874-1908), which held that Egypt was ready for
self-government and which saw in the presence of the British
a hindrance to the attainment of their ideal. This " national "
party lent what weight it had to the pan-Islamic agitation which
arose in the summer and autumn of 1905, regardless of the fact
that a pan-Islamic triumph meant the re-assertion of direct
Turkish rule in Egypt and the end of the liberty the Egyptians
enjoyed. The pan-Islamic press, allowed full licence by the
Cairo authorities, spread abroad rumours that the Egyptian
government intended to construct fortifications in the Sinai
peninsula with the design of menacing the railway, under
construction by Turkey, from Damascus to Mecca. This baseless
report led to what is known as the Taba incident (see below).
This incident inflamed the minds of many Egyptians, and almost
all the opposition elements in the country were united by the
appeal to religious fanaticism, of which the incident was partly
the effect and partly the cause. The inflammatory writing of
the newspapers indicated, encouraged by many persons holding
high positions both inside and outside Egypt, created, by every
process of misrepresentation, an anti-Christian and anti-European
feeling among the mass of the people. After more than a quarter
of a century of just rule, i.e. since the accession of Tewfik, the
tyranny of the Turkish system was apt to be forgotten, while
the appeal to rally in support of their khalif found a response
in the hearts of many Egyptians. The feeling entertained by
large numbers even of the educated class of Egyptians was
strikingly illustrated by the terms of an anonymous letter
received by Lord Cromer in May 1906. The writer, probably
a member of the Ulema class, addressing the British agent as
the reformer of Egypt, said:
"... He must be blind who sees not what the English have
wrought in Egypt; the gates of justice stand open to the poor; the
streams flow through the land and are not stopped by order of the
strong; the poor man is lifted up and the rich man pulled down,
the hand of the oppressor and the briber is struck when outstretched
to do evil. Our eyes see these things and they know from whom
they come. . . . While peace is in the land the spirit of Islam
sleeps. . . . But it is said, ' There is war between England and
Abdul Hamid Khan." If that be so a change must come. The words
of the Imam are echoed in every heart, and every Moslem hears
only the cry of the Faith. . . . Though the Khalif were hapless
as Bayezid, cruel as Murad, or mad as Ibrahim, he is the shadow of
God, and every Moslem must leap up at his call. . . . You will say,
' The Egyptian is more ungrateful than a dog, which remembers
the hand that fed him. He is foolish as the madman who pulls down
the roof-tree of .his house upon himself.' It may be so to worldly
eyes, but in the time of danger to Islam the Moslem turns away from
the things of this world and thirsts only for the service of his Faith,
even though he looks in the face of death. ..."
To establish confidence in the minds of the Egyptian public
that the authorities could maintain order and tranquillity, it
was determined to increase permanently the strength of the
British garrison. An incident occurred in June 1906 which
illustrated the danger which might arise if anything happened
to beget the idea that the protecting power had weakened its
hold. While mounted infantry of the British army were marching
from Cairo to Alexandria, five officers went (on the I3th of
June) to the village of Denshawai to shoot pigeons. 1
An attack was made on the party by the villagers.
The officers were told by their guide that they might
shoot, but the villagers had not given permission and were
incensed at the shooting of their pigeons by other officers in the
previous year. A premeditated attack was made on the officers;
a gun seized from one of them went off and slightly injured four
natives one a woman. The attack had been preceded by a
1 The Egyptians keep large numbers of pigeons, which are allowed
to be shot only by permission of the village omdeh (head-man).
After the occurrence here related, officers were prohibited from
shooting pigeons in any circumstances.
llen-
shawaJ.
trifling fire at a threshing floor, either accidentally caused (but
not by the officers' shots) or lit as a signal for the assault. Captain
S. C. Bull of the 6th Dragoons received serious injuries and died
a few hours later, and two other officers were seriously injured.
A number of persons were arrested and tried by a special tribunal
created in 1895 to deal with offences against the army of occupa-
tion. On the 27th of the same month four of the ringleaders
were sentenced to death, others received various terms of
imprisonment, 2 and seven were sentenced to fifty lashes. The
executions and floggings were carried out the next day at the
scene of the outrage and in the presence of some five hundred
natives. The quieting effect that this drastic action might have
had was marred by the fact that certain members of the British
parliament called in question the justice of the sentences passed
unanimously by a court of which the best English and the best
native judge were members. For a time there was considerable
ferment in Egypt. The Anglo-Egyptian authorities received,
however, the firm support of Sir Edward Grey, the foreign
secretary in the liberal administration formed in December 1905.
As far as responsible statesmen were concerned the change of
government in Great Britain made no difference in the conduct
of Egyptian affairs.
The Taba incident, to which reference has been made, arose
in the beginning of 1906 over the claim of the sultan of Turkey
to jurisdiction in the Sinai peninsula. The origin of
the dispute dated back, however, to 1892, when Abbas
Hilmi became khedive. Mehemet Ali and his suc-
cessors up to and including Tewfik had not only administered
the Sinai peninsula but certain posts on the Hejaz or Arabian
side of the gulf of Akaba. The firman of investiture issued by
the sultan on the occasion of the succession of Abbas differed,
however, from the text of former firmans, the intention being,
apparently, to exclude Egypt from the administration of the
Sinai peninsula. The British government intervened and after
considerable pressure upon Turkey obtained a telegram (dated
the 8th of April 1892) from the grand vizier in which it was
declared that the status quo was maintained in the Sinai peninsula,
but that the sultan resumed possession of the posts in the Hejaz
heretofore garrisoned by Egypt. To this last course Great
Britain raised no objection. As officially stated by the British
government at the time, the eastern frontier of the Sinai peninsula
was taken to be a line running in a south-easterly direction from
Rafa, a place on the Mediterranean, east of El Arish, to the head
of the gulf of Akaba. The fort of Akaba and other posts farther
east Egypt abandoned. So matters rested until in 1905 in con-
sequence of lawlessness among the Bedouins of the peninsula
a British official was appointed commandant and inspector of
the peninsula and certain administrative measures taken.
The report was spread by pan-Islamic agents that the intention
of the Egyptian government was to construct fortifications on
the frontier near Akaba, to which place the Turks were building
a branch railway from the Damascus-Mecca line. In January
1906 the sultan complained to the British ambassador at Con-
stantinople of Egyptian encroachments on Turkish territory,
whereupon the khedive asked that the frontier should be
delimited, a request which Turkey rejected. A small Egyptian
force was then directed to occupy Taba, a port near Akaba but
on the western side of the gulf. Before this force could reach
Taba that place had been seized by the Turkish commandant at
Akaba. A period of considerable tension ensued, the Turks
removing the boundary posts at Rafa and sending strong
reinforcements to the frontier. The British government inter-
vened on behalf of the khedive and consistently maintained that
the Rafa-Akaba line must be the frontier. In April a conference
was held between the khedive and Mukhtar Pasha, the Ottoman
commissioner. It then appeared that Turkey was unwilling to
recognize the British interpretation of the telegram of the 8th of
April 1892. Turkey claimed that the peninsula of Sinai consisted
* On the 8th of January 1908, the anniversary of the khedive's
accession, the whole of the Denshawai prisoners were pardoned and
released. For the Denshawai incident see the British parliamentary
papers, Egypt No. j and Egypt No. 4 of 1906.
HISTORY]
EGYPT
119
only of the territory south of a straight line from Akaba to Suez,
and that Egyptian territory north of that line was traced from
Rafa to Suez. As a compromise Mukhtar Pasha suggested as
the frontier a line drawn direct from Rafa to Ras Mahommed
(the most southern point of the Sinai peninsula), which would
have left the whole of the gulf of Akaba in Turkish territory.
In other words the claim of the Porte was, to quote Lord
Cromer.
" to carry the Turkish frontier and strategical railways to Suez
on the banks of the canal; or that if the Ras Mahommed line were
adopted, the Turkish frontier would be advanced to the neigh-
bourhood of Nekhl, i.e. within easy striking distance of Egypt, and
that . . . the gulf of Akaba . . . would practically become a mare
ctausitm in the poociiion of Turkey and a standing menace to the
security of the trade route to the East."
Such proposals could not be entertained by Great Britain;
and as the sultan remained obstinate the British ambassador
on the 3rd of May presented a note to the Porte requiring com-
pliance with the British proposals within ten days. The Turkish
ambassador in London was informed by Sir Edward Grey, foreign
secretary, that if it were found that Turkish suzerainty in Egypt
were incompatible with the rights of the British government to
interfere in Egyptian affairs, and with the British occupation,
the British position in Egypt would be upheld by the whole force
of the empire. Thereupon the sultan gave way and agreed (on
the Mth of May) that the line of demarcation should start at
Rafa and run towards the south-east " in an approximately
straight line as far as a point on the gulf of Akaba at least 3 m.
distant from Akaba." 1 The Turkish troops were withdrawn
from Taba, and the delimitation of the frontier was undertaken
by a joint Turco-Egyptian commission. An agreement was
signed on the ist of October finally settling the frontier line.
With the ending of this dispute and the strengthening of the
British garrison in Egypt a demonstration was given of the ability
of the protecting power to maintain its position. At the same
time encouragement was given to that section of Egyptian
society which sought the reform of various Moslem institutions
without injury to the principles underlying the faith of Islam:
a more truly national movement than that of the agitators who
clamoured for parliamentary government.
In April 1007, a few days after the appearance of his report
for 1906, in which the " Nationalist " and pan-Islamic move-
11,^,^. ments were shown to be detrimental to the welfare of
tma of Egypt, Lord Cromer resigned his post of British agent
and consul-general. His resignation, dictated by
reasons of health, was described by Sir Edward Grey
as " the greatest personal loss which the public service of this
country (Britain) could suffer." Lord Cromer's work was in a
sense complete. He left the country in a state of unexampled
material prosperity, free from the majority of the international
fetters with which it was bound when he took up his task in
1883, and with the legitimate expectation that the work he had
done would endure. The magnitude of the task he had accom-
plished is shown by the preceding pages, and it need only be
added that the transformation effected in Egypt and the Sudan,
during his twenty-four years' occupancy of the British Agency,
was carried out in every department under his guidance and
inspiration. Lord Cromer was succeeded by Sir Eldon Gorst,
who had served in Egypt eighteen years under him, and was
at the time of his appointment to Cairo an assistant under
secretary of state for foreign affairs.
Notwithstanding, or, rather, as a consequence of, the un-
exampled material prosperity of the country, 1907 was a year of
severe financial crisis, due to over-trading, excessive credit and
the building mania induced by the rapid economic progress of
Egypt, and aggravated by the unfavourable monetary conditions
existing in America and Europe during the latter part of the year.
Though the crisis had results disastrous to the speculators, the
position of the fellahin was hardly affected; the cotton crop
was marketed with regularity and at an average price higher
than that of 1906, while public revenue showed a satisfactory
1 See Errpt No. 2 (1906), Correspondence respecting the Turco-
Egypuan Frontier in the Sinai Peninsula (with a map).
increase. The noisy " Nationalist " agitation which was main-
tained during this period of financial stringency reacted un-
favourably on public order. Although the degree of insecurity
prevailing in the provinces was greatly exaggerated serious
crime in 1907 being less than in the preceding year an increas-
ing number of crimes were left untraced to their authors. The
release of the Denshawai prisoners in January 1908 and the
death of Mustafa Kamel in the following month had a quieting
effect on the public mind; while the fact that in the elections
(December 1907) for the legislative council and the general
assembly only 5% of the electors went to the polls, afforded
a striking commentary alike on the appreciation of the average
Egyptian of the value of parliamentary institutions and of
the claims of the " Nationalist " members of the assembly to
represent the Egyptian people. The " Nationalists " were, too,
divided into many warring sections Mahommed Bey Ferid,
chosen as successor to Mustafa Kamel, had to contend with the
pretensions of several other " leaders." The khedive, moreover,
markedly abstained from any association with the agitation
of the Nationalists, who viewed with disfavour his highness's
personal friendship with Sir Eldon Gorst. The agitators gained
their chief strength from the support accorded them by certain
Radical politicians in England. A number of members of the
council and assembly visited England in July 1908 and were
received by Sir Edward Grey, who gave them assurances that
Great Britain would always strive to remedy the legitimate
grievances of Egyptians.
The establishment of constitutional rule in Turkey in the
summer of 1908 excited the hopes of the Egyptian Nationalists,
and a deputation was sent to Constantinople to confer with the
Young Turk committee. From the Young Turks, however, the
deputation received no encouragement for their agitation and
returned with the advice to work in co-operation with the British.
In view of the rumours current, Sir Eldon Gorst, in the form of
an interview in El Mokatlam, a widely read native paper, restated
(October 1908) the British view as to the occupation of the
country and the demand for a parliament. Great Britain, he
declared, had no intention of proclaiming a protectorate over
Egypt; on the other hand, recent events in Turkey in no way
affected the question of self-government in Egypt. It would
be folly to think of introducing unrestricted parliamentary
government at present, the conditions for its successful working
not existing. The " wild and foolish " agitation on this question
only served to confirm the impression that the Egyptians were
not yet fit to govern themselves. At the same time steps were
being taken to give them a much greater part in the manage-
ment of local affairs. If the Egyptians showed that the existing
institutions and the new provincial councils could do useful
work, it would prove the best argument for extending their
powers. Sir Eldon Corel's statements were approved by the
British government.
In November 1908 Mustafa Fehmi, who had been premier
since 1895, resigned and was succeeded by Boutros Pasha, a
Copt of marked ability, who had been for several years foreign
minister. Boutros incurred the enmity of the " Nationalists "
and was murdered in February 1910. (D. M. W.; F. R. C.)
AUTHORITIES. D. A. Cameron, Egypt in the Nineteenth Century
(London, 1898), a clear and useful summary of events up to 1882 ;
E. Dicey, The Story of the Khedivate (London, 1902); J. C. McCoan,
Egypt under Ismail (London, 1899) ; P. Mouricz, Histotre de Mehemet-
Ali (4 vols., Paris, 1855-1858); L. Brehier, L'Egypte de 1789*1900
(Paris, IQOI); C. de Freycinet, La Question d'Egypte (Paris, 1905).
See also MEHEMET ALL
For the period immediately ^preceding and during the British
occupation the standard authority is Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt
(2 vols., London, 1908). In this invaluable work the history of
Egypt from 1875 to 1892 and that of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
from 1882 to 1907 is treated fully. Lord Cromer's annual reports
(1888-1906) to the British government on the affairs of Egypt
should also be consulted. Next in interest are Alfred (Lord) Milner's
England in Egypt (nth ed., London, 1004), and Sir A. Colvin's The
Making of Modern Egypt (London, 1906). Consult also Khedives and
Pashas (London, 1884), by C. F. Moberly Bell (published anony-
mously); D. M. Wallace, Egypt and the Egyptian Question (London,
1883) ; W. S. Blunt, Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt
(2nd ed., London, 1907), a partisan record; C. v. Malortie, Egypt,
120
EGYPT
[MILITARY OPERATIONS 1882-85
Native Rulers and Foreign Interference, 2 vols. (London, 1883);
O. Borelli, Chases politiques d'Egypte, 1883-1895 (Paris, 1895) ; H.
Resener,AgyptenunterenglischerOkkupation (Berlin, 1896). Morley's
Life of Gladstone and Fitzmaurice's Life of Granville throw consider-
able light on the inner history of the period 1880-1893. See further
the historical works cited in SUDAN: Anglo-Egyptian, and those
given at the end of the first section of this article.
For military operations 1882-1899 see C. Royle, The Egyptian
Campaigns 1882 to 1899, revised ed. (London, 1900) ; H. Bracken-
bury, Narrative of the Advance of the River Column of the Nile Expe-
ditionary Force (Edinburgh, 1885); Sir W. F. Butler, Campaign of
the Cataracts (London, 1887) ; Count A. E. W. Gleichen, With the
Camel Corps up the Nile (London, 1888); Gordon's Last Journal
(London, 1885); Sir C. W. Wilson, From Korti to Khartum (Edin-
burgh, 1886); J. Grant, Cassell's History of the War in the Soudan,
6 vols. (London, 1885 et seq.); "An Officer," Sudan Campaigns
1896-1899 (London, 1899); G. W. Steevens, With Kitchener to
Khartum (Edinburgh, 1898); W. S. Churchill, The River War, new
edition (London, 1902).
Bibliographical notes for each section of this article are given in
their several places. The following bibliographies may.be consulted :
Ibrahim Hilmi, Literature of Egypt and the Soudan, 2 vols. (London,
1886-1888); H. Jolowicz, Bibliotheca aegyptiaca (Leipzig, 1858;
supplement, 1861); M. Hartmann, The Arabic Press of Egypt
(London, 1899). (F.R.C.)
MILITARY OPERATIONS OF 1882-1885
In February 1879 a slight outbreak of discharged officers and
soldiers occurred at Cairo, which led to the despatch of British
and French ships to Alexandria. On the 26th of June of that year
Ismail Pasha was removed from Egypt, and Tewfik assumed the
khediviate, becoming practically the protegt of the two western
powers. On the ist of February 1881 a more serious disturbance
arose at Cairo from the attempt to try three colonels, Ahmed
Arabi, Ali Fehmy, and Abd-el-Al, who had been arrested as
the ringleaders of the military party. The prisoners were re-
leased by force, and proceeded to dictate terms to the khedive.
Again British and French warships were despatched to Alexan-
dria, and were quickly withdrawn, their presence having pro-
duced no apparent impression. It soon became clear that the
khedive was powerless, and that the military party, headed by
Arabi, threatened to dominate the country. The " dual note,"
communicated to the khedive on the 6th of January 1881, con-
tained an intimation that Great Britain and France were pre-
pared to afford material support if necessary; but the fall of
Gambetta's ministry produced a reaction, and both governments
proceeded to minimize the meaning of their language. The
khedive was practically compelled to form a government in which
Arabi was minister of war and Mahmud Sami premier, and Arabi
took steps to extend his influence throughout his army. The
situation now became critically serious: for the third time ships
were sent to Alexandria, and on the 25th of May 1882 the consuls-
general of the two powers made a strong representation to
Mahmud Sami which produced the resignation of the Egyptian
ministry, and a demand, to which the khedive yielded, by the
military party for the reinstatement of Arabi. The attitude of
the troops in Alexandria now became threatening; and on the
29th the British residents pointed out that they were " absolutely
defenceless." This warning was amply justified by the massacres
of the nth of June, during which more than one hundred persons,
including an officer and two seamen, were killed in the streets of
Bombard- Alexandria, almost under the guns of the ships in
harbour. It was becoming clear that definite action
would have to be taken, and on the isth the channel
squadron was ordered to Malta. By the end of June
twenty-six warships, representing the navies of Great Britain,
France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia, the United States,
Spain, Greece and Turkey, lay off the port of Alexandria, and
large numbers of refugees were embarked. The order received
by Admiral Sir Beauchamp Seymour (afterwards Lord Alcester)
on the 3rd of July was as follows:
" Prevent any attempt to bar channel into port. If work is resumed
on earthworks, or fresh guns mounted, inform military commander
that you have orders to prevent it; and if not immediately dis-
continued, destroy earthworks and silence batteries if they open fire,
having given sufficient notice to population, shipping and foreign
men-of-war."
**"
On the Qth the admiral received a report that working
parties had been seen in Fort Silsileh " parbuckling two smooth-
bore guns apparently 32-pounders towards their respective
carriages and slides, which were facing in the direction of the
harbour." Fort Silsileh was an old work at the extreme east
of the defences of Alexandria, and its guns do not bear on the
harbour. On the loth an ultimatum was sent to Toulba Pasha,
the military commandant, intimating that the bombardment
would commence at sunrise on the following morning unless
" the batteries on the isthmus of Ras-el-Tin and the southern
shore of the harbour of Alexandria " were previously surrendered
" for the purpose of disarming." The fleet prepared for action,
and the bearer of the reply, signed by the president of the council,
and offering to dismount three guns in the batteries named,
only succeeded in finding the flagship late at night. This
proposal was rejected, and at 7 A.M. on the nth of July the
" Alexandra " opened fire and the action became general. The
attacking force was disposed in three groups: (i) the "Alex-
andra," " Sultan " and " Superb," outside the reef, to engage
the Ras-el-Tin and the earthworks under weigh; (2) the
" Monarch," " Invincible " and " Penelope," inside the harbour,
to engage the Meks batteries; and (3) the "Inflexible " and
" Temeraire," to take up assigned stations outside the reef
and to co-operate with the inshore squadron. The gunboats
" Beacon," " Bittern," " Condor," " Cygnet " and " Decoy "
were to keep out of fire at first and seek opportunities of engaging
the Meks batteries. Meks fort was silenced by about 12.45 p - M ->
and a party from the " Invincible " landed and disabled the
guns. As the fire delivered under weigh was not effective, the
offshore squadron anchored at about 10.30 A.M., and succeeded
in silencing Fort Ras-el-Tin at about 12.30 P.M., and Fort Adda,
by the explosion of the main magazine, at 1.35 P.M. The " In-
flexible " weighed soon after 8 A.M. and engaged Ras-el-Tin,
afterwards attacking Forts Pharos and Adda. The " Condor,"
followed by the " Beacon," " Bittern " and " Decoy," engaged
Fort Marabout soon after 8 A.M. till n A.M., when the gunboats
were recalled. After the works were silenced, the ships moved
in closer, with a view to dismount the Egyptian guns. The
bombardment ceased at 5 P.M.; but a few rounds were fired
by the " Inflexible " and " Temeraire " on the morning of the
i zth at the right battery in Ras-el-Tin lines.
The bombardment of the forts of Alexandria is interesting as a
gauge of the effect to be expected from the fire of ships under specially
favourable conditions. The Egyptians at different times during the
day brought into action about 33 R.M.L. guns (7-in. to io-in.),
3 R.B.L. guns (40 prs.), and 120 S.B. guns (6-5-in. and io-in.), with
a few mortars. These guns were disposed over a coast-line of about
10 sea miles, and were in many cases indifferently mounted. The
Egyptian gunners had been little trained, and many of them had
never once practised with rifled ordnance. Of seventy-five hits on
the hulls of the ships only five can with certainty be ascribed to
projectiles from rifled guns, and thirty were unquestionably due to
the old smoothbores, which were not provided with sights. The
total loss inflicted was 6 killed and 27 wounded. The British ships
engaged fired 1741 heavy projectiles (7-in. to l6-in.) and 1457 light
(7-prs. to 64-prs.), together with 33,493 machine-gun and rifle bullets.
The result was comparatively small. About 8 rifled guns and 19
smoothbores were dismounted or disabled and 4 and i temporarily
put out of action respectively. A considerable portion of this injury
was inflicted, after the works had been silenced, by the deliberate
fire of the ships. As many as twenty-eight rifled guns and 140
smoothbores would have opened fire on the following day. The
Egyptians made quite as good a stand as could be expected, but were
driven from their guns, which they were unable to use with adequate
effect; and the bombardment of Alexandria confirms previous
experience that the fire of ships cannot really compete with that
of well-mounted and well-handled guns on shore.
In the afternoon of the i2th, fires, which were the work of
incendiaries, began to break out in the best quarters of Alex-
andria; and the town was left to murder and pillage till the
following day, when a party of bluejackets and marines was
landed at about 3 P.M.
Military intervention being now imperatively demanded,
a vote of credit for 2,300,000 was passed in the British House
of Commons on the 27th of July. Five days later the French
government failed to secure a similar vote, and Great Britain
was left to deal with the Egyptian question alone. An
MILITARY OPERATIONS 1881-85]
EGYPT
121
expeditionary force detailed from home stations and from Malta
was organized in two divisions, with a cavalry division, corps
troops, and a siege train, numbering in all about
25,000 men. An Indian contingent numbering about
r sir 7000 combatants, complete in all arms and with its own
transport, was prepared for despatch to Suez. General
Sir Garnet Wolseley was appointed commander-in-
chief, with Lieutenant - General Sir J. Adye as chief of the
staff. The plan of operations contemplated the seizure of Ismailia
as the base for an advance on Cairo, Alexandria and its suburbs
to be held defensively, and the Egyptian forces in the neighbour-
hood to be occupied by demonstrations. The expeditionary
force having rendezvoused at Alexandria, means were taken by
Rear-Admiral Hoskins and Sir W. Hewett for the seizure of the
Suez canal. Under orders from the former, Captain Fairfax,
R.N., occupied Port Said on the night of igth August, and
Commander Edwards, R.N., proceeded down the canal, taking
possession of the tares and dredgers, while Captain Fitzroy, R.N.,
occupied Ismailia after slight opposition. Before nightfall on
the 20th of August the canal was wholly in British hands.
Meanwhile, leaving Sir E. Hamley in command at Alexandria,
Sir G. Wolseley with the bulk of the expeditionary force arrived
at Port Said on the 20th of August, a naval demonstration
having been made at Abukir with a view to deceive the enemy
as to the object of the great movement in progress. The advance
from Ismailia now began. On the 2ist Major-General Graham
moved from Ismailia with about 800 men and a small naval
force, occupying Nefiche, the junction with the Suez line, at
1.30 A.M. without opposition. On the 22nd he made a recon-
naissance towards Suez, and on the 23rd another to El-Magfar,
4 m. from Nefiche. It now appeared that the enemy had dammed
the sweet-water canal and blocked the railway at Tell-el-Mahuta,
where entrenchments had been thrown up and resistance seemed
to be contemplated. At 4 A.M. on the 24th Sir Garnet Wolseley
advanced with 3 squadrons of cavalry, 2 guns, and about 1000
infantry, placed under the orders of Lieutenant-General Willis.
The enemy showed in force, estimated at 7000 with 12 guns,
and a somewhat desultory action ensued. Reinforcements
from Ismailia were ordered up, and the British cavalry, operating
on the right, helped to check the enemy's attack, which showed
little vigour. At night the troops, now reinforced by the Guards
Brigade, an infantry battalion, 2 cavalry regiments and 10 guns,
bivouacked on the ground. Early on the morning of the 25th
the advance was continued to Tell-el-Mahuta, which the enemy
evacuated, while the mounted troops and horse artillery pressed
on to Mahsama, capturing the Egyptian camp, with 7 guns
and large quantities of ammunition and supplies. On the same
evening Major-General Graham, with about 1200 marines
(artillery and light infantry), reached Mahsama, and on the
following day he occupied Kassassin without opposition. The
advance guard had now outrun its communications and was
actually short of food, while a considerable force was distributed
at intervals along the line Ismailia-Kassassin. The situation
on the 27th tempted attack by an enterprising enemy, and
Major-General Graham's force, consisting of a squadron of the
i Oth Hussars, the York and Lancaster Regiment, the duke of
Cornwall's Light Infantry, the Marine Artillery Battalion and
two R.H.A. guns, short of ammunition, was in danger of being
overwhelmed by vastly superior numbers from Tell-el-Kebir.
On the 28th Major-General Graham's troops were attacked,
and after repulsing the enemy, made a general advance about
6.45 P.M. The cavalry, summoned by heliograph from Mahsama,
co-operated, and in a moonlight charge inflicted considerable
loss. The British casualties amounted to 14 killed and 83
wounded. During the lull which followed the first action of
Kassassin, strenuous efforts were made to bring up supplies
and troops and to open up railway communication to the front.
On the 9th of September the Egyptians again attacked Kassassin,
but were completely repulsed by 9 A.M., with a loss of 4 guns,
and were pursued to within extreme range of the guns of Tell-el-
Kebir. The British casualties were 3 killed and 78 wounded.
The three following days were occupied in concentrating troops
at Kassassin for the attack on Tell-el-Kebir, held by about
38,000 men with 60 guns. The Egyptian defences consisted of
a long line of trench (2$ m.) approximately at right T n-i-
angles to the railway and the sweet-water canal. At KM'. '
ii P.M. on the 1 2th of September the advance of
about 15,000 men commenced; the ist division, under Lieu-
tenant-General Willis, was on the right, and the 2nd division,
under Lieutenant-General Hamley, was on the left. Seven
batteries of artillery, under Brigadier-General Goodenough,
were placed in the centre. The cavalry, under Major-General
Drury Lowe, was on the right flank, and the Indian contingent,
under Major-General Macpherson, starting one hour later, was
ordered to move south of the sweet-water canal. The night
was moonless, and the distance to be covered about 6J m. The
ground was perfectly open, slightly undulating, and generally
firm gravel. The conditions for a night march were thus ideal;
but during the movement the wings dosed towards each other,
causing great risk of an outbreak of firing. The line was, however,
rectified, and after a halt the final advance began. By a for-
tunate accident the isolated outwork was just missed in the
darkness by the left flank of the 2nd Division; otherwise
a premature alarm would have been given, which must have
changed all the conditions of the operation. At dawn the
Highland Brigade of the 2nd Division struck the enemy's trenches,
and carried them after a brief struggle. The ist Division
attacked a few minutes later, and the cavalry swept round the
left of the line of entrenchments, cutting down any fugitives
who attempted resistance and reaching the enemy's camp in
rear. The Indian contingent, on the south of the canal, co-
operated, intercepting the Egyptians at the canal bridge. The
opposition encountered at some points was severe, but by 6 A.M.
all resistance was at an end. The British loss amounted to 58
killed, 379 wounded and 22 missing; nearly 2000 Egyptians
were killed, and more than 500 wounded were treated in hospital.
An immediate pursuit was ordered, and the Indian contingent,
under Major-General Macpherson, reached Zagazig, while the
cavalry, under Major-General Drury Lowe, occupied Belbeis
and pushed on to Cairo, 65 m. from Tell-el-Kebir, next day.
On the evening of the i4th the 10,000 troops occupying Abbasia
barracks, and 5000 in the citadel of Cairo, surrendered. On
the isth General Sir Garnet Wolseley, with the brigade of
Guards under H.R.H. the duke of Connaught, entered the
city.
The prompt following up of the victory at Tell-el-Kebir saved
Cairo from the fate of Alexandria and brought the rebellion
to an end. The Egyptian troops at Kafr Dauar, Abukir and
Rosetta surrendered without opposition, and those at Damietta
followed on the 23rd of September, after being threatened with
attack. On the 2$th the khedive entered Cairo, where a review
of the British troops was held on the 3oth. The expeditionary
force was now broken up, leaving about 10,000 men, under
Major-General Sir A. Alison, to maintain the authority of the
khedive. In twenty-five days, from the landing at Ismailia to
the occupation of Cairo, the rebellion was completely suppressed,
and the operations were thus signally successful.
The authority of the khedive and the maintenance of law
and order now depended absolutely on the British forces left
in occupation. Lord Dufferin, who had been sent to TAeSo<lia
Cairo to draw up a project of constitutional reforms, quet tk>a.
advocated the re-establishment of a native army, not
to exceed 5000 to 6000 men, with a proportion of British officers,
for purely defence purposes within the Delta; and on the i3th
of December 1882 Sir Evelyn Wood left England to undertake
the organization of this force, with the title of sirdar. Lord
Dufferin further advised the formation of a gendarmerie, which
" should be in a great measure a mounted force and empowered
with a semi-military character " (despatch of January ist, 1883).
The strength of this military police force was fixed at 4400 men
with 2562 horses, and Baker Pasha (General Valentine Baker)
was entrusted with its formation, with the title of inspector-
general.
In a despatch of the 6th of February 1883 Lord Dufferin dealt
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[MILITARY OPERATIONS 1882-85
with the Sudan, and stated that Egypt " could hardly be expected
to acquiesce " in a policy of withdrawal from her Southern
territories. At the same time he pointed out that,
"Unhappily, Egyptian administration in the Sudan had been almost
uniformly unfortunate. The success of the present mahdi in raising
the tribes and extending his influence over great tracts of country
was a sufficient proof of the government's inability either to reconcile
the inhabitants to its rule or to maintain order. The consequences
had been most disastrous. Within the last year and a half the
Egyptians had lost something like 9000 men, while it was estimated
that 40,000 of their opponents had perished."
Moreover, to restore tranquillity in the Sudan,
" the first step necessary was the construction of a railway from
Suakin to Berber, or what, perhaps, would be more advisable, to
Shendi, on the Nile. The completion of this enterprise would at
once change all the elements of the problem."
The immense responsibilities involved were most imperfectly
understood by the British government. Egyptian sovereignty
in the Sudan dates from 1820, when Mehemet Ali sent a large
force into the country, and ultimately established his authority
over Sennar and Kordofan. In 1865 Suakin and Massawa were
assigned to Egyptian rule by the sultan, and in 1870 Sir Samuel
Baker proceeded up the Nile to the conquest of the Equatorial
provinces, of which General Gordon was appointed governor-
general in 1874. In the same year Darfur and Harrar were
annexed, and in 1877 Gordon became governor-general of the
Sudan, where, with the valuable assistance of Gessi Pasha, he
laboured to destroy the slave trade and to establish just govern-
ment. In August 1879 he returned to Cairo, and was succeeded
by Raouf Pasha. Misrule and oppression in every form now
again prevailed throughout the Sudan, while the slave traders,
exasperated by Gordon's stern measures, were ready to revolt.
The authority of Egypt was represented by scattered garri-
sons of armed men, badly officered, undisciplined and largely
demoralized. In such conditions a leader only was required
to ensure widespread and dangerous rebellion. A leader appeared
in the person of Mahommed Ahmed, born in 1848, who had taken
up his abode on Abba Island, and, acquiring great reputation for
sanctity, had actively fomented insurrection. In August 1881
a small force sent by Raouf Pasha to arrest Mahommed Ahmed
was destroyed, and the latter, proclaiming himself the mahdi,
stood forth as the champion of revolt. Thus, at the time when
the Egyptian army was broken up at Tell-el-Kebir, the Sudan
was already in flames. On the 7th of June 1882, 6000 men under
Yusef Pasha, advancing from Fashoda, were nearly annihilated
by the mahdists. Payara and Birket in Kordofan quickly
fell, and a few days before the battle of Tell-el-Kebir was fought,
the mahdi, with a large force, was besieging El Obeid. That
town was captured, after an obstinate defence, on the I7th of
January 1883, by which time almost the whole of the Sudan
south of Khartum was in open rebellion, except the Bahr-el-
Ghazal and the Equatorial provinces, where for a time Lupton
Bey and Emin Pasha were able to hold their own. Abd-el-Kader,
who had succeeded Raouf, telegraphed to Cairo for 10,000 addi-
tional troops, and pointed out that if they were not sent at once
four times this number would be required to re-establish the
authority of the government in the Sudan. After gaining some
small successes, Abd-el-Kader was superseded by Suliman Niagi
on the 2oth of February 1883, and on the 26th of March Ala-ed-
din Pasha was appointed governor-general. Meanwhile 5000
men, who had served in the Egyptian army, were collected
and forcibly despatched to Khartum via Suakin. In March
1883 Colonel William Hicks, late of the Bombay army,
w ^ m J anuar X had been appointed by the khedive
Pasha. chief of the staff of the army of the Sudan, found
himself at Khartum with nine European officers and
about 10,000 troops of little military value. The recon quest of
the Sudan having been determined upon, although Sir E. Malet
reported that the Egyptian government could not supply the
necessary funds, and that there was great risk of failure, Colonel
Hicks, who had resigned his post on the 23rd of July, and had
been appointed commander-in-chief, started from Khartum on
9th September, with a total force of about 10,000 men, including
non-combatants, for Kordofan. On the 22nd of May Sir E.
Malet had informed Sherif Pasha that,
" although Colonel Hicks finds it convenient to communicate with
Lord Dufferin or with me, it must not be supposed that we endorse
in any way the contents of his telegrams. . . . Her Majesty's
government are in no way responsible for his operations in the Sudan,
which have been undertaken under the authority of His Highness's
government."
Colonel Hicks was fully aware of the unfitness of his rabble
forces for the contemplated task, and on the 5th of August he
telegraphed: " I am convinced it would be best to keep the two
rivers and province of Sennar, and wait for Kordofan to settle
itself." Early in November the force from Khartum was caught
by the mahdists short of water at Kashgil, near El Obeid, and
was almost totally destroyed, Colonel Hicks, with all his
European officers, perishing. Sinister rumours having reached
Cairo, Sir E. Baring (Lord Cromer), who had succeeded Sir E.
Malet, telegraphed that " if Colonel Hicks's army is destroyed,
the Egyptian government will lose the whole of the Sudan, unless
some assistance from the outside is given," and advised the
withdrawal to some post on the Nile. On the following day
Lord Granville replied: " We cannot lend English or Indian
troops; if consulted, recommend abandonment of the Sudan
within certain limits "; and on the 2$th he added that " Her
Majesty's government can do nothing in the matter which would
throw upon them the responsibilities for operations in the
Sudan." In a despatch of the 3rd of December Sir E. Baring
forcibly argued against British intervention in the affairs of the
Sudan, and on the I3th of December Lord Granville telegraphed
that " Her Majesty's government recommend the ministers of
khedive to come to an early decision to abandon all territory
south of Assuah, or, at least, of Wadi Haifa." On the 4th of
January 1884 Sir E. Baring was directed to insist upon the policy
of evacuation, and on the i8th General Gordon left London to
assist in its execution.
The year 1883 brought a great accession of power to the
mahdi, who had captured about 20,000 rifles, 19 guns and large
stores of ammunition. On the Red Sea littoral Osman
Digna, a slave dealer of Suakin, appointed amir of the
Eastern Sudan, raised the local tribes and invested
Sinkat and Tokar. On the i6th of October and the
4th of November Egyptian reinforcements intended for the
former place were destroyed, and on the 2nd of December a force
of 700 men was annihilated near Tamanieb. On the 23rd of
December General Valentine Baker, followed by about 2500 men,
gendarmerie, blacks, Sudanese and Turks, with 10 British
officers, arrived at Suakin to prepare for the relief of Sinkat and
Tokar. The khedive appears to have been aware of the risks
to be incurred, and in a private letter he informed the general
that " I rely upon your prudence and ability not to engage the
enemy except under the most favourable circumstances."
The tragedy of Kashgil was repeated on the 4th of February
1884, when General Baker's heterogeneous force, on the march
from Trinkitat to Tokar, was routed at El Teb by an inferior
body of tribesmen. Of 3715 men, 2375, with n European
officers, were killed. Suakin was now in danger, and on the 6th
of February British bluejackets and marines were landed for
the defence of the town.
Two expeditions in the Sudan led by British officers having
thus ended in disaster, and General Gordon with Lieutenant-
Colonel J. D. Stewart having reached Khartum on British
the i8th of February, the policy of British non-inter- expedition
vention in regard to Sudan affairs could no longer be UDder
maintained. Public opinion in England was strongly graham:
impressed by the fact that the Egyptian garrisons of battles of
Tokar and Sinkat were perishing within striking dis- El Teb " aa
tance of the Red Sea littoral. A British force about 4400
strong, with 22 guns, made up of troops from Egypt and from
units detained on passage from India, was rapidly concentrated
at Suakin and placed under the orders of Major-General Sir
G. Graham, with Major-Generals Sir R. Bujler and J. Davis as
brigadiers. News of the fall of Sinkat, where the starving
garrison, under Tewfik Bey, made a gallant sortie and was cut
Baker.
MILITARY OPERATIONS i8Sa-5]
EGYPT
123
to pieces, reached Suakin on the 1 2th of February. On the 24th
General Graham's force disembarked at Trinkitat and received
information of the surrender of Tokar. At 8 A.M. on the joth
the force advanced towards Tokar in square, and came under fire
at 1 1. to A.M. from the enemy entrenched at El Teb. The tribes-
men made desperate efforts to rush the square, but were repulsed,
and the position was taken by a P.M. The cavalry, loth and ipth
Hussars, under Brigadier-General Sir H. Stewart, became in-
volved in a charge against an unbroken enemy, and suffered
somewhat severely. The total British loss was 34 killed and
155 wounded; that of the tribesmen was estimated at 1500
killed. On the following day Tokar was reached, and on the
and of March the force began its return to Suakin, bringing away
about 700 people belonging to the late garrison and the civil
population, and destroying 1250 rifles and a quantity of am-
munition found in a neighbouring village. On the gth of March
the whole force was back at Suakin, and on the evening of the
nth an advance to Tamai began, and the force bivouacked
and formed a zeriba in the evening. Information was brought
by a native that the enemy had assembled in the Khor Ghob,
a deep ravine not far from the zeriba. At about 8.30 A.M. on the
i^th the advance began in echelon of brigade squares from
the left. The left and leading square (2nd Brigade) moved
towards the khor, approaching at a point where a little ravine
joined it. The enemy showing in front, the leading face of the
square was ordered to charge up to the edge of the khor. This
opened the square, and a mass of tribesmen rushed in from
the small ravine. The brigade was forced back in disorder, and
the naval guns, which had been left behind, were temporarily
captured. After a severe hand-to-hand struggle, in which the
troops behaved with great gallantry, order was restored and the
enemy repulsed, with the aid of the fire from the ist Brigade square
and from dismounted cavalry. The ist Brigade square, having a
sufficient field of fire, easily repelled all attempts to attack, and
advancing as soon as the situation had been restored, occupied
the village of Tamai. The British loss was 109 killed and 104
wounded; of the enemy nearly 2000 were killed. On the
following day the force returned to Suakin.
Two heavy blows had now been inflicted on the followers of
Osman Digna, and the road to Berber could have been opened, as
General Graham and Brigadier-General Sir H. Stewart suggested.
General Gordon, questioned on the point, telegraphed from
Khartum, on the yth of March, that he might be cut off by a
rising at Shendi, adding, " I think it, therefore, most important
to follow up the success near Suakin by sending a small force to
Berber." He had previously, on the 2pth of February, urged
that the Suakin-Berber road should be opened up by Indian
troops. This, and General Gordon's proposal to send 200 British
troops to Wadi Haifa, was opposed by Sir E. Baring, who,
realizing soon afterwards the gravity of the situation, tele-
graphed on the 1 6th of March:
" It has now become of the utmost importance not only to open
the road between Suakin and Berber, but to come to terms with
the tribes between Berber and Khartum."
The government refused to take this action, and Major-General
Graham's force was employed in reconnaissances and small
skirmishes, ending in the destruction of the villages in the
Tamanieb valley on 2yth March. On the 28th the whole force
was reassembled at Suakin, and was then broken up, leaving
one battalion to garrison the town.
The abrupt disappearance of the British troops encouraged
the tribesmen led by Osman Digna, and effectually prevented the
EmtMmt t f . formation of a native movement, which might have
mmiof been of great value. The first attempt at intervention
o*mtrmi in the affairs of the Sudan was made too late to save
Sinkat and Tokar. It resulted only in heavy slaughter
of the tribesmen, which afforded no direct or indirect
aid to General Gordon or to the policy of evacuation. The
public announcement of the latter was a grave mistake, which
increased General Gordon's difficulties, and the situation at
Khartum grew steadily worse. On the 24th of March Sir E.
Baring telegraphed:
" The question now is, how to get General Gordon and Colonel
Stewart away from Khartum. . . . Under present circumstances,
I think an effort should be made to help General Gordon from
Suakin, if it is at all a possible military operation. . . . We all
consider that, however difficult the operations from Suakin may
be, they arc more practicable than any operations from Korosko
and along the Nile.
A telegram from General Gordon, received at Cairo on the
igth of April, stated that
" We have provisions for five months and are hemmed in. ... Our
position will he much strengthened when the Nile rises. . . . Sennar,
Kassala and Dongola are quite safe for the present."
At the same time he suggested " an appeal to the millionaires
of America and England " to subscribe money for the cost of
" 2000 or 3000 nizams " (Turkish regulars) to be sent to Berber.
A cloud now settled down upon Khartum, and subsequent
communications were few and irregular. The foreign office and
General Gordon appeared to be somewhat at cross purposes.
The former hoped that the garrisons of the Sudan could be ex-
tricated without fighting. The latter, judging from the tenor
of some of his telegrams, believed that to accomplish this work
entailed the suppression of the mahdi's revolt, the strength of
which he at first greatly underestimated. He had pressed
strongly for the employment of Zobeir as " an absolute necessity
for success " (3rd of March) ; but this was refused, since Sir H.
Gordon advised at this time that it would be dangerous. On the
gth of March General Gordon proposed, " if the immediate
evacuation of Khartum is determined upon irrespective of out-
lying towns," to send down the " Cairo rmployis " and the
garrison to Berber with Lieutenant-Colonel J. D. Stewart, to
resign his commission, and to proceed with the stores and the
steamers to the equatorial provinces, which he would consider
as placed under the king of the Belgians. On the I3th of March
Lord Granville gave full power to General Gordon to " evacuate
Khartum and save that garrison by conducting it himself to
Berber without delay," and expressed a hope that he would not
resign his commission.
By the end of March 1884 Sir E. Baring and the British officers
in Egypt were convinced that force would have to be employed,
and the growing danger of General Gordon, with the jj e // e / ez .
grave national responsibility involved, began to be petition:
realized in Great Britain. Sir Henry Gordon, however, queitloa
who was in personal communication with Mr Glad- ofroutf -
stone, considered that his brother was in no peril, and for some
time disbelieved in the need for a relief expedition. Meanwhile
it was at least necessary to evolve some plan of action, and on
the 8th of April the adjutant-general addressed a memorandum
to the secretary of state for war detailing the measures required
for placing 6500 British troops " in the neighbourhood of Shendi."
The battle of the routes began much earlier, and was continued
for some months. Practically the choice lay between the Nile
and the Suakin-Berber road. The first involved a distance of
1650 m. from Cairo along a river strewn with cataracts, which
obstructed navigation to all but small boats, except during the
period of high water. So great was this obstruction that the
Nile had never been a regular trade route to the Sudan. The
second entailed a desert march of about 250 m., of which one
section, Obak-Bir Mahoba (52 m.), was waterless, and the rest
had an indifferent water supply (except at Ariab, about half-way
to Berber), capable, however, of considerable development.
From Berber the Nile is followed (210 m.) to Khartum. This
was an ancient trade route with the Sudan, and had been used
without difficulty by the reinforcements sent to Hicks Pasha in
1883, which were accompanied by guns on wheels. The authori-
ties in Egypt, headed by General Stephenson, subsequently
supported by the Admiral Lord John Hay, who sent a naval
officer to examine the river as far as Dongola, were unanimous
in favour of the Suakin-Berber route. From the first Major-
General Sir A. Clarke, then inspector-general of fortifications,
strongly urged this plan, and proposed to begin at once a metre
gauge railway from Suakin, to be constructed by Indian labour
under officers skilled in laying desert lines. Some preliminary
arrangements were made, and on the 1 4th of June the government
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EGYPT
[MILITARY OPERATIONS 1882-85
, .
sanctioned certain measures of preparation at Suakin. On the
other side were the adjutant-general (Lord Wolseley) and a small
number of officers who had taken part in the Red River ex-
pedition of 1870. The memorandum of the adjutant-general
above referred to was based on the hypothesis that Khartum
could not hold out beyond the isth of November, and that the
expedition should reach Berber by the 2oth of October. Steamers
were to be employed in such reaches as proved practicable, but
the force was to be conveyed in special whale-boats, by which
" the difficulty of transport is reduced to very narrow limits."
The mounted force was to consist of 400 men on native horses
and 450 men on horses or camels. The question of routes con-
tinued to be the subject of animated discussion, and on the apth
of July a committee of three officers who had served in the Red
River expedition reported:
" We believe that a brigade can easily be conveyed in small boats
from Cairo to Dongola in the time stated by Lord Wolseley ; and,
further, that should it be necessary to send a still larger force by
water to Khartum, that operation will present no insuperable
difficulties."
This most inconclusive report, and the baseless idea that the
adoption of the Nile route would involve no chance of bloodshed,
which the government was anxious to avoid, seem to
have decided the question. On the 8th of August the
seat out; secretary of state for war informed General Stephen-
Niie route gon tnat "the time had arrived when some further
measures for obtaining accurate information as to
his (General Gordon's) position, and, if necessary, for rendering
him assistance, should be adopted." General Stephenson still
urged the Suakin-Berber route, and was informed on the 26th
of August that Lord Wolseley would be appointed to take over
the command in Egypt for the purposes of the expedition, for
which a vote of credit had been taken in the House of Commons
on the $th of August. On the 9th of September Lord Wolseley
arrived at Cairo, and the plan of operations was somewhat
modified. A camel corps of 1 100 men selected from twenty-eight
regiments at home was added, and the " fighting force to be
placed in line somewhere in the neighbourhood of Shendi "was
fixed at 5400. The construction of whale-boats began on the
1 2th of August, and the first batch arrived at Wadi Haifa on
the 1 4th of October, and on the 25th the first boat was hauled
through the second cataract. The mounted forces proceeded
up the banks, and the first half-battalion embarked at Gemai,
870 m. from Khartum, on the sth of November, ten days before
the date to which it had been assumed General Gordon could
hold out. In a straggling procession the boats worked their
way up to Korti, piloted by Canadian voyageurs. The labour
was very great, and the troops, most of whom were having their
first lesson in rowing, bore the privations of their unaccustomed
conditions with admirable cheerfulness. By the 25th of
December 2220 men had reached Korti, of whom about 800 only
had been conveyed by the whale-boats, the last of which did not
arrive till the 27th of January. Beyond Korti lay the very
difficult section of the river to Abu Hamed, which was quite
unknown. Meanwhile news of the loss of the " Abbas " and of
the murder of Colonel J. D. Stewart and his party on the i8th of
September had been received. A letter from Gordon, dated the
4th of November and received on the i7th of November, stated
that his steamers would await the expedition at Metemma, and
added, " We can hold out forty days with ease; after that it
will be difficult." In his diary, on the I3th of December, when
his difficulties had become extreme, he noted that " if the
expeditionary force does not come in ten days, the town may
fall."
It was clear at Korti that something must be done at once;
and on the i3th of December noo men, with 2200 camels, under
General Sir H. Stewart, were despatched to occupy Jakdul wells,
96 m. on the desert route to Metemma. Stewart returned on
the 5th of January, and started again on the Sth, with orders
to establish a fort at Abu Klea and to occupy Metemma. The
Desert Column, 1800 men, with 2880 camels in poor condition
and 1 53 horses, found the enemy in possession of Abu Klea wells
on the i6th, and was desperately attacked on the I7th. The
want of homogeneity of the force, and the unaccustomed tactics
imposed upon the cavalry, somewhat hampered the de- (
fence, and the square was broken at the left rear corner. Desert *
Driven back upon the camels in the centre, the troops Column;
fought hand to hand with the greatest gallantry. Order batae f
was quickly restored, and the attack was repulsed, with ^*^ tea
a loss of 74 killed and 94 wounded. At least noo of
the enemy were killed. The wells being occupied and a
zeriba formed, the column started on the evening of the i8th.
The wrong road was taken, and great confusion occurred,
during the night, but at dawn this was rectified; and after
forming a rough fort under fire, by which General Sir H. Stewart
was fatally wounded, an advance was made at 3 P.M. The
square was again heavily attacked, but the Arabs could not get
to dose quarters and in the evening a bivouac was formed on
the Nile. The British losses on this day were 23 killed and 98
wounded. The Desert Column was now greatly exhausted.
On the 20th the village of Gubat was occupied; and on the
following day Sir C. Wilson, on whom the command had devolved,
advanced against Metemma, which was found too strong to
assault. On this day General Gordon's four steamers arrived;
and on the morning of the 24th Sir C. Wilson, with 20 British
soldiers in red coats and about 280 Sudanese, started in the
" Bordein " and " Telahawiyeh " for Khartum. The " Bordein "
grounded on the following day, and again on the 26th, by which
twenty-four hours were lost. At 1 1 A.M. on the 28th Khartum
was sighted, and it soon became clear that the town was in the
hands of the enemy. After reconnoitring farther, the steamers
turned and proceeded down stream under a heavy fire, the
Sudanese crews showing signs of disaffection. The " Tela-
hawiyeh " was wrecked on the agth of January and the
" Bordein " on the 3ist, Sir C. Wilson's party being rescued on
the 4th of February by Lord C. Beresford in the " Safieh,"
which had come up from Gubat on receipt of news carried there
by Lieutenant Stuart Wortley in a row-boat. Khartum had
been taken and General Gordon killed on the morning of the
26th of January 1885, having thus held out thirty-four days
beyond the date when he had expected the end. The garrison
had been reduced to starvation; and the arrival of
twenty British soldiers, with orders to return at once,
could not have affected the situation. The situation petition.
of the Desert Column and of its transport was most
imperfectly understood at Korti, where impossible plans were
formed. Fortunately Major-General Sir R. Buller, who arrived
at Gubat on the nth of February, decided upon withdrawal,
thus averting impending disaster, and by the i6th of March the
Desert Column had returned to Korti.
The advance from Korti of the River Column, under Major-
General Earle, began on the 28th of December, and great diffi-
culties of navigation were encountered . On the loth of February
an action was fought at Kirbekan with about 800 of the enemy,
entailing a loss of 10 killed, including Major-General Earle,
and 47 wounded. The column, now commanded by Brigadier-
General Brackenbury, continued its slow advance, and on the
morning of the 24th of February it was about 26 m. below Abu
Hamed, a point where the Korosko desert route strikes the Nile,
350 m. from Khartum. Here it received orders to retire, and
it reached Korti on the Sth of March.
The verbal message received from General Gordon on the
3oth of December 1884 rendered the extreme danger of the
position at Khartum painfully apparent, and the
secretary of state for war, acting on Sir E. Baring's
advice, offered to make an active demonstration from
Suakin. To this proposal Lord Wolseley demurred, but asked
that ships of war should be sent to Suakin, and that " marines in
red coats should be frequently landed and exercised." Lord
Hartington replied that the government did not consider that
a demonstration of this kind could be effective, and again
suggested stronger measures. On the Sth of January 1885 Lord
Wolseley repeated that " the measures you propose will not assist
my operations against Khartum," adding:
MILITARY OPERATIONS 1885] EGYPT
" I have from first endeavoured to impress on government that I
am strong enough to relieve Khartum, and believe in being able to
tend a force, when returning by way of Berber, to Suakin, to open
road and crush Osraan Digna.'
On this very day the small Desert Column started from Korti
on its hazardous mission to the relief of a town fully 270 m.
distant, ht-l.l by a starving garrison, and invested by 30,000
fighting men, mostly armed with good rifles. Before reaching
the Nile the Desert Column had lost 300 men and was unable
to take Metemma, while its transport had completely broken
down. On the 8th of February Lord Wolseley telegraphed,
" The sooner you can now deal with Osman Digna the better,"
and recommended the despatch of Indian troops to Suakin, to
" co-operate with me in keeping road to Berber open." On
the nth of February, the day on which Sir R. Buller most
wisely decided to withdraw the Desert Column from a position
of extreme danger, it was determined at Korti that the River
Column should proceed to attack Berber, and Lord Wolseley
accepted the proposal of the government to make a railway
from Suakin, telegraphing to Lord Hartington:
" By all means make railway by contract to Berber, or as far as
you can, during summer. It will be invaluable as a means of
supply, and I recommend it being begun immediately. Contract
to be, if possible, for so much per ton military stores and supplies
and men carried, per mile."
Every effort was now concentrated upon sending an expedi-
tionary force to Suakin, and before the end of March about
13,000 men, including a brigade from India and a field battery
from New South Wales, with nearly 7000 camels and 1000 mules,
were there assembled. Lieutenant-General Sir G. Graham was
placed in command of this force, with orders to break down the
power of Osman Digna and to press the construction of the
railway towards Berber. The troops at Suakin, on arrival,
were much harassed by small night attacks, which ceased as
soon as the scattered camps were drawn together. On the igth
of March Sir G. Graham, with the cavalry brigade and the
infantry of the Indian contingent, reconnoitred as far as Hashin,
finding the country difficult on account of the dense mimosa
scrub. The enemy occupied the bills and fired upon the cavalry.
On the loth Sir G. Graham, with about 9000 men, again advanced
to Hashin, and Dehilbat hill was taken by the Berk-
shire regiment and the Royal Marines. A squadron
of the 9th Royal Lancers, which was dismounted in
the thick bush, was driven back with the loss of 9 men; but
elsewhere the Arabs never succeeded in closing, and the troops
returned to Suakin in the afternoon, leaving the East Surrey
regiment in a zeriba covering some low hills near Hashin village.
The total British loss was 9 killed and 39 wounded.
On the 22nd of March a force, consisting of two British and
three Indian battalions, with a naval brigade, a squadron of
lancers, two companies of engineers, and a large
*riib*. ' convoy of camels' carrying water and supplies, under
Major-General Sir J. McNeill, started from Suakin for
Tamai, with orders to form a half-way zeriba. The advance
was much impeded by the dense bush, and the force halted at
Tofrik, about 6 m. out, at 10.30 A.M. A native had brought
information that the enemy intended to attack while the zeriba
was being formed, and this actually occurred. The force was
caught partly unprepared soon after 2.30 P.M., and severe fighting
took place. The enemy were repulsed in about twenty minutes,
the naval brigade, the Berkshire regiment, the Royal Marines,
and the i$th Sikhs showing the greatest gallantry. The
casualties, including those among non-combatants, were 150
killed, 148 missing, and 174 wounded. More than 500 camels
were killed. The tribesmen lost more than 1000 killed. As soon
as firing was beard at Suakin, Sir G. Graham, with two battalions
of Guards and a battery of horse artillery, started for Tofrik,
but returned on being assured that reinforcements were not
required. On the 24th and 26th convoys proceeding in square
to Tofrik were attacked, the enemy being repulsed without
difficulty. On the 2nd of April a force exceeding 7000 men,
with 14 guns and 1600 transport animals, started from Suakin
125
at 4.30 A.M., and bivouacked twelve hours later at Tesela Hill.
Next morning an advance was made towards Tamai, and a
number of huts in the Khor Ghob were burned. The force
then returned to Suakin. The railway was now pushed on
without interruption, reaching Otao on the 3Oth. On the night
of the 6th of May a combined movement was made from Suakin
and Otao, which resulted in the surprise and break-up of a force
of the enemy under Mahommed Sardun, and the capture of a
large number of sheep and goats. The moral effect of this
operation was marked, and large numbers of tribesmen placed
themselves unconditionally at the disposal of Sir G. Graham.
A great native movement could now have been organized,
which would have kept the route to Berber and enabled the
railway to be rapidly pushed forward.
Meanwhile many communications had passed between the
war office and Lord Wolseley, who at first believed that Berber
could be taken before the summer. In a long despatch Poaiicfl
of the 6th of March he discussed the general situation, aad
and pointed out that although the force at his disposal military
" was amply sufficient" for raising the siege of Khartum
and defeating the mahdi, the conditions were changed
by the fall of the town. It was now "impossible . . .
to undertake any offensive operations until about the end of
the summer," when twelve additional British battalions, four
strong squadrons of British cavalry, and two R.H.A. batteries,
together with a large extension of the Wadi Haifa railway,
eleven steamers, and three hundred more whale-boats, would
be required. He considered it necessary to hold Dongola, and
he reported that he was " distributing this army along the left
bank of the Nile, on the open reach of water " between the
Hannek cataract and Abu Dom, opposite Merawi. On the 3Oth
of March Lord Wolseley quitted the army and proceeded to
Cairo. A cloud having arisen on the frontiers of Afghanistan,
the withdrawal of the troops from the Sudan was ordered on
the i ith of May. On the formation of Lord Salisbury's cabinet,
the new secretary of state for war, Mr W. H. Smith, inquired
whether the retirement could be arrested, but Major-General
Sir R. Buller reported that the difficulties of reoccupation would
be great, and that if Dongola was to be held, a fresh expedition
would be required. On the 22nd of June, before the British
rearguard had left Dongola, the mahdi died. The withdrawal
of the Suakin force began on the I7th of May, and the friendly
tribes, deprived of support, were compelled to make terms
with Osman Digna, who was soon able to turn his attention to
Kassala, which capitulated in August, nearly at the same time
as Sennar.
The failure of the operations in the Sudan had been absolute
and complete, and the reason is to be sought in a total miscon-
ception of the situation, which caused vacillation and delay, and
in the choice of a route by which, having regard to the date of
the decision, the relief of General Gordon and Khartum was
impossible. (G. S. C.)
MILITARY OPERATIONS IN EGYPT AND THE SUDAN,
1885 TO 1896
The operations against Mahdism during the eleven years
from the end of the Nile expedition and the withdrawal from
the Sudan to the commencement of the Dongola campaign will
be more easily understood if, instead of narrating them in one
chronological sequence, the operations in each province are
considered separately. The mahdi, Mahommed Ahmed, died
at Omdurman on the 22nd of June 1885. He was succeeded
by the principal khalifa, Abdullah el Taaisha, a Baggara Arab,
who for the next thirteen years ruled the Sudan with despotic
power. Cruel, vicious, unscrupulous and strong, the country
groaned beneath his oppression. He removed all possible rivals,
concentrated at Omdurman a strong military force composed
of men of his own tribe, and maintained the ascendancy of that
tribe over all others. As the British troops retired to Upper
Egypt, his followers seized the evacuated country, and the
khalifa cherished the idea, already formulated by the mahdi,
of the conquest of Egypt, but for some years he was too much
126
EGYPT
[MILITARY OPERATIONS 1885-96
occupied in quelling risings, massacring the Egyptians in the
Sudan, and fighting Abyssinia, to move .seriously in the
matter.
Upper Egypt. Mahommed el Kheir, dervish amir of Dongola,
however, advanced towards the frontier in the autumn of 1885,
and at the end of November came in touch with the frontier
field force, a body of some 3000 men composed in nearly equal
parts of British and Egyptian troops. A month of harassing
skirmishes ensued, during which the Egyptian troops showed
their mettle at Mograka, where 200 of them held the fort
against a superior number of dervishes, and in combats at
Ambigol, Kosha and Firket. Sir Frederick Stephenson, com-
manding the British army of occupation in Egypt, then con-
centrated the frontier field force at Firket, and attacked the main
body of the enemy at Ginnis on the 3oth of December 1885,
completely defeating it and capturing two guns and twenty
banners. It was here the new Egyptian army received its
baptism of fire and acquitted itself very creditably. Although
checked, the dervishes were not discouraged, and continued
to press upon the frontier in frequent raids, and thus in many
bloody skirmishes the fighting qualities of the Egyptian troops
were developed. In April 1886 the frontier was drawn back to
Wadi Haifa, a fortified camp at the northern end of the desolate
defile, Batn-el-Hagar, through which the Nile tumbles amid
black, rocky hills in a succession of rapids, and debouches on
a wide plain. The protection of the frontier was now left in the
hands of the Egyptian army, a British force remaining at Assuan,
200 m. to the north, as a reserve in case of emergency, and two
years later even this precaution was deemed unnecessary.
In October 1886 Wad en Nejumi, the amir who had defeated
Hicks Pasha in Kordofan three years before, and led the assault
at Khartum when General Gordon was slain in January 1885,
replaced Mahommed el Kheir as " commander of the force for
the conquest of Egypt," and brought large reinforcements to
Dongola. An advanced column under Nur-el-Kanzi occupied
Sarras in April 1887, was attacked by the Egyptian force under
Colonel H. Chennside on the 28th of that month, and after a
stubborn resistance was defeated with great loss. Nur-el-Kanzi
was killed and ten standards taken.
The troubles in Darfur and with Abyssinia (q.v.) induced the
khalifa to reduce the garrisons of the north; nevertheless, the
dervishes reoccupied Sarras, continued active in raids and skir-
mishes, and destroyed the railway south of Sarras, which during
the Nile expedition of 1884 and 1885 had been carried as far as
Akasha. It was not until May 1889 that an invasion of the
frontier on a large scale was attempted. At this time the power
and prestige of the khalifa were at their height: the rebellions
in Darfur and Kordofan had been stamped out, the anti-mahdi
was dead, and even the dervish defeat by the Abyssinians had
been converted by the death of King John and the capture of
his body into a success. It was therefore an opportune time to
try to sweep the Turks and the British into the sea. On the 22nd
of June Nejumi was at Sarras with over 6000 fighting men and
8000 followers. On the 2nd of July Colonel J. Wodehouse
headed off a part of this force from the river at Argin, and, after
a sharp action, completely defeated it, killing ooo, among whom
were many important amirs, and taking 500 prisoners and 12
banners, with very small loss to his own troops. A British
brigade was on its way up stream, but the sirdar, who had already
arrived to take the command in person, decided not to wait for
it. The Egyptian troops, with a squadron of the 2oth Hussars,
concentrated at Toski, and thence, on the 3rd of August,
General Grenfell, with slight loss, gained a decisive
victory. Wad en Nejumi, most of his amirs, and more
than 1 200 Arabs were killed; 4000 prisoners and 147 standards
were taken, and the dervish army practically destroyed. No
further serious attempts were made to disturb the frontier, of
which the most southerly outpost was at once advanced to Sarras.
The escape from Omdurman of Father Ohrwalder and of two
of the captive nuns in December 1891, of Father Rossignoli in
October 1894, and of Slatin Bey in February 1895, revealed the
condition of the Sudan to the outside world, threw a vivid light
on the rule of the khalifa, and corroborated information already
received of the discontent which existed among the tribes with
the oppression and despotism under which they lived.
The Eastern Sudan. In 1884 Colonel Chermside, governor
of the Red Sea littoral, entered into arrangements with King
John of Abyssinia for the relief of the beleaguered Egyptian
garrisons. Gera, Amadib, Senhit and Gallabat were, in con-
sequence, duly succoured, and their garrisons and Egyptian
populations brought away to the coast by the Abyssinians in
1885. Unfortunately famine compelled the garrison of Kassala
to capitulate on the 30th of July of that year, and Osman Digna
hurried there from Tamai to raise a force with which to meet
the Abyssinian general, Ras Alula, who was preparing for its
relief. By the end of August Osman Digna had occupied Kufit,
in the Barea country, with 10,000 men and entrenched himself.
On the 23rd of September Ras Alula attacked him there with an
equal number of men and routed him with great slaughter.
Over 3000 dervishes with their principal amirs, except Osman
Digna, lay dead on the field, and many more were killed in the
pursuit. The Abyssinians lost 40 officers and 1500 men killed,
besides many more wounded. Instead of marching on to Kassala,
Ras Alula, who at this time was much offended by the transfer
of Massawa by the Egyptians to Italy, made a triumphant entry
into Asmara, and absolutely refused to make any further efforts
to extricate Egyptian garrisons from the grip of the khalifa.
Meanwhile Osman Digna, who had fled from Kufit to Kassala,
wreaked his vengeance upon the unhappy captives at Kassala.
In the neighbourhood of Suakin there were many tribes
disaffected to the khalifa's cause, and in the autumn of 1886
Colonel H. Kitchener, who was at the time governor of the Red
Sea littoral, judiciously arranged a combination of them to
overthrow Osman Digna, with the result that his stronghold at
Tamai was captured on the 7th of October, 200 of his men killed,
and 50 prisoners, 17 guns and a vast store of rifles and ammuni-
tion captured. For about a year there was comparative quiet.
Then at the end of 1887 Osman Digna again advanced towards
Suakin, but bis force at Taroi was routed by the
" Friendlies," and he fell back on Handub. Kitchener
unsuccessfully endeavoured to capture Osman Digna on the i7th
of January 1888, but in the attack was himself severely wounded,
and was shortly after invalided. Later in the year Osman Digna
collected a large force and besieged Suakin. In December the
sirdar arrived with reinforcements from Cairo, and on the 2oth
sallied out and attacked the dervishes in their trenches at
Gemaiza, clearing the whole line and inflicting considerable
loss on the enemy, who retired towards Handub, and the country
was again fairly quiet for a time. During 1889 and 1890 Tokar
became the centre of dervish authority, while Handub continued
to be occupied for the khalifa. In January 1891 Osman Digna
showed signs of increased activity, and Colonel (afterwards
Sir Charles) Holled Smith, then governor of the Red Sea littoral,
attacked Handub successfully on the 27th and occupied it, then
seized Trinkitat and Teb, and on the igth of February fought
the decisive action of Afafit, occupied Tokar, and drove Osman
Digna back to Temrin with a loss of 700 men, including
all his chief amirs. This action proved the final blow
to the dervish power in the neighbourhood of Suakin,
for although raiding continued on a small scale, the tribes were
growing tired of the khalifa's rule and refused to support Osman
Digna.
In the spring of 1891 an agreement was made between England
and Italy by which the Italian forces in Eritrea were at liberty,
if they were able, to capture and occupy Kassala, which lay close
to the western boundary of their new colony, on condition that
they restored it to Egypt at a future day when required to do so.
Three years passed before they availed themselves of this agree-
ment. In 1893 the dervishes, 12,000 strong, under Ahmed Ali,
invaded Eritrea, and were met on the 29th of December at
Agordat by Colonel Arimondi with 2000 men of a native force.
Ahmed Ali's force was completely routed and himself killed,
and in the following July Colonel Baratieri, with 2500 men,
made a fine forced march from Agordat, surprised and captured
Battle of
Afafit.
MILITARY OPERATIONS 1885-96]
EGYPT
127
on the i ;th of that month, and continued to hold it for
three yean and a half.
Tkt Abyssinian Frontiar.On the Abyssinian frontier Ras Adal
was in command of a considerable force of Abyssinians early in 1886,
and in June of that year he invaded GalUbat and defeated the
dervishes on the plain of Madana; the dervish amir Mahommed
Wad Ardal was killed and his camp captured. In the following
year the amir Vunis ed Uekeim made two successful raids into Abys-
sinian territory, upon which Ras Adal collected an enormous army,
aid to number 300,000 men, for the invasion of the Sudan. The
khalifa sent the amir Hamdan Abu Angar. a very skilful leader, with
an army of over 80,000 men against him. Abu Angar entered
Abyssinia and, in August 1887, attacked Ras Adal in the plain of
Debra Sin and, after a prolonged battle, defeated the Abyssimans.
captured their camp, and marched on Gondar, the ancient capital
of Abyssinia, which he sacked, and then returned into Oallabat.
King John, the negus of Abyssinia, burning to avenge this defeat,
marched, in February 1889, with an enormous army to Gallabat,
where the amir Zeki Tumal commanded the khalifa s forces, some
60,000 strong, and had strongly fortified the town and the camp.
On the oth of March 1889 the Abyssinians made a terrific onslaught,
stormed and burnt the town, and took thousands of prisoners.
A small party of dervishes still held a zeriba when King John was
struck by a stray bullet. The Abyssinians decided to retire, fighting
ceased, and they moved off with their prisoners and the wounded
negus. That night the king died, and the greater part of the army
having gone ahead with the prisoners, a party of Arabs pursued the
rearguard, which consisted of the king's bodyguard, routed them,
and captured the king's body, which was sent to Omdurman to
confirm the report of a brilliant victory sent by Zeki Tumal to the
khalifa. Internal strife prevented the new negus of Abyssinia from
prosecuting the war, which thus, in spite of the Abyssinian success,
resulted in the increased prestige of the khalifa. From this time,
however, the dervishes ceased to trouble the Abyssinians.
Darfur and Kordofan. On the outbreak of the mahdi's rebellion
SUtin Bey was governor of the province, and when Madibbo, the
insurgent sheikh of Kizighat, attacked and occupied Shakka and
was following up his success, Slatin twice severely defeated him,
and, having concentrated his forces at El Fasher, repulsed the
enemy again at Om Shanga. Mahdism, however, spread over Darfur
in spite of Statin's efforts to stay it. He fought no fewer than
twenty-seven actions in various parts of his province, but his own
troops, in course of time, became infected with the new faith and
deserted him. He was obliged to surrender at Oara in December
1883, and was a prisoner, first at Obeid and then at Omdurman,
untU he escaped in 1895. In January 1884 Zogal, the new dervish
amir of the province, attacked El Fasher, where Said Bey Guma
and an Egyptian garrison 1000 strong with 10 guns was still holding
out, and captured it. He also reduced the Jebel Marra district,
where the loyal hill-people gave him some trouble.
After the death of the mahdi in 1885, Madibbo revolted against
the khalifa, but was defeated by Karamalla, the dervish amir
of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and was caught and executed. A war then
sprang up between Karamalla and Sultan Yusef, who had succeeded
Zogal as amir of Darfur. Yusef was joined in 1887 by Sultan
Zayid, the black ruler of Jebel Marra, and Karamalla 's trusted
general, Ketenbur, was defeated with great slaughter at El Towaish
on the 39th of June 1887. Osman wad Adam (Ganu), amir of
Kordofan, was sent by the khalifa to Karamalla's assistance. He
forced back the Darfurians near Dara on the 26th of December,
routed Zayid in a second battle, entered El Fasher, and, in 1888,
became complete master of the situation, the two sultans being
killed. The Darfurian chiefs then allied themselves with Abu
Gemaiza, sheikh of the Masalit Arabs, who had proclaimed himself
" Khalifa Osman," and was known as the anti-mahdi. The revolt
assumed large proportions, and became the more dangerous to
Abdullah, the khalifa, by reason of its religious character, wild
rumours spreading over the country and reaching to Egypt and
Suakin of the advent to power of an opposition mahdi. Abu
Gemaiza attacked a portion of Osman Adam s force, under Abd-el-
Kader, at Kebkebia, 30 m. from El Fasher, and' almost annihilated
it on the i6th of October 1888; and a week later another large
force of Osman Adam met with the same fate at the same place.
Instead of following up his victories, Abu Gemaiza retired to Dar
Tama to augment his army, to which thousands flocked as the news
of his achievements spread far and wide. He again advanced to El
Fasher in February 1889, but wasseized with smallpox. His army,
however, under Fiici Adam, fought a fierce battle close to El Fasher
on the 22nd, which resulted in its defeat and dispersion, and Abu
Gemaiza himself dying the following day, the movement collapsed.
In 1891 Darfur and Kordofan were again disturbed, and Sultan
Abbas succeeded in turning the dervishes out of the Jebel Marra
district. Two years later a saint of Sokoto, Abu Naal Muzil el
Muhan, collected many followers and for a time threatened the
khalifa's power, but the revolt gradually died out.
Tkf Bahr-ei-Gkaial. The first outbreak in favour of Mahdism
in the Bahr-el-Ghazal took place at Liffi in August 1882, when the
Dinka tribe, under Jango, revolted and was defeated by Lupton
Bey with considerable slaughter at Tel Gauna, and again in 1883
near Liffi. In September of that year Lupton's captain, Rufai Aga,
was massacred with all his men at Dembo, and Lupton, short of
ammunition, was forced to retire to Dem Suliman, where he was
completely cut off from Khartum. After gallantly fighting for
eighteen months he was compelled by the defection of his troops
to surrender on the 2ist of April 1884 to Karamalla, the dervish
amir of the province. He died at Omuurman in 1888.
In 1890 the Shilluks in the neighbourhood of Fashoda rose against
the khalifa, and the dervish amir of Gallabat, Zeki Tumal, was
engaged for two years in suppressing the rebellion. He got the upper
hand in 1892, and was recalled to oppose an Italian force said to be
advancing from Massawa ; but on reporting that it was impossible
to invade Eritrea, as the khalifa wished him to do, he was summoned
to Omdurman and put to death. The country then relapsed into its
original barbarous condition, and dervish influence was nominal only.
In 1892 the Congo State expedition established posts up to the
seventh parallel of north latitude. _ In 1803 the dervish amir, Abu
M. 11 i. mi, fought with the Dinka tribe and was killed and his force
destroyed, the fugitives taking refuge in Shakka. In the following
year the Congo expedition established further posts, and in conse-
quence the khalifa sent 3000 men, under the amir Khatem Musa,
from Shakka to repccupy the Bahr-el-Ghazal. The Belgians at
Liffi retired before him, and he entered Faroga. Famine and disease
broke out in Khatem Musa's camp in 1895, and a retreat was made
towards Kordofan.
!'.!/ untiir in. In the Equatorial Province, which extended from
the Albert Nyanza to Lado, Emin Bey, who had a force of 1300
Egyptian troops and 3000 irregulars, distributed among many
stations, held out, hoping for reinforcements. In Marcn 1885,
however, Amadi fell to the. dervishes, and on the i8th of April
Karamalla arrived near Lado, the capital, and sent to inform Emin
of the fall of Khartum. Emin and Captain Casati, an Italian,
moved south to Wadelai, giving up the northern posts, and opened
friendly relations with Kabarega, icing of Unyoro. _ On the 26th of
February 1886 Emin received despatches from Cairo via Zanzibar,
from which he learned all that had occurred during the previous
three years, and that " he might take any step he liked, should he
decide to leave the country." He determined to remain where he
was and " hold together, as long as possible, the remnant of the
last ten years." His troops were in a mutinous state, wishing to
go north rather than south, as Emin had ordered them to do, and
unsuccessfully endeavoured to carry him with them by force.
His communications to Europe through Zanzibar led to the
relief expedition under H. M. Stanley, which went to his rescue by
way of the Congo in 1887, and after encountering incredible dangers
and experiencing innumerable sufferings, met with Emin and Casati
at Nsabe, on the Albert Nyanza, on the 2gth of April 1888. Stanley
went back in May to pick up his belated rearguard, leaving Mounteney
jephson and a small escort to accompany Emin round nis province.
The southern garrisons decided to go with Emin, but the troops at
Lahore mutinied, and a general revolt broke out, headed by Fadl-el-
Maula, governor of Fabbo. On arriving at Dufile in August 1888,
Emin and Jephson were made prisoners by the Egyptian mutineers.
In the meantime the arrival of Stanley at Lake Albert had caused
rumours, which quickly spread to Omdurman, of a great invading
white pasha, with the result that in July the khalifa sent up the river
three steamers and six barges, containing 4000 troops, to oppose
this new-comer. In October Omar-Saleh, the Mahdist commander,
took Rejaf and sent messengers to Dufile to summon Emin to
surrender; but on the 15th of November the mutineers released
both Emin and Jephson, who returned to Lake Albert with some
600 refugees, and joined Stanley in February 1889. The expedition
arrived at Zanzibar at the end of the year.
Emin's mutinous troops kept the dervishes at bay between
Wadelai and Reiaf, and eventually severely defeated them, driving
them back to Rejaf. They did not, however, follow up their victory,
and under the leadership of Fadl-el-Maula Bev remained about
Wadelai, while the dervishes strengthened their post at Rejaf.
In 1893 Fadl-el-Maula Bey and many of his men took service with
Baert of the Congo State expedition. The bey was killed fighting
the dervishes at Wandi in January 1894, and the remnant of his
men eventually were found by Captain Thruston from Uganda on
the 23rd of March 1894 at Mahagi, on the Albert Nyanza, whither
they had drifted from Wadelai in search of supplies. They were
enlisted by Thruston and brought back under the British flag to
In consequence of the Franco-Congolese Treaty of 1894, Major
Cunningham and Lieutenant Vandeleur were sent from Uganda to
Dufile, where they planted the British flag on the isth of January
1895.
SUDAN OPERATIONS, 1896-1900
The wonderful progress political, economical and social
which Egypt had made during British occupation, so ably set
forth in Sir Alfred Milner's England in Egypt (published in 1892),
together with the revelation in so strong a light of the character
of the khalifa's despotism in the Sudan and the miserable con-
dition of his misgoverned people, as detailed in the accounts
128
EGYPT
[MILITARY OPERATIONS 1896-1900
1896.
of their captivity at Omdurman by Father Ohrwalder and Slatin
Bey (published in 1892 and 1896), stirred public opinion in Great
Britain, and brought the question of the recovery of the
Sudan into prominence. A change of ministry took
place in 1895, and Lord Salisbury's cabinet, which had
consistently assailed the Egyptian policy of the old,
was not unwilling to consider whether the flourishing condition of
Egyptian finance, the prosperity of the country and the settled
state of its affairs, with a capable and proved little army ready
to hand, did not warrant an attempt being made to recover
gradually the Sudan provinces abandoned by Egypt in 1885 on
the advice of Mr Gladstone's government.
Such being the condition of public and official sentiment, the
crushing defeat of the Italians by the Abyssinians at the battle
of Adowa on the ist of March 1896, and the critical state of
Kassala held by Italy at British suggestion, and now closely
invested by the dervishes made it not only desirable but
necessary to take immediate action.
On the I4th of March 1896 Major-General Sir H. Kitchener,
who succeeded Sir Francis Grenfell as sirdar of the Egyptian
army in 1892, received orders to reoccupy Akasha, 50 m. south
of Sarras, and to carry the railway on from Sarras. Subsequent
operations were to depend upon the amount of resistance he
encountered. On the aoth of March Akasha was occupied
without opposition by an advanced column of Egyptian troops
under Major J. Collinson, who formed an entrenched camp there.
The reserves of the Egyptian army were called out, and responded
with alacrity. The troops were concentrated at Wadi Haifa;
the railway reconstruction, under Lieutenant E. P. Girouard,
R.E., pushed southward; and a telegraph line followed the
advance. At the commencement of the campaign the Egyptian
army, including reserves, consisted of 16 battalions of infantry,
of which 6 were Sudanese, 10 squadrons of cavalry, 5 batteries
of artillery, 3 companies of garrison artillery, and 8 companies
of camel corps, and it possessed 13 gunboats for river work.
Colonel H. M. L. Rundle was chief of the staff; Major F. R.
Wingate was head of the intelligence department, with Slatin
Bey as his assistant; and Colonel A. Hunter was in command
of Sarras, and south. The ist battalion of the North Stafford-
shire regiment moved up from Cairo to join the Egyptian
army.
In the meantime the advance to Akasha had already relieved
the pressure at Kassala, Osman Digna having withdrawn a
considerable force from the investing army and proceeded with
it to Suakin. To meet Osman Digna's movement Lieutenant-
Colonel G. E. Lloyd, the Suakin commandant, advanced to the
Taroi Wells, 19 m. south of Suakin, on the isth of April to
co-operate with the " Friendlies," and with Major H. M. Sidney,
advancing with a small force from Tokar. His cavalry, under
Major M. A. C. B. Fenwick, went out to look for Sidney's force,
and were surprised by a large number of dervishes. Fenwick,
with some 40 officers and men, seized an isolated hill and held
it through the night, repulsing the dervishes, who were the same
night driven back with such heavy loss in attacking Lloyd's
zeriba that they retired to the hills, and comparative quiet again
reigned at Suakin. At the end of May an Indian brigade arrived
for garrison duty, and the Egyptian troops were released for
service on the Nile.
The dervishes first came in contact with the Egyptian cavalry
on the Nile near Akasha, on the ist of May, and were repulsed.
The army concentrated at Akasha early in June, and on the
6th Kitchener moved to the attack of Firket 16 m. away, where
the amir Hamuda, with 3000 men, was encamped. The attack
was made in two columns: one, under Colonel Hunter, marching
along the river-bank, approached Firket from the north; while
the other, under Major Burn-Murdoch, making a detour through
the desert, approached it from the south. The co-operation
of the two columns was admirably timed, and on the morning of
the 7th the dervish camp was surrounded, and, after a sharp
fight, Hamuda and many amirs and about 1000 men were killed,
and 500 prisoners taken. The dash and discipline of the Egyptian
troops in this victory were a good augury for the future.
By the end of June the railway was advanced beyond Akasha,
and headquarters were at Kosha, 10 m. farther south. Cholera
and fever were busy both with the North Staffordshire regiment
at Gemai, whither they had been moved on its approach, and
with the Egyptian troops at the front, and carried off many
officers and men. The railway reached Kosha early in August;
the cholera disappeared, and stores were collected and arrange-
ments steadily made for a farther advance. The North Stafford-
shire moved up to the front, and in September the army moved on
Kerma, which was found to be evacuated, the dervishes having
crossed the river to Hafir. There they were attacked by the gun-
boats and Kitchener's artillery from the opposite bank, and forced
to retire, with their commander, Wad Bishara, seriously wounded.
Dongola was bombarded by the gunboats and captured by the
army on the 23rd of September. Bishara and his men retreated,
but were pursued by the Egyptians until the retreat became a
hopeless rout. Guns, small arms and ammunition, with large
stores of grain and dates, were captured, many prisoners taken,
while hundreds surrendered voluntarily, among them a brother
of the amir Wad en Nejumi. The dervish Dongola army had
practically ceased to exist. Debba was seized on the 3rd October,
Korti and Merawi occupied soon after, and the principal sheiks
came in and submitted to the sirdar. The Dongola campaign
was over, and the province recovered to Egypt. The Indian
brigade at Suakin returned to India, and was replaced by
Egyptians. The North Staffordshire returned to Cairo. The
work of consolidation began, and preparations were made for
a farther advance when everything should be ready.
The railway up the right bank of the Nile was continued to
Kerma, in order to evade the difficulties of the 3rd cataract;
but the sirdar had conceived the bold project of cutting
off the great angle of the Nile from Wadi Haifa to Abu
Hamed, involving nearly 600 m. of navigation and 1397.
including the 4th cataract, by constructing a railway
across the Nubian desert, and so bringing his base at Wadi Haifa
within a few hours of his force, when it should have advanced
to Abu Hamed, instead of ten days. Early in 1897 this new line
of railway was commenced from Wadi Haifa across the great
Nubian desert 230 m. to Abu Hamed. The first-mentioned
line reached Kerma in May, and by July the second had advanced
130 m. into the desert towards Abu Hamed, when it became
necessary, before it was carried farther, to secure that terminus
by an advance from Merawi.
In the meantime the khalifa was not idle. He occupied Abu
Klea wells and Metemma; recalled the amir Ibrahim Khalil,
with 4000 men, from the Ghezira; brought to Omdurman the
army of the west under Mahmud some 10,000 men; entrusted
the line of the Atbara Ed Darner, Adarama, Asubri and El
Fasher to Osman Digna; constructed defences in the Shabluka
gorge; and personally superintended the organization and drill
of the forces gathered at Omdurman, and the collection of vast
stores of food and supplies of camels for offensive expeditions.
Towards the end of June the chief of the Jaalin tribe, Abdalla
wad Said, who occupied Metemma, angered by the khalifa,
made his submission to Kitchener and asked for support, at the
same time foolishly sending a defiant letter to the khalifa. The
sirdar sent him rifles and ammunition across the desert from
Korti; but before they arrived, Mahmud 's army, sent by the
khalifa, swept down on Metemma on the ist of July and mas-
sacred Abdalla wad Said and his garrison.
On the agth of July, after several reconnaissances, Major-
General Hunter, with a flying column, marched up the Nile
from near Merawi to Abu Hamed, 133 m. distant, along the edge
of the Monassir desert. He arrived on the 7th of August and
captured it by storm, the dervishes losing 250 killed and 50
prisoners. By the end of the month the gunboats had sur-
mounted the 4th cataract and reached Abu Hamed. Berber was
found to be deserted, and occupied by Hunter on the sth of
September, and in the following month a large force was en-
trenched there. The khalifa, fearing an attack on Omdurman,
moved Osman Digna from Adarama to Shendi. In the 23rd of
October Hunter, with a flying column lightly equipped, left
MILITARY OPERATIONS 1896-1900]
EGYPT
129
Berber for Adar-ima, which he burned on the 2nd of November,
and after reconnoitring for 40 m. up the Atbara, returned to
Berber. The Nile was falling, and Kitchener decided to keep the
gunboats above the impassable rapid at I'm Tuir, 4 m. north of
the confluence of the Atbara with the Nile, where he constructed
a fort. The gunboats made repeated reconnaissances up the
river, bombarding Metemma with effect. The railway reached
Abu Hamed on the 4th of November, and was pushed rapidly
forward along the right bank of the Nile towards Berber.
The forces of the khalifa remaining quiet, the sirdar visited
Kifff* 1 * and negotiated with the Italian General Caneva for its
restoration to Egypt. The Italians were anxious to leave it ; and
on Christmas day 1897 Colonel (afterwards General Sir Charles)
Parsons, with an Egyptian force from Suakin, took it formally
over, together with a body of Arab irregulars employed by the
Italians. These troops were at once despatched to capture the
dervish posts at Asabri and El Fashcr, which they did with small
loss.
On his return from Kassala to Berber the sirdar received
information of an intended advance of the khalifa northward.
He at once ordered a concentration of Egyptian troops
towards Berber, and telegraphed to Cairo for a British
brigade. By the end of January the concentration
was complete, and the British brigade, under Major-
General Gatacrc, was at Dakhesh, south of Abu Hamed. Dis-
agreement among the khalifa's generals postponed the dervish
advance and gave Kitchener much-needed time. But at the
end of February, Mahmud crossed the Nile to Shcndi with some
12,000 fighting men, and with Osman Digna advanced along
the right bank of the Nile to Aliab, where he struck across the
desert to Nakheila, on the Atbara, intending to turn Kitchener's
left flank at Berber. The sirdar took up a position at Ras el
Hudi, on the Atbara. His force consisted of Gatacre's British
brigade (ist Warwicks, Lincolns, Seaforths and Camerons) and
Hunter's Egyptian division (3 brigades under Colonels Maxwell,
MacDonald and Lewis respectively), Broadwood's cavalry,
Tudway's camel corps and Long's artillery. The dervish army
reached Nakheila on the 20th of March, and entrenched them-
selves there in a formidable zeriba. After several reconnaissances
in which fighting took place with Mahmud's outposts, it was
ascertained from prisoners that their army was short of pro-
visions and that great leakage was going on. Kitchener, there-
fore, did not hurry. He sent his flotilla up the Nile and captured
Shcndi, the dervish depot, on the z;th of March. On the 4th
of April he advanced to Abadar. A final reconnaissance was
made on the 5th. On the following day he bivouacked at
Umdabia, where he constructed a strong zeriba, which was
garrisoned by an Egyptian battalion, and on the night of the
7th he marched to the attack of Mahmud's zeriba, which, after
an hour's bombardment on the morning of the 8th of April,
was stormed with complete success. Mahmud and several
hundred dervishes were captured, 40 amirs and 3000 Arabs
killed, and many more wounded; the rest escaped to Gedaref.
The sirdar's casualties were 80 killed and 472 wounded.
Preparations were now made for the attack on the khalifa's
force at Omdurrnan; and in the meantime the troops were
camped in the neighbourhood of Berber, and the railway carried
on to the Atbara. At the end of July reinforcements were
forwarded from Cairo; and on the 24th of August the following
troops were concentrated for the advance at Wad Hamad, above
Metemma, on the western bank of the 6th cataract: British
division, under Major-General Gatacrc, consisting of ist Brigade,
commanded by Colonel A. G. Wauchopc (ist Warwicks, Lincolns,
Seaforths and Camerons), and 2nd Brigade, commanded by
Colonel the Hon. N. G. Lyttclton (ist Northumberlands and
Grenadier Guards, 2nd Lancashire and Rifle Brigade) ; Egyptian
di vision, umler Major-General Hunter, consisting of four brigades,
commanded by Colonels MacDonald, Maxwell, Lewis and
Collinson; mounted troops 2 ist Lancers, camel corps, and
Egyptian cavalry; artillery, under Colonel Long, 2 British
batteries, 5 Egyptian batteries, and 20 machine guns; detach-
ment of Royal Engineers. The flotilla, under Commander
DC. 5
Keppcl, R.N., consisted of 10 gunboats and 5 transport steamers.
The total strength was nearly 26,000 men.
While the army moved along the west bank of the river, a
force of Arab irregulars or " Friendlies " marched along the east
bank, under command of Major Stuart-Wortley and
Lieutenant Wood, to clear it of the enemy as far as ^J^"'
the Blue Nile; and on the ist of September the gun- maa .
boats bombarded the forts on both sides of the river
and breached the great wall of Omdurman. Kitchener met with
no opposition; and on the ist of September the army bivouacked
in zeriba at Egeiga, on the west bank of the Nile, within 4 m. of
Omdurman. Here, on the morning of the 2nd of September,
the khalifa's army, 40,000 strong, attacked the zeriba, but was
repulsed with slaughter. Kitchener then moved out and marched
towards Omdurman, when he was again twice fiercely attacked
on the right flank and rear, MacDonald's brigade bearing the
brunt. MacDonald distinguished himself by his tactics, and
completely repulsed the enemy. The 2 ist Lancers gallantly
charged a body of 2000 dervishes which was unexpectedly met in
a khor on the left flank, and drove them westward, the Lancers
losing a fifth of their number in killed and wounded. The
khalifa was now in full retreat, and the sirdar, sending his
cavalry in pursuit, marched into Omdurman. The dervish loss
was over 10,000 killed, as many wounded, and 5000 prisoners.
The khalifa's black flag was captured and sent home to Queen
Victoria. The British and Egyptian casualties together were
under 500. The European prisoners of the khalifa found in
Omdurman Charles Neufeld, Joseph Ragnotti, Sister Teresa
Grigolini, and some 30 Greeks were released; and on Sunday
the 4th of September the sirdar, with representatives from every
regiment, crossed the river to Khartum, where the British and
Egyptian flags were hoisted, and a short service held in memory
of General Gordon, near the place where he met his death.
The results of the battle of Omdurman were the practical
destruction of the khalifa's army, the extinction of Mahdism
in the Sudan, and the recovery of nearly all the country formerly
under Egyptian authority.
The khalifa fled with a small force to Obeid in Kordofan.
The British troops were quickly sent down stream to Cairo,
and the sirdar, shortly afterwards created Lord Kitchener of
Khartum, was free to turn his attention to the reduction of the
country to some sort of order.
He had first, however, to deal with a somewhat serious matter
the arrival of a French expedition at Fashoda, on the White
Nile, some 600 m. above Khartum. He started for the captain
south on the loth of September, with 5 gunboats and
a small force, dispersed a body of 700 dervishes at *'
Reng on the isth, and four days later arrived at
Fashoda, to find the French Captain Marchand, with 120 Sene-
galese soldiers, entrenched there and the French flag flying.
He arranged with Marchand to leave the political question
to be settled by diplomacy, and contented himself with hoisting
the British and Egyptian flags to the south of the French flag,
and leaving a gunboat and a Sudanese battalion to guard them.
He then steamed up the river and established a post at Sobat;
and after sending a gunboat up the Bahr-el-Ghazal to establish
another post at Meshra-er-Rek, he returned to Omdurman.
The French expedition had experienced great difficulties in the
swampy region of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and had reached Fashoda
on the loth of July. It had been attacked by a dervish force
on the 25th of August, and was expecting another attack when
Kitchener arrived and probably saved it from destruction.
The Fashoda incident was the subject of important diplomatic
negotiations, which at one time approached an acute phase;
but ultimately the French position was found to be untenable,
and on the nth of December Marchand and his men returned
to France by the Sobat, Abyssinia and Jibuti. In the following
March the spheres of interest of Great Britain and France in the
Nile basin were defined by a declaration making an addition
to Article IV. of the Niger convention of the previous year.
During the sirdar's absence from Omdurman Colonel Hunter
commanded an expedition up the Blue Nile, and by the end of
130
EHRENBERG EHRENBREITSTEIN
September had occupied and garrisoned Wad Medani, Sennar,
Karkoj and Roseires. In the meantime Colonel Parsons marched
with 1400 men from Kassala on the yth of September, to capture
Gedaref . He encountered 4000 dervishes under the amir Saadalla
outside the town, and after a desperate fight, in which he lost
50 killed and 80 wounded, defeated them and occupied the
town on the 22nd. The dervishes left 500 dead on the field,
among whom were four amirs. Having strongly entrenched
himself, Parsons beat off, with heavy loss to the dervishes, two
impetuous attacks made on the 28th by Ahmed Fedil. But the
garrison of Gedaref suffered from severe sickness, and Colonel
Collinson was sent to their aid with reinforcements from Omdur-
man. He steamed up the Blue Nile and the Rahad river to
Ain-el-Owega, whence he struck across the desert, reaching
Gedaref on the 2ist of October, to find that Ahmed Fedil had
gone south with his force of 5000 men towards Roseires. Colonel
Lewis, who was at Karkoj with a small force, moved to Roseires,
where he received reinforcements from Omdurman, and on the
26th of December caught Ahmed Fedil's force as it was crossing
the Blue Nile at Dakheila, and after a very severe fight cut it up.
The dervish loss was 500 killed, while the Egyptians had 24
killed and 118 wounded. Two thousand five hundred fighting
men surrendered later, and the rest escaped with Ahmed Fedil
to join the khalifa in Kordofan.
Oil the 2$th of January 1899 Colonel Walter Kitchener was
despatched by his brother, in command of a flying column of
Operations 2OO Egyptian troops and 1700 Friendlies, which had
in the been concentrated at Faki Kohi, on the White Nile,
Sudan, some 200 m, above Khartum, to reconnoitre the
khalifa's camp at Sherkela, 130 m. west of the river,
in the heart of the Baggara country in Kordofan, and if possible
to capture it. The position was found to be a strong one,
occupied by over 6000 men; and as it was not considered
prudent to attack it with an inferior force at such a distance
from the river base, the flying column returned. No further
attempt was made to interfere with the khalifa in his far-off
retreat until towards the end of the year, when, good order
having been generally established throughout the rest of the
Sudan, it was decided to extend it to Kordofan.
In the autumn of 1899 the khalifa was at Jebel Gedir, a hill
in southern Kordofan, about 80 m. from the White Nile, and
was contemplating an advance. Lord Kitchener concentrated
8000 men at Kaka, on the river, 380 m. south of Khartum, and
moved inland on the 2oth of October. On arriving at Fongor
it was ascertained that the khalifa had gone north, and the
cavalry and camel corps having reconnoitred Jebel Gedir, the ex-
pedition returned. On the I3th November the amir Ahmed Fedil
debouched on the river at El Alub, but retired on finding Colonel
Lewis with a force in gunboats. Troops and transport were then
concentrated at Faki Kohi, and Colonel Wingate sent with
reinforcements from Khartum to take command of the expedition
and march to Gedid, where it was anticipated the khalifa would
be obliged to halt. A flying column, comprising a squadron of
cavalry, a field battery, 6 machine guns, 6 companies of the
camel corps, and a brigade of infantry and details, .in all 3700
men, under Wingate, left Faki Kohi on the 2ist of November.
The very next day he encountered Ahmed Fedil at Abu Aadel,
drove him from his position with great loss, and captured his
camp and a large supply of grain he was convoying to the
khalifa. Gedid was reached on the 23rd, and the khalifa was
ascertained to be at Om Debreikat. Wingate marched at
midnight of the 24th, and was resting his troops on high ground
in front of the khalifa's position, when at daybreak of the 2$th
his picquets were driven in and the dervishes attacked. They
were repulsed with great slaughter, and Wingate
Death of advancing, carried the camp. The khalifa Abdullah
khalifa. el Taaisha, unable to rally his men, gathered many of
his principal amirs around him, among whom were
his sons and brothers, Ali Wad Helu, Ahmed Fedil, and other
well-known leaders, and they met their death unflinchingly
from the bullets of the advancing Sudanese infantry. Three
thousand men and 29 amirs of importance, including Sheik-ed-
din, the khalifa's eldest son and intended successor, surrendered.
The dervish loss in the two actions was estimated at 1000 killed
and wounded, while the Egyptian casualties were only 4 killed
and 29 wounded. Thus ended the power of the khalifa and of
Mahdism.
On the 1 9th of January 1900 Osman Digna, who had been
so great a supporter of Mahdism in the Eastern Sudan, and had
always shown great discretion in securing the safety of his own
person, was surrounded and captured at Jebel Warriba, as he
was wandering a fugitive among the hills beyond Tokar.
The reconquest of Dongola and the Sudan provinces during the
three years from March 1896 to December 1898, considering the
enormous extent and difficulties of the country, was achieved at an
unprecedentedly small cost, while the main item of expenditure
the railway remains a permanent benefit to the country. The
figures are :
Railways . . . ... . .1,181,372
Telegraphs . . . 21,825
Gunboats ...... 154,934
Military ...... 996,223
Total . . E.2.354,354
Towards this expense the British government gave a grant-in-aid of
800,000, and the balance was borne by the Egyptian treasury.
The railway, delayed by the construction of the big bridge over the
Atbara, was opened to the Blue Nile opposite Khartum, 187 m. from
the Atbara, at the end of 1899. (R. H. V.)
EHRENBERG, CHRISTIAN GOTTFRIED (1795-1876),
German naturalist, was born at Delitzsch in Saxony on the igth
of April 1795. After studying at Leipzig and Berlin, where he
took the degree of doctor of medicine in 1818, he was appointed
professor of medicine in the university of Berlin (1827). Mean-
while in 1820 he was engaged in a scientific exploration conducted
by General von Minutoli in Egypt. They investigated parts of
the Libyan desert, the Nile valley and the northern coasts of
the Red Sea, where Ehrenberg made a special study of the corals.
Subsequently parts of Syria, Arabia and Abyssinia were ex-
amined. Some results of these travels and of the important
collections that had been made were reported on by Humboldt
in 1826; and afterwards Ehrenberg was enabled to bring out
two volumes Symbolae physicae (1828-1834), in which many
particulars of the mammals, birds, insects, &c., were made public.
Other observations were communicated to scientific societies. In
1829 he accompanied Humboldt through eastern Russia to the
Chinese frontier. On his return he gave his attention to micro-
scopical researches. These had an important bearing on some
of the infusorial earths used for polishing and other economic
purposes; they added, moreover, largely to our knowledge of
the microscopic organisms of certain geological formations,
especially of the chalk, and of the modern marine and freshwater
accumulations. Until Ehrenberg took up the study it was not
known that considerable masses of rock were composed of
minute forms of animals or plants. He demonstrated also that
the phosphorescence of the sea was due to organisms. He
continued until late in life to investigate the microscopic organ-
isms of the deep sea and of various geological formations. He
died in Berlin on the 27th of June 1876.
PUBLICATIONS. Die Infusionsthierchen als vollkommene Organis-
men (2 vols. fol., Leipzig, 1838); Mikrogeologie (2 vols. fol., Leipzig,
1854); and " Fortsetzung der mikrogeologischen Studien," in
Abhandl. der k. Akad. der Wissenschaft (Berlin, 1875).
EHRENBREITSTEIN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian
Rhine province, on the right bank of the Rhine, facing Coblenz,
with which it is connected by a railway bridge and a bridge of
boats, on the main line of railway Frankfort-on-Main-Cologne.
Pop. (including the garrison) 5300. It has an Evangelical and
two Roman Catholic churches, a Capuchin monastery, tanneries,
soap-works and a considerable trade in wine. Above the town,
facing the mouth of the Mosel, on a rock 400 ft. high, lies the
magnificent fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, considered practically
impregnable. The sides towards the Rhine and the south and
south-east are precipitous, and on the south side, on which is
the winding approach, strongly defended. The central fort or
citadel is flanked by a double line of works with three tiers .of
casemate batteries, The works towards the north and north-east
EHUD EICHHORN, J. G.
end in a separate outlying fort. The whole forms a part of
the system of fortifications which surround Coblenz.
The site of the castle is said to have been occupied by a Roman
fort built in the time of the emperor Julian. In the nth century
the castle was held by a noble named Erembert, from whom it
i* said to have derived its name. In the nth century it came
into the possession of Archbishop HiUin (de Fallemagne) of
Trier, who strengthened the defences in 1153. These were
again extended by Archbishop Henry II. (de Fenetrange) in
1286, and by Archbishop John II. of Baden in 1481. In 1631
it was surrendered by the archbishop elector Philip Christopher
von Soetern to the French, but was recovered by the Imperialists
in 1637 and given to the archbishop elector of Cologne. It was
restored to the elector of Trier in 1650, but was not strongly
fortified until 1672. In 1688 the French bombarded it in vain,
but in 1759 they took it and held it till 1762. It was again
blockaded in 1795, 1706 and 1797, in vain; but in 1799 they
starved it into surrender, and at the peace of LuneVille in 1801
blew it up before evacuating it. At the second peace of Paris
the French paid 15,000,000 francs to the Prussian government
for its restoration, and from 1816 to 1826 the fortress was
reconstructed by General E. L. Aster (1778-1855).
EHUD, in the Bible, a " judge " who delivered Israel from
the Moabites (Judg. iii. 12-30). He was sent from Ephraim to
bear tribute to Eglon king of Moab, who had crossed over the
Jordan and seized the district around Jericho. Being, like the
Benjamites, left-handed (cf. xx. 16), he was able to conceal a
dagger and strike down the king before his intentions were sus-
pected. He locked Eglon in his chamber and escaped. The
men from Mt Ephraim collected under his leadership and by
seizing the fords of the Jordan were able to cut off the Moabites.
He is called the son of Gera a Benjamite, but since both Ehud
and Gera are tribal names (2 Sam. xvi. 5, i Chron. viii. 3, 5 sq.)
it has been thought that this notice is not genuine. The tribe
of Benjamin rarely appears in the old history of the Hebrews
before the time of Saul. See further BENJAMIN; JUDGES.
EIBENSTOCK, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Saxony,
near the Mulde, on the borders of Bohemia, 17 m. by rail S.S.E.
of Zwickau. Pop. (1905) 7460. It is a principal seat of the
tambour embroidery which was introduced in 1775 by Clara
Angermann. It possesses chemical and tobacco manufactories,
and tin and iron works. It has also a large cattle market. Eiben-
stock, together with Schwarzenbcrg, was acquired by purchase
in 1533 by Saxony and was granted municipal rights in the
following year.
EICHBERG, JULIUS (1824-1893), German musical composer,
was born at Diisseldorf on the I3th of June 1824. When he was
nineteen he entered the Brussels Conservatoire, where he took
first prizes for violin-playing and composition. For eleven years
he occupied the post of professor in the Conservatoire of Geneva.
In 1857 he went to the United States, staying two years in New
York and then proceeding to Boston, where he became director
of the orchestra at the Boston Museum. In 1867 he founded the
Boston Conservatory of Music. Eichberg published several
educational works on music; and his four operettas, The Doctor
f Alcantara, The Rose of Tyrol, The Two Cadis and A Night in
Rome, were highly popular. He died in Boston on the i8th of
January 1893.
EICHENDORFF. JOSEPH. FREIHERR VON (1788-1857),
Gernufo poet and romance-writer, was born at Lubowitz, near
Ratibor, in Silesia, on the loth of March 1788. He studied law
at Halle and Heidelberg from 1805 to 1808. After a visit to
Paris he went to Vienna, where he resided until 1813, when he
joined the Prussian army as a volunteer in the famous Ltltzow
corps. When peace was concluded in 1815, he left the army,
and in the following year he was appointed to a judicial office
at Breslau. He subsequently held similar offices at Danzig,
Kdnigsberg and Berlin. Retiring from public service in 1844,
be lived successively in Danzig, Vienna, Dresden and Berlin.
He died at Neisse on the 26th of November 1857. Eichendorff
was one of the most distinguished of the later members of the
German romantic school. His genius was essentially lyrical.
Thus he is most successful in his shorter romances and drum;i>.
where constructive power is least called for. His first work,
written in iSn.was a romance, Ahnung uttd Gegenwart (1815):
This was followed at short intervals by several others, among
which the foremost place is by general consent assigned to Aus
dem Leben fines Taugenichts (1826), which has often been re-
printed. Of his dramas may be mentioned Eztelin von Romano
(1828) ; and Derletatc Held von Marienburg (1830), both tragedies;
and a comedy, Die Freier (1833). He also translated several
of Calderon's religious dramas (Geistllche Sckauspiclc, 1846).
It is, however, through his lyrics (Gtdichie, first collected 1837)
that Eichendorff is best known; he is the greatest lyric poet of
the romantic movement. No one has given more beautiful
expression than he to the poetry of a wandering life; often, again,
his lyrics are exquisite word pictures interpreting the mystic
meaning of the moods of nature, as in Nachts, or the old-time
mystery which yet haunts the twilight forests and feudal castles
of Germany, as in the dramatic lyric W ' aldesgesprUch or Auj
einer Burg. Their language is simple and musical, which makes
them very suitable for singing, and they have been often set,
notably by Schubert and Schumann.
In the later years of his life Eichendorff published several
works on subjects in literary history and criticism such as (fber
die ethische uttd religiose Bedeutung der neuen romantischen
Poesie in Deutschland (1847), Der deulsche Roman des 18.
Jahrhunderts in seinem Verhdltniss zum Christenthum (1851),
and Geschichte der poetise/ten Litleralur Deutschlands (1856),
but the value of these works is impaired by the author's re-
actionary standpoint. An edition of his collected works in six
volumes, appeared at Leipzig in 1870.
Eichendorff's Sdmtiiche Werke appeared in 6 vols., 1864 (reprinted
1869-1870); his Sdmtiiche poetische Werke in 4 vols. (1883). The
latest edition is that edited by R. von Gottschall in 4 vols. (1901).
A good selection edited by M. Koch will be found in vol. 145 of
Kiirschner's Deutsche Nationalliteratur (1893). Eichendorff's critical
writings were collected in 1866 under the title Vermischte Sil.rifltn
(5 vols.). Cp. H. von Eichendorff's biographical introduction to the
Sdmtiiche Werke; also H. Keiter, Joseph von Eichendorff (Cologne,
1887); H. A. Kruger, Der junge Eichendorff (Oppeln, 1898).
EICHHORN, JOHANN GOTTFRIED (1752-1827), German
theologian, was born at Dorrenzimmern, in the principality of
Hohenlohe-Oehringen, on the i6th of October 1752. He was
educated at the state school in Weikersheim, where his father
was superintendent, at the gymnasium at Heilbronn and at the
university of Gottingen (1770-1774), studying under J. D.
Michaelis. In 1774 he received the rectorship of the gymnasium
at Ohrdruf, in the duchy of Gotha, and in the following year was
made professor of Oriental languages at Jena. On the death
of Michaelis in 1788 he was elected professor ordinarius at
Gottingen, where he lectured not only on Oriental languages and
on the exegesis of the Old and New Testaments, but also on politi-
cal history. His health was shattered in 1825, but he continued
his lectures until attacked by fever on the I4th of June 1827.
He died on the 27th of that month. Eichhorn has been called
" the founder of modern Old Testament criticism." He first
properly recognized its scope and problems, and began many of
its most important discussions. " My greatest trouble," he
says in the preface to the second edition of his Einleitung, '* I had
to bestow on a hitherto unworked field on the investigation of
the inner nature of the Old Testament with the help of the Higher
Criticism (not a new name to any humanist)." His investigations
led him to the conclusion that " most of the writings of the
Hebrews have passed through several hands." He took for
granted that all the so-called supernatural facts relating to the
Old and New Testaments were explicable on natural principles.
He sought to judge them from the standpoint of the ancient
world, and to account for them by the superstitious beliefs which
were then generally in vogue. He did not perceive in the biblical
books any religious ideas of much importance for modern times;
they interested him merely historically and for the light they
cast upon antiquity. He regarded many books of the Old
Testament as spurious, questioned the genuineness of i Peter
and Jude, denied the Pauline authorship of Timothy and Titus,
132
EICHHORN, K. F. EIDER
and suggested that the canonical gospels were based upon various
translations and editions of a primary Aramaic gospel. He did
not appreciate as sufficiently as David Strauss and the Tubingen
critics the difficulties which a natural theory has to surmount,
nor did he support his conclusions by such elaborate discussions
as they deemed necessary.
His principal works were Geschichte des Ostindischen Handels vor
Mohammed (Gotha, 1775); Allgemeine Bibliothek der biblischen
Literatur (10 vols., Leipzig, 1787-1801) ; Einleitung in das Alte Testa-
ment (3 vols., Leipzig, I78o_-i783) ; Einleitung in das Neue Testament
(1804-1812); Einlettung in die apokryphischen Biicher des Alien
Testaments (Gott., 1795); Commentarius in apocalypsin Joannis
(2 vols., Gott., 1791); Die Hebr. Propheten (3 vols., Gott., 1816-
1819); Allgemeine Geschichte der Cultur und Literatur des neuern
Europa (2 vols., Gott., 1706-1799) ; Literdrgeschichte (ist vol., Gott.,
1799, 2nd ed. 1813, 2nd vol. 1814); Geschichte der Literatur von
ihrem Anfange bis auf die neuesten Zeiten (5 vols., Gott., 18051812) ;
Obersicht der Franzosischen Revolution (2 vols., Gott., 1797); Welt-
geschichte (yd ed., 5 vols., Gott., 1819-1820); Geschichte der drei
letzten Jahrhunderte (yd ed., 6 vols., Hanover, 1817-1818); Ur-
geschichte des erlauchten Houses der Welfen (Hanover, 1817).
See R. W. Mackay, The Tubingen School and its Antecedents (1863),
pp. 103 ff.; Otto Pfleiderer, Development of Theology (1890), p. 209;
T. K. Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism (1893), pp. 13 ff.
EICHHORN, KARL FRIEDRICH (1781-1854), German jurist,
son of the preceding, was born at Jena on the 2oth of November
1781. He entered the university of Gottingen in 1797. In 1805
he obtained the professorship of law at Frankfort-on-Oder,
holding it till 1811, when he accepted the same chair at Berlin.
On the call to arms in 1813 he became a captain of horse, and
received at the end of the war the decoration of the Iron Cross.
In 1817 he was offered the chair of law at Gottingen, and, pre-
ferring it to the Berlin professorship, taught there with great
success till ill-health compelled him to resign in 1828. His
successorin the Berlin chair having diedin 1832, he again entered
on its duties, but resigned two years afterwards. In 1832 he also
received an appointment in the ministry of foreign affairs, which,
with his labours on many state committees and his legal re-
searches and writings, occupied him till his death at Cologne
on the 4th of July 1854. Eichhorn is regarded as one of the
principal authorities on German constitutional law. His chief
work is Deutsche Stoats- und Rechtsgeschichte (Gottingen, 1808-
1823, sth ed. 1843-1844). In company with Savigny and
J. F. L. Goschen he founded the Zeitschrift fur geschichtliche
Rechtswissenschaft. He was the author besides of Einleitung
in das deutsche Privatrecht mil Einschluss des Lehnrechts (Gott.,
1823) and the Grundsdtze des Kirchenrechts der Katholischen und
der Evangelischen Religionsparteiin Deutschland, 2 Bde. (ib., 1831-
1833)-
See Schulte, Karl Friedrich Eichhorn, sein Leben und Wirken
(1884).
EICHSTATT, a town and episcopal see of Germany, in the
kingdom of Bavaria, in the deep and romantic valley of the
Altmtthl, 35 m. S. of Nuremberg, on the railway to Ingolstadt
and Munich. Pop. (1905) 7701. The town, with its numerous
spires and remains of medieval fortifications, is very picturesque.
It has an Evangelical and seven Roman Catholic churches,
among the latter the cathedral of St Wih'bald (first bishop of
Eichstatt), with the tomb of the saint and numerous pictures
and relics, the church of St Walpurgis, sister of Wilibald,
whose remains rest in the choir, and the Capuchin church, a copy
of the Holy Sepulchre. Of its secular buildings the most notice-
able are the town hall and the Leuchtenberg palace, once the
residence of the prince bishops and later of the dukes of Leuchten-
berg (now occupied by the court of justice of the district), with
beautiful grounds. The Wilibaldsburg, built on a neighbouring
hill in the i4th century by Bishop Bertold of Hohenzollern, was
long the residence of the prince bishops of Eichstatt, and now
contains an historical museum. There are an episcopal lyceum,
a clerical seminary, a classical and a modern school, and numerous
religious houses. The industries of the town include bootmaking,
brewing and the production of lithographic stones.
Eichstatt (Lat. Aureatum or Rubilocus) was originally a Roman
station which, after the foundation of the bishopric by Boniface
in 745, developed into a considerable town, which was surrounded
with walls in 008. The bishops of Eichstatt were princes of the
Empire, subject to the spiritual jurisdiction of the archbishops
of Mainz, and ruled over considerable territories in the Circle of
Franconia. In 1802 the see was secularized and incorporated
in Bavaria. In 1817 it was given, with the duchy of Leuchten-
berg, as a mediatized domain under the Bavarian crown, by the
king of Bavaria to his son-in-law Eugene de Beauharnais,
ex-viceroy of Italy, henceforth styled duke of Leuchtenberg.
In 1855 it reverted to the Bavarian crown.
EICHWALD, KARL EDUARD VON (1795-1876), Russian
geologist and physician, was born at Mitau in Courland on the
4th of July 1795. He became doctor of medicine and professor
of zoology in Kazan in 1823 ; four years later professor of zoology
and comparative anatomy at Vilna; in 1838 professor of
zoology, mineralogy and medicine at St Petersburg; and finally
professor of palaeontology in the institute of mines in that city.
He travelled much in the Russian empire, and was a keen
observer of its [natural history and geology. He died at St
Petersburg on the loth of November 1876. His published works
include Reise auf dem Caspischen Metre und in den Caucasus,
2 vols. (Stuttgart and.,Tubingen, 1834-1838); Die Urwelt Russ-
lands (St Petersburg, 1840-1845); Lethaea Rossica, ou paleonto-
logie de la Russie, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1852-1868), with Atlases.
EIDER, a river of Prussia, in the province of Schleswig-
Holstein. It rises to the south of Kiel, in Lake Redder, flows
first north, then west (with wide-sweeping curves), and after a
course of 1 1 7 m. enters the North Sea at Tonning. It is navigable
up to Rendsburg, and is embanked through the marshes across
which it runs in its lower course. Since the reign of Charlemagne,
the Eider (originally Agyr Dor Neptune's gate) was known
as Romani terminus imperil and was recognized as the boundary
of the Empire in 1027 by the emperor Conrad II., the founder
of the Salian dynasty. In the controversy arising out of the
Schleswig-Holstein Question, which culminated in the war of
Austria and Prussia against Denmark in 1864, the Eider gave
its name to the " Eider Danes," the intransigeant Danish party
which maintained that Schleswig (Stfnderjylland, South Jutland)
was by nature and historical tradition an integral part of Den-
mark. The Eider Canal (Eider-Kanal) , which was constructed
between 1777 and 1784, leaves the Eider at the point where the
river turns to the west and enters the Bay of Kiel at Holtenau. It
was hampered by six sluices, but was used annually by some
4000 vessels, and until its conversion in 1887-1895 into the
Kaiser Wilhelm Canal afforded the only direct connexion between
the North Sea and the Baltic.
EIDER (Icelandic, jEa'ur) , a large marine duck, the Somateria
mollissima of ornithologists, famous for its down, which, from
its extreme lightness and elasticity, is in great request for filling
bed-coverlets. This bird generally frequents low rocky islets
near the coast, and in Iceland and Norway has long been afforded
every encouragement and protection, a fine being inflicted for
killing it during the breeding-season, or even for firing a gun near
its haunts, while artificial nesting-places are in many localities
contrived for its further accommodation. From the care thus
taken of it in those countries it has become exceedingly tame at
its chief resorts, which are strictly regarded as property, and the
taking of eggs or down from them, except by authorized persons,
is severely punished by law. In appearance the eider is some-
what clumsy, though it flies fast and dives admirably. The
female is of a dark reddish-brown colour barred with brownish-
black. The adult male in spring is conspicuous by his pied
plumage of velvet-black beneath, and white above: a patch
of shining sea-green on his head is only seen on close inspection.
This plumage he is considered not to acquire until his third
year, being when young almost exactly like the female, and
it is certain that the birds which have not attained their full
dress remain in flocks by themselves without going to the
breeding-stations. The nest is generally in some convenient
corner among large stones, hollowed in the soil, and furnished
with a few bits of dry grass, seaweed or heather. By the time
that the full number of eggs (which rarely if ever exceeds five)
is laid the down is added. Generally the eggs and down are
EIFEL EILDON HILLS
133
Uken at intervals of a few days by the owners of the " eider-
fold," and the birds are thus kept depositing both during the
whole season; but some experience is needed to ensure the
greatest profit from each commodity. Every duck is ultimately
allowed to hatch an egg or two to keep up the stock, and the
down of the last nest is gathered after the birds have left the spot.
The story of the drake's furnishing down, after the duck's
supply is exhausted is a fiction. He never goes near the nest.
The eggs have a strong flavour, but are much relished by both
Icelanders and Norwegians. In the Old World the eider breeds
in suitable localities from Spitsbergen to the Faroe Islands off
the coast of Northumberland where it is known as St Cuthbcrt's
duck. Its food consists of marine animals (molluscs and crus-
taceans), and hence the young are not easily reared in captivity.
The eider of the New World differs somewhat, and has been
described as a distinct species (S. dresser i). Though much
diminished in numbers by persecution, it is still abundant on
the coast of Newfoundland and thence northward. In Greenland
also eiders are very plentiful, and it is supposed that three-
fourths of the supply of down sent to Copenhagen comes from
that country. The limits of the eider's northern range are not
known, but the Arctic expedition of 1875 did not meet with it
after leaving the Danish settlements, and its place was taken
by an allied species, the king-duck (S. spectabilis) , a very beautiful
bird which sometimes appears on the British coast. The female
greatly resembles that of the eider, but the male has a black
chevron on his chin and a bright orange prominence on his
forehead, which last seems to have given the species its English
name. On the west coast of North America the eider is repre-
sented by a species (S. v-nigntm) with a like chevron, but other-
wise resembling the Atlantic bird. In the same waters two
other fine species are also found (S. fischeri and S. stelleri), one
of which (the Utter) also inhabits the Arctic coast of Russia
and East Finmark and has twice reached England. The Labra-
dor duck (S. labradoria), now extinct, also belongs to this
group. (A. N.)
EIFEL, a district of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine Province,
between the Rhine, the Moselle and the frontier of the grand
duchy of Luxemburg. It is a hilly region, most elevated in the
eastern part (Hohe Eifel), where there are several points from
2000 up to 24 10 ft. above sea-level. In the west is the Schneifels
or Schnee-Eifel ; and the southern part, where the most pictur-
esque scenery and chief geological interest is found, is called
the Vorder Eifcl.
The Eifel is an ancient massif of folded Devonian rocks
upon the margins of which, near Hillesheim and towards Bit burg
and Trier, rest unconformably the nearly undisturbed sandstones,
marls and limestones of the Trias. On the southern border,
at Wittlich. the terrestrial deposits of the Permian Rothliegende
are also met with. The slates and sandstones of the Lower
Devonian form by far the greater part of the region ; but folded
amongst these, in a series of troughs running from south-west
to north-east lie the fossiliferous limestones of the Middle
Devonian, and occasionally, as for example near Biideshcim,
a few small patches of the Upper Devonian. Upon the ancient
floor of folded Devonian strata stand numerous small volcanic
cones, many of which, though long extinct, are still very perfect
in form. The precise age of the eruptions is uncertain. The
only sign of any remaining volcanic activity is the emission in
many places of carbon dioxide and of heated waters. There is no
historic or legendary record of any eruption, but nevertheless the
eruptions must have continued to a very recent geological period.
The lavas of Papenkaulc are clearly posterior to the excavation
of the valley of the Kyll, and an outflow of basalt has forced
the Uess to seek a new course. The volcanic rocks occur both
as tuffs and as lava-flows. They are chiefly leucitc and nephelinc
rocks, such as leucititc, leucitophyre and ncphelinite, but basalt
and trachyte also occur. The leucitc lavas of Niedermcndig con-
tain haviync in abundance. The most extensive and continuous
area of volcanic rocks is that surrounding the Laachcr See and
extending eastwards to Neuwied and Coblenz and even beyond
the Rhine.
The numerous so-called crater-lakes or maare of the Eifel
present several features of interest. They do not, as a rule,
lie in true craters at the summit of volcanic cones, but rather
in hollows which have been formed by explosions. The most
remarkable group is that of Daun, where the three depressions
of GemUnd, Weinfeld and Schalkenmehren have been hollowed
out in the Lower Devonian strata. The first of these shows no
sign of either lavas or scoriae, but volcanic rocks occur on the
margins of the other two. The two largest lakes in the Eifel
region, however, are the Laacher See in the hills west of Andcr-
nach on the Rhine, and the Pulvermaar S.E. of the Daun group,
with its shores of peculiar volcanic sand, which also appears in
its waters as a black powder (pulvcr).
EIFFEL TOWER. Erected for the exposition of 1889, the
Eiffel Tower, in the Champ de Mars, Paris, is by far the highest
artificial structure in the world, and its height of 300 metres
(984 ft.) surpasses that of the obelisk at Washington by 429 ft.,
and that of St Paul's cathedral by 580 ft. Its framework is
composed essentially of four uprights, which rise from the
corners of a square measuring 100 metres on the side; thus the
area it covers at its base is nearly 2$ acres. These uprights
are supported on huge piers of masonry and concrete, the
foundations for which were carried down, by the aid of iron
caissons and compressed air, to a depth of about 15 metres on
the side next the Seine, and about 9 metres on the other side.
At first they curve upwards at an angle of 54; then they
gradually become straighter, until they unite in a single shaft
rather more than half-way up. The first platform, at a height
of 57 metres, has an area of 5860 sq. yds., and is reached either
by staircases or lifts. The next, accessible by lifts only, is 115
metres up, and has an area of 32 sq. yds; while the third, at
276, supports a pavilion capable of holding 800 persons. Nearly
25 metres higher up still is the lantern, with a gallery 5 metres
in diameter. The work of building this structure, which is
mainly composed of iron lattice-work, was begun on the 28th
of January 1887, and the full height was reached on the I3th of
March 1889. Besides being one of the sights of Paris, to which
visitors resort in order to enjoy the extensive view that can be
had from its higher galleries on a clear day, the tower is used to
some extent for scientific and semi-scientific purposes; thus
meteorological observations are carried on. The engineer under
whose direction the tower was constructed was Alexandre
Gustave Eiffel (born at Dijon on the isth of December 1832),
who had already had a wide experience in the construction of
large metal bridges, and who designed the huge sluices for the
Panama Canal, when it was under the French company.
EILDON HILLS, a group of three conical hills, of volcanic
origin, in Roxburghshire, Scotland, i m. S. by E. of Melrose,
about equidistant from Melrose and St Boswells stations on the
North British railway. They were once known as Eldune the
Eldunum of Simeon of Durham (fl. 1 130) probably derived from
the Gaelic aill, " rock," and dun, " hill "; but the name is also
said to be a corruption of the Cymric moeldun, " bald hill."
The northern peak is 1327 ft. high, the central 1385 ft. and the
southern 1216 ft. Whether or not the Roman station of Tri-
montium was situated here is matter of controversy. According
to General William Roy (1726-1790) Trimontium so called,
according to this theory, from the triple Eildon heights was
Old Melrose; other authorities incline to place the station on the
northern shore of the Solway Firth. The Eildons have been the
subject of much legendary lore. Michael Scot (1175-1234),
acting as a confederate of the Evil One (so the fable runs) cleft
Eildon Hill, then a single cone, into the three existing peaks.
Another legend states that Arthur and his knights sleep in a
vault beneath the Eildons. A third legend centres in Thomas
of Erceldoune. The Eildon Tree Stone, a large moss-covered
boulder, lying on the high road as it bends towards the west
within 2 m. of Melrose, marks the spot where the Fairy Queen
led him into her realms in the heart of the hills. Other places
associated with this legend may still be identified. Huntly
Banks, where " true Thomas " lay and watched the queen's
approach, is half a mile west of the Eildon Tree Stone, and on the
EILENBURG EINHARD
west side of the hills is Bogle Burn, a streamlet that feeds the
Tweed and probably derives its name from his ghostly visitor.
Here, too, is Rhymer's glen, although the name was invented
by Sir Walter Scott, who added the dell to his Abbotsford estate.
Bowden, to the south of the hills, was the birthplace of the poets
Thomas Aird (1802-1876) and James Thomson, and its parish
church contains the burial-place of the dukes of Roxburghe.
Eildon Hall is a seat of the duke of Buccleuch.
EILENBURG, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province
of Saxony, on an island formed by the Mulde, 31 m. E. from
Halle, at the junction of the railways Halle-Cottbus and Leipzig-
Eilenburg. Pop. (1905) 15,145. There are three churches, two
Evangelical and one Roman Catholic. The industries of the
town include the manufacture of chemicals, cloth, quilting,
calico, cigars and agricultural implements, bleaching, dyeing,
basket-making, carriage-building and trade in cattle. In the
neighbourhood is the iron foundry of Erwinhof. Opposite the
town, on the steep left -bank of the Mulde, is the castle from
which it derives its name, the original seat of the noble family
of Eulenburg. This castle (Ilburg) is mentioned in records of
the reigns of Henry the Fowler as an important outpost against
the Sorbs and Wends. The town itself, originally called
Mildenau, is of great antiquity. It is first mentioned as a town
in 981, when it belonged to the house of Wettin and was the
chief town of the East Mark. In 1386 it was incorporated in
the margraviate of Meissen. In 1815 it passed to Prussia.
SeeGundermann, ChronikderStadtEilenburg (Eilenburg, 1879).
EINBECK, or EIMBECK, a town of Germany, in the Prussian
province of Hanover, on the Urn, 50 m. by rail S. of Hanover.
Pop. (1905) 8709. It is an old-fashioned town with many quaint
wooden houses, notable among them the " Northeimhaus," a
beautiful specimen of medieval architecture. There are several
churches, among them the Alexanderkirche, containing the
tombs of the princes of Grubenhagen, and a synagogue. The
schools include a Realgymnasium (i.e. predominantly for
" modern " subjects), technical schools for the advanced study
of machine-making, for weaving and for the textile industries,
a preparatory training-college and a police school. The in-
dustries include brewing, weaving and the manufacture of
cloth, carpets, tobacco, sugar, leather-grease, toys and roofing-
felt.
Einbeck grew up originally round the monastery of St
Alexander (founded 1080), famous for its relic of the True Blood.
It is first recorded as a town in 1274, and in the I4th century
was the seat of the princes of Grubenhagen, a branch of the
ducal house of Brunswick. The town subsequently joined the
Hanseatic League. In the isth century it became famous for
its beer (" Eimbecker," whence the familiar " Bock "). In 1540
the Reformation was introduced by Duke Philip of Brunswick-
Saltzderhelden (d. 1551), with the death of whose son Philip II.
(1596) the Grubenhagen line became extinct. In 1626, during
the Thirty Years' War, Einbeck was taken by Pappenheim and
in October 1641 by Piccolomini. In 1643 it was evacuated by the
Imperialists. In 1761 its walls were razed by the French.
See H. L. Harland, Gesch. der Siadt Einbeck, 2 Bde. (Einbeck,
1854-1859; abridgment, ib. 1881).
EINDHOVEN, a town in the province of North Brabant,
Holland, and a railway junction 8 m. by rail W. by S. of
Helmond. Pop. (1900) 4730. Like Tilburg and Helmond it
has developed in modern times into a flourishing industrial
centre, having linen, woollen, cotton, tobacco and cigar,
matches, &c., factories and several breweries.
EINHARD (c. 770-840), the friend and biographer of Charle-
magne; he is also called Einhartus, Ainhardus or Heinhardus,
in some of the early manuscripts. About the loth century
the name was altered into Agenardus, and then to Eginhardus,
or Eginhartus, but, although these variations were largely used
in the English and French languages, the form Einhardus, or
Einhartus, is unquestionably the right one.
According to the statement of Walafrid Strabo, Einhard was
born in the district which is watered by the river Main, and his
birth has been fixed at about 770. His parents were of noble
birth, and were probably named Einhart and Engilfrit; and
their son was educated in the monastery of Fulda, where he
was certainly residing in 788 and in 79 1. Owing to his intelligence
and ability he was transferred, not later than 796, from Fulda
to the palace of Charlemagne by abbot Baugulf; and he soon
became very intimate with the king and his family, and under-
took various important duties, one writer calling him domesticus
palatii regalis. He was a member of the group of scholars who
gathered around Charlemagne and was entrusted with the
charge of the public buildings, receiving, according to a fashion
then prevalent, the scriptural name of Bezaleel (Exodus xxxi. 2
and xxxv. 30-35) owing to his artistic skill. It has been supposed
that he was responsible for the erection of the basilica at Aix-la-
Chapelle, where he resided with the emperor, and the other
buildings mentioned in chapter xvii. of his Vita Karoli Magni,
but there is no express statement to this effect. In 806 Charle-
magne sent him to Rome to obtain the signature of Pope Leo III.
to a will which he had made concerning the division of his
empire; and it was possibly owing to Einhard 's influence that
in 813, after the death of his two elder sons, the emperor made
his remaining son, Louis, a partner with himself in the imperial
dignity. When Louis became sole emperor in 814 he retained
his father's minister in his former position; then in 817 made
him tutor to his son, Lothair, afterwards the emperor Lothair I. ;
and showed him many other marks of favour. Einhard married
Emma, or Imma, a sister of Bernharius, bishop of Worms, and
a tradition of the 1 2th century represented this lady as a daughter
of Charlemagne, and invented a romantic story with regard to
the courtship which deserves to be noticed as it frequently
appears in literature. Einhard is said to have visited the
emperor's daughter regularly and secretly, and on one occasion
a fall of snow made it impossible for him to walk away without
leaving footprints, which would lead to his detection. This risk,
however, was obviated by the foresight of Emma, who carried
her lover across the courtyard of the palace; a scene which was
witnessed by Charlemagne, who next morning narrated the
occurrence to his counsellors, and asked for their advice. Very
severe punishments were suggested for the clandestine lover,
but the emperor rewarded the devotion of the pair by consenting
to their marriage. This story is, of course, improbable, and is
further discredited by the fact that Einhard does not mention
Emma among the number of Charlemagne's children. Moreover,
a similar story has been told of a daughter of the emperor
Henry III. It is uncertain whether Einhard had any children.
He addressed a letter to a person named Vussin, whom he calls
fili and mi note, but, as Vussin is not mentioned in documents
in which his interests as Einhard's son would have been
concerned, it is possible that he was only a young man in whom
he took a special interest. In January 815 the emperor Louis I.
bestowed on Einhard and his wife the domains of Michelstadt
and Mulinheim in the Odenwald, and in the charter conveying
these lands he is called simply Einhardus, but, in a document
dated the 2nd of June of the same year, he is referred to as abbot.
After this time he is mentioned as head of several monasteries:
St Peter, Mount Blandin and St Bavon at Ghent, St Servais
at Maastricht, St Cloud near Paris, and Fontenelle near Rouen,
and he also had charge of the church of St John the Baptist
at Pavia.
During the quarrels which took place between Louis I. and
his sons, in consequence of the emperor's second marriage,
Einhard's efforts were directed to making peace, but after a time
he grew tired of the troubles and intrigues of court life. In 818
he had given his estate at Michelstadt to the abbey of Lorsch,
but he retained Mulinheim, where about 827 he founded an
abbey and erected a church, to which he transported some relics
of St Peter and St Marcellinus, which he had procured from
Rome. To Mulinheim, which was afterwards called Seligenstadt,
he finally retired in 830. His wife, who had been his constant
helper, and whom he had not put away on becoming an abbot,
died in 836, and after receiving a visit from the emperor, Einhard
died on the I4th of March 840. He was buried at Seligenstadt,
and his epitaph was written by Hrabanus Maurus. Einhard
EINHORN EISENACH
135
was a man of very short stature, a feature on which Alcuin wrote
an epigram. Consequently he was called Nardtiltu, a diminutive
form of Einhardus, and his great industry and activity caused
him to be likened to an ant. He was also a man of learning and
culture. Reaping the benefits of the revival of -learning brought
about by Charlemagne, he was on intimate terras with Alcuin,
was well versed in Latin literature, and knew some Greek. His
most famous work is his ViUt Karoli Alagni, to which a prologue
was added by Walafrid Strabo. Written in imitation of the
Df vilis Caesantm of Suetonius, this is the best contemporary
account of the life of Charlemagne, and could only have been
written by one who was very intimate with the emperor and his
court. It is, moreover, a work of some artistic merit, although
not free from inaccuracies. It was written before 821, and having
been very popular during the middle ages, was first printed
at Cologne in 1521. G. H. Pertz collated more than sixty
manuscripts for his edition of 1829, and others have since come
to light. Other works by Einhard are: Epistolae, which are of
considerable importance for the history of the times; Historia
traiulationis beatorum Ckristi martyrum Marcellini et Petri,
which gives a curious account of how the bones of these martyrs
were stolen and conveyed to Seligenstadt, and what miracles
they wrought; and De adorandti cruce, a treatise which has only
recently come to light, and which has been published by E.
Dttmmler in the Neuet Archiv der Gesellschaft fiir alter e deutsche
Gesckifktskunde, Band zi. (Hanover, 1886). It has been asserted
that Einhard was the author of some of the Prankish annals,
and especially of part of the annals of Lorsch (Annales Lauris-
semses majores), and part of the annals of Fulda (Annales
Fuldenset). Much discussion has taken place on this question,
and several of the most eminent of German historians, Ranke
among them, have taken part therein, but no certain decision
has been reached.
The literature on Einhard is very extensive, as nearly all those
who deal with Charlemagne, early German and early French litera-
ture, treat of him. Editions of his works are by A. Teulet, Einhardi
omniamae extant opera (Paris, 1840-1843), with a French translation;
P. Jane, in the Btbliotheca rerum Germaniearum, Band iv. (Berlin,
1867); G. H. Pertz in the Monumenta Germaniae hiitorica, Bande
i. and ii. (Hanover, 1826-1829), and J. P. Migne in the Patrologia
Latino, tomes 97 and 104 (Paris, 1866). The Vita Karoli Magni,
edited by G. H. Pertz and G. Waltz, has been published separately
(Hanover, 1880). Among the various translations of the Vila may
be mentioned an English one by W. Glaister (London, 1877) and a
German one by O. Abel (Leipzig, 189.1). For a complete bibliography
of Einhard, see A. Potthast, Bibtintheca historica, pp. 394-397
(Berlin, 1896), and W. Wattcnbach, DeutscUands Geschifhtsqucllen,
Band i. (Berlin, 1904). (A. W. H.*)
EINHORN. DAVIO (1809-1879), leader of the Jewish reform
movement in the United States of America, was born in Bavaria.
He was a supporter of the principles of Abraham Geigcr (q.v.),
and while still in Germany advocated the introduction of prayers
in the vernacular, the exclusion of nationalistic hopes from the
synagogue service, and other ritual modifications. In 1855 he
migrated to America, where he became the acknowledged leader
of reform, and laid the foundation of the regime under which the
mass of American Jews (excepting the newly arrived Russians)
now worship. In 1858 he published his revised prayer book,
which has formed the model for all subsequent revisions. In 1 86 1
be strongly supported the anti-slavery party, and was forced
to leave Baltimore where he then ministered. He continued his
work first in Philadelphia and later in New York. (I. A.)
EINSIEDELN, the most populous town in the Swiss canton of
Schwyz. It is built on the right bank of the Alpbach (an affluent
of the Sihl), at a height of 2908 ft. above the sea-level on a rather
bare moorland, and by rail is 25 m. S.E. of Zurich, or by a round-
about railway route about 38 m. north of Schwyz, with which
it communicates directly over the Hacken Pass (4649 ft.) or the
Holzegg Pan (4616 ft.). In 1000 the population was 8406, all
(save 75) Romanists and all (save in) German-speaking. The
town is entirely dependent on the great Benedictine abbey that
rises slightly above it to the east. Close to its present site
Meinrad, a hermit, was murdered in 861 by two robbers, whose
crime was made known by Meinrad's two pet ravens. Early
in the loth century Benno, a hermit, rebuilt the holy man's cell,
but the abbey proper was not founded till about 934, the church
having been consecrated (it is said by Christ Himself) in 948.
In 1274 the dignity of a prince of the Holy Roman Empire was
confirmed by the emperor to the reigning abbot. Originally
under the protection of the counts of Rapperswil (to which town
on the lake of Zurich the old pilgrims' way still leads over the
Etzel Pass, 3146 ft., with its chapel and inn), this position passed
by marriage with their heiress in 1295 to the Laufenburg or
cadet line of the Habsburgs, but from 1386 was permanently
occupied by Schwyz. A black wooden image of the Virgin and
the fame of St Meinrad caused the throngs of pilgrims to resort
to Einsiedeln in the middle ages, and even now it is much
frequented, particularly about the i4th of September. The
existing buildings date from the i8th century only, while the
treasury and the library still contain many precious objects,
despite the sack by the French in 1798. There are now about
100 fully professed monks, who direct several educational
institutions. The Black Virgin has a special chapel in the stately
church. Zwingli was the parish priest of Einsiedeln 1516-1318
(before he became a Protestant), while near the town Paracelsus
(1493-1541), the celebrated philosopher, was born.
See Father O. Ringholz, Geschichte d. ftirstl. Benediktiner stifles
Einsiedeln, vol. i. (to 1526), (Einsiedeln, 1904). (W. A. B. C.)
EISENACH, a town of Germany, second capital of the grand-
duchy of Saxe- Weimar-Eisenach, lies at the north-west foot
of the Thuringian forest, at the confluence of the Nesse and
Horsel, 32 m. by rail W. from Erfurt. Pop. (1905) 35,123.
The town mainly consists of a long street, running from east to
west. Off this are the market square, containing the grand-
ducal palace, built in 1742, where the duchess Helene of Orleans
long resided, the town-hall, and the late Gothic St Georgen-
kirche; and the square on which stands the Nikolaikirche, a
fine Romanesque building, built about 1150 and restored in 1887.
Noteworthy are also the Klemda, a small castle dating from
1260; the Lutherhaus, in which the reformer stayed with the
Cotta family in 1498; the house in which Sebastian Bach was
born, and that (now a museum) in which Fritz Reuter lived
(1863-1874). There are monuments to the two former in the
town, while the resting-place of the latter in the cemetery is
marked by a less pretentious memorial. Eisenach has a school
of forestry, a school of design, a classical school (Gymnasium)
and modern school ( Real gymnasium) , a deaf and dumb school, a
teachers' seminary, a theatre and a Wagner museum. The
most important industries of the town are worsted-spinning,
carriage and wagon building, and the making of colours and
pottery. Among others are the manufacture of cigars, cement
pipes, iron-ware and machines, alabaster ware, shoes, leather,
&c., cabinet-making, brewing, granite quarrying and working,
tile-making, and saw- and corn-milling.
The natural beauty of its surroundings and the extensive
forests of the district have of late years attracted many summer
residents. Magnificently situated on a precipitous hill, 600 ft.
above the town to the south, is the historic Wartburg (?..), the
ancient castle of the landgraves of Thuringia, famous as the
scene of the contest of Minnesingers immortalized in Wagner's
Tannhauser, and as the place where Luther, on his return from
the diet of Worms in 1521, was kept in hiding and made his
translation of the Bible. On a high rock adjacent to the Wart-
burg are the ruins of the castle of Madelstein.
Eisenach (Isenacum) was founded in 1070 by Louis II. the
Springer, landgrave of Thuringia, and its history during the
middle ages was closely bound up with that of the Wartburg,
the seat of the landgraves. The Klemda, mentioned above,
was built by Sophia (d. 1284), daughter of the landgrave Louis
IV., and wife of Duke Henry II. of Brabant, to defend the town
against Henry III., margrave of Meissen, during the succession
contest that followed the extinction of the male line of the
Thuringian landgraves in 1247. The principality of Eisenach
fell to the Saxon house of Wettin in 1440, and in the partition of
1485 formed part of the territories given to the Ernestine line.
It was a separate Saxon 'duchy from 1596 to 1638, from 1640
136
EISENBERG EISTEDDFOD
to 1644, and again from 1662 to 1741, when it finally fell to Saxe-
Weimar. The town of Eisenach, by reason of its associations,
has been a favourite centre for the religious propaganda of
Evangelical Germany, and since 1852 it has been the scene of
the annual conference of the German Evangelical Church, known
as the Eisenach conference.
See Trinius, Eisenach und Umgebung (Minden, 1900); and H. A.
Daniel, Deutschland (Leipzig, 1895), and further references in U.
Chevalier, " Repertoire des sources," &c., Topo-bibliogr. (Mont-
beliard, 1894-1899), s.v.
EISENBERG (Isenberg), a town of Germany, in the duchy of
Saxe-Altenburg, on a plateau between the rivers Saale and
Elster, 20 m. S.W. from Zeitz, and connected with the railway
Leipzig-Gera by a branch to Crossen. Pop. (1905) 8824. It
possesses an old castle, several churches, and monuments to
Duke Christian of Saxe-Eisenberg (d. 1707), Bismarck, and the
philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (q.v.). Its principal
industries are weaving, a*d the manufacture of machines,
ovens, furniture, pianos, porcelain and sausages.
See Back, Chronik der Stadt und des Amtes Eisenberg (Eisenb., 1843).
EISENERZ ("Iron ore"), a market-place and old mining
town in Styria, Austria, 68 m. N.W. of Graz by rail. Pop.
(1900) 6494. It is situated in a deep valley, dominated on the
east by the Pfaffenstein (6140 ft.), on the west by the Kaiser-
schild (6830 ft.), and on the south by the Erzberg (5030 ft.). It
has an interesting example of a medieval fortified church, a
Gothic edifice founded by Rudolph of Habsburg in the i3th
century and rebuilt in the i6th. The Erzberg or Ore Mountain
furnishes such rich ore that it is quarried in the open air like
stone, in the summer months. There is documentary evidence
of the mines having been worked as far back as the i2th century.
They afford employment to two or three thousand hands in
summer and about half as many in winter, and yield some
800,000 tons of iron per annum. Eisenerz is connected with the
mines by the Erzberg railway, a bold piece of engineering work,
14 m. long, constructed on the Abt's rack-and-pinion system.
It passes through some beautiful scenery, and descends to
Vordernberg (pop. 3111), an important centre of the iron trade
situated on the south side of the Erzberg. Eisenerz possesses,
in addition, twenty-five furnaces, which produce iron, and
particularly steel, of exceptional excellence. A few miles to the
N.W. of Eisenerz lies the castle of Leopoldstein, and near it the
beautiful Leopoldsteiner Lake. This lake, with its dark-green
water, situated at an altitude of 2028 ft., and surrounded on all
sides by high peaks, is not big, but is very deep, having a depth
of 520 ft.
EISLEBEN (Lat. IslebiaJ; a town of Germany, in the Prussian
province of Saxony, 24 m. W. by N. from Halle, on the railway
to Nordhausen and Cassel. Pop. (1905) 23,898. It is divided
into an old and a new town (Altstadt and Neustadt). Among
its principal buildings are the church of St Andrew (Andreas-
kirche), which contains numerous monuments of the counts of
Mansfeld; the church of St Peter and St Paul (Peter-Paulkirche),
containing the font in which Luther was baptized; the royal
gymnasium (classical school) , founded by Luther shortly before
his death in 1546; and the hospital. Eisleben is celebrated
as the place where Luther was born and died. The house in
which he was born was burned in 1689, but was rebuilt in 1693
as a free school for orphans. This school fell into decay under
the regime of the kingdom of Westphalia, but was restored in
1817 by King Frederick William III. of Prussia, who, in 1819,
transferred it to a new building behind the old house. The
house in which Luther died was restored towards the end of the
1 9th century, and his death chamber is still preserved. A
bronze statue of Luther by Rudolf Siemering (1835-1905) was
unveiled in 1883. Eisleben has long been the centre of an
important mining district (Luther was a miner's son), the
principal products being silver and copper. It possesses smelting
works and a school of mining.
The earliest record of Eisleben is dated 974. In 1045, at
which time it belonged to the counts of Mansfeld, it received
the right to hold markets, coin money, and levy tolls. From
1531 to 1710 it was the seat of the cadet line of the counts of
Mansfeld-Eisleben. After the extinction of the main line of
the counts of Mansfeld, Eisleben fell to Saxony, and, in the
partition of Saxony by the congress of Vienna in 1815, was
assigned to Prussia.
See G. Grossler, Urkundliche Gesch. Eislebens bis zum Ende des 12.
Jahrhunderts (Halle, 1875) ; Chronicon Islebiense; Eisleben Stadt-
chronik aus den Jahren 1520-1738, edited from the original, with
notes by Grossler and Sommer (Eisleben, 1882).
EISTEDDFOD (plural Eisteddfodau), the national bardic con-
gress of Wales, the objects of which are to encourage bardism
and music and the general literature of the Welsh, to maintain
the Welsh language and customs of the country, and to foster and
cultivate a patriotic spirit amongst the people. This institution,
so peculiar to Wales, is of very ancient origin. 1 The term
Eisteddfod, however, which means "a session" or "sitting,"
was probably not applied to bardic congresses before the i2th
century.
The Eisteddfod in its present character appears to have
originated in the time of Owain ap Maxen Wledig, who at the
close of the 4th century was elected to the chief sovereignty
of the Britons on the departure of the Romans. It was at this
time, or soon afterwards, that the laws and usages of the Gorsedd
were codified and remodelled, and its motto of " Y gwir yn erbyn
y byd " (The truth against the world) given to it. " Chairs "
(with which the Eisteddfod as a national institution is now
inseparably connected) were also established, or rather perhaps
resuscitated, about the same time. The chair was a kind of
convention where disciples were trained, and bardic matters
discussed preparatory to the great Gorsedd, each chair having a
distinctive motto. There are now existing four chairs in Wales,
namely, the " royal " chair of Powys, whose motto is " A laddo
a leddir " (He that slayeth shall be slain) ; that of Gwent and
Glamorgan, whose motto is " Duw a phob daioni " (God and all
goodness); that of Dyfed, whose motto is " Calon wrth galon "
(Heart with heart) ; and that of Gwynedd, or North Wales, whose
motto is "lesu," or "O lesu! na'd gamwaith " (Jesus, or Oh
Jesus! suffer not iniquity).
The first Eisteddfod of which any account seems to have
descended to us was one held on the banks of the Conway in
the 6th century, under the auspices of Maelgwn Gwynedd, prince
of North Wales. Maelgwn on this occasion, in order to prove
the superiority of vocal song over instrumental music, is recorded
to have offered a reward to such bards and minstrels as should
swim over the Conway. There were several competitors, but on
their arrival on the opposite shore the harpers found themselves
unable to play owing to the injury their harps had sustained
from the water, while the bards were in as good tune as ever.
King Cadwaladr abo presided at an Eisteddfod about the
middle of the 7th century.
Griffith ap Cynan, prince of North Wales, who had been born
in Ireland, brought with him from that country many Irish
musicians, who greatly improved the music of Wales. During
his long reign of 56 years he offered great encouragement to
bards, harpers and minstrels, and framed a code of laws for their
better regulation. He held an Eisteddfod about the beginning
of the 1 2th century at Caerwys in Flintshire, "to which there
repaired all the musicians of Wales, and some also from England
and Scotland." For many years afterwards the Eisteddfod
appears to have been held triennially, and to have enforced the
rigid observance of the enactments of Griffith ap Cynan. The
places at which it was generally held were Aberffraw, formerly
the royal seat of the princes of North Wales; Dynevor, the
royal castle of the princes of South Wales; and Mathrafal,
the royal palace of the princes of Powys; and in later times
1 According to the Welsh Triads and other historical records, the
Gorsedd or assembly (an essential part of the modern Eisteddfod,
from which indeed the latter sprung) is as old at least as the time of
Prydain the son of ^Edd the Great, who lived many centuries before
the Christian era. Upon the destruction of the political ascendancy
of the Druids, the Gorsedd lost its political importance, though it
seems to have long afterwards retained its institutional character as
the medium for preserving the laws, doctrines and traditions of
bardism.
EJECTMENT
137
Caenry* in Flintshire received that honourable distinction, it
having been the princely residence of Llewelyn the Last. Some
of these Eisteddfodau were conducted in a style of great magni-
ficence, under the patronage of the native princes. At Christmas
1107 Cadwgan, the son of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, prince of Powys,
held an Eisteddfod in Cardigan Castle, to which he invited the
bards, harpers and minstrels, " the best to be found in all Wales ";
and " he gave them chairs and subjects of emulation according
to the custom of the feasts of King Arthur." In 1176 Rhys ab
Gruffydd, prince of South Wales, held an Eisteddfod in the same
castle on a scale of still greater magnificence, it having been
proclaimed, we are told, a year before it took place, " over Wales,
England, Scotland, Ireland and many other countries."
On the annexation of Wales to England. Edward I. deemed it
politic to sanction the bardic Eisteddfod by his famous statute of
Rhuddlan. In the reign of Edward III. Ifor Hael, a South Wales
chieftain, held one at his mansion. Another was held in 1451,
with the permission of the king, by Griffith ab Nicholas at
Carmarthen, in princely style, where Dafydd ab Edmund, an
eminent poet, signalized himself by his wonderful powers of
versification in the Welsh metres, and whence " he carried home
on his shoulders the silver chair " which he had fairly won.
Several Eisteddfodau, were held, one at least by royal mandate,
in the reign of Henry VII. In 1523 one was held at Caerwys
before the chamberlain of North Wales and others, by virtue of
a commission issued by Henry VIII. In the course of time,
through relaxation of bardic discipline, the profession was
assumed by unqualified persons, to the great detriment of the
regular bards. Accordingly in 1567 Queen Elizabeth issued
a commission for holding an Eisteddfod at Caerwys in the
following year, which was duly held, when degrees were conferred
on 55 candidates, including 20 harpers. From the terms of the
royal proclamation we find that it was then customary to bestow
" a silver harp " on the chief of the faculty of musicians, as it had
been usual to reward the chief bard with " a silver chair." This
was the last Eisteddfod appointed by royal commission, but
several others of some importance were held during the i6th
and 1 7th centuries, under the patronage of the earl of Pembroke,
Sir Richard Neville, and other influential persons. Amongst
these the last of any particular note was one held in Bewper
Castle, Glamorgan, by Sir Richard Basset in 1681.
During the succeeding 130 years Welsh nationality was at its
lowest ebb, and no general Eisteddfod on a large scale appears
to have been held until 1819, though several small ones were
held under the auspices of the Gwyneddigion Society, established
in 1771, the most important being those at Corwen (1789),
St Asaph (1700) and Caerwys (1708).
At the close of the Napoleonic wars, however, there was a
general revival of Welsh nationality, and numerous Welsh
literary societies were established throughout Wales, and in
the principal English towns. A large Eisteddfod was held under
distinguished patronage at Carmarthen in 1819, and from that
time to the present they have been held (together with numerous
local Eisteddfodau), almost without intermission, annually.
The Eisteddfod at Llangollen in 1858 is memorable for its archaic
character, and the attempts then made to revive the ancient
ceremonies, and restore the ancient vestments of druids, bards
and ovates.
To constitute a provincial Eisteddfod it is necessary that
it should be proclaimed by a graduated bard of a Gorsedd a
year and a day before it takes place. A local one may be held
without such a proclamation. A provincial Eisteddfod generally
lasts three, sometimes four days. A president and a conductor
are appointed for each day. The proceedings commence with a
Gorsedd meeting, opened with sound of trumpet and other
ceremonies, at which candidates come forward and receive
bardic degrees after satisfying the presiding bard as to their
fitness. At the subsequent meetings the president gives a brief
address; the bards follow with poetical addresses; adjudications
are made, and prizes and medals with suitable devices are given
to the successful competitors for poetical, musical and prose
compositions, for the best choral and solo singing, and singing with
the harp or " Pennillion singing " ' as it is called, for the best play-
ing on the harp or stringed or wind instruments, as well as
occasionally for the best specimens of handicraft and art. In the
evening of each day a concert is given, generally attended by very
largcnumbcrs. The great dayof the Eisteddfod is the "chair "day
usually the third or last day the grand event of the Eisteddfod
being the adjudication on the chair subject, and the chairing and
investiture of the fortunate winner. This is the highest object
of a Welsh bard's ambition. The ceremony is an imposing one,
and is performed with sound of trumpet. (See also the articles
BARD, CELT: Celtic Literature, and WALES.) (R. W.*)
EJECTMENT (Lat. e, out, a.ndjacere, to throw), in English law,
an action for the recovery of the possession of land, together
with damages for the wrongful withholding thereof. In the old
classifications of actions, as real or personal, this was known
as a mixed action, because its object was twofold, viz. to recover
both the realty and personal damages. It should be noted that
the term " ejectment " applies in law to distinct classes of
proceedings ejectments as between rival claimants to land,
and ejectments as between those who hold, or have held, the
relation of landlord and tenant. Under the Rules of the Supreme
Court, actions in England for the recovery of land are commenced
and proceed in the same manner as ordinary actions. But the
historical interest attaching to the action of ejectment is so
great as to render some account of it necessary.
The form of the action as it prevailed in the English courts
down to the Common Law Procedure Act 1852 was a series of
fictions, among the most remarkable to be found in the entire
body of English law. A, the person claiming title to land,
delivered to B, the person in possession, a declaration in eject-
ment in which C and D, fictitious persons, were plaintiff and
defendant. C stated that A had devised the land to him for a
term of years, and that he had been ousted by D. A notice
signed by D informed B of the proceedings, and advised him to
apply to be made defendant in D's place, as he, D, having no
title, did not intend to defend the suit. If B did not so apply,
judgment was given against D, and possession of the lands was
given to A. But if B did apply, the Court allowed him to
defend the action only on condition that he admitted the three
fictitious averments the lease, the entry and the ouster which,
together with title, were the four things necessary to maintain
an action of ejectment. This having been arranged the action
proceeded, B being made defendant instead of D. The names
used for the fictitious parties were John Doe, plaintiff, and
Richard Roe, defendant, who was called " the casual ejector."
The explanation of these mysterious fictions is this. The writ
de ejectione firmae was invented about the beginning of the reign
of Edward III. as a remedy to a lessee for years who had been
ousted of his term. It was a writ of trespass, and carried damages,
but in the time of Henry VII., if not before that date, the courts
of common law added thereto a species of remedy neither
warranted by the original writ nor demanded by the declaration,
viz. a judgment to recover so much of the term as was still to
run, and a writ of possession thereupon. The next step was to
extend the remedy limited originally to leaseholds to cases
of disputed title to freeholds. This was done indirectly by the
claimant entering on the land and there making a lease for a
term of years to another person; for it was only a term that
could be recovered by the action, and to create a term required
actual possession in the granter. The lessee remained on the land ,
and the next person who entered even by chance was accounted
an ejector of the lessee, who then served upon him a writ of
trespass and ejectment. The case then went to trial as on a
1 According to Jones's Bardic Remains, " To sing ' Pennillion '
with a Welsh harp is not so easily accomplished as may be imagined.
The singer is obliged to follow the harper, who may change the tune,
or perform variations ad libitum, whilst the vocalist must keep time,
and end precisely with the strain. The singer does not commence
with the harper, but takes the strain up at the second, third or
fourth bar, as best suits the ' pennill ' he intends to sine. . . .
Those are considered the best singers who can adapt stanzas of various
metres to one melody, and who are acquainted with the twenty-four
measures according to the bardic laws and rules of composition."
138
EKATERINBURG
common action of trespass; and the claimant's title, being the
real foundation of the lessee's right, was thus indirectly deter-
mined. These proceedings might take place without the know-
ledge of the person really in possession; and to prevent the
abuse of the action a rule was laid down that the plaintiff in
ejectment must give notice to the party in possession, who
might then come in and defend the action. When the action
came into general use as a mode of trying the title to freeholds,
the actual entry, lease and ouster which were necessary to found
the action were attended with much inconvenience, and accord-
ingly Lord Chief Justice Rolle during the Protectorate (c. 1657)
substituted for them the fictitious averments already described.
The action of ejectment is now only a curiosity of legal history.
Its fictitious suitors were swept away by the Common Law
Procedure Act of 1852. A form of writ was prescribed, in which
the person in possession of the disputed premises by name and
all persons entitled to defend the possession were informed that
the plaintiff claimed to be entitled to possession, and required
to appear in court to defend the possession of the property or
such part of it as they should think fit. In the form of the writ
and in some other respects ejectment still differed from other
actions. But, as already mentioned, it has now been assimilated
(under the name of action for the recovery of lands) to ordinary
actions by the Rules of the Supreme Court. It is commenced
by writ of summons, and subject to the rules as to summary
judgments (v. inf.) proceeds along the usual course of pleadings
and trial to judgment; but is subject to one special rule, viz:
that except by leave of the Court or a judge the only claims
which may be joined with one for recovery of land are claims
in respect of arrears of rent or double value for holding over,
or mesne profits (i.e. the value of the land during the period
of illegal possession), or damages for breach of a contract under
which the premises are held or for any wrong or injury to the
premises claimed (R.S.C., O. xviii. r. 2). These claims were
formerly recoverable by an independent action.
With regard to actions for the recovery of land apart from
the relationship of landlord and tenant the only point that
need be noted is the presumption of law in favour of the actual
possessor of the land in dispute. Where the action is brought
by a landlord against his tenant, there is of course no presumption
against the landlord's title arising from the tenant's possession.
By the Common Law Procedure Act 1852 (ss. 210-212) special
provision was made for the prompt recovery of demised premises
where half a year's rent was in arrear and the landlord was
entitled to re-enter for non-payment. These provisions are
still in force, but advantage is now more generally taken of the
summary judgment procedure introduced by the Rules of the
Supreme Court (Order 3, r. 6.). This procedure may be adopted
when (a) the tenant's term has expired, (b) or has been duly
determined by notice to quit, or (c) has become liable to forfeiture
for non-payment of rent, and applies not only to the tenant
but to persons claiming under him. The writ is specially en-
dorsed with the plaintiff's claim to recover the land with or
without rent or mesne profits, and summary judgment obtained
if no substantial defence is disclosed. Where an action to
recover land is brought against the tenant by a person claiming
adversely to the landlord, the tenant is bound, under penalty
of forfeiting the value of three years' improved or rack rent of the
premises, to give notice to the landlord in order that he may
appear and defend his title. Actions for the recovery of land,
other than land belonging to spiritual corporations and to the
crown, are barred in 12 years (Real Property Limitation Acts
1833 (s. 29) and 1874 (s. i). A landlord can recover possession
in the county court (i.) by an action for the recovery of possession,
where neither the value of the premises nor the rent exceeds
100 a year, and the tenant is holding over (County Courts Acts
of 1888, s. 138, and 1903, s. 3) ; (ii.) by " an action of ejectment,"
where (a) the value or rent of the premises does not exceed
100, (b) half a year's rent is in arrear, and (c) no sufficient
distress (see RENT) is to be found on the premises (Act of 1888,
s. 139; Act of 1003, s. 3; County Court Rules 1903, Ord. v. rule 3).
Where a tenant at a rent not exceeding 20 a year of premises
at will, or for a term not exceeding 7 years, refuses nor neglects,
on the determination or expiration of his interest, to deliver up
possession, such possession may be recovered by proceedings
before justices under the Small Tenements Recovery Act 1838,
an enactment which has been extended to the recovery of allot-
ments. Under the Distress for Rent Act 1737, and the Deserted
Tenements Act 1817, a landlord can have himself put by the order
of two justices into premises deserted by the tenant where half
a year's rent is owing and no sufficient distress can be found.
In Ireland, the practice with regard to the recovery of land is
regulated by the Rules of the Supreme Court 1891, made under
the Judicature (Ireland) Act 1877; and resembles that of
England. Possession may be recovered summarily by a special
indorsement of the writ, as in England; and there are analogous
provisions with regard to the recovery of small tenements
(see Land Act, 1860 ss. 84 and 89). The law with regard to
the ejectment or eviction of tenants is consolidated by the Land
Act 1860. (See ss. 52-66, 68-71, and further under LANDLORD
AND TENANT.)
In Scotland, the recovery of land is effected by an action of
" removing " or summary ejection. In the case of a tenant
" warning " is necessary unless he is bound by his lease to
remove without warning. In the case of possessors without
title, or a title merely precarious, no warning is needed. A
summary process of removing from small holdings is provided
for by Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Acts of 1838 and 1851.
In the United States, the old English action of ejectment was
adopted to a very limited extent, and where it was so adopted
has often been superseded, as in Connecticut, by a single action
for all cases of ouster, disseisin or ejectment. In this action,
known as an action of disseisin or ejectment, both possession of
the land and damages may be recovered. In some of the states
a tenant against whom an action of ejectment is brought by a
stranger is bound under a penalty, as in England, to give notice
of the claim to the landlord in order that he may appear and
defend his title.
In French law the landlord's claim for rent is fairly secured
by the hypothec, and by summary powers which exist for the
seizure of the effects of defaulting tenants. Eviction or annul-
ment of a lease can only be obtained through the judicial
tribunals. The Civil Code deals with the position of a tenant
in case of the sale of the property leased. If the lease is by
authentic act (acte authentique) or has an ascertained date, the
purchaser cannot evict the tenant unless a right to do so was
reserved on the lease (art. 1743), and then only on payment of an
indemnity (arts. 1744-1747). If the lease is not by authentic
act, or has not an ascertained date, the purchaser is not liable
for indemnity (art. 1750). The tenant of rural lands is bound
to give the landlord notice of acts of usurpation (art. 1768).
There are analogous provisions in the Civil Codes of Belgium
(arts. 1743 et seq.), Holland (arts. 1613, 1614), Portugal (art.
1572); and see the German Civil Code (arts. 535 et seq.). In
many of the colonies there are statutory provisions for the
recovery of land or premises on the lines of English law (cf.
Ontario, Rev. Stats. 1897, c. 170. ss. 19 et seq.; Manitoba, Rev.
Stats. 1902, c. 1903). In others (e.g. New Zealand, Act. No. 55
of 1893, ss - I 7S" I 87; British Columbia, Revised Statutes, 1897,
c. 182; Cyprus, Ord. 15 of 1895) there has been legislation similar
to the Small Tenements Recovery Act 1838.
AUTHORITIES. English Law. Cole on Ejectment; Digby, History
of Real Property (3rd ed., London, 1884) ; Pollock and Maitland,
History of English Law (Cambridge, 1895); Foa, Landlord and
Tenant (4th ea., London, 1907); Fawcett, Landlord and Tenant
(London, 1905). Irish Law. Nolan and Kane's Statutes relating
to the Law of Landlord and Tenant (sth ed., Dublin, 1898) ; Wylie's
Judicature Acts (Dublin, 1900). Scots Law. Hunter on Landlord
and Tenant (4th ed., Edin., 1878); Erskine's Principles (aoth ed.,
Edin., 1903). American Law. Two Centuries' Growth of American
Law (New York and London, 1901); Bouvier's Law Dictionary
(Boston and London, 1897) ; Stimson, American Statute Law
(Boston, 1886). (A. W. R.)
EKATERINBURG, a town of Russia, in the government of
Perm, 311 m. by rail S.E. of the town of Perm, on the Iset river,
near the E. foot of the Ural Mountains, in 56 49' N. and
EKATERINODAR EKHOF
139
60 35' ., at an altitude of 870 ft. above sea-level. It is the
most important town of the Urals. Pop. (1860) 19,830; (1897)
55,488. The streets are broad and regular, and several of the
houses of palatial proportions. In 1834 Ekaterinburg was made
the see of a suffragan bishop of the Orthodox Greek Church.
There are two cathedrals SI Catherine's, founded in 1758, and
that of the Epiphany, in 1774 and a museum of natural history,
opened in 1853. Ekaterinburg is the seat of the central mining
administration of the Ural region, and has a chemical laboratory
for the assay of gold, a mining school, the Ural Society of
Naturalists, and a magnetic and meteorological observatory.
Besides the government mint for copper coinage, which dates
from 1735, the government engineering works, and the
imperial factory for the cutting and polishing of malachite,
jasper, marble, porphyry and other ornamental stones, the
industrial establishments comprise candle, paper, soap and
machinery works, flour and woollen mills, and tanneries. There is
a lively trade in cattle, cereals, iron, woollen and silk goods,
and colonial products; and two important fairs are held annually.
Nearly forty gold and platinum mines, over thirty iron-works,
and numerous other factories are scattered over the district,
while wheels, travelling boxes, hardware, boots and so forth
are extensively made in the villages. Ekaterinburg took its
origin from the mining establishments founded by Peter the
Great in 1721, and received its name in honour of his wife,
Catherine I. Its development was greatly promoted in 1763
by the diversion of the Siberian highway from Verkhoturye to
this place.
EKATERINODAR. a town of South Russia, chief town of the
province of Kuban, on the right bank of the river Kuban, 85 m.
E.N.E. of Novo-rossiysk on the railway to Rostov-on-Don,
and in 45 3' N. and 38 50' E.' It is badly built, on a swampy
site exposed to the inundations of the river; and its houses,
with few exceptions, are slight structures of wood and plaster.
Founded by Catherine II. in 1704 on the site of an old town
called Tmutarakan, as a small fort and Cossack settlement, its
population grew from 9620 in 1860 to 65,697 in 1897. It has
various technical schools, an experimental fruit-farm, a military
hospital, and a natural history museum. A considerable trade is
carried on, especially in cereals.
EKATERINOSLAV, a government of south Russia, having the
governments of Poltava and Kharkov on the N., the territory
of the Don Cossacks on the E., the Sea of Azov and Taurida on
the S., and Kherson on the W. Area, 24,478 sq. m. Its surface
is undulating steppe, sloping gently south and north, with a few
hills reaching 1200 ft. in the N.E., where a slight swelling (the
Don Hills) compels the Don to moke a great curve eastwards.
Another chain of hills, to which the eastward bend of the Dnieper
is due, rises in the west. These hills have a crystalline core
(granites, syenites and dioritrs), while the surface strata belong
to the Carboniferous, Permian, Cretaceous and Tertiary forma-
tions. The government is rich in minerals, especially in coal
the mines lie in the middle of the Donets coalfield iron ores,
fireclay and rock-salt, and every year the mining output increases
in quantity, especially of coal and iron. Granite, limestone,
grindstone, slate, with graphite, manganese and mercury are
found. The government is drained by the Dnieper, the Don and
their tributaries (e.g. the Donets and Volchya) and by several
affluents (e.g. the Kalmius) of the Sea of Azov. The soil is the
fertile black earth, but the crops occasionally suffer from drought,
the average annual rainfall being only 1 5 in. Forests are scarce.
Pop. (1860) 1,138,750; (1897) 2,118,946, chiefly Little Russians,
with Great Russians, Greeks (48,740), Germans (80,979),
Rumanians and a few gypsies. Jews constitute 4-7% of the
population. The estimated population in 1906 was 2,708,700.
Wheat and other cereals are extensively grown; other note-
worthy crops are potatoes, tobacco and grapes. Nearly 40,000
persons find occupation in factories, the most imporant being
iron-works and agricultural machinery works, though there are
also tobacco, glass, soap and candle factories, potteries, tanneries
and breweries. In the districts of Mariupol the making of
agricultural implements and machinery is carried on extensively
as a domestic industry in the villages. Bees are kept in very con-
siderable numbers. Fishing employs many persons in the Don
and the Dnieper. Cereals are exported in large quantities via
the Dnieper, the Sevastopol railway, and the port of Mariupol.
The chief towns of the eight districts, with their populations in
1897, are Ekaterinoslav (135,552 inhabitants in 1900), Alex-
androvsk (28,434), Bakhmut (30,585), Mariupol (31,772),
Novomoskovsk (12,862), Pavlograd (17,188), Slavyanoserbsk
(3120), and Verkhne-dnyeprovsk (11,607).
EKATERINOSLAV, a town of Russia, capital of the govern-
ment of the same name, on the right bank of the Dnieper above
the rapids, 673 m. by rail S.S.W. of Moscow, in 48 21' N. and
35 4' E., at an altitude of 210 ft. Pop. (1861) 18,881, without
suburbs; (1000) 135,552. If the suburb of Novyikoindak be
included, the town extends for upwards of 4 m. along the river.
The oldest part lies very low and is much exposed to floods. Con-
tiguous to the towns on the N.W. is the royal village of Novyi-
maidani or the New Factories. The bishop's palace, mining
academy, archaeological museum and library are the principal
public buildings. The house now occupied by the Nobles Club
was formerly inhabited by the author and statesman Potemkin.
Ekaterinoslav is a rapidly growing city, with a number of technical
schools, and is an important depot for timber floated down the
Dnieper, and also for cereals. Its iron-works, flour-mills and
agricultural machinery works give occupation to over 5000
persons. In fact since 1895 the city has become the centre of
numerous Franco-Belgian industrial undertakings. In addition
to the branches just mentioned, there are tobacco factories and
breweries. Considerable trade is carried on in cattle, cereals,
horses and wool, there being three annual fairs. On the site of
the city there formerly stood the Polish castle of Koindak, built
in 1635, and destroyed by the Cossacks. The existing city was
founded by Potemkin in 1 786, and in the following year Catherine
II. laid the foundation-stone of the cathedral, though it was not
actually built until 1830-1835. On the south side of it is a bronze
statue of the empress, put up in 1846. Paul I. changed the name
of the city to Novo-rossiysk, but the original name was restored
in 1802.
EKHOF, KONRAD (1720-1778), German actor, was born in
Hamburg on the i2th of August 1720. In 1739 he became a
member of Johann Friedrich Schonemann's (1704-1782) company
in Luneburg, and made his first appearance thereon the isth
of January 1740 as Xiphares in Racine's Mithridate. From
1751 the Schonemann company performed mainly in Hamburg
and at Schwerin, where Duke Christian Louis II. of Mecklenburg-
Schwerin made them comedians to the court. During this
period Ekhof founded a theatrical academy, which, though
short-lived, was of great importance in helping to raise the
standard of German acting and the status of German actors.
In 1757 Ekhof left Schonemann to join Franz Schuch's company
at Danzig; but he soon returned to Hamburg, where, in con-
junction with two other actors, he succeeded Schonemann in
the direction of the company. He resigned this position, however,
in favour of H. G. Koch, with whom he acted until 1764, when
he joined K. E. Ackermann's company. In 1767 was founded
the National Theatre at Hamburg, made famous by Lessing's
Hamburgische Dramaturgic, and Ekhof was the leading member
of the company. After the failure of the enterprise Ekhof was
for a time in Weimar, and ultimately became co-director of the
new court theatre at Gotha. This, the first permanently estab-
lished theatre in Germany, was opened on the 2nd of October
1775. Ekhof 's reputation was now at its height; Goethe called
him the only German tragic actor; and in 1777 he acted with
Goethe and Duke Charles Augustus at a private performance
at Weimar, dining afterwards with the poet at the ducal table.
He died on the i6th of June 1778. His versatility may be
judged from the fact that in the comedies of Goldoni and Molie're
he was no less successful than in the tragedies of Lessing and
Shakespeare. He was regarded by his contemporaries as an
unsurpassed exponent of naturalness on the stage; and in this
respect he has been not unfairly compared with Garrick. His
fame, however, was rapidly eclipsed by that of Friedrich U. L.
140
EKRON ELAM
Schroder. His literary efforts were chiefly confined to transla-
tions from French authors.
See H. Uhde, biography of Ekhof in vol. iv. of Der neue Plutarch
(1876), and J. Ruschner, K. Ekhofs Leben und Wirken (1872). Also
H. Devrient, J. F. Schonemann und seine Schauspielergesellschaft
(1895)-
EKRON (better, as in the Septuagint and Josephus, ACCARON,
'hKKapiav), a royal city of the Philistines commonly identified
with the modern Syrian village of 'Akir, 5 m. from Ramleh,
on the southern slope of a low ridge separating the plain of
Philistia from Sharon. It lay inland and off the main line of
traffic. Though included by the Israelites within the limits of
the tribe of Judah, and mentioned in Judges xix. as one of the
cities of Dan, it was in Philistine possession in the days of
Samuel, and apparently maintained its independence. Accord-
ing to the narrative of the Hebrew text, here differing from the
Greek text and Josephus (which read Askelon), it was the last
town to which the ark was transferred before its restoration to
the Israelites. Its maintenance of a sanctuary of Baal Zebub
is mentioned in 2 Kings i. From Assyrian inscriptions it has
been gathered that Padi, king of Ekron, was for a time the
vassal of Hezekiah of Judah, but regained his independence
when the latter was hard pressed by Sennacherib. A notice of
its history in 147 B.C. is found in i Mace. x. 89; after the fall of
Jerusalem A.D. 70 it was settled by Jews. At the time of the
crusades it was still a large village. Recently a Jewish agri-
cultural colony has been settled there. The houses are built of
mud, and in the absence of visible remains of antiquity, the
identification of the site is questionable. The neighbourhood
is fertile. (R. A. S. M.)
ELABUGA, a town of Russia, in the government of Vyatka,
on the Kama river, 201 m. by steamboat down the Volga from
Kazan and then up the Kama. It has flour-mills, and carries
on a brisk trade in exporting corn. Pop. (1897) 9776.
The famous Ananiynskiy Mogilnik (burial-place) is on the
right bank of the Kama, 3 m. above the town. It was discovered
in 1858, was excavated by Alabin, Lerch and Nevostruyev,
and has since supplied extremely valuable collections belonging
to the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. It consisted of a mound,
about 500 ft. in circumference, adorned with decorated stones
(which have disappeared), and contained an inner wall, 65 ft.
in circumference, made of uncemented stone flags. Nearly
fifty skeletons were discovered, mostly lying upon charred logs,
surrounded with cinerary urns filled with partially burned
bones. A great variety of bronze decorations and glazed clay
pearls were strewn round the skeletons. The knives, daggers
and arrowpoints are of slate, bronze and iron, the last two being
very rough imitations of stone implements. One of the flags
bore the image of a man, without moustaches or beard, dressed
in a costume and helmet recalling those of the Circassians.
ELAM, the name given in the Bible to the province of Persia
called Susiana by the classical geographers, from Susa or Shushan
its capital. In one passage, however (Ezra iv. 9), it is confined
to Elymais, the north-western part of the province, and its
inhabitants distinguished from those of Shushan, which else-
where (Dan. viii. 2) is placed in Elam. Strabo (xv. 3. 12, &c.)
makes Susiana a part of Persia proper, but a comparison of his
account with those of Ptolemy (vi. 3. i, &c.) and other writers
would limit it to the mountainous district to the east of Baby-
lonia, lying between the Oroatis and the Tigris, and stretching
from India to the Persian Gulf. Along with this mountainous
district went a fertile low tract of country on the western side,
which also included the marshes at the mouths of the Euphrates
and Tigris and the north-eastern coast land of the Gulf. This low
tract, though producing large quantities of grain, was intensely
hot in summer; the high regions, however, were cool and well
watered.
The whole country was occupied by a variety of tribes, speaking
agglutinative dialects for the most part, though the western
districts were occupied by Semites. Strabo (xi. 13. 3, 6), quoting
from Nearchus, seems to include the Susians under the Elymaeans,
whom he associates with the Uxii, and places on the frontiers
of Persia and Susa; but Pliny more correctly makes the Eulaeus
the boundary between Susiana and Elymais (N.H. vi. 29-31).
The Uxii are described as a robber tribe in the mountains
adjacent to Media, and their name is apparently to be identified
with the title given to the whole of Susiana in the Persian
cuneiform inscriptions, Uivaja, i.e. " Aborigines." Uwaja is
probably the origin of the modern Khuzistan, though Mordtmann
would derive the latter from Jj 2 ^ " a sugar-reed." Immediately
bordering on the Persians were the Amardians or Mardians,
as well as the people of Khapirti (Khatamti, according to Scheil),
the name given to Susiana in the Neo-Susian texts. Khapirti
appears as Apir in the inscriptions of Mai-Amir, which fix the
locality of the district. Passing over the Messabatae, who
inhabited a valley which may perhaps be the modern Mah-
Sabadan, as well as the level district of Yamutbal or Yatbur
which separated Elam from Babylonia, and the smaller districts
of Characene, Cabandene, Corbiana and Gabiene mentioned
by classical authors, we come to the fourth principal tribe of
Susiana, the Cissii (Aesch. Pers. 16; Strabo xv. 3. 2) or Cossaei
(Strabo xi. 5. 6, xvi. II. 17; Arr. 2nd. 40; Polyb. v. 54, &c.),
the Kassi of the cuneiform inscriptions. So important were they,
that the whole of Susiana was sometimes called Cissia after
them, as by Herodotus (iii. 91, v. 49, &c.). In fact Susiana
was only a late name for the country, dating from the time
when Susa had been made a capital of the Persian empire. In
the Sumerian texts of Babylonia it was called Numma, " the
Highlands," of which Elamtu or Elamu, " Elam," was the
Semitic translation. Apart from Susa, the most important
part of the country was Anzan (Anshan, contracted Assan),
where the native population maintained itself unaffected by
Semitic intrusion. The exact position of Anzan is still disputed,
but it probably included originally the site of Susa and was
distinguished from it only when Susa became the seat of a
Semitic government. In the lexical tablets Anzan is given
as the equivalent of Elamtu, and the native kings entitle them-
selves kings of " Anzan and Susa," as well as " princes of the
Khapirti."
The principal mountains of Elam were on the north, called
Charbanus and Cambalidus by Pliny (vi. 27, 31), and belong-
ing to the Parachoathras chain. There were numerous rivers
flowing into either the Tigris or the Persian Gulf. The most
important were the Ulai or Eulaeus (Kuran) with its tributary
the Pasitigris, the Choaspes (Kerkhah), the Coprates (river of
Diz called Itite in the inscriptions) , the Hedyphon or Hedypnus
(Jerrahi), and the Croatis (Hindyan), besides the monumental
Surappi and Ukni, perhaps to be identified with the Hedyphon
and Oroatis, which fell into the sea in the marshy region at the
mouth of the Tigris. Shushan or Susa, the capital now marked
by the mounds of Shush, stood near the junction of the Choaspes
and Eulaeus (see SUSA) ; and Badaca, Madaktu in the inscrip-
tions, lay between the Shapur and the river of Diz. Among the
other chief cities mentioned in the inscriptions may be named
Naditu, Khaltemas, Din-sar, Bubilu, Bit-imbi, Khidalu and
Nagitu on the sea-coast. Here, in fact, lay some of the oldest
and wealthiest towns, the sites of which have, however, been
removed inland by the silting up of the shore. J. de Morgan's
excavations at Susa have thrown a flood of light on the early
history of Elam and its relations to Babylon. The earliest settle-
ment there goes back to neolithic times, but it was already a
fortified city when Elam was conquered by Sargon of Akkad
(3800 B.C.) and Susa became the seat of a Babylonian viceroy.
From this time onward for many centuries it continued under
Semitic suzerainty, its high-priests, also called " Chief Envoys
of Elam, Sippara and Susa," bearing sometimes Semitic, some-
times native " Anzanite " names. One of the kings of the dynasty
of Ur built at Susa. Before the rise of the First Dynasty of
Babylon, however, Elam had recovered its independence, and
in 2280 B.C. theElamite king Kutur-Nakhkhunte made a raid
in Babylonia and carried away from Erech the image of the
goddess Nana. The monuments of many of his successors have
been discovered by de Morgan and their inscriptions deciphered
by v. Scheil. One of them was defeated by Ammi-zadoq
ELAND ELASTICITY
141
of Babylonia (c. 2100 B.C.); another would have been the
Chedor-laomer (Kutur-Lagamar) of Genesis xiv. One of the
greatest builders among them was Untas-GAL (the pronunciation
of the second element in the name is uncertain). About 1330
B.C. Khurba-tila was captured by Kuri-galzu III., the Kassitc
king of Babylonia, but a later prince Kidin-Khutrutas avenged
his defeat, and Sutruk-Nakhkhunte (1220 B.C.) carried fire and
sword through Babylonia, slew its king Zamama-sum-iddin and
carried away a stela of Naram-Sin and the famous code of laws
of Khammurabi from Sippara, as well as a stela of Manistusu
from Akkuttum or Akkad. He also conquered the land of
Asnunnak and carried off from Padan a stela belonging to a
refugee from Malatia. He was succeeded by his son who was
followed on the throne by his brother, one of the great builders of
Elam. In 750 B.C. Umbadara was king of Khun; Khumban-
igas was his successor in 742 B.C. In 720 B.C. the latter prince
met the Assyrians under Sargon at Dur-ili in Yamutbal, and
though Sargon claims a victory the result was that Babylonia
recovered its independence under Merodach-bakdan and the
Assyrian forces were driven north. From this time forward it
was against Assyria instead of Babylonia that Elam found
itself compelled to exert its strength, and Elamite policy was
directed towards fomenting revolt in Babylonia and assisting the
Babylonians in their struggle with Assyria. In 7 16 B.C. Khumban-
igas died and was followed by his nephew, Sutruk-Nakhkhunte.
He failed to make head against the Assyrians; the frontier cities
were taken by Sargon and Merodach-baladan was left to his
fate. A few years later (704 B.C.) the combined forces of Elam
and Babylonia were overthrown at Kis, and in the following
year the Kassites were reduced to subjection. The Elamite king
was dethroned and imprisoned in 700 B.C. by his brother Khallusu,
who six years later marched into Babylonia, captured the son of
Sennacherib, whom his father had placed there as king, and raised
a nominee of his own, Nergal-yusezib, to the throne. Khallusu
was murdered in 604 B.C., after seeing the maritime part of his
dominions invaded by the Assyrians. His successor Kudur-
Nakhkhunte invaded Babylonia; he was repulsed, however,
by Sennacherib, 34 of his cities were destroyed, and he himself
fled from Madaktu to Khidalu. The result was a revolt in which
he was killed after a reign of ten months. His brother Umman-
menan at once collected allies and prepared for resistance to the
Assyrians. But the terrible defeat at Khalule broke his power;
he was attacked by paralysis shortly afterwards, and Khumba-
KhaUlas II. followed him on the throne (689 B.C.). The new king
endeavoured to gain Assyrian favour by putting to death the
son of Merodach-baladan, but was himself murdered by his
brothers Urtaki and Teumman (681 B.C.), the first of whom
seized the crown. On his death Teumman succeeded and almost
immediately provoked a quarrel with Assur-bani-pal by demand-
ing the surrender of his nephews who had taken refuge at the
Assyrian court. The Assyrians pursued the Elamite army to
Susa, where a battle was fought on the banks of the Eulaeus, in
which the Elamites were defeated, Teumman captured and skin,
and Umman-igas, the son of Urtaki, made king, his younger
brother Tammaritu being given the district of Khidalu. Umman-
igas afterwards assisted in the revolt of Babylonia under Samas-
sum-yukin, but his nephew, a second Tammaritu, raised a
rebellion against him, defeated him in battle, cut off his head
and seized the crown. Tammaritu marched to Babylonia;
while there, his officer Inda-bigas made himself master of Susa
and drove Tammaritu to the coast whence he fled to Assur-bani-
pal. Inda-bigas was himself overthrown and skin by a new
pretender, Khumba-Khaldas III., who was opposed, however,
by three other rivals, two of whom maintained themselves in
the mountains until the Assyrian conquest of the country, when
Tammaritu was first restored and then imprisoned, Elam being
utterly devastated. The return of Khumba-Khaldas led to a
fresh Assyrian invasion; the Ekmite king fled from Madaktu
to Dur-undasi; Susa and other cities were taken, and the
Elamite army almost exterminated on the banks of the ItitS.
The whole country was reduced to a desert, Susa was plundered
and razed to the ground, the royal sepulchres were desecrated,
and the images of the gods and of 32 kings " in silver, gold,
bronze and alabaster," were carried away. All this must have
happened about 640 B.C. After the fall of the Assyrian empire
Elam was occupied by the Persian Teispes, the forefather of
Cyrus, who, accordingly, like his immediate successors, is called
in the inscriptions " king of Anzan." Susa once more became
a capital, and on the establishment of the Persian empire re-
mained one of the three scats of government, its language,
the Neo-Susian, ranking with the Persian of Persepolis and the
Semitic of Babylon as an official tongue. In the reign of Darius,
however, the Susianians attempted to revolt, first under Assina
or Atrina, the son of Umbadara, and later under Martiya, the son
of Issainsakria, who called himself Immanes; but they gradually
became completely Aryanized, and their agglutinative dialects
were suppknted by the Aryan Persian from the south-east.
Ekm, " the land of the cedar-forest," with its enchanted
trees, figured largely in Babylonian mythology, and one of the
adventures of the hero Gilgamesh was the destruction of the
tyrant Khumbaba who dwelt in the midst of it. A list of the
Elamite deities is given by Assur-bani-pal; at the head of them
was In-Susinak, " the lord of the Susians," a title which went
back to the age of Babylonian suzerainty, whose image and
oracle were hidden from the eyes of the profane. Nakhkhunte,
according to Scheil, was the Sun-goddess, and Lagamar, whose
name enters into that of Chedorkomer, was borrowed from
Semitic Babylonia.
See W. K. Loftus, Chaldaea and Susiana (1857) ; A. Billerbeck,
Susa (1893) ; J. de Morgan, Memoires de la Delegation en Perse
(9 vols.. 1899-1906). (A. H. S.)
ELAND (=elk), the Dutch name for the krgcst of the South
African antelopes (Taurotragus oryx), a. species near akin to the
kudu, but with horns present in both sexes, and their spiral
much closer, being in fact screw-like instead of corkscrew-like.
There is also a large dewlap, while old bulls have a thick forelock.
In the typical southern form the body-colour is wholly pale
fawn, but north of the Orange river the body is marked by
narrow vertical white lines, this race being known as T. oryx
livingstonei. In Senegambia the genus is represented by T.
derbianus, a much krger animal, with a dark neck; while in the
Bahr-el-Ghazal district there is a gigantic local race of this species
(T. derbianus giganteus). (R. L.*)
ELASTICITY, i. Elasticity is the property of recovery of
an original size or shape. A body of which the size, or shape,
or both size and shape, have been altered by the application of
forces may, and generally does, tend to return to its previous
size and shape when the forces cease to act. Bodies which
exhibit this tendency are said to be elastic (from Greek, tXouwv,
to drive). All bodies are more or less elastic as regards size;
and all solid bodies are more or less elastic as regards shape.
For example: gas contained in a vessel, which is closed by a
piston, can be compressed by additional pressure applied to the
piston; but, when the additional pressure is removed, the gas
expands and drives the piston outwards. For a second example:
a steel bar hanging vertically, and loaded with one ton for each
square inch of its sectional area, will have its length increased by
about seven one-hundred-thousandths of itself, and its sectional
area diminished by about half as much; and it will spring back
to its original length and sectional area when the load is gradually
removed. Such changes of size and shape in bodies subjected
to forces, and the recovery of the original size and shape when
the forces cease to act, become conspicuous when the bodies
have the forms of thin wires or planks; and these properties
of bodies in such forms are utilized in the construction of spring
balances, carriage springs, buffers and so on.
It is a familiar fact that the hair-spring of a watch can be
coiled and uncoiled millions of times a year for several years
without losing its elasticity; yet the same spring can have its
shape permanently altered by forces which are much greater
than those to which it is subjected in the motion of the watch.
The incompleteness of the recovery from the effects of great
forces is as important a fact as the practical completeness of
the recovery from the effects of comparatively small forces.
142
ELASTICITY
The fact is referred to in the distinction between " perfect "
and " imperfect " elasticity; and the limitation which must
be imposed upon the forces in order that the elasticity may be
perfect leads to the investigation of " limits of elasticity "
(see 31, 32 below). Steel pianoforte wire is perfectly elastic
within rather wide limits, glass within rather narrow limits;
building stone, cement and cast iron appear not to be perfectly
elastic within any limits, however narrow. When the limits of
elasticity are not exceeded no injury is done to a material or
structure by the action of the forces. The strength or weakness
of a material, and the safety or insecurity of a structure, are thus
closely related to the elasticity of the material and to the change
of size or shape of the structure when subjected to forces. The
" science of elasticity " is occupied with the more abstract side
of this relation, viz. with the effects that are produced in a body
of definite size, shape and constitution by definite forces; the
" science of the strength of materials " is occupied with the
more concrete side, viz. with the application of the results
obtained in the science of elasticity to practical questions of
strength and safety (see STRENGTH OF MATERIALS).
2. Stress. Every body that we know anything about is
always under the action of forces. Every body upon which
we can experiment is subject to the force of gravity, and must,
for the purpose of experiment, be supported by other forces.
Such forces are usually applied by way of pressure upon a
portion of the surface of the body; and such pressure is exerted
by another body in contact with the first. The supported body
exerts an equal and opposite pressure upon the supporting body
across the portion of surface which is common to the two. The
same thing is true of two portions of the same body. If, for
example, we consider the two portions into which a body is
divided by a (geometrical) horizontal plane, we conclude that
the lower portion supports the upper portion by pressure across
the plane, and the upper portion presses downwards upon the
lower portion with an equal pressure. The pressure is still
exerted when the plane is not horizontal, and its direction may
be obliquely inclined to, or tangential to, the plane. A more
precise meaning is given to " pressure " below. It is important
to distinguish between the two classes of forces: forces such as
the force of gravity, which act all through a body, and forces
such as pressure applied over a surface. Ihe former are named
" body forces " or " volume forces," and the latter " surface
tractions." The action between two portions of a body separated
by a geometrical surface is of the nature of surface traction.
Body forces are ultimately, when the volumes upon which they
act are small enough, proportional to the volumes; surface
tractions, on the other hand, are ultimately, when the surfaces
across which they act are small enough, proportional to these
surfaces. Surface tractions are always exerted by one body
upon another, or by one part of a body upon another part,
across a surface of contact; and a surface traction is always
to be regarded as one aspect of a " stress," that is to say of a
pair of equal and opposite forces; for an equal traction is always
exerted by the second body, or part, upon the first across the
surface.
3. The proper method of estimating and specifying stress is
a matter of importance, and its character is necessarily mathe-
matical. The magnitudes of the surface tractions which compose
a stress are estimated as so much force (in dynes or tons) per
unit of area (per sq. cm. or per sq. in.). The traction across an
assigned plane at an assigned point is measured by the mathe-
matical limit of the fraction F/S, where F denotes the numerical
measure of the force exerted across a small portion of the plane
containing the point, and S denotes the numerical measure
of the area of this portion, and the limit is taken by diminishing
S indefinitely. The traction may act as " tension," as it does
in the case of a horizontal section of a bar supported at its
upper end and hanging vertically, or as " pressure," as it
does in the case of a horizontal section of a block resting on
a horizontal plane, or again it may act obliquely or even
tangentially to the separating plane. Normal tractions are
reckoned as positive when they are tensions, negative when
they are pressures. Tangential tractions are often called
" shears " (see 7 below). Oblique tractions can always
be resolved, by the vector law, into normal and tangential
tractions. In a fluid at rest the traction across any plane at
any point is normal to the plane, and acts as pressure. For the
complete specification of the " state of stress " at any point of a
body, we should require to know the normal and tangential
components of the traction across every plane drawn through
the point. Fortunately this requirement can be very much
simplified (see 6, 7 below).
4. In general let v denote the direction of the normal drawn in a
specified sense to a plane drawn through a point O of a body; and
let TV denote the traction exerted across the plane, at the point O,
by the portion of the body towards which v is drawn upon the
remaining portion. Then T? is a vector quantity, which has a definite
magnitude (estimated as above by the limit of a fraction of the form
F/S) and a definite direction. It can be specified completely by its
components X,,, Yj<, Zv, referred to fixed rectangular axes of x, y, z.
When the direction of v is that of the axis of x, in the positive sense,
the components are denoted by X*, Y, Z*; and a similar notation
is used when the direction of v is that of y or 2, the suffix x being
replaced by y or z.
5. Every body about which we know anything is always in a
state of stress, that is to say there are always internal forces
acting between the parts of the body, and these forces are
exerted as surface tractions across geometrical surfaces drawn in
the body. The body, and each part of the body, moves under
the action of all the forces (body forces and surface tractions)
which are exerted upon it; or remains at rest if these forces are
in equilibrium. This result is expressed analytically by means
of certain equations the " equations of motion " or " equations
of equilibrium " of the body.
Let p denote the density of the body at any point, X, Y, Z, the
components parallel to the axes of x, y, z of the body forces, esti-
mated as so much force per unit of mass; further let f,, f v , f, denote
the components, parallel to the same axes, of the acceleration of the
particle which is momentarily at the point (x, y, z). The equations
of motion express the result that the rates of change of the momentum,
and of the moment of momentum, of any portion of the body are
those due to the action of all the forces exerted upon the portion
by other bodies, or by other portions of the same body. For the
changes of momentum, we have three equations of the type
JJJpXJx dy dz +JJX,dS =fypf,dx dy dz, . (i)
in which the volume integrations are taken through the volume
of the portion of the body, the surface integration is taken over its
surface, and the notation X v is that of 4, the direction of v being
that of the normal to this surface drawn outwards. For the changes
of moment of momentum, we have three equations of the type
ffjp(yZ-zY)dxdydz+ff(yZ y -zYr)d$=fyp(yf,-efv)dx dy dz. (2)
The equations (i) and (2) are the equations of motion of any kind of
body. The equations of equilibrium are obtained by replacing the
right-hand members of these equations by zero.
6. These equations can be used to obtain relations between the
valuesof X,, Y y , . . . for different directions v. When the equations
are applied to a very small volume, it appears that the terms ex-
pressed by surface integrals would, unless they tend to zero limits
in a higher order than the areas of the surfaces, be very great com-
pared with the terms expressed by volume integrals. We conclude
that the surface tractions on the portion of the body which is bounded
by any very small closed surface, are ultimately in equilibrium.
When this result is interpreted for a small portion in the shape of a
tetrahedron, having three of its faces at right angles to the co-
ordinate axes, it leads to three equations of the type
Xj, = Xj cos (x,i>) +X,, cos 0>,0 +X, cos (z,v), . (i)
where v is the direction of the normal (drawn outwards) to the
remaining face of the tetrahedron, and (x, v) . . . denote the angles
which this normal makes with the axes. Hence X,,, . . . for any
direction v are expressed in terms of X, When the above
result is interpreted for a very small portion in the shape of a cube,
having its edges parallel to the co-ordinate axes, it leads to the
equations v -v
Y y, Lit **, Ay is. . V*/
When we substitute in the general equations the particular results
which are thus obtained, we find that the equations of motion take
such forms as
and the equations of moments are satisfied identically. The equa-
tions of equilibrium are obtained by replacing the right-hand
tions ot equilib:
members by zero.
ELASTICITY
7. A state of stress in which the traction across any plane of
set of parallel planes is normal to the plane, and that across
any perpendicular plane vanishes, is described as a state of
" simple tension " (" simple pressure " if the traction is negative).
A state of stress in which the traction across any plane is normal
to the plane, and the traction is the same for all planes passing
. T T through any point, is de-
_J [ T scribed as a state of " uni-
~ form tension " (" uniform
pressure " if the traction
is negative). Sometimes
the phrases " isotropic
tension " and " hydro-
static pressure " are used
instead of " uniform "
tension or pressure. The
FIG. i.
distinction between the two states, simple tension and uniform
tension, is illustrated in fig. i.
A state of stress in which there is purely tangential traction
on a plane, and no normal traction on any perpendicular plane,
is described as a state of " shearing stress." The result (2) of
$ 6 shows that tangential tractions occur in pairs. If, at any
point, there is tangential traction, in any direction, on a plane
parallel to this direction,
and if we draw through
the point a plane at right
angles to the direction of
this traction, and therefore
s containing the normal to
the first plane, then there
is equal tangential traction
on this second plane in the
direction of the normal to
the first plane. The result
is illustrated in fig. 2, where
FIG. 2.
* a. rectangular block is sub-
jected on two opposite faces
to opposing tangential trac-
tions, and is held in equilibrium by equal tangential tractions
applied to two other faces.
Through any point there always pass three planes, at
right angles to each other, across which there is no tangential
(faction. These planes are called the "principal planes of
stress," and the (normal) tractions across them the " principal
stresses." Lines, usually curved, which have at every point the
direction of a principal stress at the point, are called "lines of
stress."
8. It appears that the stress at any point of a body is com-
pletely specified by six quantities, which can be taken to be the
Xx, Yy, Z, and Y t , Z, X v of 6. The first three are tensions
(pressures if they are negative) across three planes parallel to
fixed rectangular directions, and the remaining three are tangen-
tial tractions across the same three planes. These six quantities
are called the " components of stress." It appears also that the
components of stress are connected with each other, and with the
body forces and accelerations, by the three partial differential
equations of the type (3) of 6. These equations are available
for the purpose of determining the state of stress which exists
in a body of definite form subjected to definite forces, but they
are not sufficient for the purpose (see 38 below). In order
to effect the determination it is necessary to have information
concerning the constitution of the body, and to introduce sub-
sidiary relations founded upon this information.
q. The definite mathematical relations which have been found
to connect the components of stress with each other, and with
other quantities, result necessarily from the formation of a clear
conception of the nature of stress. They do not admit of experi-
mental verification, because the stress within a body does not
admit of direct measurement. Results which are deduced by
the aid of these relations can be compared with experimental
results. If any discrepancy were observed it would not be inter-
preted as requiring a modification of the concept of stress, but
as affecting some one or other of the subsidiary relations which
must be introduced for the purpose of obtaining the theoretical
result.
10. Strain. For the specification of the changes of size and
shape which are produced in a body by any forces, we begin by
defining the " average extension " of any linear element or
" filament " of the body. Let / be the length of the filament
before the forces are applied,/ its length when the body is subjected
to the forces. The average extension of the filament is measured
by the fraction (/-/)/'<> If this fraction is negative there is
" contraction." The " extension at a point " of a body in any
assigned direction is the mathematical limit of this fraction when
one end of the filament is at the point, the filament has the
assigned direction, and its length is diminished indefinitely. It
is clear that all the changes of size and shape of the body are
known when the extension at every point in every direction
is known.
The relations between the extensions in different direction*
around the same point arc most simply expressed by introducing the
extensions in the directions of the co-ordinate axes and the angles
between filaments of the body which arc initially parallel to these
axes. Let e,,, e n , e,, denote the extensions parallel to the axes of
x, v, t, and let r,,, e,,, <;, denote the cosines of the angles between
the pairs of filaments which arc initially parallel to the axes of v
and z, t and x, x and y. Also let < denote the extension in the
direction of a line the direction cosines of which are /, m, n. Then,
if the changes of size and shape are slight, we have the relation
e = e, ,P + ,m* + ' + e t ,m n + e,,nl + ( tl/ lm .
The body which undergoes the change of size or shape is said
to be " strained," and the " strain " is determined when the
quantities , e yy , and gy,, e, x , e xt defined above are known
at every point of it. These quantities are called " components
of strain." The three of the type e xx are extensions, and the
three of the type e y , are called " shearing strains " (see 12
below).
11. All the changes of relative position of particles of the body
are known when the strain is known, and conversely the strain
can be determined when the changes of relative position are
given. These changes can be expressed most simply by the
introduction of a vector quantity to represent the displacement
of any particle.
When the body is deformed by the action of any forces its particles
pass from the positions which they occupied before the action of the
forces into new positions. If *, y, z are the co-ordinates of the
position of a particle in the first state, its co-ordinates in the second
state may be denoted by x+u, y+v, z+w. The quantities, u, v, w
are the components of displacement." When these quantities arc
small, the strain is connected with them by the equations
.=
l dv
_du dw
~Sz + dx r
dv du
'*"~5v~r5'
(I)
12. These equations enable us to determine more exactly the
nature of the " shearing strains " such as e xy . Letu, for example,
be of the form sy, where s is constant, and let v and w vanish.
Then e xy =s, and the remaining components of strain vanish.
The nature of the strain (called " simple shear ") is simply
appreciated by imagining the body to consist of a series of thin
sheets, like the leaves of a book, which lie one over another and
are all parallel to a plane (that of x, z) ; and the displacement
is seen to consist in the shifting of each sheet relative to the sheet
below in a direction (that of x) which is the same for all the
sheets. The displacement of any sheet is proportional to its
distance y from a particular sheet, which remains undisplaccd.
The shearing strain has the effect of distorting the shape of any
portion of the body without altering its volume. This is shown
in fig. 3, where a square ABCD is distorted by simple shear
(each point moving parallel to the line marked xx)into a rhombus
A'B'C'D', as if by an extension of the diagonal BD and a con-
traction of the diagonal AC, which extension and contraction
arc adjusted so as to leave the area unaltered. In the general
case, where u is not of the form sy and v and w do not vanish,
the shearing strains such as e xy result from the composition
of pairs of simple shears of the type which has just been
explained.
144
ELASTICITY
13. Besides enabling us to express the extension in any direction
and the changes of relative direction of any filaments of the body,
the components of strain also express the changes of size of volumes
and areas. In particular, the " cubical dilatation," that is to say,
the increase of volume per unit of volume, is expressed by the
quantity e xx -\-e,, a -\-e ft
there is " compression.
du dv dw
r ^+a7;+az~- When this quantity is negative
FIG. 3.
14. It is important to distinguish between two types of
strain: the " rotational " type and the " irrotational " type.
The distinction is illustrated in fig. 3, where the figure
A'B'C'D" is obtained from the figure ABCD by contraction
parallel to AC and extension parallel to BD, and the figure
A'B'C'D' can be obtained from ABCD by the same con-
traction and extension followed by a rotation through the
angle A"OA'. In strains of the irrotational type there are at
any point three filaments at right angles to each other, which are
such that the particles which lie in them before strain continue
to lie in them after strain. A small spherical element of the body
with its centre at the point becomes a small ellipsoid with its
axes in the directions of these three filaments. In the case
illustrated in the figure, the lines of the filaments in question,
when the figure ABCD is strained into the figure A"B"C"D",
are OA, OB and a line through O at right angles to their plane. In
strains of the rotational type, on the other hand,the single existing
set of three filaments (issuing from a point) which cut each other
at right angles both before and after strain do not retain their
directions after strain, though one of them may do so in certain
cases. In the figure, the lines of the filaments in question, when
the figure ABCD is strained into A'B'C'D', are OA, OB and a
line at right angles to their plane before strain, and after strain
they are OA', OB', and the same third line. A rotational
strain can always be analysed into an irrotational strain (or
" pure " strain) followed by a rotation.
Analytically, a strain is irrotational if the three quantities
dw dv du_ dw_ dv_ d_u
dy dz' dz dx ' dx dy
vanish, rotational if any one of them is different from zero. The
halves of these three quantities are the components of a vector
quantity called the " rotation."
15. Whether the strain is rotational or not, there is always one
set of three linear elements issuing from any point which cut each
other at right angles both before and after strain. If these directions
are chosen as axes of x, y, z, the shearing strains e vt , e, x , e x , vanish
at this point. These directions are called the " principal axes of
strain," and the extensions in the directions of these axes the
" principal extensions."
16. It is very important to observe that the relations between
components of strain and components of displacement imply
relations between the components of strain themselves. If
by any process of reasoning we arrive at the conclusion that
the state of strain in a body is such and such a state, we have a
test of the possibility or impossibility of our conclusion. The
test is that, if the state of strain is a possible one, then there
must be a displacement which can be associated with it in accord-
ance with the equations (i) of n.
We may eliminate u, v, w_ from these equations. When this is
done we find that the quantities e xx , . . . e af are connected by the
two sets of equations
dz 2 " dy 2 dydz
!?+&
gy* T g x i dxdy
(I)
and
,6V = d_ ( de,,, de, x de x ,\
"dydz dx\ dx "" dy """ dz I
d-e y ,_ d I de ai de, x ,de xy \
dzdx dy \ dx dy "" dz I
d*e a __ d I de,, de !1 _de
dxdy dz\ dx + dy i)
(2)
These equations are known as the conditions of compatibility
of strain-components. The components of strain which specify
any possible strain satisfy them. Quantities arrived at in any
way, and intended to be components of strain, if they fail to
satisfy these equations, are not the components of any possible
strain; and the theory or speculation by which they are reached
must be modified or abandoned.
_When the components of strain have been found in accordance
with these and other necessary equations, the displacement is
to be found by solving the equations (i) of II, considered as
differential equations to determine u, v, w. The most general
possible solution will differ from any other solution by terms which
contain arbitrary constants, and these terms represent a possible
displacement. This " complementary displacement " involves no
strain, and would be a possible displacement of an ideal perfectly
rigid body.
17. The relations which connect the strains with each other
and with the displacement are geometrical relations resulting
from the definitions of the quantities and not requiring any
experimental verification. They do not admit of such verifica-
tion, because the strain within a body cannot be measured.
The quantities (belonging to the same category) which can be
measured are displacements of points on the surface of a body.
For example, on the surface of a bar subjected to tension we may
make two fine transverse scratches, and measure the distance
between them before and after the bar is stretched. For such
measurements very refined instruments are required. Instru-
ments for this purpose are called barbarously " extensometers,"
and many different kinds have been devised. From- measure-
ments of displacement by an extensometer we may deduce the
average extension of a filament of the bar terminated by the
two scratches. In general, when we attempt to measure a
strain, we really measure some displacements, and deduce the
values, not of the strain at a point, but of the average extensions
of some particular linear filaments of a body containing the point ;
and these filaments are, from the nature of the case, nearly
always superficial filaments.
1 8. In the case of transparent materials such as glass there is
available a method of studying experimentally the state of strain
within a body., This method is founded upon the result that a
piece of glass when strained becomes doubly refracting, with its
optical principal axes at any point in the directions of the
principal axes of strain ( 15) at the point. When the piece has
two parallel plane faces, and two of the principal axes of strain
at any point are parallel to these faces, polarized light transmitted
through the piece in a direction normal to the faces can be used
to determine the directions of the principal axes of the strain
at any point. If the directions of these axes are known theoretic-
ally the comparison of the experimental and theoretical results
yields a test of the theory.
19. Relations between Stresses and Strains. The problem
of the extension of a bar subjected to tension is the one which
has been most studied experimentally, and as a result of this
study it is found that for most materials, including all metals
except cast metals, the measurable extension is proportional
ELASTICITY
to the applied tension, provided that this tension is not too great.
In interpreting this result it is assumed that the tension is uni-
form over the cross-section of the bar, and that the extension
of longitudinal filaments is uniform throughout the bar; and
then the result takes the form of a law of proportionality connect-
ing stress and strain: The tension is proportional to the exten-
sion. Similar results are found for the same materials when other
methods of experimenting are adopted, for example, when a
bar is supported at the ends and bent by an attached load and the
deflexion is measured, or when a bar is twisted by an axial couple
and the relative angular displacement of two sections is measured.
We have thus very numerous experimental verifications of the
famous law first enunciated by Robert Hoolte in 1678 in the words
11 L 't Tensio sic vis "; that is, " the Power of any spring is in the
same proportion as the Tension ( stretching) thereof." The
most general statement of Hooke's Law in modern language
would be: Each of the six components of stress at any point of
a body is a linear function of the six components of strain at the
point. It is evident from what has been said above as to the
nature of the measurement of stresses and strains that this law
in all its generality does not admit of complete experimental
verification, and that the evidence for it consists largely in the
agreement of the results which are deduced from it in a theoretical
fashion with the results of experiments. Of such results one of
a general character may be noted here. If the law is assumed
to be true, and the equations of motion of the body ( 5) are
transformed by means of it into differential equations for
determining the components of displacement, these differential
equations admit of solutions which represent periodic vibratory
displacements (see 85 below). The fact that solid bodies can
be thrown into states of isochronous vibration has been
emphasized by G. G. Stokes as a peremptory proof of the truth
of Hooke's Law.
20. According to the statement of the generalized Hooke's
Law the stress-components vanish when the strain-components
vanish. The strain-components contemplated in experiments
upon which the law is founded are measured from a zero of
reckoning which corresponds to the state of the body subjected
to experiment before the experiment is made, and the stress-
components referred to in the statement of the law are those
which are called into action by the forces applied to the body
in the course of the experiment. No account is taken of the stress
which must already exist in the body owing to the force of gravity
and the forces by which the body is supported. When it is
desired to take account of this stress it is usual to suppose that the
strains which would be produced in the body if it could be freed
from the action of gravity and from the pressures of supports are
so small that the strains produced by the forces which are
applied in the course of the experiment can be compounded with
them by simple superposition. This supposition comes to the
same thing as measuring the strain in the body, not from the
state in which it was before the experiment, but from an ideal
state (the " unstressed " state) in which it would be entirely free
from internal stress, and allowing for the strain which would
be produced by gravity and the supporting forces if these forces
were applied to the body when free from stress. In most prac-
tical cases the initial strain to be allowed for is unimportant
(see 5 91-03 below).
21. Hooke's law of proportionality of stress and strain leads
to the introduction of important physical constants: the
moduluses of elasticity of a body. Let a bar of uniform section
(of area u>) be stretched with tension T, which is distributed
uniformly over the section, so that the stretching force is To),
and let the bar be unsupported at the sides. The bar will undergo
a longitudinal extension of magnitude T/E, where E is a constant
quantity depending upon the material. This constant is called
Young's modulus after Thomas Young, who introduced it into
the science in 1807. The quantity E is of the same nature as a
traction, that is to say, it is measured as a force estimated per
unit of area. For steel it is about 2-O4X 10" dynes per square
centimetre, or about 13,000 tons per sq. in.
22. The longitudinal extension of the bar under tension is
not the only strain in the bar. It is accompanied by a lateral
contraction by which all the transverse filaments of the bar
are shortened. The amount of this contraction is ffT/E, where
<r is a certain number called Poisson's ratio, because its importance
was at first noted by S. D. Poisson in 1828. Poisson arrived
at the existence of this contraction, and the corresponding
number a. from theoretical considerations, and his theory led
him to assign to a the value \. Many experiments have been
made with the view of determining <r, with the result that it
has been found to be different for different materials, although
for very many it does not differ much from J. For steel the
best value (Amagat's) is 0-268. Poisson 's theory admits of
being modified so as to agree with the results of experiment.
23. The behaviour of an elastic solid body, strained within
the limits of its elasticity, is entirely determined by the constants
E and a if the body is isotropic, that is to say, if it has the same
quality in all dii.-ctions around any point. Nevertheless it is
convenient to introduce other constants which are related to the
action of particular sorts of forces. The most important of these
are the " modulus of compression " (or " bulk modulus ") and
the " rigidity " (or "modulus of shear"). To define the modulus
of compression, we suppose that a solid body of any form is
subjected to uniform hydrostatic pressure of amount p. The
state of stress within it will be one of uniform pressure, the same
at all points, and the same in all directions round any point.
There will be compression, the same at all points, and propor-
tional to the pressure; and the amount of the compression can
be expressed as p/k. The quantity k is the modulus of com-
pression. In this case the linear contraction in any direction
is pl$k; but in general the linear extension (or contraction)
is not one-third of the cubical dilatation (or compression).
24. To define the rigidity, we suppose that a solid body is
subjected to forces in such a way that there is shearing stress
within it. For example, a cubical block may be subjected to
opposing tractions on opposite faces acting in directions which
are parallel to an edge of the cube and to both the faces. Let
S be the amount of the traction, and let it be uniformly distri-
buted over the faces. As we have seen (7), equal tractions
must act upon two other faces in suitable directions in order
to maintain equilibrium (see fig. 2 of 7). The two directions
involved may be chosen as axes of x, y as in that figure. Then
the state of stress will be one in which the stress-component
denoted by X v is equal to S, and the remaining stress-components
vanish; and the strain produced in the body is shearing strain of
the type denoted by e^,. The amount of the shearing strain
is S/jt, and the quantity n is the " rigidity."
25. The modulus of compression and the rigidity are quantities
of the same kind as Young's modulus. The modulus of com-
pression of steel is about i-43Xio u dynes per square centi-
metre, the rigidity is about 8-19X10" dynes per square centi-
metre. It must be understood that the values for different
specimens of nominally the same material may differ consider-
ably.
The modulus of compression k and the rigidity *t of an isotropic
material are connected with the Young's modulus E and Poisson's
ratio <r of the material by the equations
fe = E/3(l-2<r), M = E/2(l+<r). _
26. Whatever the forces acting upon an isotropic solid body may
be, provided that the body is strained within its limits of elasticity,
the strain-components are expressed in terms of the stress-com-
ponents by the equations
e,, = (X,-<rY,-<rZ.)/E. <r,,-Y./M,
e n = (Y v -*Z. -ffX^/E, K -Z,/^, \- (I)
<V,=(Z.-rX,-rY,)/E, e-X,/ M . J
If we introduce a quantity X, of the same nature as E or it, by the
equation
X-E ff /(i+<0(i-2), . . . (2)
we may express the stress-components in terms of the strain-com-
ponents by the equations
X, = X(e +e,, +) +21*,., Y. - A*,,,
Y, = *(e,,+e v ,+e*)+2 l te n , Z, =/*, f (3)
Z. -\(c,,+c n +e a )+2ne a , X,-ne tt ; J
and then the behaviour of the body under the action of any forces
146
ELASTICITY
depends upon the two constants X and />. These two constants were
introduced by G. Lame in his treatise of i82. The importance of
thr quantity M had been previously emphasized by L. J. Vicat and
G. G. Stokes.
27. The potential energy per unit of volume (often called the
" resilience ") stored up in the body by the strain is equal to
or the equivalent expression
The former of these expressions is called the " strain-energy-function "
28. The Young's modulus E of a material is often determined
experimentally by the direct method of the extensometer
( 17), but more frequently it is determined indirectly by means
of a result obtained in the theory of the flexure of a bar (see
47> S3 below). The rigidity (i is usually determined indirectly
by means of results obtained in t!he theory of the torsion of a
bar (see 41, 42 below). The modulus of compression k may
be determined directly by means of the piezometer, as was
done by E. H. Amagat, or it may be determined indirectly by
means of a result obtained in the theory of a tube under pressure,
as was done by A. Mallock (see 78 below). The value of
Poisson's ratio a is generally inferred from the relation connecting
it with E and n or with E and k, but it may also be determined
indirectly by means of a result obtained in the theory of the
flexure of a bar ( 47 below), as was done by M. A. Cornu and
A. Mallock, or directly by a modification of the extensometer
method, as has been done recently by J. Morrow.
29. The elasticity of a fluid is always expressed by means of .a
single quantity of the same kind as the modulus of compression
of a solid body. To any increment of pressure, which is not too
great, there corresponds a proportional cubical compression,
and the amount of this compression for an increment dp of
pressure can be expressed as 5p/k. The quantity that is usually
tabulated is the reciprocal of k, and it is called the coefficient
of compressibility. It is the amount of compression per unit
increase of pressure. As a physical quantity it is of the same
dimensions as the reciprocal of a pressure (or of a force per unit
of area). The pressures concerned are usually measured in
atmospheres (i atmosphere = 1-014 * io 6 dynes per sq. cm.).
For water the coefficient of compressibility, or the compression
per atmosphere, is about 4-5 X io~ 6 . This gives for k the value
2-22 X io 10 dynes per sq. cm. The Young's modulus and the
rigidity of a fluid are always zero.
30. The relations between stress and strain in a material
which is not isotropic are much more complicated. In such a
material the Young's modulus depends upon the direction of
the tension, and its variations about a point are expressed
by means of a surface of the fourth degree. The Poisson's
ratio depends upon the direction of the contracted lateral
filaments as well as upon that of the longitudinal extended
ones. The rigidity depends upon both the directions involved
in the specification of the shearing stress. In general there is
no simple relation between the Young's moduluses and Poisson's
ratios and rigidities for assigned directions and the modulus
of compression. Many materials in common use, all fibrous
woods for example, are actually aeolotropic (that is to say, are not
isotropic), but the materials which are aeolotropic in the most
regular fashion are natural crystals. The elastic behaviour
of crystals has been studied exhaustively by many physicists,
and in particular by W. Voigt. The strain-energy-function is a
homogeneous quadratic function of the six strain-components,
and this function may have as many as 21 independent co-
efficients, taking the place in the general case of the 2 coefficients
X, jtt which occur when the material is isotropic a result first
obtained by George Green in 1837. The best experimental
determinations of the coefficients have been made indirectly
by Voigt by means of results obtained in the theories of the
torsion and flexure of aeolotropic bars.
31. Limits of Elasticity. A solid body which has been strained
by considerable forces does not in general recover its original
size and shape completely after the forces cease to act. The
strain that is left is called set. If set occurs the elasticity is
said to be " imperfect," and the greatest strain (or the greatest
load) of any specified type, for which no set occurs, defines the
" limit of perfect elasticity " corresponding to the specified
type of strain, or of stress. All fluids and many solid bodies,
such as glasses and crystals, as well as some metals (copper,
lead, silver) appear to be perfectly elastic as regards change of
volume within wide limits; but malleable metals and alloys
can have their densities permanently increased by considerable
pressures. The limits of perfect elasticity as regards change
of shape, on the other hand, are very low, if they exist at all,
for glasses and other hard, brittle solids; but a class of metals
including copper, brass, steel, platinum are very perfectly
elastic as regards distortion, provided that the distortion is not
too great. The question can be tested by observation of the
torsional elasticity of thin fibres or wires. The limits of perfect
elasticity are somewhat ill-defined, because an experiment
cannot warrant us in asserting that there is no set, but only
that, if there is any set, it is too small to be observed.
32. A different meaning may be, and often is, attached to
the phrase " limits of elasticity " in consequence of the following
experimental result: Let a bar be held stretched under a
moderate tension, and let the extension be measured; let the
tension be slightly increased and the extension again measured;
let this process be continued, the tension being increased by
equal increments. It is found that when the tension is not too
great the extension increases by equal increments (as nearly as
experiment can decide), but that, as the tension increases, a
stage is reached in which the extension increases faster than
it would do if it continued to be proportional to the tension.
The beginning of this stage is tolerably well marked. Some
time before this stage is reached the limit of perfect elasticity
is passed; that is to say, if the load is removed it is found that
there is some permanent set. The limiting tension beyond
which the above law of proportionality fails is often called the
" limit of linear elasticity." It is higher than the limit of perfect
elasticity. For steel bars of various qualities J. Bauschinger
found for this limit values varying from io to 17 tons per square
inch. The result indicates that, when forces which produce
any kind of strain are applied to a solid body and are gradually
increased, the strain at any instant increases proportionally
to the forces up to a stage beyond that at which, if the forces
were removed, the body would completely recover its original
size and shape, but that the increase of strain ceases to be
proportional to the increase of load when the load surpasses '
a certain limit. There would thus be, for any type of strain, a
limit of linear elasticity, which exceeds the limit of perfect
elasticity.
33. A body which has been strained beyond the limit of
linear elasticity is often said to have suffered an " over-strain. "
When the load is removed, the set which can be observed is not
entirely permanent; but it gradually diminishes with lapse of
time. This phenomenon is named " elastic after- working."
If, on the other hand, the load is maintained constant, the
strain is gradually increased. This effect indicates a gradual
flowing of solid bodies under great stress; and a similar effect
was observed in the experiments of H. Tresca on the punching
and crushing of metals. It appears that all solid bodies under
sufficiently great loads become " plastic," that is to say, they
take a set which gradually increases with the lapse of time.
No plasticity is observed when the limit of linear elasticity is
not exceeded.
34. The values of the elastic limits are affected by overstrain.
If the load is maintained for some time, and then removed,
the limit of linear elasticity is found to be higher than before.
If the load is not maintained, but is removed and then reapplied,
the limit is found to be lower than before. During a period of
rest a test piece recovers its elasticity after overstrain.
35. The effects of repeated loading have been studied by
A. Wohler, J. Bauschinger, O. Reynolds and others. It has
been found that, after many repetitions of rather rapidly alter-
nating stress, pieces are fractured by loads which they have
many times withstood. It is not certain whether the fracture
ELASTICITY
i- in every case caused by the gradual growth of minute flaws
from the beginning of the series of tests, or whether the elastic
quality of the material suffers deterioration apart from such
flaws. It appears, however, to be an ascertained result that,
so long as the limit of linear elasticity is not exceeded, repeated
loads and rapidly alternating loads do not produce failure of
the material.
36. The question of the conditions of safety, or of the condi-
tions in which rupture is produced, is one upon which there has
been much speculation, but no completely satisfactory result
has been obtained. It has been variously held that rupture
occurs when the numerically greatest principal stress exceeds
t a certain limit, or when this stress is tension and exceeds a
' certain limit, or when the greatest difference of two principal
stresses (called the " stress-difference ") exceeds a certain
limit, or when the greatest extension or the greatest shearing
strain or the greatest strain of any type exceeds a certain limit.
Some of these hypotheses appear to have been disproved. It
was held by G. F. Fitzgerald (Nature, Nov. 5, 1896) that rupture
is not produced by pressure symmetrically applied all round a
body, and this opinion has been confirmed by the recent experi-
ments of A. Foppl. This result disposes of the greatest stress
hypothesis and also of the greatest strain hypothesis. The
fact that short pillars can be crushed by longitudinal pressure
disposes of the greatest tension hypothesis, for there is no
tension in the pillar. The greatest extension hypothesis failed
to satisfy some tests imposed by H. Wchage, who experimented
with blocks of wrought iron subjected to equal pressures in two
directions at right angles to each other. The greatest stress-
difference hypothesis and the greatest shearing strain hypothesis
would lead to practically identical results, and these results
have been held by J. J. Guest to accord well with his experi-
ments on metal tubes subjected to various systems of combined
stress; but these experiments and Guest's conclusion have been
criticized adversely by O. Mohr, and the question cannot be
regarded as settled. The fact seems to be that the conditions
of rupture depend largely upon the nature of the test (tensional,
torsional, flexural, or whatever it may be) that is applied to
a specimen, and that no general formula holds for all kinds
of tests. The best modern technical writings emphasize the
importance of the limits of linear elasticity and of tests of
dynamical resistance ( 87 below) as well as of statical resistance.
37. The question of the conditions of rupture belongs rather
to the science of the strength of materials than to the science
of elasticity ( i); but it has been necessary to refer to it briefly
here, because there is no method except the methods of the
theory of elasticity for determining the state of stress or strain
in a body subjected to forces. Whatever view may ultimately
be adopted as to the relation between the conditions of safety
of a structure and the state of stress or strain in it, the calculation
of this state by means of the theory or by experimental means
(as in 18) cannot be dispensed with.
38. MetJiodi of determining (he Stress in a Body subjected to given
forces. To determine the state of stress, or the state of strain,
in an isotropic solid body strained within its limits of elasticity by
given forces, we have to use (i.) the equations of equilibrium, (ii.)
: conditions which hold at the bounding surface, (iii.) the relations
tween stress-components and strain-components, (iv.) the rela-
tions between strain-components and displacement. The equations
of equilibrium are (with notation already used) three partial differ-
ential equations of the type
,3X
'47
retain only the components of displacement. This method leads
(with notation already used) to three partial differential equations
of the type
and three boundary conditions of the type
In the alternative method we eliminate the strain-components and
the- displacements. This method leads to a system of partial differ-
ential equations to be satisfied by the stress-components. In this
system there are three equations of the type
three of the type
ax "^ay
-o,
. (i bis)
3F+
_
oy
dx dy v*
The conditions which hold at the bounding surface are three equations
of the type
X, cos Or, r) +X, cos (y. ,) +Z. cos (i, r) - X,, (2)
where denotes the direction of the outward-drawn normal to the
idmg surface, and X, denotes the x-component of the applied
surface traction. The relations between stress-components and
train-components are expressed by either of the sets of equations
f 26. The relations between strain-components and
Placement are the equations (i) Of f II, or the equivalent con-
ditions of compatibility expressed in equations (i) and (2) of $ 16.
39 f Vvc may proceed by either of two methods In one method
we eliminate the stress-components and the strain-components and
y /ax + a_y az\ _ 2 ax
and three of the type
*Y. ,Y, a'Y. _i a / a z aY\
dx' ~ dy 1 """ dsf ~*~l+od}d^ A + T t-i) = p \JJ+'gjj . (6)
the equations of the two latter types being necessitated by the
conditions of compatibility of strain-components. The solutions of
these equations have to be adjusted so that the boundary conditions
of the tyoe (2) may be satisfied.
40. It is evident that whichever method is adopted the mathe-
matical problem is in general very complicated. It is also evident
that, if we attempt to proceed by help of some intuition as to the
nature of the stress or strain, our intuition ought to satisfy the
tests provided by the above systems of equations. Neglect of this
precaution has led to many errors. Another source of frequent error
lies in the neglect of the conditions in which the above systems of
equations are correct. They are obtained by help of the supposition
that the relative displacements of the parts of the strained body
are small. The solutions of them must therefore satisfy the test of
sniallncss of the relative displacements.
41. Torsion. As a first example of the application of the
theory we take the problem of the torsion of prisms. This
problem, considered first by C. A. Coulomb in 1784, was finally
solved by B. de Saint- Venant in 1855. The problem is this:
A cylindrical or prismatic bar is held twisted by terminal
couples; it is required to determine the state of stress and
strain in the interior. When the bar is a circular cylinder
the problem is easy. Any section is displaced by rotation about
the central-line through a small angle, which is proportional
to the distance z of the section from a fixed plane at right angles
to this line. This plane is a terminal section if one of the two
terminal sections is not displaced. The angle through which
the section z rotates is TZ, where r is a constant, called the
amount of the twist; and this constant r is equal to G//J,
where G is the twisting couple, and I is the moment of inertia
of the cross-section about the central-line. This result is often
called " Coulomb's law." The stress within the bar is shearing
stress, consisting, as it must, of two sets of equal tangential
tractions on two sets of planes which are at right angles to each
other. These planes are the cross-sections and the axial planes
of the bar. The tangential traction at any point of the cross-
section is directed at right angles to the axial plane through
the point, and the tangential traction on the axial plane is
directed parallel to the length of the bar. The amount of
either at a distance r from the axis is firr or Gr/I. The result
that G = HT! can be used to determine /j experimentally, for T
may be measured and G and I are known.
42. When the cross-section of the bar is not circular it is
clear that this solution fails; for the existence of tangential
traction, near the prismatic bounding surface, on any plane
which does not cut this surface at right angles, implies the
existence of traction applied to this surface. We may attempt
to modify the theory by retaining the supposition that the
stress consists of shearing stress, involving tangential traction
distributed in some way over the cross-sections. Such traction
is obviously a necessary constituent of any stress-system
which could be produced by terminal couples around the axis.
ELASTICITY
We should then know that there must be equal tangential
traction directed along the length of the bar, and exerted across
some planes or other which are parallel to this direction. We
should also know that, at the bounding surface, these planes
must cut this surface at right angles. The corresponding strain
would be shearing strain which could involve (i.) a sliding
of elements of one cross-section relative to another, (ii.) a relative
sliding of elements of the above mentioned planes in the direction
of the length of the bar. We could conclude that there may
be a longitudinal displacement of the elements of the cross-
sections. We should then attempt to satisfy the conditions
of the problem by supposing that this is the character of the
strain, and that the corresponding displacement consists of
(i.) a rotation of the cross-sections in their planes such as we
found in the case of the circle, (ii.) a distortion of the cross-
sections into curved surfaces by a displacement (w) which is
directed normally to their planes and varies in some manner
from point to point of these planes. We could show that all
the conditions of the problem are satisfied by this assumption,
provided that the longitudinal displacement (TV), considered as
a function of the position of a point (x,y) in the cross-section,
satisfies the equation
ffkv
and the boundary condition
(~ry) COS (*,,) + (f+r*) cos (y,r) =o, . (2)
where T denotes the amount of the twist, and v the direction
of the normal to the boundary. The solution is known for a
great many forms of section. (In the particular case of a circular
section w vanishes.) The tangential traction at any point of
the cross-section is directed along the tangent to that curve
of the family ^ = const, which passes through the point, ^ being
the function determined by the equations
The amount of the twist T produced by terminal couples of
magnitude G is G/C, where C is a constant, called the " torsional
rigidity " of the prism, and expressed by the formula
the integration being taken over the cross-section. When
the coefficient of n in the expression for C is known for any
section, p can be determined by experiment with a bar of that
form of section.
43. The distortion of the cross-sections into curved surfaces
is shown graphically by drawing the contour lines (w =const.).
In general the section is divided into a number of compartments,
and the portions that lie within two adjacent compartments
are respectively concave
and convex. This result
is illustrated inthe
accompanying figures
(fig. 4 for the ellipse,
given by * 2 /4 2 +ji 2 /^ =I
fig. 5 f r the equilateral
triangle, given by (x+\a)
FIG. 4.
fig. 6 for the square).
44. The distribution of
the shearing stress over
the cross-section is de-
termined by the function \ff already introduced. If we
draw the curves ^ = const., corresponding to any form of
section, for equidifferent values of the constant, the tangential
traction at any point on the cross-section is directed along the
tangent to that curve of the family which passes through the
point, and the magnitude of it is inversely proportional to the
distance between consecutive curves of the family. Fig. 7
illustrates the result in the case of the equilateral triangle. The
boundary is, of course, one of the lines. The " lines of shearing
stress " which can thus be drawn are in every case identical
with the lines of flow of frictionless liquid filling a cylindrical
vessel of the same cross-section as the bar, when the liquid
circulates in the plane of the section with uniform spin. They
are also the same as the contour lines of a flexible and slightly
extensible membrane, of
which the edge has the
same form as the bounding
curve of the cross-section
of the bar, when the mem-
brane is fixed at the edge
and slightly deformed by
uniform pressure.
45.Saint-Venant's theory
shows that the true tor-
sional rigidity is in general
less than that which would
be obtained by extending
Coulomb's law (G=/*Tl)
to sections which are not FIG. 5.
circular. For an elliptic
cylinder of sectional area w and moment of inertia I about
its central-line the torsional rigidity is ju 4 /4T 2 I, and this
formula is not far from being correct for a very large
number of sections. For a bar of square section of side a
centimetres, the torsional rigidity in C.G.S. units is (o-i4o6)^a 4
approximately, y. being expressed in dynes per square centi-
metre. How great the defect of the true value from that
FIG. 6.
given by extending Coulomb's law may be in the case of
sections with projecting corners is shown by the diagrams (fig. 8
especially no. 4). In these diagrams the upper of the two
numbers under each figure indicates the fraction which the true
torsional rigidity corresponding to the section is of that value
which would be obtained by extending Coulomb's law; and the
lower of the two numbers indicates the
ratio which the torsional rigidity for a
bar of the corresponding section bears
to that of a bar of circular section of
the same material and of equal sec-
tional area. These results have an
important practical application, inas-
much as they show that strengthening
ribs and projections, such as are intro-
duced in engineering to give stiff-
ness to beams, have the reverse of
FIG. 7.
a good effect when torsional stiffness is an object, although
they are of great value in increasing the resistance to
bending. The theory shows further that the resistance to
torsion is very seriously diminished when there is in the
surface any dent approaching to a re-entrant angle. At such
a place the shearing strain tends to become infinite, and some
ELASTICITY
149
permanent set is produced by torsion. In the case of a section
of any form, the strain and stress are greatest at points on the
contour, and these points are in many cases the points of the
contour which are nearest to the centroid of the section. The
theory has also been applied to show that a longitudinal Haw
SquArr with
lUMTti coracn
aodboltow
(d
Squarr with
cutr ancles
and hallow
u>
Star with four
rounitat points,
brinf a curve
of ton rif hlh
1 .juil.tlrr.il
i.i ,:,.-.;,
S4J46. -l6. 177*J. -5374. '60000.
MJJO. -M66. -S76. JOT^S- "I'i
FIG. 8. Diagrams showing Torsional Rigidities.
FIG. 9.
near the axis of a shaft transmitting a torsional couple has
little influence on the strength of the shaft, but that in the
neighbourhood of a similar flaw which is much nearer to the
surface than to the axis the shearing strain may be nearly
doubled, and thus the possibility of such flaws is a source of
weakness against which special provision ought to be made.
46. Bending of Beams. As a second example of the applica-
tion of the general theory we take the problem of the flexure
of a beam. In this case also we begin by forming a simple
intuition as to the nature of the strain and the stress. On the
side of the beam towards the centre of curvature the longi-
tudinal filaments must be contracted, and on the other side
they must be extended. If we assume that the cross-sections
remain plane, and that the central-line is unaltered in length,
we see (at once from fig. 9) that the extensions (or contractions)
are given by the formula y/R, where y
denotes the distance of a longitudinal
filament from the plane drawn through
the unstrained central-line at right-
angles to the plane of bending, and
R is the radius of curvature of the
curve into which this line is bent
(shown by the dotted line in the figure).
Corresponding to this strain there must
be traction acting across the cross-
sections. If we assume that there is no other stress, then the
magnitude of the traction in question is Ey/R, where E is Young's
modulus, and it is tension on the side where the filaments arc
extended and pressure on the side where they are contracted.
If the plane of bending contains a set of principal axes of the
cross-sections at their centroids, these tractions for the whole
cross-section are equivalent to a couple of moment EI/R, where
I now denotes the moment of inertia of the cross-section about
an axis through its centroid at right angles to the plane of
bending, and the plane of the couple is the plane of bending.
Thus a beam of any form of section can be held bent in a
"principal plane" by terminal couples of moment M, that is
to say by a "bending moment" M; the central-line will take
a curvature M, El, so that it becomes an arc of a circle of radius
KIM; and the stress at any point will be tension of amount
My/I, where y denotes distance (reckoned positive towards the
side remote from the centre of curvature) from that plane which
initially contains the central-line and is at right angles to the
plane of the couple. This plane is called the " neutral plane."
The restriction that the beam is bent in a principal plane means
that the plane of bending contains one set of principal axes of the
cross-sections at their centroids; in the case of a beam of rect-
angular section the plane would bisect two opposite edges at
right angles. In order that the theory may hold good the
radius of curvature must be very large.
47. In this problem of the bending of a beam by terminal
couples the stress is tension, determined as above, and the
corresponding strain consists therefore of longitudinal extension
of amount My/El or y/R (contraction if y is negative), accom-
panied by lateral contraction of amount a My/El or <ry/R(exten-
sion if y is negative), a being Poisson's ratio for the material.
Our intuition of the nature of the strain was imperfect, inas-
much as it took no account of these lateral strains. The necessity
for introducing them was pointed out by Saint-Venant. The
effect of them is a change
of shape of the cross-
sections in their own
planes. This is shown in
an exaggerated way in fig.
10, where the rectangle
ABCD represents the
cross-section of the un-
strained beam, or a rect-
angular portion of this
FIG. 10.
FIG. n.
cross-section, and the curvilinear figure A'B'C'D' represents in an
exaggerated fashion the cross-section (or the corresponding por-
tion of the cross-section) of the same beam, when bent so that the
centre of curvature of the central-line (which is at right angles
to the plane of the figure) is on the line EF produced beyond F.
The lines A'B' and C'D' are approximately circles of radii R/a,
when the central-line is a circle of radius R, and their centres
are on the line FE produced beyond E. Thus the neutral plane,
and each of the faces that is parallel to it, becomes strained
into an anticlastic surface, whose principal curvatures are in the
ratio ff : i. The general appearance of the bent beam is shown
in an exaggerated fashion in fig. n, where the traces of the sur-
face into which the neutral plane is bent are dotted. The result
that the ratio of the
principal curvatures of
the anticlastic surfaces,
into which the top and
bottom planes of the
beam (of rectangular
section) are bent, is.
Poisson's ratio <r, has
been used for the ex-
perimental determina-
tion of a. The result that the radius of curvature of the bent
central-line is EI/M is used in the experimental determination
of E. The quantity El is often called the " flexural rigidity "
of the beam. There are two principal flexural rigidities corre-
sponding to bending in the two principal planes (cf. 62 below).
48. That this theory requires modification, when the load
does not consist simply of terminal couples, can be seen most
easily by considering the problem of a beam loaded at one end
with a weight W, and supported in a horizontal position at its
other end. The forces that are exerted at any section p, to
balance the weight W, must reduce statically to a vertical
force W and a couple, and these forces arise from the action of
the part Ap on the part B/> (see fig. 12), i.e. from the stresses
across the section at p. The couple is equal to the moment of
the applied load W
about an axis drawn
through the cen-
troid of the section
p at right angles to
the plane of bend-
ing. This moment
is called the " bend-
ing moment " at
the section, it is the
product of the load
W and the distance
of the section from
the loaded end, so
that it varies uni-
formly along the
F IG -
length of the beam. The stress that suffices in the simpler problem
gives rise to no vertical force, and it is clear that in addition to
longitudinal tensions and pressures there must be tangential
tractions on the cross-sections. The resultant of these tangential
tractions must be a force equal to W, and directed vertically;
ELASTICITY
but the direction of the traction at a point of the cross-section
need not in general be vertical. The existence of tangential
traction on the cross-sections implies the existence of equal
tangential traction, directed parallel to the central-line, on
some planes or other which are parallel to this line, the two sets
of tractions forming a shearing stress. We conclude that such
shearing stress is a necessary constituent of the stress-system
in the beam bent by terminal transverse load. We can develop
a theory of this stress-system from the assumptions (i.) that the
tension at any point of the cross-section is related to the bending
moment at the section by the same law as in the case of uniform
bending by terminal couples; (ii.) that, in addition to this
tension, there is at any point shearing stress, involving tangential
tractions acting in appropriate directions upon the elements
of the cross-sections. When these assumptions are made it
appears that there is one and only one distribution of shearing
stress by which the conditions of the problem can be satisfied.
The determination of the amount and direction of this shearing
stress, and of the corresponding strains and displacements, was
effected by Saint- Venant and R. F. A. Clebsch for a number of
forms of section by means of an analysis of the same kind as that
employed in the solution of the torsion problem.
49. Let / be the length of the beam, * the distance of the section
p from the fixed end A, y the distance of any point below the hori-
zontal plane through the centroid of the
section at A, then the bending moment at
p is W(i x), and the longitudinal tension P
or Xi at any point on the cross-section is
W(/ x)y/l, and this is related to the
b nding moment exactly as in the
simpler problem.
50. The expressions for the
shearing stresses depend on the
shape ofthe cross-section. Taking
the beam to be of isotropic
material and the cross-section to
be an ellipse of semiaxes a and b
(fig- 13). the a axis being vertical
in the unstrained state, and drawing the axis
2 at right angles to the plane of flexure, we
find that the vertical shearing stress U or X v
at any point (y, z) on any cross-section is
y
FIG. 13.
If <r = i, this ratio is \ for a circle, nearly f for a flat elliptic bar
with the longest diameter vertical, nearly I for a flat elliptic bar with
the longest diameter horizontal.
In the same problem the horizontal shearing stress T or Z* at any
point on any cross-section is of amount
The resultant of these stresses is W, but the
amount at the centroid, which is the maxi-
mum amount, exceeds the average amount,
W/JTO&, in the ratio
The resultant of these stresses vanishes; but, taking as before <r = t,
and putting for the three cases above a = b, a = iob, b = loa, we find
that the ratio of the maximum of this stress to the average vertical
shearing stress has the values ?, nearly J s , and nearly 4. Thus the
stress T is of considerable importance when the beam is a plank.
As another example we may consider a circular tube of external
radius r and internal radius fi. Writing P,U,T forXj, X v , Z z , we find
and for a tube of radius r and small thickness t the value of P and
the maximum values of U and T reduce approximately to
P=-W(/-*)y/7rr<
IW = W/irr/, T mll . = W/2-/.
The greatest value of U is in this case approximately twice its
average value, but it is possible that these results for the bending
of very thin tubes may be seriously at fault if the tube is not plugged,
and if the load is not applied in the manner contemplated in the
theory (cf. 55). In such cases the extensions and contractions of
the longitudinal filaments may be practically confined to a small
part of the material near the ends of the tube, while the rest of the
tube is deformed without stretching.
51. The tangential tractions U, T on the cross-sections are
necessarily accompanied by tangential tractions on the longi-
tudinal sections, and on each such section the tangential traction
is parallel to the central line; on a vertical section z = const.
its amount at any point is T, and on a horizontal section y=
const, its amount at any point is U.
The internal stress at any point is completely determined
by the components P, U, T, but these are not principal stresses
( 7). Clebsch has given an elegant geometrical construction
for determining the p'rincipal stresses at any point when the
values of P, U, T are known.
From the point O (fig. 14) draw lines OP, OU, OT, to represent
the stresses P, U, T at O, on the cross-section through O, in magni-
tude, direction and sense, and
compound U and T into a
resultant represented by OE;
the plane EOF is a principal
plane of stress at O, and the
principal stress at right angles
to this plane vanishes. Take
M the middle point of OP, and
with centre M and radius ME
describe a circle cutting the
line OP in A and B; then OA
and OB represent the magni-
tudes of the two remaining
principal stresses. On AB
describe a rectangle ABDC so
FIG. 14.
that DC passes through E ; then OC is the direction of the princi-
pal stress represented in magnitude by OA, and OD is the direction
of the principal stress represented in magnitude by OB.
52. As regards the strain in the beam, the longitudinal and
lateral extensions and contractions depend on the bending
moment in the same way as in the simpler problem; but, the
bending moment being variable, the anticlastic curvature
produced is also variable. In addition to these extensions
and contractions there are shearing strains corresponding to the
shearing stresses T, U. The shearing strain corresponding to
T consists of a relative sliding parallel to the central-line of
different longitudinal linear elements combined with a relative
sliding in a transverse horizontal direction of elements of different
cross-sections; the latter of these is concerned in the production
of those displacements by which the variable anticlastic curvature
is brought about; to see the effect of the former we may most
suitably consider, for the case of an elliptic cross-section, the
distortion of the shape of a rectangular portion of a plane of the
material which in the natural state H
was horizontal; all the boundaries
of such a portion become parabolas of
small curvature, which is variable along
the length of the beam, and the par-
ticular effect under consideration is
the change of the transverse horizontal
linear elements from straight lines
such as HK to parabolas such as H'K'
(fig. is); the lines HL and KM are
parallel to the central-line, and the
figure is drawn for a plane above the neutral plane. When the
cross-section is not an elh'pse the character of the strain is the
same, but the curves are only approximately parabolic.
The shearing strain corresponding to U is a distortion which
has the effect that the straight vertical filaments become curved
lines which cut the longitudinal filaments obliquely, and thus
the cross-sections do not remain plane, but become curved
surfaces, and the tangent plane to any one of these surfaces
at the centroid cuts the central line obliquely (fig. 16). The
angle between these tangent planes and the central-line is the
same at all points of the line; and, if it is denoted by ir+.So,
the value of SQ is expressible as
shearing stress at centroid
rigidity of material '
ELASTICITY
nd it thus depends on the shape of the cross-section; for the
elliptic section of 50 its value is
4W
for a circle (with a-}) this becomes yVV/zEiro*. The vertical
filament through the centroid of any cross-section becomes
a cubical parabola, as shown in tig. 16, and the contour lines
of the curved surface into which any cross-section is distorted
are shown in fig. 17 for a circular section.
53. The deflection of the beam is determined from the equation
curvature of central line -bending moment + flexural rigidity,
and the special conditions at the supported end; there is no
alteration of this statement on account of the shears. As regards
the special condition at
an end which is encaslrle,
or built in, Saint-Venant
proposed to assume that
the central tangent plane
of the cross-section at
the end is vertical; with
this assumption the tan-
gent to the central line
at the end is inclined
downwards and makes an
angle s a with the hori-
zontal (see fig. 1 8); it is,
Fie. 16.
however, improbable that
this condition is exactly
realized in practice. In the application of the theory to the
experimental determination of Young's modulus, the small
angle which the central-line at the support makes with the
horizontal is an unknown quantity, to be eliminated by observa-
tion of the deflection at two or more points.
54- We may suppose the displacement in a bent beam to be
produced by the following operations: (i) the central-line is
deflected into its curved form, (2) the crois-sections are rotated
about axes through their centroids at right angles to the plane
of flexure so as to make angles equal to fa+So with the central-
line, (3) each cross-section is distorted in its own plane in such
a way that the appropriate 'variable anticlastic curvature is
produced, (4) the cross-sections are further distorted into curved
surfaces. The contour lines of fig. 17 show the disturbance
from the central tangent plane, not from the original vertical
plane.
55. Practical Application of Saint-Venant' s Theory The.
theory above described is exact provided the forces applied to
the loaded end, which
have W for resultant,
are distributed over the
terminal section in a par-
ticular way,not likely to
be realized in practice;
and the application to
practical problems de-
pends on a principle due
to Saint-Venant, to the
effect that, except for
comparatively small por-
tions of the beam near
to the loaded and fixed
ends, the resultant only
is effective, and its mode
of distribution does not
seriously affect the in-
FIG. 17.
ternal strain and stress. In fact, the actual stress is that due
to forces with the required resultant distributed in the manner
contemplated in the theory, superposed upon that due to a
certain distribution of forces on each terminal section which, if
applied to a rigid body, would keep it in equilibrium; according
to Saint-Venant's principle, the stresses and strains due to such
distributions of force are unimportant except near the ends. For
this principle to be exactly applicable it is necessary that the
length of the beam should be very great compared with any
linear dimension of its cross-section; for the practical applica-
tion it is sufficient that the length should be about ten times the
greatest diameter.
56. In recent years the problem of the bending of a beam by
loads distributed along its length has been much advanced.
It is now practically solved for the case of a load distributed
uniformly, or according to any rational algebraic law, and it is
also solved for the case where the thickness is small compared
with the length and depth, as in a plate girder, and the load is
distributed in any way. These solutions are rather complicated
and difficult to interpret. The case which has been worked
out most fully is that of a transverse load distributed uniformly
along the length of the beam. In this case two noteworthy
results have been obtained. The first of these is that the central-
line in general suffers extension. This result had been found
experimentally many years before. In the case of the plate
girder loaded uniformly along the top, this extension is just
half as great as the extension of the central-line of the same
girder when free at the ends, supported along the base, and
carrying the same load along the top. The second note-
worthy result is that the curvature of the strained central-
line is not proportional to the bending moment. Over and
above the curvature which would be found from the ordinary
relation
curvature of central-line = bending moment * flexural rigidity,
there is an additional curvature which is the same at all the
cross-sections. In ordinary cases, provided the length is large
compared with any linear dimension of the cross-section, this
additional curvature is small compared with that calculated
from the ordinary formula, but it may become important in
cases like that of suspension
bridges, where a load carried
along the middle of the roadway
is supported by tensions in rods
attached at the sides.
57. When the ordinary relation
between the curvature and the
bending moment is applied to the
calculation of the deflection of con-
tinuous beams it must not be
forgotten that a correction of the
kind just mentioned may possibly .
be requisite. In the usual method
of treating the problem such cor-
rections are not considered, and the ordinary relation is made
the basis of the theory. In order to apply this relation to the
calculation of the deflection, it is necessary to know the bending
moment at every point; and, since the pressures of the supports
are not among the data of (he problem, we require a method
of determining the bending moments at the supports either
by calculation or in some other way. The calculation of the
bending moment can be replaced by a method of graphical
construction, due to Mohr, and depending on the two following
theorems:
(i.) The curve of the central-line of each span of a beam, when
the bending moment M is given, 1 is identical with the catenary
or funicular curve passing through the ends of the span under a
[fictitious) load per unit length of the span equal to M/EI, the
lorizontal tension in the funicular being unity.
(ii.) The directions of the tangents to this funicular curve
at the ends of the span are the same for all statically equivalent
systems of (fictitious) load.
When M is known, the magnitude of the resultant shearing
stress at any section is dM/dx, where x is measured along the
learn.
The sign of M is shown by the arrow-heads in fig. 19, for which,
with y downwards,
II
II
FIG. 18.
EI;g+M-0.
152
ELASTICITY
58. Let I be the length of a span of a loaded beam (fig. 19), Mi
and Mi the bending moments at the ends, M the bending moment
at a section distant x from the end (Mi),- M' the bending moment at
,(<
A
l-x
FIG. 19.
the same section when the same span with the same load is simply
supported ; then M is given by the formula
and thus a fictitious load statically equivalent to M/EI can be
easily found when M' has been found. If we draw a curve (fig. 20)
to pass through the ends of the span, so that its ordinate represents
the value of M'/EI, the corresponding fictitious loads are statically
equivalent to a single load, of amount represented by the area of the
curve, placed at the point of the span vertically above the centre of
gravity of this area. If PN is the ordinate of this curve, and if at
the ends of the span we erect prdinates in the proper sense to represent
Mi/El and Mz/EI, the bending moment at any point is represented
by the length PQ. 1 For
a uniformly distributed
load the curve of M' is a
parabola M.' = $wx(l x),
where w is the load per
unit of length; and the
statically equivalent fic-
titious load is ^jTo/VEI
placed at the middle point
G of the span; also the
loads statically equivalent
to the fictitious loads
M,(/-*)//EI and Mjx/JEI
are iMi//EI and iMt//EI
of the span. The funi-
FlG. 20.
placed at the points g, g' of trisection ____
cular polygon for the fictitious loads can thus be drawn, and the
direction of the central-line at the supports is determined when the
bending moments at the supports are known.
59. When there is more than one span the funiculars in question
may be drawn for each of the spans, and, if the bending moments
at the ends of the extreme spans are known, the intermediate ones
can be determined. This determination depends on two considera-
tions: (l) the fictitious loads corresponding to the bending moment
at any support are proportional to the lengths of the spans which
abut on that support ; (2) the sides of two funiculars that end at
any support coincide in direction. Fig. 21 illustrates the method
for the case of a uniform beam on three supports A, B, C, the ends
A and C being freely supported. There will be an unknown bending
moment Mo at B, and the system 2 of fictitious loads is j^mAB'/EI
at G the middle point of AB, ^aiBC'/EI at G' the middle point of
BC, - JMoAB/EI at g and - JMoBC/EI at g', where g and g' are the
points of trisection nearer to B of the spans AB, BC. The centre of
FIG. 21.
gravity of the two latter is a fixed point independent of Mo, and the
line VK of the figure is the vertical through this point. We draw
AD and CE to represent the loads at G and G' in magnitude; then
D and E are fixed points. We construct any triangle UVW whose
sides UV, UW pass through D, B, and whose vertices lie on the
verticals gU. VK, g'W; the point F where VW meets DB is a fixed
1 The figure is drawn for a case where the bending moment has the
same sign throughout.
* Mo is taken to have, as it obviously has, the opposite sense to that
shown in fig. 19.
point, and the lines EF, DK are the two sides (2, 4) of the required
funiculars which do not pass through A, B or C. The remaining
sides (l, 3, 5) can then be drawn, and the side 3 necessarily passes
through B; for the triangle UVW
and the triangle whose sides are
2, 3, 4 are in perspective.
The bending moment Mo is repre-
sented in the figure by the vertical
line BH where H is on the con-
tinuation of the side 4, the scale
being given by
BH = JMoBC_
this appears from the diagrams of p
forces, fig. 22, in which the oblique 22
lines are marked to correspond to the sides of the funiculars to
which they are parallel.
In the application of the method to more complicated cases there
are two systems of fixed points corresponding to F, by means of
which the sides of the funiculars are drawn.
60. Finite Bending of Thin Rod. The equation
curvature = bending moment -j-flexural rigidity
may also be applied to the problem of the flexure in a principal
plane of a very thin rod or wire, for which the curvature need
not be small. When the forces that pro-
duce the flexure are applied at the ends
only, the curve into which the central-line
is bent is one of a definite family of curves,
to which the name elastica has been given,
and there is a division of the family into two
species according as the external forces are
applied directly to the ends or are applied
to rigid arms attached to the ends; the
curves of the former species are characterized
by the presence of inflections at all the points
at which they cut the line of action of the
applied forces.
We select this case for consideration. The
problem of determining the form of the curve
(cf. fig. 23) is mathematically identical with
the problem of determining the motion of a
simple circular pendulum oscillating through a
finite angle, as is seen by comparing the differential equation of the
FIG. 23.
with the equation of motion of the pendulum
The length L of the curve between two inflections corresponds to the
time of oscillation of the pendulum from rest to rest, and we thus
have
LV(W/EI)=2K,
where K is the real quarter period of elliptic functions of modulus
sin Ja, and o is the angle at which the curve cuts the line of action
of the applied forces. Unless
the length of the rod exceeds
IT V (EI/W) it will not bend under
the force, but when the length is
great enough there may be more
than two points of inflection and
more than one bay of the curve;
for n bays (n + l inflections) the
length must exceed nirV(EI/W).
Some of the forms of the curve
are shown in fig. 24.
For the form d, in which two
bays make a figure of eight, we
have
LV(W/EI)=4-6, = 130
approximately. It is noteworthy
that whenever the length and force
admit of a sinuous form, such as
a or 6, with more than two in-
flections, there is also possible a
crossed form, like e, with two inflections only; the latter form is
stable and the former unstable.
61. The particular case of the above for which a is very
small is a curve of sines of small amplitude, and the result
in this case has been applied to the problem of the buckling
of struts under thrust. When the strut, of length L', is
ELASTICITY
153
4
FIG. 25.
maintained upright at its lower end, and loaded at its upper
end, it is simply contracted, unless L' 1 W>J 4 EI, for t he-
lower end corresponds to a point at which the tangent is
vertical on an elastica for which the line of inflections is also
vertical, and thus the length must be half of one bay (fig. 25, a).
For greater lengths or loads
A |\ u the strut tends to bend or
/JL \ buckle under the load. For
/ U \ \ a very slight excess of I/'W
above JT*EI, the theory on
\ which the above discussion
I is founded, is not quite
I adequate, as it assumes the
' central-line of the strut to be
free from extension or con-
traction, and it is probable
that bending without exten-
sion does not take place
when the length or the force
exceeds the critical value but
slightly. It should be noted
also that the formula has no application to short struts, as the
theory from which it is derived is founded on the assump-
tion that the length is great compared with the diameter
(cf. 56).
The condition of buckling, corresponding to the above, for a
long strut, of length L', when both ends are free to turn is
L <1 W>*EI; for the central-line forms a complete bay (fig. 25,
6); if both ends are maintained in the same vertical line, the
condition is L^NY^r'EI, the central-line forming a complete
bay and two half bays (fig. 25, c).
62. In our consideration of flexure it has so far been supposed
that the bending takes place in a principal plane. We may remove
this restriction by resolving the forces that tend to produce
bending into systems of forces acting in the two principal planes.
To each plane there corresponds a particular flexural rigidity,
and the systems of forces in the two planes give rise to inde-
pendent systems of stress, strain and displacement, which
must be superposed in order to obtain the actual state. Applying
this process to the problem of 48-54, and supposing that
one principal axis of a cross-section at its centroid makes an
angle with the vertical, then for any shape of section the
FIG. 36.
neutral surface or locus of unextended fibres cuts the section
in a Hoe DD', which is conjugate to the vertical diameter CP
with respect to any ellipse of inertia of the section. The central-
line is bent into a plane curve which is not in a vertical plane,
but is in a plane through the line CY which is perpendicular
to DD' (fig. 26).
63. Bending and Twisting of Thin Rods. When a very thin
rod or wire is bent and twisted by applied forces, the forces on
any part of it limited by a normal section are balanced by the
tractions across the section, and these tractions are statically
equivalent to certain forces and couples at the centroid of the
section; we shall call them the stress-resultants and the stress-
couples. The stress-couples consist of two flexural couples in
the two principal planes, and the torsional couple about the
tangent to the central-line. The torsional couple is the product
of the torsional rigidity and the twist produced; the torsional
rigidity is exactly the same as for a straight rod of the same
material and section twisted without bending, as in Saint
Venant's torsion problem ( 42). The twist T is connected with
the deformation of the wire in this way: if we suppose a verjr
small ring which fits the cross-section of the wire to be provided
with a pointer in the direction of one principal axis of the section
at its centroid, and to move along the wire with velocity r, the
pointer will rotate about the central-line with angular velocity TV.
The amount of the flexural couple for either principal plane at
any section is the product of the flexural rigidity for that plane,
and the resolved part in that plane of the curvature of the central
line at the centroid of the section; the resolved part of the
curvature along the normal to any plane is obtained by treating
the curvature as a vector directed along the normal to the oscu-
lating plane and projecting this vector. The flexural couples
reduce to a single couple in the osculating plane proportional
to the curvature when the two flexural rigidities are equal, and
in this case only.
The stress-resultants across any section are tangential forces
in the two principal planes, and a tension or thrust along the
central-line; when the stress-couples and the applied forces are
known these stress-resultants are determinate. The existence,
in particular, of the resultant tension or thrust parallel to the
central-line does not imply sensible extension or contraction of
the central filament, and the tension per unit area of the cross-
section to which it would be equivalent is small compared
with the tensions and pressures in longitudinal filaments not
passing through the centroid of the section; the moments
of the latter tensions and pressures constitute the flexural
couples.
64. We consider, in particular, the case of a naturally straight
spring or rod of circular section, radius c, and of homogeneous
isotropic material. The torsional rigidity is JEirc 4 /(i-|-ff);
and the flexural rigidity, which is the same for all planes through
the central-line, is iEirtr 1 ; we shall denote these by C and A
respectively. The rod may be held bent by suitable forces into
a curve of double curvature with an amount of twist T, and then
the torsional couple is Cr.and the flexural couple in the osculating
plane is A/p,where p is the radius of circular
curvature. Among the curves in which
the rod can be held by forces and couples
applied at its ends only, one is a circular
helix; and then the applied forces and
couples are equivalent to a wrench about
the axis of the helix.
Let a be the angle and r the radius of the
helix, so that p is r sec'o ; and let R and K be
the force and couple of the wrench (fig. 27).
Then the couple formed by R and an equal
and opposite force at any section and the
couple K are equivalent to the torsional and
flexural couples at the section, and this gives
the equations for R and K
. , .
K A
sin a COS* a
ms a
.
sin a.
The thrust across any section is R sin a
parallel to the tangent to the helix, and
the shearing stress-resultant is R cos a at
osculating plane.
When the twist is such that, if the rod were
Flo. 27.
right angles to the
simply unbent, k
'54
ELASTICITY
would also be untwisted, r is (sin a cos o)/r, and then, restoring the
values of A and C, we have
D ETC* <r
R = 4r2 1 _|_ g sin a cos'o,
., Ere* 1+ff cos'a
65. The theory of spiral springs affords an application of these
results. The stress-couples called into play when a naturally helical
spring (a, r) is held in the form of a helix (a', r'), are equal to the
differences between those called into play when a straight rod of the
same material and section is held in the first form, and those called
into play when it is held in the second form.
Thus the torsional couple is
sin a' cos a' sin a cos a
and the flexural couple is
. /cos 2 q' cos 2 a\
A (~p r-)'
The wrench (R, K) along the axis by which the spring can be held
in the form (q', r') is given by the equations
_ _ .sin q' /cos 8 q' cos 8 q\ -cos a' /sin a' cos q' sin q cos a'
, /cos'q' cos*q\ . ,, . ./sin a' cos q' sin a cos q\
K = Acosq I p J +Csino'^ , 1 .
When the spring is slightly extended by an axial force F, = R,
and there is no couple, so that K vanishes, and q', r' differ very
little from o, r, it follows from these equations that the axial elonga-
tion, &x, is connected with the axial length x and the force F by the
equation
_ Eve' sin q Sx
~ 4r 2 1+crcos 2 q *'
and that the loaded end is rotated about the axis of the helix through
a small angle
4ffFjcr cos q
the sense of the rotation being' such that the spring becomes more
tightly coiled.
66. A horizontal pointer attached to a vertical spiral spring
would be made to rotate by loading the spring, and the angle
through which it turns might be used to measure the load, at
any rate, when the load is not too great; but a much more
sensitive contrivance is the twisted strip devised by W. E.
Ayrton and J. Perry. A very thin, narrow rectangular strip
of metal is given a permanent twist about its longitudinal
middle line, and a pointer is attached to it at right angles to
this line. When the strip is subjected to longitudinal tension
the pointer rotates through a considerable angle. G. H. Bryan
(Phil. Mag., December 1890) has succeeded in constructing 'a
theory of the action of the strip, according to which it is re-
garded as a strip of plating in the form of a right helicoid, which,
after extension of the middle line, becomes a portion of a slightly
different helicoid; on account of the thinness of the strip, the
change of curvature of the surface is considerable, even when
the extension is small, and the pointer turns with the generators
of the helicoid.
If 6 stands for the breadth and / for the thickness of the strip,
and r for the permanent twist, the approximate formula for the
angle 8 through which the strip is untwisted on the application of
a load W was found to be
8 =
The quantity 6r which occurs in the formula is the total twist in a
length of the strip equal to its breadth, and this will generally be
very small ; if it is small of the same order as t/b, or a higher order,
the formula becomes JWfrr(l +<r)/Et 3 , with sufficient approximation,
and this result appears to be in agreement with observations of the
behaviour of such strips.
67. Thin Plate under Pressure. The theory of the deforma-
tion of plates, whether plane or curved, is very intricate, partly
because of the complexity of the kinematical relations involved.
We shall here indicate the nature of the effects produced in a
thin plane plate, of isotropic material, which is slightly bent by
pressure. This theory should have an application to the stress
produced in a ship's plates. In the problem of the cylinder
under internal pressure ( 77 below) the most important stress
is the circumferential tension, counteracting the tendency of
the circular filaments to expand under the pressure; but in the
problem of a plane plate some of the filaments parallel to the
plane of the plate are extended and others are contracted,
so that the tensions and pressures along them give rise to result-
ant couples but not always to resultant forces. Whatever
forces are applied to bend the plate, these couples are always
expressible, at least approximately in terms of the principal
curvatures produced in the surface which, before strain, was the
middle plane of the plate. The simplest case is that of a rect-
angular plate, bent by a distribution of couples applied to its
edges, so that the middle surface becomes a cylinder of large
radius R; the requisite couple per unit of length of the straight
edges is of amount C/R, where C is a certain constant; and the
requisite couple per unit of length of the circular edges is of
amount Cff/R, the latter being required to resist the tendency
to anticlastic curvature (cf. 47). If normal sections of the
plate are supposed drawn through the generators and circular
sections of the cylinder, the action of the neighbouring portions
on any portion so bounded involves flexural couples of the
above amounts. When the plate is bent in any manner, the
curvature produced at each section of the middle surface may
be regarded as arising from the superposition of two cylindrical
curvatures; and the flexural couples across normal sections
through the lines of curvature, estimated per unit of length
of those lines, are C(i/Ri+a/R 2 ) and C(i/R 2 +<7/Ri), where
RI and R 2 are the principal radii of curvature. The value of
C for a plate of small thickness ih is |EA'/(i-<7 2 ). Exactly as
in the problem of the beam ( 48, 56), the action between
neighbouring portions of the plate generally involves shearing
stresses across normal sections as well as flexural couples; and
the resultants of these stresses are determined by the conditions
that, with the flexural couples, they balance the forces applied
to bend the plate.
68. To express this theory analytically, let the middle plane of
the plate in the unstrained position be taken as the plane of (x, y),
and let normal sections at right angles to the axes of x and y be
drawn through any point. After strain let w be the displacement
of this point in the direction perpendicular to the plane, marked
p in fig. 28. If the axes of * and y were parallel to the lines of
FIG. 28.
curvature at the point, the flexural couple acting across the section
normal to x (or y) would have the axis of y (or x) for its axis; but
when the lines of curvature are inclined to the axes of co-ordinates,
the flexural couple across a section normal to either axis has a
component about that axis as well as a component about the per-
pendicular axis. Consider an element ABCD of the section at
right angles to the axis of x, contained between two lines near
together and perpendicular to the middle plane. The action of the
portion of the plate to the right upon the portion to the left,
across the element, gives rise to a couple about the middle line
(y) of amount, estimated per unit of length of that line, equal
Gi, say, and to a couple, similarly estimated,
toC(S
about the normal (x) of amount C(l ff )gj7;' =H, say. The
ELASTICITY
155
corresponding couples on an element of a section at right angle
to the axis of y, estimated per unit of length of the axis of x, an
of amounts -C ( j5+* fjl) ~G> *>, and -H. The rcsultan
i the shearing stresses on the element ABCD, estimated a
before, is given by the equation SI--T '-T-- (cf- 5 57)> an '' ''"
corresponding resultant S for an element perpendicular to the
i y is given by the equation St-~p-^p-'. If the plate
is bent by a pressure p per unit of area, the equation of equilibrium
" p, or, in terms of tr.
This equation, together with the special conditions at the rim
suffices for the determination of w. and then all the quantities
here introduced are determined. Further, the most important
of the stress-components are those which act across elements ol
normal sections: the tension in direction x, at a distance z from
the middle plane measured in the direction of p, is of amount
57
I , and there is a corresponding tension in direc-
tion y; the shearing stress consisting of traction parallel to v or
planes x- const., and traction parallel to x on planes y = const., is ol
amount ^k 4 5xd~' thesc tensions and sn ea"ng stresses i
equivalent to two principal tensions, in the directions of the lines ol
curvature of the surface into which the middle plane is bent, and
they give rise to the flcxural couples.
69. In the special example of a circular plate, of radius a, sup-
ported at the rim, and held bent by a uniform pressure p, the value
of v at a point distant r from the axis is
and the most important of the stress components is the radial
tension, of which the amount at any point is A(3+<r)/>z(a > -r)/fc > ;
the maximum radial tension is about \(a,h)*p, and, when the thickness
is small compared with the diameter, this is a large multiple of p.
70. General Theorems. Passing now from these questions
of flexure and torsion, we consider some results that can be
deduced from the general equations of equilibrium of an elastic
solid body.
The form of the general expression for the potential energy
( 27) stored up in the strained body leads, by a general property
of quadratic functions, to a reciprocal theorem relating to the
effects produced in the body by two different systems of forces,
viz.: The whole work done by the forces of the first system,
acting over the displacements produced by the forces of the
second system, is equal to the whole work done by the forces
of the second system, acting over the displacements produced
by the forces of the first system. By a suitable choice of the
second system of forces, the average values of the component
stresses and strains produced by given forces, considered as
constituting the first system, can
be obtained, even when the dis-
tribution of the stress and strain
cannot be determined.
Taking for example the problem
presented by an isotropic body of
any form 1 pressed between two
parallel planes distant / apart (fig.
29), and denoting the resultant pres-
sure by p, we find that the diminu-
tion of volume -to is given by the
equation
-to -If Ilk,
where k is the modulus of compres-
sion, equal to JE/(l 2<r). Again,
take the problem of the changes
produced in a heavy body by dif-
FIG. 29.
ferent ways of supporting it; when the body is suspended from
one or more points in a horizontal plane its volume is increased by
where W is the weight of the body, and A' the depth of its centre
of gravity below the plane; when the body is supported by upward
1 The line joining the points of contact must be normal to the
planes.
vertical pressures at one or more points in a horizontal plane the
volume is diminished by
-to-WA'/3i,
where *' is the height of the centre of gravity above the plane; if
the body is a cylinder, of length / and section A, standing with
its base on a smooth horizontal plane, its length is shortened by
an amount
-U-W//2EA;
if the same cylinder lies on the plane with its generators horizontal,
its length is increased by an amount
/-ffWA'/EA.
71. In recent years important results have been found by
considering the effects produced in an clastic solid by forces
applied at isolated points.
Taking the case of a single force F applied at a point in the interior,
we may show that the stress at a distance r from the point consists of
(l) a radial pressure of amount
2-g _F_ cos 6
1 -a 41- r 1 '
(a) tension in all directions at right angles to the radius of amount
l-2<r F cosO
2Tf-~7) 4ir r 1 '
(3) shearing stress consisting of traction acting along the radius dr
on the surface of the cone fl=const. and traction acting along the
meridian d$ on the surface of the sphere r const, of amount
l-2g Fsinfl
where 9 is the angle between the radius vector r and the line of
action of F. The line marked T in fig. 30 shows the direction of
the tangential traction on the spherical surface.
Thus the lines of stress are in and perpendicular to the
meridian plane, and the direc-
tion of one of those in the
meridian plane is inclined to
the radius vector r at an angle
The corresponding displace-
ment at any point is com-
pounded of a radial displace-
ment of amount
1+g- F cos 9
2(1 -a) 47E r
and a displacement parallel to
the line of action of F of
amount
(3-4<r)(i+ ff ) F 1
2(1 -a) 47E~ r
The effects of forces applied
at different points and in different directions can be obtained by
summation, and the effect of continuously distributed forces can
H- obtained by integration.
72. The stress system considered in 71 is equivalent, on the
)lane through the origin at right angles to the line of action of
?, to a resultant pressure of magnitude JF at the origin and a
radial traction of amount 2 /[_ a \ 7^5, and, by the application
of this system of tractions to a solid bounded by a plane, the
displacement just described would be produced. There is also
another stress system for a solid so bounded which is equivalent,
on the same plane, to a resultant pressure at the origin, and a
radial traction proportional to
/r 1 , but these are in the ratio
2ir:r~ 1 , instead of being in
he ratio 47r(i-(r):(i-2<7)r~ l
The second stress system (see
ig. 31) consists of:
(1) radial pressure F'r~*,
(2) tension in the meridian
>lane across the radius vector
if amount
FV-* cos'/(l + cos 9),
(3) tension across the me-
idian plane of amount
FIG. 31.
FV-*;(i+cos),
(4) shearing stress as in 71 of amount
F'r- | sin9/(i- r -cos9),
nd the stress across the plane boundary consists of a resultant
>ressure of magnitude 2rF' and a radial traction of amount KV~ J . If
i 5 6
ELASTICITY
then we superpose the component stresses of the last section multi-
plied by 4(1 a)W/F, and the component stresses here written down
multiplied by (l 2<r) W/2irF', the stress on the plane boundary
will reduce to a single pressure W at the origin. We shall thus
obtain the stress system at any point due to such a force applied
at one point of the boundary.
In the stress system thus arrived at the traction across any plane
parallel to the boundary is directed away from the place where W
is supported, and its amount is 3W cos 1 0/2m--. The corresponding
displacement consists of
(l) a horizontal displacement radially outwards from the vertical
through the origin of amount
CO!
l-2a
1+cosO'
(2) a vertical displacement downwards of amount
The effects produced by a system ol loads on a solid bounded by a
plane can be deduced.
The results for a solid body bounded by an infinite plane
may be interpreted as giving the local effects of forces applied
to a small part of the surface of a body. The results show
that pressure is transmitted into a body from the boundary
in such a way that the traction at a point on a section parallel
to the boundary is the same at all points of any sphere which
touches the boundary at the point of pressure, and that its
amount at any point is inversely proportional to the square of
the radius of this sphere, while its direction is that of a line
drawn from the point of pressure to the point at which the
traction is estimated. The transmission of force through a
solid body indicated by this result was strikingly demonstrated
in an attempt that was made to measure the lunar deflexion
of gravity; it was found that the weight of the observer on the
floor of the laboratory produced a disturbance of the instrument
sufficient to disguise completely the effect which the instrument
had been designed to measure (see G. H. Darwin, The Tides
and Kindred Phenomena in the Solar System, London, 1898).
73. There is a corresponding theory of two-dimensional
systems, that is to say, systems in which either the displacement
is parallel to a fixed plane, or there is no traction across any
plane of a system of parallel planes. This theory shows that,
when pressure is applied at a point of the edge of a plate in any
direction in the plane of the plate, the stress developed in the
plate consists exclusively of radial pressure across any circle
having the point of pressure as centre, and the magnitude of
this pressure is the same at all points of any circle which touches
the edge at the point of pressure, and its amount at any point
is inversely proportional to the radius of this circle. This result
leads to a number of interesting solutions of problems relating
to plane systems; among these may be mentioned the problem
of a circular plate strained by any forces applied at its edge.
74. The results stated in 7 2 have been applied to give an
account of the nature of the actions concerned in the impact
of two solid bodies. The dissipation of energy involved in the
impact is neglected, and the resultant pressure between the
bodies at any instant during the impact is equal to the rate of
destruction of momentum of either along the normal to the
plane of contact drawn towards the interior of the other. It
has been shown that in general the bodies come into contact
over a small area bounded by an ellipse, and remain in contact
for a time which varies inversely as the fifth root of the initial
relative velocity.
For equal spheres of the same material, with cr = i, impinging
directly with relative velocity v, the patches that come into contact
are circles of radius
J v
where r is the radius of either, and V the velocity of longitudinal
waves in a thin bar of the material. The duration of the impact is
approximately
D 1
For two steel spheres of the size of the earth impinging with a
velocity of I cm. per second the duration of the impact would be
about twenty-seven hours. The fact that the duration of impact
is, for moderate velocities, a considerable multiple of the time
taken by a wave of compression to travel through either of two
impinging bodies has been ascertained experimentally, and con-
stitutes the reason for the adequacy of the statical theory here
described.
75. Spheres and Cylinders. Simple results can be found for
spherical and cylindrical bodies strained by radial forces.
For a sphere of radius a, and of homogeneous isotrppic material
of density p, strained by the mutual gravitation of its parts, the
stress at a distance r from the centre consists of
(1) uniform hydrostatic pressure of amount i^gpafa <T)/(I a),
(2) radial tension of amount ^gp(r 2 /a)(3 <r)/(l <r).
(3) uniform tension at right angles to the radius vector of amount
where g is the value of gravity at the surface. The corresponding
strains consist of
(l) uniform contraction of all lines of the body of amount
(2) radial extension of amount j 1 ( ,J~ 1 gp(r 2 /o)(l+ff)/(l <r),
(3) extension in any direction at right angles to the radius vector
of amount
where k is the modulus of compression. The volume is diminished
by the fraction gpa/5k of itself. The parts of the radii vectores within
the sphere r = a((3 CT)/(3+3<r)!" 2 are contracted, and the parts
without this sphere are extended. The application of the above
results to the state of the interior of the earth involves a neglect of
the caution emphasized in 40, viz. that the strain determined by
the solution must be small if the solution is to be accepted. In a
body of the size and mass of the earth, and having a resistance to
compression and a rigidity equal to those of steel, the radial con-
traction at the centre, as given by the above solution, would be
nearly J, and the radial extension at the surface nearly J, and these
fractions can by no means be regarded as " small."
76. In a spherical shell of homogeneous isotropic material, of
internal radius n and external radius r c , subjected to pressure p a
on the outer surface, and pi on the inner surface, the stress at any
point distant r from the centre consists of
(1) uniform tension in all directions of amount ' ' ' t _
(2) radial pressure of amount J\ _ y a ",'
(3) tension in all directions at right angles to the radius vector
of amount
The corresponding strains consist of
(1) uniform extension of all lines of the body of amount
1 p^-pqro 3
3k r 3 -ri 3 '
(2) radial contraction of amount j- ~5~^ ^-fr
(3) extension in all directions at right angles to the radius vector
of amount
1 pi-po ro 3 ri 3 _
4n r 3 ri 3 r 3
where M is the modulus of rigidity of the material, =|E/(l+<r).
The volume included between the two surfaces of the body is in-
creased by the fraction
of itself, and the volume within
the inner surface is increased by the fraction
of itself. For a shell subject only to internal pressure p the greatest
extension is the extension at right angles to the radius at the inner
surface, and its amount is
l , 1 rc'V
the greatest tension is the transverse tension at the inner surface,
and its amount is *($ro 3 +ri 3 )/(r 3 f i*)-
77. In the problem of a cylindrical shell under pressure a com-
plication may arise from the effects of the ends; but when the
ends are free from stress the solution is very simple. With notation
similar to that in 76 it can be shown that the stress at a distance r
from the axis consists of
(i) uniform tension in all directions at right angles to the axis
of amount
(2) radial pressure of amount ,_*\
(3) hoop tension numerically equal to this radial pressure.
ELASTICITY
157
The corresponding (trains consist of
(i) uniform extension of all lines of the material at right angles
to the axis of amount
(a) radial contraction of amount
1+y PI - p
(j) extension along the circular filaments numerically equal to
this radial contraction.
(4) uniform contraction of the longitudinal filaments of amount
For a shell subject only to internal pressure p the greatest extension
is the circumferential extension at the inner surface, and its amount is
the greatest tension is the hoop tension at the inner surface, and
it* amount is plr.'+rj^/fo'-ri*).
78. When the ends of the tube, instead of b:>injs foe* arc closed by
dicks, so that the tube becomes a closed cylindrical vessel, the
longitudinal extension is determined by the condition that the
resultant longitudinal tension in the wall- balances the resultant
normal pressure on either end. This condition gives the value of the
extension of the longitudinal filaments as
where k is the modulus of compression of the material. The result
may be applied to the experimental determination of k, by measur-
ing the increase of length of a tube subjected to internal pressure
(A. Mallock, Proc. R. Soc. London, Ixxiv., 1904, and C. Chree, ibid.).
79. The results obtained in 77 have been applied to gun
construction; we may consider that one cylinder is heated
so as to slip over another upon which it shrinks by cooling,
so that the two form a single body in a condition of initial stress.
We take P as the measure of the pressure between the two, and
p for the pressure within the inner cylinder by which the system
ts afterwards strained, and denote by r' the radius of the common
surface. To obtain the stress at any point we superpose the
system consisting of radial pressure p-j *^ j and hoop tension
upon a system which, for the outer cylinder, consists
T *
f-ft
of radial pressure
and hoop tension
r "
1 _
and
for the inner cylinder consists of radial pressure P-y *^~ r ' t and
hoop tension P-j
The hoop tension at the inner surface
is less than it would be for a tube of equal thickness without initial
in the ratio
This shows how the strength of the tube is increased by the initial
strew. When the initial stress is produced by tightly wound wire,
a similar gain of strength accrues.
80. In the problem of determining the distribution of stress
and strain in a circular cylinder, rotating about its axis, simple
solutions have been obtained which arc sufficiently exact for
the two special cases of a thin disk and a long shaft.
Suppose that a circular disk of radius a and thickness 2/, and of
density f, rotates about its axis with angular velocity u, and consider
the following systems of superposed stresses at any point distant r
from the axis and z from the middle plane :
(1) uniform tension in all directions at right angles to the axis
of amount l<Jpa*(3+f),
(2) radial pressure of amount lurpr*($+a),
(3) pressure along the circular filaments of amount Iw ! pr 1 (i+3<r),
(4) uniform tension in all directions at right angles to the axis
of amount ,p</*-3*)(i+)/(i-).
The corresponding strains may be expressed as
(i) uniform extension of all filaments at right angles to the axis
of amount
(2) radial contraction of amount
(3) contraction along the circular filaments of amount
!-*,
(4) extension of all filaments at right angles to the axis of amount
(5) contraction of the filaments normal to the plane of the disk
of amount
- r
The greatest extension i* the circumferential extension near the
centre, and its amount is
The longitudinal contraction is required to make the plane faces
of the disk free from pressure, and the terms in / and z enable
us to avoid tangential traction on any cylindrical surface. The
system of stresses and strains thus expressed satisfies all the con-
ditions, except that there is a small
radial tension on the bounding
surface of amount per unit area
Wp(P-3*Ml +)/(!-). The re-
sultant of these tensions on any
part of the edge of the disk
vanishes, and the stress in question
is very small in comparison with
the other stresses involved when
the disk is thin; we may conclude
that, for a thin disk, the expres-
sions given represent the actual
condition at all points which are
not very close to the edge (cf. 55).
The effect to the longitudinal con-
traction is that the plane faces
become slightly concave (fig. 32).
81. The corresponding solution
for a disk with a circular axle-hole
FIG. 32.
(radius b) will be obtained from that giyen in the last section by
superposing the following system of additional stresses:
(1) radial tension of amount Ju*pft*(i-a 1 //' I )(3+ff)i
(2) tension along the circular filaments of amount
The corresponding additional strains are
(i) radial contraction of amount
(2) extension along the circular filaments of amount
(3) contraction of the filaments parallel to the axis of amount
Again, the greatest extension is the circumferential extension at
the inner surface, and, when the hole is very small, its amount is
nearly double what it would be for a complete disk.
82. In the problem of the rotating shaft we have the following
MI< ss-system:
(1) radial tension of amount \ta t p(a t -r t )(^-2a)l(l -a),
(2) circumferential tension of amount
Oj) longitudinal tension of amount }u*p(a* - 2r*)<r/(l -<r).
The resultant longitudinal tension at any normal section vanishes,
and the radial tension vanishes at the bounding surface; and
thus the expressions here given may be taken to represent the
actual condition at all points which are not very close to the ends
of the shaft. The contraction of the longitudinal filaments is
uniform and equal to Jw'poV/E. The greatest extension in the
rotating shaft is the circumferential extension close to the axis,
and its amount is iw*pa 1 (3-5<r)/E(i -).
The value of any theory of the strength of long rotating shafts
founded on these formulae is diminished by the circumstance that
at sufficiently high speeds the shaft may tend to take up a curved
form, the straight form being unstable. The shaft is then said to
whirl. This occurs when the period of rotation of the shaft is very
nearly coincident with one of its periods of lateral vibration. The
lowest speed at which whirling can take place in a shaft of length /,
freely supported at its ends, is given by the formula
p = JEaOr//).
As in 61, this formula should not be applied unless the length of
the shaft is a considerable multiple of its diameter. It implies that
whirling is to be expected whenever u approaches this critical value.
83. When the forces acting upon a spherical or cylindrical body
are not radial, the problem becomes more complicated. In the
case of the sphere deformed by any forces it has been completely
solved, and the solution has been applied by Lord Kelvin and
i 5 8
ELASTICITY
Sir G. H. Darwin to many interesting questions of cosmical
physics. The nature of the stress produced in the interior of
the earth by the weight of continents and mountains, the spher-
oidal figure of a rotating solid planet, the rigidity of the earth,
are among the questions which have in this way been attacked.
Darwin concluded from his investigation that, to support the
weight of the existing continents and mountain ranges, the
materials of which the earth is composed must, at great depths
(1600 kilometres), have at least the strength of granite. Kelvin
concluded from his investigation that the actual heights of the
tides in the existing oceans can be accounted for only on the
supposition that the interior of the earth is solid, and of rigidity
nearly as great as, if not greater than, that of steel.
84. Some interesting problems relating to the strains produced in a
cylinder of finite length by forces distributed symmetrically round
the axis have been solved. The most important is that of a cylinder
crushed between parallel planes in contact with its plane ends.
The solution was applied to explain the discrepancies that have been
observed in different tests of crushing strength according as the
ends of the test specimen are or are not prevented from spreading.
It was applied also to explain the fact that in such tests small conical
pieces are sometimes cut out at the ends subjected to pressure.
85. Vibrations and Waves. When a solid body is struck, or
otherwise suddenly disturbed, it is thrown into a state of vibra-
tion. There always exist dissipative forces which tend to
destroy the vibratory' motion, one cause of the subsidence of the
motion being the communication of energy to surrounding
bodies. When these dissipative forces are disregarded, it is
found that an elastic solid body is capable of vibrating in such
a way that the motion of any particle is simple harmonic motion,
all the particles completing their oscillations in the same period
and being at any instant in the same phase, and the displacement
of any selected one in any particular direction bearing a definite
ratio to the displacement of an assigned one in an assigned
direction. When a body is moving in this way it is said to be
vibrating in a normal mode. For example, when a tightly
stretched string of negligible flexural rigidity, such as a violin
string may be taken to be, is fixed at the ends, and vibrates
transversely in a normal mode, the displacements of all the
particles have the same direction, and their magnitudes are
proportional at any instant to the ordinates of a curve of sines.
Every body possesses an infinite number of normal modes of
vibration, and the frequencies (or numbers of vibrations per
second) that belong to the different modes form a sequence
of increasing numbers. For the string, above referred to, the
fundamental tone and the various overtones form an harmonic
scale, that is to say, the frequencies of the normal modes of
vibration are proportional to the integers i, 2, 3, ... In all
these modes except the first the string vibrates as if it were
divided into a number of equal pieces, each having fixed ends;
this number is in each case the integer defining the frequency.
In general the normal modes of vibration of a body are distin-
guished one from another by the number and situation of the
surfaces (or other loci) at which some characteristic displacement
or traction vanishes. The problem of determining the normal
modes and frequencies of free vibration of a body of definite
size, shape and constitution, is a mathematical problem of a
similar character to the problem of determining the state of
stress in the body when subjected to given forces. The bodies
which have been most studied are strings and thin bars, mem-
branes, thin plates and shells, including bells, spheres and
cylinders. Most of the results are of special importance in their
bearing upon the theory of sound.
86. The most complete success has attended the efforts of mathe-
maticians to solve the problem of free vibrations for an isotropic
sphere. It appears that the modes of vibration fall into two classes :
one characterized by the absence of a radial component of displace-
ment, and the other by the absence of a radial component of rotation
( 14). In each class there is a doubly infinite number of modes.
The displacement in any mode is determined in terms o'f a single
spherical harmonic function, so that there are modes of each class
corresponding to spherical harmonics of every integral degree;
and for each degree there is an infinite number of modes, differing
from one another in the number and position of the concentric
spherical surfaces at which some characteristic displacement vanishes.
The most interesting modes are those in which the sphere becomes
slightly spheroidal, being alternately prolate and oblate during the
course of a vibration; for these vibrations tend to be set up in a
spherical planet by tide-generating forces. In a sphere of the size
of the earth, supposed to be incompressible and as rigid as steel,
the period of these vibrations is 66 minutes.
87. The theory of free vibrations has an important bearing
upon the question of the strength of structures subjected to
sudden blows or shocks. The stress and strain developed in a
body by sudden applications of force may exceed considerably
those which would be produced by a gradual application of the
same forces. Hence there arises the general question of dynami-
cal resistance, or of the resistance of a body to forces applied
so quickly that the inertia of the body comes sensibly into play.
In regard to this question we have two chief theoretical results.
The first is that the strain produced by a force suddenly applied
may be as much as twice the statical strain, that is to say, as the
strain which would be produced by the same force when the
body is held in equilibrium under its action; the second is that
the sudden reversal of the force may produce a strain three
times as great as the statical strain. These results point to the
importance of specially strengthening the parts of any machine
(e.g. screw propeller shafts) which are subject to sudden applica-
tions or reversals of load. The theoretical limits of twice, or
three times, the statical strain are not in general attained. For
example, if a thin bar hanging vertically from its upper end is
suddenly loaded at its lower end with a weight equal to its own
weight, the greatest dynamical strain bears to the greatest
statical strain the ratio 1-63:1; when the attached weight is
four times the weight of the bar the ratio becomes 1-84:1. The
method by which the result just mentioned is reached has
recently been applied to the question of the breaking of winding
ropes used in mines. It appeared that, in order to bring the
results into harmony with the observed facts, the strain in the
supports must be taken into account as well as the strain in the
rope (J. Perry, Phil. Mag., 1906 (vi.), vol. ii.).
88. The immediate effect of a blow or shock, locally applied
to a body, is the generation of a wave which travels through
the body from the locah'ty first affected. The question of the
propagation of waves through an elastic solid body is historically
of very great importance; for the first really successful efforts
to construct a theory of elasticity (those of S. D. Poisson, A. L.
Cauchy and G. Green) were prompted, at least in part, by
FresnePs theory of the propagation of light by transverse
vibrations. For many years the luminiferous medium was
identified with the isotropic solid of the theory of elasticity.
Poisson showed that a disturbance communicated to the body
gives rise to two waves which are propagated through it with
different velocities; and Sir G. G. Stokes afterwards showed
that the quicker wave is a wave of irrotational dilatation, and
the slower wave is a wave of rotational distortion accompanied
by no change of volume. The velocities of the two waves in a
solid of density p are V !(X+2M)/p! and V (ju/p), X and ju being
the constants so denoted in 26. When the surface of the body
is free from traction, the waves on reaching the surface are
reflected; and thus after a little time the body would, if there
were no dissipative forces, be in a very complex state of motion
due to multitudes of waves passing to and fro through it. This
state can be expressed as a state of vibration, in which the motions
belonging to the various normal modes, ( 85) are superposed,
each with an appropriate amplitude and phase. The waves of
dilatation and distortion do not, however, give rise to different
modes of vibration, as was at one time supposed, but any mode
of vibration in general involves both dilatation and rotation^
There are exceptional results for solids of revolution; such
solids possess normal modes of vibration which involve no
dilatation. The existence of a boundary to the solid body
has another effect, besides reflexion, upon the propagation of
waves. Lord Rayleigh has shown that any disturbance originat-
ing at the surface gives rise to waves which travel away over
the surface as well as to waves which travel through the interior;
and any internal disturbance, on reaching the surface, also
gives rise to such superficial waves. The velocity of the super-
ficial waves is a little less than that of the waves of distortion:
ELASTICITY
159
0-9554 V 0>/p)when the material is incompressible 0-9194
when the 1'oisson's ratio belonging to the material is 1 .
89. These results have an application to the propagation of
earthquake shocks (sec also EARTHQUAKE). An internal dis-
turbance should, if the earth can be regarded as solid, give rise
to three wave-motions: two propagated through the interior
of the earth with different velocities, and a third propagated
over the surface. The results of seismographic observations
have independently led to the recognition of three phases of
the recorded vibrations: a set of "preliminary tremors"
which are received at different stations at such times as to show
that they are transmitted directly through the interior of the
earth with a velocity of about 10 km. per second, a second
set of preliminary tremors which are received at different
stations at such times as to show that they are transmitted
directly through the earth with a velocity of about 5 km. per
second, and a " main shock," or set of large vibrations, which
becomes sensible at different stations at such times as to show
that a wave is transmitted over the surface of the earth with
a velocity of about 3 km. per second. These results can be
interpreted if we assume that the earth is a solid body the
greater part of which is practically homogeneous, with high
values for the rigidity and the resistance to compression, while
the superficial portions have lower values for these quantities.
The rigidity of the central portion would be about (1-4)10''
dynes per square cm., which is considerably greater than that
of steel, and the resistance to compression would be about
(3-8) io u dynes per square cm. which is much greater than that
of any known material. The high value of the resistance to
compression is not surprising when account is taken of the great
pressures, due to gravitation, which must exist in the interior
of the earth. The high value of the rigidity can be regarded as
a confirmation of Lord Kelvin's estimate founded on tidal
observations (83).
90. Strain produced by Heat. The mathematical theory
of elasticity as at present developed takes no account of the
strain which is produced in a body by unequal heating. It
appears to be impossible in the present state of knowledge
to form as in 39 a system of differential equations to determine
both the stress and the temperature at any point of a solid body
the temperature of which is liable to variation. In the cases
of isothermal and adiabatic changes, that is to say, when the
body is slowly strained without variation of temperature, and
also when the changes are effected so rapidly that there is no
gain or loss of beat by any element, the internal energy of the
body is sufficiently expressed by the strain-energy-function
(it *7i 3)- Thus states of equilibrium and of rapid Vibration
can be determined by the theory that has been explained above.
In regard to thermal effects we can obtain some indications
from general thermodynamic theory. The following passages
extracted from the article " Elasticity " contributed to the 9th
edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica by Sir W. Thomson
(Lord Kelvin) illustrate the nature of these indications:
" From thermodynamic theory it is concluded that cold is pro-
duced whenever a solid is strained by opposing, and heat when
it is strained by yielding to, any elastic force of its own, the
strength of which would diminish if the temperature were raised;
but that, on the contrary, heat is produced when a solid is
strained against, and cold when it is strained by yielding to, any
elastic force of its own, the strength of which would increase
if the temperature were raised. When the strain is a condensa-
tion or dilatation, uniform in all directions, a fluid may be
included in the statement. Hence the following propositions:
" (i) A cubical compression of any elastic fluid or solid in an
ordinary condition causes an evolution of heat; but, on the
contrary, a cubical compression produces cold in any substance,
solid or fluid, in such an abnormal state that it would contract
if heated while kept under constant pressure. Water below its
temperature(3-oCent.)of maximum density is a familiar instance.
" () If a wire already twisted be suddenly twisted further,
always, however, within its limits of elasticity, cold will be
produced; and if it be allowed suddenly to untwist, heat will
be evolved from itself (besides heat generated externally by any
work allowed to be wasted, which it docs in untwisting). It is
assumed that the torsion, il rigidity of the wire is diminished
by an elevation of temperature, as the writer of this article
had found it to be for copper, iron, platinum and other metals.
" (3) A spiral spring suddenly drawn out will become lower
in temperature, and will rise in temperature when suddenly
allowed to draw in. [This result has been experimentally
verified by Joule (' Thermodynamic Properties of Solids,'
Phil. Trans., 1858) and the amount of the effect found to agree
with that calculated, according to the preceding thermodynamii
theory, from the amount of the weakening of the spring which
he found by experiment.)
" (4) A bar or rod or wire of any substance with or without
a weight hung on it, or experiencing any degree of end thrust,
to begin with, becomes cooled if suddenly elongated by end pull
or by diminution of end thrust, and warmed if suddenly shortened
by end thrust or by diminution of end pull; except abnormal
cases in which with constant end pull or end thrust elevation
of temperature produces shortening; in every such case pull
or diminished thrust produces elevation of temperature, thrust
or diminished pull lowering of temperature.
" (5) An india-rubber band suddenly drawn out (within its
limits of elasticity) becomes warmer; and when allowed to
contract, it becomes colder. Any one may easily verify this
curious property by placing an india-rubber band in slight
contact with the edges of the lips, then suddenly extending it-
it becomes very perceptibly warmer: hold it for some time
stretched nearly to breaking, and then suddenly allow it to
shrink it becomes quite startlingly colder, the cooling effect
being sensible not merely to the lips but to the fingers holding
the band. The first published statement of this curious observa-
tion is due to J. Gough (Mem. Lit. Phil. Soc. Manchester, and
series, vol. i. p. 288), quoted by Joule in his paper on ' Thermo-
dynamic Properties of Solids' (cited above). The thermo-
dynamic conclusion from it is that an india-rubber band,stretched
by a constant weight of sufficient amount hung on it, must,
when heated, pull up the weight, and, when cooled, allow the
weight to descend: this Gough, independently of thermo-
dynamic theory, had found to be actually the case. The ex-
periment any one can make with the greatest ease by hanging
a few pounds weight on a common india-rubber band, and
taking a red-hot coal in a pair of tongs, or a red-hot poker, and
moving it up and down close to the band. The way in which
the weight rises when the red-hot body is near, and falls when
it is removed, is quite startling. Joule experimented on the
amount of shrinking per degree of elevation of temperature,
with different weights hung on a band of vulcanized india-rubber,
and found that they closely agreed with the amounts calculated
by Thomson's theory from the heating effects of pull, and cool-
ing effects of ceasing to pull, which he had observed in the same
piece of india-rubber."
91. Initial Stress. It has been pointed out above ( 20)
that the " unstressed " state, which serves as a zero of reckon-
ing for strains and stresses is never actually attained, although
the strain (measured from this state), which exists in a body
to be subjected to experiment, may be very slight. This is the
case when the " initial stress," or the stress existing before the
experiment, is small in comparison with the stress developed
during the experiment, and the limit of linear elasticity ( 32)
is not exceeded. The existence of initial stress has been corre-
lated above with the existence of body forces such as the force
of gravity, but it is not necessarily dependent upon such forces.
A sheet of metal rolled into a cylinder, and soldered to maintain
the tubular shape, must be in a state of considerable initial
stress quite apart from the action of gravity. Initial stress is
utilized in many manufacturing processes, as, for example, in
the construction of ordnance, referred to in 79, in the winding
of golf balls by means of india-rubber in a state of high tension
(see the report of the case The Haskell Golf Ball Company v.
Hutchinson 6* Main in The Times of March i, 1906). In the
case of a body of ordinary dimensions it is such internal stress
i6o
ELATERITE ELBA
as this which is especially meant by the phrase " initial stress."
Such a body, when in such a state of internal stress, is sometimes
described as " self-strained." It would be better described as
" self-stressed." The somewhat anomalous behaviour of cast
iron has been supposed to be due to the existence within the
metal cf initial stress. As the metal cools, the outer layers cool
more rapidly than the inner, and thus the state of initial stress
is produced. When cast iron is tested for tensile strength, it
shows at first no sensible range either of perfect elasticity or of
linear elasticity; but after it has been loaded and unloaded
several times its behaviour begins to be more nearly like that
of wrought iron or steel. The first tests probably diminish the
initial stress.
92. From a mathematical point of view the existence of initial
stress in a body which is " self-stressed " arises from the fact that
the equations of equilibrium of a body free from body forces or surface
tractions, viz. the equations of the type
~dx ~dy dz ~'
possess solutions which differ from zero. If, in fact, fa, fa, fa denote
any arbitrary functions of x, y, z, the equations are satisfied by
putting
and it is clear that the functions <fa, fa, fa can be adjusted in an
infinite number of ways so that the bounding surface of the body
may be free from traction.
93. Initial stress due to body forces becomes most important
in the case of a gravitating planet. Within the earth the stress
that arises from the mutual gravitation of the parts is very great.
If we assumed the earth to be an elastic solid body with moduluses
of elasticity no greater than those of steel, the strain (measured
from the unstressed state) which would correspond to the stress
would be much too great to be calculated by the ordinary methods
of the theory of elasticity (75). We require therefore some
other method of taking account of the initial stress. In many
investigations, for example those of Lord Kelvin and Sir G. H.
Darwin referred to in 83, the difficulty is turned by assuming
that the material may be treated as practically incompressible;
but such investigations are to some extent incomplete, so long
as the corrections due to a finite, even though high, resistance to
compression remain unknown. In other investigations, such as
those relating to the propagation of earthquake shocks and to
gravitational instability, the possibility of compression is an
essential element of the problem. By gravitational instability
is meant the tendency of gravitating matter to condense into
nuclei when slightly disturbed from a state of uniform diffusion;
this tendency has been shown by J. H. Jeans (Phil. Trans.
A. 201, 1903) to have exerted an important influence upon the
course of evolution of the solar system. For the treatment of
such questions Lord Rayleigh (Proc. R. Soc. London, A. 77,
1906) has advocated a method which amounts to assuming that
the initial stress is hydrostatic pressure, and that the actual
state of stress is to be obtained by superposing upon this initial
stress a stress related to the state of strain (measured from the
initial state) by the same formulae as hold for an elastic solid
body free from initial stress. The development of this method
is likely to lead to results of great interest.
AUTHORITIES. In regard to the analysis requisite to prove the
results set forth above, reference may be made to A. E. H. Love,
Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity (2nd ed., Cambridge,
1906), where citations of the original authorities will also be found.
The following treatises may be mentioned: Navier, Resume des
lemons sur ['application de la mecanique (yd ed., with notes by Saint-
Venant, Paris, 1 864) ; G. Lame, Lemons sur la theorie mathematique
de I'elasticite des corps solides (Paris, 1852) ; A. Clebsch, Theorie der
Elasticitdt fester Korper (Leipzig, 1862; French translation with
notes by Saint-Venant, Paris, 1883); F. Neumann, Vorlesungen
uber die Theorie der Elasticitdt (Leipzig, 1885) ; Thomson and Tait,
Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, 1879, 1883); Todhunter and
. Pearson, History of the Elasticity and Strenethof Materials (Cambridge,
188671893). The article " Elasticity " by Sir W. Thomson (Lord
Kelvin) in 9th ed. of Encyc. Brit, (reprinted in his Mathematical
and Physical Papers, Hi., Cambridge, 1800) is especially valu-
able, not only for the exposition of the theory and its practical
applications, but also for the tables of physical constants which
are there given. (A. E. H. L.)
ELATERITE, also termed ELASTIC BITUMEN and MINERAL
CAOUTCHOUC, a mineral hydrocarbon, which occurs at Castleton
in Derbyshire, in the lead mines of Odin and elsewhere. It
varies somewhat in consistency, being sometimes soft, elastic
and sticky; often closely resembling india-rubber; and occasion-
ally hard and brittle. It is usually dark brown in colour and
slightly translucent. A substance of similar physical character
is found in the Coorong district of South Australia, and is hence
termed coorongite, but Prof. Ralph Tate considers this to be a
vegetable product.
ELATERIUM, a drug consisting of a sediment deposited
by the juice of the fruit of Ecballium Elaterium, the squirting
cucumber, a native of the Mediterranean region. The plant,
which is a member of the natural order Cucurbitaceae, resembles
the vegetable marrow in its growth. The fruit resembles a
small cucumber, and when ripe is highly turgid, and separates
almost at a touch from the fruit stalk. The end of the stalk
forms a stopper, on the removal of which the fluid contents of
the fruit, together with the seeds, are squirted through the
aperture by the sudden contraction of the wall of the fruit.
To prepare the drug the fruit is sliced lengthwise and slightly
pressed; the greenish and slightly turbid juice thus obtained
is strained and set aside; and the deposit of elaterium formed
after a few hours is collected on a linen filter, rapidly drained,
and dried on porous tiles at a gentle heat. Elaterium is met
with in commerce in light, thin, friable, flat or slightly incurved
opaque cakes, of a greyish-green colour, bitter taste and tea-like
smell.
The drug is soluble in alcohol, but insoluble in water and ether.
The official dose is rVa g ram i and the British pharmacopeia
directs that the drug is to contain from 20 to 25% of the active
principle elaterinum or elaterin. A resin in the natural product
aids its action. Elaterin is extracted from elaterium by chloro-
form and then precipitated by ether. It has the formula
CzoHzsOfi. It forms colourless scales which have a bitter taste,
but it is highly inadvisable to taste either this substance or
elaterium. Its dose is ^V ^V gr am i an d the British pharmacopeia
contains a useful preparation, the Pulvis Elaterini Compositus,
which contains one part of the active principle in forty.
The action of this drug resembles that of the saline aperients,
but is much more powerful. It is the most active hydragogue
purgative known, causing also much depression and violent
griping. When injected subcutaneously it is inert, as its action
is entirely dependent upon its admixture with the bile. The
drug is undoubtedly valuable in cases of dropsy and Bright's
disease, and also in cases of cerebral haemorrhage, threatened or
present. It must not be used except in urgent cases, and must
invariably be employed with the utmost care, especially if the
state of the heart be unsatisfactory.
ELBA (Gr. AWaXia; Lat. Ilva), an island off the W. coast
of Italy, belonging to the province of Leghorn, from which
it is 45 m. S., and 7 m. S.W. of Piombino, the nearest point of
the mainland. Pop. (1901) 25,043 (including Pianosa). It is
about 19 m. long, 6j m. broad, and 140 sq. m. in area; and its
highest point is 3340 ft. (Monte Capanne). It forms, like Giglio
and Monte Cristo, part of a sunken mountain range extending
towards Corsica and Sardinia.
The oldest rocks of Elba consist of schist and serpentine which
in the eastern part of the island are overlaid by beds containing
Silurian and Devonian fossils. The Permian may be represented,
but the Trias is absent, and in general the older Palaeozoic rocks
are overlaid directly by the Rhaetic and Lias. The Liassic beds
are often metamorphosed and the limestones contain garnet
and wollastonite. The next geological formation which is
represented is the Eocene, consisting of nummulitic limestone,
sandstone and schist. The Miocene and Pliocene are absent.
The most remarkable feature in the geology of Elba is the extent
of the granitic and ophiolitic eruptions of the Tertiary period.
Serpentines, peridotites and diabases are interstratified with the
Eocene deposits. The granite, which is intruded through the
Eocene beds, is associated with a pegmatite containing tour-
maline and cassiterite. The celebrated iron ore of Elba is of
ELBE
161
Tertiary age and occurs indifferently in all the older rocks. The
deposits arc superficial, resulting from the opening out of veins
at the surface, and consist chiefly of haematite. These ores were
worked by the ancients, but so inefficiently that their spoil-
heaps can be smelted again with profit. This process is now
gone through on the island itself. The granite was also quarried
by the Romans, but is not now much worked.
Parts of the island are fertile, and the cultivation of vines,
and the tunny and sardine fishery, also give employment to a part
of the population. The capital of the island is Portoferraio
pop. (1001) 5987 in the centre of the N. coast, enclosed by an
amphitheatre of lofty mountains, the slopes of which are covered
with villas and gardens. This is the best harbour, the ancient
Port us Argons. The town was built and fortified by Cosimo I.
in 1 548, who called it Cosmopolis. Above the harbour, between
the forts Stella and Falcone, is the palace of Napoleon I., and
4 m. to the S.\V. is his villa; while on the N. slope of Monte
Capanne is another of his country houses. The other villages
in the island are Campo nelT Elba, on the S. near the W. end,
Mardana and Marciana Marina on the N. of the island near the
W. extremity. Porto Longone, on the . coast, with picturesque
Spanish fortifications, constructed in 1602 -by Philip III.; Rio
dell' Elba and Rio Marina, both on the E. side of the island, in
the mining district. At Le Grotte, between Portoferraio and Rio
dell' Elba, and at Capo Castello, on the N.E. of the island, are
ruins of Roman date.
Elba was famous for its mines in early times, and the smelting
furnaces gave it its Greek name of A' 0aXia (" soot island ").
In Roman times, and until 1900, however, owing to lack of fuel,
the smelting was done on the mainland. In 453 B.C. Elba was
devastated by a Syracusan squadron. From the nth to the
Uth century it belonged to Pisa, and in 1309 came under the
dukes of Piombino. In 1548 it was ceded by them to Cosimo I.
of Florence. In 1506 Porto Longone was taken by Philip III.
of Spain, and retained until 1709, when it was ceded to Naples.
In 1802 the island was given to France by the peace of Amiens.
On Napoleon's deposition, the island was ceded to him with full
sovereign rights, and he resided there from the 5th of May 1814
to the 26th of February 1815. After his fall it was restored
to Tuscany, and passed with it to Italy in 1860.
See Sir R. Colt Hoare, A Tour through the Island of Elba (London,
1814).
ELBE (the Alois of the Romans and the Lobe of the Czechs),
a river of Germany, which rises in Bohemia not far from the
frontiers of Silesia, on the southern side of the Riesengebirgc,
at an altitude of about 4600 ft. Of the numerous small streams
(Seifen or Flessen as they are named in the district) whose con-
fluent waters compose the infant river, the most important are
the Weisswasser, or White Water, and the Elbseifen, which is
formed in the same neighbourhood, but at a little lower elevation.
After plunging down the 140 ft. of the Elbfall, the latter stream
unites with the steep torrential Weisswasser at Madelstegbaudc,
at an altitude of 2230 ft., and thereafter the united stream of
the Elbe pursues a southerly course, emerging from the mountain
glens at Hohenelbe (1495 ft.), and continuing on at a soberer pace
to Pardubitz, where it turns sharply to the west, and at Kolin
(730 ft.), some 27 m. farther on, bends gradually towards the
north-west. A little above Brandeis it picks up the Iser, which,
like itself, comes down from the Riesengebirge, and at Melnik
it has its stream more than doubled in volume by the Moldau,
a river which winds northwards through the heart of Bohemia
in a sinuous, trough-like channel carved through the plateaux.
Some miles lower down, at Leitmeritz (433 ft.), the waters of
the Elbe are tinted by the reddish Eger, a stream which drains
the southern slopes of the Erzgcbirge. Thus augmented, and
swollen into a stream 140 yds. wide, the Elbe carves a path
through the basaltic mass of the Mittelgebirge, churning its
way through a deep, narrow rocky gorge. Then the river winds
through the fantastically sculptured sandstone mountains of the
" Saxon Switzerland," washing successively the feet of the lofty
Lilienstein (932 ft. above the Elbe), the scene of one of Frederick
the Great's military exploits in the Seven Years' War, Konigstein
Dt. 6
(797 ft. above the Elbe), where in times of war Saxony has more
than once stored her national purse for security, and the pinnacled
rocky wall of the Bastei, towering 650 ft. above the surface of
the stream. Shortly after crossing the Bohemian-Saxon frontier,
and whilst still struggling through the sandstone defiles, the
stream assumes a north-westerly direction, which on the whole
it preserves right away to the North Sea. At Pirna the Elbe
leaves behind it the stress and turmoil of the Saxon Switzerland,
rolls through Dresden, with its noble river terraces, and finally,
beyond Meissen, enters on its long journey across the North
German plain, touching Torgau, Wittenberg, Magdeburg,
Wittenberge, Hamburg, Harburg and Altona on the way, and
gathering into itself the waters of the Mulde and Saale from the
left, and those of the Schwarze Elstcr, Havel and Elde from the
right. Eight miles above Hamburg the stream divides into the
Norder (or Hamburg) Elbe and the Stidcr (or Harburg) Elbe,
which are linked together by several cross-channels, and embrace
in their arms the large island of Wilhelmsburg and some smaller
ones. But by the time the river reaches Blankencse, 7 m. below
Hamburg, all these anastomosing branches have been reunited,
and the Elbe, with a width of 4 to 9 m. between bank and bank,
travels on between the green marshes of Holstein and Hanover
until it becomes merged in the North Sea off Cuxhaven. At
Kolin the width is about 100 ft., at the mouth of the Moldau
about 300, at Dresden 960, and at Magdeburg over 1000. From
Dresden to the sea the river has a total fall of only 280 ft., although
the distance is about 430 m. For the 75 m. between Hamburg
and the sea the fall is only 3! ft. One consequence of this is that
the bed of the river just below Hamburg is obstructed by a bar,
and still lower down is choked with sandbanks, so that navigation
is confined to a relatively narrow channel down the middle of
the stream. But unremitting efforts have been made to maintain
a sufficient fairway up to Hamburg (?..). The tide advances
as far as Geesthacht, a little more than 100 m. from the sea.
The river is navigable as far as Melnik, that is, the confluence of
the Moldau, a distance of 525 m., of which 67 are in Bohemia.
It total length is 725 m., of which 190 are in Bohemia, 77 in the
kingdom of Saxony, and 350 in Prussia, the remaining 108 being
in Hamburg and other states of Germany. The area of the drain-
age basin is estimated at 56,000 sq. m.
Navigation. Since 1842, but more especially since 1871, im-
provements have been made in the navigability of the Elbe by
all the states which border upon its banks. As a result of these
labours there is now in the Bohemian portion of the river a
minimum depth of 2 ft. 8 in., whilst from the Bohemian frontier
down to Magdeburg the minimum depth is 3 ft., and from
Magdeburg to Hamburg, 3 ft. 10 in. In 1896 aud 1897 Prussia
and Hamburg signed covenants whereby two channels are to be
kept open to a depth of 9? ft., a width of 656 ft., and a length
of 550 yds. between Bunthaus and Ortkathen, just above the
bifurcation of the Norder Elbe and the SUder Elbe. In 1869 the
maximum burden of the vessels which were able to ply on the
upper Elbe was 250 tons; but in 1899 it was increased to 800 tons.
The large towns through which the river flows have vied with one
another in building harbours, providing shipping accommodation,
and furnishing other facilities for the efficient navigation of the
Elbe. In this respect the greatest efforts have naturally been
made by Hamburg; but Magdeburg, Dresden, Meissen, Riesa,
Tetschen, Aussig and other places have all done their relative
shares, Magdeburg, for instance, providing a commercial
harbour and a winter harbour. In spite, however, of all that has
been done, the Elbe remains subject to serious inundations at
periodic intervals. Among the worst floods were those of the
years 1774, 1799, 1815, 1830, 1845, 1862, 1890 and 1509. The
growth of traffic up and down the Elbe has of late years become
very considerable. A towing chain, laid in the bed of the river,
extends from Hamburg to Aussig, and by this means, as by
paddle-tug haulage, large barges are brought from the port of
Hamburg into the heart of Bohemia. The fleet of steamers and
barges navigating the Elbe is in point of fact greater than on
any other German river. In addition to goods thus conveyed,
enormous quantities of timber are floated down the Elbe; the
162
ELBE
weight of the rafts passing the station of Schandau on the Saxon
Bohemian frontier amounting in 1901 to 333,000 tons.
A vast amount of traffic is directed to Berlin, by means of the
Havel-Spree system of canals, to the Thuringian states and the
Prussian province of Saxony, to the kingdom of Saxony and
Bohemia, and to the various riverine states and provinces of the
lower and middle Elbe. The passenger traffic, which is in the
hands of the Sachsisch-Bohmische Dampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft
is limited to Bohemia and Saxony, steamers plying up and down
the stream from Dresden to Melnik, occasionally continuing the
journey up the Moldau to Prague, and down the river as far as
Riesa, near the northern frontier of Saxony, and on the average
15 million passengers are conveyed.
In 1877-1879, and again in 1888-1895, some 100 m. of canal
were dug, 5 to 6j ft. deep and of various widths, for the purpose of
connecting the Elbe, through the Havel and the Spree, with the
system of the Oder. The most noteworthy of these connexions
are the Elbe Canal (14^ m. long), the Reek Canal (95 m.), the
Riidersdorfer Gewasser (i i J m.), the Rheinsberger Canal (iij m.),
and the Sacrow-Paretzer Canal (10 m.), besides which the Spree
has been canalized for a distance of 28 m., and the Elbe for a
distance of 70 m. Since 1896 great improvements have been
made in the Moldau and the Bohemian Elbe, with the view of
facilitating communication between Prague and the middle of
Bohemia generally on the one hand, and the middle and lower
reaches of the Elbe on the other. In the year named a special
commission was appointed for the regulation of the Moldau and
Elbe between Prague and Aussig, at a cost estimated at about
1,000,000, of which sum two-thirds were to be borne by the
Austrian empire and one-third by the kingdom of Bohemia.
The regulation is effected by locks and movable dams, the latter
so designed that in times of flood or frost they can be dropped flat
on the bottom of the river. In 1901 the Austrian government laid
before the Reichsrat a canal bill, with proposals for works
estimated to take twenty years to complete, and including the
construction of a, canal between the Oder, starting at Prerau, and
the upper Elbe at Pardubitz, and for the canalization of the Elbe
from Pardubitz to Melnik (see AUSTRIA: Waterways). In 1900
LUbeck was put into direct communication with the Elbe at
Lauenburg by the opening of the Elbe-Trave Canal, 42 m. in
length, and constructed at a cost of 1,177,700, of which the state
of Ltibeck contributed 802,700, and the kingdom of Prussia
375,000. The canal has been made 72 ft. wide at the bottom,
105 to 1 26 ft. wide at the top, has a minimum depth of 8J f t., and
is equipped with seven locks, each 2625 ft. long and 39! ft. wide.
It is thus able to accommodate vessels up to 800 tons burden ;
and the passage from Liibeck to Lauenburg occupies 18 to 21
hours. In the first year of its being open (June 1900 to June
1901) a total of 115,000 tons passed through the canal. 1 A
gigantic project has also been put forward for providing water
communication between the Rhine and the Elbe, and so with the
Oder, through the heart of Germany. This scheme is known as
the Midland Canal. Another canal has been projected for con-
necting Kiel with the Elbe by means of a canal trained through
the Plon Lakes.
Bridges. The Elbe is crossed by numerous bridges, as at
Koniggratz, Pardubitz, Kolin, Leitmeritz, Tetschen, Schandau,
Pirna, Dresden, Meissen, Torgau, Wittenberg, Rosslau, Barby,
Magdeburg, Rathenow, Wittenberge, Domitz, Lauenburg, and
Hamburg and Harburg. At all these places there are railway
bridges, and nearly all, but more especially those in Bohemia,
Saxony and the middle course of the river these last on the main
lines between Berlin and the west and south-west of the empire
possess a greater or less strategic value. At Leitmeritz there is an
iron trellis bridge, 600 yds long. Dresden has four bridges, and
there is a fifth bridge at Loschwitz, about 3 m. above the city.
Meissen has a railway bridge, in addition to an old road bridge.
Magdeburg is one of the most important railway centres in
northern Germany; and the Elbe, besides being bridged it
divides there into three arms several times for vehicular traffic,
1 See Der Bau des Elbe-Trave Canals und seine Vorgeschichle
(Liibeck, 1900).
is also spanned by two fine railway bridges. At both Hamburg
and Harburg, again, there are handsome railway bridges, the one
(1868-1873 and 1894) crossing the northern Elbe, and the other
(1900) the southern Elbe; and the former arm is also crossed by a
fine triple-arched bridge (1888) for vehicular traffic.
Fish. The river is well stocked with fish, both salt-water and
fresh-water species being found in its waters, and several varieties
of fresh-water fish in its tributaries. The kinds of greatest
economic value are sturgeon, shad, salmon, lampreys, eels, pike
and whiting.
Tolls. In the days of the old German empire no fewer than
thirty-five different tolls were levied between Melnik and Ham-
burg, to say nothing of the special dues and privileged exactions of
various riparian owners and political authorities. After these had
been de facto, though not dejure, in abeyance during the period of
the Napoleonic wars, a commission of the various Elbe states met
and drew up a scheme for their regulation, and the scheme,
embodied in the Elbe Navigation Acts, came into force in 1822.
By this a definite number of tolls, at fixed rates, was substituted
for the often arbitrary tolls which had been exacted previously.
Still further relief was afforded in 1844 and in 1850, on the latter
occasion by the abolition of all tolls between Melnik and the
Saxon frontier. But the number of tolls was only reduced to one,
levied at Wittenberge, in 1863, about one year after Hanover was
induced to give up the Stade or Brunsbiittel toll in return for a
compensation of 2,857,340 thalers. Finally, in 1870, 1,000,000
thalers were paid to Mecklenburg and 85,000 thalers to Anhal,
which thereupon Abandoned all claims to levy tolls upon the
Elbe shipping, and thus navigation on the river became at last
entirely free.
History. The Elbe cannot rival the Rhine in the picturesque-
ness of the scenery it travels through, nor in the glamour which
its romantic and legendary associations exercise over the imagi-
nation. But it possesses much to charm the eye in the deep
glens of the Riesengebirge, amid which its sources spring, and
in the bizarre rock-carving of the Saxon Switzerland. It has
been indirectly or directly associated with many stirring events
in the history of the German peoples. In its lower course, what-
ever is worthy of record clusters round the historical vicissitudes
of Hamburg its early prominence as a missionary centre
( Ansgar) and as a bulwark against Slav and marauding Northman,
its commercial prosperity as a leading member of the Hanseatic
League, and its sufferings during the Napoleonic wars, especially
at the hands of the ruthless Davout. The bridge over the river
at Dessau recalls the hot assaults of the condottiere Ernst von
Mansfeld in April 1626, and his repulse by the crafty generalship
of Wallenstein. But three years later this imperious leader was
checked by the heroic resistance of the " Maiden " fortress of
Magdeburg; though two years later still she lost her reputation,
and suffered unspeakable horrors at the hands of Tilly's law-
less and unlicensed soldiery. Miihlberg, just outside the Saxon
frontier, is the place where Charles V. asserted his imperial
authority over the Protestant elector of Saxony, John Frederick,
the Magnanimous or Unfortunate, in 1547. Dresden, Aussig
and Leitmeritz are all reminiscent of the fierce battles of the
Hussite wars, and the last named of the Thirty Years' War.
But the chief historical associations of the upper {i.e. the Saxon
and Bohemian) Elbe are those which belong to the Seven Years'
War, and the struggle of the great Frederick of Prussia against
the power of Austria and her allies. At Pirna (and Lilienstein) in
1756 he caught the entire Saxon army in his fowler's net, after
driving back at Lobositz the Austrian forces which were hasten-
ing to their asistance; but only nine months later he lost his
reputation for " invincibility " by his crushing defeat at Kolin,
where the great highway from Vienna to Dresden crosses the
Elbe. Not many miles distant, higher up the stream, another
decisive battle was fought between the same national antagon-
ists, but with a contrary result, on the memorable 3rd of July
1866.
See M. Buchheister, " Die Elbe u. der Hafen von Hamburg,"
in Mitteil. d. Geog. Gesellsch. in Hamburg (1899), vol. xv. pp. 131-
188; V. Kurs, Die kiinstlichen Wasserstrassen des deutschen
ELBERFELD ELBING
163
Reich*." in Gtvg. Ztitsckrifl (1898), pp. 601-617; and (the official)
I (' Elbstrom (1900); B. Weiawnborn. Die ElbsoUe unit Elbstaprl-
platzt im \ftttelaltfr (Halle. 1900); Daniel, DevlicUand; and A.
Supan, \\'^>strstrasitn und Binnenscki/fakrl (Berlin, 1902).
ELBERFELD. a manufacturing town of Germany, in the
Prussian Rhine province, on the Wupper, and immediately west
of and contiguous to Barmen (4.*.). Pop. (1816) 21,710; (1840)
14; (1885) 100,218; (1005) 167,382. Elberfeld-Barmen,
although administratively separate, practically form a single
whole. It winds, a continuous strip of houses and factories,
for o m. along the deep valley, on both banks of the Wupper,
which is crossed by numerous bridges, the engirdling hills
crowned with woods. Local intercommunication is provided
by an electric tramway line and a novel hanging railway on
the Langen mono-rail system suspended over the bed of the
river, with frequent stations. In the centre of the town are a
number of irregular and narrow streets, and the river, polluted
by the refuse of dye-works and factories, constitutes a constant
eyesore. Yet within recent years great alterations have been
effected; in the newer quarters are several handsome streets
and public buildings; in the centre many insanitary dwellings
have been swept away, and their place occupied by imposing
blocks of shops and business premises, and a magnificent new
town-hall, erected in a dominant position. Among the most
recent improvements must be mentioned the Brausenwerther
Phtz, flanked by the theatre, the public baths, and the railway
station and administrative offices. There are eleven Evangelical
and five Roman Catholic churches (noticeable among the latter
the Suitbcrtuskirche), a synagogue, and chapels of various other
sects. Among other public buildings may be enumerated the
civic hall, the law courts and the old town-hall.
The town is particularly rich in educational, industrial, philan-
thropic and religious institutions. The schools include the
Gymnasium (founded in 1592 by the Protestant community
as a Latin school), the Realgymnasium (founded in 1830, for
" modern " subjects and Latin), the Obcrrealschule and Real-
schule (founded 1893, the latter wholly " modern "), two girls'
high schools, a girls' middle-class school, a large number of
popular schools, a mechanics' and polytechnic school, a school
of mechanics, an industrial drawing school, a commercial school,
and a school for the deaf and dumb. There are abo a theatre,
an institute of music, a library, a museum, a zoological garden,
and numerous scientific societies. The town is the seat of the
Berg Bible Society. The majority of the inhabitants are
Protestant, with a strong tendency towards Pietism; but the
Roman Catholics number upwards of 40,000, forming about
one-fourth of the total population. The industries of Elberfeld
are on a scale of great magnitude. It is the chief centre in
Germany of the cotton, wool, silk and velvet manufactures, and
of upholstery, drapery and haberdashery of all descriptions, of
printed calicoes, of Turkey-red and other dyes, and of fine
chemicals. Leather and rubber goods, gold, silver and aluminium
wares, machinery, wall-paper, and stained glass are also among
other of its staple products. Commerce is lively and the exports
to foreign countries are very considerable. The railway system
is well devised to meet the requirements of its rapidly increasing
trade. Two main lines of railway traverse the valley; that on
the south is the main line from Aix-Ia-Chapclle, Cologne and
Diisseldorf to central Germany and Berlin, that on the north
feeds the important towns of the Ruhr valley.
The surroundings of Elberfeld are attractive, and public
grounds and walks have been recently opened on the hills around
with results eminently beneficial to the health of the population.
In the 12th century the site of Elberfeld was occupied by the
castle of the lords of Elverfeld, feudatories of the archbishops of
Cologne. The fief passed later into the possession of the counts
of Berg. The industrial development of the place started with
a colony of bleachers, attracted by the clear waters of the Wupper,
who in 1532 were granted the exclusive privilege of bleaching
yarn. It was not, however, until 1610 that Elberfeld was raised
to the status of a town, and in 1640 was surrounded with walls.
In 1760 the manufacture of silk was introduced, and dyeing with
Turkey-red in 1780; but it was not till the end of the century
that its industries developed into importance under the influence-
of Napoleon's continental system, which barred out British
competition. In 1815 Elberfeld was assigned by the congress
of Vienna, with the grand-duchy of Berg, to Prussia, and its
prosperity rapidly developed under the Prussian Zollverein.
See Coutelle, Elberfeld, topographisch-statistischr Darstellung (Kll>er-
feld, 1853) ; Schell, Geschichte dtr Stadt Elberfeld (1900) ; A. Shadwcll,
Industrial Efficiency (London, 1906) ; and Jorde, huhrer durch Elber-
feld und seine Umgebung (1902).
ELBEUF, a town of northern France in the department of
Seine-Inftfrieure, 14 m. S.S.W. of Rouen by the western railway.
Pop. (1006) 17,800. Elbeuf, a town of wide, clean streets, with
handsome houses and factories, stands on the left bank of the
Seine at the foot of hills over which extends the forest of Elbeuf.
A tribunal and chamber of commerce, a board of t rade-arbitrators,
a Iyc6e, a branch of the Bank of France, a school of industry,
a school of cloth manufacture and a museum of natural history
are among its institutions. The churches of St Etienne and St
Jean, both of the Renaissance period with later additions,
preserve stained glass of the i6th century. The h6tel-de-ville
and the Cercle du Commerce are the chief modern buildings.
The town with its suburbs, Orival, Caudebec-les-Elbeuf,
St Aubin and St Pierre, is one of the principal and most ancient
seats of the woollen manufacture in France; more than half the
inhabitants are directly maintained by the staple industry and
numbers more by the auxiliary crafts. As a river-port it has a
brisk trade in the produce of the surrounding district as well as in
the raw materials of its manufactures, especially in wool from
La Plata, Australia and Germany. Two bridges, one of them a
suspension-bridge, communicate with St Aubin on the opposite
bank of the Seine, and steamboats ply regularly to Rouen.
Elbeuf was, in the i3th century, the centre of an im-
portant fief held by the house of Harcourt, but its previous
history goes back at least to the early years of the Norman
occupation, when it appears under the name of Hollebof. It
passed into the hands of the houses of Rieux and Lorraine, and
was raised to the rank of a duchy in the peerage of France by
Henry III. in favour of Charles of Lorraine (d. 1605), grandson
of Claude, duke of Guise, master of the hounds and master of
the horse of France. The last duke of Elbeuf was Charles Eugene
of Lorraine, prince de Lambesc, who distinguished himself in
1789 by his energy in repressing risings of the people at Paris.
He fought in the army of the Bourbons, and later in the service
of Austria, and died in 1825.
ELBING, a seaport town of Germany, in the kingdom of
Prussia, 49 m. by rail E.S.E. of Danzig, on the Elbing, a small
river which flows into the Frische Haff about 5 m. from the
town, and is united with the Nogat or eastern arm of the Vistula
by means of the Kraffohl canal. Pop. (1905) 55,627. By the
Elbing-Oberlandischer canal, no m. long, constructed in 1845-
1860, Lakes Geserich and Drewenz are connected with Lake
Drausen, and consequently with the port of Elbing. The old
town was formerly surrounded by fortifications, but of these only
a few fragments remain. There are several churches, among
them the Marienkirche (dating from the i sth century and restored
in 1887), a classical school (Gymnasium) founded in 1536, a
modern school (Realschule), a public library of over 28,000
volumes, and several charitable institutions. The town-hall
(1894) contains a historical museum.
Elbing is a place of rapidly growing industries. At the great
Schichau iron-works, which employ thousands of workmen, are
built most of the torpedo-boats and destroyers for the German
navy, as well as larger craft, locomotives and machinery. In
addition to this there are at Elbing important iron foundries, and
manufactories of machinery, cigars, lacquer and metal ware, flax
and hemp yarn, cotton, linen, organs, &c. There is a considerable
trade also in agricultural produce.
The origin of Elbing was a colony of traders from Liibeck and
Bremen, which established itself under the protection of a castle
of the Teutonic Knights, built in 1 237. In 1 246 the town acquired
" LUbeck rights," i.e. the full autonomy conceded by the charter
164
ELBOW ELCHINGEN
of the emperor Frederick II. in 1226 (see LUBECK), and it was
early admitted to the Hanseatic League. In 1454 the town
repudiated the overlordship of the Teutonic Order, and placed
itself under the protection of the king of Poland, becoming the
seat of a Polish voivode. From this event dates a decline in its
prosperity, a decline hastened by the wars of the early i8th
century. In 1698, and again in 1703, it was seized by the elector
of Brandenburg as security for a debt due to him by the
Polish king. It was taken and held to ransom by Charles XII. of
Sweden, and in 1710 was captured by the Russians. In 1772,
when it fell to Prussia through the first partition of Poland, it was
utterly decayed.
See Fuchs, Gesch. der Stadt Elbing (Elbing, 1818-1852); Rhode,
Der Elbinger Kreis in topographischer, histonscher, und statistischer
Hinsicht (Danzig, 1871); Wernick, Elbing (Elbing, 1888).
ELBOW, in anatomy, the articulation of the humerus, the bone
of the upper arm, and the ulna and radius, the bones of the fore-
arm (see JOINTS). The word is thus applied to things which are
like this joint in shape, such as a sharp bend of a stream or river,
an angle in a tube, &c. The word is derived from the O. Eng.
elnboga, a combination of eln, the forearm, and boga, a bow or
bend. This combination is common to many Teutonic languages,
cf. Ger. Ellbogen. Eln still survives in the name of a linear
measure, the " ell," and is derived from the O. Teut. alina,
cognate with Lat. ulna and Gr. &\ivTi, the forearm. The use of
the arm as a measure of length is illustrated by the uses of ulna,
in Latin, cubit, and fathom.
ELBURZ, or ALBURZ (from O. Pers. Hara-bere-zaiti, the
" High Mountain "), a great chain of mountains in northern
Persia, separating the Caspian depression from the Persian
highlands, and extending without any break for 650 m. from the
western shore of the Caspian Sea to north-eastern Khorasan.
According to the direction, or strike, of its principal ranges the
Elburz may be divided into three sections: the first 120 m. in
length with a direction nearly N. to S., the second 240 m. in length
with a direction N.W. to S.E., and the third 290 m. in length strik-
ing S.W. to N.E. The first section, which is connected with the
system of the Caucasus, and begins west of Lenkoran in 39 N. and
45 E., is known as the Talish range and has several peaks 9000 to
10,000 ft. in height. It runs almost parallel to the western shore
of the Caspian, and west of Astara is only 10 or 12 m. distant from
the sea. At the point west of Resht, where the direction of the
principal range changes to one of N.W. to S.E., the second section
of the Elburz begins, and extends from there to beyond Mount
Demavend, east of Teheran. South of Resht this section is broken
through at almost a right angle by the Safid Rud (White river) ,and
along it runs the principal commercial road between the Caspian
and inner Persia, Resht-Kazvin-Teheran. The Elburz then
splits into three principal ranges running parallel to one another
and connected at many places by secondary ranges and spurs.
Many peaks of the ranges in this section have an altitude of
11,000 to 13,000 ft., and the elevation of the passes leading over
the ranges varies between 7000 and 10,000 ft. The highest peaks
are situated in the still unexplored district of Talikan, N.W. of
Teheran, and thence eastwards to beyond Mount Demavend.
The part of the Elburz immediately north of Teheran is known as
the Kuh i Shimran (mountain of Shimran, from the name of the
Shimran district on its southern slopes) and culminates in the
Sar i Tochal (12,600 ft.). Beyond it, and between the border of
Talikan in the N.W. and Mount Demavend in the N.E., are the
ranges Azadbur, Kasil, Kachang, Kendevan, Shahzad, Varzeh,
Derbend i Sar and others, with elevations of 12,000 to 13,300 ft.,
while Demavend towers above them all with its altitude of
19,400 ft. The eastern foot of Demavend is washed by the river
Herhaz (called Lar river in its upper course), which there breaks
through the Elburz in a S.-N. direction in its course to the Caspian,
past the city of Amol. The third section of the Elburz, with its
principal ranges striking S.W. to N.E., has a length of about 290
m., and ends some distance beyond Bujnurd in northern Khora-
san, where it joins the Ala Dagh range, which has a direction to
the S.E., and, continuing with various appellations to northern
Afghanistan, unites with the Paropamisus. For about two-
thirds of its length from its beginning to Khush Yailak the
third section consists of three principal ranges connected by
lateral ranges and spurs. It also has many peaks over 10,000 ft.
in height, and the Nizva mountain on the southern border of the
unexplored district of Hazarjirib, north of Semnan, and the
Shahkuh, between Shahrud and Astarabad, have an elevation
exceeding 13,000 ft. Beyond Khush Yailak (meaning "pleasant
summer quarters "), with an elevation of 10,000 ft., are the
Kuh i Buhar (8000) and Kuh i Suluk (8000), which latter joins
the Ala Dagh (11,000).
The northern slopes of the Elburz and the lowlands which lie
between them and the Caspian, and together form the provinces of
Gilan, Mazandaran and Astarabad, are covered with dense forest
and traversed by hundreds (Persian writers say 1362) of perennial
rivers and streams. The breadth of the lowlands between the
foot of the hills and the sea is from 2 to 25 m., the greatest breadth
being in the meridian of Resht in Gilan, and in the districts of
Amol, Sari and Barfurush in Mazandaran. The inner slopes and
ranges of the Elburz south of the principal watershed, generally
the central one of the three principal ranges which are outside of
the fertilizing influence of the moisture brought from the sea,
have little or no natural vegetation, and those farthest south are,
excepting a few stunted cypresses, completely arid and bare.
" North of the principal watershed forest trees and general
verdure refresh the eye. Gurgling water, strips of sward and tall
forest trees, backed by green hills, make a scene completely un-
like the usual monotony of Persian landscape. The forest scenery
much resembles that of England, with fine oaks and greensward.
South of the watershed the whole aspect of the landscape is as
hideous and disappointing asscenery in Afghanistan. Ridgeafter
ridge of bare hill and curtain behind curtain of serrated mountain,
certainly sometimes of charming greys and blues, but still all bare
and naked, rugged and arid " (Beresford Lovett, Proc. R.G.S.,
Feb. 1883).
The higher ranges of the Elburz are snow-capped for the
greater part of the year, and some, which are not exposed to the
refracted heat from the arid districts of inner Persia, are rarely
without snow. Water is plentiful in the Elburz, and situated in
well-watered valleys and gorges are innumerable flourishing
villages, embosomed in gardens and orchards, with extensive
cultivated fields and meadows, and at higher altitudes small
plateaus, under snow until March or April, afford cool camping
grounds to the nomads of the plains, and luxuriant grazing to
their sheep and cattle during the summer. (A. H.-S.)
ELCHE, a town of eastern Spain, in the province of Alicante,
on the river Vinalapo. Pop. (1900) 27,308. Elche is the meeting-
place of three railways, from Novelda, Alicante and Murcia.
It contains no building of high architectural merit, except,
perhaps, the collegiate church of Santa Maria, with its lofty
blue-tiled dome and fine west doorway. But the costume and
physiognomy of the inhabitants, the narrow streets and flat-
roofed, whitewashed houses, and more than all, the thousands
of palm-trees in its gardens and fields, give the place a strikingly
Oriental aspect, and render it unique among the cities of Spain.
The cultivation of the palm is indeed the principal occupation;
and though the dates are inferior to those of the Barbary States,
upwards of 22,500 tons are annually exported. The blanched
fronds are also sold in large quantities for the processions of
Palm Sunday, and after they have received the blessing of the
priest they are regarded throughout Spain as certain defences
against lightning. Other thriving local industries include the
manufacture of oil, soap, flour, leather, alcohol and esparto
grass rugs. The harbour of Elche is Santa Pola (pop. 4100),
situated 6 m.E.S.E.,where the Vinalapo enters the Mediterranean,
after forming the wide lagoon known as the Albufera de Elche.
Elche is usually identified with the Iberian Helike, afterwards
the Roman colony of Ilici or Ittici. From the 8th century to
the I3th it was held by the Moors, who finally failed to recapture
it from the Spaniards in 1332.
ELCHINGEN, a village of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria,
not far from the Danube, 5 m. N.E. from Ulm. Here, on the
I4th of October 1805, the Austrians under Laudon were
ELDAD BEN MAHLI ELDER
165
defeated by the French under Key, who by taking the bridge
decided the day and gained for himself the title of duke of
Elchingen.
ELDAD BEN MAHLI. also surnamcd had-Dani, Abu-Dani,
David-had-Dani, or 'the Danite, Jewish traveller, was the sup-
posed author of a Jewish travel-narrative of the oih century
A.D., which enjoyed great authority in the middle ages, especially
on the question of the Lost Ten Tribes. Eldad first set out to
visit his Hebrew brethren in Africa and Asia. His vessel was
wrecked, and he fell into the hands of cannibals; but he was
saved by his leanness, and by the opportune invasion of a neigh-
bouring tribe. After spending four years with his new captors,
he was ransomed by a fellow-countryman, a merchant of the
tribe of Issachar. He then (according to his highly fabulous
narrative) visited the territory of Issachar, in the mountains
of Media and Persia; he also describes the abodes of Zabulon,
on the " other side " of the I 'a ran Mountains, extending to
Armenia and the Euphrates; of Reuben, on another side of the
same mountains; of Ephraim and Half Manassch, in Arabia,
not far from Mecca; and of Simeon and the other Half of
Manassch, in Chorazin, six months' journey from Jerusalem.
Dan, he declares, sooner than join in Jeroboam's scheme of an
Israelite war against Judah, had migrated to Cush, and finally,
with the help of Naphthali, Asher and Gad, had founded an
independent Jewish kingdom in the Gold Land of Havila, beyond
Abyssinia. The tribe of Levi had also been miraculously guided,
from near Babylon, to Havila, where they were enclosed and
protected by the mystic river Sambation or Habitation, which
on the Sabbath, though calm, was veiled in impenetrable mist,
while on other days it ran with a fierce unt ra versa ble current of
stones and sand.
Apart from these tales, we have the genuine Eldad, a celebrated
Jewish traveller and philologist; who flourished c. A.D. 830-890;
to whom the work above noticed is ascribed; who was a native
either of S. Arabia, Palestine or Media; who journeyed in Egypt,
Mesopotamia, North Africa, and Spain; who spent several
years at Kairawan in Tunis; who died on a visit to Cordova,
and whose authority, as to the lost tribes, is supported by a
great Hebrew doctor of his own time, Zemah Gaon, the rector
of the Academy at Sura (A.D. 880-808). It is possible that a
certain relationship exists (as suggested by Epstein and supported
by D. H. Muller) between the famous apocryphal Letter of
PresUr John (of c. A.D. 1165) and the narrative of'Eldad; but
the affinity is not close. Eldad is quoted as an authority on
linguistic difficulties by the leading medieval Jewish grammarians
and lexicographers.
The work ascribed to Eldad is in Hebrew, divided into six chapters,
probably abbreviated from the original text. The first edition
appeared at Mantua about 1480; the second at Constantinople in
1516; this was reprinted at Venice in 1544 and 1605, and at Jessnitz
in 1722. A Latin version by Gilb. Genibrard was published at Paris
in 1563, under the title of Eldad Danius . . . de Judatis clausis
torumque in Aethiopia . . . imperio, and was afterwards incorporated
in the translator's Chronologia Hebraeorum of 1584; a German ver-
sion appeared at Prague in 1695, and another at Jessnitz in 1723.
In 1838 E. Carmolv edited and translated a fuller recension which
he had found in a MS. from the library of Eliczer Ben Hasan, for-
warded to him by David Zabach of Morocco (see Relation d' Eldad le
Danite, Paris, 1838). Both forms are printed by Dr Icllinek in his
Bet-ka-ifidrasck, vols. ii. p. 102, &c., and iii. p. 6, &c. (Leipzig, 1853-
1855). See also Bartolocci, BMiolheca magna Rabbinica, i. 101-130;
FOnt, BMiotkeca Juda.ua. i. 30, &c. ; Hirsch Graetz, Geschichle der
Juden (3rd cd., Leipzig, 1895), v. 239-244; Rossi, Dizionario degli
Ebrei; Steinschneiaer, Cat. librorum Hebraeorum in bibliolheca
Bodleiana, cols. 923-925; Kitto's Biblical Cyclopaedia (3rd edition,
tub nomine); Abr. Epstein, Eldad Ha-Dani (Pressburg, 1891);
D. H. Muller, " Die Recensionen und Versionen des Eldad had-Dani,"
in Denktchriflen d. Wiener Akad. (Phil.-HUt. Cl.), vol. xli. (1892),
pp. i -So.
ELDER (Gr. Tpwfltrtpof), the name given at different times
to a ruler or officer in certain political and ecclesiastical systems
of government.
i. The office of elder is in its origin political and is a relic of
the old patriarchal system. The unit of primitive society is
always the family; the only tie that binds men together is that
of kinship. " The eldest male parent," to quote Sir Henry
Maine, 1 " is absolutely supreme in his household. His dominion
extends to life and death and is as unqualified over his children
and their houses as over his slaves." The tribe, which is a later
development, is always an aggregate of families or clans, not a
collection of individuals. " The union of several clans for common
political action," as Robertson Smith says, " was produced by
the pressure of practical necessity, and always tended towards
dissolution when this practical pressure was withdrawn. The
only organization for common action was that the leading men
of the clans consulted together in time of need, and their influcmr
led the masses with them. Out of these conferences arose the
senates of elders found in the ancient states of Semitic and Aryan
antiquity alike."' With the development of civilization there
came a time when age ceased to be an indispensable condition
of leadership. The old title was, however, generally retained,
e.g. the ylporra so often mentioned in Homer, the ytpovala of
the Dorian states, the senolus and the patres conscripti of Rome,
the sheikh or elder of Arabia, the alderman of an English borough,
the seigneur (Lat. senior) of feudal France.
2. It was through the influence of Judaism that the originally
political office of elder passed over into the Christian Church
and became ecclesiastical. The Israelites inherited the office
from their Semitic ancestors (just as did the Moabites and the
Midianites.of whose elders we read in Numbers xxii. 7), and traces
of it are found throughout their history. Mention is made in
Judges viii. 14 of the elders of Succoth whom " Gideon taughl
with thorns of the wilderness and with briers." It was to the
elders of Israel in Egypt that Moses communicated the plan of
Yahweh for the redemption of the people (Exodus iii. 16).
During the sojourn in the wilderness the elders were the inter-
mediaries between Moses and the people, and it was out of the
ranks of these elders that Moses chose a council of seventy " to
bear with him the burden of the people " (Numbers xi. 16).
The elders were the governors of the people and the administrators
of justice. There are frequent references to their work in the
latter capacity in the book of Deuteronomy, especially in
relation to the following crimes the disobedience of sons;
slander against a wife; the refusal of levirate marriage; man-
slaughter; and blood-revenge. Their powers were gradually
curtailed by (a) the development of the monarchy, to which of
course they were in subjection, and which became the court of
appeal in questions of law; 3 (b) the appointment of special
judges, probably chosen from amongst the elders themselves,
though their appointment meant the loss of privilege to the
general body; (c) the rise of the priestly orders, which usurped
many of the prerogatives that originally belonged to the elders.
But in spite of the rise of new authorities, the elders still retained
a large amount of influence. We hear of them frequently in the
Persian, Greek and Roman periods. In the New Testament
the members of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem are very frequently
termed " elders " or icptafivrtpoi, and from them the name was
taken over by the Church.
3. The name " elder " was probably the first title bestowed
upon the officers of the Christian Church since the word deacon
does not occur in connexion with the appointment of the Seven
in Acts vi. Its universal adoption is due not only to its currency
amongst the Jews, but also to the fact that it was frequently
used as the title of magistrates in the cities and villages of Asia
Minor. For the history of the office of elder in the early Church
and the relation between elders and bishops see PRESBYTER.
4. In modern times the use of the term is almost entirely
confined to the Presbyterian church, the officers of which are
always called elders. According to the Presbyterian theory of
church government there are two classes of elders " teaching
elders," or those specially set apart to the pastoral office, and
" ruling elders," who are laymen, chosen generally by the con-
gregation and set apart by ordination to be associated with the
pastor in the oversight and government of the church. When
1 Ancient Law, p. 1 20. * Religion of the Semites, p. 34.
* There is a hint at this even in the Pentateuch, " every great
matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall
judge themselves."
i66
ELDER ELDON, EARL OF
the word is used without any qualification it is understood to
apply to the latter class alone. For an account of the duties,
qualifications and powers of elders in the Presbyterian Church
see PRESBYTERIANISM.
See \V. R. Smith, History of the Semites; H. Maine, Ancient Law,
E, Schiirer, The Jewish People in the Time of Christ; J. Wellhausen,
History of Israel and Judah; G. A. Deissmann, Bible Studies, p. 154.
ELDER (0. Eng. ellarn; Ger. Holunder; Fr. sureau), the
popular designation of the deciduous shrubs and trees constitut-
ing the genus Sambucus of the natural order Caprifoliaceae.
The Common Elder, S. nigra, the bourtree of Scotland, is found
in Europe, the north of Africa, Western Asia, the Caucasus, and
Southern Siberia; in sheltered spots it attains a height of over
20 ft. The bark is smooth; the shoots are stout and angular,
and the leaves glabrous, pinnate, with oval or elliptical leaflets.
The flowers, which form dense flat-topped clusters (corymbose
cymes), with five main branches, have a cream-coloured, gamo-
petalous, five-lobed corolla, five stamens, and three sessile
stigmas; the berries are purplish-black, globular and three- or
four-seeded, and ripen about September. The elder thrives best
in moist, well-drained situations, but can be grown in a great
diversity of soils. It grows readily from young shoots, which
after a year are fit for transplantation. It is found useful for
making screen-fences in bleak, exposed situations, and also as
a shelter for other shrubs in the outskirts of plantations. By
clipping two or three times a year, it may be made close and
compact in growth. The young trees furnish a brittle wood,
containing much pith; the wood of old trees is white, hard and
close-grained, polishes well, and is employed for shoemakers' pegs,
combs, skewers, mathematical instruments and turned articles.
Young elder twigs deprived of pith have from very early times
been in request for making whistles, popguns and other toys.
The elder was known to the ancients for its medicinal properties,
and in England the inner bark was formerly administered as a
cathartic. The flowers (sambuci flares) contain a volatile oil, and
serve for the distillation of elder-flower water (aqua sambuci),
used in confectionery, perfumes and lotions. The leaves of the
elder are employed to impart a green colour to fat and oil (un-
guentum sambuci foliorum and oleum viride), and the berries for
making wine, a common adulterant of port. The leaves and
bark emit a sickly odour, believed to be repugnant to insects.
Christopher Gullet (Phil. Trans., 1772, Ixii. p. 348) recommends
that cabbages, turnips, wheat and fruit trees, to preserve them
from caterpillars, flies and blight, should be whipped with twigs
of young elder. According to German folklore, the hat must be
doffed in the presence of the elder-tree; and in certain of the
English midland counties a belief was once prevalent that the
cross of Christ was made from its wood, which should therefore
never be used as fuel, or treated with disrespect (see Quart. Rev.
cxiv. 233). It was, however, a common medieval tradition,
alluded to by Ben Jonson, Shakespeare and other writers, that the
elder was the tree on which Judas hanged himself; and on this
account, probably, to be crowned with elder was in olden times
accounted a disgrace. In Cymbeline (act iv. s. 2) " the stinking
elder " is mentioned as a symbol of grief. In Denmark the tree is
supposed by the superstitious to be under the protection of the
" Elder-mother ": its flowers may not be gathered without her
leave; its wood must not be employed for any household
furniture; and a child sleeping in an elder- wood cradle would
certainly be strangled by the Elder-mother.
Several varieties are known in cultivation: aurea, golden elder,
has golden-yellow leaves; laciniata, parsley -leaved elder, has the
leaflets cut into fine segments; rotundifolia has rounded leaflets;
forms also occur with variegated white and yellow leaves, and
virescens is a variety having white bark and green-coloured berries.
The scarlet-berried elder, S. racemosa, is the handsomest species
of the genus. It is a native of various parts of Europe, growing in
Britain to a height of over 15 ft., but often producing no fruit.
The dwarf elder or Banewort (supposed to have been introduced
into Britain by the Danes), 5. Ebulus, a common European
species, reaches a height of about 6 ft. Its cyme is hairy, has
three principal branches, and is smaller than that of S. nigra; the
flowers are white tipped with pink. All parts of the plant are
cathartic and emetic.
ELDON, JOHN SCOTT, ist EARL or (1751-1838), lord high
chancellor of England, was born at Newcastle on the 4th of June
1751. His grandfather, William Scott of Sandgate, a suburb of
Newcastle, was clerk to a " fitter " a sort of water-carrier and
broker of coals. His father, whose name also was William,
began life as an apprentice to a fitter, in which service he obtained
the freedom of Newcastle, becoming a member of the gild of
Hoastmen (coal-fitters) ; later in life he became a principal in the
business, and attained a respectable position as a merchant in
Newcastle, accumulating property worth nearly 20,000.
John Scott was educated at the grammar school of his native
town. He was not remarkable at school for application to his
studies, though his wonderful memory enabled him to make good
progress in them; he frequently played truant and was whipped
for it, robbed orchards, and indulged in other questionable school-
boy freaks; nor did he always come out of his scrapes with
honour and a character for truthfulness. When he had finished
his education at the grammar school, his father thought of
apprenticing him to his own business, to which an elder brother
Henry had already devoted himself; and it was only through
the interference of his elder brother William (afterwards Lord
Stowell, q.v.) , who had already obtained a fellowship at University
College, Oxford, that it was ultimately resolved that he should
continue the prosecution of his studies. Accordingly, in 1766,
John Scott entered University College with the view of taking
holy orders and obtaining a college living. In the year following
he obtained a fellowship, graduated B.A. in 1770, and in 1771 won
the prize for the English essay, the only university prize open in
his time for general competition.
His wife was the eldest daughter of Aubone Surtees, a New-
castle banker. The Surtees family objected to the match, and
attempted to prevent it; but a strong attachment had sprung
up between them. On the i8th November 1772 Scott, with the
aid of a ladder and an old friend, carried off the lady from her
father's house in the Sandhill, across the border to Blackshiels,
in Scotland, where they were married. The father of the bride-
groom objected not to his son's choice, but to the time he chose to
marry; for it was a blight on his son's prospects, depriving him
of his fellowship and his chance of church preferment. But
while the bride's family refused to hold intercourse with the pair,
Mr Scott, like a prudent man and an affectionate father, set
himself to make the best of a bad matter, and received them
kindly, settling on his son 2000. John returned with his wife
to Oxford, and continued to hold his fellowship for what is called
the year of grace given after marriage, and added to his income
by acting as a private tutor. After a time Mr Surtees was
reconciled with his daughter, and made a liberal settlement
on her.
John Scott's year of grace closed without any college living
falling vacant; and with his fellowship he gave up the church
and turned to the study of law. He became a student at the
Middle Temple in January 1773. In 1776 he was called to the
bar, intending at first to establish himself as an advocate in his
native town, a scheme which his early success led him to abandon,
and he soon settled to the practice of his profession in London,
and on the northern circuit. In the autumn of the year in which
he was called to the bar his father died, leaving him a legacy of
1000 over and above the 2000 previously settled on him.
In his second year at the bar his prospects began to brighten.
His brother William, who by this time held the Camden pro-
fessorship of ancient history, and enjoyed an extensive acquaint-
ance with men of eminence in London, was in a position materially
to advance his interests. Among his friends was the notorious
Andrew Bowes of Gibside, to the patronage of whose house
the rise of the Scott family was largely owing. Bowes having
contested Newcastle and lost it, presented an election petition
against the return of his opponent. Young Scott was retained as
junior counsel in the case, and though he lost the petition he did
not fail to improve the opportunity which it afforded for display-
ing his talents. This engagement, in the commencement of his
ELDON, EARL OF
167
second year at the bar, and the dropping in of occasional fees,
must have raised his hopes; and he now abandoned the scheme
of becoming a provincial barrister. A year or two of dull drudgery
and few fees followed, and he began to be much depressed. But
in 1780 we find his prospects suddenly improved, by his appear-
ance in the case of Ackroyd v. Smithson, which became a leading
case settling a rule of law; and young Scott, having lost his
point in the inferior court, insisted on arguing it, on appeal,
against the opinion of his clients, and carried it before Lord
Thurlow, whose favourable consideration he won by his able
argument. The same year Bowes again retained him in an
election petition; and in the year following Scott greatly
increased his reputation by his appearance as leading counsel in
the Clitheroe election petition. From this time his success was
certain. In 1781 he obtained a silk gown, and was so far cured
of his early modesty that he declined accepting the king's
counselship if precedence over him were given to his junior,
Thomas (afterwards Lord) Erskine, though the latter was the son
of a peer and a most accomplished orator. He was now on the
high way to fortune. His health, which had hitherto been but
indifferent, strengthened with the demands made upon it; his
talents, his power of endurance, and his ambition all expanded
together. He enjoyed a considerable practice in the northern
part of his circuit, before parliamentary committees and at the
chancery bar. By 1787 his practice at the equity bar had so far
increased that he was obliged to give up the eastern half of his
circuit (which embraced six counties) and attend it only at
Lancaster.
In 1782 he entered parliament for Lord Weymouth's close
borough of Weobley, which Lord Thurlow obtained for him
without solicitation. In parliament he gave a general and
independent support to Pitt. His first parliamentary speeches
were directed against Fox's India Bill. They were unsuccessful.
In one he aimed at being brilliant; and becoming merely
laboured and pedantic, he was covered with ridicule by Sheridan,
from whom he received a lesson which he did not fail to turn
to account. In 1788 he was appointed solicitor-general, and
was knighted, and at the close of this year he attracted attention
by his speeches in support of Pitt's resolutions on the state of
the king (George III., who then laboured under a mental malady)
and the delegation of his authority. It is said that he drew the
Regency Bill, which was introduced in 1789. In 1793 Sir John
Scott was promoted to the office of attorney-general, in which
it fell to him to conduct the memorable prosecutions for high
treason against British sympathizers with French republicanism,
amongst others, against the celebrated Home Tooke. These
prosecutions, in most cases, were no doubt instigated by Sir
John Scott, and were the most important proceedings in which
he was ever professionally engaged. He has left on record, in
his Anecdote Book, a defence of his conduct in regard to them.
A full account of the principal trials, and of the various legislative
measures for repressing the expressions of popular opinion for
which he was more or less responsible, will be found in Twiss's
Public and Private Life of the Lord Chancellor Eldon, and in the
Li?<i of the Lord Chancellors, by Lord Campbell.
In 1799 the office of chief justice of the Court of Common
Pleas falling vacant, Sir John Scott's claim to it was not over-
looked; and after seventeen years' service in the Lower House,
be entered the House of Peers as Baron Eldon. In February
1801 the ministry of Pitt was succeeded by that of Addington,
and the chief justice now ascended the woolsack. The chancellor-
ship was given to him professedly on account of his notorious
anti-Catholic zeal. From the peace of Amiens (1802) till 1804
Lord Eldon appears to have interfered little in politics. In the
latter year we find him conducting the negotiations which
resulted in the dismissal of Addington and the recall of Pitt to
office as prime minister. Lord Eldon was continued in office
as chancellor under Pitt; but the new administration was of
short duration, for on the 23rd of January 1806 Pitt died, worn
out with the anxieties of office, and his ministry was succeeded
by a coalition, under Lord Grenville. The death of Fox, who
became foreign secretary and leader of the House of Commons,
soon, however, broke up the Grenville administration; and in
the spring of 1807 Lord Eldon once more, under Lord Liverpool's
administration, returned to the woolsack, which, from that
time, he continued to occupy for about twenty years, swaying
the cabinet, and being in all but name prime minister of England.
It was not till April 1827, when the premiership, vacant through
the paralysis of Lord Liverpool, fell to Canning, the chief advocate
of Roman Catholic emancipation, that Lord Eldon, in the
seventy-sixth year of his age, finally resigned the chancellorship.
When, after the two short administrations of Canning and
Goderich, it fell to the duke of Wellington to construct a cabinet ,
Lord Eldon expected to be included, if not as chancellor, at least
in some important office, but he was overlooked, at which he
was much chagrined. Notwithstanding his frequent protests
that he did not covet power, but longed for retirement , we find
him again, so late as 1835, within three years of his death, in
hopes of office under Peel. He spoke in parliament for the last
time in July 1834.
In 1821 Lord Eldon had been created Viscount Encombc and
earl of Eldon by George IV., whom he managed to conciliate,
partly, no doubt, by espousing his cause against his wife, whose
advocate he had formerly been, and partly through his reputation
for zeal against the Roman Catholics. In the same year his
brother William, who from 1798 had filled the office of judge
of the High Court of Admiralty, was raised to the peerage under
the title of Lord Stowell.
Lord Eldon's wife, his dear " Bessy, " his love for whom is a
beautiful feature in his life, died before him, on the 28th of June
1831. By nature she was of simple character, and by habits
acquired during the early portion of her husband's career almost
a recluse. Two of their sons reached maturity John, who
died in 1805, and William Henry John, who died unmarried
in 1832. Lord Eldon himself survived almost all his immediate
relations. His brother William died in 1836. He himself died
in London on the I3th of January 1838, leaving behind him two
daughters, Lady Frances Bankes and Lady Elizabeth Repton,
and a grandson John (1805-1854), who succeeded him as second
earl, the title subsequently passing to the latter's son John
(b. 1846).
Lord Eldon was no legislator his one aim in politics was to
keep in office, and maintain things as he found them; and almost
the only laws he helped to pass were laws for popular coercion.
For nearly forty years he fought against every improvement in
law, or in the constitution calling God to witness, on the smallest
proposal of reform, that he foresaw from it the downfall of his
country. Without any political principles, properly so called,
and without interest in or knowledge of foreign affairs, he main-
tained himself and his party in power for an unprecedented
period by his great tact, and in virtue of his two great political
properties of zeal against every species of reform, and zeal
against the Roman Catholics. To pass from his political to his
judicial character is to shift to ground on which his greatness
is universally acknowledged. His judgments, which have
received as much praise for their accuracy as abuse for their
clumsiness and uncouthness, fill a small library. But though
intimately acquainted with every nook and cranny of the English
law, he never carried his studies into foreign fields, from which
to enrich our legal literature; and it must be added that against
the excellence of his judgments, in too many cases, must be set
off the hardships, worse than injustice, that arose from his
protracted delays in pronouncing them. A consummate judge
and the narrowest of politicians, he was doubt on the bench,
and promptness itself in the political arena. For literature, as
for art, he had no feeling. What intervals of leisure he enjoyed
from the cares of office he filled up with newspapers and the
gossip of old cronies. Nor were his intimate associates men of
refinement and taste; they were rather good fellows who quietly
enjoyed a good bottle and a joke; he uniformly avoided en-
counters of wit with his equals. He is said to have been
parsimonious, and certainly he was quicker to receive than to
reciprocate hospitalities; but his mean establishment and mode
of life are explained by the retired habits of his wife, and her
i68
EL DORADO ELEATIC SCHOOL
dislike of company. His manners were very winning and courtly,
and in the circle of his immediate relatives he is said to have
always been lovable and beloved.
" In his person," says Lord Campbell, " Lord Eldon was about
the middle size, his figure light and athletic, his features regular
and handsome, his eye bright and full, his smile remarkably
benevolent, and his whole appearance prepossessing. The
advance of years rather increased than detracted from these
personal advantages. As he sat on the judgment-seat, ' the deep
thought betrayed in his furrowed brow the large eyebrows,
overhanging eyes that seemed to regard more what was taking
place within than around him his calmness, that would have
assumed a character of sternness but for its perfect placidity
his dignity, repose and venerable age, tended at once to win
confidence and to inspire respect ' (Townsend). He had a voice
both sweet and deep-toned, and its effect was not injured by his
Northumbrian burr, which, though strong, was entirely free from
harshness and vulgarity."
AUTHORITIES. Horace Twiss, Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon
(1844); W. E. Surtees, Sketch of the Lives of Lords Stowell and
Eldon (1846); Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors; W. C.
Townsend, Lives of Twelve Eminent Judges (1846) ; Greville Memoirs.
EL DORADO (Span. " the gilded one "), a name applied, first,
to the king or chief priest of a South American tribe who was said
to cover himself with gold dust at a yearly religious festival held
near Santa Fe de Bogota; next, to a legendary city called Manoa
or Omoa; and lastly, to a mythical country in which gold and
precious stones were found in fabulous abundance. The legend,
which has never been traced to its ultimate source, had many
variants, especially as regards the situation attributed to Manoa.
It induced many Spanish explorers to lead expeditions in search
of treasure, but all failed. Among the most famous were the
expedition undertaken by Diego de Ordaz, whose lieutenant
Martinez claimed to have been rescued from shipwreck, conveyed
inland, and entertained at Omoa by " El Dorado " himself (i 53 1) ;
and the journeys of Orellana(i54o 1541), who passed down the
Rio Napo to the valley of the Amazon; that of Philip von Hutten
( 1 541-1 545) , who led an exploring party from Coro on the coast of
Caracas; and of Gonzalo Ximenes de Quesada (1569), who started
from Santa Fe de Bogota. Sir Walter Raleigh, who resumed the
search in 1595, described Manoa as a city on Lake Parima in
Guiana. This lake was marked on English and other maps until
its existence was disproved by A. von Humboldt (1769-1859).
Meanwhile the name of El Dorado came to be used metaphorically
of any place where wealth could be rapidly acquired. It was
given to a county in California, and to towns and cities in various
states. In literature frequent allusion is made to the legend,
perhaps the best-known references being those in Milton's
Paradise Lost (vi. 411) and Voltaire's Candide (chs. 18, 19).
See A. F. A. Bandelier, The Gilded Man, El Dorado (New York,
1893)-
ELDUAYEN, JOSfi DE, ist Marquis del Pazo de la Merced
(1823-1898), Spanish politician, was born in Madrid on the
22nd of June 1823. He was educated in the capital, took the
degree of civil engineer, and as such directed important works
in Asturias and Galicia, entered the Cortes in 1856 as deputy
for Vigo, and sat in all the parliaments until 1867 as member of
the Union Liberal with Marshal O'Donnell. He attacked the
Miraflores cabinet in 1864, and became under-secretary of the
home office when Canovas was minister in 1865. He was made a
councillor of state in 1866, and in 1868 assisted the other members
of the Union Liberal in preparing the revolution. In the Cortes
of 1872 he took much part in financial debates. He accepted
office as member of the last Sagasta cabinet under King Amadeus.
On the proclamation of the republic Elduayen very earnestly
co-operated in the Alphonsist conspiracy, and endeavoured to
induce the military and politicians to work together. He went
abroad to meet and accompany the prince after the pronuncia-
mienlo of Marshal Campos, landed with himat Valencia, was made
governor of Madrid, a marquis, grand cross of Charles III., and
minister for the colonies in 1878. He accepted the portfolio of
foreign affairs in the Canovas cabinet from 1883 to 1885, and was
made a life senator. He always prided himself on having been
one of the five members of the Cortes of 1870 who voted for
Alphonso XII. when that parliament elected Amadeus of Savoy.
He died at Madrid on the 24th of June 1898.
ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE (c. 1122-1204), wife of the English
king Henry II., was the daughter and heiress of Duke William X.
of Aquitaine, whom she succeeded in April 1137. In accordance
with arrangements made by her father, she at once married
Prince Louis, the heir to the French crown, and a month later her
husband became king of France under the title of Louis VII.
Eleanor bore Louis two daughters but no sons. This was prob-
ably the reason why their marriage was annulled by mutual con-
sent in 1151, but contemporary scandal-mongers attributed the
separation to the king's jealousy. It was alleged that, while
accompanying her husband on the Second Crusade (1146-1149),
Eleanor had been unduly familiar with her uncle, Raymond of
Antioch. Chronology is against this hypothesis, since Louis and
she lived on good terms together for two years after the Crusade.
There is still less ground for the supposition that Henry of Anjou,
whom she married immediately after the divorce, had been her
lover before it. This second marriage, with a youth some years
her junior, was purely political. The duchy of Aquitaine required
a strong ruler, and the union with Anjou was eminently desirable.
Louis, who had hoped that Aquitaine would descend to his
daughters, was mortified and alarmed by the Angevin marriage;
all the more so when Henry of Anjou succeeded to the English
crown in 1154. From this event dates the beginning of the
secular strife between England and France which runs like a red
thread through medieval history.
Eleanor bore to her second husband five sons and three
daughters; John, the youngest of their children, was born in
1 1 66. But her relations with Henry passed gradually through
indifference to hatred. Henry was an unfaithful husband, and
Eleanor supported her sons in their great rebellion of 1173.
Throughout the latter years of the reign she was kept in a sort of
honourable confinement. It was during her captivity that Henry
formed his connexion with Rosamond Clifford, the Fair Rosa-
mond of romance. Eleanor, therefore, can hardly have been
responsible for the death of this rival, and the romance of the
poisoned bowl appears to be an invention of the next century.
Under the rule of Richard and John the queen became a
political personage of the highest importance. To both her sons
the popularity which she enjoyed in Aquitaine was most valuable.
But in other directions also she did good service. She helped to
frustrate the conspiracy with France which John concocted
during Richard's captivity. She afterwards reconciled the king
and the prince, thus saving for John the succession which he had
forfeited by his misconduct. In 11.99 she crushed an Angevin
rising in favour of John's nephew, Arthur of Brittany. In 1 201
she negotiated a marriage between her grand-daughter, Blanche
of Castile, and Louis of France, the grandson of her first husband.
It was through her staunch defence of Mirabeau in Poitou that
John got possession of his nephew's person. She died on the ist
of April 1204, and was buried at Fontevrault. Although a woman
of strong passions and great abilities she is, historically, less
important as an individual than as the heiress of Aquitaine, a part
of which was, through her second marriage, united to England for
some four hundred years.
See the chronicles cited for the reigns of Henry II., Richard I.
and John. Also Sir J. H. Ramsay, Angevin Empire (London, 1903) ;
K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings (London, 1887);
and A. Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, vol. i. (1841).
(H. W. C. D.)
ELEATIC SCHOOL, a Greek school of philosophy which came
into existence towards the end of the 6th century B.C., and
ended with Melissus of Samos (fl. c. 450 B.C.). It took its
name from Elea, a Greek city of lower Italy, the home of its
chief exponents, Parmenides and Zeno. Its foundation is often
attributed to Xenophanes of Colophon, but, although there is
much in his speculations which formed part of the later Eleatic
doctrine, it is probably more correct to regard Parmenides as
the founder of the school. At all events, it was Parmenides who
gave it its fullest development. The main doctrines of the
Eleatics were evolved in opposition, on the one hand, to the
ELECAMPANE ELECTION
169
physical theories of the early physical philosophers who explained
all existence in terms of primary matter (see IONIAN SCHOOL),
and, on the other hand, to the theory of Heraditus that all
existence may be summed up as perpetual change. As against
these theories the Eleatics maintained that the true explanation
of things lies in the conception of a universal unity of being.
The senses with their changing and inconsistent reports cannot
cognue this unity; it is by thought alone that we can pass
beyond the false appearances of sense and arrive at the knowledge
of being, at the fundamental truth that " the All is One." There
can be no creation, for being cannot come from not-being; a
thing cannot arise from that which is different from it. The
errors of common opinion arise to a great extent from the
ambiguous use of the verb " to be," which may imply existence
or be merely the copula which connects subject and predicate.
In these main contentions the Elcatic school achieved a real
advance, and paved the way to the modern conception of meta-
physics. Xenophanes in the middle of the 6th century had
made the first great attack on the crude mythology of early Greece,
including in his onslaught the whole anthropomorphic system
enshrined in the poems of Homer and Hesiod. In the hands of
Parmenides this spirit of free thought developed on metaphysical
lines. Subsequently, whether from the fact that such bold
speculations were obnoxious to the general sense of propriety
in Klca, or from the inferiority of its leaders, the school de-
generated into verbal disputes as to the possibility of motion,
and similar academic trifling. The best work of the school was
absorbed in the Platonic metaphysic (see E. Caird, Evolution
of Theology in the Creek Philosophers, 1004).
See further the articles on XENOPHANES; PARMENIDES; ZENO
(of Elca) ; MELISSUS, with the works there quoted ; also the histories
of philosophy by Zcllcr, Gompcrz, Windelband, &c.
ELECAMPANE (Med. Lat. Enula Campana), a perennial
composite plant, the Inula Helenium of botanists, which is
common in many parts of Britain, and ranges throughout
central and southern Europe, and in Asia as far eastwards as
the Himalayas. It is a rather rigid herb, the stem of which
attains a height of from 3 to 5 ft.; the leaves are large and
toothed, the lower ones stalked, the rest embracing the stem; the
flowers are yellow, 2 in. broad, and have many rays, each three-
notched at the extremity. The root is thick, branching and
mucilaginous, and has a warm, bitter taste and a camphoraceous
odour. For medicinal purposes it should be procured from
plants not more than two or three years old. Besides inulin,
CuHi*Oio, a body isomeric with starch, the root contains helenin,
CiHfO, a stearoptene, which may be prepared in white acicular
crystals, insoluble in water, but freely soluble in alcohol. When
freed from the accompanying inula-camphor by repeated
crystallization from alcohol, helenin melts at 110 C. By the
ancients the root was employed both as a medicine and as a
condiment, and in England it was formerly in great repute as
an aromatic tonic and stimulant of the secretory organs. " The
fresh roots of elecampane preserved with sugar, or made into a
syrup or conserve," are recommended by John Parkinson in
his Theatrum Botanic urn as " very effectual to warm a cold and
windy stomack. and the pricking and stitches therein or in the
sides caused by the Spleene, and to helpe the cough, short nesse
of breath, and wheesing in the Lungs." As a drug, however,
the root is now seldom resorted to except in veterinary practice,
though it is undoubtedly possessed of antiseptic properties. In
France and Switzerland it is used in the manufacture of absinthe.
ELECTION (from Lat. eligere, to pick out), the method by
which a choice or selection is made by a constituent body (the
electors or electorate) of some person to fill a certain office or
dignity. The procedure itself is called an election. Election,
as a special form of selection, is naturally a loose term covering
many subjects; but except in the theological sense (the doctrine
of election), as employed by Calvin and others, for the choice
by God of His " elect," the legal sense (see ELECTION, in Una,
below), and occasionally as a synonym for personal choice (one's
own " election "), it is confined to the selection by the pre-
ponderating vote of some properly constituted body of electors
of one of two or more candidates, sometimes for admission only
to some private social position (as in a club) , but more particularly
in connexion with public representative positions in political
government. It is thus distinguished from arbitrary methods
of appointment, either where the right of nominating rests in an
individual, or where pure chance (such as selection by lot)
dictates the result. The part played by different forms of
election in history is alluded to in numerous articles in this work,
dealing with various countries and various subjects. It is only
necessary here to consider certain important features in the
elections, as ordinarily understood, namely, the exercise of the
right of voting for political and municipal offices in the United
Kingdom and America. See also the articles PAKI.IAMENT;
REPRESENTATION; VOTING; BALLOT, &c., and UNITED
STATES: Political Institutions. For practical details as to the
conduct of political elections in England reference must be made
to the various text-books on the subject; the candidate and his
election agent require to be on their guard against any false
step which might invalidate his return.
Law in the United Kingdom. Considerable alterations have
been made in recent years in the law of Great Britain and Ireland
relating to the procedure at parliamentary and municipal
elections, and to election petitions.
As regards parliamentary elections (which may be either the
" general election," after a dissolution of parliament, or " by-
elections," when casual vacancies occur during its continuance),
the most important of the amending statutes is the Corrupt
and Illegal Practices Act 1883. This act, and the Parliamentary
Elections Act 1868, as amended by it, and other enactments
dealing with corrupt practices, are temporary acts requiring
annual renewal. As regards municipal elections, the Corrupt
Practices (Municipal Elections) Act 1872 has been repealed by
the Municipal Corporations Act 1882 for England, and by the
Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 for Ireland. The governing
enactments for England are now the Municipal Corporations
Act 1882, part iv., and the Municipal Elections (Corrupt and
Illegal Practices) Act 1884, the latter annually renewable. The
provisions of these enactments have been applied with necessary
modifications to municipal and other local government elections
in Ireland by orders of the Irish Local Government Board made
under powers conferred by the Local Government (Ireland) Act
1898. In Scotland the law regulating municipal and other
local government elections is now to be found in the Elections
(Scotland) (Corrupt and Illegal Practices) Act 1890.
The alterations in the law have been in the direction of
greater strictness in regard to the conduct of elections, and
increased control in the public interest over the proceedings
on election petitions. Various acts and payments which were
previously lawful in the absence of any corrupt bargain or
motive are now altogether forbidden under the name of " illegal
practices " as distinguished from " corrupt practices." Failure
on the part of a parliamentary candidate or his election agent
to comply with the requirements of the law in any particular
is sufficient to invalidate the return (see the articles BRIBERY
and CORRUPT PRACTICES). Certain relaxations are, however,
allowed in consideration of the difficulty of absolutely avoiding
all deviation from the strict rules laid down. Thus, where the
judges who try an election petition report that there has been
treating, undue influence, or any illegal practice by the candidate
or his election agent, but that it was trivial, unimportant and
of a limited character, and contrary to the orders and without
the sanction or connivance of the candidate or his election agent,
and that the candidate and his election agent took all reasonable
means for preventing corrupt and illegal practices, and that the
election was otherwise free from such practices on their part,
the election will not be avoided. The court has also the power
to relieve from the consequences of certain innocent contraven-
tions of the law caused by inadvertence or miscalculation.
The inquiry into a disputed parliamentary election was
formerly conducted before a committee of the House of Commons,
chosen as nearly as possible from both sides of the House for that
particular business. The decisions of these tribunals laboured
170
ELECTION
under the suspicion of being prompted by party feeling, and by an
act of 1868 the jurisdiction was finally transferred to judges of
the High Court, notwithstanding the general unwillingness of the
bench to accept a class of business which they feared might bring
their integrity into dispute. Section n of the act ordered, inter
alia, that the trial of every election petition shall be conducted
before a puisne judge of one of the common law courts at West-
minster and Dublin; that the said courts shall each select a
judge to be placed on the rota for the trial of election petitions;
that the said judges shall try petitions standing for trial according
to seniority or otherwise, as they may agree; that the trial shall
take place in the county or borough to which the petition refers,
unless the court should think it desirable to hold it elsewhere.
The judge shall determine " whether the member whose return
is complained of, or any and what other person, was duly returned
and elected, or whether the election was void," and shall certify
his determination to the speaker. When corrupt practices have
been charged the judge shall also report (i) whether any such
practice has been committed by or with the knowledge or consent
of any candidate, and the nature thereof; (2) the names of persons
proved to have been guilty of any corrupt practice; and (3)
whether corrupt practices have extensively prevailed at the
election. Questions of law were to be referred to the decision of
the court of common pleas. On the abolition of that court by the
Judicature Act 1873, the jurisdiction was transferred to the
common pleas division, and again on the abolition of that
division was transferred to the king's bench division,
petitions. m wnoln it is now vested. The rota of judges for
the trial of election petitions is also supplied by the
king's bench division. The trial now takes place before two
judges instead of one; and, when necessary, the number of
judges on the rota may be increased. Both the judges who try a
petition are to sign the certificates to be made to the speaker. If
they differ as to the validity of a return, they are to state such
difference in their certificate, and the 'return is to be held good;
if they differ as to a report on any other matter, they are to
certify their difference and make no report on such matter.
The director of public prosecutions attends the trial personally or
by representative. It is his duty to watch the proceedings in the
public interest, to issue summonses to witnesses whose evidence
is desired by the court, and to prosecute before the election court
or elsewhere those persons whom he thinks to have been guilty of
corrupt or illegal practices at the election in question. If an
application is made for leave to withdraw a petition, copies of the
affidavits in support are to be delivered to him; and he is
entitled to be heard and to call evidence in opposition to such
application. Witnesses are not excused from answering criminat-
ing questions; but their evidence cannot be used against them in
any proceedings except criminal proceedings for perjury in
respect of that evidence. If a witness answers truly all questions
which he is required by the court to answer, he is entitled to
receive a certificate of indemnity, which will save him from all
proceedings for any offence under the Corrupt Practices Acts
committed by him before the date of the certificate at or in
relation to the election, except proceedings to enforce any
incapacity incurred by such offence. An application for leave to
withdraw a petition must be supported by affidavits from all the
parties to the petition and their solicitors, and by the election
agents of all of the parties who were candidates at the election.
Each of these affidavits is to state that to the best of the de-
ponent's knowledge and belief there has been no agreement and
no terms or undertaking made or entered into as to the with-
drawal, or, if any agreement has been made, shall state its terms.
The applicant and his solicitor are also to state in their affidavits
the grounds on which the petition is sought to be withdrawn. If
any person makes an agreement for the withdrawal of a petition
in consideration of a money payment, or of the promise that the
seat shall be vacated or another petition withdrawn, or omits to
state in his affidavit that he has made an agreement, lawful or
unlawful, for the withdrawal, he is guilty of an indictable
misdemeanour. The report of the judges to the speaker is to
contain particulars as to illegal practices similar to those
previously required as to corrupt practices; and they are to
report further whether any candidate has been guilty by his
agents of an illegal practice, and whether certificates of indemnity
have been given to persons reported guilty of corrupt or illegal
practices.
The Corrupt Practices Acts apply, with necessary variations
in details, to parliamentary elections in Scotland and Ireland.
The amendments in the law as to municipal elections are
generally similar to those which have been made in parliamentary
election law. The procedure on trial of petitions is substantially
the same, and wherever no other provision is made by the acts or
rules the procedure on the trial of parliamentary election petitions
is to be followed. Petitions against municipal elections were
dealt with in 35 & 36 Viet. c. 60. The election judges appoint
a number of barristers, not exceeding five, as commissioners to
try such petitions. No barrister can be appointed who is of less
than fifteen years' standing, or a member of parliament, or holder
of any office of profit (other than that of recorder) under the
crown; nor can any barrister try a petition in any borough in
which he is recorder or in which he resides, or which is included in
his circuit. The barrister sits without a jury. The provisions are
generally similar to those relating to parliamentary elections. The
petition may allege that the election was avoided as to the
borough or ward on the ground of general bribery, &c., or that the
election of the person petitioned against was avoided by corrupt
practices, or by personal disqualification, or that he had not the
majority of lawful votes. The commissioner who tries a petition
sends to the High Court a certificate of the result, together with
reports as to corrupt and illegal practices, &c., similar to those
made to the speaker by the judges who try a parliamentary
election petition. The Municipal Elections (Corrupt and Illegal
Practices) Act 1884 applied to school board elections subject to
certain variations, and has been extended by the Local Govern-
ment Act 1888 to county council elections, and by the Local
Government Act 1894 to elections by parochial electors. The
law in Scotland is on the same lines, and extends to all non-
parliamentary elections, and, as has been stated, the English
statutes have been applied with adaptations to all municipal
and local government elections in Ireland.
United States. Elections are much more frequent in the United
States than they are in Great Britain, and they are also more
complicated. The terms of elective officers are shorter; and as
there are also more offices to be filled, the number of persons to
be voted for is necessarily much greater. In the year of a
presidential election the citizen may be called upon to vote at one
time for all of the following: (i) National candidates president
and vice-president (indirectly through the electoral college) and
members of the House of Representatives; (2) state candidates
governor, members of the state legislature, attorney-general,
treasurer, &c.; (3) county candidates sheriff, county judges,
district attorney, &c.; (4) municipal or town candidates mayor,
aldermen, selectmen, &c. The number of persons actually voted
for may therefore be ten or a dozen, or it may be many more.
In addition, the citizen is often called upon to vote yea or nay on
questions such as amendments to the state constitutions, granting
of licences, and approval or disapproval of new municipal
undertakings. As there may be, and generally is, more than one
candidate for each office, and as all elections are now, and have
been for many years, conducted by ballot, the total number of
names to appear on the ballot may be one hundred or may be
several hundred. These names are arranged in different ways,
according to the laws of the different states. Under the Massa-
chusetts law, which is considered the best by reformers, the names
of candidates for each office are arranged alphabetically on a
" blanket " ballot, as it is called from its size, and the elector
places a mark opposite the names of such candidates as he may
wish to vote for. Other states, New York for example, have the
blanket system, but the names of the candidates are arranged in
party columns. Still other states allow the grouping on one
ballot of all the candidates of a single party, and there would be
therefore as many separate ballots in such states as there were
parties in the field.
ELECTION
171
The qualifications for voting, while varying in the different
states in details, are in their main features the same throughout
the Union. A residence in the state is required of from three
months to two yean. Residence is also necessary, but for u
shorter period, in the county, city or town, or voting precinct.
A few states require the payment of a poll tax. Some require
that the voter shall be able to read and understand the Constitu-
tion. This latter qualification has been introduced into several
of the Southern states, partly at least to disqualify the ignorant
coloured voters. In all, or practically all, the states idiots,
convicts and the insane are disqualified; in some states paupers;
in some of the Western states the Chinese. In some states
women are allowed to vote on certain questions, or for the
candidates for certain offices, especially school officials; and in
four of the Western states women have the same rights of
suffrage as men. The number of those who are qualified to vote,
but do not avail themselves of the right, varies greatly in the
different states and according to the interest taken in the election.
As a general rule, but subject to exceptions, the national elections
call out the largest number, the state elections next, and the local
elections the smallest number of voters. In an exciting national
election between 80 and 00% of the qualified voters actually
vote, a proportion considerably greater than in Great Britain or
Germany.
The tendency of recent years has been towards a decrease both
in the number and in the frequency of elections. A president and
vice-president are voted for every fourth year, in the years
divisible by four, on the first Tuesday following the first Monday
of November. Members of the national House of Representa-
tives arc chosen for two years on the even-numbered years.
State and local elections take place in accordance with state laws,
and may or may not be on the same day as the national elections.
Originally the rule was for the states to hold annual elections; in
fact, so strongly did the feeling prevail of the need in a democratic
country for frequent elections, that the maxim " where annual
elections end, tyranny begins," became a political proverb. But
opinion gradually changed even in the older or Eastern states,
and in 1900 Massachusetts and Rhode Island were the only states
in the Union holding annual elections for governor and both
bouses of the state legislature. In the Western states especially
state officers are chosen for longer terms in the case of the
governor often for four years and the number of elections has
correspondingly decreased. Another cause of the decrease in the
number of elections is the growing practice of holding all the
elections of any year on one and the same day. Before the Civil
War Pennsylvania held its state elections several months before
the national elections. Ohio and Indiana, until 1885 and 1881
respectively, held their state elections early in October. Maine,
Vermont and Arkansas keep to September. The selection of one
day in the year for all elections held in that year has resulted
in a considerable decrease in the total number.
Another tendency of recent years, but not so pronounced, is to
hold local elections in what is known as the " off " year; that is,
on the odd-numbered year, when no national election is held.
The object of this reform is to encourage independent voting.
The average American citizen is only too prone to carry his
national political predilections into local elections, and to vote for
the local nominees of his party, without regard to the question of
fitness of candidates and the fundamental difference of issues
involved. This tendency to vote the entire party ticket is the
more pronounced because under the system of voting in use in
many of the states all the candidates of the party are arranged on
one ticket, and it is much easier to vote a straight or unaltered
ticket than to change or "scratch " it. Again, the voter,
especially the ignorant one, refrains from scratching his ticket,
lest in some way he should fail to comply with the technicalities
of the law and his vote be lost. On the other hand, if local
elections are held on the " off " or odd year, and there be no
national or state candidates, the voter feels much more free to
select only those candidates whom he considers best qualified for
the various offices.
On the important question of the purity of elections it is
difficult to speak with precision. In many of the stales,
ally those with an enlightened public spirit, such as most of the
New England states and many of the North-Western, the elections
arc fairly conducted, there being no intimidation at all, little or no
bribery, and an honest count. It can safely be said that through
the Union as a whole the tendency of recent years has bri-n
decidedly towards greater honesty of elections. This is owing to
a number of causes: (i)The selection of a single day for all
elections, and the consequent immense number voting on ihal
day. Some years ago, when for instance the Ohio and Indiana
rlivtions were held a few weeks before the general election, emli
party strained every nerve to carry them, for the sake of prestige
and the influence on other states. In fact, presidential elections
were often felt to turn on the result in these early voting stales,
and the party managers were none too scrupulous in the means
employed to carry them. Bribery has decreased in such states
since the change of election day to that of the rest of the country.
(2) The enactment in most of the states of the Australian or
secret ballot (q.v.) laws. These have led to the secrecy of the
ballot, and hence to a greater or less extent have proven u-<l
intimidation and bribery. (3) Educational or other such test,
more particularly in the Southern states, the object of which is to
exclude the coloured, and especially the ignorant coloured, voters
from the polls. In those southern states in which the coloured
vote was large, and still more in those in which it was the majority,
it was felt among the whites that intimidation or ballot-box
stuffing was justified by the necessity of white supremacy. With
the elimination of the coloured vote by educational or other tests
the honesty of elections has increased. (4) The enactment of new
and more stringent registration laws. Under these laws only
those persons are allowed to vote whose names have been placed
on the rolls a certain number of days or months before election.
These rolls are open to public inspection, and the names may be
challenged at the polls, and " colonization " or repeating is
therefore almost impossible. (5) The reform of the civil service
and the gradual elimination of the vicious principle of " to the
victors belong the spoils." With the reform of the civil service
elections become less a scramble for office and more a contest of
political or economic principle. They bring into the field,
therefore, a better class of candidates. (6) The enactment in a
number of states of various other laws for the preventionof corrupt
practices, for the publication of campaign expenses, and for the
prohibition of party workers from coming within a certain
specified distance of the polls. In the state of Massachusetts, for
instance, an act passed in 1892, and subsequently amended,
provides that political committees shall file a full statement, duly
sworn to, of all campaign expenditures made by them. The act
applies to all public elections except that of town officers, and also
covers nominations by caucuses and conventions as well. Apart
from his personal expenses such as postage, travelling expenses,
&c., a candidate is prohibited from spending anything himself to
promote either his nomination or his election, but he is allowed
to contribute to the treasury of the political committee. The law
places no limit on the amount that these committees may spend.
The reform sought by the law is thorough publicity, and not only
are details of receipts and expenditures to be published, but the
names of contributors and the amount of their contributions. In
the state of New York the act which seeks to prevent corrupt
practices relies in like manner on the efficacy of publicity, but
it is less effective than the Massachusetts law in that it provides
simply for the filing by the candidates themselves of sworn
statements of their own expenses. There is nothing to prevent
their contributing to political committees, and the financial
methods and the amounts expended by such committees are not
made public. But behind all these causes that have led to more
honest elections lies the still greater one of a healthier public
spirit. In the reaction following the Civil War all reforms halted.
In recent years, however, a new and healthier interest has sprung
up In things political; and one result of this improved civic
spirit is seen in the various laws for purification of elections. It
may now be safely affirmed that in the majority of states the
elections are honestly .conducted; that intimidation, bribery,
172
ELECTION ELECTORAL COMMISSION
stuffing of the ballot boxes or other forms of corruption, when
they exist, are owing in large measure to temporary or local
causes; and that the tendency of recent years has been towards
a decrease in all forms of corruption.
The expenses connected with elections, such as the renting and
preparing of the polling-places, the payment of the clerks and
other officers who conduct the elections and count the vote, are
borne by the community. A candidate therefore is not, as far
as the law is concerned, liable to any expense whatever. As a
matter of fact he does commonly contribute to the party treasury,
though in the case of certain candidates, particularly those for the
presidency and for judicial offices, financial contributions are not
general. The amount of a candidate's contribution varies
greatly, according to the office sought, the state in which he lives,
and his private wealth. On one occasion, in a district in New
York, a candidate for Congress is credibly believed to have spent
at one election $50,000. On the other hand, in a Congressional
election in a certain district in Massachusetts, the only ex-
penditure of one of the candidates was for the two-cent stamp
placed on his letter of acceptance. No estimate of the average
amount expended can be made. It is, however, the conclusion of
Mr Bryce, in his American Commonwealth, that as a rule a seat in
Congress costs the candidate less than a seat for a county
division in the House of Commons. (See also BALLOT.)
ELECTION, in English law, the obligation imposed upon a
party by courts of equity to choose between two inconsistent
or alternative rights or claims in cases where there is a clear
intention of the person from whom he derives one that he should
not enjoy both. Thus a testator died seized of property in fee
simple and in fee tail he had two daughters, and devised the
fee simple property to one and the entailed property to the other;
the first one claimed to have her share of the entailed property
as coparcener and also to retain the benefit she took under the
will. It was held that she was put to her election whether she
would take under the will and renounce her claim to the entailed
property or take against the will, in which case she must renounce
the benefits she took under the will in so far as was necessary
to compensate her sister. As the essence of the doctrine is
compensation, a person electing against a document does not
lose all his rights under it, but the court will sequester so much
only of the benefit intended for him as will compensate the persons
disappointed by his election. For the same reason it is necessary
that there should be a free and disposable fund passing by the
instrument from which compensation can be made in the event
of election against the will. If, therefore, a man having a special
power of appointment appoint the fund equally between two
persons, one being an object of the power and the other not an
object, no question of election arises, but the appointment to
the person not an object is bad.
Election, though generally arisfng in cases of wills, may also
arise in the case of a deed. There is, however, a distinction to
be observed. In the case of a will a clear intention on the part
of the testator that he meant to dispose of property not his own
must be shown, and parol evidence is not admissible as to this.
In the case of a deed, however, no such intention need be shown,
for if a deed confers a benefit and imposes a liability on the same
person he cannot be allowed to accept the one and reject the other,
but this must be distinguished from cases where two separate
gifts are given to a person, one beneficial and the other onerous.
In such a case no question of election arises and he may take
the one and reject the other, unless, indeed, there are words
used which make the one conditional on the acceptance of the
other.
Election is either express, e.g. by deed, or implied; in the
latter case it is often a question of considerable difficulty
whether there has in fact been an election or not; each case
must depend upon the particular circumstances, but quite
generally it may be said that the person who has elected must
have been capable of electing, aware of the existence of the
doctrine of election, and have had the opportunity of satisfying
himself of the relative value of the properties between which
he has elected. In the case of infants the court will sometimes
elect after an inquiry as to which course is the most advantageous,
or if there is no immediate urgency, will allow the matter to stand
over till the infant attains his majority. In the cases of married
women and lunatics the courts will exercise the right for them.
It sometimes happens that the parties have so dealt with
the property that it would be inequitable to disturb it; in
such cases the court will not interfere in order to allow of
election.
ELECTORAL COMMISSION, in United States history, a
commission created to settle the disputed presidential election
of 1876. In this election Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic
candidate, received 184 uncon tested electoral votes, and Ruther-
ford B. Hayes, the Republican candidate, i63. 1 The states of
Florida, Louisiana, Oregon and South Carolina, with a total
of 22 votes, each sent in two sets of electoral ballots, 2 and from
each of these states except Oregon one set gave the whole vote
to Tilden and the other gave the whole vote to Hayes. From
Oregon one set of ballots gave the three electoral votes of the
state to Hayes; the other gave two votes to Hayes and one to
Tilden.
The election of a president is a complex proceeding, the method
being indicated partly in the Constitution, and being partly left
to Congress and partly to the states. The manner of selecting
the electors is left to state law; the electoral ballots are sent
to the president of the Senate, who " shall, in the presence of
the Senate and House of Representatives, open all certificates,
and the votes shall then be counted." Concerning this provision
many questions of vital importance arose in 1876: Did the pre-
sident of the Senate count the votes, the houses being mere
witnesses; or did the houses count them, the president's duties
being merely ministerial ? Did counting imply the determination
of what should be counted, or was it a mere arithmetical process;
that is, did the Constitution itself afford a method of settling
disputed returns, or was this left to legislation by Congress?
Might Congress or an officer of the Senate go behind a state's
certificate and review the acts of its certifying officials ? Might
it go further and examine into the choice of electors ? And if
it had such powers, might it delegate them to a commission?
As regards the procedure of Congress, it seems that, although
in early years the president of the Senate not only performed or
overlooked the electoral count but also exercised discretion in
some matters very important in 1876, Congress early began to
assert power, and, at least from 1821 onward, controlled the
count, claiming complete power. The fact, however, that the
Senate in 1876 was controlled by the Republicans and the House
by the Democrats, lessened the chances of any harmonious
settlement of these questions by Congress. The country seemed
on the verge of civil war. Hence it was that by an act of the
2gth of January 1877, Congress created the Electoral Commission
to pass upon the contested returns, giving it " the same powers,
if any " possessed by itself in the premises, the decisions to stand
unless rejected by the two houses separately. The commission
was composed of five Democratic and five Republican Congress-
men, two justices of the Supreme Court of either party, and a
fifth justice chosen by these four. As its members of the com-
mission the Senate chose G. F. Edmunds of Vermont, O. P.
Morton of Indiana, and F. T. Frelinghuysen of New Jersey
(Republicans) ; and A. G. Thurman of Ohio and T. F. Bayard
of Delaware (Democrats). The House chose Henry B. Payne
of Ohio, Eppa Hunton of Virginia, and Josiah G. Abbott of
Massachusetts (Democrats); and George F. Hoar of Massa-
chusetts and James A. Garfield of Ohio (Republicans). The
Republican judges were William Strong and Samuel F. Miller;
the Democratic, Nathan Clifford and Stephen J. Field. These
four chose as the fifteenth member Justice Joseph P. Bradley,
1 The election of a vice-president was, of course, involved also.
William A. Wheeler was the Republican candidate, and Thomas A.
Hendricks the Democratic.
* A second set of electoral ballots had also been sent in from
Vermont, where Hayes had received a popular majority vote of
24,000. As these ballots had been transmitted in an irregular
manner, the president of. the Senate refused to receive them, and
was sustained in this action by the upper House.
ELECTORS
a Republican but the only member not selected avowedly as a
partisan. As counsel for the Democratic candidate there ap-
peared before the commission at different times Charles O'Conor
of New York, Jeremiah S. Black of Pennsylvania, Lyman
Trumbull of Illinois, R. T. Merrick of the District of Columbia,
Ashbel Green of New Jersey, Matthew H.Carpenter of Wisconsin,
George Hoadley of Ohio, and W. C. Whitney of New York.
W. M. Evarts and E. W. Stoughton of New York and Samuel
Shrllabarger and Stanley Matthews of Ohio appeared regularly
in behalf of Mr Hayes.
The popular vote seemed to indicate that Hayes had carried
South Carolina and Oregon, and Tildcn Florida and Louisiana.
It was evident, however, that Hayes could secure the 185 votes
necessary to elect only by gaining every disputed ballot. As
the choice of Republican electors in Louisiana had been accom-
plished by the rejection of several thousand Democratic votes
by a Republican returning board, the Democrats insisted that
the commission should go behind the returns and correct in-
justice; the Republicans declared that the state's action was
final, and that to go behind the returns would be invading its
sovereignty. When this matter came before the commission
it virtually accepted the Republican contention, ruling that it
could not go behind the returns except on the superficial issues
of manifest fraud therein or the eligibility of electors to their
office under the Constitution; that is, it could not investigate
antecedents of fraud or misconduct of state officials in the results
certified. All vital questions were settled by the votes of eight
Republicans and seven Democrats; and as the Republican
Senate would never concur with the Democratic House in over-
riding the decisions, all the disputed votes were awarded to Mr
Hayes, who therefore was declared elected.
The strictly partisan votes of the commission and the adoption
by prominent Democrats and Republicans, both within and
without the commission, of an attitude toward states-rights
principles quite inconsistent with party tenets and tendencies,
have given rise to much severe criticism. The Democrats and
the country, however, quietly accepted the decision. The
judgments underlying it were two: (i) That Congress rightly
claimed the power to settle such contests within the limits set;
(2) that, as Justice Miller said regarding these limits, the people
had never at any time intended to give to Congress the power,
by naming the electors, to " decide who are to be the president
and vice-president of the United States."
There is no doubt that Mr Tildcn was morally entitled to the
presidency, and the correction of the Louisiana frauds would
certainly have given satisfaction then and increasing satisfaction
later, in the retrospect, to the country. The commission might
probably have corrected the frauds without exceeding its Con-
gressional precedents. Nevertheless, the principles of its
decisions must be recognized by all save ultra-nationalists as
truer to the spirit of the Constitution and promising more for
the good of the country than would have been the principles
necessary to a contrary decision.
By an act of the 3rd of February 1887 the electoral procedure
is regulated in great detail. Under this act determination by a
state of electoral disputes is conclusive, subject to certain
formalities that guarantee definite action and accurate certifica-
tion. These formalities constitute " regularity," and are in all
cases judgable by Congress. When Congress is forced by the
lack or evident inconclusivcncss of state action, or by conflicting
state action, to decide disputes, votes are lost unless both
houses concur.
ACTHOWTTES. J. F. Rhodes, History of the United Statei, vol. 7,
covering 1872-1877 (New York, 1906); P. L. Haworth, The Hayes-
Tilden disputed Presidential Election of 1876 (Cleveland, 1906);
J. W. Burgess, Political Science Quarterly, vol. 3 (1888), pp. 633-653,
The Law of the Electoral Count "; and for the sources, Senate
Miscellaneous Document No. 5 (vol. l), and House Misccl. Doc.
No. 13 (vol. a), 44 Congress, 2 Session, Count of the Electoral Vole.
Proceedings of Congress and Electoral Commission, the latter
identical with Congressional Record, vol. 5, pt. 4, 44 Cong., 2 Session ;
also about twenty volumes of evidence on the state election* in-
volved. The volume called The Presidential Counts (New York,
1877) was compiled bv Mr Tilden and his secretary.
ELECTORS (Ger. Kurjtirsten, from Kilren, O.H.G. kiosan,
choose, elect, and Furst, prince), a body of German princes,
originally seven in number, with whom rested the election of
the German king, from the I3th until the beginning of the igth
century. The German kings, from the time of Henry the
Fowler (919-036) till the middle of the I3th century, succeeded
to their position partly by heredity, and partly by election.
Primitive Germanic practice had emphasized the element of
heredity. Reges ex nobilitale summit: the man whom a German
tribe recognized as its king must be in the line of hereditary
descent from Woden; and therefore the genealogical trees of
early Teutonic kings (as, for instance, in England those of the
Kentish and West Saxon sovereigns) are carefully constructed
to prove that descent from the god which alone will constitute
a proper title for his descendants. Even from the first, however,
there had been some opening for election; for the principle of
primogeniture was not observed, and there might be several
competing candidates, all of the true Woden stock. One of
these competing candidates would have to be recognized (as
the Anglo-Saxons said, geceosan); and to this limited extent
Teutonic kings may be termed elective from the very first. In
the other nations of western Europe this element of election
dwindled, and the principle of heredity alone received legal
recognition; in medieval Germany, on the contrary, the principle
of heredity, while still exercising an inevitable natural force,
sank formally into the background, and legal recognition was
finally given to the elective principle. De facto, therefore, the
principle of heredity exercises in Germany a great influence,
an influence never more striking than in the period which follows
on the formal recognition of the elective principle, when the
Habsburgs (like the Metelli at Rome) fato imperatores fiunt:
de jure, each monarch owes his accession simply and solely to
the vote of an electoral college.
This difference between the German monarchy and the other
monarchies of western Europe may be explained by various
considerations. Not the least important of these is what seems
a pure accident. Whereas the Capetian monarchs, during the
three hundred years that followed on the election of Hugh Capet
in 987, always left an heir mole, and an heir male of full age,
the German kings again and again, during the same period,
either left a minor to succeed to their throne, or left no issue
at all. The principle of heredity began to fail because there
were no heirs. Again the strength of tribal feeling in Germany
made the monarchy into a prize, which must not be the apanage
of any single tribe, but must circulate, as it were, from Franconian
to Saxon, from Saxon to Bavarian, from Bavarian to Franconian,
from Franconian to Swabian; while the growing power of the
baronage, and its habk of erecting anti-kings to emphasize its
opposition to the crown (as, for instance, in the reign of Henry
IV.), coalesced with and gave new force to the action of tribal
feeling. Lastly, the fact that the German kings were also
Roman emperors finally and irretrievably consolidated the grow-
ing tendency towards the elective principle. The principle of
heredity had never held any great sway under the ancient Roman
Empire (see under EMPEROR); and the medieval Empire,
instituted as it was by the papacy, came definitely under the
influence of ecclesiastical prepossessions in favour of election.
The church had substituted for that descent from Woden, which
had elevated the old pagan kings to their thrones, the conception
that the monarch derived his crown from the choice of God,
after the manner of Saul; and the theoretical choice of God
was readily turned into the actual choice of the church, or, at
any rate, of the general body of churchmen. If an ordinary
king is thus regarded by the church as essentially elected, much
more will the emperor, connected as he is with the church as
one of its officers, be held to be also elected; and as a bishop
is chosen by the chapter of his diocese, so, it will be thought,
must the emperor be chosen by some corresponding body in his
empire. Heredity might be tolerated in a mere matter of king-
ship: the precious trust of imperial power could not be allowed
to descend according to the accidents of family succession. To
Otto of Freising (Gesta Frid. ii. i) it is already a point of right
ELECTORS
vindicated for itself by the excellency of the Roman Empire,
as a matter of singular prerogative, that it should not descend
per sanguinis propaginem, sed per principum electionem.
The accessions of Conrad II. (see Wipe, Vita Cuonradi^ c. 1-2),
of Lothair II. (see Narratio de electione Lotharii, M.G.H.,Scriptt.
xii. p. 510), of Conrad III. (see Otto of Freising, Chronicon, vii.
22) and of Frederick I. (see Otto of Freising, Gesta Frid. ii. i)
had all been marked by an element, more or less pronounced,
of election. That element is perhaps most considerable in the
case of Lothair, who had no rights of heredity to urge. Here
we read of ten princes being selected from the princes of the
various duchies, to whose choice the rest promise to assent, and
of these ten selecting three candidates, one of whom, Lothair,
is finally chosen (apparently by the whole assembly) in a some-
what tumultuary fashion. In this case the electoral assembly
would seem to be, in the last resort, the whole diet of all the
princes. But a de facto pre-eminence in the act of election is
already, during the i2th century, enjoyed by the three Rhenish
archbishops, probably because of the part they afterwards
played at the coronation, and also by the dukes of the great
duchies possibly because of the part they too played, as vested
for the time with the great offices of the household, at the corona-
tion feast. 1 Thus at the election of Lothair it is the archbishop
of Mainz who conducts the proceedings; and the election is
not held to be final until the duke of Bavaria has given his assent.
The fact is that, votes being weighed by quality as well as by
quantity (see DIET), the votes of the archbishops and dukes,
which would first be taken, would of themselves, if unanimous,
decide the election. To prevent tumultuary elections, it was
well that the election should be left exclusively with these great
dignitaries; and this is what, by the middle of the i3th century,
had eventually been done.
The chaos of the interregnum from 1198 to 1212 showed the
way for the new departure; the chaos of the great interregnum
(1250-1273) led to its being finally taken. The decay of the great
duchies, and the narrowing of the class of princes into a close
corporation, some of whose members were the equals of the old
dukes in power, introduced difficulties and doubts into the
practice of election which had been used in the i2th century.
The contested election of the interregnum of 1198-1212 brought
these difficulties and doubts into strong relief. The famous
bull of Innocent III. (Venerabilem), in which he decided for
Otto IV. against Philip of Swabia, on the ground that, though
he had fewer votes than Philip, he had a majority of the votes
of those ad quos principaliter special electio, made it almost
imperative that there should be some definition of these principal
electors. The most famous attempt at such a definition is that
of the Sachsenspiegel, which was followed, or combated, by
many other writers in the first half of the i3th century.
Eventually the contested election of 1257 brought light and
definition. Here we find seven potentates acting the same
seven whom the Golden Bull recognizes in 1356; and we find
these seven described in an official letter to the pope, as principes
iiocem in hujusmodi electione habentes, qui sunt septem numero.
The doctrine thus enunciated was at once received. The pope
acknowledged it in two bulls (1263); a cardinal, in a commentary
on the bull Venerabilem of Innocent III., recognized it about
the same time; and the erection of statues of the seven electors
at Aix-la-Chapelle gave the doctrine a visible and outward
expression.
By the date of the election of Rudolph of Habsburg (1273)
the seven electors may be regarded as a definite body, with an
acknowledged right. But the definition and the acknowledgment
were still imperfect, (i) The composition of the electoral body
was uncertain in two respects. The duke of Bavaria claimed
as his right the electoral vote of the king of Bohemia; and the
practice of partitio in electoral families tended to. raise further
1 This is the view of the Sachsenspiegel, and also of Albert of Stade
(quoted in Schroder, p. 476, n. 27) : Palatinus eligit, quia dapifer est ;
dux Saxoniae, quia marescalcus," &c. Schroder points out (p. 479.
n. 45) that " participation in the coronation feast is an express
recognition of the king " ; and those who are to discharge their office
in the one must have had a prominent voice in the other.
difficulties about the exercise of the vote. The Golden Bull of
1356 settled both these questions. Bohemia (of which Charles
IV., the author of the Golden Bull, was himself the king) was
assigned the electoral vote in preference to Bavaria; and a
provision annexing the electoral vote to a definite territory,
declaring that territory indivisible, and regulating its descent
by the rule of primogeniture instead of partition, swept away the
old difficulties which the custom of partition had raised. After
1356 the seven electors are regularly the three Rhenish arch-
bishops, Mainz, Cologne and Trier, and four lay magnates, the
palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of
Brandenburg, and the king of Bohemia; the three former
being vested with the three archchancellorships, and the four
latter with the four offices of the royal household (see HOUSE-
HOLD). (2) The rights of the seven electors, in their collective
capacity as an electoral college, were a matter of dispute with the
papacy. The result of the election, whether made, as at first,
by the princes generally or, as after 1257, by the seven electors
exclusively, was in itself simply the creation of a German king
an electio in regem. But since 962 the German king was also,
after coronation by the pope, Roman emperor. Therefore the
election had a double result: the man elected was not only
electus in regem, but also promoiiendus ad imperium. The
difficulty was to define the meaning of the term promovendus.
Was the king elect inevitably to become emperor? or did the
promotio only follow at the discretion of the pope, if he thought
the king elect fit for promotion? and if so, to what extent, and
according to what standard, did the pope judge of such fitness?
Innocent III. had already claimed, in the bull Venerabilem,
(i) that the electors derived their power of election, so far as it
made an emperor, from the Holy See (which had originally " trans-
lated " the Empire from the East to the West), and (2) that the
papacy had a jus et auctoritas examinandi personam electam in
regem et promovendam ad imperium. The latter claim he had
based on the fact that he anointed, consecrated and crowned
the emperor in other words, that he gave a spiritual office
according to spiritual methods, which entitled him to inquire
into the fitness of the recipient of that office, as a bishop inquires
into the fitness of a candidate for ordination. Innocent had put
forward this claim as a ground for deciding between competing
candidates: Boniface VIII. pressed the claim against Albert I.
in 1298, even though his election was unanimous; while John
XXII. exercised it in its harshest form, when in 1324 he ex-
communicated Louis IV. for using the title and exerting the
rights even of king without previous papal confirmation. This
action ultimately led to a protest from the electors themselves,
whose right of election would have become practically meaning-
less, if such assumptions had been tolerated. A meeting of the
electors (Kurverein) at Rense in 1338 declared (and the declara-
tion was reaffirmed by a diet at Frankfort in the same year)
that postquam aliquis eligitur in Imperatorem sive Regem ab
Electoribus Imperii concorditer, iiel majori parte eorundem, slatim
ex sola electione est Rex verus et Imperator Romanus censendus
. . . nee Papae sive Sedis Apostolicae . . . approbalione . . .
indiget. The doctrine thus positively affirmed at Rense is
negatively reaffirmed in the Golden Bull, in which a significant
silence is maintained in regard to papal rights. But the doctrine
was not in practice followed: Sigismund himself did not venture
to dispense with papal approbation.
By the end of the i4th century the position of the electors,
both individually and as a corporate body, had become definite
and precise. Individually, they were distinguished from all
other princes, as we have seen, by the indivisibility of their
territories and by the custom of primogeniture which secured
that indivisibility; and they were still further distinguished by
the fact that their person, like that of the emperor himself, was
protected by the law of treason, while their territories were only
subject to the jurisdiction of their own courts. They were
independent territorial sovereigns; and their position was at
once the envy and the ideal of the other princes of Germany.
Such had been the policy of Charles IV. ; and thus had he, in the
Golden Bull, sought to magnify the seven electors, and himself
ELECTRA
175
as one of the seven, in his capacity of king of Bohemia, even at
the expense of the Empire, and of himself in his capacity of
emperor. Powerful as they were, however, in their individual
capacity, the electors showed themselves no less powerful as a
corporate body. As such a corporate body, they may be con-
sidered from three different points of view, and as acting in
three different capacities. They are an electoral body, choosing
each successive emperor; they are one of the three colleges of
the imperial diet (see DIET); and they are also an electoral
union (Ktirfiirstenvtrtin), acting as a separate and independent
political organ even after the election, and during the reign, of
the monarch. It was in this last capacity that they had met at
Rense in 1338; and in the same capacity they acted repeatedly
during the i$th century. According to the Golden Bull, such
meetings were to be annual, and their deliberations were to
loiuern "the safety of the Empire and the world." Annual
they never were; but occasionally they became of great im-
portance. In 1414, during the attempt at reform occasioned by
the failure of German arms against the Hussites, the Kurfilrsten-
tfrrin acted, or at least it claimed to act, as the predominant
partner in a duumvirate, in which the unsuccessful Sigismund
was relegated to a secondary position. During the long reign
of Frederick III. a reign in which the interests of Austria
were cherished, and the welfare of the Empire neglected, by
that apathetic yet tenacious emperor the electors once more
attempted, in the year 1453, to erect a new central government
in place of the emperor, a government which, if not conducted
by themselves directly in their capacity of a Kurfiirstenwrein,
should at any rate be under their influence and control. So,
they hoped, Germany might be able to make head against that
papal aggression, to which Frederick had yielded, and to take
a leading part in that crusade against the Turks, which he had
neglected. Like the previous attempt at reform during the
Hussite wars, the scheme came to nothing; the forces of disunion
in Germany were too strong for any central government, whether
monarchical and controlled by the emperor, or oligarchical and
controlled by the electors. But a final attempt, the most
strenuous of all, was made in the reign of Maximilian I., and
under the influence of Bertold, elector and archbishop of Mainz.
The council of 1500, in which the electors (with the exception
of the king of Bohemia) were to have sat, and which would have
been under their control, represents the last effective attempt
at a real Reicksregiment. Inevitably, however, it shipwrecked
on the opposition of Maximilian; and though the attempt was
again made between 1521 and 1530, the idea of a real central
government under the control of the electors perished, and the
development of local administration by the circle took its place.
In the course of the i6th century a new right came to be
exercised by the electors. As an electoral body (that is to say,
in the first of the three capacities distinguished above), they
claimed, at the election of Charles V. in 1519 and at subsequent
elections, to impose conditions on the elected monarch, and to
determine the terms on which he should exercise his office in
the course of his reign. This Wahlcapitulation, similar to the
Pacla Conventa which limited the elected kings of Poland, was
left by the diet to the discretion of the electors, though after
the treaty of Westphalia an attempt was made, with some little
success, 1 to turn the capitulation into a matter of legislative
enactment by the diet. From this time onwards the only fact of
importance in the history of the electors is the change which
took place in the composition of their body during the i-th
and iSth centuries. From the Golden Bull to the treaty of
Westphalia (1356-1648) the composition of the electoral body
had remained unchanged. In 1623, however, in the course
of the Thirty Years' War, the vote of the count palatine of the
Rhine had been transferred to the duke of Bavaria; and at the
treaty of Westphalia the vote, with the office of imperial butler
which it carried, was left to Bavaria, while an eighth vote, along
with the new office of imperial treasurer, was created for the
count palatine. In 1708 a ninth vote, along with the office of
imperial standard-bearer, was created for Hanover; while
' See Schroder's Lekrbvek der deutschen RechtsgescMthte, p. 820.
finally, in 1778, the vote of Bavaria and the office of imperial
butler returned to the counts palatine, as heirs of the duchy,
on the extinction of the ducal line, while the new vote created
for the Palatinate in 1648, with the office of imperial treasurer,
was transferred to Brunswick-LUneburg (Hanover) in lieu of the
one which this house already held. In 1806, on the dissolution
of the Holy Roman Empire, the electors ceased to exist.
LITERATUUE. T. Lindner, Die deutschen Kdnigfwahlen und die
Entstehung des Kurfurstentums (1893), and Der Hergang bei den
<ientschenKdnigsv.'ahlen (1800); R. Hirchh6fer, Zur Entstrhung des
Kurkollegiums (1893); W. Maurenbrecher, Gcschichte der deutschen
Kdnigswahlen (1889); and G. Blondel, Etude sur Frederic II,
p. 27 sqq. See also J. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire (edition of 1904),
c. ix.; and R. Schroder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte,
pp. 471-481 and 819-820. (!:. BR.)
ELECTRA ('HWwpa), " the bright one," in Greek mythology,
(i) One of the seven Pleiades, daughter of Atlas and Pleione.
She is closely connected with the old constellation worship and
the religion of Samothrace, the chief seat of the Cabeiri (q.v.),
where she was generally supposed to dwell. By Zeus she was the
mother of Dardanus, lasion (or Eetion), and Harmonia; but in
the Italian tradition, which represented Italy as the original
home of the Trojans, Dardanus was her son by a king of Italy
named Corythus. After her amour with Zeus, Electra fled to the
Palladium as a suppliant, but Athena, enraged that it had been
touched by one who was no longer a maiden, flung Electra and
the image from heaven to earth, where it was found by Ilus, and
taken by him to Ilium; according to another tradition, Electra
herself took it to Ilium, and gave it to her son Dardanus (Schol.
Eurip. Phoen. 1136). In her grief at the destruction of the city
she plucked out her hair and was changed into a comet; in
another version Electra and her six sisters had been placed among
the stars as the Pleiades, and the star which she represented lost
its brilliancy after the fall of Troy. Electra's connexion with
Samothrace (where she was also called Electryone and Strategis)
is shown by the localization of the carrying off of her reputed
daughter Harmonia by Cadmus, and by the fact that, according
to Athenicon (the author of a work on Samothrace quoted by the
scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius i. 917), the Cabeiri were
Dardanus and lasion. The gate Electra at Thebes and the
fabulous island Electris were said to have been called after her
(Apollodorus iii. 10. 12; Servius on Aen. iii. 167, vii. 207, x. 272,
Georg. i. 138).
(2) Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra, sister of
Orestes and Iphigeneia. She does not appear in Homer, although
according to Xanthus (regarded by some as a fictitious personage) ,
to whom Stesichorus was indebted for much in his Oresteia, she
was identical with the Homeric Laodice, and was called Electra
because she remained so long unmarried CA-Xe/CTpo). She was
said to have played an important part in the poem of Stesichorus,
and subsequently became a favourite figure in tragedy. After
the murder of her father on his return from Troy by her mother
and Aegisthus, she saved the life of her brother Orestes by
sending him out of the country to Strophius, king of Phanote in
Phocis, who had him brought up with his own son Pylades.
Electra, cruelly ill-treated by Clytaemnestra and her paramour,
never loses hope that her brother will return to avenge his father.
When grown up, Orestes, in response to frequent messages from
his sister, secretly repairs with Pylades to Argos, where he
pretends to be a messenger from Strophius bringing the news
of the death of Orestes. Being admitted to the palace, he slays
both Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra. According to another story
(Hyginus, Fab. 122), Electra, having received a false report that
Orestes and Pylades had been sacrificed to Artemis in Tauris,
went to consult the oracle at Delphi. In the meantime Alctes,
the son of Aegisthus, seized the throne of Mycenae. Her arrival
at Delphi coincided with that of Orestes and Iphigeneia. The
same messenger, who had already communicated the false report
of the death of Orestes, informed her that he had been slain by
Iphigeneia. Electra in her rage seized a burning brand from
the altar, intending to blind her sister; but at the critical
moment Orestes appeared, recognition took place, and the brother
and sister returned to Mycenae. Aletes was slain by Orestes, and
ELECTRICAL MACHINE
Electra became the wife of Pylades. The story of Electra is the
subject of the Choephori of Aeschylus, the Electra of Sophocles
and the Electra of Euripides. It is in the Sophoclean play that
Electra is most prominent.
There are many variations in the treatment of the legend, for
which, as also for a discussion of the modern plays on the subject
by Voltaire and Alfieri, see Jebb's Introduction to his edition of the
Electra of Sophocles.
ELECTRICAL (or ELECTROSTATIC) MACHINE, a machine
operating by manual or other power for transforming mechanical
work into electric energy in the form of electrostatic charges of
opposite sign delivered to separate conductors. Electrostatic
machines are of two kinds: (i) Frictional, and (2) Influence
machines.
Frictional Machines. A primitive form of frictional electrical
machine was constructed about 1663 by Otto von Guericke
(1602-1686). It consisted of a globe of sulphur fixed on an axis
and rotated by a winch, and it was electrically excited by the
friction of warm hands held against it. Sir Isaac Newton
appears to have been the first to use a glass globe instead of
sulphur (Optics, 8th Query). F. Hawksbee in 1709 also used a
revolving glass globe. A metal chain resting on the globe served
to collect the charge. Later G. M. Bose (1710-1761), of Witten-
berg, added the prime conductor, an insulated tube or cylinder
supported on silk strings, and J. H. Winkler (1703-1770),
professor of physics at Leipzig, substituted a leather cushion for
the hand. Andreas Gordon (1712-1751) of Erfurt, a Scotch
Benedictine monk, first used a glass cylinder in place of a sphere.
Jesse Ramsden (1735-1800) in 1768 constructed his well-known
form of plate electrical machine (fig. i). A glass plate fixed to a
wooden or metal shaft is rotated by a winch. It passes between
two rubbers made of leather, and is partly covered with two silk
aprons which extend over quadrants of its surface. Just below
the places where the aprons terminate, the glass is embraced by
two insulated metal forks having the sharp points projecting
towards the glass, but not quite touching it. The glass is
excited positively by friction with the rubbers, and the charge is
drawn off by the action of the points which, when acted upon
inductively, discharge negative electricity against it. The
insulated conductor to which the points are connected therefore
becomes positively electri-
fied. The cushions must
be connected to earth to
remove the negative elec-
tricity which accumulates
on them. It was found
that the machine acted
better if the rubbers were
covered with bisulphide of
tin or with F. von Kien-
mayer's amalgam, consist-
ing of one part of zinc, one
of tin and two of mer-
cury. The cushions were
greased and the amalgam
in a state of powder
spread over them. Edward
Nairne's electrical machine
(1787) consisted of a glass
cylinder with two insu-
lated conductors, called
prime conductors, on glass
legs placed near it. One
FIG. i. Ramsden's electrical machine. o{ these carried the leather
exacting cushions and the
other the collecting metal points, a silk apron extending over the
cylinder from the cushion almost to the points. The rubber was
smeared with amalgam. The function of the apron is to prevent
the escape of electrification from the glass during its passage
from the rubber to the collecting points. Nairne's machine could
give either positive or negative electricity, the first named being
collected from the prime conductor carrying the collecting
points and the second from the prime conductor carrying the
cushion.
Influence Machines. Frictional machines are, however, now
quite superseded by the second class of instrument mentioned
above, namely, influence machines. These operate by electro-
static induction and convert mechanical work into electrostatic
energy by the aid of a small initial charge which is continu-
ally being replenished
or reinforced. The
general principle of
all the machines de-
scribed below will be
best understood by
considering a simple
ideal case. Imagine
two Leyden jars with
large brass knobs, A
and B, to stand on the
ground (fig. 2). Let
one jar be initially FIG. 2.
charged with positive electricity on its inner coating and
the other with negative, and let both have their outsides
connected to earth. Imagine two insulated balls A' and B'
so held that A' is near A and B'is near B. Then the positive
charge on A induces two charges on A', viz.: a negative
on the side nearest and a positive on the side most removed.
Likewise the negative charge on B induces a positive charge
on the side of B' nearest to it and repels negative electricity to
the far side. Next let the balls A' and B' be connected together
for a moment by a wire N called a neutralizing conductor which
is subsequently removed. Then A' will be left negatively
electrified and B' will be left positively electrified. Suppose
that A' and B' are then made to change places. To do this we
shall have to exert energy to remove A' against the attraction
of A and B' against the attraction of B. Finally let A' be
brought in contact with B and B' with A. The ball A' will give
up its charge of negative electricity to the Leyden jar B, and the
ball B' will give up its positive charge to the Leyden jar A.
This transfer will take place because the inner coatings of the
Leyden jars have greater capacity with respect to the earth than
the balls. Hence the charges of the jars will be increased. The
balls A'andB' are then practically discharged, and the above
cycle of operations may be repeated. Hence, however small
may be the initial charges of the Leyden jars, by a principle of
accumulation resembling that of compound interest, they can
be increased as above shown to any degree. If this series of
operations be made to depend upon the continuous rotation of
a winch or handle, the arrangement constitutes an electrostatic
influence ifiachine. The principle therefore somewhat resembles
that of the self-exciting dynamo.
The first suggestion for a machine of the above kind seems
to have grown out of the invention of Volta's electrophorus.
Abraham Bennet, the inventor of the gold leaf electro-
scope, described a doubler or machine for multiplying ooabier.
electric charges (Phil. Trans., 1787).
The principle of this apparatus may be explained thus. Let A and
C be two fixed disks, and B a disk which can be brought at will within
a very short distance of either A or C. Let us suppose all the plates
to be equal, and let the capacities of A and C in presence of B be
each equal to p, and the coefficient of induction between A and B,
or C and B, be q. Let us also suppose that the plates A and C are so
distant from each other that there is no mutual influence, and that p'
is the capacity of one of the disks when it stands alone. A small
charge Q is communicated to A, and A is insulated, and B, un-
insulated, is brought up to it; the charge on B will be (q/p)Q.
B is now uninsulated and brought to face C, which is uninsulated;
the charge on C will be (qlpYQ. C is now insulated and connected
with A, which is always insulated. B is then brought to face A and
uninsulated, so that the charge on A becomes rQ, where
A is now disconnected from C, and here the first operation ends.
It is obvious that at the end of n such operations the charge on
A will be r"Q, so that the charge goes on increasing in geometri-
cal progression. If the distance between the disks could be made
ELECTRICAL MACHINE
177
infinitely roll each time, then the multiplier r would be 2, and
the course would be doubled each time. Hence the name of the
apparatus.
Erasmus Darwin, B. Wilson, G. C. Bohncnberger and J. C. E
Peclet devised various modifications of Bennet's instrument
(see S. P. Thompson, " The Influence Machine from
1788 to 1888," Jour*. Soc. Tel. Eng., 1888, 17, P- S^g).
Bennet's doublcr appears to have given a suggestion
to William Nicholson (Pkti. Trans., 1788, p. 403) of
" an instrument which by turning a winch produced the two
states of electricity without friction or communication with the
earth." This " revolving doublcr," according to the description
of Professor S. P. Thompson (loc. cti.), consists of two fixed
plates of brass A and C (fig. 3), each two inches in diameter and
separately supported on insulating arms in the same plane, so
that t third revolving plate B may pass very near them without
touching. A brass ball D two inches in diameter is fixed on
the end of the axis that carries the plate B, and is loaded within
at one side, so as to act as a counterpoise to the revolving plate
B. The axis P N is made of varnished glass, and so are the axes
that join the three plates with the brass axis N O. The axis N O
passes through the brass piece M, which stands on an insulating
pillar of glass, and supports the plates A and C. At one extremity
of this axis is the ball D, and the other is connected with a rod
of glass. N P, upon which is fixed the handle L, and also the piece
G H, which is separately insulated. The pins E, F rise out of the
back of the fixed plates A and C, at unequal distances from the
axis. The piece K is parallel to G H, and both of them are
furnished at theirends with small piecesof flexible wire that they
may touch the pins E, F in certain points of their revolution.
From the brass
piece M there
stands out a pin
I, to touch against
a small flexible
wire or spring
which projects
C sideways from the
rotating plate B
when it comes op-
posite A. The
wires are so ad-
justed by bending
that B, at the
moment when it
is opposite A, com-
municates with the ball D, and A communicates with C
through GH; and half a revolution later C, when B comes
opposite to it, communicates with the ball D through the contact
of K with F. In all other positions A, B, C and D are completely
disconnected from each other. Nicholson thus described the
operation of his machine:
" When the plates A and B are opposite each other, the two fixec
plates A and C may be considered as one mass, and the revolving
plate B, together with the ball D, will constitute another mass
All the experiments yet made concur to prove that these two masses
will not possess the same electric state. . . .The redundant elec-
tricities in the fa* under consideration will be unequally distri
buted ; the plate A will have about ninety-nine parts, and the plate
C one; and, for the same reason, the revolving plate B will have
ninety-nine parts of the opposite electricity, ana the ball D one
The rotation, by destroying the contacts,, preserves this unequa
(JHtribution, and carries B from A to C at the same time that the tai
K connects the ball with the plate C. In this situation, the clec
tricity in B acts upon that in C, and produces the contrary state
by virtue of the communication between C and the ball; whicl
last must therefore acquire an electricity of the same kind with tha
of the revolving plate. But the rotation again destroys the contac
and restores B to its first situation opposite A. Here, if we attend
to the effect of the whole revolution, we shall find that the electrii
states of the respective masses have been greatly increased ; for th<
ninety-nine parts in A and B remain, and the one part of electricity
in C has been increased so as nearly to compensate ninety-nine part:
of the opposite electricity in the revolving plate B, while the com
munication produced an opposite mutation in the electricity of the
ball. A second rotation will, of course, produce a proportion.!
augmentation of these increased quantities; and a continuance o
FIG. 3. Nicholson's Revolving Doubter.
urning will soon bring the intensities to their maximum, which is
iimtlbyanexplo8ionbctwcenthcplates"(^M-'''' a ' w -> 1788, p. 405).
Nicholson described also another apparatus, the " spinning
ondenscr," which worked on the same principle. Bennet and
Nicholson were followed by T. Cavallo, John Read, B.JJ/.,
Johnenbcrger, C. B. De'sormcs and J. N. P. Hachcttc doubler.
nd others in the invention of various forms of rotating
loublcr. A simple and typical form of doubler, devised in 1831
>y G. Belli (fig. 4), consisted of two curved metal plates between
which revolved a pair of
jails carried on an insulat-
ng stem. Following the
nomenclature usual in con-
nexion with dynamos we
may speak of the conduc-
ors which carry the initial
charges as the field plates,
and of the moving conduc-
ors on which are induced
he charges which are sub-
sequently added to those on
the field plates, as the
carriers. The wire which Fl(J 4 ._Belti's Doubler.
connects two armature
plates for a moment is the neutralizing conductor. The
:wo curved metal plates constitute the field plates and must
bave original charges imparted to them of opposite sign. The
rotating balls are the carriers, and arc connected together for a
moment by a wire when in a position to be acted upon inductively
by the field plates, thus acquiring charges of opposite sign. The
moment after they are separated again. The rotation continuing
the ball thus negatively charged is made to give up this
charge to that negatively electrified field plate, and the ball
positively charged its charge to the positively electrified field
plate, by touching little contact springs. In this manner the
field plates accumulate charges of opposite sign.
Modern types of influence machine may be said to date from
1860 when C. F. Varley patented a type of influence machine
which has been the parent of numerous subsequent Varley , B
forms (Brit. Pat. Spec. No. 206 of 1860). In it the mach iae.
field plates were sheets of tin-foil attached to a glass
plate (fig. 5). In front of them a disk of ebonite or glass, having
carriers of metal fixed to its edge, was rotated by a winch. In
the course of their rotation two diametrically opposite carriers
touched against the ends of a neutralizing conductor so as to form
for a moment one conductor, and the moment afterwards these
two carriers were insulated, one carrying away a positive charge
and the other a negative. Continuing their rotation, the positively
charged carrier gave up its positive charge by touching a little
knob attached to the positive field plate, and similarly for the
negative charge carrier. In this way the charges on the field
plates were continually replenished
and reinforced. Varley also con-
structed a multiple form of influence
machine having six rotating disks,
each having a number of carriers
and rotating between field plates.
With this apparatus he obtained fiflVTW
sparks 6 in. long, the initial source ]
of electrification being a single
Daniell cell.
Varley was followed by A. J. I.
Toepler, who in 1865 constructed J F _ Varl - s Machinc .
an influence machine consisting of
two disks fixed on the same shaft and rotating in the same
direction. Each disk carried two strips of tin-foil extending
nearly over a semi-circle, and there were two field T kr
plates, one behind each disk; one of the plates was mKh ine.
positively and the other negatively electrified. The
carriers which were touched under the influence of the positive
field plate passed on and gave up a portion of their negative
charge to increase that of the negative field plate; in the same
i 7 8
ELECTRICAL MACHINE
way the carriers which were touched under the influence of the
negative field plate sent a part of their charge to augment that
of the positive field plate. In this apparatus one of the charging
rods communicated with one of the field plates, but the other
with the neutralizing brush opposite to the other field plate.
Hence one of the field plates would always remain charged
when a spark was taken at the transmitting terminals.
Between 1864 and 1880, W. T. B. Holtz constructed and
described a large number of influence machines which were for a
Holt* ^ on ^ t e cons idered tne m st advanced development
machine. * tn ' s tv P e ^ electrostatic machine. In one form the
Holtz machine consisted of a glass disk mounted on a
horizontal axis F (fig. 6) which could be made to rotate at a
considerable speed by a multiplying gear, part of which is seen at
FIG. 6. Holtz's Machine.
X. Close behind this disk was fixed another vertical disk of glass
in which were cut two windows B, B. On the side of the fixed
disk next the rotating disk were pasted two sectors of paper A, A,
with short blunt points attached to them which projected out
into the windows on the side away from the rotating disk. On
the other side of the rotating disk were placed two metal combs
C, C, which consisted of sharp points set in metal rods and were
each connected to one of a pair of discharge balls E, D, the
distance between which could be varied. To start the machine the
balls were brought in contact, one of the paper armatures
electrified, say, with positive electricity, and the disk set in
motion. Thereupon very shortly a hissing sound was heard
and the machine became harder to turn as if the disk were moving
through a resisting medium. After that the discharge balls
might be separated a little and a continuous series of sparks or
brush discharges would take place between them. If two Leyden
jars L, L were hung upon the conductors which supported the
combs, with their outer coatings put in connexion with one
another by M, a series of strong spark discharges passed between
the discharge balls. The action of the machine is as follows:
Suppose one paper armature to be charged positively, it acts by
induction on the right hand comb, causing negative electricity to
issue from the comb points upon the glass revolving disk; at the
same time the positive electricity passes through the closed
discharge circuit to the left comb and issues from its teeth upon
the part of the glass disk at the opposite end of the diameter.
This positive electricity electrifies the left paper armature by
induction, positive electricity issuing from the blunt point upon
the side farthest from the rotating disk. The charges thus
deposited on the glass disk are carried round so that the upper
half is electrified negatively on both sides and the lower half
positively on both sides, the sign of the electrification being
reversed as the disk passes between the combs and the armature
by discharges issuing from them respectively. If it were not for
leakage in various ways, the electrification would go on every-
where increasing, but in practice a stationary state is soon
attained. Holtz's machine is very uncertain in its action in a
These
moist climate, and has generally to be enclosed in a chamber in
which the air is kept artificially dry.
Robert Voss, a Berlin instrument maker, in 1880 devised a form
of machine in which he claimed that the principles of Toepler and
Holtz were combined. On a rotating glass or ebonite
disk were placed carriers of tin-foil or metal buttons
against which neutralizing brushes touched. This
armature plate revolved in front of a field plate carrying two
pieces of tin-foil backed up by larger pieces of varnished paper.
The studs on the armature plate were charged inductively by
being connected for a moment by a neutralizing wire as they
passed in front of the field plates, and then gave up their charges
partly to renew the field charges and partly to collecting combs
connected to discharge balls. In general design and construction,
the manner of moving the rotating plate and in the use of the two
Leyden jars in connexion with the discharge balls, Voss borrowed
his ideas from Holtz.
All the above described machines, however, have been thrown
into the shade by the invention of a greatly improved type of in-
fluence machine first constructed by James Wimshurst
about 1878. Two glass disks are mounted on two shafts Wims-
in such a manner that, by means of two belts and pulleys
worked from a winch shaft, the disks can be rotated
rapidly in opposite directions close to each other (fig. 7).
glass disks carry on them a certain number (not less than 16 or
20) tin-foil carriers which may or may not have brass buttons
upon them. The glass plates are well varnished, and the carriers
are placed on the outer sides of the two glass plates. As therefore
the disks revolve, these carriers travel in opposite directions,
coming at intervals in opposition to each other. Each upright
bearing carrying the shafts of the revolving disks also carries a
neutralizing conductor or wire ending in a little brush of gilt
thread. The neutralizing conductors for each disk are placed at
right angles to each other. In addition there are collecting
combs which occupy an intermediate position and have sharp
points projecting inwards, and coming near to but not touching
the carriers. These combs on opposite sides are connected
respectively to the inner coatings of two Leyden jars whose outer
coatings are in connexion with one another.
The operation of the machine is as follows: Let us suppose
that one of the studs on the back plate is positively electrified
and one at the opposite end of a diameter is negatively electrified,
and that at that moment two corresponding studs on the front
plate passing opposite to these back studs are momentarily
connected together by
the neutralizing wire
belonging to the front
plate. The positive stud
on the back plate will
act inductively on the
front stud and charge it
negatively, and similarly
for the other stud, and
as the rotation continues
these charged studs will
pass round and give up
most of their charge
through the combs to
the Leyden jars. The
moment, however, a pair
of studs on the front
plate are charged, they
act as field plates to
studs on the back plate which are passing at the moment,
provided these last are connected by the back neutralizing wire.
After a few revolutions of the disks half the studs on the front
plate at any moment are charged negatively and half positively
and the same on the back plate, the neutralizing wires forming the
boundary between the positively and negatively charged studs.
The diagram in fig. 8, taken by permission from S. P. Thompson's
paper (loc. cit.}, represents a view of the distribution of these
charges on the front and back plates respectively. It will be
FlG. 7. Wimshurst's Machine.
ELECTRIC EEL ELECTRICITY
179
seen that each stud is in turn both a field plate and a currier
having a charge induced on it, and then passing on in turn
induces further charges on other studs. Wimshurst constructed
numerous very powerful machines
of this type, some of them with
multiple plates, which operate in
almost any climate, and rarely fail
to charge themselves and deliver a
torrent of sparks between the dis-
charge balls whenever the winch is
turned. He also devised an alter-
nating current electrical machine
in which the discharge balls were
alternately positive and negative.
Large Wimshurst multiple plate
influence machines are often used
instead of induction coils for ex-
citing Rontgen ray tubes in medical
steady illumination on fluorescent
FIG. 8. Action of the
Wimshurst Machine.
work. They give very
screens.
In looo it was found by F. Tudsbury that if an influence
machine is enclosed in a metallic chamber containing compressed
air, or belter, carbon dioxide, the insulating properties of com-
pressed gases enable a greatly improved effect to be obtained
owing to the diminution of the leakage across the plates and from
the supports. Hence sparks can be obtained of more than
double the length at ordinary atmospheric pressure. In one
case a machine with plates 8 in. in diameter which could give
sparks 2-5 in. at ordinary pressure gave sparks of 5, 7. and 8 in.
as the pressure was raised to 13, 30 and 45 tb above the normal
atmosphere.
The action of Lord Kelvin's replenisher (fig. Q) used by him
in connexion with his electrometers for maintaining their
charge, closely resembles that of Belli's doubler and will be
understood from fig. 9. Lord Kelvin also devised an influence
machine, commonly called a " mouse mill," for electrifying the
ink in connexion with his siphon recorder. It was an electrostatic
and electromagnetic machine combined, driven by an electric
current and producing in turn electrostatic charges of electricity.
FlG. 9. Lord Kelvin's Replenisher.
r. C. Nfetal carriers, fixed to a, a. Receiving springs.
ebonite cross-arm. n, n. Connect i ng springs or
F. K. Brass field-plates or con- neutralizing brushes.
doctors.
In connexion with this subject mention must also be made of the
water dropping influence machine of the same inventor. 1
The action and efficiency of influence machines have been
investigated by F. Rossetti, A. Righi and F. W. G. Kohlrausch.
The electromotive force is practically constant no matter what the
velocity of the disks, but according to some observers the inter-
nal resistance decreases as the velocity increases. Kohlrausch,
using a Holtz machine with a plate 16 in. in diameter, found
that the current given by it could only electrolyse acidulated
water in 40 hours sufficient to liberate one cubic centimetre of
mixed gases. E. E. N. Mascart, A. Roiti, and E. Bouchotte have
1 See Lord Kelvin, Reprint of Paperi on Electrostatics and Magnet-
ism (1872); " Electrophone Apparatus and Illustrations of Voltaic
Theory." p. 319: " On Electric Machines Founded on Induc-
tion and Convection," p. 330; "The Reciprocal Electrophorus,"
P- 337-
also examined the efficiency and current producing power of
influence machines.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. In addition to S. P. Thompson's valuable IKIJHT
on influence machines (to which this article is much indebted) and
other references given, sec J. Clerk Maxwell, Treatise on Electricity
and Magnetism (2nd ed., Oxford, 1881), vol. i. p. 294; J. D. Everett,
Electricity (expansion of part iii. of Dcschanel's Natural Philosophy)
(London, 1901), ch. iv. p. 20; A. Winkelmunn, Handbuch der Physik
(Breslau, 1905), vol. iv. pp. 50-58 (contains a large number of
references to original papers) ; J. Gray, Electrical Influence Machines,
their Development and Modern Forms (London, 1903). (J. A. F.)
ELECTRIC EEL (Gymnolus electricus), a member of the
family of fishes known as Gymnotidae. In spite of their external
similarity the Gymnotidae have nothing to do with the eels
(Anguilla). They resemble the latter in the elongation of the
body, the large number of vertebrae (240 in Gymno(us), and the
absence of pelvic fins; but they differ in all the more important
characters of internal structure. They are in fact allied to the
carps or Cyprinidae and the cat-fishes or Siluridae. In common
with these two families and the Characinidac of Africa and South
America, the Gymnotidae possess the peculiar structures called
ossicula audit us or Weberian ossicles. These are a chain of
small bones belonging to the first four vertebrae, which are
much modified, and connecting the air-bladder with the auditory
organs. Such an agreement in the structure of so complicated
and specialized an apparatus can only be the result of a com-
munity of descent of the families possessing it. Accordingly
these families are now placed together in a distinct sub-order,
the Ostariophysi. The Gymnotidae are strongly modified and
degraded Characinidae. In them the dorsal and caudal fins are
very rudimentary or absent, and the anal is very long, extending
from the anus, which is under the head or throat, to the end of
the body.
Gymnolus is the only genus of the family which possesses
electric organs. These extend the whole length of the tail, which
is four-fifths of the body. They are modifications of the lateral
muscles and are supplied with numerous branches of the spinal
nerves. They consist of longitudinal columns, each composed
of an immense number of " electric plates." The posterior end
of the organ is positive, the anterior negative, and the current
passes from the tail to the head. The maximum shock is given
when the head and tail of the Gymnolus are in contact with
different points in the surface of some other animal. Gymnotus
electricus attains a length of 3 ft. and the thickness of a man's
thigh, and frequents the marshes of Brazil and the Guianas,
where it is regarded with terror, owing to the formidable electrical
apparatus with which it is provided. When this natural battery
is discharged in a favourable position, it is sufficiently powerful
to stun the largest animal; and according to A. von Humboldt,
it has been found necessary to change the line of certain roads
passing through the pools frequented by the electric eels. These
fish are eaten by the Indians, who, before attempting to capture
them, seek to exhaust their electrical power by driving horses
into the ponds. By repeated discharges upon these they
gradually expend this marvellous force; after which, being
defenceless, they become timid, and approach the edge for
shelter, when they fall an easy prey to the harpoon. It is only
after long rest and abundance of food that the fish is able to
resume the use of its subtle weapon. Humboldt's description of
this method of capturing the fish has not, however, been verified
by recent travellers.
ELECTRICITY. This article is devoted to a general sketch of
the history of the development of electrical knowledge on both
the theoretical and the practical sides. The two great branches
of electrical theory which concern the phenomena of electricity
at rest, or " frit tional " or " static " electricity, and of electricity
in motion, or electric currents, are treated in two separate
articles, ELECTROSTATICS and ELECTROKINETICS. The pheno-
mena attendant on the passage of electricity through solids,
through liquids and through gases, are described in the article
CONDUCTION, ELECTRIC, and also ELECTROLYSIS, and the propa-
gation of electrical vibrations in ELECTRIC WAVES. The inter-
connexion of magnetism (which has an article to itself) and
i8o
ELECTRICITY
electricity is discussed in ELECTROMAGNETISM, and these mani-
festations in nature in ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY; AURORA
POLARIS and MAGNETISM, TERRESTRIAL. The general principles
of electrical engineering will be found in ELECTRICITY SUPPLY,
and further details respecting the generation and use of electrical
power are given in such articles as DYNAMO; MOTORS, ELECTRIC;
TRANSFORMERS; ACCUMULATOR; POWER TRANSMISSION:
Electric; TRACTION; LIGHTING: Electric; ELECTROCHEMISTRY
and ELECTROMETALLURGY. The principles of telegraphy (land,
submarine and wireless) and of telephony are discussed in the
articles TELEGRAPH and TELEPHONE, and various electrical
instruments are treated in separate articles such as AMPERE-
METER; ELECTROMETER; GALVANOMETER; VOLTMETER;
WHEATSTONE'S BRIDGE; POTENTIOMETER; METER, ELECTRIC;
ELECTROPHORUS; LEYDEN JAR; &c. .
The term " electricity " is applied to denote the physical
agency which exhibits itself by effects of attraction and repulsion
when particular substances are rubbed or heated, also in certain
chemical and physiological actions and in connexion with moving
magnets and metallic circuits. The name is derived from the
word electrica, first used by William Gilbert (1544-1603) in his
epoch-making treatise De magnete, magneticisque corporibus,
et de magno magnete tellure, published in 1600,* to denote
substances which possess a similar property to amber ( = electrum,
from ijXeKTpov) of attracting light objects when rubbed. Hence
the phenomena came to be collectively called electrical, a term
first used by William Barlowe, archdeacon of Salisbury, in 1618,
and the study of them, electrical science.
Historical Sketch.
Gilbert was the first to conduct systematic scientific experi-
ments on electrical phenomena. Prior to his date the scanty
knowledge possessed by the ancients and enjoyed in the middle
ages began and ended with facts said to have been familiar to
Thales of Miletus (600 B.C.) and mentioned by Theophrastus
(321 B.C.) and Pliny (A.D. 70), namely, that amber, jet and one
or two other substances possessed the power, when rubbed, of
attracting fragments of straw, leaves or feathers. Starting with
careful and accurate observations on facts concerning the
mysterious properties of amber and the lodestone, Gilbert laid
the foundations of modern electric and magnetic science on the
true experimental and inductive basis. The subsequent history
of electricity may be divided into four well-marked periods.
The first extends from the date of publication of Gilbert's great
treatise in 1600 to the invention by Volta of the voltaic pile and
the first production of the electric current in 1799. The second
dates from Volta's discovery to the discovery by Faraday in
1831 of the induction of electric currents and the creation of
currents by the motion of conductors in magnetic fields, which
initiated the era of modern electrotechnics. The third covers
the period between 1831 and Clerk Maxwell's enunciation of the
electromagnetic theory of light in 1865 and the invention of the
self-exciting dynamo, which marks another great epoch in the
development of the subject; and the fourth comprises the modern
development of electric theory and of absolute quantitative
measurements, and above all, of the applications of this knowledge
in electrical engineering. We shall sketch briefly the historical
progress during these various stages, and also the growth of
electrical theories of electricity during that time.
FIRST PERIOD. Gilbert was probably led to study the
phenomena of the attraction of iron by the lodestone in conse-
quence of his conversion to the Copernican theory of the earth's
motion, and thence proceeded to study the attractions produced
by amber. An account of his electrical discoveries is given in
the De magnete, lib. ii. cap. 2. 2 He invented the versorium or
1 Gilbert's work, On the Magnet, Magnetic Bodies and the Great
Magnet, the Earth, has been translated from the rare folio Latin
edition of 1600, but otherwise reproduced in its original form by the
chief members of the Gilbert Club of England, with a series of valu-
able notes by Prof. S. P. Thompson (London, 1900). See also The
Electrician, February 21, 1902.
* See The Intellectual Rise in Electricity, ch. x., by Park Benjamin
(London, 1895).
electrical needle and proved that innumerable bodies he called
electrica, when rubbed, can attract the needle of the versorium
(see ELECTROSCOPE). Robert Boyle added many new facts and
gave an account of them in his book, The Origin of Electricity.
He showed that the attraction between the rubbed body and
the test object is mutual. Otto von Guericke (1602-1686) con-
structed the first electrical machine with a revolving ball of
sulphur (see ELECTRICAL MACHINE), and noticed that light
objects were repelled after being attracted by excited electrics.
Sir Isaac Newton substituted a ball of glass for sulphur in the
electrkal machine and made other not unimportant additions
to electrical knowledge. Francis Hawksbee (d. 1713) published
in his book Physico-Mechanical Experiments (i 709), and in several
Memoirs in the Phil. Trans, about 1 707, the results of his electrical
inquiries. He showed that light was produced when mercury
was shaken up in a glass tube exhausted of its air. Dr Wall
observed the spark and crackling sound when warm amber was
rubbed, and compared them with thunder and lightning (Phil.
Trans., 1708, 26, p. 69). Stephen Gray (1696-1736) noticed in
1720 that electricity could be excited by the friction of hair, silk,
wool, paper and other bodies. In 1729 Gray made the important
discovery that some bodies were conductors and others non-
conductors of electricity. In conjunction with his friend
Granville Wheeler (d. 1770), he conveyed the electricity from
rubbed glass, a distance of 886 ft., along a string supported on
silk threads (Phil. Trans., 1735-1736, 39, pp. 16, 166 and 400).
Jean Theophile Desaguliers (1683-1744) announced soon after
that electrics were non-conductors, and conductors were non-
electrics. C. F. de C. du Fay (1699-1739) made the great dis-
covery that electricity is of two kinds, vitreous and resinous
(Phil. Trans., 1733, 38, p. 263), the first being produced when
glass, crystal, &c. are rubbed with silk, and the second when
resin, amber, silk or paper, &c. are excited by friction with
flannel. He also discovered that a body charged with positive
or negative electricity repels a body free to move when the
latter is charged with electricity of like sign, but attracts it if
it is charged with electricity of opposite sign, i.e. positive repels
positive and negative repels negative, but positive attracts
negative. It is to du Fay also that we owe the abolition of the
distinction between electrics and non-electrics. He showed
that all substances could be electrified by friction, but that
to electrify conductors they must be insulated or supported
on non-conductors. Various improvements were made in the
electrical machine, and thereby experimentalists were provided
with the means of generating strong electrification; C. F.
Ludolff (1707-1763) of Berlin in 1744 succeeded in igniting ether
with the electric spark (Phil. Trans., 1744, 43, p. 167).
For a very full list of the papers and works of these early electrical
philosophers, the reader is referred to the bibliography on Electricity
in Dr Thomas Young's Natural Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 415.
In 1745 the important invention of the Leyden jar or condenser
was made by E. G. von Kleist of Kammin, and almost simultane-
ously by Cunaeus and Pieter van Musschenbroek (1692-1761)
of Leiden (see LEYDEN JAR). Sir William Watson (1715-1787)
in England first observed the flash of light when a Leyden jar
is discharged, and he and Dr John Bevis (1695-1771) suggested
coating the jar inside and outside with tinfoil. Watson carried
out elaborate experiments to discover how far the electric
discharge of the jar could be conveyed along metallic wires and
was able to accomplish it for a distance of 2 m., making
the important observation that the electricity appeared to be
transmitted instantaneously.
Franklin's Researches. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was
one of the great pioneers of electrical science, and made the ever-
memorable experimental identification of lightning and electric
spark. He argued that electricity is not created by friction, but
merely collected from its state of diffusion through other matter
by which it is attracted. He asserted that the glass globe, when
rubbed, attracted the electrical fire, and took it from the rubber,
the same globe being disposed, when the friction ceases, to give
out its electricity to any body which has less. In the case of the
charged Leyden jar, -he asserted that the inner coating of tinfoil
ELECTRICITY
181
bad received more than its ordinary quantity of electricity, and
was therefore electrified positively, or plus, while the outer
coating of tinfoil having had its ordinary quantity of electricity
diminished, was electrified negatively, or minus. Hence the
cause of the shock and spark when the jar is discharged, or
when the superabundant or plus electricity of the inside is
transferred by a conducting body to the defective or minus
electricity of the outside. This theory of the Leyden phial
Franklin supported very ingeniously by showing that the outside
and the inside coating possessed electricities of opposite sign, and
that, in charging it, exactly as much electricity is added on one
side as is subtracted from the other. The abundant discharge of
electricity by points was observed by Franklin is his earliest
experiments, and also the power of points to conduct it copiously
from an electrified body. Hence he was furnished with a simple
method of collecting electricity from other bodies, and he was
enabled to perform those remarkable experiments which are
chiefly connected with his name. Hawksbee, Wall and J. A.
Nollet (1700-1770) had successively suggested the identity of
lightning and the electric spark, and of thunder and the snap
of the spark. Previously to the year 1750, Franklin drew up a
statement, in which he showed that all the general phenomena
and effects which were produced by electricity had their counter-
parts in lightning. After waiting some time for the erection of
a spire at Philadelphia, by means of which he hoped to bring
down the electricity of a thunderstorm, he conceived the idea
of sending up a kite among thunder-clouds. With this view he
made a small cross of two small light strips of cedar, the arms
being sufficiently long to reach to the four corners of a large
thin silk handkerchief when extended. The corners of the
handkerchief were tied to the extremities of the cross, and when
the body of the kite was thus formed, a toil, loop and string were
added to it. The body was made of silk to enable it to bear the
violence and wet of a thunderstorm. A very sharp pointed wire
was fixed at the top of the upright stick of the cross, so as to rise a
foot or more above the wood. A silk ribbon was tied to the end
of the twine next the hand, and a key suspended at the junction
of the twine and silk. In company with his son, Franklin raised
the kite like a common one, in the first thunderstorm, which
happened in the month of June 1752. To keep the silk ribbon
dry, he stood within a door, taking care that the twine did not
touch the frame of the door; and when the thunder-clouds came
over the kite he watched the state of the string. A cloud passed
without any electrical indications, and he began to despair of
success. At last, however, he saw the loose filaments of the twine
standing out every way, and he found them to be attracted by
the approach of his finger. The suspended key gave a spark on
the application of his knuckle, and when the string had become
wet with the rain the electricity became abundant. A Leyden
jar was charged at the key, and by the electric fire thus obtained
spirits were inflamed, and many other experiments performed
which had been formerly made by excited electrics. In subse-
quent trials with another apparatus, he found that the clouds
were sometimes positively and sometimes negatively electrified,
and so demonstrated the perfect identity of lightning and
electricity. Having thus succeeded in drawing the electric fire
from the clouds, Franklin conceived the idea of protecting
buildings from lightning by erecting on their highest parts pointed
iron wires or conductors communicating with the ground. The
electricity of a hovering or a passing cloud would thus be carried
off slowly and silently; and if the cloud was highly charged, the
lightning would strike in preference the elevated conductors. 1
The most important of Franklin's electrical writings are his
Experiments and Observations on Electricity made at Philadelphia,
I 75'~'754; his Letters on Electricity, and various memoirs and
letters in the Phil. Trans, from 1756 to 1760.
About the same time that Franklin was making his kite
1 See Sir Oliver Lodge, " Lightning, Lightning Conductors and
Lightning Protectors," Journ. hit. Elec. Eng. (1889), 18, p. 386, and
the discussion on the subject in the same volume; also the book
by the same author on Lightning Conductors and Lightning Guards
(London. 189*).
experiment in America, T. F. Dalibard (1703-1779) and others in
France had erected a long iron rod at Marli, and obtained results
agreeing with those of Franklin. Similar investigations were
pursued by many others, among whom Father G. K. Beccaria
(1716-1781) deserves especial mention. John Canton (1718-
1772) made the important contribution to knowledge that
electricity of either sign could be produced on nearly any body by
friction with appropriate substances, and that a rod of glass
roughened on one half was excited negatively in the rough part
and positively in the smooth part by friction with the same rubber.
Canton first suggested the use of an amalgam of mercury and tin
for use with glass cylinder electrical machines to improve their
action. His most important discovery, however, was that of
electrostatic induction, the fact that one electrified body can
produce charges of electricity upon another insulated body, and
that when this last is touched it is left electrified with a charge of
opposite sign to that of the inducing charge (Phil. Trans., 1753-
1 7S4)- We shall make mention lower down of Canton's contribu-
tions to electrical theory. Robert Symmer (d. 1763) showed that
quite small differences determined the sign of the electrification
that was generated by the friction of two bodies one against the
other. Thus wearing a black and a white silk stocking one over the
other, he found they were electrified oppositely when rubbed and
drawn off, and that such a rubbed silk stocking when deposited in
a Leyden jar gave up its electrification to the jar (Phil.. Trans.,
1759). Ebenezer Kinnersley (1711-1778) of Philadelphia made
useful observations on the elongation and fusion of iron wires
by electrical discharges (Phil. Trans., 1 763). A contemporary of
Canton and co-discoverer with him of the facts of electrostatic
induction was the Swede, Johann Karl Wilcke (1732-1796), then
resident in Germany, who in 1762 published an account of
experiments in which a metal plate held above the upper surface
of a glass table was subjected to the action of a charge on an
electrified metal plate held below the glass (Kon. Schuredische
Akad. Abhandl., 1762, 24, p. 213).
Pyro-electricity . The subject of pyro-electricity, or the power
possessed by some minerals of becoming electrified when merely
heated, and of exhibiting positive and negative electricity, now
began to attract notice. It is possible that the lyncurium of
the ancients, which according to Theophrastus attracted light
bodies, was tourmaline, a mineral found in Ceylon, which had
been christened by the Dutch with the name of aschenlrikker, or
the attractor of ashes. In 1717 Louis Lemery exhibited to the
Paris Academy of Sciences a stone from Ceylon which attracted
light bodies; and Linnaeus in mentioning his experiments
gives the stone the name of lapis eleltricus. Giovanni Caraffa,
duca di Noja (1715-1768), was led in 1758 to purchase some of
the stones called tourmaline in Holland, and, assisted by L. J. M.
Daubenton and Michel Adanson, he made a series of experiments
with them, a description of which he gave in a letter to G. L. L.
Buffon in 1759. The subject, however, had already engaged the
attention of the German philosopher, F. U. T. Aepinus, who
published an account of them in 1756. Hitherto nothing had
been said respecting the necessity of heat to excite the tourmaline;
but it was shown by Aepinus that a temperature between 99$
and 212 Fahr. was requisite for the development of its attractive
powers. Benjamin Wilson (Phil. Trans., 1763, &c.), J. Priestley,
and Canton continued the investigation, but it was reserved for
the Abb6 Haiiy to throw a clear light on this curious branch
of the science (Traitt de minfralogie, 1801). He found that the
electricity of the tourmaline decreased rapidly from the summits
or poles towards the middle of the crystal, where it was imper-
ceptible; and he discovered that if a tourmaline is broken into
any number of fragments, each fragment, when excited, has
two opposite poles. Hauy discovered the same property in the
Siberian and Brazilian topaz, borate of magnesia, mesotype,
prehnite, sphene and calamine. He also found that the polarity
which minerals receive from heat has a relation to the secondary
forms of their crystals the tourmaline, for example, having
its resinous pole at the summit of the crystal which has three
faces. In the other pyro-electric crystals above mentioned,
HaUy detected the same deviation from the rules of symmetry
182
ELECTRICITY
in their secondary crystals which occurs in tourmaline. C. P.
Brard (1788-1838) discovered that pyro-electricity was a
property of axinite; and it was afterwards detected in other
minerals. In repeating and extending the experiments of Hauy
much later, Sir David Brewster discovered that various artificial
salts were pyro-electric, and he mentions the tartrates of potash
and soda and tartaric acid as exhibiting this property in a very
strong degree. He also made many experiments with the
tourmaline when cut into thin slices, and reduced to the finest
powder, in which state each particle preserved its pyro-electricity;
and he showed that scolezite and mesolite, even when deprived
of their water of crystallization and reduced to powder, retain
their property of becoming electrical by heat. When this white
powder is heated and stirred about by any substance whatever,
it collects in masses like new-fallen snow, and adheres to the
body with which it is stirred.
For Sir David Brewster's work on pyro-electncity, see Trans. Roy.
Soc. Edin., 1845, also Phil. Mag., Dec. 1847. The reader will also
find a full discussion on the subject in the Treatise on Electricity, by
A. de la Rive, translated by C. V. Walker (London, 1856), vol. if.
part v. ch. i.
Animal electricity. The observation that certain animals
could give shocks resembling the shock of a Leyden jar induced
a closer examination of these powers. The ancients were
acquainted with the benumbing power of the torpedo-fish, but
it was not till 1676 that modern naturalists had their attention
again drawn to the fact. E. Bancroft was the first person who
distinctly suspected that the effects of the torpedo were electrical.
In J 773 John Walsh (d. 1795) and Jan Ingenhousz (1730-1799)
proved by many curious experiments that the shock of the
torpedo was an electrical one (Phil. Trans., 1773-1775); and
John Hunter (id. 1773, 1775) examined and described the
anatomical structure of its electrical organs. A. von Humboldt
and Gay-Lussac (Ann. Chim., 1805), and Etienne Geoffrey Saint-
Hilaire (Gilb. Ann., 1803) pursued the subject with success;
and Henry Cavendish (Phil. Trans., 1776) constructed an
artificial torpedo, by which he imitated the actions of the living
animal. The subject was also investigated (Phil. Trans., 1812,
1817) by Dr T. J. Todd (1789-1840), Sir Humphry Davy
(id. 1829), John Davy (id. 1832, 1834, 1841) and Faraday
(Exp. Res., vol. ii.). The power of giving electric shocks has
been discovered also in the Gymnotus electricus (electric eel),
the Malapterurus electricus, the Trichiurus electricus, and the
Tetraodon electricus. The most interesting and the best known
of these singular fishes is the Gymnotus or Surinam eel. Hum-
boldt gives a very graphic account of the combats which are
carried on in Sputh America between the gymnoti and the wild
horses in the vicinity of Calabozo.
Cavendish's Researches. The work of Henry Cavendish (1731-
1810) entitles him to a high place in the list of electrical investi-
gators. A considerable part of Cavendish's work was rescued
from oblivion in 1879 and placed in an easily accessible form
by Professor Clerk Maxwell, who edited the original manuscripts
in the possession of the duke of Devonshire. 1 Amongst Caven-
dish's important contributions were his exact measurements of
electrical capacity. The leading idea which distinguishes his
work from that of his predecessors was his use of the phrase
" degree of electrification " with a clear scientific definition
which shows it to be equivalent in meaning to the modern term
" electric potential." Cavendish compared the capacity of
different bodies with those of conducting spheres of known
diameter and states these capacities in " globular inches," a
globular inch being the capacity of a sphere i in. in diameter.
Hence his measurements are all directly comparable with modern
electrostatic measurements in which the unit of capacity is that
of a sphere i centimetre in radius. Cavendish measured the
capacity of disks and condensers of various forms, and proved
that the capacity of a Leyden pane is proportional to the surface
of the tinfoil and inversely as the thickness of the glass. In
connexion with this subject he anticipated one of Faraday's
1 The Electrical Researches of the Hon. Henry Cavendish 1771-
1781, edited from the original manuscripts by J. Clerk Maxwell,
F.R.S. (Cambridge, 1879).
greatest discoveries, namely, the effect of the dielectric or in-
sulator upon the capacity of a condenser formed with it, in other
words, made the discovery of specific inductive capacity (see
Electrical Researches, p. 183). He made many measurements
of the electric conductivity of different solids and liquids, by
comparing the intensity of the electric shock taken through his
body and various conductors. He seems in this way to have
educated in himself a; very precise " electrical sense," making
use of his own nervous system as a kind of physiological galvano-
meter. One of the most important investigations he made in
this way was to find out, as he expressed it, " what power of the
velocity the resistance is proportional to." Cavendish meant
by the term " velocity " what we now call the current, and
by " resistance " the electromotive force which maintains the
current. By various experiments with liquids in tubes he found
this power was nearly unity. This result thus obtained by
Cavendish in January 1781, that the current varies in direct
proportion to the electromotive force, was really an anticipation
of the fundamental law of electric flow, discovered independently
by G. S. Ohm in 1827, and since known as Ohm's Law. Cavendish
also enunciated in 1776 all the laws of division of electric current
between circuits in parallel, although they are generally supposed
to have been first given by Sir C. Wheatstone. Another of his
great investigations was the determination of the, law according
to which electric force varies with the distance. Starting from
the fact that if an electrified globe, placed within two hemi-
spheres which fit over it without touching, is brought in contact
with these hemispheres, it gives up the whole of its charge to
them in' other words, that the charge on an electrified body is
wholly on the surface he was able to deduce by most ingenious
reasoning the law that electric force varies inversely as the
square of the distance. The accuracy of his measurement, by
which he established within 2 % the above law, was only limited
by the sensibility, or rather insensibility, of the pith ball electro-
meter, which was his only means of detecting the electric charge. 2
In the accuracy of his quantitative measurements and the range
of his researches and his combination of mathematical and
physical knowledge, Cavendish may not inaptly be described
as the Kelvin of the i8th century. Nothing but his curious in-
difference to the publication of his work prevented him from
securing earlier recognition for it.
Coulomb's Work. Contemporary with Cavendish was C. A.
Coulomb (1736-1806), who in France addressed himself to the
same kind of exact quantitative work as Cavendish in England.
Coulomb has made his name for ever famous by his invention
and application of his torsion balance to the experimental
verification of the fundamental law of electric attraction, in
which, however, he was anticipated by Cavendish, namely,
that the force of attraction between two small electrified spherical
bodies varies as the product of their charges and inversely as the
square of the distance of their centres. Coulomb's work received
better publication than Cavendish's at the time of its accomplish-
ment, and provided a basis on which mathematicians could
operate. Accordingly the close of the i8th century drew into
the arena of electrical investigation on its mathematical side
P. S. Laplace, J. B. Biot, and above all, S. D. Poisson. Adopting
the hypothesis of two fluids, Coulomb investigated experimentally
and theoretically the distribution of electricity on the surface
of bodies by means of his proof plane. He determined the law
of distribution between two conducting bodies in contact; and
measured with his proof plane the density of the electricity
at different points of two spheres in contact, and enunciated
an important law. He ascertained the distribution of electricity
among several spheres (whether equal or unequal) placed in
contact in a straight line; and he measured the distribution of
2 In 1878 Clerk Maxwell repeated Cavendish's experiments with
improved apparatus and the employment of a Kelvin quadrant
electrometer as a means of detecting the absence of charge on the
inner conductor after it had been connected to the outer case, and
was thus able to show that if the law of electric attraction varies
inversely as the th power of the distance, then the exponent n
must have a value of 2 n J jj. See Cavendish's Electrical Researches,
p. 419.
ELECTRICITY
183
electricity on the surface of a cylinder, and its distribution
between a sphere and cylinder of different lengths but of the
same diameter. His experiments on the dissipation of electricity
possess also a high value. He found that the momentary
dissipation was proportional to the degree of electrification at
the time, and that, when the charge was moderate, its dissipation
was oot altered in bodies of different kinds or shapes. The
temperature and pressure of the atmosphere did not produce
any sensible change; but he concluded that the dissipation was
nearly proportional to the cube of the quantity of moisture in
the air. 1 In examining the dissipation which takes place along
imperfectly insulating substances, he found that a thread of
gum-lac was the most perfect of all insulators; that it insulated
ten times as well as a dry silk thread; and that a silk thread
covered with fine sealing- wax insulated as powerfully as gum-lac
when it had four times its length. He found also that the
dissipation of electricity along insulators was chiefly owing to
adhering moisture, but in some measure also to a slight conduct-
ing power. For his memoirs see Mem. de math, et phys. de
I' AC ad. de x., 1785, &c.
SECOND PERIOD. We now enter upon the second period of
electrical research inaugurated by the epoch-making discovery
of Alessandro Volta (1745-1827). L. Galvani had made in
1700 his historic observations on the muscular contraction
produced in the bodies of recently killed frogs when an electrical
machine was being worked in the same room, and described
them in 1791 (De viribus electriciiatis in molu musculari commen-
taritts, Bologna, 1791). Volta followed up these observations
with rare philosophic insight and experimental skill. He showed
that all conductors liquid and solid might be divided into two
classes which he called respectively conductors of the first and
of the second dass, the first embracing metals and carbon in its
conducting form, and the second dass, water, aqueous solutions
of various kinds, and generally those now called electrolytes.
In the case of conductors of the first dass he proved by the use
of the condensing electroscope, aided probably by some form
of multiplier or doubler, that a difference of potential (see
ELECTROSTATICS) was created by the mere contact of two such
conductors, one of them being positively electrified and the other
negativdy. Volta showed, however, that if a series of bodies of
the first class, such as disks of various metals, arc placed in
contact, the potential difference between the first and the last
is just the same as if they are immediately in contact. There
is no accumulation of potential. If, however, pairs of metallic
disks, made, say, of zinc and copper, are alternated with disks
of doth wetted with a conductor of the second class, such, for
instance, as dilute add or any electrolyte, then the effect of the
feeble potential difference between one pair of copper and zinc
disks is added to that of the potential difference between the
next pair, and thus by a sufficiently long series of pairs any
required difference of potential can be accumulated.
The Voltaic Pile. This led him about 1799 to devise his famous
voltaic pile consisting of disks of copper and zinc or other metals
with wet doth placed between the pairs. Numerous examples
of Volta's original piles at one time existed in Italy, and were
collected together for an exhibition held at Como in 1809, hut
were unfortunately destroyed by a disastrous fire on the 8th of
July 1809. Volta's description of his pile was communicated
in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society
of London, on the 20th of March 1800, and was printed in the
Phil. Trans., vol. 00, pt. i, p. 405. It was then found that when
the end plates of Volta's pile were connected to an electroscope
the leaves diverged either with positive or negative electricity.
Volta also gave his pile another form, the couronne des tosses
(crown of cups), in which connected strips of copper and zinc
were used to bridge between cups of water or dilute acid. Volta
then proved that all metals could be arranged in an electromotive
1 Modern researches have shown that the loss of charge is in fact
dependent _ upon the ionization of the air, and that, provided the
atmospheric moisture is prevented from condensing on the insulating
supports, water vapour in the air does not per se bestow on it con-
ductance for electricity.
scries such that each became positive when placed in contact
with the one next below it in the series. The origin of the
electromotive force in the pile has been much discussed, and
Volta's discoveries gave rise to one of the historic contro-
versies of science. Volta maintained that the mere contact
of metals was sufficient to produce the electrical difference
of the end plates of the pile. The discovery that chemical
action was involved in the process led to the advancement of
the chemical theory of the pile and this was strengthened by the
growing insight into the principle of the conservation of energy.
In 1851 Lord Kelvin (Sir W. Thomson), by the use of his then
newly-invented electrometer, was able to confirm Volta's obser-
vations on contact electricity by irrefutable evidence, but the
contact theory of the voltaic pile was then placed on a basis
consistent with the principle of the conservation of energy.
A. A. de la Rive and Faraday were ardent supporters of the
chemical theory of the pile, and even at the present time opinions
of physicists can hardly be said to be in entire accordance as to
the source of the electromotive force in a voltaic couple or pile.*
Improvements in the form of the voltaic pile were almost
immediately made by W. Cruickshank (:74s-i8oo), Dr W. H.
Wollaston and Sir H. Davy, and these, together with other
eminent continental chemists, such as A. F. de Fourcroy, L. J.
Th6nard and J. W. Ritter (1776-1810), ardently prosecuted
research with the new instrument. One of the first discoveries
made with it was its power to electrolyse or chemically decom-
pose certain solutions. William Nicholson (1733-1815) and Sir
Anthony Carlisle (1768-1840) in 1800 constructed a pile of
silver and zinc plates, and placing the terminal wires in water
noticed the evolution from these wires of bubbles of gas, which
they proved to be oxygen and hydrogen. These two gases, as
Cavendish and James Watt had shown in 1784, were actually
the constituents of water. From that date it was clearly recog-
nized that a fresh implement of great power had been given
to the chemist. Large voltaic piles were then constructed by
Andrew Crosse (1784-1855) and Sir H. Davy, and improvements
initiated by Wollaston and Robert Hare (1781-1858) of Phila-
delphia. In 1806 Davy communicated to the Royal Society
of London a celebrated paper on some " Chemical Agencies of
Electricity," and after providing himself at the Royal Institution
of London with a battery of several hundred cells, he announced
in 1807 his great discovery of the electrolytic decomposition of
the alkalis, potash and soda, obtaining therefrom the metals
potassium and sodium. In July 1808 Davy laid a request
before the managers of the Royal Institution that they would
set on foot a subscription for the purchase of a specially large
voltaic battery; as a result he was provided with one of 2000
pairs of plates, and the first experiment performed with it was
the production of the electric arc light between carbon poles.
Davy followed up his initial work with a long and brilliant
series of electrochemical investigations described for the most
part in the Phil. Trans, of the Royal Society.
Magnetic Action of Electric Current. Noticing an analogy
between the polarity of the voltaic pile and that of the magnet,
philosophers had long been anxious to discover a relation between
the two, but twenty years elapsed after the invention of the pile
before Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851), professor of natural
philosophy in the university of Copenhagen, made in 1819 the
discovery which has immortalized his name. In the Annals of
Philosophy (1820, 16, p. 273) is to be found an English translation
of Oersted's original Latin essay (entitled " Experiments on the
Effect of a Current of Electricity on the Magnetic Needle "),
dated the 2ist of July 1820, describing his discovery. In it
Oersted describes the action he considers is taking place around
1 Faraday discussed the chemical theory of the pile and arguments
in support of it in the 8th and i6th scries of his Experimental Re-
searches on Electricity. De la Rive reviews the subject in his large
Treatise on Electricity and Magneslism, vol. ii. ch. lii. The writer
made a contribution to the discussion in 1874 in a paper on " The
Contact Theory of the Galvanic Cell," Phil. Mag., 1874, 47, p. 401.
Sir Oliver Lodge reviewed the whole position in a paper in 1885.
" On the Seat of the Electromotive Force in a Voltaic Cell," Journ.
Inst. Elec. Eng., 1885, 14, p. 186.
184
ELECTRICITY
the conductor joining the extremities of the pile; he speaks of
it as the electric conflict, and says: " It is sufficiently evident
that the electric conflict is not confined to the conductor, but is
dispersed pretty widely in the circumjacent space. We may
likewise conclude that this conflict performs circles round the
wire, for without this condition it seems impossible that one part
of the wire when placed below the magnetic needle should drive
its pole to the east, and when placed above it, to the west."
Oersted's important discovery was the fact that when a wire
joining the end plates of a voltaic pile is held near a pivoted
magnet or compass needle, the latter is deflected and places itself
more or less transversely to the wire, the direction depending
upon whether the wire is above or below the needle, and on the
manner in which the copper or zinc ends of the pile are connected
to it. It is clear, moreover, that Oersted clearly recognized the
existence of what is now called the magnetic field round the
conductor. This discovery of Oersted, like that of Volta, stimu-
lated philosophical investigation in a high degree.
Electrodynamics. On the 2nd of October 1820, A. M. Ampere
presented to the French Academy of Sciences an important
memoir, 1 in which he summed up the results of his own and
D. F. J. Arago's previous investigations in the new science of
electromagnetism, and crowned that labour by the announcement
of his great discovery of the dynamical action between conductors
conveying the electric currents. Ampere in this paper gave an
account of his discovery that conductors conveying electric
currents exercise a mutual attraction or repulsion on one another,
currents flowing in the same direction in parallel conductors
attracting, and those in opposite directions repelling. Respecting
this achievement when developed in its experimental and
mathematical completeness, Clerk Maxwell says that it was
" perfect in form and unassailable in accuracy." By a series
of well-chosen experiments Ampere established the laws of this
mutual action, and not only explained observed facts by a
brilliant train of mathematical analysis, but predicted others
subsequently experimentally realized. These investigations led
him to the announcement of the fundamental law of action
between elements of current, or currents in infinitely short
lengths of linear conductors, upon one another at a distance;
summed up in compact expression this law states that the action
is proportional to the product of the current strengths of the two
elements, and the lengths of the two elements, and inversely
proportional to the square of the distance between the two
elements, and also directly proportional to a function of the angles
which the line joining the elements makes with the directions
of the two elements respectively. Nothing is more remarkable
in the history of discovery than the manner in which Ampere
seized upon the right clue which enabled him to disentangle the
complicated phenomena of electrodynamics and to deduce them
all as a consequence of one simple fundamental law, which
occupies in electrodynamics the position of the Newtonian law
of gravitation in physical astronomy.
In 1821 Michael Faraday (1791-1867), who was destined
later on to do so much for the science of electricity, discovered
electromagnetic rotation, having succeeded in causing a wire
conveying a voltaic current to rotate continuously round the pole
of a permanent magnet. 2 This experiment was repeated hi a
variety of forms by A. A. De la Rive, Peter Barlow (1776-1862),
William Ritchie (1790-1837), William Sturgeon (1783-1850),
and others; and Davy (Phil. Trans., 1823) showed that when two
wires connected with the pole of a battery were dipped into a
cup of mercury placed on the pole of a powerful magnet, the
fluid rotated in opposite directions about the two electrodes.
Electromagnetism. In 1820 Arago (Ann. Chim. Phys., 1820,
15, p. 94) and Davy (Annals of Philosophy, 1821) discovered
independently the power of the electric current to magnetize
1 " Mfemoire sur la th6orie mathematique des phenomenes lectro-
dynamiques," Memoires de I'institut, 1820, 6; see also Ann. de
Chim., 1820, 15.
' See M. Faraday, " On some new Electro-Magnetical Motions
and on the Theory of Magnetism," Quarterly Journal of Science,
1822, 12, p. 74; or Experimental Researches on Electricity, vol. ii.
p. 127.
iron and steel. Felix Savary (1797-1841) made some very
curious observations in 1827 on the magnetization of steel
needles placed at different distances from a wire conveying the
discharge of a Leyden jar (Ann. Chim. Phys., 1827, 34). W.
Sturgeon in 1824 wound a copper wire round a bar of iron bent
in the shape of a horseshoe, and passing a voltaic current through
the wire showed that the iron became powerfully magnetized
as long as the connexion with the pile was maintained (Trans.
Soc. Arts, 1825). These researches gave us the electromagnet,
almost as potent an instrument of research and invention as the
pile itself (see ELECTROMAGNETISM).
Ampere had already previously shown that a spiral conductor
or solenoid when traversed by an electric current possesses
magnetic polarity, and that two such solenoids act upon one
another when traversed by electric currents as if they were
magnets. Joseph Henry, in the United States, first suggested
the construction of what were then called intensity electro-
magnets, by winding upon a horseshoe-shaped piece of soft
iron many superimposed windings of copper wire, insulated by
covering it with silk or cotton, and then sending through the
coils the current from a voltaic battery. The dependence of
the intensity of magnetization on the strength of the current was
subsequently investigated (Pogg. Ann. Phys., 1839, 4?) by
H. F. E. Lenz (1804-1865) and M. H. von Jacobi (1801-1874).
J. P. Joule found that magnetization did not increase proportion-
ately with the current, but reached a maximum (Sturgeon's
Annals of Electricity, 1839, 4). Further investigations on this
subject were carried on subsequently by W. E. Weber (1804-
1891), J. H. J. Muller (1800-1875), C. J. Dub (1817-1873),
G. H. Wiedemann (1826-1899), and others, and in modern times
by H. A. Rowland (1848-1901), Shelford Bidwell (b. 1848),
John Hopkinson (1849-1898), J. A. Ewing (b. 1855) and many
others. Electric magnets of great power were soon constructed
in this manner by Sturgeon, Joule, Henry, Faraday and Brewster.
Oersted's discovery in 1819 was indeed epoch-making in the
degree to which it stimulated other research. It led at once to
the construction of the galvanometer as a means of detecting
and measuring the electric current in a conductor. In 1820
J. S. C. Schweigger (1779-1857) with his " multiplier " made
an advance upon Oersted's discovery, by winding the wire
conveying the electric current many times round the pivoted
magnetic needle and thus increasing the deflection; and L.
Nobili (1784-1835) in 1825 conceived the ingenious idea of
neutralizing the directive effect of the earth's magnetism by
employing a pair- of magnetized steel needles fixed to one axis,
but with their magnetic poles pointing in opposite directions.
Hence followed the astatic multiplying galvanometer.
Electrodynamic Rotation. The study of the relation between
the magnet and the circuit conveying an electric current then
led Arago to the discovery of the " magnetism of rotation."
He found that a vibrating magnetic compass needle came to
rest sooner when placed over a plate of copper than otherwise,
and also that a plate of copper rotating under a suspended
magnet tended to drag the magnet in the same direction. The
matter was investigated by Charles Babbage, Sir J. F. W.
Herschel, Peter Barlow and others, but did not receive a final
explanation until after the discovery of electromagnetic induction
by Faradayin 1831. Ampere's investigations had led electricians
to see that the force acting upon a magnetic pole due to a current
in a neighbouring conductor was such as to tend to cause the
pole to travel round the conductor. Much ingenuity had,
however, to be expended before a method was found of exhibiting
such a rotation. Faraday first succeeded by the simple but
ingenious device of using a light magnetic needle tethered
flexibly to the bottom of a cup containing mercury so that one
pole of the magnet was just above the surface of the mercury.
On bringing down on to the mercury surface a wire conveying
an electric current, and allowing the current to pass through the
mercury and out at the bottom, the magnetic pole at once began
to rotate round the wire (Eper. Res., 1822, 2, p. 148). Faraday
and others then discovered, as already mentioned, means to
make the conductor conveying the current rotate round a
ELECTRICITY
185
magnetic pole, and Ampere showed that a magnet could be made
to rotate on its own axis when a current was passed through it.
The difficulty in this case consisted in discovering means by
which the current could be passed through one half of the magnet
without passing it through the other half. This, however, was
overcome by sending the current out at the centre of the magnet
by means of a short length of wire dipping into an annular groove
containing mercury. Barlow, Sturgeon and others then showed
that a copper disk could be made to rotate between the poles
of a horseshoe magnet when a current was passed through the
disk from the centre to the circumference, the disk being rendered
at the same time freely movable by making a contact with the
circumference by means of a mercury trough. These experiments
furnished the first elementary forms of electric motor, since it
was then seen that rotatory motion could be produced in masses
of metal by the mutual action of conductors conveying electric
current and magnetic fields. By his discovery of thermo-
electricity in i8 (Pou- Ann. Phys., 6), T. J. Seebeck (1770-
1831) opened up a new region of research (see THERMO-ELEC-
TRICITY). James Gumming (1777-1861) in 18*3 (Annals of
Philosophy, 1823) found that the thermo-electric series varied
with the temperature, and J. C. A. Peltier (1785-1845) in 1834
discovered that a current passed across the junction of two
metals either generated or absorbed heat.
Okm's Lav. In 1827 Dr G. S. Ohm (1787-1854) rendered a
great service to electrical science by his mathematical investiga-
tion of the voltaic circuit, and publication of his paper, Die
gahaniscke Keltr mathemalisch bearbcitet. Before his time,
ideas on the measurable quantities with which we are concerned
in an electric circuit were extremely vague. Ohm introduced
the clear idea of current strength as an effect produced by
electromotive force acting as a cause in a circuit having resistance
as its quality, and showed that the current was directly propor-
tional to the electromotive force and inversely as the resistance.
Ohm's law, as it is called, was based upon an analogy with the
flow of beat in a circuit, discussed by Fourier. Ohm introduced
the definite conception of the distribution along the circuit of
" elect roscopic force " or tension (Spannung), corresponding to
the modern term potential. Ohm verified his law by the aid of
thermo-electric piles as sources of electromotive force, and Davy,
C. S. M. Pouillet (1791-1868), A. C. Becquerel (1788-1878),
G. T. Fechner (1801-1887), R. H. A. Kohlrausch (1800-1858)
and others laboured at its confirmation. In more recent times,
1876, it was rigorously tested by G. Chrystal (b. 1851) at Clerk
Maxwell's instigation (see Brit. Assoc. Report, 1876, p. 36), and
although at its original enunciation its meaning was not at first
fully apprehended, it soon took its place as the expression of the
fundamental law of electrokinetics.
Induction of Electric Currents. In 1831 Faraday began the
investigations on electromagnetic induction which proved more
fertile in far-reaching practical consequences than any of those
which even his genius gave to the world. These advances all
centre round his supreme discovery of the induction of electric
currents. Fully familiar with the fact that an electric charge
upon one conductor could produce a charge of opposite sign
upon a neighbouring conductor, Faraday asked himself whether
an electric current passing through a conductor could not in any
like manner induce an electric current in some neighbouring
conductor. His first experiments on this subject were made in
the month of November 1825, but it was not until the 2Qth of
August 1831 that he attained success. On that date he had
provided himself with an iron ring, over which he had wound
two coils of insulated copper wire. One of these coils was con-
nected with the voltaic battery and the other with the galvano-
meter. He found that at the moment the current in the battery
circuit was started or stopped, transitory currents appeared
in the galvanometer circuit in opposite directions. In ten days
of brilliant investigation, guided by clear insight from the very
first into the meaning of the phenomena concerned, he established
experimentally the fact that a current may be induced in a
conducting circuit simply by the variation in a magnetic field,
the lines of force of which are linked with that circuit. The
whole of Faraday's investigations on this subject can be summed
up in the single statement that if a conducting circuit is placed
in a magnetic field, and if either by variation of the field or by
movement or variation of the form of the circuit the total
magnetic flux linked with the circuit is varied, an electromotive
force is set up in that circuit which at any instant is measured
by the rate at which the total flux linked with the circuit is
changing.
Amongst the memorable achievements of the ten days which
Faraday devoted to this investigation was the discovery that
a current could be induced in a conducting wire simply by moving
it in the neighbourhood of a magnet. One form which this
experiment took was that of rotating a copper disk between the
poles of a powerful electric magnet. He then found that a con-
ductor, the ends of which were connected respectively with the
centre and edge of the disk, was traversed by an electric current.
This important fact laid the foundation for all subsequent
inventions which finally led to the production of electromagnetic
or dynamo-electric machines.
THIRD PERIOD. With this supremely important discovery
of Faraday's we enter uporj the third period of electrical research,
in which that philosopher himself was the leading figure. He
not only collected the facts concerning electromagnetic induction
so industriously that nothing of importance remained for future
discovery, and embraced them all in one law of exquisite sim-
plicity, but he introduced his famous conception of lines of
force which changed entirely the mode of regarding electrical
phenomena. The French mathematicians, Coulomb, Biot,
Poisson and Ampere, had been content to accept the fact that
electric charges or currents in conductors could exert forces on
other charges or conductors at a distance without inquiring
into the means by which this action at a distance was produced.
Faraday's mind, however, revolted against this notion; he felt
intuitively that these distance actions must be the result of
unseen operations in the interposed medium. Accordingly
when he sprinkled iron filings on a card held over a magnet and
revealed the curvilinear system of lines of force (see MAGNETISM),
he regarded these fragments of iron as simple indicators of a
physical state in the space already in existence round the magnet.
To him a magnet was not simply a bar of steel; it was the
core and origin of a system of lines of magnetic force attached
to it and moving with it. Similarly he came to see an electrified
body as a centre of a system of lines of electrostatic force. All
the space round magnets,- currents and electric charges was
therefore to Faraday the seat of corresponding lines of magnetic
or electric force. He proved by systematic experiments that the
electromotive forces set up in conductors by their motions in
magnetic fields or by the induction of other currents in the
field were due to the secondary conductor cutting lines of magnetic
force. He invented the term " electrotonic state " to signify
the total magnetic flux due to a conductor conveying a current,
which was linked with any secondary circuit in the field or even
with itself.
Faraday's Researches. Space compels us to limit our account
of the scientific work done by Faraday in the succeeding twenty
years, in elucidating electrical phenomena and adding to the
knowledge thereon, to the very briefest mention. We must
refer the reader for further information to his monumental work
entitled Experimental Researches on Electricity, in three volumes,
reprinted from the Phil. Trans, between 1831 and 1851. Faraday
divided these researches into various series. The ist and 2nd
concern the discovery of magneto-electric induction already
mentioned. The 3rd series (1833) he devoted to discussion of
the identity of electricity derived from various sources, frictional,
voltaic, animal and thermal, and he proved by rigorous experi-
ments the identity and similarity in properties of the electricity
generated by these various methods. The sth series (1833)13
occupied with his electrochemical researches. In the 7th series
(1834) he defines a number of new terms, such as electrolyte,
electrolysis, anode and cathode, &c., in connexion with electro-
lytic phenomena, which were immediately adopted into the
vocabulary of science. His most important contribution at
i86
ELECTRICITY
this date was the invention of the voltameter and his enunciation
of the laws of electrolysis. The voltameter provided a means
of measuring quantity of electricity, and in the hands of Faraday
and his successors became an appliance of fundamental im-
portance. The 8th series is occupied with a discussion of the
theory of the voltaic pile, in which Faraday accumulates evidence
to prove that the source of the energy of the pile must be chemical.
He returns also to this subject in the i6th series. In the gth
series (1834) he announced the discovery of the important
property of electric conductors, since called their self-induction
or inductance, a discovery in which, however, he was anticipated
by Joseph Henry in the United States. The nth series (1837)
deals with electrostatic induction and the statement of the
important fact of the specific inductive capacity of insulators
or dielectrics. This discovery was made in November 1837
when Faraday had no knowledge of Cavendish's previous
researches into this matter. The ipth series (1845) contains
an account of his brilliant discovery of the rotation of the plane
of polarized light by transparent dielectrics placed in a magnetic
field, a relation which established for the first time a practical
connexion between the phenomena of electricity and light. The
2oth series (1845) contains an account of his researches on the
universal action of magnetism and diamagnetic bodies. The
22nd series (1848) is occupied with the discussion of magneto-
crystallic force and the abnormal behaviour of various crystals
in a magnetic field. In the 25th series (1850) he made known
his discovery of the magnetic character of oxygen gas, and the
important principle that the terms paramagnetic and dia-
magnetic are relative. In the 26th series (1850) he returned
to a discussion of magnetic lines of force, and illuminated the
whole subject of the magnetic circuit by his transcendent insight
into the intricate phenomena concerned. In 1855 he brought
these researches to a conclusion by a general article on magnetic
philosophy, having placed the whole subject of magnetism and
electromagnetism on an entirely novel and solid basis. In
addition to this he provided the means for studying the phenomena
not only qualitatively, but also quantitatively, by the profoundly
ingenious instruments he invented for that purpose.
Electrical Measurement. Faraday's ideas thus pressed upon
electricians the necessity for the quantitative measurement of
electrical phenomena. 1 It has been already mentioned that
Schweigger invented in 1820 the " multiplier," and Nobili in
1825 the astatic galvanometer. C. S. M. Pouillet in 1837 contri-
buted the sine and tangent compass; and W. E. Weber effected
great improvements in them and in the construction and use
of galvanometers. In 1849 H. von Helmholtz devised a tangent
galvanometer with two coils. The measurement of electric
resistance then engaged the attention of electricians. By his
Memoirs in the Phil. Trans, in 1843, Sir Charles Wheatstone gave
a great impulse to this study. He invented the rheostat and
improved the resistance balance, invented by S. H. Christie
(1784-1865) in 1833, and subsequently called the Wheatstone
Bridge. (See his Scientific Papers, published by the Physical
Society of London, p. 129.) Weber about this date invented
the electrodynamometer, and applied the mirror and scale
method of reading deflections, and in co-operation with C. F.
Gauss introduced a system of absolute measurement of electric
and magnetic phenomena. In 1846 Weber proceeded with
improved apparatus to test Ampere's laws of electrodynamics.
In 1845 H. G. Grassmann (1809-1877) published (Pogg. Ann.
vol. 64) his " Neue Theorie der Electrodynamik," in which he
gave an elementary law differing from that of Ampere but leading
to the same results for closed circuits. In the same year F. E.
Neumann published another law. In 1846 Weber announced
his famous hypothesis concerning the connexion of electrostatic
and electrodynamic phenomena. The work of Neumann and
Weber had been stimulated by that of H. F. E. Lenz (1804-1865),
J Amongst the most important of Faraday's quantitative re-
searches must be included the ingenious and convincing proofs he
provided that the production of any quantity of electricity of one
sign is always accompanied by the production of an equal quantity
of electricity of the opposite sign. See Experimental Researches on
Electricity, vol. i. 1177.
whose researches (Pogg. Ann., 1834, 31; 1835, 34) among other
results led him to the statement of the law by means of which
the direction of the induced current can be predicted from the
theory of Ampere, the rule being that the direction of the induced
current is always such that its electrodynamic action tends to
oppose the motion which produces it.
Neumann in 1845 did for electromagnetic induction what
Ampere did for electrodynamics, basing his researches upon the
experimental laws of Lenz. He discovered a function, which
has been called the potential of one circuit on another, from
which he deduced a theory of induction, completely in accordance
with experiment. Weber at the same time deduced the mathe-
matical laws of induction from his elementary law of electrical
action, and with his improved instruments arrived at accurate
verifications of the law of induction which by this time had been
developed mathematically by Neumann and himself. In 1849
G. R. Kirchhoff determined experimentally in a certain case
the absolute value of the current induced by one circuit in
another, and in the same year Erik Edland (1819-1888) made
a series of careful experiments on the induction of electric
currents which further established received theories. These
labours laid the foundation on which was subsequently erected
a complete system for the absolute measurement of electric
and magnetic quantities, referring them all to the fundamental
units of mass, length and time. Helmholtz gave at the same
time a mathematical theory of induced currents and a valuable
series of experiments in support of them (Pogg. Ann., 1851).
This great investigator and luminous expositor just before that
time had published his celebrated essay, Die Erhaltung der
Kraft (" The Conservation of Energy "), which brought to a
focus ideas which had been accumulating in consequence of the
work of J. P. Joule, J. R. von Mayer and others, on the trans-
formation of various forms of physical energy, and in particular
the mechanical equivalent of heat. Helmholtz brought to bear
upon the subject not only the most profound mathematical
attainments, but immense experimental skill, and his work in
connexion with this subject is classical.
Lord Kelvin's Work. About 1842 Lord Kelvin (then William
Thomson) began that long career of theoretical and practical
discovery and invention in electrical science which revolutionized
every department of pure and applied electricity. His early
contributions to electrostatics and electrometry are to be found
described in his Reprint of Papers on Electrostatics and Magnetism
(1872), and his later work in his collected Mathematical and
Physical Papers. By his studies in electrostatics, his elegant
method of electrical images, his development of the theory of
potential and application of the principle of conservation of
energy, as well as by his inventions in connexion with electro-
metry, he laid the foundations of our modern knowledge of
electrostatics. His work on the electrodynamic qualities of
metals, thermo-electricity, and his contributions to galvanometry,
were not less massive and profound. From 1842 onwards to the
end of the igth century, he was one of the great master workers
in the field of electrical discovery and research. 2 In 1853 he
published a paper " On Transient Electric Currents " (Phil.
Mag., 1853 [4], 5, p. 393), in which he applied the principle of
the conservation of energy to the discharge of a Leyden jar.
He added definiteness to the idea of the self-induction or induct-
ance of an electric circuit, and gave a mathematical expression
for the current flowing out of a Leyden jar during its discharge.
He confirmed an opinion already previously expressed by
Helmholtz and by Henry, that in some circumstances this dis-
charge is oscillatory in nature, consisting of an alternating electric
current of high frequency. These theoretical predictions were
confirmed and others, subsequently, by the work of B. W.
Feddersen (b. 1832), C. A. Paalzow (b. 1823), and it was then
seen that the familiar phenomena of the discharge of a Leyden
2 In this connexion the work of George Green (1793-1841) must
not be forgotten. Green's Essay on the Application of Mathematical
Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism, published in
1828, contains the first exposition of the theory of potential. An
important theorem contained in it is known as Green's theorem,
and is of great value.
ELECTRICITY
187
jar provided the means of generating electric oscillations of very
high frequency.
TtUfrapky. Turning to practical applications of electricity,
we may note thai electric telegraphy took its rise in 1820,
beginning with a suggestion of Ampire immediately after
Oersted's discovery. It was established by the work of Weber
and Gauss at Gottingrn in 1836, and (li.it of C. A. Su-inheil
(i,Soi-i87o) of Munich, Sir \V. F. Cooke (1806-1879) and Sir
C. Wheatstone in England, Joseph Henry and S. F. B. Morse
(i;iji-i87j) in the United States in 1837. In 1845 submarine
telegraphy was inaugurated by the laying of an insulated con-
ductor across the English Channel by the brothers Brett, and
their temporary success was followed by the laying in 1851
of a permanent Dover-Calais cable by T. R. Crampton. In
' the project for an Atlantic submarine cubic took shape
and the Atlantic Telegraph Company was formed with a capital
of 350.000, with Sir (.'h.irles Bright as enginccr-in-chief and
E. O. \V. Whitehouse as electrician. The phenomena connected
with the propagation of electric signals by underground insulated
wires had already engaged the attention of Faraday in 1854,
who pointed out the Lcyden-jar-likc action of an insulated
subterranean wire. Scientific and practical questions connected
with the possibility of laying an Atlantic submarine cable then
began to be discussed, and Lord Kelvin was foremost in develop-
ing true scientific knowledge on this subject, and in the invention
of appliances for utilizing it. One of his earliest and most useful
contributions (in 1858) was the invention of the mirror galvano--
meter. Abandoning the long and somewhat heavy magnetic
needles that had been used up to that date in galvanometers,
he attached to the back of a very small mirror made of micro-
scopic glass a fragment of magnetized watch-spring, and sus-
pended the mirror and needle by means of a cocoon fibre in the
centre of a coil of insulated wire. By this simple device he
provided a means of measuring small electric currents far in
advance of anything yet accomplished, and this instrument
proved not only most useful in pure scientific researches, but at
the same time was of the utmost value in connexion with sub-
marine telegraphy. The history of the initial failures and final
success in laying the Atlantic cable has been well told by Mr.
Charles Bright(see TheStoryof the Atlantic Cable, London, 1003).'
The first cable laid in 1857 broke on the nth of August during
laying. The second attempt in 1858 was successful, but the
cable completed on the 5th of August 1858 broke down on the
zoth of October 1858, after 732 messages had passed through it.
The third cable laid in 1865 was lost on the 2nd of August 1865,
but in 1866 a final success was attained and the 1865 cable also
recovered and completed. Lord Kelvin's mirror galvanometer
was first used in receiving signals through the short-lived 1858
cable. In 1867 he invented his beautiful siphon-recorder for
receiving and recording the signals through long cables. Later,
in conjunction with Prof. Fleeming Jcnkin, he devised his auto-
matic curb sender, an appliance for sending signals by means
of punched telegraphic paper tape. Lord Kelvin's contributions
to the science of exact dectric measurement 5 were enormous.
His ampere-balances, voltmeters and electrometers, and double
bridge, are elsewhere described in detail (see AMPEREMETER;
ELECTROMETER, and WHEATSTONE'S BRIDGE).
Dynamo. The work of Faraday from 1831 to 1851 stimulated
and originated an immense mass of scientific research, but at
the same time practical inventors had not been slow to perceive
that it was capable of purely technical application. Faraday's
copper disk rotated between the poles of a magnet, and pro-
ducing thereby an electric current, became the parent of
1 See alo his Submarine Telegraphs (London, 1898).
'The quantitative study of electrical phenomena has been
enormously assisted by the establishment of the absolute system of
electrical measurement due originally to Gauss and Weber. The
British Association for the advancement of science appointed in
1861 a committee on electrical units, which made its first report in
1862 and has existed ever since. In this work Lord Kelvin took a
leading part. The popularization of the system was greatly assisted
by the publication by Prof. J. D. Evrrett of The C.C.S. System of
Until 'London, 1891).
innumerable machines in which mechanical energy was directly
converted into the energy of electric currents. Of these
m.u liines, originally called magneto-electric machines, one of
the first was devised in 1832 by H. Pixii. It consisted of a fixed
horseshoe armature wound over with insulated copper wire in
Front of which revolved about a vertical axis a horseshoe magnet .
Pixii, who invented the split tube commutator for converting
the alternating current so produced into a continuous current
in the external circuit, was followed by J. Saxton, E. M. Clarke,
and many others in the development of the above-described
magneto-electric machine. In 1857 E. W. Siemens effected a
great improvement by inventing a shuttle armature and improv-
ing the shape of the field magnet. Subsequently similar machines
with electromagnets were introduced by Henry Wilde (b. 1833),
Siemens, Wheatstone, W. Ladd and others, and the principle
of self-excitation was suggested by Wilde, C. F. Varley (1828-
1883), Siemens and Wheatstone (see DYNAMO). These machines
about 1866 and 1867 began to be constructed on a commercial
scale and were employed in the production of the electric light.
The discovery of electric-current induction also led to the pro-
duction of the induction coil (q.v.), improved and brought to its
present perfection by W. Sturgeon, E. R. Ritchie, N. J. Callan,
H. D. Riihmkorff (1803-1877), A. H. L. Fizeau, and more recently
by A. Apps and modern inventors. About the same time
Fizeau and J. B. L. Foucault devoted attention to the invention
of automatic apparatus for the production of Davy's electric
arc (see LIGHTING: Electric), and these appliances in conjunction
with magneto-electric machines were soon employed inlighthouse
work. With the advent of large magneto-electric machines the
era of elect rotechnics was fairly entered, and this period, which
may be said to terminate about 1867 to 1869, was consummated
by the theoretical work of Clerk Maxwell.
Maxwell's Researches. James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)
entered on his electrical studies with a desire to ascertain if the
ideas of Faraday, so different from those of Poisson and the
French mathematicians, could be made the foundation of a
mathematical method and brought under the power of analysis. 3
Maxwell started with the conception that all clectricandmagnetic
phenomena are due to effects taking place in the dielectric or in
the ether if the space be vacuous. The phenomena of light had
compelled physicists to postulate a space-filling medium, to which
the name ether had been given, and Henry and Faraday had long
previously suggested the idea of an electromagnetic medium.
The vibrations of this medium constitute the agency called
light. Maxwell saw that it was unphilosophical to assume a
multiplicity of ethers or media until it had been proved that one
would not fulfil all the requirements. He formulated the con-
ception, therefore, of electric charge as consisting in a displace-
ment taking place in the dielectric or electromagnetic medium
(see ELECTROSTATICS). Maxwell never committed himself to a
precise definition of the physical nature of electric displacement,
but considered it as defining that which Faraday had called the
polarization in the insulator, or, what is equivalent, the number
of lines of electrostatic force passing normally through a unit of
area in the dielectric. A second fundamental conception of
Maxwell was that the electric displacement whilst it is changing
is in effect an electric current, and creates, therefore, magnetic
force. The total current at any point in a dielectric must be
considered as made up of two parts: first, the true conduction
current, if it exists; and second, the rate of change of dielectric
displacement. The fundamental fact connecting electric cur-
rents and magnetic fields is that the line integral of magnetic
force taken once round a conductor conveying an electric current
is equal to 4 ir-times the surface integral of the current density,
or to 4 T-times the total current flowing through the closed
line round which the integral is taken (see ELECTROKINETICS).
A second relation connecting magnetic and electric force is
* The first paper in which Maxwell began to translate Faraday's
conceptions into mathematical language was " On Faraday's Lines
of Force," read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society on the loth
of December 1855 and the nth of February 1856. See Maxwell's
Collected Scientific Papers, \. 155.
i88
ELECTRICITY
based upon Faraday's fundamental law of induction, that the
rate of change of the total magnetic flux linked with a conductor
is a measure of the electromotive force created in it (see ELECTRO-
KINETICS). Maxwell also introduced in this connexion the
notion of the vector potential. Coupling together these ideas
he was finally enabled to prove that the propagation of electric
and magnetic force takes place through space with a certain
velocity determined by the dielectric constant and the magnetic
permeability of the medium. To take a simple instance, if we
consider an electric current as flowing in a conductor it is, as
Oersted discovered, surrounded by closed lines of magnetic
force. If we imagine the current in the conductor to be in-
stantaneously reversed in direction, the magnetic force surround-
ing it would not be instantly reversed everywhere in direction,
but the reversal would be propagated outwards through space
with a certain velocity which Maxwell showed was inversely
as the square root of the product of the magnetic permeability
and the dielectric constant or specific inductive capacity of the
medium.
These great results were announced by him for the first time
in a paper presented in 1864 to the Royal Society of London
and printed in the Phil. Trans, for 1865, entitled " A Dynamical
Theory of the Electromagnetic Field." Maxwell showed in this
paper that the velocity of propagation of an electromagnetic
impulse through space could also be determined by certain experi-
mental methods which consisted in measuring the same electric
quantity, capacity, resistance or potential in two ways. W. E.
Weber had already laid the foundations of the absolute system
of electric and magnetic measurement, and proved that a
quantity of electricity could be measured either by the force
it exercises upon another static or stationary quantity of electri-
city, or magnetically by the force this quantity of electricity
exercises upon a magnetic pole when flowing through a neighbour-
ing conductor. The two systems of measurement were called
respectively the electrostatic and the electromagnetic systems
(see UNITS, PHYSICAL). Maxwell suggested new methods for
the determination of this ratio of the electrostatic to the electro-
magnetic units, and by experiments of great ingenuity was able
to show that this ratio, which is also that of the velocity of the
propagation of an electromagnetic impulse through space, is
identical with that of light. This great fact once ascertained,
it became clear that the notion that electric phenomena are
affections of the luminiferous ether was no longer a mere specula-
tion but a scientific theory capable of verification. An immediate
deduction from Maxwell's theory was that in transparent dielec-
trics, the dielectric constant or specific inductive capacity should
be numerically equal to the square of the refractive index for very
long electric waves. At the time when Maxwell developed his
theory the dielectric constants of only a few transparent insulators
were known and these were for the most part measured with
steady or unidirectional electromotive force. The only refractive
indices which had been measured were the optical refractive
indices of a number of transparent substances. Maxwell made
a comparison between the optical refractive index and the
dielectric constant of paraffin wax, and the approximation
between the numerical values of the square of the first and that
of the last was sufficient to show that there was a basis for further
work. Maxwell's electric and magnetic ideas were gathered
together in a great mathematical treatise on electricity and
magnetism which was published in 1873. * This book stimulated
in a most remarkable degree theoretical and practical research
into the phenomena of electricity and magnetism. Experi-
mental methods were devised for the further exact measurements
of the electromagnetic velocity and numerous determinations
of the dielectric constants of various solids, liquids and gases,
and comparisons of these with the corresponding optical re-
fractive indices were conducted. This early work indicated
that whilst there were a number of cases in which the square
1 A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (2 vols.), by James
Clerk Maxwell, sometime professor of experimental physics m the
university of Cambridge. A second edition was edited by Sir W. D.
Niven in 1881 and a third by Prof. Sir J. J. Thomson in 1891.
of optical refractive index for long waves and the dielectric
constant of the same substance were sufficiently close to afford
an apparent confirmation of Maxwell's theory, yet in other
cases there were considerable divergencies. L. Boltzmann
(1844-1907) made a large number of determinations for solids
and for gases, and the dielectric constants of many solid and
liquid substances were determined by N. N. Schiller (b. 1848),
P. A. Silow (b. 1850), J. Hopkinson and others. The accumu-
lating determinations of the numerical value of the electro-
magnetic velocity (11) from the earliest made by Lord Kelvin
(Sir W. Thomson) with the aid of King and MKichan, or those
of Clerk Maxwell, W. E. Ayrton and J. Perry, to more recent
ones by J. J. Thomson, F. Himstedt, H. A. Rowland, E. B. Rosa,
J. S. H. Pellat and H. A. Abraham, showed it to be very close
to the best determinations of the velocity of light (see UNITS,
PHYSICAL). On the other hand, the divergence in some cases
between the square of the optical refractive index and the
dielectric constant was very marked. Hence although Maxwell's
theory of electrical action when first propounded found many
adherents in Great Britain, it did not so much dominate opinion
on the continent of Europe.
FOURTH PERIOD. With the publication of Clerk Maxwell's
treatise in 1873, we enter fully upon the fourth and modern
period of electrical research. On the technical side the invention
of a new form of armature for dynamo electric machines by
Z. T. Gramme (1826-1901) inaugurated a departure from which
we may date modern electrical engineering. It will be convenient
to deal with technical development first.
Technical Development. As far back as 1841 large magneto-
electric machines driven by steam power had been constructed,
and in 1856 F. H. Holmes had made a magneto machine with
multiple permanent magnets which was installed in 1862 in
Dungeness lighthouse. Further progress was made in 1867
when H. Wilde introduced the use of electromagnets for the field
magnets. In 1860 Dr Antonio Pacinotti invented what is now
called the toothed ring winding for armatures and described it
in an Italian journal, but it attracted little notice until reinvented
in 1870 by Gramme. In this new form of bobbin, the armature
consisted of a ring of iron wire wound over with an endless coil
of wire and connected to a commutator consisting of copper bars
insulated from one another. Gramme dynamos were then soon
made on the self-exciting principle. In 1873 at Vienna the fact
was discovered that a dynamo machine of the Gramme type
could also act as an electric motor and was set in rotation when
a current was passed into it from another similar machine.
Henceforth the electric transmission of power came within the
possibilities of engineering.
Electric Lighting. In 1876, Paul Jablochkov (1847-1894),
a Russian officer, passing through Paris, invented his famous
electric candle, consisting of two rods of carbon placed side by
side and separated from one another by an insulating material.
This invention in conjunction with an alternating current
dynamo provided a new and simple form of electric arc lighting.
Two years afterwards C. F. Brush, in the United States, produced
another efficient form of dynamo and electric arc lamp suitable
for working in series (see LIGHTING: Electric) , and these inven-
tions of Brush and Jablochkov inaugurated commercial arc
lighting. The so-called subdivision of electric light by incan-
descent lighting lamps then engaged attention. E. A. King in
1845 and W. E. Staite in 1848 had made incandescent electric
lamps of an elementary form, and T. A. Edison in 1878 again
attacked the problem of producing light by the incandescence of
platinum. It had by that time become clear that the most
suitable material for an incandescent lamp was carbon contained
in a good vacuum, and St G. Lane Fox and Sir J. W. Swan in
England, and T. A. Edison in the United States, were engaged
in struggling with the difficulties of producing a suitable carbon
incandescence electric lamp. Edison constructed in 1879 a
successful lamp of this type consisting of a vessel wholly of glass
containing a carbon filament made by carbonizing paper or
some other carbonizable material, the vessel being exhausted
and the current led into the filament through platinum wires.
ELECTRICITY
189
In 1870 and iSSo, Edison in the United States, and Swan in
conjunction with (.'. H. Steam in England, succeeded in com-
pletely solving the practical problems. From and after that date
incandescent electric lighting became commercially possible,
and was brought to public notice chiefly by an electrical exhibi-
tion held at the Crystal Palace, near London, in 1882. Edison,
moreover, as well as Lane-Fox, had realized the idea of a public
electric supply station, and the former proceeded to establish
in Pearl Street, New York, in 1881, the first public electric supply
station. A similar station in England was opened in the basement
of a house in Holborn Viaduct, London, in March 1882. Edison,
with copious ingenuity, devised electric meters, electric mains,
lamp fittings and generators complete for the purpose. In 1881
C. A. Faure made an important improvement in the lead
secondary battery which G. Plant* (1834-1889) had invented
in 1859, and storage batteries then began to be developed as
commercial appliances by Faure, Swan, J. S. Sellon and many
others (see ACCUMULATOR). In 1882, numerous electric lighting
companies were formed for the conduct of public and private
lighting, but an electric lighting act passed in that year greatly
hindered commercial progress in Great Britain. Nevertheless
the delay was utilized in the completion of inventions necessary
for the safe and economical distribution of electric current for
the purpose of electric lighting.
Telephone. Going back a few years we find the technical
applications of electrical invention had developed themselves
in other directions. Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 invented
the speaking telephone (q.v.), and Edison and Elisha Gray in
the United States followed almost immediately with other
telephonic inventions for electrically transmitting speech.
About the same time D. E. Hughes in England invented the
microphone. In 1 879 telephone exchanges began to be developed
in the United States, Great Britain and other countries.
Electric Power. Following on the discovery in 1873 of the
reversible action of the dynamo and its use as a motor, efforts
began to be made to apply this knowledge to transmission of
power, and S. D. Field, T. A. Edison, Leo Daft, E. M. Bentley
and W. H. Knight, F. J. Sprague, C. J. Van Depoele and others
between 1880 and 1884 were the pioneers of electric traction. One
of the earliest electric tram cars was exhibited by E. W. and W.
Siemens in Paris in 1881. In 1883 Lucien Gaulard, following a
line of thought opened by Jablochkov, proposed to employ high
pressure alternating currents for electric distributions over wide
areas by means of transformers. His ideas were improved by
Carl Zipernowsky and O. T. Blathy in Hungary and by S. Z.
de Ferranti in England, and the alternating current transformer
(see TRANSFORMERS) came into existence. Polyphase alternators
were first exhibited at the Frankfort electrical exhibition in 1891,
developed as a consequence of scientific researches by Galileo
Ferraris (i847-i897),NikolaTesla,M.O.vonDolivo-Dobrowolsky
and C. E. L. Brown, and long distance transmission of electrical
power by polyphase electrical currents (see POWER TRANS-
MISSION: Electric) was exhibited in operation at Frankfort in
1891. Meanwhile the early continuous current dynamos devised
by Gramme, Siemens and others had been vastly improved in
scientific principle and practical construction by the labours of
Siemens, J. Hopkinson, R. E. B. Crompton, Elihu Thomson,
Rudolf Eickemeyer, Thomas Parker and others, and the theory
of the action of the dynamo had been closely studied by J. and
E. Hopkinson, G. Kapp, S. P. Thompson, C. P. Steinmetz and
J. Swinburne, and great improvements made in the alternating
current dynamo by W. M. Mordey, S. Z. de Ferranti and Messrs
Ganz of Budapest. Thus in twenty years from the invention of
the Gramme dynamo, electrical engineering had developed from
small beginnings into a vast industry. The amendment, in 1888,
of the Electric Lighting Act of 1882, before long caused a huge
development of public electric lighting in Great Britain. By
the end of the iglh century every large city in Europe and in
North and South America was provided with a public electric
supply for the purposes of electric lighting. The various improve-
ments in electric illuminants, such as the Nernst oxide lamp, the
an d osmium incandescent lamps, and improved forms
of arc lamp, enclosed, inverted and flame arcs, are described
under LIGHTING: Electric.
Between 1800 and 1900, electric traction advanced rapidly
in the United States of America but more slowly in England.
In 1902 the success of deep tube electric railways in Great
Britain was assured, and in 1904 main line railways began to
abandon, at least experimentally, the steam locomotive and sub-
stitute for it the electric transmission of power. Long distance
electrical transmission had been before that time exemplified
in the great scheme of utilizing the falls of Niagara. The first
projects were discussed in 1891 and 1892 and completed practic-
ally some ten years later. In this scheme large turbines were
placed at the bottom of hydraulic fall tubes 150 ft. deep, the
turbines being coupled by long shafts with 5000 H.P. alternating
current dynamos on the surface. By these electric current was
generated and transmitted to towns and factories around, being
sent overhead as far as Buffalo, a distance of 18 m. At the end
of the igth century electrochemical industries began to be
developed which depended on the possession of cheap electric
energy. The production of aluminium in Switzerland and
Scotland, carborundum and calcium carbide in the United
States, and soda by the Castner-Kellner process, began to be
conducted on an immense scale. The early work of Sir W.
Siemens on the electric furnace was continued and greatly
extended by Henri Moissan and others on its scientific side, and
electro-chemistry took its place as one of the most promising
departments of technical research and invention. It was
stimulated and assisted by improvements in the construction
of large dynamos and increased knowledge concerning the
control of powerful electric currents.
In the early part of the soth century the distribution in bulk
of electric energy for power purposes in Great Britain began to
assume important proportions. It was seen to be uneconomical
for each city and town to manufacture its own supply since,
owing to the intermittent nature of the demand for current for
lighting, the price had to be kept up to 4d. and 6d. per unit.
It was found that by the manufacture in bulk, even by steam
engines, at primary centres the cost could be considerably
reduced, and in numerous districts in England large power
stations began to be erected between 1003 and 1005 for the
supply of current for power purposes. This involved almost a
revolution in the nature of the tools used, and in the methods
of working, and may ultimately even greatly affect the factory
system and the concentration of population in large towns
which was brought about in the early part of the igth century
by the invention of the steam engine.
Development of Electric Theory.
Turning now to the theory of electricity, we may note the
equally remarkable progress made in 300 years in scientific
insight into the nature of the agency which has so recast the
face of human society. There is no need to dwell upon the
early crude theories of the action of amber and lodestone. In
a true scientific sense no hypothesis was possible, because few
facts had been accumulated. The discoveries of Stephen Gray
and C. F. de C. du Fay on the conductivity of some bodies for
the electric agency and the dual character of electrification gave
rise to the first notions of electricity as an imponderable fluid,
or non-gravitative subtile matter, of a more refined and pene-
trating kind than ordinary liquids and gases. Its duplex char-
acter, and the fact that the electricity produced by rubbing
glass and vitreous substances was different from that produced
by rubbing sealing-wax and resinous substances, seemed to
necessitate the assumption of two kinds of electric fluid; hence
there arose the conception of positive and negative electricity,
and the two-fluid theory came into existence.
Single-fluid Theory. The study of the phenomena of the
Leyden jar and of the fact that the inside and outside coatings
possessed opposite electricities, so that in charging the jar as
much positive electricity is added to one side as negative to the
other, led Franklin about 1750 to suggest a modification called
the single fluid theory, in which the two states of electrification
190
ELECTRICITY
were regarded as not the results of two entirely different fluids
but of the addition or subtraction of one electric fluid from
matter, so that positive electrification was to be looked upon
as the result of increase or addition of something to ordinary
matter and negative as a subtraction. The positive and negative
electrifications of the two coatings of the Leyden jar were
therefore to be regarded as the result of a transformation of
something called electricity from one coating to the other, by
which process a certain measurable quantity became so much
less on one side by the same amount by which it became more
on the other. A modification of this single fluid theory was put
forward by F. U. T. Aepinus which was explained and illustrated
in his Tentamen theoriae electricitatis el magnetismi, published
in St Petersburg in 1759. This theory was founded on the
following principles: (i) the particles of the electric fluid
repel each other with a force decreasing as the distance increases;
(2) the particles of the electric fluid attract the atoms of all
bodies and are attracted by them with a force obeying the same
law; (3) the electric fluid exists in the pores of all bodies, and
while it moves without any obstruction in conductors such as
metals, water, &c., it moves with extreme difficulty in so-called
non-conductors such as glass, resin, &c. ; (4) electrical phenomena
are produced either by the transference of the electric fluid of a
body containing more to one containing less, or from its attraction
and repulsion when no transference takes place. Electric
attractions and repulsions were, however, regarded as differential
actions in which the mutual repulsion of the particles of electricity
operated, so to speak, in antagonism to the mutual attraction
of particles of matter for one another and of particles of elec-
tricity for matter. Independently of Aepinus, Henry Cavendish
put forward a single-fluid theory of electricity (Phil. Trans.,
1771, 61, p. 584), in which he considered it in more precise
detail.
Two-fluid Theory. In the elucidation of electrical phenomena,
however, towards the end of the i8th century, a modification of
the two-fluid, theory seems to have been generally preferred.
The notion then formed of the nature of electrification was
something as follows: All bodies were assumed to contain a
certain quantity of a so-called neutral fluid made up of equal
quantities of positive and negative electricity, which when in
this state of combination neutralized one another's properties.
The neutral fluid could, however, be divided up or separated
into its two constituents, and these could be accumulated on
separate conductors or non-conductors. This view followed
from the discovery of the facts of electric induction of J. Canton
(1753,1754). When, for instance, a positively electrified body
was found to induce upon another insulated conductor a charge
of negative electricity on the side nearest to it, and a charge of
positive electricity on the side farthest from it, this was explained
by saying that the particles of each of the two electric fluids
repelled one another but attracted those of the positive fluid.
Hence the operation of the positive charge upon the neutral
fluid was to draw towards the positive the negative constituent
of the neutral charge and repel to the distant parts of the con-
ductor the positive constituent.
C. A. Coulomb experimentally proved that the law of attraction
and repulsion of simple electrified bodies was that the force
between them varied inversely as the square of the distance
and thus gave mathematical definiteness to the two-fluid hypo-
thesis. It was then assumed that each of the two constituents
of the neutral fluid had an atomic structure and that the so-called
particles of one of the electric fluids, say positive, repelled
similar particles with a force varying inversely as a square of the
distance and attracted those of the opposite fluid according to
the same law. This fact and hypothesis brought electrical
phenomena within the domain of mathematical analysis and,
as already mentioned, Laplace, Biot, Poisson, G. A. A. Plana
(1781-1846), and later Robert Murphy (1806-1843), made them
the subject of their investigations on the mode in which elec-
tricity distributes itself on conductors when in equilibrium.
Faraday's Views. The two-fluid theory may be said to have
held the field until the time when Faraday began his researches
on electricity. After he had educated himself by the study of
the phenomena of lines of magnetic force in his discoveries on
electromagnetic induction, he applied the same conception to
electrostatic phenomena, and thus created the notion of lines
of electrostatic force and of the important function of the di-
electric or non-conductor in sustaining them. Faraday's notion
as to the nature of electrification, therefore, about the middle
of the ipth century came to be something as follows: He
considered that the so-called charge of electricity on a conductor
was in reality nothing on the conductor or in the conductor
itself, but consisted in a state of strain or polarization, or a
physical change of some kind in the particles of the dielectric
surrounding the conductor, and that it was this physical state
in the dielectric which constituted electrification. Since Faraday
was well aware that even a good vacuum can act as a dielectric,
he recognized that the state he called dielectric polarization
could not be wholly dependent upon the presence of gravitative
matter, but that there must be an electromagnetic medium of a
supermaterial nature. In the i3th series of his Experimental
Researches on Electricity he discussed the relation of a vacuum
to electricity. Furthermore his electrochemical investigations,
and particularly his discovery of the important law of electrolysis,
that the movement of a certain quantity of electricity through an
electrolyte is always accompanied by the transfer of a certain
definite quantity of matter from one electrode to another and the
liberation at these electrodes of an equivalent weight of the ions,
gave foundation for the idea of a definite atomic charge of elec-
tricity. In fact, long previously to Faraday's electrochemical
researches, Sir H. Davy and J. J. Berzelius early in the igth
century had advanced the hypothesis that chemical combination
was due to electric attractions between the electric charges
carried by chemical atoms. The notion, however, that electricity
is atomic in structure was definitely put forward by Hermann
von Helmholtz in a well-known Faraday lecture. Helmholtz
says: " If we accept the hypothesis that elementary substances
are composed of atoms, we cannot well avoid concluding that
electricity also is divided into elementary portions which behave
like atoms of electricity." 1 Clerk Maxwell had already used in
1873 the phrase, " a molecule of electricity." 2 Towards the
end of the third quarter of the igth century it therefore became
clear that electricity, whatever be its nature, was associated
with atoms of matter in the form of exact multiples of an in-
divisible minimum electric charge which may be considered to be
" Nature's unit of electricity." This ultimate unit of electric
quantity Professor Johnstone Stoney called an electron? The
formulation of electrical theory as far as regards operations in
space free from matter was immensely assisted by Maxwell's
mathematical theory. Oliver Heaviside after 1880 rendered
much assistance by reducing Maxwell's mathematical analysis
to more compact form and by introducing greater precision into
terminology (see his Electrical Papers, 1892). This is perhaps
the place to refer also to the great services of Lord Rayleigh
to electrical science. Succeeding Maxwell as Cavendish professor
of physics at Cambridge in 1880, he soon devoted himself especi-
ally to the exact redetermination of the practical electrical
units in absolute measure. He followed up the early work of the
British Association Committee on electrical units by a fresh
determination of the ohm in absolute measure, and in conjunction
with other work on the electrochemical equivalent of silver and
the absolute electromotive force of the Clark cell may be said
to have placed exact electrical measurement on a new basis.
He also made great additions to the theory of alternating electric
currents, and provided fresh appliances for other electrical
measurements (see his Collected Scientific Papers, Cambridge,
1900).
Electro-optics. For a long time Faraday's observation, on the
rotation of the plane of polarized light by heavy glass in a
1 H. von Helmholtz, " On the Modern Development of Faraday's
Conception of Electricity," Journ. Chem. Soc., 1881, 39, p. 277.
2 See Maxwell's Electricity and Magnetism, vol. i. p. 350 (2nd ed.,
1881).
' " On the Physical Units of (Nature," Phil. Mag., 1881, [5], II,
p. 381. Also Trans. Roy. Soc. (Dublin, 1891), 4, p. 583.
ELECTRICITY
191
magnetic field remained an isolated fact in electro-optics. Then
M. K. Ycrdet (1824-1860) made a study of the subject and
discovered that a solution of ferric perchloride in methyl alcohol
rotated the plane of polarisation in an opposite direction to heavy
glass MUM. CUM. M|J*, 1854, 4>, P- 37; 1855, 43, P- 37!
C0m. Rend., 1854, 39, p. 548). Later A. A. E. E. Kundt prepared
metallic films of iron, nickel and cobalt, and obtained powerful
negative optical rotation with them (Witd. Ann., 1884, 23,
p. 228; 1886, 27, p. 191). John Kerr (1824-1007) discovered
that a similar effect was produced when plane polarized light was
reflected from the pole of a powerful magnet (Phil. Mag., 1877,
Isl. 3. P- 3 JI an ^ '878, 5, p. 161). Lord Kelvin showed that
Faraday's discovery demonstrated that some form of rotation
was taking place along lines of magnetic force when passing
through a medium. 1 Many observers have given attention to
the exact determination of Verdet's constant of rotation for
standard substances, e.g. Lord Rayleigh for carbon bisulphide, 1
and Sir W. H. Perkin for an immense range of inorganic and
organic bodies.* Kerr also discovered that when certain homo-
geneous dielectrics were submitted to electric strain, they
became birefringent (Phil. Mag., 1875, 50, pp. 337 and 446).
The theory of electro-optics received great attention from
Kelvin, Maxwell. Rayleigh, G. F. Fitzgerald, A. Righi and
1'. K. L. Drude, and experimental contributions from innumerable
workers, such as F. T. Trouton, O. J. Lodge and J. L. Howard,
and many others.
Eltttric Waves. In the decade 1880-1800, the most important
advance in electrical physics was, however, that which originated
with the astonishing researches of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-
1894). This illustrious investigator was stimulated, by a certain
problem brought to his notice by H. von Helmholtz, to undertake
investigations which had for their object a demonstration of the
truth of Maxwell's principle that a variation in electric displace-
ment was in fact an electric current and had magnetic effects.
It is impossible to describe here the details of these elaborate
experiments; the reader must be referred to Hertz's own papers,
or the English translation of them by Prof. D. E. Jones. Hertz's
great discovery was an experimental realization of a suggestion
made by G. F. Fitzgerald (1851-1901) in 1883 as to a method of
producing electric waves in space. He invented for this purpose
a radiator consisting of two metal rods placed in one line, their
inner ends being provided with poles nearly touching and their
outer ends with metal plates. Such an arrangement constitutes
in effect a condenser, and when the two plates respectively are
connected to the secondary terminals of an induction coil in
operation, the plates are rapidly and alternately charged, and
discharged across the spark gap with electrical oscillations (see
ELECTROKINETICS). Hertz then devised a wave detecting
apparatus called a resonator. This in its simplest form consisted
of a ring of wire nearly closed terminating in spark balls very
close together, adjustable as to distance by a micrometer screw.
He found that when the resonator was placed in certain positions
with regard to the oscillator, small sparks were seen between the
micrometer balls, and when the oscillator was placed at one end
of a room having a sheet of zinc fixed against the wall at the
other end, symmetrical positions could be found in the room at
which, when the resonator was there placed, either no sparks
or else very bright sparks occurred at the poles. These effects, as
Hertz showed, indicated the establishment of stationary electric
waves in space and the propagation of electric and magnetic
force through space with a finite velocity. The other additional
phenomena he observed finally contributed an all but conclusive
proof of the truth of Maxwell's views. By profoundly ingenious
methods Hertz showed that these invisible electric waves could
be reflected and refracted like waves of light by mirrors and
1 See Sir W. Thomson, Proc. Roy. Soc. Land., 1856, 8, p. 152; or
Maxwell. EUct. and Mag., vol. ii. p. 831.
See Lord Rayleigh, Proc. Roy. Sot. Land., 1884, 37, p. 146;
Gordon. Phil. Tram., 1877, l6 7. P- ' : H. Becquerel, Ann. CHint.
Pkyt., 1882. 1}), 27, p. 312.
1 Perkin's Papers are to be found in the Journ. Chem. Soc. Land.,
1884, p. 421; 1886. p. 177: 1888, p. 561; 1889, p. 680; 1891,
p. 981 ; 1892, p. 800; 1893. p. 75.
prisms, and that familiar experiments in optics could be repeated
with electric waves which could not affect the eye. Hence
there arose a new science of electro-optics, and in all parts of
Europe and the United States innumerable investigators took
possession of the novel field of research with the greatest delight.
O. J. Lodge, 4 A. Righi, 4 J. H. Poincar6, V. F. K. Bjerkncs,
P. K. L. Drude, J. J. Thomson, 7 John Trowbridgc, Max Abraham,
and many others, contributed to its elucidation.
In 1892, E. Branly of Paris devised an appliance for detecting
these waves which subsequently proved to be of immense
importance. He discovered that they had the power of affecting
the electric conductivity of materials when in a state of powder,
the majority of metallic filings increasing in conductivity.
Lodge devised a similar arrangement called a coherer, and E.
Rutherford invented a magnetic detector depending on t he-
power of electric oscillations to demagnetize iron or steel. The
sum total of all these contributions to electrical knowledge
had the effect of establishing Maxwell's principles on a firm basis,
but they also led to technical inventions of the very greatest
utility. In 1896 G. Marconi applied a modified and improved
form of Branly's wave detector in conjunction with a novel
form of radiator for the telegraphic transmission of intelligence
through space without wires, and he and others developed this
new form of telegraphy with the greatest rapidity and success
into a startling and most useful means of communicating through
space electrically without connecting wires.
Electrolysis. The study of the transfer of electricity through
liquids had meanwhile received much attention. The general
facts and laws of electrolysis (q.v.) were determined experiment-
ally by Davy and Faraday and confirmed by the researches of
J. F. Daniel], R. W. Bunsen and Helmholtz. The modern
theory of electrolysis grew up under the hands of R. J. E. Clausius,
A. W. Williamson and F. W. G. Kohlrausch, and received a
great impetus from the work of Svante Arrhenius, J. H. Van't
Hoff, W. Ostwald, H. W. Nernst and many others. The theory
of the ionization of salts in solution has raised much discussion
amongst chemists, but the general fact is certain that electricity
only moves through liquids in association with matter, and
simultaneously involves chemical dissociation of molecular
groups.
Discharge through Gases. Many eminent physicists had an
instinctive feeling that the study of the passage of electricity
through gases would shed much light on the intrinsic nature
of electricity. Faraday devoted to a careful examination of the
phenomena the XIII series of his Experimental Researches,
and among the older workers in this field must be particularly
mentioned J. PlUcker, J. W. Hittorf, A. A. de la Rive, J. P.
Gassiot, C. F. Varley, and W. Spottiswoode and J. Fletcher
Moulton. It has long been known that air and other gases at
the pressure of the atmosphere were very perfect insulators,
but that when they were rarefied and contained in glass tubes
with platinum electrodes sealed through the glass, electricity
could be passed through them under sufficient electromotive
force and produced a luminous appearance known as the electric
glow discharge. The so-called vacuum tubes constructed by
H. Geissler (1815-1879) containing air, carbonic acid, hydrogen,
&c., under a pressure of one or two millimetres, exhibit beautiful
appearances when traversed by the high tension current produced
by the secondary circuit of an induction coil. Faraday discovered
the existence of a dark space round the negative electrode which
is usually known as the " Faraday dark space." De la Rive
added much to our knowledge of the subject, and J. Plucker
and his disciple J. W. Hittorf examined the phenomena exhibited
in so-called high vacua, that is, in exceedingly rarefied gases.
C. F. Varley discovered the interesting fact that no current
could be sent through the rarefied gas unless a certain minimum
potential difference of the electrodes was excited. Sir William
Crookes took up in 1872 the study of electric discharge through
The Work of Herts (London, 1804).
L'Oltica deile oscillazioni elettriche (Bologna, 1897).
Les Oscillations electriaues (Paris, 1894).
' Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism (Oxford, 1892).
192
ELECTRICITY
high vacua, having been led to it by his researches on the radio-
meter. The particular details of the phenomena observed will
be found described in the article CONDUCTION, ELECTRIC ( III.).
The main fact discovered by researches of Pliicker, Hittorf and
Crookes was that in a vacuum tube containing extremely rarefied
air or other gas, a luminous discharge takes place from the
negative electrode which proceeds in lines normal to the surface
of the negative electrode and renders phosphorescent both the
glass envelope and other objects placed in the vacuum tube
when it falls upon them. Hittorf made in 1869 the discovery
that solid objects could cast shadows or intercept this cathode
discharge. The cathode discharge henceforth engaged the
attention of many physicists. Varley had advanced tentatively
the hypothesis that it consisted in an actual projection of electri-
fied matter from the cathode, and Crookes was led by his re-
searches in 1870, 1871 and 1872 to embrace and confirm this
hypothesis in a modified form and announce the existence of a
fourth state of matter, which he called radiant matter, demon-
strating by many beautiful and convincing experiments that
there was an actual projection of material substance of some
kind possessing inertia from the surface of the cathode. German
physicists such as E. Goldstein were inclined to take another
view. Sir J. J. Thomson, the successor of Maxwell and Lord
Rayleigh in the Cavendish chair of physics in the university of
Cambridge, began about the year 1899 a remarkable series of
investigations on the cathode discharge, which finally enabled
him to make a measurement of the ratio of the electric charge
to the mass of the particles of matter projected from the cathode,
and to show that this electric charge was identical with the
atomic electric charge carried by a hydrogen ion in the act of
electrolysis, but that the mass of the cathode particles, or
" corpuscles " as he called them, was far less, viz. about snsVirth
part of the mass of a hydrogen atom. 1 The subject was pursued
by Thomson and the Cambridge physicists with great mathe-
matical and experimental ability, and finally the conclusion
was reached that in a high vacuum tube the electric charge is
carried by particles which have a mass only a fraction, as above
mentioned, of that of the hydrogen atom, but which carry a
charge equal to the unit electric charge of the hydrogen ion as
found by electrochemical researches. 2 P. E. A. Lenard made
in 1894 (Wied. Ann. Phys., 51, p. 225) the discovery that these
cathode particles or corpuscles could pass through a window
of thin sheet aluminium placed in the wall of the vacuum tube
and give rise to. a class of radiation called the Lenard rays.
W. C. Rontgen of Munich made in 1896 his remarkable discovery
of the so-called X or Rontgen rays, a class of radiation produced
by the impact of the cathode particles against an impervious
metallic screen or anticathode placed in the vacuum tube.
The study of Rontgen rays was ardently pursued by the principal
physicists in Europe during the years 1897 and 1898 and subse-
quently. The principal property of these Rontgen rays which
attracted public attention was their power of passing through
many solid bodies and affecting a photographic plate. Hence
some substances were opaque to them and others transparent.
The astonishing feat of photographing the bones of the living
animal within the tissues soon rendered the Rontgen rays
indispensable in surgery and directed an army of investigators
to their study.
Radioactivity. One outcome of all this was the discovery
by H. Becquerel in 1896 that minerals containing uranium, and
particularly the mineral known as pitchblende, had the power
of affecting sensitive photographic plates enclosed in a black
paper envelope when the mineral was placed on the outside, as
'See J. J. Thomson, Proc. Roy. Inst. Land., 1897, 15, p. 419;
also Phil. Mag., 1899, [5], 48, p. 547.
* Later results show that the mass of a hydrogen atom is not far
from I -3 X i o" 24 gramme and that the unit atomic charge or natural
unit of electricity is i-sXicr^of an electromagnetic C.G.S. unit.
The mass of the electron or corpuscle is 7 -oXio" 28 gramme and its
diameter is 3 X io~"centimetre. The diameter of a chemical atom is
of the order of lo" 7 centimetre.
See H. A. Lorentz, " The Electron Theory," Elektrotechnische
Zeitschrift, 1905, 26, p. 584; or Science Abstracts, 1905, 8, A, p. 603.
well as of discharging a charged electroscope (Com. Rend., 1896,
122, p. 420). This research opened a way of approach to the
phenomena of radioactivity, and the history of the steps by which
P. Curie and Madame Curie were finally led to the discovery of
radium is one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of
science. The study of radium and radioactivity (see RADIO-
ACTIVITY) led before long to the further remarkable knowledge
that these so-called radioactive materials project into surround-
ing space particles or corpuscles, some of which are identical
with those projected from the cathode in a high vacuum tube,
together with others of a different nature. The study of radio-
activity was pursued with great ability not only by the Curies
and A. Debierne, who associated himself with them, in France,
but by E. Rutherford and F. Soddy in Canada, and by J. J.
Thomson, Sir William Crookes, Sir William Ramsay and others
in England.
Electronic Theory. The final outcome of these investigations
was the hypothesis that Thomson's corpuscles or particles
composing the cathode discharge in a high vacuum tube must
be looked upon as the ultimate constituent of what we call
negative electricity; in other words, they are atoms of negative
electricity, possessing, however, inertia, and these negative
electrons are components at any rate of the chemical atom.
Each electron is a point-charge of negative electricity equal to
3'9X io~ 10 of an electrostatic unit or to i-3X lo" 20 of an electro-
magnetic unit, and the ratio of its charge to its mass is nearly
2Xio 7 using E.M. units. For the hydrogen atom the ratio of
charge to mass as deduced from electrolysis is about io 4 . Hence
the mass of an electron is -j-isVirth of that of a hydrogen atom.
No one has yet been able to isolate positive electrons, or to give
a complete demonstration that the whole inertia of matter is
only electric inertia due to what may be called the inductance
of the electrons. Prof. Sir J. Larmor developed in a series of
very able papers (Phil. Trans., 1894, 185; 1895, 186; 1897,
190), and subsequently in his book Aether and Matter (1900), a
remarkable hypothesis of the structure of the electron or cor-
puscle, which he regards as simply a strain centre in the aether
or electromagnetic medium, a chemical atom being a collection
of positive and negative electrons or strain centres in stable
orbital motion round their common centre of mass (see AETHER).
J. J. Thomson also developed this hypothesis in a profoundly
interesting manner, and we may therefore summarize very
briefly the views held on the nature of electricity and matter
at the beginning of the 2oth century by saying that the term
electricity had come to be regarded, in part at least, as a collective
name for electrons, which in turn must be considered as con-
stituents of the chemical atom, furthermore as centres of certain
lines of self-locked and permanent strain existing in the universal
aether or electromagnetic medium. Atoms of matter are com-
posed of congeries of electrons and the inertia of matter is probably
therefore only the inertia of the electromagnetic medium. 1
Electric waves are produced wherever electrons are accelerated
or retarded, that is, whenever the velocity of an electron is
changed or accelerated positively or negatively. In every solid
body there is a continual atomic dissociation, the result of which
is that mixed up with the atoms of chemical matter composing
them we have a greater or less percentage of free electrons.
The operation called an electric current consists in a diffusion
or movement of these electrons through matter, and this is
controlled by laws of diffusion which are similar to those of the
diffusion of liquids or gases. Electromotive force is due to a
difference in the density of the electronic population in different
or identical conducting bodies, and whilst the electrons can
move freely through so-called conductors their motion is much
more hindered or restricted in non-conductors. Electric charge
consists, therefore, in an excess or deficit of negative electrons
in a body. In the hands of H. A. Lorentz, P. K. L. Drude, J. J.
Thomson, J. Larmor and many others, the electronic hypothesis
of matter and of electricity has been developed in great detail
and may be said to represent the outcome of modern researches
upon electrical phenomena.
1 See J. J. Thomson, Electricity and Matter (London, 1904).
ELECTRICITY SUPPLY
193
The reader may be referred for an admirable summary of the
theories of electricity prior to the advent of the electronic
hypothesis to J. J. Thomson's " Report on Electrical Theories "
(Brtt. Assoc. Report, 1885), in which he divides electrical
theories enunciated during the iqth century into four classes,
and summarizes the opinions and theories of A. M. Ampere,
H. G. Grassman. C. F. Gauss, W. E. Weber, G. F. B. Ricmann,
R. J. E. Clausius, F. E. Neumann and H. von Helmholtz.
BlBLiocRAMiy. M. 'Faraday. Experimental Researches in Elec-
tricity (3 vols.. London, 1839, 1844. 1855); A. A. DC la Rive, Treatise
en Electricity (3 voU.. London. 1853. 1858); J. Clerk Maxwell, A
TnotiM on Electricity and Magnetism (3 voU., trd ed., 1892); id.,
Scientific Papers (a voU., edited by Sir W. J. Niven, Cambridge,
1890) ; H. M. Noad, A Manual of Electricity (3 vols., London, 1855,
1857): J. J. Thomson, Reeenl Researches in Electricity and Magnetism
(Oxford. 1893); id.. Conduction of Electricity throuih Gases (Cam-
bridge. 1903); id.. Electricity and Matter (London, 1904); O.
Heavbide. Electromagnetic Theory (London. 1893); O. J. Lodge,
Modern Views of Electricity (London. 1889); E. Mascart and J.
Jpubert, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, English trans, by
E. Atkinson (3 vol*.. London, 1883); Park Benjamin, The Intellectual
Rue in Electricity (London, 1895); G. C. Foster and A. W. Porter,
Elettntity and Magnetism (London, 1903) ; A. Gray, A Treatise on
Magnetism and Electricity (London. 1898); H. W. Watson and S. H.
Bui-bury. Tkt Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism
(i vols., l88s); Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson), Mathematical
and Physical Papers (3 vols., Cambridge, 1882); Lord Kayleigh,
Scientific Papers (4 vols., Cambridge, 1903); A. Winkelmann,
Handbmck der Physik, vols. iii. and iy. (Breslau, 1903 and 1905;
mine of wealth lor references to original papers on electricity and
magnetism from the earliest date up to modern times). For
particular information on the modern Electronic theory the reader
may consult W. Kaufmann, " The Developments of the Electron
Idem." Physikaliscke Zeitschrift (1st of Oct. 1901), or The Electrician
(1901), 48. p. 95; H. A. Lorentz, The Theory of Electrons (1909);
E. E. Fournier d'Albe. The Electron Theory (London, 1906); H.
Abraham and P. Langevin, Ions, Electrons, Corpuscles (Pans, 1905) ;
I. A. Fleming, " The Electronic Theory of Electricity," Popular
Science Monthly (May 1903); Sir Oliver J. Lodge, Electrons, or the
Nature and Properties of Negative Electricity (London, 1907). (J.A.F.)
ELECTRICITY SUPPLY. L General Principles. The im-
provements made in the dynamo and electric motor between
1870 and 1880 and also in the details of the arc and incandescent
electric lamp towards the close of that decade, induced engineers
to turn their attention to the question of the private and public
supply of electric current for the purpose of lighting and power.
T. A. Edison 1 and St G. Lane Fox 1 were among the first to see
the possibilities and advantages of public electric supply, and
to devise plans for its practical establishment. If a supply
of electric current has to be furnished to a building the option
exists in many cases of drawing from a public supply or of
generating it by a private plant.
Pritate Plants. In spite of a great amount of ingenuity
devoted to the development of the primary battery and the
thermopile, no means of generation of large currents can compete
in economy with the dynamo. Henceaprivate electric generating
plant involves the erection of a dynamo which may be driven
either by a steam, gas or oil engine, or by power obtained by
means of a turbine from a low or high fall of water. It may be
either directly coupled to the motor, or driven by a belt; and
it may be either a continuous-current machine or an alternator,
and il the latter, either single-phase or polyphase. The con-
venience of being able to employ storage batteries in connexion
with a private-supply system is so great that unless power has
to be transmitted long distances, the invariable rule is to employ
a continuous-current dynamo. Where space is valuable this
is always coupled direct to the motor; and if a steam-engine
is employed, an enclosed engine is most cleanly and compact.
Where coal or heating gas is available, a gas-engine is exceedingly
convenient, since it requires little attention. Where coal gas
is not available, a Dowson gas-producer can be employed. The
oil-engine has been so improved that it is extensively used in
combination with a direct-coupled or belt-driven dynamo and
thus forms a favourite and easily-managed plant for private
electric lighting. Lead storage cells, however, as at present
made, when charged by a steam-driven dynamo deteriorate less
1 British Patent Specification, No. 5306 of 1878, and No. 602 of
1880. ' Ibid. No. 3988 of 1878.
DC. 7
rapidly than when an oil-engine is employed, the reason being
ih.it the charging current is more irregular in the latter case,
since the single cylinder oil-engine only makes an impulse every
other revolution. In connexion with the generator, it is almost
the invariable custom to put down a secondary battery of storage
cells, to enable the supply to be given after the engine has stopped.
This is necessary, not only as a security for the continuity of
supply, but because otherwise the costs of labour in running
the engine night and day become excessive. The storage battery
gives its supply automatically, but the dynamo and engine
require incessant skilled attendance. If the building to be
lighted is at some distance from the engine-house the battery
should be placed in the basement of the building, and under-
ground or overhead conductors, to convey the charging current,
brought to it from the dynamo.
It is usual, in the case of electric lighting installations, to reckon
all lamps in their equivalent number of 8 candle power (c.p.)
incandescent lamps. In lighting a private house or building,
the first thing to be done is to settle the total number of incan-
descent lamps and their size, whether 32 c.p., 16 c.p. or 8 c.p.
Lamps of 5 c.p. can be used with advantage in small bedrooms
and passages. Each candle-power in the case of a carbon filament
lamp can be taken as equivalent to 3-5 watts, or the 8 c.p. lamp
as equal to 30 watts, the 16 c.p. lamp to 60 watts, and so on.
In the case of metallic filament lamps about i-o or 1-25 watts.
Hence if the equivalent of 100 carbon filament 8 c.p. lamps is
required in a building the maximum electric power-supply avail-
able must be 3000 watts or 3 kilowatts. The next matter to
consider is the pressure of supply. If the battery can be in a
position near the building to be lighted, it is best to use too-volt
incandescent lamps and enclosed arc lamps, which can be
worked singly off the loo-volt circuit. If, however, the lamps
are scattered over a wide area, or in separate buildings somewhat
far apart, as in a college or hospital, it may be better to select 200
volts as the supply pressure. Arc lamps can then be worked three
in series with added resistance. The third step is to select the size
of the dynamo unit and the amount of spare plant. It is desir-
able that there should be at least three dynamos, two of which
are capable of taking the whole of the full load, the third being
reserved to replace either of the others when required. The
total power to be absorbed by the lamps and motors (if any)
being given, together with an allowance for extensions, the size
of the dynamos can be settled, and the power of the engines
required to drive them determined. A good rule to follow is
that the indicated horse-power (I.H.P.) of the engine should be
double the dynamo full-load output in kilowatts; that is to
say, for a lo-kilowatt dynamo an engine should be capable of
giving 20 indicated (not nominal) H.P. From the I.H.P. of the
engine, if a steam engine, the size of the boiler required for steam
production becomes known. For small plants it is safe to reckon
that, including water waste, boiler capacity should be pro-
vided equal to evaporating 40 Ib of water per hour for every
I.H.P. of the engine. The locomotive boiler is a convenient
form; but where large amounts of steam are required, some
modification of the Lancashire boiler or the water-tube boiler
is generally adopted. In settling the electromotive force of
the dynamo to be employed, attention must be paid to the
question of charging secondary cells, if these are used. If a
secondary battery is employed in connexion with loo-volt lamps,
it is usual to put in 53 or 54 cells. The electromotive force of
these cells varies between 2-2 and 1-8 volts as they discharge;
hence the above number of cells is sufficient for maintaining the
necessary electromotive force. For charging, however, it is
necessary to provide 2-5 volts per cell, and the dynamo must
therefore have an electromotive force of 135 volts, plus any
voltage required to overcome, the fall of potential in the cable
connecting the dynamo with the secondary battery. Supposing
this to be 10 volts, it is safe to install dynamos having an electro-
motive force of 150 volts, since by means of resistance in the
field circuits this electromotive force can be lowered to no or
115 if it is required at any time to dispense with the battery.
The size of the secondary cell will be determined by the nature
ELECTRICITY SUPPLY
of the supply to be given after the dynamos have been stopped.
It is usual to provide sufficient storage capacity to run all the
lamps for three or four hours without assistance from the dynamo.
As an example taken from actual practice, the following figures
give the capacity of the plant put down to supply 500 8 c.p. lamps
in a hospital. The dynamos were 15-unit machines, having a full-
load capacity of 100 amperes at 150 volts, each coupled direct to an
engine of 25 H.P. ; and a double plant of this description was supplied
from two steel locomotive boilers, each capable of evaporating 800 Ib
of water per hour. One dynamo during the day was used for charging
the storage battery of 54 cells; and at night the discharge from the
cells, together with the current from one of the dynamos, supplied
the lamps until the heaviest part of the load had been taken ; after
that the current was drawn from the batteries alone. In working
such a plant it is necessary to have the means of varying the electro-
motive force of the dynamo as the charging of the cells proceeds.
When they are nearly exhausted, their electromotive force is less
than 2 volts; but as the charging proceeds, a counter-electromotive
force is gradually built up, and the engineer-in-charge has to raise
the voltage of the dynamo in order to maintain a constant charging
current. This is effected by having the dynamos designed to give
normally the highest E.M.F. required, and then inserting resistance
in their field circuits to reduce it as may be necessary. The space
and attendance required for an oil-engine plant are much less than
for a steam-engine.
Public Supply. The methods at present in successful operation
for public electric supply fall into two broad divisions: (i)
continuous-current systems and (2) alternating-current systems.
Continuous-current systems are either low- or high-pressure.
In the former the current is generated by dynamos at some
pressure less than 500 volts, generally about 460 volts, and is
supplied to users at half this pressure by means of a three-wire
system (see below) of distribution, with or without the addition
of storage batteries.
The general arrangements of a low-pressure continuous-current
town supply station are as follows: If steam is the motive
power selected, it is generated under all the best
conditions of economy by a battery of boilers, and
supplied to engines which are now almost invariably
coupled direct, each to its own dynamo, on one
common bedplate; a multipolar dynamo is most
usually employed, coupled direct to an enclosed engine. Parsons
or Curtis steam turbines (see STEAM-ENGINE) are frequently
selected, since experience has shown that the costs of oil and
attendance are far less for this type than for the reciprocating
engine, whilst the floor space and, therefore, the building cost
are greatly reduced. In choosing the size of unit to be adopted,
the engineer has need of considerable experience and discretion,
and also a full knowledge of the nature of the public demand
for electric current. The rule is to choose as large units as possible,
consistent with security, because they are proportionately
more economical than small ones. The over-all efficiency of a
steam dynamo that is, the ratio between the electrical power
output, reckoned say in kilowatts, and the I. H.P. of the
engine., reckoned in the same units is a number which falls
rapidly as the load decreases, but at full load may reach some
such value as 80 or 85 %. It is common to specify the efficiency,
as above defined, which must be attained by the plant at full-
load, and also the efficiencies at quarter- and half-load which
must be reached or exceeded. Hence in the selection of the size
of the units the engineer is guided by the consideration that
whatever units are in use shall be as nearly as possible fully
loaded. If the demand on the station is chiefly for electric
lighting, it varies during the hours of the day and night with
tolerable regularity. If the output of the station, either in
amperes or watts, is represented by the ordinates of a curve,
the abscissae of which represent the hours of the day, this load
diagram 'for a supply station with lighting load only, is a curve
such as is shown in fig. i, having a high peak somewhere between
6 and 8 P.M. The area enclosed by this load-diagram compared
with the area of the circumscribing rectangle is called the load-
factor of the station. This varies from day to day during the
year, but on the average for a simple lighting load is not.generally
above 10 or 12%, and may be lower. Thus the total output
from the station is only some 10% on an average of that which
it would be if the supply were at all times equal to the maximum
Low-
pressure
con-
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supply.
demand. Roughly speaking, therefore, the total output of an
electric supply station, furnishing current chiefly for electric
lighting, is at best equal to about two hours' supply during the
day at full load. Hence during the greater part of the twenty-
four hours a large part of the plant is lying idle. It is usual to
provide certain small sets of steam dynamos, called the daylight
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machines, for supplying the demand during the day and later
part cf the evening, the remainder of the machines being called
into requisition only for a short time. Provision must be made
for sufficient reserve of plant, so that the breakdown of one or
more sets will not cripple the output of the station.
Assuming current to be supplied at about 460 volts by different
and separate steam dynamos, Dyi, Dy 2 (fig. 2), the machines are
connected through proper amperemeters and volt-
meters with omnibus bars, Oi, 02, Os, on a main switch-
board, so that any dynamo can be put in connexion system.
or removed. The switchboard is generally divided
into three parts one panel for the connexions of the positive
feeders, FI, with the positive terminals of the generators; one for
the negative feeders, F 3 , and negative generator terminals;
while from the third (or middle-wire panel) proceed an equal
number of middle-wire feeders, F 2 . These sets of conductors
are led out into the district to be supplied with current, and are
there connected into a distributing system, consisting of three
separate insulated conductors, DI, D 2 , D 3 , respectively called the
positive, middle and negative distributing mains. The lamps
in the houses, HI, H 2 , &c., are connected between the middle and
negative, and the middle and positive, mains by smaller supply
and service wires. As far as possible the numbers of lamps
installed on the two sides of the system are kept equal; but since
it is not possible to control the consumption of current, it becomes
necessary to provide at the station two small dynamos called
the balancing machines, BI, B 2 , connected respectively between
FIG. 2.
the middle and positive and the middle and negative omnibus
bars. These machines may have their shafts connected together,
or they may be driven by separate steam dynamos; their
function is to supply the difference in the total current circulating
through the whole of the lamps respectively on the two opposite
sides of the middle wire. If storage batteries are employed in
the station, it is usual to install two complete batteries, Si, S 2 ,
ELECTRICITY SUPPLY
which arc placed in a separate battery room and connected
between the middle omnibus bar and the two outer omnibus
bars. The extra electromotive force required to charge these
batteries is supplied by two small dynamos IM. !>-, called boosters.
It is not unusual to join together the two balancing dynamos
and the two boosters on one common bedplate, the shafts being
coupled and in line, and to employ the balancing machines as
electromotors to drive the boosters as required. By the use of
revtrsibie boosters, such as those made by the Lancashire Dynamo
& Motor Company under the patents of Turnbull & M'Leod,
having four field windings on the booster magnets (see Tin-
EJerlrifian, 1904, p. 3O?V it is possible to adjust the relative duty
of the dynamos and battery so that the load on the supply
dynamos is always constant. Under these conditions the main
engines can be worked all the time at their maximum steam
economy and a smaller engine plant employed. If the loud in
the station rises above the fixed amount, the batteries discharge
in parallel with the station dynamos; if it falls below, the
batteries are charged and the station dynamos take the external
load.
The general arrangements of a low-pressure supply station
are shown in figs. 3 and 4. It consists of a boiler-house containing
a bank of boilers, either Lancashire or Babcock & Wilcox being
generally used (sec BOILER), which furnish steam to the engines
SWITCHBOARD PLATFORM
fnm Tiu ElatrUm.
Flos. 3 and 4. Low-pressure Supply Station.
196
ELECTRICITY SUPPLY
and dynamos, provision being made by duplicate steam-pipes
or a ring main so that the failure of a single engine or dynamo
does not cripple the whole supply. The furnace
stations"* 8 ases are taken through an economizer (generally
Green's) so that they give up their heat to the cold
feed water. If condensing water is available the engines
are worked condensing, and this is an essential condition of
economy when steam turbines are employed. Hence, either
a condensing water pond or a cooling tower has to be provided
to cool the condensing water and enable it to be used over and
over again. Preferably the station should be situated near a
river or canal and a railway siding. The steam dynamos are
generally arranged in an engine-room so as to be overlooked
from a switchboard gallery (fig. 3), from which all the control
is carried out. The boiler furnaces are usually stoked by auto-
matic stokers. Owing to the relatively small load factor (say
8 or 10%) of a station giving electric supply for lighting only,
the object of every station engineer is to cultivate a demand for
electric current for power during the day-time by encouraging
the use of electric motors for lifts and other purposes, but above
all to create a demand for traction purposes. Hence most urban
stations now supply current not only for electric lighting but
for running the town tramway system, and this traction load
being chiefly a daylight load serves to keep the plant employed
and remunerative. It is usual to furnish a continuous current
supply for traction at 500 or 600 volts, although some station
engineers are advocating the use of higher voltages. In those
stations which supply current for traction, but which have a
widely scattered lighting load, double current dynamos are often
employed, furnishing from one and the same armature a
continuous current for traction purposes, and an alternating
current for lighting purposes.
In some places a high voltage system of electric supply by
continuous current is adopted. In this case the current is
High- generated at a pressure of 1000 or 2000 volts, and
pressure transmitted from the generating station by conductors,
continuous called high-pressure feeders, to certain sub-centres
supply. or t rans former centres, which are either buildings
above ground or cellars or excavations under the ground. In
these transformer centres are placed machines, called continuous-
current transformers, which transform the electric energy and
create a secondary electric current at a lower pressure, perhaps
100 or 150 volts, to be supplied by distributing mains to users
(see TRANSFORMERS). From these sub-centres insulated con-
ductors are run back to the generating station, by which the
engineer can start or stop the continuous-current rotatory
transformers, and at the same time inform himself as to their
proper action and the electromotive force at the secondary
terminals. This system was first put in practice in Oxford,
England, and hence has been sometimes called by British
engineers " the Oxford system." It is now in operation in a
number of places in England, such as Wolverhampton, Walsall,
and Shoreditch in London. It has the advantage that in con-
nexion with the low-pressure distributing system secondary
batteries can be employed, so that a storage of electric energy
is effected. Further, continuous-current arc lamps can be worked
in series off the high-pressure mains, that is to say, sets of 20
to 40 arc lamps can be operated for the purpose of street lighting
by means of the high-pressure continuous current.
The alternating current systems in operation at the present
time are the single-phase system, with distributing transformers
or transformer sub-centres, and the polyphase systems,
in which the alternating current is transformed down
into an alternating current of low pressure, or, by means
of rotatory transformers, into a continuous current.
The general arrangement of a single-phase alternating-current
system is as follows: The generating station contains a number
of alternators, AI A 2 (fig. 5), producing single-phase alternating
current, either at 1000, 2000, or sometimes, as at Deptford and
other places, 10,000 volts. This current is distributed from the
station either at the pressure at which it is generated, or after
being transformed up to a higher pressure by the transformer T.
Alter-
nating
supply.
The alternators are sometimes worked in parallel, that is to
say, all furnish their current to two common omnibus bars on a
high-pressure switchboard, and each is switched into circuit at
the moment when it is brought into step with the other machines,
as shown by some form of phase-indicator. In some cases,
instead of the high-pressure feeders starting from omnibus bars,
each alternator works independently and the feeders are grouped
FIG. 5.
together on the various alternators as required. A number of
high-pressure feeders are carried from the main switchboard to
various transformer sub-centres or else run throughout the
district to which current is to be furnished. If the system laid
down is the transformer sub-centre system, then at each of these
sub-centres is placed a battery of alternating-current transformers,
Ti Tj Tz, having their primary circuits all joined in parallel to
the terminals of the 'high-pressure feeders, and their secondary
circuits all joined in parallel on a distributing main, suitable
switches and cut-outs being interposed. The pressure of the
current is then transformed down by these transformers to the
required supply pressure. The secondary circuits of these
transformers are generally provided with .three terminals, so as
to supply the low-pressure side on a three-wire system. It is
not advisable to connect together directly the secondary circuits
of all the different sub-centres, because then a fault or short
circuit on one secondary system affects all the others. In banking
together transformers in this manner in a sub-station it is
necessary to take care that the transformation ratio and
secondary drop (see TRANSFORMERS) are exactly the same,
otherwise one transformer will take more than its full share of
the load and will become overheated. The transformer sub-
station system can only be adopted where the area of supply
is tolerably compact. Where the consumers lie scattered over
a large area, it is necessary to carry the high-pressure mains
throughout the area, and to place a separate transformer or
transformers in each building. From a financial point of view,
this " house-to-house system " of alternating-current supply,
generally speaking, is less satisfactory in results than the trans-
former sub-centre system. In the latter some of the transformers
can be switched off, either by hand or by automatic apparatus,
during the time when the load is light, and then no power is
expended in magnetizing their cores. But with the house-to-
house system the whole of the transformers continually remain
connected with the high-pressure circuits; hence in the case of
supply stations which have only an ordinary electric lighting
load, and therefore a load-factor not above 10%, the efficiency
of distribution is considerably diminished.
The single-phase alternating-current system is defective in
that it cannot be readily combined with secondary batteries for
the storage of electric energy. Hence in many places preference
is now given to the polyphase system. In such a system a poly-
phase alternating current, either two- or three-phase, is trans-
mitted from the generating station at a pressure of 5000 to
10,000 volts, or sometimes higher, and at various sub-stations
is transformed down, first by static transformers into an alter-
nating current of lower pressure, say 500 volts, and then by
ELECTRICITY SUPPLY
197
ins of rotatory transformers into a continuous current of
500 volts or lower for use for lighting or traction.
In the case of large cities such as London, New York, Chicago,
Berlin and Paris the use of small supply stations situated in the
interior of the city has gradually given way to the establishment
of large supply stations outside the area; in these alternating
current is generated on the single or polyphase system at a high
voltage and transmitted by underground cables to sub-stations
in the city, at which it is transformed down for distribution
for private and public electric lighting and for urban electric
traction.
Owing to the high relative cost of electric power when generated
in small amounts and the great advantages of generating it in
proximity to coal mines and waterfalls, the supply of electric
power in bulk to small towns and manufacturing districts has
become a great feature in modern electrical engineering. In
Great Britain, where there is little useful water power but
abundance of coal, electric supply stations for supply in bulk
have been built in the cool-producing districts of South Wales,
the Midlands, the Clyde valley and Yorkshire. In these coses
the current is a polyphase current generated at a high voltage,
5000 to 10,000 volts, and sometimes raised again in pressure to
20,000 or 40,000 volts and transmitted by overhead lines to the
districts to be supplied. It is there reduced in voltage by trans-
formers and employed as an alternating current, or is used to
drive polyphase motors coupled to direct current generators to
reproduce the power in continuous current form. It is then
distributed for local lighting, street or railway traction, driving
motors, and metallurgical or electro-chemical applications.
Experience has shown that it is quite feasible to distribute in all
directions for 25 miles round a high-pressure generating station,
which thus supplies an area of nearly 2000 sq. m. At such
stations, employing large turbine engines and alternators,
electric power may be generated at a works cost of o-375d. per
kilowatt (K.W.), the coal cost being less than o-i2$d. per K.W.,
and the selling price to large load-factor users not more thon
o-sd. per K.W. The average price of supply from the local
generating stations in towns and cities is from 3d. to 4d. per unit,
electric energy for power and heating being charged at a lower
rate than that for lighting only.
We have next to consider the structure and the arrangement
of the conductors employed to convey the currents from their
place of creation to that of utilization. The conductors
themselves for the most part consist of copper having
a conductivity of not less than 98% according to
Matthiessen's standard. They are distinguished as (i) External
conductors, which are a part of the public supply and belong
to the corporation or company supplying the electricity; (2)
Internal conductors,** house wiring, forming a part of the structure
of the bouse or building supplied and usually the property of its
owner.
The external conductors may be overhead or underground.
Overhead conductors may consist of bare stranded copper cables
carried on porcelain insulators mounted on stout iron
or wooden poles. If the current is a high-pressure
lo^."" one, these insulators must be carefully tested, and are
preferably of the pattern known as oil insulators.
In and near towns it is necessary to employ insulated overhead
conductors, generally india-rubber-covered stranded copper
cables, suspended by leather loops from steel bearer wires which
take the weight. The British Board of Trade have issued
elaborate rules for the construction of overhead lines to transmit
large electric currents. Where telephone and telegraph wires
pus over such overhead electric lighting wires, they have to be
protected from falling on the latter by means of guard wires.
By far the largest part, however, of the external electric
distribution is now carried out by underground conductors, which
mre either bare or insulated. Bare copper conductors may be
carried underground in culverts or chases, air being in this case
the insulating material, as in the overhead system. A culvert
and covered chase is constructed under the road or side-walk,
and properly shaped oak crossbars arc placed in it carrying
gloss or porcelain insulators, on which stranded copper cables,
or, preferably, copper strips placed edgeways, are stretched
and supported. The advantages of this method of construction
ore cheapness and the ease with which connexions can be made
with service-lines for house supply; the disadvantages arc the
somewhat large space in which coal-gas leaking out of gas-pipes
can accumulate, and the difficulty of keeping the culverts at all
times free from rain-water. Moisture has a tendency to collect
on the negative insulators, and hence to make a dead earth on
the negative side of the main; while unless the culverts are
well ventilated, explosions from mixtures of coal-gas and air
are liable to occur. Insulated cables are insulated either with
a material which is in itself waterproof, or with one which is
only waterproof in so far as it is enclosed in a waterproof tube,
e.g. of lead. Gutta-percha and india-rubber ore examples of
materials of the former kind. Gutta-percha, although practically
everlasting when in darkness and laid under water, as in the
case of submarine cables, has not been found satisfactory for
use with large systems of electric distribution, although much
employed for telephone and telegraph work. Insulated under-
ground external conductors arc of three types: (a) Insulated
Cables drawn into Pipes. In this system of distribution cast-iron
or stoneware pipes, or special stoneware conduits, or conduits
made of a material called bitumen concrete, are first laid under-
ground in the street. These contain a number of holes or " ways,"
and at intervals drawing-in boxes are placed which consist of a
brick or cast-iron box having a water-tight lid, by means of which
access is gained to a certain section of the conduit. Wires are
used to draw in the cables, which are covered with cither india-
rubber or lead, the copper being insulated by means of paper,
impregnated jute, or other similar material. The advantages
of a drawing-in system are that spare ways can be left when
the conduits are put in, so that at a future time fresh cables can
be added without breaking up the roadway, (b) Cables in Bitumen.
One of the earliest systems of distribution employed by T. A.
Edison consisted in fixing two segment-shaped copper conductors
in a steel tube, the interspace between the conductors and the
tube being filled in with a bitumen compound. A later plan is
to lay down an iron trough, in which the cables arc supported by
wooden bearers at proper distances, and fill in the whole with
natural bitumen. This system has been carried out extensively
by the Callendar Cable Company. Occasionally concentric lead-
covered and armoured cables are laid in this way, and then
form an expensive but highly efficient form of insulated conductor.
In selecting a system of distribution regard must be paid to the
nature of the soil in which the cables are laid. Lead is easily
attacked by soft water, although under some conditions it is
apparently exceedingly durable, and an atmosphere containing
coal-gas is injurious to india-rubber, (c) Armoured Cables. In
a very extensively used system of distribution armoured cables
are employed. In this case the copper conductors, two, three
or more in number, may be twisted together or arranged concen-
trically, and insulated by means of specially prepared jute or
paper insulation, overlaid with a continuous tube of lead. Over
the lead, but separated by a hemp covering, is put a steel armour
consisting of two layers of steel strip, wound in opposite directions
and kept in place by an external covering. Such a cable can
be laid directly in the ground without any preparation other
than the excavation of a simple trench, junction-boxes being
inserted at intervals to allow of branch cables being taken off.
The armoured cable used is generally of the concentric pattern
(fig. 6). It consists of a stranded copper cable composed of a
number of wires twisted together and overlaid with an insulating
material. Outside this a tubular arrangement of copper wires
and a second layer of insulation, and finally a protective covering
of lead and steel wires or armour are placed. In some cases
three concentric cylindrical conductors are formed by twisting
wires or copper strips with insulating material between. In
others two or three cables of stranded copper are embedded in
insulating material and included in a lead sheath. This last
type of cable is usually called a two- or three-core pattern cable
(fig. 7)-
198
ELECTRICITY SUPPLY
The arrangement and nature of the external conductors
depends on the system of electric supply in which they are used.
In the case of continuous-current supply for incandescent
electric lighting and motive power in small units, when the
external conductors are laid down on the three-wire system,
FIG. 6. Armoured Concentric FIG. 7. Triple Conductor
Cable (Section). Armoured Cable (Section).
1C, Inner conductor.
OC, Outer conductor.
I, Insulation.
L, Lead sheath.
S, Steel armour.
H, Hemp covering.
C, Copper conductor.
I, Insulation.
L, Lead sheath.
H, Hemp covering.
S, Steel armour.
each main or branch cable in the street consists of a set of three
conductors called the positive, middle and negative. Of these
triple conductors some run from the supply station to various
points in the area of supply without being tapped, and are called
the feeders; others, called the distributing mains, are used for
making connexions with the service lines of the consumers, one
service line, as already explained, being connected to the middle
conductor, and the other to either the positive or the negative
one. Since the middle conductor serves to convey only the
difference between the currents being used on the two sides of
the system, it is smaller in section than the positive and negative
ones. In laying out the system great judgment has to be exercised
as to the selection of the points of attachment of the feeders
to the distributing mains, the object being to keep a constant
electric pressure or voltage between the two service-lines in all
the houses independently of the varying demand for current.
Legally the suppliers are under regulations to keep the supply
voltage constant within 4% either way above or below the
standard pressure. As a matter of fact very few stations do
maintain such good regulation. Hence a considerable variation
in the light given by the incandescent lamps is observed, since
the candle-power of carbon glow lamps varies as the fifth or
sixth power of the voltage of supply, i.e. a variation of only
2% in the supply pressure affects the resulting candle-power
of the lamps to the extent of 10 or 12%. This variation is, how-
ever, less in the case of metallic filament lamps (see LIGHTING:
Electric). In the service-lines are inserted the meters for measur-
ing the electric energy supplied to the customer (see METER,
ELECTRIC).
In the interior of houses and buildings the conductors generally
consist of india-rubber-covered cables laid in wood casing.
The copper wire must be tinned and then covered,
"'ring. fi rst w ' tn a l aver of unvulcanized pure india-rubber,
then with a layer of vulcanized rubber, and lastly
with one or more layers of protective cotton twist or tape. No
conductor of this character employed for interior house-wiring
should have a smaller insulation resistance than 300 megohms
per mile when tested with a pressure of 600 volts after soaking
24 hours in water. The wood casing should, if placed in damp
positions or under plaster, be well varnished with waterproof
varnish. As far as possible all joints in the run of the cable
should be avoided by the use of the so-called looping-in system,
and after the wiring is complete, careful tests for insulation
should be made. The Institution of Electrical Engineers of
Great Britain have drawn up rules to be followed in interior
house-wiring, and the principal Fire Insurance offices, following
the lead of the Phoenix Fire Office, of London, have made
regulations which, if followed, are a safeguard against bad
workmanship and resulting possibility of damage by fire. Where
fires having an electric origin have taken place, they have in-
variably been traced to some breach of these rules. Opinions
differ, however, as to the value and security of this method of
laying interior conductors in buildings, and two or three alter-
native systems have been much employed. In one of these,
called the interior conduit system, highly insulating waterproof
and practically fireproof tubes or conduits replace the wooden
casing; these, being either of plain insulating material, or
covered with brass or steel armour, may be placed under plaster
or against walls. They are connected by bends or joint-boxes.
The insulated wires being drawn into them, any short circuit or
heating of the wire cannot give rise to a fire, as it can only take
place in the interior of a non-inflammable tube. A third system
of electric light wiring is the safety concentric system, in which
concentric conductors are used. The inner one, which is well
insulated, consists of a copper-stranded cable. The outer may-
be a galvanized iron strand, a copper tape or braid, or a brass
tube, and is therefore necessarily connected with the earth. A
fourth system consists in the employment of twin insulated
wires twisted together and sheathed with a lead tube; the
conductor thus formed can be fastened by staples against walls,
or laid under plaster or floors.
The general arrangement for distributing current to the
different portions of a building for the purpose of electric lighting
is to run up one or more rising mains, from which branches are
taken off to distributing boxes on each floor, and from these
boxes to carry various branch circuits to the lamps. At the
distributing boxes are collected the cut-outs and switches
controlling the various circuits. When alternating currents
are employed, it is usual tq select as a type of conductor either
twin-twisted conductor or concentric; and the employment
of these types of cable, rather than two separate cables, is
essential in any case where there are telephone or telegraph
wires in proximity, for otherwise the alternating current would
create inductive disturbances in the telephone circuit. The
house-wiring also comprises the details of switches for controlling
the lamps, cut-outs or fuses for preventing an excess of current
passing, and fixtures or supports for lamps often of an ornamental
character. For the details of these, special treatises on electric
interior wiring must be consulted.
For further information the reader may be referred to the following
books:: C. H. Wordingham, Central Electrical Stations (London,
1901) ; A. Gay and C. Y. Yeaman, Central Station Electricity Supply
(London, 1906); S. P. Thompson, Dynamo Electric Machinery (2
vols., London, 1905); E. Tremlett Carter and T. Davies, Motive
Power and Gearing (London, 1906) ; W. C. Clinton, Electric Wiring
(2nd ed., London, 1906); W. Perren Maycock, Electric Wiring,
Fitting, Switches and Lamps (London, 1899); D. Salomons, Electric
Light Installations (London, 1894); Stuart A. Russell, Electric Light
Cables (London, 1901); F. A. C. Perrine, Conductors for Electrical
Distribution (London, 1903); E. Rosenberg, W. W. Haldane Gee
and C. Kinzbrunner, Electrical Engineering (London, 1903); E. C.
Metcalfe, Practical Electric Wiring for Lighting Installations (London,
1905) ; F. C. Raphael, The Wireman's Pocket Book (London/
1903). (J. A. F.)
II. Commercial Aspects. To enable the public supply enter-
prises referred to in the foregoing section to be carried out in
England, statutory powers became necessary to break HM
up the streets. In the early days a few small stations
were established for the supply of electricity within " block "
buildings, or by means of overhead wires within restricted areas,
but the limitatons proved uneconomical and the installations
were for the most part merged into larger undertakings sanc-
tioned by parliamentary powers. In the year 1879 the British
government had its attention directed for the first time to electric
lighting as a possible subject for legislation, and the consideration
of the then existing state of electric lighting was referred to a
select committee of the House of Commons. No legislative
action, however, was taken at that time. In fact the invention
of the incandescent lamp was incomplete Edison's British
master-patent was only filed in Great Britain in November
1879. In 1 88 1 and 1882 electrical exhibitions were held in Paris
and at the Crystal Palace, London, where the improved electric
ELECTRICITY SUPPLY
199
incandescent lamp was brought before the general public. In
1881 parliament passed the first Electric Lighting Act, and
considerable speculation ensued. The aggregate capital of the
companies registered in 1882-1883 to carry out the public
supply of electricity in the United Kingdom amounted to
15,000,000, but the onerous conditions of the act deterred
investors from proceeding with the enterprise. Not one of the
sixty-two provisional orders granted to companies in 1883 under
the act was carried out. In 1884 the Board of Trade received
only (our applications for provisional orders, and during the
subsequent four years only one order was granted. Capitalists
declined to go on with a business which if successful could be
taken away from them by local authorities at the end of twenty-
one years upon terms of paying only the then value of the plant,
lands and buildings, without regard to past or future profits,
goodwill or other considerations. The electrical industry in
Great Britain ripened at a time when public opinion was averse
to the creation of further monopolies, the general belief being
that railway, water and gas companies had in the past received
valuable concessions on terms which did not sufficiently safe-
guard the interests of the community. The great development
of industries by means of private enterprise in the early part
of the ipth century produced a reaction which in the latter part
of the century had the effect of discouraging the creation by
private enterprise of undertakings partaking of the nature of
monopolies; and at the same time efforts were made to strengthen
local and municipal institutions by investing them with wider
(unct ions. There were no fixed principles governing t he relations
between the state or municipal authorities and commercial
companies rendering monopoly services. The new conditions
imposed on private enterprise for the purpose of safeguarding
the interests of the public were very tentative, and a former
permanent secretary of the Board of Trade has stated that the
efforts made by parliament in these directions have sometimes
proved injurious alike to the public and to investors. One of
these tentative measures was the Tramways Act 1870, and
twelve years later it was followed by the first Electric Lighting
Act.
It was several years before parliament recognized the harm
that had been done by the passing of the Electric Lighting Act
1882. A select committee of the House of Lords sat in 1886
to consider the question of reform, and as a result the Electric
Lighting Act 1888 was passed. This amending act altered the
period of purchase from twenty-one to forty-two years, but
the terms of purchase were not materially altered in favour of
investors. The act, while stipulating for the consent of local
authorities to the granting of provisional orders, gives the
Board of Trade power in exceptional cases to dispense with the
consent, but this power has been used very sparingly. The
right of vetoing an undertaking, conferred on local authorities
by the Electric Lighting Acts and also by the Tramways Act
1870, has frequently been made use of to exact unduly onerous
conditions from promoters, and has been the subject of complaint
for years. Although, in the opinion of ministers of the Crown,
the exercise of the veto by local authorities has on several
occasions led to considerable scandals, no government has so
far been able, owing to the very great power possessed by local
authorities, to modify the law in this respect. After 1888
electric lighting went ahead in Great Britain for the first time,
although other countries where legislation was different had
long previously enjoyed its benefits. The developments pro-
ceeded along three well-defined lines. In London, where none
of the gas undertakings was in the hands of local authorities,
many of the districts were allotted to companies, and competition
was permitted between two and sometimes three companies.
In the provinces the cities and larger towns were held by the
municipalities, while the smaller towns, in cases where consents
could be obtained, were left to the enterprise of companies.
Where consents could not be obtained these towns were for
some time left without supply.
Some statistics showing the position of the electricity supply
respectively in 1896 ana 1906 are interesting as indicating
the progress made and as a means of comparison between these two
periods of the state of the industry as a whole In 1896 thirty-eight
companies were at work with an aggregate capital of about 6,000,000,
and thirty-three municipalities with electric lighting loans of nearly
2,000,000. The figures (or 1906, ten years later, show that 187
electricity supply companies were in operation with a total invest-
ment of close on 32,000,000, and 277 municipalities with loans
amounting to close on 36,000,000. The average return on i In-
capital invested in the companies at the later period was 5-1 % per
annum. In 1896 the average capital expenditure was about 100
per kilowatt of plant installed; and 50 per kilowatt was regarded
as a very_Iow record. For 1906 the average capital expenditure per
kilowatt installed was about 8 1 . The main divisions of the average
expenditure are:
1896.
Land and buildings 22-3%
Plant and machinery
Mains . .
Meters and instruments
Provisional orders, &c
36-7
32-2
4-6
3-2
1906.
17-8%
36-5
35-5
57
2-8
The load connected, expressed in equivalents of eight candle-power
lamps, was 2,000,000 in 1896 and 24,000,000 in 1906 About one-
third of this load would be tor power purposes and about two-thirds
for lighting. The Board of Trade units sold were 30,200,000 in 1896
and 533,600,000 in 1906, and the average prices per unit obtained
were 5~7d. and 2-jd. respectively, or a revenue of 717,250 in 1896
and over 6,000,000 in 1906. The working expenses per Board of
Trade unit sold, excluding depreciation, sinking fund and interest
were as follows :
1896.
Generation and distribution . 2-8id.
Rent, rates and taxes . . . -35
Management ..... -81
Sundries . -10
1906.
99d.
'4
IS
02
Total 4-7d. I -33d.
In 1896 the greatest output at one station was about 5) million
units, while in 1906 the station at Manchester had the largest output
of over 40 million units.
The capacity of the plants installed in the United Kingdom in
1906 was:
K.W.
Continuous current . 417,000
Alternating current
Continuous current and
alternating current
combined
480,000
Provinces
333,000
London
84,000
Provinces
London
83,000
49,000
Provinces
London
366.000
114,000
1 ,029,000 k.w.
The economics of electric lighting were at first assumed to be
similar to those of gas lighting. Experience, however, soon
proved that there were important differences, one
being that gas may be stored in gasometers without f^/c,
appreciable loss and the work of production carried
on steadily without reference to fluctuations of demand. Electri-
city cannot be economically stored to the same extent, and for
the most part it has to be used as it is generated. The demand
for electric light is practically confined to the hours between
sunset and midnight, and it rises sharply to a " peak " during
this period. Consequently the generating station has to be
equipped with plant of sufficient capacity to cope with the
maximum load, although the peak does not persist for many
minutes a condition which is very uneconomical both as re-
gards capital expenditure and working costs (see LIGHTING:
Electric). In order to obviate the unproductiveness of the
generating plant during the greater part of the day, electricity
supply undertakings sought to develop the " daylight " load.
This they did by supplying electricity for traction purposes, but
more particularly for industrial power purposes. The difficulties
in the way of this line of development, however, were that
electric power could not be supplied cheaply enough to compete
with steam, hydraulic, gas and other forms of power, unless
it was generated on a very large scale, and this large demand
could not be developed within the restricted areas for which
provisional orders were granted and under the restrictive
conditions of these orders in regard to situation of power-house
and other matters.
The leading factors which make for economy in electricity
supply are the magnitude of the output, the load factor, and
200
ELECTRICITY SUPPLY
the diversity factor, also the situation of the power house, the
means of distribution, and the provision of suitable, trustworthy
and efficient plant. These factors become more favourable the
larger the area and the greater and more varied the demand
to be supplied. Generally speaking, as the output increases so
the cost per unit diminishes, but the ratio (called the load factor)
which the output during any given period bears to the maximum
possible output during the same period has a very important
influence on costs. The ideal condition would be when a power
station is working at its normal maximum output continuously
night and day. This would give a load-factor of 100%, and
represents the ultimate ideal towards which the electrical
engineer strives by increasing the area of his operations and
consequently also the load and the variety of the overlapping
demands. It is only by combining a large number of demands
which fluctuate at different times that is by achieving a high
diversity factor that the supplier of electricity can hope to
approach the ideal of continuous and steady output. Owing
to the dovetailing of miscellaneous demands the actual demand
on a power station at any moment is never anything like the
aggregate of all the maximum demands. One large station
would require a plant of 36,000 k.w. capacity if all the demands
came upon the station simultaneously, but the maximum demand
on the generating plant is only 1 5,000 kilowatts. The difference
between these two figures may be taken to represent the economy
effected by combining a large number of demands on one station.
In short, the keynote of progress in cheap electricity is increased
and diversified demand combined with concentration of load.
The average load-factor of all the British electricity stations in
1907 was 14-5% a figure which tends to improve.
Several electric power supply companies have been established
in the United Kingdom to give practical effect to these principles.
The Electric Lighting Acts, however, do not provide
for the establishment of large power companies, and
panies. special acts of parliament have had to be promoted
to authorize these undertakings. In 1898 several
bills were introduced in parliament for these purposes. They
were referred to a joint committee of both Houses of Parliament
presided over by Lord Cross. The committee concluded that,
where sufficient public advantages are shown, powers should be
given for the supply of electricity over areas including the districts
of several local authorities and involving the use of exceptional
plant; that the usual conditions of purchase of the undertakings
by the local authorities did not apply to such undertakings;
that the period of forty-two years was " none too long " a
tenure; and that the terms of purchase should be reconsidered.
With regard to the provision of the Electric Lighting Acts which
requires that the consent of the local authority should be obtained
as a condition precedent to the granting of a provisional order,
the committee was of opinion that the local authority should
be entitled to be heard by the Board of Trade, but should not
have the power of veto. No general legislation took place as a
result of these recommendations, but the undermentioned special
acts constituting power supply companies were passed.
In 1 002 the president of the Board of Trade stated that a bill
had been drafted which he thought " would go far to meet all
the reasonable objections that had been urged against the present
powers by the local authorities." In 1904 the government
introduced the Supply of Electricity Bill, which provided for
the removal of some of the minor anomalies in the law relating
to electricity. The bill passed through all its stages in the
House of Lords but was not proceeded with in the House of
Commons. In 1905 the bill was again presented to parliament
but allowed to lie on the table. In the words of the president
of the Board of Trade, there was " difficulty of dealing with this
question so long as local authorities took so strong a view as to
the power which ought to be reserved to them in connexion with
this enterprise." In the official language of the council of the
Institution of Electrical Engineers, the development of electrical
science in the United Kingdom is in a backward condition as
compared with other countries in respect of the practical applica-
tion to the industrial and social requirements of the nation,
notwithstanding that Englishmen have been among the first in
inventive genius. The cause of such backwardness is largely
due to the conditions under which the electrical industry has been
carried on in the country, and especially to the restrictive
character of the legislation governing the initiation and develop-
ment of electrical power and traction undertakings, and to the
powers of obstruction granted to local authorities. Eventually
The Electric Lighting Act 1 909 was passed. This Act provides :
(i) for the granting of provisional orders authorizing any local
authority or company to supply electricity in bulk; (2) for the
exercise of electric lighting powers by local authorities jointly
under provisional order; (3) for the supply of electricity to
railways, canals and tramways outside the area of supply with
the consent of the Board of Trade; (4) for the compulsory
acquisition of land for generating stations by provisional order;
(5) for the exemption of agreements for the supply of electricity
from stamp duty; and (6) for the amendment of regulations
relating to July notices, revision of maximum price, certification
of meters, transfer of powers of undertakers, auditors' reports,
and other matters.
The first of the Power Bills was promoted in 1898, under which
it was proposed to erect a large generating station in the Midlands
from which an area of about two thousand square miles would
be supplied. Vigorous opposition was organized against the
bill by the local authorities and it did not pass. The bill was
revived in 1899, but was finally crushed. In 1900 and following
years several power bills were successfully promoted, and the
following are the areas over which the powers of these acts extend:
In Scotland, (i) the Clyde Valley, (2) the county of Fife,
(3) the districts described as " Scottish Central," comprising
Linlithgow, Clackmannan, and portions of Dumbarton and
Stirling, and (4) the Lothians, which include portions of Mid-
lothian, East Lothian, Peebles and Lanark.
In England there are companies operating in (i) Northumber-
land, (2) Durham county, (3) Lancashire, (4) South Wales and
Carmarthenshire, (5) Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, (6)
Leicestershire and Warwickshire, (7) Yorkshire, (8) Shropshire,
Worcestershire and Staffordshire, (9) Somerset, (10) Kent, (n)
Cornwall, (12) portions of Gloucestershire, (13) North Wales,
(14) North Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Denbighshire and Flint-
shire, (15) West Cumberland, (16) the Cleveland district,
(17) the North Metropolitan district, and (18) the West Metro-
politan area. An undertaking which may be included in this
category, although it is not a Power Act company, is the Midland
Electric Corporation in South Staffordshire. The systems of
generation and distribution are generally 10,000 or 11,000 volts
three-phase alternating current.
The powers conferred by these acts were much restricted as a
result of opposition offered to them. In many cases the larger
towns were cut out of the areas of supply altogether, but the
general rule was that the power company was prohibited from
supplying direct to a power consumer in the area of an authorized
distributor without the consent of the latter, subject to appeal
to the Board of Trade. Even this restricted power of direct
supply was not embodied in all the acts, the power of taking
supply in bulk being left only- to certain authorized distributors
and to authorized users such as railways and tramways. Owing
chiefly to the exclusion of large towns and industrial centres from
their areas, these power supply companies did not all prove as
successful as was expected.
In the case of one of the power companies which has been in a
favourable position for the development of its business, the
theoretical conclusions in regard to the economy of large pro-
duction above stated have been amply demonstrated in practice.
In 1901, when this company was emerging from the stage of a
simple electric lighting company, the total costs per unit were
i-osd. with an output of about 2^ million units per annum.
In 1905 the output rose to over 30 million units mostly for power
and traction purposes, and the costs fell to o-s6d. per unit.
An interesting phase of the power supply question has arisen
in London. Under the general acts it was stipulated that the
power-house should be erected within the area of supply, and
ELECTRICITY SUPPLY
201
ilgamation of undertakings was prohibited. After less than
a decade of development several of the companies in London
found themselves obliged to make considerable additions to their
generating plants. But their existing buildings were full to tln-ir
utmost capacity, and the difficulties of generating cheaply on
crowded sites had increased instead of diminished during the
interval. Several of the companies had to promote special acts
of parliament to obtain relief, but the idea of a general combina-
tion was not considered to be within the range of practical
politics until 1005, when the Administrative County of London
Electric Power Bill was introduced. Compared with other
large cities, the consumption of electricity in London is small.
The output of electricity in New York for all purposes is 971
million units per annum or 282 units per head of population.
The output of electricity in London is only 42 units per head
per annum. There are in London twelve local authorities and
fourteen companies carrying on electricity supply undertakings.
The capital expenditure is 3,127,000 by the local authorities
and 12,530,000 by the companies, and their aggregate capacity
of plant is 165,000 k.w. The total output is about 160,000,000
units per annum, the total revenue is over 2,000,000, and the
gross profit before providing for interest and sinking fund
charges is 1,158,000. The general average cost of production
is i-5sd. per unit, and the average price per unit sold is 3-i6d.,
but some of the undertakers have already supplied electricity
to large power consumers at below id. per unit. By generating
on a large scale for a wide variety of demands the promoters of
the new scheme calculated to be able to offer electrical energy
in bulk to electricity supply companies and local authorities
at prices substantially below their costs of production at separate
stations, and also to provide them and power users with electricity
at rates which would compete with other forms of power. The
authorized capital was fixed at 6,666,000, and the initial outlay
on the first plant of 90,000 k.w., mains, &c., was estimated at
2,000,000. The costs of generation were estimated at o-i^d.
per unit, and the total cost at o-szd. per unit sold. The output
by the year 1911 was estimated at 133,500,000 units at an
avenge selling price of o-7d. per unit, to be reduced to 0-5511. by
1916 when the output was estimated at 600,000,000 units. The
bill underwent a searching examination before the House of
Lords committee and was passed in an amended form. At the
second reading in the House of Commons a strong effort was made
to throw it out, but it was allowed to go to committee on the
condition contrary to the general recommendations of the
parliamentary committee of 1898 that a purchase clause
would be inserted; but amendments were proposed to such an
extent that the bill was not reported for third reading until the
eve of the prorogation of parliament. In the following year
(1006) the Administrative Company's bill was again introduced
in parliament, but the London County Council, which had
previously adopted an attitude both hostile and negative, also
brought forward a similar bill. Among other schemes, one known
as the Additional Electric Power Supply Bill was to authorize
the transmission of current from St Neots in Hunts. This bill
was rejected by the House of Commons because the promoters
declined to give precedence to the bill of the London County
Council. The latter bill was referred to a hybrid committee with
instructions to consider the whole question of London power
uipply, but it was ultimately rejected. The same result attended
i second bill which was promoted by the London County Council
in 1907. The question was settled by the London Electric
Supply Act 1908, which constitutes the London County Council
the purchasing authority (in the place of the local authorities)
for the electric supply companies in London. This Act also
enabled the Companies and other authorized undertakers to
enter into agreements for the exchange of current and the
linking-up of stations.
The general supply of electricity is governed primarily by
the two acts of parliament passed in 1882 and 1888, which apply
to the whole of the United Kingdom. Until 1899 the other
statutory provisions relating to electricity supply were incor-
porated in provisional orders granted by the Board of Trade
and confirmed by parliament in respect of each undertaking, but
in that year an Electric Lighting Clauses Act was passed by
which the clauses previously inserted in each order ,/!-
were standardized. Under these acts the Board of tloa and
Trade made rules with respect to applications for
licences and provisional orders, and regulations for
the protection of the public, and of the electric lines and works
of the post office, and others, and also drew up a model form
for provisional orders.
Until the passing of the Electric Lighting Acts, wires could be
placed wherever permission for doing so could be obtained, but
persons breaking up streets even with the consent of the local
authority were liable to indictment for nuisance. With regard
to overhead wires crossing the streets, the local authorities had
no greater power than any member of the public, but a road
authority having power to make a contract for lighting the road
could authorize others to erect poles and wires for the purpose.
A property owner, however, was able to prevent wires from being
taken over his property. The act of 1888 made all electric lines
or other works for the supply of electricity, not entirely enclosed
within buildings or premises in the same occupation, subject to
regulations of the Board of Trade. The postmaster-general
may also impose conditions for the protection of the post office.
Urban authorities, the London County Council, and some other
corporations have now powers to make by-laws for prevention
of obstruction from posts and overhead wires for telegraph,
telephone, lighting or signalling purposes; and electric lighting
stations are now subject to the provisions of the Factory Acts.
Parliamentary powers to supply electricity can now be obtained
by (A) Special Act, (B) Licence, or (C) Provisional order.
A. Special Act. Prior to the report of Lord Cross's joint
committee of 1898 (referred to above), only one special act was
passed. The provisions of the Electric Power Acts passed
subsequently are not uniform, but the following are some of the
usual provisions:
The company shall not supply electricity for lighting purposes
except to authorized undertakers, provided that the energy
supplied to any person for power may be used for lighting any
premises on which the power is utilized. The company shall not
supply energy (except to authorized undertakers) in any area
which forms part of the area of supply of any authorized dis-
tributors without their consent, such consent not to be unreason-
ably withheld. The company is bound to supply authorized
undertakers upon receiving notice and upon the applicants
agreeing to pay for at least seven years an amount sufficient to
yield 20% on the outlay (excluding generating plant or wires
already installed). Other persons to whom the company is
authorized to supply may require it upon terms to be settled,
if not agreed, by the Board of Trade. Dividends are usually
restricted to 8 %, with a provision that the rate may be increased
upon the average price charged being reduced. The maximum
charges are usually limited to 3d. per unit for any quantity up
to 400 hours' supply, and 2d. per unit beyond. No preference is
to be shown between consumers in like circumstances. Many pro-
visions of the general Electric Lighting Acts are excluded from
these special acts, in particular the clause giving the local
authority the right to purchase the undertaking compulsorily.
B. Licence. The only advantages of proceeding by licence
are that it can be expeditiously obtained and does not require
confirmation by parliament; but some of the provisions usually
inserted in provisional orders would be ultra vires in a licence 1 ,
and the Electric Lighting Clauses Act 1899 does not extend to
licences. The term of a licence does not exceed seven years,
but is renewable. The consent of the local authority is necessary
even to an application for a licence. None of the licences that
have been granted is now in force.
C. Provisional Order. An intending applicant for a pro-
visional order must serve notice of his intention on every local
authority within the proposed area of supply on or before the ist
of July prior to the session in which application is to be made to
the Board of Trade. This provision has given rise to much com-
plaint, as it gives the local authorities a long time for bargaining
202
ELECTRICITY SUPPLY
and enables them to supersede the company's application by
themselves applying for provisional orders. The Board of Trade
generally give preference to the applications of local authorities.
In 1905 the Board of Trade issued a memorandum stating
that, in view of the revocation of a large number of provisional
orders which had been obtained by local authorities, or in regard
to which local authorities had entered into agreements with
companies for carrying the orders into effect (which agreements
were in many cases ultra vires or at least of doubtful validity), it
appeared undesirable that a local authority should apply for a
provisional order without having a definite intention of exercising
the powers, and that in future the Board of Trade would not
grant an order to a local authority unless the board were satisfied
that the powers would be exercised within a specified period.
Every undertaking authorized by provisional order is subject
to the provision of the general act entitling the local authority
to purchase compulsorily at the end of forty-two years (or
shorter period), or after the expiration of every subsequent
period of ten years (unless varied by agreement between the
parties with the consent of the Board of Trade), so much of the
undertaking as is within the jurisdiction of the purchasing
authority upon the terms of paying the then value of all lands,
buildings, works, materials and plant, suitable to and used for
the purposes of the undertaking; provided that the value of
such lands, &c., shall be deemed to be their fair market value
at the time of purchase, due regard being had to the nature and
then condition and state of repair thereof, and to the circum-
stance that they are in such positions as to be ready for immediate
working, and to the suitability of the same to the purposes of
the undertaking, and where a part only of the undertaking is
purchased, to any loss occasioned by severance, but without
any addition in respect of compulsory purchase or of goodwill,
or of any profits which may or might have been or be made from
the undertaking or any similar consideration. Subject to this
right of purchase by the local authority, a provisional order
(but not a licence) may be for such period as the Board of Trade
may think proper, but so far no limit has been imposed, and
unless purchased by a local authority the powers are held in
perpetuity. No monopoly is granted to undertakers, and since
1889 the policy of the Board of Trade has been to sanction two
undertakings in the same metropolitan area, preferably using
different systems, but to discourage competing schemes within
the same area in the provinces. Undertakers must within two
years lay mains in certain specified streets. After the first
eighteen months they may be required to lay mains in other
streets upon conditions specified in the order, and any owner
or occupier of premises within 50 yds. of a distributing main
may require the undertakers to give a supply to his premises;
but the consumer must pay the cost of the lines laid upon his
property and of so much outside as exceeds 60 ft. from the
main, and he must also contract for two and in some cases for
three years' supply. But undertakers are prohibited in making
agreements for supply from showing any undue preference.
The maximum price in London is 135. 4d. per quarter for any
quantity up to 20 units, and beyond that 8d. per unit, but i is. 8d.
per quarter up to 20 units and 7d. per unit beyond is the more
general maximum. The " Bermondsey clause " requires the
undertakers (local authority) so to fix their charges (not exceeding
the specified maximum) that the revenue shall not be less than
the expenditure.
There is no statutory obligation on municipalities to provide
for depreciation of electricity supply undertakings, but after
providing for all expenses, interest on loans, and sinking fund
instalments, the local authority may create a reserve fund until
it amounts, with interest, to one-tenth of the aggregate capital
expenditure. Any deficiency when not met out of reserve is
payable out of the local rates.
The principle on which the Local Government Board sanctions
municipal loans for electric lighting undertakings is that the
period of the loan shall not exceed the life of the works, and that
future ratepayers shall not be unduly burdened. The periods
of the loans vary from ten years for accumulators and arc lamps
to sixty years for lands. Within the county of London the
loans raised by the metropolitan borough councils for electrical
purposes are sanctioned by the London County Council, and that
body allows a minimum period of twenty years for repayment.
Up to 1904-1905, 245 loans had been granted by the council
amounting in the aggregate to 4,045,067.
In 1901 the Institution of Civil Engineers appointed a com-
mittee to consider the advisability of standardizing various
kinds of iron and steel sections. Subsequently the
. . f Standard-
original reference was enlarged, and m 1902 the izattoa.
Institution of Electrical Engineers was invited to
co-operate. The treasury, as well as_ railway companies, manu-
facturers and others, have made grants to defray the expenses.
The committee on electrical plant has ten sub-committees. In
August 1904 an interim report was issued by the sub-committee
on generators, motors and transformers, dealing with pressures
and frequencies, rating of generators and motors, direct-current
generators, alternating-current generators, and motors.
In 1903 the specification for British standard tramway rails
and fish-plates was issued, and in 1904 a standard specification
for tubular tramway poles was issued. A sectional committee
was formed in 1904 to correspond with foreign countries with
regard to the formation of an electrical international commission
to study the question of an international standardization of
nomenclature and ratings of electrical apparatus and machinery.
The electrical manufacturing branch, which is closely related
to the electricity supply and other operating departments of the
electrical industry, only dates from about 1880. Since
that time it has undergone many vicissitudes. It
began with the manufacture of small arc lighting industry.
equipments for railway stations, streets and public
buildings. When the incandescent lamp became a commercial
article, ship-lighting sets and installations for theatres and
mansions constituted the major portion of the electrical work.
The next step was the organization of house-to-house distribu-
tion of electricity from small " central stations," ultimately
leading to the comprehensive public supply in large towns,
which involved the manufacture of generating and distributing
plants of considerable magnitude and complexity. With the
advent of electric traction about 1896, special machinery had
to be produced, and at a later stage the manufacturer had to
solve problems in connexion with bulk supply in large areas and
for power purposes. Each of these main departments involved
changes in ancillary manufactures, such as cables, switches,
transformers, meters, &c., so that the electrical manufacturing
industry has been in a constant state of transition. At the
beginning of the period referred to Germany and America were
following the lead of England in theoretical developments, and
for some time Germany obtained electrical machinery from
England. Now scarcely any electrical apparatus is exported
to Germany, and considerable imports are received by England
from that country and America. The explanation is to be found
mainly in the fact that the adverse legislation of 1882 had the
effect of restricting enterprise, and while British manufacturers
were compulsorily inert during periods of impeded growth of
the two most important branches of the industry electric
lighting and traction manufacturers in America and on the
continent of Europe, who were in many ways encouraged by
their governments, devoted their resources to the establishment
of factories and electrical undertakings, and to the development
of efficient selling organizations at home and abroad. When
after the amendment of the adverse legislation in 1888 a demand
for electrical machinery arose in England, the foreign manu-
facturers were fully organized for trade on a large scale, and
were further aided by fiscal conditions to undersell English
manufacturers, not only in neutral markets, but even in their
own country. Successful manufacture on a large scale is possible
only by standardizing the methods of production. English
manufacturers were not able to standardize because they had
not the necessary output. There had been no repetitive demand,
and there was no production on a large scale. Foreign manu-
facturers, however, were able to standardize by reason of the
ELECTRIC WAVES
203
large uniform demand which existed fur their manufactures.
Statistics are available showing the extent to which the growth
of the electrical manufacturing industry in Great Britain was
delayed. Nearly twenty years after the inception of the industry
there were only twenty-four manufacturing companies registered
in the United Kingdom, having an aggregate subscribed capital
of under 7,000,000. But in 1007 there were igi companies
with over 47,000.000 subscribed capital. The cable and in-
candescent lamp sections show that when the British manu-
facturers arc allowed opportunities they are not slow to take
advantage of them. The cable-making branch was established
under the more encouraging conditions of the telegraph industry,
and the lamp industry was in the early days protected by patents.
Other departments not susceptible to foreign competition on
account of freightage, such as the manufacture of storage
batteries anil rolling sunk, are also fairly prosperous. In
departments where special circumstances offer a prospect of
success, the technical skill, commercial enterprise and general
efficiency of British manufacturers manifest themselves by
positive progress and not merely by the continuance of a struggle
against adverse conditions. The normal posture of the British
manufacturer of electrical machinery has been described as one
of desperate defence of his home trade; that of the foreign
manufacturer as one of vigorous attack upon British and other
open markets. In considering the position of English manu-
facturers as compared with their foreign rivals, some regard
should be had to the patent laws. One condition of a grant
of a patent in mo>t foreign countries is that the patent shall
be worked in those countries within a specified period. But a
foreign inventor was until 1007 able to secure patent protection
in Great Britain without any obligation to manufacture there.
The effect of this was to encourage the manufacture of patented
apparatus in foreign countries, and to stimulate their exportation
to Great Britain in competition with British products. With
regard to the electro-chemical industry the progress which has
been achieved by other nations, notably Germany, is very
marvellous by comparison with the advance made by England,
but to state the reasons why this industry has had such extra-
ordinary development in Germany, notwithstanding that many
of the fundamental inventions were made in England, would
require a statement of the marked differences in the methods
by which industrial. progress is promoted in the two countries.
There has been very little solidarity among those interested
in the commercial development of electricity, and except for
the discussion of scientific subjects there has been very little
organization with the object of protecting and promoting common
interests. (E. GA.)
ELECTRIC WAVES. i. Clerk Maxwell proved that on his
theory electro-magnetic disturbances are propagated as a wave
motion through the dielectric, while Lord Kelvin in 1853 (Phil.
Uag. (4) S< P- 393) proved from electro-magnetic theory that the
discharge of a condenser is oscillatory, a result which Feddersen
(Pogg. Ann. 103, p. 69, &c.) verified by a beautiful scries of
experiments. The oscillating discharge of a condenser had been
inferred by Henry as long ago as 1842 from his experiments on
the magnetization produced in needles by the discharge of a
condenser. From these two results it follows that electric waves
must be passing through the dielectric surrounding a condenser
in the act of discharging, but it was not until 1887 that the
existence of such waves was demonstrated by direct experiment.
This great step was made by Hertz (Wied. Ann. 34, pp. 155,
551, 609; Ausbrettung der elektrischen Kraft, Leipzig, 1892),
whose experiments on this subject form one of the greatest
contributions ever made to experimental physics. The difficulty
which had stood in the way of the observations of these waves
was the absence of any method of detecting electrical and
magnetic forces, reversed some millions of times per second, and
only lasting for an exceedingly short time. This was removed
by Hertz, who showed that such forces would produce small
sparks between pieces of metal very nearly in contact, and that
these sparks were sufficiently regular to be used to detect electric
waves and to investigate their properties. Other and more
delicate methods have subsequently been discovered, but the
results obtained by Hertz with his detector were of such signal
importance, that we shall begin our account of experiments on
these waves by a description of some of Hertz's more fundamental
experiments.
To produce the waves Hertz used two forms of vibrator. The
first is represented in fig. i. A and B arc two zinc plates about
40 cm. square; to these brass rods, C, D, each about 30 cm. long,
are soldered, terminating in brass balls E and F. To get good
results it is necessary that these balls should be very brightly
polished, and as they get roughened by the sparks which pass
between them it is necessary to repolish them at short intervals;
they should be shaded from light and from sparks, or other
source of ultra-violet light. In order to excite the waves, C and
1) are connected to the two poles of an induction coil; sparks
cross the air-gap which becomes a conductor, and the charges on
the plates oscillate backwards and forwards like the charges on
the coatings of a Leyden jar when it is short-circuited. The
object of polishing the balls and screening off light is to get a
sudden and sharp discharge; if the balls are rough there will
be sharp points from which the charge will gradually leak, and
the discharge will not be abrupt enough to start electrical
vibrations, as these have an exceedingly short period. From
the open form of this vibrator we should expect the radiation
to be very large and the rate of decay of the amplitude very
rapid. Bjerknes (Wied. Ann. 44, p. 74) found that the amplitude
fell to lie of the original value, after a time 4!' where T was the
period of the electrical vibrations. Thus after a few vibrations
the amplitude becomes inappreciable. To detect the waves
produced by this vibrator Hertz used a piece of copper wire bent
into a circle, the ends being furnished with two balls, or a ball
and a point connected by a screw, so that the distance between
them admitted of very fine adjustment. The radius of the
circle for use with the vibrator just described was 35 cm., and
was so chosen that the free period of the detector might be the
same as that of the, vibrator, and the effects in it increased by
resonance. It is evident, however, that with a primary system
as greatly damped as the vibrator used by Hertz, we could not
expect very marked resonance effects, and as a matter of fact
the accurate timing of vibrator and detector in this case is not
very important. With electrical vibrators which can maintain
a large number of vibrations, resonance effects are very striking,
as is beautifully shown by the following experiment due to
Lodge (Nature, 41, p. 368), whose researches have greatly
advanced our knowledge of electric waves. A and C (fig. 2) are
two Leyden jars, whose inner and outer coatings are connected
by wires, B and D, bent so as to include a considerable area.
There is an air-break in the circuit connecting the inside and
outside of one of the jars, A, and electrical oscillations are started
in A by joining the inside and outside with the terminals of a
coil or electrical machine. The circuit in the jar C is provided
204
ELECTRIC WAVES
with a sliding piece, F, by means of which the self-induction of
the discharging circuit, and, therefore, the time of an electrical
oscillation of the jar, can be adjusted. The inside and outside
of this jar are put almost, but not quite, into electrical contact
by means of a piece of tin-foil, E, bent over the lip of the jar.
The jars are placed face to face so that the circuits B and D
are parallel to each other, and approximately at right angles to
the line joining their centres. When the electrical machine is
in action sparks pass across the air-break in the circuit in A,
and by moving the slider F it is possible to find one position for
it in which sparks pass from the inside to the outside of C across
the tin-foil, while when the slider is moved a short distance on
either side of this position the sparks cease.
Hertz found that when he held his detector in the neighbour-
hood of the vibrator minute sparks passed between the balls.
These sparks were not stopped when a large plate of non-conduct-
ing substance, such as the wall of a room, was interposed between
the vibrator and detector, but a large plate of very thin metal
stopped them completely.
To illustrate the analogy between electric waves and waves
of light Hertz found another form of apparatus more convenient.
The vibrator consisted of two equal brass cylinders, 1 2 cm. long
and 3 cm. in diameter, placed with their axes coincident, and in
the focal line of a large zinc parabolic mirror about 2 m. high,
with a focal length of 1 2-5 cm. The ends of the cylinders nearest
each other, between which the sparks passed, were carefully
polished. The detector, which was placed in the focal line of
an equal parabolic mirror, consisted of two lengths of wire,
FIG. 3.
each having a straight piece about 50 cm.* long and a curved
piece about 15 cm. long bent round at right angles so as to pass
through the back of the mirror. The ends which came through
the mirror were connected with a spark micrometer, the sparks
being observed from behind the mirror. The mirrors are shown
in fig. 3.
2. Reflection and Refraction. To show the reflection of the
waves Hertz placed the mirrors side by side, so that their openings
looked in the same direction, and their axes converged at a point
about 3 m. from the mirrors. No sparks were then observed
in the detector when the vibrator was in action. When, however,
a large zinc plate about 2 m. square was placed at right angles
to the line bisecting the angle between the axes of the mirrors
sparks became visible, but disappeared again when the metal
plate was twisted through an angle of about 15 to either side.
This experiment showed that electric waves are reflected, and
that, approximately at any rate, the angle of incidence is equal
to the angle of reflection. To show refraction Hertz used a large
prism made of hard pitch, about 1-5 m. high, with a slant side
of i 2 m. and an angle of 30. When the waves from the vibrator
passed through this the sparks in the detector were not excited
when the axes of the two mirrors were parallel, but appeared
when the axis of the mirror containing the detector made a
certain angle with the axis of that containing the vibrator. When
the system was adjusted for minimum deviation the sparks were
most vigorous when the angle between the axes of the mirrors
was 2 2. This corresponds to an index of refraction of i -69.
3. Analogy to a Plate of Tourmaline. If a screen be made
by winding wire round a large rectangular framework, so that
the turns of the wire are parallel to one pair of sides of the frame,
and if this screen be interposed between the parabolic mirrors
when placed so as to face each other, there will be no sparks in
the detector when the turns of the wire are parallel to the focal
lines of the mirror; but if the frame is turned through a right
angle so that the wires are perpendicular to the focal lines of the
mirror the sparks will recommence. If the framework is sub-
stituted for the metal plate in the experiment on the reflection
of electric waves, sparks will appear in the detector when the
wires are parallel to the focal lines of the mirrors, and will dis-
appear when the wires are at right angles to these lines. Thus
the framework reflects but does not transmit the waves when the
electric force in them is parallel to the wires, while it transmits
but does not reflect waves in which the electric force is at right
angles to the wires. The wire framework behaves towards the
electric waves exactly as a plate of tourmaline does to waves
of light. Du Bois and Rubens (Wied. Ann. 49, p. 593), by using
a framework wound with very fine wire placed very close together,
have succeeded in polarizing waves of radiant heat, whose wave
length, although longer than that of ordinary light, is very small
compared with that of electric waves.
4. Angle of Polarization. When light polarized at right
angles to the plane of incidence falls on a refracting substance
at an angle tan ~ l n, where y. is the refractive index of the sub-
stance, all the light is refracted and none reflected; whereas
when light is polarized in the plane of incidence, some of the
light is always reflected whatever the angle of incidence.
Trouton (Nature, 39, p. 391) showed that similar effects take
place with electric waves. From a paraffin wall 3 ft. thick,
reflection always took place when the electric force in the inci-
dent wave was at right angles to the plane of incidence, whereas
at a certain angle of incidence there was no reflection when
the vibrator was turned, so that the electric force was in the
plane of incidence. This shows that on the electromagnetic
theory of light the electric force is at right angles to the plane of
polarization.
5. Stationary Electrical Vibrations. Hertz (Wied. Ann.
34, p. 609) made his experiments on these in a large room about
15 m. long. The vibrator, which was of the type first described,
was placed at one end of the room, its plates being parallel to
the wall, at the other end a piece of sheet zinc about 4 m. by
2 m. was placed vertically against the wall.. The detector the
circular ring previously described was held so that its plane
was parallel to the metal plates of the vibrator, its centre on the
line at right angles to the metal plate bisecting at right angles
the spark gap of the vibrator, and with the spark gap of the
detector parallel to that of the vibrator. The following effects
were observed when the detector was moved about. When it
was close up to the zinc plate there were no sparks, but they
began to pass feebly as soon as it was moved forward a little
way from the plate, and increased rapidly in brightness until it
was about 1-8 m. from the plate, when they attained their
maximum. When its distance was still further increased they
diminished in brightness, and vanished again at a distance of
about 4 m. from the plate. When the distance was still further
increased they reappeared, attained another maximum, and so
on. They thus exhibited a remarkable
periodicity similar to that which occurs
when stationary vibrations are produced
by the interference of direct waves with
those reflected from a surface placed at
right angles to the direction of propaga-
tion. Similar periodic alterations in the
spark were observed by Hertz when the
waves, instead of passing freely through
the air and being reflected by a metal
plate at the end of the room, were led
along wires, as in the arrangement shown
in fig. 4. L and K. are metal plates,
placed parallel to the plates of the vibrator, long parallel
wires being attached to act as guides to the waves which
were reflected from the isolated end. (Hertz, used only one
ELECTRIC WAVES
205
plate and one wire, but the double set of plates and wires
introduced by Sarasin and De la Kive make the results more
definite.) In this case the detector is best placed so that its
plane is at right angles to the wires, while the air space is parallel
to the plane containing the wires. The sparks instead of vanish-
ing when the detector is at the far end of the wire are a maximum
in this position, but wax and wane periodically as the detector is
moved along the wires. The most obvious interpretation of
these experiments was the one given by Hertz that there was
interference between the direct waves given out by the vibrator
and those reflected either from the plate or from the ends of the
wire, this interference giving rise to stationary waves. The
places where the electric force was a maximum were the
places where the sparks were brightest, and the places
where the electric force was zero were the places where
the sparks vanished. On this explanation the distance be-
tween two consecutive places where the sparks vanished
would be half the wave length of the waves given out by the
vibrator.
Some very interesting experiments made by Sarasin and De
la Rive (Comptts rendus, 115, p. 489) showed that this explana-
tion could not be the true one, since by using detectors of different
sizes they found that the distance between two consecutive places
where the sparks vanished depended mainly upon the size of
the detector, and very little upon that of the vibrator. With
small detectors they found the distance small, with large de-
tectors, large; in fact it is directly proportional to the diameter
of the detector. We can see that this result is a consequence
of the large damping of the oscillations of the vibrator and the
very small damping of those of the detector. Bjerkncs showed
that the time taken for the amplitude of the vibrations of the
vibrator to sink to i/ of their original value was only 4'!', while
for the detector it was sooT, when T and T' are respectively
the times of vibration of the vibrator and the detector. The
rapid decay of the oscillations of the vibrator will stifle the
interference between the direct and the reflected wave, as the
amplitude of the direct wave will, since it is emitted later, be
much smaller than that of the reflected one, and not able to
annul its effects completely; while the well-maintained vibra-
tions of the detector will interfere and produce the effects observed
by Sarasin and De la Rive. To see this let us consider the extreme
case in which the oscillations of the vibrator are absolutely dead-
beat. Here an impulse, starting from the vibrator on its way
to the reflector, strikes against the detector and sets it in vibra-
tion; it then travels up to the plate and is reflected, the electric
force in the impulse being reversed by reflection. After reflection
the impulse again strikes the detector, which is still vibrating
from the effects of the first impact; if the phase of this vibration
is such that the reflected impulse tends to produce a current
round the detector in the same direction as that which is circulat-
ing from the effects of the first impact, the sparks will be increased,
but if the reflected impulse tends to produce a current in the
opposite direction the sparks will be diminished. Since the
electric force is reversed by reflection, the greatest increase in the
sparks will take place when the impulse finds, on its return, the
detector in the opposite phase to that in which it left it; that
is, if the time which has elapsed between the departure and return
of the impulse is equal to an odd multiple of half the time of
vibration of the detector. If d is the distance of the detector
from the reflector when the sparks are brightest, and V the
velocity of propagation of electromagnetic disturbance, then
zrf/V - (2* + i)CT/2); where n is an integer and T' the time of
vibration of the detector, the distance between two spark
maxima will be VT'/i, and the places where the sparks are a
minimum will be midway between the maxima. Sarasin and
De la Rive found that when the same detector was used the
distance between two spark maxima was the same with the
waves through air reflected from a metal plate and with those
guided by wires and reflected from the free ends of the wire, the
inference being that the velocity of waves along wires is the
same as that through the air. This result, which follows from
Maxwell's theory, when the wires are not too fine, had been
questioned by Hertz on account of some of his experiments on
wires.
6. Detectors. The use of a detector with a period of vibration
of its own thus tends to make the experiments more complicated,
and many other forms of detector have been employed by
subsequent experimenters. For example, in place of the sparks
in air the luminous discharge through a rarefied gas has been
used by Dragoumis, Lecher (who used tubes without electrodes
laid across the wires in an arrangement resembling that shown
in fig. 7) and Arons. A tube containing neon at a low pressure
is especially suitable for this purpose. Zchnder (Wied. Ann.
47. P- 777) used an exhausted tube to which an external electro-
motive force almost but not quite sufficient of itself to produce
a discharge was applied; here the additional electromotive
force due to the waves was sufficient to start the discharge.
Detectors depending on the heat produced by the rapidly
alternating currents have been used by Paalzow and Rubens,
Rubens and Ritter, and I. KlemenciC. Rubens measured the
heat produced by a bolometer arrangement, and Klemencj
used a thermo-electric method for the same purpose; in con-
sequenceof the great increase in the sensitivenessof galvanometers
these methods are now very frequently resorted to. Boltzmann
used an electroscope as a detector. The spark gap consisted
of a ball and a point, the ball being connected with the electro-
scope and the point with a battery of 200 dry cells. When the
spark passed the cells charged up the electroscope. Ritter
utilized the contraction of a frog's leg as a detector, Lucas and
Garrett the explosion produced by the sparks in an explosive
mixture of hydrogen and oxygen; while Bjerknes and Franke
used the mechanical attraction between oppositely charged
conductors. If the two sides of the spark gap are connected with
the two pairs of quadrants of a very delicate electrometer, the
needle of which is connected with one pair -of quadrants, there
will be a deflection of the electrometer when the detector is
struck by electric waves. A very efficient detector is that in-
vented by E. Rutherford (Trans. Roy. Soc. A. 1897, 189, p. i);
it consists of a bundle of fine iron wires magnetized to saturation
and placed inside a small magnetizing coil, through which the
electric waves cause rapidly alternating currents to pass which
demagnetize the soft iron. If the instrument is used to detect
waves in air, long straight wires are attached to the ends of the
demagnetizing coil to collect the energy from the field; to
investigate waves in wires it is sufficient to make a loop or two
in the wire and place the magnetized piece of iron inside it.
The amount of demagnetization which can be observed by the
change in the deflection of a magnetometer placed near the iron,
measures the intensity of the electric waves, and very accurate
determinations can be made with ease with this apparatus.
It is also very delicate, though in this respect it does not equal
the detector to be next described, the coherer; Rutherford got
indications in 1895 when the vibrator was J of a mile away from
the detector, and where the waves had to traverse a thickly
populated part of Cambridge. It can also be used to measure
the coefficient of damping of the electric waves, for since the
wire is initially magnetized to saturation, if the direction of the
current when it first begins to flow in the magnetizing coil is
such as to tend to increase the magnetization of the wire, it will
produce no effect, and it will not be until the current is
reversed that the wire, will lose some of its magnetization.
The effect then gives the measure of the intensky half a period
after the commencement of the waves. If the wire is put in the
coil the opposite way, i.e. so that the magnetic force due to the
current begins at once to demagnetize the wire, the demagnetiza-
tion gives a measure of the initial intensity of the waves. Com-
paring this result with that obtained when the wires were
reversed, we get the coefficient of damping. A very convenient
detector of electric waves is the one discovered almost simultane-
ously by Fessendcn (Electrolech. Zeils., 1903, 24, p. 586) and
Schlomilch (ibid. p. 959). This consists of an electrolytic cell in
which one of the electrodes is an exceedingly fine point. The
electromotive force in the circuit is small, and there is large
polarization in the circuit with only a small current. When the
206
ELECTRIC WAVES
circuit is struck by electric waves there is an increase in the
currents due to the depolarization of the circuit. If a galvano-
meter is in the circuit, the increased deflection of the instrument
will indicate the presence of the waves.
7. Coherers. The most sensitive detector of electric waves
is the " coherer," although for metrical work it is not so suitable
as that just described. It depends upon the fact discovered by
Branly (Comptes rendus, in, p. 785; 112, p. 90) that the resistance
between loose metallic contacts, such as a pile of iron turnings,
diminishes when they are struck by an electric wave. One of
the forms made by Lodge (The Work of Hertz and some of his
Successors, 1894) on this principle consists simply of a glass tube
containing iron turnings, in contact with which are wires led
into opposite ends of the tube. The arrangement is placed in
series with a galvanometer (one of the simplest kind will do)
and a battery; when the iron turnings are struck by electric
waves their resistance is diminished and the deflection of the
galvanometer is increased. Thus the deflection of the galvano-
meter can be used to indicate the arrival of electric waves. The
tube must be tapped between each experiment, and the deflection
of the galvanometer brought back to about its original value.
This detector is marvellously delicate, but not metrical, the
change produced in the resistance depending upon so many
things besides the intensity of the waves that the magnitude of
the galvanometer deflection is to some extent a matter of chance.
Instead of the iron turnings we may use two iron wires, one
resting on the other; the resistance of this contact will be altered
by the incidence of the waves. To get greater regularity Bose
uses, instead of the iron turnings, spiral springs, which are pushed
against each other by means of a screw until the most sensitive
state is attained. The sensitiveness of the coherer depends on
the electromotive force put in the galvanometer circuit. Very
sensitive ones can be made by using springs of very fine silver
wire coated electrolytically with nickel. Though the impact
of electric waves generally produces a diminution of resistance
with these loose contacts, yet there are exceptions to the rule.
Thus Branly showed that with lead peroxide, PbO 2 , there is an
increase in resistance. Aschkinass proved the same to be true
with copper sulphide, CuS; and Bose showed that with potassium
there is an increase of resistance and great power of self-recovery
of the original resistance after the waves have ceased. Several
theories of this action have been proposed. Branly (Lumiere
electrique, 40, p. 511) thought that the small sparks which
certainly pass between adjacent portions of metal clear away
layers of oxide or some other kind of non-conducting film, and
in this way improve the contact. It would seem that if this
theory is true the films must be of a much more refined kind than
layers of oxide or dirt, for the coherer effect has been observed
with clean non-oxidizable metals. Lodge explains the effect by
supposing that the heat produced by the sparks fuses adjacent
portions of metal into contact and hence diminishes the resist-
ance; it is from this view of the action that the name coherer
is applied to the detector. Auerbeck thought that the effect was
a mechanical one due to the electrostatic attractions between
the various small pieces of metal. It is probable that some
or all of these causes are at work in some cases, but the
effects of potassium make us hesitate to accept any of them
as the complete explanation. Blanc (Ann. Mm. phys., 1905,
[8] 6, p. 5), as the result of a long series of experiments,
came to the conclusion that coherence is due to pressure. He
regarded the outer layers as different from the mass of the metal
and having a much greater specific resistance. He supposed
that when two pieces of metal are pressed together the molecules
diffuse across the surface, modifying the surface layers and in-
creasing their conductivity.
| 8. Generators of Electric Waves. Bose (Phil. Mag. 43, p. 55)
designed an instrument which generates electric waves with a length
of not more than a centimetre or so, and therefore allows their
properties to be demonstrated with apparatus of moderate dimen-
sions. The waves are excited by sparking between two platinum
beads carried by jointed electrodes; a platinum sphere is placed
between the beads, and the distance between the beads and the
sphere can be adjusted by bending the electrodes. The diameter of
the sphere is 8 mm., and the wave length of the shortest electrical
waves generated is said to be about 6 mm. The beads are connected
with the terminals of a small induction coil, which, with the battery
to work it and the sparking arrangement, are enclosed in a metal
box, the radiation passing out through a metal tube opposite to
the spark gap. The ordinary vibrating break of the coil is not used,
a single spark made by making and breaking the circuit by means of
a button outside the box being employed instead. The detector is
one of the spiral spring coherers previously described; it is shielded
from external disturbance by being enclosed in a metal box provided
with a funnel-shaped opening to admit the radiation. The wires
leading from the coherers to the galvanometer are also surrounded
by metal tubes to protect them from stray radiation. The radiat-
ing apparatus and the receiver are mounted on stands sliding in an
optical bench. If a parallel beam of radiation is required, a cylin-
drical lens of ebonite or sulphur is mounted in a tube fitting on to
the radiator tube and stopped by a guide when the spark is at the
principal focal line of the lens. For experiments requiring angular
measurements a spectrometer circle is mounted on one of the sliding
stands, the receiver being carried on a radial arm and pointing to the
centre of the circle. The arrangement is represented in fig. 5.
With this apparatus the laws of reflection, refraction and polariza-
tion can readily be verified, and also the double refraction of crystals,
and of bodies possessing a fibrous or laminated structure such as
jute or books. (The double refraction of electric waves seems first
to have been observed by Righi, and other researches on this subject
have been made by Garbasso and Mack.) Bose showed the rotation
of the plane of polarization by means of pieces of twisted jute rope;
if the pieces were arranged so that their twists were all in one direction
and placed in the path of the radiation, they rotated the plane of
polarization in a direction depending upon the direction of twist;
if they were mixed so that there were as many twisted in one direction
as the other, there was no rotation.
A series of experiments showing the complete analogy between
electric and light waves is described by Righi in his book L'Ottica
delle oscillazioni elettriche. Righi's exciter, which is especially-
convenient when large statical electric machines are used instead
of induction coils, is shown in fig. 6. E and F are balls connected
with the terminals of the machine, and AB and CD are conductors
insulated from each other, the ends B, C, between which the sparks
pass, being immersed in vaseline oil. The period of the vibrations
given out by the system is adjusted by means of metal plates M and
N attached to AB and CD. When the waves are produced by in-
duction coils or by electrical machines the intervals between the
emission of different sets of waves occupy by far the largest part
of the time. Simon (Wied. Ann., 1898, 64, p. 293; Phys..Zeit.,
1901, 2, p. 253), Duddell (Electrician, 1900, 46, p. 269) and Poulsen
(Eleclrotech. Zeits., 1906, 27, p. 1070) reduced these intervals very
considerably by using the electric arc to excite the waves, and in this
way produced electrical waves possessing great energy. In these
FIG. 6.
methods the terminals between which the arc is passing are connected
through coils with self-induction L to the plates of a condenser of
capacity C. The arc is not steady, but is continually varying. This
is especially the case when it passes through hydrogen. These
variations excite vibrations with a period 2rrV(LC) in the circuit
containing the capacity of the self-induction. By this method
Duddell produced waves with a frequency of 40,000. Poulsen, who
cooled the terminals of the arc, produced waves with a frequency of
1,000,000, while Stechodro (Ann. der Phys. 27, p. 225) claims to
have produced waves with three hundred times this frequency, i.e.
having a wave length of about a metre. When the self-induction
ELECTRIC WAVES
207
and rapacity are large to that the frequency comet within the limits
of the frequency o( audible notes, \he system gives out a musical
note, and tie arrangement is often referred to a* the singing arc.
| 9. Watti in lVi>. Many problems on electric waves along
wires can readily be investigated by a method due to Lecher (Wirf.
Ann. 41, p. 850), and known as Lecher's bridge, which furnishes us
with a mean* of dealing with waves of a definite and determinate
wave-length. In this arrangement (fig. 7) two large plates A and
_B are, as in Herti's exciter, connected with the terminals of an
induction coil; opposite these and insulated from them are two
V
FIG. 7.
smaller plates D, E, to which long parallel wires DFH, EGJ are
attached. These wires are bridged across by a wire I..M, and their
farther ends H, J, may be insulated, or connected together, or with
the plates of a condenser. To detect the waves in the circuit beyond
the bridge. Lecher used an exhausted tube placed across the wires,
and Rubens a bolometer, but Rutherford s detector is the most
convenient and accurate. If this detector is placed in a fixed position
at the end of the circuit, it is found that the deflections of this detector
depend greatly upon the position of the bridge LM, rising rapidly
to a maximum for some positions, and falling rapidly away when the
bridge is displaced. As the bridge is moved from the coil end towards
the detector the deflections show periodic variations, such as are
represented in fig. 8 when the ordinates represent the deflections of
the detector and the abscissae the distance of the bridge from the
ends D, E. The maximum deflections of the detector correspond to
the positions in which the two circuits DFLMGE, I1LM J (in which
the vibrations are but slightly damped) are in resonance. For since
the self-induction and resistance of the bridge LM is very small
compared with that of the circuit beyond, it follows from the theory
of circuits in parallel that only a small part of the current will in
general flow round the longer circuit ; it is only when the two circuits
DFLMGE, HLMJ are in resonance that a considerable current will
Bow round the latter. Hence when we get a maximum effect in
the detector we know that the waves we are dealing with are those
corresponding to the free periods of the system HLMJ, so that if
we know the free periods of this circuit we know the wave length
of the electric waves under consideration. Thus if the ends of
the wires H, J are free and have no capacity, the current along them
must vanish at H and J, which must be in opposite electric condition.
Hence half the wave length must be an odd submultiple of the length
of the circuit HLMJ. If H and J are connected together the wave
length must be a submultiple of the length of this circuit. When the
capacity at the ends is appreciable the wave length of the circuit is
FIG. 8.
determined by a somewhat complex expression. To facilitate the
determination of the wave length in such cases, Lecher introduced a
second bridge L'M', and moved this about until the deflection of the
detector was a maximum; when this occurs the wave length is one
of those corresponding to the closed circuit LMM'L', and must there-
fore be a submultiple of the length of the circuit. Lecher showed
that if instead of using a single wire LM to form the bridge, he used
two parallel wires PQ, LM, placed close together, the currents in the
further circuit were hardly appreciably diminished when the main
wires were cut between PL and QM. Blondlot used a modification of
this apparatus better suited for the production of short waves. In his
form (fig. 9) the exciter consists of two semicircular arms connected
with the terminals of an induction coil, and the long wires, instead
of being connected with the small plates, form a circuit round the
exciter.
As an example of the use of Lecher's arrangement, we may quote
Urude s application of the method to find the specific induction
capacity of dielectrics under electric oscillations of varying frequency.
In this application the ends of the wire are connected to the plates
of a condenser, the space between whose plates can be filled
with the liquid whose specific inductive capacity is required, and
the bndge is moved until
the detector at the end of
the circuit gives the maxi-
mum deflection. Then if
X is the wave length of
the waves, X is the wave
length of one of the free
vibrations of the system
HLMJ; hence if C is the.
capacity of the condenser <
at the end in electrostatic
measure we have
where / is the distance of
the condenser from the
bridge and C' is the capacity of unit length of the wire. In the
condenser part of the lines of force will pass through air and part
through the dielectric; hence C will be of the form Co+KCi where
K is the specific inductive capacity of the dielectric. Hence if / is
the distance of maximum deflection when the dielectric is replaced
by air, /' when filled with a dielectric whose specific inductive
capacity is known to be K', and /' the distance when filled with
the dielectric whose specific inductive capacity is required, we easily
see that
cot^-cotlT i-K'
271 2lrP = I-K
cot. cot r
A A
an equation by means of which K can be determined. It was in
this way that Drude investigated the specific inductive capacity
with varying frequency, and found a falling off in the specific in-
ductive capacity with increase of frequency when the dielectrics
contained the radicle OH. In another method used by him the
wires were led through long tanks filled with the liquid whose specific
inductive capacity was required ; the velocity of propagation of the
electric waves along the wires in the tank being the same as the
velocity of propagation of an electromagnetic disturbance through
the liquid filling the tank, if we find the wave length of the waves
along the wires in the tank, due to a vibration of a given frequency,
and compare this with the wave lengths corresponding to the same
frequency when the wires are surrounded by air, we obtain the
velocity of propagation of electromagnetic disturbance through the
fluid, and hence the specific inductive capacity of the fluid.
I o. Velocity of Propagation of Electromagnetic Effects through A ir.
The experiments of Sarasin and De la Rive already described
(see 5) have shown that, as theory requires, the velocity of propa>-
gallon of electric effects through air is the same as along wires.
The same result had been arrived at by J. I. Thomson, although
from the method he used greater differences between the velocities
might have escaped detection than was possible by Sarasin and De
la Rive's method. The velocity of waves along wires has been
directly determined by Blondlot by two different methods. In the
first the detector consisted of two parallel plates about 6 cm. in
diameter placed a fraction of a millimetre apart, and forming a
condenser whose capacity C was determined in electromagnetic
measure by Maxwell's method. The plates were connected by a
rectangular circuit whose self-induction L was calculated from the
dimensions of the rectangle and the size of the wire. The time of
vibration T is equal to 2V (LC). (The wave length corresponding
to this time is long compared with the length of the circuit, so that
the use of this formula is legitimate.) This detector is placed
between two parallel wires, and the waves produced by the exciter
are reflected from a movable bridge. When this bridge is placed just
beyond the detector vigorous sparks are observed, but as the bridge
is pushed away a place is reached where the sparks disappear; this
place is distance 2/X from the detector, when X is the wave length
of the vibration given out by the detector. The sparks again dis-
appear when the distance of the bridge from the detector is 3X/4-
Thus by measuring the distance between two consecutive positions
of the bridge at which the sparks disappear X can be determined,
208
ELECTROCHEMISTRY
and f, the velocity of propagation, is equal to X/T. As the means
of a number of experiments Blondlot found to be 3-02 Xio 10
cm./sec., which, within the errors of experiment, is equal to 3 Xio 10
cm./sec., the velocity of light. A second method used by Blondlot,
and one which does not in-
volve the calculation of the
period, is as follows: A and
A' (fig. 10) are two equal
Leyden jars coated inside
and outside with tin-foil.
The outer coatings form two
separate rings a, oi; a', a\,
and the inner coatings are
connected with the poles of
the induction coil by means
of the metal pieces b, b'. The
sharply pointed conductors p
and p', the points of which
are about J mm. apart, are
connected with the rings of
the tin-foil a and a', and two
long copper wires pcai, p'c'a'i,
1029 cm. long, connect these
points with the other rings
fli, Oi'. The rings an', flia/,
are connected by wet strings
so as to charge up the jars.
When a spark passes between
b and b', a spark at once
passes between pp', and this
is followed by another spark
when the waves travelling by
the paths Oi cp, a'ic'p' reach
p and p'. The time between
the passage of these sparks,
which is the time taken by
the waves to travel 1029 cm.,
FlG. IO. was observed by means of
a rotating mirror, and the
velocity measured in 15 experiments varied between 2-92 Xio 10 and
3-03 Xio 10 cm./sec., thus agreeing well with that deduced by the
preceding method. Other determinations of the velocity of electro-
magnetic propagation have been made by Lodge and Glazebrook,
and by Saunders.
On Maxwell's electromagnetic theory the velocity of propagation
of electromagnetic disturbances should equal the velocity of light,
and also the ratio of the electromagnetic unit of electricity to the
electrostatic unit. A large number of determinations of this ratio
have been made:
Observer.
Klemencic
Himstedt . .
Rowland . .
Rosa
J. J. Thomson and Searle
Webster.
Pellat ....
Abraham . .
Hurmuzescu .
Rosa .
The mean of these determinations is 3-001 Xio 10 cm./sec., while
the mean of the last five determinations of the velocity of light in
air is given by Himstedt as 3-002 Xio 10 cm./sec. From these ex-
periments we conclude that the velocity of propagation of an electro-
magnetic disturbance is equal to the velocity of light, and to the
velocity required by Maxwell's theory.
In experimenting with electromagnetic waves it is in general
more difficult to measure the period of the oscillations than their
wave length. Rutherford used a method by which the period of
the vibration can easily be determined ; it is based upon the theory
of the distribution of alternating currents in two circuits ACB, ADB
in parallel. If A and B are respectively the maximum currents in
the circuits ACB, ADB, then
Date.
Ratio I0 10 X.
1884
3
019 cm./sec.
1888
3
009 cm./sec.
1889
2
9815 cm./sec.
1889
2
9993 cm./sec.
1890
2
9955 cm./sec.
1891
2
987 cm./sec.
1891
3
009 cm./sec.
1892
2
992 cm./sec.
1895
3
002 cm./sec.
1908
2
9963 cm./sec.
when R and S are the resistances, L and N the coefficients of self-
induction of the circuits ACB, ADB respectively, M the coefficient
of mutual induction between the circuits, and p the frequency of the
currents. Rutherford detectors were placed in the two circuits, and
the circuits adjusted until they showed that A = B; when this is
the case
/>'=
R'-S*
N 2 -L Z -2M (N - L)
If we make one of the circuits, ADB, consist of a short length
of a high liquid resistance, so that S is large and N small, and
the other circuit ACB of a low metallic resistance bent to have
considerable self-induction, the preceding equation becomes ap-
proximately = S/L, so that when S and L are known p is readily
determined.
Q- J- T.)
ELECTROCHEMISTRY. The present article deals with
processes that involve the electrolysis of aqueous solutions,
whilst those in which electricity is used in the manufacture of
chemical products at furnace temperatures are treated under
ELECTROMETALLURGY, although, strictly speaking, in some
cases (e.g. calcium carbide and phosphorus manufacture) they
are not truly metallurgical in character. For the theory and
elemental laws of electro-deposition see ELECTROLYSIS; and
for the construction and use of electric generators see DYNAMO
and BATTERY: Electric. The importance of the subject may
be gauged by the fact that all the aluminium, magnesium,
sodium, potassium, calcium carbide, carborundum and artificial
graphite, now placed on the market, is made by electrical pro-
cesses, and that the use of such processes for the refining of copper
and silver, and in the manufacture of phosphorus, potassium
chlorate and bleach, already pressing very heavily on the older
non-electrical systems, is every year extending. The convenience
also with which the energy of waterfalls can be converted into
electric energy has led to the introduction of chemical industries
into countries and districts where, owing to the absence of coal,
they were previously unknown. Norway and Switzerland have
become important producers of chemicals, and pastoral districts
such as those in which Niagara or Foyers are situated manu-
facturing centres. In this way the development of the electro-
chemical industry is in a marked degree altering the distribution
of trade throughout the world.
Electrolytic Refining of Metals. The principle usually followed
in the electrolytic refining of metals is to cast the impure metal
into plates, which are exposed as anodes in a suitable solvent,
commonly a salt of the metal under treatment. On passing a
current of electricity, of which the volume and pressure are
adjusted to the conditions of the electrolyte and electrodes,
the anode slowly dissolves, leaving the insoluble impurities in
the form of a sponge, if the proportion be considerable, but
otherwise as a mud or slime which becomes detached from the
anode surface and must be prevented from coming into contact
with the cathode. The metal to be refined passing into solution
is concurrently deposited at the cathode. Soluble impurities
which are more electro-negative than the metal under treatment
must, if present, be removed by a preliminary process, and the
voltage and other conditions must be so selected that none of
the more electro-positive metals are co-deposited with the metal
to be refined. From these and other considerations it is obvious
that (i) the electrolyte must be such as will freely dissolve the
metal to be refined; (2) the electrolyte must be able to dissolve
the major portion of the anode, otherwise the mass of insoluble
matter on the outer layer will prevent access of electrolyte to
the core, which will thus escape refining; (3) the electrolyte
should, if possible, be incapable of dissolving metals more
electro-negative than that to be refined; (4) the proportion of
soluble electro-positive impurities must not be excessive, or these
substances will accumulate too rapidly in the solution and
necessitate its frequent purification; (5) the current density
must be so adjusted to the strength of the solution and to other
conditions that no relatively electro-positive metal is deposited,
and that the cathode deposit is physically suitable for sub-
sequent treatment; (6) the current density should be as high as
is consistent with the production of a pure and sound deposit,
without undue expense of voltage, so that the operation may be
rapid and the " turnover " large; (7) the electrolyte should
be as good a conductor of electricity as possible, and should not,
ordinarily, be altered chemically by exposure to air; and (8) the
use of porous partitions should be avoided, as they increase the
resistance and usually require frequent renewal. For details
of the practical methods see GOLD; SILVER; COPPER and head-
ings for other metals.
Electrolytic Manufacture of Chemical Products. When an
aqueous solution of the salt of an alkali metal is electrolysed, the
ELECTROCHEMISTRY
209
metal reacts with the water, as is well known, forming caustic
alkali, which dissolves in the solution, and hydrogen, which comes
off as a gas. So early as 185: a patent was taken out by Cooke
for the production of caustic alkali without the use of a separate
current, by immersing iron and copper plates on opposite sides
of a porous (biscuit-ware) partition in a suitable cell, containing
a solution of the salt to be electrolysed, at 2i-65C. (70-! 50 F.).
The solution of the iron anode was intended to afford the
necessary energy. In the same year another patent was granted
to C. Watt for a similar process, involving the employment of an
externally generated current. When an alkaline chloride, say
sodium chloride, is electrolysed with one electrode immersed
in a porous cell, while caustic soda is formed at the cathode,
chlorine is deposited at the anode. If the latter be insoluble,
the gas diffuses into the solution and, when this becomes
saturated, escapes into the air. If, however, no porous division
be used to prevent the intermingling by diffusion of the anode
and cathode solutions, a complicated set of subsidiary reactions
takes place. The chlorine reacts with the caustic soda, forming
sodium hypochlorite, and this in turn, with an excess of chlorine
and at higher temperatures, becomes for the most part converted
into chlorate, whilst any simultaneous electrolysis of a hydroxide
or water and a chloride (so that hydroxyl and chlorine are simul-
taneously liberated at the anode) also produces oxygen-chlorine
compounds direct. At the same time, the diffusion of these
compounds into contact with the cathode leads to a partial
reduction to chloride, by the removal of combined oxygen by the
instrumentality of the hydrogen there evolved. In proportion as
the original chloride is thus reproduced, the efficiency of the
process is of course diminished. It is obvious that, with suitable
methods and apparatus, the electrolysis of alkaline chlorides
may be made to yield chlorine, hypochlorites (bleaching liquors),
chlorates or caustic alkali, but that great care must be exercised
if any of these products is to be obtained pure and with economy.
Many patents have been taken out in this branch of electro-
chemistry, but it is to be remarked that that granted to C. Watt
traversed the whole of the ground. In his process a current
was passed through a tank divided into two or three cells by
porous partitions, hoods and tubes were arranged to carry off
chlorine and hydrogen respectively, and the whole was heated
to 120 F. by a steam jacket when caustic alkali was being made.
Hypochlorites were made, at ordinary temperatures, and
chlorates at higher temperatures, in a cell without a partition in
which the cathode was placed horizontally immediately above the
anode, to favour the mixing of the ascending chlorine with the
descending caustic solution.
The relation between the composition of the electrolyte and the
various conditions of current-density, temperature and the like
has been studied by F. Oettel iZeiiichriftf. Elektrochem., 1894, vol. i.
pp. 3M and 474) in connexion with the production of hypochlorites
and chlorates in tanks without diaphragms, by C. Haussermann and
W. Naschold (Chemiter Zeitung, 1894, vol. xviii. p. 857) for their
production in cells with porous diaphragms, and by F. Haber and
S. Grinberg (Zeitschrift f. anorgan. Chem., 1898, vol. xvi. pp. 198, 329,
438) in connexion with the electrolysis of hydrochloric acid. Oettel,
using a 20% solution of potassium chloride, obtained the best
yield of hypochlorite with a high current-density, but as soon
a* lj% of bleaching chlorine (as hypochlorite) was present, the
formation of chlorate commenced. The yield was at best very
low as compared with that theoretically possible. The best yield
of chlorate was obtained when from I to 4% of caustic potash
was present. With high current-density, heating the solution tended
to increase the proportion of chlorate to hypochlorite, but as the
proportion of water decomposed is then higher, the amount of
chlorine produced must be less and the total chlorine efficiency
lower. He also traced a connexion between alkalinity, temperature
and current-density, and showed that these conditions should be
mutually adjusted. With a current-density of 130 to 140 amperes
per sq. ft., at 3 volts, passing between platinum electrodes, he
attained to a current-efficiency of 52 %, and each (British) electrical
bone-power hour was equivalent to a production of 1378-5 grains of
potassium chlorate. In other words, each pound of chlorate would
require an expenditure of nearly 5-1 e.h.p. hours. One of the
earliest of the more modern processes was that of E. Hermite,
which consisted in the production of bleach-liquors by the electro-
lysis (according to the 1st edition of the 1884 patent) of magnesium
or calcium chloride between platinum anodes carried in wooden
frames, and zinc cathodes. The solution, containing hypochlorites
and chlorates, was then applied to the bleaching of linen, paper-pulp
or the like, the solution being used over and over again. Many
modifications have been patented by Hermite, that of 1895 specify-
ing the use of platinum gauze anodes, held in ebonite or other
frames. Rotating zinc cathodes were used, with scrapers to prevent
the accumulation of a layer of insoluble magnesium compounds,
which would otherwise increase the electrical resistance beyond
reasonable limits. The same inventor has patented the application
of electrolysed chlorides to the purification of starch by the oxidation
of less stable organic bodies, to the bleaching of oils, and to the
purification of coal gas, spirit and other substances, flis system for
the disinfection of sewage and similar matter by the electrolysis of
chlorides, or of sea-water, has been tried, but for the most part aban-
doned on the score of expense. Reference may be made to papers
written in the early days of the process by C. F. Cross and E. J. Bevan
(Jour*. Soc. Chem. Industry, 1887, vol. vi. p. 170, and 1888, vol. vii.
p. 292), and to later papers by P. Schoop (Zeitschrift f, Elektrochem.,
1805, vol. ii. pp. 68, 88, 107, 209, 289).
E. Kellner, who in 1886 patented the use of cathode (caustic soda)
and anode (chlorine) liquors in the manufacture of cellulose from
wood-fibre, and has since evolved many similar processes, has pro-
duced an apparatus that has been largely used. It consists of a
stoneware tank with a thin sheet of platinum-iridium alloy at
either end forming the primary electrodes, and between them a
number of glass plates reaching nearly to the bottom, each having
a platinum gauze sheet on cither side; the two sheets belonging to
each plate are in metallic connexion, but insulated from all the
others, and form intermediary or bi-polar electrodes. A 10-12 %
solution of sodium chloride is caused to flow upwards through the
apparatus and to overflow into troughs, by wnich it is conveyed
(if necessary through a cooling apparatus) back to the circulating
pump. Such a plant has been reported as giving 0-229 gallon of a
liquor containing I % of available chlorine per kilowatt hour, or
0-171 gallon per e.h.p. hour. Kellner has also patented a " bleach-
ing-block," as he terms it, consisting of a frame carrying parallel
plates similar in principle to those last described. The block is
immersed in the solution to be bleached, and may be lifted in or out
as required. O. Kn6fler and Gebauer have also a system of bi-polar
electrodes, mounted in a frame in appearance resembling a filter-press.
Other Electrochemical Processes. It is obvious that electrolytic
iodine and bromine, and oxygen compounds of these elements,
may be produced by methods similar to those applied to chlorides
(see ALKALI MANUFACTURE and CHLORATES), and Kellner and
others have patented processes with this end in view. Hydrogen
and oxygen may also be produced electrolytically as gases, and
their respective reducing and oxidizing powers at the moment
of deposition on the electrode are frequently used in the
laboratory, and to some extent industrially, chiefly in the field
of organic chemistry. Similarly, the formation of organic
halogen products may be effected by electrolytic chlorine, as,
for example, in the production of chloral by the gradual introduc-
tion of alcohol into an anode cell in which the electrolyte is a
strong solution of potassium chloride. Again, anode reactions,
such as are observed in the electrolysis of the fatty acids, may be
utilized, as, for example, when the radical CHjCOz deposited
at the anode in the electrolysis of acetic acid is dissociated,
two of the groups react to give one molecule of ethane, C 2 H, and
two of carbon dioxide. This, which has long been recognized
as a class-reaction, is obviously capable of endless variation.
Many electrolytic methods have been proposed for the purifica-
tion of sugar; in some of them soluble anodes are used for a few
minutes in weak alkaline solutions, so that the caustic alkali
from the cathode reaction may precipitate chemically the
hydroxide of the anode metal dissolved in the liquid, the pre-
cipitate carrying with it mechanically some of the impurities
present, and thus clarifying the solution. In others the current
is applied for a longer time to the original sugar-solution with
insoluble (e.g. carbon) anodes. F. Peters has found that with
these methods the best results are obtained when ozone is em-
ployed in addition to electrolytic oxygen. Use has been made
of electrolysis in tanning operations, the current being passed
through the tan-liquors containing the hides. The current,
by endosmosis, favours the passage of the solution into the
hide-substance, and at the same time appears to assist the chemi-
cal combinations there occurring; hence a great reduction in
the time required for the completion of the process. Many
patents have been taken out in this direction, one of the best
known being that of Groth, experimented upon by S. Riclcal
and A. P. Trotter (Journ. Soc. Chem. Indust., 1891, vol. x. p. 425),
210
ELECTROCUTION ELECTROKINETICS
who employed copper anodes, 4 sq. ft. in area, with current-
densities of 0-375 to i (ranging in some cases to 7-5) ampere per
sq. ft., the best results being obtained with the smaller current-
densities. Electrochemical processes are often indirectly used,
as for example in the Villon process (Elec. Rev., New York,
1899, vol. xxxv. p. 375) applied in Russia to the manufacture of
alcohol, by a series of chemical reactions starting from the pro-
duction of acetylene by the action of water upon calcium carbide.
The production of ozone in small quantities during electrolysis,
and by the so-called silent discharge, has long been known, and
the Siemens induction tube has been developed for use industri-
ally. The Siemens and Halske ozonizer, in form somewhat
resembling the old laboratory instrument, is largely used in
Germany; working with an alternating current transformed
up to 6500 volts, it has been found to give 280 grains or more
of ozone per e. h. p. hour. E. Andreoli (whose first British
ozone patent was No. 17,426 of 1891) uses flat aluminium plates
and points, and working with an alternating current of 3000
volts is said to have obtained 1440 grains per e.h.p. hour.
Yarnold's process, using corrugated glass plates coated on one
side with gold or other metal leaf, is stated to have yielded as
much as 2700 grains per e.h.p. hour. The ozone so prepared
has numerous uses, as, for example, in bleaching oils, waxes,
fabrics, &c., sterilizing drinking-water, maturing wines, cleansing
foul beer-casks, oxidizing oil, and in the manufacture of vanillin.
For further information the following books, among others, may
be consulted: Haber, Grundriss der technischen Elektrochemie
(Miinchen, 1898); Borchers and M'Millan, Electric Smelting and
Refining (London, 1904) ; E. D. Peters, Principles of Copper Smelting
(New York, 1907); F. Peters, Angewandte Elektrochemie, vols. ii.
and iii. (Leipzig, 1900); Gore, The Art of Electrolytic Separation of
Metals (London, 1890) ; Blount, Practical Electro-Chemistry (London,
1906); G. Langbein, Vollstdndiges Handbuch der galvanischen
Metall-Niederschlage (Leipzig, 1903), Eng. trans, by W. T. Brannt
(1909); A. Watt, Electro-Plating and Electro-Refining of Metals
(London, 1902); W. H. Wahl, Practical Guide to the Gold and Silver
Electroplater, &c. (Philadelphia, 1883); Wilson, Stereotyping and
Electrotyping (London); Lunge, Sulphuric Acid and Alkali, vol. iii.
(London, 1909). Also papers in various technical periodicals.
The industrial aspect is treated in a Gartside Report, Some Electro-
Chemical Centres (Manchester, 1908), by J. N. Pring. (W. G. M.)
ELECTROCUTION (an anomalous derivative from " electro-
execution "; syn. " electrothanasia "), the popular name, in-
vented in America, for the infliction of the death penalty on
criminals (see CAPITAL PUNISHMENT) by passing through the body
of the condemned a sufficient current of electricity to cause
death. The method was first adopted by the state of New York,
a law making this method obligatory having been passed and
approved by the governor on the 4th of June 1888. The law
provides that there shall be present, in addition to the warden,
two physicians, twelve reputable citizens of full age, seven deputy
sheriffs, and such ministers, priests or clergymen, not exceeding
two, as the criminal may request. A post-mortem examination
of the body of the convict is required, and the body, unless
claimed by relatives, is interred in the prison cemetery with a
sufficient quantity of quicklime to consume it. The law became
effective in New York on the ist of January 1889. The first
criminal to be executed by electricity was William Kemmler,
on the 6th of August 1890, at Auburn prison. The validity of
the New York law had previously been attacked in regard to
this case (Re Kemmler, 1889; 136 U.S. 436), as providing " a
cruel and unusual punishment " and therefore being contrary
to the Constitution; but it was sustained in the state courts and
finally in the Federal courts. By 1906 about one hundred and
fifteen murderers had been successfully executed by electricity in
New York state in Sing Sing, Auburn and Dannemora prisons.
The method has also been adopted by the states of Ohio
(1896), Massachusetts (1898), New Jersey (1906), Virginia
(1908) and North Carolina (1910).
The apparatus consists of a stationary engine, an alternating
dynamo capable of generating a current at a pressure of 2000
volts, a " death-chair " with adjustable head-rest, binding
straps and adjustable electrodes devised by E. F. Davis, the
state electrician of New York. The voltmeter, ammeter and
switch-board controlling the current are located in the execution-
room; the dynamo-room is communicated with by electric
signals. Before each execution the entire apparatus is thoroughly
tested. When everything is in readiness the criminal is brought
in and seats himself in the death-chair. His head, chest, arms
and legs are secured by broad straps; one electrode thoroughly
moistened with salt-solution is affixed to the head, and another to
the calf of one leg, both electrodes being moulded so as to secure
good contact. The application of the current is usually as
follows: the contact is made with a high voltage (1700-1800
volts) for 5 to 7 seconds, reduced to 200 volts until a half-minute
has elapsed; raised to high voltage for 3 to 5 seconds, again re-
duced to low voltage for 3 to 5 seconds, again reduced to a low
voltage until one minute has elapsed, when it is again raised to
the high voltage for a few seconds and the contact broken. The
ammeter usually shows that from 7 to 10 amperes pass through
the criminal's body. A second or even a third brief contact is
sometimes made, partly as a precautionary measure, but rather
the more completely to abolish reflexes in the dead body. Cal-
culations have shown that by this method of execution from 7 to
10 h. p. of energy are liberated in the criminal's body. The
time consumed by the strapping-in process is usually about 45
seconds, and the first contact is made about 70 seconds after the
criminal has entered the death-chamber.
When properly performed the effect is painless and instan-
taneous death. The mechanism of life, circulation and respira-
tion cease with the first contact. Consciousness is blotted out
instantly, and the prolonged application of the current ensures
permanent derangement of the vital functions beyond recovery.
Occasionally the drying of the sponges through undue generation
of heat causes desquamation or superficial blistering of the skin
at the site of the electrodes. Post-mortem discoloration, or
post-mortem lividity, often appears during the first contact.
The pupils of the eyes dilate instantly and remain dilated after
death.
The post-mortem examination of " electrocuted " criminals
reveals a number of interesting phenomena. The temperature
of the body rises promptly after death to a very high point.
At the site of the leg electrode a temperature of over 128 F. was
registered within fifteen minutes in many cases. After the removal
of the brain the temperature recorded in the spinal canal was
often over 120 F. The development of this high temperature is
to be regarded as resulting from the active metabolism of tissues
not (somatically) dead within a body where all vital mechanisms
have been abolished, there being no circulation to carry off the
generated heat. The heart, at first flaccid when exposed soon
after death, gradually contracts and assumes a tetanized con-
dition; it empties itself of all blood and takes the form of a heart
in systole. The lungs are usually devoid of blood and weigh
only 7 or 8 ounces (avoird.) each. The blood is profoundly
altered biochemically; it is of a very dark colour and it rarely
coagulates. (E. A. S.*)
ELECTROKINETICS, that part of electrical science which is
concerned with the properties of electric currents.
Classification of Electric Currents. Electric currents are
classified into (a) conduction currents, (b) convection currents,
(c) displacement or dielectric currents. In the case of conduc-
tion currents electricity flows or moves through a stationary
material body called the conductor. In convection currents
electricity is carried from place to place with and on moving
material bodies or particles. In dielectric currents there is no
continued movement of electricity, but merely a limited displace-
ment through or in the mass of an insulator or dielectric. The
path in which an electric current exists is called an electric
circuit, and may consist wholly of a conducting body, or partly
of a conductor and insulator or dielectric, or wholly of a dielectric.
In cases in which the three classes of currents are present together
the true current is the sum of each separately. In the case of
conduction currents the circuit consists of a conductor immersed
in a non-conductor, and may take the form of a thin wire or
cylinder, a sheet, surface or solid. Electric conduction currents
may take place in space of one, two or three dimensions, but for
ELECTROKINETICS
21 I
the most part the circuits we hve to con*ider consist of thin
cylindrical wires or tubes of conducting material surrounded
with an insulator; hence the case which generally presents itself
is that of electric (low in space of one dimension. Self-closed
electric currents taking place in a sheet of conductor are called
" eddy currents."
Although in ordinary language the current is said to flow in
the conductor, yet according lo modern views the real pathway
of the energy transmitted is the surrounding dielectric, and the
so-called conductor or wire merely guides the transmission of
energy in a certain direction. The presence of an electric
current is recognized by three qualities or powers: (i) by the
production of a magnetic field, (2) in the cose of conduction
currents, by the production of heat in the conductor, and (.;) if
the conductor is an electrolyte and the current unidirectional,
by ihc occurrence ol chemical decomposition in it. An electric
current may also be regarded as the result of a movement of
eltvt ricity across each section of the circuit , and is then measured
by the quantity conveyed per unit of time. Hence if dq is the
quantity of electricity which flows across any section of the
conductor in the element of time dl, the current i = dq'dt.
Electric currents may be also classified as constant or variable
and as unidirectional or " direct," that is flowing always in the
same direction, or " alternating," that is reversing their direction
at regular intervals. In the last case the variation of current
may follow any particular law. It is called a " periodic current "
if the cycle of current values is repeated during a certain lime
called the periodic time, during which the current reaches a
certain maximum value, first in one direction and then in the
opposite, and in the intervals between has a zero value at certain
instants. The frequency of the periodic current is the number
of periods or cycles in one second, and alternating currents are
described as low frequency or high frequency, in the latter case
having some thousands of periods per second. A periodic current
may be represented cither by a wave diagram, or by a polar
diagram. 1 In the first case we take a straight line to represent
the uniform flow of time, and at small equidistant intervals
set up perpendiculars above or below the time axis, representing
to scale the current at that instant in one direction or the other;
the extremities of these ordinates then define a wavy curve
which is called the wave form of the current (fig. i). It is obvious
that this curve can only be a single valued curve. In one par-
ticular and important case the form of the current curve is a
simple harmonic curve or simple sine curve. If T represents
the periodic time in which the cycle of current values takes
n... i.
FIG. 2.
place, whilst n is the frequency or number of periods per second
and f> stands for irn, and i is the value of the current at any
instant /. and I its maximum value, then in this case we have
i I sin ft. Such a current is called a " sine current " or simple
periodic current.
In a polar diagram (fig. 2) a number of radial lines are drawn
from a point at small equiangular intervals, and on these lines
are set off lengths proportional to the current value of a periodic
current at corresponding intervals during one complete period
represented by four right angles. The extremities of these
radii delineate a polar curve. The polar form of a simple sine
current i} obviously a circle drawn through the origin. As a
consequence of Fourier's theorem it follows that any periodic
curve having any wave form can be imitated by the super-
'See J. A. Fleming. The Alternate Current Transformer, vol. i.
P 519-
position of simple sine currents differing in maximum value and
in phase.
Definitions of Unit Electric Current. In eleclrokinetic investiga-
tions we arc most commonly limited to the cases of unidirectional
continuous and constant currents (C.C. or D.C.), or of simple
periodic currents, or alternating currents of sine form (A.C.).
A continuous electric current is measured either by the magnetic
effect it produces at some point outside its circuit, or by the
amount of electrochemical dccom|K>silion it can [K-rform in ;i
given time on a selected standard electrolyte. Limiting our
consideration to the case of linear currents or currents flowing
in thin cylindrical wires, a definition may bo given in the first
place of the unit electric current in the centimetre, gramme,
second (C.G.S.) of electromagnetic measurement (see UNITS,
PHYSICAL). H. C. Oersted discovered in 1820 that a straight
wire conveying an electric current is surrounded by a magnetic
field the lines of which arc self-closed lines embracing the electric
circuit (see ELECTRICITY and ELECTROMACNETISM). The unit
current in the electromagnetic system of measurement is defined
as the current which, flowing in a thin wire bent into the form
of a circle of one centimetre in radius, creates a magnetic field
having a strength of 2ir units at the centre of the circle, and
therefore would exert a mechanical force of 2ir dynes on a unit
magnetic pole placed at that point (see MAGNETISM). Since
the length of the circumference of the circle of unit radius is
2ir units, this is equivalent to stating that the unit current on
the electromagnetic C.G.S. system is a current such that unit
length acts on unit magnetic pole with a unit force at a unit
of distance. Another definition, called the electrostatic unit
of current, is as follows: Let any conductor be charged with
electricity and discharged through a thin wire at such a rate
that one electrostatic unit of quantity (see ELECTROSTATICS)
flows past any section of the wire in one unit of time. The
electromagnetic unit of current defined as above is 3 X io 10 times
larger than the electrostatic unit.
In the selection of a practical unit of current it was considered
that the electromagnetic unit was too large for most purposes,
whilst the electrostatic unit was too small; hence a practical
unit of current called i ampere was selected, intended originally
to be i/io of the absolute electromagnetic C.G.S. unit of current
as above defined. The practical unit of current, called the
international ampere, is, however, legally defined at the present
time as the continuous unidirectional current which when
flowing through a neutral solution of silver nitrate deposits in
one second on the cathode or negative pole o-ooi 1 18 of a gramme
of silver. There is reason to believe that the international unit
is smaller by about one part in a thousand, or perhaps by one
part in 800, than the theoretical ampere defined as i/io part of
the absolute electromagnetic unit. A periodic or alternating
current is said to have a value of i ampere if when passed through
a fine wire it produces in the same time the same heat as a
unidirectional continuous current of i ampere as above electro-
chemically defined. In the case of a simple periodic alternating
currertt having a simple sine wave form, the maximum value
is equal to that of the equiheating continuous current multiplied
by V2. This equiheating continuous current is called the effective
or root -mean square (R.M.S.) value of the alternating one.
Resistance. A current flows in a circuit in virtue of an electro-
motive force (E.M.F.), and the numerical relation between the
current and E.M.F. is determined by three qualities of the
circuit called respectively, its resistance (R), inductance (L), and
capacity (C). If we limit our consideration to the case of con-
tinuous unidirectional conduction currents, then the relation
between current and E.M.F. is defined by Ohm's law, whichstates
that the numerical value of the current is obtained as the quotient
of the electromotive force by a certain constant of the circuit
called its resistance, which is a function of the geometrical form
of the circuit, of its nature, i.e. material, and of its temperature,
but is independent of the electromotive force or current. The
resistance (R) is measured in units called ohms and the electro-
motive force in volts (V); hence for a continuous current the
value of the current in amperes (A) is obtained as the quotient
212
ELECTROKINETICS
of the electromotive force acting in the circuit reckoned in volts
by the resistance in ohms, or A = V/R. Ohm established his law
by a course of reasoning which was similar to that on which
J. B. J. Fourier based his investigations on the uniform motion
of heat in a conductor. As a matter of fact, however, Ohm's
law merely states the direct proportionality of steady current
to steady electromotive force in a circuit, and asserts that this
ratio is governed by the numerical value of a quality of the con-
ductor, called its resistance, which is independent of the current,
provided that a correction is made for the change of temperature
produced by the current. Our belief, however, in its universality
and accuracy rests upon the close agreement between deductions
made from it and observational results, and although it is not
derivable from any more fundamental principle, it is yet one of
the most certainly ascertained laws of electrokinetics.
Ohm's law not only applies to the circuit as a whole but to any
part of it, and provided the part selected does not contain a
source of electromotive force it may be expressed as follows:
The difference of potential (P.D.) between any two points of a
circuit including a resistance R, but not including any source of
electromotive force, is proportional to the product of the re-
sistance and the current i in the element, provided the conductor
remains at the same temperature and the current is constant and
unidirectional. If the current is varying we have, however, to take
into account the electromotive force (E.M.F.) produced by this
variation, and the product Ri is then equal to the difference
between the observed P.D. and induced E.M.F.
We may otherwise define the resistance of a circuit by saying
that it is that physical quality of it in virtue of which energy is
dissipated as heat in the circuit when a current flows through it.
The power communicated to any electric circuit when a current
i is created in it by a continuous unidirectional electromotive
force E is equal to Ei, and the energy dissipated as heat in that
circuit by the conductor in a small interval of time dt is measured
by Et dt. Since by Ohm's law E = Rt, where R is the resistance
of the circuit, it follows that the energy dissipated as heat per
unit of time in any circuit is numerically represented by Rt 2 , and
therefore the resistance is measured by the heat produced per
unit of current, provided the current is unvarying.
Inductance. As soon as we turn our attention, however, to
alternating or periodic currents we find ourselves compelled to take
into account another quality of the circuit, called its " inductance."
This may be defined as that quality in virtue of which energy is
stored up in connexion with the circuit in a magnetic form.
It can be experimentally shown that a current cannot be created
instantaneously in a circuit by any finite electromotive force,
and that when once created it cannot be annihilated instantane-
ously. The circuit possesses a quality analogous to the inertia
of matter. If a current i is flowing in a circuit at any moment,
the energy stored up in connexion with the circuit is measured
by JLi 2 , where L, the inductance of the circuit, is related to the
current in the same manner as the quantity called the mass of
a body is related to its velocity in the expression for the ordinary
kinetic energy, viz. ^Mc 2 . The rate at which this conserved
energy varies with the current is called the " electrokinetic
momentum " of this circuit ( = Li). Physically interpreted this
quantity signifies the number of lines of magnetic flux due to
the current itself which are self-linked with its own circuit.
Magnetic Force and Ekctric Currents. In the case of every
circuit conveying a current there is a certain magnetic force (see
MAGNETISM) at external points which can in some instances be
calculated. Laplace proved that the magnetic force due to an
element of length dS of a circuit conveying a current I at a point
P at a distance r from the element is expressed by US sin 6/t 3 ,
where B is the angle between the direction of the current element
and that drawn between the element and the point. This force
is in a direction perpendicular to the radius vector and to the
plane containing it and the element of current. Hence the
determination of the magnetic force due to any circuit is reduced
to a summation of the effects due to all the elements of length.
For instance, the magnetic force at the centre of a circular
circuit of radius r carrying a steady current I is 2irl/r, since all
elements are at the same distance from the centre. In the same
manner, if we take a point in a line at right angles to the plane
of the circle through its centre and at a distance d, the magnetic
force along this line is expressed by 2irr 2 I/(f 2 +d 2 )^. Another
important case is that of an infinitely long straight current.
By summing up the magnetic force due to each element at
any point P outside the continuous straight current I, and at a
distance d from it, we can show that it is equal to zl/rf or is
inversely proportional to the distance of the point from the wire.
In the above formula the current I is measured in absolute
electromagnetic units. If we reckon the current in amperes
A, then I = A/io.
It is possible to make use of this last formula, coupled with an
experimental fact, to prove that the magnetic force due to an
element of current varies inversely as the square of the distance.
If a flat circular disk is suspended so as to be free to rotate round
a straight current which passes through its centre, and two
bar magnets are placed on it with their axes in line with the
current, it is found that the disk has no tendency to rotate round
the current. This proves that the force on each magnetic pole
is inversely as its distance from the current. But it can be shown
that this law of action of the whole infinitely long straight current
is a mathematical consequence of the fact that each element of
the current exerts a magnetic force which varies inversely as
the square of the distance. If the current flows N times round
the circuit instead of once, we have to insert NA/io in place of
I in all the above formulae. The quantity NA is called the
" ampere-turns " on the circuit, and it is seen that the magnetic
field at any point outside a circuit is proportional to the ampere-
turns on it and to a function of its geometrical form and the
distance of the point.
There is therefore a distribution of magnetic force in the field
of every current-carrying conductor which can be delineated by
lines of magnetic force and rendered visible to the eye by iron
filings (see MAGNETISM). If a copper wire is passed vertically
through a hole in a card on which iron filings are sprinkled, and
a strong electric current is sent through the circuit, the filings
arrange themselves in concentric circular lines making visible
the paths of the lines of magnetic force (fig. 3). In the same
manner, by passing a circular wire through a card and sending
a strong current through the wire we can employ iron filings to
delineate for us the form of the lines of magnetic force (fig. 4).
mmm
FIG. 3.
FIG. 4.
In all cases a magnetic pole of strength M, placed in the field of an
electric current, is urged along the lines of force with a mechanical
force equal to MH, where -H is the magnetic force. If then we
carry a unit magnetic pole against the direction in which it would
naturally move we do work. The lines of magnetic force em-
bracing a current-carrying conductor are always loops or endless
lines.
The work done in carrying a unit magnetic pole once round a
circuit conveying a current is called the " line integral of magnetic
force " along that path. If, for instance, we carry a unit pole in a
circular path of radius r once round an infinitely long straight
filamentary current I, the line integral is 4x1. It is easy to prove
that this is a general law, and that if we have any currents flowing
in a conductor the line integral of magnetic force taken once round
a path linked with the current circuit is 4* times the total current
flowing through the circuit. Let us apply this to the case of an
endless solenoid. If a copper wire insulated or covered with cotton
or silk is twisted round a thin rod so as to make a close spiral, this
ELECTROKINETICS
213
form* " solenoid." and if the solenoid is bent round to that itt two
end* come together we have an endless solenoid. Consider such a
solenoid of mean length / and N turns of wire. If it is made endless,
the magnetic force H is the same everywhere along the central axis
and the line integral alone the axis is It.'. If the current is denoted
by 1. then Nl is the total current, and accordingly 4NI-II/, or
H -4NI V. For a thin endless solenoid the axial magnetic force is
therefore 4* times the current-turns per unit of length. This holds
food also for a tang straight solenoid provided its length is large
compared with its diameter. It can be shown that if insulated wire
is wound round a sphere, the turns being^ all parallel to lines of
latitude, the magnetic force in the interior is constant and the lines
of force therefore parallel. The magnetic force at a point outside a
conductor conveying a current ran by various means be measured
or compared with some other standard magnetic forces, and it
becomes then a means of measuring the current. Instruments called
galvanometers and ammeters for the most part operate on this
principle.
Thermal Ejects of Currents. J. P. Joule proved that the heat
produced by a constant current in a given time in a wire having
* constant resistance is proportional to the square of the strength
of the current. This is known as Joule's law, and it follows,
as already shown, as an immediate consequence of Ohm's law
and the fact that the power dissipated electrically in a conductor,
when an electromotive force E is applied to its extremities,
producing thereby a current I in it, is equal to El.
If the current is alternating or periodic, the heat produced in
any time T is obtained by taking the sum at equidistant intervals of
lime of all the values of the quantities JW dt, where dl represents a
small interval of time and i is the current at that instant. The
quantity T~* C*fdt is called the mean-square-value of the variable
Jo
current, i being the instantaneous value of the current, that is, its
value at a particular instant or during a very small interval of time
dt. The square root of the above quantity, or
i* called the root-mean-square-value, or the effective value of the
current, and is denoted by the letters R.M.S.
Currents have equal heat-producing power in conductors of
identical resistance when they have the same R.M.S. values.
Hence periodic or alternating currents can be measured as regards
their R.M.S. value by ascertaining the continuous current which
produces in the same time the same heat in the same conductor
as the periodic current considered. Current measuring instru-
ments depending on this fact, called hot-wire ammeters, are
in common use, especially for measuring alternating currents.
The maximum value of the periodic current can only be deter-
mined from the R.M.S. value when we know the wave form of
the current. The thermal effects of electric currents in conductors
are dependent upon the production of a state of equilibrium
between the heat produced electrically in the wire and the
causes operative in removing it. If an ordinary round wire is
heated by a current it loses heat, (i) by radiation, (2) by air
convection or cooling, and (3) by conduction of heat out of the
ends of the wire. Generally speaking, the greater part of the
beat removal is effected by radiation and convection.
If a round sectioned metallic wire of uniform diameter d and
length / made of a material of resistivity p has a current of A amperes
passed through it, the heat in watts produced in any time / seconds
is represented by the value of tA'plt/ufrf, where d and / must be
measured in centimetres and p in absolute C.G.S. electromagnetic
units. The factor 10* enters because one ohm is 10* absolute electro-
magnetic C.G.S. units (see UNITS, PHYSICAL). If the wire has an
eraissivity e, by which is meant that e units of heat reckoned in
joules or watt-seconds are radiated per second from unit of surface,
then the power removed by radiation in the time / is expressed
by rdlet. Hence when thermal equilibrium is established we have
iA'flllt&TtP-wdlet, or A'-io**toP/4*. If the diameter of the
wire is reckoned in mils (i mil -ooi in.), and if we take e to have
a value o-i. an emissivity which will generally bring the wire to
about 60* C., we can put the above formula in the following forms
for circular sectioned copper, iron or platinoid wires, viz.
A V^'/Joo for copper wires
A - V<f'/4Ooo for iron wires
A - V<f/sooo for platinoid wires.
These expressions give the ampere value of the current which
will bring bare, straight or loosely coiled wires of d mils in diameter
to about 60* C. when the steady state of temperature is reached.
I I
r t
Thus, for instance, a bare straight copper wire 50 mils in diameter
( -0-05 in.) will be brought to a steady temperature of about 60 C.
if a current of V jo'/joo - V 250 - 16 amperes (nearly) is passed
through it, whilst a current of Vaj-J amperes would bring a
platinoid wire to about the same temperature.
A wire has therefore a certain safe current-carrying capacity
which is determined by its specific resistance and cmissivity,
the latter being fixed by its form, surface and surroundings.
The emissivity increases with the temperature, else no state of
thermal equilibrium could be reached. It has been found
experimentally that whilst for fairly thick wires from 8 to 60
mils in diameter the safe current varies approximately as the
i-Sth power of the diameter, for fine wires of i to 3 mils it varies
more nearly as the diameter.
Action of one Current on Another. The investigations of Ampere
in connexion with electric currents are of fundamental importance
in electrokinetics. Starting from the discovery of Oersted,
Ampere made known the correlative fact that not only is there
a mechanical action between a current and a magnet, but that
two conductors conveying electric currents exert mechanical
forces on each other. Ampere devised ingenious methods of
making one portion of a circuit movable so that he might observe
effects of attraction or repulsion between this circuit and some
other fixed current. He employed for this purpose an astatic
circuit B, consisting of a wire bent into a double rectangle
round which a current flowed first in one and then in the opposite
direction (fig. 5). In
this way the circuit
was removed from
the action of the
earth's magnetic
field, and yet one
portion of it could
be submitted to the
action of any other
circuit C. The
astatic circuit was
pivoted by suspend-
ing it in mercury
cups q, p, one of i
which was in elec-
trical connexion
with the tubular support A, and the other with a strong insu-
lated wire passing up it.
Ampere devised certain crucial experiments, and the theory
deduced from them is based upon four facts and one assumption. 1
He showed (i) that wire conveying a current bent back on itself
produced no action upon a proximate portion of a movable
astatic circuit; (2) that if the return wire was bent zig-zag but
close to the outgoing straight wire the circuit produced no action
on the movable one, showing that the effect of an element of the
circuit was proportional to its projected length; (3) that a closed
circuit cannot cause motion in an element of another circuit free
to move in the direction of its length; and (4) that the action
of two circuits on one and the same movable circuit was null if
one of the two fixed circuits was n times greater than the other
but n times further removed from the movable circuit. From
this last experiment by an ingenious line of reasoning he proved
that the action of an element of current on another element of
current varies inversely as a square of their distance. These
experiments enabled him to construct a mathematical expression
of the law of action between two elements of conductors conveying
currents. They also enabled him to prove that an element of
current may be resolved like a force into components in different
directions, also that the force produced by any element of the
circuit on an element of any other circuit was perpendicular
to the line joining the elements and inversely as the square of
their distance. Also he showed that this force was an attraction
if the currents in the elements were in the same direction, but
a repulsion if they were in opposite directions. From these
experiments and deductions from them he built up a complete
formula for the action of one element of a current of length dS
1 See Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism, vol. ii. chap. ii.
214
ELECTROKINETICS
of one conductor conveying a current I upon another element
dS' of another circuit conveying another current I' the elements
being at a distance apart equal to r.
If 6 and 0' are the angles the elements make with the line joining
them, and <t> the angle they make with one another, then Ampere's
expression for the mechanical force / the elements exert on one
another is
f=2ll'r- i {cos <t>-% cos e cos 0'|dSdS'.
This law, together with that of Laplace already mentioned, viz. that
the magnetic force due to an element of length dS of a current I at a
distance r, the element making an angle 6 with the radius vector o is
IdS sin 6/r 2 , constitute the fundamental laws of, electrokinetics.
Ampere applied these with great mathematical skill to elucidate
the mechanical actions of currents on each other, and experi-
mentally confirmed the following deductions: (i) Currents in
parallel circuits flowing in the same direction attract each
other, but if in opposite directions repel each other. (2) Cur-
rents in wires meeting at an angle -attract each other more into
parallelism if both flow either to or from the angle, but repel
each other more widely apart if they are in opposite directions.
(3) A current in a small circular conductor exerts a magnetic
force in its centre perpendicular to its plane and is in all respects
equivalent to a magnetic shell qr a thin circular disk of steel
so magnetized that one face is a north pole and the other a south
pole, the product of the area of the circuit and the current flowing
in it determining the magnetic moment of the element. (4) A
closely wound spiral current is equivalent as regards external
magnetic force to a polar magnet, such a circuit being called a
finite solenoid. (5) Two finite solenoid circuits act on each other
like two polar magnets, exhibiting actions of attraction or
repulsion between their ends.
Ampere's theory was wholly built up on the assumption of
action at a distance between elements of conductors conveying
the electric currents. Faraday's researches and the discovery
of the fact that the insulating medium is the real seat of the
operations necessitates a change in the point of view from which
we regard the facts discovered by Ampere. Maxwell showed
that in any field of magnetic force there is a tension along the
lines of force and a pressure at right angles to them; in other
words, lines of magnetic force are like stretched elastic threads
which tend to contract. 1 If, therefore, two conductors lie parallel
and have currents in them in the same direction they are im-
pressed by a certain number of lines of magnetic force which
pass round the two conductors', and it is the tendency of these
to contract which draws the circuits together. If, however, the
currents are in opposite directions then the lateral pressure of the
similarly contracted lines of force between them pushes the
conductors apart. Practical application of Ampere's discoveries
was made by W. E. Weber in inventing the electrodynamometer,
and later Lord Kelvin devised ampere balances for the measure-
ment of electric currents based on the attraction between coils
conveying electric currents.
Induction of Electric Currents. Faraday 2 in 1831 made the
important discovery of the induction of electric currents (see
ELECTRICITY). If two conductors are placed parallel to each
other, and a current in one of them, called the primary, started
or stopped or changed in strength, every such alteration causes
a transitory current to appear in the other circuit, called the
secondary. This is due to the fact that as the primary current
increases or decreases, its own embracing magnetic field alters,
and lines of magnetic force are added to or subtracted from its
fields. These lines do not appear instantly in their place at a
distance, but are propagated out from the wire with a velocity
equaf to that of light; hence in their outward progress they
cut through the secondary circuit, just as ripples made on the
surface of water in a lake by throwing a stone on to it expand
and cut through a stick held vertically in the water at a distance
from the place of origin of the ripples. Faraday confirmed this
view of the phenomena by proving that the mere motion of a
wire transversely to the lines of magnetic force of a permanent
magnet gave rise to an induced electromotive force in the wire.
1 See Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism, vol. ii. 642.
1 Experimental Researches, vol. i. ser. I.
He embraced all the facts in the single statement that if there
be any circuit which by movement in a magnetic field, or by the
creation or change in magnetic fields round it, experiences a
change in the number of lines of force linked with it, then an
electromotive force is set up in that circuit which is proportional
at any instant to the rate at which the total magnetic flux linked
with it is changing. Hence if Z represents the total number of
lines of magnetic force linked with a circuit of N turns, then
-N(dZ/df) represents the electromotive force set up in that
circuit. The operation of the induction coil (q.v.) and the
transformer (q.v.) are based on this discovery. Faraday also
Tound that if a copper disk A (fig. 6) is rotated between the poles
FIG. 6.
of a magnet NO so that the disk moves with its plane perpendi-
cular to the lines of magnetic force of the field, it has created in
it an electromotive force directed from the centre to the edge
or vice versa. The action of the dynamo (q.v.) depends on
similar processes, viz. the cutting of the lines of magnetic force
of a constant field produced by certain magnets by certain moving
conductors called armature bars or coils in which an electro-
motive force is thereby created.
In 1834 H. F. E. Lenz enunciated a law which connects together
the mechanical actions between electric circuits discovered by
Ampere and the induction of electric currents discovered by Faraday.
It is as follows: If a constant current flows in a primary circuit P,
and if by motion of P a secondary current is created in a neighbouring
circuit S, the direction of the secondary current will be such as to
oppose the relative motion of the circuits. Starting from this, F. E.
Neumann founded a mathematical theory of induced currents,
discovering a quantity M, called the " potential of one circuit on
another," or generally their " coefficient of mutual inductance."
Mathematically M is obtained by taking the sum of all such quantities
asffdSdS' cos <t>/r, where dS and dS' are the elements of length of the
two circuits, r is their distance, and <t> is the angle which they make
with one another; the summation or integration must be extended
over every possible pair of elements. If we take pairs of elements in
the same circuit, then Neumann's formula gives us the coefficient
of self-induction of the circuit or the potential of the circuit on itself.
For the results of such calculations on various forms of circuit the
reader must be referred to special treatises.
H. von Helmholtz, and later on Lord Kelvin, showed that the
facts of induction of electric currents discovered by Faraday could
have been predicted from the electrodynamic actions discovered by
Ampere assuming the principle of the conservation of energy.
Helmholtz takes the case of a circuit of resistance R in which acts
an electromotive force due to a battery or thermopile. Let a magnet
be in the neighbourhood, and the potential of the magnet on the
circuit be V, so that if a current I existed in the circuit the work done
on the magnet in the time dt is l(dV/dt)dt. .The source of electro-
motive force supplies in the time dt work equal to Eld/, and according
to Joule's law energy is dissipated equal to Rl 2 dt. Hence, by the
conservation of energy,
If then E=O, we have 1= (dV/d/)/R, or there will be a current
due to an induced electromotive force expressed by dV/dt. Hence
if the magnet moves, it will create a current in the wire provided
that such motion changes the potential of the magnet with respect
to the circuit. This is the effect discovered by Faraday. 3
Oscillatory Currents. In considering the motion of electricity
in conductors we find interesting phenomena connected with the
discharge of a condenser or Leyden jar (q.v.). This problem was
first mathematically treated by Lord Kelvin in 1853 (Phil. Mag.,
i8S3. 5, P- 292).
If a conductor of capacity C has its terminals connected by a wire
of resistance R and inductance L, it becomes important to consider
3 See Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism, vol. ii. 542, p. 178.
ELECTROKINETICS
215
the subsequent motion of electricity in the wire. If Q U the quantity
uf electricity in the condenser initially, and g that at any time .'
after completing the circuit, then thr energy stored up in the con-
den*er at that instant U IflVC. and the energy associated with the
. irvuit U lL(dq/dt)*. and the rate of dissipation of energy by resistance
i< R(dq!dt)', since 4q <fl i is the discharge current. Hence we can
construct an equation of energy which expresses the fact that at
instant the power given put by the condenser is partly stored
in the circuit and partly dissipated as heat in it. Mathematically
t hi* is expressed as follow*:
or
The above equation has two solutions according as R*/4L* is greater
or la* than i/LC. In the first case the current i in the circuit can
be expressed by the equation
where -R/2L. 0-
--*).
. Q is the value of q when <-o,
and * is the base of Napierian logarithms; and in the second case
by the equation
where
- R/2L. and -
These expressions show that in the first case the discharge current
of the jar is always in the same direction and is a transient uni-
directional current. In the second case, however, the current is an
oscillatory current gradually decreasing in amplitude, the frequency
of the oscillation tjeing given by the expression
~nv rc-o'
In those cases in which the resistance of the discharge circuit is
very small, the expression for the frequency n and for the time
period of oscillation R take the simple forms n = i, zrVCC, or
T-l/-aVCC-
The above investigation shows that if we construct a circuit
consisting of a condenser and inductance placed in series with
one another, such circuit has a natural electrical time period of
its own in which the electrical charge in it oscillates if disturbed.
It may therefore be compared with a pendulum of any kind
which when displaced oscillates with a time period depending
on its inertia and on its restoring force.
The study of these electrical oscillations received a great
impetus after H. R. Hertz showed that when taking place in
electric circuits of a certain kind they create electromagnetic
waves (see ELECTRIC WAVES) in the dielectric surrounding the
oscillator, and an additional interest was given to them by their
application to telegraphy. If a Leyden jar and a circuit of low
resistance but some inductance in series with it are connected
across the secondary spark gap of an induction coil, then when
the coil is set in action we have a series of bright noisy sparks,
each of which consists of a train of oscillatory electric discharges
from the jar. The condenser becomes charged as the secondary
electromotive force of the coil is created at each break of the
primary current, and when the potential difference of the
condenser coatings reaches a certain value determined by the
spark-ball distance a discharge happens. This discharge, how-
ever, is not a single movement of electricity in one direction but
an oscillatory motion with gradually decreasing amplitude.
If the oscillatory spark is photographed on a revolving plate or
a rapidly moving film, we have evidence in the photograph that
such a spark consists of numerous intermittent sparks gradually
becoming feebler. As the coil continues to operate, these trains
of electric discharges take place at regular intervals. We can
cause a train of electric oscillations in one circuit to induce
similar oscillations in a neighbouring circuit, and thus construct
an oscillation transformer or high frequency induction coil.
Alternating Currents. The study of alternating currents of
electricity began to attract great attention towards the end of
the 19th century by reason of their application in electrotechnics
and especially to the transmission of power. A circuit in which
a simple periodic alternating current flows is called a single phase
circuit. The important difference between such a form of current
flow and steady current flow arises from the fact that if the circuit
has inductance then the periodic electric current in it is not in
step with the terminal potential difference or electromotive force
acting in the circuit, but the current lags behind the electro-
motive force by a certain fraction of the periodic time called the
" phase difference." If two alternating currents having a fixed
difference in phase flow in two connected separate but related
circuits, the two are called a two-phase current. If three or more
single-phase currents preserving a fixed difference of phase flow
in various parts of a connected circuit, the whole taken together
is called a polyphase current. Since an electric current is a
vector quantity, that is, has direction as well as magnitude,
it can most conveniently be represented by a line denoting its
maximum value, and if the alternating current is a simple
periodic current then the root-mean-square or effective value
of_the current is obtained by dividing the maximum value by
V2. Accordingly when we have an electric circuit or circuits
in which there are simple periodic currents we can draw a vector
diagram, the lines of which represent the relative magnitudes and
phase differences of these currents.
A vector can most conveniently be represented by a symbol such
as a-f-ifr, where a stands for any length of a units measured horizon-
tally and b for a length 6 units measured vertically, and the smybol i
is a sign of perpendicularity, and equivalent analytically 1 to V I.
Accordingly if E represents the periodic electromotive force (maxi-
mum value) acting in a circuit of resistance R and inductance I . and
frequency n, and if the current considered as a vector is represented
by I, it is easy to show that a vector equation exists between these
quantities as follows:
'
Since the absolute magnitude of a vector 0+16 is V (a*+ J 1 ), it follows
that considering merely magnitudes of current and electromotive
force and denoting them by symbols (E) (I), we have the following
equation connecting (I) and (E):
where p stands for 2m. If the above equation is compared with the
symbolic expression of Ohm's law, it will be seen that the quantity
V (R'+^L*) takes the place of resistance R in the expression of
Ohm. This quantity V (R'+^L 1 ) is called the " impedance " of the
alternating circuit. The quantity pL is called the " reactance " of
the alternating circuit, and it is therefore obvious that the current
in such a circuit lags behind the electromotive force by an angle,
called the angle of lag, the tangent of which is'^L/R.
Currents in Networks of Conductors. In dealing with problems
connected with electric currents we have to consider the laws which
govern the flow of currents in linear conductors (wires), in plane
conductors (sheets), and throughout the mass of a material con-
ductor. 1 In the first case consider the collocation of a number of
linear conductors, such as rods or wires of metal, joined at their ends
to form a network of conductors. The network consists of a number
of conductors joining certain points and forming meshes. In each
conductor a current may exist, and along each conductor there is a
fall of potential, or an active electromotive force may be acting in it.
Each conductor has a certain resistance. To find the current in each
conductor when the individual resistances and electromotive forces
are given, proceed as follows: Consider any one mesh. The sum
of all the electromotive forces which exist in the branches bounding
that mesh must be equal to the sum of all the products of the resist-
ances into the currents flowing along them, or 2(E) = S(C.R.).
Hence if we consider each mesh as traversed by imaginary currents
all circulating in the same direction, the real currents are the sums
or differences of these imaginary cyclic currents in each branch.
Hence we may assign to each mesh a cycle symbol x, y, z, &c., and
form a cycle equation. Write down the cycle symbol for a mesh
and prefix as coefficient the sum of all the resistances which bound
that cycle, then subtract the cycle symbols of each adjacent cycle,
each multiplied by the value of the bounding or common resistances,
and equate this sum to the total electromotive force acting round the
cycle. Thus if * y t are the cycle currents, and a b c the resistances
bounding the mesh x, and 6 and c those separating it from the
meshes y and z, and E an electromotive force in the branch a, then
1 See W. G. Rhodes, A n Elementary Treatise on A Iternating Currents
(London, 1002), chap. vii.
* See J. A. Fleming, " Problems on the Distribution of Electric
Currents in Networks of Conductors," Phil. Mag. (1885), or Proc.
Phys. Soc. Land. (1885), 7; also Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism
(2nd ed.), vol. i. p. 374, f 280, 2826.
2l6
ELECTROKINETICS
we have formed the cycle equation x (a+b+c) by cz = K. For
each mesh a similar equation may be formed. Hence we have as
many linear equations as there are meshes, and we can obtain the
solution for each cycle symbol, and therefore for the current in
each branch. The solution giving the current in such branch of
the network is therefore always in the
form of the quotient of two deter-
minants. The solution of the well-
known problem of finding the current
in the galvanometer circuit of the
arrangement of linear conductors called
Wheatstone's Bridge is thus easily ob-
tained. For if we call the cycles (see
fig- 7) (x+y), y and z, and the resist-
ances P, Q, R, S, G and B, and if E be
the electromotive force in the battery
circuit, we have the cycle equations
(P+G+R)(*-HO-Gy-Rz = 0,
(Q+G+S);y-G(*+:y)-Sz = 0,
(R+S+B)-R(*+y)-Sy-E.
From these we can easily obtain the
x, which is the current through the galvano-
solution for (x+y)
meter circuit in the form
= E(PS-RQ)A.
where A is a certain function of P, Q, R, S, B and G.
Currents in Sheets. In the case of current flow in plane sheets,
we have to consider certain points called sources at which the current
flows into the sheet, and certain points called sinks at which it leaves.
We may investigate, first, the simple case of one source and one sink
in an infinite plane sheet of thickness S and conductivity k. Take
any point P in the plane at distances R and r from the source and
sink respectively. The potential V at P is obviously given by
V =
where Q is the quantity of electricity supplied by the source per
second. Hence the equation to the equipotential curve is nr 2 = a
constant.
If we take a point half-way between the sink and the source as
the origin of a system of rectangular co-ordinates, and if the distance
between sink and source is equal to p, and the line joining them is
taken as the axis of x, then the equation to the equipotential line is
= a constant.
This is the equation of a family of circles having the axis of y for
a common radical axis, one set of circles surrounding the sink and
another set of circles surrounding the source. In order to discover
the form of the stream of current lines we have to determine the
orthogonal trajectories to this family of coaxial circles. It is easy
to show that the orthogonal trajectory of the system of circles is
another system of circles all passing through the sink and the source,
and as a corollary of this fact, that the electric resistance of a circular
disk of uniform thickness is the same between any two points taken
anywhere on its circumference as sink and source. These equi-
potential lines may be delineated experimentally by attaching the
terminals of a battery or batteries to small wires which touch at
various places a sheet of tinfoil. Two wires attached to a galvano-
meter may then be placed on the tinfoil, and one may be kept
stationary and the other may be moved about, so that the galvano-
meter is not traversed by any current. The moving terminal then
traces out an equipotential curve. If there are n sinks and sources
in a plane conducting sheet, and if r, r', r" be the distances of any
point from the sinks, and t, t', t" the distances of the sources, then
I l> I* ' ' ~ a constant,
is the equation to the equipotential lines. The orthogonal trajectories
or stream lines have the equation
S(9 0') =a constant,
where 8 and 6' are the angles which the lines drawn from any point
in the plane to the sink and corresponding source make with the line
joining that sink and source. Generally it may be shown that if
there are any number of sinks and sources in an infinite plane-
conducting sheet, and if r, 9 are the polar co-ordinates of any one,
then the equation to the equipotential surfaces is given by the
equation
2(A log e r) =a constant,
where A is a constant; and the equation to the stream or current
lines is
Z(0)= a constant.
In the case of electric flow in three dimensions the electric potential
must satisfy Laplace's equation, and a solution is therefore found
in the form Z(A/r) =a constant, as the equation to an equipotential
surface, where r is the distance of any point on that surface from a
source or sink.
Convection Currents. The subject of convection electric
currents has risen to great importance in connexion with modern
electrical investigations. The question whether a statically
electrified body in motion creates a magnetic field is of funda-
mental importance. Experiments to settle it were first under-
taken in the year 1876 by H. A. Rowland, at a suggestion of
H. von Helmholtz. 1 After preliminary experiments, Rowland's
first apparatus for testing this hypothesis was constructed, as
follows: An ebonite disk was covered with radial strips of gold-
leaf and placed between two other metal plates which acted as
screens. The disk was then charged with electricity and set in
rapid rotation. It was found to affect a delicately suspended
pair of astatic magnetic needles hung in proximity to the disk
just as would, by Oersted's rule, a circular electric current
coincident with the periphery of the disk. Hence the statically-
charged but rotating disk becomes in effect a circular electric
current.
The experiments were repeated and confirmed by W. C.
Rontgen (Wied. Ann., 1888, 35, p. 264; 1890, 40, p. 93) and by
F. Himstedt (Wied. Ann., 1889, 38, p. 560). Later V. Cr6mieu
again repeated them and obtained negative results (Com. rend.,
1900, 130, p. 1544, and 131, pp. 578 and 797; 1901, 132, pp. 327 and
1 1 08) . They were again very carefully reconducted by H. Pender
(Phil. Mag., 1901, 2, p. 179) and by E. P. Adams (id. ib., 285).
Fender's work showed beyond any doubt that electric convec-
tion does produce a magnetic effect. Adams employed charged
copper spheres rotating at a high speed in place of a disk, and
was able to prove that the rotation of such spheres produced a
magnetic field similar to that due to a circular current and agree-
ing numerically with the theoretical value. It has been .shown
by J. J. Thomson (Phil. Mag., 1881, 2, p. 236) andO. Heaviside
(Electrical Papers, vol. ii. p. 205) that an electrified sphere,
moving with a velocity v and carrying a quantity of electricity
q, should produce a magnetic force H, at a point at a distance
p from the centre of the sphere, equal to qv sin 0/p 2 , where
is the angle between the direction of p and the motion of the
sphere. Adams found the field produced by a known electric
charge rotating at a known speed had a strength not very
different from that predetermined by the above formula. An
observation recorded by R. W. Wood (Phil. Mag., 1902, 2, p. 659)
provides a confirmatory fact. He noticed that if carbon-dioxide
strongly compressed in a steel bottle is allowed to escape suddenly
the cold produced solidifies some part of the gas, and the issuing
jet is full of particles of carbon-dioxide snow. These by friction
against the nozzle are electrified positively. Wood caused the
jet of gas to pass through a glass tube 2-5 mm. in diameter,
and found that these particles of electrified snow were blown
through it with a velocity of 2000 ft. a second. Moreover, he
found that a magnetic needle hung near the tube was deflected
as if held near an electric current. Hence the positively electrified
particles in motion in the tube create a magnetic field round it.
Nature of an Electric Current. The question, What is an
electric current ? is involved in the larger question of the nature
of electricity. Modern investigations have shown that negative
electricity is identical with the electrons or corpuscles which are
components of the chemical atom (see MATTER and ELECTRICITY).
Certain lines of argument lead to the conclusion that a solid
conductor is not only composed of chemical atoms, but that there
is a certain proportion of free electrons present in it, the electronic
density or number per unit of volume being determined by
the material, its temperature and other physical conditions. If
any cause operates to add or remove electrons at one point there
is an immediate diffusion of electrons to re-establish equilibrium,
and this electronic movement constitutes an electric current.
This hypothesis explains the reason for the identity between the
laws of diffusion of matter, of heat and of electricity. Electro-
motive force is then any cause making or tending to make an
inequality "of electronic density in conductors, and may arise
from differences of temperature, i.e. thermoelectromotive force
1 See Berl. Acad. Ber., 187$, p. 21 1 ; also H. A. Rowland and C. T.
Hutchinson, " On the Electromagnetic Effect of Convection Cur-
rents," Phil. Mag., 1889, 27, p. 445.
ELECTROLIER ELECTROLYSIS
217
(see THMMOEUCCTMCTTY), or from chemical action when part
of the circuit is an electrolytic conductor, or from the movement
of lines of magnetic force across the conductor.
RIBLIOCRAFIIY. For additional information the reader may be
referred to the following books : M . Faraday. Experimental Researches
in EUctricity (3 voU., London. 1839, 1844, 1855); J. Clerk Maxwell,
EUctriiity ana Uatnetum (2 vols., Oxford, 1893); W. Watson and
S. H. Burbury. Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism,
vol. ii. (Oxford, 1889); E. Mascart and J. Joubert, A Treatise on
EUttncity and Magnetism (a vols., London, 1883) ; A. Hay, Alternat-
ing Current (London, 1905); W. G. Rhodes, An Elementary Treatise
M Alternating Currents (London, 1903); D. C. Jackson and J. P.
Jackson, Alternating Currents and Alternating Current Machinery
11896, new ed. 1903) ; S. P. Thompson. Polyphase Electric Currents
(London, 1900); Dynamo-Electric Machinery, vol. ii., " Alternating
Currents " (London, 1905) ; E. E. Fournier d'Albe, The Electron^
Theory (London, 1906). (J- A. F.)
ELECTROLIER, a fixture, usually pendent from the ceiling,
for holding electric lamps. The word is analogous to chandelier,
from which indeed it was formed.
ELECTROLYSIS (formed from Gr. XiW, to loosen). When
the passage of an electric current through a substance is accom-
panied by definite chemical changes which are independent
of the heating effects of the current, the process is known as
electrolysis, and the substance is called an electrolyte. As an
example we may take the case of a solution of a salt such as
copper sulphate in water, through which an electric current is
passed between copper plates. We shall then observe the follow-
ing phenomena, (i) The bulk of the solution is unaltered,
except that its temperature may be raised owing to the usual
beating effect which is proportional to the square of the strength
of the current, (i) The copper plate by which the current is
said to enter the solution, i.e. the plate attached to the so-called
positive terminal of the battery or other source of current, dis-
solves away, the copper going into solution as copper sulphate.
(3) Copper is deposited on the surface of the other plate, being
obtained from the solution. (4) Changes in concentration are
produced in the neighbourhood of the two plates or electrodes.
In the case we have chosen, the solution becomes stronger near
the anode, or electrode at which the current enters, and weaker
near the cathode, or electrode at which it leaves the solution.
If, instead of using copper electrodes, we take plates of platinum,
copper is still deposited on the cathode; but, instead of the
anode dissolving, free sulphuric acid appears in the neighbouring
solution, and oxygen gas is evolved at the surface of the platinum
plate.
With other electrolytes similar phenomena appear, though
the primary chemical changes may be masked by secondary
actions. Thus, with a dilute solution of sulphuric acid and
platinum electrodes, hydrogen gas is evolved at the cathode,
while, as the result of a secondary action on the anode, sulphuric
acid is there re-formed, and oxygen gas evolved. Again, with
the solution of a salt such as sodium chloride, the sodium, which
is primarily liberated at the cathode, decomposes the water and
evolves hydrogen, while the chlorine may be evolved as such,
may dissolve the anode, or may liberate oxygen from the water,
according to the nature of the plate and the concentration of
the solution.
Early History of Eletlrolysis. AJessandro Volta of Pavia
discovered the electric battery in the year 1800, and thus placed
the means of maintaining a steady electric current in the hands
of investigators, who, before that date, had been restricted to
the study of the isolated electric charges given by frictional
electric machines. Volta 's cell consists essentially of two plates
of different metals, such as zinc and copper, connected by an
electrolyte such as a solution of salt or acid. Immediately on
its discovery intense interest was aroused in the new invention,
and the chemical effects of electric currents were speedily
detected. W. Nicholson and Sir A. Carlisle found that hydrogen
and oxygen were evolved at the surfaces of gold and platinum
wires connected with the terminals of a battery and dipped in
water. The volume of the hydrogen was about double that of
the oxygen, and, since this is the ratio in which these elements
are combined in water, it was concluded that the process con-
sisted essentially in the decomposition of water. They also
noticed that a similar kind of chemical action went on in the
battery itself. Soon afterwards, William Cruickshank decom-
posed the magnesium, sodium and ammonium chlorides, and
precipitated silver and copper from their solutions an observa-
tion which led to the process of electroplating. He also found
that the liquid round the anode became acid, and that round
the cathode alkaline. In 1804 W. Hisinger and J. J. Berzclius
stated that neutral salt solutions could be decomposed by
electricity, the acid appearing at one pole and the metal at the
other. This observation showed that nascent hydrogen was
not, as had been supposed, the primary cause of the separation
of metals from their solutions, but that the action consisted
in a direct decomposition into metal and acid. During the
earliest investigation of the subject it was thought that, since
hydrogen and oxygen were usually evolved, the electrolysis of
solutions of acids and alkalis was to be regarded as a direct
decomposition of water. In 1806 Sir Humphry Davy proved
that the formation of acid and alkali when water was electrolysed
was due to saline impurities in the water. He had shown
previously that decomposition of water could be effected although
the two poles were placed in separate vessels connected by
moistened threads. In 1807 he decomposed potash and soda,
previously considered to be elements, by passing the current
from a powerful battery through the moistened solids, and thus
isolated the metals potassium and sodium.
The electromotive force of Volta's simple cell falls off rapidly
when the cell is used, and this phenomenon was shown to be
due to the accumulation at the metal plates of the products of
chemical changes in the cell itself. This reverse electromotive
force of polarization is produced in all electrolytes when the
passage of the current changes the nature of the electrodes.
In batteries which use acids as the electrolyte, a film of
hydrogen tends to be deposited on the copper or platinum
electrode; but, to obtain a constant electromotive force, several
means were soon devised of preventing the formation of the film.
Constant cells may be divided into two groups, according as
their action is chemical (as in the bichromate cell, where the
hydrogen is converted into water by an oxidizing agent placed
in a porous pot round the carbon plate) or electrochemical (as
in DanielPs cell, where a copper plate is surrounded by a solution
of copper sulphate, and the hydrogen, instead of being liberated,
replaces copper, which is deposited on the plate from the solution).
Faraday's Laws. The first exact quantitative study of electro-
lytic phenomena was made about 1830 by Michael Faraday
(Experimental Researches, 1833). When an electric current flows
round a circuit, there is no accumulation of electricity any-
where in the circuit, hence the current strength is every-
where the same, and we may picture the current as analogous
to the flow of an incompressible fluid. Acting on this view,
Faraday set himself to examine the relation between the flow
of electricity round the circuit and the amount of chemical
decomposition. He passed the current driven by a voltaic
battery ZnPt (fig. i) through two branches containing the two
electrolytic cells A and
B. The reunited cur-
rent was then led
through another cell C,
in which the strength of
the current must be the
sum of those in the
arms A and B . Faraday
found that the mass of
substance liberated at
the electrodes in the cell
C was equal to the sum Fie. i.
of the masses liberated
in the cells A and B. He also found that, for the same current,
the amount of chemical action was independent of the size of
the electrodes and proportional to the time that the current
flowed. Regarding the current as the passage of a certain
amount of electricity per second, it will be seen that the results
2l8
ELECTROLYSIS
of all these experiments may be summed up in the statement
that the amount of chemical action is proportional to the
quantity of electricity which passes through the cell.
Faraday's next step was to pass the same current through
different electrolytes in series. He found that the amounts of
the substances liberated in each cell were proportional to the
chemical equivalent weights of those substances. Thus, if the
current be passed through dilute sulphuric acid between hydrogen
electrodes, and through a solution of copper sulphate, it will
be found that the mass of hydrogen evolved in the first cell is
to the mass of copper deposited in the second as i is to 31-8.
Now this ratio is the same as that which gives the relative
chemical equivalents of hydrogen and copper, for i gramme of
hydrogen and 31-8 grammes of copper unite chemically with
the same weight of any acid radicle such as chlorine or the
sulphuric group, SO,|. Faraday examined also the electrolysis
of certain fused salts such as lead chloride and silver chloride.
Similar relations were found to hold and the amounts of chemical
change to be the same for the same electric transfer as in the
case of solutions.
We may sum up the chief results of Faraday's work in the
statements known as Faraday's laws: The mass of substance
liberated from an electrolyte by the passage of a current is
proportional (i) to the total quantity of electricity which passes
through the electrolyte, and (2) to the chemical equivalent
weight of the substance liberated.
Since Faraday's time his laws have been confirmed by modern
research, and in favourable cases have been shown to hold good
with an accuracy of at least one part in a thousand. The principal
object of this more recent research has been the determination
of the quantitative amount of chemical change associated with
the passage for a given time of a current of strength known in
electromagnetic units. It is found that the most accurate and
convenient apparatus to use is a platinum bowl filled with a
solution of silver nitrate containing about fifteen parts of the
salt to one hundred of water. Into the solution dips a silver
plate wrapped in filter paper, and the current is passed from the
silver plate as anode to the bowl as cathode. The bowl is
weighed before and after the passage of the current, and the
increase gives the mass of silver deposited. The mean result
of the best determinations shows that when a current of one
ampere is passed for one second, a mass of silver is deposited
equal to 0-001118 gramme. So accurate and convenient is
this determination that it is now used conversely as a practical
definition of the ampere, which (defined theoretically in terms
of magnetic force) is defined practically as the current which in
one second deposits 1-118 milligramme of silver.
Taking the chemical equivalent weight of silver, as determined
by chemical experiments, to be 107-92, the result described gives
as the electrochemical equivalent of an ion of unit chemical
equivalent the value i-o36Xio' 5 . If, as is now usual, we take
the equivalent weight of oxygen as our standard and call it 16,
the equivalent weight of hydrogen is 1-008, and its electro-
chemical equivalent is I-O44X icr 6 . The electrochemical equiva-
lent of any other substance, whether element or compound, may
be found by multiplying its chemical equivalent by i-o36Xio~ 6 .
If, instead of the ampere, we take the C.G.S. electromagnetic
unit of current, this number becomes i -036 X io~ 4 .
Chemical Nature of the Ions. A study of the products of
decomposition does not necessarily lead directly to a knowledge
of the ions actually employed in carrying the current through
the electrolyte. Since the electric forces are active throughout
the whole solution, all the ions must come under its influence
and therefore move, but their separation from the electrodes
is determined by the electromotive force needed to liberate them.
Thus, as long as every ion of the solution is present in the layer
of liquid next the electrode, the one which responds to the least
electromotive force will alone be set free. When the amount of
this ion in the surface layer becomes too small to carry all the
current across the junction, other ions must also be used, and
either they or their secondary products will appear also at the
electrode. In aqueous solutions, for instance, a few hydrogen
(H) and hydroxyl (OH) ions derived from the water are always
present, and will be liberated if the other ions require a higher
decomposition voltage and the current be kept so small that
hydrogen and hydroxyl ions can be formed fast enough to carry
all the current across the junction between solution and electrode.
The issue is also obscured in another way. When the ions are
set free at the electrodes, they may unite with the substance
of the electrode or with some constituent of the solution to
form secondary products. Thus the hydroxyl mentioned above
decomposes into water and oxygen, and the chlorine produced
by the electrolysis of a chloride may attack the metal of the
anode. This leads us to examine more closely the part played
by water in the electrolysis of aqueous solutions. Distilled
water is a very bad conductor, though, even when great care is
taken to remove all dissolved bodies, there is evidence to show
that some part of the trace of conductivity remaining is due to
the water itself. By careful redistillation F. Kohlrausch has
prepared water of which the conductivity compared with that
of mercury was only 0-40 Xio" 11 at 18 C. Even here some
little impurity was present, and the conductivity of chemically
pure water was estimated by thermodynamic reasoning as
o-36Xio~ n at 18 C. As we shall see later, the conductivity of
very dilute salt solutions is proportional to the concentration, so
that it is probable that, in most cases, practically all the current
is carried by the salt. At the electrodes, however, the small
quantity of hydrogen and hydroxyl ions from the water are
liberated first in cases where the ions of the salt have a higher
decomposition voltage. The water being present in excess, the
hydrogen and hydroxyl are re-formed at once and therefore are
set free continuously. If the current be so strong that new
hydrogen and hydroxyl ions cannot be formed in time, other
substances are liberated; in a solution of sulphuric acid a strong
current will evolve sulphur dioxide, the more readily as the
concentration of the solution is increased. Similar phenomena
are seen in the case of a solution of hydrochloric acid. When
the solution is weak, hydrogen and oxygen are evolved; but,
as the concentration is increased, and the current raised, more
and more chlorine is liberated.
An interesting example of secondary action is shown by the
common technical process of electroplating with silver from a bath
of potassium silver cyanide. Here the ions are potassium and the
group Ag(CN) 2 .' Each potassium ion as it reaches the cathode
precipitates silver by reacting with the solution in accordance with
the chemical equation
K+KAg(CN) 2 =2KCN+Ag,
while the anion Ag(CN) 2 dissolves an atom of silver from the anode,
and re-forms the complex cyanide KAg(CN) 2 by combining with the
2KCN produced in the reaction described in the equation. If the
anode consist of platinum, cyanogen gas is evolved thereat from the
anion Ag(CN) 2 , and the platinum becomes covered with the insoluble
silver cyanide, AgCN, which soon stops the current. The coating of
silver obtained by this process is coherent and homogeneous, while
that deposited from a solution of silver nitrate, as the result of the
primary action of the current, is crystalline and easily detached.
In the electrolysis of a concentrated solution of sodium acetate,
hydrogen is evolved at the cathode and a mixture of ethane and
carbon dioxide at the anode. According to H. Jahn, z the processes
at the anode can be represented by the equations
2CH 3 -COO+H 2 O=2CH 3 -COOH+O
= C 2 H,+2C0 2 +H a O.
The hydrogen at the cathode is developed by the secondary action
2Na+2H 2 O=2NaOH+H 2 .
Many organic compounds can be prepared by taking advantage of
secondary actions at the electrodes, such as reduction by the cathodic
hydrogen, or oxidation at the anode (see ELECTROCHEMISTRY).
It is possible to distinguish between double salts and salts of
compound acids. Thus J. W. Hittorf showed that when a current
was passed through a solution of sodium platino-chloride, the
platinum appeared at the anode. The salt must therefore be derived
from an acid, chloroplatinic acid, H 2 PtCl 6 , and have the formula
Na 2 PtCl, the ions being Na and PtCU*, for if it were a double salt
it would decompose as a mixture of sodium chloride and platinum
chloride and both metals would go to the cathode.
'See Hittorf, Pogg. Ann. cvi. 517 (1859).
*Grundriss der Elektrochemie (1895), p. 292; see also F. KauHcr
and C. Herzog, Ber., 1909, 42, p. 3858.
ELECTROLYSIS
219
. Tktorits of Ekftrolysis. The obvious phenomena to be
explained by any theory of electrolysis are the liberation of the
products of chemical decomposition at the two electrodes while
the intervening liquid is unaltered. To explain these facts,
TheodorOrott bus (1785- 1822) in 1806 put forward an hypothesis
which supposed that the opposite chemical constituents of an
electrolyte interchanged partners all along the line between the
electrode* when a current passed. Thus, if the molecule of a
substance in solution is represented by AB, Grotthus considered
a chain of AB molecules to exist from one electrode to the other.
I'mler the influence of an applied electric force, he imagined that
the B part of the first molecule was liberated at the anode, and
that the A part thus isolated united with the B part of the second
molecule, which, in its turn, passed on its A to the B of the
third molecule. In this manner, the B part of the last molecule
of the chain was seized by the A of the last molecule but one, and
the A part of the last molecule liberated at the surface of the
cathode.
Chemical phenomena throw further light on this question.
Ii two solutions containing the salts AB and CD be mixed.
double decomposition is found to occur, the salts AD and CB
being formed till a certain pan of the first pair of substances
is transformed into an equivalent amount of the second pair.
The proportions between the four salts AB, CD, AD and CB,
which exist finally in solution, are found to be the same whether
we begin with the pair AB and CD or with the pair AD and CB.
To explain this result, chemists suppose that both changes can
occur simultaneously, and that equilibrium results when the rate
at which AB and CD are transformed into AD and CB is the same
as the rate at which the reverse change goes on. A freedom of
interchange is thus indicated between the opposite parts of the
molecules of salts in solution, and it follows reasonably that with
the solution of a single salt, say sodium chloride, continual
interchanges go on between the sodium and chlorine parts of the
different molecules.
These views were applied to the theory- of electrolysis by
R. J. E. Clausius. He pointed out that it followed that the
electric forces did not cause the interchanges bet ween the opposite
parts of the dissolved molecules but only controlled their direc-
tion. Interchanges must be supposed to go on whether a current
passes or not, the function of the electric forces in electrolysis
being merely to determine in what direction the parts of the
molecules shall work their way through the liquid and to effect
actual separation of these parts (or their secondary products)
at the electrodes. This conclusion is supported also by the
evidence supplied by the phenomena of electrolytic conduction
(ee CONDUCTION, ELECTKIC, II.). If we eliminate the reverse
electromotive forces of polarization at the two electrodes, the con-
duction of electricity through electrolytes is found to conform
to Ohm's law; that is, once the polarization is overcome, the
current is proportional to the electromotive force applied to
the bulk of the liquid. Hence there can be no reverse forces of
polarization inside the liquid itself, such forces being confined
to the surface of the electrodes. No work is done in separating
the parts of the molecules from each other. This result again
indicates that the parts of the molecules are effectively separate
from each other, the function of the electric forces being merely
directive.
Migration of Ike Ions. The opposite parts of an electrolyte,
which work their way through the liquid under the action of the
electric forces, were named by Faraday the ions the travellers.
The changes of concentration which occur in the solution near
the two electrodes were referred by W. Hittorf (1853) to the
unequal speeds with which he supposed the two opposite ions
to travel. It is clear that, when two opposite streams of ions
move past each other, equivalent quantities are liberated at the
two ends of the system. If the ions move at equal rates, the salt
which is decomposed to supply the ions liberated must be taken
equally from the neighbourhood of the two electrodes. But if
one ion, say the anion. travels faster through the liquid than
the other, the end of the solution from which it comes will be
more exhausted of salt than the end towards which it goes.
Fio. 3.
If we assume that no other cause is at work, it is easy to prove
that, with non-dissolvable electrodes, the ratio of salt lost at
the anode to the salt lost ut the cathode must be equal to the
ratio of the velocity of the cation to the velocity of the union.
This result may be illustrated by fig. 2. The black circles repre-
sent one ion and the white
circles the other. Ifthcblnck jjj j Jj;i'j jVsJ'SJSSSSJ
ions move twice as fast as the '."";."_Y(
while ones, the state of things """'"SSSJijJJJj'sSJ ;;..,.,.
after the passage of a current
will be represented by the
lower part of the figure. Here the middle part of the solution is
unaltered and the number of ions liberated is the same at either
end, but the amount of salt left at one end is less than that at
the other. On the right, towards which the faster ion travels,
five molecules of salt arc left, being a loss of two from the original
seven. On the left, towards which the slower ion moves, only
three molecules remain a loss of four. Thus, the ratio of the
losses at the two ends is two to one the same as the ratio of
the assumed ionic velocities. It should be noted, however, that
another cause would be competent to explain the unequal
dilution of the two solutions. If either ion carried with it some
of the unaltered salt or some of the solvent, concentration or
dilution of the liquid would be produced where the ion was
liberated. There is reason to believe that in certain cases such
complex ions do exist, and interfere with the results of the
differing ionic velocities.
Hittorf and many other observers have made experiments
to determine the unequal dilution of a solution round the two
electrodes when a current passes. Various forms of apparatus
have been used, the principle of them all being to secure efficient
separation of the two volumes of solution in which the changes
occur. In some cases porous diaphragms have been employed;
but such diaphragms introduce a new complication, for the liquid
as a whole is pushed through them by the action of the current,
the phenomenon being known as electric endosmose. Hence
experiments without separating diaphragms are to be preferred,
and the apparatus may be considered effective when a considera-
able bulk of intervening solution is left unaltered in composition.
It is usual to express the results in terms of what is called the
migration constant of the anion, that is, the ratio of the amount
of salt lost by the anode vessel to the whole amount lost by both
vessels. Thus the statement that the migration constant or
transport number for a decinormal solution of copper sulphate
is 0-632 implies that of every gramme of copper sulphate lost
by a solution containing originally one-tenth of a gramme
equivalent per litre when a current is passed through it between
platinum electrodes, 0-632 gramme is taken from the cathode
vessel and 0-368 gramme from the anode vessel. For certain
concentrated solutions the transport number is found to be greater
than unity; thus for a normal solution of cadmium iodide its
value is 1-12. On the theory that the phenomena are wholly
due to unequal ionic velocities this result would mean that the
cation like the anion moved against the conventional direction
of the current. That a body carrying a positive electric charge
should move against the direction of the electric intensity is con-
trary to all our notions of electric forces, and we arc compelled
to seek some other explanation. An alternative hypothesis is
given by the idea of complex ions. If some of the anions, instead
of being simple iodine ions represented chemically by the symbol I ,
are complex structures formed by the union of iodine with un-
altered cadmium iodide structures represented by some such
chemical formula as I(CdI 2 ), the concentration of the solution
round the anode would be increased by the passage of an electric
current, and the phenomena observed would be explained. It
is found that, in such cases as this, where it seems necessary to
imagine the existence of complex ions, the transport number
changes rapidly as the concentration of the original solution is
changed. Thus, diminishing the concentration of the cadmium
iodine solution from normal to one-twentieth normal changes
the transport number from 1-12 to 0-64. Hence it is probable
that in cases where the transport number keeps constant with
220
ELECTROLYSIS
changing concentration the hypothesis of complex ions is un-
necessary, and we may suppose that the transport number is a
true migration constant from which the relative velocities of
the two ions may be calculated in the matter suggested by
Hittorf and illustrated in fig. 2. This conclusion is confirmed
by the results of the direct visual determination of ionic velocities
(see CONDUCTION, ELECTRIC, II.), which, in cases where the
transport number remains constant, agree with the values
calculated from those numbers. Many solutions in which the
transport numbers vary at high concentration often become
simple at greater dilution. For instance, to take the two solu-
tions to which we have already referred, we have
of ions between molecules at the instants of molecular collision
only; during the rest of the life of the ions they were regarded
as linked to each other to form electrically neutral molecules.
In 1887 Svante Arrhenius. professor of physics at Stockholm,
put forward a new theory which supposed that the freedom
of the opposite ions from each other was not a mere momentary
freedom at the instants of molecular collision, but a more or less
permanent freedom, the ions moving independently of each other
through the liquid. The evidence which led Arrhenius to this
conclusion was based on van 't Hoff's work on the osmotic
pressure of solutions (see SOLUTION). If a solution, let us say
of sugar, be confined in a closed vessel through the walls of
Concentration ... . .
Copper sulphate transport numbers
Cadmium iodide . .
2-0
0-72
1-22
i-5
0-7I4
1-18
I-O
0-696
I-I2
o-5
0-668
I-OO
O-2
0-643
0-83
O-I
0-632
0-71
0-05
0-626
0-64
O-O2
O-62
o-59
o-oi normal
0-56
It is probable that in both these solutions complex ions exist at
fairly high concentrations, but gradually gets less in number and
finally disappear as the dilution is increased. In such salts as
potassium chloride the ions seem to be simple throughout! a wide
range of concentration since the transport numbers for the same
series of concentrations as those used above run
Potassium chloride
-5!5. o-SiS. o-SH. O'S'S. -59. '58, 0-507, 0-507, 0-506.
The next important step in the theory of the subject was made
by F. Kohlrausch in 1879. Kohlrausch formulated a theory
of electrolytic conduction based on the idea that, under the action
of the electric forces, the oppositely charged ions moved in
opposite directions through the liquid, carrying their charges
with them. If we eliminate the polarization at the electrodes,
it 'can be shown that an electrolyte possesses a definite electric
resistance and therefore a definite conductivity. The con-
ductivity gives us the amount of electricity conveyed per second
under a definite electromotive force. On the view of the process
of conduction described above, the amount of electricity conveyed
per second is measured by the product of the number of ions,
known from the concentration of the solution, the charge carried
by each of them, and the velocity with which, on the average,
they move through the liquid. The concentration is known,
and the conductivity can be measured experimentally; thus
the average velocity with which the ions move past each other
under the existent electromotive force can be estimated. The
velocity with which the ions move past each other is equal to
the sum of their individual velocities, which can therefore be
calculated. Now Hittorf's transport number, in the case of
simple salts in moderately dilute solution, gives us the ratio
between the two ionic velocities. Hence the absolute velocities
of the two ions can be determined, and we can calculate the
actual speed with which a certain ion moves through a given
liquid under the action of a given potential gradient or electro-
motive force. The details of the calculation are given in the
article CONDUCTION, ELECTRIC, II., where also will be found
an account of the methods which have been used to measure
the velocities of many ions by direct visual observation. The
results go to show that, where the existence of complex ions is
not indicated by varying transport numbers, the observed
velocities agree with those calculated on Kohlrausch 's theory.
Dissociation Theory. The verification of Kohlrausch 's theory
of ionic velocity verifies also the view of electrolysis which regards
the electric current as due to streams of ions moving in opposite
directions through the liquid and carrying their opposite electric
charges with them. There remains the question how the
necessary migratory freedom of the ions is secured. As we have
seen, Grotthus imagined that it was the electric forces which
sheared the ions past each other and loosened the chemical
bonds holding the opposite parts of each dissolved molecule
together. Clausius extended to electrolysis the chemical ideas
which looked on the opposite parts of the molecule as always
changing partners independently of any electric force, and re-
garded the function of the current as merely directive. Still, the
necessary freedom was supposed to be secured by interchanges
which the solvent can pass but the solution cannot, the solvent
will enter till a certain equilibrium pressure is reached. This
equilibrium pressure is called the osmotic pressure of the solution,
and thermodynamic theory shows that, in an ideal case of
perfect separation between solvent and solute, it should have the
same value as the pressure which a number of molecules equal
to the number of solute molecules in the solution would exert if
they could exist as a gas in a space equal to the volume of the solu-
tion, provided that the space was large enough (i.e. the solution
dilute enough) for the intermolecular forces between the dissolved
particles to be inappreciable. Van 't Hoff pointed out that
measurements of osmotic pressure confirmed this value in the
case of dilute solutions of cane sugar.
Thermodynamic theory also indicates a connexion between
the osmotic pressure of a solution and the depression of its
freezing point and its vapour pressure compared with those of the
pure solvent. The freezing points and vapour pressures of solu-
tions of sugar are also in conformity with the theoretical numbers.
But when we pass to solutions of mineral salts and acids to
solutions of electrolytes in fact we find that the observed values
of the osmotic pressures and of the allied phenomena are greater
than the normal values. Arrhenius pointed out that these
exceptions would be brought into line if the ions of electrolytes
were imagined to be separate entities each capable of producing
its own pressure effects just as would an ordinary dissolved
molecule.
Two relations are suggested by Arrhenius' theory, (i) In
very dilute solutions of simple substances, where only one kind of
dissociation is possible and the dissociation of the ions is complete,
the number of pressure-producing particles necessary to produce
the observed osmotic effects should be equal to the number of
ions given by a molecule of the salt as shown by its electrical
properties. Thus the osmotic pressure, or the depression of the
freezing point of a solution of potassium chloride should, at
extreme dilution, be twice the normal value, but of a solution
of sulphuric acid three times that value, since the potassium
salt contains two ions and the acid three. (2) As the concentra-
tion of the solutions increases, the ionization as measured
electrically and the dissociation as measured osmotically might
decrease more or less together, though, since the thermodynamic
theory only holds when the solution is so dilute that the dissolved
particles are beyond each other's sphere of action, there is much
doubt whether this second relation is valid through any appreci-
able range of concentration.
At present, measurements of freezing point are more con-
venient and accurate than those of osmotic pressure, and we may
test the validity of Arrhenius' relations by their means. The
theoretical value for the depression of the freezing point of a
dilute solution per gramme-equivalent of solute per litre is
1-857 C. Completely ionized solutions of salts with two ions
should give' double this number or 3-714, while electrolytes
with three ions should have a value of 5- 57.
The following results are given by H. B. Loomis for the
concentration of o-oi gramme-molecule of salt to one thousand
grammes of water. The salts tabulated are those of which the
ELECTROLYSIS
221
equivalent conductivity reaches a limiting value indicating that
complete ionization is reached as dilution is increased. With
such salts alone is a valid comparison possible.
UoUcular Depressions of tkt Fretting Point.
Electrolytes vitk two Ions.
Potassium chloride . 3-60 Nitric acid . . . 3-73
Sodium chloride . 3-67 Potassium nitrate . 3-46
Potassium hydrate . 3 71 Sodium nitrate . 3 55
Hydrochloric acid . 3-61 Ammonium nitrate . 3-58
Electrolytes with three Ions.
Sulphuric acid . . 4-49 Calcium chloride . . 5-04
Sodium sulphate . . 5-09 Magnesium chloride . 5-08
At the concentration used by I.oomis the electrical con-
ductivity indicates that the ionization is not complete, particu-
larly in the case of the salts with divalent ions in the second list.
Allowing for incomplete ionization the general concordance
of these numbers with the theoretical ones is very striking.
The measurements of freezing points of solutions at the extreme
dilution necessary to secure complete ionization is a matter of
great difficulty, and has been overcome only in a research
initiated by E. H. Griffiths. 1 Results have been obtained for
solutions of sugar, where the experimental number is 1-858,
and for potassium chloride, which gives a depression of 3-720.
These numbers agree with those indicated by theory, viz. 1-857
and 3-714, with astonishing exactitude. We may take Arrhenius*
first relation as established for the case of potassium chloride.
The second relation, as we have seen, is not a strict consequence
of theory, and experiments to examine it must be treated as
an investigation of the limits within which solutions are dilute
within the thermodynamic sense of the word, rather than as a
test of the soundness of the theory. It is found that divergence
has begun before the concentration has become great enough
to enable freezing points to be measured with any ordinary
apparatus. The freezing point curve usually lies below the
electrical one, but approaches it as dilution is increased. 1
Returning once more to the consideration of the first relation,
which deals with the comparison between the number of ions and
the number of pressure-producing particles in dilute solution,
one caution is necessary. In simple substances like potassium
chloride it seems evident that one kind of dissociation only
is possible. The electrical phenomena show that there are two
ions to the molecule, and that these ions are electrically charged.
Corresponding with this result we find that the freezing point of
dilute solutions indicates that two pressure-producing particles
per molecule are present. But the converse relation does not
necessarily follow. It would be possible for a body in solution
to be dissociated into non-electrical parts, which would give
osmotic pressure effects twice or three times the normal value,
but, being uncharged, would not act as ions and impart electrical
conductivity to the solution. L. Kahlenberg (Jour. Phys. Cftem.,
1901, v. 344, 1002, vi. 43) has found that solutions of diphenyl-
amine in methyl cyanide possess an excess of pressure-producing
particles and yet are non-conductors of electricity. It is possible
that in complicated organic substances we might have two
kinds of dissociation, electrical and non-electrical, occurring
simultaneously, while the possibility of the association of mole-
cules accompanied by the electrical dissociation of some of them
into new parts should not be overlooked. It should be pointed
out that no measurements on osmotic pressures or freezing points
can do more than tell us that an excess of particles is present ;
such experiments can throw no light on the question whether
or not those particles are electrically charged. That question
can only be answered by examining whether or not the particles
move in an electric field.
The dissociation theory was originally suggested by the
osmotic pressure relations. But not only has it explained
satisfactorily the electrical properties of solutions, but it seems
to be the only known hypothesis which is consistent with the
experimental relation between the concentration of a solution
and its electrical conductivity (see CONDUCTION, ELECTRIC,
1 Brit. At}. Kef., 1906, Section A, Presidential Address.
See Tkeory of Solution, by W. C. D. Whetham (low), p. 328.
II., " Nature of Electrolytes "). It is probable that the
electrical effects constitute the strongest arguments in favour
of the theory. It is necessary to point out that the dissociated
ions of such a body as potassium chloride arc not in the same
condition as potassium and chlorine in the free state. The ions
are associated with very large electric charges, and, whatever
their exact relations with those charges may be, it is certain that
the energy of a system in such a state must be different from
its energy when unelectrified. It is not unlikely, therefore,
that even a compound as stable in the solid form as potassium
chloride should be thus dissociated when dissolved. Again,
water, the best electrolytic solvent known, is also the body of
the highest specific inductive capacity (dielectric constant),
and this property, to whatever cause it may be due, will reduce
the forces between electric charges in the neighbourhood, and
may therefore enable two ions to separate.
This view of the nature of electrolytic solutions at once explains
many well-known phenomena. Other physical properties of
these solutions, such as density, colour, optical rotatory power,
&c., like the conductivities, are additive, i.e. can be calculated
by adding together the corresponding properties of the parts.
This again suggests that these parts are independent of each other.
For instance, the colour of a salt solution is the colour obtained
by the superposition of the colours of the ions and the colour
of any undissociated salt that may be present. All copper salts
in dilute solution are blue, which is therefore the colour of the
copper ion. Solid copper chloride is brown or yellow, so that its
concentrated solution, which contains both ions and undissociated
molecules, is green, but changes to blue as water is added and
the ionization becomes complete. A series of equivalent solutions
all containing the same coloured ion have absorption spectra
which, when photographed, show identical absorption bands
of equal intensity. 1 The colour changes shown by many sub-
stances which are used as indicators (q.v.) of acids or alkalis can
be explained in a similar way. Thus para-nitrophenol has colour-
less molecules, but an intensely yellow negative ion. In neutral,
and still more in acid solutions, the dissociation of the indicator
is practically nothing, and the liquid is colourless. If an alkali
is added, however, a highly dissociated salt of para-nitrophenol
is formed, and the yellow colour is at once evident. In other
cases, such as that of litmus, both the ion and the undissociated
molecule are coloured, but in different ways.
Electrolytes possess the power of coagulating solutions of
colloids such as albumen and arscnious sulphide. The mean
values of the relative coagulative powers of sulphates of mono-,
di-, and tri-valent metals have been shown experimentally to
be approximately in the ratios 1:35:1023. The dissociation
theory refers this to the action of electric charges carried by the
free ions. If a certain minimum charge must be collected in
order to start coagulation, it will need the conjunction of 6
monovalcnt, or 3 divalent, to equal the effect of 2 trivalent
ions. The ratios of the coagulative powers can thus be calculated
to be i :*:**, and putting =32 we get 1 132 : 1024, a satis-
factory agreement with the numbers observed. 4
The question of the application of the dissociation theory to
the case of fused salts remains. While it seems clear that the
conduction in this case is carried on by ions similar to those of
solutions, since Faraday's laws apply equally to both, it does
not follow necessarily that semi-permanent dissociation is the
only way to explain the phenomena. The evidence in favour
of dissociation in the case of solutions does not apply to fused
salts, and it is possible that, in their case, a series of molecular
interchanges, somewhat like Grotthus's chain, may represent
the mechanism of conduction.
An interesting relation appears when the electrolytic con-
ductivity of solutions is compared with their chemical activity.
The readiness and speed with which electrolytes react are in
W. Ostwald, Zeits. physikal. Chemie, 1892, vol. ix. p. 579;
T. Ewan, Phil. Mag. (5), 1892, vol. xxxiii. p. 317; G. D. Liveing,
Cambridge Phil. Trans., 1900, vol. xviii. p. 298.
See W. B. Hardy, Journal of Physiology, 1899, vol. xxiv. p. 288;
and W. C. D. Whetham Phil. Mag., November 1809.
222
ELECTROLYSIS
sharp contrast with the difficulty experienced in the case o
non-electrolytes. Moreover, a study of the chemical relations
of electrolytes indicates that it is always the electrolytic ions
that are concerned in their reactions. The tests for a salt
potassium nitrate, for example, are the tests not for KNO 3 , but
for its ions K and NO 3 , and in cases of double decomposition
it is always these ions that are exchanged for those of other
substances. If an element be present in a compound otherwise
than as an ion, it is not interchangeable, and cannot be recognizec
by the usual tests. Thus neither a chlorate, which contains the
ion C1O 3 , nor monochloracetic acid, shows the reactions oi
chlorine, though it is, of course, present in both substances
again, the sulphates do not answer to the usual tests which
indicate the presence of sulphur as sulphide. The chemical
activity of a substance is a quantity which may be measured
by different methods. For some substances it has been shown
to be independent of the particular reaction used. It is then
possible to assign to each body a specific coefficient of affinity.
Arrhenius has pointed out that the coefficient of affinity of an
acid is proportional to its electrolytic ionization.
The affinities of acids have been compared in several ways.
W. Ostwald (Lehrbuch der allg. Chemie, vol. ii., Leipzig, 1893) investi-
gated the relative affinities of acids for potash, soda and ammonia,
and proved them to be independent of the base used. The method
employed was to measure the changes in volume caused by the action.
His results are given in column I. of the following table, the affinity
of hydrochloric acid being taken as one hundred. Another method
is to allow an acid to act on an insoluble salt, and to measure the
quantity which goes into solution. Determinations have been made
with calcium oxalate, CaC 2 O4+H 2 O, which is easily decomposed by
acids, oxalic acid and a soluble calcium salt being formed. The
affinities of acids relative to that of oxalic acid are thus found, so
that the acids can be compared among themselves (column II.).
If an aqueous solution of methyl acetate be allowed to stand, a slow
decomposition goes on. This is much quickened by the presence
of a little dilute acid, though the acid itself remains unchanged. It
is found that the influence of different acids on this action is pro-
portional to their specific coefficients of affinity. The results of this
method are given in column III. Finally, in column IV. the electrical
conductivities of normal solutions of the acids have been tabulated.
A better basis of comparison would be the ratio of the actual to the
limiting conductivity, but since the conductivity of acids is chiefly
due to the mobility of the hydrogen ions, its limiting value is nearly
the same for all, and the generalresult of the comparison would be
unchanged.
Acid.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
;
Hydrochloric ....
Nitric
IOO
1 02
IOO
no
IOO
92
IOO
99-6
s
t
Sulphuric
68
67
74
65-1
t
Formic
4-0
2-5
'3
1-7
i
Acetic
1-2
I-O
0-3
0-4
Propionic
1-1
0-3
0-3
Monochloracetic
7-2
5' i
4-3
4-9
%
Dichloracetic ....
34
1 8
23-0
25-3
\
Trichloracetic ....
82
63
68-2
62-3
1
Malic
3-o
5-o
1-2
il
i
Tartaric
5-3
6-3
2'3
2-3
\
Succinic
O-I
0-2
o-5
0-6
It must be remembered that, the solutions not being of quite the
same strength, these numbers are not strictly comparable, and that
the experimental difficulties involved in the chemical measurements
are considerable. Nevertheless, the remarkable general agreement
of the numbers in the four columns is quite enough to show the
intimate connexion between chemical activity and electrical con-
ductivity. We may take it, then, that only that portion of these
bodies is chemically active which is electrolytically active that
ionization is necessary for such chemical activity as we are dealing
with here, just as it is necessary for electrolytic conductivity.
The ordinary laws of chemical equilibrium have been applied to
the case of the dissociation of a substance into its ions. Let x be
the number of molecules which dissociate per second when the
number of undissociated molecules in unit volume is unity, then
in a dilute solution where the molecules do not interfere with each
other, xp is the number when the concentration is p. Recombination
can only occur when two ions meet, and since the frequency with
which this will happen is, in dilute solution, proportional to the
square of the ionic concentration, we shall get for the number of
mojecules re-formed in one second yif where q is the number of dis-
sociated molecules in one cubic centimetre. When there is equili-
brium, rp = yq*. If ft be the molecular conductivity, and UK, itsvalue
at infinite dilution, the fractional number of molecules dissociated is
JU/MOO . which we may write as o. The (lumber of undissociated mole-
cules is then I a, so that if V be the volume of the solution containing
i gramme-molecule of the dissolved substance, we get
3=o/V and p = (l-a)/V,
hence x(\ o) V=ya 2 /V 2 ,
9
and
=- = constant
= k.
This constant k gives a numerical value for the chemical affinity,
and the equation should represent the effect of dilution on the
molecular conductivity of binary electrolytes.
In the case of substances like ammonia and acetic acid, where the
dissociation is very small, I a is nearly equal to unity, and only
varies slowly with dilution. The equation then becomes o 2 /V = k, or
a = V Vk, so that the molecular conductivity is proportional to the
square root of the dilution. Ostwald has confirmed the equation
by observation on an enormous number of weak acids (Zeits.
physikal. Chemie, 1888, ii. p. 278; 1889, iii. pp. 170, 241, 369).
Thus in the case of cyanacetic acid, while the volume V changed by
doubling from 16 to 1024 litres, the values of k were o-oo (376, 373,
374, 361, 362, 361, 368). The mean values of k for other common
acids were formic, 0-0000214; acetic, 0-0000180; monochlor-
acetic, 0-00155; dichloracetic, 0-051; trichloracetic, 1-21; pro-
pionic, 0-0000134. From these numbers we can, by help of the
equation, calculate the conductivity of the acids for any dilution.
The value of k, however, does not keep constant so satisfactorily in the
case of highly dissociated substances, and empirical formulae have
been constructed to represent the effect_of dilution on them. Thus
the values of the expressions a a /(l o V V) (Rudolph!, Zeits. physikal.
Chemie, 1895, vol. xvii. p. 385) and o 3 /(i-a) 2 V (van 't Hoff, ibid.,
1895, vol. xviii. p. 300) are found to keep constant as V changes.
Van 't Hoff's formula is equivalent to taking the frequency of dis-
sociation as proportional to the square of the concentration of the
molecules, and the frequency of recombination as proportional to
the cube of the concentration of the ions. An explanation of the
failure of the usual dilution law in these cases may be given if we
remember that, while the electric forces between bodies like un-
dissociated molecules, each associated with equal and opposite
charges, will vary inversely as the fourth power of the distance, the
forces between dissociated ions, each carrying one charge only, will
be inversely proportional to the square of the distance. The forces
between the ions of a strongly dissociated solution will thus be con-
siderable at a dilution which makes forces between undissociated
molecules quite insensible, and at the concentrations necessary to
test Ostwald's formula an electrolyte will be far from dilute in the
thermodynamic sense of the term, which implies no appreciable
intermolecular or interionic forces.
When the solutions of two substances are mixed, similar con-
siderations to those given above enable us to calculate the resultant
changes in dissociation. (See Arrhenius, loc. cit.) The simplest
and most important case is that of two electrolytes having one
ion in common, such as two acids. It is evident that the undis-
sociated part of each acid must eventually be in equilibrium with
the free hydrogen ions, and, if the concentrations are not such as
to secure this condition, readjustment must occur. In order that
Lhere should be no change in the states of dissociation on mixing,
t is necessary, therefore, that the concentration of the hydrogen
ions should be the same in each separate solution. Such solutions
were called by Arrhenius " isohydric." The two solutions, then,
will so act on each other when mixed that they become isohydric.
Let us suppose that we have one very active acid like hydrochloric,
n which dissociation is nearly complete, another like acetic, in
which it is very small. In order that the solutions of these should be
sohydric and the concentrations of the hydrogen ions the same,
we must have a very large quantity of the feebly dissociated acetic
acid, and a very small quantity of the strongly dissociated hydro-
chloric, and in such proportions alone will equilibrium be possible.
This explains the action of a strong acid on the salt of a weak acid.
L,et us allow dilute sodium acetate to react with dilute hydrochloric
acid. Some acetic acid is formed, and this process will go on till
the solutions of the two acids are isohydric : that is, till the dis-
sociated hydrogen ions are in equilibrium with both. In order
that this should hold, we have seen that a considerable quantity
of acetic acid must be present, so that a corresponding amount of
:he salt will be decomposed, the quantity being greater the less
he acid is dissociated. This " replacement " ol a " weak " acid
>y a " strong " one isa matter of common observation in the chemical
aboratory. Similar investigations applied to the general case of
chemical equilibrium lead to an expression of exactly the same form
as that given by C. M. Guldberg and P.Waage, which is universally
accepted as an accurate representation of the facts.
The temperature coefficient of conductivity has approximately
he same value for most aqueous salt solutions. It decreases
)oth as the temperature is raised and as the concentration is
ncreased, ranging from about 3-5% per degree for extremely
lilute solutions (i.e. practically pure water) at o to about 1-5
KLKCTROLYSIS
223
(or concentrated solutions at 18. For acids its value is usually
rather less than for salts at equivalent concentrations. The
influence of temperature on the conductivity of solutions depends
oo (i) the ionixation, and (i) the frictional resistance of the
liquid to the passage of the ions, the reciprocal of which is called
the ionic fluidity. At extreme dilution, when the ionization is
complete, a variation in temperature cannot change its amount.
The rise of conductivity with temperature, therefore, shows
that the fluidity becomes greater when the solution is heated.
As the concentration is increased and un-ionized molecules are
formed, a change in temperature begins to affect the ionization
as well as the fluidity. But the temperature coefficient of
conductivity is now generally less than before; thus the effect
of temperature on ionization must be of opposite sign to its
effect on fluidity. The ionization of a solution, then, is usually
diminished by raising the temperature, the rise in conductivity
being due to the greater increase in fluidity. Nevertheless, in
certain cases, the temperature coefficient of conductivity becomes
negative at high temperatures, a solution of phosphoric acid,
for example, reaching a maximum conductivity at 75 C.
The dissociation theory gives an immediate explanation of the
fact that, in general, no heat-change occurs when two neutral
alt solutions are mixed. Since the salts, both before and after
mixture, exist mainly as dissociated ions, it is obvious that large
thermal effects can only appear when the state of dissociation
of the products is very different from that of the reagents. Let
us consider the case of the neutralization of a base by an acid
in the light of the dissociation theory. In dilute solution such
substances as hydrochloric acid and potash are almost completely
dissociated, so that, instead of representing the reaction as
HCl+KOH-KCI-t-H,O.
we must write
+ - + - + -
H+Cl+K+OH-K+CI+HjO.
The ions K and Cl suffer no change, but the hydrogen of the acid
and the hydroxyl (OH) of the potash unite to form water, which
is only very slightly dissociated. The heat liberated, then, is
almost exclusively that produced by the formation of water
from its ions. An exactly similar process occurs when any
strongly dissociated acid acts on any strongly dissociated base,
so that in all such cases the heat evolution should be approxi-
mately the same. This is fully borne out by the experiments of
Julius Thomscn, who found that the heat of neutralization of one
gramme molecule of a strong base by an equivalent quantity of a
strong acid was nearly constant, and equal to 13,700 or 13,800
calories. In the case of weaker acids, the dissociation of which
is less complete, divergences from this constant value will occur,
for some of the molecules have to be separated into their ions.
For instance, sulphuric acid, which in the fairly strong solutions
used by Thomsen is only about half dissociated, gives a higher
value for the heat of neutralization, so that heat must be evolved
when it is ionized. The heat of formation of a substance from
its ions is, of course, very different from that evolved when it is
formed from its elements in the usual way, since the energy
associated with an ion is different from that possessed by the
atoms of the element in their normal state. We can calculate
the heat of formation from its ions for any substance dissolved
in a given liquid, from a knowledge of the temperature coefficient
of ionization, by means of an application of the well-known
thermodynamical process, which also gives the latent heat of
evaporation of a liquid when the temperature coefficient of its
vapour pressure is known. The heats of formation thus obtained
may be either positive or negative, and by using them to supple-
ment the heat of formation of water, Arrhenius calculated the
total heats of neutralization of soda by different acids, some of
them only slightly dissociated, and found values agreeing well
with observation (Ztils. physikal. Chemit, 1889, 4, p. 96; and
1892, 9, p. 339).
Voltaic Cells. When two metallic conductors are placed in
an electrolyte, a current will flow through a wire connecting
them provided that a difference of any kind exists between the
two conductors in the nature either of the metals or of the
portions of the electrolyte which surround them. A current
can be obtained by the combination of two metals in the same
electrolyte, of two metals in different electrolytes, of the same
metal in different electrolytes, or of the same metal in solutions
of the same electrolyte at different concentrations. In accord-
ance with the principles of energetics (q.v.), any change which
involves a decrease in the total available energy of the system
will tend to occur, and thus the necessary and sufficient condition
for the production of electromotive force is that the available
energy of the system should decrease when the current flows.
In order that the current should be maintained, and the
electromotive force of the cell remain constant during action, it
is necessary to ensure that the changes in the cell, chemical or
other, which produce the current, should neither destroy the
difference between the electrodes, nor coat either electrode
with a non-conducting layer through which the current cannol
pass. As an example of a fairly constant cell we may lake that
of Daniell, which consists of the electrical arrangement zinc |
zinc sulphate solution | copper sulphate solution | copper, the
two solutions being usually separated by a pot of porous earthen-
ware. When the zinc and copper plates are connected through
a wire, a current flows, the conventionally positive electricity
passing from copper to zinc in the wire and from zinc to copper
in the cell. Zinc dissolves at the anode, an equal amount of
zinc replaces an equivalent amount of copper on the other side
of the porous partition, and the same amount of copper is
deposited on the cathode. This process involves a decrease in
the available energy of the system, for the dissolution of zinc
gives out more energy than the separation of copper absorbs.
But the internal rearrangements which accompany the produc-
tion of a current do not cause any change in the original nature
of the electrodes, fresh zinc being exposed at the anode, and
copper being deposited on copper at the cathode. Thus as long
as a moderate current flows, the only variation in the cell is the
appearance of zinc sulphate in the liquid on the copper side of the
porous wall. In spite of this appearance, however, while the
supply of copper is maintained, copper, being more easily
separated from the solution than zinc, is deposited alone at the
cathode, and the cell remains constant.
It is necessary to observe that the condition for change in
a system is that the total available energy of the whole system
should be decreased by the change. We must consider what
change is allowed by the mechanism of the system, and deal with
the sum of all the alterations in energy. Thus in the Daniell cell
the dissolution of copper as well as of zinc would increase the
loss in available energy. But when zinc dissolves, the zinc
ions carry their electric charges with them, and the liquid tends
to become positively electrified. The electric forces then soon
stop further action unless an equivalent quantity of positive
ions are removed from the solution. Hence zinc can only dissolve
when some more easily separable substance is present in solution
to be removed pari passu with the dissolution of zinc. The
mechanism of such systems is well illustrated by an experiment
devised by W. Ostwald. Plates of platinum and pure or amal-
gamated zinc are separated by a porous pot, and each sur-
rounded by some of the same solution of a salt of a metal
more oxidizable than zinc, such as potassium. When the plates
are connected together by means of a wire, no current flows,
and no appreciable amount of zinc dissolves, for the dissolution
of zinc would involve the separation of potassium and a gain
in available energy. If sulphuric acid be added to the vessel
containing the zinc, these conditions are unaltered and still no
zinc is dissolved. But, on the other hand, if a few drops of acid
be placed in the vessel with the platinum, bubbles of hydrogen
appear, and a current flows, zinc dissolving at the anode, and
hydrogen being liberated at the cathode. In order that positively
electrified ions may enter a solution, an equivalent amount of
other positive ions must be removed or negative ions be added,
and, for the process to occur spontaneously, the possible action
at the two electrodes must involve a decrease in the total avail-
able energy of the system.
Considered thermodynamically, voltaic cells must be divided
224
ELECTROLYSIS
into reversible and non-reversible systems. If the slow pro-
cesses of diffusion be ignored, the Daniell cell already described
may be taken as a type of a reversible cell. Let an electromotive
force exactly equal to that of the cell be applied to it in the reverse
direction. When the applied electromotive force is diminished
by an infinitesimal amount, the cell produces a current in the
usual direction, and the ordinary chemical changes occur. If
the external electromotive force exceed that of the cell by ever
so little, a current flows in the opposite direction, and all the
former chemical changes are reversed, copper dissolving from
the copper plate, while zinc is deposited on the zinc plate. The
cell, together with this balancing electromotive force, is thus
a reversible system in true equilibrium, and the thermodynamical
reasoning applicable to such systems can be used to examine its
properties.
Now a well-known relation connects the available energy of
a reversible system with the corresponding change in its total
internal energy.
The available energy A is the amount of external work obtainable
by an infinitesimal, reversible change in the system which occurs
at a constant temperature T. If I be the change in the internal
energy, the relation referred to gives us the equation
A = l+T(dAldT),
where <iA/<fT denotes the rate of change of the available energy
of the system per degree change in temperature. During a small
electric transfer through the cell, the external work done is Ee,
where E is the electromotive force. If the chemical changes which
occur in the cell were allowed to take place in a closed vessel without
the performance of electrical or other work, the change in energy
would be measured by the heat evolved. Since the final state of the
system would be the same as in the actual processes of the cell,
the same amount of heat must give a measure of the change in
internal energy when the cell is in action. Thus, if L denote the heat
corresponding with the chemical changes associated with unit
electric transfer, Le will be the heat corresponding with an electric
transfer e, and will also be equal to the change in internal energy
of the cell. Hence we get the equation
Ee=Le+Te(dEldT) or E = L+T(<fE/<iT),
as a particular case of the general thermodynamic equation of
available energy. This equation was obtained in different ways by
J. Willard Gibbs and H. von Helmholtz.
It will be noticed that when dE/dT is zero, that is, when the
electromotive force of the cell does not change with temperature,
the electromotive force is measured by the heat of reaction per unit of
electrochemical change. The earliest formulation of the subject,
due to Lord Kelvin, assumed that this relation was true in all cases,
and, calculated in this way, the electromotive force of Daniell's
cell, which happens to possess a very small temperature coefficient,
was found to agree with observation.
When one gramme of zinc is dissolved in dilute sulphuric acid,
1670 thermal units or calories are evolved. Hence for the electro-
chemical unit of zinc or 0-003388 gramme, the thermal evolution is
5-66 calories. Similarly, the heat which accompanies the dissolution
of one electrochemical unit of copper is 3-00 calories. Thus, the
thermal equivalent of the unit of resultant electrochemical change in
Daniell's cell is 5-66 3-00 = 2-66 calories. The dynamical equivalent
of the calorie is 4- 1 8 X io 7 ergs or C.G.S. units of work, and therefore
the electromotive force of the cell should be 1-112 X io 8 C.G.S. units
or 1-112 volts a close agreement with the experimental result of
about I -08 volts. For cells in which the electromotive force varies
with temperature, the full equation given by Gibbs and Helmholtz
has also been confirmed experimentally.
As stated above, an electromotive force is set up whenever
there is a difference of any kind at two electrodes immersed
in electrolytes. In ordinary cells the difference is secured by
using two dissimilar metals, but an electromotive force exists
if two plates of the same metal are placed in solutions of different
substances, or of the same substance at different concentrations.
In the latter case, the tendency of the metal to dissolve in the
more dilute solution is greater than its tendency to dissolve in
the more concentrated solution, and thus there is a decrease in
available energy when metal dissolves in the dilute solution and
separates in equivalent quantity from the concentrated solution.
An electromotive force is therefore set up in this direction, and,
if we can calculate the change in available energy due to the
processes of the cell, we can foretell the value of the electro-
motive force. Now the effective change produced by the action
of the current is the concentration of the more dilute solution by
the dissolution of metal in it, and the dilution of the originally
stronger solution by the separation of metal from it. We may
imagine these changes reversed in two ways. We may evaporate
some of the solvent from the solution which has become weaker
and thus reconcentrate it, condensing the vapour on the solu-
tion which had become stronger. By this reasoning Helmholtz
showed how to obtain an expression for the work done. On the
other hand, we may imagine the processes due to the electrical
transfer to be reversed by an osmotic operation. Solvent may
be supposed to be squeezed out from the solution which has
become more dilute through a semi-permeable wall, and through
another such wall allowed to mix with the solution which in
the electrical operation had become more concentrated. Again,
we may calculate the osmotic work done, and, if the whole cycle
of operations be supposed to occur at the same temperature,
the osmotic work must be equal and opposite to the electrical
work of the first operation.
The result of the investigation shows that the electrical work Ee
is given by the equation
Ee
PW,
J pi **
where is the volume of the solution used and p its osmotic pressure.
When the solutions may be taken as effectively dilute, so that the
gas laws apply to the csmotic pressure, this relation reduces to
nrRT. ci
E = log <F 2
where n is the number of ions given by one molecule of the salt, r the
transport ratio of the anion, R the gas constant, T the absolute
temperature, y the total valency of the anions obtained from one
molecule, and Ci and C 2 the concentrations of the two solutions.
If we take as an example a concentration cell in which silver plates
are placed in solutions of silver nitrate, one of which is ten times as
strong as the other, this equation gives
E= 0-060X108 C.G.S. units
=0-060 volts.
W. Nernst, to whom this theory is due, determined the electromotive
force of this cell experimentally, and found the value 0-055 volt.
The logarithmic formulae for these concentration cells in-
dicate that theoretically their electromotive force can be increased
to any extent by diminishing without limit the concentration
of the more dilute solution, log Ci/c 2 then becoming very great.
This condition may be realized to some extent in a manner that
throws light on the general theory of the voltaic cell. Let us
consider the arrangement silver | silver chloride with potassium
chloride solution ] potassium nitrate solution | silver nitrate
solution | silver. Silver chloride is a very insoluble substance,
and here the amount in solution is still further reduced by the
presence of excess of chlorine ions of the potassium salt. Thus
silver, at one end of the cell in contact with many silver ions of the
silver nitrate solution, at the other end is in contact with a
liquid in which the concentration of those ions is very small
indeed. The result is that a high electromotive force is set up,
which has been calculated as 0-52 volt, and observed as 0-51 volt.
Again, Hittorf has shown that the effect of a cyanide round a
copper electrode is to combine with the copper ions. The con-
centration of the simple copper ions is then so much diminished
that the copper plate becomes an anode with regard to zinc.
Thus the cell copper | potassium cyanide solution | potassium
sulphate solution zinc sulphate solution | zinc gives a current
which carries copper into solution and deposits zinc. In a similar
way silver could be made to act as anode with respect to cadmium.
It is now evident that the electromotive force of an ordinary
chemical cell such as that of Daniell depends on the concentration
of the solutions as well as on the nature of the metals. In
ordinary cases possible changes in the concentrations only affect
the electromotive force by a few parts in a hundred, but, by
means such as those indicated above, it is possible to produce
such immense differences in the concentrations that the electro-
motive force of the cell is not only changed appreciably but even
reversed in direction. Once more we see that it is the total
impending change in the available energy of the system which
controls the electromotive force.
Any reversible cell can theoretically be employed as an
accumulator, though, in practice, conditions of general con-
venience are more sought after than thermodynamic efficiency.
ELECTROLYSIS
225
The effective electromotive force of the common lead accumu-
lator (?.!.) is less than that required to charge it. This drop in
the electromotive force has led to the belief that the cell is not
reversible. F. Dolezalek, however, has attributed the difference
to mechanical hindrances, which prevent the equalization of
acid concentration in the neighbourhood of the electrodes,
rather than to any essentially irreversible chemical action. The
fact that the Gibbs-Helmholtz equation is found to apply also
indicates that the lead accumulator is approximately reversible
in the thermodynamic sense of the term.
Polarisation and Contact Di/erencr of Potential . If we connect
together in series a single Daniell's cell, a galvanometer, and two
platinum electrodes dipping into acidulated water, no visible
chemical decomposition ensues. At first a considerable current
is indicated by the galvanometer; the deflexion soon diminishes,
however, and finally becomes very small. If, instead of using
single Daniell's cell, we employ some source of electromotive
force which can be varied as we please, and gradually raise its
intensity, we shall find that, when it exceeds a certain value,
about 1-7 volt, a permanent current of considerable strength
flows through the solution, and, after the initial period, shows
no signs of decrease. This current is accompanied by chemical
decomposition. Now let us disconnect the platinum plates
from the battery and join them directly with the galvanometer.
A current will flow for a while in the reverse direction; the system
of plates and acidulated water through which a current has been
passed, acts as an accumulator, and will itself yield a current in
return. These phenomena are explained by the existence of a
reverse electromotive force at the surface of the platinum plates.
Only when the applied electromotive force exceeds this reverse
force of polarization, will a permanent steady current pass
through the liquid, and visible chemical decomposition proceed.
It seems that this reverse electromotive force of polarization is
due to the deposit on the electrodes of minute quantities of the
products of chemical decomposition. Differences between the
two electrodes are thus set up, and, as we have seen above, an
electromotive force will therefore exist between them. To pass
a steady current in the direction opposite to this electromotive
force of polarization, the applied electromotive force E must
exceed that of polarization E', and the excess E - E' is the
effective electromotive force of the circuit, the current being,
in accordance with Ohm's law, proportional to the applied
electromotive force and represented by (E - E')/ R, where R is
a constant called the resistance of the circuit.
When we use platinum electrodes in acidulated water, hydrogen
and oxygen are evolved. The opposing force of polarization is
about 1-7 volt, but, when the plates are disconnected and used
as a source of current, the electromotive force they give is only
about 1-07 volt. This irreversibility is due to the work required
to evolve bubbles of gas at the surface of bright platinum
plates. If the plates be covered with a deposit of platinum
black, in which the gases are absorbed as fast as they are pro-
duced, the minimum decomposition point is 1-07 volt, and the
process is reversible. If secondary effects are eliminated, the
deposition of metals also is a reversible process; the decomposi-
tion voltage is equal to the electromotive force which the metal
itself gives when going into solution. The phenomena of polariza-
tion are thus seen to be due to the changes of surface produced,
and are correlated with the differences of potential which exist
at any surface of separation between a metal and an electrolyte.
Many experiments have been made with a view of separating
the two potential-differences which must exist in any cell made
of two metals and a liquid, and of determining each one in-
dividually. If we regard the thermal effect at each junction
as a measure of the potential-difference there, as the total
thermal effect in the cell undoubtedly is of the sum of its potential-
differences, in cases where the temperature coefficient is negligible,
the heat evolved on solution of a metal should give the electrical
potential-difference at its surface. Hence, if we assume that,
in the Daniell's cell, the temperature coefficients are negligible
at the individual contacts as well as in the cell as a whole, the
sign of the potential-difference ought to be the same at the surface
n. 8
of the zinc as it is at the surface of the copper. Since zinc goes
into solution and copper comes out, the electromotive force of
the cell will be the difference between the two effects. On the
other hand, it is commonly thought that the single potential-
differences at the surface of metals and electrolytes have been
determined by methods based on the use of the capillary electro-
meter and on others depending on what is called a dropping
electrode, that is, mercury dropping rapidly into an electrolyte
and forming a cell with the mercury at rest in the bottom of
the vessel. By both these methods the single potential-differences
found at the surfaces of the zinc and copper have opposite signs,
and the effective electromotive force of a Daniell's cell is I la-
sum of the two effects. Which of these conflicting views repre-
sents the truth still remains uncertain.
Dijfusion of Electrolytes and Contact Difference of Potential
between Liquids. An application of the theory of ionic velocity
due to W. Nernst ' and M. Planck 2 enables us to calculate the
diffusion constant of dissolved electrolytes. According to the
molecular theory, diffusion is due to the motion of the molecules
of the dissolved substance through the liquid. When the dissolved
molecules are uniformly distributed, the osmotic pressure will
be the same everywhere throughout the solution, but, if the
concentration vary from point to point, the pressure will vary
also. There must, then, be a relation between the rate of change
of the concentration and the osmotic pressure gradient, and thus
we may consider the osmotic pressure gradient as a force driving
the solute through a viscous medium. In the case of non-
electrolytes and of all non-ionized molecules this analogy com-
pletely represents the facts, and the phenomena of diffusion can
be deduced from it alone. But the ions of an electrolytic solution
can move independently through the liquid, even when no current
flows, as the consequences of Ohm's law indicate. The ions
will therefore diffuse independently, and the faster ion will
travel quicker into pure water in contact with a solution. The
ions carry their charges with them, and, as a matter of fact, it is
found that water in contact with a solution takes with respect
to it a positive or negative potential, according as the positive
or negative ion travels the faster. This process will go on until
the simultaneous separation of electric charges produces an
electrostatic force strong enough to prevent further separation
of ions. We can therefore calculate the rate at which the salt
as a whole will diffuse by examining the conditions for a steady
transfer, in which the ions diffuse at an equal rate, the faster
one being restrained and the slower one urged forward by the
electric forces. In this manner the diffusion constant can
be calculated in absolute units (HCl = 2-49, HNOj = 2-27,
NaCl = i-i2), the unit of time being the day. By experiments
on diffusion this constant has been found by Scheffer, and the
numbers observed agree with those calculated (HCl=2-3o,
HNO,= 2-22, NaCl=i-n).
As we have seen above, when a solution is placed in contact
with water the water will take a positive or negative potential
with regard to the solution, according as the cation or anion has
the greater specific velocity, and therefore the greater initial
rate of diffusion. The difference of potential between two
solutions of a substance at different concentrations can be calcu-
lated from the equations used to give the diffusion constants.
The results give equations of the same logarithmic form as those
obtained in a somewhat different manner in the theory of con-
centration cells described above, and have been verified by
experiment.
The contact differences of potential at the interfaces of metals
and electrolytes have been co-ordinated by Nernst with those
at the surfaces of separation between different liquids. In
contact with a solvent a metal is supposed to possess a definite
solution pressure, analogous to the vapour pressure of a liquid.
Metal goes into solution in the form of electrified ions. The
liquid thus acquires a positive charge, and the metal a negative
charge. The electric forces set up tend to prevent further
separation, and finally a state of equilibrium is reached, when no
1 Zeits. physikal. Chem. 2, p. 613.
* Wied. Ann., 1890, 40, p. 561.
226
ELECTROMAGNETISM
more ions can go into solution unless an equivalent number are
removed by voltaic action. On the analogy between this case
and that of the interface between two solutions, Nernst has
arrived at similar logarithmic expressions for the difference of
potential, which becomes proportional to log (Pi/Pz) where P 2
is taken to mean the osmotic pressure of the cations in the
solution, and Pi the osmotic pressure of the cations in the sub-
stance of the metal itself. On these lines the equations of con-
centration cells, deduced above on less hypothetical grounds,
may be regained.
Theory of Electrons. Our views of the nature of the ions of
electrolytes have been extended by the application of the ideas
of the relations between matter and electricity obtained by the
study of electric conduction through gases. The interpretation
of the phenomena of gaseous conduction was rendered possible
by the knowledge previously acquired of conduction through
liquids; the newer subject is now reaching a position whence
it can repay its debt to the older.
Sir J. J. Thomson has shown (see CONDUCTION, ELECTRIC,
III.) that the negative ions in certain cases of gaseous con-
duction are much more mobile than the corresponding positive
ions, and possess a mass of about the one-thousandth part of
that of a hydrogen atom. These negative particles or corpuscles
seem to be the ultimate units of negative electricity, and may be
identified with the electrons required by the theories of H. A.
Lorentzand Sir J. Larmor. A body containing an excess of these
particles is negatively electrified, and is positively electrified if
it has parted with some of its normal number. An electric
current consists of a moving stream of electrons. In gases the
electrons sometimes travel alone, but in liquids they are always
attached to matter, and their motion involves the movement of
chemical atoms or groups of atoms. An atom with an extra
corpuscle is a univalent negative ion, an atom with one corpuscle
detached is a univalent positive ion. In metals the electrons
can slip from one atom to the next, since a current can pass
without chemical action. When a current passes from an
electrolyte to a metal, the electron must be detached from the
atom it was accompanying and chemical action be manifested
at the electrode.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Michael Faraday, Experimental Researches in
Electricity (London, 1844 an d l8 55): W. Ostwald, Lehrbuch der
allgemeinen Chemie, 2te Aufl. (Leipzig, 1891) ; Elektrochemie (Leipzig,
1896); W Nernst, Theoretische Chemie, 3te Aufl. (Stuttgart, 1900;
English translation, London, 1904); F. Kohlrausch and L. Holborn,
Das Leitvermogen der Elektrolyte (Leipzig, 1898) ; W. C. D. Whetham,
The Theory of Solution and Electrolysis (Cambridge, 1902) ; M. Le
Blanc, Elements of Electrochemistry (Eng. trans., London, 1896);
S. Arrhenius, Text-Book of Electrochemistry (Eng. trans., London,
1902); H. C. Jones, The Theory of Electrolytic Dissociation (New
York, 1900); N. Munroe Hopkins, Experimental Electrochemistry
(London, 1905); Liiphe, Grundziige der Elektrochemie (Berlin, 1896).
Some of the more important papers on the subject have been
reprinted for Harper's Series of Scientific Memoirs in Electrolytic
Conduction (1899) and the Modern Theory of Solution (1899). Several
journals are published specially to deal with physical chemistry, of
which electrochemistry forms an important part. Among them may
be mentioned the Zeitschrift fur physikalische Chemie (Leipzig) ;
and the Journal of Physical Chemistry (Cornell University). In
these periodicals will be found new work on the subject and
abstracts of papers which appear in other physical and chemical
publications. (W. C. D. W.)
ELECTROMAGNETISM, that branch of physical science
which is concerned with the interconnexion of electricity and
magnetism, and with the production of magnetism by means of
electric currents by devices called electromagnets.
History. The foundation was laid by the observation first
made by Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851), professor of
natural philosophy in Copenhagen, who discovered in 1820 that
a wire uniting the poles or terminal plates of a voltaic pile has the
property of affecting a magnetic needle l (see ELECTRICITY).
1 In the Annals of Philosophy for November 1821 is a long article
entitled " Electroma^netism " by Oersted, in which he gives a
detailed account of his discovery. He had his thoughts turned to
it as far back as 1813, but not until the 2Oth of July 1820 had he
actually made his discovery. He seems to have been arranging a
compass needle to observe any deflections during a storm, and placed
near it a platinum wire through which a galvanic current was passed.
Oersted carefully ascertained that the nature of the wire itself
did not influence the result but saw that it was due to the electric
conflict, as he called it, round the wire; or in modern language,
to the magnetic fprce or magnetic flux round the conductor.
If a straight wire through which an electric current is flowing is
placed above and parallel to a magnetic compass needle, it is
found that if the current is flowing in the conductor in a direction
from south to north, the north pole of the needle under the con-
ductor deviates to the left hand, whereas if the conductor is
placed under the needle, the north pole deviates to the right hand ;
if the conductor is doubled back over the needle, the effects of
the two sides of the loop are added together and the deflection is
increased. These results are summed up in the mnemonic rule:
Imagine yourself swimming in the conductor with the current, that
is, moving in the direction of the positive electricity, with your face
towards the magnetic needle; the north pole will then deviate to
your left hand. The deflection of the magnetic needle can there-
fore reveal the existence of an electric current in a neighbouring
circuit, and this fact was soon utilized in the construction of
instruments called galvanometers (q.v.).
Immediately after Oersted's discovery was announced,
D. F. J. Arago and A. M. Ampere began investigations on the
subject of electromagnetism. On the i8th of September 1820,
Ampere read a paper before the Academy of Sciences in Paris,
in which he announced that the voltaic pile itself affected a
magnetic needle as did the uniting wire, and he showed that the
effects in both cases were consistent with the theory that electric
current was a circulation round a circuit, and equivalent in
magnetic effect to a very short magnet with axis placed at right
angles to the plane of the circuit. He then propounded his
brilliant hypothesis that the magnetization of iron was due to
molecular electric currents. This suggested. to Arago that wire
wound into a helix carrying electric current should magnetize
a steel needle placed in the interior. In the Ann. Chim. (1820,
iS,p.94), Arago published a paper entitled " Experiences relatives
a Paimantation du fer et de 1'acier par 1'action du courant
volta'ique," announcing that the wire conveying the current,
even though of copper, could magnetize steel needles placed
across it, and if plunged into iron filings it attracted them. About
the same time Sir Humphry Davy sent a communication to Dr
W. H. Wollaston, read at the Royal Society on the i6th of
November 1820 (reproduced in the Annals of Philosophy for
August 1821, p.8i), " On the Magnetic Phenomena produced by
Electricity," in which he announced his independent discovery
of the same fact. With a large battery of 100 pairs of plates at
the Royal Institution, he found in October 1820 that the uniting
wire became strongly magnetic and that iron filings clung to it;
also that steel needles placed across the wire were permanently
magnetized. He placed a sheet of glass over the wire and
sprinkling iron filings on it saw that they arranged themselves
in straight lines at right angles to the wire. He then proved that
Leyden jar discharges could produce the same effects. Ampere
and Arago then seem to have experimented together and magne-
tized a steel needle wrapped in paper which was enclosed in a
helical wire conveying a current. All these facts were rendered
intelligible when it was seen that a wire when conveying an
electric current becomes surrounded by a magnetic field. If
the wire is a long straight one, the lines of magnetic force are
circular and concentric with centres on the wire axis, and if the
wire is bent into a circle the lines of magnetic force are endless
loops surrounding and linked with the electric circuit. Since
a magnetic pole tends to move along a line of magnetic force it
was obvious that it should revolve round a wire conveying a
current. To exhibit this fact involved, however, much ingenuity.
It was first accomplished by Faraday in October 1821 (Exper.
Res. ii. p. 127). Since the action is reciprocal a current free to
move tends to revolve round a magnetic pole. The fact is most
easily shown by a small piece of apparatus made as follows:
In a glass cylinder (see fig. i) like a lamp chimney are fitted two
corks. Through the bottom one is passed the north end of a bar
magnet which projects up above a little mercury lying in the
cork-. Through the top cork is passed one end of a wire from a
ELECTROMAGNETISM
227
Fi'.. i.
battery, and a piece of wire in the cylinder is flexibly connected
to it, the lower end of this last piece just touching the mercury.
\\ hrn a current is passed in at the top wire and out at the lower
end of thr bar magnet, the loose wire revolves round the magnet
pole. All text -books on physics contain in their
chapters on electromagnet ism full accounts of
various forms of this experiment.
In 1X15 another important step forward was
taken when William Sturgeon (1783-1850) of
London produced the electromagnet. It con-
sisted of a horseshoe-shaped bar of soft iron,
coated with varnish, on which was wrapped a
spiral coil of bare copper wire, the turns not
louching each other. When a voltaic current
was passed through the wire the iron became a
powerful magnet, but on severing the con-
nexion with the battery, the soft iron lost
immediately nearly all its magnetism. 1
At that date Ohm had not announced his
law of the electric circuit, and it was a matter
of some surprise to investigators to find that
Sturgeon's electromagnet could not be operated
at a distance through a long circuit of wire
with such good results as when close to the
battery. Peter Barlow, in January 1825. published in the
Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, a description of such an
experiment made with a view of applying Sturgeon's electro-
magnet to telegraphy, with results which were unfavourable.
Sturgeon's experiments, however, stimulated Joseph Henry
(a.r.) in the United Stales, and in 1831 he gave a description
of a method of winding electromagnets which at once put a new
face upon matters (Siliiman's Journal, 1831, 19, p. 400). Instead
of insulating the iron core, he wrapped the copper wire round
with silk and wound in numerous turns and many layers upon
the iron horseshoe in such fashion that the current went round
the iron always in the same direction. He then found that such
an electromagnet wound with a long fine wire, if worked with a
battery consisting of a large number of cells in series, could be
operated at a considerable distance, and he thus produced what
were called ai that time intensity electromagnets, and which
subsequently rendered the electric telegraph a possibility. In
fact. Henry established in 1831, in Albany, U.S.A., an electro-
magnetic telegraph, and in 1835 at Princeton even used an
earth return, thereby anticipating the discovery (1838) of C. A.
Steinheil (1801-1870) of Munich.
Inventors were then incited to construct powerful electro-
magnets as tested by the weight they could carry from their
armatures. Joseph Henry made a magnet for Yale College,
U.S.A., which lifted 3000 lb (Siliiman's Journal, 1831, 20, p. 201),
and one for Princeton which lifted 3000 with a very small
battery Amongst others J. P. Joule, ever memorable for his
investigations on the mechanical equivalent of heat, gave much
attention about 1838-1840 to the construction of electromagnets
and succeeded in devising some forms remarkable for their
lifting power. One form was constructed by cutting a thick
soft iron tube longitudinally
into two equal parts. Insu-
lated copper wire was then
wound longitudinally over
one of both parts (see fig. 2)
and a current sent through
the wire. In another form
FIG. . two iron disks with teeth at
right angles to the disk had
insulated wire wound zigzag between the teeth; when a current
was sent through the wire, the teeth were so magnetized that
they were alternately N. and S. poles. If two such similar disks
were placed with teeth of opposite polarity in contact, a very
large force was required to detach them, and with a magnet and
1 See Tram. See.A rlt, 1825, 43, p.38, in which a figure of Sturgeon's
electromagnet U given as well as of other pieces of apparatus for
which the Society granted him a premium and a silver medal.
armature weighing in all 11-575 H* Joule found that a weight
of 2718 was supported. Joule's papers on this subject will be
found in his Collected 1'aptrs published by the Physical Society
of London, and in Sturgeon's Annals of Electricity, 1838-184'!,
vols. 2-6.
The Magnetic Circuit. The phenomena presented by the electro-
magnet are interpreted by the aid of the notion of the magnetic
circuit. Let us consider a thin circular sectioned ring of iron wire
wound over with a solenoid or spiral of insulated copper wire through
which a current of electricity can be passed. If the solenoid or wire
windings existed alone, a current having a strength A amperes
passed through it would create in the interior of the solenoid a
magnetic force H, numerically equal to 4/io multiplied by the
number of windings N on the solenoid, and by the current in ampere*
A, and divided by the mean length of the solenoid /, or H 4TAN/IO/.
The product AN is called the " ampere-turns " on the solenoid.
The product 111 of the magnetic force H and the length / of tin-
magnetic circuit is called the " magnetomotive force " in the magnet i<
circuit, and from the above formula it is seen that the magnetomot i\ r
force denoted by (M.M.F.) is equal to 4*- lo( 1-25 nearly) times
the ampere-turns (A.N.) on the exciting coil or solenoid. Otherwise
(A.N.) o-8(M.M.F.). The magnetomotive force is regarded as
creating an effect called magnetic flux (Z) in the magnetic circuit.
just as electromotive force E.M.F. produces electric current (A) in
the electric circuit, and as by Ohm's law (see ELECTROKINETICS) the
current varies as the E.M.F. and inversely as a quality of the electric
circuit called its " resistance," so in the magnetic circuit the mag-
netic flux varies as the magnetomotive force and inversely as a
quality of the magnetic circuit called its " reluctance." The great
dilTcrencc between the electric circuit and the magnetic circuit lies
in the fact that whereas the electric resistance of a solid or liquid
conductor is independent of the current and affected only by thr
temperature, the magnetic reluctance varies with the magnetic
flux and cannot be denned except by means of a curve which shows
its value for different flux densities. The quotient of the total
magnetic flux, Z, in a circuit by the cross section, S, of the circuit is
called the mean " flux density," and the reluctance of a magnetic
circuit one centimetre long and one square centimetre in cross
section is called the " reluctivity " of the material. The relation
between reluctivity p^l/V magnetic force H, and flux density B,
is denned by the equation H = pB, from which we have H/ = Z(p//S)
M.M.F. acting on the circuit. Again, since the ampere-turns (AN)
on the circuit are equal to 0-8 times the M.M.F., we have finally
AN//=o-8(Z/MS). This equation tells us the exciting force reckoned
in ampere-turns, AN, which must be put on the ring core to create
a total magnetic flux Z in it, the ring core having a mean perimeter /
and cross section S and reluctivity P=I/M corresponding to a flux
density Z/S. Hence before we can make use of the equation for
practical purposes we need to possess a curve for the particular
material showing us the value of the reluctivity corresponding to
various values of the possible flux density. The reciprocal of p is
usually called the " permeability " of the material and denoted by it.
Curves showing the relation of i/p and Z S or M and B, are called
" permeability curves." For air and all other non-magnetic matter
the permeability has the same value, taken arbitrarily as unity.
On the other hand, for iron, nickel and cobalt the permeability may
in some cases reach a value of 2000 or 2500 for a value of B = 5000 in
C.G.S. measure (see UNITS, PHYSICAL). The process of taking these
curves consists in sending a current of known strength through a
solenoid of known number of turns wound on a circular iron ring of
known dimensions, and observing the time-integral of the secondary
current produced in a secondary circuit of known turns and resistance
R wound over the iron core N times. The secondary electronjotive
force is by Faraday's law (see ELECTROKINETICS) equal to the time
rate of change of the total flux, or E-NrfZ/rf/. But by Ohm's
law E = Rdq/dt, where a is the quantity of electricity set flowing in
the secondary circuit by a change <!'/. in the co-linked total flux.
Hence if 2Q represents this total quantity of electricity set flowing
in the secondary circuit by suddenly reversing the direction of the
magnetic flux Z in the iron core we must have
RQ = NZorZ-RQ/N.
The measurement of the total quantity of electricity Q can be
made by means of a ballistic galvanometer (9.11.), and the resistance
R of the secondary circuit includes that of the coil wound on the
iron core and the galvanometer as well. In this manner the value
of the total flux Z and therefore of Z/S B or the flux density, can lie
found for a given magnetizing force II, and this last quantity is
determined when we know the magnetizing current in the solenoid
and its turns and dimensions. The curve which delineates the relation
of H and B is called the magnetization curve for the material in
question. For examples of these curves see MAGNETISM.
The fundamental law of the non-homogeneous magnetic circuit
traversed by one and the same total magnetic flux Z is that the sum
of all the magnetomotive forces acting in the circuit is numerically
equal to the product of the factor 0-8, the total flux in the circuit,
and the sum of all the reluctances of the various parts of the circuit.
If then the circuit consists of materials of different permeability
228
ELECTROMAGNETISM
and it is desired to know the ampere-turns required to produce a given
total of flux round the circuit, we have to calculate from the magnet-
ization curves of the material of each part the necessary magneto-
motive forces and add these forces together. The practical applica-
tion of this principle to the predetermination of the field windings of
dynamo magnets was first made by Drs J. and E. Hopkinson (Phil.
Trans., 1886, 177, p. 331).
We may illustrate the principles of this predetermination by a
simple example. Suppose a ring of iron has a mean diameter of
10 cms. and a cross section of 2 sq. cms., and a transverse cut on air
gap made in it I mm. wide. Let us inquire the ampere-turns to
be put upon the ring to create in it a total flux of 24,000 C.G.S. units.
The total length of the iron part of the circuit is (IOTT o-i) cms.,
and its section is 2 sq. cms., and the flux density in it is to be 12,000.
From Table II. below we see that the permeability of pure iron
corresponding to a flux density of 12,000 is 2760. Hence the reluct-
ance of the iron circuits is equal to
IOT o-l 220 _ _
2760X2 =p6J5 CG - S - " mtS -
The length of the air gap is o-i cm., its section 2 sq. cms., and its
permeability is unity. Hence the reluctance of the air gap is
o-i I
Accordingly the magnetomotive force in ampere-turns required to
produce the required flux is equal to
=1070 nearly.
0-8(24,000)
It follows that the part of the magnetomotive force required to
overcome the reluctance of the narrow air gap is about nine times
that required for the iron alone.
In the above example we have for simplicity assumed that the
flux in passing across the air gap does not spread out at all. In
dealing with electromagnet design in dynamo construction we have,
however, to take into consideration the spreading as well as the
leakage of flux across the circuit (see DYNAMO). It will be seen,
therefore, that in order that we may predict the effect of a certain
kind of iron or steel when used as the core of an electromagnet,
we must be provided with tables or curves showing the reluctivity
or permeability corresponding to various flux densities or which
comes to the same thing with (B, H) curves for the sample.
Iron and Sleel for Electfomagnetic Machinery. In connexion
with the technical application of electromagnets such as those
used in the field magnets of dynamos (?..), the testing of different
kinds of iron and steel for magnetic permeability has therefore
become very important. Various instruments called permea-
meters and hysteresis meters have been designed for this purpose,
but much of the work has been done by means of a ballistic
galvanometer and test ring as above described. The "hysteresis "
of an iron or steel is that quality of it in virtue of which energy
is dissipated as heat when the magnetization is reversed or
carried through a cycle (see MAGNETISM), and it is generally
measured either in ergs per cubic centimetre of metal per cycle
of magnetization, or in watts per Ib per 50 or 100 cycles
per second at or corresponding to a certain maximum flux
density, say 2500 or 600 C.G.S. units. For the details of various
forms of permeameter and hysteresis meter technical books
must be consulted. 1
Art immense number of observations have been carried out
on the magnetic permeability of different kinds of iron and
steel, and in the following tables are given some typical results,
mostly from experiments made by J. A. Ewing (see Proc. Inst.
C.E., 1896, 126, p. 185) in which the ballistic method was
employed to determine the flux density corresponding to various
magnetizing forces acting upon samples of iron and steel in the
form of rings.
The figures under heading I . are values given in a paper by A. W. S.
Pocklington and F. Lydall (Proc. Roy. Soc., 1892-1893, 52, pp. 164
and 228) as the results of a magnetic test of an exceptionally pure
iron supplied for the purpose of experiment by Colonel Dyer, of the
Elswick Works. The substances other than iron in this sample
were stated to be: carbon, trace; silicon, trace; phosphorus,
none; sulphur, 0-013%; manganese, 0-1%. The other five
specimens, II. to VI., are samples of commercial iron or steel. No.
II. is a sample of Low Moor bar iron forged into a ring, annealed and
turned. No. III. is a steel forging furnished by Mr R. Jenkins as a
Magnetiz-
ing Force
H (C.G.S.
Magnetic Flux Density B (C.G.S. Units).
Units).
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
5
12,700
10,900
12,300
4,700
9,600
10,900
10
14,980
13,120
14,920
12,250
13,050
13,320
15
15,800
14,010
15,800
14,000
14,600
14,350
20
16,300
I4,58o
16,280
15,050
15,310
14,950
30
16,950
15,280
16,810
16,200
16,000
15,660
40
17,350
I5,76o
17,190
16,800
16,510
16,150
5
16,060
17,500
17,140
16,900
16,480
60
16,340
17-750
17,450
17,180
16,780
70
16,580
17,970
17,750
17,400
17,000
80
16,800
18,180
18,040
17,620
17,200
90
17,000
18,390
18,230
17,830
17,400
IOO
17,200
18,600
18,420
18,030
17,600
See S. P. Thompson, The Electromagnet (London, 1891); J. A.
Fleming, A Handbook for the Electrical Laboratory and Testing Room,
vol. 2 (London, 1903); J. A. Ewing, Magnetic Induction in Iron and
other Metals (London, 1903, 3rd ed.).
sample of forged ingot-metal for dynamo magnets. No. IV. is a steel
casting for dynamo magnets, unforged, made by Messrs Edgar Allen
& Company by a special pneumatic process under the patents of
Mr A. Tropenas. No. V. is also an unforged steel casting for dynamo
TABLE I. Magnetic Flux Density corresponding to various Magnet-
izing Forces in the case of certain Samples of Iron and Steel
(Ewing).
magnets, made by Messrs Samuel Osborne & Company by the
Siemens process. No. VI. is also an unforged steel casting for
dynamo magnets, made by Messrs Fried. Krupp, of Essen.
It will be seen from the figures and the description of the materials
that the steel forgings and castings have a remarkably high perme-
ability under small magnetizing force.
Table II. shows the magnetic qualities of some of these
materials as found by Ewing when tested with small magnetizing
forces.
TABLE II. Magnetic Permeability of Samples of Iron and Steel under
Weak Magnetizing Forces.
Magnetic Flux
Density B.
(C.G.S. Units).
I.
Pure Iron.
III.
Steel Forging.
VI.
Steel Casting..
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
H v.
O-OX) 222O
I-4O 2850
I-85 3240
2-30 3480
3-10 3220
4-40 2760
H M
1-38 1450
1-91 2090
2-38 2520
2-92 2740
3-62 2760
4-80 2500
H
1-18 1690
1-66 2410
2-15 2790
2-83 2830
4-05 2470
6-65 1810
The numbers I., III. and VI. in the above table refer to the samples
mentioned in connexion with Table I.
It is a remarkable fact that certain varieties of low carbon
steel (commonly called mild steel) have a higher permeability
than even annealed Swedish wrought iron under large magnetiz-
ing forces. The term steel, however, here used has reference
rather to the mode of production than the final chemical nature
of the material. In some of the mild-steel castings used for
dynamo electromagnets it appears that the total foreign matter,
including carbon, manganese and silicon, is not more than 0.3%
of the whole, the material being 99.7 % pure iron. This valuable
magnetic property of steel capable of being cast is, however,
of great utility in modern dynamo building, as it enables field
magnets of very high permeability to be constructed, which can
be fashioned into shape by casting instead of being built up as
formerly out of masses of forged wrought iron. The curves in
fig. 3 illustrate the manner in which the flux density or, as it is
usually called, the magnetization curve of this mild cast steel
crosses that of Swedish wrought iron, and enables us to obtain a
higher flux density corresponding to a given magnetizing force
with the steel than with the iron.
From the same paper by Ewing we extract a number of results
relating to permeability tests of thin sheet iron and sheet steel,
such as is used in the construction of dynamo armatures and
transformer cores.
No. VI I. is a specimen of good transformer-plate, 0-301 millimetre
thick, rolled from Swedish iron by Messrs Sankey of Bilston. No.
VIII. is a specimen of specially thin transformer-plate rolled from
scrap iron. No. IX. is a specimen of transformer-plate rolled from
ELECTROMAGNETISM
229
CccL No. X. i a specimen of the wire which was used by
to form the core of his " hedgehog " transformers. Its
0-602 millimetre. All these samples were tested in the
'0 to 'Of
FIG. 3.
form of rings by the ballistic method, the rings of sheet-metal
being stamped or turned in the flat. The wire ring No. X. was
coiled and annealed after coiling.
TABLE III. Permeability Tests of Transformer Plate and Wire.
Magnetic
Pit IV
VII.
VIII.
IX.
r IUX
Density B
(C.G.S.
Units).
Transformer-
plate of
Swedish Iron.
Transformer-
plate of
Scrap Iron.
Transformer-
plate of
Steel.
.
Transformer-
wire.
H M
H M
H M
H M
1,000
0-81 1230
i -08 920
0-60 1470
1-71 590
2,000
1-05 1900
1-46 '370
o-oo 2230
2-IO 95O
3,000
1 -26 2320
1-77 1690
I -04 2880
2-30 1300
4.000
1-54 2600
2-10 1900
1-19 3360
2-50 1000
5,000
I -82 2750
2-53 1980
i -38 3620
2-7O 1850
6,000
2-14 2800
3-04 1970
1-59 3770
2-92 2070
7.000
2-54 2760
3-62 1930
1-89 3700
3-16 2210
8,000
3-09 2590
4-37 1830
2-25 3600
3-43 2330
9,000
3-77 390
5'3 700
2-72 33
3-77 2390
10,000
4-6 2170
6-5 1540
3-33 3000
4-17 2400
11,000
5-7 93
7-9 1390
4-15 2650
4-70 2340
12,000
7-0 1710
9-8 1220
5-40 2220
5-45 2200
13.000
8-5 1530
1 1 -9 1190
7-1 1830
6-5 2OOO
14,000
ll-o 1270
5-0 930
10-0 1400
8-4 1670
15.000
15- 990
19-5 770
. . . .
II-') I26O
16,000
21-4 750
27-5 580
21 -O 760
Some typical flux-density curves of iron and steel as used in
dynamo and transformer building are given in fig. 4.
FIG. 4.
The numbers in Table III. well illustrate the fact that the
permeability /B/H has a maximum value corresponding to a
certain flux density. The tables are also explanatory of the fact
that mild steel has gradually replaced iron in the manufacture
of dynamo electromagnets and transformer-cores.
Broadly speaking, the materials which are now employed
in the manufacture of the cores of electromagnets for technical
purposes of various kinds may be said to fall into three classes,
namely, forgings, castings and stampings. In some cases the
iron or steel core which is to be magnetized is simply a mass of
iron hammered or pressed into shape by hydraulic pressurr;
in other cases it has to be fused and cast; and for certain other
purposes it must be rolled first into thin sheets, which are sub-
sequently stamped out into the required forms.
For particular purposes it is necessary to obtain the highest
possible magnetic permeability corresponding to a high, or the
highest attainable flux density. This is generally the case in
the electromagnets which are employed as the field magnets in
dynamo machines. It may generally be said that whilst the best
wrought iron, such as annealed Low Moor or Swedish iron, is
more permeable for low flux densities than steel castings, the
cast steel may surpass the wrought metal for high flux density.
For most electro-technical purposes the best magnetic results
are given by the employment of forged ingot-iron. This material
is probably the most permeable throughout the whole scale of
attainable flux densities. It is slightly superior to wrought iron,
and it only becomes inferior to the highest class of cast steel
when the flux density is pressed above 18,000 C.G.S. units (see
fig- 5). For flux densities above 13,000 the forged ingot-iron
femaaor/ify Cunts ef/ro\antf Stt&
mo
noo
MtO
IMC
1300
<tio
too
too
TOO
foo
MO
OO
100
SE f
.IliliiHIl,
Jff./,c art Ot'n'ff tr ;/*/.
FIG. 5.
has now practically replaced for electric engineering purposes
the Low Moor or Swedish iron. Owing to the method of its
production, it might in truth be called a soft steel with a very
small percentage of combined carbon. The best description of
this material is conveyed by the German term " Flusseisen,"
but its nearest British equivalent is " ingot-iron." Chemically
speaking, the material is for all practical purposes very nearly
pure iron. The same may be said of the cast steels now much
employed for the production of dynamo magnet cores. The
cast steel which is in demand for this purpose has a slightly
lower permeability than the ingot-iron for low flux densities,
but for flux densities above 16,000 the required result may be
more cheaply obtained with a steel casting than with a forging.
When high tensile strength is required in addition to considerable
magnetic permeability, it has been found advantageous to employ
a steel containing 5 % of nickel. The rolled sheet iron and sheet
steel which is in request for the construction of magnet cores,
especially those in which the exciting current is an alternating
current, are, generally speaking, produced from Swedish iron.
Owing to the mechanical treatment necessary to reduce the
material to a thin sheet, the permeability at low flux densities
is rather higher than, although at high flux densities it is in/prior
230
ELECTROMAGNETISM
to, the same iron and steel when tested in bulk. For most
purposes, however, where a laminated iron magnet core is
required, the flux density is not pressed up above 6000 units,
and it is then more important to secure small hysteresis loss than
high permeability. The magnetic permeability of cast iron is
much inferior to that of wrought or ingot-iron, or the mild steels
taken at the same flux densities.
The following Table IV. gives the flux density and perme-
ability of a typical cast iron taken by J. A. Fleming by the
ballistic method:
TABLE IV. Magnetic Permeability and Magnetization Curve of
Cast Iron.
H
B
M
H
B
M
H
B
M
19
27
139
8-84
4030
456
44-65
8,071
181
4i
62
IS
10-60
4491
424
56-57
8,548
IS'
i.- 1 1
206
I 7 6
12-33
4884
396
71-98
9,097
126
2-53
768
303
13-95
5276
378
88-99
9,600
1 08
3-4i
1251
367
15-61
5504
353
106-35
10,066
95
4-45
1898
427
18-21
5829
320
120-60
>o,375
86
5-67
2589
456
26-37
6814
258
I40-37
10-725
76
7-16
3350
468
36-54
758o
207
I52-73
10,985
72
The metal of which the tests are given in Table IV. contained
2% of silicon, 2-85% of total carbon, and 0-5% of manganese.
It will be seen that a magnetizing force of about 5 C.G.S. units is
sufficient to impart to a wrought-iron ring a flux density of
18,000 C.G.S. units, but the same force hardly produces more
than one-tenth of this flux density in cast iron.
The testing of sheet iron and steel for magnetic hysteresis
loss has developed into an important factory process, giving
as it does a means of ascertaining the suitability of the metal
for use in the manufacture of transformers and cores of alter-
nating-current electromagnets.
In Table V. are given the results of hysteresis tests by E wing on
samples of commercial sheet iron and steel. The numbers VII.,
VIII., IX. and X. refer to the same samples as those for which
permeability results are given in Table III.
TABLE V. Hysteresis Loss in Transformer-iron
TABLE VII. Observations on the Magnetic Hysteresis of Cast Iron-
Loop.
B (max.)
Hysteresis Loss.
Ergs per cc.
per Cycle.
Watts per Ib per
too Cycles per see.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
"475
2545
365
5972
8930
466
1,288
2,997
7,397
13-423
300
829
1-934
4-765
8-658
Maxi-
mum
Flux
Density
B.
Ergs per Cubic Centimetre
per Cycle.
Watts per Ib at a Frequency
of 100.
VII.
Swedish
Iron
VIII.
Forged
Scrap-
iron
IX.
Ingot-
steel.
X.
Soft
Iron
Wire.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
2OOO
3000
4000
5000
6OOO
7OOO
8OOO
9OOO
240
520
830
1190
1600
2O2O
2510
3050
400
790
1 220
1710
2260
2940
3710
4560
215
430
700
IOOO
1350
1730
2150
2620
600
1150
1780
2640
336o
4300
5300
6380
0-141
0-306
0-490
0-700
0-940
I -200
1-480
1-800
0-236
0-465
0-720
., I-OIO
i-330
1-730
2-180
2-680
0-127
0-253
0-410
0-590
0-790
i -020
1-270
1-540
0-356
0-630
1-050
1-550
1-980
2-530
3-120
3-750
In Table VI. are given the results of a magnetic test of
some exceedingly good transformer-sheet rolled from Swedish
TABLE VI. Hysteresis Loss in Strip of Transformer-plate rolled
Swedish Iron.
Maximum Flux
Density B.
Ergs per Cubic Centimetre
per Cycle.
Watts per Ib at a
Frequency of 100.
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
220
410
640
910
1 200
1520
1900
2310
0-129
0-242
0-376
0-535
0-710
0-890
1*130
1-360
In Table VII. are given some values obtained by Fleming for
the hysteresis loss in the sample of cast iron, the permeability test
of which is recorded in Table IV.
For most practical purposes the constructor of electromagnetic
machinery requires his iron or steel to have some one of the follow-
ing characteristics. If for dynamo or magnet making, it should
have the highest possible permeability at a flux density corre-
sponding to practically maximum magnetization. If for trans-
former or alternating-current magnet building, it should have
the smallest possible hysteresis loss at a maximum flux density
of 2500 C.G.S. units during the' cycle. If required for permanent
magnet making, it should have the highest possible coercivity
combined with a high retentivity. Manufacturers of iron and
steel are now able to meet these demands in a very remarkable
manner by the commercial production of material of a quality
which at one time would have been considered a scientific
curiosity.
It is usual to specify iron and steel for the first purpose by
naming the minimum permeability it should possess corre-
sponding to a flux density of 18,000 C.G.S. units; for the second,
by stating the hysteresis loss in watts per Ib per 100 cycles
per second, corresponding to a maximum flux density of 2500
C.G.S. units during the cycle; and for the third, by mentioning
the coercive force required to reduce to zero magnetization a
sample of the metal in the form of a long bar magnetized to a
stated magnetization. In the cyclical reversal of magnetization
of iron we have two modes to consider. In the first case, which is
that of the core of the alternating transformer, the magnetic
force passes through a cycle of values, the iron remaining
stationary, and the direction of the
magnetic force being always the same.
In the other case, that of the dynamo
armature core, the direction of the
magnetic force in the iron is con-
stantly changing, and at the same time
undergoing a change in magnitude.
It has been shown by F. G. Baily
(Proc. Roy. Soc., 1896) that if a mass
of laminated iron is rotating in a
magnetic field which remains constant
in direction and magnitude in any
one experiment, the hysteresis loss
rises to a maximum as the magni-
tude of the flux density in the iron is
increased and then falls away again to
nearly zero value. These observations have been confirmed
by other observers. The question has been much debated
whether the values of the hysteresis loss obtained by these
two different methods are identical for magnetic cycles in which
the flux density reaches the same maximum value. This question
is also connected with another one, namely, whether thehysteresis
loss per cycle is or is not a function of the speed with which the
cycle is traversed. Early experiments by C. P. Steinmetz and
others seemed to show that there was a difference between slow-
speed and high-speed hysteresis cycles, but later experiments
by J. Hopkinson and by A. Tanakadate, though not absolutely
exhaustive, tend to prove that up to 400 cycles per second the
hysteresis loss per cycle is practically unchanged.
Experiments made in 1896 by R. Beattie and R. C. Clinker on
magnetic hysteresis in rotating fields were partly directed to
determine whether the hysteresis loss at moderate flux densities,
such as are employed in transformer work, was the same as that
found by measurements made with alternating-current fields
on the same iron and steel specimens (see The Electrician, 1896,
ELECTROMAGNETISM
231
37, p. ;..{). These experiments showed that over moderate ranges
of induction, such as may be expected in electro-technical work,
the hysteresis loss per cycle per cubic centimetre was practically
the same when the iron was tested in an alternating field with a
periodicity of 100, the field remaining constant in direction,
and when the iron was tested in a rotating field giving the same
maximum llux density.
With respect to the variation of hysteresis loss in magnetic
cycles having different maximum values for the flux density,
SteinmeU found that the hysteresis loss (\V), as measured by
the area of the complete (B, H) cycle and expressed in ergs per
centimetre-cube per cycle, varies proportionately to a constant
called the hyshrttic constant, and to the i-6th power of the
maximum flux density (B), or W-ij B 1 '*.
The hysteretic constants (i)) for various kinds of iron and steel
are given in the table below:
Metal. Hysteretic Constant.
Swedish wrought iron, well annealed . . -ooio to -0017
Annealed cast steel of good quality: small
percentage of carbon .... *OOI7 to -0029
Cut Siemens-Martin steel .... -0019 to -OO28
Cast ingot-iron -0021 to -0026
Cast steel, with higher percentages of
carbon, or inferior qualities of wrought
iron ... -0031 to -0054
Steinmetz's law, though not strictly true for very low or very
high maximum flux densities, is yet a convenient empirical rule
for obtaining approximately the hysteresis loss at any one
maximum flux density and knowing it at another, provided
these values fall within a range varying say from i to oooo
C.G.S. units. (See MAGNETISM.)
The standard maximum flux density which is adopted in
electro-technical work is 2500, hence in the construction of the
cores of alternating-current electromagnets and transformers
iron has to be employed having a known hysteretic constant
at the standard flux density. It is generally expressed by stating
the number of watts per tt> of metal which would be dissipated
for a frequency of 100 cycles, and a maximum flux density
(B max.) during the cycle of 2500. In the case of good iron or
steel for transformer-core making, it should not exceed 1-25 watt
per D> per 100 cycles per 2500 B (maximum value).
It has been found that if the sheet iron employed for cores
of alternating electromagnets or transformers is heated to a
temperature somewhere in the neighbourhood of 200 C. the
hysteresis loss is very greatly increased. It was noticed in 1804
by G. W. Partridge that alternating-current transformers which
had been in use some time had a very considerably augmented
core loss when compared with their initial condition. O. T.
B la thy and W. M. Mordey in 1895 showed that this augmentation
in hysteresis loss in iron was due to heating. H. F. Parshall
investigated the effect up to moderate temperatures, such as
140 C., and an extensive series of experiments was made in
1898 by S. R. Roget (Proc. Roy. Soc., 1898, 63, p. 258, and 64,
p. 150). Roget found that below 40 C. a rise in temperature
did not produce any augmentation in the hysteresis loss in iron,
but if it is heated to between 40 C. and 135 C. the hysteresis
loss increases continuously with time, and this increase is now
called " ageing " of the iron. It proceeds more slowly as the
temperature is higher. If heated to above 135 C., the hysteresis
loss soon attains a maximum, but then begins to decrease.
Certain specimens heated to 160 C. were found to have their
hysteresis loss doubled in a few days. The effect seems to come
to a maximum at about 180 C. or 200 C. Mere lapse of time
does not remove the increase, but if the iron is reannealed the
augmentation in hysteresis disappears. If the iron is heated
to a higher temperature, say between 300 C. and 700 C.,
Roget found the initial rise of hysteresis happens more quickly,
bat that the metal soon settles down into a state in which the
hysteresis loss has a small but still augmented constant value.
The augmentation in value, however, becomes more nearly zero
as the temperature approaches 700 C. Brands of steel are now
obtainable which do not age in this manner, but these non-ageing
varieties of steel have not generally such low initial hysteresis
values as the " Swedish Iron," commonly considered best for
the cores of transformers and alternating-current magnets.
The following conclusions have been reached in the matter:
(i) Iron and mild steel in the annealed state are more liable to
change their hysteresis value by heating than when in the
harder condition; (2) all changes are removed by re-annealing;
<3) the changes thus produced by heating affect not only the
amount of the hysteresis loss, but also the form of the lower part
of the (B,H) curve.
Forms of Electromagnet. The form which an electromagnet
must take will greatly depend upon the purposes for which it is
to be used. A design or form of electromagnet which will be-
very suitable for some purposes will be useless for others.
Supposing it is desired* to make an electromagnet which shall
be capable of undergoing very rapid changes of strength, it
must have such a form that the coercivity of the material is
overcome by a self-demagnetizing force. This can be achieved
by making the magnet in the form of a short and stout bar rather
than a long thin one. It has already been explained that the
ends or poles of a polar magnet exert a demagnetizing power
upon the mass of the metal in the interior of the bar. If then
the electromagnet has the form of a long thin bar, the length of
which is several hundred times its diameter, the poles are very
far removed from the centre of the bar, and the demagnetizing
action will be very feeble; such a long thin electromagnet,
although made of very soft iron, retains a considerable amount
of magnetism after the magnetizing force is withdrawn. On the
other hand, a very thick bar very quickly demagnetizes itself,
because no part of the metal is far removed from the action of the
FIG. 6. Du Bois's Electromagnet.
free poles. Hence when, as in many telegraphic instruments, a
piece of soft iron, called an armature, has to be attracted to the
poles of a horseshoe-shaped electromagnet, this armature should
be prevented from quite touching the polar surfaces of the magnet .
If a soft iron mass does quite touch the poles, then it completes
the magnetic circuit and abolishes the free poles, and the magnet
is to a very large extent deprived of its self-demagnetizing power.
This is the explanation of the well-known fact that after exciting
the electromagnet and then stopping the current, it still requires
a good pull to detach the " keeper "; but when once the keeper
has been detached, the magnetism is found to have nearly
disappeared. An excellent form of electromagnet for the pro-
duction of very powerful fields has been designed by H. du
Bois (fig. 6).
Various forms of electromagnets used in connexion with
232
ELECTROMETALLURGY
dynamo machines are considered in the article DYNAMO, and there
is, therefore, no necessity to refer particularly to the numerous
different shapes and types employed in electrotechnics.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. For additional information on the above subject
the reader may be referred to the following works and -original
papers :
H. du Bois, The Magnetic Circuit in Theory and Practice; S. P.
Thompson, The Electromagnet; J. A. Fleming, Magnets and Electric
Currents; J. A. Ewing, Magnetic Induction in Iron and other Metals;
J. A. Fleming, " The Ferromagnetic Properties of Iron and Steel,"
Proceedings of Sheffield Society of Engineers and Metallurgists (Oct.
1897); J. A. Ewing, "The Magnetic Testing of Iron and Steel,"
Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng., 1896, 126, p. 185; H. F. Parshall, "The
Magnetic Data of Iron and Steel," Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng., 1896,
126, p. 220; J. A. Ewing, "The Molecular Theory of Induced
Magnetism," Phil. Mag., Sept. 1890; W. M. Mordey, "Slow Changes
in the Permeability of Iron," Proc. Roy. Soc. 57, p. 224; J. A.
Ewing, " Magnetism," James Forrest Lecture, Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng.
138; S. P. Thompson, " Electromagnetic Mechanism," Electrician,
26, pp. 238, 269, 293; J. A. Ewing, " Experimental Researches in
Magnetism, '' Phil. Trans., 1885, part ii. ; Ewing and Klassen,
" Magnetic Qualities of Iron," Proc. Roy. Soc., 1893. (J. A. F.)
ELECTROMETALLURGY. The present article, as explained
under ELECTROCHEMISTRY, treats only of those processes in
which electricity is applied to the production of chemical re-
actions or molecular changes at furnace temperatures. In
many of these the application of heat is necessary to bring
the substances used into the liquid state for the purpose of
electrolysis, aqueous solutions being unsuitable. Among the
earliest experiments in this branch of the subject were
those of Sir H. Davy, who in 1807 (Phil. Trans., 1808,
p. i), produced the alkali metals by passing an intense cur-
rent of electricity from a platinum wire to a platinum dish,
through a mass of fused caustic alkali. The action was started
in the cold, the alkali being slightly moistened to render it a
conductor; then, as the current passed, heat was produced
and the alkali fused, the metal being deposited in the liquid
condition. Later, A. Matthiessen (Quarterly Journ. Chem. Soc.
viii. 30) obtained potassium by the electrolysis of a mixture
of potassium and calcium chlorides fused over a lamp. There
are here foreshadowed two types of electrolytic furnace-opera-
tions: (a) those in which external heating maintains the
electrolyte in the fused condition, and (b) those in which a current-
density is applied sufficiently high to develop the heat necessary
to effect this object unaided. Much of the earlier electrometal-
lurgical work was done with furnaces of the (a) type, while
nearly all the later developments have been with those of class
(b). There is a third class of operations, exemplified by the
manufacture of calcium carbide, in which electricity is employed
solely as a heating agent; these, are termed electrothermal, as
distinguished from electrolytic. In certain electrothermal
processes (e.g. calcium carbide production) the heat from the
current is employed in raising mixtures of substances to the
temperature at which a desired chemical reaction will take
place between them, while in others (e.g. the production of
graphite from coke or gas-carbon) the heat is applied solely to
the production of molecular or physical changes. In ordinary
electrolytic work only the continuous current may of course
be used, but in electrothermal work an alternating current is
equally available.
Electric Furnaces. Independently of the question of the
application of external heating, the furnaces used in electro-
metallurgy may be broadly classified into (i.) arc furnaces, in
which the intense heat of the electric arc is utilized, and (ii.)
resistance and incandescence furnaces, in which the heat is
generated by an electric current overcoming the resistance
of an inferior conductor.
.Excepting such experimental arrangements as that of C. M.
Despretz (C.R., 1849, 29) for use on a small scale in the laboratory,
An Pichou in France and J. H. Johnson in England
furnaces, appear, in 1853, to have introduced the earliest
practical form of furnace. In these arrangements,
which were similar if not identical, the furnace charge was
crushed to a fine powder and passed through two or more electric
arcs in succession. When used for ore smelting, the reduced
metal and the accompanying slag were to be caught, after leaving
the arc and while still liquid, in a hearth fired with ordinary
fuel. Although this primitive furnace could be made to act, its
efficiency was low, and the use of a separate fire was disadvan-
tageous. In 1878 Sir William Siemens patented a form of furnace '
which is the type of a very large number of those designed by
later inventors.
In the best-known form a plumbago crucible was used with a
hole cut in the bottom to receive a carbon rod, which was ground
in so as to make a tight joint. This rod was connected with the
positive pole of the dynamo or electric generator. The crucible
was fitted with a cover in which were two holes; one at the side to
serve at once as sight-hole and charging door, the other in the
centre to allow a second carbon rod to pass freely (without touching)
into the interior. This rod was connected with the negative pole of
the generator, and was suspended from one arm of a balance-beam,
while from the other end of the beam was suspended a vertical hollow
iron cylinder, which could be moved into or out of a wire coil or
solenoid joined as a shunt across the two carbon rods of the furnace.
The solenoid was above the iron cylinder, the supporting rod of which
passed through it as a core. When the furnace with this well-known
regulating device was to be used, say, for the melting of metals or
other conductors of electricity, the fragments of metal were placed
in the crucible and the positive electrode was brought near them.
Immediately the current passed through the solenoid it caused the
iron cylinder to rise, and, by means of its supporting rod, forced the
end of the balance beam upwards, so depressing the other end that
the negative carbon rod was forced downwards into contact with the
metal in the crucible. This action completed the furnace-circuit,
and current passed freely from the positive carbon through the
fragments of metal to the negative carbon, thereby reducing the
current through the shunt. At once the attractive force of the
solenoid on the iron cylinder was automatically reduced, and the
falling of the latter caused the negative carbon to rise, starting an
arc between it and the metal in the crucible. A counterpoise was
placed on the solenoid end of the balance beam to act against the
attraction of the solenoid, the position of the counterpoise determin-
ing the length of the arc in the crucible. Any change in the resist-
ance of the arc, either by lengthening, due to the sinking of the charge
in the crucible, or by the burning of the carbon, affected the pro-
portion of current flowing in the two shunt circuits, and so altered
the position of the iron cylinder in the solenoid that the length of
arc was, within limits, automatically regulated. Were it not for the
use of some such device the arc would be liable to constant fluctuation
and to frequent extinction. The crucible was surrounded with a
bad conductor of heat to minimize loss by radiation. The positive
carbon was in some cases replaced by a water-cooled metal tube, or
ferrule, closed, of course, at the end inserted in the crucible. Several
modifications were proposed, in one of which, intended for the heating
of non-conducting substances, the electrodes were passed horizontally
through perforations in the upper part of the crucible walls, and the
charge in the lower part of the crucible was heated by radiation.
The furnace used by Henri Moissan in his experiments on
reactions at high temperatures, on the fusion and volatilization
of refractory materials, and on the formation of carbides, silicides
and borides of various metals, consisted, in its simplest form,
of two superposed blocks of lime or of limestone with a central
cavity cut in the lower block, and with a corresponding but much
shallower inverted cavity in the upper block, which thus formed
the lid of the furnace. Horizontal channels were cut on opposite
walls, through which the carbon poles or electrodes were passed
into the upper part of the cavity. Such a furnace, to take a
current of 4 H.P. (say, of 60 amperes and 50 volts), measured
externally about 6 by 6 by 7 in., and the electrodes were about
0-4 in. in diameter, while for a current of 100 H.P. (say, of 746
amperes and 100 volts) it measured about 14 by 12 by 14 in.,
and the electrodes were about 1-5 in. in diameter. In the latter
case the crucible, which was placed in the cavity immediately
beneath the arc, was about 3 in. in diameter (internally), and
about 3^ in. in height. The fact that energy is being used at
so high a rate as 100 H.P. on so small a charge of material
sufficiently indicates that the furnace is only used for experi-
mental work, or for the fusion of metals which, like tungsten
or chromium, can only be melted at temperatures attainable
by electrical means. Moissan succeeded in fusing about Ib of
either of these metals in 5 or 6 minutes in a furnace similar to
that last described. He also arranged an experimental tube-
furnace by passing a carbon tube horizontally beneath the arc
1 Cf. Siemens's account of the use of this furnace for experimental
purposes in British Association Report for 1882.
ELECTROMETALLURGY
233
In the cavity of the lime blocks. When prolonged heating is
required at very high temperatures it is found necessary to line
the furnace-cavity with alternate layers of magnesia and carbon,
taking care that the lamina next to the lime is of magnesia;
if this were not done the lime in contact with the carbon crucible
would form calcium carbide and would slag down, but magnesia
does not yield a carbide in this way. Chaplet has patented
a muffle or tube furnace, similar in principle, for use on a larger
scale, with a number of electrodes placed above and below the
murtle-tube. The arc furnaces now widely used in the manu-
facture of calcium carbide on a large scale are chiefly develop-
ments of the Siemens furnace. But whereas, from its construc-
tion, the Siemens furnace was intermittent in operation,
necessitating stoppage of the current while the contents of the
crucible were poured out, many of the newer forms are specially
designed either to minimize the time required in effecting the
withdrawal of one charge and the introduction of the next, or
to ensure absolute continuity of action, raw material being
constantly charged in at the top and the finished substance
and by-products (slag, &c.) withdrawn either continuously or
at intervals, as sufficient quantity shall have accumulated. In
the King furnace, for example, the crucible, or lowest part of the
furnace, is made detachable, so that when full it may be removed
and an empty crucible substituted. In the United States a
revolving furnace is used which is quite continuous in action.
The class of furnaces heated by electrically incandescent
materials has been divided by Borchers into two groups: (i)
those in which the substance is heated by contact
with a substance offering a high resistance to the
current passing through it, and (2) those in which the
substance to be heated itself affords the resistance to
the passage of the current whereby electric energy is converted
into heat. Practically the first of these furnaces was that of
Despretz, in which the mixture to be heated was placed in a
carbon tube rendered incandescent by the passage of a current
through its substance from end to end. In 1880 W. Borchers
introduced his resistance-furnace, which, in one sense, is the
converse of the Despretz apparatus. A thin carbon pencil,
forming a bridge between two stout carbon rods, is set in the
midst of the mixture to be heated. On passing a current through
the carbon the small rod is heated to incandescence, and imparts
heat to the surrounding mass. On a larger scale several pencils
are used to make the connexions between carbon blocks which
form the end walls of the furnace, while the side walls are of
fire-brick laid upon one another without mortar. Many of the
furnaces now in constant use depend mainly on this principle,
a core of granular carbon fragments stamped together in the
direct line between the electrodes, as in Acheson's carborundum
furnace, being substituted for the carbon pencils. In other
cases carbon fragments are mixed throughout the charge, as
in E.H. and A.H. Cowles's zinc-smelting retort. In practice, in
these furnaces, it is possible for small local arcs to be temporarily
set up hy the shifting of the charge, and these would contribute
to the heating of the mass. In the remaining class of furnace,
in which the electrical resistance of the charge itself is utilized,
are the continuous-current furnaces, such as are used for the
smelting of aluminium, and those alternating-current furnaces,
(e.g. for the production of calcium carbide) in which a portion
of the charge is first actually fused, and then maintained in the
molten condition by the current passing through it, while the
reaction between further portions of the charge is proceeding.
For ordinary metallurgical work the electric furnace, requiring
as it does (excepting where waterfalls or other cheap sources
of power are available) the intervention of the boiler
and steam-engine, or of the gas or oil engine, with a
consequent loss of energy, has not usually proved so
economical as an ordinary direct fired furnace. But in
some cases in which the current is used for electrolysis and for
the production of extremely high temperatures, for which the
calorific intensity of ordinary fuel is insufficient, the electric
furnace is employed with advantage. The temperature of the
electric furnace, whether of the arc or incandescence type, is
practically limited to that at which the least easily vaporized
material available for electrodes is converted into vapour. This
material is carbon, and as its vaporizing point is (estimated at)
over 3500 C, and less than 4000 C., the temperature of the
electric furnace cannot rise much above 3500 C. (6330 F.);
but H. Moissan showed that at this temperature the most stable
of mineral combinations are dissociated, and the most refractory
elements are converted into vapour, only certain boridcs, silicidcs
and metallic carbides having been found to resist the action of
the heat. It is not necessary that all electric furnaces shall be
run at these high temperatures; obviously, those of the incan-
descence or resistance type may be worked at any convenient
temperature below the maximum. The electric furnace has
several advantages as compared with some of the ordinary types
of furnace, arising from the fact that the heat is generated from
within the mass of material operated upon, and (unlike the blast-
furnace, which presents the same advantage) without a large
volume of gaseous products of combustion and atmospheric
nitrogen being passed through it. In ordinary reverberatory
and other heating furnaces the burning fuel is without the mass,
so that the vessel containing the charge, and other parts of the
plant, are raised to a higher temperature than would otherwise
be necessary, in order to compensate for losses by radiation,
convection and conduction. This advantage is especially
observed in some cases in which the charge of the furnace is
ble to attack the containing vessel at high temperatures,
as it is often possible to maintain the outer walls of the electric
furnace relatively cool, and even to keep them lined with a
protecting crust of unfused charge. Again, the construction
of electric furnaces may often be exceedingly crude and simple;
in the carborundum furnace, for example, the outer walls are
of loosely piled bricks, and in one type of furnace the charge is
simply heaped on the ground around the carbon resistance used
for heating, without containing-walls of any kind. There is,
however, one (not insuperable) drawback in the use of the electric
furnace for the smelting of pure metals. Ordinarily carbon is
used as the electrode material, but when carbon comes in contact
at high temperatures with any metal that is capable of forming
a carbide a certain amount of combination between them is in-
evitable, and the carbon thus introduced impairs the mechanical
properties of the ultimate metallic product. Aluminium, iron,
platinum and many other metals may thus take up so much
carbon as to become brittle and unforgeable. It is for this reason
that Siemens, Borchers and others substituted a hollow water-
cooled metal block for the carbon cathode upon which the melted
metal rests while in the furnace. Liquid metal coming in contact
with such a surface forms a crust of solidified metal over it, and
this crust thickens up to a certain point, namely, until the heat
from within the furnace just overbalances that lost by conduction
through the solidified crust and the cathode material to the flow-
ing water. In such an arrangement, after the first instant, the
melted metal in the furnace does not come in contact with the
cathode material.
Electrothermal Processes. In these processes the electric
current is used solely to generate heat, either to induce chemical
reactions between admixed substances, or to produce a physical
(allotropic) modification of a given substance. Borchers pre-
dicted that, at the high temperatures available with the electric
furnace, every oxide would prove to be reducible by the action
of carbon, and this prediction has in most instances been justified.
Alumina and lime, for example, which cannot be reduced at
ordinary furnace temperatures, readily give up their oxygen
to carbon in the electric furnace, and then combine with an
excess of carbon to form metallic carbides. In 1885 the brothers
Cowles patented a process for the electrothermal reduction of
oxidized ores by exposure to an intense current of electricity
when admixed with carbon in a retort. Later in that year they
patented a process for the reduction of aluminium by carbon,
and in 1886 an electric furnace with sliding carbon rods passed
through the end walls to the centre of a rectangular furnace.
The impossibility of working with just sufficient carbon to reduce
the alumina, without using any excess which would be free to
234
ELECTROMETER
form at least so much carbide as would suffice, when diffused
through the metal, to render it brittle, practically restricts the
use of such processes to the production of aluminium
alloys. Aluminium bronze (aluminium and copper)
alloys. and ferro-aluminium (aluminium and iron) have
been made in this way; the latter is the more satis-
factory product, because a certain proportion of carbon is
expected in an alloy of this character, as in ferromanganese and
cast iron, and its presence is not objectionable. The furnace is
built of fire-brick, and may measure (internally) 5 ft. in length
by i ft. 8 in. in width, and 3 ft. in height. Into each end wall
is built a short iron tube sloping downwards towards the centre,
and through this is passed a bundle of five 3-in. carbon rods,
bound together at the outer end by being cast into a head of
cast iron for use with iron alloys, or of cast copper for aluminium
bronze. This head slides freely in the cast iron tubes, and is
connected by a copper rod with one of the terminals of the
dynamo supplying the current. The carbons can thus, by the
application of suitable mechanism, be withdrawn from or plunged
into the furnace at will. In starting the furnace, the bottom
is prepared by ramming it with charcoal-powder that has been
soaked in milk of lime and dried, so that each particle is coated
with a film of lime, which serves to reduce the loss of current
by conduction through the lining when the furnace becomes
hot. A sheet iron case is then placed within the furnace, and
the space between it and the walls rammed with limed charcoal;
the interior is filled with fragments of the iron or copper to be
alloyed, mixed with alumina and coarse charcoal, broken pieces
of carbon being placed in position to connect the electrodes.
The iron case is then removed, the whole is covered with charcoal,
and a cast iron cover with a central flue is placed above all.
The current, either continuous or alternating, is then started,
and continued for about i to 15 hours, until the operation is
complete, the carbon rods being gradually withdrawn as the
action proceeds. In such a furnace a continuous current, for
example, of 3000 amperes, at 50 to 60 volts, may be used at first,
increasing to 5000 amperes in about half an hour. The reduction
is not due to electrolysis, but to the action of carbon on alumina,
a part of the carbon in the charge being consumed and evolved
as carbon monoxide gas, which burns at the orifice in the cover
so long as reduction is taking place. The reduced aluminium
alloys itself immediately with the fused globules of metal in
its midst, and as the charge becomes reduced the globules of
alloy unite until, in the end, they are run out of the tap-hole
after the current has been diverted to another furnace. It was
found in practice (in 1889) that the expenditure of energy per
pound of reduced aluminium was about 23 H.P.-hours, a
number considerably in excess of that required at the present
time for the production of pure aluminium by the electrolytic
process described in the article ALUMINIUM. Calcium carbide,
graphite (q.v.), phosphorus (q.v.) and carborundum (q.v.) are now
extensively manufactured by the operations outlined above.
Electrolytic Processes. The isolation of the metals sodium
and potassium by Sir Humphry Davy in 1807 by the electrolysis
of the fused hydroxides was one of the earliest applications of
the electric current to the extraction of metals. This pioneering
work showed little development until about the middle of the
igth century. In 1852 magnesium was isolated electrolytically
by R. Bunsen, and this process subsequently received much
attention at the hands of Moissan and Borchers. Two years
later Bunsen and H. E. Sainte Claire Deville working indepen-
dently obtained aluminium (g.v.) by the electrolysis of the fused
double sodium aluminium chloride. Since that date other
processes have been devised and the electrolytic processes have
entirely replaced the older methods of reduction with sodium.
Methods have also been discovered for the electrolytic manu-
facture of calcium (q.v.), which have had the effect of converting
a laboratory curiosity into a product of commercial importance.
Barium and strontium have also been produced by electro-
metallurgical methods, but the processes have only a laboratory
interest at present. Lead, zinc and other metals have also been
reduced in this manner.
For further information the following books, in addition to those
mentioned at the end of the article ELECTROCHEMISTRY, may be
consulted : Borchers, Handbuch der Elektrochemie ; Electric Furnaces
(Eng. trans, by H. G. Solomon, 1908) ; Moissan, The Electric Furnace
(1904); J. Escard, Fours tlectriques (1905); Les Industries eleclro-
chimiques (1907). (W. G. M.)
ELECTROMETER, an instrument for measuring difference
of potential, which operates by means of electrostatic force
and gives the measurement either in arbitrary or in absolute
units (see UNITS, PHYSICAL). In the last case the instrument
is called an absolute electrometer. Lord Kelvin has classified
electrometers into (i) Repulsion, (2) Attracted disk, and (3)
Symmetrical electrometers (see W. Thomson, Brit. Assoc. Report,
1867, or Reprinted Papers on Electrostatics and Magnetization,
p. 261).
Repulsion Electrometers. The simplest form of repulsion
electrometer is W. Henley's pith ball electrometer (Phil. Trans.,
i?7 2 > 63, p. 359) in which the repulsion of a straw ending in a
pith ball from a fixed stem is indicated on a graduated arc (see
ELECTROSCOPE). A double pith ball repulsion electrometer
was employed by T. Cavallo in 1777.
It may be pointed out that such an arrangement is not merely an
arbitrary electrometer, but may become an absolute electrometer
within certain rough limits. Let two spherical pith balls of radius r
and weight W, covered with gold-leaf so as to be conducting, be
suspended by parallel silk threads of length / so as just to touch each
other. If then the balls are both charged to a potential V they will .
repel each other, and the threads will stand out at an angle 29,
which can be observed on a protractor. Since the electrical repulsion
of the balls is equal to C 2 V 2 4/ 2 sin ^ dynes, where C = r is the capacity
of either ball, and this force is balanced by the restoring force due
to their weight, Wg dynes, where g is the acceleration of gravity, it
is easy to show that we have
, r 2l sing VWgtanfl
as an expression for their common potential V, provided that the
balls are small and their distance sufficiently great not sensibly to
disturb the uniformity of electric charge upon them. Observation of
8 with measurement of the value of / and r reckoned in centimetres
and W in grammes gives us the potential difference of the balls in
absolute C.G.S. or electrostatic units. The gold-leaf electroscope
invented by Abraham Bennet (see ELECTROSCOPE) can in like
manner, by the addition of a scale to observe the divergence of the
gold-leaves, be made a repulsion electrometer.
Attracted Disk Electrometers. A form of attracted disk
absolute electrometer was devised by A. Volta. It consisted
of a plane conducting plate forming one pan of a balance which
was suspended over another insulated plate which could be
electrified. The attraction between the two plates was balanced
by a weight put in
the opposite pan.
A similar electric
balance was subse-
quently devised by
SirW.Snow-Harris, 1
one of whose instru-
ments is shown in
fig. i. C is an in-
sulated disk over
which is suspended
another disk at-
tached to the arm
of a balance. A
weight is put in the
opposite scale pan
and a measured
charge of electricity
is given to the disk
C just sufficient to
tipoverthebalance. FlG ' L-Snow-Hams s D.sk Electrometer.
Snow-Harris found that this charge varied as the square root
of the weight in the opposite pan, thus showing that the
1 It is probable that an 'experiment of this kind had been made as
far back as 1746 by Daniel Gralath, of Danzig, who has some claims
to have suggested the word " electrometer in connexion with it.
See Park Benjamin, The Intellectual Rise in Electricity (London, 1895),
P- 542-
ELECTROMETER
235
attraction between the disks at given distance apart varies as
the square of their difference of potential.
The most important improvements in connexion with cleft ro
meters are due, however, to Lord Kelvin, who introduced the
guard plate and used gravity or the torsion of a wire as a means
for evaluating the electrical forces.
HU portable electrometer is shown in fig. 3. H H (see fig. 3) is a
plane disk of metal called the guard plate, fixed to the inner coating
Fie. 2. Kelvin's Portable
Electrometer.
Ki... 3.
of a small Lcyden jar (see fig. 3). At F a square hole is cut out of
H H, and into this fits loosely without touching, like a trap door,
a square piece of aluminium foil having a projecting tail, which carries
at its end a stirrup L, crossed by a fine hair (see fig. 3). The square
piece of aluminium is pivoted round a horizontal stretched wire.
If then another horizontal disk G is placed over the disk H H and a
difference of potential made between G and H H, the movable
aluminium trap door F will be attracted by the fixed plate G.
Matters are so arranged by giving a torsion to the wire carrying the
aluminium disk F that for a certain potential difference between the
plates H and G, the movable part F comes into a definite sighted
position, which is observed by means of a small lens. The plate G
(see fig. 3) is moved up and down, parallel to itself, by means of a
screw. In using the instrument the conductor, whose potential is
to be tested, is connected to the plate G. Let this potential be
denoted by V, and let r be the potential of the guard plate and the
aluminium flap. This last potential is maintained constant by
guard plate and flap being part of the interior coating of a charged
Levden jar. Since the distribution of electricity may be considered
to be constant over the surface S of the attracted disk, the mechanical
force /on it is given by the expression, 1
where d is the distance between the two plates. If this distance is
varied until the attracted disk comes into a definite sighted position
as seen by observing the end of the
index through the lens, then since the
force / is constant, being due to the
torque applied by the wire for a definite
angle of twist, it follows that the dif-
ference of potential of the two plates
varies as their distance. If then two
experiments are made, first with the
upper plate connected to earth, and
secondly, connected to the object being
tested, we get an expression for the
potential V of this conductor in the
form
V-A(d'-rf),
where d and d' are the distances of the
fixed and movable plates from one
another in the two cases, and A is some
constant. We thus find V in terms of
the constant and the difference of the
two screw readings.
Lord Kelvin's absolute electrometer
Fn-. 4. -Kelvin's Ab-
solute Electrometer.
shielded by D and suspend
with that of the guard plate.
(fig. 4) involves the same principle.
There is a certain fixed guard disk B
having a hole in it which is loosely occu-
iit <l l.y an aluminium trap door plate,
on springs, so that its surface is parallel
Parallel to this is a second movable plate
A. the distance* between the two being measurable by means of a
screw. The movable plate can be drawn-down into a definite sighted
position when a difference of potential is made between the two
1 See Maxwell, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (and ed.),
1 ' "
plates. This sighted position is such that the surface of the trap
door plate is level with that of the guard plate, and is determined
by observations made with the lenses II and L. The movable plate
can be thus depressed by placing on it a certain standard weight W
grammes.
Suppose it is required to measure the difference of potentials V
and V of two conductors. First one and then the other conductor
is connected with the electrode of the lower or movable plate, which
is moved by the screw until the index attached to the attracted disk
shows it to be in the sighted position. Let the screw readings in
the two cases be d and d'. If W is the weight required to depress the
attracted disk into the same sighted position when the plates are
unelectrified and g is the acceleration of gravity, then the difference
of potentials of the conductors tested is expressed by the formula
FIG. 5.
where S denotes the area of the attracted disk.
The difference of potentials is thus determined in terms of a
weight, an area and a distance, in absolute C'.G.S. measure or electro.
static units.
Symmetrical Electrometers include the dry pile electrometer
and Kelvin's quadrant electrometer. The principle under-
lying these instruments is that we can
measure differences of potential by means
of the motion of an electrified body in a
symmetrical field of electric force. In the
dry pile electrometer a single gold-leaf is
hung up between two plates which arc
connected to the opposite terminals of a
dry pile so that a certain constant dif-
ference of potential exists between these
plates. The original inventor of this
instrument was T. G. B. Behrens (Gilb.
Ann., 1806, 23), but it generally bears the name of J. G. F.
von Bohnenberger, who slightly modified its form. G. T. Fcchner
introduced the important improvement of using only one pile,
which he removed from the immediate neighbourhood of the
suspended leaf. W. G. Hankel still further improved the dry
pile electrometer by giving a slow motion movement to the two
plates, and substituted a galvanic battery with a large number of
cells for the dry pile, and also employed a divided scale to measure
the movements of the gold-leaf (Pogg. Ann., 1858, 163). If the
gold-leaf is unelectrified, it is not acted upon by the two plates
placed at equal distances on either side of it, but if its potential
is raised or lowered it is attracted by one disk and repelled by
the other, and the displacement becomes a measure of its
potential.
A vast improvement in this instrument was made by the
invention of the quadrant electrometer by Lord Kelvin, which is
the most sensitive form |
of electrometer yet de-
vised. In this instrument
(see fig. 5) a flat paddle-
shaped needle of alumin-
ium foil U is supported
by a bifilar suspension
consisting of two cocoon
fibres. This needle is sus-
pended in the interior
of a glass vessel partly
coated with tin-foil on
the outside and inside,
forming therefore a Ley-
den jar (see fig. 6). In
the bottom of the vessel
is placed some sulphuric
acid, and a platinum wire
attached to the suspended
needle dips into this acid. F|G ' 6.-Kelvms Quadrant Electro-
meter.
By giving a charge to
this Levden jar the needle can thus be maintained at a certain
constant high potential. The needle <s enclosed by a sort of
flat box divided into four insulated quadrants A, B, C, D (fig. 5),
whence the name. The opposite quadrants are connected to-
gether by thin platinum wires. These quadrants arc insulated
236
ELECTROMETER
from the needle and from the case, and the two pairs are connected
to two electrodes. When the instrument is to be used to deter-
mine the potential difference between two conductors, they are
connected to the two opposite pairs of quadrants. The needle
in its normal position is symmetrically placed with regard to
the quadrants, and carries a mirror by means of which its dis-
placement can be observed in the usual manner by reflecting
the ray of light from it. If the two quadrants are at different
potentials, the needle moves from one quadrant towards the
other, and the image of a spot of light on the scale is therefore
displaced. Lord Kelvin provided the instrument with two
necessary adjuncts, viz. a replenisher or rotating electrophorus
(?..), by means of which the charge of theLeyden jar whichforms
the enclosing vessel can be increased or diminished, and also a
small aluminium balance plate or gauge, which is in principle the
same as the attracted disk portable electrometer by means of
which the potential of the inner coating of the Leyden jar is
preserved at a known value.
According to the mathematical theory of the instrument, 1 if V
and V are the potentials of the quadrants and v is the potential of
the needle, then the torque acting upon the needle to cause rotation
is given by the expression,
c<v-V){r-|(v+V)i,
where C is some constant. If v is very large compared with the
mean value of the potentials of the two quadrants, as it usually is,
then the above expression indicates that the couple varies as the
difference of the potentials between the quadrants.
Dr J. Hopkinson found, however, before 1885, that the above
formula does not agree with observed facts (Proc. Phys. Soc. Land.,
1 885, 7, p. 7). The formula indicates that the sensibility of the instru-
ment should increase with the charge of the Leyden jar or needle,
whereas Hopkinson found that as the potential of the needle was
increased by working the replenisher of the jar, the deflection due
to three volts difference between the quadrants first increased and
then diminished. He found that when the potential of the needle
exceeded a certain value, of about 200 volts, for the particular
instrument he was using (made by White of Glasgow), the above
formula did not hold good. W. E. Ayrton, J. Perry and W. E.
Sumpner, who in 1886 had noticed the same fact as Hopkinson,
investigated the matter in 1891 (Proc. Roy. Soc., 1891, 50, p. 52;
Phil. Trans., 1891, 182, p. 519). Hopkinson had been inclined to
attribute the anomaly to an increase in the tension of the bifilar
threads, owing to a downward pull on the needle, but they showed
that this theory would not account for the discrepancy. They
found from observations that the particular quadrant electrometer
they used might be made to follow one or other of three distinct laws.
If the quadrants were near together there were certain limits between
which the potential of the needle might vary without producing more
than a small change in the deflection corresponding with the fixed
potential difference of the quadrants. For example, when the
quadrants' were about 2-5 mm. apart and the suspended fibres near
together at the top, the deflection produced by a P.D. of 1-45 volts
between the quadrants only varied about 1 1 % when the potential
of the needle varied from 896 to 3586 volts. When the fibres were
far apart at the top a similar flatness was obtained in the curve
with the quadrants about I mm. apart. In this case the deflection
of the needle was practically quite constant when its potential varied
from 2152 to 3227 volts. When the quadrants were about 3-9 mm.
apart, the deflection for a given P.D. between the quadrants was
almost directly proportional to the potential of the needle. In other
words, the electrometer nearly obeyed the theoretical law. Lastly,
when the quadrants were 4 mm. or more apart, the deflection in-
creased much more rapidly than the potential, so that a maximum
sensibility bordering on instability was obtained. Finally, these ob-
servers traced the variation to the fact that the wire supporting the
aluminium needle as well as the wire which connects the needle with
the sulphuric acid in the Leyden jar in the White pattern of Leyden
jar is enclosed in a metallic guard tube to screen the wire from
external action. In order that the needle may project outside
the guard tube, openings are made in its two sides ; hence the moment
the needle is deflected each half of it becomes unsymmetrically
placed relatively to the two metallic pieces which join the upper and
lower half of the guard tube. Guided by these experiments, Ayrton,
Perry and Sumpner constructed an improved unifilar quadrant
electrometer which was not only more sensitive than the White
pattern, but fulfilled the theoretical law of working. The bifilar
suspension was abandoned, and instead a new form of adjustable
magnetic control was adopted. All the working parts of the instru-
ment were supported on the base, so that on removing a glass shade
which serves as a Leyden jar they can be got at and adjusted in
position. The conclusion to which the above observers came was
that any quadrant electrometer made in any manner does not
~~ r See Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism (2nd ed., Oxford, 1881),
vol. i. p. 311.
necessarily obey a law of deflection making the deflections propor-
tional to the potential difference of the quadrants, but that an
electrometer can be constructed which does fulfil the above law.
The importance of this investigation resides in the fact that an
electrometer of the above pattern can be used as a wattmeter (q.v.),
provided that the deflection of the needle is proportional to the
potential difference of the quadrants. This use of the instrument
was proposed simultaneously in 1881 by Professors Ayrton and G. F.
Fitzgerald and M. A. Potier. Suppose we have an inductive and a
non-inductive circuit in series, which is traversed by a periodic
current, and that we desire to know the power being absorbed to the
inductive circuit. Let fi, 2 , v 3 be the instantaneous potentials of
the two ends and middle of the circuit ; let a quadrant electrometer
be connected first with the quadrants to the two ends of the inductive
circuit and the needle to the far end of the non-inductive circuit,
and then secondly with the needle connected to one of the quadrants
(see fig. 5). Assuming the electrometer to obey the above-mentioned
theoretical law, the first reading is proportional to
)
the second to
The difference of the readings is then proportional to
But this last expression is proportional to the instantaneous power
taken up in the inductive circuit, and hence the difference of the
two readings of the electrometer is proportional to the mean power
taken up in the circuit (Phil. Mag., 1891, 32, p. 206). Ayrton and
Perry and also P. R. Blondlot and P. Curie afterwards suggested
that a single electrometer could be constructed with two pairs of
quadrants and a duplicate needle on one stem, so as to make two
readings simultaneously and produce a deflection proportional at
once to the power being taken up in the inductive circuit.
Quadrant electrometers have also been designed especially
for measuring extremely small potential differences. An instru-
ment of this kind has been constructed by Dr. F. Dolezalek
(fig. 7). The needle and quadrants are of small size, and the
FIG. 7. Quadrant Electrometer. Dolezalek Pattern.
electrostatic capacity is correspondingly small. The quadrants
are mounted on pillars of amber which afford a very high
insulation. The needle, a piece of paddle-shaped paper thinly
coated with silver foil, is suspended by a quartz fibre, its extreme
lightness making it possible to use a very feeble controlling force
without rendering the period of oscillation unduly great. The
resistance offered by the air to a needle of such light construction
suffices to render the motion nearly dead-beat. Throughout a
wide range the deflections are proportional to the potential
difference producing them. The needle is charged to a potential
ELECTRON ELECTROPLATING
237
of 50 to .-00 volts by means of a dry pile or voltaic battery, or
from a lighting circuit. To facilitate the communication of
the charge to the needle, the quartz fibre and its attachments
are rendered conductive by a thin film of solution of hygroscopic
salt such as calcium chloride. The lightness of the needle enables
the instrument to be moved without fear of damaging the suspen-
sion. The upper end of the quartz fibre is rotated by a torsion
head, and a metal cover serves to screen the instrument from stray
electrostatic fields. With a quartz fibre 0-009 mm. thick and
60 mm. long, the needle being charged to 1 10 volts, the period
and swing of the needle was 18 seconds. With the scale at a
distance of two metres, a deflection of 130 mm. was produced by
an electromotive force of o-i volt. By using a quartz fibre of
about half the above diameter the sensitiveness was much
increased. An instrument of this form is valuable in measuring
small alternating currents by the fall of potential produced
down a known resistance. In the same way it may be employed
to measure high potentials by measuring the fall of potential
down a fraction of a known non-inductive resistance. In this
last case, however, the capacity of the electrometer used must be
small, otherwise an error is introduced. 1
See, in addition to references already given, A. Gray, Absolute
Uauurtmtnti in Electricity and Maenetism (London, 1888), vol. i.
p. 254; A. Winkclmann, Handbutk der Physik (Breslau, 1905),
pp. 58-70, which contains a large number of references to original
paper* on electrometers. (J. A. F.)
ELECTRON, the name suggested by Dr G. Johnstone Stoney
in 1891 for the natural unit of electricity to which he had drawn
attention in 1874, and subsequently applied to the ultra-
atomic particles carrying negative charges of electricity, of which
Professor Sir J. J. Thomson proved in 1897 that the cathode
rays consisted. The electrons, which Thomson at first called
corpuscles, are point charges of negative electricity, their in-
ertia showing them to have a mass equal to about ;o'oo that of
the hydrogen atom. They are apparently derivable from all
kinds of matter, and are believed to be components at any rate
of the chemical atom. The electronic theory of the chemical
atom supposes, in fact, that atoms are congeries of electrons
in rapid orbital motion. The size of the electron is to that of an
atom roughly in the ratio of a pin's head to the dome of St
Paul's cathedral. The electron is always associated with the unit
charge of negative electricity, and it has been suggested that
its inertia is wholly electrical. For further details see the
articles on ELECTRICITY; MAGNETISM; MATTER; RADIO-
ACTIVITY; CONDUCTION, ELECTRIC; The Electron Theory, E.
Fournier d'Albe (London, 1907); and the original papers of
Dr G. Johnstone Stoney, Proc. Brit. Ass. (Belfast, August 1874),
" On the Physical Units of Nature," and Trans. Royal Dublin
Society (1891). 4, p. 583.
ELECTROPHORUS. an instrument invented by Alessandro
Volta in 1775, by which mechanical work is transformed into
electrostatic charge by the aid of a small initial charge of electri-
city. The operation depends on the facts of electrostatic in-
duction discovered by John Canton in 1753, and, independently,
by J. K. Wilcke in 1762 (see ELECTRICITY). Volta, in a letter
to J. Priestley on the loth of June 1775 (see Collaione dell' opcre,
ed. 1816, vol. i. p. 118), described the invention of a device
be called an elettroforo perpetuo, based on the fact that a con-
ductor held near an electrified body and touched by the finger
was found, when withdrawn, to possess an electric charge of
opposite sign to that of the electrified body. His electrophorus
in one form consisted of a disk of non-conducting material, such
as pitch or resin, placed between two metal sheets, one being
provided with an insulating handle. For the pitch or resin
may be substituted a sheet of glass, ebonite, indiarubber or
any other good dielectric placed upon a metallic sheet, called
the sole-plate. To use the apparatus the surface of the dielectric
is rubbed with a piece of warm flannel, silk or cat skin, so as to
electrify it, and the upper metal plate is then placed upon it.
Owing to the irregularities in the surfaces of the dielectric and
upper plate the two are only in contact at a few points, and owing
1 See I. A. Fleming, Handbook for Ike Electrical Laboratory and
Testing Room. vol. i. p. 448 (London, 1901).
to the insulating quality of the dielectric its surface electrical
charge cannot move over it. It therefore acts inductively upon
the upper plate and induces on the adjacent surface an electric
charge of opposite sign. Suppose, for instance, that the dielectric
is a plate of resin rubbed with catskin, it will then be negatively
electrified and will act by induction on the upper plate across
the film of air separating the upper resin surface and lower
surface of the upper metal plate. If the upper plate is touched
with the finger or connected to earth for a moment, a negative
charge will escape from the metal plate to earth at that moment.
The arrangement thus constitutes a condenser; the upper plate
on its under surface carries a charge of positive electricity and
the resin plate a charge of negative electricity on its upper
surface, the air film between them being the dielectric of the
condenser. If, therefore, the upper plate is elevated, mechanical
work has to be done to separate the two electric charges. Ac-
cordingly on raising the upper plate, the charge on it, in old-
fashioned nomenclature, becomes free and can be communicated
to any other insulated conductor at a lower potential, the upper
plate thereby becoming more or less discharged. On placing
the upper plate again on the resin and touching it for a moment,
the process can be repeated, and so at the expense of mechanical
work done in lifting the upper plate against the mutual attraction
of two electric charges of opposite sign, an indefinitely large
electric charge con be accumulated and given to any other
suitable conductor. In course of time, however, the surface charge
of the resin becomes dissipated and it then has to be again excited.
To avoid the necessity for touching the upper plate every time
it is put down on the resin, a metal pin may be brought through
the insulator from the sole-plate so that each time that the
upper plate is put down on the resin it is automatically connected
to earth. We are thus able by a process of merely lifting the
upper plate repeatedly to convey a large electrical charge to
some conductor starting from the small charge produced by
friction on the resin. The above explanation does not take into
account the function of the sole-plate, which is important. The
sole-plate serves to increase the electrical capacity of the upper
plate when placed down upon the resin or excited insulator.
Hence when so placed it takes a larger charge. When touched
by the finger the upper plate is brought to zero potential. If
then the upper plate is lifted by its insulating handle its capacity
becomes diminished. Since, however, it carries with it the charge
it had when resting on the resin, its potential becomes increased
as its capacity becomes less, and it therefore rises to a high
potential, and will give a spark if the knuckle is approached to
it when it is lifted after having been touched and raised.
The study of Volta's electrophorus at once suggested the
performance of these cyclical operations by some form of rota-
tion instead of elevation, and led to the invention of various
forms of doubler or multiplier. The instrument was thus the
first of a long series of machines for converting mechanical work
into electrostatic energy, and the predecessor of the modern
type of influence machine (see ELECTRICAL MACHINE). Volta
himself devised a double and reciprocal electrophorus and also
made mention of the subject of multiplying condensers in a paper
published in the Phil. Trans, for 1782 (p. 237, and appendix,
p. vii.). He states, however, that the use of a condenser in
connexion with an electrophorus to make evident and multiply
weak charges was due to T. Cavallo (Phil. Trans., 1788).
For further information see S. P. Thompson, " The Influence
Machine from 1788 to 1888," Journ. Inst. Tel. Ene., 1888, 17, p. 569.
Many references to original papers connected with the electrophorus
will be found in A. Winkelmann's Ilandbuch der Physik (Breslau,
1005), vol. iv. p. 48. (J. A. F.)
ELECTROPLATING, the art of depositing metals by the
electric current. In the article ELECTROLYSIS it is shown how
the passage of an electric current through a solution containing
metallic ions involves the deposition of the metal on the cathode.
Sometimes the metal is deposited in a pulverulent form, at others
as a firm tenacious film, the nature of the deposit being dependent
upon the particular metal, the concentration of the solution, the
difference of potential between the electrodes, and other experi-
mental conditions. As the durability of the electro-deposited
ELECTROPLATING
coat on plated wares of all kinds is of the utmost importance,
the greatest care must be taken to ensure its complete adhesion.
This can only be effected if the surface of the metal on which
the deposit is to be made is chemically clean. Grease must
be removed by potash, whiting or other means, and tarnish
by an acid or potassium cyanide, washing in plenty of water
being resorted to after each operation. The vats for depositing
may be of enamelled iron, slate, glazed earthenware, glass,
lead-lined wood, &c. The current densities and potential
differences frequently used for some of the commoner metals
are given in the following table, taken from M'Millan's Treatise
on Electrometallurgy. It must be remembered, however, that
variations in conditions modify the electromotive force required
for any given process. For example, a rise in temperature of
the bath causes an increase in its conductivity, so that a lower
E.M.F. will suffice to give the required current density; on the
other hand, an abnormally great distance between the electrodes,
or a diminution in acidity of an acid bath, or in the strength of
the solution used, will increase the resistance, and so require
the application of a higher E.M.F.
Amperes.
Metal.
Per sq. decimetre
Per sq. in. of
Volts between
Anode and
of Cathode
Cathode
Cathode.
Surface.
Surface.
Antimony
0-4-0-5
0-02-0-03
I-O-I-2
Brass ....
0-5-0-8
0-03-0-05
3-0-4-0
Copper, acid bath
i -0-1-5
0-065-0-10
o-S-i-5
alkaline bath .
0-3-0-5
0-02-0-03
3-0-5-0
Gold
O-I
0-006
0-5-4-0
Iron ....
0-5
0-03
I-O
Nickel, at first
1-4-1-5
0-09-0-10
5-o
after
0-2-0-3
0-015 0-02
1-5-2-0
,, on zinc
0-4
0-025
4-0-5-0
Silver ....
0-2-0-5
0-015-0-03
0-75-1-0
Zinc ....
0-3-0-6
0-02-0-04
2-5-3-0
Large objects are suspended in the tanks by hooks or wires,
care being taken to shift their position and so avoid wire-marks.
Small objects are often heaped together in perforated trays or
ladles, the cathode connecting-rod being buried in the midst of
them. These require constant shifting because the objects are
in contact at many points, and because the top ones shield those
below from the depositing action of the current. Hence processes
have been patented in which the objects to be plated are suspended
in revolving drums between the anodes, the rotation of the drum
causing the constant renewalof surfacesand affording a burnishing
action at the same time. Care must be taken not to expose goods
in the plating-bath to too high a current density, else they may
be " burnt "; they must never be exposed one at a time to the
full anode surface, with the current flowing in an empty bath,
but either one piece at a time should be replaced, or some of the
anodes should be transferred temporarily to the place of the
cathodes, in order to distribute the current over a sufficient
cathode-area. Burnt deposits are dark-coloured, or even pul-
verulent and useless. The strength of the current may also
be regulated by introducing lengths of German silver or iron
wire, carbon rod, or other inferior conductors in the path of the
current, and a series of such resistances should always be provided
close to the tanks. Ammeters to measure the volume, and volt-
meters to determine the pressure of current supplied to the baths,
should also be provided. Very irregular surfaces may require
the use of specially shaped anodes in order that the distance
between the electrodes may be fairly uniform, otherwise the
portion of the cathode lying nearest to the anode may receive
an undue share of the current, and therefore a greater thickness
of coat. Supplementary anodes are sometimes used in difficult
cases of this kind. Large metallic surfaces (especially external
surfaces) are sometimes plated by means of a " doctor," which,
in its simplest form, is a brush constantly wetted with the
electrolyte, with a wire anode buried amid the hairs or bristles;
this brush is painted slowly over the surface of the metal to be
coated, which must be connected to the negative terminal of the
electrical generator. Under these conditions electrolysis of the
solution in the brush takes place. Iron ships' plates have recently
been coated with copper in sections (to prevent the adhesion of
barnacles), by building up a temporary trough against the side
of the ship, making the thoroughly cleansed plate act both as
cathode and as one side of the trough. Decorative plating-work
in several colours (e.g. " parcel-gilding ") is effected by painting
a portion of an object with a stopping-out (i.e. a non-conducting)
varnish, such as copal varnish, so that this portion is not coated.
The varnish is then removed, a different design stopped out, and
another metal deposited. By varying this process, designs in
metals of different colours may readily be obtained.
Reference must be made to the textbooks (see ELECTRO-
CHEMISTRY) for a fuller account of the very varied solutions and
methods employed for electroplating with silver, gold, copper,
iron and nickel. It should be mentioned here, however, that
solutions which would deposit their metal on any object by simple
immersion should not be generally used for electroplating that
object, as the resulting deposit is usually non-adhesive. For
this reason the acid copper-bath is not used for iron or zinc
objects, a bath containing copper cyanide or
oxide dissolved in potassium cyanide, being
substituted. This solution, being an inferior
conductor of electricity, requires a much higher
electromotive force to drive the current through
it, and is therefore more costly in use. It is,
however, commonly employed hot, whereby its.
resistance is reduced. Zinc is commonly de-
posited by electrolysis on iron or steel goods
which would ordinarily be " galvanized," but
which for any reason may not conveniently be
treated by the method of immersion in fused
zinc. The zinc cyanide bath may be used
for small objects, but for heavy goods the
sulphate bath is employed. Sherard Cowper-
Coles patented a process in which, working
with a high current density, a lead anode is used, and
powdered zinc is kept suspended in the solution to main-
tain the proportion of zinc in the electrolyte, and so to
guard against the gradual acidification of the bath. Cobalt
is deposited by a method analogous to that used for its^sister-
metal nickel. Platinum, palladium and tin are occasionally
deposited for special purposes. In the deposition of gold the
colour of the deposit is influenced by the presence of impurities
in the solution; when copper is present, some is deposited with
the gold, imparting to it a reddish colour, whilst a little silver
gives it a greenish shade. Thus so-called coloured-gold deposits
may be produced by the judicious introduction of suitable
impurities. Even pure gold, it may be noted, is darker or lighter
in colour according as a stronger or a weaker current is used.
The electro-deposition of brass mainly on iron ware, such as
bedstead tubes is now very widely practised, the bath employed
being a mixture of copper, zinc and potassium cyanides, the
proportions of which vary according to the character of the brass
required, and to the mode of treatment. The colour depends
in part upon the proportion of copper and zinc, and in part upon
the current density, weaker currents tending to produce a redder
or yellower metal. Other alloys may be produced, such as bronze,
or German silver, by selecting solutions (usually cyanides) from
which the current is able to deposit the constituent metals
simultaneously.
Electrolysis has in a few instances been applied to processes
of manufacture. For example, Wilde produced copper printing
surfaces for calico printing-rollers and the like by immersing
rotating iron cylinders as cathodes in a copper bath. Elmore,
Dumoulin, Cowper-Coles and others have prepared copper
cylinders and plates by depositing copper on rotating mandrels
with special arrangements. Others have arranged a means of
obtaining high conductivity wire from cathode-copper without
fusion, by depositing the metal in the form of a spiral strip on
a cylinder, the strip being subsequently drawn down in the
usual way; at present, however, the ordinary methods of wire
ELECTROSCOPE
239
production are found to be cheaper. J. W. Swan (Jaunt, lust.
Eltt. {., 1898, vol. xxvii. p. 16) also worked out, but did not
proceed with, a process in which a copper wire whilst receiving
a deposit of copper was continuously passed through the draw-
plate, and thus indefinitely extended in length. Cowper-Coles
(Joum. lust. Elet. Eng., 1808, 27, p. 09) very successfully
produced true parabolic reflectors for projectors, by depositing
copper upon carefully ground and polished glass surfaces rendered
conductive by a film of deposited silver.
ELECTROSCOPE, an instrument for detecting differences of
electric potential and hence electrification. The earliest form
of scientific electroscope was the rrrsorium
or electrical needle of William Gilbert ( 1 544-
1603), the celebrated author of the treatise
/.V mdtfm-fc' (sec ELECTRICITY). It consisted
simply of a light metallic needle balanced on
a pivot like a compass needle. Gilbert em-
ployed it to prove that numerous other
bodies besides amber are susceptible of being
electrified by friction. 1 In this case the
visible indication consisted in the attraction
exerted between the electrified body and the
light pivoted needle which was acted upon
and electrified by induction. The next im-
provement was the invention of simple forms
of repulsion electroscope. Two similarly
electrified bodies repel each other. Benjamin
I ^ft Franklin employed the repulsion of two linen
threads, C. F. de C. du Fay, J. Canton, W.
Henley and others devised the pith ball, or
double straw electroscope (fig. i). T. Cavallo
about 1770 employed two fine silver wires
terminating in pith balls suspended in a glass
vessel having strips of tin-foil pasted down
the sides (fig. 2). The object of the thimble-
shaped dome was to keep moisture from the
stem from which the pith balls were supported, so that the
apparatus could be used in the open air even in the rainy
weather. Abraham Bennet (Phil. .Trans., 1787, 77, p. 26)
invented the modern form of gold-leaf electroscope. Inside
a glass shade he fixed to an insulated wire a pair of strips
of gold-leaf (fig. 3). The wire terminated in a plate or
knob outside the vessel. When an electrified body was held
near or in contact with the knob, repulsion of the gold leaves
ensued. Volta added the condenser (Phil. Trans., 1782),
which greatly increased the power of the instrument. M.
} n.. i. Henley's
Electroscope.
Fie. 2. Cavallo's Electroscope. Fie. 3. Bennet's Electro-
scope.
Faraday, however, showed long subsequently that to bestow
upon the indications of such an electroscope definite meaning
1 See the English translation by the Gilbert Club of Gilbert's De
mafiutt, p. 49 (London, 1900).
it was necessary to place a cylinder of metallic gauze connected
to the earth inside the vessel, or better still, to line the glass
shade with tin-foil connected to the earth and observe through
a hole the indications of the gold leaves (fig. 4). Leaves of
aluminium foil may with advantage be substituted for gold-leaf,
and a scale is sometimes added to indicate the angular divergence
of the leaves.
The uses of an electroscope are, first, to ascertain if any body
is in a state of electrification, and secondly, to indicate the sign
of that charge. In connexion with the modern study of radio-
activity, the electroscope has become an instrument of great
usefulness, far outrivalling the spectroscope in sensibility.
Radio-active bodies are chiefly recognized by the power they
possess of rendering the air in their neighbourhood conductive;
hence the electroscope detects the presence of a radio-active body
by losing an electric charge given to it more quickly than it
would otherwise do. A third great use of the electroscope is
therefore to detect electric conductivity either in the air or in
any other body.
To detect electrification it is best to charge the electroscope
by induction. If an electrified body is held near the gold-leaf
electroscope the leaves diverge with electricity of the same sign
as that of the body being tested. If, without removing the
electrified body, the plate or knob of the electroscope is touched,
the leaves collapse. If the electroscope is insulated once more and
the electrified body removed, the leaves
again diverge with electricity of the
opposite sign to that of the body being
tested. The sign of charge is then deter-
mined by holding near the electroscope a
glass rod rubbed with silk or a sealing-
wax rod rubbed with flannel. If the
approach of the glass rod causes the
leaves in their final state to collapse,
then the charge in the rod was positive,
but if it causes them to expand still
more the charge was negative, and vice
versa for the sealing-wax rod. When
employing a Volta condensing electro-
scope, the following is the method of
procedure: The top of the electro-
scope consists of a flat, smooth plate
FIG. 4. Gold-Leaf
Electroscope.
of lacquered brass on which another plate of brass rests,
separated from it by three minute fragments of glass or
shellac, or a film of shellac varnish. If the electrified body
is touched against the upper plate whilst at the same time the
lower plate is put to earth, the condenser formed of the two plates
and the film of air or varnish becomes charged with positive
electricity on the one plate and negative on the other. On in-
sulating the lower plate and raising the upper plate by the glass
handle, the capacity of the condenser formed by the plates is
vastly decreased, but since the charge on the lower plate including
the gold leaves attached to it remains the same, as the capacity
of the system is reduced the potential is raised and therefore the
gold leaves diverge widely. Volta made use of such an electro-
scope in his celebrated experiments (1790-1800) to prove that
metals placed in contact with one another are brought to different
potentials, in other words to prove the existence of so-called
contact electricity. He was assisted to detect the small potential
differences then in question by the use of a multiplying condenser
or revolving doubler (see ELECTRICAL MACHINE). To employ the
electroscope as a means of detecting radio-activity, we have first
to test the leakage quality of the electroscope itself. Formerly
it was usual to insulate the rod of the electroscope by passing it
through a hole in a cork or mass of sulphur fixed in the top of
the glass vessel within which the gold leaves were suspended.
A further improvement consisted in passing the metal wire to
which the gold leaves were attached through a glass tube much
wider than the rod, the latter being fixed concentrically in the
glass tube by means of solid shellac melted and run in. This
insulation, however, is not sufficiently good for an electroscope
intended for the detection of radio-activity; for this purpose
240
ELECTROSTATICS
FIG. 5. Curie's Elec-
troscope.
it must be such that the leaves will remain for hours or days in
a state of steady divergence when an electrical charge has been
given to them.
In their researches on radio-activity M. and Mme P. Curie
employed an electroscope made as follows: A metal case
(fig. 5), having two holes in its sides, has a vertical brass strip B
attached to the inside of the lid by a block of sulphur SS or any
other good insulator. Joined to the strip is a transverse wire
terminating at one end in a knob C,
and at the other end in a condenser
plate P'. The strip B carries also a
strip of gold-leaf L, and the metal case
is connected to earth. If a charge is
given to the electroscope, and if any
radio-active material is placed on a
condenser plate P attached to the
outer case, then this substance be-
stows conductivity on the air between the plates P and P',
and the charge of the electroscope begins to leak away. The
collapse of the gold-leaf is* observed through an aperture in
the case by a miscroscope, and the time taken by the gold-
leaf to fall over a certain distance is proportional to the
ionizing current, that is, to the intensity of the radio-activity
of the substance.
A very similar form of electroscope was employed by J. P. L. J.
Elster and H. F. K. Geitel (fig. 6), and also by C. T. R. Wilson
(see Proc. Roy. Soc., 1901, 68, p. 152). A metal box has a metal
strip B suspended from a block or insulator by means of a bit of
sulphur or amber S, and to it is fastened a strip of gold-leaf L.
The electroscope is provided with a charging rod C. In a dry
atmosphere sulphur or amber is an early perfect insulator,
and hence if the air in the interior of the box is kept dry by
calcium chloride, the electroscope will hold its charge for a
long time. Any divergence or collapse of the gold-leaf can be
viewed by a microscope through an aperture in the side of the
case.
Another type of sensitive electroscope is one devised by
C. T. R. Wilson (Proc. Cam. Phil. Soc., 1903, 1 2, part 2). It con-
sists of a metal box placed on a tilting stand (fig. 7). At one end
is an insulated plate P kept at a potential of 200 volts or so above
the earth by a battery. At the other end is an insulated metal
wire having attached to it a thin strip of gold-leaf L. If the plate
P is electrified it attracts the strip which stretches out towards it.
Before use the strip is for one moment connected to the case, and
the arrangement is then tilted until the strip extends at a certain
angle. If then the s'tripof gold-leaf is raised or lowered in potential
it moves to or from the plate P, and its movement can be observed
by a microscope through a hole in the side of the box. There is
a particular angle of tilt of the case which gives a maximum
sensitiveness. Wilson found that with the plate electrified to
207 volts and with a tilt of the case of 30, if the gold-leaf was
raised one volt in potential above the case, it moved over 200
FIG. 6. Elster and
Geitel Electroscope.
FIG. 7. Wilson's Electroscope.
divisions of the micrometer scale in the eye-piece of the micro-
scope, 54 divisions being equal to one millimetre. In using the
instrument the insulated rod to which the gold-leaf is attached
is connected to the conductor, the potential of which is being
examined. In the use of all these electroscopic instruments it
is essential to bear in mind (as first pointed out by Lord Kelvin)
that what a gold-leaf electroscope really indicates is the difference
of potential between the gold-leaf and the solid walls enclosing
the air space in which they move. 1 If these enclosing walls are
made of anything else than perfectly conducting material, then
the indications of the instrument may be uncertain and meaning-
less. As already mentioned, Faraday remedied this defect by
coating the inside of the glass vessel in which the gold-leaves were
suspended to form an electroscope with tinfoil (see fig. 4).
In spite of these admonitions all but a few instrument makers
have continued to make the vicious type of instrument consisting
of a pair of gold-leaves suspended within a glass shade or bottle,
no means being provided for keeping the walls of the vessel
continually at zero potential.
See J. Clerk Maxwell, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, vol. i.
p. 300 (2nd ed., Oxford, 1881); H. M. Noad, A Manual of Electricity,
vol i. p. 25 (London, 1855); E. Rutherford, Radio-activity.
(J. A. F.)
ELECTROSTATICS, the name given to that department of
electrical science in which the phenomena of electricity at rest
are considered. Besides their ordinary condition all bodies are
capable of being thrown into a physical state in which they are
said to be electrified or charged with electricity. When in this
condition they become sources of electric force, and the space
round them in which this force is manifested is called an " electric
field " (see ELECTRICITY). Electrified bodies exert mechanical
forces on each other, creating or tending to create motion, and
also induce electric charges on neighbouring surfaces.
The reader possessed of no previous knowledge of electncal
phenomena will best appreciate the meaning of the terms em-
ployed by the aid of a few simple experiments. For this purpose
the following apparatus should be provided: (i) two small
metal tea-trays and some clean dry tumblers, the latter preferably
varnished with shellac varnish made with alcohol free from
water; (2) two sheets of ebonite rather larger than the tea-trays;
(3) a rod of sealing-wax or ebonite and a glass tube, also some
pieces of silk and flannel; (4) a few small gilt pith balls suspended
by dry silk threads; (5) a gold-leaf electroscope, and, if possible,
a simple form of quadrant electrometer (see ELECTROSCOPE and
ELECTROMETER); (6) some brass balls mounted on the ends
of ebonite penholders, and a few tin canisters. With the aid
of this apparatus, the principal facts of electrostatics can be
experimentally verified, as follows:
Experiment I. Place one tea-tray bottom side uppermost
upon three warm tumblers as legs. Rub the sheet of ebonite
vigorously with warm flannel and lay it rubbed side downwards
on the top of the tray. Touch the tray with the finger for an
instant, and lift up the ebonite without letting the hand touch
the tray a second time. The tray is then found to be electrified.
If a suspended gilt pith ball is held near it, the ball will first be
attracted and then repelled. If small fragments of paper are
scattered on the tray andthentheother tray held in the hand over
them, they will fly up and down rapidly. If the knuckle is
approached to the electrified tray, a small spark will be seen, and
afterwards the tray will be found to be discharged or unelectrified.
If the electrified tray is touched with the sealing-wax or ebonite
rod, it will not be discharged, but if touched with a metal wire,
the hand, or a damp thread, it is discharged at once. This shows
that some bodies are conductors and others non-conductors or
insulators of electricity, and that bodies can be electrified by
friction and impart their electric charge to other bodies. A
charged conductor supported on a non-conductor retains its
charge. It is then said to be insulated.
Experiment II. Arrange two tea-trays, each on dry tumblers
as before. Rub the sheet of ebonite with flannel, lay it face
downwards on one tray, touch that tray with the finger for a
moment and lift up the ebonite sheet, rub it again, and lay it
face downwards on the second tray and leave it there. Then
take two suspended gilt pith balls and touch them (a) both
against one tray; they will be found to repel each other; (V)
touch one against one tray and the other against the other tray,
and they will be found to attract each other. This proves the
existence of two kinds of electricity, called positive and negative.
1 See Lord Kelvin, " Report on Electrometers and Electrostatic
Measurements," Brit. Assoc. Report for 1867, or Lord Kelvins
Reprint of Papers on Electrostatics and Magnetism, p. 260.
ELECTROSTATICS
241
The first tea-tray is positively electrified, and the second
negatively. If an insulated brass ball is touched against the
first tray and then against the knob or plate of the electroscope,
the gold leaves will diverge. If the ball is discharged and
touched against the other tray, and then afterwards against
the previously charged electroscope, the leaves will collapse.
This shows that the two electricities neutralize each other's
effect when imparted equally to the same conductor.
Experiment III. Let one tray be insulated as before, and
the electrified sheet of ebonite held over it, but not allowed to
touch the tray. If the ebonite is withdrawn without touching
the tray, the latter will be found to be unclectrified. If whilst
holding the ebonite sheet over the tray the latter is also touched
with an insulated brass ball, then this ball when removed and
tested with the electroscope will be found to be negatively
electrified. Thcsignof the electrification imparted to the electro-
scope when so charged that is, whether positive or negative
can be determined by rubbing the sealing-wax rod with flannel
and the glass rod with silk, and approaching them gently to the
electroscope one at a time. The sealing-wax so treated is
electrified negatively or resinously, and the glass with positive
or vitreous electricity. Hence if the electrified sealing-wax rod
makes the leaves collapse, the elcctroscopic charge is positive,
but if the glass rod does the same, the electroscopic charge is
negative. Again, if, whilst holding the electrified ebonite over
the tray, we touch the latter for a moment and then withdraw
the ebonite sheet, the tray will be found to be positively electrified.
The electrified ebonite is said to act by " electrostatic induction "
on the tray, and creates on it two induced charges, one of positive
and the other of negative electricity. The last goes to earth when
the tray is touched, and the first remains when the tray is insulated
and the ebonite withdrawn.
Experiment I V. Place a tin canister on a warm tumbler and
connect it by a wire with the gold-leaf electroscope. Charge
positively a brass ball held on an ebonite stem, and introduce
it, without touching, into the canister. The leaves of the electro-
scope will diverge with positive electricity. Withdraw the ball
and the leaves will collapse. Replace the ball again and touch
the outside of the canister; the leaves will collapse. If then
the ball be withdrawn, the leaves will diverge a second time
with negative electrification. If, before withdrawing the ball,
after touching the outside of the canister for a moment the ball
is touched against the inside of the canister, then on withdrawing
it the ball and canister are found to be discharged. This experi-
ment proves that when a charged body acts by induction on
an insulated conductor it causes an electrical separation to take
place; electricity of opposite sign is drawn to the side nearest
the inducing body, and that of like sign is repelled to the remote
side, and these quantities are equal in amount.
Seat of Ike Electric Charge. So far we have spoken of electric
charge as if it resided on the conductors which are electrified.
The work of Benjamin Franklin, Henry Cavendish, Michael
Faraday and J. Clerk Maxwell demonstrated, however, that
all electric charge or electrification of conductors consists simply
in the establishment of a physical state in the surrounding
insulator or dielectric, which state is variously called electric
strain, electric displacement or electric polarisation. Under the
action of the same or identical electric forces the intensity of
this state in various insulators is determined by a quality of
them called their dielectric constant, specific inductive capacity
or inductivity. In the next place we must notice that electrifica-
tion is a measurable magnitude and in electrostatics is estimated
in terms of a unit called the electrostatic unit of electric quantity.
In the absolute C.G.S. system this unit quantity is defined as
follows: If we consider a very small electrified spherical con-
ductor, experiment shows that it exerts a repulsive force upon
another similar and similarly electrified body. Cavendish and
C. A. Coulomb proved that this mechanical force varies inversely
as the square of the distance between the centres of the spheres.
The unit of mechanical force in the " centimetre, gramme,
second " (C.G.S.) system of units is the dyne, which is approxi-
mately equal to 1/081 part of the weight of one gramme. A
very small sphere is said then to possess a charge of one electro-
static unit of quantity, when it repels another similar and
similarly electrified body with a force of one dyne, the centres
being at a distance of one centimetre, provided that the spheres
are in vacua or immersed in some insulator, the dielectric constant
of which is taken as unity. If the two small conducting spheres
are placed with centres at a distance d centimetres, and immersed
in an insulator of dielectric constant K. and carry charges of
Q and Q' electrostatic units respectively, measured as above
described, then the mechanical force between them is equal
to QQ'/Kd 1 dynes. For constant charges and distances the
mechanical forte is inversely as the dielectric constant.
Electric Force. If a small conducting body is charged with
Q electrostatic units of electricity, and placed in any electric
field at a point where the electric force has a value E, it will be
subject to a mechanical force equal to QE dynes, tending to
move it in the direction of the resultant electric force. This
provides us with a definition of a unit of electric force, for it is
the strength of an electric field at that point where a small
conductor carrying a unit charge is acted upon by unit mechanical
force, assuming the dielectric constant of the surrounding
medium to be unity. To avoid unnecessary complications we
shall assume this latter condition in all the following discussion,
which is equivalent simply to assuming that all our electrical
measurements are made in air or in vacua.
Owing to the confusion introduced by the employment of the
term force, Maxwell and other writers sometimes use the words
electromotive intensity instead of electric force. The reader should,
however, notice that what is generally called electric force is the
analogue in electricity of the so-called acceleration of gravity
in mechanics, whilst electrification or quantity] of electricity is
analogous to mass. If a mass of M grammes be placed in the
earth's field at a place where the acceleration of gravity has a
value g centimetres per second, then the mechanical force acting
on it and pulling it downwards is Mg dynes. In the same
manner, if an electrified body carries a positive charge Q electro-
static units and is placed in an electric field at a place where
the electric force or electromotive intensity has a value E units,
jt is urged in the direction of the electric force with a mechanical
force equal to QE dynes. We must, however, assume that the
charge Q is so small that it does not sensibly disturb the original
electric field, and that the dielectric constant of the insulator
is unity.
Faraday introduced the important and useful conception of
lines and tubes of electric force. If we. consider a very small
conductor charged with a unit of positive electricity to be placed
in an electric field, it will move or tend to move under the action
of the electric force in a certain direction. The path described
by it when removed from the action of gravity and all other
physical forces is called a line of electric force. We may other-
wise define it by saying that a line of electric force is a line so
drawn in a field of electric force that its direction coincides at
every point with the resultant electric force at that point. Let
any line drawn in an electric field be divided up into small elements
of length. We can take the sum of all the products of the length
of each element by the resolved part of the electric force in its
direction. This sum, or integral, is called the " line integral of
electric force" or the electromotive force (E.M.F.) along this line.
In some cases the value of this electromotive force between two
points or conductors is independent of the precise path selected,
and it is then called the potential difference (P.D.) of the two
points or conductors. We may define the term potential
difference otherwise by saying that it is the work done in carrying
a small conductor charged with one unit of electricity from one
point to the other in a direction opposite to that in which it
would move under the electric forces if left to itself.
Electric Potential. Suppose then that we have a conductor
charged with electricity ,we may imagine its surface to be divided
up into small unequal areas, each of which carries a unit charge
of electricity. If we consider lines of electric force to be drawn
from the boundaries of these areas, they will cut up the space
round the conductor into tubular surfaces called tubes of electric
242
ELECTROSTATICS
force, and each tube will spring from an area of the conductor
carrying a unit electric charge. Hence the charge on the con-
ductor can be measured by the number of unit electric tubes
springing from it. In the next place we may consider the charged
body to be surrounded by a number of closed surfaces, such that
the potential difference between any point on one surface and
the earth is the same. These surfaces are called "equipotential"
or " level surfaces," and we may so locate them that the potential
difference between two adjacent surfaces is one unit of potential;
that is, it requires one absolute unit of work (i erg) to move a
small body charged with one unit of electricity from one surface
to the next. These enclosing surfaces, therefore, cut up the space
into shells of potential, and divide up the tubes of force into
electric cells. The surface of a charged conductor is an equi-
potential surface, because when the electric charge is in equili-
brium there is no tendency for electricity to move from one part
to the other.
We arbitrarily call the potential of the earth zero, since all
potential difference is relative and there is no absolute potential
any more than absolute level. We call the difference of potential
between a charged conductor and the earth the potential of the
conductor. Hence when a body is charged positively its poten-
tial is raised above that of the earth, and when negatively it is
lowered beneath that of the earth. Potential in a certain
sense is to electricity as difference of level is to liquids or
difference of temperature to heat. It must be noted, how-
ever, that potential is a mere mathematical concept, and
has no objective existence like difference of level, nor is it
capable per se of producing physical changes in bodies, such
as those which are brought about by rise of temperature, apart
from any question of difference of temperature. There is,
however, this similarity between them. Electricity tends to
flow from places of high to places of low potential, water to flow
down hill, and heat to move from places of high to places of low
temperature. Returning to the case of the charged body with
the space around it cut up into electric cells by the tubes of force
and shells of potential, it is obvious that the number of these
cells is represented by the product QV, where Q is the charge and
V the potential of the body in electrostatic units. An electrified
conductoris astore of energy, and from the definition of potential
it is clear that the work done in increasing the charge q of a
conductor whose potential is v by a small amount dq, is iidq,
and since this added charge increases in turn the potential,
it is easy to prove that the work done in charging a conductor
with Q units to a potential V units is |QV units of work. Accord-
ingly the number of electric cells into which the space round is cut
up is equal to twice the energy stored up, or each cell contains
half a unit of energy. This harmonizes with the fact that the
real seat of the energy of electrification is the dielectric or in-
sulator surrounding the charged conductor. 1
We have next to notice three important facts in electrostatics
and some consequences flowing therefrom.
(i) Electrical Equilibrium and Potential. If there be any
number of charged conductors in a field, the electrification on
them being in equilibriumor at rest, the surfaceof each conductor
is an equipotential surface. For since electricity tends to move
between points or conductors at different potentials, if the
electricity is at rest on them the potential must be every-
where the same. It follows from this that the electric
force at the surface of the conductor has no component along
the surface, in other words, the electric force at the bounding
surface of the conductor and insulator is everywhere at right
angles to it.
By the surface density of electrification on a conductor is
meant the charge per unit of area, or the number of tubes of
electric force which spring from unit area of its surf ace. Coulomb
proved experimentally that the electric force just outside a
conductor at any point is proportional to the electric density at
that point. It can be shown that the resultant electric force
normal to the surface at a point just outside a conductor is
1 See Maxwell, Elementary Treatise on Electricity (Oxford, 1881),
p. 47.
equal to 4ircr, where a is the surface density at that point. This
is usually called Coulomb's Law. 2
(ii) Seat of Charge. The charge on an electrified conductor
is wholly on the surface, and there is no electric force in the
interior of a closed electrified conducting surface which does
not contain any other electrified bodies. Faraday proved this
experimentally (see Experimental Researches, series xi. 1173)
by constructing a large chamber or box of paper covered with
tinfoil or thin metal. This was insulated and highly electrified.
In the interior no trace of electric charge could be found when
tested,by electroscopes or other means. Cavendish proved it by
enclosing a metal sphere in two hemispheres of thin metal held
on insulating supports. If the sphere is charged and then the
jacketing hemispheres fitted on it and removed, the sphere is
found to be perfectly discharged. 3 Numerous other demonstra-
tions of this fact were given by Faraday. The thinnest possible
spherical shell of metal, such as a sphere of insulator coated with
gold-leaf, behaves as a conductor for static charge just as if it
were a sphere of solid metal. The fact that there is no electric
force in the interior of such a closed electrified shell is one
of the most certainly ascertained facts in the science of electro-
statics, and it enables us to demonstrate at once that particles
of electricity attract and repel each other with a force which is
inversely as the square of their distance.
We may give in the first place an elementary proof of the con-
verse proposition by the aid of a simple lemma:
Lemma. If particles of matter attract one another according
to the law of the inverse square the attraction of all sections
of a cone for a particle at the vertex is the same. Definition.
The solid angle subtended by any surface at a point is measured
by the quotient of its apparent surface by the square of its
distance from that point. Hence the total solid angle round
any point is 47r. The solid angles subtended by all normal
sections of a cone at the vertex are therefore equal, and since the
attractions of these sections on a particle at the vertex are
proportional to their distances from the vertex, they are nume/i-
cally equal to one another and to the solid angle of the cone.
Let us then suppose a spherical shell O to be electrified.
Select any point P in the interior and let a line drawn
through it sweep out a small double cone
(see fig. i). Each cone cuts out an area
on the surface equally inclined to the cone
axis. The electric density on the sphere
being uniform, the quantities of electricity
on these areas are proportional to the areas,
and if the electric force varies inversely as
the square of the distance, the forces
exerted by these two surface charges at the
point in question are proportional to the
solid angle of the little cone. Hence the forces due to the two
areas at opposite ends of the chord are equal and opposed.
Hence we see that if the whole surface of the sphere is divided
into pairs of elements by cones described through any interior
point, the resultant force at that point must consist of the sum
of pairs of equal and opposite forces, and is therefore zero.
For the proof of the converse proposition we must refer the
reader to the Electrical Researches of the Hon. Henry Cavendish,
p. 419, or to Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism,
2nd ed., vol. i. p. 76, where Maxwell gives an elegant proof that
if the force in the interior of a closed conductor is zero, the law
of the force must be that of the inverse square of the distance. 4
From this fact it follows that we can shield any conductor
entirely from external influence by other charged conductors
by enclosing it in a metal case. It is not even necessary that
1 See Maxwell, Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (3rd ed.,
Oxford, 1892), vol. i. p. 80.
* Maxwell, Ibid. vol. i. 743; also Electrical Researches of the Hon.
Henry Cavendish, edited by J. Clerk Maxwell (Cambridge, 1879),
p. 104.
4 Laplace (Mec. Cel. vol. i. ch. ii.) gave the first direct demonstra-
tion that no function of the distance except the inverse square can
satisfy the condition that a uniform spherical shell exerts no force
on a particle within it.
ELECTROSTATICS
243
this envelope should be of solid metal; a cage made of fine
metal wire gauze which permits objects in its interior to be seen
will yet be a perfect electrical screen for them. Electroscopes
and electrometers, therefore, standing in proximity to electrified
bodies can be perfectly shielded from influence by enclosing
them in cylinders of metal gauze.
Even if a charged and insulated conductor, such as an open
canister or deep cup, is not perfectly closed, it will be found that
a proof-plane consisting of a small disk of gilt paper carried at
the end of a rod of gum-lac will not bring away any charge if
applied to the deep inside portions. In fact it is curious to note
bow large an opening may be made in a vessel which yet remains
for all electrical purposes " a closed conductor." Maxwell
(Elementary Treatise. Sic., p. 15) ingeniously applied this fact to
the insulation of conductors. If we desire to insulate a metal
ball to make it hold a charge of electricity, it is usual to do so
by attaching it to a handle or stem of glass or ebonite. In this
case the electric charge exists at the point where the stem is
attached, and there leakage by creeping takes place. If, however,
e employ a hollow sphere and let the stem pass through a hole
in the side larger than itself, and attach the end to the interior
of the sphere, then leakage cannot take place.
Another corollary of the fact that there is no electric force in
the interior of a charged conductor is that the potential in the
interior is constant and equal to that at the surface. For by
the definition of potential it follows that the electric force in any
direction at any point is measured by the space rale of change
of potential in that direction or E - d\/dx. Hence if the force
is zero the potential V must be constant.
(iii.) Association of Positive and Negative Electricities. The
third leading fact in electrostatics is that positive and negative
electricity are always created in equal quantities, and that for
every charge, say, of positive electricity on one conductor there
must exist on some other bodies an equal total charge of negative
electricity. Faraday expressed this fact by saying that no
absolute electric charge could be given to matter. If we consider
the charge of a conductor to be measured by the number of
tubes of electric force which proceed from it, then, since each
tube must end on some other conductor, the above statement
is equivalent to saying that the charges at each end of a tube
of electric force are equal.
The facts may, however, best be understood and demonstrated
by considering an experiment due to Faraday, commonly called
the ice pail experiment, because he employed for it a pewter
ice pail (Exp. Res. vol. ii. p. 279, or Phil. Mag. 1843, 22). On
the plate of a gold-leaf electroscope place a metal canister
having a loose lid. Let a metal ball be suspended by a silk
thread, and the canister lid so fixed to the thread that when the
lid is in place the ball hangs in the centre of the canister. Let
the ball and lid be removed by the silk, and let a charge, say,
of positive electricity ( 4- Q) be given to the ball. Let the canister
be touched with the finger to discharge it perfectly. Then let
the ball be lowered into the canister. It will be found that as
it does so the gold-leaves of the electroscope diverge, but collapse
again if the ball is withdrawn. If the ball is lowered until the
lid is in place, the leaves take a steady deflection. Next let the
canister be touched with the finger, the leaves collapse, but
diverge again when the ball is withdrawn. A test will show that
in this last case the canister is left negatively electrified. If
before the ball is withdrawn, after touching the outside of the
canister with the finger, the ball is tilted over to make it touch
the inside of the canister, then on withdrawing it the canister
and ball are found to be perfectly discharged. The explanation
is as follows: the charge ( + Q) of positive electricity on the
ball creates by induction an equal charge ( Q) on the inside
of the canister when placed in it, and repels to the exterior
surface of the canister an equal charge ( + Q). On touching the
canister this last charge goes to earth. Hence when the ball is
touched against the inside of the canister before withdrawing it
a second time, the fact that the system is found subsequently
to be completely discharged proves that the charge -Q induced
on the inside of the canister must be exactly equal to the charge
i O on the ball, and also that the inducing action of the charge
+Q on the ball created equal quantities of electricity of opposite
sign, one drawn to the inside and the other repelled to the outside
of the canister.
Electrical Capacity. We must next consider the quality of a
conductor called its electrical capacity. The potential of a
conductor has already been defined as the mechanical work
which must be done to bring up a very small body charged with
a unit of positive electricity from the earth's surface or other
boundary taken as the place of zero potential to the surface of
this conductor in question. The mathematical expression for
this potential can in some cases be calculated or predetermined.
Thus, consider a sphere uniformly charged with Q units of positive
i In tricity. It is a fundamental theorem in attractions that a thin
spherical shell of matter which attracts according to the
law of the inverse square acts on all external points as
if it were concentrated at its centre. Hence a sphere
I'uleattml
off
tphtn.
having a charge Q repels a unit charge placed at a distance
x from its centre with a force Q/x* dynes, and therefore the work
W in ergs expended in bringing the unit up to that point from an
infinite distance is given by the integral
W-
(I).
Hence the potential at the surface of the sphere, and therefore
the potential of the sphere, is Q/K, where R is the radius of the sphere
in centimetres. The quantity of electricity which must be given
to the sphere to raise it to unit potential is therefore R electrostatic
units. The capacity of a conductor is defined to be the charge
required to raise its potential to unity, all other charged conductors
being at an infinite distance. This capacity is then a function of
the geometrical dimensions of the conductor, and can be mathe-
matically determined in certain cases. Since the potential of a small
charge of electricity dQ at a distance r is equal to dQ/r, and since the
potential of all parts of a conductor is the same in those cases in
which the distribution of surface density of electrification is uniform
or symmetrical with respect to some point or axis in the conductor,
we can calculate the potential by simply summing up terms like
orfS/r, where rfS is an element of surface, a the surface density ol
electricity on it, and r the distance from the symmetrical centre.
The capacity is then obtained as the quotient of the whole charge
by this potential. Thus the distribution of electricity on a sphere in
free space must be uniform, and all parts of the charge are at an
equal distance R from the centre. Accordingly the potential at
the centre is Q/R. But this must be the potential of the _
sphere, since all parts arc a_t the same potential V. Since
the capacity C is the ratio of charge to potential, the f
capacity of the sphere in free space is Q/V=-R, or is
numerically the same as its radius reckoned in centimetres.
We can thus easily calculate the capacity of a long thin wire like
a telegraph wire far removed from the earth, as follows: Let 2r
be the diameter of the wire, / its length, and a the uniform _
surface electric density. Then consider a thin annulus ,^* c *
of the wire of width dx; the charge on it is equal to <fc/n md
iirraldx units, and the potential V at a point on the axis
at a distance x from the annulus due to this elementary charge is
V
) -log.'
If, then, r is small compared with /, we have V ^irra log.//r. Hut
the charge is Q = 2rra, and therefore the capacity of the thin wire
is given by
C -1/2 log. //f (2).
A more difficult case is presented by the ellipsoid. 1 We have
first to determine the mode in which electricity distributes itself on
a conducting ellipsoid in free space. It must be such a _ . .
distribution that the potential in the interior will be
constant, since the electric force must be zero. It is a
well-known theorem in attractions that if a shell is made
of gravitative matter whose inner and outer surfaces are similar
ellipsoids, it exercises no attraction on a particle of matter in its
interior.* Consider then an ellipsoidal shell the axes of whose
bounding surfaces are (a, b, c) and (a+da), (b+db), (c + dc), where
da/a^db b=dc/c = p. The potential of such a shell at any internal
point is constant, and the cqui-potential surfaces for external space
are ellipsoids confocal with the ellipsoidal shell. Hence if we distri-
bute electricity over an ellipsoid, so that its density is everywhere
proportional to the thickness of a shell formed by describing round
1 The solution of the problem of determining the distribution en
an ellipsoid of a fluid the particles of which repel each other with a
force inversely as the nth power of the distance was first given by
George Green (see Ferrer's edition of Green's Collected Papers, p. 1 19.
1871).
See Thomson and Tail, Treatise on Natural Philosophy, 519.
244
ELECTROSTATICS
the ellipsoid a similar and slightly larger one, that distribution will
be in equilibrium and will produce a constant potential through-
out the interior. Thus if a is the surface density, & the thickness
of the shell at any point, and p the assumed volume density of the
matter of the shell, we have <r = Adp. Then the quantity of elec-
tricity on any element of surface <iS is A times the mass of the
corresponding element of the shell ; and if Q is the whole quantity
of electricity on the ellipsoid, Q = A times the whole mass of the shell.
This mass is equal to 4jro&cpju; therefore Q = A^rabcp^ a.nd&=np,
where p is the length of the perpendicular let fall from the centre
of the ellipsoid on the tangent plane. Hence
Accordingly for a given ejlipsoid the surface density of free
distribution of electricity on it is everywhere proportional to the
Caoaclt length of the perpendicular let fall from the centre on
. the tangent plane at that point. From this we can
..f .. determine the capacity of the ellipsoid as follows: Let
p be the length of the perpendicular from the centre of
the ellipsoid, whose equation is 3?/a 2 +y/& 2 +z 2 /c 2 = l to the tangent
plane at x,y,z. Then it can be shown that i//> 2 = x 2 /a 4 +y 2 /& 4 -|-z 2 /c''
(see Frost's Solid Geometry, p. 172). Hence the density <r is given by
: Q
and the potential at the centre of the ellipsoid, and therefore its
potential as a whole is given by the expression,
rV (x*la*+'flb*+z*lc*) ^'
Accordingly the capacity C of the ellipsoid is given by the equation
b
(5)-
(x 2 +y 2 +z 2 )V
It has been shown by Professor Chrystal that the above integral
may also be presented in the form, 1
1, f 00 _ d\ _
C"*J o V!( 22 2
The above expressions for the capacity of an ellipsoid of three unequal
axes are in general elliptic integrals, but they can be evaluated for
the reduced cases when the ellipsoid is one of revolution, and hence
in the limit either takes the form of a long rod or of a circular disk.
Thus if the ellipsoid is one of revolution, and ds is an element of
arc which sweeps out the element of surface dS, we have
= 2wydx/
2*V>,
- dX -
Hence, since <r = Qpl^Trab-,<rdS = Qdx/2a,
Accordingly the distribution of electricity is such that equal parallel
slices of the ellipsoid of revolution taken normal to the axis of
revolution carry equal charges on their curved surface.
The capacity C of the ellipsoid of revolution is therefore given by
the expression
1^1 r dx
If the ellipsoid is one of revolution round the major axis a (prolate)
and of eccentricity e, then the above formula reduces to
i+e'
(8).
Whereas if it is an ellipsoid of revolution round the minor axis b
(oblate), we have
J_ _sin-'ae
C tic
In each case we have C = a when e = O, and the ellipsoid thus becomes
a sphere.
In the extreme case when e = i, the prolate ellipsoid becomes a
long thin rod, and then the capacity is given by
which is identical with the formula (2) already obtained. In the
other extreme case the oblate spheroid becomes a circular disk
when e = I , and then the capacity C 2 = 2o/ir. This last result shows
that the capacity of a thin disk is 2/ir=i/i -571 of that of a sphere
of the same radius. Cavendish (Elec. Res. pp. 137 and 347) deter-
mined in 1773 experimentally that the capacity of a sphere was
1-541 times that of a disk of the same radius, a truly remarkable
result for that date.
Three other cases of practical interest present themselves, viz. the
1 See article " Electricity," Encyclopaedia Britannica (gth edition),
vol. yiii. p. 30. The reader is also referred to an article by Lord
Kelvin (Reprint of Papers on Electrostatics and Magnetism, p. 178),
entitled " Determination of the Distribution of Electricity on a
Circular Segment of a Plane, or Spherical Conducting Surface under
any given Influence," where another equivalent expression is given
for the capacity of an ellipsoid.
capacity of two concentric spheres, of two coaxial cylinders and of
two parallel planes.
Consider the case of two concentric spheres, a solid one enclosed
in a hollow one. Let RI be the radius of the inner sphere, R 2 the
inside radius of the outer sphere, and R 2 the outside
radius of the outer spherical shell. Let a charge +Q be
given to the inner sphere. Then this produces a charge
-Q on the inside of the enclosing spherical shell, and a """*""*
charge +Q on the outside of the shell. Hence the potential s P* eres -
V at the centre of the inner sphere is given by V = Q/R,-Q/R 2 +Q/R3.
If the outer shell is connected to the earth, the charge +Q on it
disappears, and we have the capacity C of the inner sphere given by
Such a pair of concentric spheres constitute a condenser (see LEYDEN
JAR), and it is obvious that by making R 2 nearly equal to RI, we may
enormously increase the capacity of the inner sphere. Hence the
name condenser.
The other case of importance is that of two coaxial cylinders.
Let a solid circular sectioned cylinder of radius RI be enclosed in a
coaxial tube of inner radius R 2 . Then when the inner
cylinder is at potential Vi and the outer one kept at c *P aclty
potential V 2 the lines of electric force between the cylinders *
are radial. Hence the electric force E in the interspace coaxlal
__ * 1__ _ ,1. i , e .4 *
potential V 2 the lines of electric force between the cylinders
are radial. Hence the electric force E in the interspace
varies inversely as the distance from the axis. Accordingly
the potential V at any point in the interspace is given by
E=-AV<2R=A/RorV=-A/R-'dR, (12),
where R is the distance of the point in the interspace from the axis,
and A is a constant. Hence V 2 -Vi=-A log R 2 /RL If we consider
a length I of the cylinder, the charge Q on the inner cylinder is
Q = 2irRil<r, where <r is the surface density, and by Coulomb's law
<r = Ei/4ir, where Ei=A/Ri is the force at the surface of the inner
cylinder.
Accordingly Q = 27rR,;A/4TRi=A//2. If then the outer cylinder
be at zero potential the potential V of the inner one is
V=A log (R 2 /Ri), and its capacity C = //2 log R 2 /Ri-
This formula is important in connexion with the capacity of electric
cables, which consist of a cylindrical conductor (a wire) enclosed
in a conducting sheath. If the dielectric or separating insulator
has a constant K, then the capacity becomes K times as great.
The capacity of two parallel planes can be calculated at once if we
neglect the distribution of the lines of force near the edges of the
plates, and assume that the only field is the uniform field
between the plates. Let Vi and V 2 be the potentials of
the plates, and let a charge Q be given to one of them.
If S is the surface of each plate, and d their distance, then pal
the electric force E in the space between them is E= P' aoes -
(Vi-V 2 )/<i. But if a is the surface density, =4, and <r = Q/S.
Hence we have
or C = Q/(Fr-V) =S/ 4 ir<J (13).
In this calculation we neglect altogether the fact that electric force
distributed on curved lines exists outside the interspace between the
plates, and these lines in fact extend from the back of one , .
plate to that of the other. G. R. Kirchhoff (Gesammelte ,,
Abhandl. p. 1 12) has given a full expression for the capacity "*
C of two circular plates of thickness t and radius r placed at any
distance d apart in air from which the edge effect can be calculated.
Kirchhoff's expression is as follows:
r ^
=
d+t
In the above formula is the base of the Napierian logarithms.
The first term on the right-hand side of the equation is the expression
for the capacity, neglecting the curved edge distribution of electric
force, and the other terms take into account, not only the uniform
field between the plates, but also the non-uniform field round the
edges and beyond the plates.
In practice we can avoid the difficulty due to irregular distribution
of electric force at the edges of the plate by the use of a guard plate
as first suggested by Lord Kelvin. 2 If a large plate has a .
circular hole cut in it, and this is nearly filled up by a
circular plate lying in the same plane, and if we place plates.
another large plate parallel to the first, then the electric field
between this second plate and the small circular plate is
nearly uniform; and if S is the area of the small plate and d
its distance from the opposed plate, its capacity may be calculated
by the simple formula C = S/4ir<i. The outer larger plate in which
the hole is cut is called the " guard plate," and must be kept at the
same potential as the smaller inner or " trap-door plate." The same
arrangement can be supplied to a pair of coaxial cylinders. By
placing metal plates on either side of a larger sheet of dielectric or
insulator we can construct a condenser of relatively large capacity.
The instrument known as a Leyden jar (q.v.) consists of a glass
bottle coated within and without for three parts of the way up with
tinfoil.
1 See Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism, vol. i. pp. 284-305 (3rd
ed., 1892).
ELECTROSTATICS
245
If we have a number of Mich condensers we can combine them in
' parallel " or in " aeries." If all the plates on one ide are connected
together and also those on the other, the condensers are
joined in parallel. If I',. (.',, C,. &c., are the separate
~* capacities, then Z(C) -Ci+d+C.-f- &c., is the total
capacity in parallel. If the condensers are so joined
that the inner coating of one is connected to the outer coating of the
m-\t. they arr said to be in serial. Since then they arc all charged
with the same quantity of electricity, and the total over all potent i.il
difference V U the sum of each of the individual potential ilillcrences
\ . \ ... V,, &c.. we have
Q-C,V,-C,V,-C.V,-&o.. and V-V,+V,+V,+&c.
The resultant capacity U C -Q/V, and
C-i/(i/Ci + i/C,+i/C.+&c)-i/S(i/C) (15)-
These rules provide means for calculating the resultant capacity
when any number of condensers arc joined up in any w.i> .
If one condenser U charged, and then joined in parallel with
another uncharged condenser, the charge U divided between them
in the ratio of their capacities. For if Ci and Ci are the capacities
and Qi and Q are the charges after contact, then Qt/Ci and Qi/C t
are the potential differences of the coatings and must be equal.
Hence ft/Ci-Qi/C, or Qi/Qi-Ci/Ct. It is worth noting that if
we have a charged sphere we can perfectly discharge it by introducing
it into the interior of another hollow insulated conductor and
making contact. The small sphere then becomes part of the interior
of the other and loses all charge.
Measurement of Capacity. Numerous methods have been devised
for the measurement of the electrical capacity of conductors in
those cases in which it cannot be determined by calculation. Such a
measurement may be an absolute determination or a relative one.
The dimensions of a capacity in electrostatic measure is a length (see
I'sus, PHYSICAL). Thus the capacity of a sphere in electrostatic
units (E.S.U.) is the same as the number denoting its radius in
centimetres. The unit of electrostatic capacity is therefore that of
a sphere of I cm. radius. 1 This unit is too small for practical purposes,
and hence a unit of capacity 900,000 greater, called a microfarad,
is generally employed. Thus for instance the capacity in free
space of a sphere i metres in diameter would be 100/900,000 =
l 9000 of a microfarad. The electrical capacity of the whole earth
considered as a sphere is about 800 microfarads. An absolute
measurement of capacity means, therefore, a determination in E.S.
units made directly without reference to any other condenser. On
the other hand there are numerous methods by which the capacities
of condensers may be compared and a relative measurement made
in terms of some standard.
One well-known comparison method is that of C. V. de Sauty.
The two condensers to be compared are connected in the branches
of a Wheatstone's Bridge (<?.r.) and the other two arms
completed with variable resistance boxes. These arms
are then altered until on raising or depressing the battery
key there U no sudden deflection cither way ofthe galvano-
If Ri and Ri are the arms' resistances and Ci and Ci the
condenser capacities, then when the bridge is balanced we have
R,:R,-C,:<V
Another comparison method much used in submarine cable work
is the method of mixtures, originally due to Lord Kelvin and usually
called Thomson and Gott's method. It depends on the principle
that if two condensers of capacity Ci and C are respectively charged
to potentials Vi and V t , and then joined in parallel with terminals
of opposite charge together, the resulting potential difference of the
two condensers will be V, such that
V JC.V.-C.V.)
(Q+Q)
and hence if V is zero we have Ci : Ci - V : Vi.
The method is carried out by charging the two condensers to be
compared at the two sections of a high resistance joining the ends
of a battery which is divided into two parts by a movable contact.'
This contact is shifted until such a point is found by trial that the
two condensers charged at the different sections and then joined as
above described and tested on a galvanometer show no charge.
Various special keys have been invented for performing the electrical
operations expedit'iously.
A simple method for condenser comparison is to charge the two
condenser* to the same voltage by a battery- and then discharge
them successively through a ballistic galvanometer (q.v.) and
observe the respective "throws" or deflections of the coil or needle.
These are proportional to the capacities. For the various precautions
necessary in conducting the above tests special treatises on electrical
testing must be consulted.
(16);
1 It U an interesting fact that Cavendish measured capacity in
" globular inches," using as his unit the capacity of a metal ball,
l in. in diameter. Hence multiplication of his values for capacities
by 2-54 reduces them to E.S. units in the C.G.S. system. See Elec.
Kei.p. 347-
For fuller details of these methods of comparison of capacities
A. Fleming, A Handbook for the Electrical Laboratory and
Room, vol. ii. ch. ii. (London, 1903).
see J
In the absolute determination of capacity we have to measure the
ratio of the charge of a condenser to its plate potential difference.
One of the best methods for doing this is to charge the
condenser by the known voltage of a battery, and then
j? i :. A.I L . . i . t.
discharge it through a galvanometer and repeat this _',.,,,,
process rapidly and successively. If a condenser of
capacity C is charged to potential V, and discharged n times per
second through a galvanometer, this scries of intermittent discharges
is equivalent to a current CV. Hence if the galvanometer is
calibrated by a potentiometer (q.v.) we can determine the value of
this current in amperes, and knowing the value of n and V thus
determine C. Various forms of commutator have been devised for
effecting this charge and discharge rapidly by J. J. Thomson, R. T.
Glazcbrook,]. A. Fleming and WTC. Clinton and others. 1 One form
consists of a tuning-fork electrically maintained in vibration of known
period, which closes an electric contact at every vibration and sets
another electromagnet in operation, which reverses a switch and
moves over one terminal of the condenser from a battery to a
galvanometer contact. In another form, a
revolving contact is used driven by an electric
motor, which consists of an insulating disk
having on its surface slips of metal ana three
wire brushes a, b, c (see fig. 2) pressing against
them. The metal slips arc so placed that, as
the disk revolves, the middle brush, connected
to one terminal of the condenser C, is alter-
nately put in conductive connexion with first
one and then the other outside brush, which
are joined respectively to the battery B and
galvanometer G terminals. From the speed
of this motor the number of commutations
per second can be determined. The above method is especially
useful for the determinations of very small capacities of the order
of 100 electrostatic units or so and upwards.
Dielectric constant. Since all electric charge consists in a state
of strain or polarization of the dielectric, it is evident that the
physical state and chemical composition of the insulator must
be of great importance in determining electrical phenomena.
Cavendish and subsequently Faraday discovered this fact, and
the latter gave the name " specific inductive capacity," or
" dielectric constant," to that quality of an insulator which
determines the charge taken by a conductor embedded in it
when charged to a given potential. The simplest method of
determiningit numerically is, therefore, that adopted by Faraday. 4
TABLE I. Dielectric Constants (K) of Solids (Kfor Air* l).
FIG. 2.
Substance.
K.
Authority.
Glass, double extra dense flint,
density 4-5 .
Glass, light flint, density 3-2 .
Glass, hard crown, density 2-485
Sulphur
9-896
6-72
6-61
2-24
2-88
3-84
4-0
2-94
2-05
3-15
J. Hopkinson
M
M. Faraday
Coullner
L. Boltzmann
P. J. Curie
P. R. Blondlot
Rosetti
Boltzmann
India-rubber, pure brown .
India-rubber, vulcanized, grey .
Gutta-percha
2-21
2-86
2-12
2-69
2-462
'977
2-32
Schiller
Elsas
Schiller
J. E!'H. Gordon
Gibson and Barclay
Boltzmann
2-29
1-99
2-95
J. Hopkinson
Gordon
Wallner
3-04
6-64
8-00
A. A. Winkelmann
I. Klemenci
P. J. Curie
Quartz
along optic axis . . .
perp. to optic axis . .
Ice at -23 .
7-98
5-97
4-55
4-49
78-0
E. M. L. Bouty
Elsas
P. I. Curie
P. J. Curie
Bouty
* See Fleming, Handbook for the Electrical Laboratory, vol. ii.
p. 130.
Faraday, Experimental Researches on Electricity, vol. i. 1252.
For a very complete set of tables of dielectric constants of solids,
liquids and gases see A. Winkelmann, Handbuch der Phystk, vol. iv.
pp. 98-148 (Breslau, 1905); also see Landolt and Bornstein's Tables
of Physical Constants (Berlin, 1894).
246
ELECTROSTATICS
He constructed two equal condensers, each consisting of a meta
ball enclosed in a hollow metal sphere, and he provided also
certain hemispherical shells of shellac, sulphur, glass, resin, &c.
which he could so place in one condenser between the ball anc
enclosing sphere that it formed a condenser with solid dielectric
He then determined the ratio of the capacities of the two con
densers, one with air and the other with the solid dielectric
This gave the dielectric constant K of the material. Taking
the dielectric constant of air as unity he obtained the fol
lowing values, for shellac K = 2-0, glass K = 1-76, and sulphur
K = 2-24.
Since Faraday's time, by improved methods, but depending
essentially upon the same principles, an enormous number ol
determinations of the dielectric constants of various insulators
solid, liquid and gaseous, have been made (see tables I., II., III.
and IV.). There are very considerable differences between the
values assigned by different observers, sometimes no doubt due
to differences in method, but in most cases unquestionably
depending on variations in the quality of the specimens examined.
The value of the dielectric constant is greatly affected by the
temperature and the frequency of the applied electric force.
TABLE II. Dielectric Constant (K) of Liquids.
Liquid.
K.
Authority.
Water at 17 C. .
80-88
F. Heenvagen
25" C. .
75-7
E. B. Rosa
i
;, ,, 2 5 -3 C.
78-87
Franke
]
Olive oil
Castor oil
3'i6
4-78
Hopkinson
i
Turpentine . .
2-15
P. A.'Silow
i
Petroleum . .
2-23
2-072
Hopkinson
Silow
1
t
Ethyl'alcohoi at 25 C.
2-07
257
Hopkinson
Rosa
c
Ethyl ether . .
4'57
Doule
C
!
4-8
Bouty
Acetic acid . .
97
Franke
I
TABLE III. -Dielectric Constant of some Bodies at a very low
C
Temperature ( 185 C.) (Fleming and Dewar).
1
Substance.
K
at 15 C.
K
at-l85C.
I
C
Water
80
2-4 to 2-9
Formic acid
62
2-41
Glycerine .
56
3-2
I
Methyl alcohol
34
3-13
;i
Nitrobenzene .
3 2
2-6
"
Ethyl alcohol .
25
3' 1
Acetone .
21-85
2-62
t
Ethyl nitrate
I7'7
2-73
t
Amyl alcohol
16
2-14
;
Aniline
7'5
2-92
Castor oil
4-78
2-19
o
Ethyl ether .
4-25
2-31
(
:\
The above determinations at low temperature were made
with either a steady or a slowly alternating electric force applied
a hundred times a second. They show that the dielectric
constant of a liquid generally undergoes great reduction in value
when the liquid is frozen and reduced to a low temperature. 1
The dielectric constants of gases have been determined by
L. Boltzmann and I. Klemencic' as follows:
1 See the following papers by J. A. Fleming and James Dewar
on dielectric constants at low temperatures: " On the Dielectric
Constant of Liquid Oxygen and Liquid Air," Proc. Roy. Soc., 1897,
60, p. 360; " Note on the Dielectric Constant of Ice and Alcohol
at very low Temperatures," ib., 1897, 61, p. 2; " On the Dielectric
Constants of Pure Ice, Glycerine, Nitrobenzol and Ethylene Di-
bromide at and above the Temperature of Liquid Air," id. ib.
p. 316; " On the Dielectric Constant of Certain Frozen Electrolytes
at and above the Temperature of Liquid Air," id. ib. p. 299 this
paper describes the cone condenser and methods used; " Further
Observations on the Dielectric Constants of Frozen Electrolytes
at and above the Temperature of Liquid Air," id. ib. p. 381 ; " The
Dielectric Constants of Certain Organic Bodies at and below the
Temperature of Liquid Air," id. ib. p. 358; "On the Dielectric
Constants of Metallic Oxides dissolved or suspended in Ice cooled
to the Temperature of Liquid Air," id. ib. p. 368.
TABLE IV. Dielectric Constants (K) of Cases at 15 C. and 760 mm.
Vacuum = i.
Gas.
Dielectric
Constant
K.
VK.
Optical
Refractive
Index.
M-
Air
Hydrogen ....
Carbon dioxide ....
Carbon monoxide
Nitrous oxide
Ethylene
000946
000690
000994
001312
000475
000345
000497
000454
000335
000516
Marsh gas (methane)
Carbon bisulphide
Sulphur dioxide .
Ether
000944
002900
00954
000478
001450
004770
000442
001478
000703
Ethyl chloride ....
Ethyl bromide ....
01552
01546
007760
007730
00154
001174
OOI22
In general the dielectric constant is reduced with decrease of
temperature towards a certain limiting value it would attain
at the absolute zero. This variation, however, is not always,
linear. In some cases there is a very sudden drop at or below
a certain temperature to a much lower value, and above and
below the point the temperature variation is small. There is also
a large difference in most cases between the value for a steadily
applied electric force and a rapidly reversed or intermittent
force in the last case a decrease with increase of frequency.
Maxwell (Elec. and Magn. vol. ii. 788) showed that the square
root of the dielectric constant should be the same number as the
refractive index for waves of the same frequency (see ELECTRIC
WAVES). There are very few substances, however, for which
the optical refractive index has the same value as K for steady
or slowly varying electric force, on account of the great variation
of the value of K with frequency.
There is a close analogy between the variation of dielectric
constant of an insulator with electric force frequency and that
of the rigidity or stiffness of an elastic body with the frequency
of applied mechanical stress. Thus pitch is a soft and yielding
body under steady stress, but a bar of pitch if struck gives a
musical note, which shows that it vibrates and is therefore stiff
or elastic for high frequency stress.
Residual Charges in Dielectrics. In close connexion with this
ies the phenomenon of residual charge in dielectrics. 2 If a glass
Leyden jar is charged and then discharged and allowed to stand
awhile, a second discharge can be obtained from it, and in like
manner a third, and so on. The reappearance of the residual
charge is promoted by tapping the glass. It has been shown
that this behaviour of dielectrics can be imitated by a mechanical
model consisting of a series of perforated pistons placed in a tube
of oil with spiral springs between each piston. 3 If the pistons are
depressed and then released, and then the upper piston fixed
awhile, a second discharge can be obtained from it, and the
mechanical stress-strain diagram of the model is closely similar
to the discharge curve of a dielectric. R. H. A. Kohlrausch
called attention to the close analogy between residual charge
and the elastic recovery of strained bodies such as twisted wire
or glass threads. If a charged condenser is suddenly discharged
and then insulated, the reappearance of a potential difference
>etween its coatings is analogous to the reappearance of a torque
n the case of a glass fibre which has been twisted, released
suddenly, and then gripped again at the ends.
For further information on the qualities of dielectrics the reader is
eferred to the following sources: J. Hopkinson, " On the Residual
Charge of the Leyden Jar," Phil. Trans., 1876, 166 [ii.], p. 489,
where it is shown that tapping the glass of a Leyden jar permits the
eappearance of the residual charge; " On the Residual Charge of
2 See Faraday, Experimental Researches, vol. i. 1245; R. H. A.
Cohlrausch, Pogg. Ann., 1854, 9 1 '< s 66 also Maxwell, Electricity
.nd Magnetism, vol. i. 327, who shows that a composite or stratified
dielectric composed of layers of materials of different dielectric
Constants and resistivities would exhibit the property of residual
harge.
3 Fleming and Ashton, " On a Model which imitates the behaviour
f Dielectrics," Phil. Mag., 1901 [6], 2, p. 228.
ELECTROSTATICS
247
the Lrvden Jar." if. 167 fii.). p. 590, containing many valuable
observation* on the residual charge of Leyden jars; W. E. Ayrton
and J. Perry, " A Preliminary Account of the Rtiliu-tion of Observa-
tions oa Strained Material. Leyden Jar* and Voltameters," Prix.
Roy. Sat.. 1880, 30, p. 411. showing experiments on residual charge
of rmftrntT"' and a comparison between the Ix'h.iviour of dielectrics
and glass fibres under torsion. In connexion with this paper the
reader may also be referred to one by L. Boltxmann, " Xur T heoric
der rUutischen Nachwirkung," Wieu. Acad. 5tff.-Br., 1874, 70.
Distribution of EUtlriciiy on Conductors. We now proceed to
ronstdrr in more detail the laws which govern the distribution of
electricity at rest upon conductors. It has been shown above that
the potential due to a charge of g units placed on a very small
sphere, commonly called a point -charge, at any distance x is g/x.
The mathematical importance of this function called the potential
U that it is a scalar quantity, and the potential at any point due to
any number of point charges?!. 91, ?i. &c., distributed in any manner,
is the sum of them separately, or
./x,+fc/x,+},/x,+&c.-Z(j/:t)-V (17),
where >i, zi, XL Sec., are the distances of the respective point charges
from the point in question at which the total potential is required.
The resultant electric force E at that point is then obtained by
differentiating V, since E -dV/dx, and t is in the direction in which
V diminishes fastest. In any case, therefore, in which we can sum
up the elementary potentials at any point we can calculate the
resultant electric force at the same point.
We may describe, through all the points in an electric field which
have the same potential, surfaces called cquipotential surfaces, and
these will be everywhere perpendicular or orthogonal to the lines of
electric force. Let us assume the field divided up into tubes of electric
force as already explained, and these cut normally by cquipotential
surfaces. We can then establish some important properties of these
tubes and surfaces. At each point in the field the electric force can
have but one resultant value. Hence the equipotential surfaces
cannot cut each other. Let us suppose any other surface described
in the electric field so as to cut the closely compacted tubes. At
each point on this surface the resultant force has a certain value,
and a certain direction inclined at an angle 9 to the normal to i In-
selected surface at that point. Let rfS be an element of the surface.
Then the quantity E cos MS is the product of the normal component
of the force and an element of the surface, and if this is summed
up all over the surface we have the total electric flux or induction
through the surface, or the surface integral of the normal force
mathematically expressed by/E cos MS, provided that the dielectric
constant of the medium is unity.
We have then a very important theorem as follows: If any closed
-urface be described in an electric field which wholly encloses or
wholly excludes electrified bodies, then the total flux through this
surface is equal to 41-- times the total quantity of electricity
within it. 1 This is commonly called Stokes's theorem. The proof
\ as follows: Consider any point-charge E of electricity included
in any surface S, S, S (see fig. 3), and describe through it as centre
a cone of small solid angle da cutting out
of the enclosing surface in two small
areas dS and <>' at distances x and x'.
Then the electric force due to the point
'charge q at distance x is g/x, and the
resolvea part normal to the element of
surface <K> is q cos9/x*. The normal sec-
tion of the cone at that point is equal to
rfS cos0, and the solid angle du is equal
to dS cos0/x*. Hence the flux through
dS is qda. Accordingly, since the total
solid angle round a point is 4*-, it follows
that the total flux through the closed surface due to the single point
charge g is 4*4t and what is true for one point charge is true for any
collection forming a total charge Q of any form. Hence the total
electnc flux due to a charge Q through an enclosing surface is^rQ,
and therefore is zero through one enclosing no electricity.
Stokes's theorem becomes an obvious truism if applied to an
incompressible fluid. Let a source of fluid be a point from which an
incompressible fluid is emitted in all directions. Close to the source
he*'* I'"" will be radial lines. Let a very small sphere be
described round the source, and let the strength of the source be
fined as the total flow per second through the surface of this small
sphere. Then if we have any number of sources enclosed by any
surface, the total flow per second through this surface is equal to
the total strengths of all the sources. If, however, we defined the
strength of the source by the statement that the strength divided
The beginner is often puzzled by the constant appearance of the
factor 4x in electrical theorems. It arises from the manner in which
the unit quantity of electricity is defined. The electric force due to a
point-charge q at a distance r is defined to be g/r>, and the total flux
or induction through the sphere of radius r is therefore 41-0. If,
however, the unit point charge were defined to be that which pro-
duces a unit of electric flux through a circumscribing spherical
surface or the electric force at distance r defined to be 1/4***,
many theorems would be enunciated in simpler forms.
FIG. 3.
by the square of the distance gives the velocity of the liquid at that
point, then the total flux through any enclosing surface would be
4r times the strengths of all the sources enclosed. To every pro-
position in electrostatics there is thus a corresponding one in the
hydrokinetic theory of incompressible liquids.
Let us apply the above theorem to the case of a small parallel-
epipedon or rectangular prism having sides dx, dy, dt respectively,
its centre having co-ordinates (x, y, t). Its angular points have then
co-ordinates (*flfe y*Jrfv, ** J<fo). Let this rectangular prism
be supposed to be wholly filled up with electricity of density p;
then the total quantity in it is pdxdydt. Consider the two faces
perpendicular to the x-axis. Let V be the potential at the centre of
the pnsm, then the normal forces on the two faces of area dy.dx arc
respectively
and similar expressions for the normal forces to the other pairs of
faces dx.dv, dt.dx. Hence, multiplying these normal forces by the
areas of the corresponding faces, we have the total flux parallel to
the x-axis given by -(d'V /d^dx dy dz, and similar expressions for
the other sides. Hence the total flux is
and by the previous theorem this must be equal to ^
This celebrated equation was first given by S. D. Poisson, although
previously demonstrated by Laplace for the case when p = o. It
defines the condition which must be fulfilled by the potential at any
and every point in an electric field, through which p is finite and the
electric force continuous. It may be looked upon as an equation
to determine p when V is given or vice versa. An exactly similar
expression holds good in hydrokinetics, provided that for the
electric potential we substitute velocity potential, and for the electric
force the velocity of the liquid.
The Poisson equation cannot, however, be applied in the above
form to a region which is partly within and partly without an
electrified conductor, because then the electric force undergoes a
sudden change in value from zero to a finite value, in passing out-
wards through the bounding surface of the conductor. We can,
however, obtain another equation called the " surface characteristic
equation " as follows: Suppose a very small area <*S described on a
conductor having a surface density of electrification a. Then let a
small, very short cylinder be described of which <fS is a section,
and the generating lines are normal to the surface. Let Vi and Vi
be the potentials at points just outside and inside the surface <fS,
and let n t and n be the normals to the surface dS drawn outwards
and inwards; then -dVi/dtii and -dVidn, are the normal com-
ponents of the force over the ends of the imaginary small cylinder.
But the force perpendicular to the curved surface of this cylinder is
everywhere zero. Hence the total flux through the surface considered
is -f(rfVi/<fi) + (dVi/dn,)\dS, and this by a previous theorem must
be equal to 4-radS, or the total included electric quantity. Hence
we have the surface characteristic equation, 1
(d\i/dn 1 )+(dVt/dn,)+4T < r=o (19).
Let us apply these theorems to a portion of a tube of electric force.
Let the part selected not include any charged surface. Then since
the generating lines of the tube are lines of force, the component of
the electric force perpendicular to the curved surface of the tube is
everywhere zero. But the electric force is normal to the ends
of the tube. Hence if dS and dS' are the areas of the ends, and +E
and -E' the oppositely directed electric forces at the ends of the
tube, the surface integral of normal force on the flux over the tube is
EdS-E'dS' (20),
and this by the theorem already given is equal to zero, since the tube
includes no electricity. Hence the characteristic quality of a tube
of electric force is that its section is everywhere inversely as the
electric force at that point. A tube so chosen that ErfS for one section
has a value unity, is called a unit tube, since the product of force
and section is then everywhere unity for the same tube.
In the next place apply the surface characteristic equation to any
point on a charged conductor at which the surface density is a.
The electric force outward from that point is -d\/dn, where dn is a
distance measured along the outwardly drawn normal, and the force
within the surface is zero. Hence we have
-dV/dn - jra or a <= -( i /4T)dV/dn - E/4*.
The above is a statement of Coulomb's law, that the electric fora at
the surface of a conductor is proportional to the surface density of the
charge at that point and equal to 4* times the density.'
1 See Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism, vol. i. 78b (2nd ed.).
' Id. ib. vol. i. 80. _ Coulomb proved the proportionality of electric
surface force to density, but the above numerical relation E-=4ira
was first established by Poisson.
248
ELECTROSTATICS
If we define the positive direction along a tube of electric force
as the direction in which a small body charged with positive elec-
tricity would tend to move, we can summarize the above facts in a
simple form by saying that, if we have any closed surface described
in any manner in an electric field, the excess of the number of unit tubes
which leave the surface over those which enter it is equal to ^.-r-limes
the algebraic sum of all the electricity included within the surface.
Eveiy tube of electric force must therefore begin and end on
electrified surfaces of opposite sign, and the quantities of positive
and negative electricity on its two ends are equal, since the force E
just outside an electrified surface is normal to it and equal to <r/4ir,
where a is the surface density; and since we have just proved that
for the ends of a tube of force EdS = E'dS', it follows that adS = y'dS',
or Q = Q', where Q and Q' are the quantities of electricity on the ends
of the tube of force. Accordingly, since every tube sent out from a
charged conductor must end somewhere on another charge of
opposite sign, it follows that the two electricities always exist in
equal quantity, and that it is impossible to create any quantity
of one kind without creating an equal quantity of the opposite sign.
We have next to consider the energy storage which takes place
when electric charge is created, i.e. when the dielectric is strained or
polarized. Since the potential of a conductor is defined to be the
work required to move a unit of positive electricity from the surface
of the earth or from an infinite distance from all electricity to the
surface of the conductor, it follows that the work done in putting a
small charge dq into a conductor at a potential v is v dq. Let us then
suppose that a conductor originally at zero potential has its potential
raised by administering to it small successive doses of electricity dq.
The first raises its potential to v, the second to v' and so on, and the
nth to V. Take any horizontal line and divide it into small elements
of length each representing dq, and draw vertical lines representing
the potentials v, v', &c., and after each dose. Since the potential
rises proportionately to the quantity in the conductor, the ends of
these ordinates will lie on a straight line
and define a triangle whose base line is a
length equal to the total quantity Q and
V height a length equal to the final poten-
tial V. The element of work done in
introducing the quantity of electricity
dq at a potential v is represented by the
element of area of this triangle (see fig.
4), and hence the work done in charging
the conductor with quantity Q to final
potential V is $QV, or since Q = CV, where C is its capacity, the
work done is represented by JCV 2 or by iQ 2 /C.
If a is the surface density and dS an element of surface, then
fydS is the whole charge, and hence J/V<rdS is the expression for the
energy of charge of a conductor.
We can deduce a remarkable expression for the energy stored up
in an electric field containing electrified bodies as follows: 1 Let V
denote the potential at any point in the field. Consider the integral
where the integration extends throughout the whole space unoccupied
by conductors. We have by partial integration
and two similar equations in y and z. Hence
where dV/dn means differentiation along the normal, and v stands
d? a z a t
for the operator ^2+352+^2- Let E be the resultant electric force
at any point in the field. Then bearing in mind that a = (i/4v)dV/dn,
and p=-(i/47r)vV, we have finally
The first term on the right hand side expresses the energy of the
surface electrification of the conductors in the field, and the second
the energy of volume density (if any). Accordingly the term on
the left hand side gives us the whole energy in the field.
Suppose that the dielectric has a constant K, then we must multiply
both sides by K and the expression for the energy per unit of volume
of the field is equivalent to JDE where D is the displacement or
polarization in the dielectric.
Furthermore it can be shown by the application of the calculus of
variations that the condition for a minimum value of the function W,
is that yV = o. Hence that distribution of potential which is neces-
1 See Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism, vol. i. 993 (3rd ed.,
1892), where the expression in question is deduced as a corollary of
Green's theorem.
sary to satisfy Laplace's equation is also one which makes the
potential energy a minimum and therefore the energy stable. Thus
the actual distribution of electricity on the conductor in the field is
not merely a stable distribution, it is the only possible stable
distribution.
Method of Electrical Images. A very powerful method of attacking
problems in electrical distribution was first made known by Lord
Kelvin in 1845 and is described as the method of electrical images. 2
By older mathematical methods it had only been possible to predict
in a few simple cases the distribution of
electricity at rest on conductors of various
forms. The notion of an electrical image
may be easily grasped by the following
illustration: Let there be at A (see fig. 5)
a point-charge of positive electricity +q
and an infinite conducting plate PO,
shown in section, connected to earth and
therefore at zero potential. Then the
charge at A together with the induced
surface charge on the plate makes a cer-
tain field of electric force on the left of
the plate PO, which is a zero equipotential
surface. If we remove the plate, and
FIG.
yet by any means can keep the identical surface occupied by it
a plane of zero potential, the boundary conditions will remain
the same, and therefore the field of force to the left of PO
will remain unaltered. This can be done by placing at B an equal
negative point-charge -q in the place which would be occupied
by the optical image of A if PO were a mirror, that is, let -q
be placed at B, so that the distance BO is equal to the distance
AO, whilst AOB is at right angles to PO. Then the potential at any
point P in this ideal plane PO is equal to g/AP-g/BP = O, whilst the
resultant force at P due to the two point charges is ajAO/AP 3 , and
is parallel to AB or normal to PO. Hence if we remove the charge
-q at B and distribute electricity over the surface PO with a surface
density a, according to the Coulomb- Poisson law, <7 = gAO/27rAP 3 ,
the fiejd of force to the left of PD will fulfil the required boundary
conditions, and hence will be the law of distribution of the induced
electricity in the case of the actual plate. The point-charge -q at B
is called the " electrical image " of the point-charge +? at A.
We find a precisely analogous effect in optics which justifies the
term " electrical image." Suppose a room lit by a single candle.
There is everywhere a certain illumination due to it. Place across
the room a plane mirror. All the space behind the mirror will
become dark, and all the space in front of the mirror will acquire
an exalted illumination. Whatever this increased illumination may
be, it can be precisely imitated by removing the mirror and placing
a sec<3nd lighted candle at the place occupied by the optical image
of the first candle in the mirror, that is, as far behind the plane as
the first candle was in front. So the potential distribution in the
space due to the electric point-charge +3 as A together with -q at
B is the same as that due to +q at A and the negative induced charge
erected on the infinite plane (earthed) metal sheet placed half-way
between A and B.
The same reasoning can be applied to determine the electrical
image of a point-charge of positive electricity in a spherical surface,
and therefore the distribution of in-
duced electricity over a metal sphere
connected to earth produced by a
point-charge near it. Let -\-q be
any positive point-charge placed at
a point A outside a sphere (fig. 6) of
radius r, and centre at C, and let P
be any point on it. Let CA. = d.
Take a point B in CA such that
CB-CA = r 2 , or CB=r 2 /<i. It is easy
then to show that PA : PB =d : r. If
then we put a negative point-charge -qr/d at B, it follows that the
spherical surface will be a zero potential surface, for
A-'-a--lk= ^
Another equipotential surface is evidently a very small sphere
described round A. The resultant force due to these two point-
charges must then be in the direction CP.and its value E is the vector
sum of the two forces along AP and BP due to the two point-charges.
It is not difficult to show that
E--(<P-r)s/rAP . . . (25),
in other words, the force at P is inversely as the cube of the distance
from A. Suppose then we remove the negative point-charge, and
let the sphere be supposed to become conductive and be connected
to earth. If we make a distribution of negative electricity over it,
which has a density a varying according to the law
<r=-(<f ! -r 2 )g/47rrAP J . . . (26),
that distribution, together with the point-charge +g at A, will
make a distribution of electric force at all points outside the sphere
FIG. 6.
3 See Lord Kelvin's Papers on Electrostatics and Magnetism, p. 144.
ELECTROTHERAPEUTICS
249
exactly similar to that which would exist if the sphere were removed
and a negative point charge qrld were placed at H. Hence this
charge is the electrical image of the charge +fl at A in the sphcru.il
-urface.
We may generalize these statements in the following theorem,
which is an important iletluaion from a wider theorem due to G.
Green. Suppose that we have any distribution of electricity at rest
over conductors, and that we know the potential at all points and
consequently the level or equipotential surfaces. Take any equi-
I-. rriiu.il surface enclosing the whole of the electricity, and suppose
this to become an actual sheet of metal connected to the earth.
It U then a zero potential surface, and every point outside is at zero
potential a* far as concerns the electric charge on the conductors
inside. Then if U is the potential outside the surface due to this
electric charge inside alone, and V that due to the opposite charge
it induces on the inside of the metal surface, we must have U+V O
or U V at all points outside the earthed metal surface. There-
fore, whatever may be the distribution of electric force produced
by the charge* inside taken alone, it can be exactly imitated for all
*p*ce outside the metal surface if we suppose the inside charge
removed and a distribution of electricity of the same sign made
.m-r the metal surface such that its density follows the law
~-(l/4w)dV/dn . . (37).
where dVldn U the electric force at that point on the closed equi-
potential surface considered, due to the original charge alone.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. For further developments of the subject we must
refer the reader to the numerous excellent treatises on electrostatics
now available. The student will find it to be a great advantage to
read through Faraday's three volumes entitled Experimental Re-
uarckes on Electricity, as soon as he has mastered some modern
elementary book giving in compact form a general account of
electrical phenomena. For this purpose he may select from the
following oooks: J. Clerk Maxwell, Elementary Treatise on Elec-
Pkilosopky (London. 1901); G. C. Foster and A. W. Porter, Ele-
mtnlary Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (London, 1901) ; S. P.
Thompson, Elementary Lessons on Electricity and Magnetism (London,
When these elementary books have been digested, the advanced
student may proceed to study the following: J. Clerk Maxwell,
.( Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1st ed., Oxford, 1873;
2nd ed. by W. D. Niven, 1881; 3rd ed. by J. J. Thomson, 1892);
Joubert and Mascart, Electricity and Magnetism, English translation
by E. Atkinson (London, 1883); Watson and Burbury, The Mathe-
matical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism (Oxford, i88s) ; A. Gray,
A Treatise on Magnetism and Electricity (London, 1898). In the
collected Scientific Papers of Lord Kelvin (3 vols., Cambridge, 1882),
of James Clerk Maxwell (2 vols., Cambridge, 1890), and of Lord
Kayleigh (4 vols., Cambridge, 1903), the advanced student will find
the iwap for studying the historical development of electrical
knowledge as it has been evolved from the minds of some of the
master workers of the igth century. (J. A. F.)
ELECTROTHERAPEUTICS, a general term for the use of
electricity in therapeutics, i.e. in the alleviation and cure of
disease. Before the different forms of medical treatment are
dealt with, a few points in connexion with the machines and
currents, of special interest to the medical reader, must first be
given.
Faradism. For the battery required either for faradisra or
galvanism, cells of the Leclanche type are the most satisfactory.
Being dry they can be carried in any position, are lighter, and
there is no trouble from the erosion of wires and binding screws,
such as so often results from wet cells. The best method ol
producing a smooth current in the secondary coil is for the
interrupter hammer to vibrate directly against the iron core of the
primary coil. For this it is best that the interrupter be made ol
a piece of steel spring, as a high rate of interruption can then be
maintained, with a fairly smooth current in the secondary coil,
This form of interrupter necessitates that the iron core be fixed,
and variation in the primary induced current is arranged for by
slipping a brass tube more or less over the iron core, thus cutting
off the magnetic field from the primary coil. The secondary
current (that obtained from the secondary coil) can be varied by
keeping the secondary coil permanently fixed over the primary
and varying the strength of the primary current. Where, as
suggested above, the iron core is fixed, the primary and secondary
induced currents will be at their strongest when the brass tube
is completely withdrawn. As there is no simple means of measur
ing the strength of the faradic current, it is best to start with a
very weak current, testing it on the muscles of one's own bane
until these begin to contract and a definite sensory effect is
>roduced; the current can then be applied to the part, being
trengthened only very gradually.
Galvanism. For treatment by galvanism a large battery is
needed, the simplest form being known as a " patient's battery,"
consisting of a variable number of dry cells arranged in series.
The cells used are those of Leclanch6, with E.M.F. (or voltage)
of 1-5 and an internal resistance of -3 ohm. Thus the exact
itrcngth of the current is known; the number of cells usually
employed is 14, and when new give an E.M.F. of about 36 volts.
I?
3y using the formula C = > where E is the voltage of the battery,
il the total resistance of battery, electrodes and the patient's
skin and tissues, and C the current in amperes, the number of
cells required for any particular current can be worked out. The
resistance of the patient's skin must be made as low as possible
jy thoroughly wetting both skin and electrodes with sodium
nr.trlnm.iti' solution, and keeping the electrodes in very close
apposition to the skin. A galvanometer is always fitted to the
mattery, usually of the d'Arsonval type, with a shunt by means
of which, on turning a screw, nine-tenths of the inducing current
can be short-circuited away, and the solenoid only influenced
by one-tenth of the current which is being used on the patient.
In districts where electric power is available the continuous
current can be used by means of a switchboard. A current
of much value for electrotherapeutic purposes is the sinusoidal
current, by which is meant an alternating current whose curve
of electromotive force, in both positive and negative phase,
varies constantly and smoothly in what is known as the sine
curve. In those districts supplied by an alternating current,
the sinusoidal current can be obtained from the mains by passing
it through various transformers, but where the main supply is
the direct or constant current, a motor transformer is needed.
Static Electricity. For treatment by static electricity the
Wimshurst type of machine is the one most generally used. A
number of electrodes are required; thus for the application of
sparks a brass ball and brass roller electrode, for the " breeze "
a single point and a multiple point electrode, and another
multiple point electrode in the form of a metal cap that can be
placed over the patient's head. The polarity of the machine must
always be tested, as either knob may become positive or negative,
though the polarity rarely changes when once the machine is
in action. The oldest method of subjecting a patient to electric
influence is that in which static electricity is employed. The
patient is insulated on a suitable platform and treated by means
of charges and discharges from an electrical machine. The effect
is to increase the regularity and frequency of the pulse, raise the
blood pressure and increase the action of the skin. The nervous
system is quieted, sleep being promoted, the patient often be-
coming drowsy during the application. If while the patient is
being treated a point electrode is brought towards him he feels
the sensation of a wind blowing from that point; this is an
electric breeze or brush discharge. The breeze is negative if the
patient is positively charged and vice versa. The " breeze
discharge " treatment is especially valuable in subduing pain of
the superficial cutaneous nerves, and also in the treatment of
chronic indolent ulcers. Quite recently this form of treatment
has been applied with much success to various skin lesions
psoriasis, eczema and pruritus. Static electricity is also utilized
for medical purposes by means of " sparks," which are adminis-
tered with a ball electrode, the result being a sudden muscular
contraction at the point of application. The electrode must be
rapidly withdrawn before a second spark has time to leap across,
as this is a severe form of treatment and must be administered
slowly. It is mainly employed for muscular stimulation, and
the contractions resulting from spark stimulation can be produced
in cases of nerve injury and degeneration, even when the muscles
have lost their reaction to faradism. The sensory stimulation
of this form of treatment is also strong, and is useful in hysterical
anaesthesia and functional paralysis. Where a milder sensory
stimulation is required friction can be used, the electrode being
in the form of a metal roller which is moved rapidly outside the
25
ELECTROTHERAPEUTICS
patient's clothing over the spine or other part to be treated.
The clothing must be dry and of wool, and each additional
woollen layer intensifies the effect.
Another method of employing electricity at high potential
is by the employment of high frequency currents. There are two
methods of application: that in which brush discharges are made
use of, with undoubtedly good effects in many of the diseases
affecting the surface of the body, and that in which the currents
of the solenoid are made to traverse the patient directly. The
physiological value of the latter method is not certain, though
one point of interest in connexion with it is that whereas statical
applications raise the blood pressure, high frequency applications
lower it. It has been used in the case of old people with arterio-
sclerosis, and the reduction of blood pressure produced is said to
have shown considerable permanence.
The Faradic Current. G. B. Duchenne was the first physician
to make use of the induced current for treatment, and the term
" faradization " is supposed to be due to him. But in his day
the differences between the two currents available, the primary
and the secondary, were not worked out, and they were used
somewhat indiscriminately. Nowadays it is generally accepted
that the primary current should be used for the stimulation of
deep-lying organs, as stomach and intestines, &c., while the
secondary current is employed for stimulation of the limb
muscles and the cutaneous sensory nerves. The faradic current
is also used as a means of diagnosis for neuro-muscular conditions.
When the interrupted current is used to stimulate the skin over
a motor nerve, all the muscles supplied by that nerve are thrown
into rapid tetanic contraction, the contraction both beginning
and ceasing sharply and suddenly with the current. This is
the mormal reaction of the nerve to faradism. If the muscle
be wasted from disuse or some local cause unconnected with its
nerve-supply, the contraction is smaller, and both arises and
relaxes more slowly. But if the lesion lies in the nerve itself,
as in Bell's palsy, the muscles no longer show any response when
the nerve is stimulated, and this is known as the reaction of
degeneration in the nerve. It is usually preceded by a condition
of hyperexcitability. These results are applied to distinguish
between functional paralysis and that due to some organic
lesion, as in the former case the reaction of faradism will be as
brisk as usual. Also at the beginning of most cases of infantile
paralysis many more groups of muscles appear to be affected
than ultimately prove to be, and faradism enables the physician
to distinguish between those groups of muscles that are per-
manently paralysed owing to the destruction of their trophic
centre, and those muscles which are only temporarily inhibited
from shock, and which with proper treatment will later regain
their full power. In the testing of muscles electrically that
point on the skin which on stimulation gives the maximum
contraction for that muscle is known as the " motor point " for
that muscle. It usually corresponds to the entry of the motor
nerve. Faradic treatment may be employed in the weakness
and emaciation depending on any long illness, rickets, anaemia,
&c. For these cases it is best to use the electric bath, the patient
being placed in warm water, and the two electrodes, one at the
patient's back and the other at his feet, being connected with
the secondary coil. The patient's general metabolism is stimu-
lated, he eats and sleeps better and soon begins to put on weight.
This is especially beneficial in severe cases of rickets. In the
weakness and emaciation due to neurasthenia, especially in
those cases being treated by the Weir Mitchell method (isolation,
absolute confinement to bed, massage and overfeeding), a similar
faradic bath is a very helpful adjunct. In tabes dorsalis faradic
treatment will often diminish the anaesthesia and numbness
in the legs, with resulting benefit to the ataxy. Perhaps the
most beneficial use of the faradic current is in the treatment of
chronic constipation especially that so frequently met with in
young women and due to deficient muscular power of the
intestinal walls. In long-standing cases the large intestine
becomes permanently dilated, and its muscular fibres so atten-
uated as to have no power over the intestinal contents. But
faradism causes contraction at the point of stimulation, and
the peristaltic wave thus started slowly progresses along the
bowel. All that is needed is a special electrode for introduction
into the bowel and an ordinary roller electrode. The rectal
electrode consists of a 6-inch wire bearing at one end a small
metal knob and fitted at the other into a metal cup which screws
into the handle of the electrode. The only part exposed is the
metallic knob; the rest is coated with some insulating material.
The patient reclines on a couch on his back, the rectal electrode
is connected, and having been vaselined is passed some three
inches into the rectum. A current is started with the secondary
coil in such a position as to give only an extremely weak current.
The roller electrode is then wetted with hot water and applied
to the front of the abdomen. At first the patient should feel
nothing, but the current should slowly be increased until a
faint response is perceptible from the abdominal muscles. This
gives the required strength, and the roller electrode, pressed
well into the abdominal wall, should very slowly be moved along
the course of the large intestine beginning at the right iliac
fossa. Thus a combination of massage and faradic current is
obtained, and the results are particularly satisfactory. Treat-
ment should be given on alternate days immediately after
breakfast, and should be persevered with for six or eight weeks.
The patient can be taught to administer it to himself.
The Galvanic, Continuous or Direct Current. In using the
galvanic or direct current the electrode must be covered with
padded webbing or some other absorbent material, the metal of
the electrode never being allowed to come in contact with the
skin. The padding by retaining moisture helps to make good
contact, and also helps to guard against burning the skin. But
when a continuous current of 3 am. or more is passed for more
than 5 min. the electrodes must be raised periodically and the
skin inspected. If the current be too strong or applied for too
long a time, small blisters are raised which break and are very
troublesome to heal. Nor does the patient always feel much
pain when this occurs. Also the electrodes must be remoistened
every five or six minutes, as they soon become dry, and the skin
will then be burnt. It is best to use a solution of sodium bi-
carbonate. Again, the danger of burning the skin depends on
the density of the current per sq. in. of electrode, so that a
strong current through a small electrode will burn the skin,
whereas the same current through a larger electrode will produce
a beneficial effect. If the patient be immersed up to his neck
in an electric bath, much stronger currents can be passed without
causing either pain or injury, as in this case the whole area of the
skin in contact with the water acts as an electrode. In passing
the current it must be remembered that the negative electrode
or kathode is the more painful of the two, and its action more
stimulating than the positive electrode or anode, which is
sedative. If a muscle be stimulated over its motor point, it
will contract with a sharp twitch and then become q-uiescent.
With normal muscle the KCC (kathodal closure contraction) is
stronger than that produced by the closure of the current at
the anode ACC (anodal closure contraction). And if the muscle
be normal the opening contraction KOC and AOC are not seen.
When a galvanic current is passed along a nerve its excitability
is increased at the kathode and diminished at the anode. The
increased excitability at the kathode is katelectrotonus, and the
lowered excitability at the anode anelectrotonus. But since
in a patient the electrode cannot be applied directly to the nerve,
the lines of force from the electrode pass into the nerve both in
an upward and downward direction, and hence there are two
poles produced by each electrode. If the current be suddenly
reversed, so that what was the anode becomes the kathode, a
stonger contraction is obtained than by simply making and
breaking the current. To avoid the four poles on the nerve to
be tested, it is found most satisfactory to have one electrode
placed at some distance, on the back or chest, not on the same
limb.
As explained above, when the nerve supplying a muscle is
diseased it no longer responds to the faradic current. On further
testing this with the galvanic or continuous current it responds,
but the contraction is not brisk but begins slowly and relaxes
ELECTROTHERAPEUTICS
25 1
slowly, though the contraction as a whole may be larger ili.m
that oi a normal muscle. Thi. i-vr-.>i\r contraction is known
as hyperexcitability to galvanism. This form of contract ion
is that obtained when the muscle iil>n- itscll is stimulated.
Again, whereas in normal musilc K(V>.\(V, when the nerve is
degenerated K.CC ACCor AlV > Kl'C'. Also in t he more severe
forms of nerve injury tetanic contractions may be set up in the
paralysed muscles, by closure of the current either at the anode
or kathode. These charges are known as the react ion of dcgenera-
t ion or R D, and are of great value in diagnosis. They occur only
after sudden or acute damage to the nerve cells of the anterior
horn of the spinal cord, or to the motor nerve libres proceeding
from these ceils. Thus RD is present in infantile paralysis,
acute neuritis. &c., but absent in progessive muscular atrophy
where the wasting of nerve and muscle takes place extremely
slowly. The reaction of degeneration in the nerve is shown by
disappearance of reaction to either kind of current, preceded for
some days by hyperexcitability to either current. Where the
muscle wasting is due to a lesion in the muscle alone, us in
ischaemic myositis (usually due to injury from tight bandaging
or badly applied splints), no reaction of degeneration is found;
the only change is a loss of power in the contraction. If the
damage to the anterior horn cells be only very slight, there may
only be partial RD, and the prognosis is given according to the
extent of RD. From this account it is clear that the greatest
value of the continuous current lies in its use in diagnosis. But
it is also applied extremely successfully, in combination with
massage, to cases of infantile paralysis. Wrist drop from lead
poisoning and lead neuritis of all kinds, reflex muscular atrophy
and the muscular wasting of hcmiplegia, are all benefited by the
continuous current; the severe pain of sciatica, and the inflam-
mation of the nerve sheath in these cases, can be arrested more
quickly by galvanic treatment than in any other way. Nearly
all forms of neuritis, both of the cranial and other nerves, arc
best treated by the continuous current. The action in all cases
is to stimulate the natural tendency to repair, very largely by
improving the circulation through the injured parts.
Another effect of an electric current is electrolysis, and the
phenomena of electrolytic conduction involve not merely the
ioniiation of the compounds, but also the setting in motion of the
ions towards their respective poles. Solutions which conduct
electric currents are called electrolytes, and in the case of the
human body the electrolyte is the whole mass of the saline con-
stituents in solution throughout the body. When a current is
[tinner! through an electrolyte, dissociation into ions takes place,
the ions which are freed round the anode being called anions and
those which are freed round the kathode being called kations.
The anions carry negative charges and are consequently attracted
by the positive electricity of the anode. The kations carry
positive charges, hence they are repelled by the anode and
attracted by tne kathode. But a certain number of molecules
do not dissociate, and hence in an electrolytic solution there
are neutral molecules, anions and kations. The chemical actions,
and thus the antiseptic, remedial or toxic effects of electrolytes,
are due to the actions of their ions. The phosphides and phos-
phates may be taken as examples. Some are extremely tcxic,
while others are quite harmless. But it is to the phosphorus
ion that the toxic or therapeutic effect is due. In the phosphates
the phosphorus is part of a complex ion possessing quite
different properties to those of the phosphorus ion of the
phosphides. The strikingly different effects of the sulphates and
sulphides are due to similar conditions, as also of many other
compounds. There are certain solvents, as alcohol, chloroform,
glycerin and vaseline which do not dissociate electrolytes, and
consequently the latter become inert when mixed with these
solvents. These solutions do not conduct electricity, and hence
ionic effects are extremely slow. A vaseline ointment containing
5% of phenol makes a good dressing for an ulcer of the leg,
and produces no irritant effect, but a 5 % aqueous solution may
be both caustic and toxic. Since the toxic or therapeutic action
of a solution is due to its ions, the action must be proportional to
the number of ions in a given volume, that is, the action of an
electrolyte depends on the degree of dissociation. Thus a strong
acid is one that is much dissociated, a weak acid one that has
undergone but little dissociation and so on. In 1896-1897 it was
shown that the bactericidal action of salts varies with their
degree of dissociation and therefore depends on the concentration
of the active ions. In the medical application of these facts it
must be remembered that when an ion is introduced into the body
by electrolysis, it is propably forced into the actual cellular
constituents of the body, whereas the drug administered by one
of the usual methods though circulating in the blood may perhaps
never gain access to the cell itself. Hence the different effects
that have been recorded between a drug administered by the
mouth or subcutaneously and the same administered by electro-
lysis. Thus a solution of cocaine injected subcutaneously pro-
duces quite different effects to that introduced by electrolysis.
By the latter method it produces anaesthesia but does not diffuse,
and the anaesthesia remains strictly limited to the surface covered
by the electrode. It would appear that the ion is never intro-
duced into the general circulation but into the cell plasma.
In the technical working of medical electrolysis the most
minute precautions are required. The solution of the drug must
be made with as pure water as possible, recently distilled. The
spongy substance forming the electrode must be free from any
trace of electrolytic substances. Hence all materials used must
be washed in distilled water. Absorbent cotton answers all
requirements and is easily procured. The area of introduction
can be exactly circumscribed by cutting a hole in a sheet of adhe-
sive plaster which is applied to the skin and on which the electro-
lytic electrodes are pressed. The great advantage of electrolytic
methods is that it enables general treatment to be replaced by
a strictly local treatment, and the cells can be saturated exactly
to the degree and depth required. Strong antiseptics and
materials that coagulate albumen cannot be introduced locally
by ordinary methods, as the skin is impermeable to them, but by
electrolysis they can be introduced to the exact depth required.
The local effects of the ions depend on the dosage; thus a feeble
dose of the ions of zinc stimulates the growth of hair, but a
stronger dose produces the death of the tissue. Naturally the
different ions produce different effects. Thus the ions of the
alkalis and magnesium are caustic, those of the alkaline earthy
metals produce actual mortification of the tissue and so on.
According to the ion chosen the effect may be caustic in various
degrees, antiseptic, coagulating, producing vascular or nervous
changes, &c., &c. And again electrolysis can also be used for
extracting from the body such ions as are injurious, as uric and
oxalic acid from a patient suffering from gout.
One of the latest advances is the treatment of ankylosed
joints by the electrolytic method, the electrolyte used being
chloride of sodium, and the marvellous results being attributed
to the introduction of the chlorine ions. This scleroly tic property
of the current is applicable to all parts of the body accessible
to the current. Old cases of rheumatic scleritis, entirely un-
affected by the routine treatment of salicylates and iodide,
have often cleared up entirely under electrolytic treatment.
Cases of chronic iritis with adhesions and old pleura! adhesions
are also suited for this method of procedure. Certain menstrual
troubles of women and also endometritis yield rapidly to electro-
lysis with a zinc anode. Before this method of introduction, the
zinc salts, though excellent disinfectants, acted only on the surface
in consequence of their coagulating action on the albuminoids,
but by the electric current, under the influence of a difference of
potential, the zinc iron will penetrate to any desired depth.
Cases of rodent ulcer unaffected by all other methods of treatment
have been cured by electric kataphorcsis with zinc ions, and the
method is now being applied to the treatment of inoperable
malignant tumours. As very strong currents are required for
this latter, the patient has first to be anaesthetized by a general
anaesthetic. Another direction in which electric ions are being
used is that of the induction of local anaesthesia before minor
surgical operations. Cocaine is the drug used, the resulting
anaesthesia is absolute, and the operation can be made almost
bloodjess by the admixture of suprarenal extract.
252
ELECTROTYPING ELEGY
ELECTROTYPING, an application of the art of electroplating
(q.v.) to typography (q.v.). In copying engraved plates for
printing purposes, copper may be deposited upon the original
plate, the surface of which is first rendered slightly dirty, by
means of a weak solution of wax in turpentine or otherwise, to
prevent adhesion. The reversed plate thus produced is then
stripped from the first and used as cathode in its turn, with the
result that even the finest lines of the original are faithfully
reproduced. The electrolyte commonly contains about i| Ib
of copper sulphate and | ft of strong sulphuric acid per gallon,
and is worked with a current density of about 10 amperes per
sq. ft., which should give a thickness of 0-000563 in. of copper
per hour. As time is an object, the conditions alluded to
in the article on COPPER as being favourable to the use
of high current densities should be studied, bearing in mind
that a tough copper deposit of high quality is essential. Moulds
for reproducing plates or art-work are often taken in plaster,
beeswax mixed with Venice turpentine, fusible metal, or gutta-
percha, and the surface being rendered conductive by powdered
black-lead, copper is deposited upon it evenly throughout. For
statuary, and " undercut " work generally, an elastic mould
of glue and treacle (80 : 20 parts) may be used; the mould,
when set, is waterproofed by immersion in a solution of potassium
bichromate followed by exposure to sunlight, or in some other
way. The best results, however, are obtained by taking a wax
cast from the elastic mould, and then from this a plaster mould,
which may be waterproofed with wax, black-leaded, and used
as cathode. In art -work of this nature the principal points to
be looked to in depositing are the electrical connexions to the
cathode, the shape of the anode (to secure uniformity of deposi-
tion), the circulation of the electrolyte, and, in some cases, the
means for escape of anode oxygen. Silver electrotyping is
occasionally resorted to for special purposes.
ELECTRUM, ELECTRON (Gr. rjKtKrpov, amber), an alloy of
gold and silver in use among the ancients, described by Pliny
as containing one part of silver to four of gold. The term is
also applied in mineralogy to native argentiferous gold containing
from 20 to 50% of silver. In both cases the name is derived
from the pale yellow colour of electrum, resembling that of amber.
ELEGIT (Lat. for " he has chosen "), in English law. a judicial
writ of execution, given by the Statute of Westminster II.
(i 285), and so called from the words of the writ, that the plaintiff
has chosen (elegit) this mode of satisfaction. Previously to the
Statute of Westminster II., a judgment creditor could only
have the profits of lands of a debtor in satisfaction of his judg-
ment, but not the possession of the lands themselves. But this
statute provided that henceforth it should be in the election of
the party having recovered judgment to have a writ of fieri facias
(q.v.) unto the sheriff on lands and goods or else all the chattels
of the debtor and the one half of his lands until the judgment
be satisfied. Since the Bankruptcy Act 1883 the writ of elegit
has extended to lands and hereditaments only. (See further
EXECUTION.)
ELEGY, a short poem of lamentation or regret, called forth
by the decease of a beloved or revered person, or by a general
sense of the pathos of mortality. The Greek word e\eyfLa is of
doubtful signification; it is usually interpreted as meaning a
mournful or funeral song. But there seems to be no proof that
this idea of regret for death entered into the original meaning
of tteyda. The earliest Greek elegies which have come down
to us are not funereal, although it is possible that the primitive
i\tytla may have been a set of words liturgically used, with
music, at a burial. When the elegy appears in surviving Greek
literature, we find it dedicated, not to death, but to war and
love. Callinus of Ephesus, who flourished in the yth century,
is the earliest elegist of whom we possess fragments. A little
later Tyrtaeus was composing his famous elegies in Sparta.
Both of these writers were, so far as we know, exclusively war-
like and patriotic. On the other hand, the passion of love inspires
Mimnermus, whose elegies are the prototypes not only of the
later Greek pieces, and of the Latin poems of the school on
Tibullus and Propertius, but of a great deal of the formal erotic
poetry of modern Europe. In the 6th century B.C., the elegies
of Solon were admired; they are mainly lost. But we possess
more of the work of Theognis of Megara than of any other
archaic elegist, and in it we can observe the characteristics of
Greek elegy best. Here the Dorian spirit of chivalry reaches its
highest expression, and war is combined with manly love.
The elegy, in its calm movement, seems to have begun to lose
currency when the ecstasy of emotion was more successfully
interpreted by the various rhythmic and dithyrambic inventions
of the Aeolic lyrists. The elegy, however, rose again to the highest
level of merit in Alexandrian times. It was reintroduced by
Philetas in the 3rd cent. B.C., and was carried to extreme per-
fection by Callimachus. Other later Greek elegists of high
reputation were Asclepiades and Euphorion. But it is curious
to notice that all the elegies of these poets were of an amatory
nature, and that antiquity styled the funeral dirges of Theocritus,
Bion and Moschus which are to us the types of elegy not
elegies at all, but idylls. When the poets of Rome began their
imitative study of Alexandrian models, it was natural that the
elegies of writers such as Callimachus should tempt them to
immediate imitation. Gallus, whose works are unhappily lost,
is known to have produced a great sensation in Rome by pub-
lishing his translation of the poems of Euphorion; and he passed
on to the composition of erotic elegies of his own, which were
the earliest in the Latin language. If we possessed his once-
famous Cytheris, we should be able to decide the question of how
much Propertius, who is now the leading figure among Roman
elegists, owed to the example of Gallus. His brilliantly emotional
Cynthia, with its rich and unexampled employment of that
alternation of hexameter and pentameter which had now come
to be known as the elegiac measure, seems, however, to have
settled the type of Latin elegy. Tibullus is always named in
conjunction with Propertius, who was his contemporary, although
in their style they were violently contrasted. The sweetness
of Tibullus was the object of admiration and constant imitation
by the Latin poets of the Renaissance, although Propertius has
more austerely pleased a later taste. Finally, Ovid wrote elegies
of great variety in subject, but all in the same form, and his
dexterous easy metre closed the tradition of elegiac poetry
among the ancients. What remains in the decline of Latin
literature is all founded on a study of those masters of the
Golden Age.
When the Renaissance found its way to England, the word
" elegy " was introduced by readers of Ovid and Propertius.
But from the beginning of the i6th century, it was used in English,
as it has been ever since, to describe a funeral song or lament.
One of the earliest poems in English which bears the title of
elegy is The Complaint of Philomene, which George Gascoigne
began in 1562, and printed in 1576. The Daphnaida of Spenser
(1591) is an elegy in the strict modern sense, namely a poem
of regret pronounced at the obsequies of a particular person.
In 1579 Puttenham had defined an elegy as being a song " of
long lamentation." With the opening of the I7th century
the composition of elegies became universal on every occasion
of public or private grief. Dr Johnson's definition, " Elegy, a
short poem without points or turns," is singularly inept and
careless. By that time (1753) English literature had produced
many great elegies, of which the Lycidas of Milton is by far the
most illustrious. But even Cowley's on Crashaw, Tickell's on
Addison, Pope's on an Unfortunate Lady, those of Quarles, and
Dryden,and Donne, should have warned Johnson of his mistake.
Since the i8th century the most illustrious examples of elegy
in English literature have been the Adonais of Shelley (on Keats),
the Thyrsis of Matthew Arnold (on Clough), and the Ave atque
Vale of; ,Mr Swinburne (on Baudelaire). It remains for us to
mention what is the most celebrated elegy in English, that
written by Gray in a Country Churchyard. This, however,
belongs to a class apart, as it is not addressed to the memory
of any particular person. A writer of small merit, James
Hammond (1716-1742), enjoyed a certain success with his Love
Elegies in which he endeavoured to introduce the erotic elegy as
it was written by Ovid and Tibullus. This experiment took no
ELEMENT
253
bold of English literature, but was welcomed in France in the
amatory works of Parny (1753-1814), in those of Ch(nedoll
(1760-1853), and of Millevoye (1783-1816). The melancholy
and sentimental elegies of the last named are the typical examples
of this class of poetry in French literature. Lamartine must be
included among the elegists, and his famous " Le Lac " is as
eminent an elegy in French as Gray's " Country Churchyard "
is in English. The elegy has flourished in Portugal, partly
because it was cultivated with great success by Camoens, the
most illustrious of the Portuguese poets. In Italian, Chiabrera
and Filicaia are named among the leading national elegists. In
German literature, the notion of elegy as a poem of lamentation
does not exist. The famous Roman Elegies of Goethe imitate
in form and theme those of Ovid; they, are not even plaintive
in character.
ELEGIAC VERSE has commonly been adopted by German
poets for their elegies, but by English poets never. Schiller
defines this kind of verse, which consists of a distich of which the
first line is a hexameter and the second a pentameter, in the
following pretty illustration:
" In the hexameter'rises the fountain's silvery column,
In the pentameter aye falling in melody back."
The word " elegy," in English, is one which is frequently
used very incorrectly; it should be remembered that it must
be mournful, meditative and short without being cjacu-
latory. Thus Tennyson's In Memorium is excluded by its
length; it may at best be treated as a collection of elegies.
Wordsworth's Lucy, on the other hand, is a dirge; this is too
brief a burst of emotion to be styled an elegy. Lycidas and
Adinwis remain the two unapproachable types of what a personal
elegy ought to be in English. (E. G.)
ELEMENT (Lat. rlemfntum), an ultimate component of any-
thing, hence a fundamental principle. Elementum was used
in Latin to translate the Greek (rrotx<u> (that which stands
in a orotxof, or row), and is a word of obscure origin and
etymology. The root of Lat. alert, to nourish, has been sug-
gested, thus making it a doublet of aJimenttim, that which sup-
ports life; another explanation is that the word represents
LMN.. the first three letters of the second part of the alphabet,
a parallel use to that of ABC. Apart from its application in
chemistry, which is treated below, the word is used of the
rudiments or principia of any science or subject, as in Euclid's
Elements of Geometry, or in the " beggarly elements " (ra irrwxd
orcxxelo, of St Paul in Gal. iv. 9) ; in mathematics, of a funda-
mental concept involved in an investigation, as the " elements "
of a determinant; and in electricity, of a galvanic (or voltaic)
" element " in an electric cell (see BATTEEY: Electric). In
astronomy, " element " is used of any one of the numerical or
geometrical data by which the course of a varying phenomenon is
computed; it is applied especially to orbital motion and eclipses.
The " elements of an orbit " are the six data by which the position
of a moving body in its orbit at any time may be determined.
The " elements of an eclipse " express and determine the motion
of the centre of the shadow-axis, and are the data necessary
to compute the phenomena of an eclipse during its whole course,
as Men at any place. In architecture the term " element "
is applied to the outline of the design of a Decorated window, on
which the centres for the tracery are found. These centres
will all be found to fall on points which, in some way or other,
will be equimultiples of parts of the openings.
Chemical Elements.
Like all other scientific concepts, that of an element has
changed its meaning many times in many ways during the
.^ development of science. Owing to their very small
Hm, amount of real chemical knowledge, the generalizations
of the ancients were necessarily rather superficial,
and could not stand in the face of the increasing development
of practical chemistry. Nevertheless we find the concept of
an element as " a substance from which all bodies are made or
derived " held at the very beginning of occidental philosophy.
Thales regarded " water " as the element of all things; his
followers accepted his idea of a primordial substance as the basis
of all bodies, but they endeavoured to determine some other
general element or elements, like " fire " or " spirit, " or " love "
and " hatred," or " fire," " water," " air " and " earth." We
find in this development an exact parallelism to the manner
in which scientific ideas generally arise, develop and change.
They are created to point out the common part in a variety of
observed phenomena, in order to get some leading light in the
chaos of events. At first almost any idea will do, if only ii
promises some comprehensive arrangement of the facts; after-
wards, the inconsistencies of the first trial make themselves
felt; the first idea is then changed to meet better the new
requirements. For a shorter or longer time the facts and M> ..
may remain in accord, but the uninterrupted increase of empirical
knowledge involves sooner or later new fundamental alterations
of the general idea, and in this way there is a never-ceasing
process of adaptation of the ideas to ihc facts. As facts are un-
changeable by themselves, the adaptation can be only one-sided;
the ideas arc compelled to change according to the facts. We
must therefore educate ourselves to regard the ideas or theories
as the changing part of science, and keep ourselves ready to
accept even the most fundamental revision of current theories.
The first step in the development of the idea of elements was
to recognize that a single principle would not prove sufficient to
cover the manifoldness of facts. Empcdocles therefore conceived
a double or binary elementary principle; and Aristotle developed
this idea a stage further, stating two sets of binary antagonistic
principles, namely " dry-wet " and " hot-cold." The Aristotelian
or peripatetic elements, which played such a great r61e in the
whole medieval philosophy, are the representatives of the several
binary combinations of these fundamental properties, " fire "
being hot and dry, " air " hot and wet, " water " cold and wet,
" earth " cold and dry. According to the amount of these pro-
perties found in any body, these elements were regarded as having
taken part in forming this body. Concerning the reason why
only these properties were regarded as fundamental, we know
nothing. They seem to be taken at random rather than carefully
selected; they relate only to the sense of touch, and not to vision
or any other sense, possibly because deceptions in the sense of
touch were regarded as non-existent, while the other senses were
apparently not so trustworthy. At any rate, the Aristotelian
elements soon proved to be rather inadequate to meet the
requirements of the increasing chemical knowledge; other pro-
perties had therefore to be selected to represent the general
behaviour of chemical substances, and in this case we find them
already much more " chemical " in the modern sense.
Among the various substances recognized by the chemists,
certain classes or groups readily distinguished themselves.
First the metals, by their lustre, their heaviness, and Ekmeatt
a number of other common properties. According to of the
the general principle of selecting a single substance **-
as a representative of the group, the metallic properties
were represented by " mercury." The theoreticians of the middle
ages were rather careful to point out that common mercury
(the liquid metal of to-day) was not at all to be identified with
" philosophical " mercury, the last being simply the principle
of metallic behaviour. In the same way combustibility was
represented by " sulphur," solubility by " salt," and occasionally
the chemically indifferent or refractory character by " earth."
According to the subsistence and preponderance of these pro-
perties in different bodies, these were regarded as containing the
corresponding elements; conversely, just as experience teaches
the chemist every day that by proper treatment the properties
of given bodies may be changed in the most various ways, the
observed changes of properties were ascribed to the gain or loss
of the corresponding elements. According to this theory, which
accounted rather well for a large number of facts, there was no
fundamental objection against trying to endow base metals with
the properties of the precious ones; to make artificial gold was a
task quite similar to the modern problem of, e.g. making artificial
quinine. The realization that there is a certain natural law
preventing such changes is of much later date. It is therefore
254
ELEMENT
quite unjust to consider the work of the alchemists, who tried
to make artificial gold, as consummate nonsense. A priori there
was no reason why a change from lead to gold should be less
possible than a change from iron to rust; indeed there is no
a priori reason against it now. But experience has taught us
that lead and gold are chemical elements in the modern sense,
and that there is a general experimental law that elements are
not transformable one into another. So experience taught the
alchemists irresistibly that in spite of the manif oldness of chemical
changes it is not always possible to change any given substance
into another; the possibilities are much more limited, and there
is only a certain range of substances to be obtained from a given
one. The impossibility of transforming lead or copper into noble
metals proved to be only one case out of many, and it was recog-
nized generally that there are certain chemical families whose
members are related to one another by their mutual transform-
ability, while it is impossible to bridge the boundaries separating
these families.
The man who brought all these experiences and considerations
into scientific form was Robert Boyle. He stated as a general
principle, that only tangible and ponderable substances
Work of should be recognized as elements, an element being
Boyif 1 . a substance from which other substances maybemade,
but which cannot be separatedinto different substances.
He showed that neither the peripatetic nor the alchemistic
elements satisfied this definition. But he was more of a critical
than of a synthetical turn of mind; although he established
the correct principles, he hesitated to point out what substances,
among those known at his time, were to be considered as elements.
He only paved the way to the goal by laying the foundations
of analytical chemistry, i.e. by teaching how to characterize
and to distinguish different chemical individuals. Further, by
adopting and developing the corpuscular hypothesis of the
constitution of the ponderable substances, he foreshadowed, in
a way, the law of the conservation of the elements, viz. that no
element can be changed into another element; and he considered
the compound substances to be made up from small particles
or corpuscles of their elements, the latter retaining their essence
in all combinations. This hypothesis accounts for the fact that
only a limited number of other substances can be made from a
givenone namely, only those which contain the elements present
in the given substance. But it is characteristic of Boyle's critical
mind that he did not shut his eyes against a serious objection
to his hypothesis. If the cbmpound substance is made up of
parts of the elements, one would expect that the properties of
the compound substance would prove to be the sum of the
properties of the elements. But this is not the case, and chemical
compounds show properties which generally differ very consider-
ably from those of the compounds. On the one hand, the cor-
puscular hypothesis of Boyle was developed into the atomic
hypothesis of Dalton, which was considered at the beginning of
the ipth century as the very best representation of chemical
facts, while, on the other hand, the difficulty as to the properties
of the compounds remained the same as Boyle found it, and has
not yet been removed by an appropriate development of the
atomic, hypothesis. Thus Boyle considered, e.g. the metals as
elements. However, it is interesting to note that he considered
the mutual transformation of the metals as not altogether im*
possible, and he even tells of a case when gold was transformed
into base metal. It is a common psychological fact that a
reformer does not generally succeed in being wholly consistent
in his reforming ideas; there remains invariably some point
where he commits exactly the same fault which he set out to
abolish. We shall find the same inconsistency also among other
chemical reformers. Even earlier than Boyle, Joachim Jung
(1587-1657) of Hamburg developed similar ideas. But as he
did not distinguish himself, as Boyle did, by experimental work
in science, his views exerted only a limited influence amongst
his pupils.
In the times following Boyle's work we find no remarkable
outside development of the theory of elements, but a very
important inside one. Analytical chemistry, or the art of dis-
tinguishing different chemical substances, was rapidly develop-
ing, and the necessary foundation for such a theory was thus
laid. We find the discussions about the true elements
disappearing from the text-books, or removed to an e gls '
insignificant corner, while the description of observed
chemical changes of different ways of preparing the same sub-
stance, as identified by the same properties, and of the methods
for recognizing and distinguishing the various substances, take
their place . The similarity of certain groups of chemical changes,
as, for example, combustion, and the inverse process, reduction,
was observed, and thus led to an attempt to shape these most
general facts into a common theory. In this way the theory
of " phlogiston " was developed by G.E. Stahl, phlogiston being
(according to the usual way of regarding general properties as
being due to a principle or element) the " principle of combusti-
bility," similar to the " sulphur " of the alchemists. This again
must be regarded as quite a legitimate step justified by the
knowledge of the time. For experience taught that combusti-
bility could be transferred by chemical action, e.g. from charcoal
to litharge, the latter being changed thereby into combustible
metallic lead; and according to Boyle's principle, that only
bodies should be recognized as chemical elements, phlogiston
was considered as a body. From the fact that all leading
chemists in the second half of the i8th century used the phlogiston
theory and were not hindered by it in making their great dis-
coveries, it is evident that a sufficient amount of truth and
usefulness was embodied in this theory. It states indeed quite
correctly the mutual relations between oxidation and reduction,
as we now call these very general processes, and was erroneous
only in regard to one question, which at that time had not
aroused much interest, the question of the change of weight
during chemical processes.
It was only after Isaac Newton's discovery of universal
gravitation that weight was considered as a property of para-
mount interest and importance, and that the question
of the changes of weight in chemical reactions became s /e^s'"
one worth asking. When in due time this question was reform.
raised, the fact became evident at once, trfat combus-
tion means not loss but gain of weight. To be sure of this, it
was necessary to know first the chemical and physical properties
of gases, and it was just at the same time that this knowledge
was developed by Priestley, Scheele and others. Lavoisier was
the originator and expounder of the necessary reform. Oxygen
was just discovered at that time, and Lavoisier gathered evidence
from all sides that the theory of phlogiston had to be turned
inside out to fit the new facts.
He realized that the sum total of the weights of all sub-
stances concerned within a chemical change is not altered
by the change. This principle of the " conservation of weight "
led at once to a simple and unmistakable definition -of a chemical
element. As the weight of a compound substance is the sum of
the weights of its elements, the compound necessarily weighs
more than any of its elements. An element is therefore a sub-
stance which, by being changed into another substance, in-
variably increases its weight, and never gives rise to substances
of less weight. By the help of this criterion Lavoisier composed
the first table of chemical elements similar to our modern ones.
According to the knowledge of his time he regarded the alkalis
as elements, although he remarked that they are rather similar
to certain oxides, and therefore may possibly contain oxygen;
the truth of this was proved at a later date by Humphry Davy.
But the inconsistency of the reformer, already referred to, may
be observed with Lavoisier. He included " heat and light " in
his list of elements, although he knew that neither of them had
weight, and that neither fitted his definition of an element; this
atavistic survival was subsequently removed from the table of
the elements by Berzelius in the beginning of the igth century.
In this way the question of what substances are to be regarded as
chemical elements had been settled satisfactorily in a qualitative
way, but it is interesting to realize that the last step in this
development, the theory of Lavoisier, was based on quantitative
considerations. Such considerations became of paramount
ELEMENT
255
f^.-rr ,
interest at once, and led to the concept of the combining weights
of UK tUmttUs.
The first discoveries in this field were made in the last quarter
of the iSth century by J. B. Richter. The point at issue was a
rather commonplace one: it was the fact that when two
neutral salt solutions were mixed to undergo mutual
chemical decomposition and recombination, the re-
sulting liquid was neutral again, /'.<-. it did not contain
any excess of acid or base. In other words, if two salts, A'B'
and A* B', composed of the acids A' and A' and the bases B' and
B", undergo mutual decomposition, the amount of the base B'
left by the first salt, when its acid A' united with the base B'
to form a new salt A'B', was just enough to make a neutral salt
A'B' with the acid A' left by the second salt. At first sight this
looks quite simple and self-evident, that neutral salts should
form neutral ones again and not acid or basic ones, but if this
fact is once stated very serious quantitative inferences may be
drawn from it, as Richter showed. For if the symbols A', A',
B', B* denote at the same time such quantities of the acids and
bases as form neutral salts, then if three of these quantities arc
determined, the fourth may be calculated from the others. This
follows from the fact that by decomposing A'B' with just the
proper amount of the other salt to form A'B", the remaining
quantities B' and A" exist in exactly the ratio to form a neutral
salt A* B'. It is possible, therefore, to ascribe to each acid and
base a certain relative weight or " combining weight " by which
they will combine one with the other to form neutral sails. The
same reasoning may be extended to any number of acids and bases.
It is true that Richter did not find out by himself this simplest
statement of the law of neutrality which he discovered, but he
expressed the same consequence in a rather clumsy way by a
table of the combining weights of different bases related to the
unit amount of a certain acid, and doing the same thing for the
unit weight of every other acid. Then he observed that the
numbers in these different tables are proportionate one to another.
The same holds good if the corresponding scries of the combining
weights of acids for unit weights of different bases were tabulated.
It was only a little later that a Berlin physicist, G. E. Fischer,
united the whole system of Richter's numbers simply into a
double table of acids and bases, taking as unit an arbitrarily
chosen substance, namely sulphuric acid. The following table
by Fischer is therefore the first table of combining weights.
Bases.
Alumina
Magnesia .
Ammoniac
Lime
Soda
Strontiane
Potaih
Baryte
525
6I 5
672
793
59
"329
1605
1222
Acids.
Fluoric
Carbonic
Scbacic
Muriatic (hydrochloric;
Oxalic .
Phosphoric
Formic
Sulphuric
Succinic .
Nitric
Acetic
Citric
427
577
706
712
755
979
988
1000
1209
H5
1480
1683
Turturic . . 1694
It is interesting again to notice how difficult it is for the
discoverer of a pew truth to find out the most simple and com-
plete statement of his discovery. It looks as if the amount of
work needed to get to the top of a new idea is so great that not
enough energy remains to clear the very last few steps. It is
noteworthy also to observe how difficult it was for the chemists
of that time to understand the bearing of Richter's work.
Although a summary of his results was published in Bcrthollct's
Essai de statistic ckimique, one of the most renowned chemical
books of that time, nobody dared for a long time to take up the
scientific treasure laid open for all the world.
At the beginning of the igth century the same question was
taken up from quite another standpoint. John Dalton, in his
j^f,,, investigations of the behaviour of gases, and in order
i>mitm'* to understand more easily what happened when gases
were absorbed by liquids, used the corpuscular hypo-
thesis already mentioned in connexion with Boyle.
While he depicted to himself how the corpuscles, or, as he pre-
ferred to call them, the "atoms" of the gases, entered the
interstices of the atoms of the liquids in which they dissolved,
he asked himself: Arc the several atoms of the same substance
exactly alike, or arc there differences as between the grains o.
sand ? Now experience teaches us that it is impossible to
separate, for example, a quantity of pure water into two samples
of somewhat different properties. When a pure substance is
fractionated by partial distillation or partial crystallization or
partial change into another substance by chemical means, we
find constantly that the residue is not changed in its properties,
as it would be if the atoms were slightly different, since in thai
case e.g. the lighter atoms would distil first and leave behind the
heavier ones, &c. Therefore we must conclude that all atoms
of the same kind are exactly alike in shape and weight. But, if
this be so, then all combinations between different atoms must
proceed in certain invariable ratios of the weights of the elements,
namely by the ratio of the weights of the atoms. Now it is
impossible to weigh the atoms directly; but if we determine the
ratio of the weights in which oxygen and hydrogen combine to
form water, we determine in this way also the relative weight of
their atoms. By a proper number of analyses of simple chemical
compounds we may determine the ratios between the weights of
all elementary atoms, and, selecting one of them as a standard
or unit, we may express the weight of all other atoms in terms
of this unit. The following table is Dalton's (Mem. of the Lit.
and Phil. Soc. of Manchester (II.), vol. i. p.. 287, 1805).
Table of the Relative Weights of the Ultimate Particles of Gaseous and
other Bodies.
Nitrous oxide .... 13-7
Sulphur 14-4
Nitric acid . ... 15-2
Sulphuretted hydrogen . 15-4
Carbonic acid . . . 15-3
Alcohol -15-1
Sulphureous acid . . . 19-9
Sulphuric acid .... 25-4
Carburetted hydrogen from
stagnant water . . . 6-3
Olefiant gas ..... 5-3
Hydrogen i
Azot 4-2
Carbone 4-3
Ammonia 5-2
Oxygen
Water
Phosphorus
Phosphuretted hydrogen
Nitrous gas
Ether
Gaseous oxide of carbone
5-5
6-5
8-2
9-3
9-6
9-8
Dalton at once drew a peculiar inference from this view.
If two elements combine in different ratios, one must conclude
that different numbers of atoms unite. There must be, therefore,
a simple ratio between the quantities of the one clement united
to the same quantity of the other. Dalton showed at once that
the analysis of carbon monoxide and of carbonic acid satisfied
this consequence, the quantity of oxygen in the second compound
being double the quantity in the first one. A similar relation
holds good between marsh gas and olefiant gas (ethylene). This
is the "law of multiple proportions" (see ATOM). By these
considerations Dalton extended the law of combining weights,
which Richter had demonstrated only fbr neutral salts, to all
possible chemical compounds. While the scope of the law was
enormously extended, its experimental foundation was even
smaller than with Richter. Dalton did not concern himself very
much with the experimental verification of his ideas, and the
first communication of his theory in a paper on the absorption
of gases by liquids (1803) attracted as little notice as Ricbter's
discoveries. Even when T. Thomson published Dalton's views
in an appendix to his widely read text-book of chemistry, matters
did not change very much. It was only by the work of J. J.
Berzelius that the enormous importance of Dalton's views was
brought to light.
Berzelius was at that time busy in developing a trustworthy
system of chemical analysis, and for this purpose he investigated
the composition of the most important salts. He then
went over the work of Richter, and realized that by his
law he could check the results of his analyses. He tried
it and found the law to hold good in most cases; when
it did not, according to his analyses, he found that the error was
on his own side and that better analyses fitted Richter's law.
Thus he was prepared to understand the importance of Dalton's
views and he proceeded at once to test its exactness. The result
was the best possible. The law of the combining weights of the
256
ELEMENT
atoms, or of the atomic weights, proved to hold good in every
case in which it was tested. All chemical combinations between
the several elements are therefore regulated by weight according
to certain numbers, one for each element, and combinations
between the elements occur only in ratios given by these weights
or by simple multiples thereof. Consequently Berzelius regarded
Dalton's atomic hypothesis as proved by experiment, and became
a strong believer in it.
At the same time W. H. Wollaston had discovered independ-
ently the law of multiple proportions in the case of neutral and
acid salts. He gave up further work when he learned of Dalton's
ideas, but afterwards he pointed out that it was necessary to
distinguish the hypothetical part in Dalton's views from their
empirical part. The latter is the law of combining weights, or
the law that chemical combination occurs only according to
certain numbers characteristic for each element. Besides this
purely experimental law there is the hypothetical explanation
by the assumption of the existence of atoms. As it is not
proved that this explanation is the only one possible, the existence
of the law is not a proof of the existence of the atoms. He there-
fore preferred to call the characteristic combining numbers of
the elements not "atomic weights" but " chemical equivalents."
Although there were at all times chemists who shared
Wollaston's cautious views, the atomic hypothesis found general
acceptance because of its ready adaptability to the most diverse
chemical facts. In our time it is even rather difficult to separate,
as Wollaston did, the empirical part from the hypothetical one,
and the concept of the atom penetrates the whole system of
chemistry, especially organic chemistry.
If we compare the work of Dalton with that of Richter we
find a fundamental difference. Richter's inference as to the
existence of combining weights in salts is based solely on an
experimental observation, namely, the persistence of neutrality
after double decomposition; Dalton's theory, on the contrary,
is based on the hypothetical concept of the atom. Now, however
favourably one may think of the probability of the existence of
atoms, this existence is really not an observed fact, and it is
necessary therefore to ask: Does there exist some general fact
which may lead directly to the inference of the existence of
combining weights of the elements, just as the persistence of
neutrality leads to the same consequence as to acids and bases ?
The answer is in the affirmative, although it took a whole cen-
tury before this question was put and answered. In a series of
rather difficult papers (Zeits. f. Phys. Chem. since 1895, and
Annalen der Naturphilosophie since 1902), Franz Wald (of
Kladno, Bohemia) developed his investigations as to the genesis
of this general law. Later, W. Ostwald^ Faraday lecture, Trans.
Chem. Soc., 1904) simplified Wald's reasoning and made it more
evident.
The general fact upon which the necessary existence of combin-
ing weights of the elements may be based is the shifting character
of the boundary between elements and compounds. It has
already been pointed out that Lavoisier considered the alkalis
and the alkaline earths as elements, because in his time they had
not been decomposed. As long as the decomposition had not
been effected, these compounds could be considered and treated
like elements without mistake, their combining weight being
the sum of the combining weights of their (subsequently dis-
covered) elements. This means that compounds enter in reaction
with other substances as a whole, just as elements do. In
particular, if a compound AB combines with another substance
(elementary or compound) C to form a ternary compound ABC,
it enters this latter as a whole, leaving behind no residue of A or
B. Inversely, if a ternary compound ABC be changed into a
binary one AB by taking away the element C, there will not be
found any excess of A or B, but both elements will exhibit just
the same ratio in the binary as in the ternary compound.
Experimentally this important fact was proved first by
Berzelius, who showed that by oxidizing lead sulphide, PbS, to
lead sulphate, PbSO^ no excess either of sulphur or lead could
be found after oxidation; the same held good with barium
sulphite, BaSO 3 , when converted into barium sulphate, BaSO 4 .
On a much larger scale and with very great accuracy the inverse
was proved half a century later by J. S. Stas, who reduced silver
chlorate, AgClO 3 , silver bromate, AgBrO 3 , and silver iodate,
AgIO 3 , to the corresponding binary compounds, AgCl, AgBr
and Agl, and searched in the residue of the reaction for any
excess of silver or halogen. As the tests for these substances
are among the most sensitive in analytical chemistry, the
general law underwent a very severe test indeed. But the
result was the same as was found by Berzelius no excess of
one of the elements could be discovered. We may infer, therefore,
generally that compounds enter ulterior combinations without
change of the ratio of their elements, or that the ratio between
different elements in their compounds is the same in binary and
ternary (or still more complicated) combinations.
This law involves the existence of general combining weights
just in the same way as the law of neutrality with double de-
composition of salts involves the law of the combining weights
of acids and bases. For if the ratio between A and B is deter-
mined, this same ratio must obtain in all ternary and more
complicated compounds, containing the same elements. The
same is true for any other elements, C, D, E, F, &c., as related
to A. But by applying the general law to the ternary compound
ABC the same conclusion may be drawn as to the ratio A: C in
all compounds containing A and C, or B : C in the corresponding
compounds. By reasoning further in the same way, we come to
the conclusion that only such compounds are possible which
contain elements according to certain ratio-numbers, i.e. their
combining weight. Any other ratio would violate the law of
the integral reaction of compounds.
As to the law of multiple proportions, it may be deduced by
a similar reasoning by considering the possible combinations
between a compound, e.g. AB, and one of its elements, say B.
AB and B can combine only according to their combining
weights, and therefore the quantity of B combining with AB is
equal to the quantity of AB which has combined with A to
form AB. The new combination is therefore to be expressed
by AB 2 . By extending this reasoning in the same way, we
get the general conclusion that any compounds must be com-
posed according to the formula A m B n C p . . ., where m, n, p, &c.,
are integers.
The bearing of these considerations on the atomic hypothesis
is not to disprove it, but rather to show that the existence of the
law of combining weights, which has been considered for so long
as a proof of the truth of this hypothesis, does not necessarily
involve such a consequence. Whether atoms may prove to exist
or not, the law of combining weights is independent thereof.
Two problems arose from the discoveries of Dalton and
Berzelius. The first was to determine as exactly as possible the
correct numbers of the combining weights. The other Atomlc
results from the fact that the same elements may weight
combine in different ratios. Which of these ratios determina-
gives the true ratio of the atomic weights? And
which is the multiple one? Both questions have had most
ample experimental investigation, and are now answered rather
satisfactorily. The first question was a purely technical one;
its answer depended upon analytical skill, and Berzelius in his
time easily took the lead, his numbers being readily accepted
on the continent of Europe. In England there was a certain
hesitation at first, owing to Prout's assumption (see below), but
when Turner, at the instigation of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science, tested Berzelius's numbers and
found them entirely in accordance with his own measurements,
these numbers were universally accepted. But then a rather
large error in one of Berzelius's numbers (for carbon) was
discovered in 1841 by Dumas and Stas, and a kind of panic ensued.
New determinations of the atomic weights were undertaken
from all sides. The result was most satisfactory for Berzelius,
for no other important error was discovered, and even Dumas
remarked that repeating a determination by Berzelius only
meant getting the same result, if one worked properly. In later
times more exact measurements, corresponding to the increasing
art in analysis, were carried out by various workers, amongst
ELEMENT
257
whom J. S. Stas distinguished himself. But even the classical
work of Stas proved not to be entirely without error; for every
period has its limit in accuracy, which extends slowly as science
extends. In recent limes American chemists have been especially
prominent in work of this kind, and the determinations of
I \V. Morley, T. W. Richards and G. P. Baxter rank among the
first in this line of investigation.
During this work the question arose naturally: How far docs
thr txMtness of the law extend ? It is well known that most
natural laws are only approximations, owing to disturbing
causes. Are there disturbing causes also with atomic weights?
The answer is that as far as we know there are none. The law
is still an exact one. But we must keep in mind that an absolute
answer is never possible. Our exactness is in every case limited,
and as long as the possible variations lie behind this limit, we
cannot tell anything about them. In recent times II. Landolt
has doubted and experimentally investigated the law of the
conservation of weight.
Landolt 's experiments were carried out in vessels of the shape
of an inverted (J, each branch holding one of the substances to
react one on the other. Two vessels were prepared as equal as
possible and hung on both sides of a most sensitive balance.
Then the difference of weight was determined in the usual way
by exchanging both the vessels on the balance. After this set
of weighings one of the vessels was inverted and the chemical
reaction between the contained substances was performed;
then the double weighing was repeated. Finally also the second
vessel was inverted and a third set of weighings taken. From
blank experiments where the vessels were hlled with substances
which did not react one on the other, the maximum error was
determined to 0-03 milligramme. The reactions experimented
with were: silver salts with ferrous sulphate; iron on copper
sulphate; gold chloride and ferrous chloride; iodic acid and
hydriodic acid; iodine and sodium sulphite; uranyl nitrate and
potassium hydrate; chloral hydrate and potassium hydrate;
electrolysis of cadmium iodide by an alternating current;
solution of ammonium chloride, potassium bromide and uranyl
nitrate in water, and precipitation of an aqueous solution of
copper sulphate by alcohol. In most of these experiments a
slight diminution of weight was observed which exceeded the
limit of error distinctly in two cases, viz. silver nitrate with
ferrous sulphate and iodic acid with hydriodic acid, the loss of
weight amounting from 0-068 to 0-199 mg. with the first and
0-047 to 0-177 m K- w ' ln the second reaction on about 50 g. of
substance. As each of these reactions had been tried in nine
independent experiments, Landolt felt certain that there was
no error of observation involved. But when the vessels were
covered inside with paraffin wax, no appreciable diminution of
weight was observed.
These experiments apparently suggested a small decrease of
weight as a consequence of chemical processes. On repeating
them, however, and making allowance for the different amounts
of water absorbed on the surface of the vessel at the beginning
and end of the experiment, Landolt found in 1008 ( Zeit. physik.
Ckem.(>4,p. 581) that the variations in weight are equally positive
and negative, and he concluded that there was no change in
weight, at least to the extent of i part in 10,000,000.
There is still another question regarding the numerical values
of the atomic weights, namely: Are there relations
between the numbers belonging to the several
elements? Richter had arranged his combining
weights according to their magnitude, and en-
deavoured to prove that they form a certain mathematical
Tht
series. He also explained the incompleteness of his series by
assuming that certain acids or bases requisite to the filling
up of the gaps in the series, were not yet known. He even
had the satisfaction that in his lime a new base was discovered,
which fitted rather well into one of his gaps; but when it
turned out afterwards that this new base was only calcium
phosphate, this way of reasoning fell into discredit and was
resumed only at a much later date.
To obtain a correct table of atomic weights the second question
already mentioned, viz. how to select the correct value in the
case of multiple proportions, had to be answered. Bcrzclius
was constantly on the look-out for means to distinguish the true
atomic weights from their multiples or sub-multiples, but he
could not find an unmistakable test. The whole question fell
into a terrible disorder, until in the middle of the ipth century
S. Caruiizzaro showed that by taking together all partial evidences
one could get a system of atomic weights consistent in itself and
fitting the exigencies of chemical systematics. Then a startling
discovery was made by the same method which Richter had
tried in vain, by arranging all atomic weights in one series
according to their numerical values.
The Periodic Law. The history of this discovery is rather
long. As early as 1817 J. W. Dobereiner of Jena drew attention
to the fact that the combining weight of strontium lies midway
between those of calcium and barium, and some years later he
showed that such " triads " occurred in other cases too. L.
Gmelin tried to apply this idea to all elements, but he realized
that in many cases more than three elements had to be grouped
together. While Ernst Lenssen applied the idea of triads to the
whole table of chemical elements, but without any important
result, the other idea of grouping more than three elements into
series according to their combining weights proved more success-
ful. It was the concept of homologous series just developed in
organic chemistry which influenced such considerations. First
Max von Pettenkofer in 1850 and then J. B. A. Dumas in 1851
undertook to show that such a series of similar elements could
be formed, having nearly constant differences between their
combining weights. It is true that this idea in all its simplicity
did not hold good extensively enough; so J. P. Cooke and
Dumas tried more complicated types of numerical series, but
only with a temporary success.
The idea of arranging all elements in a single series in the order
of the magnitude of their combining weights, the germ of which
is to be found already in J. B. Richter's work, appears first in
1860 in some tables published by Lothar Meyer for his lectures.
Independently, A. E. B. de Chancourtois in 1862, J. A. R.
Newlands in 1863, and D. I. Mendel6eff in 1869, developed the
same idea with the same result, namely, that it is possible to
divide this series of all the elements into a certain number of
very similar parts. In their papers, which appeared in the same
year, 1869, Lothar Meyer and Mendel6eff gave to all these trials
the shape npw generally adopted. They succeeded in proving
beyond all doubt that this series was of a periodic character, and
could be cut into shorter pieces of similar construction. Here
again gaps were present to be filled up by elements to be dis-
covered, and Mendeleeff , who did this, predicted from the general
regularity of his table the properties of such unknown elements.
In this case fate was more kind than with Richter, and science
had the satisfaction of seeing these predictions turn out to be
true.
The following table contains this periodic arrangement of the
elements according to their atomic weight. By cutting the
whole series into pieces of eight elements (or more in several
He 4-0
Ne
Li 7-03
Na 23-00
Be o-i
Mg 24-32
B i i-o
AI27-I
C 12-00
Si 28-4
N 14-01
P3I-0
O 16-00
832-06
F 19-0
Cl 35-45
Ar39-9
Cu 63-6
340-1
In 65-4
Ga 70
Ti 48-1
Ge72-5
Vsi-2
A 75-0
Cr-o
SC79-2
Mn 55-0
Br 79-96
Fe 55-9, Ni 58-7, Co 59-0
KrSa-0
Rb 85-5
Sr 87-6
Y89-0
Zroo-6
Cb(Nb) 94
Mo 96-0
Ru 101-7, Rh 103-0, Pd 106-5
Ag 107-93
Cd 112-4
In 115
Sn 119-0
Sb 120-2
Te 127-6
I 126-97
Xe 130-7
Ci3a-9
Bal 3 7-4
La 138-9
Ce &c. 140
Ta 181
W 184
Os 191, Ir 193-0, Pt 194-8
Au 197-2
Hg 200-0
Tl 204-1
Pb 206-9
Bi 208-0
. .
Ra 225
Th 232-5
U 238-5
DC. 9
ELEMENT
cases) and arranging these one below another in the alternating
way shown in the table, one finds similar elements placed in
vertical series whose properties change gradually and with some
regularity according to their place in the table. Not only the
properties of the uncombined elements obey this rule, but also
almost all properties of similar compounds of the elements.
But upon closer investigation it must be confessed that these
regularities can be called only rules, and not laws. In the first
line one would expect that the steps in the values of the atomic
weights should be regular, but it is not so. There are even cases
when it is necessary to invert the order of the atomic weights
to satisfy the chemical necessities. Thus argon has a larger
number than potassium, but must precede it to fit into its proper
place. The same is true of tellurium and iodine. It looks as if
the real elements were scattered somewhat haphazard on a
regular table, or as if some independent factor were active to
disturb an existing regularity. It may be that the new facts
mentioned above will lead also to an explanation of these irregu-
larities; at present we must recognize them and not try to
explain them away. Such considerations have to be kept in
mind especially in regard to the very numerous attempts to
express the series of combining weights in a mathematical form.
In several cases rather surprising agreements were found, but
never without exception. It looks as if some very important
factor regulating the whole matter is still unknown, and before
this has been elucidated no satisfactory treatment of the matter
is possible. It seems therefore premature to enter into the details
of these speculations.
In recent times not only our belief in the absolute exactness
of the law of the conservation of weight has been shaken, but
also our belief in the law of the conservation of the
tatioa"o"' elements. The wonderful substance radium, whose
elements, existence has made us to revise quite a number of old
and established views, seems to be a fulfilment of the
old problem of the alchemists. It is true that by its help lead
is not changed into gold, but radium not only changes itself into
another element, helium (Ramsay), but seems also to cause other
elements to change. Work in this line is of present day origin
only and we do not know what new laws will be found to regulate
these most unexpected reactions (see RADIOACTIVITY). But we
realize once more that no law can be regarded as free from
criticism and limitation; in the whole realm of exact sciences
there is no such thing as the Absolute.
Another question regarding the values of atomic weights was
raised very soon after their first establishment. From the some-
<>s what inexact first determinations William Prout
ass"mp- concluded that all atomic weights are multiples of the
tioa. atomic weight of hydrogen, thus suggesting all other
elements to be probably made up from condensed
hydrogen. Berzelius found his determinations not at all in
accordance with this assumption, and strongly opposed the
arbitrary rounding off of the numbers practised by the partisans
of Prout's hypothesis. His hypothesis remained alive, although
almost every chemist who did exact atomic weight determinations,
especially Stas, contradicted it severely. Even in our time it
seems to have followers, who hope that in some way the existing
experimental differences may disappear. But one of the most
important and best-known relations, that between hydrogen and
oxygen, is certainly different from the simple ratio 1:16, for it
has been determined by a large number of different investigators
and by different methods to be undoubtedly lower, namely,
i : 15-87. Therefore, if Prout's hypothesis contain an element
of truth, by the act of condensation of some simpler substance
into the present chemical elements a change of weight also
must have occurred, such that the weight of the element did not
remain exactly the weight of the simpler substance which changed
into it. We have already remarked that such phenomena are
not yet known with certainty, but they cannot be regarded as
utterly impossible.
It may here be mentioned that the internationality of science
has shown itself active also in the question of atomic weights.
These numbers undergo incessantly small variations because
of new work done for their determination. To avoid the un-
certainty arising from this inevitable state of affairs,
an international committee was formed by the co-
operation of the leading chemical societies all over the
world, and an international table of the most probable
values is issued every year. The following table is
that for 1910:
International Atomic Weights, 1910.
Inter-
national
table of
atomic
weights.
Atomic
Atomic
Weights.
Weights.
Name.
Symbol. = 16.
Name.
Symbol. = 16.
Aluminium
Al 27-1
Mercury .
. Hg 200-0
Antimony
Sb 120-2
Molybdenum
. Mo 96-0
Argon .
Ar 39-9
Neodymium .
Nd 144-3
Arsenic
As 74-96
Neon .
Ne 20-0
Barium .
Ba 137-37
Nickel . .
Ni "58-68
Beryllium
(Glucinum
%\ 9-i
Nitrogen .
Osmium .
NO" MW
I4-OI
Os 190-9
Bismuth
Bi 208-0
Oxygen .
O 16-00
Boron .
B n-o
Palladium
Pd 106-7
Bromine
Br 79-92
Phosphorus .
P 31-0
Cadmium
Cd 112-40
Platinum.
Pt IQS-O
Caesium .
Cs 132-81
Potassium
j* *yo "
K 39-10
Calcium .
Ca 40-09
Praseodymium
Pr 140-6
Carbon .
C 12-00
Radium .
Ra 226-4
Cerium
Ce 140-25
Rhodium.
Rh 102-9
Chlorine .
ci 35-46
Rubidium
Rb 85-45
Chromium
Cr 52-0
Ruthenium .
Ru 101-7
Cobalt .
Co 58-97
Samarium
Sm i so-4
Columbium
Cb 1
Scandium
Sc 44.- 1
(Niobium)
(Nb) I 93-5
Selenium
e
Se 79-2
Copper .
Cu 63-57
Silicon
Si 28-3
Dysprosium
Erbium .
Dy 162-5
Er 167-4
Silver
Sodium .
Ag 107-88
Na 23-00
Europium
Eu 152-0
Strontium
Sr 87-62
Fluorine .
F 19-0
Sulphur .
S 32-07
Gadolinium
Gd 157-3
Tantalum
Ta 181-0
Gallium .
Ga 69-9
Tellurium
Te 127-5
Germanium
Ge 72-5
Terbium .
Tb 159-2
Gold . .
Au 197-2
Thallium
T>l
204-0
Helium .
He 4-0
Thorium .
Th 232-42
Hydrogen
H 1-008
Thulium .
Tm 168-5
Indium
In 114-8
Tin ...
Sn 119-0
Iodine
126-92
Titanium.
Ti 48-1
Indium .
Ir 193-1
Tungsten.
W 184-0
Iron .
Fe 55-85
Uranium .
U 238-5
Krypton .
Kr 83-0
Vanadium
V 51-2
Lanthanum
La 139-0
Xenon
Xe 130-7
Lead . .
Pb 207-10
Ytterbium (N
eo-
Lithium .
Li 7-00
ytterbium)
Yb 172-0
Lutecium .
Lu 174-0
Yttrium . .
Y 89-0
Magnesium
Mg 24-32
Zinc .
Zn 65-37
Manganese
Mn 54-93
Zirconium
Zr 90-6
Con-
cludlnj
remar
In the long and manifold development of the concept of the
element one idea has remained prominent from the very begin-
ning down to our times: it is the idea of a primordial
matter. Since the naive statement of Thales that all
things came from water, chemists could never reconcile
themselves to the fact of the conservation of the
elements. By an experimental investigation which extended
over five centuries and more, the impossibility of transmuting
one element into another for example, lead into gold was
demonstrated in the most extended way, and nevertheless this
law has so little entered the consciousness of the chemists that
it is seldom explicitly stated even in carefully written text-books.
On the other side the attempts to reduce the manifoldness of the
actual chemical elements to one single primordial matter have
never ceased, and the latest development of science seems to
endorse such a view. It is therefore necessary to consider this
question from a most general standpoint.
In physical science, the chemical elements may be compared
with such concepts as mass, momentum, quantity of electricity,
entropy and such like. While mass and entropy are determined
univocally by a unit and a number, quantity of electricity has
a unit, a number and a sign, for it can be positive as well as nega-
tive. Momentum has a unit, a number and a direction in space.
Elements do not have a common unit as the former magnitudes,
but every element has its own unit, and there is no transition
from one to another. All these magnitudes underlie a law of
conservation, but to a very different degree. While mass was
ELEMI ELEPHANT
259
considered as absolutely invariable in the classical mechanics,
the newer theories of the electrical constitution of matter make
mass dependent on the velocity of the moving electron.
Momentum also is not entirely conservative because it can be
changed by light-pressure. Entropy is known as constantly
increasing, remaining constant only in an ideal limiting case.
With chemical elements we observe the same thing as wiih
momentum; though till recently considered as conservative,
there is now experimental evidence that they do not always
show this character.
Generally the laws of the conservation of mass, weight and
elements are expressed as the " law of the conservation of matter."
Kut this expression lacks scientific exactness because the term
" matter " is generally not defined exactly, and because only the
above-named properties of ponderable objects do not change,
while all other properties do to a greater or less extent. Con-
sidered in the most general way, we may define matter as a
complex of gravitational, kinetic and chemical energies, which are
found to cling together in the same space. Of these energies the
capacity factors, namely, weight, mass and elements, are con-
servative as described, while the intensity factors, potential,
velocity and affinity, may change in wide limits. To explain
why we find these energies constantly combined one with
another, we only have to think of a mass without gravity or a
ponderable body without mass. The first could not remain on
earth because every movement would carry it into infinite space,
and the second would acquire infinite velocity by the slightest
push and would also disappear at once. Therefore only such
objects which have both mass and weight can be handled and
out be objects of our knowledge. In the same way all other
energies come to our knowledge only by being (at least tempor-
arily) associated with this combination of mass and weight.
This is the true meaning of the term " matter."
In this line of ideas matter appears not at all as a primary
concept, but as a complex one; there is therefore no reason to
consider matter as the last term of scientific analysis of chemical
facts, and the idea of a primordial matter appears as a survival
from the very first beginning of European natural philosophy.
The most general concept science has developed to express the
variety of experience is energy, and in terms of energy (combined
with number, magnitudes, time and space) all observed and
observable experiences are to be described. (W. O.)
ELEMI. an oleo-resin (Manilla elemi) obtained in the Philippine
Islands, probably from Canarium commune (nat. ord. Burser-
aceae), which when fresh and of good quality is a pale yellow
granular substance, of honey-like consistency, but which gradu-
ally hardens with age. It is soluble in alcohol and ether, and has
a spicy taste with a smell like fennel. In the i;th and *i8th
'centuries the term elemi usually denoted an oleo-resin (American
or Brazilian elemi) obtained from trees of the genus Idea in
Brazil, and still earlier it meant oriental or African elemi, derived
from BoneeUij Prereana, which flourishes in the neighbourhood
of Cape Gardafui. The word, like the older term animi, appears
to have been derived from enhaemon(Gr. tvaifiov), the name of
styptic medicine said by Pliny to contain tears exuded by the
olive tree of Arabia.
ELEPHANT, the designation of the two existing representatives
of the Proboscidea, a sub-order of ungulate mammals, and also
extended to include their more immediate extinct relatives.
As the distinctive characteristics of the sub-order, and also of the
single existing genus Elepkas, are given in the article PROBOS-
CIDEA, it will suffice to point out how the two existing species
are distinguished from one another.
The more specialized of the two species is the Indian or Asiatic
elephant. Elephas maximus, specially characterized by the ex-
treme complexity of the structure of its molar teeth, which are
composed of a great number of tall and thin plates of enamel
and dent inc. with the intervals filled by cement (see PROBOSCIDEA,
fig. i). The average number of plates of the six successive
molar teeth may be expressed by the " ridge-formula " 4, 8, 1 2,
1 1, 16, 24. The plates are compressed from before backwards,
the anterior and posterior surfaces (as seen in the worn grinding
face of the tooth) being nearly parallel. Earsof moderate size.
Upper margin of the end of the proboscis developed into a distinct
finger-like process, much longer than the lower margins, and the
whole trunk uniformly tapering and smooth. Five nails on the
fore-feet, and four (occasionally five) on the hind-feet.
The Asiatic elephant inhabits the forest-lands of India, Burma,
the Malay Peninsula, Cochin China, Ceylon and Sumatra.
Elephants from the last-named islands present some variations
from those of the mainland, and have been separated under the
names of E. zeylonicus and E. sumatranus, but they are not
more than local races, and the Ceylon animal, which is generally
tuskless, may be the typical E. maximus, in which case the Indian
race will be E. maximus indicus. The appearance of the Asiatic
elephant is familiar to all. In the wild state it is gregarious,
associating in herds of ten, twenty or more individuals, and,
though it may under certain circumstances become dangerous,
it is generally inoffensive and even timid, fond of shade and
solitude and the neighbourhood of water. The height of the
male at the shoulder when full grown is usually from 8 to 10 ft.,
occasionally as much as 1 1 , and possibly even more. The female
is somewhat smaller.
The following epitome of the habits of the Asiatic elephants is
extracted from Great and Small Came of India and Tibet, by
R. Lydekker:
" The structure of the teeth is sufficient to indicate that the
food consists chiefly of grass, leaves, succulent shoots and fruits;
and this has been found
by observation to be
actually the case. In
this respect the Asiatic
species differs very
widely from its African
relative, whose nutri-
ment is largely com-
posed of boughs and
roots. Another differ-
ence between the two
animals is to be found
in the great intolerance
of the direct rays of
the sun displayed by
the Asiatic species,
which never voluntarily
exposes itself to their
influence. Consequently, during the hot season in Upper
India, and at all times except during the rains in the more
southern districts, elephants keep much to the denser parts
of the forests. In Southern India they delight in hill-forest,
where the undergrowth is largely formed of bamboo, the
tender shoots of which form a favourite delicacy; but during
the rains they venture out to feed on the open grass tracts.
Water is everywhere essential to their well-being; and no animals
delight more thoroughly in a bath. Nor are they afraid to
venture out of their depth, being excellent swimmers, and able,
by means of their trunks, to breathe without difficulty when the
entire body is submerged. The herds, which are led by females,
appear in general to be family parties; and although commonly
restricted to from thirty to fifty, may occasionally include as
many as one hundred head. The old bulls are very generally
solitary for a considerable portion of the year, but return to the
herds during the pairing season. Some ' rogue ' elephants
gunda of the natives remain, however, permanently separated
from the rest of their kind. All such solitary bulls, as their
colloquial name indicates, are of a spiteful disposition; and it
appears that with the majority the inducement to live apart is
due to their partiality for cultivated crops, into which the more
timid females are afraid to venture. ' Must ' elephants are
males in a condition of probably sexual excitement, when an
abundant discharge of dark oily matter exudes from two pores
in the forehead. In addition to various sounds produced at
other times, an elephant when about to charge gives vent to a
shrill loud 'trumpet';, and on such occasions rushes on its
FIG. i.
Asiatic Elephant (Elephas maximus'}.
260
ELEPHANT
adversary with its trunk safely rolled up out of danger, endeavour-
ing either to pin him to the ground with its tusks (if a male tusker)
or to trample him to death beneath its ponderous knees or feet."
Exact information in regard to the period of gestation of the
female is still lacking, the length of the period being given from
eighteen to twenty-two months by different authorities. The
native idea, which may be true, is that the shorter period occurs in
the case of female and the longer in that of male calves. In India
elephants seldom breed in captivity, though they do so more
frequently in Burma and Siam; the domesticated stock is there-
fore replenished by fresh captures. Occasionally two calves are
produced at a birth, although the normal number is one. Calves
suckle with their mouths and not with their trunks. Unlike the
African species, the Indian elephant charges with its trunk
curled up, and consequently in silence.
As regards their present distribution in India, elephants are
found along the foot of the Himalaya as far west as the valley
of Dehra-Dun, where the winter temperature falls to a com-
paratively low point. A favourite haunt used to be the swamp
of Azufghur, lying among the sal-forests to the northward of
Meerut. In the great tract of forest between the Ganges and
Kistna rivers they occur locally as far west as Biiaspur and
Mandla; they are met with in the Western Ghats as far north as
between latitude 17 and 18, and are likewise found in the hill-
FIG. 2. Immature African Elephant (Elephas africanus).
forests of Mysore, as well as still farther south. In this part of the
peninsula they ascend the hills to a considerable height, as they
do in the Newara Eliya district of Ceylon, where they have been
encountered at an elevation of over 7000 ft. There is evidence
that about three centuries ago elephants wandered in the forests
of Malwa and Nimar, while they survived to a later date in the
Chanda district of the Central Provinces. At the comparatively
remote epoch when the Deccan was a forest tract, they were
probably also met with there, but the swamps of the Bengal
Sundarbans appear unsuited to their habits.
Of tusks, the three longest specimens on record respectively
measure 8 ft. 9 in., 8 ft. 2 in. and 8 ft.; their respective weights
being 81, 80 and 90 Ib. These are, however, by no means the
heaviest one, whose length is 7 ft. 3! in., weighing 102 Ib;
while a second, of which the length is 7 ft. 3} in., scaled 97! ft.
Of the largest pair in the possession of the British Museum, which
belonged to an elephant killed in 1866 by Colonel G. M. Payne
in Madras, one tusk measures 6 ft. 8 in. in length, and weighs
77! Ib, the other being somewhat smaller. It should be added
that some of these large tusks came from Ceylon; such tuskers
being believed to be descended from mainland animals imported
into the island. "White" elephants are partial or complete
albinos, and are far from uncommon in Burma and Siam. Young
Indian elephants are hairy, thus showing affinity with the
mammoth.
The African elephant is a very different animal from its
Asiatic cousin, both as regards structure and habits; and were it
not for the existence of intermediate extinct species, might well
be regarded as the representative of a distinct genus. Among
its characteristics the following points are noticeable. The
molar teeth are of coarse construction, with fewer and larger
plates and thicker enamel; the ridge-formula being 3, 6, 7, 7, 8,
10; while the plates are not flattened, but thicker in the middle
than at the edges, so that their worn grinding-surfaces are lozenge-
shaped. Ears very large. The upper and lower margins of the
end of the trunk form two nearly equal prehensile lips. Only
three toes on the hind-foot. A very important distinction is
to be found in the conformation of the trunk, which, as shown
in fig. 2, looks as though composed of a number of segments,
gradually decreasing in size from base to tip like the joints of a
telescope, instead of tapering gradually and evenly from one
extremity to the other. The females have relatively large tusks,
which are essential in obtaining their food. Except where
extetminated by human agency (and this has been accomplished
to a deplorable extent), the African elephant is a native of the
wooded districts of the whole of Africa south of the Sahara. It
is hunted chiefly for the sake of the ivory of its immense tusks,
of which it yields the principal source of supply to the European
market, and the desire to obtain which is rapidly leading to the
extermination of the species. In size the male African elephant
often surpasses the Asiatic species, reaching nearly 12 ft. in
some cases. The circumference of the fore-foot is half the height
at the shoulder, a circumstance which enables sportsmen to
estimate approximately the size of their quarry. A tusk in the
British Museum measures 10 ft. 2 in. in length, with a basal
girth of 24 in. and a weight of 2265 ft; but a still longer, although
lighter, tusk was brought to London in 1905.
Several local races of African elephant have been described,
mainly distinguished from one another by the form and size of
the ears, shape of the head, &c. The most interesting of these
is the pigmy Congo race, E. africanus pumilio, named on the
evidence of an immature specimen in the possession of C. Hagen-
beck, the well-known animal-dealer of Hamburg, in 1905.
According to Hagenbeck's estimate, this elephant, which came
from the French Congo, was about six years old at the time it
came under scientific notice. Moreover, in the opinion of the
same observer, it is in no wise an abnormally dwarfed or ill-
grown representative of the normal type of African elephant,
but a well-developed adolescent animal. In height it stood
about the same as a young individual of the ordinary African
elephant when about a year and a half old, the vertical measure-
ment at the shoulder being only 4 ft., or merely a foot higher
than a new-born Indian elephant. Hagenbeck's estimate of its
age was based on the presence of well-developed tusks, and the
relative proportion of the fore and hind limbs, which are stated
to show considerable differences in the case of the African
elephant according to age. Nothing was stated as to the prob-
ability of an increase in the stature of the French Congo animal
as it grows older; but even if we allow another foot, its height
would be considerably less than half that of a large Central
African bull of the ordinary elephant.
By Dr Paul Matschie several races of the African elephant
have been described, mainly, as already mentioned, on certain
differences in the shape of the ear. From the two West African
races (E. a. cydotis and E. a. oxyotis) the dwarf Congo elephant
is stated to be distinguished by the shape of its ear; comparison
in at least one instance having been made with an immature
animal. The relatively small size of the ear is one of the most
distinctive characteristics of the dwarf race. Further, the skin
is stated to be much less rough, with fewer cracks, while a more
important difference occurs in the trunk, which lacks the trans-
verse ridges so distinctive of the ordinary African elephant, and
thereby approximates to the Asiatic species.
If the differences in stature and form are constant, there can
be no question as to the right of the dwarf Congo elephant to
rank as a well-marked local race; the only point for consideration
being whether it should not be called a species. The great
interest in connexion with a dwarf West African race of elephant
is in relation to the fossil pigmy elephants of the limestone
ELEPHANTA ISLE ELEPHANTIASIS
261
fissures and caves of Malta and Cyprus. Although some of these
elephants are believed not to have been larger than donkeys,
the height of others may be estimated at from 4 to 5 ft., or prac-
tically the same as that of the dwarf Congo race. By their
describers, the dwarf European elephants were regarded as
distinct species, under the names of Elephas mrlitensis, E.
mutiidriensu and E. Cypriotes; but since their molar teeth are
essentially miniatures of those of the African elephant , it has been
suggested by later observers that these animals are nothing more
than dwarf races of the latter. This view may receive some sup-
port from the occurrence of a dwarf form of the African elephant
in the Congo; and if we regard the latter as a subspecies of
Elfpkas ofricaints, it seems highly probable that a similar
position will have to be assigned to the pigmy European fossil
elephants. If, on the other hand, the dwarf Congo elephant be
regarded as a species, then the Maltese and Cyprian elephants
may have to be classed as races of Eicphas pumilio; or, rather,
E. pumilio will have to rank as a race of the Maltese species.
In this connexion it is of interest to note that, both in the
Mediterranean islands and in West Africa, dwarf elephants of
the African type are accompanied by pigmy species of hippo-
potamus, although we have not yet evidence to show that in
Africa the two animals occupy actually the same area. Still, the
close relationship of the existing Liberian pigmy hippopotamus
to the fossil Mediterranean species is significant, in relation to
the foregoing observations on the elephant.
It may be added that fossil remains of the African elephant
have been obtained from Spain, Sicily, Algeria and Egypt, in
strata of the Pleistocene age. Some of the main differences in
the habits of the African as distinct from those of the Asiatic
elephant have been mentioned under the heading of the ktter
species. The most important of these are the greater tolerance
by the African animal of sunlight, and the hard nature of its
food, which consists chiefly of boughs and roots. The latter are
dug up with the tusks; the left one being generally employed
in this service, and thus becoming much more worn than its
fellow. (R. L.*)
ELEPHANTA ISLE (called by the natives Gharapuri),n
small island between Bombay and the mainland of India, situated
about 6 m. from Bombay. It is nearly 5 m. in circumference,
and the few inhabitants it contains are employed in the cultiva-
tion of rice, and in rearing sheep and poultry for the Bombay
market. The island, till within recent times, was almost entirely
overgrown with wood; it contains several springs of good water.
There are also important quarries of building stone. But it
owes its chief celebrity to the mythological excavations and
sculptures of Hindu superstition which it contains. Opposite to
the landing-place was a colossal statue of an elephant, cracked
and mutilated, from which the island received from the Portu-
guese the name it still bears. The statue was removed in 1864,
and may now be seen in the Victoria Gardens, Bombay. At a
short distance from this spot is a cave, the entrance to which
is nearly 60 ft. wide and 18 high, supported by pillars cut out
of the rock; the sides are sculptured into numerous compart-
ments, containing representations of the Hindu deities, but
many of the figures have been defaced by the zeal of the
Mabommedans and Portuguese. In the centre of the excavations
is a remarkable Trimurli or bust, formerly thought to represent
the Hindu Triad, namely, Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the
Preserver, and Siva or Mahadeva the Destroyer, but now held to
be a triform representation of Siva alone. The heads are from
4 to 5 ft. in length, and are well cut, and the faces, with the
exception of the under lip, are handsome. The head-dresses are
curiously ornamented; and one of the figures holds in its hand
a cobra, while on the cap arc, amongst other symbols, a human
skull and an infant. On each side of the Trimurti is a pilaster,
the front of which is filled up by a human figure leaning on a
dwarf, both much defaced. There is a large compartment to
the right, hollowed a little, and covered with a great variety of
figures, the largest of which is 16 ft. high, representing the double
figure of Siva and Parvati. named Viraj. half male and half
female. On the right is Brahma, four-faced, on a lotus one
of the very few representations of this god which now exist in
India; and on the left is Vishnu. On the other side of the
Trimurti is another compartment with various figures of Siva and
Parvati, the most remarkable of which is Siva in his vindictive
character, eight-handed, with a collet of skulls round his neck.
On the right of the entrance to the cave is a square apartment,
supported by eight colossal figures, containing a gigantic symbol
of Mahadeva or Siva cut out of the rock. In a ravine connected
with the great cave are two other caves, also containing sculptures,
which, however, have been much defaced owing to the action
of damp and the falling of the rocks; and in another hill is a
fourth cave. This interesting retreat of Hindu religious art is
said to have been dedicated to Siva, but it contains numerous
representations of other Hindu deities. It has, however, for
long been a place not so much of worship as of archaeological
and artistic interest alike to the European and Hindu traveller.
It forms a wonderful monument of antiquity, and must have been
a work of incredible labour. Archaeological authorities are of
opinion that the cave must have been excavated about the loth
century of the Christian era, if not earlier. The island is much
frequented by the British residents of Bombay; and during
his tour in India in 1873 King Edward VII., then prince of Wales,
was entertained there at a banquet.
ELEPHANTIASIS (Barbadoes leg; Boucnemia), is a disease
dependent on chronic lymphatic obstruction, and characterized
by hypertrophy of the skin and subcutaneous tissue. Two
distinct forms are known, (i) elephantiasis arabum, due to the
development of living parasites, filaria sanguinis hominis (or
filaria Bancrofti), and (2) the non-filarial form due to lymphatic
obstruction from any other cause whatsoever, as erysipelas, the
deposit of tuberculous or cancerous material in the lymphatic
glands, phlegmasia dolens (white leg), long-continued eczema,
&c. The enlargement is limited to a particular part of the body,
generally one, or in rare cases both of the lower limbs, occasion-
ally the scrotum, one of the labiae or the mammary gland; far
more rarely the face. An attack is usually ushered in by febrile
disturbance (elephantoid fever), the part attacked becoming
rapidly swollen, and the skin tense and red as in erysipelas.
The subcutaneous tissues become firm, infiltrated and hard,
pitting only on considerable pressure. The skin becomes
roughened with a network of dilated lymphatics, and vesicles
and bullae may form, discharging a chyle-like fluid when broken
(lymphorrhoea). In a later stage still the skin may be coarse
and wart-like, and there is a great tendency for varicose ulcers to
form. At the end of a variable time enlargement ceases to take
place, and the disease enters a quiescent state: but recru-
descences occur at irregular intervals, always ushered in by
elephantoid fever. At the end of some years the attacks of
fever cease, and the affected part remains permanently swollen.
The only difference in the history of the two forms of the disease
lies in the fact that the non-filarial form progresses steadily,
until either the underlying condition is cured, or in the case of
cancer. &c., brings about a fatal issue. The elephantiasis due to
filaria is spread by the agency of mosquitoes, in whose bodies
the intermediate stage is passed. The dead mosquito falls upon
the water, which thus becomes infected, and hence the ova
reach the human stomach. The young worm develops, bores
through the gastric mucous membrane and finally becomes
lodged in the lymphatics, usually of one or other of the extremities.
A large number of embryonic filariae are produced. Some remain
in the lymphatic spaces and cause lymphatic obstruction, while
others enter the blood stream by night (filaria nocturna), or by
day (filaria diurna). It is supposed that a mosquito, biting
an infected person, itself becomes infected with the blood it
abstracts, and that so a new generation is developed.
Treatment for this condition is unsatisfactory. Occasionally
the dilated lymph trunks can be found, and an operation per-
formed to implant them in some vein (lymphangeioplasty). And
in some few other cases artificial lymphatics have been made
by introducing sterilized silk thread in the subcutaneous tissues
of the affected part, and prolonging it into the normal tissues.
This operation has been most successful when performed on
262
ELEPHANT'S-FOOT ELEU.SIS
elephantoid arms dependent on a late stage of cancerous breast.
Elevation of the limb and elastic pressure should always be tried,
but often amputation has to be resorted to in the end. The
disease is totally different from the so-called elephantiasis
graecorum or true leprosy, for which see LEPROSY.
ELEPHANTS-FOOT, the popular name for the plant Testudi-
naria elephantipes, a native of the Cape of Good Hope. It takes
its name from the large tuberous stem, which grows very slowly
but often reaches a considerable size, e.g. more than 3 yds.
in circumference with a height of nearly 3 ft. above ground.
It is rich in starch, whence the name Hottentot bread, and is
covered on the outside with thick, hard, corky plates. It develops
slender, leafy, climbing shoots which die down each season. It
is a member of the monocotyledonous order Dioscoreaceae,
half of the iyth century, when it became a centre for the trade
with south Russia.
ELEUSIS, an ancient Greek city in Attica about 14 m. N.W.
of Athens, occupying the eastern part of a rocky ridge close to
the shore opposite the island of Salamis. Its fame is due chiefly
to its Mysteries, for which see MYSTERY. Tradition carries
back the origin of Eleusis to the highest antiquity. In the earlier
period of its history it seems to have been an independent rival
of Athens, and it was afterwards reckoned one of the twelve
Old Attic cities. A considerable portion of its small territory
was occupied by the plains of Thria, noticeable for their fertility,
though the hopes of the husbandmen were not unfrequently
disappointed by the blight of the south wind. To the west was
the Htdiov Tdpioj' or Rharian Plain, where Demeter is said to
TEMPLES!
OF egs
ARTEMIS
PROPYLAEA
(Q)WEUL
^CAULICHORON
Primitive
6th. Century
Sth. & 4th. Century
Macedonian
Roman
Scale of Metres
> 20 3, 4p ?
Scale of Yards
p 20 jo 40 y
climbing plants with slender herbaceous or shrubby shoots,
to which belong the yam and the British black bryony, Tamus
communis.
ELETS, a town of Russia, in the government of Orel, 122 m.
by rail E.S.E. of Orel, on the railway which connects Riga with
Tsaritsyn on the lower Volga. Pop. (1883) 36,680; '(1900)
38,239. Owing to its advantageous position Elets has grown
rapidly. Its merchants buy large quantities of grain, and
numerous flour-mills, many of them driven by steam, prepare
flour, which is forwarded to Moscow and Riga. The trade in
cattle is very important. Elets has the first grain elevator
erected in Russia (1887), a railway school, and important
tanneries, foundries for cast iron and copper, tallow-melting
works, limekilns and brickworks. The cathedral and two
monasteries contain venerated historic relics.
Elets is first mentioned in 1 147, when it was a fort of Ryazan.
The Turkish Polovtsi or Kumans attacked it in the 1 2th century,
and the Mongols destroyed it during their first invasion (1239)
and again in 1305. The Tatars plundered it in 1415 and 1450;
and it seems to have been completely abandoned in the latter
half of the i sth century. Its development dates from the second
have sown the first seeds of corn; and on its confines was the
field called Orgas, planted with trees consecrated to Demeter
and Persephone. The sacred buildings were destroyed by Alaric
in A.D. 396, and it is not certain whether they were restored
before the extinction of all pagan rites by Theodosius. The
present village on the site is of Albanian origin; it is called.
Lefsina or Lepsina, officially 'EXeuois.
The Site. Systematic excavations, begun in 1882 by D.
Philios for the Greek Archaeological Society, have laid bare the
whole of the sacred precinct. It is now possible to trace its
boundaries as extended at various periods, and also many suc-
cessive stages in the history of the Telesterion, or Hall of Initia-
tion. These complete excavations have shown the earlier and
partial excavations to have been in some respects deceptive.
In front of the main entrance of the precinct is a large paved
area, with the foundations of a temple in it, usually identified as
that of Artemis Propylaea; in their present form both area and
temple date from Roman times; and on each side of the Great
Propylaea are the foundations of a Roman triumphal arch.
Just below the steps of the Propylaea, on the left as one
enters, there has been discovered, at a lower level than the
ELEUTHERIUS ELEVATORS
263
Roman pavement, the curb surrounding an curly well. This is
almost 1 1 rt.imly the xaXXixopoc <t>p*ap mentioned by Pausanias.
The C'.rvut 1'ropylaea is a structure of Roman imperial date,
in close imitation of the Propylaea on the Athenian Acropolis.
however, set in a wall of 6th-century work, though repaired
in later times. This wall encloses a sort of outer court , of irregular
triangular shape. The Small Propylaea is not set exactly
opposite to the Great Propylaea, but at an angle to it; an
inscription on the architrave records that it was built by Appius
Claudius Pulcher, the contemporary of Cicero. It is also set in
a later wall that occupies approximately the same position as
two earlier ones, which date from the 6th and 5th centuries
respectively, and must have indicated the boundary of the inner
precinct. From the Small Propylaea a paved road of Roman
date leads to one of the doors of the Telesterion. Above the
Small Propylaea, partly set beneath the overhanging rock,
is the precinct of Pluto; it has a curious natural cleft approached
by rock-cut steps. Several inscriptions and other antiquities
were found here, including the famous head, now in Athens,
usually called Eubouleus, though the evidence for its identifica-
tion is far from satisfactory. A little farther on is a rock-cut
platform, with a well, approached by a broad flight of steps,
which probably served for spectators of the sacred procession.
Beyond this, close to the side of the Telesterion, are the founda-
tions of a temple on higher ground; it has been conjectured that
this was the temple of Demeter, but there is no evidence that such
a building existed in historic times, apart from the Telesterion.
The Telesterion, or Hall of Initiation, was a large covered
building, about 1 70 ft. square. It was surrounded on all sides by
steps, which must have served as seats for the mystac, while the
sacred dramas and processions took place on the floor of the hall:
these seats were partly built up, partly cut in the solid rock; in
later times they appear to have been cased with marble. There
were two doors on each side of the hall, except the north-west,
where it is cut out of the solid rock, and a rock terrace at a higher
level adjoins it; this terrace may have been the station of those
who were not yet admitted to the full initiation. The roof of the
hall was carried by rows of columns, which were more than once
renewed.
The architectural history of the hall has been traced by
Professor W. Dorpfeld with the help of the various foundations
that have been brought to light. The earliest building on the site
is a small rectangular structure, with walls of polygonal masonry,
built of the rock quarried on the spot. This was succeeded by a
square hall, almost of the same plan as the later Telesterion, but
about a quarter of the size; its eastern corner coincides with that
of the later building, and it appears to have had a portico in front
like that which, in the later hall, was a later addition. Its roof
was carried by columns, of which the bases can still be seen.
This building has with great probability been assigned to the time
of Peisistratus; it was destroyed by the Persians. Between this
event and the erection of the present hall, which must be sub-
stantially the one designed by Ictinus in the time of Pericles,
there must have been a restoration, of which we may see the
remains in a set of round sinkings to carry columns, which occur
only in the north-east part of the hall; a set of bases arranged
on a different system occur in the south-west part, and it is
difficult to see how these two systems could be reconciled unless
there were some sort of partition between the two parts of the hall.
Both sets were removed to make way for the later columns, of
which the bases and some of the'drums still remain. These later
columns are shown, by inscriptions and other fragments built into
their bases, to belong to later Roman times. At the eastern and
southern comers of the hall of Ictinus are projecting masses
of masonry, which may be the foundation for a portico that was
to be added; but perhaps they were only buttresses, intended
to resist the thrust of the roof of this huge structure, which
rested at its northern and western corners against the solid rock
of the hill. On the south-east side the hall is faced with a portico,
extending its whole width; the marble pavement of this portico
is a most conspicuous feature of Eleusis at the present day.
The portico was added to the hall by the architect Philo, under
Demetrius of Phalerum, about the end of the 4th century B.C.
It was never completed, for the fluting of its columns still remains
unfinished.
The Telesterion took up the greater part of the sacred precinct,
which seems merely to have served to keep the profane away from
the temple. The massive walls and towers of the time of Pericles,
which resemble those of a fortress, are quite close in on the south
and east; later, probably in the 4th century B.C., the precinct was
extended farther to the south, and at its end was erected a
building of considerable extent, including a curious apsidal
chamber, for which a similar but larger curved structure was
substituted in Roman times. This was probably the Bouleu-
tcrion. The precinct was full of altars, dedications and in-
scriptions; and many fragments of sculptures, pottery and other
antiquities, from the earliest to the latest days of Greece, have
been discovered. It is to be noted that the subterranean passages
which some earlier explorers imagined to be connected with the
celebration of the mysteries, have proved to be nothing but
cisterns or watercourses.
The excavations of Eleusis, and the antiquities found in them,
have been published from time to time in the 'E</>wp2i 'ApxatoXo-ytx^
and in the npoxrixA of the Greek Archaeological Society, especially
for 1887 and 1895. See also D. Philios, fLleusis, ses tnysteres,
ses nines, et son music. Inscriptions have also been published
in the Bulletin de correspondance helUnique. (K. ( IK.)
ELEUTHERIUS, pope from about 175 to 189. Allusions to
him are found in the letters of the martyrs of Lyons, cited by
Eusebius, and in other documents of the time. The Liber
Pontificalis, at the beginning of the 6th century, says that he had
relations with a British king, Lucius, who was desirous of being
converted to Christianity. This tradition Roman, not British
is an enigma to critics, and, apparently, has no historical
foundation. (L. D.*)
ELEUTHEROPOLIS (Gr. 'EXu0epair6Xts, "free city"), an
ancient city of Palestine, 25 m. from Jerusalem on the road to
Gaza, identified by E. Robinson with the modern Beit Jibrin.
This identification is confirmed by Roman milestones in the
neighbourhood. It represents the Biblical Mareshah, the ruins
of which exist at Tell Sandahannah close by. As Betogabra it
is mentioned by Ptolemy; the name Eleutheropolis dates from
the Syrian visit of Septimius Severus (A.D. 202). Eusebius in
his Onomaslicon uses it as a central point from which the distances
of other towns are measured. It was destroyed in 796, rebuilt
by the crusaders in 1134 (their fortress and chapel remain, much
ruined). It was finally captured by Bibars, 1244. Beit Jibrin
is in the centre of a district of great archaeological interest.
Besides the crusader and other remains in the village itself, the
surrounding country possesses many tells (mounds) covering the
sites of ancient cities. The famous caves of Beit Jibrin honey-
comb the hills all round. These are immense artificial excava-
tions of unknown date. Roman milestones and aqueducts also
are found, and close by the now famous tomb of Apollophanes,
with wall-paintings of animals and other ornamentation, was
discovered in 1902; a description of it will be found in Thiersch
and Peters, The Marissa Tombs, published by the Palestine
Exploration Fund. (R. A. S. M.)
ELEVATORS, LIFTS or HOISTS, machines for raising or
lowering loads, whether of people or material, from one level
to another. They are operated by steam, hydraulic or electric
power, or, when small and light, by hand. Their construction
varies with the magnitude of the work to be performed and the
character of the motive power. In private houses, where only
small weights, as coal, food, &c., have to be transferred from
one floor to another, they usually consist simply of a small
counter-balanced platform suspended from the roof or an upper
floor by a tackle, the running part of which hangs from top to
bottom and can be reached and operated at any level. In
buildings where great weights and numbers of people have to
be lifted, or a high speed of elevation is demanded, some form
of motor is necessary. This is usually, directly or indirectly, a
steam-engine or occasionally a gas-engine; sometimes a water-
pressure engine is adopted, and it is becoming more and more
common to employ an electric motor deriving its energy from
264
ELEVATORS
the general distribution of the city. Large establishments,
hotels or business houses, commonly have their own source of
energy, an electric or other power " plant," on the premises.
The hydraulic elevator is the simplest in construction of
elevators proper, sometimes consisting merely of a long pipe set
deeply in the ground under the cage and containing
a corres P ncu ngly long plunger, which rises and falls
elevators, as required and carries the elevator-cage on its upper
end (fig. i). The " stroke " is thus necessarily equal
to the height traversed by the cage, with some surplus to keep
the plunger steady within its guiding-pipe. The pipe or pump
FIG. I. The Plunger, or Direct Lift Hydraulic Engine.
chamber has a length exceeding the maximum rise and fall
of the plunger, and must be strong enough to sustain safely the
heavy hydraulic pressures needed to raise plunger and cage with
load. The power is usually supplied by a steam pump (occasion-
ally by a hydraulic motor), which forces water into the chamber
of the great pipe as the elevator rises, a waste-cock drawing off
the liquid in the process of lowering the cage. A single handle
within the cage generally serves to apply the pressure when
raising, and to reduce it when lowering the load. The most
common form of hydraulic elevator, for important work and
under usual conditions of operation, as in cities, consists of a
suspended cage, carried by a tackle, the running part of which
FIG. 2. The Otis Standard Hydraulic Passenger Lift, with Pilot
Valve and Lever-operating Device.
ELEVATORS
265
it connected with a set of pulleys at each end of a frame (fig. i).
The tope is made fast at one end, and its intermediate part is
tarried round first one pulley at the farther end of the frame
and then round another at the nearer end, and so on as often
as is found advisable in the particular case. The two pulley
shafts carrying these two sets of pulleys are made to traverse
the frame in such a way as, by their separation, to haul in on
the running part, or, by their approximation, to permit the
weight of the cage to haul out the rope. By this alternate
hauling and " rendering " of the rope the cage is raised and
lowered. The use of a number of parallel and independent sets
of pulleys and tackles assures safety in case of the breakage of
any one, each being strong enough alone to hold the load. The
movement of the pair of pulley shafts is effected by a water-
pressure engine, actuating the plunger of a pump which is similar
to that used in the preceding apparatus, but being relatively of
short stroke and large diameter, is more satisfactory in design
and construction as well as in operation. Electricity may be
applied to elevators of this type by attaching the travelling
sheaves to a nut in which works a screwed shaft driven by an
electric motor. In other electric lifts the cables which support
the cage are wound on a drum which is turned by a motor, the
drum being connected to the motor-shaft either by a series of
pinions or by a worm-gear. The drum may also be worked by a
steam or gas engine. Where the traffic is not very heavy, a form
of elevator that requires no attendant is convenient. In this
any one wishing to use the lift has merely to press a button
placed by the side of the lift-gate on the floor on wtiich he happens
to be standing, when the car will come to him; and having
entered it he can cause it to travel to any floor he desires by
pressing another button inside the car. The motive power in
such cases may be either electric or hydraulic, but the control
of the switches or valves that govern the action of the apparatus
is electric.
The history of the elevator is chronologically extensive, but
only since 1850 has rapid or important progress been effected.
In that year George H. Fox & Co. built an elevator operated
by the motion of a vertical screw, the nut on which carried the
cage. This device was used in a number of instances, especially
in hotels in the large cities, during the succeeding twenty years,
and was then generally supplanted by the hydraulic lift of the
kind already described as the plunger-lift. With the increased
demand for power, speed, safety, convenience of manipulation,
and comfort in operation, the inventive ability of the engineer
developed the various systems more and more perfectly, and
experience gradually showed to what service each type was best
adapted and the best construction of each for its peculiar work.
Whatever the class, the following are the essentials of design,
construction and operation: the elevator must be
safe, comfortable, speedy and convenient, must not
be too expensive in either first cost or maintenance,
and must txsabsolutely trustworthy. It must not be
liable to fracture of any element of the hoisting gear that will
permit either the fall of the cage or its projection by an over-
weighted balance upwards against the top of its shaft. It must
be possible to stop it, whether in regular working or in emergency,
or when accident occurs, with sufficient promptness, yet without
endangering life or property, or even very seriously inconvenien-
cing the passengers. Acceleration and retardation in starting
and stopping must be smooth and easy, the stop must be capable
of being made precisely where and when intended, and no danger
must be incurred by the passengers from contact with running
pmrts of the mechanism or with the walls and doors of the
elevator shaft.
These requirements have been fully met in the later forms
of elevator commonly employed for passenger service. Usual
sizes range from loads of 1000 to 5000 Ib with speeds of from
80 to 250 ft. a minute unloaded, and 75 to 200 ft. loaded, and
a height of travel of from 50 to 200 ft. In some very tall build-
ings, as the Singer and Metropolitan buildings in New York,
elevators h*ve been installed having a maximum speed of ooo ft.
a minute, with a rise of over 500 ft. Where electric motors
Safely
device*.
are employed, their speed ranges from 600 and 700 revolutions
per minute in the larger to 1000 and 1200 in the smaller sizes,
corresponding to from j down to 4 or 5 h.p. Two or more
counter-weights arc employed, and from four to six suspension
cables ensure as nearly as possible absolute safety. The electric
elevators of the Central London railway are guaranteed to raise
1 7,000 Ib 65 ft. in som; of its shafts, in 30 sees, from start to stop.
Over 100,000 ft. of j-in. and 17,000 ft. of j-in. steel rope are re-
quired for its 24 shafts, and each rope can carry from 16 to 22
tons without breaking. The steel used in the cables, of which
there are four to six for each car and counter-weight, has a
tenacity of 85 to 90 tons per sq. in. of section of wire. The
maximum pull on each set of rope is assumed to be not over
9500 Ib, the remainder of the load being taken by the counter-
balance. Oil " dash-pots " or buffers, into which enter plungers
attached to the bottom of the cage, prevent too sudden a stop
in case of accident, and safety-clutches with friction adjustments
of ample power and fully tested before use give ample insurance
against a fall even if all the cables should yield at once an almost
inconceivable contingency. The efficiency, i.e. the ratio of work
performed to power expended in the same time, was In these
elevators found by test to be between 70 and 75 %.
Safety devices constitute perhaps the most important of the
later improvements in elevator construction where passengers
are carried. The simplest and, where practicable,
most certain of them is the " air-cushion," a chamber
into which the cage drops if detached or from any cause
allowed to fall too rapidly to the bottom, compression of the air
bringing it to rest without shock (fig. 3). This chamber must be
perfectly air-tight, except in so far as a
purposely arranged clearance around the
sides, diminishing downwards and in well-
established proportion, is adjusted to per-
mit a " dash-pot " action and to prevent
rebound. The air-cushion should be about
one-tenth the depth of the elevator shaft ;
in high buildings it may be a well 20 or
30 ft. deep. The Empire building, in New
York, is twenty storeys in height, the total
travel of the cage is 287 ft., and the air-
cushion is 50 ft. deep, extending from the
floor of the third storey to the bottom of
the shaft. Sliding doors of great strength,
and automatic in action, at the first and
second floors, are the only openings. The
shaft is tapered for some distance below
the third floor, and then carried straight
to the bottom. An inlet valve admits air
freely as the cage rises, and an adjusted
safety-valve provides against excess pres-
sure. A " car," falling freely from the
twentieth storey, was checked by this
arrangement without injury to a basket
of eggs placed on its floor. Other safety
devices consist of catches under the floor
of the cage, so arranged that they are
held out of engagement by the pull on
the cables. But if the strain is suddenly
relieved, as by breakage of a cable or
accident to the engine or motor, they in-
stantly fly into place and, engaging strong
side-struts in the shaft, hold the car
until it can be once more lifted 'by its
cables. These operate well when the cables
part at or near the car, but they are apt
to fail if the break occurs on the opposite
side of the carrying sheaves at the top
of the shaft, since the friction and inertia
FIG. 3.
Safety Air-Cushion.
of the mass of the cables may in that case be sufficient to hold the
pawls out of gear either entirely or until the headway is so great
as to cause the smashing of all resistances when they do engage.
Another principle employed in safety arrangements is the
266
ELF ELGIN
action of inertia of parts properly formed and attached. Any
dangerous acceleration of the cage causes the inertia of these
parts to produce a retardation relativ^ to the car which throws
into action a brake or a catch, and thus controls the motion
within safe limits or breaks the fall. The hydraulic brake has
been used in this apparatus, as have mechanical and pneumatic
apparatus. This control of the speed of fall is most commonly
secured by the employment of a centrifugal or other governor
or regulator. The governor may be on the top of the cage and
driven by a stationary rope fixed between the top and bottom of
the shafts, or it may be placed at the top of the shaft and driven
by a rope travelling with the car. Its action is usually to trip
into service a set of spring grips or friction clutches, which,
as a rule, grasp the guides of the cage and by their immense
pressure and great resultant friction bring the cage to rest within
a safe limit of speed, time and distance. A coefficient of friction
of about 15% is assumed in their design, and this estimate is
confirmed by their operation. Pressures of 10 tons or more are
sometimes provided in these grips to ensure the friction required.
There are many different forms of safety device of these various
classes, each maker having his own. The importance of absolute
safety against a fall is so great that the best builders are not
satisfied with any one form or principle, but combine provisions
against every known danger, and often duplicate such precau-
tions against the most common accidents.
The'" travelling staircase," which may be classed among the
passenger elevators, usually consists of a staircase so constructed
that while the passenger is ascending it the whole structure is
also ascending at a predetermined rate, so that the progress made
is the sum of the two rates of motion. The system of " treads and
risers " is carried on a long endless band of chain sustained by
guides holding it in its desired line, and rendering at either end
over cylinders or sprockets. The junctions between the stairway
and the upper or lower floors are ingeniously arranged so as to
avoid danger of injury to the passengers.
Freight elevators have the same general forms as the passenger
elevators, but are often vastly larger and more powerful, and
are not as a rule fitted up for such heights of lift, or constructed
with such elaborate provision for safety or with any special
finish. Elevators raising grain, coal, earth and similar materials,
such as can be taken up by scooping into a bucket, or can be run
into and out of the bucket by gravity, constitute a class by them-
selves, and are described in the article CONVEYORS.
The term " grain elevator " is often used to include buildings
as well as machinery, and it is not unusual in Europe to hear a
flour-mill, with its system of motor machinery, mills, elevator and
storage departments, spoken of as an " American elevator "
(see GRANARIES).
ELF (O. Eng. aelf; cf. Ger. Alp, nightmare), a diminutive
supernatural being of Teutonic mythology, usually of a more or
less mischievous and malignant character, causing diseases and
evil dreams, stealing children and substituting changelings,
and thus somewhat different from the Romanic fairy, which
usually has less sinister associations. The prehistoric arrow-
heads and other flint implements were in England early known as
" elf-bolts " or " elf-arrows," and were looked on as the weapons
of the elves, with which they injured cattle. So too a tangle in
the hair was called an " elf-lock," as being caused by the mischief
of the elves.
ELGAR, SIR EDWARD (1857- ), English musical com-
poser, son of W. H. Elgar, who was for many years organist in
the Roman Catholic church of St George at Worcester, was born
there on the 2nd of June 1857. ' His father's connexion with
music at Worcester, with the Glee Club and with the Three
Choirs Festivals, supplied him with varied opportunities for a
musical education, and he learnt to play several instruments.
In 1879 he became bandmaster at the county lunatic asylum,
and held that post till 1 884. He was also a member of an orchestra
at Birmingham, and in 1883 an intermezzo by him was played
there at a concert. In 1882 he became conductor of the
Worcester Amateur Instrumental Society; and in 1885 he suc-
ceeded his father as organist at St George's, Worcester. There he
wrote a certain amount of church music. In 1889 he moved to
London, but finding no encouragement retired to Malvern in
1891 ; in 1904 he went to live at Hereford, and in 1905 was made
professor of music at Birmingham University. To the public
generally he was hardly known till his oratorio The Dream of
Gerontius was performed at Birmingham in 1900, but this was at
once received as a new revelation in English music, both at home
and by Richard Strauss in Germany, and the composer was made
a Mus. Doc. at Cambridge. His experience in writing church
music for a Roman Catholic service cannot be overlooked in
regard to this and other works by Elgar, who came to be regarded
as the representative of a Catholic or neo-Catholic style of
religious music, for which an appreciative public was ready in
England at the moment, owing to the recent developments in
the more artistic and sensuous side of the religious movement.
And the same interest attached to his later oratorios, The Apostles
(1903) and The Kingdom (1906). But Elgar's sudden rise into
popularity, confirmed by his being knighted in 1904, drew
attention to his other productions. In 1896 his Scenes from the
Saga of King Olaf was recognized by musicians as a fine work,
and in the same year his Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands
and Lux Christi were performed; and apart from other important
compositions, his song-cycle Sea-Pictures was sung at Norwich
in 1899 by Clara Butt, and his orchestral Variations on an
original theme were given at a Richter concert in the same year.
In 1901 his popular march " Pomp and Circumstance " was
played at a promenade concert, the stirring melody of his song
" Land of Hop% and Glory " being effectually utilized. It is
impossible here to enumerate all Sir Edward Elgar's works, which
have excited a good deal of criticism in musical circles without
impairing his general recognition as one of the few front-rank
English composers of his day; but his most important later
production, his first orchestral symphony, produced in 1908
with immediate success, raised his reputation as a composer to
an even higher place, as a work of marked power and beauty,
developing the symphonic form with the originality of a real
master of his art. In 1908 he resigned his professorship at
Birmingham University.
ELGIN, a city of Kane county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the N.
part of the state, 36 m. N.W. of Chicago. Pop. (1880) 8787;
(1890) 17,823; (1900) 22,433, of whom S4 r 9 were foreign-born;
(1910 census) 25,976. Elgin is served by the Chicago & North-
Western and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, and by
interurban electric railways to Chicago, Aurora and Belvidere.
The city is the seat of the Northern Illinois hospital for the
insane, of the Elgin Academy (chartered 1839; opened 1856),
and of St Mary's Academy (Roman Catholic) ; and has the Gail
Borden public library, with 35,000 volumes in 1908. The city
has six public parks, Lord's Park containing 112, and Wing
Park 121 acres. The city is in a fine dairying region and is
an important market for butter. Among Elgin's manufactures
are watches and watch-cases, butter and. other dairy products,
cooperage (especially butter tubs), canned corn, shirts, foundry
and machine-shop products, pipe-organs, and caskets and casket
trimmings; in 1905 Elgin's total factory product was valued at
$9,349,274. The Elgin National Watch factory, and the Borden
milk-condensing works, are famous throughout the United States
and beyond. The publishing office of the Dunkers, or German
Brethren, is at Elgin; and several popular weeklies with large
circulations are published here. A permanent settlement was
made as early as 1835, and Elgin was chartered as a city in 1854
and was rechartered in 1880.
ELGIN, a royal, municipal and police burgh, and county
town of Elginshire, Scotland, situated on the Lossie, 5 m. S.
of Lossiemouth its port, on the Moray Firth, and 71 j m. N.W.
of Aberdeen, with stations on the Great North of Scotland and
Highland railways. Pop. (1901) 8460.. It is a place of very con-
siderable antiquity, was created a royal burgh by Alexander I.,
and received its charter from Alexander II. in 1234. Edward I.
stayed at the castle in 1296 and 1303, and it was to blot out
the memory of his visit that the building was destroyed im-
mediately after national independence had been reasserted.
ELGIN AND KINCARDINE, EARLS OF
267
The hill on which it stood was renamed the Ladyhill, and on the
scanty ruins of the castle now stands a monument to the sth
duke of Gordon, consisting of a column surmounted by a statue.
The burgh has suffered periodically from fire, notably in 1452,
when half of it was burnt by the earl of Huntly. Montrose
plundered it twice in 1645. In 1746 Prince Charles Edward
spent a few days in Thunderton House. His hostess, Mrs
Anderson, an ardent Jacobite, kept the sheets in which he slept,
and was buried in them on her death, twenty-five years after-
wards. For fifty yean after this date the place retained the
character and traditions of a sleepy cathedral city, but with the
approach of the igth century it was touched by a more modern
spirit. As the result much that was picturesque disappeared, but
the prosperity of Elgin was increased, so that now, owing to its
pleasant situation in " the Garden of Scotland," its healthy
climate, cheap living, and excellent educational facilities, it has
become a nourishing community. The centre of interest is the
cathedral of Moray, which was founded in 1224, when the church
of the Holy Trinity was converted to this use. It was partially
burned in 1270 and almost destroyed in 1300 by Alexander
Stewart, the Wolf of Badenoch, natural son of Robert II., who
had incurred the censure of the Church. In 1402 Alexander,
lord of the Isles, set fire to the town, but spared the cathedral
for a consideration, in memory of which mercy the Little Cross
(so named to distinguish it from the Muckle or Market Cross,
restored in 1888) was erected. After these outrages it was
practically rebuilt on a scale of grandeur that made it the most
magnificent example of church architecture in the north. Its
design was that of a Jerusalem cross, with two flanking towers
at the east end, two at the west end, and one in the centre,
at the intersection of the roofs of the nave and transepts. It
measured 282 ft. long from east to west by 120 ft. across the
transepts, and consisted of the choir, the gable of which was
pierced by two tiers of five lancet windows and the Omega rose
window; the north transept, in which the Dunbars were buried,
and the south transept, the doorway of which is interesting for
its dog's-tooth ornamentation; and the nave of five aisles.
The grand entrance was by the richly carved west door, above
which was the Alpha window. The central steeple fell in 1506,
but was rebuilt, the new tower with its spire reaching a height of
198 ft. By 1 538 the edifice was complete in every part. Though
the Reformation left it unscathed, it suffered wanton violence
from time to time. By order of the privy council the lead was
stripped off the roofs in 1567 and sold to Holland to pay the
troops; but the ship conveying the spoils foundered in the
North Sea. In 1637 the roof-tree of the choir perished during a
gale, and three years later the rich timber screen was demolished.
The central tower again collapsed in 1711, after which the
edifice was allowed to go to ruin. Its stones were carted away,
and the churchyard, overgrown with weeds, became the dumping-
ground for rubbish. It lay thus scandalously neglected until
1824, when John Shanks, a " drouthy " cobbler, was appointed
keeper. By a species of inspiration this man, hitherto a ne'er-do-
well, conceived the notion of restoring the place to order. Un-
dismayed, he attacked the mass of litter and with his own hands
removed 3000 barrow-loads. When he died in 1841 he had
cleared away all the rubbish, disclosed the original plan, and
collected a quantity of fragments. A tablet, let into the wall,
contains an epitaph by Lord Cockburn, recording Shanks's
services to the venerable pile, which has since been entrusted
to the custody of the commissioners of woods and forests. The
chapter-house, to the north-cast of the main structure, suffered
least of all the buildings, and contains a 'Prentice pillar, of which
a similar story a told to that of the ornate column in Roslin
chapel. In the lavatory, or vestibule connecting the chapter-
house with the choir, Marjory Anderson, a poor half-crazy
creature, a soldier's widow, took up her quarters in 1748. She
cradled her son in the piscina and lived on charity. In the
course of time the lad joined the army and went to India, where
he rose to the rank of major-general and amassed a fortune of
70.000 with which he endowed the Elgin Institution (commonly
known as the Anderson Institution) at the east end of High
Street, for the education of youth and the support of old age.
Within the precincts of the cathedral grounds stood the bishop's
palace (now in ruins), the houses of the dean and archdeacon
(now North and South Colleges), and the manses of the canons.
Other ecclesiastical buildings were the monasteries of Blackfriars
(1230) and Greyfriars (1410) and the prereptory of Maisondieu
(1240). They also were permitted to fall into decay, but the
3rd marquess of Bute undertook the restoration of the Grey-
friars' chapel. The parish church, in the Greek style, was built
in 1828. Gray's hospital, at the west end of High Street, was
endowed by Dr Alexander Gray (1751-1808), and at the east
end stands the Institution, already mentioned, founded by
General Andrew Anderson (1746-1822). Other public buildings
include the assembly rooms, the town-hall, the museum (in which
the antiquities and natural history of the shire are abundantly
illustrated), the district asylum, the academy, the county
buildings and the court house, the market buildings, the Victoria
school of science and art, and Lady Gordon-Cumming's children's
home. In 1903 Mr G. A. Cooper presented his native town with
a public park of 42 acres, containing lakes representing on a
miniature scale the British Isles. Grant Lodge, an old mansion
of the Grant family, occupying the south-west corner of the park,
was converted into the public library. From the top of Ladyhill
the view commands the links of the Lossie and the surrounding
country, and a recreation ground is laid out on Lossie Green.
The industries include distilling and brewing, nursery garden-
ing, tanning, saw and flour mills, iron-foundries and manu-
factures of woollens, tweeds and plaiding, and the quarrying
of sandstone. Elgin combines with Banff, Cullen, Inverurie,
Kintore and Peterhead to return one member to parliament,
and the town is controlled by a council with provost and bailies.
Two miles and a half S. by W. of Elgin stands the church of
Birnie, with the exception of the church at Mortlach in Banffshire
probably the oldest place of public worship in Scotland still in
use. It is not later than 1 150 and, with its predecessor, was the
cathedral of Moray during the rule of the first four bishops;
the fourth bishop, Simon de Toeny, an Englishman, was buried
in its precincts in 1184. In the church is preserved an old
Celtic altar-bell of hammered iron, known as the " Ronnell bell."
Such is the odour of sanctity of this venerable church that there
is an old local saying that " to be thrice prayed for in the kirk
of Birnie will either mend or end ye." Six miles to the S.W. of
Elgin, charmingly situated in a secluded valley encircled by fir-
clad heights, lie the picturesque remains of Pluscarden Priory,
a Cistercian house founded by Alexander II. in 1 230. The ruins,
consisting of tower, choir, chapter-house, refectory and other
apartments, are nearly hidden from view by their dense coating
of ivy and the fine old trees, including many beautiful examples
of copper beech, by which they are surrounded. Its last prior,
Alexander Dunbar, died in 1560. The Liber Pluscardensis, a
valuable authority on early Scots history, was compiled in the
priory by Maurice Buchanan in 1461. The chronicle conies
down to the death of James I. The 3rd marquess of Bute
acquired the ruins in 1897.
ELGIN AND KINCARDINE, EARLS OP. THOMAS BRUCE, 71 1,
earl of Elgin (1766-1841), British diplomatist and art collector,
was born on the 2oth of July 1766, and in 1771 succeeded his
brother in the Scottish peerage as the 7th earl of Elgin (cr. 1633),
and i ith of Kincardine (cr. 1647). He was educated at Harrow
and Westminster, and, after studying for some time at the uni-
versity of St Andrews, proceeded to the continent, where he
studied international law at Paris, and military science in
Germany. When his education was completed he entered the
army, in which he rose to the rank of general. His chief attention
was, however, devoted to diplomacy. In 1 792 he was appointed
envoy at Brussels, and in 1795 envoy extraordinary at Berlin;
and from 1 799 to 1802 he was envoy extraordinary at the Porte.
It was during his stay at Constantinople that he formed the
purpose of removing from Athens the celebrated sculptures
now known as the Elgin Marbles. His doing so was censured
by some as vandalism, and doubts were also expressed as to the
i artistic value of many of the marbles; but he vindicated himself
268
ELGIN AND KINCARDINE, EARLS OF
in a pamphlet published in 1810, and entitled Memorandum on
the Subject of the Earl of Elgin's Pursuits in Greece. In 1816 the
collection was purchased by the nation for 36,000, and placed
in the British Museum, the outlay incurred by Lord Elgin having
been more than 50,000. Lord Elgin was a Scottish representa-
tive peer for fifty years. He died at Paris on the i4th of November
1841.
JAMES BRUCE, 8th earl of Elgin (1811-1863), British statesman,
eldest son of the 7th earl by his second marriage, was born in
1811, and succeeded to the peerage as 8th earl of Elgin and i2th
of Kincardine in 1841. He was educated at Eton and at Christ
Church, Oxford, where he had as companions and rivals his
younger predecessors in the office of governor-general of India,
Dalhousie and Canning. He began his official career in 1842
at the age of thirty, as governor of Jamaica. During an adminis-
tration of four years he succeeded in winning the respect of
all classes. He improved the condition of the negroes and con-
ciliated the planters by working through them. In 1846 Lord
Grey appointed him governor-general of Canada. Son-in-law
of the popular earl of Durham, he was well received by the
colonists, and he set himself deliberately to carry out the Durham
policy. In this his frank and genial manners aided him power-
fully. His assent to the local measure for indemnifying those
who had suffered in the troubles of 1837 led the mob of Montreal
to pelt his carriage for the rewarding of rebels for rebellion, as
Mr Gladstone described it. But long before his eight years'
term of service expired he was the most popular man in Canada.
His relations with the United States, his hearty support of the
self-government and defence of the colony, and his settlement
of the free-trade and fishery questions, led to his being raised in
1 849 to the British peerage as Baron Elgin.
Soon after his return to England in 1854, Lord Palmerston
offered him a seat in the cabinet as chancellor of the duchy of
Lancaster, which he declined. But when, in 1856 the seizure
of the " Arrow " by Commissioner Yeh plunged England into
war with China, he at once accepted the appointment of special
envoy with the expedition. On reaching Point de Galle he was
met by a force summoned from Bombay to Calcutta by the news
of the sepoy mutiny at Meerut on the nth of May. His first
idea, that the somewhat meagre intelligence would justify most
energetic action in China, was at once changed when urgent
letters from Lord Canning reached him at Singapore, the next
port, on the 3rd of June. H.M.S. " Shannon " was at once sent
on to Calcutta with the troops destined for China, and Lord
Elgin himself followed it, when gloomier letters from India
reached him. The arrival of the " Shannon " gave new life to
the handful of white men fighting for civilization against fearful
odds, and before the reinforcements from England arrived the
back of the mutiny had been broken. Nor was the position in
China seriously affected by the want of the troops. Lord Elgin
sent in his ultimatum to Commissioner Yeh at Canton on the same
day, the 1 2th of December, that he learned the relief of Lucknow,
and he soon after sent Yeh a prisoner to Calcutta. By July
1858, after months of Chinese deception, he was able to leave the
Gulf of Pechili with the emperor's assent to the Treaty of Tientsin.
Subsequently he visited Japan, and obtained less considerable
concessions from its government in the Treaty of Yeddo. It is
true that the negotiations were confined to the really subordinate
Tycoon or Shogun, but that visit proved the beginning of British
influence in the most progressive country of Asia. Unfortunately,
the Chinese difficulty was not yet at an end. After tedious
disputes with the tariff commissioners as to the opium duty, and
a visit to the upper waters of the Yang-tzse, Lord Elgin had
reached England in May 1859. But when his brother and the
allied forces attempted to proceed to Peking with the ratified
treaty, they were fired on from the Taku forts at the mouth of the
Peiho. The Chinese had resolved to try the fortune of war once
more, and Lord Russell again sent out Lord Elgin as ambassador
extraordinary to demand an apology for the attack, the execu-
tion of the treaty, and an indemnity for the military and naval
expenditure. Sir Robert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of
Magdala) and Sir Hope Grant, with the French, so effectually
routed the Tatar troops and sacked the Summer Palace that by
the 24th of October 1860 a convention was concluded which
was " entirely satisfactory to Her Majesty's government."
Lord Elgin had not been a month at home when Lord Palmerston
selected him to be viceroy and governor-general of India. He
had now attained the object of his honourable ambition, after
the office had been filled in most critical times by his juniors
and old college companions, the marquis of Dalhousie and Earl
Canning. He succeeded a statesman who had done much to
reorganize the whole administration of India, shattered as it had
been by the mutiny. But, as the first viceroy directly appointed
by the Crown, and as subject to the secretary of state for India,
Lord Elgin at once gave up all Lord Canning had fought for, in
the co-ordinate independence, or rather the stimulating responsi-
bility, of the governor-general, which had prevailed from the
days of Clive and Warren Hastings. On the other hand, he
loyally carried out the wise and equitable policy of his predecessor
towards our feudatories with a firmness and a dignity that in the
case of Holkar and Udaipur had a good effect. He did his best
to check the aggression of the Dutch in Sumatra, which was
contrary to treaty, and he supported Dost Mahommed in Kabul
until that aged warrior entered the then neutral and disputed
territory- of Herat. Determined to maintain inviolate the in-
tegrity of our own north-west frontier, Lord Elgin assembled
a camp of exercise at Lahore, and marched a force to the Pesha-
war border to punish those branches of the Yusufzai tribe who
had violated the engagements of 1858.
It was in the midst of this " little war " that he died. Soon
after his arrival at Calcutta, he had projected the usual tour to
Simla, to be followed by an inspection of the Punjab and its
warlike ring-fence of Pathans. He even contemplated the
summoning of the central legislative council at Lahore. After
passing the summer of 1863 in the cool retreat of Peterhoff, Simla,
Lord Elgin began a march across the hills from Simla to Sialkot
by the upper valleys of the Beas, the Ravi and the Chenab,
chiefly to decide the two allied questions of tea cultivation and
trade routes to Kashgar and Tibet. The climbing up to the
Rotung Pass (13,000 ft.) which separates the Beas valley from
that of the Chenab, and the crossing of the frail twig bridge
across the Chundra torrent, prostrated him by the time he had
descended into the smiling English-like Kangra valley. Thence
he wrote his last letter to Sir Charles Wood, still full of hope and
not free from anxiety as to the Sittana expedition. At the lovely
hill station of Dharmsala, " the place of piety," he died of fatty
degeneration of heart on the 2oth of November 1863.
For his whole career see Letters and Journals of James, Eighth
Earl of Elgin, edited by Walrond, but corrected by his brother-in-
law, Dean Stanley; for the China missions see Narrative of the
Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan, by Laurence Oliphant,
his private secretary; for the brief Indian administration see
the Friend of India for 1862-1863.
VICTOR ALEXANDER BRUCE, gth earl of Elgin (1849- ),
British statesman, was born on the i6th of May 1849, the son
of the 8th earl, and was educated at Eton and Balliol College,
Oxford. In 1863 he succeeded as gth earl of Elgin and i3th of
Kincardine. A Liberal in politics, he became first commissioner
of works (1886), and subsequently viceroy of India (1894-1899).
His administration in India was chiefly notable for the frontier
risings of 1897-1898. The Afridis broke out into a fanatical
revolt and through hesitation on the part of the government
were allowed to seize the Khyber Pass, necessitating the Tirah
Expedition. After his return to England he was nominated
chairman of the royal commission to investigate the conduct of
the South African War; and on the formation of Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman's ministry in December 1903, he became
a member of the cabinet as secretary of state for the colonies.
In this capacity, though he showed many statesmanlike qualities,
he was somewhat overshadowed by his brilliant under-secretary
in the Commons, Mr Winston Churchill, whose speeches on
colonial affairs were as aggressive as Lord Elgin's were cautious;
and when in April 1908, Mr Asquith became prime minister,
Lord Elgin retired from the cabinet.
ELGINSHIRE
269
ELGINSHIRE, or MORAY (Gaelic " among the sea-boanl
men "), a northern county of Scotland, bounded N. by the Moray
Kirth. K. and S.K. by BantTshiiv, S. and S.\V. by Inverness and
\\ by Nairnshire. It comprises only the eastern portion of
the ancient province of Moray, which extended from the Spey
to the Beauty and from the Grampians to the sea, embracing
an area of about 3000 sq. m. 'I hi- area of the county is 305,1 19
acres, or 477 q. n>.
Elginshire is naturally divided into two sections, the level
nd fertile coast and its hinterland " the Laigh o' Moray,"
a tract 30 m. long by from 5 to 1 2 m. broad and the hilly country
in the south. There are, however, no high mountains. Carn
Ruigh (1784 ft.), Larig Hill (1783) and Carn Kitty (1711) are the
chief eminences in the south-central district until the ridge
of the Cromdale Hills is reached on the Banffshire border, where
the highest point is 2329 ft. above the sea. The two most im-
portant rivers, the Spey (q.r.) and the Findhorn, both have their
sources in Inverness-shire. About 50 m. of the course of the
Spey are in Elginshire, to which it may be roughly said to serve
as the boundary line on the south-east and east. The Findhorn
rises in the Monadliadh Mountains which form the watershed
for several miles between it and the Spey. Of its total course of
nearly 70 m. only the last i are in the county, where it separates
the woods of Altyre from the Forest of Darnaway, before entering
the Moray Firth in a bay on the north-eastern shore to which it
has given its name. During the first 7 m. of its flow in Elginshire
the stream passes through some of the finest scenery in Scotland.
It is liable to sudden risings, and in the memorable Moray
floods of August 1829 wrought the greatest havoc. Of other
rivers the Lossic rises in the small lakes on the flanks of Carn
Kitty and pursues a very winding course of 34 m. till it reaches
the Moray Kirth; Ballintomb Burn, Rothes Burn and Tulchan
Bum are left-hand affluents of the Spey; the Dorbock and
Divie, uniting their forces near Dunphail House, join the Find-
born at Relugas; and Muckle Water, a left-hand tributary of
the Findhorn, comes from Nairnshire. The Spey and Findhorn
are famous for salmon, but some of the smaller streams, too,
afford good sport. The lochs are few and unimportant, among
them being Loch Spynic, 2} m. N., and Loch-na-Bo, 4 m. S.E.
of Elgin; Loch of Blairs, 2} m. S. of Forres; Loch Romach, 3 m.
S. of Rafford; Loch Dallas, about 4 m. S.W. of Dallas, and
Lochindorb in the S.W., 6 m. N.N.W. of Grantown. Loch Spynie
was once a lake extending from the Firth to within 2\ m. of
Elgin and covering an area of over 2000 acres. Its shores were
the haunt of a great variety of birds, and its waters were full
of salmon, sea-trout and pike. But early in the igth century
it was resolved to reclaim the land, and the drainage works
then undertaken reduced the beautiful loch to a swamp of some
120 acres.
Lochindorb is now the largest lake, being 2 m. in length and
fully } m. wide. In the upper end, on an island believed to be
artificial, stand the ruins of Lochindorb Castle, in the 1 41 h century
the stronghold of the Wolf of Badenoch, and afterwards success-
ively the property of the earl of Moray, the Campbells of Cawdor
and the earl of Seafield. Sir Thcmas Dick Lauder saw at Cawdor
Castle a massive iron gate which, according to tradition, Sir
Donald Campbell of Cawdor carried on his back from Lochindorb
to Cawdor, a distance of 13 m. In the southern half of the
county, amongst the hills, are several glens, among them the
Glen of Rothes, Glen I-ossie, Glen Gheallaidh, Glen Tulchan
and Glen Beag. Strathspey, though more of a valley than a
glen, is remarkable for its extent and beauty.
Gtdary. This county may be divided geologically into two
areas, the hilly region to the south being composed of the crystalline
schist* of the Central Highlands and the fertile plain of Moray
being made up of Old Red Sandstone and Triassir strata. In the
Crofndale Hills in the south-east of the county the metamorphic
series comprises schistose quartzite, quartz-schists, micaceous
flagstones and mica-schists, which arc granulitic and hplocrystalline,
the dark laminae in some cases containing heavy residues such as'
ilmrnitc and zircon. The greater portion of the metamorphic area
west of the Spey consist* of granulitic quartz-biotite-granulites and
bands of muscovite-biotite-schist belonging to the Moine series of the
Geological Survey (see SCOTLAND: Geology). In certain areas these
are permeated by granitic material in the form of thin strings, knots
and veins, Excellent sections of these rocks are exposed in the
hmdhorn, the Divie ami the tributaries of the Spey. Near Gr.m-
town there is a group locally developed, comprising crystalline
limestone with tremohte, kyanite gneiss, muscovite-biom. -s< hist
and quartsite, the age and relations of which are still uncertain.
The general strike of the crystalline schists, save where thm- an-
jocal deflections, is north-east and south-west, ami the general dip
is to the south-east. Between Lochindorb ami Grantown there is a
Sandstone resting unconformably on the crystalline schists. The
strata of the middle or Orcadian series consist of conglomerates,
sandstones, shales and clays, with limestone nodules containing fish
remains. This sequence is well displayed in the banks of the Spey
north of Boat of Bridge and in the Tynet Burn east of Fochabers,
the latter being one ot the well-known localities for ichthyolites in
the middle or Orcadian division. In the Tynet and Gollai'hie Burn
sections, the fish bed is overlaid by conglomerates and red pebbly
sandstones, passing upwards into a thin zone of andesitc lavas,
indicating contemporaneous volcanic action. West of the Tynet
Burn and Spey sections there is no trace of the members of the
Orcadian division till we reach the Muckle Burn and Lcthen Bar in
Nairnshire, save the coarse conglomerate filling the ancient hollow
of the valley of Rothes which may belong to the middle series. In
that direction they are overlapped by the Upper Old Red Sandstone,
which in the river Lossie, in the Lochty Burn and the Findhorn
rest directly on the metamorphic rocks. Even to the south of the
main boundary of the upper division there are small outliers of that
series resting on the crystalline schists. Hence there must be a dis-
cordance between the Middle and Upper Old Red Sandstone in this
county. The strata of the upper division consist of red. grey and
yellow false-bedded sandstones with conglomeratic bands, which are
well seen in the Findhorn between Sluie and Cothall, where they are
associated with a bed of cornstone, all dipping to the N.N.W. at
gentle angles. South of Elgin they are exposed in the Lossie and at
Scaat Craig, while to the north of that town they extend along the
ridge from Bishopmill to Alves. By means of the fish remains,
which occur at Scaat Craig, in the Bishopmill quarries, at Alves, in
the Findhorn cliffs and in the Whitemyre quarry on the Muckle
Burn, the Upper Old Red Sandstone in this county is arranged in
two groups, the Alves and Rosebrae. In the area lying to the north
of the Upper Old Red Sandstone ridge at Bishopmill and Quarry-
wood, the strata of Triassic age occur, where they consist of pale
grey and yellow sandstones and a peculiar cherty and calcareous
band, known as the cherty rock of Stotfield. The sandstones are
visible in quarries on the north slope of Quarry Wood, at Findrassie,
at Spynie and along the ridge and sea-shore between Burghead
and Lossiemouth. They are invested with special interest on
account of the remarkable series of reptilian remains obtained from
them, comprising Stagonolepis, a crocodile allied to the modern
caiman in form; Telerpcton and Hyperodapedon, species of lizards;
Dicynodonts (Cordonia and Ceikia) and a horned reptile, Elrinia
mirabilis (see SCOTLAND: Geolofy). The palaeontological evidence
points to the conclusion that these reptiliferous sandstones must
belong in part to the Trias, indeed it is possible that the lower
portion may be of Permian age. In the Cutties Hillock quarry west
of Elgin these reptiliferous beds rest directly on the sandstones
containing Holoptychius of Upper Old Red Sandstone age, so that
the apparent conformability must be entirely deceptive. Within
the area occupied by the Trias west of Stotfield, flagstones appear,
charged with fish scales of Upper Old Red age, where they form a
low ridge protruding through the younger strata. Both the Upper
Old Red and Triassic sandstones have been largely quarried for
building purposes. On the shore at Lossiemouth there is a patch of
greenish white sandstones yielding fossils characteristic of the Lower
Oolite.
The glacial deposits distributed over the fertile plain of Moray
and in the upland valleys are of interest. The low grounds were
crossed by the ice descending the Moray Firth in an easterly and
south-easterly direction, which carried boulders of granite from
Strath Nairn and augen gneiss from Easter Ross. In the Elgin
district, boulders belonging to the horizons of the Lower and Middle
Lias, the Oxford Clay and the Upper Chalk are found both in the
glacial deposits and on the surface of the ground. The largest trans-
(jorted mass occurs at Linksfield, where a succession of limestones
and shales rests on boulder clay and is covered by it, which from the
fossils may be of Rhaetic or Lower Lias age.
Climate and Agriculture. The climate of the coast is equable
and mild, even exotic fruits ripening readily in the open. The
uplands are colder and damp. The average temperature in
January is 38 F. and in July 38-5, while for the year the mean
is 47 F. The rainfall for the year averages 26 in. Considering
its latitude and the extent of its arable land the standard of
farming in Elginshire is high. The rich soil of the lowlands
is well adapted for wheat, barley and oats. The acreage confined
270
ELGINSHIRE
to the glens and straths under barley approximates that under
oats. In the uplands, oats is the principal cereal. The breeding
of live-stock is profitable, and some of the finest specimens of
shorthorned and polled cattle and of crosses between the two
are bred. On the larger farms in the Laigh Leicester sheep are
kept all the year round, but in the uplands the Blackfaced take
their place. Large numbers of horses and pigs are also raised.
Other Industries. Whisky is the chief product, and the
numerous distilleries are usually busy. There are woollen mills
at Elgin and elsewhere and chemical works at Forres and Burg-
head. Owing to the absence of coal what little mineral wealth
there is (iron and lead) cannot be remuneratively worked. The
sandstone quarries, yielding a building-stone of superior quality,
are practically inexhaustible. The plantations mainly consist
of larch and fir and, to a smaller extent, of oak. Much timber
was once floated down the Spey and other rivers, but, since the
increased facilities of carriage afforded by the railways, trees
have been felled on a wider scale. Boat-building is carried on at
Burghead, Lossiemouth and Kingston so-called from the fact
that a firm from Kingston-on-Hull laid down a yard there in
1784 while at Garmouth the fishing fleet lies up during the
winter and is also repaired there. The Firth fisheries are of
considerable value. The boats go out from Findhorn, Burghead,
Hopeman and Lossiemouth, which are all furnished with safe
harbours. Findhorn has been twice vsited by calamities.
The first village was overwhelmed by the drifting sands of Culbin,
and the second was buried beneath the waves in 1 701 . Kingston
harbour is tidal, exposed, and liable to interruption from a shifting
bar. The deep sea fisheries comprise haddock, cod, ling and
herring, and the Spey, Findhorn and Lossie yield large quantities
of salmon.
The Great North of Scotland railway enters the shire in the
S.E. from Craigellachie, whence a branch runs up the Spey to
Boat of Garten in Inverness-shire, and in the N.E. from Port
Gordon, running in both cases to Elgin, from which a branch line
extends to Lossiemouth. The Highland railway traverses the
western limits of the shire running almost due north to Forres,
whence it turns westward to Nairn and eastward to Elgin.
From the county town it runs to Aberdeen via Orbliston and
Keith, with a branch to Fochabers from Orbliston.
Population and Government. The population was 43,471
in 1891 and 44,800 in 1901, when 1865 persons spoke both
Gaelic and English, and 2 spoke Gaelic only. The chief towns
are Elgin (pop. in 1901, 8460), Forres (4313) and Lossiemouth
(3904), to which may be added Rothes (1621), Grantown (1568)
and Burghead (1531). In conjunction with Nairnshire the
county returns one member to parliament. Elgin and Forres
are royal burghs; the municipal and police burghs include
Burghead, Elgin, Forres, Grantown, Lossiemouth, and Rothes.
Elginshire is included in one sheriffdom with Inverness and
Nairn, and there is a resident sheriff-substitute at Elgin. The
county is under school-board jurisdiction, several of the schools
earning grants for higher education. There are academies at
Elgin and Fochabers and science and art and technical schools
at Elgin and Grantown. The bulk of the " residue " grant is
spent in subsidizing the agricultural department of Aberdeen
University and the science schools and art and technical classes
in the county.
History. Moray, in the wider sense, was first peopled by
Picts of the Gaelic branch of Celts, of whom relics are found in
the stone circle at Viewfield and at many places in Nairnshire.
Christianity, introduced under the auspices of Columba (from
whose time the site of Burghead church has probably been so
occupied), flourished for a period until the Columban church
was expelled in 717 by King Nectan. Thereafter the district
was given over to internecine strife between the northern and
southern Picts, which was ended by the crushing victory of
Kenneth MacAlpine in 831, as one result of which the kingdom
of Pictavia was superseded by the principality of Moravia.
Still, settled order had not yet been secured, for the Norsemen
raided the country first under Thorstein and then under two
Sigurds. It was in the time of the second Sigurd that the Firth
was fixed as the northern boundary of Moray. In spite of such
interruptions as the battle of Torfness (Burghead) on the i4th
of August 1040, in which Thorfinn, earl of Orkney and Shetland,
overthrew a strong force of Scots under King Duncan, the con-
solidation of the kingdom was being gradually accomplished.
After Macbeth ascended the throne the Scandinavians held
their hands. Though Macbeth and his fainfani successor,
" daft " Lulach, were the only kings whom Moray gave to Scot-
land, the province never lacked for able, if headstrong, men,
and it continued to enjoy home rule under its own marmaer, or
great steward (the equivalent of earl, the title that replaced it),
until the dawn of the izth century, when as an entity it ceased
to exist. With a view to breaking up the power of the marmaers
David I. and his successors colonized the seaboard with settlers
from other parts of the kingdom. Nevertheless, from time to
time the clansmen and their chiefs descended from their fast-
nesses and plundered the Laigh, keeping the people for genera-
tions in a state of panic. Meanwhile, the Church had become
a civilizing force. In 1107 Alexander had founded the see of
Moray and the churches of Birnie, Kinneddar and Spynie
were in turn the cathedral of the early bishops, until in 1224
under the episcopate of Andrew of Moray (de Mora via), the church
of the Holy Trinity in Elgin was chosen for the cathedral.
Another factor that drew men together was the struggle for
independence. In his effort to stamp out Scottish nationality
Edward I. came as far north as Elgin, where he stayed for four
days in July 1296, and whence he issued his writ for the parlia-
ment at Berwick. Wallace, however, had no doughtier supporter
than Sir Andrew Moray of Both well, and Bruce recognized the
assistance he had received from the men of the north by erecting
Moray into an earldom on the morrow of Bannockburn and
bestowing it upon Thomas Randolph (see MORAY, THOMAS
RANDOLPH, EARL OF). Henceforward the history of the county
resolved itself in the main into matters affecting the power of
the Church and the ambitions of theMoray dynasties. The Church
accepted the Reformation peacefully if not with gratitude.
But there was strife between Covenanters and the adherents
of Episcopacy until, prelacy itself being abolished in 1689, the
bishopric of Moray came to an end after an existence of 581
years. (For the subsequent history of the earldom, which
was successively held by the Randolphs, the Dunbars, the
Douglases, the royal Stewarts and an illegitimate branch of
the Stewarts, see MURRAY or MORAY, EARLS OF.) Other cele-
brated Moray families who played a more or less strenuous
part in local politics were the Gordons, the Grants and the Duffs.
Still, national affairs occasionally evoked interest in Moray.
In the civil war Montrose ravaged the villages which stood
for the Covenanters, but most of the great lairds shifted in their
allegiance, and the mass of the people were quite indifferent
to the declining fortunes of the Stewarts. Charles II. landed
at Garmouth on the 3rd of July 1650 on his return from his first
exile in Holland, but hurried southwards to try the yoke of
Presbytery. The fight at Cromdale (May day, 1690) shattered
the Jacobite cause, for the efforts in 1715 and 1745 were too
spasmodic and half-hearted to affect the loyalty of the district
to Hanoverian rule. A few weeks before Culloden Prince Charles
Edward stayed in Elgin for some days, and a month afterwards
the duke of Cumberland passed through the town at the top of his
speed and administered the coup de grace to the Young Pretender
on Drummossie Moor.
Twice Elginshire has been the scene of catastrophes without
parallel in Scotland. In 1694 the barony of Culbin a fine
estate, with a rent roll in money and kind of 6000 a year, belong-
ing to the Kinnairds, comprising 3600 acres of land, so fertile
that it was called the Granary of Moray, a handsome mansion,
a church and several houses was buried under a mass of sand
in a storm of extraordinary severity. The sandy waste measures
3 m. in length and 2 in breadth, and the sand, exceedingly fine
and light, is constantly shifting and, at rare intervals, exposing
traces of the vanished demesne. This wilderness of dome-shaped
dunes divided by a loftier ridge lies to the north-west of Forres.
The other calamity was the Moray floods of the 2nd and 3rd of
ELGON ELIAS, JOHN
271
August 1819. The Findhorn rose 50 ft. above the ordinary level,
inundating an area of 20 sq. m.; the Divie rose 40 ft., and the
Lossic tlooded all the low ground around Elgin. The floods tore
down bridges and buildings, and obliterated farms and home-
steads.
AUTHOBITIBS. Lachlan Shaw, History of the Province of Moray
(Gordon's edition, Glasgow. 1882); A Survey of tin Province of
Moray (Elgin. 1798); W. Khind. Sketches of the Past and Present
State e/ Moray (Kdinburvh, 1839); K. Dunlur Uunbar, Documents
reiattng to * f'rvriiue of Moray (Edinburgh, l8<js); C. A. Gordon,
llntary of the House of Gordon (Abt-nlccn. 1890); C. Rampini,
H^tory of Moray and Nairn 'Edinburgh. 1807); C. Innes, Elgin,
Past and Present (Elgin, 1860); J. Macdonald, " Burghead "
{Proceeding of Glasgow Archaeological Soc.), (1891); Sir T. Dick
Uudcr, 1'ne Wolf of Badenoch iGkugow. 1886); An Account of the
Great floods of A ugiul iHjy in the Province of JJoray and Adjotning
Districts (hlgin, 1873).
EICON, also known as MASAWA, an extinct volcano in British
East Africa, cut by i N. and 34} ., forming a vast isolated
mf over 40 m. in diameter. The outer slopes are in great
measure precipitous on the north, west and south, but fall more
gradually to the east. The southern cliffs are remarkable for
extensive caves, which have the appearance of water-worn caves
on a coast line and have for ages served as habitations for the
natives. The higher, parts slope gradually upwards to the rim
of an old crater, lying somewhat north of the centre of the mass,
and measuring some 8 m. in diameter. The highest point of the
rim is about 14,100 ft. above the sea. Steep spurs separated
by narrow ravines run out from the mountain, affording the
most picturesque scenery. The ravines are traversed by a great
number of streams, which flow north-west and west to the Nile
(through Lake Choga), south and south-east to Victoria Nyanza,
and north-east to Lake Rudolf by the Turk well, the head-stream
of which rises within the crater, breaking through a deep cleft
in its rim. To the north-west of the mountain a grassy plain,
swampy in the rains, falls towards the chain of lakes ending in
Choga; towards the north-east the country becomes more
arid, while towards the south it is well wooded. The outer slopes
are clothed in their upper regions with dense forest formed in
part of bamboos, especially towards the south and west, in which
directions the rainfall is greater than elsewhere. The lower slopes
are exceptionally fertile on the west, and produce bananas in
abundance. On the north-west and north the region between
6000 and 7000 ft. possesses a delightful climate, and is well
watered by streams of ice-cold water. The district of Save on
the north is a halting-place for Arab and Swahili caravans going
north. On the west the slopes are densely inhabited by small
Bantu-Negro tribes, who style their country Masawa (whence
the alternative name for the mountain) ; -but on the south and
north there are tribes which seem akin to the Gallas. Of these,
the best known are the El-gonyi, from whom the name Elgon has
been derived. They formerly lived almost entirely in the caves,
but many of them have descended to villages at the foot of the
mountain. Elgon was first visited in 1883 by Joseph Thomson,
who brought to light the cave-dwellings on the southern face.
It was crossed from north to south, and its crater reached, in
1890 by F. J. Jackson and Ernest Gedge, while the first journey
round it was made by C. W. Hobley in 1896. (E. HB.)
ELI (Hebrew for "high"? i Sam. chaps, j.-iv.), a member
of the ancient priesthood founded in Egypt (i Sam. ii. 27), priest
of the temple of Shiloh, the sanctuary of the ark, and also
" judge " over Israel. This was an unusual combination of
offices, when it is considered that in the history preserved
to us he appears in the weakness of extreme old age, unable
to control the petulance and rapacity of his sons, Hophni and
I'hinehas, who disgraced the sanctuary and disgusted the
people. While the central authority was thus weakened, the
Philistines advanced against Israel, and gained a complete
victory in the great battle of Ebenezer, where the ark was taken,
and Hophni and Phinehas slain. On hearing the news Eli fell
from his seat and died. In a passage not unlike the account ol
the birth of Benjamin (Gen. xxxv. 16 sqq.), it is added that the
wife of Phinehas, overwhelmed at the loss of the ark and of her
husband, died in child-birth, naming the babe Ichabod (i Sam
v. 19 sqq.). This name, which popular etymology explained
by the words " the glory is removed (or, stronger, ' banished ')
rom Israel " (cf. Hos. x. 5), should perhaps be altered from
l-kdbdd (as though " not glory ") to jOchebed (YOktbed, a slight
change in the original), the name which tradition also gave to
he mother of Moses (q.v.). After these events the sanctuary of
Shiloh appears to have been destroyed (cf. Jer. vii. 12, xxvi.
6, 9), and the descendants of Eli with the whole of their clan or
' father's house "subsequently appear as settled at Neb (i Sam.
xxi. i, xxii. ii sqq., cp. xiv. 3), perhaps in the immediate
neighbourhood of Jerusalem (Is. x. 32). In the massacre of the
clan by Saul, and the subsequent substitution of the survivor
Abiathar by Zadok (i Kings ii. 27, 33), later writers saw the
ulfilment of the prophecies of judgment which was said to have
jeen uttered in the days of Eli against his corrupt house (i Sam.
i. 27 sqq., iii. n sqq.). 1
See further, SAMUEL, ROOKS OF; and on Eli as a descendant of a
Leviteclan (i Sam. ii 27 sq.), see LEVITES ( 3). W.R.S.; S.A.C.)
ELIAS, of Cortona (c. 1180-1253), disciple of St Francis of
Assisi, was born near Assisi, about 1180, of the working class,
5ut became schoolmaster at Assisi and then notary at Bologna.
In 1217 he was the head of the Franciscan mission to the Holy
Land, and in 1219 St Francis made him first provincial minister
of Syria. When St Francis was recalled from the East in 1220
he brought Elias with him. Elias played a leading part in the
early history of the Franciscan order (see FRANCISCANS) ; Francis
made him his vicar general in 1221; and he was the practical
acting superior of the order till Francis" death in 1226, and the
real superior till the general chapter of 1227. This chapter did
not elect him minister general, but that of 1232 did; at the
chapter of 1 239 he was deposed. During these years he erected
the basilica and monastery at Assisi which were entirely his
creation he collected the funds and carried the work through,
being himself the builder and even the architect. Elias was a
man of extraordinary ability, the friend both of Gregory IX.
and of his opponent Frederick II. After his deposition Elias
joined the party of the emperor and so incurred excommunica-
tion. Frederick sent him as ambassador to Constantinople.
He dressed and lived as a Franciscan throughout and a small
number of friars adhered to him; for these he built a church
and monastery at Cortona. Unavailing efforts were made to
bring about his reconciliation with the order and the Church;
at last on his death-bed he made his submission to the pope
and died in 1253, having received the Sacraments.
The best account of Elias is that be Ed. Lempp, Frere Elie de
Cortone (looi), who points out the conflict of view, as to the relations
between Elias and Francis, between the Speculum perfectionis and
the First Life, by Thomas of Celano; Lempp and Sabatier accept
the hostile picture given by the Speculum perfectionis. But see
further FRANCIS OF ASSISI, SAINT, Note on Sources," and especi-
ally the articles by Goetz, there referred to, in the Hist. Vierteljahrs-
schrift. There is a good article on Elias, but written before the new
materials had been produced, in Wetzer und Welte, Kirchenlexicon
(ed. 2). (E. C. B.)
ELIAS, JOHN (1774-1841), Welsh Nonconformist preacher and
reformer, was born on the 2nd of May 1774, in the parish of
Abercrch, Carnarvonshire. In his youth he came under the influ-
ence of the Calvinistic Methodist revival and became a preacher
at nineteen. In 1799 he married and settled at Llanfechell in
Anglesey, giving up his trade as a weaver to become a small
shopkeeper. His fame as a preacher increased, and under the
direction of Thomas Charles of Bala he established numerous
Sunday schools, and gave and secured considerable Welsh
support to the founding of the London Missionary Society,
the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Religious Tract
Society. On Charles's death in 1814 he became the recognized
leader of the Calvinistic Methodist Church, and the story of his
life is simply a record of marvellously successful preaching tours.
He died on the 8th of June 1841 ; ten thousand people attended
his funeral.
1 On the old views relating to the succession of the priests, accord-
ing to whi<-h the high-priesthood was diverted from the line of
Elcazar and Phinehas into that of Ithamar, see Robertson Smith,
Old Test, in Jewish Church* 2nd ed., p. 266.
272
ELIAS LEVITA ELIE DE BEAUMONT
His eloquence was so remarkable that he was known as
" the Welsh Demosthenes." His strength lay in his intense
conviction of an intimate connexion between sin and punish-
ment and in his power of dramatic presentation. As an ecclesi-
astic he was not so successful; he helped to compile his church's
Confession of Faith in 1823, and laid great stress on a clause
which limited the scope of the atonement to the elect. He
was a stout Tory in politics and had many friends among
the Anglican clergy; he opposed the movement for Roman
Catholic emancipation. Several of his sermons were published
in Welsh.
ELIAS LEVITA (1460-1549), Jewish grammarian, was born
at Neustadt on the Aisch, a place in Bavaria lying between
Nuremberg and Wiirzburg. He preferred to call himself " Ashke-
nazi," the German, and bore also the nickname of " Bachur,"
the youth or student, which latter he gave as title to his Hebrew
grammar. Before the end of the isth century he went to Italy,
which thenceforth remained his home. He lived first at Padua,
went in 1509, after the capture of this town by the army of the
League of Cambrai, to Venice, and finally in 1513 to Rome,
where he found a patron in the learned general of the Augustinian
Order, the future cardinal Egidio di Viterbo, whom he helped
in his study of the Kabbalah, while he himself was inspired by
him to literary work. The storming of Rome by the army of the
Constable de Bourbon in 1527 compelled Elias to go to Venice,
where he was employed as corrector in the printing-house of
Daniel Bomberg. In the years 1541 and 1542 he lived at Isny,
in Southern Wiirttemberg, where he published several of his
writings in the printing-house of the learned pastor Paul Fagius.
The last years of his life he spent at Venice, continuously active
in spite of ill-health and the weakness of old age. His monument
in the graveyard of the Jewish community at Venice boasts of
him that " he illuminated the darkness of grammar and turned
it into light." The importance of Levita rests both in his
numerous writings and in his personal activity. In the remark-
able period which saw the rise of the Reformation and gave
to the study of the Hebrew Bible and to its language an import-
ance in the history of the world, it was Levita who furthered in
an extraordinary manner the study of Hebrew in Christian
circles by his activity as a teacher and by his writings. To his
pupils especially belong Sebastian Minoter, who translated
Levita's grammatical works into Latin, also George de Selve,
bishop of Lavaur, the French ambassador in Venice (1536),
who was instrumental in. obtaining for Levita an invitation from
Francis I. to come to Paris, which invitation, however, Levita did
not accept. Levita's writings on Hebrew grammar (Bachur,
a text-book, 1518; Harkaba, an explanation, alphabetically
arranged, of irregular word-forms; a Table of Paradigms;
Pirke Elijahu, a description partly metrical of phonetics, and
other chapters of the grammar, 1520; his earliest work, a Com-
mentary on Moses Kimhi's Hebrew Grammar, 1508) were by
reason of their methodical exposition, their clear articulation,
their avoidance of prolixity, especially suited as an introduction
to the study of the Hebrew language. Amongst Levita's other
writings is the first dictionary of the Targumim (Meturgeman,
1541) and the first attempt at a lexicon in which much of the
treasure of late Hebrew language was explained ( Tishbi, explana-
tion of 712 new Hebrew vocables, as a supplement to the diction-
aries of David Kimhi and Nathan b. Yehiel, 1 542) . Scientifically
most valuable, and of original importance, are the works of Levita
on the Massora; his Concordance to the Massora (Sefer Zikhronot
completed in the second revision 1 536) , of which hitherto only a
small part has been published, and especially his most celebrated
book Massoreth Hamasoreth (1538), published with English
translation by Chr. D. Ginsburg, London, 1867. This was the
first attempt to give a systematic account of the contents and
history of the Massora. By his criticism of the Massora, and
especially by proving that the punctuation of the books of the
Hebrew Bible is of late origin, Levita exercised an epoch-making
influence. Of his other writings may be mentioned his running
commentary on David Kimhi's Grammar and Dictionary (in
the Bomberg editions 1545, 1546), his German translation of
the Psalms (1545) and the Baba-Buch (more properly Buovobuch,
a German recension of the Italian novel Historic, di Buoiio
d'Antona, 1508).
Of the literature on Levita may be mentioned : Y. Levi, Elia Levita
und seine Leistungen als Grammatiker (Breslau, 1888); W. Bacher,
" E. Levita's wissenschaftliche Leistungen " in Z. d. D. M. G. xliii.
(1889), p. 206-272. (W. BA.)
ELIE, a village and watering-place of Fifeshire, Scotland,
on the shore of the Firth of Forth. Pop. 687. It is 10 m. due
S. of St Andrews, but 20 m. distant by the North British railway,
which makes a great bend by following the coast. Though it
retains some old houses, and the parish church dates from 1639,
Elie is, as a whole, quite modern and is one of the most popular
resorts in the county on account of its fine golf links and excellent
bathing. The royal burgh of Earlsferry (pop. 317) is situated
in the parish of Elie, which it adjoins on the west. Its charter,
granted by Malcolm Canmore, having been burned, it was re-
newed by James VI. The chief structure is the town hall,
which is modern but has an ancient steeple. The place derived
its name from its use by the earls of Fife as a ferry to the opposite
shore of Haddington, 8 m. distant. Macduff's cave near Kincraig
Point is believed traditionally to have been that in which the
thane took refuge from Macbeth. Two and a half miles north is
Balcarres House, belonging to the earl of Crawford, where Lady
Anne Barnard (1750-1825) was born.
&LIE DE BEAUMONT, JEAN BAPTISTE ARMAND LOUIS
LEONCE (1798-1874), French geologist, was born at Canon,
in Calvados, on the 25th of September 1798. He was educated
at the Lycee Henri IV. where he took the first prize in mathe-
matics and physics; at the Ecole Poly technique, where he stood
first at the exit examination in 1819; and at the Ecole des
Mines (1819-1822), where he began to show a decided preference
for the science with which his name is associated. In 1823 he
was selected along with Dufrenoy by Brochant de Villiers,
the professor of geology in the Ecole des Mines, to accompany
him on a scientific tour to England and Scotland, in order to
inspect the mining and metallurgical establishments of the
country, and to study the principles on which Greenough's
geological map of England (1820) had been prepared, with a view
to the construction of a similar map of France. In 1835 he was
appointed professor of geology at the Ecole des Mines, in succes-
sion to Brochant de Villiers, whose assistant he had been in the
duties of the chair since 1827. He held the office of engineer-in-
chief of mines in France from 1833 until 1847, when he was
appointed inspector-general; and in 1861 he became vice-
president of the Conseil-General des Mines and a grand officer of
the Legion of Honour. His growing scientific reputation secured
his election to the membership of the Academy of Berlin, of the
Academy of Sciences of France and of the Royal Society of
London. By a decree of the president he was made a senator of
France in 1852, and on the death of Arago (1853) he was chosen
perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences. Elie de Beau-
mont's name is widely known to geologists in connexion with his
theory of the origin of mountain ranges, first propounded in a
paper read to the Academy of Sciences in 1829, and afterwards
elaborated in his Notice sur le systeme des montagnes (3 vols.,
1852). According to his view, all mountain ranges parallel to
the same great circle of the earth are of strictly contemporaneous
origin, and between the great circles a relation of symmetry
exists in the form of a pentagonal reseau. An elaborate statement
and criticism of the theory was given in his anniversary address
to the Geological Society of London in 1853 by William Hopkins
(Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.). The theory has not found general
acceptance, but it proved of great value to geological science,
owing to the extensive additions to the knowledge of the structure
of mountain ranges which its author made in endeavouring to
find facts to support it. Probably, however, the best service
Elie de Beaumont rendered to science was in connexion with
the geological map of France, in the preparation of which he
had the leading share. During this period Elie de Beaumont
published many important memoirs on the geology of the country.
After his superannuation at the Ecole des Mines he continued to
superintend the issue of the detailed maps almost until his death,
ELIJAH
which occurred at Canon on the 2ist of September 1874. Hi
academic lectures for 1843-1844 were published in 2 vols., 1845
1840, under the title Lemons de gMogir firatiyut.
A U of hi* works was published in the Ann. des Mines, vol. vii
l75. P- 'S9-
ELIJAH (a Hebrew name meaning " Yah[weh] is God ")
in the Bible, the greatest and sternest of the Hebrew prophets
makes his appearance in the narrative of the Old Testament wit 1
an abruptness not out of keeping with his character and worl
( i Kings xvii. i ).' The first and most important part of his caree
Imy in the reign of Ahab, i.e. during the first half of the pth centur)
B.C. He is introduced as predicting the drought* God was tc
send upon Israel as a punishment for the apostasy into whicl
Ahab had been led by his heathen wife Jezebel. During the
first portion of this period Elijah found a refuge by the brool
Cherith, " before the Jordan." This description leaves it un
certain whether the brook was to the east of Jordan in Elijah's
native Gilead, or less probably to the west in Samaria. Here
he drank of the brook and was fed by ravens, who night and morn
ing brought him bread and flesh. 1 When this had dried up
the prophet betook himself to Zarephath, a Phoenician town
near Sidon. At the gate of the town he met the widow to whom
he had been sent, gathering sticks for the preparation of what she
believed was to be her last meal. She received the prophet with
hospitality, sharing with him her all but exhausted store, in
faith of his promise in the name of the God of Israel that the
supply would not fail so long as the drought lasted. During
this period her son died and was miraculously restorec
to life in answer to the prayers of the prophet (i Kings
xvii. 8-24).
Elijah emerged from his retirement in the third year, when
the famine having reached its worst, Ahab and his minister
Obadiah had themselves to search the land for provender for
the royal stables. To the latter Elijah suddenly appeared, and
announced his intention of showing himself to Ahab. The king
met Elijah with the reproach that he was " the troubler ol
Israel," which the prophet boldly flung back upon him who had
forsaken the commandments of the Lord and followed the
Baalim.' The retort was accompanied by a challenge or rather
a command to the king to assemble on Mount Carmel " all
Israel " and the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. (The
four hundred prophets of Asherah have been added later.) From
the allusion to an " altar of Jehovah that was broken down "
(i Kings xviii. 30) it has been inferred that Carmel was an
ancient sacred place. (On Mount Carmel and Elijah's connexion
with it in history and tradition see CARMEL.)
The scene on Carmel is perhaps the grandest in the lifeof Elijah,
or indeed in the whole of the Old Testament. As a typical
embodiment for all time of the conflict between superstition and
true religion, it is lifted out of the range of mere individual
biography into that of spiritual symbolism, and it has accordingly
furnished at once a fruitful theme for the religious teacher and
1 The text a uncertain. According to the LXX., he was a native
of Tishbch in Gilead; a more natural reading. Klostermann's
conjecture that the original name of his home was Jabesh-Gilead
attractive but unnecessary. His appearance in the narrative,
like Melchizedek, " without father, without mother " (Heb. vii. 3),
save rise to various rabbinical traditions, such as that he was
Phinchas, the grandson of Aaron, returned to earth, or that he was
an angel in human form.
' Its duration is vaguely stated; from Luke iv. 25, James v. 17,
we learn that it lasted three years and a half; but according to
Phoenician tradition (Jos. Ant. viii. 13. 2) only one year
The rationalistic view that the word translated " ravens "
hould be ' Arabians " is improbable. Cheyne's suggestion that
the unknown brook Chenth should be placed to the south of Judah
** Tee *T lth J ^? hu 'J' 4 ' l/ - ""' '* * " " e departed into the southern
d with i Kings xix. 3. 8; " Jordan " may refer to another
nvt l.u t be not a gloss; see Cheyne, Ency. Bib., s.v. " Cherith."
The sudden introduction of Elijah in xvii. i may be accounted
by toe supposition that the commencement of the narrative
i been omitted by the editor of xvi. 29 sqq. Hence we are not told
cause of Ahab * hostility towards Elijah, nor is the allusion to
*be massacre of the prophets (xviii. 3. 13) explained. It would
appear from Obadiah s words in ver. 9 that he himself was in fear of
hu We. Later tradition supposed he was the captain of 2 Kings i. 13,
or that the widow of 2 Kings iv. i had been his wife.
a lofty inspiration for the artist. The false prophets were allowed
to invoke their god in whalevcr manner they pleased. The only
interruption came in the mocking encouragement of Elijah
(i Kings xviii. 27), a rare instance of grim sarcastic humour
occurring in the Bible. Its effect upon the false prophets was to
increase their frenzy. The evening came,' and the god had made
no sign. Elijah now stepped forward with the quiet confidence
and dignity that became the prophet and representative of the
true God. All Israel is represented symbolically in the twelve
stones with which he built the altar; and the water which he
poured upon the sacrifice and into the surrounding trench was
apparently designed to prevent the suspicion of fraud! In strik-
ing contrast to the " vain repetitions " of the false prophets an-
the simple words with which Elijah makes his prayer to Yahweh.
Once only, with the calm assurance of one who knew that his
prayer would be answered, he invokes the God of his fathers
The answer comes at once: " The fire of the Lord (Gen. xix. 24]
Lev. x. 2) fell and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood]
and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was
in the trench." So convincing a sign was irresistible; all the
people fell on their faces and acknowledged Yahweh as the true
God. This was immediately followed by the destruction of the
false prophets, slain by Elijah beside the brook Kisbon (xviii. 40).
The deed, though not without parallel in the Old Testament
history, stamps the peculiarly vindictive character of Elijah's
prophetic mission.*
On the evening of the day that had witnessed the decisive
contest, Elijah proceeded once more to the top of Carmel, and
there, with " his face between his knees " (possibly engaged
in the prayer referred to in James v. 17 sq.), waited for the long-
looked-for blessing. His servant, sent repeatedly to search the
sky for signs, returned the seventh time reporting a little cloud
arising out of the sea " like a man's hand." The sky was speedily
full of clouds and a great rain was falling when Ahab, to escape
the storm, set out in his chariot for Jezreel. As a proof of Elijah 's
supernatural power, it is stated that the prophet, for some
unknown object, ran before the chariot to the entrance of Jezreel,
a distance of at least 16 m. On being told what had taken place]
Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah with a vow that ere another
day had passed his life would be even as the lives of the prophets
of Baal, and the threat was enough to cause him to take to instant
flight (xix. 1-3; cp. LXX. in v. 2). The first stage of the journey
was to Beersheba, on the southern limits ol Judah. Here he
left his servant (according to old Jewish tradition, the v/idow's
son of Zarephath, afterwards the prophet Jonah), and proceeded
a day's journey into the wilderness. Resting under a solitary
broom bush (a kind of genista), he gave vent to his disappoint-
ment in a prayer for death. By another of those may miracu-
ous interpositions which occur in his history he was twice supplied
with food and drink, in the strength of which he journeyed
r orty days and forty nights until he came to Horeb, where he
x>dged in a cave. 7 A hole " just large enough for a man's body "
(Stanley), immediately below the summit of Jebel MQsa, is still
pointed out by tradition as the cave of Elijah.
If the scene on Carmel is the grandest, that on Horeb is
spiritually the most profound in the story of Elijah (xix. 9 sqq.).
Not in the strong wind that brake the rocks in pieces, not in the
earthquake, not in the fire, but in the still small voice that
ollowed the Lord made himself known. A threefold commission
vas laid upon him: he was to return to Damascus and anoint
Hazacl king of Syria; he was to anoint Jehu, the son of Nimshi,
1 The definition of time by the stated oblation (xviii. 29, 36) is
rery noteworthy (cp. 2 Kings iii. 20).
It is obvious that a purely rationalistic interpretation of the
great sign whereby Jahwch manifested himself would be out of
jlacc. But there Is an interesting parallel in the legend of the
cindling of the sacred fire and the igniting of the " thick water "
n the time of Nehemiah (2 Mace. i. 18 36). Elsewhere, there were
acred fires kindled by the aid of magical invocations (e.g. Hypaepa
'ausanias v. 27. 3).
7 Yahweh is here supposed to have his seat on the ancient
mountain. ' It was the God of the Exodus to whom he appealed,
[ic ancient King of Israel in the journeyings through the wilderness."
'or the cave, cp. Ex. xxxiii. 22.
274
as king of Israel in place of Ahab; and as his own suc-
cessor in the prophetic office he was to anoint Elisha (xix.
15-18).'
Leaving Horeb and proceeding northwards along the desert
route to Damascus, Elijah met Elisha engaged at the plough
probably near his native place, Abel-meholah, in the valley
of the Jordan, and by the symbolical act of casting his mantle
upon him, consecrated him to the prophetic office. This was the
only command of the three which he fulfilled in person; the other
two were carried out by his successor. 2 After the call of Elisha
the narrative contains no notice of Elijah for several years,
although the LXX., by placing i Kings xxi. before ch. xx., pro-
ceeds at once to the tragic story of Naboth's vineyard (see
JEZEBEL). He is now the champion of freedom and purity of
life, like Nathan when he confronted David for the murder of
Uriah. Without any indication of whence or how he came, he
again appeared, as usual with startling abruptness, in the vine-
yard when Ahab entered to take possession of it, and pronounced
upon the king and his house that awful doom (i Kings xxi. 17-24)
which, though deferred for a time, was ultimately fulfilled to the
letter (see JEHU).
With one more denunciation of the house of Ahab, Elijah's
function as a messenger of wrath was fully discharged (2 Kings i.).
When Ahaziah, the son of Ahab, having injured himself by falling
through a lattice, sent to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron,
whether he should recover, the prophet was commanded to appear
to the messengers and tell 'them that, for this resort to a false
god, the king should die. The effect of his appearance was such
that they turned back without attempting to fulfil their errand.
Ahaziah despatched a captain with a band of fifty to arrest
him. They came upon Elijah seated on " the mount," prob-
ably Carmel. The imperious terms in which he was summoned
to come down were punished by fire from heaven,which descended
at the bidding of Elijah and consumed the whole land. A second
captain and fifty were despatched, behaved in a similar way,
and met the same fate. The leader of a third troop took a
humbler tone, sued for mercy, and obtained it. Elijah then went
with them to the king, but only to repeat before his face the doom
he had already made known to his messengers, which was almost
immediately afterwards fulfilled. The spirit, even the style of
this narrative, points unmistakably to its being of late origin.
It shocks the moral sense with its sanguinary character more
than, perhaps, any other Old Testament story.
The only mention of Elijah's name in the book of Chronicles
(2 Chronicles xxi. 12-15) is where he is represented as sending
a letter of rebuke and denunciation to Jehoram, son of Jehosha-
phat, king of Judah. The chronological difficulties which are
involved suggest that the floating traditions of this great
personality were easily attached to well-known names whether
strictly contemporary or not. It was before the death of
Jehoshaphat that the last grand scene in Elijah's life occurred
(2 Kings ii., see iii. i). He had taken up his residence with
Elisha at one of the prophetic guilds at Gilgal. His approaching
end seems to have been known to the guilds at Bethel and Jericho,
both of which they visited in their last journey. At the Jordan,
Elijah, wrapping his prophet's mantle together, smote the water
with it, and so by a last miracle passed over on dry ground.
When they had crossed the master desired the disciple to ask
some parting blessing. The request for a double portion (i.e.
1 The theophany is clearly no rebuke to an impatient prophet,
nor a lesson that the kingdom of heaven was to be built up by the
slow and gentle operation of spiritual forces. It expresses the
spirituality of Yahweh in a way that indicates a marked advance in the
conception of his nature. See Skinner, Century Bible, " Kings," adloc.
J The geographical indications imply that in one account the
journey to Damascus and the anointing of Hazael and Jehu must
have intervened, and were omitted because another account ascribed
these acts to Elisha (2 Kings viii. ix.). In the latter we possess a
more historical account of the anointing of Jehu, and Robertson
Smith observes: " When the history in I Kings represents Elijah
as personally commissioned to inaugurate [the revolution] by
anointing Jehu and Hazael as well as Elisha, we see that the author s
design is to gather up the whole contest between Yahweh and Baal
* in an ideal picture of Elijah and his work " (Ency. Brit. (9) art.
KINGS, vol. xiv. p. 85).
ELIJAH WILNA ELIOT
probably a first-born's portion, Deut. xxi. 17) 3 of the prophet's
spirit Elijah characterized as a hard thing; but he promised
to grant it if Elisha should see him when he was taken away.
The end is told in words of simple sublimity: " And it came to
pass, as they still went on and talked, that, behold, there appeared
a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, which parted them both
asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven "
(2 Kings ii. n). It is scarcely necessary to point out, however,
that through the figure the narrative evidently means to convey
as fact that Elijah passed from earth, not by the gates of death,
but by miraculous translation. Such a supernatural close is in
perfect harmony with a career into every stage of which the
supernatural enters as an essential feature. For whatever
explanation may be offered of the miraculous element in Elijah's
life, it must obviously be one that accounts not for a few miracu-
lous incidents only, which might be mere excrescences, but for
a series of miraculous events so closely connected and so con-
tinuous as to form the main thread of the history.
Elijah occupied an altogether peculiar place in later Jewish history
and tradition. For the general belief that he should return for the
restoration of Israel cf. Mai. iv. 5-6; Matt. xi. 14, xvi. 14; Luke ix.
8; John i. 21, and on the development of the thought see Bousset,
Antichrist, s.v., and the Jewish Encyc. vol. v. p. 126. In Mahom-
medan tradition Elijah is the everlasting youthful el-Khidr or el-
Khadir.
Elijah is canonized both in the Greek and in the Latin Churches,
his festival being kept in both on the 2Oth July the date of his
ascension in the nineteenth year of Jehoshaphat, according to
Cornelius a Lapide. The natural and most reliable estimate of the
career of Elijah is that which is based upon a critical examination
of the narratives; see, in addition to Robertson Smith, Prophets of
Israel ( 2 ), pp. 75 sqq., Cheyne, Hallowing of Criticism, the articles by
Addis in Encyc. Bib., and J. Strachan, Hastings' Diet. Bib., H.
Gunkel, Elias, Yakve u. Baal (Tubingen, 1906), the literature to
KINGS, BOOKS OF, and the histories referred to in JEWS. There is
difference of opinion as to the historical importance of both Elijah
and Elisha; for a useful summary of views, as also for fuller biblio-
graphical information, see W. R. Harper, Amos and Hosea (Internal.
Crit. Comm.), pp. xxxiv.-xlix., and article HEBREW RELIGION.
(W. R. S.; S. A. C.)
ELIJAH WILNA, or ELIJAH BEN SOLOMON, best known as
the GAON ELIJAH or WILNA (1720-1797), a noted Talmudist
who hovered between the new and the old schools of thought.
Orthodox in practice and feeling, his critical treatment of the
rabbinic literature prepared the way 'for the scientific investiga-
tions of the igth century. As a teacher he was one of the first
to discriminate between the various strata in rabbinic records;
to him was due the revival of interest in the older Midrash (q.v.)
and in the Palestinian Talmud (q.v.), interest in which had been
weak for some centuries before his time. He was an ascetic, and
was a keen opponent of the emotional mysticism which was
known as the new Hassidism.
See S. Schechter's Studies in Judaism (London, 1896). His
voluminous writings are classified in the Jewish Encyclopedia, v.
134- (L A.)
ELIOT, CHARLES WILLIAM (1834- ), American educa-
tionalist, the son of Samuel Atkins Eliot (1798-1862), mayor of
Boston, representative in Congress, and in 1842-1853 treasurer
of Harvard, was born in Boston on the 2oth of March 1834.
He graduated in 1853 at Harvard College, where he was succes-
sively tutor (1854-1858) and assistant professor of chemistry
(1858-1863). He studied chemistry and foreign educational
methods in Europe in 1863-1865, was professor of analytical
chemistry in the newly established Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (1865-1869), although absent fourteen months in
Europe in 1867-1868; and in 1869 was elected president of
Harvard University, a choice remarkable at once for his youth
and his being a layman and scientist. With Johns Hopkins
University, Harvard, in his presidency, led in the work of efficient
graduate schools. Its elective system, which has spread far,
although not originated by President Eliot, was thoroughly
established by him, and is only one of many radical changes
which he championed with great success. The raising of entrance
requirements, which led to a corresponding raising of the
standards of secondary schools, and the introduction of an
' Understood in Eccles. xlviii. 12 (Heb.) to mean that Elisha was
twice as great as Elijah.
ELIOT, GEORGE
275
element of choice in these entrance requirements, which allowed
a limited election of studies to secondary pupils, became national
tendencies primarily through President Eliot's potent influence.
As chairman of a national Committee of Ten (1890) on secondary
school studies, he urged the abandonment of brief disconnected
" information " courses, the correlation of subjects taught, the
equal rank in college requirements of subjects in which equal
time, consecutiveness and concentration were demanded, and
a more thorough study of English composition; and to a large
degree he secured national sanction for these reforms and their
working out by experts into a practicable and applicable system.
He laboured to unify the entire educational system, minimize
prescription, cast out monotony, and introduce freedom and
enthusiasm; and he emphasized the need of special training for
special work. He was first to suggest (1804) co-operation by
colleges in holding common entrance examinations throughout
the country, and it was largely through his efforts that standards
were so approximated that this became possible. He contended
that secondary schools maintained by public funds should shape
their courses for the benefit of students whose education goes no
further than such high schools, and not be mere training schools
for the universities. His success as administrator and man of
affairs and as an educational reformer made him one of the
great figures of his time, in whose opinions on any topic the
deepest interest was felt throughout the country. In November
1008 he resigned the presidency of Harvard, and retired from the
position early in 1909, when he was succeeded by Professor
Abbott Lawrence Lowell. In December 1908 he was elected
president of the National Civil Service Reform League.
His writings include The Happy Life (1896); Five American
Contributions to Civilization, and Other Essays and Addresses
(1897); Educational Reform, Essays and Addresses 1869-1897
(1898); More Money for the Public Schools (1903); Four
American Leaders (1906), chapters on Franklin, Washington,
Channing and Emerson; University Administration (1908);
and with F. H. Storer, a Compendious Manual of Qualitative
Chemical Analysis (Boston, 1869; many times reissued and
revised). His annual reports as President of Harvard were
notable contributions to the literature of education in America,
and be delivered numerous public addresses, many of which have
been reprinted.
See " President Eliot's Administration," by different hands, a
summary of hi* work at Harvard in 1860-1894, in The Harvard
Graduates' Magazine, vol. 3, pp. 449-504 (Boston, Mass., 1894); and
K. Kuhnemann, Charles W. Eliot, President 0} Harvard (Boston, 1909).
His son, CHARLES ELIOT (1850-1897), graduated at Harvard
in 1882, studied landscape architecture at the Bussey Institution
of Harvard and in Europe, successfully urged the incorporation
of the Massachusetts Trustees of Public Reservations (1891)
and of the Metropolitan Park Commission (1892) of Boston,
became landscape architect to the Metropolitan Park Commission
in 1892, and in 1893, with F. L. Olmsted and J. C. Olmsted,
formed the firm of Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot, which was employed
by the Metropolitan Commission. His life was written by his
father, Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect (Boston, 1002).
ELIOT, GEORGE, the pen-name of the famous English writer,
nee Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans (1810-1880), afterwards Mrs
J. W. Cross, born at Arbury Farm, in Warwickshire, on the zznd
of November 1819. Her father, Robert Evans, was the agent
of Mr Francis Newdigate, and the first twenty-one years of the
great novelist's life were spent on the Arbury estate. She re-
ceived an ordinary education at respectable schools till the age
of seventeen, when her mother's death, add the marriage of her
elder sister, called her home in the character of housekeeper.
This, though it must have sharpened her sense, already too acute,
of responsibility, was an immense advantage to her mind, and,
later, to her career, for, delivered from the tiresome routine of
lessons and class-work, she was able to work without pedantic
interruptions at German, Italian and music, and to follow her
unusually good taste in reading. The life, inasmuch as she was
a girl still in her teens, was no doubt monotonous, even unhappy.
Just as Cardinal Newman felt, with such different results, the
sadness and chain of evangelical influences from his boyhood till
the end of his days, so Marian Evans was subdued all through
her youth by a severe religious training which, while it pinched
her mind and crushed her spirit.attracted her idealism by the very
hardness of its perfect counsels. It is not surprising to find,
therefore, that when Mr Evans moved to Coventry in 1841,
and so enlarged the circle of their acquaintance, she became
much interested in some new friends, Mr and Mrs Charles Bray
and Mr Charles Hennell. Mr Bray had literary taste and wrote
works on the Education of the Feelings, the Philosophy of
Necessity, and the like. Mr Hennell had published in 1838
An Enquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity. Miss Evans,
then twenty-two, absorbed immediately these unexpected, and,
at that time, daring habits of thought. So compelling was the
atmosphere that it led to a complete change in her opinions.
Kind in her affection, she was relentless in argument. She refused
to go to church (for some time, at least), wrote painful letters
to a "former governess the pious Miss Lewis and barely
avoided an irremediable quarrel with her father, a churchman
of the old school. Here was rebellion indeed. But rebels come,
for the most part, from the provinces where petty tyranny,
exercised by small souls, show the scheme of the universe on
the meanest possible scale. George Eliot was never orthodox
again; she abandoned, with fierce determination, every creed,
and although she passed, later, through various phases, she re-
mained incessantly a rationalist in matters of faith and in all
other matters. It is nevertheless true that she wrote admirably
about religion and religious persons. She had learnt the evangeli-
cal point of view; she knew none better the strength of
religious motives; vulgar doubts of this fact were as distasteful
to her as they were to another eminent writer, to whom she refers
in one of her letters (dated 1853) as " a Mr Huxley, who was
the centre of interest " at some " agreeable evening." Her
books abound in tributes to Christian virtue, and one of her own
favourite characters was Dinah Morris in Adam Bede.
She undertook, about the beginning of 1844, the translation
of Strauss's Leben Jesu. This work, published in 1846, was
considered scholarly, but it met, in the nature of things, with
no popular success. On the death of Mr Evans in 1849, she went
abroad for some time, and we hear of no more literary ventures
till 1851, when she accepted the assistant-editorship of the
Westminster Review. For a while she had lodgings at the offices
of that publication in the Strand, London. She wrote several
notable papers, and became acquainted with many distinguished
authors of that period among them Herbert Spencer, Carlyle,
Harriet Martineau, Francis Newman and George Henry Lewes.
Her friendship with the last-named led to a closer relationship
which she regarded as a marriage. Among the many criticisms
passed upon this step (in view of the fact, among other considera-
tions, that Lewes had a wife living at the time), no one has denied
her courage in defying the law, or questioned the quality of her
tact in a singularly false position. That she felt the deepest
affection for Lewes is evident; that we owe the development
of her genius to his influence and constant sympathy is all but
certain. Yet it is also sure that what she gained from his intimate
companionship was heavily paid for in the unceasing conscious-
ness that most people thought her guilty of a grave mistake,
and found her written words, with their endorsement of tradi-
tional morality, wholly at variance with the circumstances of
her private life. Doubts of her suffering in this respect will be at
once dismissed after a study of her journal and letters. Stilted
and unnatural as these are to a tragic degree, one can read well
enough between the lines, and also in the elaborate dedication
of each manuscript to " my husband " (in terms of the strongest
love), that self -repression, coupled with audacity, does not make
for peace. Her sensitiveness to criticism was extreme; a flippant
paragraph or an illiterate review with regard to her work actually
affected her for days. The whole history of her union with Lewes
is a complete illustration of the force of sheer will in that case
partly her own and not inconsiderably his over a nature
essentially unfitted for a bold stand against attacks. At first
she and the man whom she had described " as a sort of miniature
ELIOT, GEORGE
Mirabeau in appearance," went abroad to Weimar and Berlin,
but they returned to England the same year and settled, after
several moves, in lodgings at East Sheen.
In 1854 she published The Essence of Christianity, a translation
from Feuerbach, a philosopher to whom she had been introduced
by Charles Bray. During 1855 she translated Spinoza's Ethics,
wrote articles for the Leader, the Westminster Review, and the
Saturday Review then a new thing. It was not until the follow-
ing year that she attempted the writing of fiction, and produced
The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton the first of the
Scenes of Clerical Life. These, published in Blackwood's Magazine,
were issued in two volumes in 1858. The press in general ex-
tended a languid welcome to this work, and although the author
received much encouragement from private sources, notably
from Charles Dickens, the critics were mostly non-committal,
and it was not until the publication of Adam Bede in 1859 that
enthusiasm was attracted to the quality of the earlier production.
Adam Bede, in the judgment of many George Eliot's masterpiece,
met with a success (in her own words) " triumphantly beyond
anything she had dreamed of." In 1860 appeared The Mill on
the Floss. After the sensational good fortune of Adam Bede,
the criticism applied to the new novel seems to have been
disappointing. We find Miss Evans telling her publisher that
" she does not wish to see any newspaper articles." But the
book made its way, and prepared an ever-growing army of readers
for Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862-1863), and Felix Holt
(1866).
Silas Marner shows a reversion to her early manner the
manner of Scenes of Clerical Life. Romola, which is what is
called an historical novel, owes it vitality not to the portraits of
Savonarola or of the heroine, or to its vigorous pictures of
Florentine life in the i sth century, but to its superb presentment
of the treacherous, handsome Tito Melema, who belongs not to
any one period but to every generation. Felix Holt, a novel
dealing with political questions, is strained by a painfulness
too severe for any reader's pleasure. Where other eminent
authors have produced mechanical books, or books which were
mere repetitions of their most popular effort, she erred only
on the side of the ponderous and the distressing. Felix Holt
is both, and it is the only one of her novels which lacks an un-
forgettable human note. The Spanish Gypsy (1868), a drama
in blank verse, received more public response Irian most com-
positions of the kind executed by those connected with the drama
'or with poetry only; and she published in 1874 another volume
of verses, The Legend of Jubal and other Poems.
Any depression which the author may have felt with regard
to the faults found with some of the last-named books was
completely cured by the praise bestowed on Middlemarch (1872).
This profound study of certain types of English character was
supreme at the time of its writing, and it remains supreme, of its
school, in European literature. Thackeray is brilliant; Tolstoi
is vivid to a point where life-likeness overwhelms any considera-
tion of art; Balzac created a whole world; George Eliot did not
create, but her exposition of the upper and middle class minds
of her day is a masterpiece of scientific psychology. Daniel
Deronda (1876), a production on the same lines, was less satis-
factory. It exhibited the same human insight, the passionate
earnestness, the insinuated special pleading for hard cases, the
same intellectual strength, but the subject was unwieldy, almost
forbidding, and, as a result, the novel, in spite of its distinc-
tion, has never been thoroughly liked. The death of Mr Lewes
in 1878 was also the death-blow to her artistic vitality. She
corrected the proofs of Theophrastus Such (a collection of essays) ,
but she wrote no more. About two years later, however, she
married Mr J. W. Cross, a gentleman whose friendship was
especially congenial to a temperament so abnormally dependent
on affectionate understanding as George Eliot's. But she never
really recovered from her shock at the loss of George Lewes, and
died at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, on the 22nd of December 1880.
No right estimate of her, whether as a woman, an artist or a
philosopher, can be formed without a steady recollection of her
infinite capacity for mental suffering, and her need of human
support. The statement that there is no sex in genius, is on the
face of it, absurd. George Sand, certainly the most independent
and dazzling of all women authors, neither felt, nor wrote, nor
thought as a man. Saint Teresa, another great writer on' a
totally different plane, was pre-eminently feminine in every
word and idea. George Eliot, less reckless, less romantic than
the Frenchwoman, less spiritual than the Spanish saint, was more
masculine in style than either; but her outlook was not, for a
moment, the man's outlook; her sincerity, with its odd reserves,
was not quite the same as a man's sincerity, nor was her humour
that genial, broad, unequivocal humour which is peculiarly
virile. Hers approximated, curiously enough, to the satire. of
Jane Austen, both for its irony and its application to little
everyday affairs. Men's humour, in its classic manifestations,
is on the heroic rather than on the average scale: it is for the
uncommon situations, not for the daily tea-table.
Her method of attacking a subject shows the influence of Jane
Austen, especially in parts of Middlemarch; one can detect also
the stronger influence of Mrs Gaskell, of Charlotte Bronte, and
of Miss Edgeworth. It was, however, but an influence, and no
more than a man writer, anxious to acquire a knowledge of the
feminine point of view, might have absorbed from a study of
these women novelists. One often hears that she is not artistic;
that her characterization is less distinct than Jane Austen's;
that she tells more than should be known of her heroes and
heroines. But it should be remembered that Jane Austen dealt
with familiar domestic types, whereas George Eliot excelled
in the presentation of extraordinary souls. One woman drew
members of polite society with correct notions, while the other
woman depicted social rebels with ideas and ideals. In every
one of George Eliot's books, the protagonists, tortured by dreams
of perfection, are in revolt against the prudent compromises
of the worldly. All through her stories, one hears the clash of
" the heroic for earth too high," and the desperate philosophy,
disguised it is true, of Omar Khayyam. In her day, Epicurean-
ism had not reached the life of the people, nor passed into the
education of the mob. Few dared to confess that the pursuit
of pleasure, whether real or imagined, was the aim of mankind.
The charm of Jane Austen is the charm of the untroubled and
well-to-do materialist, who sees in a rich marriage, a comfortable
house, carriages and an assured income the best to strive for;
and in a fickle lover of either sex or the loss of money the severest
calamities which can befall the human spirit. Jane Austen
despised the greater number of her characters: George Eliot
suffered with each of hers. Here, perhaps, we find the reason
why she is accused of being inartistic. She could not be im-
personal.
Again, George Eliot was a little scornful to those of both sexes
who had neither special missions nor the consciousness of this
deprivation. Men are seldom in favour of missions in any field.
She demanded, too strenuously from the very beginning, an
aim, more or less altruistic, from every individual; and as she
advanced in life this claim became the more imperative, till
at last it overpowered her art, and transformed a great delineator
of humanity into an eloquent observer with far too many personal
prejudices. But she was altogether free from cynicism, bitter-
ness, or the least tendency to pride of intellect. She suffered
from bodily weakness the greater part of her life, and, but for an
extraordinary mental health inherited from the fine yeoman
stock from which she sprang it is impossible that she could have
retained, at all times, so sane a view of human conduct, or been
the least sentimental among women writers of the first rank
theonewholly withoufmorbidityin any disguise. The accumula-
tion of mere book knowledge, as opposed to the friction of a life
spent among all sorts and conditions of men, drove George Eliot
at last to write as a specialist for specialists: joy was lost in the
consuming desire for strict accuracy: her genius became more
and more speculative, less and less emotional. The highly
trained brain suppressed the impulsive heart, the heart
described with such candour and pathos as Maggie Tulliver's
in The Mill on the Floss. For this reason chiefly because
philosophy is popularly associated with inactive depression,
ELIOT, SIR J. ELIOT, J.
whereas human nature is held to be eternally exhilarating her
later works have not received so much praise as her earlier
productions. But one has only to compare Romola or Daniel
DtronJa with the compositions of any author except herself to
realize the greatness of her designs, and the astonishing gifts
brought to their final accomplishment.
See also the Lift of Ceortt Eliot, ttlited by J. W. Cross (3 vols.,
1889-1887); (Jeorgt Eliot, by Sir Leslie Stephen, in the " English
Men of Letters " aerie* (I9OJ); by Oscar lirnwniiiK. " tiri-.it Writers"
cries (1890), with a bibliography by J. P. Anderson; by Mathilde
Blind, " Eminent Women ' series, a new edition of which also
contains a bibliography (Boston, Mass., 1904). (P. M. T. C.)
ELIOT. SIR JOHN (1592-1632), English statesman, son of
Richard Eliot, a member of an old Devonshire family lately
settled in Cornwall, was born at his father's seat at Port Eliot
in Cornwall in 1592. He matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford,
on the 4th of December 1607, and leaving the university after a
Itnceof three years he studied law at one of the inns of court.
He also spent some months travelling in France, Spain and
Italy, in company, for part of the time, with young George
Villiers, afterwards duke of Buckingham. He was only twenty-
two when he began his parliamentary career as member for St
Germans in the " addled parliament " of 1614. In 1618 he was
knighted, and next year through the patronage of Buckingham
he obtained the appointment of vice-admiral of Devon, with
large powers for the defence and control of the commerce of the
county. It was not long before the characteristic energy with
which he performed the duties in his office involved him in diffi-
culties. After many attempts, in 1623 he succeeded by a clever
but dangerous manoeuvre in entrapping the famous pirate
John Nutt, who had for years infested the southern coast,
indicting immense damage upon English commerce. The
issue is noteworthy. The pirate, having a powerful protector
at court in Sir George Calvert, the secretary of state, was
pardoned; while the vice-admiral, upon charges which could
not be substantiated, was flung into the Marshalsca, and detained
there nearly four months.
A few weeks after his release Eliot was elected member, of
parliament for Newport (February 1624). On the 27th of
February he delivered his first speech, in which he at once
revealed his great powers as an orator, demanding boldly that
the liberties and privileges of parliament, repudiated by James I.
in the former parliament, should be secured. In the first parlia-
ment of Charles I., in 1625, he urged the enforcement of the
laws against the Roman Catholics. Meanwhile he had continued
the friend and supporter of Buckingham and greatly approved
of the war with Spain. Buckingham's incompetence, however,
and the bad faith with which both he and the king continued
to treat the parliament, alienated Eliot completely from the
administration. Distrust of his former friend quickly grew in
Eliot's excitable mind to a certainty of his criminal ambition
and treason to his country. Returned to the parliament of
1626 as member for St Germans, he found himself, in the absence
of other chiefs of the opposition whom the king had secured
by nominating them sheriffs, the leader of the House. He
immediately demanded an inquiry into the recent disaster at
Cadiz. On the 27th of March he made an open and daring
attack upon Buckingham and his evil administration. He was
not intimidated by the king's threatening intervention on the
29th, and persuaded the House to defer the actual grant of the
subsidies and to present a remonstrance to the king, declaring its
right to examine the conduct of ministers. On the 8th of May
he was one of the managers who carried Buckingham's impeach-
ment to the Lords, and on the loth he delivered the charges
against him. comparing him in the course of his speech to Sejanus.
Next day Eliot was sent to the Tower. On the Commons declin-
ing to proceed with business as long as Eliot and Sir Dudley
Digges (who had been imprisoned with him) were in confinement,
they were released, and parliament was dissolved on the isth
of June. Eliot was immediately dismissed from his office of
vice-admiral of Devon, and in 1627 he was again imprisoned for
refusing to pay a forced loan, but liberated shortly before the
assembling of the parliament of 1628. to which he was returned
277
as member for Cornwall. He joined in the resistance now
organized to arbitrary taxation, was foremost in the promotion
of the Petition of Right, continued his outspoken censure of
Buckingham, and after the lattcr's assassination in August, led
the attack in the session of 1629 on the ritualists and Armini.
In February the great question of the right of the king to levy
tonnage and poundage came up for discussion; and on the kinj;
ordering an adjournment of parliament, the speaker, Sir John
Finch, was held down in the chair while Kliot's resolutions
against illegal taxation and innovations in religion were read
to the House by Holies (q.v.). In consequence, Eliot, with eight
other members, was imprisoned on the 4th of March in the Tower.
He refused to answer in his examination, relying on his privilege
of parliament, and on the zgth of October was removed to the
Marshalsca. On the 26th of January he appeared at the bar
of the king's bench, with Holies and Valentine, to answer a
charge of conspiracy to resist the king's order, and refusing to
acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court he was fined 2000
and ordered to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure and till
he had made submission. This he steadfastly refused. While
some of the prisoners appear to have had certain liberty allowed
to them, Eliot's confinement in the Tower was made exceptionally
severe. Charles's anger had been from the first directed chiefly
Against him, not only as his own political antagonist but as the
prosecutor and bitter enemy of Buckingham; " an outlawed
man," he described him, " desperate in mind and fortune."
Eliot languished in prison for some time, during which he
wrote several works, his Negotiant posterorum, an account of the
parliament in 1625; The Monarchic of Man, a political treatise;
De jure majestatis, a Political Treatise of Government; and
An Apology for Socrates, his own defence. In the spring of 1632
he fell into a decline. In October he petitioned Charles for per-
mission to go into the country, but leave could only be obtained
at the price of submission, and was finally refused. He died on
the 27th of November 1632. When his son requested permission
to move the body to Port Eliot, Charles, whose resentment still
survived, returned the curt refusal: " Let Sir John Eliot be
buried in the church of that parish where he died." The manner
of Eliot's death, not without suspicion of foul play, and as the
result of the king's implacability and the severe treatment to
which he had been subjected, had more effect, probably, than any
other single incident in embittering and precipitating the, dispute
between king and parliament; and the tragic sacrifice of a man
so gifted and patriotic, and actuated originally by no antagonistic
feeling against the monarchy or the church, is the surest con-
demnation of the king's policy and administration. Eliot was
essentially a great orator, inspired by enthusiasm and high
ideals, which he was able to communicate to his hearers by his
eloquence, but, like Chatham afterwards, he had not only the
gifts but the failings of the orator, was incapable of well-reasoned
and balanced judgment, and, though one of the greatest person-
alities of the time, was inferior to Pym both as a party leader and
as a statesman.
Eliot married Rhadagund, daughter of Richard Gedie of
Trebursye in Cornwall, by whom he had five sons, from the
youngest of whom Nicholas the present carl of St Germans is
descended, and four daughters.
The Life of Sir J. Eliot, by J. Forster (1864), is supplemented and
corrected by Gardiner's History of England, vols. v.-vii., and the
article in the Diet, of Nat.Biog., by the same author. Eliot's writings,
together with his Letter-Book, have been edited by Dr Grosart.
ELIOT, JOHN (1604-1690), American colonial clergyman,
known as the " Apostle to the Indians," was born probably at
Widford, Hertfordshire, England, where he was baptized on the
5th of August 1604. He was the son of Bennett Eliot, a middle-
class farmer. Little is known of his boyhood and early manhood
except that he took his degree of B.A. at Jesus College, Cam-
bridge, in 1622. It seems probable that he entered the ministry
of the Established Church, but there is nothing definitely known
of him until 1620-1630, when he became an usher or assistant
at the school of the Rev. Thomas Hooker, at Little Baddow,
near Chelmsford. The influence of Hooker apparently determined
278
ELIS
him to become a Puritan, but his connexion with the school
ceased in 1630, when Laud's persecutions drove Hooker into
exile. The realization of the difficulties in the way of a non-
conforming clergyman in England undoubtedly determined Eliot
to emigrate to America in the autumn of 1631, where he settled
first at Boston, assisting for a time at the First Church. In
November 1632 he became " teacher " to the church at Roxbury,
with which his connexion lasted until his death. There he
married Hannah Mulford, who had been betrothed to him in
England, and who became his constant helper. In the care of
the Roxbury church he was associated with Thomas Welde from
1632 to 1641, with Samuel Danforth (1626-1674) from 1649 to
1674, and with Nehemiah Walter (1663-1750) from 1688 to 1690.
Inspired with the idea of converting the Indians, his first step
was to perfect himself in their dialects, which he did by the
assistance of a young Indian whom he received into his home.
With his aid he translated the Ten Commandments and the Lord's
Prayer. He first successfully preached to the Indians in their
own tongue at Nonantum (Newton) in October 1646. At the
third meeting several Indians declared themselves converted,
and were soon followed by many others. Eliot induced the
Massachusetts General Court to set aside land for their residence,
the same body also voting him 10 to prosecute the work, and
directing that two clergymen be annually elected by the clergy,
as preachers to the Indians. As soon as the success of Eliot's
endeavours became known, the necessary funds flowed in upon
him from private sources in both Old and New England. In
July 1649 parliament incorporated the " Society for the Pro-
pagation of the Gospel in New England," which henceforth sup-
ported and directed the work inaugurated by Eliot. The first
appeal for aid brought contributions of 11,000. In 1651 the
Christian Indian town founded by Eliot was removed from
Nonantum to Natick, where residences, a meeting-house, and a
school-house were erected, and where Eliot preached, when able,
once in every two weeks as long as he lived. To this community
Eliot applied a plan of government by means of tens, fifties
and hundreds, which he subsequently advocated as suitable for
all England. Eliot's missionary labours encouraged others to
follow in his footsteps. A second town under his direction was
established at Ponkapog (Stoughton) in 1654, in which he had
the assistance of Daniel Gookin (c. 1612-1687). His success was
duplicated in Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket by the Mayhews,
and by 1674 the unofficial census of the " praying Indians "
numbered 4000. King Philip's War (1675-76) was a staggering
blow to all missionary enterprise; and although few of the
converted Indians proved disloyal, it was some years before
adequate support could again be enlisted. Yet at Eliot's
death, which occurred at Roxbury on the 2ist of May 1690, the
missions were at the height of their prosperity, and that the
results of his labours were not permanent was due only to the
racial traits of the New England tribes.
Of wider influence and more lasting value than his personal
labours as a missionary was Eliot's work as a translator of the
Bible and various religious works into the Massachusetts dialect
of the Algonquian language. The first work completed was
the Catechism, published in 1653 at Cambridge, Massachusetts,
the first book to be printed in the Indian tongue. Several
years elapsed before Eliot completed his task of translating
the Bible. The New Testament was at last issued in 1661,
and the Old Testament followed two years later. The
New Testament was bound with it, and thus the whole
Bible was completed. To it were added a Catechism and a
metrical version of the Psalms. The title of this Bible, now a
great rarity, is Mamussee Wunneetupanatamive Up-Biblum God
naneeswe Nukkone Testament kah wonk Wusku Testament-Ne
quoshkinnumuk nashpe Wultinneumoh Christ noh assoowesit
John Eliot; literally translated, " The Whole Holy His-Bible
God, both Old Testament and also New Testament. This
turned by the-servant-of-Christ, who is called John Eliot."
This book was printed in 1663 at Cambridge, Mass., by Samuel
Green and Marmaduke Johnson, and was the first Bible printed in
America. In 1685 appeared a second edition, in the preparation
of which Eliot was assisted by the Rev. John Cotton (1640-1699),.
the younger, of Plymouth, who also had a wide knowledge of the
Indian tongue.
Besides his Bible, Eliot published at Cambridge in 1664 a
translation of Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, and in 1665 an
abridged translation of Bishop Bayly's Practice of Piety. With
the assistance of his sons he completed (1664) his well-known
Indian Grammar Begun, printed at Cambridge, Massachusetts,
in 1666. It was reprinted in vol. ix. of the Collections of the
Massachusetts Historical Society. The Indian Primer, comprising
an exposition of the Lord's Prayer and a translation of the
Larger Catechism, was published at Cambridge in 1669, and was
reprinted under the editorial superintendence of Mr John Small
of the university of Edinburgh in 1877. In 1671 Eliot printed
in English a little volume entitled Indian Dialogues, followed in
1672 by his Logick Primer, both of which were intended for the
instruction of the Indians in English. His last translation was
Thomas Shepard's Sincere Convert, completed and published by
Grindal Rawson in 1689. Eliot's literary activity, however,
extended into other fields than that of Indian instruction. He
was, with Richard Mather, one of the editors of the Bay Psalm
Book (1640). Several tracts written wholly or in part by him in
the nature of reports to the society which supported his missions
were published at various times in England. In 1660 he pub-
lished a curious treatise on government entitled The Christian
Commonwealth, in which he found the ideal of government in
th'e ancient Jewish state, and proposed the reorganization of the
English government on the basis of a numerical subdivision of
the inhabitants. His Harmony of the Gospels (1678) was a life
of Jesus Christ.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. An account of Eliot's life and work is contained
in Williston Walker's Ten New England Leaders (New York, 1901).
There is a " Life of John Eliot," by Convers Francis, in Sparks'
American Biography, vol. v. (New York, 1853); another by N.
Adams (Boston, 1847); and a sketch in Cotton Mather's Magnolia
(London, 1702). For a good account of his publications in the Indian
language see the chapter on " The Indian Tongue and its Litera-
ture," by J. H. Trumbull, in vol. i. of the Memorial History of Boston
(1882). (W. WR.)
ELIS, or ELEIA, an ancient district of southern Greece, bounded
on the N. by Achaea, E. by Arcadia, S. by Messenia, and W.
by the Ionian Sea. The local form of the name was Valis,
or Valeia, and its meaning, in all probability, " the lowland."
In its physical constitution Elis is practically one with Achaea
and Arcadia; its mountains are mere offshoots of the Arcadian
highlands, and its principal rivers are fed by Arcadian springs.
From Erymanthus in the north, Skollis (now known as Mavri
and Santameri in different parts of its length) stretches toward
the west, and Pholoe along the eastern frontier; in the south a
prolongation of Mount Lycaeon bore in ancient times the names
of Minthe and Lapithus, which have given place respectively to
Alvena and to Kaiapha and Smerna. These mountains are
well clothed with vegetation, and present a soft and pleasing
appearance in contrast to the picturesque wildness of the parent
ranges. They gradually sink towards the west and die off into
what was one of the richest alluvial tracts in the Peloponnesus.
Except where it is broken by the rocky promontories of Chelonatas
(now Chlemutzi) and Ichthys (now Katakolo), the coast lies low,
with stretches of sand in the north and lagoons and marshes
towards the south. During the summer months communication
with the sea being established by means of canals, these lagoons
yield a rich harvest of fish to the inhabitants, who at the same
time, however, are almost driven from the coast by the swarms
of gnats. The district for administrative purposes forms part
of the nome of Elis and Achaea (see GREECE).
Elis was divided into three districts Hollow or Lowland Elis
(17 KoiXT)' r HXts), Pisatis, or the territory of Pisa, and Triphylia,
or the country of the three tribes. ( i ) Hollow Elis, the largest and
most northern of the three, was watered by the Peneus and its
tributary the Ladon, whose united stream forms the modern
Gastouni. It included not only the champaign country originally
designated by its name, but also the mountainous region of
Acrorea, occupied by the offshoots of Erymanthus. Besides the
capital city of Elis, it contained Cyllene, an Arcadian settlement
ELIS ELISAVETGRAD
279
on the sea-coast, whose inhabitants worshipped Hermes under
the phallic symbol; 1'ylus, at the junction of the Peneus and the
Ladon, which, like so many other places of the same name,
claimed to be the city of Nestor, and the fortified frontier town
of Lasion, the ruins of which are still visible at Kuti, near the
village of Kumani. The district was famous in antiquity for its
cattle and horses; and its byssus, supposed to have been intro-
duced by the Phoenicians, was inferior only to that of Palestine,
(i) Pisittis extended south from Hollow Klis to the right bank
of the Alphcus, and was divided into eight departments called
alter as many towns. Of these Salmone, Hentclea, Cicysion,
Dyspontium and Harpina are known the last being the reputed
burial-place of Marmax, the suitor of Hippodamia. From the
time of the early investigators it has been disputed whether
Pisa, which gave its name to the district, has ever been a city,
or was only a fountain or a hill. By far the most important spot
in Pisatis was the scene of the great Olympic games, on the
northern bank of the Alpheus (see OLYMPIA). (3) Triphylia
stretches south from the Alpheus to the Neda, which forms the
boundary towards Messenia. Of the nine towns mentioned by
Polybius, only two attained to any considerable influence
Lepreum and Macistus, which gave the names of Lepreatis and
Macbtia to the southern and northern halves of Triphylia.
The former was the seat of a strongly independent population,
and continued to take every opportunity of resisting the
supremacy of the Eleans. In the time of Pausanias it was in a
very decadent condition, and possessed only a poor brick-built
temple of Demeter; but considerable remains of its outer walls
are still in existence near the village of Strovitzi, on a part of the
Minthe range.
The original inhabitants of Elis were called Caucones and
Paroreatae. They are mentioned for the first time in Greek
history under the title of Epeians, as setting out for the Trojan
War, and they are described by Homer as living in a state of
constant hostility with their neighbours the Pylians. At the
dose of the nth century B.C. the Dorians invaded the Pelopon-
nesus, and Elis fell to the share of Oxylus and the Aetolians.
These people, amalgamating with the Epeians, formed a powerful
kingdom in the north of Elis. After this many changes took
place in the political distribution of the country, till at length
it came to acknowledge only three tribes, each independent of
the others. These tribes were the Epeians, Minyae and Eleans.
Before the end of the 8th century B.C., however, the Eleans had
vanquished both their rivals, and established their supremacy
over the whole country. Among the other advantages which they
thus gained was the right of celebrating the Olympic games,
which had formerly been the prerogative of the Pisatans. The
attempts which this people made to recover their lost privilege,
during a period of nearly two hundred years, ended at length
in the total destruction of their city by the Eleans. From the
time of this event (572 B.C.) till the Peloponnesian War, the peace
of Elis remained undisturbed. In that great contest Elis sided
at first with Sparta; but that power, jealous of the increasing
prosperity of its ally, availed itself of the first pretext to pick a
quarrel. At the battle of Mantinea (418 B.C.) the Eleans fought
against the Spartans, who, as soon as the war came to a close,
took vengeance upon them by depriving them of Triphylia and
the towns of the Acrorea. The Eleans made no attempt to
re-establish their authority over these places, till the star of
Thebes rose in the ascendant after the battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.).
It is not unlikely that they would have effected their purpose
bad not the Arcadian confederacy come to the assistance of the
Triphylians. In 366 B.C. hostilities broke out between them,
and though the Eleans were at first successful, they were soon
overpowered, and their capital very nearly fell into the hands of
the enemy. Unable to make head against their opponents,
they applied for assistance to the Spartans, who invaded Arcadia,
and forced the Arcadians to recall their troops from Elis. The
general result of this war was the restoration of their territory
to the Eleans, who were also again invested with the right of
holding the Olympic games. During the Macedonian supremacy
in Greece they sided with the victors, but refused to fight against
their countrymen. After the death of Alexander they renounced
the Macedonian alliance. At a subsequent period they joined
the Aetolian League, but persistently refused to identify them-
selves with the Achaeans. When the whole of Greece fell under
the Roman yoke, the sanctity of Olympia secured for the Eleans
a certain amount of indulgence. The games still continued to
attract to the country large numbers of strangers, until they
were finally put down by Theodosius in 304, two years previous
to the utter destruction of the country by the Gothic invasion
'under Alaric. In later times Elis fell successively into the hands
of the Franks and the Venetians, under whose rule it recovered
to some extent its ancient prosperity. By the latter people the
province of Belvedere on the Peneus was called, in consequence
of its fertility, " the milch cow of the Morea."
ELIS. the chief city of the ancient Greek district of Elis, was
situated on the river Peneus, just where it passes from the
mountainous district of Acrorca into the champaign below.
According to native tradition, it was originally founded by
Oxylus, the leader of the Aetolians, whose statue stood in the
market-place. In 471 B.C. it received a great extension by the
incorporation (synoecism) of various small hamlets, whose
inhabitants took up their abode in the city. Up to this date it
only occupied the ridge of the hill now called Kalaskopi, to the
south of the Peneus, but afterwards it spread out in several
suburbs, and even to the other side of the stream. As all the
athletes who intended to take part in the Olympic games were
obliged to undergo a month's training in the city, its gymnasiums
were among its principal institutions. They were three in number
the " Xystos," with its avenues of plane-trees, its plethrion
or wrestling-place, its altars to Heracles, to Eros and Anteros, to
Demeter and Kore (Cora), and its cenotaph of Achilles; the
" Tetragonon," appropriated to boxing exercises; and the
" Maltho," in the interior of which was a hall or council chamber
called Lalichmion after its founder. The market-place was of
the old-fashioned type, with porticoes at intervals and paths
leading between them. It was called the Hippodrome because
it was commonly used for exercising horses. Among the other
objects of interest were the temple of Artemis Philomirax; the
Hellanodicaeon, or office of the Hellanodicae; the Corey rean
Hall, a building in the Dorian style with two facades, built of
spoils from Corcyra; a temple of Apollo Acesius; a temple
of Silenus; an ancient structure supported on oaken pillars and
reputed to be the burial-place of Oxylus; the building where
the sixteen women of Elis were wont to weave a robe for the
statue of Hera at Olympia; the temple of Aphrodite, with a
statue of the goddess by Pheidias as Urania with a tortoise
beneath her foot, and by Scopas as Pandemos, riding on a goat;
and the shrine of Dionysus, whose festival, the Thyia, was
yearly celebrated in the neighbourhood. On the acropolis was a
temple of Athena, with a gold and ivory statue by Pheidias.
The history of the town is closely identified with that of the
country. In 390 B.C. it was occupied by Agis, king of Sparta.
The acropolis was fortified in 312 by Telesphorus, the admiral
of Antigonus, but it was shortly afterwards dismantled by
Philemon, another of his generals. A view of the site is given by
Stanhope. It is now called Palaeopolis. No traces of any
buildings can be identified, the only remains visible dating from
Roman times.
See Pausanias vi. 23-26; J. Spencer Stanhope, Olympia and Elis
(1824), folio; W. M. Leake, Morea (1830); E. Curtius, Peloponnesus
(1851-1852); Schijler, Stdmme und Staaten Griechenlands ; (.'.
Bursian, Ceographie von Griechenland (1868-1872); P. Gardner,
" The Coins of Elis," in Num. Chr. (1879). (E. GR.)
ELIS, PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOL OF. This school was
founded by Phaedo, a pupil of Socrates. It existed for a very
short time and was then transferred by Menedemus to Eretria,
where it became known as the Eretrian school. Its chief
members, beside Phaedo, were Anchipylus, MoscHus and Plei-
stanus (see PHAEDO and MENEDEMUS).
ELISAVETGRAD, a fortress and town of Russia, in the
government of Kherson, 206 m. by rail N.E. of Odessa on the
Balta-Kremenchug railway, and on the Ingul river, in 48 31' N.
and 32 10' E. The population increased from 23,725 in 1860 to
280
ELISAVETPOL ELISHA
66,182 in 1900. The town is regularly built, with wide streets,
some of them lined with trees, and is a wealthy town, which has
become an industrial centre for the region especially on account
of its steam flour-mills, in which it is second only to Odessa, its
distilleries, mechanical workshops, tobacco and tallow factories
and brickworks. It is an important centre for trade in cereals
and flour for export, and in sheep, cattle, wool, leather and
timber. Five fairs are held annually. It has a military school,
a first-class meteorological station and a botanical garden. The
town was founded in 1 754 and named after the empress Elizabeth.
The fortifications are now decayed.
ELISAVETPOL, a government of Russia, Transcaucasia,
having the governments of Tiflis and Daghestan on the N.,
Baku on the E., and Erivan and Tiflis on the W. and Persia on
the S. Area, 16,721 sq. m. It includes: (a) the southern slope
of the main Caucasus range in the north-east, where Bazar-
dyuzi (14,770 ft.) and other peaks rise above the snow-line;
(b) the arid and unproductive steppes beside the Kura, reaching
1000 ft. of altitude in the west and sinking to 100-200 ft. in the
east, where irrigation is necessary; and (c) the northern slopes of
the Transcaucasian escarpment and portions of the Armenian
plateau, which is intersected towards its western boundary,
near Lake Gok-cha, by chains of mountains consisting of trachytes
and various crystalline rocks, and reaching 12,845 rt - in Mount
Kapujikh. Elsewhere the country has the character of a plateau,
7000 to 8000 ft. high, deeply trenched by tributaries of the Aras.
All varieties of climate are found from that of the snowclad
peaks, Alpine meadows, and stony deserts of the high levels, to
that of the hill slopes, clothed with gardens and vineyards, and
of the arid Caspian steppes. Thus, at Shusha, on the plateau,
at an altitude of 3680 ft., the average temperatures are: year
48, January 26, July 66; annual rainfall, 26-4; while at
Elisavetpol, in the valley of the Kura, they are: year 55,
January 32- 2, July 77 and rainfall only 10-3 in. Nearly one-
fifth of the surface is under forests.
The population which was 885,379 m J 897 (only 392,124
women; 84,130 urban), and was estimated at 953,300 in 1906,
consists chiefly of Tatars (56%) and Armenians (33%). The
remainder are Kurds (4-7%), Russians and a few Germans,
Jews, Kurins, Udins and Tates. Peasants form the great bulk of
the population. Some of the Tatars and the Kurds are nomadic.
Wheat, maize, barley, oats and rye are grown, also rice. Cultiva-
tion of cotton has begun, but the rearing of silkworms is of old
standing, especially at Nukha (1650 tons of cocoons on the
average are obtained every year). Nearly 8000 acres are under
vines, the yield of wine averaging 825 million gallons annually.
Gardening reaches a high standard of perfection. Liquorice
root is obtained to the extent of about 35,000 tons annually.
The rearing of live-stock is largely carried on on the steppes.
Copper, magnetic iron ore, cobalt and a small quantity of naphtha
are extracted, and nearly 10,000 persons are employed in manu-
facturing industry copper works and silk-mills. Carpet-
weaving is widely spread. Owing to the Transcaucasian railway,
which crosses the government, trade, both in the interior and
with Persia, is very brisk. The government is divided into
eight districts, Elisavetpol, Aresh, Jebrail, Jevanshir, Kazakh,
Nukha, Shusha and Zangezur. The only towns, besides the
capital, are Nukha (24,811 inhabitants in 1897) and Shusha
(25,656).
ELISAVETPOL (formerly Ganja, alternative names being
KENJEH and KANGA), a town of Russia, capital of the govern-
ment of the same name, 118 m. by rail S.E. of Tiflis and 3$
m. from the railway, at an altitude of 1446 ft. Pop. (1873)
15,439; (1897) 33,090. It is a very old town, which changed
hands between Persians, Khazars and Arabs even in the 7th
century, and later fell into the possession of Mongols, Georgians,
Persians and Turks successively, until the Russians took it in
1804, when the change of name was made. It is a badly built
place, with narrow streets and low-roofed, windowless nouses,
and is situated in a very unhealthy locality, but has been much
improved, a new European quarter having been built on the site
of the old fortress (erected by the Turks in 1712-1724). The
inhabitants are chiefly Tatars and Armenians, famed for their
excellent gardening, and also for silkworm breeding. It has a
beautiful mosque, built by Shah Abbas of Persia in 1620; and
a renowned " Green Mosque " amidst the ruins of old Ganja,
4 m. distant. The Persian poet, Shah Nizam (Nizam-ed-Din),
was born here in 1141, and is said to have been buried (1203)
close to the town. The Persians were defeated by the Russians
under Paskevich outside this town in 1826.
ELISHA (a Hebrew name meaning " God is deliverance "),
in the Bible, the disciple and successor of Elijah, was the son
of Shaphat of Abel-meholah in the valley of the Jordan. He
was symbolically elected to the prophetic office by Elijah some
time during the reign of Ahab (i Kings xix. 19-21), and he
survived until the reign of Joash. His career thus appears to
have extended over a period of nearly sixty years. The relation
between Elijah and Elisha was of a particularly close kind, but
the difference between them is much more striking than the
resemblance. Elijah is the prophet of the wilderness, wandering,
rugged and austere; Elisha is the prophet of civilized life, of the
city and the court, with the dress, manners and appearance of
ordinary " grave citizens." Elijah is the messenger of vengeance
sudden, fierce and overwhelming; Elisha is the messenger of
mercy and restoration. Elijah's miracles, with few exceptions,
are works of wrath and destruction; Elisha's miracles, with but
one notable exception, are works of beneficence and healing.
Elijah is the "prophet as fire" (Ecclus, xlviii. i), an abnormal
agent working for exceptional ends; Elisha is the " holy man
of God which passeth by us continually " (2 Kings iv. 9), mixing
in the common life of the people.
It is impossible to draw up a detailed chronology of his life.
In most of the events narrated no further indication of time is
given than by the words " the king of Israel," the name not being
specified. There are some instances in which the order of time
is obviously the reverse of the order of narrative, and there are
other grounds for concluding that the narrative as we now have
it is confused and incomplete. This may serve not only to
explain the chronological difficulties, but also to throw some
light on the altogether exceptional character of the miraculous
element in Elisha's history. On the literary questions, see
further KINGS.
Not only are Elisha's miracles very numerous, even more so
than those of Elijah, but they stand in a peculiar relation to the
man and his work. With all the other prophets the primary
function is spiritual teaching: miracles, even though numerous and
many of them symbolical like Elisha's, are only accessory. With
Elisha, on the other hand, miracles seem the principal function,
and the teaching is altogether subsidiary. An explanation of
the superabundance of miracles in Elisha's life is suggested by
the fact that several of them were merely repetitions or doubles
of those of his predecessor. Such were: his first miracle, when,
returning across the Jordan, he made a dry path for himself in
the same manner as Elijah (2 Kings ii. 14); the increase of the
widow's pot of oil (iv. 1-7); and the restoration of the son of the
woman of Shunem to life (iv. 18-37). The theory that stories
from the earlier life have been imported by mistake into the later,
even if tenable, applies only to three of the miracles, and leaves
unexplained a much larger number which are not only not
repetitions of those of Elijah, but have an entirely opposite
character. The healing of the water of Jericho by putting salt
init(ii. 19-22), the provision of water for the army of Jehoshaphat
in the arid desert (iii. 6-20), the neutralizing by meal of the poison
in the pottage of the famine-stricken sons of the prophets at
Jericho (iv. 38-41), the healing of Naaman the Syrian (v. 1-19),
and the recovery of the iron axehead that had sunk in the water
(vi. 1-7), are all instances of the beneficence which was the
general characteristic of Elisha's wonder-working activity in con-
trast to that of Elijah. Another miracle of the same class, the
feeding of a hundred men with twenty loaves so that something
was left over (iv. 42-44), deserves mention as the most striking
though not the only instance of a resemblance between the work
of Elisha and that of Jesus (Matt. xiv. 13-21). The one distinct
exception to the general beneficence of Elisha's activity the
ELISHA BEN ABUYAH ELIXIR
281
destruction of the forty-two children who mocked him as he was
going up to Bethel (.' Kings ii. 23-35) presents an ethical
difficulty which is scarcely removed by the suggestion that the
narrative has lost some particulars which would have shown the
real enormity of the children's offence. We may prefer to imagine
that among the homely stories told of him was one which had
for its main object the inculcation of respect for one's elders.'
The leprosy brought upon Gehazi (v. 20-27), though a miracle
of judgment, scarcely belongs to the same class as the other;
and it will be observed that Gehazi 's subsequent relations with
the court (viii. 1-6) ignore the disease, a fatal hindrance to
intercourse. Further, the healing of Naaman (alluded to in Luke
iv. 27) presupposes peaceful relations between Israel and the
Syrians, with which, however, contrast ch. vi. The wonder-
working power of Elisha is represented as continuing even after
his death. As the feeding of the hundred men and the cure of
leprosy connect his work with that of Jesus, so the story that a
dead man who was cast into his sepulchre was brought to life
by the mere contact with his bones (2 Kings xiii. 21, cf. Ecclus.
xlviii. 12-14) is the most striking instance of an analogy between
his miracles and those recorded of medieval saints. Stanley
(Jf*isk Ckurch, 4th ed., ii. 276) in reference to this has remarked
that in the life of Elisha alone " in the sacred history the gulf
between biblical and ecclesiastical miracles almost disappears."
The place which Elisha filled in contemporary history was one
of great inilucnce and importance, and several narratives testify
to his great reputation in Israel. On one occasion, when he
delivered the army that had been brought out against Moab
from a threatened dearth of water (2 Kings iii.), 1 he plainly
intimates that, but for his regard to Jehoshaphat, the king of
Judah, who was in alliance with Israel, he would not have
interfered. Whether he was with the army or was supposed
to be living in the desert is left obscure. An interesting touch
is the influence of music upon the prophetic mind (v. 15). His
next signal interference was during the incursions of the Syrians,
when he disclosed the plans of the invaders to the " king of
Israel " with such effect that they were again and again baffled.
When the " king of Syria " was informed that " Elisha, the
prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words
that thou speakest in thy bed-chamber," he at once sent an
army to take him captive in Dothan. At Elisha's prayer his
terrified servant beheld an army of horses and chariots of fire
surrounding the prophet. At a second prayer the invaders
were struck blind, and in this state they were led by Elisha
to Samaria, where their sight was restored. Their lives were
spared at the command of the prophet, and they returned home
so impressed that their incursions thenceforward ceased (vi. 8-23).
This is immediately followed by the siege of Samaria by
Benhadad which caused a famine of the severest kind. The
calamity was imputed by the " king of Israel " to the influence
of Elisha, and he ordered the prophet to be immediately put to
death. Forewarned of the danger, Elisha ordered the messenger
who had been sent to slay him to be detained at the door,
and, when, immediately afterwards, the king himself came
(" messenger " in vi. 33 should rather be king), predicted a great
plenty within twenty-four hours. This was fulfilled by the flight
of the Syrian army under the circumstances stated in ch. vii.
After the episode with regard to the woman of Shunem (viii.
1-6), which is out of its chronological order, Elisha is represented
as at Damascus (viii. 7-15). The reverence with which the
foreign monarch Benhadad addressed Elisha deserves to be
noted as showing the extent of the prophet's influence. In
sending to know the issue of his illness, the king caused himscll
to be styled "thy ion Benhadad." Equally remarkable is the
1 Similarly Elijah enforces respect for the prophetic office in
i. 9 aqq. Prof. Kennett points out to the present writer that the
epithet " bald-head " may refer to the sign of mourning for Elisha's
lost master (cf. Ez. vii. 18, Deut. xiv. i); "Go up ' is perhaps
to be taken literally (in reference to Elijah's translation).
' The method of obtaining; water (v. 16 sq.) is that which stil!
gives its name to the Wadi el-Abs3 (" valley of water pits ") at the
out hern end of the Dead Sea (Old Test. Jew. Church. 2nd ed., 147)
On the other hand, see Burncy. Heb. Text of Kings, p. 270.
very ambiguous nature of Elisha's reply (viii. 10).* The most
mportant interference of Elisha in the history of his country
constituted the fulfilment of the third of the commands laid
upon Elijah. The work of anointing Jehu to be king over Israel
was performed by deputy (ix. 1-3). During the forty-five years
which the. chronological scheme allows for the reigns of Jehu
and Jchoabaz the narratives contain no notice of Klislia, but
rom the circumstances of his death (xiii. 14-21) it is clear that
ic had continued to enjoy the esteem of the dynasty which
ic had helped to found. Joash, the grandson of Jehu, waited
on him on his deathbed, and addressed him in the words which
ic himself had used to Elijah: " My father, my father, the
chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof " (cf. ii. 12). By the
result of a symbolic discharge of arrows he informed the king
of his coming success against Syria, and immediately thereafter
ic died. The explicit statement that he was buried completes
the contrast between him and his greater predecessor.
On the narratives, sec KINGS. In general those where " the
prophet appears as on friendly terms with the king, and possessed
of influence at court (e.g. 2 Kings iv. 13, vi. 9, vi. 21, compared
with xiii. 14), plainly belong to the time of Jehu's dynasty, though
:hey are related before the fall of the house of Omn. We can dis-
:inguish portions of an historical narrative which speaks of Elisha
n connexion with events of public interest, without making him the
central figure, and a series of anecdotes of properly biographical
character. ... In the latter we may distinguish one circle con-
nected with Gilgal, Jericho and the Jordan valley to which Abel-
Meholah belongs (iv. 1-7? 38-44, v.? vi. 1-7). Here Elisha appears
as the head of the prophetic gilds, having his fixed residenceat Gilgal. 4
Another circle, which presupposes the accession of the house of Jehu,
places him at Dothan or Carmel, and represents him as a personage
of almost superhuman dignity. Here there is an obvious parallelism
with the history of Elijah, especially with his ascension ^cf. 2 Kings
vi. 17 with ii. II ; xiii. 14 with ii. 12); and it is to this group of
narratives that the ascension of Elijah forms the introduction "
(Robertson Smith, Ency. Brit., gth ed., art. KINGS, vol. xiv. p. 186).
This twofold representation finds a parallel in the narratives of
Samuel, whose history and the conditions reflected therein are
analogous to the life and times of Elisha.
Elisha is canonized in the Orthodox Eastern Church, his festival
being on the I4th of June, under which date his life is entered in the
Acta sanctorum.
See especially, W. R. Smith, Propliets of Israel (Index, s.v.),
and the literature to ELIJAH; KINGS, BOOKS OF; PROPHET.
(W. R. S.; S. A. C.)
ELISHA BEN ABUYAH (c. A.D. 100), a unique figure among
the Palestinian Jews of the first Christian century. He was
born before the destruction of the Temple (which occurred in
A.D. 70) and survived into the 2nd century. It is not easy to
decide as to his exact attitude towards Judaism. That he refused
to accept the current rabbinical views is certain, though the
Talmud cites his legal decisions. Most authorities believe that
he was a Gnostic; but while it is certain that he was not a
Christian, it is possible that he was simply a Sadducee, and thus
an opponent not of Judaism but of Pharisaism. His disciple,
the famous Pharisee Meir, remained his steadfast friend, and his
efforts to reclaim his former master are among the most pathetic
incidents in the Talmud. In later ages Elisha (after " the other,"
as he was named) was regarded as the type of a heretic whose
pride of intellect betrayed him into infidelity to law and morals.
Without much appropriateness Elisha has been sometimes
described as the " Faust of the Talmud." (I. A.)
ELIXIR (from the Arabic al-iksir, probably an adaptation of
the Gr. tfipiov, a powder used for drying wounds, from i?pos,
dry), in alchemy, the medium which would effect the transmuta-
tion of base metals into gold; it probably included all such
substances vapours, liquids, &c. and had a wider meaning
than " philosopher's stone." The same term, more fully elixir
' R. V. marg. is an alteration to remove from Elisha the suggestion
of an untruth.
4 The Gilgal of Elisha is near the Jordan comp. vi. I with iv. 38,
r:c^ D'sr, and cannot be other than the great sanctuary; 2 m.
from Jericho, the local holiness of which is still attested in the
Onomastica. It is true that in 2 Kings ii. I Bethel seems to lie
between Gilgal and Jericho; but v. 25 shows that Gilgal was not
originally represented as Elisha's residence in this narrative, which
belongs to the Carmel- Dothan acnes. On the other hand, for the
identification with the Gilgal (Jiljilia) S.W. of Shiloh, see G. A.
Smith, Ency. Bib. (s.v. Gilgal); Burney, op. cit., p. 264; Skinner,
Century Bible: Kings, p. 278.
282
ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND
vitae, elixir of life, was given to the substance which would
indefinitely prolong life; it was considered to be closely related
to, or even identical with, the substance for transmuting metals.
In pharmacy the word was formerly given to a strong extract
or tincture, but it is only used now for an aromatic sweet prepara-
tion, containing one or more drugs, and in such expressions as
" elixir of vitriol," a mixture of sulphuric acid, cinnamon, ginger
and alcohol.
ELIZABETH (1533-1603), queen of England and Ireland,
born on Sunday the 7th of September 1533, and, like all the
Tudors except Henry VII., at Greenwich Palace, was the only
surviving child of Henry VIII. by his second queen, Anne Boleyn.
With such a mother and with Cranmer as her godfather she
represented from her birth the principle of revolt from Rome,
but the opponents of that movement attached little importance
to her advent into the world. Charles V.'s ambassador, Chapuys,
hardly deigned to mention the fact that the king's amie had given
birth to a daughter, and both her parents were bitterly dis-
appointed with her sex. She was, however, given precedence
over Mary, her elder sister by sixteen years, and Mary never
forgave the infant's offence. Even this dubious advantage only
lasted three years until her mother was beheaded, and by a much
more serious freak on Henry's part " divorced." Elizabeth has
been censured for having made no effort in later years to clear
her mother's memory; but no vindication of Anne's character
could have rehabilitated Elizabeth's legitimacy. Her mother was
not " divorced " for her alleged adultery, because that crime was
no ground for divorce by Roman or English canon law. The
marriage was declared invalid ab inilio either on the ground of
Anne's precontract with Lord Percy or more probably on the
ground of the affinity established between Henry and Anne by
Henry's previous relations with Mary Boleyn.
Elizabeth thus lost all hereditary title to the throne, and her
early years of childhood can hardly have been happier than
Mary's. Nor was her legitimacy ever legally established; but
after Jane Seymour's death, when Henry seemed likely to have
no further issue, she was by act of parliament placed next in
order of the succession after Edward and Mary and their issue;
and this statutory arrangement was confirmed by the will which
Henry VIII. was empowered by statute to make. Queen
Catherine Parr introduced some humanity into Henry's house-
hold, and Edward and Elizabeth were well and happily educated
together, principally at old Hatfield House, which is now the
marquess of Salisbury's stables. They were there wfien Henry's
death called Edward VI. away to greater dignities, and Elizabeth
was left in the care of Catherine Parr, who married in indecent
haste Thomas, Lord Seymour, brother of the protector Somerset.
This unprincipled adventurer, even before Catherine's death
in September 1548, paid indelicate attentions to Elizabeth.
Any attempt to marry her without the council's leave would have
been treason on his part and would have deprived Elizabeth
of her contingent right to the succession. Accordingly, when
Seymour's other misbehaviour led to his arrest, his relations
with Elizabeth were made the subject of a very trying investiga-
tion, which gave Elizabeth her first lessons in the feminine arts
of self-defence. She proved equal to the occasion, partly because
she was in all probability innocent of anything worse than a
qualified acquiescence in Seymour's improprieties and a girlish
admiration for his handsome face. He or his tragic fate may have
touched a deeper chord, but it was carefully concealed; and
although in later years Elizabeth seems to have cherished his
memory, and certainly showed no love for his brother's children,
at the time she only showed resentment at the indignities inflicted
on herself.
For the rest of Edward's reign Elizabeth's life was less
tempestuous. She hardly rivalled Lady Jane Grey as the ideal
Puritan maiden, but she swam with the stream, and was regarded
as a foil to her stubborn Catholic sister. She thus avoided the
enmity and the still more dangerous favour of Northumberland;
and some unknown history lies behind the duke's preference of
the Lady Jane to Elizabeth as his son's wife and his own puppet
for the throne. She thus escaped shipwreck in his crazy vessel,
and rode by Mary's side in triumph into London on the failure
of the plot. For a time she was safe enough; she would not
renounce her Protestantism until Catholicism had been made the
law of the land, But she followed Gardiner's advice to her father
when he said it was better that he should make the law his will
than try to make his will the law. As a presumptive ruler of
England she was, like Cecil, and for that matter the future arch-
bishop Parker also, too shrewd to commit herself to passive
or active resistance to the law; and they merely anticipated
Hobbes in holding that the individual committed no sin in sub-
ordinating his conscience to the will of the state, for the responsi-
bility for the law was not his but the state's. Their position was
well enough understood in those days; it was known that they
were heretics at heart, and that when their turn came they would
once more overthrow Catholicism and expect a similar submission
from the Catholics.
It was not so much Elizabeth's religion as her nearness to the
throne and the circumstances of her birth that endangered her
life in Mary's reign. While Mary was popular Elizabeth was
safe; but as soon as the Spanish marriage project had turned
away English hearts Elizabeth inevitably became the centre of
plots and the hope of the plotters. Had not Lady Jane still been
alive to take off the edge of Mary's indignation and suspicion
Elizabeth might have paid forfeit for Wyat's rebellion with
her life instead of imprisonment. She may have had interviews
with French agents who helped to foment the insurrection; but
she was strong and wary enough to avoid Henry II. 's, as she had
avoided Northumberland's, toils; for even in case of success
she would have been the French king's puppet, placed on the
throne, if at all, merely to keep it warm for Henry's prospective
daughter-in-law, Mary Stuart. This did not make Mary Tudor
any more friendly,and, although the story that Elizabeth favoured
Courtenay and that Mary was jealous is a ridiculous fiction, the
Spaniards cried loud and long for Elizabeth's execution. She
was sent to the Tower in March 1554, but few Englishmen were
fanatic enough to want a Tudor beheaded. The great nobles, the
Howards, and Gardiner would not hear of such a proposal; and
all the efforts of the court throughout Mary's reign failed to induce
parliament to listen to the suggestion that Elizabeth should be
deprived of her legal right to the succession. After two months in
the Tower she was transferred to Sir Henry Bedingfield's charge
at Woodstock, and at Christmas, when the realm had been recon-
ciled to Rome and Mary was expecting issue, Elizabeth was once
more received at court. In the autumn of 1555 she went down
to Hatfield, where she spent most of the rest of Mary's reign,
enjoying the lessons of Ascham and Baldassare Castiglione, and
planting trees which still survive.
She had only to bide her time while Mary made straight her
successor's path by uprooting whatever affection the English
people had for the Catholic faith, Roman jurisdiction and
Spanish control. The Protestant martyrs and Calais between
them removed all the alternatives to an insular national English
policy in church and in state; and no sovereign was better
qualified to lead such a cause than the queen who ascended the
throne amid universal, and the Spaniards thought indecent,
rejoicings at Mary's death on the i7th of November 1 558. " Mere
English " she boasted of being, and after Englishmen's recent
experience there was no surer title to popular favour. No
sovereign since Harold had been so purely English in blood;
her nearest foreign ancestor was Catherine of France, the widow
of Henry V., and no English king or queen was more superbly
insular in character or in policy. She was the unmistakable
child of the age so far as Englishmen shared in its characteristics,
for with her English aims she combined some Italian methods
and ideas. " An Englishman Italianate," ran the current jingle,
" is a devil incarnate," and Elizabeth was well versed in Italian
scholarship and statecraft. Italians, especially Bernardino
Ochino, had given her religious instruction, and the Italians who
rejected Catholicism usually adopted far more advanced forms
of heresy than Lutheranism, Zwinglianism, or even Calvinism.
Elizabeth herself patronized Giacomo Acontio, who thought
dogma a " stratagema Satanae," and her last favourite, Essex
ELIZABETH, EMPRESS OF RUSSIA
283
was accused of being the ringleader of " a damnable crew of
atheists." A Spanish ambassador early in the reign thought that
Elizabeth's own religion was equally negative, though she told
him she agreed with nearly everything in the Augsburg Con-
fession. She was probably not at liberty to say what she really
thought, but she made up by saying a great many things which
she did not mean. It is dear enough that, although, like her
father, she was fond of ritual, she was absolutely devoid of the
religious temperament, and that her ecclesiastical preferences
were dictated by political considerations. She was sincere
enough in her dislike of Roman jurisdiction and of Calvinism;
a daughter of Anne Boleyn could have little affection for a system
which made her a bastard, and all monarch* agreed at heart with
James I.'s aphorism about " no bishop, no king." It was con-
venient, too, to profess Lutheran sympathies, for Lutheranism
was now an established, monarchical and comparatively re-
spectable religion, very different from the Calvinism against
which monarchs directed the Counter-reformation from political
motives. Lutheran dogma, however, had few adherents in
England, though its political theory coincided with that of
Anglicanism in the i6th century. The compromise that resulted
from these conflicting forces suited Elizabeth very well; she had
little dislike of Catholics who repudiated the papacy, but she was
forced to rely mainly on Protestants, and had little respect for
any form of ecclesiastical self-government. She valued uni-
formity in religion, not as a safeguard against heresy, but as a
guarantee of the unity of the state. She respected the bishops
only as supporters of her throne; and, although the well-known
letter beginning " Proud Prelate " is an iSth-ccntury forgery,
it is hardly a travesty of Elizabeth's attitude.
The outlines of her foreign policy are sketched elsewhere
(see ENGLISH HISTORY), and her courtships were diplomatic.
Contemporary gossip, which was probably justified, said that
she was debarred from matrimony by a physical defect; and
her cry when she heard that Mary queen of Scots had given
birth to a son is the most womanly thing recorded of Elizabeth.
Her features were as handsome as Mary's, but she had little
fascination, and in spite of her many suitors no man lost his head
over Elizabeth as men did over Mary. She was far too masculine
in mind and temperament, and her extravagant addiction to the
outward trappings of femininity was probably due to the absence
or atrophy of deeper feminine instincts. In the same way the
impossibility of marriage made her all the freer with her flirtations,
and she carried some of them to lengths that scandalized a public
unconscious of Elizabeth's security. She had every reason to
keep them in the dark, and to convince other courts that she could
and would marry if the provocation were sufficient. She could
not marry Philip II., but she held out hopes to more than one of
his Austrian cousins whenever France or Mary Stuart seemed
to threaten; and later she encouraged two French princes
when Philip had lost patience with Elizabeth and made Mary
Stuart his protegee. Her other suitors were less important,
except Leicester, who appealed to the least intellectual side of
Elizabeth and was always a cause of distraction in her policy
and her ministers.
Elizabeth was terribly handicapped by having no heirs of her
body and no obvious English successor. She could not afford
to recognize Mary's claim, for that would have been to alienate
the Protestants, double the number of Catholics, and, in her own
phrase, to spread a winding-sheet before her eyes; for all would
have turned to the rising sun. Mary was dangerous enough as it
was, and no one would willingly make his rival his heir. Elizabeth
could hardly be expected to go out of her way and ask parlia-
ment to repeal its own acts for Mary's sake; probably it would
have refused. Nor was it personal enmity on Elizabeth's part
that brought Mary to the block. Parliament had long been
ferociously demanding Mary's execution, not because she was
guilty but because she was dangerous to the public peace. She
alone could have given the Spanish Armada any real chance
of lucctst; and as the prospect of invasion loomed larger on
the horizon, fiercer grew the popular determination to remove
the only possible centre of a domestic rising, without which the
external attack was bound to be a failure. Elizabeth resisted the
demand, not from compassion or qualms of conscience, but
because she dreaded the responsibility for Mary's death. She
wished 1'aulct would manage the business on his own account,
and when at last her signature was extorted she made a scapegoat
of her secretary Davison who had the warrant executed.
The other great difficulty, apart from the succession, with
which Elizabeth had to deal arose from the exuberant aggressive-
ness of England, which she could not, and perhaps did not want
to, repress. Religion was not really the cause of her external
dangers, for the time had passed for crusades, and no foreign
power seriously contemplated an armed invasion of England for
religion's sake. But no state could long tolerate the affronts
which English seamen offered Spain. The common view that
the British Empire has been won by purely defensive action
is not tenable, and from the beginning of her reign Englishmen
had taken the offensive, partly from religious but also from other
motives. They were determined to break up the Spanish
monopoly in the new world, and in the pursuit of this endeavour
they were led to challenge Spain in the old. For nearly thirty
years Philip put up with the capture of his treasure-ships, the
raiding of his colonies and the open assistance rendered to his
rebels. Only when he had reached the conclusion that his
power would never be secure in the Netherlands or the New
World until England was conquered, did he despatch the Spanish
Armada. Elizabeth delayed the breach as long as she could,
probably because she knew that war meant taxation, and that
taxation was the most prolific parent of revolt.
With the defeat of the Spanish Armada Elizabeth's work
was done, and during the last fifteen years of her reign she got
more out of touch with her people. That period was one of
gradual transition to the conditions of Stuart times; during it
practically every claim was put forward that was made under
the first two Stuarts either on behalf of parliament or the pre-
rogative, and Elizabeth's attitude towards the Puritans was
hardly distinguishable from James I.'s. But her past was in her
favour, and so were her sex and her Tudor tact, which checked
the growth of discontent and made Essex's rebellion a ridiculous
fiasco. He was the last and the most wilful but perhaps the best
of her favourites, and his tragic fate deepened the gloom of her
closing years. The loneliness of a queen who had no husband
or children and no relatives to mention must at all times have
been oppressive; it grew desolating in old age after the deaths of
Leicester, Walsingham, Burghley and Essex, and Elizabeth died,
the last of her race, on the 24th of March 1603.
Bishop Creighton s Queen Elizabeth (1896) is the best biography;
there are others by E. S. Beesly (Twelve English Statesmen, 1892);
Lucy Aikin, Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth (1818); and
T. Wright, Queen Elizabeth and her Times (1838). See also A.
Jessopp s article in the Diet. Nat. Biog. (A. F. P.)
ELIZABETH [PETROVNA] (1700-1762), EMPRESS OF RUSSIA,
the daughter of Peter the Great and Martha Skovronskaya, born
at Kolomenskoye, near Moscow, on the i8th of December 1709.
Even as a child her parts were good, if not brilliant, but unfortun-
ately her education was both imperfect and desultory. Her
father had no leisure to devote to her training, and her mother
was too illiterate to superintend her studies. She had a French
governess, however, and at a later day picked up some Italian,
German and Swedish, and could converse in these languages with
more fluency than accuracy. From her earliest years she
delighted every one by her extraordinary beauty and vivacity.
It was Peter's intention to marry his second daughter to the
young French king Louis XV., but the pride of the Bourbons
revolted against any such alliance. Other connubial specula-
tions foundered on the personal dislike of the princess for the
various suitors proposed to her, so that on the death of her
mother (May 1727) and the departure to Holstein of her beloved
sister Anne, her only remaining near relation, the princess found
herself at the age of eighteen practically her own mistress.
So long as Menshikov remained in power, she was treated with
liberality and distinction by the government of Peter II., but
the Dolgorukis, who supplanted Menshikov and hated the
memory of Peter the.Great, practically banished Peter's daughter
284
ELIZABETH, EMPRESS OF RUSSIA
from court. Elizabeth had inherited her father's sensual
temperament and, being free from all control, abandoned herself
to her appetites without* reserve. While still in her teens, she
made a lover of Alexius Shubin, a sergeant in the Semenovsky
Guards, and after his banishment to Siberia, minus his tongue,
by order of the empress Anne, consoled herself with a handsome
young Cossack, Alexius Razumovski, who, there is good reason
to believe, subsequently became her husband. During the reign
of her cousin Anne (1730-1740), Elizabeth effaced herself as much
as possible; but under the regency of Anne Leopoldovna the
course of events compelled the indolent but by no means
incapable beauty to overthrow the existing government. The
idea seems to have been first suggested to her by the French
ambassador, La Chetardie, who was plotting to destroy the
Austrian influence then dominant at the Russian court. It is a
mistake to suppose, however, that La Chetardie took a leading
part in the revolution which placed the daughter of Peter the
Great on the Russian throne. As a matter of fact, beyond
lending the tsesarevna 2000 ducats, instead of the 15,000 she
demanded of him, he took no part whatever in the actual coup
d'etat which was as great a surprise to him as to every one else.
The merit and glory of that singular affair belong to Elizabeth
alone. The fear of being imprisoned in a convent for the rest
of her life was the determining cause of her irresistible outburst
of energy. At midnight on the 6th of December 1741, with a
few personal friends, including her physician, Armarid Lestocq,
her chamberlain, Michael Ilarionvich Vorontsov, her future
husband, Alexius Razumovski, and Alexander and Peter
Shuvalov, two of the gentlemen of her household, she drove to
the barracks of the Preobrazhensky Guards, enlisted their sym-
pathies by a stirring speech, and led them to the Winter Palace,
where the regent was reposing in absolute security. Having on the
way thither had all the ministers arrested, she seized the regent
and her children in their beds, and summoned all the notables,
civil and ecclesiastical, to her presence. So swiftly and noise-
lessly indeed had the whole revolution proceeded that as late as
eight o'clock the next morning very few people in the city were
aware of it. Thus, at the age of three-and-thirty, this naturally
indolent and self-indulgent woman, with little knowledge and
no experience of affairs, suddenly found herself at the head of a
great empire at one of the most critical periods of its existence.
Fortunately for herself, and for Russia, Elizabeth Petrovna,
with all her shortcomings, had inherited some of her father's
genius for government. Her usually keen judgment and her
diplomatic tact again and again recall Peter the Great. What in
her sometimes seemed irresolution and procrastination, was,
most often, a wise suspense of judgment under exceptionally
difficult circumstances; and to this may be added that she was
ever ready to sacrifice the prejudices of the woman to the duty
of the sovereign.
After abolishing the cabinet council system in favour during
the rule of the two Annes, and reconstituting the senate as it
had been under Peter the Great, with the chiefs of the depart-
ments of state, all of them now Russians again, as ex-officio
members under the presidency of the sovereign, the first care
of the new empress was to compose her quarrel with Sweden.
On the 23rd of January 1743, direct negotiations between the
two powers were opened at Abo, and on the 7th of August 1743
Sweden ceded to Russia all the southern part of Finland east
of the river Kymmene, which thus became the boundary between
the two states, including the fortresses of Villmanstrand and
Fredrikshamn. This triumphant issue was mainly due to the
diplomatic ability of the new vice chancellor, Alexius Bestuzhev-
Ryumin (q.v.), whom Elizabeth, much as she disliked him
personally, had wisely placed at the head of foreign affairs
immediately after her accession. He represented the anti-
Franco-Prussian portion of her council, and his object was to
bring about an Anglo-Austro-Russian alliance which, at that
time, was undoubtedly Russia's proper system, Hence the
reiterated attempts of Frederick the Great and Louis XV. to
get rid of Bestuzhev, which made the Russian court during the
earlier years of Elizabeth's reign the centre of a tangle of intrigue
impossible to unravel by those who do not possess the clue to it
(see BESTUZHEV-RYUMIN, ALEXIUS). Ultimately, however, the
minister, strong in the support of Elizabeth, prevailed, and his
faultless diplomacy, backed by the despatch of an auxiliary
Russian corps of 30,000 men to the Rhine, greatly accelerated the
peace negotiations which led to the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle
(October 18, 1748). By sheer tenacity of purpose, Bestuzhev
had extricated his country from the Swedish imbroglio; recon-
ciled his imperial mistress with the courts of Vienna and London,
her natural allies; enabled Russia to assert herself effectually
in Poland, Turkey and Sweden, and isolated the restless king of
Prussia by environing him with hostile alliances. But all this
would have been impossible but for the steady support of
Elizabeth, who trusted him implicitly, despite the insinuations
of the chancellor's innumerable enemies, most of whom were
her personal friends.
The great event of Elizabeth's later years was the Seven
Years' War. Elizabeth rightly regarded the treaty of West-
minster (January i6, 1756, whereby Great Britain and Prussia
agreed to unite their forces to oppose the entry into, or the
passage through, Germany of the troops of every foreign power)
as utterly subversive of the previous conventions between Great
Britain and Russia. A by no means unwarrantable fear of the
king of Prussia, who was " to be reduced within proper limits,"
so that " he might be no longer a danger to the empire," induced
Elizabeth to accede to the treaty of Versailles, in other words the
Franco- Austrian league against Prussia, and on the i7th of
May 1757 the Russian army, 85,000 strong, advanced against
Konigsberg. Neither the serious illness of the empress, which
began with a fainting-fit at Tsarskoe Selo (September 19, 1757),
nor the fall of Bestuzhev (February 21, 1758), nor the cabals
and intrigues of the various foreign powers at St Petersburg,
interfered with the progress of the war, and the crushing defeat
of Kunersdorf (August 12, 1759) at last brought Frederick to
the verge of ruin. From that day forth he despaired of success,
though he was saved for the moment by the jealousies of the
Russian and Austrian commanders, which ruined the military
plans of the allies. On the other hand, it is not too much to
say that, from the end of 1 759 to the end of 1 761 , the unshakable
firmness of the Russian empress was the one constraining political
force which held together the heterogeneous, incessantly jarring
elements of the anti-Prussian combination. From the Russian
point of view, Elizabeth's greatness as a statesman consists in
her steady appreciation of Russian interests, and her determina-
tion to promote them at all hazards. She insisted throughout
that the king of Prussia must be rendered harmless to his neigh-
bours for the future, and that the only way to bring this about
was to reduce him to the rank of an elector. Frederick himself
was quite alive to his danger. " I am at the end of my resources,"
he wrote at the beginning of 1760, " the continuance of this war
means for me utter ruin. Things may drag on perhaps till July,
but then a catastrophe must come." On the 2ist of May 1760
a fresh convention was signed between Russia and Austria,
a secret clause of which, never communicated to the court of
Versailles, guaranteed East Prussia to Russia, as an indemnity for
war expenses. The failure of the campaign of 1760, so far as
Russiaand France were concerned, induced the court of Versailles,
on the evening of the 22nd of January 1761, to present to the
court of St Petersburg a despatch to the effect that the king of
France by reason of the condition of his dominions absolutely
desired peace. On the following day the Austrian ambassador,
Esterhazy, presented a despatch of a similar tenor from his
court. The Russian empress's reply was delivered to the two
ambassadors on the i2th of February. It was inspired by the
most uncompromising hostility towards the king of Prussia.
Elizabeth would not consent to any pacific overtures until the
original object of the league had been accomplished. Simultane-
ously, Elizabeth caused to be conveyed to Louis XV. a confiden-
tial letter in which she proposed the signature of a new treaty of
alliance of a more comprehensive and explicit nature than the pre-
ceding treaties between the two powers, without the knowledge
of Austria. Elizabeth's object in this mysterious negotiation
ELIZABETH OF AUSTRIA ELIZABETH STUART
285
seems to have been to reconcile France and Great Britain, in
return for which signal service France was to throw all her
forces into the Herman war. This project, which lacked neither
ability nor audacity, foundered upon Louis XV. 's invincible
jealousy of the growth of Russian influence in eastern Europe
and his fear of offending the I'orte. It was finally arranged by
the allies that their envoys at Pahs should fix the date for the
assembling of a peace congress, and that, in the meantime, the
war against Prussia should be vigorously prosecuted. The
campaign of 1761 was almost as abortive as the campaign of
1760. Frederick acted on the defensive with consummate
skill, and the capture of the Prussian fortress of Kojberg on
Christmas day O.S. 1761, by Rumyantscv, was the sole Russian
success. Frederick, however, was now at the last gasp. On the
6lh of January 176*, he wrote to Finkenstein, " We ought now
to think of preserving for my nephew, by way of negotiation,
whatever fragments of my territory we can save from the avidity
of my enemies," which means, if words mean anything, that he
was resolved to seek a soldier's death on the first opportunity.
A fortnight later he wrote to Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick,
" The sky begins to dear. Courage, my dear fellow. I have
received the news of a great event." The great event which
snatched him from destruction was the death of the Russian
empress (January 5, 1762).
See Robert Nisbet Bain, The Daughter of Peter the Great (London,
1899); Sergyei Solovev, History of Russia (Rus.), vols. xx.-xxii.
(St Petersburg, 1857-1877); Politische Correspondent Friedrichs
its Crosten, vols. i.-xxi. (Berlin, 1879, &c.); Colonel Masslowski,
Dfr siebenjakrite Kriet nock russischer Darstetlune (Berlin, 1888-
1893); Kariimfn \\aliszt-wski. La Dernitre des Romanov (Paris,
1907). (R. N. B.)
ELIZABETH [AMELIE EUGENIE] (1837-1898), consort of
Francis Joseph, emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, was
the daughter of Duke Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria and Louisa
\Vilhelmina, daughter of Maximilian I. of Bavaria, and was born
on the 24th of December 1837 at the castle of Possenhofen on
Lake Starnberg. She inherited the quick intelligence and
artistic taste displayed in general by members of the Wittelsbach
royal house, and her education was the reverse of conventional.
She accompanied her eccentric father on his hunting expeditions,
becoming an expert rider and climber, visiting the peasants in
their huts and sharing in rustic pleasures. The emperor of
Austria, Francis Joseph, met the Bavarian ducal family at
IschI in August 1853, and immediately fell in love with Elizabeth,
then a girl of sixteen, and reported to be the most beautiful
princess in Europe. The marriage took place in Vienna on the
24th of April 1854. In the early days of her married life she
frequently came into collision with Viennese prejudice. Her
attempts to modify court etiquette, and her extreme fondness for
horsemanship and frequent visits to the imperial riding school,
scandalized Austrian society, while her predilection for Hungary
and for everything Hungarian offended German sentiment.
There is no doubt that her influence helped the establishment
of the Ausgltich with Hungary, but outside Hungarian affairs
the empress took small part in politics. She first visited Hungary
in 1857, and ten years later was crowned queen. Her popularity
with the Hungarians remained unchanged throughout her life;
and the castle of Godollo, presented as a coronation gift, was
one of her favourite residences. Elizabeth was one of the most
charitable of royal ladies, and her popularity with her Austrian
subjects was more than restored by her assiduous care for the
wounded in the campaign of 1866. Besides her public benefac-
tions she constantly exercised personal and private charity.
Her eldest daughter died in infancy; Gisela (b. 1856) married
the Prince Leopold of Bavaria; and her youngest daughter
Marie Valerie (b. 1868) married the Archduke Franz Salvator.
The tragic death of her only son, the crown prince Rudolph,
in 1880, was a shock from which she never really recovered.
She was also deeply affected by the suicide of her cousin Louis II.
of Bavaria, and again by the fate of her sister Sophia, duchess
of Alencon, who perished in the fire of the Paris charity bazaar
in 1897. The empress had shown signs of lung disease in 1861,
when she spent some months in Madeira; but she was able to
resume her outdoor sports, and for some years before 1882, when
she had to give up riding, was a frequent visitor on English and
Irish hunting fields. In her later years her dislike of publicity
increased. Much of her time was spent in travel or at the
Achilleion, the palace she had built in the Greek style in Corfu.
She was walking from her hotel at Geneva to the steamer when
she was stabbed by the anarchist Luigi Luccheni, on the loth
of September 1898, and died of the wound within a few hours.
This aimless and dastardly crime completed the list of mis-
fortunes of the Austrian house, and aroused intense indignation
throughout Europe.
See A. de Burgh, Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, a Memoir (London,
1898); C. Friedmann and J. Paves, Kaiserin Elisabeth (Berlin,
1898); and the anonymous Martyrdom of an Empress (1899),
containing a quantity of court gossip.
ELIZABETH (1396-1662), consort of Frederick V., elector
palatine and titular king of Bohemia, was the eldest daughter
of James I. of Great Britain and of Anne of Denmark, and was
born at Falkland Castle in Fifeshire in August 1596. She was
entrusted to the care of the earl of Linlithgow, and after the
departure of the royal family to England, to the countess of
Kildare, subsequently residing with Lord and Lady Harington
at Combe Abbey in Warwickshire. In November 1603 the
Gunpowder Plot conspirators formed a plan to seize her person
and proclaim her queen after the explosion, in consequence of
which she was removed by Lord Harington to Coventry. In
1608 she appeared at court, where her beauty soon attracted
admiration and became the theme of the poets, her suitors
including the dauphin, Maurice, prince of Orange, Gustavus
Adolphus, Philip III. of Spain, and Frederick V., the elector
palatine. A union with the last-named was finally arranged,
in spite of the queen's opposition, in order to strengthen the
alliance with the Protestant powers in Germany, and the marriage
took place on the i4th of February 1613 midst great rejoicing
and festivities. The prince and princess entered Heidelberg on
the 1 7th of June, and Elizabeth, by means of her English annuity,
enjoyed five years of pleasure and of extravagant gaiety to which
the small German court was totally unaccustomed. On the 26th
of August 1618, Frederick, as a leading Protestant prince, was
chosen king by the Bohemians, who deposed the emperor
Ferdinand, then archduke of Styria. There is no evidence to
show that his acceptance was instigated by the princess or that
she had any influence in her husband's political career. She
accompanied Frederick to Prague in October 1619, and was
crowned on the 7th of November. Here her unrestrainable high
spirits and levity gave great offence to the citizens. On the
approach of misfortune, however, she showed great courage
and fortitude. She left Prague on the 8th of November 1620,
after the fatal battle of the White Hill, for Kustrin, travelling
thence to Berlin and Wolfenbiittcl, finally with Frederick "
taking refuge at the Hague with Prince Maurice of Orange.
The help sought from James came only in the shape of useless
embassies and negotiations; the two Palatinates were soon
occupied by the Spaniards and the duke of Bavaria; and the
romantic attachment and services of Duke Christian of Bruns- i
wick, of the ist earl of Craven, and of other chfvalrous young
champions who were inspired by the beauty and grace of the
" Queen of Hearts," as Elizabeth was now called, availed
nothing. Her residence was at Rhenen near Arnheim, where
she received many English visitors and endeavoured to maintain
her spirits and fortitude, with straitened means and in spite of
frequent disappointments. The victories of Gustavus Adolphus
secured no permanent advantage, and his death at Ltitzen was
followed by that of the elector at Mainz on the acjth of November
1632. Subsequent attempts of the princess to reinstate her
son in his dominions were unsuccessful, and it was not till the
peace of Westphalia in 1648 that he regained a portion of them,
the Rhenish Palatinate. Meanwhile, Elizabeth's position in
Holland grew more and more unsatisfactory. The payment
of her English annuity of 12,000 ceased after the outbreak
of the troubles with the parliament; the death of Charles I. in
1649 put an end to all hopes from that quarter; and the pension
286 ELIZABETH OF RUMANIA ELIZABETH, MADAME
allowed her by the house of Orange ceased in 1650. Her children,
in consequence of disputes, abandoned her, and her eldest son
Charles Louis refused her a home in his restored electorate.
Nor did Charles II. at his restoration show any desire to receive
her in England. Parliament voted her 20,000 in 1660 for the
payment of her debts, but Elizabeth did not receive the money,
and on the ipth of May 1661 she left the Hague for England,
in spite of the king's attempts to hinder her journey, receiving
no official welcome on her arrival in London and being lodged at
Lord Craven's house in Drury Lane. Charles, however, subse-
quently granted her a pension and treated her with kindness.
On the 8th of February 1662 she removed to Leicester House in
Leicester Fields, and died shortly afterwards on the I3th of the
same month, being buried in Westminster Abbey. Her beauty,
grace and vivacity exercised a great charm over her con-
temporaries, the enthusiasm for her, however, being probably not
merely personal but one inspired also by her misfortunes and
by the fact that these misfortunes were incurred in defence of
the Protestant cause; later, as the ancestress of the Protestant
Hanoverian dynasty, she obtained a conspicuous place in English
history. She had thirteen children Frederick Henry, drowned
at sea in 1629; Charles Louis, elector palatine, whose daughter
married Philip, duke of Orleans, and became the ancestress of the
elder and Roman Catholic branch of the royal family of England;
Elizabeth, abbess and friend of Descartes; Prince Rupert and
Prince Maurice, who died unmarried; Louisa, abbess; Edward,
who married Anne de Gonzaga, " princesse palatine," and had
children; Henrietta Maria, who married Count Sigismund
Ragotzki but died childless; Philip and Charlotte, who died
childless; Sophia, who married Ernest Augustus, elector of
Hanover, and was mother of George I. of England; and two
others who died young.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. See the article in Diet, of Nat. Biography and
authorities there collected ; Five Stuart Princesses, ed. by R. S. Rait
(1902); Briefe der Elizabeth Sluart ... on ... den Kurfursten
Carl Ludwig von der Pfalz, by A. Wendland (Bibliothek des lite-
rarischen Vereins, 228, Stuttgart, 1902); "Elizabeth Stuart," by
J. O. Opel, in Sybel's Histonsche Zeitschrift, xxiii. 289; Thomason
Tracts (Brit. Mus.), E., 138 (14), 122 (12), 118 (40), 119 (18). Im-
portant material regarding the princess exists in the MSS. of the earl
of Craven, at Combe Abbey.
ELIZABETH [PAULINE ELIZABETH OTTILIE LOUISE]
(1843- ), consort of King Charles I. (q.v.) of Rumania, widely
known by her literary name of " Carmen Sylva," was born on the
29th of December 1843. She Was the daughter of Prince Hermann
of Neuwied. She first met the future king of Rumania at Berlin
in 1861, and was married to him on the isth of November 1869.
Her only child, a daughter, died in 1874. In the Russo-Turkish
War of 1877-1878 she devoted herself to the care of the wounded,
and founded the Order of Elizabeth (a gold cross on a blue ribbon)
* to reward distinguished service in such work. She fostered the
higher education of women in Rumania, and established societies
for various charitable objects. Early distinguished by her
excellence as a pianist, organist and singer, she also showed
considerable ability in painting and illuminating; but a
lively poetic imagination led her to the path of literature,
and more especially to poetry, folk-lore and ballads. In
addition to numerous original works she put into literary
form many of the legends current among the Rumanian
peasantry.
" Carmen Sylva " wrote with facility in German, Rumanian,
_ French and English. A few of her voluminous writings, which
include poems, plays, novels, short stories, essays, collections
of aphorisms, &c., may be singled out for special mention. Her
earliest publications were Sappho and Hammer stein, two poems
which appeared at Leipzig in 1880. In 1888 she received the Prix
Botta, a prize awarded triennially by the French Academy,
for her volume of prose aphorisms Les Penstes d'une reine (Paris,
1882), a German version of which is entitled Vom Amboss (Bonn,
1890). Cuvinte Swfletesci, religious meditations in Rumanian
(Bucharest, 1888), was also translated into German (Bonn, 1890),
under the name of Seelen-Cesprache. Several of the works of
" Carmen Sylva " were written in collaboration with Mite
Kremnitz, one of her maids of honour, who was born at Greifs-
wald in 1857, and married Dr Kremnitz of Bucharest; these
were published between 1881 and 1888, in some cases under the
pseudonyms Dito et Idem, and includes the novel Aus ziuei
Welten (Leipzig, 1884), Anna Boleyn (Bonn, 1886), a tragedy,
In der Irre (Bonn, 1888) , a collection of short stories, &c. Edleen
Vaughan, or Paths of Peril, a novel (London, 1894), and Sweet
Hours, poems (London, 1904), were written in English. Among
the translations made by " Carmen Sylva" are German versions
of Pierre Loti's romance Pecheur d'Islande, and of Paul de St
Victor's dramatic criticisms Les DeuxMasques (Paris, 1881-1884) ;
and in particular The Bard of the Dimbomtza, a fine English
version by " Carmen Sylva " and Alma Strettell of Helene
Vacarescu's collection of Rumanian folk-songs, &c., entitled
Lieder aus dem Dimbovitzathal (Bonn, 1889). The Bard of the
Dimbovitza was first published in 1891, and was soon reissued
and expanded. Translations from the original works of ' ' Carmen
Sylva " have appeared in all the principal languages of Europe
and in Armenian.
See RUMANIA: History; also M. Kremnitz, Carmen Sylva eine
Biographic (Leipzig, 1903) ; and, fora full bibliography, G. Bengescu,
Carmen Sylva bibliographie et ex traits de ses ceuvres (Paris, 1904).
ELIZABETH (1635-1650), English princess, second daughter
of Charles I., was born on the 28th of December 1635 at St
James's Palace. On the outbreak of the Civil War and the
departure of the king from London, while the two elder princes
accompanied their father, the princess and the infant duke of
Gloucester were left under the care of the parliament. In
October 1642 Elizabeth sent a letter to the House of Lords
begging that her old attendants might not be removed. In
July 1644 the royal children were sent to Sir John Danvers at
Chelsea, and in 1645 to the earl and countess of Northumberland.
After the final defeat of the king they were joined in 1646 by
James, and during 1647 paid several visits to the king at Caver-
sham, near Reading, and Hampton Court, but were again separ-
ated by Charles's imprisonment at Carisbrooke Castle. On the
2ist of April 1648 James was persuaded to escape by Elizabeth,
who declared that were she a boy she would not long remain in
confinement. The last sad meeting between Charles and his two
children, at which the princess was overcome with grief, and of
which she wrote a short and touching account, took place on the
2gth of January 1649, the day before his execution. In June
she was entrusted to the care of the earl and countess of Leicester
at Penshurst, but in 1650, upon the landing of Charles II. in
Scotland, the parliament ordered the royal children to be taken
for security to Carisbrooke Castle. The princess fell ill from
a wetting almost immediately upon her arrival, and died of
fever on the 8th of September. She was buried in St Thomas's
church at Newport, Isle of Wight, where the initials " E.S."
alone marked her grave till 1856, when a monument was erected
to her memory by Queen Victoria. The princess's sorrowful
career and early death have attracted general interest and
sympathy. She was said to have acquired considerable pro-
ficiency in Greek, Hebrew and Latin, as well as in Italian and
French, and several books were dedicated to her, including the
translation of the Eleclra of Sophocles by Christopher Wase
in 1649. Her mild nature and gentleness towards her father's
enemies gained her the name of " Temperance."
See Lives of the Princesses of England, by M. A. E. Green (1855),
vol. vi.; Notes and Queries, 7th ser., ix. 444, x. 15.
ELIZABETH [Elisabeth Philippine Marie Helene of France]
(1764-1794), commonly called MADAME ELIZABETH, daughter of
Louis the Dauphin and Marie Josephine of Saxony, and sister
of Louis XVI., was born at Versailles on the 3rd of May 1764.
Left an orphan at the age of three, she was brought up by
Madame de Mackau, and had a residence at Montreuil, where
she gave many proofs of her benevolent character. She refused
all offers of marriage so that she might remain by the side of
her brother, whom she loved passionately. At the outset of the
Revolution she foresaw the gravity of events, and refused to
leave the king, whom she accompanied in his flight on the 2oth
of June 1792, and with whom she was arrested at Varennes.
ELIZABETH, SAINT- -ELIZABETH
287
She was present at the Legislative Assembly when Louis was
suspended, and was imprisoned in the Temple with the royal
family. By the execution of the king and the removal of Marie
Antoinette to the Conciergerie, Madame Elizabeth was deprived
of her companions in the Temple prison, and on the 9th of May
1794 she was herself transferred to the Conciergerie, and haled
before the revolutionary tribunal. Accused of assisting the
king's flight, of supplying emigres with funds, and of encouraging
the resistance of the royal troops on the loth of August 1792,
she was condemned to death, and executed on the loth of May
1794. Like her brother, she had all the domestic virtues, and,
as was to be expected of a sister of Louis XVI., she was in favour
of absolutist principles. Hers was one of the most touching
tragedies of the Revolution; she perished because she was the
sister of the king.
The \temoires de Madame fJisiibeth (Paris, 1858), by F. de Barghon
and Fort-Rion, are of doubtful authenticity; and the collection of
letters and documents published in 1865 by F. Feuillet de Conches
must be used with caution (see the bibliographical note to the article
MARIE ANTOINETTE). See le Cocnte A. F. C. Kerrand, Eloge historique
4t Madame Elisabeth (1814, containing 04 letters; 2nd ed., 1861,
containing additional letters, but correspondence mutilated); Du
Fmae de Bcaucourt. iude stir Madame AlisaMh (Paris, 1864);
A. de Beauchesne, Vie de Madame Elisabeth (1869); La comtesse
d'Armaille. Madame Elisabeth (Paris, 1886); Madame d'Arvor,
Madame Elisabeth (Paris. 1898); and Hon. Mrs Maxwell-Scott,
Madame Elixsbeth of France (1908).
ELIZABETH. SAINT (1207-1231), daughter of Andrew II.,
king of Hungary (d. 1235), by his first wife, Gertrude of Andechs-
Mcran (d. 1213), was born in Pressburg in 1207. At four years
of age she was betrothed to Louis IV., landgrave of Thuringia,
and conducted to the Wartburg, near Eisenach, to be educated
under the direction of his parents. In spite of her decidedly
worldly surroundings at the Thuringian court, she evinced from
the first an aversion from even the most innocent pleasures, and
stimulated by the example of her mother's sister, St Hedwig,
wife of Henry VI., duke of Silesia-Breslau, devoted her whole
time to religion and to works of charity. She was married at the
age of fourteen, and acquired such influence over her husband
that he adopted her point of view and zealously assisted her in
all her charitable endeavours. According to the legend, much
celebrated in German art, Louis at first desired to curtail her
excessive charities, and forbade her unbounded gifts to the poor.
One day, returning from hunting, he met his wife descending
from the Wartburg with a heavy bundle filled with bread. He
sternly bade her open it; she did so, and he saw nothing but a
mau of red roses. The miracle completed his conversion. On
the death of Louis " the Saint " in 1227, Elizabeth was deprived
of the regency by his brother, Henry Raspe IV. (d. 1247), on the
pretext that she was wasting the estates by her alms; and with
her three infant children she was driven from her home without
being allowed to carry with her even the barest necessaries of life.
She lived for some time in great hardship, but ultimately her
maternal uncle, Egbert, bishop of Bamberg, offered her an
asylum in a bouse adjoining his palace. Through the intercession
of some of the principal barons, the regency was again offered her,
and her son Hermann was declared heir to the landgraviate;
but renouncing all power, and making use of her wealth only
for charitable purposes, she preferred to live in seclusion at
Marburg under the direction of her confessor, the bigoted per-
secutor Conrad of Marburg. There she spent the remainder of
her days in penances of unusual severity, and in ministrations
to the sick, especially those afflicted with the most loathsome
diseases. She died at Marburg on the igth of November 1231,
and four years afterwards* was canonized by Gregory IX. on
account of the frequent miracles reported to have been performed
at her tomb.
The exhibition in the Royal Academy of P. H. Caldcron's
picture, " St Elizabeth of Hungary's Great Act of Renunciation,"
now in the Tate Gallery in London, roused considerable protest
among Catholics. The saint is represented as kneeling nude
before the altar, in the presence of her confessor and a couple
of nuns. The passage this is intended to illustrate is in Lib. iv.
f i of Dietrich of Apolda's Vita, which relates how, on a certain
Good Friday, she went into a chapel and, in the presence of
some Franciscan brothers, laid her hands on the bare altar,.
renounced her own will, her parents, children, relations, and all
pomps of this kind (hujus modi) in imitation of Christ; and
stripped herself utterly naked (omnino se exuit el nudavit) in order
to follow Him naked, in the steps of poverty. A literal inter-
pretation of this passage is not impossible; for ecstatic mystics
of all ages have indulged in a like Ktvuoix, and Conrad, who
revelled in inflicting religious tortures, was quite capable of
imposing this crowning humiliation upon his gentle victim.
It is far more probable, however, that the passage is not to be
taken literally.
Lives of St Elizabeth were written by Theodoricus (Dietrich) of
Aix>lda (b. 1228), Caesarius of Heisterbach (d. c 1240), Conrad of
Marburg and others (see Pott hast, Bibl. Hist. Med. Aev. p. 1284).
A metncal life in German exists by lohann Kothe (d. c. 1440),
chnplain to the Landgravine Anne of Thuringia (Potthast, p. 985).
L'llistoire de Sainte Elisabeth de Ilongrie, by Montalembcrt, was
published at Paris in 1836. Her life has also supplied the materials
for a dramatic poem by Charles Kingslcy, entitled the " Saint's
Tragedy." The edition of this in vol. xvi. of the Life and Works of
Charles Kingsley (London, 1902) has valuable notes, with many
extracts from the original sources.
ELIZABETH, a city and the county-seat of Union county,
New Jersey, U.S.A., on Elizabeth river, Newark Bay, and
Arthur Kill, 10 m. S.W. of Jersey City. Pop. (1890) 37,764;
(1000) 52,130, of whom 14,770 were foreign-born and 1139 were
negroes; (1910 census) 73,409. It is served by the Penn-
sylvania, the Lchigh Valley and the Central of New Jersey
railways. The site is level and the streets are broad and shaded.
There are many residences of New York business men, and
several historic buildings, including Liberty Hall, the mansion of
William Livingston, first governor of the state; Boxwood Hall
(now used as a home for aged women), the former home of
Elias Boudinot; the old brick mansion of Jonathan Belcher
(1681-1757), governor of the province from 1747 to 1757; the
First Presbyterian Church; and the house occupied at different
times by General Winfield Scott. The city has several parks,
the Union county court house (1905), a public library and
several charitable institutions. Elizabethport, that part of the
city on Staten Island Sound, about 2 m. S.E. of the centre of
Elizabeth, has a port open to vessels of 300 tons; it is an outlet
of the Pennsylvania coal fields and is thus one of the rr.ost
important coal shipping depots in the United States. Here,
too, are a plant (covering more than 800 acres) of the Standard
Oil Company and a large establishment for the manufacture of
the " Singer " sewing machine according to the U.S. census
the largest manufactory of sewing machines in the world
employing more than 6000 workmen in 1005; among the other
manufactures of Elizabeth are foundry and machine shop
products (value in 1905, $3,887,139), wire, oil (value in 1505,
$2,387,656), refined and smelted copper, the output of railway
repair shops, edge tools and lager beer. The value of the manu-
factured products was $10,489,364 in 1890; $22,861,375
(factory product) in 1000; and $29,300,801 (factory product)
in 1905.
Elizabeth was settled in 1665 by a company from Long Island
for whom the land had been purchased from the Indians and a
grant had been obtained from Richard Nicolls as agent for the
duke of York. But about the same time the duke conveyed the
entire province to John, Lord Berkeley, and Sir George Carteret,
and these two conflicting grants gave rise to a long-continued
controversy (see NEW JERSEY). The town was named in honour
of Elizabeth, wife of Sir George Carteret, and was first known
as Elizabethtown. From 1665 to 1686 it was the seat of govern-
ment of the province, and the legislature sat here occasionally
until 1790. In the home of the Rev. Jonathan Dickinson
(1688-1747), fts first president, the first sessions of the College
of New Jersey (now Princeton University) were held in 1747,
but immediately afterwards the college removed to Newark.
In December 1776 and twice in June 1780 the British entered
Elizabeth and made it a base of operations, but on each occasion
they were soon driven out. Elizabeth became a " free town
and borough " in 1739; the borough charter was confirmed
288
ELIZABETHAN STYLE ELLA
by the legislature in 1789 and repealed in 1790, and Elizabeth
was chartered as a city in 1855.
See E. F. Hathe\d,History of Elizabeth, New Jersey {New York, 1868).
ELIZABETHAN STYLE, in architecture, the term given to
the early Renaissance style in England, which flourished chiefly
during the reign of Queen Elizabeth; it followed the Tudor style,
and was succeeded in the beginning of the i6th century by the
purer Italian style introduced by Inigo Jones.' It responds to
the Cinque-Cento period in Italy, the Francois I. style in France,
and the Plateresque or Silversmith's style in Spain. During the
reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. many Italian artists
came over, who carried out various decorative features at
Hampton Court; Layer Marney, Suffolk (1522-1525); Sutton
Place, Surrey (1529); Nonsuch Palace and elsewhere. Later
in the century Flemish craftsmen succeeded the Italians, and
the Royal Exchange in London (1566-1570) is one of the first
important buildings designed by Henri de Paschen, an architect
from Antwerp. Longford Castle, Wollaton, Hatfield, Blickling,
Audley . End, and Charterhouse (London) all show the style
introduced by Flemish workmen.
ELIZABETH CITY, a town, port of entry and the county-
seat of Pasquotank county, North Carolina, U.S.A., on the
Pasquotank river, at the head of navigation, 46 m. S. by E. of
Norfolk, Virginia. Pop. (1890) 3251; (1900) 6348 (3164
negroes); (1910) 8412. It is served by the Norfolk & Southern,
and the Suffolk & Carolina railways, and is on the Dismal Swamp
and Albemarle & Chesapeake canals. Elizabeth City is a winter
meeting-place for hunters. It is the seat of a state normal
school for negroes and of the Atlantic Collegiate Institute, is
a trucking centre, has shipyards, and has a large wholesale trade
in clothing, groceries and general merchandise; from it are
shipped considerable quantities of fish, cotton and lumber.
The town is the port of entry of the Albemarle customs district,
but its foreign trade is unimportant. Among its manufactures
are cotton goods, iron, lumber, nets and twine, bricks, and
carriages and wagons. The oyster fisheries in the vicinity are
of considerable importance. Elizabeth City was settled in 1793,
and was first incorporated in the same year.
ELK, or MOOSE, the largest of all the deer tribe, distinguished
from other members of the Cervidae by the form of the antlers
of the males. These arise as cylindrical beams projecting on each
side at right angles to the middle line of the skull, which after a
short distance divide in a fork -like manner. The lower prong of
this fork may be either simple, or divided into two or three
tines, with some flattening. In the East Siberian elk (Alces
machlis bedfordiae) the posterior division of the main fork divides
into three tines, with no distinct flattening. In the common elk
(A. machlis or A. alces), on the other hand, this branch usually
expands into a broad palmation, with one large tine at the base,
and a number of smaller snags en the free border; there is,
however, a phase of the Scandinavian elk in which the antlers
are simpler, and recall those of the East Siberian race. The
palmation appears to be more marked in the North American
race (A. m. americanus) than in the typical Scandinavian elk.
The largest of all is the Alaskan race (A. m. gigas), which is said
to stand 8 ft. in height, with a span of 6 ft. across the antlers.
The great length of the legs gives a decidedly ungainly appearance
to the elk. The muzzle is long and fleshy, with only a very small
triangular naked patch below the nostrils; and the males have
a peculiar sac, known as the bell, hanging from the neck. From
the shortness of their necks, elks are unable to graze, and their
chief food consists of young shoots and leaves of willow and birch.
In North America during the winter one male and several females
form a " moose-yard " in the forest, which they keep open by
trampling the snow. Although generally timid, the males become
very bold during the breeding season, when the females utter a
loud call; and at such times they fight both with their antlers
and their hoofs. The usual pace is a shambling trot, but when
pressed elks break into a gallop. The female gives birth to one
or two young at a time, which are not spotted. In America
the elk is known as the moose, and the former name is transferred
to the wapiti deer. (R. L.*)
ELKHART, a city of Elkhart county, Indiana, U.S.A., at the
confluence of the Elkhart and St Joseph rivers, about 100 m.
E. of Chicago. Pop. (1890) 11,360; (1900) 15,184, of whom
1353 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 19,282. Elkhart is
at the junction of the western division with the main line of the
Lake Shore & Michigan Southern railway, and is served by the
Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, and the Northern
Indiana railways (the latter electric). It is attractively situated
and has fine business and public buildings, including a Carnegie
library and the Clark hospital, with which a nurses' training
school is connected. It has also several parks, including the
beautiful Island Park and McNaughton Park, the latter the
annual meeting-place of the St Joseph Valley Chautauqua.
A valuable water-power is utilized for manufacturing purposes.
There are extensive railway-car shops and iron and brass foundries,
and the manufactures include band instruments, furniture,
telephone supplies, electric transformers, bridges, paper, flour,
starch, rubber goods, acetylene gas machines, printing presses,
drugs and carriages. The total value of the factory product
was $4,345,466 in 1905, an increase of 10-5% since 1900. At
Elkhart is the main publishing house of the Mennonite Church
in America, two weekly periodicals being issued, one in English,
The Herald of Truth, and one in German, the Mennonitische
Rundschau. The first settlement was made here about 1834;
and Elkhart was chartered as a city in 1875.
ELKINGTON, GEORGE RICHARDS (1801-1865), founder of
the electroplating industry in England, was born in Birmingham
on the 1 7th of October 1801, the son of a spectacle manufacturer.
Apprenticed to his uncle?, silver platers in Birmingham, he
became, on their death, sole proprietor of the business, but
subsequently took his cousin, Henry Elkington, into partnership.
The science of electrometallurgy was then in its infancy, but the
Elkingtons were quick to recognize its possibilities. They had
already taken out certain patents for the application of electricity
to metals when, in 1840, John Wright, a Birmingnam surgeon,
discovered the valuable properties of a solution of cyanide of
silver in cyanide of potassium for electroplating purposes. The
Elkingtons purchased and patented Wright's process, subse-
quently acquiring the rights of other processes and improve-
ments. Large new works for electroplating and electrogilding
were opened in Birmingham in 1841, and in the following year
Josiah Mason became-a partner in the firm. George Richards
Elkington died on the 22nd of September 1865, and Henry
Elkington on the 26th of October 1852.
ELLA, or JEii-A, \he name of three Anglo-Saxon kings.
ELLA (d. c. 514), king of the South Saxons and founder of
the kingdom of Sussex, was a Saxon ealdorman, who landed near
Arundel in Sussex with his three sons in 477. Defeating the
Britons, who were driven into the forest of Andredsweald, Ella '
and his followers established themselves along the south coast,
although their progress was slow and difficult. However, in 491,
strengthened by the arrival of fresh bands of immigrants, they
captured the Roman city of Anderida and " slew all that were
therein." Ella, who is reckoned as the first Bretwalda, then
became bang of the South Saxons, and, when he died about 514,
he was succeeded by his son Cissa.
ELLA (d. 588), king of the Deirans, was the son of an ealdorman
named Iffa, and became the first king of Deira when, in 559,
the Deirans separated themselves from the neighbouring kingdom
of Bernicia. The English slaves, who aroused the interest of
Pope Gregory I. at Rome, were subjects of Ella, and on this
occasion the pope, punning the name of their king, suggested
that " Alleluia " should be sung in his land. When Ella died
in 588 Deira was conquered by Bernicia. One of his sons was
Edwin, afterwards king of the Northumbrians,
ELLA (d. 867), king of the Northumbrians, became king about
862 on the deposition of Osbert, although he was not of royal
birth. Afterwards he became reconciled with Osbert, and to-
gether they attacked the Danes, who had invaded Northumbria,
and drove them into York. Rallying, however, the Danes
defeated the Northumbrians, and in the encounter both Ella
and Osbert were slain. In certain legends Ella is represented
ELLAND ELLENBOROUGH, EARL OF
289
as having brought about the Danish invasion of Northumbria
by cruel ami unjust actions.
See Tkt AHfto-Saxo* Cknmitt*. edited by C. Plummer (Oxford,
1891-1899): Bede. Hiilonat tttUsiatlietu, edited by C. Plummcr
(Oxford, 18106); Hrnry of Huntingdon, Ilislorta Antlorum, edited
by T Arnold, Rolls X-rirs i London, 1870); Asaer, De rebus geslis
AtifrtJi. edited by W. H. Ste\-enon (Oxford, 1904); J. R. Green,
. . . ,
Tkt Making f |i0W (London, 1897), and the Dictionary of
Ntti*tol Biop*pky, vol. i. (London, 1895).
ELLAND. an urban district in the Elland parliamentary
division of Yorkshire, England, on the Calder, zj m. S. of Halifax
by the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway. Pop. (1001) 10,412.
The church of St Mary is Decorated and Perpendicular. Cotton-
milb, woollen-factories, ironworks, flagstone quarries at Elland
Edge, and fire-clay works employ the industrial population.
Elland Hall, though almost rebuilt, retains the recollection of a
remarkable family feud between the Ellands and the Beaumonts
of Croaland Hall, the site of which may be traced in the vicinity.
A nephew of Sir John Elland, in 1342, met death at the hands
of a relative of the Beaumonts upon whom Sir John took
vengeance, as also upon the heads of the allied houses of Lock-
wood and Quarmby. The children of these families were edu-
cated in the hope of avenging their parents, and after many
years succeeded in doing so, cutting off Sir John Elland and
his heir.
ELLENBOROUGH. EDWARD LAW. IST BARON (1750-1818),
English judge, was born on the i6th of November 1750, at
Great Salkeld, in Cumberland, of which place his father, Edmund
Law (1703-1787), afterwards bishop of Carlisle, was at the time
rector. Educated at the Charterhouse and at Peterhousc,
Cambridge, he passed as third wrangler, and was soon afterwards
elected to a fellowship at Trinity. In spite of his father's strong
wish that he should take orders, he chose the legal profession,
and on quitting the university was entered at Lincoln's Inn.
After spending five years as a special pleader under the bar,
be was called to the bar in 1780. He chose the northern circuit,
and in a very short time obtained a lucrative practice and a high
reputation. In 1787 he was appointed principal counsel for
Warren Hastings in the celebrated impeachment trial before
the House of Lords, and the ability with which he conducted
the defence was universally recognized. He had begun his
political career as a Whig, but, like many others, he saw in the
French Revolution a reason for changing sides, and became a
supporter of Pitt. On the formation of the Addington ministry
in 1801, he was appointed attorney-general and shortly after-
wards was returned to the House of Commons as member for
Newtown in the Isle of Wight. In 1802 he succeeded Lord
Renyon as chief justice of the king's bench. On being raised
to the bench he was created a peer, taking his title from the
village of Ellenborough in Cumberland, where his maternal
ancestors had long held a small patrimony. In 1806, on the
formation of Lord Grenville's ministry " of all the talents,"
Lord Ellenborough declined the offer of the great seal, but
accepted a seat in the cabinet. His doing so while he retained
the chief justiceship was much criticized at the time, and, though
not without precedent, was open to such obvious objections on
constitutional grounds that the experiment has not since been
repeated. As a judge he had grave faults, though his decisions
displayed profound legal knowledge, and in mercantile law especi-
ally were reckoned of high authority. He was harsh and over-
bearing to counsel, and in the political trials which were so
frequent in his time showed an unmistakable bias against the
accused. In the trial of William Hone (q.v.) for blasphemy in
1817, Ellenborough directed the jury to find a verdict of guilty,
and their acquittal of the prisoner is generally said to have
hastened his death. He resigned his judicial office in November
1818. and died on the 13th of December following.
Ellenborough was succeeded as 2nd baron by his eldest son,
Edward, afterwards earl of Ellenborough; another son was
Cbarie* Ewan Law (1792-1850), recorder of London and member
of parliament for Cambridge University from 1835 until his
death in August 1850.
Three of Ellenborough 's brothers attained some degree of
DC. to
fame. These were John Law (1745-1810), bishop of Elphin;
Thomas Law (1750-1834), who settled in the United States in
1793, and married, as his second wife, Anne, a granddaughter of
Martha Washington; and George Henry Law (1761-1845), bishop
of Chester and of Bath and Wells. The connexion of the Law
family with the English Church was kept up by George Henry's
sons, three of whom took orders. Two of these were Henry Law
(1797-1884), dean of Gloucester, and James Thomas Law
(1700-1876), chancellor of the diocese of Lichfield.
ELLENBOROUGH, EDWARD LAW. EARL OF (1790-1871),
the eldest son of the ist Lord Ellenborough, was born on the
8th of September 1 790. He was educated at Eton and St John's
College, Cambridge. He represented the subsequently dis-
franchised borough of St Michael's, Cornwall, in the House of
Commons, until the death of his father in 1818 gave him a seat
in the House of Lords. He was twice married; his only child
died young; his second wife was divorced by act of parliament
in 1830.
In the Wellington administration of 1828 Ellenborough was
made lord privy seal; he took a considerable share in the
business of the foreign office, as an unofficial assistant to Welling-
ton, who was a great admirer of his talents. He aimed at
succeeding Lord Dudley at the foreign office, but was forced to
content himself with the presidency of the board of control,
which he retained until the fall of the ministry in 1830. Ellen-
borough was an active administrator, and took a lively interest
in questions of Indian policy. The revision of the company's
charter was approaching, and he held that the government of
India should be transferred directly to the crown. He was
impressed with the growing importance of a knowledge of central
Asia, in the event of a Russian advance towards the Indian
frontier, and despatched Burnes on an exploring mission to that
district. Ellenborough subsequently returned to the board
of control in Peel's first and second administrations. He had
only held office for a month on the third occasion when he was
appointed by the court of directors to succeed Lord Auckland as
governor-general of India. His Indian administration of two
and a half years, or half the usual term of service, was from
first to last a subject of hostile criticism. His own letters sent
monthly to the queen, and his correspondence with the duke of
Wellington, published in 1874, afford material for an intelligent
and impartial judgment of his meteoric career. The events
chiefly in dispute are his policy towards Afghanistan and the
army and captives there, his conquest of Sind, and his campaign
in Gwalior.
Ellenborough went to India in order " to restore peace to
Asia," but the whole term of his office was occupied in war. On
his arrival there the news that greeted him was that of the
massacre of Kabul, and the sieges of Ghazni and Jalalabad,
while the sepoys of Madras were on the verge of open mutiny.
In his proclamation of the isth of March 1842, as in his memor-
andum for the queen dated the i8th, he stated with characteristic
clearness and eloquence the duty of first inflicting some signal
and decisive blow on the Afghans, and then leaving them to
govern themselves under the sovereign of their own choice.
Unhappily, when he left his council for upper India, and learned
the trifling failure of General England, he instructed Pollock
and Nott, who were advancing triumphantly with their avenging
columns to rescue the British captives, to fall back. The army
proved true to the governor-general's earlier proclamation rather
than to his later fears; the hostages were rescued, the scene
of Sir Alexander Burnes's murder in the heart of Kabul was
burned down. Dost Mahommed was quietly dismissed from a
prison in Calcutta to the throne in the Bala Hissar, and Ellen-
borough presided over the painting of the elephants for an
unprecedented military spectacle at Ferozepur, on the south
bank of the Sutlej. But this was not the only piece of theatrical
display which capped with ridicule the horrors and the follies
of these four years in Afghanistan. When Sultan Mahmud, in
1024, sacked the Hindu temple of Somnath on the north-west
coast of India, he carried off, with the treasures, the richly
studded sandal-wood gates of the fane, and set them up in his
290
ELLERY ELLESMERE, EARL OF
capital of Ghazni. The Mahommedan puppet of the English,
Shah Shuja, had been asked, when ruler of Afghanistan, to
restore them to India; and what he had failed to do the Christian
ruler of opposing Mahommedans and Hindus resolved to effect
in the most solemn and public manner. In vain had Major
(afterwards Sir Henry) Rawlinson proved that they were only
reproductions of the original gates, to which the Ghazni moulvies
clung merely as a source of offerings from the faithful who visited
the old conqueror's tomb. In vain did the Hindu sepoys show
the most chilling indifference to the belauded restoration.
Ellenborough could not resist the temptation to copy Napoleon's
magniloquent proclamation under the pyramids. The fraudulent
folding doors were conveyed on a triumphal car to the fort of
Agra, where they were found to be made not of sandalwood but
of deal. That Somnath proclamation (immortalized in a speech
by Macaulay) was the first step towards its author's recall.
Hardly had Ellenborough issued his medal with the legend
" Pax Asiae Restituta " when he was at war with the amirs of
Sind. The tributary amirs had on the whole been faithful,
for Major (afterwards Sir James) Outram controlled them.
But he had reported the opposition of a few, and Ellenborough
ordered an inquiry. His instructions were admirable, in equity
as well as energy, and if Outram had been left to carry them out
all would have been well. But the duty was entrusted to Sir
Charles Napier, with full political as well as military powers.
And to add to the evil, Mir Ali Morad intrigued with both sides
so effectually that he betrayed the amirs on the one hand, while
he deluded Sir Charles Napier to their destruction on the other.
Ellenborough was led on till events were beyond his control, and
his own just and merciful instructions were forgotten. Sir
Charles Napier made more than one confession like this: " We
have no right to seize Sind, yet we shall do so, and a very
advantageous, useful and humane piece of rascality it will be."
The battles of Meeanee and Hyderabad followed; and the Indus
became a British river from Karachi to Multan.
Sind had hardly been disposed of when troubles arose on both
sides of the governor-general, who was then at Agra. On the
north the disordered kingdom of the Sikhs was threatening the
frontier. In Gwalior to the south, the feudatory Mahratta state,
there were a large mutinous army, a Ranee only twelve years of
age, an adopted chief of eight, and factions in the council of
ministers. These conditions brought Gwalior to the verge of
civil war. Ellenborough reviewed the danger in the minute of
the ist of November 1845, an d told Sir Hugh Gough to advance.
Further treachery and military licence rendered the battles of
Maharajpur and Punniar, fought on the same day, inevitable
though they were, a surprise to the combatants. The treaty that
followed was as merciful as it was wise. The pacification of
Gwalior also had its effect beyond the Sutlej, where anarchy was
restrained for yet another year, and the work of civilization was
left to Ellenborough's two successors. But by this time the
patience of the directors was exhausted. They had no con-
trol over Ellenborough's policy; his despatches to them were
haughty and disrespectful; and in June 1844 they exercised
their power of recalling him.
On his return to England Ellenborough was created an earl
and received the thanks of parliament; but his administration
speedily became the theme of hostile debates, though it was
successfully vindicated by Peel and Wellington. When 'Peel's
cabinet was reconstituted in 1846 Ellenborough became first lord
of the admiralty. In 1858 he took office under Lord Derby as
president of the board of control, for the fourth time. It was
then his congenial task to draft the new scheme for the govern-
ment of India which the mutiny had rendered necessary. But
his old fault of impetuosity again proved his stumbling-block.
He wrote a caustic despatch censuring Lord Canning for the
Oudh proclamation, and allowed it to be published in The Times
without consulting his colleagues, who disavowed his action in
this respect. General disapprobation was excited; votes of
censure were announced in both Houses; and, to save the
cabinet, Ellenborough resigned.
But for this act of rashness he might have enjoyed the task
of carrying into effect the home constitution for the govern-
ment of India which he sketched in his evidence before the select
committee of the House of Commons on Indian territories on the
8th of June 1852. Paying off his old score against the East India
Company, he then advocated the abolition of the court of directors
as a governing body, the opening of the civil service to the army,
the transference of the government to the crown, and the appoint-
ment of a council to advise the minister who should take the place
of the president of the board of control. These suggestions of
1852 were carried out by his successor Lord Stanley, afterwards
earl of Derby, in 1858, so closely even in details, that Lord
Ellenborough must be pronounced the author, for good or evil,
of the present home constitution of the government of India.
Though acknowledged to be one of the foremost orators in the
House of Lords, and taking a frequent part in debate, Ellen-
borough never held office again. He died at his seat, Southam
House, near Cheltenham, on the 22nd of December 1871, when
the barony reverted to his nephew Charles Edmund Law (1820-
1890), the earldom becoming extinct.
See History of the Indian Administration (Bentley, 1874), edited
by Lord Colchester; Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select
Committee on Indian Territories (June 1852); volume i. of the
Calcutta Review, the Friend of India, during the years 1842-1845;
and John Hope, The House of Scindea: A Sketch (Longmans, 1863).
The numerous books by and against Sir Charles Napier, on the con-
quest of Sind, should be consulted.
ELLERY, WILLIAM (1727 - 1820), American politician, a
signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born in Newport,
Rhode Island, on the 22nd of December 1727. He graduated
from Harvard in 1747, engaged in trade, studied law, and was
admitted to the bar in 1770. He was a member of the Rhode
Island committee of safety in 1775-1776, and was a delegate in
Congress in 1776-1781 and again in 1783-1785. Just after
his first election to Congress, he was placed on the important
marine committee, and he was made a member of the board of
admiralty when it was established in 1779. In April 1786 he
was elected commissioner of the continental loan office for the
state of Rhode Island and from 1790 until his death at Newport,
on the isth of February 1820, he was collector of the customs
for the district of Newport.
See Edward T. Channing, " Life of William Ellery," in vol. 6 of
Jared Sparks's American Biography (Boston and London, 1836).
ELLESMERE, FRANCIS EGERTON, IST EARL OF (1800-1857),
born in London on the ist of January 1800, was the second son
of the ist duke of Sutherland. He was known by his patronymic
as Lord Francis Leveson Gower until 1833, when he assumed
the surname of Egerton alone, having succeeded on the death
of his father to the estates which the latter inherited from the
duke of Bridgewater. Educated at Eton and at Christ Church,
Oxford, he entered parliament soon after attaining his majority
as member for the pocket borough of Bletchingly in Surrey.
He afterwards sat for Sutherlandshire and for South Lancashire,
which he represented when he was elevated to the peerage as
earl of Ellesmere and Viscount Brackley in 1846. In politics
he was a moderate Conservative of independent views, as was
shown by his supporting the proposal for establishing the
university of London, by his making and carrying a motion for
the endowment of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland, and by
his advocating free trade long before Sir Robert Peel yielded
on the question. Appointed alord of the treasury in 1827, hehcld
the post of chief secretary for Ireland from 1828 till July 1830,
when he became secretary-at-war for a short time. His claims
to remembrance are founded chiefly on his services to literature
and the fine arts. Before he was twenty he printed for private
circulation a volume of poems, which he followed up after a short
interval by the publication of a translation of Goethe's Faust,
one of the earliest that appeared in England, with some transla-
tions of German lyrics and a few original poems. In 1839 he
visited the Mediterranean and the Holy Land. His impressions
of travel were recorded in his very agreeably written Mediter-
ranean Sketches (1843), and in the notes to a poem entitled
The Pilgrimage. He published several other works in prose and
verse, all displaying a fine literary taste. His literary reputation
ELLESMERE ELLIOTT, EBENEZER
291
secured for him the position of rector of Aberdeen University in
Lord EUesracre was a munificent and yet discriminating
patron of artists. To the splendid collection of pictures whit li
he inherited from his great-uncle, the jrd duke of Bridgewater,
he made numerous additions, and he built a noble gallery to
which the public were allowed free access. Lord tllcsmerc
served as president of the Royal Geographical Society and as
president of the Royal Asiatic Society, and he was a trustee of
the National Gallery- He died on the i8th of February 1857.
lie was succeeded by his son (1823-1862) as 2nd earl, and his
grandson (b. 1847) as jrd earl.
ELLESMERE. a market town in the Oswestry parliamentary
division of Shropshire, England, on the main line of the Cambrian
railway, 182 m. X.\V. from London. Pop. of urban district (1901 )
. is prettily situated on the west shore of the mere or
small lake from which it takes its name, while in the neighbour-
hood are other sheets of water, as Bloke Mere, Cole Merc, White
Merc. Newton Mere and Crose Mere. The church of St Mary is
of various styles from Norman onward, but was partly rebuilt in
1848. The site of the castle is occupied by pleasure gardens,
commanding an extensive view from high ground. The town hull
contains a library and a natural history collection. The college is
a large boys' school. The town is an important agricultural
centre. EUesmere canal, a famous work of Thomas Tel ford,
connects the Severn with the Mersey, crossing the Vale of l.lan
golkn by an immense aqueduct, 336 yds. long and 127 ft. high.
The manor of EUesmere (EUesmtles) belonged before the
Conquest to Earl Edwin of Men iu. and was granted by William
the Conqueror to Roger, earl of Shrewsbury, whose son, Robert de
Belesme, forfeited it in 1112 for treason against Henry I. In
1177 Henry II. gave it with his sister in marriage to David, son
of Owen, prince of North Wales, after whose death it was retained
by King John, who in 1206 granted it to his daughter Joan
on her marriage with Llewellyn, prince of North Wales; it was
finally surrendered to Henry III. by David, son of Llewellyn,
about 1240. EUesmere owed its early importance to its position
on the Welsh borders and to its castle, which was in ruins,
however, in 1349. While EUesmere was in the hands of Joan,
lady of Wales, she granted to the borough all the free customs
of Breteuil. The town was governed by a bailiff appointed by a
jury at one of the court leets of the lord of the manor, until a local
board was formed in 1 859. Ini22i Henry III. granted Llewellyn,
prince of Wales, a market on Thursdays in EUesmere. The
inquisition taken in 1383 after the death of Roger le Straunge
(Lord Strange), lord of EUesmere, shows that he also held two fairs
there on the feasts of St Martin and the Nativity of the Virgin
Mary. By 1597 the market had been discontinued on account
of the plague by which many of the inhabitants had died, and the
queen granted that Sir Edward Kynaston, Kt., and thirteen
others might bold a market every Thursday and a fair on the
3rd of November. Since 1792 both have been discontinued.
The commerce of EUesmere has always been chiefly agricultural.
FLLICE (LAGOON) ISLANDS, an archipelago of the Pacific
Ocean, lying between 5" and 11 S. and about 178 E., nearly
midway between Fiji and Gilbert. It is under British protection,
being annexed in 1892. It comprises a large number of low
coralline islands and atolls, which arc disposed in nine clusters
extending over a distance of about 400 m. in the direction from
V.W. to S.E. Their total area is 14 sq. m. and the population is
about 2400. The chief groups, all yielding coco-nuts, pandanus
fruit and yams, are Funafuti or Ellice, Nukulailai or MitcheU,
N jrakita or Sophia, Nukufetau or De Peyster, Nui or Egg,
Nanomana or Hudson, and Niutao or Lynx. Nearly all the
natives are Christians, Protestant missions having been long
established in several of the islands. Those of Nui speak the
language of the Gilbert islanders, and have a tradition that they
came tome generations ago from that group. All the others are
of Samoan speech, and their tradition that they came thirty
generations back from Samoa is supported by recent research.
They have an ancient spear which they believe was brought
from Samoa, and they actually name the valley from which their
ancestors started. A missionary* visiting the Samoan valley
found there a tradition of a party who put to sea never to return,
and he also found the wood of which the staff was made grow-
ing plentifully in the district. Borings and soundings taken at
Funafuti in 1897 indicate almost beyond doubt that the whole of
this Polynesian region is an area of comparatively recent sub-
sidence.
See Geographical Journal, passim ; and Atoll of Funafuti: Borings
into a Coral Reef (Re|>ort of Coral Reef Committee of Royal Society,
London, 1904).
ELLICHPUR, or ILLICHPUR, a town of India in the Amraoti
district of Berar. Pop. (1901) 26,082. It is first mentioned
authentically in the I3th century as " one of the famous cities
of the Deccan." Though tributary to the Mahommcdans after
1294, it remained under Hindu administration tiU 1318, when
it came directly under the Mahommedans. It was afterwards
capital of the province of Berar at intervals until the Mogul
occupation, when the seat of the provincial governor was moved
to Balapur. The town retains many relics of the nawabs of Berar.
It has ginning factories and a considerable trade in cotton and
forest produce. It is connected by good roads with Amraoti and
Chikalda. It was formerly the headquarters of the district of
Ellichpur, which had an area of 2605 sq. m. and a population in
1901 of 297,403. This district, however, was merged in that of
Amraoti in 1905. The civil station of Paratwada, 2 m. from the
town of Ellichpur, contains the principal public buildings.
ELLIOTSON, JOHN (1791-1868), English physician, was born
at Southwark, London, on the 29th of October 1791. He studied
medicine first at Edinburgh and then at Cambridge, in both which
places he took the degree of M.D., and subsequently in London
at St Thomas's and Guy's hospitals. In 1831 he was elected
professor of the principles and practice of physic in London
University, and in 1834 he became physician to University College
hospital. He was a student of phrenology and mesmerism, and
his interest in the latter eventuaUy brought him into collision
with the medical committee of the hospital, a circumstance which
led him, in December 1838, to resign the offices held by him
there and at the university. But he continued the practice of
mesmerism, holding seances in his home and editing a magazine,
The Zoist, devoted to the subject, and in 1849 he founded a
mesmeric hospital. He died in London on the 29th of July 1868.
Elliotson was one of the first teachers in London to appreciate
the value of clinical lecturing, and one of the earliest among
British physicians to advocate the employment of the stetho-
scope. He wrote a translation of Blumenbach's Institutions
Physiologicae (1817); Cases of the Hydrocyanic or Prussic Acid
(1820); Lectures on Diseases of the Heart (1830); Principles and
Practice of Medicine (1839); Human Physiology (1840); and
Surgical Operations in the Mesmeric Stale without Pain (1843).
He was the author of numerous papers in the Transactions
of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, of which he was at one time
president; and he was also a fellow both of the Royal CoUege
of Physicians and Royal Society, and founder and president
of the Phrenological Society. W. M. Thackeray's Pendennis
was dedicated to him.
ELLIOTT, EBENEZER (1781-1849), English poet, the "corn-
law rhymer," was born at Masborough, near Rotherham, York-
shire, on the 1 7th of March 1781. His father, who was an
extreme Calvinist and a strong radical, was engaged in the iron
trade. Young Ebenezer, although one of a large family, had a
solitary and rather morbid childhood. He was sent to various
schools, but was generally regarded as a dunce, and when he
was sixteen years of age he entered his father's foundry, working
for seven years with no wages beyond a little pocket money.
In a fragment of autobiography printed in the Athenaeum
(i2th of January 1850) he says that he was entirely self-taught,
and attributes his poetic development to long country walks
undertaken in search of wild flowers, and to a collection of books,
including the works of Young, Barrow, Shenstone and Milton,
bequeathed to his father by a poor clergyman. At seventeen
he wrote his Vernal Walk in imitation of Thomson. His earlier
volumes of poems, dealing with romantic themes, received little
but unfriendly comment. The faults of Night, the earliest of
ELLIPSE
these, are pointed out in a long and friendly letter (3oth of
January 1819) from Robert Southey to the author.
Elliott's wife brought him some money, which was invested
in his father's share of the iron foundry. But the affairs of the
firm were then in a desperate condition, and money difficulties
hastened his father's death. Elliott lost all his money, and when
he was forty years old began business again in Sheffield on a small
borrowed capital. He attributed his father's pecuniary losses
and his own to the operation of the corn laws. He took an active
part in the Chartist agitation, but withdrew his support when
the agitation for the repeal of the corn laws was removed from
the Chartist programme. The fervour of his political convictions
effected a change in the style and tenor of his verse. The Corn-
Law Rhymes (3rd ed., 1831), inspired by a fierce hatred of in-
justice, are vigorous, simple and full of vivid description. In
1833-1835 he published The Splettdid Village; Corn-Law
Rhymes, and other Poems (3 vols.), which included " The Village
Patriarch " (1820), " The Ranter," an unsuccessful drama,
" Keronah," and other pieces. He contributed verses from time
to time to Tail's Magazine and to the Sheffield and Rotherham
Independent. In the meantime he had been successful in business,
but he remained the sturdy champion of the poor. In 1837 he
again lost a great deal of money. This misfortune was also
ascribed to thecornlaws. He retired in 1841 with a small fortune
and settled at Great Houghton, near Barnsley, where he died
on the ist of December 1849. In 1850 appeared two volumes
of M ore Prose and Verse by the Corn-Law Rhymer. Elliott lives
by his determined opposition to the " bread-tax," as he called
it, and his poems on the subject are saved from the common fate
of political poetry by their transparent sincerity and passionate
earnestness.
An article by Thomas Carlyle in the Edinburgh Review (July
1832) is the best criticism on Elliott. Carlyle was attracted by
Elliott's homely sincerity and genuine power, though he had small
opinion of his political philosophy, and lamented his lack of humour
and of the sense of proportion. He thought his poetry too imitative,
detecting not only the truthful severity of Crabbe, but a " slight
bravura dash of the fair tuneful Hemans." His descriptions of his
native county reveal close observation and a vivid perception of
natural beauty.
See an obituary notice in the Gentleman's Magazine (Feb. 1850).
Two biographies were published in 1850, one by his son-in-law, John
Watkins, and another by " January Searle " (G. S. Phillips). A new
edition of his works by his son, Edwin Elliott, appeared in 1876.
ELLIPSE (adapted from Gr. eXXei^-is, a deficiency, e
to fall behind), in mathematics, a conic section, having the form
of a closed oval. It admits of several definitions framed
according to the aspect from which the curve is considered.
In solido, i.e. as a section of a cone or cylinder, it may be
defined, after Menaechmus, as the perpendicular section of
an "acute-angled" cone; or, after Apollonius of Perga, as
the section of any cone by a plane at a less inclination to the
base than a generator; or as an oblique section of a right
cylinder. Definitions in piano are generally more useful; of
these the most important are: (i) the ellipse is the conic sec-
tion which has its eccentricity less than unity: this involves
the notion of one directrix and one focus; (2) the ellipse is
the locus of a point the sum of whose distances from two fixed
points is constant: this involves the notion of two foci. Other
geometrical definitions are: it is the oblique projection of a
circle; the polar reciprocal of a circle for a point within it;
and the conic which intersects the line at infinity in two imaginary
points. Analytically it is defined by an equation of the second
degree of which the highest terms represent two imaginary lines.
The curve has important mechanical relations, in particular it
is the orbit of a particle moving under the influence of a central
force which varies inversely as the square of the distance of the
particle; this is the gravitational law of force, and the curve
consequently represents the orbits of the planets if only an
individual planet and the sun be considered; the other planets,
however, disturb this orbit (see MECHANICS).
The relation of the ellipse to the other conic sections is treated
in the articles CONIC SECTION and GEOMETRY; in this article
a summary of the properties of the curve will be given.
To investigate the form of the curve use may be made of the
definition: the ellipse is the locus of a point which moves so that
the ratio of its distance from a fixed point (the focus) to its distance
from a straight line (the directrix) is constant and is less than unity.
This ratio is termed the eccentricity, and will be denoted by e. Let
KX (fig. l) be the directrix, S the focus, and X the foot of the per-
pendicular from S to KX. If
SX be divided at A so that K
SA/AX = e, then A is a point
on the curve. SX may be
also divided externally at A',
so that SA'/A'X = e, since e
is less than unity; the points
A and A' are the vertices, and
the line AA' the major axis of
the curve. It is obvious that
the curve is symmetrical
about AA'. If AA' be
bisected at C, and the line
BCB' be drawn perpendicular
to AA', then it is readily seen that the curve is symmetrical about
this line also; since if we take S' on AA' so that S'A' = SA, and a
line K'X' parallel to KX such that AX = A'X', then the same curve
will be described if we regard K'X' and S' as the given directrix and
focus, the eccentricity remaining the same. If B and B' be points
on the curve, BB' is the minor axis and C the centre of the curve.
Metrical relations between the axes, eccentricity, distance between
the foci, and between these quantities and the co-ordinates of points
on the curve (referred to the axes and the centre), and focal distances
are readily obtained by the methods of geometrical conies or analytic-
ally. The semi-major axis is generally denoted by a, and the semi-
minor axis by 6, and we have the relation 6 2 = a 2 (l e 2 ). Also a? =
CS.CX, i.e. the square on the semi-major axis equals the rectangle
contained by the distances of the focus and directrix from the centre ;
and 2a = SP+S'P, where P is any point on the curve, i.e. the sum of
the focal distances of any point on the curve equals the major axis.
The most important relation between the co-ordinates of a point on
an ellipse is: if N be the foot of the perpendicular from a point P,
then the square on PN bears a constant ratio to the product of the
segments AN, NA' of the major axis, this ratio being the square of
the ratio of the minor to the major axis; symbolically PN 2 =
AN.NA'(CB/CA) 2 . From this or otherwise it is readily deduced that
the ordinates of an ellipse and of the circle described on the major
axis are in the ratio of the minor to the major axis. This circle is
termed the auxiliary circle.
Of the properties of a tangent it may be noticed that the tangent
at any point is equally inclined to the focal distances of that point ;
that the feet of the perpendiculars from the foci on any tangent
always lie on the auxiliary circle, and the product of these per-
pendiculars is constant, and equal to the product of the distances
of a focus from the two vertices. From any point without the curve
two, and only two, tangents can be drawn; if OP, OP' be two
tangents from O, and S, S' the foci, then the angles OSP, OSP' are
equal and also SOP, S'OP'. If the tangents be at right angles, then
the locus of the point is a circle having the same centre as the ellipse ;
this is named the director circle.
The middle points of a system of parallel chords is a straight line,
and the tangent at the point where this line meets the curve is
parallel to the chords. The straight line and the line through the
centre parallel to the chords are named conjugate diameters; each
bisects the chords parallel to the other. An important metrical
property of conjugate diameters is the sum of their squares equals the
sum of the squares of the major and minor axis.
In analytical geometry, the equation ax*+2hxy+by'>+2gx+2fy +
c = o represents an ellipse when ab>h?; if the centre of the curve
be the origin, the equation is a l x*+2h l xy+b*y 2 = C I , and if in addition
a pair of conjugate diameters are the axes, the equation is further
simplified to A* 2 + B;y 2 = C. The simplest form is x 2 /a 2 +y*/b 1 = l,
in which the centre is the origin and the major and minor axes the
axes of co-ordinates. It is obvious that the co-ordinates of any point
on an ellipse may be expressed in terms of a single parameter, the
abscissa being a cos 0, and the ordinate b sin <t>, since on eliminating^
between x = a cos <t> and y = b sin $ we obtain the equation to the
ellipse. The angle <j> is termed the eccentric angle, and is geometrically
represented as the angle between the axis of x (the major axis of the
ellipse) and the radius of a point on the auxiliary circle which has
the same abscissa as the point on the ellipse.
The equation to the tangent at is x cos S/a+y sin 0/6 = 1, and to
the normal ax/cos 9 by /sin 6 = a 2 b*.
The area of the ellipse is irab, where a, b are the semi-axes;
this result may be deduced by regarding the ellipse as the ortho-
gonal projection of a circle, or by means of the calculus. The peri-
meter can only be expressed as a series, the analytical evaluation
leading to an integral termed elliptic (see FUNCTION, ii. Complex).
There are several approximation formulae: S = 7r(a-f;&) makes the
perimeter about i/2OOth too small; s = irV (a*+b*) about l/2OOth
too great; 2s = Tr(a+b)+Tnl (a 2 +6 2 ) is within 1/30,000 of the truth.
An ellipse can generally be described to satisfy any five conditions.
If five points be given, Pascal's theorem affords a solution; if
five tangents, Brianchon's theorem is employed. The principle of
ELLIPSOID ELLIS, H.
293
involution solves such con>iriu lions a*: given four tangents and one
point, three tangents and two points. &c. If a tangent and its point
of contact be given, it is only necessary' to remember that a double
point on the curve it given. A focus or directrix is equal to two
conditions; hence such problems as: given a focus and three points;
focus, two points and one tangent ; and a focus, one point and two
tangents are soluble- \\>-i\ . n\rnii-mK by employing the principle
of reciprocation). Of practical importance are the following const ruc-
tions: (i) Given the axes; (a) given the major axis and the foci;
(t) given the focus, eccentricity and directrix; (4) to construct an
ellipse (approximately) by means of circular arcs.
(l) If the axes be given, we may avail ourselves of several con-
struction*, (a) Let AA', BB' be the axes intersecting at right angles
ellipse. This is known as the trammel construction.
(ft) Let A.V, BB' be the axes as before; describe on each as dia-
meter a circle. Draw any number of radii of the two circles, and
from the points of intersection with the major circle draw lines parallel
to the minor axis, and from the |x>ints of intersection with the minor
circle draw lines parallel to the major axis. The intersections of the
lines drawn from corresponding points arc points on the ellipse.
(3) If the major axis and loci be given, there is a convenient
mechanical construction based on the property that the sum of the
focal distances of any point is constant and equal to the major axis.
Let A.Y be the axis and S, S' the foci. Take a piece of thread of
length A.V, and fix it at its extremities by means of pins at the foci.
The thread is now stretched taut by a pencil, and the pencil moved ;
the curve traced out is the desired ellipse.
(3) If the directrix, focus and eccentricity be given, we may
employ the general method for constructing a conic. Let S (fig. 2) be
the focus, KA the directrix, X being the Toot of the perpendicular
from S to the directrix. Divide SX internally at A and externally
at A', so that the ratios SA/AX and SA'/A'X are each equal to the
eccentricity. Then A, A' are the
vertices of the curve. Take any
point R on the directrix, and
draw the lines RAM, RSN ; draw
SL so that the angle LSN = angle
NS.V. Let P be the intersection
of the line SL with the line RAM,
f, then it can be readily shown that
P is a point on the ellipse. For,
draw through P a line parallel to
AA', intersecting the directrix in
Q and the line RSN in T. Then
since XS and QT are parallel and
are intersected by the lines RK,
RM. RN, we have SA/AX -TP/PQ -SP/PQ, since the angle PST =
angle PTS. By varying the position of R other points can be
found, and, since the curve is symmetrical about both the major
and minor axes, it is obvious that any point may be reflected in
both the axes, thus giving 3 additional points.
(4) If the axe* be given, the curve can bcapproximatcly constructed
by circular arc* in the following manner: Let AA', BB' be the
axes; determine D the intersection of lines through B and A parallel
to the major and minor axes respectively. Bisect AD at E and join
EB. Then the intersection of EB and DB' determines a point P
on the (true) curve. Bisect the chord PB at G, and draw through G
a line perpendicular to PB, intersecting BB' in O. An arc with
centre O and radius OB forms part of a curve. Let this arc on the
reverse side to P intersect a line through O parallel to the major axis
in a point H. Then HA' will cut the circular arc in J. Let JO
intersect the major axis in O|. Then with centre Oi and radius
OJ, -OA 1 . describe an arc. By reflecting the two arcs thus described
over the centre the ellipse is approximately described.
ELLIPSOID, a quadric surface whose sections arc ellipses.
Analytically, it has for its equation x?la*.+y t lb*+z t /c* = i, , b, c
being its axes; the name is also given to the solid contained by
this surface (see GEOMETRY: Analytical). The solids and sur-
faces of revolution of the ellipse are sometimes termed ellipsoids,
but it is advisable to use the name spheroid (q.v.).
The ellipsoid appears in the mathematical investigation of
physical properties of media in which the particular property
varies in three directions within the media; such properties
are the elasticity, giving rise to the strain ellipsoid, thermal
expansion, ellipsoid of expansion, thermal conduction, refractive
index (see CRYSTALLOGRAPHY), &c. In mechanics, the ellipsoid
of gyration or inertia is such that the perpendicular from the
centre to a tangent plane is equal to the radius of gyration of the
given body about the perpendicular as axis; the " momental
ellipsoid," also termed the " inverse ellipsoid of inertia " or
Poinsot's ellipsoid, has the perpendicular inversely proportional
to the radius of gyration; the " equimomental ellipsoid" is
such that its moments of inertia about all axes arc the same as
those of a given body. (See MECHANICS.)
ELLIPTICITY, in astronomy, deviation from a circular or
spherical form ; applied to the elliptic orbits of heavenly bodies,
or the spheroidal form of such bodies. (Sec also COMPRESSION.)
ELLIS (originally SHARPE), ALEXANDER JOHN (1814-1890),
English philologist, mathematician, musician and writer on
phonetics, was born at Hoxton on the i.|i li of June 1814. He
was educated at Shrewsbury, Eton, and Trinity College, Cam-
bridge, and took his degree in high mathematical honours.
He was connected with many learned societies as member or
president, and was governor of University College, London.
He was the first in England to reduce the study of phonetics to a
science. His most important work, to which the greater part of
his life was devoted, is On Early English Pronunciation, with
special reference to Shakespeare and Chaucer (1869-1889), in
five parts, which he intended to supplement by a sixth, containing
an abstract of the whole, an account of the views and criticisms
of other inquirers in the same field, and a complete index, but
ill-health prevented him from carrying out his intention. He had
long been associated with Isaac Pitman in his attempts to reform
English spelling, and published A Plea for Phonotypy and
Phonography (1845) and A Plea for Phonetic Spelling (1848); and
contributed the articles on " Phonetics " and " Speech-sounds "
to the 9th edition of the Ency. Brit. He translated (with con-
siderable additions) Helmholtz's Sensations of Tone as a physio-
logical Basis for the Theory of Music (and ed., 1885); and was
the author of several smaller works on music, chiefly in connexion
with his favourite subject phonetics. He died in London on
the z8th of October 1890.
ELLIS, GEORGE (1753-1815), English author, was born in
London in 1753. Educated at Westminster school and at Trinity
College, Cambridge, he began his literary career by some satirical
verses on Bath society published in 1777, and Poetical Tales,
by "Sir Gregory Gander," in 1778. He contributed to the
Rolliad and the Probationary Odes political satires directed
against Pitt's administration. He was employed in diplomatic
business at the Hague in 1784; and in 1797 he accompanied
Lord Malmesbury to Lille as secretary to the embassy. On his
return he was introduced to Pitt, and the episode of the Rolliad,
which had not been forgotten, was explained. He found con-
tinued scope for his powers as a political caricaturist in the
columns of the Anti-Jacobin, a weekly paper which 'he founded
in connexion with George Canning and William Gifford. For
some years before the Anti-Jacobin was started Ellis had been
working in the congenial field of Early English literature, in which
he was one of the first to arouse interest. The first edition of his
Specimens of lite Early English Poets appeared in 1700; and this
was followed by Specimens of Early English Metrical Romanu-s
(1805). He also edited Gregory Lewis Way's translation of
select Fabliaux in 1796. Ellis was an intimate friend of Sir
Walter Scott, who styled him " the first converser I ever saw,"
and dedicated to him the fifth canto of Marmion. Some of the
correspondence between them is to be found in Lockhart's
Life. He died on the loth of April 1815. The monument erected
to his memory in the parish church of Gunning Hill, Berks, bears
a fine inscription by Canning.
ELLIS, SIR HENRY (1777-1869), English antiquary, was born
in London on the 2gth of November 1777. He was educated at
Merchant Taylors' school, and at St John's College, Oxford, of
which he was elected a fellow. After having held for a few
months a sub-librarianship in the Bodleian, he was in 1800
appointed to a similar post in the British Museum. In 1827 he
became chief librarian, and held that post until 1856, when he
resigned on account of advancing age. In 1832 William IV. made
him a knight of Hanover, and in the following year he received
an English knighthood. He died on the i.sih of January 1869.
Sir Henry Ellis's life was one of very considerable literary
activity. His first work of importance was the preparation of
a new edition of Brand's Popular Antiquities, which appeared in
1813. In 1816 he was selected by the commissioners of public
294
ELLIS, ROBINSON ELLSWORTH
records to write the introduction to Domesday Book, a task
which he discharged with much learning, though several of his
views have not stood the test of later criticism. His Original
Letters Illustrative of English History (first series, 1824; second
series, 1827; third series, 1846) are compiled chiefly from manu-
scripts in the British Museum and the State Paper Office, and
have been of considerable service to historical writers. To the
Library of Entertaining Knowledge he contributed four volumes
on the Elgin and Townley Marbles. Sir Henry was for many
years a director and joint-secretary of the Society of Antiquaries.
ELLIS, ROBINSON (1834- ), English classical scholar,
was born at Barming, near Maidstone, on the 5th of September
1834. He was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, Rugby,
and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1858 he became fellow of Trinity
College, Oxford, and in 1870 professor of Latin at University
College, London. In 1876 he returned to Oxford, where from
1883 to 1893 he held the university readership in Latin. In
1 893 he succeeded Henry Nettleship as professor. His chief work
has been on Catullus, whom he began to study in 1859. His
first Commentary on Catullus (1876) aroused great interest, and
called forth a flood of criticism. In 1889 appeared a second and
enlarged edition, which placed its author in the first rank of
authorities on Catullus. Professor Ellis quotes largely from the
early Italian commentators, maintaining that the land where
the Renaissance originated had done more for scholarship than is
commonly recognized. He has supplemented his critical work
by a translation (1871, dedicated to Tennyson) of the poems in
the metres of the originals. Another author to whom Professor
Ellis has devoted many years' study is Manilius, |.he astrological
poet. In 1891 he published Nodes Manilianae, a series of dis-
sertations on the Aslronomica, with emendations. He has also
treated Avianus, Velleius Paterculus and the Christian poet
Orientius, whom he edited for the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum
Ecclesiaslicorum. He edited the Ibis of Ovid, the Aetna of the
younger Lucilius, and contributed to the Anecdota Oxonicnsia
various unedited Bodleian and other manuscripts. In 1907 he
published Appendix Vergiliana (an edition of the minor poems);
in 1908 The Annalist Licinianus.
ELLIS, WILLIAM (1794-1872), English Nonconformist
missionary, was born in London on the 29th of August 1794.
His boyhood and youth were spent at Wisbeach, where he worked
as a market-gardener. In 1814 he offered himself to the London
Missionary Society, and was accepted. During a year's training
he acquired some knowledge of theology and of various practical
arts, such as printing and bookbinding. He sailed for the South
Sea Islands in January 1816, and remained in Polynesia, occupy-
ing various stations in succession, until 1824, when he was com-
pelled to return home on account of the state of his wife's health.
Though the period of his residence in the islands was thus com-
paratively short, his labours were very fruitful, contributing
perhaps as much as those of any other missionary to bring about
the extraordinary improvement in the religious, moral and
social condition of the Pacific Archipelago that took place during
the igth century. Besides promoting the spiritual object of his
mission, he introduced many other aids to the improvement
of the condition of the people. His gardening experience en-
abled him successfully to acclimatize many species of tropical
fruits and plants, and he set up and worked the first printing
press in the South Seas. Returning home by way of the United
States, where he advocated his work, Ellis was for some years
employed as a travelling agent of the London Missionary Society,
and in 1832 was appointed foreign secretary to the society, an
office which he held for seven years. In 1837 he married his
second wife, Sarah Stickney, a writer and teacher of some note
in her generation. In 1841 he went to live at Hoddesdon, Herts,
and ministered to a small Congregational church there. On
behalf of the London Missionary Society he paid three visits
to Madagascar (1853-1857), inquiring into the prospects for re-
suming the work that had been suspended by Queen Ranavolona's
hostility. A further visit was paid in 1863. Ellis wrote accounts
of all his travels, and Southey's praise (in the Quarterly Review)
of his Polynesian Researches (2 vols., 1829) finds many echoes.
He was a fearless, upright and tactful man, and a keen observer
of nature. He died on the 25th of June 1872.
ELLISTON, ROBERT WILLIAM (1774-1831), English actor,
was born in London on the 7th of April 1774, the son of a watch-
maker. He was educated at St Paul's school, but ran away from
home and made his first appearance on the stage as Tressel in
Richard III. at Bath in 1791. Here he was later seen as Romeo,
and in other leading parts, both comic and tragic, and he
repeated his successes in London from 1796. He acted at Drury
Lane from 1804 to 1809, and again from 1812; and from 1819
he was the lessee of the house, presenting Kean, Mme Vestris and
Macready. Ill-health and misfortune culminated in his bank-
ruptcy in 1826, when he made his last appearance at Drury Lane
as Falstaff. But as lessee of the Surrey theatre he acted almost
up to his death, which was hastened by intemperance. Leigh
Hunt compared him favourably with Garrick; Byron thought
him inimitable in high comedy; Macready praised his versatility.
Elliston was the author of The Venetian Outlaw (1805), and,
with Francis Godolphin Waldron, of No Prelude (1803), in both
of which plays he appeared.
ELLORA, a village of India in the native state of Hyderabad,
near the city of Daulatabad, famous for its rock temples, which
are among the finest in India. They are first mentioned by
Ma'sudi, the Arabic geographer of the loth century, but merely
as a celebrated place of pilgrimage. The caves differ from those
of Ajanta in consequence of their being excavated in the sloping
sides of a hill and not in a nearly perpendicular cliff. They
extend along the face of the hill for a mile and a quarter, and are
divided into three distinct series, the Buddhist, the Brahmanical
and the Jain, and are arranged almost chronologically. The most
splendid of the whole scries is the Kailas, a perfect Dravidian
temple, complete in all its parts, characterized by Fergusson
as one of the most wonderful and interesting monuments of archi-
tectural art in India. It is not a mere interior chamber cut in
the rock, but is a model of a complete temple such as might
have been erected on the plain. 1 n other words, the rock has been
cut away externally as well as internally. First the great sunken
court measuring 276 ft. by 154 ft. was hewn out of the solid
trap-rock of the hillside, leaving the rock mass of the temple
wholly detached in a cloistered court like a colossal boulder,
save that a rock bridge once connected the upper storey of the
temple with the upper row of galleried chambers surrounding
three sides of the court. Colossal elephants and obelisks stand
on either side of the open mandapam, or pavilion, containing
the sacred bull; and beyond rises the monolithic Dravidian
temple to Siva, 90 ft. in height, hollowed into vestibule, chamber
and image-cells, all lavishly carved. Time and earthquakes have
weathered and broken away bits of the great monument, and
Moslem zealots strove to destroy the carved figures, but these
defects are hardly noticed. The temple was built by Krishna I.,
Rashtrakuta, king of Malkhed in 760-783.
ELLORE, a town of British India, in the Kistna district of
Madras, on the East Coast railway, 303 m. from Madras. Pop.
(1901) 33,521. The two canal systems of the Godavari and the
Kistna deltas meet here. There are manufactures' of cotton
and saltpetre, and an important Church of England high school.
Ellore was formerly a military station, and the capital of the
Northern Circars. At Pedda Vegi to the north of it are extensive
ruins, which are believed to be remains of the Buddhist kingdom
of Vengi. From these the Mahommedans, after their conquest of
the district in 1470, obtained material for building a fort at Ellore.
ELLSWORTH, OLIVER (1745-1807), American statesman
and jurist, was born at Windsor, Connecticut, on the 29th of
April 1745. He studied at Yale and Princeton, graduating
from the latter in 1766, studied theology for a year, then law,
and began to practise at Hartford in 1771. He was state's
attorney for Hartford county from 1777 to 1785, and achieved
extraordinary success at the bar, amassing what was for his day
a large fortune. From 1773 to 1775 he represented the town of
Windsor in the general assembly of Connecticut, and in the latter
year became a member of the important commission known as
the " Pay Table," which supervised the colony's expenditures
ELLSWORTH ELL WOOD
295
for military purposes during the War of Independence. In 1770
be again Mt in the assembly, this time representing Hartford.
From 17;; to i ;S < he was a member of the Continental Congress,
and in this body he served on three important committees, the
marine committee, the board of treasury, and the committee
of appeals, the predecessors respectively of the navy and treasury
departments and the Supreme Court under the Federal Con-
stitution. From 178010 1 785 he was a member of the governor's
council of Connecticut, which, with the lower house before 1784
and alone from 1784 to 1807, constituted a supreme court of
errors; and from 1785 to 1789 he was a judge of the state
superior court. In 1787, with Roger Sherman and William
Samuel Johnson (1727-1819), he was one of Connecticut's
delegates to the constitutional convention at Philadelphia,
in which his services were numerous and important. In
particular, when disagreement seemed Inevitable on the question
of representation, he, with Roger Sherman, proposed what is
known as the " Connecticut Compromise," by which the Federal
legislature was made to consist of two houses, the upper having
equal representation from each state, the lower being chosen
on the basis of population. Ellsworth also made a determined
stand against a national paper currency. Being compelled to
leave the convention before its adjournment, he did not sign the
instrument, but used his influence to secure its ratification by
his native state. From 1789 to 1796 he was one of the first
senators from Connecticut under the new Constitution. In the
senate he was looked upon as President Washington's personal
spokesman and as the leader of the Administration party. His
most important service to his country was without a doubt in
connexion with the establishment of the Federal judiciary.
As chairman of the committee having the matter in charge,
he drafted the bill by the enactment of which the system of
Federal courts, almost as it is to-day, was established. He also
took a leading part in the senate in securing the passage of laws
for funding the national debt, assuming the state debts and
establishing a United States bank. It was Ellsworth who sug-
gested to Washington the sending of John Jay to England to
negotiate a new treaty with Great Britain, and he probably
did more than any other man to induce the senate, despite
widespread and violent opposition, to ratify that treaty when
negotiated. By President Washington's appointment he be-
came chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
in March 1796, and in 1799 President John Adams sent him, with
William Vans Murray (1762-1803) and William R. Davie (1756-
1820), to negotiate a new treaty with France. It was largely
through the influence of Ellsworth, who took the principal part
in the negotiations, that Napoleon consented to a convention, of
the 30th of September 1800, which secured for citizens of the
United States their ships, captured by France but not yet con-
demned as prizes, provided for freedom of commerce between the
two nations, stipulated that " free ships shall give a freedom to
goods," and contained provisions favourable to neutral commerce.
While he was abroad, failing health compelled him (1800) to
resign the chief-justiceship, and after some months in England
he returned to America in 1801. In 1803 he was again elected
to the governor's council, and in 1807, on the reorganization of
the Connecticut judiciary, was appointed chief justice of the new
Supreme Court. He never took office, however, but died at his
home in Windsor on the 27th of November 1807.
See W. G Brown's Oliver Ellsworth (New York, 1905), an excellent
biography. There is also an appreciative account of Ellsworth's
life and work in H. C. Lodge's A Fighting Frigate, and Other Essays
and Addrcitei (New York, 1902), which contains in an appendix an
interesting letter by Senator George F. Hoar concerning Ellsworth's
work in the constitutional convention.
ELLSWORTH, a city, port of entry and the county seat of
Hancock county, Maine, U.S.A., at the head of navigation on
the Union river (and about 3} m. from its mouth), about 30 m.
of Bangor. Pop. (1890) 4804; (1000)4297 (189 foreign-born);
:o) 3549. It is served by the Maine Central railway. The
fall of the river, about 85 ft. in 2 m., furnishes good water-
power, and the* city has various manufactures, including lumber,
shoe*, woollens, sails, carriages and foundry and machine shop
products, besides a large lumber trade. Shipbuilding was
formerly important. There is a large United States fish hatchery
hero. The city is the port of entry for the Frenchman's Hay
customs district, but its foreign trade is unimportant. Ellsworth
was first settled in 1763 and for some time was called \>
Bowdoin; but when it was incorporated as a town in 1800 thr
present name was adopted in honour of Oliver Ellsworth. A
city charter was secured in 1869.
ELLWANGEN, a town of Germany in the kingdom of
WUrttcmberg, on the Jagst, 12 m. S.S.E. from Crailsheim on the
railway to Goldshofc. Pop. 5000. It is romantically situated
between two hills, one crowned by the castle of Hohen-Ellwangen,
built in 1354 and now used as an agricultural college, and the
other, the Schdnenberg, by the pilgrimage church of Our Lady
of Loreto, in the Jesuit style of architecture. The town possesses
one Evangelical and five Roman Catholic churches, among the
latter the Stiftskirche, the old abbey church, a Romanesque
building dating from 1124, and the Gothic St Wolfgangskirche.
The classical and modern schools (Gymnasium and Realschule)
occupy the buildings of a suppressed Jesuit college. The in-
dustries include the making of parchment covers, of envelopes,
of wooden hafts and handles for tools, &c., and tanneries. There
are also a wool-market and a horse-market, the latter famous
in Germany.
The Benedictine abbey of Ellwangcn is said to have been
founded in 764 by Herulf, bishop of Langres; there is, however,
no record of it before 814. In 1460 the abbey was converted,
with the consent of Pope Pius II., into a Ritterstift (college or
institution for noble pensioners) under a secular provost, who,
' n '555) was raised to the dignity of a prince of the Empire.
The provostship was secularized in 1803 and its territories were
assigned to Wiirttemberg. The town of Ellwangen,which grew up
round the abbey and received the status of a town about the
middle of the i4th century, was until 1803 the capital of the
provostship.
See Seckler, Beschreibung der gefiirsteten Probstei Ellwangen
(Stuttgart, 1864) ; Beschreibung des Oberamts Ellwaneen, published
by the statistical bureau (Landesamt) at Ellwangen (1888). For a
list of the abbots and provosts see Stokvis, Manuel d'histoire (Leiden,
1890-1893), iii. p. 242.
ELLWOOD, THOMAS (1630-1714), English author, was born
at Crowell, in Oxfordshire, in 1639. He is chiefly celebrated for
his connexion with Milton, and the principal facts of his life arc
related in a very interesting autobiography, which contains
much information as to his intercourse with the poet. While
he was still young his father removed to London, where Thomas
became acquainted with a Quaker family named Pennington,
and Was led to join the Society of Friends, a connexion which
subjected him to much persecution. It was through the Penning-
tons that he was introduced in 1662 to Milton in the capacity of
Latin reader. He spent nearly every afternoon in the poet's
house in Jewin Street, until the intercourse was interrupted
by an illness which compelled him to go to the country. After
a period of imprisonment in the old Bridewell prison and in
Newgate for Quakerism, Ellwood resumed his visits to Milton,
who was now residing at a house his friend had taken for him
at Chalfont St Giles. In 1665 Ellwood was again arrested and
imprisoned in Aylesbury gaol. When he visited Milton after
his release the poet gave him the manuscript of the Paradise
Lost to read. On returning the manuscript Ellwood said,
" Thou hast said much here of Paradise lost; but what hast
thou to say of Paradise found ? " and when Milton long after-
wards in London showed him Paradise Regained, it was with
the remark, " This is owing to you, for you put it into my head
at Chalfont." Ellwood was the friend of Fox and Penn, and was
the author of several polemical works in defence of the Quaker
position, of which Forgery no Christianity (1674) and The,
Foundation of Tithes Shaken (1678) deserve mention. His
Sacred Histories of the Old and New Testaments appeared in 1 705
and 1709. He also published some volumes of poems, among
them a Davideis in five books. He died on the ist of March 1714.
The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood: written by his own hand
(1714) has been many times reprinted.
296
ELM ELMHAM
ELM, the popular name for the trees and shrubs constituting
the genus Ulmus, of the natural order Ulmaceae. The genus
contains fifteen or sixteen species widely distributed throughout
the north temperate zone, with the exception of western North
America, and extending southwards as far as Mexico in the New
and the Sikkim Himalayas in the Old World.
The common elm, U. campestris, a doubtful native of England,
is found throughout a great part of Europe, in North Africa and
in Asia Minor, whence it ranges as far east as north Asia and
Japan. It grows in woods and hedge-rows, especially in the
southern portion of Britain, and on almost all soils, but thrives
best on a rich loam, in open, low-lying, moderately moist situa-
tions, attaining a height of 60 to 100, and in some few cases as
much as 130 or 150 ft. The branches are numerous and spread-
ing, and often pendulous at the extremities; the bark is rugged;
the leaves are alternate, ovate, rough, doubly serrate, and, as
in other species of Ulmus, unequal at the base. The flowers are
small, hermaphrodite, numerous, in purplish-brown tufts, and
each with a fringed basal bract; the bell-shaped calyx is often
four-toothed and surrounds four free stamens; the pistil bears
two spreading hairy styles. They appear before the leaves in
March and April. The seed-vessels are green, membranous,
one-seeded and deeply cleft. Unlike the wych elm, the common
elm rarely perfects its seed in England, where it is propagated
by means of root suckers from old trees, or preferably by layers
from stools. In the first ten years of its growth it ordinarily
reaches a height of 25 to 30 ft. The wood, at first brownish white,
becomes, with growth, of a brown colour having a greenish
shade. It is close-grained, free from knots, without apparent
medullary rays, and is hard and tough, but will not take a polish.
All parts of the trunk, including the sapwood, are available in
carpentry. By drying, the wood loses over 60% of its weight,
and has then a specific gravity of 0-588. It has considerable
transverse strength, does not crack when once seasoned, and is
remarkably durable under water, or if kept quite dry; though
it decays rapidly on exposure to the weather, which in ten to
eighteen months causes the bark to fall off, and gives to the wood
a yellowish colour a sign of deterioration in quality. To
prevent shrinking and warping it may be preserved in water
or mud, but it is best worked up soon after felling. Analyses
of the ash of the wood have given a percentage of 47' 8 % of
lime, 21-9% of potash, and 13-7% of soda. In summer, elm
trees often exude an alkaline gummy substance, which by the
action of the air becomes the brown insoluble body termed
ulmin. Elm wood is used for keels and bilge-planks, the blocks
and dead-eyes of rigging, and ships' pumps, for coffins, wheels,
furniture, carved and turned articles, and for general carpenters'
work; and previous to the common employment of cast iron
was much in request for waterpipes. The inner bark of the elm
is made into bast mats and ropes. It contains mucilage, with a
little tannic acid, and was formerly much employed for the
preparation of an antiscorbutic decoction, now obsolete. The
bark of Ulmus fulva, the slippery or red elm of the United States
and Canada, serves the North American Indians for the same
purpose, and also as a vulnerary. The leaves as well as the young
shoots of elms have been found a suitable food for live stock.
For ornamental purposes elm trees are frequently planted, and
in avenues, as at the park of Stratfieldsaye, in Hampshire, are
highly effective. They were first used in France for the adorn-
ment of public walks in the reign of Francis I. In Italy, as in
ancient times, it is still customary to train the vine upon the
elm a practice to which frequent allusion has been made by
the poets. The cork-barked elm, U. campestris, var. suberosa,
is distinguished chiefly by the thick deeply fissured bark with
which its branches are covered. There are numerous cultivated
forms differing in size and shape of leaf, and manner of growth.
The Scotch or wych elm, U. montana, is indigenous to Britain
and is the common elm of the northern portion of the island;
it usually attains a height of about 50 ft., but among tall-growing
trees may reach 1 20 ft. It has drooping branches and a smoother
and thinner bark, larger and more tapering leaves, and a far less
deeply notched seed-vessel than U. campestris. The wood,
though more porous than in that species, is a tough and hard
material when properly seasoned, and, being very flexible
when steamed, is well adapted for boat-building. Branches
of the wych elm were formerly manufactured into bows, and if
forked were employed as divining-rods. The weeping elm, the
most ornamental member of the genus, is a variety of this species.
The Dutch or sand elm is a tree very similar to the wych elm,
but produces inferior timber. The American or white elm,
U. americana, is a hardy and very handsome species, of which
the old tree on Boston (Mass.) Common was a representative.
This tree is supposed to have been in existence before the settle-
ment of Boston, and at the time of its destruction by the storm
of the isth of February 1876 measured 22 ft. in circumference.
ELMACIN (ELMAKIN or ELMACINUS), GEORGE (c. 1223-1274),
author of a history of the Saracens, which extends from the
time of Mahomet to the year u 18 of our era. He was a Christian
of Egypt, where he was born; is known in the east as Ibn-Amid;
and after holding an official position under the sultans of Egypt,
died at Damascus. His history is principally occupied with the
affairs of the Saracen empire, but it contains passages which
relate to the Eastern Christians. It was published in Arabic
and Latin at Leiden in 1625. The Latin version is a translation
by Erpenius, under the title, Historic, saracenica, and from
this a French translation was made by Wattier as L'Histoire
mahometane (Paris, 1657).
ELMALI (" apple-town "), a small town of Asia Minor in the
vilayet of Konia, the present administrative centre of the
ancient Lycia, but not itself corresponding to any known ancient *
city. It lies about 25 m. inland, at the head of a long upland
valley (5000 ft.) inhabited by direct descendants of the ancient
Lycians, who have preserved a distinctive facial type, noticeable
at once in the town population. There are about fifty Greek
families, the rest of the population (4000) being Moslem. The
district is agricultural and has no manufactures of importance.
ELMES, HARVEY LONSDALE (1813-1847), British architect,
son of James Elmes (?..), was born at Chichester in 1813.
After serving some time in his father's office, and under a surveyor
at Bedford and an architect at Bath, he became partner with
his father in 1835, and in the following year he was successful
among 86 competitors for a design for St George's Hall, Liverpool.
The foundation stone of this building was laid on the 28th of
June 1838, but, Elmes being successful in a competition for the
Assize Courts in the same city, it was finally decided to include
the hall and courts in a single building. In accordance with
this idea, Elmes prepared a fresh design, and the work of erection
commenced in 1841. He superintended its progress till 1847,
when from failing health he was compelled to delegate his duties
to Charles Robert Cockerell, and leave for Jamaica, where he
died of consumption on the 26th of November 1847.
ELMES, JAMES (1782-1862), British architect, civil engineer,
and writer on the arts, was born in London on the isth of
October 1782. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' school,
and, after studying building under his father, and architecture
under George Gibson, became a student at the Royal Academy,
where he gained the silver medal in 1804. He designed a large
number of buildings in the metropolis, and was surveyor and
civil engineer to the port of London, but is best known as a
writer on the arts. In 1809 he became vice-president of the
Royal Architectural Society, but this office, as well as that of
surveyor of the port of London, he was compelled through partial
loss of sight to resign in 1828. He died at Greenwich on the 2nd
of April 1862. His publications were: Sir Christopher Wren
and his Times (1823); Lectures on Architecture (1823); The
Arts and Artists (1825); General and Biographical Dictionary
of the Fine Arts (1826); Treatise on Architectural Jurisprudence
(1827), and Thomas Clarkson: a Monograph (1854).
ELMHAM, THOMAS (d. c. 1420), English chronicler, was
probably born at North Elmham in Norfolk. He became a
Benedictine monk at Canterbury, and then joining the Cluniacs,
was prior of Lenton Abbey, near Nottingham; he was chaplain
to Henry V., whom he accompanied to France in 1415, being
present at Agincourt. Elmham wrote a history of the monastery
ELMINA EL OBEID
297
of St Augustine at Canterbury, which has been edited by C.
Hardwick for the Rolls Series (1858); and a Liber metric us de
Htnrieo V., edited by C. A. Cole in the Memorials of Henry V.
(1858). It is very probable that Elmham wrote the famous
Gtsiti H curie i Quint t, which is the best authority for the life of
Henry V. from his accession to 1416. This work, often referred
to as the " chaplain's life," and thought by some to have been
written by Jean de Bordin, has been published for the English
Historical Society by B. Williams (1850). Elmham, however,
did not write the Vita el Gesla Henrici V., which was attributed
to him by T. Hearne and others.
See C. L. Kingston!, Htnry V. (1901).
ELMINA. a town on the Gold Coast, British West Africa, in
5* 4' N., i 20' W. and about 8 m. W. of Cape Coast. Pop. about
4000. Facing the Atlantic on a rocky peninsula is Fort St
George, considered the finest fort on the Guinea coast. It is
built square with high walls, and has accommodation for 200
soldiers. On the land side were formerly two moats, cut in the
rock on which the castle stands. The castle is the residence of
the commissioner of the district and other officials. The houses
in the native quarter are mostly built of stone, that material
being plentiful in the vicinity.
Elmina is the earliest European settlement on the Gold Coast,
and was visited by the Portuguese in 1481. Christopher
Columbus is believed to have been one of the officers who took
pan in this voyage. The Portuguese at once began to build the
castle now known as Fort St George, but it was not completed
till eighty years afterwards. Another defensive work is Fort
St Jago, built in 1666, which is behind the town and at some
distance from the coast. (In the latter half of the njth century
it was converted into a prison.) Elmina was captured by the
Dutch in 1637, and ceded to them by treaty in 1640. They made
it the chief port for the produce of Ashanti. With the other
Dutch possessions on the Guinea coast, it was transferred to
Great Britain in April 1872. The king of Ashanti, claiming to
be ground landlord, objected to its transfer, and the result was
the Ashanti war of 1873-1874. For many years the greatest
output of gold from this coast came from Elmina. The annual
export is said to have been nearly 3,000,000 in the early years
of the i8th century, but the figure is probably exaggerated.
Since 1000 the bulk of the export trade in gold has been trans-
ferred to Sekondi (?..). Prempeh, the ex-king of Ashanti,
was detained in the castle (1896) until his removal to the
Seychelles. (See ASHANTI: History, and GOLD COAST: History.)
ELMIRA, a city and the county-seat of Chemung county,
New York, U.S.A., 100 m. S.E. of Rochester, on the Chemung
river, about 850 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1800) 30,893; (1900)
35,672, of whom 5511 were foreign-born (1988 Irish and 1208
German); (1910 census) 37,176. It is served by the Erie,
the Pennsylvania, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western,
the Lehigh Valley, and the Tioga Division railways, the last of
which connects it with the Pennsylvania coalfields 48 m. away.
The city is attractively situated on both sides of the river,
and has a fine water-supply and park system, among the parks
being Eldridge, Rorick's Glen, Riverside, Brand, Diven, Grove,
Maple Avenue and Wisner; in the last-named is a statue of
Thomas K. Beecher by J. S. Hartley. The city contains a
Federal building, a state armoury, the Chemung county court
bouse and other county buildings, the Elmira orphans' home,
the Stcele memorial library, home for the aged, the Arnot-
Ogden memorial hospital, the Elmira free academy, and the
Railway Commcrical training school. Here, also, is Elmira
College (Presbyterian) for women, founded in 1855. This
institution, chartered in 1852 as Auburn Female University and
then situated in Auburn, was rechartered in 1855 as the Elmira
Female College; it was established largely through the influence
and persistent efforts of the Rev. Samuel Robbins Brown (1810-
1880) and his associates, notably Simeon Benjamin of Elmira,
who gave generously to the newly founded college, and was the
first distinctively collegiate institution for women in the United
States, and the first, apparently, to grant degrees to women.
The most widely known institution in the city is the Elmira
reformatory, a state prison for first offenders between the ages
of sixteen and thirty, on a system of general indeterminate
sentences. Authorized by the state legislature in 1866 and
opened in 1876 under the direction of Zebulon Reed Brockway
(b. 1827), it was the first institution of the sort and has served
as a model for many similar institutions both in the United
States and in other countries (see JUVENILE OFFENDERS).
Elmira is an important railway centre, with large repair shops,
and has also extensive manufactories (value of production in
1000, $8,538,786, of which $6,596,603 was produced under the
"factory system"; in 1905, under the "factory system,"
$6,984,095), including boot and shoe factories, a large factory
for fire-extinguishing apparatus, iron and steel bridge works,
steel rolling mills, large valve works, steel plate mills, knitting
mills, furniture, glass and boiler factories, breweries and silk
mills. Near the site of Elmira occurred on the 29th of August
1779 the battle of Newtown, in which General John Sullivan
decisively defeated a force of Indians and Tories under Sir John
Johnson and Joseph Brant. There were some settlers here at
the close of the War of Independence, but no permanent settle-
ment was made until 1788. The village was incorporated as
Newtown in 1815, and was reincorporated as Elmira in 1828.
A city charter was secured in 1864. In 1861 a state military
camp was established here, and in 1864-1865 there was a prison
camp here for Confederate soldiers.
ELMSHORN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of
Schleswig-Holstein, on the Kruckau, 19 m. by rail N.W. from
Altona. Pop. (1905) 13,640. Its industries include weaving,
dyeing, brewing, iron-founding and the manufacture of leather
goods, boots and shoes and machines. There is a considerable
shipping trade.
ELMSLEY, PETER (1773-1825), English classical scholar.
He was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford,
and having inherited a fortune from his uncle, a well-known
bookseller, devoted himself to the study of classical authors
and manuscripts. In 1798 he was appointed to the chapelry
of Little Horkesley in Essex, which he held till his death. He
travelled extensively in France and Italy, and spent the winter
of i.SiS in examining the MSS. in the Laurentian library at
Florence. In 1819 he was commissioned, with Sir Humphry
Davy, to decipher the papyri found at Herculaneum, but the
results proved insignificant. In 1823 he was appointed principal
of St Alban's Hall, Oxford, and Camden professor of ancient
history. He died in Oxford on the 8th of March 1825. Elmsley
was a man of most extensive learning and European reputation,
and was considered to be the best ecclesiastical scholar in
England. But it is chiefly by his collation of the MSS. of the
Greek tragedians and his critical labours on the restoration of
their text that he will be remembered. He edited the A charnians
of Aristophanes, and several of the plays and scholia of Sophocles
and Euripides. He was the first to recognize the importance of
the Laurentian MS. (see Sandys, Hist, of Class. Schol. iii. (1008).
ELNE, a town of south-western France in the department of
Pyr6nes-Orientales, 10 m. S.S.E. of Perpignan by rail. Pop.
(1006) 3026. The hill on which it stands, once washed by the
sea, which is now over 3 m. distant, commands a fine view over
the plain of Roussillon. From the 6tft century till 1602 the town
was the seat of a bishopric, which was transferred to Perpignan.
The cathedral of St Eulalie, a Romanesque building completed
about the beginning of the i2th century, has a beautiful cloister
in the same style, with interesting sculptures and three early
Christian sarcophagi. Remains of the ancient ramparts flanked
by towers are still to be seen. Silk-worm cultivation is carried
on. Elne, the ancient Illiberis, was named Helena by the
emperor Constantino in memory of his mother. Hannibal
encamped under its walls on his march to Rome in 218 B.C.
The emperor Constans was assassinated there in A.D. 350. The
town several times sustained siege and capture between its
occupation by the Moors in the 8th century and its capitulation
in 1641 to the troops of Louis XIII.
EL OBEID, chief town of the mudiria (province) of Kordofan,
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and 230 m. S.W. by S. of Khartum in
ELOI, SAINT ELPHINSTONE, MOUNTSTUART
a direct line. Pop. (1905) about 10,000. It is situated about
2000 ft. above the sea, at the northern foot of Jebel Kordofan,
in 13 n' N. and 30 14' E. It is an important trade centre,
the chief articles of commerce being gum, ivory, cattle and
ostrich feathers. A considerable part of the trade of Darfur
with Egypt passes through El Obeid.
El Obeid, which appears to be a place of considerable antiquity
and the ancient capital of the country, was garrisoned by the
Egyptians on their conquest of Kordofan in 1821. In September
1882 the town was assaulted by the troops of the mahdi, who,
being repulsed, laid siege to the place, which capitulated on the
1 7th of January 1883. During the Mahdia the city was destroyed
and deserted, and when Kordofan passed, in 1899, into the
possession of the Anglo-Egyptian authorities nothing was left
of El Obeid but a part of the old government offices. A new
town was laid out in squares, the mudiria repaired and barracks
built. (See KORDOFAN, and SUDAN: Anglo-Egyptian.)
ELOI [ELIGIUS], SAINT (588-659), apostle of the Belgians and
Frisians, was born at Cadillac, near Limoges, in 588. Having
at an early age shown artistic talent he was placed by his parents
with the master of the mint at Limoges, where he made rapid
progress in goldsmith's work. He became coiner to Clotaire II.,
king of the Franks, and treasurer to his successor Dagobert.
Both kings entrusted him with important works, among which
were the composition of the ba's-reliefs which ornament the tomb
of St Germain, bishop of Paris, and the execution (for Clotaire)
of two chairs of gold, adorned with jewels, which at that time
were reckoned chefs-d'oeuvre. Though he was amassing great
wealth, Eloi acquired a distaste for a worldly life, and resolved
to become a priest. At first he retired to a monastery, but in
640 was raised to the bishopric of Noyon. He made frequent
missionary excursions to the pagans of the Low Countries, and
also founded a great many monasteries and churches. He died
on the ist of December 659. A mass of legend has gathered
round the life of St Eloi, who as the patron saint of goldsmiths
is still very popular.
His life was written by his friend and contemporary St Ouen
(Audoenus); French translations of the Vila 5. Eligii auctore
Audoeno were published by L. de Montigny (Paris, 1626), by C.
Barthelemy in Etudes hist., lilt, et art. (ib. 1847), and by Parenty,
with notes (2nd ed., ib. 1870). For bibliography see Potthast,
Bibliotheca hist. med. aevi (Berlin, 1896), s.v. Vita S. Eligii Novio-
mensis," and Ulysse Chevalier, Rep. des sources hist., Bio-bibl.
(Paris, 1894), s. "Eloi."
ELONGATION, strictly " lengthening " ; in astronomy, the
apparent angular distance of a heavenly body from its centre
of motion, as seen from the earth; designating especially
the angular distance of the planet Mercury or Venus from the
sun, or the apparent angle between a satellite and its primary.
The greatest elongation of Venus is about 45; that of Mercury
generally ranges between 18 and 27.
EL PASO, a city, port of entry, and the county-seat of El Paso
county, Texas, U.S.A., on the E. bank of the Rio Grande, in the
extreme W. part of the state, at an altitude of 3710 ft. Pop.
(1880) 736; (1890) 10,338; (1900) 15,906, of whom 6309 were
foreign-born and 466 were negroes; (1910 census) 39,279.
Many of the inhabitants are of Mexican descent. El Paso is an
important railway centre and is served by the following railways:
the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, of which it is the S. terminus;
the El Paso & South-Western, which connects with the Chicago,
Rock Island & El Paso (of the Rock Island system); the Gal-
veston,Harrisburg& San Antonio, of which it is the W. terminus;
the Mexican Central, of which it is the N. terminus; the Texas &
Pacific, of which it is the W. terminus; a branch of the Southern
Pacific, of which it is the E. terminus; and the short Rio Grande,
Sierra Madre & Pacific, of which it is the N. terminus. The city is
regularly laid out on level bottom lands, stretching to the table-
lands and slopes to the N.E. and N.W. of the city. Opposite, on
the W. bank of the river, is the Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez
(until 1885 known as Paso del Norte), with which El Paso is con-
nected by bridges and by electric railway. The climate is mild,
warm and dry, El Paso being well known as a health resort,
particularly for sufferers from pulmonary complaints. Among
the city's public buildings are a handsome Federal building, a
county court house, a city hall, a Y.M.C.A. building, a public
library, a sanatorium for consumptives, and the Hotel Dieu, a
hospital maintained by Roman Catholics. El Paso is the seat
of St Joseph's Academy and of the El Paso Military Institute.
Three miles E. of the city limits is Fort Bliss, a U.S. military
post, with a reservation of about 2 sq. m. El Paso's situation
on the Mexican frontier gives it a large trade with Mexico; it is
the port of entry of the Paso del Norte customs district, one of the
larger Mexican border districts, and in 1908 its imports were
valued at $2,677,784 and its exports at $5,661,901. Wheat,
boots and shoes, mining machinery, cement, lime, lumber, beer,
and denatured alcohol are among the varied exports; the
principal imports are ore, sugar, cigars, oranges, drawn work and
Mexican curios. El Paso has extensive manufactories, especially
railway car shops, which in 1905 employed 34-5% of the factory
wage-earners. Just outside the city limits are important lead
smelting works, to which are brought ores for treatment from
western Texas, northern Mexico, New Mexico and Arizona.
Among the city's manufactures are cement, denatured alcohol,
ether, varnish, clothing and canned goods. The value of the
city's total factory product in 1905 was $2,377,813, 96% greater
than that in 1900. El Paso lies in a fertile agricultural valley,
and in 1908 the erection of an immense dam was begun near
Engle, New Mexico (100 m. above El Paso), by the U.S. govern-
ment, to store the flood waters of the Rio Grande for irrigating
this area. Before the Mexican War, following which the first
United States settlement was made, the site of El Paso was known
as Ponce de Leon Ranch, the land being owned by the Ponce de
Leon family. El Paso was first chartered as a city in 1873, and
in 1907 adopted the commission form of government.
ELPHINSTONE, MOUNTSTUART (1779-1859), Indian states-
man and historian, fourth son of the nth Baron Elphinstone in
the peerage of Scotland, was born in 1779. Having received
an appointment in the civil service of the East India Com-
pany, of which one of his uncles was a director, he reached
Calcutta in the beginning of 1796. After filling several sub-
ordinate posts, he was appointed in 1801 assistant to the
British resident at Poona, at the court of the peshwa, the most
powerful of the Mahratta princes. Here he obtained his first
opportunity of distinction, being attached in the capacity of
diplomatist to the mission of Sir Arthur Wellesley to the
Mahrattas. When, on the failure of negotiations, war broke out,
Elphinstone, though a civilian, acted as virtual aide-de-camp to
General Wellesley. He was present at the battle of Assaye,
and displayed such courage and knowledge of tactics throughout
the whole campaign that Wellesley told him he had mistaken his
profession, and that he ought to have been a soldier. In 1804,
when the war closed, he was appointed British resident at Nagpur.
Here, the times being uneventful and his duties light, he occupied
much of his leisure in reading classical and general literature,
and acquired those studious habits which clung to him throughout
life. In 1808 he was appointed the first British envoy to the court
of Kabul, with the object of securing a friendly alliance with the
Afghans; but this proved of little value, because Shah Shuja
was driven from the throne by his brother before it could be
ratified. The most valuable permanent result of the embassy
was the literary fruit it bore several years afterwards in Elphin-
stone's great work on Kabul. After spending about a year in
Calcutta arranging the report of his mission, Elphinstone was
appointed in 1811 to the important and difficult post of resident
at Poona. The difficulty arose from the general complication
of Mahratta politics, and especially from the weak and treacherous
character of the peshwa, which Elphinstone rightly read from
the first. While the mask of friendship was kept up Elphinstone
carried out the only suitable policy, that of vigilant quiescence,
with admirable tact and patience; when in 1817 the mask was
thrown aside and the peshwa ventured to declare war, the English
resident proved for the second time the truth of Wellesley's
assertion that he was born a soldier. Though his own account
of his share in the campaign is characteristically modest, one
can gather from it that the success of the British troops was
ELPHINSTONE ELSINORE
299
chiefly owing to his Assuming the command at an important
crisis during the battle of Kirkee.
The pcshwa being driven from his throne, his territories were
annexed to the British dominions, and Elphinstonc was
Dominated commissioner to administer them. He discharged
the responsible task with rare judgment and ability. In 1819
be was appointed lieutenant-governor of Bombay and held this
post till 1827, his principal achievement being the compilation
of the " Klphinstonc code." He may fairly be regarded as the
founder of the system of stale education in India, and he probably
did more than any other Indian administrator to further every
likely scheme for the promotion of native education. His con-
nexion with the Bombay presidency was appropriately com-
memorated in the endowment of the Elphinstone College by the
native communities, and in the erection of a macble statue
by the European inhabitants.
Returning to England in 1829, after an interval of two years'
travel, Elphinstone retained in his retirement and enfeebled
health an important influence on public affairs. He twice
refused the offer of the governor-generalship of India. Long
before his return he had made his reputation as an author by his
.{(count of the Kingdom of Cabal and Us Dependencies in Persia
and India (1815). Soon after his arrival in England he com-
menced the preparation of a work of wider scope, a history of
India, which was published in 1841. It embraces the Hindu
and Mahommedan periods, and is still a work of high authority.
He died on the joth of November 1859.
See J.S. Cotton, Mountstuarl Elphinstone ("Rulers of India"series),
(1893); T. E. Colebrooke, Life of Mountstuart Elphinstone (1884);
and G. \V. Forrest, Official Writings of Mountstuart Elphinstone( 1 884) .
ELPHINSTONE, WILLIAM (1431-1514), Scottish statesman
and prelate, founder of the university of Aberdeen, was born
in Glasgow, and educated at the university of his native city,
taking the degree of M.A. in 1452. After practising for a short
time as a lawyer in the church courts, he was ordained priest,
becoming rector of St Michael's church, Trongate, Glasgow, in
1465. Four years later he went to continue his studies at the
university of Paris, where he became reader in canon law, and
then, proceeding to Orleans, became lecturer in the university
there. Before 1474 he had returned to Scotland, and was made
rector of the university, and official of the see of Glasgow.
Further promotion followed, but soon more important duties
were entrusted to Elphinstone, who was made bishop of Ross
in 1481. He was a member of the Scots parliament, and was
sent by King James III. on diplomatic errands to Louis XI.
of France, and to Edward IV. of England; in 1483 he was
appointed bishop of Aberdeen, although his consecration was
delayed for four years; and he was sent on missions to England,
both before and after the death of Richard III. in 1485. Although
he attended the meetings of parliament with great regularity
he did not neglect his episcopal duties, and the fabric of the
cathedral of Aberdeen owes much to his care. Early in 1488
the bishop was made lord high chancellor, but on the king's
death in the following June he vacated this office, and retired to
Aberdeen. As a diplomatist of repute, however, his services
were quickly required by the new king, James IV., in whose
interests be visited the kings of England and France, and the
German king, Maximilian I. Having been made keeper of the
privy seal in 1492, and having arranged a dispute between the
Scotch and the Dutch, the bishop's concluding years were mainly
spent in the foundation of the university of Aberdeen. The
papal bull for this purpose was obtained in 1494, and the royal
charter which made old Aberdeen the seat of a university is
dated 1498. A small endowment was provided by the king,
' and the university, modelled on that of Paris and intended
principally to be a school of law, soon became the most famous
and popular of the Scots seats of learning, a result which was
largely due to the wide experience and ripe wisdom of Elphinstone
and of his friend. Hector Boece, the first rector. The building
of the college of the Holy Virgin in Nativity, now King's College,
was completed in 1506, and the bishop also rebuilt the choir of
hit cathedral, and built a bridge over the Dee. Continuing to
participate in public affairs he opposed the policy of hostility
towards England which led to the disaster at Flodden in
September 1513, and died in Edinburgh on the 25th of October
1514. Elphinstone was partly responsible for the introduction
of printing into Scotland, and for the production of the Breviarium
Abrrdonrnsc. He may have written some of the lives in this
collection, and gathered together materials concerning the
history of Scotland; but he did not, as some have thought,
continue the Scottchronicon, nor did he write the Lives of Scottish
Saints.
See Hector Boccc, Murthlaeensium el Aberdonensium tpiscaparum
vitae, edited and translated by J. Moir (Aberdeen, 1894); Fasti
Aberdonenses, edited by C. Innes (Aberdeen, 1854); and A. Gardyne,
Theatre of Scottish Worthies and Lyf of W. Elphinston, edited bv
D. Laing (Aberdeen, 1878).
EL RENO, a city and the county-seat of Canadian county,
Oklahoma, U.S.A., on the N. fork of the Canadian river, about
26 m. W. of Oklahoma City. Pop. (1800) 285; (1900) 3383;
(1907) 5370 (401 were of negro descent and 7 were Indians);
(1910) 7872. It is served by the Chicago, Rock Island &
Pacific, the Choctaw, Oklahoma & Gulf (owned by the Chicago,
Rock Island & Pacific), and the St Louis, El Reno & Western
railways, the last extending from El Reno to Guthric. El Reno
lies on the rolling prairie lands, about 1360 ft. above the sea, in
an Indian corn, wheat, oats and cotton-producing and dairying
region, and has a large grain elevator, a cotton compress, and
various manufacturing establishments, among the products
being flour, canned goods and crockery. El Reno has a Carnegie
library, and within the city's limits is Bellamy's Lake (180 acres),
a favourite resort. Near the city is a Government boarding
school for the Indians of the Cheyenne and the Arapahoe Reserva-
tion. Fort Reno, a U.S. military post, was established near
El Reno in 1876, and in 1908 became a supply depot of the
quartermaster's department under the name of " Fort Reno
Remount Depot." The first settlement here, apart from the
fort, was made in the autumn of 1889; in 1892 El Reno received
a city charter.
ELSFLETH, a maritime town of Germany, in the grand-
duchy of Oldenburg, in a fertile district at the confluence of
the Hunte with the Weser, on the railway Hude-Nordenham.
Pop. 2000. It has an Evangelical church, a school of navigation,
a harbour and docks. It has considerable trade in corn and
timber and is one of the centres of the North Sea herring fishery.
ELSINORE (Dan. Hclsingdr), a seaport of Denmark in the
ami (county) of Frederiksborg, on the east coast of the island
of Zealand, 28 m. N. of Copenhagen by rail. Pop. (1001) 13,902.
It stands at the narrowest part of the Sound, opposite the
Swedish town of Hclsingborg, 3 m. distant. Communication
is maintained by means of a steam ferry. Its harbour admits
vessels of 20 ft. draught, and the roadstead affords excellent
anchorage. There are shipbuilding yards, with foundry, engineer-
ing shops, &c.; the chief export is agricultural produce; imports,
iron, coal, cereals and yarn. Helsingor received town-privileges
in 1425. In 1522 it was taken and burnt by Liibeck, but in
1 535 was retaken by Christian II. It is celebrated as the Elsinorc
of Shakespeare's tragedy of Hamlet, and was the birthplace
of Saxo Grammaticus, from whose history the story of Hamlet
is derived. A pile of rocks surrounded by trees is shown as the
grave of Hamlet, and Ophelia's brook is also pointed out, but
both are, of course, inventions. On a tongue of land east of the
town stands the castle of Kronbergor Kronenberg, a magnificent,
solid and venerable Gothic structure built by Frederick II.
towards the end of the i6th century, and extensively restored
by Christian IV. after a fire in 1637. It was taken by the Swedes
in 1658, but its possession was again given up to the Danes in
1660. From its turrets, one of which serves as a lighthouse,
there are fine views of the straits and of the neighbouring
countries. The Flag Battery is the " platform before the castle "
where the ghost appears in Hamlet. Within it the principal
object of interest is the apartment in which Matilda, queen of
Christian VII. and sister of George III. of England, was im-
prisoned before she was taken to Hanover. The chapel contains
fine wood-carving of the I7th century. North-west of the town
300
ELSSLER ELVAS
is Marienlyst, originally a royal chateau, but now a seaside
resort.
ELSSLER, FANNY (1810-1884), Austrian dancer, was born
in Vienna on the 23rd of June 1810. From her earliest years
she was trained for the ballet, and made her appearance at the
Karntner-Thor theatre in Vienna before she was seven. She
almost invariably danced with her sister Theresa, who was two
years her senior; and, after some years' experience together in
Vienna, the two went in 1827 to Naples. Their success there
to which Fanny contributed more largely than her sister, who
used to efface herself in order to heighten the effect of Fanny's
more brilliant powers led to an engagement in Berlin in 1830.
This was the beginning of a series of triumphs for Fanny's
personal beauty and skill in dancing. After captivating all
hearts in Berlin and Vienna, and inspiring the aged statesman
Friedrich von Gentz (q.v.) with a remarkable passion, she paid
a visit to London, where she received much kindness at the
hands of Mr and Mrs Grote, who practically adopted the little
girl who was born three months after the mother's arrival in
England. In September 1834 Fanny Elssler appeared at the
Opera in Paris, a step to which she looked forward with much
misgiving on account of Taglioni's supremacy on that stage.
The result, however, was another triumph for her, and the
temporary eclipse of Taglioni, who, although the finer artist
of the two, could not for the moment compete with the new-
comer's personal fascination. It was conspicuously in her
performance of the Spanish cachuca that Fanny Elssler outshone
all rivals. In 1840 she sailed with her sister for New York, and
after two years' unmixed success they returned to Europe,
where during the following five years Fanny appeared inGermany ,
Austria, France, England and Russia. In 1845, having amassed
a fortune, she retired from the stage and settled near Hamburg.
A few years later her sister Theresa contracted a morganatic
marriage with Prince Adalbert of Prussia, and was ennobled
under the title of Baroness von Barnim. Fanny Elssler died at
Vienna on the 2yth of November 1884. Theresa was left a
widow in 1873, and died on the igth of November 1878.
ELSTER,* the name of two rivers of Germany, (i) The
Schwarze (Black) Elster rises in the Lausitz range, on the
southern border of Saxony, flows N. andN.W., and after a course
of 112 m. enters the Elbe a little above Wittenberg. It is a
sluggish stream, winding its way through sandy soil and
frequently along a divided channel. (2) The Weisse (White)
Elster rises in the north-western corner of Bohemia, a little
north of Eger, cuts through the Vogtland in a deep and pictur-
esque valley, passing Plauen, Greiz, Gera and Zeitz on its way
north to Leipzig, just below which city it receives its most
important tributary, the Pleisse. At Leipzig it divides, the
main stream turning north-west and entering the Saale from
the right a little above Halle; the other arm, the Luppe,
flowing parallel to the main stream and south of it enters the
Saale below Merseburg. Total length, 121 m.; total descent,
i286ft.
ELSTER, a spa and inland atering-place of Germany, in
the kingdom of Saxony, on the Weisse Elster, close to the
Bohemian frontier on the railway Plauen-Eger, and 20 m. S.
of the former. It has some industries of lace-making and weaving,
and a population of about 2000, in addition to visitors. The
mineral springs, saline-chalybeate, specific in cases of nervous
disorders and feminine ailments, have been lately supplemented
by baths of various kinds, and these, together with the natural
attractions of the place as a climatic health resort, have com-
bined to make it a fashionable watering-place during the summer
season. The number of visitors amounts annually to about
10,000.
See Flechsig, Bad Elster (Leipzig, 1884).
ELSWICK, a ward of the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
England, in the western part of the borough, bordering the
river Tyne. The name is well known in connexion with the great
ordnance and naval works of Sir W. G. Armstrong, Mitchell & Co.
Ebwick Park, attached to the old mansion of the same name, is
now a public recreation ground.
EL TEB, a halting-place in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan near
the coast of the Red Sea, 9 m. S.W. of the port of Trinkitat
on the road to Tokar. At El Teb, on the 4th of February 1884,
a heterogeneous force under General Valentine Baker, marching
to the relief of the Egyptian garrison of Tokar, was completely
routed by the Mahdists (see EGYPT: Military Operations).
ELTON, CHARLES ISAAC (1839-1900), English lawyer and
antiquary, was born at Southampton on the 6th of December
1839. Educated at Cheltenham and Balliol College, Oxford, he
was elected a fellow of Queen's College in 1862. He was called
to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1865. His remarkable knowledge
of old real property law and custom helped him to an extensive
conveyancing practice and he took silk in 1885. He sat in the
House of Commons for West Somerset in 1884-1885 and from
1886 to 1892. In 1869 he succeeded to his uncle's property of
Whitestaunton, near Chard, in Somerset. During the later
years of his life he retired to a great extent from legal practice,
and devoted much of his time to literary work. He died at
Whitestaunton on the 23rd of April 1900. Elton's principal
works were The Tenures of Kent (1867); Treatise on Commons
and Waste Lands (1868); Law of Copyholds (1874); Origins
of English History (1882); Custom and Tenant Right (1882).
ELTVILLE (ELFELD), a town of Germany, in the Prussian
province of Hesse-Nassau, on the right bank of the Rhine,
5 m. S.W. from Wiesbaden, on the railway Frankfort-on-Main-
Cologne, and with a branch to Schlangenbad. Pop. 3700.
It has a Roman Catholic and a Protestant church, ruins of a
feudal castle, a Latin school, and a monument to Gutenberg.
It has a considerable trade in the wines of the district and two
manufactories of sparkling wines. Eltville (originally Adeldvilc,
Lat. Altavilla) is first mentioned in a record of the year 882.
It was given by the emperor Otto I. to the archbishops of Mainz,
who often resided here. It received town rights in 1331 and was
a place of importance during the middle ages. In 1465 Gutenberg
set up his press at Eltville, under the patronage of Archbishop
Adolphus of Nassau, shortly afterwards handing over its use
to the brothers Heinrich and Nikolaus Bechtermiinz. Several
costly early examples of printed books issued by this press
survive, the earliest being the Vocabularium Latino-Teutonicum,
first printed in 1467.
ELTZ, a small river of Germany, a left bank tributary of the
Mosel. It rises in the Eifel range, and, after a course of 5 m.,
joins the latter river at Moselkern. Just above its confluence
stands the romantic castle of Eltz, crowning a rocky summit
900 ft. high, and famous as being one of the best preserved
medieval strongholds of Germany. It is the ancestral seat of the
counts of Eltz and contains numerous antiquities.
See Roth, Geschichte der Herren und Grafen zu Eltz (2 vols., Mainz,
1889-1890).
ELVAS, an episcopal city and frontier fortress of Portugal,
in the district of Portalegre and formerly included in the province
of Alemtejo; 170 m. E. of Lisbon, and 10 m. W. of the Spanish
fortress of Badajoz, by the Madrid-Badajoz-Lisbon railway.
Pop. (1900) 13,981. Elvas is finely situated on a hill 5 m. N.W.
of the river Guadiana. It is defended by seven bastions and
the two forts of Santa Luzia and Nossa Senhora da Graca.
Its late Gothic cathedral, which has also many traces of Moorish
influence in its architecture, dates from the reign of Emmanuel I.
(1495-1521). A fine aqueduct, 4 m. long, supplies the city with
pure water; it was begun early in the isth century and com-
pleted in 1622. For some distance it includes four tiers of super-
imposed arches, with a total height of 120 ft. The surrounding
lowlands are very fertile, and Elvas is celebrated for its excellent
olives and plums, the last-named being exported, either fresh
or dried, in large quantities. Brandy is distilled and pottery '
manufactured in the city. The fortress of Campo Maior, 10 m.
N.E., is famous for its siege by the French and relief by the
British under Marshal Beresford in 1811 an exploit com-
memorated in a ballad by Sir Walter Scott.
Elvas is the Roman Alpesa or Hehas, the Moorish Balesh,
the Spanish Yelves. It was wrested from the Moors by Alphonso
VIII. of Castile in 1166; but was temporarily recaptured
ELVEY ELY
301
before its final occupation by the Portuguese in 1226. In 1570
it became an episcopal see. From it>4- until modern times it
was the chief frontier fortress S. of the Tagus; and it twice
withstood sieges by the Spanish, in 1658 and 1711. The From h
under Marshal Junot took it in March 1808, but evacuated it in
August, after the conclusion of the convention of Cintra (see
\si LAU WAR).
ELVEY. SIR GEORGE JOB (1816-1893), English organist and
composer, was born at Canterbury on the 37th of March 1816.
He was a chorister at Canterbury cathedral under Highmore
Skeats, the organist . Subsequently he became a pupil of his elder
brother. Stephen, and then studied at the Royal Academy of
k under Cipriani Potter and Dr Crotch. In 1834 he gained
the Gresham prize medal for his anthem, " Bow down thine ear,"
and in 1835 was appointed organist of St George's chapel,
Windsor, a post he filled for 47 years, retiring in 1882. He took
the degree of Mus. B. at Oxford in 1838, and in 1840 that of
Mus. D. Ant hems of his were commissioned for t he Three Choirs
Festivals of 1853 and 1857, and in 1871 he received the honour
of knighthood. He died at YVindlesham in Surrey on the gth of
December 1893. His works, which are nearly all for the Church,
include two oratorios, a great number of anthems and services,
and some pieces for the organ. A memoir of him, by his widow,
was published in 1894.
ELVIRA. SYNOD OP. an ecclesiastical synod held in Spain,
the date of which cannot be determined with exactness. The
solution of the question hinges upon the interpretation of the
canons, that is, upon whether they are to be taken as reflecting
a recent, or as pointing to an imminent, persecution. Thus
some argue for a date between 300 and 303, i.e. before the
Diocletian persecution; others for a date between 303 and 314,
after the persecution, but before the synod of Aries; still others
for a date between the synod of Aries and the council of Nicaea,
325. Mansi, Hardouin, Hefcle and Dale are in substantial
agreement upon 305 or 306, and this is probably the closest
approximation possible in the present state of the evidence.
The place of meeting, Elvira, was not far from the modern
Granada, if not, as Dale thinks, actually identical with it.
There the nineteen bishops and twenty-four presbyters, from
all parts of Spain, but chiefly from the south, assembled, probably
at the instigation of Hosius of Cordova, but under the presidency
of Felix of Accis, with a view to restoring order and discipline
in the church. The eighty-one canons which were adopted
reflect with considerable fulness the internal life and external
relations of the Spanish Church of the 4th century. The social
environment of Christians may be inferred from the canons
prohibiting marriage and other intercourse with Jews, pagans
and heretics, closing the offices of flamen and duumvir to
Christians, forbidding all contact with idolatry and likewise
participation in pagan festivals and public games. The state
of morals is mirrored in the canons denouncing prevalent vices.
The canons respecting the clergy exhibit the clergy as already
a special class with peculiar privileges, a more exacting moral
standard, heavier penalties for delinquency. The bishop has
acquired control of the sacraments, presbyters and deacons
acting only under his orders; the episcopate appears as a unit,
bishops being bound to respect one another's disciplinary decrees.
Worthy of special note are canon 33, enjoining celibacy upon all
clerics and all who minister at the altar (the most ancient canon
of celibacy); canon 36, forbidding pictures in churches; canon
38, permitting lay baptism under certain conditions; and canon
forbidding one bishop to restore a person excommunicated
by another.
See Marai ii. pp. 1-406; Hardouin i. pp. 247-258; Hefele (2nd
Ft I i i. pp. 148 tqq. (English translation', 'i. pp. 131 iqq.); Dale,
Tkt Synod of Etrira (London. 1882); and Hcnnecke, in Herzog-
Haock. RaileiuyUopaJie tjrd ed.), t.v. " Elvira," especially biblio-
.-., . ' (T. F.C.)
EL WAD. a town in the Algerian Sahara, 125 m. in a straight
line S.S.E. of Biskra, and 190 m. W. by S. of Gabes. Pop. (1006)
7586. El Wad is one of the most interesting places in Algeria.
It is surrounded by huge hollows containing noble palm groves;
and beyond these on every side stretches the limitless desert
with its great billows of sand, the encroachments of which on
the oasis are only held at bay by ceaseless toil. The town itself
consists of a mass of one-storeyed stone houses, each surmounted
t>y a little dome, clustering round the market-place with its
mosque and minaret. By an exception rare in Saharan settle-
ments, there are no defensive works save the fort containing the
jovernment offices, which the French have built on the south
side of the town. The inhabitants are of two distinct tribes,
one, the Aduan, of Berber stock, the other a branch of the
Sha'ambah Arabs. El Wad possesses a curious currency known
as flous, consisting of obsolete copper coins of Algerian and
Tunisian dynasties. Seven flous are regarded as equal to the
French five-centime piece.
El Wad oasis is one of a group known collectively as the Suf.
Five miles N.W. is Kuinine (pop. 3541) and 6 m. farther N.W.
Guemar (pop. 6885), an ancient fortified town noted for its
manufacture of carpets. Linen weaving is carried on extensively
in the Suf. Administratively El Wad is the capital of an annexe
to the territory of Tuggurt.
ELWOOD, a city of Madison county, Indiana, U.S.A., on
Duck Creek; about 38 m. N.E. of Indianapolis. Pop. (1880)
751; (1890) 2284; (1900) 12,950 (1386 foreign-born); (1910)
11,028. Elwood is served by the Lake Erie & Western and the
Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis railways, and by an
interurban electric line. Its rapid growth in population and as
a manufacturing centre was due largely to its situation in the
natural gas region; the failure of the gas supply in 1903 caused
a decrease in manufacturing, but the city gradually adjusted
itself to new conditions. It has large tin plate mills, iron and
steel foundries, saw and planing mills, wooden-ware and furniture
factories, bottling works and lamp-chimney factories, flour mills
and packing houses. In 1905 the value of the city's factory
product was $6,111,083; in 1900 it was $9,433,513; the glass
product was valued at $223,766 in 1905, and at $1,011,803 in
1900. There are extensive brick-yards in the vicinity, and the
surrounding agricultural country furnishes large supplies of
grain, live-stock, poultry and produce, for which Elwood is the
shipping centre. The site was first settled under the name ot
Quincy; the present name was adopted in 1869; and in 1891
Elwood received a city charter.
ELY, RICHARD THEODORE (1854- ), American econ-
omist, was born at Ripley, New York, on the I3th of April 1854.
Educated at Columbia and Heidelberg universities, he held the
professorship of economics at Johns Hopkins University from
1881 to 1892, and was subsequently professor of economics at
Wisconsin University. Professor Ely took an active part in
the formation of the American Economic Association, was
secretary from 1885 to 1892 and president from 1899 to 1901.
He published a useful Introduction to Political Economy (1889);
Outlines of Economics (1893); The Labour Movement in America
(1883); Problems of To-day (1888); Social Aspects of Christian-
ity (1889); Socialism and Social Reform (1894); Monopolies
and Trusts (1900), and Studies in the Evolution of Industrial
Society (1903).
ELY, a cathedral city and market-town, in the Newmarket
parliamentary division of Cambridgeshire, England, 16 m.
N.N.E. of Cambridge by the Great Eastern railway. Pop.
of urban district (1901) 7713. It stands on a considerable
eminence on the west (left) bank of the Ouse, in the Isle of Ely,
which rises above the surrounding fens. Thus its situation,
before the great drainage operations of the i7th century, was
practically insular. The magnificent cathedral, towering above
the town, is a landmark far over the wide surrounding level.
The soil in the vicinity is fertile and market -gardening is carried
on, fruit and vegetables (especially asparagus) being sent to the
London markets. The town has a considerable manufacture of
tobacco pipes and earthenware, and there are in the neighbour-
hood mills for the preparation of oil from flax, hemp and cole-
seed. Besides the cathedral Ely has in St Mary's church, lying
almost under the shadow of the greater building, a fine structure
ranging in style from Norman to Perpendicular, but in the main
Early English. The sessions house and corn exchange are the
302
ELY
principal public buildings. The grammar school, founded by
Henry VIII. in 1541, occupies (together with other buildings)
the room over the gateway of the monastery, known as the Porta,
and the chapel built by Prior John de Cranden (1321-1341) is
restored to use as a school chapel. A theological college was
founded in 1876 and opened in 1881.
The foundation of the present cathedral was laid by its first
Norman abbot, Simeon, in 1083. But the reputation of Ely
had been established long before Etheldreda (^Ethelthryth),
daughter of Anna, king of East Anglia, was married to Ecgfrith,
king of Northumbria, against her will, as she had vowed herself
wholly to a religious life. Her husband opposed himself to her
vow, but with the help of Wilfrid, archbishop of York, she took
the veil, and found refuge from her husband in the marsh-girt
Isle of Ely. Here she founded a religious house, in all probability
a mixed community, in 673, becoming its first abbess, and giving
the whole Isle of Ely to the foundation. In 870 the monastery
was destroyed by the Danes, as were also the neighbouring
foundations at Soham, Thorney, Crowland and Peterborough,
and it remained in ruins till 970, when ^Ethelwold, bishop of
Winchester, founded a new Benedictine monastery here. King
Edgar in 970 endowed the monks with the former possessions of
the convent and also granted them the secular causes of two
hundreds within and of five hundreds without the marshes, all
charges belonging to the king in secular disputes in all their lands
and every fourth penny of public revenue in the province of
Grantecestre. The wealth a.nd importance of Ely rose, and its
abbots held the post of chancellors of the king's court alternately
with the abbots of Glastonbury and of St Augustine's, Canter-
bury. But Ely again became a scene of contest in the desperate
final struggle against William the Conqueror of which Hereward
" the Wake " was the hero. Finally, in 1071, the monks agreed
to surrender the Isle of Ely to the king on condition of the
confirmation of all the possessions and privileges, held by them
in the time of Edward the Confessor. Abbot Simeon (1081-
1094), who now began the reconstruction of the church, was
related to William and brother to Walkelin, first Norman bishop
of Winchester. Under Abbot Richard (1100-1107) the transla-
tion from the Saxon church of the bodies of St Etheldreda and
of the two abbesses who had followed her, and their enshrine-
ment in the new edifice, took place; and it was due to the honour
in which the memory of the foundresses was held that Ely
maintained the position of dignity which it kept henceforth
until the dissolution of the monasteries. The feast of St Ethel-
dreda, or St Awdrey as she was generally called, was the occasion
every year for a large fair here, at which " trifling objects "
were sold to pilgrims by way of souvenirs; whence the word
" tawdrey," a contraction of St Awdrey. In 1109 the Isle of
Ely, most of Cambridgeshire, and the abbeys of Thorney and
Cetricht were separated from the diocese of Lincoln, and con-
verted into a new diocese, Ely being the seat of the bishopric,
and after the dissolution of the monasteries Henry VIII. con-
verted the conventual church into a cathedral (1541). The
diocese is extensive. It covers nearly the whole of Cambridge-
shire, Huntingdonshire and Bedfordshire, part of Suffolk, and
small portions of Essex, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Hertford-
shire and Buckinghamshire.
The cathedral is a cruciform structure, 537 ft. long and 190 ft.
across the great transepts (exterior measurements). A relic of
the Saxon foundation is preserved in the cross of St Osyth
(c. 670), and a pre-Norman window is kept in the triforium,
having been dug up near the cathedral. Of the work of the first
two Norman abbots all that remains is the early Norman lower
storey of the main transept. The foundations of Abbot Simeon's
apse were discovered below the present choir. The nave, which
is Norman throughout, is 208 ft. in length, 72 ft. 9 in. to the top
of the walls, and 77 ft. 3 in. broad, including the aisles. The
upper parts of the western tower and the transept were begun
by Bishop Geoffrey Ridel (d. 1189), and continued by his suc-
cessor William Longchamp, chancellor of England. The tower,
which is 215 ft. high, is surmounted by a Decorated octagon
with partly detached side turrets, and underwent alteration and
strengthening in the Perpendicular period. The north-western
transept wing is in ruins; it is not known when it fell. The
Galilee, or western porch, by which the cathedral is entered, is
the work of Bishop Eustace (d. 1215), and is a perfect example
of Early English style. In 1322 the Norman central tower,
erected by Abbot Simeon, fell. Alan of Walsingham, sacrist of
the church, designed its restoration in the form of the present
octagon, a beautiful and unique conception. Instead of the
ordinary four-arched central crossing, an octagon is formed at the
crossing, the arches of the nave aisles and choir aisles being set
obliquely. Both without and within, the octagon is the principal
feature in the unusual general appearance of the cathedral,
which gives it a peculiar eminence among English churches.
The octagon was completed in 1328, and upon the ribbed vaulting
of wood above it rose the lofty lantern, octagonal also, with its
angles set opposite those of the octagon below. The total height
of the structure is 170 ft. 7 in. Alan of Walsingham was further
employed by Bishop John of Hotham (d. 1337) as architect of
the Lady chapel, a beautiful example of Decorated work, which
served from 1 566 onward as a parish church. Of the seven bays
of the choir the four easternmost, as well as the two beyond
forming the retrochoir, were built by Bishop Hugh of Northwold
(d. 1254). The three western bays were destroyed by the fall
of the tower in 1321, and were rebuilt by Alan of Walsingham.
The earlier portion is a superb example of Early English work,
while the later is perhaps the best example of pure Decorated in
England. The wooden canopies of the choir stalls are Decorated
(1337) an d very elaborate. The Perpendicular style is repre-
sented by windows and certain other details, including supporting
arches to the western tower. There are also some splendid
chantry chapels and tombs in this style the chapels of Bishop
John Alcock (d. 1500) and Bishop Nicolas West (d. 1534), in
the north and south choir aisles respectively, are completely
covered with the most delicate ornamentation; while the tomb
of Bishop Richard Redman (d. 1 505) has a remarkably beautiful
canopy. Among earlier monuments the canopied tomb of
Bishop William de Luda (1290-1298) and the finely-carved effigy
of Bishop Northwold (1254) are notable. Between 1845 and
1884 the cathedral underwent restoration under the direction of
Sir Gilbert Scott. The work included the erection of the modern
reredos and choir-screen, both designed by Scott, and the painting
of the nave roof by Styleman le Strange (d. 1862), who was suc-
ceeded by Gambier Parry. Parry also richly ornamented the
octagon and lantern in the style of the I4th century.
Remains of the monastic buildings are fragmentary but
numerous. Mention has been made of the Ely " Porta " or
gateway (1396), which is occupied by the grammar school,
and of Prior John de Cranden's beautiful little Decorated chapel.
But many of the remains, the bulk of which are incorporated in
the deanery and canons' and other residences to the south of the
cathedral, are of much earlier date. Thus the fine early Norman
undercroft of the prior's hall is probably of the time of Abbot
Simeon. Another notable fragment is the transitional Norman
chancel of the infirmary chapel. The remnants of the cloisters
show a reconstruction in the isth century, but the prior's and
monks' doorways from the cloisters into the cathedral are highly
decorated late Norman. The bishop's palace to the west of the
cathedral has towers erected by Bishop Alcock at the close of the
1 5th centuiy. In the muniment room of the chapter is preserved,
among many ancient documents of great interest, the liber
Eliensis, a history of the monastery by the monk known as
Thomas of Ely (d. c. 1174), of which the first part, which extends
to the year 960, contains a life of St Etheldreda, while the second
is continued to the year 1107.
Ely, which according to Bede (Hist. eccl. iv. 19) derives its
name from the quantity of eels in the waters about it (A.S. eel,
eel,-ig, island), was a borough by prescription at least as early
as the reign of William the Conqueror. It owed its importance
entirely to the monastery, and for a long time the abbot and
afterwards the bishop had almost absolute power in the town.
The bailiff who governed the town was chosen by the bishop
until 1850, when a local board was appointed. Richard I.
ELYOT ELYSIUM
303
(ranted the bishop of Ely a fair there, and in 1319-1320 John of
llotham, a later bishop, nroivcii licence to hold a fair on the
vigil and day of Ascension and for twenty days following. The
markets are claimed by an undated charter by the bishop, who
also continues to hold the fairs. In 1295 Ely sent two members
to parliament, but has never been represented since.
See C. \V. Stulil. Ely CaOudral (London, 1897); Victoria County
liutory, CitmbriJtrikirf.
ELYOT. SIR THOMAS (c. 1490-1546). English diplomatist and
sihol.ir Hi.- f.aher. Sir Richard Elyot (d. 1512), who held con-
siderable estates in Wiltshire, was made (1503) serjcant-at-law
and attorney-general to the queen consort, and soon afterwards
was commissioned to act as justice of assize on the western
circuit, becoming in 1513 judge of common pleas. Thomas was
the son of his first marriage with Alice Fynderne, but neither the
date nor place of his birth is accurately known. Anthony a
1 claimed him as an jlumnus of St Mary Hall, Oxford, while
I' H. Cooper in the Athenae CantabrigitHses put in a claim for
Jesus College, Cambridge. Elyot himself says in the preface to
his Dutionary that he was educated under the paternal roof,
and was from the age of twelve his own tutor. He supplies, in
the introduction to his Castrll of Htlth, a list of the authors he
bad read in philosophy and medicine, adding that a " worshipful
physician " read to him Galen and some other authors. In 1511
he accompanied his father on the western circuit as clerk to the
assize, and he held this posjlion until 1528. In addition to his
father's lands in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire he inherited in 1523
the Cambridge estates of his cousin, Thomas Fynderne. His
title was disputed, but Wolscy decided in his favour, and also
made him clerk of the privy council. Elyot, in a letter addressed
to Thomas Cromwell, says that he never received the emoluments
of this office, while the barren honour of knighthood conferred
on him when he was displaced in 1 530 merely put him to further
expense. In that year he sat on the commission appointed to
inquire into the Cambridgeshire estates of his former patron,
Cardinal Wolsey. He married Margaret Barrow, who is described
(Stapleton, Vita Tkomae Mori, p. 59, ed. 1558) as a student in
the " school " of Sir Thomas More.
In 1531 he produced the Boke named the Governour, dedicated
to King Henry VIII. The work advanced him in the king's
favour, and in the close of the year he received instructions to
proceed to the court of the emperor Charles V. to induce him to
lake a more favourable view of Henry's projected divorce from
Catherine of Aragon. With this was combined another com-
mission, on which one of the king's agents, Stephen V'aughan,
was already engaged. He was, if possible, to apprehend William
Tyndalc. It is probable that Elyot was suspected, as Vaughan
certainly was, of lukewarmness in carrying out the king's wishes,
but this has not prevented his being much abused by Protestant
writers. As ambassador Elyot had been involved in ruinous
expense, and on his return he wrote to Thomas Cromwell,
begging to be excused from serving as sheriff of Cambridgeshire
and Huntingdonshire, on the score of his poverty. -The request
was not granted. He was one of the commissioners in the inquiry
instituted by Cromwell prior to the suppression of the monasteries,
but he did not obtain any share of the spoils. There is little
doubt that his known friendship for Thomas More militated
against his chances of success, for in a letter addressed to Crom-
well he admitted his friendship for More, but protested that he
rated higher his duty to the king. William Roper, in his Life of
More, says that Elyot was on a second embassy to Charles V.,
in the winter of 1535-1536, when he received at Naples the news
of More's execution. He had been kept in the dark by his own
government, but heard the news from the emperor. The story
of an earlier embassy to Rome (1532), mentioned by Burnct,
rests on a late endorsement of instructions dated from that year,
which cannot be regarded as authoritative. In 1542 he repre-
sented the borough of Cambridge in parliament. He had pur-
chased from Cromwell the manor of Carleton in Cambridgeshire,
where he died on the 26th of March 1546.
Sir Thomas Elyot received little reward for his services to the
Ute, but his scholarship and his books were held in high esteem
by his contemporaries. The Boke named the Governour was
printed by Thomas Berthelet (1531, 1534, 1536, 1544, &c.).
It is a treatise on moral philosophy, intended to direct the
education of those destined to fill high positions, and to inculcate
those moral principles which alone could fit them for the perform-
ance of their duties. The subject was a favourite one in the
i6th century, and the book, which contained many citations
from classical authors, was very popular. Elyot expressly
acknowledges his obligations to Erasmus's Instilutio Principis
Chrisliani; but he makes no reference to the De regno el regis
institutione of Francesco Patrizzi (d. 1494), bishop of Gaeta,
on which his work was undoubtedly modelled. As a prose writer,
Elyot enriched the English language with many new words.
In 1534 he published The Castell of Hellh, a popular treatise on
medicine, intended to place a scientific knowledge of the art
within the reach of those unacquainted with Greek. This work,
though scoffed at by the faculty, was appreciated by the general
public, and speedily went through many editions. His Latin
Dictionary, the earliest comprehensive dictionary of the language,
was completed in 1538. The copy of the first edition in the
British Museum contains an autograph letter from Elyot to
Thomas Cromwell, to whom it originally belonged. It was
edited and enlarged in 1548 by Thomas Cooper, bishop of
Winchester, who called it Bibliotheca Eliolae, and it formed
the basis in 1565 of Cooper's Thesaurus linguae Romanae et
Britannicac.
Elyot's translations include: The Doctrinal of Princes (1534),
Holy
Saynt Ciprian of the Mortalitie of Man ( 1 534) ; Rules of a Christian
Life (1534), from Pico della Mirandola; the Education or Bringing
up of Children (c. 1535), from Plutarch; and Howe one may take
Profile of his Enymes (1535), from the same author is generally
attributed to him. He also wrote: The Knowledge which maketh a
Wise Man and Pasquyll the Playne (1533) ; The Bankelle of Sapience
('534)> a collection of moral sayings; Preservative agaynste Delh
(1545), which contains many quotations from the Fathers; Defence
of Good Women (1545). His Image of Governance, compiled of the
Actes and Sentences notable of the most noble Emperor Alexander
Severus (1540) professed to be a translation from a Greek MS. of
the emperor's secretary Encolpius (or Eucolpius, as Elyot calls him),
which had been lent him by a gentleman of Naples, called Pudericus,
who asked to have it back before the translation was complete.
In these circumstances Elyot, as he asserts in his preface, supplied
the other maxims from different sources. He was violently assailed
by Humphrey Hody and later by William Wotton for putting forward
a pseudo-translation; but Mr H. H. S. Croft has discovered that
there was a Neapolitan gentleman at that time bearing the name
of Poderico, or, Latinized, Pudericus, with whom Elyot may well
have been acquainted. Roger Ascham mentions his De rebus
memorabilibus Angliae; and Webbe quotes a few lines of a lost
translation of the A rs poetica of Horace.
A learned edition of the Governour (2 vols., 1880), by H. H. S.
Croft, contains, besides copious notes, a valuable glossary of l6th
century English word:..
ELYRIA, a city and the county-seat of Lorain county, Ohio,
U.S.A., on the Black river, 8 m. from Lake Erie, and about
25 m. W.S.W. of Cleveland. Pop. (1890) 5611; (1900) 8791,
of whom 1397 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 14,825. It
is served by the Baltimore & Ohio, and the Lake Shore & Michigan
Southern railways. Elyria is about 720 ft. above sea-level,
and lies at the junction of the two forks of the Black river,
each of which falls about 50 ft. here, furnishing water-power.
Among the city's manufactures are oxide of tin and other
chemicals, iron and steel, leather goods, automobiles and bicycles,
electrical and telephone supplies, butted tubing, gas engines,
screws and bolts, silk, lace and hosiery. In 1005 the city's
factory products were valued at $2,933,450 140-2% more
than their value in 1000. Flagging, building-stones and
grindstones, taken from quarries in the vicinity (known as the
Berea Grit quarries), are shipped from Elyria in large quantities.
Elyria was founded about 1819 by Heman Ely, in whose honour
it was named; it was selected as the site for the county seat
in 1823, and was chartered as a city in 1892.
ELYSIUM, in Greek mythology, the Elysian fields, the abode
of the righteous after their removal from earth. In Homer
(Od. iv. 563) this region is a plain at the farthest end of the
earth on the banks of the river Oceanus, where the fair-haired
304
ELZE EMANATION
Rhadamanthys rules, and where the people are vexed by neither
snow nor storm, heat nor cold, the air being always tempered
by the zephyr wafted from the ocean. It is no dwelling of
the dead nor part of the lower world, but distinguished heroes
are translated thither without dying, to live a life of perfect
happiness. In Hesiod (W. and D. 166) the same description
is given of the Islands of the Blessed under the rule of Cronus,
which yield three harvests yearly. Here, according to Pindar,
Rhadamanthys sits by the side of his father Cronus and ad-
ministers judgment (Ol. ii. 61, Frag. 95). All who have suc-
cessfully gone through a triple probation on earth are admitted
to share these blessings. In later accounts (Aeneid, vi. 541)
Elysium was regarded as part of the underworld, the home of the
righteous dead adjudged worthy of it by the tribunal of Minos,
Rhadamanthys and Aeacus. Those who had lived evil lives
were thrust down into Tartarus, where they suffered endless
torments.
ELZE, KARL (1821-1889), German scholar and Shakespearian
critic, was born at Dessau on the 22nd of May 1821. Having
studied ( 1839-1 843) classical philology, and modern, but especially
English, literature at the university of Leipzig, he was a master
for a time in the Gymnasium (classical school) at Dessau, and
in 1875 was appointed extraordinary, and in 1876 ordinary,
professor of English philology at the university of Halle, in which
city he died on the 2ist of January 1889. Elze began his literary
career with the Englischer Liederschalz (1851), an anthology
of English lyrics, edited for a while a critical periodical Atlantis,
and in 1857 published an edition of Shakespeare's Hamlet with
critical notes. He also edited Chapman's Alphonsus (1867) and
wrote biographies of Walter Scott, Byron and Shakespeare;
Abhandlungenzu Shakespeare (English translation by D. Schmitz,
as Essays on Shakespeare, London, 1874), and the excellent
treatise, Notes on Elizabethan Dramatists with conjectural emenda-
tions of the text (3 vols., Halle, 1880-1886, new ed. 1889).
ELZEVIR, the name of a celebrated family of Dutch printers
belonging to the i7th century. The original name of the family
was Elsevier, or Elzevier, and their French editions mostly retain
this name; but in their Latin editions, which are the more
numerous, the name is spelt Elzeverius, which was gradually
corrupted in English into Elzevir as a generic term for their
books. The family originally came from Lou vain, and there
Louis, who first made the name Elzevir famous, was born in
1 540. He learned the business of a bookbinder, and having been
compelled in 1580, on account of his Protestantism and his
adherence to the cause of the insurgent provinces, to leave his
native country, he established himself as bookbinder and book-
seller in Leiden. His Eutropius, which appeared in 1592, was
long regarded as the earliest Elzevir, but the first is now known
to be Drusii Ebraicarum quaestionum ac responsionum libri duo,
which was produced in 1583. In all he published about 150
works. He died on the 4th of February 1617. Of his five sons,
Matthieu, Louis, Gilles, Joost and Bonaventure, who all adopted
their father's profession, Bonaventure, who was born in 1583,
is the most celebrated. He began business as a printer in 1608,
and in 1626 took into partnership Abraham, a son of Matthieu,
born at Leiden in 1592. Abraham died on the i4th of August
1652, and Bonaventure about a month afterwards. The fame
of the Elzevir editions rests chiefly on the works issued by this
firm. Their Greek and Hebrew impressions are considered
inferior to those of the Aldi and the Estiennes, but their small
editions in i2mo, i6mo and 24mo, for elegance of design, neat-
ness, clearness and regularity of type, and beauty of paper,
cannot be surpassed. Especially may be mentioned the two
editions of the New Testament in Greek ('H Kaivri diaO-ijKrj,
Novum Teslamenlum, &c.), published in 1624 and 1633, of which
the latter is the more beautiful and the more sought after;
the Psalterium Davidis, 1653; Virgilii opera, 1636; Terentii
comediae, 1635; but the works which gave their press its chief
celebrity are their collection of French authors on history and
politics in 24mo, known under the name of the Pelites
Ripubliqites, and their series of Latin, French and Italian classics
in small i2mo. Jean, son of Abraham, born in 1622, had since
1647 been in partnership with his father and uncle, and when
they died Daniel, son of Bonaventure, born in 1626, joined him.
Their partnership did not last more than two years, and after
its dissolution Jean carried on the business alone till his death
in 1661. In 1654 Daniel joined his cousin Louis (the third of
that name and son of the second Louis), who was born in 1604,
and had established a printing press at Amsterdam in 1638^
From 1655 to 1666 they published a series of Latin classics
in 8vo, cum notis variorum; Cicero in 410; the Etymologicon
linguae Latinae; and a magnificent Corpus juris civil is in
folio, 2 vols., 1663. Louis died in 1670, and Daniel in 1680.
Besides Bonaventure, another son of Matthieu, Isaac, born in
!593, established a printing press at Leiden, where he carried on
business from 1616 to 1625; but none of his editions attained
much fame. The last representatives of the Elzevir printers
were Peter, grandson of Joost, who from 1667 to 1675 was a
bookseller at Utrecht, and printed seven or eight volumes of
little consequence; and Abraham, son of the first Abraham,
who from 1681 to 1712 was university printer at Leiden.
Some of the Elzevir editions bear no other typographical mark
than simply the words A pud Elzeiierios, or Ex officina Elseveriana,
under the rubrique of the town. But the majority bear one of
their special devices, four of which are recognized as in common
use. Louis Elzevir, the founder of the family, usually adopted
the arms of the United Provinces, an eagle on a cippus holding
in its claws a sheaf of seven arrows, with the motto Concordia
res parvae crescunt. About 1620 the Leiden Elzevirs adopted
a new device, known as " the solitary," and consisting of an
elm tree, a fruitful vine and a man alone, with a motto Non
solus. They also used another device, a palm tree with the
motto, Assurgo pressa. The Elzevirs of Amsterdam used for
their principal device a figure of Minerva with owl, shield and
olive tree, and the motto, Ne extra oleas. The earliest produc-
tions of the Elzevir press are marked with an angel bearing a book
and a scythe, and various other devices occur at different times.
When the Elzevirs did not wish to put their name to their works
they generally marked them with a sphere, but of course the
mere fact that a work printed in the i7th century bears this
mark is no proof that -it is theirs. The total number of works
of all kinds which came from the presses of the Elzevirs is given
by Willems as 1608; there were also many forgeries.
See " Notice de la collection d'auteurs latins, franjais, et italiens,
imprimee de format petit en 12, par les Elsevier," in Brunei's Manuel
du libraire (Paris, 1820); A. de Reume, Recherches historiques,,
ginealogiques, et bibliographiques sur les Elsevier (Brussels, 1847);
Paul Dupont, Histoire de I'imprimcrie, in two vols. (Paris, 1854) ;
Pieters, Annales de Vimprimene Elsevirienne (2nd ed., Ghent, 1858) ;
Walther, Les Els everiennes de la bibliotheque imperiale de St-Peters-
bourg (St Petersburg, 1864); Alphonse Willems, Les Elzeviei
(Brussels, 1880), with a history of the Elzevir family and then
printing establishments, a chronological list and detailed description
of all words printed by them, their various typographical marks,
and a plate illustrating the types used by them; Kelchner, Catalogus
librorum officinae Elsevirianae (Paris, 1880); Frick, Die Elzevir schen
Republiken (Halle, 1892); Berghman, Etudes sur la bibliographie
Elzevirienne '(Stockholm, 1885), and Nouvelles etudes, &c. (ib.
1897).
EMANATION (Lat. emanatio, from e-, out, manare, to flow),
in philosophy and theology, the name of one of the three chief
theories of existence, i.e. of the relation between God and men
the One and the Many, the Universal and the Particular. This
theory has been propounded in many forms, but the central idea
is that the universe of individuals consists of the involuntary
" outpourings " of the ultimate divine essence. That essence
is not only all-inclusive, but absolutely perfect, while the
" emanated " individuals degenerate in proportion to the degree
of their distance from the essence. The existence of evil in
opposition to the perfect goodness of God, as thus explained,
need not be attributed to God's agency, inasmuch as the whole
emanation-process is governed by necessary as it were
mechanical laws, which may be compared to those of the
physical universe. The doctrine of emanation is thus to be
distinguished from the cosmogonic theory of Judaism and
Christianity, which explains human existence as due to a
single creative act of a moral agent. The God of Judaism and
EMANUEL I. OF PORTUGAL EMBALMING
305
Christianity is essentially a person in close personal relation to
his creatures; emanation is the denial of personality both for
God and for man. The emanation theory is to be contrasted, on
the other hand, with the theory of evolution. The two theories
are alike in so far as both recognize the existence of individuals
as due to a necessary process of differentiation and a scale of
existence. They differ, however, fundamentally in this respect,
that, whereas evolution regards the process as from the inde-
terminate lower towards the determinate higher, emanation
regards it as from the highest to the indefinitely lower.
There is considerable superficial similarity between evolution
and emanation, especially in their formal statements. The pro-
cess of evolution from the indeterminate to the determinate is
often expressed as a progress from the universal to the particular.
Thus the primordial matter assumed by the early Greek physicists
may be said to be the universal substance out of which particular
things arise. The doctrine of emanation also regards the world
as a process of part icularizat ion. Yet the resemblance is more
apparent than real. The universal is, as Herbert Spencer
remarked, a subjective idea, and the general forms, existing
ami* res, which play so prominent a part in Greek and medieval
philosophy, do not in the least correspond to the homogeneous
matter of the physical evolutionists. The one process is a logical
operation, the other a physical. The theory of emanation, which
had its source in certain moral and religious ideas, aims first of
all at explaining the origin of mental or spiritual existence as
an effluence from the divine and absolute spirit. In the next
place, it seeks to account for the general laws of the world, for
the universal forms of existence, as ideas which emanate from
the Deity. By some it was developed into a complete philosophy
of the world, in which matter itself is viewed as the lowest
emanation from the absolute. In this form it stands in sharp
antithesis to the doctrine of evolution, both because the former
views the world of particular things and events as essentially
unreal and illusory, and because the latter, so far as it goes,
looks on matter as eternal, and seeks to explain the general forms
of things as we perceive them by help of simpler assumptions.
In certain theories known as doctrines of emanation, only mental
existence is referred to the absolute source, while matter is
viewed as eternal and distinct from the divine nature. In this
form the doctrine of emanation approaches certain forms of the
evolution theory (see EVOLUTION).
The doctrine of emanation is correctly described as of oriental
origin. It appears in various forms in Indian philosophy, and
is the characteristically oriental element in syncretic systems like
Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. None the less it is easy to find
it in embryo in the speculations of the essentially European
philosophers of Greece. Plato, whose philosophy was strongly
opposed to the evolution theory, distinctly inclines to the emana-
tion idea in his doctrine that each particular thing is what it is
in virtue of a pre-existent idea, and that the particulars are the
lowest in the scale of existence, at the head of, or above, which
is the idea of the good. The view of Xenocrates is based on the
same ideas. Or again, we may compare the Stoic doctrine
of droppoieu (literally " emanations ") from the divine essence.
It is, however, only in the last eclectic period of Greek philosophy
that the emanation doctrine was definitely established in the
doctrines, e.i. Plotinus.
See especially articles EVOLUTION, NEOPLATONISM, GNOSTICISM.
EMANUEL I. [Portuguese Manoel] (1460-1521), fourteenth
king of Portugal, surnamed the Happy, knight of the Garter
and of the Golden Fleece, was the son of Duke Ferdinand of Vizeu
and of Beatrice of Beja, grandchildren of John I. of Portugal.
He was born at Alcochete on the 3rd of May 1469, or, according
to Barbosa Machado, on the ist of June. His early education
was directed by a Sicilian named Cataldo. In 1495 he became
king in succession to his cousin John II. In 1497 he married
Isabella, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, who had
previously been married to Alphonso, the heir of John II. She
died in the next year in giving birth to a son named Miguel,
who until his death two yean later was considered heir to the
entire Iberian Peninsula. Emanuel's next wife was Maria,
another daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, whom he married in
i soo. Two of their children, John and Henry, later became kings
of Portugal. Maria died in 1516, and in 1518 her niece Leonora,
a sister of the emperor Charles V., became Emanuel's third wife.
Emanuel's reign is noteworthy for the continuance of the Portu-
guese discoveries and the extension of their chain of trading-posts,
Vasco da Gama's opening an all-sea route to India, Cabral's
landing in Brazil, Corte-Real's voyage to Labrador, the explora-
tion of the Indian seas and the opening of commercial relations
with Persia and China, bringing Portugal international promin-
ence, colonial pre-eminence and a hitherto unparalleled degree
of national prosperity. His intense religious zeal variously
manifested itself in his persecutions of the Jews, whom at the
beginning of his reign he had been disposed to tolerate, his
strenuous endeavours to promote an international crusade
against the Turks, his eager missionary enterprise throughout
his new possessions, and his erection of twenty-six monasteries
and two cathedrals, including the stately monastic church of
the Jeronymos at Belem (see LISBON). His jealously despotic
character was accentuated by the enormous increase the Indies
furnished to his personal wealth, and exemplified in his assump-
tion of new titles and in a magnificent embassy to Pope Leo X.
He died at Lisbon on the i3th of December 1521.
The best authorities for the history of Emanuel's reign are the
contemporary 16th-century Chronica d'el Ret D. Manoel, by Damio
de Goes, and De rebus Emanuelis, by J. Osorio. El Rei D. Manoel,
by M. B. Hi. iiu ii (Lisbon, 1888), is a valuable but ill-arranged bio-
graphy. See also the OrdenafSes do S. R. D. Manoel (Coimbra
University Press, 1797). For further bibliography see Barbosa
Machado, BMiographica Lusitana, vol. iii. pp. 161-166.
EMBALMING (Gr. /3dXaa/w, balsam; Ger. Einbalsamiren;
Fr. embaumement) , the art of preparing dead bodies, chiefly by the
use of medicaments, in order to preserve them from putrefaction
and the attacks of insects. The ancient Egyptians carried the
art to great perfection, and embalmed not only human beings,
but cats, crocodiles, ichneumons, and other sacred animals.
It was at one time suggested that the origin of embalming in
Egypt was to be traced to a want of fuel for the purpose of crema-
tion, to the inadvisability or at some times impossibility of burial
in a soil annually disturbed by the inundation of the Nile, and to
the necessity, for sanitary reasons, of preventing the decom-
position of the bodies of the dead when placed in open sepulchres.
As, however, the corpses of the embalmed must have constituted
but a small proportion of the aggregate mass of animal matter
daily to be disposed of, the above explanation would in any case
be far from satisfactory; and there is no doubt (see MUMMY)
that embalming originated in the idea of preserving the body
for a future life. According to W. H. Prescott, it was a belief
in a resurrection of the body that led the ancient Peruvians to
preserve the air-dried corpses of their dead with so much solici-
tude (see Conquest of Peru, bk. i. chap. iii.). And J. C. Prichard
(Egyptian Mythology, p. 200) properly compared the Egyptian
practice with the views which rendered " the Greeks and Romans
so anxious to perform the usual rites of sepulture to their departed
warriors, namely, . . . that these solemnities expedited the
journey of the soul to the appointed region, where it was to re-
ceive judgment for its former deeds, and to have its future doom
fixed accordingly." It has been supposed by some that the
discovery of the preservation of bodies interred in saline soils
may have been the immediate origin of embalming in Egypt.
In that country certain classes of the community were specially
appointed for the practice of the art. Joseph, we are told in
Gen. 1. 2, " commanded his servants the physicians to embalm
his father."
Herodotus (ii. 86) gives an account of three of the methods of
embalming followed by the Egyptians. The most expensive of
these, which cost a talent of silver (243: 153.), was as follows.
The brains were in part removed through the nostrils by means
of a bent iron implement, and in part by the injection of drugs.
The intestines having been drawn out through an incision in
the left side, the abdomen was cleansed with palm-wine, and
filled with myrrh, cassia and other materials, and the opening
was sewed up. This done, the body was steeped seventy days
306
EMBANKMENT EMBASSY
in a solution of litron or natron. 1 Diodorus (i. 91) relates that
the cutter (irapcurx""^ 5 ) appointed to make the incision in the
flank for the removal of the intestines, as soon as he had performed
his office, was pursued with stones and curses by those about
him, it being held by the Egyptians a destestable thing to commit
any violence or inflict a wound on the body. After the steeping,
the body was washed, and handed over to the swathers, a
peculiar class of the lowest order of priests, called by Plutarch
cholchytae, by whom it was bandaged in gummed cloth; it was
then ready for the coffin. Mummies thus prepared were con-
sidered to represent Osiris. In another method of embalming,
costing twenty-two minae (about 90), the abdomen was injected
with "cedar-tree pitch" (KtSpia), which, as it would seem from
Pliny (Nat. Hist. xvi. 21), was the liquid distillate of the pitch-
pine. This is stated by Herodotus to have had a corrosive
and solvent action on the viscera. After injection the body
was steeped a certain number of days in natron; the contents
of the abdomen were allowed to escape; and the process was
then complete. The preparation of the bodies of the poorest
consisted simply in placing them in natron for seventy days,
after a previous rinsing of the abdomen with " syrmaea." The
material principally used in the costlier modes of embalming
appears to have been asphalt; wax was more rarely employed.
In some cases embalming seems to have been effected by im-
mersing the body in a bath of molten bitumen. Tanning also
was resorted to. Occasionally the viscera, after treatment,
were in part or wholly replaced in the body, together with wax
figures of the four genii of Amenti. More commonly they were
embalmed in a mixture of sand and asphalt, and buried in vases,
or canopi, placed near the mummy, the abdomen being filled
with chips and sawdust of cedar and a small quantity of natron.
In one jar were placed the stomach and large intestine; in
another, the small intestines; in a third, the lungs and heart;
in a fourth, the gall-bladder and liver. Porphyry (De abstinentia,
iv. 10) mentions a custom of enclosing the intestines in a box
and consigning them to the Nile, after a prayer uttered by
one of the embalmers, but his statement is regarded by Sir J. G.
Wilkinson as unworthy of belief. The body of Nero's wife
Poppaea, contrary to the usage of the Romans, was not burnt,
but as customary among other nations with the bodies of poten-
tates, was honoured with embalmment (see Tacitus, Ann. xvi. 6).
The body of Alexander the Great is said to have been embalmed
with honey (Statius, Silv. iii. 2. 117), and the same material
was used to preserve the corpse of Agesipolis I. during its con-
veyance to Sparta for burial. Herodotus states (iii. 24) that the
Ethiopians, in embalming, dried the body, rubbed it with
gypsum (or chalk), and, having painted it, placed it in a block
of some transparent substance. The Guanches, the aborigines
of the Canaries, employed a mode of embalming similar to that
of the Egyptians, filling the hollow caused by the removal of the
viscera with salt and an absorbent vegetable powder (see Bory
de Saint Vincent, Essais sur les lies Fortunees, 1803, p. 495).
Embalming was still in vogue among the Egyptians in the time
of St Augustine, who says that they termed mummies gabbarae
(Serm. 120, cap. 12).
In modern times numerous methods of embalming have been
practised. Dr Frederick Ruysch of Amsterdam (1665-1717) is
said to have utilized alcohol for this purpose. By William
Hunter essential oils, alcohol, cinnabar, camphor, saltpetre
and pitch or rosin were employed^ and the final desiccation of
the body was effected by means of roasted gypsum placed in its
coffin. J. P. Boudet (1778-1849) embalmed with tan, salt,
asphalt and Peruvian bark, camphor, cinnamon and other
aromatics and corrosive sublimate. The last-mentioned drug,
chloride and sulphate of zinc, acetate and sulphate of alumina,
and creosote and carbolic acid have all been recommended by
various modern embalmers.
See MUMMY;' Louis Penicher, Traile des embaumements (Paris,
1669); S. Blancard. Anatomia reformata, et de balsamatione nova
methodus (Lugd. Bat., 1695); Thomas Greenhill, The Art of Em-
1 Neutral carbonate of sodium, Na 2 CO 3 , found at the natron lakes
in the Libyan desert, and at El Hegs, in Upper Egypt.
balming (London, 1705); J. N. Marjolin, Manuel d 'anatomic (Paris,
1810); Pettigrew, History of Mummies (London, 1834); Gannal,
Traits d' embaumements (Paris, 1838; 2nd ed., 1841); Magnus,
Das Einbalsamiren der Leichen (Brunsw., 1839); Sucquet, Em-
baumement (Paris, 1872); Lessley, Embalming (Toledo, Ohio, 1884);
Myers, Textbook of Embalming (Springfield, Ohio, 1900); Rawlinson,
Herodotus, vol. ii. p. 141 ; G. Elliot Smith, A Contribution to the
Study of Mummification in Egypt (Cairo, 1906).
EMBANKMENT, in engineering, a mound of earth or stone,
usually narrow in comparison with its length, artificially raised
above the prevailing level of the ground. Embankments serve
for two main classes of purpose. On the one hand, they are used
to preserve the level of railways, canals and roads, in cases where
a valley or piece of low-lying ground has to be crossed. On the
other, they are employed to stop or limit the flow of water,
either constituting the retaining wells of reservoirs constructed
in connexion with water-supply schemes, or protecting low-lying
tracts of land from river floods or the encroachments of the sea.
The word embankment has thus come to be used for the mass of
material, faced and supported by a stone wall and protected by
a parapet, placed along the banks of a river where it passes
through a city, whether to guard against floods or to gain
additional space. Such is the Thames Embankment in London,
which carries a broad roadway, while under it runs the Under-
ground railway. In this sense an embankment is distinguished
from a quay, though the mechanical construction may be the
same, the latter word being confined to places where ships are
loaded and unloaded, thus differing from the French quai,
which is used both of embankments and quays, e.g. the Quais
along the Seine at Paris.
EMBARGO (a Spanish word meaning " stoppage "), in inter-
national law, the detention by a state of vessels within its ports
as a measure of public, as distinguished from private, utility.
In practice it serves as a mode of coercing a weaker state. In
the middle ages war, being regarded as a complete rupture
between belligerent states, operated as a suspension of all respect
for the person and property of private citizens; an article of
Magna Carta (1215) provided that "... if there shall be found
any such merchants in our land in the beginning of a war, they
shall be attached, without damage to their bodies or goods,
until it may be known unto us, or our Chief Justiciary, how our
merchants are treated who happen to be in the country which
is at war with us; and if ours be safe there, theirs shall be safe
in our lands " (art. 48).
Embargoes in anticipation of war have long since fallen into
disuse, and it is now customary on the outbreak of war for the
belligerents even to grant a respite to the enemy's trading
vessels to leave their ports at the outbreak of war, so that neither
ship nor cargo is any longer exposed to embargo. This has been
confirmed in one of the Hague Conventions of 1907 (convention
relative to the status of enemy merchant ships at the outbreak
of hostilities, Oct. 18, 1907), which provides that " when a
merchant ship belonging to one of the belligerent powers is at
the commencement of hostilities in an enemy port, it is desirable
that it should be allowed to depart freely, either immediately,
or after a reasonable number of days of grace, and to proceed,
after being furnished with a pass, direct to its port of destination,
or any other port indicated " (art. i). The next article of the
same convention limits the option apparently granted by the
use of the word " desirable," providing that " a merchant ship
unable, owing to circumstances of force majeure, to leave the
enemy port within the period contemplated (in the previous
article) , or which was not allowed to leave, cannot be confiscated.
The belligerent may only detain it, without compensation, but
subject to the obligation of restoring it after the war, or requisi-
tion it on payment of compensation " (art. 2). (T. BA.)
EMBASSY, the office of an ambassador, or, more generally,
the mission on which an ambassador of one power is sent to
another, or the body of official personages attached to such a
mission, whether temporary or permanent. Hence " embassy "
is often quite loosely used of any mission, diplomatic or other-
wise. The word is also used of the official residence of an
ambassador. " Embassy " was originally " ambassy," the form
EMBER DAYS EMBEZZLEMENT
307
used in the i;th century, but by the time of Johnson considered
quite obsolete. " Ambassy " is from the O. Fr. ambassfe,
derived through such forms as the Port, ambassada, Ital. atn-
friMfiaAj from a lost Med. Lat. ambjtlititii, ambactiarr, to go on
a mission. (See further AMBASSADOR, EXTERRITORIALITY and
DIPLOMACY.)
EMBER DAYS and EMBER WEEKS, the four seasons set
part by the Western Church for special prayer and fasting,
and the ordination of clergy, known in the medieval Church as
qmaJuor tempera, or jejunia quatuor temporum. The Ember
weeks are the complete weeks next following Holy Cross day
(September 14), St Lucy's day (December 13), the first Sunday
in Lent and Whitsun day. The Wednesdays, Fridays and
Saturdays of these weeks are the Ember days distinctively, the
following Sundays being the days of ordination. These dates
are given in the following memorial distich with a frank in-
difference to quantity and metre
" Vult Crux, Lucia, Cinis, Charismata dia
Quod det vota pia quarta sequens feria."
The word has been derived from the A.S. ymb-ren, a circuit or
revolution (from ymb, around, and rrnncn, to run); or by process
of agglutination and phonetic decay, exemplified by the Ger.
quatember, Dutch quatertemper and Dan. kvatember, from the
Lat. qualuor temporal. The occurrence of the Anglo-Saxon com-
pounds ymbrrn-lid, ymbrtn-vrucan, ymbrcn-feestan, ymbren-dagas
for Ember tide, weeks, fasts, days, favours the former derivation,
which is also confirmed by the use of the word imbrcn in the acts
of the council of .-Enham. A.D. looo, (" jejunia quatuor tempora
quae imbrcn vocant "). It corresponds also with Pope Leo the
Great's definition, " jejunia ccclcsiastica per totius anni circulum
distributa."
The observance of the Ember days is confined to the Western
Church, and had its origin as an ecclesiastical ordinance in Rome.
They were probably at first merely the fasts preparatory to the
three great festivals of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. A
fourth was subsequently added, for the sake of symmetry, to
make them correspond with the four seasons, and they became
known as the jejunium vernum, aestivum, autumnale and hicmale,
so that, to quote Pope Leo's words, " the law of abstinence
might apply to every season of the year." An earlier mention
of these fasts, as four in number the first known is in the
writings of Philastrius, bishop of Brescia, in the middle of the
4th century. He also connects them with the great Christian
festivals (De haeres. 119). In Leo's time, A.D. 440-461,
Wednesday, Friday and Saturday were already the days of
special observance. From Rome the Ember days gradually
spread through the whole of Western Christendom. Uniformity
of practice, however, was of somewhat slow growth. Neither
in Gaul nor Spain do they seem to have been generally recognized
much before the 8th century. Their introduction into Britain
appears to have been earlier, dating from Augustine, A.D. 597,
acting under the authority of Gregory the Great. The general
period of the four fasts being roughly fixed, the precise date
appears to have varied considerably, and in some cases to
have lost its connexion with the festivals altogether. The Ordo
Roman us fixes the spring fast in the first week of March (then
the first month); the summer fast in the second week of June;
the autumnal fast in the third week of September; and the winter
fast in the complete week next before Christmas eve. Other
regulations prevailed in different countries, until the incon-
veniences arising from the want of uniformity led to the rule
now observed being laid down under Pope Urban II. as the law
of the church, in the councils of Piacenza and Clermont, A.D. 1095.
The present rule which fixes the ordination of clergy in the
Ember weeks cannot be traced farther back than the time of
Pope Gelasius, A.D. 497-496. In the early ages of the church
ordinations took place at any season of the year whenever
necessity required. Gelasius is stated by ritual writers to have
been the first who limited them to these particular times, the
special solemnity of the season being in all probability the cause
of the selection. The rule once introduced commended itself
to the mind of the church, and its observance spread. We find
it laid down in the pontificate of Archbishop Ecgbert of York,
A.D. 732-766, and referred to as a canonical rule in a capitulary
of Charlemagne, and it was finally established as a law of the
church in the pontificate of Gregory VII., c. 1085.
AUTHORITIES. Muratori, Dissert, de jejun. quat. temp., c. vii.,
anecdot. torn. ii. p. 262; Hingham, Anliq. of the Christ. Church,
bk. iv. ch. vi. 6, bk. xxi. ch. ii. 5 >-7; Bintenn, Denkwurdirkeilen,
vol. v. part 2, pp. 133 ff. ; August!, llandbuch der chrisllich. Archaol.
vol. i. p. 465, iii. p. 486. (E. V.)
EMBEZZLEMENT (A.-Fr. embesilemenl ', from beselcr or
btsillier, to destroy), in English law, a peculiar form of theft,
which is distinguished from the ordinary crime in two points:
(1) It is committed by a person who is in the position of clerk
or servant to the owner of the property stolen; and (2) the
property when stolen is in the possession of such clerk or servant.
The definition of embezzlement as a special form of theft arose
out of the difficulties caused by the legal doctrine that to con-
stitute larceny the property must be taken out of the possession
of the owner. Servants and others were thus able to steal with
impunity goods entrusted to them by their masters. A statute
of Henry VIII. (1529) was passed to meet this case; and it
enacted that it should be felony in servants to convert to their
own use caskets, jewels, money, goods or chattels delivered
to them by their masters. " This act," says Sir J. F. Stephen
(General View of the Criminal Law of England), "assisted by
certain subtleties according to which the possession of the servant
was taken under particular circumstances to be the possession
of the master, so that the servant by converting the goods to his
own use took them out of his own possession qua servant (which
was his master's possession) and put them into his own possession
qua thief (which was a felony), was considered sufficient for
practical purposes for more than 200 years." In 1799 a clerk
who had converted to his own use a cheque paid across the
counter to him by a customer of his master was held to be not
guilty of felony; and in the same year an act was passed, which,
meeting the difficulty in such cases, enacted that if any clerk
or servant, or any person employed as clerk or servant, should,
by virtue of such employment, receive or take into his possession
any money, bonds, bills, &c., for or in the name or on account
of his employers, and should fraudulently embezzle the same,
every such offender should be deemed to have stolen the same.
The same definition is substantially repeated in a Consolidation
Act passed in 1827. Numberless difficulties of interpretation
arose under these acts, e.g. as to the meaning of " clerk or
servant," as to the difference between theft and embezzlement,
&c.
The law now in force, or the Larceny Act 1861, defines the
offence thus (section 68) : " Whosoever, being a clerk or servant,
or being employed for the purpose or in the capacity of a clerk
or servant, shall fraudulently embezzle any chattel, money or
valuable security which shall be delivered to or received or
taken into possession by him for or in the name or on the account
of his master or employer, or any part thereof, shall be deemed
to have feloniously stolen the same from his master or employer,
although such chattel, money or security was not received into
the possession of such master or employer otherwise than by
the actual possession of his clerk, servant or other person so
employed, and being convicted thereof shall be liable, at the
discretion of the court, to be kept in penal servitude for any time
not exceeding fourteen years, and not less than three years,"
or imprisonment with or without hard labour for not more than
two years. To constitute <he offence thus described three things
must concur: (i) The offender must be a clerk or servant;
(2) he must receive into his possession some chattel on behalf
of his master; and (3) he must fraudulently embezzle the same.
A clerk or servant has been defined to be a person bound either
by an express contract of service or by conduct implying such a
contract to obey the orders and submit to the control of his
master in the transaction of the business which it is his duty as
such clerk or servant to transact. (Stephen's Digest of the
Criminal Law, Art. 309.)
The Larceny Act 1901, amending sections 75 and 76 of the
Larceny Act 1861, also describes similar offences on the part of
3 o8
EMBLEM EMBOSSING
persons, not being clerks or servants, to which the name embezzle-
ment is not uncommonly applied. The act makes the offence
of fraudulently misappropriating property entrusted to a person
by another, or received by him on behalf of another a mis-
demeanour punishable by penal servitude for a term not
exceeding seven years, or to imprisonment, with or without
hard labour, for a term not exceeding two years. So also trustees
fraudulently disposing of trust property, and directors of com-
panies fraudulently appropriating the company's property or
keeping fraudulent accounts, or wilfully destroying books or
publishing fraudulent statements, are misdemeanants punish-
able in the same way.
In the United States the law of embezzlement is founded
mainly on the English statute passed in 1799, but the statutes
of most states are so framed that larceny includes embezzlement.
The latter is sometimes denominated statutory larceny. The
punishment varies in the different states, otherwise there is little
substantive difference in the laws of the two countries.
Statutes have been passed in some states providing that
one indicted for larceny may be convicted of embezzlement.
But it is doubtful whether such statutes are valid where the
constitution of the state provides that the accused must be
informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against him.
(See also LARCENY.)
EMBLEM (Gr. enfiXrina., something put in or inserted, from
f/i/SoXXew, to throw in), a word originally applied in Greek and
Latin (emblema) to a raised or inlaid ornament on vases and other
vessels, &c., and also to mosaic or tessellated work. It is in
English confined to a symbolical representation of some object,
particularly when used as a badge or heraldic device.
EMBLEMENTS (from O. Fr. emblavence de bled, i.e. corn
sprung up above ground), a term applied in English law to the
corn and other crops of the earth which are produced annually,
not spontaneously, but by labour and industry. Emblements
belong therefore to the class oifructus induslriales, or " industrial
growing crops " (Sale of Goods Act 1893, 62). They include
not only corn and grain of all kinds, but everything of an artificial
and annual profit that is produced by labour and manuring,
e.g. hemp, flax, hops, potatoes, artificial grasses like clover,
but not fruit growing on trees, which come under the general
rule quicquid planlatur solo, solo cedit. Emblements are included
within the definition of goods in s. 62 of the Sale of Goods Act
1893. Where an estate of uncertain duration terminates un-
expectedly by the death of the tenant, or some other event due
to no fault of his own, the law gives to the personal representative
the profits of crops of this nature as compensation for the tilling,
manuring and sowing of the land. If the estate, although of
uncertain duration, is determined by the tenant's own acts,
the right to emblements does not arise. The right to emble-
ments has become of no importance in England since 1851,
when it was provided by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1851 (s. i)
that any tenant at rack-rent, whose lease was determined by
the death or cesser of the estate, of a landlord entitled only for
his life, or for any other uncertain interest, shall, instead of
emblements, be entitled to hold the lands until the expiration
of the current year of his tenancy. The right to emblements still
exists, however, in favour of (a) a tenant not within the Landlord
and Tenant Act 1851, whose estate determines by an event
which could not be foreseen, (6) the executor, as against the heir
of the owner in fee of land in his own occupation, (c) an execution
creditor under a writ directing seizure of goods and chattels.
A person entitled to emblements may enter upon the lands after
the determination of the tenancy for the purpose of cutting
and carrying away the crops. Emblements are liable to distress
by the landlord for arrears of rent, or rent during the period of
holding on under the act of 1851 (the Distress for Rent Act 1737 ;
see Bullen on Distress, 4th ed., 1893).
The term " emblements " is unknown in Scots law, but the
heir or representative of a life-rent tenant, a liferenter of lands,
has an analogous right to reap the crop (on paying a proportion
of the rent) and a right to recompense for labour in tilling the
ground. The Landlord and Tenant Act 1851 (s. i) was in force
in Ireland till 1860, when it was replaced by the Land Act 1860,
which gave to the tenant an almost identical right to emblements
(s. 34).
In the United States the English common law of emblements has
been generally preserved. In North Carolina there has been
legislation on the lines of the English Landlord and Tenant Act
1851. In some states the tenant is entitled to compensation
also from the person succeeding to the possession.
Under the French Code Civil, the outgoing tenant is entitled to
convenient housing for the consumption of his fodder and for the
harvests remaining to be got in (art. 1777). The same rule is in
force in Belgium (Code Civil, art. 1777) ; and in Holland (Civil Code,
art. 1635) and Spain (art. 1578). Similar rights are secured to the
tenant under the German Civil Code (arts. 592 et seq.). French
law is in force in Mauritius. The common law of England and the
Landlord and Tenant Act 1851 (14 & 15 Viet., c. 25, s. i) are in
force in many of the British colonies acquired by settlement In
other colonies they have been recognized by statute (e.g. Victoria,
Landlord and Tenant Act 1890, No. 1108, ss. 45-48: Tasmania,
Landlord and Tenant Act 1874, 38 Viet. No. 12).
AUTHORITIES. English Law: Fawcett on the Law of Landlord
and Tenant (3rd ed., London, 1905); Foa, Landlord and Tenant
(4th ed., London, 1907). Scots Law: Bell's Principles (loth ed.,
Edinburgh, 1899). Irish Law: Noland and Kanes, Statutes relating
to the Law of Landlord and Tenant in Ireland (loth ed.), by Kelly
(Dublin, 1898). American Law: Stimson, American Statute Law
(Boston, 1886); Bouvier, Law Dictionary, ed. by Rawle (Boston
and London, 1897); Ruling Cases (London and Boston, 1894-1901),
tit. " Emblements " (American Notes). (A. W. R.)
EMBOSSING, the art of producing raised portions or patterns
on the surface of metal, leather, textile fabrics, cardboard, paper
and similar substances. Strictly speaking, the term is applicable
only to raised impressions produced by means of engraved dies
or plates brought forcibly to bear on the material to be embossed,
by various means, according to the nature of the substance
acted on. Thus raised patterns produced by carving, chiselling,
casting and chasing or hammering are excluded from the range
of embossed work. Embossing supplies a convenient and ex-
peditious medium for producing elegant ornamental effects in
many distinct industries; and especially in its relations to paper
and cardboard its applications are varied and important. Crests,
monograms, addresses, &c., are embossed on paper and envelopes
from dies set in small handscrew presses, a force or counter-die
being prepared in leather faced with a coating of gutta-percha.
The dies to be used for plain embossing are generally cut deeper
than those intended to be used with colours. Colour embossing
is done in two ways the first and ordinary kind that in which the
ink is applied to the raised portion of the design. The colour
in this case is spread on the die with a brush and the whole
surface is carefully cleaned, leaving only ink in the depressed
parts of the engraving. In the second variety called cameo
embossing the colour is applied to the flat parts of the design
by means of a small printing roller, and the letters or design in
relief is left uncoloured. In embossing large ornamental designs,
engraved plates or electrotypes therefrom are employed, the
force or counterpart being composed of mill-board faced with
gutta-percha. In working these, powerful screw-presses, in
principle like coining or medal-striking presses, are employed.
Embossing is also most extensively practised for ornamental
purposes in the art of bookbinding. The blocked ornaments on
cloth covers for books, and the blocking or imitation tooling on
the cheaper kinds of leather work, are effected by means of
powerful embossing or arming presses. (See BOOK-BINDING.)
For impressing embossed patterns on wall-papers, textiles of
various kinds, and felt, cylinders of copper, engraved with the
patterns to be raised, are employed, and these are mounted in
calender frames, in which they press against rollers having
a yielding surface, or so constructed that depressions in the
engraved cylinders fit into corresponding elevations in those
against which they press. The operations of embossing and
colour printing are also sometimes effected together in a modifica-
tion of the ordinary cylinder printing machine used in calico-
printing, in which it is only necessary to introduce suitably
engraved cylinders. For many purposes the embossing rollers
must be maintained at a high temperature while in operation;
and they are heated either by steam, by gas jets, or by the
EMBROIDERY
PLATE I.
FIG. 6. PANEL OF PETIT-POINT EMBROIDERY, WITH A REPRESENTATION OF
English work of the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
COURTLY FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE.
Scale: jth.
FIG. 7. PORTION OF THE " BAYEUX TAPESTRY," A BAND OF EMBROIDERY WITH THE STORY OF THE
NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. In the museum at Bayeux, nth century work. Scale: 1th.
OLf*.
PLATE II.
EMBROIDERY
FIG. 8. HANGING OF WOOLLEN CLOTH, EMBROIDERED WITH THE FIVE WISE AND THE FIVE FOOLISH VIRGINS,
German work, dated 1598. Scale: iVth.
FIG. 9. PORTION OF THE ORPHREY OF THE "SYON COPE," EMBROIDERED WITH SHIELDS OF ARMS.
The cope, formerly in the monastery of Syon near Isleworth, is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
English work of the I3th century. Scale:
FIG. io. PORTION OF A BAND OF LOOSE LINEN, EMBROIDERED IN WHITE THREAD WITH FIGURES AND ANIMALS.
German work of the later part of the Hth century. Scale: |ths.
EMBRACERY EMBROIDERY
309
introduction of red-hot irons within them. The stamped or
struck ornaments in sheet metal, used especially in connexion with
the brass and Britannia-metal trades, are obtained by a process
of embossing hard steel dies with forces or counterparts of soft
metal being used in their production. A kind of embossed
ornament is formed on the surface of soft wood by first compress-
ing and consequently sinking the
parts intended to be embossed, then
planing the whole surface level, after
which, when the wood is placed in
water, the previously depressed por-
tion swells up and rises to its original
level. Thus an embossed pattern
is produced which may be subse-
quently sharpened and finished by
the ordinary process of carving (see
i'n \SISG and REPOUSS).
EMBRACERY (from the O. Fr.
cmbraseour, an embracer, i.e. one who
excites or instigates, literally one who
sets on fire, from embraser, to kindle
a fire; " embrace," i.e. to hold or
clasp in the arms, is from O. Fr. cm-
bracer, Lat. in and bracckia, arms), in
law, the attempting to influence a
juryman corruptly to give his verdict
in favour of one side or the other in
a trial, by promise, persuasions, en-
treaties, money, entertainments and
the like. It is an offence both at
common law and by statute, and
punishable by fine and imprison-
ment. As a statutory offence it dates
back to 1360. The offence is complete,
whether any verdict has been given
or not, and whether the verdict is in
accordance with the weight of evidence or otherwise. The person
making the attempt, and any juryman who consents, are equally
punishable. The false verdict of a jury, whether occasioned
by embracery or otherwise, was formerly considered criminal,
and jurors were severely punished, being proceeded against
by writ of attaint (?..). The Juries Act of 1825, in abolishing
writs of attaint, made a special exemption as regards jurors
guilty of embracery ( 61). Prosecution for the offence has been
so extremely rare that when a case occurred in 1891 (R. v. Baker,
1 13, Cent. Crim. Ct. Sess. Pap. 374) it was stated that no pre-
cedent could be found for the indictment. The defendant was
fined 200, afterwards reduced to 100.
EMBRASURE, in architecture, the opening in a battlement
between the two raised solid portions or merlons, sometimes
called a crenelle (see BATTLEMENT, CRENELLE); also the splay
of a window.
EMBROIDERY (M.E. embrouderie, from O. Fr. cmbroder,
Mod. Fr. broder), the ornamentation of textile fabrics and other
materials with needlework. The beginnings of the art of em-
broidery probably date back to a very primitive stage in the
history of all peoples, since plain stitching must have been
one of the earliest attainments of mankind, and from that it is
but a short step to decorative needlework of some kind. The
discovery of needles among the relics of Swiss lake-dwellings
shows that their primitive inhabitants were at least acquainted
with the an of stitching.
In concerning ourselves solely with those periods of which ex-
amples survive, we must pass over a wide gap and begin with the
anciently-civilized land of Egypt. The sandy soil and dry climate
of that country have led to the preservation of woven stuffs and
embroideries of unique historic interest. The principal, and by
far the earliest , known pieces which have a bearing on the present
subject, found in 1003 in the tomb of Tethmosis (Thoutmosis,
or Tbothmes) IV. at Thebes, are now in the Cairo Museum.
There are three fragments, entirely of linen, inwrought with
patterns in blue, red, green and black (fig. i). A kind of tape>try
method is used, the patterns being wrought upon the warp
threads of the ground, instead of upon the finished web or woven
material. Such a process, generally supplemented, as in this
case, by a few stitches of fine needlework, was still in common
use at a far later time. The largest of the three fragments
at Cairo bears, in addition to rows of lotus flowers and papyrus
FIG. I. Fragment of a linen robe, found in the tomb of Tethmosis (Thothmes) IV. at Thebes,
and now in the Cairo Museum. The cartouche has the name of Amenophis (Amenhotep) II.
(c. isth century B.C.).
inflorescences, a cartouche containing the name of Amenophis
(Amenhotep) II. (c. isth century B.C.); another is inwrought
with the name of Tethmosis III. (c. i6th century B.C.). 1
No other embroidered stuffs which can be assigned to so early
a date have hitherto come to light in the Nile valley (nor indeed
elsewhere) , and the student who wishes to gain a fuller knowledge
of the textile patterns of the ancient Egyptians must be referred
to the wall-paintings and sculptured reliefs which have been
preserved in considerable numbers.
From the ancient civilizations of Babylon and Assyria no frag-
ments of embroidery, nor even of woven stuffs, have come down
to us. The fine series of wall-reliefs from Nineveh in the British
Museum give some idea of the geometrical and floral patterns
and diapers which adorned the robes of the ancient Assyrians.
The discovery of the ruins of the palace of Darius I. (521-
485 B.C.) at Susa in 1885 has thrown some light upon the textile
art of the ancient Persians. They evidently owed much to the
nations whom they had supplanted. The famous relief from this
palace (now in the Louvre) represents a procession of archers,
wearing long robes covered with small diaper patterns, perhaps
of embroidery.
The exact significance of the words used in the book of Exodus
in describing the robes of Aaron (ch. xxviii.) and the hangings
and ornaments of the Tabernacle (ch. xxvi.) cannot be deter-
mined, and the " broidered work " of the prophecy of Ezekiel
(ch. xxvii.) at a later time is also of uncertain meaning. It seems
likely that much of this ancient work was of the tapestry class,
such as we have found in the early fragments from Thebes.
The methods of the ancient Greek embroiderer, or"varie-
gator " (roiiuXrTT*) to whom woven garments were submitted
1 See H. Carter and P. E. Newberry, Cat. tin. des ant. fgypt. du
musfe du Caire (1904), pi. i. and xxviii. A remarkable piece of
Egyptian needlework, the funeral tent of Queen Isi em Kheb (XXIst
Dynasty), was discovered at Deir cl Bahri some years ago. It is
described as a mosaic of leatherwork pieces ofgazelle hide of several
colours, stitched together (see Villiers Stuart, The. Funeral Tent of an
Egyptian Queen, 1882).
310
EMBROIDERY
for enrichment, can only be conjectured. The peplos or woven
cloth made every fifth year to cover or shade the statue of
Athena in the Parthenon at Athens, and carried at the Pan-
athenaic festival, 1 was ornamented with the battles of the gods
and giants. The late Dr J. H. Middleton thought that very
possibly most of the elaborate work upon these peploi was done
by the needle. That true embroidery, in the modern sense
the decoration by means of the needle of a finished woven
material was practised among the ancient Greeks, has been
demonstrated by the finding of some textile fragments in graves
in the Crimea; these are now in the Hermitage at St Petersburg.
One of them, of purple woollen material, from a tomb assigned
to the 4th century B.C., is embroidered .in wools of different
colours with a man on horseback, honeysuckle ornament and
tendrils. Another woollen piece, attributed to the following
century, has a stem and arrow-head leaves worked in gold
thread. 2
In turning to ancient Rome, it is well first briefly to notice
Pliny's account of the craft (Nat. Hist, viii.), as recording the
views current in Rome at his time (ist century A.D.). After
relating that Homer mentions embroidered garments (piclas
vestes), he states that the Phrygians first used the needle for
embroidered robes, which were thence called Phrygionian
(Phrygioniae), and that Attalic garments were named from
Attalus II., king of Pergamum (150-138 B.C.), the inventor of
the art of embroidering in gold. He further relates that Babylon
gave the name to embroideries of divers colours, for the produc-
tion of which that city was famous. By the Romans the art
was designated as " painting with the needle " (acn pingere),
a term used by Virgil in speaking of the decoration of robes, by
Ovid (who describes it as an art taught by Minerva), and by
Roman writers generally when referring to embroidery. 3 It is
to be regretted that no examples have been discovered in the
neighbourhood of the Roman capital. For embroideries made
under Roman influence we must again look to Egypt. They
formed the decoration of garments 4 and mummy-wrappings
from the cemeteries in Upper and Middle Egypt, which have
been so extensively rifled of late years. Those of Roman type
date approximately from the first five centuries of the Christian
era. The earliest represent human figures, animals, birds,
geometrical and interlacing ornaments, vases, fruit, flowers and
foliage (especially the vine). They are generally done in purple
wool and undyed linen thread by the tapestry process employed
in Egypt at least fifteen centuries earlier, as we have seen;
most of the patterns have had the lines more clearly marked out
by the ordinary method of needlework. Towards the end of
this period a greater choice of colours is seen, and Christian
symbols appear. At this time examples worked entirely upon
the finished web are found (fig. 2). The transition is easy
from such work to the veritable " needle-paintings," representing
scenes from the gospels, produced in Egypt shortly after (fig. 3).
Such embroideries are evidently akin to those mentioned by
Bishop Asterius (330-410), who describes the garments worn by
effeminate Christians as painted like the walls of their houses. 5
From the time of Justinian (527-565) onwards for some
centuries, the art of Europe, embroidery with the rest, was
dominated by that of the Byzantine empire. To trace the pro-
gress of the highly conventionalized Byzantine style, becoming
more rigid and stereotyped as time passes, belongs to the general
history of art, and such a task cannot be attempted here.
Perhaps the most remarkable example of all which have survived
1 The procession at this festival is represented upon the frieze of
the Parthenon.
2 See Compte rendu de la Comm. Imp. Arch., 1878-1879 (St
Petersburg), pi. iii. and v.
* For an account of the conditions under which Greek and Roman
embroiderers worked, see Alan S. Cole, " Some Aspects of Ancient
and Modern Embroidery," Journal of the Society of Arts, vol. liii.,
1905, P.p. 958. 959-
Chiefly tunics with vertical bands (clavi) and medallions (Orbi-
culae), and an ample outer robe or cloak.
5 The Adoration of the Magi is represented upon the lower border
of the long robe worn by the empress Theodora (wife of Justinian)
in the mosaic in the church of S. Vitale at Ravenna.
to illustrate the work of the Byzantine embroiderers is the
blue silk robe known as the dalmatic of Charlemagne or of
Leo III., in the sacristy of St Peter's at Rome (fig. 4). According
FIG. 2. Embroidered panel from a linen garment, with a jewelled
cross and two birds within a wreath. Found in a cemetery at
Akhmim, Upper Egypt. Egypto-Roman work of the 4th or 5th
century A.D.
to the present consensus of opinion it belongs to a later time
than either of those dignitaries, dating most probably from
the 1 2th century. 6 In front is represented Christ enthroned
as Judge of the world, a youthful but majestic figure; on the
back is the Transfiguration. These, as well as the minor sub-
jects, are explained by Greek inscriptions. The wide influence
of Byzantine art gradually died out after the Latin sack of
FIG. 3. Embroidered panel from a linen garment, with a repre-
sentation of the Annunciation and the Salutation. Found in a
cemetery in Egypt. Coptic work of the 6th or 7th century A.D.
Constantinople in the year 1204, although the style lingered,
and lingers still, in certain localities, notably at Mount Athos.
Palermo in Sicily succeeded Byzantium as the capital of the
6 Writers have assigned different dates to this vestment :
Lady Alford, Needlework as Art (earlier than the I3th century);
F. Bock, Die Kleinodien (lath century); S. Boissere'e, Cber die
Kaiser-Dalmatica in der St Peterskirche zu Rom (I2th or first
half of I3th century) ; A. S. Cole, Cantor Lectures at Society of
Arts, 1905 (possibly of gth century); Lord Lindsay, Christian Art
(i2th or early I3th century); A. Venturi, Storia dell' arte (loth or
nth century); T. Braun, Liturg. Cewandung, p. 305 and note (late
I4th or early I5th century).
EMBROIDERY
in Europe, although its ascendancy was of brief duration.
I'mlcr the Norman kings of Sicily the style was strongly oriental,
cquent upon the earlier occupation of the island by the
Saracens, and upon the employment of Saracenic craftsmen
by the Normans. The magnificent red silk mantle at Vienna,
embroidered in gold thread with a date-palm and two lions
springing upon camels, and enriched with pearls and enamel
plaques, bears round the edge an Arabic inscription, recording
that it was made in the royal factory of the capital of Sicily
(Palermo) in the year 518 (-A.D. 1134). At that time Roger,
the first Norman king, was on the throne. Another of the
imperial coronation-robes a linen alb with gold embroidery
is also at Vienna.' An inscription in Latin and Arabic states
that it was made in the year uSi, under the reign of William
II. (Norman king of Sicily, 1166-1189).
From about that time distinct national styles began to develop
in different places. In tracing the progress of the embroiderer's
art during the middle ages we must rely mainly upon the many
Fie. A. Embroidered robe known as the " Dalmatic of Charle-
magne, or of Leo HI., preserved in the sacristy of St Peter's at
Rome. Byzantine work, probably of the izth century.
fine examples of ecclesiastical work which have been preserved.
The costumes of men and women, as well as curtains and hangings
and such articles of domestic use, were often richly adorned with
embroidery. These have mostly perished; while the careful
preservation and comparatively infrequent use of the vestments
and other objects devoted to the service of the church have
given us tangible evidence of the attainments of the medieval
embroiderer. Much of this work was produced in convents,
but old documents show that in monasteries also were to be
found men known for their skill in needlework. Other names,
both, of men and women, are recorded, showing that the craft
was by no means exclusively confined to monastic foundation .
Gilds of embroiderers existed far back in medieval times.
In England the craft has been a favourite employment for
many centuries, and persons of all ranks have occupied their
spare hours at needlework. Some embroidered fragments,
found in 1826-1827 in the tomb of St Cuthbert at Durham, and
now kept in the cathedral library, were worked, chiefly in gold
thread, by order of ,lfflzda, queen of Edward the Elder, for
Fridestan, bishop of Winchester, early in the toth century.
1 Both arc illustrated in F. Bock, Die Kleinodien.
In the later part of the following century the " Bayeux tapestry "
was produced a work of unique importance (Plate I. fig. 7).
It is a band of linen, more than 230 ft. long, embroidered in
coloured wools with the story of the Norman conquest of England.
(Sec BAYEUX TAPESTRY.)
Some fragments of metallic embroidery on silk, of the I2th
and i3th centuries, may be seen in the library of Worcestrr
cathedral. They were removed from the coflins of two bishops,
William de Blois (1218-1236) and Walter de Cantelupe (1236-
1266). A fragment of gold embroidery from the tomb of the
latter bishop is preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum at
South Kensington, and others are in the British Museum. In
the I3th century English embroidery was famous throughout
western Europe, and many embroidered objects are described
in inventories of that time as being de opere anglicano. During
that century, and the early part of the next, English work was
at its best. The most famous example is the " Syon cope " at
South Kensington, belonging to the latter half of the i.iih
century (see COPE, Plate I. fig. 2). It represents the coronation
of the Virgin, the Crucifixion, the archangel Michael transfixing
the dragon, the death and burial of the Virgin, d\ir Lord meeting
Mary Magdalene in the garden, the Apostles and the hierarchies
of angels. The broad orphrey is embroidered with a series of
heraldic shields (Plate II. fig. 9). Other embroideries of the
period are at Steeple Aston, Chesterfield (Col. Butler-Bowden),
Victoria and Albert and British museums, Rome (St John
Lateran), Bologna, Picnza, Anagni, Ascoli, St Bcrtrand de
Comminges, Lyons museum, Madrid (archaeological museum),
Toledo and Vich.
During the course of the I4th and i$th centuries embroideries
produced in England were not equal to the earlier work. To-
wards the end of the latter century, and until the dissolution
of the monasteries in the next, much ecclesiastical embroidery
of effective design was done, and many examples are still to be
seen in churches throughout the country. In the Tudor period
the costumes of the wealthy were often richly adorned with
needlework. The portraits of King Henry VIII., Queen Elizabeth
and their courtiers show how magnificent was the embroidery
used for such purposes. Many examples, especially of the latter
reign, worked with very effective and beautiful floral patterns,
have come down to these times. A kind of embroidery known
as " black work," done in black silk on linen, was popular during
the same reign. A tunic embroidered for Queen Elizabeth, with
devices copied from contemporary woodcuts, is an excellent
example of this work. It now belongs to the Viscount Falkland.
Another class of work, popular at the same time, was closely
worked in wools and silks on open-mesh material like canvas,
which was entirely covered by the embroidery. Figures in rich
costume were often introduced (Plate I. fig. 6). This method
was much practised in France, and the term applied to it in that
country, " an petit point," has become generally used. Through-
out the 1 7th and i8th centuries embroidery in England, though
sometimes lacking in good taste, maintained generally a high
standard, and that done to-day, based on the study of old
examples, need not fear comparison with any modern work.
During these three centuries bold floral patterns for hangings,
curtains and coverlets have been usual (Plate III. fig. 13), but
smaller works, such as samplers, covers of work-boxes, and
pictorial and landscape subjects (fig. 5), have been produced
in large numbers. In the i8th century gentlemen's coats and
waistcoats and ladies' dresses were extensively embroidered.
In France, embroidery, like all the arts practised by that
nation, has been characterized by much grace and beauty, and
many good specimens belonging to different periods are known.
The vestments associated with the name of St Thomas of Canter-
bury at Sens may be either of French or English work (izth
century). To the later part of the following century belongs a
band of embroidery, representing the coronation of the Virgin,
the Adoration of the Magi, the presentation in the Temple, and
other subjects beneath Gothic arches, preserved in the Hfitcl-
Dieu at Chateau Thierry. The mitre of Jean de Marigny,
archbishop of Rouen (1347-1351), in the museum at Evreux,
EMBROIDERY
embroidered with figures of St Peter and St Eloy, may be regarded
as representative of 14th-century work. An altar-frontal with
the Annunciation embroidered in silks and gold and silver upon
a blue silk damask ground, now in the museum at Lille, is a very
beautiful example of Franco-Flemish art in the second half of
the isth century. It was originally in the church at Noyelles-
lez-Seclin. An embroidery more characteristically French, and
belonging to the same century, is in the museum at Chartres.
It is a triptych, having in the middle a pieta, on the left wing St
John the Evangelist, and on the right St Catherine of Alexandria.
Each leaf has a canopy of architecture represented in perspective.
In the i6th century an effective style of embroidery was practised
in France; the pattern is generally a graceful combination of
floral and scroll forms, cut out of velvet, satin or silk, and
applied to a thick woollen cloth. Later work, chiefly of a floral
character, has served for the decoration of costumes, ecclesiastical
vestments, curtains and hangings, and the seats and backs of
chairs.
Under the rule of the dukes of Burgundy in the isth century
art in the southern provinces of the Netherlands prospered
7-^W^^^V^-
FlG. 5. Oval picture in silk embroidery: Fame scattering Flowers
over Shakespeare's Tomb. English work of the i8th century.
greatly, and able artists were found to meet the wishes of those
munificent rulers. The local schools of painting, which flourished
under their patronage, appear to have very considerably in-
fluenced the embroiderers' art. Great care and pains were given
to reproduce as accurately as possible the painted cartoon or
picture which served as the model. The heads are individualized,
and the folds of the draperies are laboriously worked out in
detail. The masonry of buildings, the veinings of marble, and
the architectural enrichments are often represented with careful
fidelity, and landscape backgrounds are shown in every detail.
As in the case of the tapestries of the Netherlands the finest
which the world has seen there can be no doubt that patrons
of art and donors, when requiring embroideries to be made,
secured the services of eminent painters for the designs. There
are many examples of such careful work. A set of vestments
known as the ornement de la Toison d'Or, now in the Hof-museum
at Vienna, is embroidered in the most minute manner with
sacred subjectsand figuresof saints and angels. The stiff disposal
of many of these figures, within flattened hexagons arranged in
zones, is not pleasing, but the needlework is most remarkable
for skill and carefulness. They are of isth-century work. A
cope belonging to the second half of that century was given to
the cathedral of Tournay by Guillaume Fillatre, abbot of St
Berlin at St Omer, and bishop of Tournay (d. 1473). It is now
in the museum there. Upon the orphreys and hood are repre-
sented the seven Works of Mercy. The body of the cope, of
plain red velvet, is powdered with stags' heads and martlets
(the heraldic bearings of the bishop) ; between the antlers of the
stags is worked in each case the initial letter of the bishop's name,
and the morse is embroidered with his arms. Some panels of
embroidery, once decorating an altar in the abbey of Grimbergen,
and now at Brussels, illustrate the best class of Flemish needle-
work in the i6th century. The scenes are taken from the Gospel:
the marriage at Cana, Christ in the house of the Pharisee, Christ
in the house of Zacchaeus, the Last Supper, and the supper at
Emmaus. In the museum at Bern there are some embroideries
of great historic and artistic interest, found in the tent of Charles
the Bold, duke of Burgundy, after his defeat at Granson in 1476.
They include some armorial panels and two tabards or heralds'
coats. A tabard of the following century, with the royal arms
of Spain in applied work, and most probably of Flemish origin,
is preserved in the archaeological museum at Ghent.
The later art of Holland was largely influenced by the Dutch
conquests in the East Indies at the end of the i6th century,
and the subsequent founding of the Dutch East India Company.
Embroideries were among the articles produced in the East
under Dutch influence for exportation to Holland.
Much embroidery for ecclesiastical purposes has been executed
in Belgium of late years. It follows medieval models, but is
lacking in the qualities which make those of so much importance
in the history of the art.
There is perhaps little worthy of special notice in Italy before
the beginning of the i4th century, but the embroideries produced
at that time show great skill and are very beautiful. The names
of two Florentine embroiderers of the i4th century both men
have come down to us, inscribed upon their handiwork. A fine
frontal for an altar, very delicately worked in gold and silver
and silks of many colours, is preserved in the archaeological
museum at Florence. The subject in the middle is the coronation
of the Virgin ; on either side is an arcade with figures of apostles
and saints. The embroiderer's name is worked under the central
subject: Jacobus Cambi de Floretia me fecit MCCCXXXVII1.
The other example is in the basilica at Manresa in Spain. It
also is an altar-frontal, worked in silk and gold upon an em-
broidered gold ground. There is a large central panel represent-
ing the Crucifixion, with nine scenes from the Gospel on each
side. The embroidered inscription is as follows: Geri Lapi
rachamatore me fecit in Florentia. It is of 14th-century work.
An embroidered orphrey in the Victoria and Albert Museum
belongs to the early part of the same century. It represents the
Annunciation, the coronation of the Virgin and figures of apostles
and saints beneath arches. In the spandrels are the orders of
angels with their names in Italian. In the best period of Italian
art successful painters did not disdain to design for embroidery.
Francesco Squarcione (1394-1474), the founder of the Paduan
school of painting, and master of Mantegna, is called in a
document of the year 1423 a tailor and embroiderer (sartor et
recamator). It is recorded that Antonio del Pollaiuolo painted
cartoons which were carried out in embroidery, 1 and Pierino del
Vaga, according to Vasari, did likewise. In the i6th and I7th
centuries large numbers of towels and linen covers were em-
broidered in red, green or brown silk with borders of floral
patterns, sometimes (especially in the southern provinces)
combined with figure subjects and bird and animal forms
(Plate IV. fig. 15). Another type of embroidery popular at the
same time, both in Italy and Spain, is known as appliqufi (or
applied) work. The pattern is cut out and applied to a bright-
coloured ground, frequently of velvet, as in the example illus-
trated (Plate III. fig. 14). The later embroidery of Sicily
follows that of the mainland. A remarkable coverlet, quilted
and padded with wool so as to throw the design into relief,
is shown to be of Sicilian origin by the inscriptions which it bears
1 Some embroideries from vestments, designed by Pollaiuolo, are
still preserved in the Museo dell' Opera del Duomo, Florence.
EMBROIDERY
PLATE III.
FIG. ii. SILK PANEL. EMBROIDERED WITH A
II \\GING LANTERN.
Chinese work of the i~th or l8th century. Scale: ith.
FIG. 13. PORTION" OF A BED-HANGING. EMBROIDERED
WITH FLOWERING TREES GROWING FROM MOUNDS.
English work of the later part of the iyth century. Scale:
FIG. 12. PORTION OF A LARGE HANGING, EM-
BROIDERED WITH FIGURES WITHIN MEDALLIONS,
AND INSCRIPTIONS.
From a church in Iceland, probably i;th century. Scale: ith.
IX (if.
FIG. 14. APPAREL FOR A DALMATIC OF GREEN VELVET,
EMBROIDERED WITH AN APPLIQUE PATTERN.
Italian work of the i6th century. Scale: ith.
PLATE IV.
EMBROIDERY
FIG. 15. PORTION OF THE BORDER OF A LINEN COVER, EMBROIDERED WITH A FIGURE OF ST CATHERINE
OF ALEXANDRIA AND KNEELING VOTARIES. Italian work of the i6th century. Scale: fths.
FIG. 16. LINEN BORDER, EMBROIDERED WITH DEBASED FIGURES, BIRDS AND ANIMALS AMID FLOWERS.
Cretan work, dated 1762. Scale: $ths.
EMBROIDERY
(Plate VI. fig. 18). It represents scenes from the story of
Tristan, agreeing in the main part with the notrlUi entitled " La
Tavola Rotunda o 1'istoria di Tristano." The quilt dates from
the end of the uth century. Many pattern-books for em-
broidery and lace were published in Italy in the i6th and i;ili
centuries. 1
In the greater part of the Spanish peninsula art was for many
centuries dominated by the Arabs, who overran the country in
the Sth century, and were not finally subdued until the end of the
ijth. Hispano- Moorish embroideries of the medieval period
usually have interlacing patterns combined with Arabic in-
scriptions. In the isth and i6th centuries Italian influence
becomes evident. Later the effects of the Spanish conquests
in Asia are seen. Eastern influence is, however, stronger in
the cax- of the Portuguese, who seized Goa, on the west coast
of the Indian peninsula, early in the i6th century, and during the
whole of that century held the monopoly of the eastern trade.
Many large embroideries were produced in the Indies, showing
eastern floral patterns mingled with representations of Euro-
peans, ships and coats of arms. Embroideries done in Portugal
in the i6th and i;th centuries strongly reflect the influence of
oriental patterns.
German embroidery of the I2th and ijth centuries adheres
closely to the traditions of Byzantine art. A peculiarity of much
medieval German work is a tendency to treat the draperies of
the figures as flat surfaces to be covered with diaper patterns,
snowing no folds. A cope from Hildesheim cathedral, now in
the Victoria and Albert Museum, is a typical illustration of such
work, dating from the end of the i jth century. It is embroidered
in silk upon linen with the martyrdom of apostles and saints.
Other specimens of embroidery in this manner may be seen at
Halberstadt. An altar-frontal from Rupertsburg (Bingen),
belonging to the earlier years of the ijth century, is now in the
Brussels museum. It is of purple silk, embroidered with Christ
in majesty and figures of saints. It was no doubt made in the
time of Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz (1201-1230), who is
represented upon it. A type of medieval German embroidery
is done in white linen thread on a loose linen ground a sort of
darning-work (Plate II. fig. 10). Earlier specimens of this
work are often diversified by using a variety of stitches tending
to form diaper patterns. The use of long scrolling bands with
inscriptions explaining the subjects represented is more usual in
German work than in that of any other country. In the 151)1
century much fine embroidery was produced in the neighbourhood
of Cologne. Later German work shows a preference for bold
floral patterns, sometimes mingled with heraldry; the larger
examples are often worked in wool on a woollen cloth ground
(Plate II. fig. 8). The embroidery of the northern nations
(Denmark, Scandinavia, Iceland) was later in development than
that of the southern peoples. Figure subjects evidently belonging
to as late a period as the i ;th century are still disposed in formal
rows of circles, and accompanied by primitive ornamental
forms (Plate III. fig. 12). A remarkable early embroidered
fabric covers the relics of St Knud (Canute, king of Denmark,
1080-1086) in his shrine in the church dedicated to him at
Odense. It is apparently contemporary work. The pattern
consists of displayed eagles within oval compartments, in blue
on a red ground.
In Greece and the islands of the eastern Mediterranean
embroidery has been much employed for the decoration of
costumes, portieres and bed-curtains. Large numbers have
been acquired in Crete (Plate IV. fig. 16), and patterns of a
distinctive character are also found in Rhodes, Cos, Patmos and
other islands. Some examples show traces of the influence of
the Venetian trading settlements in the archipelago in the i6th
and 1 7th centuries. Among the Turks a great development of
the arts followed upon the conquest of Asia Minor and the
Byzantine territory in Europe. Their embroideries show a
1 Other*, sometimes with the same illustrations, appeared in
France and Germany, and no doubt forwarded the general tendency
towards Italian models at the time. A few pattern-books were also
pOMMbed in England.
preference for floral forms chiefly roses, tulips, carnations and
hyacinths which are treated with great decorative skill.
The use of embroidery in Asia especially in India, China,
Turkestan and Persia dates back to very early times. The
conservatism of all these peoples renders the date of surviving
examples often difficult to establish, but the greater number
of such embroideries now to be seen in Europe arc certainly of
no great age.
India has produced vast quantities of embroideries of varying
excellence. The fine woollen shawls of Kashmir are widely
famed; their first production is sup|K>scd to date back to a
remote period. The somewhat gaudy effect of many Indian
embroideries is at times intensified by the addition of beetles'
wings, tinsel or fragments of looking-glass. China is the original
home of the silkworm, and the textile arts there reached an
advanced stage at a date long before that of any equally skilful
work in Europe. Embroideries worked there arc generally
in silk threads on a ground of the same material. Such work
is largely used for various articles of costume, and for coverlets,
screens, banners, chair-covers and table-hangings. The orna-
ments upon the robes especially are prescribed according to the
rank of the wearer. The designs include elaborate landscapes
with buildings and figures, dragons, birds, animals, symbolic
devices, and especially flowers (Plate III. fig. n). Dr Bushell
states that the stuff to be embroidered is first stretched upon a
frame, on pivots, and that pattern-books with woodcuts have
been published for the workers' guidance. A kind of embroidery
exported in large quantiiies from Canton to Europe rivals
painting in the variety and gradation of its colours, and in the
smoothness and regularity of its surface.
Embroidery in Japan resembles in many ways that of China,
the country which probably supplied its first models. As a
general rule, Japanese work is more pictorial and fanciful than
that of China, and the stitching is looser. It frequently happens
that the brush has been used to add to the variety of the
embroidered work, and in other cases the needle has been an
accessory upon a fabric already ornamented with printing or
painting. Japanese work is characterized generally by bold
and broad treatment, and especial skill is shown in the repre-
sentation of landscapes figures, rocks, waterfalls, animals,
birds, trees, flowers and clouds being each rendered by a few
lines. More elaborate are the large temple hangings, the
pattern being frequently thrown into relief, and completely
covering the ground material.
Embroidery in Persia has been used to a great extent for
the decoration of carpets, for prayer or for use at the bath
(Plate V. fig. 17). Robes, hangings, curtains, tablecovers and
portieres are also embroidered. A preference is shown for
floral patterns, but the Mahommedans of Persia had no scruples
about introducing the forms of men and animals the former
engaged in hawking or hunting, or feasting in gardens. Panels
embroidered with close diagonal bands of flowers were made
into loose trousers for women, now obsolete. The embroidered
shawls of Kerman are widely celebrated. Hangings and covers
of cloth patchwork have been embroidered in many parts of
Persia, more particularly at Resht and Ispahan.
In Turkestan, and especially at Bokhara, excellent embroideries
have been, and are, produced, some patterns being of a bold
floral type, and others conventionalized into hooked and serrated
outlines. The work is most usually in bright-coloured silks,
red predominating, on a linen material.
In North Africa the embroidery of Morocco and Algeria
deserves notice; the former inclines more to geometrical forms
and the latter to patterns of a floral character.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Lady Alford, Needlework as Art (London, 1886) ;
Mrs M. Barber, Some Drawings of Ancient Embroidery (ib., 1880);
P. Blanchet, Tissus antiques et du haul moyen-age (Paris, 1897);
F. Bock, Die Kleinodien des Heiligen Romischen Retches Deutscher
Nation (Vienna, 1864); M. Charles, Les Broderies et les dentellcs
(Paris, 1905); Mrs Christie, Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving
(London, 1906); A. S. Cole, C.B., " Some Aspects of Ancient and
Modern Embroidery " (Soc. of Arts Journal, liii., 1905, pp. 956-973);
R. Cox, L'Art de drearer tes tissus (Paris, Lyons, 1900) ; L. F. Day,
Art in Needlework (London, 1900); A. Dolby, Church Embroidery
3M-
EMBRUN EMBRYOLOGY
(ib., 1867), and Church Vestments (ib., 1868); M. Dreger, Kunst-
lensche Entwicklung der Weberei und Stickerei (Vienna, 1904);
Madame I. Errera, Collection de broderies anciennes (Brussels 1905)-
L. de Farcy, La Broderie (Paris, 1890); R. Forrer, Die Graber und
Textilfunde von Achmim-Panopolis (Strassburg, 1891); F. R Fowke
The Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1898) ; Rev. C. H. Hartshorne, On
English Medieval Embroidery (ib., 1848) ; M. B. Huish, Samplers and
Tapestry Embroideries (ib., 1900); A. F. Kendrick, English Em-
broidery (ib., 1905); English Embroidery executed prior to the Middle
of the i6th Century (Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition, 1905,
introduction by A. F. Kendrick); E. Lefebure, Embroideries and
Lace, translated by A. S. Cole, C.B. (London, 1888); F. Marshall,
Old English Embroidery (ib., 1894); E. M. Rogge, Moderne Kunst-
Nadclarbeiten (Amsterdam, 1905); South Kensington Museum,
Catalogue of Special Loan Exhibition of Decorative Art Needlework
(1874); W. G. P. Townshend, Embroidery (London, 1899). For
further examples of ecclesiastical embroidery see the articles
CHASUBLE, COPE, DALMATIC and MITRE. (A. F. K. ; A. S. C.)
EMBRUN, a town in the department of the Hautes Alpes in
S.E. France. It is built at a height of 2854 ft. on a plateau
that rises above the right bank of the Durance. It is 27^ m.
by rail from Briancon and 24 m. from Gap. Its ramparts were
demolished in 1884. In 1906 the communal pop. (including
the garrison) was 3752. Besides the Tour Brune (nth century)
and the old archiepiscopal palace, now occupied by government
offices, barracks, &c., the chief object of interest in Embrun is its
splendid cathedral church, which dates from the second half
of the 1 2th century. Above its side door, called the Real, there
existed till 1585 (when it was destroyed by the Huguenots) a
fresco, probably painted in the i3th century, representing the
Madonna: this was the object of a celebrated pilgrimage for
many centuries. Louis XI. habitually wore on his hat a leaden
image of this Madonna, for which he had a very great veneration,
since between 1440 and 1461, during the lifetime of his father,
he had been the dauphin, and as such ruler of this province.
Embrun was the Eburodunum or Ebrcdunum of the Romans,
and the chief town of the province of the Maritime Alps. The
episcopal see was founded in the 4th century, and became an
archbishopric about 800. In 1147 the archbishops obtained
from the emperor Conrad III. very extensive temporal rights,
and the rank of princes of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1 232 the
county of the Embrunais passed by marriage to the dauphins of
Viennois. In 1791 the archiepiscopal see was suppressed, the
region being then transferred to the diocese of Gap, so that the
once metropolitan cathedral church is now simply a parish church.
The town was sacked in 1585 by the Huguenots and in 1692 by
the duke of Savoy. Henri Arnaud (1641-1721), the Waldensian
pastor and general, was born at Embrun.
See A. Albert, Histoire du diocese d'Embrun (2 vols., Embrun,
1783) ; M. Fornier, Histoire generale des Alpes Marilimesou Cottiennes
el particutiere de leur metropolitaine Embrun (written 1626-1643),
published by the Abbe Paul Guillaume (3 vols., Paris and Gap,
1890-1891); A. Fabre, Recherckes historiques sur le pelerinage des
rois de France a N. D. d'Embrun (Grenoble, 1859); A. Sauret,
Essai historique sur la ville d'Embrun (Gap, 1860). (W. A. B. C.)
EMBRYOLOGY. The word embryo is derived from the Gr.
tufipvov, which signified the fruit of the womb before birth.
In its strict sense, therefore, embryology is the study of the
intrauterine young or embryo, and can only be pursued in those
animals in which the offspring are retained in the uterus of the
mother until they have acquired, or nearly acquired, the form
of the parent. As a matter of fact, however, the word has a
much wider application than would be gathered from its deriva-
tion. All animals above the Protozoa undergo at the beginning
of their existence rapid growth and considerable changes of
form and structure. During these changes, which constitute
the development of the animal, the young organism may be
incapable of leading a free life and obtaining its own food. In
such cases it is either contained in the body of the parent or it
is protruded and lies quiescent within the egg membranes;
or it may be capable of leading an independent life, possessing
in a functional condition all the organs necessary for the main-
tenance of its existence. In the former case the young organism
is called an embryo, 1 in the latter a larva. It might thus be
1 In the mammalia the word foetus is often employed in the
same signification as embryo; it is especially applied to the embryo
in the later stages of uterine development.
concluded that embryology would exclude the study of larvae,
in which the whole or the greater part of the development takes
place outside the parent and outside the egg. But this is not
the case; embryology includes not only 'a study of embryos
as just defined, but also a study of larvae. In this way the
scope of the subject is still further widened. As long as em-
bryology confines its attention to embryos, it is easy to fix its
limits, at any rate in the higher animals. The domain of em-
bryology ceases in the case of viviparous animals at birth, in
the case of oviparous animals at hatching; it ceases as soon as
the young form acquires the power of existing when separated
from the parent, or when removed from the protection of the egg
membranes. But as soon as post-embryonic developmental
changes are admitted within the scope of the subject, it becomes
on close consideration difficult to limit its range. It must include
all the developmental processes which take place as a result of
sexual reproduction. A man at birth, when he ceases to be an
embryo, has still many changes besides those of simple growth
to pass through. The same remark applies to a young frog
at the metamorphosis. A chick even, which can run about
and feed almost immediately after hatching, possesses a plumage
very different from that of the full-grown bird; a starfish at
the metamorphosis is in many of its features quite different
from the form with which we are familiar. It might be attempted
to meet this difficulty by limiting embryology to a study of all
those changes which occur in the organism before the attainment
of the adult state. But this merely shifts the difficulty to
another quarter, and makes it necessary to define what is meant
by the adult state. At first sight this may seem easy, and no
doubt it is not difficult when man and the higher animals alone
are in question, for in these the adult state may be defined
comparatively sharply as the stage of sexual maturity. After
that period, though changes in the organism still continue, they
are retrogressive changes, and as such might fairly be excluded
from any account of development, which clearly implies progres-
sion, not retrogression. But, as so often happens in the study
of organisms, formulae which apply quite satisfactorily to one
group require modifications when others are considered. Does
sexual maturity always mark the attainment of the adult state?
Is the Axolotl adult when it acquires its reproductive organs?
Can a larval Ctenophore, which acquires functional reproductive
glands and still possesses the power of passing into the form
ordinarily described as adult in that group, be considered to have
reached the end of its development? Or to take the case of
those animals, such as Amphioxus, Balanoglossus, and many
segmented worms in which important developmental processes
occur, e.g. formation of new gill slits, of gonadial sacs, or even of
whole segments of the body, long after the power of reproduction
has been acquired how is the attainment of the adult state
to be defined, for it is clear that in them the attainment of sexual
maturity does not correspond with the end of growth and
development? If, then, embryology is to be regarded as includ-
ing not only the study of embryos, but also that of larvae, i.e.
if it includes the study of the whole developmental history of
the individual and it is impossible to treat the subject rationally
unless it is so regarded it becomes exceeding difficult to fix
any definite limit to the period of life with which embryology
concerns itself. The beginning of this period can be fixed, but
not the end, unless it be the end of life itself, i.e. death. The
science of embryology, then, is the science of individual develop-
ment, and includes within its purview all those changes of form
and structure, whether embryonic, larval or post-larval, which
characterize the life of the individual. The beginning of this
period is precise and definite it is the completion of the fertiliza-
tion of the ovum, in which the life of the individual has its start.
The end, on the other hand, is vague and cannot be precisely
defined, unless it be death, in which case the period of life with
which embryology concerns itself is coincident with the life of
the individual. To use the words of Huxley (" Cell Theory,"
Collected Works, vol. i. p. 267): " Development, therefore, and
life are, strictly speaking, one thing, though we are accustomed
to limit the former to the progressive half of life merely, and to
EMBROIDERY
PLATE V.
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PLATE VI.
EMBROIDERY
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FIG. 18. PART OF A SICILIAN COVERLET, OF THE END OF THE
CENTURY.
It is of white linen, quilted and padded in wool so as to throw the design into relief. The scenes represented, taken from the
Story of Tristan, with inscriptions in the Sicilian dialect, are as follows: (i) COMU : Lu AMOROLDU FA BANDIRI: Lu OSTI: IN
CORNUUALGIA (How the Morold made the host to go to Cornwall) ; (2) COMU: LuRRE: LANGUIS: CUMANDA: CHI UAIA: LoOsri:
CORNUAGLIA (How King Languis ordered that the host should go to Cornwall; (3) COMU: Lu RRE: LANGUIS: MANDA: PER Lu
TRABUTU IN CORNUALIA (How King Languis sent to Cornwall for the tribute); (4) COMU: (li m) ISSAGIERI: so UINNTI: AL RRE:
MARCU: PER Lu TRIBUTU Di SECTI ANNI (How the ambassadors are come to King Mark for the tribute of seven years); (5)
COMU: Lu AMOROLDU UAI: IN CORNUUALGIA (How the Morold comes to Cornwall); (6) COMU: Lu AMOROLDU: FA SULDARI:
LA GENTI (How the Morold made the people pay): ^7) COMU: T(RISTAINU): DAI: Lu GUANTU ALLU AMOROLDU DELA
BACTAGLIA (How Tristan gives the glove of battle to the Morold); (8) COMU: Lu AMOROLDU: E UINUTU: IN CORNUUALGIA:
CUM XXXX GALEI: (How the Morold is come to Cornwall with forty galleys); (9) COMU TRISTAINU BUCTA: LA UARCA: ARRETU:
INTU: ALLU MARU (How Tristan struck his boat behind him into the sea); (10) COMU: TRISTAINU: ASPECTA: Lu AMOROLDU:
ALLA ISOLA Di Lu MARU: SANSA UINTURA (How Tristan a\vaits the Morold on the isle Sanza Ventura in the sea); (11) COMU:
TRISTAINU FERIU Lu AMOROLLDU IN TESTA (How Tristan wounded the Morold in the head); (12) COMU: Lu INNA (?) DELU
AMOROLDU: ASPECTTAUA Lu PATRUNU (How the Morold's page (?) awaited his master); (13) COMU Lu AMORODU FERIU: TRISTAINU
A TRADIMANTU (How the Morold wounded Tristan by treachery); (14) . . . SITA: IN AIRLANDIA ( ... in Ireland).
REPRODUCTION]
EMBRYOLOGY
3'5
speak of the retrogressive half as decay, considering an imaginary
resting-point between the two as the adult or perfect state."
There are two kinds of reproduction, the sexual and the
asexual. The sexual method has for its results an increase of
t he number of kinds of individual or organism, whereas
the asexual affords an increase in the number of
individuals of the same kind. If the asexual method
of reproduction alone existed, there would, so far as our know-
ledge at present extends, be no increase in the number of
kinds of organism: no new individuality could arise. The first
establishment of a new kind of individual by the sexual process
is effected in a very similar manner in all Metazoa. The parent
produces by a process of unequal fission, which takes place at a
part of the body called the reproductive gland, a small living
organism called the reproductive cell. There are always two
kinds of reproductive cells, and these are generally produced by
different animals called the male and female respectively (when
they are produced by the same animal it is said to be herma-
phrodite). The reproductive cell produced by the male is called
the spermatozoon, and that produced by the female, the ovum.
These two organisms agree in being small uninucleated masses
of protoplasm, but differ considerably in form. They are without
the organs of nutrition, &c., which characterize their parents,
but the ovum nearly always possesses, stored up within its
protoplasm, a greater or less quantity of vitelline matter or
food-yolk, while the spermatozoon possesses in almost all cases
the power of locomotion. The object with which these two
minute and simple organisms are produced is to fuse with one
another And give rise to one resultant uninucleated (for the
nuclei fuse) organism or cell, which is called the zygole. This
process of fusion between the two kinds of reproductive cells,
which are termed gametes, is called conjugation: it is the process
which is sometimes spoken of as the fertilization of the ovum,
and its result is the establishment of a new individual. This
new individual at first is simply a uninucleated mass of living
matter, which always contains a certain amount of food-yolk,
and is generally bounded by a delicate cuticular membrane
called the vitelline membrane. In form the newly established
zygotc resembles the female gamete or ovum so much so,
indeed, that it is frequently called the ovum; but it must be
clearly understood that although the bulk of its matter has been
derived from the ovum, it consists of ovum and spermatozoon,
and, as shown by its subsequent behaviour, the spermatozoon
has quite as much to do with determining its vital properties
as the ovum.
To the unaided eye the main difference between the newly formed
lygotes of different species of animals is that of bulk, and this is
due to the amount of food-yolk held in suspension in the proto-
plasm. The ovum of the fowl is 30 mm. in diameter, that of the
\rat 1-75 mm., while the ova of the rabbit and Amphioxus have
a diameter of -I mm. The food-yolk is deposited in the ovum as a
result of the vital activity of its protoplasm, whije the ovum is
still a part of the ovary of the parent. It is an inert substance
hich is used as food later on by the developing embryo, and it
acts as a dilutant of the living matter of the ovum. It has a
profound influence on the subsequent developmental process. The
newly formed zygotes of different species of animals have un-
doubtedly, as staied above, a certain family resemblance to one
another; but however great this superficial resemblance may be,
the differences must be most profound, and this fact becomes at
once obvious when the properties of these remarkable masses of
matter are closely investigated.
As in the case of so many other forms of matter, the more
important properties of the zygote do not become apparent
until it is submitted to the action of external forces.
2**J"' These forces constitute the external conditions of
iifc existence, and the properties which are called forth
by their action are called the acquired characters of
the organism. The investigation of these properties, particularly
of those which are called forth in the early stages of the process,
constitutes the science of Embryology. With regard to the
manifestation of these properties, certain points must be clearly
understood at the outset: (t) If the zygote is withheld from the
appropriate external influences, e.g. if a plant-seed be kept in
a box free from moisture or at a low temperature, no properties
are evolved, and the zygote remains apparently unchanged;
(2) the acquisition of the properties which constitutes the growth
and development of the organism proceeds in ;i porlVi tly definite
sequence, which, so far as is known, cannot be altered; (3) just
as the features of the growing organism change under the con-
tinued action of the external conditions, so the external conditions
themselves must change as the organism is progressively evolved.
With regard to this last change, it may be said generally that it is
usually, if not always, effected by the organism itself, making
use of the properties which it has acquired at earlier stages of its
growth, and acting in response to the external conditions. There
is, to use a phrase of Mr Herbert Spencer, a continuous adjust-
ment between the external and internal relations. For every
organism a certain succession of conditions is necessary if the
complete and normal evolution of properties is to take place.
Within certain limits, these conditions may vary without inter-
fering with the normal evolution of the properties, though such
variations are generally responded to by slight but unimportant
variation of the properties (variation of acquired characters).
But if the variation of the conditions is too great, the evolved
properties become abnormal, and are of such a nature as to
preclude the normal evolution of the organism; in other words,
the action of the conditions upon the organism is injurious,
causing abortions and, ultimately, death. For many organisms
the conditions of existence are well known for all stages of life,
and can be easily imitated, so that they can be reared artificially
and kept alive and made to breed in confinement e.g. the
common fowl. But in a large number of cases it is not possible,
through ignorance of the proper conditions, or on account of
the difficulty of imitating them, to make the organism evolve
all its properties. For instance, there are many marine larvae
which have never been reared beyond a certain point, and there
are some organisms which, even when nearly full-grown a
stage of life at which it is generally most easy to ascertain and
imitate the natural conditions will not live, or at any rate
will not breed, in captivity. Of late years some naturalists
have largely occupied themselves with experimental observation
of the effects on certain organisms of marked and definite changes
of the conditions, and the name of Developmental Mechanics
(or Physiology of Development) has been applied to this branch
of study (see below).
In normal fertilization, as a rule, only one spermatozoon fuses with
the ovum. It has been observed in some eggs that a membrane,
formed round the ovum immediately after the entrance n, m eto-
of the spermatozoon, prevents the entrance of others. If
more than one spermatozoon enters, a corresponding vv '
number of male pronuclei are formed, and the subsequent develop-
ment, if it takes place at all, is abnormal and soon ceases. An
egg by ill-treatment (influence of chloroform, carbonic acid, &c.)
can be made to take more than one spermatozoon. In some animals
it appears that several spermatozoa may normally enter the ovum
(some Arthropoda, Selachians, Amphibians and Mammals), but
of these only one forms a male pronucleus (see below), the rest
being absorbed. Gametogeny is the name applied to the formation
of the gametes, i.e. of the ova and spermatozoa. The cells of the
reproductive glands are the germ cells (oogonia, spcrmatogonia) .
They undergo division and give rise to the progamctes, which in the
case of the female arc sometimes called oocytes, in the case of the
male spermatocytes. The oocytes are more familiarly called the
ovarian ova. The nucleus of the oocyte is called the germinal
vesicle. The oocyte (progamete) gives rise by division to the ovum
or true gamete, the nucleus of which is called the female pronucleus.
As a general rule the oocyte divides unequally twice, giving rise to
two small cells called polar bodies, and to the ovum. The first
formed polar body frequently divides when the oocyte undergoes
its second and final division, so that there are three polar bodies
as well as the ovum resulting from the division of the oocyte or
progamete. Sometimes the ovum arises from the oocyte by one
division only, and there is only one polar body (e.g. mouse, Sobotta,
Arch. f. mikr. Anat., 1895, P- 15)- The polar bodies are oval, but
as a rule they are so small as to be incapable of fertilization. They
may therefore be regarded as abortive ova. In one case, however
(see Francotte, Buff. Acad. Belg. (3), xxxiii., 1897, p. 278), the
first formed polar body is nearly as large as the ovum, and is some-
times fertilized and develops. The spermatogonia are the cells of
the tcstis; these produce by division the spermatocytes (pro-
gamctes), which divide and give rise to the spermatids. In most
cases which have been investigated the divisions by which the
spermatids arise from the spermatocytes are two in number, so
3i6
EMBRYOLOGY
[DEVELOPMENT
that each spermatocyte gives origin to four spermatids. Each
spermatid becomes a functional spermatozoon or male gamete.
The gametogeny of the male therefore closely resembles that of the
female, differing from it only in the fact that all the four products
of the progamete become functional gametes, whereas in the female
only one, the ovum, becomes functional, the other three (polar bodies)
being abortive. In the spermatogenesis of the bee, however, the
spermatocyte only divides once, giving rise to a small polar-body-like
structure and one spermatid (Meves, Anat. Anzeiger, 24, 1904, pp.
29-32). The nucleus of the male gamete is not called the male pro-
nucleus, as would be expected, that term being reserved for the
second nucleus which appears in the ovum after fertilization. As
this is in all probability derived entirely from the nucleus of the
spermatozoon, we should be almost justified in calling the nucleus
of the spermatozoon the male pronucleus. In most forms in which
the formation of the gametes from the progamete has been accuratejy
followed, and in which the progamete of both sexes divides twice in
forming the gametes, the division of the nucleus presents certain
peculiarities. In the first place, between the first division and the
second it does not enter into the resting state, but immediately
proceeds to the second division. In the second place, the number of
chromosomes which appear in the final divisions of the progametes
and assist in constituting the nuclei of the gametes is half the humber
which go to constitute the new nuclei in the ordinary .nuclear divisions
of the animal. The number of chromosomes of the nucleus of the
gamete is therefore reduced, and the divisions by which the gametes
arise from the progametes are called reducing (maiotic) divisions.
It is not certain, however, that this phenomenon is of universal
occurrence, or has the significance which is ordinarily attributed to it.
In the parthenogenetic ova of certain insects, e.g. Rhodites rosae
(Henking), Nemalus lacteus (Dpncaster, Quart, journal Mic. Science,
49, 1906, pp. 561-589), reduction does not occur, though two polar
bodies are formed.
As soon as the spermatozoon has conjugated with the ovum, a
second nucleus appears in the ovum. This is undoubtedly derived
from the spermatozoon, possibly from its nucleus only,
Fertlllza- an j j g ca n e( ] [ ne male pronucleus. It possesses in the
"' adjacent protoplasm a well-marked centrosome. The
general rule appears to be that the female pronucleus is without
a centrosome, and that no centrosome appears in the female in
the divisions by which the gamete arises from the progamete.
If this is true, the centrosome of the zygote nucleus must be entirely
derived from that of the male pronucleus. This accounts for the
fact, which has been often observed, that the female pronucleus is
not surrounded by protoplasmic radiations, whereas such radiations
are present round the male pronucleus in its approach to the female.
In the mouse the subsequent events are as follow : Both pronuclei
assume the resting form, the chromatin being distributed over the
nuclear network, and the nuclei come to lie side by side in the centre
of the egg. A long loop of chromatin then appears in each nucleus
and divides up into twelve pieces, the chromosomes. The centrosome
now divides, the membranes of both nuclei disappear, and a spindle
is formed. The twenty-four chromosomes arrange themselves at the
centre of this spindle and split longitudinally, so that forty-eight
chromosomes are formed. Twenty-four of these, twelve male and
twelve female, as it is supposed, travel to each pole of the spindle
and assist in giving rise to the two nuclei. At the next nuclear
division twenty-four chromosomes appear in each nucleus, each of
which divides longitudinally; and so in all subsequent divisions.
The fusion of the two pronuclei is sometimes effected in a manner
slightly different from that described for the mouse. In Echinus, for
instance, the two pronuclei fuse, and the spindle and chromosomes
are formed from the zygote nucleus, whereas in the mouse the two
pronuclei retain their distinctness during the formation of the
chromosomes. There appears, however, to be some variation in this
respect: cases have been observed in the mouse in which fusion
of the pronuclei occurs before the separation of the chromosomes.
Parthenogenesis, or development of the female gamete without
fertilization, is known to occur in many groups of the animal king-
dom. Attempts have been made to connect this pheno-
* no " menon with peculiarities in the gametogeny. For
genesis. instance, it has been said that parthenogenetic ova
form only one polar body. But, as we have seen, this is sometimes
the case in eggs which are fertilized, and parthenogenetic ova are
known which form two polar bodies, e.g. ova of the honey-bee
which produce drones (Morph. Jahrb. xv., 1889, p. 85), ova of
Rotifera which produce males (Zopl. Anzeiger, xx., 1897, p. 455), ova
of some saw-flies and gall flies which produce females (L. Doncaster,
Quart. Journ. Mic. Sc., 49, 1906, pp. 561-589). Again it has been
asserted that in parthenogenetic eggs the polar bodies are not ex-
truded from the ovum; in such cases, though the nucleus divides,
those of its products which would in other cases be extruded in polar
bodies remain in the protoplasm of the ovum. _But this is not a
universal rule, for in some cases of parthenogenesis polar bodies are
extruded in the usual way (Aphis, some Lepidoptera), and in some
fertilized eggs the polar bodies are retained in the ovum.
It is. quite probable that parthenogenesis is more common- than
has been supposed, and it appears that there is some evidence
to show that ova, which in normal conditions are incapable of
developing without fertilization, may yet develop if subjected to
an altered environment. For instance, it has been asserted that
the addition of a certain quantity of chloride of magnesium and
other substances to sea-water will cause the unfertilized ova of
certain marine animals (Arbacia, Chaetopterus) to develop (J.
Loeb, American Journal of Physiology, ix., 1901, p. 423); and
according to M. Y. Delage (Comptes rendus, 135, 1902. Nos 15 and
1 6) such development may occur after the formation of polar bodies,
the chromosomes undergoing reduction and the full number being
regained in the segmenting stage. These experiments, if authenti-
cated, suggest that ova have the power of development, but are not
able to exercise it in their normal surroundings. There is reason to
believe that the same assertion may be made of spermatozoa.
Phenomena of the nature of parthenogenesis have never been ob
served in the male gamete, but it has been suggested by A. Giard
(Cinquantenaire de la Soc. de Biol., 1900) that the phenomenon
of the so-called fertilization of an enucleated ovum which has been
described by T. Boveri and Delage in various eggs, and which results
in development up to the larval form (merogony), is in reality a case
in which the male gamete, unable to undergo development in
ordinary circumstances on account of its small size and specialization
of structure has obtained a nutritive environment which enables
it]to display its latent power of development. Moreover, A. M . Giard
suggests that in some cases of apparently normal fertilization one
of the pronuclei may degenerate, the resultant embryo being the
product of one pronucjeus only. In this way he explains certain
cases of hybridization in which the paternal (rarely the maternal)
type is exclusively reproduced. For instance, in the batrachiate
Amphibia, Heron Royer succeeded in 1883 in rearing, out of a vast
number of attempts, a few hybrids between a female Pelobates
fuscus and a male Rana fusca; the product was a Rana fusca.
He also crossed a female Bufo vulgaris with a male Bufo calamita ;
in the few cases which reached maturity the product was obviously
a Bufo calamita. Finally, H. E. Ziegler (Arch. f. Ent.-Mech., 1898,
p. 249) divided the just-fertilized ovum of a sea-urchin in such a way
that each half had one pronucleus; the half with the male pro-
nucleus segmented and formed a blastula, the other degenerated.
It is said that in a few species of animals males do not occur, and
that parthenogenesis is the sole means of reproduction (a species of
Ostracoda among Crustacea; species of Tenthredinidae, Cynipidae
and Coccidae among Insecta) ; this is the thelytoky of K. T. E. von
Siebold. The number of species in which males are unknown is
constantly decreasing, and it is quite possible that the phenomenon
does not exist. Parthenogenesis, however, is undoubtedly of
frequent occurrence, and is of four kinds, namely, (i) that in which
males alone are produced, e.g. honey-bees (arrhenotoky) ; (2) that
in which females only are produced (thelytoky), as in some saw-flies;
(3) that in which both sexes are produced (deuterotoky), as in some
saw-flies; (4) that in which there is an alternation of sexual and
parthenogenetic generations, as in Aphidae, many Cynipidae, &c.
It would appear that " parthenogenesis does not favour the pro-
duction of one sex more than another, but it is clear that it decidedly
favours the production of a brood that is entirely of one sex, but
which sex that is differs according to circumstances " (D. Sharp,
Cambridge Natural History, " Insects," pt. i. p. 498) In some
Insecta and Crustacea exceptional parthenogenesis occurs: a certain
proportion of the eggs laid are capable of undergoing either the whole
or a part of development parthenogenetically, e.g. Bombyx mori, &c.
(A. Brauer, Arch. f. mikr. Anat., 1893; consult also E. Maupas on
parthenogenesis of Rotifera, Comp. rend., 1889-1891, and R. Lauter-
born, Biol. Centralblatt, xviii., 1898, p. 173).
The question of the determination of sex may be alluded to
here. Is sex determined at the act of conjugation of the two
gametes? Is it, in other words, an unalterable property
of the zygote, a genetic character? Or does it depend
upon the conditions to which the zygote is subjected in
its development? In other words, is it an acquired
character? It is impossible in the present state of knowledge to
answer these questions satisfactorily, but the balance of evidence
appears to favour the view that sex is an unalterable, inborn character.
Thus those twins which are believed to come from a split zygote
are always of the same sex, members of the same litter which have
been submitted to exactly similar conditions are of different sexes,
and all attempts to determine the sex of offspring in the higher
animals by treatment have failed. On the other hand, the male
bee is a portion of a female zygote-^-the queen-bee. The same
remark applies to the male Rotifer, in which the zygote always
gives rise to a female, from which the male arises parthenogenetically.
But in these cases it does not appear that the production of males
is in any way affected by external conditions (see R. C. Punnett,
Proc. Royal Soc., 78 B, 1906, p. 223). It is said that in human
societies the number of males born increases after wars and famines,
but this, if true, is probably due tb an affection of the gametes
and not of the young zygote. For a review of the whole subject
see L. Cuenot, Bull. sci. France et Belgique, xxxii., 1899, pp. 462-
535-
The first change the zygote undergoes in all animals is what is
generally called the segmentation or cleavage of the ovum.
This consists essentially of the division of the nucleus into a
number of nuclei, around which the protoplasm sooner or later
Deter-
mlaatinn
of sex.
CLEAYA..1 ;
EMBRYOLOGY
becomes arranged in the manner ordinarily spoken of as cellular.
This division of the nucleus is effected by the process called
jj^. binary fission; that is to say, it first divides into
two, then each of these divides simultaneously again
into two, giving four nuclei; each of these after a pause again
simultaneously divides into two. So the process continues for
some time until the ovum becomes possessed of a large number
of nuclei, all of which have proceeded from the original nucleus
by a series of binary fissions. This division of the nucleus, which
constitutes the essential part of the cleavage of the ovum, con-
tinues through the whole of life, but it is only in the earliest
period that it is distinguished by a distinct name and used to
characterize a stage of development. The nuclear division of
cleavage is usually at first a rhythmical process; all the nuclei
divide simultaneously, and periods of nuclear activity alternate
with periods of rest. Nuclear divisions may be said to be of three
kinds, according to the accompanying changes in the surrounding
protoplasm: (i) accompanied by no visible change, e.g. the
multinucleated Protozoon Aftinospkatrium; (2) accompanied
by a rearrangement of the protoplasm around each nucleus,
but not by its division into two separate masses, e.g. the division
which results in the formation of a colony of Protozoa; (3)
accompanied by the division of the protoplasm into two parts,
so that two distinct cells result, e.g. the divisions by which the
free wandering leucocytes are produced, the reproduction of
uninuclear Protozoa, &c. In the cleavage of the ovum the first
two of these methods of division are found, but probably not
the third. At one time it was thought that the nuclear divisions
of cleavage were always of the third kind, and the result of
cleavage was supposed to be a mass of isolated cells, which
became reunited in the subsequent development to give rise to
the later connexion between the tissues which were known to
exist. But in 1885 it was noticed that in the ovum of Peripaius
Ciiffiuis (A. Sedgwick, Quart. Journ. Mic. Science, xxv., 1885,
p. 449) the extranuclear protoplasm did not divide in the cleavage
of the ovum, but merely became rearranged round the increasing
nuclei; the continuity of the protoplasm was not broken, but
persisted into the later stages of growth, and gave rise to the
tissue-connexions which undoubtedly exist in the adult. This
discovery was of some importance, because it rendered intelligible
the unity of the embryo so far as its developmental processes are
concerned, the maintenance of this unity being somewhat
surprising on the previous view. On further inquiry and
examination it was found that the ova of many other animals
presented a cleavage essentially similar to that of Peripatus.
Indeed, it was found that the nuclear divisions of cleavage were
of the first two kinds just described. In some eggs, e.g. the
Alcyonaria, the first nuclear divisions are effected on the first
plan, i.e. they take place without at first producing any visible
effect upon the protoplasm of the egg. But in the later stages
of cleavage the protoplasm becomes arranged around each
nucleus and related to it as to a centre. In the majority of eggs,
however, the protoplasm, though not undergoing complete
cleavage, becomes rearranged round each nucleus as these are
formed. The best and clearest instance of this is afforded by
many Arthropodan eggs, in which the nucleus of the just-formed
zygote takes up a central position, where it undergoes its first
division, subsequent divisions taking place entirely within the egg
and not in any way affecting its exterior. The result is to give rise
to a nucleated network or foam-work of protoplasm, ramifying
through the yolk-particles and containing these in its meshes.
In other Arthropodan eggs the cleavage is on the so-called
cent rolccithal type, in which the dividing nuclei pass to the cortex
of the ovum, and the surface of the ovum becomes indented with
grooves corresponding to each nucleus. In this kind of cleavage
all the so-called segments are continuous with the central
undivided yolk-mass. It sometimes happens that in Arthropods
the egg breaks up into masses, which cannot be said to have the
value of cells, as they are frequently without nuclei. In other
eggs, characterized by a considerable amount of yolk, e.g. the
ova of Cephalopoda, and of the Vertebrata with much yolk, the
first nucleus takes up an eccentric position in a small patch of
protoplasm which is comparatively free from yolk-particles.
This patch is the germinal disc, and the nuclear divisions are
confined to it and to the transitional region, where it merges
into the denser yolk which makes up the bulk of the egg. At
the close of segmentation the germinal disc consists of a number
of nuclei, each surrounded by its own mass of protoplasm,
which is, however, not separated from the protoplasm round the
neighbouring nuclei, as was formerly supposed, but is continuous
at the points of contact. In this manner the germinal disc has
beecome converted into the blastoderm, which consists of a small
watch-glass-shaped mass of so-called cells resting on, but con-
tinuous with, the large yolk-mass. It is characteristic of this
kind of ovum that there is always a row of nuclei, called the yolk -
nuclei, placed in the denser yolk immediately adjacent to ihr
blastoderm. These nuclei are continually undergoing division,
one of the products of division, together with a little of the sparse
yolk protoplasm, passing into the blastoderm to reinforce it
(so-called formative cells). The other product of the dividing
yolk-nuclei remains in the yolk, in readiness for the next division.
In this manner nucleated masses of protoplasm are continually
being added to the periphery of the blastoderm and assisting
in its growth. But it must be borne in mind that all the nucleated
masses of which the blastoderm consists are in continuity with
each other and with the sparse protoplasmic reticulum of the
subjacent yolk.
In the great majority of eggs, then, the nuclear division of
cleavage is not accompanied by a complete division of the ovum
into separate cells, but only by a rearrangement of the proto-
plasm, which produces, indeed, the so-called cellular arrangement,
and an appearance only of separate cells. But there still remain
to be mentioned those small eggs in which the amount of yolk
is inconsiderable, and in which division of the nuclei does appear
to be accompanied by a complete division of the surrounding
protoplasm into separate unconnected cells ova of many
Annelida, Mollusca, Echinoderma, &c., and of Mammalia
amongst Vertebrata. In the case of these also (G. F. Andrews,
Zool. Bulletin, ii., 1898) it has been shown that the apparently
separate spheres are connected by a number of fine anastomosing
threads of a hyaline protoplasm, which are not easy to detect
and are readily destroyed by the action of reagents. It is there-
fore probable that the divisions of the nuclei in cleavage are in
no case accompanied by complete division of the surrounding
protoplasm, and the organism in the cleavage stage is a continuous
whole, as it is in all the other stages of its existence.
Of late years a great number of experiments have been made
to discover the effects of dividing the embryo during its cleavage,
and of destroying certain portions of it. These experi-
men is have been made with the object of testing the
view, held by some authorities, that certain segments
are already set apart in cleavage to give rise to certain adult
organs, so that if they were destroyed the organs in question could
not be developed. The results obtained have not borne out this
view. Speaking generally, it may be said that they have been
different according to the stage at which the separation was
effected and the conditions under which the experiment was
carried out. If the experiment be made at a sufficiently early
stage, each part, if not too small, will develop into a normal,
though small, embryo. In some cases the embryo remained
imperfect for a certain time after the experiment, but the loss
is eventually made good by regeneration. (For a summary of
the work done on this subject see R. S. Bcrgh, Zool. Centralblait,
vii., 1000, p. i.)
The end of cleavage is marked by the commencement of the
differentiation of the organs. The first differentiation is the
formation of the layers. These are three in number,
being called respectively the ectoderm, endoderm and
mesoderm, or, in embryos in which at their first
appearance they lie like sheets one above the other, the
epiblast, hypoblast and mesoblast. The layers are sometimes
spoken of as the primary organs, and their importance lies in the
fact that they arc supposed to be generally homologous through-
out the series of the Metazoa. This view, which is based partly
3 i8
EMBRYOLOGY
[LAYER THEORY
on their origin and partly on their fate, had great influence on
the science of comparative anatomy during the last thirty years
of the igth century, for the homology of the layers being ad-
mitted, they afforded a kind of final courtof appealindetermining
questions of doubtful homologies between adult organs. Great
importance was therefore attached to them by embryologists,
and both their mode of development and the part which they play
in forming the adult organs were examined with the greatest care.
It is very unusual for all the layers to be established at the same
time. As a general rule the ectoderm and endoderm, which
may be called the primary layers, come first, and later the
mesoderm is developed from one or other of them. There are
two main methods in which the first two are differentiated
invagination and delamination. The former is generally found
in small eggs, in which the embryo at the close of cleavage
assumes the form of a sphere, having a fluid or gelatinous
material in its centre, and bounded externally by a thin layer of
protoplasm, in which all the nuclei are contained. Such a sphere
is called a blastosphere, and may be regarded as a spherical
mass of protoplasm, of which the central portion is so much
vacuolated that it seems to consist entirely of fluid. The central
part of the blastosphere is called the segmentation cavity or
blastocoel. The blastosphere soon gives rise, by the invagination
of one part of its wall upon the other, and a consequent ob-
literation of the segmentation cavity, to a double- walled cup
with a wide opening, which, however, soon becomes narrowed
to a small pore. This cup-stage is called the gastrula stage;
the outer wall of the gastrula is the ectoderm, and its inner
the endoderm; while its cavity is the enteron, and the opening
to the exterior the blastopore. Origin of the primary layers
by delamination occurs universally in eggs with large yolks
(Cephalopoda and many Vertebrata), and occasionally in others.
In it cleavage gives rise to a solid mass, which divides by de-
lamination into two layers, the ectoderm and endoderm. The
main difference between the two methods of development lies
in the fact that in the first of them the endoderm at its first
origin shows the relations which it possesses in the adult, namely,
of forming the epithelial wall of the enteric space, whereas in the
second method the endoderm is at first a solid mass, in which
the enteric space makes its appearance later by excavation.
In the delaminate method the enteric space is at first without a
blastopore, and sometimes it never acquires this opening, but a
blastopore is frequently formed, and the two-layered gastrula
stage is reached, though by a very different route from that taken
in the formation of the invaginate gastrula. According to the
layer-theory, these two layers are homologous throughout the
series of Metazoa; their limits can always be accurately defined,
they give rise to the same organs in all cases, and the adult
organs (excluding the mesodermal organs) can be traced back to
one or other of them with absolute precision. Thus the ectoderm
gives rise to the epidermis, to the nervous system, and to the
lining of the stomodaeum and proctodaeum, if such parts of
the alimentary canal are present. The endoderm, on the other
hand, gives rise to the lining of the enteron, and of the glands
which open into it.
So far as these two layers are concerned, and excluding
the mesoderm, it would appear that the layer-theory does apply
in a very remarkable manner to the whole of the Metazoa.
But even here, when the actual facts are closely scanned, there
are found to be difficulties, which appear to indicate that the
theory may not perhaps be such an infallible guide as it seems
at first sight. Leaving out of consideration the case of the
Mammalia, in which the differentiation of the segmented ovum
is not into ectoderm and endoderm, and the case of the sponges,
the most important of these difficulties concern the stomodaeum
and proctodaeum. The best case to examine is that of Peripatus
capemis, in which the blastopore is at first a long slit, and gives
rise to both the mouth and the anus of the adult. Here there is
always found at the lips of the blastopore, and extending for a
short distance inwards as enteric lining, a certain amount of
tissue, which by its characters must be regarded as ectoderm.
Now, in the closure of the blastopore between the mouth and
anus, this tissue, which at the mouth and anus develops into the
lining of the stomodaeum and proctodaeum, is left inside, and
actually gives rise to the median ventral epithelium of the ali-
mentary canal. Hence the development of Peripatus capensis
suggests the conclusion, if we strictly apply the layer-theory,
that a considerable portion of the true mesenteron is lined by
ectoderm, and is not homologous with the corresponding portion
of the mesenteron of other animals a conclusion which will on
all hands be admitted to be absurd. The difficulties in the
application of the layer-theory become vastly greater when the
origin and fate of the mesoderm is considered. The
mesoderm is, if we may judge from the number of
organs which are derived from it, much the most important
of the three layers. It generally arises later than the others,
and in its very origin presents difficulties to the theory, which
are much increased when we consider its history. It is generally,
though not always, developed from the endoderm, either as
hollow outgrowths containing prolongations of the enteric
cavity, which become the coelom, or as solid proliferations.
But in some groups the mesoderm is actually laid down in
cleavage, and is present at the end of that process. In others
it is entirely derived from the ectoderm (Peripatus capensis).
In yet others it is partly derived from endoderm and partly from
ectoderm (primitive streak of amniotic Vertebrates). Finally,
in whatever manner the first rudiments are developed, it fre-
quently receives considerable reinforcements from one of the
primary layers. For instance, the structure known as the
nerve crest of the vertebrate embryo is not, as was formerly
supposed, exclusively concerned with the formation of the spinal
nerves and ganglia, but contributes largely to the mesoderm of
the axial region of the body. This is particularly clearly seen
in the case of the anterior part of the head of Elasmobranch
and probably of other vertebrate embryos, where all the meso-
derm present is derived from the anterior part of the neural crest
(Quart. Journ. Mic. Science, xxxvii. p, 92).
The layer-theory, then, will not bear critical examination.
It is clear, both from their origin and history, that the layers or
masses of cells called ectoderm, endoderm and mesoderm have
not the same value in different animals; indeed, it is misleading
to speak of three layers. At the most we can only speak of two,
for the mesoderm is formed after the others, has a composite
origin, and has no more claim to be considered an embryonic
layer than has the rudiment of the central nervous system,
which in some animals, indeed, appears as soon as the mesoderm.
Arguments as to homology, based on derivation or non-derivation
from the same embryonic layer, have therefore in themselves
but little value.
It has frequently been asserted that the reproductive cells are
marked off at a very early stage of the development (Sagitta, certain
Crustacea, Scorpio). Recently it has been asserted that in Ascaris
(T. Boveri, Kuppfer's Festschrift, 1899, p. 383) the reproductive
cells are set apart after the first cleavage, and that they can be traced
by certain peculiarities of their nuclei into the adult reproductive
glands.
It has been already stated that the mesoderm is a composite
tissue. This fact is frequently conspicuous at its first establishment.
In many Coelomata it is present under two forms from fljesen-
the beginning. One of these is epithelial in character, chyme.
while the other has the form of a network of protoplasm,
with nuclei at the nodes. The former is called simply epithelial
mesoderm, the latter mesenchyme. Sometimes the epithelial
mesoderm is the first formed, and what little mesenchyme there is
is developed from it (Amphioxus, Balanoglossus, &c.). Sometimes
the mesenchyme is the first to arise, the epithelial mesoderm develop-
ing from it (most, if not all, Vertebrates). Finally, it sometimes
happens that these two kinds of tissue arise separately from one or
other of the primary layers (Echinodermata). As already hinted, in
Balanoglossus and Amphioxus the whole of the mesoderm of the body
is at first in an epithelial condition, being developed as an outgrowth
of the gut-wall. In Peripatus capensis also, and possibly in other
Arthropods, it has at first an intermediate form, being derived from a
primitive streak and not from the gut-wall, but it rapidly assumes an
epithelial structure, from which all the mesodermal tissues are
developed. In Annelids the bulk of the mesoderm has at first a
modified epithelial form similar to that of Arthropods, but it is
formed, not from a primitive streak, but from some peculiar cells
produced in cleavage, called pole-cells. In Annelids with trocho-
sphere larvae a certain amount of mesenchyme is formed at an earlier
ORIGIN OF OK. ,\\-
EMBRYOLOGY
tafe and give* rise to the muscular bamU of the young l.ir\ .1. In
:.xl<-rniata a certain amount of mcnenchvme ap|x-.ir> IK lore the
t-iMihfli.il mesoderni, whi.h i> lorinetl I. itcr as gut-divertii ul.i. In
these forms the mociu h\ me is said to arise as wandering amoeboid
cells, which art- Im.l.l.-.i into tin- blustocoel by the endodorm just
before and during its ins agination, but the writer has reason to
believe that this account of it tloe not quite describe what hap|x-n*.
It would seem t.i U- more probable that tin- BMMChyM anses in
ibrse form*, as it certainly does in the rase of (he later- formed
mesenrhyme of the Vertebrate embryo, as a protoplasmic outflow
from its tissue of origin, passing at first along the line of pre-existcnt
protoplasmic strands which traverse the blastocoel, and sending
out at the sumo time processes which branch and anastomose with
neighbouring processes (see K. \Y. Mat Bride, 1'roc. Camb. Phil. Soc.,
1896, p. IJjT. In the Vertebrata the whole of the mcsoderm has at
first the mesenchyme form. Afterwards, when the body-cavitv >plit
appears, the bulk of it assumes a kind of modified epithelial condition,
which later on yields, by a process of outflow very similar in its
character to what has been supposed to occur in tne Echimxlcrm
l>l.i-tul.i. a considerable mesencnymc of the reticulate character.
Mesenchyme is the tissue which in Vertebrate embryology has fre-
quently been called embryonic connective tissue. This name is no
doubt due to the fact that it was supposed to consist of isolated
i. Hate cells. It is, however, in no sense of the word connective
lisMic. because it gives rise to many organs having nothing whatever
to do with connective tissue. For instance, in Vertebrata this tissue
gives tise to nervous tissue, blood-vessels, renal tubules, smooth
muscular fibres, and other structures, as well as to connective and
skeletal tissues. The Vertebrata, indeed, are remarkable for the
fact that the epithelial tissues of the so-called mesoderm, e.g. the
epithelial lining of the body-cavity, and of the renal tubules and
urogenital tracts, all pass through the mesenchymatous condition,
whereas in Ampkioxui, Ralanoglossus and presumably Sagitla and
the Brachiopoda, all the mesodermal tissues pass through the
epithelial condition, most of the mesodermal tissues of the adult
retaining this condition permanently. As has been implied in the
above account, mesenchyme is usually formed from epithelial
mesoderm or from endodcrm, or from tissue destined to_ form
endoderm. It is also sometimes formed from ectoderm, as in the
Vertebrataat the nerve crest and other places. In some Coelcnterata
also it appears certain that the ectoderm does furnish tissue of a
mesenchymatous nature which passes into the jelly, but this pheno-
menon takes place comparatively late in life, at any rate after the
embryonic period. In this connexion it may be interesting to point
out that in many Coelentcrates all the tissues of the body retain
throughout life the epithelial condition, nothing comparable to
mesenchyme ever being formed.
Finally, before leaving this branch of the subject, the fact
that the three germinal layers are continuous with one another,
and not isolated masses of tissue, may be emphasized.
Indeed, an embryo may be defined as a multinucleatcd
protoplasmic mass, in which the protoplasm at any
surface whether internal or external is in the form
of a relatively dense layer, while that in the interior is much
vacuolatcd and reduced to a more or less sparse reticulum, the
nuclei either being exclusively found in the surface protoplasm,
or if the embryo has any bulk and the internal reticulum is at
all well developed, at the nodes of the internal reticulum as well.
The origin of some of the more important organs may now be
considered. It is a remarkable fact that the mouth and anus
develop in the most diverse ways in different groups,
but as a rule cither one or both of them can be traced
into relation with the blastopore, the history of which
must therefore be examined. In most, if not all, the great groups
of the animal kingdom, e.g. in Coelenterata, Annelida, Mollusca,
Vertebrata, and in Arthropoda, the blastopore or its repre-
sentative is placed on the neural surface of the body, and,
as will be shown later on, within the limits of the central nerve
rudiment. Here it undergoes the most diverse fate, even in
members of the same group. For instance, in Peripatus capensis
it extends as a slit along the ventral surface, which closes up in
the middle, but remains open at the two ends as the permanent
mouth and anus. In other Arthropods, though full details
have not yet in all cases been worked out, the following general
statement may be made: A blastopore (certain Crustacea) or
its representative is formed on the neural surface of the embryo
and always becomes closed, the mouth and anus arising as
independent perforations later. Here no one would doubt the
homolojry of the mouth and anus throughout the group; yet
within the limits of a single genus Peripalut they show the
most diverse modes of development. In Annelids the blastopore
/>*
sometimes becomes the mouth (most Chaetopoda) ; sometimes
it becomes the anus (Serpula); sometimes it closes up, giving
rise to neither, though in this case il may assume the form of ;i
long slit along the ventral surface before disappearing. In
Mollusca its futc presents the same variations as in Annelida.
Now in these groups no zoologist would deny the homology of
the mouth and anus in the different forms, and yet how very
different is their history even in closely allied animals. How
are these apparently diverse facts to be reconciled? Theonly
satisfactory explanation which has been offered (Sedgwiik,
Quart. J. Afic. Science, xxiv., 1884, p. 43) is that the blastopore
is homologous in all the groups mentioned, and is the repre-
sentative of the original single opening into the enteric cavity,
such as at present characterizes the Coelenterata. From it the.
mouth and anus have been derived, as is indicated by its history
in Peripatus ctipensis, and by the variability in its behaviour
in closely allied forms; such variability in its subsequent
history is due to its specialization as a larval organ, as a result
of which it has lost its capacity to give rise to both mouth an. I
anus, and sometimes to cither.
That the blastopore docs become specialized as a larval organ is
obvious in those cases in which it becomes transformed into the
single opening with which some larvae arc, for a time at least, alone
provided, e.i>. Pilidium, Echinoderm larvae, &c., and that larval
characters have been the principal causes of the form of embryonic
characters, strong reason to believe will be adduced later on. In the
Vertebrata the behaviour of the blastopore (anus of Kusconi) is also
variable in a very remarkable manner. As a rule it is slit-like in
form and closes completely, but in most cases one portion of it
remains open longer than the rest, as the neurenteric canal. In a
few forms (e.g. Newt, Lepidosiren, &c.) the very hindermost portion
of the slit-like blastopore remains permanently open as the anus, and
from such cases it can be shown that the neurenteric aperture (when
present) is derived from a portion of the blastopore just anterior
to its hindermost end. The words " hindermost ' and " anterior "
are used on the assumption that the whole blastopore has retained
its dorsal position ; as a matter of fact the hindermost part of it
the part which persists or reopens as the anus loses this position
in the course of development and becomes shifted on to the ventral
surface. This is clearly seen in Lepidosiren (Kerr, Phil. Trans.
cxcii., 1900), in Elasmobranchii, and in Amniota (primitive streak).
Moreover, in Lepidosiren, and possibly in some other forms, the
anus, i.e. the hind end of the blastopore, is at first contained within
the medullary plate and bounded behind by the medullary folds.
Later the portions of the medullary plate in the neighbourhood of
the anus completely atrophy, and this relation is lost. This ex-
tension of the hind end of the blastopore on to the ventral surface,
and atrophy of the portion of the medullary plate in relation with
it, is a highly important phenomenon, and one to which attention
will be again called when the relation of the mouth to the blastopore
is being considered. The remarkable fact about the Vertebrata,
a feature which that group shares in common with all other Chordata
(Amphioxus, Tunicata, Enteropncusta) and with the Echinodermata,
is that the mouth has never been traced into relation with the blasto-
pore. For this reason, among others, it has been held by some
zoologists that the mouth of the Vertebrata is not homologous with
the mouth of such groups as the Annelida, Arthropoda and Mollusca.
But, as has been explained above, in face of the extraordinary
variability in the history of the mouth and anus in these groups,
this view cannot be regarded as in any way established. On the
contrary, there are distinct reasons for thinking that the Vertebral.
mouth is a derivate of the blastopore. In the first place, in Elasmo-
branchii (Sedgwick, Quart. Journ. Mic. Set. xxxiii., 1892, p. 559),
and in a less conspicuous form in other vertebrate groups, the
mouth has at first a slit-like form, extending from the anterior
end of the central nerve-tube backwards along; the ventral surface of
the anterior part of the embryo. This slit-like rudiment, recalling
as it docs the form which the blastoporc assumes in so many groups
and in many Vertebrata, does suggest the view that possibly the
mouth of the Vertebrata may in reality be derived from a portion
of an originally long slit-like neural blastopore, which has become
extended anteriorly on to the ventral surface and has lost its original
relation to the nerve rudiment, as has undoubtedly happened with
the posterior part, which persists as the anus.
Of the other organs which develop from the two primary
layers it is only possible to notice here the central nervous
system. This in almost all animals develops from the
ectoderm. In Cephalopods among Mollusca the ,".
development of which is remarkable from the almost , y ,iem.
complete absence of features which are supposed to
have an ancestral significance and in one or two other forms,
it has been said to develop from the mesoderm ; but apart from
320
EMBRYOLOGY
[NERVOUS SYSTEM
these exceptional and perhaps doubtful cases, the central nervous
system of all embryos arises as thickenings of the ectoderm,
and in the groups above mentioned, namely, Annelida, Mollusca,
Arthropoda and Vertebrata, and probably others, from the
ectoderm of the blastoporal surface of the body. This surface
generally becomes the ventral surface, but in Vertebrata it
becomes the dorsal. These thickened tracts of ectoderm in
Peripatus and a few other forms can be clearly seen to surround
the blastopore. This relation is retained in the adult in
Peripatus, some Mollusca and some Nemertines, in which the
main lateral nerve cords are united behind the anus as well as
in front of the mouth; in other forms it cannot always be
demonstrated, but it can, as in the case of the Vertebrata just
referred to, always be inferred; only, in the Invertebrate groups
the part of the nerve rudiment which has to be inferred is -the
posterior part behind the blastopore, whereas in Vertebrata
it is the anterior part, namely, that in front of the blastopore,
assuming that the mouth is a blastoporal derivate.
In the Echinodermata, Enteropneusta and one or two other
groups, it is not possible, in the present state of knowledge, to
bring the mouth into relation with the blastopore, nor can the
blastopore be shown to be a perforation of the neural surface. For
the Echinoderms, at any rate, this fact loses some of the importance
which might at first sight be attributed to it when the remarkable or-
ganization of the adult and the sharp contrast which exists between
it and the larva is remembered. In some Annelids the central
nervous system remains throughout life as part of the outer epi-
dermis, but as a general rule it becomes separated from the epidermis
and embedded in the mesodermal tissues. The mode in which this
separation is effected varies according to the form and structure of
the central nervous system. In the Vertebrata, in which this organ
has the form of a tube extending along the dorsal surface of the
body, it arises as a groove of the medullary plate, which becomes
constricted into a canal. The wall of this canal consists of ectoderm ,
which at an earlier stage formed part of the outer surface of the body,
but which after invagmation thickens, to give rise to the epithelial
lining of the canal and to the nervous tissue which forms the bulk of
the canal wall. The fact that the blastopore remains open at the
hind end of the medullary plate explains to a certain extent the
peculiar relation which always exists in the embryo between the
hind end of the neural and alimentary canals. This communication
between the hind end of the neural tube and the gut is one of the
most remarkable and constant features of the Vertebrate embryo.
As has been pointed out, it is not altogether unintelligible when we
remember the relation of the blastopore to the medullary plate
of the earlier stage, but to give a complete explanation of it is, and
probably always will be, impossible. It is no doubt the impress of
some remarkable larval condition of the blastopore of a stage of
evolution now long past.
In Ceratodus the open part of the blastopore is enclosed by the
medullary folds, as in Lepidosiren, and probably persists as the anus,
the portion of the folds around the anus undergoing atrophy (Semon,
Zoo/. Forschungsreisen in Australien, 1893, Bd. i. p. 39). In Urodeles
the blastopore persists as anus, so far as is known, but the relation
to the medullary folds has not been noticed. The same may be
said of Petromyzon (A. E. Shipley, Quart. Journ, Mic. Sci. xxviii.,
1887).
The nerve tube of the Vertebrata at a. certain early stage of the
embryo becomes bent ventralwards in its anterior portion, in such
a manner that the anterior end, which is represented
j n ^g ac j u [ fjy (jj e infundibulum, comes to project
backwards beneath the mid-brain. This bend, which
is called the cranial flexure, takes place through the mid-brain,
so that the hind-brain is unaffected by it. The cranial flexure
is not, however, confined to the brain: the anterior end of the noto-
chord, which at first extends almost to the front end of the nerve
tube (this extension, which is quite obvious in the young embryo of
Elasmobranchs, becomes masked in the later stages by the extra-
ordinary modifications which the parts undergo), is also affected by
it. Moreover, it affects even other parts, as may be seen by the
oblique, almost antero-posterior, direction of the anterior gill slits
as compared with the transverse direction of those behind. No
satisfactory explanation has ever been offered of the cranial flexure.
It is found in all Vertebrates, and is effected at an early stage of
the development. In the later stages and in the adult it ceases to
be noticeable, on account of an alteration of the relative sizes of parts
of the brain. This is due almost entirely to the enormous growth
of the cerebral vesicle, which is an outgrowth of the dorsal wall of
the fore-brain just short of its anterior end. The anterior end of
the fore-brain remains relatively small throughout life as the in-
fundibulum, and the junction of this part of the fore-brain with the
part which is so largely developed, as the rudiment of the cerebrum,
is marked by the attachment of the optic chiasma. The optic
nerve, indeed, is morphologically the first cranial nerve, the olfactory
being the second ; both are attached to what is morphologically the
(,raal
"*'
dorsal side of the nerve tube. The morphological anterior end of the
central nerve tube is the point of the infundibulum which is in con-
tact with the pituitary body. While on the subject of the cranial
flexure, it may be pointed out that there is a similar downward curve
of the hind end of the nervous axis, which leads into the hind end
of the enteron. If it be supposed that originally there was a com-
munication between the infundibulum and pituitary body, then the
ventral flexure found at both ends of the nerve axis would originally
have had the same result, namely, of placing the neural and ali-
mentary canals in communication. Moreover, the mouth would have
had much the same relation to this imaginary anterior neurenteric
canal that the anus has to the actual posterior one.
In Amphioxus and the Tunicata the early development of the
central nervous system is very much like that of the Vertebrata,
but the later stages are simpler, being without the cranial flexure.
The Tunicata are remarkable for the fact that the nervous system,
though at first hollow, becomes quite solid in the adult. In Balano-
glossus the central nervous system is in part tubular, the canal
being open at each end. It arises, however, by delamination from
the ectoderm, the tube being a secondary acquisition. This is
probably due to a shortening of development, for the same feature is
found in some Vertebrata (Teleostei, Lepidosteus, &c.), where the
central canal is secondarily hollowed out in the solid keel-like mass
which is separated from the ectoderm. Parts of the central nervous
system arise by invagination in other groups; for instance, the
cerebral ganglia of Dentalium are formed from the walls of two
invaginations of ectoderm, which eventually disappear at the
anterior end of the body (A. Kowalevsky, Ann. Mus. Hist. Nat.
Marseilles, " Zoology," vol. i.). In Peripatus the cerebral ganglia
arise in a similar way, but in this case the cavities of the invagination
become separated from the skin and persist as two hollow append-
ages on the lower side of the cerebral ganglia. In other Arthropods
the cerebral ganglia arise in a similar way, but the invaginations
disappear in the adult. In Nemertines the cerebral ganglia contain
a cavity which communicates with the exterior by a narrow canal.
Finally, in certain Echinodermata the ventral part of the central
nervous system arises by the invagination of a linear streak of
ectoderm, the cavity of the invagination persisting as the epineural
canal.
Although the central nervous system is almost always de-
veloped from the ectoderm of the embryo, the same cannot
be said of the peripheral nerve trunks. These structures
arise from the mesoblastic reticulum already described
(Sedgwick, Quart. Journ. Mic. Sci. xxxvii. 92). Inas-
much as this reticulum is perfectly continuous with
the precisely similar though denser tissue- in the ectoderm
and endoderm, it may well be that a portion of the nerve
trunks should be described as being ectodermal and endo-
dermal in origin, though the bulk of them are undoubtedly
formed from that portion of the reticulum commonly described
as mesoblastic. But, however that may be, the tissue from
which the great nerve trunks are developed is continuous on all
sides with a similar tissue which pervades all the organs of the
body, and in which the nuclei of these organs are contained.
In the early stages of development this tissue is very sparse and
not easily seen. It would appear, indeed, that it is of a very delicate
texture and readily destroyed by reagents. It is for this reason that
the layers of the Vertebrate embryo are commonly represented as
being quite isolated from one another, and that the medullary canal
is nearly always represented as being completely isolated at certain
stages from the surrounding tissues. In reality the layers are all
connected together by this delicate tissue in a sparse form, it is true
which not only extends between them, but also in a denser and
more distinct form pervades them. In the germinal layers them-
selves, and in the organs developing from them, this tissue is in the
young stages almost entirely obscured by the densely packed nuclei
which it contains. For instance, in the wall of the medullary canal
in the Vertebrate embryo, in the splanchnic and somatic layers of
mesoderm of the same embryo, and in the developing nerve cords of
the Peripatus embryo, the nuclei are at first so densely crowded
together that it is almost impossible to see the protoplasmic frame-
work in which they rest, but as development proceeds this extra-
nuclear tissue becomes more largely developed, and the nuclei are
forced apart, so that it becomes visible and receives various names
according to its position. In the wall of the medullary canal of the
Vertebrate embryo, on the outside of which it becomes especially
conspicuous in certain places, and on the dorsal side of the developing
nerve cords of the Peripatus embryo, it constitutes the whjte matter
of the developing nerve cord ; in the mesoblastic tissue outside, where
it at the same time becomes more conspicuous (Sedgwick, " Mono-
graph of the Development of Peripatus capensis," Studies from the
Morph. Lab. of the University of Cambridge, iv., 1889, p. 131), it forms
the looser network of the mesoblastic reticulum; and connecting the
two, in place of the few and delicate strands of this tissue of the
former stage, there are at certain places well-marked cords of a
relatively dense texture, with the meshe . of the reticulum elongated
state*<
,,-".
COELOM I
in the direction of the cord. This Litter structure is an incipient
nerve trunk. It can be traced outwards into the mesoMustic reti-
culum. from the strands of which it is indeed developed, and with
which it is continuous not only at its free end, but also along its
whole course. In this way the nerve trunks are developed by a
gathering up. so to speak, of the fibres of the reticulum into bundles.
These bundles are generally marked by the possession of nuclei,
( grin i i II in their conical parts, which become no doubt the nuclei
of the nerve sheath, and. in the neighbourhood of the ganglia, of
nerve cells. From this account of the early development of the
serve*, it i* apparent that they are in their origin continuous with
aU the other tissues of the body, with that of the central nervous
system and with that which becomes transformed into muscular
tissue and connective and epithelial tissues. AU these tissues are
developed from the general reticulum. which in the young embryo
can be seen to pervade the whole body, not bctni; confined to the
mesoderm, but extending between the nuclei of the ectoderm and
endoderm. and forming the extra-nuclear, so-called cellular, proto-
i of those layers. Moreover, it must be remarked that in the
_.j of the embryo with which we are here concerned the so-called
HuUr constitution of the tissues, which is such a m irked feature of
the older embryo and adult, has not been arrived at. It is true,
- of it may be seen in some of the earlier-formed cpithclia,
but of nerve cells, muscular cells, and many kinds of gland cells no
distinct sign* are yet visible. This remark particularly applies
to nerve cell*, which do not make their appearance until a much later
state not, indeed, until some time after the principal nerve trunks
and ganglia are indicated as tracts of pale fibrous substance and
aggregations of nuclei respectively.
The embryos of Elasmobranchs particularly of Scyllium are
the best objects in which to study the development if nerves. In
many embryos it is difficult to make out what hap|ns, because
the various parts of the body remain so close together that the
process is obscured, and the loosening of the mesoblastic nuclei is
deferred until after the nerves have begun to be differentiated.
The process may also be traced in the embryos of Peripatus, where
the main features are essentially similar to those above described
(p. tit. p. 131). The development of the motor nerves has been
worked out in Lepidotiren by J. Graham Kt-rr (Trans. Roy. Soc. of
Edibttrtk. 41, 1904- P- 119)-
To sum up, the development of nerves is not, as has been
recently urged, an outgrowth of cell processes from certain cells,
but is a differentiation of a substance which was already in
position, and from which all other organs of the body have been
and are developed. It frequently happens that the young nerve
tracts can be seen sooner near the central organ than elsewhere,
but it is doubtful if any importance can be attached to this fact,
since it is not constantly observed. For instance, in the case of
the third nerve of ScyUium the differentiation appears to take
place earliest near the ciliary ganglion, and to proceed from that
point to the base of the mid-brain.
There are two main methods in which new organs are de-
veloped. In the one, which indicates the possibility of physio-
logical continuity, the organ arises by the direct
modification of a portion of a pre-existing organ;
the development of the central nervous system of the Vertebrata
from a groove in the embryonic ectoderm may be taken as an
example of this method. In the other method there is no
continuity which can be in any way interpreted as physiological;
a centre of growth appears in one of the pans of the embryo,
and gives rise to a mass of tissue which gradually shapes itself
into the-required organ. The development of the central nervous
system in Teleosteans and in other similar exceptional cases
may be mentioned as an example of the second plan. Such a
centre of growth is frequently called a blastema, and consists of a
mass of closely packed nuclei which have arisen by the growth-
activity of the nuclei in the neighbourhood. The coelom, an
organ whkb is found in the so-called coelomate animals, and
which in the adult is usually divided up more or less completely
into three parts, namely, body-cavity, renal organs, generative
glands, presents in different animals both these methods of
development. In certain animals it develops by the direct
modification of a part of the primitive enteron, while in others it
arises by the gradual shaping of a mass of tissue which consists
of a compact mass of nuclei derived by nuclear proliferation
from one or more of the pre-existing tissues of the body. Inas-
much as the first rudiment of the coelom nearly always makes its
appearance at an early stage, when the ectoderm and endoderm
are almost the only tissues present, and as it then bulks relatively
tx. ii
EMBRYOLOGY
321
very large and frequently contains within itself the potential
centres of growth of other organs, e.g. mcsenchymal organs (see
above), it has come to be regarded by embryologists as being the
forerunner of all the so-called mesodermal organs of the body,
and has been dignified with the somewhat mysterious rank
which attaches to the conception of a germinal layer. Its
prominence and importance at an early stage led embryologists.
as has already been explained, to overlook the fact that although
some of the centres of growth for the formation of other mm
coelomic mesodermal organs and tissues may be contained
within it, all are not so contained, and that there are centres of
mesodermal growth still left in the ectoderm and endoderm
after its establishment. If these considerations, and others like
them, are correct, it would seem to follow that the conception
implied by the word mesoderm has no objective existence, that
the tissue of the embryo called mesoderm, though sometimes
mainly the rudiment of the coelom, is often much more than this,
and contains within itself the rudiment of many, sometimes of all,
of the organs appertaining to the mcsenchyme. 'In thus con-
taining within itself the potential centres of growth of other
organs and tissues which are commonly ranked as mesodermal,
it is not different from the rudiments of the two other organs
already formed, namely, the ectoderm and endoderm ; for these
contain within themselves centres of growth for the production
of so-called mesodermal tissues, as witness the nerve-crest of
Vertebrata, the growing-point of the pronephric duct, and the
formation of blood-vessels from the hypoblast described for some
members of the same group.
In Echinodermata, Amphioxus, Enteropneusta, and a few
other groups, the coelom develops from a portion or portions of
the primitive entcron, which eventually becomes separated from
the rest and forms a variable number of closed sacs lying between
the gut and the ectoderm. The number of these sacs varies in
different animals, but the evidence at present available seems
to show that the maximum number is five an unpaired one in
front and two pairs behind and, further, that if a less number
of sacs is actually separated from the enteron, the rule is for these
sacs so to divide up that they give rise to five sacs arranged in the
manner indicated. The Enteropneusta present us with the
clearest case of the separation of five sacs from the primitive
enteron (W. Bateson, Quart. Journ. Mic. Sci. xxiv. % 1884). In
Amphioxus, according to the important researches of E. W.
MacBride (Quart. Journ. Mic. Sci. xl. 589), it appears that a
similar process occurs, though it is complicated by the fact that
the sacs of the posterior pair become divided up at an early
stage into many pairs. In Phoronis there are indications of the
same phenomenon (A. T. Masterman, Quart. Journ. Mic. Sci.
xliii. 375). In the Chaetognatha a single sac only is separated
from the enteron, but soon becomes divided up. In the Brachio-
poda one pair of sacs is separated from the enteron, but our
knowledge of their later history is not sufficient to enable us to
say whether they divide up into the typically arranged five sacs.
In Echinodermata the number of sacs separated from the enteron
varies from one to three; but though the history of these shows
considerable differences, there are reasons to believe that the
typical final arrangement is one unpaired and two paired sacs.
But however many sacs may arise from the primitive enteron,
and however these sacs may ultimately divide up and arrange
themselves, the important point of development common to all
these animals, about which there can be no dispute, is that the
coelom is a direct differentiation of a portion of the enteron.
In the majority of the Coelomata the coelomic rudiment docs
not arise by the simple differentiation of a pre-existing organ,
and there is considerable variation in its method of formation.
Speaking generally, it may be said to arise by the differentiation
of a blastema (see above), which develops at an early stage as a
nuclear proliferation from one or more growth-centres in one or
both of the primary layers. It appears in this tissue as a sac
or as a scries of sacs, which become transformed into the body-
cavity (except in the Arthropoda), into the renal organs (with
the possible exception, again, of some Arthropoda), and into the
reproductive glands. In metamerically segmented animals the
322
EMBRYOLOGY
[RECAPITULATION THEORY
appearance of the cavities of these sacs is synchronous with,
and indeed determines, the appearance of metameric segmenta-
tion. In all segmented animals in which the mesoderm (coelomic
rudiment) appears as a continuous sheet or band of tissue on
each side of the body, the coelomic cavity makes its first appear-
ance not as a continuous space on each side, which later becomes
divided up into the structures called mesoblastic somites, but
as a series of paired spaces round which the coelomic tissue
arranges itself in an epithelial manner. In the Vertebrata, it is
true, the ventral portion of the coelom appears at first as a
continuous space, at any rate behind the region of the two
anterior pairs of somites, but in the dorsal portion the coelomic
cavity is developed in the usual way, the coelomic tissue becoming
transformed into the muscle plates and rudimentary renal
tubules of the later stages. With regard to this ventral portion
of the coelom in Vertebrata, it is to be noticed that the cavity
in it never becomes divided up, but always remains continuous,
forming the perivisceral portion of the coelom. The probable
explanation of this peculiarity in the development of the Verte-
brate coelom, as compared with that of Amphioxus and other
segmented animals, is that the segmented stage of the ventral
portion of the coelom is omitted. This explanation derives
some support from the fact that even in animals in which the
coelom is at its first appearance wholly segmented, it frequently
happens that in the adult the perivisceral portion of it is un-
segmented, i.e. it loses during development the segmentation
which it at first possesses. This happens in many Annelida and
in Amphioxus. The lesson, then, which the early history of the
coelom in segmented animals teaches is, that however the
coelomic cavity first makes its appearance, whether by evagina-
tions from the primitive enteron, or by the hollowing out of a
solid blastema-like tissue which has developed from one or both
of the primary layers, it is in its first origin segmented, and
forms the basis on which the segments of the adult are moulded.
In Arthropoda the origin of the coelom is similar to that of
Annelids, but its history is not completely known in any group,
with the exception of Peripatus. In this genus it develops no
perivisceral portion, as in other groups, but gives rise solely to
the nephridia and to the reproductive organs. It is probable,
though not certainly proved, that the history of the coelom in
other Arthropods is essentially similar to that of Peripatus,
allowance being made for the fact that the nephridial portion
does not attain full development in those forms which are
without nephridia in the adult.
With regard to the development of the vascular system,
little can be said here, except that it appears to arise from the
spaces of the mesoblastic reticulum. When this reticulum is
sparse or so delicate as to give way in manipulation, these spaces
appear to be represented by a continuous space which in the
earliest stages of development is frequently spoken of as the
blastocoel or segmentation cavity. They acquire special
epithelial walls, and form the main trunks and network of smaller
vessels found in animals with a canalicular vascular system,
or the large sinus-like spaces characteristic of animals with a
haemocoelic body-cavity.
The existence of a phase at the beginning of life during which
a young animal acquires its equipment by a process of growth
of the germ is of course intelligible enough; such a
P hase is seen in the formation of buds, and in the
sexual reproduction of both animals and plants. The
remarkable point is that while in most cases this
embryonic growth is a direct and simple process e.g. animal and
plant buds, embryonic development of plant seeds in many
cases of sexual reproduction of animals it is not direct, and the
embryonic phase shows stages of structure which seem to possess
a meaning other than that of being merely phases of growth.
The fact that these stages of structure through which the embryo
passes sometimes present for a short time features which are
permanent in other members of the same group, adds very
largely to the interest of the phenomenon and necessitates its
careful examination. This may be divided into two heads: (i)
in relation to embryos, (2) in relation to larvae. So far as embryos
are concerned, we shall limit ourselves mainly to a consideration
of the Vertebrata, because in them are found most instances of
that remarkable phenomenon, the temporary assumption by
certain organs of the embryo of stages of structure which are
permanent in other members of the same group. As is well
known, the embryos of the higher Vertebrata possess in the
structure of the pharynx and of the heart and vascular system
certain features namely, paired pharyngeal apertures, a simple
tubular heart, and a single ventral aorta giving off right and left
a number of branches which pass between the pharyngeal
apertures which permanently characterize those organs in fishes.
The skeleton, largely bony in the adult, passes through a stage in
which it is entirely without bone, and consists mainly of cartilage
the form which it permanently possesses in certain fishes.
Further, the Vertebrate embryo possesses for a time a notochord,
a segmented muscular system, a continuity between the peri-
cardium and the posterior part of the perivisceral cavity all
features which characterize certain groups of Pisces in the aduk
state. Instances of this kind might be multiplied, for the work
of anatomists and embryologists has of late years been largely
devoted to adding to them. Examples of embryonic characters
which are not found in the adults of other Vertebrates are the
following: At a certain stage of development the central nervous
system has the form of a groove in the skin, there is a communica-
tion at the hind end of the body between the neural and ali-
mentary canals, the mouth aperture has at first the form of an
elongated slit, the growing end of the Wolffian duct is in some
groups continuous with the ectoderm, and the retina is at one
stage a portion of the wall of the medullary canal. In the
embryos of the lower Vertebrates many other instances of the
same interesting character might be mentioned; for instance,
the presence of a coelomic sac close to the eye, of another in the
jaw, and of a third near the ear (Elasmobranchs), the opening
of the Mullerian duct into the front end of the WolfEan duct,
and the presence of an aperture of communication between the
muscle-plate coelom and the nephridial coelom.
The interest attaching to these remarkable facts is much
increased by the explanation which has been given of them.
That explanation, which is a deduction from the theory of
evolution, is to the effect that the peculiar embryonic structures
and relations just mentioned are due to the retention by the
embryo of features which, once possessed by the adult ancestor,
have been lost in the course of evolution. This explanation,
which at once suggests itself when we are dealing with structures
actually present in adult members of other groups,
does not so obviously apply to those features which are ^f a/ '"""
found in no adult animal whatsoever. Nevertheless theory.
it has been extended to them, because they are of a
nature which it is not impossible to suppose might have existed
in a working animal. Now this explanation, which, it will be
observed, can only be entertained on the assumption that the
evolution theory is true, has been still further extended by
embryologists in a remarkable and frequently unjustifiable
manner, and has been applied to all embryonic processes, finally
leading to the so-called recapitulation theory, which asserts that
embryonic history is a shortened recapitulation of ancestral
history, or, to use the language of modern zoology, that the
ontogeny or development of the individual contains an abbreviated
record of the phylogeny or development of the race. A theory so
important and far-reaching as this requires very careful examina-
tion. When we come to look for the facts upon which it is based,
we find that they are non-existent, for the ancestors of all living
animals are dead, and we have no means of knowing what they
were like. It is true there are fossil remains of animals which have
lived, but these are so imperfect as to be practically useless for
the present requirements. Moreover, if they were perfectly pre-
served, there would be no evidence to show that they were
ancestors of the animals now living. They might have been
animals which have become extinct and left no descendants.
Thus the explanation ordinarily given of the embryonic structures
referred to is purely a deduction from the evolution theory.
Indeed, it is even less than this, for all that can be said is
BAER'S LAW]
EMBRYOLOGY
323
tihing of dii> kind: if the evolution theory is true, then it
in conceivable that the reason why the embryo of a bird passes
through a stage in which its pharynx presents some resemblance
to that of a nsh is that a remote ancestor of the bird possessed
a pharynx with lateral apertures such as are at present found in
But the explanation is sometimes pushed even further, and
it tt said that these pharyngeal apertures of the ancestral bird
had the same respiratory function as the corresponding structures
in modern fishes. That this is going too far a little reflection will
show. For if it be admitted that all so-called vestigial structures
had once the same function as the homologous structures when
fully developed in other animals, it becomes necessary to admit
that male mammals must once have had fully developed
mammary glands and suckled the young, that female mammals
formerly were provided with a functional penis, and that in
species in which the females have a trace of the secondary sexual
characters of the male the latter were once common to both sexes.
The second and more extended form of the explanation plainly
introduces a considerable amount of contentious matter, and it
will be advisable, in the first instance, at any rate, to routine
ourselves to a critical examination of the less ambitious con-
ception. This explanation obviously implies the view that in the
course of evolution the tendency has been for structures to persist
in the embryo after they have been lost in the adult. Is there
any justification for this view? It is clearly impossible to get any
direct evidence, because, as explained above, we have no know-
ledge of the ancestors of living animals; but if we assume the
evolution theory to be true, there is a certain amount of indirect
evidence which is distinctly opposed to the view. As is well
known, living birds are without teeth, but it is generally assumed
that their edentulous condition has been comparatively recently
acquired, and that they are descended from animals which,
at a time not very remote from the present, possessed teeth.
Considering the resemblance of birds to other terrestrial verte-
brates, and the fact that extinct birds, not greatly differing from
birds now living, are known to have had teeth, it must be allowed
that there is some warrant for the assumption. Yet in no single
case has it been certainly shown that any trace of teeth has
been developed in the embryo. The same remark applies to a
large number of similar cases; for instance, the reduced digits
of the bird's hand and foot and the limbs of snakes. Moreover,
organs which are supposed to have become recently reduced
and functionless in the adult are also reduced in the embryo;
for instance, digits 3 and 4 of the horse's foot, the hind limbs of
whales (G. A. Guldberg and F. Nansen, " On the Development
and Structure of Whales," Bergen Museum, 1894), the spiracle
of Elasmobranchii. In fact, considerations of this kind dis-
tinctly point to the view that any tendency to the reduction
or enlargement of an organ in the adult is shared approximately
to the same extent by the embryo. But there are undoubtedly
some, though not many, cases in which organs which were pre-
sumably present in an ancestral adult have persisted in the
embryo of the modern form. As an instance may be mentioned
the presence in whale-bone whales of imperfectly formed teeth,
which are absorbed comparatively early in foetal life (Julin,
Arek. bttUfie, L, 1880, p. 75).
It therefore becomes necessary to inquire why in some cases
an organ is retained by the embryo after its loss by the adult,
whereas in other cases it dwindles and presumably disappears
.Itaneously in the embryo and the adult. The whole question
is examined and discussed by the present writer in the Quarterly
Journal ff Microscopical Science, xxxvi., 1804, p. 35, and the
conclusions there reached are as follows: A disappearing adult
organ is not retained in a relatively greater development by an
organism in the earlier stages of its individual growth unless it is
of functional importance to the young form. In cases in which
the whole development is embryonic this rarely happens, because
the conditions of embryonic life are so different from free life
that functional embryonic organs are usually organs sui generis,
e.( the placenta, amnion. tec., which cannot be traced to a
modification of organs previously present in the adult. It does,
however, appear to have happened sometimes, and as an instance
of it may be mentioned the ductus arteriosus of the Sauropsidan
and Mammalian embryo. On the other hand, when there is a
considerable period of larval life, it docs appear that there is a
strong case for thinking that organs which have been lost by the
adult may be retained and made use of by the larva. The best-
known example that can be given of this is the tadpole of the
frog. Here we find organs, viz. gills and gill-slits, which arc
universally regarded as having been attributes of all terrestrial
Vertebrata in an earlier and aquatic condition, and we also
notice that their retention is due to their being useful on account
of the supposed ancient conditions of life having been retained.
Many other instances, more or less plausible, of a like retention
of ancestral features by larvae might be mentioned, and it must
be conceded that there are strong reasons for supposing that
larvae often retain traces, more or less complete, of ancestral
stages of structure. But this admission docs not carry with it
any obligation to accept the widely prevalent view that larval
history can in anyway be regarded as a recapitulation of ancestral
history. Far from it, for larvae in retaining some ancestral
features are in no way different from adults; they only differ
from adults in the features which they have retained. Both
larvae and adults retain ancestral features, and both have been
modified by an adaptation to their respective conditions of life
which has ever been becoming more perfect.
The conclusion, then, has been reached, that whereas larvae
frequently retain traces of ancestral stages of adult structure,
embryos will rarely do so; and we are confronted again with the
question, How are we to account for the presence in the embryo
of numerous functionless organs which cannot be explained
otherwise than as having been inherited from a previous con-
dition in which they were functional? The answer is that the
only organs of this kind which have been retained are organs
which have been retained by the larvae of the ancestors after
they have been lost by the adult, and have become in this way
impressed upon the development. As an illustration taken from
current natural history of the manner in which larval characters
are in actual process of becoming embryonic may be mentioned
the case of the viviparous salamander (Salamander atra), in which
the gills, &c., are all developed but never used, the animal
being born without them. In other and closely allied species of
salamander there is a considerable period of larval life in which
the gills and gill-slits arc functional, but in this species the larval
stage, for the existence of which there was a distinct reason,
viz. the entirely aquatic habits of life in the young state, has
become at one stroke embryonic by its simple absorption into
the embryonic period. The view, then, that embryonic develop-
ment is essentially a recapitulation of ancestral history must be
given up; it contains only a few references to ancestral history,
namely, those which have been preserved probably in a mui'h
modified form by previous larvae.
We must now pass to the consideration of another supposed
law of embryology the so-called law of v. Baer. This generali-
zation is usually stated as follows: Embryos of
different species of the same group are more alike than
adults, and the resemblances are greater the younger
the embryo examined. Great importance has been attached
to this generalization by cmbryologists and naturalists, and it is
very widely accepted. Nevertheless, it is open to serious criti-
cism. If it were true, we should expect to find that embryos of
closely similar species would be indistinguishable, but this is
notoriously not the case. On the contrary, they often differ
more than do the adults, in support of which statement the
embryos of the different species of Peripatus may be referred to.
The generalization undoubtedly had its origin in the fact that
there is what may be called a family resemblance between
embryos, but this resemblance, which is by no means exact, is
purely superficial, and does not extend to anatomical detail.
On the contrary, it may be fairly argued that in some cases
embryos of widely dissimilar members of the same group present
anatomical differences of a higher morphological value than do
the adults (see Sedgwick, loc. cit.), and, as stated above the
324
EMBRYOLOGY
[HISTORY
embryos of closely allied animals are distinguishable at all stages
of development, though the distinguishing features are not the
same as those which distinguish the adults. To say that the
development of the organism and of its component parts is a
progress from the simple to the complex is to state a truism,
but to state that it is also a progress from the general to the
special is to go altogether beyond the facts. The bipinnaria
larva of an echinoderm, the trochosphere larva of an annelid,
the blastodermic vesicle of a mammal are all as highly specialized
as their respective adults, but the specialization is for a different
purpose, and of a different kind to that which characterizes the
adult.
In its scientific and systematic form embryology may be
considered as having only taken birth within the last century,
although the germ from which it sprung was already
f rme d nearly half a century earlier. The ancients,
oogy. it is true, as we see by the writings of Aristotle and
Galen, pursued the subject with interest, and the
indefatigable Greek naturalist and philosopher had even made
continued series of observations on the progressive stages of
development in the incubated egg, and on the reproduction of
various animals; but although, after the revival of learning,
various anatomists and physiologists from time to time made
contributions to the knowledge of the foetal structure in its
larger organs, yet from the minuteness of the observations
required for embryological research, it was not till the microscope
came into use for the investigation of organic structure that any
intimate knowledge was attained of the nature of organogenesis.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that during a long period,
in this as in other branches of physical inquiry, vague speculations
took the place of direct observation and more solid information.
This is apparent in most of the works treating of generation
during the i6th and part of the i7th centuries. 1
Harvey was the first to give, in the middle of the latter century,
a new life and direction to investigation of this subject, by his
discovery of the connexion between the cicatricula of the yolk
and the rudiments of the chick, and by his faithful description
of the successive stages of development as observed in the in-
cubated egg, as well as of the progress of gestation in some
Mammalia. He had also the merit of fixing the attention of
physiologists upon general laws of development as deduced
from actual observation of the phenomena, by the enunciation
of two important propositions, viz. (i) that all animals are
produced out of ova, and (2) that the organs of the embryo
arise by new formation, or epigenesis, and not by mere enlarge-
ment out of a pre-existing invisible condition (Exercitationes de
generatione animalium, Amstelodami, 1651). Harvey's observa-
tions, however, were aided only by the use of magnifying glasses
(perspecillae) , probably of no great power, and he saw nothing
of the earliest appearances of the embryo in the first thirty-six
hours, and believed the blood and the heart to be the parts first
formed.
The influence of the work of Harvey, and of the successful
application of the microscope to embryological investigation,
was soon afterwards apparent in the admirable researches of
Malpighi of Bologna, as evinced by his communications to the
1 It may be proper to mention, as authors of this period who made
special researches on the development of the embryo (i) Volcher
Colter of Groningen, who, along with Aldrovandus of Bologna, made
a series of observations on the formation of the chick, day by day, in
the incubated egg, which were described in a work published in 1573,
and (2) Hieronymus Fabricius (ab Aquapendente), who, in his work
De formato foetu, first published at Padua in 1600, gave an interesting
account, illustrated by many fine engravings, of uterogestation and
the foetus of a number of quadrupeds and other animals, and in a post-
humous work entitled De formatione oyi et puili, edited by J. Prevost
and published at Padua in 1621, described and illustrated by engrav-
ings the daily changes of the egg in incubation. It is enough, how-
ever, to say that Fabricius was entirely ignorant of the earlier
phenomena of development which occur in the first two or three days,
and even of the source of the embryonic rudiments, which he con-
ceived to soring, not from the yolk or true ovum, but from the
chalazae or twisted, deepest part of the white. The cicatricula he
looked upon as merely the vestige of the pedicle by which the yolk
had previously been attached to the ovary.
Royal Society of London in 1672, " De ovo incubato," and " De
formatione pulli," and more especially in his delineations of
some of the earlier phenomena of development, in which, as in
many other parts of minute anatomy, he partially or wholly
anticipated discoveries, the full development of which has only
been accomplished in the present century. Malpighi traced the
origin of the embryo almost to its very commencement in the
formation of the cerebro-spinal groove within the cicatricula,
which he removed from the opaque mass of the yolk; and he
only erred in supposing the embryonal rudiments to have pre-
existed as such in the egg, in consequence, apparently, of his
having employed for observation, in very warm weather, eggs
which, though he believed them to be unincubated, had in reality
undergone some of the earlier developmental changes.
The works of Walter Needham (1667), Regnier de Graaf (1673),
Swammerdam (1685), Vallisneri (1689) following upon those of
Harvey all contain important contributions to the knowledge
of our subject, as tending to show the similarity in the mode of
production from ova in a variety of animals with that previously
best known in birds. The observations more especially of de
Graaf, Nicoks Steno and J. van Home gave much greater
precision to the knowledge of the connexion between the origin
of the ovum of quadrupeds and the vesicles of the ovary now
termed Graafian, which de Graaf showed always burst and dis-
charged their contents on the occurrence of pregnancy.
These observations bring us to the period of Boerhaave and
Albinus in the earlier part of the i8th century, and in the suc-
ceeding years to that of Haller, whose vast erudition and varied
and accurate original observations threw light upon the entire
process of reproduction in animals, and brought its history into
a more systematic and intelligible form. A considerable part of
the seventh and the whole of the eighth volumes of Haller's
great work, the Elementa physiologiae, published at successive
times from 1757 to 1766, are occupied with the general view
of the function of generation, while his special contributions to
embryology are contained in his Deux memoires sur la formation
du cceur dans le poulet and Deux memoires sur la formation des
os, both published at Lausanne in 1758, and republished in an
extended and altered form, together with his " Observations on
the early condition of the Embryo in Quadrupeds," made along
with Kiihlemann, in the Opera minora (1762-1768). Though
originally educated as a believer in the doctrine of " preforma-
tion " by his teacher Boerhaave, Haller was soon led to abandon
that view in favour of " epigenesis " or new formation, as may be
seen in various parts of his works published before the middle
of the century; see especially a long note explanatory of the
grounds of his change of opinion in his edition of Boerhaave's
Praelectiones academicae, vol. v. part 2, p. 497 (1744). and
his Primae lineae physiologiae (1747). But some years later,
and after having been engaged in observing the phenomena of
development in the incubated egg, he again changed his views,
and during the remainder of his life was a keen opponent of the
system of epigenesis, and a defender and exponent of the theory
of " evolution," as it was then named a theory very different
from that now bearing the name, and which implied belief in the
pre-existence of the organs of the embryo in the germ, according
to the theory of encasement (emboitement) or inclusion supported
by Leibnitz and Bonnet. (See the interesting work of Bonnet,
Considerations sur les corps organises, Amsterdam, 1762, for
an account of his own views and those of Haller.)
It was reserved for Caspar Frederick Wolff (1733-1794),
a German by birth, but naturalized afterwards in Russia, to
bring forward observations which, though almost entirely
neglected for a long time after their publication, and in some
measure discredited under the influence of Haller's authority,
were sixty years later acknowledged to have established the
theory of epigenesis upon the secure basis of ascertained facts,
and to have laid the first foundation of the morphological science
of embryology. Wolff's work, entitled Theoria generationis,
first published as an inaugural Dissertation at Berlin in 1759,
was republished with additions in German at Berlin in 1764, and
again in Latin at Halle in 1774. Wolff also wrote a " Memoir on
HISTORY]
EMBRYOLOGY
325
the Development of the Intestine " in .Vet-, comment, acad.
Pttit^ti., 1768 and 1760. But it was not till the latter work was
translated into German by J. F. Meckel, and appeared in his
Arckh (or 1812, that Wolff's peculiar merits as the founder of
pjMirtfm embryology came to be known or fully appreciated.
The special novelty of Wolff's discoveries consisted mainly
in this, that he showed that the germinal part of the bird's egg
forms layer of united granules or organized particles (cells of
the modem histologist), presenting at first no semblance of the
form or structure of the future embryo, but gradually converted
by various morphological changes in the formative material,
which are all capable of being traced by observation, into the
several rudimentary organs and systems of the embryo. The
earlier form of the embryo he delineated with accuracy; the
actual mode of formation he traced in more than one organ, as
for example in the alimentary canal, and he was the discoverer
of several new and important cmbryological facts, as in the in-
stance of the primordial kidneys, which have thus been named
the Wolffian bodies. Wolff further showed that the growing
parts of plants owe their origin to organized particles or cells,
so that he was led to the great generalization that the processes
of embryonic formation and of adult growth and nutrition
are all of a like nature in both plants and animals. No advance,
however, was made upon the basis of Wolff's discoveries till the
year 1817, when the researches of C. H. Pander on the develop-
ment of the chick gave a fuller and more exact view of the pheno-
mena less clearly indicated by Wolff, and laid down with greater
precision a plan of the formation of parts in the embryo of birds,
which may be regarded as the foundation of the views of all
subsequent cmbryologisis.
But although the minuter investigation of the nature and
true theory of the process of embryonic development was thus
held in abeyance for more than half a century, the interval was
not unproductive of observations having an important bearing
on the knowledge of the anatomy of the foetus and the function
of reproduction. The great work of William Hunter on the
human gravid uterus, containing unequalled pictorial illustra-
tions of its subject from the pencil of Rymsdyk and other artists,
was published in 1775;' and during a large part of the same
period numerous communications to the Memoirs of the Royal
Society testified to the activity and genius of his brother, John
Hunter, in the investigation of various parts of comparative
embryology. But it is mainly in his rich museum, and in the
manuscripts and drawings which he left, and which have been
in part described and published in the catalogue of his wonderful
collection, that we obtain any adequate idea of the unexampled
industry and wide scope of research of that great anatomist and
physiologist.
As belonging to a somewhat later period, but still before
the time when the more strict investigation of embryological
phenomena was resumed by Pander, there fall to be noticed, as
indicative of the rapid progress that was making, the experiments
of L. Spallanzani, 1789; the researches of J. H. von Autenrieth,
1797, and of Soemmering; 1799, on the human foetus; the
observations of Senff on the formation of the skeleton, 1801;
those of L. Oken and D. G. Kicser on the intestine and other
organs, 1806; Oken's remarkable work on the bones of the head,
1807 (with the views promulgated in which Goethe's name is
also intimately connected); J. F. Mcckel's numerous and
valuable contributions to embryology and comparative anatomy,
extending over a long series of years; and F. Tiedemann's
rtiMinl work on the development of the brain, 1816.
The observations of the Russian naturalist, Christian Heinrich
Pander (1704-186$), were made at the instance and under the
immediate supervision of Prof. Ddllinger at Wurzburg, and we
learn from von Baer's autobiography that he, being an early
friend of Pander's, and knowing his qualifications for the task,
had pointed him out to Ddllinger as well fitted to carry out the
investigation of development which that professor was desirous
1 Along with the work of W. Hunter must be mentioned a large
collect ion of unpublished observation* by Dr lames Douglas which
are preserved in the Hunterian Museum of Glasgow University.
of having accomplished. Pander's inaugural dissertation was
entitled Historic mttamorphoseos quam ovum incubalum prioribus
quinque diebus subit (Virccburgi, 1817); and it was also published
in German under the title of Beitr&getur Entwickeiungsgeschickte
dts Hiihnthens im Eie (Wurzburg, 1817). The beautiful plates
illustrating the latter work were executed by the elder E. J.
d'Alton, well known for his skill in scientific observation,
delineation and engraving.
Pander observed the germinal membrane or blastoderm, as he
for the first time called it, of the fowl's egg to acquire three
layers of organized substance in the earlier period of incubation.
These he named respectively the serous or outer, the vascular or
middle, and the mucous or inner layers; and he traced with
great skill and care the origin of the principal rudimentary
organs and systems from each of these layers, pointing out
shortly, but much more distinctly than Wolff had done, the
actual nature of the changes occurring in the process of
development.
Karl Ernest von Baer (q.v.), the greatest of modern embryolo-
gists, was, as already remarked, the early friend of Pander,
and, at the time when the latter was engaged in his researches
at WUrzburg, was associated with Ddllinger as prosector, and
engaged with him in the study of comparative anatomy. He
witnessed, therefore, though he did not actually take part in,
Pander's researches; and the latter having afterwards abandoned
the inquiry, von Baer took it up for himself in the year 1819,
when he had obtained an appointment in the university of
Konigsberg, where he was the colleague of Burdach and Rathke,
both of whom were able coadjutors in the investigation, of the
subject of his choice. (See v. Baer's interesting autobiography,
published on his retirement from St Petersburg to Dorpat in
1864.)
Von Baer's observations were carried on at various times
from 1819 to 1826 and 1827, when he published the first results
in a description of the development of the chick in the first
edition of Burdach's Physiology.
It was at this time that von Baer made the important dis-
covery of the ovarian ovum of mammals and of man, totally
unknown before his time, and was thus able to prove as matter
of exact observation what had only been surmised previously,
viz. the entire similarity in the mode of origin of these animals
with others lower in the scale. (Epistola de ovi mammalium et
hominis genesi, Lipsiae, 1827. See also the interesting com-
mentary on or supplement to the Epistola in Heusinger's Journal,
and the translation in Breschet's Rtpertoire, Paris, 1829.)
In 1829 von Baer published the first part of his great work,
entitled Beobachtungcn und Reflexionen iiber die Enlwickelungs-
geschichte dcr Thiere, the second part of which, still leaving the
work incomplete, did not appear till 1838. In this work, dis-
tinguished by the fulness, richness and extreme accuracy of the
observations and descriptions, as well as by the breadth and
soundness of the general views on embryology and allied branches
of biology which it presents, he gave a detailed account not only
of the whole progress of development of the chick as observed
day by day during the incubation of the egg, but he also described
what was known, and what he himself had investigated by
numerous and varied observations, of the whole course of
formation of the young in other vertebrate animals. His work
is in fact a system of comparative embryology, replete with new
discoveries in almost every part.
Von Baer's account of the layers of the blastoderm differs
somewhat from that of Pander, and appears to be more con-
sistent with the further researches which have lately been made
than was at one time supposed, in this respect, that he distin-
guished from a very early period two primitive or fundamental
layers, viz. the animal or upper, and the vegetative or lower,
from each of which, in connexion with two intermediate layers
derived from them, the fundamental organs and systems of the
embryo are derived: the animal layer, with its derivative,
supplying the dermal, neural, osseous and muscular; the
vegetative layer, with its derivative, the vascular and mucous
(intestinal) systems. He laid down the general morphological
326
EMBRYOLOGY
[HISTORY
principle that the fundamental organs have essentially the shape
of tubular cavities, as appears in the first form of the central
organ of the nervous system, in the two muscular and osseous
tubes which form the walls of the body, and in the intestinal
canal; and he followed out with admirable clearness the steps
by which from these fundamental systems the other organs
arise -secondarily, such as the organs of sense, the glands, lungs,
heart, vascular glands, Wolffian bodies, kidneys and generative
organs.
To complete von Baer's system there was mainly wanting a
more minute knowledge of the intimate structure of the ele-
mentary tissues, but this had not yet been acquired by biologists,
and it remained for Theodor Schwann of Liege in 1839, along
with whom should be mentioned those who, like Robert Brown
and M. J. Schleiden, prepared the way for his great discovery,
to point out the uniformity in histological structure of the simpler
forms of plants and animals, the nature of the organized animal
and vegetable cell, the cellular constitution of the primitive
ovum of animals, and the derivation of the various tissues,
complex as well as simple, from the transformation or, as it is
now called, differentiation of simple cellular elements, dis-
coveries which have exercised a powerful and lasting influence
on the whole progress of biological knowledge in our time,
and have contributed in an eminent degree to promote the
advance of embryology itself.
To K. B. Reichert of Berlin more particularly is due the first
application of the newer histological views to the explanation of
the phenomena of development, 1840. To him and to R. A. von
Kolliker and R. Virchow is due the ascertainment of the general
principle that there is no free-cell formation in embryonic
development and growth, but that all organs are derived from
the multiplication, combination and transformation of cells,
and that all cells giving rise to organs are the descendants or
progeny of previously existing cells, and that these may be
traced back to the original cell or cell-substance of the ovum.
It may be that modern research has somewhat modified the
views taken by biologists of the statements of Schwann as to the
constitution of the organized cell, especially as regards its
simplest or most elementary form, and has indicated more
exactly the nature of the protoplasmic material which constitutes
its living basis; but it has not caused any very wide departure
from the general principles enunciated by that physiologist.
Schwann's treatise, entitled Microscopical Researches into the
Accordance in the Structure and Growths of Animals and Plants,
was published in German at Berlin in 1839, and was translated
into English by Henry Smith, and printed for the Sydenham
Society in 1847, along with a translation of Schleiden's memoir,
" Contributions to Phylogenesis," which originally appeared in
1838 in Miiller's Archvo for that year, and which had also been
published in English in Taylor and Francis's Scientific Memoirs,
vol. ii. part vi.
Among the newer observations of the same period which
contributed to a more exact knowledge of the structure of the
ovum itself may be mentioned first the discovery of the
germinal vesicle, or nucleus, in the germ-disk of birds by J. E.
von Purkinje (Symbolae ad ovi atrium historiam ante incubationem,
Vratislaviae, 1825, and republished at Leipzig in 1830); second,
von Baer's discovery of the mammiferous ovum in 1827, already
referred to; third, the discovery of the germinal vesicle of
mammals by J. V. Coste in 1834, and its independent observation
by Wharton Jones in 1835; and fourth, the observation in the
same year by Rudolph Wagner of the germinal macula or
nucleus. Coste's discovery of the germinal vesicle of Mammalia
was first communicated to the public in the Comptes rendus of
the French Academy for 1833, and was more fully described in
the Recherches sur la generation des mammiferes, by Delpech
and Coste (Paris, 1834). Thomas Wharton Jones's observations,
made in the autumn of 1834, without a knowledge of Coste's
communication, were presented to the Royal Society in 1835.
This discovery was also confirmed and extended by G. G. Valentin
and Bernardt, as recorded by the latter in his work Symb. ad ovi
mammal, hist, ante praegnationem. Rudolph Wagner's observa-
tions first appeared in his Textbook of Comparative Anatomy,
published at Leipzig in 1834-1835, and in Miiller's Archiv for the
latter year. His more extended researches are described in his
work Prodromus hist, generationis hominis atque animalium
(Leipzig, 1836), and in a memoir inserted in the Trans, of the Roy.
Bavarian Acad. of Sciences (Munich, 1837).
The two decades of years from 1820 to 1840 were peculiarly
fertile in contributions to the anatomy of the foetus and the
progress of embryological knowledge. The researches of Prevost
and Dumas on the ova and primary stages of development of
Batrachia, birds and mammals, made as early as 1824, deserve
especial notice as important steps in advance, both in the dis-
covery of the process of yolk segmentation in the batrachian
ovum, and in their having shown almost with the force of demon-
stration, previous to the discovery of the mammiferous ovarian
ovum by von Baer, that that body must exist as a minute
spherule in the Graafian follicle of the ovary, although they did
not actually succeed in bringing the ova clearly under
observation.
The works of Pockels (1825), of Seller (1831), of G. Breschet
(1832), of A. A. L. M. Velpeau (1833), of T. L. W. Bischoff
(1834) all bearing upon human embryology; the researches of
Coste in comparative embryology in 1834, already referred to,
and those published by the same author in 1837; the publication
of Johannes Miiller's great work on physiology, and Rudolph
Wagner's smaller text-book, in both of which the subject of
embryology received a very full treatment, together with the
excellent Manual of the Development of the Foetus, by Valentin,
in 1835, the first separate and systematic work on the whole
subject, now secured to embryology its permanent place among
the biological sciences on the Continent; while in this country
attention was drawn to the subject by the memoirs of Allen
Thomson (1831), Th. Wharton Jones (1835-1838) and Martin
Barry (1839-1840).
Among the more remarkable special discoveries which belong
to the period now referred to, a few may be mentioned, as, for
example, that of the chorda dorsalis by von Baer, a most
important one, which may be regarded as the key to the whole
of vertebral morphology; the phenomenon of yolk segmentation,
now known to be universal among animals, but which was only
first carefully observed in Batrachia by Prevost and Dumas
(though previously casually noticed by Swammerdam), and was
soon afterwards followed out by Rusconi and von Baer in fishes;
the discovery of the branchial clefts, plates and vascular arches
in the embryos of the higher abranchiate animals by H. Rathke
in 1825-1827; the able investigation of the transformations of
these arches by Reichert in 1837; and the researches on the
origin and development of the urinary and generative organs
by Johannes Mtiller in 1829-1830.
On entering the fifth decade of the igth century, the number
of original contributions and systematic treatises becomes so
great as to render the attempt to enumerate even a selection of
the more important of them quite unsuitable to the limits of the
present article. We must be satisfied, therefore, with a reference
to one or two which seem to stand out with greater prominence
than the rest as landmarks in the progress of embryological
discovery. Among these may first be mentioned the researches
of Theodor L. W. von Bischoff, formerly of Giessen and later of
Munich, on the development of the ovum in Mammalia, in which
a series of the most laborious, minute and accurate observations
furnished a greatly novel and very full history of the formative
process in several animals of that class. These researches are
contained in four memoirs, treating separately of the development
of the rabbit, the dog, the guinea-pig and the roe-deer, and
appeared in succession in the years 1842, 1845, 1852 and 1054.
Next may be mentioned the great work of Coste, entitled
Histoire gen. el particul. du developpement des animaux, of which,
however, only four fasciculi appeared between the years 1847
and 1859, leaving the work incomplete. In this work, in the
large folio form, beautiful representations are given of the
author's valuable observations on human embryology, and on
that of various mammals, birds and fishes, and of the author's
H1STORVI
EMBRYOLOGY
327
discovery in 1847 of the process of partial yolk segmentation in
the germinal disk of the fowl's egg during its descent through
the oviduct, and his observations on the same phenomenon in
fishes and mammals.
1 he development of reptiles received important elucidation
from the researches of Rathke, in his history of the dcvelopnu-nt
of serpents, published at Konigsberg in 1839, and in a similar
work on the turtle in 1848, as well as in a later one on the crocodile
in 1866, along with which may be associated the observations
of H. J. Clark on the " Embryology of the Turtle," published in
Agassiz's L'oHiribuiiuns to Satural History, ffc., 1857.
The phenomena of yolk segmentation, to which reference has
more than once been made, and to which later researches give
more and more importance in connexion with the fundamental
phenomena of development, received great elucidation during
this period, first from the observations of C. T. E. von Siebold
and those of Bagge on the complete yolk segmentation of the
egg in nematoid worms in 1841, and more fully by the observa-
tions of Kulliker in the same animals in 1843. The nature of
partial segmentation of the yolk was first made known by
Kollikcr in his work on the development of the Cephalopoda
in 1844, and, as has already been mentioned, the phenomena
were observed by Caste in the eggs of birds. The latter observa-
tions have since been confirmed by those of Oellacher, Gotte and
:ker. Further researches in a vast number of animals give
every reason to believe that the phenomenon of segmentation
is in some shape or other the invariable precursor of embryonic
formation.
The first considerable work on the development of a division
of the invertebrates was that of Maurice Herold of Marburg
on spiders, DC generatione aranearum ex mo, published at
Marburg in 1824, in which the whole phenomena of the formative
processes in that animal are described with remarkable clearness
and completeness. A few years later an important series of
contributions to the history of the development of invertebrate
animals appeared in the second volume of Burdach's work on
Pkysioiofy, of which the first edition was published in 1828,
and in this the history of the development of the Entozoa was
the production of Ch. Thcod. von Siebold, and that of most of
the other invertebrates was compiled by H. Rathke from the
results of his own observations and those of others. These
memoirs, together with others subsequently published by
Rathke, notably that Ober die Bildung und Entwickelungs-
fesekickte d. Flusskrebses (Leipzig, 1829), in which an attempt
is made to extend the doctrine of the derivation of the organs
from the germinal layers to the invertebrata, entitle him to be
regarded as the founder of invertebrate embryology.
A large body of facts having by this time been ascertained
with respect to the more obvious processes of development,
a further attempt to refer the phenomena of organogencsis to
morphological and histological principles became desirable.
More especially was the need felt to point out with greater
minuteness and accuracy the relation in which the origin of the
fundamental organs of the embryo stands to the layers of the
blastoderm: and this we find accomplished with signal success
in the researches of R. Remak on the development of the chick
and frog, published between the years 1850 and 1855.
Starting from Pander's discovery of the trilaminate blasto-
derm, Remak worked out the development of the chick in the
light of the cell-theory of Schleiden and Schwann. He observed
the division of the middle layer into two by a split which subse-
quently gives rise to the body-cavity (pleuro-pcritoncal space)
of the adult; and traced the principal organs which came from
these two layers (Hautfaserblatt and Darmfasrrhlatt) respectively.
In this manner the foundations of the germ-layer theory were
established in their modern form.
A great step forward was made in 1859 by T. H. Huxley,
who compared the serous and mucous layers of Pander with the
ectoderm and endoderm of the Coelenterata. But in spite of
this comparison it was generally held that germinal layers similar
to those of the vertebrata were not found in invertebrate animals,
and it was not until the publication in 1871 of Kowalewsky's
rest-arches (see below) that the germinal layer theory was
applied to the embryos of all the Metazoa. But the year 1850
will be for ever memorable in the history of science as the year
of the publication of the Origin of Species. If the enunciation
of the cell-theory may be said to have marked a first from a
second period in the history of embryology, the publication oi
Darwin's great idea ushered in a third. Whereas hitherto thr
facts of anatomy and development were loosely held together
by the theory of types which owed its origin and maintenance
to Cuvier, L. Agassiz, J. Muller and R. Owen, they were now
combined into one organic whole by the theory of descent and
by the hypothesis of recapitulation which was deduced from
that theory. First clearly enunciated by Johann Mtiller in his
well-known work Ftir Darwin published in 1864 (rendered in
England as Facts for Darwin, 1869), the view that a knowledge
of embryonic and larval histories would lay bare the secrets
of race history and enable the course of evolution to be traced
and so lead to the discovery of the natural system of classification,
gave a powerful stimulus to cmbryological research. The first
fruits of this impetus were gathered by Alexander Agassiz, A.
Kowalewsky and E. Mctschnikoff. Agassiz, in his memoir on the
Embryology of the Starfish published in 1864, showed that the
body-cavity in Echinodermata arises as a differentiation of the
enteron of the larva and so laid the foundations of our present
knowledge of the coelom. This discovery was confirmed in
1869 by Metschnikoff (" Studien iib. d. Entwick. d. Echinodermen
u. Nemertinen," Mtm. Ac. Ptlersbourg (7), 41, 1869), and
extended by him toTornaria, the larva of Balanoglossus in 1870
(" Untersuchungen iib. d. Metamorphose einiger Secthierc,"
Zeit. f. wiss. Zoologie, 20, 1870). In 1871 Kowalewsky in his
classical memoir, entitled " Embryologische Studien an Wiirmern
und Arthropoden " (Mtm. Acad. Ptlersbourg (7), 16, 1871),
proved the same fact for Sagitta and added immensely to our
knowledge of the early stages of development of the Invertebrata.
These memoirs formed the basis on which subsequent workers
took their stand. Amongst the most important of these was
F. M. Balfour (1851-1882). Led to the study of embryology
by his teacher, M. Foster, in association with whom he published
in 1874 the Elements of Embryology, Balfour was one of the
first to take advantage of the facilities for research offered by
Dr. A. Dohrn's Zoological Station at Naples which has since
become so celebrated. Here he did the work which was subse-
quently published in 1878 in his Monograph of the Development
of Elasmobranch Fishes, and which constituted the most im-
portant addition to vertebrate morphology since the days of
Johannes Muller. This was followed in 1879 and 1881 by the
publication of his Treatise on Comparative Embryology, the first
work in which the facts of the rapidly growing science were
clearly and philosophically put together, and the greatest.
The influence of Balfour's work on embryology was immense
and is still felt. He was an active worker in every department
of it, and there are few groups of the animal kingdom on which
he has not left the impress of his genius.
In the period under consideration the output of embryological
work has been enormous. No group of the animal kingdom
has escaped exhaustive examination, and no effort has been
spared to obtain the embryos of isolated and out of the way
forms, the development of which might have a bearing upon
important questions of phylogeny and classification. Of this
work it is impossible to speak in detail in this summary. It is
only possible to call attention to some of its more important
features, to mention the more important advances, and to refer
to some of the more striking memoirs.
Marine zoological stations have been established, expeditions
have been sent to distant countries, and the methods of investiga-
tion have been greatly improved. Since Anton Dohrn founded
the Stazione Zoologica at Naples in 1872, observatories for the
study of marine organisms have been established in most
countries. Of journeys which have been made to distant
countries and which have resulted in important contributions
to embryology, may be mentioned the expedition (1884-1886)
of the cousins Sarasin to Ceylon (development of Gymnophiona),
3 28
EMBRYOLOGY
[HISTORY
of E. Selenka to Brazil and the East Indies (development of
Marsupials, Primates and other mammals, 1877, 1889, 1892),
of A. A. W. Hubrecht to the East Indies (1890, development of
Tarsius), of W. H. Caldwell to Australia (1883-1884, discovery
of the nature of the ovum and oviposition of Echidna and of
Ceratodus), of A. Sedgwick to-the Cape (1883, development of
Peripatus), of J. Graham Kerr to Paraguay (1896, development
of Lepidosiren) , of R. Semon to Australia and the Malay Archi-
pelago (1891-1893, development of Monotremata, Marsupialia) ,
and of J. S. Budgett to Africa (1898, 1900, 1901, 1903, develop-
ment of Polypterus).
In methods, while great improvements have been made in the
processes of hardening and staining embryos, the principal
advance has been the introduction in 1883 by W. H. Caldwell
in his work on the development of Phoronis of the method of
making tape-worm like strings of sections as a result of which
the process of mounting in order all the sections obtained from
an embryo was much facilitated, and the use of an automatic
microtome rendered possible. The method of Golgi for the
investigation of the nervous system, introduced in 1875, must
also be mentioned here.
The word " coelom " (q.v.) was introduced into zoology by
E. Haeckel in 1872 (Kalkschwamtne, p. 468) as a convenient
term for the body-cavity (pleuroperitoneal) . The word was
generally adopted, and was applied alike to the blood-containing
body-cavity of Arthropods and to the body-cavity of Vertebrata
and segmented worms, in which there is no blood. In 1875
Huxley (Quarterly Journ. of Mic. Science, 15, p. 53), relying
on the researches of Agassiz, Metschnikoff and Kowalewsky
above mentioned, put forward the idea that according to
their development three kinds of body-cavity ought to be
distinguished: (i) the enterocoelic which arises from enteric
diverticula, (2) the schizocoelic which develops as a split in the
embryonic mesoblast, and (3) the epicoelic which was enclosed
by folds of the skin and lined by ectoderm (e.g. atrial cavity
of Tunicates, &c.). This suggestion was of great importance,
because it led the embryologists of the day (Balfour, the brothers
Hertwig, Lankester and others) to discuss the question as to
whether there was not more than one kind of body-cavity.
The Hertwigs (Coelomtheorie, Jena, 1881) distinguished two
kinds, the enterocoel and the pseudocoel. The former, to which
they limited the use of the word coelom, and which is developed
directly or indirectly from the enteron, is found in Annelida,
Arthropoda, Echinodermata, Chordata, &c. The latter they
regarded as something quite different from the coelom and as
arising by a split in what they called for the first time mesen-
chyme; the mesenchyme being the non-epithelial mesoderm,
which they described as consisting of amoeboid cells, but which
we now know to consist of a continuous reticulum. The next
step was made by E. Ray Lankester, who in 1884 (Zoologischer
Anzeiger) showed that the pericardium of Mollusca does not con-
tain blood, and therein differs from the rest of the body-cavity
which does contain blood, but no suggestion is made that the
blood-containing space is not coelomic. In fact it was generally
held by the anatomists of the day that the coelom and the
vascular system were different parts of the same primitive organ,
though separate from it in the adult except in Arthropoda and
Mollusca. In the Mollusca, it is true, the pericardial part of the
coelom was held to be separate from the vascular, and the Hert-
wigs had reached the correct conception that the pericardium
of these animals was alone true coelom, the vascular part being
pseudocoel. This was the state of morphological opinion until
1886, when it was shown (Proc. Cambridge Phil. Soc., 6, 1886,
p. 27) (i) that the coelom of Peripatus gives rise to the nephridia
and generative glands only, and to no other part of the body-
cavity of the adult, ( 2) that the nephridia of the adult do not open
as had been supposed into the body-cavity, (3) that the body-
cavity is entirely formed of the blood-containing space, the
coelom having no perivisceral portion. These results were
extended by the same author (Quart. Journ. Mic. Sci., 27, 1887,
pp. 486-540) to other Arthropods and to the Mollusca, and the
modern theory of the coelom was finally established. An in-
creased precision was given to the conception of coelom by the
discovery in 1880 (Quart. Journ. Mic. Sci., 20, p. 164) that the
nephridia of Elasmobranchs are a direct differentiation of a
portion of it. In 1886 this was extended to Peripatus (Proc.
Camb. Phil. Soc., 6, p. 27) and doubtless holds universally.
In 1864 it was suggested by V. Hensen (Virchow's Archiv, 31)
that the rudiments of nerve-fibres are present from the beginning
of development as persistent remains of connexions between
the incompletely separated cells of the segmented ovum. This
suggestion fell to the ground because it was held by embryo-
logists that the cleavage of the ovum resulted in the formation
of completely separate cells, and that the connexions between
the adult cells were secondary. In 1886 it was shown (Quarterly
Journ. Mic. Sci., 26, p. 182) that in Peripatus Capensis the cells
of the segmenting ovum do not separate from one another, but
remain connected by a loose protoplasmic network. This dis-
covery has since been extended to other ova, even to the small so-
called holoblastic ova, and a basis of fact was found for Hensen's
suggestion as to the embryonic origin of nerves (Quart. Journ.
Mic. Sci., 33, 1892, pp. 581-584). An extension and further
application of the new views as to the cell-theory and the
embryonic origin of nerves thus necessitated was made in 1894
(Quart. Journ. Mic. Sci., 37, p. 87), and in 1904 J. Graham Kerr
showed that the motor nerves in the dipnoan fish Lepidosiren
arise in an essentially similar manner (Trans. Roy. Society oj
Edinburgh, 41, p. 119).
In 1883 Elie Metschnikoff published his researches on the
intracelluiar digestion of invertebrates (Arbeiten a. d. zoologischen
Inst. Wien, 5; and Biologisches Centralblatt, 3, p. 560); these
formed the basis of his theory of inflammation and phagocytosis,
which has had such an important influence on pathology. As
he himself has told us, he was led to make these investigations
by his precedent researches on the development of sponges and
other invertebrates. To quote his own words: "Having long
studied the problem of the germinal layers in the animal series,
I sought to give some idea of their origin and significance. The
part played by the ectoderm and endoderm appeared quite clear,
and the former might reasonably be regarded as the cutaneous
investment of primitive multicellular animals, while the latter
might be regarded as their organ of digestion. The discovery of
intracelluiar digestion in many of the lower animals led me to
regard this phenomenon as characteristic of those ancestral
animals from which might be derived all the known types of the
animal kingdom (excepting, of course, the Protozoa) . The origin
and part played by the mesoderm appeared the most obscure.
Thus certain embryologists supposed that this layer corresponded
to the reproductive organs of primitive animals: others regarded
it as the prototype of the organs of locomotion. My embryo-
logical and physiological studies on sponges led me to the con-
clusion that the mesoderm must function in the hypothetically
primitive animals as a mass of digestive cells, in all points
similar to those of the endoderm. This hypothesis necessarily
attracted my attention to the power of seizing foreign corpuscles
possessed by the mesodermic cells " (Immunity in Infective
Diseases, English translation, Cambridge, 1905).
The branch of embryology which concerns itself with the study
of the origin, history and conjugation of the individuals (gametes)
which are concerned in the reproduction of the species has made
great advances. These began in 1875 and following years with
a careful examination of the behaviour of the germinal vesicle
in the maturation and fertilization of the ovum. The history
of the polar bodies, the origin of the female pronucleus, the pre-
sence in the ovum of a second nucleus, the male pronucleus,
which gave rise to the first segmentation nucleus by fusion with
the female pronucleus, were discovered (E. van Beneden, O.
Biitschli, O. Hertwig, H. Fol), and in 1876 O. Hertwig (Morpho-
logisches Jahrbuch, 3, 1876) for the first time observed the
entrance of a spermatozoon into the egg and the formation
of the male pronucleus from it. The centrosome was discovered
by W. Flemming in 1875 in the egg of the fresh-water mussel,
and independently in 1876 by E. van Beneden in Dicyemids.
In 1883 came E. van Beneden's celebrated discovery (Arch.
PHYSIOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT]
EMBRYOLOGY
329
Biologie, 4) of the reduction of the number of chromosomes in
the nucleus of both male and female gametes, and of the fact tli.il
the male and female pronuclei contribute the same number ol
chromosomes to the zygote-nucleus. He also showed that the
gametogenesis in the male is a similar process to that in the
female, and paved the way for the acceptation of the view (due
to Buuchli) that polar bodies are aborted female gametes
These discoveries were extended and completed by subsequent
workers, among whom may be mentioned E. van Beneden,
J. B. Cmrnoy, G. Plainer, T. Bovcri, O. Hertwig, A. Brauer
The subject is still being actively pursued, and hopes are enter-
tained that some relation may be found between the behaviour
of the chromosomes and the facts of heredity.
Since 1874 (W. His, I' mere Kdrperform and das physiologische
Problem ikrer EiUsttkung) a new branch of embryology, which
concerns itself with the physiology of development, has arisen
(experimental embryology). The principal workers in this field
have been W. Roux, who in 1804 founded the Arckivfur Entwicke-
lnngsmeclMitik der Organismen, T. Bovcri and Y. Dclage who
discovered and elucidated the phenomenon of mcrogony, J. Locb
who discovered artificial parthenogenesis, O. and R. Hertwig,
H. Driesch, C. Hcrbst, E. Maupas. A. Weismann, T. H. Morgan,
C. B. Davenport (Experimental Morphology, i vols., 1809) and
many others.
In the elucidation of remarkable life-histories we may point
in the first place to the work of A. Kowalewsky on the develop-
ment of the Tunicata (" Entwickelungsgeschichte d. cinfachen
Ascidien," Mtm. Acad. Pttenbourg (7), IO , 1866, and Arck.f. Mic.
Anatomie, 7, 1871), in which was demonstrated for the first
time the vertebrate relationship of the Tunicata (possession of a
notochord, method of development of the central nervous
system) and which led to the establishment of the group Chordata.
We may also mention the work of Y. Dclage in the meta-
morphosis of Saccttlina (Arch. tool. exp. (2) 2, 1884), A. Giard
(CompUt rendm, 123, 1806, p. 836) and of A. Malaquin on
ilonstrilla (Arch. tool. exp. (3), 9, p. 81, 1001), of Delagc
(Complti rend us, 103, 1886, p. 698) and Grass! and CaLandruccio
(Rend. Ace. Lincei (5), 6, 1897, p. 43), on the development of
the eels, and of P. Pergande on the life-history of the Aphidae
(Bull. U3. Dep. Agric. Eni., technical series, 9, 1901). The
work of C. Grobben (Arbeiten tool. Inst.Wien, 4, 1882) and of
B. Uljanin (" Die Arten der Gattung Doliolum," Fauna u. Flora
des Golfti ton Neapd, 1884) on the extraordinary life-history
and migration of the buds in Doliolum must also be mentioned.
In pure embryological morphology we have had Heymons'
elucidation of the Arthropod head, the work of Hatschek on
Annelid and other larvae, the works of H. Bury and of E. W.
Mac Bride which have marked a distinct advance in our knowledge
of the development of Echinodermata, of K. Mitsukuri, who has
founded since 1882 an important school of embryology in Japan,
on the early development of Chelonia and Aves, of A. Brauer
and G. C. Price on the development of vertebrate excretory
organs, of Th. W. Bischoff . E. van Beneden, E. Selenka, A. A. W.
Hubrecht , R. Bonnet, F. Keibel and R. Assheton on the develop-
ment of mammals, of A. A. W. Hubrecht and E. Selenka
on the early development and placentation of the Primates,
ol J. Graham Kerr and of J. S. Budgett on the development
of Dipnoan and Ganoid fishes, of A. Kowalewsky, B. Hatschek,
A. Wflley and E. W. MacBride on the development of Amphioxus,
of B. Dean on the development of Bdellostoma, of A. Gdtte on
the development of Amphibia, of H. Strahl and L. Will on the
erly development of reptiles, of T. H. Huxley, C. Gegenbaur
and W. K. Parker on the development of the vertebrate skeleton,
of van Wijhe on the segmentation of the vertebrate head, by
which the modern theory of head-segmentation, previously
adumbrated by Balfour. was first established, of Leche and Rose
on the development of mammalian dentitions. We may also
specially notice W. Bateson's work on the development of
Balanoglotiut and his inclusion of this genus among the Chordata
(1884), the discovery by J. P. Hill of a placenta in the marsupial
genus Peramda (1895), the work of P. Marchal (1904) on the
sexual increase by fission of the early embryos of certain
parasitic Hymenoptcra (so called gcrminogony), u phenomenon
which had been long ago shown to occur in Lumbricus trapezoides
by N. Kleinenberg (1879) and by S. F. Manner in Polyzoa (1893).
The work on cell-lineage which has been so actively pursued in
America may be mentioned here. It has consisted mainly of an-
extension of the early work of A. Kowalewsky and B. Hatschek
on the formation of the layers, being a more minute and detailed
examination of the origin of the embryonic tissues.
The most important text-books and summaries which have
appeared in this period have IK-OH Kurschclt and Holder's Lrhrbuch
der vergleichenden EntwickelungsgesMchte der wirbellosen Tiere
(1890-1902), C. S. Minot's Human Embryology (1892), and the
Ilandbuch der vergleichenden and experimentrUen Entwickeltingslehre
der Wirbelliere, edited by O. Hertwig (1001, ct seq.). See also
K. E. von Baer, Uber Entwicklunesgeschichte der Tiere (Konigsberg,
1828, 1837); F. M. Balfour, A Monograph on the Development of
Elasmobranch Fishes (London, 1878); A Treatise on Comparative
Embryology, vols. i. and ii. (London, 1885) (still the most important
work on Vertebrate Embryology) ; M. Duval, Atlas d'Embryologie
(Paris, 1889); M. Foster and F. M. Balfour, Elements of Embryology
(London, 1883); O. Hertwig, Lehrbuch der Entwicklungsgeschichte
des Menschen u. der Wirbeltterc (6th ed., Jena, 1898); A. Kolliker,
Enttvicklungsgeschiehte des Menschen u. der hoheren Tiere (Leipzig,
1879); A. M. Marshall, Vertebrate Embryology (London, 1893).
(A.SE.)
PHYSIOLOGY or DEVELOPMENT
Physiology of Development [in German, Entwicklungsmechanik
(W. Roux), Enhvicklungsphysiologie (H. Driesch), physiologische
Morphologie (J. Loeb)] is, in the broadest meaning of the word,
the experimental science of morphogenesis, i.e. of the laws that
govern morphological differentiation. In this sense it embraces
the study of regeneration and variation, and would, as a whole,
best be called rational morphology. Here we shall treat of the
Physiology of Development in a narrower sense, as the study
of the laws that govern the development of the adult organism
from the egg, REGENERATION and VARIATION AND SELECTION
forming the subjects of special articles.
After the work done by W. His, A. Goette and E. F. W.
Pfliiger, who gave a sort of general outline and orientation of
the subject, the first to study developmental problems properly
in 'a systematical way, and with full conviction of their great
importance, was Wilhelm Roux. This observer, having found
by a full analysis of the facts of " development " that the first
special problem to be worked out was the question when and
where the first differentiation appeared, got as his main result
that, when one of the two first blastomeres (cleavage cells) of the
frog's egg was killed, the living one developed into a typical half-
embryo, i.e. an embryo that was either the right or the left part
of a whole one. From that Roux concluded that the first cleavage
plane determined already the median plane of the adult; and
that the basis of all differentiation was given by an unequal
division of the nuclear substances during karyokinesis, a result
that was also attained on a purely theoretical basis by A. Weis-
mann. Hans Driesch repeated Roux's fundamental experiment
with a different method on the sea-urchin's egg, with a result
that was absolutely contrary to that of Roux: the isolated
blastomere cleaved like half the egg, but it resulted in a whole
jlastula and a whole embryo, which differed from a normal one
only in its small size. Driesch "s result was obtained in somewhat
the same manner by E. B. Wilson with the egg of Amphioxus, by
Zoja with the egg of Medusae, &c. It thus became very probable
that an inequality of nuclear division could not be the basis of
differentiation. The following experiments were still more fatal
to the theories of Roux and of Weismann. Driesch found that
even when the first eight or sixteen cells of the cleaving egg of
he sea-urchin were brought into quite abnormal positions
with regard to one another, still a quite normal embryo was
developed; Driesch and T. H. Morgan discovered jointly
that in the Ctcnophore egg one isolated blastomere developed
nto a half-embryo, but that the same was the case if a portion
of protoplasm was cut off from the fertilized egg not yet in
cleavage; last, but not of least importance, in the case of the
'rog's egg which had been Roux's actual subject of experiment,
conditions were discovered by O. Schultze and O. Hertwig
330
EMBRYOLOGY
[PHYSIOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT
under which one of the two first blastomeres of this egg developed
into a whole embryo of half size. This result was made still
more decisive by Morgan, who showed that it was quite in the
power of the experimenter to get either a half-embryo or a whole
one of half size, the latter dependent only upon giving to the
blastomere the opportunity for a rearrangement of its matter
by turning it over.
Thus we may say that the general result of the introductory
series of experiments in the physiology of development is the
following: In many forms, e.g. Echinoderms, Amphioxus,
Ascidians, Fishes and Medusae, the potentiality (prospective
Potenz Driesch) of all the blastomeres of the segmented egg is
the same, i.e. each of them may play any or every part in the
future development; the prospective value (prosp. Bedeutung
D.) of each blastomere depends upon, or is a function of, its
position in the whole of the segmented egg; we can term the
" whole " of the egg after cleavage an " aequipotential system "
(Driesch). But though aequipotential, the whole of the seg-
mented egg is nevertheless not devoid of orientation or direction;
the general law of causality compels us to assume a general
orientation of the smallest parts of the egg, even in cases where
we are not able to see it. It has been experimentally proved
that external stimuli (light, heat, pressure, &c.) are not responsible
for the first differentiation of organs in the embryo; thus,
should the segmented egg be absolutely equal in itself, it would
be incomprehensible that the first organs should be formed at
one special point of it and not at another. Besides this general
argument, we see a sort of orientation in the typical forms of the
polar or bilateral cleavage stages.
Differentiation, therefore, depends on a primary, i.e. innate,
orientation of the egg's plasma in those forms, the segmented eggs
of which represent aequipptential systems; this orientation is
capable of a sort of regulation or restoration after disturbances of
any sort; in the egg of the Ctenophora such a regulation is not
possible, and in the frog's egg it is facultative, i.e. possible under
certain conditions, but impossible under others. Should this inter-
pretation be right, the difference between the eggs of different
animals would not be so great as it seemed at first : differences with
regard to the potentialities of the blastomeres would only be differ-
ences with regard to the capability of regulation or restoration of the
egg's protoplasm.
The foundation of physiological embryology being laid, we
now can shortly deal with the whole series of special problems
offered to us by a general analysis of that science, but at present
worked out only to a very small extent.
We may ask the following questions: What are the general
conditions of development? On what general factors does it de-
pend? How do the different organs of the partly developed embryo
stand with regard to their future fate? What are the stimuli
(Reize) effecting differentiation ? What is to be said about the
specific character of the different formative effects? And as the
most important question of all : Are all the problems offered to us
in the physiology of development to be solved with the aid of the
laws known hitherto in science, or do we want specifically new
" vitalistic " factors?
Energy in different forms is required for development, and
is provided by the surrounding medium. Light, though of no
influence on the cleavage (Driesch), has a great effect
CoadKioas on j ater s t a g es o f development, and is also necessary
of differ- , , c T- j j CT T UN
entiatioa. f r tne formation of polyps in Eudendnum (J. Loeb).
That a certain temperature is necessary for ontogeny
has long been known; this was carefully studied by O. Hertwig,
as was also the influence of heat on the rate of development.
Oxygen is also wanted, either from a certain stage of develop-
ment or from the very beginning of it, though very nearly related
forms differ in this respect (Loeb) . The great influence of osmotic
pressure on growth was studied by J. Loeb, C. Herbst and C. H.
Davenport. In all these cases energy may be necessary for
development in general, or a specific form of energy may be
necessary for the formation of a specific organ; it is clear that,
especially in the latter case, energy is shown to be a proper
factor for morphogenesis. Besides energy, a certain chemical
condition of the medium, whether offered by the water in which
the egg lives or (especially in later stages) by the food, is of great
importance for normal ontogeny; the only careful study in this
respect was carried out by Herbst for the development of the
egg of Echinids. This investigator has shown that all salts
of the sea water are of great importance for development, and
most of them specifically and typically; for instance, calcium
is absolutely necessary for holding together the embryonic cells,
and without calcium all cells will fall apart, though they do not
die, but live to develop further.
What we have dealt with may be called external factors of
development; as to their complement, the internal factors,
it is clear that every elementary factor of general physiology
may be regarded as one of them. Chemical metamorphosis plays,
of course, a great part in differentiation, especially in the form
of secretions; but very little has been carefully studied in this
respect. Movement of living matter, whether of cells or of
intracellular substance, is another important factor (O. Butschli,
F. Dreyer, L. Rhumbler.) Cell-division is another, its differences
in direction, rate and quantity being of great importance for
differentiation. We know very little about it; a so-called law
of O. Hertwig, that a cell would divide at right angles to its
longest diameter, though experimentally stated in some cases,
does not hold for all, and the only thing we can say is, that the
unknown primary organization of the egg is here responsible.
(Compare the papers on " cell-lineage " of E. B. Wilson, F. R.
Lillie, H. S. Jennings, O. Zurstrassen and others.) Of the inner
factors of ontogeny there is another category that may be called
physical, that already spoken of being physiological. The most
important of these is the capillarity of the cell surfaces. B erthold
was the first to call attention to its role in the arrangement of
cell composites, and afterwards the matter was more carefully
studied by Dreyer, Driesch, and especially W. Roux, with the
result that the arrangement of cells follows the principle of sur-
faces minimae areae (Plateau) as much as is reconcilable with
the conditions of the system.
It has already been shown that in many cases the embryo
after cleavage, i.e. the blastula, is an " aequipotential system."
It was shown that in the egg of Echinids there existed poteo-
such an absolute lack of determination of the cleavage tiaiities /
cells that (a) the cells may be put in quite abnormal embryonic
positions with reference to one another without dis-
turbing development; (b) a quarter blastomere gives a quite
normal little pluteus, even a sixteenth yields a gastrula; (c)
two eggs may fuse in the early blastula stage, giving one single
normal embryo of double size. Our next question concerns the
distribution of potentiality, when the embryo is developed
further than the blastula stage. In this case it has been shown
that the potentialities of the different embryonic organs are
different: that, for instance, in Echinoderms or Amphibians
the ectoderm, when isolated, is not able to form endoderm,
and so on (Driesch, D. Barfurth); but it has been shown at the
same time that the ectoderm in itself, the intestine in itself
of Echinoderms (Driesch) , the medullary plate in itself of Triton
(H. Spemann), is as aequipotential as was the blastula: that any
part whatever of these organs may be taken away without
disturbing the development of the rest into a normal and pro-
portional embryonic part, except for its smaller size.
If the single phases of differentiation are to be regarded as
effects, we must ask for the causes, or stimuli, of these effects.
For a full account of the subject we refer to Herbst, Pormatlve
by whom also the whole botanical literature, much more st i mu ii.
important than the zoological, is critically reviewed.
We have already seen that when the blastula represents an
aequipotential system, there must be some sort of primary
organization of the egg, recoverable after disturbances, that
directs and localizes the formation of the first embryonic organs;
we do not know much about this organization. Directive stimuli
(Richtungsreize) play a great role in ontogeny; Herbst has analysed
many cases where their existence is probable. They have been
experimentally proved in two cases. The chromatic cells of the
yolk sac of Fundulus are attracted by the oxygen of the arteriae
(Loeb) ; the mesenchyme cells of Echinus are attracted by some
specific parts of the ectoderm, for they move towards them also
when removed from their original positions to any point of the
blastocoel by shaking (Driesch). Many directive stimuli might
EMDEN
33 1
be discovered by a careful study of grafting experiments, such
as have been made by Born, Joest, Harrison and others, but at
present these experiments have not been carried out far enough
to get exact results.
Formative stimuli in a narrower meaning of the word, i.e.
stimuli affecting the origin of embryonic organs, have long been
known in botany; in zoology we know (especially from Loeb)
a good deal about the influence of light, gravitation, contact,
fcc.. on the formation of organs in hydroids, but these forms
arc very plant-lite in many respects; as to free-living animals,
Herbst proved that the formation of the arms of the pluteus
larva depends on the existence of the calcareous tetrahedra, and
made in other cases (lens of vertebrate eye, nerves and muscles,
ftc.) the existence of formative stimuli very probable. Many of
the facts generally known as functional adaptation (Junctionellc
Anfasfu*S Roux) in botany and zoology may also belong to
this category, i.e. be the effects of some external stimulus, but
they are far from having been analysed in a satisfactory manner.
That the structure of parts of the vertebrate skeleton is always
in relation to their function, even under abnormal conditions,
is well known; what is the real " cause " of differentiation in
this case- is difficult to say.
It is obvious that we cannot answer the question why the
different ontogenetic effects are just what they are. Develop-
mental physiology takes the specific nature of form for
granted, and it may be left for a really rational theory
of the evolution of species in the future to answer
the problem of species, as far as it is answerable at
all. What we intend to do here is only to say in a few words
wherein consists the specific character of embryonic organs. That
embryonic parts are specific or typical in regard to their proto-
plasm is obvious, and is well proved by the fact that the different
parts of the embryo react differently to the same chemical or
other reagents (Herbst, Loeb). That they may be typical also in
regard to their nuclei was shown by Boveri for the generative
cells of Ascaris; we are not able at present to say anything
definite about the importance of this fact. The specific nature ot
an embryonic organ consists to a high degree in the number
of cells composing it; it was shown for many cases that this
number, and also the size of cells, is constant under constant
conditions, and that under inconstant conditions the number
is variable, the size constant; for instance, embryos which have
developed from one of the two first blastomercs show only half
the normal number of cells in their organs (Morgan, Dricsch) .
. We have learnt that the successive steps of embryonic develop-
ot are to be regarded as effects, caused by stimuli, which partly
exist in the embryo itself. But it must be noted that
not every part of the embryo is dependent on every
other one, but that there exists a great independence
of the parts, to a varying degree in every case. This
independence has been called self-differentiation
(Sdbsldiferentierung) by Roux, and is certainly a characteristic
feature of ontogeny. At the same time it must not be forgotten
that the word is only relative, and that it only expresses our
recognition of a negation.
For instance, we know that the ectoderm of Echinus may
develop further if the endoderm is taken away; in other words,
that it develops by self -differentiation in regard to the endoderm,
that its differentiation is not dependent on the endoderm; but
it would be obviously more important to know the factors on
which this differentiation is actually dependent than to know
one factor on which it is not. The same is true for all other
riments on " self-differentiation," whether analytical (Loeb,
;
Schaper. Driesch) or not (grafting experiments, Born, Joest, &c.).
Cam we understand differentiation by means of the laws of
natural phenomena offered to us by physics and chemistry?
_-- Most people would say yes, though not yet. Driesch
has tried to show that we are absolutely not able to
understand development, at any rate one part of it, i.e. the
localization of the various successive steps of differentiation.
But it is impossible to give any idea of this argument in a few
words, and we cam only My here that it is based on the experi-
ments upon isolated blastomeres, &c., and on an analysis of the
character of aequipotential systems. In this way physiology
of development would lead us straight on into vitalism.
REFERENCES. An account of the subject, with full literature, is
given by H. Dricsch, Resullate und Probleme der Kntwicklungx-
phyiiologie der Tiere in Ergebnissen der Anal. u. Entw.-Cesch. (1809).
Other works are: C. H. Davenport, Experimental Morphology
(New York, 1897-1899); Y. Delage, La Structure du proloplasma, &c.
(1895); Driesch, Mat Hem. mech. Betrachtung morpholog. Probleme
(Jena, 1891); Entwicklungsmcchan. Studien (1891-1893); Analy-
lische Theorie d. organ. Entw. (Leipzig, 1894); Studien iiber d.
Regulationsvermogen (1897-1900), &c. ; C. Herbst, " t)berdie Bcdcu-
tung d. Rcizphysiologic fur die kausalc AufFassung von Vorgangcn
i. d. tier. Ontogenesc, ' Dialog. Centralblatt, vols. xiv. u. xv.(Lcipzig,
1894). Many papers on influence of salts on development in Arch.
/. Entw.-Mech. ; O. Hertwig, Papers in A rch. f. mikr. A not., " Die Zelle
und die Gcwebe," ii. (Jena, 1897); VV. His, Unsere Korperform
(Leipzig, 1875); J. Loeb, Unterstuh. z. physiol. Morph. (Wunburf,
1891-1892). Papers in Arch. f. Entw.-Mech. and PflUger's Archiv;
T. H. Morgan, The Development of the Frog's Egg (New York, 1897) ;
Papers in Arch. f. Entw.-Mech.; Roux, Cesammelte Abhandlungfii
(Leipzig, 1895); Papers in Arch. f. Entw.-Mech.; A. Weismami,
Das Keimplasma (Jena, 1892) ; E. B. Wilson, papers in Journ. Morph.,
" The CeM in Development and Inheritance " (New York, 1806).
(H. A. E. D.)
EMDEN, a maritime town of Germany, in the Prussian
province of Hanover, near the mouth of the Ems, 49 m. N.W.
from Oldenburg by rail. Pop. (1885) 14,019; (1903) 20,754.
The Ems once flowed beneath its walls, but is now 2 m. distant,
and connected with the town by a broad and deep canal, divided
into the inner (or dock) harbour and the outer (or " free port ")
harbour. The latter is j m. in length, has a breadth of nearly
400 ft., and since the construction of the Ems-Jade and Dort-
mund-Ems canals, has been deepened to 38 ft., thus allowing
the largest sea-going vessels to approach its wharves. The town
is intersected by canals (crossed by numerous bridges), which
bring it into communication with most of the towns in East
Friesland, of which it is the commercial capital. The waterways
which traverse and surround it and the character of its numerous
gabled medieval houses give it the appearance of an old Dutch,
rather than of a German, town. Of its churches the most note-
worthy are the Reformed " Great Church " (Grosse Kirche),
a large Gothic building completed in 1455, containing the tomb
of Enno II. (d. 1540), count of East Friesland; the Gasthaus-
kirche, formerly the church of a Franciscan friary founded in
1317; and the Neue Kirche (1643-1647). Of its secular build-
ings, the Rathaus (town-hall), built in 1574-1576, on the model
of that of Antwerp, with a lofty tower, and containing an interest-
ing collection of arms and armour, is particularly remarkable.
There are numerous educational institutions, including classical
and modern schools, and schools of commerce, navigation
and telegraphy. The town has two interesting museums.
Emden is the seat of an active trade in agricultural produce and
live-stock, horses, timber, coal, tea and wine. The deep-sea
fishing industry of the town is important, the fishing fleet in 1902
numbering 67 vessels. Machinery, cement, cordage, wire ropes,
tobacco, leather, &c. are manufactured. Emdcn is also of
importance as the station of the submarine cables connecting
Germany with England, North America and Spain. It has a
regular steamboat service with Borkum and Norderney.
Emden (Emuden, Emetha) is first mentioned in the 12th
century, when it was the capital of the Ecmsgo (Emsgau, or
county of the Ems), one of the three hereditary countships into
which East Friesland had been divided by the emperor. In
1252 the countship was sold to the bishops of Mtinster; but
their rule soon became little more than nominal, and in Emden
itself the family of Abdcna, the episcopal provosts and castellans,
established their practical independence. Towards the end of
the nth century the town gained a considerable trade owing
to the permission given by the provost to the pirates known as
" Viktualicnbrtlder " to make it their market, after they had
been driven out of Gothland by the Teutonic Order. In 1402,
after the defeat of the pirates off Heligoland by the fleet of Ham-
burg, Emden was besieged, but it was not reduced by Hamburg,
with the aid of Edzard Cirksena of Grectsyl, until 1431. The
town was held jointly by its captors till 1453, when Hamburg sold
332
EMERALD EMERSON
its rights to Ulrich Cirksena, created count of East Friesland
by the emperor Frederick III. in 1434- In 1544 the Reformation
was introduced, and in the following years numerous Protestant
refugees from the Low Countries found their way to the town.
In 1595 Emden became a free imperial city under the protection
of Holland, and was occupied by a Dutch garrison until 1744
when, with East Friesland, it was transferred to Prussia. In
1810 Emden became the chief town of the French department
of Ems Oriental; in 1815 it was assigned to Hanover, and in
1866 was annexed with that kingdom by Prussia.
See Fiirbringer, Die Stadt Emden in Gegenwart und Vergangenheit
(Emden, 1892).
EMERALD, a bright green variety of beryl, much valued as
a gem-stone. The word comes indirectly from the Gr. afiapaySos
(Arabic zumurrud) , but this seems to have been a name vaguely
given to a number of stones having little in common except
a green colour. Pliny's " smaragdus " undoubtedly included
several distinct species. Much confusion has arisen with respect
to the " emerald " of the Scriptures. The Hebrew word nophek,
rendered emerald in the Authorized Version, probably meant the
canbuncle: it is indeed translated avOpat- in the Septuagint,
and a marginal reading in the Revised Version gives carbuncle.
On the other hand, the word bdreqath, rendered anapaydos in
the LXX., appears in the A.V. as carbuncle, with the alternative
reading of emerald in the R.V. It may have referred to the true
emerald, but Flinders Petrie suggests that it meant rock-crystal.
The properties of emerald are mostly the same as those described
under BERYL. The crystals often show simply the hexagonal
prism and basal plane. The prisms cleave, though imperfectly,
at right angles to the geometrical axis; and hexagonal slices
were formerly worn in the East. Compared with most gems,
the emerald is rather soft, its hardness (7-5) being but slightly
above that of quartz. The specific gravity is low, varying slightly
in stones from different localities, but being for the Muzo emerald
about 2-67. . The refractive and dispersive powers are not high,
so that the cut stones display little brilliancy or " fire." The
emerald is dichroic, giving in the dichroscope a bluish-green and
a yellowish-green image. The magnificent colour which gives
extraordinary value to this gem, is probably due to chromium.
F. Wohler found 0-186% of Cr 2 Os in the emerald of Muzo,
a proportion which, though small, is sufficient to impart an
emerald-green colour to glass. The stone loses colour when
strongly heated, and M. Lewy suggested that the colour was
due to an organic pigment. Greville Williams showed that
emeralds lost about 9 % of their weight on fusion, the specific
gravity being reduced to about 2-4.
The ancients appear to have obtained the emerald from Upper
Egypt, where it is said to have been worked as early as 1650 B.C.
It is known that Greek miners were at work in the time of Alex-
ander the Great, and in later times the mines yielded their gems
to Cleopatra. Remains of extensive workings were discovered
in the northern Etbai by the French traveller, F. Cailh'aud,
in 1817, and the mines were re-opened for a short time under
Mehemet Ali. " Cleopatra's Mines " are situated in Jebel Sikait
and Jebel Zabara near the Red Sea coast east of Assuan. They
were visited in 1891 by E. A. Floyer, and the Sikait workings
were explored in 190x3 by D. A. MacAlister and others. The
Egyptian emeralds occur in mica-schist and talc-schist.
On the Spanish conquest of South America vast quantities
of emeralds were taken from the Peruvians, but the exact locality
which yielded the stones was never discovered. The only South
American emeralds now known occur near Bogota, the capital
of Colombia. The most famous mine is at Muzo, but workings
are known also at Coscuez and Somondoco. The emerald occurs
in nests of calcite in a black bituminous limestone containing
ammonites of Lower Cretaceous age. The mineral is associated
with quartz, dolomite, pyrites, and the rare mineral called
" parisite " a fluo-carbonate of the cerium metals, occurring in
brownish-yellow hexagonal crystals, and named after J. J. Paris,
who worked the emeralds. It has been suggested that the
Colombian emerald is not in its original matrix. The fine stones
are called canutillos and the inferior ones morallion.
In 1830 emeralds were accidentally discovered in the Ural
Mountains. At the present time they are worked on the river
Takovaya, about 60 m. N.E. of Ekaterinburg, where they occur
in mica-schist, associated with aquamarine, alexandrite, phenacite,
&c. Emerald is found also in mica-schist in the Habachthal,
in the Salzburg Alps, and in granite at Eidsvold in Norway.
Emerald has been worked in a vein of pegmatite, piercing slaty
rocks, near Emmaville, in New South Wales. The crystals
occurred in association with topaz, fluorspar and cassiterite;
but they were mostly of rather pale colour. In the United
States, emerald has occasionally been found, and fine crystals
have been obtained from the workings for hiddenite at Stony-
point, Alexander county, N.C.
Many virtues were formerly ascribed to the emerald. When
worn, it was held to be a preservative against epilepsy, it cured
dysentery, it assisted women in childbirth, it drove away evil
spirits, and preserved the chastity of the wearer. Administered
internally it was reputed to have great medicinal value. In
consequence of its refreshing green colour it was naturally said
to be good for the eyesight.
The stone known as " Oriental emerald " is a green corundum.
Lithia emerald is the mineral called hiddenite; Uralian emerald
is a name given to demantoid; Brazilian emerald is merely
green tourmaline; evening emerald is the peridot; pyro-emerald
is fluorspar which phosphoresces with a green glow when heated ;
and " mother of emerald " is generally a green quartz or perhaps
in some cases a green felspar.
See AQUAMARINE, BERYL. (F. W. R.*)
EMERIC - DAVID, TOUSSAINT - BERNARD (1755-1839),
French archaeologist and writer on art, was born at Aix, in
Provence, on the 2oth of August 1755. He was destined for the
legal profession, and having gone in 1775 to Paris to complete
his legal education, he acquired there a taste for art which
influenced his whole future career, and he went to Italy, where
he continued his art studies. He soon returned, however, to his
native village, and followed for some time the profession of an
advocate; but in 1787 he succeeded his uncle Antoine David
as printer to the parlement. He was elected mayor of Aix in
1791; and although he speedily resigned his office, he was in
1793 threatened with arrest, and had for some time to adopt a
vagrant life. When danger was past he returned to Aix, sold
his printing business, and engaged in general commercial .pursuits;
but he was not long in renouncing these also, in order to devote
himself exclusively to literature and art. From 1809 to 1814,
under the Empire, he represented his department in the Lower.
House (Corps legislatif); in 1814 he voted for the downfall of
Napoleon; in 1815 he retired into private life, and in 1816 he
was elected a member of the Institute. He died in Paris on the
2nd of April 1839. Emeric-David was placed in 1825 on the
commission appointed to continue L'Histoire lilteraire de la
France. His principal works are Recherches sur I'art staluaire,
considere chez les anciens et les.modernes (Paris, 1805), a work
which obtained the prize of the Institute; Suite d' etudes calqutes
et dessinees d'apres cinq tableaux de Raphael (Paris, 1818-1821),
in 6 vols. fol.; Jupiter, ou recherches sur ce dieu, sur son culte,
&c. (Paris, 1833), 2 vols. 8vo, illustrated; and Vulcain (Paris, 1837).
EMERITUS (Lat. from emereri, to serve out one's time, to
earn thoroughly), a term used of Roman soldiers and public
officials who had earned their discharge from the service, a
veteran, and hence applied, in modern times, to a university
professor (professor emeritus) who has vacated his chair, on
account of long service, age or infirmity, and, in the Presbyterian
church, to a minister who has for like reason given up his charge.
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO (1803-1882), American poet
and essayist, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 25th of
May 1 803. Seven of his ancestors were ministers of New England
churches. Among them were some of those men of mark who
made the backbone of the American character: the sturdy
Puritan, Peter Bulkeley, sometime rector of Odell in Bedfordshire,
and afterward pastor of the church in the wilderness at Concord,
New Hampshire; the zealous evangelist, Father Samuel Moody
of Agamenticus in Maine, who pursued graceless sinners even
EMERSON
333
into the alehouse; Joseph Emerson of Maiden, "a heroic
scholar." who prayed every night that no descendant of his
might ever be rich; and William Emerson of Concord, Mass.,
the patriot preacher, who died while serving in the army of the
Resolution. Sprung from such stock, Emerson inherited
qualities of self-reliance, love of liberty, strenuous virtue,
sincerity, sobriety and fearless loyalty to ideals. The form of
his ideals was modified by the metamorphic glow of Trans-
cendentalism which passed through the region of Boston in the
second quarter of the loth century. But the spirit in which
Emerson conceived the laws of life, reverenced them and lived
them out, was the Puritan spirit, elevated, enlarged and beauti-
fied by the poetic temperament.
His father was the Rev. William Emerson, minister of the
First Church (Unitarian) in Boston. Ralph Waldo was the
fourth child in a family of eight, of whom at least three gave
evidence of extraordinary mental powers. He was brought
up in an atmosphere of hard work, of moral discipline, and (after
his father's death in iSii)of that wholesome self-sacrifice which
is a condition of life for those who are poor in money and rich
in spirit. His aunt. Miss Mary Moody Emerson, a brilliant
old maid, an ecce'ntric saint, was a potent factor in his education.
Loving him, believing in his powers, passionately desiring for
him a successful career, but clinging with both hands to the
old forms of faith from which he floated away, this solitary,
intense woman did as much as any one to form, by action and
reaction, the mind and character of the young Emerson. In
1817 he entered Harvard College, and graduated in 1821. In
scholarship he ranked about the middle of his class. In literature
and oratory he was more distinguished, receiving a Boylston
prize for declamation, and two Bowdoin prizes for dissertations,
the first essay being on " The Character of Socrates " and the
second on " The Present State of Ethical Philosophy " both
rather dull, formal, didactic productions. He was fond of
reading, and of writing verse, and was chosen as the poet for
Hit! day His cheerful serenity of manner, his tranquil mirthful-
ness, and the steady charm of his personality made him a
favourite with his fellows, in spite of a certain reserve. His
literary taste was conventional, including the standard British
writers, with a preference for Shakespeare among the poets,
Berkeley among the philosophers, and Montaigne (in Cotton's
translation) among the essayists. His particular admiration
among the college professors was the stately rhetorician, Edward
Everett ; and this predilection had much to do with his early
ambition to be a professor of rhetoric and elocution.
Immediately after graduation he became an assistant in
his brother William's school for young ladies in Boston, and
continued teaching, with much inward reluctance and discomfort,
for three years. The routine was distasteful; he despised the
superficial details which claimed so much of his time. The bonds
of conventionalism were silently dissolving in the rising glow
of his poetic nature. Independence, sincerity, reality, grew
more and more necessary to him. His aunt urged him to seek
retirement, self-reliance, friendship with nature; to be no longer
" the nursling of surrounding circumstances," but to prepare a
celestial abode for the muse. The passion for spiritual leadership
stirred within him. The ministry seemed to offer the fairest
field for its satisfaction. In 1825 he entered the divinity school
at Cambridge, to prepare himself for the Unitarian pulpit. His
course was much interrupted by ill-health. His studies were
irregular, and far more philosophical and literary than theological.
In October 1826 he was " approbated to preach " by the
Middlesex Association of Ministers. The same year a threatened
consumption compelled him to take a long journey in the south.
Returning in 1827, he continued his studies, preached as a
candidate in various churches, and improved in health. In 1829
be married a beautiful but delicate young woman, Miss Ellen
Tucker of Concord, and was installed as associate minister of
the Second Church (Unitarian) in Boston. The retirement of
his senior colleague soon left him the sole pastor. Emerson's
early sermons were simple, direct, unconventional. He dealt
freely with the things of the spirit. There was a homely eleva-
tion in his, discourses, a natural freshness in his piety, a quiet
enthusiasm in his manner, that charmed thoughtful hearers.
Early in 1832 he lost his wife, a sorrow that deeply depressed
him in health and spirits. Following his passion for independ-
ence and sincerity, he arrived at the conviction that the Lord's
Supper was not intended by Christ to be a permanent sacrament.
To him, at least, it had become an outgrown form. He was
willing to continue the service only if the use of the elements
should be dropped and the rite made simply an act of spiritual
remembrance. Setting forth these views, candidly and calmly,
in a sermon, he found his congregation, not unnaturally, reluctant
to agree with him, and therefore retired, not without some
disappointment, from the pastoral office. He never again took
charge of a parish; but he continued to preach, as opportunity
offered, until 1847. In fact, he was always a preacher, though
of a singular order. His supreme task was to befriend and guide
the inner life of man.
The strongest influences in his development about this time
were the liberating philosophy of Coleridge, the mystical visions
of Swedenborg, the intimate poetry of Wordsworth, and the
stimulating essays of Carlyle. On Christmas Day 1832 he took
passage in a sailing vessel for the Mediterranean. He travelled
through Italy, visited Paris, spent two months in Scotland and
England, and saw the four men whom he most desired to see
Landor, Coleridge, Carlyle and Wordsworth. " The comfort of
meeting such men of genius as these," he wrote, " is that they
talk sincerely." But he adds that he found all four of them, in
different degrees, deficient in insight into religious truth. His
visit to Carlyle, in the lonely farm-house at Craigenputtock,
was the memorable beginning of a lifelong friendship. Emerson
published Carlyle's first books in America. Carlyle introduced
Emerson's Essays into England. The two men were bound
together by a mutual respect deeper than a sympathy of tastes,
and a community of spirit stronger than a similarity of opinions.
Emerson was a sweet-tempered Carlyle, living in the sunshine.
Carlyle was a militant Emerson, moving amid thunderclouds.
The things that each most admired in the other were self-
reliance, directness, moral courage. A passage in Emerson's
Diary, written on his homeward voyage, strikes the keynote of
his remaining life. "A man contains all that is needful to his
government within himself. ... All real good or evil that can
befall him must be from himself. . . . There is a correspondence
between the human soul and everything that exists in the world;
more properly, everything that is known to man. Instead of
studying things without, the principles of them all may be pene-
trated into within him. . . . The purpose of life seems to be to
acquaint man with himself. . . . The highest revelation is that
God is in every man." Here is the essence of that intuitional
philosophy, commonly called Transcendentalism. Emerson
disclaimed allegiance to that philosophy. He called it " the
saturnalia, or excess of faith." His practical common sense
recoiled from the amazing conclusions which were drawn from
it by many of its more eccentric advocates. His independence
revolted against being bound to any scheme or system of doctrine,
however nebulous. He said : " I wish to say what I feel and think
to-day, with the proviso that to-morrow perhaps I shall contra-
dict it all." But this very wish commits him to the doctrine
of the inner light. All through his life he navigated the Trans-
cendental sea, piloted by a clear moral sense, warned off the rocks
by the saving grace of humour, and kept from capsizing by a
good ballast of New England prudence.
After his return from England in 1833 he went to live with his
mother at the old manse in Concord, Mass., and began his career
as a lecturer in Boston. His first discourses were delivered before
the Society of Natural History and the Mechanics' Institute.
They were chiefly on scientific subjects, approached in a poetic
spirit. In the autumn of 1835 he married Miss Lydia Jackson
of Plymouth, having previously purchased a spacious old house
and garden at Concord. There he spent the remainder of his life,
a devoted husband, a wise and tender father, a careful house-
holder, a virtuous villager, a friendly neighbour, and, spite of all
his disclaimers, the central and luminous figure among the
334
EMERSON
Transcendentalists. The doctrine which in others seemed to
produce all sorts of extravagances communistic experiments
at Brook Farm and Fruitlands, weird schemes of political reform,
long hair on men and short hair on women in his sane, well-
balanced nature served only to lend an ideal charm to the
familiar outline of 'a plain, orderly New England life. Some
mild departures from established routine he tranquilly tested
and as tranquilly abandoned. He tried vegetarianism for a while,
but gave it up when he found that it did him no particular good.
An attempt to illustrate household equality by having the
servants sit at table with the rest of the family was frus-
trated by the dislike of his two sensible domestics for such an
inconvenient arrangement. His theory that manual labour
should form part of the scholar's life was checked by the personal
discovery that hard labour in the fields meant poor work in the
study. " The writer shall not dig," was his practical conclusion.
Intellectual independence was what he chiefly desired; and this,
he found, could be attained in a manner of living not outwardly
different from that of the average college professor or country
minister. And yet it was to this property-holding, debt-paying,
law-abiding, well-dressed, courteous-mannered citizen of Concord
that the ardent and enthusiastic turned as the prophet of the
new idealism. The influence of other Transcendental teachers,
Dr Hedge, Dr Ripley, Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson,
Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller, Henry Thoreau, Jones Very,
was narrow and parochial compared with that of Emerson.
Something in his imperturbable, kindly presence, his angelic
look, his musical voice, his commanding style of thought and
speech, announced him as the possessor of the great secret which
many were seeking the secret of a freer, deeper, more harmoni-
ous life. More and more, as his fame spread, those who " would
live in the spirit " came to listen to the voice, and to sit at the
feet, of the Sage of Concord.
It was on the lecture-platform that he found his power and
won his fame. The courses of lectures that he delivered at the
Masonic Temple in Boston, during the winters of 1835 and 1836,
on " Great Men," " English Literature," and " The Philosophy
of History," were well attended and admired. They were
followed by two discourses which commanded for him immediate
recognition, part friendly and part hostile, as a new and potent
personality. His Phi Beta Kappa oration at Harvard College
in August 1837, on " The American Scholar," was an eloquent
appeal for independence, sincerity, realism, in the intellectual
life of America. His address before the graduating class of the
divinity school at Cambridge, in 1838, was an impassioned
protest against what he called " the defects of historical Chris-
tianity " (its undue reliance upon the personal authority of Jesus,
and its failure to explore the moral nature of man as the fountain
of established teaching), and a daring plea for absolute self-
reliance and a new inspiration of religion. " In the soul," he
said, " let redemption be sought. Wherever a man comes, there
comes revolution. The old is for slaves. Go alone. Refuse the
good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination
of men. Cast conformity behind you, and acquaint men at first
hand with Deity." In this address Emerson laid his hand on
the sensitive point of Unitarianism, which rejected the divinity
of Jesus, but held fast to his supreme authority. A blaze of
controversy sprang up at once. Conservatives attacked him;
Radicals defended him. Emerson made no reply. But amid
this somewhat fierce illumination he went forward steadily as
a public lecturer. It was not his negations that made him
popular; it was the eloquence with which he presented the
positive side of his doctrine. Whatever the titles of his discourses,
"Literary Ethics," "Man the Reformer," "The Present Age."
"The Method of Nature," "Representative Men," "The
Conduct of Life," their theme was always the same, namely,
" the infinitude of the private man." Those who thought him
astray on the subject of religion listened to him with delight when
he poetized the commonplaces of art, politics, literature or the
household. His utterance was Delphic, inspirational. There
was magic in his elocution. The simplicity and symmetry of
his sentences, the modulations of his thrilling voice, the radiance
of his fine face, even his slight hesitations and pauses over his
manuscript, lent a strange charm to his speech. For more than
a generation he went about the country lecturing in cities,
towns and villages, before learned societies, rustic lyceums and
colleges; and there was no man on the platform in America
who excelled him in distinction, in authority, or in stimulating
eloquence.
In 1847 Emerson visited Great Britain for the second time,
was welcomed by Carlyle, lectured to appreciative audiences
in Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and London, made many
new friends among the best English people, paid a brief visit
to Paris, and returned home in July 1848. " I leave England,"
he wrote, " with increased respect for the Englishman. His
stuff or substance seems to be the best in the world. I forgive
him all his pride. My respect is the more generous that I have
no sympathy with him, only an admiration." The impressions
of this journey were embodied in a book called English Trails,
published in 1856. It might be called " English Traits and
American Confessions," for nowhere does Emerson's American-
ism come out more strongly. But the America that he loved
and admired was the ideal, the potential America. For the
actual conditions of social and political life in his own time
he had a fine scorn. He was an intellectual Brahmin. His
principles were democratic, his tastes aristocratic. He did not
like crowds, streets, hotek " the people who fill them oppress
me with their excessive civility." Humanity was his hero.
He loved man, but he was not fond of men. He had grave
doubts about universal suffrage. He took a sincere interest in
social and political reform, but towards specific "reforms"
his attitude was somewhat remote and visionary. On the
subject of temperance he held aloof from the intemperate
methods of the violent prohibitionists. He was a believer in
woman's rights, but he was lukewarm towards conventions
in favour of woman suffrage. Even in regard to slavery he had
serious hesitations about the ways of the abolitionists, and for
a long time refused to be identified with them. But as the
irrepressible conflict drew to a head Emerson's hesitation
vanished. He said in 1856, " I think we must get rid of slavery,
or we must get rid of freedom." With the outbreak of the Civil
War he became an ardent and powerful advocate of the cause
of the Union. James Russell Lowell said, " To him more than
to all other causes did the young martyrs of our Civil War owe
the sustaining strength of thoughtful heroism that is so touching
in every record of their lives."
Emerson the essayist was a condensation of Emerson the
lecturer. His prose works, with the exception of the slender
volume entitled Nature (1836), were collected and arranged
from the manuscripts of his lectures. His method of writing
was characteristic. He planted a subject in his mind, and waited
for thoughts and illustrations to come to it, as birds or insects
to a plant or flower. When an idea appeared, he followed it,
" as a boy might hunt a butterfly"; when it was captured
he pinned it in his " Thought-book." The writings of other men
he used more for stimulus than for guidance. He said that
books were for the scholar's idle times. " I value them," he
said, " to make my top spin." His favourite reading was poetry
and mystical philosophy: Shakespeare, Dante, George Herbert.
Goethe, Berkeley, Coleridge, Swedenborg, Jakob Boehme.
Plato, the new Pktonists, and the religious books of the East
(in translation). Next to these he valued books of biography
and anecdote: Plutarch, Grimm, St Simon, Varnhagen von
Ense. He had some odd dislikes, and could find nothing in
Aristophanes, Cervantes, Shelley, Scott, Miss Austen, Dickens.
Novels he seldom read. He was a follower of none, an original
borrower from all. His illustrations were drawn from near and
far. The zodiac of Denderah; the Savoyards who carved
their pine-forests into toys; the naked Derar, horsed on an
idea, charging a troop of Roman cavalry; the long, austere
Pythagorean lustrum of silence; Napoleon on the deck of the
" Bellerophon," observing the drill of the English soldiers; the
Egyptian doctrine that every man has two pairs of eyes;
Empedocles and his shoe; the horizontal stratification of the
EMERSON, W. EMERY
335
earth; a soft mushroom pushing its way through the hard
ground, all these allusions and a thousand more are found in
the same volume. On his pages, close beside the I'.irthenon, the
Sphinx. M I'aulV Etna and Vesuvius, you will find the White
Mountains, Monadnock, Agiocochook, Katahdin, the pickerel-
weed in bloom, the wild geese honking through the sky, the
thick -a -dee braving the snow, Wall Street and State Street,
m-mills, railroads and Quincy granite. For an abstract
thinker he was strangely in love with the concrete facts of life.
Idealism in him assumed the form of a vivid illumination of
the real. From the pages of his teeming note-books he took the
material for his lectures, arranging and rearranging it under
>uch titles as Nature, School.Homc, Genius, Beauty and Manners,
Mi Possession, Duty, The Superlative, Truth, The Anglo-Saxon,
The Young American. When the lectures had served their
purpose he rearranged the material in essays and published
them. Thus appeared in succession the following volumes:
Essays (First Series) (1841); Essays (Second Series) (1844);
R, fresentatne Men (1850); English Traits (1856); The Conduct
of Lift (1860); Society and Solitude (1870); Letters and Social
Aims(iS-b). Besides these, many other lectures were printed
in separate form and in various combinations.
Emerson's style is brilliant, epigrammatic, gem-like; clear
in sentences, obscure in paragraphs. He was a sporadic observer.
He saw by flashes. He said, " I do not know what arguments
mean in reference to any expression of a thought." The co-
herence of his writing lies in his personality. His work is fused
by a steady glow of optimism. Yet he states this optimism
moderately. " The genius which preserves and guides the human
race indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance
in brute facts always favourable to the side of reason."
His verse, though in form inferior to his prose, was perhaps
a truer expression of his genius. He said, " I am born a poet " ;
and again, writing to Carlyle, he called himself "half a bard."
He had "the vision," but not "the faculty divine" which trans-
lates the vision into music. In his two volumes of verse (Poems,
1846; May Day and other Pieces, 1867) there are many passages
of beautiful insight and profound feeling, some lines of surprising
splendour, and a few poems, like " The Rhodora," " The Snow-
storm," " Ode to Beauty," " Terminus," " The Concord Ode,"
and the marvellous " Threnody " on the death of his first-born
boy, of beauty unmarred and penetrating truth. But the
total value of his poetical work is discounted by the imperfection
of metrical form, the presence of incongruous images, the pre-
dominance of the intellectual over the emotional element, and
the lack of flow. It is the material of poetry not thoroughly
worked out. But the genius from which it came the swift
faculty of perception, the lofty imagination, the idealizing spirit
enamoured of reality was the secret source of all Emerson's
greatness as a speaker and as a writer. Whatever verdict time
may pass upon the balk of his poetry, Emerson himself must be
recognized as an original and true poet of a high order.
His latter years were passed in peaceful honour at Concord.
In 1866 Harvard College conferred upon him the degree of
I.I. I)., and in 1867 he was elected an overseer. In 1870 he
delivered a course of lectures before the university on " The
Natural History of the Intellect." In 1872 his house was bumed
down, and was rebuilt by popular subscription. In the same
year he went on his third foreign journey, going as far as Egypt.
About this time began a failure in his powers, especially in his
memory. But his character remained serene and unshaken in
dignity. Steadily, tranquilly, cheerfully, he finished the voyage
Of life.
I trim myaclf to the storm of time,
I nun the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at primi- :
' Lowly faithful, banish fear.
Right onward drive unharmed ;
The port, well worth the cruise, is near,
And every wave is charmed.' "
Emerson died on the 2?th of April 1882, and his body was laid
to rest in the peaceful cemetery of Sleepy Hollow, in a grove
on the edge of the village of Concord.
AUTHORITIES. Emerson's Complete Works, Riverside edition,
editnl by J. E. Catxjt (ll vul .. li.>-t<m, 1883-1884) ; another edition
(London, 5 vols., 1906), by (.. Sampson, in Holm's " Libraries " ; The
Correspondence oj Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited
by Charles Eliot Norton (Boston, 1883); George Willis Cooke,
Ralph Waldo Emerson: His Life, Writings and Philosophy (Boston,
1881); Alexander Ireland, Ralph Waldo Emerson: His Life, Genius
and Writings (London, 1882); A. Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Philosopher and Seer (Boston, 1883); Moncure Daniel
Conwuy, Emerson at Home and Abroad (Boston, 1882) ; Joel Beiitmi,
Emtnon as a Poet (New York, 1883) ; F. B. Sanborn (editor), The
Genius and Character of Emerson : Lectures at the Concord School of
Philosophy (Boston, 1885); Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo
Emerson (" American Men of Letters " series) (Boston, 1885) ; James
Elliott Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 3 vols. (the
authorized biography) (Boston, 1887); Edward Waldo Emer-'Mi.
Emerson in Concord (Boston, 1889) ; Richard Garnctt, Life of Ralph
Waldo Emerson (London, 1888); G. E. Woodbcrry, Ralph Waldo
Emerson (1907). Critical estimates are also to be found in Matthew
Arnold's Discourses in America, John Morley's Critical Miscellanies,
Henry James's Partial Portraits, Lowell's My Study Windows,
Birrcil's Obiter Dicta (2nd scries), Stedman's Poets of America,
Whipple's A merican Literature, &c. There is a Bibliography of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, by G. W. Cooke (Boston, 1908). (H. van D.)
EMERSON, WILLIAM (1701-1782), English mathematician,
was born on the i |i h of May 1701 at Hurworth, near Darlington,
where his father, Dudley Emerson, also a mathematician, taught
a school. Unsuccessful as a teacher he devoted himself entirely
to studious retirement, and published many works which are
singularly free from errata. In mechanics he never advanced
a proposition which he had not previously tested in practice, nor
published an invention without first proving its effects by a model.
He was skilled in the science of music, the theory of sounds,
and the ancient and modern scales; but he never attained any
excellence as a performer. He died on the 2oth of May 1782 at
his native village. Emerson was eccentric and indeed clownish,
but he possessed remarkable independence of character and
intellectual energy. The boldness with which he expressed his
opinions on religious subjects led to his being charged with
scepticism, but for this there was no foundation.
Emerson's works include The Doctrine of Fluxions (1748); The
Projection of the Sphere, Orthographic, Stereographic and Gnomical
(1749); The Elements of Trigonometry (1749); The Principles oj
Mechanics (1754); A Treatise of Navigation (1755); A Treatise of
Algebra, in two books (1765); The Arithmetic of Infinites, and the
Differential Method, illustrated by Examples (1767); Mechanics, or
the Doctrine of Motion (1769) ; The Elements of Optics, in four books
(1768) ; A System of Astronomy (1769) ; The Laws of Centripetal and
Centrifugal force (1769); The Mathematical Principles of Geography
(1770); Tracts (1770); Cyclomathesis, or an Easy Introduction to the
several branches of the Mathematics (1770), in ten vols.; A Short
Comment on Sir Isaac Newton's Principia; to which is added, A
Defence of Sir Isaac against the objections that have been made to several
parts of his works (1770) ; A Miscellaneous Treatise containing several
Mathematical Subjects (1776).
EMERY (Ger. Smirgel), an impure variety of corundum, much
used as an abrasive agent. It was known to the Greeks under
the name of anvpa or cr/iipis, which is defined by Dioscorides
as a stone used in gem-engraving. The Hebrew word shamir (re-
lated to the Egyptian asmir), where translated in our versions
of the Old Testament " adamant " and " diamond," probably
signified the emery-stone or corundum.
Emery occurs as a granular or massive, dark-coloured, dense
substance, having much the appearance of an iron-ore. Its specific
gravity varies with its composition from 3-7 to 4-3. Under
the microscope, it is seen to be a mechanical aggregate of corun-
dum, usually in grains or minute crystals of a bluish colour,
with magnetite, which also is granular and crystalline. Other
iron oxides, like haematite and limonite, may be present as
alteration-products of the magnetite. Some of the alumina and
iron oxide may occasionally be chemically combined, so as to
form an iron spinel, or hercynite. In addition to these minerals
emery sometimes contains quartz, mica, tourmaline, cassiterite,
&c. Indeed emery may be regarded as a rock rather than a
definite mineral species.
The hardness of emery is about 8, whereas that of pure
corundum is 9. The " abrasive power," or " effective hardness,"
of emery is by no means proportional to the amount of alumina
which it contains, but seems rather to depend on its physical
EMETICS EMEU
condition. Thus, taking the effective hardness of sapphire as
ico, Dr J. Lawrence Smith found that the emery of Samos with
70-10% of alumina had a corresponding hardness of 56; that
of Naxos, with 68-53 of A1 2 O 3 , a hardness of 46; and that of
Gumach with 77-82 of A1 2 O 3 , a hardness of 47.
Emery has been worked from a very remote period in the
Isle of Naxos, one of the Cyclades, whence the stone was called
naxium by Pliny and other Roman writers. The mineral occurs
as loose blocks and as lenticular masses or irregular beds in granu-
lar limestone, associated with crystalline schists. The Naxos
emery has been described by Professor G. Tschermak. From a
chemical analysis of a sample it has been calculated that the
emery contained 52-4% of corundum, 32-1 of magnetite, 11-5
of tourmaline, 2 of muscovite and 2 of margarite.
Important deposits of corundum were discovered in Asia
Minor by J. Lawrence Smith, when investigating Turkish mineral
resources about 1847. The chief sources of emery there are
Gumach Dagh, a mountain about 12 m. E. of Ephesus; Kula,
near Ala-shehr; and the mines in the hills between Thyra and
Cosbonnar, south of Smyrna. The occurrence is similar to that
in Naxos. The emery is found as detached blocks in a reddish
soil, and as rounded masses embedded in a crystalline limestone
associated with mica-schist, gneiss and granite. The proportion
of corundum in this emery is said to vary from 37 to 57%.
Emery is worked at several localities in the United States,
especially near Chester, in Hampden county, Mass., where it is
associated with peridotites. The corundum and magnetite are
regarded by Dr J. H. Pratt as basic segregations from an igneous
magma. The deposits were discovered by H. S. Lucas in 1864. '
The hardness and toughness of emery render it difficult to
work, but it may be extracted from the rock by blasting in holes
bored with diamond drills. In the East fire-setting is employed.
The emery after being broken up is carefully picked by hand,
and then ground or stamped, and separated into grades by wire
sieves. The higher grades are prepared by washing and eleutria-
tion, the finest being known as " flour of emery." A very fine
emery dust is collected in the stamping room , where it is deposited
after floating in the air. The fine powder is used by lapidaries
and plate-glass manufacturers. Emery-wheels are made by
consolidating the powdered mineral with an agglutinating medium
like shellac or silicate of soda or vulcanized india-rubber. Such
wheels are not only used by dentists and lapidaries but are
employed on a large scale in mechanical workshops for grinding,
shaping and polishing steel. Emery-sticks, emery-cloth and
emery-paper are made by coating the several materials with
powdered emery mixed with glue, or other adhesive media.
(See CORUNDUM.) (F.W.R.*)
EMETICS (from Gr. e/iertKos, causing vomit), the term
given to substances which are administered for the purpose
of producing vomiting. It is customary to divide emetics into
two classes, those which produce their effect by acting on the
vomiting centre in the medulla, and those which act directly
on the stomach itself. There is considerable confusion in the
nomenclature of these two divisions, but all are agreed in calling
the former class central emetics, and the latter gastric. The
gastric emetics in common use are alum, ammonium carbonate,
zinc sulphate, sodium chloride (common salt), mustard and
warm water. Copper sulphate has been purposely omitted
from this list, since unless it produces vomiting very shortly
after administration, being itself a violent gastro-intestinal
irritant, some other emetic must promptly be administered.
The central emetics are apomorphine, tartar emetic, ipecacuanha,
senega and squill. Of these tartar emetic and ipecacuanha
come under both heads: when taken by the mouth they act
as gastric emetics before absorption into the blood, and later
produce a further and more vigorous effect by stimulation of
the medullary centre. It must be remembered, however, that,
valuable though these drugs are, their action is accompanied
by so much depression, they should never be administered
except under medical advice.
Emetics have two main uses: that of emptying the stomach,
especially in cases of poisoning, and that of expelling the contents
of the air passages, more especially in children before they have
learnt or have the strength to expectorate. Where a physician
is in attendance, the first of these uses is nearly always replaced
by lavage of the stomach, whereby any subsequent depression is
avoided. Emetics still have their place, however, in the treat-
ment of bronchitis, laryngitis and diphtheria in children, as
they aid in the expulsion of the morbid products. Occasionally
also they are administered when a foreign body has got into
the larynx. Their use is contra-indicated in the case of anyone
suffering from aneurism, hernia or arterio-sclerosis, or where
there is any tendency to haemorrhage.
EMEU, evidently from the Port. Ema, 1 a name which has in
turn been applied to each of the earlier-known forms of Ratite
birds, but has finally settled upon that which inhabits Australia,
though, up to the close of the i8th century, it was given by most
authors to the bird now commonly called cassowary this last
FIG. i. Ceram Cassowary. 2
word being a corrupted form of the Malayan Simian (see Craw-
furd, Cramm. and Diet. Malay Language, ii. pp. 178 and 25),
apparently first printed as Casoaris by Bontius in 1658 (Hist,
nat. et med. Ind. Orient, p. 71).
The cassowaries (Casuariidae) and emeus (Dromaeidae) as
the latter name-is now used have much structural resemblance,
and form the order Megistanes, 3 which is peculiar to the Australian
Region. Huxley showed (Proc. Zool. Soc., 1867, pp. 422, 423,
that they agree in differing from the other Ralitae in many
important characters; one of the most obvious of them is that
1 By Moraes (1796) and Sousa (1830) the word is said to be from the
Arabic Na'ama or Na'ema, an ostrich (Struthio camelus); but no
additional evidence in support of the assertion is given by Dozy in
1869 (Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais derives de I'arabe, 2nd
ed., p. 260). According to Gesner in 1555 (lib. iii. p. 709), it was the
Portuguese name of the crane (Grus communis), and had been trans-
ferred with the qualifying addition of " di Gei " (i.e. ground-crane)
to the ostrich. This statement is confirmed by Aldrovandus (lib. ix.
cap. 2). Subsequently, but in what order can scarcely now be deter-
mined, the name was naturally enough used for the ostrich-like birds
inhabiting the lands discovered by the Portuguese, both in the Old
and in the New World. The last of these are now known as rheas,
and the preceding as cassowaries.
1 The figures are taken, by permission, from Messrs Mosenthal
and Harting's Ostriches and Ostrich Farming (Triibner & Co., 1877).
3 Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 4, xx. p. 500.
EMIGRATION EMILIA
337
each contour-feather appears to be double, its kyporackis, or
aftershaft, being as long as the main shaft a feature noticed
in the case of either form so soon as examples were brought to
Europe. The external distinctions of the two families are,
however, equally plain. The cassowaries, when adult, bear a
homy helmet on their head; they have some part of the neck
bare, generally more or less ornamented with caruncles, and the
claw of the inner toe is remarkably elongated. The emeus have
no helmet, their head is feathered, their neck has no caruncles,
and their inner toes bear a claw of no singular character.
The type of the C>isuariid>ir is the species named by Linnaeus
Slmtkio camariiu and by John Latham Casuarius emru. Vicillot
subsequently called it C. golf at us, and his epithet has been very
commonly adopted by writers, to the exclusion of the older
specific appellation. It seems to be peculiar to the island of
Ceram, and was made known to naturalists, as we learn from
Ciusius, in 1597, by the first Dutch expedition to the East
="-
FIG. 2. Emeu.
Indies, when an example was brought from Banda, whither
it had doubtless been conveyed from its native island. It was
said to have been called by the inhabitants " Emeu," or " Ema,"
but this name they must have had from the earlier Portuguese
navigators. 1 Since that time examples have been continually
imported into Europe, so that it has become one of the best-
known members of the subclass Ratilae. For a long time its
glossy, but coarse and hair-like, black plumage, its lofty helmet,
the gaudily-coloured caruncles of its neck, and the four or five
barbies* quills which represent its wing-feathers, made it appear
unique among birds. But in 1857 Dr George Bennett certified
the existence of a second and perfectly distinct species of casso-
wary, an inhabitant of New Britain, where it was known to the
natives a* the Hooruk. and in his honour it was named by John
Gould C. bennetti. Several examples were soon after received
in England, and these confirmed the view of it already taken.
A considerable number of other species of the genus have since
been described from various localities in the same subregion.
1 It is known that the Portuguese preceded the Dutch in their
voyages to the East, and it is almost certain that the latter were
MMed by pilot* of the former nation, whose names for places and
various natural objects would be imparted to their employers (see
DODO).
Conspicuous among them from its large size and lofty helmet
is the C. auslralis, from the northern parts of Australia. Its
existence indeed had been ascertained, by T. S. Wall, in 1854,
but the specimen obtained by that unfortunate explorer was
lost, and it was not until 1867 that an example was submitted
to competent naturalists.
Not much seems to be known of the habits of any of the
cassowaries in a state of nature. Though the old species occurs
rather plentifully over the whole of the interior of Ceram, A. R.
Wallace was unable to obtain or even to see an example. They
all appear to bear captivity well, and the hens in confinement
frequently lay their dark-green and rough-shelled eggs, which,
according to the custom of the Ratitae, are incubated by the
cocks. The nestling plumage is mottled (Proc. Zool. Soc., 1863,
pi. xlii.), and when about half-grown they are clothed in dis-
hevelled feathers of a deep tawny colour.
Of the emeus (as the word is now restricted) the best known
is the Casuarius novae-hollandiae of John Latham, made by
Vicillot the type of his genus Dromaeus, 1 whence the name of the
family (Dromaeidac) is taken. This bird immediately after the
colonization of New South Wales (in 1 788) was found to inhabit
the south-eastern portion of Australia, where, according to
John Hunter (Hist. Journ., &c., pp. 409, 413), the natives call
it Maracry, Marryang or Maroang; but it has now been so
hunted down that not an example remains at large in the districts
that have been fully settled. It is said to have existed also on
the islands of Bass Straits and in Tasmania, but it has been
exterminated in both, without, so far as is known, any orni-
thologist having had the opportunity of determining whether
the race inhabiting those localities was specifically identical with
that of the mainland or distinct. Next to the ostrich the largest
of existing birds, the common emeu is an inhabitant of the more
open country, feeding on fruits, roots and herbage, and generally
keeping in small companies. The nest is a shallow pit scraped
in the ground, and from nine to thirteen eggs, in colour varying
from a bluish-green to a dark bottle-green, are laid therein.
These are hatched by the cock-bird, the period of incubation
lasting from 70 to 80 days. The young at birth are striped
longitudinally with dark markings on a light ground. A remark-
able structure in Dromaeus is a singular opening in the front of
the windpipe, communicating with a tracheal pouch. This has
attracted the attention of several anatomists, and has been
well described by Dr Murie(Proc. Zool. Soc., 1867, pp. 405-415).
Various conjectures have been made as to its function, the most .
probable of which seems to be that it is an organ of sound in the
breeding-season, at which time the hen-bird has long been
known to utter a remarkably loud booming note. Due con-
venience being afforded to it, the emeu thrives well, and readily
propagates its kind in Europe. Like other Ratite birds it will
take to the water, and examples have been seen voluntarily
swimming a wide river. (A. N.)
EMIGRATION (from Lat. emigrare; e, ex, out of, and migrare,
to depart), the movement of population out of one country into
another (see MIGRATION).
EMILIA, a territorial division (compartimenlo) of Italy,
bounded by Venetia and Lombardy on the N., Liguria on the
W., Tuscany on the S., the Marches on the S.E., and the Adriatic
Sea on the E. It has an area of 7967 sq. m., and a population
of 2,477,690 (1901), embracing eight provinces, as follows:
(i) Bologna (pop. 529,612; 61 communes); (2) Ferrara (270,558;
16 communes); (3) Forli (283,996; 41 communes); (4) Modena
(3Z3.S98; 45 communes); (5) Parma (303, 694; 50 communes);
(6) Piacenza (250,491; 47 communes); (7) Ravenna (234,656;
18 communes); (8) Reggio nelF Emilia (281,085; 43 communes).
In these provinces the chief towns, with communal populations,
are as follows:
(i) Bologna (147,898), Imola (33.144), Budrio (17,077), S.
Giovanni in Persiceto (15,978), Castelfranco (13,484), Castel
The obvious misprint of Dromeicus in this author's work
(Analyte, &c., p. 54) was foolishly followed by many naturalists,
forgetful that he corrected it a few pages farther on (p. 70) to
Dromaius the properly latinized form of which is Dromaeus.
EMILIA
S. Pietro (13,426), Medicina (12,575), Molinella (12,081), Creval-
core (11,408).
(2) Ferrara (86,675), Copparo (39,222), Argenta (20,474),
Portomaggiore (20,141), Cento (19,078), Bondeno (15,682),
Comacchio (10,745).
(3) Forli (43,321), Rimini (43,595), Cesena (42,509).
(4) Modena (63,012), Carpi (22,876), Mirandola (13,721),
Finale nell' Emilia (12,896), Pavullo nel Frignano (12,034).
(5) Parma (48,523), Borgo S. Donnino (12,019).
(6) Piacenza (35,647).
(7) Ravenna (63,364), Faenza (39,757), Lugo (27,244), Bagna-
cavallo (15,176), Brisighella (13,815), Alfonsine (10,369).
(8) Reggio nell' Emilia (58,993), Correggio (14,445), Guastalla
(11,091).
The northern portion of Emilia is entirely formed by a great
plain stretching from the Via Aemilia to the Po; its highest
point is not more than 200 ft. above sea-level, while along the E.
coast are the lagoons at the mouth of the Po and those called
the Valli di Comacchio to the S. of them, and to the S. again the
plain round Ravenna (10 ft.), which continues as far as Rimini,
where the mountains come down to the coast.
Immediately to the S.E. of the Via Aemilia the mountains begin
to rise, culminating in the central chain of the Ligurian and
Tuscan Apennines. The boundary of Emilia follows the highest
summits of the chain in the provinces of Parma, Reggio and
Modena, passing over the Monte Bue (5915 ft.) and the Monte
Cimone (7103 ft.), while in the provinces of Bologna and Forli it
keeps somewhat lower along the N.E. slopes of the chain. With
the exception of the Po, the main rivers of Emilia descend from
this portion of the Apennines, the majority of them being
tributaries of the Po; the Trebbia (which rises in the province
of Genoa), Taro, Secchia and Panaro are the most important.
Even the Reno, Ronco and Montone, which now flow directly
into the Adriatic, were, in Roman times, tributaries of the Po,
and the Savio and Rubicone seem to be the only streams of any
importance from these slopes of the Tuscan Apennines which
ran directly into the sea in Roman times (see APENNINES).
Railway communication in the plain of Emilia is unattended
by engineering difficulties (except for the bridging of rivers)
and is mainly afforded by the line from Piacenza to Rimini.
This, as far as Bologna, forms part of the main route from
Milan to Florence and Rome, while beyond Rimini it follows the
S.E. coast of Italy past Ancona as far as Brindisi and Lecce.
The description follows this main line in a S.E. direction. Pia-
cenza, being immediately S. of a bridge over the Po, is an im-
portant centre; a line runs to the W. to Voghera, through which
it communicates with the lines of W. Lombardy and Piedmont,
and immediately N. of the Po a line goes off to Cremona. A
new bridge over the Po carries a direct line from Cremona to
Borgo S. Donnino. From Parma starts a main line, followed by
expresses from Milan to Rome, which crosses the Apennines to
Spezia (and Sarzana, for Pisa and Rome), tunnelling under the
pass of La Cisa, while in a N. and N.E. direction lines run to
Brescia andSuzzara. From Reggio branch lines run to Guastalla,
Carpi and Sassuolo, there being also a line from Sassuolo to
Modena. At Modena the main line to Verona through Suzzara
and Mantua diverges to the N. ; there is also a branch N.N.E.
to Mirandola, and another S. to Vignola. Bologna is, however,
the most important railway centre; besides the line S. to
Pistoia and Florence over the Apennines and the line S.E. to
Rimini, Ancona and Brindisi, there is the main line N.N.E. to
Ferrara, Padua and Venice, and there are branches to Budrio
and Portomaggiore to the N.E., and to S. Felice sul Panaro and
Poggio Rusco to the N.,.,which connect the main lines of the
district.
At Castel Bolognese, 5 m. N.W. of Faenza, a branch goes off
to Lugo, whence there are connexions with Budrio, Lavezzola
(on the line between Ravenna and Ferrara) and Ravenna, and
at Faenza a line, not traversed by express trains, goes across
the Apennines to Florence. Rimini is connected by a direct line
with Ravenna and Ferrara; and Ferrara, besides the main
line S.S.W. to Bologna and N. by E. to Padua, has a branch to
Poggio Rusco, which goes on to Suzzara, a station on the main
line between Modena and Verona. There are also many steam
tramways in the flatter part of the province, the fertility and
agricultural activity of which are considerable. The main pro-
ducts of the plain are cereals, wine, and, in the marshy districts
near the Po, rice; the system prevailing is that of the mezzadria
half the produce to the owner and half to the cultivator.
The ancient Roman divisions of the fields are still preserved in
some places. There are also considerable pastures, and cheese
is produced, especially Parmesan. Flax, hemp and silk-worms
are also cultivated, and a considerable quantity of poultry kept.
The hill districts produce cereals, vines, olives and fruit; while
on the mountains are considerable chestnut and other forests,
and extensive summer pastures, the flocks going in part to the
Maremma in summer, and in part to the pastures of the plain
of the Emilia.
The name Emilia comes from the Via Aemilia (<?..), the
Roman road from Ariminum to Placentia, which traversed the
entire district from S.E. to N.W., its line being closely followed
by the modern railway. The name was transferred to the district
(which formed the eighth Augustan region of Italy) as early as
the time of Martial, in popular usage (Epigr. vi. 85. 5), and in
the 2nd and 3rd centuries it is frequently named as a district
under imperial judges (iuridici), generally in combination with
Flaminia or Liguria and Tuscia. The district of Ravenna was,
as a rule, from the 3rd to the sth century, not treated as part of
Aemilia, the chief town of the latter being Placentia. In the
4th century Aemilia and Liguria were joined to form a consular
province; after that Aemilia stood alone, Ravenna being some-
times temporarily added to it. The boundaries of the ancient
district correspond approximately with those of the modern.
In the Byzantine period Ravenna became the seat of an
exarch; and after the Lombards had for two centuries attempted
to subdue the Pentapolis (Ravenna, Bologna, Forli, Faenza,
Rimini), Pippin took these cities from Aistulf and gave them,
with the March of Ancona, to the papacy in 755, to which,
under the name of Romagna, they continued to belong. At first,
however, the archbishop of Ravenna was in reality supreme.
The other chief cities of Emilia Ferrara, Modena, Reggio,
Parma, Piacenza were, on the other hand, independent, and
in the period of the communal independence of the individual
towns of Italy each of the chief cities of Emilia, whether belonging
to Romagna or not, had a history of its own; and, notwithstand-
ing the feuds of Guelphs and Ghibellines, prospered considerably.
The study of Roman law, especially at Bologna, acquired great
importance. The imperial influence kept the papal power in
check. Nicholas III. obtained control of the Romagna in 1278,
but the papal dominion almost fell during the Avignon period,
and was only maintained by the efforts of Cardinal Albornoz,
a Spaniard sent to Italy by Innocent VI. in 1353. Even so,
however, the papal supremacy was little more than a name;
and this state of things only ceased when Caesar Borgia, the
natural son of Alexander VI., crushed most of the petty princes
of Romagna, intending to found there a dynasty of his own;
but on the death of Alexander VI. it was his successors in the
papacy who carried on and profited by what Caesar Borgia had
begun. The towns were thenceforth subject to the church
and administered by cardinal legates. Ferrara and Comacchio
remained under the house of Este until the death of Alphonso II.
in 1 597, when they were claimed by Pope Clement VIII. as vacant
fiefs. Modena and Reggio, which had formed part of the Ferrara
duchy, were thenceforth a separate duchy under a branch of
the house of Este, which was descended from a natural son
of Alphonso I. Carpi and Mirandola were small principalities,
the former of which passed to the house of Este in 1525,
in which year Charles V. expelled the Pio family, while
the last of the Pico dynasty of Mirandola, Francesco Maria,
having sided with the French in the war of Spanish Succes-
sion, was deprived of his duchy in 1709 by the emperor
Joseph I., who sold it to the house of Este in 1710. Parma
and Piacenza were at first under the Farnese, Pope Paul III.
having placed his natural son PierLuigi therein 1545, and then,
EMINENCE EMINESCU
339
after the extinction of the family in 1731, under a secondary
branch of the Bourbons of Spain. In 1796-1814, Emilia was
first incorporated in the Italian republic and then in the
Napoleonic Italian kingdom; after 1815 there was a return to
the status i/ut> ante, Romagna returning to the papacy and its
ecclesiastical government, the duchy of Parma being given
to Marie Louise, wife of the deposed Napoleon, and Modena to
the archduke Francis of Austria, the heir of the las.t Este. In
Romagna and .Modena the government was oppressive, arbitrary,
coirupt and unprogressive, while in Parma things were better.
In iS.ii and 1831 there were unsuccessful attempts at revolt
in Emilia, which were sternly and cruelly repressed; chronic
discontent continued and the people joined again in the move-
ment of 1848-1849, which was crushed by Austrian troops.
In 1859 the struggle for independence was finally successful,
Emilia r>t$jng to the Italian kingdom almost without resistance.
EMINENCE (Lat. eminrntia), a title of honour now confined
to the cardinals of the Church of Rome. It was originally given
as a complimentary title to emperors, kings, and then to less
conspicuous persons. The Roman empire of the 4th century
adopted from the " vanity of the East the forms and ceremonies
of ostentatious greatness." Gibbon includes in the " profusion
of epithets " by which " the purity of the Latin language was
debased," and which were lavished on " the principal officers
of the empire," " your Sincerity, your Gravity, your Excellency,
your Eminence, your sublime and wonderful Magnitude, your
illustrious and magnificent Highness." From the not ilia digni-
taium it passed into the Latin of the middle ages as a flattering
epithet, and was applied in the church and by the popes to the
dignified clergy at large, and sometimes as a pure form of civility
to churchmen of modest rank. On the loth of June 1630, Urban
VIII. confined the use of the titles Emintntuif and Eminentisfimi
to the cardinals, to imperial electors, and to the master of the
Hospital of St John of Jerusalem (order of the Knights of Malta).
Since the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, and the entire
change, if not actual destruction, of the order of St John, the
title " eminence " has become strictly confined to the cardinals.
Before 1630 the members of the Sacred College were " Illus-
trissimi " and " Reverendissimi." It is, therefore, not correct
to speak of a cardinal who lived before that time as " his
Eminence."
See du Canoe, Giossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (Niort and
London, 1884), .v. " Eminentia."
EMINENT DOMAIN (Lat. eminens, rising high above surround-
ing objects: and dominium, domain), a term applied in law
to the sovereign right of a state to appropriate private property
to public uses, whether the owner consents or not. It is re-
peatedly employed by Grotius (e.g. De jure belli, bk. iii. c. 20,
. 7), Bynkershock (Quaest. jur. pub. bk. 2, c. 15), and Puffendorf
(De jure naturae el gentium, bk. i. c. I, s. 19), the two latter,
however, preferring the word imperium to dominium; and by
other Dutch jurists. But in modern times it is chiefly in the
United States of America that the doctrine of eminent domain
has received its application, and it is chiefly to American law
that the following remarks refer (see also the article COMPEN-
SATION). Eminent domain is distinguishable alike from the
police patter, by which restrictions are imposed on private
property in the public interest, e.g. in connexion with the liquor
traffic or public health (see re Haff (1004), 197 U.S. 488); from
the power of taxation, by which the owner of private property
is Compelled to contribute a portion of it for public purposes;
and from the war-power, involving the destruction of private
property in the course of military operations. The police
power fetters rights of property; eminent domain takes them
way. The power of taxation is analogous to eminent domain
as regards the purposes to which the contribution of the tax-
payer is to be applied. But, unlike eminent domain, it does not
necessarily involve a taking of specific property for those purposes.
The destruction of property in military operations or in the
discharge by Government of other duties in cases of necessity,
*.f. in order to check the progress of a fire in a city clearly
cannot be said to be an exercise of the power of eminent domain.
The question whether the element of compensation is necessarily
involved in the idea of eminent domain has in modern dim ^
aroused much controversy. According to one school of thought
(see Lewis, Eminent Domain, s. 10), this question must be
answered in the negative. According to a second, whose view
has the support of the civilians (see Randolph, Eminent Domain,
s. 227; Mills, Eminent Domain, s. i) compensation is an inherent
attribute of the power. An intermediate view is advocated by
Professor Thayer (Cases on Const 'it 'ulional Law, vol. i, 953),
according to which eminent domain springs from the necessities
of government, while the obligation to reimburse rests upon
the natural right of individuals. The right to compensation is
thus not a component part of the power to take, but arises at
the same time and the latter cannot exist without it. The
relation between the two is that of substance and shadow.
The matter is not, however, of great practical importance, for
the Federal Constitution prohibits the exercise of the power
" without just compensation " (sth Amendment), while in most
of the states the State constitution or other legislation has
imposed upon it a similar limitation: and the tendency of
modern judicial decisions is in favour of the view that the
absence of such a limitation will make an enactment so far
unconstitutional and invalid.
In order to justify the exercise of the power of eminent domain,
the purposes to which the property taken is to be applied must
be " public," i.e. primarily public, and not primarily of private
interest and merely incidentally beneficial to the public (Madison-
vUle Traction Co. v. Mining Co., 1904, 196 U.S. 239). Subject
to this definition, the term " public " receives a wide interpreta-
tion. All kinds of property may be taken; and the procedure
indicated by the different legislatures must be followed. Any
contravention of this rule would involve a breach of the 5th
Amendment of the Federal Constitution, which provides that
" no persons . . . shall be deprived of property without due
process of law." It may be added that if the performance of
a covenant is rendered impossible by an act of eminent domain
the covenantor is excused.
In English Jaw, the only exact analogue to the doctrine of
eminent domain is to be found in the prerogative right of the
crown to enter upon the lands of subjects or to interfere with
their enjoyment for the defence of the realm (see A. G. v.
Tomline; 1879; 12 Ch. D. 214). No attempt is made to exercise
this prerogative, and lands are acquired for state purposes by
statute usually framed on or incorporating the Lands Clauses
Acts (see COMPENSATION). The French Code Civil secures
compensation to the owner of property in cases of expropriation
pour cause d'utilM publique (art. 545), and there is similar
provision in Belgium (Const. Law, art. II.), Holland (Funda-
mental Law, art. 147), Spain (Civil Code, art. 349, and Law of
3rd May, 1841), and most other European states. It has been
held in France that the right to compensation does not arise
under art. 545 of the Code Civil where only a servitude d'utilitt
publique is created on a private individual's land.
In addition to the authorities cited in the text, see Lewis, Eminent
Domain (2nd ed., Chicago, 1900); Mills, Eminent Domain (2nd ed.,
St Louis, 1888); Randolph, Eminent Domain in the United States
(Boston, 1894). (A. W. R.)
EMINESCU, MICHAIL (1849-1889), the greatest Rumanian
poet of the igth century, was born on the zoth of December
in Ipateshti near Botoshani, in the north of Moldavia. He
was of Turco-Tatar origin, and his surname was originally
Emin; this was changed to Eminovich and finally to the
Rumanian form Eminescu. He was educated for a time in
Czernowitz, and then entered the civil service. In 1864 he
resumed his studies in Transylvania, but soon joined a roving
theatrical company where he played in turn the r61es of actor,
prompter and stage-manager. After a few years he went to
Vienna, Jena and Berlin, where he attended lectures, especially
on philosophy. In 1874 he was appointed school inspector and
librarian at the university of Jassy, but was soon turned out
through the change of government, and took charge, as editor
in chief, of the Conservative paper Timpul (Times). In 1883
340
EMIN PASHA
he had the first attack of the insanity hereditary in his family,
and in 1889 he died in a private institution in Bucharest. In
1870 his great poetical talent was revealed by two contributions
to the Convorbiri literare, the organ of the Junimist party in
Jassy; these were the poems " Venera s,i Madona " and
" Epigonii." Other poems followed and soon established his
claim to be the first among the modern poets of his country.
He was thoroughly acquainted with the chronicles of the past,
had a complete mastery of the Rumanian language, and was a
lover and admirer of Rumanian popular poetry. Influenced
by these studies and by the philosophy of Schopenhauer, he
introduced a new spirit into Rumanian poetry. Mystically
inclined and himself of a melancholy disposition, he lived in the
glory of the medieval Rumanian past; stifled by the artificiality
of the world around him, he rebelled against the conventionality
of society and his surroundings. In inimitable language he
denounced the vileness of the present and painted in glowing
pictures the heroism of the past; he also surprised nature
in its primitive beauty, and he gave expression to stirring
emotions in lyrics couched in the language and metre of popular
poetry. He further proved himself an unsurpassed master in
satire. Over all his poetry hangs a cloud of sadness, the sense
of coming doom. Simplicity of language, masterly handling
of rhyme and verse, deep thought and plastic expression made
Eminescu the creator of a school of poetry which dominated
the thought of Rumania and the expression of Rumanian
writers and poets at the end of the ipth century and the begin-
ning of the 20th.
Five editions of his collected poems appeared after 1890. Some
of them were translated into German by " Carmen Sylva " and Mite
Kremnitz, and others have also been translated into several other
languages. Eminescu also wrote two short novels, real poems in
prose (Jassy, 1890). (M. G.)
EMIN PASHA [EDUARD SCHNITZER] (1840-1892), German
traveller, administrator and naturalist, was the son of Ludwig
Schnitzer, a merchant of Oppeln in Silesia, and was born in
Oppeln on the 28th of March 1840. He was educated at the
universities of Breslau, Berlin and Konigsberg, and took the
degree of M.D. at Berlin. He displayed an early predilection for
zoology and ornithology, and in later life became a skilled and
enthusiastic collector, particularly of African plants and birds.
When he was four-and-twenty he determined to seek his fortunes
abroad, and made his way to Turkey, where, after practising
medicine on his own account for a short time, he was appointed
(in 1865) quarantine medical officer at Antivari. The duties
of the post were not heavy, and allowed him leisure foi a diligent
study of Turkish, Arabic and Persian. From 1870 to 1874 he
was in the service of the governor of northern Albania, had
adopted a Turkish name (though not that by which he afterwards
became so widely known), and was practically naturalized as
a Turk.
After a visit home in 1875 he went to Cairo, and then to
Khartum, in the hope of an opportunity for travelling in the
interior of Africa. This came to him in the following year,
when General Charles George Gordon, who had recently suc-
ceeded Sir Samuel Baker as governor of the equatorial provinces
of Egypt, invited Schnitzer, who was now known as " Emin
Effendi," to join him at Lado on the upper Nile. Although
nominally Gordon's medical officer, Emin was soon entrusted
with political missions of some importance to Uganda and
Unyoro. In these he acquitted himself so well that when, in
1878, Gordon's successor at Lado was deprived of his office on
account of malpractices (Gordon himself having been made
governor-general of the Sudan), Emin was chosen to fill the post
of governor of the Equatorial Province (i.e. the old equatorial
provinces minus the Bahr-el-Ghazal) and given the title of
" bey." He proved an energetic and enterprising governor;
indeed, his enterprise on more than one occasion brought him
into conflict with Gordon, who eventually decided to remove
Emin to Suakin. Before the change could be effected, however,
Gordon resigned his post in the Sudan, and his successor revoked
the order.
The next three or four years were employed by Emin in
various journeys through his province, and in the initiation of
schemes for its development, until in 1882, on his return from a
visit to Khartum, he became aware that the Mahdist rising,
which had originated in Kordofan, was spreading southward.
The effect of the rising was, of course, more markedly felt in
Emin's province after the abandonment of the Sudan by the
Egyptian government in 1884. He was obliged to give up several
of his stations in face of the Mahdist advance, and ultimately
to retire from Lado, which had been his capital, to Wadelai.
This last step followed upon his receipt of a letter fom Nubar
Pasha, informing him that it was impossible for the Egyptian
government to send him help, and that he must stay in his
province or retire towards the coast as best he could. Emin
(who about this time was raised to the rank of pasha) had some
thoughts of a retreat to Zanzibar, but decided to remain where
he was and endeavour to hold his own. To this end he carried
on protracted negotiations with neighbouring native potentates.
When, in 1887, (Sir) H. M. Stanley's expedition was on its way
to relieve him, it is clear from Emin's diary that he had no wish
to leave his province, even if relieved. He had done good work
there, and established a position which he believed himself able
to maintain. He hoped, however, that the presence of Stanley's
force, when it came, would strengthen his position; but the
condition of the relieving party, when it arrived in April 1888,
did not seem to Emin to promise this. Stanley's proposal to
Emin, as stated in the latter's diary, was that Emin should either
remain as governor-general on behalf of the king of the Belgians,
or establish himself on Victoria Nyanza on behalf of a group of
English merchants who wished to start an enterprise in Africa
on the model of the East India Company. After much hesitation,
and prompted by a growing disaffection amongst the natives
(owing, as he maintained, to his loss of prestige after the arrival
of Stanley's force), Emin decided to accompany Stanley to the
coast, where the expedition arrived in December 1889. Unfortun-
ately, on the evening of a reception dinner given in his honour,
Emin met with an accident which resulted in fracture of the
skull. Careful nursing gradually restored him to health, and on
his convalescence he resolutely maintained his decision to remain
in Africa, and, if possible, to work there in future on behalf of
the German government. The seal was definitely set upon this
decision by his formal engagement on behalf of his native country,
early in 1890. Preparations for a new expedition into the interior
were set on foot, and meanwhile Emin was honoured in various
ways by learned societies in Germany and elsewhere.
The object of the new expedition was (to quote Emin's in-
structions) " to secure on behalf of Germany the territories
situated south of and along Victoria Nyanza up to Albert
Nyanza," and to " make known to the population there that
they were placed under German supremacy and protection, and
to break or undermine Arab influence as far as possible." The
force, which was well equipped, started at the end of April 1890.
But before it had penetrated far inland the political reasons for
sending the expedition vanished with the signature, on the ist
of July 1890, of the Anglo-German agreement defining the
spheres of influence of the two nations, an agreement which
excluded the Albert Nyanza region from the German sphere.
For a time things went well enough with the expedition; Emin
occupied the important town of Tabora on the route from the
coast to Tanganyika and established the post of Bukoba on
Victoria Nyanza, but by degrees ill-fortune clouded its prospects.
Difficulties on the route; dissensions between Emin and the
authorities in German East Africa, and misunderstandings on
the part of both; epidemics of disease in Emin's force, followed
by a growing spirit of mutiny among his native followers; an
illness of a painful nature which attacked him all these gradually
undermined Emin's courage, and his diaries at the close of
1891 reflect a gloomy and almost hopeless spirit. In May that
year he had crossed into the Congo State by the south shore of
Albert Edward Nyanza, and many months were spent on the
borders of the great Congo Forest and in the Undusuma country
south-west of Albert Nyanza, breaking ground new to Europeans.
EMLYN EMMANUEL PHILIBERT
In December 1891 he sent off his companion, Dr Stuhlmann,
with the bulk of the caravan, on the way back to the east coast.
Emin remained behind with the sick, and with a very reduced
following left the lake district in March 1892 for the Congo
river. On reaching Ipoto on the Ituri he came within the region
of the Arab slave raiders and ivory hunters, in whose company
he at times travelled. These gentry were incensed against Emin
for the energetic way in which he had dealt with their comrades
while in German territory, and against Europeans generally
by the campaign for their suppression begun by the Congo State.
At the instigation of one of these Arabs Emin was murdered on
the 2jrd or 24th of October 1802 at Kinena, a place about
80 m. E.S.E. of Stanley Falls.
See Emm Paska, kis Life and Work, by Georg Schweitzer, with
imnxluction by K. \V. Fefkin (2 vols., London, 1898) ; Km in Pasha
m Central Afrita (London, 1888), a collection of Emin's papers
contributed to scientific journals; and Mil Emin Pascka ins Urn
tra Afrika (Berlin, 1894), by Dr Franz Stuhlmann. Major G.
Caaati (1838-1903), an Italian officer who spent several years with
Emin, and accompanied him and Stanley to the coast, narrated his
experiences in Died anni in Eaualoria (English edition, Ten Years
in Eqvatoria and the Return vita Emin Pasha. London, 1891).
EMLYN, THOMAS (1663-1741), English nonconformist divine,
was born at Stamford, Lincolnshire. He served as chaplain to the
presbyterian Letitia, countess of Donegal, and then to Sir
Robert Rich, afterwards (1691) becoming colleague to Joseph
Boyse, presbyterian minister in Dublin. From this office he
was virtually dismissed on his own confession of unitarianism,
and for publishing An Humble Inquiry into the Scripture Account
of Jesus Christ (1702) was sentenced to a year's imprisonment
and a fine of 1000. Thanks to the intervention of Boyse he
was released in 1 705 on payment of 00. He is said to have been
the first English preacher definitely to describe himself as
" Unitarian," and writes in his diary, " I thank God that He did
not call me to this lot of suffering till I had arrived at maturity
of judgment and firmness of resolution, and that He did not
desert me when my friends did. He never let me be so cast
down as to renounce the truth or to wjfver in my faith." Of
Christ he writes, " We may regard with fervent gratitude so
great a benefactor, but our esteem and rational love must ascend
higher and not rest till it centre in his God and ours." Emlyn
preached a good deal in Paul's Alley, Barbican, in his later years,
and died in London in 1741.
EMMANUEL, or IMMANUEL, a Hebrew symbolical proper
name, meaning " God (is) with us." When in 734-733 B.C.
Ahaz. king of Judah, alarmed at the preparations made against
him by the Syro-Ephraimitish alliance, was inclined to seek
aid from Tiglath-pUeser of Assyria, the prophet Isaiah en-
deavoured to allay his fear by telling him that the danger would
pass away, and as a sign from Yahweh that this should be so,
any young woman who should within the year bear a son, might
call his name Immanuel in token of the divine protection accorded
to Judah. For before the infant should come to even the im-
mature intelligence of childhood the lands of the foe would be
laid waste (Isaiah vii. 14-16). For other interpretations, especi-
ally as regards the mother, see Ency. Bib. col. 2162-3, and the
commentaries. In the post -exilic period the historical meaning
of the passage was forgotten, and a new significance was given
to it in accordance with the gradually developing eschatological
doctrine. This new interpretation finds expression in Matt,
i. 23, where the name is applied to Jesus as the Messiah. At
the close of Isaiah viii. 8 for " of thy land, O Immanuel," we
should probably read " of the land, for God is with us." The
three passages quoted are the only instances where this word
occurs in Scripture; it is frequent in hymns and devotional
literature as a title of Jesus Christ.
EMMANUEL PHILIBERT (i 528-1 580), duke of Savoy, son of
Charles III. and Beatrice of Portugal, one of the most renowned
princes of the later Renaissance, was born on the 8th of July
1528. Charles, after trying in vain to remain neutral in the wars
between France and the emperor Charles V., had been forced
to side with the latter, whereupon his duchy was overrun with
foreign soldiery and became the battlefield of the rival armies.
Prince Emmanuel took service with the emperor in 1545 and
distinguished himself in Germany, France and the Low Countries.
On the death of his father in 1553 he succeeded to the title,
little more than an empty one, and continued in the emperor's
service. Having been refused the command of the imperial
troops in Piedmont, he tried in vain to negotiate a separate
peace with France; but in 1556 France and Spain concluded
a five years' truce, by which each was to retain what it then
occupied. This would have been the end of Savoy, but within
a yeai the two powers were again at war. The chief events of
the campaign were the successful resistance of Cuneo, held for
the duke by Count Luserna, and the victory of St Quentin
(i557)> won by Emmanuel Philibert himself against the French.
At last in 1558 the powers agreed to an armistice, and in 1559
the peace of Cateau-Cambresis was made, by which Emmanuel
regained his duchy, but on onerous terms, for France was to
occupy several Piedmontese fortresses, including Turin and
Pinerolo, for not more than three years, and a marriage was
arranged between the duke and Margaret, duchess of Berry,
sister of the French king; while Spain was to garrison Asti
and Vercelli (afterwards exchanged for Santhia) until France
evacuated the above-mentioned fortresses. The duke's marriage
took place in Paris a few months later; and after the French
evacuation he re-entered his dominions amidst the rejoicings
of the people. The condition of Piedmont at that time was
deplorable; for wars, the exactions and devastations of the
foreign soldiery, and religious antagonism between Catholics
and Protestants had wrought terrible havoc. " Uncultivated,"
wrote the Venetian ambassador, quoted by E. Ricotti, " no
citizens in the cities, neither man nor beast in the fields, all the
land forest-clad and wild; one sees no houses, for most of them
are burnt, and of nearly all the castles only the walls are visible;
of the inhabitants, once so numerous, some have died of the
plague or of hunger, some by the sword, and some have fled
elsewhere preferring to beg their bread abroad rather than
support misery at home which is worse than death." There was
no army, the administration was chaotic, and the finances were
in a hopeless state. The duke set to work to put his house in
order, and inaugurated a series of useful reforms, ably assisted
by his minister, Niccol6 Balbo. But progress was slow, and was
accompanied by measures which abolished the states general,
the last survival of feudal liberties. Savoy, following the
tendency of the other states of Europe at that time, became
thenceforth an absolute monarchy, but without that transforma-
tion the achievement of complete independence from foreign
powers would have been impossible.
One of the first questions with which he had to deal was the
religious difficulty. The inhabitants of the Pellice and Chisone
valleys had long professed a primitive form .of Christianity
which the orthodox regarded as heretical, and had been subject
to numerous persecutions in consequence (see WALDENSES).
At the time of the Reformation they had gone over to Protestant-
ism, and during the wars of the i6th century the new religion
made great progress in Piedmont. The duke as a devout Catholic
desired to purge the state of heresy, and initiated repressive
measures against the Waldenses, but after some severe and not
very successful fighting he ended by allowing them a measure of
religious liberty in those valleys (1561). At the pope's instigation
he recommenced persecution some years later, but his duchess
and some German princes pleaded successfully in favour of the
Protestants. He next turned his attention to getting rid of the
French garrisons; the negotiations proved long and troublesome,
but in December 1562 the French departed on payment of
100,000 scudi, retaining only Pinerolo and Savigliano, and Turin
became the capital once more. There remained the Bernese,
who had occupied some of the duke's territories in Savoy and
Vaud, and in Geneva, over which he claimed certain rights.
With Bern he made a compromise, regaining Gex, the Chablais,
and the Genevois, on condition that Protestantism should be
tolerated there, but he renounced Vaud and some other districts
(1566). Disagreements with the Valais were settled in a similar
way in 1569; but the Genevans refused to recognize Savoyard
342
EMMAUS EMMET
suzerainty. Emmanuel reformed the currency, reorganized
justice, prepared the way for the emancipation of the serfs,
raised the standing army to 25,000 men, and fortified the
frontiers, ostensibly against Huguenot raids, but in reality
from fear of France. On the death of Charles IX. of France in
1574 the new king, Henry III., passed through Piedmont on his
way from Poland; Emmanuel gave him a magnificent reception,
and obtained from him a promise that Pinerolo and Savigliano
should be evacuated, which was carried out at the end of the year.
Philip of Spain was likewise induced to evacuate Asti and
Santhia in 1575. Thus, after being more or less under foreign
occupation for 39 years, the duchy was at last free. The duke
rounded off his dominions by the purchase of Tenda and Oneglia,
which increased his seaboard, and the last years of his life were
spent in fruitless negotiations to obtain Monferrato, held by
the Gonzagas under Spanish protection, and Saluzzo, which
was a French fief. He died on the 3oth of August 1580, and
was succeeded by his son Charles Emmanuel I. As a statesman
Emmanuel Philibert was able, business-like and energetic;
but he has been criticized for his duplicity, although in this
respect he was no worse than most other European princes,
whose ends were far more questionable. He was autocratic,
but just and very patriotic. During his reign the duchy, which
had been more than half French, became predominantly Italian.
By diplomacy, which, although he was a capable and brave
soldier, he preferred to war, he succeeded in freeing his country,
and converting it from a ruined and divided land into a respect-
able independent power of the second rank, and, after Venice,
the best-governed state in Italy.
The most accurate biography of Emmanuel Philibert is contained
in E. Ricotti's Storia delta monarchia, Piemontese, vol. ii. (Florence,
1861), which is well done and based on documents; cf. Claretta's
La Successione di Emanuele Filiberto (Turin, 1884).
EMMAUS, the name of two places in Palestine.
1. A village mentioned by Luke (xxiv. 13), without any in-
dication of direction, as being 60 stadia (almost 7 m.) , or according
to some MSS. 1 160 stadia, from Jerusalem. Its identification
is a matter of mere guesswork: it has been sought at (a) Emmaus-
Nicopolis (see 2 below), distant 176 stadia from Jerusalem;
(6) Kuryet el-' Enab, distant 66 stadia, on the carriage road to
Jaffa; (c) Kulonieh, distant 36 stadia, on the same road; (d)
el-Kubeibeh, distant 63 stadia, on the Roman road to Lydda;
(e) 'Urtas, distant 60 stadia; and (/) Khurbet el-Khamasa,
distant 86 stadia, on the Roman road to Eleutheropolis. Of
these, el-Kubeibeh or 'Urtas seems the most probable, though
many favour Kulonieh because of its nearness to Bet Mizza, in
which name there is similarity with Emmaus, and because of
a reading (30 stadia) in Josephus.
2. Emmaus-Nicopolis, now "Amwas, a town on the maritime
plain, and a place of importance during the Maccabaean and
Jewish wars. Near it Judas Maccabaeus defeated Gorgias in
164 B.C., and Vespasian established a fortified camp in A.D. 69.
It was afterwards rebuilt and named Nicopolis, and became
an episcopal see. It was also noted for a healing spring.
EMMENDINGEN, a town of Germany, in the grand-duchy
of Baden, close to the Black Forest, on the Elz and the main
line of railway Mannheim-Constance. Pop. 6200. It has a
Protestant church with a fine spire, a Roman Catholic church,
a handsome town-hall, an old castle (now a hospital), once the
residence of the counts of Hochberg, spinning mills, tanneries and
manufactures of photographic instruments, paper, machinery
and cigars. There is also a considerable trade in timber and cattle.
Here the author Johann Georg Schlosser (1739-1799), the
husband of Goethe's sister Cornelia (who died in 1777 and is
interred in the old graveyard), was Oberamtmann (bailiff) for a
few years.
'Including Codex K. But this distance is too great for the
conditions of Luke's narrative and the reading (160) is evidently
an attempt to harmonize with the traditional identification of
Emmaus-Nicopolis held by Eusebius and Jerome. For a curious
reading in three old Latin MSS. which makes Emmaus the name of
the second traveller on the journey, see Expos. Times, xiii. 429, 477,
56i.
Emmendingen was formerly the seat of the counts of Hochberg,
a cadet branch of the margraves of Baden. In 1418 it received
market rights from the emperor, and in 1590 was raised to the
status of a town, and walled, by Margrave Jacob III.
EMMERICH (the ancient Embrica), a town of Germany,
in the Prussian Rhine province, on the right bank of the Rhine
and the railway from Cologne to Amsterdam, 5 m. N.E. of Cleves.
Pop. (1905) 12,578. It has a considerable shipping trade, and
manufactories of tobacco and cigars, chocolate, margarine,
oil, chemicals, brushes, vinegar, soap, guano and perfumery.
There are also iron foundries and machine factories. The old
minster church, built in the middle of the nth century, contains
some fine choir stalls.
Emmerich, formerly called Embrika and Emrik, originally a
Roman colony, is mentioned in records so early as the 7th century.
St Willibrord founded a monastery and church here. In 1233
the place came into the possession of the dukes of Gelderland
and received the status of a town in 1247. In 1371 it fell to the
duchy of Cleves, and passed with it in 1609 to Brandenburg.
The town joined the Hanseatic League in 1407. In 1794 it was
bombarded by the French under General Vandamme, and in
1806 it was assigned to the grand-duchy of Berg. It passed
into the possession of Prussia in 1815.
See A. Dederich, Annalen der Stadt Emmerich (Emmerich, 1867).
EMMET, ROBERT (1778-1803), Irish rebel, youngest son of
Robert Emmet, physician to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland,
was born in Dublin in 1778, and entered Trinity College in
October 1793, where he had a distinguished academic career,
showing special aptitude for mathematics and chemistry, and
acquiring a reputation as an orator. Without taking a degree
he removed his name from the college books in April 1798, as
a protest against the inquisitorial examination of the political
views of the students conducted by Lord Clare as chancellor of
the university. Thus cut off from entering a learned profession,
he turned towards political intrigue, being already to some
extent in the secfets of the United Irishmen, of whom his elder
brother Thomas Addis Emmet (see below) was one of the most
prominent. In April 1799 a warrant was issued for his arrest,
but was not executed; and in 1800 and the following year he
travelled on the continent of Europe, where he entered into
relations with the leaders of the United Irishmen, exiled since
the rebellion of 1798, who were planning a fresh outbreak
in Ireland in expectation of support from France. Emmet went
to Paris in October 1802, where he had an interview with Bona-
parte which convinced him that the peace of Amiens would be
of short duration and that a French invasion of England might
be looked for in August 1803. The councils of the conspirators
were weakened by divided opinions as to the ultimate aim of
their policy; and no clearly thought-out scheme of operations
appears to have been arrived at when Emmet left Paris for Ireland
in October 1802. Those in his confidence afterwards denied that
Emmet was himself the originator of the plan on which he
acted; and several of the ablest of the United Irishmen held
aloof, believing the project to be impracticable. Among the
latter was Lord Cloncurry, at one time on the executive of the
United Irishmen, with whom Emmet dined the night before
he left Paris, and to whom he spoke of his plans with intense
enthusiasm and excitement. Emmet's lack of discretion was
shown by his revealing his intentions in detail to an Englishman
named Lawrence, resident near Honfleur, with whom he sought
shelter when travelling on foot on his way to Ireland. Arriving
in Dublin at the end of October he received information to the
effect that seventeen counties were ready to take up arms if a
successful effort were made in Dublin. For some time he re-
mained concealed in his father's house near Miltown, making his
preparations. A large number of pikes were collected and stored
in Dublin during the spring of 1803, but fire-arms and ammuni-
tion were not plentiful.
The probability of a French invasion in August was increased
by the renewal of the war in May, Emmet's brother Thomas
being then in Paris in communication with Talleyrand and
Bonaparte. But a discovery by the government of concealed
EMMET EMMITSBURG
343
arms, and an explosion at one of Emmet's depots in Patrick
i-t on the ifcth of July, necessitated immediate action, and
the Jjrd of that month was accordingly fixed for the projected
rising . An elaborate plan of operations, which he described in
ill-tail in a letter to his brother after his arrest, had been prepared
by Kmmet, the leading feature of which was a simultaneous
attack on the castle, the Pigeon House and the artillery barracks
at Island bridge; while bodies of insurgents from the neighbouring
counties were to march on the capital. But the whole scheme
miscarried. Some of Emmet's bolder proposals, such as a plan
lor capturing the commandcr-in-chief , were vetoed by the timidity
of his associates, none of whom were men of any ability. On
the 3 3rd of July all was confusion at the depots, and the leaders
were divided as to the course to be pursued; orders were not
obeyed; a trusted messenger despatched for arms absconded
with the money committed to him to pay for them; treachery,
quite unsuspected by Emmet, honeycombed the conspiracy;
the Wicklow contingent failed to appear; the Kildaremen turned
back on hearing that the rising had been postponed; a signal
expected by a contingent at the Broadstone was never given. In
this hopeless state of affairs a false report reached Emmet at
one of his depots at nine o'clock in the evening that the military
were approaching. Without taking any step to verify it, Emmet
put on a green and white uniform and placed himself at the head
of some eighty men, who marched towards the castle, being joined
in the streets by a second body of about equal strength. None
of these insurgents had any discipline, and many of them were
drunk. Lord Rilwarden, proceeding to a hastily summoned
meeting of the privy council, was dragged from his carriage by
this rabble and murdered, together with his nephew Richard
Wolfe; his daughter who accompanied him being conveyed
to safety by Emmet himself. Emmet, now seeing that the rising
had become a mere street brawl, made his escape; a detachment
of soldiers quickly dispersed his followers.
After hiding for some days in the Wicklow mountains Emmet
repaired to the house of a Mrs Palmer at Harold's Cross, in
order to be near the residence of John Philpot Curran (q.v.),
to whose daughter Sarah he had for some time been secretly
attached, and with whom he had carried on a voluminous corre-
spondence, afterwards seized by the authorities at her father's
house. Attempting without success to persuade this lady to
fly with him to America, Emmet lingered in the neighbourhood
till the 2$th of August, when he was apprehended by Major H. C.
Sirr, the same officer who had captured Lord Edward Fitzgerald
in 1798. At his trial he was defended and betrayed by the
infamous Leonard MacNally (?.r.), and was convicted of treason;
and after delivering an eloquent speech from the dock, was
hanged on the 2oth of September 1803.
By the universal testimony of his friends, Robert Emmet was
a youth of modest character, pure motives and winning person-
ality. But he was entirely lacking in practical statesmanship.
Brought up in a revolutionary atmosphere, his enthusiasm
was uncontrolled by judgment. Thomas Moore, who warmly
eulogizes Emmet, with whom he was a student at Trinity College,
records that one day when he was playing on the piano the
melody " Let Erin remember," Emmet started up exclaiming
passionately, " Oh, that I were at the head of 20,000 men
marching to that air! " He had no knowledge of the world or
of men; be trusted every one with child-like simplicity; except
personal courage he had none of the qualities essential to leader-
ship in such an enterprise as armed rebellion. The romance
of his love affair with Sarah Curran who afterwards married
Robert Henry Sturgeon, an officer distinguished in the Peninsular
War has cast a glamour over the memory of Robert Emmet;
and it inspired Thomas Moore's well-known songs, " She is far
from the land where her young hero sleeps," and " Oh, breathe
not his name"; it is also the subject of Washington Irving's
" The Broken Heart." Emmet was short and slight in figure;
his face was marked by smallpox, and he was described in 1803
for the purpose of identification as being " of an ugly, sour
countenance and dirty brown complexion." A few poems by
Emmet of little merit are appended to Madden's biography.
Sec R. R. Madden, The Untied Irishmen, their Lives and Times
(2nd cd. 4 vols., Dublin, 1858-1860); I'harles Phillip!), Recollections
of Curran and Some of his Contemporaries (2nd ed., London, 1822);
Henry Grattan, Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Right lion.
11. Grattan (5 vols., London, 1839-1846); W. H. Maxwrll, History
of the Irish Rebellion in 1798; with Memoirs of tlte Union and Emmet's
Insurrection in 1803 (London, 1845); W. II. Curran, Life of J. P.
Curran (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1822); Thomas Moore, Life and Death
of Lord Edward Fitzgerald (2 vols. 3rd cd., London, 1832); and
Memoirs, Journals and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, edited by
Lord John Russell (8 vols., London, 1853-1856). (K. J. M.)
EMMET. THOMAS ADDIS (1764-1827), Irish lawyer and
politician, second son of Robert Emmet, physician to the lord-
lieutenant of Ireland, and elder brother of Robert Emmet d/.r.),
the rebel, was born at Cork on the 24th of April 1764, and was
educated at Trinity College, Dublin, andat Edinburgh University,
where he studied medicine and was a pupil of Dugald Stewart
in philosophy. After visiting the chief medical schools on the
continent, he returned to Ireland in 1788; but the sudden
death of his elder brother, Christopher Temple Emmet (1761-
1788), a barrister of some distinction, induced him to follow the
advice of Sir James Mackintosh to forsake medicine for the
law as a profession. He was called to the Irish bar in 1790,
and quickly obtained a practice, principally as counsel for
prisoners charged with political offences, and became the legal
adviser of the leading United Irishmen. When the Dublin
corporation issued a declaration of Protestant ascendancy in
1792, the counter-manifesto of the United Irishmen was drawn
up by Emmet ;_and in 1795 he took the oath of the society in
open court, becoming secretary in the same year and a member
of the executive in 1797. Although Grattan had a profound
contempt for Emmet's political understanding, describing him
as a quack in politics who set up his own crude notions as settled
rules, Emmet was among the more prudent of the United
Irishmen on the eve of the rebellion. It was only when convinced
that parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation were not
to be obtained by constitutional methods, that he reluctantly
engaged in treasonable conspiracy; and in opposition to bolder
spirits like Lord Edward Fitzgerald, he discountenanced the
taking up of arms until help should be obtained from France.
Though not among those taken at the house of Oliver Bond on
the 1 2th of March 1798 (see FITZGERALD, LORD EDWARD), he was
arrested about the same time, and he was one of the leaders who
after the rebellion were imprisoned at Fort George till 1802.
Being then released, he went to Brussels, where he was visited by
his brother Robert in October of that year; and he was in the
secrets of those who were preparing for a fresh rising in Ireland
in conjunction with French aid. After the failure of Robert
Emmet's rising in July 1803, the news of which reached him in
Paris, where he was in communication with Bonaparte, he
emigrated to the United States. Joining the New York bar he
obtained a lucrative practice and in 1 81 2-13 was attorney-general
of New York; his abilities and success being such that Judge
Story declared him to be " by universal consent in the first rank
of American advocates." He died while conducting a case in
court on the I4th of November 1827. Thomas Emmet married,
in 1791, Jane, daughter of the Rev. John Patten, of Clonmel.
See authorities under EMMET, ROBERT; also Alfred Webb, Com-
pendium of Irish Biography (Dublin, 1878); C. S. Haynes, Memoirs
of Thomas Addis Kmmet (London, 1829); Theobald Wolfe Tone,
Memoirs, edited by W. T. W. Tone (2 vols., London, 1827) ; W. E. H.
Lecky, Hist, of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, vol. iv. (Cabinet
edition, 5 vols., London, 1892). (R. J. M.)
EMMETT, DANIEL DECATUR (1815-1904), American song-
writer, was born at Mount Vernon, Ohio. He started the " negro
minstrel " performances, which from 1842 onwards became so
popular in America and England, and he composed a number of
songs which had a great temporary vogue. He is remembered
particularly as the writer of the famous Southern war-song
" Dixie," which he composed in 1859.
EMMITSBURQ, a town in Frederick county, Maryland,
U.S.A., 61 m. by rail W. by N. of Baltimore, and i J m. S. of the
northern boundary of the state. Pop. (1900) 849; (1910)
1054. It is served by the Emmitsburg railway (7 m. long) to
Rocky Ridge on the Western Maryland railway. The town is
344
EMMIUS EMPEDOCLES
in a picturesque region on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge
Mountains. Two miles S.W. is Mount St. Mary's College(Roman
Catholic), founded in 1808 by the Rev. John du Bois (1764-1842)
its president until 1826, when he became bishop of New York
and chartered by the state in 1830. The Ecclesiastical Seminary
of the college has been a great training school, and has been
called the " Nursery of Bishops "; among its graduates have
been Bishop Hughes, Cardinal McCloskey and Archbishop
Corrigan. In 1908 the college had 25 instructors and 350 students,
of whom 57 were in the Ecclesiastical Seminary, and 61 in the
Minim Department. Half a mile S. of the town is St Joseph's
College and Academy (incorporated in 1816), for young women,
which is conducted by the Sisters of Charity this order was in-
troduced into the United States at Emmitsburg by Mrs Elizabeth
Ann Seton in 1809. The first settlement at Emmitsburg was
made about 1773. It was at first called " Silver Fancy," and
then for a time was known as " Poplar Fields "; but in 1786 the
present name was adopted in honour of William Emmitt, one of
the original settlers. The town was incorporated in 1824.
EMMIUS, UBBO (1547-1625), Dutch historian and geographer,
was born at Gretha in East Friesland on the 5th of December
1547. After studying at Rostock, he spent two years in Geneva,
where he became intimate with Theodore Beza; and returning
to the Netherlands was appointed the principal of a college at
Norden, a position which he lost in 1587 because, as a Calvinist,
he would not subscribe to the confession of Augsburg. Subse-
quently he was head of a college at Leer, and in 1594 became
rector of the college at Groningen, and when in 1614 this college
became a university he was chosen principal and professor of
history and Greek, and by his wise guidance and his learning
speedily raised the new university to a position of eminence.
He was on friendly terms with Louis, count of Nassau; corre-
sponded with many of the learned men of his time; and died
at Groningen on the gth of December 1625. He was twice
married, and left a son and a daughter. The chief works of
Emmius are: Rerum Frisicarum historiae decades, in six parts,
a complete edition of which was published at Leiden in 1616;
Opus chronologicum (Groningen, 1619); Vetus Graecia illustrata
(Leiden, 1626); and Historia temporis nostri, which was first
published at Groningen in 1732. An account of his life, written
by Nicholas Mulerius, was published, with the lives of other
professors of Groningen, at Groningen in 1638.
See N. G. van Kampen, Geschiedenis der letteren en itietenschappen
in de Nederlanden (The Hague, 1821-1826).
EMMONS, EBENEZER (1800-1863), American geologist, was
born at Middlefield, Massachusetts, on the i6th of May 1800.
He studied medicine at Albany, and after taking his degree
practised for some years in Berkshire county. His interest in
geology was kindled in early life, and in 1824 he had assisted
Prof. Chester Dewey (1784-1867) in preparing a geological map of
Berkshire county, in which the first attempt was made to classify
the rocks of the Taconic area. While thus giving much of his
time to natural science, undertaking professional work in natural
history and geology in Williams College, he also accepted the
professorship of chemistry and afterwards of obstetrics in the
Albany Medical College. The chief work of his life was, however,
in geology, and he has been designated by Jules Marcou as
" the founder of American palaeozoic stratigraphy, and the first
discoverer of the primordial fauna in any country." In 1836
he became attached to the Geological Survey of the State of
New York, and after lengthened study he grouped the local
strata (1842) into the Taconic and overlying New York systems.
The latter system was subdivided into several groups that
were by no means well defined. Emmons had previously
described the Potsdam sandstone (1838), and this was placed
at the base of the New York system. It is now regarded as
Upper Cambrian. In 1844 Emmons for the first time obtained
fossils in his Taconic system: a notable discovery because the
species obtained were found to differ from all then-known
Palaeozoic fossils, and they were regarded as representing the
primordial group. Marcou was thus led to advocate that the
term Taconic be generally adopted in place of Cambrian. Never-
theless the Taconic fauna of Emmons has proved to include only
the lower part of Sedgwick's Cambrian. Considerable discussion
has taken place on the question of the Taconic system, and
whether the term should be adopted; and the general opinion
has been adverse. Emmons made contributions on agriculture
and geology to a series of volumes on the natural history of New
York. He also issued a work entitled American Geology;
containing a statement of the principles of the Science, with full
illustrations of the characteristic American Fossils (1855-1857).
From 1851 to 1860 he was state geologist of North Carolina. He
died at Brunswick, North Carolina, on the ist of October 1863.
See the Biographical Notice of Ebenezer Emmons, by J. Marcou;
Amer. Geologist, vol. vii. (Jan., 1891), p. I (with portrait and list of
publications).
EMMONS, NATHANAEL (1745-1840), American theologian,
was born at East Haddam, Connecticut, on the 2oth of April
1745. He graduated at Yale in 1767, studied theology under
the Rev. John Smalley (1734-1820) at Berlin, Connecticut, and
was licensed to preach in 1769. After preaching four years in
New York and New Hampshire, he became, in April 1773,
pastor of the Second church at Franklin (until 1778 a part of
Wrentham, Massachusetts), of which he remained in charge
until May 1827, when failing health compelled his relinquishment
of active ministerial cares. He lived, however, for many years
thereafter, dying of old age at Franklin on the 23rd of September
1840. It was as a theologian that Dr Emmons was best known,
and for half a century probably no clergyman in New England
exerted so wide an influence. He developed an original system
of divinity, somewhat on the structural plan of that of Samuel
Hopkins, and, in Emmons's own belief, contained in and evolved
from Hopkinsianism. While by no means abandoning the
tenets of the old Calvinistic faith, he came to be looked upon
as the chief representative of what was then known as the
" new school " of theologians. His system declared that holiness
and sin are free voluntary exercises; that men act freely under
the divine agency; that the slightest transgression deserves
eternal punishment; that it is through God's mere grace that
the penitent believer is pardoned and justified; that, in spite
of total depravity, sinners ought to repent ; and that regeneration
is active, not passive, with the believer. Emmonsism was
spread and perpetuated by more than a hundred clergymen,
whom he personally trained. Politically, he was an ardent
patriot during the War of Independence, and a strong Federalist
afterwards, several of his political discourses attracting wide
attention. He was a founder and the first president of the
Massachusetts Missionary Society, and was influential in the
establishment of Andover Theological Seminary. More than
two hundred of his sermons and addresses were published
during his lifetime. His Works were published in 6 vols. (Boston,
1842; new edition, 1861).
See also the Memoir, by Dr E. A. Park (Andover, 1861).
EMPEDOCLES (c. 490-430 B.C.), Greek philosopher and
statesman, was born at Agrigentum (Acragas, Girgenti) in Sicily
of a distinguished family, then at the height of its glory. His
grandfather Empedocles was victorious in the Olympian chariot
race in 496; in 470 his father Meto was largely instrumental
in the overthrow of the tyrant Thrasydaeus. We know almost
nothing of his life. The numerous legends which have grown
up round his name yield very little that can fairly be regarded
as authentic. It seems that he carried on the democratic tradi-
tion of his house by helping to overthrow an oligarchic govern-
ment which succeeded the tyranny in Agrigentum, and was
invited by the citizens to become their king. That he refused
the honour may have been due to a real enthusiasm for free
institutions or to the prudential recognition of the peril which
in those turbulent times surrounded the royal dignity. Ulti-
mately a change in the balance of parties compelled him to leave
the city, and he died in the Peloponnese of the results of an
accident in 430.
Of his poem on nature (</>6<7is) there are left about 400 lines
in unequal fragments out of the original 5000; of the hymns
of purification (KoBappoi) less than 100 verses remain; of the
EMPEROR
345
other works, improbably assigned to him, nothing is known.
His grand but obscure hexameters, after the example of Par-
menides, delighted Lucretius. Aristotle, it is said, called him
the father of rhetoric. But it was as at once statesman, prophet,
physicist, physician and reformer that he most impressed
the popular imagination. To his contemporaries, as to himself,
he seemed more than a mere man. The Sicilians honoured his
august aspect as he moved amongst them with purple robes
and golden girdle, with long hair bound by a Delphic garland,
and brazen sandals on his feet, and with a retinue of slaves
behind him. Stories were told of the ingenuity and generosity
by which he had made the marshes round Selinus salubrious,
of the grotesque device by which he laid the winds that ruined
the harvests of Agrigentum, and of the almost miraculous
restoration to life of a woman who had long lain in a death-like
trance. Legends stranger still told of his disappearance from
among men. Empedocles, according to one story, was one
midnight, after a feast held in his honour, called away in a blaze
of glory to the gods; according to another, he had only thrown
himself into the crater of Etna, in the hope that men, finding
no truces of his end, would suppose him translated to heaven.
But his hopes were cheated by the volcano, which cast forth his
brazen sandals and betrayed his secret (Diog. Laert. viii. 67).
The people of Agrigentum have never ceased to honour his name,
and even in modern times he has been celebrated by followers
of Mazzini as the democrat of antiquity par excellence.
As his history is uncertain, so his doctrines are hard to put
together. He does not belong to any one definite school. While,
on one hand, he combines much that had been suggested by
Parmenides, Pythagoras and the Ionic schools, he has germs
of truth that Plato and Aristotle afterwards developed; he is
at once a firm believer in Orphic mysteries, and a scientific
thinker, precursor of the physical scientists. There are, according
to Empedocles, four ultimate elements, four primal divinities,
of which are made all structures in the world fire, air, water,
earth. These four elements are eternally brought into union,
and eternally parted from each other, by two divine beings or
powers, love and hatred an attractive and a repulsive force
which the ordinary eye can see working amongst men, but which
really pervade the whole world. According to the different
proportions in which these four indestructible and unchangeable
matters are combined with each other is the difference of the
organic structure produced; e.g. flesh and blood are made
of equal (in weight but not in volume) parts of all four elements,
whereas bones are one-half fire, one-fourth earth, and one-fourth
water. It is in the aggregation and segregation of elements
thus arising that Empedocles, like the atomists, finds the real
process which corresponds to what is popularly termed growth,
increase or decrease. Nothing new comes or can come into
being; the only change that can occur is a change in the juxta-
position of element with element.
Empedocles apparently regarded love (^iXonp) and discord
(rtufttt) as alternately holding the empire over things, neither,
however, being ever quite absent. As the best and original
state, he seems to have conceived a period when love was pre-
dominant, and all the elements formed one great sphere or
globe. Since that period discord had gained more sway; and
the actual world was full of contrasts and oppositions, due to
the combined action of both principles. His theory attempted
to explain the separation of elements, the formation of earth
and sea, of sun and moon, of atmosphere. But the most interest-
ing and most matured part of his views dealt with the first
origin of plants and animals, and with the physiology of man.
A the elements (his deities) entered into combinations, there
appeared quaint results heads without necks, arms without
shoulders. Then as these fragmentary structures met, there
were seen horned heads on human bodies, bodies of oxen with
men's heads, and figures of double sex. But most of these
products of natural forces disappeared as suddenly as they arose;
only in those rare cases where the several parts were found
adapted to each other, and casual member fitted into casual
member, did the complex structures thus formed last. Thus
from spontaneous aggregations of casual aggregates, which
suited each other as if this had been intended, did the organic
universe originally spring. Soon various influences reduced
the creatures of double sex to a male and a female, and the
world was replenished with organic life. It is impossible not to
see in this thecry a crude anticipation of the "survival of the
fittest "theory of modern evolutionists.
As man, animal and plant are composed of the same elements
in different proportions, there is an identity of nature in them
all. They all have sense and understanding; in man, however,
and especially in the blood at his heart, mind has its peculiar
seat. But mind is always dependent upon the body, and varies
with its changing constitution. Hence the precepts of morality
are with Empedocles largely dietetic.
Knowledge is explained by the principle that the several
elements in the things outside us arc perceived by the correspond-
ing elements in ourselves. We know only in so far as we have
within us a nature cognate to the object of knowledge. Like
is known by like. The whole body is full of pores, and hence
respiration takes place over the whole frame. But in the organs
of sense these pores are specially adapted to receive the effluxes
which are continually rising from bodies around us; and in this
way perception is somewhat obscurely explained. The theory,
however unsatisfactory as an explanation, has one great merit,
that it recognizes between the eye, for instance, and the object
seen an intermediate something. Certain particles go forth
from the eye to meet similar particles given forth from the object,
and the resultant contact constitutes vision. This idea contains
within it the germ of the modern idea of the subjectivity of
sense-given data; perception is not merely a passive reflection
of external objects.
It is not easy to harmonize these quasi-scientific theories
with the theory of transmigration of souls which Empedocles
seems to expound. Probably the doctrine that the divinity
(daiiMv) passes from element to element, nowhere finding a
home, is a mystical way of teaching the continued identity of
the principles which are at the bottom of every phase of develop-
ment from inorganic nature to man. At the top of the scale
are the prophet and the physician, those who have best learned
the secret of life; they are next to the divine. One law, an
identity of elements, pervades all nature; existence is one from
end to end; the plant and the animal are links in a chain where
man is a link too; and even the distinction between male and
female is. transcended. The beasts are kindred with man ; he
who eats their flesh is not much better than a cannibal.
Looking at the opposition between these and the ordinary
opinions, we are not surprised that Empedocles notes the limita-
tion and narrowness of human perceptions. We see, he says,
but a part, and fancy that we have grasped the whole. But the
senses cannot lead to truth; thought and reflection must look
at the thing on every side. It is the business of a philosopher,
while he lays bare the fundamental difference of elements, to
display the identity that subsists between what seem unconnected
parts of the universe.
See Diog. Laert. viii. 51-77; Sext. Empiric. Adv. math. vii. 123;
Simplicius, Phys. (. 24, T. 76. For text Simon Karsten, " Empe-
doclis Agrigenti carminum reliquiae," in Reliq. phil. vet. (Amsterdam,
1838) ; F. W. A. Mullach, fragmenta phtlosophorum Graecorum,
vol. i. ; H. Stein, Empedoclis Agrircnti fragmenta (Bonn, 1882);
H. Rittcrand L. Preller, Historia phtlosophiae Uth ed., Gotha, 1869),
chap. iii. ad fin. ; A. Fairbanks, The First Philosophers of Greece
(1898). Verse translation, W. E. Leonard (1908). For criticism
E. Zeller, Phil, der Griechen (Eng. trans. S. F. Alleyne, 2 vols.,
London, 1881); A. W. Benn, Greek Philosophers (1882); J. A.
Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets (3rd ed., 1893), vol. i. chap. 7;
C. B. Renouvier, Manuel de philosophie ancienne (Paris, 1844);
T. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, vol. i. (Lng. trans. L. Magnus, 1901);
W. Windelband, Hist, of Phil. (Eng. trans. 1895); manv articles
in periodicals (see Baldwin's Diet, of Philos. vol. hi. p. 190).
fW. VV.; X.)
EMPEROR (Fr. empereur, from the Lat. imperator), a title
formerly borne by the sovereigns of the Roman empire (see
EMPIRE), and since their time, partly by derivation, partly by
imitation, used by a variety of other sovereigns. Under the
Republic, the term imperator applied in theory to any magistrate
34 6
EMPEROR
vested with imperiunt; but in practice it was only used of a
magistrate who was acting abroad (militiae) and was thus in
command of troops. The term imperator was the natural and
regular designation employed by his troops in addressing such a
magistrate; but it was more particularly and specially employed
by them to salute him after a victory; and when he had been
thus saluted he could use the title of imperator in public till the
day of his triumph at Rome, after which it would lapse along
with his imperium. The senate itself might, in the later Republic,
invite a victorious general to assume the title; and in these two
customs the salutation of the troops, and the invitation of the
senate we see in the germ the two methods by which under the
Empire the princeps was designated; while in the military
connotation attaching to the name even under the Republic we
can detect in advance the military character by which the
emperor and the Empire were afterwards distinguished. Julius
Caesar was the first who used the title continuously (from 58 B.C.
to his death in 44 B.C.), as well domi as militiae; and his nephew
Augustus took a further step when he made the term imperator
a praenomen, a practice which after the time of Nero becomes
regular. But apart from this amalgamation of the term with
his regular name, and the private right to its use which that
bestowed, every emperor had an additional and double right to
the title on public grounds, possessed as he was of an imperium
infinitum majus, and commanding as he did all the troops of the
Empire. From the latter point of view as generalissimo of
the forces of Rome, he had the right to the insignia of the com-
mander (the laurel wreath and the fasces), and to the protection
of a bodyguard, the praetoriani. This public title of imperator
was normally conferred by the senate; and an emperor normally
dates his reign from the day of his salutation by the senate.
But the troops were also regarded as still retaining the right of
saluting an imperator; and there were emperors who regarded
themselves as created by such salutation and dated their reigns
accordingly. The military associations of the term thus resulted,
only too often, in making the emperor the nominee of a turbulent
soldiery.
Augustus had been designated (not indeed officially, but none
the less regularly) as princeps the first citizen or foremost man
of the state. The designation suited the early years of the
Empire, in which a dyarchy of princeps and senate had been
maintained. But by the 2nd century the dyarchy is passing
into a monarchy: the title of princeps recedes, and the title of
imperator comes into prominence to designate not merely the
possessor of a certain imperium, or the general of troops, but the
simple monarch in the fulness of his power as head of the state.
From the days of Diocletian one finds occasionally two emperors,
but not, at any rate in theory, two Empires; the two emperors
are the dual sovereigns of a single realm. But from the time of
Arcadius and Honorius (A.D. 395) there are in reality (though
not in theory) two Empires as well as two emperors, one of the
East and one of the West. When Greek became the sole language
of the East Roman Empire, imperator was rendered sometimes
by /ScunXeus and sometimes by avroKpariiip, the former word
being the usual designation of a sovereign, the latter specially
denoting that despotic power which the imperator held, and being
in fact the official translation of imperator. Justinian uses
cLvroKparup as his formal title, and /SaertXeiis as the popular
term.
On the revival of the Roman empire in the West by Charle-
magne in 800, the title (at first in the form imperator, or imperator
Augustus, afterwards Romanorum imperalor Augustus) was taken
by him and by his Prankish, Italian and German successors,
heads of the Holy Roman Empire, down to the abdication of the
emperor Francis II. in 1806. The doctrine had, however, grown
up in the earlier middle ages (about the time of the emperor
Henry II., 1002-1024) that although the emperor was chosen
in Germany (at first by the nation, afterwards by a small body
of electors), and entitled from the moment of his election to be
crowned in Rome by the pope, he could not use the title of
emperor until that coronation had actually taken place. The
German sovereign, therefore, though he exercised, as soon as
chosen, full imperial powers both in Germany and Italy, called
himself merely " king of the Romans " (Romanorum rex semper
Augustus) until he had received the sacred crown in the sacred
city. In 1508 Maximilian I., being refused a passage to Rome
by the Venetians, obtained from Pope Julius II. a bull permitting
him to style -himself emperor elect (imperator electus, erwahlter
Kaiser). This title was taken by Ferdinand I. (1558) and all
succeeding emperors, immediately upon their coronation in
Germany; and it was until 1806 their strict legal designation,
and was always employed by them in proclamations and other
official documents. The term " elect " was, however, omitted
even in formal documents when the sovereign was addressed
or was spoken of in the third person.
In medieval times the emperor, conceived as vicegerent of
God and co-regent with the pope in government of the Christian
people committed to his charge, might almost be regarded as
an ecclesiastical officer. Not only was his function regarded
as consisting in the defence and extension of true religion;
he was himself arrayed in ecclesiastical vestments at his corona-
tion; he was ordained a subdeacon; and assisting the pope
in the celebration of the Eucharist, he communicated in both
kinds as a clerk. The same sort of ecclesiastical character came
also to be attached to the tsars ' of Russia, who especially
in their relations with the Orthodox Eastern Church may
vindicate for themselves (though the sultans of Turkey have
disputed the claim) the succession to the East Roman emperors
(see EMPIRE). But the title of emperor was also used in the
middle ages, and is still used, in a loose and vague sense, without
any ecclesiastical connotation or hint of connexion with Rome
(the two attributes which should properly distinguish an
emperor), and merely in order to designate a non-European
ruler with a large extent of territory. It was thus applied,
and is still applied, to the rulers of China and Japan; it was
attributed to the Mogul sovereigns of India; and since 1876
it has been used by British monarchs in their capacity of
sovereigns of India (Kaiser-i-Hind) ?
Since the French Revolution and during the course of the
century the terra emperor has had an eventful history.
In 1804 Napoleon took the title of " Emperor of the French,"
and posed as the reviver of the Empire of Charlemagne. Afraid
that Napoleon would next proceed to deprive him of his title of
Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II. first took the step, in 1804, of
investing himself with a new title, that of " Hereditary Emperor
of Austria," and then, in 1806, proceeded to the further step of
abdicating his old historical title and dissolving the Holy Roman
Empire. Thus the old and true sense of the term emperor the
sense in which it was connected with the church in the present
and with Rome in the past finally perished; and the term
became partly an apanage of Bonapartism (Louis Napoleon
resuscitated it as Napoleon III. in 1853), and partly a personal
title of the Habsburgs as rulers of their various family territories.
In 1870, however, a new and most important use of the title
was begun, when the union of Germany was achieved, and the
Prussian king, who became the head of united Germany, received
in that capacity the title of German Emperor. Here the title
of emperor designates the president of a federal state; and here
the Holy Roman emperor of the i7th and i8th centuries, the
president of a loose confederation of German states, may be said
to have found his successor. But the term has been widely and
1 The word Tsar, like the German Kaiser, is derived from Caesar
(see TSAR). Peter the Great introduced the use of the style " Im-
perator," and the official designation is now " Emperor of all the
Russias, Tsar of Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland," though the
term tsar is still popularly used in Russia.
2 For the titles of jSaaiXtds, imperator Augustus, &c., applied in the
loth century to the Anglo-Saxon kings, see EMPIRE (note). The
claim to the style of emperor, as a badge of equal rank, played a
considerable part in the diplomatic relations between the Sultan
and certain European sovereigns. Thus, at a time when this style
(Padishah) was refused by the Sultan to the tsars of Russia, and
even to the Holy Roman Emperor himself, it was allowed to the
French kings, who in diplomatic correspondence and treaties with
Turkey called themselves " emperor of France " (empereur de
France), [Eo.].
EMPHYSEMA EMPIRE
347
loosely used in the course of the igth century. It was the style
Irom 1821 to 1889 of the princes of the house of Braganza who
ruled in Brazil; it has been assumed by usurpers in Haiti, and
in Mexico it was borne by August in Iturbide in 1822 and 1823,
and by the ill-fated Archduke Maximilian of Austria from 1864
to 1867. It can hardly, therefore, be said to have any definite
descriptive force at the present time, such as it had in the middle
ages. So far as it has any such force in Europe, it may be said
partly to be connected with Bonapartism, and to denote a popular
but military dictatorship, partly to be connected with the federal
idea, and to denote a precedence over other kings possessed by a
ruler standing at the head of a composite state which may
embrace kings among its members. It is in this latter sense
that it is used of Germany, and of Britain in respect of India;
it is in something approaching this latter sense that it may be
said to be used of Austria.
See J. Selden, TitUs of Honour (1673); J. Bryce, Holy Roman
Kmfiire (London, 1904); and Sir E. Colebrooke. "On Imperial
and Other Title* " in the Journal of tkt Royal Asiatic Society (1877).
See also the ankles on " Imperator " and " Princeps " in Smith's
dictionary of Creek ana Roman Antiquities (1890). (E. BR.)
EMPHYSEMA (Gr. ifufvoav to inflate) is a word vaguely
meaning the abnormal presence of air in certain parts of the body.
At the present day, however, there are two conditions to which
it refers, " pulmonary emphysema " (and the word pulmonary
is often omitted) and " surgical emphysema." Of pulmonary
emphysema there are two forms, true vesicular and interstitial
(or interlobular). Vesicular emphysema signifies that there
is an enlargement of air-vesicles, resulting either from their
excessive distension, from destruction of the septa, or from both
causes combined (see RESPIRATORY SYSTEM). In interstitial
emphysema the air is infiltrated into the connective tissue
beneath the pleura and between the pulmonary air-cells.
The former variety is by far the more common, and appears
to be capable of being produced by various causes, the chief
of which are the following:
1. Where a portion of the lung has become wasted, or its
vesicular structure permanently obliterated by disease, without
corresponding falling in of the chest wall, the neighbouring
air-vesicles or some of them undergo dilatation to fill the vacuum
i vicarious emphysema).
2. In some cases of bronchitis, where numbers of the smaller
bronchial tubes become obstructed, the air in the pulmonary
vesicles remains imprisoned, the force of expiration being
insufficient to expel it; while, on the other hand, the stronger
force of inspiration being adequate to overcome the resistance,
the air-cells tend to become more and more distended, and
permanent alterations in their structure, including emphysema,
are the result (inspiratory theory).
3. Emphysema also arises from exertion involving violent
expiratory efforts, during which the glottis is constricted, as in
paroxysms of coughing, in straining, and in lifting heavy weights
expiratory theory). Whooping-cough is well known as the
exciting cause of emphysema in many persons.
4. Another view, known as the nutritive theory, maintains
that emphysema depends essentially on a primary nutritive
i hange in the walls of the air-vesicles. Thus these are impaired
in their resisting power, and are far more likely to become
distended by any force acting on them from within.
5. Again in certain cases the cartilages of the chest become
hypertrophicd and rigid, thus causing a primary chronic enlarge-
ment, and the lungs become emphysematous in order to fill up
the increased space (Freund's theory).
In whatever manner' produced, this disease gives rise to
important morbid changes in the affected portions of the lungs,
especially the loss of the natural elasticity of the air-cells, and
likewise the destruction of many of the pulmonary capillary
blood-vessels, and the diminution of aerating surface for the
blood. As a consequence an increased strain is thrown on the
right ventricle with a consequent dilatation leading on to heart
failure and all its attendant troubles. The chief symptom in
this complaint is shortness of breath, more or less constant but
greatly aggravated by exertion, and by attacks of bronchitis, to
which persons suffering from emphysema appear to be specially
liable. The respiration is of similar character to that already
described in the case of asthma. In severe forms of the disease
the patient comes to acquire a peculiar puffy or bloated appear-
ance, and the configuration of the chest is altered, assuming
the character known as the barrel-shaped or emphysemalaiis
chest.
The main element in the treatment cf emphysema consists
in attention to the general condition of the health, and in llir
avoidance of all causes likely to aggravate the disease or induce
its complications. Compressed air baths and expiration into
rarefied air may be useful. During attacks of urgent dyspnoea
and lividity, with engorgement of veins, the patient should be
repeatedly bled until relief is obtained. Interstitial emphysema
arising from the rupture of air-cells in the immediate neighbour-
hood of the pleura may occur as a complication of the vesicular
form, or separately as the result of some sudden expulsive effort,
such as a fit of coughing, or, as has frequently happened, in
parturition. Gangrene or post-mortem decomposition may
lead to the presence of air in the interstitial tissue of the lung.
Occasionally the air infiltrates the cellular tissue of the posterior
mediastinum, and thence comes to distend the integument of
the whole surface of the body (surgical emphysema). Surgical
emphysema signifies the effusion of air into the general connective
tissues of the body. The commonest causes are a wound of
some air-passage, or a penetrating wound of the chest wall
without injury to the lung. It may, however, occur in any
situation of the body and in many other ways. Its severity
varies from very slight cases where only a little crepitation may
be felt under the skin, to extreme cases where the whole body
is blown up and death is imminent from impeded respiration
and failure of the action of the heart. In the milder cases no
treatment is necessary as the air gradually becomes absorbed,
but in the more severe cases incisions must be made in the
swollen cellular tissues to allow the air to escape.
EMPIRE, a term now used to denote a state of large size
and also (as a rule) of composite character, often, but not neces-
sarily, ruled by an emperor a state which may be a federation,
like the German empire, or a unitary state, like the Russian, or
even, like the British empire, a loose commonwealth of free
states united to a number of subordinate dependencies. For
many centuries the writers of the Church, basing themselves
on the Apocalyptic writings, conceived of a cycle of four empires,
generally explained though there was no absolute unanimity
with regard to the members of the cycle as the Assyrian, the
Persian, the Macedonian and the Roman. But in reality the
conception of Empire, like the term itself (Lat. imperium), is
of Roman origin. The empire of Alexander had indeed in some
ways anticipated the empire of Rome. " In his later years,"
Professor Bury writes, " Alexander formed the notion of an
empire, both European and Asiatic, in which the Asiatics
should not be dominated by the European invaders, but Euro-
peans and Asiatics alike should be ruled on an equality by a
monarch, indifferent to the distinction of Greek and barbarian,
and looked upon as their own king by Persians as well as by
Macedonians." The contemporary Cynic philosophy of cosmo-
politanism harmonized with this notion, as Stoicism did later
with the practice of the Roman empire; and Alexander, like
Diocletian and Constantine, accustomed a Western people to
the forms of an Oriental court, while, like the earlier Caesars,
he claimed and received the recognition of his own divinity.
But when he died in 323, his empire, which had barely lasted
ten years, died with him; and it was divided among Diadochi
who, if in some other respects (for instance, the Hellenization
of the East) they were heirs of their master's policy, were
destitute of the imperial conception. The work of Alexander
was rather that of the forerunner than the founder. He prepared
the way for the world-empire of Rome; he made possible the
rise of a universal religion. And these are the two factors which,
throughout the middle ages, went together to make the thing
which men called Empire.
348
EMPIRE
At Rome the term imperium signified generally, in its earlier
use, the sovereignty of the state over the individual, a sovereignty
which the Romans had disengaged with singular
clearness from all other kinds of authority. Each of
tne higher magistrates of the Roman people was
vested, by a lex curiata (for power was distinctly
conceived as resident in, and delegated by, the community),
with an imperium both civil and military, which varied in degree
with the magnitude of his office. In the later days of the
Republic such imperium was enjoyed, partly in Rome by the
resident consuls and praetors, partly in the provinces by the
various proconsuls or propraetors. There was thus a certain
morcellement of imperium, delegated as it was by the people
to a number of magistrates: the coming of the Empire meant
the reintegration of this imperium, and its unification, by a
gradual process, in the hands of the princeps, or emperor. The
means by which this process was achieved had already been
anticipated under the Republic. Already in the days of Pompey
it had been found convenient to grant to an extraordinary
officer an imperium aequum or majus over a large area, and that
officer thus received powers, within that area, equal to, or greater
than, the powers of the provincial governors. This precedent
was followed by Augustus in the year 27 B.C., when he acquired
for himself sole imperium in a certain number of provinces
(the imperial provinces), and an infinilum imperium majus
in the remaining provinces (which were termed senatorial).
As a result, Augustus enjoyed an imperium coextensive indeed
with the whole of the Roman world, but concurrent, in part
of that world, with the imperium of the senatorial proconsuls;
and the early Empire may thus be described as a dyarchy.
But the distinction between imperial and senatorial provinces
finally disappeared; by the time of Constantine the emperor
enjoyed sole imperium, and an absolute monarchy had been
established. We shall not, however, fully understand the
significance of the Roman empire, unless we realize the import-
ance of its military aspect. All the soldiers of Rome had from
the first to swear in verba Caesaris Augusti; and thus the whole
of the Roman army was his army, regiments of which he might
indeed lend, but of which he was sole Imperator (see under
EMPEROR). Thus regarded as a permanent commander-in-chief,
the emperor enjoyed the privileges, and suffered from the
weaknesses, of his position. He had the power of the sword
behind him; but he became more and more liable to be deposed,
and to be replaced by a new commander, at the will of those
who bore the sword in his service.
The period which is marked by the reigns of Diocletian and
Constantine (A.D. 284-337) marks a great transformation in
D t the character of the Empire. The old dyarchy, under
meatuniler which the emperor might still be regarded as an official
Diocletian of the respublico, Romano, passed into a new monarchy,
and Con- j n w hich all political power became, as it were, the
private property of the monarch. There was now
no distinction of provinces; and the old public oerarium became
merely a municipal treasury, while the fiscus of the emperor
became the exchequer of the Empire. The officers of the imperial
praetorium, or bodyguard, are now the great officers of state;
his private council becomes the public consistory, or supreme
court of appeal; and the comites of his court are the adminis-
trators of his empire. " All is in him, and all comes from him,"
as our own year-books say of the medieval king; his household,
for instance, is not only a household, but also an administration.
On the other hand, this unification seems to be accompanied by
a new bifurcation. The exigencies of frontier defence had long
been drawing the Empire towards the troubled East; and this
tendency reached its culmination when a new Rome arose by
the Bosporus, and Constantinople became the centre of what
seemed a second Empire in the East (A.D. 324). Par-
ticularl y after the division of the Empire between
Arcadius and Honorius in 395 does this bifurcation
appear to be marked; and one naturally speaks of
the two Empires of the West and the East. Yet it cannot be
too much emphasized that in reality such language is utterly
inexact. The Roman empire was, and always continued to be,
ideally one and indivisible. There were two emperors, but one
Empire two persons, but one power. The point is of great
importance for the understanding of the whole of the middle
ages: there only is, and can be, one Empire, which may indeed,
for convenience, be ruled conjointly by two emperors, resident,
again for convenience, in two separate capitals. And, as a
matter of fact, not only did the residence of an emperor in the
East not spell bifurcation, it actually fostered the tendency
towards unification. It helped forward the transformation of
the Empire iato an absolute and quasi-Asiatic monarchy, under
which all its subjects fell into a single level of loyal submission: it
helped to give the emperor a gorgeous court, marked by all the
ceremony and the servility of the East. 1 The deification of the
emperor himself dates from the days of Augustus; by the time
of Constantine it has infected the court and the government.
Each emperor, again, had from the first enjoyed the sacrosanct
position which was attached to the tribunate; but now his palace,
his chamber, his charities, his letters, are all " sacred," and one
might almost speak in advance of a " Holy Roman Empire."
But there is one factor, the greatest of all, which still remains
to be added, before we have counted the sum of the forces that
made the world think in terms of empire for centuries .
to come; and that is the reception of Christianity into '"J^Saa-
the Roman empire by Constantine. That reception ao ity.
added a new sanction to the existence of the Empire
and the position of the emperor. The Empire, already one and
indivisible in its aspect of a political society, was welded still
more firmly together when it was informed and permeated by
a common Christianity, and unified by the force of a spiritual
bond. The Empire was now the Church; it was now indeed
indestructible, for, if it perished as an empire, it would live as a
church. But the Church made it certain that it would not perish,
even as an empire, for many centuries to come. On the one hand
the Church thought in terms of empire and taught the millions
of its disciples (including the barbarians themselves) to think
in the same terms. No other political conception no conception
of a ir6Xts or of a nation was any longer possible. When the
Church gained its hold of the Roman world, the Empire, as it
has been well said, was already " not only a government, but a
fashion of conceiving the world ": it had stood for three
centuries, and no man could think of any other form of political
association. Moreover, the gospel of St Paul that there is one
Church, whereof Christ is the Head, and we are all members
could not but reinforce for the Christian the conception of a
necessary political unity of all the world under a single head.
Una Chiesa in uno Stalo such, then, was the theory of the
Church. But not only did the Church perpetuate the conception
of empire by making it a part of its own theory of the world:
it perpetuated that conception equally by materializing it in
its own organization of itself. Growing up under the shadow of
the Empire, the Church too became an empire, as the Empire
had become a church. As it took over something of the old
pagan ceremonial, so it took over much of the old secular organi-
zation. The pope borrowed his title of pontijex maximtis from
the emperor: what is far more, he made himself gradually, and
in the course of centuries, the Caesar and Imperator of the
Church. The offices and the dioceses of the Church are parallel
to the offices and dioceses of the Diocletian empire: the whole
spirit of orderly hierarchy and regular organization, which
breathes in the Roman Church, is the heritage of ancient Rome.
The Donation of Constant jne is a forgery; but it expresses a
great truth when it represents Constantine as giving to the pope
the imperial palace and insignia, and to the clergy the ornaments
of the imperial army (see DONATION OF CONSTANTINE).
1 Bryce points out, with much subtlety and truth, that the rise
of a second Rome in the East not only helped to perpetuate the
Empire by providing a new centre which would take the place of
Rome when Rome fell, but also tended to make it more universal ;
" for, having lost its local centre, it subsisted no. longer by historic
right only, but, so to speak, naturally, as a part of an order of things
which a change in external conditions seemed incapable of disturbing"
(Holy Roman Empire, p. 8 of the edition of 1904).
EMPIRK
349
Upon this world, informed by tnese ideas, there finally
descended, in the 51 h century, the avalanche of barbaric invasion.
_ , ^ Its impact seemed to split the Empire into fragmentary
j^|^^ kingdoms; yet it left the universal Church intact,
and with it the conception of empire. With that
conception, indeed, the barbarians had already been for centuries
familiar: service in Roman armies, and settlement in Roman
territories, bad made the Roman empire for them, as much as for
the civilized provincial, pan of the order of the world. One of
the barbarian invaders, Odoacer (Odovakar), might seem, in 476,
to have swept away the Empire from the West, when he com-
manded the abdication of Romulus Augustulus; and the date
476 has indeed been generally emphasized as marking " the fall
of the Western empire." Other invaders, again, men like the
Frank Clovis or the great Ostrogoth Theodoric, might seem,
in succeeding years, to have completed the work of Odoacer,
and to have shattered the sorry scheme of the later Empire,
by remoulding it into national kingdoms. DC facto, there is
some truth in such a view: dr jure, there is none. 1 All that
Odoacer did was to abolish one of the two joint rulers of the
indivisible Empire, and to make the remaining ruler at Con-
stantinople sole emperor from the Bosporus to the pillars of
Hercules. He abolished the dual sovereignty which had been
inaugurated by Diocletian, and returned to the unity of the
Empire in the days of Marcus Aurelius. He did not abolish the
Roman empire in the West : he only abolished its separate ruler,
and, leaving the Empire itself subsisting, under the sway (nominal,
it is true, but none the less acknowledged) of the emperor resident
at Constantinople, he claimed to act as his vicar, under the name
of patrician, in the administration of the Italian provinces. 1
As Odoacer thus fitted himself into the scheme of empire, so
did both Clovis and Theodoric. They do not claim to be
emperors (that was reserved for Charlemagne): they claim to
be the vicars and lieutenants of the Empire. Theodoric spoke
of himself to Zeno as imperil) vcstro famulans; he left
justice and administration in "Roman hands, and maintained
two nniij consuls in Rome. Clovis received the title of consul
from Anastasius; the Visigothic kings of Spain (like the kings
of the savage Lombards) styled themselves Flavii, and permitted
the cities of their eastern coast to send tribute to Constantinople.
Yet it must be admitted that, as a matter of fact, this adhesion
of the new barbaric kings to the Empire was little more than a
form. The Empire maintained its ideal unity by treating them
as its vicars; but they themselves were forming separate and
independent kingdoms within its borders. The Italy of the
Ostrogoths cannot have belonged, in any real sense, to the
Empire; otherwise Justinian would never have needed toattempt
its reconquest. And- in the 7th and 8th centuries the form of
adhesion itself decayed: the emperor was retiring upon the
Greek world of the East, and the German conquerors, settled
within their kingdoms, lost the width of outlook of their old
migratory days.
It is here that the action of the Church becomes of supreme
importance. The Church had not ceased to believe in the
Thr continuous life of the Empire. The Fathers had
taught that when the cycle of empires was finally
ended by the disappearance of the empire of Rome,
the days of Antichrist would dawn; and, since Anti-
christ was not yet come, the Church believed that the Empire
Mill lived, and would continue to live till his coming. Mean
1 The df facto importance of the event of 476 can only be seen in the
light of later events, and it was not therefore noticed by contem-
poraries. Marcellinu* is the only contemporary who remarks on its
importance, cf. Marctllini Chrimicon (Man. Germ. Hist., Chronica
minors, ii. 91^. Htiperium Romanae ffntis imperium . . . cum hoc
A upatula fertit . . . Gotkorum dekinc reeibus Romam ttnrntibus.
' A naaMgr in Malchus. a Byzantine historian (quoted by Bryce,
Half Rom*n Em fin, p. 25. note u. in the edition of 1904), expresses
this truth exactly. The envoy* sent to Zeno by Odoacer urge ui
Mm MJr *rWl 0*tA<<ai at Urn nxrit M aroxM'tt piot ur atronptrup
*r* 4Wat40BM $ vfpai. The envoys then suggest the name of
Odoacer. a* on* able to manage their affairs, and ask Zeno to give
hirm. u offer of the Empire, the title of Patricius and the
adahriimtion of Italy.
\\hile the Eastern emperor, ever since Justinian's reconquest of
Italy, had been able to maintain his hold on the centre of Italy;
and Rome itself, the seat of the head of the Church, still ranked
as one of the cities under his sway. The imperialist theory of
the Church found its satisfaction in this connexion of its head
with Constantinople; and as long as this connexion continued
to satisfy the Church, there was little prospect of any change.
For many years after their invasion of 568, the pressure which
the Lombards maintained on central Italy, from their kingdom
in the valley of the Po, kept the popes steadily faithful to the
emperor of the East and his representative in Italy, the exarch
of Ravenna. But it -was not in the nature of things that such
fidelityshouldcontinueunimpaired. The development
of the East and the West could not but proceed along 2v^"n,
constantly diverging lines, until the point was reached between
when their connexion must snap. On the one hand, the Butuad
development of the West set towards the increase of the J!l"'
powers of the bishop of Rome until he reached a height
at which subjection to the emperor at Constantinople became
impossible. Residence in Rome, the old seat of empire, had in
itself given him a great prestige; and to this prestige St Gregory
(pope from 590 to 604) had added in a number of ways. He
was one of the Fathers of the Church, and turned its theology
into the channels in which it was to flow for centuries; he had
acquired for his church the great spiritual colony of England by
the mission of St Augustine; he had been the protector of Italy
against the Lombards. As the popes thus became more and
more spiritual emperors of the West, they found themselves less
and less able to remain the subjects of the lay emperor of the
East. Meanwhile the emperors of the East were led to interfere
in ecclesiastical affairs in a manner which the popes and the
Western Church refused to tolerate. Brought into contact with
the pure monotheism of Mahommedanism, Leo the Isaurian
(718-741) was stimulated into a crusade against image-worship,
in order to remove from the Christian Church the charge of
idolatry. The West clung to its images: the popes revolted
against his decrees; and the breach rapidly became irreparable.
As the hold of the Eastern emperor on central Italy began to be
shaken, the popes may have begun to cherish the hope of becom-
ing their successors and of founding a temporal dominion; and
that hope can only have contributed to the final dissolution of
their connexion with the Eastern empire.
Thus, in the course of the 8th century, the Empire, as repre-
sented by the emperors at Constantinople, had begun to fade utterly
out of the West. It had been forgotten by lay sovereigns; it
was being abandoned by the pope, who had been its chosen
apostle. But it did not follow that, because the Eastern emperor
ceased to be the representative of the Empire for the West, the
conception of Empire itself therefore perished. The popes only
abandoned the representative; they did not abandon the
conception. If they had abandoned the conception, they
would have abandoned the idea that there was an order
of the world; they would have committed themselves to
a belief in the coming of Antichrist. The conception of the
world as a single Empire-Church remained: what had to be
discovered was a new representative of one of the two sides of
that conception. Fora brief time, it would seem, the pope himself
cherished the idea of becoming, in his own person, the successor
of the ancient Caesars in their own old capital. By the aid of
the Prankish kings, he had been able to stop the Lombards from
acquiring the succession to the derelict territories of the Eastern
emperor in Italy (from which their last exarch had fled overseas
in 752), and he had become the temporal sovereign of those
territories. Successor to the Eastern emperor in central Italy,
why should he not also become his successor as representative
of the Empire all the more, since he was the head of the Church,
which was coextensive with the Empire? Some such hope
seems to inspire the Donation of Constantine, a document forged
between 754 and 774, in which Constantine is represented as
having conferred on Silvester I. the imperial palace and insignia,
and therewith omnrs Italiae seu occidentalium region um pro-
vincial loca el cintales. But the hope, if it ever was cherished,
35
EMPIRE
proved to be futile. The popes had not the material force at
their command which would have made them adequate to the
position. The strong arm of the Prankish kings had alone
Corona- d euvere d them from the Lombards: the same strong
tioa of arm > they found, was needed to deliver them from
Charts- the wild nobility of their own city. So they turned
magnc as to the power which was strong enough to undertake
~ pe r * the task which they could not themselves attempt,
and they invited the Prankish king to become the
representative of the imperial conception they cherished. 1 In
the year 800 central Italy ceased to date its documents by the
regnal years of the Eastern emperors; for Charlemagne was
crowned emperor in their stead.
The king of the Franks was well fitted for the position which
he was chosen to fill. He was king of a stock which had been
from the first Athanasian, and had never been tainted, like most
of the Germanic tribes, by the adoption of Arian tenets. His
grandfather, Charles Martel, had saved Europe from the danger
of a Mahommedan conquest by his victory at Poitiers (732);
his father, Pippin the Short, had helped the English missionary
Boniface to achieve the conversion of Germany. The popes
themselves had turned to the Prankish kings for support again
and again in the course of the 8th century. Gregory III.,
involved in bitter hostilities with the iconoclastic reformers
of the East, appealed to Charles Martel for aid, and even offered
the king, it is said, the titles of consul and patrician. Zacharias
pronounced the deposition of the last of the Merovingians, and
gave to Pippin the title of king (751); while his successor,
Stephen II., hard pressed by the Lombards, who were eager to
replace the Eastern emperors in the possession of central Italy,
not only asked and received the aid of the new king, but also
acquired, in virtue of Pippin's donation (754), the disputed
exarchate itself. Thus was laid the foundation of the States of
the Church; and the grateful pope rewarded the donation by
the gift of the title of patricius Romanorum, which conferred
on its recipient the duty and the privilege of protecting the
Roman Church, along with some undefined measure of authority
in Rome itself.' Finally, in 773, Pope Adrian I. had to appeal
to Charles, the successor of Pippin, against the aggressions of
the last of the Lombard kings; and in 774 Charles conquered
the Lombard kingdom, and himself assumed its iron crown.
Thus by the end of the 8th century the Prankish king stood on
the very steps of the imperial throne. He ruled a realm which
extended from the Pyrenees to the Harz, and from Hamburg
to Rome a realm which might be regarded as in itself a de
facto empire. He bore the title of patricius, and he had shown
that he did not bear it in vain by his vigorous defence of the
papacy in 774. Here there stood, ready to hand, a natural
representative of the conception of Empire; and Leo III.,
finding that he needed the aid of Charlemagne to maintain
himself against his own Romans, finally took the decisive step of
crowning him emperor, as he knelt in prayer at St Peter's, on
Christmas Day, 800.
The coronation of Charlemagne in 800 marks the coalescence
into a single unity of two facts, or rather, more strictly speaking,
of a fact and a theory. The fact is German and secular: it
is the wide de facto empire, which the Frankish sword had
conquered, and Frankish policy had organized as a single whole.
The theory is Latin and ecclesiastical: it is a theory of the
1 According to the view'here followed, the Church was the ark in
which the conception of Empire was saved during the dark ages
between 600 and 800. Some influence should perhaps also be
assigned to Roman law, which continued to be administered during
these centuries, especially in the towns, and maintained the imperial
tradition. But the influence of the Church is the essential fact.
* In the th century the title patricius came to attach particularly
to the head of the Roman army (maeister utriusque militiae) to men
like Aetius and Ricimer, who made and unmade emperors (cf.
Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften, iv. 537, 545 sqq.). Later it had
been borne by the Greek exarchs of Ravenna. The concession
to Pippin of this great title makes him military head of the Western
empire, in the sense in which the title was used in the 5th century;
it makes him representative of the Empire for Italy, in the sense in
which it had been used of the exarchs.
necessary political unity of the world, and its necessary repre-
sentation in the person of an emperor a theory half springing
from the unity of the old Roman empire, and half Theory of
derived from the unity of the Christian Church as the Caro-
conceived in the New Testament. If we seek for Ungiaa
the force which caused this fact and this theory to ei "P lre -
coalesce in the Carolingian empire, we can only answer the
papacy. The idea of Empire was in the Church; and the
head of the Church translated this idea into fact. If, however,
we seek to conceive the event of 800 from a political or legal
point of view, and to determine the residence of the right of
constituting an emperor, we at once drift into the fogs of centuries
of controversy. Three answers are possible from three points
of view; and all have their tfuth, according to the point of
view. From the ecclesiastical point of view, the right resides
with the pope. This theory was not promulgated (indeed no
theory was promulgated) until the struggles of Papacy and
Empire in the course of the middle ages; but by the time of
Innocent III. it is becoming an established doctrine that a
translatio Imperil took place in 800, whereby the pope transferred
the Roman empire from the Greeks to the Germans in the
person of the magnificent Charles. 3 One can only say that, as
a matter of fact, the popes ceased to recognize the Eastern
emperors, and recognized Charles instead, in the year 800; that,
again, this recognition alone made Charles emperor, as nothing
else could have done; but that no question arose, at the time,
of any right of the pope to give the Empire to Charlemagne, for
the simple reason that neither of the actors was acting or thinking
in a legal spirit. If we now turn to study the point of view of the
civil lawyer, animated by such a spirit, and basing himself on
the code of Justinian, we shall find that an emperor must derive
his institution and power from a lex regia passed by the populus
Romanus; and such a view, strictly interpreted, will lead us
to the conclusion that the citizens of Rome had given the crown
to Charlemagne in 800, and continued to bestow it on successive
emperors afterwards. There ft indeed some speech, in the
contemporary accounts of Charlemagne's coronation, of the
presence of " ancients among the Romans " and of " the faithful
people "; but they are merely present to witness or applaud,
and the conception of the Roman people as the source of Empire
is one that was only championed, at a far later date, by anti-
quarian idealists like Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi. The
faex Romuli, a population of lodging-house keepers, living upon
pilgrims to the papal court, could hardly be conceived, except
by an ardent imagination, as heir to the Quiriles of the past.
Finally, from the point of view of the German tribesman, we
must admit that the Empire was something which, once received
by his king (no matter how), descended in- the royal family as an
heirloom; or to which (when the kingship became elective) a title
was conferred, along with the kingship, by the vote of electors.' 1
But apart from these questions of origin, two difficulties have
still to be faced with regard to the nature and position of
the Carolingian empire. Did Charlemagne and his successors
enter into a new relation with their subjects, in virtue of their
coronation? And what was the nature of the relation between
the new emperor now established in the West and the old
emperor still reigning in the East? It is true that Charlemagne
exacted a new oath of allegiance from his subjects after his
coronation, and again that he had a revision of all the laws of
his dominions made in 802. But the revision did not amount
to much in bulk: what there was contained little that was
Roman; and, on the whole, it hardly seems probable that
Charlemagne entered into any new relation with his subjects.
The relation of his empire to the empire in the East is a more
difficult and important problem. In 797 the empress Irene had
deposed and blinded her son, Constantine VI., and usurped his
throne. Now it would seem that Charlemagne, whose thoughts
3 See the famous bull Venerabilem (Corp. Jur. Canon. Deer.
Greg. i. 6, c. 34).
4 Even on this view, an imperial coronation at the hands of the
pope was necessary to complete the title ; but this was regarded by
the Germans (though not by the pope) as a form which necessarily
followed.
EMPIRE
already set on Empire, hoped to depose and succeed
Irene, and thus to become sole represent. it ive of the conception
of Empire, both (or the East and for the West. Sud-
denly there came, in Soo, his own coronation as em-
peror, an act apparently unpremeditated at the
moment, taking him by surprise, as one gathers from
Einhard's I'j/j KttnJi, and interrupting his plans. It
left him representative of the Empire for the West
only, confronting another representative in the East. Such a
position he did not desire: there had been a single Empire
vested in a single person since 476, and he desired that there
should still continue to be a single Empire, vested only in his
own person. He now sought to achieve this unity by a proposal
of marriage to Irene. The proposal failed, and he had to content
himself with a recognition of his imperial title by the two suc-
cessors of the empress. This did not, however, mean (at any
rate in the issue) that henceforth there were to be two conjoint
rulers, amicably ruling as colleagues a single Empire, in the
manner of Atcadius and Honorius. The dual government of
a single Empire established by Diocletian had finally vanished
in 476; and the unity of the Empire was now conceived, as
it had been conceived before the days of Diocletian, to demand
single representative. Henceforth there were two rulers, one
at Aix-la-Chapelle and one at Constantinople, each claiming,
whatever temporary concessions he might make, to be the sole
ruler and representative of the Roman empire. On the one hand,
the Western emperors held that, upon the deposition of Con-
stantine VI.. Charlemagne had succeeded him, after a slight
interval, in the government of the whole Empire, both in the
East and in the West ; on the other hand, the Eastern emperors,
in spite of their grudging recognition of Charlemagne at the
moment, regarded themselves as the only lawful successors of
Constantino VI., and viewed the Carolings and their later
successors as upstarts and usurpers, with no right to their imperial
pretensions. Henceforth two halves confronted one another,
each claiming to be the whole; two finite bodies touched, and
each yet claimed to be infinite.
If, as has been suggested, Charlemagne did not enter into
any fundamentally new relations with his subjects after his
coronation, it follows that the results of his coronation,
in the sphere of policy and administration, cannot
have been considerable. The Empire added a new
sanction to a policy and administration already
developed. Charlemagne had already showed himself
rpiscopus episco forum, anxious not only to suppress heresy and
supervise the clergy within his borders, but also to extend true
Christianity without them even before the year when his imperial
coronation gave him a new title to supreme governorship in all
cases ecclesiastical. He had already organized his empire on a
new uniform system of counties, and the mini dominie i were
already at work to superintend the action of the counts, even
before the renocalio imperil Roman i came to suggest such
uniformity and centralization. Charlemagne had a new title;
but his subjects still obeyed the king of the Franks, and lived by
Prankish law, in the old fashion. In their eyes, and in the eyes
of Charlemagne's own descendants, the Empire was something
appendant to the kingship of the Franks, which made that
kingship unique among others, but did not radically alter its
character. True, the kingship might be divided among brothers
by the old Germanic custom of partition, while the Empire
must inhere in one person; but that was the one difference, and
the one difficulty, which might easily be solved by attaching the
name of emperor to the eldest brother. Such was the conception
of the Carolings: such was not, however, the conception of the
Church. To the popes the Empire was a solemn office, to which
the kings of the Franks might most naturally be called, in view
of their power and the traditions of their house, but which by no
means remained in their hands as a personal property. By
thus seeking to dissociate the Empire from any indissoluble
connexion with the Carolinian house, the popes were able to
save it. Civil wan raged among the descendants of Charlemagne :
partitions recurred: the Empire was finally dissolved, in the
/<*
sense that the old realm of Charlemagne fell asunder, in 888.
But the Empire, as an office, did not perish. During the gth
century the popes had insisted, as each emperor died, _
that the new emperor needed coronation at their hands; /,",.
and they had thus kept alive the conception of the C*ni-
Empire as an office to which they invited, if they did la * 1 *"
not appoint, each successive emperor. The quarrels
of the Carolingian house helped them to make good their claim.
John VIII. was able to select Charles the Bald in preference
to other claimants in 875; and before the end of his *
pontificate he could write that " he who is to be *"*
ordained by us to the Empire must be by us first and p ap a t >
foremost invited and elected." Thus was the unity
of the Empire preserved, and the conception of a united Empire
continued, in spite of the eventual dissolution of the realm of
Charlemagne. When the Carolingian emperors disappeared.
Benedict IV. could crown Louis of Provence (901) and John X.
could invite to the vacant throne an Italian potentate like
Berengar of Friuli (915); and even when Bercngar died in 924,
and the Empire was vacant of an emperor, they could hold, and
hold with truth, that the Empire was not dead, but only sus-
pended, until such time as they should invite a new ruler to
assume the office.
Various causes had contributed to the dissolution of the
realm of Charlemagne. Partitions had split it; feudalism
had begun to honeycomb it; incessant wars had destroyed its
core, the fighting Franks of Austrasia. But, above all, the rise
of divisions within the realm, which, whether animated by tin-
spirit of nationality or no, were ultimately destined to develop
into nations, had silently undermined the structure of Pippin
and Charlemagne. Already in 842 the oath of Strassburg shows
us one Caroling king swearing in French and another in German :
already in 870 the partition of Mersen shows us the kings of
France and Germany dividing the middle kingdom which lay
between 1 the two countries by the linguistic frontier of the Meuse
and Moselle. The year 888 is the birth-year of modern Europe.
France, Germany, Italy, stood distinct as three separate units.
with Burgundy and Lorraine as debatable lands, as they were
destined to remain for centuries to come. If the conception of
Empire was still to survive, the pope must ultimately invite the
ruler of the strongest of these three units to assume
the imperial crown; and this was what happened
when in 962 Pope John XII. invited Otto I. of Ger- kingdom
many to renew once more the Roman Empire. As the
imperial strength of the whole Prankish tribe had
given them the Empire in 800, so did the national strength of
the East Prankish kingdom, now resting indeed on a Saxon
rather than a Prankish basis, bring the Empire to its ruler in
962. The centre of political gravity had already been shifting
to the east of the Rhine in the course of the gth century. While
the Northman had carried their arms along the rivers and into
the heart of France^ Louis the German had consolidated his
kingdom in a long reign of sixty years (817-876); and at the end
of the 9th century two kings of Germany had already worn the
imperial crown. Early in the loth century the kingship of
Germany had come to the vigorous Saxon dukes (919); and
strong in their Saxon basis Henry I. and his son Otto had buih
a realm which, disunited as it was, was far more compact than
that which the Carolings of the West ruled from Laon. Henry 1.
had thought in his later years of going to Rome for the imperial
crown: under Otto I. the imperial idea becomes manifest.
On the one hand, he established a semi-imperial position in the
West: by 946 Louis IV. d'Outrcmer is his prot6g6, and it is his
arms which maintain the young Conrad of Burgundy on his
throne. On the other hand, he showed, by his policy towards
the German Church, that he was the true heir of the Carolingian
traditions. He made churchmen his ministers; he established
missionary bishoprics on the Elbe which should spread Christi-
anity among the Wends; and his dearest project was a new
archbishopric of Magdeburg. The one thing needful was that he
should, like Charlemagne, acquire the throne of Italy; and the
dissolute condition of. that country during the first half of the
T
352
EMPIRE
ioth century made its acquisition not only possible, but almost
imperative. Begun in 952, the acquisition was completed
ten years later; and all the conditions were now
T Romaa P resent f r Otto's assumption of the imperial throne.
Empire. He was crowned by John XII. on Candlemas Day 962,
and thus was begun the Holy Roman Empire, which
lasted henceforth with a continuous life until 1806.*
The same ideas underlay the new empire which had underlain
that of Charlemagne, strengthened and reinforced by the fact
that they had already found a visible expression before in that
earlier empire. Historically, there was the tradition of the old
Roman empire, preserved by the Church as an idea, and preserved
in the Church, and its imperial organization, as an actual fact.
Ecclesiastically, there was the Pauline conception of a single
Christian Church, one in subjection to Christ as its Head, and
needing (so men still thought) a secular counterpart of its in-
divisible unity. 2 To these two sanctions philosophy later added
a third; and the doctrine of Realism, that the one universal
is the true abiding substance the doctrine which pervades the
De monarchia of Dante, reinforced the feeling which demanded
that Europe should be conceived as a single political unity. But
if the Holy Roman empire of the German nation has the old
foundations, it is none the less a thing sui generis. Externally,
it meant far less than the empire cf Charlemagne; it meant
simply a union of Germany and northern Italy (to which, after
1032, one must also add Burgundy, though the addition is in
reality nominal) under a single rule. Historians of the igth
century, during the years in which the modern German empire
was in travail, disputed sorely on the advantages of this union;
but whatever its advantages or disadvantages, the fact remains
that the union of Teutonic Germany and Latin Italy was, from
an external point of view, the essential fact in the structure of
the medieval Empire. Internally, again, the Empire of the
Ottos and their successors was new and unprecedented. If
Latin imperialism had been combined with Prankish tribalism
The in the Empire of Charlemagne, it now met and blended
Empire with feudalism. The Holy Roman emperor of the
aad middle ages, as Frederick I. proudly told the Roman
feudalism. envoySj f oun d his senate in the diet of the German
baronage, his equties in the ranks of the German knights. Feudal-
ism, indeed, came in time to invade the very conception of
Empire itself. The emperors began to believe that their position
of emperor made them feudal overlords of other kings and
princes; and they came to be. regarded as the topmost summit
of the feudal pyramid, from whom kings held their kingdoms,
while they themselves held directly of God. In this way the old
conception of the world as a single political society entered upon
a new phase: but the translation of that conception into feudal
terms, which might have made Diocletian gasp, only gave it the
greater hold on the feudal society of the middle ages. Yet in
one way the feudal conception was a source of weakness to the
Empire; for the popes, from the middle of the I2th century
1 It is a curious fact that imperial titles (imperator and basileus)
are used in the Anglo-Saxon diplomata of the ioth century. Edred,
for instance (946-955) is " imperator," " cyning and casere totius
Britanniae," " basileus Anglorum hujusque insulae barbarorum ":
Edgar is " totius Albionis imperator Augustus " (cf. Stubbs, Const.
Hist. i. c. vii. 71). These titles partly show the turgidity of English
Latinity in the ioth century, partly indicate the quasi-imperial
position held by the Wessex kings after the reconquest of the Dane-
law. But there seems to be no real ground for Freeman's view
(Norman Conquest, i. 548 sqq.), that England was regarded as a third
Empire, side by side with the other Empires of West and East
Europe. That the titles were assumed in order to repudiate possible
claims of the Western Empire to the overlordship of England is
disproved by the fact that they are assumed at a time when there
is no Western emperor. The assumption of an imperial style by
Henry VIII., which is mentioned below, is explained by the Refor-
mation, and does not mean any recurrence to a forgotten Anglo-
Saxon style.
2 It is in virtue of this aspect that the Empire is holy. The term
sacrum imperium seems to have been first used about the time of
Frederick I., when the emperors were anxious to magnify the
sanctity of their office in answer to papal opposition. The emperor
himself (see under EMPEROR) was always regarded, and at his
coronation treated, as a persona ecclesiastica.
onwards, began to claim for themselves a feudal overlordship
of the world, and to regard the emperor as the chief of their
vassals. The theory of the Translatio buttressed their claim to
be overlords of the Empire; and the emperors found that their
very duty to defend the Papacy turned them into its vassals
for was not the advocatus who defended the lands of an abbey
or church its tenant by feudal service, and might not analogy
extend the feudal relation to the imperial advocate himself ?
The relation of the Empire to the Papacy is indeed the cardinal
fact in its history for the three centuries which followed the
coronation of Otto I. (962-1250). For a century The
(962-1076) the relation was one of amity. The pope Empire
and the emperor stood as co-ordinate sovereigns, aad the
ruling together the commonwealth of Europe. 3 If p *P"cy.
either stood before, the other, the emperor stood before the pope.
The Romans had sworn to Otto I. that they would never elect or
ordain a pope without his consent;' and the rights over papal
elections conceived to belong to the office of patricius, which
they generally held, enabled the emperors, upon occasion, to
nominate the pope of their choice. The partnership of Otto III.,
son of a Byzantine princess, and his nominee Silvester II. (already
distinguished as Gerbert, scholasticus of the chapter school of
Reims) forms a remarkable page in the annals of Empire and
Papacy. Otto, once the pupil of Silvester in classical studies,
and taught by his mother the traditions of the Byzantine empire,
dreamed of renewing the Empire of Constantine, with Rome
itself for its centre; and this antiquarian idealism (which
Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi were afterwards, though
with some difference of aim, to share) was encouraged in his
pupil by the pope. Tradition afterwards ascribed to the two
the first project of a crusade, and the institution of the seven
electors: in truth their faces were turned to the past rather
than to the future, and they sought not to create, but to renovate.
The dream of restoring the age of Constantine passed with the
premature death of Otto; and after the death of Silvester II.
the papacy was degraded into an appendage of the Tusculan
family. From .that degradation the Church was rescued by
Henry III. (the second emperor of the new Salian house, which
reigned from 1024 to 1125), when in 1046 he caused the deposition
of three competing popes, and afterwards filled the papal chair
with his own nominees; but it was rescued more effectually
by itself, when in 1059 the celebrated bull In nomine Domini
of Nicholas II. reserved the right of electing the popes to the
college of cardinals (see CONCLAVE). A new era of the Papacy
begins with the decree, and that era found its exponent in
Hildebrand. If under Henry III. the Empire stands in many
respects at its zenith, and the emperor nominates to the Papacy,
it sinks, under Henry IV., almost to the nadir of its fortunes,
and a pope attempts, with no little success, to fight and defeat
an emperor.
The rise of the Papacy, which the action of Henry III. in 1046
had helped to begin, and the bull of 1059 had greatly promoted,
was ultimately due to an ecclesiastical revival, which
goes by the name of the Cluniac movement. The aim The la-
e .\_ , ^.i,,. vestiture
ot that movement was to separate the Cnurch from contest.
the world, and thus to make it independent of the
laity and the lay power; and it sought to realize its aim first by
the prohibition of clerical marriage and simony, and ultimately
by the prohibition of lay investiture. A decree of Gregory VII.
in 1075 forbade emperor, king or prince to " presume to give
investiture of bishoprics." under pain of excommunication ;
and Henry IV., contravening the decree, fell under the penalty,
and the War of Investitures began (1076-1122). Whether or
no Henry humiliated himself at Canossa (and the opinion of
German historians now inclines to regard the traditional account
as exaggerated) the Empire certainly suffered in his reign a
3 The emperor claimed suzerainty over the greater part of Europe
at various dates. Hungary and Poland, France and Spain, the
Scandinavian peninsula, the British Isles, were all claimed for the
Empire at different times (see Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, c. xii.).
The " effective " empire, if indeed it may be called effective, em-
braced only Germany, Burgundy and the regnum Italiae (the old
Lombard kingdom in the valley of the Po).
EMPIRE
353
great low of prestige. The emperor lost his hold over Germany,
where the aid of the pope strengthened the hands of the discon-
tented nobility: he lost his hold over Italy, where the Lombard
towns gradually acquired municipal independence, and the dona-
tion of the Countess Matilda gave the popes the germ of a new
and stronger dominium Irmporaie. The First Crusade came,
and the emperor, its natural leader, could not lead it; while
the centre of learning and civilization, in the course of the fifty
years' War of Investitures, gradually shifted to France. The
struggle was finally ended by a compromise the Concordat
Aorms in 1122; but the Papacy, which had fought the long
War of Investitures and inspired the First Crusade, was a far
greater power than it had been at the beginning of the struggle,
and the emperor, shaken in his hold on Germany and Italy, had
lost both power and prestige (see INVESTITURE). It is significant
that a theory of the feudal subjection of the emperor to the pope,
foreshadowed in the pontificate of Innocent II., and definitely
enounced by the envoys of Adrian IV. at the diet of Besancon
in 1157, now begins to arise. The popes, who had called the
emperors to be heads of the European commonwealth in 800 and
gain in 962, begin to vindicate that headship for themselves.
Gregory VII. had already claimed that the pope stood to the
emperor, as the sun to the moon; and gradually the old co-
ordination disappeared in a new subordination of the Empire
to the papal pttnitudo polestatis. The claim of ecclesiastical
independence of the middle of the nth century was rapidly
becoming a claim of ecclesiastical supremacy in the middle of
the 1 2th: the imperial claim to nominate popes, which had
lasted till 1059, was turning into the papal claim to nominate
emperors. Yet at this very time a new period of splendour
dawned for the Empire; and the rule of the three Hohenstaufen
emperors, Frederick I., Henry VI. and Frederick II. (1152-1230),
marks the period of its history which attracts most sympathy
and admiration.
Frederick I. regained a new strength in Germany, partly
because he united in his veins the blood of the two great con-
rw tending families, the Welfs and the Waiblingens; partly
because he had acquired large patrimonial possessions
in Swabia, which took the place of the last Saxon
demesne; partly because he had a greater control
over the German episcopate than his predecessors had enjoyed
for many yean past. At the same time the revival of interest
in the study of Roman law gave the emperor, as source and
centre of that law, a new dignity and prestige, particularly in
Italy, the home and hearth of the revival. Confident in this
new strength, he attempted to vindicate his claims on Italy,
and sought, by uniting the two under his sway, to inspire with
new life the old Ottoman Empire. He failed to crush Lombard
municipal independence: defeated at Legnano in 1176, he had
to recognize his defeat at the treaty of Constance in 1183. He
failed to acquire control over the Papacy: a new struggle of
Empire and Papacy, begun in the pontificate of Adrian IV. on
the question of control over Rome, and continued in the pontifi-
cate of Alexander III., because Frederick recognized an anti-pope,
coded in the emperor's recognition of his defeat at Venice in
1177. The one success was the acquisition of the Norman
kingdom for Henry VI., who was married to its heiress, Constance.
But the one success of Frederick's Italian policy proved the
ruin of his bouse in the reign of his grandson Frederick II. On
the one hand, the possession of Sicily induced Frederick II. to
neglect Germany; and by two documents, one of 1 220 and one of
1 1 j i , be practically abdicated his sovereign powers to the German
princes in order to conciliate their support for his Italian policy.
On the other hand, the possession of Sicily involved him in the
(Bird great struggle of Empire and Papacy. Strong in his
Sicilian kingdom in the south, and seeking, like his grandfather,
to establish his power in Lombardy, Frederick practically aimed
at the unification of Italy, a policy which threatened to engulf
the States of the Church and to reduce the Papacy to impotence.
The popes excommunicated the emperor: they aided the Lom-
bard towns to maintain their independence; finally, after
Frederick's death (i j;o). they summoned Charles of Anjou into
DC. 12
Sicily to exterminate his house. By 1268 he had done his work,
and the medieval Empire was practically at an end. When
Rudolph of Habsburg succeeded in 1 273, he wasonly the ovtrtbnw
head of a federation of princes in Germany, while in ol the
Italy he abandoned all claims over the centre and south, ff" n '"
and only retained titular rights in the Lombard plain.
Thus ended the first great chapter in the history of the Holy
Roman Empire which Otto had founded in 962. In those three
centuries the great fact had been its relation to the Papacy: in
the last two of those three centuries the relation had been one
of enmity. The basis of the enmity had been the papal claim
to supreme headship of Latin Christianity, and to an independent
temporal demesne in Italy as the condition of that headship.
Because they desired supreme headship, the popes had sought
to reduce the emperor's headship to something lower than, and
dependent upon, their own to a mere fief held of St Peter:
because they desired a temporal demesne, they had sought to
expel him from Italy, since any imperial hold on Italy threatened
their independence. They had succeeded in defeating the Empire,
but they had also destroyed the Papacy; for the French aid
which they had invoked against the Hohenstaufen developed,
wilhin fifty years of the fall of that house, into French control,
and the captivity at Avignon (1308-1378) was the logical result
of the final victory of Charles of Anjou at Tagliacozzo. The
struggle seemed to have ended in nothing but the exhaustion of
both combatants. Yet in many respects it had in reality made
for progress. It had set men thinking of the respective limits
of church and state, as the many libelli de lite impcratorum tt
pontificum show; and from that thought had issued a new con-
ception of the state, as existing in its own right and supreme
in its own sphere, a conception which is the necessary basis of
the modern nation-state. If it had dislocated Germany into a
number of territorial principalities, it had produced a college of
electors to represent the cause of unity: if it had helped to pre-
vent the unification of Italy, and had left to Italy the fatal
legacy of Guelph and Ghibelline feuds, it had equally helped
to produce Italian municipal independence.
A new chapter of the history of the Empire fills the three
centuries from 1273 to 1556 from the accession of Rudolph of
Habsburg to the abdication of Charles V. Italy was
now lost: the Empire had now no peculiar connexion T he .
with Rome, and far less touch with the Papacy. A /,, ,/,,
new Germany had risen. The extinction of several royal flection of
stocks and the nomination of anti-kings in the course of ^" > / >lph of
civil wars had made the monarchy elective, and raised t / 7 j* ar *'
to the side of the emperor a college of electors (see
ELECTORS), which appears as definitely established soon after
1250. With Italy lost, and Germany thus transmuted, why
should the Empire have still continued to exist? In the first
place, it continued to exist because the Germans still found a
king necessary and because, the German king having been called
for three centuries emperor, it seemed necessary that he should
still continue to bear the name. In this sense the Empire existed
as the presidency of a Germanic confederation, and as something
analogous to the modern German empire, with the one great
difference that the Hohenzollcrns now derive from Prussia a
strength which enables them to make their imperial position a
reality, while no Luxemburg or Habsburg was able to make his
imperial position otherwise than honorary and nominal. In the
second place, it continued to exist because the conception of the
unity of western Europe still lingered, and was still conceived
to need an exponent. In this sense the Empire existed as a
presidency, still more honorary and still more nominal, of the
nations of western Europe. In both capacities the emperor
existed to a great extent because he was a legal necessity
because, in Germany, he was necessary for the investiture of
princes with their principalities, and because, in Europe, he
was necessary, as the source of all rights, to bestow crowns upon
would-be kings, or to act as the head of the great orders of
chivalry, or to give patents to notaries. With the history of the
Empire regarded as a German confederation we are not here
concerned. The reigns of the Habsburg, Luxemburg and
354
EMPIRE
Wittelsbach emperors belong to the history of Germany. Yet
two of these emperors, Henry VII. and Louis IV., should not
pass without notice, the one for his own sake, the other for the
sake of his adherents, and both because, by interfering in Italy,
and coming into conflict with the Papacy, they brought once
more into prominence the European aspect of the Empire.
Henry VII., the contemporary and the hero of Dante,
descended into Italy in 1310, partly because he had no power
and no occupation in Germany, partly because he was deeply
imbued with the sense of his imperial dignity. Coming as a
peacemaker and mediator, he was driven by Guelph opposition
into a Ghibelline role; and he came into conflict with Clement V.,
the first of the Avignonese popes, who under the pressure of
France attempted to enforce upon Henry a recognition of his
feudal subjection. Henry asserted his independence: he
claimed Rome for his capital, and the lordship of the world for
his right; but, just as a struggle seemed impending, he died,
in 13 13. During the reign of his successor, Louis IV., the struggle
came. Louis had been excommunicated by John XXII. in
1324 for acting as emperor before he had received papal recogni-
tion. None the less, in 1328, he came to Rome for his coronation.
He had gathered round him strange allies; on the one hand, the
more advanced Franciscans, apostles of the cause of clerical
disendowment, and inimical to a wealthy papacy; on the other
hand, jurists like Marsilius of Padua and John of Jandun, who
brought to the cause of Louis the spirit and the doctrines which
had already been used in the struggle between Boniface VIII.
and Philip IV. of France. Marsilius in particular, in a treatise
called the Defensor Pads, insisted on the majesty of the lay state,
and even on its superiority to the Church. Perhaps it was
Marsilius, learned as he was in Roman law, and remembering
the lex regia by which the Roman people had of old conferred its
power on the emperor, who suggested to Louis the policy, which
he followed, of receiving the imperial crown by the decree and
at the hands of the Roman people. The policy was remarkable :
Louis embraced an alliance which Frederick Barbarossa had
spurned, and recognized the medieval Romans as the source of
imperial power. Not less remarkable was the new attitude of
the German electors, who for the first time supported an emperor
against the pope, because they now felt menaced in their own
electoral rights; and the one permanent result which finally
flowed from the struggle was the enunciation and definition of
the rights and privileges of the electors in the Golden Bull of
1356 (see GOLDEN BULL).
In this struggle with the Papacy the Empire had shown
something of its old universal aspect. It had come into connexion
with Italy, and into close connexion with Rome: it had enlisted
in defence of its rights at once an Italian like Marsilius and an
Englishman like Ockham. The same universal aspect appeared
once more in the age of the conciliar movement, at the beginning
of the isth century. One of the essential duties of the emperor,
as defender of the Church, was to help the assembling and the
deliberations of general councils of the Church. This was the
duty discharged by Sigismund, when he forced John XXIII.
to summon a council at Constance in 1414, and sought, though
in vain, to guide its deliberations. The journey which Sigismund
undertook in the interests of the council (1415-1417) is particu-
larly noteworthy. He sought to make peace throughout western
Europe, acting as international arbitrator in virtue of his
presidency of western Europe between England and France,
between Burgundians and Armagnacs; but he failed in his aim,
and when he returned to the council, it was only to witness the
defeat of the party of reform which he championed. National
feeling and national antipathies proved too strong for
Sigismund's attempt to revive the medieval empire for
the purposes of international arbitration : the same feel-
ing, the same antipathies, made inevitable the failure
of the council itself, in which western Europe had
sought to meet once more as a single religious com-
monwealth. Early in the I5th century, therefore,
the conception of the unity of western Europe, as a single
Empire-Church, was already waning in both its aspects. The
The
Empire
and the
rise of the
Idea of
national
states.
laflutr.i-c
of the
tloa '
unity of the Church Universal was dissolving, and the conception
of the nation-church arising (as the separate concordats granted
by Martin V. to the different nations prove) ; while the unity of
the Empire was proved a dream, by the powerlessness of the
emperor in the face of the struggle of England and France.
Renaissance and Reformation combined to complete the fall
which the failure of Sigismund to guide the conciliar movement
had already foreshadowed. The Renaissance, revolting
against the medievalism of the stadium and not
sparing even the sacerdotium of the middle ages, had
little respect for the medieval imperium; and, going
back to pure Latin and original Greek, it went back beyond
even the classical empire to find its ideals and inspirations.
But it is the coming of the Reformation, and with it of the
nation-church, which finally marks the epoch at which the last
vestige of the old conception of the political unity of the world
disappears before the nation-state. Externally indeed it seemed ,
at the time of the Reformation, as if the old Empire had been
revived in the person of Charles V., who owned territories as vast
as those of Charlemagne. But Charles's dominions were a
dynastic agglomeration, knit together by no vivifying conception ;
and, though Charles was a champion of the one Catholic Church
against the Reformation, he did not in any way seek to revive
the power of the medieval empire. Meanwhile the reforming
monarchs, while they cast off the Roman Church, cast off with
it the Roman empire. Henry VIII. declared himself free, not
only of the pope, but of all other foreign power; not only so,
but as he sought to take the place of the pope with regard to his
own church, so he sought to take the place of the emperor with
regard to his kingdom, and spoke of his " imperial " crown, a
style which recurs in later Tudor reigns. 1 The conception of one
Empire passed out of Europe, or, if it remained, it remained only
in an honorary precedence accorded by other sovereigns to the
king of Germany, who still entitled himself emperor. In Germany
itself the honorary presidency which the emperor enjoyed over
the princes came to mean still less than before, when religious
differences divided the country, and the principle of cujus regio
ejus religio accentuated the local autonomy of the prince. When
Charles abdicated in 1556, the change which the accession of
Rudolph of Habsburg had already marked was complete:
there was no empire except in Germany, and in Germany the
Empire was nothing more than a convenient legal conception.
The Reformation, by sweeping away the spiritual unity of
western Christendom, had swept away any real conception of its
political unity, and with that conception it had swept away the
Empire; while it had also, by splitting Germany into two
religious camps, and making the emperor at the most the head
of a religious faction, dissipated the last vestiges of a real Empire
in the country which had, since 962, been its peculiar home.
From 1556 to 1806 the Empire means a loose federation of
the different princes of Germany, lay and ecclesiastical, under
the presidency, elective in theory but hereditary in The
practice, of the house of Habsburg. It is an empire Empire a*
much in the same sense as the modern German empire, German
with a diet somewhat analogous to the modern Bundes- c ntedera ~-
rat, and a cumbrous imperial chamber for purposes of
justice, hardly at all analogous to the highly organized system
of federal justice which prevails in Germany to-day. The dis-
solution of the Holy Roman Empire into this loose federation
had already been anticipated by the concessions made to the
princes by Frederick II. in 1220 and 1231; but the final organiza-
tion of Germany on federal lines was only attained in the treaty
of Westphalia of 1648. The attempt of Ferdinand II., in the
course of the Thirty Years' War, to assert a practically monarchical
authority over the princes of Germany, only led to the regular
vindication by the princes of their own monarchical authority.
The emperor, who had tried in the isth century to be the inter-
national authority of all Europe, now sank to the position of
less than inter-state arbitrator in Germany. That the Empire
and the emperor were retained at all, when the princes became
1 Cf. the Act 25 Henry VIII. c. 22, i: "the lawful kings and
emperors of this realm."
EMPIRE
355
so many independent sovereigns, was due partly to a lingering
ttm* of quasi-national sentiment for a magni nominis umbra,
partly to the need of some authority which should combine in
one whole principalities of very different sites and strengths,
and should protect the weak from the strong, and all from France.
But this authority only found its symbol in the emperor. Such
real federal authority as there was remained with the diet, a
congress of sovereign princes through their accredited repre-
sentatives; and the emperor's sole rights, as emperor, were
those of granting titles and confirming tolls. The Habsburgs,
emperors in each successive generation, never pursued an imperial,
but always a dynastic policy; and they were perfectly ready
to sacrifice to the aggrandizement of their house the honour of
the Empire, as when they ceded Lorraine to France in return
for Tuscany (1735)-
It needed the cataclysm of the French Revolution finally to
rthrow the Empire. Throughout the iSth century it lasted,
a thing of long-winded protocols and never-ending
lawsuits, " neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.
But with Napoleon came its destroyer. As far back
as the end of the i jth century, French kings had been
scheming to annex the title or at any rate- absorb the territories
of the Empire: at the beginning of the ipth century the annexa-
tion of the title by Napoleon seemed very imminent. Posing
as the New Charlemagne (" because, like Charlemagne, I unite
the crown of France to that of the Lombards, and my Empire
marches with the East "), he resolved in 1806, during the dis-
solution and recomposition of Germany which followed the peace
of Luneville, to oust Francis II. from his title, and to make the
Holy Roman Empire part and parcel of the " Napoleonic idea."
He was anticipated, however, by the prompt action of the proud
Habsburg, who was equally resolved that no other should wear
the crown which he himself was powerless to defend, and accord-
ingly, on the 6th of August 1806, Francis resigned the imperial
dignity. So perished the Empire. Out of its ashes sprang the
Austrian Empire, for Francis.in i8o4,partly to counter Napoleon's
assumption of the title of Emperor of the French, partly to pre-
pare for the impending dissolution of the old Empire, had
assumed the title of " Hereditary Emperor of Austria." And
in yet more recent times the German empire may be regarded,
in a still more real sense than Austria, as the descendant and
representative of the old Empire of the German nation.
What had been the results of the Holy Roman Empire, in the
course of its long history, upon Germany and upon Europe?
n,, t ,ml It has been a tcxata quoeslio among German historians,
lmtlut*n whether or no the Empire ruined Germany. Some
have argued that it diverted the attention of the
em f tn - German kings from their own country to Italy, and
that, by bringing them into conflict with the popes, and by thus
strengthening the hands of their rebellious baronage with a
papal alliance, it prevented the development of a national
German monarchy, such as other sovereigns of western Europe
were able to found. Others again have emphasized the racial
division of Saxon and Frank, of High German and Low German,
as the great cause of the failure of Germany to grow into a united
national whole, aad have sought to ascribe to the influence of
the Empire such unity as was achieved; while they have attri-
buted the learning, the trade, the pre-eminence of medieval
Germany to the Italian connexion and the prestige which the
Empire brought. It is difficult to pronounce on either side;
bat one feds that the old localism and individualism which
characterized the early German, and had never, on German
soil, been combined with and counteracted by a large measure
ol Roman population and Roman civilization, as they were in
Gaol and Spain, would in any case have continued to divide
and disturb Germany till late in her history, even if the Empire
had never come to reside within her borders. Of the larger
question of the influence of the Empire on Europe we can here
only say that it worked for good. An Empire which represented,
as a Holy Empire, the unity of all the faithful as one body in
their secular, no leas than in their religious life an Empire
whkh, again, as a Roman Empire, represented with an unbroken
continuity the order of Roman administration and law such
an empire could not but make for the betterment of the world.
It was not an empire resting on force, a military empire; it was
not, as in modern times empires have sometimes been, an
autocracy warranted and stamped by the plebiscite of the mob.
It was an empire resting neither on the sword nor on the ballot-
box, but on two great ideas, taught by the clergy and received
by the laity, that all believers in Christ form one body politic,
and that the one model and type for the organization of that
body is to be found in the past of Rome. It was indeed the
weakness of the Empire that its roots were only the thoughts
of men; for the lack of material force, from which it always
suffered, hindered it from doing work it might well have done
the work, for instance, of international arbitration. Yet, on
the other hand, it was the strength and glory of the Empire
that it lived, all through the middle ages, an unconquerable idea
of the mind of man. Because it was a being of their thought, it
stirred men to reflection: the Empire, particularly in its clash
with the Papacy, produced a political consciousness and a political
speculation reflected for us in the many libelli de lite imperatomm
el pontificum, and in the pages of Dante and Marsilius of Padua.
Roman, it perpetuated the greatest monument of Roman
thought that ordered scheme of law, which either became, as
in England, the model for the building of a native system, or,
as in Germany from the end of the isth century onwards, was
received in its integrity and administered in the courts. Holy,
it fortified and consolidated Christian thought, by giving a
visible expression to the kingdom of God upon earth; and not
only so, but it maintained, however imperfectly, some idea of
international obligation, and some conception of a commonwealth
of Europe. 1
The Holy Roman Empire of western Europe had in its own
day a contemporary and a rival that east Roman empire of
which we have already spoken. From Arcadius to John Palaeo-
logus, from A.D. 395 to 1453, the Roman empire was continued
at Constantinople not as a theory and an idea, but as a simple
and daily reality of politics and administration. In one sense
the East Roman Empire was more lineally and really Roman
than the West: it was absolutely continuous from ancient times.
In another sense the Western Empire was the most Roman;
for its capital in theory at least was Rome itself, and the
Roman Church stood by its side, while Constantinople was
Hellenic and even Oriental. Between the two Empires there was
fixed an impassable gulf; and they were divided by deep
differences of thought and temper, which appeared most particu-
larly in the sphere of religion, and expressed themselves in the
cleavage between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. Yet,
as when Rome fell, the Catholic Church survived, and ultimately
found for itself a new Empire of the West, so, when Constantinople
fell, the Orthodox Church continued its life, and found for itself
a new Empire of the East the Empire of Russia. Under Ivan
the Great (1462-1505) Moscow became the metropolis of
Orthodoxy; Byzantine law influenced his code; and he took
for his cognizance the double-headed eagle. Ivan the Terrible,
his grandson, finally assumed in 1547 the title of Tsar; and
henceforth the Russian emperor is, in theory and very largely
in fact, the successor of the old East Roman emperor, 1 the head
of the Orthodox Church, with the mission of vengeance on Islam
for the fall of Constantinople.
In the ipth century the word " empire " has had a large and
important bearing in politics. In France it has been the apanage
of the Bonapartes, and has meant a centralized system Modem
of government by an efficient Caesar, resting immedi- Empire*.
ately on the people, and annihilating the powers of
the people's representatives. Under Napoleon I. this conception
had a Carolingian colour: under Napoleon III. there is less of
1 The Papacy, consistent to the last, formally protested at the
Congress of Vienna in 1815 against the failure of the Powers to
restore the Holy Roman Empire, the " centre of political unity "
(Ed.).
1 The Turks, occupying Constantinople, have also claimed to l
the heirs of the old emperors of Constantinople; and their sultans
have styled themselves Keisar-i-Rdm.
35 6
EMPIRICISM EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY
Carolingianism, and more of Caesarism more of a popular
dictatorship. While in modern France Empire has meant
autocracy instead of representative government, in Germany
it has meant a greater national unity and a federal government
in the place of a confederation. The modern German empire
is at once like and unlike the old Holy Roman Empire. It is
unlike the old medieval Empire; for it has no connexion with
the Catholic Church, and no relation to Rome. But it is like
the Holy Roman Empire of the I7th and i8th centuries for
it represents a federation, but a more real and more unitary
federation, of the several states of Germany. The likeness is
perhaps more striking than the dissimilarity; and in virtue of
this likeness, and because the memory of the old German Kaiser-
zeit was a driving force in 1870, we may speak of the modern
German empire as the successor of the old Holy Roman Empire,
if we remember that we are speaking of that Empire in its last
two centuries of existence. The modern " Empire of Austria,"
on the other hand, does not connote an empire in the sense
of a federation, but is a convenient designation for the sum of
the territories ruled by a single sovereign under various titles
(king of Bohemia, archduke of Austria, &c.) and unified in a
single political system. 1 The title of Emperor was assumed, as
we have seen, through an historical accident; and, though the
Habsburgs of to-day are personally the lineal descendants of the
old Holy Roman emperors, they do not in any way possess an
empire that represents the old Holy Empire. In England, of
recent years, the term " Empire " and the conception of imperial-
ism have become prominent and crucial. To Englishmen to-day,
as to Germans before 1870, the term and the conception stand
for the greater unity and definitely federal government of a
number of separate states. For the German, indeed, Empire
has meant, in great measure, the strengthening of a loose federal
institution by the addition of a common personal superior:
to us it means the turning of a loose union of separate states
already under a common personal superior the King into a
federal commonwealth living under some common federal
institutions. But the aim is much the same; it is the integration
of a people under a single scheme which shall be consistent with
a large measure of political autonomy. We speak of imperial
federation; and indeed our modern imperialism is closely
allied to federalism. Yet we do well to cling to the term empire
rather than federation; for the one term emphasizes the whole
and its unity, the other the part and its independence. This
imperialism, which is federalism viewed as making for a single
whole, is very different from that Bonapartist imperialism,
which means autocracy; for its essence is free co-ordination, and
the self-government of each co-ordinated part. The British
Empire (q.v.) is, in a sense, an aspiration rather than a reality,
a thought rather than a fact; but, just for that reason, it is
like the old Empire of which we have spoken; and though it be
neither Roman nor Holy, yet it has, like its prototype, one law,
if not the law of Rome one faith, if not in matters of religion,
at any rate in the field of political and social ideals.
AUTHORITIES. See, in the first place, J. Bryce, Holy Roman
Empire (1904 edition); J. von Dollinger, article on " The Empire
of Charles the Great " (in Essays on Historical and Literary Subjects,
translated by Margaret Warre, 1894); H. Fisher, The Medieval
Empire (1898); E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, edited by J. B. Bury. It would be impossible to refer to all
the books bearing on the article, but one may select (i.) for the
period down to 476, Stuart Jones, The Roman Empire (1908), an
excellent brief sketch; H. Schiller, Geschichte der romischen Kaiser-
zeit (1883-1888) ; O. Seeck, Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken
Welt (Band I., Berlin, 1897-1898, Band II., 1901) (a remarkable and
stimulating book); and the two excellent articles on " Impenum
and " Princeps " in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Anti-
quities (1890) ; (ii.) for the period from 476 down to 888, T. Hodgkm,
Italy and her Invaders (1880-1900); F. Gregorovius, Geschichte der
Stadt Rom im Mittelalter (1886-1894; Eng. trans., London, 1894-
1900); E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, n. i. (1901); J. B. Bury,
History of the Later Roman Empire (1889) ; (iii.) for the Holy Roman
is does not, of course, apply to Hungary, which since 1867
has not formed part of the Austrian empire and is ruled by the
head of the house of Habsburg not as emperor, but as king of
Hungary.
Empire of the German nation, W. von Giesebrecht, Geschichte der
deutschen Kaiserzeit (1881-1890); J. Zeller, Histoire d'Allemagne
(1872-1891); R. L. Ppole, Illustrations of Medieval Thought (1884);
S. Riezjer, Die literarischen Widersacher der Pdpste sur Zeit Ludwigs
des Baiers (1874); J. Jannsen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seil
dem Ausgang des Mittelalters (1885-1894); L. von Ranke, Deutsche
Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation (1839-1847), and Zur
deutschen Geschichte. Vom Religionsfrieden bis zum dreissigjdhrigen
Kriee (1869); and T. Carlyle, Frederick the Great (1872-1873). On
:he fall of the Roman Empire and the transition to the modern
jerman Empire see Sir J. R. Seeley, Life and Times of Stein (1878) ;
H. von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte (1879-1894); and H. von
Sybel, Die Begrundung des deutschen Reichs (1890-1894, Eng. trans.,
The Founding of the Germ. Emp., New York, 1890-1891). For
institutional history, see R. Schroder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechts-
leschichte (1894). On the influence of the Holy Roman Empire
upon the history of Germany, see J. Ficker, Das deutsche Kaiserreich
(1861), and Deutsches Konigtum und Kaisertum (1862); and H. von
Sybel, Die deutsche Nation und das Kaiserreich (1861). (E. BR.)
EMPIRICISM (from Gr. e/wretpos, skilled in, from ireipo,
experiment), in philosophy, the theory that all knowledge
is derived from sense-given data. It is opposed to all forms
of intuitionalism, and holds that the mind is originally an absolute
blank (tabula rasa), on which, as it were, sense-given impressions
are mechanically recorded, without any action on the part of
the mind. The process by which the mind is thus stored consists
of an infinity of individual impressions. The frequent or invari-
able recurrence of similar series of events gives birth in the
mind to what are wrongly called " laws "; in fact, these " laws "
are merely statements of experience gathered together by
association, and have no other kind of validity. In other words
from the empirical standpoint the statement of such a " law "
does not contain the word " must "; it merely asserts that such
and such series have been invariably observed. In this theory
there can strictly be no " causation "; one thing is observed
to succeed another, but observations cannot assert that it is
" caused " by that thing; it is post hoc, but not propter hoc.
The idea of necessary connexion is a purely mental idea, an
a priori conception, in which observation of empirical data
takes no part; empiricism in ethics likewise does away with the
idea of the absolute authority of the moral law as conceived by
the intuitionalists. The moral law is merely a collection of
rules of conduct based on an infinite number of special cases in
which the convenience of society or its rulers has subordinated
the inclination of individuals. The fundamental objection to
empiricism is that it fails to give an accurate explanation of
experience; individual impressions as such are momentary,
and their connexion into a body of coherent knowledge pre-
supposes mental action distinct from mere receptivity. Empiri-
cism was characteristic of all early speculation in Greece. During
the middle ages the empiric spirit was in abeyance, but it revived
from the time of Francis Bacon and was systematized especially
in the English philosophers, Locke, Hume, the two Mills,
Bentham and the associationist school generally.
See ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS; METAPHYSICS; PSYCHOLOGY ; LOGIC ;
besides the biographies of the empirical philosophers.
In medicine, the term is applied to a school of physicians who,
in the time of Celsus and Galen, advocated accurate observation
of the phenomena of health and disease in the belief that only
by the collection of a vast mass of instances would a true science
of medicine be attained. This point of view was carried to
extremes by those who discarded all real study, and based their
treatment on rules of thumb. Hence the modern sense of empirical
as applied to the guess work of an untrained quack or charlatan.
EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY, and WORKMEN'S COMPENSA-
TION. 2 The law of England as to the liability of employers in
respect of personal injuries to their servants is regulated partly
by the common law and partly by statute; but by the
Employers' Liability Act 1880, such exceptions have been
grafted upon the common law, and by the Workmen's Compensa-
tion Act 1906, principles so alien to the common law have been
applied to most employments that it is impossible now to present
any view of this branch of the law as a logical whole. All that
can be done is to state the nature of the liability at common law.
* " Employ " comes through Fr. from Lat. implicare, to enfold.
Late Lat. to direct upon something. .
EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY
357
the extension of it effected by the Employers' Liability Act 1880,
and the new liabilities introduced by later a>
At common law the liability of a master is of a very limited
character. There is, of course, nothing to prevent a master
and servant from providing by special contract in any
j^"*" way they please for their mutual rights in cases of
personal injury to the servant. In such cases the
liability will depend upon the terms of the special contract.
But apart from any special agreement, it may be broadly stated
that a master is liable to his servants only for injuries caused
by his own negligence. Injuries to a servant may arise from
accident, from the nature of the service, or from negligence;
and this negligence may be of the master, of another servant
of the master, or of a stranger. If the injury is purely accidental
the loss lies where it falls. If it arises from the nature of the
service, the servant must bear it himself; he has undertaken a
service to which certain risks are necessarily incident; if he
is injured thereby, it is the fortune of war, and no one can be
made responsible. If the injury is caused by the negligence of
a stranger, the servant has his ordinary remedy against the
wrong-doer or any one who is responsible as a principal for the
conduct of the wrong-doer. If it is caused by the negligence of a
fellow-servant, he likewise has his ordinary remedy against the
actual wrong-doer; but, by virtue of what is known as the
doctrine of common employment, he cannot at common law
make the master liable as a principal. The only case (inde-
pendently of modern legislation: see below) in which he can
recover damages from the master is where the injury has been
caused by negligence of the master himself. A master is
negligent if he fails to exercise that skill and care which, in the
circumstances of the particular employment, are used by
employers of ordinary skill and carefulness. If he himself takes
part in the work, he must act with such skill and care as may
reasonably be demanded of one who takes upon himself to do
work of that kind. If he entrusts the work to other servants,
be must be careful in their selection, and must not negligently
employ persons who are incompetent. He must take proper
care so to arrange the system of work that his servants are not
exposed to unnecessary danger. If tools or machinery are used,
be must take proper care to provide such as are fit and proper
(or the work, and must either himself see that they are maintained
in a fit condition or employ competent servants to do so for him.
If be is bound by statute to take precautions for the safety of
his servants, he must himself sec that that obligation is discharged.
For breach of any of these duties a master is liable to his servant
who is injured thereby, but his liability extends no further.
That his obligations to a servant are so much less than to a
stranger is chiefly due to the doctrine of common employment.
As a rule a master is responsible for the negligence of
his servant acting in the course of his employment;
but, from about the middle of the igth century, it
became firmly rooted in the law that this principle did
not apply where the person injured was himself a servant of the
master and engaged in a common employment with the servant
guilty of the negligence. In effect this rule protects a master
as against his servant from the consequences of negligence on
the pan of any other of his servants; to this there is no qualifica-
tion except that, for the rule to apply, both the injured and the
negligent servant must be acting in pursuance of a common
employment. They must both be working for a common object
though not necessarily upon the same work.
It not easy to define precisely what constitutes a common
employment in this sense, and there is peculiarly little judicial
authority a* to the limit at which work for the same employer
ce*j*e* to be work in a common employment. It does not depend
on difference in grade; all engaged in one business, from the
"I" to the apprentice, are within the rule. It does not depend
on difference in work, if the work each i doing is part of one larger
vhether employed
, are in a common
rily depend on difference of
locality: a servant who pack* good* at the factory and a servant
i unpack* them in the shop may well be in a common employ-
On the other hand, it U not enough that the two servants
OB uMioeme in wane, n tne wane each n doing is pa
operation : all the servant* of a railway company, wh
o* the train*, or at the station*, or on the line, ai
employment. It doe* not necessarily depend 01
are working for the same employer, if there is nothing in common
between them except that they art- making money for the same
man; apart from special circumstances, the crews of two ships
owned by the same company are probably not in common employ-
iin-ni while navigating their respective ship*. The test in each case
must be derived from the view, invented by the courts, upon which
the doctrine was based, namely, that the servant by entering upon
the service consented to run all the risks incidental to it, including
the risk of negligence on the part of fellow-servants; if the relation
between the two servants is such that the safety of the one may, in
the ordinary course of things, be affected by the negligence of the
other, that negligence must be taken to be one of the risks of tin-
employment assented to by the servant, and both arc engaged in a
common employment. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it
will be found tnat the dcjctrinc is applicable, and the master pro-
tected from liability. It is thus seen that, in general, no action will
lie against a master at the suit of his servant, unless the servant can
prove personal negligence on the part of the master causing injury
to the servant. And in such action the master may avail himself
of those defences which he has against a stranger. He may rely upon
contributory negligence, and show that the servant was himself
negligent, and that, notwithstanding the negligence of the master,
the injury was proximately caused by the negligence of the servant.
Or (except in cases where the injury results from a breach of a
statutory duty) he may prove such facts as establish the defence
expressed in the maxim, volenti nonfit injuria; that is, he may prove
that the injured servant knew and appreciated the particular risk
he was running, and incurred it voluntarily with full understanding
of its nature. Mere knowledge on the part of the servant, or even his
continuing to work with knowledge, does not necessarily establish
this defence; it must be knowledge of such a kind and in such
circumstances that it can be inferred that the servant contracted
to take the risk upon himself. The action at common law is subject
to the general rule that personal actions die with the person ; except
so far as the remedy for money loss caused by death by negligence
has been preserved in favour of a husband or wife and certain near
relatives, under Lord Campbell's Act (Fatal Accidents Act 1846).
Such was the law up to 1880. So long as industry was con-
ducted on a small scale, and the master worked with his men,
or was himself the manager, its hardship was perhaps
little felt; his personal negligence could in many cases
be established. But with the development of the
factory system, and the ever-growing expansion of the scale on
which all industries were conducted, it became increasingly
difficult to bring home individual responsibility to the employer.
As industry passed largely into the control of corporations,
difficulty became almost impossibility. The employer was noi
liable to a servant for the negligence of a fellow-servant, and
therefore, in most cases of injury, was not liable at all. It is
not surprising that the condition of things thus brought about,
partly by the growth of modern industry and partly by t In-
decisions of the courts, caused grave dissatisfaction. The justice
of the doctrine of common employment was vigorously called
in question. In the result the Employers' Liability Act 1880
was passed. The effect of this act is to destroy the defence of
common employment in certain specified cases. It does nol
abolish the doctrine altogether, nor, on the other hand, does it
impose upon the master any new standard of duty which does
not exist as regards strangers. All that it does is to place the
servant, in certain cases, in the position of a stranger, making
the master liable for the negligence of his servants notwithstand-
ing the fact that they are in common employment with the
servant injured. It is still necessary under the act, as at common
law, to prove negligence, and the master may still rely upon the
defences of contributory negligence and volcnti non fit injuria.
But under the act he cannot, as against the workmen who come
within it and in the cases to which it applies, set up the defence
that the negligence complained of was the negligence of a servant
in a common employment. The act does not apply to all
servants. It does not apply to domestic or menial servants,
or to seamen, or to any except railway servants and " any
person who, being a labourer, servant in husbandry, journeyman,
artificer, handicraftsman, miner, or otherwise engaged in manual
labour . . . has entered into or works under a contract with an
employer, whether the contract be oral or in writing, and be a
contract of service or a contract personally to execute any work
or labour." Whether a servant, not being one of those specially
named, is within the act depends on whether manual labour is
the real and substantial employment, or whether it is merely
358
EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY
incidental thereto; thus a carman who handles the goods he
carries may be within the act, but a tramcar driver or an omnibus
conductor is not. The act does not make the master liable for
the negligence of all his servants, but, speaking generally, only
for the negligent discharge of their duties by such as are entrusted
with the supervision of machinery and plant, or with super-
intendence, or the power of giving orders, with the addition, in
the case of a railway, of the negligence of those who are given
the charge or control of signals, points, locomotive engines or
trains. The cases dealt with by the act are five in number; in
the first and fourth the words are wide enough to include
negligence of the employer himself, for which, as has been seen,
he is liable at common law. In such instances the workman has
an alternative remedy either at common law or under the act,
but in all other respects the rights given by the act are new, being
limitations upon the defence of common employment, and can be
enforced only under the act.
The first case is where the injury is caused by reason of any defect
in the condition of the ways, works, machinery or plant connected
with or used in the business of the employer, provided that such
defect arises from, or has not been discovered or remedied owing to
the negligence of the employer, or of some person in the service of the
employer and entrusted by him with the duty of seeing that the ways,
works, machinery or plant are in proper condition. The second case
is where the injury is caused by reason of the negligence of any
person in the service of the employer who has any superintendence
entrusted to him (that is, a person whose sole or principal duty is
that of superintendence, and who is not ordinarily engaged in manual
labour) whilst in the exercise of such superintendence. The third
case is where the injury is caused by reason of the negligence of any
person in the service of the employer to whose orders or directions
the workman at the time of the injury is bound to conform and does
conform, where such injury results from his so conforming. The
fourth case is where the injury is caused by reason of the act or
omission of any person in the service of the employer done or made
in obedience to the rules or by-laws of the employer, or in obedience
to particular instructions given by any person delegated with the
authority of the employer in that behalf, provided that the injury
results from some impropriety or defect in such rules, by-laws or
instructions. The fifth case is where the injury is caused by reason
of the negligence of any person in the service of the employer who
has the charge or control of any signal, points, locomotive engine
or train upon a railway.
In all these cases it is provided that the employer shall not
be liable if it can be shown that the workman knew of the defect
or negligence which caused his injury, and failed within a reason-
able time to give, or cause to be given, information thereof to the
employer or some person superior to himself in the service of
the employer, unless he was aware that the employer or such
superior already knew of the said defect or negligence. It was
inevitable that these provisions should call for judicial inter-
pretation, and a considerable body of authority has grown up
about the act. Where general words are used, it must always
occur that, between the cases which are obviously within and
those which are obviously without the words, there are many
on the border line. Thus, under the act, the courts have been
called upon to determine the precise meaning of " way,"
" works," " machinery," " plant," and to say what is precisely
meant by a " defect " in the condition of each of them. They
have had to say what is included in " railway " and in " train, "
what is meant by having " charge " or " control," and to what
extent one whose principal duty is superintendence may partici-
pate in manual labour without losing his character of superin-
tendent, and what is the precise meaning of negligence in
superintendence. These are only illustrations of many points
of detail which, having called for judicial interpretation, will be
found fully dealt with in the text-books on the subject. A
workman who, being within the act, is injured by such negligence
of a fellow-servant as is included in one or other of the five cases
mentioned above, has against his employer the remedies which
the act gives him. These are not necessarily the same as those
which a stranger would have in the like circumstances; the
amount of compensation is not left at large for a jury to deter-
mine, but is limited to an amount not exceeding such sum as may
be found to be equivalent to the estimated earnings, during the
three years preceding the injury, of a person in the same grade
employed during those years in the like employment and in the
district in which the workman is employed at the time of the
injury. Moreover, the right to recover is hedged about with
technicalities which are unknown at the common law; proceed-
ings must be taken in the county court, within a strictly limited
time, and are maintainable only if certain elaborate provisions
as to notice of injury have been complied with. Where the injury
causes death the action is maintainable for the benefit of the like
persons as are entitled under Lord Campbell's act in an action
at common law.
The law continued in this condition up to 1897. In the
majority of cases of injury to a servant, the doctrine of common
employment still piotected the master; and where, under the
Employers' Liability Act, it failed to do so, the liability was of a
limited character and often, owing to technicalities of procedure,
difficult to enforce. Moreover, there is nothing in the act to
prevent master and servant from entering into any special con-
tract they please; and in many trades it became a common prac-
tice for contracts to be made wholly excluding the operation of
the act. In 1893 an attempt was made to alter the law by a total
abolition of the defence of common employment, so as to make
a master as liable to a servant as to a stranger for the negligence
of any of his servants acting in the course of their employment,
and at the same time to prohibit any agreements to forego the
rights so given to the servant. The bill did not become law,
and no further change was made until, in 1897, parliament took
the first step in what has been a complete revolution in the law
of employers' liability. Up to that year, as has been seen, the
foundation of a master's liability was negligence, either of the
master himself, or, in certain cases, of his servants. But by the
Workmen's Compensation Act 1897, a new principle was intro-
duced, whereby certain servants in certain employments
were given a right to compensation for injuries, wholly ^97'
irrespective of any consideration of negligence or igg^_
contributory negligence. As regards such servants
in such employments the master was in effect made an insurer
against accidental injuries. The act was confessedly tentative
and partial; it dealt only with selected industries, and even
within these industries was not of universal application. But
where it did apply, it gave a right to a limited compensation in
every case of injury by accident arising out of and in the course of
the employment, whether that accident had been brought about
by negligence or not, and whether the injured servant had or
had not contributed to it by his own negligence.
The act applied only to employment on, or in, or about certain
localities where, at the same time, the employer was what the
act called an " undertaker," that is, the person whose business
was there being carried on. If we wanted to know whether a
workman was within the act, we had to ask, first, was he em-
ployed on, or in, or about a railway, or a factory, or a mine, or a
quarry, or an engineering shop,or a building of the kind mentioned
in the act; secondly, was he employed by one who was, in relation
to that railway, &c., the undertaker as defined by the act; and
thirdly, was he at the time of the accident at work on, or in, or
about that railway, &c. Unless these three conditions were
fulfilled the employment was not within the act.
The employments to which the act applied comprised rail-
ways, factories (which included docks, warehouses and steam
laundries), mines, engineering works and most kinds of buildings.
" Workman " included every person engaged in an employment
to which the act applied, whether by manual labour or otherwise,
and whether his agreement was one of service or apprenticeship
or otherwise, expressed or implied, oral or in writing.
By the Workmen's Compensation Act 1900, the benefits of
the act of 1897 were extended to agricultural labourers.
The Workmen's Compensation Act 1906 (which came into
force on the ist of July 1907) extended the right of compensation
for injuries practically to all persons in service, and also intro-
duced many provisions not contained in the acts of 1897 and
1900 (repealed). It does not apply to persons in the naval or
military service of the crown (s. 9), or persons employed other-
wise than by way of manual labour whose remuneration exceeds
EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY
359
two hundred and fifty pounds a year, or persons whose employ-
ment is of a casual nature, and who are employed otherwise than
for the purposes of the employer's trade or business, or members
of a police force, or out -workers, or members of the employer's
family dwelling in his house. But it expressely applies to seamen.
To entitle a workman engaged in ;-n employment to which
the act applies to compensation all the following conditions
must be fulfilled: (i) There must be personal injury
S2J2*"* by accident. This will exclude injury wilfully in-
flicted, unless the injury results in death or serious
and permanent disablement, but the act introduces a new
provision by making the suspension or disablement from work
or death caused by certain industrial diseases " accidents "
within the meaning of the act. The industrial diseases specified
in the jrd schedule of the act were anthrax, ankylostomi;isis,
and lead, mercury, phosphorus and arsenic poisoning or their
sequelae. But 8 of the act authorized the secretary of state
to make orders from time to time including other industrial
diseases, and such orders have embraced glass workers' cataract,
telegraphists' cramp, eczematous ulceration of the skin produced
by dust or liquid, ulceration of the mucous membrane of the nose
or mouth produced by dust, &c. To render the employer liable
the workman must either obtain acertificate of disablement or
be suspended or die by reason of the disease. If the disease has
been contracted by a gradual process, all the employers who
have employed the workman during the previous twelve months
in the employment to which the disease was due are liable to
contribute a share of the compensation to the employer primarily
liable. (2) The accident must arise out of and in the course of
the employment. In each case it will have to be determined
whether the workman was at the time of the accident in the
course of his employment, and whether the accident arose out
of the employment. It will have to be considered when and
where the particular employment began and ended. Otner
difficulties have arisen and will frequently arise when the work-
man at the time of the accident is doing something which is no
part of the work he is employed to do. So far as the decisions
have gone, they indicate that if what the workman is doing is
DO act of service, but merely for his own pleasure, or if he is im-
properly meddling with that which is no part of his work, the
accident does not arise out of and in the course of his employment ;
but if, while on his master's work, he upon an emergency acts
in his master's interest, though what he does is no part of the
work he is employed to do, the accident does arise out of and
in the course of his employment. (3) The injury must be such as
disables the workman for a period of at least one week from
earning full wages at the work at which he was employed. (4)
Notice of the accident must be given as soon as practicable after
the happening thereof, and before the workman has voluntarily
left the employment in which he was injured; and the claim for
compensation (by which is meant notice that he claims com-
pensation under the act addressed by the workman to the
employer) must be made within six months from the occurrence
of the accident or, in case of death , from the time of death. Want
of notice of the accident or defects in it are not to be a bar to
proceedings, if occasioned by mistake or other reasonable cause,
and the employer is not prejudiced thereby. But want of
notice of a claim for compensation is a bar to proceedings, unless
the employer by his conduct has estopped himself from relying
upon it. (5) An injured workman must, if so required by the
employer, submit himself to medical examination.
When these conditions are fulfilled, an employer who is within
the act has no answer unless he can prove that the injury arose
from the serious and wilful misconduct of the workman. The
precise effect of these terms is not dear; but mere negligence
is not within them.
Where the injury causes death, the right to compensation
belongs to the workman's " dependents "; that is, such of the
members of the workman's family as were at the time of the death
wholly or in part dependent upon the earnings of the workman
for their maintenance. " Members of a family " means wife or
husband, father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, step-father.
step-mother, son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, step-son,
step-daughter, brother, sister, half brother, half-sister. The act
of 1006 makes also a very remarkable departure in including
illegitimate relations in the direct line among " dependents,"
for where a workman, being the parent or grandparent of an
illegitimate child, leaves such a child dependent upon his c;irnin^
or, being an illegitimate child, leaves a parent or grandparem
so dependent upon his earnings, such child or parent is to
be included in the " members of a family."
Under the act compensation is for loss of wages only, and is,
as has been said, based upon the actual previous earnings of I In-
injured workman in the employment of the employers
for whom he is working at the time of the injury. In
case of death, if the workman leaves dependents who were wholly
dependent on his earnings, the amount recovered is a sum equal
to his earnings in the employment of the same employer during
the three years next preceding the injury, or the sum of 150,
whichever is the larger, but not exceeding 300; if the period
of his employment by the same employer has been less than three
years, then the amount of his earnings during the three ye;irs
is to be deemed to be 156 times his average weekly earnings
during the period of his actual employment under the said
employer. If the workman leaves only dependents who were
not wholly dependent, the amount recovered is such sum as may
be reasonable and proportionate to the injury to them, but not
exceeding the amount payable in the previous case. If the
workman leaves no dependents, the amount recoverable is the
reasonable expenses of his medical attendance and burial, not
exceeding 10. In case of total or partial incapacity for work
resulting from the injury, what is recovered is a weekly payment
during the incapacity after the second week not exceeding 50%
of the workman's average weekly earnings during the previous
twelve months, if he has been so long employed, but if not, then
for any less period during which he has been in the continuous
employment of the same employer; such weekly payment is
not to exceed i and in fixing it regard is to be had to the
difference between the amount of his average weekly earnings
before the accident and the average amount which he is able
to earn after the accident. Any payments, not being wages,
made by the employer in respect of the injury must also be taken
into account. The weekly payment may from time to time be
reviewed at the request of either party, upon evidence of a
change in the circumstances since the award was made, and after
six months may be redeemed by the employer by payment of a
lump sum. A workman is within the act although at the time
of the injury he has been in the employment for less than two
weeks, and although there are no actual earnings from the same
employer upon which a weekly average can be computed.
But how are the average weekly earnings which he would have
earned from the same employer to be estimated? The question
must be determined as one of fact by reference to all the circum-
stances of the particular case. Suppose the workman to be
engaged at six shillings a day and injured on the first day. If it
can be inferred that he would have remained in such employment
for a whole week, his average weekly earnings from the same em-
ployer may be taken at thirty shillings. If it can be inferred that
he would have worked one day and no more, his average weekly
earnings from the same employer may be taken at six shillings.
All questions as to liability or otherwise under the act, if not
settled by agreement, are referred to arbitration in accordam e
with a scheme prescribed by the act. Contracting out is not
permitted, save in one event: where a scheme of compensation,
benefit or insurance for the workmen of an employer has been
certified by the Registrar of Friendly Societies to be not less
favourable to the workmen and their dependents than the
provisions of the act, and that where the scheme provides for
contributions by the workmen, it confers benefits at least equal
to those contributions, in addition to the benefits to which the
workmen would have been entitled under the act, and that a
majority (to be ascertained by ballot) of the workmen to whom
the scheme is applicable are in favour of it, the employer may
contract with any of his workmen that the provisions of the
3 6
EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY
scheme shall be substituted for the act; such certificate may
not be for more than five years, and may in certain circumstances
be revoked. The act does not touch the workman's rights at
common law or under the Employers' Liability Act, but the
workman, if more than one remedy is open to him, can enforce
only one. When the circumstances create a legal liability in
some other person, e.g. where the injury is caused by the negli-
gence of a sub-contractor or of a stranger, in such cases the
employer, if required to pay compensation under the act, is
entitled to be indemnified by such other person.
Under the Factory Acts, offences, when they result in death or
bodily injury to health, may be punished by fine not exceeding
100, and the whole or any part of such fine may be applied for
the benefit of the injured person or his family, or otherwise as the
secretary of state determines. Similar provisions occur in the
Mines Acts. Any sum so applied must be taken into account in
estimating compensation under the Employers' Liability and Work-
men's Compensation Acts.
Law in Other Countries. In Germany (q.v.) there is a system
of compulsory state insurance against accidents to workmen.
rmaa The law dates from 1884, being amended from
iaay. ^.^ ^ ^^ (1885, 1886, 1887, 1900, 1903) to
embrace different classes of employment. Occupations are
grouped into (i) industry; (2) agriculture; (3) building; (4)
marine, to all of which one general law, with variations necessary
to the particular occupation in question, is applicable. There
are also special provisions for prisoners and government officials.
Practically every kind of working-man is thus included, with
the exception of domestic servants and artisans or labourers
working on their own account. All workmen and officials whose
salary does not exceed 150 a year come within the law. No
compensation is payable where an accident is caused through a
person's own gross carelessness, and where an accident has been
contributed to by a criminal act or intentional wrongdoing the
compensation may be refused or only partially allowed. With
these exceptions, compensation for injury is payable in case of
injury so long as the injured is unfit to work; in case of total
incapacity an allowance is made equal to two-thirds of the injured
person's annual earnings, in case of partial incapacity, in pro-
portion to the degree that his wage-earning capacity has been
affected. In case of death the compensation is either burial
money or an allowance to the family varying in amount from
20 to 60% of the annual earnings according to circumstances.
The provision of compensation for accidents falls entirely upon
employers, and in order to lighten the burden thus falling upon
them, and at the same time to guard against the possible in-
solvency of an individual employer, associations or self -adminis-
tering bodies of employers have been formed usually all the
employers of each particular branch of industry in a district.
These associations fix the amount of compensation after each
accident, and at the end of the year assess the amount upon the
individual employers. There is an appeal from the association
to an arbitration court, and in particularly complicated cases
there may be a further appeal to the imperial insurance depart-
ment. No allowance is paid until after the lapse of thirteen weeks
from the accident, and in the meantime the injured person is
supported from a sick fund t which the ^employers contribute
one-third, the employee contributing two-thirds. In Germany
quite twelve millions of workpeople are insured; in 1905 a sum
of nearly eight millions sterling was paid for accidents, and a
million and a half to the families of those killed in accidents.
In Austria the compulsory insurance of workmen was provided
for by a law of 1887, with subsequent amendments. Briefly,
A stria near ly every class of industrial worker is included
under the Austrian law, which is administered by
special territorial insurance institutions, each of them embracing
particular classes of industries or workers. The institutions
are managed by committees, one-third of the members of each
committee being chosen by the minister of the interior, one-third
by the employers and one-third by the workers. Compensation
is payable, in case of accidents, on a scale proportionate to the
injured person's wages during the preceding year. In case
of death, a certain sum is paid for funeral expenses, an annuity
to the widow, if one is left, equal to 20% of the deceased's annual
wages if the widow remarries, she receives a lump sum equal
to three annual payments in liquidation of the annuity an
annuity to each legitimate child equal to 15%, or, if the child
has no mother, equal to 20% of the father's wages; an annuity
to the father or mother, if dependent on the deceased for support,
equal to 20% of the annual wages. As in the English act of
1906 illegitimate children are recognized by being granted an
annuity in the case of the death of a father equal to 10% of his
wages. In no case can the total amount of the annuities exceed
50% of the deceased's annual wages. Where the accident has
resulted in total incapacity, the workman receives an annuity
equal to 60% of his wages. No allowance is paid until after
the fourth week, during which time the injured is supported by
the sick-insurance institutions. The provision for the system
is raised by contributions to the extent of nine-tenths by the
employers and one-tenth by the workers, deducted from their
wages. Instead of the German method by which an annual
payment equal to the amount disbursed is required from each
employer, he is required to provide the full amount necessary
for the complete payment of the pension, this amount being
placed to the credit of a special insurance fund.
In France a system of compulsory state insurance against
accidents was created by a law of 1898. The principal feature
in the French law is the attempt to meet the possible
insolvency of the employer by the establishment of a
special guarantee fund, created by a small addition to the
" business tax " (contribution des patenles), and, in the case
of the mining industry, by a small tax on mines.
Norway, by a law of 1894, amended in 1897 and 1899, adopted
a system of compulsory insurance modelled to a great extent
on the German system. Instead, however, of a
trade association as in Germany, or a district insurance
association as in Austria, there is a government insurance
office, in which employers have to insure their workmen.
In Denmark a law was passed in 1897 rendering employers
personally liable for the amount of compensation for accidents,
but employers may relieve themselves of this liability .
r*_ i . . Denmark.
by insuring workmen in an assurance association
approved of by the minister of the interior. This course, how-
ever, is discretionary with employers.
In Italy, although many attempts were made between 1889
and 1898 to introduce a system of compulsory insurance, it
was not until the latter year that the principle was ...
adopted. There is a National Bank for the Insurance
of Working men against Accident (Cassa Nazionale di Assicura-
zione per gli infortuni degli operaji sul lavoro), created under a
law of 1883. It has special privileges, such as exemption from
taxation and the employment of the branch offices of the state
post-office savings bank as local offices. Under the law of 1898
there is a primary obligation on the employer to insure his work-
men with the National Bank, but he may, if he prefers, insure
with other societies approved by government. Employers
employing about five hundred workmen may, instead of insuring,
establish a fund for the payment of not less than the statutory
compensation, subject to giving adequate security for the
sufficiency of the fund. Exemption from compulsory insurance
is granted to employers who have established a mutual insur-
ance association, which must comply with certain prescribed
conditions. Railway companies, also, are exempt, if they have
relief funds which conform with the provisions of the act.
In Spain an act of the 3oth of January 1900, adopted the
principle of the personal responsibility of the employer for
accidents to workmen other than those due to vis spaia
major. The act also lays down regulations for prevent-
ing accidents in dangerous trades, and releases the employer
from .personal liability on effecting adequate insurance of his
workmen with an approved insurance company.
Holland has adopted the principle of compulsory insurance
by a law of the 2nd of January 1901. An employer has to pay
the necessary premium to the State Insurance Office, or by
depositing adequate security with the State Office he may
EMPOLI EMPSON
361
undertake the payment of the prescribed compensation himself.
Or he may transfer his liability to an insurance company, pro-
fH^tt vided tnc company deposit adequate security with the
State Office. The State Insurance Office is under the
management of directors appointed by the crown, and decides
on all questions as to compensation; there is also a " Supervisory
Board " of the State Office with joint representation of employers
aad workmen. There is an appeal from the State Office to
Councils of Appeal, and from them to a National Board of Appeal.
Cntct has a law of the 2ist of February 1901, providing
(or compensation for accidents causing incapacity of more than
aBJJ u four days' duration to workmen in mines, quarries
and smelting works. The employer is exclusively
liable for such compensation and for medical expenses during
the first three months; after that time he is liable for one-half,
the other half being borne by a miners' provident fund, supported
by certain taxes on the properties affected, fines, &c.
By a law of the 5th of July 1901, Sweden adopted the principle
of the personal liability of the employer for industrial accidents.
Xwltfm _ The employer can, however, insure himself against
liability in the Royal Insurance Institute. Compensa-
tion bcomes payable after the expiration of sixty days from
the date of the accident.
Russia has a law which came into force on the ist of January
1004. Under this law employers in certain specified industries
q^n ^ are bound to indemnify workers for incapacity of
more than three days' duration due to injury arising
out of their work. Employers are exempt from liability by
insuring their workmen in insurance companies whose terms
are not less favourable than those laid down by the law.
Belgium passed a law dealing with industrial accidents on
the 24th of December 1903. It adopts the principle of the
g t ^^ m . personal liability of the employer in certain specified
trades or industries. There is a power of extension to
such other undertakings as may be declared dangerous by
the Commission on Labour Accidents. Employers may exempt
themselves from their liability by contracting for the payment
of compensation by an insurance company approved by the
government or by the National Savings and Pension Fund.
Where an employer does not so contract, he must (with certain
exemptions) contribute to a special insurance fund. The law
of 1003 also established a permanent Commission on Labour
Accidents.
Switzerland in 1809 adopted a law providing for
accident insurance, but it was defeated on referendum
in May 1900.
In the United States the law mainly depends on the doctrine
of common employment, and the extent to which this doctrine
,_ M ^ is applied varies considerably in the different states,
-".*',i more particularly as to who are and who are not to
be regarded as fellow-servants. The tendency, how-
ever, has been to increase the liability of the employer for the
negligence of a fellow -servant, and in the case of employment
on railways many states have passed laws either modifying or
abrogating the doctrine. Colorado, byalawof 1001, hasentircly
abrogated it; and Alabama, Massachusetts and New York have
laws generally similar to the English act of 1880. But the
greatest departure, due to the initiative of President Roosevelt,
has been the passing by the Federal Congress of the laws of April
33 and May 30, 1908, one giving damages to injured employees
of interstate carriers by railroad, and common carriers by railroad
in Territories, the District of Columbia, the Canal Zone and other
territory governed by Congress, and the other giving regular
wages for not more than one year to injured employees of the U.S.
government in arsenals, navy yards, construction work on rivers,
harbours and fortifications, hazardous work in connexion with
ibe Panama Canal or Reclamation Service, and in government
manufacturing establishments. These national laws, which
were intended to serve as an example to the states, specifically
provided for employers' liability and for the non-recognition of
the doctrine of common employment.
Most of the British colonial states have adopted the principle
of the English Workmen's Compensation Act of 1897, and the
various colonial acts arc closely modelled on the English act,
with more or less important variations in detail. The
New Zealand Act was passed in 1900, and amended
in igoi, 1902, ftjo.i and 1905. The act of 1905
(No. 50) fixes the minimum compensation for total or partial
disablement at 1 a week when the worker's previous remunera-
tion was not less than 30$. a week. South Australia passed a
Workmen's Compensation Act in 1900 and Western Australia
one in 1902. New South Wales passed one in 1905, and British
Columbia in 1902.
EMPOLI, a town of Tuscany, Italy, in the province of Florence,
from which it is 20 m. W. by S. by rail. Pop. (1901) 7005 (town);
20,301 (commune). It is situated 89 ft. above sea-level, to the
S. of the Arno. The principal church, the Collegiata, or l'ic\ <
di S. Andrea, founded in 1093, still preserves the lower part of the
original arcaded facade in black, white and coloured marble.
The works of art which it once contained are most of them
preserved in a gallery close by. Some of the other churches
contain interesting works of art. The principal square is sur-
rounded by old houses with arcades. The painter Jacopo
Chimenti (Jacopo da Empoli), 1554-1640, was born here.
Empoli is on the main railway line from Florence to Pisa, and is
the point of divergence of a line to Siena.
EMPORIA, a city and the county-scat of Lyon county,
Kansas, U.S.A., on the Neosho river, about 60 m. S.W. of
Topcka. Pop. (1890) 7551; (1900) 8223, of whom 686 were
foreign-born and 663 were negroes; (1910 U.S. census) 9058.
It is served by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa F6, and the
Missouri, Kansas & Texas railways. The city has a Carnegie
library, and is the seat of the state normal school and of the
College of Emporia (Presbyterian; 1883). Emporia's industrial
interests are mainly centred in commerce with the surrounding
farming region; but there are small flour mills, machine shops,
foundries and other manufacturing establishments, in 1905
the value of the factory product was$57i,6oi. The municipality
owns and operates the water-works and the electric-lighting
plant. Emporia was settled in 1856 and was chartered as a city
in 1870. The Emporia Gazette, established in 1890, was pur-
chased in 1894 by William Allen White (b. 1868), a native of
Emporia, who took over the editorship and made a great stir in
1896 by his editorial entitled " What's the matter with
Kansas? "; he also wrote several volumes of excellent short
stories, particularly The Court of Boyville (1889), Stratagems and
Spoils (1901) and In Our Town (1906).
EMPORIUM (a Latin adaptation of the Gr. ifnrbpioif, from
kv, in, and stem of iroptixaOcu, to travel for purpose of trade)
a trade-centre such as a commercial city, to which buyers and
dealers resort for transaction of business from all parts of the
world. The word is often applied to a large shop.
EMPSON, SIR RICHARD (d. 1510), minister of Henry VII.,
king of England, was a son of Peter Empson, an influential
inhabitant of Towcester. Educated as a lawyer he soon attained
considerable success in his profession, and in 1491 was one of the
members of parliament for Northamptonshire and speaker of the
House of Commons. Early in the reign of Henry VII. he became
associated with Edmund Dudley (q.v.) in carrying out the king's
rigorous and arbitrary system of taxation, and in consequence-
he became very unpopular. Retaining the royal favour, how-
ever, he was made a knight in 1504, and was soon high steward
of the university of Cambridge, and chancellor of the duchy of
Lancaster; but his official career ended with Henry's death in
April 1 509. Thrown into prison' by order of the new king,
Henry VIII., he was charged, like Dudley, with the crime of
constructive treason, and was convicted at Northampton in
October 1509. His attainder by the parliament followed, and
he was beheaded on the 1 7th or i8th of August 1510. Empson
left, so far as is known, a family of two sons and four daughters,
and about 1513 his estates were restored to his elder son, Thomas.
See Francis Bacon, History of Henry VII., edited by T. R. Lumby
(Cambridge, 1881); and J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry VI If..
edited by J. Gainlncr (London, 1884).
362
EMPYEMA ENAMEL
EMPYEMA (from Gr. kv, within, and irvov, pus), a term in
medicine applied to an accumulation of purulent fluid within the
cavity of the pleura (see LUNG: Surgery).
EMPYREAN (from the Med. Lat. empyreus, an adaptation
of the Gr. fpwvpos, in or on the fire, TrOp), 'the place in the
highest heaven, which in ancient cosmologies was supposed to
be occupied by the element of fire. It was thus used as a name
for the firmament, and inChristian literatureforthedwelling-place
of God and the blessed, and as the source of light. The word
is used both as a substantive and as an adjective. Having the
same Greek origin are the scientific words " empyreuma " and
" empyreumatic," applied to the characteristic smell of burning
or charring vegetable or animal matter.
EMS, a river of Germany, rising on the south slope of the
Teutoburger Wald, at an altitude of 3 58 ft ., and flowing generally
north-west and north through Westphalia and Hanover to the
east side of the Dollart, immediately south of Emden. After
passing through the Dollart the navigable stream bifurcates,
the eastern Ems going to the east, and the western Ems to the
west, of the island of Borkum to the North Sea. Length, 200 m.
Between 1892 and 1899 the river was canalized along its right
bank for a distance of 43 m. At the same time, and as part of
the same general plan, a canal, the DORTMUND-EMS CANAL,
was dug to connect the river (from Miinster) with Herne in the
Westphalian coal-field. At Henrichenburg a branch from Herne
(5 m. long) connects with another branch from Dortmund (io| m.
long). Another branch, from Olfen (north of Dortmund),
connects with Duisburg, and so with the Rhine. There is,
however, a difference in elevation of 46 ft. between the two
branches first named, and vessels are transferred from the one
to the other by means of a huge lift. The canal, which was
constructed to carry small steamers and boats up to 220 ft. in
length and 750 tons burden, measures 169 m. in length, of which
io8| m. were actually dug, and cost altogether 3,728,750. The
surface width throughout is 982 ft., the bottom width 59 ft.,
and the depth 8 ft.
See Victor Kurs, " Die kiinstlichen Wasserstrassen des deutschen
Reichs," in Geog. Zeitschrift (1898), pp. 601-617 and 665-694; and
Deutsche Rundschau/. Geog. und Stat. (1898), pp. 130-131.
EMS, a town and watering-place of Germany, in the Prussian
province of Hesse-Nassau, romantically situated on both banks
of the Lahn, in a valley surrounded by wooded mountains and
vine-clad hills, 1 1 m. E. from Coblenz on the railway to Cassel
and Berlin. Pop. 6500. It has two Evangelical, a Roman
Catholic, an English and a Russian church. There is some
mining industry (silver and lead). Ems is one of the most
delightful and fashionable watering-places of Europe. Its
waters hot alkaline springs about twenty in number are
used both for drinking and bathing, and are efficacious in chronic
nervous disorders, feminine complaints and affections of the liver
and respiratory organs. On the right bank of the river lies the
Kursaal with pretty gardens. A stone let into the promenade
close by marks the spot where, on the i3th of July 1870, King
William of Prussia had the famous interview with the French
ambassador Count Benedetti (q.v.) which resulted in the war
of 1870-1871. A funicular railway runs up to the Malberg
(1000 ft.), where is a sanatorium and whence extensive views
are obtained over the Rhine valley. Ems is largely frequented in
the summer months by visitors from all parts of the world
the numbers amounting to about 11,000 annually and many
handsome villas have been erected for their accommodation.
In August 1786 Ems was the scene of the conference of the
delegates of the four German archbishops, known as the congress
of Ems, which issued (August 25) in the famous joint pronounce-
ment, known as the Punctation of Ems, against the interference
of the papacy in the affairs of the Catholic Church in Germany
(see FEBRONIANISM).
See Vogler, Ems, seine Heilquellen, Kureinrichtungen, &c. (Ems,
1888) ; and Hess, Zur Geschichle der Stadt Ems (Ems, 1895).
EMSER, JEROME, or HIERONYMUS (1477-1527), antagonist
of Luther, was born of a good family at Ulm on the zoth of
March 1477. He studied Greek at Tubingen and jurisprudence
at Basel, and after acting for three years as chaplain and secretary
to Raymond Peraudi, cardinal of Gurk, he began lecturing on
classics in 1504 at Erfurt, where Luther may have been among
his audience. In the same year he became secretary to Duke
George of Albertine Saxony, who, unlike his cousin Frederick
the Wise, the elector of Ernestine Saxony, remained the stanchest
defender of Roman Catholicism among the princes of northern
Germany. Duke George at this time was bent on securing the
canonization of Bishop Benno of Meissen, and at his instance
Emser travelled through Saxony and Bohemia in search of
materials for a life of Benno, which he subsequently published
in German and Latin. In pursuit of the same object he made
an unsuccessful visit to Rome in 1510. Meanwhile he had also
been lecturing on classics at Leipzig, but gradually turned his
attention to theology and canon law. A prebend at Dresden
(1509) and another at Meissen, which he obtained through
Duke George's influence, gave him means and leisure to pursue
his studies.
At first Emser was on the side of the reformers, but like his
patron he desired a practical reformation of the clergy without
any doctrinal breach with the past or the church; and his
liberal sympathies were mainly humanistic, like those of Erasmus
and others who parted company with Luther after 1519. As
late as that year Luther referred to him as " Emser noster," but
the disputation at Leipzig in that year completed the breach
between them. Emser warned his Bohemian friends against
Luther, and Luther retorted with an attack on Emser which
outdid in scurrility all his polemical writings. Emser, who was
further embittered by an attack of the Leipzig students, imitated
Luther's violence, and asserted that Luther's whole crusade
originated in nothing more than enmity to the Dominicans.
Luther's reply was to burn Eraser's books along with Leo X.'s
bull of excommunication.
Emser next, in 1521, published an attack on Luther's " Appeal
to the German Nobility," and eight works followed from his
pen in the controversy, in which he defended the Roman doctrine
of the Mass and the primacy of the pope. At Duke George's
instance he prepared, in 1523, a German translation of Henry
VIII. 's " Assertio Septem Sacramentorum contra Lutherum,"
and criticized Luther's " New Testament." He also entered into a
controversy with Zwingli. He took an active part in organizing
a reformed Roman Catholic Church in Germany, and in 1527
published a German version of the New Testament as a counter-
blast to Luther's. He died on the 8th of November in that year
and was buried at Dresden.
Emser was a vigorous controversialist, and next to Eck the
most eminent of the German divines who stood by the old church.
But he was hardly a great scholar; the errors he detected in
Luther's New Testament were for the most part legitimate
variations from the Vulgate, and his own version is merely
Luther's adapted to Vulgate requirements.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Waldau, Nachricht von Hierpnymus Emsers
Leben und Schriften (Anspach, 1783); Kawerau, Hieronymus Emser
(Halle, 1898); Akten und Briefe zur Kirchenpolitik Herzog Georgs
von Sachsen (Leipzig, 1905) ; Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vi.
96-98 (1877). All histories of the Reformation in Germany contain
notices of Emser; see especially Friedensburg, Beitrdge zum Brief-
wechsel der katholischen Gelehrten Deutschlands im Reformations-
zeitalter. (A. F. P.)
ENAMEL (formerly " amel," derived through the Fr. amail,
esmal, esmail, from a Latin word smaltum, first found in a gth-
century life of Leo IV.), a term, strictly speaking, given to the
hard vitreous compound, which is " fused " upon the surface
of metallic objects either for the purpose of decoration or
utility. This compound is a form of glass made of silica, minium
and potash, which is stained by the chemical combination of
various metallic oxides whilst in a melted condition in the
crucible. This strict application of the term was widened to
signify the metal object coated with enamel, so that to-day the
term " an enamel " generally implies a work of art in enamel
upon metal. The composition of the substance enamel which
is used upon metal does not vary to any great extent from the
enamels employed upon pottery and faience. But they differ
in this respect, that the pottery enamel is usually applied to the
ENAMEL
" biscuit " surface of the ware in a raw state; that is, the com-
pound has not been previously " run down " or vitrified in the
crucible by heat, as is the case with enamelling upon metal,
although, in most of the enamelled iron advertisement tablets,
the enamel is in the raw state and is treated in a similar manner
to that employed upon pottery.
Examination of the enamels upon brick of the Assyrians shows
that they were applied unvitrified. It was upon pottery and
brick that the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians achieved their
greatest work in enamelling. For as yet no work of such magnifi-
cence as the great enamelled walls of the palace of Rameses III.
at Tell el-Yehudia in the Delta of the Nile, or the palace of
Nimrod in Babylon, has been discovered upon metal of any kind.
But there were gold ornaments and jewelry enamelled of noble
design in opaque turquoise, cobalt, emerald green and purple,
some of which can be seen at the British Museum and the Louvre.
An example is shown in Plate I. fig. 3.
In the subsequent Greek and Roman civilizations enamel
was also applied to articles of personal adornment. Many
pieces of jewelry, exquisite in workmanship, have been found.
But a greater application was made of it by the Greek sculptors
in the 4th and $th centuries B.C. For we find, in many instances,
that not only were the eyes made of enamel which (artistically
speaking) is a somewhat doubtful manner of employing it, as
in the fine bronze head found at Anticythcra (Cerigotto) in 1902,
but in the colossal figure of Zeus for the temple at Olympia
made by Pheidias the gold drapery was gorgeously enamelled
with figures and flowers. This wonderful work by the greatest
sculptor the world has ever seen was destroyed, as so many
priceless works of art in enamel have been: doubtless on account
of the precious metal upon which they were made. It was in all
probability the crowning triumph of a long series of essays in
this material. The art of ancient Rome lacked the inspiration
of Greece, being mainly confined to copying Greek forms and
style, and in the case of enamelling it did not depart from this
attitude. But the Roman and Etruscan glass has many beautiful
qualities of form and colour that do not seem entirely borrowed,
and the enamel work upon them so far as we can discern is of
graceful design and rich colour. No doubt, were it not, as has
been remarked, for the fact that enamelling was generally done
upon gold and silver, there would still be many works to testify
to the art of that period. Such as there are, however, show a
rare appreciation of enamel as a beautiful material. With the
decline of this civilization the art of enamelling probably died
out. For it has ever been one of those exquisite arts which exist
only under the sunshine of an opulent luxurious time or sheltered
from the rude winds of a poorer age by the affluence of patrons.
The next time we hear of it is in an oft -quoted passage (c. A.D.
240) from the writings of the great sophist Phi lost rat us. who
says (I cones, i. 28): " It is said that the barbarians in the ocean
pour these colours into bronze moulds, that the colours become
as hard as stone, preserving the designs," a more or less in-
accurate description of the process of champlevi. This has been
understood (from an interpretation given to a passage in the
commentary on it by Olearius) to refer to the Celts of the
British Islands. It also goes to prove that enamelling was not
practised at this day in Greece. We have no British enamels to
show so early as this, but belonging to a later period, from the
6th to the Qth century, a number of the finest gold and bronze
ornaments, horse trappings, shields, fibulae and ciboria have been
discovered of Celtic and Saxon make. The Saxon work has
nothing to show so exquisitely wrought as that found in Ireland,
where one or two pieces are to be seen now in the Dublin Museum,
notably the Ardagh chalice and some gold brooches. In the
chalice the enamel is of a minute inlaid character, and appears
to have been made first in the form of a multi-colour bead,
which was fused to the surface of its setting, and then polished
down. Many of the pieces seem to have been made after this
fashion, which does not speak very highly of the technical
knowledge of enamelling, but it is none the less true enamelling
of an elementary character. The shield at the British Museum
has an inlay of red enamel which is remarkable in its quality.
For centuries such a fine opaque red has not been discovered.
An example of Irish work is shown in Plate II. fig. 10.
From Ireland the art was transferred to Byzantium, which
is to be seen by the close resemblance of method, style, design
and colour. The style and design changed in course of time,
but the craft remained. It was at Byzantium that it flourished
for several centuries.
The finest work we know of belonging to this period is the
Pala d'Oro at St Mark's, Venice, believed to have been brought
from Constantinople to Venice about 1105. This magnificent
altar-piece is in cloisonnt enamel. A typical example is the
ciborium and chalice belonging to the South Kensington loan
collection. The design entirely covers the whole of the surface
in one rich mass composed of circular or vesica-shapcd medallions
filled with sacred subjects and foliated scrolls. These are
engraved and enamelled, and the metal bands of the scrolls
and figures are engraved and gilt. The characteristic quality
of the colour scheme is that it is composed almost wholly of
primaries. Red, blue and yellow predominate, with a little
white and black. Occasionally the secondaries, green and purple,
arc used, but through the whole period of Byzantine enamelling
there is a total absence of what to-day is termed " subtle colour-
ing." The arrangement of the enamels is also distinct, in that
Fio. i. Byzantine Cloispnnd Cross (c. nth century) (South
Kensington Museum).
the divisions of the colours are not always made by the cloison,
but are frequently laid in side by side without the adjoining
colours mingling or running together whilst being melted.
For instance, in a leaf pattern or in the drapery, the dress may
be cobalt, heightened with turquoise or green. Thus it is interest-
ing to observe that the artist employed the metal dividing lines
frequently for the sake of aesthetic result, and was not much
hampered by technical difficulties. This was the rule when
opaque enamels were used. It is also worthy of remark that
these opaque enamels differ from those in common use to-day,
in that they are not nearly so opaque. This quality, together
with a dull, instead of a highly polished surface, gives a much
softer appearance to the enamels. Again, the whole tone of the
enamels is darker and richer. Many examples of Byzantine
work (see fig. i.) arc to be seen in the public and private art
collections throughout Europe. They are principally upon
ecclesiastical objects, missal covers, croziers, chalices, ciboria,
pyx, candlesticks, crosses and tabernacles. In most instances
the enamels are made in separate little plates rudely fastened
with nails, screws or rivets to a metal or wooden foundation.
Theophilus, a monk of the I3th century, describes the process
of enamelling as it was understood by the Byzantines of his time,
which probably differed but little from earlier methods. The
design and drawing of the figures in Byzantine enamels is similar
to the mosaic and carving. The figures are treated entirely
as decorations, with scarcely ever the least semblance of expres-
sion, although here and there an intention of piety or sorrow
is to be descried through the awkward postures in which they
364
ENAMEL
are placed. In spite of this, the sense of decorative design, the
simplicity of conception, the strength of the general character,
and the richness of the colour, places this period as one of the
finest which the art of enamelling has seen, and it leads us to
lay stress upon the principle that the simplest methods in design
and manipulation attain a higher end than those which are
elaborate and intricate. It might be asserted with truth that
this style never arrived at the degree of delicacy and refinement
of later styles. But the refinement was often at the expense of
higher qualities.
The next great application of these kinds of enamelling was
at Cologne, for there we find not only the renowned work of
Nicolas of Verdun, the altar front at Klosterneuberg, which
consists of fifty plates in champleve enamel, but in that Rhenish
province there are many shrines of magnificent conception.
From here the secrets of the craft were taken to Limoges, where
the greatest activity was displayed, as numerous examples are
found throughout England, France and Spain, which no doubt
were made there (see Plate I. fig. 6.) But no new method or
distinct advance is to be noticed, during these successive revivals
at Byzantium, Cologne or Limoges, and it is to early 14th-
century Italy that we owe one of the most beautiful develop-
ments, that of the process subsequently called basse-taille, which
signifies a low-cut relief upon which transparent enamel is fused.
In this process enamelling passed from a decorative to a fine
art. For it demanded the highest knowledge of an artist with
the consummate skill of both sculptor and enameller. Witness
the superb gold cup, called the King's Cup, now in the British
Museum, and the silver cup at King's Lynn. The first is in an
excellent state of preservation, as it is upon gold, but the latter,
like most of the ancient enamelling upon silver, has lost most
of its enamel. This was due as the present writer believes
after much experiment to the impurity of the silver employed.
The King's Cup is one of the finest works in enamelling extant.
It consists of a gold cup and cover, hammered out of pure gold;
and around the bowl, base and cover there are bands of figures,
illustrating the scenes from the life of St Agnes. The hands and
faces are of pale jasper, which over the carved gold gives a
beautiful flesh tone. The draperies are in most resplendent
ruby, sapphire, emerald, ivory, black and orange. The stem
was subsequently altered by an additional piece inserted and
enamelled with Tudor roses. It is a work of the i3th century,
and belonged to Jean, due de Berry, who gave it to his nephew,
Charles VI. of France, in 1391. It afterwards came into the
possession of the kings of England, from Henry VI. to James I.,
who gave it to Don Juan Velasco, constable of Castile. It was
purchased by subscription with the aid of ihe treasury for the
British Museum.
Other well-known pieces are the silver horn in the possession
of the marquess of Aylesbury, and the crozier of William of
Wykeham at New College, Oxford. The discovery about the
same time of the process called plique-d-jour forms another most
interesting and beautiful development. Owing to the difficulty
of its manufacture and its extreme fragility there are very few
examples left. One of the finest specimens is now at the Victoria
and Albert Museum, South Kensington. It is in the form of two
bands of emerald green enamel which decorate a silver beaker.
They are in the form of little stained glass windows, the cloisons
forming (as it were) the leads. These fine cloisons and shapes
are most correct in form, and the whole piece shows a perfection
of craftsmanship rarely equalled.
The end of the isth century saw a development in enamelling
which was not only remarkable, but revolutionary in its method.
For until then the whole theory of enamelling had been that it
relied upon the enclosing edges of the metal or the cloison to
hold it to the metal ground and in part to preserve it in the shape
of the pattern, much in the same way as a setting holds a stone
or a jewel. All the enamel before this date had been sunk into
cells or cloisons. Two discoveries were made; first, that
enamels could be made which require no enclosing ribbon of
metal, but that merely the enamel should be fused on both sides
of the metal object ; secondly, that after an enamel had been fused
to a surface of metal, another could be superimposed and fused
to the first layer without any danger of separation from each
or from the metal ground. It is true that such processes had
been employed upon glass on which enamel had been applied,
as well as upon pottery; and it is probably due to the influence
of a knowledge of both enamelling upon metal and upon glass
or pottery that the discovery was made.
In most of these enamel paintings the subject was laid on
with a white enamel upon a dark ground. The white was
modulated; so that possessing a slight degree of translucency,
it was grey in the thin parts and white in the thick. Thus was
obtained a certain amount of light and shade. This gave the
process called grisaille. But strange to say, it was not until
a later period that this was practised alone, and then the model-
ling of the figures and draperies became very elaborate. At
first it was only done in a slight degree, just sufficiently to give
expression and to add to the richness of the form. For the
enamellers were thinking of a plate upon which to put their
wonderful colours, and not only of form. The painting in
white was therefore invariably coloured with enamels. Probably
the earliest painter in enamel was Nardon Penicaud, many of
whose works (one of them, dated 1503, is in the Cluny Museum)
have been preserved with great care. He had many followers,
the most distinguished of whom was Leonard Limosin (i.e. of
Limoges). He excelled in portraiture. Examples of his work
(between 1532 and 1574) are to be found in most of the larger
public and private collections. Leonard Limosin and his
Limoges contemporaries were very largely addicted to the
employment of foil, which became too largely used, thus spoiling
their otherwise fine serious work.
The family of Jean Penicaud, Jean Court de Vigier, Pierre
Raymond and Pierre Courteys were all great names of artists
who excelled in the grisaille process. Grisaille is similar to
pdte-sur-pdte in pottery, and depends for its attractive quality
entirely upon form and composition. No comparison should
be made with enamels in colour, for they occupy a different
category similar to cameo.
The casket shown in Plate II. fig. 9 is by Jean Penicaud.
It is a fine example of the enamelling in this style, very beautiful
in colour. The hands and faces are in opaque white enamel;
the draperies, garlands and flowers are in transparent green,
turquoise blue, purple and cobalt over foil. The background
is in transparent violet over white enamel ground, which is
semi with gold stars. The draperies are also heightened with
gold.
One of the most marvellous pieces of brilliant craft is the
missal cover (Plate I. fig. 5) at the South Kensington Museum,
said to have belonged to Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles I.
The subjects are the " Creation of Adam and Eve " and the
" Fountain of Youth." It is about 4 in. by 7 when opened
out. The enamel is encrusted upon the figures, ornament and
flowers which are beaten up in pure gold into high relief. The
extraordinary minuteness and skill of handling, and the extreme
brilliancy of the enamels, which are as brilliant to-day as on the
day they were made, together form one of the unique specimens
of art craftsmanship of the world. To the subdued taste of
to-day, however, the effect is tawdry. The conception and
design are also alike unworthy of the execution.
Since the Assyrian and Egyptian civilizations, there has
been a succession of luxurious developments followed by lapses
into the decline and death of the art of enamelling upon metals.
In each revival there has been something added to that which
was known and practised before. The last revival took place
five hundred years ago, accompanying the rebirth of learning
and the arts; but after flourishing for over a century, the art
gradually fell into disuse, and remained so until the recent
revival and further development. The development consists,
first, in the more complete knowledge of the technical processes,
following upon the great advances which science has made;
and secondly, in a finer and more subtly artistic treatment of
them. The advance in technical knowledge comprises greater
facility and perfection in the production of the substance enamel,
ENAMELS
PLATE 1.
Fi... 3. GRAECO-BACTRIAN GOLD AMULET. SHOWING
THE GOLD STRIP FOR SETTING STONES, WHICH
EXEMPLIFIES THE MANNER IN WHICH THE
CLOISONS ARE SOLDERED FOR CLOISONNE.
FIG. 6. BOX IN TOPPER PARTLY ENAMELLED IN
OPAgi E ENAMELS CHAM PLEVE WITH COATS OF
ARMS 'i.vhrcntury, English or German. South Kensing-
ton Museum.)
DC.**
FIG. 4. CHINESE CLOISONNE BOWL.
FIG. 5. MISSAL COVER, ENCRUSTED ENAMEL.
(French, I7th century. Debased style.)
FIG. 7 PRAYER-BOOK COVER IN ENAMEL AND SILVER
GILT, SET WITH RUBIES AND EMERALDS, BY
ALEXANDER FISHER. (Size, closed, 4X3 in.)
PLATE II.
ENAMELS
FIG. 8. OVERMANTEL (24X18^ in.) IN CHAMPLEVE ENAMEL ON SILVER. SUBJECT: THE GARDEN OF THE SOUL
BY ALEXANDER FISHER.
FIG. io. CELTIC CHAMP-
LEVE ENAMELLED
CROZIER.
FIG. 9. PAINTED ENAMEL CASKET BY JEAN PENICAUD. (i6th century.) (Irish, gth century.)
ENAMEL
365
and it* subsequent application to metal surfaces; more intimate
knowledge of mi-tub and their alloys to which it is applied, and
greater ease in obtaining them from the metalliferous ores and
reducing them to suitable dimensions and surfaces. For instance,
it is now a simple matter to obtain perfectly pure copper by
means of electricity. Again, formerly a flat sheet of metal was
obtained by hammering, which involved an infinite amount
of hard labour, whereas it is accomplished to-day with ease by
means of flatting and rolling mills: /.<. after the metal has been
obtained from the ore in the form of an ingot, it is stretched
equally to any degree of thinness by steel rollers. Further,
the furnaces have been greatly improved by the introduction
of gas and electricity as the heating power, instead of the wood
or charcoal employed.
In the manufacture of the substance enamel a much greater
advance has been made, for whereas the colours, and conse-
quently the schemes of colour, were extremely limited, we now
possess an infinite gradation in the colours, as well as the trans-
parency and opacity, the hardness and softness of enamels.
There are only two colours which cannot yet be obtained;
these are opaque vermilion and lemon yellow in a vitrified
state. Many of the colours we now employ were not known by
enamellers such as Leonard Limosin. Our enamels are also
perfect in purity, brilliancy and durability, qualities which are
largely due to the perfect knowledge of the proportion of parts
composing an enamel and their complete combination. It is this
complete combination, together with the absence of any de-
structible matter, which gives the enamel its lasting quality.
The base of enamel is a clear, colourless, transparent vitreous
compound called flux, which is composed of silica, minium and
potash. This flux or base termed fondant in France is
coloured by the addition of oxides of metals while in a state of
fusion, which stain the flux throughout its mass. Enamels
are either hard or soft, according to the proportion of the silica
to the other parts in its composition. They are termed hard
when the temperature required to fuse them is very high. The
harder the enamel the less liable is it to be affected by atmo-
spheric agencies, which in soft enamels produce a decomposition
of the surface first and ultimately of the whole enamel. It is
therefore advisable to use hard enamels in all cases. This
involves the employment of pure or almost pure metals for
the plates, which are in most respects the best to receive and
retain the enamel. For if there is an excess of alloy, either the
metal will possibly melt before the enamel is fused or afterwards
they will part company. To the inferior quality of old silver
may be attributed the fact that in all cases the enamel has
flown off it; if it has not yet wholly disappeared it will scale
off in time. It is therefore essential that metals should be pure
and the enamels hard. It is also noteworthy that enamels
composed of a great amount of soda or potash, as compared
with those wherein red lead is in greater proportion, are more
liable to crack and have less cohesion to the metals. It is better
not to use silver as a base, although it is capable of reflecting a
higher and more brilliant white light than any other metal.
Fine gold and pure copper as thin as possible are the best metals
upon which to enamel. If silver is to be used, it should be fine
silver, treated in the methods called champlrcf and cloisonne.
The brilliancy of the substance enamel depends upon the
perfect combination and proportion of its component parts.
The intimacy of the combination depends upon an equal tem-
perature being maintained throughout its fusion in the crucible.
For this purpose it is better to obtain a flux which has been
already fused and most carefully prepared, and afterwards to
add the colouring oxides, which stain it dark or light according
to the amount of oxide introduced. Many of the enamels are
changed in colour by the difference of the proportion of the parts
composing the flux, rather than by the change of the oxides.
For instance, turquoise blue is obtained from the black oxide
of copper by using a comparatively large proportion of carbonate
of soda, and a yellow green from the same oxide by increasing
the proportionate amount of the red lead. All transparent
enamels are made- opaque by the addition of calx, which is a
mixture of tin and lead calcined. White enamel is made by the
addition of stannic and arsenious acids to the flux. The amount
of acid regulates the density or opacity of the enamel.
To elucidate the development which has occurred, it will be
luvcssary to describe some of the processes. After the enamel
has been procured in the lump, the next stage in the process,
common to all methods of enamelling, is to pulverize it. To do
this properly the enamel must first be placed in an agate mortar
and covered with water; next, with a wooden mallet a number
of sharp blows must be given to a pestle held vertically over the
enamel, to break it; then holding the mortar firmly in the left
hand, the pestle must be rotated with the right, with as much
pressure as possible on the enamel, grinding it until the particles
are reduced to a fine grain. The powder is then subjected to a
series of washings in distilled water, until all the floury particles
are removed. After this the metal is cleaned by immersion in
acid and water. For copper, nitric acid is used; for silver,
sulphuric, and for gold hydrochloric acid. All trace of acid is
then removed, first by scratching with a brush and water, and
finally by drying in warm oak sawdust. After this the pulverized
enamel is carefully and evenly spread over those parts of the
metal designed to receive it, in sufficient thickness just to cover
them and no more. The piece is then dried in front of the furnace,
and when dry is placed gently on a fire-clay or iron planche, and
introduced carefully into the muffle of the furnace, which is
heated to a bright pale red. It is now attentively watched until
the enamel shines all over, when it is withdrawn from the furnace.
The firing of enamel, unlike that of glass or pottery, takes only
a few minutes, and in nearly all processes no annealing is required.
The following are the different modes of enamelling: champlevt,
cloisonnf, basse-taille, plique-d-jour, painted enamel, encrusted,
and miniature-painted. These processes were known at successive
periods of ancient art in the order in which they are named.
To-day they are known in their entirety. Each has been largely
developed and improved. No new method has been discovered,
although variations have been introduced into all. The most
important are those connected with painted enamels, encrusted
enamels and plique-d-jour.
Champlevt enamelling is done by cutting away troughs or cells
in the plate, leaving a metal line raised between them, which
forms the outline of the design. In these cells the pulverized
enamel is laid and then fused; afterwards it is filed with a
corundum file, then smoothed with a pumice stone and polished
by means of crocus powder and rouge. An example is shown
in Plate II. fig. 8.
In cloisonne enamel, upon a metal plate or shape, thin metal
strips are bent to the outline of the pattern, then fixed by silver
solder or by the enamel itself. These strips form a raised outline,
giving cells as in the case of champlevt. The rest of the process
is identical with that of champlevt enamelling. An example is
shown in Plate I. fig. 4.
The basse-taille process is also a combination of metal work
in the form of engraving, carving and enamelling. The metal,
either silver or gold, is engraved with a design, and then carved
into a bas-relief (below the general surface of the metal like an
Egyptian bas-relief) so that when the enamel is fused it is level
with the uncarved parts of the design enamel, and the design
shows through the transparent enamel.
Painted enamels are different from any of these processes both
in method and in result. The metal in this case is either copper,
silver or gold, but usually copper. It is cut with shears into a
plate of the size required, and slightly domed with a burnisher
or hammer, after which it is cleaned by acid and water. Then
the enamel is laid equally over the whole surface both back and
front, and afterwards " fired." The first coat of enamel being
fixed, the design is carried out, first by laying it in white enamel
or any other which is opaque and most advantageous for sub-
sequent coloration:
In the case of a grisaille painted enamel the white is mixed with
water or turpentine, or spike oil of lavender, or essential oil of
petroleum (according to the taste of the artist) and the white is
painted thickly in the light parts and thinly in the grey ones,
3 66
ENAMEL
whereby a slight sense of relief is obtained and a great degree of
light and shade.
In coloured painted enamels the white is coloured by transparent
enamels spread over the grisaille treatment, parts of which when
fired are heightened by touches of gold, usually painted in lines.
Other parts can be made more brilliant by the use of foil, over
which the transparent enamels are placed and then fired. An
example is shown in Plate I. fig. 7.
Enamels by the plique-d-jour method might be best described
as translucent cloisonni enamels; for they are similar to cloisonne,
except that the ground upon which they are fired is removed,
thus making them transparent like stained glass.
Two new processes have been the subject of the present
writer's study and experiment for several years, which he has
lately brought to fruition. The first is an inlay of transparent
enamels similar to plique-d-jour without cloisons to divide the
colours. For if enamels do not run together whilst in a melted
state, as is seen in the case of painted and basse-taille enamels,
there should be no necessity for it in this process. The result
is a clear transparent subject in colour. The other process
consists of a coloured enamel relief. It resembles the della
Robbia relief, with this important difference, that the colour
of the enamel by its nature permeates the whole depth of the
relief, whereas in the della Robbia ware it is only on the surface.
It also has a fresco surface, instead of one highly glazed. The
quality of the enamel is as rare and unlike anything else as it is
beautiful. It is in point of fact the only coloured sculpture in
which the whole of its parts are one solid homogeneous mass,
and through which the colour is one with the substance and is
not applied. The process consists of the shapes of the various
parts of the relief being selected for the different enamels, and
these enamels melted together, in the mould of the relief, which
is finished with lapidary's tools.
Miniature enamel painting is not true enamelling, for after
the white enamel is fired upon the gold plate, the colours used
are not vitreous compounds not enamels in fact as is the case
in any other form of metal enamelling; but they are either raw
oxides or other forms of metal, with a little flux added, not
combined. These colours are painted on the white enamel, and
afterwards made to adhere to the surface by partially fusing
the enamel, which when in a state of partial fusion becomes
viscous.
There are many of these so-called enamels to-day, which are
much easier of accomplishment than the true enamel, but they
possess none of the beautiful quality of the latter. It is most
apparent when parts of a work are true enamels and parts are
done in the manner described above. These enamel paintings
on enamel are afterwards coated over with a transparent flux,
which gives them a surface of enamel. Many are done in this
way for the market.
All these methods were used formerly, before the present
revival; but they were not so completely understood or carried
so far as they are to-day. Nor were the whole methods practised
by any artist as they are now. The greatest advance has been
in painted enamels. This process requires that both sides of the
metal plate shall be covered with enamel; for this reason the
plate is made convex on the top, so that the concave side does
not touch the planche on which it is supported for firing, but
rests on its edges throughout. There are several reasons why
these plates are bombe, the principal one being that in the firing
they resist the tendency to warp and curl up at the edges as a
flat thin plate would do. Further, the enamel having been fused
to both sides is not so liable to crack or to splint in subsequent
firings. This is most important, for otherwise the white which
is placed on afterwards would be a network of cracks. The
manner of firing has also to do with this, but not nearly so much
as the preliminary care and mechanical perfection with which
a plate is prepared. Nearly all the old enamels are seen to be
cracked in the white if minutely examined. To obviate this the
following points must be observed: The plate must be of an
excellent quality of metal, equal in thickness throughout, and
perfectly regular in shape. It must be arched equally from end
to end. The first coat of enamel must be of a perfectly regular
equal thickness on both sides, entirely covering the plate. What-
ever the medium employed in painting the white on to the
enamel, it must be completely evaporated before the plate is
placed in the furnace. The furnace must be heated to a bright
red heat, and the planche must be red-hot before being taken
out for the enamel to be placed upon it, and then quickly returned
to the furnace and the muffle door shut tight so as to allow no
draught of cool air to enter it. Then as soon as it has begun to
fuse, which if a small piece, it would do in a minute or so, the
muffle door is slightly opened to afford a view of it. As soon as
it shines all over its surface, it is withdrawn from the muffle.
The method of laying a white upon the enamel ground is a
matter of individual taste, so far as the medium is concerned.
By some, pure distilled water is preferred to any other liquid
for mixing the enamel. Otherwise, turpentine and the fat oil
of turpentine, as well as spike oil of lavender. The oil mixture
takes longer to dry, and thus gives a greater chance for model-
ling into fine shades than the water. But it has several draw-
backs. Firstly, there is the difficulty of drying the oil out a
process which takes some time and increases the risk of cracking
in the drying process; and secondly, the enamel is not so fresh
FIG. 2. Modern French plique-a-jour bowl, by Fernand Thesmar.
and clear after it is fired as when pure water has been employed.
Besides there is a great difference in the result; the water
involves a quick, decided, direct touch and method, which
carries with it its own charm. The oil medium, besides giving
an effect of laborious rounded stippled surfaces, is apt partly
to reduce the enamel, thus giving it a dull surface. The colora-
tion of the white is comparatively simple and is done by trans-
parent enamels finely ground and evenly spread over the white
after the latter has been fused. The only danger to be avoided
is that of over-firing, which is produced by too great heat of a
prolonged duration of firing, which causes the stannic and
arsenious acids in the white to volatilize.
Plique-a-jour enamelling is done in the same way as cloisonne
enamelling, except that the wires or strips of metal which
enclose the enamel are not soldered to the metal base, but are
soldered to each other only. Then these are simply placed upon
a sheet of platinum, copper, silver, gold or hard brass, which,
after the enamel is fused and sufficiently annealed and cooled,
is easily removed. For small pieces of plique-a-jour there is no
necessity to apply any metallic base, as the particles of enamel
quickly fuse, become viscous, and when drawn out set quite
hard. Neither is there any need for annealing, as would be the
case in larger work. For an example, see fig. 2.
Commercially there has lately been an activity in enamels
such as has never before occurred. This has been the case
throughout Europe, Japan and the United States of America.
In London there has been a demand for a cheap form of gaudy
coloured enamel, fused into sunk spaces of metal obtained by
stamping with a steel die; this has been applied to small objects
ENCAENIA ENCAUSTIC PAINTING
367
of cheap jewelry, in the form of brooches, bracelets and the like.
There has also been a great demand for enamel watch-cases and
small pendants, done mainly by hand, of a better class of work,
v of those have been produced in Birmingham, Berlin,
Paris and London. In Paris copies of pictures in black and
white enamel, with a little gold paint in the draperies and
background, have been manufactured in very large quantities
and sometimes of great dimensions. Another curious demand,
followed by as astonishing a production, is that of the imitations
(a harder name for which is " forgeries ") of old enamels, made
with much skill, giving all the technical excellenceof the originals,
even to the cracks and scratches incidental to age. These are
duly signed, and will deceive the most expert. They are copies
of enamels by Nardon and Jean Penicaud, Leonard Limosin,
Pierre Raymond, Courtois and others. The same artificers
also produce copies of old Chinese cloisonnt and champlevt
enamels, as well as old Battersea enamel snuff-boxes, patch-
boxes, and indeed every kind of enamelling formerly practised.
It is advisable for the collector never to purchase any piece of
enamelling as the work of an old master without having a
pedigree extending at least over forty years. From Japan
there has been a continuous flow of cloisount enamelled vases,
boxes and plates, either entirely covered with enamel or applied
in parts. Compared with this enormous output, only a few
small pieces of jewelry have come from Jaipur and other towns
in India. There has also been a great quantity of plique-d-jour
enamelling manufactured in Russia, Norway and Sweden.
And finally, it has been used in an unprecedented manner in
large pieces upon iron and copper for purposes of advertisement.
Amongst the chief workers in the modern revival of this art
are Claudius Popclin, Alfred Meyer, Paul Grandhomme, Fernand
Thesmar, Hubert von Herkomer and Alexander Fisher. The
work of Claudius Popelin is characterized by good technical
skill, correctness, and a careful copying of the work of the old
masters. Consequently it suffers from a lack of invention and
individuality. His work was devoted to the rendering of mytho-
logical subjects and fanciful portraits of historical people.
Alfred Meyer and Grandhomme are both accomplished and
careful enamellers; the former is a painter cnamcllcr and the
author of a book dealing technically with enamelling. Grand-
h >mme paints mythological subjects and portraits in a very
tender manner, with considerably more artistic feeling than
either Meyer or Popclin. There is a specimen of his work in the
Luxemburg Museum. Fernand Thesmar is the great reviver
of plique-d-jour enamelling in France. Specimens of his work
are possessed by the an museums throughout Europe, and one
is to be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. They
are principally valued on account of their perfect technical
achievement. Lucien Falize was an employer of artists and
craftsmen, and to him we are indebted for the production of
specimens of basse-laille enamel upon silver and gold, as well
as for a book reviewing the revival of the art in France, bearing
particularly on the work of Claudius Popelin. Until within
recent years there was a clear division between the art and the
crafts in the system of producing art objects. The artist was one
person and the workman another. It is now acknowledged
that the artist must also be the craftsman, especially in the
higher branches of enamelling. M. Falize initiated the produc-
tion of a gold cup which was enamelled in the basse-laille manner.
The band of figures was designed by Olivier Merson, the painter,
and carved by a metal carver and enamelled by an enameller,
lx>th able craftsmen employed by M. Falize. Other pieces of
enamelling in ckamplcct and cloisonnt were also produced under
hi* supervision and on this system; therefore lacking the one
quality which would make them complete as an expression of
artistic emotion by the artist's own hands. M. Ren Lalique
is among the jewellers who have applied enamelling to their
work in a peculiarly technically perfect manner. In England,
Professor Hubert von Herkomer has produced painted enamels
of considerable dimensions, aiming at the execution of pictures
in enamel, such as have been generally regarded as peculiar
to the province of oil or water-colour painting. Among numerous
works is a large shield, into which plaques of enamel arc inserted,
as well as several portraits, one of which, made in several pieces,
is 6 ft. high a portrait of the emperor William II. of Germany.
The present writer rediscovered the making of many enamels,
the secrets of which had been jealously guarded. He has worked
in all these processes, developing them from the art side, and
helping to make enamelling not only a decorative adjunct to
metal-work, but raising it to a fine art. His work may be seen
in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Brussels Museum.
Others who have been enamelling with success in various
branches, and who have shown individuality in their work,
are Mr John Eyre, Mrs Nelson Dawson, Miss Hart.
LITERATURE. Among older books on enamelling, apart from the
works oi Neri and Bcnvenuto Cellini, are J.-P. Forrand, L'Art
du feu, ou de peindre en email (1721); Labarte, Recherches sur la
peinture en email (Paris, 1856); Marquis de Laborde, Notice des
emaux du Louvre (Paris, 1852); Kcboullcau, Nouveau manuel
complet de la peinture en verre, sur porcelaine et sur email (ed. by
Magnier, Pans, 1866); Claudius Popelin, L' Email des peinlres
(Paris, 1866); Emit Molinier, Dictionnaire des (mailleurs (l88j).
Among useful recent books arc H. Cunynghamc's Art of Enamelling
on Metals (1906); L. Falize, Claudius Popelin et la renaissance
des fmaux peints; L. Dalpayrat, Limoges Enamels; Alexander
Fisher, The Art of Enamelling upon Metal (1906, " The Studio,"
London). (A. Fl.*).
ENCAENIA, a festival commemorating a dedication, in
Greek rd t-yicaino Uan/os, new), particularly used of the
anniversary of the dedication of a church (see DEDICATION).
The term is also used at the university of Oxford of the annual
Commemoration, held in June, of founders and benefactors
(see OXFORD).
ENCAUSTIC PAINTING. The name encaustic (from the Greek
for " burnt in ") is applied to paintings executed with vehicles
in which wax is the chief ingredient. The term was appropriately
applied to the ancient methods of painting in wax, because these
required heat to effect them. Wax may be used as a vehicle for
painting without heat being requisite; nevertheless the ancient
term encaustic has been retained, and is indiscriminately applied
to all methods of painting in wax. The durability of wax, and
its power of resisting the effects of the atmosphere, were well
known to the Greeks, who used it for the protection of their
sculptures. As a vehicle for painting it was commonly employed
by them and by the Romans and Egyptians; but in recent times
it has met with only a limited application. Of modern encaustic
paintings those by Schnorr in the Residenz at Munich are the
most important. Modern paintings in wax, in their chromatic
range and in their general effect, occupy a middle place between
those executed in oil and in fresco. Wax painting is not so easy
as oil, but presents fewer technical difficulties than fresco.
Ancient authors often make mention of encaustic, which, if
it had been described by the word inurere, to burn in, one might
have supposed to have been a species of enamel painting. But
the expressions " incausto pingere," " pictura encaustica,"
" ceris pingere," " pictura inurere," used by Pliny and other
ancient writers, make it clear that some other species of painting
is meant. Pliny distinguishes three species of encaustic painting.
In the first they used a stylus, and painted either on ivory or on
polished wood, previously saturated with some certain colour;
the point of the stylus or stigma served for this operation, and its
broad or blade end cleared off the small filaments which arose
from the outlines made by the stylus in the wax preparation.
In the second method it appears that the wax colours, being
prepared beforehand, and formed into small cylinders for use,
were smoothly spread by the spatula after the outlines were
determined, and thus the picture was proceeded with and
finished. By the side of the painter stood a brazier which was
used to heat the spatula and probably the prepared colours.
This is the method which was probably used by the painters who
decorated the houses of Hcrculaneum and of Pompeii, as artists
practising this method of painting are depicted in the decorations.
The third method was by painting by a brush dipped into wax
liquefied by heat; the colours so applied attained considerable
hardness, and could not be damaged either by the heat of the
sun or by the effects of sea-water. It was thus that ships were
3 68
ENCEINTE ENCINA
decorated; and this kind of encaustic was therefore styled
" ship-painting."
About the year 1749 Count Caylus and J. J. Bachelier, apainter,
made some experiments in encaustic painting, and the count
undertook to explain an obscure passage in Pliny, supposed to
be the following (xxxv. 39) : " Ceris pingere ac picturam inurere
quis primus excogitaverit non constat. Quidam Aristidis
inventum putant, postea consummatum a Praxitele; sed
aliquanto vetustiores encausticae pjcturae exstitere, ut Polygnoti
et Nicanoris et Arcesilai Pariorum. Lysippus quoque Aeginae
picturae suae inscripsit tvfKavatv, quod profecto non fecisset
nisi encaustica inventa." There are other passages in Pliny
bearing upon this subject, in one of which (xxi. 49) he gives an
account of the preparation of " Punica cera." The nature of this
Punic wax, which was the essential ingredient of the ancient
painting in encaustic, has not been definitely ascertained. The
chevalier Lorgna, who investigated the subject in a small but
valuable tract, asserts that the nitron which Pliny mentions is
not the nitre of the moderns, but the natron of the ancients, viz.
the native salt which is found crystallized in Egypt and other
hot countries in sands surrounding lakes of salt water. This
substance the Carthaginians, according to Pliny, used in pre-
paring their wax, and hence the name Punic seems to be derived.
Lorgna made a number of experiments with this salt, using from
three to twenty parts of white melted wax with one of natron.
He held the mixture in an iron vessel over a slow fire, stirring it
gently with a wooden spatula, till the mass assumed the con-
sistency of butter and the colour of milk. He then removed
it from the fire, and put it in the shade in the open air to harden.
The wax being cooled liquefied in water, and a milky emulsion
resulted from it like that which could be made with the best
Venetian soap.
Experiments, it is said, were made with this wax in painting
in encaustic in the apartments of the Count Giovanni Battista
Gasola by the Italian painter Antonio Paccheri, who dissolved the
Punic wax when it was not so much hardened as to require to
be " igni resoluta," as expressed by Pliny, with pure water
slightly infused with gum-arabic, instead of sarcocolla, men-
tioned by Pliny. He afterwards mixed the colours with this
wax so liquefied as he would have done with oil, and proceeded
to paint in the same manner; nor were the colours seen to run or
alter in the least; and the mixture was so flexible that the pencil
ran smoother than it would have done with oil. The painting
being dry, he treated it with caustic, and rubbed it with linen
cloths, by which the colours acquired peculiar vivacity and
brightness.
About the year 1755 further experiments were made by Count
Caylus and several French artists. One method was to melt
wax with oil of turpentine as a vehicle for the colours. It is
well known that wax may be dissolved in spirit and used as a
medium, but it dries too quickly to allow of perfect blending,
and would by the evaporation of the spirit be prejudicial to
the artist's health. Another method suggested about this time,
and one which seems to tally "<>ry well with Pliny's description,
is the following. Melt the wax with strong solution of salt of
tartar, and let the colours be ground up in it. Place the picture
when finished before the fire till by degrees the wax melts, swells,
and is bloated up upon the picture; the picture is then gradually
removed from the fire, and the colours, without being injuriously
affected by the operation of the fire, become unalterable, spirits
of wine having been burnt upon them without doing the least
harm. Count Caylus's method was different, and much
simpler: (i) the cloth or wood designed for the picture is waxed
over, by rubbing it simply with a piece of beeswax; (2) the
colours are mixed up with pure water; but as these colours will
not adhere to the wax, the whole ground must be rubbed over
with chalk or whiting before the colour is applied; and (3) when
the picture is dry it is put near the fire, whereby the wax is
melted and absorbs the colours. It must be allowed that nothing
could well be simpler than this process, and it was thought that
this kind of painting would be capable of withstanding the
weather and of lasting longer than oil painting. This kind of
painting has not the gloss of oil painting, so that the picture
may be seen in any light, a quality of the very first importance
in all methods of mural painting. The colours too, when so
secured, are firm, and will bear washing, and have a property
which is perhaps more important still, viz. that exposure to
smoke and foul vapours merely leaves a deposit on the surface
without injuring the work. The " encausto pingendi " of the
ancients could not have been enamelling, as the word" inurere,"
taken in its rigorous sense, might at first lead one to suppose, nor
could it have been painting produced in the same manner as
encaustic tiles or encaustic tesserae; but that it must have been
something akin to the count's process would appear from the
words of Pliny already quoted, " Ceris pingere ac picturam
inurere."
Werner of Neustadt found the following process very effectual
in making wax soluble in water. For each pound of white wax
he took twenty-four ounces of potash, which he dissolved in
two pints of water, warming it gently. In this ley he boiled the
wax, cut into litle bits, for half an hour, after which he removed
it from the fire and allowed it to cool. The wax floated on the
surface of the liquor in the form of a white saponaceous matter;
and this being triturated with water produced a sort of emulsion,
which he called wax milk, or encaustic wax. This preparation
may be mixed with all kinds of colours, and consequently can be
applied in a single operation.
Mrs Hooker of Rottingdean, at the end of the i8th century,
made many experiments to establish a method of painting in
wax, and received a gold palette from the Society of Arts for
her investigations in this branch of art. Her account is printed
in the tenth volume of the Society's Transactions (1792), under
the name of Miss Emma Jane Greenland.
See also Lorgna, Un Discorso sulla cera punica; Pittore Vicenzo
Requeno, Saggi sul ristabilimento dell' antica arte de' Greet e Rontani
(Parma, 1787); Phil. Trans, vol. xlix. part 2; Muntz on Encaustic
Painting; W. Cave Thomas, Methods of Mural Decoration (London.
1869); Cros and Henry, L'Encaustique, &c. (1884); Donner von
Richter, Uber Technisches in der Malerei der Alien (1885).
(W. C. T.)
ENCEINTE (Lat. in, within, cinclus, girdled; to be distin-
guished from the word meaning " pregnant," from in, not, and
cinctus, i.e. with girdle loosened), a French term used technically
in fortification for the inner ring of fortifications surrounding a
town. Strictly the term was applied to the continuous line of
bastions and curtains forming the " body of the place," this last
expression being often used as synonymous with enceinte. The
outworks, however, close to the enceinte were not considered
as forming part of it. In modern fortification the enceinte is
usually simply the innermost continuous line of fortifications.
In architecture generally an enceinte is the close or precinct of a
cathedral, abbey, castle, &c.
ENCINA, JUAN DEL (i469-c.iS33), often called the founder
of the Spanish drama, was born in 1469 near Salamanca probably
at Encinas. On leaving the university of Salamanca he became
a member of the household of the second duke of Alva. In 1492
the poet entertained his patron with a dramatic piece, the
Triunfo de la fama, written to commemorate the fall of Granada.
In 1496 he published his Cancionero, a collection of dramatic
and lyrical poems. Some years afterwards he visited Rome,
attracted the attention of Alexander VI. by his skill in music,
and was appointed choirmaster. About 1518 Encina took orders,
and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he said his first mass.
Since 1509 he had held a lay canonry at Malaga; in 1519 he
was appointed prior of Leon and is said to have died at Sala-
manca about 1533. His Cancionero is preceded by a prose
treatise ( Arte de trobar) on the condition of thepoetic art in Spain.
His fourteen dramatic pieces mark the transition from the purely
ecclesiastical to the secular stage. The Aucto del Repelon and
the Egloga de Ftteno dramatize the adventures of shepherds;
the latter, like Placida y Vitoriano, is strongly influenced by the
Celestina. The intrinsic interest of Encina's plays is slight, but
they are important from the historical point of view, for the lay
pieces form a new departure, and the devout eclogues prepare
the way for the autos of the i7th century. Moreover, Enema's
ENCKE ENCYCLOPAEDIA
369
lyrical poems are remarkable for their intense sincerity and
ut grace.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Tetttro complete de Juan del Encina (Madrid,
1803). edited by F. Asenio Bartw-ri; Cancionero musical de las
titlos XV y XVI (Madrid. 1894), edited by F. Asenjo Barbicri; R.
.Mitiana. Satire Juan del Kitcina, miisito v poeta (Malaga, iSg.s);
\ I Menendei y Pelayo, A nlologia de poetai liricos castf llanos (Madrid,
1890-1903). vol. vii.
ENCKE. JOHANN FRANZ (1791-1865), German astronomer,
was born at Hamburg on the .\$rd of September 1791. Matricu-
lating at the university of Gfittingen in iSn.he began by devoting
himself to astronomy under Carl Friedrich Gauss; but he enlisted
in the Hanseatic Legion for the campaign of 1813-14, and
became lieutenant of artillery in the Prussian service in 1815.
Having returned to Gottingen in 1816, he was at once appointed
by Hciih.ir.lt von Lindenau his assistant in the observatory
of Seeberg near Gotha. There he completed his investigation
of the comet of 1680, for which the Gotta prize was awarded to
him in 1817; he correctly assigned a period of 71 years to the
comet of 1812 ; and discovered the swift circulation of the
remarkable comet which bears his name (see COMET). Eight
masterly treatises on its movements were published by him in
the Berlin Abkandlungen (1829-1859). From a fresh discussion
of the transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769 he deduced (1822-1824)
a solar parallax of 8" -57, long accepted as authoritative. In
1822 he became director of the Seeberg observatory, and in
1825 was promoted to a corresponding position it Berlin, where
a new observatory, built under his superintendence, was inaugu-
rated in 1835. He directed the preparation of the star-maps of
the Berlin academy 1830-1859, edited from 1830 and greatly
improved the Aslroncmisckes Jahrbuch, and issued four volumes
of the Aslronomiscke Beobachlungen of the Berlin observatory
(1840-1857). Much labour was bestowed by him upon facilitating
the computation of the movements of the asteroids. With this
end in view he expounded to the Berlin academy in 1849 a
mode of determining an elliptic orbit from three observations,
and communicated to that body in 1851 a new method of calcu-
lating planetary perturbations by means of rectangular co-
ordinates (republished in W. Ostwald's Klassiker der exacten
Wissenschaften, No. 141, 1903). Encke visited England in 1840.
Incipient brain-disease compelled him to withdraw from official
life in November 1863, and he died at Spandau on the 26th of
August 1865. He contributed extensively to the periodical
literature of astronomy, and was twice, in 1823 and 1830,
the recipient of the Royal Astronomical Society's gold
medal.
See Jokann Fran* Encke, tein Leben and Wirken, von Dr C.
Bruhns (Leipzig. 1869), to which a list of his writings is appended.
Abo. Uonlk. Notices Roy. Astr. Society, xxvi. 129; V.J.S. Astr.
Gutilsckafl, iv. 227; Berlin. Abkandlungen (1866), i., G. Hagen;
Sitxuntsbfricklf. Munich Acad. (1866), i. p. 395, &c. (A. M. C.)
ENCLAVE (a French word from enclater, to enclose), a term
signifying a country or, more commonly, an outlying portion of
a country, entirely surrounded by the territories of a foreign or
other power, such as the detached portions of Prussia, Saxony,
&c., enclosed in the Thuringian States. (From the point of view
of the states possessing such detached portions of territory these
become " exclavesl") " Enclave " is, however, generally used
in a looser sense to describe a colony or other territory of a state,
which, while possessing a seaboard, is entirely surrounded land-
ward by the possession of some other power; or, if inland
territory, nearly though not entirely so enclosed, e.g. the Lado
Enclave in equatorial Africa.
ENCO1GNURE, in furniture, literally the angle, or return,
formed by the junction of two walls. The word is now chiefly
used to designate a small armoire, commode, cabinet or cup-
board made to fit a corner; a chaise encoignure is called in English
a three-cornered chair. In its origin the thing, like the word,
is French, and the delightful Louis Quinze or Louis Seize en-
toignure in lacquer or in mahogany elaborately mounted in gilded
bronze is not the least alluring piece of the great period of French
furniture. It was made in a vast variety of forms so far as the
front was concerned; in other respects it was strictly limited
by its destination. Asa rule these delicate and dainty receptacles
were in pairs and placed in opposite angles; more often than
not the top was formed of a slab of coloured marble.
ENCYCLICAL (from Late Lat. encyclicus, for encyclius Gr.
tyxiwXuK, from r and KiwXos, " a circle "), an ecclesiastical
epistle intended for general circulation, now almost exclusively
used of such letters issued by the pope. The forms encyclim
and encyclic are sometimes, but more rarely, used. The old
adjectival use of the word in the sense of " general " (en-
circling) is now obsolete, though it survives in the term
" encyclopaedia."
ENCYCLOPAEDIA. The Greeks seem to have understood
by encyclopaedia (fcyKiucXoiratitia, or i-yKiucXios iraifcia) in-
struction in the whole circle (kv KincXijJ) or complete system of
learning education in arts and sciences. Thus Pliny, in the
preface to his Natural History, says that his book treated of all
the subjects of the encyclopaedia of the Greeks, " Jam omnia
attingenda quae Graeci T^S 7KwiXo7rai6as vocant." Quin-
tilian (Inst. Oral. i. 10) directs that before boys are placed under
the rhetorician they should be instructed in the other arts,
" ut efficiatur orbis ille doctrinae quam Graeci &fKVK\oTraidtia.v
vocant." Galen (De victus ratione in morbis acutis, c. n) speaks
of those who are not educated h TJJ {^KWcXoiraiStl?. In these
passages of Pliny and Quintilian, however, from one or both of
which the modern use of the word seems to have been taken.
lyKi>K\u>s waiStla is now read, and this seems to have been
the usual expression. Vitruvius (lib. vi. praef .) calls the encyclios
or i-yw/cXios vcudtla of the Greeks " doctrinarum omnium
disciplina," instruction in all branches of learning. Strabo
(lib. iv. cap. 10 ) speaks of philosophy KO.I rifv &\\rjv iratodav
l"fKi/K\u>v. Tzetzes (Chiliades, xi. 527), quoting from Porphyry's
Lives of the Philosophers, says that ^yxuxXta nadijuara. was the
circle of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and the four arts under
it, arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy. Zonaras
explains it as grammar, poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, mathe-
matics and simply every art and science (djrXws traffa. ri\vri KCU
tTTirsTriiiri) , because sophists go through them as through a circle.
The idea seems to be a complete course of instruction in all parts
of knowledge. An epic poem was called cyclic when it contained
the whole mythology; and among physicians K(>K\<P 8epa.irei*ii>,
cyclo curare (Vegetius, De arte veterinaria, ii. 5, 6), meant a
cure effected by a regular and prescribed course of diet and
medicine (see Wower, De polymathia, c. 24, 14).
The word encyclopaedia was probably first used in English
by Sir Thomas Elyot. " In an oratour is required to be a heape
of all maner of lernyng: whiche of some is called the worlde
of science, of other the circle of doctrine, whiche is in one worde
of greke Encyclopedia " (The Governour, bk. i. chap. xiii.). In
his Latin dictionary, 1538, he explains " Encyclios et Encyclia,
the cykle or course of all doctrines," and " Encyclopedia, that
Icrnynge whiche comprehendeth all lyberall science and studies."
The term does not seem to have been used as the title of a book
by the ancients or in the middle ages. The edition of the works
of Joachimus Fortius Ringelbergius, printed at Basel in 1541,
is called on the title-page Lucubrationes vel polius absolutis-
sima KVK\OTro.i0ua. Paulus Scalichius de Lika, an Hungarian
count, wrote Encydopaediae seu orbis disciplinarum epislemon
(Basilcae, 1599, 4to). Alsted published in 1608 Encyclopaedia
cursus philosophies, and afterwards expanded this into his great
work, noticed below, calling it without any limitation Encyclo-
paedia, because it treats of everything that can be learned by
man in this life. This is now the most usual sense in which the
word encyclopaedia is used a book treating of all the various
kinds of knowledge. The form " cyclopaedia " is not merely
without any appearance of classical authority, but is etymologic-
ally less definite, complete and correct. For as Cyropaedia
means "the instruction of Cyrus," so cyclopaedia may mean
" instruction of a circle." Vossius says, " Cyclopaedia is some-
times found, but the best writers say encyclopaedia " (De
titiis sermonis, 1645, p. 402). Gesncr says, " rfwXof est
circulus, quae figura est simplicissima et perfect issima simul:
nam incipi potest ubicunquc in ilia et ubicunque cohaeret.
Cyclopaedia itaque significat omnem doctrinarum scicntiam inter
37
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
se cohaerere; Encyclopaedia est institutio in illo circulo."
(Isagoge, 1774, i. 40).
In a more restricted sense, encyclopaedia means a system or
classification of the various branches of knowledge, a subject
on which many books have been published, especially in
Germany, as Schmid's Allgemeinc Encyklopadie und Methodo-
logieder Wissenschaften (Jena, 1810, 410, 241 pages). In this sense
the Novum Organum of Bacon has often been called an encyclo-
paedia. But it is " a grammar only of the sciences: a cyclopaedia
is not a grammar, but a dictionary; and to confuse the meanings
of grammar and dictionary is to lose the benefit of a distinction
which it is fortunate that terms have been coined to convey "
(Quarterly Review, cxiii. 354). Fortunius Licetus, an Italian
physician, entitled several of his dissertations on Roman altars
and other antiquities encyclopaedias (as, for instance, Encyclo-
paedia ad Aram mysticam Nonarii, Pataviae, 163 1,410), because
in composing them he borrowed the aid of all the sciences. The
Encyclopaedia moralis of Marcellinus de Pise (Paris, 1646, fol.,
4 vols.) is a series of sermons. Encyclopaedia is often used to
mean a book which is, or professes to be, a complete or very full
collection or treatise relating to some particular subject, as
Elaine's work, The Encyclopaedia of Rural Sports (London, 1852);
The Encyclopaedia of Wit (London, 1803); The Vocal Encyclo-
paedia (London, 1807, i6mo), a collection of songs, catches, &c.
The word is frequently used for an alphabetical dictionary
treating fully of some science or subject, as Murray, Encyclopaedia
of Geography (London, 1834); Lefebvre Laboulaye, Encyclopedic
technologique: Diclionnaire des arts el manufactures (Paris,
1845-1847). Whether under the name of " dictionary " or
" encyclopaedia " large numbers of this class of reference-work
have been published. These are essentially encyclopaedic,
being subject books and not word-books. The important books
of this character are referred to in the articles dealing with the
respective subjects, but the following may be mentioned here:
the Jewish Encyclopedia, in 12 vols. (1901), a descriptive record
of the history, religion, literature and customs of the Jewish
people from the earliest times; the Encyclopaedia of Sport, 2
vols. (1897-1898); Holtzendorffs Encyklopadie der Rechtswisscn-
schaft (1870; an edition in 2 vols., 1904); the Dictionary of
Political Economy, edited by R. H. Inglis Palgrave, 3 vols.
(1894; reprinted 1901); the Encyclopaedia Biblica, edited by
T. K. Cheyne and J. Sutherland Black, 4 vols. (1899-1903); the
Dictionary of the Bible, edited by James Hastings, 4 vols., with
a supplementary volume (1904); an interesting series is the
Repertoire general du commerce, dealing with the foreign trade
of France, of which one part, the Encyclopaedia of Trade between
the United States of America and France, with a preface by M.
Gabriel Hanotaux, appeared, in French and English, in 1904.
The great Chinese encyclopaedias are referred to in the article
on CHINESE LITERATURE. It will be sufficient to mention here
the Win Men t'ung k'ao, compiled by Ma Twa-lin in the i4th
century, the encyclopaedia ordered to be compiled by the
Emperor Yung-loh in the 1 5th century, and the.Ktt Kin tu shu thi
ch'eng prepared for the Emperor K'ang-hi (d. 1721), in 5020
volumes. A copy of this enormous work, bound in some 700
volumes, is in the British Museum.
The most ancient encyclopaedia extant is Pliny's Natural
History in 37 books (including the preface) and 2493 chapters,
which may be thus described generally: book i, preface;
book 2, cosmography, astronomy and meteorology; books 3 to
6, geography; books 7 to n, zoology, including man, and the
invention of the arts; books 12 to 19, botany; books 20 to 32,
medicines, vegetable and animal remedies, medical authors
and magic; books 33 to 37, metals, fine arts, mineralogy and
mineral remedies. Pliny, who died A.D. 79, was not a naturalist,
a physician or an artist, and collected his work in his leisure
intervals while engaged in public affairs. He says it contains
20,000 facts (too small a number by half, says Lemaire), collected
from 2000 books by 100 authors. Hardouin has given a list
of 464 authors quoted by him. His work was a very high
authority in the middle ages, and 43 editions of it were printed
before 1 536.
Martianus Minneus Felix Capella, an African, wrote (early in
the 5th cent.), in verse and prose, a sort of encyclopaedia, which
is important from having been regarded in the middle ages as a
model storehouse of learning, and used in the schools, where the
scholars had to learn the verses by heart; as a text-book of high-
class education in the arts. It is sometimes entitled Satyra, or
Satyricon, but is usually known as De nuptiis Philologiae et
Mercurii, though this title is sometimes confined to the first
two books, a rather confused allegory ending with the apotheosis
of Philologia and the celebration of her marriage in the milky
way, where Apollo presents to her the seven liberal arts, who,
in the succeeding seven books, describe their respective branches
of knowledge, namely, grammar, dialectics (divided into meta-
physics and logic), rhetoric, geometry (geography, with some
single geometrical propositions), arithmetic (chiefly the pro-
perties of numbers), astronomy and music (including poetry).
The style is that of an African of the 5th century, full of grandilo-
quence, metaphors and strange words. He seldom mentions
his authorities, and sometimes quotes authors whom he does not
even seem to have read. His work was frequently copied in
the middle ages by ignorant transcribers, and was eight times
printed from 1499 to 1599. The best annotated edition is by
Kopp (Frankfort, 1836, 4to), and the most convenient and the
best text is that of Eysserhardt (Lipsiae, 1866, 8vo).
Isidore, bishop of Seville from 600 to 630, wrote Elymologiarum
libri XX. (often also entitled his Origines) at the request of his
friend Braulio, bishop of Saragossa, who after Isidore's death
divided the work into books, as it was left unfinished, and divided
only into titles.
The tenth book is an alphabet of 625 Latin words, not belonging
to his other subjects, with their explanations as known to him,
and often with their etymologies, frequently very .absurd. The
other books contain 448 chapters, and are: -I, grammar (Latin);
2, rhetoric and dialectics; 3, the four mathematical disciplines
arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy; 4, medicine; 5,
laws and times (chronology), with a short chronicle ending in 627;
6, ecclesiastical books and offices; 7, God, angels and the orders of
the faithful; 8, the church and sects; 9, languages, society and
relationships; II, man and portents; 12, animals, in eight classes,
namely, pecora et jumenta, beasts, small animals (including spiders,
crickets and ants), serpents, worms, fishes, birds and small winged
creatures, chiefly insects; 13, the world and its parts; 14, the earth
and its parts, containing chapters on Asia, Europe and Libya, that
is, Africa; 15, buildings, fields and their measures; 16, stones (of
which one is echo) and metals; 17, de rebus rusticis; 18, war and
games; 19, ships, buildings and garments; 20, provisions, domestic
and rustic instruments.
Isidore appears to have known Hebrew and Greek, and to
have been familiar with the Latin classical poets, but he is a
mere collector, and his derivations given all through the work
are not unfrequently absurd, and, unless when very obvious,
will not bear criticism. He seldom mentions his authorities
except when he quotes the poets or historians. Yet his work
was a great one for the time, and for many centuries was a much
valued authority and a rich source of material for other works,
and he had a high reputation for learning both in his own time
and in subsequent ages. His Etymologies were often imitated,
quoted and copied. MSS. are very numerous: Antonio (whose
editor, Bayer, saw nearly 40) says, " plures passimque reperiuntur
in bibliothecarum angulis." This work was printed nine times
before 1529.
Hrabanus Maurus, whose family name was Magnentius, was
educated in the abbey of Fulda, ordained deacon in 802 (" Annales
Francorum " in Bouquet, Historiens de la France, v. 66), sent to
the school of St Martin of Tours, then directed by Alcuin, where
he seems to have learned Greek, and is said by Trithemius to have
been taught Hebrew, Syriac and Chaldee by Theophilus an
Ephesian. In his Commentaries cm Joshua (lib. ii. c. 5) he
speaks of having resided at Sidon. He returned to Fulda and
taught the school there. He became abbot of Fulda in 822,
resigned in April 842, was ordained archbishop of Mainz on
the 26th of July 847, and died on the 4th of February 856. He
compiled an encyclopaedia De unherso (also called in some MSS.
De universali natura, De nalura rerum, and De origine rerunt) in
22 books and 325 chapters. It is chiefly a rearrangement of
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
37*
IM. lore's Etymologies, omitting the first four books, half of the
fifth and the tenth (the seven liberal arts, law, medicine and the
alphabet of words), and copying the rest, beginning with the
seventh book, verbally, though with great omissions, and adding
(according to Ritter, Gachichte der Philosopher, vii. 193, from
Alcuin, Augustine or some other accessible source) the meanings
given in the Bible to the subject matter of the chapter; while
things not mentioned in Scripture, especially such as belong to
classical antiquity, are omitted, so that his work seems to be
formed of two alternating parts. His arrangement of beginning
with God and the angels long prevailed in methodical encyclo-
paedias. His last six books follow very closely the order of the
last five of Isidore, from which they are taken. His omissions
are characteristic of the diminished literary activity and more
contracted knowledge of his time. His work was presented to
Louis the German, king of Bavaria, at Hersfeld in October 847,
and was printed in 1473, fol., probably at Venice, and again at
Strassburg by Mentclin about 1472-1475, fol., 334 pages.
Michael Constantine Psellus, the younger, wrote AtJacrxaMa
Tarroiarri, dedicated to the emperor Michael Ducas, who reigned
1071-1078. It was printed by Fabricius in his Bibliotheca
Craeca (1712), vol. v., in 186 pages 410 and 193 chapters, each
containing a question and answer. Beginning with divinity,
it goes on through natural history and astronomy, and ends
with chapters on excessive hunger, and why flesh hung from a
fig-tree becomes tender. As collation with a Turin MS. showed
that 35 chapters were wanting, Harles has omitted the text in
his edition of Fabricius, and gives only the titles of the chapters
(x. 84-88).
The author of the most famous encyclopaedia of the middle
ages was Vincent (q.v.) of Bcauvais (r. 1 100- c. 1264), whose work
Bibliotktca mundi or Speculum majus divided, as we have it,
into four parts, Speculum naluraie, Speculum doclrinale, Speculum
morale (this part should be ascribed to a later hand), and
Speculum historiale was the great compendium of mid-i3th
century knowledge. Vincent of Beauvais preserved several
works of the middle ages and gives extracts from many lost
classics and valuable readings of others, and did more than any
other medieval writer to awaken a taste for classical literature.
Fabricius (Bibl. Graeca, 1728, xiv. pp. 107-125) has given a list
of 328 authors, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek and Latin, quoted in the
Speculum nalurale. To these should be added about 100 more
for the doctrinale and historiale. As Vincent did not know
Greek or Arabic, he used Latin translations. This work is dealt
with separately in the article on VIXCKXT OF BEAUVAIS.
Brunetto Latini of Florence (born 1230, died 1294), the master
of Dante and Guido Cavalcanti, while an exile in France between
1260 and 1267, wrote in French Li Herts dou Tresor, in 3 books
and 413 chapters. Book i. contains the origin of the world, the
history of the Bible and of the foundation of governments,
astronomy, geography, and lastly natural history, taken from
Aristotle, Pliny, and the old French Bestiaries. The first part
of Book ii., on morality, is from the Ethics of Aristotle, which
Brunetto had translated into Italian. The second part is little
more than a copy of the well-known collection of extracts from
ancient and modern moralists, called the Moralities of the
Philosophers, of which there are many MSS. in prose and verse.
Book iii., on politics, begins with a treatise on rhetoric, chiefly
from Cicero De invention*, with many extracts from other
writers and Brunette's remarks. The last part, the most original
and interesting of all, treats of the government of the Italian
republics of the time. Like many of his contemporaries, Brunetto
revised his work, so that there are two editions, the second made
after his return from exile. MSS. are singularly numerous, and
exist in all the dialects then used in France. Others were written
in Italy. It was translated into Italian in the latter part of the
ijlh century by Bono Giamboni, and was printed at Trevigi,
1474, fol., Venice, 1528 and 1533. The Tesoro of Brunetto must
not be confounded with his Tesorctto, an Italian poem of 2937
short lines. Napoleon I. had intended to have the French text
of the Tcsoro printed with commentaries, and appointed a com-
Btstion for the purpose. It was at last published in the Collection
des documents inedils (Paris, 1863, 410, 772 pages), edited by
Chabaillc from 42 MSS.
Bartholomew dc Glanville, an English Franciscan friar, wrote
about 1360 a most popular work, De proprietatibus rerum, in 19
books and 1 230 chapters.
Book i relates to God; 2, angels; 3, the soul; 4, the substance of
the body; 5, anatomy; 6, ages; 7, diseases; 8, the heavens (astro-
nomy and astrology); 9, time; 10, matter and form; n, air; 12,
birds (including insects, 38 names, Aquila to Vespertilio); 13,
water (with fishes); 14, the earth (42 mountains, Ararath to Ziph);
15, provinces (171 countries, Asia to Zcugia); 16, precious stones
(including coral, pearl, salt, 104 names, Arena to Zinguttcs)- 17,
trees and herbs (197, Arbor to Zucarum) ; 18, animals (i 14, Aries to
Vipera); 19, colours, scents, flavours and liquors, with a list of 36
CUKS (Aspis to Vultur). Some editions add book 20, accidents of
things, that is, numbers, measures, weights and sounds. The Paris
edition of 1574 has a book on bees.
There were 15 editions before 1500. An English translation
was completed nlh February 1398 by John Trevisa, and
printed by Wynkyn de Worde, Westminster, 1495? fol.;
London, 1533, fol.; and with considerable additions by Stephen
Batman, a physician, London, 1582, fol. It was translated into
French by Jehan Corbichon at the command of Charles V. of
France, and printed 14 times from 1482 to 1556. A Dutch
translation was printed in 1479, and again at Haarlem, 1485,
fol.; and a Spanish translation by Padre Vincente de Burgos.
Tholosa, 1494, fol.
Pierre Bersuire (Berchorius) , a Benedictine, prior of the abbey
of St Eloi in Paris, where he died in 1362, wrote a kind of en-
cyclopaedia, chiefly relating to divinity, in three parts:
Rcductorium morale super totam Bibliam, 428 moralitatcs in
34 books on the Bible from Genesis to Apocalypse; Reductorium
morale de proprietatibus rerum, in 14 books and 958 chapters,
a methodical encyclopaedia or system of nature on the plan of
Bartholomew de Glanville, and chiefly taken from him(Berchorius
places animals next after fishes in books 9 and 10, and adopts
as natural classes volalilia, natatilia and grcssibilia) ; Dictionarius,
an alphabetical dictionary of 3514 words used in the Bible
with moral expositions, occupying in the last edition 1558 folio
pages. The first part was printed n times from 1474 to 1515,
and the third 4 times. The three parts were printed together
as Pclri Berchorii opera omnia (an incorrect title, for he wrote
much besides), Moguntiae, 1609, fol., 3 vols., 2719 pages;
Coloniae Agrippinae, 1631, fol., 3 vols.; ib. 1730-1731, fol. ,6 vols.,
2570 pages.
A very popular small encyclopaedia, Margarita philosophica,
in 12 books, divided into 26 tractates and 573 chapters, was
written by Georg Reisch, a German, prior of the Carthusians
of Freiburg, and confessor of the emperor Maximilian I. Books
1-7 treat of the seven liberal arts; 8, 9, principles and origin
of natural things; 10, n, the soul, vegetative, sensitive and
intellectual; 12, moral philosophy. The first edition, Heidel-
berg, 1496, 4to, was followed by 8 others to 1535. An Italian
translation by the astronomer Giovanno Paolo Gallucci was
published at Venice in 1594, 1138 small quarto pages, of
which 343 consist of additional tracts appended by the
translator.
Raphael Maffei, called Volaterranus, being a native of Volterra,
where he was born in 1451 and died 5th January 1522, wrote
Commenlarii Urbani (Rome, 1506, fol., in 38 books), so called
because written at Rome. This encyclopaedia, printed eight
times up to 1603, is remarkable for the great importance given
to geography, and also to biography, a subject not included in
previous encyclopaedias. Indeed, the book is formed of three
nearly equal parts, geographia, n books; anthropclogia
(biography), n books; and philologia, 15 books. The books
are not divided into short chapters in the ancient manner, like
those of its predecessors. The edition of 1603 contains 814
folio pages. The first book consists of the table of contents
and a classed index; books 2-12, geography; 13-23, lives of
illustrious men, the popes occupying book 22, and the emperors
book 23; 24-27, animals and plants; 28, metals, gems,
stones, houses and other inanimate things; 34, de scientiis
cyclicis (grammar and rhetoric) ; 35, de scientiis mathematicis,
372
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
and
arithmetic, geometry, optica, catoptrica, astronomy
astrology; 36-38, Aristotelica (on the works of Aristotle).
Giorgio Valla, born about 1430 at Placentia, and therefore
called Placentinus, died at Venice in 1499 while lecturing on the
immortality of the soul. Aldus published his work, edited by
his son Giovanni Pietro Valla, De expetendis et fugiendis rebus,
Venetiis, 1501, fol. 2 vols.
It contains 49 books and 2119 chapters. Book I is introductory,
on knowledge, philosophy and mathematics, considered generally
(he divides everything to be sought or avoided into three kinds
those which are in the mind, in the body by nature or habit, and
thirdly, external, coming from without); books 2-4, arithmetic;
5-9, music; 10-15, geometry, including Euclid and mechanics-
book 15 being in three long chapters-^-de spiritualibus, that is,
pneumatics and hydraulics, de catoptricis, and de optice; 16-19,
astrology (with the structure and use of the astrolabe) ; 20-23,
physics (including metaphysics); 24-30, medicine; 31-34, grammar;
35-37, dialectics; 38, poetry; 39, 40, rhetoric; 41, moral philo-
sophy; 42-44, economics; 45, politics; 46-48, de corporis com-
modis et incommodis, on the good and evil of the body (and soul) ;
49, de rebus externis, as glory, grandeur, &c.
Antonio Zara, born 1574, made bishop of Petina in Istria
1600, finished on the i7th of January 1614 a work published as
Anatomia ingeniorum et scientiarum, Venetiis, 1615, 4to, 664
pages, in four sections and 54 membra. The first section, on the
dignity and excellence of man, in 16 membra, considers him in
all his bodily and mental aspects. The first membrum describes
his structure and his soul, and in the latter part contains the
author's preface, the deeds of his ancestors, an account of
himself, and the dedication of his book to Ferdinand, archduke
of Austria. Four membra treat of the discovery of character
by chiromancy, physiognomy, dreams and astrology. The
second section treats of 16 sciences of the imagination writing,
magic, poetry, oratory, courtiership (aulicitas), theoretical and
mystic arithmetic, geometry, architecture, optics, cosmography,
astrology, practical medicine, war, government. The third
section treats of 8 sciences of intellect logic, physics, meta-
physics, theoretical medicine, ethics, practical jurisprudence,
judicature, theoretical theology. The fourth section treats
of 12 sciences of memory grammar, practical arithmetic,
human history, sacred canons, practical theology, sacred history,
and lastly the creation and the final catastrophe. The book,
now very rare, is well arranged, with a copious index, and is full
of curious learning.
Johann Heinrich Alsted, born 1588, died 1638, published
Encyclopaedia septem tomis distincta, Herbornae Nassoviorum,
1630, fol. 7 vols., 2543 pages of very small type. It is in 35
books, divided into 7 classes, preceded by 48 synoptical tables
of the whole, and followed by an index of 119 pages.
I. Praecogjiita disciplinarum, 4 books, hexilogia, technologia,
archelogia, didactica, that is, on intellectual habits and on the classi-
fication, origin and study of the arts. II. Philology, 6 books, lexica,
grammar, rhetoric, logic, oratory and poetry; book 5, lexica,
contains dictionaries explained in Latin of 1076 Hebrew, 842 Syriac,
1934 Arabic, 1923 Greek and 2092 Latin words, and also nomen-
clator technologiae, &c., a classified vocabulary of terms used in the
arts and sciences, in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, filling 34 pages;
book 6 contains Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin and German
grammars; book 10, poetica, contains a list of 61 Rotwelsch words.
III. Theoretic philosophy, 10 books: book II, metaphysics; 12,
pneumatics (on spirits); 13, physics; 14, arithmetic; 15, geometry;
16, cosmography; 17, uranometria (astronomy and astrology); 18,
geography (with maps of the Old World, eastern Mediterranean, and
Palestine under the Old and New Testaments, and a plate of Noah's
ark); 19, optics; 20, music. IV. Practical philosophy, 4 books:
21, ethics; 22, economics (on relationships); 23, politics, with flori-
legium politicum, 119 pages of extracts from historians, philo-
sophers and orators; 24, scholastics (on education, with a flori-
legiumof 25 pages). V. The three superior faculties: 25, theology;
26, jurisprudence; 27, medicine (ending with the rules of the
Salernian school). VI. Mechanical arts in general: book 28,
mathematical mechanical arts; book 29, agriculture, gardening,
care of animals, baking, brewing, preparing medicines, metallurgy
(with mining) ; book 30, physical mechanical arts printing, dialling,
&c. Under paedutica (games) is Vida's Latin poem on chess, and
one by Leuschner on the ludus Lorzius. VII. Farragines disciplin-
arum, 5 books: 31, mnemonics; 32, history; 33, chronology;
34, architecture; 35, quodlibetica, miscellaneous arts, as magic,
cabbala, alchemy, magnetism, &c., with others apparently dis-
tinguished and named by himself, as, paradoxologia, the art of
explaining paradoxes; dipnosophistica, the art of philosophizing
while feasting; cyclognomica, the art of conversing well de quovis
scibili ; tabacologia, the nature, use and abuse of tobacco, &c.
in all 35 articles in this book.
Alsted's encyclopaedia was received with very great applause,
and was highly valued. Lami (Entreliens, 1684, p. 188) thought
it almost the only encyclopaedia which did not deserve to be
despised. Alsted's learning was very various, and his reading
was very extensive and diversified. He gives few references,
and Thomasius charges him with plagiarism, as he often copies
literally without any acknowledgment. He wrote not long
before the appearance of encyclopaedias in modern languages
superseded his own and other Latin books, and but a short
time before the alphabetical arrangement began to prevail over
the methodical. His book was reprinted, Lugduni, 1649, fol.
4 vols., 2608 pages.
Jean de Magnon, historiographer to the king of France,
undertook to write an encyclopaedia in French heroic verse,
which was to fill ten volumes of 20,000 lines each, and to render
libraries merely a useless ornament. But he did not live to
finish it, as he was killed at night by robbers on the Pont Neuf
in Paris, in April 1662. The part he left was printed as La
Science universelle, Paris, 1663, fol., 348 pages, 10 books
containing about 11,000 lines. They begin with the nature of
God, and end with the history of the fall of man. His verses,
say Chaudon and Delandine, are perhaps the most nerveless,
incorrect, obscure and flat in French poetry; yet the author
had been the friend of Moliere, and had acted with him in comedy.
Louis Moreri(born on the 2Sth of March 1643 at Bargemont, in
the diocese of Frejus, died on the loth of July 1680 at Paris)
wrote a dictionary of history, genealogy and biography, Le
Grand Dictionnaire historique, ou le melange curieux de I'histoire
sacree et profane, Lyons, 1674, fol. He began a second edition
on a larger scale, published at Lyons in 1681, in two volumes
folio; the sixth edition was edited by Jean le Clerc, Amsterdam,
1691, fol. 4 vols.; the twentieth and last edition, Paris, 1759,
fol. 10 vols. Moreri's dictionary, still very useful, was of
great value and importance, although not the first of the kind.
It superseded the very inferior compilation of Juigne-Broissinere,
Dictionnaire theologique, historique, poetique, cosmographique,
et chronologique, Paris, 1644,410; Rouen, 1668, &c., a transla-
tion, with additions, of the Diclionarium historicum, geographi-
cum, et poelicum of Charles Estienne, published in 1553, 4to, and
often afterwards. As such a work was much wanted, Juigne's
book went through twelve editions in less than thirty years,
notwithstanding its want of criticism, errors, anachronisms,
defects and inferior style.
Johann Jacob Hofmann (born on the nth of September 1635,
died on the loth of March 1706), son of a schoolmaster at Basel,
which he is said never to have left, and where he was professor
of Greek and History, wrote Lelcicon universale historico-
geographico - ckronologico - poetico - philologicum, Basileae, 1677 ,
fol. 2 vols., 1823 pages, a dictionary of history, biography,
geography, genealogies of princely families, chronology, mytho-
logy and philology. At the end is Nomenclator Mi6yXwrn>s, an
index of names of places, people, &c., in many languages, care-
fully collected, and explained in Latin, filling no pages; with
an index of subjects not forming separate articles, occupying
34 pages. In 1683 he published a continuation in 2 vols. fol.,
2293 pages, containing, besides additions to the subjects given
in his lexicon, the history of animals, plants, stones, metals,
elements, stars, and especially of man and his affairs, arts,
honours, laws, magic, music, rites and a vast number of
other subjects. In 1698 he published a second edition, Lugduni
Batavorum, fol. 4 vols., 3742 pages, incorporating the continua-
tion with additions. From the great extent of his plan, many
articles, especially in history, are superficial and faulty.
fitienne Chauvin was born at Nismes on the i8th of April
1640. He fled to Rotterdam on the revocation of the edict of
Nantes, and in 1688 supplied Bayle's place in his lectures on
philosophy. In 1695 he was invited by the elector of Branden-
burg to go as professor of philosophy to Berlin, where he became
the representative of the Cartesian philosophy, and died on the
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
373
6th of April 1725. He wrote Lexicon rationale, sine thesaurus
pktioiofkiuts online alphabttiio digestus. Rotterdami, 1692,
fol., 746 page* and 30 plates. An improved and enlarged edition
was printed as Lexicon philosophicum secundis curis, Leovardiae,
1713, large folio, 725 pages and 30 plates. This great work
may be considered as a dictionary of the Cartesian philosophy,
and was very much used by Bruckcr and other earlier historians
of philosophy. It is written in a very dry and scholastic style,
and seldom names authorities.
The great dictionary of French, begun by the French Academy
on the 7th of February 1639, excluded all words especially
belonging to science and the arts. But the success of the rival
dictionary of Furetiere, which, as its title-page, as well as that
of the Essais published in 1684, conspicuously announced,
professed to give " les termes de toutes les Sciences et des Arts,"
induced Thomas Corneillc, a member of the Academy, to compile
Le Dictionnaire des arts el des sciences, which the Academy
published with the first edition of their dictionary, Paris, 1694,
folio, as a supplement in two volumes containing 1236 pages.
It was reprinted at Amsterdam, 1696, fol. 2 vols., and at Paris
in 1720, and again in 1732, revised by Fontenelle. A long series
of dictionaries of arts and sciences have followed Corneille in
placing in their titles the arts before the sciences, which he
probably did merely in order to differ from Furetiere. Corneille
professed to quote no author whom he had not consulted; to
take plants from Dioscorides and Matthiolus, medicine from
EttmUller, chemistry from a MS. of Perrault, and architecture,
painting and sculpture from Fvlibicn; and to give an abridged
history of animals, birds and fishes, and an account of all
religious and military orders and their statutes, heresiarchs and
heresies, and dignities and charges ancient and modern.
Pierre Bayle (born on the i8th of November 1647, died on the
28th of December 1706) wrote a very important and valuable
work, Dictionnaire historique el critique, Rotterdam, 1697, fol.
2 vols. His design was to make a dictionary of the errors and
omissions of Moreri and others, but he was much embarrassed
by the numerous editions and supplements of Moreri. A second
edition with an additional volume appeared at Amsterdam in
1702, fol. 3 vols. The fourth edition, Rotterdam, 1720, fol.
4 vols., was much enlarged from his manuscripts, and was edited
by Prosper Marchand.- It contains 3132 pages besides tables,
&c. The ninth edition was published at Basel, 1 741 , fol. 10 vols.
It was translated into English from the second edition, London,
1709, fol. 4 vols., with some slight additions and corrections
by the author; and again from the fifth edition of 1730 by
Birch and Lockman, London, 1734-1740, fol. 5 vols. J. G. de
Cba.uiep\& published NouveauDittionnaire historique, Amsterdam,
'75<>-'756, fol. 4 vols., as a supplement to Bayle. It chiefly
consists of the articles added by the English translators with
many corrections and additions, and about 500 new articles
added by himself .and contains in all about i4Ooarticles. Prosper
Marchand, editor of the fourth edition, left at his death on the
1 4th of January 1756 materials for a supplementary Dictionnaire
kittorique, La Haye, 1758, fol. 2 vols., 891 pages, 136 articles.
It had occupied his leisure moments for forty years. Much of
his work was written on small scraps of paper, sometimes 20
in half a page and no larger than a nail, in such small characters
that not only the editor but the printer had to use powerful
magnifiers. Bayle's dictionary was also translated into German,
Leipzig, 1741-1744, fol. 4 vols., with a preface by J. C. Gottsched.
It is still a work of great importance and value.
Vincenzo Maria Coronclli, a Franciscan friar, who was born
in Venice about 1650, made cosmographer to the republic in
1685, became general of his order in 1702, and was found dead
at his study table on the 9th of December 1718, began in 1701
to publish a general alphabetical encyclopaedia, written in Italian,
at which he had been working for thirty years, Biblioteca uni-
tcrtoJe socro- pro/ana. It was to explain more than 300,000
words, to include history and biography as well as all other
subjects, and to extend to 45 volumes folio. Volumes 1-39
were to contain the dictionary A to Z; 40, 41, the supplement;
42, retractations and corrections; 43, universal index; 44,
index divided into matters; 45, index in various languages.
But seven volumes only were published, Venezia, 1701-1706,
fol., 5609 pages, A to Caque. The first six volumes have each an
index of from 28 to 48 pages (in all 224 pages) of subjects, whether
forming articlesor incidental. The articles ineach are numbered,
and amount to 30,269 in the six volumes, which complete the
letter B. On an average 3 pages contain 33 articles. Each
volume is dedicated to a different patron the pope, the doge,
the king of Spain, &c. This work is remarkable for the extent
and completeness of its plan, and for being the first great alpha-
betical encyclopaedia, as well as for being written in a modern
language, but it was hastily written and very incorrect. Never,
perhaps, says Tiraboschi (Storia delta lelteratura ilaliana,
viii. 546), was there so quick a writer; he composed a folio
volume as easily as others would a page, but he never perfected
his works, and what we have of this book will not induce us to
regret the want of the remainder.
The first alphabetical encyclopaedia written in English was
the work of a London clergyman, John Harris (born about 1667,
elected first secretary of the Royal Society on the 3Oth of
November 1709, died on the 7th of September 1719), Lexicon
technicum, or an universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences,
London, 1704, fol., 1220 pages, 4 plates, with many diagrams
and figures printed in the text. Like many subsequent English
encyclopaedias the pages are not numbered. It professes not
merely to explain the terms used in the arts and sciences, but
the arts and sciences themselves. The author complains that
he found much less help from previous dictionaries than one
would suppose, that Chauvin is full of obsolete school terms,
and Corneille gives only bare explanations of terms, which often
relate. only to simple ideas and common things. He omits
theology, antiquity, biography and poetry; gives only technical
history, geography and chronology; and in logic, metaphysics,
ethics, grammar and rhetoric, merely explains the terms used.
In mathematics and anatomy he professes to be very full, but
says that thecatalogues and places of the stars are very imperfect,
as Flamsteed refused to assist him. In botany he gave from
Ray, Morrison and Tournefort " a pretty exact botanick lexicon,
which was what we really wanted before," with an account of
all the " kinds and subalternate species of plants, and their
specific differences " on Ray's method. He gave a table of fossils
from Dr Woodward, professor of medicine in Gresham College,
and took great pains to describe the parts of a ship accurately
and particularly, going often on board himself for the purpose.
In law he abridged from the best writers what he thought neces-
sary. He meant to have given at the end an alphabet for each
art and science, and some more plates of anatomy and ships,
" but the undertaker could not afford it at the price." A review
of his work, extending to the unusual length of four pages,
appeared in the Philosophical Transactions, 1704, p. 1699.
This volume was reprinted in 1708. A second volume of 1419
pages and 4 plates appeared in 1 7 10, with a list of about 1300
subscribers. Great part of it consisted of mathematical and
astronomical tables, as he intended his work to serve as a small
mathematical library. He was allowed by Sir Isaac Newton to
print his treatise on acids. He gives a table of logarithms to
seven figures of decimals (44 pages), and one of sines, tangents
and secants (120 pages), a list of books filling two pages, and
ail index of the articles in both volumes under 26 heads, filling 50
pages. The longest lists are law (1700 articles), chyrurgery,
anatomy, geometry, fortification, botany and music. The
mathematical and physical part is considered very able. He
often mentions his authorities, and gives lists of books on
particular subjects, as botany and chronology. His dictionary
was long very popular. The fifth edition was published in 1736,
fol. 2 vols. A supplement, including no new subjects, appeared
in 1744, London, fol., 996 pages, 6 plates. It was intended to
rival Ephraim Chambers's work (see below), but, being considered
a bookseller's speculation, was not well received.
Johann HUbner, rector of the Johanneum in Hamburg, born
on the 1 7th of March 1668, wrote prefaces to two dictionaries
written in German, which bore his name, and were long popular.
374
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
The first was Reales Staats Zeilungs- and Conversations-Lexicon,
Leipzig, 1704, 8vo; second edition, 1706, 947 pages; at the end
a register of arms, and indexes of Latin and French words;
fifth edition, 1711; fifteenth edition 1735, 1119 pages. The
thirty-first edition was edited and enlarged by F. A. Ruder, and
published by Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1824-1828, 8vo, 4 vols., 3088
pages. It was translated into Hungarian by Fejer, Pesten,
1816, 8vo, 5 vols., 2958 pages. The second, published as a supple-
ment, was Curieuscs und reales Nalur- Kunst- Berg- Cewerb- und
Handlungs- Lexicon, Leipzig, 1712, 8vo, 788 pages, frequently
reprinted to 1792. The first relates to the political state of the
world, as religion, orders, states, rivers, towns, castles, mountains,
genealogy, war, ships; the second to nature, science, art and
commerce. They were the work of many authors, of whom
Paul Jacob Marpurger, a celebrated and voluminous writer on
trade and commerce, born at Nuremberg on the 27th of June
1656, was an extensive contributor, and is the only one named
by Hiibner.
Johann Theodor Jablonski, who was born at Danzig on the
iSth of December 1654, appointed secretary to the newly
founded Prussian Academy in 1700, when he went to Berlin,
where he died on the 28th of April 1731, published Allgemeines
Lexicon der Kilnste und Wissenschaften, Leipzig, 1721, 410, a
short but excellent encyclopaedia still valued in Germany. It
does not include theology, history, geography, biography and
genealogy. He not only names his authorities, but gives a list
of their works. A new edition in 1748 was increased one-third
to 1508 pages. An improved edition, Konigsberg and Leipzig,
1767, 4to, 2 vols., 1852 pages, was edited by J. J. Schwabe, public
teacher of philosophy at Leipzig.
Ephraim Chambers (q.v.) published his Cyclopaedia; or an
Universal Dictionary of An and Sciences, containing an Explication
of the Terms and an Account oj the Things Signified thereby in the
several Arts, Liberal and Mechanical, and the several Sciences,
Human and Divine, London, 1728, fol. 2 vols. The dedication
to the king is dated October 15, 1727. Chambers endeavoured
to connect the scattered articles relating to each subject by a
system of references, and to consider " the several matters, not
only in themselves, but relatively, or as they respect each other;
both to treat them as so many wholes and as so many parts of
some greater whole." Under each article he refers to the subject
to which it belongs, and also to its subordinate parts; thus
Copyhold has a reference to Tenure, of which it is a particular
kind, and other references to Rolls, Custom, Manor,Fine, Charter-
land and Freehold. In his preface he gives an " analysis of the
divisions of knowledge," 47 in number, with classed lists of the
articles belonging to each, intended to serve as table of contents
and also as a rubric or directory indicating the order in which
the articles should be read. But it does so very imperfectly, as
the lists are curtailed by many et caeteras; thus 19 occur in a
list of 119 articles under Anatomy, which has nearly 2200 articles
in Rees's index. He omits etymologies unless " they appeared
of some significance "; he gives only one grammatical form of
each word, unless peculiar ideas are arbitrarily attached to
different forms, as precipitate, precipitant, precipitation, when
each has an article; and he omits complex ideas generally
known, and thus " gets free of a vast load of plebeian words."
His work, he says, is a collection, not the produce of one man's
wit, for that would go but a little way, but of the whole common-
wealth of learning. " Nobody that fell in my way has been
spared, antient or modern, foreign nor domestic, Christian or
Jew nor heathen." To the subjects given by Harris he adds
theology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, logic, grammar, rhetoric
and poetry, but excludes history, biography, genealogy,
geography and chronology, except their technical parts. A
second edition appeared in 1738, fol. 2 vols., 2466 pages, "re-
touched and amended in a thousand places. 1 ' A few articles are
added and some others enlarged, but he was prevented from
doing more because " the booksellers were alarmed with a bill
in parliament containing a clause to oblige the publishers of all
improved editions of books to print their improvements
separately." The bill after passing the Commons was unex-
pectedly thrown out by the Lords; but fearing that it might
be revived, the booksellers thought it best to retreat though
more than twenty sheets had been printed. Five other editions
were published in London, 1739 to 1751-1752, besides one in
Dublin, 1742, all in 2 vols. fol. An Italian translation, Venezia,
1748-1749, 4to, 9 vols., was the first complete Italian encyclo-
paedia. When Chambers was in France in 1739 he rejected very
favourable proposals to publish an edition there dedicated to
Louis XV. His work was judiciously, honestly and carefully
done, and long maintained its popularity. But it had many
defects and omissions, as he was well aware; and at his death,
on the 1 5th of May 1740, he had collected and arranged materials
for seven new volumes. John Lewis Scott was employed by
the booksellers to select such articles as were fit for the press
and to supply others. He is said to have done this very efficiently
until appointed sub-preceptor to the prince of Wales and Prince
Edward. His task was entrusted to Dr (afterwards called Sir
John) Hill, who performed it very hastily, and with character-
istic carelessness and self-sufficiency, copying freely from his
own writings. The Supplement was published in London, 1753,
fol. 2 vols., 3307 pages and 12 plates. As Hill was a botanist,
the botanical part, which had been very defective in the
Cyclopaedia, was the best.
Abraham Rees (1743-1825), a famous Nonconformist minister,
published a revised and enlarged edition, " with the supplement
and modern improvements incorporated in one alphabet,"
London, 1778-1788, fol. 2 vols., 5010 pages (but not paginated),
159 plates. It was published in 418 numbers at 6d. each. Rees
says that he has added more than 4400 new articles. At the end
he gives an index of articles, classed under 100 heads, numbering
about 57,000 and filling 80 pages. The heads, with 39 cross
references, are arranged alphabetically. Subsequently there
were reprints.
One of the largest and most comprehensive encyclopaedias
was undertaken and in 'a great measure completed by Johann
Heinrich Zedlcr, a bookseller of Leipzig, who was born at Breslau
7th January 1706, made a Prussian commerzienrath in 1731,
and died at Leipzig in 1760, Grosses vollstiindiges Universal
Lexicon Aller Wissenschaften und Kilnste wclche bishero durch
menschlichen Ver stand, und, Witz crfunden und verbessert warden,
Halle and Leipzig, 1732-1750, fol. 64 Vols., 64,309 pages; and
Nothige Supplcmente, ib. 1751-1754, vols. i. to iv., A to Caq,
3016 pages. The columns, two in a page, are numbered, varying
from 1356 in vol. li. to 2588 in vol. xlix. Each volume has a
dedication, with a portrait. The first nine are the emperor,
the kings of Prussia and Poland, the empress of Russia, and the
kings of England, France, Poland, Denmark and Sweden. The
dedications, of which two are in verse, and all are signed by
Zedler, amount to 4 59 pages. The supplement has no dedications
or portraits. The preface to the first volume of the work is by
Johann Peter von Ludewig, chancellor of the university of Halle
(born ijth August 1690, died 6th September 1743). Nine
editors were employed, whom Ludewig compares to the nine
muses; and the whole of each subject was entrusted to the
same person, that all its parts might be uniformly treated.
Carl Giinther Ludovici (born at Leipzig 7th August 1707, public
teacher of philosophy there from 1734, died 3rd July 1778)
edited the work from vol. xix., beginning the letter M, and
published in 1739, to the end, and also the supplement. The
work was published by subscription. Johann Heinrich Wolff, an
eminent merchant and shopkeeper in Leipzig, born there on the
29th of April 1690, came to Zedler's assistance by advancing
the funds for expenses and becoming answerable for the
subscriptions, and spared no cost that the work might be com-
plete. Zedler very truly says, in his preface to vol. xviii., that
his Universal Lexicon was a work such as no time and no nation
could show, and both in its plan and execution it is much more
comprehensive and complete than any previous encyclopaedia.
Colleges, says Ludewig, where all sciences are taught and studied,
are on that account called universities, and their teaching is
called sludium universale; but the Universal Lexicon contains
not only what they teach. in theology, jurisprudence, medicine,
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
375
philosophy history, mathematics, &c., but also many other
things belonging to courts, chanceries, hunting, forests, war and
peace, and to artists, artizans, housekeepers and merchants
not thought of in colleges. Its plan embraces not only history,
geography and biography, but also genealogy, topography,
and from vol. xviii., published in 1738, lives of illustrious living
persons. Zedler inquires why death alone should make a deserv-
ing man capable of having his sen-ices and worthy deeds made
known to the world in print. The lives of the dead, he says,
are to be found in books, but those of the living are not to be
met with anywhere, and would often be more useful if known.
In consequence of this preface, many lives and genealogies were
sent to him for publication. Cross references generally give not
only the article referred to, but also the volume and column,
and, when necessary, such brief information as may distinguish
the word referred to from others similar but of different meaning.
Lists of authorities, often long, exact and valuable are frequently
appended to the articles. This work, which is well and carefully
compiled, and very trustworthy, is still a most valuable book
of reference on many subjects, especially topography, genealogy
and biography. The genealogies and family histories are ex-
cellent, and many particulars are given of the lives and works
of authors not easily found elsewhere.
A work on a new plan was published by Dennis de Coetlogon,
a Frenchman naturalized in England, who styled himself
" Knight of St Lazarc, M.D., and member of the Royal Academy
of Angers " An Universal History of Arts and Sciences, London,
1745, fol. 2 vols., 2529 pages, 33 plates and 161 articles arranged
alphabetically. He " endeavours to render each treatise as
complete as possible, avoiding above all things needless repeti-
tions, and never puzzling the reader with the least reference."
Theology is divided into several treatises; Philosophy into
Ethicks, Logick and Metaphysick, each under its letter; and
Physick is subdivided into Anatomy, Botany, Geography,
Geometry, &c. Military Art is divided into Army, Fortification,
Gunnery. The royal licence is dated I3th March 1740-1741,
the dedication is to the duke of Gisors, the pages are numbered,
there is an appendix of 35 pages of astronomical tables, and the
two indexes, one to each volume, fill 69 pages, and contain about
oooo subjects. The type is large and the style diffuse, but the
subject matter is sometimes curious. The author says that his
work is the only one of the kind, and that he wrote out with his
own hand every line, even the index. But notwithstanding the
novelty of his plan, his work does not seem ever to have been
popular.
Gianfrancesco Pivati, born at Padua in 1689, died at Venice
in 1764, secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Venice, who
had published in 1744 a 410 volume containing a Dizionario
tntuersale, wrote Nuovo dizionario scienlifico e curioso sacro-
profano, Venezia, 1746-1751, fol. 10 vols., 7791 pages, 597 plates.
It is a general encyclopaedia, including geography, but not
history or biography. He gives frequent references to his
authorities and much curious information. His preliminary
discourse (80 pages) contains a history of the several sciences
from mathematics to geography. The book was published by
subscription, and at the end of the last volume is a Catalogo dei
Signori Associali, 252 in number, who took 266 copies. It is
also remarkable for the number of its plates, which are engraved
on copper. In each volume they are placed together at the end,
and are preceded by an explanatory index of subjects referring
to the plates and to the articles they illustrate.
One of the greatest and most remarkable literary enterprises
of the i8th century, the famous French Encyclopfdie, originated
in a French translation of Ephraim Chambcrs's Cyclopaedia,
begun in 1743 and finished in 1745 by John Mills, an Englishman
resident in France, assisted by Gottfried Sellius, a very learned
native of Danzig, who, after being a professor at Halle and
Gottingen, and residing in Holland, had settled in Paris. They
applied to Lebreton. the king's printer, to publish the work,
to fulfil the formalities required by French law, with which, as
foreigners, they were not acquainted, and to solicit a royal
privilege. This he obtained, but in his own name alone. Mills
complained so loudly and bitterly of this deception that Lebreton
hail to acknowledge formally that the privilege belonged en
iKiit,- proprUte to John Mills. But, as he again took care not to
acquaint Mills with the necessary legal formalities, this title
soon became invalid. Mills then agreed to grant him part of his
privilege, and in May 1743 the work was announced as Encydo-
ptdie ou dictionnaire universel des arts ct des sciences, folio,
four volumes of 250 to 260 sheets each, with a fifth of at least
1 20 plates, and a vocabulary or list of articles in French, Latin,
German, Italian and Spanish, with other lists for each language
explained in French, so that foreigners might easily find any
article wanted. It was to be published by subscription at 135
livres, but for large paper copies 200 livrcs, the first volume
to be delivered in June 1746, and the two last at the end of 1748.
The subscription list, which was considerable, closed on the 3ist
of December 1 745. Mills demanded an account, which Lebreton,
who had again omitted certain formalities, insultingly refused.
Mills brought an action against him, but before it was decided
Lebreton procured the revocation of the privilege as informal,
and obtained another for himself dated the aist of January
1746. Thus, for unwittingly contravening regulations with which
his unscrupulous publisher ought to have made him acquainted,
Mills was despoiled of the work he had both planned and executed,
and had to return to England. Jean Paul de Gua de Malves,
professor of philosophy in the college of France (born at Carcas-
sonne in 1713, died on the isth of June 1785), was then engaged
as editor merely to correct errors and add new discoveries.
But he proposed a thorough revision, and obtained the assistance
of many learned men and artists, among whom Dcsessarts
names Louis, Condillac, d'Alembert and Diderot. But the
publishers did not think his reputation high enough to ensure
success, withheld their confidence, and often opposed his plans
as too expensive. Tired at last of disputes, and too easily
offended, de Gua resigned the editorship. The publishers, who
had already made heavy advances, offered it to Diderot, who
was probably recommended to them by his very well received
Dictionnaire universel de medicine, Paris, 1746-1748, fol. 6 vols.,
published by Briasson, David and Durand, with notes and
additions by Julien Busson, doctor regent of the faculty of
medicine of Paris. It was a translation, made with the assistance
of Eidous and Toussaint, of the celebrated work of Dr Robert
James, inventor of the fever powders, A Medicinal Dictionary,
London, I743-I74S, fol. 3 vols., 3275 pages and 98 plates,
comprising a history of drugs, with chemistry, botany and
natural history so far as they relate to medicine, and with an
historical preface of 99 pages (in the translation 136). The
proposed work was to have been similar in character. De
Gua's papers were handed over to Diderot in great confusion.
He soon persuaded the publishers to undertake a far more original
and comprehensive work. His friend d'Alembert undertook to
edit the mathematics. Other subjects were allotted to 21 con-
tributors, each of whom received the articles on this subject
in Mills' translation to serve as a basis for his work. But they
were in most cases so badly composed and translated, so full
of errors and omissions, that they were not used. The contribu-
tions were to be finished in three months, but none was ready
in time, except Music by Rousseau, which he admits was hastily
and badly done. Diderot was imprisoned at Vinccnnes, on the
29th of July 1 749, for his Leltre sur les aveuglcs. He was closely
confined for 28 days, and was then for three months and ten
days a prisoner on parole in the castle. This did not stop the
printing, though it caused delay. The prospectus by Diderot
appeared in November 1750. The work, was to form 8 vols.
fol., with at least 600 plates. The first volume was published
in July 1751, and delivered to the subscribers in August. The
second appeared in January 1752. An arrtt of the council,
9th of February, suppressed both volumes as injurious to the
king's authority and to religion. Malcsherbcs, director-general
of the Librairic, stopped the issue of volume ii., 9th of February,
and on the 2ist went with a lellre de cachet to Lcbrcton's to
seize the plates and the MSS., but did not find, says Barbier,
even those of volume Hi., as they had been taken to his own
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
house by Diderot and one of the publishers. The Jesuits tried
to continue the work, but in vain. It was less easy, says Grimm,
than to ruin philosophers. The Dictionnaire de Trevoux pro-
nounced the completion of the Encyclopedic impossible, and
the project ridiculous (5th edition, 1752, iii. 750). The govern-
ment had to request the editors to resume the work as one
honourable to the nation. The marquis d'Argenson writes,
7th of May 1752, that Mme de Pompadour had been urging
them to proceed, and at the end of June he reports them as
again at work. Volume iii., rather improved by the delay,
appeared in October 1753; and volume vii., completing G, in
November 1757. The clamours against the work soon recom-
menced. D'Alembert retired in January 1758, weary of sermons,
satires and intolerant and absurd censors. The parlement of
Paris, by an arret, 23rd of January 1759, stopped the sale and
distribution of the Encyclopedic, Helvetius's De I' Esprit, and six
other books; and by an arret, 6th February, ordered them all
to be burnt, but referred the Encyclopedic for examination to a
commission of nine. An arret du conseil, yth of March, revoked
the privilege of 1746, and stopped the printing. Volume viii.
was then in the press. Malesherbes warned Diderot that he
would have his papers seized next day; and when Diderot said
he could not make a selection, or find a place of safety at such
short notice, Malesherbes said, " Send them to me, they will
not look for them there." This, according to Mme de Vandeul,
Diderot's daughter, was done with perfect success. In the
article Pardonner Diderot refers to these persecutions, and says,
" In the space of some months we have seen our honour, fortune,
liberty and life imperilled." Malesherbes, Choiseul and Mme
de Pompadour protected the work; Diderot obtained private
permission to go on printing, but with a strict charge not to
publish any part until the whole was finished. The Jesuits were
condemned by the parlement of Paris in 1762, and by the
king in November 1764. Volume i. of plates appeared in 1762,
and volumes viii. to xvii., ten volumes of text, 9408 pages, com-
pleting the work, with the 4th volume of plates in 1765, when
there were 4250 subscribers. The work circulated freely in the
provinces and in foreign countries, and was secretly distributed
in Paris and Versailles. The general assembly of the clergy, on
the 2oth of June 1765, approved articles in which it was con-
demned, and on the 27th of September adopted a memoire to
be presented to the king. They were forbidden to publish their
acts which favoured the Jesuits, but Lebreton was required to
give a list of his subscribers, and was put into the Bastille for
eight days in 1766. A royal order was sent to the subscribers
to deliver their copies to the lieutenant of police. Voltaire in
1774 relates that, at a petit souper of the king at Trianon, there
was a debate on the composition of gunpowder. Mme de
Pompadour said she did not know how her rouge or her silk
stockings were made. The due de la Valliere regretted that
the king had confiscated their encyclopaedias, which could
decide everything. The king said he had been told that the
work was most dangerous, but as he wished to judge for himself,
he sent for a copy. Three servants with difficulty brought in
the 21 volumes. The company found everything they looked
for, and the king allowed the confiscated copies to be returned.
Mme de Pompadour died on the ijth of April 1764. Lebreton
had half of the property in the work, and Durand, David and
Briasson had the rest. Lebreton, who had the largest printing
office in Paris, employed 50 workmen in printing the last ten
volumes. He had the articles set in type exactly as the authors
sent them in, and when Diderot had corrected the last proof of
each sheet, he and his foreman, hastily, secretly and by night,
unknown to his partners in the work, cut out whatever seemed
to them daring, or likely to give offence, mutilated most of the
best articles without any regard to the consecutiveness of what
was left, and burnt the manuscript as they proceeded. The
printing of the work was nearly finished when Diderot, having
to consult one of his great philosophical articles in the letter S,
found it entirely mutilated. He was confounded, says Grimm,
at discovering the atrocity of the printer; all the best articles
were in the same confusion. This discovery put him into a
state of frenzy and despair from rage and grief. His daughter
never heard him speak coolly on the subject, and after twenty
years it still made him angry. He believed that every one knew
as well as he did what was wanting in each article, but in fact
the mutilation was not perceived even by the authors, and for
many years was known to few persons. Diderot at first refused
to correct the remaining proofs, or to do more than write the
explanations of the plates. He required, according to Mme de
Vandeul, that a copy, now at St Petersburg with his library,
should be printed with columns in which all was restored. The
mutilations began as far back as the article Intendant. But
how far, says Rosenkranz, this murderous, incredible and
infamous operation was carried cannot now be exactly ascer-
tained. Diderot's articles, not including those on arts and
trades, were reprinted in Naigeon's edition (Paris, 1821, 8vo,
22 vols.). They fill 4132 pages, and number 1139, of which
60 1 were written for the last ten volumes. They are on very
many subjects, but principally on grammar, history, morality,
philosophy, literature and metaphysics. As a contributor, his
special department of the work was philosophy, and arts and
trades. He passed whole days in workshops, and began by
examining a machine carefully, then he had it taken to pieces
and put together again, then he watched it at work, and lastly
worked it himself. He thus learned to use such complicated
machines as the stocking and cut velvet looms. He at first
received 1200 livres a year as editor, but afterwards 2500 livres
a volume, besides a final sum of 20,000 livres. Although after
his engagement -he did not suffer from poverty as he had done
before, he was obliged to sell his library in order to provide for
his daughter. De Jaucourt spared neither time, trouble nor
expense in perfecting the work, for which he received nothing,
and he employed several secretaries at it for ten years. To pay
them he had to sell his house in Paris, which Lebreton bought
with the profits derived from De Jaucourt's work. All the
publishers made large fortunes; their expenses amounted to
1,158,000 livres and their profits to 2,162,000. D'Alembert's
" Discours Preliminaire," 45 pages, written in 1750, prefixed
to the first volume, and delivered before the French Academy
on his reception on the igth of December 1754, consists of a
systematic arrangement of the various branches of knowledge,
and an account of their progress since their revival. His system,
chiefly taken from Bacon, divides them into three classes,
under memory, reason and imagination. Arts and trades are
placed under natural history, superstition and magic under
science de Dieu, and orthography and heraldry under logic.
The literary world is divided into three corresponding classes
erudits, philosophes and beaux esprits. As in Ephraim
Chambers's Cyclopaedia, history and biography were excluded,
except incidentally; thus Aristotle's life is given ih the article
Aristotelisme. The science to which an article belongs is gener-
ally named at the beginning of it, references are given to other
articles, and the authors' names are marked by initials, of which
lists are given in the earlier volumes, but sometimes their names
are subscribed in full. Articles by Diderot have no mark, and
those inserted by him as editor have an asterisk prefixed. Among
the contributors were Voltaire, Euler, Marmontel, Montesquieu,
D'Anville, D'Holbach and Turgot, the leader of the new school
of economists which made its first appearance in the pages of
the Encyclopedic. Louis wrote the surgery, Daubenton natural
history, Eidous heraldry and art, Toussaint jurisprudence, and
Condamine articles on South America.
No encyclopaedia perhaps has been of such political importance,
or has occupied so conspicuous a place in the civil and literary history
of its century. It sought not only to give information, but to guide
opinion. It was, as Rosenkranz says (Diderot, i. 157), theistic and
heretical. It was opposed to the church, then all-powerful in France,
and it treated dogma historically. It was, as Desnoiresterres says
(Voltaire, v. 164), a war machine; as it progressed, its attacks both
on the church and the still more despotic government, as well as on
Christianity itself, became bolder and more undisguised, and it was
met by opposition and persecution unparalleled in the history of
encyclopaedias. Its execution is very unequal, and its articles of
very different value. It was not constructed on a regular plan, or
subjected to sufficient supervision; articles were sent in by the
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
377
contributors, and not seen by the editor* until they were in type. In
etch subject there are onu- rv rid MI .un, K >. but others are very
inferior or altogether omitted, and references are often given to
!<- which do not exist. Thus marine is said to be more than
three-fourths deficient; and in geography errors and omissions
abound even capitals and sovereign states are overlooked, while
villages are given as towns, and towns are described which IU-MT
existed. The style is too generally loose, digressive and inexact;
- are seldom given; and discursiveness, verbosity and dog-
matism are frequent faults. Voltaire was constantly demanding
truth, brevity and method, and said it was built half of marble and
half of wood. D'Alembert compared it to a harlequin's coat, in
hich there is some good stuff but too many rags. _ Diderot was dis-
satisfied with it as a whole; much of it was compiled in haste; and
carelessly wntten articles and incompetent contributors were ad-
mitted for want of money to pay good writers. Zedlcr's Universal
Lexicon is on the whole much more useful for reference than its far
more brilliant successor. The permanent value of encyclopaedias
depends on the proportion of exact and precise facts they contain
and on their systematic regularity.
The first edition of the Encyclopfdie. in 17 vols. folio, 16,288 pages,
was imitated by a counterfeit edition printed at Geneva as the
volumes appeared in Paris. Eleven folio volumes of plates were
published at Paris (1762 to 1772), containing 2888 plates and 923
paces of explanation, &c. A supplement was printed at Amsterdam
H i I'.in- ' m6 irrr . '. '.. 5 rat, .;vt TC*% wil1 ' -'-'-t i' 1 -"' '
History was introduced at the wish of the public, but only " the
by Haller. Daubenton, Condaminc, Marmontel and other old
lontributors wrote many articles, and several were taken from
foreign editions. A very full and elaborate index of the articles
and subjects of the 33 volumes was printed at Amsterdam in 1780,
i ! 2 vols. 1852 pages. It was made by Pierre Mouchon, who
was born at Geneva on the 3Oth of July 1735, consecrated minister
on the l8th of August 1758, pastor of the Trench church at Basel
1/66, elected a pastor in Geneva on the 6th of March 1788, principal
of the college there 22nd of April 1791, died on the 2Oth of August
v This Table analytiqiie, which took him five years to make,
was undertaken for the publishers Cramer and De Tournes, who
gave him 800 louis for it. Though very exact and full, he designedly
omits the attacks on Christianity. This index was rendered more
useful and indispensable by the very diffuse and digressive style
of the work, and by the vast number of its articles. A complete
copy of the first edition of the Encycloptdie consists of 35 vols. fol.,
pnnted 1751-1780, containing 23,135 pages and 3132 plates. It
was written by about 160 contributors. About 1761 Panckoucke
and other publishers in Paris proposed a new and revised edition, and
bought the plates for 250,000 livres. But, as Diderot indignantly
refused to edit what he considered a fraud on the subscribers to the
as yet unfinished work, they began simply to reprint the work,
promising supplementary' volumes. When three volumes were
printed the whole was seized in 1770 by the government at the
complaint of the clergy, and was lodged in the Bastille. The plan of
a second French edition was laid aside then, to be revived twenty
years later in a very different form. Foreign editions of the Encyclo-
[xdte are numerous, and it is difficult to enumerate them correctly.
One, with notes by Ottavio Diodati, Dr Scbastiano Paoli and Carlo
i.mluni. appeared at Lucca (1758-1771), fol. 17 vols. of text and
10 of plates. Though it was very much expurgated, all engaged in
it were excommunicated by the pope in 1759. An attempt made at
Siena to publish an Italian translation failed. An addition by the
abbe Serafini and Dr Gonnella (Livournc, 177). &c., fol. 33 vols.,
returned a profit of 60,000 piastres, and was protected by Leopold II.,
who secured the pope's silence. Other editions are Geneve, Cramer
(1772-1776), a facsimile reprint. Geneve, Pellet (I777-'77.9)| 4to,
36 vols. of text and 3 of plates, with 6 vols. of Mouchon's index
(Lyon, 1780), 410; Geneve et Neufchatel, Pellet (1778-1779), 410,
36 vols. of text and 3 of plates; Lausanne (1778-1781), 36 vols. 410,
or 72 octavo, of text and 3 of plates (1779-1780) ; Lausanne et Bern,
chez les Societes Typographiques (1780-1782), 36 vols. 8vo of text
and 3 yob. 410 of plates ( 1 782). These four editions have the supple-
ment incorporated. Fortune Bart helemydc Felice, an Italian monk,
bom at Rome on the 24th of August 1723, who had been pro-
fessor at Rome and Naples, and had become a Protestant, printed a
rrect though successful edition (Yvcrdun, 1770-1780) 410,
SvoJs. of text, 5 of supplement and 10 of plates. It professed to
a new work, standing in the same relationship to the Encyclopedic
as that did to Chambers'*, which is far from being the case. Sir
Joseph Ayloffe issued proposals, Mth December 1751, for an English
translation of the Encyclopfdie. to be finished by Christmas 1756, in
10 vols. 410, with at least 600 plates. No. I appeared in January
17V. but met with little success. Several selections of articles and
extracts have been published under the title of L'Espril de I'Ency-
vols.
e. The last was by Hennequin (Paris, 1822-1823), 8vo, 15 vo
An English selection is Select Essays from the Encyclopedy (London,
'773). 8vo. The articles of most of the principal contributors have
been reprinted in the editions of their respective works. Voltaire
wrote 8 vols. 8vo of a kind of fragmentary- supplement. Questions
sur I'Encyclopfdie, frequently printed, and usually included in
editions of his works, together with his contributions to the Encyclo-
tidie and his Dictionnaire philosophique. Several special dictionaries
have been formed from the Encycloptdie, as the Dictionnaire portatif
dei arts et metiers (Paris, 1766), 8vo, 2 vols. about 1300 pages, by
Philippe Macqucr, brother of the author of the Diet, de cktmte. An
enlarged edition by the abbi Jaubert (Paris, 1773), 5 vols. 8vo,
3017 pages, was much valued and often reprinted. The books
attacking and defending the Encycloptdie are very many. No
original work of the i8th century, says Lanfrey, has been more
depreciated, ridiculed and calumniated. It has been called chaos,
nothingness, the Tower of Babel, a work of disorder and destruction,
the gospel of Satan and even the ruins of Palmyra.
The Encyclopaedia BriUmnica, " by a society of gentlemen in
Scotland, printed in Edinburgh for A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar,
and sold by Colin Macfarquhar at his printing office in Nicolson
Street," was completed in 1771 in 3 volumes 410, containing
2670 pages, and 160 copperplates engraved by Andrew Bell.
It was published in numbers, of which the two first were issued
in December 1768, " price 6d. each, or 8d on a finer paper," and
was to be completed in 100 weekly numbers. It was compiled,
as the title-page says, on a new plan. The different sciences
and arts were " digested into distinct treatises or systems,"
of which there are 45 with cross headings, that is, titles printed
across the page, and about 30 other articles more than three
pages long. The longest are " Anatomy," 166 pages, and
" Surgery," 238 pages. " The various technical terms, &c.,
are explained as they occur in the order of the alphabet."
" Instead of dismembering the sciences, by attempting to treat
them intelligibly under a multitude of technical terms, they have
digested the principles of every science in the form of systems
or distinct treatises, and explained the terms as they occur in
the order of the alphabet, with references to the sciences to
which they belong." This plan, as the compilers say, differs
from that of all the previous dictionaries of arts and sciences.
Its merit and novelty consist in the combination of De Coet-
logon's plan with that in common use, on the one hand keeping
important subjects together, and on the other facilitating
reference by numerous separate articles. It is doubtful to whom
the credit of this plan is due. The editor, William Smellie, a
printer (born in 1740, died on the 24th of June 1795), afterwards
secretary and superintendent of natural history to the Society
of Scottish Antiquaries, is said by his biographer to have devised
the plan and written or compiled all the chief articles; and he
prints, but without date, part of a letter written and signed
by Andrew Bell by which he was engaged in the work: " Sir,
As we are engaged in publishing a dictionary of the arts and
sciences, and as you have informed us that there are fifteen
capital sciences which you will undertake for and write up the
subdivisions and detached parts of these conform to your plan,
and likewise to prepare the whole work for the press, &c., &c.,
we hereby agree to allow you 200 for y&ur trouble, &c." Prof.
Macvey Napier says that Smellie " was more likely to have
suggested that great improvement than any of his known co-
adjutors." Archibald Constable, who was interested in the work
from 1788, and was afterwards intimately acquainted with Bell,
says Colin Macfarquhar was the actual projector of the Encyclo-
paedia, and the editor of the two first editions, while Smellie
was merely "a contributor for hire" (Memoirs, ii. 311). Dr
Gleig, in his preface to the third edition, says: " The idea had
been conceived by him (Colin Macfarquhar) and his friend Mr
Andrew Bell, engraver. By whom these gentlemen were assisted
in digesting the plan which attracted to that work so much
public attention, or whether they had any assistance, are ques-
tions in which our readers cannot be interested." Macfarquhar,
according to Constable, was a person of excellent taste and very
general knowledge, though at starting he had little or no capital,
and was obliged to associate Bell, then the principal engraver
in Edinburgh, as a partner in his undertaking.
The second edition was begun in 1776, and was published
in numbers, of which the first was issued on the 2ist of June
1777, and the last, No. 181, on the i8th of September 1784,
forming 10 vols. 4to, dated 1778 to 1783, and containing 8595
pages and 340 plates. The pagination is continuous, ending
378
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
with page 9200, but 295 pages are inserted in various places,
and page 7099 is followed by 8000. The number and length
of the articles were much increased, 72 have cross headings, and
more than 150 others may be classed as long articles. At the
end is an appendix (" Abatement " to " Wood ") of 200 pages,
containing, under the heading Botanical Table, a list of the 931
genera included in the 58 natural orders of Linnaeus, and followed
by a list of 526 books, said to have been the principal authorities
used. All the maps are placed together under the article
"Geography" (195 pages). Most of the long articles have
numbered marginal titles; " Scotland," 84 pages, has 837.
" Medicine," 309 pages, and " Pharmacy " have each an index.
The plan of the work was enlarged by the addition of history
and biography, which encyclopaedias in general had long omitted.
" From the time of the second edition of this work, every cyclo-
paedia of note, in England and elsewhere, has been a cyclopaedia,
not solely of arts and sciences, but of the whole wide circle
of general learning and miscellaneous information " (Quarterly
Review, cxiii. 362). Smellie was applied to by Bell to edit the
second edition, and to take a share of one-third in the work;
but he refused, because the other persons concerned in it, at the
suggestion of " a very distinguished nobleman of very high
rank " (said by Professor Napier to have been the duke of
Buccleuch), insisted upon the introduction of a system of general
biography which he considered inconsistent with the character
of a dictionary of arts and sciences. James Tytler, M.A., seems
to have been selected as the next most eligible compiler. His
father, a man of extensive knowledge, was 53 years minister of
Fearn in Forfarshire, and died in 1785. Tytler (outlawed by
the High Court of Justiciary, 7th of January 1793, buried
at Salem in Massachusetts on the nth of January 1804, aged
fifty-eight) " wrote," says Watt, " many of the scientific treatises
and histories, and almost all the minor articles " (Bibliotheca
Brit.).
After about a year's preparation, the third edition was
announced in 1787; the first number was published early in
1788, and the first volume in October 1788. There were to be
300 weekly numbers, price is. each, forming 30 parts at los. 6d.
each, and 15 volumes, with 360 plates. It was completed in
1797 in- 18 vols. 410, containing 14,579 pages and 542 plates.
Among the multifarious articles represented in the frontispiece,
which was required by the traditional fashion of the period, is
a balloon. The maps are, as in subsequent editions, distributed
among the articles relating to the respective countries. It was
edited by Colin Macfarquhar as far as the article "Mysteries"
(by Dr Doig, vol. xii.), when he died, on the 2nd of April 1793,
in his forty-eighth year, " worn out," says Constable, " by
fatigue and anxiety of mind." His children's trustees and
Andrew Bell requested George Gleig of Stirling (consecrated
on the 30th of October 1808 assistant and successor to the bishop
of Brechin), who had written about twelve articles, to edit the
rest of the work; " and for the time, and the limited sum
allowed him for the reward of contributors, his part in the
work was considered very well done" (Constable, ii. 312).
Professor Robison was induced by Gleig to become a contributor.
He first revised the article " Optics," and then wrote a series
of articles on natural philosophy, which attracted great attention
and were long highly esteemed by scientific men. The sub-
editors were James Walker (Primus Scotiae Episcopus 27th of
May 1837, died on the sth of March 1841, aged seventy) until
1795, then James Thomson, succeeded in November 1796 by
his brother Thomas, afterwards professor of chemistry at Glasgow,
who remained connected with the Encyclopaedia until 1800.
According to Kerr (Smellie's Life, i. 364-365), 10,000 copies
were printed, and the profit to the proprietors was 42,000,
besides the payments for their respective work in the conduct
of the publication as tradesmen, Bell as engraver of all the
plates, and Macfarquhar as sole printer. According to Constable
(Memoirs, ii. 312), the impression was begun at 5000 copies,
and concluded with a sale of 13,000. James Hunter, " an active
bookseller of no character," who had a shop in Middle Row,
Holborn, sold the book to the trade, and on his failure Thomson
Bonar, a wine merchant, who had married Bell's daughter,
became the seller of the book. He quarrelled with his father-in-
law, who would not see him for ten years before his death in i8og.
When the edition was completed, the copyright and remaining
books were sold in order to wind up the concern, and " the
whole was purchased by Bell, who gave 13 a copy, sold all the
complete copies to the trade, printed up the odd volumes, and
thus kept the work in the market for several years " (Constable,
ii. 312).
The supplement of the third edition, printed for Thomson
Bonar, and edited by Gleig, was published in 1801 in 2 vols.
4to, containing 1624 pages and 50 copperplates engraved by
D. Lizars. In the dedication to the king, dated Stirling, xoth
December 1800, Dr Gleig says: " The French Encyclopedic
had been accused, and justly accused, of having disseminated
far and wide the seeds of anarchy and atheism. If the Encyclo-
paedia Britannica shall in any degree counteract the tendency
of that pestiferous work, even these two volumes will not be
wholly unworthy of your Majesty's attention." Professor
Robison added 19 articles to the series he had begun when the
third edition was so far advanced. Professor Playfair assisted in
" Mathematics." Dr Thomas Thomson wrote " Chemistry,"
" Mineralogy " and other articles, in which the use of symbols
was for the first time introduced into chemistry; and these
articles formed the first outline of his System of Chemistry,
published at Edinburgh in 1802, 8vo, 4 vols.; the sixth edition,
1821.
The fourth edition, printed for Andrew Bell, was begun
in 1800 or 1801, and finished in 1810 in 20 vols. 410, containing
16,033 pages, with 581 plates engraved by Bell. The dedication
to the king, signed Andrew Bell, is dated Lauristoun, Edinburgh,
1809. The preface is that of the third edition with the necessary
alterations and additions in the latter part. No articles were
reprinted from the supplement, as Bell had not the copyright.
Professor Wallace's articles on mathematics were much valued,
and raised the scientific character of the work. Dr Thomas
Thomson declined the editorship, and recommended Dr James
Millar, afterwards editor of the Encyclopaedia Edinensis (died
on the I3th of July 1827). He was fond of natural history and
a good chemist, but, according to Constable, slow and dilatory
and not well qualified. Andrew Bell died on the loth of June
1809, aged eighty-three, "leaving," says Constable, "two sets
of trustees, one literary to make the money, the other legal to
lay it out after it was made." The edition began with 1250
copies and concluded at 4000, of which two-thirds passed through
the hands of Constable's firm. Early in 1804 Andrew Bell had
offered Constable and his partner Hunter the copyright of the
work, printing materials, &c., and all that was then printed of
the fourth edition, for 20,000. This offer was in agitation in
March 1804, when the two partners were in London. On the
5th of May 1804, after Lord Jeffrey's arrival in Edinburgh, as he
relates to Francis Horner, they entrusted him with a design,
on which he found that most of his friends had embarked with
great eagerness, " for publishing an entire new encyclopaedia
upon an improved plan. Stewart, I understand, is to lend his
name, and to write the preliminary discourse, besides other
articles. Playfair is to superintend the mathematical depart-
ment, and Robison the natural philosophy. Thomas Thomson
is extremely zealous in the cause. W. Scott has embraced it
with great affection. . . . The authors are to be paid at least
as well as reviewers, and are to retain the copyright of their
articles for separate publication if they think proper " (Cock-
burn, Life of Lord Jeffrey, 1852, ii. 90). It was then, perhaps,
that Constable gave 100 to Bonar for the copyright of the
supplement.
The fifth edition was begun immediately after the fourth as a
mere reprint. " The management of the edition, or rather misman-
agement, went on under the lawyer trustees for several years, and
at last the whole property was again brought to the market by
public sale. There were about 1800 copies printed of the five first
volumes, which formed one lot, the copyright formed another lot,
and so on. The whole was purchased by myself and in my name
for between 13,000 and 14,000 , and it was said by the wise
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
379
i of Edinburgh and other* that I had completely ruiiu-d
' and all connected with me by a purchase to such an nmr-
i amount; this was early in 1812 " ii .>n-!.iMr, ii. 314). Bonar,
who lived next duor to the printing office, thought he could con-
duct the book, and had resolved on the purchase. Having a good
deal of money, he accmed to Constable a formidable rival, whose
alliance was to be secured. After " sundry interview* " it wa agreed
that Constable should buy the copyright in his own name, and that
Bonar should have one-third, and also one-third of the copyright of
the supplement, for which he gave 200. Dr James Millar cor-
rected and revised the last 15 volumes. The preface is dated the
1st of December 1814. The printing was superintended by Bonar,
who died on the loth of July 1814. Mis trustees were repaid his
advances on the work, about 6000, and the copyright was valued at
11,000. of which they received one-third, Constable adding 500,
as the book had been so extremely successful. It was published in
jo vols.. 16.017 page*. 582 plates, price 36. and dated 1817.
Soon after the purchase of the copyright. Constable began to
prepare for the publication of a supplement, to be of four or, at the
very utmost, five volumes. " The first article arranged for was one
on ' Chemistry ' by Sir Humphry Davy, but he went abroad (in
October 1813) and I released him from his engagement, and employed
Mr Rrandc: the second article was Mr Stewart's Dissertation,
for which I agreed to pay him 1000, leaving the extent of it to
himself, but with this understanding, that it was not to be under
ten beets, and might extend to twenty " (Constable, ii. 318).
Dugald Stewart, in a letter to Constable, the 1 5th of November 1812,
though he declines to engage to execute any of his own suggestions,
recommends that four discourses should " stand in front, forming
" a general map of the various departments of human knowledge,
similar to " the excellent discourse prefixed by D'Alembert to the
French Encyclopedie," together with historical sketches of the
progress since Bacon's time of modern discoveries in metaphysical,
moral and political philosophy, in mathematics and physics, in
chemistry, and in zoology, botany and mineralogy. He would only
promise to undertake the general map and the first historical sketch,
if his health and other engagements permitted, after the second
volume of his Philosophy of the Human Mind (published in 1813)
had gjone to press. For the second he recommended Playfair, for
chemistry Sir Humphry Davy. He received 1000 for the first part
of his dissertation (166 pages), and 700 for the second (257 pages),
the right of publication being limited to the Supplement and Encyclo-
paedia. Constable next contracted with Professor Playfair for a
dissertation " to be equal in length or not to Mr Stewart's, for 250;
but a short time afterwards I felt that to pay one eminent individual
1000 because he would not take less would be quite unfair, and I
wrote to the worthy Professor that I had fixed his payment at 500."
Constable gave him 500 for the first part (127 pages), and would
have given as much for the second (90 pages) if it had been as long.
His next object was to find out the greatest defects in the book, and
he gave Professor Leslie 200 and Graham Dalycll 100 for looking
over it. He then wrote out a prospectus and submitted it in print
to Stewart, " but the cautious philosopher referred " him to Play-
fair, who " returned it next day very greatly improved." For this
Constable sent him six dozen of very fine old sherry, only feeling
regret that he had nothing better to offer. He at first intended to
have two editors, " one for the strictly literary and the other for the
scientific department." He applied to Dr Thomas Brown, who
" preferred writing trash of poetry to useful and lucrative employ-
ment." At last he fixed on Mr Macvey Napier (born 1777), whom
be had known from 1798, and who " had been a hard student, and
at college laid a good foundation for his future career, though more
perhaps in general information than in what would be, strictly
speaking, called scholarship; this, however, does not fit him the
less for his present task." Constable, in a letter dated the nth of
June 1813, offered him 300 before the first part went to press, 150
on the completion at press of each of the eight half volumes, 500
if the work was reprinted or extended beyond 7000 copies and
200 for incidental expenses. " In this way the composition of the
four volumes, including the introductory dissertations, will amount
to considerably more than 9000." In a postscript the certain
payment is characteristically increased to 1575, the contingent
J 7.15. and the allowance for incidental expenses to 300 (Constable,
ii. 326). Napier went to London, and obtained the co-operation of
many literary men. The supplement wis published in half-volume
parts from December 1816 to April 1824. It formed six volumes
4o, containing 4913 pages, 125 plates, 9 maps, three dissertations
and 669 ankles, of which a list is given at the end. The first disser-
tation^on the " progress of metaphysical, ethical and political philo-
sophy," was by Stewart, who completed his plan only in respect to
metaphysics. He had thought it would be easy to adapt the in-
tellectual map or general survey of human knowledge, sketched by
Bacon and improved by D'Alembert. to the advanced state of the
sciences, while its unrivalled authority would have softened criticism.
But oo closer examination he found the logical views on which this
systematic arrangement was based essentially erroneous; and,
doubting whether the time had come for a successful repetition of
this bold experiment, he forebore to substitute a new scheme of his
Sir James Mackintosh characterized this discourse as " the
: splendid of Mr. Stewart's works, a composition which no other
living writer of English prose ha* equalled " (Edinburgh Review,
\\\M. H)i, September 1816). The second dissertation, "On the
progress of matlu-nuti. -s .un! physics," was by Playfair, who din)
1 9th July 1819, when he had only finished the period of Newton and
Lrilmitz. The third, by Professor Itrande, On the progress of
rlu-inistry from the early middle ages to 1800," was the only our
completed. Those historical dissertations were udmiruhlr' ;md
delightful compositions, and important and interesting additions
to the Encyclopaedia; but it is difficult to sec why they should form
a separate department distinct from the general alphabet. The
preface, dated March 1824, begins with an account of the more
important previous encyclopaedias, relates the history of this to the
sixth edition, describes the preparation for the supplement and gives
an " outline of the contents," and mentions under each great division
of knowledge the principal articles and their authors' names, often
with remarks on the characters of both. Among the distinguished
contributors were Leslie, Playfair, Ivory, Sir John Barrow, Tredgold,
Jeffrey, John Bird Sumner, Blanco White, Hamilton Smith and
1 1. i/l in. Sir Walter Scott, to gratify his generous friend Constable,
laid aside Waverley, which he was completing for publication, and in
April and May 1814 wrote " Chivalry." He also wrote " Drama "
in November 1818, and " Romance " in the summer of 1823. As it
Law of Nations," " Liberty of the Press," and other articles,
which, reprinted cheaply, had a wide circulation. M'Culloch wrote
" Corn Laws," " Interest," " Money," " Political Economy," &c.
Mr Ricardo wrote " Commerce " and " Funding System," and
Professor Malthus, in his article " Population," gave a compre-
hensive summary of the facts and reasonings on which his theory
rested. In the article " Egypt " Dr Thomas Young " first gave
to the public an extended view of the results of his successful inter-
pretation of the hieroglyphic characters on the stone of Rosetta,"
with a vocabulary of 22't words in English, Coptic, Hieroglyphic
and Enchorial, engraved on four plates. There were about 160
biographies, chiefly of persons who had died within the preceding
30 years. Constable " wished short biographical notices of the first
founders of this great work, but they were, in the opinion of my
editor, too insignificant to entitle them to the rank which such
separate notice, it was supposed, would have given them as literary
men, although his own consequence in the world had its origin in
their exertions " (Memoirs, ii. 326). It is to be regretted that this
wish was not carried out, as was done in the latter volumes of Zedler.
Arago wrote " Double Refraction " and " Polarization of Light,"
a note to which mentions his name as author. Playfair wrote
" Aepinus," and " Physical Astronomy." Biot wrote " Electricity "
and ' Pendulum." He " gave his assistance with alacrity," though
his articles had to be translated. Signatures, on the plan of the
Encyclopidie, were annexed to each article, the list forming a triple
alphabet, A to XXX, with the full names of the 72 contributors
arranged apparently in the order of their first occurrence. At the
end of vol. vi. are Addenda and Corrigenda, including " Inter-
polation," by Leslie, and " Polarization of Light," by Arago.
The sixth edition, " revised, corrected and improved," appeared
in half-volume parts, price i6s. in boards, vol. xx. part ii. com-
pleting the work in May 1823. Constable, thinking it not wise to
reprint so large a book year after year without correction, in 1820
selected Mr Charles Maclaren (1782-1866), as editor. " His atten-
tion was chiefly directed to the historical and geographical articles.
He was to keep the press going, and have the whole completed in
three years." He wrote " America," " Greece," " Troy," &c.
Many of the large articles as " Agriculture," " Chemistry, " Con-
chology," were new or nearly so; and references were given to the
supplement. A new edition in 25 vols. was contemplated, not to
be announced till a certain time after the supplement was finished ;
but Constable's house stopped payment on the igth of January
1826, and his copyrights were sold by auction. Those of the Encyclo-
paedia were bought by contract, on the i6th of July 1828, for 6150,
by Thomas Allan, proprietor of the Caledonian Mercury, Adam
Black, Abram Thomson, bookbinder, and Alexander Wight, banker,
who, with the trustee of Constable's estate, had previously begun
the seventh edition. Not many years later Mr Black purchased
all the shares and became sole proprietor.
The seventh edition, 21 vols. 410 (with an index of 187 pages,
compiled by Robert Cox), containing 17,101 pages and 506 plates,
edited by Macvey Napier, assisted by James Browne, LL.D., was
begun in 1827, and published from March 1830 to January 1842.
It was reset throughout and stereotyped. Mathematical diagrams
were printed in the text from woodcuts. The first half of the preface
was nearly that of the supplement. The list of signatures, contain-
ing 167 names, consists of four alphabets with additions, and differs
altogether from that in the supplement: many names are omitted,
the order is changed and 103 arc added. A list follows of over 300
articles, without signatures, by 87 writers. The dissertations 1st,
Stewart's, 289 pages; 2nd, " Ethics " (136 pages), by Sir James
Mackintosh, whose death prevented the addition of " Political
Philosophy"; 3rd, Playfair's, 139 pages; 4th, its continuation by
Sir John Leslie, 100 pages and their index of 30 pages, fill vol. i.
As they did not include Greek philosophy, " Aristotle," " Plato "
3 8o
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
and " Socrates " were supplied by Dr Hampden, afterwards bishop
of Hereford. Among the numerous contributors of eminence,
mention may be made of Sir David Brewster, Prof. Phillips, Prof.
Spalding, John Hill Burton, Thomas De Quincey, Patrick Fraser
Tytler, Capt. Basil Hall, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Antonio Panizzi,
John Scott Russell and Robert Stephenspn. Zoology was divided into
II chief articles, " Mammalia," Ornithology," " Reptilia," " Ich-
thyology," " Mollusca," " Crustacea," " Arachnides," "Entomology,"
" Helmmthology," " Zoophytes," and "Animalcule" all by James
Wilson.
The eighth edition, 1853-1860, 4to, 21 vols. (and index of 239
pages, 1861), containing 17,957 pages and 402 plates, with many
woodcuts, was edited by Dr Thomas Stewart Traill, professor of
medical jurisprudence in Edinburgh University. The dissertations
were reprinted, with one on the Rise, Progress and Corruptions
of Christianity " (97 pages), by Archbishop Whately, and a con-
tinuation of Leslie's to 1850, by Professor James David Forbes,
198 pages, the work of nearly three years, called by himself his
" magnum opus " (Life, pp. 361, 366). Lord Macaulay, Charles
Kingsley, Isaac Taylor, Hepworth Dixon, Robert Chambers, Rev.
Charles Merivale, Rev. F. W. Farrar, Sir John Richardson, Dr
Scoresby, Dr Hooker, Henry Austin Layard, Edw. B. Eastwick,
John Crawfurd, Augustus Petermann, Baron Bunsen, Sir John
Herschel, Dr Lankester, Professors Owen, Rankine, William
Thomson, Aytoun, Blackie, Daniel Wilson and Jukes, were some
of the many eminent new contributors found among the 344 authors,
of whom an alphabetical list is given, with a key to the signatures.
In the preface a list of 279 articles by 189 writers, classed under
1 5 heads, is given. This edition was not wholly reset like the seventh ,
but many long articles were retained almost or entirely intact.
The publication of the ninth edition (A. & C. Black) was com-
menced in January 1875, under the editorship of Thomas Spencer
Baynes until 1880, and subsequently of W. Robertson Smith, and
completed in 1889, 24 vols., with index. This great edition retained
a certain amount of the valuable material in the eighth, but was
substantially a new work; and it was universally acknowledged to
stand in the forefront of the scholarship of its time. Its contributors
included the most distinguished men of letters and of science. In
1898 a reprint, sold at about half the original price, and on the plan
of payment by instalments, was issued by The Times of London;
and in 1902, under the joint editorship of Sir Donald Mackenzie
Wallace, President Arthur T. Hadley of Yale University, and Hugh
Chisholm, eleven supplementary volumes were published, forming,
with the 24 vols. of the ninth edition, a tenth edition of 35 volumes.
These included a volume of maps, and an elaborate index (vol. 35)
to the whole edition, comprising some 600,000 entries. In May 1903
a start was made with the preparation of the nth edition, under the
general editorship of Hugh Chisholm, with W. Alison Phillips as chief
assistant-editor, and a staff of editorial assistants, the whole work of
organization being conducted up to December 1909 from The Times
office. Arrangements were then made, as described in the Prefatory
Note to the present work, by which the copyright and control of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica passed to Cambridge University, for the
publication at the University Press in 19101911 of the 29 volumes
tone being Index) of the nth edition, a distinctive feature of this
issue being the appearance of the whole series of volumes practically
at the same time.
A new and enlarged edition of the Encyclopedic arranged
as a system of separate dictionaries, and entitled Encyclopedic
methddique ou par ordre de matieres, was undertaken by Charles
Joseph Panckoucke, a publisher of Paris (born at Lille on the
26th of November 1736, died on the igth of December 1798).
His privilege was dated the zoth of June 1780. The articles
belonging to different subjects would readily form distinct
dictionaries, although, having been constructed for an alpha-
betical plan, they seemed unsuited for any system -wholly
methodical. Two copies of the book and its supplement were
cut up into articles, which were sorted into subjects. The
division adopted was: i, mathematics; 2 physics; 3, medicine;
4, anatomy and physiology; 5, surgery; 6, chemistry, metal-
lurgy and pharmacy; 7, agriculture; 8, jiatural history of
animals, in six parts; 9, botany; 10, minerals; n, physical
geography; 12, ancient and modern geography; 13, antiquities;
14, history; 15, theology; 16, philosophy; 17, metaphysics,
logic and morality; 18, grammar and literature; 19, law; 20,
finance; 21, political economy; 22, commerce; 23, marine;
24, art militaire; 25, beaux arts; 26, arts et mdtiers 'all
forming distinct dictionaries entrusted to different editors. The
first object of each editor was to exclude all articles belonging
to other subjects, and to take care that those of a doubtful
nature should not be omitted by all. In some words (such as
air, which belonged equally to chemistry, physics and medicine)
the methodical arrangement has the unexpected effect of break-
ing up the single article into several widely separated. Each
dictionary was to have an introduction and a classified table of
the principal articles. History and its minor parts, as inscrip-
tions, fables, medals, were to be included. Theology, which
was neither complete, exact nor orthodox, was to be by the abbe
Bergier, confessor to Monsieur. The whole work was to be
completed and connected together by a Vocabulaire Universe!,
1 vol. 4to, with references to all the places where each word
occurred, and a very exact history of the Encyclopedic and its
editions by Panckoucke. The prospectus, issued early in 1782,
proposed three editions 84 vols. 8vo, 43 vols. 4to with 3 columns
to a page, and 53 vols. 4to of about 100 sheets with 2 columns
to a page, each edition having 7 vols. 410 of 250 to 300 plates
each. The subscription was to be 672 livres from the i5th of
March to July 1782, then 751, and 888 after April 1783. It was
to be issued in livraisons of 2 vols. each, the first (jurisprudence,
vol. i., literature, vol. i.) to appear in July 1782, and the whole
to be finished in 1787. The number of subscribers, 4072, was
so great that the subscription list of 672 livres was closed on the
3oth of April. Twenty-five printing offices were employed,
and in November 1782 the ist livraison (jurisprudence, vol. i.,
and half vol. each of arts et metiers and histoire naturelle) was
issued. A Spanish prospectus was sent out, and obtained 330
Spanish subscribers, with the inquisitor-general at their head.
The complaints of the subscribers and his own heavy advances,
over 150,000 livres, induced Panckoucke, in November 1788,
to appeal to the authors to finish the work. Those en retard
made new contracts, giving their word of honour to put their
parts to press in 1 788, and to continue them without interruption,
so that Panckoucke hoped to finish the whole, including the
vocabulary (4 or 5 vols.), in 1792. Whole sciences, as architec-
ture, engineering, hunting, police, games, &c., had been over-
looked in the prospectus; a new division was made in 44 parts,
to contain 51 dictionaries and about 124 vols. Permission was
obtained on the 27th of February 1789, to receive subscriptions
for the separate dictionaries. Two thousand subscribers were
lost by the Revolution. The soth livraison appeared on the
23rd of July 1792, when all the dictionaries eventually published
had been begun except seven jeux familiers and mathematiques,
physics, art oratoire, physical geography, chasses and peches;
and 18 were finished, mathematics, games, surgery, ancient
and modern geography, history, theology, logic, grammar,
jurisprudence, finance, political economy, commerce, marine,
arts militaires, arts academiques, arts et metiers, encyclopediana.
Supplements were added to military art in 1797, and to history in
1807, but not to any of the other 16, though required for most
long before 1832. The publication was continued by Henri
Agasse, Panckoucke's son-in-law, from 1794 to 1813, and then
by Mme Agasse, his widow, to 1832, when it was completed
in 102 livraisons or 337 parts, forming 1665 vols. of text, and 51
parts containing 6439 plates. The letterpress issued with the
plates amounts to 5458 pages, making with the text 124,210
pages. To save expense the plates belonging to architecture
were not published. Pharmacy (separated from chemistry),
minerals, education, ponts et chaussees had been announced but
were not published, neither was the Vocabulaire Universe!,
the key and index to the whole work, so that it is difficult to
carry out any research or to find all the articles on any subject.
The original parts have been so often subdivided, and have been
so added to by other dictionaries, supplements and appendices,
that, without going into great detail, an exact account cannot
be given of the work, which contains 88 alphabets, with 83
indexes, and 166 introductions, discourses, prefaces, &c. Many
dictionaries have a classed index of articles; that of economic
politique is very excellent, giving the contents of each article,
so that any passage can be found easily. The largest dictionaries
are medicine, 13 vols., 10,330 pages; zoology, 7 dictionaries,
13,645 pages, 1206 plates; botany, 12,002 pages, icoo plates
(34 only of cryptogamic plants); geography, 3 dictionaries and
2 atlases, 9090 pages, 193 maps and plates; jurisprudence
(with police and municipalities), 10 vols., 7607 pages. Anatomy,
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
4 vols., 2866 pages, is not a dictionary but a series of systematic
treatises. Assembles Nationalc was to be in three parts, (i)
the history of the Revolution, (2) debates, and (3) laws and
decrees. Only vol. ii., debates, appeared, 179*, 804 pages,
Abtens to Aurillac. Ten volumes of a Spanish translation with
a vol. of plates were published at Madrid to 1806 viz. historia
natural, i. ii.; grammatica, i.; arte militar, i., ii.; geografia,
i.-iii.; fabricas, i., ii., plates, vol. i. A French edition was
printed at Padua, with the plates, says Peignot, very carefully
engraved. Probably no more unmanageable body of dictionaries
has ever been published except Migne's Encydoptdit Mologiqur,
Paris, 1844-1875, 410, 168 vols., 101 dictionaries, 119,059 pages.
No work of reference has been more useful and successful, or
more frequently copied, imitated and translated, than that known
as the Conversations Lexikon of Brockhaus. It was begun as Con-
versations Lexikon mil vontiglicker Rucksicht auf die gegemeOrtigen
Zfilem, Leipzig, 1706 to 1808, 8vo, 6 vols., 2762 pages, by Dr
Gotthelf Renatus Lobel (born on the ist of April 1767 at Thalwitz
near Wurzen in Saxony, died on the uth of February 1799),
who intended to supersede HUbner, and included geography,
history, and in part biography, besides mythology, philosophy,
natural history, &c. Vols. i.-iv. (A to R) appeared 1796 to 1800,
vol. v. in 1806. Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus (</.r.) bought the
work with its copyright on the 25th of October 1808, for 1800
thafers from the printer, who seems to have got it in payment of
his bill. The editor, Christian Wilhelm Franke, by contract
dated the i6th of November, was to finish vol. vi. by the sth of
December, and the already projected supplement, 2 vols., by
Michaelmas 1809, for 8 thalers a printed sheet. No penalty was
specified, but, says his grandson, Brockhaus was to learn that
such contracts, whether under penalty or not, are not kept, for
the supplement was finished only in 1811. Brockhaus issued a
new impression as Conversations Lexikon oder kurzgefasstes
Htmdicdrttrbiuh. &c., 1800-1811, and on removing to Altenburg
in 1811 began himself to edit the 2nd edition (1812-1819, 10 vols.),
and, when vol. iv. was published, the 3rd (1814-1819). He carried
on both editions together until 1817, when he removed to
Leipzig, and began the 4th edition as Allgemeine deutsche Real-
encycUpadie far die gebildettn Slande. Conversations Lexikon.
This title was, in the uth edition, changed to that of Brockhaus'
Komersalions Lexicon. The sth edition was at once begun, and
was finished in eighteen months. Dr Ludwig Hain assisted in
editing the 4th and 5th editions until he left Leipzig in April
1820, when Professor F. C. Hasse took his place. The 12,000.
copies of the 5th edition being exhausted while vol. x. was at
press, a and unaltered impression of 10,000 was required in 1820
and a 3rd of 10,000 in 1822. The 6th edition, 10 vols., was begun
in September 1822. Brockhaus died in 1823, and his two eldest
sons, Friedrich and Heinrich, who carried on the business for
the heirs and became sole possessors in 1829, finished the edition
with Hasse 's assistance in September 1823. The 7th edition
(1827-1829, 12 vols., 10,489 pages, 13,000 copies, 2nd impression
14.000) was edited by Hasse. The Sth edition (1833-1836,
12 vols., 10,689 pages, 3 1, ooo copies to 1842), begun in the autumn
of 1832, ended May 1837, was edited by Dr Karl August Espe
(born February 1804, died in the Irrcnanstalt at StiHteritz near
Leipzig on the 24th of November 1850) with the aid of many
learned and distinguished writers. A general index, Universal
Register, 242 pages, was added in 1839. The 9th edition (1843-
1847, 15 vols., 11,470 pages, over 30,000 copies) was edited
T Espe. The loth edition (1851-1855, 12,564 pages) was
also in 15 vols., for convenience in reference, and was edited
by Dr August Kurtzel aided by Oskar Pilz. Friedrich Brockhaus
had retired in 1849; Dr Heinrich Edward, the elder son of
Heinrich. made partner in 1854, assisted in this edition, and
Heinrich Rudolf, the younger son, partner since 1863, in the
nth (1864-1868, is vols. of 60 sheets, 13,366 pages).
. U 7f ' *** " *! 2 th "f AP" 1 |8 7'- and Pilz was olc editor
until March 1872, when Dr Gustav Stockmann joined, who was
alooefrom April until joined by Dr Karl Wippermann in OctoU-r.
WBM.Reguter of 136 pages and about 50,000 articles,
each volume has an index. The supplement, 2 vols, 1764 pages,
was begun in February 1871, and finished in April 1873. The 12th
edition. be$un in 1875, was completed in 1879 in is vols., the nth
oli lion (1882-1887), in 16 voU., and the 141)1 (1901-1903) in 16
vols. with a supplementary volume in 1904. The Conversations
I.f.\nan is intended, not for scientific use, but to promote general
in. ntal improvement by giving the results of research and discovery
in a simple and popular form without extended details. The articles,
often too brief, arc very excellent and trustworthy, especially on
German subjects, give references to the best books, and include
biographies of living men.
One of the best German encyclopaedias is that of Meyer,
Neues Konversaliom-Lexifon. The first edition, in 37 vols., was
published in 1830-1852. The later editions, following closely
the arrangement of Brockhaus, arc the 4th (1885-1890, 17 vols.),
the sth (1894-1898, 18 vols.), and the 6th (begun in 1902).
The most copious German encyclopaedia is Ersch and Gruber's
Allgetneine Encyklopitdie der Wissenschaften und Kiinste, Leipzig.
It was designed and begun in 1813 by Professor Johann Samuel
Ersch (born at Gross Glogau on the 23rd of June 1766, chief
librarian at Halle, died on the i6th of January 1828) to satisfy
the wants of Germans, only in part supplied by foreign works.
It was stopped by the war until 1816, when Professor Hufeland
(born at Danzig on the I9th of October 1760) joined, but he died
on the 25th of November 1817 while the specimen part was at
press. The editors of the different sections at various times have
been some of the best-known men of learning in Germany, in-
cluding J. G. Gruber, M. H. E. Meier, Hermann Brockhaus,
W. Miiller and A. G. Hoffmann of Jena.
The work is divided into three sections (i) A-G, of which 99 vols.
had appeared by 1905, (2) H-N, 43 vols., (3) O-Z, 25 vols. All article*
bear the authors' names, and those not ready in time were placed
at the end of their letter. The longest in the work is Griechenland,
vols. 80-87, 3668 pages, with a table of contents. It began to appear
after vol. 73 (Gotze to Gondouin), and hence does not come in its
proper place, which is in vol. 91. Gross Britannien contains 700
pages, and Indien by Benfey 356.
The Encyclopaedia Melropolitana (London, 1845, 410, 28 vols.,
issued in 59 parts in 1817-1845, 22,426 pages, 565 plates) pro-
fessed to give sciences and systematic arts entire and in their
natural sequence, as shown in the introductory treatise on
method by S. T. Coleridge. " The plan was the proposal of the
poet Coleridge, and it had at least enough of a poetical character
to be eminently unpractical " (Quarterly Review, cxiii., 379).
However defective the plan, the excellence of many of the
treatises by Archbishop Whately, Sir John Herschel, Professors
Barlow, Peacock, de Morgan, &c., is undoubted. It is in four
divisions, the last only being alphabetical: I. Pure Sciences,
2 vols., 1813 pages, 16 plates, 28 treatises, includes grammar,
law and theology; II. Mixed and Applied Sciences, 8 vols., 5391
pages, 437 plates, 42 treatises, including fine arts, useful arts,
natural history and its " application," the medical sciences;
III. History and Biography, 5 vols., 4458 pages, 7 maps, con-
taining biography (135 essays) chronologically arranged (to
Thomas Aquinas in vol. 3), and interspersed with (210) chapters
on history (to 1815), as the most philosophical, interesting am!
natural form (but modern lives were so many that the plan broke
down, and a division of biography, to be in 2 vols., was announced
but not published); IV. Miscellaneous, 12 vols., 10,338 pages.
105 plates, including geography, a dictionary of English (the first
form of Richardson's) and descriptive natural history. The
index, 364 pages, contains about 9000 articles. A re-issue in 38
vols. 410, was announced in 1849. Of a second edition 42
vols. 8vo, 14,744 pages, belonging to divisions i. to iii., were
published in 1849-1858.
The very excellent and useful English Cyclopaedia (London,
1854-1862, 410, 23 vols., 12,117 pages; supplements, 1869-1873,
4 vols., 2858 pages), conducted by Charles Knight, based on the
Penny Cyclopaedia (London, 1833-1846, 410, 29 vols., 15,625
pages), of which he had the copyright, is in four divisions,
all alphabetical, and evidently very unequal as classes: i,
geography; 2, natural history; 3, biography (with 703 lives of
living persons); 4, arts and sciences. The synoptical index,
168 pages, has four columns on a page, one for each division, so
that the order is alphabetical and yet the words are classed.
Chambers'* Encyclopaedia (Edinburgh, W. & R. Chambers),
1860-1868, 8vo, 10 vols., 8283 pages, edited in part by the pub-
lishers, but under the charge of Dr Andrew Findlater as " acting
ENDECOTT ENDIVE
editor " throughout,was founded on the loth edition of Brockhaus.
A revised edition appeared in 1874, 8320 pages. In the list of
126 contributors were J.H. Burton, Emmanuel Deutsch, Professor
Goldstiicker, &c. The index of matters not having special
articles contained about 1 500 headings. The articles were gener-
ally excellent, more especially on Jewish literature, folk-lore and
practical science; but, as in Brockhaus, the scope of the work
did not allow extended treatment. A further revision took place,
and in 1888-1892 an entirely new edition was published, in 10
vols., still further new editions being issued in 1895 and in
1901.
An excellent brief compilation, the Harmsworth Encyclopaedia
(1905), was published in 40 fortnightly parts (sevenpence each)
in England, and as Nelson's Encyclopaedia (revised) in 12 vols.
(1906) in America. It was originally prepared for Messrs Nelson
of Edinburgh and for the Carmelite Press, London.
In the United States various encyclopaedias have been
published, but without rivalling there the Encyclopedia Britan-
nica, the gth edition of which was extensively pirated. Several
American Supplements were also issued.
The New American Cyclopaedia, New York (Appleton & Co.),
1858-1863, 16 vols., 12,752 pages, was the work of the editors,
George Ripley and Charles Anderson Dana, and 364 contributors,
chiefly American. A supplementary work, the American Annual
Cyclopaedia, a yearly 8vo vol. of about 800 pages and 250 articles,
was started in 1861, but ceased in 1902. In a new edition, the
American Cyclopaedia, 1873-1876, 8vo, 16 vols., 13,484 pages,
by the same editors, 4 associate editors, 31 revisers and a
librarian, each article passed through the hands of 6 or 8
revisers.
Other American encyclopaedias are Alvin J. Johnson's New
Universal Cyclopaedia, 1875-1877, in 4 vols., a new edition of
which (excellently planned) was published in 8 vols., 1893-1895,
under the name of Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia; the Encyclo-
paedia Americana, edited by Francis Lieber, which appeared in
1839-1847 in 14 vols.; a new work under the same title, pub-
lished in 1903-1904 in 16 vols.; the International Cyclopaedia,
first published in 1884 (revised in 1891, 1894 and 1898), and
superseded in 1902 (revised, 1906) by the New International
Encyclopaedia in 1 7 vols.
In Europe a great impetus was given to the compilation of encyclo-
paedias by the appearance of Brockhaus' Conversations-Lexicon (see
above), which, as a begetter of these works, must rank, in the igth
century, with the Cyclopaedia of Ephraim Chambers in the l8th.
The following, although in no sense an exhaustive list, may be here
mentioned. In France, Le Grand Dictionnaire universel du XIX'
siecle, of Pierre Larousse (15 vols., 1866-1876), with supplementary
volumes in 1877, 1887 and 1890; the Nouveau Larousse illus're,
dictionnaire univsrsel encyclopedique (7 vols., 1901-1904), (this is in
no way a re-issue or an abridgment of Le Grand Dictionnaire of
Pierre Larousse) ; La Grande Encyclopedic, inventaire raisonne des
sciences, des lettres, et des arts, in 31 vols. (1886-1903). In Italy,
the Nuova Enciclopedia Italiana (14 vols., 1841-1851, and in 25
vols., 1875-1888). In Spain, the Diccionario enciclopedico Hispa.no-
Americano de litteratura, ciencias y artes, published at Barcelona
(25 vols., 1877-1899). The Russian encyclopaedia, Russkiy Entsi-
klopedicheskiy Slovar (41 vols., 1905, 2 supplementary vols., 1908)
was begun in 1890 as a Russian version of Brockhaus' Conversations-
Lexicon, but has become a monumental encyclopaedia, to which
all the best Russian men of science and letters have contributed.
Elaborate encyclopaedias have also appeared in the Polish, Hun-
garian, Bohemian and Rumanian languages. Of Scandinavian
encyclopaedias there have been re-issues of the Nordesk Conver-
sations-Lexicon, first published in 1858-1863, and of the Svenskt
Conversations-Lexicon, first published in 1845-1851.
ENDECOTT, JOHN (c. 1588-1665), English colonial governor
in America, was born probably at Dorchester, Dorsetshire,
England, about 1588. Little is known of him before 1628, when
he was one of the six " joint adventurers " who purchased from
the Plymouth Company a strip of land about 60 m. wide along
the Massachusetts coast and extending westward to the Pacific
Ocean. By his associates Endecott was entrusted with the
responsibility of leading the first colonists to the region, and with
some sixty persons proceeded to Naumkeag (later Salem) where
Roger Conant, a seceder from the colony at Plymouth, had begun
a settlement two years earlier. Endecott experienced some trouble
with the previous settlers and with Thomas Morton's settlement
at " Merry Mount " (Mount Wollaston, now Quincy), where,
in accordance with his strict Puritanical tenets, he cut down
the maypole and dispersed the merrymakers. He was the local
governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from the 3Oth of
April 1629 to the 1 2th of June 1630, when John Winthrop, who
had succeeded Matthew Cradock as governor of the company on
the 2oth of October 1629, brought the charter to Salem and
became governor of the colony as well as of the company. In
the years immediately following he continued to take a prominent
part in the affairs of the colony, serving as an assistant and as
a military commissioner, and commanding, although with little
success, an expedition against the Pequots in 1636. At Salem
he was a member of the congregation of Roger Williams, whom
he resolutely defended in his trouble with the New England
clerical hierarchy, and excited by Williams's teachings, cut the
cross of St George from the English flag in token of his hatred of
all symbols of Romanism. He was deputy-governor in 1641-
1644, and governor in 1644-1645, and served also as sergeant-
major-general (commander-in-chief) of the militia and as one
of the commissioners of the United Colonies of New England,
of which in 1658 he was president. On the death of John Win-
throp in 1649 he became governor, and by annual re-elections
served continuously until his death, with the exception of two
years (1650-1651 and 1654-1655), when he was deputy-governor.
Under his authority the colony of Massachusetts Bay made rapid
progress, and except in the matter of religious intolerance he
showed great bigotry and harshness, particularly towards the
Quakers his rule was just and praiseworthy. Of him Edward
Eggleston says: " A strange mixture of rashness, pious zeal,
genial manners, hot temper, and harsh bigotry, his extravagances
supply the condiment of humour to a very serious history it
is perhaps the principal debt posterity owes him." He died on
the 1 5th of March 1665.
See C. M. Endicott, Memoirs of John Endecott (Salem, 1847), and
a " Memoir of John Endecott " in Antiquarian Papers of the
American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, Mass., 1879).
A lineal descendant, WILLIAM CROWNINSHIELD ENDICOTT
(1826-1900), graduated at Harvard in 1847, was a justice of the
Massachusetts supreme court in 1873-1882, and was secretary
of war in President Cleveland's cabinet from 1885 to 1889. His
daughter, Mary Crowninshield Endicott, was married to the
English statesman Mr Joseph Chamberlain in 1888.
. ENDIVE, Cichorium Endivia, an annual esculent plant of the
natural order Compositae, commonly reputed to have been
introduced into Europe from the East Indies, but, according to
some authorities, more probably indigenous to Egypt. It has
been cultivated in England for more than three hundred years,
and is mentioned by John Gerarde in his Herbal (1597). There are
numerous varieties of the endive, forming two groups, namely,
the curled or narrow-leaved (var. crispa), and the Batavian or
broad-leaved (var. latifolia), the leaves of which are not curled.
The former varieties are those most used for salads, the latter
being grown chiefly for culinary purposes. The plant requires
a light, rich and dry soil, in an unshaded situation. In the
climate of England sowing for the main crop should begin about
the second or third week in June; but for plants required to be
used young it may be as early as the latter half of April, and for
winter crops up to the middle of August. The seed should be
finely spread in drills 4 in. asunder, and then lightly covered.
After reaching an inch in height the young plants are thinned;
and when about a month old they may be placed out at distances
of 12 or 15 in., in drills 3 in. in depth, care being taken in removing
them from the seed-bed to disturb their roots as little as possible.
The Batavian require more room than the curled-leaved varieties.
Transplantation, where early crops are required, has been found
inadvisable. Rapidity of growth is promoted by the application
of liquid manures. The bleaching of endive, in order to prevent
the development of the natural bitter taste of the leaves, and to
improve their appearance, is begun about three months after the
sowing, and is best effected either by tying the outer leaves
around the inner, or, as in damp seasons, by the use of the
ENDOEUS ENDOSPORA
383
bleaching-pol. The bleaching may be completed in ten days or
to in summer, but in winter it takes three or four weeks. For
late crops, protection from frost is requisite; and to secure fine
winter endive, it has been recommended to take up the full
frown plants in November, and to place them under shelter,
in a soil of moderately dry sand or of half-decayed peat earth.
Where forcing-houses are employed, endive may be sown in
January, so as to procure by the end of the following month
plants ready for use.
ENDOEUS. an early sculptor, who worked at Athens in the
middle of the 6th century B.C. We are told that he made
an image of Athena dedicated by Callias the contemporary of
Pisistratus at Athens about 564 B.C. An inscription bearing
his name has been found at Athens, written in Ionian dialect.
The tradition which made him a pupil of Daedalus is apparently
misleading, since Daedalus had no connexion with Ionic art.
ENDOGAMY (Gr. tutor, within, and yd^os, marriage), marriage
within the tribe or community, the term adopted to express the
custom compelling those of a tribe to marry among themselves.
Endogamy was probably characteristic of the very early stages of
social organization (see FAMILY), and is to-day found only among
races low in the scale of civilization. As a custom it is believed
to have been preceded in most lands by the far more general rule
of Exogamy (q.v.). Lord Avebury (Origin of Civilisation, p. 154)
points out that " there is not the opposition between exogamy
and endogamy which Mr McLennan supposed." Some races
which are endogamous as regards the tribe are exogamous as
regards the gens. Thus the Abors, Kochs, Hos and other peoples
of India, are forbidden to marry out of the tribe; but the tribe
itself is divided into " keelis " or clans, and no man is allowed to
take as wife a girl of his own " keeli." Endogamy must have in
most cases arisen from racial pride, and a contempt, either well
or ill founded, for the surrounding peoples.
Among the Ahtena of Alaska, though the tribes are extremely
militant and constantly at war, the captured . women are
never made wives, but are used as slaves. Endogamy also
prevails among tribes of Central America. With the Yerkalas
of southern India a custom prevails by which the first two
daughters of a family may be claimed by the maternal uncle as
wives for his sons. The value of a wife is fixed at twenty pagodas
(a 16th-century Indian coin equivalent to about five shillings),
and should the uncle forgo his claim he is entitled to share in
the price paid for his nieces. Among some of the Karen tribes
marriages between near relatives are usual. The Douignaks,
a branch of the Chukmas, seem to have practised endogamy,
and they " abandoned the parent stem during the chiefship
of Janubrix Khan about 1782. The reason of this split was a
disagreement on the subject of marriages. The chief passed an
order that the Douignaks should intermarry with the tribe in
general. This was contrary to an ancient custom and caused
discontent and eventually a break in the tribe " (Lcwin's Hill
Trattt of Ckitiagong, p. 65). This is interesting as being one of the
few cases in which evidence of a change in this respect is available.
The Kalangs of Java are endogamous, and every man must first
prove his common descent before he can enter a family. The
Manchu Tatars prohibit those who have the same family names
from marrying. Among the Bedouins " a man has an exclusive
right to the hand of his cousin." Hottentots seldom marry out of
their own kraal, and David Livingstone quotes other examples.
Endogamy seems to have existed in the Sandwich Islands and
in New Zealand. A community of Javans near Surabaya, on
the Teugger Hills, numbering about 1200 persons, distributed
in about forty villages, and still following the ancient Hindu
religion, is endogamous. Good examples of what biologists
call " in-and-in breeding " are to be found in various fishing
villages in Great Britain, such as Itchinfeny, near Southampton,
Portland Island, Bentham in Yorkshire, Mousehole and Newlyn
in Mountsbay, Cornwall, Boulmer near Alnwick (where almost all
the inhabitants are called Stephenson, Stanton or Stewart),
Burnmout h, Ross and (to some extent) Eyemouth in Berwickshire,
Boyndic in Banffshire, Rathen in Abcrdeenshire, Buckhaven in
Fifeshire, Portmahomack and Balnabruach in Eastern Ross.
In France may be mentioned the commune of Uatz, near Le
Broisic in Loirc-Infe'rieur, many of the central cantons of
Bretagnc, and the singular society called Forcutines supposed
to be of Irish descent living between St Arnaud and Bourses.
Many other European examples might be mentioned, such as the
Marans of Auvergne, a race of Spanish converted Jews accused
of introducing syphilis into France; the Burins and Scrmoyers.
chiefly cattle-breeders, scattered over the department of Ain
and especially in the arrondissement of Bourg-en-Bresse; the
Vaqu6ros, shepherds in the Asturias Mountains; and the Jewish
Chuctas of Majorca.
Sec Gilbert Malcolm Sproat's Scenes and Studies of Savage Life ;
Wcstermarck's History of Human Marriage (1894); Lord Avebury 's
Origin of Civilisation (1902); J. F. McLennan's Primitive Marriaee
(1865)-
ENDOR, an ancient town of Palestine, chiefly memorable as the
abode of the sorceress whom Saul consulted on the eve of the
battle of Gilboa, in which he perished (i Sam. xxviii. 5-25).
According to a psalmist (Ps. Ixxxiii. 9) it was the scene of the
rout of Jabin and Sisera. Although situated in the territory of
the tribe of Issachar, it was assigned to Manasseh. In the timi-
of Eusebius and Jerome Endor existed as a large village 5 m.
south of Mount Tabor; there is still a poor village of the same
name on the slope of Jebel Dahi, near which are numerous caves.
For a description of the locality see Stanley, Sinai and Palestine,
P- 337-
ENDOSPORA, a natural group or class of the Sporozoa, con-
sisting of the orders Myxosporidia, Actinomyxidia, Sarcosporidia
and Haplosporidia, together with various insufficiently-known
forms (Sero- and Exosporidia), regarded at present as Sporozoa
incertae sedis. The distinguishing feature of the group is that the
spore-mother-cells (pansporoblasts) arise in the interior of the
body of the parent-individual; in other words, sporulation is
endogenous. Another very general character though not so
universal is that the adult trophozoite possesses more than one
nucleus, usually many (i.e. it is multinucleate). In the majority
of forms, though apparently not in all (e.g. certain Microsporidia),
sporulation goes on coincidently with growth and trophic life.
With regard to the origin of the group, the probability is greatly
in favour of a Rhizopod ancestry. The entire absence, at any
known period, of a flagellate or even gregariniform phase; on the
other hand, the amoeboid nature of the trophozoites in very
many cases together with the formation of pseudopodia; and,
lastly, the simple endogenous spore-formation characteristic of
the primitive forms, are all points which support this view,
and exclude any hypothesis of a Flagellate origin, such as, on
the contrary, is probably the case in the Ectospora (q.v.).
i. Order Myxosporidia. The Myxosporidia, or, more
correctly, the dense masses formed by their spores, were well
known to the earlier zoological observers. The parasites in
fishes were called by Muller " fish-psorosperms, " a name which
has stuck to them ever since, although, as is evident from the
meaning of the term (" mange-seed "), Muller had little idea
of the true nature of the bodies. Other examples, infesting
silkworms, have also long been known as " Pebrinc-corpuscles,''
from the ravaging disease which they produce in those cater-
pillars in France, in connexion with which Pasteur did such
valuable work. The foundation of our present morphological
and biological knowledge of the order was well laid by the
admirable researches of Thelohan in 1895. In spite, however, of
the contributions of numerous workers since then (e.g. Doflein.
Cohn, Stempell and others), there are still one or two very
important points, such as the occurrence of sexual conjugation,
upon which light is required.
Although pre-eminently parasites of fishes, Myxosporidia also
occur, in a few cases, in other Vertebrates (frogs and reptiles);
no instance of their presence in a warm-blooded
Vertebrate has, however, yet been described. One Occur-
suborder (the Microsporidia or Cryptocystes) is pretty
equally distributed between fishes on the one hand and
Invertebrates chiefly, but not exclusively, Arthropods on the
other. The parasites arc frequently the cause of severe and
Fatal illness in their hosts, and devastating epidemics of
ENDOSPORA
myxosporidiosis have often been reported (e.g. among carp and
barbel in continental rivers, due to a Myxobolus, and among
crayfish in France, to Thelohania).
The seat of the invasion and the mode of parasitism are ex-
tremely varied. Practically any organ or tissue may be attacked,
excepting, apparently, the testis and cartilage and bone. In one
instance at least (that of Nosema bombycis of the silkworm) the
parasites penetrate into the ova, so that true hereditary infection
occurs, the progeny being born with .the disease. The parasites
may be either free in some lumen, such as that of the gall bladder
or urinary bladder (not of the alimentary canal, or the body-
cavity itself), when they are known as coelozoic forms; or in
intimate relation with some tissue, intracellular while young but
becoming intercellular in the adult phase (histozoic forms); or
entirely intracellular (cytozoic forms). Among the histozoic and
cytozoic types, moreover, two well-defined conditions, concentra-
tion and diffuse infiltration, occur. In the former, the parasitic
zone is strictly limited, and well-marked cysts are formed; in
the latter, the infection spreads throughout
the neighbouring tissue, and the parasitic
development becomes inextricably com-
mingled with the host's cells. Sometimes,
as shown by Woodcock (45), there may be
an attempt on the part of the host's tissue to
circumscribe and check the growth of these
parasitic areas, which results in the formation
of pseudocysts, quite different in character
from true cysts.
The most noticeable feature about the
Myxosporidian trophozoite is its amoeboid
Morpbo- and Rhizopod-like character.
logy. Pseudopodia of various kinds,
from long slender ones (fig. 3, B)
to short blunt lobose ones, are of general
occurrence, being most easily observed, of
course, in the free-living forms. The pseudo-
podia serve chiefly for movement and attach-
ment, and never, it should be noted, for the
injection of solid food-particles, as in the
case of Amoebae. The general protoplasm is
divisible into ectoplasm and endoplasm. The former is a clear,
finely-granular layer, of which the pseudopodia are mainly con-
stituted (fig. 3, A). In one or two instances (e.g. Myxidium
tion is found in Myxocystis. The endoplasm is more fluid, and
contains numerous inclusions of a granular nature, as well as
vacuoles of varying size.
In the endoplasm are
lodged the nuclei, of which
in an adult trophozoite
there may be very many;
they are all derived by
multiplication from the
single nucleus with which
the young individuals
begin life, the number in-
creasing as growth pro-
ceeds.
Spore-formation goes on
entirely in the endoplasm.
The number of spores
formed is very variable.
/*
en
Spore .
formation;
From Lankester's Treatise on
Zoology, vol. Protozoa, from Wasie-
lewski, after Thelohan.
FIG. I. Transverse section
of a stickle-back (Gasterosteus
aculeatus), showing two cysts
of Glugea anomata, Moniez
(kk), in the body muscu-
lature on the right side.
lieberkiihnii) the ectoplasm shows a vertical striation, and in the
older trophozoites breaks down partially, appearing like a fur
of delicate, non-motile filaments. A somewhat similar modifica-
From Wasielewski, :
FIG. 3. A. Trophozoite of Sphaerospora divergens, Th61. (par. Blennius and Creni-
labrns), X 750. ec, Ectoplasm; en, endoplasm; sp, spores, each with four pole capsules.
From Lankester's Treatise on Zoology, vol. Protozoa.
B. Spore-bearing trophozoite of Leptotheca agilis, Th61. (par. Trygon and Scorpaena),
X 7o. ps, Pseudopodia localized at the anterior end; f.gr, fatty granules similarly
localized; r.gr, refringent granules; sp, spores, two in number.
It may be as low as two (as in free-living forms, e.g. Leptotheca),
in which case a large amount of trophic protoplasm is uncon-
verted into spores; or, on the other hand, the number
of spores may be very great (as in tissue-parasites),
practically the whole of the parent-body being thus
used up. The sporont may or may not encyst at the
commencement of sporulation. In the free-living forms
there is no cyst-membrane secreted; but in certain Glugeidae, on
the other hand, the ectoplasm becomes altered into a firm, enclos-
ing layer, the ectorind, which forms a thick cyst-wall (fig. 5). The
process of sporulation begins by the segregation of small quantities
of endoplasm around certain of the nuclei, to form little, rounded
bodies, the pansporoblasts. There may be either very many or
only few pansporoblasts developed; in some cases, indeed,
there is only one, the sporont either itself becoming a pansporo-
blast (certain Microsporidia), or giving rise to a solitary one
(Ceratomyxidae). The pansporoblast constituted, nuclear multi-
plication goes on preparatory to the formation of sporoblasts,
which in their turn become spores (see figs. 4 and 5). Not all the
nuclei thus formed, however, are made use of. In the Phaeno-
cystes there are always two sporoblasts developed in each pan-
sporoblast; in the Cryptocystes there may be from one to several.
Around each sporoblast a spore-membrane is secreted, which
usually has the form of two valves. It has recently been shown
by Leger and Hesse (296) that, in many Phaenocystes at any rate,
each of these valves is formed by a definite nucleated portion of
the sporoblast.
The spores themselves vary greatly in size and shape (figs. 7 and
8) . They may be as small as i 5 p by 1/1 (as in a species of Nosema) ,
or as large as 100 ft by 12 ju (as in Ceralomyxa). A conspicuous
feature in the structure of a fully-developed spore is the polar-
capsules, of which there may be either i, 2, or 4 to each. In the
009
From Lankester's Treatise on Zoology,
vol. Protozoa.
FIG. 2. Portion of a section
through a muscle fibre of Coitus
scorpius invaded by Pleistophora
typicalis, Gurley.
m,f, Muscle fibrils, retaining
their striation.
myx. Cysts of the parasite, lying
between the fibrils.
.ENDOSPORA
385
Phaenocystes the polar-capsules are visible in the fresh condition,
but not in the Cryptocystes. The polar-capsule is anorganella
which recalls the nematocyst of a Hydrozoan, containing a
spirally -coiled filament, often of great length, which is shot out
on the application of a suitable stimulus. Normally, as was
From LukMftrt TrtHiM ~ Zt+ty, o<- Proton*. after TMIohan.
FIG. 4. Stages in spore-formation. All the figures are from Myxo-
bolus tUipsouUs, except a and /, which are from M. pfeiferi.
Differentiation of the pan-
sporoblast (p.sp).
b, Panspuroblast with two nuclei,
( and d, Pansporoblasts with six
and ten nuclei respectively;
in d, four of the nuclei are
degenerating.
. Pansporoblast segmented into
two definitive sporoblasts,
each with three nuclei. In
the next four figures the de-
finitive sporoblast, or the
spore produced from it, is
alone figured.
/. Definitive sporoblast seg-
mented into three masses,
t he capeulogenous cells (c.g.c)
and the sporoplasm (tp.p),
within an envelope, the spore
membrane (sp.m).
e. More advanced stage.
n. Spore completely developed,
with two polar capsules and
sporoplasm containing an
iodinophilous vacuole.
', Abnormal spore containing
six polar capsules.
n. Nuclei.
ipM, Definitive sporoblast.
r.n. Residuary nuclei.
vac, Vacuole.
r.p.c. Rudiment of p.c, polar
capsule.
n.p.c. Nuclei of polar capsules.
ioa.vac, Iodinophilous vacuole.
n.sp, Nuclei of sporoplasm.
ingeniously shown by Thelohan (48), the digestive juices of the
fresh host serve this purpose, but various artificial means may
suffice. The function of the everted filament is probably to
secure the attachment of the spore to the epithelium of the new
host. In the Phaenocystes, in connexion with each polar-capsule,
a small nuclear body can be generally made out; these two little
nuclei are those of the two " capsulogenous " areas of the proto-
plasm of the pansporoblast, which formed the capsules. The
sporoplasm, representing the sporozoite, is always single. Never-
arrol.tiu.
U Tmu. / Ou Liver pod BUtfical Society, 1904.
FIG. 5. Pan of the periphery of a cyst of Glugea suphani, in the
intestinal wall of the puke, showing sporoblast and spore-formation.
tt. Ectorind. velopment of the pansporo-
tnd. Forloplasm blasts.
tn4otM. Fold of the mucous mem- sp. Ripe spores, filling the
brane. normal in character. greater part of the cyst.
p.tp.bt. Various states in the de- n, Large (vegetative) nuclei.
tbdess, in the Phaenocystes it is invariably binuclear; and,
in the Microsporidia, the nucleus, at first single, gives rise later
to four nuclei, two of which are regarded by Stempell (42) as
corresponding to those of two polar-capsules (of which only one
it developed in the spore), the remaining two representing germ-
nuclei. Hence it is possible that the Myxosporidian sporoplasm
ix. 13
-tad.
really consists of two, incompletely-divided (sister) germs.
Moreover, it is supposed by some that these two nuclei fuse
together later, this act representing a sexual conjugation; since
the earliest known phases of young trophozoites (amoebulae)
have been described as uninuclear.
In addition to spore-formation, two or three modes of endo-
genous reproduction, serving for auto-infection, have been made
known. One, termed by Doflein plasmotomy, consists either in
the division of the (multinucleate) trophozoite into two, by more
or less equal fission (simple plasmotomy), or in the budding-off.
from the parent trophozoite, of several portions (example:
Myxidium liebcrkiihnii, fig. 6). A variety of this method has been
described by Stempell (40) in the case of the young trophozoites
(meronts) of Thelohania mulleri, which may divide into two
while still uninuclear; and by rapid successive divisions chains
of meronts may be formed, the different individuals being
incompletely separated. Another method, which is probably
chiefly responsible for the rapid spread of tissue-parasites and
cell-parasites (such as Myxobolidae and Glugeidae) through
their host's tissue in the condition of diffuse infiltration,
consists in multiple nuclear division, and the liberation of
amoebulae while the parasite is yet
quite young and possesses only few
nuclei. As Woodcock has pointed out
in considering the case of Glugea
stephani, it is very probable that
this " multiplicative reproduction," in
diffuse infiltration, is to be looked upon
as a separation of the pansporoblast-
rudiments as daughter-individuals; i.e.
that the pansporoblasts are, in certain
circumstances, capable of independent
existence as little sporonts. A further
stage in this direction of evolution is
seen, according to Stempell, in Thelo-
hania, Pleistophora and other types
where the whole individual becomes
one reproductive organella; such forms buds b V multiple plas-
.. , motomy in Myxidium
are to be considered as examples of a i ieber t uhnii> Btttschli
phylogenetic mdividualization of the (par. S ox and Lota)
pansporoblasts, which now exist as after Cohn.
solitary sporonts. An extreme case of 4, Buds.
this "reduction of the individual " is end ; Endoplasm;
found, apparently in the genus Nosema,
as lately characterized by Perez (84),
where vast numbers of minute entirely independent sporonts
(pansporoblasts) are produced, each of which gives rise to only
a single spore.
The Myxosporidia are divided into two suborders, the Phaeno-
cystes and the Cryptocystes. Some authors have of late years
separated these two divisions and raised each to the rank of a
distinct order, considering that they are not more closely related
to each other than to other Endosporan orders. We think
this is a mistake; and it is very interesting to find that Leger and
Hesse (1008) have described (29o) a new genus of Phaenocystes,
Coccomyxa, which represents a type intermediate between these
two suborders, and shows that they are closely connected.
Suborder I : Phaenocystes, Gurley. Spores relatively large, with
generally two or four polar-capsules, visible in the fresh
condition. There are nearly always two spores formed
in each pansporoblast.
Section (a) : Disporea. Only two spores (i.e. one pansporoblast)
produced in each individual trophozoite. The greatest length of the
spore is at right angles to the plane of the suture.
One family, Ceratomyxidae, including two genera, Ceratomyxa
(fig. 3, B) ana Leptotheca, typically " free parasites, mostly from the
gall bladders of fishes. The valves of the spore in the former genus
are prolonged into hollow cones. The type-species of this genus is
C. sphaerulosa, from Muslelus and Galeus; that of Leptulheca is
L. agilis, from Trygon.
Section (b): Polysporea. More than two spores, generally very
many, are produced typically by each individual tropnozoite. The
greatest length of the spore is usually in the sutural plane.
Family, Myxidiidae. Spores with two polar-capsules, and with-
out an iodinophilous vacuole in the sporoplasm. Mostly " free "
FIG. 6. Formation of
the
tl ""
3 86
ENDOSPORA,
parasites. Gen. Sphaerospora. Four or five species are known, from
the kidneys or gall bladder of fishes (fig. 3, A). One, 5. elegans,
is interesting in that it affords a transition between the two sections,
being disporous. Gen. Myxidium; spores elongated and fusiform,
with a polar capsule at each extremity. The best-known species is M .
lieberkuhnii, from the urinary bladder of the pike. One or two species
occur in reptiles. Other genera are Sphaeromyxa, Cystodiscus, Myxo-
soma and Myxoproteus.
Family, Chloromyxidae. Spores with four polar capsules and no
iodinopbilous vacuole. One genus, Chloromyxum, of which several
species are known ; the type being C. leydigi, from the gall bladder
of various Elasmobranchs (fig. 7, B).
Family, Myxobolidae. Spores with two polar-capsules (excep-
tionally one), and with a characteristic iodinophilous vacuole in the
sporoplasm. Typically tissue parasites of Teleosteans, often very
dangerous. Genus Myxobolus. Spores oval or rounded, without a
tail-like process. Very many species are known, which are grouped
into three subsections : (a) forms with only one polar-capsule, such as
M. piriformis, of the tench ; (b) forms with two unequal capsules, e.g.
M. dispar from Cyprinus and Leuciscus ; and (c) the great majority
of species with two equal polar-capsules, including M. mulleri, the
type-species, from different fish, M. cy print and M. pfeifferi, the
cause of deadly disease in carp and barbel respectively and others.
Other genera are Henneguya and Hoferettus, differing from Myxo-
FIG. 7. A. Spore of Ceratomyxa sphaerulosa, Thel (par. Mustelus
and Galeus), X 750, after Th&ohan. sp.p, Sporoplasm; p.c, polar
capsules; s, suture; x, "irregular, pale masses, of undetermined
origin." ,
From Lankester's Treatise on Zoology, vol. Protozoa.
B. Spores of Chloromyxidae, after Thfilohan. a, Chloromyxum
leydigi, Ming., seen from the sutural aspect, X225O; b, C. caudatum,
Thel., XI9OO. p.c, Polar capsules; s, suture; /, filaments; p.s,
tail-like process of the spore envelope.
From Wasielewski'sS^orozotfnAttMrfe.
C. Spores of Myxobolus ellipsoides, Thel. The spores on the left
and right are lying with the sutural plane horizontal, that in the
middle with the sutural plane vertical.
bolus in having, respectively, one or two tail-like processes to the
spore. Lentospora, according to Plehn (37), lacks an iodinophilous
vacuole.
Family Coccomyxidae. The pansporoblasts produce (probably)
only one spore. Spore oval, large (I^M by 5-5 /), with a single very
large polar-capsule. Sporoplasm with no vacuole. Single genus
Coccomyxa, with the characters of the family. One species, C.
morovi, Leger and Hesse, from the gall bladder of the sardine. The
spore greatly resembles a Cryptocystid spore.
Suborder 2: Cryptocystes, Gurley ( = Microsporidia, Balbiani).
Spores minute, usually pear-shaped, with only one polar-capsule,
which is visible only after treatment with reagents. The number
of spores formed in each pansporoblast varies greatly in different
forms.
Section (a) : Polysporogenea. The trophozoite produces numerous
pansporoblasts, each of which gives rise to many spores. Genus
Glugea, with numerous species, of which the best-known is G. anomala,
from the stickleback (fig. i). The genus Myxocystis, which has been
shown by Hesse (24) to be a true Microsporidian, is placed by Perez
in this section, but this is a little premature, as Hesse does not
describe the exact character of the sporulation, i.e. with regard to
the number of pansporoblasts and the spores they produce.
Section (b) : Oligosporogenea. The trophozoite becomes itself the
(single) pansporoblast. In Pleistophora, the pansporoblast pro-
duces many spores; P. typicalis, from the muscles of various fishes
(fig. 2), is the type-species. In Thelohania, eight spores are formed;
the different species are parasitic in Crustacea. In Gurleya, parasitic
in Daphnia, only four are formed; and, lastly, in Nosema (exs.
N. pulvis, from Carcinus, and, most likely, N. bombycis, of the silk-
worm), each pansporoblast produces only a single spore.
2. Order Actinomyxidia. This order comprises a peculiar
group of parasites, first described by A. Stole in 1899, which are
restricted to Oligochaete worms of the family Tubificidae. Most
forms attack the intestinal wall, often
destroying its epithelium over consider-
able areas; but one genus, Sphaeractino-
myxon, inhabits the body-cavity of its
host. The researches of Caullery and
Mesnil (10-12) and of Leger (28 and 29)
have shown that the parasites exhibit
the typical features of the Endospora,
and the spores possess the characteristic
polar-capsules of the Myxosporidian
spore, but differ therefrom by their more
complicated structure.
The growth and development of an
Actinomyxidian have been recently
worked out by Caullery and Mesnil in
the case of Sphaeractinomyxon stolci. A
noteworthy point is the differentiation
of an external (covering) cellular layer,
which affords, perhaps, the nearest ap-
proach to distinct tissue-formation known
among Protozoa. This envelope is formed
f
From Lankester's Treatise
on Zooiogy, vol . Protozoa.
FIG. 8. Spores of
various Glugeidae, X
1500 (after Thelohan).
soon after nuclear multiplication of the a and b, Pleistophora
typicalis, Gurley;
o in the fresh con-
dition, b after treat-
ment with iodine
water, causing ex-
trusion of the fila-
ment.
and d, Thelohania
octospora, Henne-
guy; c fresh, d
treated with ether.
depressa,
fresh.
acuta,
young trophozoite has begun, and is
constituted by two nuclei and a thin,
peripheral layer of cytoplasm. It remains
binuclear throughout the entire period of
development, and serves as a delicate
cyst-membrane. The multiplication of
the internal nuclei is accompanied by a
corresponding division of the cytoplasm;
so that instead of a multinucleate or
plasmodial condition, distinct uninucleate e > '
cellules are formed, up to sixteen in num- ,.
ber. These cellules, as a matter of fact,
are sexual elements or gametes; and eight of them can be dis-
tinguished from the other eight by slight differences in the nuclei.
The gametes unite in couples, each couple being most probably
composed of dissimilar members: in other words, conjugation is
slightly anisogamous. Each of these eight copulae gives rise to a
spore.
As the name of the order implies, there are always eight spores
formed. These differ from other Endosporan spores in having
invariably a ternary symmetry and constitution (fig. 9). The
wall of the spore is composed of three valves, each formed from an
enveloping cell, and three capsular cells, placed at the upper or
anterior pole, and containing each a polar-capsule, visible in the
fresh condition. The valves are usually prolonged into processes
or appendages, whose form and arrangement characterize the
genus; but in Sphaeractinomyxon the spore is spherical and lacks
processes. The sporoplasm may be either a plasmodial mass, with
numerous nuclei, or may form a certain number of uninuclear
sporozoites. A remarkable feature in the development of the
spore is that the germinal tissue (sporoplasm) arises separate
from and outside the cellules which give rise to the spore- wall;
later, when the envelopes are nearly developed, the sporoplasm
penetrates into the spore.
Four genera have been made known, (i) Hexactinomyxon, Stole.
Spores having the form of an anchor with six arms; sporoplasm
plasmodial, situate near the anterior pole of the spore. One sp.
H. psammoryctis, from Psammoryctes. (2) Triactinomyxon, St.
Spores having the form of an anchor with three arms; distinct
sporozoites, disposed near the anterior pole. T. ignotum, with eight
spores, from Tubifex tubifex, and also from an unspecified Tubificid;
another sp., unnamed, with 32 sporozoites, also from T. t. (3) Synac-
tinomyxon, St. Spores united to one another, each having two aliform
appendages; sporoplasm plasmodial. One sp., 5. tubtficis, from
T. rivulorum. (4) Sphaeractinomyxon, C. and M. Spores spherical,
without aliform prolongations; sporoplasm gives rise to very many
ENDOSPORA
37
sporoioites. occupying the whole spore. One sp.. 5. Oolci, from
OiUitto and HrmUutnftx.
j. Order Sarcosporidia. With the exception of one or
two forms occurring in reptiles, these parasites are always found
a
up the endoplasm into somewhat angular chambers or alveoli
(fig. 12). In each chamber is a pansporoblast, which divides up to
produce many spores ; hence the spores formed from different pan-
sporoblasts are kept more or less separate. The pansporoblasts
originate, in a growing
Sarcosporidian, at the two
poles of the body, where
the peripheral endoplasm
with its nuclei is chiefly
aggregated. More inter-
nally, spore-formation is
in progress; and in the
centre, pansporoblasts full
of ripe spores are found.
By this time the para-
site has greatly distended
the muscle-fibre in which
it has hitherto lain, ab-
sorbing, with its growth,
practically all the con-
tractile-substance, until it
is surrounded only by the
sarcolemma and sarco-
plasm. It next passes into
the adjacent connective-
FIG. 10. A. Sarcosporidia
in the ox; a transverse section
of the oesophagus, natural size,
showing the parasites in the
outer (a. b, c, d, e) and inner
(/. r, k) muscular coats.
B. Longitudinal section of
a muscle-fibre containing a
Sarcosporidian parasite, X 60.
as
biania, under the impression that the two forms were quite
distinct. In the later stages, the parasite may become more
rounded, and a cyst may be secreted around it by the host's
tissue. In these older forms, the most centrally placed spores
degenerate and die, having become over-ripe and stale.
With regard to the spores themselves and what becomes of
them, our knowledge is defective. Two kinds of reproductive
germ have been described, termed respectively gymnospores
(so-called sporozoites, " Rainey's corpuscles ") and chlamydo-
spores, or simply spores. It seems probable that the former
serve for endogenous or auto-infection, and the latter for infecting
fresh hosts. Unfortunately, however, both kinds of germ are
not yet known in the case of any one species. The gymnospores,
From UaknttT*! Trmiiit M Ztsj, vol. PTOIOSM.
FIG. 9. Spores of Actinomyxidia (after Stole).
a, Hextutinomyxtm piammorycHi (par. Psammoryctes c, Triactinomyxon ignolum (par. Clitellio, sp.).
barbaha). d. Upper portion of Hexactinomyxon, showing two t j ssue anc i : n tn j s Dn
b. StnattiHomyxon tubificis (par. Tubifex rivulorum) ; of the three polar capsules, one with filament , ',
the mass of united spores. discharged.
from Miescherta
in warm-blooded Vertebrates, usually Mammals. They are of com-
mon occurrence in domestic animals, such as pigs, sheep, horses
and (sometimes) cattle. A Sarcosporidian has also been described
from man. The characteristic habitat is the striped muscle,
generally of the oesophagus (fig. 10, A) and heart, but in acute
cases the parasites
overrun the general
musculature. When
this occurs, as often
happens in mice, the
result is usually fatal.
Unless, however, the
organisms thus spread
throughout the body,
the host does not ap-
pear to suffer any
serious consequences.
In addition to the
effects produced by
the general disturb-
ance to the tissues, the
attacked animals have-
apparently to contend
at any rate in the
case of Sarcocystis teiteila in the sheep with a poison secreted
by the parasite. For Laveran and Mesnil (27) have isolated a
toxine from this form, which they have termed sarcocystin.
In the early stages of growth, a Sarcosporidian appears as an
elongated whitish body lodged in the substance of a muscle-
fibre; this phase has long been known as a " Miescher's tube,"
or Mies(keria. The youngest trophozoites that have been yet
observed (by Bertram, 1) were multinucleate (fig. n, A), but
there is no reason to doubt that they begin life in a uninuclear
condition. The protoplasm is limited by a delicate cuticle.
With growth, organellae corresponding to the Myxosporidian
pansporoblasts are formed by the segregation internally of little
uninuclear spheres of protoplasm. At the same time, a thick
striated envelope is developed around the parasite, which later
comes to look like a fur of fine filaments. The probable explana-
tion of this feature (given by Vuillemin, 44) is that it is due to the
partial breaking down of a stiff, vertically (or radially) striated
external layer (fig. 1 1, A), such as is seen in Myxidium lieberkUhnii.
Immediately internal to this is a thin, homogeneous membrane,
which sends numerous partitions or septa inwards; these divide
After Bertram, from Waielewslti's5#woKW-
ktauli.
FIG. 1 1. Stages in the growth of
Sarcocystis leneua of the sheep. A,
Youngest observed stage in which
the radially striated outer coat has
not appeared; the body of the
trophozoite is already divided into
a number of cells or pansporoblasts
(*). B and C, Older stages with
numerous pansporoblasts and two
envelopes, an inner membrane and
an outer radially striated layer.
which are the more commonly found (e.g. in 5. muris, 5.
micscheriana of the pig, and other forms), are small sickle-shaped
3 88
ENDOSPORA
or reniform bodies which are more or less amoeboid, and capable
of active movement at certain temperatures. They appear to be
naked, and consist of finely granular protoplasm, containing a
single nucleus and one or two vacuoles. The chlamydospores, or
B
From Wasielewski's Sporozoenkundt.
FIG. 12. A.,Sarcocyslismiescheriana
(Kuhn) from the pig: late stage in
which the body has become divided
up into numerous chambers or alveoli,
each containing a number of germs.
B, Sarcocystis of the ox: section of a stage similar to fig. 12. a,
Substance of muscle-fibre; 6, envelope of parasite; c, nuclei of the
muscle ; d, parasitic germs (gymnospores) ; e, walls of the alveoli.
In the peripheral alveoli are seen immature germs.
true spores, occur in 5. tenella of sheep (fig. 13), and have been
described by Laveran and Mesnil (26). They also are falciform,
but one extremity is rounded, the other pointed. There is a very
thin, delicate membrane, most unlike a typical, resistant spore-
wall; and the spores themselves are extremely fragile and easily
acted upon and deformed by reagents, even by distilled water.
The rounded end of the spore contains a large nucleus, while at
the other end is an oval, clear space, which, in the fresh condition,
shows a distinct spiral striation. The exact significance of this
structure has been much debated. In position and appearance
it recalls the polar-capsule of a Myxosporidian spore. The proof
of this interpretation would be the
expulsion of a filament on suitably
stimulating the spore; while, how-
ever, some investigators have asserted
that such a filament is extruded, this
cannot be regarded as at all certain.
Hence it is still doubtful whether this
striated body really corresponds to a
polar-capsule.
Nothing whatever is known as to
the natural means by which infection
with Sarcosporidia is brought about.
Smith (39) showed that mice can be
infected with Sarcocystis muris by
simply feeding them on the flesh of
infected mice. It is not very likely,
however, that this represents the
natural mode, even in the case of
mice; and it certainly cannot do so in
the case of Herbivora. The difficulty
in the way is the delicacy of the
spores, which seem totally unfitted to
withstand external conditions. It may be that some alternative
(intermediate) host is concerned in dispersal; but this has
yet to be ascertained.
All known Sarcosporidia are included in a single genus Sarcocystis
Lank. ( = Miescheria+Balbiania, Blanchard.) Some of the prin
cipal species are: 5. miescheriana, from pigs; 5. tenella, from
(After Laveran and Mesnil,
from Lankester's Treatise on
Zoology, vol. Protozoa.)
FIG. 13. Spores of
Sarcocystis tenella, Raill.,
from the sheep.
a, Spore in the fresh con-
dition.showinga clear
nucleus (n) and a
striated body or cap-
sule (c).
b, Stained spore ; the
nucleus (n) shows a
central karyosome ;
the striations of the
polar capsule (c) are
not visible.
heep ; 5. bertrami, from horses ; 5. blanchardi, from, Bovines ; S.
muns, from mice; 5. platydactyli, from the gecko; and lastly, 5.
indemanni, described from man.
4. Order Haplosporidia. The Sporozoa included in this
irder are characterized by the general simplicity of their develop-
ment, and by the undifferentiated character of their spores. The
order includes a good many forms, whose arrangement and
classification have been recently undertaken by Caullery and
Mesnil (15), to whom, indeed, most of our knowledge relating to
he Haplosporidia is due. The habitat of the parasites is
sufficiently varied; Rotifers, Crustacea, Annelids and fishes
'urnishing most of the hosts. A recent addition to the list of
Protozoa causing injury to man, a Haplosporidian, has been.
From Minchin, in Lankester's Treatise on Zoology, vol. Protozoa.
FIG. i4.Bertramia Asperospora (Fritsch) from the body-cavity
of Brachionus. X 1040.
a, Young form with opaque,even-
ly-granulated protoplasm
and few refringent granules;
the nuclei (n) are small, and
appear to be surrounded each
by a clear space.
6 and c, Full-grown specimens
with large nuclei and clearer
protoplasm, containing nu-
protoplasm is left, in which
the refringent granules
seem to be embedded. The
morula may break up forth-
with and scatter the spores,
or may first round itself off
and form a spherical cyst
with a tough, fairly thick
wall.
protoplasm, cuiuaiiiiug uu- an.
merous refringent granules /, Empty, slightly shrunken cyst,
/. . \ frnm which the snores have
(r.gr.).
d and e, Morula stages, derived
from' which the spores have
escaped.
each cell so formed being a
spore. Between the spores
a certain amount of inter-
cellular substance or residual
1U c t 1*1 ui UICL smgua, um rvu
from 6 and c by division of g, Free spore or youngest um-
the body into segments cellular trophozoite.
centred round the nuclei, h, i,j, Commencing growth of the
trophozoite, with multi-
plication of the nuclei, which
results ultimately in forms
such as a and b.
described by Minchin and Fantham (29d), who have termed the
parasite Rhinosporidium, from its habitat in the nasal septum,
where it produces pedunculate tumours.
Bertramia,a. well-known parasite of the body-cavity of Rotifers,
will serve very well to give a general idea of the life-cycle so far as
it has yet been made out (fig. 14). The trophozoite begins life as a
small, rounded uninucleate corpuscle, which as it grows, becomes
multinucleate. The multinuclear body generally assumes a
definite shape, often that of a sausage. Later, the protoplasm
becomes segregated around each of the nuclei, giving the parasite
a mulberry-like aspect; hence this stage is frequently known as a
morula. The uninuclear cellules thus formed are the spores,
which are ultimately liberated by the break-up of the parent body.
Each is of quite simple, undifferentiated structure, possesses a
large, easily-visible nucleus, and gives rise in due course to
another young trophozoite. In some instances, as described by
ENDOSPORA
39
Minchin, the sporulating parasite becomes rounded off and forms
a protective cyst, doubtless for the protection of the spores
during dissemination.
In some forms (e.g. H a plos poridium and Rhinosporidium) the
spore-mother-cells, instead of becoming each a single spore, as in
Bertramia, give rise to several, four in the first case, many in
the latter. Sometimes, again, the spore, while preserving the
essentially simple character of the sporoplasm, may be enclosed in
spore-case; this may have the form of a little box with a lid or
operculum, as in some species of Haplosporidium, or may possess
a long process or tail, as in Urosporidium (fig. 1 5).
The Haplosporidia are divided by Caullery and Mosnil into three
families, Ilapiosporidiidae, Berlramiidae and Cotlosporidiidae; one
or two genera are also included whose exact position is doubtful.
(a) napiosporidiidoe: 3 genera, Haplosporidium, type-species
H. kettrocirri; I'roiporidium. with one sp., U. fuliginosum; all
parasitic in various Annelids; and Anurosporidium, with the species
A.petseneeri.fmm the sporocyst sofa Trematode, parasitic on Donax.
(b) Bertramiidae: 3 genera, Brrtramia, with B. capitellae from an
From CaulkTT ud Mrwil, Anki-.fi it udoru extMmnlalt, vol. 4, 1905, by per-
aWoa ol SchkKhcr Frtrw Cit. Pmra.
FIG. 1 5. Spores of various Haplosporidia.
I, Haplosporidium helerocirri: 3. H. vejdovskii.
a, on liberation ; 4, Urosporidium fuliginosum:
b, after bang in sea-water. a, surface-view ;
a. H. stolopli. b, side-view. X 1000.
Annelid and B. osperospora, the Rot iferan parasite above described ;
and Icktkyosporidium, with /. gasterophuum and /. phymogenes,
parasitic in various fish.
(c) Codosporidiiae: genera Coelos poridium, type-species C.
(kydorulola; and Polycaryum, type-species P. branchiopodianum.
These forms are parasitic in small Crustacea. The genus Blastulidium
i referred, doubtfully, by Caullery and Mesnil to this family; but
certain phases of this organism seem to indicate rather a vegetable
nature.
The genus Rhinos poridium should probably be placed in a distinct
family. The only species so far described is R. kinealyi from the nasal
septum of man, to which reference has above been made. Another
form, ff euros poridium cephalodisci, agreeing in some respects with
Rhinos poridium, has been described by Ridewood and Fantham
(37a) from the nervous system of Cephalodiscui.
_ A parasite whose affinities are doubtful, but which is regarded by
Caullery and Mesnil as allied to the Haplosporidia, is the curious
parasite originally described by Schewiakoff as " endoparasitic tubes"
of Cyclops; it has been named by Caullery and Mesnil, Schevia-
ktttua. This organism is remarkable in one or two ways: it pos-
sesses a contractile vacuole; the amoeboid trophozoites tend to
fora plasmodia; and (he spores, of the usual simple type, may
apparently divide by binary fission.
5. There remain, lastly, certain forms, which are conveniently
grouped together as "Sporozoa incerlae stdis," either for the reason
that it is impossible to place them in any of the well-defined orders,
or because their life-cycle is at present too insufficiently known.
SeroBporidia is the name given by Pfeiffer to certain minute
parasites of the body-cavity of Crustacea; they include Sero-
sporidium, Blanckardino and Botellus. Lymphosporidium, a
form with distributed nucleus, causing virulent epidemics among
brook-trout , is considered by Calkins(3)to be suitably placed here.
Another parasite of lymphatic spaces and channels is the remark-
able Lympkocyttii, described by Woodcock (46), from plaice and
Bounders, which in some respects rather recalls a Gregarine.
The group Exosporidia was founded by Perrier to include a
peculiar organism, ectoparasitic on Arthropods, to which the
name of Amoebidium had been given by Cienkowsky. It has
recently been shown, however, that this organism is most probably
an Alga. Another genus, Exosporidium, described by Sand (88),
is placed at present in this group. For details of the structure of
these forms and others like Siedleckia, Toxosporidium, Chitonicium
Joyeuxeila and Metschnikmella, a comprehensive treatise on the
Sporozoa, such as that of Minchin, should be consulted.
To complete this article, it will be sufficient to mention various
enigmatical bodies, associated with different diseases, which are
regarded by their describers as Protozoa. Among such is the
" Histos poridium carcinomatosum " of Fcinberg, which he finds
in cancerous growths. Cytoryctes, the name given to " Guarnieri's
bodies " in small-pox and vaccinia, has been recently investigated
by Calkins (3a), who has described a complex life-cycle for the
alleged parasite. Other workers, however, such as Siegel, give a
quite different account of these bodies, and, moreover, find
similar ones in scarlet-fever, syphilis, &c.; while yet others (e.g.
Prowazek) deny that they are parasitic organisms at all.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. (For general works see under SPOROZOA.) (1)
Bertram, " Beitrage zur Kenntnis der Sarcosporidicn," Zool. Jahrb.
Anal. 5, 1902; (2) L. Brasil, "Joyeuxeila toxoides," (n.g., n.sp.),
Arch. tool. exp. N. et R. (3) 10, p. 5, 7 figs., 1902; (3) G. N. Calkins,
" Lymphosporidium truttae," (n.g., n.sp.), Zool. Am. 23, p. 513, 6 figs.,
1903; (3a) ib. The Life-History of Cytoryctes Variolae; Guarnieri,
" Studies path, etiol. variola,"/. Med. Research (Boston, 1904), p. 136,
4 pis. ; (3b) M. Caullery and A. Chappellier, " Anurospondium pelsc-
neeri, (n.g., n.sp.), Haplosporidie, &c., C. R. soc. biol. do, p. 325,
1906; (4) M. Caullery and F. Mesnil, "Surun type nouveau" (Metch-
nikpvella, n.g.), C. R. ac. sci. 125, p. 787, 10 figs., 1897; (5) ib. " Sur
trois Sporozoaires parasites de la Capitella, C. R. soc. biol. 49, p.
1005, 1877 ; (6) ib. " Sur un Sporozoaire aberrant " (Siedleckia, n.g.).
op. cil. 50, p. 1093, 7 figs., 1898 ; (7) ib. " Sur le genre Aplosporidium
(not/.), op. cil. 51, p. 780, 1899; (8) ib. "Sur les Aplosporidies,"
C. R. ac. sci. 129, p. 616, 1899; (9) ib. " Sur les parasites intimcs
des Annelidcs " (Stedleckia, Toxosporidium), C. R. ass. franc.., 1899,
p. 491, 1900; (10) ib. " Sur un type nouveau (Sphaeractinomyxon,
n.g.) d'Actinomyxidies," C. R. soc. biol. 56, p. 408, 1904; (11) ib.
" Phdnomdnes de sexualit6 dans le deVelpppement des Actino-
myxidies," op. cil. 58, p. 889, 1905; (12) ib. " Recherches sur les
Actinomyxidies," Arch. Protistenk. 6, p. 272, pi. ij, 1905; (13) ib.
" Sur quelqucs nouvelles Haplosporidies d'Annelides," C. R. soc.
biol. 58, p. 580, 6 figs., 1005 ; (14) ib. " Sur des Haplosporidies
parasites de poissons marins, ib. p. 640, 1905 ; (15) ib. " Recherches
der Myxosppridien," Centrbl. Bakl. I, Orig. 32, p. 628, 3 figs., 1902;
(18) ib. " Protozoen als Parasiten in Rotatonen," Zool. Am. 25,
p. 497, 1902; (19) F. Doflcin, " fjber Myxosporidien," Zool. Jahr.
Anal, ii, p. 281, 6 pis., 1898; (20) ib. " Fortschritte auf dem
Gebiete der Myxosporidienkunde," Zool. Centrbl. 7, p. 361, 1899;
(21) R. Gurley, " The Myxosporidia," Bull. U.S. Fish. Comm., 1892,
P- 65, 47 pis., 1894; (22) E. Hesse, " Sur une nouvelle Microsporidie
t6traspor6e du genre Gurlcva," C. R. soc. biol. 55, p. 495, 1903;
(23) tb. " Thelohania legen " (n.sp.), op. cil. S7, pp. 570-572, 10
figs., 1904; (24) ib. " Sur Myxocystis Mrazeki Hesse, &c., op.
cil. 58, p. 12, 9 figs., 1905; (25) A. Lavcran and F. Mesnil, " Sur
p. 311, 1899; (28) L. Lcger, "Sur la sporulation du Triactino-
myxon," op. cil. 56, p. 844, A figs., 1904; (29) ib. " Considerations
sur ... les Actinomyxidies, of>. cit. p. 846, 1904; (29a) L. L6ger
and E. Hesse, " Sur une nouvelle Myxosporidie, Coccomyxa, n.g.,"
C. R. ac. sci., 1st July 1907; (29b) ib. "Sur la structure de la
paroisporale des Myxosporidies," op. cit. 142, p. 720, 1906; (29c)
A. Lutz and A. Splendore, " Cber 'Pdbrine' and verwandte Mikro-
sporidien," Central. Bakt. I, 33, Orig. p. 150, 1003, and 36, Orig.
p. 645, 2 pis., 1904; f29d) L. A. Minchin and H. B. Fantham,
Rhinosporidium kinealyi (n.g., n.sp.), Q. J. Micr. Sci. 49, p. 521,
2 pis., 1905; (30) A. Mrazek, " Ober cine neue Sporozoenform "
(Myxocystis), S. B. Bdhm. Ces. 8, 5 pp., 9 figs., 1897 ; (31) ib. "Glugea
lophii," Doflcin, op. cit. 10, 8pp., I pi., 1809; (32) C. Perez, " Sur un
organisme nouveau, Blastulidium, C. R. soc. biol. 55, p. 715, 5 figs.,
1903; (33) ib. " Sur nouvelles Glug6id6es," op. cit. 58, pp. 146-151,
1905; (34) ib. " Microsporidies parasites des crakes, Bull. sta.
biol. d'Arcachon, 8, 22 pp., 14 figs., 1905; (35) W. S. Perrin, " Pleisto-
phora periplanetae," Q. J.JMtcr. Sci. 49, p. 615, 2 pis., 1906; (36)
L. Plate, " Uber einen einzclligen Zcllparasitcn (Chitonicium),
Fauna Chilensis, 3, pp. 601, pis., 1901; (37) M. Plehn, " Cber die
Drchkrankheit der Salmoniden " (Lentospora, n.g.), Arch. Prolistenk.
5, p. 145, pi. 5, 1904; (37a) \V. J. Ridewood and H. B. Fantham,
' Neurosporidium cephalodisci, n.g., n.sp.," Q. J. Micr. Sci. 51,
p. Hi, pi. 7, 1907; (38) R. Sand, " Exosporidium marinum " (n.g.,
39
ENDYMION ENERGETICS
n.sp.), Bull. soc. micr. beige, 24, p. 116, 1898; (39) T. Smith, " The
production of sarcosporidiosis in the mouse," &c., /. Exp. Med. 6,
p. I, 4 pis., 1901; (40) W. Stempell, " Cher Thelphania mulleri,"
Zoo/. Jahr. Anat. 16, p. 235, pi. 25, 1902; (41) ib. " Uber Polycaryum
branchiopodianum " (n.g., n.sp.), Zoo/. Jahrb. Syst. 15, p. 591, pi. 31,
1902; (42) ib. " t)ber Nosema anomalum," Arch. Protistenk, 4, p. I,
pis. 1-3, 1904; (43) P. Thelohan, " Recherches sur les Myxosporidies,"
Bull. sci. France belg. 26, p. ipo, 3 pis., 1895; C 44 ) P- Vuillemin,
" Le Sarcocystis tenella, parasite de I'homme," C. R. ac. sci. 134,
p. 1152, 1902; (45) H. M. Woodcock, "On Myxosporidia in flat
fish," Proc. Liverp. Biol. Soc. 18, p. 126, pi. 2, 1904; (46) ib.
" On a remarkable parasite " (Lymphocystis), op. cit. p. 143, pi. 3,
1904. (H. M. Wo.)
ENDYMION, in Greek mythology, son of Aethlius and king of
Elis. He was loved by Selene, goddess of the moon, by whom he
had fifty daughters, supposed to represent the fifty moons of the
Olympian festal cycle. In other versions, Endymion was a
beautiful youth, a shepherd or hunter whom Selene visited every
night while he lay asleep in a cave on Mount Latmus in Caria
(Pausanias v. i; Ovid, Ars am. iii. 83). Zeus left him free to
choose anything he might desire, and he chose an everlasting
sleep, in which he might remain youthful for ever (Apollodorus
i. 7). According to others, Endymion 's eternal sleep was a
punishment inflicted by Zeus upon him because he ventured to
fall in love with Hera, when he was admitted to the society of the
Olympian gods (Schol. Theocritus iii. 49) . The usual form of the
legend, however, represents Endymion as having been put to
sleep by Selene herself in order that she might enjoy his society
undisturbed (Cicero, Tusc. disp. i. 38). Some see in Endymion
the sun, setting opposite to the rising moon, the Latmian cave
being the cave of forgetfulness, into which the sun plunges
beneath the sea; others regard him as the personification of
sleep or death (see Mayor on Juvenal x. 318).
ENERGETICS. The most fundamental result attained by the
progress of physical science in the igth century was the definite
enunciation and development of the doctrine of energy, which is
now paramount both in mechanics and in thermodynamics.
For a discussion of the elementary ideas underlying this concep-
tion see the separate heading ENERGY.
Ever since physical speculation began in the atomic theories of
the Greeks, its main problem has been that of unravelling the
nature of the underlying correlation which binds together the
various natural agencies. But it is only in recent times that
scientific investigation has definitely established that there is a
quantitative relation of simple equivalence between them,
whereby each is expressible in terms of heat or mechanical
power; that there is a certain measurable quantity associated
with each type of physical activity which is always numerically
identical with a corresponding quantity belonging to the new type
into which it is transformed, so that the energy, as it is called, is
conserved in unaltered amount. The main obstacle in the way
of an earlier recognition and development of this principle had
been the doctrine of caloric, which was suggested by the principles
and practice of calorimetry, and taught that heat is a substance
that can be transferred from one body to another, but cannot be
created or destroyed, though it may become latent. So long as
this idea maintained itself, there was no possible compensation for
the destruction of mechanical power by friction; it appeared that
mechanical effect had there definitely been lost. The idea that
heat is itself convertible into power, and is in fact energy of
motion of the minute invisible parts of bodies, had been held by
Newton and in a vaguer sense by Bacon, and indeed long before
their time; but it dropped out of the ordinary creed of science in
the following century. It held a place, like many other anticipa-
tions of subsequent discovery.in the system of Natural Philosophy
of Thomas Young (1804); and the discrepancies attending
current explanations on the caloric theory were insisted on,
about the same time, by Count Rumford and Sir H. Davy. But
it was not till the actual experiments of Joule verified the same
exact equivalence between heat produced and mechanical energy
destroyed, by whatever process that was accomplished, that the
idea of caloric had to be definitely abandoned. Some time
previously R. Mayer, physician, of Heilbronn, had founded a
weighty theoretical argument on the production of mechanica
power in the animal system from the food consumed; he had,
moreover, even calculated the value of a unit of heat, in terms of
ts equivalent in power, from the data afforded by Regnault's
determinations of the specific heats of air at constant pressure
and at constant volume, the former being the greater on Mayer's
lypothesis (of which his calculation in fact constituted the
verification) solely on account of the power required for the work
of expansion of the gas against the surrounding constant pressure.
About the same time Helmholtz, in his early memoir on the
Conservation of Energy, constructed a cumulative argument
>y tracing the ramifications of the principle of conservation of
energy throughout the whole range of physical science.
Mechanical and Thermal Energy^ The amount of energy,
defined in this sense by convertibility with mechanical work,
which is contained in a material system, must be a function of its
physical state and chemical constitution and of its temperature.
The change in this amount, arising from a given transformation
n the system, is usually measured by degrading the energy that
.eaves the system into heat; for it is always possible to do this,
while the conversion of heat back again into other forms of
:nergy is impossible without assistance, taking the form of
compensating degradation elsewhere. We may adopt the
srovisional view which is the basis of abstract physics, that all
hese other forms of energy are in their essence mechanical,
;hat is, arise from the motion or strain of material or ethereal
media; then their distinction from heat will lie in the fact that
Jhese motions or strains are simply co-ordinated, so that they can
traced and controlled or manipulated in detail, while the
ihermal energy subsists in irregular motions of the molecules or
smallest portions of matter, which we cannot trace on account of
;he bluntness of our sensual perceptions, but can only measure as
regards total amount.
Historical: Abstract Dynamics. Even in the case of a purely
mechanical system, capable only of a finite number of definite
types of disturbance, the principle of the conservation of energy is
very far from giving a complete account of its motions; it forms
only one among the equations that are required to determine
their course. In its application to the kinetics of invariable
systems, after the time of Newton, the principle was emphasized
as fundamental by Leibnitz, was then improved and generalized
by the Bernoullis and by Euler, and was ultimately expressed in
its widest form by Lagrange. It is recorded by Helmholtz that
it was largely his acquaintance in early years with the works of
those mathematical physicists of the previous century, who had
formulated and generalized the principle as a help towards the
theoretical dynamics of complex systems of masses, that started
him on the track of extending the principle throughout the whole
range of natural phenomena. On the other hand, the ascertained
validity of this extension to new types of phenomena, such as
those of electrodynamics, now forms a main foundation of our
belief in a mechanical basis for these sciences.
In the hands of Lagrange the mathematical expression for the
manner in which the energy is connected with the geometrical
constitution of the material system became a sufficient basis for a
complete knowledge of its dynamical phenomena. So far as
statics was concerned, this doctrine took its rise as far back as
Galileo, who recognized in the simpler' cases that the work
expended in the steady driving of a frictionless mechanical
system is equal to its output. The expression of this fact was
generalized in a brief statement by Newton in the Principia, and
more in detail by the Bernoullis, until, in the analytical guise of
the so-called principle of " virtual velocities " or virtual work, it
finally became the basis of Lagrange's general formulation of
dynamics. In its application to kinetics a purely physical
principle, also indicated by Newton, but developed long after with
masterly applications by d'Alembert, that the reactions of the
infinitesimal parts of the system against the accelerations of
their motions statically equilibrate the forces applied to the system
as a whole, was required in order to form a sufficient basis, and
one which Lagrange soon afterwards condensed into the single
relation of Least Action. As a matter of history, however, the
complete formulation of the subject of abstract dynamics actually
ENERGETICS
arose (in 1758) from Lagrange's precise demonstration of the
principle of Least Action for a particle, and its immediate ex-
tension, on the basis of his new Calculus of Variations, to a system
of connected particles such as might be taken as a representation
of any material system; but here too the same physical as
distinct from mechanical considerations come into play as in
d'Alembert's principle. (See DYNAMICS: Analylifai.)
It is in the cases of systems whose state is changing so slowly
that reactions arising from changing motions can be neglected,
that the conditions are by far the simplest. In such systems,
whether stationary or in a state of steady motion, the energy
depends on the configuration alone, and its mathematical
expression can be determined from measurement of the work
required for a sufficient number of simple transformations;
once it is thus found, all the statical relations of the system are
implicitly determined along with it, and the results of all other
transformations can be predicted. The general development of
such relations is conveniently classed as a separate branch of
physics under the name Energetics, first invented by W. J. M.
Rankinc, but the essential limitations of this method have not
always been observed. As regards statical change, the complete
specification of a mechanical system is involved in its geometrical
configuration and the function expressing its mechanical energy
'in terms thereof. Systems which have statical energy-functions
of the same analytical form behave in corresponding ways, and
can serve as models or representations of one another.
Extension to Thermal and Chemical Systems. This dominant
position of the principle of energy, in ordinary statical problems,
has in recent times been extended to transformations involving
change of physical state or chemical constitution as well as change
of geometrical configuration. In this wider field we cannot
assert that mechanical (or available) energy is never lost, for it
may be degraded into thermal energy; but we can use the
principle that on the other hand it can never spontaneously
increase. If this were not so, cyclic processes might theoretically
be arranged which would continue to supply mechanical power
so long as energy of any kind remained in the system; whereas
the irregular and uncontrollable character of the molecular
motions and strains which constitute thermal energy, in combina-
tion with the vast number of the molecules, must place an effectual
bar on their unlimited co-ordination. To establish a doctrine
of energetics that shall form a sufficient foundation for a theory
of the trend of chemical and physical change, we have, there-
fore, to impart precision to this motion of available energy.
Comet's Principle: Entropy. The whole subject is involved
in the new principle contributed to theoretical physics by Sadi
Carnot in 1824, in which the far-reaching modern conception of
cyclic processes was first scientifically developed. It was shown
by Carnot, on the basis of certain axioms, whose theoretical
foundations were subsequently corrected and strengthened by
Clausius and Lord Kelvin, that a reversible mechanical process,
working in a cycle by means of thermal transfers, which takes
heat, say HI, into the material system at a given temperature
Ti, and delivers the pan of it not utilized, say HI, at a lower
given temperature T 3 , is more efficient, considered as a working
engine, than any other such process, operating between the same
two temperatures but not reversible, could be. This relation of
inequality involves a definite law of equality, that the mechanical
efficiencies of all reversible cyclic processes are the same, whatever
be the nature of their operation or the material substances
involved in them; that in fact the efficiency is a function solely
of the two temperatures at which the cyclically working system
takes in and gives out heat. These considerations constitute a
fundamental general principle to which all possible slow reversible
processes, so far as they concern matter in bulk, must conform in
all their stages; its application is almost coextensive with the
cope of general physics, the special kinetic theories in which
inertia is involved, being excepted. (See THERMODYNAMICS.)
If the working system is an ideal gas-engine, in which a perfect
gas (known from experience to be a possible state of matter) is
passed through the cycle, and if temperature is measured from
the absolute zero by the expansion of this gas, then simple direct
calculation on the basis of the laws of ideal gases shows that
Hi/T|~Hi/Tj; and as by the conservation of energy the work
done is HI H,, it follows that the efficiency, measured as the
ratio of the work done to the supply of heat, is i T/Ti. If we
change the sign of HI and thus consider heat as positive when
it is restored to the system as is H,, the fundamental equation
becomes Hi/Ti-}-Hi/Ti^o; and as any complex reversible
working system may be considered as compounded in various
ways of chains of elementary systems of this type, whose e/ects
are additive, the general proposition follows, that in any reversible
complete cyclic change which involves the taking in of heat by
the system of which the amount is 5H, when its temperature
ranges between T r and T P -f ST, the equation SaH P /T r -o holds
good. Moreover, if the changes are not reversible, the proportion
of the heat supply that is utilized for mechanical work will be
smaller, so that more heat will be restored to the system, and
25H r /T r or, as it may be expressed, /dH/T, must have a larger
value, and must thus be positive. The first statement involves
further, that for all reversible paths of change of the system from
one state C to another state D, the value of /dH/T must be the
same, because any one of these paths and any other one reversed
would form a cycle; whereas for any irreversible path of change
between the same states this integral must have a greater value
(and so exceed the difference of entropies at the ends of the path).
The definite quantity represented by this integral for a reversible
path was introduced by Clausius in 1854 (also adumbrated by
Kelvin's investigations about the same time), and was named
afterwards by him the increase of the entropy of the system in
passing from the state C to the state D. This increase, being thus
the same for the unlimited number of possible reversible paths
involving independent variation of all its finite co-ordinates,
along which the system can pass, can depend only on the terminal
states. The entropy belonging to a given state is therefore a
function of that state alone, irrespective of the manner in which it
has been reached; and this is the justification of the assignment to
it of a special name, connoting a property of the system depending
on its actual condition and not on its previous history. Every
reversible change in an isolated system thus maintains the
entropy of that system unaltered; no possible spontaneous
change can involve decrease of the entropy; while any defect of
reversibility, arising from diffusion of matter or motion in the
system, necessarily leads to increase of ent ropy. For a physical or
chemical system only those changes are spontaneously possible
which would lead to increase of the entropy; if the entropy is
already a maximum for the given total energy, and so incapable
of further continuous increase under the conditions imposed
upon the system, there must be stable equilibrium.
This definite quantity belonging to a material system, its
entropy tf>, is thus concomitant with its energy E, which is also a
definite function of its actual state by the law of conservation of
energy; these, along with its temperature T, and the various
co-ordinates expressing its geometrical configuration and its
physical and chemical constitution, are the quantities with
which the thermodynamics of the system deals. That branch of
science develops the consequences involved in just two principles:
(i.) that the energy of every isolated system is constant, and (ii.)
that its entropy can never diminish ; any complication that may
be involved arises from complexity in the systems to which these
two laws have to be applied.
The General Thermodynamic Equation. When any physical or
chemical system undergoes an infinitesimal change of state, we
have 5E =JH+8U, where SH is the energy that has been acquired
as heat from sources extraneous to the system during the change,
and 6U is the energy that has been imparted by reversible
agencies such as mechanical or electric work. It is, however,
not usually possible to discriminate permanently between heat
acquiredand work imparted, for(unless for isothermal transforma-
tions) neither iH nor 5Uis the exact differential of a function of
the constitution of the system and so independent of its previous
history, although their sum SK is such; but we can utilize the
fact that JH is equal to T5</> where 50 is such , as has just been seen.
Thus E and <j> represent properties of the system which, along with
392
ENERGETICS
temperature, pressure and other independent data specifying its
constitution, must form the variables of an analytical exposition.
We have, therefore, to substitute Td<t> forSH; also the change of
internal energy is determined by the change of constitution,
involving a differential relation of type
when the system consists of an intimate mixture (solution) of
masses m\, f 2 , . . . >n of given constituents, which differ physically
or chemically but may be partially transformable into each other
by chemical or physical action during the changes under con-
sideration, the whole being of volume v and under extraneous
pressure p, while W is potential energy arising from physical
forces such as those of gravity, capillarity, &c. The variables
mi,m 2 ....... tihi may not be all independent; for example, if the
system were chloride of ammonium gas existing along with its
gaseous products of dissociation, hydrochloric acid and ammonia,
only one of the three masses would be independently variable. The
sufficient number of these variables (independent components)
together with two other variables, which may be 11 and T, or v and
4>, specifies and determines the state of the system, considered as
matter in bulk, at each instant. It is usual to include SW in
HiSnti + . . . ; in all cases where this is possible the single
equation
dE = T</> - p&v + nibmi +/u 2 8w a + ---- +HnS m n (i)
thus expresses the complete variation of the energy-function E
arising from change of state; and when the part involving the n
constitutive differentials has been expressed in terms of the
number of them that are really independent, this equation by
itself becomes the unique expression of all the thermodynamic
relations of the system. These are in fact the various relations
ensuring that the right-hand side is an exact differential, and are
of the type of reciprocal relations such as dn r ld(t>=dT/dm r .
The condition that the state of the system be one of stable
equilibrium is that &<j>, the variation of entropy, be negative for
all formally imaginable infinitesimal transformations which
make 5E vanish; for as 6c cannot actually be negative for any
spontaneous variation, none of these transformations can then
occur. From the form of the equation, this condition is the same
as that 5E-T50 must be positive for all possible variations of
state of the system as above defined in terms of co-ordinates
representing its constitution in bulk, without restriction.
We can change one of the independent variables expressing the
state of the system from < to T by sub trading 5 (0T) from both
sides of the equation of variation: then
a(E -T0) = -0ST -/>8r+wi +. . . . +Hn&m n .
It follows that for isothermal changes, i.e. those for which ST is
maintained null by an environment at constant temperature, the
condition of stable equilibrium is that the f unction E-T< shall be
a minimum. If the system is subject to an external pressure p,
which as well as the temperature is imposed constant from
without and thus incapable of variation through internal changes
the condition of stable equilibrium is similarly that E-T<t>+pv
shall be a minimum.
A chemical system maintained at constant temperature by
communication of heat from its environment may thus have
several states of stable equilibrium corresponding to different
minima of the function here considered, just as there may be
several minima of elevation on a landscape, one at the bottom of
each depression; in fact, this analogy, when extended to space of
n dimensions, exactly fits the case. If the system is sufficiently
disturbed, for example, by electric shock, it may pass over
(explosively) from a higher to a lower minimum, but never
(without compensation from outside) in the opposite direction.
The former passage, moreover, is often effected by introducing a
new substance into the system; sometimes that substance is
recovered unaltered at the end of the process, and then its actior
is said to be purely catalytic; its presence modifies the form ol
the function E-T< so as to obliterate the ridge between the two
equilibrium states in the graphical representation.
There are systems in which the equilibrium states are but very
slightly dependent on temperature and pressure within wide
limits, outside which reaction takes place. Thus while there are
cases in which a state of mobile dissociation exists in the system
which changes continuously as a function of these variables,
there are others in which change does not sensibly occur at all
until a certain temperature of reaction is attained, after which it
>roceeds very rapidly owing to the heat developed, and the
system soon becomes sensibly permanent in a transformed phase
jy completion of the reaction. In some cases of this latter type
the cause of the delay in starting lies possibly in passive resistance
;o change, of the nature of viscosity or friction, which is
competent to convert an unstable mechanical equilibrium into a
moderately stable one; but in most such reactions there seems to
56 no exact equilibrium at any temperature, short of the ultimate
state of dissipated energy in which the reaction is completed,
although the velocity of reaction is found to diminish exponentially
with change of temperature, and thus becomes insignificant at a
small interval from the temperature of pronounced activity.
Free Energy. The quantity E-T< thus plays the same
r undamental part in the thermal statics of general chemical
systems at uniform temperature that the potential energy plays
in the statics of mechanical systems of unchanging constitution,
[t is a function of the geometrical co-ordinates, the physical and
chemical constitution, and the temperature of the system, which
determines the conditions of stable equilibrium at each tempera-
ture; it is, in fact, the potential energy generalized so as to
include temperature, and thus be a single function relating to each
temperature but at the same time affording a basis of connexion
between the properties of the system at different temperatures.
It has been called Ihefree energy of the system by Helmholtz, for
it is the part of the energy whose variation is connected with
changes in the bodily structure of the system represented by the
variables mi, tth, . . . m n , and not with the irregular molecular
motions represented by heat, so that it can take part freely in
physical transformations. Yet this holds good only subject to
the condition that the temperature is not varied; it has been
seen above that for the more general variation neither 5H norSU
is an exact differential, and no line of separation can be drawn
between thermal and mechanical energies.
The study of the evolution of ideas in this, the most abstract
branch of modern mathematical physics, is rendered difficult in
the manner of most purely philosophical subjects by the variety
of terminology, much of it only partially appropriate, that has
been employed to express the fundamental principles by different
investigators and at different stages of the development.
Attentive examination will show, what is indeed hardly surprising,
that the principles of the theory of free energy of Gibbs and Helm-
holtz had been already grasped and exemplified by Lord Kelvin
in the very early days of the subject (see the paper " On the
Thermoelastic and Thermomagnetic Properties of Matter,
Part I." Quarterly Journal of Mathematics, No. i, April 1855;
reprinted in Phil. Mag., January 1878, and in Math, and Phys.
Papers, vol. i. pp. 291, seq.). Thus the striking new advance
contained in the more modern work of J. Willard Gibbs (1875-
1877) and of Helmholtz (1882) was rather the sustained general
application of these ideas to chemical systems, such as the
galvanic cell and dissociating gaseous systems, and in general
fashion to heterogeneous concomitant phases. The fundamental
paper of Kelvin connecting the electromotive force of the cell
with the energy of chemical transformation is of date 1851, some
years before the distinction between free energy and total energy
had definitely crystallized out; and, possibly satisfied with the
approximate exactness of his imperfect formula when applied to a
Daniell's cell (infra), and deterred by absence of experimental
data, he did not return to the subject. In 1852 he briefly
announced (Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin.) the principle of the dissipation
of mechanical (or available) energy, including the necessity of
compensation elsewhere when restoration occurs, in the form that
" any restoration of mechanical energy, without more than an
equivalent of dissipation, is impossible " probably even in
vital activity; but a sufficient specification of available energy
(cf . infra) was not then developed. In the paper above referred to,
where this was done, and illustrated by full application to solid
elastic systems, the total energy is represented by e and is named
ENERGETICS
393
" the intrinsic energy." the energy taken in during an isothermal
transformation is represented by #, of which H is taken in as heat,
while the remainder, the change of free (or mechanical or
available ) energy of the system is the unnamed quantity denoted
by the symbol w, which is " the work done by the applied forces "
at uniform temperature. It is pointed out that it is w and not
that is the potential energy-function for isothermal change, of
which the form can be determined directly by dynamical and
physical experiment, and from which alone the criteria of
equilibrium and stress are to be derived simply for the reason
that for all rrctrsible paths at constant temperature between the
same terminal configurations, there must, by Carnot's principle,
be the same gain or loss of heat. And a system of formulae are
given (5) to(ii) Ex. gr. e w ''v7+J I *<fl for finding the total
energy e for any temperature / when if and the thermal capacity s
of the system, in a standard state, have thus been ascertained,
and another for establishing connexion between the form of if
for one temperature and its form for adjacent temperatures
which are identical with those developed by Helmholtz long
afterwards, in 1882, except that the entropy appears only as an
unnamed integral. The progress of physical science is formally
identified with the exploration of this function w for physical
systems, with continually increasing exact ness and range except
where pure kinetic considerations prevail, in which cases the
wider Hamil Ionian dynamical formulation is fundamental.
Another aspect of the matter will be developed below.
A somewhat different procedure, in terms of entropy as
fundamental, has been adopted and developed by Planck. In an
isolated system the trend of change must be in the direction
which increases the entropy <t>, by Clausius' form of the principle.
But in experiment it is a system at constant temperature rather
than an adiabatic one that usually is involved; this can be
attained formally by including in the isolated system (cf . infra) a
source of heat at that temperature and of unlimited capacity,
when the energy of the original system increases by6E this source
must give up heat of amount 5E, and its entropy therefore
diminishes 5E/T. Thus for the original system maintained at
constant temperature T it is 60 6E/T that must always
be positive in spontaneous change, which is the same criterion as
was reached above. Reference may also be made to H. A.
Lorentz's Collected Scientific Papers, part i.
A striking anticipation, almost contemporaneous, of Gibbs's
thermodynamic potential theory (infra) was made by Clerk
Maxwell in connexion with the discussion of Andrews's experi-
ments on the critical temperature of mixed gases, in a letter
published in Sir G. G. Stokes's Scientific Correspondence (vol.
ii. p. 34).
Available Energy. The same quantity </>, which Clausius
named the entropy, arose in various ways in the early develop-
ment of the subject, in the train of ideas of Rankinc and Kelvin
relating to the expression of the available energy A of the material
system. Suppose there were accessible an auxiliary system
containing an unlimited quantity of heat at absolute temperature
T. forming a condenser into which heat can be discharged from
the working system, or from which it may be recovered at that
temperature: we proceed to find how much of the heat of our
system is available for transformation into mechanical work, in a
process which reduces the whole system to the temperature of
this condenser. Provided the process of reduction is performed
reversibly, it is immaterial, by Carnot's principle, in what
manner it is effected: thus in following it out in detail we can
consider each elementary quantity of heat SH removed from the
system as set aside at its actual temperature between T and
T+JT for the production of mechanical work 3W and the
residue of it 3H. as directly discharged into the condenser at T .
The principle of Carnot gives H/T-H/To, so that the portion
of the beat JH that is not available for work is 6H , equal to
T, JH/T. In the whole process the part not available in connexion
with the condenser at T, is therefore T /rfH/T. This quantity
must be the same whatever reversible process is employed:
thus, for example, we may first transform the system reversibly
from the state C to the state D, and then from the state D to the
final state of uniform temperature TO. It follows that the value
of To/dH/T, representing the heat degraded, is the same along all
reversible paths of transformation from the state C to the state D ;
so that the function /<fH/T is the excess of a definite quantity
<(> connected with the system in the former state as compared
with the latter.
It is usual to change the law of sign of 611 so that gain of heat
by the system is reckoned positive; then, relative to a condenser
of unlimited capacity at T , the state C contains more mechanic-
ally available energy than the state D by the amount
EC-ED+ To/rfH/T, that is, by Ec-ED-T (0c-0p). In this way
the existence of an entropy f unction with a definite value for each
state of the system is again seen to be the direct analytical
equivalent of Carnot's axiom that no process can be more efficient
than a reversible process between the same initial and final states.
The name motivity of a system was proposed by Lord Kelvin in
1879 for this conception of available energy. It is here specified
as relative to a condenser of unlimited capacity at an assigned
temperature TO: some such specification is necessary to the
definition; in fact, if To were the absolute zero, all the energy
would be mechanically available.
But we can obtain an intrinsically different and self-contained
comparison of the available energies in a system in two different
states at different temperatures, by ascertaining how much
energy would be dissipated in each in a reduction to the same
standard state of the system itself, at a standard temperature TO.
We have only to reverse the operation, and change back this
standard state to each of the others in turn. This will involve
abstractions of heat 5H from the various portions of the system
in the standard state, and returns of 511 to the state at T ; if
this return were5HoT/To instead of 8H, there would be no loss of
availability in the direct process; hence there is actual dissipa-
tion 6H-5H T/T , that is T (5<M<o). On passing from state i
to state 2 through this standard state o the difference of these
dissipations will represent the energy of the system that has
become unavailable. Thus in this sense E -T^+T^o-f-const.
represents for each state the amount of energy that is available;
but instead of implying an unlimited source of heat at the standard
temperature To, it implies that there is no extraneous source.
The available energy thus defined differs from E-T0, the free
energy of Helmholtz, or the work function of the applied forces of
Kelvin, which involves no reference to any standard state, by a
simple linear function of the temperature alone which is immaterial
as regards its applications.
The determination of the available mechanical energy arising
from differences of temperature between the parts of the same
system is a more complex problem, because it involves a
determination of the common temperature to which reversible
processes will ultimately reduce them; for the simple case in
which no changes of state occur the solution was given by Lord
Kelvin in 1853, in connexion with the above train of ideas (cf.
Tail's Thermodynamics, 179). In the present exposition the
system is sensibly in equilibrium at each stage, so that its
temperature T is always uniform throughout ; isolated portions
at different temperatures would be treated as different systems.
Thermodynamic Potentials. We have now to develop the
relations involved in the general equation (i) of thermodynamics.
Suppose the material system includes two coexistent states or
phases, with opportunity for free interchange of constituents
for example, a salt solution and the aqueous vapour in equilibrium
with it. Then in equilibrium a slight transfer dm of the water-
substance of mass m, constituting the vapour, into the water-
substance of massm, existing in the solution, should not produce
any alteration of the first order in oEr-TS<t>; therefore // r must be
equal to fi,. The quantity ^ is called by Willard Gibbs the
potential of the corresponding substance of mass m r ; it may be
defined as its marginal available energy per unit mass at the
given temperature. If then a system involves in this way
coexistent phases which remain permanently separate, the
potentials of any constituent must be the same in all of them in
which that constituent exists, for otherwise it would tend to pass
394
ENERGETICS
from the phases in which its potential is higher to those in which
it is lower. If the constituent is non-existent in any phase, its
potential when in that phase would have to be higher than in the
others in which it is actually present; but as the potential
increases logarithmically when the density of the constituent is
indefinitely diminished, this condition is automatically satisfied
or, more strictly, the constitutent cannot be entirely absent,
but the presence .of the merest trace will suffice to satisfy the
eondition of equality of potential. When the action of the force of
gravity is taken into account, the potential of each constituent
must include the gravitational potential gh; in the equilibrium
state the total potential of each constituent, including this part,
must be the same throughout all parts of the system into which
it is freely mobile. An example is Dalton's law of the indepen-
dent distributions of the gases in the atmosphere, if it were in a
state of rest. A similar statement applies to other forms of
mechanical potential energy arising from actions at a distance.
When a slight constitutive change occurs in a galvanic element
at given temperature, producing available energy of electric
current, in a reversible manner and isothermally, at the expense of
chemical energy, it is the free energy of the system E T<t>, not its
total intrinsic energy, whose value must be conserved during the
process. Thus the electromotive force is equal to the change of
this free energy per electrochemical equivalent of reaction in the
cell. This proposition, developed by Gibbs and later by Helm-
holtz, modifies the earlier one of Kelvin which tacitly assumed
all the energy of reaction to be available except in the cases
such as that of a Daniell's cell, in which the magnitude of the
electromotive force does not depend sensibly on the temperature.
The effects produced on electromotive forces by difference of
concentrations in dilute solutions can thus be accounted for and
traced out, from the knowledge of the form of the free energy for
such cases; as also the effects of pressure in the case of gas
batteries. The free energy does not sensibly depend on whether
the substance is solid or fused for the two states are in
equilibrium at the temperature of fusion though the total
energy differs in these two cases by the heat of fusion; for this
reason, as Gibbs pointed out, voltaic potential-differences are the
same for the fused as for the solid state of the substances
concerned.
Relations involving Constitution only. The potential of a
component in a given solution can depend only on the tempera-
ture and pressure of the solution, and the densities of the various
components, including itself; as no distance-actions are usually
involved in chemical physics, it will not depend on the aggregate
masses present. The example above mentioned, of two coexistent
phases liquid and vapour, indicates that there may thus be
relations between the constitutions of the phases present in a
chemical system which do not involve their total masses. These
are developed in a very direct manner in Willard Gibbs's original
procedure. In so far as attractions at a distance (a uniform
force such as gravity being excepted) and capillary actions at the
interfaces between the phases are inoperative, the fundamental
equation (i) can be integrated. Increasing the volume k times,
and all the masses to the same extent in fact, placing alongside
each other k identical systems at the same temperature and
pressure will increase <t> and E in the same ratio k; thus E must
be a homogeneous function of the first degree of the independent
variables <t>, v, m\, . . ., ntn, and therefore by Euler's theorem
relating to such functions
This integral equation merely expresses the additive character of
the energies and entropies of adjacent portions of the system at
uniform temperature, and thus depends only on the absence of
sensible physical action directly across finite distances. If we
form from it the expression for the complete differential 5E, and
subtract (i), there remains the relation
... +w n 5/i n . (2)
This implies that in each phase the change of pressure depends on
and is determined by the changes in T, pi, . . . pin alone; as we
know beforehand that a physical property like pressure is an
analytical function of the state of the system, it is therefore a
function of these n+i quantities. When they are all inde-
pendently variable, the densities of the various constituents and
of the entropy in the phase are expressed by the partial fluxions of
p with respect to them: thus
But when, as in the case above referred to of chloride of
ammonium gas existing partially dissociated along with its
constituents, the masses are not independent, necessary linear
relations, furnished by the laws of definite combining proportions,
subsist between the partial fluxions, and the form of the
function which expresses p is thus restricted, in a manner which is
easily expressible in each special case.
This proposition that the pressure in any phase is a function of
the temperature and of the potentials of the independent con-
stituents, thus appears as a consequence of Carnot's axiom
combined with the energy principle and the absence of effective
actions at a distance. It shows that at a given temperature and
pressure the potentials are not all independent, that there is a
necessary relation connecting them. This is the equation of state
or constitution of the phase, whose existence forms one mode of
expression of Carnot's principle, and in which all the properties
of the phase are involved and can thence be derived by simple
differentiation.
The Phase Rule. When the material system contains only a
single phase, the number of independent variations, in addition
to change of temperature and pressure, that can spontaneously
occur in its constitution is thus one less than the number of its
independent constituents. But where several phases coexist in
contact in the same system, the number of possible independent
variations may be much smaller. The present independent
variables fit, . . ., ju n are specially appropriate in this problem,
because each of them has the same value in all the phases. Now
each phase has its own characteristic equation, giving a relation
between dp, ST, and 5/*i, . . . dfin, or such of the latter as are
independent; if r phases coexist, there are r such relations;
hence the number of possible independent variations, including
those of v and T, is reduced to mr-\-2, where m is the number
of independently variable chemical constituents which the system
contains. This number of degrees of constitutive freedom
cannot be negative; therefore the number of possible phases
that can coexist alongside each other cannot exceed m+2.
If m+2 phases actually coexist, there is no variable quantity in
the system, thus the temperature and pressure and constitutions
of the phases are all determined; such is the triple point at which
ice, water and vapour exist in presence of each other. If there are
m+i coexistent phases, the system can vary in one respect only;
for example, at any temperature of water-substance different
from the triple point two phases only, say liquid and vapour,
or liquid and solid, coexist, and the pressure is definite, as also are
the densities and potentials of the components. Finally, when
but one phase, say water, is present, both pressure and tempera-
ture can vary independently. The first example illustrates the
case of systems, physical or chemical, in which there is only one
possible state of equilibrium, forming a point of transition between
different constitutions; in the second type each temperature has
its own completely determined state of equilibrium; in other
cases the constitution in the equilibrium state is indeterminate as
regards the corresponding number of degrees of freedom. By aid
of this phase rule of Gibbs the number of different chemical
substances actually interacting in a given complex system can
be determined from observation of the degree of spontaneous
variation which it exhibits; the rule thus lies at the foundation
of the modern subject of chemical equilibrium and continuous
chemical change in mixtures or alloys, and in this connexion it
has been widely applied and developed in the experimental
investigations of Roozeboom and van 't Hoff and other physical
chemists, mainly of the Dutch school.
Extent to which the Theory can be practically developed. It is
only in systems in which the number of independent variables is
small that the forms of the various potentials, or the form of the
ENERGETICS
395
fundamental characteristic equation expressing the energy of the
system in terms of its entropy and constitution, or the pressure
in terms of the temperature and the potentials, which includes
them all, can be readily approximated to by experimental
determinations. Even in the case of the simple system water-
vapour, which is fundamental for the theory of the steam-engine,
this has not yet been completely accomplished. The general
theory is thus largely confined, as above, to defining the test ra-
tions on the degree of variability of a complex chemical system
which the principle of Carnot imposes. The tracing out of these
general relations of continuity of state is much facilitated by
geometrical diagrams, such as James Thomson first introduced in
order to exhibit and explain Andrews' results as to the range of
coexistent phases in carbonic acid. Gibbs's earliest thermo-
dynamic surface had for its co-ordinates volume, entropy and
energy; it was constructed to scale by Maxwell for water-
substance, and is fully explained in later editions of the Theory of
Heat (1875); it forms a relief map which, by simple inspection,
reveals the course of the transformations of water, with the
corresponding mechanical and thermal changes, in its three
coexistent states of solid, liquid and gas. In the general case,
when the substance has more than one independently variable
constituent, there are more than three variables to be repre-
sented; but Gibbs has shown the utility of surfaces represent-
ing, for instance, the entropy in terms of the constitutive variables
when temperature and pressure are maintained constant. Such
graphical methods are now of fundamental importance in
connexion with the phase rule, for the experimental exploration
of the trend of the changes of constitution of complex mixtures
with interacting components, which arise as the physical con-
ditions are altered, as, for example in modern metallurgy, in the
theory of alloys. The study of the phenomena of condensation
in a mixture of two gases or vapours, initiated by Andrews and
developed in this manner by van der Waals and his pupils, forms
a case in point (see CONDENSATION OF GASES).
Dilute Components: Perfect Gases and Dilute Solutions.
There are, however, two simple limiting cases, in which the theory
can be completed by a determination of the functions involved in
it, which throw much light on the phenomena of actual systems
not far removed trom these ideal limits. They are the cases of
mixtures of perfect gases, and of very dilute solutions.
If, following Gibbs, we apply his equation (2) expressing the pres-
sure in terms of the temperature and the potentials, to a very dilute
solution of substances m,, m,, . . . m. in a solvent substance mi, and
vary the co-ordinate m, alone, p and T remaining unvaried, fre have
in the equilibrium state
du, , dit
'
in which every m except mi is very small, while dn\ldm, is presumably
finite. A the second term is thus finite, this requires that the total
potential of each component m,, which is mdn,ldm,, shall be finite,
say k,, in the limit when m, is null. Thus for very small concentra-
tions the potential Mr of a dilute component must be of the form
irlogMr/*, being proportional to the logarithm of the density of
that component; it thus tends logarithmically to an infinite value
at evanescent concentrations, showing that removal of the last
traces of any impurity would demand infinite proportionate ex-
penditure of available energy, and is therefore practically impossible
with finite intensities of force. It should be noted, however, that
this argument applies only to fluid phrases, for in the case of deposi-
tion ola solid m, i not uniformly distributed throughout the phase;
thus it remains possible for the growth of a crystal at its surface
in aqueous solution to extrude all the water except such as is in some
form of chemical combination.
The precise value of this logarithmic expression for the potential
can be readily determined for the case of a perfect gas from its
characteristic properties, and can be thence extended to other dilute
forms of matter. We have ^*>- R/m.T for unit mass of the gas,
where m is the molecular weight, being 2 for hydrogen, and R is a
constant equal to 82X10* in C.G.S. dynamical units, or 2 calories
approximately in thermal energy units, which n the same for all
gases because they have all the same number of molecules per unit
volume. The increment of heat received by the unit mass of the
fas is H-pto+T, beinjj thus the specific heat at constant
volume, which can be a function only of the temperature. Thus
* - /<m/T - R/m. log +/T-'<fr ;
and the available energy A per unit mass is E-T*+T$o where
E.-t+jtfT, the integral being for a standard state, and < being
intrinsic' energy of chemical constitution; to that
If there are molecules in the unit mass, and N per unit volume, we
have mv-Nmv, each being 2 *'. where ' is the number of molecules
per unit mass in hydrogen; thus the free energy per molecule is
o'+R'Tlog6N, where 6-m/2', R'-R/2v', and a* is a function of
T alone. It is customary to avoid introducing the unknown mole-
cular constant >' by working with the available energy per " gramme-
molecule," that is, for a number of grammes expressed by the
molecular weight of the substance; this is a constant multiple of the
available energy per molecule, and is o + RT log?, p being the density
equal to 6N where 6 m/2*'. This formula may now be extended
by simple summation to a mixture of gases, on the ground of Ualton's
experimental principle that each ol the components behaves in
presence of the others as it would do in a vacuum. The components
are, in fact, actually separable wholly or partially in reversible ways
which may be combined into cycles, for example, either (i.) by
diffusion through a porous partition, taking account of the work of
the pressures, or (ii.) by utilizing the modified constitution towards
the top of a lone column of the mixture arising from the action of
gravity, or fiii.) by reversible absorption of a single component.
If we employ in place of available energy the form of characteristic
equation which gives the pressure in terms of the temperature and
potentials, the pressure of the mixture is expressed as the sum of
those belonging to its components: this equation was made by Gibbs
the basis of his analytical theory of gas mixtures, which he tested by
its application to the only data then available, those of the equili-
brium of dissociation of nitrogen peroxide (2NO ^~* NjOi) vapour.
Van 't Hofs Osmotic Principle: Theoretical Explanation.
We proceed to examine how far the same formulae as hold for
gases apply to the available energy of matter in solution which is
so dilute that each molecule of the dissolved substance, though
possibly the centre of a complex of molecules of the solvent, is for
nearly all the time beyond the sphere of direct influence of the
other molecules of the dissolved substance. The available
energy is a function only of the co-ordinates of the matter in bulk
and the temperature; its change on further dilution, with which
alone we are concerned in the transformations of dilute solutions,
can depend only on the further separation of these molecular
complexes in space that is thereby produced, as no one of them is
in itself altered. The change is therefore a function only of the
number N of the dissolved molecules per unit volume, and of the
temperature, and is, per molecule, expressible in a form entirely
independent of their constitution and of that of the medium in
which they are dissolved. This suggests that the expression for
the change on dilution is the same as the known one for a gas, in
which the same molecules would exist free and in the main
outside each other's spheres of influence; which confirms and is
verified by the experimental principle of van 't Hoff , that osmotic
pressure obeys the laws of gaseous pressure with identically the
same physical constants as those of gases. It can be held, in fact,
that this suggestion does not fall short of a demonstration, on the
basis of Carnot's principle, and independent of special molecular
theory, that in all cases where the molecules of a component,
whether it be of a gas or of a solution, are outside each other's
spheres of influence, the available energy, so far as regards
dilution, must have a common form, and the physical constants
must therefore be the known gas-constants. The customary
exposition derives this principle, by an argument involving
cycles, from Henry's law of solution of gases; it is sensibly
restricted to such solutes as appear concomitantly in the free
gaseous state, but theoretically it becomes general when it is
remembered that no solute can be absolutely non-volatile.
Source of the Idea of Temperature. The single new element
that thermodynamics introduces into the ordinary dynamical
specification of a material system is temperature. This concep-
tion is akin to that of potential, except that it is given to us
directly by our sense of heat. But if that were not so, we could
still demonstrate, on the basis of Carnot's principle, that there is a
definite function of the state of a body which must be the same
for all of a series of connected bodies, when thermal equilibrium
has become established so that there is no tendency for heat to
flow from one to another. For we can by mere geometrical
displacement change the order of the bodies so as to bring
different ones intodirect contact. If this disturbed the thermal
equilibrium, we could construct cyclic processes to take advantage
of the resulting flow of heat to do mechanical work, and such
processes might be carried on without limit. Thus it is proved
39 6
ENERGETICS
that if a body A is in temperature-equilibrium with B, and B
with C, then A must be in equilibrium with C directly. This
argument can be applied, by aid of adiabatic partitions, even
when the bodies are in a field of force so that mechanical work is
required to change their geometrical arrangement; it was in
fact employed by Maxwell to extend from the case of a gas to that
of any other system the proposition that the temperature is the
same all along a vertical column in equilibrium under gravity.
It had been shown from the kinetic theory by Maxwell that in a
gas-column the mean kinetic energy of the molecules is the same
at all heights. If the only test of equality of temperature con-
sisted in bringing the bodies into contact, this would be rather a
proof that thermal temperature is of the same physical nature in
all parts of the field of force; but temperature can also be
equalized across a distance by radiation, so that this law for gases
is itself already necessitated by Carnot's general principle, and
merely confirmed or verified by the special gas-theory. But
without introducing into the argument the existence of radiation,
the uniformityof temperature throughout all phases in equilibrium
is necessitated by the doctrine of energetics alone, as otherwise,
for example, the raising of .a quantity of gas to the top of the
gravitational column in an adiabatic enclosure together with the
lowering of an equal mass to the bottom would be a source of
power, capable of unlimited repetition.
Laws of Chemical Equilibrium based on Available Energy.
The complete theory of chemical and physical equilibrium in
gaseous mixtures and in very dilute solutions may readily be
developed in terms of available energy (cf. Phil. Trans., 1897,
A, pp. 266-280), which forms perhaps the most vivid and most
direct procedure. The available energy per molecule of any kind,
in a mixture of perfect gases in which there are N molecules of
that kind per unit volume, has been found to be <i+R'T log&N
where R' is the universal physical constant connected with R
above. This expression represents the marginal increase of
available energy due to the introduction of one more molecule
of that kind into the system as actually constituted. The same
formula also applies, by what has already been stated, to sub-
stances in dilute solution in any given solvent. In any isolated
system in a mobile state of reaction or of internal dissociation,
the condition of chemical equilibrium is that the available energy
at constant temperature is a minimum, therefore that it is
stationary, and slight change arising from fresh reaction would
not sensibly alter it. Suppose that this reaction, per molecule
affected by it, is equivalent to introducing HI molecules of type
NI, 2 of type Nj, &c., into the system, n\, 2 , . . being the
numbers of molecules of the different types that take part in the
reaction, as shown by its chemical equation, reckoned positive
when they appear, negative when they disappear. Then in the
state of equilibrium
must vanish. Therefore Ni"iN2 n 2 . . . must be equal to K, a
function of the temperature alone. This law, originally based
by Guldberg and Waage on direct statistics of molecular inter-
action, expresses for each temperature the relation connecting the
densities of the interacting substances, in dilution comparable as
regards density with the perfect gaseous state, when the reaction
has come to the state of mobile equilibrium.
All properties of any system, including the heat of reaction,
are expressible in terms of its available energy A, equal to
E T<fr+<t>oT. Thus as the constitution of the system changes
with the temperature, we have
where
E=H+*W, H
5H being heat and 5W mechanical and chemical energy imparted
to the system at constant temperature; hence
: (<**>), so that A =
which is equivalent to
-W~T(A*E).
This general formuia, applied differentially, expresses the heat
5E 5W absorbed by a reaction in terms of 5A, the change
produced by it in the available energy of the system, and of 5W,
the mechanical and electrical work done on the system during
its progress.
In the problem of reaction in gaseous systems or in very dilute
solution, the change of available energy per molecule of reaction
has just been found to be
SA=Ao+R'TlogK', where K' = 6,iJ,j. . . .K;
thus, when the reaction is spontaneous without requiring external
work, the heat absorbed per molecule of reaction is
This formula has been utilized by van 't Hoff to determine, in
terms of the heat of reaction, the displacement of equilibrium in
various systems arising from change of temperature; for K, equal
to Ni n iN 2 "2. . ., is the reaction -parameter through which alone the
temperature affects the law of chemical equilibrium in dilute
systems.
Inter/octal Phenomena: Liquid Films. The characteristic
equation hitherto developed refers to the state of an element of
mass in the interior of a homogeneous substance: it does not
apply to matter in the neighbourhood of the transition between
two adjacent phases. A remarkable analysis has been developed
by J. W. Gibbs in which the present methods concerning matter
in bulk are extended to the phenomena at such an interface,
without the introduction of any molecular theory; it forms
the thermodynamic completion of Gauss's mechanical theory of
capillarity, based on the early form of the principle of total
energy. The validity of the fundamental doctrine of available
energy, so far as regards all mechanical actions in bulk such as
surface tensions, is postulated, even when applied to interfacial
layers so thin as to be beyond our means of measurement ; the
argument from perpetual motions being available here also, as
soon as we have experimentally ascertained that the said tensions
are definite physical properties of the state of the interface and
not merely accidental phenomena. The procedure will then
consist in assuming a definite excess of energy, of entropy, and
of the masses of the various components, each per unit surface,
at the interface, the potential of each component being of
necessity, in equilibrium, the same as it is in the adjacent masses.
The interfacial transition layer thus provides in a sense a new
surface-phase coexistent with those on each side of it, and having
its own characteristic equation. It is only the extent of the
interface and not its curvatures that need enter into this relation,
because any slight influence of the latter can be eliminated from
the equation by slightly displacing the position of the surface
which is taken to represent the interface geometrically. By an
argument similar to one given above, it is shown that one of the
forms of the characteristic equation is a relation expressing the
surface tension as a function of the temperature and the potentials
of the various components present on the two sides of the
interface; and from the differentiation of this the surface
densities of the superficial distributions of these components
(as above defined) can be obtained. The conditions that a
specified new phase may become developed when two other
given ones are brought into contact, i.e. that a chemical reaction
may start at the interface, are thence formally expressed in
terms of the surface tensions of the three transition layers and the
pressures in the three phases. In the case of a thin soap-film,
sudden extension of any part reduces the interfacial density of
each component at each surface of the film, and so alters the
surface tension, which requires time to recover by the very slow
diffusion of dissolved material from other parts of the thin film;
the system being stable, this change must be an increase of
:ension, and constitutes a species of elasticity in the film. Thus
!n a vertical film the surface tension must be greater in the
higher parts, as they have to sustain the weight of the lower parts;
he upper parts, in fact, stretch until the superficial densities of
he components there situated are reduced to the amounts that
ENERGETICS
397
correspond to the tension required for this purpose. Such a film
could not therefore consist of pure water. But there is a limit to
these processes: if the film becomes so thin that there is no water
in bulk between its surfaces, the tensions cannot adjust them-
selves in this slow way by migration of components from one pan
of the film to another; if the film can survive at all after it has
become of molecular thickness, it must be as a definite molecular
structure all across its thickness. Of such type are the black
spots that break out in soap- films (suggested by Gibbs and proved
by the measures of Reinold and Rticker): the spots increase in
size because their tension is less than that of the surrounding
film, but their indefinite increase is presumably stopped in
practice by some clogging or viscous agency at their boundary.
Trtintiiio* to Mobculor Theory. The subject of energetics,
based on the doctrine of available energy, deals with matter in
bulk and is not concerned with its molecular constitution, which
it is expressly designed to eliminate from the problem. This
analysis of the phenomena of surface tension shows how far the
principle of negation of perpetual motions can carry us, into
regions which at first sight might be classed as molecular. But,
as in other cases, it is limited to pointing out the general scheme
of relations within which the phenomena can have their play.
There is now a considerable body of knowledge correlating
surface tension with chemical constitution, especially to a
certain extent with the numerical density of the distribution
of molecules; thus R. Eotvos has shown that a law of proportion-
ality exists for wide classes of substances between the tempera-
ture-gradient of the surface tension and the density of the mole-
cules over the surface layer, which varies as the two-thirds
power of the number per unit volume (see CHEMISTRY: Physical).
This takes us into the sphere of molecular science, where at
present we have only such indications largely derived from
experiment, if we except the mere notion of inter-atomic forces of
unknown character on which the older theories of capillarity,
those of Laplace and Poisson, were constructed.
In other topics the same restrictions on the scope of the simple
statical theory of energy appear. From the ascertained behaviour
in certain respects of gaseous media we are able to construct
their characteristic equation, and correlate their remaining
relations by means of its consequences. Part of the experimental
knowledge required for this purpose is the values of the gas-con-
stants, which prove to be the same for all nearly perfect gases.
The doctrine of energetics by itself can give no clue as to why this
should be so; it can only construct a scheme for each simple
or complex medium on the basis of its own experimentally
determined characteristic equation. The explanation of uni-
formities in the intrinsic constitutions of various media belongs
to molecular theory, which is a distinct and in the main more
complex and more speculative department of knowledge. When
we proceed further and find, with van 't Hoff, that these same
universal gas-constants reappear in the relations of very dilute
solutions, our demand for an explanation such as can only be
provided by molecular theory (as supra) is intensely stimulated.
But except in respects such as these the doctrine of energetics
gives a complete synthesis of the course and relations of the
chemical reactions of matter in bulk, from which we can eliminate
atomism altogether by restating the merely numerical atomic
theory of Dalton as a principle of equivalent combining pro-
portions. Of recent years there has been a considerable school of
chemists who insist on this procedure as a purification of their
science from the hypothetical ideas as to atoms and molecules,
in terms of which its experimental facts have come to be expressed.
A complete system of doctrine can be developed in this manner,
but its scope will be limited. It makes use of one principle
of correlation, the doctrine of available energy, and discards
another such principle, the atomic theory. Nor can it be said
that the one principle is really more certain and definite than the
other. This may be illustrated by what has sometimes by
German writers been called Gibbs's paradox: the energy that is
available for mechanical effect in the inter-diffusion of given
volumes of two gases depends only on these volumes and their
s, and is independent of what the gases are; if the gases
differed only infinitesimally in constitution it would still be the
same, and the question arises where we are to stop, for we cannot
suppose the inter-diffusion of two identical gases to be a source oi
power. This then looks like a real failure, or rather limitation, of
the principle; and there are other such, that can only be satis-
factorily explained by aid of the complementary doctrine of
molecular theory. That theory, in fact, shows that the more
nearly identical the gases are, the slower will be the process of
inter-diffusion, so that the mechanical energy will indeed be
available, but only after a time that becomes indefinitely pro-
longed. It is a case in which the simple doctrine of energetics
becomes inadequate before the limit is reached. The phenomena
of highly rarefied gases provide other cases. And in fact the only
reason hitherto thought of for the invariable tendency of available
energy to diminish, is that it represents the general principle that
in the kinetic play of a vast assemblage of independent mole-
cules individually beyond our control, the normal tendency is for
the regularities to diminish and the motions to become less
correlated: short of some such reason, it is an unexplained
empirical principle. In the special departments of dynamical
physics on the other hand, the molecular theory, there dynamical
and therefore much more difficult and less definite, is an indispens-
able part of the framework of science; and even experimental
chemistry now leans more and more on new physical methods
and instruments. Without molecular theory the clue which has
developed into spectrum analysis, bringing with it stellar
chemistry and a new physical astronomy, would not have been
available; nor would the laws of diffusion and conduction in
gases have attained more than an empirical form; nor would it
have been possible to weave the phenomena of electrodynamics
and radiation into an entirely rational theory.
The doctrine of available energy, as the expression of thermo-
dynamic theory, is directly implied in Carnot's Essai of 1824, and
constitutes, in fact, its main theme; it took a fresh start, in the
light of fuller experimental knowledge regarding the nature of
heat, in the early memoirs of Rankine and Lord Kelvin, which
may be found in their Collected Scientific Papers; a subsequent
exposition occurs in Maxwell's Theory of Heal; its most familiar
form of statement is Lord Kelvin's principle of the dissipation of
available energy. Its principles were very early appb'ed by James
Thomson to a physico-chemical problem, that of the influence of
stress on the growth of crystals in their mother liquor. The
" thermodynamic function " introduced by Rankine into its
development is the same as the " entropy " of the material
system, independently defined by Clausius about the same time.
Clausius's form of the principle, that in an adiabatic system the
entropy tends continually to increase, has been placed by Pro-
fessor Willard Gibbs, of Yale University, at the foundation of his
magnificent but complex and difficult development of the theory.
His monumental memoir " On the Equilibrium of Heterogene-
ous Substances," first published in Trans. Connecticitl Academy
(1876-1878), made a clean sweep of the subject; and workers
in the modern experimental science of physical chemistry
have returned to it again and again to find their empirical
principles forecasted in the light of pure theory, and to derive
fresh inspiration for new departures. As specially preparatory to
Gibbs's general discussion may be mentioned Lord Rayleigh's
memoir on the thermodynamics of gaseous diffusion (Phil. Mag.,
1876), which was expounded by Maxwell in the 9th edition of the
Ency. Brit. (art. DIFFUSION). The fundamental importance of
the doctrine of dissipation of energy for the theory of chemical
reaction had already been insisted on in general terms by
Rayleigh; subsequent to, but independently of, Gibbs's work it
had been elaborated by von Helmholtz (Gcsamm. Abhandl. ii. and
iii.) in connexion with the thermodynamics of voltaic cells, and
more particularly in the calculation of the free or available
energy of solutions from data of vapour-pressure, with a view to
the application to the theory of concentration cells, therein also
coming close to the doctrine of osmotic pressure. This form of
the general theory has here been traced back substantially to
Lord Kelvin under date 1855. Expositions and developments on
various lines will be found in papers by Riecke and by Planck in
' ENERGICI ENERGY
Annakn der Physik between 1890 and 1900, in the course of a
memoir by Larmor, Phil. Trans., 1897, A, in Voigt's Compendium
der Physik and his more recent Thermodynamik, in Planck's
Vorlesungen iiber Thermodynamik, in Duhem's elaborate Traite
de mecanique chimique and Le Potential thermodynamique, in
Whetham's Theory of Solution and in Bryan's Thermodynamics.
Numerous applications to special problems are expounded in
van 't Hoff's Lectures on Theoretical and Physical Chemistry.
The theory of energetics, which puts a diminishing limit on the
amount of energy available for mechanical purposes, is closely
implicated in the discovery of natural radioactive substances by
H. Becquerel, and their isolation in the very potent form of
radium salts by M. and Mme Curie. The slow degradation of
radium has been found by the latter to be concomitant with an
evolution of heat, in amount enormous compared with other
chemical changes. This heat has been shown by E. Rutherford
to be about what must be due to the stoppage of the a and ft
particles, which are emitted from the substance with velocities
almost of the same scale as that of light. If they struck an ideal
rigid target, their lost kinetic energy must all be sent away as
radiation; but when they become entangled among the molecules
of actual matter, it will, to a large extent, be shared among them
as heat, with availability reduced accordingly. In any case the
particles that escape into the surrounding space are so few and
their velocity so uniform that we can, to some extent, treat their
energy as directly available mechanically, in contradistinction
to the energy of individual molecules of a gas (cf. Maxwell's
" demons "), e.g. for driving a vane, as in Crookes's experiment
with the cathode rays. Indeed, on account of the high velocity
of projection of the particles from a radium salt, the actions
concerned would find their equilibrium at such enormously high
temperatures that any influence of actually available differences
of temperature is not sensibly a feature of the phenomena.
Such actions, however, like explosive actions in general, are
beyond our powers of actual direct measurement as regards the
degradation of availability of the energy. It has been pointed
out by Rutherford, R. J. Strutt and others, that the energy of
degradation of even a very minute admixture of active radium
would entirely dominate and mask all other cosmical modes of
transformation of energy; for example, it far outweighs that
arising from the exhaustion of gravitational energy, which has
been shown by Helmholtz and Kelvin to be an ample source for
all the activities of our cosmical system, and to be itself far greater
than the energy of any ordinary chemical rearrangements con-
sequent on a fall of temperature: a circumstance that makes
the existence and properties of this substance under settled
cosmic conditions still more anomalous (see RADIOACTIVITY).
Theoretically it is possible to obtain unlimited concentration of
availability of energy at the expense of an equivalent amount of
degradation spread over a wider field; the potency of electric
furna-ces, which have recently opened up a new department of
chemistry, and are limited only by the refractoriness of the
materials of which they are constituted, forms a case in point.
In radium we have the very remarkable phenomenon of far higher
concentration occurring naturally in very minute permanent
amounts, so that merely chemical sifting is needed to produce its
aggregation. Even in pitchblende only one molecule in io 9
seems to be of radium, renewable, however, when lost, by internal
transformation.
The energetics of RADIATION is treated under that heading. See
also THERMODYNAMICS. (J. L.*)
ENERGICI, or ENERGUMENS (Gr. " possessed by a spirit "),
the name given in the early Church to those suffering from
different forms of insanity, who were popularly supposed to b*
under the control of some indwelling spirit other than their own.
Among primitive races everywhere disease is explained in this
way, and its removal supposed to be effected by priestly prayers
and incantations. They were sometimes called xnno^bntvoi.,
as being " tossed by the waves " of uncontrollable impulse.
Persons afflicted in this way were restricted from entering the
church, but might share the shelter of the porch with lepers and
persons of offensive life (Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, vol. i. 16).
After the prayers, if quiet, they might come in to receive the
bishop's blessing (Apost. Const, viii. 6, 7, 32) and listen to the
sermon. They were daily fed and prayed over by the exorcists,
and, in case of recovery, after a fast of from 20 to 40 days, were
admitted to the eucharist, and their names and cures entered in
the church records.
A note on the New Testament use of the word (vepjeiv and its
cognates will be found in J. A. Robinson's edition of The Epistle to
the Ephesians, pp. 241-247; an excursus on "The Conflict with
Demons " in A. Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity, i. 152-180.
Cf. EXORCISM.
ENERGY (from the Gr. tvlpytia; kv, in, tpyov, work), in
physical science, a term which may be defined as accumulated
mechanical work, which, however, may be only partially available
for use. A bent spring possesses energy, for it is capable of doing
work in returning to its natural form ; a charge of gunpowder pos-
sesses energy, for it is capable of doing work in exploding; aLeyden
jar charged with electricity possesses energy, for it is capable of
doing work in being discharged. The motions of bodies, or of the
ultimate parts of bodies, also involve energy, for stopping them
would be a source of work.
All kinds of energy are ultimately measured in terms of work.
If we raise i Ib of matter through a foot we do a certain amount of
work against the earth's attraction; if we raise 2 Ib through the
same height we do twice this amount of work, and so on. Also,
the work done in raising i Ib through 2 ft. will be double of that
done in raising it i ft. Thus we recogniae that the work done
varies as the resistance overcome and the distance through
which it is overcome conjointly.
Now, we may select any definite quantity of work we please as
our unit, as, for example, the work done in lifting a pound a foot
high from the sea-level in the latitude of London, which is the
unit of work generally adopted by British engineers,, and is
called the " foot-pound." The most appropriate unit for scientific
purposes is one which depends only on the fundamental units of
length, mass and time, and is hence called an absolute unit.
Such a unit is independent of gravity or of any other quantity
which varies with the locality. Taking the centimetre, gramme
and second as our fundamental units, the most convenient unit
of force is that which, acting on a gramme for a second, produces
in it a velocity of a centimetre per second; this is called a Dyne.
The unit of work is that which is required to overcome a resistance
of a dyne over a centimetre, and is called an Erg. In the latitude
of Paris the dyne is equal to the weight of about -g^ of a gramme,
and the erg is the amount of work required to raise $-g-j- of
a gramme vertically through one centimetre.
Energy is the capacity for doing work. The unit of energy
should therefore be the same as that of work, and the centimetre-
gramme-second (C.G.S.) unit of energy is the erg.
The forms of energy which are most readily recognized are of
course those in which the energy can be most directly employed
in doing mechanical work; and it is manifest that masses of
matter which are large enough to be seen and handled are more
readily dealt with mechanically than are smaller masses. Hence
when useful work can be obtained from a system by simply
connecting visible portions of it by a train of mechanism, such
energy is more readily recognized than is that which would
compel us to control the behaviour of molecules before we could
transform it into useful work. This leads up to the fundamental
distinction, introduced by Lord Kelvin, between " available
energy," which we can turn to mechanical effect, and " diffuse
energy," which is useless for that purpose.
The conception of work and of energy was originally derived
from observation of purely mechanical phenomena, that is to say,
phenomena in which the relative positions and motions of visible
portions of matter were all that were taken into consideration.
Hence it is not surprising that, in those more subtle forms in
which energy cannot be readily or completely converted into
work, the universality of the principle of energy, its conserva-
tion, as regards amount, should for a long while have escaped
recognition after it had become familiar in pure dynamics.
If a pound weight be suspended by a string passing over
ENERGY
399
pulley, in descending through 10 ft. it is capable of raising nearly
* pound weight attached to the other end of the string, through
the same height, and thus can do nearly 10 foot-pounds of work.
The smoother we make the pulley the more nearly does the
amount of useful work which the weight is capable of doing
approach 10 foot-pounds, and if we take into account the work
done against the friction of the pulley, we may say that the work
done by the descending weight is 10 foot-pounds, and hence
when the weight is in its elevated position we have at disposal
to foot-pounds more energy than when it is in the lower position.
It should be noticed, however, that this energy is possessed by
the system consisting of the earth and pound together, in virtue of
their separation, and that neither could do work without the other
to attract it. The system consisting of the earth and the pound
therefore possesses an amount of energy which depends on the
relative positions of its two parts, on account of the latent physical
connexion existing between them. In most mechanical systems
the working stresses acting between the parts con be determined
when the relative positions of all the parts are known; and the
energy which a system possesses in virtue of the relative positions
of its parts, or its configuration, is classified as "potential energy,"
to distinguish it from energy of motion which we shall presently
consider. The word potential does not imply that this energy is
not real; it exists in potentiality only in the sense that it is
stored away in some latent manner; but it can be drawn upon
without limit for mechanical work.
It is a fundamental result in dynamics that, if a body be pro-
jected vertically upwards in vacua, with a velocity of v centi-
metres per second, it will rise to a height of v*/2g centimetres,
where g represents the numerical value of the acceleration pro-
duced by gravity in centimetre-second units. Now, if m represent
the mass of the body in grammes its weight will be mg dynes, for
it will require a force of mg dynes to produce in it the acceleration
denoted by g. Hence the work done in raising the mass will be
represented by mg-it/ig, that is, Jmf 1 ergs. Now, whatever be
the direction in which a body is moving, a f rictionless constraint,
like a string attached to the body, can cause its velocity to be
changed into the vertical direction without any change taking
place in the magnitude of the velocity. Thus it is merely in
virtue of the velocity that the mass is capable of rising against
the resistance of gravity, and hence we recognize that on account
of its motion the body possessed Jmr* units of energy. Energy
of motion is usually called " kinetic energy."
A simple example of the transformation of kinetic energy into
potential energy, and vice versa, is afforded by the pendulum.
When at the limits of its swing, the pendulum is for an instant at
rest, and all the energy of the oscillation is static or potential.
When passing through its position of equilibrium, since gravity
can do no more work upon it without changing its fixed point of
support, all the energy of oscillation is kinetic. At intermediate
positions the energy is partly kinetic and partly potential.
Available kinetic energy is possessed by a system of two or more
bodies in virtue of the relative motion of its parts. Since our
conception of velocity is essentially relative, it is plain that any
property possessed by a body in virtue of its motion can be
effectively possessed by it only in relation to those bodies with
respect to which it is moving. If a body whose mass is m
grammes be moving with a velocity of ti centimetres per second
relative to the earth, the available kinetic energy possessed by the
system is Jwt* ergs if m be small relative to the earth. But if we
consider two bodies each of mass m and one of them moving with
velocity t relative to the other, only Imv 1 units of work is available
from this system alone. Thus the estimation of kinetic energy
is intimately affected by the choice of our base of measurement.
When the stresses acting between the parts of a system depend
only on the relative positions of those parts, the sum of the
kinetic energy and potential energy of the system is always the
same, provided the system be not acted upon by anything outside
it. Such a system is called " conservative," and is well illustrated
by the swinging pendulum above referred to. But there are
stresses which depend on the relative motion of the visible
bodies between which they appear to act. When work is done
against these forces no full equivalent of potential energy may be
produced; this applies especially to frictional forces, for if the
motion of the system be reversed the forces will be also reversed
and will still oppose the motion. It was long believed that work
done against such forces was lost, and it was not till the loth
century that the energy thus transformed was traced; the
conservation of energy has become the master-key to unlock the
connexions in inanimate nature.
It was pointed out by Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and P. G. Tait
that Newton had divined the principle of the conservation of
energy, so far as it belongs purely to mechanics. But what
became of the work done against friction and such non-
conservative forces remained obscure, while the chemical doctrine
that heat was an indestructible substance afterwards led to the
idea that it was lost. There was, however, even before Newton's
time, more than a suspicion that heat was a form of energy.
Francis Bacon expressed his conviction that heat consists of a
kind of motion or " brisk agitation " of the particles of matter.
In the Novum Organum, after giving a long list of the sources
of heat, he says: " From these examples, taken collectively as
well as singly, the nature whose limit is heat appears to be
motion. ... It must not be thought that heat generates motion
or motion heat (though in some respects this is true), but the very
essence of heat, or the substantial self of heat, is motion and
nothing else."
After Newton's time the first vigorous effort to restore the
universality of the doctrine of energy was made by Benjamin
Thompson, Count Rumford, and was published in the Phil.
Trans, for 1798. Rumford was engaged in superintending the
boring of cannon in the military arsenal at Munich, and was
struck by the amount of heat produced by the action of the
boring bar upon the brass castings. In order to see whether the
heat came out of the chips he compared the capacity for heat of
the chips abraded by the boring bar with that of an equal quantity
of the metal cut from the block by a fine saw, and obtained the
same result in the two cases, from which he concluded that
" the heat produced could not possibly have been furnished at
the expense of the latent heat of the metallic chips."
Rumford then turned up a hollow cylinder which was cast in
one piece with a brass six-pounder, and having reduced the
connexion between the cylinder and cannon to a narrow neck of
metal, he caused a blunt borer to press against the hollow of the
cylinder with a force equal to the weight of about 10,000 Ib,
while the casting was made to rotate in a lathe. By this means
the mean temperature of the brass was raised through about 70
Fahr., while the amount of metal abraded was only 837 grains.
In order to be sure that the heat was not due to the action of the
air upon the newly exposed metallic surface, the cylinder and the
end of the boring bar were immersed in 1 8- 7 7 Ib. of water contained
in an oak box. The temperature of the water at the commence-
ment of the experiment was 60 Fahr., and after two horses had
turned the lathe for zj hours the water boiled. Taking into
account the heat absorbed by the box and the metal, Rumford
calculated that the heat developed was sufficient to raise 26-58 Ib
of water from the freezing to the boiling point, and in this calcula-
tion the heat lost by radiation and conduction was neglected.
Since one horse was capable of doing the work required, Rumford
remarked that one horse can generate heat as rapidly as nine wax
candles burning in the ordinary manner.
Finally, Rumford reviewed all the sources from which the heat
might have been supposed to be derived, and concluded that it
was simply produced by the friction, and that the supply was
inexhaustible. "It is hardly necessary to add," he remarks,
" that anything which any insulated body or system of bodies
can continue to furnish without limitation cannot possibly be a
material substance; and it appears to me to be extremely difficult .
if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything
capable of being excited and communicated in the manner that
heat was excited and communicated in these experiments, except
it be motion."
About the same time Davy showed that two pieces of ice
could be melted by rubbing them together in a vacuum, although
400
ENERGY
everything surrounding them was at a temperature below the
freezing point. He did not, however, infer that since the heat
could not have been supplied by the ice, for ice absorbs heat in
melting, this experiment afforded conclusive proof against the
substantial nature of heat.
Though we may allow that the results obtained by Rumford
and Davy demonstrate satisfactorily that heat is in some way
due to motion, yet they do not tell us to what particular dynamical
quantity heat corresponds. For example, does the heat generated
by friction vary as the friction and the time during which it acts,
or is it proportional to the friction and the distance through
which the rubbing bodies are displaced that is, to the work
done against friction or does it involve any other conditions?
If it can be shown that, however the duration and all other
conditions of the experiment may be varied, the same amount
of heat can in the end be always produced when the same amount
of energy is expended, then, and only then, can we infer that heat
is a form of energy, and that the energy consumed has been
really transformed into heat. This was left for J. P. Joule to
achieve; his experiments conclusively prove that heat and
energy are of the same nature, and that all other forms of energy
can be transformed into an equivalent amount of heat.
The quantity of energy which, if entirely converted into heat,
is capable of raising the temperature of the unit mass of water
from o C. to i C. is called the mechanical equivalent of heat.
One of the first who took in hand the determination of the
mechanical equivalent of heat was Marc. Seguin, a nephew of
J. M. Montgolfier. He argued that, if heat be energy, then,
when it is employed in doing work, as in a steam-engine, some of
the heat must itself be consumed in the operation. Hence he
inferred that the amount of heat given up to the condenser of an
engine when the engine is doing work must be less than when the
same amount of steam is blown through the engine without
doing any work. S6guin was unable to verify this experimentally,
but in 1857 G. A. Him succeeded, not only in showing that such a
difference exists, but in measuring it, and hence determining a
tolerably approximate value of the mechanical equivalent of
heat. In 1839 Seguin endeavoured to determine the mechanical
equivalent of heat from the loss of heat suffered by steam in
expanding, assuming that the whole of the heat so lost was
consumed in doing external work,egainst the pressure to which the
steam was exposed. This assumption, however, cannotbe justified,
because it neglected to take account of work which might possibly
have to be done within the steam itself during the expansion.
In 1842 R. Mayer, a physician at Heilbronn, published an
attempt to determine the mechanical equivalent of heat from the
heat produced when air is compressed. Mayer made an assump-
tion the converse of that of S6guin, asserting that the whole of the
work done in compressing the air was converted into heat, and
neglecting the possibility of heat being consumed in doing work
within the air itself or being produced by the transformation of
internal potential energy. Joule afterwards proved (see below)
that Mayer's assumption was in accordance with fact, so that his
method was a sound one as far as experiment was concerned;
and it was only on account of the values of the specific heats of
air at constant pressure and at constant volume employed by him
being very inexact that the value of the mechanical equivalent of
heat obtained by Mayer was very far from the truth.
Passing over L. A. Colding, who in 1843 presented to the
Royal Society of Copenhagen a paper entitled " Theses concern-
ing Force," which clearly stated the " principle of the perpetuity
of energy," and who also performed a series of experiments for the
purpose of determining the heat developed by the compression of
various bodies, which entitle him to be mentioned among the
founders of the modern theory of energy, we come to Dr James
Prescott Joule of Manchester, to whom we are indebted more than
to any other for the establishment of the principle of the conserva-
tion of energy on the broad basis on which it has since stood.
The best-known of Joule's experiments was that in which a
brass paddle consisting of eight arms rotated in a cylindrical
vessel of water containing four fixed vanes, which allowed the
passage of the arms of the paddle but prevented the water from
rotating as a whole. The paddle was driven by weights, and
the temperature of the water was observed by thermometers
which could indicate -jTjth of a degree Fahrenheit. Special
experiments were made to determine the work done against
resistances outside the vessel of water, which amounted to about
006 of the whole, and corrections were made for the loss of heat
by radiation, the buoyancy of the air affecting the descending
weights, and the energy dissipated when the weights struck the
floor with a finite velocity. From these experiments Joule
obtained 72-692 foot-pounds in the latitude of Manchester as
equivalent to the amount of heat required to raise i ft of water
through i Fahr, from the freezing point. Adopting the centi-
grade scale, this gives 1390-846 foot-pounds.
With an apparatus similar to the above, but smaller, made of
iron and filled with mercury, Joule obtained results varying from
772-814 foot-pounds when driving weights of about 58 ft were
employed to 775-352 foot-pounds when the driving weights were
only about 195 ft. By causing two conical surfaces of cast-iron
immersed in mercury and contained in an iron vessel to rub
against one another when pressed together by a lever, Joule
obtained 776-045 foot-pounds for the mechanical equivalent of
heat when the heavy weights were used, and 774-93 foot-pounds
with the small driving weights. In this experiment a great noise
was produced, corresponding to a loss of energy, and Joule
endeavoured to determine the amount of energy necessary to
produce an equal amount of sound from the string of a violoncello
and to apply a corresponding correction.
The close agreement between the results at least indicates that
" the amount of heat produced by friction is proportional to the
work done and independent of the nature of the rubbing surfaces."
Joule inferred from them that the mechanical equivalent of heat is
probably about 772 foot-pounds, or, employing the centigrade
scale, about 1390 foot-pounds.
Previous to determining the mechanical equivalent of heat by
the most accurate experimental method at his command, Joule
established a series of cases in which the production of one kind
of energy was accompanied by a disappearance of some other
form. In 1840 he showed that when an electric current was
produced by means of a dynamo-magneto-electric machine the
heat generated in the conductor, when no external work was
done by the current, was the same as if the energy employed in
producing the current had been converted into heat by friction,
thus showing that electric currents conform to the principle of the
conservation of energy, since energy can neither be created nor
destroyed by them. He also determined a roughly approximate
value for the mechanical equivalent of heat from the results of
these experiments. Extending his investigations to the currents
produced by batteries, he found that the total voltaic heat
generated in any circuit was proportional to the number of
electrochemical equivalents electrolysed in each cell multiplied
by the electromotive force of the battery. Now, we know that
the number of electrochemical equivalents electrolysed is
proportional to the whole amount of electricity which passed
through the circuit, and the product of this by the electromotive
force of the battery is the work done by the latter, so that in
this case also Joule showed that the heat generated was pro-
portional to the work done.
In 1844 and 1845 Joule published a series of researches on the
compression and expansion of air. A metal vessel was placed in
a calorimeter and air forced into it, the amount of energy ex-
pended in compressing the air being measured. Assuming that the
whole of the energy was converted into heat, when the air was
subjected to a pressure of 2 1 5 atmospheres Joule obtained for the
mechanical equivalent of heat about 824-8 foot-pounds, and
when a pressure of only 10-5 atmospheres was employed the
result was 7196-9 foot-pounds.
In the next experiment the air was compressed as before, and
then allowed to escape through a long lead tube immersed in the
water of a calorimeter, and finally collected in a bell jar. The
amount of heat absorbed by the air could thus be measured,
while the work done by it in expanding could be readily calculated.
In allowing the air to expand from a pressure of 21 atmospheres
ENERGY
401
to that of i atmosphere the value of the mechanical equivalent
of heat obtained was 8*1-89 foot-pounds. Between to atmo-
spheres and i it was 815-875 foot-pounds, and between 23 and 14
atmospheres 761-74 foot-pounds.
But, unlike Mayer and Seguin, Joule was not content with
ltf nmin B that when air is compressed or allowed to expand the
beat generated or absorbed is the equivalent of the work done and
of that only, no change being made in the internal energy of the
air itself when the temperature is kept constant. To test this two
vessels similar to that used in the last experiment were placed in
the same calorimeter and connected by a tube with a stop-cock.
One contained air at a pressure of 3 2 atmospheres, while the
other was exhausted. On opening the stop-cock no work was
done by the expanding air against external forces, since it
expanded into a vacuum, and it was found that no heat was
generated or absorbed. This showed that Mayer's assumption
was true. On repeating the experiment when the two vessels
were placed in different calorimeters, it was found that heat was
absorbed by the vessel containing the compressed air, while an
equal quantity of heat was produced in the calorimeter containing
the exhausted vessel. The heat absorbed was consumed in giving
motion to the issuing stream of air, and was reproduced by the
impact of the particles on the sides of the exhausted vessel.
The subsequent researches of Dr Joule and Lord Kelvin (Phil.
Trans., 1853, p. 357, 1854, p. 321, and 1862, p. 579) showed that
the statement that no internal work is done when a gas expands or
contracts is not quite true, but the amount is very small in the
cases of those gases which, like oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen,
can only be liquefied by intense cold and pressure.
For a long time the final result deduced by Joule by these
varied and careful investigations was accepted as the standard
value of the mechanical equivalent of heat. Recent determina-
tions by H. A. Rowland and others, necessitated by modern
requirements, have shown that it is in error, but by less than i %.
The writings of Joule, which thus occupy the place of honour in
the practical establishment of the conservation of energy, have
been collected into two volumes published by the Physical
Society of London. On the theoretical side the greatest stimulus
came from the publication in 1847, without knowledge of Mayer
or Joule, of Helmholtz's great memoir, Ober die Erhaltung der
Kraft, followed immediately (1848-1852) by the establishment of
the science of thermodynamics (?..), mainly by R. Clausius and
Lord Kelvin on the basis of" Carnot's principle " (1824), modified
in expression so as to be consistent with the conservation of
energy (see ENERGETICS).
Though we can convert the whole of the energy possessed by
any mechanical system into heat , it is not in our power to perform
the inverse operation, and to utilize the whole of the heat in
doing mechanical work. Thus we see that different forms of
energy are not equally valuable for conversion into work. The
ratio of the portion of the energy of a system which can under
given conditions be converted into mechanical work to the whole
amount of energy operated upon may be called the " availability "
of the energy. If a system be removed from all communication
with aaything outside of itself, the whole amount of energy
poMtmd by it will remain constant, but will of its own accord
tend to undergo such transformations as will diminish its avail-
ability. This general law, known as the principle of the " dissipa-
tion of energy," was first adequately pointed out by Lord Kelvin
in 1852; and was applied by him to some of the principal
problems of cosmical physics. Though controlling all phenomena
of which we have any experience, the principle of the dissipation
of energy rests on a very different foundation from that of the
conservation of energy; for while we may conceive of no means
of circumventing the latter principle, it seems that the actions of
intelligent beings are subject to the former only in consequence of
the rudeness of the machinery which they have at their disposal for
controlling the behaviour of those ultimate portions of matter, in
virtue of the motions or positions of which the energy with which
they have to deal exists. If we have a weight capable of falling
through a certain distance, we can employ the mutual forces of
the system consisting of the earth and weight to do an amount of
useful work which is less than the full amount of potential energy
possessed by the system only in consequence of the friction of the
constraints, so that the limit of availability in this case is de-
termined only by the friction which is unavoidable. Here we
have to deal with a transformation with which we can grapple,
and which can be controlled for our purposes. If, on the other
hand, we have to deal with a system of molecules of whose
motions in the aggregate we become conscious only by indirect
means, while we know absolutely nothing either of the motions or
positions of any individual molecule, it is obvious that we cannot
grasp single molecules and control their movements so as to
derive the full amount of work from the system. All we can do in
such cases is to place the system under certain conditions of
transformation, and be content with the amount of work which it
is, as it were, willing to render up under those conditions. Thus
the principle of Carnot involves the conclusion ,that a greater
proportion of the heat possessed by a body at a high temperature
can be converted into work than in the case of an equal quantity
of heat possessed by a body at a low temperature, so that the
availability of heat increases with the temperature.
Clerk Maxwell supposed two compartments, A and B, to be
filled with gas at the same temperature, and to be separated by
an ideal, infinitely thin partition containing a number of exceed-
ingly small trap-doors, each of which could be opened or closed
without any expenditure of energy. An intelligent creature, or
" demon," possessed of unlimited powers of vision, is placed in
charge of each door, with instructions to open the door whenever
a particle in A comes towards it with more than a certain velocity
V, and to keep it closed against all particles in A moving with
less than this velocity, but, on the other hand, to open the door
whenever a particle in B approaches it with less than a certain
velocity v, which is not greater than V, and to keep it closed
against all particles in B moving with a greater velocity than this.
By continuing this process every unit of mass which enters B will
carry with it more energy than each unit which leaves B, and
hence the temperature of the gas in B will be raised and that
of the gas in A lowered, while no heat is lost and no energy
expended; so that by the application of intelligence alone a
portion of gas of uniform pressure and temperature may be
sifted into two parts, in which both the temperature and the
pressure are different, and from which, therefore, work can be
obtained at the expense of heat. This shows that the principle of
the dissipation of energy has control over the actions of those
agents only whose faculties are too gross to enable them to
grapple individually with the minute portions of matter which
are the seat of energy.
In 1875 Lord Rayleigh published an investigation on "the
work which may be gained during the mixing of gases." In the
preface he states the position that " whenever, then, two gases
are allowed to mix without the performance of work, there is
dissipation of energy, and an opportunity of doing work at the
expense of low temperature heat has been for ever lost." He
shows that the amount of work obtainable is equal to that which
can be done by the first gas in expanding into the space occupied
by the second (supposed vacuous) together with that done by the
second in expanding into the space occupied by the first. In the
experiment imagined by Lord Rayieigh a porous diaphragm takes
the place of the partition and trap-doors imagined by Clerk
Maxwell, and the molecules sort themselves automatically on
account of the difference in their average velocities for the two
gases. When the pressure on one side of the diaphragm thus
becomes greater than that on the other, work may be done at the
expense of heat in pushing the diaphragm, and the operation
carried on with continual gain of work until the gases are
uniformly diffused. There is this difference, however, between-
this experiment and the operation imagined by Maxwell, that
when the gases have diffused the experiment cannot be repeated;
and it is no more contrary to the dissipation of energy than is the
fact that work may be derived at the expense of heat when a gas
expands into a vacuum, for the working substance is not finally
restored to its original condition; while Maxwell's "demons"
may operate without limit.
402
ENFANTIN
In such experiments the molecular energy of a gas is converted
into work only in virtue of the molecules being separated into
classes in which their velocities are different, and these classes
then allowed to act upon one another through the intervention of
a suitable heat-engine. This sorting can occur spontaneously to a
limited extent; while if we could carry it out as far as we pleased
we might transform the whole of the heat of a body into work.
The theoretical availability of heat is limited only by our power of
bringing those particles whose motions constitute heat in bodies
to rest relatively to one another; and we have precisely similar
practical limits to the availability of the energy due to the
motion of visible and tangible bodies, though theoretically we
can then trace all the stages.
If a battery of electromotive force E maintain a current C in a
conductor, and no other electromotive force exist in the circuit,
the whole of the work done will be converted into heat, and the
amount of work done per second will be EC. If R denote the
resistance of the whole circuit, E=CR, and the heat generated
per second is C 2 R. If the current drive an electromagnetic
engine, the reaction of the engine will produce an electromotive
force opposing the current. Suppose the current to be thus
reduced to C'. Then the work done by the battery per second
will be EC' or CC'R, while the heat generated per second will be
C'. 2 R, so that we have the difference (C-C')C'R for the energy
consumed in driving the engine. The ratio of this to the whole
work done by the battery is (C-C')/C, so that the efficiency is
increased by diminishing C'. If we could drive the engine so fast
as to reduce C' to zero, the whole of the energy of the battery
would be available, no heat being produced in the wires, but
the horse-power of the engine would be indefinitely small. The
reason why the whole of the energy of the current is not available
is that heat must always be generated in a wire in which a finite
current is flowing, so that, in the case of a battery in which the
whole of the energy of chemical affinity is employed in producing
a current, the availability of the energy is limited only on account
of the resistance of the conductors, and may be increased by
diminishing this resistance. The availability of the energy of
electrical separation in a charged Leyden jar is also limited only
by the resistance of conductors, in virtue of which an amount of
heat is necessarily produced, which is greater the less the time
occupied in discharging the jar. The availability of the energy of
magnetization is limited by the coercive force of the magnetized
material, in virtue of which any change in the intensity of
magnetization is accompanied by the production of heat.
In all cases there is a general tendency for other forms of energy
to be transformed into heat on account of the friction of rough
surfaces, the resistance of conductors, or similar causes, and thus
to lose availability. In some cases, as when heat is converted into
the kinetic energy of moving machinery or the potential energy
of raised weights, there is an ascent of energy from the less
available form of heat to the more available form of mechanical
energy, but in all cases this is accompanied by the transfer of
other heat from a body at a high temperature to one at a lower
temperature, thus losing availability to an extent that more than
compensates for the rise.
It is practically important to consider the rate at which energy
may be transformed into useful work, or the horse-power of the
agent. It generally happens that to obtain the greatest possible
amount of work from a given supply of energy, and to obtain it
at the greatest rate, are conflicting interests. We have seen that
the efficiency of an electromagnetic engine is greatest when the
current is indefinitely small, and then the rate at which it works is
also indefinitely small. M. H. von Jacobi showed that for a given
electromotive force in the battery the horse-power is greatest
when the current is reduced to one-half of what it would be if the
engine were at rest. A similar condition obtains in the steam-
engine, in which a great rate of working necessitates the dissipa-
tion of a large amount of energy. (W. G. ; J. L.*)
ENFANTIN, BARTHfcLEMY PROSPER (1796-1864), French
social reformer, one of the founders of Saint-Simonism, was born
at Paris on the 8th of February 1796. He was the son of a
banker of Dauphiny, and after receiving his early education at a
lyceum, was sent in 1813 to the Ecole Polytechnique. In March
1814 he was one of the band of students who, on the heights of
Montmartre and Saint-Chaumont, attempted resistance to the
armies of the allies then engaged in the investment of Paris.
In consequence of this outbreak of patriotic enthusiasm, the
school was soon after closed by Louis XVIII., and the young
student was compelled to seek some other career instead of that of
the soldier. He first engaged himself to a country wine merchant,
for whom he travelled in Germany, Russia and the Netherlands.
In 1821 he entered a banking-house newly established at St
Petersburg, but returned two years later to Paris, where he was
appointed cashier to the Caisse Hypothecate. At the same time
he became a member of the secret society of the Carbonari. In
1825 a new turn was given to his thoughts and his life by the
friendship which he formed with Olinde Rodriguez, who intro-
duced him to Saint-Simon. He embraced the new doctrines with
ardour, and by 1829 had become one of the acknowledged heads
of the sect (see SAINT-SIMON).
After the Revolution of 1830 Enfantin resigned his office of
cashier, and devoted himself wholly to his cause. Besides contri-
buting to the Globe newspaper, he made appeals to the people by
systematic preaching, and organized centres of action in some of
the principal cities of France. The headquarters in Paris were
removed from the modest rooms in the Rue Taranne, and estab-
lished in large halls near the Boulevard Italien. Enfantin and
Bazard (q.v.) were proclaimed " Peres Supremes." This union of
the supreme fathers, however, was only nominal. A divergence
was already manifest, which rapidly increased to serious
difference and dissension. Bazard had devoted himself to
political reform, Enfantin to social and moral change; Bazard
was organizer and governor, Enfantin was teacher and consoler;
the former attracted reverence, the latter love. A hopeless
antagonism arose between them, which was widened by Enfantin 's
announcement of his theory of the relation of man and woman,
which would substitute for the "tyranny of marriage" a system
of " free love." Bazard now separated from his colleague, and in
his withdrawal was followed by all those whose chief aim was
philosophical and political. Enfantin thus became sole " father,"
and the few who were chiefly attracted by his religious pretensions
and aims still adhered to him. New converts joined them, and
Enfantin assumed that his followers in France numbered 40,000.
He wore on his breast a badge with his title of "Pere,"was
spoken of by his preachers as " the living law," declared, and
probably believed, himself to be the chosen of God, and sent out
emissaries in a quest of a woman predestined to be the "female
Messiah," and the mother of a new Saviour. The quest was very
costly and altogether fruitless. No such woman was discoverable.
Meanwhile believers in Enfantin and his new religion were
multiplying in all parts of Europe. His extravagances and
success at length brought down upon him the hand of the law.
Public morality was in peril, and in May 1832 the halls of the new
sect were closed by the government, and the father, with some of
his followers, appeared before the tribunals. He now retired to
his estate at Menilmontant, near Paris, where with forty disciples,
all of them men, he continued to carry out his socialistic views.
In August of the same year he was again arrested, and on his
appearance in court he desired his defence to be undertaken by
two women who were with him, alleging that the matter was of
special concern to women. This was of course refused. The trial
occupied two days and resulted in a verdict of guilty, and a
sentence of imprisonment for a year with a small fine.
This prosecution finally discredited the new society. Enfantin
was released in a few months, and then, accompanied by some of
his followers, he went to Egypt. He stayed there two years, and
might have entered the service of the viceroy if he would have
professed himself, as a few of his friends did, a Mahommedan.
On his return to France, a sadder and practically a wiser man, he
settled down to very prosaic work. He became first a postmaster
near Lyons, and in 1841 was appointed, through the influence of
some of his friends who had risen to posts of power, member of a
scientific commission on Algeria, which led him to engage in
researches concerning North Africa and colonization in general.
ENFIDAVILLE ENGADINE
403
in 1845 he was appointed a director of the Paris&Lyons railway.
Three years later he established, in conjunction with Duveyrier, a
daily journal, entitled Le Crtdit, which was discontinued in 1850.
He was afterwards attached to the administration of the railway
from Lyons to the Mediterranean. Father Enfantin held fast by
his ideal to the end, but he had renounced the hope of giving it a
local habitation and a name in the degenerate obstinate world.
His personal influence over those who associated with him was
immense. " He was a man of a noble presence, with finely
formed and expressive features. He was gentle and insinuating
in manner, and possessed a calm, graceful and winning delivery "
(Gent. Uag., Jan. 1865). His evident sincerity, his genuine
enthusiasm, gave him his marvellous ascendancy. Not a few of
his disciples ranked afterwards amongst the most distinguished
men of France. He died suddenly at Paris on the ist of
September 1864.
Amongst his works are^ Doctrine de Saint-Simon (written in con-
junction with several of his followers), published in 1830, and several
times republuhed; Economte politioue et politique Satnt-Simonienne
(1831): Correspondence politiour (1835-1840); Corresp. philos, et
rttifiense (1843-1845); and La Vie fternelle passfe, prtsente, future
(1861). A large number of articles by his hand appeared in Le
Prodttcteur. L'Or[anisaleur, Le Globe, and other periodicals. He
also wrote in 1832 Le Litre nouteau, intended as a substitute for
the Christian Scriptures, but it was not published.
See G. Weill, L'Ecole Saint-Simonienne, son kistoire, son influence,
jusqu' a nos jours (Paris, 1896).
ENFIDAVILLE [Dar-el- Bey], a town of Tunisia, on the
railway between Tunis and Susa, 30 m. N.E. of the last-named
place and 5 m. inland from the Gulf of Hammamet. Enfidaville
is the chief settlement on the Enfida estate, a property of over
300,000 acres in the Sahel district of Tunisia, forming a rectangle
between the towns of Hammamet, Susa, Kairawan and Zaghwan.
On this estate, devoted to the cultivation of cereals, olives, vines
and to pasturage, are colonies of Europeans and natives. At
Enfidaville, where was, as its native name indicates, a palace of
the beys of Tunis, there is a large horse-breeding establishment
and a much-frequented weekly market. About 5 m. N. of
Enfidaville is Henshir Fraga (anc. Uppenna) , where are ruins of a
large fortress and of a church in which were found mosaics with
epitaphs of various bishops and martyrs.
The Enfida estate was granted by the bey Mahommed-es-
Sadok to his chief minister Khaireddin Pasha (q.v.) in return for
the confirmation by the sultan of Turkey in 1871, through the
instrumentality of the pasha, of the right of succession to the
beylik of members of Es-Sadok's family. When, some years
later, Khaireddin left Tunisia for Constantinople he sold the
estate to a Marseilles company, which resold it to the Societe
Franco-africaine.
EN FIELD, a township of Hartford county, Connecticut, U.S.A.,
in the N. part of the state, on the E. bank of the Connecticut
river, 10 m. N. of Hartford. It has an area of 35 sq. m., with
three villages Thompsonville, Hazardville and Enfield. Pop.
(1890) 7199; (1900) 6699 (1812 foreign-born); (1910) 9719. Its
principal manufactures are gunpowder, carpets, brick, cotton
press machinery, and coffin hardware. In Enfield and its vicinity
much tobacco is grown. First settled in 1679, Enfield was a part
of the township of Springfield, Massachusetts, until 1683, when it
wa made a separate township; in 1749 it became a part of
Connecticut. At a town meeting on the nth of July 1774 it was
resolved that " a firm and inviolable union of our colonies is
absolutely necessary for the defence of our civil rights," and that
" the most effectual measures to defeat the machinations of the
enemies of His Majesty's government and the libertiesof America
is to break off all commercial intercourse with Great Britain and
the West Indies until these oppressive acts for raising a revenue in
America are repealed." A Shaker community was established
in the township in 1781, at what is now called Shaker Station.
See Francis CMcutt Allen, History of Enfield (Lancaster, Pa., 1000).
ENFIELD. a market town in the Enfield parliamentary
division of Middlesex, England, u m. N. of London Bridge,
on the Great Northern and Great Eastern railways. Pop. of
urban district, (1891) 31,536, (1901) 42,738. It is picturesquely
situated on the western slope of the Lea valley, with a consider-
able extension towards the river, mainly consisting of artisans'
dwellings (Churchbury, Ponder's End, and Enfield Highway on
the Old North Road). Great numbers of villas occupied by
those whose work lies in London have grown up; and many of
the inhabitants are employed in the Royal Small Arms factory at
Enfield Lock. The church of St Andrew is mainly Perpendicular,
but has Early English portions; it contains several ancient
monuments and brasses, and flanks the market-place, with its
modern cross. Enfield Palace fronts the High Street; it retains
portions of the building of Edward VI., but has been greatly
altered. The grammer school, near the church, was founded in
1557. The New River flows through the parish, and Sir Hugh
Myddleton, its projector, was for some time resident here.
Middleton House, named after him, is oneof severalfine mansions
in the vicinity. Of these, Forty Hall, in splendidly timbered
grounds, is from the designs of Inigo Jones; and a former
mansion occupying the site of White Webbs House was suspected
as the scene of the hatching of Gunpowder Plot. The parish is of
great extent (12,653 acres).
An Anglo-Saxon derivation, signifying " forest clearing," is
indicated for the name. Enfield Chase was a royal preserve,
disafforested in 1777. The principal manor of Enfield, which was
held by Asgar, Edward the Confessor's master of horse, was in
the hands of the Norman baron Geoffrey de Mandeville at the
time of Domesday, and belonged to the Bohun family in the
1 2th and i3th centuries. It came, by succession and marriage,
into the possession of the crown underHenryIV.,and wasincluded
in the duchy of Lancaster. There were, however, seven other
manors, and of these one, Worcesters, came to the crown in the
time of Henry VIII., whose children resided at the manor-house,
Elsynge Hall. Edward VI., settling both manors upon the
princess Elizabeth, rebuilt Enfield Palace for her. She was a
frequent resident here not only before but after her accession to
the throne. About 1664 the palace was occupied as a school by
Robert Uvedale (1642-1722), who was also an eminent horticul-
turist, planted the magnificent cedar still standing in the palace
grounds, and formed a herbarium now in the Sloane collection at
the British Museum. The town received grants of markets from
Edward I. and James I.
ENFILADE (a French word, from enfiler, to thread, and so to
pass through from end to end), a military term used to express the
direction of fire along an enemy's line, or parapet. This species
of fire is most demoralizing and destructive, since, from its
direction, very few guns or rifles can be brought to bear to meet
it. If any considerable body of men changes front, it immediately
lays itself open to enfilade from the enemy whom it originally
faced. Against entrenchments, or the parapets of fortifications,
enfilade is still more effective, as the enemy is deprived of the
protection given by his works and is no better covered than if he
were in the open. Banks of earth, built perpendicular to the
line of defence (called traverses), are usually employed to protect
parapets or trenches against enfilade.
ENOADINE (Ger. Engadin; Ital. Engadina; Ladin, Engia-
dina), the name of the upper or Swiss portion of the valley of the
Inn, which forms part of the Swiss canton of the Grisons. Its
length by carriage road from the Maloja plateau (5935 ft.) at its
south-western end to Martinsbruck (3406 ft.) at its north-eastern
extremity is about 59 m. It is to be noted that up to and includ-
ing St Moritz (6037 ft., the highest) all the villages (save Sils-
Baseglia) at its south-western end are higher than the Maloja
plateau itself. The uppermost portion of the valley contains
several lakes, which, as one descends, gradually diminish in size,
those of Sils, Silvaplana and St Moritz. But both the Maloja
plateau and the south-western half of the lake of Sils belong to
the commune of Stampa in the Val Bregaglia, and are included in
the Bregaglia administrative district, so that, from a political point
of view, Sils is the first village that is included in the Engadine.
The rest of the Engadine forms the districts of the Upper,
Engadine with eleven communes, and of the Inn (i.e. the Lower
Engadine), subdivided into the Ob Tasna, Remiis, and Unter
Tasna circles, and containing twelve communes.
In tooo the total population of the Engadine was 11,712, of
404
ENGAGED COLUMN
whom 5429 were in the Upper Engadine and 6283 in the Lower
Engadine. In point of religion 8594 were Protestants (4923 in
the Lower Engadine and 3671 in the Upper Engadine), and 3086
Romanists (1728 in the Upper Engadine and 1358 in the Lower
Engadine), while there were 12 Jews in the Upper Engadine and
2 in the Lower Engadine : in the Upper Engadine the majority in
each commune was Protestant (the Romanists strongest in St
Moritz), as also in the case of the Lower Engadine, save Tarasp
and Samnaun, where the Romanists prevail. In point of language
7609 inhabitants (5010 in the Lower Engadine and 2599 in the
Upper Engadine) spoke the curious Ladin dialect (a survival of a
primitive Romance tongue), and 2221 German (1265 in the Upper
Engadine and 956 in the Lower Engadine). The capital of the
Upper Engadine is Samaden (967 inhabitants), and that of the
Lower Engadine, Schuls (1117 inhabitants). In 1908 there were
no railways in the Engadine, save about 8 m. (from the mouth of
the tunnel past Severs and Samaden to St Moritz village) of the
railway pierced (1898-1902) beneath (5987 ft.) the Albula Pass
(7595 ft-)> which now affords the easiest means of access from
Coire to St Moritz (56 m.); but many railways in and to the
Engadine have been planned. The valley is reached by many
passes (over which excellent carriage roads were constructed
1820-1872). The Maloja (5935 ft.) is the route from Chiavenna
and the Lake of Como to the Upper Engadine, which is also
reached from Coire by the Julier (7504 ft.) and the Albula Passes
(7595 ft.) as well as from Tirano in the Valtellina by the Bernina
Pass (7645 ft.). On the other hand, the Lower Engadine is
accessible from Davos over the Fliiela Pass (7838 ft.) and from
Mais at the head of the Adige valley (or the Vintschgau) by the
Ofen Pass (7071 ft.), while from Martinsbruck, the last Swiss
village, a carriage road leads up to Nauders (5 m.), whence it is
27 m. by road down the Inn valley to Landeck on the Arlberg
railway, or 175 m. over the Reschen Scheideck Pass (4902 ft.)
to Mais in the Vintschgau.
The Upper Engadine consists of a long, straight, nearly level
trough of 26 m., varying from a mile to half a mile in breadth,
through which flows the Inn. On the south-east this trough is
limited by the lofty glacier-clad Bernina group (culminating in the
Piz Bernina, 13,304 ft.) and the range rising between the Inn
valley and that of Livigno to the south-east, while on the north-
west the boundary is the extensive Albula group (culminating in
Piz Kesch, 11,228 ft.). The Lower Engadine is far more pictur-
esque and romantic than the Upper Engadine, the Inn valley
being here much narrower and the fall greater. On its north-
west rises the last bit of the Albula group (culminating in Piz
Vadret, 10,584 ft.), and on the north the Silvretta group (culmin-
ating in Piz Linard, 11,201 ft.), while to the east and south are
the ranges on either side of the Ofen Pass (culminating in Piz
Sesvenna, 10,568 ft.). In the Upper Engadine the villages are on
the floor of the valley, but in the Lower Engadine many are
perched high above the bed of the river on terraces, and are cut
off from each other by deep ravines.
The Upper Engadine is far better known to foreign visitors
than the Lower Engadine, and is consequently much richer and
more prosperous. The mineral waters of St Moritz (q.v.) were
known and employed in the i6th century, and long formed the
great attraction of the region. But about the middle of the
1 9th century the Upper Engadine came into fashion as a great
" air-cure," and now Maloja, Sils, Silvaplana, Campfer and St
Moritz are all well known; those who desire to explore the glaciers
of the Bernina group mostly resort to Pontresina, on the Flatz-
bach, the stream descending from the Bernina Pass. Yet, owing
to its great elevation, the scenery of the Upper Engadine has a
bleak, northern aspect. Pines and larches alone flourish, garden
vegetables are grown only in sunny spots, and there is no tillage.
The Alpine flora is very rich and varied. But snow falls even in
August, and the climate is well described in the proverb, " nine
months winter, and three months cold weather. ' ' The villages are
built entirely of stone (as also in the Lower Engadine) , chiefly to
guard against destructive fires that were formerly frequent in
this narrow, wind-swept valley. The wealth of the inhabitants
consists in their hay meadows and pastures. The lower pastures
support large herds of cows, while the higher are let out (in both
parts of the valley) to Bergamasque shepherds, who come thither
every summer with their flocks. In the Lower Engadine
the chief attraction is formed by the mineral springs at Schuls
below Tarasp, which are much frequented during the summer.
The wild gorge of Finstermunz separates the last Swiss village,
Martinsbruck, from the first Tirolese village, Pfunds, the gorge
being passable only on foot, while the carriage road makes a
great detour by way of Nauders, so that the two villages named
are 13 m. by road from each other. The earliest full description
of the country by an English traveller is that by Archdeacon
W. Coxe, in Travels in Switzerland (London, 1789).
The Upper Engadine is not mentioned in authentic documents
till 1 139, the bishop of Coire being then the great lord, and, from
the I3th century, having as his bailiffs the family of Planta, the
original seat of which was at Zuz. The valley obtained its freedom
from both in 1486 (Planta) and in 1526, when the temporal
powers of the bishop were abolished. In 1367 it (as well as
the bishop's vassals in the Lower Engadine) joined the newly
founded League of God's House or Gotteshausbund (see GRISONS),
one of the 3 Raetian Leagues, which lasted till 1799-1801, when
the whole Engadine became part of Canton Raetia of the Helvetic
Republic, which, in 1803, altered its name to that of Grisons or
Graubiinden, and then first entered the Swiss Confederation.
In the Upper Engadine the " Referendum " existed as between
the different villages composing a bailiwick (Hochgericht). The
history of the Lower Engadine is for long quite different. Though
always comprised in the diocese of Coire, it formed from the early
9th century onwards (with the Vintschgau) a separate county,
which was gradually absorbed in that which, later, took the name
of the county of Tirol. The limit between the Upper Engadine
and the Tirolese Lower Engadine was definitively fixed in 1282 at
the Punt' Ota (the high bridge) just above Brail, and mentioned
in 1139 already. In 1363 Tirol came into the possession of the
Habsburgers, who were troublesome neighbours both to the
Upper Engadine and to the League of God's House. Their
power was stemmed in 1499 at the battle of the Calven gorge
(above Mais), though it was only in 1652 that the Lower Engadine
bought up the remaining rights of the Habsburgers. But the
castle of Tarasp (acquired by them in 1464) was excepted: the
lordship was given by them in 1687 to the Dietrichstein family,
and held by it till 1801, when Austria ceded it to France, which,
in 1803, handed it over to the Swiss Confederation, by which it
was incorporated in 1809 with the Canton of the Grisons. This
long connexion with Tirol accounts for the fact that Tarasp is
still mainly Romanist, while the lonely Swiss valley of Samnaun
(above Martinsbruck) has given up its Protestantism and its
Ladin speech owing to communications with Tirol being easier
than with Switzerland. The bears in the bear pit at Bern come
from the forests in the lower Spol valley, above Zernez, in the
Lower Engadine, on the way to the Ofen Pass. The upper Spol
valley (Livigno) is Italian (see VALTELUNA).
AUTHORITIES. M. Caviezel, Das Oberengadin, 7th edition (Coire,
1896) ; C. Decurtius, Ratoromanische Chrestomathie, vols. v.-ix.
(Erlangen, 1899-1908), deals with the two divisions of the Engadine
from the l6th century to modern times; Mrs H. Freshfield, A
Summer Tour in the Grisons and the Italian Valleys of the Bernina
(London, 1862); E. Imhof, Itinerarium des S.A.C. fur die Albula-
gruppe (Bern, 1893), and Itinerarium des S.A.C. fur die Silvretta-
und Ofenpassgruppe (Mountains of the Lower Engadine) (Bern, 1898) ;
E. Lechner, Das Oberengadin in der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart
(Leipzig, 1900) ; A. Lorria and E. A. Mattel, Le Massif de la Bernina
(complete monograph on the Upper Engadine, with full bibliography)
(Ziirich, 1894) ; P. C. von Planta, Die Currdtischen Herrschaften
in der Feudalzeit (Bern, 1881) ; Z. and E. Pallioppi, Dizionari
dels Idioms Romauntschs d'Engiadina ota e bassa, &c. (Samaden,
1895) ; F. de B. Strickland, The Engadine, and edition (London and
Samaden, 1891); J. Ulrich, Ratoromanische Chrestomathie, vol. ii.
(Halle, 1882). (W. A. B. C.)
ENGAGED COLUMN, in architecture, a form of column,
sometimes defined as semi or three-quarter detached according
to its projection; the term implies that the column is partly
attached to a pier or wall. It is rarely found in Greek work, and
then only in exceptional cases, but it exists in profusion in Roman
architecture. In the temples it is attached to the cella walls,
ENGEL ENGHIEN
405
repeating the columns of the peristyle, and in the theatres and
amphitheatres, where they subdivided the arched openings: in
all these cases engaged columns are utilized as a decorative
feature, and as a rule the same proportions are maintained as if
they had been isolated columns. In Romanesque work the
classic proportions are no longer adhered to; the engaged
column, attached to the piers, has always a special function to
perform, either to support subsidiary arches, or, raised to the
vault, to carry its transverse or diagonal ribs. The same con-
structional object is followed in the earlier Gothic styles, in which
they become merged into the mouldings. Being virtually always
ready made, so far as their design is concerned, they were much
affected by the Italian revivalists.
ENGEL, ERNST (1821-1806), German political economist and
statistician, was born in Dresden on the list of March 1821.
He studied at the famous mining academy of Freiberg, in Saxony,
and on completing his curriculum travelled in Germany and
France. Immediately after the revolution of 1848 he was
attached to the royal commission in Saxony appointed to deter-
mine the relations between trade and labour. In 1850 he was
directed by the government to assist in the organization of the
German Industrial Exhibition of Leipzig (the first of its kind).
The success which crowned his efforts was so great that in 1854
he was induced to enter the government service, as chief of the
newly instituted statistical department. He retired, however,
from the office in 1858. He founded at Dresden the first Mortgage
Insurance Society (Hypotheken-Versicherungsgesellschaft), and
as a result of the success of his work was summoned in 1860 to
Berlin as director of the statistical department, in succession to
Karl Fricdrich Wilhelm Dieterici (1790-1859). In his new
office he made himself a name of world-wide reputation. Raised
to the rank of Gekeimer Regierungsrat, he retired in 1882 and
lived henceforward in Radebeul near Dresden, where he died on
the 8th of December 1806. Engel was a voluminous writer on
the subjects with which his name is connected, but his statis-
tical papers are mostly published in the periodicals which he
himself established, viz. Preuss. Statistik (in 1861); Zeitschrift
its Statistisihen Bureaus, and Zeitschrift des Statistician Bureaus
des KdnigreichsSachsrn.
ENGEL, JOHANN JAKOB (1741-1802), German author, was
born at Parchim, in Mecklenburg, on the i ith of September 1 741 .
He studied theology at Rostock and Biitzow, and philosophy at
Leipzig, where he took his doctor's degree. In 1776 he was
appointed professor of moral philosophy and belles-lettres in the
Joachimstal gymnasium at Berlin, and a few years later he
became tutor to the crown prince of Prussia, afterwards Frederick
William III. The lessons which he gave his royal pupil in ethics
and politics were published in 1798 under the title Fiirstenspiegel,
and are a favourable specimen of his powers as a popular
philosophical writer. In 1787 he was admitted a member of the
Academy of Sciences of Berlin, and in the same year he became
director of the royal theatre, an office he resigned in 1794. He
died on the 28th of June 1802.
Besides numerous dramas, some of which had a considerable
success, Engel wrote several valuable books on aesthetic sub-
jects. His A nfangsgrunde einer Theorie der Dichtungsarten ( 1 783)
showed fine taste and acute critical faculty if it lacked imagina-
tion and poetic insight. The same excellences and the same
defects were apparent in his Ideen tu einer Mimik (1785), written
in the form of letters. His most popular work was Der Philosoph
fur die Welt (1775), which consists chiefly of dialogues on men and
morals, written from the utilitarian standpoint of the philosophy
of the day. His last work, a romance entitled Herr Lorcnz Stark
( 1 795) , achieved a great success, by virtue of the marked individu-
ality of its characters and its appeal to middle-class sentiment.
Eager* S&mtlickt Sckriften were published in 12 volumes at Berlin
in iHot-i8o6; a new edition appeared at Frankfort in 1851. See
K. Schroder, Jokann Jakob Eiffel (Vortrag) (1897).
ENGELBERO, an Alpine village and valley in central Switzer-
land, much frequented by visitors in summer and to some extent
in winter. It is 14 m. by electric railway from Stansstad, on the
Lake of Lucerne, past Stans. The village (3343 ft.) is in a
mountain basin, shut in on all sides by lofty mountains (the
highest is the Titlis, 10,627 ft. in the south-east), so that it is
often hot in summer. It communicates by the Surencn Pass
(7563 ft.) with Wassen, on the St Gotthard railway, and by the
Joch Pass (7267 ft.) past the favourite summer resort of the
Engstlen Alp (6034 ft.), with Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland.
The village has clustered round the great Benedictine monastery
which gives its name to the valley, from the legend that its site
was fixed by angels, so that the spot was named " Mons
Angelorum." The monastery was founded about 1120 and still
survives, though the buildings date only from the early i8th
century. Its library suffered much at the hands of the French in
1798. From 1462 onwards it was under the protectorate of
Lucerne, Schwyz, Unterwalden and Uri. In 1 798 the abbot lost
all his temporal powers, and his domains were annexed to the
Obwalden division of Unterwalden, but in 1803 were transferred
to the Nidwalden division. However, in 1816, in consequence of
the desperate resistance made by the Nidwalden men to the new
Federal Pact of 1815, they were punished by the fresh transfer
of the valley to Obwalden, part of which it still forms. As the
pastures forming the upper portion of the Engelberg valley have
for ages belonged to Uri, the actual valley itself is politically iso-
lated between Uri and Nidwalden. The monastery is still directly
dependent on the pope. In 1900 the valley had 1973 inhabitants,
practically all German-speaking and Romanists. (W. A. B. C.)
ENGELBRECHTSDATTER, DORTHE (1634-1716), Norwegian
poet, was born at Bergen on the i6th of January 1634; her father,
Engelbrecht Jorgensen, was originally rector of the high school
in that city, and afterwards dean of the cathedral. In 1652 she
married Ambrosius Hardenbech, a theological writer famous
for his flowery funeral sermons, who succeeded her father at the
cathedral in 1659. They had five sons and four daughters. In 1678
.her first volume appeared, Sjaelens aandelige Sangoffer (" The
Soul's Spiritual Offering of Song ") published at Copenhagen.
This volume of hymns and devotional pieces, very modestly
brought out, had an unparalleled success. The fortunate poetess
was invited to Denmark, and on her arrival at Copenhagen was
presented at Court. She was also introduced to Thomas Kingo,
the father of Danish poetry, and the two greeted one another with
improvised couplets, which have been preserved, and of which
the poetess's reply is incomparably the neater. In 1683 her
husband died, and before 1698 she had buried allherninechildren.
In the midst of her troubles appeared her second work, the
Taareo/er (" Sacrifice of Tears "), which is a continuous religious
poem in four books. This was combined with the Sango/er, and
no fewer than three editions of the united works were published
before her death, and many after it. In 1698 she brought out a
third volume of sacred verse, Et kristeligt Valet fra Verden (" A
Christian Farewell to the World ") , a very tame production. She
died on the igth of February 1716. The first verses of Dorthe
Engelbrechtsdatter are the best; her Sango/er was dedicated to
Jesus, the Taareoffer to Queen Charlotte Amalia; this is signifi-
cant of her changed position in the eyes of the world.
ENGELHARDT. JOHANN GEORG VEIT (1791-1855), German
theologian, was born at Neustadt-on-the-Aisch on the izth of
November 1791, and was educated at Erlangen, where he after-
wards taught in the gymnasium (1817), and became professor of
theology in the university (1821)- His two great works were a
Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte in 4 vols. (1833-1834), and a
Dogmengeschichte in 2 vols. (1839). He died at Erlangen on the
I3th of September 1855.
ENGHIEN, LOUIS ANTOINE HENRI DE BOURBON CONDE,
Due D' (1772-1804), was the only son of Henri Louis Joseph,
prince of Condc, and of Louise Marie Thfiresc Mathilde, sister of
the duke of Orleans (Philippe Egalit), and was born at Chantilly
on the 2nd of August 1772. 'He was educated privately by the
abb Millot, and received a military training fromthecommodore
de Virieux. He early showed the warlike spirit of the house of
Cond6, and began his military career in 1788. On the outbreak of
the French Revolution he " emigrated " with very many of the
nobles a few days after the fall of the Bastille, and remained in
exile, seeking to raise forces for the invasion of France and the
406
EN.GHIEN ENGINEERS, MILITARY
restoration of the old monarchy. In 1 792, on the outbreak of war,
he held a command in the force of imigrts (styled the " French
royal army ") which shared in the duke of Brunswick's unsuccess-
ful invasion of France. He continued to serve under his father
and grandfather in what was known as the Conde army, and
on several occasions distinguished himself by his bravery and
ardour in the vanguard. On the dissolution of that force after the
peace of Luneville (February 1801) he married privately the
princess Charlotte, niece of Cardinal de Rohan, and took up his
residence at Ettenheim in Baden, near the Rhine. Early in the
year 1804 Napoleon, then First Consul of France, heard news
which seemed to connect the young duke with the Cadoudal-
Pichegru conspiracy then being tracked by the French police.
The news ran that the duke was in company with Dumouriez
and made secret journeys into France. This was false; the
acquaintance was Thumery, a harmless old man, and the duke
had no dealings with Cadoudal or Pichegru. Napoleon gave
orders for the seizure of the duke. French mounted gendarmes
crossed the Rhine secretly, surrounded his house and brought him
to Strassburg (isth of March 1804), and thence to the castle of
Vincennes, near Paris. There a commission of French colonels
was hastily gathered to try him. Meanwhile Napoleon had
found out the true facts of the case, and the ground of the
accusation was hastily changed. The duke was now charged
chiefly with bearing arms against France in the late war, and with
intending to take part in the new coalition then proposed against
France. The colonels hastily and most informally drew up the
act of condemnation, being incited thereto by orders from
Savary (q.v.), who had come charged with instructions. Savary
intervened to prevent all chance of an interview between the
condemned and the First Consul; and the duke was shot in the
moat of the castle, near a grave which had already been prepared.
With him ended the house of Conde. In 1816 the bones were
exhumed and placed in the chapel of the castle. It is now known
that Josephine and Mme de Remusatjiad begged Napoleon for
mercy towards the duke; but nothing would bend his will. The
blame which the apologists of the emperor have thrown on, Talley-
rand or Savary is undeserved. On his way to St Helena and at
Longwood he asserted that, in the same circumstances, he would
do the same again; he inserted a similar declaration in his will.
See H. Welschinger, Le Due d'Enghien 1772-1804 (Paris, 1888);
A. Nougaret de Fayet, Recherches historiques sur le proems et la con-
damnation du due d Enghien, 2 vols. (Paris, 1844) ; Comte A. Boulay
de la Meurthe, Les Dernieres Annees du due d'Enghien 1801-1804
(Paris, 1886). For documents see La Catastrophe du due d' Enghien
in the edition of Memoires edited by M. F. Barriere, also the edition
of the duke's letters, &c., by Count Boulay de la Meurthe (tome i.,
Paris, 1904; tome ii., 1908). (J. HL. R.)
ENGHIEN, a town in the province of Hainaut, Belgium, lying
south of Grammont. Pop. (1904) 4541. It is the centre of
considerable lace, linen and cotton industries. There is a fine
park outside the town belonging to the duke of Arenberg, whose
ancestor, Charles de Ligne, bought it from Henry IV. in 1607, but
the chateau in which the duke of Arenberg of the i8th century
entertained Voltaire no longer exists. Curiously enough the
cottage, a stone building, built by the same duke for Jean
Jacques Rousseau, still stands in the park, while the ducal
residence was burnt down by the sans-culotles. A fine pavilion or
kiosk, named de 1'Etoile, has also survived. The great Conde
was given, for a victory gained near this place, the right to use
the style of Enghien among his subsidiary titles.
ENGINE (Lat. ingenium), a term which in the time of Chaucer
had the meaning of " natural talent " or " ability," corresponding
to the Latin from which it is derived (cf. " A man hath sapiences
thre, Memorie, engin, and intellect also," Second Nun's Tale,
339); in this sense it is now obsolete. It also denoted a
mechanical tool or contrivance, an'd especially a weapon of war;
this use may be compared with that of ingenium in classical Latin
to mean a clever idea or device, and in later Latin, as in Tertullian,
for a warlike instrument or machine. In the igth century it
came to have, when employed alone, a specific reference to the
steam-engine (q.v.), but it is also used of other prime movers such
as the air-engine, gas-engine and oil-engine (qq.v.).
ENGINEERING, a term for the action of the verb " to engineer,"
which in its early uses referred specially to the operations of those
who constructed engines of war and executed works intended to
serve military purposes. Such military engineers were long the
only ones to whom the title was applied. But about the middle of
the 1 8th century there began to arise a new class of engineers who
concerned themselves with works which, though they might be
in some cases, as in the making of roads, of the same character as
those undertaken by military engineers, were neither exclusively
military in purpose nor executed by soldiers, and those men by
way of distinction came to be known as civil engineers. No
better definition of their aims and functions can be given than
that which is contained in the charter (dated 1828) of the Insti-
tution of Civil Engineers (London), where civil engineering is
described as the " art of directing the great sources of power in
nature for the use and convenience of man, as the means of
production and of traffic in states, both for external and internal
trade, as applied in the construction of roads, bridges, aqueducts,
canals, river navigation and docks for internal intercourse and
exchange, and in the construction of ports, harbours, moles,
breakwaters and lighthouses, and in the art of navigation by
artificial power for the purposes of commerce, and in the construc-
tion and adaptation of machinery, and in the drainage of cities
and towns." Wide as is this enumeration, the practice of a civil
engineer in the earlier part of the igth century might cover many
or even most of the subjects it contains. But gradually specializa-
tion set in. Perhaps the first branch to be recognized as separate
was mechanical engineering, which is concerned with steam-
engines, machine tools, mill-work and moving machinery in
general, and it was soon followed by mining engineering, which
deals with the location and working of coal, ore and other
minerals. Subsequently numerous other more or less strictly
defined groups and subdivisions came into existence, such as
naval architecture dealing with the design of ships, marine engineer-
ing with the engines for propelling steamers, sanitary engineering
with water-supply and disposal of sewage and other refuse, gas
engineering with the manufacture and distribution of illuminating
gas, and chemical engineering with the design and erection of the
plant required for the manufacture of such chemical products as
alkali, acids and dyes, and for the working of a wide range of
industrial processes. The last great new branch is electrical
engineering, which touches on the older branches at so many
points that it has been said that all engineers must be electricians.
ENGINEERS, MILITARY. From the earliest times engineers
have been employed both in the field of war and on field
defences. In modern times, however, the application of
numerous scientific and engineering devices to warfare has
resulted in the creation of many minor branches of military
engineering, some of them almost rivalling in importance their
primary duty of fortification and siegecraft, such as the field
telegraph, the balloon service, nearly all demolitions, the building
of pontoon and other bridges, and the construction and working
of military roads, railways, piers, &c. All these branches requir-
ing special knowledge, the modern tendency is to divide a corps
of engineers in accordance with such requirements. The " field
companies " and " fortress companies " of the R.E. represent the
traditional tactical application of their arm to works of offence
and defence in field and siege warfare. The balloon, telegraph,
and other branches, also organized on a permanent footing, re-
present the modern application of scientific aids in warfare. (See
FORTIFICATION AND SIEGECRAFT; TACTICS; INFANTRY, &c.)
History. It is difficult to distinguish between military and
civil engineers in the earlier ages of modern history, for all
engineers acted as builders of castles and defensible strongholds,
as well as manufacturers and directors of engines of war with
which to attack or defend them. The annals of fortification
show professors, artists, &c., as well as soldiers and architects, as
designers and builders of innumerable systems of fortification.
By the middle. of the I3th century there was in England an
organized body of skilled workmen employed under a " chief
engineer." At the siege of Calais in 1347 this corps consisted of
masons, carpenters, smiths, tentmakers, miners, armourers,
ENGIS
407
gunners and artillerymen. At the siege of Harfleur in 1415 the
chief engineer was designated Master of the King's Works, Guns
and Ordnance, and the corps under him numbered 500 men,
including n foot -archers. Headquarters of engineers existed at
the Tower of London before 1330, and a century later developed
into the Office of Ordnance (afterwards the Board of Ordnance),
whose duty was to administer all matters connected with fortifica-
tions, artillery and ordnance stores.
Henry \ 111. employed many engineers (of whom Sir Richard
Lee is the best known) in constructing coast defences from
Penzance to the Thames and thence to Berwick-on-Tweed, and in
strengthening the fortresses of Calais and Gulnes in France. He
also added to the organization a body of pioneers under trench-
masters and a master trenchmaster. Charles II. increased the
peace establishment of engineers and formed a separate one for
Ireland, with a chief engineer who was also surveyor-general of
the King's Works. In both countries only a small permanent
establishment was maintained, a special ordnance train being
enrolled in war-time for each expedition and disbanded on its
termination. The commander of an ordnance train was fre-
quently, but not necessarily, an engineer, but there was always a
chief engineer of each train. At Blenheim ( 1 704) Marlborough's
ordnance train was commanded by Holcroft Blood, a distin-
guished engineer. But after the rebellion of 17 15 it was decided
to separate the artillery from the engineers, and the royal
warrant of 26th May 1716 established two companies of artillery
as a separate regiment, and an engineer corps composed of i
chief engineer, 3 directors, 6 engineers-in-ordinary, 6 engineers
extraordinary, 6 sub-engineers and 6 practitioner engineers.
Until the 1 4th of May 17 57 officers of engineers frequently held,
in addition to their military rank in the corps of engineers,
commissions in foot regiments; but on and after that date all
engineer officers were gazetted to army as well as engineer rank
the chief engineer as colonel of foot, directors as lieutenant-
colonel, and so forth down to practitioners as ensigns. On the
i8th of November 1782 engineer grades, except that of chief
engineer, were abolished, and the establishment was fixed at
i chief engineer and colonel, 6 colonels commandant, 6 lieutenant-
colonels, 9 captains, 9 captain lieutenants (afterwards second cap-
tains), 22 first lieutenants, and 22 second lieutenants. Ten years
later a small invalid corps was formed. In 1787 the designation
" Royal " was conferred upon the engineers, and its precedence
settled to be on the right of the army, with the royal artillery.
In 1802 the title of chief engineer was changed to inspector-
general of fortifications. From this time to the conclusion of the
Crimean War various augmentations took place, consequent on the
increasing and widely extending duties thrown upon the officers.
These, in addition to ordinary military duties, comprised the
construction and maintenance of fortifications, barrack and
ordnance store buildings, and all engineering services connected
with them. The cadastral survey of the United Kingdom (called
the " Ordnance Survey ") had been entrusted to the engineers
as far back as 1784, and absorbed many officers in its execution.
In 1772 the formation at Gibraltar of "The Company of
Soldier Artificers," officered by Royal Engineers, was authorized,
and a second company was added soon afterwards. In 1787 by
royal warrant " The Corps of Royal Military Artificers " was
established at home, consisting of six companies, with which the
Gibraltar companies were amalgamated. In 1806 this corps
was doubled, and in 1811 increased to 3 2 companies. In iSi.^its
title was changed to " The Royal Sappers and Miners." In 1856,
at the dose of the Crimean War, it was incorporated with " The
Corps of Royal Engineers," by whom it had always been officered.
At that date the corps numbered about 340 officers and 4000 non-
commissioned officers and men, in i troop and 32 companies.
In 1 770 the East India Company reorganized the engineer corps
of the three presidencies, composed of officers only. Native corps
of sappers or pioneers were formed later, and officered principally
by engineers. The officers of engineers were employed in peace-
time on the public works of the country, their services when
required being placed at the disposal of the military authorities.
The Indian Engineers have not only distinguished themselves in
the operations of war, but have left monuments of engineering
skill in the irrigation works, railways, surveys, roads, bridges,
hlii buildings and defences of the country. When Indian
ulininisir.il inn was transferred to the crown (1862) the Indian
Engineers became " Royal," so that there now exists but one
corps, the Royal Engineers. This is composed of about 1000
officers and 7700 warrant and non-commissioned officers and
men. Of the officers some 220 are attached to units, about 400
employed either at home or in the colonies on engineering duties
in military commands, on the staff, or on special duty, and about
370 on the Indian establishment. The supreme technical control
of the Royal Engineers is exercised from the War Office. See
also UNITED KINGDOM; ARMY.
The history of the French engineers shows a somewhat similar
line of development. Originally selected officers of infantry were
given brevets as engineers, and these men performed military and
also civil duties for the king's service by the aid of companies of
workmen enlisted and discharged from time to time. Vauban
(q.v.) was the founder of the famous corps de Genie (1690). Its
members were selected officers and civilians, employed in all
branches of military and naval services, and it soon achieved its
European reputation as the first school of fortification and siege-
craft. It received a special uniform in 1732. About 1755 it was
for a time merged in the artillery. In 1766 the title of Gtnie was
conferred upon the officers, and the same name (troupes de
Gfnie) was given to the previously existing companies of sappers
and miners in 1801.
In the United States the separate Corps of Engineers (since
1794 there had been a Corps of Artillerists and Engineers) was
organized in 1802, starting with a small body stationed at West
Point, which in 1838 and 1846 was gradually increased, and in
1861 given three additional companies. In 1866 they were
formed into a battalion and stationed at Willets Point, N.Y.
In 1901 they were reorganized in three battalions, with a total
strength of 1282. The U.S. Engineer School, formerly at Willets
Point, was transferred in 1901 to Washington. Until 1866 the
military academy at West Point was under the supervision of the
Corps of Engineers, but from that time its direction was thrown
open; but the highest branch at West Point is still regarded as
that of the engineers. The Corps of Engineers has done a great
deal of highly important work in the United States, notably in
building forts, and improving rivers and harbours for navigation.
See Maj.-Gen. R. W. Porter, Hist, of the Corps of Royal Engineers
(Chatham, 1889); C. Lecomte, Les Ingenieurs militaires de la France
(Paris, 1903); H. Frobenius, Geschichte der K. preuss. Ingenieur-
und Pioneer-Korps (Berlin, 1906).
ENGIS, a cave on the banks of the Meuse near Liege, Belgium,
where in 1832 Dr P. C. Schmerling found human remains in
deposits belonging to the Quaternary period. Bones of the cave-
bear, mammoth, rhinoceros and hyena were discovered in
association with parts of a man's skeleton and a human skull.
This, known as " the Engis Skull," gave rise to much discussion
among anthropologists, since it has characteristics of both high
and low development, the forehead, low and narrow, indicating
slight intelligence, while the abnormally large brain cavity
contradicts this conclusion. Of it Huxley wrote: " There is no
mark of degradation about any part of its structure. It is a fair
average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher,
or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage."
Dr Schmerling concluded that the human remains were those of
man who had been contemporary with the extinct mammals.
As, however, fragments of coarse pottery were found in the cave
which bore other evidence of having been used by neolithic man,
by whom the cave-floor and its contents might have been dis-
turbed and mixed, his arguments have not been regarded as
conclusive. There is, however, no doubt as to the great age of the
Engis Skull. Discoveries of a like nature were made by Dr
Schmerling in the neighbourhood in the caves of Engihoul,
Chokier and others.
See P. C. Schmerling, Recherches sur les ossements decomerts dans
lei cavernes de la province Liege (1833); Huxley, Man's Place in
Nature, p. 156; Lord Avebury, Prehistoric Times, p. 317 (1900).
408
ENGLAND
[TOPOGRAPHY
ENGLAND. Geographical usage confines to the southern part
of the island of Great Britain the name commonly given to the
great insular power of western Europe. 1 In this restricted sense
the present article deals with England, the predominant partner
in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, both as
containing the seat of government and in respect of extent,
population and wealth.
I. TOPOGRAPHY.
England extends from the mouth of the Tweed in 55 46' N. to
Lizard Point in 49 5 7' 30* N. , in a roughly triangular form. The
base of the triangle runs from the South Foreland to Land's End
W. by S., a distance of 316 m. in a straight line, but 545 m.
following the larger curves of the coast. The east coast runs
N.N.W. from the South Foreland to Berwick, a distance of 348 m.,
or, following the coast, 640 m. The west coast runs N.N.E. from
Area
Counties.
Statute
Population.
Acres.
1901.
Bedfordshire
298,494
171,240
Berkshire. . . . .
462,208
256,509
Buckinghamshire
475,682
195-764
Cambridgeshire .
549,723
190,682
Cheshire
657-783
815,099
Cornwall . . . .
868,220
322,334
Cumberland
973,086
266,933
Derbyshire
658,885
620,322
Devonshire
1,667,154
661,314
Dorsetshire
632,270
202,936
Durham . . . .
649,352
1,187,361
Essex . . . . .
986,975
1,085,771
Gloucestershire . ...
795,709
6 34,729
Hampshire . . . .
1-039,031
797,634
Herefordshire
537,363
1 14,380
Hertfordshire
406,157
250,152
Huntingdonshire
234,218
57,771
Kent
995,014
1,348,841
Lancashire . . .
1,203,365
4,406,409
Leicestershire
527.123
434-019
Lincolnshire . . . .
1,693,550
498,847
Middlesex . . . .
181,320
3,585,323
Monmouthshire .
341,688
292,317
Norfolk
1,308,439
460,120
Northamptonshire
641,992
338,088
Northumberland
1,291,530
603,498
Nottinghamshire
539-756
514,578
Oxfordshire . . . .
483,626
181,120
Rutland ... . .
97,273
19,709
Shropshire
859,516
239,324
Somersetshire
1,043,409
508,256
Staffordshire
749,602
1,234,506
Suffolk . . . .
952,710
384,293
Surrey . . .
485,122
2,012,744
Sussex . . .
933,887
605,202
Warwickshire
577,462
897.835
Westmorland
503,160
64,303
Wiltshire
879-943
273,869
Worcestershire ...
480,560
488,338
Yorkshire . ...
3,882,328
3,584,762
Total . . .
32,544,685
30,807,232
Land's End to the head of Solway Firth, a distance of 354 m.,
or following the much-indented coast, 1225 m. The total length
of the coast-line may be put down as 2350 m., ! out of which
515 m. belong to the western principality of Wales. 3 The most
easterly point is at Lowestoft, i 46' E., the most westerly is
Land's End , in 5 43' W. The coasts are nowhere washed directly
by the ocean, except in the extreme south-west; the south coast
faces the English Channel, which is bounded on the southern side
by the coast of France, the two shores converging from 100 m.
1 The general questions capable of a single treatment for England,
Scotlandand Ireland are considered under UNITED KINGDOM.
1 Measurements made on a map on the scale of I2j m. to I in.,
the coast being assumed to run up estuaries until the breadth became
I m., and no bays or headlands of less than I m. across being reckoned.
The coast-line of Anglesea and the Isle of Wight, but of no other
islands, is included.
* A separate topographical notice is given under the heading
WALES, but the consideration of certain points affecting Wales as
linked with England is essential in this article.
apart at the Lizard to 21 at Dover. The east coast faces the
shallow North Sea, which widens from the point where it joins the
Channel to 375 m. off the mouth of the Tweed, the opposite shores
being occupied in succession by France, Belgium, Holland,
Germany and Denmark. The west coast faces the Irish Sea, with
a width varying from 45 to 130 m.
The area of England and Wales is 37,327,479 acres or 58,324
sq. m. (England, 50,851 sq. m.), and the population on this area
in 1901 was 32,527,843 (England, 30,807,232). The principal
territorial divisions of England, as of Wales, Scotland and
Ireland, are the counties, of which England comprises 40.
Their boundaries are not as a rule determined by the physical
features of the land ; but localities are habitually denned by the
use of their names. A list of the English counties (excluding
Wales) is given in the table above. 4
Hills. As an introduction to the discussion of the natural
regions into which England is divided (Section II.), and for the
sake of comparison of altitudes, size of rivers and similar details,
the salient geographical features may be briefly summarized.
The short land-frontier of England with Scotland (its length is
only 100 m.) is in great measure a physical boundary, as con-
siderable lengths of it are formed on the east side by the river
Tweed, and on the west by Kershope Burn, Liddel Water, and the
river Sark; while for the rest it follows pretty closely the summit
of the Cheviot Hills, whose highest point is the Cheviot (2676 ft.).
A narrow but well-marked pass or depression, known as the Tyne
Gap, is taken to separate the Cheviot system from the Pennine
Chain, which is properly to be described as a wide tract of hill-
country, extending through two degrees of latitude, on an axis
from N. by W. to S. by E. The highest point is Cross Fell
(2930 ft.). On the north-west side of the Pennine system,
marked off from it by the upper valleys of the rivers Eden and
Lune, lies the circular hill-tract whose narrow valleys, radiating
from its centre somewhat like wheel-spokes, contain the beautiful
lakes which give it. the celebrated name of the Lake District.
In this tract is found the highest land in England, Scafell Pike
reaching 3 2 10 f t. East of the Pennines, isolated on three sides by
lowlands and on the fourth sideby the North Sea, lie the highmoors
of the North Riding of Yorkshire, with the Cleveland Hills, and,
to the south, the Yorkshire Wolds of the East Riding. Neither of
these systems has any great elevation; the moors, towards their
north-western edge, reaching an extreme of 1489 ft. in Urra Moor.
The tableland called the Peak of Derbyshire, in the south of the
Pennine system, is 2088 ft. in extreme height, but south of this
system an elevation of 2000 ft. is not found anywhere in England
save at a few points on the south Welsh border and in Dartmoor,
in the south-west. Wales, on the other hand, projecting into the
western sea between Liverpool Bay and the estuary of the Dee on
the north, and the Bristol Channel on the south, is practically
all mountainous, and has in Snowdon, in the north-west, a higher
summit than any in England 3560 ft. But the midlands, the
west, and the south of England, in spite of an absence of great
elevation, contain no plains of such extent as might make for
monotony. The land, generally undulating, is further diversified
with hills arranged in groups or ranges, a common characteristic
of which is a bold face on the one hand and a long gentle slope,
with narrow valleys deeply penetrating, on the other. South-
ward from the Pennines there may be mentioned, in the midlands,
the small elevated tract of Charnwood Forest (Bardon Hill, 912
ft.) in Leicestershire, and Cannock Chase (775 ft.) and the Clent
Hills (928 ft.), respectively north and south of the great manu-
facturing district of Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Of the
western counties, the southern half of Shropshire, Herefordshire
and Monmouthshire are generally hilly. Among the Shropshire
Hills may be mentioned the isolated Wrekin (1335 ft.), Long
Mynd (1674 ft.) and the Clee Hills (Brown Clee, 1805 ft.). The
4 The figures given here are for the ancient or geographical
counties. Section IX., on Territorial Divisions, indicates the
departures from the ancient county boundaries made for certain
purposes of administration. Each county is treated in a separate
article in the topographical, geological, economical and historical
aspects. Further topographical details are given in separate articles
on the more important hill-systems, rivers, &c.
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TOPOGRAPHY]
ENGLAND
409
long ridge of the Black Mountain reaches an extreme height of
ajio ft. on the Welsh border of Herefordshire. The Malvern Hills
on the other side of the county, which, owing to their almost
isolated position among lowlands, appear a far more prominent
feature, reach only 1395 ft. In western Monmouthshire, again
belonging to the south Welsh system, there are such heights as
Sugar Loaf (1955 ft.) and Coity (1005 ft.).
In the south midlands of England there are two main ranges of
hills, with axes roughly parallel. The western range is the
Cotteswold Hills of Gloucestershire and the counties adjacent on
the east running S.W. and N.E. Its highest point is Clceve Cloud
(1134 ft.). The uplands of Northamptonshire continue this
range north-eastward, decreasing in elevation. The eastern range,
beginning in Wiltshire, runs E.N.E. as the White Horse Hills
(856 ft. at the highest point), and after the interruption caused by
the gap or narrow valley by which the river Thames penetrates
the hills near Goring, continues N.E. as the Chiltcrn Hills (850
ft.). The East Anglian ridge continues the line E.N.E., gradually
decreasing in altitude. In the south-east of England, the North
and South Downs are both well-defined ranges, but are character-
iinl by a number of breaches through which rivers penetrate, on
the one hand to the Thames or the North Sea and on the other to
the English Channel. Leith Hill in the North Downs reaches
065 ft., and Butser Hill in the South Downs 889 ft.; Blackdown
and Hindhead, two almost isolated masses of high ground lying
between the two ranges of the Downs towards their western
extremity, are respectively 918 and 895 ft. in height. In the north
of Hampshire along its boundary with Surrey and Berkshire, in
the southern half of Wiltshire (where rises the upland of Salisbury
Plain), in Dorsetshire, and the south of Somersetshire, the hills
may be said to run in a series of connected groups. They cannot
be defined as a single range, nor are they named, as a rule,
according to the groups into which they fall, but the general title
of the Western Downs is applied to them. One point only in all
these groups exceeds 1000 ft. in altitude, namely, Inkpen
Beacon (ion ft.) in the extreme south-west of Berkshire, but
heights above ooo ft. are not infrequent. In the northern part of
Somersetshire, two ranges, short but well defined, lie respectively
east and west of a low plain which slopes to the Bristol Channel.
These are the Mendips (Black Down, 1068 ft.) and the Quantocks
(Will's Neck, 1261 ft.). The Blackdown Hills, in south-western
Somersetshire and eastern Devonshire, reach 1035 ft. in Staple
Hill in the first-named county. In western Somersetshire and
north Devonshire the elevated mass of Exmoor reaches 1707 ft.
in Dunkery Beacon; and in south Devonshire the highest land in
southern England is found in the similar mass of Dartmoor (High
Willhays, 2039 ft.). The westward prolongation of the great
south-western promontory of England, occupied by the county of
Cornwall, continues as a rugged ridge broken by a succession of
depressions, and exceeds a height of 800 ft., nearly as far as the
point where it falls to the ocean in the cliffs of Land's End.
Lowlands. The localities of the more extensive lowlands of
England may now be indicated in their relation to the principal
hill-systems, and in this connexion the names of some of the
more important rivers will occur. In the extreme north-west
is the so-called Solway Plain, of no great extent, but clearly
denned between the northern foothills of the Lake District and
the shore of Solway Firth. In Lancashire a flat coastal strip
occurs between the western front of the Pennine Chain and the
Irish Sea, and, widening southward, extends into Cheshire and
comprises the lower valleys of the Mersey and the Dee. In the
preceding review of the English hill-systems it may have been
observed that eastern England hardly enters into consideration.
The reason now becomes clear. From Yorkshire to the flat
indented sea-coast north of the Thames estuary, east of the
Pennines and the slight hills indicated as the Northampton
uplands, and in part demarcated southward by the East Anglian
ridge in Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, the land,
although divided between a succession of river-systems, varies
so little in level as to be capable of consideration as a single
plain. Its character, however, varies in different parts. The
Fens, the flat open levels in the lower basins of the Witham,
Wetland, Nene and Great Ouse, only kept from their former
marshy conditions by an extensive system of artificial drainage,
and the similar levels round the head of the Humber estuary,
differ completely in appearance from the higher and firmer
parts of the plain. The coast-land north of the mouth of the
Thames is a low plain; and on the south coast somewhat
similar tracts are found in Romney Marsh, and about the shallow
inlets (Portsmouth Harbour and others) which open from
Spithead. The vales of Kent and Sussex are rich undulating
lowlands within the area of the Weald, separated by the Forest
Ridges, and enclosed by the North and South Downs. In the
south-west there is a fairly extensive lowland in south Devon-
shire watered by the Exe in its lower course. But the most
remarkable plain is that in Somersetshire, enclosed by the
Mendips, the Western Downs, Blackdown Hills and the Quan-
tocks and entered by the Parrett and other streams. The mid-
lands, owing to the comparatively slight elevation of the land,
arc capable of geographical consideration as a plain. But it is
not a plain in the sense of that of East Anglia. There is no
quite level tract of great extent, excepting perhaps the fertile
and beautiful district watered by the lower Severn and its
tributary the Upper or Warwickshire Avon, overlooked by the
Cotteswolds on the one hand and the Malvern and other hills
on the other.
Coast. The coast-line of England is deeply indented by a
succession of large inlets, particularly on the east and west.
Thus, f rom north to south there are, on the east coast, the mouths
of the Tyne and the Tees, the Humber estuary, the Wash
(which receives the waters of the Witham, Welland, Nene and
Great Ouse), the Orwell-Stour, Blackwater and Thames-
Medway estuaries. On the west there are Solway Firth, More-
cambe Bay, the estuaries of the Mersey and Dee, Cardigan
Bay of the Welsh coast, and the Bristol Channel and Severn
estuary. In this way the land is so deeply penetrated by the
water that no part is more than 75 m. from the sea. Thus
Buckingham appears to be the most inland town in England,
being 75 m. from the estuaries of the Severn, Thames and Wash;
Coleshill, near Birmingham, is also almost exactly 75 m. from
the Mersey, Severn and Wash.
The east and south coasts show considerable stretches of
uniform uninflected coast-line, and except for the Fame Islands
and Holy Island in the extreme north, the flat islands formed
by ramifications of the estuaries on the Essex and north Kent
coasts, and the Isle of Wight in the south, they are without
islands. The west coast, on the other hand, including both
shores of the great south-western promontory, is minutely
fretted into capes and bays, headlands and inlets of every size,
and an island-group lies off each of the more prominent head-
lands from Land's End northward. The formation of the coast
varies from low, shifting banks of shingle or sand to majestic
cliffs, and its character in different localities has been fore-
shadowed in the previous consideration of the hill-systems and
lowlands. Thus in the north-east the coast is generally of no
great elevation, but the foothills of the Cheviot and Pennine
systems approach it closely. On the Yorkshire coast the
Cleveland Hills and the high moors are cut off on the seaward
side in magnificent cliffs, which reach the greatest elevation of
sea-cliffs on the English coast (666 ft.). The Yorkshire Wolds
similarly terminate seaward in the noble promontory of Flam-
borough Head. From this point as far south as the North
Foreland of Kent the coast, like the land, is almost wholly low,
though there are slight cliffs at some points, as along the coasts
of Norfolk and Suffolk, on which the sea constantly encroaches.
On the south coast a succession of cliffs and low shores may be
correlated with the main physical features of the land. Thus
in succession there are the famous white cliffs about Dover,
terminating the North Downs, the low coast of Romney Marsh,
projecting seaward in Dungeness, the cliffs above Hastings,
terminating an offshoot of the Forest Ridges, the low shore
between Hastings and Eastbourne, to which succeeds the lofty
Beachy Head, terminating the South Downs. A flat coast
follows as far as Selsey Bill and Spithead, but the south coast
ENGLAND
[PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
of the Isle of Wight shows a succession of splendid cliffs. The
shallow inlet of Poole Bay is followed by the eminence of St
Alban's Head, and thereafter, right round the south-western
promontory of England, the cliff-bound coast, with its bays
and inlets closely beset with hills, predominates over the low
shore-line, exhibits a remarkable series of different forms, and
provides the finest scenery of its kind in England. The shores
of the Severn estuary are low, but the Welsh coast, sharing the
general character of the land, is more or less elevated throughout,
though none of the higher mountain-masses directly approaches
the sea. Low shores correspond to the plains of Cheshire,
Lancashire and the Solway, while the intervening coast is of
no great elevation, as only the foothills of the Lake District
approach it with a gradual slope.
A great extent of the English coast is constantly undergoing
visible alteration, the sea in some instances receding from the
land, and in others gaining upon it. The whole of Romney
Marsh, in Kent and Sussex, formerly constituted an arm of the
sea, where vessels rode in deep water, carrying produce to ports
no longer in existence. Lydd and Romney, though maritime
Rivers.
Length
Miles.
Drainage
Area sq. m.
I. North-east
Tweed l
97
1870
Tyne
80
1130
Wear
60
458
Tees
85
708
2. East
Humber system 2
9293
Witham ....
80
1079
Welland ....
70
760
Nene
90
1077
Ouse (Great) .
1 60
2607
Yare
60
880
Stour (Suffolk-Essex)
60
407
Thames 3 . . . .
209
5924
3. South
Stour (Kent) .
40
370
Rother ....
32
3"
Arun .
43
37
Avon (Hampshire) .
60
1132
Exe
55
584
Tamar ....
58
384
4. Bristol Channel (south-
west)
Torridge ....
45
336
Taw
48
455
Parrett ....
37
562
Severn 4 6 ...
2IO
6850
Usk 5
70
54
5. North-west
(a) Cheshire-Lancashire
Dee'
70
813
Mersey .
70
1596
Ribble ....
65
585
(b) Solway
Eden
70
1300
still in name, retaining some of the ancient privileges of the
Cinque Ports, have become, through changes in the coast-line,
small inland towns; and the same has been the fate of Rye,
Winchelsea, and other places in that district. Again, the Isle
of Thanet, in the north-eastern corner of Kent, has practically
ceased to be an island. The wide estuary of the sea separating
it from the mainland, through which ships sailed from the
English Channel into the Thames, using it as the shortest route
from the south to London, has entirely disappeared, leaving
only a flat lowland traversed by branches of the river Stour to
1 Partly belonging to Scotland.
1 The principal members of the H umber-system are the Ouse of
Yorkshire (121 m. long from the source of the Swale or Ure) and the
Trent (170 m.), 50.11. for their numerous important tributaries.
' Includjng the Medway (680 sq. m.) in the drainage area.
4 Including the Wye (1609 sq. m.) and the Lower Avon (891 sq. m.)
in the drainage area.
* These rivers have their earlier courses in Wales, and flow at
first to some point of east. Of wholly Welsh rivers only the Towy
and the Teifi are comparable in length and drainage area with the
smaller rivers in the above list (see WALES).
From the source of its headstream the Goyt.
mark its former existence. The sea is encroaching over a con-
siderable extent of coast-line on the North Sea as well as on the
English Channel. Ravenspur, once an important town of
Yorkshire, where Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV., landed
in 1399, is now submerged; and Dunwich and other ancient
ports in East Anglia have met with the same fate. The process
of destruction, slow in some places, is so rapid in others that
it can be traced even from month to month the incessant
work of the waves washing away the soft strata at the base of
the cliffs and leaving the summits unsupported. Many cliffs
of the east coast, from the Humber to the mouth of the Thames,
are suffering from this destructive action, and instances also
occur on the south coast. A royal commission on Coast Erosion
was appointed to inquire into this question in 1906 (see Report,
1907 sqq.).
Except along the centre of the Irish Sea, at one point off the
Tweed and one between Devon and Normandy, the depth of
water between England and the nearest land nowhere exceeds
50 fathoms.
Rivers. The variations in length of the general slope of the
land towards successive natural divisions of the coast may be
illustrated by a comparative table of the mileage and drainage
areas of the principal English rivers. The mileage does not
take account of the lesser sinuosities of rivers.
With the exception of those in the Lake District (q.v.) the
lakes of England are few and insignificant. A number of small
meres occur in a defined area in Cheshire. (O. J. R. H.)
II. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
The object of this section is to give a physical description of
England and Wales according to natural regions, which usually
follow the geology of the country very closely; although the
relationship of configuration and geology is not so simple or so
clearly marked as in Scotland.
The land is highest in the west and north, where the rocks also
are oldest, most disturbed, and hardest, and the land surface
gradually sinks towards the east and sou th, where the rocks become
successively less disturbed, more recent, and softer. The study
of the scenery of England and Wales as a whole, or the study of
orographical and geological maps of the country, allows a broad
distinction to be drawn between the types of land-forms in the
west and in the east. This distinction is essential, and applies to
all the conditions of which geography takes account. The
contrasted districts are separated by an intermediate area, which
softens the transition between them, and may be described
separately.
The Western Division is composed entirely of Archaean and
Palaeozoic rocks, embracing the whole range from pre-Cambrian
up to Carboniferous. The outcrops of these rocks succeed each
other in order of age in roughly concentric belts, with the Archaean
mass of the island of Anglesey as a centre, but the arrangement in
detail is much disturbed and often very irregular. Contemporary
igneous outbursts are extremely common in some of the ancient
formations, and add, by their resistance to atmospheric erosion,
to the extreme ruggedness of the scenery. The hills and uplands
of ancient rocks do not form regular ranges, but rise like islands in
four distinct groups from a plain of New Red Sandstone (Permian
and Triassic), which separates them from each other and from the
newer rocks of the Eastern Division. Each of the uplands is a
centre for the dispersal of streams; but with only one prominent
exception (the Humber) these reach the sea without crossing
into the Eastern Division of the country.
The Eastern Division, lying to the east of the zone of New Red
Sandstone, may be defined on the west by a slightly curved line
drawn from the estuary of the Tees through Leicester and
Stratford-on-Avon to the estuary of the Severn, and thence
through Glastonbury to Sidmouth. It is built up of nearly
uniform sheets of Mesozoic rock, the various beds of the Jurassic
lying above the New Red Sandstone (Triassic), and dipping
south-eastward under the successive beds of the Cretaceous
system. In exactly the same way the whole of the south-east of
the island appears to have been covered uniformly with gently
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY]
ENGLAND
411
dipping beds of Tertiary sands and days, beneath which the
Cretaceous strata dipped. At some period subsequent to this
deposition there was a movement of elevation, which appears to
have thrown the whole mass of rocks into a fold along an anti-
clinal axis running west and east, which was tlanked to north and
south by synclinal hollows. In these hollows the Tertiary rocks
were protected from erosion, and remain to form the London and
the Hampshire Basins respectively, while on the anticlinal axis
the whole of the Tertiary and the upper Cretaceous strata have
been dissected away, and a complex and beautiful configuration
has been impressed on the district of the Weald. The general
character of the landscape in the Eastern Division is a succession
of steep escarpments formed by the edges of the outcropping beds
of harder rock, and long gentle slopes or plains on the dip-slopes,
or on the softer layers; clay and hard rock alternating through-
out the series.
The contrast between the lower grounds of the Western and
the Eastern Divisions is masked in many places by the general
covering of the surface with glacial drift, which is usually a stiff
day composed on the whole of the detritus of the rocks upon
which it rests, though containing fragments of rocks which have
been transported from a considerable distance. This boulder
day covers almost all the low ground north of the Thames Basin,
its southern margin fading away into washed sands and gravels.
The history of the origin of the land-forms of England, as far as
they have been deduced from geological studies, is exceedingly
complicated. The fact that every known geological formation
(except the Miocene) is represented, proves of itself how long the
history has been, and how multifarious the changes. It must
suffice to say that the separation of Ireland from England was a
comparatively recent episode, while the severance of the land-
connexion between England and the continent by the formation
of the Strait of Dover is still more recent and probably occurred
with the human period.
Natural Divisions. The four prominent groups of high land
rising from the plain of the Red Rocks are: (l) the Lake District,
bounded by the Solway Firth, Morecambe Bay and the
valleys of the Eden and the Lune; (2) the Pennine
Region, which stretches from the Scottish border to the
centre of England, running south ; (3) Wales, occupying
the peninsula between the Mersey and the Bristol Channel, and
extending beyond the political boundaries of the principality to
include Shropshire and Hereford ; and (4) the peninsula of Cornwall
and Devon. They are all similar in the great features of their
bad-forms, which have been impressed upon them by the prolonged
action of atmospheric denudation rather than by the original order
and arrangement of the rocks; but each group has its own geological
character, which has imparted something of a distinctive individu-
ality to the scenery. Taken as a whole, the Western Division
depends for its prosperity on mineral products and manufactures
rather than on farming; and the staple of the farmers is live-stock
rather than agriculture. The people of the more rugged and remoter
groups of this division are by race survivors of the early Celtic stock,
which, being driven by successive invaders from the open and fertile
country of the Eastern Division, found refuges in the less inviting
but more easily defended lands of the west. Even where, as in the
Pennine region and the Lake District, the people have been com-
pletely ammilated with the Teutonic stock, they retain a typical
character, marked by independence of opinion approaching stubborn-
nes. and by great determination and enterprise.
Lake Diilrtct. The Lake District occupies the countiesof Cumber-
land. Westmorland and North Lancashire. It forms a roughly
circular highland area, the drainage lines of which radiate outward
from the centre in a series of narrow valleys, the upper parts of
which cut deeply into the mountains, and the lower widen into the
surrounding plain. Sheets of standing water are still numerous,
and formerly almost every valley contained a single long narrow
lake-basin; but tome of these have been subdivided, drained or
filled up by natural processes. The existing lakes include Winder-
mere and Coniston, draining south ; Wastwater, draining south-west,
Ennerdale water. Buttermere and Crummock water (the two latter,
originally one lake, are now divided by a lateral delta), draining
north-vest: Do-went water and Basaenthwaite water (which were
probably originally one lake), and Thirlmere, draining north;
L'lUwater and Haweswatcr. draining north-cast. There are,
beside*, numerous mountain tarns of small size, most of them in
hollows barred by the glacial drift which covers a great part of
the district. Tle central and most picturesque part of the district
is formed of great masses of volcanic ashes ana tuffs, with intru-
of basalts and granite, all of Ordovician (Lower Silurian)
Scafell and Scafell Pike (3162 and 3210 ft.), at the head
Tftr
of Wastwater, and Hctvcllyn (3118), at the head of Ullswater, are
the loftiest amongst many summits the grandeur of whose outlines
is not to be estimated by their moderate height. Sedimentary rocks
of the same age form a belt to the north, and include Skiddaw
(3054 ft.); while to the south a belt of Silurian rocks, thickly
covered with boulder clay, forms the finely wooded valleys of
Coniston and Windermere. Round these central masses of early
Palaeozoic rocks there is a broken ring of Carboniferous Limestone,
and several patches of Coal Measures, while the New Red Sand-
stone appears as a boundary belt outside the greater part of the
district. Where the Coal Measures reach the sea at Wm'tehayen,
there are coal-mines, and the hematite of the Carboniferous Lime-
stones has given rise to the active ironworks of Barrow-in-Furncss,
now the largest town in the district. Except in the towns of the
outer border, the Lake District is very thinly peopled; and from the
economic point of view, the remarkable beauty of its scenery,
attracting numerous residents and tourists, is the most valuable
of its resources. The very heavy rainfall of the district, which is
the wettest in England, has led to the utilization of Thirlmere as
a reservoir for the water supply of Manchester, over 80 m. distant.
Pennine Region. The Pennine Region, the centre of which
forms the so-called Pennine Chain, occupies the country from the
Eden valley to the North Sea in the north, and from the lower
Tees, Yorkshire Ouse and Trent, nearly to the Irish Sea, in the
south. It includes the whole of Northumberland and Durham,
the West Riding of Yorkshire, most of Lancashire and Derbyshire,
the north of Staffordshire and the west of Nottinghamshire. The
region is entirely composed of Carboniferous rocks, the system which
transcends all others in the value of its economic minerals. The
coal and iron have made parts of the region the busiest manufac-
turing districts, and the centres of densest population, in the country,
or even in the world. The whole region may be looked upon as
formed by an arch or anticline of Carboniferous strata, the axis of
which runs north and south; the centre has been worn away by
erosion, so that the Coal Measures have been removed, and the
underlying Millstone Grit and Carboniferous Limestone exposed
to the influences which form scenery. On both sides of the arch,
east and west, the Coal Measures remain intact, forming outcrops
which disappear towards the sea under the more recent strata of
Permian or Triassic age. The northern part of the western side of
the anticline is broken off by a great fault in the valley of the Eden,
and the scarp thus formed is rendered more abrupt by the presence
of a sheet of intrusive basalt. Seen from the valley, this straight
line of lofty heights, culminating in Crossfell, presents the nearest
approach in England to the appearance of a mountain range. In
the north the Pennine region is joined to the Southern Uplands of
Scotland by the Cheviot Hills, a mass of granite and Old Red Sand-
stone; and the northern part is largely traversed by dykes of
contemporary volcanic or intrusive rock. The most striking of these
dykes is the Great Whin Sill, which crosses the country from a short
distance south of Durham almost to the source of the Tees, near
Crossfell. The elevated land is divided into three masses by depres-
sions, which furnish ready means of communication between east and
west. The South Ty ne and Irthing valleys cut off the Cheviots on
the north from the Crossfell section, which is also marked off on the
south by the valleys of the Aire and Ribble from the Kinder Scout
or Peak section. The numerous streams of the region carry off
the rainfall down long valleys or dales to the east and the south,
and by shorter and steeper valleys to the west. The dales are
separated from each other by high uplands, which for the most
part are heathery moorland or, at best, hill pastures. The agriculture
of the region is confined to the bottoms of the dales, and is of small
importance. Crossfell and the neighbouring hills are formed
from masses of Carboniferous Limestone, which received its popular
name of Mountain Limestone from this fact. Farther south, such
summits as High Seat, Whernside, Bow Fell, Penyghent and many
others, all over 2000 ft. in height, are capped by portions of the grits
and sandstones, which rest upon the limestone. The belt of Mill-
stone Grit south of the Aire, lying between the great coal-fields of the
West Riding and Lancashire, has a lower elevation, and forms grassy
uplands and dales; but farther south, the finest scenery of the whole
region occurs in the limestones of Derbyshire, in which the range
terminates. The rugged beauty of the south-running valleys, and
especially of Dovedale, is enhanced by the rich woods which still
clothe the slopes. There are remarkable features underground as
well as on the surface, the caverns and subterranean streams of
Yorkshire and Derbyshire being amongst the deepest that have yet
been explored. Compared with the rugged and picturesque scenery
of the Lower Carboniferous rocks, that of the Coal Measures is, as a
rule, featureless and monotonous. The coal-fields on the eastern
side, from the Tyne nearly to the Trent, are sharply marked off on
the east by the outcrop of Permian dolomite or Magnesian limestone,
which forms a low terrace dipping towards the cast under more recent
rocks, and in many places giving rise to an escarpment facing west-
ward towards the gentle slope of the Pennine dales. To the west and
south the Coal Measures dip gently under the New Red Sandstone,
to reappear at several points through the Triassic plain. The clear
water of the upland becks and the plentiful supply of water-power
ted to the founding of smalt paper-mills in remote valleys before
the days of steam, and some of these primitive establishments still
4-12
ENGLAND
[PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
exist. The prosperity and great population of the Pennine region
date from the discovery that pit-coal could smelt iron as well as
charcoal; and this source of power once discovered, the people bred
in the dales developed a remarkable genius for mechanical inven-
tion and commercial enterprise, which revolutionized the economic
life of the world and changed England from an agricultural to an
industrial country. The staple industry of the district in ancient
times was sheep-rearing, and the villages in nearly all the dales
carried on a small manufacture of woollen cloth. The introduction
of cotton caused the woollen manufactures on the western side to be
superseded by the working up of the imported raw material; but
woollen manufactures, themselves carried on now almost entirely
with imported raw material, have continued to employ the energies
of the inhabitants of the east. Some quiet market-towns, such as
Skipton and Keighley, remain, but most of them have developed
by manufactures into great centres of population, lying, as a rule,
at the junction of thickly peopled valleys, and separated from one
another by the empty uplands. Such are Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield,
Huddersfield and Halifax on the great and densely peopled West
Riding coal-field, which lies on the eastern slope of the Pennines.
The iron ores of the Coal Measures have given rise to great manu-
factures of steel, from cutlery to machinery and armour-plates.
High on the barren crest of the Pennines, where the rocks yield no
mineral wealth, except it be medicinal waters, Harrogate, Buxton
and Matlock are types of health resorts, prosperous from their
pure air and fine scenery. Across the moors, on the western side
of the anticline, the vast and dense population of the Lancashire
coal-field is crowded in the manufacturing towns surrounding the
great commercial centre, Manchester, which itself stands on the edge
of the Triassic plain. Ashton, Oldham, Rochdale, Bury, Bolton and
Wigan form a nearly confluent semicircle of great towns, their pros-
perity founded on the underlying coal and iron, maintained by
imported cotton. The Lancashire coal-field, and the portion of the
bounding plain between it and the seaport of Liverpool, contain a
population greater than that borne by any equal area in the country,
the county of London and its surroundings not excepted. In the
south-west of the Pennine region the coal-field of North Staffordshire
supports the group of small but active towns known collectively
from the staple of their trade as " The Potteries." On the north-east
the great coal-field of Northumberland and Durham, traversed mid-
way by the Tyne, supports the manufactures of Newcastle and its
satellite towns, and leaves a great surplus for export from the
Tyne ports.
Wales. -The low island of Anglesey, which is built up of the
fundamental Archaean rocks, is important as a link in the main
line of communication with Ireland, because it is separated from
the mainland by a channel narrow enough to be bridged, and lies
not far out of the straight line joining London and Dublin. The
mainland of Wales rises into three main highlands, the mountain
groups of North, Mid and South Wales, connected together by
land over 1000 ft. in elevation in most places, but separated by
valleys affording easy highways. The streams of the southern and
western slopes are short and many, flowing directly to the Bristol
Channel and the Irish Sea; but the no less numerous streams of
the eastern slopes gather themselves into three river systems, and
reach the sea as the Dee, the Severn and the Wye. The mountain
group of North Wales is the largest and loftiest ; its scenery resembles
that of the Scottish Highlands because of the juxtaposition of
ancient Palaeozoic rocks Cambrian and Ordovician, often altered
into slate and contemporaneous volcanic outbursts and igneous
intrusions. Here rises the peak of Snowdon (3560 ft.), the culminat-
ing point of South Britain, and near it half a dozen summits exceed
3000 ft., while Cader Idris, farther south, though slightly lower,
presents a singularly imposing outline. The mild winter climate
has fringed the coast with seaside resorts, the rugged heights
attract tourists in summer, and the vast masses of slate have given
rise to the largest slate quarries in the world. The heavy rainfall
of the upper valleys unfits them for agriculture, and the farms are
poor. There are several lakes: that of Bala being the largest,
except the old lake of Vyrnwy, reconstituted artificially to store
the rainfall for the water-supply of Liverpool, 68 m. distant. The
Vyrnwy is tributary to the Severn; but north of it the streams
gather into the Dee, and flow eventually northward. Mid Wales is
Built up, for the most part, of Silurian or Ordovician roeks, practically
free from igneous intrusions except in the south-west. There the
resistance of a series of igneous dykes gives prominence to the
Pembroke peninsula, in which the fine fjord-like harbour of Milford
Haven lies far out towards the Atlantic. The coast north of Pem-
broke and Merioneth has been worked into the grand sweep of
Cardigan Bay, its surface carved into gently rounded hills, green
with rich grass, which sweep downward into wide rounded valleys.
Plinlimmon (2468 ft.) is the highest of the hills, and forms a sort of
hydrographic centre for the group, as from its eastern base the
Severn and the Wye take their rise the former describing a wide
curve to east and south, the latter forming a chord to the arc in its
southward course. Mid Wales is mainly a pastoral country, and
very thinly peopled. A group of artificial lakes, one of them exceeded
in area only by Windermere, has been formed in the valley of the
Elan, a tributary of the Wye, for the supply of water to Birmingham.
The group of heights of South Wales, running on the whole from
west to east, marks the outcrops of the Old Red Sandstone and
Carboniferous strata which lie within a vast syncline of the Silurian
rocks. The Brecon Beacons of Old Red Sandstone are the highest
(2907 ft.), but the Black Mountain bears a number of picturesque
summits carved out of Millstone Grit and Carboniferous Limestone,
which rise frequently over 2000 ft. Throughout Hereford, and in
part of Monmouthshire, the Old Red Sandstone sinks to a great un-
dulating plain, traversed by the exquisite windings of the Wye, and
forming some of the richest pasture and fruit lands of England.
This plain formed an easy passage from south to north, and since the
time of the Romans was a strategical line of the greatest importance,
a fact which has left its traces on the present distribution of towns.
Around the western and northern edge of the Old Red Sandstone
plain the underlying Silurian rocks (and even the Cambrian and
Archaean in places) have been bent up so that their edges form hills
of singular abruptness and beauty. Of these are the Malvern Hills,
east of Hereford, and in particular the hills of Shropshire. Wenlock
Edge, running from south-west to north-east, is an escarpment
of Silurian limestone, while the broad upland of Long Mynd, nearly
parallel to it on the north, is a mass of Archaean rock. The Wrekin,
the Caradoc and Cardington Hills are isolated outbursts of pre-
Cambrian volcanic rocks. The outer rim of the Welsh area contains
a broken series of coal-fields, where patches of Carboniferous strata
come to the surface on the edge of the New Red Sandstone plain.
Such are the coal-fields of Flint in the north, the Forest of Wyre
and the Forest of Dean, close to the Severn, on the east. The great
coal-field on the south is a perfect example of a synclinal basin,
the Millstone Grit and Carboniferous Limestone which underlie the
Coal Measures appearing all round the margin. This coal-field
occupies practically the whole of Glamorgan and part of Monmouth,
and its surface slopes from the Black Mountain and Brecon Beacons
to the sea as a gently inclined plateau, scored by deep valleys draining
south. Each chief valley has a railway connecting a string of mining
villages, and converging seaward to the busy ports of Newport,
Cardiff and Barry (a town created on a sandy island by the excava-
tion of a great dock to form an outlet for the mines). In the north
of the field, where the limestone crops out and supplies the necessary
flux, Merthyr Tydfil has become great through iron-smelting; and
in the west Swansea is the chief centre in the world for copper and
tin smelting. The unity and ruggedness of the highlands of Wales
have proved sufficient to isolate the people from those of the rest
of South Britain, and to preserve a purely Celtic race, still very largely
of Celtic speech.
Cornwall and Devon. The peninsula of Cornwall and Devon may
be looked upon as formed from a synclinal trough of Devonian
rocks, which appear as plateaus on the north and south, while the
centre is occupied by Lower Carboniferous strata at a lower level.
The northern coast, bordering the Bristol Channel, is steep, with
picturesque cliffs and deep bays or short valleys running into the
high land, each occupied by a little seaside town or village. The
plateau culminates in the barren heathy upland of Exmoor, which
slopes gently southward from a general elevation of 1600 ft., and is
almost without inhabitants. The Carboniferous rocks of the centre
form a soil which produces rich pasture under the heavy rainfall
and remarkably mild and equable temperature, forming a great
cattle-raising district. The Devonian strata on the south do not
form such lofty elevations as those on the north, and are in conse-
quence, like the plain of Hereford, very fertile and peculiarly adapted
for fruit-growing and cider-making. The remarkable features of the
scenery of South Devon and Cornwall are due to a narrow band of
Archaean rock which appears in the south of the peninsulas terminat-
ing in Lizard Head and Start Point, and to huge masses of granite
and other eruptive rocks which form a series of great bosses and
dykes. The largest granite boss gives relief to the wild upland of
Dartmoor, culminating in High Willhays and Yes Tor. The clay
resulting from the weathering of the Dartmoor granite has formed
marshes and peat bogs, and the desolation of the district has been
emphasized by the establishment in its midst of a great convict
prison, and in its northern portion of a range for artillery practice.
The Tamar flows from north to south on the Devonian plain, which
lies between Dartmoor on the east and the similar granitic boss of
Bodmin Moor (where Brown Willy rises to 1345 ft.) on the west.
There are several smaller granite bosses, of which the mass of Land's
End is the most important. Most of the Lizard peninsula, the only
part of England stretching south of 50 N., is a mass of serpentine.
The great variety of the rocks which meet the sea along the south of
Cornwall and Devon has led to the formation of a singularly pic-
turesque coast the headlands being carved from the hardest igneous
rocks, the bays cut back in the softer Devonian strata. The fjord-like
inlets of Falmouth, Plymouth and Dartmouth are splendid natural
harbours, which would have developed great commercial ports but
for their remoteness from the centres of commerce and manufactures.
China clay from the decomposing granites; tin and copper ore,
once abounding at the contacts between the granite and the rocks-
it pierced, were the former staples of wealth, and the mining largely
accounts for the exceptional density of population in Cornwall.
Fishing has always been important, the numerous good harbours
giving security to fishing-boats; and the fact that this coast is the
mildest and almost the sunniest, though by no means the driest,
part of Great Britain has led to the establishment of many health
Hit
iaia
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY]
ENGLAND
mom. of which Torquay is the chief. The old Cornish language of
the Celtic stock became extinct only in the iSth century, ami the
Cornish character remains as a heritage of the time when the land
had leisure to mould the life and the habits of the man. Projecting
farthest of all England into the Atlantic, it is not surprising that the
West country' has supplied a large proportion of the great naval
commanders in British history, and of the crews of the navy.
Between the separate uplands there extends a plain of Permian
and Triassic rocks, which may conveniently be considered as an
intermediate lone between the two main divisions.
To the eye it form* an almost continuous plain with
the belt of Lias clays, which is the outer border of the
Eastern Division ; for although a low escarpment marks the line of
junction, and seems to influence the direction of the main rivers,
there is only one plain so far as regards free movement over its
surface and the construction of canals, roads and railways. The
plain usually forms a distinct border along the landward margins
of the uplands of more ancient rock, though to the east of the
Cornwall- Devon peninsula it is not very clear, and its continuity in
other places is broken by inliers of the more ancient rocks, which
everywhere underlie it. One such outcrop of Carboniferous l.imr-
stone in the south forms the Mendip Hills; another of the Coal
Measures increases the importance of Bristol, where it stands at the
head of navigation on the southern Avon. In the north-west a
tongue of the Red rocks forms the Eden valley, separating the Lake
District from the Pennine Chain, with Carlisle as its central town.
Farther south, these rocks form the low coastal belt of Lancashire,
edged with the longest stretches of blown sand in England, and
dotted here and there with pleasure towns, like Blackpool and South-
port. The plain sweeps round south of the Lancashire coal-field,
forms the valley of the Mersey from Stockport to the sea, and farther
aouth in Cheshire the salt-bearing beds of the Keuper marls give
rise to a characteristic industry. The plain extends through Stafford-
shire and Worcester, forming the lower valley of the Severn. The
greater part of Manchester, all Liverpool and Birkenhead, and in-
numerable busy towns of medium sue, which in other parts of
England would rank as great centres of population, stand on this
soiL Its flat surface and low level facilitate the construction of
railway* and canals, which form a closer network over it than in
other parts of the country. The great junction of Crowe, where
railway* from south-east, south-west, east, west and north converge,
is thus explained. South of the Pennines, the Red rocks extend
eastward in a great sweep through the south of Derbyshire, Warwick,
the west of Leicestershire, and the cast of Nottingham, their margin
being approximately marked by the Avon, flowing south-west, and
the Soar and Trent, flowing north-cast. South and east of these
stream* the very similar country is on the Lias clay. Several small
coal-fields rise through the Red rocks the largest, between Stafford
and Birmingham, forms the famous " Black Country," with Wolver-
hampton and Dudley as centres, where the manufacture of iron has
preserved a historic continuity, for the great Forest of Arden supplied
charcoal until the new fuel from the pits took its place. This coal-
field, ministering to the multifarious metal manufactures of Birming-
ham, constitutes the centre of the Midlands. Smaller patches of the
Coal Measures appear near Tamworth and Burton, while deep shafts
have been sunk in many places through the overlying Triassic strata
to the coal below, thus extending the mining and manufacturing area
beyond the actual outcrop of the Coal Measures. A few small
outcrops occur where still more ancient strata have been raised to
the surface, as, for instance, in Charnwood Forest, where the Archaean
rocks, with intrusions of granite, create a patch of highland scenery
in the very heart of the English plain ; and in the Lickey Hills, near
Birmingham, where the prominent features are due to volcanic
rocks of very ancient date. The " Waterstones," or Lower Keuper
Sandstones, forming gentle elevations above the softer marls, and
usually charged with an abundant supply of water, which can be
reached by wells, form the site of many towns, such as Birmingham,
Warwick and Lichncld, and of very numerous villages. The plain
a* a whole is fertile and undulating, rich in woods and richer in
the very heart of rural England. Cattle-grazing is the
farm industry in the west, sheep and horse-rearing in the
~ , the prevalence of the prefix " Market " in the names of the
rural towns is noticeable in this respect. The manufacture of
woollen and leather goods is a natural result of the raising of live
stock; Leicester, Coventry and Nottingham are manufacturing
towns of the region. The historic castles, the sites of ancient battles,
and the innumerable mansions of the wealthy, combine to give to
central England a certain aesthetic interest which the more purely
manufacturing districts of the west and north fail to inspire. The
midland plain carves northward between the outcrop of the Dolomite
on the west and the Oolitic heights on the east. It sinks lowest
where the estuary of the Humber gathers in its main tributaries,
and the greater pan of the surface is covered with recent alluvial
deposits. The Trent runs north in the southern half of this plain,
the Ouse runs south through the northern half, which is known as the
Vale of York, lying low between the Pennine height* on the west and
the Yorkshire moon on the east. Where the plain reaches the sea,
the soft rocks are cut back into the estuary of the Tees, and there
Middlesbrough stands at the base of the Moors. The quiet beauty of
the rural country in the south, where the barren Bunter pebble-beds
have never invited agriculture, and where considerable vestiges of the
old woodland still remain in and near Sherwood Forest, has attracted
so many seats of the landed aristocracy as to earn for that part the
familiar name of " the Dukeries." The central position of York in
the north made it the capital of Roman Britain in ancient times,
and an important railway junction in our own.
Five natural regions may be distinguished in the Eastern Division
of England, by no means so sharply marked off as those of the west,
but nevertheless quite clearly characterized. The first _.
is the Jurassic Belt, sweeping along the border of the
Triassic plain from the south coast at the mouth of the U?*/v"
Exc to the cast coast at the mouth of the Tees. This is
closely followed on the south-cast by the Chalk country, occupying
the whole of the rest of England except where the Tertiary Basins
of London and Hampshire cover it. where the depression of the Fen-
land carries it out of sight, and where the lower rocks of the Weald
break through it. Thus the Chalk appears to run in four diverging
fingers from the centre or palm on Salisbury Plain, other formations
lying wedge-like between them. Various lines of reasoning unite in
proving that the Mesozoic rocks of the south rest upon a mass of
Palaeozoic rocks, which lies at no very great depth beneath the surface
of the anticlinal axis running from the Bristol Channel to the Strait
of Dover. The theoretical conclusion has been confirmed by the
discovery of Coal Measures, with workable coal seams, at Dover at
a depth of 2000 ft. below the surface.
The Eastern Division is built up of parallel strata, the edges
of the harder rocks forming escarpments, the sheets of clay forming
plains; and on this account similar features are repeated in each
of the successive geological formations. The rivers exhibit a remark-
ably close relation to the geological structure, and thus contrast
with the rivers of the Western Division. There are two main classes
of river-course those flowing down the dip-slopes at right angles
to the strike, and cutting through opposed escarpments by deep
valleys, and those following the line of strike along a bed of easily
eroded rock. A third class of streams, tributary to the second,
flows down the steep face of the escarpments. By the study of the
adjustment of these rivers to their valleys, and of the relation of the
valleys to the general structure, Professor W. M. Davis has elaborated
a theory of river classification, and a scheme of the origin of surface-
features which is attractive in its simplicity. The Thames is the one
great river of the division, rising on the Jurassic Belt, crossing the
Chalk country, and finishing its course in the Tertiary London Basin,
towards which, in its prevailing west-to-cast direction, it draws its
tributaries from north and south. The other rivers are shorter,
and flow either to the North Sea on the east, or to the English
Channel on the south. With the exception of the Humber, they
all rise and pursue their whole course within the limits of the Eastern
Division itself.
The Eastern Division is the richest part of England agriculturally,
it is the part most accessible to trade with the Continent, and that
least adapted for providing refuges for small bodies of men in con-
flict with powerful invaders. Hence the latest of the conquerors,
the Saxon and other Germanic tribes, obtained an easy mastery,
and spread over the whole country, holding their own against
marauding Northmen, except on the northern part of the r.i-t
coast; and even after the political conquest by the Normans,
continuing to form the great mass of the population, though in-
fluenced not a little by the fresh blood and new ideas they had
assimilated. The present population is so distributed as to show
remarkable dependence on the physical features. The chalk and
limestone plateaus are usually almost without inhabitants, and the
villages of these districts, occur grouped together in long strings,
either in drift-floored valleys in the calcareous plateaus, or along
the exposure of some favoured stratum at their base. In almost
every case the plain along the foot of an escarpment bedrs a line
of villages and small towns, and on a good map of density of popula-
tion the lines of the geological map may be readily discerned.
The Jurassic Belt. The Jurassic belt is occupied by the counties
of Gloucester, Oxford, Buckingham, Bedford, Northampton,
Huntingdon, Rutland, Lincoln and the North Riding of Yorkshire.
The rocks of the belt may be divided into two main groups: the
Lias beds, which come next to the Triassic plain, and the Oolitic
beds. Each group is made up of an alternation of soft marls or clays
and hard limestones or sandstones. The low escarpments of the
harder beds of the Lias are the real, though often scarcely perceptible,
boundary between the Triassic plain and the Jurassic belt. They
run along the right bank of the Trent in its northward course to the
Humber, and similarly direct the course of the Avon southward to
the Severn. The great feature of the region is the long line of the
Oolitic escarpment, formed in different places by the edges of different
beds of rock. The escarpment runs north from Portland Island on
the English Channel, curves north-eastward as the Cotteswold Hills,
rising abruptly from the Severn plain to heights of over 1000 ft.;
it sinks to insignificance in the Midland counties, is again clearly
marked in Lincolnshire, and rises in the North Yorkshire moors
to its maximum height of over 1500 ft. Steep towards the west,
where it overlooks the low Lias plain as the Oolitic escarpment,
the land falls very gently in slopes of Oxford Clay towards the
Cretaceous escarpments on the south and east. Throughout its
whole extent it yields valuable building-stone, and in the Yorkshire
ENGLAND
[PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
moors the great abundance of iron ore has created the prosperity of
Middlesbrough, on the plain below. The Lias plain is rich grazing
country, the Oxford Clay forms valuable agricultural land, yielding
heavy crops of wheat. The towns of the belt are comparatively
small, not one attains a population of 75,000, and the favourite
site is on the Lias plain below the great escarpment. They are for
the most part typical rural market-towns, the manufactures, where
such exist, being usually of agricultural machinery, or woollen and
leather goods. Bath, Gloucester, Oxford, Northampton, Bedford,
Rugby, Lincoln and Scarborough are amongst the chief. North
of the gap in the low escarpment in which the town of Lincoln
centres, a close fringe of villages borders the escarpment on the
west; and throughout the belt the alternations of clay and hard
rock are reflected in the grouping of population.
The Chalk Country. The dominating surface-feature formed by
the Cretaceous rocks is the Chalk escarpment, the northern edge
of the great sheet of chalk that once spread continuously over the
whole south-east. It appears as a series of rounded hills of no great
elevation, running in a curve from the mouth of the Axe to Flam-
borough Head, roughly parallel with the Oolitic escarpment. Suc-
cessive portions of this line of heights are known as the Western
Downs, the White Horse Hills, the Chiltern Hills, the East Anglian
Ridge, the Lincolnshire Wolds and the Yorkshire Wolds. The
rivers from the gentle southern slopes of the Oolitic heights pass by
deep valleys t through the Chalk escarpments, and flow on to the
Tertiary plains within. The typical scenery of the Chalk country
is unrelieved by small streams of running water; the hills rise
into rounded downs, often capped with fine clumps of beech, and
usually covered with thin tun, affording pasture for sheep. The
chalk, when exposed on the surface, is an excellent foundation
for roads, and the lines of many of the Roman " streets " were
probably determined by this fact. The Chalk country extends over
part of Dorset, most of Wiltshire, a considerable portion of Hamp-
shire and Oxfordshire, most of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire,
the west of Norfolk and Suffolk, the east of Lincolnshire, and the
East Riding of Yorkshire. From the upland of Salisbury Plain,
which corresponds to the axis of the anticline marking the centre of
the double fold into which the strata of the south of England have
been thrown, the great Chalk escarpment runs north-eastward;
fingers of Chalk run eastward one each side of the Weald, forming the
North and South Downs, while the southern edge of the Chalk
sheet appears from beneath the Tertiary strata at several places on
the south coast, and especially in the Isle of Wight. Flamborough
Head, the South Foreland, Beachy Head and the Needles are
examples of the fine scenery into which chalk weathers where it
fronts the sea, and these white cliffs gave to the island its early
name of Albion. The Chalk is everywhere very thinly peopled,
except where it is thickly covered with boulder clay, and so becomes
fertile, or where it is scored by drift-filled valleys, in which the
small towns and villages are dotted along the high roads. The
thickest covering^of drift is found in the Holderness district of
Yorkshire, where^ from the chalk cliffs of Flamborough Head to
the sandspit of Spurn Point, the whole coast is formed of boulder-
clay resting on chalk. Of the few towns in the Chalk country, the
interest of which is largely historical or scholastic, Salisbury, Win-
chester, Marlborough and Cambridge are the most distinguished.
Reading flourishes from its position on the edge of the London
Tertiary Basin, Croydon is a suburb of London, and Hull, though
on the Chalk, derives its importance from the Humber estuary,
which cuts through the Chalk and the Jurassic belts, to drain the
Triassic plain and the Pennine region. The narrow strip of Green-
sands appearing from beneath the Chalk escarpment on its northern
side is crowded with small towns and villages on account of the
plentiful water-supply. The distinction between the low grounds of
the Jurassic belt and the Chalk country is not always very apparent
on the surface, and from the historic point of view it is important
to recognize the individuality of the Eastern plain which extends
from the Vale of York across the Humber and the Wash into Essex.
The Eastern plain thus includes a portion of the Triassic plain in
the north, a portion of the Jurassic and Chalk belts in the middle,
and a portion of the Tertiary plain of the London Basin in the
south.
The Fenland. The continuity of the belts of Chalk and of the
Middle and Upper Oolites in the Eastern Plain is broken by the
shallow depression of the Wash and the Fenland. The Fenland
comprises a strip of Norfolk, a considerable part of Cambridgeshire,
and the Holland district of Lincoln. Formerly a great inlet with
vague borders of lagoons and marshes, the Fenland has been re-
claimed partly by natural processes, partly by engineering works
patiently continued for centuries. The whole district is flat and low,
For the most part within 15 ft. of sea-level; the seaward edge in
many places is below the level of high tide, and is protected by dykes
as in Holland, while straight canals and ditches carry the sluggish
drainage from the land. The soil is composed for the most part of
silt and peat. A few small elevations of gravel, or of underlying
formations, rise above the level of 25 ft.; these were in former
times islands, and now they form the sites of the infrequent villages.
Boston and King's Lynn are memorials of the maritime importance
of the Wash in the days of small ships. The numerous ancient
churches and the cathedrals of Ely and Peterborough bear witness
to the share taken by religious communities in the reclamation
and cultivation of the land.
The Weald. The dissection of the great east and west anticline
in the south-east of England has resulted in a remarkable piece of
country, occupying the east of Hampshire and practically the whole
of Sussex, Surrey and Kent, in which each geological stratum
produces its own type of scenery, and exercises its own specific
influence on eyery natural distribution. The sheet of Chalk shows
its cut edges in the escarpments facing the centre of the Weald,
and surrounding it in an oval ring, the eastern end of which is broken
by the Strait of Dover, so that its completion must be sought in
France. From the crest of the escarpment, all round on south,
west and north, the dip-slope of the Chalk forms a gentle descent
outwards, the escarpment a very steep slope inwards. The cut
edges of the escarpment forming the Hog's Back and North Downs
on the north, and the South Downs on the south, meet the sea in the
fine promontories of the South Foreland and Beachy Head. The
Downs are almost without population, waterless and grass-covered,
with patches of beech wood. Their only important towns are on the
coast, e.g. Brighton, Eastbourne, Dover, Chatham, or in the gaps
where rivers from the centre pierce the Chalk ring, as at Guildford ,
Rochester, Canterbury, Lewes and Arundel. Within the Chalk ring,
and at the base of the steep escarpment, there is a low terrace of the
Upper Greensand, seldom so much as a mile in width, but in most
places crowded with villages scarcely more than a mile apart, and
ranged like beads on a necklace. Within the Upper Greensand an
equally narrow ring of Gault is exposed, its stiff clay forming level
plains of grazing pasture, without villages, and with few farmhouses
even ; and from beneath it the successive beds of the Lower Greensand
rise towards the centre, forming a wider belt, and reaching a con-
siderable height before breaking off in a fine escarpment, the crest
of which is in several points higher than the outer ring of Chalk.
Leith Hill and Hindhead are parts of this edge in the west, where
the exposure is widest. Several towns have originated in the gaps
of the Lower Greensand escarpment which are continuous with
those through the Chalk: such are Dorking, Reigate, Maidstone
and Ashford. Folkestone and Pevensey stand where the two
ends of the broken ring meet the sea. It is largely a region of
oak and pine trees, in contrast to the beech of the Chalk Downs.
The Lower Greensand escarpment looks inwards in its turn over
the wide plain of Weald Clay, along which the Medway flows in the
north, and which forms a fertile soil, well cultivated, and particularly
rich in hops and wheat. The primitive forests have been largely
cleared, the primitive marshes have all been drained, and now
the Weald Clay district is fairly well peopled and sprinkled with
villages. From the middle of this plain the core of Lower Cretaceous
sandstones known as the Hastings Beds emerges steeply, and
reaches in the centre an elevation of 796 ft. at Crowborough Beacon.
It is on the whole a region with few streams, and a considerable
portion of the ancient woodland still remains in Ashdown Forest.
The greater part of the Forest Ridges is almost without inhabitants.
Towns are found only round the edge bordering the Weald Clay,
such as Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells and Horsham; and along the
line where it is cut off by the sea, e.g. Hastings and St Leonards.
The broad low' tongue of Romney Marsh running out to Dungeness
is a product of shore-building by the Channel tides, attached to the
Wealden area, but not essentially part of it.
The London Basin. The London Basin occupies a triangular
depression in the Chalk which is filled up with clays and gravels
of Tertiary and later age. It extends from the eastern extremity
of Wiltshire in a widening triangle to the sea, which it meets along
an irregular line from Deal to Cromer. It thus occupies parts of
Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey, Kent, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, the
whole of Middlesex, the county of London and Essex, and the eastern
edge of Suffolk and Norfolk. The scenery is quiet in its character,
but the gravel hills are often prominent features, as at Harrow and
in the northern suburbs of London; the country is now mainly
under grass or occupied with market and nursery gardens, and
many parts, of which Epping Forest is a fine example, are still
densely wooded, the oak being the prevailing tree. The coast is
everywhere low and deeply indented by ragged and shallow estuaries,
that of the Thames being the largest. Shallow lagoons formed
along the lower courses of the rivers of Norfolk have given to that
part of the country the name of the Broads, a district of low and
nearly level land. Apart from the huge area of urban and suburban
London, the London Basin has few large towns. Norwich and
Ipswich, Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Harwich and Colchester may be
mentioned in the north-eastern part, all depending for their pros-
perity on agriculture or on the sea; and a fringe of summer resorts
on the low coast has arisen on account of the bracing climate.
Reading and Windsor lie in the western portion, beyond the sub-
urban sphere of London. The Bagshot Beds in the west form
infertile tracts of sandy soil, covered with heath and pine, where
space is available for the great camps and military training-grounds
round Aldershot, and for the extensive cemeteries at Woking.
The London Clay in the east is more fertile and crowded with
villages, while the East Anglian portion of the basin consists of the
more recent Pliocene sands and gravels, which mix with the boulder
clay to form the best wheat-growing soil in the country.
The Hampshire Basin. The Hampshire Basin forms a triangle
GEOLOGY]
ENGLAND
4-15
with Dorchester, Salisbury and Worthing near the angles, and the
rim of Chalk to the south appear* in broken fragments in ilu- 1-1.-
of Purbeck, the Isle of Wi^ht. and to the east of Bognor. On the
infertile B.i^liot Heds the large area of the New Forest remains
untilled under its ancient oaks. The London Clay of the east is
more fertile, but the greatness of tin- district lies in its coast-line,
which is deeply indented, like that of the London Basin. South-
ampton and Portsmouth have gained importance through their fine
natural harbours, improved by engineering works and fortifications ;
Bournemouth and Bognor, from their favourable position in the
sunniest belt of the country, as health resorts.
. Communications. The configuration of England, while sufficiently
pronounced to allow of the division of the country into natural
regions, is not strongly enough marked to exercise any very great
influence upon lines of communication. The navigable rivers are
all connected by barge-canals, even across the Pennine Chain.
Although the waterway* are much neglected, compared with those
of France or of Germany, they might still be very useful if they
were enlarged and improved and if free competition with railways
could be secured. The main roads laid out as arteries of inter-
communication by the Romans, suffered to fall into neglect, and
revived in the coaching days of the beginning of the 191(1 century,
fell into a second period of comparative neglect when the railway
system was completed; but they have recovered a very large share
of their old importance in consequence of the development of motor-
traffic. Following the Roman roads, the high roads of the Eastern
Division very frequently run along the crests of ridges or escarp-
ments; but in the Western Division they are, as a rule, forced by
the more commanding relief of the country to keep to the river
valleys and cross the rougher districts through the dales and passes.
The railways themselves, radiating from the great centres of popula-
tion, and especially from London, arc only in a few instances much
affected by configuration. The Pennine Chain has always separated
the traffic from south to north into an east coast route through the
Vale of York, and a west coast route by the Lancashire plain.
The Midland railway, running through the nigh and rugged country
between the two, was the last to be constructed. The most notable
bridge* over navigable water affording continuous routes arc those
across Menai Strait, the Tyne at Newcastle, the Severn at Severn
Bridge and the Manchester Ship Canal. It is more usual to tunnel
under such channels, and the numerous Thames tunnels, the Mersey
tunnel between Liverpool and Birkenhcad, and the Severn tunnel,
the longest in the British Islands (4) m.), on the routes from London
to South Wales, and from Bristol to the north of England, are all
important. The Humber estuary is neither bridged nor tunnelled
below Goole. .
Density of Population. The present distribution of population
over England and Wales shows a dense concentration at all large
seaports, in the neighbourhood of London, and on the coal-fields
where manufactures are carried on. Agricultural areas are very
thinly peopled; purely pastoral districts can hardly be said to have
any settled population at all. There are very few dwellings situated
at a higher level than looo ft., and on the lower ground the Chalk
and the Oolitic limestones, where they crop out on the surface,
are extremely thinly peopled, and so as a rule are areas of alluvial
deposits and the Tertiary sands- But, on the other hand, the
broad clay plains of all formations, the Cretaceous sandstones, and
the Triassic plain, are peopled more densely than any other district
without mineral wealth or sea trade.
Political Divisions. In the partition of England and Wales into
counties, physical features play but a small part. The forty ancient
counties, remnants of various historical groupings and partings,
are occasionally bounded by rivers. Thus the Thames divides
counties along nearly its whole length, forming the southern
boundary of four and the northern boundary of three. Essex and
Suffolk, Suffolk and Norfolk, Cornwall and Devon, Durham and
Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire, are all separated by rivers,
while rivers form some part of the boundaries of almost every county.
Still, it is noteworthy that the Severn and Trent nowhere form
continuous county boundaries. Watersheds are rarely used as
boundaries for any distance; but, although slightly overlapping
the watershed on all sides, Yorkshire is very nearly coincident
with the basin of the Ouse. The boundaries of the parishes, the
fundamental units of English political geography, are very often
either rivers or watersheds, and they frequently show a close relation
to the strike of the geological strata. The hundreds, or groups of
parishes, necessarily share their boundaries, and groups of hundreds
are often aggregated to form larger subdivisions of counties. A
wider grouping according to natural characteristics may now be
recognized only in the cases of Wales, East Anglia, Wessex and such
lesf definite groups as the Home Counties around London or the
Birmingham. Configuration is only one out of
many conditions modifying distributions, and its effects on England
as a whole appear to be suggestive rather than determinative.
(H. R. M.)
III. GEOLOGY
For an area so small, England is peculiarly rich in geological
interest. This is due in some degree to the energy of the early
British geologists, whose work profoundly influenced all subse-
quent thought in the science, as may be seen by the general
acceptation of so many of the English stratigraphical terms; but
the natural conditions were such as to call forth and to stimulate
this energy in an unusual way. Almost every one of the principal
geological formations may be studied in England with com-
parative ease.
If we lay aside for the moment all the minor irregularities, we
find, upon examination of a geological map of England, two structural
features of outstanding importance. (l) The first is the great anti-
rlinr of the Pennine Hills which dominates the northern half of
England from the Scottish border to Derby. Its central core of
I Rtttnt A Pleiltocent
I Tertiary
I Cretactoui
I Juraisic
I Triti
I Permian
yjjjjyj Coal Mtaiurti, Carboniferous
I HillitOHt Grit Stritl 4 Culm
\ lower Cartxinlferoua
^J Old Htd Sandilont A Devonian
Silurian
Ordovidan
Cambrian
Metamorphic Group
*_*) Volcanic Hocks
Basic Intrusive Rockl
ii) Granite 4 Acid Intrutlat Hockt
Lower Carboniferous rock is broadly displayed towards the north,
while southward it contracts; on either side lie the younger rocks,
the coal-fields, the Permian strata and the Triassic formations,
the last-named, while sweeping round the southern extremity of
the Carboniferous axis of the uplift from its eastern and western
flanks, spread out in a large sheet over the midland counties. (2)
The second striking feature is the regular succession of Jurassic
and Cretaceous rocks which crop out in almost unbroken lines from
the coast of Dorsetshire, whither they appear to converge, to the
Cleveland Hills and the Yorkshire coast. Lying upon the Cretaceous
rocks in the S.E. of England are the two Tertiary basins of London
and Hampshire, separated by the dissected anticline of the Weald.
The older rocks in England occupy relatively small areas. Pre-
Cambrian rocks are represented by the gneisses of Primrose Hill
and schists of Rushton in Shropshire; by the gneisses forming the
core of the Malvern Hills, and by the ancient volcanic and other rocks
of the Wrekin, Charnwood Forest and Nuneaton. The slates of the
Long Mynd, on the Shropshire border, belong to this system. Cam-
brian strata appear in Shropshire in the form of sandstones and
quartzites; in the Malvern Hills they are black shales, while in the
416
ENGLAND
[GEOLOGY
Lake District they are represented by the Skiddaw slates. Next in
point of age comes the Ordovician system, which is well developed
upon the Shropshire border and in the Lake District. In the same
two areas we find the Silurian rocks, shales and limestones with
grits and flags. In N. and S. Devon are the Devonian limestones,
grits and shales; the corresponding Old Red Sandstone type of the
system (marls and sandstones) being exposed over a large part of
Herefordshire, stretching also into Shropshire and Monmouth.
Next in order of succession comes the Carboniferous system, with
shales and limestones in the lower members, grits, sandstones and
shales the Millstone Grit series in the middle of the system,
followed by the Coal Measures a great series of shales with coal,
sandstones and ironstone at the top. This important system
occupies a large area in England. The limestones and shales are
well exposed in Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Northumberland, the Mendip
Hills and at Clifton. The Millstone Grit series is prominent in
Lancashire, Derbyshire, N. Staffordshire, Yorkshire and in the
Forest of Dean. The Coal Measures rest upon the Millstone Grits
in most places, generally in synclinal basins. On the eastern side
of the Pennine range are the conterminous coal-fields of Yorkshire,
Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and the coal-field of Durham and
Northumberland; on the western side are the Whitehaven, Burnley,
S. Lancashire and N. Staffordshire coal-fields. Farther south are
the S. Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Coalbrook Dale, Forest of Wyre,
Forest of Dean and Bristol and Somerset coal-fields; while much
concealed coal lies under younger formations in the south-east of
England, as has been proved at Dover. A large part of N. Devon is
occupied by the Culm shales, limestones and grits of Carboniferous
age. The principal development of Permian rocks is the narrow
strip which extends from Nottingham to Tynemouth; here the
Magnesian limestone is the characteristic feature. On the other
side of the Pennine Hills we find the Penrith sandstone of the Vale of
Eden and the Brockram beds of the Lake District. Red sandstones
and conglomerates of this age constitute some of the red rocks
which form the picturesque scenery about Dawlish and Teignmouth.
The Triassic rocks, red sandstones, marls and conglomerates
cover a broad area in the Midlands in Worcestershire, Warwickshire
and Leicestershire, whence they may be followed south-westward
through Somerset to the coast at Sidmouth, and northward, round
either flank of the Pennine Hills, through Nottinghamshire and
Yorkshire to Middlesbrough on the one hand, and upon the other
through Staffordshire, Cheshire and Lancashire to Carlisle.
The outcrop of the Lias, mainly clay with thin limestones and
ironstones, runs in an almost continuous band across the country
from Lyme Regis, through Bath, Cheltenham, near Leicester, and
Lincoln to Redcar in Yorkshire. Closely following the same line
are the alternating clays and limestones of the Oolitic series. Next
in order come the Greensands and Gault, which lie at the base of the
Chalk escarpment, between that formation and the Oolites. The
Chalk occupies all the remaining portion of the south-east of England ,
save the Wealden area, and extends northward as far as Flamboroueh
in Yorkshire, forming the Yorkshire Wolds, the Lincolnshire Wolds,
the Chiltern Hills, the N. and S. Downs, the Dorsetshire heights and
Salisbury Plain. But in the eastern and southern counties the
Chalk is covered by younger deposits of Tertiary age; the Pliocene
Crags of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Lower London Tertiaries (London
Clay, Woolwich and Reading Beds, &c.) of the London Basin
comprising parts of Essex, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Bucks and
Berks, and northern Kent. Again, in the Hampshire Basin and Isle
of Wight, Eocene and Oligocene formations rest upon the Chalk.
When we attempt to decipher the physical history of the country
from the complicated record afforded by the stratigraphical palimp-
sest, we are checked at the outset by the dearth of information
from being able to picture the geographical condition in the older
Palaeozoic periods. All we can say is, that in those remote times
what is now England had no existence; its site was occupied by
eas which were tenanted by marine invertebrates, long since
extinct. As for the boundaries of these ancient seas, we can say
nothing with certainty, but it is of interest to note the evidence we
possess of still older land conditions, such as we have in the old rocks
of Shropshire, &c. In the Devonian period it is clear that an
levatory movement had set in towards the north, which gave rise
to the formation of inland lakes and narrow estuaries in which the
Old Red Sandstone rocks were formed, while in the south of England
lay the sea with a vigorous coral fauna. This condition led up to the
Carboniferous period, which began with fairly open sea over the
south and north of England, but in the centre there rose an elevated
land mass from which much of the Millstone Grit was derived;
other land lay towards the north. Slowly this sea shallowed, giving
rise to the alternating estuarine marine and freshwater deposits
of the Coal Measures. Continual elevation of the land brought about
the close of the coal-forming period and great changes ensued.
Desert conditions, with confined inland seas, marked the Permian
and Triassic periods. It was about this time that the Pennine Hills,
the Lake District mountain mass, and the Mendip Hills were being
most vigorously uplifted, while the granite masses ^of Cornwall
and Devon were perhaps being injected into the Carboniferous
and Devonian rocks. From this period, more or less of the Pennine
ridge has always remained above the sea, along with much of Cornwall
ana parts of Devonshire.
In early Jurassic times the sea probably again occupied most of
England with the exception of the above-mentioned areas, the Lake
District and eastern part of the London Basin; Wales, too, and
much of Scotland were land. Elevation gradually caused more land
to appear in later Jurassic and early Cretaceous times when a river
system, now entirely obliterated, drained into the Purbeck estuary
and Wealden lake; but a subsequent depression led to the wide
extension of the Chalk sea. By the beginning of the Eocene period
we find the sea limited to the S.E. of England, where the London
Clay, &c., were being laid down. It was not until quite late in
Tertiary time that these islands began to assume anything like their
present form. In the earlier part of the Pleistocene period, England .
and Ireland were still incompletely severed, and the combined
activity of certain extinct rivers and the sea had not yet cut through
the land connexion with the continent. The last well-marked
lowering of the land took place in the Pleistocene period, when it
was accompanied by glacial conditions, through which the greater
part of northern England and the Midlands was covered by ice ; a
state of things which led directly and indirectly to the deposition
of those extensive boulder clays, sands and gravels which obscure
so much of the older surface of the country in all but the southern
counties.
Throughout the whole period of its geological history, volcanic
activity has found expression with varying degrees of intensity
along what is now the western side of the island, with the exception
that in the Mesozoic era this activity was in abeyance. We may
note the pre-Cambrian lavas and tuffs of the Wrekin district in
Shropshire and the somewhat later volcanic rocks of Charnwood;
the porphyrites, andesites, tuffs and rhyolites of the Borrowdale
volcanic centre, erupted in the Ordovician period, and the Silurian
granites of the same region. The volcanic outbursts which followed
became feebler in the Devonian and Carboniferous periods and
ceased with the Permian. When again the volcanic forces became
active, it was in the early Tertiary era; the evidences for this lie
outside the English border.
The principal directions of crust movement in England are:
(l) north and south, by which the Pennine folds and faults, and the
Malvern Hills have been produced ; (2) east and west, by which the
folds of the Weald and the Mendip Hills, and those of Devonshire
have been formed. Another less important direction is N.W. and
S.E., as in the Charnwood folding.
Further details of the geology are given under the heads of the
counties. (J. A. H.)
IV. CLIMATE
Temperature. The mean annual temperature of the whole of
England and Wales (reduced to sea-level) is about 50 F., varying
from something over 52 in the Scilly Isles to something
under 48 at the mouth of the Tweed. The mean annual "
temperature diminishes very regularly from south-west to north-
east, the west coast being warmer than the east, so that the mean
temperature at the mouth of the Mersey is as high as that at the
mouth of the Thames. During the coldest month of the year
(January) the mean temperature of all England is about 40. The
influence of the western ocean is very strongly marked, the tempera-
ture falling steadily from west to east. Thus while the temperature
in the west of Cornwall is 44, the temperature on the east coast
from north of the Humber to the Thames is under 38, the coldest
winters being experienced in the Fenland. In the hottest month
(July) the mean temperature of England and Wales is about 61-5,
and the westerly wind then exercises a cooling effect, the greatest
heat being found in the Thames basin immediately around London,
where the mean temperature of the month exceeds 64: the mean
temperature along the south coast is 62, and that at the mouth of the
Tweed a little under 59. In the centre of the country along a line
drawn from London to Carlisle the mean temperature in July is
found to diminish gradually at an average rate of i per 60 m. The
coasts are cooler than the centre of the country, but the west coast
is much cooler than the east, modified continental conditions pre-
vailing over the North Sea. The natural effect of the heating of the
air in summer and the cooling of the air in winter by contact with
the land is largely masked in England on account of the strength
of the prevailing south-westerly wind carrying oceanic influence
into the heart of the country. This effect is well seen in the way
in which the wind blowing directly up the Severn estuary is directed
along the edges of the Oolitic escarpment north-eastward, thus dis-
placing the centre of cold in winter to the east coast, and the centre
of heat in summer to the lower Thames, from the position which
both centres would occupy, if calms prevailed, in a belt running
from Birmingham to Buckingham. As to how far the narrow portion
of the North Sea modifies the influence of the European continent,
there seems reason to believe that the prevailing winds blowing up
the English Channel carry oceanic conditions some distance inland,
along those parts of the continent nearest to England. The Mersey
estuary, being partly sheltered by Ireland and North Wales, does
not serve as an inlet for modifying influences to the same extent
as the Bristol Channel : and as the wind entering by it blows squarely
against the slope of the Pennine Chain, it does not much affect the
climate of the midland plain.
Winds. The average barometric pressure over England is about
: NAMES]
ENGLAND
39*94 in., and normally diminishes from south-west to north-oust
at all ttB"". the mean pressure on the south coast being -')<) 7
and that on the northern border 29-88. The pressure at any given
latitude is normally highest in the centre of the country and on
the east coast, and lowest on the west coast. The direction of the
mean annual isobars shows that the normal wirul in all parts of
England and Wales must be from the south-west on the west coast,
curving gradually until in the centre of the country, and on the east
coast it is westerly, without a southerly component. The normal
seasonal march of pressure-change produces a maximum gradient
in December and January-, and a minimum gradient in April;
but for every month in the year the mean gradient is for winds
from southerly and westerly Quarters. In April the gradient is
so slight that any temporary fall of pressure to the south of England
or any temporary rise of pressure to the north, which would suffice
in other months merely to reduce the velocity of the south-westerly
m ind. is sufficient in that month to reverse the gradient and produce
an east wind over the whole country. The liability to east wind in
spring is one of the most marked features of the English climate,
the effect being naturally most felt on the east coast. The southerly
component in the wind is as a rule most marked in the winter months,
the westerly component predominating in summer. The west end
of a town receives the wind as it blows in fresh from the country at
all fBnfL, and consequently the west end of an English town is
with few exceptions the residential quarter, while smoke-producing
industries are usually relegated to the east end.
Storms. On account of the great frequency of cyclonic disturb-
ances passing in from the Atlantic, the average conditions of wind
over the British Islands give no idea of the frequency of change in
direction and force. The chief paths of depressions are from south-
west to north-east across England; one track runs across the
south-east and eastern counties, and is that followed by a large
proportion of the summer and autumn storms, thereby perhaps
helping to explain the peculiar liability of the east of England to
damage from hail accompanying thunderstorms. A second track
crossf I central England, entering by the Severn estuary and leaving
by the Humber or the Wash; while a third crosses the north of
England from the neighbourhood of Morecambe Bay to the Tyne.
While these are tracks frequently followed by the centres of baro-
metric depressions, individual cyclones may and do cross the country
in all directions, though very rarely indeed from east to west or from
north to south.
Rainfall. The rainfall of England, being largely due to passing
c\ clones, can hardly be expected to show a very close relation to the
physical features of the country, yet looked at in a general way
the relation between prevailing winds and orographic structure is
not obscure. The western or mountainous division is the wettest
at all seasons, each orographic group forming a centre of heavy
precipitation. There are few places in the Western Division where
the rainfall is less than 35 in., while in Wales, the Cornwall-Devon
peninsula, the Lake District and the southern part of the Pennine
Region the precipitation exceeds 40 in., and in Wales and the Lake
District considerable areas have a rainfall of over 60 in. In the
Eastern Division, on the other hand, an annual rainfall exceeding
30 in. is rare, and in the low ground about the mouth of the Thames
estuary and around the Wash the mean annual rainfall is less than
25 in. In the Western Division and along the south coast the driest
month is usually April or May, while in the Eastern Division it is
February or March. The wettest month for most parts of England
is October, the most noticeable exception being in East Anglia,
where, on account of the frequency of summer thunderstorms, July
is the month in which most rain falls, although October is not far
behind. Jn the Western Division there is a tendency for the annual
maximum of rainfall to occur later than October. It may be stated
generally that the Western Division is mild and wet in winter,
and cool and less wet in summer; while the Eastern Division
is cold and dry in winter and spring, and hot and less dry in summer
and autumn. The south coast occupies an intermediate position
bttwtii the two as regards climate. Attention has been called to
the fact that the bare rocks and steep gradients which are common
in the Western Division allow of the heavy rainfall running off the
surface rapidly, while the flat and often clayey lands of the Eastern
Division retain the scantier rainfall in the soil for a longer time,
so that for agricultural purposes the effect of the rainfall is not very
danmiUr throughout the country.
Smttkmc^ The distribution of sunshine is not yet fully investi-
gated, bat it appears that the sunniest part is the extreme south
roast, where alone the total number of hours of bright sunshine
reaches an average of more than 1600 per annum. The north-east,
including the Pennine Region and the whole of Yorkshire, has less
than 1300 boors of sunshine, and a portion of North Wales is equally
cloudy- Although little more than a guess, 1375 hours may be
put down as approximately the average duration of bright sunshine
lor England as a whole, which may be compared with 2600 hours
for Italy, and probably about 1200 hours for Norway.
For the purpose of forecasting the weather, the meteorological
office divides England into six districts.' which are known as England
X.E.. Midland Counties, England East. London and Channel,
England N.W. and North Wales, and England S.W. and South
Wale*. (H. R. M.)
DLI4
V. ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES
English place-names are of diverse origin and often extremely
corrupt in their modern form, so that the real etymology of the
names can often be discovered only by a careful comparison of
the modern form with such ancient forms as are to be found in
charters, ancient histories, and other early documents. By the
aid of these a certain amount of work has been done in the subject,
but it is still largely an unworked field. The most satisfactory
method of characterizing English place-nomenclature is to deal
with it historically and chronologically, showing the influence of
the successive nations who have borne sway in this island. The
Celtic influence is to be found scattered evenly up and down the
country so far as names of rivers and mountains arc concerned;
in names of towns it is chiefly confined to the west. Roman
influence is slight but evenly distributed. English influence
is all-pervading, though in the northern and north-midland
counties this influence has been encroached upon by Scandi-
navian influence. Norman influence is not confined to any
particular district.
Celtic. Though scattered notices of towns, cities and rivers in
Britain are to be found in various early Roman writers, it is not
till the time of Ptolemy (2nd century), who constructed a map of the
island, and of the itinerary of Antonine (beginning of the 3rd century)
that we have much information as to the cities and towns of Britain.
We there learn that the following place-names are ultimately of
Celtic origin: Brougham, Catterick, York, Lincoln (Lindum),
Manchester (Mancunium), Doncaster (Danum), Wroxeter (Viro-
eonium), Lichneld (Letocetum), Gloucester (Glevum), Cirencester
(Corinium), Colchester (Camulodunum), London, Reculver, Rich-
borough (Rutupiae), Dover, Lymne, Isle of Wight, Dorchester
(Durnooaria), Sarum, Exeter (Isca), Brancaster (Branodunum),
Thanet. We also have the names of the following rivers: Eden,
Dee, Trent, Yare, Colne, Thames, Kennet, Churne, Exe, Severn,
Tamar. Gildas, writing in the 6th century, speaks of the twenty-
eight cities of the Britons. Nennius' Historia Britonum gives what
purports to be a list of these cities. Of these, excluding Welsh ones,
we may with some certainty identify Canterbury (Caint), Caerleon-
on-Usk, Leicester (Lerion), Penzelwood, Carlisle, Colchester, Grant-
Chester (Granth), London, Worcester (Guveirangon), Doncaster
(Daun), Wroxeter (Guoricon), Chester (Legion this is Roman),
Lichneld (Liciicsith) and Gloucester (Gloui). Others less certain are
Preston-on-Humber and Manchester (Manchguid).
In modern place-names the suffix don often goes back to the Celtic
dun, a hill, e.g. Bredon, Everdon, but the suffix was still a living one
in Saxon times. Of river-names the vast majority are Celtic (possible
exceptions will be named later), and the same is true of mountains
and hills. The forests of Wyre, Elmet and Sel (wood), and the dis-
tricts of the Wrekin and the Peak are probably Celtic.
Roman. We do not owe entire place-names to Roman influence,
with the exception of a few such as Chester, Chester-le-Street (L.
strata [via], a road) and Caistor, but Roman influence is to be found
in many names compounded of Celtic and Roman elements. The
chief of these is the element Chester (L. castrum, a fort), e.g. Eb-
chester, Silchester, Grantchester. Porchester is entirely Latin, but
may not have been formed till Saxon times. The form caster is
found in the north and east, under Scandinavian influence, e.g.
Tadcaster, Lancaster; and in the south-west and in the midlands
we have a group of towns with the form cester: Bicester, Gloucester,
Cirencester, Worcester, Alcester, Leicester, Towcester. Exeter,
Wroxeter and perhaps Uttoxeter show the suffix in slightly different
form. In names like Chesterton, Chesterford, Chesterholm, Wood-
chester, the second element shows that the names are of later English
or Scandinavian formation. In Lincoln we have a compound of
the Celtic Lindum and the Latin colonia.
Saxon. The chief suffixes of Saxon origin to be found in English
place-names are as follows (some of them being also used independ-
ently): -burgh, -borough, -bury (O.E. burh, fortified town), e.g.
Burgh, Bamborough, Aylesbury, Bury; -bourne, -borne, -burn (O.E.
burne, -a, a stream), e.g. Ashbourne, Sherborne, Sockburn; -bridge,
e.g. Weybridge, Bridge; -church, e.g. Pucklechurch ; -den, -dean
(O.E. denu, a valley), e.g. Gaddesden, Rottingdean; -down, -don,
ton (O.E. dun [Celtic], a hill), .. Huntingdon, Seckington, Edington ;
-ey, -ea, -y (O.E. Ig, an island), e.g. Tnorney, Mersea, Ely; -fleet
(O.E. fleet, an estuary) e.g. Benfleet; -field, e.g. Lichneld; -ford,
e.g. Bradford ; -ham (O.E. Mm, a home^ and hamm, an enclosure) ;
these are not distinguished in modern English, e.g. Bosham, Ham;
-hall (O.E. healh, a corner), e.g. Riccalf, Tettenhall; -head, e.g.
Gateshead; -hill, e.g. Tickhill; -hunt (O.E. hyrst, copse, wood), e.g.
Deerhurst; -ing (patronymic suffix, plural form in O.E.), e.g. Basing,
Reading; -leigh, -ley, -lea (O.E. Uah, meadow), e.g. Leigh, Stone-
leigh. Whalley; -lade (O.E. lad, path, course), e.g. Cricklade; -land,
e.g. Crowland; -lock (O.E. loca, enclosure), e.g. Porlock; -minster
(O.E. mynster, L. monaste rium) , e.g. Axminster, Minster; -mouth,
e.g. Exmouth; -port (O.E. port, market-town, a word of Latin
418
ENGLAND
[POPULATION
origin), e.g. Bridport; -sled, -stead (O. E. stede, a place), e.g. Stansted,
Wanstead; -stone, -ston, e.g. Beverstone, Sherston; -staple (O.E.
stapol, foundation), e.g. Barnstaple; -stow (O.E. stow, place), e.g.
Stow, Chepstow, Bristol (earlier Bristow) ; -tree, -try, e.g. Coventry,
Elstree, Seasalter; -ton (O.E. tun, enclosure), e.g. Milton; -wark
(O.E. geweorc, fortification), e.g. Southwark; -well, e.g. Bakewell;
-wich, -wick (O.E. wic, a dwelling), e.g. Norwich, Swanage (O.E.
Swanawic), Warwick; -worth, -worthy (O.E. weorth, weorthig, an
enclosure), e.g. Polesworth, Holsworthy.
Of river names the Blackwater, Witnam, Ashburne, Swift, Wash-
burn, Loxly, Wythburn, Eamont are perhaps English and so also
may be the Waveney in Suffolk.
Scandinavian. The following suffixes are Scandinavian in origin,
some of them being also used independently: -beck (O.N. bekkr,
stream), e.g. Starbeck, Troutbeck; -by (O.N. byr, towi^), e.g. Whitby ;
-dale (O.N. dalr), e.g. Swaledale; -car(r), -ker (O.N. kiorr, marshy
ground), e.g. Redcar, The Carrs, Muker; -fell (O.N. fjdll, mountain),
e.g. Scafell; -force, -foss (O.N. fors, waterfall), High Force, Wilber-
foss; -garth (O.N. gorSr, enclosure), e.g. Hoggarths; -gill (O.N. gil,
a deep narrow glen), e.g. Skelgill, Dungeon Ghyll; -holm(e) (O.N.
holmr, island), e.g. Axholme, Durham (earlier Dunholm) ; keld (O.N.
kelda, well, spring), e.g. Threlkeld, Keld; -lund (O.N. lundr, grove),
e.g. Snelland, Timberland, Lound; -how (O.N. haugr, hill), e.g.
Greenhow; -scale (O.N. skdle, hut, shed), e.g. Seascale; -skew (O.N.
skogr, forest), e.g. Litherskew; -thorpe (O.N. porp, village), e.g.
Thorpe, Osgathorp; -thwaite (O.N. Tpveit, a piece of land), e.g.
Rosthwaite; -toft (O.N. topt, a green knoll), e.g. Toft, Langtoft;
-with (O.N. vir, a wood), e.g. Blawith, Stowiths.
Tarn (a mountain pool), grain and sike (mountain streams) are
also Scandinavian terms.
Norman. Norman influence has not been very great in English
place-nomenclature. The number of places with pure French names
is extremely limited; a few such are Beaulieu, Belvoir, Beauchief,
Beaudesert, Beaufort, Beaumont, also Theydon Bois, War-boys.
Norman influence is marked more strongly in certain compound
place-names, where one of the elements often represents the name of
the original Norman tenant or holder, e.g. Thorpe Mandeville, Helion
Bumstead, Higham Ferrers, Swaffham Bulbeck, Stoke Gifford,
Shepton Mallet; similarly names like Lyme Regis, King's Sutton,
Monks' Kirby, Zeal Monachorum, Milton Abbas, Bishop's Waltham,
Prior's Dean, Huish Episcopi date from feudal times. Gallicized
forms are also to be found in a few forms like Kirkby-le-Soken,
Chapel-en-le-Frith, Alsop-en-le-Dale, Barnoldby-le-Beck. Ecclesi-
astical influence is to be found in such names as Aldwinkle St Peter,
Barford St Martin, Belchamp St Paul, the name of the saint being
the name either of the saint to whom the church at that place was
dedicated or the patron-saint of the monastery or abbey to whom
lands in that district belonged. (A. Mw.)
VI. POPULATION
Until the beginning of the igth century there existed no other
knowledge of the actual area and population of the country
but what was given in the vaguest estimates. But there can
be little doubt that the population of England and Wales
increased very slowly for centuries, owing largely to want of
intercommunication, which led to famines, more or less severe
it being a common occurrence that, while one county, with a
good harvest, was enjoying abundance, the people of the ad-
joining one were starving. The interpretation of certain figures
given in the Domesday Survey (which do not cover certain parts
of modern England nor take account of the ecclesiastical popula-
tion) is a matter of widely divergent opinion; but a total
population of one million and a half has been accepted by many
for the close of the nth century. In 1377 the levying of a poll-
tax provides partial figures from which a total of two to two-
and-a-half millions has been deduced, but again divergent
views have been expressed as to how far the number was still
affected by the Black Death of 1348-1349. It is calculated,
on the basis of registers of births and deaths, that the population
of England and Wajes numbered 5,475,000 in 1700, and 6,467,000
in 1750. From the later part of the i8th century a stronger
tendency to increase set in, and at the taking of the first census,
in 1801, it was ascertained that the population numbered
8,892,536, being if the former estimates were approximately
correct an increase of very nearly 2^ millions in little over
fifty years. This rate of increase was not only continued, but
came to be greatly exceeded.
Since the first census of 1801, regular enumerations of the
people of England and Wales have been taken every ten years.
The results of these enumerations are published in separate
volumes for each county, in a volume of summary tables, and
Dates of
Enumeration.
Population.
Increase at
each Census.
Decennial
Rate of Increase
per Cent.
1801, March loth .
8,892,536
..
1811, May 27th .
10,164,256
1,271,720
14-00
1821, May 28th . .
12,000,236
1,835,980
1 8 -06
1831, May 30th . .
13-896,797
1,896,561
15-80
1841, June 7th . .
15,914,148
2,017,351
14-27
1851, March 3ist .
17,927,609
2,013,461
12-65
1 86 1, April 8th . .
20,066,224
2,138,615
11-90
1871, April 3rd .
22,712,266
2,646,042
13-21
1881, April 4th .
25,974439
3,262,173
14-36
1891, April 6th .
29,002,525
3,028,086
11-65
1901, April 1st .
32,527,843
3,525,318
12-17
in a general report. In the summaries England and Wales are
treated as one, and this treatment is followed here. The
following table gives the total numbers of the population of
England and Wales at each census, together with the absolute
increase, and growth per cent, during each decennial period:
Allowing for a rate of increase equivalent to that which
obtained between 1891 and 1901, the estimated population was
34,152,977 in 1905, and 36,169,150 in 1910.
Distribution. A detailed map of the distribution of population in
England and Wales 1 shows certain well-defined areas of very dense
population. First for consideration, though not in geographical
extent, stands the area round London, in Middlesex, Surrey, Kent,
Essex and Hertfordshire. A great proportion of this population is
purely residential, that is to say, its working members do not practise
their professions at home or close to home, but in the metropolis,
travelling a considerable distance between their residences and their
offices. Just as London, in spite of its manifold industrial interests,
is hardly to be termed a manufacturing centre, so the populous
district surrounding it is not to be termed an industrial district in the
sense in which that term is applied to the remaining regions of
dense population which fall for consideration here. London gained
its paramount importance from its favourable geographical position
in respect of the rest of England on the one hand and the Continent
on the other, and the populous district of the " home counties "
owes its existence to that importance; whereas other populous
districts have generally grown up at the point where some source of
natural wealth, as coal or iron, lay to hand. The great populous
area which covers south Lancashire and the West Riding of York-
shire, and extends beyond them into Cheshire, Derbyshire, Stafford-
shire and Nottinghamshire, is not in reality a unit. The whole of the
lowland in the south of Lancashire has almost the appearance of one
vast town, whereas among the hills of the Pennine Chain the popula-
tion crowds the valleys on either flank and leaves in the high-lying
centre some of the largest tracts of practically uninhabited country in
England. Moreover, the industries in different parts of this area
(for it is strictly an industrial area) differ completely, as will be
observed later, though coal-mining is common to all. The other
most extensive centres of dense population are the coal-mining or
manufacturing districts of Northumberland and Durham, of the
midlands (parts of Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Leicestershire),
and of South Wales and Monmouthshire; and it is in these districts,
and others smaller, but of similar character, that the greatest increase
of population has been recorded, since the extensive development of.
Counties.
Increase per cenf.
1871-1891.
1891-1901.
Middlesex
47-42
45-II
Essex ... . .
3I-54
39-6o
Glamorganshire (S. Wales) .
30-72
25-10
Surrey
25-03
24-78
Northumberland
14-42
19-19
Worcestershire ....
12-12
18-49
Nottinghamshire
I9-30
18-09
Durham
2I-67
16-62
Leicestershire ....
17-43
16-46
Kent
I3-I5
15-95
Hampshire ....
Monmouthshire
12-73
12-08
15-33
14-97
Yorkshire (E. Riding)
I4-3I
13-49
Northamptonshire .
11-40
13-27
Warwickshire .
12-78
12-95
Staffordshire
12-15
12-92
Derbyshire ....
I5-52
12-81
Yorkshire (W. Riding) .
I5-36
12-70
Cheshire
14-62
12-56
Lancashire . . .
17-92
12-05
Hertfordshire .
5-o8
10-91
'As in Bartholomew's Survey Atlas of England and Wales (1903).
POPULATION)
ENGLAND
419
their resource* during the 19th century. Thus the preceding counties'
showed an increase, under normal conditions, exceeding 10% during
the ten year* 1891-1901, the percentage oi increase in l87l.-i89i
being given (or comparison.
It will be observed that three of the home counties occur in the
first four in the above list. It is interesting to note, in this connexion,
that the increase of population diminished steadily, in the three
decade* under notice, within the area covered by the administrative
county- of London, which is only the central part of urban London
(compare the population table of the great urban districts, below).
This was 17-44 ",, in 1871-1881, 10-39 in 1881-1891. and 7-3 in 1891-
1901. This illustrates the constant tendency for the residential ili-
tricts of a city to radiate away from its centre, which appears, though
in a modified degree, in the case of all the great English cities.
During the period 1891-1901 five English and five Welsh counties
1 a decrease per cent in the population. The English counties
Decrease or lncrease( + ).
Decrease.
1891-1901.
1871-1881.
1881-1891.
Huntingdonshire
Rutland. . .
Westmorland
Oxfordshire
Herefordshire
6-39
1-55
f25
:H-27
3-26
5'5
373
+2-96
+3-64
4-02
7-04
5-59
2-73
1-70
1-62
The Welsh counties were Montgomeryshire, Cardiganshire, Flint-
shire, Merionethshire and Brecknockshire, the first-named showing
the highest decrease, 5-08%, in 1891-1901. These
*** counties are principally agricultural, and it is in agricul-
tural districts elsewhere that the increase of population is
slightest. But in 1871-1881 a decrease was found in the
of fifteen counties in all, and in 1881-1891 in the case
of thirteen, whereas in 1891-1901, although Radnorshire, which
returned a decrease previously, now returned an abnormal increase
owing to the temporary employment of workmen on the construction
of the Birmingham waterworks, the number fell to 10, and the
average percentage also fell. This suggested some tendency to
return to a state of equilibrium as between urban and rural districts.
This is in a measure borne out by the movement of population in the
districts clawed as purely rural in 1901. In these there was an
increase percent of 14-2 in 1811-1821, which fell off to 2-8 in 1841-
1851. A decrease then set in and grew from 0-2 in 1851-1861 to
0-67 in 1881-1891, but in 1891-1901 an increase, 1-95, was once
more recorded. But the drain on the rural population continued
heavy-, for in the same purely rural area, which had a population in
1901 of 1,330.319, the excess of births over deaths was 150,437,
but the actual increase of population was only 25,492, leaving a heavy
l (9*6%) to be accounted for by migration, the term used in this
connexion in the general report of the Census to include movement
of population to any new locality, home or foreign.
Housing. The total area of England and Wales covered by urban
districts (a term which coincides pretty nearly with that of towns,
which bears no technical meaning in England) was 3,848,987 acres,
and contained a population of 25,058,355 in 1901 . the increase in the
decade 1891-1901 being 15-2 %. The number of inhabited houses in
the whole country in 1901, namely 6,260,852, may be compared
with the numbers in 1801 (1,575,923) and 1851 (3,278,039); it gives
an average of 5-2 persons to each house. This average has decreased
with some regularity from a maximum of 5-75 in 1821, but there is
no certain evidence on which to affirm or deny that the average
cubic capacity of dwelling-houses has been maintained. The urban
population averaged 5-4 persons to a house, but varied greatly in
different towns- Thus, an average below 4-4 is quoted for Rochdale,
Halifax. Huddenfield, Yarmouth, Bradford and Stockport, while
the average for London was 7-93, and for Gateshead, Newcastle-upon-
Tyne and South Shields, in the northern industrial district of the
Tyne. and for Devonport, the average exceeded 8. The average
of persons to a house in rural districts was 4-6.
Vital Statistic!." The increase or decrease of population is
governed by two factors: (i) the balance between births and deaths,
(2) the balance between immigration and emigration." 1 The
tmbk M therefore given to show (i) the percentage of
Year.
Percentage of
Excess of Estimated
over Enumerated
Population.
Increase by
Birth*.
Decrease by
Deaths.
1851-1861
1861-1871
1871-1881
1881-1891
1891-1901
36 19
37-56
37-9
34-24
3' 57
-M S-
-' -, 'f
22-80
20-27
Pi I-
122,111
78,968
64.307
601,389
68.330
The figures are for Registration Counties (tee classification o
errttonal Dmnonj. below).
Cen*us of England and Wales. 1901 ; General Report, p. 15.
increase by births and. decrease by deaths in each decade from 1851,
and (2) the difference at the close of each decade (i.e. in the later year
mentioned in r.u-li line) IH-IWO-II iti<- |x>pulution whii h would UVC
followed U|in (ti<- natural increase unaffected by miuialion and tin-
population as actually enumerated. In the case of (2) the actual
population has always been exceeded by the estimate based on
natural increase, and this demonstrates an excess of emigration
over immigration.
The proportion of males to females is 1000 to 1068, this being a
higher proportion of females than any recorded in the igth century,
during which the lowest proportion of females was 1036 in 1821.
The proportion rose at each census from 1851. But on the other
hand looo male children were born against only 965 female, on an
average in 1891-1901. This excess of male births, which is usual,
has been ascertained to find its equilibrium, through a higher rate
of infant mortality among the males, about the tenth year of life,
and is finally changed by perilous male occupations and other causes,
including the stronger tendency of males to emigration. The pro-
portion of females varies much in different localities, being highest
in such districts as London and the home counties, which are resi-
dential, and in which, therefore, many domestic servants are enumer-
ated ; and Somersetshire, Bedfordshire and other seats of industries
which especially occupy women (e.g. the straw-plaiting of the county
last named). It is lowest, naturally, in the mining districts, as
Glamorgan, Monmouth, Durham, Northumberland; but an ex-
ception may be noted in the case of Cornwall, where a high proportion
of females is attributed to the emigration of miners consequent upon
the relative decrease in importance of the tin-mines. In 1901 the
proportion of females to males in urban districts was 1086 to 1000,
and in rural districts ion to 1000.
The proportion of married adults (aged twenty and upwards)
was found to decrease from 1881 to 1901, being 630 per thousand
Urban Districts of England and Wales with Population
exceeding 80,000 (1901).
Population.
Increase
per cent.
1891.
1901.
London'
4-228,317
4.536,54
7-3
Liverpool ....
629,548
684,958
8-8
Manchester ....
505.368
543.872
7-6
Birmingham ....
478."3
522,204
9-2
Leeds
367.505
426,968
16-7
Sheffield
324.243
380,793
17-4
Bristol
289,280
328,945
'37
Bradford
265,728
279,767
5'3
West Ham 4 ....
204,903
267,358
30-5
Hull
200,472
240,259
19-8
Nottingham
213.877
239.743
I2-I
Salford
198,139
220,957
"5
Newcastle-upon-Tyne .
186,300
215.328
15-6
Leicester
174,624
211,579
21-2
Portsmouth ....
159.278
188,133
18-1
Bolton
146,487
168,215
14-8
Cardiff (Wales) . . .
128,915
'64,333
27-5
Sunderland ....
131,686
146,077
10-9
Oldham
i 3 463
137,246
4.4
Croydon 4 ....
102,695
133-895
30-4
Blackburn ....
120,064
127,626
6-3
Brighton
"5.873
123,478
6-6
Willesden 4 ....
61,265
114,811
87-4
Rhondda (Wales) . .
88,351
"3,735
28-7
Preston
107.573
112,989
5-o
Norwich
100,970
I ",733
10-7
Birkenhead ....
99,857
110,915
li-l
Gatcshead ....
85,092
109,888
28-2
Plymouth ....
88,931
107,636
2I-O
Derby
94,146
105,912
12-5
Halifax
97.7'4
104,936
7-4
Southampton
82,126
104,824
27-6
Tottenham 4 ....
7 ",343
102,541
437
Ley ton 4
63,106
98,92
56-7
South Shields
78.391
97,263
24-1
Burnley
87,016
97,043
"5
East Ham 4 ....
32,712
96,018
93-5
Walthamstow 4 . . .
46,346
95.13
105-3
Huddcrsfield
95.420
95,047
0-4 deer.
Swansea (Wales)
9 '.034
94-537
3-8
Wolverhampton
82,662
94. '87
13-9
Middlesborough
75,532
91.302
20-9
Northampton
75,075
87,021
15-9
Walsall
71.789
86,430
20-4
St Helens . . . :
72,413
84,410
16-6
Rochdale . .
76,161
83,114
9-1
1 Administrative county.
4 These districts, administratively distinct, belong topographically
to Greater London.
420
ENGLAND
[RELIGION
in the former and 604-5 in the latter year. The marriage-rate per
thousand has ranged since 1841 from 14-2 in 1886 to 17-6 in 1873,
and is evidently closely associated with the general prosperity of the
country, for in the latter year the value of the total imports and
exports per head of the population of the United Kingdom was at its
highest, and in the former year at its lowest. The five years 1895-
1899 exhibited a remarkable sequence illustrative of this:
Years.
Marriage-
Rate.
Value,
Exports and
Imports.
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
15-0
15-8
16-0
16-3
16-5
s. d.
17 19 3
18 14 I
18 14 3
19 o 5
20 I 8
The marriage-rate declined, subsequently to the year last quoted in
this table, to 15-6 in 1903. (O. J. R. H.)
Religion. In attempting to give a concise account of the
religious conditions of England we are confronted from the
outset with the absence of any trustworthy statistics. A
religious census, such as is customary in other countries, has not
been taken since 1851; nor is it probable that such a census
would be any true indication of the actual religious beliefs of
the population. Still less satisfactory, from this standpoint,
is the attempt to compile statistics of religious belief from the
registrar-general's report on the number of marriages celebrated
in the places of worship of the various denominations; for among
those who are practically attached to no religious body, and
even some Nonconformists, a prejudice survives in favour of
having their marriages celebrated and their funerals conducted
by the clergy of the Established Church. Nor is the test of
" sittings " provided by the various denominations, nor even
the number of their communicants, a trustworthy test of the
relative number of their adherents. In Wales, for instance,
the rivalry of the sects has multiplied chapel accommodation
out of all proportion to the population; while everywhere it
happens that churches, at one time crowded every Sunday,
have been emptied by the shifting of population or other causes.
As for the test of communicancy, it is untrustworthy because
the insistence on communion as the pledge of membership varies
with the different denominations and even with different sections
of opinion within those denominations. Any statistics of this
nature, then, however useful they may be as a general indication,
must not be treated as conclusive.
Whatever disputes there may be as to the relative strength
of the various churches and sects, there can be no questioning
the fact that the dominant religion in England is Protestant
Christianity. Protestantism, indeed, since the Act of Settlement
in 1689, has been of the essence of the Constitution, the sovereign
forfeiting his or her crown ipso facto by acknowledging the
authority of the pope, by accepting " the Romish religion,"
or by marrying a Roman Catholic; and though of late years
efforts have been made to modify or to abrogate this provision,
the fact that such efforts have met with widespread opposition
shows that it still represents the general attitude of the British
nation. Protestantism, however, is a generic term which in
England covers a great variety of opinions, and a large number
of rival religious organizations. The state church, the Church
of England as by law established, represents the tradition of a
time when church and state were regarded as two
r * aspects of one divinely ordered organism. In law
everv sub J ect of the state is als a member f the
Established Church, and can lay claim to its minis
trations so long as he or she obeys the ecclesiastical law, which
is also the law of the state. No Englishman, whatever his
opinions, can be excommunicated without due process of law
The Church of England is thus theoretically coextensive with
the English nation, each unit of which is legally assumed to
belong to it unless proof be brought to the contrary. To state
the theory is, however, to risk giving an entirely false impression
of the facts. In practice the Church of England is no longe
regarded as coextensive with the state; nor is nonconformity
my longer, as it once was, an offence against the law. Since
he abolition of the Test Acts and the emancipation of the
Catholics no Englishman has suffered any civil disability owing
o his religion 1 ; and the progress of democracy has given to
he great so-called "Free Churches" a political power that
ivals that of the Established Church. In the matter of the
stimation of their relative strength the main grievance of the
Nonconformists is that the law classes as members of the Church
>f England that enormous floating population which is really
onscious of no ecclesiastical allegiance at all.
The Church of England, both in constitution and doctrine,
epresents in general the mean between Roman Catholicism on
he one hand and the more advanced forms of Protestantism on
he other (see EPISCOPACY). Though its doctrine was reformed
n the 1 6th century and the spiritual supremacy of the pope
was repudiated, the continuity of its organic life was not inter-
rupted, and historically as well as legally it is the same church
as that established before the Reformation. The ecclesiastical
system is episcopal, the whole of England (including for this
>urpose Wales) being divided into two provinces, Canterbury
and York, and 37 bishoprics (including the primatial sees of
Canterbury and York). These again are subdivided into 14,080
parishes (1901), the smallest ecclesiastical units, which are
jrouped for certain administrative purposes into 810 rural
deaneries. The sovereign is by law the supreme governor of
the church, both in things spiritual and temporal, and he has
the right to nominate to vacant sees. In the case of sees of old
foundation this is done by means of the congi d'tlire (?..), in
that of others by letters patent. 2 The bishops hold their
temporalities as baronies, for which they do homage in the
ancient form, and are spiritual peers of parliament. Only 26,
however, have the right to seats in the House of Lords, of whom
fi ve viz. t he two archbishops and the bishops of London,
Durham and Winchester always sit, the others taking their
seats in order of seniority of consecration. Under the bishops
the affairs of the dioceses are managed by archdeacons (q.v.)
and rural deans (see ARCHPRIEST and DEAN). The cathedral
churches are governed by chapters consisting of a dean, canons
and prebendaries (see CATHEDRAL)! The deaneries are in the
gift of the crown, canonries and prebends sometimes in that of
the crown, sometimes in that of the bishops. The parish clergy,
with a few rare exceptions (when they are elected by the rate-
payers), are appointed by patronage. The right of presentation
to some 8500 benefices or " livings " is in the hands of private
persons; the right is regarded in law as property and is, under
certain restrictions for the avoidance of gross simony, saleable
(see ADVOWSON). The patronage of the remaining benefices
belongs in the main to the crown, the bishops and cathedral
chapters, the lord chancellor, and the universities of Oxford
and Cambridge.
In spite of the fact that the Church of England is collectively
one of the wealthiest in Christendom, a large proportion of the
" livings " are extremely poor. To understand this and other
anomalies it is necessary to bear in mind that the church is not,
like the established Protestant churches of Germany, an elabor-
ately organized state department, nor is it a single corporation
with power to regulate its internal polity. It is a conglomeration
of corporations. Even the incumbent of a parish is in law a
" corporation sole," his benefice a freehold; and until the
establishment in 1836, by act of parliament, of the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners (q.v.) nothing could be done to adjust the in-
equalities in the emoluments of the clergy resulting from the
natural rise and fall of the value of property in various parts of the
country. Even more extraordinary is the effect of the singular
constitution of the church on its discipline. An incumbent, once
inducted, can only be disturbed by complicated and extremely
costly processes of law; in effect, except in cases of gross
1 Certain great offices of state are closed to Roman Catholics.
1 The actual selection of the bishops is in practice in the hands
of the prime minister for the time being. This formerly led to purely
political appointments; but it is usual now to select clergynv
approved by public opinion.
ENGLAND Sc WALES
Section III.
Scale, 1:1,000,000
IO It to *4 *0
RELIGION]
ENGLAND
421
misconduct, be is only checked so far as ecclesiastical order is
concerned by his oath of canonical obedience to the " godly "
monitions of his bishop; and, since these monitions are difficult
and costly to enforce, while their " godliness " may be a matter
of opinion, an incumbent is practically himself the interpreter of
the law as applied to the doctrine and ritual of his particular
church. The result has been the development within the
Established Church of a
most startling diversity of
doctrine and ritual practice,
varying from what closely
resembles that of the
Church of Rome to the
broadest Liberalism and
the extremest evangelical
Protestantism. This broad
comprehensiveness, which
to outsiders looks like
ecclesiastical anarchy, is the
characteristic note of the
Church of England; it may
be, and has been, defended
as consonant with Christian
charity and suited to the
genius of a people not remarkable for logical consistency; but
it makes it all the more difficult to say what the religion of
Englishmen actually is, even within the English Church.
The following is a list of the archicpiscopal and episcopal sees
of England and Wales the latter arranged in alphabetical
order, with date of their establishment and amount of
emoluments:
Burnley (Manchester), Thetford, Ipswich (Norwich), Reading
(Oxford), Leicester (Peterborough), Richmond, Knaresborough
(Ripon), Colchester, Barking (St Albans), Swansea (St. David's),
Woolwich, Kingston - on - Thames (Southwark), Derby (South-
well), St Germans (Truro). See also ENGLAND, CHURCH OF;
ANGLICAN COMMUNION; ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION; VEST-
MENTS; MASS.
Sittings.
Com-
municants.
Ministers
(Pastoral).
Local
Preachers.
Sunday
Scholars.
Baptists 1
1.421,742
424.741
2'34
5.748
590,321
Congregationalists (1907)
1,801,447
498,953
3'97
5.603
729,347
Presbyterian Church of England '.
'73.047
85,755
323
98,258
Society of Friends
'7.442
62,347
Moravians
10,000
2.999
34
4,542
\\.--lcs.ui Methodists* ....
2,500,000
620,350
2658
20,119
',039.437
Primitive Methodists' ....
1,017,690
205,407
1101
15.963
477.1 '4
I'nited Methodist Church* .
738.840
158.095
833
5.577
3'5.993
\Vesleyan Reform Union.
47.435
8,717
19
508
23,008
Independent Methodists.
33,000
9,732
375
28,387
Welsh Calvinistic Methodist .
472,089
85,935
900
36i
187,484
Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion .
12,347
2,469
26
3.040
Reformed Episcopal ('hurvli .
6,000
1,090
28
2,600]
Free Church of England ....
8,140
1.352
24
4,196
Year of
Annual
Foundation.
Emoluments.
Province of Canterbury
Canterbury (archbishopric) 597
15.000
Bangor
Bath and Wells
c-SSO
"39
4,200
5,000
Birmingham
1004
3.500
Bristol
1897'
3,000
Chichester
,
1075
4,200
Ely
1109
5.500
Exeter
1050
4,200
Gloucester
1541
4.300
Hereford .
676
4.200
Lichfidd .
669
4,200
Lincoln , .
1067
4.500
Liandaff .
c-550
4,200 .
London
605
10,000
Norwich
'094
4.500
Oxford . .
'542
S.ooo
Peterborough
'54'
4.500
K' * hr-*cr
604
3,800
St Albans .
1877
3,200
StAsaph . .
St David's
4,200
4,500
Salisbury
'075
5,000
Southwark
3,000
Southwell .
1884
3.500
Tniro
1876
3.000
Winchester .
c. 650
6,500
Worcester
c. 680
4,200
Province of York-
York (archbishopric) .
625
10,000
Carlisle ...
'133
4.500
Chester
'541
4,200
Durham
995
7,000
Liverpool
Manchester
itto
1847
4,200
4,200
Newcastle
itto
3,500
Ripon
1836
4,200
Sodor and Man
"54
1,500
WakefieJd . .
1888
3,000
1 Modern refoundation.
The following are suffragan or assistant bishoprics (the names
of the dioceses to which each belongs being given in brackets):
Dover, Croydon (Canterbury), Beverley, Hull, Sheffield (York),
Stepney, Islington, Kensington (London), Jarrow (Durham),
Guildford, Southampton, Dorking (Winchester), Barrow-in-
Furness (Carlisle), Crediton (Exeter), Grantham (Lincoln),
The number of " denominations " by whom buildings were
certified for worship up to 1895 was 293 (see list in Whitaker's
Almanack, 1896, p. 253), but in many instances such o< fcer
" denominations " consisted of two or three congrega- Proteiimat
tions only, in some cases of a single congregation. The ""-
more important nonconformist churches are fully dealt taualoa *-
with under their several headings. The above table, however,
based on that in the Statesman's Year-Book for 1908, and giving
the comparative statistics of the chief nonconformist churches,
may be useful for purposes of comparison. It may be prefaced by
stating that, according to returns made in 1905, the Church of
England provided sitting accommodation in parish and other
churches for 7,177,144 people; had an estimated number of
2>53,455 communicants, 206,873 Sunday-school teachers, and
2,538,240 Sunday scholars. There were 14,029 incumbents
(rectors, vicars, and perpetual curates), 7500 curates, i.e.
assistant clergy, and some 4000 clergy on the non-active list. 1 t
Besides the bodies enumerated in the table there are other
churches concerning which similar statistics are lacking, but
which, in several cases, have large numbers of adherents. The
Unitarians are an important body with (1908) 350 ministers and
345 places of worship. Most numerous, probably, are the
adherents of the Salvation Army, which with a semi-military
organization has in Great Britain alone over 60,000 officers, and
" barracks," i.e. preaching stations, in almost every town. The
Brethren, generally known, from their place of origin, as the
Plymouth Brethren, have " rooms " and adherents throughout
England; the Catholic Apostolic Church ("Irvingites ") have
some 80 churches; the New Jerusalem Church(Swedenborgians)
had (1008) 75 " societies "; the Christian Scientists, the Christa-
delphians, the British Israelites and similar societies, such as the
New and Latter House of Israel, the Seventh Day Baptists,
deserve mention. The Latter Day Saints (Mormons) had (1908)
82 churches in Great Britain.
Roman Catholicism in England has shown a tendency to
advance, especially among the upper and upper-middle classes.
The published lists of " converts " are, however,
no safe index to actual progress; for no equivalent
statistics are available for " leakage " in the opposite
direction. The membership of the Roman Catholic Church in
England is estimated at about 2,200,000. But though the
1 In 1906.
* There are in addition some thousands of Presbyterians un-
connected with the church, including members of the Church of
Scotland.
' Great Britain and Ireland, 1906.
4 On September 17, 1907, the United Methodist Free Churches,
the Methodist New Connexion, and the Bible Christians were united
under the name of the United Methodist Church.
ftomnn
Cmtbollc*.
422
ENGLAND
[COMMUNICATIONS
growth of the church relatively to the population has not been
particularly startling, there can be no doubt that, since the
restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in 1851, its general
political and religious influence has enormously increased. A
notable feature in this has been the great development of monastic
institutions, due in large measure to the settlement in England of
the congregations expelled from France. The Roman Catholic
Church in England is organized in 1 5 dioceses, which are united
in a single province under the primacy of the archbishop of
Westminster. In December 1907 there were 1736 Roman
Catholic churches and stations, and the number of the clergy was
returned at 3524 (see ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH).
The Jews in Great Britain, chiefly found in London and other
great towns, number (1907) about 196,000 and have
some 200 synagogues; at the head of their organiza-
tion is a chief Rabbi resident in London.
Finally it may be mentioned that a small number of English-
men, chiefly resident in Liverpool and London, have embraced
Islam; they have a mosque at Liverpool. Various foreign
churches which have numbers of adherents settled in England
have also branch churches and organizations in the country,
notably the Orthodox Eastern Church, with a considerable
number of adherents in London, Liverpool and Manchester, the
Lutheran, and the Armenian churches. (W. A. P.)
VII. COMMUNICATIONS
Roads. In England and Wales the high-roads, or roads on
which wheeled vehicles can travel, are of two classes: (i) the
main roads, or great arteries along which the main vehicular
traffic of the country passes; and (2) ordinary highways, which
are by-roads serving only local areas. The length of the main
roads is about 22,000 m., and that of ordinary highways about
96,000. The highways of England, the old coaching roads, are
among the best in the world, being generally of a beautiful
smoothness and well maintained; they vary, naturally, in
different districts, but in many even the local roads are superior
to some main roads in other countries. The supersession of the
stage coach by the railway took a vast amount of traffic away
from the main roads, but their proper maintenance did not
materially suffer; and a larger accession of traffic took place
subsequently on the development of the cycle and the motor-
vehicle.
The system of road-building by private enterprise, the under-
takers being rewarded by tolls levied from vehicles, persons or
animals using the roads, was established in England in 1663,
when an act of Charles II. authorized the taking of such tolls
at " turnpikes " in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire. A century
later, in 1767, the authorization was extended over the whole
kingdom by an act of George III. In its fulness the system
lasted just sixty years, for the first breach in it was made by an
act of George IV., in 1827, by which the chief turnpikes in London
were abolished. Further acts followed in the same direction,
leading to the gradual extinction, by due compensation of the
persons interested, of the old system, the maintenance of the
roads being vested in " turnpike trusts and highway boards,"
empowered to levy local rates. The last turnpike trust ceased
to exist on the sth of November 1895, and the final accounts
in connexion with its debt were closed in 1898-1899. Toll-gates
are rjow met with only at certain bridges, where the right to levy
tolls is statutory or by prescription. By the Local Government
Act of 1888 the duty of maintaining main roads was imposed
on the county councils, but these bodies were enabled to make
arrangements with the respective highway authorities for their
repair. Under the Local Government Act of 1894 the duties
of all the highway authorities were transferred to the rural
district councils on or before the 3ist of March 1899.
It was not until the close of the i8th century, when the
period of road-building activity already indicated set in, that
English roads were redeemed from an extraordinarily bad
condition. The roads were until then, as a rule, merely tracks,
deeply worn by ages of traffic into the semblance of ditches,
and, under adverse weather conditions, impassable. Travellers
also had the risk of assault by robbers and highwaymen. As
early as 1285 a law provided for the cutting down of trees and
bushes on either side of highways, so as to deprive lawless men
of cover. Instances of legislation as regards the upkeep of roads
are recorded from time to time after this date, but (to take a
single illustration) even in the middle of the i8th century the
journey from the village, as it was then, of Paddington to London
by stage occupied from 25 to 3 hours. But from 1784 to 1792
upwards of 300 acts were passed dealing with the construction
of new roads and bridges.
Railways. The history and development of railways in
England, their birthplace, and in Ireland and Scotland, with
illustrative statistics, are considered under the heading UNITED
KINGDOM. The following list indicates the year of foundation,
termini, chief offices and geographical sphere of the chief railways
of England and Wales.
i. Railways with Termini in London.
(a) NORTHERN.
Great Northern (1846). Terminus and offices, King's Cross. Main
line Peterborough, Grantham, Newark, Doncaster; forming, with
the North-Eastern and North British lines, the " East Coast route
to Scotland. Serving also the West Riding of Yorkshire, Lincoln-
shire, Nottingham and other towns of the midlands, and Manchester
(by running powers over the Great Central metals). This company
has so extensive a system of running powers over other railways,
and of lines held jointly with other companies, that few of its more
important express trains from London complete their journeys
entirely on the company's own lines.
Midland (1844, an amalgamation of the former North Midland,
Midland Counties, Birmingham&Derby.andother lines). Terminus,
St Pancras; offices, Derby. Main line Bedford, Leicester, Sheffield,
Leeds and Carlisle, affording the " Midland " route to Scotland.
Serving also Nottingham, Derby, and the principal towns of the
midlands and West Riding, and Manchester. West and North line
from Bristol, Gloucester and Birmingham to Leicester and Derby.
Also an Irish section, the Belfast and Northern Counties system
being acquired in 1903. Docks at Heysham, Lancashire; and
steamship services to Belfast, &c.
London & North-Western (1846, an amalgamation of the London
& Birmingham, Grand Junction, and Manchester & Birmingham
lines). Terminus and offices, Euston. Main line Rugby, Crewe,
Warrington; Preston, Carlisle; forming, with the Caledonian
system, the " West Coast " route to Scotland. Serves also Man-
chester, Liverpool and all parts of the north-west, North Wales,
Birmingham and the neighbouring midland towns, and by joint-
lines, the South Welsh coal-fields. Maintains docks at Garston on
the Mersey, a steamship traffic with Dublin and Greenore from
Holyhead, and, jointly with the Lancashire & Yorkshire Company,
a service to Belfast, &c., from Fleetwood.
Great Central (1846; until 1897, when an extension to London
was undertaken, called the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire).
Terminus, Marylebone; offices, Manchester. Main line Rugby,
Nottingham, Leicester, Sheffield, Manchester. The former mam
line runs from Manchester and Sheffield east to Retford, thence
serving Grimsby and Hull, with branches to Lincoln, &c. The main
line reached from London by joining the line of the Metropolitan
railway near Aylesbury and following it to Harrow. Subsequently
an alternative route out of London was constructed between Neasden
and Northolt, where it joins another line, of the Great Western
railway, from Acton, and continues as a line held jointly by the
two companies through Beaconsfield and High Wycombe. Here it
absorbs the old Great Western line as far as Prince's Risborough,
and continues thence to Grendon Underwood, effecting a junction
with the original main line of the Great Central system. This line
was opened for passenger traffic in April 1906. The Great Central
company owns docks at Grimsby.
(b) EASTERN.
Great Eastern (1862). Terminus and offices, Liverpool Street.
Serving Essex, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk. Joint-line with
Great Northern from March to Lincoln and Doncaster. Passenger
steamship services from Harwich to the Hook of Holland, Antwerp,
Rotterdam, &c.
London, Tilbury & Southend (1852). Terminus and offices,
Fenchurch Street. Serving places on the Essex shore of the Thames
estuary, terminating at Shoeburyness.
(c) WESTERN.
Great Western (1835, London to Bristol). Terminus and offices,
Paddington. Main line Reading, Didcot, Swindon, Bath, Bristol,
Taunton, Exeter, Plymouth, Penzance. Numerous additional mam
lines Reading to Newbury, Weymouth and the west, a new line
opened in 1906 between Castle Gary and Langport effecting a great
reduction in mileage between London and Exeter and places beyond ;
Didcot, Oxford, Birmingham, Shrewsbury, Chester with connexions
northward, and to North Wales; Oxford to Worcester, and Swindon
ll'MCATIONSl
ENGLAND
423
loucester ami the west of Kngbnd: South Welsh system
(through route from London via Wix>tton Bassett or via Bristol,
and the Severn tunnel). Newport, Cardiff, Swansea, Milford. Str.nu-
hip ervice* to the Channel Islands (rum Wrymouth to Waterford,
Ireund irmn Milford, and to Rossjare, Ireland, from Fishguard.
the route last named being opened in 1906. The line constructed
jointly with theCreat Central company (asdetailed in the description
above) was extended in 1910 from Ashendon to Aynho, to form a
short route to the great centres north of Oxford.
London (f South-Western (1839, incorporating the London &
Southampton railway of 1835). Terminus and offices, Waterloo.
Main line Woking, Basingstoke, Salisbury, Yeovil, Exeter, Ply-
mouth ; Woking. Guildford and Portsmouth ; Basingstoke, Win-
chester, Southampton, Bournemouth, &c. Extensive connexions
in Surrey, Hampshire and the south-west, as far as North Cornwall.
This company owns the great docks at Southampton, and maintains
passenger services from that port to the Channel Islands, Havre, St
Mato and Cherbourg.
(d) SOUTHERN.
London, Brighton fir South Coast (1846). Termini, Victoria and
London Bridge. Serving all the coast stations from Hastings to
Portsmouth, with various lines in eastern Surrey and in Sussex.
tains a service of passenger steamers between Newhaven and
Dieppe.
South Eastern ff Chatham (under a managing committee, 1899,
of the South-Eastern company, 1836, and the London, Chatham &
Dover company, 1853). Termini Victoria, Charing Cross.Holborn
Viaduct, Cannon Street. Offices, London Bridge Station. Various
lines chiefly in Kent. Steamship services between Folkestone and
Boulogne, Dover and Calais, &c.
2. Provincial Railways.
The two most important railway companies not possessing lines
to London are the North-Eastern and the Lancashire & Yorkshire.
North Eastern (1854, amalgamating a number of systems).
Office*, York. Main line Leeds, Normanton and York to Darling-
ton, Durham, Newcastle and Bcrwick-on-Tweed. Connecting with
the Great Northern between Doncaster and York, and with the
North British at Berwick, it forms part of the " East Coast " route
to Scotland. Serving all ports and coast stations from Hull to
Berwick, also Carlisle, &c. Owning extensive docks at Hull, Middles-
brough, South Shields, the Hartlepools, Blyth, &c.
Lancashire cf Yorkshire (1847, an amalgamation of a number of
(oral systems). Offices, Manchester. Main line Manchester, Roch-
dale, Tormorden, Wakefield and Normanton, with branches to
Halifax, Bradford, Leeds, Huddersficld and other centres of the West
Riding. Extensive system in south Lancashire, connecting Man-
chester with Preston and Fleetwood (where the docks and steamship
service* to Ireland are worked jointly with the London & North-
Western company), Southport, Liverpool, &c.
Among further provincial systems there should be mentioned :
Cambrian. Office*, Oswestry. Whitchurch, Oswestry, Welsh pool
to Barmputh and Pwllheli, Aberystwyth, &c.
Cheshire Lines, worked by a committee representative of the
Great Central .Great Northernand Midland Companies, andaffording
important connexions between the lines of these systems and south
Lancashire and Cheshire (God ley, Stockport, Wamngton, Liverpool ;
Manchester and Liverpool ; Manchester and Liverpool to Southport ;
Godley and Manchester to Northwich and Chester, &c.).
Fitness. Office*. Barrow-in-Furness. Carnforth, Barrow, White-
haven, with branches to Coniston, Windermere (Lakeside), &c.
Dock* at Barrow.
North Staffordshire. Offices, Stoke-upon-Trent. Crewe and the
Potteries, Macclesneld, &c., to Uttoxeter and Derby.
Cross-Country Connexions. While London is naturally the
principal focal point of the English railway system, the develop-
ment of through connexions between the chief lines by way of the
metropolis U very small. Some through trains arc provided between
the North-Western and the London, Brighton & South Coast lines
via Willesden junction. Addison Road and Clapham Junction;
and a through connexion by way of Ludgate Hill has been arranged
bttattn main line train* of the South-Western and the Great Northern
railways, but otherwise passengers travelling through London have
generally to make their own way from one terminus to another.
Certain crow-country routes, however, are provided to connect the
system* of some of the companies, among which the following may
be noticed.
(l) Through connexion* with the continental services from
Harwich, and with Yarmouth and other towns of the East coast, are
provided from Yorkshire. Lancashire, &c., by way of the Great
Northern and Great Eastern Joint line from Doncaster and Lincoln
to March.
() Through connexion* between the systems of the South-Eastern
ft Chatham and the Great Western companies are provided via
Reading.
(j) Through connexions between the systems of the Great Central
and the Great Western companies are provided by the line connecting
Woodford and Banbury.
(4) Through connexion* between the Midland and the South-
western system* are provided (a) by the Midland and South-Western
Junction line connecting Cheltenham on the north-and-west line
of the Midland with Andover Junction on the South- Western line;
and (b) by the Somerset & Dorset line, connecting the same lines
between Bath, Templecombe and Bournemouth.
(J) The line from Shrewsbury to Craven Arms and Hereford,
giving connexion between the north and the south-west, and Wales,
is worked by the North-Western and Great Western companies.
Inland Navigation. The English system of inland navigation is
confined principally to the following districts: South Lancashire,
the West Riding of Yorkshire, the Midlands, especially _ .
about Birmingham, the Fen district and the Thames ~r~
basin (especially the lower part). All these districts are
interconnected. The condition of inland navigation, as a whole,
is not satisfactory. The Fossdyke in Lincolnshire, connecting
the river Trent at Torksey with the Witham near Lincoln, and
now belonging to the Great Northern and Great Eastern joint rail-
ways, is usually indicated as the earliest extant canal in England,
inasmuch as it was constructed by the Romans for the purpose
of drainage or water-supply, and must have been used for navigation
at an early period. But the history of canal-building in England is
usually dated from about 1760, and from the construction, at the
instance of Francis, Duke of Bridgewatcr, of the Bridgcwater canal
in South Lancashire, now belonging to the Manchester Ship Canal
Company. The activity in canal-building which prevailed during
the later years of the l8th century was, in a measure, an earlier
counterpart of the first period of railway development, which,
proceeding subsequently along systematized lines not applied to
canal-construction, and providing obvious advantages in respect of
speed, caused railways to withdraw much traffic from canals. Some
canals and river navigations have consequently become derelict,
or are only maintained with difficulty and in imperfect condition.
The inland navigation system suffers from a want of uniformity
in the size of locks, depth of water, width of channels and other
arrangements, so that direct intercommunication between one canal
and another is often impossible in consequence; moreover, although
the canals, like railways, are owned by many separate bodies,
hardly any provision has been made, as it has in the case of railways,
for such facilities as the working of through traffic over various
systems at an inclusive charge. Lastly, the railway companies
themselves have acquired control of about 30% of the total mileage
of canals in England and Wales, and in many cases this has had a
prejudicial effect on the prosperity of canals. Notwithstanding
these disabilities, there has been in modern times a new development
in the trade of some canals, born of a realization that for certain
classes of goods water-transport is cheaper than the swifter rail-
transport. Various proposals have been made for the establishment
of a single control over all inland waterways.
The lower or estuarine courses of some of the English rivers as the
Thames, Tyne, Humber, Mersey and Bristol Avon, are among the
most important waterways in the world, as giving access for sea-
borne traffic to great ports. From the Mersey the Manchester Ship
Canal runs to Manchester. The manufacturing districts of South
Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire are traversed and
connected by several canals following transverse valleys of the
Pennine Chain. The main line of the Aire and Calder navigation
runs from Goole by Castleford to Leeds, whence the Leeds and
Liverpool canal, running by Burnley and Blackburn, completes
the connexion between the Humber and the Mersey. Other canals
are numerous, among which may be mentioned the Sheffield and
South Yorkshire, connecting Sheffiejd with the Trent. The Trent
itself affords an extensive navigation, from which, at Derwent
mouth, the Trent and Mersey Canal runs near Burton and Stafford,
and through the Potteries, to the Bridgewatcr Canal and so to the
Mersey. This canal is owned by the North Staffordshire railway
company. The river Weaver, a tributary of the Mersey, affords a
waterway of importance to the salt-producing towns of Cheshire.
The system of the Shropshire Union railways and canal company,
which is connected by lease with the London & North-Western
railway company, carries considerable traffic, especially in the
neighbourhood of Ellesmere Port. In the Black Country and
neighbourhood the numerous ramifications of the Birmingham
Canal navigations bear a large mineral traffic. This system is
connected with the rivers Severn and Trent and the canal system
of the country at large, and is controlled by the London & North-
Western company. The principal line of navigation from the
Thames northward to the midlands is that of the Grand Junction,
which runs from Brentford, is connected through London with the
port of London by the Regent's Canal, and follows closely the main
line of the North-Western railway. It connects with the Oxford
Canal at Braunston in Northamptonshire, and through this with
canals to Birmingham and the midlands, and continues to Leicester.
Both the Severn up to Stourport and the Thames up to Oxford have
a fair traffic, but the Thames and Severn Canal is not much used.
There is some traffic on the navigable drainage cuts and rivers of the
Fens, but beyond these, in a broad consideration of the waterways
of England from the point of view of their commercial importance,
it is unnecessary to go.
See H. R. De Safis, Bradshaw's Canals and Navigable Rivers of
England and Wales (London, 1904) ; Report of Royal Commission on
Canals (London, 1909).
424
ENGLAND
[AGRICULTURE
Oversea Communications. The chief ports for continental passenger
traffic are as follows :
Harwich to Amsterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg, Hook of Holland,
Rotterdam (Great Eastern railway); to Copenhagen and Esbjerg
(Royal Danish mail route).
Oueenborough to Flushing (Zeeland Steamship company).
Dover to Calais (South-Eastern & Chatham railway); to Ostend
(Belgian Royal mail steamers).
Folkestone to Boulogne (South Eastern & Chatham railway).
Newhaven to Dieppe (London, Brighton & South Coast railway).
Southampton to Cherbourg, Havre, St Malo (South-Western
railway).
The chief ports for trans-Atlantic traffic are Liverpool and South-
ampton, and special trains are worked in connexion with the steamers
to and from London. The great development of harbour accom-
modation at Dover early in the 2Oth century brought trans-Atlantic
traffic to this port also. Southampton and Liverpool are the two
greatest English ports for all oceanic passenger traffic; but London
has also a large traffic, both to European and to foreign ports.
The passenger traffic to the Norwegian ports, always very heavy in
summer, is carried on chiefly from Hull and Newcastle.
VIII. INDUSTRIES
Agriculture, In the agricultural returns for Great Britain,
issued annually by the government, the area of England (apart
from Wales) has been divided into two sections, " arable " and
"_grass," corresponding with a former division into " corn
counties " and " grazing counties," except that Leicestershire
is included not in the " grass " but in the " arable " section.
Most of the eastern part of England is " arable," while the
western and northern part is " grass," the boundary between
the sections being the western limit of Hampshire, Berkshire,
Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire,
and of the East Riding of Yorkshire.
The division is thus as follows:
Grass Counties.
Northumberland.
Cumberland.
Durham.
Yorkshire, North and West Ridings.
Westmorland.
Lancashire.
Cheshire.
Derbyshire.
Staffordshire.
Shropshire.
Worcestershire.
Herefordshire.
Monmouthshire.
Gloucestershire.
Wiltshire.
Dorsetshire.
Somersetshire.
Devonshire.
Cornwall.
Arable Counties.
Yorkshire, East Riding.
Lincolnshire.
Nottingham.
Rutland.
Huntingdonshire.
Warwickshire.
Leicestershire.
Northamptonshire.
Cambridgeshire.
Norfolk.
Suffolk.
Bedfordshire.
Buckinghamshire.
Oxfordshire.
Berkshire.
Hampshire.
Hertfordshire.
Essex.
Middlesex.
Surrey.
Kent.
Sussex.
The average area under cultivation of all the counties is about
76 of the whole area. The counties having the greatest area under
cultivation (ranging up to about nine-tentns of the whole) may be
taken to be Leicestershire, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Lincoln-
shire, Huntingdonshire, Rutland, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire
and Cambridgeshire. Those with the smallest proportional cultivated
area are Westmorland, Middlesex, Northumberland, Surrey, Cumber-
land, the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Durham
and Cornwall. Geographical considerations govern these conditions
to a very great extent; thus the counties first indicated lie almost
entirely within the area of the low-lying and fertile Eastern Plain,
while the smallest areas of cultivation are found in the counties
covering the Pennine hill-system, with its high-lying uncultivated
moors. In the case of Cornwall and Cumberland the physical
conditions are similar to these; but in that of Middlesex and Surrey
the existence of large urban areas belonging or adjacent .to London
must be taken into account. These also affect the proportion of
cultivated areas in the other home counties. The presence of a wide-
spread urban population must also be remembered in the case of
Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire.
The geographical distribution of the principal crops, &c., may
now be followed. The grain crops grown in England consist almost
n; i ik exclusively of wheat, barley and oats. Lincolnshire,
Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and the East
Riding of Yorkshire are especially productive in all
these; the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire pro-
duce a notable quantity of barley and oats; and the oat-crops in
the following counties deserve mention Devonshire, Hampshire,
Lancashire, Cumberland, Cornwall, Cheshire and Sussex. There is
no county, however, in which the single crop of wheat or barley
stands pre-eminently above others, and in the case of the upland
counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and Derbyshire, the metro-
politan county of Middlesex, and Monmouthshire, these crops are
quite insignificant. In proportion to their area, the counties specially
productive of wheat are Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Hertford-
shire, Bedfordshire and Essex ; and of barley, Norfolk, Suffolk and
the East Riding of Yorkshire. In fruit-growing, Kent takes the
first place, but a good quantity is grown in Cambridgeshire, Norfolk
and Essex, in Worcestershire and other western 'counties, where,
as in Herefordshire, Somerset and Devon, the apple is especially
cultivated and cider is largely produced. Kent is again pre-eminent
in the growth of hops ; indeed this practice and that of fruit-growing
give the scenery of the county a strongly individual character.
Hop-growing extends from Kent into the neighbouring parts of
Sussex and Surrey, where, however, it is much less important; it
is also practised to a considerable degree in a group of counties of
the midlands and west Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Gloucester-
shire and Shropshire. Market-gardening is carried on most exten-
sively on suitable lands in the neighbourhood of the great areas of
urban population; thus the open land remaining in Middlesex is
largely devoted to this industry. From the Channel and Scilly
Islands, vegetables, especially seasonable vegetables, and also flowers
which, owing to the peculiar climatic conditions of these islands,
come early to perfection, are imported to the London market.
Considering the crops not hitherto specified, it may be indicated
that turnips and swedes form the chief green crops in most districts;
potatoes, mangels, beans and peas are also commonly grown.
Beyond the three chief grain crops, only a little rye is grown. The
cultivation of flax is almost extinct, but it is practised in a few
districts, such as the East and West Ridings of Yorkshire.
The counties in which the greatest proportion of the land is
devoted to permanent pasture may be judged roughly from the list
of " grass counties " already given. Derbyshire, Leicester- f^gf^
shire, the midland counties generally, and Somersetshire,
have the highest proportion, and the counties of the East Anglian
seaboard the lowest. But with lands thus classified heath, moor and
hill pastures are not included ; and the greatest areas of these are
naturally found in the counties of the Penninesand the Lake District,
especially in Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland and the
North and West Ridings of Yorkshire. There is also plenty of hill-
pasture in the south-western counties (from Hampshire and Berkshire
westward), especially in Devonshire, Cornwall and Somersetshire,
and also in Monmouthshire and along the Welsh marches, on the
Cotteswold Hills, &c. In all these localities sheep are extensively
reared, especially in Northumberland, but on the other hand in
Lincolnshire the numbers of sheep are roughly equal to those in the
northern county. Other counties in which the numbers are especially
large are Devonshire, Kent, Cumberland and the North and West
Ridings of Yorkshire. Cattle are reared in great numbers in Lincoln-
shire, Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, Devonshire,
Somersetshire and Cornwall; but the numbers of both cattle and
sheep are in no English county (save Middlesex) to be regarded as
insignificant. Pigs are bred most extensively in Suffolk, Norfolk
and Lincolnshire and in Somersetshire.
It is often asserted that the scenery of rural England is of its kind
unrivalled. Except in open lands like the Fens, the peculiarly rich
appearance of the country is due to the closely-divided Wood-
fields with their high, luxuriant hedges, and especially lands.
to the profuse growth of trees. There is not, however,
any large continuous forested tract. Certain areas still bear the
name of forest where there is now none; the term here possesses an
historical significance, in many cases indicating former royal game-
preserves. Great areas of England were once under forest. The
clearing of land for agricultural purposes, the use of wood for the
prosecution of the industries of an increasing population, and other
causes, have led to the gradual disforesting of large tracts. There are
still, however, some small well-defined woodland areas. The New
Forest in Hampshire, the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, and
Epping Forest, which is preserved as a public recreation-ground by
the City of London, are the most notable instances. The counties
comprising the greatest proportional amount of woodland fall into
two distinct groups Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and Kent, with
Berkshire and Buckinghamshire; Monmouth, Herefordshire and
Gloucestershire. Cambridgeshire, lying almost wholly within the
area of the Fens, has the smallest proportional area of woodland of
any English county.
The number of persons engaged in agriculture in England and
Wales was found by the census of 1901 to be 1,192,167; the total
showing a steady decrease (e.g. from 1,352,389 in 1881), which is
especially marked in the case of females. But the decrease lies
mainly in the number of agricultural labourers; the number of
farmers is not notably affected, and the increasing substitution of
machinery for manual labour must be taken into consideration.
The average size of holdings in England may be taken approximately
as 66 acres, the average in 1903 being 66- 1, whereas in 1895 it
was 65-3.
(See also the article AGRICULTURE.)
D LonRimd* Halt i' of Greenwich
FISHKKI1>;
ENGLAND
425
Fijktries..\\\ the sea* round Britain are rich in fish, and there are
important fishing stations at intervals on all (he KiiKliah coasts,
but those on the east coast are by far the most numerous.
s " On an estimate of weight and value of the fish landed,
***** Grimsby at the mouth of the Humber in Lincolnshire,
stands pre-eminent as a fishing port. For example, the fish landed
there in 1903 were of nearly four times the value of those landed at
Hull, which was the second in order of all the English stations,
m importance stand Lowestoft, Yarmouth and North Shields,
Barton ana Scarborough, and, among a large number of minor
ti-'iiM^ station*, II irt!. ;-! .ui.l K.nn~ K .iti-. <".n-.it qu.inm ii--. <>l ti-.li
are also landed at the riverside market of Billingsgate in London,
but the conditions here are exceptional, the landings being effected
by carrier steamers, plying from certain of the fishing fleets, and not
talcing part in the actual process of fishing. On the south coast
NVwIyn ranks in the same category with Boston; at Plymouth
considerable catches are landed; and Brixham ranks alongside the
last ports named on the east coast. The chief fishing centres of the
English Channel are thus seen to belong; to the coast of Devonshire
and" Cornwall. On the west coast the Welsh port of Milford takes
the first place, while Swansea and Cardiff have a considerable fishing
industry, surpassed, however, by that of Fleetwood in Lancashire.
Liverpool also ranks among the more important centres. As a com-
parison of the production of the east, south and west coast fisheries,
an average may be taken of the annual catches recorded over a
term of yean. In the ten years 1894-1903 this average was 6,985,588
cwt. for the east coast stations, 660,759 cwt. for those of the
south coast, and 884,932 for those of the west (including the Welsh
stations).
Distinctions may be drawn, as will be seen, between the nature
and methods of the fisheries on the various coasts, and the rela-
tive prosperity of the industry; from year to year cannot be
imaiiuiKi as a whole. Thus in the period considered the re-
corded maximum weight of fish landed at the east coast ports was
9,539.114 cwt. in 1903 (the value being returned as 5,721,105);
whereas on the south coast it was 736,599 cwt. in 1890, and
on the west 1,117,164 cwt. in 1898. Considered^ as a whole, the
individual fish, by far the most important in the English fisheries,
is the herring, for which Yarmouth and Lowestoft are the chief
ports. The next in order are haddock, cod and plaice, and the east
coast fisheries return the greatest bulk of these also. But whereas
the south coast has the advantage over the west in the herring and
plaice fisheries, the reverse is the case in the haddock and cod
fisheries, haddock, in particular, being landed in very small quantities
at the south coast ports. Mackerel, however, are landed principally
at the southern ports, and the pilchard is taken almost solely off
the south-western coast. A fish of special importance to the west
f"Kt fisheries is the hake. Among shell-fish, crabs and oysters are
taken principally off the east coast ; the oyster beds in the shallow
water off the north Kent and Essex coasts, as at Whitstable and
Colchester, being famous. Lobsters are landed in greatest number
on the south coast.
The number of vessels of every sort employed in fishing was
returned in 1903 as 9721, and the number of persons employed as
41,539, of whom 34,071 were regular fishermen. The development
of the steam trawhng- vessel is illustrated by the increase in numbers
of these vessels from 480 in 1893 to 1135 in 1903. They belong
chiefly to North Shields, Hull, Grimsby, Yarmouth and Lowestoft.
There are a considerable number on the west coast, but very few
on the south. These vessels have a wide range of operations, pur-
suing their work as far as the Faeroe Islands and Iceland on the
one hand, and the Bay of Biscay and the Portuguese coast on the
other.
The English freshwater fisheries are not of great commercial
importance, nor, from the point of view of sport, are the salmon
and trout fisheries as a whole of equal importance with
those of Scotland, Ireland or Wales. _ The English salmon
and trout fisheries may be geographically classified thus:
(l) North-western division. Rivers Eden, Derwent, Lune,
Ribble: (i)North-eastem, Coquet, Tyne, Wear, Tees, &c.; (3)
WtOem, Dee. Usk, Wye, Severn; (4) South-western, Taw, Torndge,
Camel, Taraar, Dart, Exe, Teign, &c. ; (5) Southern, Avon and Stour
(Christ church) and the Itchin and other famous trout streams of
Hampshire. The rivers of the midlands and east are of little im-
portance to salmon-fishers, though the Trent carries a few, and in
modern times attempts have been made to rehabilitate the Thames
a* a salmon river. The trout-fishing in the upper Thames and
many of its tributaries (such as the Kennet, Colnc and Lea) js famous.
But many of the midland, eastern and south-eastern rivers, the
Norfolk Broads, 4c., are noted for their coarse fish.
ilining. Although the conditions of mining have, naturally,
a revolutionary development in comparatively modern
times, yet some indications of England's mineral wealth are found
at various periods of early history. The exploitation of tin in the
south-west is commonly referred back to the time of the Phoenician
sea-traders, and in the first half of the ijfh century England supplied
Europe with this metal. At a later period tin and lead were regarded
as the English minerals of highest commercial value ; whereas to-day
both, but especially lead, have fallen far from this position. The
Roman working of lead and iron has been clearly traced in many
districts, as has that of salt in Cheshire. The subsequent develop-
ment of the iron m.lu-ir is full of interest, as, while extending
vastly, it has entirely lapsed in certain districts. However long
before it may have been known to a few, the use of coal for smelting
iron did not become general till the later part of the i8th century,
and down to that time, iron-working was confined to districts where
timber was available for the supply of the smelting medium, char-
coal. Thus the industry centred chiefly upon the Weald (Sussex
and Kent), the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, and the Birming-
ham district ; but from the first district named it afterwards wholly
departed, following the development of the coal-fields. These have,
in some cases, a record from a fairly early date; thus, an indication
of the Northumberland coal-supply occurs in a charter of 1234, and
the Yorkshire coal-field is first mentioned early in the following
century. But how little this source of wealth was developed appears
from an estimate of the total production of coal, which gives in
1700 only 2,612,000 tons, and, in 1800, 10,080,000 tons, against
the returned total (for the United Kingdom) of 225,181,300 tons
in looo.
The chief minerals raised in England, as stated in the annual
home office report on mines and quarries, appear in order of value,
thus: coal, iron ore, clay and shale, sandstone, limestone, igneous
rocks, salt, tin ore. Coal surpasses all the other minerals to such an
extent that, taking the year 1903 as a type, when the total value of
the mineral output was very nearly 70,000,000, that of coal is
found to approach 61,000,000.
The position of the various principal coal-fields has been indicated
in dealing with the physical geography of England, but the grouping
of the fields adopted in the official report may be given
here, together with an indication of the counties covered . .
by each, and the percentage of coal to the total bulk
raised in each county. These figures are furnished as a general
demonstration of the geographical distribution of the industry,
but are based on the returns for 1903.
Coal-fields.
. Counties.
Per-
centage.
Northern ....
/Durham
[Northumberland
Yorkshire (West Riding) ' .
22-37
7-48
17-76
Yorkshire, &c. . . .
Derbyshire
Nottinghamshire
9-40
5'4'
Lancashire and Cheshire
Lancashire
Cheshire ... . .
15-26
0-25
Leicestershire ....
1-3'
Shropshire
0-50
Midland" ....
Staffordshire ....
8-10
Warwickshire ....
2-12
Worcestershire ....
0-44
(Cumberland ....
'37
Gloucestershire*
0-87
Small detached . . .
Somersetshire ....
0-62
Westmorland ....
0-07
Yorkshire (North Riding) '
Monmouthshire 4
6-67
The coal-fields on the eastern flank of the Pennines, therefore,
namely, the Northern and the Yorkshire, are seen to be by far the
most important in England. The carrying trade in coal is naturally
very extensive, and may be considered here. The principal ports
for the shipping of coal for export, set down in order of the amount
shipped, also fall very nearly into topographical groups, thus:
Newcastle, South Shields and Blyth in the Northern District;
Newport in Monmouthshire; Sunderland in the Northern District,
Hull, Grimsby and Gpole on the Humber, which forms the eastern
outlet of the Yorkshire coal-fields; Hartlepool, in the Northern
District, and Liverpool. The tonnage annually shipped ranges
from about 4} millions of tons in the case of Newcastle to some half
a million in the case of Liverpool ; but the export trade of Cardiff
in South Wales far surpasses that of any English port, being more
than three times that of Newcastle in 1903. The coastwise carrying
trade is also important, the bulk being shared about equally by
Sunderland, Newcastle, South Shields and Cardiff, while Liverpool
has also a large share. Of the whole amount of coal received coast-
wise at English and Welsh ports (about 13} million tons), London
received considerably over one-half (nearly 8 million tons in 1903).
The railways having the heaviest coal traffic are the North-Eastern,
which monopolizes the traffic of Northumberland and Durham;
the Midland^ commanding the Derbyshire, Yorkshire and East
Midland traffic, and some of the Welsh; the London & North
Western, whose principal sources are the Lancashire, Staffordshire
1 The figure 17-76 is the percentage for the whole of Yorkshire.
1 The West Midlands (Shropshire, &c.) include the coal-fields of
Shrewsbury, Leebotwood, Coalbrookdalc, the dec Hills and the
Forest of Wyre.
* The Forest of Dean coal-field is in Gloucestershire.
4 The coal-field of Monmouthshire belongs properly to, and in the
Report is classified with, the great coal-field of South Wales.
426
ENGLAND
[MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES
and South Welsh districts; the Great Western and the Taff Vale
(South Welsh), with the Great Central, Lancashire & Yorkshire and
Great Northern systems.
In the face of railway competition, several of the canals maintain
a fair traffic in coal, for which they are eminently suitable the
system of the Birmingham navigation, the Aire : and Calder navigation
of Yorkshire, and the Leeds and Liverpool navigation have the largest
shares in this trade.
The richest iron-mining district in England and in the United
Kingdom is the Cleveland district of the North Riding of Yorkshire.
Iron. It produces over two-fifths of the total amount of ore
raised in the Kingdom, and not much less than one-half
of that Braised in England. The richness of the ore (about 30% of
metal) is by no means so great as the red haematite ore found in
Cumberland and north Lancashire (Furness district, &c.). Here the
percentage is over 50, but the ore, though the richest found in the
kingdom, is less plentiful, about I J million tons being raised in 1903
as against more than sJ millions in Clevejand. There is also a con-
siderable working of brown iron ore at various points in Lincolnshire,
Northamptonshire and Leicestershire; with further workings of
less importance in Staffordshire and several other districts. The
total amount of ore raised in England is about 12$ million tons,
but it is not so high, in some iron-fields, as formerly. Some of the
lesser deposits have been worked out, and even in the rich Furness
fields it has been found difficult to pursue the ore. The import of
ore (the bulk coming from Spain) has consequently increased, and the
ports where the principal import trade is carried on are those which
form the principal outlets of the iron-working districts of Cleveland
and Furness, namely Middlesbrough and Barrow-in-Furness.
The geographical distribution of the remaining more important
English minerals may be passed in quicker review. Of the metals,
the production of copper is a lapsing industry, confined to Cornwall.
For the production of lead the principal counties are Derbyshire,
Durham and Stanhope, but the industry is not extensive, and is
confined to a few places in each county. Quarrying for limestone,
clay and sandstone is general in most parts. For limestone the
principal localities are in Durham, Derbyshire and Yorkshire, while
for chalk-quarrying Kent is pre-eminent among a group of south-
eastern counties, including Hampshire, Sussex and Surrey, with
Essex. Fireclay is largely raised from coal-mines, while, among
special clays, there is a considerable production of china and potter's
clays in Cornwall, Devonshire and Dorsetshire. As regards igneous
rocks, the Charnwood Forest quarries of Leicestershire, and those of
Cornwall, are particularly noted for their granite. Slate is worked
in Cornwall and Devon, and also in Lancashire and Cumberland,
where, in the Lake District, there are several large quarries. Salt,
obtained principally from brine but also as rock-salt, is an important
object of industry in Cheshire, the output from that county and
Staffordshire exceeding a million tons annually. In Worcestershire,
Durham and Yorkshire salt is also produced from brine.
The total number of persons in any way occupied in connexion
with mines and quarries in England and Wales in 1901 was 805,185;
the number being found to increase rapidly, as from 528,474 in 1881.
Coal-mines alone occupied 643,654, and to development in this
direction the total increase is chiefly due. The number of ironstone
and other mines decreased in the period noticed from 55,907 to
31,606.
Manufacturing Industries. There are of course a great number
of important industries which have a general distribution
throughout the country, being more or less fully developed here
or there in accordance with the requirements of each locality.
But in specifying the principal industries of any county, it is
natural to consider those which have an influence more than
local on its prosperity. In- England, then, two broad classes
of industry may be taken up for primary consideration the
textile and the metal. Long after textile and other industries
had been flourishing in the leading states of the continent, in
the Netherlands, Flanders and France, England remained, as a
whole, an agricultural and pastoral country, content to export
her riches in wool, and to import them again, greatly enhanced
in value, as clothing. It is not to be understood that there
were no manufacturing industries whatever. Rough cloth, for
example, was manufactured for home consumption. But from
Norman times the introduction of foreign artisans, capable of
establishing industries which should produce goods fit for
distant sale, occupied the attention of successive rulers. Thus
the plantation of Flemish weavers in East Anglia, especially
at the towns of Worstead (to which is attributed the derivation
of the term worsted) and Norwich, dates from the I2th century.
The industry, changing locality, like many others, in sympathy
with the changes in modern conditions, has long been practically
extinct in this district. Then, when religious persecution drove
many of the industrial population of the west of Europe away
from the homes of their birth, they liberally repaid English
hospitality by establishing their own arts in the country, and
teaching them to the inhabitants. Thus religious liberty formed
part of the foundation of England's industrial greatness. Then
came the material agent, machinery propelled by steam. The
invention of the steam engine, following quickly upon that of
the carding machine, the spinning jenny, and other ingenious
machinery employed in textile manufactures, gave an extra-
ordinary impulse to their development, and, with them, that
of kindred branches of industry. At the basis of ah 1 of them
was England's wealth in coal. The vast development of in-
dustries in England during the ipth century may be further
correlated with certain events in the general history of the time.
Insular England was not affected by the disturbing influences
of the Napoleonic period in any such degree as was continental
Europe. Such conditions carried on the work of British inventors
in helping to develop industries so strongly that manufacturers
were able to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by
the American Civil War (in spite of the temporary disability it
entailed upon the cotton industry) and by the Franco-German
War. These wars tended to paralyse industries in the countries
affected, which were thus forced to English markets to buy
manufactured commodities. That England, not possessing the
raw material, became the seat of the cotton manufacture, was
owing to the ingenuity of her inventors. It was not till the later
part of the i8th century, when a series of inventions, unparalleled
in the annals of industry, followed each other in quick succession,
that the cotton manufacture took real root in the country,
gradually eclipsing that of other European nations, although
a linen manufacture in Lancashire had acquired some prominence
as early as the i6th century. But though the superior excellence
of their machinery enabled Englishmen to start in the race of
competition, it was the discovery of the new motive power,
drawn from coal, which made them win the race. In 1815 the
total quantity of raw cotton imported into the United Kingdom
was not more than 99 millions of pounds, which amount had
increased to 152 millions of pounds in 1820, and rose further
to 229 millions in 1825, so that there was considerably more than
a doubling of the imports in ten years.
The geographical analysis of the cotton industry in England is
simple. It belongs almost entirely to south Lancashire to Man-
chester and the great industrial towns in its neighbourhood. Textiles
The industry has extended into the adjacent parts of
Cheshire, the West Riding of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. The
immediate neighbourhood of a coal-supply influenced the geo-
graphical settlement of this industry, like others ; and the importance
to the manufacture of a moist climate, such as is found on the western
slope of the Pennines (in contradistinction to the eastern), must also
be considered. The excess of the demand of the factories over the
supply of raw material has become a remarkable feature of the
industry in modern times.
The distribution of the woollen industries peculiarly illustrates
the changes which have taken place since the early establishment
of manufacturing industries in England. It has been seen how
completely the industry has forsaken East Anglia. Similarly, this
industry was of early importance along the line of the Cotteswold
Hills, from Chipping Camden to Stroud and beyond, as also in some
towns of Devonshire and Cornwall, but though it survives in the
neighbourhood of Stroud, the importance of this district is far
surpassed by that of the West Riding of Yorkshire, where the woollen
industry stands pre-eminent among the many which, as already
indicated, have concentrated there. As the cotton industry has
in some degree extended from Lancashire into the West Riding, so
has the woollen from the West Riding into a few Lancastrian towns,
such as Rochdale. Among other textile industries attaching to
definite localities may be mentioned the silk manufacture of eastern
Staffordshire and Cheshire, as at Congleton and Macclesfield; and
the hosiery and lace manufactures of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire
and Leicestershire.
The metal-working industries also follow a geographical distribu-
tion, mainly governed by the incidence of the coal-fields, as well
as by that of the chief districts for the production of Metal-
iron-ore already indicated, such as the Cleveland and wor uag.
Durham and the Furness districts. But the district most
intimately connected with every branch of this industry.^ from
engineering and the manufacture of tools, &c., to working in the
precious metals, is the " Black Country " and Birmingham district
of Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire. Apart from this
district, large quantities of iron and steel are produced in the manu-
facturing areas of Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire,
TERRITORIAL DIVISIONS)
ENGLAND
427
and here, as in the Black Country, are found certain centres
especially noted for the production of an individual class of goods,
suchasSherticlil i.ir itM-utlery. Then- is, further, a large engineering
industry in the London district; and important manufacture! ol
agricultural implements are found at many towns of East Anglia
and in other agricultural localities. Birmingham and Coventry
may bt specially mentioned as centres of the motor and cycle
building industry. The establishment of their engineering and other
workshop* at certain centres by the great railway companies has
important bearing on the concentration of urban population. For
example, by this means the London & North Western and the
Great Western companies have created large towns in Crewc and
Swindon respectively.
Certain other important industries may be localized. Thus, the
manufacture of china and pottery, although widespread, is primarily
identified with Staffordshire, where an area comprising Stoke and a
number of contiguous towns actually bears the name ofthe Potteries
(fl..). Derby has a similar fame, while the manufacture of glass,
important in Leeds and elsewhere in the West Riding of Yorkshire,
and in the London district, centres peculiarly upon a single town in
South Lancashire St Helens. Finally, the bootmakers of North-
amptonshire (at \Vellingborough, Rushden, &c.), and the straw-
plaiters of Bedfordshire Cat Luton and Dunstable), deserve mention
; localized industrial communities.
Ocatfatiotu of Ike People. The occupations of the people
may be so considered as to afford a conception of the relative
extent of the industries already noticed, and their importance
in relation to other occupations. The figures to be given are
those of the census of 1901, and embrace males and females
of 10 years of age and upwards. The textile manufactures
occupied a total of 994,668 persons, of which the cotton industry
occupied 529,131. A high proportion of female labour is char-
acteristic of each branch of this industry, the number of females
employed being about half as many again as that of males
(the proportion was 1-47 to i in 1001). The metal industries
of every sort occupied 1,116,202; out of which those employed
in engineering (including the building of all sorts of vehicles)
numbered 741,346. Of the other broad classes of industry
already indicated, the manufacture of boots and shoes occupied
229,257, and the pottery and glass manufactures 90,193. For
the rest, the numbers of persons occupied in agriculture has been
quoted as 1,192,167; and of those occupied in mining as 805,185.
Among occupations not already detailed, those of the male
population include transport of every sort (1,094,301), building
and other works of construction (1,042,864), manufacture of
articles of human consumption, lodging, &c. (774,291), commerce,
banking, &c. (530,685), domestic service, &c. (304,195), pro-
fessional occupations (311,618). The service of government in
every branch occupied 171,687. Female workers were occupied
to the number of i ,664,381 in domestic service generally. Tailor-
ing and the textile clothing industries and trade generally
occupied 602,881; teaching 172,873; nursing and other work
in institutions 104,036; and the civil service, clerkships and
similar occupations 82,635.
IX. TERBTTORJAL DIVISIONS, &c.
For various administrative and other purposes England and
Wales have been divided, at different times from the Saxon
period onwards, into a series of divisions, whose boundaries have
England and Wales; A rent.
County (ancient or geographical).
Parliamentary ) Division.
/ Borough.
Administrative County.
County Borough.
Municipal Borough.
Urban District (other than botough)
Rural District.
Civil Parish.
Poor Law Union.
County Court Circuit.
County Court District.
Petty Sessional Division.
Province.
Diocese.
ParU
Division.
County.
District.
Subdistrict.
\r-.i-
Administrative
Areas
Judicial Area*
Ecclesiastical
Areas
Registration
Area*
(City,
town)
been adjusted as each purpose demanded, without much attempt
to establish uniformity. Therefore, although the methods of
local government arc detailed below (Section X.), and other
administrative arrangements are described under the various
headings dealing with each subject, it is desirable to give here, for
ease of reference and distinction, a schedule of the various areas
into which England and Wales are divided. The areas here given,
excepting the Poor Law Union, are those utilized in the Census
Returns (see the General Report, 1901).
The ancient counties were superseded for most practical
purposes by the administrative counties created by the Local
Government Act of 1888. The ancient division, however,
besides being maintained in general speech and usage, forms
the basis on which the system of distribution of parliamentary
representation now in force was constructed. The Redistribu-
tion of Seats Act 1885 made a new division of the country into
county and borough constituencies. All the English counties,
with the exception of Rutland, are divided into two or more
constituencies, each returning one member, the number of
English county parliamentary areas being 234. In Wales eight
smaller or less populous counties form each one parliamentary
constituency, while the four larger are divided, the number of
Welsh county parliamentary areas being 19. The number of
county areas for parliamentary purposes in England and Wales is
thus 253, and the total number of their representatives is the
same. Outside the county constituencies are the parliamentary
boroughs. Of these there are 135 in England, one of them,
Monmouth district, being made up of three contributory boroughs,
while many are divided into several constituencies, the number of
borough parliamentary areas in England being 205, of which 61
are in the metropolis. Of the 205 borough constituencies, 184
return each one member, and 21 return each two members so
that the total number of English borough members is 226.
Besides the county and borough members there are in England
five university members, namely, two for Oxford, two for
Cambridge and one for London. In Wales there are 10 borough
parliamentary areas, all of which, except Merthyr Tydfil and
Swansea town division, consist of groups of several contributory
boroughs. Each Welsh borough constituency returns one
member, except Merthyr Tydfil, which returns two, so that there
are eleven Welsh borough members.
The administrative counties, created in 1888, number 62, each
having a county council. They sometimes coincide in area with
the ancient counties of the same name, but generally differ, in a
greater or less degree, for the following reasons (i) in some
cases an ancient county comprises (approximately) two or more
administrative counties, in the formation of which names of
some ancient divisions were preserved, thus:
Administrative County.
Cambridge.
Isle of Ely.
I Southampton.
I Isle of Wight.
( Parts of Holland.
| Parts of Kesteven.
( Parts of Lindsey.
( Northampton.
( Soke of Peterborough.
East Suffolk.
West Suffolk.
East Sussex.
West Sussex.
i East Riding.
\ North Riding.
( West Riding.
The Scilly Islands, which form part of the ancient county of
Cornwall, without being ranked as an administrative county,
are provided with a county council and have separate administra-
tion. (2) The administrative county of London has an area
taken entirely from the counties of Middlesex, Kent and Surrey.
3) All boroughs which on June i, 1888, had a population of not
ess than 50,000, boroughs which were already counties having
a population of not less than 20,000, and a few others, were formed
nto separate administrative areas, with the name of county
Ancient County.
Cambridgeshire
Hampshire
Lincolnshire .
Northamptonshire.
Suffolk ....
Sussex ....
Yorkshire
428
ENGLAND
[LOCAL GOVERNMENT
boroughs. Of these there were originally 61, but their number
subsequently increased. (4) Provision was made by the act of
1888 for including entirely within one administrative county
each of such urban districts as were situated in more than one
ancient county.
The various urban and rural districts are described below
(Section X.) . The Civil Parish is denned (Poor Law Amendment
Act 1866) as " a place for which a separate poor-rate is or can be
made," but the parish council has local administrative functions
beyond the administration of the poor law. The civil parish has
become more or less divorced in relationship from the Ecclesi-
astical Parish (a division which probably served in early times for
administrative purposes also), owing to successive independent
alterations in the boundaries of both (see PARISH). Poor-law
unions are groups of parishes for the local administration of the
Poor Laws. Within the unions the local poor-law authorities are
the Board of Guardians. In rural districts the functions of these
boards are, under the Local Government Act of 1894, performed
by the district councils, and in other places their constitution is
similar to that of the urban and district councils (see POOR LAW).
Registration districts are generally, but not invariably, co-
extensive with unions of the same name. These districts are
divided into sub-districts, within which the births and deaths are
registered by registrars appointed for that purpose. Registration
counties are groups of registration districts, and their boundaries
differ more or less from those both of the ancient and the ad-
ministrative counties. In England and Wales there are eleven
registration divisions, consisting of groups of registration counties
(see REGISTRATION). (O. J. R. H.)
X. LOCAL GOVERNMENT
The Reform Act of 1832 was the real starting-point for the
overhauling of English local government. For centuries before,
from the reign of Edward III., under a number of statutes and
commissions, the administrative work in the counties had been in
the hands of the country gentlemen and the clergy, acting as
justices of the peace, and sitting in petty sessions and quarter
sessions. Each civil or " poor law " parish was governed by the
vestry and the overseers of the poor, dating from the Poor Law of
1601; the vestry, which dealt with general affairs, being presided
over by the rector, and having the churchwardens as its chief
officials. In 1782 Gilbert's Act introduced the grouping of
parishes for poor law purposes, and boards of guardians appointed
by the justices of the peace. The municipal boroughs (246 in
England and Wales in 1832) were governed by mayor, aldermen,
councillors and a close body of burgesses or freemen, a narrow
oligarchy. Reform began with the Poor Law Amendment Act of
1834, grouping the parishes into Unions, making the boards of
guardians mainly elective, and creating a central poor law board
in London. The Municipal Corporations Act followed in 1835,
giving all ratepayers the local franchise. And as a result of the
failure of the Public Health Board established in 1848, the royal
commission of 1860-1871 led to the establishment in 1871 of the
Local Government Board as a central supervising body. Mean-
while, the school boards resulting from the Education Act of
1870 brought local government also into the educational system;
and the Public Health Act of 1875 P u t further duties on the local
authorities. By 1888 a new state of chaos had grown up as the
result of the multiplication of bodies, and the new Redistribution
Act of 1885 paved the way for a further reorganization of local
matters by the Local Government Act of 1888, followed by that of
1894. In London, which required separate treatment, a similar
process had been going on. The Metropolis Management Act of
1855 established (outside the city) two classes of parishes the
first class with vestries of their own, the second class grouped
under district boards elected by the component vestries; and the
Metropolitan Board of Works (abolished in 1888), elected by the
vestries and the district boards, was made the central authority.
In 1867 the Metropolitan Asylums Board took over its
work from the metropolitan boards of guardians. See further
CHARITY AND CHARITIES, PUBLIC HEALTH. EDUCATION, JUSTICE
OF THE PEACE, VESTRY, &c.
The system of local government now existing in England (see
also the article LOCAL GOVERNMENT) may be said to have been
founded in 1888, when the Local Government Act of that year
was passed. Since then the entire system of the government
of districts and parishes has been reorganized with due regard
to the preceding legislation. The largest area of local govern-
ment is the county; next to that the sanitary district, urban
or rural, including under this head municipal boroughs, all of
which are urban districts. The parish is, speaking generally,
the smallest area, though, as will hereafter be seen, part of a
parish may be a separate area for certain purposes; and there
may be united districts or parishes for certain purposes. It will
be convenient to follow this order in the present article. But
before doing so, it should be pointed out that all local bodies
in England are to some extent subject to the control of central
authorities, such as the privy council, the home office, the Board
of Agriculture, the Board of Trade, the Board of Education or
the Local Government Board.
The Administrative County. The administrative county in-
cludes all places within its area, with two important exceptions.
The first of these consists of the county borough. The county
The second is the quarter sessions borough, which tad the
forms part of the county for certain specified purposes mu ty .,
only. But the county includes all other places, such
as liberties and franchises, which before 1888 were exempt from
contribution to county rate. For each administrative county
a county council is elected. For purposes of election the entire
county is divided into divisions corresponding to the wards
of a municipal borough, and one councillor is elected for each
electoral division.
The electors are the county electors, i.e. in a borough the
persons enrolled as burgesses, and in the rest of the county the
persons who are registered as county electors, i.e.
those persons who possess in a county the same Couai y
...... , . , council
qualification as burgesses must have m a borough, elections.
and are registered.
The qualification of a burgess or county elector is substantially
the occupation of rated property within the borough or county,
residence during a qualifying period of twelve months within the
borough or county, and payment of rates for the qualifying property.
A person so qualified is entitled to be enrolled as a burgess, or
registered as a county elector (as the case may be), unless he is
alien, has during the qualifying period received union or parochial
relief or other alms, or is disentitled under some act of parliament
such as the Corrupt Practices Act, the Felony Act, &c. The lists
of burgesses and county electors are prepared annually by the
overseers of each parish in the borough or county, and are revised
by the revising barrister at courts holden by him for the purpose in
September or October of each year. When revised they are sent to
the town clerk of the borough, or to the clerk of the peace of the
county, as the case may be, by whom they are printed. The lists
are conclusive of the right to vote at an election, although on election
petition involving a scrutiny the vote of a person disqualified by
law may be struck off, notwithstanding the inclusion of his name
in a list of voters.
The qualification of a county councillor is similar to that required
of a councillor in a municipal borough, with some modifications.
A person may be qualified in any one of the following ways: viz.
by being (i) enrolled as a county elector, and possessed of a property
qualification consisting of the possession of real or personal property
to the amount of 1000 in a county having four or more divisions,
or of 500 in any other county, or the being rated to the poor rate
on an annual value of 30 in a county having four or more divisions,
or of 15 in any other county; (2) enrolled in the non-resident list,
and possessed of the same property qualification (the non-resident
list contains the names of persons who are qualified for enrolment in
all respects save residence in the county or within 7 m. thereof, and
are actually resident beyond the 7 m. and within 15 m.); (3) entitled
to elect to the office of county councillor (for this qualification no
property qualification is required, but the office of a councillor elected
on this qualification only becomes vacant if for six months he ceases
to reside within the county); (4) a peer owning property in the
county; (5) registered as a parliamentary voter in respect of the
ownership of property in the county. Clerks in holy orders and
ministers of religion are not disqualified as they are for being borough
councillors, but in other respects the persons disqualified to be
elected for a county are the same as those disqualified to be elected
for a borough. Such disqualifications include the holding of any
office or place of profit under the council other than the office of
chairman, and the being concerned or interested in any contract or
c
f F
.*
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i on
1
V
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Ll.nf..
Aber>
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/
rthen
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ENGLAND & WALES
Section V.
Scale, 1:1,000,000
_ I lo 1 5 > ij y j5 40 Mile*
ftf tMlmamtit* > <*cf** I.
f\ Lofl^iiuoc ivflflc 5 ^* Of mwich 4 Jo
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.
Ufracomb
Burnhan
ConfinuatMMi South. Section 6
LOCAL GOVERNMENT]
ENGLAND
429
employment with, by or on behalf of the council. Women, other
than married women, are eligible.
County councillors are elected for a terra of three years, and at
the end of that time they retire together. The ordinary day of
election is the 8th March, or some day between the 1st and 8th
March fixed by the council. Candidates are nominated in writing
by a nomination paper signed by a proposer and seconder, ana
subscribed by eight other assenting county ejectors of the division;
and in the event of there being more valid nominations than vacancies
a poll has to be taken in the manner prescribed by the Ballot Act
1872. Corrupt and illegal practices at the election are forbidden
by a statute passed in the year 1804, which imposes heavy penalties
and disqualifications for the offences which it creates. These
offences include not only treating, undue influence, bribery and
personation, but certain others, of which the following are the chief.
Payment on account of the conveyance of electors to or from the
poll; payment for any committee room in excess of a prescribed
number: the incurring of expenses in and about the election beyond
a certain maximum; employing, for the conveyance of electors
to or from the poll, hackney carriages or carriages kept for hire;
payments for bands, flags, cockades, &c. ; employing for payment
persons at the election beyond the prescribed number; printing and
publishing bills, placards or posters which do not disclose the name
and address of the printer or publisher; using as committee rooms or
for meetings any licensed premises, or any premises where food or
drink is ordinarily sold for consumption on the premises, or any club
premises where intoxicating liquor is supplied to members. In the
event of an illegal practice, payment, employment or hiring, com-
mitted or done inadvertently, relief may be given by the High Court,
or by an election court, if the validity of the election is questioned
on petition ; but unless such relief is given (and it will be observed
that it cannot be given for a corrupt as distinguished from an illegal
practice), an infringement of the act may void the election altogether.
The validity of the election may be questioned by election petition.
Indeed, this is the only method when it is sought to set aside the
election on any of the usual grounds, such as corrupt or illegal
practices, or the disqualification of the candidate at the date of
election. Election petitions against county councillors and members
of other local bodies (borough councillors, urban and rural district
councillors, members of school boards and boards of guardians) are
classed together as municipal election petitions, and are heard in the
same way, by a commissioner who must be a barrister of not less
than fifteen yean' standing. The petition is tried in open court at
some place within the county, the expenses of the court being pro-
vided in the first instance by the Treasury, and repaid out of the
county rates, except in so far as the court may order them to be paid
by either of the parties. If a candidate is unseated a casual vacancy
is created which has to be filled by a new election. A county
councillor is required to accept office by making and subscribing a
declaration in tne prescribed form that he will duly and faithfully
perform the duties of the office, and that he possesses the necessary
qualification. The declaration may be made at any time within
three months after notice of election. If the councillor does not
make it within that time, he is liable to a fine the amount of which,
if not determined by bye-law of the council, is 25 in the case of an
alderman or councillor, and 50 in the case of the chairman. Exemp-
tion may, however, be claimed on the ground of age, physical or
mental incapacity, previous service, or payment of the fine within
five years, or on the ground that the claimant was nominated without
his consent. If during his term of office a member of the council
becomes bankrupt, or compounds with his creditors, or is (except in
case of illness) continuously absent from the county, being chairman
for more than two months, or being alderman or councillor for more
than six months, his office becomes vacant by declaration of the
council. In the case of disqualification by absence, the same fines
are payable as upon non-acceptance of office, and the same liability
arises on resignation. Acting without making the declaration, or
without being qualified at the time of making the declaration, or
after ceasing to be qualified, or after becoming disqualified, involves
liability to a fine not exceeding 50, recoverable by action.
The councillors who have been elected come into office on the
8th March in the year of election. The first quarterly meeting of
t the newly-elected council is held on the i6tn or on such
other day within ten days after the 8th as the county
council may fix. The first business at that meeting is
the election of the chairman, whose office corresponds to that of the
mayor in a borough. He is elected for the ensuing year, and holds
office until his successor has accepted office. The chairman must
be a fit person, elected by the council from their own body or from
persons Qualified to be councillors. He may receive such remunera-
tion as the council think reasonable. He is by virtue of his office
a justice of the peace for the county. Having elected the chair-
man, the meeting proceeds to the election of aldermen, whose
number is one-third of the number of councillors, except in London,
where the number is one-sixth. An alderman must be a councillor
or a person qualified to be a councillor. If a councillor is elected
he vacates bis office of councillor, and thus creates a casual vacancy
in the council. In every third year one-half of the whole number
of aldermen go out of office, and their places are filled by election,
which is conducted by means of voting papers. It will be observed,
therefore, that while a county councillor holds office for three years,
a county alderman holds office for six. The council may also appoint
a vice-chairman who holds office during the term of office of the
chairman; in London the council have power to appoint a paid
deputy chairman.
It may be convenient at this point to refer to the officers of the
county council. Of these, the chief are the clerk, the treasurer,
and the surveyor. Before 1888 the clerk of the peace n m~
was appointed in a county by the custos rotulorum. omn.
He held office for life during good conduct, and had power to act by
a sufficient deputy. Under the act of 1888 existing clerks of the
peace became clerks of the councils of their counties, holding office
by the same tenure as formerly, except in the county of London,
where the offices were separated. Thereafter a new appointment to
the offices of clerk of the peace and clerk of the county council
was_to be made by the standing joint-committee, at whose pleasure
he is to hold office. The same committee appoint the deputy-
clerk, and fix the salaries of both officers. The clerk of the peace
was formerly paid by fees which were fixed bv quarter sessions,
but he is mm- generally, if not in every case, paidoy salary, the fees
received by him being paid into the county fund. The county council
may also employ such other officers and servants as they may think
necessary.
Subject to a few special provisions in the Local Government Act
of 1888, the business of the county council is regulated by the pro-
visions laid down in the Municipal Corporations Act _
1882, with regard to borough councils. There are four """"***
quarterly meetings in every year, the dates of which may be fixed
by the council, with the exception of that which must be held on
the i6th March or some day within ten days after the 8th of March
as already noticed when treating of elections. Meetings are con-
vened by notices sent to members stating the time and place of
the meeting and the business to be transacted. The chairman, or
in his absence the vice-chairman, or in the absence of both an
alderman or councillor appointed by the meeting, presides. All
questions are determined by the votes of the majority of those
present and voting, and in case of equality of votes the chairman
has a casting vote. Minutes of the proceedings are taken, and if
signed by the chairman at the same or the next meeting of the
council are evidence of the proceedings. In all other respects the
business of the council is regulated by standing orders which the
council are authorized to make. Very full power is given to appoint
committees, which may be either general or special, and to them
may be delegated, with or without restrictions or conditions, any
of their powers or duties except that of raising money by rate or
loan. Power is also given to appoint joint-committees with other
county councils in matters in which the two councils are jointly
interested, but a joint-committee so appointed must not be con-
founded with the standing joint-committee of the county council
and the quarter sessions, which is a distinct statutory body and is
elsewhere referred to. The finance committee is also a body with
distinct duties.
In order to appreciate some of the points relating to the finance
of a county council, it is necessary to indicate the relations
between an administrative county and the boroughs
which are locally situated within it. The act of 1888 *'*<> of
created a new division of boroughs into three classes;
of these the first is the county borough. A certain
number of boroughs which either had a population of not less
than 50,000, or were counties of themselves, were made counties
independent of the county council and free from the payment
of county rate. In such boroughs the borough council have,
in addition to their powers under the Municipal Corporations
Act 1882, all the powers of a county council under the Local
Government Act. They are independent of the county council,
and their only relation is that in some instances they pay a
contribution to the county, e.g. for the cost of assizes where
there is no separate assize for the borough. The boroughs thus
constituted county boroughs enumerated in the schedule to the
Local Government Act 1888 numbered sixty-one, but additional
ones are created from time to time.
The larger quarter sessions boroughs, i.e. those which had,
according to the census of 1881, a population exceeding 10,000,
form part of the county, and are subject to the control of the
county council, but only for certain special purposes. The
reason for this is that while in counties the powers and duties
under various acts were entrusted to the county authority, in
boroughs they were exercised by the borough councils. In the
class of boroughs now under consideration these powers and
duties are retained by the borough council; the county council
exercise no jurisdiction within the borough in respect of them,
and the borough is not rated in respect of them to the county
430
ENGLAND
[LOCAL GOVERNMENT
rate. The acts referred to include those relating to the diseases
of animals, destructive insects, explosives, fish conservancy,
gas meters, margarine, police, reformatory and industrial schools,
riot (damages), sale of food and drugs, weights and measures.
But for certain purposes these boroughs are part of the county
and rateable to county rate, e.g. main roads, cost of assizes and
sessions, and in certain cases pauper lunatics. The county
councillors elected for one of these boroughs may not vote on
any matter involving expenditure on account of which the
borough is not assessed to county rate.
The third class of boroughs comprises those which have a
separate court of quarter sessions, but had according to the
census of 1881 a population of less than 10,000. All such
boroughs form part of the county for the purposes of pauper
lunatics, analyses, reformatory and industrial schools, fish
conservancy, explosives, and, of course, the purposes for which
the larger quarter sessions boroughs also form part of the county,
such as main roads, and are assessed to county rate accordingly.
And in a borough, whether a quarter sessions borough or not,
which had in 1881 a population of less than 10,000, all the powers
which the borough council formerly possessed as to police,
analysts, diseases of animals, gas meters, and weights and
measures cease and are transferred to the county council, the
boroughs becoming in fact part of the area of the county for
these purposes.
It will be seen, therefore, that for some purposes, called in the
act general county purposes, the entire county, including all
boroughs other than county boroughs, is assessed to the county
rate; while for others, called special county purposes, certain
boroughs are now assessed. This explanation is necessary in
order to appreciate what has now to be said about county finance.
But before leaving the consideration of the area of the county
it may be added that all liberties and franchises are now merged
in the county and subject to the jurisdiction of the county
council.
The county council is a body corporate with power to hold
lands. Its revenues are derived from various sources which
Fin W ^' P resen tly be mentioned, but all receipts have to
be carried to the county fund, either to the general
county account if applicable to general county purposes, or
to the special county account if applicable to special county
purposes. The county council may, with the consent of the
Local Government Board, borrow money on the security of the
county fund or any of its revenues, for consolidating the debts
of the county; purchasing land or buildings; any permanent
work or other thing, the cost of which ought to be spread over
a term of years; making advances in aid of the emigration or
colonization of inhabitants of the county; and any purpose for
which quarter sessions or the county council are authorized by
any act to borrow. If, however, the total debt of the council
will, with the amount proposed to be borrowed, exceed one-
tenth of the annual rateable value of the property in the county,
the money cannot be borrowed unless under a provisional order
made by the Local Government Board and confirmed by parlia-
ment. The period for which a loan is made is fixed by the county
council with the consent of the Local Government Board, but.
may not exceed thirty years, and the mode of repayment may
be by equal yearly or half-yearly instalments of principal or of
principal and interest combined, or by means of a sinking fund
invested and applied in accordance with the Local Government
Acts. The loans authorized may be raised by debentures or
annuity certificates under these acts, or by the issue of county
stock, and in some cases by mortgage.
The county council must appoint a finance committee for regu-
lating and controlling the finance of the county, and the council
cannot make any order for the payment of money put of the county
fund save on the recommendation of that committee. Moreover,
the order for payment of any sum must be made in pursuance of an
order of the council signed by three members of the finance com-
mittee present at the meeting of the council, and countersigned
by the clerk. The order is directed to the county treasurer, by whom
authorized payments are then made.
The accounts of the receipts and expenditure of the county
council are made up for the twelve months ending the 3ist March
in each year, and are audited by a district auditor. The form in
which the accounts must be made up is prescribed by the Local
Government Board. The auditor is a district auditor appointed
by the Local Government Board under the District Auditors Act
1879, and in respect of the audit the council is charged with a
stamp duty, the amount of which depends on the total of the ex-
penditure comprised in the financial statement. Before each audit
the auditor gives notice of the time and place appointed, and the
council publish the appointment by advertisement. A copy of
the accounts has to be deposited for public inspection for seven
days before the audit. The auditor has the fullest powers of in-
vestigation ; he may require the production of any books or papers,
and he may require the attendance before him of any person account-
able. Any owner of property or ratepayer may attend the audit
and object to the accounts, and either on such objection or on his
own motion the auditor may disallow any payment and surcharge
the amount on the persons who made or authorized it. Against
any allowance or surcharge appeal lies to the High Court if the
question involved is one of law, or to the Local Government Board,
who have jurisdiction to remit a surcharge if, in the circumstances,
it appears to them to be fair and equitable to do so. It will be seen
that this is really an effective audit.
The sources of revenue of the council are the exchequer contribu-
tion, income from property and fees, and rates. Before 1888 large
grants of money had been made annually to local
authorities in aid of local taxation. Such grants repre-
sented a contribution out of taxation for the most part m ',..
arising out of property other than real property, while co
local taxation fell on real property alone. By the act of 1888 it
was provided that for the future such annual grants should cease,
and that other payments should be made instead thereof. The
commissioners of Inland Revenue pay into the Bank of England, to
an account called " the local taxation account," the sums ascertained
to be the proceeds of the duties collected by them in each county
on what are called local taxation licences, which include licences
for the sale of intoxicating liquor, licences on dogs, guns, establish-
ment licences, &c. The amount so ascertained to have been collected
in each county is paid under direction of the Local Government
Board to the council of that county. The commissioners of Inland
Revenue also pay into the same account a sum equal to lj%
on the net value of personal property in respect of which estate
duty is paid. Under the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act
1890, certain duties imposed on spirits and beer (often referred to as
" whisky money ") are also to be paid to " the local taxation account."
The sums so paid in respect of the duties last above mentioned,
and in respect of the estate duty and spirits and beer additional
duties, are distributed among the several counties in proportion to
the share which the Local Government Board certify to have been
received by each county during the financial year ending the 3 1st
March 1888, out of the grants theretofore made out of the exchequer
in aid of local rates. The payments so made out of " the local
taxation account " to a county council are paid to the county fund,
and carried to a separate account called " the Exchequer contribution
account." The money standing to the credit of this account is
applied : (i.) in paying any costs incurred in respect thereof or other-
wise chargeable thereon ; (ii.) in payment of the sums required by the
Local Government Act 1888 to be paid in substitution for locaj
grants; (iii.) in payment of the new grant to be made by the county
council in respect of the costs of union officers; and (iv.) in re-
paying to " the general county account " of the county fund the
costs on account of general county purposes for which the whole
area of the county (including boroughs other than county boroughs)
is liable to be assessed to county contribution. Elaborate provision
is made for the distribution of the surplus (if any), with a view to
securing a due share being paid to the quarter sessions boroughs.
The payments which the county council have to make in substitu-
tion for the local grants formerly made out of Imperial funds include
payments for or towards the remuneration of the teachers in poor-
law schools and public vaccinators; school fees paid for children
sent from a workhouse to a public elementary school ; half of the
salaries of the medical officer of health and the inspector of nuisances
of district councils; the remuneration of registrars for births and
deaths; the maintenance of pauper lunatics ; half of the cost of the
pay and clothing of the police of the county, and of each borough
maintaining a separate police force. In addition to the grants above
mentioned, the county council is required to grant to the guardians
of every poor-law union wholly or partly in their county an annual
sum for the costs of the officers of the union and of district schools to
which the union contributes. Another source is the income of any
property belonging to the council, but the amount of this is usually
small. The third source of revenue consists of the fees received by
the different officers of the county councils or of the joint-committee.
For example, fees received by the clerk of the peace, inspectors of
weights and measures, and the like. These fees are paid into the
county fund, and carried either to " the general county account " or,
if they have been received in respect of some matter for which part
only of the county is assessed, then to the special account to which
the rates levied for that purpose are carried. The remaining source
of income of a county council is the county rate, the manner of
levying which is hereafter stated.
T3
LOCAL GOVERNMENT]
ENGLAND
431
Of the powers and duties of county councils, it may be con-
\cnient to treat of these first, in so far as they are transferred
to or conferred on them by the Local Government
Act 1888, under which they were created, and after-
wards in so far as they have been conferred by sub-
sequent legislation. Before the passing of the Local
Government Act 1888, the only form of county govern-
ment in England was that of the justices in quarter
sessions (</..). Quarter sessions were originally' a judicial body,
but being the only body having jurisdiction over the county as
a whole, certain powers were conferred and certain duties imposed
upon them with reference to various matters of county govern-
ment from time to time. The principal object of the act of 1888
was to transfer these powers and duties from the quarter sessions
to the new representative body the county council; and it
may be said that substantially the whole of the administrative
business of quarter sessions was thus transferred.
The subjects of such transfer include (i.) the making, assessing
and levying of county, police, hundred and all rates, and the applica-
tion and expenditure thereof, and the making of orders for the
payment of sums payable out of any such rate, or out of the county
dock or county fund, and the preparation and revision of the basis
or standard for the county rate. With regard to the county rate,
a few words of description may be sufficient here. The council
appoint a committee called a county rate committee, who from
time to time prepare a basis or standard for county rate, that is to
say, they fix the amount at which each parish in the county shall
contribute its quota to the county rate. As a general rule the poor-
law valuations are followed, but this is not universally the case,
some county councils adopting the assessment to income tax,
schedule A, and others forming an independent valuation of their
own. The overseen of any parish aggrieved by the basis may
appeal against it to quarter sessions, and it is to be noticed that
this appeal is not interfered with, the transfer of the duties of
i relating only to administrative and not to judicial business,
a contribution is required from county rate, the county
i the amount payable by each parish .according to the
justice
When
previously made, ana send their precept to the guardians of
the unions comprising the several parishes in the county, the
guardians in their turn requiring the overseers of each parish to
provide the necessary quota of that parish out of the poor rate, and
the sum thus raised goes into the county fund. The police rate is
made for the purpose of defraying the expenses of the county
police. It is made on the same basis as the county rate, and is
levied with it. The hundred rate is seldom made, though in some
counties it may be made for purposes of main roads and bridges
chargeable to the hundred as distinguished from the county at
large; (ii.) the borrowing of money; (in.) the passing of the accounts
of, and the discharge of the county treasurer; (iv.) shire halls,
county halls, assize courts, the judges' lodgings, lock-up houses,
court bouses, justices' rooms, police stations and county buildings,
work* and property; (v.) the licensing under any general act of
home* and other places for music or for dancing, and the granting of
licences under the Racecourse* Licensing Act 1879; (vi.) the pro-
vision, enlargement, maintenance and management and visitation of,
and other dealing with, asylums for pauper lunatics; (vii.) the
establishment and maintenance of, and the contribution to, reforma-
tory and industrial schools; (viii.) bridges and roads repairable with
bridges, and any powers vested by the Highways and Locomotives
Amendment Act 1878 in the county authority. It may be observed
that bridges have always been at common law repairable by the
county, although, with regard to bridges erected since the vear 1805,
these are not to be deemed to be county bridges repairable by the
county unless they have been erected under the direction or to the
satisfaction of the county surveyor. The common-law liability to
repair a bridge extends also to the road or approaches for a distance
of 300 ft. on each side of the bridge. Of the powers vested in the
county authority under the Highway Act 1878, the most important
are those relating to main roads, which arc specially noticed hereafter ;
(ix.) the table* of fees to be taken by and the costs to be allowed
to any inspector, analyst or person holding any office in the county
other than the clerk of the peace and the clerks of the justices;
(x.) the appointment, removal and determination of salaries of the
county treasurer, the county surveyor, the public analysts, any
officer under the Explosives Act 1875, and any officers whose re-
muneration is paid out of the county rate, other than the clerk of the
peace and the clerks of the justices; (xi.) the salary of any coroner
whose salary is payable out of the county rate, the fees, allowances
and disbursements allowed to be paid by any such coroner, and the
division of the county into coroners' districts and the assignments
of such districts; (xii.) the division of the county into polling
districts for the purposes of parliamentary elections, the appointment
of the places of election, the places of holding courts for the revision
of the lists of voters, and the costs of, and other matters to be done
for the registration of parliamentary voters; (xiii.) the execution as
local authority of the acts relating to contagious diseases of animals,
to destructive insects, to fish conservancy, to wild birds, to weights
and measures, and to gas meters, and of the Local Stamp Act 1869;
(xiv.) any matters arising under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886.
Under this act compensation is payable out of the police rate to
any person whose property has been injured, stolen or destroyed by
rioters; (xv.) the registration of rules of scientific societies, the
registration of charitable gifts, the certifying and recording of places
of religious worship, the confirmation and record of the rules of loan
societies. These duties are imposed under various statutes.
In addition to the business of quarter sessions thus transferred,
there was also transferred to the county council certain business of
the justices of the county put of session, that is to say, in petty or
special sessions. This business consists of the licensing of houses
or places for the pubjic performance of stage plays, and the execu-
tion, as local authority, of the Explosives Act 1875. Power was
given by the act to the Local Government Board to provide, by
means of a provisional order, for transferring to county councils
any of the powers and duties of the various central authorities
which have been already referred to; but although such an order
was at one time prepared, it has never been confirmed, and nothing
has been done in that direction.
Apart from the business thus transferred to county councils, the
act itself has conferred further powers or imposed further duties
with reference to a variety of other matters, some of pnit
which musf be noticed. But before passing to them
it is necessary here to call attention to one important subject of
county government which has not been wholly transferred to the
county council, namely, the police. It was matter of considerable
discussion before the passing of the act whether the police should
remain under the control of the justices, or be transferred wholly
to the control of the county counci}. Eventually a middle course
was taken. The powers, duties and liabilities of the quarter sessions
and justices out of session with respect to the county police were
vested in the quarter sessions and the county council jointly, and
are now exercised through the standing joint-committee of the
two bodies. That committee consists of an equal number of members
of the county council and of justices appointed by the quarter
sessions, the number being arranged between the two bodies or
fixed by the secretary of state. The committee arc also charged
with the duties of appointing or removing the clerk of the peace,
and they have jurisdiction in matters relating to justices' clerks,
the provision of accommodation for quarter sessions or justices out
of session, and the like, and their expenses are paid by the county
council out of the county fund. The standing joint-committee
have power to divide their county into police districts, and, when
required by order in council, are obliged to do so. In such a case,
while the general expenditure in respect of the entire police force
is defrayed by the county at large, the local expenditure, i.e. the
cost of pay, clothing and such other expenses as the joint-committee
may direct, is defrayed at the cost of the particular district for
which it is incurred (see also POLICE).
Among the powers and duties given to county councils by the
Local Government Act 1888, the first to be mentioned, following
the order in the act itself, is that of the appointment county
of county coroners. The duties of a coroner are limited conatn
to the holding of inquiries into cases of death from causes
suspected to be other than natural, and to a few miscellaneous
duties of comparatively rare occurrence, such aa the holding of
inquiries relating to treasure trove, and acting instead of the sheriff
on inquiries under the Lands Clauses Act, &c., when that officer is
interested and thereby disabled from holding such inquiries. (For
the history of the office of coroner, which is a very ancient one,
see that title.) The county council may appoint any fit person, not
being a county alderman or county councillor, to fill the office, and
in the case of a county divided into coroners' districts, may assign
him a district. It has been decided, however, that the power hereby
conferred does not extend to the appointment of a coroner for a
liberty or other franchise who would not under the old law have
been appointed by the freeholders. It may be mentioned that
though a coroner may have a district assigned to him, he is never-
theless a coroner for the entire county throughout which he has
jurisdiction.
It was provided by the Highway Act 1878 that every road which
was disturnpiked after the 3 1st of December 1870 should be deemed
to be a mam road, the expenses of the repair and main- .
tenance of which were to be contributed as to one-half
thereof by the justices in quarter sessions, then the
county authority. By another section of the same act it was
provided that where any highway in a county was a medium of
communication between great towns, or a thoroughfare to a railway
station, or otherwise such that it ought to be declared a main road,
the county authority might declare it to be a main road, and there-
upon one-half the expense of its maintenance would fall upon the
county at large. Once a road became a main road it could only cease
to be such by order of the Local Government Board. As already
stated, the powers of the quarter sessions under the act of 1878
were transferred to the county council under the Local Government
Act of 1888, and that body alone has now power to declare a road
to be a main road. But the act of 1888 made some important
432
ENGLAND
[LOCAL GOVERNMENT
p ./ _
"
changes in the law relating to the maintenance of main roads. It
declared that thereafter not only the half but the whole cost of
maintenance should be borne by the county. Provision is made
for the control of main roads in urban districts being retained by
the urban district council. In urban districts where such control
has not been claimed, and in rural districts, the county council may
either maintain the main roads themselves or allow or require the
district councils to do so. The county council must in any case
make a payment towards the costs incurred by the district council,
and if any difference arises as to the amount of it, it has to be settled
by the Local Government Board. In Lancashire the cost of main
roads falls upon the hundred, as distinguished from the county at
large, special provision being made to that effect. Special provision
has also been made for the highways in the Isle of Wight and in
South Wales, where the roads were formerly regulated by special
acts, and not by the ordinary Highway Acts.
The county council have the same power as a sanitary authority to
enforce the provisions of the Rivers Pollution Prevention Acts in
. relation to so much of any stream as passes through
pollution or b y an y part . * t * le ' r countv - Under these acts a
prevention san i ta rv authority is authorized to take proceedings to
' restrain interference with the due flow of a stream or the
pollution of its waters by throwing into it the solid refuse of any
manufactory or quarry, or any rubbish or cinders, or any other waste
or any putrid solid matter. They may also take proceedings in
respect of the pollution of a stream by any solid or liquid sewage
matter. _They have the same powers with respect to manufacturing
and mining pollutions, subject to certain restrictions, one of which is
that proceedings are not to be taken without the consent of the Local
j Government Board. The county council may not only themselves
institute proceedings under the acts, but they may contribute to
the costs of any prosecution under the acts instituted by any other
county or district council. The Local Government Board is further
empowered by provisional order to constitute a joint-committee
representing all the administrative counties through or by which a
river passes, and confer on such committee all or any of the powers
of a sanitary authority under the acts.
A county council has the same power of opposing bills in parlia-
ment and of prosecuting or defending any legal proceedings necessary
for the -promotion or protection of the interests of the
inhabitants of a county as are conferred on the council
ji| f a municipal borough by the Borough Funds Act 1872,
costs. with this difference, thatin order to enable them to oppose
a bill in parliament at the cost of the county rate, it is not
necessary to obtain the consent of the owners and ratepayers within
the county. The power thus conferred is limited to opposing bills.
The council are not authorized to promote any bill, and although
they frequently do so, they incur the risk that if the bill should not
pass the members of the council will be surcharged personally with
the costs incurred if they attempt to charge them to the county rate.
Of course if the bill passes, it usually contains a clause enabling the
costs of promotion to be paid out of the county rate. It must not be
supposed, however, that the county council have no power to
institute or defend legal proceedings or oppose bills save such as is
expressly conferred upon them by the Local Government Act. In
this respect they are in the same position as all other local authorities,
with respect to whom it has been laid down that they may without
any express power in that behalf use the funds at their disposal for
protecting themselves against any attack made upon their existence
as a corporate body or upon any of their powers or privileges.
The county council have also the same powers as a borough council
of making by-laws for the good government of the county and for
By-laws. * ne su PP ress ' on f nuisances not already punishable
under the general law. This power has been largely
acted upon throughout England, and the courts of law have on
several occasions decided that such by-laws should be benevolently
interpreted, and that in matters which directly arise and concern
the people of the county, who have the right to choose those whom
they think best fitted to represent them, such representatives may
be trusted to understand their own requirements. Such by-laws
will therefore be upheld, unless it is clear that they are uncertain,
repugnant to the general law of the land, or manifestly unreasonable.
It may be mentioned that, while by-laws relating to the good govern-
ment of the county have to be confirmed by the secretary of state,
those which relate to the suppression of nuisances have to be con-
firmed by the Local Government Board. Such confirmation, how-
ever, though necessary to enable the council to enforce them, does
not itself confer upon them any validity in point of law.
The county council have power to appoint and pay one or more
medical officers of health, who are not to hold any other appoint-
Medlcal me . nt or engage in private practice without the express
officers. written consent of the council. The council may make
arrangements whereby any district council or councils
may have the services of the county medical officer on payment of
a contribution towards his salary, and while such arrangement
is in force the duty of the district council to appoint a medical
officer is to be deemed to have been satisfied. Every medical officer,
whether of a county or district, must now be legally qualified for
the practice of medicine, surgery and midwifery. Besides this, in
the case of a county, or of any district or combination of districts of
which the population exceeds 50,000, the medical officer must also
have a diploma in public health, unless he has during the three
consecutive years before 1892 been medical officer of a district or
combination having a population of more than 20,000, or has before
the passing of the act been for three years a medical officer or inspector
of the Local Government Board.
The only other powers and duties of a county council arising
under the Local Government Act itself which it is necessary to
notice are those relating to alterations of local areas. ft
It may be convenient here to state that certain altera- *",
tions of areas can only be effected through the medium J!ff~
of the Local Government Board after local inquiry.
These cases include the alteration of the boundary of any county or
borough, the union of a county borough with a county, the union
of any counties or boroughs or the division of any county, the
making of a borough into a county borough. In these cases the
order of the Local Government Board is provisional only, and must
be confirmed by parliament. The powers of a county council to
make orders for the alteration of local areas are as follows: When
a county council is satisfied that a prima facie case is made out as
respects any county district not a borough, or as respects any
parish, for a proposal for all or any of the things hereafter mentioned,
they may hold a local inquiry after giving such notice in the locality
and to such public departments as may be prescribed from time to
time by the orders of the Local Government Board. The things
referred to include the alteration of the boundary of the district
or parish ; the division or union thereof with any other district or
districts, parish or parishes ; the conversion of a rural district or part
thereof into an urban district or vice versa. In these cases, after the
local inquiry above referred to has been held, the county council,
being satisfied that the proposal is desirable, may make an order for
the same accordingly. The order has to be submitted to the Local
Government Board, and that board must hold a local inquiry in
order to determine whether the order should be confirmed or not, if
the council of any district affected by it, or one-sixth of the total
number of electors in the district or parish to which it relates, petition
against it. The Local Government Board have power to modify the
terms of the order whether it is petitioned against or not, but if
there is no petition, they are bound to confirm, subject only to such
modifications. Very large powers are conferred upon county councils
for the purpose of giving full effect to orders made by them under
these provisions. A considerable extension of the same powers
was made by the Local Government Act 1894, which practically
required every council to take into consideration the areas of sanitary
districts and parishes within the entire administrative county, and
to see that a parish did not extend into more than one sanitary
district; to provide for the division of a district which did extend
into more than one district into separate parishes, so that for the
future the parish should not be in more than one county district;
and to provide for every parish and rural sanitary district being
within one county. An enormous number of orders under the act of
1894 was made by county councils, and, speaking generally, it will
now be found that no parish extends into more than one county or
county district. Other powers and duties of the county council under
the act of 1894 will be noticed hereafter.
Of the statutes affecting county councils passed subsequent
to 1888 mention need only be made of the chief.
Previous to the Education Act 1902, county councils had certain
optional powers under the Technical Instruction Acts to supply or
aid the supply of technical or manual instruction. Their Baucat i on
duties in respect to education were, however, much
enlarged by the act of 1902. That act abolished the old school boards
and school attendance committees, and substituted a single authority
for all kinds of schools and for all kinds of education. The county
council or the council of a county borough is now in every case the
local education authority, except that non-county boroughs with a
population of over 10,000, and urban districts with a population of
over 20,000, may be the local education authorities for elementary
education only, but they may relinquish their powers in favour of the
county council. For higher education county councils and county
boroughs are the sole education authorities, except that non-county
boroughs and urban councils are given a concurrent power of levying
a rate for higher education not exceeding id. in the . Under the
act, an education committee must be established by all authorities.
The majority of the members of the committee are appointed by
the council, usually out of their own body, and the remainder are
appointed by the council on the nomination or recommendation
of other bodies. Some of the members of the committee must be
women. All matters relating to the exercise of the powers of the
education authority (except those of rating and borrowing) must be
referred to the committee, and before exercising any of their powers
the council must (except in cases of emergency) receive and consider
the report of the education committee with respect to the matter in
question. As to higher education the local education authority must
consider the educational needs of their area and take such steps as
seem to them desirable, after consultation with the Board of Educa-
tion, to supply or aid the supply of education other than elementary,
and to promote the general co-ordination of all forms of education.
For this purpose they are authorized to levy a rate not exceeding 2d.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT]
ENGLAND
433
in the . except with the consent of the Local Government Board.
They must also devote to the same purpose the sums received by
them in respect of the residue of the English share of the local
taxation (customs and excise) duties already referred to. See further
EDUCATION and TECHNICAL EDUCATION.
I'nder the Midwives Act 1902. every council of a county or county
borough is the local supervising authority over midwives within its
area. The duty of the local supervising authority is to
exercise general supervision over all midwives practising
within their area in accordance with rules laid down in the act;'
to investigate charges of malpractices, negligence or misconduct on
the part of a midwife, and if a prima facie case be established, to
report it to the Central Midwives Board; to suspend a midwife
from practice if necessary to prevent the spread of infection; to
report to the central board the name of any midwife convicted of
an offence; once a year (in January) to supply the central board
with the names ana addresses of all midwives practising within
their area and to keep a roll of the names, accessible at all reasonable
times for public inspection; to report at once the death of any
midwife or change in name and address. The local supervising
authority may delegate their powers to a committee appointed by
them, women being eligible to serve on it. A county council may
delegate its powers under the act to a district council.
Part of toe business transferred from quarter sessions to the
council was that which related to pauper lunatics, but the whole
,___,!_ subject of lunacy was consolidated by an act of the year
1890, which again has been amended by a later act. The
councils of all administrative counties and county boroughs and the
councils of a few specified quarter sessions boroughs, which before
1890 were independent areas for purposes of the Lunacy Acts, are
local authorities for the purposes of the Lunacy Acts, and each of
them is under an obligation to provide asylum accommodation for
pauper lunatics. This accommodation may be provided by one
council or by a combination of two or more, and such council or
combination may provide one or more asylums. The county council
exercise their powers through a visiting committee, consisting of not
less than seven members, or, in the case of a combination, of a number
of members appointed by each council in agreed proportions. In
the case of a combination the expenses are defrayed by the several
councils in such proportion as they may agree upon, and the pro-
portion may be fixed with reference to either the accommodation
required by each council or the population of the district. A county
borough may also, instead of providing an asylum of its own, contract
with the visiting committee of any asylum to receive the pauper
lunatics from the borough. Private patients may be accommodated
in the asylums provided by a county council, and received upon terms
fixed by the visiting committee. The expenses of lunatic asylums
are defrayed in the following manner: The guardians from whose
union a lunatic is sent have to pay a fixed weekly sum, which may
not exceed 148. a week. A larger charge is made for lunatics received
from unions outside the county, as these do not, of course, contribute
anything towards the provision or up- keep of the asylum itself.
In addition to the payments by guardians, there is a contribution
of 4*. a week from " the exchequer contribution account " already
mentioned, and the remaining expenses are defrayed out of the
county rate.
I 'nder the Allotments Acts 1887 to 1997, it is the duty of a county
council to ascertain the extent to which there is a demand for
,. allotments in the urban districts and parishes in the county,
or would be a demand if suitable land were available, and
the extent to which it is reasonably practicable, having
regard to the provisions of the acts, to satisfy any such demand,
and to co-operate with authorities, associations or persons best
qualified to assist, and to take such steps as may be necessary. The
powers of the Local Government Board under the Allotments Acts
were transferred by the act of 1907 to the Board of Agriculture and
Fisheries, and by the same act the powers and duties of rural district
councils were transferred to parish councils. The county council
under these acts has compulsory powers of purchase or hire if they
are unable to acquire land by agreement and on reasonable terms.
If an objection is made to an order for compulsory purchase or hire,
the order will not be confirmed by the Board of Agriculture until
after a local inquiry has been held. If the Board of Agriculture is
satisfied, after holding a local inquiry, that a county council have
failed to fulfil their obligations as to allotments, the board may
transfer all and any of the powers of the county council to the Small
Holdings Commissioners.
By the Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1907, Small Holdings
Commissioners are appointed by the Board of Agriculture to ascertain
the extent of the demand for small holdings, and confer
with county councils as to how best to provide them.
Local authorities are required to furnish information and
K've assistance to the commissioners, who report to the board.
the board, after considering the report, consider it desirable,
they require the county council concerned to prepare a scheme for
the provision of small holdings; if the county council decline to
prepare a scheme, the board may direct the commissioners to do so.
A county council may also prepare a scheme on its own initiative.
When a scheme has been confirmed, the county council must carry
out the obligations imposed on it within a prescribed time; if they
make default the board may direct the commissioners to assume
all the powers of the county council, and the county council must
repay to the board the expenses the commissioners may incur. A
county council may delegate, by arrangement, to the council of any
borough or urban district in the county their powers in respect of
the act. A small holding is defined by the act as one which exceeds
I acre, but must not exceed 50 acres or 50 annual value. Every
county council must establish a small holdings and allotments coni-
inittco. to which must be referred all matters relating to the exercise
and performance by the council of their powers and duties as to small
holdings and allotments.
Under the Isolation Hospitals Acts 1893 and 1901, a county council
may provide for the establishment of isolation hospitals for the
reception of patients suffering from infectious diseases on .
the application of any local authority within the county,
or on the report of the medical officer of the county that hospital
accommodation is necessary and has not been provided, or it may
take over hospitals already provided by a local authority. The
council by their order constitute a hospital district and form a com-
mittee for its administration. The committee have power to purchase
land, erect a hospital, provide all necessary appliances, and generally
administer a hospital for the purposes above mentioned.
The powers and duties of a county council under the Local Govern-
ment Act 1894 are numerous and varied, and the chief of them are
mentioned hereafter in connexion with parish councils. _ . .
The county council may establish a parish council in a BcWj
parish which has a population of less than 300, and may
group small parishes under a common parish council ; in every case
they fix the number of members of the parish council. They may
authorize the borrowing of money by a parish council, and they may
lend money to a parish council. They may hear complaints by a
parish council that a district council has failed to provide sufficient
sewerage or water-supply, or has failed to enforce the provisions of
the Public Health Acts in their district, and on such complaint they
may transfer to themselves and exercise the powers of the defaulting
council, or they may appoint a person to perform those duties.
They may make orders for the custody and preservation of public
books, writings, papers and documents belonging to a parish. They
may divide a parish into wards for purposes of elections or of parish
meetings. They may authorize district councils to aid persons in
maintaining rights of common. They may, on the petition of a
district council, transfer to themselves the powers of a district council
who have refused or failed to take the necessary proceedings to
assert public rights of way or protect roadside wastes. They may
dispense with the disqualification of a parish or district councillor
arising only by reason of his being a shareholder in a water company
or similar company contracting with the council, and, as has above
been stated, they have large powers of altering the boundaries of
parishes.
Among the powers and duties of quarter sessions transferred to
county councils were those arising under the acts relating --_,
to contagious diseases of animals. These acts were fulmttt
consolidated and amended by a statute of 1894, and the
county council remain the local authority for the execution of that
act in counties.
Under the Light Railways Act 1896 a county council may be
authorized by order of the light railway commissioners to
construct and work or contract for the construction or
working of a lig_ht railway, lend money to a light railway
company, or join any other council in these matters.
Among otner statutes conferring powers or imposing duties
upon county councils, mention may be made of such acts as those
relating to sea fisheries regulation, open spaces, police filial-
superannuation, railway and canal traffic, shop hours, .
weights and measures, fertilizing and feeding stuffs, wild
birds' protection, land transfer, locomotives on highways and the
acquisition of small dwellings. Sufficient has been said to indicate
that the legislature from time to time recognizes the important
position of the county council as an administrative body, and is
continually extending its functions.
The Urban District. A municipal borough is a place which has
been incorporated by royal charter. In the year 1835 the
Municipal Corporations Act was passed, which made
provision for the constitution and government of m unictp*i
certain boroughs which were enumerated in a schedule, borough
That act was from time to time amended, until in 1882 "<"*
by an act of that year the whole of the earlier acts were
repealed and consolidated. A few ancient corporations
which were not enumerated in the schedule to the act of 1835
continued to exist after that year, but by an act of 1883 all of
these, save such as should obtain charters before 1886, were
abolished, the result being that all boroughs are now subject to
the act of 1882. A place is still created a borough by royal
charter on the petition of the inhabitants, and when that is done
the provisions of the act of 1882 are applied to it by the charter
itself. The charter also fixes the number of councillors, the
434
ENGLAND
[LOCAL GOVERNMENT
boundaries of the wards (if any), and assigns the number of
councillors to each ward, and provides generally for the time and
manner in which the act of 1882 is first to come into operation.
The charter is supplemented by a scheme which makes provision
for the transfer to the new borough council of the powers and
duties of existing authorities, and generally for the bringing into
operation of the act of 1882. If the scheme is opposed by the
prescribed proportion (one-twentieth) of the owners and rate-
payers of the proposed new borough, it has to be confirmed by
parliament. The governing body in a borough is the council
elected by the burgesses.
The qualification of a burgess has been incidentally mentioned
in connexion with that of a county elector, and need not be further
noticed. A borough councillor must be qualified in the same manner
as a county councillor, and he is disqualified in the same way,
with this addition, that a peer or ownership voter is not qualified
as such, and that a person is disqualified for being a borough coun-
cillor if he is in holy orders or is the regular minister of a Dissenting
congregation. Women, other than married women, are eligible.
Borough councillors are elected for a term of three years, one-third
of the whole number going out of office in each year, and if the
borough is divided into wards, these are so arranged that the number
of councillors for each ward shall be three or a multiple of three. The
ordinary day of election is the 1st of November. At an election for
the whole borough the returning officer is the mayor; at a ward
election he is an alderman assigned for that purpose by the council.
The nomination and election of candidates and the procedure at the
election are the same as have already been described in the case of
the election of county councillors. The law as to corrupt and illegal
practices at the election is also similar, and the election may be
questioned by petition in exactly the same way. A borough coun-
cillor must, within five days after notice of his election, make a
declaration of acceptance of office under a penalty, in the case of an
alderman or councillor of 50, and in the case of a mayor of 100, or
such other sums as the council may by by-law determine. A
councillor may be disqualified in the same way as a county councillor,
by bankruptcy or composition with creditors, or continuous absence
from the borough (except in case of illness). In short it may be said
that as the provisions relating to the election of borough councillors
were merely extended to county councillors by the Local Government
Act of 1888 with a few modifications, these provisions, as already
stated when dealing with county councils, apply generally to the
election of borough councillors. After the annual election on the
1st of November the first quarterly meeting of the council is held
on the gth, and at that meeting the mayor and aldermen are elected.
The election of the mayor and aldermen is again the same as has
already been described in connexion with the election of the chair-
Offlcers. man anc ' aldermen of a county council. The officers of a
borough council are the town clerk and the treasurer,
but the council have power to appoint such other officers as they
think necessary. All these officers receive such remuneration as the
council from time to time think fit, and hold office during pleasure.
The provisions with respect to the transaction of the business of the
council are also the same in the case of a borough as in that of a
county council.
The entire income of the borough council is paid into the borough
fund, and that fund is charged with certain payments, which are
Finance specifically set out in the 5th schedule to the act of 1882.
audit These include the remuneration of the mayor, recorder
and officers of the borough, overseers' expenses, the
expenses of the administration of justice in the borough, the payment
of the borough coroner, police expenses and the like. An order of the
council for the payment of money out of the borough fund must be
signed by three members of the council and countersigned by the
town clerk, and any such order may be removed into the king's bench
division of the High Court of Justice by writ of certiorari, and may be
wholly or partly disallowed or confirmed on the hearing. This is
really the only way in which the validity of a payment by a borough
council can be questioned, for, as will be seen hereafter, the audit
in the borough is not an effective one. The borough fund is derived,
jn the first instance, from the property of the corporation. If the
income from such property is insufficient for the purposes to which it
is applicable, as usually is the case, it has to be supplemented by a
borough rate, which may be a separate rate made by the council
or may be levied through the overseers as part of the poor rate by
means of a precept addressed to them. In the event of the borough
fund being more than sufficient to meet the demands upon it without
recourse to a borough rate, any surplus may be applied in payment
of any expenses of the council as a sanitary authority or in improving
the borough or any part thereof by drainage, enlargement of streets
or otherwise. The borough treasurer is required to make up his
accounts half-yearly, and to submit them, with the necessary
vouchers and papers, to the borough auditors. These auditors are
three in number two of them elected annually by the burgesses.
An elective auditor must be qualified to be a councillor, but may not
be a member of the council. The third auditor is appointed by the
mayor and is called the mayor's auditor. The auditors so appointed
are charged with the duty of auditing the accounts of the treasurer,
but they have no power of disallowance or surcharge, and their audit
is therefore quite ineffective.
Where a borough has not a separate court of quarter sessions, but
has a separate commission of the peace, the justices of the county
in which the borough is situate have a concurrent juris-
diction with the borough justices in all matters arising "j?" , ?"
within the borough. Where, however, the borough has . "!L .
a court of quarter sessions, the county justices have no
jurisdiction within the borough. In all cases, whether sessions
the borough has quarter sessions or a separate commission
or not, the mayor, by virtue of his office, is a justice for the borough,
and continues to be such justice during the year next after he ceases
to be mayor. He takes precedence over all justices in and for the
borough, and is entitled to take the chair at all meetings at which
he is present by virtue of his office of mayor. A separate commission
of the peace may be granted to a borough on the petition of the
council. A borough justice is required to take the oaths of allegiance
and the judicial oaths before acting; he must while acting reside
in or within 7 m. of the borough, or occupy a house, warehouse or
other property in the borough; but he need not be a burgess nor
have the qualification by estate required of a county justice. Where
the borough has a separate commission, the borough justices have
power to appoint a clerk, who is now paid by salary, the fees and
costs pertaining to his office being paid into the borough fund, out
of which his salary is paid. The council may by petition obtain
the appointment of a stipendiary magistrate for the borough. The
crown may also on petition of the council grant a separate court of
quarter sessions for the borough, and in that event a recorder has
to be appointed by the crown. He must be a barrister of not less
than five years' standing, and he holds office during good behaviour;
he receives a yearly salary. The recorder sits as sole judge of the
court of quarter sessions of the borough. He has all the powers of
a court of quarter sessions in a county, including the power to hear
appeals from the borough justices; but to this there are a few
exceptions, notably the power to grant licences for the sale of
intoxicating liquor. The grant of a separate court of quarter
sessions also involves the appointment by the council of a clerk of
the peace for the borough. It should be added that the grant of a
court of quarter sessions to any borough other than a county borough
after the passing of the Local Government Act 1888, does not affect
the powers, duties or liabilities of the county council as regards that
borough, nor exempt the parishes in the borough from being assessed
to county rate for any purposes to which such parishes were previously
liable to be assessed.
When a borough is a county of itself the council appoint a sheriff
on the 9th of November in every year. And where the borough has
a separate court of quarter sessions the council appoint sheriff,
a fit and proper person, not an alderman or councillor, to coroner.
be the borough coroner, who holds office during good
behaviour. If the borough has a civil court the recorder, if there
is one, is judge of it. If there is no recorder, the judge of the court
is an officer of the borough appointed under the charter.
The provisions of the Municipal Corporations Act 1882 relate
chiefly to the constitution of the municipal corporation. It does
not itself confer many powers or impose many duties Power to
upon the council as a body. It does, however, enable a acquire
municipal corporation to acquire corporate land and / ao< /.
buildings, the buildings including a town hall, council
house, justices' room, police stations and cells, sessions house,
judges' lodgings, polling stations and the like. The council may
borrow money for the erection of such buildings; they may acquire
and hold land in mortmain by virtue of their charter, or with the
consent of the Local Government Board. Corporate land cannot
be alienated without the consent of the same board. The council
may convert corporate land, with the approval of the Local Govern-
ment Board, into sites for workmen's dwellings.
Another duty imposed upon a borough council by the act of
1882 is the maintenance of bridges within the borough which are
not repairable by the county in which the borough is Borough
locally situate. It may here be mentioned that a city bridges.
or borough which is a county of itself is liable at common
law to repair all public bridges within its limits. In a borough which
.is not a county of itself the inhabitants are only liable to repair
bridges within the borough by immemorial usage or custom.
Of the other powers possessed by the councifof a borough under
the act of 1882, one of the most important is the power to make
by-laws for the good rule and government of the borough, Bylaws.
and for the prevention and suppression of nuisances not
already punishable in summary manner by virtue of an act in force
throughout the borough. It will be observed that these by-laws are
of two classes. The former do not come into force until the expiration
of forty days after a copy of them has been sent to the secretary of
state, during which forty days the sovereign in council may disallow
any by-law or part thereof. The latter require to be confirmed by the
Local Government Board.
Under the act of 1882 every municipal borough might have its
own separate police force. As has already been stated when dealing
with county councils, boroughs having a population of less than
10,000 according to the census of 1881 can no longer have a
LOCAL GOVERNMENT!
ENGLAND
435
separate police force. But for some time before that year it had
become- the rule not to grant to any new borough with a population
.... of ten than 20,000 a separate police force. The subject of
police i separately treated in the Entydopaedia Brilan-
mua. and it is not Decenary to supplement what is there stated.
Under an act of 1893 the borough police may, in addition to
their ordinary duties, be employed to discharge the duties of a fire
The powers and duties of a borough council in the Municipal
Corporations Act do not arise or exist to any great extent under
r. 4b. that act. In a few cases, those namely of county
trta mm* boroughs, the councils have the powers of county
councils. In the quarter sessions boroughs other than
county boroughs they have some only of these powers.
But in every case the council of the borough have the powers and
duties of an urban district council, and, except where they
derive their authority from local acts, it may be said that their
principal powers and duties consist of those which they exercise or
perform as an urban council. These will now be considered.
Before the year 1848 there was not outside the municipal
boroughs any system of district government in England. It is
true that in some populous places which were not corporate
boroughs local acts of parliament had been passed appointing im-
provement commissioners for the government of these places. In
many boroughs similar acts had been obtained conferring various
powers relating to sanitary matters, streets and highways and
the like. But there was no general system, nor was there, save by
special legislation, any means by which sanitary districts could be
constituted. In the year 1848 the first Public Health Act was
passed. It provided for the formation of local boards in boroughs
and populous places, such places outside boroughs being termed
local government districts. In boroughs the town council were
generally appointed the local board for purposes of the act.
It was not, however, until 1872 that a general system of sanitary
districts was adopted. By the Public Health Act of that year the
whole country was mapped out into urban and rural sanitary
districts, and that system has been maintained until the present
time, with some important changes introduced by the Public
Health Acts 1875 to 1907, and the Local Government Act 1894.
The whole of England and Wales is divided into districts, which
are either urban or rural. Urban districts include boroughs and
places which were formerly under the jurisdiction of local
boards or improvement commissioners. The power to
constitute new urban districts is now conferred upon
county councils, as already stated. There is a concurrent
power in the Local Government Board under the Public
Health Act 1875, but that power is now rarely exercised, and new
urban districts are in practice created only by orders of county
councils made under the Local Government Act 1888, section 57.
Rural districts were first created in 1872. Before that time there
was practically no sanitary authority outside the urban district, for
although the vestry of a parish had in some cases power to make
sewers and had also some other sanitary powers, there was no
authority for such a district as now corresponds to a rural district.
There were, indeed, highway boards and burial boards which had
powers for special purposes, but district authority in the sense in
which it is now understood there was none. Before the year 1894
the rural district consisted of the area of the poor-law union, ex-
clusive of any urban district which might be within it, and. the
guardian* of the poor were the rural sanitary authority. Since
1894 this ha* been changed. By the Local Government Act of
that year the guardians ceased to be the rural sanitary authority.
The union was preserved as the rural sanitary district, with this
Qualification, that if it extended into more than one county it was
divided so that no rural district should extend into more than one
county. Rural district councillors are elected for each parish in-
the rural district, and they become by virtue of their office guardians
of the poor for the union comprising the district, so that there is
now no election of guartiians in a rural district. Guardians are
still elected as such for urban districts, but the rural district council
have ceased to be the same body as the guardians and are now
wholly dutinct. A district councillor, whether urban or rural, holds
office for a term of three yean. One-third of the whole council
retire in each year, the annual elections being held in March, but
there may be a simultaneous retirement of the whole council in
every third year if the county council at the instance of the district
council so order. The qualification and disqualification of district
councillors, whether urban or rural, now depend upon the Local
Government Act 1894. Property qualification is abolished. Any
person may be elected who is either a parochial elector of some
parish within the district or has -during the whole of the twelve
months preceding hi* election resided in the district, and no person
is disqualified by sex or marriage. The electors both in urban and
rural districts are the body called the parochial electors. These
arc practically the persons whose names appear in the parliamentary
register or in the local government register as being entitled to
vote at elections for members of parliament or county or parish
councillors as the case may be. The election takes place subject to
rules made by the Local Government Board, these rules being
largely founded upon adaptations of the Municipal Corporations Act
1882. The election is by ballot on the same lines as those prescribed
for_a municipal election, and the Corrupt Practices Act, the pro-
visions of which have been referred to when dealing with county
councils, applies to the elections of district councils. The provisions
with reference to election petitions, the grounds upon which they
may be presented and the procedure upon them, are the same in
ivery respect as have already been mentioned when dealing with
county councils. It may be convenient here to state that the Local
Government Board has power to unite any number of
districts or parts of districts into what is called a united f?***
district for certain special purposes such as water-supply, *''**
sewerage or the like. This is done by means of a provisional order
made by the board and confirmed by parliament. In such a united
district the governing body is a joint board constituted in manner
provided by the order, and it has under the order such of the powers
of a district council as are necessary for the purposes for which the
united district is created. Thus a joint sewerage board would
generally be invested by the order with all the powers of a district
council relating to the provision and control of sewers and the
disposal of sewage. It may also be convenient here to mention
another special kind of district authority, that is, a
port sanitary authority. It is also constituted by order
of the Local Government Board, and it may include one "*"''"
or more sanitary districts or parts of districts abutting '
upon a port. In this case also the authority consists of such members
and is elected in such manner as the order determines, and it has
such of the powers of an ordinary district council as the order may
confer upon it. These relate for the most part to nuisances and
infectious disease, having special reference to ships. It has been
thought convenient to deal here with district councils, whether
urban or rural, together, but the powers of the former
are much more extensive than those of the latter, and ^V" ra of
as the consideration of the subject proceeds it will be "
necessary to indicate what powers and duties are con- ' ..
ferred or imposed upon urban district councils only. c .
It must be pointed out, however, that when the necessity
arises for conferring upon a rural district council any of the powers
exercisable only by an urban district council, that can be done by
means of an order of the Local Government Board. The necessity
for this provision arises because it sometimes happens that in a
district otherwise rural there are some centres of population, hardly
large enough to be constituted urban districts, which nevertheless
require the same control as an urban district.
A district council may from time to time make regulations with
respect to summoning, notice, place, management and adjournment
of their meetings, and generally with respect to the _ .
transaction and management of their business. Three
members must be present to constitute a quorum. At the "itL,
annual meeting, which is held as soon as convenient after
the 1 5th April in each year, a chairman for the succeeding year has
to be appointed. He presides at all meetings, and in his absence
another member appointed by the meeting takes his place. Ques-
tions are determined by the majority present and voting, the chair-
man having the casting vote. Minutes are taken and, if signed at
the meeting or the next ensuing meeting, are made evidence. The
officers of the council consist of a clerk, a medical officer, a surveyor,
one or more inspectors of nuisances and a treasurer. Of these all but
the medical officer of health and inspectors of nuisances hold office
at pleasure and receive such remuneration as the council may
determine. If the urban district is a borough, the town clerk and
borough treasurer fulfil the same office for purposes of the Public
Health Acts. The salaries of the medical officer of health and
inspectors of nuisances are, as to one moiety thereof, paid out of " the
exchequer contribution account " by the county council, if they are
appointed in accordance with the requirements of the Local Govern-
ment Board as to qualification, appointment, duties, salary and
tenure of office. The orders of the Local Government Board as to
these matters are set out in the Statutory Rules and Orders. District
councils may also employ such other officers and servants as may be
necessary and proper for the fulfilment of their duties. Officers and
servants are prohibited from being concerned or interested in any
bargain or contract made with their council, and from receiving
under cover of their office or employment any fee or reward whatso-
ever other than their proper salaries, wages and allowances, under
penalty of being rendered incapable of holding office under any
district council, and of a pecuniary penalty of 50. There are some
exceptions to this provision somewhat similar to those already
mentioned with respect to the disqualification of members of the
council. It may be mentioned here that by an act, called the Public
Bodies' Corrupt Practices Act 1889, severe penalties are imposed
alike upon members and officers of public bodies for corruption in
office.
436
ENGLAND
[LOCAL GOVERNMENT
A district council may appoint committees consisting wholly or
partly of members of their own body for the exercise of any powers
which in their opinion can properly be exercised by
such committees. Such committees do not, however,
fes< hold office beyond the next annual meeting of the council,
and their acts must be submitted to the council for their approval.
If they are appointed for any purposes of the Public Health or
Highway Acts, the council may authorize them to institute any
proceedings or do any act which the council might have instituted
or done, other than the raising of any loan or the making of any rate
or contract. A rural district council may delegate their entire
powers in any parish to a parochial committee. Such committee
may consist wholly of members of their own body or of members of
the parish council, or partly of members of both. Such a committee
may be subject to any regulations and restrictions imposed upon it
by the rural district council.
In dealing with the powers and duties of district councils it will
be convenient to treat of these first as they arise under the Public
Health Acts, and afterwards as they arise under other
statutes. In so far as such powers and duties are common
to urban and rural district councils alike they will be
referred to as appertaining to district councils. When
reference is made to any power or duty of an urban council it is to
be understood that the rural council have no such power or duty
unless conferred or imposed upon them by order of the Local Govern-
ment Board. And it must be borne in mind that in a borough the
borough council is the urban district council.
The district council are required to cause to be made such sewers as
may be necessary for effectually draining their district. This duty
may be enforced by the Local Government Board on
sewerage (.Qmpfaint made to them that the council have failed in
a ,_. performing it, and in the case of a rural district by the
county council on complaint of the parish council. All
sewers, whether made by the council, by their predecessors, or by
private persons, vest in the district council, that is to say, become
their property, with some exceptions, of which the principal is
sewers made by a person for his own profit. The owner or occupier
of any premises is entitled as of right to cause his drain to be con-
nected with any sewer, on condition only of his giving notice and
complying with the regulations of the council as to the mode in
which the communication is to be made, and subject to the control
of any person appointed by the council to superintend the work.
Moreover, the owner or occupier of premises without the district
has the same right, subject only to such terms and conditions as
may be agreed or, in case of dispute, settled by justices or by arbitra-
tion. If a house does not possess a sufficient drain, the occupier
may be required to provide one, and to cause it to discharge into
a sewer if there is one within 100 ft. of the house, otherwise into a
cesspool, as the council may direct. In the case of new houses, these
may not be built or occupied in an urban district without their being
first provided with sufficient drains as the council may require;
and in an urban district it is forbidden to cause any building to be
newly erected over a sewer without the consent of the council. For
the purpose of sewage disposal a district council may construct any
wofrks and contract for the use or purchase or lease of any land,
buildings, engines, materials or apparatus, and contract to supply
for a period not exceeding twenty-five years any person with sewage.
It may be pointed out here that these expressions are defined by the
act, the effect of the definitions being shortly that a drain is a
conduit for the drainage of one building or of several within the same
curtilage, while a sewer comprises every kind of drain except that
which is covered by the definition of a drain as above stated. The
result has been that district councils frequently find themselves in
the position of being responsible for the repair and condition of
drains which, by reason of haying been laid for more than one house,
are sewers vested in and repairable by them. An attempt was made
to remedy this state of things by the Public Health Amendment
Act 1890, section 19, but the remedy so provided was very partial,
and may be said to be confined to the case where two or more houses
belonging to different owners are drained into a common drain laid
under private land, and ultimately discharging into a sewer in a road
or street.
The district council are charged with the duty of enforcing the
provision of proper sanitary accommodation (water-closets, privies,
_ .. ashpits, &c.) for all dwelling-houses, new or old, and
uy m for factories, and the maintenance of such conveniences
<J(/'n'/oj- m P I iP er condition. The urban council have power to
provide and maintain and make provision for the regu-
lation of urinals, water-closets, earth-closets, privies,
ashpits and other similar conveniences for public accommodation.
In the event of a complaint being made to a district council that any
drain, closet, privy, ashpit or cesspool is a nuisance or injurious to
health, the council may empower their surveyor to enter and examine
the premises, and, if the complaint is well founded, they may require
the owner to do the necessary works. The district council are not
Removal b un d to undertake the removal of house refuse from
nf refute premises, or the cleansing of closets, privies, ashpits and
cesspools. They may, however, undertake these duties,
and, if the Local Government Board require, they must do so. An
urban council and a rural council, if invested with the requisite power
by the Local Government Board, may, and when required by order
of that board must, provide for the proper cleansing of streets, and
may also provide for the proper watering of streets. When they have
undertaken, or are required to perform these duties, a penalty is
imposed upon them for neglect. If they do not undertake these
duties, they may make by-laws imposing on the occupiers of premises
the duty of cleansing footways and pavements, the removal of
house refuse, and the cleansing of earth-closets, privies, ashpits
and cesspools; and an urban council may also make by-laws for
the prevention of nuisances arising from snow, filth, dust, ashes
and rubbish, and For the prevention of the keeping of animals on
any premises so as to be injurious to health. The keeping of swine
in a dwelling-house, or so as to be a nuisance, is made an offence
punishable by a penalty in an urban district, as also is the suffering
of any waste or stagnant water to remain in any cellar, or within
any dwelling-house after notice, and the allowing of the contents
of any closet, privy or cesspool to overflow or soak therefrom.
Provision is also made for enforcing the removal of accumulations
of manure, dung, soil or filth from any premises in an urban district,
and for the periodical removal of manure or other refuse from mews,
stables or other premises.
With regard to water-supply, district councils have extensive
powers. They may provide their district or any part of it with a
supply of water proper and sufficient for public and , .
private purposes, and for this purpose they may con-
struct and maintain waterworks, dig wells, take on
lease or hire any waterworks, purchase waterworks or water, or
right to take or convey water either within or without their district,
and any rights, powers and privileges of any water company, and
contract with any person for the supply of water. They may not,
however, commence to construct waterworks within the limits of
supply of any water company empowered by act of parliament or
provisional order to supply water without giving notice to the
company, and not even then so long as the company are able and
willing to supply the necessary water. Any dispute as to whether
the company are able and willing has to be settled by arbitration.
Where the council do supply water, they have the same powers of
carrying mains under streets or through private lands as they have
with respect to the laying of sewers, as already mentioned. They
can charge water rents which depend upon agreements with con-
sumers, or they may charge water rates assessed on the net annual
value of the premises supplied. It is to be observed that they are
not bound to charge for a supply of water at all, unless they are
required to do so in an urban district by at least ten persons, rated
to the poor rate, or in a parish in a rural district by at least five
persons so rated in the parish. Even then the amount of the rate
is left to the council, any deficiency in the cost of the water, in so
far as it is not defrayed out of water rates or rents, being borne in
an urban district by the genera! district rate, and in a rural district
by the separate sanitary rates made for the parish or contributory
place supplied. For the purpose of enabling them to supply water,
most of the provisions of the Waterworks Clauses Acts are incor-
porated with the Public Health Act, and are made available for the
district council. They are empowered to supply water by measure if
they think fit, and may charge a rent for water-meters. The power
of the district council to supply water is strictly limited to their
own district, but they may, with the sanction of the Local Govern-
ment Board, supply water to the council of an adjoining district on
such terms as may be agreed upon, or as, in case of dispute, may be
settled by arbitration. If any house is without a sufficient supply,
and it appears that a supply can be furnished at a reasonable cost,
as denned in the Public Health Act and the Public Health Water
Act 1878, the owner may be required to provide the supply, and,
if he fails, the council may themselves provide the supply and
charge the owner with the cost. All public sources of water-supply
such as streams, pumps, wells, reservoirs, conduits, aqueducts and
works used for the gratuitous supply of water to the inhabitants of
the district are vested in the council, who may cause all such works
to be maintained and plentifully supplied with pure and wholesome
water for the gratuitous use of the inhabitants, but not for sale by
them. The council may supply water to public baths or wash-
houses, or for trade or manufacturing purposes. In the case of the
former the supply may be gratuitous. In the latter case it is to be
on terms agreed between the parties. The urban council are required
to cause fire-plugs, and all necessary works, machinery and assistance
for securing a supply of water in case of fire, to be provided and
maintained, and for this purpose they may enter into an agreement
with any water company or person. Provision is made for preventing
the pollution of water by gas refuse and enabling a district council^
with the sanction of the attorney-general, to take any proceedings
they may think fit for preventing the pollution of any stream in
their district by sewage. The district council are also empowered
to obtain an order of justices directing the closing of any well, tank
or cistern, public or private, or any public pump the water from
which is likely to be used for drinking or domestic purposes, or for
manufactun'ng drinks for the use of man, if such water is found to be
so polluted as to be injurious to health.
Power is given to prohibit the use as dwellings of any cellars,
vaults or underground rooms built or occupied after 1875, ant ^ with
regard to such cellars as were occupied as dwellings before 1875,
Ml*
LOCAL GOVERNMENT]
the continued occupation of these is aUo forbidden unless tin \
comply with certain stringent requirements as to the height of
the rooms, height of the ceilings above the surface of
the street, open areas in front, effectual drainage, sanitary
***" conveniences appurtenant to the cellars, and the provision
of fireplaces.
District councils are required to keep a register of the common
lodging-house* in their district. No person is allowed to keep a
common lodging-house unless he is registered, and a
house may not be registered until it has been inspected
and approved for the purpose by an officer of the council.
Further, the council may refuse to register a keeper
unless they are satisfied of his character and of his fitness for the
position. The council are empowered to make by-laws for fixing the
number of lodgers and separating the sexes therein, promoting
cleanliness and ventilation, giving of notices and taking precautions
in case of any infectious disease, and generally for the well-ordering
of such bouses. The keepers of common lodging-houses are required
to limewaah their walls and ceilings in the months of April and
October in every year, and if paupers or vagrants are received to
lodge, they may be required to report as to the persons who have
resorted thereto. They must give notice of any infectious disease
to the medical officer of health and to the poor-law relieving officer,
and they must give free access for inspection. There is no definition
of the expression " common lodging-house " in the Public Health
Acts, and at one time the courts decided that shelters for the destitute
kept by charitable persons were not common lodging-houses. That
idea is now exploded, and the acts apply to charitable institutions
which receive persons of the das* ordinarily received into common
lodging-bouses.
By-laws may also be made relating to houses let in lodgings
which are not common lodging-houses. These by-
laws are in practice limited to those inhabited by
the poorer classes, although the act imposes no such
restriction.
The Public Health Act* 1875 to 1907 contain elaborate provisions
for dealing with nuisances. Those which are dealt with summarily
^-_ are thus enumerated: (i) any premises in such a state
as to be a nuisance or injurious to health ; (2) any pool,
ditch, gutter, watercourse, privy, urinal, cesspool, drain or ashpit so
foul or in such a state as to be injurious to health ; (3) any animal so
kept as to be a nuisance or injurious to health ; (4) any accumulation
or deposit which is a nuisance or injurious to health ; (5) any house
or part of a bouse so overcrowded as to be dangerous or injurious to
the health of the inmates, whether or not members of the same
family; (6) any factory, workshop or workplace not already under
the operation of any general act for the regulation of factories or
bakehouse* not kept in a cleanly state or not ventilated in such a
manner a* to render harmless as far as practicable any gases, vapours,
dust or other impurities generated in the course of the work earned on
therein that are a nuisance or injurious to health, or so overcrowded
while work i* carried on as to be dangerous or injurious to the health
of those employed therein ; (7) any fireplace or furnace which does
not as far as practicable consume the smoke arising from the com-
bustible used therein, and which is used for working engines by
steam or in any mill, factory, dye-house, brewery, bakehouse or gas
work, or in any manufacturing or trade process whatsoever; and
(8) any chimney not being the chimney of a private dwelling-house
sending forth black smoke in such quantity as to be a nuisance.
The nuisance* above enumerated are said to be nuisances liable to
be dealt with summarily. It is the duty of every district council
to inspect their district with a view to the discovery of any such
nuisance*. In the event of such discovery by them or of informa-
tion given to them of the existence of any such nuisance, the district
council are required to serve a notice requiring the abatement
of the nuisance on the person by whose act, default or sufferance it
arise* or continues, or if such person cannot be found, on the owner
or occupier of the premises at which the nuisance arises. The notice
must require the abatement of the nuisance within a specified time,
and must prescribe the works which in the opinion of the council are
necessary to be done. If the nuisance arises from the absence or
defective construction of any structural convenience, or if there is no
occupier of the premise*, the notice must be served upon the owner.
If the person who cause* the nuisance cannot be found, and it is clear
that the nuisance doe* not arise or continue by the act, default or
sufferance of the owner or occupier of the premises, the local authority
may themselves abate the nuisance without further order. If the
person on whom the notice i* served objects to give effect to it, he
may be summoned before justices, and the Justices may make an
order upon him to abate the nuisance, or prohibiting the recurrence
of the nuisance if this is likely, and directing the execution of the
necessary works. If the nuisance is such as to render a dwelling-
house unfit for human habitation, the justices may close it until it is
rendered fit for that purpose. Disobedience under the order of
justices involves a penalty and a daily penalty for every day during
which default continue*. Private persons may complain to justices
in respect of nuisance* by which they are personally aggrieved, and
if the district council make default in doing their duty, the Local
Government Board may authorize any officer of police to institute
any necessary proceedings at the cost of the defaulting council. The
437
district council may, if in their opinion proceedings before justices
afford an inadequate remedy, take proceedings in the high court,
but in that case, if the nuisance is of a public nature, they must
proceed by action in the name of the attorney-general. The pro-
visions as to nuisances are extended to ships by an act of 1885.
It is forbidden to establish within an urban district without the
consent of the council any offensive trade, business or manufacture.
With regard to any offensive trade which has been established or
may be consented to in any urban district, if it is verified by the
medical officer or any two legally qualified medical practitioners, or
by any ten inhabitants of the district, to be a nuisance or injurious
to health, the urban district council are required to take proceedings
before magistrates with a view to the abatement of the nuisance
complained of.
Any medical officer or inspector of nuisances may inspect any
meat, &c., exposed for sale or deposited in any place for the purpose
of sale or of preparation for sale and intended for the
food of man. This power of inspection is, in districts
where the Public Health Act 1890 has been adopted,
extended to all articles intended for the food of man. If upon
such inspection the meat, &c., appears to be diseased, unsound or
unwholesome, it may be taken before a justice for the purpose of
being condemned, and the person to whom the meat, &c., belongs
or in whose possession it was found is liable to a penalty or, in the
discretion of the justices, to imprisonment for three months without
the option of a fine.
The Public Health Acts contain important provisions relating to
infectious disease. Any person who knows he is suffering from an
infectious disease must not carry on any trade or business . ^^
unless he can do so without risk of spreading the disease. ." e
Local authorities may require premises to be cleansed
and disinfected ; they may order the destruction of bedding, clothing
or other articles which have been exposed to infection; they may
provide proper places for the disinfection of infected articles free of
charge; they may provide ambulances, &c. In the case of a person
found suffering from infectious disease who has not proper lodging or
accommodation, or is lodging in a room occupied by more than one
family, or is on board any ship or vessel, such person may by means
of a justice's order be removed to a hospital; a local authority
may pay the expenses of a person in a hospital or, if necessary,
provide nursing attendance; any person exposing himself or any
other in his charge while suffering from infectious disease, or exposing
infected bedding, clothing or the like, is made liable to a penalty.
Owners and drivers of public conveyances must not knowingly convey
any person suffering from infectious disease, and if any person
suffering from such a disease is conveyed in any public vehicle
the owner or driver as soon as it comes to his knowledge must give
notice to the medical officer. It is also forbidden to let houses or
rooms in which infected persons have been lodging, or to make false
statements to persons negotiating for the hire of such rooms. An
act was passed in the year 1890, called the Infectious Diseases
Prevention Act. When adopted it enabled an urban or district
council to obtain the inspection of dairies where these were suspected
to be the cause of infectious disease, with a view to prohibiting the
supply of milk from such dairies if the fact were established. The
act of 1907 extended the provisions of the act of 1890. It enables a
local authority to _ require dairymen to furnish a complete list of
sources of supply if the medical officer certifies that any person is
suffering from infectious disease which he has reason to suspect is
attributable to milk supplied within his district. It also compels
dairymen to notify infectious diseases existing among their servants.
The act of 1890 also forbids the keeping for more than forty-eight
hours of the body of a person who has died of infectious disease in a
room used at the time as a dwelling-place, sleeping-place or workshop.
It provides for the bodies of persons dying of infectious diseases in a
hospital being removed only for burial, and gives power to justices
in certain cases to order bodies to be buried. The diseases to which
the act applies are smallpox, cholera, membranous croup, erysipelas,
scarlatina or scarlet fever, typhus, typhoid, enteric, relapsing,
continued or puerperal fever, and any oriier infectious disease to
which the act has been applied by the local authority of the district
in the prescribed manner. The most important provision, however,
relating to infectious disease is that contained in the Infectious
Disease Notification Act 1889. That was originally an adoptive
act, but it is now extended to all districts in England and Wales. It
requires the notification to the medical officer of health of the
district of every case in which a person is suffering from one of the
diseases above mentioned. The duty of notification is imposed upon
the head of the family, and also upon the medical practitioner who
may be in attendance on the patient. The medical attendant is
entitled to receive in respect of each notification a fee of 2s. 6d. if
the case occurs in his private practice, and of is. if the case occurs
in his practice as medical officer of any public body or institution.
These fees are paid by the urban or rural district council as the case
may be. The provisions as to notification are applied to every
ship, vessel, boat, tent, van, shed or similar structure used for
human habitation in like manner as nearly as may be as if it were
a building. Exception is made, however, in the case of a ship,
vessel or boat belonging to a foreign government. It is not too
much to say that this act has been one of the most effectual
ENGLAND
[LOCAL GOVERNMENT
means of preventing the spread of infectious disease in modern
times.
The district council are empowered to provide hospitals or tem-
porary places for the reception of the sick. They may build them,
Hosoltals contT ? ct f or tn .e use of them, agree for the reception of
' the sick inhabitants of their district into an existing
hospital, or combine with any other district council in providing
a common hospital. As has already been mentioned when dealing
with county councils, if a district council make default in providing
hospital accommodation, the county council may put in operation
the Isolation Hospitals Act. The power given to provide hospitals
must be exercised so as not to create a nuisance, and much litigation
has taken place in respect of the providing of hospitals for smallpox.
Up to the present time, however, the courts have refused to accept
as a principle that a smallpox hospital is necessarily a source of
danger to the neighbourhood, and for the most part applications
for injunction on that ground have failed.
Where any part of the country appears to be threatened with
or is affected by any formidable epidemic, endemic or infectious
disease, the Local Government Board may make regula-
_ tions for the speedy interment of the dead, house-to-
house visitation, the provision of medical aid and accommodation,
the promotion of cleansing, ventilation and disinfection, and the
guarding against the spread of disease. Such regulations are made
and enforced by the district councils. The provisions of the
Public Health Acts relating to infectious disease are for the most
part extended to ships by an act of the year 1885.
District councils may, and if required by the Local Government
Board, must provide mortuaries, and they may make by-laws with
' respect to the management and charges for the use of
ortuartcs. ^ ne ^j^g Where the body of a person who has died of an
infectious disease is retained in a room where persons live or sleep,
or the retention of any dead body may endanger health, any justice
on the certificate of a medical practitioner may order the re-
moval of a body to a mortuary and direct the body to be buried
within a time limited by the friends of the deceased or in their default
by the relieving officer. A district council may also provide and
maintain a proper place (otherwise than at a workhouse or at a
mortuary) for the reception of dead bodies during the time required
to conduct any post mortem examination ordered by a coroner.
Under an act of 1879 the district council have power to provide
and maintain a cemetery either within or without their district,
_ . . and they may purchase or accept a donation of land
for that purpose. The provisions of the Cemeteries
Clauses Act 1847 apply to a cemetery thus provided. These
cannot all be referred to here, but it may be noted that no part
of the cemetery need be consecrated, but that if any part is,
such part is to be defined by suitable marks, and a chapel in con-
nexion with the Established Church must be erected in it. A chaplain
must also be appointed to officiate at burials in the consecrated
portion. The power to provide a cemetery under the act under con-
sideration must not be confounded with that of providing a burial
ground under the Burial Acts. These acts will be mentioned later in
connexion with the powers of parish councils, for in general they are
adopted for a parish, part of a parish or combination of parishes,
and are administered by a burial board, except where that body has
been superseded by a parish council or joint committee. It may be
mentioned, however, that under the Local Government Act 1894,
where a burial board district is 'wholly in an urban district, the
urban council may resolve that the powers, duties and liabilities
of the burial board shall be transferred to the council, and thereupon
the burial board may cease to exist. And it is provided by the
same act that the Burial Acts shall not hereafter be adopted in any
urban parish without the approval of the urban council. The
distinction between a burial ground provided under the Burial
Acts and a cemetery provided under the act of '1879 is important
in many ways, of which one only need be mentioned here the
expenses under the Burial Acts are paid out of the poor rate, while
the expenses under the act of 1879 are paid in an urban district
out of the general district rate, the incidence of which differs materi-
ally from that of the poor rate, as will be seen hereafter.
In an urban district the urban council have always had all the
powers and duties of a surveyor of highways under the Highway
... . Acts. But before 1894 a rural district council had no
w y ' power or duty in respect of highways except in a few
cases where, by virtue of a provision in the Highway Act 1878,
the rural sanitary authority of a district coincident in area with
a highway district were empowered to exercise all the powers of a
a highway board. Except in these cases the highway authority in
a parish was the surveyor of highways, elected annually by the
inhabitants in vestry, or in a highway district consisting of a number
of parishes united by order of quarter sessions, the highway board
composed of waywardens representing the several parishes. By the
Local Government Act 1894, there were transferred to the district
council of every rural district all the powers, duties and liabilities of
every highway authority, surveyor or highway board within their
district, and the former highway authorities ceased to exist. The
highway authority in every district, rural as well as urban, is there-
fore the district council. Of the chief duties of a district council with
regard to highways, the first and most obvious is the duty to repair.
This duty was formerly enforceable by indictment of the inhabitants
of the parish, but it is not quite clear whether this procedure is
applicable, now that the liability to repair is transferred to a council
representing a wider area. Under the Highway Acts it is enforceable
by summary proceedings before justices and by orders of the county
council, but in either case, if the liability to repair is disputed, that
question has to be decided on indictment preferred against the high-
way authority alleged to be in default. In a rural district any parish
council may complain to the county council that the district council
have made default in keeping any highway in repair, and the county
council may thereupon transfer to themselves and execute the
powers of the district council at the cost of the latter body, or they
may make an order requiring the district council to perform their
duty, or they may appoint some person to do so at the cost of the
district council. It is important to observe, however, that an
action does not lie against a district council in respect of the failure
to repair a highway even at the suit of a person who has thereby
been injured. The reason assigned for this doctrine is that the
council as highway surveyor stand in the same position as the
inhabitants of the parish, against whom such an action would not
lie. The district council are, however, liable for any injury caused
through negligence on the part of their officers or servants in carrying
out the work of repair.
But while rural as well as urban district councils have the powers
and duties of surveyors of highways, the provisions of the Public
Health Acts relating to streets apply only in urban -. .
districts, except in so far as the Local Government
Board may by order have conferred urban powers upon a rural
district council. These provisions have now to be referred to. It
may be convenient to state that the expression " street " is here
used in a sense much wider than its ordinary meaning. It is defined
by the act to include any highway and any public bridge (not
being a county bridge), and any road, lane, footway, square, court,
alley or passage, whether a thoroughfare or not. For certain
purposes streets as thus defined are divided into two classes, viz.
those which are and those which are not highways repairable by
the inhabitants at large. But it has to be borne in mind that it
is not every highway that is repairable by the inhabitants at large.
Before the year 1836 as soon as a way was dedicated to public use
and the public had by user signified their acceptance of it, it became
without more notice repairable by the parish. Therefore every
highway whether carriage-way, driftway, bridleway or footway
which can be shown to have been in use before 1836, is presumably
repairable by the inhabitants at large, the only exceptions being
such highways as are repairable by private persons or corporate
bodies rations clausurae, ratione tenurae, or by prescription. But
in the year 1836, when the Highway Act 1835 came into operation,
the law was altered. It was possible, just as formerly, to dedicate
a way to the use of the public, and it thereupon became a highway
to all intents and purposes. But mere dedication did not make
the way repairable by the public. That result was not to follow
unless certain stringent requirements were fulfilled. When it is
shown, therefore, that a highway has been dedicated after 1836, it
is not repairable by the inhabitants at large unless it can be shown
that these provisions have been complied with, or that it has been
declared to be repairable under provisions of the Public Health Acts
presently _to be mentioned. (There was also power given to justices,
by the Highway Act 1862, to declare a private road or occupation
road in a highway district to be a public highway repairable by the
parish ; but this power does not appear to have been acted upon to
any extent.)
All streets being highways repairable by the inhabitants at large
within an urban district, are vested in and under the control of the
urban council. After much litigation it has now been established
that this provision does not give the council an absolute property
in the soil of the street, but merely such a qualified property in
the surfaces as enables them to exercise control. The urban council
are required from time to time to cause all such streets to be made
up and repaired as occasion may require, and they are empowered
to raise, lower or alter the soil of the street, and to place and keep
in repair fences and posts for the safety of foot-passengers. The
other class of streets consists of those which are not highways
repairable by the inhabitants at large. Under the Public Health
Act 1875 sucn streets may be dealt with in manner following:
If any such street or part thereof is not sewered, levelled, paved,
metalled, flagged, channelled, made good or lighted to the satis-
faction of the council, the council may cause it to be made up
at the expense of the owners of premises fronting the street in pro-
portion to their several frontages. When all or any of the works
aforesaid have been executed in the street, and the council are of
opinion that the street ought to become a highway repairable by
the inhabitants at large, they may by notice to be fixed up in the
street declare it to be a highway repairable by the inhabitants at
large, and the declaration will be effective unless, within one month
after the notice has been put up, the majority of the owners in the
street object thereto. An alternative procedure has been provided
by the Private Street Works Act, which may be adopted by any
urban council. One important point of difference is that under
the latter act the council may resolve that the expenses shall be
apportioned among the owners not merely according to frontage,
LOCAL GOVERNMENT]
ENGLAND
439
but according to the greater or less degree of benerit to be derived
. premises from the works.
Whrre a house or building in a street U taken down to be rebuilt,
the urban district munril may prescribe the line to which it U to
be rebuilt, paying compensation to the building owner for any
damage which he may MIM.UM consequent upon the requirement.
Save to this extent, no powt-r i- ijivcn l>y tin- general law to a district
council to prescribe a building line. But under an act of 1888 it is
provided that it shall not be lawful in any urban district without
the consent of the urban authority to .r t or bring forward any
house or building in any street or any part of such house or building
beyond the front main all of the house or building on either side
thereof in the same street.
The control exercised by an urban district council over streets
and buildings is to a very large extent even ised through by-laws
which they are empowered to make for various pur|x>sos relating to
the laying out and formation of new Mret-ts. the erection and ((in-
struction of new buildings, the provision of sufficient air-space
about buildings to secure a free circulation of air, and the provision
of suitable and sufficient sanitary conveniences. The manner in
which such by-laws are made and continued will be hereafter noticed.
In general, the by-laws require plans of new streets to be submitted
to the council, and they are required to approve or disapprove of
these plans within a month. They cannot disapprove of a plan unless
it contravenes the provisions of some statute or by-law; but if a
person builds otherwise than according to an approved plan he does
to at the risk of having his work pulled down or destroyed. Among
the miscellaneous powers of an urban council with respect to streets
may be mentioned the power to widen or improve, and certain powers
incorporated from the Towns Improvement Clauses Act 1847, with
respect to naming streets, numbering houses, improving the line of
streets, removing obstructions, providing protection in respect of
ruinous or dangerous buildings, and requiring precautions to be taken
during the construction ana repair of sewers, streets and houses.
An urban council may also provide for the lighting of any street in
their district, and may contract with any person or company for
that purpose. If there is no company having statutory powers of
supply within their district, they may themselves undertake the
supply of gas, and they may purchase the undertaking of any gas
company within their district.
An urban council may acquire and maintain lands for the purpose
of being used as public walks or pleasure-grounds, and may support
or contribute to the support of such walks or grounds if
provided by any other person. They may also contribute
to the cost of laying out, planting or improvement of
lands provided for this purpose by any person, in their own district
or outside that district, if it appears that the walks or grounds could
eventually be used by the inhabitants of that district. An urban
council may also provide public clocks or pay for the reasonable
cost of repairing and maintaining any public clocks in the district,
though not vested in them.
Where an urban council are the council of a borough, and in
other caws with the consent of the owners and ratepayers of the
district, they may provide market accommodation for
their district. They may not, however, establish any
market so as to interfere with any market already estab-
lished in the district under a franchise or charter. For
purposes of markets certain provisions of the Markets and
Fairs Clauses Act 1847 are incorporated with the Public Health Act.
The only one of these that need be noticed is that which provides
that after the market is opened for public use every person, other
than a licensed hawker, who shall sell or expose for sale in any place
within the district, except in his own dwelling-place or shop, any
articles in respect of which tolls are authorized to be taken shall be
liable to a penalty. The tolls which may be taken by an urban
council must be approved by the Local Government Board; and
any by-laws which they make for the regulation of the market must
be confirmed by the same body. An urban council may also provide
slaughter-houses and make by-laws with respect to the management
and charges for the use of them. Where they do not provide
slaughter-houses, all previously existing slaughter-houses have to be
registered and new ones licensed; and no person may lawfully use a
slaughter-house which is not either registered or licensed. Licences
may be suspended by justices in the event of their being used
contrary to the provisions of the act or of the by-laws, and on
a second conviction the licence may be revoked. On a con-
viction of selling or exposing for sale, or having in his possession
or on his premises unsound meat, the court may also revoke the
licence.
Certain police regulations contained in the Town Police Clauses
Act 1847 are by virtue of the Public Health Act 1875 in force
^^ in all urban districts. These relate to obstructions
and nuisances in streets, fires, places of public resort,
hackney carriages and public bathing. An urban council
may abo license proprietors, drivers and conductors of
hones, ponies, mules or asses standing for hiring in the district in
the same way as in the case of hackney carriages, and they may
also license pleasure boat* and vessels, and the boatmen or
persons in charge thereof, and they may make by-laws for all these
Every district council may enter into such contracts as are neces-
sary for carrying into execution the various purposes of the Public
Health Acts. A district council being a corporation,
the general law applies in the case of a rural council ' airaiis.
that they must contract under their common seal, tin- pu .,*.**
exception to this rule including the doing of acts very *
frequently recurring or too insignificant to be worth the trouble of
affixing the common seal. In the case of an urban council certain
stringent regulations are laid down. A contract made by an urban
council, whereof the value and amount exceed 50, must be under
seal, and certain other formalities must be observed, some of which
are imperative; for example, the taking of sureties from the con-
tractor, and the making provision for penalties to be paid by him
in case the terms of the contract are not observed. Every local
authority may also, for purposes of the act, purchase or take on
lease, sell or exchange, any lands. Such lands as arc not required
for the purpose for which they were purchased must, unless the Local
Government Board otherwise direct, be sold. Powers of compulsory
purchase of lands arc also given under the Lands Clauses Acts, but
before these can be put in operation certain conditions must be
observed. The Local Government Board must make inquiry into
the propriety of allowing the lands to be taken, and the power to
acquire the lands compulsorily can only be conferred by means of a
provisional order confirmed by parliament.
With regard to the by-laws which district councils may make
for many purposes, the subjects of which have been already from
time to time mentioned, it is only necessary to state .
that these require to be confirmed by the Local Govern- l*y-l*w*.
ment Board. Such confirmation does not, however, give validity
to a by-law which cannot be justified by the provisions of the act,
and many by-laws which have been so confirmed have been held
to be invalid under the general law as bcing^ uncertain, unreasonable
or repugnant to the law of the realm. For the guidance of local
authorities, the Local Government Board have from time to time
issued model series of by-laws dealing with the various subjects for
which by-laws may be made, and these are for -the most part followed
throughout England and Wales.
As a general rule, all the expenses of carrying into execution the
Public Health Acts in an urban district fall upon a fund which is
called the general district fund, and that fund is provided _.
by means of a rate called the general district rate. To
this there are some exceptions. First, in the case of boroughs
where from the time of the first adoption of the Sanitary Acts
these expenses have been paid out of the borough rate, the expenses
continue to be so paid ; and in an urban district which was formerly
subject to an Improvement Act, the expenses may be payable out
of the improvement rate authorized by that act. The general
rule, however, prevails over by far the greater part of England
and Wales. The general district rate is made and levied on the
occupiers of all kinds of property for the time being assessable to
any rate for the relief of the poor, subject to a few exceptions and
conditions. Of these the first is that the owner may be rated
instead of the occupier, at the option of the urban authority, where
the value of the premises is under 10, where the premises are let
to weekly or monthly tenants, or where the premises are let in
separate apartments, or the rents become payable or are collected at
any shorter period than quarterly. When the owner is rated he
must be assessed upon a certain proportion only of the net annual
value of the premises. The owners or occupiers of certain specified
properties are assessed in respect of the same in the proportion of
one-fourth part only of the net annual value thereof. These
properties include tithes, tithe commutation rent charge, land used
as arable, meadow or pasture ground only, or as woodlands, market
gardens or nursery grounds, orchards, allotments, any land covered
with water such as the reservoir of a waterworks company, or used
only as a canal or towing-path of the same, or as a railway con-
structed under the powers of any Act of Parliament for public
conveyance. The reason for these partial exemptions apparently
is that sanitary arrangements are made chiefly for the benefit of
houses and buildings, while the properties just enumerated do not
receive the same amount of benefit. The only other point to be
noticed in this connexion is that an urban council may divide their
district into parts for all or any of the purposes of the act, rating
each part separately for those purposes. The expenses of highways
in an urban district fall as a rule upon the general district rate,
but under certain conditions, which need not be here set out, a
separate highway rate may have to be levied. The urban council
have extensive powers of amending the rate, and the rate is collected
in such manner as the urban authority may appoint.
The expenses of a rural .district council are of two kinds. Of
these the first is called general expenses, and it includes the expense
of the establishment and officers of the council, of disinfection,
providing of conveyance for infected persons, and the expenses of
highways. These expenses are payable out of a common fund
which is raised out of the poor rate of the several parishes in the
district, according to the rateable value of each. Special expenses
include the expenses of the construction and maintenance and
cleansing of sewers, providing water-supply, and all other expenses
incurred or payable in respect of a parish or contributory place
within the district determined by order of the Local Government
440
ENGLAND
[LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Board to be special expenses. The expression " contributory place "
means a place other than a parish chargeable with special expenses.
For the most part it has reference only to what is called a special
drajnage district, that is to say, a district formed out of one or more
parishes or parts of parishes for the purpose of the provision of a
common water-supply, or scheme of sewerage, or the like, and in the
event of such a district including part only of a parish, the remaining
portion would, so far as the special expenses for which the district
was created are concerned, be a separate contributory place. These
special expenses are chargeable to each parish or contributory place,
and they are defrayed by means of special sanitary rates, such rates
being raised on all property assessed to the relief of the poor, but
with the same exemptions of certain properties as have been men-
tioned under the head of general district rate in urban districts.
District councils are empowered to borrow with the sanction of
the Local Government Board, subject to certain restrictions and
_ regulations. The money must be borrowed for permanent
rrowing wor i CSj tne expenses of which ought in the opinion of the
Local Government Board to be spread over a term of years
which must not exceed sixty. The sums borrowed must not
exceed, with the outstanding loans, the amount of the assessable
value for two years of the district for which the money is borrowed ;
and if the sum borrowed would, with the outstanding loans, exceed
the assessable value for one year, the sanction of the Local Govern-
ment Board may not be given except after local inquiry. The money
may be repaid by equal instalments of principal, or of principal and
interest, or by means of a sinking fund.
Where the urban council are the council of a borough, their
accounts as urban council are made up and audited in the same
\ ait ineffective manner as has already been mentioned in
the case of the accounts of the council under the Municipal
Corporations Act, but each of the borough auditors receives re-
muneration for auditing the accounts of the council as urban district
council. Where the urban council are not the council of a borough,
the accounts are made up annually, and audited by the district
auditor in the same effective manner as has already been mentioned
in the case of the accounts of a county council. The accounts of a
rural district council are made up half-yearly and are audited in
the same way.
The Public Authorities Protection Act 1893 was passed to repeal
the numerous provisions contained in many acts of parliament,
^^ whereby, before legal proceedings could be taken against a
rocee public body, notice of action had to be given and the
**. . proceedings commenced within a certain limited time.
The act applies to all public authorities, including, of
junc//s course, district councils, and it provides in effect that
where any action or legal proceeding is taken against a
council for any act done in pursuance or execution, or intended
execution, of an act of parliament, or of any public duty or authority,
the action must be commenced within six months next after the act,
neglect or default complained of, or in the case of a continuance of
injury or damage, within six months next after the ceasing thereof.
And it provides further that, in the event of the judgment of the
court being given in favour of the council, the council shall be entitled
to recover their costs taxed as between solicitor and client. Notice of
action is abolished in every case.
Among other acts which are either incorporated with the Public
Health Acts or have been passed subsequently to them, one of the
most important is the Housing of the Working Classes Act
/th I8 ?' 1* c< ? ntams three distinct parts. Under the first an
*2J urban district council may, by means of a scheme, acquire,
working rearrange and reconstruct an area which has been proved
"*' to be insanitary. The scheme has to be confirmed by the
Local Government Board, and carried out by means of a provisional
order. The second part of the act deals with unhealthy dwelling-
houses, and requires the urban district council to take steps for the
closing of any dwelling-houses within their district which are unfit
for human habitation. The third part of the act deals with what is
called in the act working-class lodging-houses. But the expression is
a little misleading, for it includes separate houses or cottages for the
working classes, whether containing one or several tenements, and
the expression " cottage " may include a garden of not more than
half an acre, provided that the estimated annual value of such garden
shall not exceed 3. This part of the act may be adopted by a rural
district council, but an urban district council can carry it into execu-
tion without formal adoption. Land may be acquired for erecting
lodging-houses as above defined, and these, when erected, may be
managed and let by the council.
The urban district council may adopt the provisions of the Baths
. and Washhouses Acts, and thereunder provide public
baths, wash-houses, open bathing-places, covered swim-
_" ming baths, which they may close in the winter months
and use as gymnasia.
Under the Tramways Act 1870 the urban district council may
obtain from the Boara of Trade a provisional order authorizing the
Tramways const ruction of tramways in their district by themselves.
Any private persons, and any corporation or company
may, with the consent of the council, obtain the like authority,
but the Board of Trade have power in certain cases to dispense
with the consent of the local authority. Where the order is obtained
Bills la
Parlia-
ment and
legal pro-
ceedings.
by a person or body other than the district council, the council may
purchase the undertaking at the end of twenty-one years after the
tramways have been constructed or at the expiration of every
subsequent period of seven years, and the terms of purchase are
that the person or company must sell the undertaking upon payment
of the then value, exclusive of any allowance for past or future profits
of the undertaking, or any compensation for compulsory sale or other
consideration whatsoever of the tramway, and all lands, buildings,
works, materials and plant suitable to and used for the purposes of
the undertaking. It should be observed, however, that although
the local authority may themselves construct, and may acquire
from the original promoters a system of tramways, they may not
themselves work them without special authority of the legislature,
and must in general let the working of the undertaking to some
person or company.
Under the Borough Funds Act 1872 the urban district council
may, if in their judgment it is expedient, promote or oppose any
local and personal bill or bills in parliament, or may
prosecute or defend any legal proceedings necessary for
the promotion or protection of the interests of the district,
and may charge the costs incurred in so doing to the
rates under their control. The power to incur parlia-
mentary costs, however, is subject to several important
restrictions. The resolution to promote or oppose the bill must
in the first instance have been carried by an absolute majority
of the whole number of the council at a meeting convened by special
notice, and afterwards confirmed by the like majority. The resolu-
tion must have been pubjished in newspapers circulated in the
district, and must have received the consent of the Local Government
Board or of a secretary of state, if the matter is one within his
jurisdiction; and further, the expenses must not be incurred unless
the promotion or opposition has been assented to by the owners
and ratepayers of the district assembled at a meeting convened
for the purpose of considering the matter, and if necessary, signified
by a poll. Moreover, the expenses must, before they can be charged
to the rates, be examined and allowed by some person authorized
by a secretary of state or the Local Government Board, as the case
may be.
Under the Pawnbrokers Act 1872 the licences to pawnbrokers,
which were formerly granted by justices, are now granted by district
councils.
Under the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts certain important duties
devolve upon medical officers and inspectors of nuisances who are
officers of district councils. But for the most part the
acts do not impose upon district councils themselves
any special powers or duties, although, as a matter of
fact, prosecutions for offences are usually undertaken by the district
councils, and the expenses of the execution of the acts are paid
out of their funds. In quarter sessions boroughs, however, where
the council have the duty of appointing a public analyst, they are
under an obligation to put the acts in force from time to time, as
occasion may arise. The acts themselves must be consulted for the
procedure, beginning with the taking of samples and ending with the
conviction of an offender.
The powers and duties of a district council under the Rivers
Adultera-
tion.
Pollution Prevention Act 1876 have been incidentally .
noticed when dealing with county councils, whose powers v .f".
under the acts are precisely the same.
Under the Electric Lighting Acts the Board of Trade may license
any district council to supply electricity, or may grant to them a
provisional order for the same purpose. A similar
licence or order may be granted to a private person or
company to supply electricity within the district of a
district council, but in that case the consent of the district council
must be given, unless the Board of Trade, for special reasons,
dispense with such consent. These licences are now rarely applied
for or granted, and the provisions which were formerly contained
in the provisional orders have now been consolidated by the Electric
Lighting Clauses Act 1899, the effect of which will be to make
provisional orders uniform for the future. It is now almost the
exception, at least in urban districts, to find a district council
which has not obtained a provisional order under these acts, and
for the most part the undertakings of local authorities in the way
of supplying electricity have been very prosperous.
Under the Allotment Acts district councils were empowered to
provide allotments for the labouring population of their district,
if they were satisfied that there was a demand for allot- . .
ments, that these could not be obtained at a reasonable
rent by voluntary arrangement, and that the land could
be let at such a price as would not involve a loss to the council.
The district council might acquire land, let it and regulate it, and
they might provide common pasture. These powers were, by an
act of 1907, transferred to parish councils.
The urban district council execute the Public Libraries Acts for
their district, and the rate for the expenses of the acts, which may
not exceed id. in the /, is in a borough in the nature
of a borough rate, and in any other urban district in
the nature of a general district rate. Under the acts
not only public libraries, but also public museums, schools for
science, art galleries and schools for art, with the necessary buildings,
libraries
LOCAL GOVERNMENT]
ENGLAND
441
furniture, fittings and conveniences, may be provided for the in-
habitants of the district. Land may ne acquired, and money
borrowed, for the purposes of the acts.
\ jjreat number of other statutes confer powers or impose duties
upon district councils, such as the acts relating to town gardens,
agricultural gangs, fairs, petroleum, infant life protection, commons,
open space*, canal boats, factories and workshops, margarine, sale of
hone-nesh and shop hours.
Before the passing of the Local Government Act 1804 there
was really nothing in the form of local government for a parish.
It is true that the inhabitants in vestry had certain
powers. They could adopt various acts, which will be
more particularly referred to hereafter, and they could
appoint the persons who were to carry these acts into
execution. They elected the churchwardens and overseers, the
highway surveyor, if the parish was a separate unit for highway
purposes, and the waywardens if it was included in a highway
district. But there was nothing in the nature of a representative
body exercising any powers of government in the parish regarded
as a separate area. Under the act of 1804 this was changed. In
every rural parish, that is to say, in every parish which is not
included within an urban district, there isa parish meeting, which
consists of the parochial electors of the parish. As already stated,
these are the persons whose names are on the parliamentary and
local government registers. If the parish has a population
exceeding 300, a parish council must be elected. If it has a
population of 100 or upwards, the county council are bound to
make an order for the election of a parish council if the parish
meeting so resolves. Where there is no parish council, as will be
seen hereafter, the various powers conferred upon a council are
exercised by the parish meeting itself. Two or more parishes may
be grouped together under a common parish council by order of
the county council if the parish meetings of each parish consent.
An annual parish meeting in every rural parish must be held on
the 25th day of March or within seven days before or after that
date; and if there is no parish council, there must be at least one
other parish meeting in the year. At the annual parish meeting
the parish council, if there is one, is elected, and the members of
the council, who originally held office for one year only, now,
under a subsequent act, hold office for three years. Any person
who is a parochial elector, or who has for twelve months preceding
the election resided in the parish, or within 3 m. thereof, may be
elected parish councillor, and the number of councillors is to be
fixed from time to time by the county council, not being less than
five nor more than fifteen. Women, whether married or single,
are eligible.
The council are elected in manner provided by the rules of the
Local Government Board. The rules now in force will be found
in the Statutory Rules and Orders. They are very similar to those
which are in force with reference to the elections of district councils,
which have already been noticed. If a poll is demanded, it must be
taken under the Ballot Act, as applied by the rules, and for all
practical purposes it may be taken that the election proceeds in
the same manner as that of a district council. The parish council
elects a chairman annually. He may be one of their own number,
or some other person qualified to be a parish councillor. The council
is a body corporate, may hold land in mortmain, and can appoint
committees for its own parish or jointly with any other parish council.
Among the powers conferred upon a parish council are
\ ** those of appointing overseers and of appointing and re-
voking the appointment of assistant overseers. Church-
wardens are no longer overseers, and the parish council
may appoint as overseers a number of persons equal to the number
formerly appointed as overseers and churchwardens. It may be
useful to mention here that for purposes of the administration of
the poor law, overseers no longer act, their duties in that respect
having been superseded by the guardians. They remain, however,
the rating authority so far as regards the poor rate and nearly
all other rates, the exceptions being the general district rate in an
urban district and the borough rate in a borough, made by the
town council. They still have power to give relief to poor persons
in case of sudden and urgent necessity, but their principal duty is
that of rating authority, and they are bound to make out the fists
for their parishes of jurors and electors. No payment is made to
them. The office is compulsory, but certain persons are privileged
from being elected to it. The assistant overseer, who was formerly
nominated by the inhabitants and vestry and then formally appointed
by justice*, U now, as has been stated, appointed by the parish
council. He holds office at pleasure, and receives such remuneration
s the council fix, and he performs all the duties of an overseer.
or such of them as may be prescribed by the terms of his appointment.
There may be in a parish a collector of rates appointed by the
guardians. In that event, an assistant overseer cannot be appointed
to perform the duties of collector of rates, but, on the other hand,
the parish council may invest the collector with any of the powers
of an overseer. The parish council may appoint a clerk, who may be
either one of their own number without payment, or the assistant
overseer, rate collector or some other fit person, with remuneration.
Among < the duties transferred to parish councils may be mentioned
the provision of parish books and of a vestry room or parochial
office, parish chest, fire engine or fire escape, the holding
or management of parish property, other than property '
relating to affairs of the church or held for an ecclesiastical *" '
charity, the holding or management of village greens or '
of allotments, the appointment of trustees of parochial
charities other than ecclesiastical charities in certain cases, and
certain limited powers with reference to the supply of water to the
parish, the removal of nuisances, and the acquisition of rights of way
which are beneficial to the inhabitants.
Among the most important of the matters which concern a rural
parish is the administration of what are commonly called the adoptive
acts. These include the Lighting and Watching Act, the
Baths and Washhouses Acts, the Burial Acts, the Public Lightlmg
Improvement Act and the Public Libraries Acts. The "*
Lighting and Watching Act was formerly adopted for a
parish, or part of a parish, by the inhabitants in vestry,
who elected lighting inspectors, of whom one-third went out of office
in every year. The inspectors took the necessary steps for having
the parish lighted (the provisions as to watching having been obsolete
for many years), and the expenses of lighting were raised by the
overseers upon an order issued to them by the inspectors. The
owners and occupiers of houses, buildings and property, other than
land, pay a rate in the L three times greater than that at which the
owners and occupiers of land are rated and pay for the purposes of
the act. Now this act, like the other adoptive acts, can only be
adopted by the parish meeting, and where adopted for part only of a
parish, must be adopted by a parish meeting held for that part.
After the adoption of the act it is carried into execution by the parish
council, if there is one, and if not, by the parish meeting, and the
expenses are raised in the same manner as heretofore.
The Baths and Washhouses Acts have already been f* "**
referred to in dealing with district councils, and it is
sufficient to say that they are now adopted and ad- *
ministered in a rural parish in the manner pointed out ^"^'
with reference to the Lighting and Watching Act. The same may
be said of the Burial Acts, but these are sufficiently important
to require special notice. These acts contain provisions
whereby burials may be prohibited in urban districts, and
churchyards or burial grounds already existing may be
closed when full. Formerly, when the acts had oecn adopted by the
vestry, it was necessary to appoint a burial board to carry the acts
into execution and provide and manage burial grounds. Now, in a
rural parish which is coextensive with an area for which the acts
have been adopted, the burial board is abolished and the acts are
administered by the parish council; and the acts cannot be adopted
in a rural parish save by the parish meeting. If the area under a
burial board in 1804 was partly in a rural parish and partly in an
urban district, the burial board was superseded, and the powers of the
board are exercised bya jointcommitteeappointed partly by the urban
district council and partly by the parish council, or parish meeting,
as the case may be. In a rural parish where there is no parish council,
though the acts are adopted by the parish meeting, it is still necessary
to elect the burial board, and that board will be elected by the parish
meeting. The distinction between a burial ground under the Burial
Acts and a cemetery provided under the Public Health Acts has
already been noticed. A burial ground, properly so called, has to
be divided into consecrated and unconsecrated portions, and the
former really takes the place of the parish churchyard; and the
incumbent of the parish church, the clerk, and the sexton continue
to receive the same fees upon burials in the consecrated portion as
they would have done in the parish churchyard. It has been
mentioned that a portion of the burial ground must be left un-
consecrated. But this is subject to one important exception, that
the parish meeting may unanimously resolve that the whole of the
burial ground shall be consecrated. In that case, however, the
parish council may, within ten years thereafter, determine that a
separate unconsecrated burial ground shall also be provided for the
parish. The expenses of the execution of the Burial Acts are pro-
vided by the overseers out of the poor rate upon the certificate of
the body entrusted with the execution of them. In the event of
the acts being adopted for a portion only of a rural parish, the
burial board, or the parish meeting, may by resolution transfer all
the powers of the board to the parish council.
The Public Improvement Act, when adopted, enables a parish
council to purchase or lease, or accept gifts of land for the purpose
of forming public walks, exercise or play grounds, and
Iturifl
Act*.
uc
to provide for the expense by means of a parish improve- . f, orort .
ment rate. Before any such rate is imposed, however, m f nt A #
a sum in amount not less than at least half of the estimated
cost of the proposed improvement must have been raised by private
442
ENGLAND, CHURCH OF
subscription or donation, and the rate must not exceed sixpence
in the .
The Public Libraries Acts enable the authority adopting them to
provide public libraries, museums, schools for science, art galleries
Public anc ^ schools f r art - The expenses in a rural parish are
Libraries de f rave d by means of a rate raised with, and as part of,
Acts. t ' ie P oor rate ' w ' l h a qu a 'ification to the effect that agri-
cultural land, market gardens and nursery grounds are
to be assessed to the rate at one-third only of their rateable value.
The expenses of a parish council may not, without the consent of
a parish meeting, exceed the amount of a rate of threepence in the
Finance- & *? r tne nnancial year; but with the consent of the
expenses P arish meeting the limit may be increased to sixpence,
of parish exclusive of expenses under the adoptive acts. If it
council. ' s necessary to borrow, the consent of the parish meeting
and of the county council must be obtained. The
expenses are payable out of the poor rate by the overseers on the
precept of the parish council.
One of the most important powers conferred upon a parish council
is that which enables them to prevent stoppage or diversion of any
public right of way without their consent and without the approval
of the parish meeting. The council may also complain to the county
council that the district council have failed to sewer their parish or
provide a proper water-supply, or generally to enforce the provisions
of the Burial Acts; and upon such complaint, if ascertained to be
well founded, the county council may transfer to themselves the
powers and duties of the district council, or may appoint a competent
person to perform such powers and duties. In a parish which is not
sufficiently large to have a parish council, most of the powers and
duties conferred or imposed on the parish council are exercised by
the parish meeting. It may be convenient here to add that where,
under the Local Government Act 1894, the powers of a parish council
are not already possessed by an urban district council, the Local
Government Board may by order confer such powers on the urban
council. This has been done almost universally, as far as regards
the power to appoint overseers and assistant overseers, and in many
cases urban councils have also obtained powers to appoint trustees
of parochial charities.
The foregoing is a sketch of the scheme of local government
carried out in England and Wales. No attempt has been made
to deal with poor law (q.v.) or education (q.v.). The
' oca ' a dministration of justice devolving upon the
justices in quarter or petty sessions is hardly a matter
of local government, although in one important respect,
that, namely, of the licensing of premises for the sale of intoxi-
cating liquors, it may be thought that the duties of justices fall
within the scope of local government. It will be seen that the
scheme, as at present existing, has for its object the simplification
of local government by the abolition of unnecessary independent
authorities, and that this has been carried out almost completely,
the principal exception being that in some cases burial boards
still exist which have not been superseded either by urban
district councils or by parish councils or parish meetings. There
are also some matters of local administration arising under what
are called commissions of sewers. These exist for the purpose
of regulating drainage, and providing defence against water in
fen lands or lands subject to floods from rivers or tidal waters.
The commissioners derive their authority from the Sewers
Commission Acts, which date from the time of Henry VIII.,
from the Land Drainage Act 1861, and from various local acts.
It is unnecessary, however, to consider in any detail the powers
exercised by commissioners of sewers in the few areas under
their control.
AUTHORITIES. G. L. Gomme, Lectures on the Principles of Local
Government; S. and B. Webb, English Local Government; Redlich
and Hirst, Local Government in England; Wright and Hobhouse,
Local Government and Local Taxation; W. Blake Odgers, Local
Government; Alex. Glen and W. E. Gordon, The Law of County
Government; Alex. Glen, The Law relating to Public Health; The
Law relating to Highways; W. I. Luhiley, The Public Health Acts
(6th ed., by Macmorran and Dill) ; Macmorran and Dill, The Local
Government Act 1888, &c. ; The Local Government Act 181)4, & C -I
Hobhouse and Fairbairn, The County Councillors' Guide; Pratt,
The Law of Highways (isth ed., by W. Mackenzie) ; Archbold, Law
of Quarter Sessions (4th ed., by Mead and Croft) ; J. Brooke Little,
The Law of Burials; Archbold, On Lunacy (4th ed., by S. G.
Lushington. (A. McM. ; T. A. I.)
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Among earlier works devoted to, or dealing largely with topo-
graphy, a few may be mentioned out of a considerable mass. _W.
Camden, Britannia; sive fiorentissimorum regnorum Angliae,
Scotiae,Hiberniae . . . chorographica descriptio(\ 586 and subsequent
editions; in Latin, but translated by several successive writers
both in Camden's time and later) ; M. Drayton, Poly-Olbion (a
descriptive poem, first issued in a complete form in 1622) ; T. Fuller,
History of the Worthies of England (1662) ; J. Leland, Itinerary, and
Collectanea, edited by T. Hearne respectively in 1710 and 1715;
T. Cox and A. Hall, Magna Britannia (1720, based on Camden's
Britannia, in English) ; D. Defoe, Tour through the whole Island of
Great Britain . . . divided into Circuits or Journeys (1724-1727);
various works of Thomas Pennant, published between 1741 and'
1820, and, at the same period, of Arthur Young (topographical
treatises on agriculture, &c.) ; W. Gilpin, Observations on Picturesque
Beauty made in the Year 1776 in several Parts of Great Britain (1778) ;
Essays on Prints and Early Engravings; Western Parts of England
(1798), and other works on various districts; Gentleman's Magazine
(1731-1868); E. W. Brayley, J. Britton and others, Beauties of
England and Wales, or, Original Delineation, Topographical, Historical
and Descriptive, of each County (1801-1818; both the authors named
wrote other descriptive works on special localities; Britton wrote
Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain, 1835); Daniel Lysons
(with the collaboration of his brother Samuel), Magna Britannia,
Topographical Account of the several Counties of Great Britain (1806-
1822; the counties were taken alphabetically but on the death of
Samuel Lysons in 1819 the work was stopped at Devonshire); Sir
G. Head, Home Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of England
(!835); Nathaniel Hawthorne, English Notebooks (1870). Among
modern publications, out of a great mass of works of more or less
popular character, there may be mentioned the well-known series of
Murray's Guides, in which each volume treats of a county or group
of counties.
Early in the 2Oth century the Victoria History of the Counties of
England (dedicated to Queen Victoria) began to appear; its volumes
deal with each county from every aspect natural history, prehistoric
and historic antiquities, ethnography, history, economic conditions,
topography and sport being dealt with by authorities in all branches.
The maps of the Ordnance, Geological and Hydrographic Surveys
delineate the configuration and geology of England and the adjacent
seas with a completeness unsurpassed in any other country. For
ordinary detailed work the best series of maps is found in Bartholo-
mew's Survey Atlas of England and Wales (Edinburgh Geographical
Institute, 1903), which, besides small distributional, physical and
other maps and letterpress, contains a magnificent series of coloured-
contour maps on the scale of | in. to [ m. (also issued in larger separate
sheets).
Statistics of every kind of climate, agriculture, mining, manu-
factures, trade, population, births, marriages, deaths, disease,
migration, education are liberally furnished by government
agencies.
See also A. J. Jukes-Brown, Tlie Building of the British Islands
(London, 1888) ; Sir A. C. Ramsay, Physical Geography and Geology
of Great Britain, edited by H. B. Woodward (London, 1894); Lord
Avebury, The Scenery of England and the Causes to which it is due
(London, 1902) ; Sir A. Geikie, Geological Map of England and Wales
(scale, 10 m. to I in.; Edinburgh, 1897); E. Reclus, Universal
Geography, vol. iv., The British Isles, edited by E. G. Ravenstein
(London, 1880); H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas
(2nd ed., Oxford, 1907); G. G. Chisholm, " On the Distribution of
Towns and Villages in England," in Geographical Journal, vol. ix.
(1897), PP- 76-87; vol. x. (1897), PP- 5H-530; A. Haviland, The
Geographical Distribution of Disease in Great Britain (London, 1892) ;
A. Buchan, " The Mean Atmospheric Temperature and Pressure of
the British ^stands " (with maps), Journal of the Scottish Meteoro-
logical Society^ vol. xi. (1898), pp. 3-41 ; W. M. Davis, " The Develop-
ment of Certain English Rivers," Geographical Journal, vol. v. (1895),
pp. 127-148; H. R. Mill, " The Mean and Extreme Rainfall of the
British Isles," Min. Proc. Inst. C.E. (1904); vol. civ. part i. ; "A
Fragment of the Geography of England South-west Sussex,"
Geographical Journal, vol. xv. (1900), p. 205; " England and Wales
viewed Geographically," Geographical Journal, vol. xxiv. (1904), pp.
621-636.
ENGLAND, THE CHURCH OF. The Church of England
claims to be a branch of the Catholic and Apostolic Church;
it is episcopal in its essence and administration, and is established
by law in that the state recognizes it as the national church of
the English people, an integral part of the constitution of the
realm. It existed, in name and in fact, as the church of the
English people centuries before that people became a united
nation, and, in spite of changes in doctrine and ritual, it remains
the same church that was planted in England at the end of the
6th century. From it the various tribes which had conquered
the land received a bond of union, and in it they beheld a pattern
of a single organized government administered by local officers,
to which they gradually attained in their secular polity. In
England, then, the state is in a sense the child of the church.
The doctrines of the English Church may be gathered from its
Book of Common Prayer (see PRAYER, BOOK OF COMMON) as
FOUNDATION]
ENGLAND, CHURCH OF
443
finally revised in 1661. with the form of ordaining and consecrat-
ing bishops, priests and deacons, with the exception of the
services for certain days which were abrogated in 1859; from
the XX X I \ Articles (see CREEDS), published with royal authority
in 1571; and from the First and Second Books of Homilies of
1540 and 1562 respectively, which arc declared in Article XXXV.
to contain sound doctrine.
Precttrtors. Christianity reached Britain during the 3rd
century, and perhaps earlier, probably from Gaul. An early
tradition records the death of a martyr Alban at
Yerulamium, the present St Albans. A fully grown
British Church existed in the 4th century: bishops
of London, York and Lincoln attended the council
of Aries in 314; the church assented to the council of Nicaea
in .425, and some of its bishops were present at the council of
Rimini in 359. The church held the Catholic faith. Britons
made pilgrimages, to Rome and to Palestine, and some joined
the monks who gathered round St Martin, bishop of Tours.
Among these was Ninian, who preached to the southern Picts,
and about 400 built a church of stone on Wigton Bay; its
whiteness struck the people and their name for it is commemo-
rated in the modem name Whithorn. From northern Britain,
St Patrick (see PATBICK, ST) went to accomplish his work as the
apostle of Ireland. Early in the 5th century Britain was infected
by the heresy of Pelagius. himself a Briton by birth, but in 429
Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, bishop of Troyes,
recalled the church to orthodoxy and, according to tradition,
led their converts to victory, the " Hallelujah victory," over the
Picts and Scots. When the Britons were hard pressed by Saxon
invaders large bodies of them found shelter in western Armorica,
in a lesser Britain, which gave its name to Brittany. A British
Church was founded there, and bishops, scholars and recluses of
either Britain seem constantly to have visited the other. The
Saxon invasion cut off Britain from communication with Rome;
and the British Church having no share in the pro-
*** gressi ve life of the Roman Church , differences gradually
arose between them. The organization of the British
Church was monastic, its bishops being members,
usually abbots, of monasteries, and not strictly diocesan, for the
monasteries to which the clergy were attached had a tribal
character. The monastic communities were large, Bangor
numbered 2000 monks. From Gildas, a British monk, who
wrote about 550, we gather that the bishops were rich and
powerful and claimed apostolical succession; that though
governed by synods the church lacked discipline; that simony
was rife, and that bishops and clergy were neglectful. He
evidently draws too dark a picture, for religious activity was not
extinct. Gildas himself and others preached in Ireland, and
from them the Scots, the dominant people of Ireland, received
a ritual. The organization of the Scotic Church in Ireland was
similar to that of the British Church. Its monastic settlements
or schools were many and large, and were the abodes of learning.
Bishops dwelt in them and were reverenced for their office, but
each was subject to the direction of the abbot and convent.
In 565 (?) St Columba, the founder and head of several Scotic
monasteries, left Ireland and founded a monastery in Hii or
lona, which afforded gospel teaching to the Scots of Dalriada
and the northern Picts, and later did a great work in evangelizing
many of the Teutonic conquerors of Britain. By 602 the British
Church, in common with the Irish Scots, followed practices
which differed from the Roman use as it then was; it kept
Easter at a different 'date; its clergy wore a different tonsure,
and there was some defect in its baptismal rite. The conquerors
of Britain Saxons, Angles and Jutes were heathens; the
Britons gradually retreated before them to Wales, and to western
and northern districts, or dwelt among them either as slaves
or as outlaws hiding in swamps and forests, and they made no
attempts to evangelize the conquering race.
About 587 a Roman abbot, Gregory, afterwards Pope Gregory
the Great, a said to have seen some English boys exposed for
sale in Rome and asked of what people they were, of what
kingdom and who was their king. They were " Angli," he was
told, of Deira, the modern Yorkshire, and their king was .-Kile.
" Not ' Angli,' " said he, struck with the beauty of the fair-
haired boys, " but ' angeli ' (angels), fleeing from wrath /^u,^.
(df <>a), and ^Bile's people must sing Alleluia." He tioaoftiit
wished himself to go as a missionary to the English, Bagiinh
but was prevented. After he became pope he sent c * ure "'
a mission to England headed by Augustine. The way was
prepared, for /Ethelberht, king of Kent, had married a
Christian, a Frankish princess Rerhta, and allowed her to
worship the true God. She brought with her a bishop who
ministered to her in St Martin's church outside Canterbury,
but evidently made no effort to spread the faith. Augustine
and his band landed probably at Ebbsfleet in 597. They were
well received by jEthelberht, who was converted and baptized.
On the 1 6th of November Augustine was consecrated by the
archbishop of Aries to be the archbishop of the English, and
by Christmas had baptized 10,000 Kentish men. Thus the
fathers of the English Church were Pope Gregory and St Augus-
tine. Augustine restored a church of the Roman times at
Canterbury to be the church of his sec. The mission was re-
inforced from Rome; and Gregory sent directions for the rule
of the infant church. There were to be two archbishops, at
London and York; London, however, was not fully Christianized
for some years, and the primatial see remained at Canterbury.
Augustine held two conferences with British bishops; he bade
them give up their peculiar usages, conform to the Roman ritual,
and join him in evangelizing the English. His haughtiness is
said to have offended them; they refused, and the English Church
owes nothing to its British predecessor. The mission prospered,
and bishops were consecrated for Rochester, and for London
for the East Saxons. After Augustine and ./Ethelberht died
a short religious reaction took place in Kent, and the East
Saxons apostatized. In 627 Edwin, king of Northumbria, who
had married a daughter of ^Ethelbcrht, was converted and
baptized with his nobles by Paulinus, who became the first
bishop of York. As Edwin's kingdom extended from the
Humber to the Forth and included the Trent valley, while he
exercised superiority over all the other English kingdoms, except
Kent, his conversion promised well for the church, but he was
slain and his kingdom overrun by Penda, the heathen king of
Mercia, the central part of England. Penda's victories en-
dangered the cause of Christianity. The Roman mission was
dying out. Kent and East Anglia, which was evangelized by
Felix, a Burgundian bishop sent from Canterbury, were settled
in the faith. Though Bernicia, the northern part of Northumbria,
was little affected by the gospel, and after Edwin's death
heathenism became dominant in his kingdom, Christianity did
not die out in Northumbria. The East Saxons had heard the
gospel, and in 634 the conversion of the West Saxons was begun
by Birinus, an Italian missionary. Central England and the
South Saxons, however, were wholly untouched by Christianity.
The work of the Romans was taken up by Scotic missionaries.
Oswald, under whom the Northumbrian power revived, had lived
as an exile among the Scots, and asked them for a bishop to teach
his people. Aidan was sent to him by the monks of lona in 635,
and fixed bis see in Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, where he founded
a monastery. Saintly, zealous and supported by Oswald's
influence, he brought Northumbria generally to accept the
gospel. The conversion of the Middle Angles and Mercians, and
the reconversion of the East Saxons, were also achieved by Scots
or by disciples of the Scotic mission. After Aidan's death in 651
the differences between the Roman and Scotic usages, and speci-
ally that concerning the date of Easter, led to bitter feelings, were
inconvenient in practice, and must have hindered the church in
its warfare against heathenism. Oswio, who reigned over both the
Northumbrian kingdoms, was, like his brother Oswald, a disciple
of the Scots, his son and his queen, the daughter of Edwin, held
to the Roman usages, and these usages were maintained by
Wilfrid, who on his return from Rome in 658 was appointed abbot
of Ripon. By Oswio's command a conference between the two
parties was held at the present Whitby in 664. Oswio decided in
favour of the Roman usages. This was the end of the Scotic
444
mission. The Scots left Lindisfarne, and their disciples generally
adopted the Roman usages. The Scots were admirable mission-
aries, holy and self-devoted, and building partly on Roman
foundations and elsewhere breaking new ground, they and their
English disciples, as Ceadda (St Chad), bishop of the Mercians,
and Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, who were by no means
inferior to their teachers, almost completed the conversion of the
country. But they practised an excessive asceticism and were
apt to abandon their work in order to live as hermits. Great as
were the benefits which the English derived from their teaching,
its cessation was not altogether a loss, for the church was passing
beyond the stage of mission teaching and needed organization,
and that it could not have received from the Scots.
Its organization like its foundation came from Rome. An
archbishop-designate who was sent to Rome for consecration
Organize- having died there, Pope Vitalian in 668 consecrated
tioa of the Theodore of Tarsus as archbishop of Canterbury. The
English Scots had no diocesan system, and the English
Church. bishoprics were vast in extent, followed the lines of the
kingdoms and varied with their fortunes. The church had no
system of government nor means of legislation. Theodore united
it in obedience to himself, instituted national synods and sub-
divided the over-large bishoprics. At his death, in 690, the
English dominions were divided into fourteen dioceses. Wilfrid,
who had become bishop of Northumbria, resisted the division of
his diocese and appealed to the pope. He was imprisoned by the
Northumbrian king and was exiled. While in exile he converted
the South Saxons, and their conversion led to that of the Isle of
Wight, then subject to them, in 686, which completed the
evangelization of the English. After long strife Wilfrid, who was
supported by Rome, regained a part of his former diocese.
Theodore also gave the church learning by establishing a school at
Canterbury, where many gained knowledge of the Scriptures, of
Latin and Greek, and other religious and secular subjects. In
the north learning was promoted by Benedict Biscop in the sister
monasteries which he founded at Wearmouth and Jarrow.
There Bede (q.v.) received the learning which he imparted to
others. In the year of Bede's death, 735, one of his disciples,
Ecgbert, bishop of York, became the first archbishop of York,
Gregory III. giving him the pallium, a vestment which conferred
archiepiscopal authority. He established a school or university
at York, to which scholars came from the continent. His work as
a teacher was carried on by Alcuin, who later brought learning to
the Court and Prankish dominions of Charlemagne. The infant
church, following the example of the Irish Scots, showed much
missionary zeal, and English missionaries founded an organized
church in Frisia and laboured on the lower Rhine; two who
attempted to preach in the old Saxon land were martyred.
Most famous of all, Winfrid, or St Boniface, the apostle of
Germany, preached to the Frisians, Hessians and Thuringians,
founded bishoprics and monasteries, became the first archbishop
of Mainz, and in 754 was martyred in Frisia. He had many
English helpers, some became bishops, and some were ladies, as
Thecla, abbess of Kitzirigen, and Lioba, abbess of Bischofsheim.
After his death, Willehad laboured in Frisia, and later, at the
bidding of Charlemagne, among the Saxons, and became the first
bishop of Bremen. Religion, learning, arts, such as transcription
and illumination, flourished in English monasteries. Yet heathen
customs and beliefs lingered on among the people, and in Bede's
time there were many pseudo-monasteries where men and women
made monasticism a cloak for idleness and vice. In the latter
part of the 8th century Mercia became the predominant kingdom
under Offa, and he determined to have an archbishop of his own.
By his contrivance two legates from Adrian I. held a council at
Chelsea in 787 in which Lichfield was declared an archbishopric,
and seven of the twelve suffragan bishoprics of Canterbury were
apportioned to it. In 802, however, Leo III. restored Canterbury
to its rights and the Lichfield archbishopric was abolished.
The rise of Wessex to power seems to have been aided by a
good understanding between Ecgbert and the church, and his
successors employed bishops as their ministers. j*Ethelred, who
was specially under ecclesiastical influence, went on a pilgrimage
ENGLAND, CHURCH OF
[EARLY ORGANIZATION
to Rome, and before his departure made large grants for
pious uses. His donation, though not the origin of tithes
in England, illustrates the idea of the sacredness of Later
the tenth of income on which laws enforcing the Anglo-
payment of tithes were founded. His pilgrimage Saxoa
was probably undertaken in the hope of averting
the attacks of the pagan Danes. Their invasions fell heavily
on the church; priests were slaughtered and churches sacked
and burnt. Learning disappeared in Northumbria, and things
were little better in the south. Bishops fought and fell in
battle, the clergy lived as laymen, the monasteries were
held by married canons, heathen superstitions and immorality
prevailed among the laity. Besides bringing the Danish
settlers in East Anglia to profess Christianity in 878, Alfred
set himself to improve the religious and intellectual condi-
tion of his own people (see ALFRED). The gradual recon-
quest of middle and northern England by his successors was
accompanied by the conversion of the Danish population. A
revival of religion was effected by churchmen inspired by the
reformed monasticism of France and Flanders, by Odo, arch-
bishop of Canterbury, Oswald, archbishop of York, and Dunstan
(see DUNSTAN), who introduced from abroad the strict life of the
new Benedictinism. King Edgar promoted the monastic reform,
and by his authority Bishop ^Ethelwold of Winchester turned
canons out of the monasteries and put monks in their place.
Dunstan sought to reform the church by ecclesiastical and secular
legislation, forbidding immorality among laymen, insisting on the
duties of the clergy, and compelling the payment of tithes and
other church dues. After Edgar's death an anti-monastic
movement, chiefly in Mercia, nearly ended in civil war. In this
strife, which was connected with politics, the victory on the
whole lay with the monks' party, and in many cathedral churches
the chapters remained monastic. The renewed energy of the
church was manifested by councils, canonical legislation and
books of sermons. In the homilies of Abbot JEllric, written for
Archbishop Sigeric, stress is laid on the purely spiritual presence
of Christ in the Eucharist, but his words do not indicate, as some
have believed, that the English Church was not in accord with
Rome. The ecclesiastical revival was short-lived. Renewed
Danish invasions, in the course of which Archbishop Alphege was
martyred in 1012, and a decline in national character, injuriously
affected the church and, though in the reign of Canute it was
outwardly prosperous, spirituality and learning decreased.
Bishoprics and abbacies were rewards of service to the king, the
bishops were worldly-minded, plurality was frequent, and simony
not unknown. Edward the Confessor promoted foreign ecclesi-
astics; the connexion with Rome was strengthened, and in 1062
the first legates since the days of Offa were sent to England by
Alexander II. A political conflict led to the banishment of Robert,
the Norman archbishop of Canterbury. An Englishman Stigand
received his see, but was excommunicated at Rome, and was
regarded even in England as schismatical. When William of
Normandy planned his invasion of England, Alexander II., by
the advice of Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory VII., moved
doubtless by this schism and by the desire to bring the English
Church under the influence of the Cluniac revival and into closer
relation with Rome, gave the duke a consecrated banner, and the
Norman invasion had something of the character of a holy war.
Before the Norman Conquest the church had relapsed into
deadness: English bishops were political partisans, the clergy
were married, and discipline and asceticism, then the
recognized condition of holiness, were extinct. The time""
Conqueror's relations with Rome ensured a reform;
for the papacy was instinct with the Cluniac spirit. In 1070
papal legates were received and held a council by which Stigand
was deposed. Lanfranc, abbot of Bee, was appointed arch-
bishop of Canterbury and worked harmoniously with the king
in bringing the English Church up to the level of the church in
Normandy. Many native bishops and abbots were deposed,
and the Norman prelates who succeeded them were generally
of good character, strict disciplinarians, and men of grander
ideas. A council of 1075 decreed the removal of bishops' sees
NORMAN TIMES)
ENGLAND, CHURCH OF
445
from villages to towns, as on the continent ; the see of Sherborne,
for example, was removed to Old Sarum, and that of Selsey to
Chicbester, and many churches statelier than of old were built
in the Norman style which the Confessor had already adopted
for his church at Westminster. In another council priests and
deacons were thenceforward forbidden to marry. William and
Lanfranc also worked on Hildebrandine lines in separating
ecclesiastical from civil administration. Ecclesiastical affairs
were regulated in church councils held at the same time as the
king's councils. Bishops and archdeacons were no longer to
exercise their spiritual jurisdiction in secular courts, as had been
the custom, but in ecclesiastical courts and according to canon
law. The king, however, ruled church as well as state; Gregory
granted him control over episcopal elections, he invested bishops
with the crazier and they held their temporalities of him, and
be allowed no councils to meet and no business to be done without
his licence. Gregory claimed homage from him; but while the
king promised the payment of Peter's pence and such obedience
as his English predecessors had rendered, he refused homage;
be allowed no papal letters to enter the kingdom without his
leave, and when an anti-pope was set up, he and Lanfranc
treated the question as to which pope should be acknowledged
in England as one to be decided by the crown. The Conquest
brought the church into closer connexion with Rome and gave
it a share in the religious and intellectual life of the continent;
it stimulated and purified English monastic-ism, and it led to
the organization of the church as a body with legislative and
administrative powers distinct from those of the state. The
relations established by the Conqueror between the crown, the
church and the pope, its head and supreme judge, worked well
as long as the king and the primate were agreed; but were so
complex that trouble necessarily arose when they disagreed.
William Rufus tried to feudalize the church, to bring its officers
and lands under feudal law; he kept bishoprics and abbacies
vacant and confiscated their revenues. He quarrelled with
Anselm (9.*.) who succeeded Lanfranc. Anselm while at Rome
heard the investiture of prelates by laymen denounced, and he
maintained the papal decree against Henry I. Bishops were
vassals of the king, holding lands of him, as well as officers of the
church. How were they to be appointed ? Who should invest
them with the symbols of their office ? To whom was their
homage due ? (see INVESTITURE). These questions which
agitated western Europe were settled as regards England by a
compromise: Henry surrendered investiture and kept the right
to homage. The substantial gain lay with the crown, for, while
elections were theoretically free, the king retained his power
over them. Though Henry in some degree checked the exercise
of papal authority in England, appeals to Rome without his
sanction were frequent towards the end of his reign. Stephen
obtained the recognition of his title from Innocent II., and was
upheld by the church until he violently attacked three bishops
who had been Henry's ministers. The clergy then transferred
their allegiance to Matilda. His later quarrel with the papacy,
then under the influence of St Bernard, added to his embarrass-
ments and strengthened the Angevin cause.
During Stephen's reign the church grew more powerful than
was for the good either of the state or itself. Its courts en-
croached on the sphere of the lay courts, and further
claimed exclusive criminal jurisdiction over all clerks
t/ or . whether in holy or minor orders, with the result
that criminous clerks, though degraded by a spiritual
court, escaped temporal punishment. Henry II., finding
ecclesiastical privileges an obstacle to administrative reform,
demanded that the bishops should agree to observe the ancient
customs of the realm. These customs were, he asserted, expressed
in certain constitutions to which he required their assent at a
council at Clarendon in 1 164. In spirit they generally maintained
the rights of the crown as they existed under the Conqueror.
One provided that clerks convicted of temporal crime in a
spiritual court and degraded should be sentenced by a lay court
and punished as laymen. Archbishop Becket (see BECKET)
agreed, repented and refused his assent. The king tried to ruin
Thr
him by unjust demands; he appealed to Rome and fled to France.
A long quarrel ensued, and in 1170 Henry was forced to be
reconciled to Becket. The archbishop's murder consequent on
the king's hasty words shocked Christendom, and Henry did
penance publicly. By agreement with the pope he renounced
the Constitutions, but the encroachments of the church courts
were slightly checked, and the king's decisive influence on
episcopal elections and some other advantages were secured.
The church in Wales had become one with the English Church
by the voluntary submission of its bishops to the see of Canter-
bury in 1 1 92 and later. The Irish Church remained distinct,
though the conquest of Ireland, which was sanctioned by the
English pope Adrian IV. (Nicholas Breakspear), brought it into
the same relations with the crown as the English Church and into
conformity with it. Under the guidance of ecclesiastics employed
as royal ministers, the church supported the crown until, in
1206, Innocent III. refused to confirm the election of a bishop
nominated by King John to Canterbury; and representatives
of the monks of Christ Church, in whom lay the right of election,
being at his court, the pope bade them elect Stephen Langton
whom he consecrated as archbishop. John refused to receive
Langton and seized the estates of Christ Church. Innocent
laid England under an interdict in 1208; the king confiscated
the property of the clergy, banished bishops and kept sees
vacant. Papal envoys excommunicated him and declared him
deposed in 1211. Surrounded by enemies, he made his peace
with the pope in 1213, swore fealty to him before his envoy,
acknowledged that he held his kingdom of the Roman see, and
promised a yearly tribute for England and Ireland. Finally he
surrendered his crown to a legate and received it back from him.
The banished clergy returned and an agreement was made as to
their losses. Langton guided the barons in their demands on
the king which were expressed in Magna Carta. The first clause
provided, as charters of Henry I. and Stephen had already
provided, that the English Church should be " free, "adding that
it should have freedom of election, which John had promised
in 1214. As John's suzerain, Innocent annulled the charter,
suspended Langton, and excommunicated the barons in arms
against the king. On John's death, Gualo, legate of Honorius
III., with the help of the earl marshal, secured the throne for
Henry III., and he and his successor Pandulf, as representatives
of the young king's suzerain, largely directed English affairs
until 1231, when Pandulf's departure restored Langton to his
rightful position as head in England of the church. Reforms
in discipline and clerical work were inculcated by provincial
legislation, and two legates, Otho in 1237 and Ottoboni in 1268,
promulgated in councils constitutions which were a fundamental
part of the canon law in England. Religious life was quickened
by the coming of the friars (see FKIARS). Parochial organization
was strengthened by the institution of vicars in benefices held
by religious bodies, which was regulated and enforced by the
bishops. It was a time of intellectual activity, in character
rather cosmopolitan than national. English clerks studied
philosophy and theology at Paris or law at Bologna; some
remained abroad and were famous as scholars, others like
Archbishops Langton, and Edmund Rich, and Bishop Grosse-
teste returned to be rulers of the church, and others like Roger
Bacon to continue their studies in England. The schools of
Oxford, however, had already attained repute, and Cambridge
began to be known as a place of study. The spirit of the age
found expression in art, and English Gothic architecture, though
originally, like the learning of the time, imported from France,
took a line of its own and reached its climax at this period.
Henry's gratitude for the benefits which in his early years he
received from Rome was shown later in subservience to papal
demands. Gregory IX., and still more Innocent IV., sorely in
need of money to prosecute their struggle with the imperial
house, laid grievous taxes on the English clergy, supported the
king in making heavy demands upon them, and violated the
rights of patrons by appointing to benefices by " provisions "
often in favour of foreigners. Churchmen, and prominently
Grosseteste, the learned and holy bishop of Lincoln, while
446
ENGLAND, CHURCH OF
[I3TH-I5TH CENTURY
recognizing the pope as the divinely appointed source of all
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, were driven to resist papal orders
which they held to be contrary to apostolic precepts. Their
remonstrances were seldom effectual, and the state of the
national church was noted by the Provisions of Oxford in 1258
as part of the general misgovernment which the baronial opposi-
tion sought to remedy. The alliance between the crown and
the papacy in this reign diminished the liberties of the church.
Edward I., who was a strong king, checked an attempt to
magnify the spiritual authority by the writ Circumspecte agatis,
which defined the sphere of the ecclesiastical courts,
'uth *" a P ut a restramt on religious endowments by the Statute
centuries, of Mortmain, and desiring that every estate in the
realm should have a share in public burdens and
counsels, caused the beneficed clergy to be summoned to send
proctors to parliament. The clergy preferred to make their grants
in their own convocations, and so lost the position offered to
them. For some years clerical taxation by the crown was carried
on with the good- will of the papacy; it was not oppressive for
unbeneficed clergy and incomes below ten marks were exempt,
and in theory the clergy were celibate. Papal demands, however,
were additional burdens. In 1296 Boniface VIII., by his bull
Clericis laicos, forbade the clergy to grant money to lay princes,
and Edward's request for a clerical subsidy was in 1 297 refused by
convocation led by Archbishop Winchelsea. The king thereupon
outlawed the clergy. The northern province yielded, the
southern held out longer; but finally the clergy made their peace
severally, each paying his share, and the royal victory was
complete. Winchelsea joined the baronial opposition which
forced Edward to grant the " Confirmation of the Charters."
Edward procured his disgrace from Clement V., and in return
allowed Clement to exact so much from the church that the
doings of the papal agents provoked an indignant remonstrance
from parliament in 1307. With that exception the king's
dealings with the church were statesmanlike. He employed
clerical ministers and paid them by church preferments, but his
nominations to bishoprics did not always receive papal confirma-
tion which had become recognized as essential. His weak. son
Edward II. yielded readily to papal demands. The majority of
the bishops of the reign, and specially those engaged in politics,
were unworthy men; religion was at a low ebb; plurality and
non-residence were common. By the constitution Execrabilis
John XXII. ordered that all cures held in plurality save one
should be vacated, and, which was not so well, " reserved " all
benefices so vacated for his own appointment. As the residence
of the popes at Avignon from 1308 to 1377 brought them under
French influence, Englishmen during the war with France were
specially displeased that large sums should be drawn from the
kingdom for them and that they should exercise patronage
there. In the reign of Edward III. the popes, though appointing
to bishoprics by provision, did not give them to foreigners,
but they appointed foreigners, enemies of England, to lesser
preferments, deaneries and prebends. In 1351 the Statute of
Provisors declared provisions unlawful. Capitular elections,
however, remained mere forms; the king nominated, and the
popes provided, and took advantage of their claim to appoint to
sees vacant by translation. Papal interference in suits concern-
ing temporalities was checked by a law of 1353 (the first statute of
Praemunire), which made punishable by outlawry and forfeiture
the carrying before a foreign tribunal of causes cognizable by
English courts. This measure was extended in 1365, and in
1393 by the great statute of Praemunire. Indignant at the law of
1365, Urban V. demanded payment of the tribute promised by
John, which was then thirty-three years in arrear, but parliament
repudiated the claim. The Black Death disorganized the church
by thinning the ranks of the clergy, who did their duty manfully
during the plague. In the diocese of Norwich, for example, 800
parishes lost their incumbents in 1349, 83 of them twice over
(Jessopp). Large though insufficient numbers were instituted
to benefices and unfit persons received holy orders. The value of
livings decreased and many lay vacant. Some incumbents
deserted their parishes to take stipendiary work in towns or secular
employments, and unbeneficed clergy demanded higher stipends.
Greediness infected the church in common with society at large.
Yet Chaucer's ideal parish priest must have represented a familiar
type, so that we may believe that much good work was here
and there unobtrusively done by the clergy. Prominent among
abuses were the sale of pardons, and the extortions of the ecclesi-
astical courts; their decrees were enforced by excommunication,
and on a writ issued to the sheriff an excommunicated person
would be imprisoned until he satisfied the demands of the church.
The state needed money and attacks were made in parliament on
the wealth of the church. Already, in 1340, Edward III., who
quarrelled with Archbishop Stratford on political grounds, had
appointed lay ministers, and in 1371 William of Wykeham,
bishop of Winchester, and other clerical ministers were turned out
of office and succeeded by laymen. A political crisis in 1376 was
followed by a struggle between the bishops and John of Gaunt,
duke of Lancaster, the head of the anticlerical party, who allied
himself with John Wycliffe (q.v.). He was unpopular, and when
the bishops cited Wycliffe before them in St Paul's, the duke's
conduct provoked a riot and the proceedings ended abruptly.
Wycliffe held that the church was corrupted by wealth; that
only those in grace had a right to God's gifts, and that temporal
power belonged only to laymen and not to popes nor priests.
Later he attacked the papacy itself, which in 1378 was distracted
by the great schism; by 1380 he condemned pilgrimages, secret
confession and masses for the dead. While holding the presence
of Christ in the Eucharist, he denied a change of substance in the
elements, arguing that accidents or qualities, such as form and
colour, could not exist without substance. He taught that Holy
Scripture was the only source of religious truth, to the exclusion
of church authority and tradition, and he and his followers made
the first complete English version of the Bible. His opinions
were spread by the poor priests whom he sent out to preach and
by his English tracts. That his teaching had any direct effect on
the insurrection of 1381, though commonly believed, appears to
be an unfounded idea; many priests were concerned in the
rising, and specially the mendicant orders, Wycliffe's bitter
enemies, but the motives of the insurrection were essentially
secular (Oman, The Great Revolt of ij8i). The reaction which
followed extended to religion, and Wycliffe's doctrines were
condemned by a church council in 1382. Nevertheless he died in
peace. He had many disciples, especially in Oxford and in
industrial centres. The Lollards, as his followers were called,
had supporters in parliament and among people of high rank in
the court of Richard II., and the king's marriage to Anne of
Bohemia brought about the importation of Wycliffe's writings
into Bohemia, where they had a strong influence on the religious
movement led by Hus. At first the bishops were not inclined to
persecute, and the earlier Lollards mostly recanted under
pressure, but their number increased.
With the accession of the Lancastrian house the crown allied
itself with the church, and the bishops adopted a repressive
policy towards the Lollards. By the canon law
obstinate heretics were to be burnt by the secular
power, and though England had hitherto been almost
free from herefsy, one or two burnings had taken place in accord-
ance with that law. In 1401 a statute, De heretico comburendo,
ordered that heretics convicted in a spiritual court should be
committed to the secular arm and publicly burned, and, while this
statute was pending, one Sawtre was burned as a relapsed heretic.
Henry V. was zealous for orthodoxy and the persecution of
Lollards increased; in 1414 Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham,
who had been condemned as a heretic, escaped and made an
insurrection; he was taken in 1412. and hanged and burned.
Lollardism was connected with an insurrection in 1431; it then
ceased to have any political importance, but it kept its hold in
certain towns and districts on the lower classes; many Lollards
were forced to recant and others suffered martyrdom. The
church was in an unsatisfactory state. As regards the papacy,
the crown generally maintained the position taken up in the
previous century, but its policy was fitful, and the custom
of allowing bishops who were made cardinals to retain their sees
The 15th
century.
REFORMATION ERA]
ENGLAND, CHURCH OF
447
strengthened papal influence. The bishops were largely engaged
in secular business; there was much plurality, and cathedral
and collegiate churches were frequently left to inferior officers
whose lives were unclerical. The clergy were numerous and
drawn from all classes, and humble birth did not debar a man
from attaining the highest positions in the church. Candidates
for holy orders were still examined, but clerical education seems
to have declined. Preaching was rare, partly from neglectfulness
and partly because, in 1401, in order to prevent the spread
of heresy, priests were forbidden to preach without a licence.
While the marriage of the clergy was checked, irregular and
temporary connexions were lightly condoned. Discipline generally
was lax, and exhortations against field-sports, tavern haunting
and other unclerical habits seem to have had little effect.
Monasticism had declined. Papal indulgences and relics were
hawked about chiefly by friars, though these practices were
discountenanced by the bishops. On the other hand, all educa-
tion was carried on by the clergy, and religion entered largely into
the daily life of the people, into their gild-meetings, church-ales,
mystery-plays and holidays, as well as into the great events of
family life baptisms, marriages and deaths. Many stately
churches were built in the prevailing Perpendicular style, often
by efforts in which all classes shared, and many hamlet chapels
supplemented the mother church in scattered parishes. The
revival of classical learning scarcely affected the church at large.
Greek learning was regarded with suspicion by many churchmen,
but the English humanists were orthodox. The movement had
little to do with the coming religious conflicts, which indeed
killed it, save that it awoke in some learned men like Sir Thomas
More a desire for ecclesiastical, though not doctrinal, reform, and
led many to study the New Testament of which Erasmus pub-
lished a Greek text and Latin paraphrases.
During the earlier years of the i6th century Lollardism still
existed among the lower classes in towns, and was rife here and
there in country districts. Persecution went on and
Jjjf^ martyrdoms are recorded. The old grievances con-
aotfrf. cerning ecclesiastical exactions remained unabated and
were further strengthened by an ill-founded rumour
that Richard Hunne, a Londoner who had refused to pay a
mortuary, was imprisoned for heresy in the Lollards' tower, and
was found hanged in his cell in 1514, had been murdered.
Lutheranism affected England chiefly through the surreptitious
importation of Tyndale's New Testament and heretical books.
In 1521 Henry VIII. wrote a book against Luther in which he
maintained the papal authority, and was rewarded by Leo X.
with the title of Defender of the Faith. Henry, however, whose
will was to himself as the oracles of God, finding that the pope
opposed his intended divorce from Catherine of Aragon, deter-
mined to allow no supremacy in his realm save his own. He
carried out his ecclesiastical policy by parliamentary help.
Parliament was packed, and was skilfully managed; and he had
on his side the popular impatience of ecclesiastical abuses, a new
feeling of national pride which would brook no foreign inter-
ference, the old desire of the laity to lighten their own burdens
by the wealth of the church, and a growing inclination to question
or reject sacerdotal authority. He used these advantages to
forward his policy, and when he met with opposition, enforced his
will as a despot. The parliament of 1529 lasted until 1536; it
broke the bonds of Rome, established royal supremacy over the
English Church, and effected a redistribution of national wealth
at the expense of the spirituality. It began by acts abolishing
ecclesiastical exactions, such as excessive mortuaries and fees for
probate, and by prohibiting pluralities except in stated cases,
application to Rome for licence to evade the act being made
penal. Henry having crushed his minister Cardinal Wolsey,
archbishop of York, declared the whole body of the clergy
involved in a praemunire by their submission to Wolsey's legatinc
authority, and ordered the convocation to purchase pardon by a
large payment, and by acknowledging him as " Protector and
Supreme Head of the English Church and Clergy." After much
debate, the acknowledgment was made in 1531, with the qualifica-
tion " to far as the law of Christ allows." A " supplication "
against clerical jurisdiction and legislation by convocation was
obtained from the Commons in 1531, and Henry received from
convocation the " submission of the clergy," surrendering its
legislative power except on royal licence, and consenting to a
revision of the canon law by commissioners to be appointed by the
king. A bill for conditionally withholding the payment of
annatei, or first-fruits, to Rome was passed, and Henry took
advantage of the fear of the Roman court lest it should lose these
payments, to obtain without the usual fees bulls promoting
Cranmer to the see of Canterbury in 1533, and thus was enabled
to gain his divorce. Cranmer pronounced his marriage to
Catherine null, and declared him lawfully married to Anne
Boleyn. Clement VII. retorted by excommunicating the king,
but for that Henry cared not. Appeals to Rome were forbidden
by statute, and the council ordained that the pope should
thenceforth only be spoken of as bishop of Rome, as not having
authority in England. In 1534 the restraint of annatcs was
confirmed by law, all payments to Rome were forbidden, and it
was enacted that, on receiving royal licence to elect, cathedral
chapters must elect bishops nominated by the king. The papal
power was extirpated by statute, parliament at the same time
declaring that neither the king nor kingdom would vary from the
" Catholic faith of Christendom." The submission of the clergy
was made law. Appeals from the archbishops' courts were to be
to the king in chancery, and were to be heard by commissioners,
whence arose the Court of Delegates as the court of final appeal
in ecclesiastical cases. The first-fruits and tenths of benefices
were given to the king, and his title as " Supreme Head in earth
of the Church of England " was declared by parliament without
the qualification added by convocation. Fisher, bishop of
Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, lately chancellor, the two most
eminent Englishmen, were beheaded in 1535 on an accusation of
attempting to deprive the king of this title, and some Carthusian
monks suffered a more cruel martyrdom in the same cause.
Meanwhile New Testaments were burnt, and heretics, or re-
formers, forced to abjure or, remaining steadfast, were sent to the
stake, for though the heresy law of Henry IV. was repealed,
heresy was still punishable by death, and persecution was not
abated. By breaking the bonds of Rome Henry did not give the
church freedom; he substituted a single despotism for the dual
authority which pope and king had previously exercised over it.
In 1535 Cromwell, the king's vicar-general, began a visitation of
the monasteries. The reports (comperla) of his commissioners
having been delivered to the king and communicated to parlia-
ment in 1536, parliament declared the smaller monasteries
corrupt, and granted the king all of less value than 200 a year.
A rebellion in Lincolnshire and another in the north, the formid-
able Pilgrimageof Grace, followed. The suppression of thegreater
houses was effected gradually, surrenders were obtained by
pressure, and three abbots who were reluctant to give up the
possessions of their convents for confiscation were hanged.
Monastic shrines and treasuries were sacked and the spoil sent to
the king, to whom parliament granted all the houses, their lands
and possessions. Of the enormous wealth thus gained Henry
spent a part on national defence, a little on the foundation of the
bishoprics of Westminster, dissolved in 1550, Bristol, Chester,
Gloucester, Oxford and Peterborough, and gave the lands to men
either useful to or favoured by himself, or sold them to rich
purchasers. In 1536 he dictated the belief and ceremonial of the
church by issuing Ten Articles which were subscribed by con-
vocation. This first formulary of the English Church as separate
from Rome did not contravene Catholic doctrine, though it
showed the influence of Lutheran models. Another exposition of
Anglican doctrine was made in the Institution of a Christian Man
or " Bishops' book," in some respects more likely to satisfy those
attached to the tenets of Rome, in others, as in the distinct
repudiation of purgatory and the declaration that salvation
depended solely on the merits of Christ, showing an advance.
It was published in 1537 with Henry's sanction but not by
authority. In that year licence was granted for the sale of a
translation of the Bible, and in 1538 another version called
Matthew's Bible, was ordered to be kept in all churches (see
44 8
ENGLAND, CHURCH OF [ELIZABETHAN SETTLEMENT
BIBLE). Pilgrimages were suppressed and images used for
worship destroyed. Denial of the king's supremacy, denial of
the corporal presence in the Eucharist, and insults to Catholic
rites were alike punished by cruel death. The publication abroad
of the king's excommunication rendered an assertion of orthodoxy
advisable for political reasons, and in 1539 came the Act of the
Six Articles attaching extreme penalties to deviations from
Catholic doctrines. The backward swing of the pendulum
continued; Cromwell was beheaded and three reforming
preachers were burnt in 1 540. Prosecutions for heresy under the
.act were fitful: four gospellers were burnt in London in 1546,
of whom the celebrated Anne Askew was one. Cranmer, how-
ever, did not lose the king's favour. A fresh attempt to define
doctrine was made in the Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of a
Christian Man, the " King's Book," published by authority in
1543, which, while repudiating the pope, was a declaration of
Catholic orthodoxy. A Primer, or private prayer-book, of which
parts were in English, as the litany composed by Cranmer, and
virtually the same as at present, was issued in 1546, and further
liturgical change seemed probable when Henry died in 1547.
Henry, while changing many things in the church, would not
allow any deviation in essentials from the religion of Catholic
Europe, which was not then so dogmatically defined as it was
later by the council of Trent. Edward VI. was a child, and the
Protector Somerset and the council favoured further changes,
which were carried out with Cranmer's help. They issued a
.book of Homilies and a set of injunctions which were enforced
by a royal visitation. Pictures and much painted glass were
destroyed in churches, frescoed walls were whitewashed, and
in 1548, the removal of all images was decreed. Parliament
ordered that bishops should be appointed by letters patent and
hold their courts in the king's name. An act of the last reign
granting the king all chantries and gilds was enlarged and
enforced with cruel injustice to the poor. On the petition of
convocation parliament allowed the marriage of priests; and
it further ordered that the laity should receive the cup in com-
munion. A communion book was issued by the council in
English, the Latin mass being retained for a time. Many
German reformers came to England, were favoured by the
council, and gained influence over Cranmer. The first Book
of Common Prayer was authorized by an Act of Uniformity in
1549; it retained much from old service books, but the com-
munion office is Lutheran in character. It excited discontent,
and a serious insurrection broke out in the West, the insurgents
demanding the revival of the Act of the Six Articles and the
withdrawal of the new service as " like a Christmas game."
After Somerset's fall the government rapidly pushed forward
reformation. A new Ordinal issued with parliamentary approval
in 1550 was significant of the change in sacramental doctrine,
and the four minor orders disappeared. Altars were destroyed
and tables substituted. Five bishops, Bonner of London,
Gardiner of Winchester, and Heath of Worcester, then already
in prison, and two others, were deprived; and the Lady Mary,
who would not give up the mass, was harshly treated. The
reformers were not tolerant; for a woman was burnt for Arianism
in 1550 and a male Anabaptist in 1551. Under the influence
of foreign reformers, who took a lower view of the Eucharist
than the Lutheran divines, Cranmer soon advanced beyond the
prayer-book of 1549. A second prayer-book, departing further
from the old order, appeared in 1552, and without being accepted
by convocation was enforced by another Act of Uniformity, and
in 1553 a catechism and forty-two articles of religion were
authorized by Edward for subscription by the clergy, though
not laid before convocation. A revision of the canon law in
accordance with the act for " submission of the clergy " was at
last undertaken in 1551, but the only result was a document
entitled Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, which never received
authority. Edward died in 1553. Apart from matters of faith,
the church had fared ill under a royal supremacy exercised by
self-seeking nobles in the name of the boy-king. Convocation
lost all authority and bishops were treated as state officials
liable to deprivation for disobedience to the council. Means of
worship were diminished, and the poor were shamefully wronged
by the suppression of chantries, gilds and holy days; even the
few sheep of the poor brethren of a gild were seized to swell a
sum which from 1550 was largely diverted from public purposes
to private gain. Churches were despoiled of their plate; the
old bishops were forced, the new more easily persuaded, to give
up lands belonging to their sees, and rich men grew richer by
robbing God.
When Mary succeeded her brother, the deprived bishops
were restored, some reforming bishops were imprisoned, and
Cranmer, who was implicated in the plot on behalf of Lady
Jane Grey, was attainted of treason. As regards doctrine,
religious practices and papal supremacy, Mary was set on
bringing back her realm to the position existing before her
father's quarrel with Rome. Her first parliament repealed the
ecclesiastical legislation of Edward's reign, and convocation
formally accepted transubstantiation. Seven bishops were
deprived in 1554, four of them as married, and about a fifth of
the beneficed clergy, though some received other benefices after
putting away their wives. Apparently Mary at first believed
that her authority would be accepted in religious matters; but
she met with opposition, partly provocative, for Wyat's re-
bellion consequent on her intended marriage to Philip of Spain
was closely connected with religion, and more largely passive
in the noble resolution of those who chose martyrdom rather
than denial of their faith. To the nation at large, though not
averse from the old doctrines and practices of the church, a
return to the Roman obedience was distasteful. Nevertheless,
Cardinal Pole was received as legate, and the title of Supreme
Head of the Church having been dropped, a parliament carefully
packed, and the fears of the rich appeased by the assurance that
they would not have to surrender the monastic lands, he absolved
the nation in parliament and reunited it to the Church of Rome
on November 30, 1554, the clergy being absolved in convocation.
Parliament repealed all acts against the Roman see since the
twentieth year of Henry VIII. The heresy laws were revived,
and a horrible persecution of those who refused to disown the
doctrines of the prayer-book began in 1555, and lasted during
the remainder of the reign. Nearly 300 persons were burned
to death as heretics in these four years, among them being five
bishops: Hooper of Gloucester, Ferrar of St David's, Ridley
of London, and Latimer (until 1539) of Worcester in 1555, and
Archbishop Cranmer in 1556. The chief responsibility for these
horrors rests with the queen; the bishops who examined the
accused were less zealous than she desired. The most prominent
among them in persecution was Bonner of London. The exiles
for religion were received at Frankfort, Strassburg and Zurich.
At Frankfort a party among them objected to the ceremonies
retained in the prayer-book, and, encouraged by Calvin and by
Knox, who came to them from Geneva, quarrelled with those
who desired to keep the book unchanged. Mary died in 1558.
Her reign arrested the rapid spoliation of the church and possibly
prevented the adoption of doctrines which would have destroyed
its apostolic character; the persecution by which it was dis-
graced strengthened the hold of the reformed religion on the
people and made another acceptance of Roman supremacy for
ever impossible.
Elizabeth's accession was hailed with pleasure; she was
known to dislike her sister's ecclesiastical policy, and a change
was expected. An Act of Supremacy restored to the eilta-
crown the authority over the church held by Henry bethaa
VIII., and provided for its exercise by commissioners,
whence came the court df High Commission nominated
by the crown, as a high ecclesiastical court; but Elizabeth
rejected the title of Supreme Head, and used that of Supreme
Governor, as " over all persons and in all cases within her
dominions supreme." An Act of Uniformity prescribed the
use of the prayer-book of 1552 in a revised form which raised
the level of its doctrine, and injunctions enforced by a royal
visitation re-established the reformed order. All the Marian
bishops save two refused the oath of supremacy and were deprived,
and eight were imprisoned. Of the clergy generally few refused
THE NONCONFORMISTS]
ENGLAND, CHURCH OF
449
it; (or only some 200 were deprived for religion during the first
six years of the reign. Bishops for the vacant sees were nominated
by the crown and elected by their chapters as in Henry's reign;
Matthew Parker was canonically consecrated archbishop of Can-
terbury. The orthodoxy of the church was vindicated by Bishop
Jewel's Apologia eccUsiae Anglicaime. Adherents to Rome
vainly tried to obtain papal sanction for attending the church
services, and were forced either to disobey the pope or become
" recusants "; many were fined, and those who attended mass
were imprisoned. Meanwhile a party, soon known as Puritans,
rebelled against church order; the exiles who had come under
Genevan influence objecting on their return to vestments and
ceremonies enjoined by the prayer-book. There was much non-
conformity in the church which the queen ordered the bishops
to correct. Parker, though averse to violent measures, in-
sisted on obedience to his " Advertisements " of 1566, which,
though not formally authorized by the queen, expressed her
will, and became held as authoritative, and some of the refractory
were punished. A company engaged in irregular worship was
discovered in London in 1567 and a few persons were imprisoned
by the magistrate. Active opposition to the government was
stirred up by Pius V'., and in 1569 a rebellion in the north, where
the old religion was strong, was aided by papal money and
encouraged by hopes of Spanish' intervention. In 1570 Pius
published a bull excommunicating and deposing the queen.
Thenceforward recusants had to choose between loyalty to the
queen and loyalty to the pope. They lay under suspicion, and
severe penal laws were enacted against Romish practices. About
1579 many seminary priests and Jesuits came over to England
as missionaries; some actively engaged in treason, all were
legally traitors. The country was threatened with foreign
invasion, plots against the government were detected, and the
queen's life was held to be endangered. The council hunted
down these priests and their abettors, and many were executed,
martyrs to the doctrine of the pope's power of deposition.
The number put to death in this reign under the penal laws was
187. The papal policy defeated itself; a large number of the old
religion while retaining their faith chose to be loyal to the queen
rather than lend themselves to the designs of her enemies. From
1571 recusants can no longer be reckoned as nonconforming
members of the English Church: the law recognized them as
separate from it. The church's doctrine was defined in the
catechism of 1570, and in the revised articles of religion which
appeared as the XXXIX. Articles in 1571, and its law by a body
of canons published with authority in 1576, the attempt at
codification made in the Rcformalio It gum having been laid
aside.
From 1574 the Protestant Nonconformists strove to introduce
Prcsbyterianism. Cause for grievance existed in the state of
the church which had suffered from the late violent
changes. Elizabeth plundered it, and laymen who
owned the rectories formerly held by monasteries
followed her example; bishoprics were impoverished
by the queen and parish cures by her subjects, and the reform of
abuses was checked by self-interest. As bishops, along with some
able men, Elizabeth chose others of an inferior stamp who con-
sented to the plunder of their sees and whom she could use
to report on recusants and harry nonconformists. Separation,
or Independency, began about 1578 with the followers of Robert
Browne, who repudiated the queen's ecclesiastical authority;
two Brownists were executed in 1583. The nonconformists
remained in the church and continued their efforts to subvert its
episcopal system. Elizabeth, though personally little influenced
by religion, understood the political value of the church, and
would allow no slackness in enforcing conformity. Archbishop
Grindal was sequestrated for defending " prophesyings," or
meet ings of the Puritan clergy for religious exercises. The House
of Commons, in which there was a Puritan element, repeatedly
attempted to discuss church questions and was sharply silenced
by the queen, who would not allow any interference in ecclesiasti-
cal matters. Whitgift, who succeeded Grindal in 1583, though
kind-hearted, was strict in his administration of the law. Violent
DC. 15
attacks were made upon the bishops in the Martin Marprelate
tracts printed by a secret press; their author is unknown,
but some who were probably connected with them were executed
for publishing seditious libels. Whitgift's firmness met with
success. During the last years of the reign the movement
towards Presbyterianism was checked and nonconformity was
less prominent. The church regained a measure of orderliness
and vigour; its claims on allegiance were advocated by eminent
divines and expounded in the stately pages of Hooker. The
queen, who had so vigorously ordered ecclesiastical affairs, died
in 1603.
On the accession of James I. the Puritans expressed their
desire for ecclesiastical change in the Millenary Petition which
purported to come from 1000 clergy; their requests
were moderate, a sign of the success of Whitgift's
policy, but some could not have been granted without
causing widespread dissatisfaction. At a conference
between divines of the two parties at Hampton Court in 1604,
James roughly decided against the Puritans. Some small
alterations were made in the prayer-book, and a new version
of the Bible was undertaken, which appeared in 1611 as the
" authorized version." In 1604 convocation framed a code of
canons which received royal authorization. Refusal to obey
them was punished with deprivation, and, according to S. R.
Gardiner, about 300 clergy were deprived, though a i7th century
writer (Peter Heylyn) puts the number at 49 only, which W. H.
Frere (History of the English Church, 1558-1625, p. 321) thinks
more credible. Conformity could still be enforced, but before
long the Puritan party grew in strength partly from religious and
partly from political causes. They would not admit any authority
in religion that was not based on the scriptures; their opponents
maintained that the church had authority to ordain ceremonies
not contrary to the scriptures. In doctrine the Puritans re-
mained faithful to the Calvinism in which most Englishmen of
the day had been brought up; they called the high churchmen
Arminians, and asserted that they were inclined to Rome.
The Commons became increasingly Puritan; they were strongly
Protestant and demanded the enforcement of the laws against
recusants, who suffered much, specially after the Gunpowder
Plot of 1605, though they were sometimes shielded by the king.
The Commons regarded ecclesiastical jurisdiction with dislike,
specially the Court of High Commission, which had developed
from the ecclesiastical commissions of Elizabeth and was hated
as a means of coercion based on prerogative. The bishops
derived their support from the king, and the church in return
supported the king's claim to absolutism and divine right. It
suffered heavily from this alliance. As men saw the church on
the side of absolutism, Puritanism grew strong both among the
country gentry, who were largely represented in the Commons,
and among the nation at large, and the church lost ground
through the king's political errors. A restoration of order and
decency in worship and the introduction of more ceremonial
begun in James's reign were carried on by Laud (q.v.) under
Charles I. Laud aimed at silencing disputes about doctrine and
enforcing outward uniformity; the Puritans hated ceremonial
and wished to make every one accept their doctrines. Many
of the reforms introduced by Laud after he became archbishop
in 1633 were needful, but they offended the Puritans and were
enforced in a harsh and tyrannical manner, for he lacked wisdom
and sympathy. Under his rule nonconforming clergy were
deprived and sometimes imprisoned. The cruel punishments
inflicted by the Court of Star Chamber of which he was a member,
the unpopularity of the High Commission Court, his own harsh
dealing, and the part which he took in politics as a confidential
adviser of the king, combined to bring odium upon him and upon
the ecclesiastical system which he represented. The church was
weak, for the Laudian system was disliked by the nation. A
storm of discontent with the course of affairs both in church
and state gathered. In 1640 Charles, after dissolving parlia-
ment, prolonged the session of convocation, which issued canons
magnifying the royal authority and imposing the so-called
" el cetera oath " against innovations on all clergy, graduates
45
ENGLAND, CHURCH OF
[RESTORATION PERIOD
and others. The Long Parliament voted the canons illegal;
Laud was imprisoned, and in 1642 the bishops were excluded
from parliament. The civil war began in 1642; in 1643 a bill
was passed for the taking away of episcopacy, in 1645 Laud
was beheaded, and parliament abolished the prayer-book and
accepted the Presbyterian directory, and from 1646 Presbyterian-
ism was the legal form of church government. Many, perhaps
2000, clergy were deprived ; some were imprisoned and otherwise
maltreated, though a fifth of their former revenues was assigned
to the dispossessed. The king, who was beheaded in 1649, might
have extricated himself from his difficulties if he had consented
to the overthrow of episcopacy, and may therefore be held a
martyr to the church's cause. The victory of the army over the
parliament secured England against the tyranny of Presbyterian-
ism, but did not better the condition of the episcopal clergy;
the toleration insisted on by the Independents did not extend
to " prelacy." Churchmen, however, occasionally enjoyed the
ministrations of their own clergy in private houses, and though
their worship was sometimes disturbed they were not seri-
ously persecuted for engaging in it. Non-delinquent or non-
sequestrated private patronage and the obligation of tithes were
retained . Community of suffering and the execution of Charles I .
brought the royalist country gentry into sympathy with the
clergy, and at the Restoration the church had the hold upon
the affection of the laity which it lacked under the Laudian rule.
On the king's restoration the survivors of the ejected clergy
quietly regained their benefices. The Presbyterians helped to
The bring back the king and looked for a reward. Charles
Kestora- 'II. promised them a limited episcopacy and other
tioa concessions, but his plan was rejected by the Commons.
period. ^ conference at the Savoy between leading Presby-
terians and churchmen in 1661 was ineffectual, and a revision
of the prayer-book by convocation further discontented non-
conformists. The parliament of 1 66 1 was violently anti-Puritan ,
and in 1662 passed an Act of Uniformity providing that all
ministers not episcopally ordained or refusing to conform should
be deprived on St Bartholomew's day, the i4th of August
following. About 2000 ministers are said to have been ejected,
and in 1665 ejected ministers were forbidden to come within
five miles of their former cures. Though some bishops and
clergy showed kindness to the ejected, churchmen generally
approved of this oppressive legislation; they could not forget
the wrongs inflicted on their church by the once triumphant
Puritans. Nonconformist worship was made punishable by
fine and imprisonment, and on the third offence by transporta-
tion. In 1672 Charles, who had secretly promised the French
king openly to profess Roman Catholicism, issued a Declaration
of Indulgence which applied both to Romanists and Protestant
Nonconformists, but parliament compelled him to withdraw
it, and, in 1673, passed a Test Act making reception of the holy
communion and a denial of transubstantiation necessary qualifi-
cations for public office. Later, when the dissenters found
friends among the party in parliament opposed to the crown,
the church supported the king, and the doctrine of passive
obedience was generally accepted by the clergy. The church
was popular, and among the great preachers and theologians
who adorned it in the Caroline period were Jeremy Taylor,
Pearson, Bull, Barrow, South and Stillingfleet. The lower
clergy were mostly poor, and their social position was conse-
quently often humble, but the pictures of clerical humiliation
after 1660 are generally overcoloured ; the assertion that they
commonly married servants or cast-off mistresses of their patrons
has been disproved, and it is certain that men of good family
entered holy orders. In accordance with an agreement between
Archbishop Sheldon and Lord Chancellor Clarendon, the clergy
ceased to tax themselves in convocation, and from 1665 have been
taxed by parliament. James II., though a Romanist, promised
to protect the church, and the clergy were on his side in the
rebellion of the duke of Monmouth, who was supported by
dissenters. The church and the nation, however, were strongly
Protestant and were soon alarmed by his efforts to Romanize
the country. James dispensed with the law by prerogative and
appointed Romanists to offices in defiance of the Test Act. In
1688 he ordered that his declaration for liberty of conscience,
issued in the interest of Romanism, should be read in all
churches. His order was almost universally disobeyed. Arch-
bishop Sancroft and six bishops who remonstrated against it
were brought to trial, and were acquitted to the extreme delight
of the nation. James's attack on the church cost him his crown.
Sancroft and eight bishops would not belie their belief in the
doctrines of divine right and passive obedience by swearing
allegiance to William and Mary, and the archbishop,
five bishops and over 400 clergy were deprived.
Certain of these nonjuring bishops consecrated others
and a schism ensued. The loss to the church was heavy; for
among the nonjurors were many men of holy lives and eminent
learning, and the fact that some suffered for conscience' sake
seemed a reproach on the rest of the clergy. After 1715 the
secession became unimportant. Protestantism was secured
from further royal attack by the Bill of Rights; and in 1701
the Act of Succession provided that all future sovereigns
should be members of the Church of England. That the king's
title rested on a parliamentary decision was destructive of the
clerical theory of divine right, and encouraged Erastianism,
then specially dangerous to the church; for William, a Dutch
Presbyterian, gave bishoprics to men personally worthy, but
more desirous of union with other Protestant bodies than jealous
for the principles of their own church. A bill for union was
rejected in the Commons, where the church party had a majority,
though one for toleration of Protestant dissenters became law.
William, anxious for concessions to dissenters, appointed a
committee of convocation for altering the liturgy, canons and
ecclesiastical courts, but the Tory party in the lower house of
convocation was strong and the scheme was abortive. A long
controversy began between the two houses: the bishops were
mostly Whigs with latitudinarian tendencies, the lower clergy
Tories and high churchmen. During most of the reign convoca-
tion was suspended and the church was governed by royal
injunctions, a system injurious to its welfare. It had been the
bulwark of the nation against Romanism under James II., and
the affection of the nation enabled it to preserve its distinctive
character amid dangers of an opposite kind under William III.
Its religious life was active; associations for worship and the
reformation of manners led to more frequent services, the estab-
lishment of schools for poor children, and the foundation of the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.) and for
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S.P.G.). This
activity and the discord between the two houses of convocation
continued during Anne's reign. Anne was a strong church-
woman, and under her the church reached its highest point of
popularity and influence. Its supposed interests were used by
the Tories for political ends. Hence the Occasional Conformity
Act, to prevent evasion of the Test Act, and a tyrannical Schism
Act, both repealed in 1718, belong rather to the history of
parties than to that of the church. So, too, does the case of Dr
Sacheverell, who was prosecuted for a violently Tory sermon.
His trial, in 1710, caused much excitement; mobs shouted for
" High Church and Dr Sacheverell," and the lightness of his
sentence was hailed as a Tory victory. Queen Anne is gratefully
remembered by the church for her " Bounty," which gave it
the first-fruits and tenths (see ANNATES and QUEEN ANNE'S
BOUNTY).
With the accession of the Hanoverian line the church entered
on a period of feeble life and inaction: many church fabrics
were neglected; daily services were discontinued;
holy days were disregarded; Holy Communion was
infrequent; the poor were little cared for; and though
the church remained popular, the clergy were lazy and held in
contempt. In accepting the settlement of the crown the clergy
generally sacrificed conviction to expediency, and their character
suffered. Promotion largely depended on a profession of Whig
principles: the church was regarded as subservient to the
state; its historic position and claims were ignored, and it was
treated by politicians as though its principal function was to
OXFORD MOVEMENT]
ENGLAND, CHURCH OF
support the government. This change was accelerated by the
sitrocipg of convocation. A sermon by Hoadly , bishop of Bangor,
impugned the existence of a visible church, and the " Bangorian
controversy " which ensued threatened to end in the condemna-
tion of his opinions by convocation, or at least by the lower
house. As this would have weakened the government, convoca-
tion was prorogued, letters of business were withheld, and from
1717 until 1851 convocation, the church's constitutional organ
of reform, existed only in name. Walpole during his long
ministry, from 1721 to 1742, discouraged activity in the church
lest it should become troublesome to his government. Prefer-
ment was shamelessly sought after even by pious men, and was
begged and bestowed on the ground of political services. In
this the clergy, apart from the sacredncss of clerical office, were
neither better nor worse than the laity; in morality and decency
they were better even at the lowest point of their decline, about
the middle of the century. While the church was inactive in
practical work, it showed vigour in the intellectual defence of
Christianity. Controversies of earlier origin with assailants of
the faith were ably maintained by, among others, Daniel
Waterland, William Law, a nonjuror, Bishop Butler, whose
AiMlofy appeared in 1736, and Bishop Berkeley. A revival of
spirituality and energy at last set in. Its origin has been traced
to Law's Serums Call, published in 1728. Law's teaching was
actively carried out by John Wesley (q.v.), a clergyman who from
1739 devoted himself to evangelization. Though his preaching
awoke much religious feeling, specially among the lower classes,
the excitement which attended it led to a horror of religious
enthusiasm, and his methods irritated the parochial clergy.
Some of them seconded his efforts, but far more regarded them
with violent and often unworthily expressed dislike. While he
urged his followers to adhere to the church, he could not himself
work in subordination to discipline; the Methodist organization
which he founded was independent of the church's system and
soon drifted into separation. Nevertheless, he did much to bring
about a revival of life in the church. Several clergy became
his allies, and some preached in Lady Huntingdon's chapels
before her secession. These were among the fathers of the
Evangelical party: they differed from the Methodists in not
forming an organization, remaining in the church, working on
the parochial system, and generally holding Calvinistic doctrine,
being so far nearer to Whit field than to Wesley, though Calvinism
gradually ceased to be a mark of the party. The Evangelicals
soon grew in number, and their influence for good was extensive.
They laid stress on the depravity of human nature, and on the
importance of conscious conversion, giving prominence to the
necessity of personal salvation rather than of incorporation with,
and abiding in, the church of the redeemed. Prominent among
their early leaders after they became distinct from the Methodists
were William Romaine, Henry Venn and John Newton.
Bishop Porteus of London sympathized with them, Lord Dart-
mouth was a liberal patron, and Cowper's poetry spread their
doctrines in quarters where sermons might have failed to attract.
Religion was also forwarded in the church by the example of
George III. During his reign the progress of toleration, though
slow and fitful, greatly advanced both as regards Roman Catholics
and Protestant dissenters. The spirit of rationalism, which
had been manifested earlier in attacks on revelation, appeared
in a movement against subscription to the Articles demanded
of the clergy and others which was defeated in parliament in
1772. The alarm consequent on the French Revolut ion checked
the progress of toleration and was temporarily fatal to free-
thinking; it strengthened the position of the church, which
was regarded as a bulwark of society against the spread of
revolutionary doctrines; and this caused the Evangelicals to
draw off more completely from the Methodists. The church
was active: the Sunday-school movement, begun in 1780,
flourished; the crusade against the slave-trade was vigorously
supported by Evangelicals; and the Church Missionary Society
(C.M.S.), a distinctly Evangelical organization, was founded.
Excellent as were the results of the revival generally, the
Evangelicals had defects which tended to weaken the church.
Some characteristics of their teaching were repellent to the
young; they were deficient in theological learning, and often
in learning of any kind; they took a low view of the church,
regarding it as the offspring of the Protestant reformation;
they expounded the Bible without reference to the church's
teaching, and paid little heed to the church's directions. Dissent
consequently grew stronger. By the Act of Union with Ireland
the Churches of England and Ireland were united from the
ist of January 1801, and the continuance of the united church
was declared an essential part of the union. No provision,
however, was made giving the Irish clergy a place in convocation,
which was evidently held unlikely to revive. The union of the
churches was dissolved in 1871 by an act of 1869 for disestab-
lishing the Irish Church.
Apart from the Evangelical revival, religion was advanced
in the church. In 1811 the education of the poor was provided
for on church principles by the National Society; the
Church Building Society was founded in 1818; and the
colonial episcopate was started by the establishment
of bishoprics in Calcutta in 1814, and in Jamaica and Barbados in
1824. Yet reforms were urgently needed. In 1813, out of about
10,800 benefices, 6311 are said to have been without resident in-
cumbents (The Block Book, p. 34); the value of some great offices
was enormous, while many of the parochial clergy were wretchedly
poor. The repeal of the Test Act, long practically inoperative,
in 1828, and Catholic emancipation in 1829, mark a change in
the relations of church and state; and the Reform Bill of 1832
transferred political power from a class which generally supported
the church to classes in which dissent was strong. The national
zeal for reform was directed towards the church, not always in
a friendly spirit. Yet wholesome changes were effected by
legislation: dioceses were rearranged and two new bishoprics
founded at Manchester and Ripon, the bishopric of Bristol,
however, being suppressed; plurality and non-residence were
abolished; tithes were commuted, and the Ecclesiastical Com-
mission, which has effected reforms in respect of endowments,
was permanently established in 1836. Some changes and pro-
posals alarmed churchmen, specially as legislation for the church
proceeded from parliament, while convocation remained silenced.
Latitudinarian opinions revived, and the church was regarded
merely as a human institution. Among the clergy generally
ritual observance was neglected and rubrical directions disobeyed.
A few churchmen, including Keble and Newman, set themselves
to revive church feeling, and Oxford became the centre of a new
movement. The publication of Keble's Christian Year prepared
its way, and its aims were declared in his assize sermon at Oxford
on " National Apostasy " in 1833. Its promoters urged their
views in Tracts for the Times, and were strengthened by the
adhesion of Pusey. Hence they were nicknamed Tractarians
or Puseyites. Their cardinal doctrine was that the Church of
England was a part of the visible Holy Catholic Church and had
unbroken connexion with the primitive church; they inculcated
high views of the sacraments, and emphasized points of agree-
ment with those branches of the Catholic Church which claim
apostolic succession. Their party grew in spite of the opposition
of low and broad churchmen, who, specially on the publication
of Tract XC. by Newman in 1841, declared that its teaching
was Romanizing. In 1845 Newman and several others seceded
to Rome. Newman's apostasy was a severe blow to the church,
though permanent injury was averted by the steadfastness of
Pusey. The Oxford movement was wrecked, but its effect
survived both in the new high church party and in the church
at large. As a body the clergy rated more highly the responsi-
bilities and dignity of their profession, and became more zealous
in the performance of its duties and more ecclesiastically minded.
High churchmen carried out rubrical directions, and after a while
began to introduce changes into the performance of divine
service which had not been adopted by the early leaders of the
party, were deprecated by many bishops, and excited opposition.
In 1833 the supreme jurisdiction of the Court of Delegates
was transferred to the judicial committee of the privy council.
Before this court came an appeal by a clerk named Gorham,
452
ENGLAND, CHURCH OF [CHURCH AND LAW COURTS
The
church
and the
law courts.
whom the bishop of Exeter refused to institute to a benefice
because he denied unconditional regeneration in baptism, and in
1850 the court decided in the appellant's favour. The
decision was followed by some secessions to Rome,
and high churchmen were dissatisfied that spiritual
questions should be decided by a secular court.
The " papal aggression " of that year, by which Pius IX.
appeared to claim authority in England, roused violent popular
indignation which was used against the high church party.
However, it afforded an argument for the revival of convocation,
and, chiefly owing to the exertions of Bishop Wilberforce of
Oxford, convocation again met in 1852 (see CONVOCATION).
Meanwhile broad church opinions were gaining ground to some
extent owing to a reaction from the Oxford movement. Among
the clergy the broad church party was comparatively small,
but it included some men of mark. In 1860 appeared Essays
and Reviews, a volume of essays by seven authors, of whom
six were in orders. The book as a whole had a rationalistic
tendency and was condemned by convocation: two of the
essayists were suspended by the Court of Arches, but its judgment
was reversed by the judicial committee. Crude attacks on the
authority of the Scriptures and the position of the English
Church with respect to it having been published by Colenso,
bishop of Natal, he was deposed by his metropolitan, Bishop
Gray of Cape Town, in 1863, but the judicial committee decided
that the bishop of Cape Town had no coercive jurisdiction over
Natal. Convocation declared Colenso's books erroneous, abstain-
ing in face of this judgment from acknowledging as valid the
excommunication which Bishop Gray pronounced against him.
It followed from the decision of the council that the English
Church in a self-governing colony is a voluntary association.
Opposition to the dogmatic principle in the church was main-
tained. Some practices introduced by clergy desirous of bringing
the services of the church to a higher level came before the judicial
committee in the case of Weslerton v. Liddell in 1857, with a
result encouraging to the ritualists, as they then began to be
called. An increase in ritual usages, such as eucharistic vest-
ments, altar lights and incense, followed. In 1850-1860 dis-
graceful riots took place at St George's-in-the-East, London,
where an advanced ritual was used. In 1860 the English
Church Union was formed mainly to uphold high church doctrine
and ritual, and assist clergy prosecuted for either cause, and in
1865 the Church Association, mainly to put down such doctrine
and ritual by prosecution. A royal commission appointed
in 1867 recommended that facilities should be granted for en-
abling parishioners aggrieved by ritual to gain redress, and in
1870 that a revised lectionary and a shortened form of service
should be provided. A new lectionary was approved by the
two convocations and enacted, and convocation having received
letters of business in 1872 and 1874 drew up a shortened form
of prayer which was also enacted, but the commission had no
further direct results. Between 1867 and 1871 two decisions
of the judicial committee were adverse to the ritualists,
and by exciting dislike to the court among high churchmen
indirectly led to an increase in ritual usages. Among those
who adopted them were many self -devoted men; their practices,
which they believed to be incumbent on them, were condemned
as illegal, yet they saw the rubrics daily disregarded with
impunity by others who trod the easy path of neglect. In 1873
a declaration against sacramental confession received the assent
of the bishops, and in 1874 Archbishop Tait of Canterbury
introduced a bill for enforcing the law on the ritualist clergy;
it was transformed in committee, and was enacted as the Public
Worship Regulation Act. It provided for the appointment
of a new judge in place of the old ecclesiastical judges, the
officials principal, of the two provinces. Litigation increased,
the only check on prosecutions being the right of the bishop to
veto proceedings, and in 1878-1881 four clergymen were im-
prisoned for disobedience to the orders of courts against whose
jurisdiction they protested. In consequence of the scandal
raised by this mode of dealing with spiritual causes, a royal
commission on ecclesiastical courts was appointed in 1881, but
its report in 1883 led to no results, and the bishops strove to
mend matters by exercising their veto. Advanced and illegal
usages became more frequent. Proceedings in respect of
illegal ritual having been instituted against Bishop King of
Lincoln, the archbishop of Canterbury (Benson) personally
heard and decided the case in 1890, and his judgment was upheld
by the judicial committee (see LINCOLN JUDGME-NT). The
spiritual character of the tribunal and the authority of the judg-
ment which sanctioned certain usages and condemned others,
had a quieting effect. Increase in ritualism, however, caused
agitation in 1898, and in 1899 and 1900 the two archbishops,
Temple of Canterbury and Maclagan of York, delivered
" opinions " condemning the use of incense and processional
lights, and the reservation of the consecrated elements. Finding
himself unable to put down illegal practices, Bishop Creighton
of London adopted a policy of compromise which was followed
by other bishops, and encouraged illegality. Disregard of law
both in excess and defect of ritual being common, a royal
commission on ecclesiastical discipline was appointed in 1904.
The commissioners presented a unanimous report in 1906, its
chief recommendations being, briefly, that practices significant
of doctrines repugnant to those of the English Church should be
extirpated; that the convocations should prepare a new orna*
ments rubric, and frame modifications in the conduct of divine
service; that the diocesan and provincial courts and the court
of final appeal should be reformed in accordance with the
recommendations of 1883, the last to consist of a permanent
body of lay judges who on all doubtful questions touching the
doctrine or use of the church should be bound by the decision
of an episcopal assembly; that the Public Worship Regula-
tion Act should be repealed, and the bishops' power of veto
abolished.
Since- the Oxford movement the church has developed
wonderful energy. Yet it is beset with difficulties and dangers
both from within and without. Within, besides
difficulties as regards ritual, it has to contend against Ufe s "
rationalism, which has been stimulated by scientific
discoveries and speculations, and far more by Biblical criticism.
While this criticism has been used by many as a means to a fuller
comprehension of divine revelation, much of it is simply de-
structive, and has led to ill-considered expressions of opinion
adverse to the doctrine of the church. From without, the church
has been threatened with disestablishment both wholly and as
regards the dioceses within the Welsh counties; and the education
of the poor, which from early days depended on its care, has
largely been taken out of its hands (see EDUCATION) . The amount
contributed by the church to elementary education, including the
maintenance of Sunday schools, in 1907-8 was576,oi2. During
the last sixty years the church has strengthened its hold on the
loyalty of the nation by its increased efficiency. Its bishops are
laborious and active. Since 1876 the home episcopate has been
increased by the creation of the dioceses of Truro, St Albans,
Liverpool, Newcastle, Southwell, Wakefield, Bristol, Southwark
and Birmingham, so that there are now (1910) thirty-seven
diocesan bishops, aided by twenty-eight suffragan and eight
assistant bishops, and a further subdivision of dioceses is contem-
plated. At no other time probably have the clergy been so
industrious. As a rule they are far better instructed in theology
than forty years ago, but they have not advanced in secular
learning. Changes in the university system have contributed to
draw off able young men to other professions which offer greater
worldly advantages. The poverty of many of the clergy stands in
strong contrast to the wealth around them. Of 14,242 benefices
4704 are said to be below 200 a year net value. The value of
100 tithe rent charge has sunk (1909) to 69 : 18 : <\, the
average value since the Commutation Act of 1836 being
94 : 3 : zj. Thenumberof assistant clergy is (1910) about 7500,
in spite of the hardships often attending clerical life, the supply
of men being kept up. The Queen Victoria Clergy Fund and
other voluntary associations and various educational institutions
have been founded to relieve clerical distress. In the church at
home there is much energy in numberless directions: cathedral
ENGLAND, CHURCH OF
453
churches have become centres of religious activity, and in parish
churches the administration of the Holy Communion and week-
day services are frequent. Many of the laity co-operate in
church work and liberally support it. During the years 1898-
1007 598 churches were built or rebuilt, and during twenty-four
years, 1884-1907, the voluntary offerings for church building were
17,61 2,709, and for endowments and parsonages 6, 1 16,592, yet
church extension fails to keep pace with the increase of the
population. Evangelistic efforts, the relief of the sick and poor,
and the inculcation of temperance are zealously carried on.
Good work is done by twenty-six sisterhoods and several institu-
tions of deaconesses, and one or two communities of celibate
clergy. In the British colonies and India the episcopate consists
(1909) of seven archbishops with two coadjutors; there are
also seventy diocesan bishops, and in other parts of the world
thirty missionary bishops. The S.P.G. has 847 ordained ministers,
including thirty chaplains in Europe, besides many female
missionaries; the C.M.S. has 793 ordained ministers, and many
other missionaries of both sexes; the Zenana Missionary Society
has a staff of 1 288; other church societies for foreign missions are
vigorous, and the S.P.C.K. in addition to its work at home spends
large sums in furthering the church abroad. The benefits arising
from conference have increasingly been valued since the revival
of convocation. Appreciation of the importance of lay support
and counsel has led to the institution of two voluntary elective
assemblies called Houses of Laymen, one for each province, and in
1905 an association of the four houses of convocation and the two
lay assemblies was formed with the name of the Representative
Church Council. During the last forty years diocesan confer-
ences, in which the laity are represented, have become universal,
while ruridecanal and other meetings of a like kind are general.
An annual church congress, established in 1861, held its forty-
ninth meeting in 1009. Of wider importance are the Lambeth
conferences, held since 1878 at intervals of ten years, to which the
bishops of the English Church and the churches in communion
with it are invited, and meet under the presidency of the arch-
bishop of Canterbury. The first of these conferences, which
illustrate the dignity of the see founded by St Augustine and now
the head of a vast quasi-pat riarchate, was held under the
presidency of Archbishop Longley in 1867 (see LAMBETH CON-
FEREXCES and ANGLICAN COMMUNION).
AUTHORITIES. General Histories, Narrative: J. Collier, Ecclesi-
astical History of Great Britain (to 1685), ed. T. Lathbury (o vols.,
London, 1852) ; T. Fuller. Ckurch History (to 1648), ed. J. S. Brewer
(Oxford, 1845), valuable near the author's own time; C. Dodd,
Church History of England (to 1625, by a Roman Catholic), ed. M. A.
Tierney (5 vols., London, 1839-1843); Dean W. F. Hook, Lives of
the Archbishops of Canterbury (to 1663) (12 vols., London, 1860-
1879); G. G. Perry, Students' English Church History (to 1884)
(London, 1887), a carefully written book; A History of the English
Church, ed. Stephens and Hunt, in 8 vols., noticed below under
various periods; H. O. Wakeman, An Introduction to the History
of the Church of England (London, 1896), a brightly written manual
by a pronounced high churchman. Documents: D. Wilkins,
Concilia (446-1717) (4 vols. fol., London, 1737), a splendid work;
A. W. Haddan and Bishop W. Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical
Documents (3 vols., Oxford, 1860-1873), supersedes Wilkins so far
as it toes, but deals with English Church only to 870, with Welsh,
Scottish and Cumbrian churches to later dates; H. Gee and W. J.
Hardy, Documents of English Church History (to 1700) (London,
1896), useful for students. Constitutional: Bishop W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England (parts of) (3 vols., revised ed.,
Oxford, 1895-1*97), a work of great learning; F. Makower,
Constitutional History of the Church of England, from the German
(London. 1805); F. W. Maitland, Roman Canon Law in the
Church of England (London, 1898), authoritative. (See under
COJIVOCATIOW.)
From 597: Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. C. Plummer (2 vol.,
Oxford, 1896). the primary authority to 731, trans, by J. A. Giles
(Bonn's Library) and others; see alio Eddi's contemporary " Vita
Wilfridi," in Historians of York, ed. lames Raine, Rolls scries (3 vols.,
1879-1894); W. Bright, Early English Church History (to 700)
(trd ed., Oxford. 1897), a learned and beautiful book; articles in
Dictionary of Christian Biography (to oth century), ed. W. Smith and
H. Wace (4 vob., London, 1877-1887). Later Anglo-Saxon: In
Chronicles and biographies, as Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Two of the
Saxon Chronicles, ed. C. Plummer (2 vols., 1892), trans, by B.Thorpe,
Rob series (1861). and others; Aser. Life of Alfred, ed. W. H.
Stevenson (Oxford, 1904), trans, by Giles; Memorials of Dunstan,
ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls series (1874). Modern: J. Lingard, History of
the Anglo-Saxon Church (2 vols., London, 2nd ed., printed 1858);
W. Hunt, History of the English Church, 597-1066, ed. Stephens and
Hunt (London, revised ed., 1901).
For later medieval times: (i) Chroniclers, &c., after 1066, as
Florence of Worcester, ed. B. Thorpe, Eng. Hist. Soc. (2 vols., 1878),
trans, by J. Stevenson in Church Historians (London, 1853) ; Symeon
of Durham, ed. T. Arnold. Rolls series (2 vols., 1882); Eadmer (for
Archbishop Anselm), cd. M. Rule, Rolls series (1884); William of
Malmesbury, Gesta regum, &c. (to 1152), ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls series
(a vols., 1887), and Gesta pontificum, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton,
Rolls series (1870); (John of Salisbury?) Historia pontificalis (for
Archbishop Theobald, 1139-1161), ed. Pertz, Rerun Germ, script!.
xx.; Materials for the Life of Archbishop Becket, ed. J. C. Robertson,
Rolls series (7 vols., 1875-1885); Giraldus Cambrensis (i2th cen-
tury). Gemma ecclesiastica and Speculum ecclesiae, Works it. and iv.,
ed. J. S. Brewer, Rolls series (1862, 1873); Matthew Paris, Chronica
majora (to 1259), ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls series (7 vols., 1880-1883),
and many more. (2) Letters, as Archbishop Lanfranc, Epistolae,
ed. Giles (Oxford, 1844) ; Archbishop Anselm, Epistolae, ed. Migne
(Paris, 1863); Robert Grosseteste, Epistolae, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls
series (1861), and others. (3) Bishops' Registers, as Reeistrum J.
Peckham (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1270-1292), ed. C. T. Martin,
Rolls series (3 vols., 1882-1886); Exeter Registers, ed. Hingcston-
Randolph (5 vols., 1889); Registers of Bishops Drokensford and
Ralph of Shrewsbury, ed. W. H. Dickinson and T. S. Holmes,
Somerset Record Soc. (3 vols., 1887, 1895-1896), and others. For
Wycliffe and early Lollards see WYCLIFFE. R. Pecock, Represser of
Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy, ed. C. Babington, Rolls scries (2 vols.,
1860); and T. Gascoignc, Loci e libra ventatum, ed. J. T. Rogers
(Oxford, 1881), which gives ample notices of abuses, should be
consulted for isth century. Modern books: W. R. W. Stephens,
The English Church, 1066-1272 (revised edition, 1904), and W. W.
Capes, The English Church in the I4th and Ijjth Centuries (1900),
both ed. Stephens and Hunt (London); J. Raine, Archbishops of
York (ends at 1373) (London, 1863) ; F. A. Gasquet, Henry 111. and
the Church (London, 1905). Biographical: Dean R. W. Church,
Anselm (London, 1870); M. Rule, Life and Times of St Anselm
(written from a Roman Catholic standpoint) (2 vols., London, 1883) ;
C. de Remusat, Vie de S. Anselme (Paris, 1868); G. G. Perry, St
Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln (London, 1879); F. S. Stevenson, Robert
Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (London, 1899), and others.
For the Reformation Period: Documentary: Notices in Letters
and Papers, Henry VIII. , ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, R. H.
Brodie, Record Publ. (19 vols., 1862-1905), and Calendars of State
Papers for Henry VIII., Edward VI., ed. R. Lemon (1856) and
M. A. Green (1870), for Mary, ed. Lemon (1856), Record Publ., and
for Elizabeth, Hatfield MSS., Hist. MSS. Comm.; Acts of the Privy
Council, ed. J. R. Dasent (1890), in progress; Records of the Reforma-
tion, ed. N. Pocock (2 vols., Oxford, 1870) ; E. Card well, Documentary
Annals (Oxford, 1839); Original Letters, ed. H. Ellis (u vols.,
1824-1846); Zurich Letters (2 vols.), Original Letters (2 vols.), ed.
Robinson (1842-1847); Latimer's Sermons (1844), and Archbishop
Parker's Correspondence, ed. J. Bruce and T. T. Pcrowne, all Parker
Soc. Publ., Cambridge; see also General Index to Parker Soc.'s Publ.
(1855); R. Pole (Cardinal), Epistolae, ed. Quirini (5 vols., Brescia,
1744-1757); G. W. Prothero, Select Statutes, &c.; Elizabeth and
James I. (yd ed., Oxford, 1906). Supplementary: Strype, Ecclesi-
astical Memorials (6 vols., 1513-1556) ; Annals (Elizabeth) (7 vols.) ;
Memorials of Cranmer (2 vols.); Lives of Parker (3 vols.), Grindal,
Whitgift (3 vols.), all with a large repertory of documents, also of
Cheke, T. Smith and Aylmer (all Oxford, 1820-1824); Burnet,
History of the Reformation, ed. N. Pocock (7 vols., Oxford, 1865),
with many documents. Chronicles and early Histories: W. Camden,
Annales (Elizabeth), ed. T. Hearne (3 vols., 1717); Chronicle of
Queen Jane and Queen Mary, ed. J. G. Nichols (Camden Soc., 1850) ;
E. Hall, Chronicle (Henry VIII.), ed. C. Whibley (2 vols., London,
1904); N. Harpsficld, Treatise on the Pretended Divorce of Henry
VIII., ed. N. Pocock (Camden Soc., 1878) ; I. Foxe, Acts and Monu-
ments (often called "The Book of Martyrs ),ed. S. R.Cattley and
G. Townsend (a book with many facts industriously gathered, many
documents and some errors) (8 vols., London, 1843-1849); if.
Machyn, Diary (1550-1563), and Narratives of the Reformation, both
ed. J. G. Nichols (Camden Soc., 1854, 1859); W. Roper, The Life of
Sir Thomas More, ed. S. Singer (1817), and other editions, a beautiful
book by More's son-in-law; N. Sander, De origine ac progressu
schismatis Anglicani, continued by E. Rishton (Rome, 1586),
translated by D. Lewis (London, 1877) (Sander was a Roman
Catholic priest who wrote in 1576; his language is violent but the
narrative generally trustworthy) ; The Presbyterian Movement in the
Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. R. G. Usher (R. Hist. Soc., 1005).
Modern histories: J. H. Blunt, History of the English Reformation
(London, 1878), a careful work though of no great historical im-
portance; T. E. Bridget t, Lije of Blessed John Fisher (London,
1888); R. W. Dixon, History oj the Church of England from the
Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction (5 vols., London, 1878-1892), a
book showing great knowledge and insight; V. M. Doreau, Henry
VIII el Its martyret de la Chartreuse (Paris, 1890); H. Fisher,
History of England 1485-1547, presents a brilliant and trustworthy
narrative of ecclesiastical affairs during the reign of Henry VII I.,
454
ENGLEFIELD
and forms vol. v. of the Political History of England, ed. W. Hunt
and R. L. Poole (London, 1906); P. Friedmann, Anne Boleyn
(London, 1884), an important work; W. H. Frere, History of the
English Church, 1558-162$, ed. W. R. W. Stephens and W. Hunt
(1904), scholarly; J. A. Froude, History of England (1527-1588), a
work of literary beauty, research and historical grasp, from an anti-
ecclesiastical standpoint, with some blemishes, but of increasing
value after the reign of Henry VIII. (12 vols., London, 1856-1870,
cheap editions, 1881-1882, 1893) ; J. Gairdner, History of the English
Church, Henry VIII. to Mary, ed. Stephens and Hunt (London,
1902), by the highest authority on the period; H. E. Jacobs, The
Lutheran Movement in England (Philadelphia, 1890), chiefly on
progressive doctrinal change ; A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII. (London,
with illustrations 1902, with references 1905), an excellent general
history of the reign, England under Protector Somerset (London,
1900), and Life of Cranmer (London, 1904). For Rebellion Period:
Contemporary and early: State Papers, Domestic, 1625-1649, ed.
J. Bruce, W. D. Hamilton, Mrs S. C. Lomas (23 vols.), from 1649,
ed. E. Green (13 vols.), and Calendars of Committees for Plundered
Ministers, &c., all Record Publ. ; Constitutional Documents of the
Puritan Revolution, ed. S. R. Gardiner (Oxford, 1899); J. Evelyn,
Diary, ed. A. Dobson (3 vols., London, 1906) ; also ed. W. Bray
and ed. H. B. Wheatley; J. Hacket, Scrinia reserata, Life of Arch-
bishop Williams (London, 1715); P. Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicanus,
T rr_ _e A __L1_* I T 1 /I~\..Ui: .11.^,. AI7 1 1 TJ7 !. 1 \\J
Life of Archbishop Laud (Dublin, 1668); W. Laud, Works, ed. W.
tt and W. Bliss, Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology (7 vols.,
Scott
Oxford, 18471860) ; J. Milton, various Prose Works, ed. C. Symmons
(7 vols., London, 1806); Puritan Visitations of Oxford, ed. M.
Burrows (Camden Soc., 1881). Later: W. H. Hutton, History of
the English Church, 1625-1714, ed. Stephen and Hunt (London,
1903), and William Laud (London, 1895); S. R. Gardiner, History
of England, under various titles, 1603-1657 (London, 1863-1903),
and cr. 8vo edition begun 1883, a work of vast research and learning,
contains fair and careful accounts of religious matters; D. Masson,
Life of Milton (7 vols., London, 1859-1894) ; D. Neal, History of the
Puritans, ed. J. Toulmin (3 vols., 1837); W. A. Shaw, The English
Church, 16401660 (2 vols., London, 1900), and on the Westminster
Assembly, Cambridge Modern History, iv. c. 12 (Cambridge, 1906);
J. Stoughton, Ecclesiastical History of England, Civil Wars, &c.
(4 vols., London, 1867-1870), by a dissenting divine, a careful and
unprejudiced history; J. Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy (London,
1714). For Restoration and Revolution Period: R. Baxter,
Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. M. Sylvester (London, 1696); and E.
Calamy, Abridgment of Life of Baxter (2 vols., 1713); R. Bentley,
Life of Bishop Stillingfleet, with Works in 6 vols. (London, 1710);
Bishop G. Burnet, History of his Own Time (6 vols., Oxford, 1783);
G. Doyly, Life of Archbishop Bancroft (2 vols., London, 1821); W.
Kennett (Bishop), Compleat History, vol. iii. (London, 1710); T.
Lathbury, History of the Nonjurors (London, 1 843) ; T. B. Macaulay,
History of England (5 vols., London, 1858-1861); Magdalen College
and James II., ed. J. R. Bloxam, Oxford Historical Society (Oxford,
1886); R. Nelson, Life of Bishop Bull, ed. Burton (Oxford, 1827);
J. H. Overton, The Nonjurors (London, 1902), and Life in the English
Church, 1660-1714 (2 vols., London, 1885); E. H. Plumptre, Life of
Bishop Ken (2 vols., London, 1888); I. Walton, Lives (Bishop G.
Morley and others) (London, 1898, and frequently). For i8th
century: C. J. Abbey, The English Church and its Bishops, 1700-
1800 (2 vols., London, 1887); C. J. Abbey and J. H. Overton, The
English Church in the i8th Century (London, revised ed., 1887), a
pleasant and useful book) ; R. Cecil, Life of John Newton (London,
1827); A. C. Fraser, Life of Bishop Berkeley, vol. iv. of Works
(Oxford, 1871); Lord Hervey, Memoirs of the Reign of George II.,
ed. J. W. Croker (3 vols., London, 1884) ; A. H. Hore, The Church
of England from William III. to Victoria (2 vols., Oxford, 1886);
J. Hunt, Religious Thought in England (3 vols., London, 1873);
Huntingdon, Selina, Countess of. Life and Times (2 vols., London,
1839-1840); J. Keble, Life of Bishop Wilson (Oxford, 1863):
W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the i8th Century, vols. i.-iii.
and v. (8 vols., London, 1879-1890); Bishop T. Newton, Auto-
biography, with Works (6 vols., London, 1787); J. H. Overton and
F. Relton, History of the English Church, 1714-1800, ed. Stephens
and Hunt (London, 1906); W. Roberts, Memoir of Hannah More
(4 vols., London, 1834); W. A. Spooner, Bishop Butler (London,
1891); Sir J. Stephen, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography (2 vols.,
London, 1853), for an account of the Evangelicals early in the igth
century ; Sir L. Stephen, English Thought in the i8lh Century (2 vols.,
London, 1881), for theological controversies; H. Thompson, Life of
Hannah More (London, 1838); R. Watson, Anecdotes of the Life of
Bishop R. Watson (2 vols., London, 1818), presents a curious picture
of a bishop's life 1782-1816; R. and S. Wilberforce, Memoir of W.
Wilberforce (5 vols., London, 1838). See under METHODISM;
WESLEY (family) ; and WHITEFIELD, GEORGE.
For the Oxford Movement and onwards: A. W. Benn, English
Rationalism in the loth Century (2 vols., London, 1906); A. C.
Benson, Life of Archbishop E. W. Benson (2 vols., London, 1899);
T. W. Burgon, Lives of Twelve Good Men (2 vols., London, 1888);
R. W. Church, History of the Oxford Movement (London, 1891);
J. T. Coleridge, Life of Keble (Oxford, 1869); R. T. Davidson and
W. Benham, Life of Archbishop A. C. Tait (2 vols., London, 1892);
H. P. Liddon and J. O. Johnston, Life of Pusey (4 vols., London,
1893-1895); T. Mozley, Reminiscences of Oriel and the Oxford
Movement (2 vols., London, 1882); J. H. Newman, Apologia pro
Vita, sua (London, 1864); R. Prothero, Correspondence of Dean
A. P. Stanley (2 vols., London, 1893); R. G. Wilberforce and A.
Ashwell, Life of Bishop S. Wilberforce (3 vols., London, 1879)
Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts (1883), and
Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline (1906),
both H.M. Stationery Office; Official Year Book of the Church of
England, S.P.C.K. (1906). (W. Hu.)
ENGLEFIELD, SIR FRANCIS (c. 1520-1596), English Roman
Catholic politician, born probably about 1520, was the eldest son
of Sir Thomas Englefield of Englefield, Berkshire, justice of the
common pleas. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir
Robert Throckmorton, one of the well-known Catholic family of
Coughton, Warwickshire. Francis, who succeeded his father in
1537, was too young to have taken any part in the opposition to
the abolition of the Roman jurisdiction and dissolution of the
monasteries; and he acquiesced in these measures to the extent
of taking the oath of royal supremacy, serving as sheriff of
Berkshire and Oxfordshire in 1546-1547, and accepting in 1545 a
grant of the manor of Tilehurst, which 1 had belonged to Reading
Abbey. He was even knighted at the coronation of Edward VI.
in February 1547. But the progress of the Reformation during
that reign alienated him, and he attached his fortunes to the
cause of the princess Mary, whose service he entered before
1551. In August of that year he was sent to the Tower for
permitting Mass to be celebrated in Mary's household. He was
released in the following March, and permitted to resume his
duties in Mary's service. But in February 1553 he was again
summoned before the privy council, and may have been in
confinement at the crisis of July; perhaps he was only released
on Mary's triumph, for his name does not appear among those
who exerted themselves on her behalf before the middle of
August. He was then sworn a member of the privy council like
many others who owed their promotion to their loyalty rather
than to their political abilities. Their numbers swelled the privy
council and sadly impaired its efficiency; but Mary resisted the
various attempts to get rid of them because she liked staunch
friends, and regarded them as a salutary check upon the abler but
less scrupulous members who had served Edward VI. as well as
herself. Englefield sat as M.P. for Berkshire in all Mary's
parliaments except that of April 1554, but received no higher
political office than the lucrative mastership of the court of
wards.
He was an ardent believer in persecution, was present at
Hooper's trial, sought Ascham's ruin, and naturally lost his office
and his seat on the privy council at Elizabeth's succession. He
retired to the continent before May 1559, and from that time
until his death was an active participant in all schemes for the
restoration of Roman Catholicism. At first his ideas took such
comparatively mild forms as inducing the pope to send a legate to
persuade Elizabeth to return to the fold; but gradually they
grew more violent and treasonable, until Englefield became the
close confidant of Cardinal Allen, Parsons and the " jesuited "
Catholics, who advocated forcible intervention by Spain and the
succession of the infanta; in 1585 Englefield thought that Mary's
succession, peaceful or other, would not be satisfactory unless it
were owing to Spanish support and she were dependent on
Philip. Englefield lived first at Rome, then in the Low Countries,
and finally at Valladolid. He was blind for the last twenty years
of his life, and received a pension of six hundred crowns from
Philip. He had been outlawed in 1 564 and his estates sequestered,
but they were not forfeited until 1585, when an act of attainder
was passed against Englefield. Even then some legal difficulties
stood in the way of their appropriation by the crown, for Engle-
field, obviously with an eye to this contingency, had conditionally
settled them on his nephew Francis. The long arguments on the
point are given in Coke's Reports, and a further act was passed
in 1592 confirming the forfeiture to the crown. The nephew,
however, eventually recovered some of the family estates, and was
created a baronet in 1612. His uncle was alive in September
1596, but apparently died at Valladolid about the end of that
year. His tomb there used to be shown to visitors as that of an
eminent man.
ENGLEHEART ENGLISH CHANNEL
455
See Diet, of .Vol. Biot. xvii. 372-374; but additional light has
been thrown on Englefieid's career since the date of that article by
the publication of the Spanish and Venetian Calendars, the Hatneld
MSS., the Act* of the Privy Council, and the Letters and Papers of
Henry VIII. (A. F. P.)
ENGLEHEART. GEORGE (1752-1829), English miniature
painter, the great rival of Richard Cosway, was born at Kew in
October 1 752, and received his artistic training first under George
Barret, R.A., and then under Sir Joshua Reynolds. He started
on his own account in 1773, and exhibited in that year at the
Royal Academy. He continued the active pursuit of his pro-
fession down to 1813, when he retired, and his fee-book, still
in existence, records the names of his sitters, and the amount
paid for each portrait, proving that he painted 4853 miniatures
during that period of thirty-nine years, and that his professional
income for many years exceeded 1200 a year. During the
greater part of his life he resided in Hertford Street, Mayfair,
where he lived till he retired. He died at Blackheath in 1829,
and was buried at Kew.
He painted George III. twenty-five times, and had a very
extensive circle of patrons, comprising nearly all the important
persons connected with the court. He made careful copies in
miniature of many of the famous paintings executed by Sir
Joshua Reynolds, and in some cases these constitute the only
information we possess respecting portraits by Sir Joshua
that are now missing. His fee-book, colours, appliances and a
large collection of his miniatures still remain in the possession
of his descendants.
His nephew, JOHN Cox DILLMAN ENGLEHEART (1784-1862),
also a miniature painter, entered George Engleheart's studio
when he was but fourteen years of age. He first exhibited at
the Royal Academy in 1801, and sent in altogether 157 works.
He was a man of substantial means, and in his time a very
popular painter, but his health broke down when he was forty-
four years old, and he had to relinquish the pursuit of his pro-
fession. He lived at Tunbridge Wells for some years and died
there in 1862.
See George Engtekeart. by G. C. Williamson and H. L. D. Engle-
beart (1902). (G. C. W.)
ENGLEWOOD. a city of Bergen county, New Jersey, U.S.A.,
near the Hudson river, 14 m. N. by E. of Jersey City. Pop.
(1900) 6253, of whom 1548 were foreign-born and 386 negroes;
(1905) 7922; (1910) 9924. It is served by a branch of the Erie
railway, and by an electric line connecting with a ferry (at Fort
Lee) to New York. Englewood is primarily a residential suburb
of New York. The site rises terrace above terrace from the
marshes in the valley of the Hackensack to the top of the palisades
overlooking the Hudson, from which Englewood is separated by
the borough of Englewood Cliffs (pop. in 1905, 266). There are
several fine residences, a hospital, a public library and the
Dwight school for girls (1859). The site of Englewood was for
a long time a part of " English Neighbourhood," and was known
as Liberty Pole; but until 1859, when the place was laid out,
there were only a few houses here, one of which was the " Liberty
Pole Tavern." In 1871 Englewood was set off from the township
of Hackensack and was incorporated as a separate township,
and in 1806 it was chartered as a city; but the act under which
it was chartered was declared unconstitutional, and in 1899
Englewood was rechartered as a city by a special act of the state
legislature.
ENGLISH CHAKKEL (commonly called "The Channel";
Fr. La Uanche, " the sleeve "), the narrow sea separating
England from France. If its entrance be taken to lie between
Ushant and the Scilly Isles, its extreme breadth (between those
points) is about 100 m., and its length about 350. At the Strait
of Dover, its breadth decreases to 20 m. Along both coasts of the
Channel, cliffs and lowland alternate, and the geological affinities
between successive opposite stretches are well marked, as between
the Devonian and granitic rocks of Cornwall and Brittany, the
Jurassic of Portland and Calvados, and the Cretaceous of the
Pays de Caux and the Isle of Wight and the Sussex coast, as well
as either shore of the Strait of Dover. The English Channel is
of comparatively recent geological formation. The land-con-
nexion between England and the continent was not finally
severed until the latter part of the Pleistocene period. The
Channel covers what was previously a wide valley, and may be
described now as a headless gulf. The action of waves and
currents, both destructive and constructive, is well seen at
many points; thus Shakespeare Cliff at Dover is said to have
been cut back more than a mile during the Christian era, and the
cliffs of Grisnez have similarly receded. Of the opposite process
notable examples are the building of the pebbly beaches of
Chesil Bank and near Treguier in C6tes du Nord, and the pro-
montory of Dungeness. The total drainage area of the English
rivers flowing into the Channel is about 8000 sq. m.; of the
French rivers, including as they do the Seine, it is about 41,000
sq. m.
From the Strait of Dover the bottom slopes fairly regularly
down to the western entrance of the Channel, the average depths
ranging from 20 to 30 fathoms in the Strait to 60 fathoms at the
entrance. An exception to this condition, however, is found in
Kurd's Deep, a narrow depression about 70 m. long, lying north
and north-west of the Channel Islands, and at its nearest point
to them only 5 m. distant from their outlying rocks, the Casquets.
Towards its eastern end Hurd's Deep has an extreme depth of
94 fathoms, and in it are found steeper slopes from shoal to deep
water than elsewhere within the Channel. Nearing the entrance
to the Channel from the Atlantic, the 100 fathoms line may be
taken to mark the edge of soundings. Beyond this depth the
bottom falls away rapidly. The too fathoms line is laid down
about 180 m. W. to 120 m. S.W. of the Scilly Isles, and 80 m.
W. of Ushant. Within it there are considerable irregularities
of the bottom; thus a succession of narrow ridges running N.E.
and S.W. occurs west of the Scillies, while only 4 m. N.W. of
Ushant there is a small depression in which a depth of 105 fathoms
has been found. As a general rule the slope from the English
coast to the deepest parts of the Channel is more regular than
that from the French coast, and for that reason, and in considera-
tion of the greater dangers to navigation towards the French
shore, the fairway is taken to lie between 12 and 24 m. from the
principal promontories of the English shore, as far up-channel as
Beachy Head. These promontories (the Lizard, Start Point,
Portland Bill, St Alban's Head, St Catherine's Point of the Isle
of Wight, Selsey Bill, Beachy Head, Dungeness, the South
Foreland) demarcate a series of bays roughly of sickle-shape, the
shores of which run north and south, or nearly so, at their
western sides, turn eastward somewhat abruptly at their heads,
and then trend more gently towards the south-east. On the
French coast the arrangement is similar but reversed; Capes
Grisnez, Antifer and La Hague, and the Pointe du Sillon demar-
cating a series of bays (larger than those on the English coast)
whose shores run north and south on the eastern side, and have
a gentler trend westward from the head.
The configuration of the coasts is perhaps the chief cause of
the peculiarities of tides in the Channel. From the entrance as
far as Portland Bill the time of high water is found to be pro-
gressively later in passing from west to east, being influenced
by the oceanic tidal stream from the west under conditions which
are on the whole normal. But eastward of a line between
Portland Bill and the Gulf of St Male these conditions are changed
and great ' irregularities are observed. On the English coast
between Portland Bill and Selsey a double tide is found. At
Portland this double tide corresponds approximately with the
time of low water in the regular tidal progression, and the result
is the occurrence of two periods of low water, separated by a
slight rise known locally as " gulder." But farther east the
double tide corresponds more nearly with the time of high
water, and in consequence either the effect is produced of a
prolonged period of high water, or there are actually two periods
of high water, as at Southampton. Various causes apparently
contribute to this phenomenon. The configuration of the coast
line is such as to present at intervals barriers to the regular
movement of the tidal wave (west to east), so that reflex waves
(east to west) are set up. In the extreme case at Southampton
the tidal effect is carried from the outer Channel first by way of
456
ENGLISH CHANNEL
the Solent, the strait west of the Isle of Wight, and later by way
of Spithead, the eastern strait. Finally the effect of the tidal
stream entering the Channel through the Strait of Dover from
the North Sea must be considered. The set of this stream
towards the Strait of Dover from the east corresponds in time
with that of the Channel stream (i.e. the stream within an area
defined by Start Point, the Casquets, Beachy Head and the mouth
of the Somme) towards the strait from the west; the set of the
two streams away from the strait also corresponds, and con-
sequently they alternately meet and separate. The area in which
the meeting and separation take place lies between Beachy
Head and the North Foreland, the mouth of the Somme and
Dunkirk. Within this area, therefore, a stream is formed,
known as the intermediate stream, which, running at first with
the Channel stream and then with the North Sea stream, changes
its direction throughout its length almost simultaneously,
and is never slack. Under these conditions, the time of high
water eastward of Selsey Bill as far as Dover is almost the same
at all points, though somewhat earlier at the east than at the
west of this stretch of coast. The configuration of the French
coast causes a very strong tidal flow in the Gulf of St Malo, with
an extreme range at spring tides of 42 ft. at St Germain, com-
pared with a range of 12 ft. at Exmouth and 7 ft. at Portland.
In the neighbourhood of Beer Head and Portland and Weymouth
Roads the streams are found to form vortices with only a slight
movement. On the eastern (Selsey-Dover) section of the English
coast the maximum range of tide is found at Hastings, with a
decrease both eastward and westward of this point.
Westerly winds are most prevalent in the Channel. The total
number of gales recorded in the period 1871-1885 was 190, of
which 104 were south-westerly. Gales are most frequent from
October to January (November during the above period had more
than any other month, with an average of 2-1), and most rare
from May to July. It appears that gales are generally more
violent and prolonged when coincident with spring tides than
with neaps. The winds have naturally a powerful effect on the
tidal streams and currents, the latter being in these seas simply
movements of the water set up by gales, which may themselves be
far distant. Thus under the influence of westerly winds prevail-
ing west of the Iberian Peninsula a current may be set up from the
Bay of Biscay across the entrance of the Channel; this is called
Rennell's current. Fogs and thick weather are common in the
Channel, and occur at all seasons of the year. Observations
during the period 1876-1890 at Dover, Hurst Castle and the
Stilly Isles showed that at the two first stations fogs most
frequently accompany anticyclonic conditions in winter, but at
the Stilly Isles they are much more common in summer than
in winter, and accompany winds of moderate strength more
frequently than in the case of the up-Channel stations.
(O. J. R. H.)
Salinity and Temperature. The waters of the English Channel
are derived partly from the west and partly from the English and
French rivers, and all observations tend to show that there is a
slow and almost continuous current through it from west to east.
The western supply comes from two sources, one of which, the
more important, is the relatively salt and warm water of the Bay
of Biscay, which enters from the south-west and has a salinity
sometimes reaching 35-6 pro.mille (parts of salt per thousand by
weight) ; the other consists of a southerly current from the Irish
Channel, and is colder and has a salinity of 35-0 to 35-2 pro mille.
As the water passes eastwards it mixes with the fresher coastal
water, so that the salinities generally rise from the shore to the
central line, and from east to west, though south of Stilly Islands
there is often a fall due to the influence of the Irish Channel.
The mean annual salinity decreases from between 35-4 and 35-5
pro mille in the western entrance to 35-2 pro mille at the Strait of
Dover on the central axis, and to about 34-7 pro mille under the
Isle of Wight and off the Bay of the Seine. The English Channel
may be divided into two areas by a line drawn from Start Point to
Guernsey and the Gulf of St Malo. In the eastern area the water
is thoroughly mixed owing to the action of the strong tidal
currents and its comparatively small depth, and salinities and
temperatures are therefore generally the same from surface to
bottom; while westward of this line there is often a strongly
marked division into layers of different salinity and temperature,
especially in summer and autumn, when the fresher water of
the Irish Channel is found overlying the salt water of the Bay
of Biscay. The salinity of the English Channel undergoes an
annual change, being highest in winter and spring and lowest in
summer, and this change is better marked in the eastern area,
where the mean deviation from the annual mean reaches 0-3 pro
mille, than it is farther west with a mean deviation of o-i pro
mille. There is also reason to believe that there is a regular
change with a two-year period, years of high maximum and low
minimum alternating with years of low maximum and high
minimum. Variations of long period or unperiodic also occur,
which are probably, and in one case (1905) almost certainly, due to
changes taking place some months earlier far out in the Atlantic
Ocean.
The mean annual surface temperature increases from between
11 C. and 11-5 C. at the Strait of Dover to over 12 C. at the
western entrance. 1 The yearly range in the eastern area is
considerable, reaching 11 C. off the Isle of Wight and 10 C.
in the Strait of Dover; westward it gradually decreases to 5 C.
a short distance north-west of Ushant. The mean maximum
temperature, over 16 C., is found under the English coast from
Start Point to the Strait of Dover about the ist of September
and off the French coast eastward of Cape la Hague about
eleven days later. In the western area the maximum tempera-
ture is about 15 C. and occurs between September i and n.
The mean minimum surface temperature is between 5 C. and
6 C. at the eastern end, and increases to over 9 C. off the coast of
Brittany. Owing to the thorough mixing of the water in the
eastern area the temperatures are here generally the same at all
depths, and the description of the surface conditions applies
equally to the bottom. In the western entrance, on the other
hand, the bottom temperature is often much lower than on the
surface; the range here is also much less, about 3 C., and the
maximum is not reached till about the ist of October, or from
three weeks to a month later than on the surface.
A detailed account of the mean conditions in the English Channel
will be found in Rap. etproces-verbaux, vol. vi., and Bulletin supple-
mentaire (1908) of the Conseil Permanent International pour 1'Ex-
ploration de la Mer (Copenhagen). (D. J. M.)
Cross-Channel Communication. An immense amount of time
and thought has been expended in the elaboration of schemes
to provide unbroken railway communication between Great
Britain and the continent of Europe and enable passengers and
goods to be conveyed across the Channel without the delay and
expense involved by transhipping them into and out of ordinary
steamers. These schemes have taken three main forms: (i)
tunnels, either made through the ground under the sea, or
consisting of built-up structures resting upon the sea bed; (2)
bridges, either elevated high above the sea-level so as to admit of
the unimpeded passage of ships under them, or submerged below
the surface; and (3) train ferries, or vessels capable of conveying
a train of railway vehicles with their loads. A tunnel was first
proposed at the very beginning of the igth century by a French
mining engineer named Mathieu, whose scheme was for a time
favourably regarded by Napoleon, but it was first put on a
practical basis more than fifty years later by J. A. Thome
de Gamond (1807-1876), whose plans were submitted to the
French emperor in 1856. This engineer had begun to work
at the problem of cross-Channel communication twenty years
previously, and had considered the possibility of a submerged
tunnel or tube resting on the sea-level, of steam ferries plying
between huge piers thrown out from both coasts, and of a bridge,
for which he prepared five different plans. He again brought
forward his scheme for a tunnel, in a modified form, in 1867, and
exhibited his plans in the Universal Exhibition of that year.
About the same time an English engineer, William Lowe, of
Wrexham, was also working at the idea of a tunnel. Geological
investigation convinced him that between Fanhole, a point half a
50 F. = 10 C. ; 60-8 F. = 16 C.
ENGLISH CHANNEL
457
mile west of the South Foreland light, and Sangatte on the
French coast, 4 m. W. of Calais, the Dover grey chalk was
continuous from side to side, and he considered that this stratum,
owing to its comparative freedom from water and the general
absence of cracks and fissures, offered exceptional advantages for
a tunnel. He and Thom de Gamond joined forces, and ilu-ir
plans were adopted by an international committee whose object
was to popularize the idea of a tunnel both in England and France.
Its engineers on the English side were Lowe, Sir James Brunlees
and Sir John Hawkshaw, the last of whom in 1866 had made
trial borings at St Margaret's and near Sangatte; and on the
French side Thom6 de Gamond, Paulin Talabot and Michael
Chevalier. In 1868 they reported that there was a reasonable
prospect of completing the tunnel in ten or twelve years at a cost
not exceeding ten millions sterling. They admitted, however,
that there was some risk of an influx of the sea, but pointed out
that this risk could be determined by driving preliminary
driftways, as suggested by Lowe, and for this purpose asked
for financial aid from the imperial treasury. A commission of
inquiry then appointed by the French ministry of public works
reported favourably on the plans, though it declined to
recommend a grant of money; but the further progress of the
scheme was interrupted by the outbreak of the Franco-German
war.
The tunnel was by no means the only plan in evidence at this
period for securing continuous railway communication between
England and France. An iron tube, resting on the bottom of the
sea, had been proposed by Tessier de Mottray in 1803, and had
again been considered by Thome de Gamond in 1833; but after
1850 projects of this kind might almost be counted by the dozen.
Some of the structures were to be of iron, others of concrete or
masonry, and some were to be floated a moderate distance
below the surface. One of the most carefully worked out plans
was that of J. F. Bateman and J. Revy, who proposed to con-
struct a continuous tube, 13 ft. in internal diameter, of iron
rings each 10 ft. long, each ring being built out from the com-
pleted portion of the tube by means of a horizontal chamber or
bell, which slid telescopically over the lost few rings previously
put in place, and was moved forward by hydraulic power. About
the same time Zerah Colburn produced plans for a tube con-
structed of looo ft. sections, which were to be built in dry dock
and then successively attached by a ball and socket joint to
the completed portion, the whole being raised from the bottom
and dragged out to sea, by the aid of a large number of ships,
as each section was attached and launched. Thomas Page,
again, the builder of Westminster Bridge, proposed to place
eight conical steel shafts at intervals across the Strait of Dover,
and to connect them by long sections of tube lowered from the
surface, the whole structure being covered with concrete when
finished. No attempt was made to put any of these plans into
execution, and the same was true of several bridge schemes
propounded about the same time; in one of these, spans one-
half or three-quarters of a mile in length were contemplated,
while another required 100 towers, 500 ft. apart and rising 500 ft.
above the water-level, which obviously would have constituted
an intolerable nuisance to navigation. The case, however, was
different with a train ferry which was vigorously advocated by
Sir John Fowler. His proposal was to employ steamers 450 ft.
long, with a beam of 57 ft. and a speed of 20 knots, having railway
lines laid down on their decks on and off which railway vehicles
could be run directly at each side of the strait. Dover was to
be the English port, while on the French coast a new harbour was
to be formed at Audresselles. between Calais and Boulogne.
This plan in 1872 received the sanction of the House of Commons,
but was rejected in the House of Lords by the casting vote of
the chairman of the committee. According to another similar
ferry scheme, which was worked out by Admiral Dupuy de
Lome in 1870, a new maritime station was to be constructed
at Calais, so far off the shore that it would command deep water
at every state of the tide, and connected with the French railways
by a bridge.
After the conclusion of the Franco- Prussian War, negotiations
concerning the tunnel were resumed between the French and
British governments, and in 1872 the latter intimated that it
had" no object ion in principle." After some further communica-
tions between the two governments in 1874, settling the basis on
which the enterprise should be allowed to proceed, a joint com-
mission was appointed to arrange details relating to jurisdiction,
the right of blocking the tunnel, &c., and this commission's
report was accepted as a basis of agreement between the govern-
ments. In 1875 the Channel Tunnel Company obtained an act
authorizing it to undertake certain preliminary works at St
Margaret's Bay. In the same year the French Submarine Rail-
way Company obtained a concession, with the obligation to spend
a minimum of 2,000,000 francs in making investigations; in
fact it took over 3000 samples from the bottom of the sea in the
strait, and made over 7000 soundings, and also sunk a shaft
at Sangatte and started a heading. The English company did
not do so much, for it failed to raise the money it required and
its powers expired in 1880. Moreover, it was not the only com-
pany in the field, and its programme was not universally accepted
as the best possible. Some authorities, such as Sir Joseph
Prestwich, doubted whether the tunnel should be attempted
in the chalk because of the likelihood of fissures being encountered
while others who thought the chalk suitable were dissatisfied
with the actual plans and formed a rival " Anglo-French Sub-
marine Railway Company." In 1882 another tunnel company
made its appearance. In 1874 the South Eastern Railway
Company had obtained powers to sink experimental shafts on
its property between Dover and Folkestone, and in 1881 to
acquire lands, including the beach and foreshore, in that area
in connexion with a Channel tunnel. These powers resulted,
in 1882, in the formation of the Submarine Continental Railway
Company which in that year sought parliamentary sanction
for a tunnel, starting from a point west of Dover, at Shakespeare's
Cliff; and at the same time the resuscitated Channel Tunnel
Company applied for powers to make one from Fanhole, instead
of St Margaret's Bay as in its former scheme. The whole question
of the tunnel was then widely discussed and considered by various
committees, the last of which a joint select committee of the
Lords and Commons in 1883 expressed the opinion by a
majority that it was " inexpedient that parliamentary sanction
should be given to a submarine communication between England
and France." This decision for the time being disposed of the
question of making a tunnel, and though Sir Edward Watkin,
one of its most prominent advocates, brought bill after bill before
parliament to authorize experimental works in connexion with
it, all were rejected. In 1882 the government interfered with
the operations then in progress, and they were ultimately
discontinued. They included a driftway 7 ft. in diameter which
was driven for a distance of about 2300 yds. eastwards under the
sea at an inclination of i in 72 from the bottom of a shaft sunk
to a depth of 164 ft. in the chalk marl at Shakespeare's Cliff.
About this time the Channel Bridge and Railway Company
took in hand the design of a bridge, the preliminary plans for
which were exhibited in the Paris Exhibition of 1889. The
terminal points were Folkestone and Cap Grisnez, and for the
sake of facilitating the laying of the pier foundations it was
proposed to take the bridge over the Varne and Colbart shoals.
The main girders were to be nearly 59 yds. above the sea-level,
the railway itself being more than 20 ft. higher still, and the spans
were to vary in length between 540 and 108 yds. As the result
of a survey of the sea bottom made in 1890, a modification in
the line of the bridge was adopted, and it was taken direct from
Cap Blancnez to the South Foreland. It was found that in this
way an excellent bottom would be obtained for the foundations,
and the length of the bridge would be 3 m. less, the number
of piers, by employing spans of 434 and 542 yds. alternately,
being reduced to 72. The cost of this structure was estimated
at 28,320,000, exclusive of interest on capital during the period
of construction, which was put at seven years. The same com-
pany also worked out plans for a moving chariot or platform,
capable of holding a railway train and supported by long legs
on a submerged causeway or track constructed of steel or
ENGLISH FINANCE
armoured concrete 45 or 50 ft. below low- water level. No attempt
has been made actually to carry out either this project or that
of a bridge.
In 1905 the question of establishing a train ferry from Dover
across the Channel was brought forward by the Intercontinental
Railway Company, and in the following year the Channel Ferry
(Dover) Act was passed authorizing the work. About the same
period the Channel Tunnel Company, which had amalgamated
with the Submarine Railway Company, awoke to activity and
started a campaign in favour of its scheme; but the bill which
it promoted was opposed by the government and accordingly
was withdrawn in March 1907.
See Blue-book, Correspondence respecting the proposed Channel
Tunnel, Commercial No. 6 (1875); Blue-book, Correspondence with
reference to the proposed Construction of a Channel Tunnel, C. 3358
(1882) ; Blue-book, Report from the Joint Select Committee of theHouse
of Lords and House of Commons on the Channel Tunnel (1883) ; F. J.
Bramwell, " The Makingand Working of a Channel Tunnel," Proc.
Roy. Inst., May 1882; Tylden Wright, "The Channel Tunnel,"
North of England Inst. Min. and Mech. Eng. vol. 33 (1882);
W. Boyd Dawkins, " The Channel Tunnel," Manchester Geol. Soc.,
May 1882, and Brit. Assoc. Rep. (1882, 1899); E. de Rodakowski,
The Channel Ferry (London, 1905). (H. M. R.)
ENGLISH FINANCE. The history of the English fiscal system
affords the best example known of continuous financial develop-
ment, in respect both of institutions and methods. Though
certain great periods of change can be readily noticed, yet from
the time of the Norman Conquest to the beginning of the 2oth
century the line of connexion is substantially unbroken. Perhaps
the most revolutionary changes occurred in the i7th century,
as the outcome of the Civil War, and, later on, the revolution of
1688. But even in this case there was no real breach of con-
tinuity. It is, therefore, possible to trace the normal growth
and expansion of British finance as one of the aspects of the
nation's history.
The primitive financial institutions of England centre round
the king's household, or, in other words, the royal economy
precedes the national one. Revenue dues collected by the king's
agents, rents, or rather returns of produce, from land, and special
levies for emergencies form the elements of the royal income,
which gradually acquired greater regularity and consistency.
There is, however, little or no evidence of any effective financial
organization until we approach the i ith century. The influence
exercised from Normandy, which so powerfully affected the
English rulers at this time, tended towards the creation of records
of revenue claims and also of a central treasury.
With the union of England and Normandy under the same
head the idea of settled administrative methods was definitely
fixed and became of special importance in the field of finance.
The systematizing spirit, so characteristic of both the Norman
and Angevin kings, produced the great institution of the ex-
chequer (q.v.) with its judicial and administrative sides, and
its elaborate forms of account and control. Even before this
organization was developed the Domesday Survey (see DOMESDAY
BOOK) now recognized as having a purely fiscal object (in Mait-
land's words " a tax book, a geld book ") shows the movement
towards careful observation of the sources of revenue. It is
clear that William I. initiated a policy which was followed by
his successors, in spite of the serious difficulties of the period of
anarchy during Stephen's nominal reign. The obscure question
as to the real origin of the special contrivances employed by the
exchequer is, strictly speaking, irrelevant to the financial inquirer,
who may be content to hold that, granting the existence of some
Old English analogies, the system, as it appears in the i2th
century, was a peculiar product of the conceptions as to fiscal
organization formed by Norman subtlety. It is the manner in
which this institution held together and focused the revenues and
expenditure of the kingdom that has to be considered. The
picture presented by the " Dialogue of the Exchequer " (c. 1176)
is that of a comprehensive system which secured the receipt
of the royal income, and provided a thorough audit of the
accounts by employing processes adapted to the circumstances
of the time. It is, in fact, through the description of financial
institutions that it is possible to ascertain the forms of revenue
possessed by the crown. The ingenuity expended on the
administrative machinery of the exchequer had as its aim the
increase of the king's resources, an object in which the official
class of churchmen and lawyers was deeply interested.
In order to understand the character of English finance in
the middle ages it is absolutely essential to bear constantly
in mind the identification of the king with the state. Though
feudalism (q.v.) was, in one of its aspects, a powerful instrument
for division of political authority, it, nevertheless, in the particular
form in which the Conqueror introduced it into England, enabled
the fiscal rights of the crown to be established in a more definite
shape than was possible under the older condition. For, in the
first place, the actual property of the crown was more carefully
administered as each royal manor came under the system of
accounting. Again, the various claims or dues of the king took
more decidedly the feudal type and received stricter legal defini-
tion. Further, the higher judicial organization assisted the
expansion of court fees; while, above all, the increased authority
of the state made the casual receipts (for such they were) from
trade more profitable.
In a broad view the sources of revenue fall under the following
heads: (i) The royal estates which were distributed over
England, derived in part from the possessions of the old English
kings, but increased by the confiscations that followed the
events of the Conqueror's reign, as well as by the doctrine that
unowned land was the king's (terra regis) . Over fourteen hundred
manors appear in Domesday as royal property. The forests,
placed under special laws, yielded little revenue, except in the
form of penalties on offenders. The rural tenants, who at first
paid, their rents in produce, gradually commuted them into
money payments. As the royal demesne was favourable for
the growth of towns the rents derived from urban tenants
became a valuable part of the yield from the demesne; this,
later, took the shape of a payment from the town as a unit (the
firma burgi) , a method which secured to the burghers freedom from
the exactions of the sheriff and which was purchased by special
payments. (2) The feudal rights. These included the claim to
military service; the three regular aids and the payments of
relief at succession to a fief, as also the profits on wardships and
marriages. Escheats and forfeitures completed the list. The
yield from this source varied with the power of the king and was
kept within bounds by the resistance of the tenants as shown
in the provisions of Magna Carta. (3) The administration of
justice was a lucrative prerogative of the crown. Suitors had to
pay for securing the hearing of their cases in addition to the fees
for writs, and both amercements and compositions increased
the receipts under this head. (4) Two special classes contributed
to the royal exchequer. As a great deal of the wealth of the
country was in the hands of the church the opportunities afforded
by the vacancies of sees, abbacies and priories were utilized for
the purpose of securing the profits of these offices during the time
in which there was no occupant; and this term was frequently
prolonged by the king's action or inaction. The Jews, until
their expulsion, were an even more profitable class to the revenue.
Being under the absolute control of the crown, they could be
taxed at pleasure, either by taking a percentage of their property
(e.g. in one case one- fourth), or by levies for alleged offences.
The existence of a separate exchequer for the Jews is an indication
of their fiscal value. ( 5) Direct taxation formed an extraordinary
or occasional head of revenue. The Danegeld was succeeded by
the carucage, and the commutation of military service introduced
the scutage, but these forms were of little immediate importance,
though very significant for the future course of development.
(6) Lastly come the dues claimed at the ports, which contain
in germ the customs system of later times, though they rather
resemble the harbour charges of modern ports and were very
trivial in amount.
The history of the English financial system consists largely
in the exhibition of the different fortunes of these several com-
ponent parts of the exchequer receipts; for it must be re-
membered that the sheriff was bound to account to that tribunal
for all that he should have received, and by this agency the local
ENGLISH FINANCE
459
contributions passed into the king's possession for the service of
the state. During the century and a half that lay between the
Conquest and the granting of the Great Charter the account given
above holds good. The character of the ruler affected the vigour
of the fiscal, as well as the general, administration. Henry I.
and Henry II. secured much better results than Stephen or John;
but the collection of the rent and profits of the royal manors
and the feudal and other dues continued as the mainstay of
revenue. Indications of change are, however, to be found.
Thus the substitution of the " carucage " or plough tax for the
1 Unegeld " marks an advance towards direct taxation of land
through its produce, and the introduction of " scutagc " is not
only further evidence of the same tendency, but also a step in
the development of " money economy " in place of the earlier
" natural economy " or system of payments in kind. The special
levies or " tallages " imposed at times of need on the towns
in the king's demesne appear to have been a doubtful exercise
of the royal prerogative, but scientifically they belong to the
same class as the Danegeld and scutage. Perhaps the most
important advance made in this period is the beginning of
taxation of movables, first applied in the Saladin tithe of 1189
and, later, expanded into a general system.
In the reign of John (1190-1216) the loss of Normandy and
the concession of the barons' demands by the issue of Magna
Carta rendered financial readjustments inevitable. During the
long reign of Henry III. the struggle to maintain the privileges
granted by the Charter acted on the fiscal system by checking
the arbitrary use of tallages, and as a consequence, encouraging
the regular assessment of the tax on movables, which was becom-
ing more prominent. The fruitful idea that it was necessary
to obtain the consent of the payers of taxes before the imposition
operated powerfully in favour of the establishment of bodies
representing the several estates. It is through the reaction of
constitutional on fiscal development that the transition from
feudal to parliamentary taxation in its earlier form is made.
Almost at the opening of the age of parliamentary taxation
one of the older sources of revenue ceased. The pressure of
popular opinon forced Edward I. to decree the expulsion of
the Jews (1290), though he naturally desired to retain such
profitable subjects. It is, indeed, probable that, owing to the
exactions practised on them, the Jewish usurers had become
lew serviceable to the exchequer; while it is certain that the
general resources of the kingdom had so increased as to make
their contribution relatively much smaller. The first effects of
the representative influence in the fiscal domain are the abandon-
ment of the tallages on towns and the decline of scutage as
a mode of levy. The tax on movables was framed in a more
systematic way. Instead of distinct charges on different classes,
or variations in proportion of levy from one-fourth to one-fortieth,
the policy of imposing a tax of one-tenth on the towns and
one-fifteenth on the counties was adopted. Greater strictness in
assessment was sought by the appointment of commissioners for
each county, supplied with special instructions as to taxable
goods and exemptions. This method continued in force for the
tax on movables from 1200 till 1334, though in some cases the
proportions imposed on the towns and counties were varied (e.g.
an eighth and a fifth were granted in 1297, and a tenth and
a sixth in 1322). A more general influence was the growing
national economy which led to greater activity on the part of the
king as administrator, and which also increased the need of the
state for revenue. Though the doctrine that " The king should
live of his own " was generally accepted as a constitutional
maxim, the force of events was making it obsolete. From being
an infrequent and uncertain kind of taxation the direct tax on
movables, which was practically absorbing the older forms,
became usual and regular. Under medieval conditions the
collection of a general property tax (for such, in fact, was the
nature of " the tenth and fifteenth ") presented serious difficulties.
Each locality gained by keeping its assessment down to the lowest
point, while the borough authorities were naturally not eager
to enforce the charge on their fellow-citizens. England in the
1 4th century was not ripe for a system that has been found hard
to make effective in more advanced societies. Hence, from 1334
onward, the method of " apportionment " was employed, i.e.
the tenth and fifteenth was taken as affording a definite sum
measured by the yield on the ancient valuation. As this gave,
in the aggregate, between 38,000 and 39,000, " the tenth and
fifteenth " became for the future " practically a fiscal expression
for a sum of about 39,000 "; the total to be divided or " appor-
tioned " between the several counties, cities and boroughs accord-
ing to their former payments. This settlement, which remained
in force for centuries and affected all the later direct taxes, had
the great advantages of certainty and adaptability. The in-
habitants of any particular town knew their total liability and
could distribute it amongst themselves in the manner most con-
venient to them. From theroyal standpoint alsothearrangcmcnt
was satisfactory, for the " tenth and fifteenth " could be multi-
plied (e.g. in 1352 three " tenths and fifteenths " were voted for
three years), and supplied a stable revenue for the service of the
kingdom. To the parliament the power of regulating the policy
of the crown by the bestowal or refusal of grants was naturally
agreeable. Thus, all sections of the nation united in support of
the system established in 1334, just before the opening of the
Hundred Years' War, in connexion with which it was particularly
serviceable.
Akin to the tax that has just been described, at least in its
nature as a direct impost, is the poll or capitation tax. Financial
pressure at the close of Edward III.'s reign (1377) led to the
adoption of a tax of fourpence per head on all persons in the
kingdom (mendicants and persons under fourteen years being
excepted). This " tallage of groats," which seems to be derived
by analogy from the hearth money for Peter's pence, was followed
by the graduated poll taxes of 1379 and 1380. In the former the
scale ranged from ten marks (6:13:4) imposed on the royal
dukes and the viscounts, through six marks on earls, bishops and
abbots, and three on barons, down to the groat or fourpence
payable by all persons over sixteen years of age. Such a form
of taxation approximated as Adam Smith saw to an income
tax, but it proved to be unproductive, only half of the estimated
yield of 50,000 being obtained. The tax of 1380 varied within
narrower limits; from twenty shillings to fourpence (or sixty
groats to three), with the proviso that " the strong should aid
the weak." But this particular tax is chiefly memorable as the
occasion whatever may have been the real causes of the great
" Peasants' Revolt " of 1381. This unlucky association sealed
the fate of the poll tax as a fiscal expedient. It was abandoned,
with one exception, for nearly three hundred years; and it's
occasional employment in the i?th century did not result in its
permanent revival. Apart from special circumstances it is plain
that the " tenth and fifteenth " was better suited than the
poll tax for the purpose of English finance. The machinery for
collection was ready to hand for the former, while special agents
had to gather the latter, even from the poorest classes. In fact,
the episode of the poll taxes may be regarded as an attempt
fortunately unsuccessful to relieve the propertied classes at the
expense of the peasants and poorer burghers. Failure in this
respect helped in the maintenance of the settlement of direct
taxation devised in 1334.
Parallel with the evolution of direct taxation, but decidedly
lagging behind, is the progress of indirect taxation. As already
mentioned, the right of levying dues on goods entering or leaving
English ports belonged from very early times to the king.
Whether this power was, in its origin, due to the protection
afforded to traders and thus a kind of insurance, or the result
of the royal prerogative of pre-emption is immaterial for finance.
What is established is that the " prisage " of wine or levy of one
cask in ten, and the taking of one-tenth or one-fifteenth of other
commodities was in force. Attempts to impose additional dues
were forbidden by an important article (41) of the Great Charter
which recognized " the ancient and just customs." One of
the earliest effects of parliamentary influence is manifested
in the establishment of duties on wool, woolfells and leather by
Edward I.'s first parliament. After some efforts by the king
to gather increased duties, the "Confirmation of the Charters"
460
ENGLISH FINANCE
(i 297) forbade any increases on the amounts fixed in 1 275, which
were henceforth known as the ancient customs. Another attempt
was made to obtain a higher scale of duties by arrangement with
the merchants. The foreign traders consented to the royal pro-
posals, which comprised duties on wine, 'wool, hides and wax,
as well as a general tax of ij% on all imports and exports.
Thus, in addition to the old customs of half a mark (6s. 8d.) per
sack of wool and on each three hundred woolfells, and one mark
(135. 4d.) per last or load of leather, the foreign merchants paid
an extra duty (or surtax) of 50% and also 23. on the tun of wine
the so-called " butlerage." The privileges granted in the
Carta Mercatoria (1303) were probably the consideration for
accepting these enhanced dues. The English merchants, how-
ever, for the time, successfully resisted the application in their
case of the higher charges, and consequently remained under the
old prisage of wine. In spite of parliamentary opposition, on
the ground that they amounted to an infringement of the
Great Charter, the new customs were maintained in force.
After being suspended in 1311 they were revived in 1322, con-
firmed by royal authority in 1328, and finally sanctioned by
parliament in the Statute of the Staple (1353). They became
a part of the permanent crown revenue from the ports, and, with
the old customs, were the basis for further development.
Just as the old direct taxes were first supplemented by, and
then absorbed in, the general taxation of movables, so the
customs, in the strict sense, were followed by the subsidies or
parliamentary grants. One great source of English wealth in
the 1 4th century was the export of the peculiarly fine wool of the
country, and the political circumstances of Edward III.'s time
suggested the manipulation of the trade in this commodity for
purposes of policy as well as revenue. Sometimes, in order to
influence the towns of Flanders, the export of wool was abso-
lutely prohibited; at others, export duties of varying amounts
were imposed on wool, skins and leather. In the early years of
the reign these arrangements were settled by agreement with
the merchants. The subsidies of this class began in 1340 and
henceforward were frequently granted, though complaints were
very often made. Thus, in 1348 the Commons objected to the
subsidy of an export duty of 2 per sack on wool on the ground
that it was really a tax on the landowners, who received a lower
price for their wool in consequence of the duty. Bargains
between the king and the merchants were forbidden, and this
species of taxation was brought under parliamentary control by
statutes passed in 1362 and 1371. Along with the special duties
on wool there was an increase of the imposts on wine and general
goods. By agreement with the merchants a charge of 25. per
tun on wine and 25% on goods was levied in 1347. Between
1371 and 1376 these dues were established as parliamentary
grants under the names of " Tunnage " and " Poundage,"
leaving the older dues intact.
One class or " estate " occupied a peculiar position. The
clergy still claimed the privilege of self-taxation, and therefore it
was convocation, not parliament, that voted the tenths imposed
on clerical property. In some instances much heavier charges
(e.g. in 1 296 one-third) were decreed by the king, but the taxation
of the clergy declined in productiveness during the I4th century.
By the close of the reign of Richard II. the results of the tran-
sition from feudalism to a parliamentary constitution were
practically complete. In respect to finance the most important
of these were: (i) The disappearance or reduction to unim-
portance of the feudal dues. The fact that this change occurred
at, relatively speaking, so early a date is of special significance
for English development. (2) The royal demesne, though it
had not suffered the losses that the grants of later times inflicted
on it, had also lost some of its value as a source of revenue.
(3) In compensation the direct taxation of property had become
a ready means of supplying the growing requirements of the
administration, and the mode of levy had been reduced to a
well-recognized form, unsatisfactory experiments such as the
poll tax being withdrawn. (4) The growth of import and ex-
port duties through the " old " and " new " customs and the
subsidies furnished a large part of the requisite funds. In fact,
n the course of a little over three hundred years the constituent
5arts of the public income had, without any violent change, been
completely altered in relative value and in organization.
The period of the Lancastrian kings, extending over two-
;hirds of the isth century (1399-1471), is noticeable for various
experiments in the system of direct taxation. The standard tax
" the tenth and fifteenth " failed to suit the changed con-
ditions. In consequence of the decay of some of the towns
allowances had to be made to them, amounting to over 15%
^6000), which, with other deductions, lowered the yield from
a " tenth and fifteenth " to 31,0x30. As a supplement a land
tax, affecting only the large owners, was voted at the rate of 5 %
in 1404, and repeated with wider scope, but at the lower rate of
%, in 1411. A house tax made its appearance in 1428.
Taxes on knight's fees and other freeholds were also tried, while
in 1435 and 1450 the graduated income tax was employed. The
minimum rate, 25%, applied to incomes under 100 (or under
20 in the tax of 1450), and rose to 10% on the higher incomes.
These devices are evidence of the demand for larger revenue,
and also of the increasing unfitness of the existing direct taxation.
It may be added that they indicate a disposition to adopt foreign
models, particularly the methods of taxation in use in France
and Italy. As to indirect taxation the receipts seem at first to
have declined, and the subsidies were only granted for fixed
terms (the victory of Agincourt gained a life grant to .Henry V.).
After the establishment of Edward IV. on the throne, the idea
of a " tenth," in the literal sense, was taken up and voted (1472)
by the two houses as a special military provision; but it failed
to bring in the required revenue, and the king had to fall back
on grants of the old-established form. Extra taxes on aliens were
levied under both Lancastrian and Yorkist rulers with little
profit. The most original contribution of Edward IV. to fiscal
policy was the " benevolence " (q.v.) or payment by wealthy
subjects of sums requested by the king. Voluntary in form, these
payments were, in fact, compulsory, and became in later times one
of the great grievances against which parliament had to struggle.
Broader issues in finance marked the course of the Tudor
period, and these were connected with the general history of the
time. The era of national monarchies had arrived, necessitating
the maintenance of greater military and naval forces, as well as
more costly machinery of administration. External policy was
affected by the set of ideas that developed into mercantilism
(see MERCANTILE SYSTEM); but so also was fiscal policy.
Finance reflected the actions of the personal rule that was the
characteristic of the i6th century. Within the period, however,
some decided contrasts are to be found. Prudence, carried to
parsimony with Henry VII., is followed by lavish prodigality in
the case of Henry VIII. Elizabeth, again, presents in her reign
a very different financial policy from that of either her father or
her grandfather. The desire for a vigorous foreign policy, the
hope of encouraging native industry, and the sentiment of re-
taliation against the trade regulations of other countries are
found to interfere with the aim strictly followed in earlier
times of obtaining the largest possible yield. All the different
parts of the public economy were regarded as existing only in
order to be utilized for the furtherance of national power. It is
this more complex character in policy, coupled with the new
influences, that the discovery of America, the Renaissance and
the Reformation brought into operation, which gives special
interest to the financial problems of the i6th century.
Taking in order the great heads of public income placed at
the disposal of the sovereign, it appears that the first head of the
old receipts the crown lands had been from time to time
diminished by grants to the king's relatives and favourites, but
had also gained through resumptions and forfeitures. On the
whole, the loss and gain down to the close of the I4th century
was probably balanced. The revenue was, however, inelastic,
and declined in relative importance. It has been said that " it
was in the isth century that the great impoverishment of
the crown estate began." The Lancastrian kings (especially
Henry VI.) lost most of the lands attached to the crown through
pressure of expenditure and the wholesale plunder of officials.
ENGLISH FINANCE
461
Though the civil wars of the isth century brought in many
forfeited estates the grants of Edward IV. kept down the increase.
But the chief opportunity for aggrandizement was afforded by
the dissolution of the monasteries and gilds under Henry VIII.
The great mass of property that passed into the royal possession
in this way was in part assigned to nobles and officials, while
most of the remainder was distributed in the reigns of his
children. The dwindling importance of the public revenue from
land and rent charges is as noticeable under the Tudors as in
earlier times. In like manner the feudal dues had fallen into a
very subordinate place notwithstanding the attempts made on
particular occasions to enforce them with greater rigour. The
force of personal monarchy exercised by the Tudors, depending
as it did on popular support, tended to encourage the collection
of dues which had a legal ground in preference to taxation of
the community. Of similar character was the employment of the
old right of purveyance (?..), in restraint of which a series of
statutes bad been passed.
Whatever possibilities of obtaining some additional revenue
from the crown lands or prerogative rights may have existed in
the 1 6th century, and these were slight, all the political and
social conditions tended more and more to make the need of
taxation as the principal financial resource imperative. Amongst
the cases of increased calls for funds to maintain the machinery
of state, the rise of prices, due to increased supplies of the precious
metals, must be included as one of the chief, and its effect extends
into the i;th century. It was under this influence that the old
forms of revenue became less profitable and that fresh develop-
ments were necessitated.
Direct taxation still retained in one of its branches the pattern
set in the reign of Edward III. " Tenths and fifteenths " con-
tinued to be voted, and for some time all attempts to introduce
new methods failed. In 1488 a military grant framed on the
model of the abortive tax of 1472 yielded only a little over one-
third of the estimate (17,000 out of 75,000), and the unsatis-
factory result prevented further experiments on the part of
Henry VII. The foreign policy of Henry VIII. particularly
his French expedition with its attendant outlay, accounts for
the graduated capitation tax of 1513, which was even less in
accordance with anticipation than the tax of 1488 (it yielded only
50.000 instead of 160,000). But these failures cleared the way
for a more effective form of direct impost, which appeared in the
" subsidy " or general tax on land and goods. The first case of this
tax (1514) was a modest one 2j%; it, however, soon took on
a typical form, so that the subsidy came to mean a charge of 45.
in the pound on land and is. 8d. in the pound on goods, a scale
evidently devised with reference to the older tenth and fifteenth,
which was henceforth put in a subordinate position. The subsidy
became the established mode of grant under both Tudors and
Stuarts, though by degrees it underwent a change similar to that
experienced by its predecessor. The taxing statutes made
elaborate provisions for the assessment and collection of the tax
in order to secure a full return. Old habits proved too strong
and the subsidy " slipped into the same kind of groove as that
of the fifteenth and tenth, and became, in practice, a grant of
a sum of money of about the same amount as the yield of the last
preceding subsidy " (Dowell). The consequence was that each
subsidy came, in the middle of the i6th century, to be a sum of
100,000, and at its close only 80,000. The parallel vote of the
clergy in convocation (which after 1533 had to be confirmed
in parliament) amounted to 20,000. The usual parliamentary
proceeding was to vote so many " tenths and fifteenths " and
so many subsidies, e.g. Elizabeth's first parliament voted her
" two fifteenths and tenths and a subsidy," or, taking the usual
values, 160,000. At times of crisis such as the arrival of the
Armada the votes were enlarged by granting more tenths and
fifteenths and subsidies. The history of the subsidy is in-
structive as to the tendencies of direct taxation in all countries.
The assessment becomes inelastic and approximates to a fixed
sum. As the subsidy follows the course of the later medieval
taxation, so it is the undesigned model of the later land and
property tax.
In the history of the port duties under the Tudors the first point
for notice is the lift- grant to each of the sovereigns of the subsidies
on wool, hides and leather, together with tunnage at 38. and
poundage at 5%; thus, with the hereditary customs, supplying a
considerable revenue for the crown's use. No better indication
of the increased power and popularity of the monarchy could be
found. The contrast with the suspicious and grudging attitude
of the Plantagenet and Lancastrian parliaments is significant of
the change in national sentiment. A duty on malmsey (1490) had
a retaliatory rather than a fiscal aim, being directed against the
Venetians who had imposed restrictions on English trade. In
several later cases wine became liable to extra duties, chiefly
applied to French trade in further pursuance of the policy of
retaliation. Restrictions on import and export as well as the
hostile measures against foreign merchants were matters of
economic policy rather than finance, but they had the indirect
effect of increasing the control exercised at the ports. The loss
of Calais (1558) dislocated the system of the staple and cut off
one centre of customs revenue; and it was also probably the
cause of an important change in the mode of valuing goods for
duty. For the declaration on oath of the merchant a fixed
valuation was substituted and set forth in a book of rates, the
first of its class (1558). Following this reform came more
stringent regulations against smuggling and fraud on the part of
officials. All through the Tudor period the cost of collection
was unduly high. For the first six years of Elizabeth it has
been estimated at one-sixth of the gross receipts.
Just as in the i4th century the subsidy had followed the
" old " and " new " customs, so in the i6th the " impositions "
levied by royal prerogative formed a supplement to the parlia-
mentary subsidy; but the principal employment of this ex-
pedient occurs in the next century. Another significant indica-
tion of the future course of indirect taxation was furnished by
the grants of monopolies to inventors, producers and traders.
These privileges, when they affected important commodities,
operated in the same way as taxes farmed out to collectors, and,
though the profit to the crown was small, they enhanced prices
and excited discontent. The wisdom of Elizabeth (or her
ministers) was shown in the promise of redress after the hostile
debate of 1601.
From one point of view it may fairly be said that the great
struggle of the Stuart kings with the parliament centred round
financial issues. It is, at all events, beyond dispute that ques-
tions of taxation were the chosen ground of conflict. Taking
the period from the accession of James I. to the opening of the
Civil War (1603-42) it appears that the legal basis of indirect
taxation was tested for the port duties in the " Great Case of
Impositions " (known as Bates' case, see BATES, JOHN), while
that of direct taxation was considered in the even more famous
" Ship Money " case (for ever associated with the name of
Hampden). In parliament the debates deal with impositions,
monopolies, the grounds for voting subsidies, and the proper
application of the funds granted; in fact, with nearly all the
financial questions of the time. Notwithstanding these diffi-
culties and disputes the financial system shows evident signs of
expansion and adaptation to the needs of the state.
The direct grants of the parliaments of James I. far exceeded
those of earlier periods (in 1606 six " fifteenths and tenths,"
three lay and four clerical subsidies), but the efforts to extend
the other sources of revenue by the exercise of the prerogative
naturally reacted on this spirit of liberality. The last " fifteenth
and tenth " was voted in 1624, from which date this old-estab-
lished form disappears, and the subsidy alone is used. In spite
of Charles I.'s high-handed policy five subsidies were voted after
the Petition of Right had been accepted, and even the Long
Parliament made similar grants. Almost at the outbreak of the
Civil War it also gave the king a graduated capitation tax.
Other modes of direct taxation were used without parliamentary
sanction. The collection of the antiquated feudal dues was
enforced through the special courts (particularly the Star
Chamber) with a rigour long unknown; James had tried the
French device of a " tariff of honors." Both kings employed
462
ENGLISH FINANCE
the " benevolence " until the Petition of Right made such a levy
illegal. But by far the most serious innovation was the collection
of the " ship money," a course forced on Charles by his deter-
mination not to meet the representatives of the nation. The
writs " embodied the ultimate expression of the ingenuity of the
king's advisers in the invention of means to enable him to rule
without a parliament." The first writs secured over 100,000,
and were followed by five further issues (1634-1639) bringing
in an average return of 200,000 or about three lay subsidies.
Like the " benevolence," the ship money was declared to be
illegal (1641).
The contest respecting monopolies, settled by Elizabeth's
withdrawal, was revived under James I., and had to be finally
closed by the Statute of Monopolies (1624), declaring such grants
to be utterly void. Certain exceptions (as in the case of the soap-
boilers) permitted the raising of revenue by what was in fact a
rudimentary excise, and plans for a general excise were discussed,
especially as a substitute for the feudal dues, though they were
not reduced to practice. In the earlier i7th century the customs
show a steady increase. From 127,000 in 1604 they rose to nearly
500,000 in 1641. This fourfold increase was due in part to the
growth of English trade, but it was also influenced by the adop-
tion of new " Books of rates " in 1608 and 1635, fixing higher
valuations, and by the inclusion of new commodities with
definite duties. Wine, currants (the subject of controversy in
Bates' case) and tobacco are particularly noticeable. Sugar also
appears as a contributory. An interesting development was the
adoption on a larger scale of the " farming " system, an evident
imitation from France. A distinction was made between the
" great," the " petty " and the " sugar " farms, and oppor-
tunities for gain were afforded to the officials. On the consti-
tutional side the life grant of subsidies, made in accordance with
Tudor usage to James, was temporarily withheld from Charles,
a restriction which his own overbearing policy led the parliament
to maintain. Practically, the whole customs revenue between
1628 and 1640 was raised by the use of the prerogative without
any parliamentary sanction. The Tunnage and Poundage Act
of 1641 pronounced definitely against the legality of any extra
parliamentary customs and thus closed another of the consti-
tutional problems of finance.
In the progress from the Conquest to the crisis of the Great
Rebellion there is noticeable a practically complete shifting
of the classes of revenue. The king had ceased " to live of his
own "; the royal demesne and the prerogative rights included
in feudalism had become very subordinate. The direct taxation
of property and income, and the indirect taxation on imported
or exported commodities became the principal forms of receipt.
In the long course of English financial history the nearest
approach to the new departure and an abandonment of old
devices is found at the time of the Civil War and Commonwealth.
The actual outlines of the now existing system made their
appearances, while the older portions of the revenue parti-
cularly the survivals of feudalism are eliminated. Thus the
Civil War and the Interregnum (1642-60) may be regarded as
marking a watershed in the financial history of the country.
At the beginning of the struggle both sides had to rely on volun-
tary contributions. Plate and ornaments were melted .down
and useful commodities were furnished by the adherents of the
king and by those of the parliament. As holding possession of
London and the central organization the parliament voted sub-
sidies and a poll tax. Such imports could hardly be levied with
success and new forms became necessary. The direct taxation
took the shape of a " monthly assessment " which was fixed from
time to time, and which was collected under strict regulations, in
marked contrast to the lax management of the former subsidies.
As the amount for each district was fixed, the systematic collec-
tion secured " the more equitable adjustment of the burden of
the tax as regards the various taxpayers " without hardship to
the community. In spite of its origin, the " assessment " was the
model for later taxation of property. The yield of this tax
exceeding for the whole period 32,000,000 is a proof of its
importance. Minor contrivances, e.g. the "weekly meal" tax, in-
dicate the financial difficulties of the parliament, but are otherwise
unimportant. Owing to its control of the sea and the principal
ports the parliament was able to command the customs revenue;
and in this case also it remodelled the duties, abolishing the wool
subsidy and readjusting the general customs by a new book of
rates. A more extensive tariff was adopted in 1656, and various
restrictions in harmony with the mercantilist ideas of the time
were enforced. Thus French wines, silk and wool were excluded
from 1649 to 1656. Far more revolutionary in its effects was
the introduction of the excise or inland duties on goods a step
which Elizabeth, James I. and Charles I. had hesitated to take.
Beginning (1643) with duties on ale, beer and spirits, it was soon
extended to meat, salt and various textiles. Meat and domestic
salt were relieved in 1647, and the taxation became definitely
established under the administration of commissioners appointed
for the purpose. Powers to let out the collection to farmers were
granted, and a bid for both excise and customs amounted in
1657 to 1,100,000. Confiscations of church lands and those
belonging to royalists, feudal charges and special collections
helped to make up the total of 83,000,000 raised during the
nineteen years of this revolutionary period. Another mark of
change was the removal of the exchequer to Oxford, leaving,
however, the real fiscal machinery at the disposal of the com-
mittees that directed the affairs of the parliament. Under
Cromwell the exchequer was re-established (1654) in a form
suited for the changes in the finances, the office of treasurer
being placed in the hands of commissioners.
A complete reconstruction of the revenue system became
necessary at the Restoration. The feudal tenures and dues, with
the prerogative rights of purveyance and pre-emption, which
had been abolished by order of the parliament, could not be
restored. Their removal was confirmed, and the new revenues
that had been developed were resorted to as a substitute. Care-
ful inquiry showed that just before the Civil War the king's
annual revenue had reached nearly 900,000. The needs of the
restored monarchy were estimated at 1,200,000 per annum,
and the loyal spirit of the commons provided sources of revenue
deemed sufficient for this amount. An hereditary excise on
beer and ale was voted as a compensation for the loss of the
feudal dues, and temporary excises on spirits, vinegar, coffee,
chocolate and tea were added. All differences of " old " and
" new " customs and subsidies had disappeared under the
Commonwealth. The general or " great statute " (1660) pro-
vided a scale of duties 5 % on imports and exports, with special
duties on wines and woollen cloths accompanied by a new
book of rates. A house tax, levied after the French pattern, on
each hearth, was introduced in 1662 and became established.
Poll taxes were used as an extraordinary resource, as were the
last subsidies, voted in 1663, and then for ever abandoned.
Licences on retailers and fees on law proceedings were further
aids to the revenue, which, in the later years of Charles II.
and in the short reign of his successor, was with difficulty kept
up to the level of the increasing expenditure. The Common-
wealth assessments were revived on several occasions, and
indirect taxation was made more rigorous by the imposition of
extra duties on brandy, tobacco and sugar, as also on French
linens and silks. A very important development was the placing
of the customs (1670) and the excise (1683) in the hands of special
commissioners, instead of the system of farming them out to
private collectors. The approach to modern conditions is further
evidenced by the greater care in the administration. Amongst
expert officials Dudley North (?..), as commissioner of customs,
was the most distinguished. In this period, too, the beginning
of the public debt as in the appropriation of the bankers' deposits
may be found.
The Revolution of 1688 may be regarded both on its con-
stitutional and financial sides as the completion of the work of
the Long Parliament. In the latter respect its chief effects were:
(i) the transfer of the administration of the finances from the
king's nominees to officials under parliamentary control, (2) the
consequent application of the revenue to the purposes designated
by parliamentary appropriation, (3) the rapid expansion of the
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4-63
various kinds of revenue, particularly the indirect taxes, (4) the
and growth of the national debt, combined with the creation
of an effective banking system. The greater part of the iSth
century was occupied with the working out of these results.
The government of William HI. had to face the expenses of
a great war and to allay discontent at home. As a preliminary
step to the necessary settlement of the revenue a return was
prepared, showing the tax receipts at over 1,800,000 and the
peace expenditure at about 1,100,000. Parliament accepted
the view that 1,200,000 per annum would suffice for the ordinary
requirements of the kingdom. It, further, introduced the system
of the Civil List (?..) and assigned 600,000 for the fixed pay-
ments placed under that head, leaving the remainder to In-
appropriated for the other needs of the state. As the " hearth
money " had proved to be a very unpopular charge, it was, in
spite of its yield (170,000), given up. The temporary excise
duties were voted for " their majesties' lives " and the customs
for a limited term. These branches of revenue were altogether
insufficient to meet the pressure of the war outlay, and in conse-
quence new heads of taxation or old ones revived came into
use. A series of poll and capitation taxes were imposed between
1689 and 1608, but were after that date abandoned for the same
reason as that for the repeal of the hearth money. The monthly
assessment was tried in 1688; then came an income tax followed
by " twelve months' " assessments in 1690 and 1691. The way
was thus prepared for the property tax of 1692, imposing a rate
of 4$. in the pound on real estate, offices and personal property.
The old difficulties of securing returns made the tax chiefly
one on land. It was under the name of " the land tax " that it
was generally known. The 43. rate brought in 1,922,712, a
return which declined in the following years. To meet this a fixed
quota of nearly half a million (a is. rate) was adopted in 1697,
the amount to be apportioned in specified sums to the several
counties and towns. The framework of the tax remained without
substantial change till 1798, the time of Pitt's redemption scheme.
In 1696 houses were taxed zs. each, with higher rates for extra
windows. The beginning of the " window tax," licences on
pedlars, and a temporary tax on the stocks of companies com-
plete the imposts of this kind. Stamp duties imitated from
Holland were adopted in 1694 and extended in 1698: they
mark the beginnings of the modern duties on transactions and
the " death duties." Large additions were made to the excise.
Breweries and distilleries were placed under charge, and such
important commodities as salt, coal, malt, leather and glass were
included in the list of taxable articles, but the two last mentioned
were soon relieved for the time. The customs rates were also
increased. In 1698 the general 5% duty was raised by the new
subsidy to 10%. French goods became liable to surtaxes, first
of 25%, afterwards of 50%; those of other countries had to pay
similar charges of smaller amount. Spirits, wines, tea and coffee
were taxed at special rates. How great was the expansion of the
fiscal system may be best realized from the fact that during the
comparatively short reign of William III. (1689-1702) the land
tax produced 19,200,000, the customs 13,296,000, and the
excise 13,650,000, or altogether 46,000,000. In the .last year
of the reign, the opening one of the 1 8th century, the returns from
these taxes respectively were: land tax (at 25.), 990,000,
customs 1,540,000, excise 986,000, or a total exceeding three
and a half millions. The removal of the regular export duties
in respect of (a) domestic woollen manufactures, (6) corn, was
the only alleviation of taxation, and in both cases it was due to
special reasons of policy.
Quite as remarkable as the growth of revenue is the sudden
appearance of the use of public loans. In earlier periods a ruler
had accumulated treasure (Henry VII. left 1,800,000) or had
pledged " his jewels or the customs or occasionally the persons
of his friends for the payment " of his borrowings. Edward III.'s
dealings with the Florentine bankers are well known; but it was
only after the Revolution that the two conditions essential for
a permanent public debt were realized, viz.: (i) the responsi-
bility of the government to the people, and (2) an effective
market for floating capital. At the close of the war in 1697 a '
debt of 21,500,000 had been incurred, over 16,000,000 of which
remained due at William III.'s death. Connected with the
public debt is the foundation of the Bank of England (see BANKS
AND BANKING), which more and more became the agent for
dealing with the state revenue and expenditure; though the
exchequer continued to exist until 1834 as a real, even if anti-
quated institution.
Thus it is clear that by the end of the I7th century the new
influences which date from the Civil War had brought into being
all the elements of the modern financial system. Expenditure,
revenue, borrowing to meet deficiencies are all, in a sense, de-
veloped into their present-day form. Increase in amount and
some refinements in procedure, combined with improved views
of public policy, are the only changes that occur later on.
Regarded broadly, the i8th and igth centuries exhibit several
distinct periods with definite financial aspects. In the ninety
years from the death of William III. (1702) to the outbreak of
the Revolutionary War with France (1793) there are four serious
wars, covering nearly thirty-five years. There is the long peace
administration of Walpole, and there are the shorter intervals
of rest following each of the contests. From the beginning of
the war with the French Republic to the year of Waterloo there
is a nearly unbroken war time of over twenty years. The forty
years' peace is closed by the Crimean War (1854-56); and
another forty years of peace ends with the South African War
(1899-1902). During this time the older mercantilism passes
into protectionism; and this, again, gives way before the gradual
adoption of the free trade policy. At each time of war, taxation
(particularly in the indirect form) and debt increase. Financial
reform is connected with the maintenance of peace. Among
the great financial ministers Walpole, the younger Pitt, Peel
and Gladstone are conspicuous; while Huskisson's services in
the kindred field of economic policy deserve special notice in their
financial bearing.
By taking the several great heads of revenue in order it is
comparatively easy to understand the nature of the progress
made in subsequent years, (i) The land tax, established on a
definite basis in 1692, was the great i8th century form of direct
taxation. Varying in rate from is. (as in 1731) to 45. (as in most
war years), it was converted by Pitt in 1798 into a redeemable
charge on the lands of each parish, and by this process has sunk
from the amount of 1,911,000 in 1798 to 730,000 in 1907-1908.
The great increase in other heads had impaired the value of the
land tax as a fiscal support. (2) Parallel with the movement
of the land tax but showing much more rapid growth was the
excise of the i8th century. Most of the articles of common
consumption were permanently taxed. Soap, salt, candles and
leather are described by Adam Smith as taxed, and that taxation
is unreservedly condemned by him. In 1739 the excise duties
brought in 3,000,000. By 1792 they had risen to 10,000,000.
Their continued expansion was due both to the wider area
covered and to the increased consuming power of the country.
(3) The customs were equally serviceable, and in their case the
increased duties were even more considerable. The general
10% of 1698 became 15% in 1704, a fourth 5% was imposed
in 1748, and in 1759 the general duties were raised to 25%.
Coincidently with this general extension of the customs duties
special articles such as tea were subjected to increased duties.
The American War of Independence brought about a further
general increase of 10%, together with special extra duties on
tobacco and sugar. In 1784 the customs revenue came to over
3,000,000. Two circumstances account for this slower growth,
(i) The extreme rigour of the duties and prohibitions, aimed
chiefly against French trade; and (2) the absence of care in
estimating the point of maximum productiveness for each duty.
Swift's famous saying that " in the arithmetic of the customs
two and two sometimes made only one " is well exemplified
in England at this time. The smuggler did a great deal of the
foreign trade of the country. Efforts at reform were not, how-
ever, altogether wanting. Walpole succeeded in carrying several
useful adjustments. He abolished the general duties on exports
and also several of those on imported raw materials such as silk,
464
ENGLISH FINANCE
beaver, indigo and colonial timber. His most ambitious scheme
that for the warehousing of wine and tobacco in order to relieve
exporters failed, in consequence of the popular belief that it
was the forerunner of a general excise. Walpole's treatment of
the land tax, which he kept down to the lowest figure (is.), and
his earlier funding plan deserve notice. His determination to
preserve peace assisted his fiscal reforms. Pitt's administration
from 1783 to 1792 marks another great period of improvement.
The consolidation of the customs laws (1787), the reduction of
the tea duty to nearly one-tenth of its former amount, the con-
clusion of a liberal commercial treaty with France, and the
attempted trade arrangement with Ireland, tend to show that
" Pitt would have anticipated many of the free trade measures
of later years if it had been his lot to enjoy ten more years of
peaceful administration." One of the financial problems which
excited the interest and even the alarm of the students of public
affairs was the rapid increase of the public debt. Each war
caused a great addition to the burden; the intervals of peace
showed very little diminution in it. From sixteen millions in
1702, the debt rose to 53,000,000 at the treaty of Utrecht (1713).
In 1748 it reached 78,000,000, at the close of the Seven Years'
War it was 137,000,000, and when the American colonies had
established their independence it exceeded 238,000,000. Appre-
hensions of national bankruptcy led to the adoption of the device
of a sinking fund, and in this case Pitt's usual sagacity seems
to have failed him. The influence of R. Price's theory induced
the policy of assigning special sums for debt reduction, without
regard to the fundamental condition of maintaining a real
surplus.
The revolutionary and Napoleonic wars mark an important
stage in English finance. The national resources were strained
to the utmost, and the " whip and spur " of taxation was used
on all classes of the community. In the earlier years of the
struggle the expedient of borrowing enabled the government to
avoid the more oppressive forms of charge; but as time went
on every possible expedient was brought into play. One class
of taxes had been organized during peace the " assessed taxes "
on houses, carriages, servants, horses, plate, &c. These duties
were raised by several steps of 10% each until, in 1798, their
total charge was increased threefold (for richer persons four- or
fivefold) under the plan of a " triple assessment." The compara-
tive failure of this scheme (which did not bring in the estimated
yield of 4,500,000) prepared the way for the most important
development of the tax system the introduction of the income-
tax in 1798. Though a development of the triple assessment,
the income-tax was also connected with the permanent settle-
ment of the land tax as a redeemable charge. It is possible to
trace the progress of direct taxation from the scutage of Norman
days through " the tenth and fifteenth," the Tudor " subsidies,"
the Commonwealth " monthly assessments," and the i8th cen-
tury land tax, to the income-tax as applied by Pitt, and, after
an interval of disuse, revived by Peel (1842). The immediate
yield of the income-tax was rather less than was expected
(6,000,000 out of 7,500,000); but by alteration of the mode of
assessment from that of a general declaration to returns under
the several schedules, the tax became, first at 5 %, afterwards at
10%, the most valuable part of the revenue. In 1815 it contri-
buted 22% of the total receipts (i.e. 14,600,000 out of
67,000,000). If employed at the beginning of the war, it would
probably have obviated most of the financial difficulties of the
government. The window tax, which continued all through
the 1 8th century, had been supplemented in the American War
by a tax on inhabited houses (one of Adam Smith's many sugges-
tions), a group to which the assessmenttaxeswerenaturallyjoined.
During the i8th century the probate duty had been gradually
raised, and in 1780 the legacy duty was introduced; but these
charges were moderate in character and did not affect land.
Though the direct and quasi-direct taxes had been so largely
increased, their growth was eclipsed by that of the excise and
customs. With each succeeding year of war new articles for
duties were detected and the ratesofoldtaxesraised. Themaxim,
said to have guided the financiers of another country "Wherever
you see an object, tax it " would fairly express the guiding
policy of the English system of the early igth century. Eatables,
liquors, the materials of industry, manufactures, and the trans-
actions of commerce had in nearly all their forms to pay toll.
To take examples: salt paid 153. per bushel; sugar 305. per
cwt.; beer los. per barrel (with 45. sd. per bushel on malt and
a duty on hops); tea 96% ad valorem. Timber, cotton, raw
silk, hemp and bar iron were taxed, so were leather, soap, glass,
candles, paper and starch. In spite of the need of revenue, many
of the customs duties were framed on the protective system and
thereby gave little returns; e.g. the import duty on salt in 1815
produced 547, as against 1,616,124 from excise; pill-boxes
brought in i8s. iod., saltpetre ad., with id. for the war duties.
The course of the war taxation was marked by varied experi-
ments. Duties were raised, lowered, raised again, or given some
new form in the effort to find additional revenue. Some duties,
e.g. that on gloves, were abandoned as unproductive; but the
conclusion is irresistible that the financial system suffered from
over-complication and absence of principle. In the period of
his peace administration Pitt was prepared to follow the teaching
of The Wealth of Nations. The strain of a gigantic war forced
him and his successors to employ whatever heads of taxation
were likely to bring in funds without violating popular prejudices.
Along with taxation, debt increased. For the first ten years
the addition to it averaged 27,000,000 per annum, bringing
the total to over 500,000,000. By the close of the war period
in 1815 the total reached over 875,000,000, or a somewhat
smaller annual increase a result due to the adoption of more
effective tax forms, and particularly the income tax. The
progress of English trade was another contributing agency
towards securing higher revenue. The import of articles such,
as tea advanced with the growing population; so that the tea
duty of 96% yielded in 1815 no less than 3,591,000. It is,
however, true that by the year just mentioned the tax system
had reached its limit. Further extension (except by direct
confiscation of property) was hardly possible. The war closed
victoriously at the moment when its prolongation seemed
unendurable.
A particular aspect of the English financial system is its
relation to the organization of the finance of territories connected
with the English crown. The exchequer may be plausibly held
to have been derived from Normandy, and wherever territory
came under English rule the methods familiar at home seem to
have been adopted. With the loss of the French possessions the
older cases of the kind disappeared. Ireland, however, had its
own exchequer, and Scotland remained a distinct kingdom.
The i8th century introduced a remarkable change. One of the
aims of the union with Scotland was to secure freedom of com-
merce throughout Great Britain, and the two revenue systems
were amalgamated. Scotland was assigned a very moderate
share of the land tax (under one-fortieth), and was exempted
from certain stamp duties. The attempt to apply selected
forms of taxation custom duties (1764), stamp duties (1765),
and finally the effort to collect the tea duty (1773) to the
American colonies are indications of a movement towards what
would now be called " imperialist " finance. The complete plan
of federation for the British empire, outlined by Adam Smith,
is avowedly actuated by financial considerations. Notwith-
standing the failure of this movement in the case of the colonies,
the close of the century saw it successful in respect to Ireland,
though separate financial departments were retained till after
the close of the Napoleonic War and some fiscal differences still
remain. By the consolidation of the English and Irish ex-
chequers and the passage from war to peace, the years between
1815 and 1820 may be said to mark a distinct step in the financial
development of the country. The connected change in the Bank
of England by the resumption of specie payments supports this
view. Moreover, the political conditions in their influence on
finance were undergoing a revolution. The landed interest,
though powerful at the moment, had henceforth to face the
rivalry of the wealthy manufacturing communities of the north
of England, and it may be added that the influence of theoretic
ENGLISH FINANCE
465
discussion was likely to be felt in the treatment of the financial
policy of the nation. Canons as to the proper system of adminis-
tration, taxation and borrowing come to be noticed by states-
men and officials.
These influences may be followed out in their working by
observing the chief lines of adjustment and modification that
followed the conclusion of peace. Relieved from the extra-
ordinary outlay of the preceding years, the government felt
bound to propose reductions. With commendable prudence it
was resolved to retain the income-tax at 5% (one-half of the
former rate), and to join with this reduction the removal of some
war duties on malt and spirits. Popular feeling against direct
taxation was so strong that the income-tax had to be surrendered
in Mo, a course which seriously embarrassed the finances of the
following years. For over twenty-five years the income-tax
remained in abeyance, to the great detriment of the revenue
system. Its revival by Peel (1841), intended as a temporary
expedient, proved its services as a permanent tax: it has con-
tinued and expanded considerably since. Both the excise and
customs at the dose of the war were marked by some of the
worst defects of a vicious kind of taxation. The former had the
evil effect of restricting the progress of industry and hampering
invention. The raw materials and the auxiliary substances of
industry were in many cases raised in price. The duties on salt
and glass specially illustrated the bad results of the excise.
New processes were hindered and routine made compulsory.
The customs duties were still more restrictive of trade; as they
practically excluded foreign manufactures, and were both costly
and in many instances unproductive of revenue. As G. R.
Porter has shown, the really profitable customs taxes were few in
number. Less than a score of articles contributed more than
nineteen-twentielhs of the revenue from import duties. The
duties on transactions, levied chiefly by stamps, were ill-graded
and lacking in comprehensiveness. From the standpoint of
equity the ground for criticism was equally pkin. The great
weight of taxation fell on the poorer classes. The owners of land
escaped giving any return for the property that they held under
the state, and other persons were not taxed in proportion to their
abilities, which had been long recognized as the proper criterion.
The grievance as to distribution has been modified, if not
removed, by the great development of (i) the income-tax, (2)
the " death " or inheritance duties. Beginning at the rate of
?d. per pound (1842-1854), the income-tax was raised to is. 4<1.
for the Crimean War, and then continued at varying rates;
reduced to 3d. in 1874, it rose to sd., then in 1894 to 8d., and by
1000 appeared to be fixed as a minimum at is., or 5% on income
from property. The yield per penny on the has risen almost
uninterruptedly. From 710,000 in 1842, it now exceeds
2,800,000, though the exemptions and abatements are much
more extensive. In fact, all incomes of 3 per week are abso-
lutely free (160 per annum is the precise exemption limit), and
an income of 400 derived from personal exertion pays less than
5jd. per pound, or 2 J %. The great productiveness of the tax is
equally remarkable. From 5,600,000 in 1843 (with a rate of jd.)
the return rose to 32,380,000 in 1007-1908, having been at the
maximum of 38,800,000 in 1002-1903, with a tax rate of 6J%.
The income-tax thus supplies about one-fifth of the total revenue,
or one-fourth of that obtained by taxation. Several fundamental
questions of finance are connected with the taxation of income
and have been dealt with by English practice. Small incomes
claim lenient treatment, and, as mentioned above, this leniency
means in England complete freedom. Again, earned incomes
appear to represent lower ability to pay than unearned ones.
Long refused on practical grounds (as by Gladstone and Lowe),
the concession of an abatement of 25% on earned incomes of
2000 and under was granted in 1007. The question whether
savings should be exempt from taxation as income has (with the
exception of life insurance premiums) been decided in the nega-
tive. Allowance* for depreciation and cost of repairs are partially
recognized. Far more important than these special problems
it the general one of increased tax rates on large incomes. Up
to 1908-1009 the tax above the abatement limit of 700 remained
strictly proportional; but opinion showed a decided tendency
in favour of extra rates or a " super tax " on incomes above an
assigned amount (e.g. 5000), and this was included in the
budget of 1009-1910 (see INCOME-TAX).
In close relation with the income-tax is the estate duty, with
its adjuncts of Legacy and Succession Duties. After Pitt's
failure to carry the succession duty in 1 796, no change was made
till Gladstone's introduction in 1853 of a duty on land and settled
property parallel to the legacy duty on free personality. Apart
from certain minor alterations, the really vital change was the
extension in 1894 of the old Probate Duty into a comprehensive
impost (entitled the Estate Duty) applicable to all the possessions
of a deceased person. This " Inheritance Tax " to give it its
scientific title operates as a complementary property tax, and
is thus an addition to the contribution from incomes derived from
large properties. By graduation the charges on large estates
in 1908-1909 (before the proposal for further increase in 1909-
1910) came to 10% on 1,000,000, and reached the maximum
of 15% at 3,500,000. From the several forms of the " In-
heritance Taxes " the national revenue gained 14,500,000, with
4! millions as a supplementary yield for local finance. The
immense expansion of direct taxation is evident on comparing
1840 with 1908. In the former year the Probate and legacy
duties brought in about one million; the other direct taxes,
even including the " House duty," did not raise the total to
3,000,000. In 1908 the direct taxation of property and income
supplied 51,500,000, or one-third of the total receipts as against
less than one-twentieth in 1840.
But though this wider employment of direct taxation a
characteristic of European finance generally reduced the
relative position of the taxation of commodities, there was a
growth in the absolute amount obtained from this category of
duties. There were also considerable alterations, the result of
changes in the views respecting fiscal policy. At the close of the
Great War the excise duties were at first retained, and even in
some cases increased. After some years reforms began. The
following articles amongst others were freed from charge:
salt (1825); leather and candles (1830); glass (1845); soap
(1853); and paper (1860). The guiding principles were: (i) the
removal of raw materials from the list of goods liable to excise,
(2) the limitation of the excise to a small number of productive
articles, with (3) the placing of the greater part (practically
nearly the whole) of this form of taxation on alcoholic drinks.
Apart from breweries and distilleries, the excise had little field
for its work. The large revenue of 35,700,000 in 1907-1008 was
derived one-half from spirits (17,700,000), over one-third from
beer, while most of the remainder was obtained from business
taxation in the form of licences, the raising of which was one of
the features of the budget in 1909. As a feeder of the revenue
the excise might be regarded as equal to the income-tax, but less
to be relied on in times of depression. Valuable as were the
reforms of the excise after 1820, they were insignificant as
compared with the changes in the customs. The particular
circumstances of English political life have led to perhaps undue
emphasis being placed on this particular branch of financial
development. Between 1820 and 1860 the customs system was
transformed from a highly complicated arrangement of duties,
pressing with severity on nearly all foreign imports, into a simple
and easily understood set of charges on certain specially selected
commodities. All favours or preferences to home or colonial
producers disappeared. Expressed in financial terms, all duties
were imposed " for revenue only," and estimated in reference
to their productiveness. An assimilation between the excise
and customs rates necessarily followed. The stages of the
development under the guidance of (i) Huskisson, (2) Peel, and
(3) Gladstone are commonly regarded as part of the movement
for Free Trade; but the financial working of the alteration is
understood only by remembering that the duties removed by
" tens " or by " hundreds " were quite trivial in yield, and did
not involve any serious loss to the revenue. Perhaps the most
remarkable feature of the English customs of the iQth century
was the steadiness of the receipts. In spite of trade depressions,
4 66
ENGLISH HISTORY
commercial crises and sweeping changes in rates, the annual
revenue in the period 1815-1900 only varied between 19,000,000
and 24,000,000; though, on balance, duties amounting to
30,000,000 were remitted. The potential resources of this
branch of revenue were made evident in the rapid rise of the yield
by the new taxation imposed for the South African War (1899-
1902). In consequence of this increase the customs became
equal to the excise in return, and, combined, they collected over
60,000,000 annually from the consumption of commodities.
They accordingly afforded a counterpoise to the burden put on
income and property, or, more accurately speaking, they ob-
tained due, or somewhat more than due, contribution from the
smaller incomes, particularly those of the working class.
The exemption of raw materials and food; the absence of
duties on imported, as on home manufactures; the selection of
a small number of articles for duty; the rather rigorous treat-
ment of spirits and tobacco, were the salient marks of the English
fiscal system which grew up in the igth century. The part of
the system most criticised was the very narrow list of dutiable
articles. Why, it was asked, should a choice be made of certain
objects for the purpose of imposing heavy taxation on them?
The answer has been that they were taken as typical of con-
sumption in general and were easily supervised for taxation.
Moreover, the sumptuary element is introduced by the policy
of putting exceptionally heavy duties on spirits and tobacco,
with lighter charges on the less expensive wines and beers.
Facility of collection and distribution of taxation over a larger
class appear to be the grounds for the inclusion of the tea and
coffee duties, which are further supported by the need for
obtaining a contribution of, roughly speaking, over half the tax
revenue by duties on commodities. The last consideration led,
at the beginning of the zoth century, to the sugar tax and the
temporary duties on imported corn and exported coal.
As a support to the great divisions of income-tax, Death Duties,
Excise and Customs, the stamps, fees and miscellaneous taxes
are of decided service. A return of 9,000,000 was secured by
stamp duties.
In recent years the so-called " non-tax " revenue largely in-
creased, owing to the extension of the postal and telegraphic
services. The real gain is not so great, as out of gross receipts
of 22,000,000 over 17,500,000 is absorbed in expenses, while
the carriage of ordinary letters seems to be the only profitable
part of these services. Crown lands and rights (such as vintage
charges) are of even less financial value.
One cardinal principle of the greatest English finance ministers
has been the avoidance of deficits or undue surpluses. Glad-
stone's inheritance of doctrine from Peel " was to estimate
expenditure liberally, to estimate revenue carefully, to make
each year pay its own expenses, and to take care that your
charge is not greater than your income." This method of
treatment requires that taxation shall be productive in yield,
and that it shall be so elastic as to admit of expansion, a function
specially assigned to the income-tax. It may also be said to
involve due care in the treatment of the national resources.
The reaction of ill-chosen taxes on industry is a hindrance to
their productiveness and their growth.
AUTHORITIES. The constitutional historians Stubbs, Gneist,
Hallam deal with the legal and constitutional aspects of finance.
Special financial histories are: Sir J. Sinclair, History of the Public
Revenue of the British Empire (3 vols., 3rd ed., London, 1803);
S. Dowell, History of Taxation and Taxes in England (4 vols., 2nd ed.,
London, 1888) ; Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik (2 vols., Leipzig,
1881), and H. Hall, History of the Customs Revenue of England
(2 vols., London, 1885), are valuable for the earlier periods. W.
Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce (2 vols.,
Cambridge, 1903-1907) ; H. O. Meredith, Economic History of
England (London, 1908), devote sections to finance. A. Smith,
Wealth of Nations (1776), Tooke and Newmarch, History of Prices
(6 vols., London, 1837-1856), give financial details. G. R. Porter,
Progress of the Nation (3rd ed., London, 1851); Sir S. Northcote,
Twenty Years of Financial Policy (London, 1862); S. Buxton,
Finance and Politics (2 vofs., London, 1888); J. R. McCulloch,
Taxation and Funding (3rd ed., London, 1863); W. M. J. Williams,
The King's Revenue (London, 1908), for 19th-century finance.
(C. F. B.)
ENGLISH HISTORY. The general account of English history
which follows should be supplemented for the earlier period by
the article BRITAIN. See also SCOTLAND, IRELAND, WALES.
I. FROM THE LANDING OF AUGUSTINE TO THE NORMAN
CPNQUEST (600-1066)
With the coming of Augustine to Kent the darkness which
for nearly two centuries had enwrapped the history of Britain
begins to clear away. From the days of Honofius to those of
Gregory the Great the line of vision of the annalists of the con-
tinent was bounded by the Channel. As to what was going on
beyond it, we have but a few casual gleams of light, just enough
to make the darkness visible, from writers such as the author
of the life of St Germanus, Prosper Tiro, Procopius, and Gregory
of Tours. These notices do not, for the most part, square
particularly well with the fragmentary British narrative that can
be patched together from Gildas's " lamentable book," or the
confused story of Nennius. Nor again do these British sources
ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN
597-&Z5
u a "" m English Miles
o 5 10 50
Ctttie Territory in 825-
Territory partly occupied
but tost again before 825
M. de/iotea annexed to Hereto
H.B.- The o/nall namfi
Wessex A Mercia nfar
to 597, thu largt names
to 825
fit in happily with the English annals constructed long centuries
after by King Alfred's scribes in the first edition of the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle. But from the date when the long-lost com-
munication between Britain and Rome was once more resumed,
the history of the island becomes clear and fairly continuous.
The gaps are neither broader nor more obscure than those which
may be found in the contemporary annals of the other kingdoms
of Europe. The stream of history in this period is narrow and
turbid throughout the West. Quite as much is known of the
doings of the English as of those of the Visigoths of Spain, the
Lombards, or the later Merovingians. The yth century was
the darkest of all the " dark ages," and England is particularly
fortunate in possessing the Ecclesiastica historia of Bede, which,
though its author was primarily interested in things religious,
yet contains a copious chronicle of things secular. No Western
author, since the death of Gregory of Tours, wrote on such a
scale, or with such vigour and insight.
ENGLISH HISTORY
467
The conversion of England to Christianity took, from first to
last, some ninety yean (A.D. 507 to 686), though during the last
thirty the ancestral heathenism was only lingering on
in remote corners of the land. The original missionary
impulse came from Rome, and Augustine is rightly
regarded as the evangelist of the English; yet only
a comparatively small part of the nation owed its Christianity
directly to the mission sent out by Pope Gregory. Wessex was
won over by an independent adventurer, the Frank Birinus, who
had no connexion with the earlier arrivals in Kent. The great
kingdom of Northumbria, though its first Christian monarch
Edwin was converted by Paulinus. a disciple of Augustine, re-
lapsed into heathenism after his death. It was finally evangelized
from quite another quarter, by Irish missionaries brought by
King Oswald from Columba's monastery of lona. The church
that they founded struck root, as that of Paulinus and Edwin
had failed to do, and was not wrecked even by Oswald's death
in battle at the hands of Penda the Mercian, the one strong
champion of heathenism that England produced. Moreover,
Penda was no sooner dead, smitten down by Oswald's brother
Oswio at the battle of the Winwaed (A.D. 655), than his whole
kingdom eagerly accepted Christianity, and received missionaries,
Irish and Northumbrian, from the victorious Oswio. It is clear
that, unlike their king, the Mercians had no profound enthusiasm
for the old gods. Essex, which had received its first bishop
from Augustine's hands but had relapsed into heathenism after
a few yean, also owed its ultimate conversion to a Northumbrian
preacher, Cedd, whom Oswio lent to King Sigeberht after the
Utter had visited his court and been baptized, hard by the
Roman wall, in 653.
Yet even in those English regions where the missionaries from
lona were the founden of the Church, the representatives of
Rome were to be its organizers. In 664 the Northumbrian king
Oswio, at the synod of Whitby, declared his adhesion to the
Roman connexion, whether it was that he saw political advantage
therein, or whether he realized the failings and weaknesses of the
Celtic church, and preferred the more orderly methods of her rival.
Five yean later there arrived from Rome the great organizer,
Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus, who bound the hitherto isolated
churches of the English kingdoms into a well-compacted whole,
wherein the tribal bishops paid obedience to the metropolitan
at Canterbury, and met him frequently in national councils and
synods. England gained a spiritual unity long ere she attained
a political unity, for in these meetings, which were often attended
by kings as well as by prelates, Northumbrian, West Saxon and
Mercian first learnt to work together as brothers.
In a few yean the English church became the pride of Western
Christendom. Not merely did it produce the great band of
missionaries who converted heathen Germany Willi-
brord, Suidbert, Boniface and the rest but it excelled
the other national churches in learning and culture.
It is but necessary to mention Bede and Alcuin. The
first, as has been already said, was the one true historian who
wrote during the dark time of the ;th-Sth centuries; the second
became the pride of the court of Charles the Great for his un-
rivalled scholarship. At the coming of Augustine England had
been a barbarous country; a century and a half later she was
more than abreast of the civilization of the rest of Europe.
But the progress toward national unity was still a slow one.
The period when the English kingdoms began to enter into the
commonwealth of Christendom, by receiving the
missionaries sent out from Rome or from lona, practi-
cally coincides with the period in which the occupation
of central Britain was completed, and the kingdoms
of the conquerors assumed their final size and shape. ^Ethel-
frith, the last heathen among the Northumbrian kings, cut off
the Britons of the North from those of the West, by winning the
battle of Chester (A.D. 613), and occupying the land about the
mouths of the Mersey and the Dee. Cenwalh, the last monarch
who ascended the throne of Wessex unbaptized, carried the
boundaries of that kingdom into Mid-Somersetshire, where they
halted for a long space. Penda, the last heathen king of Mercia,
n*
determined the size and strength of that state, by absorbing into
it the territories of the other Anglian kingdoms of the Midlands,
and probably also by carrying forward its western border beyond
the Severn. By the time when the smallest and most barbarous
of the Saxon states Sussex accepted Christianity in the year
686, the political geography of England had reached a stage from
which it was not to vary in any marked degree for some aoo
years. Indeed, there was nothing accomplished in the way of
further encroachment on the Celt after 686, save Ine's and
Cuthred's extension of Wessex into the valleys of the Tone and
the Exe, and Offa's slight expansion of the Mercian frontier
beyond the Severn, marked by his famous dyke. The conquests
of the Northumbrian kings in Cumbria were ephemeral; what
Oswio won was lost after the death of Ecgfrith.
That the conversion of the English to Christianity had any-
thing to do with their slackening from the work of conquest it
would be wrong to assert. Though their wars with the Welsh
were not conducted with such ferocious cruelty as of old, and
though (as the laws of Ine show) the Celtic inhabitants of newly-
won districts were no longer exterminated, but received as the
king's subjects, yet the hatred between Welsh and English did
not cease because both were now Christians. The westward
advance of the invaders would have continued, if only there had
remained to attract them lands as desirable as those they had
already won. But the mountains of Wales and the moors of
Cornwall and Cumbria did not greatly tempt the settler. More-
over, the English states, which had seldom turned their swords
against each other in the sth or the 6th centuries, were engaged
during the 7th and the Sth in those endless struggles for supre-
macy which seem so purposeless, because the hegemony which
a king of energy and genius won for his kingdom always dis-
appeared with his death. The " Bretwaldaship," as
the English seem to have called it, was the most *;<j,f'"
ephemeral of dignities. This was but natural: con-
quest can only be enforced by the extermination of the conquered,
or by their consent to amalgamate with the conquerors, or by
the garrisoning of the land that has been subdued by settlers
or by military posts. None of these courses were possible to a
king of the yth or Sth centuries: even in their heathen days the
English were not wont to massacre their beaten kinsmen as
they massacred the unfortunate Celt. After their conversion to
Christianity the idea of exterminating other English tribes grew
even more impossible. On the other hand, local particularism
was so strong that the conquered would not, at first, consent
to give up their natural independence and merge themselves in
the victors. Such amalgamations became possible after a time,
when many of the local royal lines died out, and unifying in-
fluences, of which a common Christianity was the most powerful,
sapped the strength of tribal pride. But it is not till the gth
century that we find this phenomenon growing general. A
kingdom like Kent or East Anglia, even after long subjection
to a powerful overlord, rose and reasserted its independence
immediately on hearing of his death. His successor had to
attempt a new conquest, -if he felt himself strong enough. To
garrison a district that had been overrun was impossible: the
military force of an English king consisted of his military house-
hold of gestiks, backed by the general levy of the tribe. The
strength of Mercia or Northumbria might be mustered for a
single battle, but could not supply a standing army to hold down
the vanquished. The victorious king had to be content with
tribute and obedience, which would cease when he died, or
was beaten by a competitor for the position of Bretwalda.
In the ceaseless strife between the old English kingdoms,
therefore, it was the personality of the king which was the main
factor in determining the hegemony of one state over
another. If in the 7th century the successive great
Northumbrians Edwin, Oswald, Oswio and Ecgfrith
were reckoned the chief monarths of England, and
exercised a widespread influence over the southern realms, yet
each had to win his supremacy by his own sword; and when
Edwin and Oswald fell before the savage heathen Penda, and
Ecgfrith was cut off by the Picts, there was a gap of anarchy
4 68
ENGLISH HISTORY
[716-851
Wessex
before another king asserted his superior power. The same
phenomenon was seen with regard to the Mercian kings of the
8th century; the long reigns of the two conquerors
^Ethelbald and Offa covered eighty years (716-796),
Memo. and it might have been supposed that after such a
term of supremacy Mercia would have remained
permanently at the head of the English kingdoms. It was not
so, jEthelbald in his old age lost his hegemony at the battle
of Burford (752), and was murdered a few years after by his
own people. Offa had to win back by long wars what his kins-
man had lost; he became so powerful that we find the pope
calling him Rex Anglorum, as if he were the only king in the
island. He annexed Kent and East Anglia, overawed North-
umbria and Wessex, both hopelessly faction-ridden at the time,
was treated almost as an equal by the emperor Charles the Great,
and died still at the height of his power. Yet the moment that
he was dead all his vassals revolted; his successors could never
recover all that was lost. Kent once more became a kingdom,
and two successive Mercian sovereigns, Beornwulf and Ludica,
fell in battle while vainly trying to recover Offa's supremacy
over East Anglia and Wessex.
The ablest king in England in the generation that followed
Offa was Ecgbert of Wessex, who had long been an exile abroad,
and served for thirteen years as one of the captains of
Charles the Great. He beat Beornwulf of Mercia at
Ellandune (A.D. 823), permanently annexed Kent, to
whose crown he had a claim by descent, in 829 received
the homage of all the other English kings, and was for the re-
mainder of his life reckoned as " Bretwalda." But it is wrong
to call him, as some have done, " the first monarch of all Eng-
land." His power was no greater than that of Oswio or Offa
had been, and the supremacy might perhaps have tarried with
Wessex no longer than it had tarried with Northumbria or Mercia
if it had not chanced that the Danish raids were now beginning.
For these invasions, paradoxical as it may seem, were the
greatest efficient cause in the welding together of England.
They seemed about to rend the land in twain, but they really
cured the English of their desperate particularism, and drove all
the tribes to take as their common rulers the one great line of
native kings which survived the Danish storm, and maintained
itself for four generations of desperate fighting against the in-
vaders. On the continent the main effect of the viking invasions
was to dash the empire of Charles the Great into fragments, and
to aid in producing the numberless petty states of feudal Europe.
In this island they did much to help the transformation of the
mere Bretwaldaship of Ecgbert into the monarchy of all England.
Already ere Ecgbert ascended the throne of Kent the new
enemy had made his first tentative appearance on the British
shore. It was in the reign of Beorhtric, Ecgbert's
invasions, predecessor, that the pirates of the famous " three
ships from Heretheland " had appeared on the coast
of Dorset, and slain the sheriff " who would fain have known
what manner of men they might be." A few years later another
band appeared, rising unexpectedly from the sea to sack the
famous Northumbrian monastery of Lindisfarne (793). After
that their visits came fast and furious on the shore-line of every
English kingdom, and by the end of Ecgbert's reign it was they,
and not his former Welsh and Mercian enemies, who were the
old monarch's main source of trouble. But he brought his
Bretwaldaship to a good end by inflicting a crushing defeat on
them at Kingston Down, hard by the Tamar, probably in 836, and
died ere the year was out, leaving the ever-growing problem to
his son yEthelwulf.
The cause of the sudden outpouring of the Scandinavian
deluge upon the lands of Christendom at this particular date is
one of the puzzles of history. So far as memory ran,
'o/'vijuag tne P eo Pl es beyond the North Sea had been seafaring
sea-power, races addicted to piracy. Even Tacitus mentions
their fleets. Yet since the 5th century they had been
restricting their operations to their own shores, and are barely
heard of in the chronicles of their southern neighbours. It seems
most probable that the actual cause of their sudden activity
was the conquest of the Saxons by Charles the Great, and his
subsequent advance into the peninsula of Denmark. The em-
peror seemed to be threatening the independence of the North,
and in terror and resentment the Scandinavian peoples turned
first to strike at the encroaching Frank, and soon after to assail
the other Christian kingdoms which lay behind, or on the flank
of, the Empire. But their offensive action proved so successful
and so profitable that, after a short time, the whole manhood
of Denmark and Norway took to the pirate life. Never since
history first began to be recorded was there such a supreme
example of the potentialities of sea-power. Civilized Europe
had been caught at a moment when it was completely destitute
of a war-navy; the Franks had never been maritime in their
tastes, the English seemed to have forgotten their ancient sea-
faring habits. Though their ancestors had been pirates as fierce
as the vikings of the 9th century, and though some of their later
kings had led naval armaments Edwin had annexed for a
moment Man and Anglesea, and Ecgfrith had cruelly ravaged
part of Ireland yet by the year 800 they appear to have ceased
to be a seafaring race. Perhaps the long predominance of Mercia,
an essentially inland state, had something to do with the fact.
At any rate England was as helpless as the Empire when first the
Danish and Norwegian galleys began to cross the North Sea, and
to beat down both sides of Britain seeking for prey. The number
of the invaders was not at first very great; their fleets were not
national armaments gathered by great kings, but squadrons of
a few vessels collected by some active and enterprising adventurer.
Their original tactics were merely 10 land suddenly near some
thriving seaport, or rich monastery, to sack it, and to take to the
water again before the local militia could turn out in force against
them. But such raids proved so profitable that the vikings
soon began to take greater things in hand; they began to ally
themselves in confederacies: two, six or a dozen " sea-kings"
would join their forces for something more than a desultory raid.
With fifty or a hundred ships they would fall upon some un-
happy region, harry it for many miles inland, and offer battle to
the landsfolk unless the latter came out in overpowering force.
And as their crews were trained warriors chosen for their high
spirit, contending with a raw militia fresh from the plough, they
were generally successful. If the odds were too great they
could always retire to their ships, put to sea, and resume their
predatory operations on some other coast three hundred miles
away. As long as their enemies were unprovided with a navy
they were safe from pursuit and annihilation. The only chance
against them was that, if caught too far from the base-fort
where they had run their galleys ashore, they might find their
communication with the sea cut off, and be forced to fight for
their lives surrounded by an infuriated countryside. But in the
earlier years of their struggles with Christendom the vikings
seldom suffered a complete disaster; they were often beaten
but seldom annihilated. Ere long they grew so bold that they
would stay ashore for months, braving the forces of a whole
kingdom, and sheltering themselves in great palisaded camps
on peninsulas or islands when the enemy pressed them too hard.
On well-guarded strongholds like Thanet or Sheppey in England,
Noirmoutier at the Loire mouth, or the Isle of Walcheren, they
defied the local magnates to evict them. Finally they took to
wintering on the coast of England or the Empire, a preliminary
to actual settlement and conquest. (See VIKING.)
King Ecgbert died long ere the invaders had reached this stage
of insolence. jEthelwulf, his weak and kindly son, would un-
doubtedly have lost the titular supremacy of Wessex
over the other English kingdoms if there had been in p ? n f*..
* *T *L L i. of Danish
Mercia or Northumbna a strong king with leisure to conquest.
concentrate his thoughts on domestic wars. But the
vikings were now showering such blows on the northern states
that their unhappy monarchs could think of nothing but self-
defence. They slew Redulf king of Northumbria in 844, took
London in 851, despite all the efforts of Burgred of Mercia, and
forced that sovereign to make repeated appeals for help to
^Ethelwulf as his overlord. For though Wessex had its full share
of Danish attacks it met them with a vigour that was not seen in
ENGLISH HISTORY
469
the other realms. The defence was often, if not always, success-
ful, and once at least (at Aclea in 851) .-Kthelwulf exterminated
a whole Danish army with " the greatest slaughter among the
heathen host that had been heard of down to that day," as the
Anglo-Saxon chronicler is careful to record. But though he
might ward off blows from his own realm, he was helpless to aid
Mcrcia or East Anglia, and still more the distant Northumbriu.
It was not, however, till after jEthelwulfs death that the
attack of the vikings developed its full strength. The fifteen
years (856-871) that were covered by the reigns of his three
shortlived sons, .-Ethclbald, /Ethclbert and /Ethelred, were the
most miserable that England was to see. Assembling in greater
and ever greater confederacies, the Danes fell upon the northern
kingdoms, no longer merely to harry but to conquer and occupy
them. A league of many sea-kings which called itself the " great
army " slew the last two sovereigns of Northumbria and stormed
York in 867. Some of the victors settled down there to lord it
over the half -exterminated English population. The rest con-
tinued their advance southward. East Anglia was conquered
in 870; its last king, Edmund, having been defeated and taken
prisoner, the vikings shot him to death with arrows because
be would not worship their gods. His realm was annexed and
partly settled by the conquerors. The fate of Mercia was hardly
better: its king, Burgred, by constant payment of tribute, bought
off the invaders for a space, but the eastern half of his realm was
reduced to a wilderness.
Practically masters of all that lay north of Thames, the " great
army " next moved against Wessex, the only quarter where a
vigorous resistance was still maintained against them, though
its capital, Winchester, had been sacked in 864. Under two kings
named HaJfdan and Bacsceg, and six earls, they seized Reading
and began to harry Berkshire, Surrey and Hampshire. King
/Ethelred, the third son of .-Kthrlwulf. came out against them,
with his young brother Alfred and all the levies of Wessex. In the
year 871 these two gallant kinsmen fought no less than six
pitched battles against the invaders. Some were victories
notably the fight of Ashdown, where Alfred first won his name
as a soldier but the English failed to capture the fortified camps
of the vikings at Reading, and were finally beaten at Marten
(" Maeretun ") near Bedwyn, where .<Ethelred was mortally
wounded.
He left young sons, but the men of Wessex crowned Alfred
king, because they needed a grown man to lead them in their
tin Desperate campaigning. Yet his reign opened in-
auspiciously: defeated near Wilton, he offered in
despair to pay the vikings to depart. He must have
known, from the experience of Mercian, Northumbrian and
Prankish kings, that such blackmail only bought a short
respite, but the condition of his realm was such that even a
moderate time for reorganization might prove valuable. The
enemy bad suffered so much in the " year of the six battles "
that they held off for some space from Wessex, seeking easier
prey on the continent and in northern England. In 874 they
harried Mercia so cruelly that King Burgred fled in despair to
Rome; the victors divided up his realm, taking the eastern half
for themselves, and establishing in it a confederacy, whose jarls
occupied the " five boroughs " of Stamford, Lincoln, Derby,
Nottingham and Leicester. But the western half they handed
over to " an unwise thegn named Ceolwulf," who bought for a
short space the precarious title of king by paying great tribute.
Alfred employed the four years of peace, which he had bought
in 871, in the endeavour to strengthen his realm against the
inevitable return of the raiders. His wisdom was shown by the
fact that he concentrated his attention on the one device which
must evidently prove effective for defence, if only he were given
time to perfect it the building of a national navy. He began
to lay down galleys and " long ships," and hired " pirates "-
renegade vikings no doubt to train crews for him and to teach
his men seamanship. The scheme, however, was only partly com-
pleted when in 876 three Danish kings entered Wessex and re-
sumed the war. But Alfred blockaded them first in Wareham
and then in Exeter. The fleet which was coming to carry them
off, or to bring them reinforcements, fought an indecisive
engagement with the English ships, and was wrecked immedi-
ately after on the cliffs of the Isle of Purbeck, where more than
100 galleys and all their crews perished. On hearing of this
disaster the vikings in Exeter surrendered the place on being
granted a free departure.
Yet within a few months of this successful campaign Alfred
was attacked at midwinter by the main Danish army under
King Guthrum. He was apparently taken by surprise by an
assault at such an unusual time of the year, and was forced to
escape with his military household to the isle of Athelney among
the marshes of the Parrett. The invaders harried Wiltshire
and Hampshire at their leisure, and vainly thought that Wessex
was at last subdued. But with the spring the English rallied:
a Danish force was cut to pieces before Easter by the men of
ENGLAND, 886,
after Alfred & Guthrum's Peace
Boundary betwten Alfred A
Otttlmix aftir ......
Under fnyl/iti nil _...
Undtr Danish A Morn rult...,
Undtr C/c nil
Tnt floe BoraufhA^ 11
Devonshire. A few weeks later Alfred had issued from Athelney,
had collected a large army in Selwood, and went out to meet the
enemy in the open field. He beat them at Edington in Wiltshire,
blockaded them in their great camp at Chippenham, and in
fourteen days starved them into surrender. The terms were that
they should give hostages, that they should depart for ever from
Wessex, and that their king Guthrum should do homage to Alfred
as overlord, and submit to be baptized, with thirty of his chiefs.
Not only were all these conditions punctually fulfilled, but
(what is more astonishing) the Danes had been so thoroughly
cured of any desire to try their luck against the great king that
they left him practically unmolested for fourteen years (878-892).
King Guthrum settled down as a Christian sovereign in East
Anglia, with the bulk of the host that had capitulated at
Chippenham. Of the rest of the invaders one section established
a petty kingdom in Yorkshire, but those in the Midlands were
subject to no common sovereign but lived in a loose confederacy
under the jarls of the " Five Boroughs " already named above.
The boundary between English and Danes established by the
peace of 878 is not perfectly ascertainable, but a document of
470
ENGLISH HISTORY
[882-955
a few years later, called " Alfred and Guthrum's frith," gives
the border as lying from Thames northward up the Lea to its
source, then across to Bedford, and then along the Ouse to
Watling Street, the old Roman road from London to Chester.
This gave King Alfred London and Middlesex, most of Hertford-
shire and Bedfordshire, and the larger half of Mercia lands that
had never before been an integral part of Wessex, though they
had some time been tributary to her kings. They were now
taken inside the realm and governed by the ealdorman ^Ethelred,
the king's son-in-law. The Mercians gladly mingled with the
West Saxons, and abandoned all memories of ancient inde-
pendence. Twenty years of schooling under the hand of the
Dane had taught them to forget old particularism.
Alfred's enlarged kingdom was far more powerful than any
one of the three new Danish states which lay beyond the Lea and
Watling Street: it was to be seen, ere another generation was
out, that it was stronger than all three together. But Alfred
was not to see the happy day when York and Lincoln, Colchester
and Leicester, were to become mere shire-capitals in the realm
of United England.
The fourteen years of comparative peace which he now
enjoyed were devoted to perfecting the military organization
of his enlarged kingdom. His fleet was reconstructed :
m *^ 2 ^ e wcnt out w i tn & ' n person and destroyed a
small piratical squadron: in 885 we hear of it coasting
all along Danish East Anglia. But his navy was not yet strong
enough to hold off all raids: it was not till the very end of his
reign that he perfected it by building " long ships that were nigh
twice as large as those of the heathen; some had 60 oars, some
more; and they were both steadier and swifter and lighter than
the others, and were shaped neither after the Frisian nor after
the Danish fashion, but as it seemed to himself that they would
be most handy." This great war fleet he left as a legacy to his
son, but he himself in his later campaigns had only its first
beginnings at his disposal.
His military reforms were no less important. Warned by the
failures of the English against Danish entrenched camps, he
introduced the long-neglected art of fortification, and built many
" burns " stockaded fortresses on mounds by the waterside
wherein dwelt permanent garrisons of military settlers. It
would seem that the system by which he maintained them was
that he assigned to each a region of which the inhabitants were
responsible for its manning and its sustentation. The land-
owners had either to build a house within it for their own inhabit-
ing, or to provide that a competent substitute dwelt there to
represent them. These " burh-ware," or garrison-men, are re-
peatedly mentioned in Alfred's later years. The old national levy
of the " fyrd " was made somewhat more serviceable by an
ordinance which divided it into two halves, one of which must
take the field when the other was dismissed. But it would seem
that the king paid even more attention to another military
reform the increase of the number of the professional fighting
class, the thegnhood as it was now called. All the wealthier
men, both in the countryside and in the towns, were required
to take up the duties as well as the privileges of membership
of the military household of the king. They became " of thegn-
right worthy " by receiving, really or nominally, a place in the
royal hall, with the obligation to take the field whenever their
master raised his banner. The document which defines their
duties and privileges sets forth that " every ceorl who throve so
that he had fully five hides of land, and a helm, and a mail-shirt,
and a sword ornamented with gold, was to be reckoned gesith-
cund." A second draft allowed the man who had the military
equipment complete, but not fully the five hides of land, to slip
into the list, and also " the merchant who has fared thrice over
the high seas at his own expense." How far the details of the
scheme are Alfred's own, how far they were developed by his
son Edward the Elder, it is unfortunately impossible to say.
But there is small doubt that the system was working to some
extent in the later wars of the great king, and that his successes
were largely due to the fact that his army contained a larger
nucleus of fully armed warriors than those of his predecessors.
Military reforms were only one section of the work of King
Alfred during the central years of his reign. It was then that he
set afoot his numerous schemes for the restoration of the learning
and culture of England which had sunk so low during the long
years of disaster which had preceded his accession. How he
gathered scholars from the continent, Wales and Ireland; how
he collected the old heroic poems of the nation, how he himself
translated books from the Latin tongue, started schools, and set
his scribes to write up the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, is told else-
where, as are his mechanical inventions, his buildings, and his
dealings with missionaries and explorers (see ALFRED).
The test of the efficiency of his work was that it held firm
when, in his later years, the Danish storm once more began to
beat against the shores of Wessex. In the years 892-896 Alfred
was assailed from many sides at once by viking fleets, of which
the most important was that led by the great freebooter Hasting.
Moreover, the settled Danes of eastern England broke their oaths
and gave the invaders assistance. Yet the king held his own,
with perfect success if not with ease. The enemy was checked,
beaten off, followed up rapidly whenever he changed his base of
operation, and hunted repeatedly all across England. The
campaigning ranged from Appledore in Kent to Exeter, from
Chester to Shoeburyness; but wherever the invaders transferred
themselves, either the king, or his son Edward, or his son-in-law
Ethelred, the ealdorman of Mercia, was promptly at hand with a
competent army. The camps of the Danes were stormed, their
fleet was destroyed in the river Lea in 895, and at last the
remnant broke up and dispersed, some to seek easier plunder in
France, others to settle down among their kinsmen in North-
umbria or East Anglia.
Alfred survived for four years after his final triumph in 896,
to complete the organization of his fleet and to repair the damages
done by the last four years of constant fighting. He died on the
26th of October 900, leaving Wessex well armed for the con-
tinuance of the struggle, and the inhabitants of the " Danelagh "
much broken in spirit. They saw that it 'would never be in their
power to subdue all England. Within a few years they were
to realize that it was more probable that the English kings
would subdue them.
The house of Wessex continued to supply a race of hard-
fighting and capable monarchs, who went on with Alfred's work.
His son, Edward the Elder, and his three grandsons,
/Ethelstan, Edmund and Edred, devoted themselves
for fifty-five years (A.D. 900-955) to the task of con-
quering the Danelagh, and ended by making England into
a single unified kingdom, not by admitting the conquered
to homage and tribute, in the old style of the 7th century, but
by their complete absorption. The process was not so hard as
might be thought; when once the Danes had settled down,
had brought over wives from their native land or taken them
from among their English vassals, had built themselves farm-
steads and accumulated flocks and herds, they lost their old
advantage in contending with the English. Their strength
had been their mobility and their undisputed command of the
sea. But now they had possessions of their own to defend, and
could not raid at large in Wessex or Mercia without exposing
their homes to similar molestation. Moreover, the fleet which
Alfred had built, and which his successors kept up, disputed
their mastery of the sea, and ended by achieving a clear superi-
ority over them. Unity of plan and unity of command was also
on the side of the English. The inhabitants of the three sections
of the Danelagh were at best leagued in a many-headed con-
federacy. Their opponents were led by kings whose orders
were punctually obeyed from Shrewsbury to Dover and from
London to Exeter. It must also be remembered that in the
greater part of the land which they possessed the Danes were
but a small minority of the population. After their first fury
was spent they no longer exterminated the conquered, but
had been content to make the Mercians and Deirans their
subjects, to take the best of the land, and exact tribute for the
rest. Only in Lincolnshire, East Yorkshire and parts of Notting-
hamshire and Leicestershire do they seem to have settled thickly
9*-991
ENGLISH HISTORY
and formed a preponderating element in the countryside. In
the rest of the Midlands and in East Anglia they were only a
governing oligarchy of scanty numbers. Everywhere there was
an English lower class which welcomed the advent of the con-
quering kings of Wessex and the fall of the Danish jarls.
Edward the Elder spent twenty-five laborious years first in
repelling and repaying Danish raids, then in setting to work to
subdue the raiders. He worked forward into the Danelagh,
building burks as he advanced, to hold down each district that
he won. He was helped by his brother-in-law, the Mercian
ealdorman jEthclred, and, after the death of that magnate, by
his warlike sister .-tthcltlaxl, the ealdorman's widow, who was
continued in her husband's place. While Edward, with London
as his base, pushed forward into the eastern counties, his sister,
starting from Warwick and Stafford, encroached on the Danelagh
along the line of the Trent. The last Danish king of East
Anglia was slain in battle in 918, and his realm, annexed. .I'.ilu-l-
fljcd won Derby and Leicester, while her brother reduced
Stamford and Nottingham. Finally, in 921, not only was the
whole land south of the Humber subdued, but the Yorkshire
Danes, the Welsh, and even it is said the remote Scots of the
North, did homage to Edward and became his men.
In 915 Edward was succeeded by his eldest son &thelstan,
who completed the reduction of the Danelagh by driving out
Guthfrith, the Danish king of York, and annexing
his realm. But this first conquest of the region beyond
Humber had to be repeated over and over again; time
after time the Danes rebelled and proclaimed a new king, aided
sometimes by bands of their kinsmen from Ireland or Norway,
sometimes by the Scots and Strathclyde Welsh. /Ethclstan's
greatest and best-remembered achievement was his decisive
victory in 937 at Brunanburh an unknown spot, probably by
the Solway Firth or the Ribble over a great confederacy of
rebel Danes of Yorkshire, Irish Danes from Dublin, the Scottish
king, Constantine, and Eugenius, king of Strathclyde. Yet
even after such a triumph /Kthrlstan had to set up a Danish
under-king in Yorkshire, apparently despairing of holding it
down as a shire governed by a mere ealdorman. But its over-
lordship he never lost, and since he also maintained the supre-
macy which his father had won over the Welsh and Scots, it
was not without reason that he called himself on his coins
and in his charters Rex tolius Britanniae. Occasionally he
even used the title Bastitus, as if he claimed a quasi-imperial
position.
The trampling out of the last embers of Danish particularism
in the North was reserved for /Ethelstan's brothers and suc-
cessors, Edmund and Edred (040-955), who put down
several risings of the Yorkshiremen, one of which was
aided by a rebellion of the Midland Danes of the Five
Boroughs. But the untiring perseverance of the house of Alfred
was at last rewarded by success. After the expulsion of the last
rebel king of York, Eric Haraldson, by Edred in 948, we cease
to hear of trouble in the North. When next there was rebellion
in that quarter it was in favour of a Wessex prince, not of a
Danish adventurer, and had no sinister national significance.
The descendants of the vikings were easily incorporated in the
English race, all the more so because of the wise policy of the
conquering kings, who readily employed and often promoted
to high station men of Danish descent who showed themselves
loyal and this not only in the secular but in spiritual offices.
In 942 Oda, a full-blooded Dane, was made archbishop of Canter-
bury. The Danelagh became a group of earldoms, ruled by
officials who were as often of Danish as of English descent.
It is notable that when, after Edred's death, there was civil
strife, owing to the quarrel of his nephew Edwy with some of
his kinsmen, ministers and bishops, the rebels, who included the
majority of the Mercians and Northumbrians, set up as their
pretender to the throne not a Dane but Edwy's younger brother
Edgar, who ruled for a short time north of Thames, and became
sole monarch on the death of his unfortunate kinsman.
The reign of Edgar (950-975) saw the culmination of the
power of the bouse of Alfred. It was untroubled by rebellion
or by foreign invasions, so that the king won the honourable
title of Rex Pacific us. The minor sovereigns of Britain owned
him as overlord, as they had owned his grandfather Edgmr
Edward and his uncle /t heist an. It was long
remembered " how all the kings of this island, both the Welsh
and the Scots, eight kings, came to him once upon a time on
one day and all bowed to his governance." The eight were
Kenneth of Scotland, Malcolm of Strathclyde, Maccus of Man,
and five Welsh kings. There is fair authority for the well-known
legend that, after this meeting at Chester, he was rowed in his
barge down the Dee by these potentates, such a crew as never
was seen before or after, and afterwards exclaimed that those
who followed him might now truly boast that they were kings
of all Britain.
Edgar's chief counsellor was the famous archbishop Dunstan,
to whom no small part of the glory of his reign has been ascribed.
This great prelate was an ecclesiastical reformer a leader in a
movement for the general purification of morals, and especially
for the repressing of simony and evil-living among the clergy
a great builder of churches, and a stringent enforcer of the rules
of the monastic life. But he was also a busy statesman; he
probably had a share in the considerable body of legislation
which was enacted in Edgar's reign, and is said to have encour-
aged him in his policy of treating Dane and Englishman with
exact equality, and of investing the one no less than the other
with the highest offices in church and state.
Edgar's life was too short for the welfare of his people he
was only in his thirty-third year when he died in 975, and his sons
were young boys. The hand of a strong man was still needed
to keep the peace in the newly-constituted realm of all England,
and the evils of a minority were not long in showing themselves.
One section of the magnates had possession of the thirteen-year-
old king Edward, and used his name to cover their ambitions.
The other was led by his step-mother ^Elfthryth, who was set
on pushing the claims of her son, the child jEthelred. After much
factious strife, and many stormy meetings of the Witan, Edward
was murdered at Corfe in 978 by some thegns of the party of
the queen-dowager. The crime provoked universal indignation,
but since there wa a no other prince of the house of Alfred avail-
able, the magnates were forced to place ^Ethelred on the throne:
he was only in his eleventh year, and was at least personally
innocent of complicity in his brother's death.
With the accession of ^Ethelred, the " Redeless," as he was
afterwards called from his inability to discern good counsel from
evil, and the consistent incapacity of his policy, an
evil time began. The retirement from public life of the '
Edgar's old minister Dunstan was the first event of Uanady.
the new reign, and no man of capacity came forward
to take his place. The factions which had prevailed during the
reign of Edward " the Martyr " seem to have continued to rage
during his brother's minority, yet /Ethelred's earliest years were
his least disastrous. It was hoped that when he came to man's
estate things would improve, but the reverse was the case. The
first personal action recorded of him is an unjust harrying of
the goods of his own subjects, when he besieged Rochester
because he had quarrelled with its bishop over certain lands,
and was bribed to depart with 100 pounds of silver. Yet from
978 to 991 no irreparable harm came to England; the machinery
for government and defence which his ancestors had established
seemed fairly competent to defend the realm even under a
wayward and incapable king. Two or three small descents of
vikings are recorded, but the ravaging was purely local, and
the invader soon departed. No trouble occurred in the Dane-
lagh, where the old tendency of the inhabitants to take sides
with their pagan kinsmen from over the sea appears to have
completely vanished. But the vikings had apparently learnt
by small experiments that England was no longer
guarded as she had been in the days of Alfred or
/Ethelstan, and in 991 the first serious invasion of
/Ethelred's reign took place. A large fleet came ashore in Essex,
and, after a hard fight with the ealdorman Brihtnoth at Maldon,
slew him and began to ravage the district north of the Thames.
472
ENGLISH HISTORY
[994-1018
Instead of making a desperate attempt to drive them off, the
king bribed them to depart with 10,000 pounds of silver, accept-
ing it is said this cowardly advice from archbishop Sigeric.
The fatal precedent soon bore fruit: the invaders came back
in larger numbers, headed by Olaf Tryggveson, the celebrated
adventurer who afterwards made himself king of Norway, and
who was already a pretender to its throne. He was helped by
Sweyn, king of Denmark, and the two together laid siege to
London in 994, but were beaten off by the citizens. Nevertheless
^Ethelred for a second time stooped to pay tribute, and bought
the departure of Dane and Norwegian with 16,000 pounds of
silver. There was a precarious interval of peace for three years
after, but in 997 began a series of invasions led by Sweyn which
lasted for seventeen years, and at last ended in the complete
subjection of England and the flight of ./Ethelred to Normandy.
It should be' noted that the invader during this period was no
mere adventurer, but king of all Denmark, and, after Olaf
Tryggveson's death in 1000, king of Norway also. His power
was something far greater than that of the Guthrums and
Anlafs of an earlier generation, and in the end of his life at
least he was aiming at political conquest, and not either at
mere plunder or at finding new settlements for his followers.
But if the strength of the invader was greater than that of his
predecessors, jEthelred also was far better equipped for war
than his ancestors of the pth century. He owned, and he some-
times used but always to little profit a large fleet, while all
England instead of the mere realm of Wessex was at his back.
Any one of the great princes of the house of Egbert who had
reigned from 871 to 975, would have fought a winning fight with
such resources, and it took nearly twenty years of yEthelred's
tried incapacity to lose the game. He did, however, succeed
in undoing all the work of his ancestors, partly by his own
slackness and sloth, partly by his choice of corrupt and treacher-
ous ministers. For the two ealdormen whom he delighted to
honour and placed at the head of his armies, .Mfric and Eadric
Streona, are accused, the one of persistent cowardice, the other
of underhand intrigue with the Danes. Some of the local mag-
nates made a desperate defence of their own regions, especially
Ulfkytel of East Anglia, a Dane by descent; but the central
government was at fault. ,/Ethelred's army was always at the
wrong place " if the enemy were east then wasthe/yrd held west,
and if they were north then was our force held south." When
^Ethelred did appear it was more often to pay a bribe to the
invaders than to fight. Indeed the Danegeld, the tax which he
raised to furnish tribute to the invaders, became a regular
institution: on six occasions at least ^Ethelred bought a few
months of peace by sums ranging from 10,000 to 48,000 pounds
of silver.
At last in the winter of 1013-1014, more as it would seem from
sheer disgust at their king's cowardice and incompetence than
Canute because further resistance was impossible, the English
gave up the struggle and acknowledged Sweyn as king.
First Northumbria, then Wessex, then London yielded, and
^Ethelred was forced to fly over seas to Richard, duke of Nor-
mandy, whose sister he had married as his second wife. But
Sweyn survived his triumph little over a month ; he died suddenly
at Gainsborough on the 3rd of February 1014. The Danes hailed
his son Canute, a lad of eighteen, as king, but many of the
English, though they had submitted to a hard-handed conqueror
like Sweyn, were not prepared to be handed over like slaves to his
untried successor. There was a general rising, the old king was
brought over from Normandy, and Canute was driven out for a
moment by force of arms. He returned next year with a greater
army to hear soon after of ^Ethelred's death (1016). The
witan chose Edmund " Ironside," the late king's eldest son, to
succeed him, and as he was a hard-fighting prince of that normal
type of his house to which his father had been such a disgraceful
exception, it seemed probable that the Danes might be beaten
off. But /Ethelred's favourite Eadric Streona adhered to Canute,
fearing to lose the office and power that he had enjoyed for so
long under ^Ethelred, and prevailed on the magnates of part of
Wessex and Mercia to follow his example. For a moment the
curious phenomenon was seen of Canute reigning in Wessex,
while Edmund was making head against him with the aid of the
Anglo-Danes of the " Five Boroughs " and Northumbria. There
followed a year of desperate struggle: the two young kings
fought five pitched battles, fortune seemed to favour Edmund,
and the traitor Eadric submitted to him with all Wessex. But
the last engagement, at Assandun (Ashingdon) in Essex went
against the English, mainly because Eadric again betrayed the
national cause and deserted to the enemy.
Edmund was so hard hit by this last disaster thai he offered
to divide the realm with Canute; they met on the isle of Alney
near Gloucester, and agreed that the son of ^Ethelred should
keep Wessex and all the South, London and East Anglia, while
the Dane should have Northumbria, the " five boroughs " and
Eadric's Mercian earldom. But ere the year was out Edmund
died: secretly murdered, according to some authorities, by the
infamous Eadric. The witan of Wessex made no attempt to set
on the throne either one of the younger sons of ^Lthelred by his
Norman wife, or the infant heir of Edmund, but chose Canute
as king, preferring to reunite England by submission to the
stranger rather than to continue the disastrous war.
They were wise in so doing, though their motive may have
been despair rather than long-sighted policy. Canute became
more of an Englishman than a Dane: he spent more of his time
in his island realm than in his native Denmark. He paid off and
sent home the great army with whose aid he had won the English
crown, retaining only a small bodyguard of " house-carls "and
trusting to the loyalty of his new subjects. There was no con-
fiscation of lands for the benefit of intrusive Danish settlers. On
the contrary Canute had more English than Danish courtiers
and ministers about his person, and sent many Englishmen as
bishops and some even as royal officers to Denmark. It is strange
to find that whether from policy or from affection he married
King ^Ethelred's young widow Emma of Normandy, though
she was somewhat older than himself so that his son King
Harthacnut and that son's successor Edward the Confessor, the
heir of the line of Wessex, were half-brothers. It might have
been thought likely that the son of the pagan Sweyn would have
turned out a mere hard-fighting viking. But Canute developed
into a great administrator and a friend of learning and culture.
Occasionally he committed a harsh and tyrannical act. Though
he need not be blamed for making a prompt end of the traitor
Eadric Streona and of Uhtred, the turbulent earl of Northumbria,
at the commencement of his reign, there are other and less
justifiable deeds of blood to be laid to his account. But they
were but few; for the most part his administration was just and
wise as well as strong and intelligent.
As long as he lived England was the centre of a great Northern
empire, for Canute reconquered Norway, which had lapsed into
independence after his father's death, and extended his power
into the Baltic. Moreover, all the so-called Scandinavian
colonists in the Northern Isles and Ireland owned him as over-
lord. So did the Scottish king Malcolm, and the princes of Wales
and Strathclyde. The one weak point in his policy that can be
detected is that he left in the hands of Malcolm the Bernician
district of Lothian, which the Scot had conquered during the
anarchy that followed the death of ^Ethelred. The battle of
Carham (1018) had given this land to the Scots, and Canute
consented to draw the border line of England at the Tweed
instead of at the Firth of Forth, when Malcolm did him homage.
Strangely enough it was this cession of a Northumbrian earldom
to the Northern king that ultimately made Scotland an English-
speaking country. For the Scottish kings, deserting their native
Highlands, took to dwelling at Edinburgh among their new sub-
jects, and first the court and afterwards the whole of their Low-
land subjects were gradually assimilated to the Northumbrian
nucleus which formed both the most fertile and the most civilized
portion of their enlarged realm.
The fact; that England recovered with marvellous rapidity
from the evil effects of ^Ethelred's disastrous reign, and achieved
great wealth and prosperity under Canute, would seem to show
that the ravages of Sweyn, widespread and ruthless though they
1035-1066]
ENGLISH HISTORY
473
had been, had yet fallen short of the devastating completeness
of those of the earlier vikings. lie had been more set on exacting
tribute than on perpetrating wanton massacres. A few years
of peace and wise administration seem to have restored the realm
to a satisfactory condition. A considerable mass of his legis-
lation has survived to show Canute's care for law and order.
Canute died in 10.15, a g*d not more than forty or forty-one.
The crown was disputed between his two sons, the half-brothers
Harold and Harthacnut; it was doubtful whether the birth of
the elder prince was legitimate, and Queen Emma strove to get
her own son Harthacnut preferred to him. In Denmark the
younger claimant was acknowledged by the whole people, but
in England the Mercian and Northumbrian earls chose Harold
as king, and Wessex only fell to Harthacnut. Both the young
kings were cruel, dissolute and wayward, most unworthy sons
of a wise father. It was to the great profit of England that they
died within two years of each other, the elder in 1040, the
younger in 104].
On Harthacnut's death he was succeeded not by any Danish
prince but by his half-brother Edward, the elder son of .-Kthclrcd
and Emma, whom he had entertained at his court, and
had apparently designated as his heir, for he had no
offspring. There was an end of the empire of Canute,
for Denmark fell to the great king's nephew, Sweyn
Estrithson, and Norway had thrown off the Danish yoke. En-
gaged in wars with each other, Dane and Norseman had no leisure
to think of reconquering England. Hence Edward's accession
took place without any friction. He reigned, but did not rule,
for twenty-four years, though he was well on in middle age before
he was crowned. Of all the descendants of Alfred he was the only
one who lived to see his sixtieth birthday the house of Wessex
were a short-lived race. In character he differed from all his
ancestors he had Alfred's piety without his capacity, and
jEthelred's weakness without his vices. The mildest of men, a
crowned monk, who let slip the reins of government from his
hands while he busied himself in prayer and church building, he
lowered the kingly power to a depth to which it had never sunk
before in England. His sole positive quality, over and above
his piety, was a love for his mother's kin, the Normans. He had
spent his whole life from 1013 to 1040 as an exile at the court of
Rouen, and was far more of a Norman than an Englishman. It
was but natural, therefore, that he should invite his continental
relatives and the friends of his youth to share in his late-coming
prosperity. But when he filled his court with them, made
them earls and bishops, and appointed one of them, Robert of
Jumieges, to the archbishopric of Canterbury, his undisguised
preference for strangers gave no small offence to his English
subjects. In the main, however, the king's personal likes and
dislikes mattered little to the realm, since he had a comparatively
small share in its governance. He was habitually overruled and
dominated by his earls, of whom three, Leofric, Godwine and
Siward all old servants of Canute had far more power than
their master. Holding respectively the great earldoms of West
Mercia, Wessex and Nort humbria, they reigned almost like petty
sovereigns in their domains, and there seemed some chance that
England might fall apart into semi-independent feudal states,
just as France had done in the preceding century. The rivalries
and intrigues of these three magnates constitute the main part
of the domestic politics of Edward's reign, Godwine, whose
HmM _ daughter had wedded the king, was the most forcible
and ambitious of the three, but his pre-eminence pro-
voked a general league against him and in 1051 he was cast out
of the kingdom with his sons. In the next year he returned in
arms, raised Wessex in revolt, and compelled the king to in-law
him again, to restore his earldom, and to dismiss with ignominy
the Norman favourites who were hunted over seas. The old earl
died in 1053, but was succeeded in power by his son Harold, who
for thirteen yean maintained an unbroken mastery over the king,
and ruled England almost with the power of a regent. There
seem? little doubt that he aspired to be Edward's successor:
there was no direct heir to the crown, and the nearest of kin
was an infant, Edgar, the great-nephew of the reigning sovereign
and grandson of Edmund Ironside. England's experience of
minors on the throne had been unhappy Edwy and ^Ethelred
the Redeless were warnings rather than examples. Moreover,
Harold had before his eye as a precedent the displacement of
the effete Carolingian line in France, by the new house of Robert
the Strong and Hugh Capet, seventy years before. He prepared
for the crisis that must come at the death of Edward the Con-
fessor by bestowing the governance of several earldoms upon
his brothers. Unfortunately for him, however, the eldest of
them, Tostig, proved the greatest hindrance to his plans, pro-
voking wrath and opposition wherever he went by his high-
handedness and cruelty.
Harold's governance of the realm seems to have been on the
whole successful. He put down the Scottish usurper Macbeth
with the swords of a Northumbrian army, and restored
Malcolm III. to the throne of that kingdom (1055-1058). He
led an army into the heart of Wales to punish the raids of King
Griffith ap Llewelyn, and harried the Welsh so bitterly that they
put their leader to death, and renewed their homage to the
English crown (1063). He won enthusiastic devotion from the
men of Wessex and the South, but in Northumbria and Mercia
he was less liked. His experiment in taking the rule of these
earldoms out of the hands of the descendants of Siward and
Leofric proved so unsuccessful that he had to resign himself to
undoing it. Ultimately one of Leofric's grandsons, Edwin, was
left as earl of Mercia, and the other, Morcar, became earl of
Northumbria instead of Harold's unpopular brother Tostig.
It was on this fact that the fortune of England was to turn, for
in the hour of crisis Harold was to be betrayed by the lords of the
Midlands and the North.
Somewhere about the end of his period of ascendancy, perhaps
in 1064, Harold was sailing in the Channel when his ship was
driven ashore by a tempest near the mouth of the origin
Somme. He fell into the hands of William the Bastard, oi the
duke of Normandy, King Edward's cousin and best- Noraua
loved relative. The duke brought him to Rouen, and Cot "' u " t -
kept him in a kind of honourable captivity till he had extorted
a strange pledge from him. William alleged that his cousin
had promised to make him his heir, and to recommend him to
the witan as king of England. He demanded that Harold
should swear to aid him in the project. Fearing for his personal
safety, the earl gave the required oath, and sailed home a per-
jured man, for he had assuredly no intention of keeping the
promise that had been extorted from him. Within two years
King Edward expired (Jan. 5, 1066) after having recommended
Harold as his successor to the thegns and bishops who stood
about his deathbed. The witan chose the earl as king without
any show of doubt, though the assent of the Mercian and North-
umbrian earls must have been half-hearted. Not a word was
said in favour of the claim of the child Edgar, the heir of the
house of Alfred, nothing (of course) for the preposterous claim
of William of Normandy. Harold accepted the crown without
a moment's hesitation, and at once prepared to defend it, for
he was aware that the Norman would fight to gain his purpose.
He endeavoured to conciliate Edwin and Morcar by marrying
their sister Ealdgyth, and trusted that he had bought their
loyal support. When the spring came round it was known that
William had begun to collect a great fleet and army. Aware
that the resources of his own duchy were inadequate to the
conquest of England, he sent all over Europe to hire mercenaries,
promising every knight who would join him broad lands beyond
the Channel in the event of victory. He gathered beneath his
banner thousands of adventurers not only from France, Brittany
and Flanders, but even from distant regions such as Aragon,
Apulia and Germany. The native Normans were but a third
part of his host, and he himself commanded rather as director
of a great joint-stock venture than as the feudal chief of his own
duchy. He also obtained the blessing of Pope Alexander II. for
his enterprise, partly on the plea that Harold was a perjurer,
partly because Stigand, the archbishop of Canterbury, bad
acknowledged the late anti-pope Benedict.
All through the summer Harold held a fleet concentrated
474
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1066-1075
under the lee of the Isle of Wight, waiting to intercept William's
armament, while the fyrd of Wessex was ready to support him
if the enemy should succeed in making a landing. By September
the provisions were spent, and the ships were growing unsea-
worthy. Very reluctantly the king bade them go round to
London to refit and revictual themselves. William meanwhile
had been unable to sail, because for many weeks the wind had
been unfavourable. If it had set from the south the fortune of
England would have been settled by a sea-fight. At this moment
came a sudden and incalculable diversion; Harold's turbulent
brother Tostig, banished for his crimes in 1063, was seeking
revenge. He had persuaded Harold Hardrada, king of Norway,
almost the last of the great viking adventurers, to take him as
guide for a raid on England. They ran into the Humber with
a great fleet, beat the earls Edwin and Morcar in battle, and
captured York. Abandoning his watch on the south coast Harold
of England flew northward to meet the invaders; he surprised
them at Stamford Bridge, slew both the Norse king and the
rebel earl, and almost exterminated their army (Sept. 25? 1066).
But while he was absent from the Channel the wind turned, and
William of Normandy put to sea. The English fleet and the
English army were both absent, and the Normans came safely
to shore on the 28th of September. Harold had to turn hastily
southward to meet them. On the i3th of October his host was
arrayed on the hill of Senlac, 7 miles from the duke's camp at
Hastings. The ranks of his thegnhood and house-carles had been
thinned by the slaughter of Stamford Bridge, and their place was
but indifferently supplied by the hasty levies of London, Wessex
and the Home Counties. Edwin and Morcar, who should have
been at his side with their Mercians and Northumbrians, were
still far away probably from treachery, slackness and jealousy.
Next morning (October 14) William marched out from Hastings
and attacked the English host, which stood at bay in a solid
mass of spear and axemen behind a slight breastwork on the
hillside. After six hours of desperate fighting the victory fell
to the duke, who skilfully alternated the use of archers and
cavalry against the unwieldy English phalanx. (See HASTINGS:
Battle of.) The disaster was complete, Harold himself was
slain, his two brothers had fallen with him, not even the wreck
of an army escaped. There was no one to rally the English in
the name of the house of Godwine. The witan met and hastily
saluted the child Edgar .iEtheling as king. But the earls
Edwin and Morcar refused to fight for him, and when William
appeared in front of the gates of London they were opened
almost without resistance. He was elected king in the old English
fashion by the surviving magnates, and crowned on Christmas
Day 1066.
II. THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN MONARCHY (1066-1199)
When William of Normandy was crowned at Westminster by
Archbishop Aldred of York and acknowledged as king by the
witan, it is certain that few Englishmen understood
tne ^ i m P ortance f tne occasion. It is probable
that most men recalled the election of Canute, and
supposed that the accession of the one alien sovereign
would have no more permanent effect on the realm than that of
the other. The rule of the Danish king and his two short-lived
sons had caused no break in the social or constitutional history
of England. Canute had become an Englishman, had accepted
all the old institutions of the nation, had dismissed his host of
vikings, and had ruled like a native king and for the most part
wjth native ministers. Within twenty years of his accession the
disasters and calamities which had preceded his triumph had
been forgotten, and the national life was running quietly in its
old channels. But the accession of William the Bastard meant
something very different. Canute had been an impressionable
lad of eighteen or nineteen when he was crowned ; he was ready
and eager to learn and to forget. He had found himself con-
fronted in England with a higher civilization and a more ad-
vanced social organization than those which he had known in
his boyhood, and he accepted them with alacrity, feeling that
he was thereby getting advantage. With William the Norman
queror.
all was different: he was a man well on in middle age, too old
to adapt himself easily to new surroundings, even if he had been
willing to do so. He never even learnt the language of his
English subjects, the first step to comprehending their needs
and their views. Moreover, unlike his Danish predecessor, he
looked down upon the English from the plane of a higher civiliza-
tion; the Normans regarded the conquered nation as barbarous
and boorish. The difference in customs and culture between the
dwellers on the two sides of the Channel was sufficient to make
this possible; though it is hard to discern any adequate justi-
fication for the Norman attitude. Probably the bar of language
was the most prominent cause of estrangement. In five genera-
tions the viking settlers of Normandy had not only completely
forgotten their old Scandinavian tongue, but had come to look
upon those who spoke the kindred English idiom not only as
aliens but as inferiors. For three centuries French remained the
court speech, and the mark of civilization and gentility.
Despite all this the Conquest would not have had its actual
results if William, like Canute, had been able to dismiss his
conquering army, and to refrain from a general policy progress
of confiscation. But he had won his crown not as of Norman
duke of Normandy, but as the head of a band of cosmo- settle-
politan adventurers, who had to be rewarded with land *"*"'
in England. Some few received their pay in hard cash, and
went off to other wars; but the large majority, Breton and
Angevin, French and Fleming, no less than Norman, wanted
land. William could only provide it by a wholesale confiscation
of the estates of all the thegnhood who had followed the house
of Godwine. Almost his first act was to seize on these lands, and
to distribute them among his followers. In the regions of the
South, which had supplied the army that fell at Hastings, at
least four-fifths of the soil passed to new masters. The dis-
possessed heirs of the old owners had either to sink to the con-
dition of peasants, or to throw themselves upon the world and
seek new homes. The friction and hatred thus caused were bitter
and long enduring. And this same system of confiscation was
gradually extended to the rest of England. At first the English
landowners who had not actually served in Harold's host were
permitted to " buy back their lands," by paying a heavy fine
to the new king and doing him homage. What would have
happened supposing that England had made no further stir, and
had not vexed William by rebellion, it is impossible to say.
But, as a matter of fact, during the first few years of his reign
one district after another took up arms and endeavoured to
cast out the stranger. As it became gradually evident that
William's whole system of government was to be on new and
distasteful lines, the English of the Midlands, the North and the
West all went into rebellion. The risings were sporadic, ill-
organized, badly led, for each section of the realm fought for its
own hand. In some parts the insurrections were in favour of
the sons of Harold, in others Edgar ^Etheling was acclaimed as
king: and while the unwise earls Edwin and Morcar fought for
their own hand, the Anglo-Danes of the East sent for Sweyn,
king of Denmark, who proved of small help, for he abode but
a short space in England, and went off after sacking the great
abbey of Peterborough and committing other outrages. The
rebels cut up several Norman garrisons, and gave King William
much trouble for some years, but they could never face him in
battle. Their last stronghold, the marsh-fortress of Ely, sur-
rendered in 1071, and not long after their most stubborn chief,
Hereward " the Wake," the leader of the fenmen, laid down his
arms and became King William's man (see HEREWARD).
The only result of the long series of insurrections was to
provoke the king to a cruelty which he had not at first shown, and
to give him an excuse for confiscating and dividing among his
foreign knights and barons the immense majority of the estates
of the English thegnhood. William could be pitiless when pro-
voked; to punish the men of the North for persistent rebellion
and the destruction of his garrison at York, he harried the whole
countryside from the Aire to the Tees with such remorseless
ferocity that it did not recover its ancient prosperity for cen-
turies. The population was absolutely exterminated, arid the
i 61 I M
ENGLISH HISTORY
475
great Domesday survey, made nearly twenty years later, shows
the greater part of Yorkshire as " waste." This act was excep-
tional only in its extent : the king was as cruel on a smaller scale
elsewhere, and not contented with the liberal use of the axe and
the rope was wont to inflict his favourite punishments of blinding
and mutilation on a most reckless scale.
The net result of the king's revenge on the rebellious English
was that by 1075 the old governing class had almost entirely
disappeared, and that their lands, from the Channel to the
Tweed, had everywhere been distributed to new holders. To a
great extent the same horde of continental adventurers who
had obtained the first batch of grants in Wessex and Kent were
also the recipients of the later confiscations, so that their newly
acquired estates were scattered all over England. Many of them
came to own land in ten or a dozen counties remote from each
other, a fact which was of the greatest importance in determining
the character of English feudalism. While abroad the great
vassals of the crown generally held their property in compact
blocks, in England their power was weakened by the dispersion
of their lands. This tendency was assisted by the fact that
even when the king, as was his custom, transferred to a Norman
the estates of an English landowner just as they stood, those
estates were already for the most part not conterminous. Even
before the Conquest the lands of the magnates were to a large
extent held in scattered units, not in solid patches. Only in
two cases did William establish lordships of compact strength,
and these were created for the special purpose of guarding the
turbulent Welsh March. The " palatine " earls of Chester and
Shrewsbury were not only endowed with special powers and
rights of jurisdiction, but were almost the only tenants-in-chief
within their respective shires. These rare exceptions prove the
general rule: William probably foresaw the dangers of such
accumulation of territory in private hands. He made a com-
plete end of the old English system by which great earls ruled
many shires: there were to be no Godwines or Leofrics under the
Norman rule. This particular feudal danger was avoided:
where earls were created, and they were but few, their authority
was usually restricted to a single shire.
It remains to speak of the most important change which
William's rearrangements made in the polity of England. It
fLrr1lfftm is of course untrue to say as was so often done by
' early historians that he " introduced the feudal
system into England." In some aspects feudalism was already
in the land before he arrived: in others it may be said
that it was never introduced at all. He did not introduce
the practice by which the small man commended himself to the
great man, and in return for his protection divested himself of
the full ownership of his own land, and became a customary
tenant in what later ages called a " manor." That system was
already in full operation in England before the Conquest. In
some districts the wholly free small landowner had already
disappeared, though in the regions which had formed the Dane-
lagh he was still to be found in large numbers. Nor did William
introduce the system of great earldoms, passing from father to
son, which gave over-great subjects a hereditary grip on the
countryside. On the contrary, as has been already said, he did
much to check that tendency, which had already developed in
England.
What he really did do was to reconstruct society on the
essentially feudal theory that the land was a gift from the king,
held on conditions of homage and military service. The duties
which under the old system were national obligations resting
on the individual as a citizen, he made into duties depending
on the relation between the king as supreme landowner and the
subject as tenant of the land. Military service and the paying
of the feudal taxes aids, reliefs, Sic. are incidents of the
bargain between the crown and the grantee to whom land has
been given. That grantee, the tenant-in-chief, has the right to
demand from his sub-tenants, to whom he has given out fractions
of his estate, the same dues that the king exacts from himself.
As at least four-fifths of the land of England had fallen into the
king's hands between 1066 and 1074, and had been actually
regranted to new owners foreigners to whom the feudal system
was the only conceivable organization of political existence the
change was not only easy but natural. The few surviving English
landholders had to fall into line with the newcomers. England,
in short, was reorganized into a state of the continental type,
but one differing from France or Germany in that the crown
had not lost so many of its regalities as abroad, and that even
the greater earls had less power than the ordinary continental
tenant-in-chief.
The English people became aware of this transformation in
the " theory of the state" mainly through the fact that the new
tenants-in-chief, bringing with them the ideas in which they
had been reared, failed to comprehend the rather complicated
statusof the rural population on thissideof theChannel. Tothe
French or Norman knight all peasants on his manor seemed to
be villeins, and he failed to understand the distinction between
freemen who had personally commended themselves to his
English predecessor but still owned their land, and the mass of
ordinary servile tenants. There can be no doubt that the first
effect of the Conquest was that the upper strata of the agri-
cultural classes lost the comparative independence which they
had hitherto enjoyed, and were in many cases depressed to the
level of their inferiors. The number of freemen began to decrease,
from the encroachments of the landowner, and continued to
dwindle for many years: even in districts where Domesday Book
shows them surviving in considerable numbers, it is clear that
a generation or two later they had largely disappeared, and
became merged in the villein class.
In this sense, therefore, England was turned into a feudal
state by the results of the work of William the Conqueror. But
it would be wrong to assert that all traces of the
ancient social organization of the realm were swept
away. The old Saxon customs were not forgotten, though
they might in many cases be twisted to fit new surroundings.
Indeed William and his successors not infrequently caused them
to be collected and put on record. The famous Domesday Book
(q.v.) of 1086 is in its essential nature an inquiry into the state
of England at the moment of the Conquest, compiled in order
that the king may have a full knowledge of the rights that' he
possesses as the heir of King Edward. Being primarily intended
to facilitate the levy of taxation, it dwells more on the details of
the actual wealth and resources of the country in 1066 and 1086,
and less on the laws and customs that governed the distribution
of that wealth, than could have been wished. But it is never-
theless a monument of the permanence of the old English insti-
tutions, even after the ownership of four-fifths of the soil has been
changed. The king inquires into the state of things in 1066
because it is on that state of things that his rights of taxation
depend. He does not claim to have rearranged the whole realm
on a new basis, or to be levying his revenue on a new assessment
made at his own pleasure. Nor is it in the sphere of taxation
alone that William's organization of the realm stands on the old
English customs. In the military sphere, though his normal army
is the feudal force composed of the tenants-in-chief and the
knights whom they have enfeoffed, he retains the power to call
out the fyrd, the old national levte en masse, without regard to
whether its members are freemen or villeins of some lord. And
in judicial matters the higher rights of royal justice remain
intact, except in the few cases where special privileges have been
granted to one or two palatine earls. The villein must sue in
his lord's manorial courts, but he is also subject to the royal
courts of hundred and shire. The machinery of the local courts
survives for the most part intact.
William's dealings with the Church of England were no less
important than his dealings with social organization. In the
earlier years of his reign he set himself to get rid of
the whole of the upper hierarchy, in order to replace /J/,e"
them by Normans. In 1070 Archbishop Stigand was church.
deposed as having been uncanonically chosen, and six
or seven other bishops after him. All the vacancies, as well as
those which kept occurring during the next few years, were
immediately filled up with foreigners. By the time that William
47 6
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1075-1087
had been ten years on the throne there were only three English
bishops left. At his death there was only one the saintly
Wulfstan of Worcester. The same process was carried out with
regard to abbacies, and indeed with all important places of
ecclesiastical preferment. By 1080 the English Church was
officered entirely by aliens. Just as with the lay landholders,
the change of personnel made a vast difference, not so much in
the legal position of the new-comers as in the way in which they
regarded their office. The outlook of a Norman bishop was as
unlike that of his English predecessor as that of a Norman baron.
The English Church had got out of touch with the ideals and the
spiritual movements of the other Western churches. In especial
the great monastic revival which had started from the abbey
of Cluny and spread all over France, Italy and Germany had
hardly touched this island. The continental churchmen of the
nth century were brimming over with ascetic zeal and militant
energy, while the majority of the English hierarchy were slack
and easy-going. The typical faults of the dark ages, pluralism,
simony, lax observation of the clerical rules, contented ignorance,
worldliness in every aspect, were all too prevalent in England.
There can be no doubt that the greater part of William's nominees
were better men than those who preceded them; his great arch-
bishop, Lanfranc, though a busy statesman, was also an energetic
reformer and a man of holy life. Osmund, Remigius and others
of the first post-Conquest bishops have left a good name behind
them. The condition of the church alike in the matter of
spiritual zeal, of hard work and of learning was much improved.
But there was a danger behind this revival; for the reformers
of the nth century, in their zeal for establishing the Kingdom
of God on earth, were not content with raising the moral and
intellectual standards prevailing in Christendom, but sought
to bring the whole scheme of life under the church, by asserting
the absolute supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal power,
wherever the two came in contact or overlapped. The result,
since the feudal and ecclesiastical systems had become closely
interwoven, and the frontier between the religious and secular
spheres must ever be vague and undefined, was the conflict
between the spiritual and temporal powers which, for two
centuries to come, was to tear Europe into warring factions
(see the articles CHURCH HISTORY; PAPACY; INVESTITURE).
The Norman Conquest of England was contemporaneous with
the supreme influence of the greatest exponent of the theory of
ecclesiastical supremacy, the archdeacon Hildebrand, who in
1073 mounted the papal throne as Gregory VII. (?..). William,
despite all his personal faults, was a sincerely pious man, but it
could not be expected that he would acquiesce in these new
developments of the religious reformation which he had done
his best to forward. Hence we find a divided purpose in the
policy which he pursued with regard to church affairs. He
endeavoured to keep on the best terms with the papacy: he
welcomed legates and frequently consulted the pope on purely
spiritual matters. He even took the hazardous step of separating
ecclesiastical courts and lay courts, giving the church leave to
establish separate tribunals of her own, a right which she had
never possessed in Saxon England. The spiritual jurisdiction
of the bishop had hitherto been exercised in the ordinary national
courts, with lay assessors frequently taking part in the pro-
ceedings, and mixing their dooms with the clergy's canonical
decisions. William in 1076 granted the church a completely
independent set of courts, a step which his successors were to
regret for many a generation.
At the same time, however, he was not blind to the possibilities
of papal interference in domestic matters, and of the danger of
conflict between the crown and the recently-strengthened
clerical order. To guard against them he laid down three general
rules: (i) that no one should be recognized as pope in England
till he had himself taken cognizance of the papal election, and
that no papal letters should be brought into the realm without
his leave; (2) that no decisions of the English ecclesiastical
synods should be held valid till he had examined and sanctioned
them; (3) that none of his barons or ministers should be ex-
communicated unless he approved of such punishment being
inflicted on them. These rules seem to argue a deeply rooted
distrust of the possible encroachments of the papacy on the power
of the state. The question of ecclesiastic patronage, which was
to be the source of the first great quarrel between the crown and
the church in the next generation, is not touched upon. William
retained in his own hands the choice of bishops and abbots, and
Alexander II. and Gregory VII. seem to have made no objection
to his doing so, in spite of the claim that free election was the only
canonical way of filling vacancies. The Conqueror was allowed
for his lifetime to do as he pleased, since he was recognized as a
true friend of the church. But the question was only deferred
and not settled.
The political history of William's later years is unimportant;
his main energy was absorbed in the task of holding down and
organizing his new kingdom. His rather precarious
conquest of the county of Maine, his long quarrels
with Philip I. of France, who suborned against him his
undutiful and rebellious eldest son Robert, his negotia-
tion with Flanders and Germany, deserve no more than a
mention. It is more necessary to point out that he reasserted
on at least one occasion (when King Malcolm Canmore did him
homage) the old suzerainty of the English kings over Scotland.
He also began that encroachment on the borders of Wales which
was to continue with small interruptions for the next two
centuries. The advance was begun by his great vassals, the earls
of Chester, Shrewsbury and Hereford, all of whom occupied
new districts on the edge of the mountains of Powys and
Gwynedd. William himself led an expedition as far as St.
Davids in 1081, and founded Cardiff Castle to mark the boundary
of his realm north of the Bristol Channel.
Perhaps the most noteworthy event of the second portion of
the Conqueror's reign was a rebellion which, though it made no
head and was easily suppressed, marks the commencement of
that feudal danger which was to be the constant trouble of the
English kings for the next three generations. Two of the greatest
of his foreign magnates, Roger, earl of Hereford, and Ralph, earl
of Norfolk, rose against him in 1075, with no better cause than
personal grievances and ambitions. He put them down with
ease; the one was imprisoned for life, the other driven into exile,
while Waltheof, the last of the English earls, who had dabbled
in a hesitating way in this plot, was executed. There was never
any serious danger, but the fact that under the new regime
baronial rebellion was possible, despite of all William's advan-
tages over other feudal kings, and despite of the fact that the
rebels were hardly yet settled firmly into their new estates, had
a sinister import for the future of England. With the new
monarchy there had come into England the anarchic spirit of
continental feudalism. If such a man as the Conqueror did not
overawe it, what was to be expected in the reigns of his suc-
cessors? William had introduced into his new realm alike the
barons, with their personal ambition, and the clerics of the school
of Hildebrand, with their intense jealousy for the rights of the
church. The tale of the dealings of his descendants with these
two classes of opponents constitutes the greater part of English
history for a full century.
William died at Rouen on the 7th of September 1087; on his
death-bed he expressed his wish that Normandy should pass to
his elder son, Robert, in spite of all his rebellions,
but gave his second son William (known by the nick-
name of Rufus) the crown of England, and sent him
thither with commendatory letters to archbishop Lanfranc and
his other ministers. There was at first no sign of opposition
to the will of the late king, and William Rufus was crowned
within three weeks of his father's decease. But the results of the
Conquest had made it hard to tear England and Normandy
apart. Almost every baron in the duchy was now the possessor
of a smaller or a greater grant of lands in the kingdom, and the
possibility of serving two masters was as small in 1087 as at any
other period of the world's history. By dividing his two states
between his sons the Conqueror undid his own work, and left
to his subjects the certainty of civil war. For the brothers
Robert and William were, and always had been, enemies, and
1087-1100]
ENGLISH HISTORY
477
every intriguing baron had before him the tempting prospect
of aggrandizing himself, by making his allegiance to one of the
brothers serve as an excuse for betraying the other. Robert was
thriftless, volatile and easy-going, a good knight but a most in-
competent sovereign. These very facts commended him to the
more turbulent section of the baronage; if he succeeded to the
whole of the Conqueror's heritage they would have every oppor-
tunity of enjoying freedom from all governance. William's
private character was detestable: he was cruel, lascivious,
greedy of gain, a habitual breaker of oaths and promises, ungrate-
ful and irreligious. But he was cunning, strong-handed and
energetic; clearly the "Red King" would be an undesirable
master to those who loved feudal anarchy. Hence every tur-
bulent baron in England soon came to the conclusion that Robert
was the sovereign whom his heart desired.
The greater part of the reign of William II. was taken up
with his fight against the feudal danger. Before he had been six
months on the throne he was attacked by a league comprising
more than half the baronage, and headed by his uncles, bishop
Odo of Bayeux and Robert of Mortain. They used the name
of the duke of Normandy and had secured his promise to cross
the Channel for their assistance. A less capable and unscrupu-
lous king than Rufus might have been swept away, for the rising
burst out simultaneously in nearly every corner of the realm.
But he made head against it with the aid of mercenary bands,
the loyal minority of the barons, and the shire-levies of his English
subjects. When he summoned out the fyrd they came in great
force to his aid, not so much because they trusted in the promises
of good governance and reduced taxation which he made, but
because they saw that a horde of greedy barons would be worse
to serve than a single king, however hard and selfish he might
be. With their assistance William fought down the rebels,
expelled his uncle Odo and several other leaders from the realm,
confiscated a certain amount of estates, and then pardoned the
remainder of the rebels. Such mercy, as he was to discover,
was misplaced. In 1095 the same body of barons made a second
and a more formidable rising, headed by the earls of Shrewsbury,
Eu and Northumberland. It was put down with the same
decisive energy that William had shown in 1088, and this time
be was merciless; he blinded and mutilated William of Eu,
shut up Mowbray of Northumberland for life in a monastery,
and hanged many men of lesser rank. Of the other rebels some
were deprived of their English estates altogether, others restored
to part of them after paying crushing fines. This second feudal
rebellion was only a distraction to William from his war with his
brother Robert, which continued intermittently all through the
earlier years of his reign. It was raging from 1088 to 1001, and
again from 1003 to 1096, when Robert tired of the losing game,
pawned his duchy to his brother and went off on the First
Crusade. Down to this moment William's position had been
somewhat precarious; with the Norman war generally on hand,
feudal rebellion always imminent, and Scottish invasions occa-
sionally to be repelled, he had no easy life. But he fought
through his troubles, conquered Cumberland from the Scots
(1092), in dealing with his domestic enemies used cunning where
force failed, and generally got his will in the end. His rule was
expensive, and he made himself hated by every class of his sub-
jects, baronage, clergy and people alike, by his ingenious and
npprrMJve taxation. His chosen instrument, a clerical lawyer
named Ranulf Flambard (?..), whom he presently made bishop
of Durham, was shameless in his methods of twisting feudal
or national law to the detriment of the taxpayer. William sup-
ported him in every device, however unjust, with a cynical frank-
ness which was the distinguishing trait of his character; for he
loved to display openly all the vices and meannesses which most
men take care to disguise. In dealing with the baronage Ranulf
and his master extorted excessive and arbitrary "reliefs" when-
ever land passed in succession to heirs. When the church was
a landholder their conduct was even more unwarrantable; every
clerk installed in a new preferment was forced to pay a large
sum down which in that age was considered a clear case of
simony by all conscientious men. But in addition the king kept
all wealthy posts, such as bishoprics and abbacies, vacant for
years at a time and appropriated the revenue meanwhile.
This policy, when pursued with regard to the archbishopric
of Canterbury, brought on Rufus the most troublesome of his
quarrels. When the wise primate Lanfranc, his
father's friend, died in 1089, he made no appointment
till 1093, extracting meanwhile great plunder from the see. In a
moment of sickness, when his conscience was for a space troub-
ling him or his will was weak, he nominated the saintly Anselm
(g.v.) to the archbishopric. When enthroned the new primate
refused to make the enormous gift which the king expected from
every recipient of preferment. Soon after he began to press for
leave to hold a national synod, and when it was denied him, spoke
out boldly on the personal vices as well as the immoral policy
of the king. From this time William and Anselm became open
enemies. They fought first upon the question of acknowledging
Urban II. as pope for the king, taking advantage of the fact
that there was an antipope in existence, refused to allow that
there was any certain and legitimate head of .the Western church
at the moment. Then, after William had reluctantly yielded
on this point, the far more important question of lay investitures
cropped up. The council of Clennont (Nov. 1095) had just
issued its famous decree to the effect that bishops must be chosen
by free election, and not invested with their spiritual insignia
or enfeoffed with their estates by the hands of a secular prince.
Anselm felt himself obliged to accept this decision, and refused
to accept his own pallium from William when Urban sent it
across the sea by the hands of a legate. The king replied by
harrying him on charges of having failed in his feudal obligation
to provide well-equipped knights for a Welsh expedition, and
imposed ruinous fines on him. It was even said that his life was
threatened, and he fled to Rome in 1097, not to return till his
adversary was dead. There was much to be said for the theory
of the king as to the relations between church and state ; he was
indeed only carrying on in a harsh form his father's old policy.
But the fact that he was a tyrant and an evil-liver, while Anselm
was a saint, so much influenced public opinion that William was
universally regarded as in the wrong, and the sympathy of the
laity no less than the clergy was with the archbishop. For the
remaining three years of his life the Red King was considered to
be in a state of reprobation and at open strife with righteousness.
Yet so far as secular affairs went William seemed prosperous
enough. Since his brother had pawned the duchy of Normandy
to him, so that he reigned at Rouen no less than at London,
the danger of rebellion was almost removed. His foreign policy
was successful: he installed a nominee of his own, Edgar, the
son of Malcolm Canmore, on the throne of Scotland (1097); he
reconquered Maine, which his brother Robert had lost; he made
successful war upon King Philip of France. His barons subdued
much of South Wales, though his own expeditions into North
Wales, which he had designed to conquer and annex, had a less
fortunate ending. He dreamed, we are told, of attacking Ireland,
even of crowning himself king at Paris. But on the 2nd of August
1 100 he was suddenly cut off in the midst of his sins. While
hunting with some of his godless companions in the New Forest,
he was struck by an arrow, unskilfully shot by one of the party.
The knight Walter Tyrrell, who was persistently accused of
being the author of his master's death, as persistently denied
his responsibility for it; and whether the arrow was his or no,
it was not alleged that malice guided it. William's favourites
had all to lose by his death.
The king's death was unexpected: he was only in his fortieth
year, and men's minds had not even begun to ponder over the
question of who would succeed him. The crown of
England was left vacant for the boldest kinsman
snatch at, if he dared. William had two surviving
brothers, beside several nephews. Robert's claim seemed
the more likely to succeed, for not only was he the elder,
but England was full 'of barons who desired his accession, and
had already taken up arms for him in 1087 or 1095. But he was
far away being at the moment on his return journey from
Jerusalem while on the spot was his brother Henry, an ambitious
478
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1100-1107
prince, whose previous efforts to secure himself a territorial
endowment had failed more from ill-luck than from want of
enterprise or ability. Seeing his opportunity, Henry left his
brother's body unburied, rode straight off to Winchester with a
handful of companions, and seized the royal treasure. This and
his ready tongue were the main arguments by which he convinced
the few magnates present, and persuaded them to back him,
despite the protests of some supporters of Robert. There was
hardly the semblance of an election, and the earl of Warwick
and the chancellor William Giffard were almost the only persons
of importance on the spot. But Henry, once hailed as king,
rode hard for London and persuaded bishop Maurice to crown
him without delay at Westminster, since the primate Anselm
was absent beyond seas. He certainly lost no time: Rufus was
shot on Thursday, the 2nd of August his successor was crowned
on Sunday the 5th of August! The realm heard almost by the
same messengers that it had lost one king and that it had gained
another.
Henry at once issued a proclamation and charter promising
the redress of all the grievances with which his brother had
afflicted his feudal tenants, the clergy and the whole nation.
He would keep the ancient laws of King Edward, as amended
by his father the Conqueror, and give all men good justice.
These promises he observed more faithfully than Norman kings
were wont to do ; if the pledge was not redeemed in every detail,
he yet kept England free from anarchy, abandoned the arbitrary
and unjust taxation of his brother, and set up a government that
worked by rule and order, not by the fits and starts of tyrannical
caprice. He was a man of a cold and hard disposition, but full
of practical wisdom, and conscious that his precarious claim
to the crown must be secured by winning the confidence of his
subjects. Almost the first and quite the wisest of his inspirations
was to wed a princess of the old English line Edith, 1 the niece
of Edgar j^Etheling, the child of his sister Margaret of Scotland
and Malcolm Canmore. The match, though his Norman barons
sneered at it, gave him the hearts of all his English subjects,
who supported him with enthusiasm, and not merely (as had
been the case with Rufus) because they saw that a strong king
would oppress them less than a factious and turbulent baronage.
Henry won much applause at the same time by filling up all
the bishoprics and abbacies which his brother had kept so long
vacant, by inviting the exiled Anselm to return to England, and
by imprisoning William's odious minister Ranulf Flambard.
He had just time to create a favourable impression by his first
proceedings, when his brother Robert, who had returned from
Palestine and resumed possession of Normandy, landed at Ports-
mouth to claim the crown and to rouse his partisans among the
English baronage. Henry bought him off, before the would-be
rebels had time to join him, by promising him an annual tribute
of 3000 marks and surrendering to him all his estates in Nor-
mandy (1101). His policy seemed tame and cautious, but was
entirely justifiable, for within a few months of Robert's departure
the inevitable feudal rebellion broke out. If the duke and his
army had been on the spot to support it, things might have gone
hardly with the king. The rising was led by Robert of Belesme,
earl of Shrewsbury, a petty tyrant of the most ruffianly type, the
terror of the Welsh marches. He was backed by his kinsmen
and many other barons, but proved unable to stand before the
king, who was loyally supported by the English shire levies.
After taking the strong castles of Arundel, Tickhill, Bridgnorth
and Shrewsbury, Henry forced the rebels to submit. He con-
fiscated their estates and drove them out of the realm; they fled
for the most part to Normandy, to spur on duke Robert to make
another bid for the English crown. From the broad lands which
they forfeited Henry made haste to reward his own servants,
new men who owed all to him and served him faithfully. From
them he chose the sheriffs, castellans and councillors through
whom he administered the realm during the rest of his long reign.
1 As the name Edith (Eadgyth) sounded uncouth to Norman ears,
she assumed the continental name Maheut or Mahelt (Eng. Mahald,
later Mold and Maud), in Latin Matildis or Matilda. Sir J. H.
Ramsay, Foundations of England, ii. 235. (Ed.)
This minor official nobility was the strength of the crown, and
was sharply divided in spirit and ambition from the older feudal
aristocracy which descended from the original adventurers who
had followed William the Conqueror. Yet the latter still re-
mained strong enough to constitute a danger to the crown when-
ever it should fall to a king less wary and resolute than Henry
himself.
Henry was by nature more of an administrator and organizer
than of a fighting man. He was a competent soldier, but his
wish was rather to be a strong king at home than a great con-
queror abroad. Nevertheless he was driven by the logic of
events to attack Normandy, for as long as his brother reigned
there, and as long as many English barons retained great holdings
on both sides of the Channel and were subjects of the duke as
well as of the king, intrigues and plots never ceased. The
Norman war ended in the battle of Tenchebrai (Sept. 28, 1106),
where Duke Robert was taken prisoner. His brother shut him
up in honourable confinement for the rest of his life, though other-
wise he was not ill-treated. For the rest of his reign Henry was
ruler of all the old dominions of the Conqueror, and none of his
subjects could cloak disloyalty by the pretence of owing a
divided allegiance to two masters. With this he was content,
and made no great effort to extend his dominions farther; his
desire wastoreignas a true king in EnglandandNormandy, rather
than to build up a loosely compacted empire around them.
Throughout the time of Henry's Norman war, he was engaged
in a tiresome controversy with the primate on the question of lay
investitures, the continuation of the struggle which Henry's
had begun in his brother's reign. Every English king difficulties
for five generations had to face the danger from the w "* the
church, no less than the danger from the barons. chufch -
Anselm had come back from Rome confirmed in the theories
for which he had contended with Rufus nay, taught to
extend them to a further extreme. He now maintained not
only that it was a sin that kings should invest prelates with their
spiritual insignia, the pallium, the staff, the ring, but claimed
that no clerk ought to do homage to the king for the lands of his
benefice, though he himself seven years before had not scrupled
to make his oath to his earlier master. He now refused to swear
allegiance to the new monarch, though he had recalled him and
had restored him to the possession of his see. He also refused
to consecrate Henry's nominees to certain bishoprics and abbacies
on the ground that they had not been chosen by free election
by their chapters or their monks. The king was loath to take
up the quarrel, for he highly respected the archbishop; yet he
was still more loath to surrender the ancient claims and privileges
of the crown. Anselm was equally reluctant to force matters
to an open breach, yet would not shift from his position. There
followed an interminable series of arguments, interrupted by
truces, till at last Anselm, at the king's suggestion, went to Rome
to see if the pope could arrange some modus vivendi. Paschal II.
for some time refused to withdraw from his fixed theory of the
relation of church and state, and Anselm, in despair, preferred
to remain abroad rather than to press matters to the rupture that
seemed the only logical issue of the controversy. But in 1107
the pope consented to a compromise, which satisfied the king, and
yet was acceptable to the church. Bishops and abbots were for
the future to be canonically elected by the clergy, and were no
longer to receive the ring and staff from lay hands. But they
were to do homage to the king for their lands, and since they thus
acknowledged him as their temporal lord Henry was content.
Moreover, he retained in practice, if not in theory, his power to
nominate to the vacant offices; chapters and monasteries seldom
dared to resist the pressure which the sovereign could bring to
bear upon them in favour of the candidate whom he had selected.
The arrangement was satisfactory, and served as the model for
the similar compromise arrived at between Pope Calixtus II.
and the emperor Henry V. fifteen years later.
From 1107 onward Henry was freed from both the dangers
which had threatened him in his earlier years, and was free to
develop his policy as he pleased. He had yet twenty-eight
years to reign, for he survived to the age of sixty-seven, an age
1107-1135]
ENGLISH HISTORY
479
unparalleled by any of his predecessors, and by all his successors
till Edward 1.
It is to Henry, aided by his great justiciar, Roger, bishop of
Salisbury, that England owed the institution of the machinery
of government by which it was to be ruled during the
earlier middle ages. This may be described as a primi-
r . tive kind of bureaucracy, which gradually developed
into a much more complicated system of courts
and offices. Around the sovereign was his Curia Rtgii or body
of councillors, of whom the most important were the justiciar,
the chancellor and the treasurer, though the feudal officers, the
constable and marshal, were also to be found there. The bulk
of the council, however, was composed of knights and clerks
selected by the king for their administrative or financial ability.
The Curia, besides advising the king on ordinary matters of state,
had two special functions. It sat, or certain members of it sat,
under the presidency of the king or the justiciar, as the supreme
court of justice of the realm. In this capacity it tried the suits
of tenants-in-chief, and all appeals from the local courts. But
Henry, not contented with this, adopted the custom of sending
forth certain members of the Curia throughout the realm at
intervals, to sit in the shire court, along with or in place of the
sheriff, and to hear and judge all the cases of which the court
had cognizance. From these itinerant commissioners (justices
in eyre) descend the modern justices of assize. The sheriff, the
original president of the shire court, was gradually extruded by
them from all important business.
But there were other developments of the Curia. The justiciar,
chancellor and treasurer sat with certain other members of the
council as the court of exchequer, not only to receive and audit
the accounts of the royal revenue, but to give legal decisions
on all questions connected with finance. Twice in every year
the sheriffs and other royal officials came up to the exchequer
court, which originally sat at Winchester, with their bags of
money and their sheaves of accounts. Their figures were sub-
jected to a severe scrutiny, and the law was laid down on all
points in which the interests of the sheriff and the king, or the
sheriff and the taxpayer, came into conflict. In this way the
exchequer grew into a law court of primary importance, instead
of remaining merely a court of receipt. Though its members
were originally the same men who sat in the Curia Regis, the
character of the question to be tried settled the capacity in which
they should sit, and two separate courts were evolved. (See
EXCHEQUER.)
Under the superintendence of the Curia Regis and the ex-
chequer, the sheriff still remained the king's factotum in local
affairs. He led the shire-levies, collected the royal revenues
both feudal and non-feudal, and presided in the shire-court as
judge, till in the course of years his functions in that sphere were
gradually taken over by the itinerant justices. On his fidelity
the king had to rely both for military aid in times of baronial
revolt and for the collection of the money which formed the
sinews of war. Hence the position was one of the highest im-
portance, and Henry's new nobility, the men of ability whom he
selected and promoted, found their special occupation in holding
the office of sheriff. It was they who had to see that the shire
court, and in minor affairs the hundred court, did not allow cases
to slip away into the jurisdiction of the feudal courts of the
baronage.
Henry I. must count not merely as the father of the English
bureaucracy, but as a fosterer of the municipal independence of
the towns. He gave charters of a very liberal character to many
places, and in especial to London, where the citizens were allowed
to choose their own sheriff, and to deal directly with the ex-
chequer in matters of revenue. He even farmed out to them the
charge of the taxes of the whole shire of Middlesex, outside the
city walls. Such a grant was exceptional though Lincoln also
seems to have been granted the privilege of dealing directly with
the exchequer. But in many other smaller towns the first grants
the smaller beginnings of autonomy may be traced back
to this period (see BOKOCGH).
Though Henry was an autocrat, and governed through
| bureaucratic officials who were entirely under his hand, yet a
reign of law and order such as his was indirectly favourable to
the growth of constitutional liberty. It was equally favourable
to the growth of national unity: it was in his time that Norman
and English began to melt together) intermarriage in all classes
became common, and only thirty years after his death a con-
temporary writer could remark that it was hard for any man to
call himself either Norman or English, so much had blood been
intermingled.
It is unnecessary to go into the very uninteresting and un-
important history of Henry's later years. A long war with
France, prosecuted without much energy, led to no results, for
the French king's attempts to stir up rebellions in the name of
William the Clito (q.v.), the son of Duke Robert, came to an end
with that prince's death in 1129. But the extension of the
English borders in South Wales by the conquests of the lords
marcher as far as Pembroke and Cardigan deserves a word of
notice.
The question of the succession was the main thing which
occupied the mind of the king and the whole nation in Henry's
later years. It had a real interest for every man in
an age when any doubt as to the heir meant the out- /,e/J-
break of civil war such as had occurred at the death of
the Conqueror and of Rufus. There was now a problem of some
difficulty to be solved. Henry's only son William had been
drowned at sea in 1 120. He had no other child born in wedlock
save a daughter, Matilda, who married the emperor Henry V. ,
but had no issue by him. On the emperor's decease she wedded
as her second husband Geoffrey of An jou (1127), to whom during
her father's last years she bore two sons. But the succession of
a woman to the crown was as unfamiliar to English as to Norman
ideas, nor did it seem natural to either to place a young child on
the throne. Moreover, Matilda's husband Geoffrey was un-
popular among the Normans; the Angevins had been the chief
enemies of the duchy for several generations, and the idea that
one of them might become its practical ruler was deeply resented.
The old king, as was but natural, had determined that his
daughter should be his successor; he made the great council
do homage to her in 1 1 26, and always kept her before the eyes
of his people as his destined heir. But though he had forced or
cajoled every leading man in England and Normandy to take
his oath to serve her, he must have been conscious that there
was a large chance that such pledges would be forgotten at his
death. The prejudice against a female heir was strong, and
there were too many turbulent magnates to whom the anarchy
that would follow a disputed succession presented temptations
which could not be resisted.
Henry died suddenly on the 25th of November 1133, while
he was on a visit to his duchy of Normandy. The moment that
his death was reported the futility of oaths became
apparent. A majority of the Norman barons ap- *'"*
pealed to Theobald, count of Blois, son of the Con- Stephen.
queror's daughter Adela, to be their duke, and to save
them from the yoke of the hated Angevin. His supporters and
those of Matilda were soon at blows all along the frontier of
Normandy. Meanwhile in England another pretender had
appeared. Stephen, count of Boulogne, the younger brother
of Theobald, had landed at Dover within a few days of Henry's
death, determined to make a snatch at the crown, though he
had been one of the first who had taken the oath to his cousin
a few years before. The citizens of London welcomed him,
but he was not secure of his success till by a swift swoop on
Winchester he obtained possession of the royal treasure an
all-important factor in a crisis, as Henry I. had shown in noo.
At Winchester he was acknowledged as king by the bishop, his
own brother Henry of Blois, and by the great justiciar, Roger,
bishop of Salisbury, and the archbishop, William of .Corbcil.
The allegiance of these .prelates was bought by an unwise promise
to grant all the demands of the church party, which his pre-
decessor had denied, or conceded only in part. He would permit
free election to all benefices, and free legislation by ecclesiastical
synods, and would surrender any claims of the royal courts to
480
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1135-1154
have jurisdiction over clerks or the property of clerks. It then
remained necessary to buy the baronage, of which only a few
members had as yet committed themselves to his side. It was
done by grants of lands and privileges, the first instalment of
a never-ending crop of ruinous concessions which Stephen
continued to make from the day of his accession down to the
day of his death.
The pretender was crowned at Westminster on the 22nd of
December 1135 less than a month after his uncle's death.
No one yet openly withstood him, but he was well aware that his
position was precarious, and that the claims of Matilda would
be brought forward ere long by the section of the baronage
which had not yet got from him all they desired. Meanwhile,
however, he was encouraged to persevere by the fact that his
brother Theobald had withdrawn his claim to the duchy of
Normandy, and retired in his favour. For a space he was to be
duke as well as king; but this meant merely that he would
have two wars, not one, in hand ere long. Matilda's adherents
were already in the field in Normandy; in England their rising
was only delayed for a few months.
Stephen, though he had shown some enterprise and capacity
in his successful snatch at the crown, was a man far below his
three predecessors on the throne in the matter of perseverance
and foresight. He was a good fighter, a liberal giver, and a
faithful friend, but he lacked wisdom, caution and the power
to organize. Starting his career as a perjurer, it is curious that
he was singularly slow to suspect perjury in others; he was the
most systematically betrayed of all English kings, because he
was the least suspicious, and the most ready to buy off and to
forgive rebels. His troubles began in 1136, when sporadic re-
bellions, raised in the name of Matilda, began to appear; they
grew steadily worse, though Stephen showed no lack of energy,
posting about his realm with a band of mercenary knights
whenever trouble broke out. But in 1138 the crisis came; the
baronage had tried the capacity of their new master and found
him wanting. The outbreak was now widespread and systematic
civil war. caused not by the turbulence of a few wild spirits,
but by the deliberate conspiracy of all who saw their
advantage in anarchy. Matilda had a few genuine partisans,
such as her half-brother Robert, earl of Gloucester, the
illegitimate son of Henry I., but the large majority of those
who took arms in her name were ready to sell their allegiance
to either candidate in return for lands, or grants of rank or
privilege. A long list of doubly and triply forsworn nobles, led
by Geoffrey de Mandeville, Aubrey de Vere and Ralph of Chester,
made the balance of war sway alternately from side to side, as
they transferred themselves to the camp of the highest bidder.
It is hard to trace any meaning in the civil war it was not a
contest between the principle of hereditary succession and the
principle of elective kingship, as might be supposed. It was
rather, if some explanation must be found for it, a strife between
the kingly power and feudal anarchy. Unfortunately for
England the kingly power was in the hands of an incapable
holder, and feudal anarchy found a plausible mask by adopting
the disguise of loyalty to the rightful heiress.
The civil war was not Stephen's only trouble; foreign invasion
was added. David I., king of Scotland, was the uncle of Matilda,
and used her wrongs as the plea for thrice invading northern
England, which he ravaged with great cruelty. His most for-
midable raid was checked by the Yorkshire shire levies, at the
battle of the Standard (Aug. 22, 1138). Yet in the following
year he had to be bought off by the grant of all Northumberland
(save Newcastle and Bamborough) to his son Earl Henry. Car-
lisle and Cumberland were already in his hands. Some years
later the Scottish prince also got possession of the great " Honour
of Lancaster." It was not Stephen's fault that the boundary of
England did not permanently recede from the Tweed and the
Solway to the Tyne and the Ribble.
But the affairs of the North attracted little attention while
the civil war was at its height in the South. In 1139 Stephen
had wrought himself fatal damage by quarrelling with the ecclesi-
astical bureaucrats, the kinsmen and allies of Roger of Salisbury,
who had been among his earliest adherents. Jealous of their
power and their arrogance, and doubting their loyalty, he im-
prisoned them and confiscated their lands. This threw the
whole church party on to the side of Matilda; even Henry,
bishop of Winchester, the king's own brother, disowned him and
passed over to the other side. Moreover, the whole machinery
of local government in the realm fell out of gear, when the
experienced ministers who were wont to control it were removed
from power.
Matilda had landed in England in the winter of 1139-1140;
for a year her partisans made steady progress against the king,
and on the 2nd of February 1141 Stephen was defeated and taken
prisoner at the battle of Lincoln. All England, save the county
of Kent and a few isolated castles elsewhere, submitted to
Matilda. She was hailed as a sovereign by a great assembly at
Winchester, over which Stephen's own brother Bishop Henry
presided (April 7, 1141) and entered London in triumph in
June. It is doubtful whether she would have obtained complete
possession of the realm if she had played her cards well, for there
were too many powerful personages who were interested in the
perpetuation of the civil war. But she certainly did her best
to ruin her own chances by showing an unwise arrogance, and
a determination to resume at once all the powers that her father
had possessed. When she annulled all the royal acts of the last
six years, declared charters forfeited and lands confiscated, and
began to raise heavy and arbitrary taxes, she made the partisans
of Stephen desperate, and estranged many of her own supporters.
A sudden rising of the citizens drove her out of London, while
she was making preparations for her coronation. The party
of the imprisoned king rallied under the wise guidance of his
wife Matilda of Boulogne and his brother Henry, and many other
of the late deserters adhered to it. Their army drove the lately
triumphant party out of Winchester, and captured its military
chief, Robert, earl of Gloucester. So much was his loss felt that
his sister exchanged him a few months later for King Stephen.
After this the war went on interminably, without complete
advantage to either side, Stephen for the most part dominating
the eastern and Matilda the western shires. It was the zenith
of the power of the baronial anarchists, who moved from camp
to camp with shameless rapidity, wresting from one or other of the
two rival sovereigns some royal castle, or some dangerous grant
of financial or judicial rights, at each change of allegiance. The
kingdom was in the desperate state described in the last melan-
choly pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, when life and property
were nowhere safe from the objectless ferocity of feudal tyrants
when " every shire was full of castles and every castle filled
with devils and evil men," and the people murmured that
" Christ and his saints slept."
Such was England's fate till 1153, when Matilda had retired
from the strife in favour of her son, Henry of Anjou, and Stephen
was grown an old man, and had just lost his heir, Eustace, to
whom he had desired to pass on the crown. Both parties were
exhausted, both were sick of the incessant treachery of their
more unscrupulous barons, and at last they came to the compro-
mise of Wallingford (October 1153), by which it was agreed that
Stephen should reign for the remainder of his life, but that on
his death the crown should pass to Henry. Both sides promised
to lay down their arms, to dismiss their mercenaries, and to
acquiesce in the destruction of unlicensed castles, of which it is
said, with no very great exaggeration, that there were at the
moment over 1000 in the realm. Henry then returned to Nor-
mandy, of which his mother had been in possession since 1145,
while Stephen turned his small remaining strength to the weary
task of endeavouring to restore the foundations of law and order.
But he had accomplished little when he died in October 1154.
The task of reconstruction was to be left to Henry of Anjou: his
predecessor was only remembered as an example of the evil that
may be done by a weak man who has been reckless enough to
seize a throne which he is incapable of defending. England has
had many worse kings, but never one who wrought her more
harm. If his successor had been like him, feudal anarchy might
have become as permanent in England as in Poland.
ENGLISH HISTORY
481
Fortunately the young lung to whom Stephen's battered
crown now fell was energetic and capable, if somewhat self-
.^ n willed and hasty. He was inferior in caution and
self-control to his grandfather Henry I., though he
resembled him in his love of strong and systematic govern-
ance. From the point of view of his English subjects his
main achievement was that he restored in almost every detail
the well-organized bureaucracy which his ancestor had created,
and with it the law and order that had disappeared during
Stephen's unhappy reign. But there was this essential difference
between the position of the two Henries, that the elder aspired
to be no more than king of England and duke of Normandy,
while the younger strove all his life for an imperial position in
western Europe. Such an ambition was almost forced upon
him by the consequences of his descent and his marriage. Besides
his grandfather's Anglo-Norman inheritance, he had received from
his father Geoffrey the counties of Anjou and Tour-aim.-, and
the predominance in the valley of the Lower Loire. But it was
his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, two years before his ac-
ceiaion to the English throne, which gave him the right to dream
of greatness such as his Norman forbears had never enjoyed.
This lady, the divorced wife of Louis VII. of France, brought to
her second husband the whole of the lands from Poitou to the
Pyrenees, the accumulated gains of many warlike ancestors. In
wealth and fighting strength the duchy of Aquitaine was a full
third of France. Added to Anjou and Normandy it made a
realm far more important than England. Hence it came that
Henry's ambitions and interests were continental more than
English. Unlike his grandfather he dwelt for the greater part
of his time beyond seas. It must be remembered, too, that
his youth had been spent abroad, and that England only came
to him when he was already a grown man. The concerns of his
island realm were a matter of high importance to him, but only
formed a pan of his cares. Essentially he was an Angevin,
neither a Norman nor an Englishman, and his primary ambition
was to make the house of Anjou supreme in France. Nor did this
seem impossible; he owned a far broader and wealthier domain
beyond the Channel than did his nominal suzerain King
Louis VII., and what was of more importance he far excelled
that prince both in vigour and in capacity.
On succeeding to the English crown, however, he came over
at once to take possession of the realm, and abode there for over
a year, displaying the most restless energy in setting to rights the
governance of the realm. He expelled all Stephen's mercenaries,
took back into his hands the royal lands and castles which his
predecessor had granted away, and destroyed hundreds of the
" adulterine " castles which the barons and knights had built
without leave during the years of the anarchy. Hardly a single
magnate dared to oppose him Bridgnorth, now a castle of the
Mortimers, was the only place which he had to take by force. His
next care was to restore the bureaucracy by which Henry I. had
been wont to govern. He handed over the exchequer to Nigel,
bishop of Ely, the nephew of the old justiciar Roger of Salisbury,
and the heir of his traditions. His chancellor was a young clerk,
Thomas Becket, who was recommended to him by archbishop
Theobald as the mopt capable official in the realm. A short
experience of his work convinced the king that his merits had
not been exaggerated. He proved a zealous and capable minister,
and such a strong exponent of the claims of the crown that no
one could have foreseen the later developments by which he was
to become their greatest enemy.
The machine of government was beginning to work in a satis-
factory fashion, and the realm was already settling down into
order, when Henry was called abroad by a rebellion raised in
Anjou by bis brother Geoffrey the first of the innumerable
dynastic troubles abroad which continued throughout his reign to
distract his attention from his duties as an English king. He
did not return for fifteen months; but when he did reappear it
was to complete the work which he had begun in 1155, to extort
from the greater barons the last of the royal fortresses which
still remained in their hands, and to restore the northern boun-
daries of the realm. Malcolm IV., the young king of Scotland,
DC. 16
was compelled to give up the earldoms of Northumberland and
Cumberland, which his father Henry had received from Stephen.
He received instead only the earldom of Huntingdon, too far
from the border to be a dangerous possession, to which he had
a hereditary right as descending from Earl Waltheof. He did
homage to the king of England, and actually followed him with
a great retinue on his next continental expedition. In the same
year (1157) Henry made an expedition into North Wales, and
forced its prince Owen to become his vassal, not without some
fighting, in which the English army received several sharp checks
at the commencement of the campaign.
Yet once more Henry's stay on the English side of the Channel
was but for a year. In 1158 he again departed to plunge into
schemes of continental conquest. This time it was an attempt
to annex the great county of Toulouse, and so to carry the
borders of Aquitaine to the Mediterranean, which distracted
him. Naturally Louis of France was unwilling to see his great
vassal striding all across his realm, and did what he could to
hinder him. Into the endless skirmishes and negotiations which
followed the raising of the question of Toulouse it would be fruit-
less to enter. Henry did not achieve his purpose, indeed he
seems to have failed to use his strength to its best advantage,
and allowed himself to be bought off by a futile marriage treaty
by which his eldest son was to marry the French king's daughter
(1160). This was to be but the first of many disappointments
in this direction; there was apparently some fatal scruple, both
in Henry's own mind and in that of his continental subjects, as
to pressing their suzerain too hard. But it must also be remem-
bered that a feudal army was an inefficient weapon for long
wars, and that the mercenaries, by whom alone it could be
replaced, were both expensive and untrustworthy. Henry
developed as far as he was able the system of " scutage " (?..)
which his grandfather had apparently invented; by this the
vassal compounded for his forty days' personal service by paying
money, with which the king could hire professional soldiers.
But even with this help he could never keep a large enough army
together.
Meanwhile England, though somewhat heavily taxed, was
at least enjoying quiet and strong governance. There is every
sign that Henry's early years were a time of returning
prosperity. But there was also much friction between ^"
the crown and its subjects. The more turbulent part
of the baronage, looking back to the boisterous times
of Stephen with regret, was reserving itself for a favourable
opportunity. The danger of feudal rebellion was not yet past,
as was to be shown ten years later. The towns did not find
Henry an easy master. He took away from London some of the
exceptional privileges which his grandfather had granted, such
as the free election of sheriffs of Middlesex, and the right of
farming the shire at a fixed rent. He asserted his power to raise
" tallages " arbitrary taxation from the citizens on occasion.
Yet he left the foundations of municipal liberty untouched,
and he was fairly liberal in granting charters which contained
moderate privileges to smaller towns. His most difficult task,
however, was to come to a settlement with the Church. The
lavish grants of Stephen had made an end of the old authority
which the Conqueror and Henry I. had exercised over the
clergy. Their successor was well aware of the fact, and was
resolved to put back the clock, so far as it was in his power. It
was not, however, on the old problems of free election, of lay
investiture, that his quarrel with the clerical body broke out,
but on the comparatively new question of the conflicting claims
of ecclesiastical and secular courts. The separate tribunals of
the church, whose erection William I. had favoured, had been
developing in power ever since, and had begun to encroach on the
sphere of the courts of the state. This was more than ever the
case since Stephen had formally granted them jurisdiction over
all suits concerning clerics and clerical property. During the
first few years of his reign Henry had already been in collision
with the ecclesiastical authorities over several such cases; he
had chafed at seeing two clerks accused of murder and black-
mailing claimed by and acquitted in the church courts; and
482
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1162-1170
most of all at the frequency of unlicensed appeals to Rome a
flagrant breach of one of the three rules laid down by Wifliam
the Conqueror. Being comparatively at leisure after the paci-
fication with France, he resolved to turn his whole attention
to the arrangement of a new modus vivendi with the church.
As a preliminary move he appointed his able chancellor Thomas
Becket to the archbishopric of Canterbury, which fell vacant in
Becket. II 6 2 - This was the greatest mistake of his reign.
Becket was one of those men who, without being
either hypocrites or consciously ambitious, live only to magnify
their office. While chancellor he was the most zealous servant
of the crown, and had seemed rather secular than clerical in his
habits and his outlook on life. But no sooner had he been
promoted to the archbishopric than he put away his former
manners, became the most formal and austere of men, and set
himself to be the champion of the church party in all its claims,
reasonable or unreasonable, against the state. The king's
astonishment was even greater than his indignation when he
saw the late chancellor setting himself to oppose him in all
things. Their first quarrel was about a proposed change in some
details of taxation, which seems to have had no specially ecclesi-
astical bearing at all. But Becket vehemently opposed it, and
got so much support when the great council met at Woodstock
that Henry withdrew his schemes. This was only a preliminary
skirmish; the main battle opened in the following year, when
the king, quite aware that he must for the future look on Thomas
as his enemy, brought forward the famous Constitutions of
Clarendon, of which the main purport was to assert the juris-
diction of the state over clerical offenders by a rather complicated
procedure, while other clauses provided that appeals to Rome
must not be made without the king's leave, that suits about land
or the presentation to benefices, in which clerics were concerned,
should be tried before the royal courts, and that bishops should
not quit the realm unless they had obtained permission to do
so from the king (see CLARENDON, CONSTITUTIONS or). Some-
what to the king's surprise, Becket yielded for a moment to his
pressure, and declared his assent to the constitutions. But he
had no sooner left the court than he proclaimed that he had
grievously sinned in giving way, suspended himself from his
archiepiscopal functions, and wrote to the pope to beg for pardon
and absolution. He then made a clandestine attempt to escape
from the realm, but was detected on the seashore and forced
to return.
Incensed with Becket for his repudiation of his original sub-
mission, Henry proceeded to open a campaign of lawsuits against
him, in order to force him to plead in secular courts. He also
took the very mean step of declaring that he should call him to
account for all the moneys that had passed through his hands
when he was chancellor, though Becket had been given a quit-
tance for them when he resigned the office more than two years
before. The business came up at the council of Northampton
(October 1164), when the archbishop was tried for refusing to
recognize the jurisdiction of the king's courts, and declared
to have forfeited his movable goods. The sentence was passed
by the lay members of the Curia Regis alone, the bishops having
been forbidden to sit, and threatened with excommunication
if they did so, by the accused primate. When Becket was visited
by the justiciar who came to rehearse the judgment, he started
to his feet, refused to listen to a word, declared his repudiation
of all lay courts and left the hall. That same night he made a
second attempt to escape from England and this time succeeded
in getting off to Flanders. From thence he fled to the court of
the pope, where he received less support than he had expected.
Alexander III. privately approved of all that he had done, and
regarded him as the champion of the Church, but he did not wish to
quarrel with King Henry. He had lately been driven from Rome
by the emperor Frederick I., who had installed an antipope in his
place, and had been forced to retire to France. If he sided with
Becket and thundered againsthispersecutor,therewassmalldoubt
that the king of England would adhere to the schism. Accord-
ingly he endeavoured to temporize and to avoid a rupture, to the
archbishop's great disgust. But since he also declared the Consti-
tutions of Clarendon uncanonical and invalid, Henry was equally
offended, and opened negotiations with the emperor and the anti-
pope. This conduct forced Alexander's hand, and he gave
Becket leave to excommunicate his enemies. The exile, who
had taken refuge in a French. abbey, placed the justiciar and six
other of the king's chief councillors under the ban of the Church,
and intimated that he should add Henry himself to the list
unless he showed speedy signs of repentance (April 1166).
Thus the quarrel had come to a head. Church and State were
at open war. Henry soon found that Becket's threats had more
effect than he liked. Many of the English clergy were naturally
on the side of the primate in a dispute which touched their
loyalty to the Church and their class feeling. Several bishops
declared to the king that, since his ministers had been duly ex-
communicated, they did not see how they could avoid regarding
them as men placed outside the pale of Christendom. Fortun-
ately the pope interfered for a moment to lighten the friction;
being threatened with a new invasion by the emperor Frederick,
he suspended the sentences and sent legates to patch up a peace.
They failed, for neither the king nor the archbishop would give
way. At this juncture Henry was desirous of getting his eldest
son and namesake crowned as his colleague, the best mode that
he could devise for avoiding the dangers of a disputed succession
at his death. He induced the archbishop of York, assisted by
the bishops of London and Salisbury, to perform the ceremony.
This was a clear invasion of the ancient rights of the primate,
and Becket took it more to heart than any other of his grievances.
Yet the next move in the struggle was a hollow reconciliation
between the combatants a most inexplicable act on both sides.
The king offered to allow Becket to return from exile, and to
restore him to his possessions, without exacting from him any
promise of submission, or even a pledge that he would not reopen
the dispute on his return. Apparently he had made a wrong
interpretation of the primate's mental attitude, and thought
him desirous of a truce, if not ready for a compromise. He had
wholly misjudged the situation; Becket made neither promises
nor threats, but three weeks after he reached Canterbury publicly
excommunicated the bishops of London and Salisbury for the
part that they had taken in the coronation of the young king, and
suspended from their functions the other prelates who had been
present at the ceremony. He then proceeded to excommunicate
a number of his minor lay enemies.
The news was carried overseas to Henry, who was then in
Normandy. It roused one of the fits of wild rage to which he
was not unfrequently liable; he burst out into ejacu-
lations of wrath, and cursed " the cowardly idle ser-
vants who suffered their master to be made the
laughing-stock of a low-born priest." Among those who stood
about him were four knights, some of whom had personal
grudges against Becket, and all of whom were reckless ruffians,
who were eager to win their master's favour by fair means or
foul. They crossed the Channel with astonishing speed; two
days after the king's outburst they stood before Becket at
Canterbury and threatened him with death unless he should
remove the excommunications and submit to his master. The
archbishop answered with words as scornful as their own, and
took his way to the minster to attend vespers. The knights went
out to seek their weapons, and when armed followed him into
the north transept, where they fell upon him and brutally slew
him with many sword-strokes (December 29, 1170). Thomas
had been given time to fly, and his followers had endeavoured
to persuade him to do so. It seems that he deliberately courted
martyrdom, anxious apparently that his death should deal the
king the bitterest blow that it was in his power to inflict (see
BECKET).
Nothing could have put Henry in such an evil plight; the
whole world held him responsible for the murder, and he was
forced to buy pardon for it by 'surrendering many ltsnsaUs-
of the advantages over the Church which he had
hoped to gain by enforcing the Constitutions of Clarendon.
Especially the immunity of clerical offenders from the juris-
diction of lay courts had to be conceded; for the rest of the
1170-1174)
ENGLISH HISTORY
483
middle ages the clerk guilty of theft or assault, riot or murder,
could plead his orders, and escape from the harsh justice of the
king's officers to the milder penalties of the bishop's tribunal.
" Benefit of clergy " became an intolerable anomaly, all the more
to because the privilege was extended in practice not only to all
persons actually in minor orders, but to all who claimed them;
any criminal who could read had a fair chance of being reckoned
a clerk. Another concession which Henry was forced to make
was that the appeals to Rome of litigants in ecclesiastical suits
should be freely permitted, provided that they made an oath
that they were not contemplating any wrong to the English
crown or the English church, a sufficiently easy condition. Such
appeals became, and remained, innumerable and vexatious.
Pope Alexander also extorted from the king a pledge that he
would relinquish any customs prejudicial to the rights of the
Church which had been introduced since his accession. To
the pope this meant that the Constitutions of Clarendon were
disavowed; to the king, who maintained that they were in the
main a mere restatement of the customs of William I., it bore
no such general interpretation. The points were fought out in
detail, and not settled for many years. Practically it became
the rule to regard suits regarding land, or presentations to bene-
fices, as pertaining to the king's court, while those regarding
probate, marriage and divorce fell to the ecclesiastical tribunal.
The question of election to bishoprics and abbacies went back
to the stage which it had reached in the time of Henry I.; the
choice was made in canonical form, by the chapters or the
monasteries, but the king's recommendation was a primary
factor in that choice. When the electors disregarded it, as was
sometimes the case, there was friction; a weak king was some-
times overruled; a strong one generally got his way in the end.
Becket's death, then, gave a qualified triumph to the church
party, and he was rightly regarded as the successful champion of
his caste. Hence they held his death in grateful remembrance;
the pope canonized him in 1173, and more churches were dedi-
cated to him during the next two centuries than to any other
English saint. In the eyes of most men his martyrdom had put
the king so much in the wrong that the obstinacy and provo-
cative conduct which had brought it about passed out of memory.
His life of ostentatious austerity, and the courage with which
he met his death, had caused all his faults to be forgotten.
Henry himself felt so much the invidious position in which he
was placed that even after making his submission to the pope's
legates at Avranches in 1172, he thought it necessary to do
penance before Becket's tomb in 1174, on which occasion he
allowed himself to be publicly scourged by the monks of Canter-
bury, who inflicted on him three cuts apiece.
Between the outbreak of the king's quarrel with Becket at
the council of Woodstock and the compromise of Avranches
DO less than ten years had elapsed the best years of Henry's
manhood. During this period his struggle with the Church had
been but one of his distractions. His policy of imperial aggran-
disement had been in progress. In 1163 he had completed the
conquest of South Wales; the marcher lords were now in
possession of the greater part of the land; the surviving Welsh
princes did homage for the rest. In 1166 Henry got practical
possession of the duchy of Brittany, the only remaining large
district of western France which was not already in his hands.
Conan. the last prince of the old Breton house, recognized him
as his lord, and gave the hand of his heiress Constance to Geoffrey,
the king's third son. When the count died in 1171 Henry did
not transfer the administration of the land to the young pair,
who were still but children, but retained it for himself, and clung
to it jealously long after his son came of age. Intermittent wars
with France during these years were of small importance; Henry
never pushed his suzerain to extremity. But the Angevin
dominions were extended in a new direction, where no English
king had yet made his power felt.
The distressful island of Ireland was at this moment enjoying
the anarchy which had reigned therein since the dawn of history.
Its state had grown even more unhappy than before since
the Danish invasions of the loth century, which had not
welded the native kingdoms into unity by pressure from without
as had been the case in England but had simply complicated
affairs, by setting up two or three alien principalities
on the coastline. As in England, the vikings had
destroyed much of the old civilization; but they had
neither succeeded in occupying the whole country nor had they
been absorbed by the natives. The state of the island was much
like that of England in the days of the Heptarchy: occasionally
a " High King " succeeded in forcing his rivals into a precarious
submission; more usually there was not even a pretence of a
central authority in the island, and the annals of objectless
tribal wars formed its sole history. King Henry's eyes had
been fixed on the faction-ridden land since the first years of his
reign. As early as 1 1 55 he had asked and obtained the approval
of Pope Adrian IV., the only Englishman who ever sat upon the
papal throne, for a scheme for the conquest of Ireland. The
Holy Sec had always regarded with distaste the existence in the
West of a nation who repudiated the Roman obedience, and
lived in schismatical independence, under local ecclesiastical
customs which dated back to the 5th century, and had never
been brought into line with those of the rest of Christendom.
Hence it was natural to sanction an invasion which might bring
the Irish within the fold. But Henry made no endeavour for
many years to utilize the papal grant of Ireland, which seems
to have been made under the preposterous " Donation of Con-
stantine," the forged document which gave the bishop of Rome
authority over all islands. It was conveniently forgotten that
Ireland had never been in the Roman empire, and so had not even
been Constantine's to give away.
Not till 1168, thirteen years after the agreement with Pope
Adrian, did the interference of the English king in Ireland
actually begin. Even then he did not take the conquest in hand
himself, but merely sanctioned a private adventure of some of
his subjects. Dermot MacMorrough, king of Leinster, an unquiet
Irish prince who for good reasons had been expelled by his
neighbours, came to Henry's court in Normandy, proffering his
allegiance in return for restoration to his lost dominions. The
quarrel with Becket, and the French war, were both distracting
the English king at the moment. He could not spare attention
for the matter, but gave Dermot leave to enlist auxiliaries among
the turbulent barons of the South Welsh Marches. The Irish
exile enlisted first the services of Maurice Fitzgerald and Robert
Fitzstephen, two half-brothers, both noted fighting men, and
afterwards those of Richard de Clare, earl of Pembroke, an
ambitious and impecunious magnate of broken fortunes. The
two barons were promised lands, the earl a greater bribe the
hand of Dermot 's only daughter Eva and the inheritance of the
kingdom of Leinster. Fitzgerald and Fitzstephen crossed to
Ireland in 1160 with a mere handful of followers. But they
achieved victories of an almost incredible completeness over
Dermot's enemies. The undisciplined hordes of the king of
Ossory and the Danes of Wexford could not stand before the
Anglo-Norman tactics the charge of the knights and the arrow-
flight of the archers, skilfully combined by the adventurous in-
vaders. Dermot was triumphant, and sent for more auxiliaries,
aspiring to evict Roderic O'Connor of Connaught from the
precarious throne of High King of Ireland. In 1170 the earl of
Pembroke came over with a larger force, celebrated his marriage
with Dermot's daughter, and commenced a series of conquests.
He took Waterford and Dublin from the Danes, and scattered
the hosts of the native princes. Early in the next spring Dermot
died, and Earl Richard, in virtue of his marriage, claimed the
kingship of Leinster. He held his own, despite the assaults of
a great army gathered by Roderic the High King, and of a viking
fleet which came to help the conquered jarls of Waterford and
Dublin. At this moment King Henry thought it necessary to
interfere; if he let more time slip away, Earl Richard would
become a powerful king and forget his English allegiance.
Accordingly, with a large army at his back, he landed at Water-
ford in 1171 and marched on Dublin. Richard did him homage
for Leinster, engaging to hold it as a palatine earldom, and not
to claim the name or rights of a king. The other adventurers
ENGLISH HISTORY
followed his example, as did, after an interval, most of the native
Irish princes. Only Roderic of Connaught held aloof in his
western solitudes, asserting his independence. The clergy,
almost without a murmur, submitted themselves to the Roman
Church.
Such was the first conquest of Ireland, a conquest too facile
to be secure. Fpur years later it appeared to be completed by
the submission of the king of Connaught, who did homage like
the rest of the island chiefs. But their oaths were as easily
broken as made, and the real subjection of the island was not
to be completed for 400 years. What happened was that the
Anglo-Norman invaders pushed gradually west, occupying the
best of the land and holding it down by castles, but leaving the
profitless bogs and mountains to the local princes. The king's
writ only ran in and about Dublin and a few other harbour
fortresses. Inland, the intruding barons and the Irish chiefs
fought perpetually, with varying fortunes. The conquest hardly
touched central and western Ulster, and left half Connaught
unsubdued: even in the immediate vicinity of Dublin the tribes
of the Wicklow Hills were never properly tamed. The English
conquest was incomplete; it failed to introduce either unity or
strong governance. After a century and a half it began to recede
rather than to advance. Many of the districts which had been
overrun in the time of the Angevin kings were lost ; many of the
Anglo-Norman families intermarried with and became absorbed
by the Irish; they grew as careless of their allegiance to the
crown as any of the native chiefs. The " Lordship of Ireland "
was never a reality till the times of the Tudors. But as long as
Henry II. lived this could not have been foreseen. The first
generation of the conquerors pushed their advance with such
vigour that it seemed likely that they would complete the
adventure. (See IRELAND: History.)
It was in 1173, the year after his return from Ireland and his
submission to the papal legates at Avranches, that King Henry
became involved in the first of a series of troubles
Rebellion^ w hich were to pursue him for the rest of his life the
oa*.'" y * rebellions of his graceless sons. His wife Eleanor of
Aquitaine had borne him many children. Henry, the
eldest surviving son, had already been crowned in 1170 as his
father's colleague and successor; not only he, but Richard the
second, and Geoffrey the third son, were now old enough to
chafe against the restraints imposed upon them by an imperious
and strong-willed father. The old king very naturally preferred
to keep his dominions united under his own immediate govern-
ment, but he had designated his eldest son as his successor in
England and Normandy, while Richard was to have his mother's
heritage of Aquitaine, and Geoffrey's wife's dowry, the duchy
of Brittany, was due to him, now that he had reached the verge
of manhood. The princes were shamelessly eager to enter on
their inheritance, the king was loath to understand that by con-
ferring a titular sovereignty on his sons he had given them a sort
of right to expect some share of real power. Their grudge
against their father was sedulously fostered by their mother
Eleanor, a clever and revengeful woman, who could never forgive
her husband for keeping her in the background in political
matters and insulting her by his frequent amours. Her old
subjects in Aquitaine were secretly encouraged by her to follow
her son Richard against his father, whom the barons of the
south always regarded as an alien and an intruder. The Bretons
were equally willing to rise in the name of Geoffrey and Constance
against the guardian who was keeping their prince too long
waiting for his inheritance. In England the younger Henry had
built himself up a party among the more turbulent section of the
baronage, who remembered with regret and longing the carnival
of licence which their fathers had enjoyed under King Stephen.
Secret agreements had also been made with the kings of France
and Scotland, who were eager to take advantage of the troubles
which were about to break out.
In 1173 the plot was complete, and Henry's three elder sons
all took arms against him, collecting Norman, Breton and Gascon
rebels in great numbers, and being backed by a French army.
At the same moment the king of Scots invaded Northumberland,
and the earls of Norfolk, -Chester and Leicester rose in the name
of the younger Henry. This was in all essentials a feudal rebellion
of the old type. The English barons were simply desirous of
getting rid of the strong and effective governance of the king,
and the alleged wrongs of his sons were an empty excuse. For
precisely the same reason all classes in England, save the more
turbulent section of the baronage, remained faithful to the elder
king. The bureaucracy, the minor landholders, the towns, and
the clergy refused to join in the rising, and lent their aid for its
suppression, because they were unwilling to see anarchy re-
commence. Hence, though the rebellious princes made head
for a time against their father abroad, the insurrection of their
partisans in England was suppressed without much difficulty.
The justiciar, Richard de Lucy, routed the army of the earl of
Leicester at Fornham in Suffolk, the castles of the rebel earls
were subdued one after another, and William of Scotland was
surprised and captured by a force of northern loyalists while
he was besieging Alnwick (1173-1174). The war lingered on
for a space on the continent; but Henry raised the siege of
Rouen, which was being attacked by his eldest son and the king
of France, captured most of Richard's castles in Poitou, and then
received the submission of his undutiful children. Showing
considerable magnanimity, he promised to grant to each of them
half the revenues of the lands in which they were his destined
heirs, and a certain number of castles to hold as their own.
Their allies fared less well; the rebel earls were subjected to
heavy fines, and their strongholds were demolished. The king
of Scots was forced to buy his liberty by doing homage to Henry
for the whole of his kingdom. Queen Eleanor, whom her husband
regarded as responsible for the whole rebellion, was placed in
a sort of honourable captivity, or retirement, and denied her
royal state.
Henry appeared completely triumphant; but the fourteen
years which he had yet to live were for the most part to be times
of trouble and frustrated hopes. He was growing old; the in-
domitable energy of his early career was beginning to slacken;
his dreams of extended empire were vanishing. In the last
period of his life he was more set on defending what he already
enjoyed, and perfecting the details of administration in his
realms, than on taking new adventures in hand. Probably the
consciousness that his dominions would be broken up among his
sons after his death had a disheartening effect upon him. At
any rate his later years bear a considerable resemblance to the
corresponding period of his grandfather's reign. The machinery
of government which the one had sketched out the other com-
pleted. Under Henry II. the circuits of the itinerant justices
became regular instead of intermittent; the judicial functions
of the Curia Regis were delegated to a permanent committee of
that body which took form as the court of king's bench (Curia
Regis in Banco). The sheriffs were kept very tightly in hand,
and under incessant supervision; once in 1170 nearly the whole
body of them were dismissed for misuse of their office. The
shire levies which had served the king so well against the feudal
rebels of 1173 were reorganized, with uniformity of weapons
and armour, by the Assize of Arms of 1181. There was also a
considerable amount of new legislation with the object of pro-
tecting the minor subjects of the crown, and the system of trial
by jurors was advanced to the detriment of the absurd old
practices of trial by ordeal and trial by wager of battle. The
13th-century jury was a rough and primitive institution, which
acted at once as accuser, witness and judge but it was at any
rate preferable to the chances of the red-hot iron, or the club of
the duellist.
The best proof that King Henry's orderly if autocratic regime
was appreciated at its true value by his English subjects, is that
when the second series of rebellions raised by his undutiful sons
began in 1182, there was no stir whatever in England, though in
Normandy, Brittany and Aquitaine the barons rose in full force
to support the young princes, whose success would mean the
triumph of particularism and the destruction of the Angevin
empire. Among the many troubles which broke down King
Henry's strong will and great bodily vigour in those unhappy
ENGLISH HISTORY
485
yean, rebellion in England was not one. For this reason he
was almost constantly abroad, leaving the administration of the
one loyal section of his realm to his great justiciar. Hence the
story of the unnatural war between father and sons has no part
in English history. It is but necessary to note that the younger
Henry died in 1183, that Geoffrey perished by accident at a
tournament in 1186, and that in 1189, when the old king's
strength finally gave out, it was Richard who was leading the
rebellion, to which John, the youngest and least worthy of the
four undutiful sons, was giving secret countenance. It was the
discovery of the treachery of this one child whom he had deemed
faithful, and loved over well, that broke Henry's heart. " Let
things go as they will; I have nothing to care for in the world
now," he murmured on his death-bed, and turned his face to the
wall to breathe his last.
The death of the younger Henry had made Richard heir to all
his father's lands from the Tweed to the Bidassoa save Brittany,
gigt^ji which had fallen to Arthur, the infant son of the un-
lucky Geoffrey. John, the new king's only surviv-
ing brother, had been declared " Lord of Ireland " by his
father in 1185, but Henry had been forced to remove him for
persistent misconduct, and had left him nothing more than a
titular sovereignty in the newly conquered island. In this
Richard confirmed him at his accession, and gave him a more
tangible endowment by allowing him to marry Isabella, the
heiress of the earldom of Gloucester, and by bestowing on him
the honour of Lancaster and the shires of Derby, Devon, Corn-
wall and Somerset. The gift was over-liberal and the recipient
was thankless; but John was distinctly treated as a vassal, not
granted the position of an independent sovereign.
Of all the medieval kings of England, Richard I. (known as
Corurde Lion) cared least for his realm on the English side of
the Channel, and spent least time within it. Though he chanced
to have been born in Oxford, he was far more of a foreigner than
his father; his soul was that of a south French baron, not that
of an English king. Indeed he looked upon England more as a
rich area for taxation than as the centre of a possible empire.
His ambitions were continental: so far as he had a policy at all
it was Angevin be would gladly have increased his dominions
on the side of the upper Loire and Garonne, and was set on keep-
ing in check the young king of France, Philip Augustus, though
the latter had been his ally during his long struggle with his
father. Naturally the policy of Richard as a newly crowned
king was bound to differ from that which he had pursued as a
rebellious prince. As regards his personal character he has
been described, not without truth, as a typical man of his time
and nothing more. He was at heart a chivalrous adventurer
delighting in war for war's sake; he was not destitute of a con-
science his undutiful conduct to his father sat heavily on his
soul when that father was once dead; he had a strong sense of
knightly honour and a certain magnanimity of soul in times of
crab; but he was harsh, thriftless, often cruel, generally lacking
in firmness and continuity of purpose, always careless of his
subjects' welfare when it interfered with his pleasure or his
ambitions of the moment. If he had stayed long in England
be would have made himself hated; but he was nearly always
absent; it was only as a reckless and spasmodic extorter of
taxation, not as a personal tyrant, that he was known on the
English side of the Channel.
At the opening of his reign Richard had one all-engrossing
desire; he was set on going forth to the Crusade for the recovery
of Jerusalem which had been proclaimed in 1187,
Ciwuu^r. partly from chivalrous instincts, partly as a penance
for his misconduct to his father. He visited England
in 1 189 only in order to be crowned, and to raise as much money
for the expedition as he could procure. He obtained enormous
some, by the moat unwise and iniquitous expedients, mainly
by selling to any buyer that he could find valuable pieces of
crown property, high offices and dangerous rights and privileges.
The king of Scotland bought for 1 5,000 marks a release from
the homage to the English crown which had been imposed upon
him by Henry II. The chancellorship, one of the two chief
offices in the realm, was sold to William Longchamp, bishop of
Ely, for 3000, though he was well known as a tactless, arrogant
and incapable person. The earldom of Northumberland, with
palatine rights, was bought by Hugh Puiset, bishop of Durham.
Countless other instances of unwise bargains could be quoted.
Having raised every penny that he could procure by legal or illegal
means, Richard crossed the Channel, and embarked at Marseilles
with a great army on the ;th of August 1 190. The only security
which, he had for the safety of his dominions in his absence was
that his most dangerous neighbour, the king of France, was also
setting out on the Crusade, and that his brother John, whose
shifty and treacherous character gave sure promise of trouble,
enjoyed a well-merited unpopularity both in England and in the
continental dominions of the crown.
Richard's crusading exploits have no connexion with the
history of England. He showed himself a good knight and a
capable general the capture of Acre and the victory of Arsuf
were highly to his credit as a soldier. But he quarrelled with all
the other princes of the Crusade, and showed himself as lacking
in tact and diplomatic ability as he was full of military capacity.
The king of France departed in wrath, to raise trouble at home;
the army gradually melted away, the prospect of recovering
Jerusalem disappeared, and finally Richard must be reckoned
fortunate in that he obtained from Sultan Saladin a peace, by
which the coastland of Palestine was preserved for the Christians,
while the Holy City and the inland was sacrificed (Sept. 2, 1192).
While returning to his dominions by the way of the Adriatic, the
king was shipwrecked, and found himself obliged to enter the
dominions of Leopold, duke of Austria, a prince whom he had
offended at Acre during the Crusade. Though he disguised
himelf, he was detected by his old enemy and imprisoned. The
duke then sold him to the emperor Henry VI., who found pre-
texts for forcing him to buy his freedom by the promise of a
ransom of 150,000 marks. It was not till February 1194 that
he got loose, after paying a considerable instalment of this vast
sum. The main bulk of it, as was to be expected, was never
made over; indeed it could not have been raised, as Richard
was well aware. But, once free, he had no scruple in cheating
the imperial brigand of his blackmail.
For five years Richard was away from his dominions as a
crusader or a captive. There was plenty of trouble during his
absence, but less than might have been expected.
The strong governance set up by Henry II. proved
competent to maintain itself, even when Richard's
ministers were tactless and his brother treacherous. A genera-
tion before it is certain that England would have been convulsed
by a great feudal rising when such an opportunity was granted
to the barons. Nothing of the kind happened between 1190 and
1 194. The chancellor William Longchamp made himself odious
by his vanity and autocratic behaviour, and was overthrown
in 1191 by a general rising, which was headed by Prince John,
and approved by Walter, archbishop of Rouen, whom Richard
had sent to England with a commission to assume the justiciar-
ship if William should prove impossible as an administrator.
Longchamp fled to the continent, and John then hoped to seize
on supreme power, even perhaps to grasp the crown. But he
was bitterly disappointed to find that he could gather few sup-
porters; the justiciar and the bureaucrats of the Curia Regis
would give him no assistance; they worked on honestly in the
name of the absent king. Among the baronage hardly a man
would commit himself to treason. In vain John hired foreign
mercenaries, garrisoned his castles, and leagued himself with
the king of France when the latter returned from the Crusade.
It was only the news of his brother's captivity in Austria which
gave the intriguing prince a transient hope of success. Boldly
asserting that Richard would never be seen alive again he went
to France, and did homage to King Philip for Normandy and
Aquitaine, as if they were already his own. Then he crossed to
England with a band of mercenaries, and seized Windsor and
Wallingford castles. But no one rose to aid him, and his garrisons
were coon being besieged by loyal levies, headed by the justiciar
and byHubert Walter,the newly elected archbishop of Canterbury.
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1194-1200
At the same time King Philip's invasion of Normandy was
repulsed by the barons of the duchy. Richard's faithful minis-
ters, despite of all their distractions, succeeded in raising the
first instalment of his ransom by grinding taxation a fourth
part of the revenue of all lay persons, a tithe from ecclesiastical
land, was raised, and in addition much church plate was seized,
though the officials who exacted it were themselves prelates.
John and Philip wrote to the emperor to beg him to detain his
captive at all costs, but Henry VI. pocketed the ransom money
and set Richard free. He reached England in March 1 194, just
in time to receive the surrender of the last two castles which were
holding out in his treacherous brother's name. With astonish-
ing, and indeed misplaced, magnanimity, Richard pardoned his
brother, when he made a grovelling submission, and restored him
to his lordship of Ireland and to a great part of his English lands.
The king abode for no more than three months in England;
he got himself recrowned at Winchester, apparently to wipe
out the stain of his German captivity and of an enforced homage
which the emperor had extorted from him. Then he raised a
heavy tax from his already impoverished subjects, sold a number
of official posts and departed to France never to return, though
he had still five years to live. He left behind Archbishop Hubert
Walter as justiciar, a faithful if a somewhat high-handed minister.
Richard's one ruling passion was now to punish Philip of
France for his unfriendly conduct during his absence. He
plunged into a war with this clever and shifty prince, which
lasted with certain short breaks of truces and treaties till
his death. He wasted his considerable military talents in a
series of skirmishes and sieges which had no great results, and
after spending countless treasures and harrying many regions,
perished obscurely by a wound from a cross-bow-bolt, received
while beleaguering Chalus, a castle of a rebellious lord of Aqui-
taine, the viscount of Limoges (April 6, 1199).
During these years of petty strife England was only reminded
at intervals of her king's existence by his intermittent demands
for money, which his ministers did their best to satisfy.
constitu- The machine of government continued to work without
tionaide- his supervision. It has been observed that, from one
veiopment. p O ; n (. o f v ; eW; England's worst kings have been her
best; that is to say, a sovereign like Richard, who per-
sistently neglected his duties, was unconsciously the foster
father of constitutional liberty. For his ministers, bureaucrats
of an orderly frame of mind, devised for their own convenience
rules and customs which became permanent, and could be cited
against those later kings who interfered more actively in the
details of domestic governance. We may trace back some small
beginnings of a constitution to the time of Henry II. himself
an absentee though not on the scale of his son. But the ten years
of Richard's reign were much more fruitful in the growth of
institutions which were destined to curb the power of the crown.
His justiciars, and especially Hubert Walter, were responsible
for several innovations which were to have far-spreading results.
The most important was an extension of the use of juries into
the province of taxation. When the government employs com-
mittees chosen by the taxpayers to estimate and assess the
details of taxation, it will find it hard to go back to arbitrary
exactions. Such a practice had been first seen when Henry II.,
in his last year, allowed the celebrated " Saladin Tithe " for
the service of the crusade to be assessed by local jurors. In
Richard's reign the practice became regular. In especial when
England was measured out anew for the great carucage of 1197
a tax on every ploughland which replaced the rough calculation
of Domesday Book knights elected by the shires shared in all
the calculations then made for the new impost. Another consti-
tutional advance was that which substituted "coroners,"
knights chosen by the county court, for the king's old factotum
the sheriff in the duty of holding the " pleas of the crown," i.e.
in making the preliminary investigations into such offences as
riot, murder or injury to the king's rights or property. The
sheriff's natural impulse was to indict every man from whom
money could be got ; the new coroners were influenced by other
motives than financial rapacity, and so were much more likely
to deal equitably with accusations. The towns also profited
in no small degree from Richard's absence and impecuniosity.
One of the most important charters to London, that which
granted the city the right of constituting itself a '' commune "
and choosing itself a mayor, goes back to October 1191, the
troubled month of Longchamp's expulsion from England. It
was given by Prince John and the ministers, who were then
supporting him against the arrogant chancellor, to secure the
adherence of London. Richard on his return seems to have
allowed it to stand. Lincoln was also given the right of electing
its own magistrates in 1194, and many smaller places owe grants
of more or less of municipal privilege to Hubert Walter acting
in the name of the absent king. The English nation began to
have some conception of a regime of fixed custom, in which its
rights depended on some other source than the sovereign's
personal caprice. The times, it may be remembered, were not
unprosperous. There had been no serious civil war since the
baronial rising of 1173. Prince John's turbulence had only
affected the neighbourhood of a few royal castles. Despite of
the frequent and heavy demands for money for the king's service,
wealth seems to have been increasing, and prosperity to have
been widespread. Strong and regular governance had on the
whole prevailed ever since Henry II. triumphed over baronial
anarchy.
III. THE STRUGGLE FOR CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY (1199-1337)
Richard's queen, Berengaria of Navarre, had borne him no
children. At the moment of his premature death his nearest
kinsmen were his worthless brother John, and the boy
Arthur of Brittany, the heir of Geoffrey, the third son
of Henry II. On his death-bed the king had designated
John as his successor, holding apparently that a bad ruler who
was at least a grown man was preferable to a child. John's claim
prevailed both in Normandy and in England, though in each,
as we are told, there were those who considered it a doubtful
point whether an elder brother's son had not a better right than
a younger brother. But the ministers recognized John, and the
baronage and nation acquiesced, though with little enthusiasm.
In the lands farther south, however, matters went otherwise.
The dowager duchess Constance of Brittany raised her son's
claim, and sent an army into Anjou, and all down the Loire
many of the nobles adhered to his cause. The king of France
announced that he should support them, and allowed Arthur to
do him homage for Anjou, Maine and Touraine. There would
have been trouble in Aquitaine also, if the aged Queen Eleanor
had not asserted her own primary and indefeasible right to her
ancestral duchy, and then declared that she transferred it to her
best loved son John. Most of her subjects accepted her decision,
and Arthur's faction made no head in this quarter.
It seemed for a space as if the new king would succeed in re-
taining the whole of his brother's inheritance, for King Philip
very meanly allowed himself to be bought off by the cession
of the county of Evreux, and, when his troops were withdrawn,
the Angevin rebels were beaten down, and the duchess of Brittany
had to ask for peace for her son. But it had not long been
granted, when John proceeded to throw away his advantage
by acts of reckless impolicy. Though cunning, he was destitute
alike of foresight and of self-control ; he could never discern the
way in which his conduct would be judged by other men, because
he lacked even the rudiments of a conscience. Ere he had been
many months on the throne he divorced his wife, Isabella of
Gloucester, alleging that their marriage had been illegal because
they were within the prohibited degrees. This act offended the
English barons, but in choosing a new queen John gave much
greater offence abroad; he carried off Isabella of Angouleme
from her affianced husband, Hugh of Lusignan, the son of the
count of la Marche, his greatest vassal in northern Aquitaine,
and married her despite the precontract. This seems to have
been an amorous freak, not the result of any deep-laid policy.
Roused by the insult the Lusignans took arms, and a great part
of the barons of Poitou joined them. They appealed for aid to
Philip of France, who judged it opportune to intervene once
IJUO-IJIO]
ENGLISH HISTORY
487
more. He summoned John to appear before him as suzerain,
to answer the complaints of his Poilevin subjects, and when he
failed to plead declared war on him and declared his dominions
escheated to the French crown for non-fulfilment of his
feudal allegiance. He enlisted Arthur of Brittany in
his cause by recognizing him once more as the rightful
owner of all John's continental fiefs save Normandy,
which he intended to take for himself. Philip then entered
Normandy, while Arthur led a Breton force into Anjou and
Poitou to aid the Lusignans. The fortune of war at first turned
in favour of the English king. He surprised his nephew while
be was besieging the castle of Mirebeau in Poitou, where the old
Queen Eleanor was residing. The young duke and most of his
chief supporters were taken prisoners (August i, 1202). Instead
of using his advantage aright, John put Arthur in secret confine-
ment, and after some months caused him to be murdered. He
m said also to have starved to death twenty-two knights of Poitou
who had been among his captives. The assassination of his
nearest kinsman, a mere boy of sixteen, was as unwise as it was
cruel. It estranged from the king the hearts of all his French
subjects, who were already sufficiently disgusted by many
minor acts of brutality, as well as by incessant arbitrary taxation
and by the reckless ravages in which John's mercenary troops
had been indulging. The French armies met with little or no
resistance when they invaded Normandy, Anjou and
Poitou. John sat inert at Rouen, pretending to take
his misfortunes lightly, and boasting that " what was
easily lost could be as easily won back." Meanwhile Philip
Augustus conquered all western Normandy, without having to
fight a battle. The great castle of Chateau Gaillard, which
guards the Lower Seine, was the only place which made a strenu-
ous resistance. It was finally taken by assault, despite of the
efforts of the gallant castellan, Roger de Lacy, constable of
Chester, who had made head against the besiegers for six months
(September 1 2Oj-March 1 204) without receiving any assistance
from his master. John finally absconded to England in December
1 203; he failed to return with an army of relief, as he had
promised, and before the summer of 1 204 was over, Caen, Bayeux
and Rouen, the last places that held out for him, had been
forced to open their gates. The Norman barons had refused to
strike a blow for John, and the cities had shown but a very
passive and precarious loyalty to him. He had made himself
so well hated by his cruelty and vices that the Normans, for-
getting their old hatred of France, had acquiesced in the conquest.
Two ties alone had for the last century held the duchy to the
English connexion: the one was that many Norman baronial
families held lands on this side of the Channel; the second was
the national pride which looked upon England as a conquered
appendage of Normandy. But the first had grown weaker as the
custom arose of dividing family estates between brothers, on the
principle that one should take the Norman, the other the English
parts of a paternal heritage. By John's time there were com-
paratively few landholders whose interests were fairly divided
between the duchy and the kingdom. Such as survived had now
to choose between losing the one or the other section of their
lands; those whose holding was mainly Norman adhered to
Philip; those who had more land in England sacrificed their
transmarine estates. For each of the two kings declared the
property of the barons who did not support him confiscated to
the crown. As to the old Norman theory that England was a
conquered land, it had gradually ceased to exist as an operative
force, under kings who, like Henry II. or Richard I., were neither
Norman nor English in feeling, but Angevin. John did not, and
could not, appeal as a Norman prince to Norman patriotism.
The successes of Philip Augustus did not cease with the
conquest of Normandy. His armies pushed forward in the south
also; Anjou, Touraine and nearly all Poitou submitted
to him. Only Guienne and southern Aquitaine held
out for King John, partly because they preferred a
weak and distant master to such a strenuous and
grasping prince as King Philip, partly because they
were far more alien in blood and language to their French
neighbours than were Normans or Angevins. The Gascons were
practically a separate nationality, and the house of Capet had
no ancient connexion with them. The kings of England were
yet to reign at Bordeaux and Bayonne for two hundred and fifty
years. But the connexion with Gascony meant little compared
with the now vanished connexion with Normandy. Henry I.
or Henry II. could run over to his continental dominions in a
day or two days; Dieppe and Harfleur were close to Ports-
mouth and Hastings. It was a different thing for John and his
successors to undertake the long voyage to Bordeaux, around
the stormy headlands of Brittany and across the Bay of Biscay.
Visits to their continental dominions had to be few and far
between; they were long, costly and dangerous when a French
fleet a thing never seen before Philip Augustus conquered
Normandy might be roaming in the Channel. The kings of
England became perforce much more home-keeping sovereigns
after 1204.
It was certainly not a boon for England that her present
sovereign was destined to remain within her borders for the
greater part of his remaining years. To know John well was to
loathe him, as every contemporary chronicle bears witness. The
two years that followed the loss of Normandy were a time of grow-
ing discontent and incessant disputes about taxation. The king
kept collecting scutagcs and tallagcs, yet barons and towns com-
plained that nothing seemed to be done with the money he col-
lected. At last, however, in 1206, the king did make an ex-
pedition to Poitou, and recovered some of its southern borders.
Yet, with his usual inconsequence, he did not follow up his
success, but made a two years' truce with Philip of France on
the basis of uti possidelis which left Normandy and all the
territories on and about the Loire in the hands of the conqueror.
It is probable that this pacification was the result of a new
quarrel which John had just taken up with a new enemy the
Papacy. The dispute on the question of free election,
which was to range over all the central years of his
reign, had just begun. In the end of 1205 Hubert Papacy.
Walter, archbishop of Canterbury, had died. The
king announced his intention of procuring the election of John
de Gray, bishop of Norwich, as his successor; but, though his
purpose was well known, the chapter (i.e. the monks of Christ
Church, Canterbury) met secretly and elected their sub-prior
Reginald as archbishop. They sent him to Rome at once, to
receive confirmation from Pope Innocent III., whom they knew
to be a zealous champion of the rights of the Church. But John
descended upon them in great wrath, and by threats compelled
them to hold a second meeting, and to elect his nominee Gray,
in whose name application for confirmation was also made to the
pope. Innocent, however, seeing a splendid chance of asserting
his authority, declared both the elections that had taken place
invalid, the first because it had been clandestine, the second
because it had been held under force, majevre, and proceeded
to nominate a friend of his own Cardinal Stephen Langton, an
Englishman of proved capacity and blameless life, then resident
in Rome. He was far the worthiest of the three candidates, but
it was an intolerable invasion of the rights of the English crown
and the English Church that an archbishop should be foisted
on them in this fashion. The representatives of the chapter
who had been sent to Rome were persuaded or compelled to
elect him in the pope's presence (Dec. 1206).
King John was furious, and not without good reason; he
refused to accept Langton, whom he declared (quite unjustly)
to be a secret friend of Philip of France, and sequestrated the
lands of the monks of Canterbury. On this the pope threatened
to lay an interdict on himself and his realm. The king replied
by issuing a proclamation to the effect that he would outlaw any
clerk who should accept the validity of such an interdict and
would confiscate his lands. Despising such threats Innocent
carried out his threat, and put England under the ban of the
Church on the 23rd of March 1208.
In obedience to the pope's orders the large majority of the
English clergy closed their churches, and suspended the ordinary
course of the services and celebration of the sacraments. Baptism
488
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1210-1214
and extreme unction only were continued, lest souls should
be lost; and marriages were permitted but not inside the walls
of churches. Foreseeing the wrath of the king against all who
obeyed the mandate from Rome, the larger number of the bishops
and many others of the higher clergy fled overseas to escape the
storm. Those who were bold enough to remain behind had much
to endure. John, openly rejoicing at the plunder that lay before
him, declared the temporalities of all who had accepted the inter-
dict, whether they had exiled themselves or no, to be confiscated.
His treasury was soon so well filled that he could dispense with
ordinary taxation. He also outlawed the whole body of the
clergy, save the timid remnant who promised to disregard the
papal commands.
Nothing proves more conclusively the strength of the Angevin
monarchy, and the decreasing power of feudalism, than that an
unpopular king like John could maintain his strife
w ' tn t ' le PP e> an( * su PP ress the discontents of his
. subjects, for nearly five years before the inevitable
explosion came. Probably his long immunity was
due in the main to the capacity of his strong-handed justiciar
Geoffrey Fitz-Peter; the king hated him bitterly, but generally
took his advice. The crash only came when Geoffrey died in
1213; his ungrateful master only expressed joy. "NowbyGod's
feet am I for the first time king of England," he exclaimed, when
the news reached him. He proceeded to fill the vacancy with a
mere Poitevin adventurer, Peter des Roches, whom he had made
bishop of Winchester some time before. Indeed John's few
trusted confidants were nearly all foreigners, such men as the
mercenary captains Gerard of Athies and Engelhart of Cigogne,
whom he made sheriffs and castellans to the discontent of all
Englishmen. He spent all his money in maintaining bands of
hired Brabanqons and routiers, by whose aid he for some time
succeeded in terrorizing the countryside. There were a few
preliminary outbreaks of rebellion, which were suppressed with
vigour and punished with horrible cruelty. John starved to
death the wife and son of William de Braose, the first baron
who took arms against him, and hanged in a row twenty-eight
young boys, hostages for the fidelity of their fathers, Welsh
princes who had dabbled in treason. Such acts provoked rage
as well as fear, yet the measure of John's iniquities was not full
till 1212. Indeed for some time his persistent prosperity pro-
voked the indignant surprise of those who believed him to be
under a curse. If his renewed war with Philip of France was
generally unsuccessful, yet at home he held his own. The most
astounding instance of his success is that in 1210 he found leisure
for a hasty expedition to Ireland, where he compelled rebellious
barons to do homage, and received the submission of more than
twenty of the local kinglets. It is strange that he came back to
find England undisturbed behind him.
His long-deserved humiliation only began in the winter of
1212-1213, when Innocent III., finding him so utterly callous
as to the interdict, took the further step of declaring
John does jjjna Deposed from the throne for contumacy, and
the"pope. handing over the execution of the penalty to the king
of France. This act provoked a certain amount of
indignation in England, and in the spring of 1213 the king was
able to collect a large army on Barham Down to resist the
threatened French invasion. Yet so many of his subjects were
discontented that he dared not trust himself to the chances of
war, and, when the fleet of King Philip was ready to sail, he sur-
prised the world by making a sudden and grovelling submission
to the pope. Not only did he agree to receive Stephen Langton
as archbishop, to restore all the exiled clergy to their benefices,
and to pay them handsome compensation for all their losses
during the last five years, but he took the strange and ignomini-
ous step of declaring that he ceded his whole kingdom to the
pope, to hold as his vassal. He formally resigned his crown into
the hands of the legate Cardinal Pandulf, and took it back as
the pope's vassal, engaging at the same time to pay a tribute of
looo marks a year for England and Ireland. This was felt
to be a humiliating transaction by many of John's subjects,
though to others the joy at reconciliation with the Church
caused all else to be forgotten. The political effect of the device
was all that John had desired. His new suzerain took him
under his protection, and forbade Philip of France to proceed
with his projected invasion, though ships and men were all ready
(May 1213). John's safety, however, was secured in a more
practical way when his bastard brother, William Longsword,
earl of Salisbury, made a descent on the port of Damme and
burnt or sunk a whole squadron of the French transports.
After this John's spirits rose, and he talked of crossing the seas
himself to recover Normandy and Anjou. But he soon found
that his subjects were not inclined to follow him; they were
resigned to the loss of the Angevin heritage, whose union with
England brought no profit to them, however much it might
interest their king. The barons expressed their wish for a peace
with France, and when summoned to produce their feudal con-
tingents pleaded poverty, and raised a rather shallow theory
to the effect that their services could not be asked for wars
beyond seas against which there were conclusive precedents
in the reigns of Henry I. and Henry II. But any plea can be
raised against an unpopular king. John found himself obliged
to turn back, since hardly a man save his mercenaries had rallied
to his standard at Portsmouth. In great anger and indignation
he marched off towards the north, with his hired soldiery, swear-
ing to punish the barons who had taken the lead in the " strike "
which had defeated his purpose. But the outbreak of war was
to be deferred for a space. Archbishop Langton, who on assum-
ing possession of his see had shown at once that he was a patriotic
English statesman, and not the mere delegate of the pope,
besought his master to hold back, and, when he refused,
threatened to renew the excommunication which had so lately
been removed. The old justiciar Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, now on
his death-bed, had also refused to pronounce sentence on the
defaulters. John hesitated, and meanwhile his enemies began
to organize their resistance.
A great landmark in the constitutional history of England
was reached when Langton assembled the leading barons,
rehearsed to them the charter issued by Henry I. on
his accession, and pointed out to them the rights fu* ltio "
and liberties therein promised by the crown to the barons.
nation. For the future they agreed to take this docu-
ment as their programme of demands. It was the first of the
many occasions in English history when the demand for reform
took the shape of a reference back to old precedents, and now
(as on all subsequent occasions) the party which opposed the
crown read back into the ancient grants which they quoted a
good deal more than had been actually conceded in them. To
Langton and the barons the charter of Henry I. seemed to cover
all the customs and practices which had grown up under the rule
of the bureaucracy which had served Henry II. and Richard I.
A correct historical perspective could hardly be expected from
men whose constitutional knowledge only ran back as far as the
memory of themselves and their fathers. The Great Charter of
1215 was a commentary on, rather than a reproduction of, the
old accession pledges of Henry I.
Meanwhile John, leaving his barons to discuss and formulate
their grievances, pushed on with a great scheme of foreign
alliances, by which he hoped to crush Philip of France,
even though the aid of the feudal levies of England ""
was' denied him. He leagued himself with his nephew France.
the emperor Otto IV. (his sister's son), and the counts
of Flanders and Boulogne, with many other princes of the
Netherlands. Their plan was that John should land in Poitou
and distract the attention of the French by a raid up the Loire,
while the emperor and his vassals should secretly mobilize a
great army in Brabant and make a sudden dash at Paris. The
scheme was not destitute of practical ability, and if it had been
duly carried out would have placed France in such a crisis of
danger as she has seldom known. It was not John's fault that the
campaign failed. He sent the earl of Salisbury with some of his
mercenaries to join the confederates in Flanders, while he sailed
with the main body of them to La Rochelle, whence he marched
northward, devastating the land before him. Philip came out
ENGLISH HISTORY
489
to meet him with the whole levy of France (April 1214), and
Paris would have been left exposed if Otto and his Netherland
vassals had struck promptly in. But the emperor was late, and
by the time that he was approaching the French frontier Philip
Augustus had discovered that John's invasion was but a feint,
executed by an army too weak to do much harm. Leaving a
small containing force on the Loire in face of the English king,
Philip hurried to the north with his main army, and on the 2;th
of July 1214 inflicted a crushing defeat on the emperor
and his allies at Bou vines near Lille. This was the
greatest victory of the French medieval monarchy. It
broke up the Anglo-German alliance, and gave the conqueror
undisturbed possession of all that he had won from the Angevin
house and his other enemies.
Indirectly Bouvines was almost as important in the history
of England as in that of France. John returned to England
foiled, and in great anger; he resolved to give up the
French war, secured a truce with King Philip by
abandoning his attempt to reconquer his lost lands
on the Loire, and turned to attack the recalcitrant subjects
who had refused to join him in his late campaign beyond the
Channel. Matters soon came to a head: on hearing that the
king was mobilizing his mercenary bands, the barons met at
Bury St Edmunds, and leagued themselves by an oath to obtain
from the king a confirmation of the charter of Henry I. (Novem-
ber 1214). At the New Year they sent him a formal ultimatum,
to which he would not assent, though he opened up futile negotia-
tion with them through the channel of the archbishop, who did
not take an open part in the rising. At Easter, nothing having
been yet obtained from the king, an army headed by five earls,
forty barons, and Giles Braose, bishop of Hereford, mustered at
Stamford and marched on London. Their captain was Robert
FitzWalter, whom they had named " marshal of the army of
God and Holy Church." When they reached the capital its
gates were thrown open to them, and the mayor and citizens
adhered to their cause (May 17). The king, who had tried to
turn them back by taking the cross and declaring himself a
crusader, and by making loud appeals for the arbitration of the
pope, was forced to retire to Windsor. He found that he had
no supporters save a handful of courtiers and officials and the
leaders of his mercenary bands; wherefore in despair he accepted
the terras forced upon him by the insurgents. On the i$th of
June 1215 he sealed at Runnymede, close to Windsor, the
famous Magma Carla, in face of a vast assembly among which
he had hardly a single friend. It is a long document of 63
clauses, in which Archbishop Langton and a committee of the
barons had endeavoured to recapitulate all their grievances,
and to obtain redress for them. Some of the clauses are un-
important concessions to individuals, or deal with matters of
trifling importance such as the celebrated weirs or " kiddles "
on Thames and Medway, or the expulsion of the condottieri
chiefs Gerard d'Athies and Engelhart de Cigogne. But many of
them are matters of primary importance in the constitutional
history of England. The Great Charter must not, however, be
overrated as an expression of general constitutional rights;
to a large extent it is a mere recapitulation of the claims of the
baronage, and gives redress for their feudal grievances in the
matters of aids, reliefs, wardships, &c., its object being the re-
pression of arbitrary exactions by the king on his tenants-in-chief .
One section, that which provides against the further encroach-
ments of the king's courts on the private manorial courts of the
landowners, might even be regarded as retrograde in character
from the point of view of administrative efficacy. But it is most
noteworthy that the barons, while providing for the abolition
of abuses which affect themselves, show an unselfish and patriotic
spirit in laying down the rule that all the concessions which the
king makes to them shall also be extended by themselves to their
own sub-tenants. The clauses dealing with the general govern-
ance of the realm are also as enlightened as could be expected
from the character of the committee which drafted the charter.
There is to be no taxation without the consent of the Great
Council of the Realm which is to consist of all barons, who are
to be summoned by individual units, and of all smaller tenants-
in-chief, who are to be called not by separate letters, but by a
general notice published by the sheriff. It has been pointed out
that this provides no representation for sub-tenants or the rest
of the nation, so that we are still far from the ideal of a repre-
sentative parliament. John himself had gone a step farther on
the road towards that ideal when in 1213 he had summoned four
" discreet men " from every shire to a council at Oxford, which
(as it appears) was never held. But this would seem to have
been a vain bid for popularity with the middle classes, which
had no result at the time, and the barons preferred to keep things
in their own hands, and to abide by ancient precedents. It was
to be some forty years later that the first appearance of elected
shire representatives at the Great Council took place. In 1215
the control of the subjects over the crown in the matter of
taxation is reserved entirely for the tenants-in-chief, great and
small.
There is less qualified praise to be bestowed on the clauses of
Magna Carta which deal with justice. The royal courts are no
longer to attend the king's person a vexatious practice when
sovereigns were always on the move, and litigants and witnesses
had to follow them from manor to manor but are to be fixed
at Westminster. General rules of indisputable equity are fixed
for the conduct of the courts no man is to be tried or punished
more than once for the same offence; no one is to be arrested
and kept in prison without trial; all arrested persons are to be
sent before the courts within a reasonable time, and to be tried
by a jury of their peers. Fines imposed on unsuccessful liti-
gants are to be calculated according to the measure of their
offence, and are not to be arbitrary penalties raised or lowered
at the king's good pleasure according to the sum that he imagined
that the offender could be induced to pay. No foreigners or other
persons ignorant of the laws of England are to be entrusted
with judicial or administrative offices.
There is only a single qlause dealing with the grievances of
the English Church, although Archbishop Langton had been the
principal adviser in the drafting of the whole document. This
clause, " that the English church shall be free," was, however,
sufficiently broad to cover all demands. The reason that
Langton did not descend to details was that the king had
already conceded the right of free canonical election and the
other claims of the clerical order in a separate charter, so that
there was no need to discuss them at length.
The special clauses for the benefit of the city of London were
undoubtedly inserted as a tribute of gratitude on the part of the
barons for the readiness which the citizens had shown in ad-
hering to their cause. There are other sections for the benefit
of the commons in general, such as that which gives merchants
full right of leaving or entering the realm with their goods on
payment of the fixed ancient custom dues. But these clauses
are less numerous than might have been expected the framers
of the document were, after all, barons and not burghers.
The most surprising part of the Great Charter to modern eyes
is its sixty-first paragraph, that which openly states doubts as to
the king's intention to abide by his promise, and appoints a
committee of twenty-five guardians of the charter (twenty-four
barons and the mayor of London), who are to coerce their master,
by force of arms if necessary, to observe every one of its clauses.
The twenty-five were to hear and decide upon any claims and
complaints preferred against the king, and to keep up their
numbers by co-optation, so that it would seem that the barons
intended to keep a permanent watch upon the crown. The
clause seems unnecessarily harsh and violent in its wording;
but it must be remembered that John's character was well known,
and that it was useless to stand on forms of politeness when
dealing with him. It seems certain that the drafters of the
charter were honest in their intentions, and did not purpose to
set up a feudal oligarchy in the place of a royal autocracy.
They were only insisting on the maintenance of what they
believed to be the ancient and laudable customs of the realm.
That the barons were right to suspect John is sufficiently
shown by his subsequent conduct. His pretence of keeping his
49
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1215-1265
promise lasted less than two months; by August 1215 he was
already secretly collecting money and hiring more mercenaries.
He wrote to Rome to beg the pope to annul the charter,
stating that all his troubles had come upon him in consequence
of his dutiful conduct to the Holy See. He also stated that
he had taken the cross as a crusader, but could not sail to
Palestine as long as his subjects were putting him in restraint.
Innocent III. at once took the hint; in September Archbishop
Langton was suspended for disobedience to papal commands,
and the charter was declared uncanonical, null and void.
The " troublers of the king and kingdom " were declared
excommunicate.
Langton departed at once to Rome, to endeavour to turn the
heart of his former patron, a task in which he utterly failed.
CMI War. Many of the clergy who had hitherto supported the
baronial cause drew back in dismay at the pope's
attitude. But the laymen were resolute, and 'prepared for
open war, which broke out in October 1215. The king, who
had already gathered in many mercenaries, gained the first
advantage by capturing Rochester Castle before the army
of the barons was assembled. So formidable did he appear to
them for the moment that they took the deplorable step of in-
viting the foreign foe to join in the struggle. Declaring John
deposed because he had broken his oath to observe the charter,
they offered the crown to Louis of France, the son of King
Philip, because he had married John's niece Blanche of Castile
and could assert in her right a claim to the throne. This was a
most unhappy inspiration, and drove into neutrality or even
into the king's camp many who had previously inclined to the
party of reform. . 'But John did his best to disgust his followers
by adopting the policy of carrying out fierce and purposeless
raids of devastation all through the countryside, while refusing
to face his enemies in a pitched battle. He bore himself like a
captain of banditti rather than a king in his own country.
Presently, when the French prince came over with a considerable
army to join the insurgent barons, he retired northward, leaving
London and the home counties to his rival. In all the south
country only Dover and Windsor castles held out for him. His
sole success was that he raised the siege of Lincoln by driving
off a detachment of the baronial army which was besieging it.
Soon after, while marching from Lynn towards Wis-
beach, he was surprised by the tide in the fords of the
Wash and lost part of his army and all his baggage and
treasure. Next day he fell ill of rage and vexation of spirit,
contracted a dysenteric ailment, and died a week later at Newark
(Oct. 19, 1216). It was the best service that he could do his
kingdom. Owing to the unwise and unpatriotic conduct of the
barons in summoning over Louis of France to their aid, John
had become in some sort the representative of national inde-
pendence. Yet he was so frankly impossible as a ruler that, save
the earls of Pembroke and Chester, all his English followers had
left him, and he had no one to back him but the papal legate
Gualo and a band of foreign mercenaries. When once he was
dead, and his heritage fell to his nine-year-old son Henry III.,
whom none could make responsible for his father's doings, the
whole aspect of affairs was changed.
The aged William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, by far the most
important and respectable personage who had adhered to John's
Henry in cause > assumed the position of regent. He at once
offered in the name of the young king pardon and
oblivion of offences to all the insurgent barons. At the
same time he reissued the Great Charter, containing all the
important concessions which John had made at Runnymede,
save that which gave the control of taxation to the tenants-in-
chief. Despite this and certain other smaller omissions, it was
a document which would satisfy most subjects of the crown,
if only it were faithfully observed. The youth of the king and
the good reputation of the earl marshal were a sufficient guaran-
tee that, for some years at any rate, an honest attempt would be
made to redeem the pledge. Very soon the barons began to
return to their allegiance, or at least to slacken in their support
of Louis, who had given much offence by his openly displayed
distrust of his partisans and his undisguised preference for his
French followers. The papal influence was at the same time
employed in the cause of King Henry, and Philip of France was
forced to abandon open support of his son, though he naturally
continued to give him secret help and to send him succours of
men and money.
The fortune of war, however, did not turn without a battle.
At Lincoln, on the 2oth of May 1217, the marshal completely
defeated an Anglo-French army commanded by the
count of Perche and the earls of Winchester and Here-
ford. The former was slain, the other two taken
prisoners, with more than 300 knights and barons. This was the
death-blow to the cause of Louis of France; when it was followed
up by the defeat in the Dover Straits of a fleet which was bringing
him reinforcements (Aug. 17), he despaired of success and asked
for terms. By the treaty of Lambeth-(Sept. n, 1217) he secured
an amnesty for all his followers and an indemnity of 10,000 marks
for himself. Less than a month later he quitted England; the
victorious royalists celebrated his departure by a second reissue
of the Great Charter, which contained some new clauses favour-
able to the baronial interest.
After the departure of Prince Louis and his foreigners the earl
marshal had to take up much the same task that had fallen to
Henry II. in 1154. Now, as at the death of Stephen, the realm
was full of " adulterine castles," of bands of robbers who had
cloaked their plundering under the pretence of loyal service to
the king or the French prince, and of local magnates who had
usurped the prerogatives of royalty, each in his own district.
It was some years before peace and order were restored in the
realm, and the aged Pembroke died in 1219 before his work was
completed. After his decease the conduct of the government
passed into the hands of the justiciar Hubert de Burgh, and the
papal legate Pandulf, to whom the marshal had specially recom-
mended the young king. Their worst enemies were those who
during the civil war had been their best friends, the mercenary
captains and upstart knights whom John had made sheriffs and
castellans. From 121910 12 24 de Burgh was constantly occupied
in evicting the old loyalists from castles which they had seized
or offices which they had disgraced. In several cases it was
necessary to mobilize an army against a recalcitrant magnate.
The most troublesome of them was Falkes de Breaute, the most
famous of King John's foreign condottieri, whose minions held
Bedford castle against the justiciar and the whole shire levy of
eastern England for nearly two months in 1224. The castle was
taken and eighty men-at-arms hanged on its surrender, but Falkes
escaped with his life and fled to France. It was not till this severe
lesson had been inflicted on the faction of disorder that the
pacification of England could be considered complete.
The fifty-six years' reign of Henry III. forms one of the periods
during which the mere chronicle of events may seem tedious
and trivial, yet the movement of national life and constitutional
progress was very important. Except during the stirring epoch
1258-1265 there was little that was dramatic or striking in the
events of the reign. Yet the England of 1272 was widely different
from the England of 1216. The futile and thriftless yet busy
and self-important king was one of those sovereigns who irritate
their subjects into opposition by injudicious activity. He was
not a ruffian or a tyrant like his father, and had indeed not a few
of the domestic virtues. But he was constitutionally incapable
of keeping a promise or paying a debt. Not being strong-
handed or capable, he could never face criticism nor suppress
discontent by force, as a king of the type of Henry I. or Henry II.
would have done. He generally gave way when pressed, without
attempting an appeal to arms; he would then swear an oath to
observe the Great Charter, and be detected in violating it again
within a few months. His greatest fault in the eyes of his subjects
was his love of foreigners; since John had lost Normandy the
English baronage had become as national in spirit as the
commons. The old Anglo-Norman houses had forgotten the
tradition of their origin, and now formed but a small section of
the aristocracy; the newer families, sprung from the officials
of the first two Henries, had always been English in spirit.
1114-1158]
ENGLISH HISTORY
491
I niortunatcly for himself the third Henry inherited the con-
tinental cosmopolitanism of his Angevin ancestors, and found
himself confronted with a nation which was growing ever more
and more insular in its ideals. He had all the ambitions of his
grandfather Henry II.; his dreams were of shuttering the
newly-formed kingdom of France, the creation of Philip Augustus,
and of recovering all the lost lands of his forefathers on the Seine
mud Loire. Occasionally his views grew yet wider he would
knit up alliances all over Christendom and dominate the West.
Nothing could have been wilder and more unpractical than the
scheme on which he set his heart in 1255-1257, a plan for con-
quering Naples and Sicily for his second son. Moreover it was
a great hindrance to him that he was a consistent friend and
supporter of the papacy. He had never forgotten the services
of the legates Pandulf and Gualo to himself and his father, and
was always ready to lend his aid to the political schemes of the
popes, even when it was difficult to see that any English interests
were involved in them. His designs, which were always shifting
from point to point of the continent, did not appeal in the least
to his subjects, who took little interest in Poitou or Touraine,
and none whatever in Italy. After the troubled limes which
had lasted from 1214 to 1224 they desired nothing more than
peace, quietness and good governance. They had no wish to
furnish their master with taxation for French wars, or to follow
his banner to distant Aquitaine. But most of all did they dislike
his practice of flooding England with strangers from beyond
seas, for whom offices and endowments had to be found. The
moment that he had got rid of the honest and capable old
justiciar Hubert de Burgh, who had pacified the country during
his minority, and set the machinery of government once more
in regular order, Henry gave himself over to fostering horde
after horde of foreign favourites. There was first his Poitevin
chancellor, Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, with a numer-
ous band of his relations and dependents. As a sample of the
king's methods it may be mentioned that he once made over
nineteen of the thirty-five sheriffdoms, within a fortnight, to Peter
of Rivaux, a nephew of the chancellor. Des Roches was driven
from office after two years (1234), and his friends and relatives
fell with him. But they were only the earliest of the king's alien
favourites; quite as greedy were the second family of his mother,
Isabella of Angoulfime, who after King John's death had married
her old betrothed, Hugh of Lusignan. Henry secured great
English marriages for three of them, and made the fourth,
Aymer, bishop of Winchester. Their kinsmen and dependents
were equally welcomed. Even more numerous and no less ex-
pensive to the realm were the Provencal and Savoyard relatives
of Henry's queen, Eleanor of Provence. The king made one of
her uncles, Boniface of Savoy, archbishop of Canterbury it
was three years before he deigned to come over to take up the
post, and then he was discovered to be illiterate and unclerical in
his habits, an unworthy successor for Langton and Edmund of
Abingdon. the great primates who went before him. Peter of
Savoy, another uncle, was perhaps the most shameless of all
the beggars for the king's bounty; not only was he made carl
of Richmond, but his debts were repeatedly paid and great sums
were given him to help his continental adventures.
King Henry's personal rule lasted from 1232, the year in
which he deprived Hubert de Burgh of his justiciarship and
confiscated most of his lands, down to 1258. It was thriftless,
arbitrary, and lacking in continuity of policy, yet not tyrannical
or cruel. If he had been a worse man he would have been put
under control long before by his irritated subjects. All through
these twenty-six years he was being opposed and criticised by
a party which embraced the wisest and most patriotic section
of the baronage and the hierarchy. It numbered among its
leaders the good archbishop, Edmund of Abingdon, and Robert
Grosseteste, the active and learned bishop of Lincoln; it was
not infrequently aided by the king's brother Richard, earl of
Cornwall, who did not share Henry's blind admiration for his
foreign relatives. But it only found its permanent guiding
spirit somewhat late in the reign, when Simon de Montfort,
earl of Leicester, became the habitual mouthpiece of the
grievances of the nation. The great earl had, oddly enough,
commenced his career as one of the king's foreign favourites.
He was the grandson of Amicia, countess of Leicester,
but his father, Simon the Elder, a magnate whose
French interests were greater than his English, had
adhered to the cause of Philip Augustus in the days of King John
and the Leicester estates had been confiscated. Simon, reared
as a Frenchman, came over in 1230 to petition for- their re-
storation. He not only obtained it, but to the great indignation
of the English baronage married the king's sister Eleanor in 1 238.
For some time he was in high favour with his brother-in-law,
and was looked upon by the English as no better than Aymer
de Valence or Peter of Savoy. But he quarrelled with the fickle
king, and adhered ere long to the party of opposition. A long
experience of his character and actions convinced barons and
commons alike that he was a just and sincere man, a friend of
good governance, and an honest opponent of arbitrary and un-
constitutional rule. He had become such a thorough English-
man in his views and prejudices, that by 12 50 he was esteemed
the natural exponent of all the wrongs of the realm. He was
austere and religious; many of his closest friends were among the
more saintly of the national clergy. By the end of his life the
man who had started as the king's unpopular minion was known
as " Earl Simon the Righteous," and had become the respected
leader of the national opposition to his royal brother-in-law.
Though Henry's taxes were vexatious and never-ending,
though his subservience to the pope and his flighty interference
in foreign politics were ever irritating the magnates cotuMion
and the people, and though outbreaks of turbulence a/England
were not unknown during his long period of personal under
rule, it would yet be a mistake to regard the central H ' ary m -
years of the i3th century as an unprosperous period for
England. Indeed it would be more correct to regard the
period as one of steady national development in wealth, culture
and unity. The towns were growing fast, and extending their
municipal liberties; the necessities of John and the facile care-
lessness of Henry led to the grant of innumerable charters and
privileges. As was to be seen again during the first period of the
reign of Charles I., political irritation is not incompatible either
with increasing material prosperity or with great intellectual
development . The king's futile activity led to ever more frequent
gatherings of the Great Council, in which the theory of the
constitution was gradually hammered out by countless debates
between the sovereign and his subjects. Every time that Henry
confirmed the Great Charter, the fact that England was already
a limited monarchy became more evident. It is curious to find
that like his father John he himself contributed unconsciously
to advances towards representative government. Btg!a-
John's writ of 12 13, bidding" discreet men "from each aiagtof
shire to present themselves at Oxford, found its
parallel in another writ of 1 253 which bids four knightly
delegates from each county to appear along with the tenants-
in-chief. for the purpose of discussing the king's needs. When
county members begin to present themselves along with the
barons at the national assembly, the conception of parliament
is already reached. And indeed we may note that the precise
word "parliament" first appears in the chroniclers and in official
documents about the middle of Henry's reign. By its end the
term is universally acknowledged and employed.
We may discern during these same years a great intellectual
activity. This was the time of rapid development in the univer-
sities, where not only were the scholastic philosophy
and systematic theology eagerly studied, but figures l' u ' flllle
appear like that of the great Roger Bacon, a scientific
researcher of the first rank', whose discoveries in optics and
chemistry caused his contemporaries to suspect him of magical
arts. His teaching at Oxford in 1250-1257 fell precisely into
the years of the worst- misgovernance of Henry III. It was the
same with law, an essentially 13th-century study; it was just
in this age that the conception of law as something not depend-
ing on the pleasure of the king, nor compiled from mere collected
ancestral customs, but existing as a logical entity, became
492
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1214-1264
generally prevalent. The feeling is thoroughly well expressed
by the partisan of Montfort who wrote in his jingling Latin
verse:
" Dicitur vulgariter ' ut rex vult lex vadit ' :
Veritas vult aliter: nam lex stat, rex cadit."
Law has become something greater than, and independent of,
royal caprice. The great lawyers of the day, of whom Bracton
is the most celebrated name, were spinning theories of its origin
and development, studying Roman precedents, and turning the
medley of half-understood Saxon and Norman customs into a
system.
Intellectual growth was accompanied by great religious
activity; it is no longer merely on the old questions of dispute
between church and state that men were straining
their minds - The re 'S n of Henry III. saw the invasion
Mars. f England by the friars, originally the moral re-
formers of their day, who preached the superiority
of the missionary life over the merely contemplative life of
the old religious orders, and came, preaching holy poverty,
to minister to souls neglected by worldly incumbents and
political prelates (see MENDICANT MOVEMENT). The mendi-
cants, Dominican and Franciscan, took rapid root in England;
the number of friaries erected in the reign of Henry III. is
astounding. For two generations they seem to have absorbed
into their ranks all the most active and energetic of those who
felt a clerical vocation. It is most noteworthy that they were
joined by thinkers such as Grosseteste, Adam Marsh, Roger
Bacon, Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. Still more strik-
ing is the fact that the friars threw themselves energetically into
the cause of political reform, and that several of their leading
brothers were the close friends and counsellors of Simon de
Montfort.
Architecture and art generally were making rapid strides
during this stirring time. The lofty Early English style had
now completely superseded the more heavy and
and art. sombre Norman, and it was precisely during the years
of the maladministration of Henry III. that some of
the most splendid of the English cathedrals, Salisbury (1220-
1258) and Wells (1230-1239), were built. The king himself,
when rearing the new Westminster Abbey over the grave of
Edward the Confessor, spent for once some of his money on a
worthy object. It may be noted that he showed a special rever-
ence for the old English royal saint, and christened his eldest
son after him; while his second bore the name of Edmund,
the East Anglian martyr. These were the first occasions on
which princes of the Angevin house received names that were
not drawn from the common continental stock, but recalled
the days before the Conquest. The reappearance of these old
English names bears witness to the fact that the vernacular
was reasserting itself. Though French was still the language
of the court and of law, a new literature was already growing
up in the native tongue, with such works as Layamon's Brut
and the Ormitlum as its first fruits. Henry III. himself on rare
occasions used English for a state document.
All these facts make it sufficiently clear that England was
irritated rather than crushed by Henry's irregular taxation and
thriftless expenditure. The nation was growing and prospering,
despite of its master's maladministration of its resources. On
several occasions when he endeavoured to commit parliaments
to back his bills and endorse his policy, they refused to help him,
and left him to face his debts as best he might. This was especi-
ally the case with the insane contract which he made with Pope
Innocent IV. in 1254, when he bound the realm of England to
find 140,000 marks to equip an army for the conquest of Naples
and Sicily. Henry lacked the energy to attempt to take by force
what he could not obtain by persuasion, and preferred to break
his bargain with the pope rather than to risk the chance of civil
war at home.
It was over this Sicilian scheme, the crowning folly of the
king, that public opinion at last grew so hot that the intermittent
criticism and grumbling of the baronage and the nation passed
into vigorous and masterful action. At the " Mad Parliament,"
which met at Oxford, 1258, the barons informed their master
that his misgovernment had grown so hopeless that they were
resolved to put him under constitutional restraints, puj/fcd/j.
They appointed a committee of twenty-four, in which content.
Simon de Montfort was the leading spirit, and en- The Pro-
trusted it with the duty, not only of formulating Q*^ O/
lists of grievances, but of seeing that they were re-
dressed. Henry found that he had practically no supporters
save his unpopular foreign relatives and favourites, and yielded
perforce. To keep him in bounds the celebrated " Provisions
of Oxford " were framed. They provided that he was to do
nothing without the consent of a permanent council of fifteen
barons and bishops, and that all his finances were to be controlled
by another committee of twenty-four persons. All aliens were
to be expelled from the realm, and even the king's household
was to be " reformed " by his self-constituted guardians. The
inevitable oath to observe honestly all the conditions of the
Great Charter of 1215 was, as usual, extorted from him with
special formalities. Though Montfort and the barons voiced the
public discontent, the constitution which they thus imposed
on the king had nothing popular about it. The royal functions
of which Henry was stripped were to be exercised by a series of
baronial committees. The arrangement was too cumbersome,
for there was nothing which would be called a central execu-
tive; the three bodies (two of twenty-four members each, the
third of fifteen) were interdependent, and none of them pos-
sessed efficient control over the others. It was small wonder
that the constitution established by the Provisions of Oxford
was found unworkable. They were not even popular the
small landholders and subtenants discovered that their interests
had not been sufficiently regarded, and lent themselves to an
agitation against the provisional government, which was got
up by Edward, the king's eldest son, who now appeared promi-
nently in history for the first time. To conciliate them the
barons allowed the " Provisions of Westminster " to be enacted
in 1259, in which the power of feudal courts was considerably
restricted, and many classes of suit were transferred to the royal
tribunals, a sufficient proof that the king's judges did not share
in the odium which appertained to their master, and were re-
garded as honest and impartial.
The limited monarchy established by the Provisions of Oxford
lasted only three years. Seeing the barohs quarrelling among
themselves, and Montfort accused of ambition and overweening
masterfulness by many of his colleagues, the king took heart.
Copying the example of his father in 1215, he obtained from the
pope a bull, which declared the new constitution irregular and
illegal, and absolved him from his oath to abide by it. He then
began to recall his foreign friends and relatives, and to assemble
mercenaries. De Montfort answered by raising an army, arrest-
ing prominent aliens, and seizing the lands which the king had
given them. Henry thereupon, finding his forces too weak to
face the earl, took refuge in the Tower of London and proposed
an arbitration. He offered to submit his case to Louis IX., the
saintly king of France, whose virtues were known and respected
all over Europe, if the baronial party would do the same. An
appeal to the pope they would have laughed to scorn; but the
confidence felt in the probity of the French king was so great
that Montfort advised his friends to accede to the proposal.
This was an unwise step. Louis was a saint, but he was also
an autocratic king, and had no knowledge of the constitutional
customs of England. Having heard the claims of the king and
the barons, he issued the mise of Amiens (Jan. 23, 1264), so called
from the city at which he dated it, a document which stated that
King Henry ought to abide by the terms of Magna Carta, to
which he had so often given his assent, but that the Provisions
of Oxford were wholly invalid and derogatory to the royal
dignity. " We ordain," he wrote, " that the king shall have full
power and free jurisdiction over his realm, as in the days before
the said Provisions." The pope shortly afterwards confirmed
the French king's award.
Simon de Montfort and his friends were put in an awk-
ward position by this decision, to which they had so unwisely
ENGLISH HISTORY
493
i-r.r.
committed themselves. But they did not hesitate to declare that
they must repudiate the misc. Simon declared that it would be
a worse perjury to abandon his oath to keep the Provisions of
Oxford than his oath to abide by the French king's award.
He took arms again at the head of the Londoners and his personal
adherents and allies. But many of the barons stood neutral,
not seeing how they could refuse to accept the arbitration they
had courted, while a number not inconsiderable joined the king,
deciding that Leicester had passed the limits of reasonable loyalty,
and that their first duty was to the crown.
Hence it came to pass that in the campaign of 1264 Simon
was supported by a minority only of the baronial class, and the
king's army was the larger. The fortune of war in-
dined at first in favour of the royalists, who captured
Northampton and Nottingham. But when it came
to open battle, the military skill of the earl sufficed
to compensate for the inferiority of his numbers. At
Lewes, on the uth of May, he inflicted a crushing defeat on the
king's army. Henry himself, his brother Richard of Cornwall,
and many hundreds of his chief supporters were taken prisoners.
His son Prince Edward, who had been victorious on his own flank
of the battle, and had not been caught in the rout, gave himself
up next morning, wishing to share his father's fate, and not to
prolong a civil war which seemed to have become hopeless.
On the day that followed his victory Leicester extorted from
the captive king the document called the " mise of Lewes,"
in which Henry promised to abide by all the terms
the Provisions of Oxford, as well as to uphold the
Great Charter and the old customs of the realm.
Montfort was determined to put his master under
political tutelage for the rest of his life. He summoned a parlia-
ment, in which four knights elected by each shire were present,
to establish the new constitution. It appointed Simon, with
his closest allies, the young earl of Gloucester and the bishop of
Chichester, as electors who were to choose a privy council for
the king and to fill up all offices of state. The king was to exer-
cise no act of sovereignty save by the consent of the councillors,
of whom three were to follow his person wherever he went.
This was a far simpler constitution than that framed at Oxford
in 1258, but it was even more liable to criticism. For if the
" Provisions " had established a government by baronial com-
mittees, the parliament of 1264 created one which was a mere
party administration. For the victorious faction, naturally but
unwisely, took all power for themselves, and filled every sheriff-
dom, castellany and judicial office with their own firm friends.
Simon's care to commit the commons to his cause by summon-
ing them to his parliament did not suffice to disguise the fact
that the government which he had set up was not representative
of the whole nation. He himself was too much like a dictator;
even his own followers complained that he was over-masterful,
and the most important of them, the young earl of Gloucester,
was gradually estranged from him by finding his requests often
refused and his aims crossed by the old earl's action. The new
government lasted less than two years, and was slowly losing
prestige all the time. Its first failure was in the repression of
the surviving royalists. Isolated castles in several districts held
out in the king's name, and the whole March of Wales was never
properly subdued. When Simon turned the native Welsh prince
Llewelyn against the marcher barons, he gave great offence;
be was accused of sacrificing Englishmen to a foreign enemy.
The new regime did not give England the peace which it had
promised; its enemies maintained that it did not even give the
good governance of which Simon had made so many promises.
It certainly appears that some of his followers, and notably his
three reckless sons, had given good cause for offence by high-
handed and selfish acts. Much indignation was provoked by
the sight of the king kept continually in ward by his privy
councillors and treated with systematic neglect; but the treat-
ment of his son was even more resented. Edward, though he
had given little cause of offence, and had behaved admirably in
refusing to continue the civil war, was deprived of his earldom
of Chester, and put under the same restraint as his father.
There was no good reason for treating him so harshly, and his
state was much pitied.
Montfort attempted to strengthen his position, and to show
his confidence in the commons, by summoning to his second
and last parliament, that of 1265, a new clement two citizens
from each city and two burgesses from each borough in the
realm. It must be confessed that his object was probably not
to introduce a great constitutional improvement, and to make
parliament more representative, but rather to compensate for
the great gaps upon the baronial benches by showing a multitude
of lesser adherents, for the towns were his firm supporters.
The actual proceedings of this particular assembly had no great
importance.
Two months later Prince Edward escaped from his confine-
ment, and fled to the earl of Gloucester, who now declared him-
self a royalist. They raised an army, which seized the fords of
the Severn, in order to prevent de Montfort who was then at
Hereford with the captive king from getting back to London
or the Midlands. The earl, who could only raise a trifling force
in the Marches, where the barons were all his enemies, failed in
several attempts to force a passage eastward. But his friends
raised a considerable host, which marched under his son Simon
the Younger and the earl of Oxford, to fall on the rear of the
royalists. Prince Edward now displayed skilful generalship
hastily turning backward he surprised and scattered the army
of relief at Kenilworth (Aug. i); he was then free to deal with
the earl, who had at last succeeded in passing the Severn during
his absence. On the 4th of August he beset Montfort 's
little force with five-fold numbers, and absolutely
exterminated it at Evesham. Simon fought most
gallantly, and was left dead on the field along with his eldest son
Henry, his justiciar Hugh Despenser, and the flower of his party.
The king fell into the hands of his son's followers, and was once
more free.
It might have been expected that the victorious party would
now introduce a policy of reaction and autocratic government.
But the king was old and broken by his late misfortunes: his
son the prince was wise beyond his years, and Gloucester and
many other of the present supporters of the crown had originally
been friends of reform, and had not abandoned their old views.
They had deserted Montfort because he was autocratic and
masterful, not because they had altogether disapproved of his
policy. Hence we find Gloucester insisting that the remnant
of the vanquished party should not be subjected to over heavy
punishment, and even making an armed demonstration, in the
spring of 1267, to demand the re-enactment of the Provisions
of Oxford. Ultimately the troubles of the realm were ended
by the Dictum of Kenilworth (Oct. 31, 1266) and the Statute
of Marlborough (Nov. 1267). The former allowed nearly all of
Montfort 's faction to obtain amnesty and regain their estates
on the payment of heavy fines; only Simon's own Leicester
estates and those of Ferrers, earl of Derby, were confiscated.
The latter established a form of constitution in which many,
if not all, of the innovations of the Provisions of Oxford were
embodied. The only unsatisfactory part of the pacification was
that Llewelyn of Wales, who had ravaged the whole March while
he was Montfort 's ally, was allowed to keep a broad region (the
greater part of the modern shire of Denbigh) which he had won
back from its English holders. His power in a more indirect
fashion extended itself over much of Mid-Wales. The line of
the March was distinctly moved backward by the treaty of 1267.
King Henry survived his restoration to nominal, if not to
actual, authority for seven years. He was now too feeble to
indulge in any of his former freaks of foreign policy,
and allowed the realm to be governed under his son's
eye by veteran bureaucrats, who kept to the old cus-
toms of the land. Everything settled down so peacefully that
when the prince took the cross, and went off to the Crusades in
1270, no trouble followed. Edward was still absent in Palestine
when his father died, on the i6th of November 1272. For the
first time in English history there was no form of election of
the new king, whose accession was quietly acknowledged by the
494
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1272-1290
officials and the nation. It was nearly two years after his
father's death that he reached England, yet absolutely no trouble
had occurred during his absence. He had taken advantage of his
leisurely journey home to pacify the turbulent Gascony, and to
visit Paris and make a treaty with King Philip III. by which
the frontiers of his duchy of Aquitaine were rectified, to some
slight extent, in his favour. He, of course, did homage for the
holding, as his father had done before him.
The reign which began with this unwonted quietness was
perhaps the most important epoch of all English medieval
Edward i. mstor y in the way of the definition and settlement of
the constitution. Edward I. was a remarkable figure,
by far the ablest of all the kings of the house of Plantagenet.
He understood the problem that was before him, the construction
of a working constitution from the old ancestral customs of the
English monarchy plus the newer ideas that had been embodied
in the Great Charter, the Provisions of Oxford, and the scanty
legislation of Simon de Montfort. Edward loved royal power,
but he was wise in his generation, and saw that he could best
secure the loyalty of his subjects by assenting to so many of
the new constitutional restraints as were compatible with his
own practical control of the policy of the realm. He was pre-
pared to refer all important matters to his parliament, and (as
we shall see) he improved the shape of that body by reintroduc-
ing into it the borough members who had appeared for the first
time in Montfort 's assembly of 1265. He would have liked
to make parliament, no doubt, a mere meeting for the voting
of taxation with the smallest possible friction. But he fully
realized that this dream was impossible, and was wise enough
to give way, whenever opposition grew too strong and bitter.
He had not fought through the civil wars of 1263-66 without
learning his lesson. There was a point beyond which it was
unwise to provoke the baronage or the commons, and, unlike
his flighty and thriftless father, he knew where that point came.
The constitutional quarrels of his reign were conducted with
decency and order, because the king knew his own limitations,
and because his subjects trusted to his wisdom and moderation
in times of crisis. Edward indeed was a man worthy of respect,
if not of affection. His private life was grave and seemly, his
court did not sin by luxury or extravagance. His chosen
ministers were wise and experienced officials, whom no man could
call favourites or accuse of maladministration. He was sincerely
religious, self-restrained and courteous, though occasionally,
under provocation, he could burst out into a royal rage. He
was a good master and a firm friend. Moreover, he had a
genuine regard for the sanctity of a promise, the one thing in
which his father had been most wanting. It is true that some-
times he kept his oaths or carried out his pledges with the literal
punctuality of a lawyer, rather than with the chivalrous gener-
osity of a knight. But at any rate he always endeavoured to
discharge an obligation, even if he sometimes interpreted it by
the strict letter of the law and not with liberality. A conscien-
tious man according to his lights, he took as his device the motto
Poctum serva, " keep troth," which was afterwards inscribed on
his tomb, and did his best to live up to it. Naturally he ex-
pected the same accuracy from other men, and when he did not
meet it he could be harsh and unrelenting in the punishment
that he inflicted. To sum up his character it must be added that
he was a very great soldier. The headlong courage which he
showed at Lewes, his first battle, was soon tempered by caution,
and already in 1 265 he had shown that he could plan a campaign
with skill. In his later military career he was the first general
who showed on a large scale how the national English weapon,
the bow, could win fights when properly combined with the
charge of the mailed cavalry. He inaugurated the tactics by
which his grandson and great-grandson were to win epoch-
making victories abroad.
Edward's reign lasted for thirty-five years, and was equally
important in constitutional development and in imperial policy.
The first period of it, 1 27 2-1 290, may be defined as mainly notable
for his great series of legislative enactments and his conquest
of Wales. The second, 1290-1307, contains his long and ulti-
mately unsuccessful attempt to incorporate Scotland into his
realm, and his quarrels with his parliament.
The changes made by Edward in constitutional law by his
great series of statutes commenced very soon after his return to
his kingdom in 1274. We may trace in all of them the coastitu-
same purpose of strengthening the power of the crown tioaai
by judicious and orderly definition of its privileges, changes.
The great enactments start with the First Statute f^f".
of Westminster (1275), a measure directed to the minster
improvement of administrative details, which was andoiou-
accompanied by a grant to the king of a permanent cest ' r -
customs-revenue on imports and exports, which soon became
more valuable to the royal exchequer than the old feudal taxes
on land. In 1278 followed the Statute of Gloucester, an act
empowering the king to make inquiry as to the right by which
old royal estates, or exceptional franchises which infringed on
the royal prerogative of justice or taxation, had passed into the
hands of their present owners. This inquest was made by the
writ Quo Warranto, by which each landholder was invited to
show the charter or warrant in which his claims rested. The
baronage were angry and suspicious, for many of their customary
rights rested on immemorial and unchartered antiquity, while
others were usurpations from the weakness of John or Henry III.
They showed signs of an intention to make open resistance;
but to their surprise the king contented himself with making
complete lists of all franchises then existing, and did no more ;
this being his method of preventing the growth of any further
trespasses on his prerogative.
Edward's next move was against clerical encroachments.
In 1279 he compelled Archbishop Peckham to withdraw some
legislation made in a synod called without the royal
permission a breach of one of the three great canons Mortmain
of William the Conqueror. Then he took the offensive
himself, by persuading his parliament to pass the Statute of
Mortmain (de religiosis). This was an act to prevent the further
accumulation of landed property in the " dead hand " of religious
persons and communities. The more land the church acquired,
the less feudal taxation came into the royal exchequer. For
undying corporations paid the king neither " reliefs " (death
duties) nor fees on wardship and marriage, and their property
would never escheat to the crown for want of an heir. The
Statute of Mortmain forbade any man to alienate land to the
church without royal licence. It was very acceptable to the
baronage, who had suffered, on a smaller scale, the same griev-
ance as the king, for when their subtenants transferred estates
to the church, they (like their masters) suffered a permanent
loss of feudal revenue. A distinct check in the hitherto
steady growth of clerical endowments began from this time,
though licences in mortmain were by no means impossible to
obtain.
The great group of statutes that date from Edward's earlier
years ends with the legislative enactments of 1285, the Second
Statute of Westminster and the Statute of Winchester, Secoad
The former contains the clause De Donis Condi- statute of
lionalibus, a notable landmark in the history of English West-
law, since it favoured the system of entailing estates. mlaster -
Hitherto life-owners of land, holding as subtenants, had pos-
sessed large powers of alienating it, to the detriment of their
superior lords, who would otherwise have recovered it, when
their vassals died heirless, as an " escheat." This custom was
primarily harmful to the king the greatest territorial magnate
and the one most prone to distribute rewards in land to his
servants. But it was also prejudicial to all tenants-in-chief.
By De Donis the tenant for life was prevented from selling his
estate, which could only pass to his lawful heir; if he had none,
it fell back to his feudal superior. Five years later this legis-
lation was supplemented by the statute Quia Emptores, equally
beneficial to king and barons, which provided that subtenants
should not be allowed to make over land to other persons, retain-
ing the nominal possession and feudal rights over it, but should
be compelled to sell it out and out, so that their successor in title
stood to the overlord exactly as the seller had done. Hitherto
ENGLISH HISTORY
495
Wlm-
they had been wont to dispose of the whole or parts of their
estates while maintaining their feudal rights over it, so that the
ultimate landlord could not deal directly with the new occupant,
whose reliefs, wardship, &c., fell to the intermediate holder who
had sold away the land. The main result of this was that, when
a baron parted with any one of his estates, the acquirer became
a tenant -in-chief directly dependent on the king, instead of being
left a vassal of the person who had passed over the land to him.
Subinfeudalion came to a complete stop, and whenever great
family estates broke up the king obtained new tenants-in-chief.
The number of persons holding immediately of the crown began
at once to multiply by leaps and bounds. As the process of the
partition of lands continued, the fractions grew smaller and
smaller, and many of the tenants-in-chief were ere long very
small and unimportant persons. These, of course, would not
form part of the baronial interest, and could not be distinguished
from any other subjects of the crown.
The Statute of Winchester, the other great legislative act of
1 185, was mainly concerned with the keeping of the peace of the
realm. It revised the arming and organization of the
national militia, the lineal descendent of the old fyrd,
and provided a useful police force for the repression of
disorder and robbery by the reorganization of watch
4*4 word. This was, of course, one more device for strengthen-
ing the power of the crown.
In the intervals of the legislation which formed the main
feature of the first half of his reign, Edward was often distracted
by external matters. He was, on the whole, on very
good terms with his first cousin, Philip III. of France;
the trouble did not come from this direction, though
there was the usual crop of feudal rebellions in Gascony. Nor
did Edward's relations with the more remote states of the con-
tinent lead to any important results, though he had many
treaties and alliances in hand. It was with Wales that his most
troublesome relations occurred. Llewelyn-ap-Gruffydd, the old
ally of de Montfort, had come with profit out of the civil wars of
1263-66, and having won much land and more influence during
the evil days of Henry III., was reluctant to see that his time
of prosperity had come to an end, now that & king of a very
different character sat on the English throne.
Friction had begun the moment that Edward returned to his
kingdom from the crusade. Llewelyn would not deign to appear
before him to render the customary homage due from Wales to
the English crown, but sent a series of futile excuses lasting over
three years. In 1277, however, the king grew tired of waiting,
invaded the principality and drove his recalcitrant vassal up
into the fastnesses of Snowdon, where famine compelled him
to surrender as winter was beginning. Llewelyn was pardoned,
but deprived of all the lands he had gained during the days of
the civil war, and restricted to his old North Welsh dominions.
He remained quiescent for five years, but busied himself in
knitting up secret alliances with the Welsh of the South, who
were resenting the introduction of English laws and customs
by the strong-handed king. In 1282 there was a sudden and
well-planned rising, which extended from the gates of Chester
to those of Carmarthen; several castles were captured by the
insurgents, and Edward had to come to the rescue of the lords-
marchers at the head of a very large army. After much checkered
tight ing Llewelyn was slain at the skirmish of Orewyn Bridge near
Builth on the 1 1 th of December 1 282. On his death the southern
rebels submitted, but David his brother continued the struggle
for three months longer in the Snowdon district, till his last
bands were scattered and he himself taken prisoner. Edward
Cmmmmnt be*** 1 ^ n ' m at Shrewsbury as a traitor, having the
t^'^-J, excuse that David had submitted once before, had
been endowed with lands in the Marches, and had
nevertheless joined his brother in rebellion. After this the king
abode for ore than a year in Wales, organizing the newly
conquered principality into a group of counties, and founding
many castles, with dependent towns, within its limits. The
" statute of Wales," issued at Rhuddlan in 1 284, provided for
the introduction of English law into the country, though a
certain amount of Celtic customs was allowed to survive. For
the next two centuries and a half the lands west of Dee and Wye
were divided between the new counties, forming the " princi-
pality " of Wales, and the " marches " where the old feudal
franchises continued, till the marcher-lordships gradually fell
by forfeiture or marriage to the crown. Edward's grip on the
land was strong, and it had need to be so, for in 1 287 and 1 294-
1295 there were desperate and widespread revolts, which were
only checked by the existence of the new castles, and subdued
by the concentration of large royal armies. In 1301 the king's
eldest surviving son Edward, who had been born at Carnarvon
in 1284, was created " prince of Wales," and invested with the
principality, which henceforth became the regular appanage
of the heirs of the English crown. This device was apparently
intended to soothe Welsh national pride, by reviving in form,
if not in reality, the separate existence of the old Cymric state.
For four generations the land was comparatively quiet, but the
great rebellion of Owen Glendower in the reign of Henry IV.
was to show how far the spirit of particularism was from
extinction.
Some two years after his long sojourn in Wales Edward made
an even longer stay in a more remote corner of his dominions.
Gascony being, as usual, out of hand, he crossed to Bordeaux in
1 286, and abode in Guienne for no less than three years, reducing
the duchy to such order as it had never known before, settling
all disputed border questions with the new king of France,
Philip IV., founding many new towns, and issuing many useful
statutes and ordinances. He returned suddenly in 1289, called
home by complaints that reached him as to the administration
of justice by his officials, who were slighting the authority of
his cousin Edmund of Cornwall, whom he had left behind as
regent. He dismissed almost the whole bench of judges, and
made other changes among his ministers. At the same time
he fell fiercely upon the great lords of the Welsh Marches, who
had been indulging in private wars; when they returned to
their evil practice he imprisoned the chief offenders, the earls
of Hereford and Gloucester, forfeited their estates, and only
gave them back when they had paid vast fines (1291). Another
act of this period was Edward's celebrated expulsion
of the Jews from England (1200). This was the con-
tinuation of a policy which he had already carried
out in Guienne. It would seem that his reasons were
partly religious, but partly economic. No earlier king could have
afforded to drive forth a race who had been so useful to the crown
as bankers and money-lenders; but by the end of the 131 h
century the financial monopoly of the Jews had been broken
by the great Italian banking firms, whom Edward had been
already employing during his Welsh wars. Finding them no
less accommodating than their rivals, he gratified the prejudices
of his subjects and himself by forcing the Hebrews to quit
England. The Italians in a few years became as unpopular as
their predecessors in the trade of usury, their practices being
the same, if their creed was not.
Meanwhile in the same year that saw the expulsion of the
Jews, King Edward's good fortune began to wane, with the rise
of the Scottish question, which was to overshadow
the latter half of his reign. Alexander III., the last f""'
male in direct descent of the old Scottish royal house, Scotland.
had died in 1286. His heiress was his only living
descendant, a little girl, the child of his deceased daughter
Margaret and Eric, king of Norway. After much discussion,
for both the Scottish nobles and the Norse king were somewhat
suspicious, Edward had succeeded in obtaining from them a
promise that the young queen should marry his heir, Edward of
Carnarvon. This wedlock would have led to a permanent union
of the English and Scottish crowns, but not to an absorption
of the lesser in the greater state, for the rights of Scotland were
carefully guarded in the marriage-treaty. But the scheme was
wrecked by the premature death of the bride, who expired by
the way, while being brought over from Norway to her own
kingdom, owing to privations and fatigue suffered on a tem-
pestuous voyage.
49 6
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1286-1295
She had no near relatives, and more than a dozen Scottish
or Anglo-Scottish nobles, distantly related to the royal line, put
in a claim to the crown, or at least to a part of the royal heritage.
The board of six regents, who had been ruling Scotland for the
young queen, seeing their own power at an end and civil war
likely to break out, begged Edward of England to arbitrate
between the claimants. The history of the next twenty years
turned on the legal point whether the arbitrator acted as
he himself contended in the capacity of suzerain, or as the
Scots maintained in that of a neighbour of acknowledged
wisdom and repute, invited to settle a domestic problem. This
question of the relations between the English and the Scottish
crowns had been raised a dozen times between the days of
Edward the Elder and those of Henry III. There was no deny-
ing the fact that the northern kings had repeatedly done homage
to their greater neighbours. But, save during the years when
William the Lion, after his captivity, had owned himself the
vassal of Henry II. for all his dominions, there was considerable
uncertainty as to the exact scope of the allegiance which had
been demanded and given. And William's complete submission
had apparently been cancelled, when Richard I. sold him in
1 190 a release from the terms of the treaty of Falaise. Since that
date Alexander II. and Alexander III. had repeatedly owned
themselves vassals to the English crown, and had even sat in
English parliaments. But it was possible for patriotic Scots to
contend that they had done so only in their capacity as English
barons for they held much land south of Tweed and to point
to the similarity of their position to that of the English king
when he did homage for his duchy of Guienne at Paris, without
thereby admitting any suzerainty of the French crown over
England or Ireland. On the last occasion when Alexander III.
had owned himself the vassal of Edward I., there had been con-
^siderable fencing on both sides as to the form of the oath, and, as
neither sovereign at the moment had wished to push matters to a
rupture, the words used had been intentionally vague, and both
parties had kept their private interpretations to themselves.
But now, when Edward met the Scottish magnates, who had
asked for his services as arbitrator, he demanded that they
should acknowledge that he was acting as suzerain and overlord
of the whole kingdom of Scotland. After some delay, and with
manifest reluctance, the Scots complied; their hand was forced
by the fact that most of the claimants to the crown had hastened
to make the acknowledgment, each hoping thereby to prejudice
the English king in his own favour.
This submission having been made, Edward acted with honesty
and fairness, handing over the adjudication to a body of eighty
Scottish and twenty-four English barons, knights and bishops.
These commissioners, after ample discussion and taking of
evidence, adjudged the crown to John Baliol, the grandson of the
eldest daughter of Earl David, younger brother of William the
Lion. They ruled out the claimof Robert Bruce, the son of David's
second daughter, who had raised the plea that his descent was
superior because he was a generation nearer than Baliol to their
common ancestor. This theory of affinity had been well known
in the I2th century, and had been urged in favour of King John
when he was contending with his nephew Arthur. But by 1291
it had gone out of favour, and the Scottish barons had no hesi-
tation in declaring Baliol their rightful king. Edward at once
gave him seizin of Scotland, and handed over to him the royal
castles, which had been placed in his hands as a pledge during
the arbitration. In return Baliol did him homage as overlord
of the whole kingdom of Scotland.
This, unfortunately, turned out to be the beginning, not the
end, of troubles. Edward was determined to exact all the
ordinary feudal rights of an overlord whatever might have been
the former relations of the English and Scottish crowns. The
Scots, on the other hand, were resolved not to allow of the intro-
duction of usages which had not prevailed in earlier times, and
to keep the tie as vague and loose as possible. Before Baliol had
been many months on the throne there was grave friction on
the question of legal appeals. Scottish litigants defeated in the
local courts began to appeal to the courts of Westminster, just
as Gascon litigants were wont to appeal from Bordeaux to Paris.
King John and his baronage, relying on the fact that such
evocation of cases to a superior court had never before been
known, refused to allow that it was valid. King Edward insisted
that by common feudal usage it was perfectly regular, and
announced his intention of permitting it. Grave friction had
already begun when external events precipitated an open rupture
between the king of England and his new vassal.
Philip III. of France, who had always pursued a friendly
policy with his cousin of England, had died in 1285, and had
been succeeded by his son Philip IV., a prince of a
very different type, the most able and unscrupulous of g,^""
all the dynasty of Capet. In 1294 he played a most Philip IV.
dishonourable trick upon King Edward. There had
been some irregular and piratical fighting at sea between English
and Norman sailors, in which the latter had been worsted.
When called to account for the doings of his subjects, as well
as for certain disputes in Gascony, the English king promised
redress, and, on the suggestion of Philip, surrendered, as a
formal act of apology, the six chief fortresses of Guienne, which
were to be restored when reparation had been made. Having
garrisoned the places, Philip suddenly changed his line, refused
to continue the negotiations, and declared the whole duchy
forfeited. Edward was forced into war, after having been tricked
out of his strongholds. Just after his first succours had sailed
for the Gironde, the great Welsh rebellion of 1294 broke out, and
the king was compelled to turn aside to repress it. This he
accomplished in the next spring, but meanwhile hardly a foot-
hold remained to him in Gascony. He was then preparing
to cross the Channel in person, when Scottish affairs began
to become threatening. King John declared himself unable to
restrain the indignation of his subjects at the attempt to enforce
English suzerainty over Scotland, and in July 1295 leagued
himself with Philip of France, and expelled from his realm the
chief supporters of the English alliance. Finding himself in-
volved in two wars at once, Edward made an earnest appeal to
his subjects to rise to the occasion and " because that which
touches all should be approved of all " summoned the
celebrated " model parliament " of November 1295, " mo dei
which exactly copied in its constitution Montfort's pariia-
parliament of 1265, members from all cities and meat " of
boroughs being summoned along with the knights of
the shires, and the inferior clergy being also represented by their
proctors. This system henceforth became the normal one, and
the English parliament assumed its regular form, though the
differentiation of the two houses was not fully completed
till the next century. Edward was voted liberal grants by
the laity, though the clergy gave less than he had hoped;
but enough money was obtained to fit out two armies, one
destined for the invasion of Scotland, the other for that of
Gascony.
The French expedition, which was led by the king's brother
Edmund, earl of Lancaster, failed to recover Gascony, and came
to an ignominious end. But Edward's own army
achieved complete success in Scotland. Berwick was
stormed, the Scottish army was routed at Dunbar
(April 2 7), Edinburgh and Stirling were easily captured,
and at last John Baliol, deserted by most of his adherents,
surrendered at Brechin. Edward pursued his triumphant march
as far as Aberdeen and Elgin, without meeting further resistance.
He then summoned a parliament at Berwick, and announced
to the assembled Scots that he had determined to depose King
John, and to assume the crown himself. The ease with which
he had subdued the realm misled him ; he fancied that the slack
resistance, which was mainly due to the incapacity and un-
popularity of Baliol, implied the indifference of the Scots to the
idea of annexation. The alacrity with which the greater part
of the baronage flocked in to do him homage confirmed him
in the mistaken notion. He appointed John, earl Warenne r
lieutenant of the realm, with Hugh Cressingham, an English
clerk, as treasurer, but left nearly all the minor offices in Scottish
hands, and announced that Scottish law should be administered.
1396-1303]
ENGLISH HISTORY
497
He then returned to England, and began to make preparations
for a great expedition to France in 1297.
His plan was something more ambitious than a mere attempt
to recover Bordeaux; succours were to go to Gascony, but he
JMwMtM himself and the main army were to invade France from
** MM the north with the aid of the count of Flanders. Much
?**JP[ _** money was, of course, needed for the double ex-
"**' pedition, and in raising it Edward became involved
in two desperate constitutional disputes. Though the barons
and the commons voted a liberal grant at the parliament of
Bury (Nov. 1206) the clergy would give nothing. This was
owing to a bull the celebrated Clericis Laicos, recently issued
by the arrogant and contentious pope Boniface VIII., which
forbade the clergy to submit to any taxation by secular princes.
Robert Winchelsea, the archbishop of Canterbury, an enthusi-
astic exponent of clerical rights and grievances, declared himself
in conscience bound to obey the pontiff, and persuaded the
representatives of the Church in the parliament to refuse
supplies. The king, indignant that an attempt should be made
to exempt the vast ecclesiastical lands from taxation at a time
of national crisis, sequestrated the estates of the see of Canter-
bury, and copied John's conduct in 1208 by outlawing the
whole body of the clergy. Winchelsea in return excommuni-
cated all those who refused to recognize the authority of the
pope's bull.
Scarcely was this quarrel developed when Edward found
himself involved in an equally hot dispute with the commons
and the baronage. In his eagerness to collect the sinews of war
he had issued orders for the levy of a heavy customs duty on
wool, the main export of the land, and in some cases laid hands
on the wool itself, which lay ready for shipping, though this
had not been granted him by the late parliament. The " mal-
tolt " or illegal tax as his subjects called it, provoked the anger
of the whole body of merchants in England. At the same time
the barons, headed by the earls of Norfolk and Hereford, raised
the old grievance about feudal service beyond seas, which had
been so prominent in the time of King John. Norfolk, who
had been designated to lead the expedition to Guienne, declared
that though he was ready to follow his master to Flanders in his
capacity of marshal, he would not be drafted off to Gascony
against his own will. Hereford and a number of other barons
gave him beany support.
Harassed by these domestic troubles, the king could not carry
out his intention of sailing for Flanders in the spring, and spent
the greater pan of the campaigning season in wrangles with
his subjects. He was obliged to come to a compromise. If the
clergy would give him a voluntary gift, which was in no way
to be considered a tax, he agreed to inlaw them. They did so,
and even Winchelsea, after a time, was reconciled to his master.
As to the barons, the king took the important constitutional
step of conceding that he would not ask them to serve abroad
as a feudal obligation, but would pay them for their services,
if they would oblige him by joining his banner. Even then
Norfolk and Hereford refused to sail; but the greater pan of
the minor magnates consented to serve as stipendiaries. The
commons were conciliated by a promise that the wool which
the royal officers had seized should be paid for, when a balance
was forthcoming in the exchequer.
By these means Edward succeeded at last in collecting a
considerable army, and sailed for Flanders at the end of August.
But he was hardly gone when dreadful news reached
him from Scotland. An insurrection, to which no
great importance was attached at first, had broken
out in the summer. Its first leader was none of the
great barons, but a Renfrewshire knight, Sir William Wallace;
but ere long more important persons, including Robert Bruce,
earl of Carrick (grandson of Robert Bruce of Annandale, one
of the competitors for the crown of Scotland), and the bishop
of Glasgow, were found to be in communication with the rebels.
Earl Warenne, the king's lieutenant in Scotland, mustered his
forces to put down the rising. On the nth of September 1297
he attempted to force the passage of the Forth at Stirling Bridge,
and was completely beaten by Wallace, who allowed half the
English army to pass the river and then descended upon it and
annihilated it, while Warenne looked on helplessly from the
other bank. Almost the whole of Scotland rose in arms on
hearing of this victory, but the barons showed less zeal than
the commons, owing to their jealousy of Wallace. Warenne
retired to Berwick and besought his master for aid.
Edward, who was just commencing an autumn campaign in
Flanders which was to lead to no results, sent home orders to
summon a parliament, which should raise men and money for
the Scottish war. It was called, and made a liberal grant for
that purpose, but Archbishop Winchelsea and the earls of Norfolk
and Hereford took advantage of their master's needs, and of
his absence, to assert themselves. Taking up the position of
defenders of the constitution, they induced the parliament to
couple its grants of money with the condition that the king
should not only confirm Magna Carta as had been so often done
before but give a specific promise that no " maltolts," or other
taxes not legally granted him, should be raised for the future.
Edward received the petition at Ghent, and made the required
oath. The document to which he gave his assent, the Con-
firmatio Cartarum (less accurately called the statute Thf
De Tallagio nun concedendo) marked a distinct advance "Coattr-
beyond the theories of Magna Carta; for the latter "<* C*f-
had been drawn up before England possessed a parlia-
ment, and had placed the control of taxation in the hands of
the old feudal council of tenants-in-chief, while the Confirmalio
gave it to the assembly, far more national and representative,
which had now superseded the Great Council as the mouthpiece
of the whole people of the realm.
The Scottish revolt had become so formidable that Edward
was compelled to abandon his unfruitful Flemish campaign;
he patched up an unsatisfactory truce with the king of France,
which left four-fifths of his lost Gascon lands in the power of
the enemy, and returned to England in the spring of 1298. In
July he invaded Scotland at the head of a formidable army of
15,000 men, and on the 22nd of that month brought Wallace
to action on the moors above Falkirk. The steady Scottish
infantry held their own for some time against the charge of the
English men-at-arms. But when Edward brought forward his
archers to aid his cavalry, as William I. had done at Hastings,
Wallace's columns broke up, and a dreadful slaughter followed.
The impression made on the Scots was so great that for some
years they refused to engage in another pitched battle. But
the immediate consequences were not all that might have been
expected. Edward was able to occupy many towns and castles,
but the broken bands of the insurgents lurked in the hills and
forests, and the countryside as a whole remained unsubdued.
Wallace went to France to seek aid from King Philip, and his
place was taken by John Comyn, lord of Badenoch, a nephew of
Baliol, who was a more acceptable leader to the Scottish nobles
than the vanquished knight of Falkirk. Edward was detained
in the south for a year, partly by negotiations with France,
partly by a renewed quarrel with his parliament, and during his
absence Comyn recovered Stirling and most of the other places
which had received English garrisons. It was not till 1300 that
the king was able to resume the invasion of Scotland, with an
army raised by grants of money that he had only bought by
humiliating concessions to the will of his parliament , formulated
in the Articidi super cartas which were drawn up in the March
of that year. Even then he only succeeded in recovering some
border holds, and the succeeding campaign of 1301 only took
him as far as Linlithgow. But in the following year his position
was suddenly changed by unexpected events abroad; the king
of France became involved in a desperate quarrel with the pope,
and at the same moment his army received a crushing defeat
before Courtrai at the hands of the Flemings. To free himself
for these new struggles Philip made up his mind to conclude
peace with England, even at the cost of sacrificing his conquests
in Gascony. Bordeaux had already revolted from him, and
he gave up the rest of his ill-gotten gains of 1 294 by the treaty
of Paris (May 20, 1303).
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1303-1307
Scotland,
1303.
Now that he had only a single war upon his hands Edward's
position was entirely changed. There was no more need to
Edward conciliate the magnates nor the parliament. His dis-
agaia la- pleasure fell mainly on the archbishop and the earl
vades of Norfolk, who had so long led the opposition.
Winchelsea was put in disgrace, and ultimately exiled.
Norfolk, who was childless, was forced to sign a grant
by which his lands went to the king after his death a harsh
and illegal proceeding, for he had collateral heirs. But the Scots,
as was natural, bore the brunt of the king's wrath. In June
1303, a month after the peace of Paris, he advanced from Rox-
burgh, determined to make a systematic conquest of the realm,
and not to return till it was ended. He kept up his campaign
throughout the winter, reduced every fortress that held out, and
carried his arms as far as Aberdeen and Elgin. In February
1304 the regent Comyn and most of the Scottish baronage sub-
mitted, on the promise that they should retain their lands on
doing homage. Wallace, who had returned from France, kept
up a guerilla warfare in the hills for a year more, but was cap-
tured in July 1305, and sent to London to be executed as a
traitor. Even before his capture it seemed that Scotland was
thoroughly tamed, and was destined to share the fate of Wales.
Edward's arrangements for the administration of the conquered
kingdom were wise and liberal, if only the national spirit of the
Scots could have tolerated them. The Scottish parliament was
to continue, though representatives from beyond Tweed were
also to be sent to the English parliament. The sheriffdoms
and most of the ministerial posts were left in the hands of Scots,
though the supreme executive authority was put in the hands
of John of Brittany, earl of Richmond, the king's nephew.
The land seemed for a time to be settling down, and indeed the
baronage were to such a large extent English in both blood and
feeling, that there was no insuperable difficulty in conciliating
them. A considerable fraction of them adhered consistently to the
English cause from this time forth, and ultimately lost their lands
for refusing to follow the rest of the nation in the next insurrection.
But the delusion that Scotland had been finally subdued was
to last only for a year, although in 1305 Edward seemed to have
accomplished his task, and stood triumphant, with the northern
realm at his feet, his domestic foes humbled, and France and the
papacy defeated. His last short interval of peaceful rule was
distinguished by the passing of the Statute of Trailbaston in the
parliament of 1305. This was a measure for the repression of
local riots, empowering justices in every shire to suppress club-
men (trailbastons) , gangs of marauders who had been rendering
the roads unsafe.
In the first month of 1306, however, the weary Scottish war
broke out again, with the appearance of a new insurgent chief.
Robert Bruce, earl of Carrick, grandson of the claimant
to t ^ le t nrone f I2 9 2 > had hitherto pursued a shifty
policy, wavering between submission and opposition
to the English invader. He had been in arms more than once, but
had finally adhered to the pacification of 1304, and was now
entirely trusted by the king. But he was secretly plotting re-
bellion, disgusted (as it would seem) that Edward had not trans-
ferred the crown of Scotland to the line of Bruce when the house
of Baliol was found wanting. Though he found himself certain
of a considerable amount of support, he yet could see that there
would be no general rising in his favour, for many of the mag-
nates refused to help in making king a baron whom they re-
garded as no more important than one of themselves. But the
insurrection was precipitated by an unpremeditated outrage.
Bruce was conferring at Dumfries with John Comyn, the late
regent, whom he was endeavouring to tempt into his plots, on
the loth of January 1306. An angry altercation followed, for
Comyn would have nothing to do with the scheme, and Bruce
and his followers finally slew him before the altar of a church
into which he had fled. After this crime, which combined the
disgrace of sacrilege with that of murder under tryst, Bruce
was forced to take arms at once, though his preparations were
incomplete. He raised his banner, and was hastily crowned at
Scone on the 25th of March; by that time the rising had burst
Brace*
out in many shires of Scotland, but it was neither unanimous nor
complete. Edward by no means despaired of crushing it, and
had raised a large army, when he was smitten with an illness
which prevented him from crossing the border. But his troops,
under Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, pressed north, and
surprised and routed Bruce at Methven near Perth. The
pretender's brother Nigel and many of his chief supporters were
taken prisoners, and he himself escaped with a handful of
followers and took refuge in the Western islands. Edward
ordered young Nigel Bruce and many other captives to be
executed; for he was provoked to great wrath by the rebellion
of a magnate who had given him every assurance of loyalty.
He intended to follow de Valence to Scotland, and to complete
the suppression of the rising in person. But this proved beyond
his strength; he struggled as far as the border in July, but could
not shake off his disease, and was forced to linger, a broken
invalid, in the neighbourhood of Carlisle for many months.
Meanwhile his lieutenants failed to follow up with energy the
victory gained at Methven, and in the next spring Bruce re-
appeared in the Lowlands, gathered new levies, and inflicted
a defeat on de Valence at Loudoun Hill. Roused to anger
King Edward rose from his bed, mounted his horse, and started
for Scotland. But after struggling on for a few miles he fell by
the way, and died at Burgh-on-Sands, just inside the English
border, on the 7th of July 1307.
Despite the chequered fortunes of his later years the reign of
Edward had been a time of progress and prosperity for England.
He had given his realm good and strong governance;
according to his lights he had striven to keep faith
and to observe his coronation oath. He had on more
than one occasion quarrelled with his subjects, but
matters had never been pushed to an open rupture. The king
knew how to yield, and even opponents like Winchelsea and the
earls of Norfolk and Hereford respected him too much to drive
him to an extremity. The nation, however much it might
murmur, would never have been willing to rebel against a sove-
reign whose only fault was that he occasionally pressed his pre-
rogative too far. Edward's rule was seldom or never oppressive,
the seizure of the merchants' wool in 1297 was the only one of
his acts which caused really fierce and widespread indignation.
For his other arbitrary proceedings he had some show of legal
justification in every case. It would have been absurd to
declare that his rule was tyrannical or his policy disastrous.
The realm was on the whole contented and even flourishing.
Population was steadily increasing, and with it commerce; the
intellectual activity which had marked the reign of Henry III.
was still alive; architecture, religious and military, was in its
prime. He was himself a great builder, and many of the per-
fected castles of that concentric style, which later ages have
called the " Edwardian type," were of his own planning. In
ecclesiastical architecture his reign represents the early flower
of the " Decorated " order, perhaps the most beautiful of all
the developments of English art.... In many respects the reign
may be regarded as the culmination and crowning point of the
middle ages. It certainly gave a promise of greatness and steady
progress which the i4th century was far from justifying.
With the great king's death a sudden change for the worse
was at once visible. The individual character of the reigning
king was still the main factor in political history, Edward u
and Edward II. was in every respect a contrast to his
father. He was incorrigibly frivolous, idle and apathetic;
his father had given him much stern schooling, but this
seems only to have inspired him with a deeply rooted dis-
like for official work of any kind. He has been well described
as " the first king since the Conquest who was not a man of
business." Even Stephen and Henry III. had been active and
bustling princes, though their actions were misguided and in-
consequent. But Edward II. hated all kingly duties; he
detested war, but he detested even more the routine work of
administration. He was most at bis ease in low company,
his favourite diversion was gambling, his best trait a love for
farming and the mechanical arts of the smith and the gardener.
3<>7-i3'4)
ENGLISH HISTORY
499
IIM
His first acts on coming to the throne caused patriotic English-
men to despair. His father, on his deathbed, had made him
swear to conduct the Scottish expedition to its end.
But he marched no further than Dumfries, and then
turned back, on the vain pretext that he must conduct
his parent's funeral in person. Leaving Bruce to gather fresh
strength and to commence the tedious process of reducing the
numerous English garrisons in Scotland, he betook himself to
London, and was not seen on the border again for more than
three yean. He then dismissed all his father's old ministers,
and replaced them by creatures of his own, for the most part
persons of complete incompetence. But his most offensive act
was to promote to the position of chief councillor of the crown,
and dispenser of the royal favours, a clever but vain and osten-
tatious Gascon knight, one Piers Gaveston, who had been the
companion of his boyhood, and had been banished by Edward I.
for encouraging him in his follies and frivolity. Piers was given
the royal title of earl of Cornwall, and married to the king's
niece; when Edward went over to France to do homage for
Gascony, he even made his friend regent during his absence, in
preference to any of his kinsmen. It was his regular habit to
refer those who came to him on matters of state to " his good
brother Piers," and to refuse to discuss them in person.
It was of course impossible that the nation or the baronage
should accept such a preposterous rfgime, and Edward was soon
involved in a lively struggle with his subjects. Of
the leaders of opposition in his father's reign both
Hereford and Norfolk were now dead. But Arch-
bishop Winchelsea had returned from exile in a belli-
gerent mood, and the place of Norfolk and Hereford was taken
by an ambitious prince of the royal house, Thomas, earl of
Lancaster, the son of the younger brother of Edward I. Thomas
was selfish and incompetent, but violent and self-assertive,
and for some years was able to pose successfully as a patriot
simply because he set himself to oppose every act of the un-
popular king. He had several powerful baronial allies the
earls of Warwick, Pembroke and Warenne, with Humphrey
Bohun of Hereford, who had succeeded to his father's politics,
though he had married the king's own sister.
The annals of the early years of Edward II. are mainly filled
by contemporary chroniclers with details of the miserable strife
between the king and his barons on the question of
Gaveston's unconstitutional position. But the really
important feature of the time was the gradual rccon-
quest of Scotland by Robert Bruce, during the con-
tinuance of the domestic strife in England. Edward I. had laid
such a firm grip on the northern realm that it required many
years to undo his work. A very large proportion of the Scottish
nobility regarded Bruce as a usurper who had opened his career
with murder and sacrilege, and either openly opposed him or
denied him help. His resources were small, and it was only by
constant effort, often chequered by failures, that he gradually
fought down his local adversaries, and reduced the English
garrisons one by one. Dumbarton and I.inlithgow were only
mastered, in 1312. Penh did not finally fall into his hands till
1313; Edinburgh, Roxburgh and Stirling were still holding out
in 1314. During all this time the English king only once went
north of the Border in 1311 and then with a very small army,
for Lancaster and his friends had refused to join his banner.
Yet even under such conditions Bruce had to retire to the
mountains, and to allow the invaders to range unopposed
through I-othian and Fife, and even beyond the Tay. With
ordinary capacity and perseverance Edward II. might have
mastered his enemy; indeed the Comyns and Umfravilles and
other loyalist barons of Scotland would have carried out the
business for him. if only he had given them adequate support.
But he spent what small energy he possessed in a wretched
strife of chicanery and broken promises with Thomas of Lan-
caster and his party, dismissing and recalling Gaveston according
to the exigencies of the moment, while he let the Scottish war
shift for itself. It must be confessed that the conduct of his
adversaries was almost as contemptible and unpatriotic. They
refused to aid in the war, as if it was the king's private affair and
not that of the nation. And repeatedly, when they had Edward
at their mercy and might have dictated what terms they pleased
to him, they failed to rise to the situation. This was especially
the case in 1311, when the king had completely submitted
in face of their armed demonstrations. Instead of introducing
any general scheme of reform they contented themselves with
putting him under the tutelage of twenty-one " lords TAe
ordainers," a baronial committee like that which had Lonlt
been appointed by the Provisions of Oxford, fifty Or-
years back. Edward was not to levy an army, appoint dalatn -"
an official, raise a tax, or quit the realm without their leave.
He had also to swear an obedience to a long string of consti-
tutional limitations of his power, and to promise to remove-
many practical grievances of administration. But there were
two great faults in the proceedings of Thomas of Lancaster and
his friends. The first was that they ignored the rights of the
commons save indeed that they got their ordinances confirmed
by parliament and put all power into the hands of a council
which represented nothing but the baronial interest. The second,
and more fatal, was that this council of " ordainers," when
installed in office, showed energy in nothing save in persecuting
the friends of Edward and Gaveston; it neglected the general
welfare of the realm, and in particular made no effort whatever
to end the Scottish war. It was clearly their duty either to make
peace with Robert Bruce, or to exert themselves to crush him;
but they would do neither.
Gaveston's unhappy career came to an end in 1312. After
he had been twice exiled, and had been twice recalled by the
king, he was besieged in Scarborough and captured by the earl
of Pembroke. He was being conducted to London to be tried
in parliament, when his two greatest enemies, Thomas of Lan-
caster and Guy, earl of Warwick, took him out of the hands of
his escort, and beheaded him by the wayside without any legal
authority or justification. The unhappy king was compelled
to promise to forget and forgive this offence, and was then
restored to a certain amount of freedom and power; the barons
believed that when freed from the influence of Gaveston he
would prove a less unsatisfactory sovereign. The experiment
did not turn out happily. Bruce having at last made an almost
complete end of the English garrisons within his realm, laid siege
to Stirling, the last and strongest of them all, in the spring of
1313. Compelled by the pressure of public opinion to attempt
its relief, Edward crossed the border in June I3i4,with an army
of 20,000 foot and 4000 men-at-arms. He found Bruce prepared
to dispute his advance on the hillside of Bannockburn,
2 m. in front of Stirling, in a strong position with a j
stream in front and his flanks covered by rows of pit- h ura .
falls, dug to discomfit the English cavalry. The Scots,
as at Falkirk, were ranged in solid clumps of pikemen above the
burn, with only a small reserve of horse. The English king,
forgetting his father's experiences, endeavoured to ride down
the enemy by headlong frontal charges of his men-at-arms, and
made practically no attempt to use his archery to advantage.
After several attacks had been beaten off with heavy loss, the
English host recoiled in disorder and broke up the king, who
had kept in the rear all day, was one of the first to move off.
The flower of his knights had fallen, including his nephew, the
earl of Gloucester, who was the only one of the great magnates
of the realm who had shown loyalty to him during the last six
years. The Scots also made many prisoners; the disaster was
complete, and the wrecks of the beaten army dispersed before
reaching the border. Bruce followed them up, and spent the
autumn in ravaging Northumberland and Cumberland.
Thomas of Lancaster, who had refused to join in the late
campaign, took advantage of its results to place the king once
more in complete tutelage. His household was dis-
missed, he was bidden to live as best he could on an
allowance of 10 a day, and all his ministers and L*aca*ter.
officials were changed. For more than three years
Lancaster practically reigned in his cousin's name; it was soon
found that the realm got no profit thereby, for Earl Thomas,
5
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1315-1325
though neither so apathetic nor so frivolous as Edward, was
not a whit more competent to conduct either war or domestic
administration. The Scots swept everything before them,
ravaging the north at their will, and capturing Berwick. They
even made a great expedition to Ireland, where Bruce's brother
Edward was proclaimed king by the rebellious Celtic septs, and
rode across the whole island, exterminating the Anglo-Irish
population in many districts (1315-1317). But the colonists
rallied, and cut to pieces a great Irish army at Athenry (1316),
while in the next year Roger Mortimer, a hard-handed baron
of the Welsh march, crossed with reinforcements and drove back
Edward Bruce into the north. Resuming his advance after a
space, the rebel king was routed and slain at Dundalk (Oct. 14,
11318) and the insurrection died out. But it had had the perma-
nent result of weakening the king's grip on the north and west of
Ireland, where the Englishry had been almost exterminated.
From this time forth until the reign of Henry VIII. the limit of
the country in full subjection to the crown was always shrinking,
and the Irish chiefs of the inland continued to pay less and less
attention to orders issued from Dublin or London.
Though the Scottish expedition to Ireland had been beaten
off, this was not in the least to be ascribed to the credit of
Lancaster, who was showing the grossest incompetence as an
administrator. He could neither protect the Border, nor even
prevent private civil wars from breaking out, not only on the
Welsh marches (where they had always been common), but even
in the heart of England. The most extraordinary symptom
of the time was a civic revolt at Bristol (1316), where the towns-
folk expelled the royal judges, and actually stood a siege before
they would submit. Such revolts of great towns were normal
in Germany or Italy, but almost unknown on this side of the
Channel. All this unrest might well be ascribed to Lancaster's
want of ability, but he had also to bear with less justice the
discontent caused by two years of famine and pestilence. In
August 1318 he was removed from power by a league formed
by Pembroke, Warenne, Arundel and others of the lords or-
dainers, who put a new council in power, and showed themselves
somewhat less hostile to the king than Earl Thomas had been.
Edward was allowed to raise an army for the siege of Berwick,
and was lying before its walls, when the Scots, turning his flank,
made a fierce foray into Yorkshire, and routed the shire-levy under
Archbishop Melton at the battle of Myton. This so disheartened
the king and the council that controlled him that they concluded
a two years truce with Robert of Scotland, thus for the first time
acknowledging him as a regular enemy and no mere rebel (1319).
The time of comparative quiet that followed was utilized
by the king in an attempt to win back some of his lost authority.
For a short space Edward showed more capacity
and energy than he had ever been supposed to possess.
Probably this was due entirely to the fact that he
had come under the influence of two able men who had
won his confidence and had promised him revenge for the
murdered Gaveston. These were the two Hugh Despensers,
father and son; the elder was an ambitious baron who hated
Lancaster, the younger had been made Edward's chamberlain
in 1318 and had become his secret councillor and constant
companion. Finding that the king was ready to back them in
all their enterprises, the Despensers resolved to take the fearful
risk of snatching at supreme power by using their master's
name to oust the barons who were now directing affairs from
their position. The task was the more easy because Lancaster
was at open discord with the men who had supplanted him, so
that the baronial party was divided; while the mishaps of the
last six years had convinced the nation that other rulers could
be as incompetent and as unlucky as the king. Indeed, there
was a decided reaction in Edward's favour, since Lancaster and
his friends had been tried and found wanting. Moreover, the
Despensers felt that they had a great advantage over Gaveston
in that they were native-born barons of ancient ancestry and
good estate: the younger Hugh, indeed, through his marriage
with the sister of the earl of Gloucester who fell at Bannockburn,
was one of the greatest landowners on the Welsh border: they
ThcDe-
spensers.
could not be styled upstarts or adventurers. Edward's growing
confidence in the Despensers at last provoked the notice and
jealousy of the dominant party. The barons brought up many
armed retainers to the parliament of 1321, and forced the king
to dismiss and to condemn them to exile. But their discom-
fiture was only to last a few months; in the following October
a wanton outrage and assault on the person and retinue of
Edward's queen, Isabella of France, by the retainers of Lord
Badlesmere, one of Pembroke's associates, provoked universal
reprobation. The king made it an excuse for gathering an army
to besiege Badlesmere's castle at Leeds; he took it and hanged
the garrison. He then declared the Despensers pardoned, and
invited them to return to England. On this Thomas of Lan-
caster and the more resolute of his associates took arms, but
the majority both of the baronage and of the commons remained
quiescent, public opinion being rather with than against the
king. The rebels displayed great indecision, and Lancaster
proved such a bad general that he was finally driven into the
north and beaten at the battle of Boroughbridge (March 16,
1322), where his chief associate, the earl of Hereford,
was slain. Next day he surrendered, with the wreck Bxecutloa
of his host. But the king, who showed himself un- Lancaster.
expectedly vindictive, beheaded him at once; three
other peers, Badlesmere, Clifford and Mowbray,were subsequently
executed, with a score of knights.
Such severity was most impolitic, and Lancaster was ere long
hailed as a saint and a martyr. But for the moment the king
seemed triumphant; he called a parliament which revoked the
" ordinances " of 1311, and replaced the Despensers in power.
For the remaining four years of his reign they were omnipotent;
but able and unscrupulous as they were, they could not solve
the problem of successful governance. To their misfortune the
Scottish war once more recommenced, King Robert having
refused to continue the truce. The fortune of Edward II. now
hung on the chance that he might be able to maintain the struggle
with success; he raised a large army and invaded Lothian, but
Bruce refused a pitched battle, and drove him off with loss by
devastating the countryside around him. Thereupon Edward,
to the deep humiliation of the people, sued for another cessation
of hostilities, and obtained it by conceding all that Robert asked,
save the formal acknowledgment of his kingly title. But peace
did not suffice to end Edward's troubles; he dropped back into
his usual apathy, and the Despensers showed themselves so harsh
and greedy that the general indignation only required a new
leader in order to take once more the form of open insurrection.
The end came in an unexpected fashion. Edward had quarrelled
with his wife Isabella, who complained that he made her the
" handmaid of the Despensers," and excluded her from her
proper place and honour. Yet in 1325 he was unwise enough
to send her over to France on an embassy to her brother
Charles IV., and to allow his eldest son Edward, prince of Wales,
to follow her to Paris. Having the boy in her power, and being
surrounded by the exiles of Lancaster's faction, she set herself
to plot against her husband, and opened up com- ReMlloa
munications with the discontented in England. It was otQueca
in vain that Edward besought her to return and to re- 'Isabella
store him his son ; she came back at last.but at the head mf
of an army commanded by Roger, Lord Mortimer, the '
most prominent survivor of the party of Earl Thomas, with
whom she had formed an adulterous connexion which they for
some time succeeded in keeping secret.
When she landed with her son in Essex in September 1326,
she was at once joined by Henry of Lancaster, the heir of Earl
Thomas, and most of the baronage of the eastern ^position
counties. Even the king's half-brother, the earl of and
Norfolk, rallied to her banner. Edward and the De- murder of
spensers, after trying in vain to raise an army, fled ^ want
into the west. They were all caught by their pursuers; '
the two Despensers were executed the one at Bristol, the other
at Hereford. Several more of Edward's scanty band of friends
the earl of Arundel and the bishop of Exeter and others were
also slain. Their unhappy master was forced to abdicate on
IJJ6-IJ40]
ENGLISH HISTORY
Mania
the .-oth of January 1327, his fourteen-year old son being pro-
claimed king in his stead. He was allowed to survive in close
prison some eight months longer, but when his robust con-
stitution defied all attempts to kill him by privations, he was
murdered by the orders of the queen and Mortimer at Berkeley
Castle on the list of September.
The three years regency of Isabella, during the minority of
Edward III., formed a disgraceful episode in the history of
England. She was as much the tool of Mortimer as
her husband had been the tool of the Dcspensers, and
their relations became gradually evident to the whole
nation. All posts of dignity and emolument were
kept for their personal adherents, and a new and formidable
dignity was conferred on Mortimer himself, when he was made
both justiciar of the principality of Wales, and also earl of March,
in which lay both his own broad lands and the estates of De-
spenser and Arundel, which he had shamelessly appropriated.
It is surprising that the adulterous pair succeeded in maintain-
ing themselves in power for so long, since the ignominy of the
situation was evident. They were even able to quell the first
attempt at a reaction, by seizing and beheading Edmund, earl
of Kent, the late king's half-brother, who was betrayed while
organizing a plot for their destruction. The one politic act of
Mortimer's administration, the conclusion of a permanent peace
with Scotland by acknowledging Bruce as king (1328), was not
one which made him more popular. The people called it " the
shameful peace of Northampton," and firmly believed that he
had been bribed by the Scots.
Yet Isabella and her paramour held on to power for two years
after the peace, and were only overthrown by a blow from an
unexpected quarter. When the young king had
reached the age of eighteen he began to understand
the disgraceful nature of his own situation. Having
secured promise of aid from Henry of Lancaster, his cousin, and
other barons, he executed a coup de main, and seized Mortimer
in his chamber at midnight. The queen was also put under
guard till a parliament could be called. It met, and at the
king's demand passed sentence on the earl for the murder of
Edward II. and other crimes. He was hanged at Tyburn (Nov.
1330); the queen suffered nothing worse than complete ex-
clusion from power, and lived for more than twenty years in
retirement on the manors of her dowry.
Edward III., who thus commenced his reign ere he was out
of his boyhood, was, as might have been foretold from his prompt
action against Mortimer, a prince of great vigour and enterprise.
He showed none of his father's weakness and much of his grand-
father's capacity. He fell short of Edward I. in steadiness of
character and organizing power, but possessed all his military
capacity and his love of work. Unfortunately for England his
ambition was to be the mirror of chivalry rather than a model
administrator. He took up and abandoned great enterprises
with equal levity; he was reckless in the spending of money;
and in times of trouble he was careless of constitutional pre-
cedent, and apt to push his prerogative to extremes. Yet like
Edward I. he was popular with his subjects, who pardoned him
much in consideration of his knightly virtues, his courage, his
ready courtesy and his love of adventure. In most respects
be was a perfect exponent of the ideals and foibles of his age,
and when he broke a promise or repudiated a debt he was but
displaying the less satisfactory side of the habitual morality of the
1 4th century the chivalry of which was often deficient in the less
showy virtues. With all his faults Edward during his prime
was a capable and vigorous ruler; and it was not without reason
that not England only but all western Europe looked up to him
as the greatest king of his generation.
His early yean were specially fortunate, as his rule contrasted
in the most favourable way with that of his infamous mother
Btwmrt and hi* contemptible father. The ministers whom
///. be substituted for the creatures of Mortimer were
*"**" capable, if not talented administrators. He did much to
restore the internal peace of the realm, and put down
the local disorders which had been endemic for the last twenty
years. Moreover, when the war with Scotland recommenced
he gave the English a taste of victory such as they had not
enjoyed since Falkirk. Robert Bruce was now dead and his
throne was occupied by the young David II., whose factious
nobles were occupied in civil strife when, in 1332, a pretender
made a snatch at the Scottish throne. This was Edward, the
son of John Baliol, an adventurous baron who collected all the
" disinherited " Scots lords, the members of the old English
faction who had been expelled by Bruce, and invaded the realm
at their head. He beat the regent Mar at the battle of Dupplin,
seized Perth and Edinburgh, and crowned himself at Scone.
But knowing that his seat was precarious he did homage to the
English king, and made him all the promises that his father had
given to Edward I. The temptation was too great for the young
king to refuse; he accepted the homage, and offered the aid of
his arms. It was soon required, for Baliol was ere long expelled
from Scotland. Edward won the battle of Halidon Hill (July 19,
1333) where he displayed considerable tactical skill captured
Berwick, and reconquered a considerable portion of Scotland for
his vassal. Unfortunately for himself he made the mistake of
requiring too much from Baliol forcing him to cede Lothian,
Tweeddale and the larger part of Galloway, and to promise a
tribute. These terms so irritated the Scots, who had shown signs
of submission up to this moment, that they refused to accept
the pretender, and kept up a long guerilla warfare which ended
in his final expulsion. But the fighting was all on Scottish
ground, and Edward repeatedly made incursions, showy if not
effective, into the very heart of the northern realm; on one
occasion he reached Inverness unopposed. He held Perth till
1339, Edinburgh till 1341, and was actually in possession of much
Scottish territory when his attention was called off from this
minor war to the greater question of the struggle with France.
Meanwhile he had acquired no small military reputation, had
collected a large body of professional soldiers whose experience
was to be invaluable to him in the continental war, and had
taught his army the new tactics which were to win Crejy and
Poitiers. For the devices employed against the Scottish
" schiltrons " of pikemen at Dupplin and Halidon, were the
same as those which won all the great battles of the Hundred
Years' War the combination of archery, not with cavalry (the
old system of Hastings and Falkirk) , but with dismounted men-
at-arms. The nation, meanwhile prosperous, not vexed by over-
much taxation, and proud of its young king, was ready and
willing to follow him into any adventure that he might indicate.
IV. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR (1337-1453)
Wars between England and France had been many, since
William the Conqueror first linked their fortunes together by
adding his English kingdom to his Norman duchy. Ctatet of
They were bound to recur as long as the kings who the
ruled on this side of the Channel were possessed of Hundred
continental dominions, which lay as near, or nearer, to *
their hearts than their insular realm. While the king-
dom of France was weak, monarchs like Henry II. and Richard I.
might dream of extending their transmarine possessions to the
detriment of their suzerain at Paris. When France had grown
strong, under Philip Augustus, the house of Plantagenet still
retained a broad territory in Gascony and Guienne, and the house
of Capet could not but covet the possession of the largest sur-
viving feudal appanage which marred the solidarity of their
kingdom. There had been a long interval of peace in the I3th
century, because Henry III. of England was weak, and Louis IX.
of France an idealist, much more set on forwarding the
welfare of Christendom than the expansion of France. But
the inevitable struggle had recommenced with the accession of
the unscrupulous Philip IV. Its cause was simple; France
was incomplete as long as the English king ruled at Bordeaux
and Bayonne, and far up the valleys of the Garonne and the
Adour. From 1 293 onward Philip and his sons had been striving
to make an end of the power of the Plantagenets in Aquitaine,
sometimes by the simple argument of war, more frequently by the
insidious process of encroaching on ducal rights, summoning
502
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1337-1345
litigants to Paris, and encouraging local magnates and cities
alike to play off their allegiance to their suzerain against that to
their immediate lord. Both in the time of Edward II. and in
that of his son active violence had several times been called
in to aid legal chicanery. Fortunately for the duke of Guienne
the majority of his subjects had no desire to become French-
men; the Gascons felt no national sympathy with their neigh-
bours of the north, and the towns in especial were linked to
England by close ties of commerce, and had no wish whatever
to break off their allegiance to the house of Plantagenet. The
English rule, if often weak, had never proved tyrannical, and
they had a great dread of French taxes and French officialism.
But there were always individuals, more numerous among the
noblesse than among the citizens, whose private interests im-
pelled them to seek the aid of France.
The root of the Hundred Years' War, now just about to
commence, must be sought in the affairs of Guienne, and not in
any of the other causes which complicated and obscured the
outbreak of hostilities. These, however, were sufficiently im-
portant in themselves. The most obvious was the aid which
Philip VI. had given to the exiled David Bruce, when he was
driven out of Scotland by Edward and his ally Baliol. The
English king replied by welcoming and harbouring Robert
of Artois, a cousin whom Philip VI. had expelled from France.
He also made alliances with several of the dukes and counts of
the Netherlands, and with the emperor Louis the Bavarian,
obviously with the intention of raising trouble for France on
her northern and eastern frontiers.
It was Philip, however, who actually began the war, by declar-
ing Guienne and the other continental dominions of Edward III.
forfeited to the French crown, and sending out a fleet
otthe'war which ravaged the south coast of England in 1337.
In return Edward raised a claim to the throne of
France, not that he had any serious intention of pressing it
for throughout his reign he always showed himself ready
to barter it away in return for sufficient territorial gains
but because such a claim was in several ways a useful asset to
him both in war and in diplomacy. It was first turned to account
when the Flemings, who had scruples about opposing their liege
lord the king of France, found it convenient to discover that,
since Edward was the real king and not Philip, their allegiance
was due in the same direction whither their commercial interests
drew them. Led by the great demagogue dictator, Jacob van
Artevelde, they became the mainstay of the English party in
the Netherlands.
Edward's claim such as it was rested on the assertion that
his mother, Isabella, was nearer of kin to her brother Charles
Edward IV., the last king of the main line of the house of Capet,
///. and than was Charles's cousin Philip of Valois. The French
the Fnnch i aW y e rs ruled that heiresses could not succeed to the
crown themselves, but Edward pleaded that they
could nevertheless transmit their right to their sons. He found
it convenient to forget that the elder brother of Charles IV.,
King Louis X., had left a daughter, whose son, the king of
Navarre, had on this theory a title preferable to his own. This
prince, he said, had not been born at the time of his grand-
father's death, and so lost any rights that might have passed to
him had he been alive at that time. A far more fatal bar to
Edward's claim than the existence of Charles of Navarre was the
fact that the peers of France, when summoned to decide the
succession question nine years before, had decided that Philip
of Valois had the sole valid claim to the crown, and that Edward
had then done homage to him for Guienne. If he pleaded that
in 1328 he had been the mere tool of his mother and Mortimer,
he could be reminded of the unfortunate fact that in 1331, after
he had crushed Mortimer, and taken the power into his own
hands, he had deliberately renewed his oath to King Philip.
Edward's claim to the French crown embittered the strife in
a most unnecessary fashion. It was an appeal to every dis-
contented French vassal to become a traitor under a plausible
show of loyalty, and from first to last many such persons utilized
it. It also gave Edward an excuse for treating every loyal
Battle of
Slays.
Frenchman as guilty of treason, and, to his shame, he did not
always refrain from employing such a discreditable device.
Yet, as has been already said, he showed his consciousness of the
fallacy of his claim by offering to barter it again and again during
the course of the war for land or money. But he finally passed
on the wretched fiction as a heritage of his descendants, to cause
untold woes in the isth century. It is seldom in the world's
history that a hollow legal device such as this has had such long
enduring and deplorable results.
In the commencement of his continental war Edward took
little profit either from his assumption of the French royal title,
or from the lengthy list of princes of the Low Countries
whom he enrolled beneath his banner. His two land-
campaigns of 1339 and 1340 led to no victories or
conquests, but cost enormous sums of money. The Netherland
allies brought large contingents and took high pay from the king,
but they showed neither energy nor enthusiasm in his cause.
When Philip of Valois refused battle in the open, and confined
his operations to defending fortified towns, or stockading himself
in entranched camps, the allies drifted off, leaving the king with
his English troops in force too small to accomplish anything.
The sole achievement of the early years of the war which was
of any profit to Edward or his realm was the great naval triumph
of Sluys (June 24, 1340), which gave the English the command
of the sea for the next twenty years. The French king had built
or hired an enormous fleet, and with it threatened to invade
England. Seeing that he could do nothing on land while his com-
munications with the Low Countries were endangered by the
existence of this armada, Edward levied every ship that was to
be found, and brought the enemy to action in the Flemish
harbour of Sluys. After a day of desperate hand to hand
fighting for the vessels grappled and the whole matter was
settled by boarding the French fleet was annihilated. Hence-
forth England was safe from coast raids, could conduct her
commerce with Flanders without danger, and could strike with-
out difficulty at any point of the French littoral. But it was
not for some years that Edward utilized the advantage that
Sluys had given him. As long as he persevered in the attempt
to conduct the invasion of the northern frontier of France he
achieved nothing.
Such schemes were finally abandoned simply because the king
discovered that his allies were worthless and that his money
was all spent. On his return from Flanders in 1340
he became involved in an angry controversy with his crisis?*'
ministers, whom he accused, quite unjustly, of wasting Trial at
his revenue and wrecking his campaign thereby. He Anl >-
imprisoned some of them, and wished to try his late s^.*^^
chancellor, Archbishop Stratford, for embezzlement,
in the court of the exchequer. But the primate contended
very vigorously for the right to be tried before his peers, and
since the king could get no subsidies from his parliament till he
acknowledged the justice of this claim, he was forced to concede
it. Stratford was acquitted the king's thriftlessness and not
the chancellor's maladministration had emptied the treasury.
Edward drifted on along the path to financial ruin till he actually
went bankrupt in 1345, when he repudiated his debts, and ruined
several great Italian banking houses, who had been unwise
enough to continue lending him money to the last . The Flemings
were also hard hit by this collapse of the king's credit, and very
naturally lost their enthusiasm for the English alliance. Van
Artevelde, its chief advocate, was murdered by his own towns-
men in this same year.
The second act of the Hundred Years' War, after King Edward
had abandoned in despair his idea of invading France from the
side of the Netherlands, was fought out in another
quarter the duchy of Brittany. Here a war of Brittany.
succession had broken out in which (oddly enough)
Edward took up the cause of the pretender who had male
descent, while Philip supported the one who represented a
female line each thus backing the theory of heritage by which
his rival claimed the throne of France. By espousing the cause
of John of Montfort Edward obtained a good foothold on the
I345-I3SI)
ENGLISH HISTORY
503
flank of France, for many of the Breton fortresses were put
into his hands. But he failed to win any decisive advantage
thereby over King Philip. It was not till 1346, when he adopted
the new policy of trusting nothing to allies, and striking at the
heart of France with a purely English army, that Edward found
the fortune of war turning in his favour.
In this year he landed in Normandy, where the English banner
had not been seen since the days of King John, and executed a
destructive raid through the duchy, and up the Seine,
till he almost reached the gates of Paris. This brought
Ftun. out the king of France against him, with a mighty
host, before which Edward retreated northward,
apparently intending to retire to Flanders. But after crossing
the Somme he halted at Crecy, near Abbeville, and offered
battle to the pursuing enemy. He fought relying on
the tactics which had been tried against the Scots at
Dupplin and Halidon Hill, drawing up his army with
masses of dismounted men-at-arms flanked on either side by
archery. This array proved as effective against the disorderly
charges of the French noblesse as it had been against the heavy
columns of the Scottish pikemen. Fourteen times the squadrons
of King Philip came back to the charge; but mowed down by the
arrow-shower, they seldom could get to handstrokes with the
English knights, and at last rode off the field in disorder. This
astonishing victory over fourfold numbers was no mere chival-
rous feat of arms, it had the solid result of giving the victors a
foothold in northern France. For Edward took his
army to beleaguer Calais, and after blockading it for
nearly a year forced it to surrender. King Philip,
after his experience at Crecy. refused to fight again in order to
raise the siege. From henceforth the English possessed a secure
landing-place in northern France, at the most convenient point
possible, immediately opposite Dover. They held it for over
two hundred years, to their own inestimable advantage in every
recurring war.
The years 1345-1347 saw the zenith of King Edward's pros-
perity; in them fell not only his own triumphs at Crecy and
Calais, but a victory at Auberoche in Perigord won
by his cousin Henry of Lancaster, which restored
many long-lost regions of Guienne to the English
suzerainty (Oct. 21, 1345), and another and more
famous battle in the far north. At Neville's Cross, near Durham,
the lords of the Border defeated and captured David Bruce, king
of Scotland (Oct. 17, 1346). The loss of their king and the
destruction of a fine army took the heart out of the resistance of
the Scots, who for many years to come could give their French
allies little assistance.
In 1347 Edward made a short truce with King Philip: even
after his late victories he felt his strength much strained, his
, witm treasury being empty, and his army exhausted by the
year -long siege of Calais. But he would have returned
to the struggle without delay had it not been for
the dreadful calamity of the " Black Death," which
fell upon France and England, as upon all Europe, in the
yean 1348-1349. The disease, on which the i-jth century
bestowed this name, was the bubonic plague, still familiar in the
East. After devastating western Asia, it reached the Medi-
terranean ports of Europe in 1347, and spread across the con-
tinent in a few months. It was said that in France, Italy and
England a third of the population perished, and though this
estimate may be somewhat exaggerated, local records of un-
impeachable accuracy show that it cannot be very far from the
truth. The bishop's registers of the diocese of Norwich show
that many parishes had three and some four successive vicars
admitted in eighteen months. In the manor rolls it is not un-
common to find whole families swept away, so that no heir can
be detected to their holdings. Among the monastic orders, whose
crowded common life seems to have been particularly favourable
to the spread of the plague, there were cases where a whole com-
munity, from the abbot down to the novices, perished. The
upper classes are said to have suffered less than the poor; but
the king's daughter Joan and two archbishops of Canterbury
were among the victims. The long continuance of the visitation,
which as a rule took six or nine months to work out its virulence
in any particular spot, seems to have cowed and demoralized
society. Though it first spread from the ports of Bristol and
Weymouth in the summer of 1348, it had not finished its de-
struction in northern England till 1350, and only spread into
Scotland in the summer of that year.
When the worst of the plague was over, and panic had died
down, it was found that the social conditions of England had
been considerably affected by the visitation. Thecondi- g eoB01B fc
tion of the realm had been stable and prosperous during and social
the earlier years of Edward III., the drain on its re-
sources caused by heavy war-taxationhavingbeenmore
than compensated by the increased wealth that arose
from growing commerce and developing industries. The victory
of Sluys, which gave England the command of the seas, had
been a great landmark in the economic no less than in the naval
history of this island. But the basis of society was shaken by
the Black Death; the kingdom was still essentially an agri-
cultural community, worked on the manorial system; and the
sudden disappearance of a third of the labouring hands by which
that system had been maintained threw everything into disorder.
The landowners found thousands of the crofts on which their
villeins had been wont to dwell vacant, and could not fill them
with new tenants. Even if they exacted the full rigour of service
from the survivors, they could not get their broad demesne
lands properly tilled. The landless labourers, who might have
been hired to supply the deficiency, were so reduced in numbers
that they could command, if free competition prevailed, double
and triple rates of payment, compared with their earnings in
the days before the plague. Hence there arose, almost at once,
a bitter strife between the lords of manors and the labouring
class, both landholding and landless. The lords wished to exact
all possible services from the former, and to pay only the old two
or three pence a day to the latter. The villeins, as hard hit
as their masters, resented the tightening of old duties, which in
some coses had already been commuted for small money rents
during the prosperous years preceding the plague. The landless
men formed combinations, disputed with the landlords, and
asked and often got twice as much as the old rates, despite of the
murmurings of the employer.
After a short experience of these difficulties the king and
council, whose sympathies were naturally with the landholders,
issued an ordinance forbidding workmen of any kind
to demand more than they had been wont to receive st^ tatf /
before 1348. This was followed up by the famous Labourer*.
Statute of Labourers of 1351, which fixed rates for
all wages practically identical with those of the times before the
Black Death. Those workmen who refused to accept them were
to be imprisoned, while employers who went behind the backs
of their fellows and secretly paid higher sums were to be punished
by heavy fines. Later additions to the statute were devised to
terrorize the labourer, by adding stripes and branding to his
punishment, if he still remained recalcitrant or absconded. And
landowners were empowered to seize all vagrant able-bodied
men, and to compel them to work at the statutory wages. As
some compensation for the low pay of the workmen, parliament
tried to bring down the price of commodities to their former
level, for (like labour) all manufactured articles had gone up
immensely in value.
Thirty years of friction followed, while the parliament and the
ruling classes tried in a spasmodic way to enforce the statute,
and the peasantry strove to evade it. It proved impossible to
carry out the scheme; the labourers were too many and too
cunning to be crushed. If driven over hard they absconded to
the towns, where hands were needed as much as in the country-
side, or migrated to districts where the statute was laxly ad-
ministered. Gradually the landowners discovered that the only
practical way out of their difficulties was to give up the old
custom of working the manorial demesne by the forced labour of
their villeins, and to cut it up into farms which were rented out
to free tenants, and cultivated by them. In the course of two
504
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1347-1360
generations the " farmers " who paid rent for these holdings
became more and more numerous, and demesne land tilled by
villein-service grew more and more rare. But enough old-
fashioned landlords remained to keep up the struggle with the
peasants to the end of the I4th century and beyond, and the
number of times that the Statute of Labourers was re-enacted
and recast was enormous. Nevertheless the struggle turned
gradually to the advantage of the labourer, and ended in the
creation of the sturdy and prosperous farming yeomanry who
were the strength of the realm for several centuries to come.
One immediate consequence of the " Black Death " was the
renewal of the truce between England and France by repeated
agreements which lasted from 1347 to 1355. During this interval
Philip of France died, in 1350, and was succeeded by his son
John. The war did not entirely cease, but became local and
spasmodic. In Brittany the factions which supported the two
claimants to the ducal title were so embittered that they never
laid down their arms. In 1351 the French noblesse of Picardy,
apparently without their master's knowledge or consent, made
an attempt to surprise Calais, which was beaten off with some
difficulty by King Edward in person. There was also con-
stant bickering on the borders of Guienne. But the main forces
Renewal of on both sides were not brought into action till the
the war series of truces ran out in 1355- From that time
"'"ft onward the English took the offensive with great
France. vjg Our . Edward, prince of Wales, ravaged Languedoc
as far as the Mediterranean, while his younger brother John of
Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, executed a less ambitious raid in
Picardy and Artois. In the south this campaign marked real
progress, not mere objectless plunder, for it was followed by the
reconquest of great districts in Perigord and the Agenais, which
had been lost to England since the I3th century. A similar
double invasion of France led to even greater results in the
following year, 1356. While Lancaster landed in Normandy,
and with the aid of local rebels occupied the greater part of the
peninsula of the C6tentin, the prince of Wales accomplished
greater things on the borders of Aquitaine. After executing a
great circular sweep through Perigord, Limousin and Berry, he
was returning to Bordeaux laden with plunder, when he was
intercepted by the king of France near Poitiers. The
battle that followed was the most astonishing of all
the English victories during the Hundred Years' War.
The odds against the prince were far heavier than those of Crecy,
but by taking up a strong position and using the national tactics
which combined the use of archery and dismounted men-at-
arms, the younger Edward not merely beat off his assailants in
a long defensive fight, but finally charged out upon them,
scattered them, and took King John prisoner (Sept. 19, 1356).
This fortunate capture put an enormous advantage in the
hands of the English; for John, a facile and selfish prince, was
The ready to buy his freedom by almost any concessions.
English He signed two successive treaties which gave such
ravage advantageous terms to Edward III. that the dauphin
France. Charles, who was acting as regent, and the French
states-general refused to confirm them. This drove the English
king to put still further pressure on the enemy; in 1359 he led
out from Calais the largest English army that had been seen
during the war, devastated all northern France as far as Reims
and the borders of Burgundy, and then continuing the cam-
paign through the heart of the winter presented himself before
the gates of Paris and ravaged the lie de France. This brought
the regent Charles and his counsellors to the verge of despair;
they yielded, and on the 8th of May 1360, signed an
agreement at Bretigny near Chartres, by which nearly
all King Edward's demands were granted. These
preliminaries were ratified by the definitive peace of Calais
(Oct. 24, 1360), which brought the first stage of the Hundred
Years' War to an end.
By this treaty King Edward formally gave up his claim to
the French throne, which he had always intended to use merely
as an asset for barter, and was to receive in return not only a sum
of 3,000,000 gold 'crowns for King John's personal ransom, but
Batik of
Poitiers.
an immense cession of territory which in southern France at
least almost restored the old boundaries of the time of
Henry II. The duchy of Aquitaine was reconstructed, so as
to include not only the lands that Edward had inherited, and
his recent conquests, but all Poitou, Limousin, Angoumois,
Quercy, Rouergue and Saintonge a full half of France south
of the Loire. This vast duchy the English king bestowed not
long after on his son Edward, the victor of Poitiers, who reigned
there as a vassal-sovereign, owing homage to England but ad-
ministering his possessions in his own right. In northern France,
Calais and the county of Guines, and also the isolated county of
Ponthieu, the inheritance of the wife of Edward I., were ceded
to the English crown. All these regions, it must be noted, were
to be held for the future free of any homage or acknowledgment
of allegiance to an overlord, " in perpetuity, and in the manner
in which the kings of France had held them." There was to be
an end to the power of the courts of Paris to harass the duke of
Aquitaine, by using the rights of the suzerain to interfere with
the vassal's subjects. It was hoped that for the future the
insidious legal warfare which had been used with such effect by
the French kings would be effectually prevented.
To complete the picture of the triumph of Edward III. at this,
the culminating point of his reign, it must be mentioned that
some time before the peace of Calais he had made terms submls-
with Scotland. David Bruce was to cede Roxburgh sionof
and Berwick, but to keep the rest of his dominions on David of
condition of paying a ransom of 100,000 marks. This Sc a "'< 1 -
sum could never be raised, and Edward always had it in his
power to bring pressure to bear on the king of Scots by demand-
ing the instalments, which were always in arrear. David gave
no further trouble; indeed he became so friendly to England
that he offered to proclaim Lionel of Clarence, Edwardls second
son, as his heir, and would have done so but for the vigorous
opposition of his parliament.
The English people had expected that a sort of Golden Age
would follow the conclusion of the peace with Scotland and
France. Freed from the war-taxes which had vexed
them for the last twenty years, they would be able
to repair the ravages of the Black Death, and to de-
velop the commercial advantages which had been won
at Sluys, and secured by the dominion of the seas which they
had held ever since. In some respects this expectation was not
deceived; the years that followed 1360 seem to have been pros-
perous at home, despite the continued friction arising from the
Statute of Labourers. The towns would seem to have fared
better than the countryside, partly indeed at its expense, for
the discontented peasantry migrated in large numbers to the
centres of population where newly-developed manufactures
were calling for more hands. The weaving industry, introduced
into the eastern counties by the king's invitation to Flemish
settlers, was making England something more than a mere
producer of raw material for export. The seaports soon recovered
from their losses in the Black Death, and English shipping was
beginning to appear in the distant seas of Portugal and the
Baltic. Nothing illustrates the growth of English wealth better
than the fact that the kingdom had, till the time of Edward III.,
contrived to conduct all its commerce with a currency of small
silver, but that within thirty years of his introduction of a
gold coinage in 1343, the English " noble " was being struck in
enormous quantities. It invaded all the markets of western
Europe, and became the prototype of the gold issues of the
Netherlands, Scotland, and even parts of Germany, It is in the
latter years of Edward III. that we find the first forerunners of
that class of English merchant princes who were to be such a
marked feature in the succeeding reigns. The Poles of Hull,
whose descendants rose in three generations to ducal rank, were
the earliest specimens of their class. The poet Chaucer may
serve as a humbler example of the rise of the burgher class
the son of a vintner, he became the father of a knight, and the
ancestor, through female descents, of many baronial families.
The second half of the i4th century is the first period in English
history in which we can detect a distinct rise in the importance
ENGLISH HISTORY
505
of the commercial as opposed to the landed interest. The latter,
hard hit by the manorial difficulties that followed the plague of
- 1349, found their rents stationary or even diminishing,
while the price of the commodities from which the former
made their wealth had permanently risen. As to intellectual
vigour, the age that produced two minds of such marked origin-
ality in different spheres as Wycliffe and Chaucer must not be
despised, even if it failed to carry out all the promise of the
ijth century.
For a few years after the peace of 1360 the political influence
of Edward III. in western Europe seemed to be supreme. France,
prostrated by the results of the English raids, by
peasant revolts, andmunicipalandbaronialturbulence,
did not begin to recover strength till the thriftless king
John had died (1364) and had been succeeded by his
capable if unchivalrous son Charles V. Yet the state of the
English dominions on the continent was not satisfactory; in
building up the vast duchy of Aquitaine Edward had made a
radical mistake. Instead of contenting himself with creating
a homogeneous Gascon state, which might have grown together
into a solid unit, he had annexed broad regions which had been
for a century and a half united to France, and had been entirely
assimilated to her. From the first Poitou, Quercy, Rouergue
and the Limousin chafed beneath the English yoke; the noblesse
in especial found the comparatively orderly and constitutional
governance to which they were subjected most intolerable.
They waited for the first opportunity to revolt, and meanwhile
murmured against every act of their duke, the prince of Wales,
though he did his best to behave as a gracious sovereign.
The younger Edward ended by losing his health and his wealth
in an unnecessary war beyond the Pyrenees. He was persuaded
by the exiled Peter the Cruel, king of Castile, to restore
r*Btec* |j| m to tne tnrone which he had forfeited by his mis-
government. In 1367 he gathered a great army,
entered Castile, defeated the usurper Henry of Trasta-
mara at the battle of Najera, and restored his ally. But Peter,
when once re-established as king, forgot his obligations and left
the prince burdened with the whole expense of the campaign.
Edward left Spain with a discontented and unpaid army, and
had himself contracted the seeds of a disease which was to leave
him an invalid for the rest of his life. To pay his debts he was
obliged to resort to heavy taxation in Aquitaine, which gave his
discontented subjects in Poitou and the other outlying districts
an excuse for the rebellion that they had been for some time
meditating. In 1 368 his greatest vassals, the counts of Armagnac,
Perigord and Comminges, displayed their disloyalty by appeal-
ing to the king of France as their suzerain against the legality
of Edward's imposts. The French overlordship had been
formally abolished by the treaty of 1360, so this appeal amounted
to open rebellion. And when Charles V. accepted it, and cited
Edward to appear before his parlement to answer the complaints
of the counts, he was challenging England to renewed war. He
found a preposterous excuse for repudiating the treaty by which
he was bound, by declaring that some details had been omitted
in its formal ratification.
The Hundred Years' War, therefore, broke out again in 1369,
after an interval of nine years. Edward III. assumed once more
tne l ' l ' e ' king of France, while Charles V., in the
usual style, declared that the whole duchy of Aqui-
taine had been forfeited for treason and rebellion on
the part of its present holder. The second period of
war. which was to last till the death of the English king, and for
some yean after, was destined to prove wholly disastrous to
England. All the conditions had changed since 1360. Edward,
though only in his fifty-seventh year, was entering into a pre-
mature and decrepit old age, in which he became the prey of
unworthy favourites, male and female. The men of the I4th
century, who commanded armies and executed coups d'ilat at
eighteen, were often worn out by sixty. The guidance of the
war should have fallen into the hands of his eldest son, the victor
of Poitiers and Najera, but the younger Edward had never re-
covered from the fatigues of his Spanish campaign; his disease
having developed into a form of dropsy, he had become a con-
firmed invalid and could no longer take the field. The charge
of the military operations of the English armies had passed to
John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, the king's younger son, a
prince far inferior in capacity to his father and brother. Though
not destitute of good impulses Lancaster was hasty, improvident
and obstinate; he was unfortunate in his choice of friends, for
he allied himself to all his father's unscrupulous dependents.
He was destitute of military skill, and wrecked army after army
by attempting hard tasks at inappropriate times and by mistaken
met hods. Despite of all checks and disasters he remained active,
self-confident and ambitious, and, since he had acquired a com-
plete control over his father, he had ample opportunity to
mismanage the political and military affairs of England.
Lancaster's strategy, in the early years of the renewed war,
consisted mainly of attempts to wear down the force of France
by devastating raids; he hoped to provoke the enemy
to battle by striking at the heart of his realm, but
never achieved his purpose. Warned by the disasters
of Crecy and Poitiers, Charles V. and his great captain
Bertrand du Guesclin would never commit themselves to an
engagement in the open field. They let the English invaders
pass by, garrisoning the towns but abandoning the countryside.
Since Lancaster, in his great circular raids, had never the leisure
to sit down to a siege generally a matter of long months in the
I4th century he repeatedly crossed France leaving a train of
ruined villages behind him, but having accomplished nothing
else save the exhaustion of his own army. For the French
always followed him at a cautious distance, cutting off his
stragglers, and restricting the area of his ravages by keeping
flying columns all around his path. But while the duke was
executing useless marches across France, the outlying lands of
Aquitaine were falling away, one after the other, to the enemy.
The limit of the territory which still remained loyal was ever
shrinking, and what was once lost was hardly ever regained.
Almost the only reconquest made was that of the city of Limoges,
which was stormed in September 1370 by the troops of the
Black Prince, who rose from his sick-bed to strike his last blow at
the rebels. His success did almost as much harm as good to his
cause, for the deliberate sack of the city was carried out with
such ruthless severity that it roused wild wrath rather than
terror in the neighbouring regions. Next spring the prince
returned to England, feeling himself physically unable to ad-
minister or defend his duchy any longer.
The greater part of Poitou, Quercy and Rouergue had been
lost, and the English cause was everywhere losing ground, when
a new danger was developed. Since Sluys the enemy
had never disputed the command of the seas; but in
1372 a Spanish fleet joined the French, and destroyed
off La Rochelle a squadron which was bringing reinforcements
for Guienne. The disaster was the direct result of the campaign
of Najera for Henry of Trastamara, who had long since de-
throned and slain his brother Peter the Cruel, remained a con-
sistent foe of England. From this date onward Franco-Spanish
fleets were perpetually to be met not only in the Bay" of Biscay
but in the Channel; they made the voyage to Bordeaux unsafe,
and often executed descents on the shores of Kent, Sussex,
Devon and Cornwall. It was to no effect that, in the year after
the battle of La Rochelle, Lancaster carried out the last, the most
expensive, and the most fruitless of his great raids across France.
He marched from Calais to Bordeaux, inflicted great misery on
Picardy, Champagne and Berry, and left half his army dead
by the way.
This did not prevent Bertrand du Guesclin from expelling
from his dominions John of Brittany, the one ally whom King
Edward possessed in France, or from pursuing a consistent
career of petty conquest in the heart of Aquitaine. By 1374
little was left of the great possessions which the English had held
beyond the Channel save Calais, and the coast slip from Bordeaux
to Bayonne, which formed the only loyal part of the duchy of
Guienne. Next year King Edward sued for peace he failed
to obtain it, finding the French terms too hard foracceptance
P.n X H,h
506
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1371-1377
but a truce at least was signed at Bruges (Jan. 1375) which
endured till a few weeks before his death.
These two last years of Edward's reign were filled with an
episode of domestic strife, which had considerable constitutional
importance. The nation ascribed the series of disasters
which had filled the space from 1369 to 1375 entirely
to the maladministration of Lancaster and the king's
favourites, failing to see that it was largely due to the mere fact
that England was not strong enough to hold down Aquitaine,
when France was administered by a capable king and served by a
great general. Hence there arose, both in and out of parliament,
a violent agitation for the removal of Lancaster from power,
and the punishment of the favourites, who were believed, with
complete justification, to be misusing the royal name for their
own private profit. Among the leaders of this agitation were
the clerical ministers whom John of Gaunt had expelled from
office in 1371, and chiefly William of Wykeham, bishop of Win-
chester, the late chancellor; they were helped by Edmund
Mortimer, earl of March, a personal enemy of Lancaster, and
could count on the assistance of the prince of Wales when he was
well enough to take a part in politics. The greater part of the
House of Commons was on their side, and on the whole they
may be regarded as the party of constitutional protest against
maladministration. But there was another movement on foot
at the same time, which cut across this political agitation in the
most bewildering fashion. Protests against the corruption of the
Agitation Church and the interference of the papacy in national
against affairs had always been rife in, England. At this
moment they were more prevalent than ever, largely
in consequence of the way in which the popes at
Avignon had made themselves the allies and tools of the kings
of France. The Statutes of Praemunire and Provisors had been
passed a few years before (1351-1365) to check papal pretensions.
There was a strong anti-clerical party, whose practical aim was
to fill the coffers of the state by large measures of disendowment
and confiscations of Church property. The intellectual head
of this party at the time was John Wycliffe, a famous Oxford
teacher, and for some time master of Balliol College.
In his lectures and sermons he was always laying stress
on the unsatisfactory state of the national church and the infamous
corruption of the papacy. The doctrine which first made him
famous, and commended him to all members of the anti-clerical
faction, was that unworthy holders of spiritual endowments
ought to be dispossessed of them, because " dominion " should
depend on " grace." Churchmen, small and great, as he held,
had been corrupted, because they had fallen away from the
early Christian idea of apostolic poverty. Instead of discharging
their proper functions, bishops and abbots had become statesmen
or wealthy barons, and took no interest in anything save politics.
The monasteries, with their vast possessions, had become cor-
porations of landlords, instead of associations for prayer and
good works. The papacy, with its secular ambitions, and its
insatiable greed for money, was the worst abuse of all. A bad
pope, and most popes were bad, was the true Antichrist, since
he was always overruling the divine law of the scriptures by his
human ordinances. Every man, as Wycliffe taught using the
feudal analogies of contemporary society is God's tenant-in-
chief, directly responsible for his acts to his overlord; the pope
is always thrusting himself in between, like a mesne-tenant, and
destroying the touch between God and man by his interference.
Sometimes his commands are merely presumptuous; sometimes
as when, for example, he preaches crusades against Christians
for purely secular reasons they are the most horrible form of
blasphemy. Wycliffe at a later period of his life developed views
on doctrinal matters, not connected with his original thesis about
the relations between Church and State, and foreshadowed most
of the leading tenets of the reformers of the i6th century. But
in 1376-1377 he was known merely as the outspoken critic of
the " Caesarean clergy " and the papacy. He had a following of
enthusiastic disciples at Oxford, and scattered adherents both
among the burghers and the knighthood, the nucleus of the party
that afterwards became famous as the Lollards. But they had
Wyclitte.
not yet differentiated themselves from the body of those who
were merely anti -clerical, without being committed to any
theories of religious reform.
Since Wycliffe was, above all things, the enemy of the political
clergy of high estate, and since those clergy were precisely
the leaders of the attack upon John of Gaunt, it came
to pass that hatred of a common foe drew the duke and J y a f aaa
the doctor together for a space. There was a strange Wyclitte.
alliance between the advocate of clerical reform, and
the practical exponent of secular misgovernment. The only
point on which they were agreed was that it would be highly
desirable to strip the Church of most of her endowments, in
order to fill the exchequer of the state. Lancaster hoped to use
Wycliffe as his mouthpiece against his enemies; Wycliffe hoped
to see Lancaster disendowing bishops and monasteries and defy-
ing the pope. Hence the attempt of the political bishops to get
Wycliffe condemned as a heretic became inextricably mixed
with the attempt of the constitutional party, to which the bishops
belonged, to evict the duke from his position of first councillor
to the king and director of the policy of the realm.
The struggle began in the parliament of 1376, called by the
anti- Lancastrian party the " Good Parliament." Headed by the
earl of March, William Courtenay, bishop of London, The
and Sir Peter de la Mare, the daring speaker of the "Good
House of Commons, the duke's enemies began their ^enf""
campaign by accusing the king's ministers and
favourites of corruption. Here they were on safe ground, for
the misdeeds of Lord Latimer the king's chamberlain,
Lord Neville his steward, Richard Lyons his financial
agent, and Alice Ferrers his greedy and shameless mistress,
had been so flagrant that it was hard for Lancaster to overthrow
defend them. In face of the evidence brought forward of the
the old king and his.son had to abandon their friends * /D *' s .
to the angry parliament. Latimer and Lyons were
condemned to imprisonment and forfeiture of their goods, Alice
Ferrers was banished from court. Encouraged by this victory,
the parliament passed on to constitutional reforms, forced on
the king a council of twelve peers nominated by themselves,
who were to exercise over him much the same control
that the lords ordainers had held over his father, and ttoaa?"'
compelled him to assent to a long list of petitions reforms.
which, if properly carried out, would have removed
most of the practical grievances of the nation. Having so done
they dispersed, not guessing that Lancester had yielded so
easily because he was set on undoing their work the moment
that they were gone.
This, however, was the case; after the shortest of intervals
the duke executed something like a coup d'etat. In his father's
name he released Latimer and Lyons, dismissed the Joha ot
council of twelve, imprisoned Peter de la Mare, oauat re-
sequestrated the temporalities of Bishop Wykeham, establishes
and sent the earl of March out of the realm. Alice ** ro >'* y
Ferrers took possession again of the king, and all his po *
corrupt courtiers came back to him. A royal edict declared
the statutes of the " Good Parliament " null and void. Lan-
caster would never have dared to defy public opinion and
challenge the constitutional party to a life-and-death struggle
in this fashion, had it not been that his brother the prince of
Wales had died while the " Good Parliament " was
sitting; thus the opposition had been deprived of ^"^^
their strongest support. The prince's heir was a mere prince.
child, Richard of Bordeaux, aged only nine. It was
feared by some that Duke John might carry his ambitions so far
as to aim at the throne he could do what he pleased with his
doting father, and flaws might have been picked in the marriage
of the Black Prince and his wife Joan of Kent, who were cousins,
and therefore within the "prohibited degrees." As a matter
of fact Lancaster was a more honest man than his enemies sus-
pected; he hastened to acknowledge his little nephew's rights,
acknowledged him as prince of Wales, and introduced him as
his grandfather's heir before the parliament of January 1377.
The character of this body was a proof of the great strength
'J8l|
ENGLISH HISTORY
507
of the royal name and power even in days when parliamentary
institutions had been long in existence, and were supposed to act
as a check on the crown. To legalize his arbitrary acts Duke
John dared to summon the estates together, after he had issued
stringent orders to the sheriffs to exclude his enemies and return
his friends when the members for t he Commons were chosen. He
obtained a house of the complexion that he desired, and having
a strong following among the peers actually succeeded in undoing
all the work of 1376. No sign of trouble or rebellion followed,
the opposition being destitute of a fighting leader. March had
left the realm; Bishop Wykeham showed an unworthy sub-
servience by suing for pardon through the mediation of Alice
IVrrers. Only Bishop Courtenay refused to be terrorized; he
chose this moment to open a campaign against the duke's ally,
John Wycliffe, who was arraigned for heresy before the ecclesi-
astical courts. His trial, however, ended in a scandalous fiasco.
Lancaster and his friend Lord Percy came to St Paul's, and so
insulted and browbeat the bishop, that the proceedings de-
generated into a riot, and reached no conclusion (Feb. 19).
Courtenay dared not recommence them, and Lancaster ruled
as he pleased till his father, five months later, died. Deserted
by his worthless courtiers and plundered on his death-
bed by his greedy mistress, the victor of Sluys and
Crecy s*nk i to an unhonoured grave. It was a relief
to the nation that he was gone. Vet there was a general
feeling that chaos might follow. If Lancaster should justify
the malevolent rumours that were afloat by making a snatch
at the crown, the last state of the realm might be worse than the
first.
Duke John, however, was a better man than his enemies
supposed. He was loyal to the crown according to his lights, and
Sf-t-HL showed a chivalrous self-denial that had hardly been
expected from him. He saluted his little nephew as
king without a moment's hesitation, though he was aware
that with the commencement of a new reign his own dictator-
ship had come to an end. The princess of Wales, in whose
hands the young Richard II. was placed, had never been
his friend, and was surrounded by adherents of her deceased
husband, who belonged to the constitutional party. Disarmed,
however, by the duke's frank submission they wisely resolved
not to push him to extremes, and the first council which was
appointed to act for the new monarch was a sort of " coalition
ministry " in which Lancaster's followers as well as his foes were
represented. For that very reason it was lacking in strength and
unity of purpose, and proved lamentably incapable of dealing
with the problems of the moment.
Of these the most pressing was the renewal of the French
war; the truce had expired a few weeks before the death of
Edward III., and the new reign began with a series
fVMc* of military disasters. The French fleet landed in great
wmr. force in Sussex, burnt Rye and Hastings and routed
the shire levies. Simultaneously the seneschal of
Aquitaine was defeated in battle, and Bergerac, the last great
town in the inland which remained in English hands, was
captured by the duke of Anjou.
The first parliament of Richard II. met in October under the
most gloomy auspices. It showed its temper by taking up the
work of the " Good Parliament." Lancaster's ad-
herents were turned out of the council; the persons
condemned in 1376 were declared incapable of serving
in it; Alice Ferrers was sentenced to banishment
and forfeiture, and the little king was made to re-
pudiate the declaration whereby his uncle had quashed the
statutes of 1376 by declaring that " no act of parliament can be
repealed save with parliament's consent." John of Gaunt
bowed before the storm, retired to his estates, and for some time
took little part in affairs of state.
Unfortunately the new government proved wholly unable
either to conduct the struggle with France successfully or to
plurk up courage to make a humiliating peace the only wise
course before them. The nation was too proud to accept
defeat, and persevered in the unhappy attempt to reverse the
fortunes of war. An almost unbroken scries of petty disasters
marked the first three years of King Richard. The worst was
the failure of the last great devastating raid which the English
launched against France. Thomas of Woodstock, the youngest
son of Edward III., took a powerful army to Calais, and marched
through rir.ir.lv and Champagne, past Orleans, and finally to
Rennes in Brittany, but accomplished nothing save the ruin
of his own troops and the wasting of a vast sum of money.
Meanwhile taxation was heavy, the whole nation was seething
with discontent, and what was worst no way was visible
out of the miserable situation; ministers and councillors were
repeatedly displaced, but their successors always proved equally
incompetent to find a remedy.
This period of murmuring and misery culminated in the Great
Revolt of 1381, a phenomenon whose origins must be sought
in the most complicated causes, but whose outbreak
was due in the main to a general feeling that the realm
was being misgoverned, and that some one must be ijsi.
made responsible for its maladministration. It was
actually provoked by the unwise and unjust poll-tax of one
shilling a head on all adult persons, voted by the parliament of
Northampton in November 1380. The last poll-tax had been
carefully graduated on a sliding scale so as to press lightly on the
poorest classes; in this one a shilling for each person had to be
exacted from every township, though it was provided that
" the strong should help the weak " to a certain extent. But
in hundreds of villages there were no " strong " residents, and
the poorest cottager had to pay his three groats. The peasantry
defended themselves by the simple device of understating the
numbers of their families; the returns made it appear that the
adult population of England had gone down from 1,355,000 to
896,000 since the poll-tax of 1379. Thereupon the government
sent out commissioners to revise the returns and exact the missing
shillings. Their appearance led to a series of widespread and
preconcerted riots, which soon spread over all England from the
Wash to the Channel, and in a few days developed into a for-
midable rebellion. The poll-tax was no more than the spark
which fired the mine; it merely provided a good general griev-
ance on which all malcontents could unite. In the districts
which took arms two main causes of insurrection may be differ-
entiated; the first and the most widespread was the discontent
of the rural population with the landowners and the Statute of
Labourers. Their aim was to abolish all villein-service, and to
wring from their lords the commutation of all manorial customs
and obligations for a small rent fourpence an acre was gener-
ally the sum suggested. But there was a simultaneous outbreak
in many urban districts. In Winchester, London, St Albans,
Canterbury, Bury, Beverley, Scarborough and many other places
the rioting was as violent as in the countryside. Here theobject
of the insurgents was in most cases to break down the local
oligarchy, who engrossed all municipal office and oppressed
the meaner citizens; but in less numerous instances their end
was to win charters from lords (almost always ecclesiastical lords)
who had hitherto refused to grant them. But it must not be
forgotten that there was also a tinge of purely political discontent
about the rising; the insurgents everywhere proclaimed their
intention to destroy " traitors," of whom the most generally
condemned were the chancellor, Archbishop Sudbury, and the
treasurer, Sir Robert Hailes, the two persons most responsible
for the levy of the poll-tax. Often the rebels added the name
of John of Gaunt to the list, looking upon him as the person
ultimately responsible for the mismanagement of the war and
the misgovernment of the realm. It must be added that though
the leaders of the revolt were for the most part local dema-
gogues, the creatures of the moment, there were among them
a few fanatics like the " mad priest of Kent," John Ball, who
had long preached socialist doctrines from the old text:
" When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman ? "
and clamoured for the abolition of all differences of rank, status
and property. Though many clerics were found among the
rebels, it does not seem that any of them were Wycliffites, or that
508
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1381-1383
the reformer's teaching had played any part in exciting the
peasantry at this time. No contemporary authority ascribes
the rising to the Lollards.
The riots had begun, almost simultaneously in Kent and Essex:
from thence they spread through East Anglia and the home
counties. In the west and north there were only isolated and
sporadic outbreaks, confined to a few turbulent towns. In the
countryside the insurrection was accompanied by wholesale
burnings of manor-rolls, the hunting down of unpopular bailiffs
and landlords, and a special crusade against the commissioners
of the poll-tax and the justices who had been enforcing the
Statute of Labourers. There was more arson and blackmailing
than murder, though some prominent persons perished, such as
the judge, Sir John Cavendish, and the prior of Bury. In many
regions the rising was purely disorderly and destitute of organi-
zation. This was not, however, the case in Kent and London.
Wat Tyler ^ e mo ^ wn ' c ^ ^ a( ^ gathered at Maidstone and Canter-
bury marched on the capital many thousands strong,
headed by a local demagogue named Wat Tyler, whom they
had chosen as their captain; his most prominent lieutenant
was the preacher John Ball. They announced their intention
of executing all " traitors," seizing the person of the king, and
setting up a new government for the realm. The royal council
and ministers showed grievous incapacity and cowardice they
made no attempt to raise an army, and opened negotiations
with the rebels. While these were in progress the malcontent
party in London, headed by three aldermen, opened the gates
of the city to Tyler and his horde. They poured in, and, joined
by the London mob, sacked John of Gaunt's palace of the Savoy,
the Temple, and many other buildings, while the ministers took
refuge with the young king in the Tower. It was well known
that not only the capital and the neighbouring counties but all
eastern England was ablaze, and the council in despair sent out
the young king to parley with Tyler at Mile End. The rebels at
first demanded no more than that Richard should declare
villeinage abolished, and that all feudal dues and services should
be commuted for a rent of fourpence an acre. This was readily
conceded, and charters were drawn up to that effect and sealed
by the king. But, while the meeting was still going on, Tyler
went off to the Tower with a part of his horde, entered the for-
tress unopposed, and murdered the unhappy chancellor, Arch-
bishop Sudbury, the treasurer, and several victims more. This
was only the beginning of massacre. Instead of dispersing with
their charters, as did many of the peasants, Tyler and his con-
federates ran riot through London, burning houses and slaying
lawyers, officials, foreign merchants and other unpopular persons.
This had the effect of frightening the propertied classes in the
city, who had hitherto observed a timid neutrality, and turned
public opinion against the insurgents. Next day the rebel
leaders again invited the king to a conference, in the open space
of Smithfield, and laid before him a programme very different
from that propounded at Mile End. Tyler demanded that all
differences of rank and status should cease, that all church
lands should be confiscated and divided up among the laity,
that the game laws should be abolished, and that " no lord should
any longer hold lordship except civilly." Apparently he was
set on provoking a refusal, and thus getting an excuse for seizing
the person of the king. But matters went otherwise than he
had expected; when he waxed unmannerly, and unsheathed
his dagger to strike one of the royal retinue who had dared to
answer him back, the mayor of London, William Walworth,
drew his cutlass and cut him down. The mob strung their
bows, and were about to shoot down the king and his suite.
But Richard who showed astounding nerve and presence of
mind for a lad of fourteen cantered up to them shouting that
he would be their chief and captain and would give them their
rights. The conference was continued, but, while it was in
progress, the mayor brought up the whole civic militia of London,
who had taken arms when they saw that the triumph of the
rebels meant anarchy, and rescued the king out of the hands
of the mob. Seeing such a formidable body of armed men
opposed to them, the insurgents dispersed without their
reckless and ready-witted captain they were helpless (June 15,
1381).
This was the turning-point of the rebellion; within a few
days the council had collected a Considerable army, which
marched through Essex scattering such rebel bands
as still held together. Kent was pacified at the same ^^" f s ~
time; and Henry Despenser, the warlike bishop of the rising.
Norwich, made a separate campaign against the East
Anglian insurgents, defeating them at the skirmish of North
Walsham, and hanging the local leader Geoffrey Lister, who
had declared himself " king of the commons " (June 25, 1381).
After this there was nothing remaining save to punish the leaders
of the revolt ; a good many scores of them were hanged, though
the vengeance exacted does not seem to have been greater than
was justified by the numerous murders and burnings of which
they had been guilty; the fanatic Ball was, of course, among
the first to suffer. On the 3Oth of August the rough methods
of martial law were suspended, and on the i4th of December
the king issued an amnesty to all save certain leaders who
had hitherto escaped capture. A parliament had been called in
November; it voted that all the charters given by the king at
Mile End were null and void, no manumissions or grants of
privileges could have been valid without the consent of the
estates of the realm, " and for their own parts they would never
consent to such, of their own free will nor otherwise, even to
save themselves from sudden death."
The rebellion, therefore, had failed either to abolish villeinage
in the countryside or to end municipal oligarchy in the towns,
and many lords took the opportunity of the time of oecUoeot
reaction in order to revindicate old claims over their the
bondsmen. Nevertheless serfdom continued to decline manorial
all through the latter years of the i4th century, and *?**""
was growing obsolete in the isth. This, however, was the result
not of the great revolt of 1381, but of economic causes working
out their inevitable progress. The manorial system was already
doomed, and the rent-paying tenant farmers, who had begun
to appear after the Black Death, gradually superseded the
villeins as the normal type of peasantry during the two gener-
ations that followed the outbreak that is generally known as
" Wat Tyler's rebellion."
King Richard, though he had shown such courage and ready
resources at Smithfield, was still only a lad of fourteen. For
three years more he was under the control of tutors
and governors appointed by his council. Their rule
was incompetent, but the chief danger to the realm Lollards.
had passed away when both Charles V. of France and
his great captain Du Guesclin died in 1380. The new king at
Paris was a young boy, whose councils were swayed by a knot
of quarrelsome and selfish uncles; the vigour of the attack on
England began to slacken. Nevertheless there was no change
in the fortune vf war, which continued to be disastrous, if on a
smaller scale than before. The chief domestic event of the time
was the attack of the clerical party on Wycliffe and his followers.
The reformer had begun to develop dogmatic views, in addition
to his old theories about the relations of Church and State.
When he proceeded to deny the doctrine of transubstantiation,
to assert the all-sufficiency of the Scriptures as a rule of life, to
denounce saint-worship, pilgrimages, and indulgences, and to
declare the pope to be Antichrist, he frightened his old supporter
John of Gaunt and the politicians of the anti-clerical clique.
They ceased to support him, and his followers became a sect
rather than a political party. He and his disciples were expelled
from Oxford, and ere long the bishops began to arrest and try
them for heresy. Wycliffe himself, strange to say, was not
molested. He survived to publish his translation of the Bible and
to die in peace in December 1383. But his followers were being
hunted, and imprisoned or forced to recant, all through the
later years of Richard II. Yet they continued to multiply, and
exercised at times considerable influence; though they had
few supporters among the baronage, yet among the lesser gentry
and still more among the burgher class and in the universities
they were strong. It was not till the next reign, when the
13*3-1399]
ENGLISH HISTORY
509
OKttlol
succeeded in calling in the crown to their aid, and
passed the statute Dt ktrttico comburendo, that Lollardy ceased
to flourish.
King Richard meanwhile had grown to man's estate, and had
resolved to take the reins of power into his own hands. He
was wayward, high-spirited and self-confident. He
wished to restore the royal powers which had slipped
into the hands of the council and parliament during
his minority, and had small doubts of his capacity
to restore it. His chosen instruments were two men whom
his enemies called his " favourites," though it was absurd to
apply the name either to an elderly statesman like Michael de
la Pole, who was made chancellor in 1384, or to Robert de Vere,
earl of Oxford, a young noble of the oldest lineage, who was the
king's other confidant. Neither of them was an upstart, and
both, the one from his experience and the other from his high
station, were persons who might legitimately aspire to a place
among the advisers of the king. But Richard was tactless;
he openly flouted his two uncles, John of Gaunt and Thomas
of Woodstock, and took no pains to conciliate either the baronage
or the commons. His autocratic airs and his ostentatious prefer-
ence for his confidants of whom he made the one earl of Suffolk
and the other marquess of Dublin provoked both
lords and commons. Pole was impeached on a ground-
less charge of corruption and condemned, but Richard
at once pardoned him and restored him to favour. De
Vere was banished to Ireland, but at his master's desire
omitted to leave the realm. The contemptuous disregard for
the will of parliament which the king displayed brought on him
a worse fate than he deserved. His youngest uncle, Thomas of
Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, was a designing and ambitious
prince who saw his own advantage in embittering the strife
between Richard and his parliament. John of Gaunt having
departed to Spain, where he was stirring up civil strife in the name
of his wife, the heiress of Peter the Cruel, Gloucester put him-
self at the head of the opposition. Playing the part of the dema-
gogue, and exaggerating all his nephew's petulant acts and
sayings, he declared the constitution in danger, and took arms
at the head of a party of peers, the earls of Warwick, Arundel
and Nottingham, and Henry, earl of Derby, the son of John of
Tfc . Gaunt, who called themselves the lords appellant,
because they were ready to " appeal " Richard's
councillors of treason. Public opinion was against
the king, and the small army which his confidant
De Vere raised under the royal banner was easily scattered by
Gloucester's forces at the rout of Radcot Bridge (Dec. 20, 1387).
Oxford and Suffolk succeeded in escaping to France, but the
king and the rest of his adherents fell into the hands of the lords
appellant. They threatened for a moment to depose him,
but finally placed him under the control of a council and ministers
chosen by themselves, and to put him in a proper
state of terror, executed Lord Beauchamp, the judge,
Sir Robert Tressilian, and six or seven more of his
chief friends. This was a piece of gratuitous cruelty,
for the king, though wayward and unwise, had done nothing to
justify such treatment.
To the surprise of the nation Richard took his humiliation
quietly. But he was merely biding his time; he had sworn
revenge in his heart, but he was ready to wait long for
it. For the next nine years he appeared an unexcep-
tionable sovereign, anxious only to conciliate the
nation and parliament. He got rid of the ministers
imposed upon him by the lords appellant, but replaced them
by Bishop Wykeham and other old statesmen against whom
no objection could be raised. He disarmed Gloucester by making
a close alliance with his elder uncle John of Gaunt, who had been
absent in Spain during the troubles of 1387-1388, and was dis-
pleased at the violent doings of his brother. His rule was mild
moderate, and he succeeded at last in freeing
himself from the incubus of the French war the
source of most of the evils of the time, for it was the
heavy taxation required to feed this struggle which embittered
wlUl
HIM
revenge on
all the domestic politics of the realm. After two long truces,
which filled the years 1300-1305, a definitive peace was at last
concluded, by which the English king kept Calais and the coast-
strip of Guienne, from Bordeaux to Bayonne, which had never
been lost to the enemy. To confirm the peace, he married
Isabella, the young daughter of Charles VI. (Nov. 1396); he
had lost his first wife, the excellent Anne of Bohemia, two years
before.
The king seemed firmly seated on his throne so much so that
in 1395 he had found leisure for a long expedition to Ireland,
which none of his ancestors had visited since King Rkbtr ^
John. He compelled all the native princes to do him redact*
homage, and exercised the royal authority in such a /<*' to
firm manner as had never before been known in the *""
island. But those who looked forward to quiet and prosperous
times both for Ireland and for England were destined to be un-
deceived. In 1397 Richard carried out an extraordinary and
unexpected coup d'ttat, which he had evidently premeditated
for many years. Having lived down his unpopularity, and made
himself many powerful friends, he resolved to take his long-
deferred revenge on Gloucester and the other lords appellant.
He trumped up a vain story that his uncle was once more
conspiring against him, arrested him, and sent him
over to Calais, where he was secretly murdered in
prison. At the same time Gloucester's two chief Gloucester
confederates of 1387, theearlsof Arundeland Warwick, <"*
were tried and sentenced to death: the former was
actually executed, the latter imprisoned for life. The
other two lords appellant, Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, 1 and
Henry of Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, were dealt
with a year later. Richard pretended to hold them among his
best friends, but in 1398 induced Bolingbroke to accuse a-Bii , k
Norfolk of treasonable language. Mowbray denied it, m'catof
and challenged his accuser to a judicial duel. When Baling.
they were actually facing each other in the lists at *>*<*
Coventry, the Icing forbade them to fight, and an-
nounced that he banished them both Henry for six years,
Norfolk for life.
Having thus completed his vengeance on those who had slain
his friends ten years before their respective punishments were
judiciously adapted to their several responsibilities in
that matter Richard began to behave in an arbitrary
and unconstitutional fashion. He evidently thought Rtcttira.
that no one would dare to lift a hand against him after
the examples that he had just made. This might have been so,
if he had continued to rule as cautiously as during the time when
he was nursing his scheme of revenge. But now his brain seemed
to be turned by success indeed his wild language at times
seemed to argue that he was not wholly sane. He declared that
all pardons issued since 1387 were invalid, and imposed heavy
fines on persons, and even on whole shires, that had given the
lords appellant aid. He made huge forced loans, and employed
recklessly the abuse of purveyance. He browbeat the judges
on the bench, and kept many persons under arrest for indefinite
periods without a trial. But the act which provoked the nation
most was that be terrified the parliament which met at Shrews-
bury in 1398 into voting away its powers to a small committee
of ten persons, all creatures of his own. This body he used as
his instrument of government, treating its assent as equivalent
to that of a whole parliament in session. There seemed to be an
end to the constitutional liberties of England.
Such violence, however, speedily brought its own punishment.
In 1309 Richard sailed over to Ireland to put down a revolt of
the native princes, who had defeated and slain the
earl of March, his cousin and their lord-lieutenant. Stcea<1
While he was absent Henry of Bolingbroke landed *o'irti*nd.
at Ravenspur with a small body of exiles and mer-
cenaries. He pretended that he had merely come to claim the
estates and title of his father John of Gaunt, who had died a
few months before. The adventurer was at once joined by the
1 The Nottingham of 1387, who had been promoted to the higher
title.
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1399-1401
earl of Northumberland and all the lords of the north ; the army
which was called out against him refused to fight, and joined
Henry at nis banner > an d m a few days he was master of all
Baling- England (July 1399). King Richard, hurrying back
broke from Ireland, landed at Milford Haven just in time
to learn that the levies raised in his name had dis-
persed or joined the enemy. He still had with him a
considerable force, and might have tried the fortune of war with
some prospect of success. But his conduct seemed dictated
by absolute infatuation; he might have fought, or he might
have fled to his father-in-law in France, if he judged his troops
untrustworthy. Instead of taking either course, he
Richard. deserted his army by night, and fled into the Welsh
mountains, apparently with the intention of collecting
fresh adherents from North Wales and Cheshire, the only regions
where he was popular. But Bolingbroke had already seized
Chester, and was marching against him at the head of such a
large army that the countryside refused to stir. After skulking
for three weeks in the hills, Richard surrendered to his cousin
at Flint, on the igth of August 1399, having previously stipu-
lated that if he consented to abdicate his life should be spared,
Surrender *" s adherents pardoned, and an honourable livelihood
andabdi- assured to him. This surrender put the crown to his
cation of career of folly. He should have known that Henry
Richard. wou id never feel safe while he survived, and that no
oaths could be trusted in such circumstances. At all costs he
should have endeavoured to escape abroad, a course that was
still in his power.
Richard carried out his part of the bargain ; he executed a deed
of abdication in which he owned himself " insufficient and use-
less." It was read to a parliament summoned in his
A f ces ~ t name on the 3Oth of September, and the throne was
f/en/y/v. declared vacant. There was small doubt as to the
personality of his successor; possession is nine points
of the law, and Henry of Bolingbroke for the moment had the
whole nation at his back. His hereditary title indeed was im-
perfect; though he was the eldest descendant of Edward III.
in the male line after Richard, yet there was a whole family
which stood between him and the crown. From Lionel of
Clarence, the second son of Edward III. (John of Gaunt was
only the third) descended the house of March, and the late king
had proclaimed that Edmund of March would be his heir if he
should die childless. Fortunately for Bolingbroke the young
earl was only six years o! age; not a voice was raised in his
favour in parliament. When Henry stood forward and claimed
the vacant throne by right of conquest and also by right of
descent, no one gainsaid him. Lords and commons voted that
they would have him for their king, and he was duly crowned
on the i3th of October 1399. No faith was kept with the un-
happy Richard; he was placed in close and secret confinement,
and denied the ordinary comforts of life. Moreover the ad-
herents for whose safety he had stipulated were at once im-
peached of treason.
Henry of Lancaster came to the throne, for all intents and
purposes as an elective king; he had to depend for the future
on his ability to conciliate and satisfy the baronage
'the'new ' an( ^ l ^ e comrnons by his governance. For by his
king. usurpation he had sanctioned the theory that kings
can be deposed for incapacity and maladministration.
If he himself should become unpopular, all the arguments that
he had employed against Richard might be turned against him-
self. The prospect was not reassuring; his revenue was small,
and parliament would certainly murmur if he tried to increase
it. The late king was not without partisans and admirers.
There was a considerable chance that the French king might
declare war nominally to avenge his son-in-law, really to win
Calais and Bordeaux. Of the partisans who had placed Henry
on the throne many were greedy, and some were wholly un-
reasonable. But he trusted to his tact and his energy, and
cheerfully undertook the task of ruling as a constitutional king
the friend of the parliament that had placed him on the
throne.
The problem proved more weary and exhausting than he had
suspected. From the very first his reign was a time of war,
foreign and domestic, of murmuring, and of humiliating
shifts and devices. Henry commenced his career by gf tne "'
granting the adherents of Richard II. their lives, after earls.
they had been first declared guilty of treason and had
been deprived of the titles, lands and endowments given them
by the late king. Their reply to this very modified show of mercy
was to engage in a desperate conspiracy against him. If they
had waited till his popularity had waned, they might have had
some chance of success, but in anger and resentment they struck
too soon. The earls of Kent and Huntingdon, close kinsmen
of Richard on his mother's side, the earl of Salisbury a noted
Lollard and the lords Despenser and Lumley took arms at
midwinter (Jan. 4, 1400) and attempted to seize the king at
Windsor. They captured the castle, but Henry escaped, raised
the levies of London against them, and beat them into the west.
Kent and Salisbury were slain at Cirencester, the others captured
and executed with many of their followers. Their rebellion
sealed the fate of the master in whose cause they had risen.
Henry and his counsellors were determined that there should
be no further use made of the name of the "lawful
king," and Richard was deliberately murdered by
privation insufficient clothing, food and warmth
in his dungeon at Pontefract Castle (Feb. 17, 1400). It is im-
possible not to pity his fate. He had been wayward, unwise and
occasionally revengeful; but his provocation had been great,
and if few tyrants have used more violent and offensive language,
few have committed such a small list of actual crimes. It was
a curious commentary on Henry's policy, that Richard, even
when dead, did not cease to give him trouble. Rumour got
abroad, owing to the secrecy of his end, that he was not
really dead, and an impostor long lived at the Scottish court
who claimed to be the missing king, and was recognized as
Richard by many malcontents who wished to be deceived.
The rising of the earls was only the first and the least danger-
ous of the trials of Henry IV. Only a few months after their
death a rebellion of a far more formidable sort broke Wetsh rls .
out in Wales where Richard II. had been popular, ing under
and the house of March, his natural heirs, held large Owen
estates. The leader was a gentleman named Owen ^^J r
Glendower, who had the blood of the ancient kings of
Gwynedd in his veins. Originally he had taken to the hills as
a mere outlaw, in consequence of a quarrel with one of the
marcher barons; but after many small successes he began to
be recognized as a national leader by his countrymen, and pro-
claimed himself prince of Wales. The king marched against
him in person in 1400 and 1401, but Glendower showed himself
a master of guerrilla warfare; he refused battle, and defied
pursuit in his mountains, till the stores of the English army were
exhausted and Henry was forced to retire. His prestige as a
general was shaken, and his treasury exhausted by these fruitless
irregular campaigns.
Meanwhile worse troubles were to come. The commons were
beginning to murmur at the king's administration; they had
obtained neither the peace nor the diminished taxation
which they had been promised. Moreover, among '
some classes at least, he had won desperate hatred commons.
by his policy in matters of religion. One of his chief
supporters in 1399 had been Archbishop Arundel, an old enemy
of Richard II. and brother to the earl who had been beheaded
in 1397. Arundel was determined to extirpate the Lollards,
and used his influence on the king to induce him to frame and
pass through parliament the detestable statute De s <toteDe
heretico comburendo, which recognized death by burn- heretico
ing at the stake as the penalty of heresy, and bound "
the civil authorities to arrest, hand over to the church Dureado -
courts, and receive back for execution, all contumacious Lollards.
Henry himself does not seem to have been particularly enthusi-
astic for persecution, but in order to keep the church party
on his side he was forced to sanction it. The burnings began
with that of William Sawtr6, a London vicar, on the 2nd of
1401-1413]
ENGLISH HISTORY
WtrwM
Hill.
Cw
tflrmyol
March 1401 ; they continued intermittently throughout the reign.
The victims were nearly all clergy or citizens; the king shrank
from touching the Lollards of higher rank, and even employed
in hi* service some who were notoriously tainted with herr>> .
External troubles continued to multiply during Henry's
earlier yean. The Scots had declared war, and there was every
sign that the French would soon follow suit, for the
king's failure to crush Ulendower had destroyed his
reputation for capacity. The rebel achieved his'
greatest success in June 1402, when he surprised and routed the
whole levy of the marcher lords at Hryn G'las, between I'ilU-ih
and Knighton, capturing (among many other prisoners) Sir
Edmund Mortimer, the uncle and guardian of the young carl of
March, whom all malcontents regarded as the rightful monarch
of England. A few months after the king's fortune seemed to
take a turn for the better, when the Scots were defeated at
Homildon Hill by the earl of Northumberland and
his son Henry Percy, the celebrated " Hotspur." But
this victory was to be the prelude to new dangers:
half the nobility of Scotland had been captured in
the battle, and Northumberland intended to fill his coffers with
their ransoms; but the king looked upon them as state
prisoners and announced his intention of taking them out of the
earl's hands. Northumberland was a greedy and unscrupulous
Border chief, who regarded himself as entitled to exact whatever
he chose from his master, because he had been the first to join
him at his landing in 1309, and had lent him a consistent support
ever since. He had been amply rewarded by grants of land
and money, but was not yet satisfied. In indignation at the first
refusal that he had met, the earl conspired with Glendower to
raise rebellion in the name of the rightful heirs of
King Richard, the house of March. The third party
in the plot was Sir Edmund Mortimer, Glendower's
captive, who was easily persuaded to join a movement
f or t he aggrandizement of his own family. He married
Owen's daughter, and became his trusted lieutenant.
Northumberland also enlisted the services of his chief Scottish
prisoner, the earl of Douglas, who promised him aid from beyond
Tweed.
In July 1403 came the crisis of King Henry's reign; while
Glendower burst into South Wales, and overran the whole
jMome. countryside as far as Cardiff and Carmarthen, the
MM < <* Pcrcies raised their banner in the North. The old earl
set himself to subdue Yorkshire; his son Hotspur
and the earl of Douglas marched south and opened
communication with the Welsh. All Cheshire, a district always
faithful to the name of Richard II., rose in their favour, and they
were joined by Hotspur's uncle, the earl of Worcester. They
then advanced towards Shrewsbury , where they hoped that
Glendower might meet them. But long ere the Welsh could
appear, King Henry was on the spot; he brought the rebels
Dtftfte/ to action at Hately Field, just outside the gates of
>****< Shrewsbury, and inflicted on them a complete defeat,
* j***"*" in which his young son Henry of Monmouth first
won his reputation as a fighting man. Hotspur was
slain, Worcester taken and beheaded, Douglas desperately
wounded (July 23, 1403). On receiving this disastrous news
the earl of Northumberland sued for pardon; the king was
unwise enough to grant it, merely punishing him by fining him
and taking all his castles out of his hands.
By winning the battle of Shrewsbury Henry IV. had saved
his crown, but his troubles were yet far from an end. The long-
expected breach with France had at last come to
' pass; the duke of Orleans, without any declaration of
war, had entered Guienne, while a French fleet attacked
the south-west of England, and burnt Plymouth.
Even more menacing to the king's prosperity was the news
that another squadron had appeared off the coast of Wales,
and landed stores and succours for Glendower, who had now
conquered the whole principality save a few isolated fortresses.
The drain of money to meet this combination of foreign war
and domestic rebellion was more than the king's exchequer
could meet. He was driven into unconstitutional ways of
raising money, which recalled all the misdoings of his prede-
cessor. Hence came a series of rancorous quarrels with his
parliaments, which grew more disloyal and clamorous
at every new session. The cry was raised that the ,"/*"
taxes were heavy not because of the French or Welsh mtuiaa*
wars, but because Henry lavished his money on control at
favourites and unworthy dependents. He was forced
to bow before the storm, though the charge had small
foundation: the greater part of his household was dismissed,
and the war-taxes were paid not to his treasurer but to a
financial committee appointed by parliament.
It was not till 1405 -that the worst of Henry's troubles came
to an end. This year saw the last of the convulsions that
threatened to overturn him, a rising in the North
headed by the old earl of Northumberland, by Richard
Scrope, archbishop of York, and by Thomas Mowbray the North.
the earl marshal. It might have proved even more
dangerous than the rebellion of 1403, if Henry's unscrupulous
general Ralph, earl of Westmorland, had not lured Scrope and
Mowbray to a conference, and then arrested them under circum-
stances of the vilest treachery. He handed them over to the king,
who beheaded them both outside the gate of York, without any
proper trial before their peers. Northumberland thereupon
fled to Scotland without further fighting. He remained in exile
till January 1408, when he made a final attempt to raise rebellion
in the North, and was defeated and slain at the battle of
Bramham Moor.
Long before this last-named fight Henry's fortunes had begun
to mend. Glendower was at last checked by the untiring energy
of the king's eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, who sappn*-
had been given charge of the Welsh war. Even when *ioa of the
French aid was sent him, the rebel chief proved unable w*'*
to maintain his grip on South Wales. He was beaten rt
out of it in 1406, and Aberystwyth Castle, where his garrison
made a desperate defence for two years, became the southern
limit of his dominions. In the end of 1408 Prince Henry captured
this place, and six weeks later Harlech, the greatest stronghold
of the rebels, where Sir Edmund Mortimer, Owen's son-in-law
and most trusted captain, held out till he died of starvation.
From this time onwards the Welsh rebellion gradually died
down, till Owen relapsed into the position from which he had
started, that of a guerrilla chief maintaining a predatory warfare
in the mountains. From 1409 onward he ceased to be a public
danger to the realm, yet so great was his cunning and activity
that he was never caught, and died still maintaining a hopeless
rebellion so late as 1416.
The French war died down about the same time that the Welsh
rebellion became insignificant. Louis of Orleans, the head of
the French war party, was murdered by his cousin Bad of the
John, duke of Burgundy, in November 1407, and after French
his death the French turned from the struggle with "><t Scot-
England to indulge in furious civil wars. Calais, '
Bordeaux and Bayonne still remained safe under the English
banner. The Scottish war had ended even earlier. Prince James,
the heir of Robert III., had been captured at sea in 1406. The
duke of Albany, who became regent when Robert died, had no
wish to see his nephew return, and concluded a corrupt agree-
ment with the king of England, by which he undertook to keep
Scotland out of the strife, if Henry would prevent the rightful
heir from returning to claim his own. 1 Hence Albany and his
son ruled at Edinburgh for seventeen years, while James was
detained in an honourable captivity at Windsor.
From 1408 till his death in 1413 Henry was freed from all
the dangers which had beset his earlier years. But he got small
enjoyment from the crown which no longer tottered /// /
on his brow. Soon after his execution of Archbishop the king.
Scrope he had been .smitten with a painful disorder, Ftctioo la
which his enemies declared to be the punishment '** """*"
1 Mr Andrew Lang takes a different view of the character of
Albany and his attitude in this matter. See Hist, of Scotland, i.
289, and the article SCOTLAND: History. ED.
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1409-1415
Prince
Hal
inflicted on him by heaven for the prelate's death. It grew
gradually worse, and developed into what his contemporaries
called leprosy a loathsome skin disease accompanied by bouts
of fever, which sometimes kept him bedridden for months at a
time. From 1409 onwards he became a mere invalid, only able
to assert himself in rare intervals of convalescence. The domestic
politics of the realm during his last five years were nothing
more than a struggle between two court factions who desired
to use his name. The one was headed by his son Henry, prince
of Wales, and his half-brothers John, Henry and Thomas Beau-
fort, the base-born but legitimized children of John of Gaunt.
The other was under the direction of Archbishop Arundel, the
king's earliest ally, who had already twice served him as chan-
cellor, and had the whole church party at his back. Arundel
was backed by Thomas duke of Clarence, the king's second son,
who was an enemy of the Beauforts, and not on the best terms
with his own elder brother, the prince of Wales. The fluctuating
influence of each party with the king was marked by the passing
of the chancellorship from Arundel to Henry Beaufort and back
again during the five years of Henry's illness. The rivalry
between them was purely personal; both were prepared to go on
with the " Lancastrian experiment," the attempt to govern
the realm in a constitutional fashion by an alliance between the
king and the parliament; both were eager persecutors of the
Lollards; both were eager to make profit for England by inter-
fering in the civil wars of the Orleanists and Burgundians which
were now devastating France.
The prince of Wales, it is clear, gave much umbrage to his
father by his eagerness to direct the policy of the crown ere yet
it had fallen to him by inheritance. The king sus-
pected, and with good reason, that his son wished
him to abdicate, and resented the idea. It seems that
a plot with such an object was actually on foot, and that the
younger Henry gave it up in a moment of better feeling, when
he realized the evil impression that the unfilial act would make
upon the nation. At this time the prince gave small promise of
developing into the model monarch that he afterwards became.
There was no doubt of his military ability,, which had been fully
demonstrated in the long Welsh wars, but he is reputed to have
.shown himself arrogant, contentious and over-given to loose-
living. There were many, Archbishop Arundel among them,
who looked forward with apprehension to his accession to the
throne.
The two parties in the council of Henry IV. were agreed that
it would be profitable to intervene in the wars of France, but
they differed as to the side which offered the most
E "* U advantages. Hence came action which seemed in-
consistent, if not immoral; in 1411, under the prince's
influence, an English contingent joined the Bur-
gundians and helped them to raise the siege of Paris. In 1412,
by Arundel's advice, a second army under the duke of Clarence
crossed the Channel to co-operate with the Orleanists. But the
French factions, wise for once, made peace at the time of
Clarence's expedition, and paid him 210,000 gold crowns to leave
the country! The only result of the two expeditions was to give
the English soldiery a poor opinion of French military capacity,
and a notion that money was easily to be got from the distracted
realm beyond the narrow seas.
On the 20th of March 1413, King Henry's long illness at last
reached a fatal issue, and his eldest son ascended the throne.
The new king had everything in his favour; his father
Accession jj a( j bomg t ne odium of usurpation and fought down
Henry v. tne forces of anarchy. The memory of Richard II.
had been forgotten; the young earl of March had
grown up into the most harmless and unenterprising of men,
and the nation seemed satisfied with the new dynasty, whose
first sovereign had shown himself, under much provocation, the
most moderate and accommodating of constitutional monarchs.
Henry V. on his accession bade farewell to the faults of his
youth. He seems to have felt a genuine regret for the unfilial
conduct which had vexed his father's last years, and showed a
careful determination to turn over a new leaf and give his
enemies no scope for criticism. From -the first he showed a sober
and grave bearing; he reconciled himself to all his enemies,
gave up his youthful follies, and became a model king
according to the ideas of his day. There is no doubt
that he had a strong sense of moral responsibility,
and that he was sincerely pious. But his piety inspired him to
redouble the persecution of the unfortunate Lollards, whom his
father had harried only in an intermittent fashion; and his
sense of moral responsibility did not prevent him from taking
the utmost advantage of the civil wars of his unhappy neighbours
of France.
The first notable event of Henry's reign was his assault upon
the Lollards. His father had spared their lay chiefs, and con-
tented himself with burning preachers or tradesmen.
Henry arrested John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, their Per * ecu -
.. ,,,,.,., , tlonof the
leading politician, and had him tried and condemned L nards.
to the stake. But Oldcastle escaped from the Tower
before the day fixed for his execution, and framed a wild plot
for slaying or deposing his persecutor. He planned to gather
the Lollards of London and the Home Counties under arms,
and to seize the person of the king a scheme as wild
as the design of Guy Fawkes or the Fifth Monarchy R lsla g
Men in later generations, for the sectaries were not o?<fcastfc
strong enough to coerce the whole nation. Henry
received early notice of the plot, and nipped it in the bud,
scattering Oldcastle's levies in St Giles' Fields (Jan. 10, 1414)
and hanging most of his lieutenants. But their reckless leader
escaped, and for three years led the life of an outlaw, till in 1417
he was finally captured, still in arms, and sent to the stake.
This danger having passed, Henry set himself to take advan-
tage of the troubles of France. He threatened to invade that
realm unless the Orleans faction, who had for the
moment possession of the person of the mad king Hea >7 v -
Charles VI., should restore to him all that Edward III. ^f ace
had owned in 1360, with Anjou and Normandy in
addition. The demand was absurd and exorbitant and was
refused, though the French government offered him the hand of
their king's daughter Catherine with a dowry of 800,000 crowns
and the districts of Quercy and Perigord sufficiently handsome
terms. When he began to collect a fleet and an army, they added
to the offer the Limousin and other regions; but Henry was
determined to pick his quarrel, and declared war in an impudent
and hypocritical manifesto, in which he declared that he was
driven into strife against his will. The fact was that he had
secured the promise of the neutrality or the co-operation of the
Burgundian faction, and thought that he could crush the
Orleanists with ease.
He sailed for France in August 1415, with an army compact
and well-equipped, but not very numerous. On the eve of his
departure he detected and quelled a plot as wild and
futile as that of Oldcastle. The conspirators were his
cousin, Richard, earl of Cambridge, Lord Scrope, and France
Sir Thomas Grey, a kinsman of the Percies. They
had planned to raise a rebellion in the name of the earl of March,
in whose cause Wales and the North were to have been called
to arms. But March himself refused to stir, and betrayed them
to the king, who promptly beheaded them, and set sail five days
later. He landed near the mouth of the Seine, and commenced
his campaign by besieging and capturing Harfleur, which the
Orleanists made no attempt to succour. But such a large
number of his troops perished in the trenches by a pestilential
disorder, that he found himself too weak to march on Paris, and
took his way to Calais across Picardy, hoping, as it seems, to lure
the French to battle by exposing his small army to attack.
The plan was hazardous, for the Orleanists turned out in great
numbers and almost cut him off in the marshes of the Somme.
When he had struggled across them, and was half-way to Calais,
the enemy beset him in the fields of Agincourt (Oct. 25,
1415). Here Henry vindicated his military reputation
by winning a victory even more surprising than those
of Crecy, and Poitiers, for he was outnumbered in an even greater
proportion than the two Edwards had been in 1346 and 1356,
1415-14---*!
ENGLISH HISTORY
and had to take the offensive instead of being attacked in a strong
position. The heavily armoured French noblesse, emboggcd
in miry meadows, proved helpless before the lightly equipped
English archery. The slaughter in their ranks was terrible, and
the young duke of Orleans, the head of the predominant faction
of the moment, was taken prisoner with many great nobles. How-
ever, so exhausted was the victorious army that Henry merely
led it back to Calais, without attempting anything more in this
year. The sole tangible asset of the campaign was
the possession of Hartlcur. the gate of Normandy,
a second Calais in its advantages when future in-
vasions were taken in hand. The moral effects were more im-
portant. The Orleanist party was shaken in its power; the
rival Burgundian faction became more inclined to commit itself
to the English cause, and the terror of the English arms weighed
heavily upon both.
It was not till the next year but one that Henry renewed his
invasion of France the intervening space was spent in ne-
gotiations with Burgundy, and with the emperor
Sigismund, whose aid the king secured in return for
help in putting an end to the scandalous " great
schism " which had been rending the Western Church
for so many years. The English deputation lent their aid to
Sigismund at the council of Constance, when Christendom was
at last reunited under a single head, though all the reforms
which were to have accompanied the reunion were postponed,
and ultimately avoided altogether, by the restored papacy.
In July 1417 Henry began his second invasion of France, and
landed at the mouth of the Seine with a powerful army of 17,000
men. He had resolved to adopt a plan of campaign
very different from those which Edward III. or the
Black Prince had been wont to pursue, having in view
not j,i n g more than the steady and gradual conquest
of the province of Normandy. This he was able to accomplish
without any interference from the government at Paris, for the
constable Armagnac, who had succeeded the captive Orleans
at the head of the anti-Burgundian party, had no troops to spare.
He was engaged in a separate campaign with Henry's
ally John the Fearless, and left Normandy to shift
y.. for itself. One after another all the towns of the duchy
were reduced, save Rouen, the siege of which, as the
hardest task, King Henry postponed till the rest of the country-
side was in his hands. He sat down to besiege it in 1418, and
was detained before its walls for many months, for the citizens
made an admirable defence. Meanwhile a change had taken
place in the domestic politics of France; the Burgundians seized
Paris in May 1418; the constable Armagnac and many of his
THm mtii partisans were massacred, and John the Fearless got
possession of the person of the mad Charles VI.,
and became the responsible ruler of France. He had
then to choose between buying off his English allies
by great concessions, or taking up the position of champion of
French interests. He selected the latter rile, broke with Henry,
and tried to relieve Rouen. But all his efforts were foiled, and the
Norman capital surrendered, completely starved out , on
the ipth of January 1419. On this Burgundy resolved
to open negotiations with Henry; he wished to free
his hands for an attack on his domestic enemies, who
had rallied beyond the Loire under the leadership of the dauphin
Charles from whom the party, previously known first as Or-
leanists and then as Armagnacs, gets for the future the name
of the " Dauphinois." The English king, however, seeing the
manifest advantage of his position, tried to drive too hard a
bargain; he demanded the old boundaries of 1360, with his new
conquest of Normandy, the hand of the princess Catherine, and
a great sum of ready money. Burgundy dared not concede so
.. much, under pain of alienating all his more patriotic
^t supporters. He broke off the conference of Meulan,
and tried to patch up a peace with the dauphin, in
order to unite all Frenchmen against the foreign in-
vader. This laudable intention was wrecked by the treachery
of the young heir to the French throne; on the bridge of
DC. 17
Montereau Charles deliberately murdered the suppliant duke, as
he knelt to do homage, thinking thereby that he would make
an end of the Burgundian party (Sept. 9, 1419).
This abominable deed gave northern France for twenty years
to an English master. The young duke of Burgundy, Philip
the Good, and his supporters in Paris and the north,
were so incensed with the dauphin's cruel treachery
that they resolved that he should never inherit his mctaow-
fathcr's crown. They proffered peace to King Henry, *<
and offered to recognize his preposterous 1 claim to 2J2 1 */**
the French throne, on condition that he should marry Fraoc*.
the princess Catherine and guarantee the constitutional
liberties of the realm. The insane Charles VI. should keep nominal
possession of the royal title till his death, but meanwhile the
Burgundians would do homage to Henry as " heir of France. "
These terms were welcomed by the English king,
and ratified at the treaty of Troyes (May ai, 1420).
Henry married the princess Catherine, received the
oaths of Duke Philip and his partisans, and started forth to
conquer the Dauphinois at the head of an army of which half
was composed of Burgundian levies. Paris, Picardy, Cham-
pagne, and indeed the greater part of France north of the Loire,
acknowledged him as their sovereign.
Henry had only two years longer to live; they were spent in
incessant and successful campaigning against the partisans of
his brother-in-law, the dauphin Charles; by a long
series of sieges the partisans of that worthless prince
were evicted from all their northern strongholds.
They fought long and bitterly, nor was this to be marvelled at,
for Henry had a custom of executing as traitors all who with-
stood him, and those who had once defied him did well to fight
to the last gasp, in order to avoid the block or the halter. In
the longest and most desperate of these sieges, that of Meaux
(Oct. i42i-March 1422), the king contracted a dysenteric ailment
which he could never shake off. He survived for a few months,
but died, worn out by his incessant campaigning, on the 3ist of
August 1422, leaving the crown of England and the heirship of
France to his only child Henry of Windsor, an infant less than
two years old.
Few sovereigns in history have accomplished such a disastrous
life's work as this much-admired prince. If he had not been
a soldier of the first ability and a diplomatist of the
most unscrupulous sort, he could never have advanced j??* 6 '* '
so far towards his ill-chosen goal, the conquest of qu ett.
France. His genius and the dauphin's murderous act
of folly at Montereau conspired to make the incredible almost
possible. Indeed, if Henry had lived five years longer, he would
probably have carried his arms to the Mediterranean, and have
united France and England in uneasy union for some short space
of time. It is clear that they could not have been held together
after his death, for none but a king of exceptional powers could
have resisted their natural impulse to break apart. As it was,
Henry had accomplished just enough to tempt his countrymen
to persevere for nearly thirty years in the endeavour to complete
the task he had begun. France was ruined for a generation,
England was exhausted by her effort, and (what was worse) her
governing classes learnt in the long and pitiless war lessons of
demoralization which were to bear fruit in the ensuing struggle
of the two Roses. It is a strange fact that Henry, though he was
in many respects a conscientious man, with a strong sense of
responsibility, and a sincere piety, was so blind to the un-
righteousness of his own actions that he died asserting that
" neither ambition nor vainglory had led him into France, but
a genuine desire to assert a righteous claim, which he desired
his heirs to prosecute to the bitter end."
The guardianship of the infant Henry VI. fell to his two
uncles, John of Bedford and Humphrey of Gloucester, the two
1 The peculiar absurdity of Henry's claim to be king of France was
that if, on the original English claim as set forth by Edward III.,
heirship through females counted, then the earl of March was
entitled to the French throne. A vote of the English parliament
superseding March's claim in favour of that of Henry IV. could
obviously have no legal effect in France.
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1422-1435
surviving brothers of the late king. Bedford became regent
in France, and took over the heritage of the war, in which he
HearyVi was v ig rous ly aided by the young Philip of Bur-
gundy, whose sister he soon after married. Almost
his first duty was to bury the insane Charles VI., who only
survived his son-in-law for a few months, and to proclaim his
little nephew king of France under the name of Henry II.
Gloucester, however, had personal charge of the child, who was
to be reared in England; he had also hoped to become pro-
tector of the realm, and to use the position for his own private
interests, for he was a selfish and ambitious prince. But the
council refused to let him assume the full powers of a regent,
and bound him with many checks and restrictions, because they
were well aware of his character. The tiresome and monotonous
domestic history of England during the next twenty years
consisted of little else than quarrels between Gloucester and
the lords of the council, of whom the chief was the duke's half-
uncle Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, the last to survive
of all the sons of John of Gaunt. The duke and the bishop were
both unscrupulous; but the churchman, with all his faults,
was a patriotic statesman, while Gloucester cared far more for
his own private ends than for the welfare of the realm.
While these two well-matched antagonists were wrangling
in England, Bedford, a capable general and a wise administrator,
was doing his best to carry out the task which the
dying Henry V. had laid upon him, by crushing the
France. dauphin, or Charles VII. as he now called himself since
his father's death. As long as the Burgundian party
lent the regent their aid, the limits of the land still unsubdued
continued to shrink, though the process was slow. Two con-
siderable victories, Cravant (1423) and Verneuil (1424), mariced
the early years of Bedford's campaigning; at each, it may be
noted, a very large proportion of his army was composed of
Burgundian auxiliaries. But after a time their assistance began
to be given less freely; this was due to the selfish intrigues of
Humphrey of Gloucester, who, regardless of the general
policy of En 8 land ' had quarrelled with Philip the
tester. Good. He had married Jacoba (Jacquelaine), countess
of Hainaut and Holland, a cousin of the Burgundian
duke, who coveted and hoped to secure her lands. Pressing her
claims, Gloucester came to open blows with Philip in Flanders
and Hainaut (1424). In his anger the Burgundian ceased to
support Bedford, and would have joined Charles VII. if revenge
on the murderers of his father had not still remained his dominant
passion. But Gloucester's attempt to seize Hainaut failed, and
Philip, when he had got possession of his cousin's person and
estates, allowed himself to be pacified by Bedford, who could
prove that he had no part in his brother's late intrigues.
This quarrel having been appeased, the advance against the
territories of Charles VII. was resumed. It went slowly on, till
in 1428 the tide of war reached the walls of Orleans,
now l ^ e on ty pl ace north of the Loire which remained
unsubdued. The siege was long; but after the last
army which the Dauphinois could raise had been beaten at the
battle of Rouvray (Feb. 1429) it seemed that the end was near.
Charles VII. was in such a state of despair after this last check,
that he was actually taking into consideration a flight to Italy
or Spain, and the abandonment of the struggle. He had shown
himself so incapable and apathetic that his followers were sick
of fighting for such a despicable master.
From this depth of despair the party which, with all its faults,
represented the national sentiment of France was rescued by
the astonishing exploits of Joan of Arc. Charles and
his counsellors had no great confidence in the mission
of this prophetess and champion, when she presented
herself to them, promising to relieve Orleans and turn back the
English. But all expedients are worth trying in the hour of
ruin, and seeing that Joan was disinterested and sincere, and
that her preaching exercised a marked influence over the people
and the soldiery, Charles allowed her to march with the last
levies that he put into the field for the relief of Orleans. From
that moment the fortune of war turned; the presence of the
Orleans.
Joan at
Arc.
prophetess with the French troops had an immediate and in-
calculable effect. Under the belief that they were now led by
a messenger from heaven, the Dauphinois fought with a fiery
courage that they had never before displayed. Their movements
were skilfully directed whether by Joan's generalship or that of
her captains it boots not to inquire and after the first successes
which she achieved, in entering Orleans and capturing some of
the besiegers' forts around it, the English became panic-stricken.
They were cowed, as they said, " by that disciple and limb of'
the fiend called La Pucelle, that used false enchantments and
sorcery." Suffolk, their commander, raised the siege, and .sent
to Bedford for reinforcements; but as he retreated he was set
upon by the victorious army, and captured with most of his men
at Jargeau and Beaugency (June 1429). The succours which
were coming to his aid from Paris were defeated by the Maid at
Patay a few days later, and for the most part destroyed.
The regent Bedford was now in a desperate position. His field
army had been destroyed, and on all sides the provinces which
had long lain inert beneath the English yoke were corona-
beginning to stir. When Joan led forth the French tionof
king to crown him at Reims, all the towns of Cham- Charles
pagne opened their gates to her one after another. VIL at
A large reinforcement received from England only just
enabled Bedford to save Paris and some of the fortresses of the
lie de France. The rest revolted at the sight of the Maid's
white banner. If Joan had been well supported by her master
and his counsellors, it is probable that she might have completed
her mission by expelling the English from France. But, despite
all that she had done, Charles VII. and his favourites had a
profound disbelief in her inspiration, and generally thwarted
her plans. After an ill-concerted attack on Paris, in which Joan
was wounded, the French army broke up for the winter. They
had shaken the grip of the English on the north, and reconquered
a vast stretch of territory, but they had failed by their own fault
to achieve complete success. Nevertheless the crucial point of
the war had passed; after 1429 the Burgundian party began
to slacken in its support of the English cause, and to pass over
piecemeal to the national side. This was but natural: the
partisans who could remember nothing but the foul deed of
Montereau were yearly growing fewer, and it was clear that
Charles VII., personally despicable though he might be, repre-
sented the cause of French nationality.
The natural drift of circumstances was not stayed even by the
disastrous end of the career of Joan of Arc in 1430. The king's
ministers had refused to take her counsels or to entrust capture
her with another army, but she went forth with a small and
force of volunteers to relieve the important fortress of ex t e j U< a ' a a
Compiegne. The place was saved, but in a sortie she
was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her for 10,000 francs
to Bedford. The regent handed her over for punishment as
a sorceress to the French clergy of his own party. After a long
trial, carried out with elaborate formality and great unfairness,
the unhappy Joan was found guilty of proclaiming as divine
visions what were delusions of the evil one, or of her own vain
imagination, and when she persisted in maintaining their reality
she was declared a relapsed heretic, and burnt at Rouen on the
30th of May 1431. Charles VII. took little interest in her fate,
which he might easily have prevented by threatening to retaliate
on the numerous English prisoners who were in his power.
Seldom had a good cause such an unworthy figurehead as that
callous and apathetic prince.
The movement which Joan had set on foot was in no way
crushed by her execution. For the next four years the limits
of the English occupation continued to recede. It /; f
was to no profit that Bedford brought over the young Burgundy
Henry VI. and had him crowned at Paris, in order to joins .
appeal to the loyalty of his French partisans by means Charles.
of the king's forlorn youth and simplicity. Yet by
endless feats of skilful generalship the regent continued
to maintain a hold on Paris and on Normandy. The fatal blow
was administered by Philip of Burgundy, who, tired of maintain-
ing a failing cause, consented at last to forget his father's murder,
I4JS-I451
ENGLISH HISTORY
K : . I
JnawUh
And to be reconciled to Charles VII. Their alliance was cele-
brated by the treaty of Arras (Sept. 6, 1435), at which the English
were offered peace and the retention of Normandy and Guicnnc
if they would evacuate Paris and the rest of France. They
would have been wise to accept the agreement; but with
obstinate and misplaced courage they refused to acknowledge
Charles as king of France, or to give up to him the capital.
Bedford, worn out by long campaigning, died at Rouen on
the Mth of September 1435, just before the results of the treaty
of Arras began to make themselves felt. With him
died the best hope of the English party in France,
for he had been well loved by the Burgundians, and
many had adhered to the cause of Henry VI. solely
of their personal attachment to him. No worthy
successor could be found England had many hard-handed
soldiers but no more statesmen of Bedford's calibre. It was
no wonder that Paris was lost within six months of the regent's
death. Normandy invaded, and Calais beleaguered by an army
headed by England's new enemy, Philip of Burgundy. But the
council, still backed by the nation, refused to give up the game;
Burgundy was beaten off from Calais, and the young duke of
York, the heir of the Mortimers, took the command at Rouen,
And recovered much of what had been lost on the Norman side.
The next eight years of the war were in some respects the
most astonishing period of its interminable length. The English
fought out the losing game with a wonderful obstinacy.
Though every town that they held was eager to revolt,
and though they were hopelessly outnumbered in
every quarter, they kept a tight grip on the greater part of
Normandy, and on their old domain in the Bordelais and about
Bayonne. They lost nearly all their outlying possessions, but
still made head against the generals of Charles VII. in these
two regions. The leaders of this period of the war were the duke
of York, and the aged Lord Talbot, afterwards earl of Shrews-
bury. The struggle only ceased in 1444, when the English
council, in which a peace party had at last been formed, con-
cluded a two-year truce with King Charles, which they hoped to
turn into a permanent treaty, on the condition that their king
should retain what he held in Normandy and Guienne, but sign
away his claim to the French crown, and relinquish the few
places outside the two duchies which were still in his power
terms very similar to those rejected at Arras nine years before
but there was now much less to give up. To mark the reconcilia-
tion of the two powers Henry VI. was betrothed to the French
king's niece, Margaret of Anjou. The two years' truce was re-
peatedly prorogued, and lasted till 1449, but no definitive treaty
was ever concluded, owing to the bad faith with which both
parties kept their promises.
The government in England was now in the hands of the
faction which Bishop Beaufort had originally led, for after long
struggles the churchman had at last crushed his nephew
Humphrey. In 1441 the duchess of Gloucester had
been arrested and charged with practising sorcery
against the health of the young king apparently not
without justification. She was tried and condemned
to imprisonment for life; her guilt was visited on her husband,
on whose behalf she was acting, for if Henry had died his uncle
would have come to the throne. For some years he was con-
strained to take a minor part in politics, only emerging occasion-
ally to make violent and unwise protests against peace with
France. The bishop now ruled, with his nephew Edmund
Beaufort, duke of Somerset, and William de la Pole, earl of
Suffolk, as his chief instruments. As he grew older he let the
power slip into their hands, as it was they who were mainly
responsible for the truce of 1444. King Henry, though he had
reached the age of 23 at the time of his marriage, counted for
nothing. He was a pious young man, simple to the
verge of imbecility; a little later he developed actual
insanity, the heritage of his grandfather Charles VI.
He showed a blind confidence in Suffolk and Somerset.
who were wholly unworthy of it, for both were tricky and un-
scrupulous politicians. His wife Margaret of Anjou, though she
possessed all the fire and energy which her husband lacked,
was equally devoted to these two ministers, and soon came to
share their unpopularity.
The truce with France had offended the natural pride of the
nation, which still refused to own itself beaten. The evacuation
of the French fortresses in Maine and elsewhere, which
was the price paid for the suspension of arms, was Humphrey
bitterly resented. Indeed the garrisons had to be otaiou-
thrratcncd with the use of force before they would <** ler * a<l
quit their strongholds. A violent clamour was raised ^M^/brt.
against Suffolk and Somerset, and Humphrey of
Gloucester emerged from his retirement to head the agitation.
This led to his death; he was arrested by the order of the queen
and the ministers at the parliament of Bury. Five days later
he died suddenly in prison, probably by foul play, though it
was given out that he had been carried off by a paralytic stroke.
His estates were confiscated, and distributed among the friends
of Suffolk and the queen. Six weeks later the aged Bishop
Beaufort followed him to the grave he had no share in Glou-
cester's fate, having long before made over his power and the
leadership of his party to his nephew Edmund of Somerset
(i447)-
The truce with France lasted for two years after the death
of Duke Humphrey, and came to an end partly owing to the
eagerness of the French to push their advantages, but neaewal
much more from the treachery and bad faith of Suffolk of the war
and Somerset, who gave the enemy an admirable wlth
casus belli. By their weakness, or perhaps with their Fnace -
secret connivance, the English garrisons of Normandy carried out
plundering raids of the most impudent sort on French territory.
When summoned to punish the offenders, and to make monetary
compensation, Suffolk and Somerset shuffled and prevaricated,
but gave no satisfaction. Thereupon the French king once more
declared war (July 1449) and invaded Normandy. Somerset
was in command; he showed hopeless incapacity and timidity,
and in a few months the duchy which had been so long held by
the swords of Bedford, York and Shrewsbury was
hopelessly lost. The final blow came when a small Lo " e
army of relief sent over from England was absolutely
exterminated by the French at the battle of For-
migny (April 15, 1450). Somerset, who had retired into Caen,
surrendered two months later after a feeble defence, and the
English power in northern France came to an end.
Even before this final disaster the indignation felt against
Suffolk and Somerset had raised violent disturbances at home.
Suffolk was impeached on many charges, true and
false; it was unfair to accuse him of treason, but J % ,
quite just to lay double-dealing and bad faith to his Rebellion.
charge. The king tried to save him from the block
by banishing him before he could be tried. But while he was
sailing to Flanders his ship was intercepted by some London
vessels, which were on the look-out for him, and he was deliber-
ately murdered. The instigators of the act were never dis-
covered. But, though Suffolk was gone, Somerset yet survived,
and their partisans still engrossed the confidence of the king.
To clear out the government, and punish those responsible for
the late disasters, the commons of Kent rose in insurrection
under a captain who called himself John Mortimer, though his
real name seems to have been John Cade. He was a soldier of
fortune who had served in the French wars, and claimed to be in
the confidence of the duke of York, the person to whom the eyes
of all who hated Somerset and the present regime were now
directed.
Cade was not a social reformer, like his predecessor Wat Tyler,
with whom he has often been compared, but a politician.
Though he called himself " John Amend-all," and promised
to put down abuses of every kind, the main part of the pro-
gramme which he issued was intended to appeal to national
sentiment, not to class feeling. Whether he was the tool of other
and more highly placed malcontents, or whether he was simply
a ready-witted adventurer playing his own game, it is hard to
determine. His first success was marvellous; he defeated the
A'or-
maady.
5 i6
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1450-1460
king's troops, made a triumphant entry into London and held
the city for two days. He seized and beheaded Lord Saye, the
treasurer, and several other unpopular persons, and might have
continued his dictatorship for some time if the Kentish mob
that followed him had not fallen to general pillage and arson.
This led to the same results that had been seen in Tyler's day.
The propertied classes in London took arms to suppress anarchy,
and beat the insurgents out of the city. Cade, striving to keep
up the rising outside the walls, was killed in a skirmish a month
later, and his bands dispersed.
But the troubles of England were only just beginning; the
protest against the misgovernment of Somerset and the rest
Richard, ^ ^ e confidants of the king and queen was now
duke of' taken up by a more important personage than the
York, adventurer Cade. Richard, duke of York, the heir
oppos/tfofl. to the claims of the house of Mortimer his mother
was the sister of the last earl of March now placed
himself at the head of the opposition. He had plausible grounds
for doing so; though he had distinguished himself in the French
wars, and was, since the death of Humphrey of Gloucester, the
first prince of the blood royal, he had been ignored and flouted
by the king's ministers, who had sent him into a kind of honour-
able banishment as lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and had forbidden
him to re-enter the realm. When, in defiance of this mandate,
he came home and announced his intention of impeaching
Somerset, he took the first step which was to lead to the Wars
of the Roses.
Yet he was a cautious and in the main a well-intentioned
prince, and the extreme moderation of his original demands
seems to prove that he did not at first aim at the crown. He
merely required that Somerset and his friends should be dis-
missed from office and made to answer for their misgovernment.
Though he backed his demands by armed demonstration twice
calling out his friends and retainers to support his policy he
carefully refrained for five long years from actual violence.
Indeed in 1452 he consented to abandon his protests, and to
lend his aid to the other party for a great national object, the
recovery of Guienne. For in the previous year Charles VII.
had dealt with Bordeaux and Bayonne as he had already dealt
with Normandy, and had met with no better resistance while
completing the conquest. Six months' experience of French rule,
however, had revealed to the Bordelais how much they had
lost when they surrendered. Their old loyalty to the house of
Plantagenet burst once more into flame; they rose in arms and
called for aid to England. For a moment the quarrel of York
and Somerset was suspended, and the last English army that
crossed the seas during theHundredYears'War landed in Guienne,
joined the insurgents, and for a time swept all before it. But
there seemed to be a curse on whatever Henry VI. and Somerset
took in hand. On the I'jth of July 1453 the veteran earl of
Shrewsbury and the greater part of his Anglo-Gascon host were
Battle of cut to pieces at the hard-fought battle of Castillon.
Casiiiion. Bordeaux, though left to defend itself, held out for
Loss of eighty days after Talbot's defeat and death, and then
lne made its final submission to the French. The long
struggle was over, and England now retained nothing of her old
transmarine possessions save Calais and the Channel Islands.
The ambition of Henry V. had finally cost her the long-loyal
Guienne, as well as all the ephemeral conquests of his own sword.
The last crowning disaster of the administration of the
favourites of Henry VI. put an end to the chance that a way out
of domestic strife might be found in the vigorous prosecution of
the French war. For the next twenty years the battles of Eng-
land were to be fought on her own soil, and between her own
sons. It was a righteous punishment for her interference in the
unnatural strife of Orleanists and Burgundians that the struggle
between York and Lancaster was to be as bitter and as bloody
as that between the two French factions.
V. THE WARS OF THE ROSES (1453-1497)
The Wars of the Roses have been ascribed to many different,
causes by different historians. To some their origin is mainly
constitutional. Henry VI., it is argued, had broken the tacit com-
pact which the house of Lancaster had made with the nation;
instead of committing the administration of the realm origin of
to ministers chosen for him by, or at least approved the Wars
by, his parliament, he persisted in retaining in office of the
persons like Suffolk and Somerset, who had for- * oses>
feited the confidence of the people by their many failures in
war and diplomacy, and were suspected of something worse
than incapacity. They might not be so personally odious as
the favourites of Edward II. or of Henry III., but they were
even more dangerous to the state, because they were not foreign
adventurers but great English peers. In spite of the warnings
given by the assault on Suffolk in 1450, by Jack Cade's insur-
rection, and by the first armed demonstrations of Richard of
York in 1450 and 1452, the king persisted in keeping his friends
in office, and they had to be removed by the familiar and forcible
methods that had been applied in earlier ages by the lords
ordainers or the lords appellant. Undoubtedly there is much
truth in this view of the situation; if Henry VI., or perhaps we
should rather say, if his queen Margaret of Anjou, had been
content to accept ministries in which the friends of Richard of
York were fairly represented, it is probable that he might have
died a king, and have transmitted his crown to his natural heir.
But this explanation of the Wars of the Roses is not complete;
it accounts for their outbreak, but not for their long continuance.
According to another school the real key to the problem is
simply the question of the succession to the crown. If the
wedlock of Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou had claims of
been fruitful during the first few years after their the duke
marriage, no one would have raised the question of a oi York to
change of dynasty. But when they remained childless u>e crown -
for seven years, and strong suspicion arose that there was a
project on foot to declare the Beauforts heirs to the throne,
the claim of Richard of York, as the representative of the houses
of Clarence and March, was raised by those who viewed the
possible accession of the incapable and unpopular Somerset with
terror and dislike. When once the claims of York had been
displayed and stated by his imprudent partisan, Thomas Yonge,
in the parliament of 1451, there was no possibility of hiding the
fact that in the strict legitimate line of succession he had a better
claim than the reigning king. He disavowed any pretensions
to the crown for nine years; it was only in 1460 that he set forth
his title with his own mouth. But his friends and followers were
not so discreet; hence when a son was at last born to Henry
and Margaret, in 1453, the succession question was already
in the air and could no longer be ignored. If the claim of
York was superior to that of Lancaster in the eyes of a consider-
able part of the nation, it was no longer possible to BMh of
consider the problem solved by the birth of a direct Edward,
heir to the actual occupant of the throne. Though prince of
Duke Richard behaved in the most correct fashion, Wales -
acknowledged the infant Edward as prince of Wales, and made
no attempt to assert dynastic claims during his two regencies
in 1454 and 1455-1456, yet the queen and her partisans already
looked upon him as a pretender to the throne. It is this fact
which accounts for the growing bitterness of the Yorkist and
Lancastrian parties during the last years of Henry VI.
Margaret believed herself to be defending the rights Margaret
of her son against a would-be usurper. Duke Richard,
on the other hand, considered himself as wrongfully oppressed,
and excluded from his legitimate position as a prince of the blood
and a chief councillor of the crown. Nor can there be any
doubt that the queen took every opportunity of showing her
suspicion of him, and deliberately kept him and his friends from
sharing in the administration of the realm. This might have
been more tolerable if the Lancastrian party had shown any
governing power; but both while Somerset was their leader,
down to his death in the first battle of St Albans, and while in
1456-1459 Exeter, Wiltshire, Shrewsbury and Beaumont were
the queen's trusted agents, the condition of England was de-
plorable. As a contemporary chronicler wrote, " the realm was
out of all good governance as it has been many days before:
1450-1461)
ENGLISH HISTORY
of Itif
try
the king was simple, ?nd led by covetous councillors, and owed
more than he was worth. His debts increased daily, but pay-
ment was there none, for all the manors and posscs-
sions that pertained to the crown he had given away,
so that he had almost nought to live on. For these
miagovernances the hearts of the people were turned
from them that had the land in rule, and their blessing was
turned to cursing. The officers of the realm, and especially
the earl of Wiltshire the treasurer, for to enrich himself plundered
poor people and disinherited rightful heirs, and did many wrongs.
The queen was defamed, that he that was called the prince was
not the king's son, but a bastard gotten in adultery." When
it is added that the Lancastrian party avoided holding a parlia-
ment for three years, because they dared not face it, and that
the French were allowed to sack Fowey, Sandwich and other
places because there was no English fleet in existence, it is not
wonderful that many men thought that the cup of the iniquities
of the house of Lancaster was full. In the military classes it
was felt that the honour of the realm was lost; in mercantile
circles it was thought that the continuance for a few years more
of such government would make an end of English trade. Some
excuse must be found for getting rid of the queen and her
friends, and the doubtful legitimacy of the Lancastrian claim
to the crown afforded such an excuse. Hence came the curious
paradox, that the party which started as the advocates of the
rights of parliament against the incapable ministers appointed
by the crown, ended by challenging the right of parliament,
exercised in 1309, to depose a legitimate king and substitute for
him another member of the royal house. For Richard of York
in 1460 and Edward IV. in 1461 put in their claim to the throne,
not as the elect of the nation, but as the possessors of a divine
hereditary right to the succession, there having been no true
king of England since the death of Richard II. Hence Edward
assumed the royal title in March 1461, was crowned in June, but
called no parliament till November. When it met, it acknow-
ledged him as king, but made no pretence of creating or electing
him to be sovereign.
But putting aside the constitutional aspects of the Wars of
the Roses, it is necessary to point out that they had another
matin* of "P** 1 - From one point of view they were little more
ihfcom- than a great faction fight between two alliances of
tfadimg over-powerful barons. Though the Lancastrians
*""**" made much play with the watchword of loyalty to the
crown, and though the Yorkists never forgot to speak of the
need for strong and wise governance, and the welfare of the realm,
yet personal and family enmities had in many cases more effect
in determining their action than a zeal for King Henry's rights
or for the prosperity of England. It is true that some classes
were undoubtedly influenced in their choice of sides mainly by
the general causes spoken of above; the citizens of London and
the other great towns (for example) inclined to the Yorkist
faction simply because they saw that under the Lancastrian rule
the foreign trade of England was being ruined, and insufficient
security was given for life and property. But the leading men
among the baronage were undoubtedly swayed by ambition and
resentment, by family ties and family feuds, far more than by
enlightened statesmanship or zeal for the king or the common-
weal. It would be going too far to seek the origin of the Yorkist
party as some have done in the old enmity of the houses of
March, Norfolk and Salisbury against Henry IV. But it is
not so fantastic to ascribe its birth to the personal hatred that
existed between Richard of York and Edmund of Somerset,
to the old family grudge (going back to 1405) between the
Percies and the Nevilles, to the marriage alliance that bound the
houses of York and Neville together, and to other less well-
remembered quarrels or blood-ties among the lesser baronage.
As an example of how such motives worked, it may suffice to
quote the case of those old enemies, the Bon villes and Courtenays,
in the west country. While Lord Bonville supported the queen,
the house of Courtenay were staunch Yorkists, and the earl of
Devon joined in the armed demonstration of Duke Richard in
1452. But when the earl changed his politics and fought on the
Lancastrian side at St Albans in 1455, the baron at once became
a strenuous adherent of the duke, adhered firmly to the white
rose and died by the axe for its cause.
Richard of York, in short, was not merely the head of a
constitutional opposition to misgovernment by the queen's
friends, nor was he merely a legitimist claimant
to the crown, he was also the head of a powerful baronial
baronial league, of which the most prominent members party.
were his kinsmen, the Nevilles, Mowbrays and The
Bourchiers. The Nevilles alone, enriched with the
ancient estates of the Bcauchamps and Montagus, and with
five of their name in the House of Lords, were a sufficient nucleus
for a faction. They were headed by the two most capable
politicians and soldiers then alive in England, the two Richards,
father and son, who held the earldoms of Salisbury and Warwick,
and were respectively brother-in-law and nephew to York. It
must be remembered that a baron of 1450 was not strong merely
by reason of the spears and bows of his household and his
tenantry, like a baron of the I3th century. The pernicious
practice of " livery and maintenance " was now at its zenith;
all over England in times of stress the knighthood and gentry
were wont to pledge themselves, by sealed bonds of indenture, to
follow the magnate whom they thought best able to protect
them. They mounted his badge, and joined his banner when
strife broke out, in return for his championship of their private
interests and his promise to " maintain " them against all their
enemies. A soldier and statesman of the ability and ambition
of Richard of Warwick counted hundreds of such adherents,
scattered over twenty shires. The system had spread so far that
the majority of the smaller tenants-in-chief, and even many
of the lesser barons, were the sworn followers of an insignificant
number of the greater lords. An alliance of half-a-dozen of these
over-powerful subjects was a serious danger to the crown. For
the king could no longer count on raising a national army against
them; he could only call out the adherents of the lords of his
own party. The factions were fairly balanced, for if the majority
of the baronage were, on the whole, Lancastrian, the greatest
houses stood by the cause of York.
Despite all this, there was still, when the wars began, a very
strong feeling in favour of compromise and moderation. For
this there can be no doubt that Richard of York was
mainly responsible. When he was twice placed in *" ltutl *of
power, during the two protectorates which followed
Henry's two long fits of insanity in 1454 and 1455-1456,
he carefully avoided any oppression of his enemies, though he
naturally took care to put his own friends in office. Most of all
did he show his sincere wish for peace by twice laying down the
protectorate when the king was restored to sanity. He was
undoubtedly goaded into his last rebellion of 1459 by the queen's
undisguised preparations for attacking him. Yet because he
struck first, without waiting for a definite casus belli, public
opinion declared so much against him that half his followers
refused to rally to his banner. The revulsion only came when
the queen, victorious after the rout of Ludford, suppret-
applied to the vanquished Yorkists those penalties of *ioa of
confiscation and attainder which Duke Richard had York-*
always refused to employ in his day of power. After cu"'
the harsh doings at the parliament of Coventry (1459), tloa* ana
and the commencement of political executions by the coafiaca-
sending of Roger Neville and his fellows to the scaffold, " n *'
the trend of public opinion veered round, and Margaret and her
friends were rightly held responsible for the embittered nature
of the strife. Hence came the marvellous success of the Yorkist
counterstroke in June 1460, when the exiled Warwick, landing
in Kent with a mere handful of men, was suddenly
joined by the whole of the south of England and the
citizens of London, and inflicted a crushing defeat on defeat* tiit
the Lancastrians at Northampton before he had been Laoca*-
fifteen days on shore (July 10, 1460). The growing
rancour of the struggle was marked by the fact that
the Yorkists, after Northampton, showed themselves
by no means so merciful and scrupulous as in their earlier
5 i8
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1460-1464
days. Retaliatory executions began, though on a small scale,
and when York reached London he at last began to talk of his
rights to the crown, and to propose the deposition of Henry VI.
Yet moderation was still so far prevalent in the ranks of his
adherents that they refused to follow him to such lengths.
Warwick and the other leading men of the party dictated a
compromise, by which Henry was to reign for the term of his
Richard of nat ural life, but -Duke Richard was to be recognized
York de- as his heir and to succeed him on the throne. They
eland heir had obviously borrowed the expedient from the terms
Ihmne. of tne treat y of Troyes. But the act of parliament
which embodied it did not formally disinherit the
reigning king's son, as the treaty of Troyes had done, but merely
ignored his existence.
It would have been well for England if this agreement had
held, and the crown had passed peaceably to the house of York,
after the comparatively short and bloodless struggle which had
just ended; But Duke Richard had forgotten to reckon with
the fierce and unscrupulous energy of Queen Margaret, when she
was at bay in defence of her son's rights. Marching with a trifling
Battle of force to expel her from the north, he was surprised and
WakefieU. slain at Wakefield (Dec. 30, 1460). But it was not his
Richard death that was the main misfortune, but the fact
that in the battle the Lancastrians gave no quarter
to small or great, and that after it they put to death York's
brother-in-law Salisbury and other prisoners. The heads of the
duke and the earl were set up over the gates of York. This
ferocity was repeated when Margaret and her northern
St. Aibaos. host beat Warwick at the second battle of St Albans
(Feb. 17, 1461), where they had the good fortune to
recover possession of the person of King Henry. Lord Bonville
and the other captives of rank were beheaded next morning.
After this it was but natural that the struggle became a mere
record of massacres and executions. The Yorkists proclaimed
Edward, Duke Richard's heir, king of England; they
took no further heed of the claims of King Henry,
March, declared their leader the true successor of Richard II.,
pro- and stigmatized the whole period of the Lancastrian
rule as a mere usurpation. They adopted a strict
legitimist theory of the descent of the crown, and
denied the right of parliament to deal with the succession.
This was the first step in the direction of absolute monarchy
which England had seen since the short months of King
Richard's tyranny in 1397-1399. It was but the first of many
encroachments of the new dynasty upon the liberties that had
been enjoyed by the nation under the house of Lancaster.
The revenge taken by the new king and his cousin Richard of
Warwick for the slaughter at Wakefield and St Albans was prompt
and dreadful. They were now well supported by the
whole of southern England; for not only had the
of the war. queen's ferocity shocked the nation, but the reckless
plundering of her northern moss-troopers in the home
counties had roused the peasantry and townsfolk to an interest
in the struggle which they had never before displayed. Up to
this moment the civil war had been conducted like a great faction
fight; the barons and their liveried retainers had been wont to
seek some convenient heath or hill and there to fight out their
quarrel with the minimum of damage to the countryside. The
deliberate harrying of the Midlands by Margaret's northern
levies was a new departure, and one bitterly resented. The
house of Lancaster could never for the future count on an
adherent south of Trent or east of Chiltern. The Yorkist army
that marched in pursuit of the raiders, and won the
bloody field of Towton under Warwick's guidance,
gave no quarter. Not only was the slaughter in that
battle and the pursuit more cruel than anything that had been
seen since the day of Evesham, but the executions that followed
were rut hless. Ere Edward turned south he had be-
headed two earls Devon and Wiltshire and forty-
oithe two knights, and had hanged many prisoners of lesser
YorlJtt*. estate The Yorkist parliament of November 1461
carried on the work by attainting 133 persons, ranging from
Ruthies*
Henry VI. and Queen Margaret down through the peerage and
the knighthood to the clerks and household retainers of the late
king. All the estates of the Lancastrian lords, living or dead,
were confiscated, and their blood was declared corrupted.
This brought into the king's hands such a mass of plunder as no
one had handled since William the Conqueror. Edward IV.
could not only reward his adherents with it, so as to . .
create a whole new court noblesse, but had enough rule of
over to fill his exchequer for many years, and to Edward
enable him to dispense with parliamentary grants of IV '
money for an unexampled period. Between 1461 and 1465
he only asked for 37,000 from the nation and won no small
popularity thereby. For, in their joy at being quit of taxa-
tion, men forgot that they were losing the lever by which their
fathers had been wont to move the crown to constitutional
concessions.
After Towton peace prevailed south of the Tyne and east of
the Severn, for it was only in Northumberland and in Wales that
the survivors of the Lancastrian faction succeeded civil war
in keeping the war alive. King Edward, as indolent lathe
and pleasure-loving in times of ease as he was active aortl > and
and ruthless in times of stress and battle, set himself westl
to enjoy life, handing over the suppression of the rebels to his
ambitious and untiring cousin Richard of Warwick. The annals
of the few contemporary chroniclers are so entirely devoted to
the bickerings in the extreme north and west, that it is necessary
to insist on the fact that from 1461 onwards the civil war was
purely local, and nine-tenths of the realm enjoyed what passed
for peace in the isth century. The campaigns of 1462-63-64,
though full of incident and bloodshed, were not of first-rate
political importance. The cause of Lancaster had been lost at
Towton, and ail that Queen Margaret succeeded in accomplish-
ing was to keep Northumberland in revolt, mainly by means
of French and Scottish succours. Her last English partisans,
attainted men who had lost their lands and lived with the
shadow of the axe ever before them, fought bitterly enough.
But the obstinate and hard-handed Warwick beat them down
again and again, and the old Lancastrian party was Battle ot
almost exterminated when the last of its chiefs went Hexham.
to the block in the series of wholesale executions that imprisoa-
followed the battle of Hexham (May 15, 1464). A
year later Henry VI. himself fell into the hands of his
enemies, as he lurked in Lancashire, and with his consignment
to the Tower the dynastic question seemed finally solved in
favour of the house of York.
The first ten years of the reign of Edward IV. fall into two
parts, the dividing point being the avowal of the king's marriage
to Elizabeth Woodville in November 1464. During the Richard
first of these periods Edward reigned but Warwick Neville,
governed; he was not only the fighting man, but the eariof
statesman and diplomatist of the Yorkist party, and Warwkk -
enjoyed a complete ascendancy over his young master, who long
preferred thriftless ease to the toils of personal monarchy.
Warwick represented the better side of the victorious cause;
he was no mere factious king-maker, and his later nickname of
" the last of the barons " by no means expresses his character
or his position. He was strong, not so much by reason of his
vast estates and his numerous retainers, as by reason of the
confidence which the greater part of the nation placed in him.
He never forgot that the Yorkist party had started as the
advocates of sound and strong administration, and the man-
datories of the popular will against the queen's incapable and
corrupt ministers. " He ever had the goodwill of the people
because he knew how to give them fair words, and always spoke
not of himself but of the augmentation and good governance
of the kingdom, for which he would spend his life; and thus he
had the goodwill of England, so that in all the land he was the
lord who was held in most esteem and faith and credence." As
long as he remained supreme, parliaments were regularly held,
and the house of York appeared to be keeping its bargain with
the nation. His policy was sound; peace with France, the re-
habilitation of the dwindling foreign trade of England, and the
, 7
1464-1471)
ENGLISH HISTORY
maintenance of law and justice by strong-handed governance
were his main aims.
But Warwick was one of those ministers who love to do every-
thing for themselves, and chafe at masters and colleagues who
presume to check or to criticise their actions. He was sur-
rounded and supported, moreover, by a group of brothers and
cousins, to whom he gave most of his confidence, and most of
the preferment that came to his hands. England has always
chafed against a family oligarchy, however well it may do its
work. The Yorkist magnates who did not belong to the clan
of the Nevilles were not unnaturally jealous of that house, and
Edward IV. himself gradually came to realize the ignominious
position of a king who is managed and overruled by a strong-
willed and arbitrary minister.
His first sign of revolt was his secret marriage to Elizabeth
Woodville, a lady of decidedly Lancastrian connexions, for her
father and her first husband were both members of
the defeated faction. Warwick was at the moment
suing for the hand of Louis XL's sister-in-law in
his master's name, and had to back out of his negotia-
tions in a sudden and somewhat ridiculous fashion.
His pride was bun, but for two years more there was no open
breach between him and his master, though their estrangement
grew more and more marked when Edward continued to heap
titles and estates on his wife's numerous relatives, and to conclude
for them marriage alliances with all the great Yorkist families
who were not of the Neville connexion. In this way
he built up for himself a personal following within the
Yorkist party; but the relative strength of this faction
and of that which still looked upon Warwick as the
true representative of the cause had yet to be tried.
The king had in his favour the prestige of the royal name, and
a popularity won by his easy-going affability and his liberal
gifts. The earl had his established reputation for disinterested
devotion to the welfare of the realm, and his brilliant record
as a soldier and statesman. In districts as far apart as Kent
and Yorkshire, his word counted for a good deal more than that
of his sovereign.
Unhappily for England and for himself, Warwick's loyalty
was not sufficient to restrain his ambition and his resentment.
He felt the ingratitude of the king, whom he had
made, so bitterly that he stooped ere long to intrigue
and treason. Edward in 1467 openly broke with him
by dismissing his brother George Neville from the
chancellorship, by repudiating a treaty with France which the
earl had just negotiated, and by concluding an alliance with
Burgundy against which he had always protested. Warwick en-
listed in his cause the king's younger brother George of Clarence,
who desired to marry his daughter and heiress Isabella Neville,
and with the aid of this unscrupulous but unstable young man
began to organize rebellion. His first experiment in treason was
e so-called " rising of Robin of Redesdole," which
ot was ostensibly an armed protest by the gentry and
commons of Yorkshire against the maladministration
of the realm by the king's favourites his wife's
relatives, and the courtiers whom he had lately promoted to high
rank and office. The rebellion was headed by well-known ad-
herents of the earl, and the nickname of " Robin of Redesdale "
seems to have covered the personality of his kinsman Sir John
Conyers. When the rising was well started Warwick declared
his sympathy with the aims of the insurgents, wedded his
daughter to Clarence despite the king's prohibition of the match,
and raised a force at Calais with which he landed in Kent.
But his plot was already successful before he reached the scene
of operations. The Yorkshire rebels beat the royalist army at
Biutoif the battle of Edgecott (July 6, 1469). A few days later
E*x*c*tt. Edward himself was captured at Olney and put into
Erf.rrf the earl's hands. Many of his chief supporters, includ-
* rttom * r - ing the queen's father, Lord Rivers, and her brother,
John Woodville, as well as the newly-created earls of Pembroke
and Devon, were put to death with Warwick's connivance, if
not by his direct orders. The king was confined for
,
weeks in the great Neville stronghold of Middlcham Castle, but
presently released on conditions, being compelled to accept
new ministers nominated by Warwick. The earl supposed that
his cousin's spirit was broken and that he would give Execution
no further trouble. In this he erred grievously, of the
Edward vowed revenge for his slaughtered favourites, '
and waited his opportunity. Warwick had lost *""*
credit by using such underhand methods in his attack on his
master, and had not taken sufficient care to conciliate public
opinion when he reconstructed the government. His conduct
had destroyed his old reputation for disinterestedness and
honesty.
In March 1470 the king seized the first chance of avenging him-
self. Some unimportant riots had broken out in Lincolnshire,
originating probably in mere local quarrels, but possibly Klgg
in Lancastrian intrigues. To suppress this rising the Edward
king gathered a great force, carefully calling in to his drive*
banner all the peers who were offended with Warwick
or, at any rate, did not belong to his family alliance.
Having scattered the Lincolnshire bands, he suddenly turned
upon Warwick with his army, and caught him wholly unprepared.
The earl and his son-in-law Clarence were hunted out of the realm
before they could collect their partisans, and fled to France;
Edward seemed for the first time to be master in his own
realm.
But the Wars of the Roses had one more phase to come.
Warwick's name was still a power in the land, and his expulsion
had been so sudden that he had not been given an \varwic*.
opportunity of trying his strength. His old enmity takes up
for the house of Lancaster was completely swallowed the cause
up in his new grudge against the king that he had of Henry
made. He opened negotiations with the exiled Queen
Margaret, and offered to place his sword at her disposition for
the purpose of overthrowing King Edward and restoring King
Henry. The queen had much difficulty in forcing herself to
come to terms with the man who had been the bane of her cause,
but finally, was induced by Louis XL to conclude a bargain.
Warwick married his younger daughter to her son Edward, prince
of Wales, as a pledge of his good faith, and swore allegiance to
King Henry in the cathedral of Angers. He then set himself
to stir up the Yorkshire adherents of the house of Neville to
distract the attention of Edward IV. When the king
had gone northward to attack them, the earl landed He land*
at Dartmouth (Sept. 1470) with a small force partly Eafiaoa.
composed of Lancastrian exiles, partly of his own
men. His appearance had the effect on which he had calcu-
lated. Devon rose in the Lancastrian interest; Kent, where the
earl's name had always been popular, took arms a
few days later; and London opened its gates. King
Edward, hurrying south to oppose the invader, found exile.
his army melting away from his banner, and hastily
took ship at Lynn and fled to Holland. He found a refuge
with his brother-in-law and ally Charles the Bold, the great
duke of Burgundy.
King Henry was released and replaced on the throne, and for
six months Warwick ruled England as his lieutenant. But there
was bitterness and mistrust between the old Lan-
castrian faction and the Nevilles, and Queen Margaret ^0*'"
refused to cross to England or to trust her son in the Heary vi.
king-maker's hands. Her partisans doubted his sin-
cerity, while many of the Yorkists who had hitherto followed
Warwick in blind admiration found it impossible to reconcile
themselves to the new regime. The duke of Clarence in par-
ticular, discontented at the triumph of Lancaster, betrayed his
father-in-law, and opened secret negotiations with his exiled
brother. Encouraged by the news of the dissensions among his
enemies, Edward IV. resolved to try his fortune once
more, and landed near Hull on the isth of March a '"'* n '
I 11 t i i > i i mum* co
1471 with a body of mercenaries lent him by the i-ngiand.
duke of Burgundy. The campaign that followed was
most creditable to Edward's generalship, but must have been
fatal to him if Warwick had been honestly supported by his
520
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1471-1483
Edward
IV.
lieutenants. But the duke of Clarence betrayed to his brother
the army which he had gathered in King Henry's name, and
Battle of manv f the Lancastrians were slow to join the earl,
Barnet. from their distrust of his loyalty. Edward, dashing
Death of through the midst of the slowly gathering levies of
Warwick. ^ O p ponentSj se i ze d London, and two days later
defeated and slew Warwick at the battle of Barnet (April 13,
1471).
On that same day Queen Margaret and her son landed at
Weymouth, only to hear that the earl was dead and
- kis army scattered. But she refused to consider the
hury , struggle ended, and gathered the Lancastrians of the
Death of west for a final rally. On the fatal day of Tewkes-
b UT y (May 3, 1471) her army was beaten, her son
was s ^ a ' n m the m Rht, ar >d the greater part of her
chief captains were taken prisoner. She herself was
captured next day. The victorious Edward sent to the block
tufe f the last Beaufort duke of Somerset, and nearly all
Queen* " the other captains of rank, whether Lancastrians or
Margaret followers of Warwick. He then moved to London,
and which was being threatened by Kentish levies raised
m Warwick's name, delivered the city, and next day
caused the unhappy Henry VI. to be murdered in the
Tower (May 21, 1471).
The descendants of Henry IV. were now extinct, and the
succession question seemed settled for ever. No one dreamed
of raising against King Edward the claims of the
remoter heirs of John of Gaunt the young earl of
Richmond, who represented the Beauforts by a female
descent, or the king of Portugal, the grandson of Gaunt's eldest
daughter. Edward was now king indeed, with no over-powerful
cousin at his elbow to curb his will. He had, moreover, at his
disposal plunder almost as valuable as that which he had divided
up in 1461 the estates of the great Neville clan and their ad-
herents. A great career seemed open before him; he had proved
himself a fine soldier and an unscrupulous diplomatist; he was
in the very prime of life, having not yet attained his thirty-first
year. He might have devoted himself to foreign politics and
have rivalled the exploits of Edward III. or Henry V. for the
state of the continent was all in his favour or might have set
himself to organize an absolute monarchy on the ruins of the
parliament and the baronage. For the successive attainders
of the Lancastrians and the Nevilles had swept away many of
the older noble families, and Edward's house of peers consisted
for the main part of new men, his own partisans promoted for
good service, who had not the grip on the land that their
predecessors had possessed.
But Edward either failed to see his opportunity or refused to
take it. He did not plunge headlong into the wars of Louis XI.
and Charles of Burgundy, nor did he attempt to recast
tne institutions of the realm. He settled down into
reign. inglorious ease, varied at long intervals by outbursts
of spasmodic tyranny. It would seem that the key
to his conduct was that he hated the hard work without which
a despotic king cannot hope to assert his personality, and
preferred leisure and vicious self-indulgence. In many ways
the later years of his reign were marked with all the signs of
absolutism. Between 1475 and 1483 he called only one single
parliament, and that was summoned not to give him advice,
or raise him money, but purely and solely to attaint his brother
of Clarence, whom he had resolved to destroy. The
^duke'ot duke ' s fate ( Feb - J 7' J 47 8 ) need provoke no sympathy,
Clarence, he was a detestable intriguer, and had given his brother
just offence by a series of deeds of high-handed violence
and by perpetual cavilling. But he had committed no act of
real treason since his long-pardoned alliance with Warwick,
and was not in any way dangerous; so that when the king
caused him to be attainted, and then privately murdered in the
Tower, there was little justification for the fratricide.
Edward was a thrifty king; he was indeed the only medieval
monarch of England who succeeded in keeping free of debt and
made his revenue suffice for his expenses. But his methods
of filling his purse were often unconstitutional and sometimes
ignominious. When the resources drawn from confiscations
were exhausted, he raised " benevolences " forced
gifts extracted from men of wealth by the unspoken policy.
threat of the royal displeasure instead of applying to
parliament for new taxes. But his most profitable source of
revenue was drawn from abroad. Having allied himself with his
brother-in-law Charles of Burgundy against the king of France,
he led an army into Picardy in 1475, and then by the treaty of
Picquigny sold peace to Louis XI. for 75,000 gold crowns down,
and an annual pension (or tribute as he preferred to call it) of
50,000 crowns more. It was regularly paid up to the last year
of his reign. Charles the Bold, whom he had thus deliberately
deserted in the middle of their joint campaign, used the strongest
language about this mean act of treachery, and with good cause.
But the king cared not when his pockets were full. Another
device of Edward for filling his exchequer was a very stringent
enforcement of justice; small infractions of the laws being
made the excuse for exorbitant fines. This was a trick which
Henry VII. was to turn to still greater effect. In defence of
both it may be pleaded that after the anarchy of the Wars of the
Roses a strong hand was needed to restore security for life and
property, and that it was better that penalties should be over-
heavy rather than that there should be no penalties at all.
Another appreciable source of revenue to Edward was his private
commercial ventures. He owned many ships, and traded with
great profit to himself abroad, because he could promise, as a
king, advantages to foreign buyers and sellers with which no
mere merchant could compete.
During the last period of Edward's rule England might have
been described as a despotism, if only the king had cared to be
a despot. But except on rare occasions he allowed his power
to be disguised under the old machinery of the medieval
monarchy, and made no parade of his autocracy. Much was
pardoned by the nation to one who gave them comparatively
efficient and rather cheap government, and who was personally
easy of access, affable and humorous. It is with little justification
that he has been called the " founder of the new monarchy,"
and the spiritual ancestor of the Tudor despotism. Another
king in his place might have merited such titles, but Edward
was too careless, too unsystematic, too lazy, and too fond of self-
indulgence to make a real tyrant. He preferred to be a man of
pleasure and leisure, only awaking now and then to perpetrate
some act of arbitrary cruelty.
England was not unprosperous under him. The lowest point
of her fortunes had been reached under the administration of
Margaret of Anjou, during the weary years that pre-
ceded the outbreak of the civil wars in 1459. At that
time the government had been bankrupt, foreign country.
trade had almost disappeared, the French and pirates
of all nations had possession of the Channel, and the nation had
lost heart, because there seemed no way out of the trouble save
domestic strife, to which all looked forward with dismay. The
actual war proved less disastrous than had been expected. It
fell heavily upon the baronage and their retainers, but passed
lightly, for the most part, over the heads of the middle classes.
The Yorkists courted the approval of public opinion by their
careful avoidance of pillage and requisitions; and the Lan-
castrians, though less scrupulous, only once launched out into
general raiding and devastation, during the advance of the
queen's army to St Albans in the early months of 1461. As
a rule the towns suffered little or nothing they submitted to
the king of the moment, and were always spared by the victors.
It is one of the most curious features of these wars that no town
ever stood a siege, though there were several long and arduous
sieges of baronial castles, such as Harlech, Alnwick and Bam-
borough. Warwick, with his policy of conciliation for the masses
and hard blows for the magnates, was mainly responsible for
this moderation. In battle he was wont to bid his followers
spare the commons in the pursuit, and to smite only the knights
and nobles. Towton, where the Yorkist army was infuriated by
the harrying of the Midlands by their enemies in the preceding
I4W4851
ENGLISH HISTORY
campaign, was the only fight that ended in a general
massacre. There were, of course, many local feuds and riots
which led to the destruction of property; well-known instances
are the private war about Caister Castle between the duke of
Norfolk and the Pastons, and the " battle of Nibley Green,"
near Bristol, between the Berkeleys and the Talbots. But on
the whole there was no ruinous devastation of the land. Pro-
sperity seems to have revived early during the rule of York;
Warwick had cleared the seas of pirates, and both he and King
Edward were great patrons of commerce, though the earl's
policy was to encourage trade with France, while his master
i wished to knit up the old alliance with Flanders by adhering
to the cause of Charles of Burgundy. Edward did
much in his later years to develop interchange of
commodities with the Baltic, making treaties with
the Hanseatic League which displeased the merchants
of London, because of the advantageous terms granted to the
foreigner. The east coast ports seem to have thriven under his
rule, but Bristol was not less prosperous. On the one side,
developing the great salt-fish trade, her vessels were encom-
passing Iceland, and feeling their way towards the Banks of
the West; on the other they were beginning to feel their way
into the Mediterranean. The famous William Canynges, the
patriarch of Bristol merchants, possessed 2500 tons of shipping,
including some ships of ooo tons, and traded in every sea. Yet
we still find complaints that too much merchandize reached
and left England in foreign bottoms, and King Edward's treaty
with the Hansa was censured mainly for this reason. Internal
commerce was evidently developing in a satisfactory style,
despite of the wars; in especial raw wool was going out of
England in less bulk than of old, because cloth woven at home
was becoming the staple export. The woollen manufactures
which had begun in the eastern counties in the I4th century
were now spreading all over the land, taking root especially in
Somersetshire, Yorkshire and some districts of the
Midlands. Coventry, the centre of a local woollen
and dyeing industry, was probably the inland town
which grew most rapidly during the i^th century.
Yet there was still a large export of wool to Flanders, and the
long pack-trains of the Cotswold flockmasters still wound
eastward to the sea for the benefit of the merchants of the staple
and the continental manufacturer.
As regards domestic agriculture, it has been often stated that
the 1 5th century was the golden age of the English peasant, and
that his prosperity was little affected either by the
unhappy French wars of Henry VI. or by the Wars
of the Roses. There is certainly very little evidence of
any general discontent among the rural population,
such as had prevailed in the times of Edward III. or Richard II.
Insurrections that passed as popular, like the risings of Jack
Cade and Robin of Redesdale, produced manifestos that spoke
of political grievances but hardly mentioned economic ones.
There is a bare mention of the Statute of Labourers in Jack
Cade's ably drafted chapter of complaints. It would seem that
the manorial grudges between landowner and peasant, which
bad been so fierce in the uth century, had died down as the lords
abandoned the old system of working their demesne by villein
labour. They were now for the most part letting out the soil
to tenant-farmers at a moderate rent, and the large class of
yeomanry created by this movement seem to have been pros-
perous. The less popular device of turning old manorial arable
land into sheep-runs was also known, but does not yet seem
to have grown to common as to provoke the popular discontents
which were to prevail under the Tudors. Probably such labour
as was thrown out of work by this tendency was easily absorbed
by the growing needs of the towns. Some murmurs are heard
about " enclosures," but they are incidental and not widely
spread.
One of the best tests of the prosperity of England under the
Yorkist rule seems to be the immense amount of building that
was on hand. Despite the needs of civil war, it was not
on castles that the builders' energy was spent; the government
ArcHl-
ttcturt.
discouraged fortresses in private hands, and the dwellings of the
new nobility of Edward IV. were rather splendid manor-houses,
with some slight external protection of moat and gate-
house, than old-fashioned castles. But the church-
building of the time is enormous and magnificent.
A very large proportion of the great Perpendicular churches of
England date back to this age, and in the cathedrals also much
work was going on.
Material prosperity docs not imply spiritual development,
and it must be confessed that from the intellectual and moral
point of view isth-century England presents an un- Retigtou*
pleasing picture. The Wycliflite movement, the one condition
phenomenon which at the beginning of the century of the
seemed to give some promise of better things, had
died down under persecution. It lingered on in a subterranean
fashion among a small class in the universities and the minor
clergy, and had some adherents among the townsfolk and even
among the peasantry. But the Lollards were a feeble and help-
less minority; they no longer produced writers, organizers or
missionaries. They continued to be burnt, or more frequently
to make forced recantations, under the Yorkist rule, though the
list of trials is not a long one. Little can be gathered concerning
them from chronicles or official records. We only know that
they continued to exist, and occasionally produced a martyr.
But the governing powers were not fanatics, bent on seeking
out victims; the spirit of Henry V. and Archbishop Arundel
was dead. The life of the church seems, indeed, to have been
in a more stagnant and torpid condition in this age than at any
other period of English history. The great prelates from Cardinal
Beaufort down to Archbishops Bourchier and Rotherham, and
Bishop John Russell trusted supporters of the Yorkist dynasty
were mere politicians with nothing spiritual about them.
Occasionally they appear in odious positions. Rotherham was
the ready tool of Edward IV. in the judicial murder of Clarence.
Russell became the obsequious chancellor of Richard III.
Bourchier made himself responsible in 1483 for the taking of the
little duke of York from his mother's arms in order to place him
in the power of his murderous uncle. It is difficult to find a single
bishop in the whole period who was respected for his piety or
virtue. The best of them were capable statesmen, the worst were
mean time-servers. Few of the higher'clergy were such patrons
of learning as many prelates of earlier ages. William Grey of
Ely and James Goldwell of Norwich did something for scholars,
and there was one bishop in the period who came to sad grief
through an intellectual activity which was rare among his
contemporaries. This was the eccentric Reginald Pecock of
Chichester, who, while setting himself to confute Lollard con-
troversialists, lapsed into heresy by setting " reason " above
" authority." He taught that the organization and many of
the dogmas of the medieval church should be justified by an
appeal to private judgment and the moral law, rather than to
the scriptures, the councils, or the fathers. For taking up this
dangerous line of defence, and admitting his doubts about
several received articles of faith, he was attacked by the Yorkist
archbishop Bourchier in 1457, compelled to do penance, and shut
up in a monastery for the rest of his life. He seems to have had
no school of followers, and his doctrines died with him.
In nothing is the general stagnation of the church in the later
i sth century shown better than by the gradual cessation of the
monastic chronicles. The stream of narrative was
still flowing strongly in 1400; by 1485 it has run dry,
even St Albans, the mother of historians, produced
no annalist after Whethamstede, whose story ceases
early in the Wars of the Roses. The only monastic chronicler
who went on writing for a few years after the extinction of the
house of York was the " Croyland continuator." For the last
two-thirds of the century the various " London chronicles,"
the work of laymen, are much more important than anything
which was produced in the religious houses. The regular clergy
indeed seem to have been sunk in intellectual torpor. Their
numbers were falling off, their zeal was gone; there is little good to
be said of them save that they were still in some cases endowing
522
ENGLISH HISTORY
(1483
England with splendid architectural decorations. But even in the
wealthier abbeys we find traces of thriftless administration,
idleness, self-indulgence and occasionally grave moral scandals.
The parochial clergy were probably in a healthier condition;
but the old abuses of pluralism and non-residence were as
rampant as ever, and though their work may have been in many
cases honourably carried out, it is certain that energy and
intelligence were at a low ebb.
The moral faults of the church only reflected those of the
nation. It was a hard and selfish generation which witnessed
the Wars of the Roses and the dictatorship of
Edward IV. The iniquitous French war, thirty years
f plunder and demoralization, had corrupted the
minds of the governing classes before the civil strife
began. Afterwards the constant and easy changes of allegiance,
as one faction or the other was in the ascendant, the wholesale
confiscations and attainders, the never-ending executions, the
sudden prosperity of adventurers, the premium on time-serving
and intrigue, sufficed to make the whole nation cynical and
sordid. The claim of the Yorkists to represent constitutional
opposition to misgovernment became a mere hypocrisy. The
claim of the Lancastrians to represent loyalty soon grew almost
as hollow. Edward IV. with his combination of vicious self-
indulgence and spasmodic cruelty was no unfit representative
of his age. The Paston Letters, that unique collection
"i * ^ t ^ ie P" vate correspondence of a typical family of
Letters"' nouveaux riches, thriftless, pushing, unscrupulous, give
us the true picture of the time. All that can be said in
favour of the Yorkists is that they restored a certain measure of
national prosperity, and that their leaders had one redeeming
virtue in their addiction to literature. The learning which had
died out in monasteries began to flourish again in the corrupt soil
of the court. Most of Edward's favourites had literary tastes.
His constable Tiptoft, the " butcher earl " of Worcester, was a
figure who might have stepped out of the Italian Renaissance.
influence ^ graduate of Pavia, a learned lawyer, who translated
ofthe Caesar and Cicero, composed works both in Latin
Italian Re- and English, and habitually impaled his victims, he
naissance. was a man o & tv p e hitherto unknown in England.
Antony, Lord Rivers, the queen's brother, was a mere adyen-
turer, but a poet of some merit, and a great patron of
Caxton. Hastings, the Bourchiers, and other of the king's
friends were minor patrons of literature. It is curious to find
that Caxton, an honest man, and an enthusiast as to the future
of the art of printing, which he had introduced into England,
waxes enthusiastic as to the merits of the intelligent but un-
scrupulous peers who took an interest in his endeavours. Of
the detestable Tiptoft he writes that " there flowered in virtue
and cunning none like him among the lords of the temporally in
science and moral virtue " ! And this is no time-serving praise
of a patron, but disinterested tribute to a man who had perished
long before on the scaffold.
The uneventful latter half of the reign of Edward IV. ended
with his death at the age of forty-one on the gth of April 1483.
He had ruined a splendid constitution by the com-
Deatb of bination of sloth and evil living, and during his last
years had been sinking slowly into his grave, unable
to take the field or to discharge the more laborious
duties of royalty. Since Clarence's death he had been gradually
falling into the habit of transferring the conduct of great matters
of state to his active and hard-working youngest brother,
Richard Richard, duke of Gloucester, who had served him well
duke of ' and faithfully ever since he first took the field at Barnet.
Qlou- Gloucester passed as a staid and religious prince, and
enter. y t jj ere was bi oo d on his hands, the same could be said
of every statesman of his time. His sudden plunge into crime
and usurpation after his brother's death was wholly unexpected
by the nation. Indeed it was his previous reputation for loyalty
and moderation which made his scandalous coup d'ttat of 1483
possible. No prince with a sinister reputation would have had
the chance of executing the series of crimes which placed him
on the throne. But when Richard declared that he was the
Edward
IV.
victim of plots and intrigues, and was striking down his enemies
only to defend his own life and honour, he was for some time
believed.
At the moment of King Edward's death his elder son by
Elizabeth Woodville, Edward, prince of Wales, was twelve;
his younger son Richard, duke of York, was nine. It ol
was clear that there would be a long minority, and proclaims
that the only possible claimants for the regency were himself
the queen and Richard of Gloucester. Elizabeth was Drotector -
personally unpopular, and the rapacity and insolence of her
family was well known. Hence when Richard of Gloucester
seized on the person of the young king, and imprisoned Lord
Rivers and Sir Richard Grey, the queen's brother and son, on
the pretence that they were conspiring against him, his action
was regarded with equanimity by the people. Nor did the fact
that the duke took the title of "protector and defender of the
realm" cause any surprise. Suspicions only became rife after
Richard had seized and beheaded without any trial, Lord
Hastings, the late king's most familiar friend, and had arrested
at the same moment the archbishop of York, Morton, bishop of
Ely, and Lord Stanley, all persons of unimpeachable loyalty to
the house of Edward IV. It was not plausible to accuse such
persons of plotting with the queen to overthrow the protector,
and public opinion began to turn against Gloucester. Never-
theless he went on recklessly with his design, having already
enlisted the support of a party of the greater peers, who were
ready to follow him to any length of treason. These confidants,
the duke of Buckingham, the lords Howard and Lovel, and a few
more, must have known from an early date that he was aiming
at the crown, though it is improbable that they suspected that
his plan involved the murder of the rightful heirs as well as mere
usurpation.
On the i6th of June, Richard, using the aged archbishop
Bourchier as his tool, got the little duke of York out of his
mother's hands, and sent him to join his brother in the Tower.
A few days later, having packed London with his own armed
retainers and those of Buckingham and his other confidants, he
openly put forward his pretensions to the throne. Edward IV.,
as he asserted, had been privately contracted to Lady Eleanor
Talbot before he ever met Queen Elizabeth. His children
therefore were bastards, the offspring of a bigamous union. As
to the son and daughter of the duke of Clarence, their blood had
been corrupted by their father's attainder, and they could not
be reckoned as heirs to the crown. He himself, therefore, was the
legitimate successor of Edward IV. This preposterous theory
was set forth by Buckingham, first to the mayor and corporation
of London, and next day to an assembly of the estates of the realm
held in St Paul's. Cowed by the show of armed force, and
remembering the fate of Hastings, the two assemblies received
the claim with silence which gave consent. Richard, after a
hypocritical show of reluctance, allowed himself to
be saluted as king, and was crowned on the 6th of July '<*'
1483. Before the coronation ceremony he had issued crowned
orders for the execution of the queen's relatives, who
had been in prison since the beginning of May. He paid his
adherents lavishly for their support, making Lord Howard duke
of Norfolk, and giving Buckingham enormous grants of estates
and offices.
Having accomplished his coup d'etat Richard started for a
royal progress through the Midlands, and a few days after his
departure sent back secret orders to London for the
murder of his two nephews in the Tower. There is Murder
no reason to doubt that they were secretly smothered princes.
on or about the i5th of July by his agent Sir James
Tyrrell, or that the bones found buried under a staircase in the
fortress two hundred years after belonged to the two unhappy
lads. But the business was kept dark at the time, and it was
long before any one could assert with certainty that they were
dead or alive. Richard never published any statement as to
their end, though some easy tale of a fever, a conflagration,
or an accident might have served him better than the mere
silence that he employed. For while many persons believed
1 4--, md
ENGLISH HISTORY
523
that the princes still existed there was room for all manner of
impostures and false rumours.
The usurper's reign was from the first a troubled one. Less
than three months after his coronation the first insurrection
broke out; it was headed strangely enough by the
duke of Buckingham, who seems to have been shocked
by the murder of the princes; he must have been
one of the few who had certain information of the
crime. He did not take arms in his own cause, though after the
bouse of York the house of Buckingham had the best claim
to the throne, as representing Thomas of Woodstock, the youngest
son of Edward III. His plan was to unite the causes of York and
Lancaster by wedding the Lady Elizabeth, the eldest sister of the
murdered princes, to Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, a young
exile who represented the very doubtful claim of the Beauforts
to the Lancastrian heritage. Henry was the son of Margaret
Beaufort, the daughter of John, first duke of Somerset, and the
niece of Edmund, second duke, who fell at St Albans. All her
male kinsmen had been exterminated in the Wars of the Roses.
This promising scheme was to be supported by a rising of
those Yorkists who rejected the usurpation of Richard III.,
and by the landing on the south coast of Henry of
Richmond with a body of Lancastrian exiles and
foreign mercenaries. But good organization was
wanting, and chance fought for the king. A number
of scattered risings in the south were put down by Richard's
troops, while Buckingham, who had raised his banner in Wales,
was prevented from bringing aid by a week of extraordinary
rains which made the Severn impassable. Finding that the rest
of the plan had miscarried, Buckingham's retainers melted away
from him, and he was forced to fly. A few days later he was
betrayed, handed over to the king, and beheaded (Nov. 2, 1483).
Meanwhile Richmond's little fleet was dispersed by the same
storms that scattered Buckingham's army, and he was forced
to return to Brittany without having landed in England.
Here King Richard's luck ended. Though he called a parlia-
ment early in 1484, and made all manner of gracious promises
of good governance, he felt that his position was insecure. The
nation was profoundly disgusted with his unscrupulous policy,
and the greater part of the leaders of the late insurrection had
escaped abroad and were weaving new plots. Early in the spring
he lost his only son and heir, Edward, prince of Wales, and the
question of the succession to the crown was opened from a new
point of view. After some hesitation Richard named his nephew
John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln, a son of his sister, as his heir.
But he also bethought him of another and a most repulsive plan
for strengthening his position. His queen, Anne Neville, the
daughter of the kingmaker, was on her death-bed. With indecent
haste he began to devise a scheme for marrying his niece Eliza-
beth, whose brothers he had murdered but a year before. Know-
ledge of this scheme is said to have shortened the life of the
unfortunate Anne, and many did not scruple to say that her
husband had made away with her.
When the queen was dead, and some rumours of the king's
intentions got abroad, the public indignation was so great that
Htaryof Richard's councillors had to warn him to disavow the
projected marriage, if he wished to retain a single
adherent. He yielded, and made public complaint
that he had been slandered which few believed.
Meanwhile the conspirators of 1483 were busy in organizing
another plan of invasion. This time it was successfully carried
out, and the earl of Richmond landed at Milford Haven with
many exiles, both Yorkists and Lancastrians, and 1000 mer-
cenaries lent him by the princess regent of France. The Welsh
joined him in great numbers, not forgetting that by his Tudor
descent he was their own kinsman, and when he reached Shrews-
bury English adherents also began to flock in to his banner, for
the whole country was seething with discontent, and
Richard III. had but few loyal adherents. When the
rivals met at Bosworth Field (Aug. 13, 1485) the king's
army was far the larger, but the greater part of it was deter-
mined not to fight. When battle was joined some left the field
and many joined the pretender. Richard, however, refused to
fly, and was slain, fighting to the last, along with the duke of
Norfolk and a few other of his more desperate partisans., The
slaughter was small, for treason, not the sword, had settled the
day. The battered crown which had fallen from Richard's
helmet was set on the victor's head by Lord Stanley, the chief
of the Yorkist peers who had joined his standard, and his army
hailed him by the new title of Henry VII.
No monarch of England since WiUiam the Conqueror, not
excluding Stephen and Henry IV., could show such a poor title
to the throne as the first of the Tudor kings. His
claim to represent the house of Lancaster was of the
weakest when Henry IV. had assented to the legiti-
mating of his brothers the Beauforts, he had attached a clause
to the act, to provide that they were given every right save that
of counting in the line of succession to the throne. The true
heir to the house of John of Gaunt should have been sought
among the descendants of his eldest legitimate daughter, not
among those of his base-born sons. The earl of Richmond had
been selected by the conspirators as their figure-head mainly
because he was known as a young man of ability, and because he
was unmarried and could therefore take to wife the princess Eliza-
beth, and so absorb the Yorkist claim in his own. This had been
the essential part of the bargain, and Henry was ready to carry
it out, but he insisted that he should first be recognized as king
in his own right, lest it might be held that he ruled merely as his
destined wife's consort. He was careful to hold his first parlia-
ment and get his title acknowledged before he married the
princess. When he had done so, he had the triple claim by
conquest, by election and by inheritance, safely united. Yet
his position was even then insecure; the vicissitudes of the last
thirty years had shaken the old prestige of the name of' king,
and a weaker and less capable man than Henry Tudor might
have failed to retain the crown that he had won. There were
plenty of possible pretenders in existence; the earl of Lincoln,
whom Richard III. had recognized as his heir, was still alive;
the two children of the duke of Clarence might be made the tools
of conspirators; and there was a widespread doubt as to whether
the sons of Edward IV. had actually died in the Tower. The
secrecy with which their uncle had carried out their murder was
destined to be a sore hindrance to his successor.
Bosworth Field is often treated as the last act of the Wars
of the Roses. This is an error; they were protracted for twelve
years after the accession of Henry VII., and did not
really end till the time of Blackheath Field and the
siege of Exeter (1497). The position of the first Tudor
king is misconceived if his early years are regarded
as a time of strong governance and well-established order. On
the contrary he was in continual danger, and was striving
with all the resources of a ready and untiring mind to rebuild
foundations that were absolutely rotten. Phenomena like the
Cornish revolt (which recalls Cade's insurrection) and
the Yorkshire rising of 1489, which began with the Jj" 1 ""
death of the earl of Northumberland, show that at plot","
any moment whole counties might take arms in sheer
lawlessness, or for some local grievance. Loyalty was such an
uncertain thing that the king might call out great levies yet be
forced to doubt whether they would fight for him at Stoke
Field it seems that a large part of Henry's army misbehaved,
much as that of Richard III. had done at Bosworth. The
demoralization brought about by the evil years between 1453
and 1483 could not be lived down in a day any sort of treason
was possible to the generation that had seen the career of
Warwick and the usurpation of Gloucester. The survivors of that
time were capable of taking arms for any cause that offered a
chance of unreasonable profit, and no one's loyalty could be
trusted. Did not Sir. William Stanley, the best paid of those
who betrayed Richard III., afterwards lose his head for a
deliberate plot to betray Henry VII.? The varjous attempts
that were made to overturn the new dynasty seem contemptible
to the historian of the aoth century. They were not so con-
temptible at the time, because England and Ireland were full
524
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1485-1495
of adventurers who were ready to back any cause, and who
looked on the king of the moment as no more than a successful
member of their own class a base-born Welshman who had been
lucky enough to become the figurehead of the movement that
had overturned an unpopular usurper. The organizing spirits
of the early troubles of the reign of Henry VII. were irreconcil-
able Yorkists who had suffered by the change of dynasty; but
their hopes of success rested less on their own strength than on
the not ill-founded notion that England would tire of any ruler
who had to raise taxes and reward his partisans. The position
bore a curious resemblance to that of the early years of Henry IV.,
a king who, like Henry VII., had to vindicate a doubtful elective
title to the throne by miracles of cunning and activity. The
later representative of the house of Lancaster was fortunate,
however, in having less formidable enemies than the earlier; the
power of the baronage had been shaken by the Wars of the Roses
no less than the power of the crown; so many old estates had
passed rapidly from hand to hand, so many old titles were
represented by upstarts destitute of local influence, that the
feudal danger had become far less. Risings like that of the
Percies in 1403 were not the things which the seventh Henry
had to fear. He was lucky too in having no adversary of genius
of the type of Owen Glendower. Welsh national spirit indeed
was enlisted on his own side. Yet leaderless seditions and the
plots of obvious impostors sufficed to make his throne tremble,
and a ruler less resolute, less wary, and less unscrupulous might
have been overthrown.
The first of the king's troubles was an abortive rising in the
north riding of Yorkshire, the only district where Richard III.
seems to have enjoyed personal popularity. It was led by Lord
Lovel, Richard's chamberlain and admiral; but the insurgents
dispersed when Henry marched against them with a large force
(1486), and Lovel took refuge in Flanders with Margaret of York,
the widow of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, whose dower towns
were the refuge of all English exiles, and whose coffers were
always open to subsidize plots against her niece's husband.
Under the auspices of this rancorous princess the second con-
spiracy was hatched in the following year (1487). Its leaders
were Lovel and John, earl of Lincoln, whom Richard III. had
designated as his heir. But the Yorkist banner was to be raised,
not in the name of Lincoln, but in that of the boy Edward of
Clarence, then a prisoner in the Tower. His absence and cap-
tivity might seem a fatal hindrance, but the conspirators had
prepared a " double " who was to take his name till he
could be released. This was a lad named Lambert
Simnel, the son of an Oxford organ-maker, who bore
a personal resemblance to the young captive. The conspirators
seem to have argued that Henry VII. would not proceed to
murder the real Edward, but would rather exhibit him to prove
the imposition; if he took the more drastic alternative Lincoln
could fall back on his own claim to the crown.
In May 1487 Lincoln and Lovel landed in Ireland accom-
panied by other exiles and 2000 German mercenaries. The
cause of York was popular in the Pale, and the Anglo-Irish barons
seem to have conceived the notion that Henry VII. was likely
to prove too strong and capable a king to suit their convenience.
The invading army was welcomed by almost all the lords, and
the spurious Clarence was crowned at Dublin by the name of
Edward VI. A few weeks later Lincoln had recruited his army
with 4000 or 5000 Irish adventurers under Thomas Fitzgerald,
son of the earl of Kildare, and had taken ship for England. He
landed in Lancashire, and pushed forward, hoping to gather the
English Yorkists to his aid. But few had joined him when
King Henry brought him to action at Stoke, near
stoke Newark, on the I7th of July. Despite the doubtful
conduct of part of the royal army, and the fierce
resistance of the Germans and Irish, the rebel army was routed.
Lincoln and Fitzgerald were slain; Lovel disappeared in the
rout; the young impostor Simnel was taken prisoner. Henry
treated him with politic contempt, and made him a cook boy
in his kitchen. He lived for many years after in the royal house-
hold. The Irish lords were pardoned on renewing their oaths
Lambert
Simael.
of fealty; the king did not wish to entangle himself in costly
campaigns beyond St George's Channel till he had made his
position in England more stable.
The Yorkist cause was crushed for four years, till it was raised
again by Margaret of Burgundy, with an imposture even more
preposterous than that of Lambert Simnel. In the
intervening space, however, while Henry VII. was
comparatively undisturbed by domestic rebellion, he
found opportunity for a first tentative experiment at interfering
in European politics. He allied himself with Ferdinand and
Isabella of Spain and with Maximilian of Austria, who was
ruling the Netherlands in behalf of his young son, Philip, the
heir of the Burgundian inheritance, for the purpose of preventing
France from annexing Brittany, the last great fief of the crown
which had not yet been absorbed into the Valois royal domain.
This struggle, the only continental war in which the first of the
Tudors risked his fortunes, was not prosecuted with any great
energy, and came to a necessary end when Anne, duchess of
Brittany, in whose behalf it was being waged, disappointed her
allies by marrying Charles VIII. of her own freewill (Dec. 1491).
Henry very wisely proceeded to get out of the war on the best
terms possible, and, to the disgust of Maximilian, sold peace to
the French king for 600,000 crowns, as well as an additional
sum representing arrears of the pension which Louis XI. had
been bound to pay to Edward IV. This treaty of
Etaples was, in short, a repetition of Edward's treaty
of Picquigny, equally profitable and less disgraceful,
for Maximilian of Austria, whom Henry thus abandoned, had
given more cause of offence than had Charles of Burgundy in
1475. Domestic malcontents did not scruple to hint that the
king, like his father-in-law before him, had made war on France,
not with any hope of renewing the glories of Crecy or Agincourt,
still less with any design of helping his allies, but purely to get
first grants from his parliament, and then a war indemnity from
his enemies. In any case he was wise to make peace. France
was now too strong for England, and both Maximilian and
Ferdinand of Spain were selfish and shifty allies. Moreover, it
was known that the one dominating desire of Charles VIII. was
to conquer Italy, and it was clear that his ambitions in that
direction were not likely to prove dangerous to England.
In the year of the treaty of Etaples the Yorkist conspiracies
began once more to thicken, and Henry was fortunate to escape
with profit from the French war before his domestic Yorkist
troubles recommenced. Ever since 1483 it had been plots.
rumoured that one or both of the sons of Edward IV. ^f^Lj,
had escaped, not having been murdered in the Tower.
Of this widespread belief the plotters now took advantage;
they held that much more could be accomplished with such a
claim than by using that of the unfortunate Edward of Clarence,
whose chances were so severely handicapped by his being still
the prisoner of Henry VII. The scheme for producing a false
Plantagenet was first renewed in Ireland, where Simnel's im-
posture had been so easily taken up a few years before. The tool
selected was one Perkin Warbeck, a handsome youth of seven-
teen or eighteen, the son of a citizen of Tournai, who had lived
for some time in London, where Perkin had actually been born.
There is a bare possibility that the young adventurer may have
been an illegitimate son of Edward IV.; his likeness to the late
king was much noticed. When he declared himself to be Richard
of York, he obtained some support in Ireland from the earl of
Desmond and other lords; but he did not risk open rebellion
till he had visited Flanders, and had been acknowledged as
her undoubted nephew by Duchess Margaret. Maximilian
of Austria also took up his cause, as a happy means of revenging
himself on Henry VII. for the treaty of Etaples. There can
be small doubt that both the duchess and the German King
(Maximilian had succeeded to his father's crown in 1493) were
perfectly well aware that they were aiding a manifest fraud. But
they made much of Perkin, who followed the imperial court for
two years, while his patron was intriguing with English mal-
contents. The emissaries from Flanders got many promises of
assistance, and a formidable rising might have taken place had
1495-
ENGLISH HISTORY
525
not Henry VII. been well served by his spies. But in the winter
of 1404-1405 the traitors were themselves betrayed, and a large
number of arrests were made, including not only Lord Fitz-
walter and a number of well-known knights of Yorkist families,
but Sir William Stanley, the king's chamberlain, who had been
rewarded with enormous gifts for his good service at Bosworth,
and was reckoned one of the chief supports of the throne.
Stanley and several others were beheaded, the rest hanged or
imprisoned. This vigorous action on the part of the king seems
to have cowed all Warbeck's supporters on English soil. But the
pretender nevertheless sailed from Flanders in July 1495 with
a following of aooo exiles and German mercenaries. He at-
tempted to land at Deal, but his vanguard was destroyed by
Kentish levies, and he drew off and made for Ireland. Suspect-
ing that this would be his goal, King Henry had been doing his
best to strengthen his hold on the Pale, whither he had sent his
capable servant Sir Edward Poynings as lord deputy. Already
before Warbeck's arrival Poynings had arrested the earl of
Kildare, Simnel's old supporter, cowed some of the Irish by
military force, and bought over others by promises of subsidies
and pensions. But his best-remembered achievement was that
he had induced the Irish parliament to pass the ordinances known
as " Poynings' Law," by which it acknowledged that it could
pass no legislation which had not been approved by the king
and his council, and agreed that all statutes passed by the
English parliament should be in force in Ireland. That such
terms could be imposed shows the strength of Poynings' arm,
and his vigour was equally evident when Warbeck came ashore
in Munster in July 1495. Few joined the impostor save the earl
of Desmond, and he was repulsed from Waterford, and dared not
face the army which the lord deputy put into the field against
him. Thereupon, abandoning his Irish schemes, Warbeck sailed
to Scotland, whose young king James IV. had just been seduced
by the emperor Maximilian into declaring war on England.
He promised the Scottish king Berwick and 50,000 crowns in
return for the aid of an army. James took the offer, gave him
the hand of his kinswoman Catherine Gordon, daughter of the
earl of Huntly, and took him forth for a raid into Northumber-
land (1496). But a pretender backed by Scottish spears did
not appeal to the sympathies of the English borderers. The
expedition fell flat; not a man joined the banner of the white
rose, and James became aware that he had set forth on a fool's
errand. But Warbeck soon found other allies of a most un-
expected sort. The heavy taxation granted by the English
parliament for the Scottish war had provoked discontent and
rioting in the south-western counties. In Cornwall especially
the disorders grew to such a pitch that local dema-
gogues called out several thousand men to resist the
tax-collectors, and finally raised open rebellion, pro-
posing to march on London and compel the king to dismiss his
ministers. These spiritual heirs of Jack Cade were Flammock,
ft lawyer of Bodmin, and a farrier named Michael Joseph.
Whether they had any communication with Warbeck it is im-
possible to say; there is no proof of such a connexion, but their
acts served him well. A Cornish army marched straight on
London, picking up some supporters in Devon and Somerset on
their way, including a discontented baron, Lord Audley, whom
they made their captain.
So precarious was the hold of Henry VII. on the throne that
he was in great danger from this outbreak of mere local turbu-
lence. The rebels swept over five counties unopposed,
* no - were on ' v 8t PPcd and beaten in a hard fight on
Blackheath, when they had reached the gates of
London. Audley, the farrier and the lawyer were all
captured and executed (June 18, 1497). But the crisis was not
yet at an end. Warbeck, bearing of the rising, but not of its
suppression, had left Scotland, and appeared in Devonshire in
August. He rallied the wrecks of the west country rebels, and
presently appeared before the gates of Exeter with nearly 8000
men. But the citizens held out against him, and presently the
approach of the royal army was reported. The pretender led
off his horde to meet the relieving force, but when he reached
Taunton he found that his followers were so dispirited that dis-
aster was certain. Thereupon he absconded by night, and took
sanctuary in the abbey of Beaulieu. He offered to confess his
imposture if he were promised his life, and the king accepted
the terms. First at Taunton and again at Westminster, Pcrkin
publicly recited a long narrative of his real parentage, his frauds
and his adventures. He was then consigned to not over strict
confinement in the Tower, and might have fared no worse than
Lambert Simnel if he had possessed his soul in patience. But
in the next year he corrupted his warders, broke out from his
prison, and tried to escape beyond seas. He was captured, but
the king again spared his life, though he was placed for the
future in a dungeon " where he could sec neither moon nor
sun." Even this did not tame the impostor's mercurial tem-
perament. In 1499 he again planned an escape, which was to
be shared by another prisoner, the unfortunate Edward of
Clarence, earl of Warwick, whose cell was in the storey above
his own. But there were traitors among the Tower officials
whom they suborned to help them, and the king was warned of
the plot. He allowed it to proceed to the verge of execution,
and then arrested both the false and the true Plantagenet.
Evidence of a suspicious character was produced to _
show that they had planned rebellion as well as mere O /H^ O<I
escape, and both were put to death with some of their beck *nd
accomplices. Warbeck deserved all that he reaped, Eaw '" 1 '> 1
but the unlucky Clarence's fate estranged many hearts
from the king. The simple and weakly young man, who had
spent fifteen of his twenty-five years in confinement, had, in all
probability, done no more than scheme for an escape from his
dungeon. But as the true male heir of the house of Plantagenet
he was too dangerous to be allowed to survive.
The turbulent portion of the reign of Henry VII. came to an
end with Blackheath Field and the siege of Exeter. From that
time forward the Tudor dynasty was no longer in Eitabiith-
serious danger; there were still some abortive plots, mentot
but none that had any prospect of winning popular the Tudor
support. The chances of Warbeck and Clarence had *'"<>'
vanished long before they went to the scaffold. The Yorkist
claim, after Clarence's death, might be supposed to have passed
to his cousin Edmund, earl of Suffolk, the younger brother of that
John, earl of Lincoln, who had been declared heir to the crown
by Richard III., and had fallen at Stoke field. Fully conscious
of the danger of his position, Suffolk fled to the continent, and
lived for many years as a pensioner of the emperor Maximilian.
Apparently he dabbled in treason; it is at any rate certain that
in 1501 King Henry executed some, and imprisoned others, of his
relatives and retainers. But his plots, such as they were, seem
to have been futile. There was no substratum of popular dis-
content left in England on which a dangerous insurrection
might be built up. It was to be forty years before another
outbreak of turbulence against the crown was to break
forth.
VI. THE TUDOR DESPOTISM AND THE BEGINNINGS OF THE
REFORMATION (1497-1528)
The last twelve years of the reign of Henry VII. present in
most respects a complete contrast to the earlier period, 1485-1497.
There were no more rebellions, and as we have already seen
no more plots that caused any serious danger. Nor did the king
indulge his unruly subjects in foreign wars, though he was
constantly engaged in negotiations with France, Scotland, Spain
and the emperor, which from time to time took awkward turns.
But Henry was determined to win all that he could by diplomacy,
and not by force of arms. His cautious, but often unscrupulous,
dealings with the rival continental powers had two main ends:
the first was to keep his own position safe by playing off France
against the Empire and Spain; the second was to get commercial
advantages by dangling his alliance before each power in turn.
Flanders was still the greatest customer of England, and it was
therefore necessary above all things to keep on good terms with
the archduke Philip, the son of Maximilian, who on coming of
age had taken over the rule of the Netherlands from his father.
526
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1496-1503
The king's great triumphs were the conclusion of the Intercursus
Magnus of 1496 and the Intercursus Mains (so called by the
Flemings, not by the English) of 1506. The former
provided for a renewal of the old commercial alliance
treaties. with the house of Burgundy, on the same terms under
which it had existed in the time of Edward IV.; the
rupture which had taken place during the years when Maximilian
was backing Perkin Warbeck had been equally injurious to both
parties. The Malus Intercursus on the other hand gave England
some privileges which she had not before enjoyed exemption
from local tolls in Antwerp and Holland, and a licence for
English merchants to sell cloth retail as well as wholesale a
concession which hit the Netherland small traders and middle-
men very hard. Another great commercial advantage secured
by Henry VII. for his subjects was an increased share of the trade
to the Scandinavian countries. The old treaties of Edward IV.
with the Hanseatic League had left the Germans still in control of
the northern seas. Nearly all the Baltic goods, and most of those
from Denmark and Norway, had been reaching London or Hull
in foreign bottoms. Henry allied himself with John of Denmark,
who was chafing under the monopoly of the Hansa, and obtained
the most ample grants of free trade in his realms. The Germans
murmured, but the English shipping in eastern and northern
waters continued to multiply. Much the same policy was
pursued in the Mediterranean. Southern goods hitherto had
come to Southampton or Sandwich invariably in Venetian
carracks, which took back in return English wool and metals.
Henry concluded a treaty with Florence, by which that republic
undertook to receive his ships in its harbours and to allow them
to purchase all eastern goods that they might require. From
this time forward the Venetian monopoly ceased, and the visits
of English merchant vessels to the Mediterranean became
frequent and regular.
Nor was it in dealing with old lines of trade alone that Henry
Tudor showed himself the watchful guardian of the interests of
his subjects. He must take his share of credit for the
encouragement of the exploration of the seas of the
F ar West. The British traders had already pushed far
into the Atlantic before Columbus discovered America;
fired by the success of the great navigator they continued their
adventures, hoping like him to discover a short " north-west
passage " to Cathay and Japan. With a charter from the king
giving him leave to set up the English banner on all the lands
he might discover, the Bristol Genoese trader John Cabot
successfully passed the great sea in 1497, and discovered New-
foundland and its rich fishing stations. Henry rewarded him
with a pension of 20 a year, and encouraged him to further
exploration, in which he discovered all the American coast-line
from Labrador to the mouth of the Delaware a great heritage
for England, but one not destined to be taken up for coloniza-
tion till more than a century had passed.
Henry's services to English commerce were undoubtedly of
far more importance to the nation than all the tortuous details
of his foreign policy. His chicanery need not, how-
Foreiga everj be censured over much, for the princes with whom
"aearyvn. he had to deal, and notably Ferdinand and Maxi-
milian, were as insincere and selfish as himself. Few
diplomatic hagglings have been so long and so sordid as that
between England and Spain over the marriage treaty which
gave the hand of Catherine of Aragon first to Henry's eldest
son Arthur, and then, on his premature death in 1502, to his
second son Henry. The English king no doubt imagined that
he had secured a good bargain, as he had kept the princess's
dowry, and yet never gave Ferdinand any practical assistance
in war or peace. It is interesting to find that he had for some
time at the end of his reign a second Spanish marriage in view;
his wife Elizabeth of York having died in 1503, he seriously
proposed himself as a suitor for Joanna of Castile, the elder
sister of Catherine, and the widow of the archduke Philip,
though she was known to be insane. Apparently he hoped there-
by to gain vantage ground for an interference in Spanish politics,
which would have been most offensive to Ferdinand. Nothing
came of the project, which contrasts strangely with the greater
part of Henry's sober and cautious schemes.
On the other hand a third project of marriage alliance which
Henry carried out in 1503 was destined to be consummated,
and to have momentous, though long-deferred, results.
This was the giving of the hand of his daughter
Margaret to James IV. of Scotland. Thereby he .
bought quiet on the Border and alliance with Scotland Scotland
for no more than some ten years. But as it chanced and
the issue of this alliance was destined to unite the
English and the Scottish crowns, when the male line of
the Tudors died out, and Henry, quite unintentionally, had his
share in bringing about the consummation, by peaceful means,
of that end which Edward I. had sought for so long to win by
the strong hand.
All the foreign politics of the reign of Henry VII. have small
importance compared with his work within the realm. The
true monument of his ability was that he left England character
tamed and orderly, with an obedient people and a full ot Henry's
exchequer, though he had taken it over wellnigh internal
in a state of anarchy. The mere suppression of insur- nle '
rections like those of Simnel and Warbeck was a small part
of his task. The harder part was to recreate a spirit of order
and subordination among a nation accustomed to long civil strife.
His instruments were ministers of ability chosen from the
clergy and the gentry he seems to have been equally averse
to trusting the baronage at the one end of the social scale, or
mere upstarts at the other, and it is notable that no one during
his reign can be called a court favourite. The best-known
names among his servants were his great chancellor, Archbishop
Morton, Foxe, bishop of Winchester, Sir Reginald Bray, and
the lawyers Empson and Dudley. These two last bore the brunt
of the unpopularity of the financial policy of the king during
the latter half of his reign, when the vice of avarice seems to
have grown upon him beyond all reason. But Henry was such
a hard-working monarch, and so familiar with all the details
of administration, that his ministers cannot be said to have had
any independent authority, or to have directed their master's
course of action.
The machinery employed by the first of the Tudors for the
suppression of domestic disorder is well known. The most
important item added by him to the administrative
machinery of the realm was the famous Star Chamber, f,. 6
,. ,. ifhamber.
which was licensed by the parliament of 1487. It
consisted of a small committee of ministers, privy councillors
and judges, which sat to deal with offences that seemed to lie
outside the scope of the common law, or more frequently with
the misdoings of men who were so powerful that the local courts
could not be trusted to execute justice upon them, such as great
landowners, sheriffs and other royal officials, or turbulent
individuals who were the terror of their native districts. The
need for a strong central court directly inspired by the king,
which could administer justice without respect of persons, was
so great, that the constitutional danger of establishing an
autocratic judicial committee, untrammelled by the ordinary
rules of law, escaped notice at the time. It was not till much
later that the nation came to look upon the Star Chamber as
the special engine of royal tyranny and to loathe its name. In
1 500 it was for the common profit of the realm that there should
exist such a court, which could reduce even the most powerful
offender to order.
One of the most notable parts of the king's policy was his
long-continued and successful assault on the abuse of " livery
and maintenance," which had been at its height during s res .
the Wars of the Roses. We have seen the part which s / 00 /
it had taken in strengthening the influence of those iivetyand
who were already too powerful, and weakening the malatea -
ordinary operation of the law. Henry put it down
with a strong hand, forbidding all liveries entirely, save for the
mere domestic retainers of each magnate. His determination
to end the system was well shown by the fact that he heavily
fined even the earl of Oxford, the companion of his exile, th&
ENGLISH HISTORY
527
victor of Bosworth, and the most notoriously loyal peer in tin-
realm, for an ostentatious violation of the statute. \Vlu-iv
Oxford was punished, no less favoured person could hope to
escape. By the end of the reign the little hosts of badged ad-
herents which had formed the nucleus for the armies of the
Wan of the Roses had ceased to exist.
Edward IV., as has been already remarked, had many of the
opportunities of the autocrat, if only he had cared to use them;
but his sloth and self-indulgence stood in the way.
Henry VII., the most laborious and systematic of men,
turned them to account. He formed his personal
opinion on every problem of administration and intervened
himself in every detail. In many respects he was his own prime
minister, and nothing was done without his knowledge and
consent. A consistent policy may be detected in all his acts
that of gathering all the machinery of government into his own
hands. Under the later Plantagencts and the Lancastrian
kings the great check on the power of the crown had been that
financial difficulties were continually compelling the sovereign
to summon parliaments. The estates had interfered perpetually
in all the details of governance, by means of the power of the
purse. Edward IV., first among English sovereigns, had been
able to dispense with parliaments for periods of many years,
because he did not need their grants save at long intervals.
Henry was in the same position; by strict economy, by the use
of foreign subsidies, by the automatic growth of his revenues
during a time of peace and returning prosperity, by confiscation
and forfeitures, he built himself up a financial position which
rendered it unnecessary for him to make frequent appeals to
parliament. Not the least fertile of his expedients was that
regular exploitation of the law as a source of revenue, which
had already been seen in the time of his father-in-law. This
pan of Henry's policy is connected with the name of his two
extortionate " fiscal judges " Empson and Dudley, who " turned
law and justice into rapine " by their minute inquisition into
all technical breaches of legality, and the nice fashion in which
they adapted the fine to the wealth of the misdemeanant,
without any reference to his moral guilt or any regard for ex-
tenuating circumstances. The king must take the responsi-
bility for their unjust doings; it was his coffers which mainly
profited by their chicane. In his later years he fell into the vice
of hoarding money for its own sake; so necessary was it to his
policy that he should be free, as far as possible, from the need
for applying to parliament for money, that he became morbidly
anxious to have great hoards in readiness for any possible day
of financial stress. At his death he is said to have had i ,800,000
in bard cash laid by. Hence it is not strange to find that he was
able to dispense with parliaments in a fashion that would have
seemed incredible to a 14th-century king. In his whole reign
he only asked them five times for grants of taxation, and three
of the five requests were made during the first seven years of
his reign. In the eyes of many men parb'ament lost the main
reason for its existence when it ceased to be the habitual provider
of funds for the ordinary expenses of the realm. Those who had
A better conception of its proper functions could see that it had
at any rate been stripped of its chief power when the king no
longer required its subsidies. There are traces of a want of public
interest in its proceedings, very different from the anxiety
with which they used to be followed in Plantagenet and Lan-
castrian times. Legislation, which only incidentally affects
him, is very much less exciting to the ordinary citizen than
taxation, which aims directly at his pocket. It is at any rate
clear that during the latter years of his reign, when the time
of impostures and rebellions had ended, Henry was able to dis-
pense with parliaments to a great extent, and incurred no un-
popularity by doing so. Indeed he was accepted by the English
people as the benefactor who had delivered them from anarchy;
and if they murmured at his love of hoarding, and cursed his
inquisitors Empson and Dudley, they bad no wish to change the
Tudor rule, and were far from regarding the times of the " Lan-
castrian experiment " as a lost golden age. The present king
might be unscrupulous and avaricious, but he was cautious,
VIII.
intelligent and economical; no one would have wished to recall
the regime of that " crowned saint " Henry VI.
Nevertheless when the first of the Tudors died, on the zist
of April 1509, there were fe\^ who regretted him. He was not
a monarch to rouse enthusiasm, while much was ex-
pected from his brilliant, clever and handsome son
Henry VIII., whose magnificent presence and manly
vigour recalled the early prime of Edward IV. Some years later
England realized that its new king had inherited not only the
physical beauty and strength of his grandfather, but also every
one of his faults, with the sole exception of his tendency to sloth.
Henry VIII. indeed may be said, to sum up his character in
brief, to have combined his father's brains with his grandfather's
passions. Edward IV. was selfish and cruel, but failed to become
a tyrant because he lacked the energy for continuous work.
Henry VII. was unscrupulous and untiring, but so cautious and
wary that he avoided violent action and dangerous risks. Their
descendant had neither Edward's sloth nor Henry's moderation;
he was capable of going to almost any lengths in pursuit of the
gratification of his ambition, his passions, his resentment or his
simple love of self-assertion. Yet, however far he might go on
the road to tyranny, Henry had sufficient cunning, versatility
and power of cool reflection, to know precisely when he had
reached the edge of the impossible. He had his father's faculty
for gauging public opinion, and estimating dangers, and though
his more venturous temperament led him to press on far beyond
the point at which the seventh Henry would have halted, he
always stopped short on the hither side of the gulf. It was the
most marvellous proof of his ability that he died on his throne
after nearly forty years of autocratic rule, during which he had
roused more enmities and done more to change the face of the
realm than any of the kings that were before him.
But it was long before the nation could estimate all the features
of the magnificent but sinister figure which was to dominate
England from 1509 to 1547. At his accession Henry VIII. was
only eighteen years of age, and, if his character was already
formed, it was only the attractive side of it that was yet visible.
His personal beauty, his keen intelligence, his scholarship, his
love of music and the arts, his kingly ambition, were all obvious
enough. His selfishness, his cruelty, his ingratitude, his fierce
hatred of criticism and opposition, his sensuality, had yet to be
discovered by his subjects. A suspicious observer might have
detected something ominous in the first act of his reign the
arrest and attainder of his father's unpopular ministers, Empson
and Dudley, whose heads he flung to the people in order to win
a moment's applause. Whatever their faults, they had served
the house of Tudor well, and it was a grotesque perversion of
justice to send them to the scaffold on a charge of high treason.
A similar piece of cruelty was the execution, some time later, of
the earl of Suffolk, who had been languishing long years in the
Tower; he was destroyed not for any new plots, but simply for
his Yorkist descent. But in Henry's earlier years such acts were
still unusual; it was not till he had grown older, and had learnt
how much the nation would endure, that judicial murder became
part of his established policy.
Henry's first outburst of self-assertion took the form of
reversing his father's thrifty and peaceful policy, by plunging
into the midst of the continental wars from which Catttl ,
England had been held back by his cautious parent. aeo iai
The adventure was wholly unnecessary, and also protect* oi
unprofitable. But while France was engaged in the ^" l ly
" Holy War " against the pope, Venice, the emperor,
and Ferdinand of Spain, Henry renewed the old claims of the
Plantagenets, and hoped, if not to win back the position of
Edward III., at least to recover the duchy of Aquitaine, or some
parts of it. He lent an army to Ferdinand for the invasion of
Gascony, and landed himself at Calais with 25,000 men, to beat .
up the northern border of France. Little good came of his '
efforts. The Spanish king gave no assistance, and the northern
campaign, though it included the brilliant battle of the Spurs
(August i6th, 1513), accomplished nothing more than the
capture of Tournai and Therouanne. It was soon borne in upon
528
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1513-1522
King Henry that France, even when engaged with other enemies,
was too strong to be overrun in the old style. Moreover, his
allies were giving him no aid, though they had eagerly accepted
his great subsidies. With a sudden revulsion of feeling Henry
offered peace to France, which King Louis XII. gladly bought,
agreeing to renew the old pension or tribute that
Etepies Henry VII. had received by the treaty of Staples.
Their reconciliation and alliance were sealed by the
marriage of the French king to Henry's favourite sister Mary,
who was the bridegroom's junior by more than thirty years.
Their wedlock and the Anglo-French alliance lasted only till the
next year, when Louis died, and Mary secretly espoused an
old admirer, Charles Brandon, afterwards duke of Suffolk, King
Henry's greatest friend and confidant.
While the French war was still in progress there had been
heavy fighting on the Scottish border. James IV., reverting to
War wtth tne traditionary policy of his ancestors, had taken the
Scotland, opportunity of attacking England while her king
Battle of and his army were over-seas. He suffered a disaster
Flodden. which recalls that of Dayid n at Neville's Cross
a fight which had taken place under precisely similar
political conditions. After taking a few Northumbrian castles,
James was brought to action at Flodden Field by the earl of
Surrey (September pth, 1513). After a desperate fight lasting
the greater part of a day, the Scots were outmanoeuvred and
surrounded. James IV. who had refused to quit the field
was slain in the forefront of the battle, with the greater part of
his nobles; with him fell also some 10,000 or 12,000 of his men.
Scotland, with her military power brought low, and an infant
king on the throne, was a negligible quantity in international
politics for some years. The queen dowager, Margaret Tudor,
aided by a party that favoured peace and alliance with England,
was strong enough to balance the faction under the duke of
Albany which wished for perpetual war and asked for aid from
France.
With the peace of 1514 ended the first period of King Henry's
reign. He was now no longer a boy, but a man of twenty-three,
with his character fully developed; he had gradually
o!sey. 8 ot r 'd f his father's old councillors, and had chosen
for himself a minister as ambitious and energetic as
himself, the celebrated Thomas Wolsey, whom he had just made
archbishop of York, and who obtained the rank of cardinal
from the pope in the succeeding year. Wolsey was the last of
the great clerical ministers of the middle ages, and by no means
the worst. Like so many of his predecessors he had risen from
the lower middle classes, through the royal road of the church;
he had served Henry VII. 's old councillor Foxe, bishop of Win-
chester, as secretary, and from his household had passed into that
of his master. He had been an admirable servant to both, full
of zeal, intelligence and energy, and not too much burdened with
scruples. The young king found in him an instrument well fitted
to his hand, a man fearless, ingenious, and devoted to the further-
ance of the power of the crown, by which alone he had reached
his present position of authority. For fourteen years he was his
master's chief minister the person responsible in the nation's
eyes for all the more unpopular assertions of the royal pre-
rogative, and for all the heavy taxation and despotic acts which
Henry's policy required. It mattered little to Henry that the
cardinal was arrogant, tactless and ostentatious; indeed it
suited his purpose that Wolsey should be saddled by public
opinion with all the blame that ought to have been laid on his
own shoulders. It was convenient that the old nobility should
detest the upstart, and that the commons should imagine him
to be the person responsible for the demands for money required
for the royal wars. As long as his minister served his purposes
and could execute his behests Henry gave him a free hand, and
supported him against all his enemies. It was believed at the
time, and is still sometimes maintained by historians, that
Wolsey laid down schemes of policy and persuaded his master
to adopt them ; but the truth would appear to be that Henry
was in no wise dominated by the cardinal, but imposed on him
his own wishes, merely leaving matters of detail to be settled
by his minister. Things indifferent might be trusted to him,
but the main lines of English diplomacy and foreign policy
show rather the influence of the king's personal desires of the
moment than that of a statesman seeking national ends.
It has often been alleged that Henry, under the guidance of
Wolsey, followed a consistent scheme for aggrandizing England,
by making her the state which kept the balance of power of
Europe in her hands. And it is pointed out that during the
years of the cardinal's ascendancy the alliance of England was
sought in turn by the great princes of the continent, and proved
the make-weight in the scales. This is but a superficial view
of the situation. Henry, if much courted, was much deceived
by his contemporaries. They borrowed his money and his armies,
but fed him with vain promises and illusory treaties. He and
his minister were alternately gulled by France and by the
emperor, and the net result of all their activity was bankruptcy
and discontent at home and ever-frustrated hopes abroad. It
is hard to build up a reputation for statecraft for either Henry
or Wolsey on the sum total of English political achievement
during their collaboration.
During the first few years of the cardinal's ascendancy the
elder race of European sovereigns, the kings with whom
Henry VII. had been wont to haggle, disappeared one
after the other. Louis of France died in 1515, Ferdi- vm^iod
nand of Aragon in 1516, the emperor Maximilian the rivalry
the last survivor of his generation in 1519. Louis of Francis
was succeeded by the active, warlike and shifty Charles v
Francis I.; the heritage of both Ferdinand and
Maximilian his maternal and paternal grandfathers fell to
Charles of Habsburg, who already possessed the Netherlands
in his father's right and Castile in that of his mother. The
enmity of the house of Valois and the house of Habsburg,
which had first appeared in the wars of Charles VIII. and
Maximilian, took a far more bitter shape under Francis I. and
Charles V., two young princes who were rivals from their youth.
Their wars were almost perpetual, their peaces never honestly
carried out. Their powers were very equally balanced; if
Charles owned broader lands than Francis, they were more
scattered and in some cases less loyal. The solid and wealthy
realm of France proved able to make head against Spain and
the Netherlands, even when they were backed by the emperor's
German vassals. Charles was also distracted by many stabs in
the back from the Ottoman Turks, who were just beginning their
attack on Christendom along the line of the Danube. To each
of the, combatants it seemed that the English alliance would
turn the scale in his own favour. Henry was much courted,
and wooed with promises of lands to be won from the other side
by his ally of the moment. But neither Charles nor Francis-
wished him to be a real gainer, and he himself was a most untrust-
worthy friend, for he was quite ready to turn against his ally
if he seemed to be growing too powerful, and threatened to
dominate, all Europe; the complete success of either party
would mean that England would sink once more into a second-
rate power. How faithless and insincere was Henry's policy
may be gauged from the fact that in 1520, after all the pageantry
of the " Field of the Cloth of Gold " and his vows of undying
friendship for Francis, he met Charles a few weeks later at
Gravelines, and concluded with him a treaty which pledged
England to a defensive alliance against the king's " good
brother " of France. Such things happened not once nor twice
during the years of Wolsey's ministry. It was hardly to be
wondered at, therefore, if Henry's allies regularly endeavoured
to cheat him out of his share of their joint profits. Failure of
What use was there in rewarding a friend who might Henry's
become an enemy to-morrow? The greatest decep- dipio-
tion of all was in 1522, when Charles V., who had mac y-
made the extraordinary promise that he would get Wolsey made
pope, and lend Henry an army to conquer northern France,
failed to redeem his word in both respects. He caused his
own old tutor, Adrian of Utrecht, to be crowned with the papal
tiara, and left the English to invade Picardy entirely unassisted.'
But this was only one of many such disappointments.
1521-1538]
ENGLISH HISTORY
529
/<**
duke of
.* A. a/-
The result of some twelve years of abortive alliances and
ill-kept treaties was that Henry had obtained no single one
of the advantages which he had coveted, and that he
had lavished untold wealth and many English lives
upon phantom schemes which crumbled between his
fingers. His subjects had already begun to murmur;
the early parliaments of his reign had been passive
and complaisant; but by 1523 the Commons had been goaded
into resistance. They granted only half the subsidies asked from
them, pleading that three summers more of such taxation as
the cardinal demanded for his master would leave the realm
drained of its last penny, and reduced to fall back on primitive
forms of barter, " clothes for victuals and bread for cheese,"
out of mere want of coin. Fortunately for the king his subjects
laid all the blame upon his mouthpiece the cardinal, instead of
placing it where it was due. On Wolsey's back also was saddled
the most iniquitous of Henry's acts of tyranny against indi-
viduals the judicial murder of the duke of Buckingham, the
highest head among the English nobility. For some hasty words,
amplified by the doubtful evidence of treacherous retainers,
together with a foolish charge of dabbling with astro-
logers, the heir of the royal line of Thomas of Woodstock
had been tried and executed with scandalous haste.
His only real crime was that, commenting on the lack
of male heirs to the crown for after many years of
wedlock with Catherine of AragonHenry's sole issue was one sickly
daughter he had been foolish enough to remark that if anything
should happen to the king he himself was close in succession
to the crown. The cardinal bore the blame, because he and
Buckingham had notoriously disliked each other; but the deed
had really been of the lung's own contriving. He was roused
to implacable wrath by anyone who dared to speak on the for-
bidden topic of the succession question.
In the later years of Wolsey's ascendancy, nevertheless, that
same question was the subject of many anxious thoughts.
Q^rtto, From Henry's own mind it was never long absent ; he
/!* yearned for a male heir, and he was growing tired of
his wife Catherine, who was some years older than
himself, had few personal attractions, and was growing
somewhat of an invalid. Somewhere about the end of 1526
those who were in the king's intimate confidence began to be
aware that he was meditating a divorce a thing not lightly
to be taken in hand, for the queen was the aunt of the emperor
Charles V'., who would be vastly offended at such a proposal.
But Henry's doubts had been marvellously stimulated by the
fact that he had become enamoured of another lady the
beautiful, ambitious and cunning Anne Boleyn, a niece of the
duke of Norfolk, who had no intention of becoming merely the
king's mistress, but aspired to be his consort.
The question of the king's divorce soon became inextricably
confused with another problem, whose first beginnings go back
to a slightly earlier date. What was to be the attitude
of England towards the Reformation? It was now
nearly ten years since Martin Luther had posted up
his famous theses on the church door at Wittenberg,
and since he bad testified (o his faith before the diet of Worms.
All Germany was now convulsed with the first throes of the revolt
against the papacy, and the echoes of the new theological
disputes were being heard in England. King Henry himself
in 1521 had deigned to write an abusive pamphlet against Luther,
for which he had been awarded the magnificent title of Pidei
Deftnior by that cultured sceptic Pope Leo X. About the same
time we begin to read of orders issued by the bishops for the
discovery and burning of all Lutheran books a clear sign
that they were reaching England in appreciable quantities.
Hitherto it had been only the works of Wycliffe that had
merited this attention on the part of inquisitors. In the
Wycliffite remnant, often persecuted but never exterminated,
there already existed in England the nucleus of a Protestant
party. All through the reign of Henry VII. and the early years
of Henry VIII. the intermittent burning of " heretics," and
their far more frequent recantations, had borne witness to the
fact that the sect still lingered on. The Wycliffites were a feeble
folk, compelled to subterraneous ways, and destitute of learned
leaders or powerful supporters. But they survived to see
Luther's day, and to merge themselves in one body with the
first English travelling scholars and merchants who brought
back from the continent the doctrines of the German Refor-
mation. The origins of a Protestant party, who were not mere
Wycliffites, but had been first interested in dogmatic controversy
by coming upon the works of Luther, can be traced back to the
year 1521 and to the university of Cambridge. There a knot of
scholars, some of whom were to perish early at the stake, whi.'i-
others were destined to become the leaders of the English
Reformation, came together and encouraged each other to test
the received doctrines of contemporary orthodoxy by searching
the Scriptures and the works of the Fathers. The sect spread
in a few years to London, Oxford and other centres of intellectual
life, but for many years its followers were not numerous; like
the old Lollardy, Protestantism took root only in certain
places and among certain classes notably the lesser clergy
and the merchants of the great towns.
King Henry and those who wished to please him professed
as great a hatred and contempt for the new purveyors of German
doctrines as for the belated disciples of Wycliffe. But there
was another movement, whose origins went back for many
centuries, which they were far from discouraging, and were
prepared to utilize when it suited their convenience. This was
the purely political feeling against the tyranny of the papacy,
and the abuses of the national church, which in early ages had
given supporters to William the Conqueror and Henry II.,
which had dictated the statutes of Mortmain and of Praemunire.
Little had been beard of the old anti-clerical party in England
since the time of Henry IV.; it had apparently been identified
in the eyes of the orthodox with that Lollardy with which it had
for a time allied itself, and had shared in its discredit. But it
had always continued to exist, and in the early years of
Henry VIII. had been showing unmistakable signs of vitality.
The papacy of the Renaissance was a fair mark for criticism.
It was not hard to attack the system under which Rodrigo Borgia
wore the tiara, while Girolamo Savonarola went to the stake;
or in which Julius II. exploited the name of Christianity to serve
his territorial policy in Italy, and Leo X. hawked his indulgences
round Europe to raise funds which would enable him to gratify
his artistic tastes. At no period had the official hierarchy of
the Western Church been more out of touch with common
righteousness and piety. Moreover, they were sinning under
the eyes of a laity which was far more intelligent and educated,
more able to think and judge for itself, less the slave of im-
memorial tradition, than the old public of the middle ages. In
Italy the Renaissance might be purely concerned with things
intellectual or artistic, and seem to have little or no touch with
things moral. Beyond the Alps it was otherwise; among the
Teutonic nations at least the revolt against the scholastic
philosophy, the rout of the obscurantists, the eager pursuit of
Hellenic culture, had a religious aspect. The same generation
which refused to take thrice-translated and thrice-garbled
screeds from Aristotle as the sum of human knowledge, and
went back to the original Greek, was also studying the Old and
New Testaments in their original tongues, and drawing from them
conclusions as unfavourable to the intelligence as to the scholar-
ship of the orthodox medieval divines. Such a discovery as that
which showed that the " False Decretals," on which so much
of the power of the papacy rested, were mere gth-century forgeries
struck deep at the roots of the whole traditional relation between
church and state.
The first English scholars of the Renaissance, like Erasmus
on the continent, did not see the logical outcome of their own
discoveries, nor realize that the campaign against obscurantism
would develop into a campaign against Roman orthodoxy.
Sir Thomas More, the greatest of them, was actually driven into
faction by the violence of Protestant controversialists, and the
fear that the new doctrines would rend the church in twain.
H became himself a persecutor, and a writer of abusive
530
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1528-1529
pamphlets unworthy of the author of the Utopia. But to the
younger generation the irreconcilability of modern scholar-
ship and medieval formulae of faith became more and more
evident. One after another all the cardinal doctrines were
challenged by writers who were generally acute, and almost
invariably vituperative. For the controversies of the Reforma-
tion were conducted by both sides, from kings and prelates
down to gutter pamphleteers, in language of the most unseemly
violence.
But, as has been already said, the scholars and theologians
had less influence in the beginning of the English Reformation
than the mere lay politicians, whose anti-clerical tendencies
chanced to fit in with King Henry's convenience when he
quarrelled with the papacy. It is well to note that the first
attacks of parliament on the church date back to two years before
Luther published his famous theses. The contention began
in 1515 with the fierce assault by the Commons on the old abuse
of benefit of clergy, and the immunity of clerical criminals from
due punishment for secular crimes a question as old as the
times of Henry II. and Becket. But the discussion spread in
later years from this particular point into a general criticism
of the church and its relations to the state, embracing local
grievances as well as the questions which turned on the dealings
of the papacy with the crown. The old complaints which had
been raised against the Church of England in the days of
Edward I. or Richard II. had lost none of their force in 1526.
The higher clergy were more than ever immersed in affairs of
state, " Caesarean " as Wycliffe would have called them. It
was only necessary to point to the great cardinal himself, and
to ask how far his spiritual duties at York were properly dis-
charged while he was acting as the king's prime minister. The
cases of Foxe and Morton were much the same; the former
passed for a well-meaning man, yet had been practically absent
from his diocese for twenty years. Pluralism, nepotism, simony
and all the other ancient abuses were more rampant than ever.
The monasteries had ceased to be even the nurseries of literature ;
their chronicles had run dry, and secular priests or laymen had
taken up the pens that the monks had dropped. They were
wealthier than ever, yet did little to justify their existence;
indeed the spirit of the age was so much set against them that
they found it hard to keep up the numbers of their inmates.
Truculent pamphleteers like Simon Fish, who wrote Beggars'
Supplication, were already demanding " that these sturdy
boobies should be set abroad into the world, to get wives of their
own, and earn their living by the sweat of their brows, according
to the commandment of God; so might the king be better
obeyed, matrimony be better kept, the gospel better preached,
and none should rob the poor of his alms." It must be added
that monastic scandals were not rare; though the majority
of the houses were decently ordered, yet the unexceptionable
testimony of archiepiscopal and episcopal visitations shows that
in the years just before the Reformation there was a certain
number of them where chastity of life and honesty of adminis-
tration were equally unknown. But above all things the church
was being criticized as an imperium in impcrio, a privileged
body not amenable to ordinary jurisdiction, and subservient
to a foreign lord the pope. And it was true that, much as
English churchmen might grumble at papal exactions, they
were generally ready as a body to support the pope against the
crown; the traditions of the medieval church made it impossible
for them to do otherwise. That there would in any case have
been a new outbreak of anti-clerical and anti-papal agitation
in England, under the influence of the Protestant impulse started
by Luther in Germany, is certain. But two special causes gave
its particular colour to the opening of the English Reformation;
the one was that the king fell out with the papacy on the question
of his divorce. The other was that the nation at this moment
was chafing bitterly against a clerical minister, whom it (very
unjustly) made responsible for the exorbitant taxation which
it was enduring, in consequence of the king's useless and un-
successful foreign wars. The irony of the situation lay in the
facts that Henry was, so far as dogmatic views were concerned,
a perfectly orthodox prince; he had a considerable knowledge
of the old theological literature, as he had shown in his pam-
phlet against Luther, and though he was ready to repress clerical
immunities and privileges that were inconvenient to the crown,
he had no sympathy whatever with the doctrinal side of the new
revolt against the system of the medieval church. Moreover,
Wolsey, whose fall was to synchronize with the commencement
of the reforming movement, was if anything more in sympathy
with change than was his master. He was an enlightened
patron of the new learning, and was inclined to take vigorous
measures in hand for the pruning away of the abuses of the
church. It is significant that his great college at Oxford
" Cardinal's College " as he designed to call it, " Christ Church "
as it is named to-day was endowed, with the revenues of some
score of small monasteries which he had suppressed on the
ground that they were useless or ill-conducted. His master
turned the lesson to account a few years later; but Henry's
wholesale destruction of religious houses was carried out not in
the interests of learning, but mainly in those of the royal
exchequer. (C. W. C. 0.)
VII. THE REFORMATION AND THE AGE OF ELIZABETH
(1528-1603)
Wolsey did not fall through any opposition to reform; nor
was he opposed to the idea of a divorce. Indeed, both in France
and Spain he was credited with the authorship of the
project. But he differed from Henry on the question
of Catherine's successor. Wolsey desired a French
marriage to consummate the breach upon which he was now
bent with the emperor; and war, in fact, was precipitated with
Spain in 1528. This is said to have been done without Henry's
consent; he certainly wished to avoid war with Charles V., and
peace was made after six months of passive hostility. Nor did
Henry want a French princess; his affections were fixed for
the time on Anne Boleyn, and she was the hope of the anti-
clerical party. The crisis was brought to a head by the failure of
Wolsey's plan to obtain a divorce. Originally it had been sug-
gested that the ecclesiastical courts in England were competent
without recourse to Rome. Wolsey deprecated this procedure,
and application was made to Clement VII. Wolsey relied upon
his French and Italian allies to exert the necessary powers of
persuasion; and in 1528 a French army crossed the Alps,
marched through Italy and threatened to drive Charles V. out
of Naples. Clement was in a position to listen to Henry's
prayer; and Campeggio was commissioned with Wolsey to hear
the suit and grant the divorce.
No sooner had Campeggio started than the fortunes of war
changed. The French were driven out of Naples, and the
Imperialists again dominated Rome; the Church,
wrote Clement to Campeggio, was completely in the
power of Charles V. The cardinal, therefore, must on divorce.
no account pronounce against Charles's aunt; if he
could not persuade Henry and Catherine to agree on a mutual
separation, he must simply pass the time and come to no con-
clusion. Hence it was June 1529 befpre the court got to work at
all, and then its proceedings were only preparatory to an adjourn-
ment and revocation of the suit to Rome in August. Clement VII.
had, in his own words, made up his mind to live and die an
imperialist; the last remnants of the French army in Italy had
been routed, and the pope had perforce concluded the treaty
of Barcelona, a sort of family compact between himself and
Charles, whereby he undertook to protect Charles's aunt, and the
emperor to support the Medici dynasty in Florence. This peace
was amplified at the treaty of Cambrai (August 1529) into a
general European pacification in which England had no voice.
So far had it fallen since 1521.
In every direction Wolsey had failed, and his failure involved
the triumph of the forces which he had opposed. The fate of
the papal system in England was bound up with his personal
fortunes. It was he and he alone who had kept parliament at
arm's length and the enemies of the church at bay. He had
interested the king, and to some extent the nation, in a spirited
ENGLISH HISTORY
foreign policy, had diverted their attention from domestic
questions, and had staved off that parliamentary attack on the
church which had been threatened fifteen years before. Now
he was doomed, and both Campeggio and Cardinal du Hi-Hay
were able to send their governments accurate outlines of the
future policy of Henry VIII. The church was to be robbed of
its wealth, its power and its privileges, and the papal jurisdiction
was to be abolished. In October Wolsey was deprived of the
great seal, and surrendered many of his ecclesiastical prefer-
ments, though he was allowed to retain his archbishopric of York
which he now visited for the first time. The first lay ministry
since Edward the Confessor's time came into office; Sir Thomas
More became lord chancellor, and Anne Boleyn's father lord
privy seal; the only prominent cleric who remained in office
was Stephen Gardiner, who succeeded Wolsey as bishop of
Winchester.
Parliament met in November 1529 and passed many acts
against clerical exactions, mortuaries, probate dues and
Attack oa pluralities, which evoked a passionate protest from
tut chuna Bishop Fisher: " Now, with the Commons," he cried
^y**- in the House of Lords, " is nothing but ' Down with
the Church.' " During 1 530 Henry's agents were busy
abroad making that appeal on the divorce to the univer-
sities which Cranmer had suggested. In 1531 the clergy
in convocation, terrified by the charge of praemunire brought
against them for- recognizing Wolsey's legatine authority, paid
Henry a hundred and eighteen thousand pounds and recognized
him as supreme head of the church so far as the law of Christ
would allow. The details of this surrender were worked out
by king and Commons in 1532; but Gardiner and More secured
the rejection by|t he Lords of the bill in which they were embodied,
and it was not till 1 533, when More had ceased to be chancellor
and Gardiner to be secretary, that a parliamentary statute
annihilated the independent legislative authority of the church.
An act was, however, passed in 1532 empowering the king, if
he thought fit, to stop the payment of annates to Rome. Henry
suspended his consent in order to induce the pope to grant
Cranmer his bulls as archbishop of Canterbury where he suc-
ceeded Warham late in 1532. The stratagem was successful, and
Henry cast off all disguise. The act of annates was confirmed ;
another prohibiting appeals to Rome and providing for the
appointment of bishops without recourse to the papacy was
passed; and Cranmer declared Henry's marriage with Catherine
null and void and that with Anne Boleyn, which had
taken place about January 25, 1533, valid. Anne
was crowned in June, and on the 7th of September the
future Queen Elizabeth was born. At length in 1534
Clement VII. concluded the case at Rome, pronouncing
in favour of Catherine's marriage, and drawing up a bull of ex-
communication against Henry and his abettors. But he did
not venture to publish it; public opinion in England, while
hostile to the divorce, was not in favour of the clergy or the pope,
and the rivalry between Charles V. and Francis I. was too bitter
to permit of joint, or even isolated, action against Henry.
Charles was only too anxious to avoid the duty of carrying out
the pope's commands, and a year later he was once more involved
in war with France. Henry was able to deal roughly with such
manifestations as Elizabeth Barton's visions, and in the autumn
of 1 534 to obtain from parliament the Act of Supremacy
which transferred to him the juridical, though not the
spiritual, powers of the pope. No penalties were
attached to this act, but another passed in the same
session made it treason to attempt to deprive the king of any
of his titles, of which supreme head of the church was one,
being incorporated in the royal style by letters patent of January
1535. Fisher and More were executed on this charge; they had
been imprisoned in the previous year for objecting to take the
form of oath to the succession as vested in Anne Boleyn's children
which the commissioners prescribed. But their lives could only
be forfeit on the supposition that they sought to deprive the
king of his royal supremacy. Many of the friars observant of
Greenwich and monks of the Charterhouse were involved in a
similar fate, but there was no general resistance, and Henry, now
inspired or helped by Thomas Cromwell, was able to proceed
with the next step in the Reformation, the dissolution of the
monasteries.
It was Cecil's opinion twenty-five years later that, but for
the dissolution, the cause of the Reformation could not have
succeeded. Such a reason could hardly be avowed, oittotu-
and justification had to be sought in the condition of iioaotthe
the monasteries themselves. The action of Wolsey and "">"
other bishops before 1529, the report of a commission ter '" >
of cardinals appointed by Paul III. in 1535, the subsequent
experience of other, even Catholic, countries give collateral
support to the conclusions of the visitors appointed by Cromwell,
although they were dictated by a desire not to deal out impartial
justice, but to find reasons for a policy already adopted in
principle. That they exaggerated the evils of monastic life
hardly admits of doubt; but even a Henry VIII. and a Thomas
Cromwell would not have dared to attack, or succeeded in destroy-
ing, the monasteries had they retained their original purity and
influence. As it was their doubtful reputation and financial
embarrassments enabled Henry to offer them as a gigantic bribe
to the upper classes of the laity, and the Reformation parliament
met for its last session early in 1536 to give effect to the reports
of the visitors and to the king's and their own desires.
But it had barely been dissolved in April when it became
necessary to call another. In January the death of Catherine
had rejoiced the hearts of Henry and Anne Boleyn, but Anne's
happiness was short-lived. Two miscarriages and the failure
to produce the requisite male heir linked her in Henry's mind
and in misfortune to Catherine; unlike Catherine she was un-
popular and not above suspicion. The story of her tragedy is
still one of the most horrible and mysterious pages in English
history. It is certain that Henry was tired and wanted to get
rid of her; but if she were innocent, why were charges brought
against her which were not brought against Catherine of Aragon
and Anne of Cleves? and why were four other victims sacrificed
when one would have been enough? The peers a year before
could acquit Lord Dacre; would they have condemned the queen
without some show of evidence? and unless there was suspicious
evidence, her daughter was inhuman in making no effort subse-
quently to clear her mother's character. However that may be,
Anne was not only condemned and executed, but her Execution
marriage was declared invalid and her daughter a of Queen
bastard. Parliament was required to establish the A"oe
succession on the new basis of Henry's new queen,
Jane Seymour. It also empowered the king to leave the crown
by will if he had no legitimate issue; but the illegitimate son,
the duke of Richmond, in whose favour this provision is said to
have been conceived, died shortly afterwards.
Fortunately for Henry, Queen Jane roused no domestic or
foreign animosities; Charles V. and Francis I. were at war;
and the pope's and Pole's attempt to profit by the
Pilgrimage of Grace came too late to produce any effect T ^j rlmage
except the ruin of Pole's family. The two risings of O i grace.
1536 in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire were provoked
partly by the dissolution of the monasteries, partly by the collec-
tion of a subsidy and fears of fresh taxation on births, marriages
and burials, and partly by the protestantizing Ten Articles of
1536 and Cromwell's Injunctions. They were conservative
demonstrations in favour of a restoration of the old order by
means of a change of ministry, but not a change of dynasty.
The Lincolnshire rising was over before the middle of October;
the more serious revolt in Yorkshire under Aske lasted through
the winter. Henry's lieutenants were compelled to temporize
and make concessions. Aske was invited to come to London and
hoodwinked by Henry into believing that the king was really
bent on restoration and reform. But an impatient outburst of
the insurgents and a foolish attempt to seize Hull and Scar-
borough gave Henry an excuse for repudiating the concessions
made in his name. He could afford to do so because England
south of the Trent remained stauncher to him than England
north of it did to the Pilgrimage. Aske and other leaders were
532
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1536-1550
tried and executed, and summary vengeance was wreaked on
the northern counties, especially on the monasteries. The one
satisfactory outcome was the establishment of the Council of
the North, which gave the shires between the Border and the
Trent a stronger and more efficient government than they had
ever had before.
Probably the Pilgrimage had some effect in moderating
Henry's progress. The monasteries did not benefit and in
_. I S38-iS39 the greater were involved in the fate which
Articles." ^ad a ' rea dy overtaken the less. But no further ad-
vances were made towards Protestantism after the
publication and authorization of the " Great " Bible in English.
. The Lutheran divines who came to England in 1538 with a
project for a theological union were rebuffed; the parliament
elected in 1539 was Catholic, and only the reforming bishops in
the House of Lords offered any resistance to the Six Articles
which reaffirmed the chief points in Catholic doctrine and
practice. The alliance between pope, emperor and French
king induced Henry to acquiesce in Cromwell's scheme for a
political understanding with Cleves and the Schmalkaldic League,
which might threaten Charles V.'s position in Germany and the
Netherlands, but could not be of much direct advantage to
England. Cromwell rashly sought to wed Henry to this policy,
proposed Anne of Cleves as a bride for Henry, now once more
a widower, and represented the marriage as England's sole
protection against a Catholic league. Henry put his neck under
the yoke, but soon discovered that there was no necessity; for
Charles and Francis were already beginning to quarrel and had
no thought of a joint attack on England. The dis-
Faiiof covery was fatal to Cromwell; after a severe struggle
Thomas , J ... , , , .
Cromwell. ' n tne council he was abandoned to his enemies,
attainted of treason and executed. Anne's marriage
was declared null, and Henry found a fifth queen in Catherine
Howard, a niece of Norfolk, a protegee of Gardiner, and a friend
of the Catholic church.
Nevertheless there was no reversal of what had been done,
only a check to the rate of progress. Cranmer remained arch-
bishop and compiled an English Litany, while Catherine Howard
soon ceased to be queen; charges of loose conduct, which in her
case at any rate were not instigated by the king, were made
against her and she was brought to the block; she was succeeded
by Catherine Parr, a mild patron of the new learning. The Six
Articles were only fitfully put in execution, especially in 1543
and 1546; all the plots against Cranmer failed; and before he
died Henry was even considering the advisability of further
steps in the religious reformation, apart from mere spoliation
like the confiscation of the chantry lands.
But Scotland, Ireland and foreign affairs concerned him most.
Something substantial was achieved in Ireland; the papal
Policy la sovereignty was abolished and Henry received from
Ireland the Irish parliament the title of king instead of lord of
ana Ireland. The process was begun of converting Irish
Scotland. cn i e ftains into English peers which eventually divorced
the Irish people from their natural leaders; and principles of
English law and government were spread beyond the Pale.
In Scotland Henry was less fortunate. He failed to win over
James V. to his anti-papal policy, revived the feudal claim to
suzerainty, won the battle of Solway Moss (1542), and then after
James's death bribed and threatened the Scots estates into
concluding a treaty of marriage between their infant queen and
Henry's son. The church in Scotland led by Beaton, and the
French party led by James V.'s widow, Mary of Guise, soon
reversed this decision, and Hertford's heavy hand was (1544)
laid on Edinburgh in revenge. France was at the root of the
evil, and Henry was thus induced once more to join Charles V.
in war (1543). The joint invasion of 1544 led to the capture of
Boulogne, but the emperor made peace in order to deal with the
Lutherans and left Henry at war with France. The French
attempted to retaliate in 1545, and burnt some villages in the
Isle of Wight and on the coast of Sussex. But their expedition
was a failure, and peace was made in 1546, by which Henry
undertook to restore Boulogne in eight years' time on payment
of eight hundred thousand crowns. Scotland was not included in
the pacification, and when Henry died (January 28, 1547) he was
busy preparing to renew his attempt on Scotland's independence.
He left a council of sixteen to rule during his son's minority.
The balance of parties which had existed since Cromwell's fall
had been destroyed in the last months of the reign
by the attainder of Norfolk and his son Surrey, and
the exclusion of Gardiner and Thirlby from the council
of regency. Men of the new learning prevailed, and Hertford
(later duke of Somerset), as uncle to Edward VI., was made pro-
tector of the realm and governor of the king's person. He soon
succeeded in removing the trammels imposed upon his authority,
and made himself king in everything but name. He used his
arbitrary power to modify the despotic system of the Tudors;
all treason laws since Edward III., all heresy laws, all restrictions
upon the publication of the Scriptures were removed in the first
parliament of the reign, and various securities for liberty were
enacted. The administration of the sacrament of progress
the altar in both elements was permitted, the Catholic of the
interpretation of the mass was rendered optional, Kefor-
images were removed, and English was introduced *"*"<>"
into nearly the whole of the church service. In the following
session (1548-1549) the first Act of Uniformity authorized the
first Book of Common Prayer. It met with strenuous resistance
in Devon and in Cornwall, where rebellions added to the thicken-
ing troubles of the protector.
His administration was singularly unsuccessful. In 1547 he
won the great but barren victory of Pinkie Cleugh over the
Scots, and attempted to push on the marriage and Aamlnls .
union by a mixture of conciliation and coercion. He tration
made genuine and considerable concessions to Scottish of the
feeling, guaranteeing autonomy and freedom of trade, P' ec<< ""
and suggesting that the two realms should adopt the
indifferent style of the empire of Great Britain. But he also
seized Haddington in 1 548, held by force the greater part of the
Lowlands, and, when Mary was transported to France, revived
the old feudal claims which he had dropped in 1547. France
was, as ever, the backbone of the Scots resistance; men and
money poured into Edinburgh to assist Mary of Guise and the
French faction. The protector's offer to restore Boulogne could
not purchase French acquiescence in the union of England and
Scotland; and the bickerings on the borders in France and
open fighting in Scotland led the French to declare war on
England in August 1 549. They were encouraged by dissensions
in England. Somerset's own brother, Thomas Seymour, jealous
of the protector, intrigued against the government; he sought
to secure the hand of Elizabeth, the favour of Edward VI. and
the support of the Suffolk line, secretly married Catherine Parr,
and abused his office as lord high admiral to make friends with
pirates and other enemies of order. Foes of the family, such as
Warwick and Southampton, saw in his factious conduct the
means of ruining both the brothers. Seymour was brought
to the block, and the weak consent of the protector seriously
damaged him in the public eye. His notorious sympathy with
the peasantry further alienated the official classes and landed
gentry, and his campaign against enclosures brought him into
conflict with the strongest forces of the time. The remedial
measures which he favoured failed; and the rising of Ket in
Norfolk and others less important in nearly all the counties of
England, made Somerset's position impossible. Bedford and
Herbert suppressed the rebellion in the west, Warwick that in
Norfolk (July- August 1549). They then combined with the
majority of the council and the discontented Catholics to remove
the protector from office and imprison him in the Tower (October) .
The Catholics hoped for reaction, the restoration of the mass,
and the release of Gardiner and Bonner, who had been im-
prisoned for resistance to the protector's ecclesiastical Admlols .
policy. But Warwick meant to rely on the Protestant tration of
extremists; by January 1550 the Catholics had been the duke of
expelled from the council, and the pace of the Reforma- Northum-
i , j ..... T , berland.
tion increased instead of diminishing. Peace was made
with France by the surrender of Boulogne and abandonment
ENGLISH HISTORY
533
of the policy of union with Scotland (March 1550); and the
approach of war between France and the emperor, coupled
with the rising of the princes in Germany, relieved Warwick from
foreign apprehensions and gave him a free hand at home.
Gardiner, Bonner, Heath, Day and Tunstall were one by one
deprived of their sees; a new ordinal simplified the ritual of
ordination, and a second Act of Uniformity and Book of Common
Prayer (1552) repudiated the Catholic interpretation which had
been placed on the first and imposed a stricter conformity to
the Protestant faith. All impediments to clerical marriage were
tuijim removed, altars and organs were taken down, old
MO* / service books destroyed and painted windows broken;
**' it was even proposed to explain away the kneeling at
"**" the sacrament. The liberal measures of the protector
were repealed, and new treasons were enacted; Somerset him-
self, who had been released and restored to the council in 1550,
became an obstacle in Warwick's path, and was removed by
means of a bogus plot, being executed in January 1552; while
Warwick had himself made duke of Northumberland, his friend
Dorset duke of Suffolk, and Herbert earl of Pembroke.
But his ambition and violence made him deeply unpopular, and
the failing health of Edward VI. opened up a serious prospect
for Northumberland. He was only safe so long as he controlled
the government, and prevented the administration of justice,
and the knowledge that not only power but life was at stake
drove him into a desperate plot for the retention of both. He
could trade upon Edward's precocious hatred of Mary's religion,
he could rely upon French fears of her Spanish inclinations, and
the success which bad attended his schemes in England deluded
him into a belief that he could supplant the Tudor with a Dudley
dynasty. His son Guilford Dudley was hastily married to Lady
Jane Grey, the eldest granddaughter of Henry VIII. 's younger
sister Mary. Henry's two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, the
descendants of his elder sister Margaret, and Lady Jane's mother,
the duchess of Suffolk, were all to be passed over, and the suc-
cession was to be vested in Lady Jane and her heirs male.
Edward was persuaded that he could devise the crown by will,
the council and the judges were browbeaten into acquiescence,
and three days after Edward's death (July 6, 1533), Lady Jane
Grey was proclaimed queen in London. Northumberland had
miscalculated the temper of the nation, and failed to kidnap
Mary. She gathered her forces in Norfolk and Suffolk, North-
umberland rode out from London to oppose her, but defection
dogged his steps, and even in I/ondon Mary was proclaimed
queen behind his back by his fellow-conspirators. Mary entered
London amid unparalleled popular rejoicings, and Northumber-
land was sent to a well-deserved death on the scaffold.
Mary was determined from the first to restore papalism as
well as Catholicism, but she had to go slowly. The papacy
had few friends in England, and even Charles V., on
whom Mary chiefly relied for guidance, was not eager
to see the papal jurisdiction restored. He wanted
England to be first firmly tied to the Habsburg interests
by Mary's marriage with Philip. Nor was it generally
anticipated that Mary would do more than restore
religion as it had been left by her father. She did not attempt
anything further in 1553 than the repeal of Edward VI. 's legis-
lation and the accomplishment of the Spanish marriage. The
latter project provoked fierce resistance; various risings were
planned for the opening months of 1554, and Wyat's nearly
proved successful. Only his arrogance and procrastination
and Mary's own courage saved her throne. But the failure of
this protest enabled Mary to carry through the Spanish marriage,
which was consummated in July; and in the ensuing parliament
(Oct. -Jan. I5S4-I555) all anti-papal legislation was repealed;
Pole was received as legate; the realm was reconciled to Rome;
and, although the holders of abbey lands were carefully protected
against attempts at restitution, the church was empowered to
work its will with regard to heresy. The Lollard statutes were
revived, and between February 1555 and November 1558 some
three hundred Protestants were burnt at the stake. They began
with John Rogers and Rowland Taylor, and Bishops Ferrar of
Rtnon-
Uomtl
the old
St Davids and Hooper of Gloucester. Ridley and Latimer were
not burnt until October 1555, and Cranmer not till March 1556.
London, Essex, Hertfordshire, East Anglia, Kent and Sussex
provided nearly all the victims; only one was burnt north of the
Trent, and only one south-west of Wiltshire. But in the Pro-
testant districts neither age nor sex was spared; even the dead
were dug up and burnt. The result was to turn the hearts of
Mary's people from herself, her church and her creed. Other
causes helped to convert their enthusiastic loyalty into bitter
hatred. The Spanish marriage was a failure from
every point of view. In spite of Mary's repeated de- i^ity"""
lusions, she bore no child, and both parliament and of the
people resisted every attempt to deprive Elizabeth of S A'*
her right to the succession. Philip did all he could to "^1"^'
conciliate English affections, but they would not have
Spanish control at any price. They knew that his blandishments
were dictated by ulterior designs, and that the absorption of
England in the Habsburg empire was his ultimate aim. As it
was, the Spanish connexion checked England's aspirations; her
adventurers were warned off the Spanish Main, and even trade
with the colonies of Philip's ally Portugal was prohibited. They
had to content themselves with the Arctic Ocean and Muscovy;
and they soon found themselves at war in Philip's interests.
Philip himself refused to declare war on Scotland on England's
behalf, but he induced Mary to declare war on France on his
own (1557). The glory of the war fell to the Spaniards at
St Quentin (1557) and Gravelines (1558), but the shame to
England by the loss of Calais (Jan. 1558). Ten months later
Mary died (Nov. 17), deserted by her husband and broken-
hearted at the loss of Calais and her failure to win English
hearts back to Rome.
The Spanish and Venetian ambassadors in London were
shocked at what they regarded as the indecent rejoicings over
Elizabeth's accession. The nation, indeed, breathed xa*fan
a new life. Papal control of its ecclesiastical, and of
Spanish control of its foreign policy ceased, and it had Elizabeth.
a queen who gloried in being " mere English." There f2**j
was really no possible rival sovereign, and no possible struggle
alternative policy. The English _were tugging at the **
chain and Elizabeth had to follow; her efforts through- s f 1 "-
out were aimed at checking the pace at which her people wanted
to go. She could not have married Philip had she wished to, and
she could not have kept her sea-dogs off the Spanish Main.
They were willing to take all the risks and relieve her of all
responsibility; they filled her coffers with Spanish gold which
they plundered as pirates, knowing that they might be hanged
if caught; and they fought Elizabeth's enemies in France and
in the Netherlands as irregulars, taking their chance of being shot
if taken prisoners. While Elizabeth nursed prosperity in peace,
her subjects sapped the strength of England's rivals by attacks
which were none the less damaging because they escaped the
name of war.
It required all Elizabeth's finesse to run with the hare and hunt
with the hounds; but she was, as Henry III. of France said,
la plus fine femme du monde, and she was ably seconded by Cecil
who had already proved himself an adept in the art of taking
cover. Nevertheless, English policy in their hands was essen-
tially aggressive. It could not be otherwise if England was to
emerge from the slough in which Mary had left it. The first step
was to assert the principle of England for the English; the queen
would have no foreign husband, though she found suitors useful
as well as attractive. Spanish counsels were applauded and
neglected, and the Spaniards soon departed. Elizabeth was
glad of Philip's support at the negotiations for peace at Cateau
Cambresis (1559), but she took care to assert the independence
of her diplomacy and of England's interests. At Trt b
home the church was made once more English. All O f"haew
foreign jurisdiction was repudiated, and under the niigioa.
style " supreme governor " Elizabeth reclaimed nearly
all the power which Henry VIII. had exercised as
"supreme head." The Act of Uniformity (1559)
restored with a few modifications the second prayer-book of
534
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1559-1587
Edward VI. The bishops almost unanimously refused to conform,
and a clean sweep was made of the episcopal bench. An eminently
safe and scholarly archbishop was found in Matthew Parker,
who had not made himself notorious by resistance to authority
even under Mary. The lower clergy were more amenable; the
two hundred who alone are said to have been ejected should
perhaps be multiplied by five; but even so they were not
one in seven, and these seven were clergy who had been pro-
moted in Mary's reign, or who had stood the celibate and other
tests of 1553-1554. Into the balance must be thrown the
hundreds, if not thousands, of zealots who had fled abroad
and returned in 1558-1559. The net result was that a few
years later the lower house of convocation only rejected by
one vote a very puritanical petition against vestments and other
" popish dregs."
The next step was to expand the principle of England for
the English into that of Britain for the British, and Knox's
reformation in 1550-1560 provided an opportunity
for its application. By timely and daring intervention
Scotland. * n Scotland Elizabeth procured the expulsion of the
French bag and baggage from North Britain, and that
French avenue to England was closed for ever. The logic of this
plan was not applied to Ireland; there it was to be Ireland for
the English for many a generation yet to come; and so Ireland
remained Achilles' heel, the vulnerable part of the United King-
dom. The Protestant religion was forced upon the Irish in a
foreign tongue and garb and at the point of foreign pikes; and
national sentiment supported the ancient faith and the ancient
habits in resistance to the Saxon innovations. In other directions
the expansion of England, the third stage in the development of
Elizabeth's policy, was more successful. The attractions of the
Spanish Main converted the seafaring folk of south-west Eng-
land into hardy Protestants, who could on conscientious
against as we ^ as th er grounds contest a papal allocation
the of new worlds to Spain and Portugal. Their monopoly
Spanish wa s broken up by Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, Raleigh,
aea' a an( ^ scores f others who recognized no peace beyond
the line; and although, as far as actual colonies went,
the results of Elizabeth's reign were singularly meagre, the idea
had taken root and the ground had been prepared. In every
direction English influence penetrated, and Englishmen before
1603 might be found in every quarter of the globe, following
Drake's lead into the Pacific, painfully breaking the ice in search
of a north-east or a north-west passage, hunting for slaves in the
wilds of Africa, journeying in caravans across the steppes of
Russia into central Asia, bargaining with the Turks on the
shores of the Golden Horn, or with the Greeks in the Levant,
laying the foundations of the East India Company, or of the
colonies of Virginia and Newfoundland.
This expansion was mainly at the expense of Spain; but at
first Spain was regarded as Elizabeth's friend, not France.
France had a rival candidate for Elizabeth's throne
^ueen of * n Mary Stuart, the wife of the dauphin who soon
Scots. (i559) became king as Francis II.; and Spanish favour
was sought to neutralize this threat. Fortunately for
Elizabeth, Francis died in 1560, and the French government
passed into the hands of Catherine de' Medici, who had no cause
to love her daughter-in-law and the Guises. France, too, was
soon paralysed by the wars of religion which Elizabeth judiciously
fomented with anything but religious motives. Mary Stuart
returned to Scotland with nothing but her brains and her charms
on which to rely in her struggle with her people and her rival.
She was well equipped in both respects, but human passions
spoilt her chance; her heart turned her head. Elizabeth's head
was stronger and she had no heart at all. When Mary married
Darnley she had the ball at her feet; the pair had the best
claims to the English succession and enjoyed the united affections
of the Catholics. But they soon ceased to love one another, and
could not control their jealousies. There followed rapidly the
murders of Rizzio and Darnley, the Bothwell marriage, Mary's
defeat, captivity, and flight into England (1568). It was a
difficult problem for Elizabeth to solve; to let Mary go to
France was presenting a good deal more than a pawn to her
enemies; to restore her by force to her Scottish throne might
have been heroic, but it certainly was not politics; to hand her
over to her Scottish foes was too mean even for Elizabeth; and to
keep her in England was to nurse a spark in a powder-magazine.
Mary was detained in the hope that the spark might be carefully
isolated.
But there was too much inflammable material about. The
duke of Norfolk was a Protestant, but his convictions were
weaker than his ambition, and he fell a victim to
Mary's unseen charms. The Catholic north of England
was to rise under the earls of Westmorland and and ex-
Northumberland, who objected to Elizabeth's seizure commuai-
of their mines and jurisdictions as well as to her pro-
scription of their faith; and the pope was to assist
with a bull of deposition. Norfolk, however, played the coward;
the bull came nearly a year too late, and the rebellion of the earls
(1569) was easily crushed. But the conspiracies did not end,
and Spain began to take a hand. Elizabeth, partly in revenge
for the treatment of Hawkins and Drake at San Juan de Ulloa,
seized some Spanish treasure on its way to the Netherlands
(Dec. 1569). Alva's operations were fatally handicapped by
this disaster, but Philip was too much involved in the Nether-
lands to declare war on England. But his friendship for Eliza-
beth had received a shock, and henceforth his finger
may be traced in most of the plots against her, of which plot f
the Ridolfi conspiracy was the first. It cost Norfolk Elizabeth.
his head and Mary more of her scanty liberty. Eliza- Relations
beth also began to look to France, and in 1572, by the **'"*
treaty of Blois, France instead of Spain became Eng- spato
land's ally, while Philip constituted himself as Mary's
patron. The massacre of St Bartholomew placed a severe strain
upon the new alliance, but was not fatal to it. A series of
prolonged but hollow marriage negotiations between Elizabeth
and first Anjou (afterwards Henry III.) and then Alencon
(afterwards duke of Anjou) served to keep up appearances.
But the friendship was never warm; Elizabeth's relations with
the Huguenots on the one hand and her fear of French designs
on the Netherlands on the other prevented much cordiality.
But the alliance stood in the way of a Franco-Spanish agreement,
limited Elizabeth's sympathy with the French Protestants, and
enabled her to give more countenance than she otherwise might
have done to the Dutch.
Gradually Philip grew more hostile under provocation;
slowly he came to the conclusion that he could never subdue
the Dutch or check English attacks on the Spanish
Main without a conquest of England. Simultaneously j he lt
the counter-Reformation began its attacks; the missions.
" Jesuit invasion " took place in 1580, and Campion
went to the block. A papal and Spanish attempt upon Ireland
in the same year was foiled at Smerwick. But more important
was Philip's acquisition of the throneof Portugal with its harbours,
its colonies and its marine. This for the first time gave him a
real command of the sea, and at least doubled the chances of
a successful attack upon England. But Philip's mind moved
slowly and only on provocation. It took a year or two to satisfy
him that Portugal was really his; not until 1583 was the fleet
of the pretender Don Antonio destroyed in the Azores. The
victor, Santa Cruz, then suggested an armada against England,
but the English Catholics could not be brought into line with a
Spanish invasion. The various attempts to square James VI.
of Scotland had not been successful, and events in the Nether-
lands and in France disturbed Philip's calculations. But his
purpose was now probably fixed. After the murder of William
the Silent (1584) Elizabeth sided more openly with the Dutch;
the Spanish ambassador Mendoza was expelled from England
for his intrigues with Elizabeth's enemies (1586); and Execul i on
on the discovery of Babington's plot Elizabeth yielded / Mary,
to the demand of her parliament and her ministers queen of
for Mary's execution (1587); her death removed the
only possible centre for a Catholic rebellion in case
of a Spanish attack. It also removed Philip's last doubts;
1587-1614)
ENGLISH HISTORY
535
Mary had left him her claims to the English throne, and he
might, now that she was out of his path, hope to treat England
like Portugal. Drake's "singeing of Philip's beard" in Cadiz
harbour in 1587 delayed the expedition for a year, and a storm
again postponed it in the early summer of 1588. At length the
armada sailed in July under the incompetent duke of Medina
Sidonia; its object was to secure command of the narrow seas
and facilitate the transport of Parma's army from the Nether-
lands to England. But Philip after his twenty years' experience
in the Netherlands can hardly have hoped to conquer a bigger
and richer country with scantier means and forces. He relied
in fact upon a domestic explosion, and the arrnada
** **** was only to be the torch. This miscalculation made
it a hopeless enterprise from the first. Scarcely an
English Catholic would have raised a finger in Philip's
favour; and when he could not subdue the two provinces of
Holland and Zeeland, it is absurd to suppose that he could have
simultaneously subdued them and England as well. English
armies were not perhaps very efficient, but they were as good
as the material with which William of Orange began his
task. Philip, however, was never given the opportunity.
His armada was severely handled in a week's fighting on its
way up the Channel, and was driven off the English ports
into the German Ocean ; there a south-west gale drove it
far from its rendezvous, and completed the havoc which the
English ships had begun. A miserable remnant alone escaped
destruction in its perilous flight round the north and west of
Scotland.
The defeat of the armada was the beginning and not the end
of the war; and there were moments between 1588 and 1603
when England was more seriously alarmed than in 1 588. The
Spaniards seized Calais in 1506; at another time they threatened
England from Brest, and the " invisible " armada of 1599
created a greater panic than the " invincible " armada of 1588.
It was not till the very end of the reign that what was in some
ways the most dangerous of Spanish aggressions was foiled at
Kinsale. Nor were the English counter-attacks very happy,
the attempt on Portugal in 1589 under Drake and Norris proved
a complete failure. The raid on Cadiz under Essex and Raleigh
in 1596 was attended with better results, but the " Islands "
voyage to the Azores in 1597 was a very partial success. Still
it was now a war upon more or less equal terms, and there was
tittle more likelihood that it would end with England's than
with Spain's loss of national independence. The subjection
of the Netherlands was now almost out of the question, and
although Elizabeth's help had not enabled .the Protestant cause
to win in France, Henry IV. built up a national monarchy
which would be quite as effectual a bar to the ambitions of
Spain.
Elizabeth had in fact safely piloted England through the
struggle to assert its national independence in religion and
politics and its claim to a share in the new inheritance
which had been opened up for the nations of Europe;
and the passionate loyalty which had supported her as
the embodiment of England's aspirations somewhat
cooled in her declining years. She herself grew more cautious
and conservative than ever, and was regarded as an obstacle
by the hotheads in war and religion. She sided with the
" scribes," Burghley and Sir Robert Cecil, against the men of
war, Essex and Raleigh; and she abetted Whitgift's rigorous
persecution of the Puritans whose discontent with her via media
was rancorously expressed in the Martin Marprelate tracts.
Essex's folly and failure to crush Hugh O'Neill's rebellion (i 599) ,
the most serious effort made in the reign to throw off the English
yoke in Ireland, involved him in treason and brought him to
the block. Parliament was beginning to quarrel with the royal
prerogative, particularly when expressed in the grant of mono-
polies, and even Mountjoy's success in Ireland (1602-1603)
failed to revive popular enthusiasm for the dying queen. Strange
as it may seem, the accession of James I. was hailed as heralding
a new and gladder age by Shakespeare, and minor writers
(March 24, 1603). (A. F. P.)
. i-jri nf
\ 1 1 1 . THE STUART MONARCHY, THE GREAT REBELLION AND
THE RESTORATION (1603-1689)
The defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588 had been the final
victory gained on behalf of the independence of the English
church and state. The fifteen years which followed
had been years of successful war; but they had been J f* ''
also years during which the nation had been preparing {6 jf.
itself to conform its institutions to the new circum-
stances in which it found itself in consequence of the great
victory. When James arrived from Scotland to occupy the
throne of Elizabeth he found a general desire for change.
Especially there was a feeling that there might be some relaxa-
tion in the ecclesiastical arrangements. Roman Catholics and
Puritans alike wished for a modification of the laws which bore
hardly on them. James at first relaxed the penalties under
which the Roman Catholics suffered, then he grew frightened
by the increase of their numbers and reimposed the penalties.
The gunpowder plot (1605) was the result, followed by a sharper
persecution than ever (see GUNPOWDER PLOT).
The Puritans were invited to a conference with the king
at Hampton Court (1604). They no longer asked, as many
of them had asked in the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, to
substitute the presbyterian discipline for the episcopal govern-
ment. All they demanded was to be allowed permission, whilst
remaining as ministers in the church, to omit the usage of
certain ceremonies to which they objected. It was the opinion
of Bacon that it would be wise to grant their request. James
thought otherwise, and attempted to carry out the Elizabethan
conformity more strictly than it had been carried out in his
predecessor's reign.
In 1 604 the Commons agreed with Bacon. They declared that
they were no Puritans themselves, but that, with such a dearth
of able ministers, it was not well to lose the services
of any one who was capable of preaching the gospel. **^'
By his refusal to entertain their views James placed commons.
himself in opposition to the Commons in a matter
which touched their deeper feelings. As a necessary consequence
every dispute on questions of smaller weight assumed an ex-
aggerated importance. The king had received a scanty revenue
with his crown, and he spent freely what little he had. As the
Commons offered grudging supplies, the necessity under which
he was of filling up the annual deficit led him to an action by
which a grave constitutional question was raised.
From the time of Richard II. to the reign of Mary no attempt
had been made to raise duties on exports and imports without
consent of parliament. But Mary had, under a specious pretext,
recommenced to a slight extent the evil practice, and Elizabeth
had gone a little further in the same direction. In 1606 a
merchant named John Bates (q.v.) resisted the payment of an
imposition as duties levied by the sole authority of the crown
were then called. The case was argued in the court of exchequer,
and was there decided in favour of the crown. Shortly after-
wards new impositions were set to the amount of 70,000 a year.
When parliament met in 1610 the whole subject was discussed,
and it was conclusively shown that, if the barons of the exchequer
had been right in any sense, it was only in that narrow technical
sense which is of no value at all. A compromise attempted broke
down, and the difficulty was left to plague the next generation.
The king was always able to assert that the judges were on his
side, and it was as yet an acknowledged principle of the consti-
tution that parliament could not change the law without the
express consent of the crown, even if, which was not the case
in this matter, the Lords had sided with the Commons. James's
attempt to obtain further supplies from the Commons by opening
a bargain for the surrender of some of his old feudal prerogatives,
such as wardship and marriage, which had no longer any real
meaning except as a means of obtaining money in an oppressive
way, broke down, and early in 1611 he dissolved his first
parliament in anger. A second parliament, summoned in 1614,
met with the same fate after a session of a few weeks.
The dissolution of this second parliament was followed by a
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1614-1625
short imprisonment of some of the more active members, and
by a demand made through England for a benevolence to make
up the deficiency which parliament had neglected to meet. The
court represented that, as no compulsion was used, there was
nothing illegal in this proceeding. But as the names of those
who refused to pay were taken down, it cannot be said that
there was no indirect pressure.
The most important result of the breach with the parliament of
1614, however, was the resolution taken by James to seek refuge
from his financial and other troubles in a close alliance
un/oiMvftft w ' t ' 1 t ' ie k m S f Spain. His own accession had done
Scotland, much to improve the position of England in its relation
with the continental powers. Scotland was no longer
available as a possible enemy to England, and though an attempt
to bind the union between the two nations by freedom of com-
mercial intercourse had been wrecked upon the jealousy of the
English Commons (1607), a legal decision had granted the status
of national subjects to all persons born in Scotland after the king's
accession in England. Ireland, too, had been thoroughly over-
powered at the end of Elizabeth's reign, and the flight of the
earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel in 1607 had been
The colon- f u owe( j by the settlement of English and Scottish
izatlonof . * . , , .
Ulster. colonists in Ulster, a measure which, in the way in
which it was undertaken, sowed the seeds of future
evils, but undoubtedly conduced to increase the immediate
strength of the English government in Ireland.
Without fear of danger at home, therefore, James, who as king
of Scotland had taken no part in Elizabeth's quarrel with
Philip II., not only suspended hostilities immediately
Spanish on n ' s accession, and signed a peace in the following
alliance. year, but looked favourably on the project of a Spanish
marriage alliance, so that the chief Protestant and the
chief Catholic powers might join together to impose peace on
Europe, in the place of those hideous religious wars by which
the last century had been disfigured. In 161 1 circumstances had
disgusted him with his new ally, but in 1614 he courted him
again, not only on grounds of general policy, but because he
hoped that the large portion which would accompany the hand
of an infanta would go far to fill the empty treasury.
In this way the Spanish alliance, unpopular in itself, was
formed to' liberate the king from the shackles imposed on
him by the English constitution. Its unpopularity, great
from the beginning, became greater when Raleigh's execution
(1618) caused the government to appear before the world as
truckling to Spain. The obloquy under which James laboured
increased when the Thirty Years' War broke out (1618), and
when his daughter Elizabeth, whose husband, the elector palatine,
was the unhappy claimant to the Bohemian crown (1619),
stood forth as the lovely symbol of the deserted Protestantism
of Europe. Yet it was not entirely in pity for German Pro-
testants that the heart of Englishmen beat. Men felt that their
own security was at stake. The prospect of a Spanish infanta
as the bride of the future king of England filled them with
suspicious terrors. In Elizabeth's time the danger, if not entirely
external, did not come from the government itself. Now the
favour shown to the Roman Catholics by the king opened up a
source of mischief which was to some extent real, if it was to a
still greater extent imaginary. Whether the danger were real or
imaginary, the consequence of the distrust resulting from the
suspicion was the reawakening of the slumbering demand for
fresh persecution of the Roman Catholics, a demand which
made a complete reconciliation between the crown and the Lower
House a matter of the greatest difficulty.
In 1621 the third parliament of James was summoned to
provide money for the war in defence of his son-in-law's in-
i>ariia- heritance, the Palatinate, which he now proposed to
meat ana undertake. But it soon appeared that he was not
the mono- prepared immediately to come to blows, and the
Commons, voting a small sum as a token of their
loyalty, passed to other matters. Indolent in his temper, James
had been in the habit of leaving his patronage in the hands of
a confidential favourite, and that position was now filled by
George Villiers, marquess and afterwards duke of Buckingham.
The natural consequence was that men who paid court to him
were promoted, and those who kept at a distance from him
had no notice taken of their merits. Further, a system of granting
monopolies and other privileges had again sprung up. Many of
these grants embodied some scheme which was intended to serve
the interests of the public, and many actions which appear
startling to us were covered by the extreme protectionist theories
then in vogue. But abuses of every kind had clustered round
them, and in many cases the profits had gone into the pockets
of hangers-on of the court, whilst officials had given their assist-
ance to the grantors even beyond their legal powers. James
was driven by the outcry raised to abandon these monopolies, and
an act of Parliament in 1624 placed the future grant of pro-
tections to new inventions under the safeguard of the judges.
The attack on the monopolies was followed by charges brought
by the Commons before the Lords against persons implicated
in carrying them into execution, and subsequently put
against Lord Chancellor Bacon as guilty of corruption. Bacon.
The sentence passed by the Lords vindicated the right
of parliament to punish officials who had enjoyed the favour
of the crown, which had fallen into disuse since the accession
of the house of York. There was no open contest between
parliament and king in this matter. But the initiative of demand-
ing justice had passed from the crown to the Commons. It is
impossible to overestimate the effect of these proceedings on
the position of parliament. The crown could never again be
regarded as the sum of the governmental system.
When the Commons met after the summer adjournment a
new constitutional question was raised. The king was at last
determined to find troops for the defence of the Palatinate, and
asked the Commons for money to pay them. They in turn
petitioned the crown to abandon the Spanish alliance, which
they regarded as the source of all the mischief. James told them
that they had no right to discuss business on which he had not
asked their opinion. They declared that they were privileged
to discuss any matter relating to the commonwealth which they
chose to take in hand, and embodied their opinion in a protest,
which they entered on their journals. The king tore the protest
out of the book and dissolved parliament.
Then followed a fresh call for a benevolence, this time more
sparingly answered than before. A year of fruitless diplomacy
failed to save the Palatinate from total loss. The ill-considered
journey to Madrid, in which Prince Charles, accompanied by
Buckingham, hoped to wring from the Spanish statesmen a
promise to restore the Palatinate in compliment for his marriage
with the infanta, ended also in total failure. In the autumn of
1623 Charles returned to England without a wife, and without
hope of regaining the Palatinate with Spanish aid.
He came back resolved to take vengeance upon Spain. The
parliament elected in 1624 was ready to second him. It voted
some supplies on the understanding that, when the
king had matured his plans for carrying on the war, ^ ac /,
it should come together in the autumn to vote the alliance.
necessary subsidies. It never met again. Charles had
promised that, if he married a Roman Catholic, he would grant
no toleration to the English Catholics in consideration of the
marriage. In the. autumn he had engaged himself to marry
Henrietta Maria, the sister of the king of France, and had bound
himself to grant the very conditions which he had declared to
the Commons that he never would concede. Hence it was that
he did not venture to recommend his father to summon parlia-
ment till the marriage was over. But though there was but little
money to dispose of, he and Buckingham, who, now that James
was sick and infirm, were the real leaders of the government,
could not endure to abstain from the prosecution of the war.
Early in 1625 an expedition, under Count Mansfeld, was sent to
Holland that it might ultimately cut its way to the Palatinate.
Left without pay and without supplies, the men perished by
thousands, and when James died in March the new king had
to meet his first parliament burthened by a broken promise
and a disastrous failure.
16*5-1638]
ENGLISH HISTORY
537
When parliament met (1675) the Commons at first contented
themselves with voting a sum of money far too small to carry on
the extensive military and naval operations in which
Charles had embarked. When the king explained his
necessities, they intimated that they had no con-
fidence in Buckingham, and asked that, before they granted
further supply, the king would name counsellors whom they
could trust to advise him on its employment. Charles at once
dissolved parliament. He knew that the demand for ministerial
responsibility would in the end involve his own responsibility,
and, believing as he did that Buckingham's arrangements had
been merely unlucky, he declined to sacrifice the minister whom
he trusted.
Charles and Buckingham did their best to win back popularity
by strenuous exertion. They attempted to found a great Pro-
testant alliance on the continent, and they sent a great ex-
pedition to Cadiz. The Protestant alliance and the expedition
to Cadiz ended in equal failure. The second parliament of the
reign (1626) impeached Buckingham for crimes against the state.
As Charles would not dismiss him simply because the Commons
were dissatisfied with him as a minister, they fell back on charg-
ing him with criminal designs. Once more Charles dissolved
parliament to save Buckingham. Then came fresh enterprises
and fresh failures. A fleet under Lord Willoughby (afterwards
earl of Lindsey) was almost ruined by a storm. The king of
Denmark, trusting to supplies from England which never came,
was defeated at Lutter. A new war in addition to the Spanish
war, broke out with France. A great expedition to R6, under
Buckingham's command (1627), intended to succour the
Huguenots of La Rochelle against their sovereign, ended in
disaster. In order to enable himself to meet expenditure on
so vast a scale, Charles had levied a forced loan from his subjects.
Men of high rank in society who refused to pay were imprisoned.
Soldiers were billeted by force in private houses, and military
officers executed martial law on civilians. When the imprisoned
gentlemen appealed to the king's bench for a writ of habeas
corpus, it appeared that no cause of committal had been assigned,
and the judges therefore refused to liberate them. Still Charles
believed it possible to carry on the war, and especially to send
relief to La Rochelle, now strictly blockaded by the forces of the
French crown. In order to find the means for this object he
summoned his third parliament (1628). The Commons at once
proceeded to draw a line which should cut oil the
ortjtfe of P oss ' D i u ly f a repetition of the injuries of which they
complained. Charles was willing to surrender his claims
to billet soldiers by force, to order the execution of
martial law in time of peace, and to exact forced loans, bene-
volences, or any kind of taxation, without consent of parliament;
but he protested against the demand that he should surrender
the right to imprison without showing cause. It was argued on
his behalf that in case of a great conspiracy it would be necessary
to trust the crown with unusual powers to enable it to preserve
the peace. The Commons, who knew that the crown had used
the powers which it claimed, not against conspirators, but
igainst the commonwealth itself, refused to listen to the argu-
ment, and insisted on the acceptance of the whole Petition of
Right, in which they demanded redress for all their grievances.
The king at last gave his consent to it, as he could obtain money
in no other way. In after times, when any real danger occurred
which needed a suspension of the ordinary safeguards of liberty,
a remedy was found in the suspension of the law by act of parlia-
ment; such a remedy, however, only became possible when
king and parliament were on good terms of agreement with one
another.
That time was as yet far distant. The House of Commons
brought fresh charges against Buckingham, whose murder soon
after the prorogation removed one subject of dispute.
But when they met again (1629) they had two quarrels
left over from the preceding session. About a third
part of the king's revenue was derived from customs
duties which had for many generations been granted by parlia-
ment to each sovereign for life. Charles held that this grant
was little more than a matter of form, whilst the Commons held
that it was a matter of right. But for the other dispute the
difficulty would probably have been got over. The strong
Protestantism of Elizabeth's reign had assumed a distinctly
Calvinistic form, and the country gentlemen who formed the
majority of the House of Commons were resolutely determined
that no other theology than that of Calvin should be taught in
England. In the last few years a reaction against it had arisen
especially in the universities, and those who adopted an un-
popular creed, and who at the same time showed tendencies to
a more ceremonial form of worship, naturally fell back on the
support of the crown. Charles, who might reasonably have
exerted himself to secure a fair liberty for all opinions, promoted
these unpopular divines to bishoprics and livings, and the divines
in turn exalted the royal prerogative above parliamentary rights.
He now proposed that both sides should keep silence on the points
in dispute. The Commons rejected his scheme, and prepared
to call in question the most obnoxious of the clergy. In this
irritated temper they took up the question of tonnage and
poundage, and instead of confining themselves to the great
public question, they called to the bar some custom-house
officers who happened to have seized the goods of one of their
members. Charles declared that the seizure had taken place
by his orders. When they refused to accept the excuse, he dis-
solved parliament, but not before a tumult took place in the
House, and the speaker was forcibly held down in his chair
whilst resolutions hostile to the government were put to the vote.
For eleven years no parliament met again. The extreme
action of the Lower House was not supported by the people,
and the king had the 'opportunity, if he chose to use it, of putting
himself right with the nation after no long delay. But he never
understood that power only attends sympathetic leadership.
He contented himself with putting himself technically in the
right, and with resting his case on the favourable decisions of
the judges. Under any circumstances, neither the training nor
the position of judges is such as to make them fit to be the final
arbiters of political disputes. They are accustomed to declare
what the law is, not what it ought to be. These judges, more-
over, were not in the position to be impartial. They had been
selected by the king, and were liable to be deprived of their office
when he saw fit. In the course of Charles's reign two chief
justices and one chief baron were dismissed or suspended.
Besides the ordinary judges there were the extraordinary
tribunals, the court of high commission nominated by the crown
to punish ecclesiastical offenders, and the court of star chamber,
composed of the privy councillors and the chief justices, and
therefore also nominated by the crown, to inflict fine, im-
prisonment, and even corporal mutilation on lay offenders.
Those who rose up in any way against the established order
were sharply punished.
The harsh treatment of individuals only calls forth resistance
when constitutional morality has sunk deeply into the popular
mind. The ignoring of the feelings and prejudices
of large classes has a deeper effect. Charles's foreign moaty.
policy, and his pretentious claim to the sovereignty
of the British seas, demanded the support of a fleet, which might
indeed be turned to good purpose in offering a counterpoise
to the growing navies of France and Holland. The increasing
estrangement between him and the nation made him averse from
the natural remedy of a parliament, and he reverted to the
absolute practices of the middle ages, in order that he might
strain them far beyond the warrant of precedent to levy a
tax under the name of ship-money, first on the port towns and
then on the whole of England. Payment was resisted by John
Hampden, a Buckinghamshire squire; but the judges declared
that the king was in the right (1638). Yet the arguments used
by Hampden's lawyers sunk deeply into the popular mind, and
almost every man in England who was called on to pay the tax
looked upon the king as a wrong-doer under the forms of law.
In his ecclesiastical policy Charles was equally out of touch
with the feelings of his people. He shared to the full his father's
dislike and distrust of the Puritans, and he supported with the
538
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1638-1643
The
Church.
whole weight of the crown the attempt of William Laud (q.v.),
since 1633 archbishop of Canterbury, to enforce conformity to
the ritual prescribed by the Prayer Book. At the same
time offence was given to the Puritans by an order
that every clergyman should read the Declaration
of Sports, in which the king directed that no one should be
prevented from dancing or shooting at the butts on Sunday
afternoon. Many of the clergy were suspended or deprived,
many emigrated to Holland or New England, and of those who
remained a large part bore the yoke with feelings of ill-concealed
dissatisfaction. Suspicion was easily aroused that a deep plot
existed, of which Laud was believed to be the centre, for carry-
ing the nation over to the Church of Rome, a suspicion which
seemed to be converted into a certainty when it was known
that Panzani and Conn, two agents of the pope, had access to
Charles, and that in 1637 there was a sudden accession to the
number of converts to the Roman Catholic Church amongst the
lords and ladies of the court.
In the summer of 1638 Charles had long ceased to reign in
the affections of his subjects. But their traditionary loyalty
had not yet failed, and if he had not called on them
f r f resn exertions, it is possible that the coming re-
Scotiand. volution would have been long delayed. Men were
ready to shout applause in honour of Puritan martyrs
like Prynne, Burton and Bastwick, whose ears were cut off in 163 7,
or in honour of the lawyers who argued such a case as that of
Hampden. But no signs of active resistance had yet appeared.
Unluckily for Charles, he was likely to stand in need of the active
co-operation of Englishmen. He had attempted to force a new
Prayer Book upon the Scottish nation. A riot at Edinburgh in
1637 quickly led to national resistance, and when in November
1638 the general assembly at Glasgow set Charles's orders at
defiance, he was compelled to choose between tame submission
and immediate war. In 1639 he gathered an English force, and
marched towards the border. But English laymen, though
asked to supply the money which he needed for the support of
his army, deliberately kept it in their pockets, and the contri-
butions of the clergy and of official persons were not sufficient
to enable him to keep his troops long in the field. The king,
therefore, thought it best to agree to terms of pacification.
Misunderstandings broke out as to the interpretation of the
treaty, and Charles having discovered that the Scots were
intriguing with France, fancied that England, in hatred of its
ancient foe, would now be ready to rally to his standard. After
an interval of eleven years, in April 1640 he once more called
a parliament.
The Short Parliament, as it was called, demanded redress of
grievances, the abandonment of the claim to levy ship-money,
and a complete change in the ecclesiastical system.
Charles thought that it would not be worth while even
meat. to conquer Scotland on such terms, and dissolved
parliament. A fresh war with Scotland followed.
Wentworth, now earl of Strafford, became the leading adviser of
the king . With all the energy of his disposition he threw himself
into Charles's plans, and left no stone unturned to furnish the
new expedition with supplies and money. But no skilfulness of
a commander can avail when soldiers are determined not to fight.
The Scots crossed the Tweed, and Charles's army was
^Scottish we ^ pl ease d to fly before them. In a short time the
invasion, whole of Northumberland and Durham were in the
hands of the invaders. Charles was obliged to leave
these two counties in their hands as a pledge for the payment
of their expenses; and he was also obliged to summon parliament
to grant him the supplies which he needed for that object.
When the Long Parliament met in November 1640 it was in
a position in which no parliament had been before. Though
nominally the Houses did not command a single
Par/la""* soldier, they had in reality the whole Scottish army at
meat their back. By refusing supplies they would put it
out of the king's power to fulfil his engagements to
that army, and it would immediately pursue its onward march
to claim its rights. Hence there was scarcely anything which
the king could venture to deny the Commons. Under Pym's
leadership, they began by asking the head of Strafford. Nomin-
ally he was accused of a number of acts of oppression
in the north of England and in Ireland. His real ^^ atader
offence lay in his attempt to make the king absolute, Strafford.
and in the design with which he was credited of intend-
ing to bring over an Irish army to crush the liberties of England.
If he had been a man of moderate abilities he might have escaped.
But the Commons feared his commanding genius too much to
let him go free. They began with an impeachment. Difficulties
arose, and the impeachment was turned into a bill of attainder.
The king abandoned his minister, and the execution of Strafford
left Charles without a single man of supreme ability on his side.
Then came rapidly a succession of blows at the supports by
which the Tudor monarchy had been upheld. The courts of
star chamber and high commission and the council of the north
were abolished. The raising of tonnage and poundage without
a parliamentary grant was declared illegal. The judges who
had given obnoxious decisions were called to answer for their
fault and were taught that they were responsible to the House
of Commons as well as the king. Finally a bill was passed provid-
ing that the existing House should not be dissolved without its
own consent.
It was clearly a revolutionary position which the House had
assumed. But it was assumed because it was impossible to ex-
pect that a king who had ruled as Charles had ruled could take
up a new position as the exponent of the feelings which were
represented in the Commons. As long as Charles lived he could
not be otherwise than an object of suspicion; and yet if he were
dethroned there was no one available to fill his place. There arose
therefore two parties in the House, one ready to trust the king,
the other disinclined to put any 'confidence in him at all. The
division was the sharper because.it coincided with a difference
in matters of religion. Scarcely any one wished to see the
Laudian ceremonies upheld. But the members who favoured
the king, and who formed a considerable minority, wished to see
a certain liberty of religious thought, together with a return
under a modified Episcopacy to the forms of worship which
prevailed before Laud had taken the church in hand. The other
side, which had the majority by a few votes, wished to see the
Puritan creed prevail in all its strictness, and were favourable to
the establishment of the Presbyterian discipline. The king by
his unwise action threw power into the hands of his opponents.
He listened with tolerable calmness to their Grand Remonstrance,
but his attempt to seize the five members whom he accused
of high treason made a good understanding impossible. The
Scottish army had been paid off some months before, and civil
war was the only means of deciding the quarrel.
At first the fortune of war wavered. Edgehill was a drawn
battle (1642), and the campaign of 1643, though it was on the
whole favourable to the king, gave no decisive results.
Before the year was at an end parliament invited a
new Scottish army to intervene in England. As an
inducement, the Solemn League and Covenant was signed by all
Parliamentarian Englishmen, the terms of which were interpreted
by the Scots to bind England to submit to Presbyterianism,
though the most important clauses had been purposely left
vague, so as to afford a loophole of escape. The battle of Marston
Moor, with the defeat of the Royalist forces in the north,
was the result. But the battle did not improve the /^g^.
position of the Scots. They had been repulsed, and icrians and
the victory was justly ascribed to the English con- indepen-
tingent. The composition of that contingent was such "**"'*
as to have a special political significance. Its leader was Oliver
Cromwell. It was formed by men who were fierce Puritan
enthusiasts, and who for the very reason that the intensity of
their religion separated them from the mass of their countrymen,
had learnt to uphold with all the energy of zeal the doctrine that
neither church nor state had a right to interfere with the forms
of worship which each congregation might select for itself (see
CONGREGATIONALISM and CROMWELL, OLIVER). .The principle
advocated by the army, and opposed by the Scots and the
1644-1662)
ENGLISH HISTORY
539
majority of the House of Commons, was liberty of sectarian
association. Some years earlier, under the dominion of Laud,
another principle had been proclaimed by Chillingworth and
Hales, that of liberty of thought within the unity of the church.
Both these movements conduced to the ultimate establishment
of toleration, but for the present the Independents were to have
their way.
The Presbyterian leaders, Essex and Manchester, were not
successful leaders. The army was remodelled after Cromwell's
pattern, and the king was finally crushed at Nascby
r ** (1645). The next year (1646) he surrendered to the
JJJJH^. Scots. Then followed two years of fruitless negotiation,
in which after the Scots abandoned the king to the
English parliament, the army took him out of the hands of the
parliament, whilst each in turn tried to find some basis of arrange-
ment on which he might reign without ruling. Such a basis
could not be found, and when Charles stirred up a fresh civil war
and a Scottish invasion (1648) the leaders of the army vowed
that, if victory was theirs, they would bring him to justice. To
do this it was necessary to drive out a large number of the
members of the House of Commons by what was known as
Pride's Purge, and to obtain from the mutilated
Commons the dismissal of the House of Lords, and
the establishment of a high court of justice, before
which the king was brought to trial and sentenced
to death. He was beheaded on a scaffold outside the windows
of Whitehall (1649).'
The government set up was a government by the committees
of a council of state nominally supporting themselves on the
House of Commons, though the members who still
** retained their places were so few that the council of
fr~ * F *
state was sufficiently numerous to form a majority
in the House. During eleven years the nation passed
through many vicissitudes in its forms of government. These
forms take no place in the gradual development of English
institutions, and have never been referred to as affording pre-
cedents to be followed. To the student of political science,
however, they have a special interest of their own, as they show
that when men had shaken themselves loose from the chain of
habit and prejudice, and had set themselves to build up a
political shelter under which to dwell, they were irresistibly
attracted by that which was permanent in the old constitutional
forms of which the special development had of late years been
so disastrous. After Cromwell had suppressed resistance in
Ireland (1649), had conquered Scotland (1650), and had over-
thrown the son of the late king, the future Charles II., at Wor-
cester (1651), the value of government by an assembly was tested
and found wanting. After Cromwell had expelled the remains
of the Long Parliament (1653), and had set up another assembly
of nominated members, that second experiment was found
equally wanting. It was necessary to have recourse to one head
of the executive government, controlling and directing its
actions. Cromwell occupied this position as lord
protector. He did all that was in his power to do to
prevent his authority from degenerating into tyranny.
He summoned two parliaments, of only one House, and
with the consent of the second parliament he erected a second
House, so that he might have some means of checking the Lower
House without constantly coming into personal collision with its
authority. As far as form went, the constitution in 1658, so
far as it differed' from the Stuart constitution, differed for the
better. But it suffered from one fatal defect. It was based
on the rule of the sword. The only substitute for traditional
authority is the dearly expressed expression of the national will,
and it U impossible to doubt that if the national will had been
expressed it would have swept away Cromwell and all his system.
The majority of the upper and middle classes, which had united
together against Laud, was now reunited against Cromwell.
The Puritans themselves were but a minority, and of that
1 The event* of the reign of Charles I. are treated in greater
detail in the articles CHARLES I., King of Great Britain and 'Ireland ;
STRAFFORD: HAMTDEN; PYM; GREAT REBELLION ; CROMWELL, &c.
The
anarchy.
minority considerable numbers disliked the free liberty accorded
to the sects. Whilst the worship of the Church of England was
proscribed, every illiterate or frenzied enthusiast was allowed
to harangue at his pleasure. Those who cared little for religion
felt insulted when they saw a government with which they had
no sympathy ruling by means of an army which they dreaded
and detested. Cromwell did his best to avert a social revolution,
and to direct the energies of his supporters into the channels of
merely political change. But he could not prevent, and it cannot
be said that he wished to prevent, the rise of men of ability from
positions of social inferiority. The nation had striven against
the arbitrary government of the king; but it was not prepared
to shake off the predominance of that widely spreading aristo-
cracy which, under the name of country gentlemen, had rooted
itself too deeply to be easily passed by. Cromwell's rule was
covered with military glory, and there can be no doubt that he
honestly applied himself to solve domestic difficulties as well.
But he reaped the reward of those who strive for something better
than the generation in which they live is able to appreciate.
His own faults and errors were remembered against him. He
tried in vain to establish constitutional government and religious
toleration (see CROMWELL, OLIVER). Whenhedied (1658) there
remained branded on the national mind two strong impressions
which it took more than a century to obliterate the dread of
the domination of a standing army, and abhorrence of the very
name of religious zeal.
The eighteen months which followed deepened the impression
thus formed. The army had appeared a hard master when it
lent its strength to a wise and sagacious rule. It was
worse when it undertook to rule in its own name, to
set up and pull down parliaments and governments.
The only choice left to the nation seemed to be one between
military tyranny and military anarchy. Therefore it was that
when Monk advanced from Scotland and declared for a free
parliament, there was little doubt that the new parliament would
recall the exiled king, and seek to build again on the old
foundations.
The Restoration was effected by a coalition between the
Cavaliers, or followers of Charles I., and the Presbyterians
who had originally opposed him. It was only after
the nature of a great reaction that the latter should for
a time be swamped by the former. The Long Parlia-
ment of the Restoration met in 1661, and the Act of Uniformity
entirely excluded all idea of reform in the Puritan direction,
and ordered the expulsion from their benefices of all clergymen
who refused to express approval of the whole of the Book of
Common Prayer (1662). A previous statute, the Corporation
Act (1661), ordered that all members of corporations should
renounce the Covenant and the doctrine that subjects might
in any case rightfully use force against their king, and should
receive the sacrament after the forms of the Church of England.
The object for which Laud had striven, the compulsory im-
position of uniformity, thus became part of the law of the land.
Herein lay the novelty of the system of the Restoration.
The system of Laud and the system of Cromwell had both
been imposed by a minority which had possessed itself of the
powers of government. The new uniformity was imposed by
parliament, and parliament had the nation behind it. For the
first time, therefore, all those who objected to the established
religion sought, not to alter its forms to suit themselves, but
to gain permission to worship in separate congregations. Ulti-
mately, the dissenters, as they began to be called, would obtain
their object. As soon as it became clear to the mass of the nation
that the dissenters were in a decided minority, there would be no
reason to fear the utmost they could do even if the present
liberty of worship and teaching were conceded to them. For
the present, however, they were feared out of all proportion
to their numbers. -They counted amongst them the old soldiers
of the Protectorate, and though that army had been dissolved,
it always seemed possible that it might spring to arms once more.
A bitter experience had taught men that a hundred of Oliver's
Ironsides might easily chase a thousand Cavaliers; and as long
540
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1663-1677
as this danger was believed to exist, every effort would be made
to keep dissent from spreading. Hence the Conventicle Act
(1664) imposed penalties on those taking part in religious
meetings in private houses, and the Five Mile Act (1665) forbade
an expelled clergyman to come within five miles of a corporate
borough, the very place where he was most likely to secure
adherence, unless he would swear his adhesion to the doctrine
of non-resistance.
The doctrine of non-resistance was evidently that by which,
at this time, the loyal subject was distinguished from those
whom he stigmatized as disloyal. Yet even the most
D f^oa >e ly a l f un< i that, if it was wrong to take up arms
resistance. a S ams t the king, it might be right to oppose him in
other ways. Even the Cavaliers did not wish to see
Charles II. an absolute sovereign. They wished to reconstruct
the system which had been violently interrupted by the events
of the autumn of 1641, and to found government on the co-
operation between king and parliament, without defining to
themselves what was to be done if the king's conduct became
insufferable. Openly, indeed, Charles II. did not force them
to reconsider their position. He did not thrust members of the
Commons into prison, or issue writs for ship-money. He laid no
claim to taxation which had not been' granted by parliament.
But he was extravagant and self-indulgent, and he wanted
more money than they were willing to supply, A war with the
Dutch broke out, and there were strong suspicions that
Charles applied money voted for the fleet to the main-
tenance of a vicious and luxurious court. Against the
vice and luxury, indeed, little objection was likely to
be brought. The over-haste of the Puritans to drill England
into ways of morality and virtue had thrown at least the upper
classes into a slough of revelry and baseness. But if the vice did
not appear objectionable the expense did, and a new chapter in
the financial history of the government was opened when the
Commons, having previously gained control over taxation, pro-
ceeded to vindicate their right to control expenditure.
As far, indeed, as taxation was concerned, the Long Parlia-
ment had not left its successor much to do. The abolition of
feudal tenures and purveyance had long been de-
Commons m anded, and the conclusion of an arrangement which
aim at had been mooted in the reign of James I. is only notable
control as affording one instance out of many of the tendency
nendfture ^ a sm l e class to shift burdens off its own shoulders.
The predominant landowners preferred the grant of an
excise, which would be taken out of all pockets, to a land-tax
which would exclusively be felt by those who were relieved by
the abolition of the tenures. The question of expenditure was
constantly telling on the relations between the king and the
House of Commons. After the Puritan army had been disbanded ,
the king resolved to keep on foot a petty force of 5000 men, and
he had much difficulty in providing for it out of a revenue which
had not been intended by those who voted it to be used for such
a purpose. Then came the Dutch war, bringing with it a sus-
picion that some at least of the money given for paying sailors
and fitting out ships was employed by Charles on very different
objects. The Commons accordingly, in 1665, succeeded in
enforcing, on precedents derived from the reigns of Richard II.
and Henry IV., the right of appropriating the supplies granted
to special objects; and with more difficulty they obtained, in
1666, the appointment of a commission empowered to investigate
irregularities in the issue of moneys. Such measures were the
complement of the control over taxation which they had
previously gained, and as far as their power of supervision went,
it constituted them and not the king the directors of the course
of government. If this result was not immediately felt, it was
because the king had a large certain revenue voted to him for
life, so that, for the present at least, it was only his extraordinary
expenses which could be brought under parliamentary control.
Nor did even the renewal of parliamentary impeachment, which
ended in the banishment of Lord Chancellor Clarendon (1667),
bring on any direct collision with the king. If the Commons
wished to be rid of him because he upheld the prerogative, the
"'
king was equally desirous to be rid of him because he looked
coldly on the looseness of the royal morals.
The great motive power of the later politics of the reign was
to be found beyond the Channel. To the men of the days of
Charles II., Louis XIV. of France was what Philip II.
of Spain had been to the men of the days of Elizabeth.
Gradually, in foreign policy, the commercial emulation Loala X iv.
with the Dutch, which found vent in one war in the
time of the Commonwealth, and in two wars in the time of
Charles II., gave way to a dread, rising into hatred, of the arrogant
potentate who, at the head of the mightiest army in Europe,
treated with contempt all rights which came into collision with
his own wishes. Louis XIV., moreover, though prepared to
quarrel with the pope in the matter of his own authority over
the Gallican Church, was a bigoted upholder of Catholic ortho-
doxy, and Protestants saw in his political ambitions a menace
to their religion. In the case of England there seemed a special
danger to Protestantism; for whatever religious sympathies
Charles II. possessed were with the Roman Catholic faith, and
in his annoyance at the interference of the Commons with his
expenditure he was not ashamed to stoop to become the pen-
sioner of the French king. In 1670 the secret treaty of Dover
was signed. Charles was to receive from Louis 200,000 a year
and the aid of 6000 French troops to enable him to declare him-
self a convert, and to obtain special advantages for his religion,
whilst he was also to place the forces of England at Louis's dis-
posal for his purposes of aggression on the continent of Europe.
Charles had no difficulty in stirring up the commercial jealousy
of England so as to bring about a second Dutch war (1672).
The next year, unwilling to face the dangers of his ^^
larger plan, he issued a declaration of indulgence, Dutch
which, by a single act of the prerogative, suspended war, and
all penal laws against Roman Catholics and dissenters deciara-
alike. To the country gentlemen who constituted the ,/uteBnce"
cavalier parliament, and who had long been drifting
into opposition to the crown, this was intolerable. Thepre-
dominance of the Church of England was the prime article of
their political creed; they dreaded the Roman Catholics; they
hated and despised the dissenters. Under any circumstances
an indulgence would have been most distasteful to them. But
the growing belief that the whole scheme was merely intended
to serve the purposes of the Roman Catholics converted their
dislike into deadly opposition. Yet the parliament resolved
to base its opposition upon constitutional grounds. The right
claimed by the king to suspend the laws was questioned, and
his claim to special authority in ecclesiastical matters was
treated with contempt. The king gave way and withdrew his
declaration. But no solemn act of parliament declared it to
be illegal, and in due course of time it would be heard of again.
The Commons followed up their blow by passing the Test Act,
making the reception of the sacrament according to the forms
of the Church of England, and the renunciation of the
doctrine of transubstantiation, a necessary qualifica- Act-
tion for office. At once it appeared what a hold the
members of the obnoxious church had had upon the adminis-
tration of the state. The lord high admiral, the lord treasurer,
and a secretary of state refused to take the test. The lord
high admiral was the heir to the throne, the king's brother, the
duke of York.
Charles, as usual, bent before the storm. In Danby (see
LEEDS, IST DUKE OF) he found a minister whose views answered
precisely to the views of the existing House of Commons. ,
Like the Commons, Danby wished to silence both ministry.
Roman Catholics and dissenters. . Like the Commons,
too, he wished to embark on a foreign policy hostile to France.
But he served a master who regarded Louis less as a possible
adversary than as a possible paymaster. Sometimes Danby
was allowed to do as he liked, and the marriage of the duke of
York's eldest daughter Mary to her cousin the prince of Orange
was the most lasting result of his administration. More often
he was obliged to follow where Charles led, and Charles was
constantly ready to sell the neutrality of England for large sums
ENGLISH HISTORY
ol French gold. At last oneof these negotiations was detected,
and Dauby, who was supposed to be the author instead of the
unwilling instrument of the intrigue, was impeached. In order
to save his minister, Charles dissolved parliament (1678). He
could not have chosen a more unlucky time for his own quiet.
The strong feeling against the Roman Catholics had
been quickened into a flame by a great imposture.
The inventors of the so-called popish plot charged the
leading English Roman Catholics with a design to
murder the king. Judges and juries alike were maddened with
excitement, and listened greedily to the lies which poured forth
from the lips of profligate informers. Innocent blood was shed
in abundance.
The excitement had its root in the uneasy feeling caused by
the knowledge that the heir to the throne was a Roman Catholic.
Three parliaments were summoned and dissolved. In
each parliament the main question at issue between
the Commons and the crown was the Exclusion Bill,
by which the Commons sought to deprive the duke
of York of his inheritance; and it was notorious that the
leaders of the movement wished the crown to descend to the
king's illegitimate son, the duke of Monmouth.
The principles by which the Commons were guided in these
parliaments were very different from those which had prevailed
in the first parliament of the Restoration. Those
principles, to which that party adhered which about
this time became known as the Tory party, had been
formed under the influence of the terror caused by militant
Puritanism. In the state the Tory inherited the ideas of
Clarendon, and, without being at all ready to abandon the
claims of parliaments, nevertheless somewhat inconsistently
spoke of the king as ruling by a divine and indefeasible title, and
wielding a power which it was both impious and unconstitutional
to resist by force. In the church he inherited the ideas of Laud,
and saw in the maintenance of the Act of Uniformity the safe-
guard of religion. But the hold of these opinions on the nation
had been weakened with the cessation of the causes which had
produced them. In 1680 twenty years had passed since the
Puritan army had been disbanded. Many of Cromwell's soldiers
had died, and most of them were growing old. The dissenters
had shown no signs of engaging in plots or conspiracies. They
were known to be only a comparatively small minority of the
population, and though they had been cruelly persecuted, they
had suffered without a thought of resistance. Dread of the
dissenters, therefore, had become a mere chimaera, which only
those could entertain whose minds were influenced by prejudice.
On the other hand, dread of the Roman Catholics was a living
force. Unless the law were altered a Roman Catholic would
be on the throne, wielding all the resources of the prerogative,
and probably supported by all the resources of the king of France.
Hence the leading principle of the Whigs, as the predominant
party was now called, was in the state to seek for the highest
national authority in parliament rather than in the king, and
in the church to adopt the rational theology of Chillingworth
and Hales, whilst looking to the dissenters as allies against the
Roman Catholics, who were the enemies of both.
Events were to show that it was a wise provision which led
the Whigs to seek to exclude the duke of York from the throne.
But their plan suffered under two faults, the con-
junction of which was ruinous to them for the time.
In the first place, their choice of Monmouth as the heir
was infelicitous. Not only was he under the stain of illegitimacy,
but his succession excluded the future succession of Mary, whose
husband, the prince of Orange, was the hope of Protestant
Europe. In the second place, drastic remedies are never gener-
ally acceptable when the evil to be remedied is still in the future.
When, in the third of the short parliaments held at Oxford ,the
Whigs rode armed into the city, the nation decided that the
future danger of a Roman Catholic succession was incomparably
less than the immediate danger of another civil war. Loyal
addresses poured in to the king. For the four remaining years
of his reign be ruled without summoning any parliament. Whigs
Ttty
were brought before prejudiced juries and partial judges. Their
blood flowed on the scaffold. The charter of the city of London
was confiscated. The reign of the Tories was unquestioned.
Yet it was not quite what the reign of the Cavaliers had been
in 1660. The violence of the Restoration had been directed
primarily against Puritanism, and only against certain forms
of government so far as they allowed Puritans to gain the upper
hand. The violence of the Tories was directed against rebellion
and disorder, and only against dissenters so far as they were
believed to be the fomenters of disorder. Religious hatred had
less part in the action of the ruling party, and even from its
worst actions a. wise man might have predicted that the day of
toleration was not so fur off as it seemed.
The accession of James II. (1685 ) put the views of the op-
ponents of the Exclusion Bill to the test. A new parliament
was elected, almost entirely composed of decided
Tories. A rebellion in Scotland, headed by the earl "%* ""
of Argyll, and a rebellion in England, headed by the usa.
duke of Monmouth, were easily suppressed. But the
inherent difficulties of the king's position were not thereby over-
come. It would have been hard, in days in which religious
questions occupied so large a space in the field of politics, for
a Roman Catholic sovereign to rule successfully over a Protestant
nation. James set himself to make it, in his case, impossible. It
may be that he did not consciously present to himself any object
other than fair treatment for his co-religionists. On the one
hand, however, he alienated even reasonable opponents by
offering no guarantees that equality so gained would not be con-
verted into superiority by the aid of his own military force and
of the assistance of the French king; whilst on the other hand
he relied, even more strongly than his father Had done, on the
technical legality which exalted the prerogative in defiance of
the spirit of the law. He began by making use of the necessity
of resisting Monmouth to increase his army, under the pretext
of the danger of a repetition of the late rebellion; and in the
regiments thus levied he appointed many Roman Catholic officers
who had refused to comply with the Test Act. Rather than
submit to the gentlest remonstrance, he prorogued parliament,
and proceeded to obtain from the court of king's bench a judg-
ment in favour of his right to dispense with all penalties due
by law, in the same way that his grandfather had appealed to
the judges in the matter of the post-nati. But not only was
the question put by James II. of far wider import than the
question put by James I., but he deprived the court to which
he applied of all moral authority by previously turning out of
office the judges who were likely to disagree with him, and by
appointing new ones who were likely to agree with him. A
court of high commission of doubtful legality was subsequently
erected (1686) to deprive or suspend clergymen who made
themselves obnoxious to the court, whilst James appointed
Roman Catholics to the headship of certain colleges at Oxford.
The legal support given him by judges of his own selection was
fortified by the military support of an army collected at Houns-
low Heath; and a Roman Catholic, the earl of Tyrconnel, was
sent as lord-deputy to Ireland (1687) to organize a Roman
Catholic army on which the king might fall back if his English
forces proved insufficient for his purpose.
Thus fortified, James issued a declaration of indulgence (1687)
granting full religious liberty to all his subjects. The belief, that
the grant of liberty to all religions was only intended
to serve as a cloak for the ascendancy of one, was so
strong that the measure roused the opposition of all Uoa o/ta-
those who objected to see the king's will substituted for dul ** ace -
the law, even if they wished to see the Protestant dissenters
tolerated. In spite of this opposition, the king thought it
possible to obtain a parliamentary sanction for his declaration.
The parliament to which he intended to appeal was, however,
to be as different a body from the parliament which met in the
first year of his reign as the bench of judges which had ap-
proved of the dispensing power had been different from the bench
which existed at his accession. A large number of the borough
members were in those days returned by the corporations, and
542
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1688-1701
the corporations were accordingly changed. But so thoroughly
was the spirit of the country roused, that many even of the new
corporations were set against James's declaration, and he had
therefore to abandon for a time the hope of seeing it accepted
even by a packed House of Commons. All, however, that he
could do to give it force he did. He ordered the clergy to read
it in all pulpits (1688). Seven bishops, who presented
a petition asking him to relieve the clergy from the
bishops burthen of proclaiming what they believed to be
illegal, were brought to trial for publishing a seditious
libel. Their acquittal by a jury was the first serious blow to the
system adopted by the king.
Another event which seemed likely to consolidate his power
was in reality the signal of his ruin. The queen bore him a son.
There was thus no longer a strong probability that
on688 " t ne king would be succeeded at no great distance of
time by a Protestant heir. Popular incredulity ex-
pressed itself in the assertion that, as James had attempted to
gain his ends by means of a packed bench of judges and a packed
House of Commons, he had now capped the series of falsifications
by[the production of a supposititious heir. The leaders of both
parties combined to invite the prince of Orange to come to the
rescue of the religion and laws of England. He landed on the
5th of November at Brixham. Before he could reach London
every class of English society had declared in his favour. James
was deserted even by his army. He fled to France, and a con-
vention parliament, summoned without the royal writ, declared
that his flight was equivalent to abdication, and offered the crown
in joint sovereignty to William and Mary (1689).
IX. THE REVOLUTION AND THE AGE OF ANNE
(1689-1714)
The Revolution, as it was called, was more than a mere change
of sovereigns. It finally transferred the ultimate decision in
William tne state f rom the king to parliament. What parlia-
///. and ment had been in the i5th century with the House of
Mary n.. Lords predominating, that parliament was to be again
I689 ' in the end of the i7th century with the House of
Commons predominating. That House of Commons was far
from resting on a wide basis of popular suffrage. The county
voters were the freeholders; but in the towns, with some
important exceptions, the electors were the richer inhabitants
who formed the corporations of the boroughs, or a body of select
householders more or less under the control of some neighbour-
ing landowner. A House so chosen was an aristocratic body,
but it was aristocratic in a far wider sense than the House of Lords
was aristocratic. The trading and legal classes found their
representation there by the side of the great owners of land.
The House drew its strength from its position as a true represent-
ative of the effective strength of the nation in its social and
economical organization.
Such was the body which firmly grasped the control over every
branch of the administration. Limiting in the Bill of Rights
the powers assumed by the crown, the Commons declared that
the king could not keep a standing army in time of peace without
consent of parliament; and they made that consent effectual,
as far as legislation could go, by passing a Mutiny Act year by
year for twelve months only, so as to prevent the crown from
exercising military discipline without their authority. Behind
these legal contrivances stood the fact that the army was or-
ganized in the same way as the nation was organized, being
officered by gentlemen who had no desire to overthrow a con-
stitution through which the class from which they sprung con-
trolled the government. Strengthened by the cessation of any
fear of military violence, the Commons placed the crown in
financial dependence on themselves by granting a large part of
the revenue only for a limited term of years, and by putting
strictly in force their right of appropriating that revenue to
special branches of expenditure.
Such a revolution might have ended in the substitution of the
despotism of a class for the despotism of a man. Many causes
combined to prevent this result. The landowners, who formed
the majority of the House, were not elected directly, as was
the case with the nobility of the French states-general, by their
own class, but by electors who, though generally loyal to them,
would have broken off from them if they had attempted
to make themselves masters of their fellow citizens. Causes to
No less important was the almost absolute inde- liberty.
pendence of the judges, begun at the beginning of
the reign, by the grant of office to them during good behaviour
instead of during the king's pleasure, and finally secured by the
clause in the Act of Settlement in 1701, which protected them
against dismissal except on the joint address of both Houses of
Parliament. Such an improvement, however, finds its full
counterpart in another great step already taken. The more
representative a government becomes, the more necessary it is
for the well-being of the nation that the expression of individual
thought should be free in every direction. If it is not so, the
government is inclined to proscribe unpopular opinion, and to
forget that new opinions by which the greatest benefits are likely
to be conferred are certain at first to be entertained by a very
few, and are quite certain to be unpopular as soon as they come
into collision with the opinions of the majority. In the middle
ages the benefits of the liberation of thought from state control
had been secured by the antagonism between church and state.
The Tudor sovereigns had rightfully asserted the principle that
in a well-ordered nation only one supreme power can be allowed
to exist; but in so doing they had enslaved religion. It was
fortunate that, just at the moment when parliamentary control
was established over the state, circumstances should have arisen
which made the majority ready to restore to the individual
conscience that supremacy over religion which the medieval
ecclesiastics had claimed for the corporation of the universal
church. Dissenters had, in the main, stood shoulder to shoulder
with churchmen in rejecting the suspicious benefits of James,
and both gratitude and policy forbade the thought of replacing
them under the heavy yoke which had been imposed on them
at the Restoration. The exact mode in which relief should be
afforded was still an open question. The idea prevalent with the
more liberal minds amongst the clergy was that of compre-
hension that is to say, of so modifying the prayers and cere-
monies of the church as to enable the dissenters cheerfully to enter
in. The scheme was one which had approved itself to minds
of the highest order to Sir Thomas More, to Bacon, to Hales and
to Jeremy Taylor. It is one which, as long as beliefs are not
very divergent, keeps up a sense of brotherhood overruling
the diversity of opinion. It broke down, as it always will break
down in practice, whenever the difference of belief is so strongly
felt as to seek earnestly to embody itself in diversity of outward
practice. The greater part of the clergy of the church felt that
to surrender their accustomed formularies was to surrender
somewhat of the belief which those formularies signified, while
the dissenting clergy were equally reluctant to adopt the common
prayer book even in a modified form. Hence the
Toleration Act, which guaranteed the right of separate T -f* lerailoa
assemblies for worship outside the pale of the church, Act.
though it embodied the principles of Cromwell and
Milton, and not those of Chillingworth and Hales, was carried
without difficulty, whilst the proposed scheme of comprehension
never had a chance of success (1689). The choice was one which
posterity can heartily approve. However wide the limits of
toleration be drawn, there will always be those who will be left
outside. By religious liberty those inside gain as much as those
who are without. From the moment of the passing of the
Toleration Act, no Protestant in England performed any act
of worship except by his own free and deliberate choice. The
literary spokesman of the new system was Locke. His Letters
concerning Toleration laid down the principle which had been
maintained by Cromwell, with a wider application than was
possible in days when the state was in the hands of a mere
minority only able to maintain itself in power by constant and
suspicious vigilance.
One measure remained to place the dissenters in the position of
full membership of the state. The Test Act excluded them from
ENGLISH HISTORY
543
office. But the memory of the high-handed proceedings of
Puritan rulers was still too recent to allow Englishmen to run
the risk of a reimposilion of their yoke, and this feeling, fanciful
as it was, was sufficient to keep the Test Act in force for years
to come.
The complement of the Toleration Act was the abolition of
the censorship of the press (1695). The ideas of the author of the
Arcofmgilim had at last prevailed. The attempt to
fix certain opinions on the nation which were pleasing
to those in power was abandoned by king and parlia-
ment alike. The nation, or at least so much of it as cared to
read books or pamphlets on political subjects, was acknowledged
to be the supreme judge, which must therefore be allowed to
listen to what counsellors it pleased.
This new position of the nation made itself felt in various ways.
It was William's merit that, fond as he was of power, he recog-
nized the fact that he could not rule except so far as he carried
the goodwill of the nation with him. No doubt he was helped
to an intelligent perception of the new situation by the fact that,
as a foreigner, he cared far more for carrying on war successfully
against France than for influencing the domestic legislation of
a country which was not his own, and by the knowledge that th*
conduct of the struggle which lasted till he was able to treat with
France on equal terms at Ryswick (1697) was fairly trusted to
his hands. Nevertheless these years of war called for the united
action of a national government, and in seeking to gain this
support for himself, he hit upon an expedient which opened
a new era in constitutional politics.
The supremacy of the House of Commons would have been
an evil of no common magnitude, if it had made government
impossible. Yet'this was precisely what it threatened
to do. Sometimes the dominant party in the House
pressed with unscrupulous rancour upon its opponents.
Sometimes the majority shifted from side to side as
the House was influenced by passing gusts of passion or sym-
pathy, so that, as it was said at the time, no man could foretell
one day what the House would be pleased to do on the next.
Against the first of these dangers William was to a great extent
able to guard by the exercise of his right of dissolution, so as
to appeal to the constituencies, which did not always share in the
the passions of their representatives. But the second danger
could not be met in this way. The only cure for waywardness
is responsibility, and not only was this precisely what the
Commons had not learned to feel, but it was that which it was
impossible to make them feel directly. A body composed of
several hundred members cannot carry on government with the
requisite steadiness of action and clearness of insight. Such
work can only fitly be entrusted to a few. and whenever difficult
circumstances arise it is necessary that the action of those few
be kept in harmony by the predominance of one. The scheme
on which William hit, by the advice of the earl of Sunderland,
was that which has since been known as cabinet government.
He selected as his ministers the leading members of the two
Houses who had the confidence of the majority of the House of
Commons. In this way, the majority felt an interest in support-
ing the men who embodied their own opinions, and fell in turn
under the influence of those who held them with greater prudence
or ability than fell to the lot of the average members of the
House. All that William doubtless intended was to acquire a
ready instrument to enable him to carry on the war with success.
In reality he had refounded, on a new basis, the government of
England. His own personal qualities were such that he was able
to dominate over any set of ministers; but the time would come
when there would be a sovereign of inferior powers. Then the
body of ministers would step into his place. The old rude
arrangements of the middle ages had provided by frequent de-
positions that an inefficient sovereign should cease to rule, and
those arrangements had been imitated in the cases of Charles I.
and James II. Still the claim to rule had, at least from the time
of Henry III., been derived from hereditary descent, and the
interruption, however frequently it might occur, had been re-
garded as something abnormal, only to be applied where there
was an absolute necessity to prevent the wieldcr of executive
authority from setting at defiance the determined purpose of the
nation. After the Revolution not only had the king's title been
so changed as to make him more directly than ever dependent
on the nation, but he now called into existence a body which
derived its own strength from its conformity with the wishes
of the representatives of the nation.
For the moment it seemed to be but a temporary expedient.
When the war came to an end, the Whig party which had sus-
tained William in his struggle with France split up. The domi-
nant feeling of the House of Commons was no longer the desire
to support the crown against a foreign enemy, but to make
government as cheap as possible, leaving future dangers to the
chances of the future. William had not so understood the new
invention of a united ministry as binding him to take into his
service a united ministry of men whom he regarded as fools and
knaves. He allowed the Commons to reduce the army to a
skeleton, to question his actions, and to treat him as if he were
a cipher. But it was only by slow degrees that he was brought
to acknowledge the necessity of choosing his ministers from
amongst the men who had done these things.
The time came when he needed again the support of the
nation. The death of Charles II., the hcirlcss king of the huge
Spanish monarchy, had long been expected. Since The
the peace of Ryswick, William and Louis XIV. had Spanish
come to terms by two successive partition treaties for *ucces-
a division of those vast territories in such a way that *'"*
the whole of them should not fall into the hands of a near relation
either of the king of France or of the emperor, the head of the
house of Austria. When the king of Spain actually died in 1 700,
William seemed to have no authority in England whatever;
and Louis was therefore encouraged to break his engagements,
and to accept the whole of the Spanish inheritance for his
grandson, who became Philip V. of Spain. William saw clearly
that such predominance of France in Europe would lead to the
development of pretensions unbearable to other states. But the
House of Commons did not see it, even when the Dutch garrisons
were driven by French troops out of the posts in the Spanish
Netherlands which they had occupied for many years (1701).
William had prudently done all that he could to conciliate
the Tory majority. In the preceding year (1700) he had given
office to a Tory ministry, and he now (1701) gave his
assent to the Act of Settlement, which secured the
succession of the crown to the elcctress Sophia of
Hanover, daughter of James I.'s daughter Elizabeth,
to the exclusion of all Roman Catholic claimants, though it
imposed several fresh restrictions on the prerogative. William
was indeed wise in keeping his feelings under control. The
country sympathized with him more than the Commons did,
and when the House imprisoned the gentlemen deputed by the
freeholders of Kent to present a petition asking that its loyal
addresses might be turned into bills of supply, it simply adver-
tised its weakness to the whole country.
The reception of this Kentish petition was but a foretaste of
the discrepancy between the Commons and the nation, which
was to prove the marked feature of the middle of the
century now opening. For the present the House
was ready to give way. It requested the king to enter
into alliance with the Dutch. William went yet further in the
direction in which he was urged. He formed an alliance with
the emperor, as well as with the Netherlands, to prevent the
union of the crowns of France and Spain, and to compel France
to evacuate the Netherlands. An unexpected event came to
give him all the strength he needed. James II. died, and Louis
acknowledged his son as the rightful king of England. English-
men of both parties were stung to indignation by the insult.
William dissolved parliament, and the new House of Commons,
Tory as it was by a small majority, was eager to support the
king. It voted men and money according to his wishes. Eng-
land was to be the soul of the Grand Alliance against France.
But before a blow was struck William was thrown from his horse.
He died on the 8th of March 1702. " The man," as Burke said
of Sctt/c-
ata t.
544
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1702-1719
of him, " was dead, but the Grand Alliance survived in which
King William lived and reigned."
Upon the accession of Anne, war was at once begun. The
Grand Alliance became, as William would have wished, a league
to wrest the whole of the Spanish dominions from
Philip, in favour of the Austrian archduke Charles.
1702-1714. ft found a chief of supreme military and diplomatic
genius in the duke of Marlborough. His victory at
Blenheim (1704) drove the French out of Germany. His victory
of Ramillies (1706) drove them out of the Netherlands. In
Spain, Gibraltar was captured by Rooke (1704) and Barcelona
by Peterborough (1705). Prince Eugene relieved Turin from a
French siege, and followed up the blow by driving the besiegers
out of Italy.
The influence of Marlborough at home was the result partly
of the prestige of his victories, partly of the dominating influence
of his strong-minded duchess (" Mrs Freeman ") over the queen
(see ANNE, queen of England). The duke cared little for home
politics in themselves; but he had his own ends, both public
and private, to serve, and at first gave his support to the Tories,
whose church policy was regarded with favour by the queen.
Their efforts were directed towards the restriction of theToleration
Act within narrow limits. Many dissenters had evaded the Test
Act by partaking of the communion in a church, though they
subsequently attended their own chapels. An Occasional Con-
formity Bill, imposing penalties on those who adopted this
practice, twice passed the Commons (1702, 1703), but was re-
jected by the House of Lords, in which the Whig element pre-
dominated. The church was served in a nobler manner in 1704
by the abandonment of first-fruits and tenths by the queen for
the purpose of raising the pittances of the poorer
Union clergy (see QUEEN ANNE'S BOUNTY). In 1707 a piece
^Scotland. ^ legislation of the highest value was carried to a
successful end. The Act of Union, passed in the
parliaments of Engfand and Scotland, joined the legislatures of
the two kingdoms and the nations themselves in an indissoluble
bond.
The ministry in office at the time of the passing of the Act
of Union had suffered important changes since the commence-
ment of the reign. The Tories had never been as
United earnest in the prosecution of the war as the Whigs;
and Marlborough, who cared above all things for the
furtherance of the war, gradually replaced Tories by
Whigs in the ministry. His intention was doubtless to conciliate
both parties by admitting them both to a share of power; but
the Whigs were determined to have all or none, and in 1708 a
purely Whig ministry was formed to support the war as the first
purely Whig ministry had supported it in the reign of William.
The years of its power were the years of the victories of Oude-
narde (1708) and of Malplaquet (1709), bringing with them the
entire ruin of the military power of Louis XIV.
Such successes, if they were not embraced in the spirit of
moderation, boded no good to the Whigs. It was known that
even before the last battle Louis had been ready to abandon
the cause of his grandson, and that his offers had been rejected
because he would not consent to join the allies in turning him
out of Spain. A belief spread in England that Marlborough
wished the endless prolongation of the war for his own selfish
ends. Spain was far away, and, if the Netherlands were safe,
enough had been done for the interests of England. The Whigs
were charged with refusing to make peace when an honourable
and satisfactory peace was not beyond their reach.
As soon as the demand for a vigorous prosecution of the war
relaxed, the Whigs could but rely on their domestic policy,
in which they were strongest in the eyes of posterity but weakest
in the eyes of contemporaries. It was known that they looked
for the principle on which the queen's throne rested to the
national act of the Revolution, rather than to the birth of the
sovereign as the daughter of James II., whilst popular feeling
preferred, however inconsistently, to attach itself to some frag-
ment of hereditary right. What was of greater consequence was,
that it was known that they were the friends of the dissenters,
Whig
ministry.
and that their leaders, if they could have had their way, would
not only have maintained the Toleration Act, but would also
have repealed the Test Act. In 1709 a sermon preached by
Dr Sacheverell (q.v.) denounced toleration and the right of
resistance in tones worthy of the first days of the Restoration.
Foolish as the sermon was, it was but the reflection of folly
which was widely spread amongst the rude and less educated
classes. The Whig leaders unwisely took up the challenge and
impeached Sacheverell. The Lords condemned the man, but
they condemned him to an easy sentence. His trial was the
signal for riot. Dissenting chapels were sacked to the
cry of High Church and Sacheverell. The queen, who ministry
had personal reasons for disliking the Whigs, dis-
missed them from office (1710), and a Tory House of Commons
was elected amidst the excitement to support the Tory ministry
of Harley and St John.
After some hesitation the new ministry made peace with
France, and the treaty of Utrecht (1713), stipulating for the
permanent separation of the crowns of France and
Spain, and assigning Milan, Naples and the Spanish
Netherlands to the Austrian claimant, accomplished
all that could reasonably be desired, though the abandonment
to the vengeance of the Spanish government of her Catalan
allies, and the base desertion of her continental confederates
on the very field of action, brought dishonour on the good
name of England. The Commons gladly welcomed the cessa-
tion of the war. The approval of the Lords had been secured
by the creation of twelve Tory peers. In home politics the new
ministry was in danger of being carried away by its more violent
supporters. St John, now Viscount Bolingbroke, with un-
scrupulous audacity placed himself at their head. The ^^
Occasional Conformity Bill was at last carried (1711). Coa * '
To it was added the Schism Act (1714), forbidding tonally
dissenters to keep schools or engage in tuition. Boling- Act ttaa
broke went still farther. He engaged in an intrigue
for bringing over the Pretender to succeed the queen
upon her death. This wild conduct alienated the moderate
Tories, who, much as they wished to see the throne occupied
by the heir of the ancient line, could not bring themselves to
consent to its occupation by a Roman Catholic prince. Such
men, therefore, when Anne died (1714) joined the Whigs in
proclaiming the elector of Hanover king as George I.
X. THE HANOVERIAN KINGS (1714-1793)
The accession of George I. brought with it the predominance
of the Whigs. They had on their side the royal power, the
greater part of the aristocracy, the dissenters and the Accession
higher trading and commercial classes. The Tories otthe
appealed to the dislike of dissenters prevalent amongst " ouse ot
the country gentlemen and the country clergy, and
to the jealousy felt by the agricultural classes towards those
who enriched themselves by trade. Such a feeling, if it was
aroused by irritating legislation, might very probably turn to
the advantage of the exiled house, especially as the majority
of- Englishmen were to be found on the Tory side. It was there-
fore advisable that government should content itself with as
little action as possible, in order to give time for old habits to
wear themselves out. The landing of the Pretender in Scotland
(1715), and the defeat of a portion of his army which had ad-
vanced to Preston a defeat which was the consequence of the
apathy of his English supporters, and which was followed by
the complete suppression of the rebellion gave increased
strength to the Whig government. But they were reluctant to
face an immediate dissolution, and the Septennial Act was
passed (1716) to extend to seven years the duration
of parliaments, which had been fixed at three years by ^TSbml
the Triennial Act of William and Mary. Under General conform-
Stanhope an effort was made to draw legislation in a HyActand
more liberal direction. The Occasional Conformity % lsm
Act and the Schism Act were repealed (1719); but
the majorities on the side of the government were unusually
small, and Stanhope, who would willingly have repealed the
1730-1743)
ENGLISH HISTORY
545
Test Act so far as it related to dissenters, was compelled to
abandon the project as entirely impracticable. The Peerage
Bill, introduced at the same time to limit the royal power of
creating peers, was happily thrown out in the Commons. It
was proposed, partly from a desire to guard the Lords against
such a sudden increase of their numbers as had been forced
on them when the treaty of Utrecht was under discussion, and
partly to secure the Whigs in office against any change in the
royal councils in a succeeding reign. It was in fact conceived
by men who valued the immediate victory of their principles
more than they trusted to the general good sense of the nation.
The Lords were at this time, as a matter of fact, not merely
wealthier but wiser than the Commons; and it is no wonder
that, in days when the Commons, by passing the Septennial
Act, had shown their distrust of their own constituents, the
peers should show, by the Peerage Bill, their distrust of that
House which was elected by those constituencies. Nevertheless,
the remedy was worse than the disease, for it would have estab-
lished a close oligarchy, bound sooner or later to come into
conflict with the will of the nation, and only to be overthrown
by a violent alteration of the constitution.
The excitement following on the bursting of the South Sea
Bubble (?.r.), and the death or ruin of the leading ministers,
_.__._, brought Sir Robert Walpole to the front (1721). As
jfrfcttj a man of business when men of business were few in
the House of Commons, he was eminently fit to
manage the affairs of the country. But he owed his long con-
tinuance in office especially to his sagacity. He clearly saw,
what Stanhope had failed to see, that the mass of the nation was
not fitted as yet to interest itself wisely in affairs of government,
and that therefore the rule must be kept in the hands of the upper
classes. But he was too sensible to adopt the coarse expedient
which had commended itself to Stanhope, and he preferred
humouring the masses to contradicting them.
The struggle of the preceding century had left its mark in every
direction on the national development. Out of the reaction
against Puritanism had come a widely-spread relaxation of
morals, and also, as far as the educated class was concerned, an
eagerness for the discussion of all social and religious problems.
The fierce excitement of political life had quickened thought,
and the most anciently received doctrines were held of little
worth until they were brought to the test of reason. It was a
time when the pen was more powerful than the sword, when a
secretary f state would treat with condescension a witty
pamphleteer, and when such a pamphleteer might hope, not in
vain, to become a secretary of state.
It was in this world of reason and literature that the Whigs
of the Peerage Bill moved. Walpole perceived that there was
another world which understood none of these things. With
cynical insight he discovered that a great government cannot rest
on a clique, however distinguished. If the moss of the nation
was not conscious of political wants, it was conscious of material
wants. The merchant needed protection for his trade; the
voters gladly welcomed election days as bringing guineas to their
pockets. Members of parliament were ready to sell their votes
for places, for pensions, for actual money. The system was not
new, as Danby is credited with the discovery that a vote in the
House of Commons might be purchased. But with Walpole it
reached its height.
Such a system was possible because the House of Commons
was not really accountable to its constituents. The votes of its
members were not published, and still less were their speeches
made known. Such a silence could only be maintained around
the House when there was little interest in its proceedings.
The great questions of religion and taxation which had agitated
the country under the Stuarts were now fairly settled. To re-
awaken those questions in any shape would be dangerous.
Walpole took good care never to repeat the mistake of the
Sacheverell trial. When on one occasion he was led into the
proposal of an unpopular excise he at once drew back. England
in his days was growing rich. Englishmen were bluff and inde-
pendent, in their ways often coarse and unmannerly. Their life
IX 18
was the life depicted on the canvas of Hogarth and the pages
of Fielding. All high imagination, all devotion to the public
weal, seemed laid asleep. But the political instinct was not
dead, and it would one day express itself for better ends than
an agitation against an excise bill or an outcry for a popular
war. A government could no longer employ its powers for
direct oppression. In his own house and in his own conscience,
every Englishman, as far as the government was concerned, was
the master of his destiny. By and by the idea would dawn on
the nation that anarchy is as productive of evil as tyranny, and
that a government which omits to regulate or control allows
the strong to oppress the weak, and the rich to oppress the
poor.
Walpole's administration lasted long enough to give room
for some feeble expression of this feeling. When George I. was
succeeded by George II. (1727), Walpole remained in
power. His eagerness for the possession of that power
which he desired to use for his country's good, together
with the incapacity of two kings born and bred in a
foreign country to take a leading part in English affairs, completed
the change which had been effected when William first entrusted
the conduct of government to a united cabinet. There was now
for the first time a prime minister in England, a person who was
himself a subject imposing harmonious action on the cabinet.
The change was so gradually and silently effected that it is
difficult to realize its full importance. So far, indeed, as it only
came about through the incapacity of the first two kings of the
house of Hanover, it might be undone, and was in fact to a great
extent undone by a more active successor. But so far as it was
the result of general tendencies, it could never be obliterated.
In the ministries in which Somers and Montagu on the one hand
and Harley and St John on the other had taken part, there was
no prime minister except so far as one member of the adminis-
tration dominated over his colleagues by the force of character
and intelligence. In the reign of George III., even North and
Addington were universally acknowledged by that title, though
they had little claim to the independence of action of a Walpole
or a Pitt.
The change was, in fact, one of the most important of those
by which the English constitution has been altered from an
hereditary monarchy with a parliamentary regulative agency
to a parliamentary government with an hereditary regulative
agency. In Walpole's time the forms of the constitution had
become, in all essential particulars, what they are now. What
was wanting was a national force behind them to set them to
their proper work.
The growing opposition which finally drove Walpole from
power was not entirely without a nobler element than could be
furnished by personal rivalry, or ignorant distrust of
commercial and financial success. It was well that
complaints that a great country ought not to be
governed by patronage and bribery should be raised, although,
as subsequent experience showed, the causes which rendered
corruption inevitable were not to be removed by the expulsion
of Walpole from office. But for one error, indeed, it is probable
that Walpole's rule would have been still further prolonged.
In 1739 a popular excitement arose for a declaration
of war against Spain. Walpole believed that war
to be certainly unjust, and likely to be disastrous.
He had, however, been so accustomed to give way to popular
pressure that he did not perceive the difference between a wise
and timely determination to leave a right action undone in the
face of insuperable difficulties, and an unwise and cowardly
determination to do that which he believed to be wrong and
imprudent. If he had now resigned rather than demean himself by
acting against his conscience, it is by no means unlikely that he
would have been recalled to power before many years were over.
As it was, the failures of the war recoiled on his own head, and
in 1742 his long ministry came to an end.
After a short interval a successor was found in Henry Pelham.
All the ordinary arts of corruption which Walpole had practised
were continued, and to them were added arts of corruption
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1742-1759
which Walpole had disdained to practise. He at least under-
stood that there were certain principles in accordance with which
he wished to conduct public affairs, and he had driven
J oftiea' y c ll ea g ue after colleague out of office rather than allow
"peiham. them to distract his method of government. Pelham
and his brother, the Thomas Pelham, duke of
Newcastle, had no principles of government whatever. They
offered place to every man of parliamentary skill or influence.
There was no opposition, because the ministers never attempted
to do anything which would arouse opposition, and because
they were ready to do anything called for by any one who had
power enough to make himself dangerous; and in 1743 they
embarked on a useless war with France in order to please the
king, who saw in every commotion on the continent of Europe
some danger to his beloved Hanover.
At most times in the history of England such a ministry
would have been driven from office by the outcry of an offended
people. In the days of the Pelhams, government was
regarded as lying too far outside the all-important
ft i , 1
otH45. private interests of the community to make it worth
v/hile to make any effort to rescue it from the degrada-
tion into which it had fallen; yet the Pelhams had not been
long in power before this serene belief that the country could
get on very well without a government in any real sense of
the word was put to the test. In 1745 Charles Edward, the
son of the Pretender, landed in Scotland. He was followed by
many of the Highland clans, always ready to draw the sword
against the constituted authorities of the Lowlands; and even
in the Lowlands, and especially in Edinburgh, he found ad-
herents, who still felt the sting inflicted by the suppression of the
national independence of Scotland. The British army was in as
chaotic a condition as the British government, and Charles
Edward inflicted a complete defeat on a force which met him
at Prestonpans. Before the end of the year the victor, at the
head of 5 men, had advanced to Derby. But he found no
support in England, and the mere numbers brought against him
compelled him to retreat, to find defeat at Culloden in the
following year ( 1 746) . The war on the continent had been waged
with indifferent success. The victory of Dettingen (1743) and
the glorious defeat of Fontenoy (1745) had achieved no objects
worthy of English intervention, and the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle
put an end in 1 748 to hostilities which should never have been
begun. The government pursued its inglorious career as long
as Henry Pelham lived. He had at least some share in the finan-
cial ability of Walpole, and it was not till he died in 1754 that
the real difficulties of a system which was based on the avoidance
of difficulties had fairly to be faced.
The change which was needed was not any mere re-adjustment
of the political machine. Those who cared for religion or morality
moral and na ^ forgotten that man is an imaginative and emotional
religious being. Defenders of Christianity and of deism alike
atmo- appealed to the reason alone. Enthusiasm was treated
sphere. a& a ^ Q ^ Qr a cr j me) anc } earnestness of every kind was
branded with the name of enthusiasm. The higher order of
minds dwelt with preference upon the beneficent wisdom of the
Creator. The lower order of minds treated religion as a kind
of life assurance against the inconvenience of eternal death.
Upon such a system as this human nature was certain to revenge
Wesley itself. The preaching of Wesley and Whitefield
and appealed direct to the emotions, with its doctrine of
White- " conversion," and called upon each individual not
to understand, or to admire, or to act, but vividly
to realize the love and mercy of God. In all this there was
nothing new. What was new was that Wesley added an organi-
zation, Methodism (q.v.), in which each of his followers unfolded
to one another the secrets of their heart, and became accountable
to his fellows. Large as the numbers of the Methodists ultimately
became, their influence is not to be measured by their numbers.
The double want of the age, the want of spiritual earnestness and
the want of organized coherence, would find satisfaction in many
ways which would have seemed strange to Wesley, but which
were, nevertheless, a continuance of the work which he began.
As far as government was concerned, when Henry Pelham
died (1754) the lowest depth of baseness seemed to have been
reached. The duke of Newcastle, who succeeded his
brother, looked on the work of corruption with absolute
pleasure, and regarded genius and ability as an castle.
awkward interruption of that happy arrangement which
made men subservient to flattery and money. Whilst he was
in the very act of trying to drive from office all men who were
possessed of any sort of ideas, he was surprised by a great war.
In America, the French settlers in Canada and the English settlers
on the Atlantic coast were falling to blows for the possession of
the vast territories drained by the Ohio and its tributaries.
In India, Frenchmen and Englishmen had striven during the last
war for authority over the native states round Pondicherry and
Madras, and the conflict threatened to break out anew. When
war began in earnest, and the reality of danger came home to
Englishmen by the capture of Minorca (1756), there arose a
demand for a more capable government than any which New-
castle could offer. Terrified by the storm of obloquy which he
aroused, he fled from office. A government was formed, of v/hich
the soul was William Pitt. Pitt was, in some sort, to the
political life of Englishmen what Wesley was to their religious
life. He brought no new political ideas into their minds, but
he ruled them by the force of his character and the example
of his purity. His weapons were trust and confidence. He
appealed to the patriotism of his fellow-countrymen, to their
imaginative love for the national greatness, and he did not appeal
in vain. He perceived instinctively that a large number, even
of those who took greedily the bribes of Walpole and the Pelhams,
took them, not because they loved money better than their
country, but because they had no conception that their country
had any need of them at all. It was a truth, but it was not the
whole truth. The great Whig families rallied under ministry
Newcastle and drove Pitt from office (1757). But if of Pitt
Pitt could not govern without Newcastle's corruption, and New-
neither could Newcastle govern without Pitt's energy. cas ' e '
At last a compromise was effected, and Newcastle undertook
the work of bribing, whilst Pitt undertook the work of governing
(see CHATHAM, WILLIAM PITT, IST EARL OF).
The war which had already broken out, the Seven Years'
War (1756-1763), was not confined to England alone. By the
side of the duel between France and England, a war
was going on upon the continent of Europe, in which years***
Austria with its allies, France, Russia and the \y ar .
German princes had fallen upon the new king-
dom of Prussia and its sovereign Frederick II. England and
Prussia therefore necessarily formed an alliance. Different
as the two governments were, they were both alike in recogniz-
ing, in part at least, the conditions of progress. Even in Pitt's
day England, however imperfectly, rested its strength on the
popular will. Even in Frederick's day Prussia was ruled by
administrators selected for their special knowledge. Neither
France nor Austria had any conception of the necessity of ful-
filling these requirements. Hence the strength of England
and of Prussia. The war seemed to be a mere struggle for terri-
tory. There was no feeling in either Pitt or Frederick, such as
there was in the men who contended half a century later against
Napoleon, that they were fighting the battles of the civilized
world. There was something repulsive as well in the enthusiastic
nationalism of Pitt as in the cynical nationalism of Frederick.
Pitt's sole object was to exalt England to a position in which she
would fear no rival. But in so doing he exalted that which, in
spite of all that had happened, best deserved to be exalted. The
habits of individual energy fused together by the inspiration of
patriotism conquered Canada. The unintelligent over-regula-
tion of the French government could not maintain the colonies
which had been founded in happier times. In 1758 Louisburg
was taken, and the mouth of the St Lawrence guarded against
France. In 1759 Quebec fell before Wolfe, who died at the ,
moment of victory. In the same year the naval victories of
Lagos and Quiberon Bay established the supremacy of the British
at sea. The battle of Plassey (1757) had laid Bengal at the feet
1760-1765)
ENGLISH HISTORY
547
of Clive; and Coote's victory at Wandiwash (1760) led to the
final ruin of the relics of French authority in southern Imliu.
When George 11. died (1760) England was the first maritime
and colonial power in the world (see SEVEN YEARS' WAR;
C \\M>\: History. INDIA: History).
In George III. the king once more became an important factor
in English politics. From his childhood he had been trained
by his mother and his instructors to regard the break-
ing down of the power of the great families as the task
of his life. In this he was walking in the same direction
as Pitt. If the two men could have worked together,
England might have been spared many misfortunes. Unhappily,
the king could not understand Pitt's higher qualities, his bold con-
fidence in the popular feeling, and his contempt for corruption
and intrigue. And yet the king's authority was indispensable to
Pitt, if he was to carry on his conflict against the great families
with success. When the war came to an end, as it must come
to an end sooner or later, Pitt's special predominance, derived
as it was from his power of breathing a martial spirit into the
fleets and armies of England, would come to an end too. Only
the king, with his hold upon the traditional instincts of loyalty and
the force of his still unimpaired prerogative, could, in ordinary
times, hold head against the wealthy and influential aristocracy.
Unfortunately, George III. was not wise enough to deal with the
difficulty in a high-minded fashion. With a well-intentioned
but narrow mind, he had nothing in him to strike the imagination
of his subjects. He met influence with influence, corruption with
corruption, intrigue with intrigue. Unhappily, too, his earliest
relations with Pitt involved a dispute on a point on which he
was right and Pitt was wrong. In 1761 Pitt resigned
office, because neither the king nor the cabinet were
willing to declare war against Spain in the midst of the
war with France. As the war with Spain was inevitable, and as,
when it broke out in the following year (1762), it was followed
by triumphs for which Pitt had prepared the way, the prescience
of the great war-minister appeared to be fully established. But
it was his love of war. not his skill in carrying it on, which was
really in question. He would be satisfied with nothing short
of the absolute ruin of France. He would have given England
that dangerous position of supremacy which was gained for
France by Louis XIV. in the I7th century, and by Napoleon in
the iqth century- He would have made his country still more
haughty and arrogant than it was, till other nations rose against
it, as they have three times risen against France, rather than
submit to the intolerable yoke. It was a happy thing for England
that peace was signed (1763).
Even as it was, a spirit of contemptuous disregard of the rights
of others had been roused, which would not be easily allayed.
The king's premature attempt to secure a prime
minister of his own choosing in Lord Bute (1761)
came to an end through the minister's incapacity
(1763). George Grenville, who followed him, kept the king in
leading strings in reliance upon his parliamentary majority.
Something, no doubt, had been accomplished by the incorrupti-
bility of Pitt. The practice of bribing members of parliament
by actual presents in money came to an end, though the practice
of bribing them by place and pension long continued. The
arrogance which Pitt displayed towards foreign nations was
displayed by Grenville towards classes of the population of the
British dominions. It was enough for him to establish a right.
He never put himself in the position of those who were to suffer
by its being put in force.
The first to suffer from Grenville's conception of his duty
were the American colonies. The mercantile system, which had
sprung up in Spain in the i6th century, held that
colonies were to be entirely prohibited from trading,
except with the mother country. Every European
country had adopted this view, and the acquisition
of fresh colonial dominions by England, at the peace of 1763,
had been made not so much through lust of empire as through
love of trade. Of all English colonies, the American were the
most populous and important. Their proximity to the Spanish
^
colonies in the West Indies had naturally led to a contraband
trade. To this trade Grenville put a stop, as far as lay in his
power. Obnoxious as this measure was in America, the colonists
had acknowledged the principle on which it was founded too
long to make it easy to resist it. Another step of Grenville's
met with more open opposition. Even with all the experience
of the century which followed, the relations between a mother
country and her colonies arc not easy to arrange. If the burthen
of defence is to be borne in common, it can hardly be left to the*
mother country to declare war, and to exact the necessary
taxation, without the consent of the colonies. If, on the other
hand, it is to be borne by the mother country alone, she may well
complain that she is left to bear more than her due share of the
weight. The latter alternative forced itself upon the attention
of Grenville. The British parliament, he held, was the supreme
legislature, and, as such, was entitled to raise taxes in America
to support the military forces needed for the defence of America.
The act (1763) imposing a stamp tax on the American colonies
was the result.
As might have been expected, the Americans resisted. For
them, the question was precisely that which Hampden had
fought out in the case of ship-money. As far as they
were concerned, the British parliament had stepped
into the position of Charles I. If Grenville had re-
mained in office he would probably have persisted in
his resolution. He was driven from his post by the king's resolve
no longer to submit to his insolence, and a new ministry was
formed under the marquess of Rockingham, composed of some of
those leaders of the Whig aristocracy who had not followed the
Grenville ministry. They were well-intentioned, but weak, and
without political ability; and the king regarded them with
distrust, only qualified by his abhorrence of the ministry which
they superseded.
As soon as the bad news came from America, the ministry
was placed between two recommendations. Grenville, on the
one hand, advised that the tax should be enforced.
Pitt, on the other, declared that the British parliament
had absolutely no right to tax America, though he Act ana
held that it had the right to regulate, or in other words
to tax, the commerce of America for the benefit of the
British merchant and manufacturer. Between the
two the government took a middle course. It obtained from
parliament a total repeal of the Stamp Act, but it also passed
a Declaratory Act, claiming for the British parliament the
supreme power over the colonies in matters of taxation, as well
as in matters of legislation.
It is possible that the course thus adopted was chosen simply
because it was a middle course. But it was probably suggested
by Edmund Burke, who was then Lord Rockingham's
private secretary, but who for some time to come was
to furnish thought to the party to which he attached heory.
himself. Burke carried into the world of theory those
politics of expediency of which Walpole had been the practical
originator. He held that questions of abstract right had no
place in politics. It was therefore as absurd to argue with Pitt
that England had a right to regulate commerce, as it was to argue
with Grenville that England had a right to levy taxes. All that
could be said was, that it was expedient in a widespread empire
that the power of final decision should be lodged somewhere,
and that it was also expedient not to use that power in such
a way as to irritate those whom it was the truest wisdom to
conciliate.
The weak side of this view was the weak side of all Burke's
political philosophy. Like all great innovators, he was intensely
conservative where he was not an advocate of change, x/ju-
With new views on every subject relating to the m*att of
exercise of power, he shrank even from entertaining the
slightest question relating to the distribution of power.
He recommended to the British parliament the most self-deny-
ing wisdom, but he could not see that in its relation to the colonies
the British parliament was so constituted as to make it entirely
unprepared to be either wise or self-denying. It is true that if
_
Stamp
Act.
111! and
Burke.
548
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1766-1782
he had thought out the matter in this direction, he would have
been led further than he or any other man in England or America
was at that time prepared to go. If the British parliament was
unfit to legislate for America, and if, as was undoubtedly the case,
it was impossible to create a representative body which was fit
to legislate, it would follow that the American colonies could only
be fairly governed as practically independent states, though
they might possibly remain, like the great colonies of our own
day, in a position of alliance rather than of dependence. It was
because the issues opened led to changes so far greater than the
wisest statesman then perceived, that Pitt's solution, logically
untenable as it was, was preferable to Burke's. Pitt would have
given bad reasons for going a step in the right direction. Burke
gave excellent reasons why those who were certain to go wrong
should have the power to go right.
Scarcely were the measures relating to America passed when
the king turned out the ministry. The new ministry was formed
by Pitt, who was created earl of Chatham (1766),
on t ^ le P rmc 'P' e f bringing together men who had
Chatham, shaken themselves loose from any of the different
Whig cliques. Whatever chance the plan had of
succeeding was at an end when Chatham's mind temporarily
gave way under stress of disease (1767). Charles Townshend, a
brilliant, headstrong man, led parliament in the way which had
been prepared by the Declaratory Act, and laid duties on tea
and other articles of commerce entering the ports of America.
It was impossible that the position thus claimed by the
British parliament towards America should affect America
alone. The habit of obtaining money otherwise than by the
consent of those who are required to pay it would be certain
to make parliament careless of the feelings and interests of
that great majority of the population at home, which was un-
represented in parliament. The resistance of America to the
taxation imposed was therefore not without benefit to the people
of the mother country. Already there were signs of a readiness
in parliament to treat even the constituencies with contempt.
wiikus I n 1 7^3> m th e days f the Grenville ministry, John
ana "The Wilkes, a profligate and scurrilous writer, had been
North ^ arrested on a general warrant that is to say, a warrant
in which the name of no individual was mentioned
as the author of an alleged libel on the king, contained in No. 45
of The North Briton. He was a member of parliament, and as
such was declared by Chief Justice Pratt to be privileged against
arrest. In 1768 he was elected member for Middlesex. The
House of Commons expelled him. He was again elected, and
again expelled. The third time, the Commons gave the seat to
which Wilkes was a third time chosen to Colonel Luttrell, who
was far down in the poll. Wilkes thus became the representative
of a great constitutional principle, the principle that the electors
have a right to choose their representatives without restriction,
save by the regulations of the law.
For the present the contention of the American colonists
and of the defenders of Wilkes at home was confined within the
compass of the law. Yet in both cases it might easily pass beyond
that compass, and might rest itself upon an appeal to the duty of
governments to modify the law, and to enlarge the basis of their
authority, when law and authority have become too narrow.
As regards America, though Townshend died, the government
persisted in his policy. As resistance grew stronger in America,
the king urged the use of compulsion. If he had not
/vrt/i' ^ e wisdom of the country on his side, he had its
ministry, prejudices. The arrogant spirit of Englishmen made
them comtemptuous towards the colonists, and the
desire to thrust taxation upon others than themselves made
the new colonial legislation popular. In 1770 the king made
Lord North prime minister. He had won the object on which
he had set his heart. A new Tory party had sprung up, not
distinguished, like the Tories of Queen Anne's reign, by a special
ecclesiastical policy, but by their acceptance of the king's claim to
nominate ministers, and so to predominate in the ministry himself.
Unhappily the opposition, united in the desire to conciliate
America, was divided on questions of home policy. Chatham
would have met the new danger by parliamentary reform, giving
increased voting power to the freeholders of the counties.
Burke from principle, and his noble patrons mainly from lower
motives, were opposed to any such change. As Burke had wished
the British parliament to be supreme over the colonies, in con-
fidence that this supremacy would not be abused, so he wished
the great landowning connexion resting on the rotten boroughs
to ruie over the unrepresented people, in confidence that this
power would not be abused. Amid these distractions the king
had an easy game to play. He had all the patronage of the
government in his hands, and beyond the circle which was
influenced by gifts of patronage, he could appeal to the ignorance
and self-seeking of the nation, with which, though he knew it
not, he was himself in the closest sympathy.
No wonder resistance grew more vigorous in America. In
1773 the inhabitants of Boston threw ship-loads of tea into the
harbour rather than pay the obnoxious duty . In 1 7 74 The
the Boston Port Bill deprived Boston of its commercial American
rights, whilst the Massachusetts Government Bill took War of
away from that colony the ordinary political liberties
of Englishmen. The first skirmish of the inevitable
war was fought at Lexington in 1775. In 1776 the thirteen
colonies united in the continental congress issued their Declara-
tion of Independence. England put forth all its strength to beat
down resistance; but the task, which seemed easy at a distance,
proved impossible. It might have been so even had the war
been conducted on the British side with greater military skill
and with more insight into the conditions of the struggle, which
was essentially a civil contest between men of the same race.
But the initial difficulties of the vast field of operations were
greatly increased by the want of skill of the British leaders in
adapting themselves to new conditions, while even loyalist
sentiment was shocked by the employment of German mer-
cenaries and- Red Indian savages against men of English blood.
Even so, the issue of the struggle was for long doubtful, and
there were moments when it might have ended by a policy of
wise concession; but the Americans, though reduced at times
to desperate straits, had the advantage of fighting in their own
country, and above all they found in George Washington a leader
after the model of the English country gentleman who had up-
held the standard of liberty against the Stuarts, and worthy of
the great cause for which they fought. In 1777 a British army
under Burgoyne capitulated at Saratoga; and early in 1778
France, eager to revenge the disasters of the Seven Years' War,
formed an alliance with the revolted colonies as free and inde-
pendent states, and was soon joined by Spain.
Chatham, who was ready to make any concession to America
short of independence, and especially of independence at the
dictation of France, died in 1778. The war was continued for
some years with varying results; but in 1781 the capitulation
of a second British army under Cornwallis at Yorktown was a
decisive blow, which brought home to the minds of the dullest
the assurance that the conquest of America was an impossibility.
Before this event happened there had been a great change
in public feeling in England. The increasing weight of taxation
gave rise in 1780 to a great meeting of the freeholders of York-
shire, which in turn gave the signal for a general agitation for
the reduction of unnecessary expense in the government. To this
desire Burke gave expression in his bill for economical reform,
though he was unable to carry it in the teeth of interested
opposition. The movement in favour of economy was necessarily
also a movement in favour of peace; and when the surrender of
Yorktown was known (1782), Lord North at once resigned office.
The new ministry formed under Lord Rockingham comprised
not only his own immediate followers, of whom the most pro-
minent was Charles Fox, but the followers of Chatham, The secon< /
of whom Lord Shelburne was the acknowledged leader. Rocking-
A treaty of peace acknowledging the independence ^ t " M
of the United States of America was at once set on *"
foot; and the negotiation with France was rendered easy by
the defeat of a French fleet by Rodney, and by the failure
of the combined forces of France and Spain to take Gibraltar.
1782-1784]
ENGLISH HISTORY
549
_ . _ j __
* '
Already the ministry on which such great hopes had been
placed had broken up. Rockingham died in July 1782. The
two sections of which the government was composed had different
aims. The Rockingham section, which now looked up to Fox,
rested on aristocratic connexion and influence; the Shelburnc
section was anxious to gain popular support by active reforms,
and to gain over the king to their side. Judging by past ex-
perience, the combination might well seem hopeless, and honour-
able men like Fox might easily regard it with suspicion. But
Fox's allies took good care that their name should not be associ-
ated with the idea of improvement. They pruned Burke's
Economical Reform Bill till it left as many abuses as it sup-
pressed; and though the bill prohibited the grant of pensions
above 300, they hastily gave away pensions of much larger
value to their own friends before the bill had received the royal
assent. They also opposed a bill for parliamentary reform
brought in by young William Pitt. When the king chose
Shelburnc as prime minister, they refused to follow him, and
put forward the. incompetent duke of Portland as their candidate
for the office. The struggle was thus renewed on the old ground
of the king's right to select his ministers. But while the king
now put forward a minister notoriously able and competent to the
task, his opponents put forward a man whose only claim to office
was the possession of large estates. They forced their way back
to power by means as unscrupulous as their claim to it was un-
justifiable. They formed a coalition with Lord North, whose
^^ politics and character they had denounced for years.
ntlfttt* The coalition, as soon as the peace with America and
France had been signed (1783), drove Shelburne from
office. The duke of Portland became the nominal head of the
government, Fox and North its real leaders.
Such a ministry could not afford to make a single blunder.
The king detested it, and the assumption by the Whig houses
of a right to nominate the head of the government
without reference to the national interests, could never
be popular. The blunder was soon committed.
Burke, hating wrong and injustice with a bitter hatred, had
descried in the government of British India by the East India
Company a disgrace to the English name. For many of the
actions of that government no honourable man can think of
uttering a word of defence. The helpless natives were oppressed
and robbed by the company and its servants in every possible
way. Burke drew up a bill, which was adopted by the coalition
government, for taking all authority in India out of the hands
of the company, and even placing the company's management
of its own commercial affairs under control. The governing
and controlling body was naturally to be a council appointed
at home. The question of the nomination of this council at once
drew the whole question within the domain of party politics.
The whole patronage of India would be in its hands, and, as
parliament was then constituted, the balance of parties might
be more seriously affected by the distribution of that patronage
than it would be now. When, therefore, it was understood that
the government bill meant the council to be named in the bill
for four years, or, in other words, to be named by the coalition
ministry, it was generally regarded as an unblushing attempt to
turn a measure for the good government of India into a measure
for securing the ministry in office. The bill of course passed the
Commons. When it came before the Lords, it was thrown out
in consequence of a message from the king, that he would regard
any one who voted for it as his enemy.
The contest had thus become one between the influence of
the crown and the influence of the great houses. Constitutional
Miabtrr historians, who treat the question as one of merely
/* theoretical politics, leave out of consideration this
essential element of the situation, and forget that, if
it was wrong for the king to influence the Lords by
his message, it was equally wrong for the ministry to acquire
for themselves fresh patronage with which to influence the
Commons. But there was now, what there had not been in the
time of Walpole and the Pelhams, a public opinion ready to throw
its weight on one side or the other. The county members still
Pttt.
Material
prognst.
formed the most independent portion of the representation,
and there were many possessors of rotten boroughs, who were
ready to agree with the county members rather than with the
great landowners. In choosing Pitt, the young son of Chatham,
for his prime minister, as soon as he had dismissed the coalition,
George III. gave assurance that he wished his counsels to be
directed by integrity and ability. After a struggle of many
weeks, parliament was dissolved (1784), and the new House of
Commons was prepared to support the king's minister by a large
majority.
As far as names go, the change effected placed the new Tory
party in office for an almost uninterrupted period of forty-six
years. It so happened, however, that after the first eight years
of that period had passed by, circumstances occurred which
effected so great a change in the composition and character of
that party as to render any statement to this effect entirely
illusive. During eight years, however, Pitt's ministry was not
merely a Tory ministry resting on the choice of the king, but a
Liberal ministry resting on national support and upon advanced
political knowledge.
The nation which Pitt had behind him was very different from
the populace which had assailed Walpole's Excise Bill, or had
shouted for Wilkes and liberty. At the beginning
of the century the intellect of thoughtful Englishmen
had applied itself to speculative problems of religion
and philosophy. In the middle of the century it applied itself
to practical problems affecting the employment of industry.
In 1776 Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations. Already
in 1762 the work of Brindley, the Bridgewater canal, the first
joint of a network of inland water communication, was opened.
In 1767 Hargreaves produced the spinning- jenny; Arkwright's
spinning machine was exhibited in 1768; Crompton's mule was
finished in 1779; Cartwright hit upon the idea of the power-
loom in 1784, though it was not brought into profitable use till
1801. The Staffordshire potteries had been flourishing under
Wedgwood since 1763, and the improved steam-engine was
brought into shape by Watt in 1768. During these years the
duke of Bedford, Coke of Norfolk, and Robert Bakewell were
busy in the improvement of stock and agriculture.
The increase of wealth and prosperity caused by these changes
went far to produce a large class of the population entirely out-
side the associations of the landowning class, but with sufficient
intelligence to appreciate the advantages of a government carried
on without regard to the personal interests and rivalries of the
aristocracy. The mode in which that increase of wealth was
effected was even more decisive on the ultimate destinies of the
country. The substitution of the organization of hereditary
monarchy for the organization of wealth and station would
ultimately have led to evils as great as those which it superseded.
It was only tolerable as a stepping-stone to the organization of
intelligence. The larger the numbers admitted to influence the
affairs of state, the more necessary is it that they respect the
powers of intellect. It would be foolish to institute a com-
parison between an Arkwright or a Crompton and a Locke or a
Newton. But it is certain that for one man who could appreciate
the importance of the treatise On the Human Understanding or
the theory of gravitation, there were thousands who could under-
stand the value of the water-frame, or the power-loom. The
habit of looking with reverence upon mental power was fostered
in no slight measure by the industrial development of the second
half of the i8th century.
The supremacy of intelligence in the political world was,
for the time, represented in Pitt. In 1784 he passed an India
Bill, which left the commerce and all except the highest
patronage of India in the hands of the East India
Company, but which erected a department of the home
government, named the board of control, to compel the com-
pany to carry out such political measures as the government
saw fit. A bill for parliamentary reform was, however, thrown
out by the opposition of his own supporters in parliament, whilst
outside parliament there was no general desire for a change in
a system which for the present produced such excellent fruits.
550
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1782-1792
Still more excellent was his plan of legislation for Ireland. Irish-
men had taken advantage of the weakness of England during
the American War to enforce upon the ministry of the day, in
1780 and 1782, an abandonment of all claim on the part of the
English government and the English judges to interfere in any
way with Irish affairs. From 1782, therefore, there were two
independent legislatures within the British Isles the one sitting
at Westminster and the other sitting in Dublin. With these
political changes Fox professed himself to be content. Pitt, whose
mind was open to wider considerations, proposed to throw open
commerce to both nations by removing all the restrictions placed
on the trade of Ireland with England and with the rest of the
world. The opposition of the English parliament was only
removed by concessions continuing some important restrictions
upon Irish exports, and by giving the English parliament the
right of initiation in all measures relating to the regulation of
the trade which was to be common to both nations. The Irish
parliament took umbrage at the superiority claimed by England,
and threw out the measure as an insult, though, even as it stood,
it was undeniably in favour of Ireland. The lesson of the in-
compatibility of two coordinate legislatures was not thrown
away upon Pitt.
In. 1 786 the commercial treaty with France opened that
country to English trade, and was the first result of the theories
laid down by Adam Smith ten years previously. The first attack
upon the horrors of the slave-trade was made in 1788; and in
the same year, in the debates on the Regency Bill caused by the
king's insanity, Pitt defended against Fox the right of parliament
to make provision for the exercise of the powers of the crown
when the wearer was permanently or temporarily disabled from
exercising his authority.
When the king recovered, he went to St Paul's to return thanks
on the 23rd of April 1789. The enthusiasm with which he was
greeted showed how completely he had the nation on his side.
All the hopes of liberal reformers were now with him. All the
hopes of moral and religious men were on his side as well. The
seed sown by "Wesley had grown to be a great tree. A spirit
of thoughtfulness in religious matters and of moral energy was
growing in the nation, and the king was endeared to his subjects,
as much by his domestic virtues as by his support of the great
minister who acted in his name. The happy prospect was soon
to be overclouded. On the 4th of May, eleven days after the
appearance of George III. at St Paul's, the French states-general
met at Versailles.
By the great mass of intelligent Englishmen the change was
greeted with enthusiasm. It is seldom that one nation under-
. stands the tendencies and difficulties of another; and
French t fle mere fact that power was being transferred from
Kevoiu- an absolute monarch to a representative assembly
tl0 "i h ' e( ^ su P er fi c i a ' observers to imagine that they were
feeling. witnessing a mere repetition of the victory of the
English parliament over the Stuart kings. In fact,
that which was passing in France was of a totally different nature
from the English struggle of the i7th century. In England, the
conflict had been carried on for the purpose of limiting the power
of the king. In France, it was begun in order to sweep away
an aristocracy in church and state which had become barbarously
oppressive. The French Revolution was not, therefore, a conflict
for the reform of the political organization of the state, but -one
for the reorganization of the whole structure of society; and
in proportion as it turned away from the path which English
ignorance had marked out for it, Englishmen turned away from it
in disgust. As they did not understand the aims of the French
Revolutionists, they were unable to make that excuse for even
so much of their conduct as admits of excuse. Three men, Fox,
Burke and Pitt, however, represented three varieties of opinion
into which the nation was very unequally divided.
Fox, generous and trustful towards the movements of large
masses of men, had very little intellectual grasp of the questions
at issue in France. He treated the struggle as one simply for
the establishment of free institutions; and when at last the
crimes of the leaders became patent to the world, he contented
himself with lamenting the unfortunate fact, and fell back on
the argument that though England could not sympathize with
the French tyrants, there was no reason why she should go to
war with them.
Burke, on the other hand, while he failed to understand the
full tendency of the Revolution for good as well as for evil,
understood it far better than any Englishman of that day under-
stood it. He saw that its main aim was equality, not liberty,
and that not only would the French nation be ready, in pursuit
of equality, to welcome any tyranny which would serve its
purpose, but would be the more prone to acts of tyranny over
individuals. This would arise from the remodelling of institutions,
with the object of giving immediate effect to the will of the
masses, which was especially liable to be counterfeited by design-
ing and unscrupulous agitators. There is no doubt that in all
this Burke was in the right, as he was in his denunciation of the
mischief certain to follow when a nation tries to start afresh, and
to blot out all past progress in the light of simple reason, which
is often most fallible when it believes itself to be most infallible.
Where he went wrong was in his ignorance of the special circum-
stances of the French nation, and his consequent blindness to
the fact that the historical method of gradual progress was im-
possible where institutions had become so utterly bad as they
were in France, and that consequently the system of starting
afresh, to which he reasonably objected, was to the French a
matter not of choice but of necessity. Nor did he see that the
passion for equality, like every great passion, justified itself,
and that the problem was, not how to obtain liberty in defiance
of it, but how so to guide it as to obtain liberty by it and
through it.
Burke did not content himself with pointing out speculatively
the evils which he foreboded for the French. He perceived
clearly that the effect of the new French principles could no more
be confined to French territory than the principles of Protestant-
ism in the i6th century could be confined to Saxony. He knew
well that the appeal to abstract reason and the hatred of aristo-
cracy would spread over Europe like a flood, and, as he was in
the habit of considering whatever was most opposed to the
object of his dislike to be wholly excellent, he called for a crusade
of all established governments against the anarchical principles
of dissolution which had broken loose in France.
Pitt occupied ground apart from either Fox or Burke. He
had neither Fox's sympathy for popular movements, nor Burke's
intellectual appreciation of the immediate tendencies of the
Revolution. Hence, whilst he pronounced against any active
interference with France, he was an advocate of peace, not
because he saw more than Fox or Burke, but because he saw
less. He fancied that France would be so totally occupied with
its own troubles that it would cease for a long time to be
dangerous to other nations.
This view was soon to be stultified by the effect of the coalition
against France in 1 792 of Prussia and Austria. The proclamation
of the allies calling on the French to restore the royal Beginning
authority was answered by a passionate outburst of of the re-
defiance. The king himself was suspected of com- vol "tion-
plicity with the invaders of his country, and the rising "* '
of the loth of August was followed by the proclamation of the
republic and by the awful " September massacres " of helpless
prisoners, guilty of no crime but noble birth, and therefore pre-
sumably of attachment to the old regime, and treason towards
the new. This passionate attachment to the Revolution, which
in France displayed itself in a carnival of insane suspicion and
cruelty, inspired on the frontiers an astonishing patriotic resist-
ance. Before the end of the year the invasion was repulsed,
and the ragged armies of the Revolution had overrun Savoy
and the Austrian Netherlands, and were threatening the aristo-
cratic Dutch republic
Very few governments in Europe were so rooted in the
affections of their people as to be able to look without terror
on the challenge thus thrown out to them. The English govern-
ment was one of those very few. No mere despotism was here
exercised by the king. No broad impassable line here divided
ENGLISH HISTORY
,/, \\ hif
the aristocracy from the people. The work of former genera-
tions of Englishmen had been too well done to call for that
breach of historical continuity which was a dire
necessity in France. There was much need of reform.
There was no need of a revolution. The whole of the
upper and middle classes, with few exceptions, clung
together in a fierce spirit of resistance; and the mass of the
lower classes, especially in the country, were too well off to wish
for change. The spirit of resistance to revolution quickly
developed into a spirit of resistance to reform, and those who
continued to advocate changes, more or less after the French
model, were treated as the enemies of mankind. A fierce hatred
of France and of all that attached itself to France became the
predominating spirit of the nation.
Such a change in the national mind could not but affect the
constitution of the Whig party. The reasoning of Uurke would,
in itself, have done little to effect its disruption. But
the great landowners, who contributed so strong an
element in it, composed the very class which had most
to fear from the principles of the Revolution. The old
questions which had divided them from the king and Pitt in
1783 had dwindled into nothing before the appalling question of
the immediate present. They made themselves the leaders of
the war party, and they knew that that party comprised almost
the whole of the parliamentary classes.
What could Pitt do but surrender? The whole of the intel-
lectual basis of his foreign policy was swept away when it became
evident that the continental war would bring with it an accession
of French territory. He did not abandon his opinions. His
opinions rather abandoned him. A wider intelligence might have
held that, let France gain what territorial aggrandizement it
might upon the continent of Europe, it was impossible to resist
such changes until the opponents of France had so purified
themselves as to obtain a hold upon the moral feelings of man-
kind. Pitt could not take this view; perhaps no man in his
day could be fairly expected to take it. He did not indeed
declare war against France; but he sought to set a limit to her
conquests in the winter, though he had not sought to set a limit
to the conquests of the allied sovereigns in the preceding summer.
He treated with supercilious contempt the National Convention,
which had dethroned the king and proclaimed a republic. Above
all, he took up a declaration by the Convention, that they would
give help to all peoples struggling for liberty against their re-
spective governments, as a challenge to England. The horror
caused in England by the trial and execution of Louis XVI.
completed the estrangement between the two countries, and
though the declaration of war came from France (1793), it had
been in great part brought about by the bearing of England and
its government. (S. R. G.)
XI. THE REVOLUTIONARY EPOCH, THE REACTION, AND THE
TRIUMPH OP REFORM (1793-1837)
In appearance the great Whig landowners gave their support
to Pitt, and in 1794 some of their leaders, the duke of Portland,
Lord Fitz william, and Windham, entered the cabinet
I%Z*rm. lo xrve under him. In reality it was Pitt who had
mtmtmut surrendered. The ministry and the party by which
<*" it was supported might call themselves Tory still;
but the great reforming policy of 1784 was at an
end, and the government, unconscious of its own
strength, conceived its main function to be at all
costs to preserve the constitution, which it believed to be
in danger of being overwhelmed by the rising tide of revolu-
tionary feeling. That this belief was idle it is now easy
enough to see; at the time this was not so obvious. Thomas
Paine 's Rigkli of Man, published in 1791, a brilliant and bitter
attack on the British constitution from the Jacobin point of
view, sold by tens of thousands. Revolutionary societies with
high-sounding names were established, of which the most con-
spicuous were the Revolution Society, the Society for Consti-
tutional Information, the London Corresponding Society, and the
Friends of the People. Of these, indeed, only the two last
were directly due to the example of France. The Revolution
Society, founded to commemorate the revolution of 1688, had
long carried on a respectable existence under the patronage
of cabinet ministers; the Society for Constitutional Infor-
mation, of which Pitt himself had been a member, was founded
in 1780 to advocate parliamentary reform; both had, however,
developed under the influence of the events in France in a
revolutionary direction. The London Corresponding Society,
composed mainly of working-men, was the direct outcome of
the excitement caused by the developments of the French Re-
volution. Its leaders were obscure and usually illiterate men,
who delighted to propound their theories for the universal
reformation of society and the state in rhetoric of which the
characteristic phrases were borrowed from the tribune of the
Jacobin Club. Later generations have learned by repeated
experience that the eloquence of Hyde Park orators is not the
voice of England; there were some even then among those
not immediately responsible for keeping order who urged the
government " to trust the people ";' but with the object-lesson
of France before them it is not altogether surprising that ministers
refused to believe in the harmlessness of societies, which not
only kept up a fraternal correspondence with the National
Convention and the Jacobin Club, but, by attempting to estab-
lish throughout the country a network of affiliated clubs, were
apparently aiming at setting up in Great Britain the Jacobin
idea of popular control.
The danger, of course, was absurdly exaggerated; as indeed
was proved by the very popularity of the repressive measures
to which the government thought it necessary to resort, and
which gave to the vnpourings of a few knots of agitators the
dignity of a widespread conspiracy for the overthrow of the
constitution. On the ist of December 1792 a proclamation was
issued calling out the militia on the ground that a dangerous
spirit of tumult and disorder had been excited by evil-disposed
persons, acting in concert with persons in foreign parts, and this
statement was repeated in the king's speech at the opening of
parliament on the I3th. In spite of the protests of Sheridan and
other members of the opposition, a campaign of press and other
prosecutions now began which threatened to extinguish the most
cherished right of Englishmen liberty of speech. The country
was flooded with government spies and informers, whose efforts
were seconded by such voluntary societies as the Association
for preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and
Levellers, founded by John Reeves, the historian of English
law. No one was safe from these zealous and too often credulous
defenders of the established order; and a few indiscreet words
spoken in a coffee house were enough to bring imprisonment
and ruin, as in the case of John Frost, a respectable attorney,
condemned for sedition in March 1793. In Scotland the panic,
and the consequent cruelty, were worse than in England. The
meeting at Edinburgh of a "convention of delegates of the
associated friends of the people," at which some foolish and
exaggerated language was used, was followed by the trial
of Thomas Muir, a talented young advocate whose brilliant
defence did not save him from a sentence of fourteen years'
transportation (August 30, 1793), while seven years' trans-
portation was the punishment of the Rev. T. Fyshe Palmer for
circulating an address from " a society of the friends of liberty
to their fellow-citizens " in favour of a reform of the House of
Commons. These sentences and the proceedings which led up
to them, though attacked with bitter eloquence by Sheridan
and Fox, were confirmed by a large majority in parliament.
It was not, however, till late in the session of 1794 that
ministers laid before parliament any evidence of seditious
practices. In May certain leaders of democratic societies were
arrested and their papers seized, and on the 131 h a king's message
directed the books of certain corresponding societies to be laid
before both Houses. The committee of the House of Commons
at once reported that there was evidence of a conspiracy
1 The position of the Corresponding Society was greatly
strengthened by the establishment of the Friends of the People by
Erskine and Grey.
552
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1794-1797
to supersede the House of Commons by a national con-
vention, and Pitt proposed and carried a bill suspending the
Habeas Corpus Act. This was followed by further reports of
the committees of both Houses, presenting evidence of the secret
manufacture of arms and of other proceedings calculated to
endanger the public peace. A series of state prosecutions
followed. The trials of Robert Watt and David Downie for
high treason (August and September 1794) actually revealed
a treasonable plot on the part of a few obscure individuals at
Edinburgh, who were found in the possession of no less than
fifty-seven pikes of home manufacture, wherewith to overthrow
the British government. 'The execution of Watt gave to this
trial a note of tragedy which was absent from that of certain
members of the Corresponding Society, accused of conspiring
to murder the king by means of a poisoned arrow shot from
an air-gun. The ridicule that greeted the revelation of the
" Pop-gun Plot " marked the beginning of a reaction that found
a more serious expression in the trials of Thomas Hardy, John
Home Tooke and John Thelwall (October and November 1794).
The prisoners were accused of high treason, their chief offence
consisting in their attempt to assemble a general convention
of the people, ostensibly for the purpose of obtaining parlia-
mentary reform, but really as the prosecution urged for sub-
verting the constitution. This latter charge, though proved to
the satisfaction of the committees of both Houses of Parliament,
broke down under the cross-examination of the government
witnesses by the counsel for the defence, and could indeed only
have been substantiated by a dangerous stretching of the
doctrine of constructive treason. Happily the jury refused to
convict, and its verdict saved the nation from the disgrace
of meting out the extreme penalty of high treason to an attempt
to hold a public meeting for the redress of grievances.
The common sense of a British jury had preserved, in spite
of parliament and ministry, that free right of meeting which
was to be one of the strongest instruments of future reform.
The government, however, saw little reason in the events of
the following months for reversing their coercive policy. The
year 1795 was one of great suffering and great popular unrest;
for the effect of the war upon industry was now beginning to
be felt, and the distress had been aggravated by two bad harvests.
The sudden determination of those in power, who had hitherto
advocated reform, to stereotype the existing system, closed the
avenues of hope to those who had expected an improvement of
their lot from constitutional changes, and the disaffected temper
of the populace that resulted was taken advantage of by the
London Corresponding Society, emboldened by its triumph in
the courts, to organize open and really dangerous demonstrations,
such as the vast mass meeting at Copenhagen House on the 26th
of October. On the zgth of October the king, on his way to open
parliament, was attacked by an angry mob shouting, " Give
us bread," " No Pitt," " No war," " No famine,"; and the glass
panels of his state coach were smashed to pieces.
The result of these demonstrations was the introduction in
the House of Lords, on the 4th of November, of the Treasonable
Practices Bill, the main principle of which was that it modified
the law of treason by dispensing with the necessity for the proof
of an overt act in order to secure conviction; and in the House
of Commons, on the loth, of the Seditious Meetings Bill, which
seriously limited the right of public meeting, making all meetings
of over fifty persons, as well as all political debates and lectures,
subject to the previous consent and active supervision of the
magistrates. In spite of the strenuous resistance of the oppo-
sition, led by Fox, and of numerous meetings of protest held
outside the walls of parliament, both bills passed into law by
enormous majorities. The inevitable result followed. The
London Corresponding Society and other political clubs, deprived
of the right of public meeting, became secret societies pledged
to the overthrow of the existing system by any means. United
Englishmen and United Scotsmen plotted with United Irish-
men for a French invasion, and sedition was fomented in the
army and the navy. Their baneful activities were exposed in
the inquiries that followed the Irish rebellion of 1798, and the
result was the Corresponding Societies Bill, introduced by Pitt
on the i gth of April 1799, which completed the series of repressive
measures and practically suspended the popular constitution
of England. The right of public meeting, of free speech, of the
free press had alike ceased for the time to exist.
The justification of the government in all this was the life and
death struggle in which Great Britain was engaged with the
power of republican France in Europe. Yet Pitt's The
conduct of the war, so far as the continent was con- Rmoiu-
cerned, had hitherto led to nothing but failure after tioaary
failure. In 1794, in spite of the presence of an English
army under the duke of York, the Austrian Netherlands had
been finally conquered and annexed to the French republic;
in 1795 the Dutch republic was affiliated to that of France, and
the peace of Basel between Prussia and the French republic left
Austria to continue the war alone with the aid of British sub-
sidies. On the sea Great Britain had been more successful,
Howe's victory of the ist of June 1794 being the first of the long
series of defeats inflicted on the French navy, while in 1795 a
beginning was made of the vast expansion of the British Empire
by the capture of Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope from the
Dutch (see FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS). The war, however,
had become so expensive, and its results were evidently so small,
that there was a growing feeling in England in favour of peace,
especially as the Reign of Terror had come to an end in 1794,
and a regular government, the Directory, had been appointed
in 1795. At last Pitt was forced to yield to the popular clamour,
and in 1796 Lord Malmesbury was sent to France to treat for
peace. The negotiation, however, was at once broken off by his
demand that France should abandon the Netherlands.
The French government, assured now of the assistance of
Spain and Holland, and freed of the danger from La Vendee,
now determined to attempt the invasion of Ireland.
On the 1 6th of December a fleet of 17 battle-ships,
13 frigates and 15 smaller vessels set sail from Brest,
carrying an expeditionary force of some 13,000 men
under General Hoche. The British fleet, under Lord Bridport,
was wintering at Spithead; and before it could put to sea the
French had slipped past. Before it reached the coast of Ireland,
however, the French fleet had already suffered serious losses,
owing partly to the attacks of British frigate detachments,
partly to the bad seamanship of the French crews and the
rottenness of the ships. Only a part of the fleet succeeded in
reaching Bantry Bay on the 2oth of December, and of these a
large number were scattered by a storm on the 23rd. Hoche
himself, with the French admiral, had been driven far to the
westward in an effort to avoid capture; the attempt of Grouchy,
in his absence, to land a force was defeated by the weather,
and by the end of the month the whole expedition was in full
retreat for Brest. A French diversion on the coast of Pembroke
was even less successful; a force of 1500 men, under Colonel
Tate, an American adventurer, landed in Cardigan Bay on the
22nd of February 1797, but was at once surrounded by the local
militia and surrendered without a blow.
A more serious attempt was now made to renew the enterprise
by means of a junction of the French, Spanish and Dutch fleets.
The victory of Jervis over the Spanish fleet at Mutinies
St Vincent on the I4th of February postponed the at Spit-
imminence of the danger; but this again became acute headand
owing to the general disaffection in the fleet, which in theNore -
April and May found vent in the serious mutinies at Spithead
and the Nore. The mutiny at Spithead, which was due solely
to the intolerable conditions under which the seamen served at
the time, was ended on the i7th of May by concessions: an
increase of pay, the removal of officers who had abused their
power of discipline, and the promise of a general free pardon.
More serious was the outbreak at the Nore. The disaffection
had spread practically to the whole of Admiral Duncan's fleet,
and by the beginning of June the mutineers were blockading
the Thames with no less than 26 vessels. The demands of the
seamen were more extensive than at Spithead; their resistance
was better organized; and they were suspected, though without
ENGLISH HISTORY
553
reason, of harbouring revolutionary designs. The return of the
Channel fleet to its duty emboldened the admiralty to refuse
any concessions, and the vigorous measures of repression taken
proved effective. One by one the mutinous crews surrendered;
and the arrest of the ringleader, Richard Parker, on board the
" Sandwich," on the uth of June, brought the affair to an end. 1
The seamen regained their reputation, and those who
^2*J|f had been imprisoned their liberty, by Duncan's victory
*. ' over the Dutch fleet at Camperdown (October n), by
which the immediate danger was averted. Though
the French attempt at a concerted invasion had failed, however,
the Directory did not abandon the enterprise, and commissioned
Bonaparte to draw up fresh plans.
At the close of the year 1797 the position of Great Britain
was indeed sufficiently alarming. On the iSth of April, during
the very crisis of the mutiny at Spithead, Austria had signed
with Bonaparte the humiliating terms of the preliminary peace
of Lcoben, which six months later were embodied in the treaty
of Campo Formio (October 17). On the loth of August Portugal
had concluded a treaty with the French Republic; and Great
Britain was left without an ally in Europe. The mutiny at the
Nore, the threat of rebellion in Ireland, the alarming fall in
consols, argued strongly against continuing the war single-
handed, and in July Lord Malmesbury had been sent to Lille to
open fresh negotiations with the plenipotentiaries of France.
The negotiations broke down on the refusal of England to restore
the Cape of Good Hope to the Dutch. But though forced, in
spite of misgivings, to continue the struggle, the British govern-
ment in one very important respect was now in a far better
position to do so. For though Great Britain was now isolated
and her policy in Europe advertised as a failure, the temper of
the British people was less inclined to peace in 1798 than it had
been three years before. The early enthusiasm of the dis-
franchised classes for French principles had cooled with the later
developments of the Revolution; the attempted invasions had
roused the national spirit; and in the public imagination the
sinister figure of Bonaparte, the rapacious conqueror, was begin-
ning to loom large to the exclusion of lesser issues. Henceforth,
in spite of press prosecutions and trials for political libel, the
government was supported by public opinion in its vigorous
prosecution of the war.
If the danger of French invasion was a reality, it was so
mainly owing to the deplorable condition of Ireland, where the
ThAci natural disaffection of the Roman Catholic majority
uivminu of the population deprived of political and many
' social rights, and exposed to the insults and oppression
of a Protestant minority corrupted by centuries of
ascendancy invited the intervention of a foreign enemy. The
full measure of the intolerable conditions prevailing in the
country was revealed by the horrors of the rebellion of 1798,
and after this had been suppressed Pitt decided that the only
way to deal with the situation was to establish a union between
Great Britain and Ireland, similar to that which had proved so
successful in the case of England and Scotland. He saw that
to establish peace in Ireland the Roman Catholics would have
to be enfranchised; he realized that to enfranchise them in a
separated Ireland would be to subject the proud Protestant
minority to an impossible domination, and to establish not peace
but war. The Union, then, was in his view the necessary pre-
liminary to Catholic emancipation, which was at the same time
the reward held out to the majority of the Irish people for the
surrender of their national quasi-independence. It was a bribe
little likely to appeal to the Protestant minority which consti-
tuted the Irish parliament, and to them other inducements
had to be offered if the scheme was to be carried through. These
inducements were not all corrupt. Those members who stood
out were, indeed, bought by a lavish distribution of money and
coronets; but the advantages to Ireland which might reason-
ably be expected from the Union were many and obvious; and
if all the promises held out by the promoters of the measure
1 A vivid account of the mutiny and its causes is given in
Captain Marry at ' Kini'i Own.
have even now not been realized, the fault is not theirs. The
Act of Union was placed on the statute-book in 1800; Catholic
emancipation was to have been accomplished in the following
session, the first of the united parliament. But Pitt's policy
broke on the stubborn obstinacy of George III., who believed
himself bound by his coronation oath to resist any concession
to the enemies of the Established Church. The disadvantage
of the possession of too strait a conscience in politics was never
more dismally illustrated. To the Irish people it was
the first breach of faith in connexion with the Union, K*if*-
and threw them into opposition to a settlement into put."
which they believed themselves to have been drawn
under false pretences. Pitt, realizing this, had no option but
to resign.
The resignation of the great minister who had so long held
the reins of power coincided with a critical situation in Europe.
The isolation of Bonaparte in Egypt, as the result Boaapmrte
of Nelson's victory of the Nile (1798), had enabled break* up
the allies to recover some of the ground lost to France. ** comli-
But this had merely increased Bonaparte's prestige,
and on his return in 1799 he found no difficulty in making him-
self master of France by the coup d'ttat of the i8th Brumaire.
The campaign of Marengo followed (1800) and the peace of
LuneVille, which not only once more isolated Great Britain, but
raised up against her new enemies, to the list of whom she added
by using her command of the sea to enforce the right of search
in order to seize enemies' goods in neutral vessels. Russia joined
with Sweden and Denmark, all hitherto friendly powers, in
resistance to this claim.
Such was the position when Addington became prime minister.
He was a man of weak character and narrow intellect, whose
main claim to succeed Pitt was that he shared to
the full the Protestant prejudices of king and people.
His tenure of power was, indeed, marked by British
successes abroad; by Nelson's victory at Copenhagen, which
broke up the northern alliance, and by Abercromby's victory
at Alexandria, which forced the French to evacuate Egypt;
but these had been prepared by the previous administration.
Addington's real work was the peace of Amiens (1802),
an experimental peace, as the king called it, to see a/xrofcn
if the First Consul could be contented to restrain
himself within the very wide limits by which his authority in
Europe was still circumscribed.
In a few months Great Britain was made aware that the
experiment would not succeed. Interference and annexation
became the standing policy of the new French govern-
ment; and Britain, discovering how little intention
Bonaparte had of carrying out the spirit of the treaty,
refused to abandon Malta, as she had engaged to do by the terms
of peace. The war began again, no longer a war against re-
volutionary principles and their propaganda, but against the
boundless ambitions of a military conqueror. This time the
British nation was all but unanimous in resistance. This time
its resistance would be sooner or later supported by all that was
healthy in Europe. The news that Bonaparte was making
preparations on a vast scale for the invasion of England roused
a stubborn spirit of resistance in the country. Volunteers were
enrolled, and the coast was dotted with Martello towers, many
of which yet remain as monuments of the time when the " army
of England " was encamped on the heights near Boulogne within
sight of the English cliffs. To meet so great a crisis Addington
was not the man. He had been ceaselessly assailed, in and out
of parliament, by the trenchant criticism, and often unmannerly
wit, of " Pitt's friends," among whom George Canning was now
conspicuous. Pitt himself had remained silent; but in view
of the seriousness of the crisis and of a threatened illness of the
king, which would have necessitated a regency and in view of
the prince of Wales's dislike for him his own permanent
exclusion from office, he now put himself forward once more.
The government majorities in the House now rapidly dwindled;
on the s6th of April 1804, Addington resigned; and Pitt, after
his attempt to form a national coalition ministry had broken
554
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1804-1807
down on the king's refusal to admit Fox, became head of a
government constructed on a narrow Tory basis. Of the
members of the late government Lord Eldon, the duke
n'furas to of P rt l and , Lord Westmorland, Lord Castlereagh and
office. Lord Hawkesbury retained office, the latter surrender-
ing the foreign office to Lord Harrowby and going to
the home office. Dundas, now Lord Melville, became first lord
of the admiralty, and the cabinet further included Lord Camden,
Lord Mulgrave and the duke of Montrose. Canning, Huskisson
and Perceval were given subordinate offices.
Save for the commanding personality of Pitt, the new govern-
ment was scarcely stronger than that which it had replaced. It
had to face the same Whig opposition, led by Fox, who scoffed
at the French peril, and reinforced by Addington and his friends ;
and the whole burden of meeting this opposition fell upon Pitt;
for Castlereagh, the only other member of the cabinet in the
House of Commons, was of little use in debate. Nevertheless,
fresh vigour was infused into the conduct of the war. The
Additional Forces Act, passed in the teeth of a strenuous op-
position, introduced the principle of a modified system of com-
pulsion to supplement the deficiencies of the army and reserve,
while the navy was largely increased. Abroad, Pitt's whole
energies were directed to forming a fresh coalition against
Bonaparte, who, on the I4th of May 1804, had proclaimed him-
self emperor of the French; but it was a year before Russia
signed with Great Britain the treaty of St Petersburg (April n,
1805), and the accession to the coalition of Austria, Sweden and
Naples was not obtained till the following September. In the
following month (October 21) Nelson's crowning victory
Trafalgar. at Trafal g ar over the allied fleets of France and Spain
relieved England of the dread of invasion. It served,
however, to precipitate the crisis on the continent of Europe;
the great army assembled at Boulogne was turned eastwards;
by the capitulation of Ulm (October 19) Austria lost a large
part of her forces; and the last news that reached Pitt on his
Austeriitt death-bed was that of the ruin of all his hopes by the
crushing victory of Napoleon over the Russians and
Austrians at Austerlitz (December 2).
Pitt died on the 23rd of January, and the refusal of Lord
Hawkesbury to assume the premiership forced the king to
Death of summon Lord Grenville, and to agree to the inclusion
put. of Fox in the cabinet as secretary for foreign affairs.
"Ministry Several members of Pitt's administration were ad-
Talents "" mitted to this " Ministry of all the Talents," including
Addington (now Lord Sidmouth), who had rejoined
the ministry in December 1804 and again resigned, owing to
a disagreement with Pitt as to the charges against Lord Melville
(q.v.) in July 1805. The new ministry remained in office for a
year, a disastrous year which saw the culmination of Napoleon's
power: the crushing of Prussia in the campaign of Jena, the
formation of the Confederation of the Rhine and the end of the
Holy Roman Empire. In the conduct of the war the British
government had displayed little skill, frittering away its forces
Abolition on distant expeditions, instead of concentrating them
of the in support of Prussia or Russia, and the chief title
slave- to fame of the Ministry of all the Talents is that it
trade. secured the passing of the bill for the abolition of the
slave-trade (March 25, 1807).
The death of Fox (September 13, 1806) deprived the ministry
of its strongest member, and in the following March it fell on
the old question of concessions to the Roman Catholics.
<ju esio'n. True to his principles, Fox had done his best to negotiate
terms of peace with Napoleon; but the breakdown
of the attempt had persuaded even the Whigs that an arrange-
ment was impossible, and in view of this fact Grenville thought
it his duty to advise the king that the disabilities of Roman
Catholics and dissenters in the matter of serving in the army
and navy should be removed, in order that all sections of the
nation might be united in face of the enemy. The situation,
moreover, was in the highest degree anomalous; for by an act
passed in 1703 Roman Catholics might hold commissions in the
army in Ireland up to the rank of colonel, and this right had
not been extended to England, though by the Act of Union the
armies had become one. The king, however, was not to be
moved from his position; and he was supported in this attitude
not only by public opinion, but by a section of the ministry itself,
of which Sidmouth made himself the mouthpiece. The demand
of George III. that ministers should undertake never again
to approach him on the subject of concessions to the Catholics
was rejected by Grenville, rightly, as unconstitutional, and on
the i8th of March 1807 he resigned.
The new ministry, under the nominal headship of the vale-
tudinarian duke of Portland, included Perceval as chancellor
of the exchequer, Canning as foreign secretary and
Castlereagh as secretary for war and the colonies,
It had given the undertaking demanded by the king;
those of its members who, like Canning, were in favour of
Catholic emancipation, arguing that, in view of greater and more
pressing questions, it was useless to insist in a matter which
could never be settled so long as the old king lived. Of more
importance to Great Britain, for the time being, than any
constitutional issues, was the life - and - death struggle with
Napoleon, which had now entered on a new phase. Defeated
at sea, but master now of the greater part of the continent of
Europe, the French emperor planned to bring Great Britain
to terms by ruining her commerce with the vast
territories under his influence. In November 1806 The con-
he issued from Berlin the famous decree prohibiting system.
the importation of British goods and excluding from
the harbours under his control even neutral ships that had
touched at British ports. The British government replied by
the famous Orders in Council of 1807, which declared
all vessels trading with France liable to seizure, and J^ ers/n
that all such vessels clearing from France must touch council.
at a British port to pay customs duties. To this
Napoleon responded with the Milan decree (December 17), for-
bidding neutrals to trade in any articles imported from the
British dominions. The effects of these measures were destined
to be far-reaching. The Revolution had made war on princes
and privilege, and the common people had in general gained
wherever the Napoleonic regime had been substituted for their
effete despotisms; but the " Continental System " was felt
as an oppression in every humble household, suddenly deprived
of the little imported luxuries, such as sugar and coffee, which
custom had made necessaries; and from this time date the
beginnings of that popular revolt against Napoleon that was
to culminate in the War of Liberation. Great Britain, too,
was to suffer from her own retaliatory policy. The Americans
had taken advantage of the war to draw into their own
hands a large part of the British carrying trade, a
process greatly encouraged by the establishment of
the Continental System. This brought them into conflict
with the British acting under the Orders in Council, and the
consequent ill-feeling culminated in the war of 1812.
It was not only the completion of the Continental System,
however, that made the year 1807 a fateful one for Great Britain.
On the 7th of July the young emperor Alexander I.
of Russia, fascinated by Napoleon's genius and bribed
by the offer of a partition of the world, concluded the
treaty of Tilsit, which not only brought Russia into the Con-
tinental System, but substituted for a coalition against France
a formidable coalition against England. A scheme for wresting
from the British the command of the sea was only defeated by
Canning's action in ordering the English fleet to capture the
Danish navy, though Denmark was still nominally a friendly
power (see CANNING, GEORGE). Meanwhile, in order to com-
plete the ring fence round Europe against British commerce,
Napoleon had ordered Junot to invade Portugal; preach la-
Lisbon was occupied by the French, and the Portu- vasioaof
guese royal family migrated to Brazil. In the follow- Spain and
ing year Napoleon seized the royal family of Spain, f
and gave the crown, which Charles VI. resigned on behalf of
himself and his heir, to his brother Joseph, king of Naples.
The revolt of the Spanish people that followed was the first of
1807-1815]
ENGLISH HISTORY
555
Hr.
the national uprisings against his rule by which Napoleon was
destined to be overthrown. In England it was greeted with
immense popular enthusiasm, and the government, without
realizing the full import of the step it was taking, sent an ex-
pedition to the Peninsula. It disembarked, under the command
of Sir Arthur Wellesley, at Figueras on the ist of
August. It was the beginning of the Peninsular War,
which was destined not to end until, in 1814, the
British troops crossed the Pyrenees into France, while the Allies
were pressing over the Rhine. The political and military events
on the continent of Europe do not, however, belong strictly to
English history, though they profoundly affected its develop-
ment, and they are dealt with elsewhere (see EUROPE: History;
NAPOLEON; NAPOLEONIC CAMPAIGNS; PENINSULAR WAR;
WATERLOO CAMPAIGN).
The war, while it lasted, was of course the main preoccupa-
tion of British ministers and of the British people. It entailed
n '*! enormous sacrifices, which led to corresponding dis-
contents; and differences as to its conduct produced
frequent friction within the government itself. A
cabinet crisis was the result of the outcome of the
unfortunate Walcheren expedition of i&og. It had been Castle-
reagh's conception and, had it been as- well executed as it was
conceived, it might have dealt a fatal blow at Napoleon's hopes
of recovering his power at sea, by destroying his great naval
establishments at Antwerp. It failed, and it became the subject
of angry dispute between Canning and Castlereagh, a dispute
embittered by personal rivalry and the friction due to the ill-
defined relations of the foreign secretary to the secretary for
war; the quarrel culminated in a duel, and in the resignation
of both ministers (see LONDONDERRY, 2ND MARQUESS OF, and
CANNING. GEORGE). The duke of Portland resigned at the same
time, and in the reconstruction of the ministry, under Perceval
as premier, Lord Wellesley became foreign secretary,
while Lord Liverpool, with Palmerston as his under-
secretary, succeeded Castlereagh at the war office.
The most conspicuous member of this government was Wellesley,
whose main object in taking office was to second his brother's
efforts in the Peninsula. In this he was, however, only partially
successful, owing to the incapacity of his colleagues to realize
the unique importance of the operations in Spain. In November
18 10 the old king's mind gave way, and on the i ith of February
1811, an act of parliament bestowed the regency, under certain
restrictions, upon the prince of Wales. The prince
had been on intimate terms with the Whig leaders,
and it was assumed that his accession to power would
mean a change of government. He had, however, been offended
by their attitude on the question of the restriction of his authority
as regent, and he continued Perceval in office. A year later,
the king's insanity being proved incurable, the regency was
definitively established (February 1812). Lord Wellesley took
advantage of the reconstruction of the cabinet to resign a
position in which he had not been given a free hand, and his
post of foreign secretary was offered to Canning. Canning,
however, refused to serve with Castlereagh as minister of war,
and the latter received the foreign office, which he was to hold
till his death in 1822. A month later, on the nth of May,
Perceval was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons,
and Lord Liverpool became the head of a government that was
to last till 1827.
The period covered by the Liverpool administration was a
fateful one in the history of Europe. The year 1812 saw
Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the disastrous
retreat from Moscow. In the following year Welling-
ton's victory at Vitoria signalled the ruin of the French
cause in Spain; while Prussia threw off the yoke of France, and
Austria, realizing after cautious delay her chance of retrieving
the humiliations of 1809, joined the alliance, and in concert with
Russia and the other German powers overthrew Napoleon at
Leipzig. The invasion of France followed in 1814, the abdication
of Napoleon, the restoration of the Bourbons and the assembling
of the congress of Vienna. The following year saw the return
Tit*
Lhtrfool
of Napoleon from Elba, the close of the congress of Vienna, and
the campaign that ended with the battle of Waterloo. The
succeeding period, after so much storm and stress, might seem
dull and unprofitable; but it witnessed the instructive experi-
ment of the government of Europe by a concert of the great
powers, and the first victory of the new principle of nationality
in the insurrection of the Greeks. The share taken by Great
Britain in all this, for which Castlereagh pre-eminently must
take the praise or blame, is outlined in the article on the history
of Europe (q.v.). Here it must suffice to point out Foni ta
how closely the development of foreign affairs was policy at
interwoven with that of home politics. The great c<*-
war, so long as it lasted, was the supreme affair of n ** h -
moment ; the supreme interest when it was over was to prevent
its recurrence. For above all the world needed peace, in order
to recover from the exhaustion of the revolutionary epoch; and
this peace, bought at so great a cost, could be preserved only
by the honest co-operation of Great Britain in the great inter-
national alliance based on " the treaties." This explains
Castlereagh 's policy at home and abroad. He was grossly
attacked by the Opposition in parliament and by irresponsible
critics, of the type of Byron, outside; historians, bred in the
atmosphere of mid-Victorian Liberalism, have re-echoed the
cry against him and the government of which he was the most
distinguished member; but history has largely justified his
attitude. He was no friend of arbitrary government; but he
judged it better that " oppressed nationalities " and " persecuted
Liberals " should suffer than that Europe should be again
plunged into war. He was hated in his day as the arch-opponent
of reform, yet the triumph of the reform movement would have
been impossible but for the peace his policy secured.
To say this is not to say that the attitude of the Tory govern-
ment towards the great issues of home politics was wholly,
or even mainly, inspired by a far-sighted wisdom. It chsracter
had departed widely from the Toryism of Pitt's oithe
younger years, which had sought to base itself on Tor y
popular support, as opposed to the aristocratic ex- pMTty -
clusiveness of the Whigs. It conceived itself as the trustee of
a system of government which, however theoretically imperfect,
alone of the governments of Europe had survived the storms
of the Revolution intact. To tamper with a constitution that
had so proved its quality seemed not so much a sacrilege as a
folly. The rigid conservatism that resulted from this attitude
served, indeed, a useful purpose in giving weight to Castlereagh's
counsels in the European concert; for Metternich at least,
wholly occupied with " propping up mouldering institutions,"
could not have worked harmoniously with a minister suspected
of an itch for reform. At home, however, it undoubtedly
tended to provoke that very revolution which it was intended
to prevent. This was due not so much to the notorious corrup-
tion of the representative system as to the fact that it represented
social and economic conditions that were rapidly passing away.
Both Houses of Parliament were in the main assemblies of
aristocrats and landowners; but agriculture was ceasing to
be the characteristic industry of the country and the p MrUa .
old semi-feudal relations of life were in process of meat and
rapid dissolution. The invention of machinery and '*'"</-
the concentration of the working population in manu- Jjjjj^
facturing centres had all but destroyed the old village
industries, and great populations were growing up outside the
traditional restraints of the old system of class dependence.
The distress inevitable in connexion with such an industrial
revolution was increased by the immense burden of the war
and by the high protective policy, of the parliament, which
restricted trade and deliberately increased the price of food
in the interests of the agricultural classes. Between 1811 and
1814 bands of so-called " Luddites," starving operatives out of
work, scoured the country, smashing machinery the immediate
cause of their misfortunes and committing every sort of out-
rage. The fault of the government lay, not in taking vigorous
measures for the suppression of these disorders, but in remain-
ing obstinately blind to the true causes that had produced them.
556
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1815-1821
Ministers saw in the Luddite organization only another con-
spiracy against the state; and, so far from seeking means for
removing the grievances that underlay popular disaffection,
the activity of parliament, inspired by the narrowest class
interests, only tended to increase them. The price of food,
already raised by the war, was still further increased by suc-
Cam Laws cess i ve Corn Laws, and the artificial value thus given
and to arable land led to the passing of Enclosure Bills,
Enclosure under which the country people were deprived of their
common rights with very inadequate compensation,
and life in the village communities was made more and more
difficult. In the circumstances it is not surprising that the
spirit of unrest grew apace. In 1815 the passing of a new Corn
Law, forbidding the importation of corn so long as the price
for home-grown wheat was under 8os. the quarter, led to riots
in London. An attack made on the prince regent at the opening
of parliament on the 28th of January 1817 led to an inquiry,
which revealed the existence of an elaborate organization for
the overthrow of the existing order. The repressive measures
of 1795 and 1799 were now revived and extended, and
a kill suspending the Habeas Corpus Act for a year
tioa. was passed through both Houses by a large majority.
On the 27th of March Lord Sidmouth opened the
government campaign against the press by issuing a circular to
the lords-lieutenants, directing them to instruct the justices of
the peace to issue warrants for the arrest of any person charged
on oath with publishing blasphemous or seditious libels. The
legality of this suggestion was more than doubtful, but it was
none the less acted on, and a series of press prosecutions followed,
some as in the case of the bookseller William Hone on grounds
so trivial that juries refused to convict. William Cobbett, the
most influential of the reform leaders, in order to avoid arbitrary
imprisonment, " deprived of pen, ink and paper," suspended
the Political Register and sailed for America. A disturbance
that was almost an armed insurrection, which broke out in
Derbyshire in June of this year, seemed to justify the severity
of the government; it was suppressed without great difficulty,
and three of the ringleaders were executed.
It was, however, in 1819 that the conflict between the govern-
ment and the new popular forces culminated. Distress was
acute; and in the manufacturing towns mass meetings
*or reform. were ne ^ to discuss a remedy, which, under the guid-
ance of political agitators, was discovered in universal
suffrage and annual parliaments. The right to return members
to parliament was claimed for all communities; and since
this right was unconstitutionally withheld, unrepresented
towns were invited to exercise it in anticipation of its formal
concession. At Birmingham, accordingly, Sir Charles Wolseley
was duly elected " legislatorial attorney and representative "
of the town. Manchester followed suit; but the meeting
arranged for the pth of August was declared illegal by the
magistrates, on the strength of a royal proclamation against
seditious meetings issued on the 3oth of July. Another meeting
was accordingly summoned for the undoubtedly legal purpose
of petitioning parliament in favour of reform. On the appointed
day (August 16) thousands poured in from the surrounding
districts. These men had been previously drilled, for the pur-
pose, as their own leaders asserted, of enabling the vast assem-
blage to be conducted in an orderly manner; for the purpose,
as the magistrates suspected, of preparing them for an armed
insurrection. An attempt was made by a party of yeomanry
The to arrest a popular agitator, Henry* Hunt; the angry
Man- mob surged round the horsemen, who found themselves
Chester ^ powerless; the Riot Act was read, and the isth
Massacre." H ussars charged the crowd with drawn swords. The
meeting rapidly broke up, but not before six had been killed
and many injured. The " Manchester Massacre " gave an
immense impetus to the movement in favour of reform. The
employment of soldiers to suppress liberty of speech stirred
up the resentment of Englishmen as nothing else could have
done, and this resentment was increased by the conviction that
the government was engaged with the " Holy Alliance " in an
unholy conspiracy against liberty everywhere. The true tend-
ency of Castlereagh's foreign policy was not understood, nor had
he any of the popular arts which would have enabled Canning
to carry public opinion with him in cases where a frank ex-
planation was impossible. The Liberals could see no more than
that he appeared to be committed to international engagements,
the logical outcome of which might be as an orator of the
Opposition put it that Cossacks would be encamped in Hyde
Park for the purpose of overawing the House of Commons.
The dangerous agitation that gave expression to this state
of feeling was met by the government in the session of November
1819 by the passing of the famous Six Acts. The first
of these deprived the defendant of the right of travers- Ac s
ing, but directed that he should be brought to trial
within a year; the second increased the penalties for seditious
libel; the third imposed the newspaper stamp duty on all
pamphlets and the like containing news; the fourth (Seditious
Meetings Act) once more greatly curtailed the liberty of public
meetings; the fifth forbade the training of persons in the use
of arms; the sixth empowered magistrates to search for and
seize arms.
The apparent necessity for the passing of these exceptional
measures was increased by the imminent death of the old king,
the tragic close of whose long reign had won for him
a measure of popular sympathy which was wholly
lacking in the case of the prince regent. On the 23rd oeorge iv.
of February 1820 George III. died, and the regent
became king as George IV. This was the signal for an outburst
of popular discontent with the existing order of a far more
ominous character than any that had preceded it. The king
was generally loathed, not so much for his vices which would
have been, in this case as in others, condoned in a more popular
monarch but for the notorious meanness and selfishness of
his character. Of these qualities he took the occasion of his
accession to make a fresh display. He had long been separated
from his wife, Caroline of Brunswick; he now refused her the
title of queen consort, forbade the mention of her name in the
liturgy, and persuaded the government to promote an inquiry
in parliament into her conduct, with a view to a divorce. What-
ever grounds there may have been for this action, popular sym-
pathy was wholly with Queen Caroline, who became the centre
round which all the forces of discontent rallied. The failure of
the Bill of Pains and Penalties against the queen, which was
dropped after it had passed its third reading in the Lords by a
majority of only seven, was greeted as a great popular triumph.
The part played by the government in this unsavoury affair
had discredited them even in the eyes of the classes whose fear
of revolution had hitherto made them supporters of the established
system; and the movement for reform received a new stimulus.
The Tory government itself realized the necessity for some
concessions to the growing public sentiment. In 1821 a small
advance was made. The reform bill (equal electoral
districts) introduced by Lambton (afterwards Lord
Durham) was thrown out; but the corrupt borough
of Grampound in Cornwall was disfranchised and the
seats transferred to the county of York. Even more significant
was the change in the cabinet, which was strengthened by the
admission of some of the more conservative section of the
Opposition, Lord Sidmouth retiring and Robert Peel becoming
home secretary. A bill for the removal of Catholic disabilities,
too, was carried in the Commons, though rejected in the Lords;
and the appointment of Lord Wellesley, an advocate of the
Catholic claims, to the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland marked yet
another stage in the settlement of a question which, more than
anything else at that time, kept Ireland and Irishmen in a state
of chronic discontent and agitation.
It is not without significance that this modification of the
policy of the Tory government at home coincided with a modi-
fication of its relations with the European powers. The tendency
of Metternich's system had long been growing distasteful to
Castlereagh, who had consistently protested against the attempt
to constitute the Grand Alliance general police of Europe and
1871-1853]
ENGLISH HISTORY
557
had specially protested against the Carlsbad Decrees (</.r.). The
first steps towards the inevitable breach with the reactionary
powers had already been taken before Castlereagh's tragic
death on the eve of the congress of Verona brought George
Canning into office as the executor of his policy. With
Canning, foe of the Revolution and all its works though
be was, the old liberal Toryism of Pitt's younger days
seemed once more to emerge. It might have emerged in any
case; but Canning, with his brilliant popular gifts and his frank
appeal to popular support, gave it a revivifying stimulus which
it would never have received from an aristocrat of the type of
CasUereagh.
The new spirit was most conspicuous in foreign affairs; in
the protest of Great Britain against the action of the continental
powers at Verona (see VERONA, CONGRESS OF), in
the recognition of the South American republics, and
WBHU>* later in the sympathetic attitude of the government
f*tst- towards the insurrection in Greece. This policy had
been foreshadowed in the instructions drawn up by Castlereagh
for his own guidance at Verona; but Canning succeeded in giving
it a popular and national colour and thus removing from the
government all suspicion of sympathy with the reactionary spirit
of the " Holy Alliance." In home affairs, too, the government
made tentative advances in a Liberal direction. In January
1823 Vansittart was succeeded as chancellor of the exchequer
by Robinson (afterwards Lord Goderich), and Huskisson became
president of the Board of Trade. The term of office of the latter
was marked by the first tentative efforts to modify the high
protective system by which British trade was hampered, especi-
ally by the Reciprocity of Duties Act (1823), a modification of
the Navigation Acts, by which British and foreign shipping
were placed on an equal footing, while the right to impose re-
strictive duties on ships of powers refusing to reciprocate was
retained. In spite, however, of the improvement in trade that
ultimately resulted from these measures, there was great de-
pression; in 1825 there was a financial crisis that caused wide-
spread ruin, and in 1826 the misery of the labouring poor led
to renewed riots and machinery smashing. It became in-
creasingly clear that a drastic alteration in the existing system
was absolutely inevitable. As to this necessity, however, the
ministry was in fact hopelessly divided. The government was
one of compromise, in which even so burning a question as
Catholic emancipation had been left open. Among its members
were some like the lord chancellor Eldon, the duke of Welling-
ton, and the premier, Lord Liverpool, himself whose Toryism
was of the type crystallized under the influence of the Revolution,
adamant against change. Such progressive measures as it had
passed bad been passed in the teeth of its own nominal sup-
porters, even of its own members. In 1826 Lord Pal mere ton,
himself a member of the government, wrote: " On the Catholic
question, on the principles of commerce, on the corn laws, on
the settlement of the currency, on the laws relating to trade in
money, on colonial slavery, on the game laws . . . ; on all these
questions, and everything like them, the government will find
support from the Whigs and resistance from their self-denom-
inated friends." It was, in fact, only the personal influence
of Liverpool that held the ministry together, and when, on the
1 7th of February 1827, he was seized with an apoplectic fit, a
crisis was inevitable.
The crisis, indeed, arose before the nominal expiration of the
Liverpool administration. Two questions were, in the view of
Canning and his supporters, of supreme importance
Catholic emancipation and the reform of the Corn Laws.
The first of these had assumed a new urgency since the
formation in 1823 of the Catholic Association, which
under the brilliant leadership of Daniel O'Connell
established in Ireland a national organization that threatened
the very basis of the government. In March 1826 Sir Francis
Burdett had brought in a Catholic Relief Bill, which, passed
in the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords. A year later
Burden's motion that the affairs of Ireland required immediate
attention, though supported by Canning, was rejected in the
Catholic
cmanclpm-
Wllllam
IV.
Commons. A bill modifying the Corn Laws, introduced by
Canning and Huskisson, passed the House of Commons on the
1 2th of April 1827, but was rejected by the Lords.
Meanwhile (April 10) Canning had become prime minister,
his appointment being followed by the resignation of all the most
conspicuous members of the Liverpool administration:
Wellington, Eldon, Melville, Bathurst, Westmorland )
and Peel, the latter of whom resigned on account
of his opposition to Catholic emancipation. The new govern-
ment had perforce to rely on the Whigs, who took their seats
on the government side of the House, Lord Lansdowne being
included in the cabinet. Before this coalition could be com-
pleted, however, Canning died (August 8). The short-lived
Goderich administration followed; and in January 1828 the king,
weary of the effort to arrange a coalition, summoned
the duke of Wellington to office as head of a purely WeUI f
Tory cabinet. Yet the logic of facts was too strong ^"aintiy
even for the stubborn spirit of the Iron Duke. In
May 1828, on the initiative of Lord John Russell, the Test and
Corporation Acts were repealed; in the same session a Corn
Bill, differing but little from those that Wellington had hitherto
opposed, was passed; and finally, after a strenuous agitation
which culminated in the election of O'Connell for Clare, and in
spite of the obstinate resistance of King George IV.,
the Catholic Emancipation Bill was passed (April 10,
1829) by a large majority. On the 26th of June 1830
the king died, exactly a month before the outbreak pf.
of the revolution in Paris that hurled Charles X. from
the throne and led to the establishment of the Liberal
Monarchy under Louis Philippe; a revolution that was to exert a
strong influence on the movement for reform in England.
King William IV. ascended the throne at a critical moment
in the history of the English constitution. Everywhere misery
and discontent were apparent, manifesting themselves
in riots against machinery, in rick-burning on a large
scale, and in the formation of trades unions which
tended to develop into organized armies of sedition. All the
elements of violent revolution were present. Nor was there
anything in the character of the new king greatly calculated
to restore the damaged prestige of the crown; for, if he lacked
the evil qualities that had caused George IV. to be loathed as
well as despised, he lacked also the sense of personal dignity
that had been the saving grace of George, while he shared the
conservative and Protestant prejudices of his predecessors.
Reform was now inevitable. The Wellington ministry, hated
by the Liberals, denounced even by the Tories as traitorous for
the few concessions made, resigned on the i6th of November;
and the Whigs at last came into office under Lord Whlg
Grey, the ministry also including a few of the more ministry
Liberal Tories. Lord Durham, perhaps the most under
influential leader of the reform movement, became Lordarf y-
privy seal, Althorp chancellor of the exchequer, Palmerston
foreign secretary, Melbourne home secretary, Goderich colonial
secretary. Lord John Russell, as paymaster-general, and
Stanley (afterwards Lord Derby), as secretary for Ireland, held
office outside the cabinet. With the actual House of Commons,
however, the government was powerless to effect its purpose.
Though it succeeded in carrying the second reading
of the Reform Bill (March 21, 1831), it was defeated
in committee, and appealed to the country. The
result was a great governmental majority, and the
bill passed the Commons in September. Its rejection by the
Lords on the 8th of October was the signal for dangerous rioting;
and in spite of the opposition of the king, the bill was once more
passed by the Commons (December 12). A violent agitation
marked the recess. On the 14th of April 1832 the bill was read
a second time in the Lords, but on the 7th of May was again
rejected, whereupon the government resigned. The attempt
of Wellington, at the king's instance, to form a ministry failed;
of all the Tory obstructionists he alone had the courage to face
the popular rage. On the i$th Lord Grey was in office again;
the demand was made for a sufficient creation of peers to swamp
558
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1832-1837
the House of Lords; the king, now thoroughly alarmed, used
his influence to persuade the peers to yield, and on the 4th of
June the great Reform Bill became law. Thus was England
spared the crisis of a bloody revolution, and proof given to the
world that her ancient constitution was sufficiently elastic to
expand with the needs of the times.
The effect of the Reform Bill, which abolished fifty-six
" rotten " boroughs, and by reducing the representation of others
set free 143 seats, which were in part conferred on the new in-
dustrial centres, was to transfer a large share of political power
from the landed aristocracy to the middle classes. Yet the
opposition of the Tories had not been wholly inspired by the
desire to maintain the political predominance of a class. Canning,
who had the best reason for knowing, defended the unreformed
system on the ground that its very anomalies opened a variety
of paths by which talent could make its way into parliament,
and thus produced an assembly far more widely representative
than could be expected from a more uniform and logical system.
This argument, which the effect of progressive extensions of the
franchise on the intellectual level of parliament has certainly
not tended to weaken, was however far outweighed as Canning
himself would have come to see by the advantage of reconciling
with the old constitution the new forces which were destined
during the century to transform the social organization of the
country. Nor, in spite of the drastic character of the Reform
Bill, did it in effect constitute a revolution. The 143 seats set
free were divided equally between the towns and the counties;
and in the counties the landowning aristocracy was still supreme.
In the towns the new 10 household franchise secured a demo-
cratic constituency; in the counties the inclusion of tenants at
will (of 50 annual rent), as well as of copyholders and lease-
holders, only tended to increase the influence of the landlords.
There was as yet no secret ballot to set the voter free.
The result was apparent in the course of the next few years.
The first reformed parliament, which met on the 2gth of January
1833, consisted in the main of Whigs, with a sprinkling of Radicals
and a compact body of Liberal Tories under Sir Robert Peel.
Its great work was the act emancipating the slaves in the British
colonies (August 30). Other burning questions were the con-
dition of Ireland, the scandal of the established church there,
the misery of the poor in England. In all these matters the
House showed little enough of the revolutionary temper; so
little, indeed, that in March Lord Durham resigned. To the
Whig leaders the church was all but as sacrosanct as to the
Tories, the very foundation of the constitution, not to be touched
save at imminent risk to the state; the most they would ad-
venture was to remedy a few of the more glaring abuses of an
establishment imposed on an unwilling population. As for
O'Connell's agitation for the repeal of the Union, that met with
but scant sympathy in parliament; on the 27th of May 1834
his repeal motion was rejected by a large majority.
In July the Grey ministry resigned, and on the i6th Lord
Melbourne became prime minister. His short tenure of office
is memorable for the passing of the bill for the reform
of the Poor Law (August). The reckless system of
outdoor relief, which had pauperized whole neighbour-
hoods, was abolished, and the system of unions and workhouses
established (see POOR LAW). An attempt to divert some of the
revenues of the Irish Church led in the autumn to serious differ-
ences of opinion in the cabinet; the king, as tenacious as his
father of the exact obligations of his coronation oath, dismissed
the ministry, and called the Tories to office under Sir Robert
Peel and the duke of Wellington. Thus, within three years of the
passing of the Reform Bill, the party which had most strenuously
opposed it was again in office. Scarcely less striking testimony
to the constitutional temper of the English was given by the new
attitude of the party under the new conditions. In the " Tam-
The worth manifesto " of January 1835 Peel proclaimed
"Coaier- the principles which were henceforth to guide the
vativc" party, no longer Tory, but " Conservative." The
Reform Bill and its consequences were frankly accepted ;
party.
further reforms were promised, especially in the matter of the
municipal corporations and of the disabilities of the dissenters.
The new parliament, however, which met on the igth of February,
was not favourable to the ministry, which fell on the 8th of April.
Lord Melbourne once more came into office, and the Municipal
Corporations Act of the 7th of September was the work of a
Liberal government. This was the last measure of first-rate
importance passed before the death of King William, which
occurred on the 2oth of June 1837.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance, not only for
England but for the world at large, of the epoch which cul-
minated in the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. All Europe,
whether Liberal or reactionary, was watching the constitutional
struggle with strained attention; the principles of monarchy
and of constitutional liberty were alike at stake. To foreign
observers it seemed impossible that the British monarchy could
survive. Baron Brunnow, the Russian ambassador in London,
sent home to the emperor Nicholas I. the most pessimistic reports.
According to Brunnow, King William, by using his influence to
secure the passage of the Reform Bill, had " cast his crown into
the gutter"; the throne might endure for his lifetime, but the
next heir was a young and inexperienced girl, and, even were the
princess Victoria ever to mount the throne which was unlikely
she would be speedily swept off it again by the rising tide
of republicanism. The course of the next reign was destined
speedily to convince even Nicholas I. of the baselessness of
these fears, and to present to all Europe the exemplar of a
progressive state, in which the principles of traditional
authority and democratic liberty combined for the common
good. (W. A. P.)
XII. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (1837-1901)
The death of William IV., on the 2oth of June 1837, placed
on the throne of England a young princess, who was destined
to reign for a longer period than any of her pre-
decessors. The new queen, the only daughter of the
duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III., had just accession.
attained her majority. Educated in comparative
seclusion, her character and her person were unfamiliar to her
future subjects, who were a little weary of the extravagances
and eccentricities of her immediate predecessors. Her accession
gave them a new interest in the house of Hanover. And their
loyalty, which would in any case have been excited by the
accession of a young and inexperienced girl to the throne of the
greatest empire in the world, was stimulated by her conduct
and appearance. She displayed from the first a dignity and
good sense which won the affection of the multitude who merely
saw her in public, and the confidence of the advisers who were
admitted into her presence.
The ministry experienced immediate benefit from the change.
The Whigs, who had governed England since 1830, under Lord
Grey and Lord Melbourne, were suffering from the reaction
which is the inevitable consequence of revolution. The country
which, in half-a-dozen years, had seen a radical reform of parlia-
ment, a no less radical reform of municipal corporations, the
abolition of slavery, and the reconstruction of the poor laws,
was longing for a period of political repose. The alliance, or
understanding, between the Whigs and the Irish was increasing
the distrust of the English people in the ministry, and Lord
Melbourne's government, in the first half of 1837, seemed
doomed to perish. The accession of the queen gave it a new
lease of power. The election, indeed, which followed her ac-
cession did not materially alter the composition of the House
of Commons. But the popularity of the queen was extended
to her government. Taper's suggestion in Coningsby that the
Conservatives should go to the country with the cry, " Our
young queen and our old institutions," expressed, in an epigram,
a prevalent idea. But the institution which derived most
immediate benefit from the new sovereign was the old Whig
ministry.
The difficulties of the ministry, nevertheless, were great.
In the preceding years it had carried most of the reforms
which were demanded in Great Britain; but it had failed to
1837-18401
ENGLISH HISTORY
559
obtain the assent of the House of Lords to its Irish measures.
It had desired (i) to follow up the reform of l-'.ntflMi cor-
LortMff- porations by a corresponding reform of Irish muni-
ir' cipalitics; (>) to convert the tithes, payable to the
Irish Church, into a rent charge, and to appropriate
****** its surplus revenues to other purposes; (3) to deal
with the chronic distress of the Irish people by extending to
Ireland the principles of the English poor law. In the year which
succeeded the accession of the queen it accomplished two of
these objects. It passed an Irish poor law and a measure
commuting tithes in Ireland into a rent charge. The first of
these measures was carried in opposition to the views of the Irish,
who thought that it imposed an intolerable burden on Irish
property. The second was only carried on the government con-
senting to drop the appropriation clause, on which Lord Mel-
bourne's administration had virtually been founded.
It was not, however, in domestic politics alone that the
ministry was hampered. In the months which immediately
followed the queen's accession news reached England of dis-
turbances, or even insurrection in Canada. The rising was easily
put down; but the condition of the colony was so grave that
the ministry decided to suspend the constitution of lower Canada
for three years, and to send out Lord Durham with almost dicta-
torial powers. Lord Durham's conduct was, unfortunately,
marked by indiscrctions'which led to his resignation; but before
leaving the colony he drew up a report on its condition and on its
future, which practically became a text-book for his successors,
and has influenced the government of British colonies ever since.
Nor was Canada the only great colony which was seething with
discontent. In Jamaica the planters, who had sullenly accepted
the abolition of slavery, were irritated by the passage of an act
of parliament intended to remedy some grave abuses in the
management of the prisons of the island. The colonial House
of Assembly denounced this act as a violation of its rights, and
determined to desist from its legislative functions. The governor
dissolved the assembly, but the new house, elected in its place,
reaffirmed the decision of its predecessor; and the British
ministry, in face of the crisis, asked parliament in 1839 for
authority to suspend the constitution of the island for five years.
The bill introduced for this purpose placed the Whig ministry
in a position of some embarrassment. The advocates of popular
government, they were inviting parliament, for a second time, to
suspend representative institutions in an important colony.
Supported by only small and dwindling majorities, they saw
that it was hopeless to carry the measure, and they decided on
placing their resignations in the queen's hands. The queen
naturally sent for Sir Robert Peel, who undertook to form
a government. In the course of the negotiations, however, he
stated that it would be necessary to make certain changes in the
household, which contained some great ladies closely connected
with the leaders of the Whig party. The queen
shrank from separating herself from ladies who had
surrounded her since she came to the throne, and
Sir Robert thereupon declined the task of forming a
ministry. Technically he was justified in adopting this course,
but people generally felt that there was some hardship in com-
pelling a young queen to separate herself from her companions
and friends, and they consequently approved the decision of
Lord Melbourne to support the queen in her refusal, and to
resume office. The Whigs returned to place, but they could not
be said to return to power. They did not even venture to renew
the original Jamaica Bill. They substituted for it a modified
proposal which they were unable to carry. They were obviously
indebted for office to the favour of the queen, and not to the
support of parliament.
Yet the session of 1839 was not without important results.
After a long struggle, in which ministers narrowly escaped defeat
in the Commons, and in the course of which they
suffered severe rebuffs in the Lords, they succeeded
in laying the foundation of the English system of
national education. In the same session they were forced against
their will to adopt a reform, which had been recommended by
The bcd-
Rowland Hill, and to confer on the nation the benefit of a
uniform penny postage. No member of the cabinet foresaw the
consequences of this reform. The postmaster-general, Lord
Lichfield, in opposing it, declared that, if the revenue of his
office was to be maintained, the correspondence of the country,
on which postage was paid, must be increased from 42,000,000
to 480,000,000 letters a year, and he contended that there were
neither people to write, nor machinery to deal with, so pro-
digious a mass of letters. He would have been astonished to
hear that, before the end of the century, his office had to deal
with more than 3,000,000,000 postal packets a year, and that the
net profit which it paid into the exchequer was to be more than
double what it received in 1839.
In 1840 the ministry was not much more successful than it
had proved in 1839. After years of conflict it succeeded indeed
in placing on the statute book a measure dealing with _.
Irish municipalities. But its success was purchased polity
by concessions to the Lords, which deprived the
measure of much of its original merit. The closing years of the
Whig administration were largely occupied with the financial
difficulties of the country. The first three years of the queen's
reign were memorable for a constantly deficient revenue. The
deficit amounted to 1,400,000 in 1837, to 400,000 in 1838,
and to 1,457,000 in 1839. Baring, the chancellor of the ex-
chequer, endeavoured to terminate this deficiency by a general
increase of taxation, but this device proved a disastrous failure.
The deficit rose to 1,842,000 in 1840. It was obvious that the
old expedient of increasing taxation had failed, and that some
new method had to be substituted for it. This new method
Baring tried to discover in altering the differential duties on
timber and sugar, and substituting a fixed duty of 8s. per quarter
for the sliding duties hitherto payable on wheat. By these
alterations he expected to secure a large increase of revenue,
and at the same time to maintain a sufficient degree of protection
for colonial produce. The Conservatives, who believed in pro-
tection, at once attacked the proposed alteration of the sugar
duties. They were reinforced by many Liberals, who cared very
little for protection, but a great deal about the abolition of
slavery, and consequently objected to reducing the duties on
foreign or slave-grown sugar. This combination of interests
proved too strong for Baring and his proposal was rejected. As
ministers, however, did not resign on their defeat, Sir Robert Peel
followed up his victory by moving a vote of want of confidence,
and this motion was carried in an exceptionally full house by
312 votes to 311.
Before abandoning the struggle, the Whigs decided on appeal-
ing from the House of Commons to the country. The general
election which ensued largely increased the strength
of the Conservative party. On the meeting of the f^', 1 ^ 9 '
new parliament in August 1841, votes of want of m iaiitry.
confidence in the government were proposed and
carried in both houses; the Whigs were compelled to resign
office, and the queen again charged Sir Robert Peel with the task
of forming a government. If the queen had remained unmarried,
it is possible that the friction which had arisen in 1839 might
have recurred in 1841. In February 1840, however, Her Majesty
had married her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
She was, therefore, no longer dependent on the Whig ladies, to
whose presence in her court she had attached so much importance
in 1 839. By the management of the prince who later in the reign
was known as the prince consort the great ladies of the house-
hold voluntarily tendered their resignations; and every obstacle
to the formation of the new government was in this way removed.
Thus the Whigs retired from the offices which, except for a
brief interval in 1834-1835, they had held for eleven years.
During the earlier years of their administration they had suc-
ceeded in carrying many memorable reforms: during the later,
years their weakness in the House of Commons had prevented
their passing any considerable measures. But, if they had failed
in this respect, Lord Melbourne had rendered conspicuous service
to the queen. Enjoying her full confidence, consulted by her on
every occasion, he had always used his influence for the public
560
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1841-1843
good; and perhaps those who look back now with so much satis-
faction at the queen's conduct during a reign of unexampled
length, imperfectly appreciate the debt which in this respect is
owed to her first prime minister. The closing years of the Whig
government were marked by external complications. A contro-
versy on the boundary of Canada and the United States was
provoking increasing bitterness on both sides of the Atlantic.
The intervention of Lord Palmerston in Syria, which resulted
in a great military success at Acre, was embittering the relations
between France and England, while the unfortunate expedition
to Afghanistan, which the Whigs had approved, was already
producing embarrassment, and was about to result in disaster.
Serious, however, as were the complications which surrounded
British policy in Europe, in the East, and in America, the country,
in August 1841, paid more attention to what a great writer called
the " condition of England " question. There had never been
a period in British history when distress and crime had been so
general. There had hardly ever been a period when food had been
so dear, when wages had been so low, when poverty had been so
widespread, and the condition of the lower orders so depraved
and so hopeless, as in the early years of the queen's reign. The
condition of the people had prompted the formation of two great
associations. The Chartists derived their name from the charter
which set out their demands. The rejection of a monster petition
which they presented to parliament in 1839 led to a formidable
riot in Birmingham, and to a projected march from South Wales
on London, in which twenty persons were shot dead at Newport.
Another organization, in one sense even more formidable than
the Chartist, was agitating at the same time for the repeal of
the corn laws, and was known as the Anti-Corn Law League.
It had already secured the services of two men, Cobden and
Bright, who, one by clear reasoning, the other by fervid eloquence,
were destined to make a profound impression on all classes of the
people.
The new government had, therefore, to deal with a position
of almost unexampled difficulty. The people were apparently
Bud et sinking into deeper poverty and misery year after year.
reforms. As an outward and visible sign of the inward distress,
the state was no longer able to pay its way. It was
estimated that the deficit, which had amounted to 1,842,000
in 1840, would reach 2,334,000 in 1841. It is the signal merit
of Sir Robert Peel that he terminated this era of private distress
and public deficits. He accomplished this task partly by
economical administration for no minister ever valued economy
more and partly by a reform of the financial system, effected
in three great budgets. In the budget of 1842 Sir Robert Peel
terminated the deficit by reviving the income tax. The proceeds
of the tax, which was fixed at ;d. in the , and was granted in
the first instance for three years, were more than sufficient to
secure this object. Sir Robert used the surplus to reform the
whole customs tariff. The duties on raw materials, he proposed,
should never exceed 5%, the duties on partly manufactured
articles 12%, and the duties on manufactured articles 20% of
their value. At the same time he reduced the duties on stage
coaches, on foreign and colonial coffee, on foreign and colonial
timber, and repealed the export duties on British manufactures.
The success of this budget in stimulating consumption and in
promoting trade induced Sir Robert Peel to follow it up in 1845
with an even more remarkable proposal. Instead of allowing the
income tax to expire, he induced parliament to continue it for
a further period, and with the resources which were thus placed
at his disposal he purged the tariff of various small duties which
produced little revenue, and had been imposed for purposes of
protection. He swept away all the duties on British exports;
he repealed the duties on glass, on cotton wool, and still further
reduced the duties on foreign and colonial sugar. This budget
was a much greater step towards free trade than the budget of
1842. The chief object in his third budget in 1846 the reduc-
tion of the duty on corn to is. a quarter was necessitated by
causes which will be immediately referred to. But it will be
convenient at once to refer to its other features. Sir Robert
Peel told the house that, in his previous budgets, he had given
the manufacturers of the country free access to the raw materials
which they used. He was entitled in return to call upon them
to relinquish the protection which they enjoyed. He decided,
therefore, to reduce the protective duties on cotton, woollen, silk,
metal and other goods, as well as on raw materials still liable to
heavy taxation, such as timber and tallow. As the policy of
1842 and 1845 had proved unquestionably successful in stimu-
lating trade, he proposed to extend it to agriculture. He
reduced the duties on the raw materials which the farmers used,
such as seed and maize, and in return he called on them to give
up the duties on cattle and meat, to reduce largely the duties
on butter, cheese and hops, and to diminish the duty on corn by
gradual stages to is. a quarter. In making these changes Sir
Robert Peel avowed that it was his object to make the country
a cheap one to live in. There is no doubt that they were followed
by a remarkable development of British trade. In the twenty-
seven years from 1815 to 1842 the export trade of Great Britain
diminished from 49,600,000 to 47,280,000; while in the
twenty-seven years which succeeded 1842 it increased from
47,280,000 to nearly 190,000,000. These figures are a simple
and enduring monument to the minister's memory. It is fair
to add that the whole increase was not due to free trade. It was
partly attributable to the remarkable development of com-
munications which marked this period.
Two other financial measures of ^reat importance were
accomplished in Sir Robert Peel's ministry. In 1844 some
250,000,000 of the national debt still bore an interest of 3!%.
The improvement in the credit of the country enabled the
government to reduce the interest on the stock to 3!% for the
succeeding ten years, and to 3 % afterwards. This conversion,
which effected an immediate saving of 625,000, and an ultimate
saving of 1,250,000 a year, was by far the most important
measure which had hitherto been applied to the debt; and no
operation on the same scale was attempted for more than forty
years. In the same year the necessity of renewing the charter
of the Bank of England afforded Sir Robert Peel an opportunity
of reforming the currency. He separated the issue department
from the banking department of the bank, and decided that in
future it should only be at liberty to issue notes against (i) the
debt of 14,000,000 due to it from the government, and (2) any
bullion actually in its coffers. Few measures of the past century
have been the subject of more controversy than this famous act,
and at one time its repeated suspension in periods of financial
crises seemed to suggest the necessity of its amendment. But
opinion on the whole has vindicated its wisdom, and it has
survived all the attacks which have been made upon it.
The administration of Sir Robert Peel is also remarkable for
its Irish policy. The Irish, under O'Connell, had constantly
supported the Whig ministry of Lord Melbourne. /re / Md
But their alliance, or understanding, with the Whigs
had not procured them all the results which they had expected
from it. The two great Whig measures, dealing with the church
and the municipalities, had only been passed after years of
controversy, and in a shape which deprived them of many
expected advantages. Hence arose a notion in Ireland that
nothing was to be expected from a British parliament, and hence
began a movement for the repeal of the union which had been
accomplished in 1801. This agitation, which smouldered during
the reign of the Whig ministry, was rapidly revived when Sir
Robert Peel entered upon office. The Irish contributed large
sums, which were known as repeal rent, to the cause, and they
held monster meetings in various parts of Ireland to stimulate
the demand for repeal. The ministry met this campaign by
coercive legislation regulating the use of arms, by quartering
large bodies of troops in Ireland, and by prohibiting a great
meeting at Clontarf, the scene of Brian Boru's victory, in the
immediate neighbourhood of Dublin. They further decided
in 1843 to place O'Connell and some of the leading agitators on
their trial for conspiracy and sedition. O'Connell was tried
before a jury chosen from a defective panel, was convicted on
an indictment which contained many counts, and the court
passed sentence without distinguishing between these counts.
1841-1848!
ENGLISH HISTORY
561
These irregularities induced the House of Lords to reverse the
judgment, and its reversal did much to prevent mischief.
O'Conncll's illness, which resulted in his death in 1847, tended
also to establish peace. Sir Robert Peel wisely endeavoured to
stifle agitation by making considerable concessions to Irish
sentiment. He increased the grant which was made to the
Roman Catholic College at Maynooth; he established three
colleges in the north, south and west of Ireland for the unde-
nominational education of the middle classes; he appointed
a commission the Devon commission, as it was called, from the
name of the nobleman who presided over it to investigate the
conditions on which Irish land was held; and, after the report
of the commission, he introduced, though he failed to carry, a
measure for remedying some of the grievances of the Irish
tenants. These wise concessions might possibly have had
some effect in pacifying Ireland, if, in the autumn of
1845, they had not been forgotten in the presence of
a disaster which suddenly fell on that unhappy country. The
potato, which was the sole food of at least half the people of an
overcrowded island, failed, and a famine of unprecedented
proportions was obviously imminent. Sir Robert Peel, whose
original views on protection had been rapidly yielding to the
arguments afforded by the success of his own budgets, concluded
that it was impossible to provide for the necessities of Ireland
without suspending the corn laws; and that, if they were once
suspended, it would be equally impossible to restore them. He
failed, however, to convince two prominent mfimbers of his
cabinet Lord Stanley and the duke of Buccleuch that pro-
tection must be finally abandoned, and considering it hopeless
to persevere with a disunited cabinet he resigned office. On
Sir Robert's resignation the queen sent for Lord John Russell,
who had led the Liberal party in the House of Commons with
conspicuous ability for more than ten years, and charged him
with the task of forming a new ministry. Differences, which
it proved impossible to remove, between two prominent Whigs
Lord Palmcrston and Lord Grey made the task impracticable,
and after an interval Sir Robert Peel consented to resume power.
Sir Robert Peel was probably aware that his fall had been only
postponed. In the four years and a half during which his
ministry had lasted he had done much to estrange his party.
They said, with some truth, that, whether his measures were
right or wrong, they were opposed to the principles which he
had been placed in power to support. The general election
of 1841 had been mainly fought on the rival policies of
protection and free trade. The country had decided for
protection, and Sir R. Peel had done more than all his pre-
decessors to give it free trade. The Conservative party, more-
over, was closely allied with the church, and Sir Robert had
offended the church by giving an increased endowment to
Maynooth, and by establishing undenominational colleges
" godless colleges " as they were called in Ireland. The
Conservatives were, therefore, sullenly discontented with the
conduct of their leader. They were lashed into positive fury
by the proposal which he was now making to abolish the corn
laws. Lord George Bentinck, who, in his youth, had been
private secretary to Canning, but who in his maturer years had
devoted more time to the turf than to politics, placed himself
at their head. He was assisted by a remarkable man Benjamin
Disraeli who joined great abilities to great ambition, and who,
embittered by Sir Robert Peel's neglect to appoint him to office,
had already displayed his animosity to the minister. The policy
on which Sir Robert Peel resolved facilitated attack. For the
minister thought it necessary, while providing against famine
by repealing the corn laws, to ensure the preservation of order
by a new coercion bill. The financial bill and the coercion bill
were both pressed forward, and each gave opportunities for
discussion and, what was then new in parliament, for obstruction.
At last, on the very night on which the fiscal proposals of the
ministers were accepted by the Lords, the coercion bill was
defeated in the Commons by a combination of Whigs, radicals
and protectionists; and Sir R. Peel, worn out with a protracted
struggle, placed his resignation in the queen's hands.
Thus fell the great minister, who perhaps had conferred more
benefits on his country than any of his predecessors. The
external policy of his ministry had been almost as
remarkable as its domestic programme. When he
accepted office the country was on the eve of a great p,,ik.
disaster in India; it was engaged in a serious dispute
with the United States; and its relations with France were so
strained that the two great countries of western Europe seemed
unlikely to be able to settle their differences without war. In
the earlier years of his administration the disaster in Afghanistan
was repaired in a successful campaign; and Lord Ellenborough,
who was sent over to replace Lord Auckland as governor-general,
increased the dominion and responsibilities of the East India
Company by the unscrupulous but brilliant policy which led
to the conquest of Sind. The disputes with the United States
were satisfactorily composed; and not only were the differences
with France terminated, but a perfect understanding was formed
between the two countries, under which Guizot, the prime
minister of France, and Lord Aberdeen, the foreign minister of
England, agreed to compromise all minor questions for the sake
of securing the paramount object of peace. The good under-
standing was so complete that a disagreeable incident in the
Sandwich Islands, in which the injudicious conduct of a French
agent very nearly* precipitated hostilities, was amicably settled;
and the ministry had the satisfaction of knowing that, if their
policy had produced prosperity at home, it had also maintained
peace abroad.
On Sir R. Peel's resignation the queen again sent for Lord
John Russell. The difficulties which had prevented his forming
a ministry in the previous year were satisfactorily arranged,
and Lord Palmerston accepted the seals of the foreign office,
while Lord Grey was sent to the colonial office. The history of
the succeeding years was destined, however, to prove that Lord
Grey had had solid reasons for objecting to Lord Palmerston's
return to his old post; for, whatever judgment may ultimately
be formed on Lord Palmerston's foreign policy, there can be
little doubt that it did not tend to the maintenance of peace.
The first occasion on which danger was threatened arose im-
mediately after the installation of the new ministry on the
question of the Spanish marriages. The queen of The
Spain, Isabella, was a young girl still in her teens; the Spanish
heir to the throne was her younger sister, the infanta mar -
Fernanda. Diplomacy had long been occupied with
the marriages of these children; and Lord Aberdeen had
virtually accepted the principle, which the French government
had laid down, that a husband for the queen should be found
among the descendants ot 'Philip V., and that her sister's marriage
to the due de Montpensier a son of Louis Philippe should
not be celebrated till the queen was married and had issue.
While agreeing to this compromise, Lord Aberdeen declared
that he regarded the Spanish marriages as a Spanish, and not as
a European question, and that, if it proved impossible to find a
suitable consort for the queen among the descendants of Philip
V., Spain must be free to choose a prince for her throne elsewhere.
The available descendants of Philip V. were the two sons of Don
Francis, the younger brother of Don Carlos, and of these the
French government was in favour of the elder, while the British
government preferred the younger brother. Lord Palmerston
strongly objected to the prince whom the French government
supported; and, almost immediately after acceding to office,
he wrote a despatch in which he enumerated the various candi-
dates for the queen of Spain's hand, including Prince Leopold
of Saxe-Coburg, a near relation of the prince consort, among the
number. Louis Philippe regarded this despatch as a departure
from the principle on which he had agreed with Lord Aberdeen,
and at once hurried on the simultaneous marriages of the queen
with the French candidate, and of her sister with the due de
Montpensier. His action broke up the entente cordiale which
had been established between Guizot and Lord Aberdeen.
The second occasion on which Lord Palmerston's vigorous
diplomacy excited alarm arose out of the revolution which broke
out almost universally in Europe in 1848. A rising in Hungary
5 6 2
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1847-1851
was suppressed by Austria with Russian assistance, and after
its suppression many leading Hungarians took refuge in Turkish
territory. Austria and Russia addressed demands to the
Porte for their surrender. Lord Palmerston determined to sup-
port the Porte in its refusal to give up these exiles, and actually
sent the British fleet to the Dardanelles with this object. His
success raised the credit of Great Britain and his own reputation.
The presence of the British fleet, however, at the Dardanelles
suggested to him the possibility of settling another long-standing
controversy. For years British subjects settled in Greece had
raised complaints against the Greek government. In particular
Don Pacifico, a Jew, but a native of Gibraltar, com-
Pacinco. plained that, at a riot, in which his house had been
attacked, he had lost jewels, furniture and papers
which he alleged to be worth more than 30,000. As Lord
Palmerston was unable by correspondence to induce the Greek
government to settle claims of this character, he determined to
enforce them ; and by his orders a large number of Greek vessels
were seized and detained by the British fleet. The French
government tendered its good offices to compose the dispute,
and an arrangement was actually arrived at between Lord
Palmerston and the French minister in London. Unfortunately,
before its terms reached Greece, the British minister at Athens
had ordered the resumption of hostilities, afid had compelled
the Greek government to submit to more humiliating conditions.
News of this settlement excited the strongest feelings both in
Paris and London. In Paris, Prince Louis Napoleon, who had
acceded to the presidency of the French republic, decided on
recalling his representative from the British court. In London
the Lords passed a vote of censure on Lord Palmerston's pro-
ceedings; and the Commons only sustained the minister by
adopting a resolution approving in general terms the principles
on which the foreign policy of the country had been conducted.
In pursuing the vigorous policy which characterized his
tenure of the foreign office, Lord Palmerston frequently omitted
to consult his colleagues in the cabinet, the prime
minister, or the queen. In the course of 1849 Her
missed. Majesty formally complained to Lord John Russell
that important despatches were sent off without her
knowledge; and an arrangement was made under which Lord
Palmerston undertook to submit every despatch to the queen
through the prime minister. In 1850, after the Don Pacifico
debate, the queen repeated these commands in a much stronger
memorandum. But Lord Palmerston, though all confidence
between himself and the court was destroyed, continued in office.
In the autumn of 1851 the queen was much annoyed at hearing
that he had received a deputation at the foreign office, which
had waited on him to express sympathy with the Hungarian
refugees, and to denounce the conduct of " the despots and
tyrants " of Russia and Austria, and that he had, in his reply,
expressed his gratification at the demonstration. If the queen
had had her way, Lord Palmerston would have been removed
from the foreign office after this incident. A few days later the
coup d'etat in Paris led to another dispute. The cabinet decided
to do nothing that could wear the appearance of interference
in the internal affairs of France; but Lord Palmerston, in con-
versation with the French minister in London, took upon himself
to approve the bold and decisive step taken by the president.
The ministry naturally refused to tolerate this conduct, and
Lord Palmerston was summarily rernoved from his office.
The removal of Lord Palmerston led almost directly to the
fall of the Whig government. Before relating, however, the
exact occurrences which produced its defeat, it is necessary to
retrace our steps and describe the policy which it had pursued
in internal matters during the six years in which it had been in
power. Throughout that period the Irish famine had been its
chief anxiety and difficulty. Sir Robert Peel had attempted
to deal with it (i) by purchasing large quantities of Indian corn,
which he had retailed at low prices in Ireland, and (2) by enabling
the grand juries to employ the people on public works, which were
to be paid out of moneys advanced by the state, one-half being
ultimately repayable by the locality. These measures were not
entirely successful. It was found, in practice, that the sale of
Indian corn at low prices by the government checked the efforts
of private individuals to supply food; and that the
offer of comparatively easy work to the poor at the famine.
cost of the public, prevented their seeking harder
private work either in Ireland or in Great Britain. The new
government, with this experience before it, decided on trusting
to private enterprise to supply the necessary food, and on throw-
ing the whole cost of the works which the locality might under-
take on loca.1 funds. If the famine had been less severe, this
policy might possibly have succeeded. Universal want, how-
ever, paralysed every one. The people, destitute of other means
of livelihood, crowded to the relief works. In the beginning of
1847 nearly 750,000 persons or nearly one person out of every
ten in Ireland were so employed. With such vast multitudes
to relieve, it proved impracticable to exact the labour which
was required as a test of destitution. The roads, which it was
decided to make, were blocked by the labourers employed upon
them, and by the stones, which the labourers were supposed
to crush for their repair. In the presence of this difficulty the
government decided, early in 1847, gradually to discontinue the
relief works, and to substitute for them relief committees charged
with the task of feeding the people. At one time no less than
3,000,000 persons more than one-third of the entire population
of Ireland were supported by these committees. At the same
time it decided on adopting two measures of a more permanent
character. The poor law of 1838 had made no provision for the
relief of the poor outside the workhouse, and outdoor relief was
sanctioned by an act of 1847. Irish landlords complained that
their properties, ruined by the famine, and encumbered by the
extravagances of their predecessors, could not bear the cost of
this new poor law; and the ministry introduced and carried
a measure enabling the embarrassed owners of life estates to
sell their property and discharge their liabilities. It is the
constant misfortune of Ireland that the measures intended for
her relief aggravate her distress. The encumbered estates act,
though it substituted a solvent for an insolvent proprietary,
placed the Irish tenants at the mercy of landlords of whom they
had no previous knowledge, who were frequently absentees,
who bought the land as a matter of business, and who dealt
with it on business principles by raising the rent. The new
poor law, by throwing the maintenance of the poor on the soil,
encouraged landlords to extricate themselves from their responsi-
bilities by evicting their tenants. Evictions were made on a
scale which elicited from Sir Robert Peel an expression of the
deepest abhorrence. The unfortunate persons driven from their
holdings and forced to seek a refuge in the towns, in England,
or when they could afford it in the United States, carried
with them everywhere the seeds of disease, the constant hand-
maid of famine.
Famine, mortality and emigration left their mark on Ireland.
In four years, from 1845 to 1849, its population decreased from
8,295,000 to 7,256,000, or by more than a million persons; and
the decline which took place at that time went on to the end of
the century. The population of Ireland in 1901 had decreased
to 4,457,000 souls. This fact is the more remarkable, because
Ireland is almost the only portion of the British empire, or
indeed of the civilized world, where such a circumstance has
occurred. We must go to countries like the Asiatic provinces
of Turkey, devastated by Ottoman rule, to find such a diminution
in the numbers of the people as was seen in Ireland during the
last half of the igth century. It was probably inevitable that
the distress of Ireland should have been followed by a renewal
of Irish outrages. A terrible series of agrarian crimes was com-
mitted in the autumn of 1847; and the ministry felt compelled,
in consequence, to strengthen its hands by a new
j v. j- !_ TT u Rebellion
measure of coercion, and by suspending the Habeas oti84S.
Corpus Act in Ireland. The latter measure at once
brought to a crisis the so-called rebellion of 1848, for his share
in which Smith O'Brien, an Irish member of parliament, was
convicted of high treason. The government, however, did not
venture to carry out the grim sentence which the law still applied
ENGLISH HISTORY
563
to traitors, and introduced an act enabling it to commute the
death penalty to transportation. The " insurrection " had from
the first proved abortive. With Smith O'Brien's transportation
it practically terminated.
In the meanwhile the difficulties which the government was
experiencing from the Irish famine had been aggravated by a
grave commercial crisis in England. In the autumn of 1847
a series of failures in the great commercial centres created a panic
in the city of London, which forced consols down to 78, and
induced the government to take upon itself the responsibility
of suspending the Bank Charter Act. That step, enabling the
directors of the Bank of England to issue notes unsecured by
bullion, had the effect of gradually restoring confidence. But a
grave commercial crisis of this character is often attended with
other than financial consequences. The stringency of the money
market increases the distress of the industrial classes by diminish-
ing the demand for work; and, when labour suffers, political
agitation flourishes. Early in 1848, moreover, revolutions on
the continent produced a natural craving for changes at home.
Louis Philippe was driven out of Paris, the emperor of Austria
was driven out of Vienna, the Austrian soldiery had to withdraw
from Milan, and even in Berlin the crown had to make terms
with the people. While thrones were falling or tottering in
every country in Europe, it was inevitable that excitement and
agitation should prevail in Great Britain. The Chartists, reviving
the machinery which they had endeavoured to employ in 1839,
decided on preparing a monster petition to parliament, which
was to be escorted to Westminster by a monster procession.
Their preparations excited general alarm, and on the invitation
^^^_ of the government no less than 170,000 special con-
stables were sworn in to protect life and property
against a rabble. By the judicious arrangements, however,
which were made by the duke of Wellington, the peace of the
metropolis was secured. The Chartists were induced to abandon
the procession which had caused so much alarm, and the monster
petition was carried in a cab to the House of Commons. There
it was mercilessly picked to pieces by a select committee. It
was found that, instead of containing nearly 6,000,000 signatures,
as its originators had boasted, less than 2,000,000 names were
attached to it. Some of the names, moreover, were obviously
fictitious, or even absurd. The exposure of these facts turned
the whole thing into ridicule, and gave parliament an excuse
for postponing measures of organic reform which might otherwise
have been brought forward.
If the ministry thus abstained from pressing forward a large
scheme of political reform, it succeeded in carrying two measures
of the highest commercial and social importance. In
1849 it supplemented the free trade policy, which
Sir Robert Peel had developed, by the repeal of the
Navigation Acts. Briefly stated, these acts, which had been
originated during the Protectorate of Cromwell, and continued
after the Restoration, reserved the whole coasting trade of the
country for British vessels and British seamen, and much of the
foreign trade for British vessels, commanded and chiefly manned
by British subjects. The acts, therefore, were in the strictest
sense protective, but they were also designed to increase the
strength of Great Britain at sea, by maintaining large numbers
of British seamen. They had been defended by Adam Smith on
the ground that defence was " of much more importance than
opulence," and by the same reasoning they had been described
by John Stuart Mill as, " though economically disadvantageous,
politically expedient." The acts, however, threw a grave
burden on British trade and British shipowners. Their provisions
by restricting competition naturally tended to raise freights,
and by restricting employment made it difficult for shipowners
to man their vessels. Accordingly the government wisely
determined on their repeal; and one of the last and greatest
battles between Free Trade and Protection was fought over the
question. The second reading of the government bill was carried
in the House of Lords by a majority of only ten: it would not
have been carried at all if the government had not secured a
much larger number of proxies than their opponents could obtain.
If the repeal of the Navigation Acts constituted a measure of
the highest commercial importance, the passage of the Ten
Hours Bill in 1847 marked the first great advance in
factory legislation. Something, indeed, had already
been done to remedy the evils arising from the em-
ployment of women and very young children in factories and
mines. In 1833 Lord Ashley, better known as Lord Shaftesbury,
had carried the first important Factory Act. In 1842 he had
succeeded, with the help of the striking report of a royal com-
mission, in inducing parliament to prohibit the employment of
women and of boys under ten years of age in mines. And in
1843 Sir James Graham, who was home secretary in Sir Robert
Peel's administration, had been compelled by the pressure of
public opinion to introduce a measure providing for the education
of children employed in factories, and for limiting the hours of
work of children and young persons. The educational clauses
of this bill were obviously framed in the interests of the Church
of England, and raised a heated controversy which led to the
abandonment of the measure; and in the following year Sir
James Graham introduced a new bill dealing with the labour
question alone. Briefly stated, his proposal was that no child
under nine years of age should be employed in a factory, and that
no young person under eighteen should be employed for more
than twelve hours a day. This measure gave rise to the famous
controversy on the ten hours clause, which commenced in 1844
and was protracted till 1847. Lord Ashley and the factory
reformers contended, on the one hand, that ten hours were long
enough for any person to work; their opponents maintained,
on the contrary, that the adoption of the clause would injure
the working-classes by lowering the rate of wages, and ruin the
manufacturers by exposing them to foreign competition. In
1847 the reform was at last adopted. It is a remarkable fact
that it was carried against the views of the leading statesmen on
both sides of the House. It was the triumph of common sense
over official arguments.
During the first four years of Lord John Russell's government,
his administration had never enjoyed any very large measure
of popular support, but it had been partly sustained
by the advocacy of Sir Robert Peel. The differences
which estranged Sir Robert from his old supporters
were far greater than those which separated him from the Whigs,
and the latter were therefore constantly able to rely on his
assistance. In the summer of 1850, however, a lamentable
accident a fall from his horse deprived the country of the
services of its great statesman. His death naturally affected
the position of parties. The small remnant of able men, indeed,
who had been associated with him in his famous administration,
still maintained an attitude of neutrality. But the bulk of the
Conservative party rallied under the lead of Lord Stanley
(afterwards Derby) in the House of Lords, and gradually sub-
mitted to, rather than accepted, the lead of Disraeli in the
House of Commons.
In the autumn which succeeded Sir Robert Peel's death, an
event which had not been foreseen agitated the country and
produced a crisis. During the years -which had sue-
ceeded the Reform Bill a great religious movement ,^ emeat .
had influenced politics both in England and Scotland.
In England, a body of eminent men at Oxford of whom J. H.,
afterwards Cardinal, Newman was the chief, but who numbered
among their leaders Hurrell Froude, the brother of the historian,
and Keble, the author of the Christian Year endeavoured to
prove that the doctrines of the Church of England were identical
with those of the primitive Catholic Church, and that every
Catholic doctrine might be held by those who were within its
pale. This view was explained in a remarkable series of tracts,
which gave their authors the name of Tractarians. The most
famous of these, and the last of the series, Tract XC., was pub-
lished three years after the queen's accession to the throne. In
Scotland, the Presbyterian Church mainly under the guidance
of Dr Chalmers, one of the most eloquent preachers of the century
was simultaneously engaged in a contest with the state on the
subject of ecclesiastical patronage. Both movements had this
Death of
PteL
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1843-1852
in common, that they indicated a revival of religious energy,
and aimed at vindicating the authority of the church, and resist-
ing the interference of the state in church matters. The Scottish
movement led to the disruption of the Church of Scotland and the
formation of the Free Church in 1843. The Tractarian movement
was ultimately terminated by the secession of Newman and many
of his associates from the Church of England, and their admission
to the Church of Rome. These secessions raised a feeling of
alarm throughout England. The people, thoroughly Protestant,
were excited by the proofs which they thought were afforded
that the real object of the Tractarians was to reconcile
England with Rome; and practices which are now regarded as
venial or even praiseworthy such as the wearing of the surplice
in the pulpit, and the institution of the weekly offertory were
denounced because they were instituted by the Tractarians, and
were regarded as insidious devices to lead the country Romewards.
The sympathies of the Whigs, and especially of the Whig prime
minister, Lord John Russell, were with the people; and Lord
John displayed his dislike to the Romanizing tendencies of the
Tractarians by appointing Renn Dickson Hampden whose
views had been formally condemned by the Hebdomadal Board
at Oxford to the bishopric of Hereford. The High Church party
endeavoured to oppose the appointment at every stage; but
their attempts exposed them to a serious defeat. The courts
held that, though the appointment of a bishop by the crown
required confirmation in the archbishop's court, the confirmation
was a purely ministerial act which could not be refused. The
effort which the High Church party had made to resist Dr
Hampden's appointment had thus resulted in showing conclu-
sively that authority resided in the crown, and not in the arch-
bishop. It so happened that about the same time this view was
confirmed by another judicial decision. The lord chancellor
presented the Rev. G. C. Gorham to a living in Devonshire; and
Dr Phillpotts, the bishop of Exeter, declined to institute him,
on the ground that he held heretical views on the subject of
baptism. The court of arches upheld the bishop's decision.
The finding of the court, however, was reversed by the privy
council, and its judgment dealt a new blow at the Tractarian
party. For it again showed that authority even in doctrine
resided in the crown and not in the church. Within a few
months of this famous decision the pope perhaps encouraged
by the activity and despondency of the High Church party
issued a brief " for re-establishing and extending the Catholic
faith in England," and proceeded to divide England and Wales
into twelve sees. One of them Westminster was made an
archbishopric, and the new dignity was conferred on Nicholas
Patrick Stephen Wiseman, who was almost immediately after-
wards created cardinal. The publication of this brief caused
much excitement throughout the country, which was fanned by
a letter from the prime minister to the bishop of Durham, con-
demning the brief as " insolent and insidious " and " inconsistent
with the queen's supremacy, with the rights of our bishops and
clergy, and with the spiritual independence of the nation."
Somewhat unnecessarily the prime minister went on to condemn
the clergymen of the Church of England who had subscribed the
Thirty-nine Articles, " who have been the most forward in
leading their own flocks, step by step, to the very edge of the
precipice."
In accordance with the promise of Lord John Russell's letter,
the ministry, at the opening of the session of 1851, introduced
a measure forbidding the assumption of territorial
ticai r/tfes ti^ 68 by the Priests and bishops of the Roman Catholic
Bill. Church, declaring all gifts made to them and all acts
done by them under these titles null and void, and
forfeiting to the crown all property bequeathed to them. The
bill naturally encountered opposition from many Liberals,
while it failed to excite any enthusiasm among Conservatives,
who thought its remedies inadequate. In the middle of the
debates upon it the government was defeated on another question
a proposal to reduce the county franchise and, feeling that
it could no longer rely on the support of the House of Commons,
tendered its resignation. But Lord Stanley, whom the queen
entrusted with the duty -of forming a new administration, was
compelled to decline the task, and Lord John resumed office.
Mild as the original Ecclesiastical Titles Bill had been thought,
the new edition of it, which was introduced after the restoration
of the Whigs to power, was still milder. Though, after pro-
tracted debates, it at last became law, it satisfied nobody. Its
provisions, as was soon found, could be easily evaded, and the
bill, which had caused so much excitement, and had nearly
precipitated the fall of a ministry, remained a dead letter. The
government, in fact, was experiencing the truth that, if a defeated
ministry may be occasionally restored to place, it cannot be
restored to power. The dismissal of Lord Palmerston from the
foreign office in 1851 further increased the embarrassments of
the government. In February 1852 it was defeated on a proposal
to revive the militia, and resigned.
The circumstances which directly led to the defeat of the
Whigs were, in one sense, a consequence of the revolutionary
wave which had swept over Europe in 1848. The
fall of Louis Philippe in that year created a panic in scare
Great Britain. Men thought that the unsettled state
of France made war probable, and they were alarmed at the
defenceless condition of England. Lord Palmerston, speaking
in 1845, had declared that " steam had bridged the Channel ";
and the duke of Wellington had addressed a letter to Sir John
Burgoyne, in which he had demonstrated that the country was
not in a position to resist an invading force. The panic was so
great that the ministry felt it necessary to make exceptional
provisions for allaying it. Lord John Russell decided on asking
parliament to sanction increased armaments, and to raise the
income tax to is. in the pound in order to pay for them. The
occasion deserves to be recollected as one on which a prime
minister, who was not also chancellor of the exchequer, has
himself proposed the budget of the year. But it was still more
memorable because the remedy which Lord John proposed at once
destroyed the panic which had suggested it. A certain increase
of the income tax to a shilling seemed a much more serious
calamity than the uncertain prospect of a possible invasion.
The estimates were recast, the budget was withdrawn, and the
nation was content to dispense with any addition to its military
and naval strength. Events in France, in the meanwhile, moved
with railway speed. Louis Napoleon became president of the
French Republic: in 1852 he became emperor of the French.
The new emperor, indeed, took pains to reassure a troubled
continent that " the empire was peace." The people insisted
on believing and, as the event proved, rightly that the empire
was war. Notwithstanding the success of the Great Exhibition
of 1851, which was supposed to inaugurate a new reign of peace,
the panic, which had been temporarily allayed in 1848, revived
at the close of 1851, and the government endeavoured to
allay it by reconstituting the militia. There were two possible
expedients. An act of 1 7 5 7 had placed under the direct authority
of the crown a militia composed of men selected in each parish
by ballot, liable to be called out for active service, and to be
placed under military law. But the act had been supplemented
by a series of statutes passed between 1808 and 1812, which had
provided a local militia, raised, like the regular militia, by ballot,
but, unlike the latter, only liable for service for the suppression
of riots, or in the event of imminent invasion. Lord John
Russell's government, forced to do something by the state of
public opinion, but anxious from the experience of 1848 to
make that something moderate, decided on reviving the local
militia. Lord Palmerston at once suggested that the regular
and not the local militia should be revived; and, in a small house
of only 265 members, he succeeded in carrying a resolution to
that effect. He had, in this way, what he called his " tit for tat "
with Lord John; and the queen, accepting her minister's
resignation, sent for Lord Derby for Lord Stanley had now
succeeded to this title and charged him with the task of forming
a ministry.
The government which Lord Derby succeeded in forming
was composed almost exclusively of the men who had rebelled
against Sir Robert Peel in 1845. It was ' ec > m t ne House of
ENGLISH HISTORY
565
l-or*
/Vr.
Commons by the brilliant, but somewhat unscrupulous states-
man who had headed the revolt. With the exception of
Lord Derby and one other man, its members had
no experience of high office; and it had no chance
of commanding a majority of the House of Commons
in the existing parliament. It owed its position to the divisions
of its opponents. Profiting by their experience, it succeeded
in framing and passing a measure reconstituting the regular
militia, which obtained general approval. It is perhaps worth
observing that it maintained the machinery of a ballot, but
reserved it only in case experience should prove that it was
necessary. Voluntary enlistment under the new Militia Bill
was to be the rule: compulsory service was only to be resorted
to if voluntary enlistment should fail. This success, to a certain
extent, strengthened the position of the new ministry. It was
obvious, however, that its stability would ultimately be deter-
mined by its financial policy. Composed of the men who had
resisted the free trade measures of the previous decade, its fate
depended on its attitude towards free trade. In forming his
administration Lord Derby had found it necessary to declare
that, though he -was still in favour of a tax on corn, he should
take no steps in this direction till the country had received an
opportunity of expressing its opinion. His leader in the House
of Commons went much further, and declared that the time had
gone by for reverting to protection. The view which Disraeli
thus propounded in defiance of his previous opinions was con-
firmed by the electors on the dissolution of parliament. Though
the new government obtained some increased strength from the
result of the polls, the country, it was evident, had no intention
of abandoning the policy of free trade, which by this time, it was
dear, had conferred substantial benefits on all classes. When
the new parliament met in the autumn of 1852, it was at once
plain that the issue would be determined on the rival merits
of the old and the new financial systems. Disraeli courted the
decision by at once bringing forward the budget, which custom,
and perhaps convenience, would have justified him in postponing
till the following spring. His proposal in which he avowedly
threw over his friends on the ground that " he had greater
subjects to consider than the triumph of obsolete opinions "
was, in effect, an attempt to conciliate his old supporters by
a policy of doles, and to find the means for doing so by the
increased taxation of the middle classes. He offered to relieve
the shipping interest by transferring some of the cost of lighting
the coasts to the Consolidated Fund; the West India interest
by sanctioning the refining of sugar in bond; and the landed
classes by reducing the malt tax by one-half, and by repealing
the old war duty on hops. He suggested that the cost of these
measures should be defrayed by extending the income tax to
Ireland to industrial incomes of 100 and to permanent incomes
of 50 year, as well as by doubling the house tax, and extend-
ing it to all 10 householders. The weight, therefore, of these
measures was either purposely or unintentionally thrown mainly
on persons living in houses worth from 10 to 20 a year, or on
persons in receipt of incomes from 50 to 150 a year. This
defect in the budget was exposed in a great speech by Gladstone,
which did much to ensure the defeat of the scheme and the fall
of the ministry.
On the resignation of Lord Derby, the queen, anxious to
terminate a period of weak governments, decided on endeavour-
ing to combine in one cabinet the chiefs of the Whig
party and the followers of Sir Robert Peel. With this
view she sent both for Lord Aberdeen, who had held
the foreign office under Sir Robert, and for Lord Lansdowne,
who was the Nestor of the Whigs; and with Lord Lansdowne's
concurrence charged Lord Aberdeen with the task of forming a
government. In the new ministry Lord Aberdeen became first
lord of the treasury, Gladstone chancellor of the exchequer,
Lord John Russell foreign minister though he was almost
immediately replaced in the foreign office by Lord Clarendon,
and himself assumed the presidency of the council. Lord
Palmerston went to the home office. One other appointment
must also be mentioned. The secretary of state for the colonies
lludfct of
isa.
was also at that time secretary of state for war. No one in 1852,
however, regarded that office as of material importance, and it
was entrusted by Lord Aberdeen to an amiable and conscientious
nobleman, the duke of Newcastle.
The first session of the Aberdeen administration will be
chiefly recollected for the remarkable budget which Gladstone
brought forward. It constituted a worthy supplement
to the measures of 1842, 1845 and 1846. Gladstone
swept away the duty on one great necessary of life
soap; he repealed the duties on 123 other articles; he reduced
the duties on 133 others, among them that on tea; and he found
means for paying for these reforms and for the gradual reduction
and ultimate abolition of the income tax, which had become
very unpopular, by (i) extending the tax to incomes of 100 a
year; (2) an increase of the spirit duties; and (3) applying the
death duties to real property, and to property passing by settle-
ment. There can be little doubt that this great proposal was
one of ihe most striking which had ever been brought forward
in the House of Commons; there can also, unhappily, be no
doubt that its promises and intentions were frustrated by events
which proved too strong for its author. For Gladstone, in
framing his budget, had contemplated a continuance of peace,
and the country was, unhappily, already drifting into war.
For some years an obscure quarrel had been conducted at
Constantinople about the custody of the holy places at Jerusalem.
France, relying on a treaty concluded in the first half
of the 1 8th century, claimed the guardianship of these
places for the Latin Church. But the rights which
the Latin Church had thus obtained had practically fallen into
disuse, while the Greek branch of the Christian Church had
occupied and repaired the shrines which the Latins had neglected.
In the years which preceded 1853, however, France had shown
more activity in asserting her claims; and the new emperor of
the French, anxious to conciliate the church which had supported
his elevation to the throne, had a keen interest in upholding
them. If, for reasons of policy, the emperor had grounds for his
action, he had personal motives for thwarting the tsar of Russia;
for the latter potentate had been foolish enough, in recognizing
the second empire, to address its sovereign as " Mon Cher Ami,"
instead of, in the customary language of sovereigns, as "Monsieur
Mon Frere." Thus, at the close of 1852, and in the beginning
of 1853, Russia and France were both addressing opposite and
irreconcilable demands to the Porte, and France was already
talking of sending her fleet to the Dardanelles, while Russia was
placing an army corps on active service and despatching Prince
Menshikov on a special mission to Constantinople. So far the
quarrel which had occurred at the Porte was obviously one in
which Great Britain had no concern. The Aberdeen ministry,
however, thought it desirable that it should be represented in
the crisis by a strong man at Constantinople; and it selected
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe for the post, which he had filled in
former years with marked ability. Whatever merits Lord
Stratford possessed and he stands out in current diplomacy
as the one strong man whom England had abroad there was
no doubt that he had this disqualification: the emperor Nicholas
had refused some years before to receive him as ambassador at
St Petersburg, and Lord Stratford had resented, and never
forgiven, the discourtesy of this refusal. Lord Stratford soon
discovered that Prince Menshikov was the bearer of larger
demands, and that he was requiring the Porte to agree to a
treaty acknowledging the right of Russia to protect the Greek
Church throughout the Turkish dominions. By Lord Stratford's
advice the Porte while making the requisite concession respect-
ing the holy places refused to grant the new demand; and
Prince Menshikov thereupon withdrew from Constantinople.
The rejection of Prince Menshikov's ultimatum was followed
by momentous consequences. Russia or rather her tsar
resolved on the occupation of the Danubian principalities; the
British ministry though the quarrel did not directly concern
Great Britain sent a fleet to the Dardanelles and placed it
under Lord Stratford's orders. Diplomacy, however, made a
fresh attempt to terminate the dispute, and in July 1853 a note
566
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1853-1856
was agreed upon by the four neutral powers, France, Great
Britain, Austria and Prussia, which it was decided to present
to Constantinople and St Petersburg. This note, the adoption of
which would have ensured peace, was accepted at St Petersburg;
at Constantinople it was, unfortunately, rejected, mainly on Lord
Stratford's advice, and in opposition to his instructions from
home. Instead, however, of insisting on the adoption of the note
to which it had agreed, Lord Aberdeen's ministry recommended
the tsar to accept some amendments to it suggested by Lord
Stratford, which it was disposed to regard as unimportant. It
then discovered, however, that the tsar attached a meaning to
the original note differing from that which it had itself applied
to it, and in conjunction with France it thereupon ceased to
recommend the Vienna note as it was called for acceptance.
This decision separated the two western powers from Austria
and Prussia, who were disposed to think that Russia had done
all that could have been required of her in accepting the note
which the four powers had agreed upon.
It was obvious that the control of the situation was passing
from the hands of the cabinet at home into those of Lord Stratford
at Constantinople. The ambassador, in fact, had the great
advantage that he knew his own mind; the cabinet laboured
under the fatal disadvantage that it had, collectively, no mind.
Its chief, Lord Aberdeen, was dominated by a desire to preserve
peace; but he had not the requisite force to control the stronger
men who were nominally serving under him. Lord John Russell
was a little sore at his own treatment by his party. He thought
that he had a claim to the first place in the ministry, and he did
not, in consequence, give the full support to Lord Aberdeen
which the latter had a right to expect from him. Lord Palmerston,
on the other hand, had no personal grudge to nurture, but he was
convinced that the first duty of England was to support Turkey
and to resist Russia. He represented in the cabinet the views
which Lord Stratford was enforcing at Constantinople, and
step by step Lord Stratford, thus supported, drove the country
nearer and nearer to war.
In October the Porte, encouraged by the presence of the
British fleet in the Bosporus, took the bold step of summoning
the Russians to evacuate the principalities. Following up this
demand the Turkish troops attacked the Russian army, and
inflicted on it one or two sharp defeats. The Russians retaliated
by loosing their squadron from Sevastopol, and on the 3oth of
November it attacked and destroyed the Turkish fleet at Sinope.
The massacre of Sinope as it was rather inaccurately called
in Great Britain, for it is difficult to deny that it was a legitimate
act of a belligerent power created an almost irresistible demand
for war among the British people. Yielding to popular opinion,
the British ministry assented to a suggestion of the French
emperor that the fleets of the allied powers should enter the
Black Sea and " invite " every Russian vessel to return to
Sevastopol. The decision was taken at an unfortunate hour.
Diplomatists, pursuing their labours at Vienna, had
Crimean succee ded in drawing up a fresh note whichthey thought
might prove acceptable both at St Petersburg and at
Constantinople. This note was presented almost at the moment
the tsar learned that the French and British fleets had entered the
Black Sea, and the Russian government, instead of considering
it, withdrew its ministers from London and Paris; the French
and British ambassadors were thereupon withdrawn from St
Petersburg. An ultimatum was soon afterwards addressed to
Russia requiring her to evacuate the principalities, and war
began. In deciding on war the British government relied on
the capacity of its fleet, which was entrusted to the command
of Sir Charles Napier, to strike a great blow in the Baltic. The
fleet was despatched with extraordinary rejoicings, and amidst
loud and confident expressions of its certain triumph. As a
matter of fact it did very little. In the south of Europe, however,
the Turkish armies on the Danube, strengthened by the advice
of British officers, were more successful. The Russians were
forced to retire, and the principalities were evacuated. A prudent
administration might possibly have succeeded in stopping the
war at this point. But the temper of the country was by this
time excited, and it was loudly demanding something more than
a preliminary success. It was resolved to invade the Crimea
and attack the great arsenal, Sevastopol, whence the Russian
fleet had sailed to Sinope, and in September 1854 the allied
armies landed in the Crimea. On the 2oth the Russian army,
strongly posted on the banks of the Alma, was completely defeated,
and it is almost certain that, if the victory had been at once
followed up, Sevastopol would have fallen. The commanders
of the allied armies, however, hesitated to throw themselves
against the forts erected to the north of the town, and decided
on the hazardous task of marching round Sevastopol and attacking
it from the south. The movement was successfully carried out,
but the Allies again hesitated to attempt an immediate assault.
The Russians, who were advised by Colonel Todleben, the only
military man who attained a great reputation in the war, thus
gained time to strengthen their position by earthworks; and
the Allies found themselves forced, with scanty preparations, to
undertake a regular siege against an enemy whose force was
numerically superior to their own. In the early days of the
siege, indeed, the allied armies were twice in great peril. A
formidable attack on the 25th October on the British position
at Balaklava led to a series of encounters which displayed the
bravery of British troops, but did not enhance the reputation of
British commanders. A still more formidable sortie on the $th
of November was with difficulty repulsed at Inkerman. And
the Russians soon afterwards found, in the climate of the country,
a powerful ally. The allied armies, imperfectly organized, and
badly equipped for such a campaign, suffered severely from the
hardships of a Crimean winter. The whole expedition seemed
likely to melt away from want and disease.
The terrible condition of the army, vividly described in the
letters which the war correspondents of the newspapers sent home,
aroused strong feelings of indignation in Great Britain. When
parliament met Roebuck gave notice that he would move for
a committee of inquiry. Lord John Russell who had already
vainly urged in the cabinet that the duke of Newcastle should be
superseded, and the conduct of the war entrusted to a stronger
minister resigned office. His resignation was followed by the
defeat of the government, and Lord Aberdeen, thus driven from
power, was succeeded by Lord Palmerston. In selecting him
for the post, the queen undoubtedly placed her seal on the wish
of the country to carry out the war to the bitter end.
But it so happened that the formation of a new
ministry was accompanied by a fresh effort to make ministry.
terms of peace. Before the change of administration
a conference had been decided on, and Lord Palmerston
entrusted its management to Lord John Russell. While the
latter was on his way to Vienna an event occurred whiph seemed
at first to facilitate his task. The tsar, worn out with disappoint-
ment, suddenly died, and was succeeded by his son Alexander.
Unfortunately the conference failed, and the war went on for
another year. In September 1855 the allied troops succeeded
in obtaining possession of the southern side of Sevastopol, and
the emperor of the French, satisfied with this partial success, or
alarmed at the expense of the war, decided on withdrawing from
the struggle. The attitude of Napoleon made the conclusion
of peace only a question of time. In the beginning of 1856 a
congress to discuss the terms was assembled at Paris; in February
hostilities were suspended; and in April a treaty was concluded.
The peace set back the boundaries of Russia from the Danube
to the Pruth; it secured the free navigation of the first of these
rivers; it opened the Black Sea to ths commercial navies of the
world, closing it to vessels of war, and forbidding the establish-
ment of arsenals upon its shores. The last condition, to which
Great Britain attached most importance, endured for about
fourteen years. Peace without this provision could undoubtedly
have been secured at Vienna, and the prolongation of the war
from 1855 to 1856 only resulted in securing this arrangement for
a little more than one decade.
The Crimean War left other legacies behind it. The British
government had for some time regarded with anxiety the
gradual encroachments of Russia in central Asia. Russian
ENGLISH HISTORY
5 6 7
diplomacy was exerting an increasing influence in Persia, and
the latter had always coveted the city of Herat, which was
popularly regarded as the gate of India. In 1856 the Persian
government, believing that England had her hands fully occupied
in the Crimea, seized Herat, and, in consequence, a fresh war
in which a British army under Sir James Out ram rapidly secured
a victory broke out. The campaign, entered upon when
parliament was not in session, was unpopular in the country.
A grave constitutional question, which was ultimately settled
by legislation, was raised as to the right of the government to
undertake military operations beyond the boundaries of India
without the consent of parliament. But the incidents
of the Persian war were soon forgotten in the presence
of a sliM graver crisis; for in the following year, 1857,
the country suddenly found itself involved in war
with China, and face to face with one of the greatest dangers
which it has ever encountered the mutiny of the sepoy army in
India. The Chinese war arose from the seizure by the Chinese
authorities of a small vessel, the " Arrow " commanded by a
British subject , and at one time holding a licence (which, however,
had expired at the time of the seizure) from the British super-
intendent at Hongkong, and the detention of her crew on the
charge of piracy. Sir John Bowring, who represented Great
Britain in China, failing to secure the reparation and apology
which he demanded, directed the British admiral to bombard
Canton. Lord Palmerston's cabinet decided to approve and
support Sir John Bowring's vigorous action. Cobden, however,
brought forward a motion in the House of Commons condemning
these high-handed proceedings. He succeeded in securing the
co-operation of his own friends, of Lord John Russell, and of
other independent Liberals, as well as of the Conservative party,
and in inflicting a signal defeat on the government. Lord
Palmerston at once appealed from the House to the country.
The constituencies, imperfectly acquainted with the technical
issues involved in the dispute, rallied to the minister, who was
upholding British interests. Lord Palmerston obtained a
decisive victory, and returned to power apparently in irresistible
strength. Lord Elgin had already been sent to China with a
considerable force to support the demand for redress. On his
way thither he learned that the British in India were reduced
to the last extremities by the mutiny of the native army in
Bengal, and, on the application of Lord Canning, the governor-
general, he decided on diverting the troops, intended to bring
the Chinese to reason, to the more pressing duty of saving India
for the British crown.
During the years which had followed the accession of the
queen, the territories and responsibilities of the East India
Company had been considerably enlarged by the
annexation of Sind by Lord Ellenborough, the conquest
of the Punjab after two desperate military campaigns
under Lord Dalhousie, the conquest of Pegu, and the annexation
of Oudh. These great additions to the empire had naturally
imposed an increased strain on the Indian troops, while the
British garrison, instead of being augmented, had been depleted
to meet the necessities of the Russian war. Several circum-
stances, moreover, tended to propagate disaffection in the Indian
army. Indian troops operating outside the Company's dominions
were granted increased allowances, but these were automatically
reduced when conquest brought the provinces in which they
were serving within the British pale. The Sepoys again had
an ineradicable dislike to serve beyond the sea, and the invasion
of Pegu necessitated their transport by water to the scat of war.
Finally, the invention of a new rifle led to the introduction of a
cartridge which, though it was officially denied at the moment,
was in fact lubricated with a mixture of cow's fat and lard.
The Sepoys thought that their caste would be destroyed if they
touched the fat of the sacred cow or unclean pig; they were even
persuaded that the British government wished to destroy their
caste in order to facilitate their conversion to Christianity.
Isolated mutinies in Bengal were succeeded by much more serious
events at Cawnpore in Oudh. and at Meerut in the North-West
Provinces. From Meerut the mutineers, after some acts of
outrage and murder, moved on Delhi, the capital of the old
Mogul empire, which became the headquarters of the mutiny.
In Oudh the native regiments placed themselves under a Mahratlu
chief, Nana Sahib, by whose orders the British in Cawnpore,
including the women and children, were foully murdered. In
the summer of 1857 these events seemed to imperil British rule
in India. In the autumn the courage of the troops and the arrival
of reinforcements gradually restored the British cause. Delhi,
after a memorable siege, was at last taken by a brilliant assault.
Lucknow, where .. small British garrison was besieged in the
residency, was twice relieved, once temporarily by Sir James
Outram and General Havelock, and afterwards permanently
by Sir Colin Campbell, who had been sent out from England to
take the chief command. Subsequent military operations broke
up the remnants of the revolt, and in the beginning of 1858 the
authority of the queen was restored throughout India. The
mutiny, however, had impressed its lesson on the British people,
and, as the first consequence, it was decided to transfer the
government from the old East India Company to the crown.
Lord Palmerston's administration was defeated on another issue
before it succeeded in carrying the measure which it introduced
for the purpose, though Lord Derby's second ministry, which
succeeded it, was compelled to frame its proposals on somewhat
similar lines. The home government ot India was entrusted to a
secretary of state, with a council to assist him; and though the
numbers of the council have been reduced, the form of govern-
ment which was then established has endured.
The cause which led to the second fall of Lord Palmerston
was in one sense unexpected. Some Italian refugees living
in London, of whom Orsini was the chief, formed a oniai
design to assassinate the emperor of the French. On
the evening of i4th January 1858, while the emperor, accom-
panied by the empress, was driving to the opera, these men threw
some bombs under his carriage. The brutal attempt happily
failed. Neither the emperor nor the empress was injured by the
explosion, but the carriage in which they were driving was
wrecked, and a large number of persons who happened to be in
the street at the time were either killed or wounded. This
horrible outrage naturally created indignation in France, and
it unfortunately became plain that the conspiracy had been
hatched in England, and that the bombs had been manufactured
in Birmingham. On these facts becoming known, Count
Walewski, the chief of the French foreign office, who was united
by ties of blood to the emperor, called on the British government
to provide against the danger to which France was exposed.
" Ought the right of asylum to protect such a state of things? "
he asked. " Is hospitality due to assassins ? Ought the British
legislature to continue to favour their designs and their plans ?
And can it continue to shelter persons who by these flagrant acts
place themselves beyond the pale of common rights? " Lord
Clarendon, the head of the British foreign office, told the French
ambassador, who read him this despatch, that " no consideration
on earth would induce the British parliament to pass a measure
for the extradition of political refugees," but he added that it
was a question whether the law was as complete and as stringent
as it should be, and he stated that the government had already
referred the whole subject to the law officers of the crown for
their consideration. Having made these remarks, however, he
judged it wise to refrain from giving any formal reply to Count
Walewski's despatch, and contented himself with privately
communicating to the British ambassador in Paris the difficulties
of the British government. After receiving the opinion of the
law officers the cabinet decided to introduce a bill into parlia-
ment increasing in England the punishment for a conspiracy
to commit a felony either within or without the United Kingdom.
The first reading of this bill was passed by a considerable
majority. But, before the bill came on for a second reading, the
language which was being used in France created strong resent-
ment in England. The regiments of the French army sent
addresses to the emperor congratulating him on his escape and
violently denouncing the British people. Some of these addresses,
which were published in the Moniteur, spoke of London as " an
568
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1858-1859
assassins' den," and invited the emperor to give his troops the
order to destroy it. Such language did not make it easier to
alter the law in the manner desired by the government. The
House of Commons, reflecting the spirit of the country, blamed
Lord Clarendon for neglecting to answer Count Walewski's
despatch, and blamed Lord Palmerston for introducing a bill
at French dictation. The feeling was so strong that, when the
Conspiracy Bill came on for a second reading, an amendment
hostile to the government was carried, and Lord Palmerston
at once resigned.
For a second time Lord Derby undertook the difficult task
of carrying on the work of government without the support of
Lord a majority of the House of Commons. If the Liberal
Derby's party had been united his attempt would have failed
second immediately. In 1858, however, the Liberal party
ministry, j^j no cohesion. The wave of popularity which had
carried Lord Palmerston to victory in 1857 had lost its strength.
The Radicals, who were slowly recovering the influence they had
lost during the Crimean War, regarded even a Conservative
government as preferable to his return to power, while many
Liberals desired to entrust the fortunes of their party to the
guidance of their former chief, Lord John Russell. It was obvious
to most men that the dissensions thus visible in the Liberal
ranks could be more easily healed in the cold shade of the
opposition benches than in the warmer sunlight of office. And
therefore, though no one had much confidence in Lord Derby,
or in the stability of his second administration, every one was
disposed to acquiesce in its temporary occupation of office.
Ministries which exist by sufferance are necessarily compelled
to adapt their measures to the wishes of those who permit them
to continue in power. The second ministry of Lord Derby
experienced the truth of this rule. For some years a controversy
had been conducted in the legislature in reference to the admission
of the Jews to parliament. This dispute had been raised in 1847
into a question of practical moment by the election of Baron
Lionel Nathan Rothschild as representative of the City of London,
and its importance had been emphasized in 1851 by the return
of another Jew, Alderman Salomons, for another constituency.
The Liberal party generally in the House of Commons was in
favour of such a modification of the oaths as would enable the
Jews so elected to take their seats. The bulk of the
Jews la Conservative party, on the contrary, and the House
of Lords, were strenuously opposed to the change.
Early in 1858 the House of Commons, by an increased
majority, passed a bill amending the oaths imposed by law on
members of both Houses, and directing the omission of the words
" on the true faith of a Christian " from the oath of abjuration
when it was taken by a Jew. If the Conservatives had remained
in opposition there can be little doubt that this bill would have
shared the fate of its predecessors and have been rejected by the
Lords. The lord chancellor, indeed, in speaking upon the clause
relieving the Jews, expressed a hope that the peers would not
hesitate to pronounce that our " Lord is king, be the people never
so impatient." But some Conservative peers realized the in-
convenience of maintaining a conflict between the two Houses
when the Conservatives were in power; and Lord Lucan, who
had commanded the cavalry in the Crimea, suggested as a com-
promise that either House should be authorized by resolution to
determine the form of oath to be administered to its members.
This solution was reluctantly accepted by Lord Derby, and
Baron Rothschild was thus enabled to take the seat from which
he had been so long excluded. Eight years afterwards parliament
was induced to take a fresh step in advance. It imposed a new
oath from which the words which disqualified the Jews were
omitted. The door of the House of Lords was thus thrown open,
and in 1885 Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild, raised to the
peerage, was enabled to take his seat in the upper chamber.
This question was not the only one on which a Conservative
government, without a majority at its back, was compelled to
make concessions. For some years past a growing disposition
had been displayed among .the more earnest Liberals to extend
the provisions of the Reform Act of 1832. Lord John Russell's
parlia-
ment.
ministry had been defeated in 1851 on a proposal of Locke
King to place 10 householders in counties on the same footing
as regards the franchise as 10 householders in towns,
and Lord John himself in 1854 had actually intro-
duced a new Reform Bill. After the general election of
1857 the demand for reform increased, and, in accepting office
in 1858, Lord Derby thought it necessary to declare that, though
he had maintained in opposition that the settlement of 1832, with
all its anomalies, afforded adequate representation to all classes,
the promises of previous governments and the expectations of
the people imposed on him the duty of bringing forward legislation
on the subject. The scheme which Lord Derby's government
adopted was peculiar. Its chief proposal was the extension of
the county franchise to 10 householders. But it also proposed
that persons possessing a 403. freehold in a borough should in
future have a vote in the borough in which their property was
situated, and not in the county. The bill also conferred the
franchise on holders of a certain amount of stock, on depositors
in savings banks, on graduates of universities, and on pther
persons qualified by position or education. The defect of the
bill was that it did nothing to meet the only real need of reform
the enfranchisement of a certain proportion of the working classes.
On the contrary, in this respect it perpetuated the settlement
of 1832. The 10 householder was still to furnish the bulk of
the electorate, and the ordinary working man could not afford
to pay 10 a year for his house. While the larger proposals of
the bill were thus open to grave objection, its subsidiary features
provoked ridicule. The suggestions that votes should be con-
ferred on graduates and stockholders were laughed at as " fancy
franchises." The bill, moreover, was not brought forward with
the authority of a united cabinet. Two members of the govern-
ment Spencer Walpole and Henley declined to be responsible
for its provisions, and placed their resignations in Lord Derby's
hands. In Walpole's judgment the bill was objectionable because
it afforded no reasonable basis for a stable settlement. There
was nothing in a 10 franchise which was capable of permanent
defence, and if it was at once applied to counties as well as
boroughs it would sooner or later be certain to be extended.
He himself advocated with some force that it would be wiser
and more popular to fix the county franchise at 20 and the
borough franchise at 6 rateable value; and he contended that
such a settlement could be defended on the old principle that
taxation and representation should go together, for 20 was the
minimum rent at which the house tax commenced, and a rateable
value of 6 was the point at which the householder could not
compound to pay his rates through his landlord. Weakened
by the defection of two of its more important members, the govern-
ment had little chance of obtaining the acceptance of its scheme.
An amendment by Lord John Russell, condemning its main
provisions, was adopted in an unusually full house by a sub-
stantial majority, and the cabinet had no alternative but to
resign or dissolve. It chose the latter course. The general
election, which almost immediately took place, increased to
some extent the strength of the Conservative party. For the
first time since their secession from Sir Robert Peel the Con-
servatives commanded more than three hundred votes in the
House of Commons, but this increased strength wa's not sufficient
to ensure them a majority. When the new parliament assembled,
Lord Hartington, the eldest son of the duke of Devonshire, was
put forward .to propose a direct vote of want of confidence in the
administration. It was carried by 323 votes to 310, and the
second Derby administration came to an end.
It was plain that the House of Commons had withdrawn its
support from Lord Derby, but it was not clear that any other
leading politician would be able to form a government, ptimer-
The jealousies between Lord John Russell and Lord s ton's
Palmerston still existed; the more extreme men, who second
were identified with the policy of Cobden and Bright,
had little confidence in either of these statesmen; and it was
still uncertain whether the able group who had been the friends
of Sir Robert Peel would finally gravitate to the Conservative
or to the Liberal camp. The queen, on the advice of Lord Derby,
ENGLISH HISTORY
569
endeavoured to solve the first of these difficulties by sending
for Lord Granville, who led the Liberal party in the Lords, and
authorizing him to form a government which should combine,
as far as possible, all the more prominent Liberals. The attempt ,
however, failed, and tht queen thereupon fell back upon Lord
Palmerston. Lord John Russell agreed to accept office as foreign
minister, Gladstone consented to take the chancellorship of
the exchequer. Cobden was offered, but declined, the presidency
of the Board of Trade; and the post which he refused was
conferred on a prominent free trader, who had associ:itl
himself with Cobden's fortunes, Milner Gibson. Thus Lord
Palmerston had succeeded in combining in one ministry the
various representatives of political progress. He had secured
the support of the Peelites, who had left him after the fall of
Lord Aberdeen in 1855, and of the free traders, who had done
so much to defeat him in 1857 and 1858. His new administration
was accordingly based on a broader bottom, and contained
greater elements of strength than his former cabinet. And the
country was requiring more stable government. The first three
ministries of the queen had 'endured from the spring of 1835 to
the spring of 1857, or for very nearly seventeen years; but the
next seven years had seen the formation and dissolution of no
less than four cabinets. It was felt that these frequent changes
were unfortunate for the country, and every one was glad to
welcome the advent of a government which seemed to promise
greater permanence. That promise was fulfilled. The adminis-
tration which Lord Palmerston succeeded in forming in 1859
endured till his death in 1865, and with slight modifications,
under its second chief Lord John (afterwards Earl) Russell, till
the summer of 1866. It had thus a longer life than any cabinet
which had governed England since the first Reform Act. But
it owed its lasting character to the benevolence of its opponents
rather than to the enthusiasm of its supporters. The Con-
servatives learned to regard the veteran statesman, who had
combined all sections of Liberals under his banner, as the most
powerful champion of Conservative principles; a virtual truce
of parties was established during his continuance in office; and,
for the most part of his ministry, a tacit understanding existed
that the minister, on his side, should pursue a Conservative
policy, and that the Conservatives, on theirs, should abstain
from any real attempt to oust him from power. Lord John
Russell, indeed, was too earnest in his desire for reform to abstain
from one serious effort to accomplish it. Early in 1860 he pro-
posed, with the -sanction of the cabinet, a measure providing
for the extension of the county franchise to 10 householders,
of the borough franchise to 6 householders, and for a moderate
redistribution of seats. But the country, being in enjoyment of
considerable prosperity, paid only a languid attention to the
scheme; its indifference was reflected in the House; the Con-
servatives were encouraged in their opposition by the lack of
interest which the new bill excited, and the almost unconcealed
dislike of the prime minister to its provisions. The bill, thus
steadily opposed and half-heartedly supported, made only slow
progress; and at last it was withdrawn by its author. He did
not again attempt during Lord Palmerston's life to reintroduce
the subject. Absorbed in the work of the foreign office, which
at this time was abnormally active, he refrained from pressing
home the arguments for internal reform.
In one important department, however, the ministry departed
from the Conservative policy it pursued in other matters.
Gladstone signalized his return to the exchequer by
introducing a series of budgets which excited keen
opposition at the time, but in the result largely added
to the prosperity of the country. The first of these
great budgets, in 1860, was partly inspired by the necessity of
adapting the fiscal system to meet the requirements of a com-
mercial treaty which, mainly through Cobden's exertions, had
been concluded with the emperor of the French. The treaty
bound France to reduce her duties on English coal and iron, and
on many manufactured articles; while, in return, Great Britain
undertook to sweep away the duties on all manufactured goods,
and largely to reduce those on French wines. But Gladstone
was not content with these great alterations, which involved a
loss of nearly 1,200,000 a year to the exchequer; he voluntarily
undertook to sacrifice another million on what he called a supple-
mental measure of customs reform. He proposed to repeal the
duties on paper, by which means he hoped to increase the
opportunities of providing cheap literature for the people. The
budget of 1860 produced a protracted controversy. The French
treaty excited more criticism than enthusiasm on both sides of
the Channel. In France the manufacturers complained that
they would be unable to stand against the competition of English
goods. In England many people thought that Great Britain
was wasting her resources and risking her supremacy by giving
the French increased facilities for taking her iron, coal and
machinery, and that no adequate advantage could result from
the greater consumption of cheap claret. But the criticism
which the French treaty aroused was drowned in the clamour
which was created by the proposed repeal of the paper duties.
The manufacture of paper was declared to be a struggling
industry, which would be destroyed by the withdrawal of
protection. The dissemination of cheap literature and the
multiplication of cheap newspapers could not compensate the
nation for the ruin of an important trade. If money could be
spared, moreover, for the remission of taxation, the paper duties
were much less oppressive than those on some other articles.
The tax on tea, for example, which had been raised during the
late war to no less than is. sd. a Ib, was much more injurious;
and it would be far wiser so it was contended to reduce the
duty on tea than to abandon the duties on paper. Notwith-
standing the opposition which the Paper Duties Bill
undoubtedly excited, the proposal was carried in the *%% t
Commons; it was, however, thrown out in the Lords, repealed.
and its rejection led to a crisis which seemed at one
time to threaten the good relations between the two houses of
parliament. It was argued that if the Lords had the right to
reject a measure remitting existing duties, they had in effect the
right of imposing taxation, since there was no material difference
between the adoption of a new tax and the continuance of an
old one which the Commons had determined to repeal. Lord
Palmerston, however, with some tact postponed the controversy
for the time by obtaining the appointment of a committee to
search for precedents; and, after the report of the committee,
he moved a series of resolutions affirming the right of the
Commons to grant aids and supplies as their exclusive privilege,
stating that the occasional rejection of financial measures by
the Lords had always been regarded with peculiar jealousy,
but declaring that the Commons had the remedy in their own
hands by so framing bills of supply as to secure their acceptance.
In accordance with this suggestion the Commons in the following
year again resolved to repeal the paper duties; but, instead
of embodying their decision in a separate bill, they included it
in the same measure which dealt with all the financial arrange-
ments of the year, and thus threw on the Lords the responsibility
of either accepting the proposal, or of paralysing the whole
machinery of administration by depriving the crown of the
supplies which were required for the public services. The Lords
were not prepared to risk this result, and they accordingly
accepted a reform which they could no longer resist, and the bill
became law. In order to enable him to accomplish these great
changes, Gladstone temporarily raised the income tax, which he
found at pd. in the , to rod. But the result of his reforms
was so marked that he was speedily able to reduce it. The
revenue increased by leaps and bounds, and the income tax was
gradually reduced till it stood at 4d. in the closing years of the
administration. During the same period the duty on tea was
reduced from is. $d. to 6d. a Ib; and the national debt
was diminished from rather more than 800,000,000 to rather
less than 780,000,000, the charge for the debt declining, mainly
through the falling in of the long annuities, by some 2,600,000
a year. With the possible exception of Sir Robert Peel's term
of office, no previous period of British history had been memor-
able for a series of more remarkable financial reforms. Their
success redeemed the character of the administration. The
570
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1859-1860
Liberals, who complained that their leaders were pursuing a
Conservative policy, could at least console themselves by the
reflection that the chancellor of the exchequer was introducing
satisfactory budgets. The language, moreover, which Gladstone
was holding on other subjects encouraged the more advanced
Liberals to expect that he would ultimately place himself at the
head of the party of progress. This expectation was the more
remarkable because Gladstone was the representative in the
cabinet of the old Conservative party which Sir Robert Peel
had led to victory. As lately as 1858 he had reluctantly refused
to serve under Lord Derby; he was still a member of the Carlton
Club; he sat for the university of Oxford ; and on many ques-
tions he displayed a constant sympathy with Conservative
traditions. Yet, on all the chief domestic questions which came
before parliament in Lord Palmerston's second administration,
Gladstone almost invariably took a more Liberal view than his
chief. It was understood, indeed, that the relations between the
two men were not always harmonious; that Lord Palmerston
disapproved the resolute conduct of Gladstone, and that Glad-
stone deplored the Conservative tendencies of Lord Palmerston.
It was believed that Gladstone on more than one occasion
desired to escape from a position which he disliked by resigning
office, and that the resignation was only averted through a
consciousness that the ministry could not afford to lose its most
eloquent member.
While on domestic matters, other than those affecting finance,
the Liberal ministry was pursuing a Conservative policy, its
members were actively engaged on, and the attention of the
public was keenly directed to, affairs abroad. For the period
was one of foreign unrest, and the wars which were then waged
have left an enduring mark on the map of the world, and have
affected the position of the Anglo-Saxon race for all time. In
the far East, the operations which it had been decided to under-
take in China were necessarily postponed on account of the
diversion of the forces, intended to exact redress at Peking, to
the suppression of mutiny in India. It was only late in 1858
that Lord Elgin and Baron Gros, the French plenipoteijtiary
(for France joined England in securing simultaneous redress of
grievances of her own) , were enabled to obtain suitable reparation.
It was arranged that the treaty, which was then provisionally
concluded at Tientsin, should be ratified at Peking in the follow-
ing year; and in June 1859 Mr (afterwards Sir
r ' Frederick) Bruce, Lord Elgin's brother, who had been
appointed plenipotentiary, attempted to proceed up
the Peiho with the object of securing its ratification. The allied
squadron, however, was stopped by the forts at the mouth of
the Peiho, which fired on the vessels; a landing party, which
was disembarked to storm the forts, met with a disastrous check,
and the squadron had to retire with an acknowledged loss of
three gunboats and 400 men. This reverse necessitated fresh
operations, and in 1860 Lord Elgin and Baron Gros were directed
to return to China, and, at the head of an adequate force, were
instructed to exact an apology for the attack on the allied fleets,
the ratification and execution of the treaty of Tientsin, and the
payment of an indemnity for the expenses of the war. The weak-
ness of the Chinese empire was not appreciated at that time;
the unfortunate incident on the Peiho in the previous summer had
created an exaggerated impression of the strength of the Chinese
arms, and some natural anxiety was felt for the success of the
expedition. But the allied armies met with no serious resistance.
The Chinese, indeed, endeavoured to delay their progress by
negotiation rather than by force; and they succeeded in treacher-
ously arresting some distinguished persons who had been sent
into the Chinese lines to negotiate. But by the middle of October
the Chinese army was decisively defeated; Peking was occupied;
those British and French prisoners who had not succumbed to
the hardships of their confinement were liberated. Lord Elgin
determined on teaching the rulers of China a lesson by the
destruction of the summer palace; and the Chinese government
was compelled to submit to the terms of the Allies, and to ratify
the treaty of Tientsin. There is no doubt that these operations
helped to open the Chinese markets to British trade; but
incidentally, by regulating the emigration of Chinese coolies,
they had the unforeseen effect of exposing the industrial markets
of the world to the serious competition of " cheap yellow "
labour. A distinguished foreign statesman observed that Lord
Palmerston had made a mistake. He thought that he had
opened China to Europe; instead, he had let out the Chinese.
It was perhaps a happier result of the war that it tended to the
continuance of the Anglo-French alliance. French and British
troops had again co-operated in a joint enterprise, and had
shared the dangers and successes of a campaign.
War was not confined to China. In the beginning of 1859
diplomatists were alarmed at the language addressed by the
emperor of the French to the Austrian ambassador at Paris,
which seemed to breathe the menace of a rupture. Notwith-
standing the exertions which Great Britain made to avert
hostilities, the provocation of Count Cavour induced Austria
to declare war against Piedmont, and Napoleon thereupon
moved to the support of his ally, promising to free Italy from
the Alps to the Adriatic. As a matter of fact, the attitude of
northern Germany, which was massing troops on the Rhine,
and the defenceless condition of France, which was drained of
soldiers for the Italian campaign, induced the emperor to halt
before he had carried out his purpose, and terms of peace
were hastily concerted at Villafranca, and were afterwards
confirmed at Zurich, by which Lombardy was given
to Piedmont, while Austria was left in possession of O f /t '^, '
Venice and the Quadrilateral, and central Italy was
restored to its former rulers. The refusal of the Italians to take
back the Austrian grand dukes made the execution of these
arrangements impracticable. Napoleon, indeed, used his
influence to carry them into effect; but Lord John Russell,
who was now in charge of the British foreign office, and who had
Lord Palmerston and Gladstone on his side in the cabinet, gave
a vigorous support to the claim of the Italians that their country
should be allowed to regulate her own affairs. The French
emperor had ultimately to yield to the determination of the
inhabitants of central Italy, when it was backed by the arguments
of the British foreign office, and Tuscany, Modena, Parma, as
well as a portion of the states of the Church, were united to
Piedmont. There was no doubt that through the whole of the
negotiations the Italians were largely indebted to the labours
of Lord John Russell. They recognized that they owed more
to the moral support of England than to the armed assistance
of France. The French emperor, moreover, took a step which
lost him the sympathy of many Italians. Before the war he
had arranged with Count Cavour that France should receive,
as the price of her aid, the duchy of Savoy and the county of
Nice. After Villafranca, the emperor, frankly recognizing that
he had only half kept his promise, consented to waive his claim
to these provinces. But, when he found himself unable to resist
the annexation of central Italy to Piedmont, he reverted to the
old arrangement. The formation of a strong Piedmontese
kingdom, with the spoliation of the papal dominion, was un-
popular in France; and he thought perhaps naturally that
he must have something to show his people in return for sacrifices
which had cost him the lives of 50,000 French soldiers, and
concessions which the whole Catholic party in France resented.
Count Cavour consented to pay the price which Napoleon thus
exacted, and the frontier of France was accordingly extended
to the Alps. But it is very doubtful whether Napoleon did not
lose more than he gained by this addition to his territory. It
certainly cost him the active friendship of Great Britain. The
Anglo-French alliance had been already strained by the language
of the French colonels in 1858 and the Franco-Austrian War of
1859; it never fully recovered from the shock which it received
by the evidence, which the annexation of Savoy and Nice gave,
of the ambition of the French emperor. The British people gave
way to what Cobden called the last of the three panics. Lord
Palmerston proposed and carried the provision of a large sum
of money for the fortification of the coasts; and the volunteer
movement, which had its origin in 1859, received a remarkable
stimulus in 1860. In this year the course of events in Italy
I86o-i86j]
ENGLISH HISTORY
57 1
emphasized the differences between the policy of Great Britain
and that of France. Garibaldi, with a thousand followers, made
his famous descent on the coast of Sicily. After making himsi-lf
master of that island, he crossed over to the mainland, drove the
king of Naples out of his capital, and forced him to take refuge
in Gaeta. In France these events were regarded with dismay.
The emperor wished to stop Garibaldi's passage across the strait,
and stationed his fleet at Gaeta to protect the king of Naples.
Lord John Russell, on the contrary, welcomed Garibaldi's
success with enthusiasm. He declined to intervene in the
affairs of Italy by confining the great liberator to Sicily; he
protested against the presence of the French fleet at Gaeta;
and when other foreign nations denounced the conduct of Pied-
mont, he defended it by quoting Vattel and citing the example
of William III. When, finally, Italian troops entered the
dominions of the pope, France withdrew her ambassador from
the court of Turin, and England under Lord John Russell's
advice at once recognized the new kingdom of Italy.
In these great events for the union of Italy was the greatest
fact which had been accomplished in Europe since the fall of
the first Napoleon the British ministry had undoubtedly
acquired credit. It was everywhere felt that the 'new kingdom
owed much to the moral support which had been steadily and
consistently given to it by Great Britain. Soon afterwards,
however, in the autumn of 1863, the death of the king of Denmark
led to a new revolution in the north of Europe, in which Lord
Palmerston's government displayed less resolution, and lost
much of the prestige which it had acquired by its Italian policy.
The duchies of Schleswig and Holstein had been for centuries
united to the kingdom of Denmark by the golden link of the
crown; in other respects they had been organically
kept distinct, while one of them Holstein was a
member of the German confederation. The succession
to the crown Q ( j) cnmar k, however, was different
from that in the duchies. In Denmark the crown could descend,
as it descends in Great Britain, through females. In the duchies
the descent was confined to the male line; and, as Frederick
VII., who ascended the Danish throne in 1848, had no direct
issue, the next heir to the crown of Denmark under this rule
was Prince Christian of Gliicksburg, afterwards king; the next
heir to the duchies being the duke of Augustenburg. In 1850
an arrangement had been made to prevent the separation of
the duchies from the kingdom. As a result of a conference held
in London, the duke of Augustenburg was induced to renounce
his claim on the receipt of a large sum of money. Most of the
great powers of Europe were parties to this plan. But the
German confederation was not represented at the conference,
and was not therefore committed to its conclusions. During the
reign of Frederick VII. the Danish government endeavoured to
cement the alliance between the duchies and the kingdom, and
specially to separate the interests of Schleswig, which was largely
Danish in its sympathies, from those of Holstein, which was
almost exclusively German. With this object, in the last year
of his life, Frederick VII. granted Holstein autonomous institu-
tions, and bound Schleswig more closely to the Danish monarchy.
The new king Christian IX. confirmed this arrangement. The
Germandietat Frankfort at once protested against it. Following
up words with acts, it decided on occupying Holstein, and it
delegated the duty of carrying out its order to Hanover and
Saxony. While this federal execution was taking place, the duke
of Augustenburg regardless of the arrangements to which he had
consented delegated his rights in the duchies to his son, who
formally claimed the succession. So far the situation, which
was serious enough, had been largely dependent on the action
of Germany. In the dosing days of 1863 it passed mainly into
the control of the two chief German powers. In Prussia Bismarck
had lately become prime minister, and was animated by ambitious
projects for his country's aggrandizement. Austria, afraid of
losing her influence in Germany, followed the lead of Prussia,
and the two powers required Denmark to cancel the arrangements
which Frederick VII. had made, and which Christian IX. had
confirmed, threatening in case of refusal to follow up the occupa-
tion of Holstein by that of Schleswig. As the Danes gave only
a provisional assent to the demand, Prussian and Austrian
troops entered Schleswig. These events created much excitement
in England. The great majority of the British people, who
imperfectly understood the merits of the case, were unanimous
in their desire to support Denmark by arms. Their wish had
been accentuated by the circumstance that the marriage in the
previous spring of the prince of Wales to the daughter of the new
king of Denmark had given them an almost personal interest
in the struggle. Lord Palmerston had publicly expressed the
views of the people by declaring that, if Denmark were attacked,
her assailants would not have to deal with Denmark alone.
The language of the public press and of Englishmen visiting
Denmark confirmed the impression which the words of the prime
minister had produced; and there is unfortunately no doubt
that Denmark was encouraged to resist her powerful opponents
by the belief, which she was thus almost authorized in entertain-
ing, that she could reckon in the hour of her danger on the active
assistance of the United Kingdom. If Lord Palmerston had been
supported by his cabinet, or if he had been a younger man, he
might possibly, in 1864, have made good the words which he
had rashly uttered in 1863. But the queen, who, it is fair to add,
understood the movement which was tending to German unity
much better than most of her advisers, was averse from war.
A large section of the cabinet shared the queen's hesitation, and
Lord Palmerston with the weight of nearly eighty summers
upon him was not strong enough to enforce his will against
both his sovereign and his colleagues. He made some attempt
to ascertain whether the emperor of the French would support
him if he went to war. But he found that the emperor had not
much fancy for a struggle which would have restored Holstein
to Denmark; and that, if he went to war at all, his chief object
would be the liberation of Venice and the rectification of his own
frontiers. Even Lord Palmerston shrank from entering on a
campaign which would have involved all Europe in conflagration
and would have unsettled the boundaries of most continental
nations; and the British government endeavoured thence-
forward to stop hostilities by referring the question immediately
in dispute to a conference in London. The labours of the con-
ference proved abortive. Its members were unable to agree
upon any methods of settlements, and the war went on. Denmark,
naturally unable to grapple with her powerful antagonists, was
forced to yield, and the two duchies which were the subject of
dispute were taken from her.
The full consequences of this struggle were not visible at the
time. It was impossible to foresee that it was the first step
which was to carry Prussia forward, under her ambitious minister,
to a position of acknowledged supremacy on the continent.
But the results to Great Britain were plain enough. She had
been mighty in words and weak in deeds. It was no doubt open
to her to contend, as perhaps most wise people consider, that
the cause of Denmark was not of sufficient importance to justify
her in going to war. But it was not open to her to encourage
a weak power to resist and then desert her in the hour of her
necessity. Lord Palmerston should not have used the language
which he employed in 1863 if he had not decided that his brave
words would be followed by brave action. His conduct lowered
the prestige of Great Britain at least as much as his Italian policy
had raised it. Continental statesmen thenceforward assumed
that Great Britain, however much she might protest, would
not resort to arms, and the influence of England suffered, as it
was bound to suffer, in consequence.
Meanwhile, in this period of warfare, another struggle was
being fought out on a still greater scale in North America. Tha
election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of the United
States emphasized the fact that the majority of the inhabitants
of the Northern States were opposed to the further spread of
slavery; and, in the. beginning of 1861, several of the Amtttcma
Southern States formally seceded from the union. A civUwM ..
steamer sent by the Federal government with reinforce-
ments to Fort Sumter was fired upon, and both parties made pre-
parations for the civil war which was apparently inevitable. On
572
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1861-1872
the one side the Confederate States as the seceding states were
called were animated by a resolution to protect their property.
On the other side the " conscience " of the North was excited
by a passionate desire to wipe out the blot of slavery. Thus
both parties were affected by some of the most powerful con-
siderations which can influence mankind, while the North were
further actuated by the natural incentive to preserve the union,
which was threatened with disruption. The progress of the
great struggle was watched with painful attention in England.
The most important manufacturing interest in England was
paralysed by the loss of the raw cotton, which was obtained
almost exclusively from the United States, and tens of thousands
of workpeople were thrown out of employment. The distress
which resulted naturally created a strong feeling in favour of
intervention, which might terminate the war and open the
Southern ports to British commerce; and the initial successes
which the Confederates secured seemed to afford some justification
for such a proceeding. In the course of 1862 indeed, when the
Confederate armies had secured many victories, Gladstone,
speaking at Newcastle, used the famous expression that President
Jefferson Davis had " made a nation ";and Lord Palmerston's
language in the House of Commons while opposing a motion
for the recognition of the South induced the impression that
his thoughts were tending in the same direction as Mr Gladstone's.
The emperor Napoleon, in July of the same year, confidentially
asked the British minister whether the moment had not come
for recognizing the South; and in the following September
Lord Palmerston was himself disposed in concert with France
to offer to mediate on the basis of separation. Soon afterwards,
however, the growing exhaustion of the South improved the
prospects of the Northern States: an increasing number of
persons in Great Britain objected to interfere in the interests of
slavery; and the combatants were allowed to fight out their
quarrel without the interference of Europe.
At the beginning of the war, Lord John Russell (who was
made a peer as Earl Russell in 1861) acknowledged the Southern
States as belligerents. His decision caused some ill-feeling at
Washington; but it was inevitable. For the North had pro-
claimed a blockade of the Southern ports; and it would have
been both inconvenient and unfair if Lord Russell had
decided to recognize the blockade and had refused to acknowledge
the belligerent rights of the Southern States. Lord Russell's
decision, however, seemed to indicate some latent sympathy
for the Southern cause; and the irritation which was felt in the
North was increased by the news that the Southern States were
accrediting two gentlemen to represent them at Paris
JTf t " anc ^ a ' I' on d n - These emissaries, Messrs Mason and
incident. Slidell, succeeded in running the blockade and in
' reaching Cuba, where they embarked on the " Trent,"
a British mail steamer sailing for England. On her passage
home the " Trent " was stopped by the Federal steamer " San
Jacinto "; she was boarded, and Messrs Mason and Slidell were
arrested. There, was no doubt that the captain of the " San
Jacinto " had acted irregularly. While he had the right to stop
the " Trent," examine the mails, and, if he found despatches
for the enemy among them, carry the vessel into an American
port for adjudication, he had no authority to board the vessel
and arrest two of her passengers. " The British government,"
to use its own language, " could not allow such ap affront to the
national honour to pass without due reparation." They decided
on sending what practically amounted to an ultimatum to the
Federal government, calling upon it to liberate the prisoners
and to make a suitable apology. The presentation of this
ultimatum, which was accompanied by the despatch of troops
to Canada, was very nearly provoking war with the United
States. If, indeed, the ultimatum had been presented in the
form in which it was originally framed, war might have ensued.
But at the prince consort's suggestion its language was consider-
ably modified, and the responsibility for the outrage was thrown
on the officer who committed it, and not on the government
of the Republic. It ought not to be forgotten that this important
modification was the last service rendered to his adopted country
.
by the prince consort before his fatal illness. He died before the
answer to the despatch was received; and his death deprived
the queen of an adviser who had stood by her side since the
earlier days of her reign, and who, by his prudence and conduct,
had done much to raise the tone of the court and the influence
of the crown. Happily for the future of the world, the govern-
ment of the United States felt itself able to accept the despatch
which had been thus addressed to it, and to give the reparation
which was demanded; and the danger of war between the two
great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race was averted. But, in
the following summer, a new event excited fresh animosities,
and aroused a controversy which endured for the best part of
ten years.
The Confederates, naturally anxious to harass the commerce
of their enemies, endeavoured from the commencement of
hostilities to purchase armed cruisers from builders of neutral
nations. In June 1862 the American minister in London drew
Lord Russell's attention to the fact that a vessel, lately launched
at Messrs Laird's yard at Birkenhead, was obviously intended
to be employed as a Confederate cruiser. The solicitor to the
commissioners of customs, however, considered that no facts had
been revealed to authorize the detention of the vessel, and this
opinion was reported in July to the American minister, Charles
Francis Adams. He thereupon supplied the government with
additional facts, and at the same time furnished them with the
opinion of an eminent English lawyer, R. P. Collier (afterwards
Lord Monkswell), to the effect that " it would be
difficult to make out a stronger case of infringement
of the Foreign Enlistment Act, which if not enforced
on this occasion is little better than a dead letter."
These facts and this opinion were at once sent to the law officers.
They reached the queen's advocate on Saturday the 26th of July;
but, by an unfortunate mischance, the queen's advocate had
just been wholly incapacitated by a distressing illness; and the
papers, in consequence, did not reach the attorney- and solicitor-
general till the evening of the following Monday, when they at
once advised the government to detain the vessel. Lord Russell
thereupon sent orders to Liverpool for her detention. In the
meanwhile the vessel probably aware of the necessity for haste
had put to sea, and had commenced the career which made
her famous as the " Alabama." Ministers might even then have
taken steps to stop the vessel by directing her detention in any
British port to which she resorted for supplies. The cabinet,
however, shrank from this course. The " Alabama " was allowed
to prey on Federal commerce, and undoubtedly inflicted a vast
amount of injury on the trade of the United States. In the
autumn of 1862 Adams demanded redress for the injuries which
had thus been sustained, and this demand was repeated for many
years in stronger and stronger language. At last, in 1871, long
after Lord Palmerston's death and Lord Russell's retirement,
a joint commission was appointed to examine into the many
cases of dispute which had arisen between the United States
and Great Britain. The commissioners agreed upon three rules
by which they thought neutrals should in future be bound, and
recommended that they should be given a retrospective effect.
They decided also that the claims which had arisen out of the
depredations of the " Alabama " should be referred to arbitra-
tion. In the course of 1872 the arbitrators met at Geneva.
Their finding was adverse to Great Britain, which was con-
demned to pay a large sum of money more than 3,000,00x3
as compensation. A period of exceptional prosperity, which
largely increased the revenue, enabled a chancellor of the
exchequer to boast that the country had drunk itself out of the
" Alabama " difficulty.
In October 1865 Lord Palmerston's rule, which had been
characterized by six years of political inaction at home and by
constant disturbance abroad, was terminated by his ton/
death. The ministry, which had suffered many losses Russell's
from death during its duration, was temporarily re-
constructed under Lord Russell; and the new minister
at once decided to put an end to the period of internal
stagnation, which had lasted so long, by the introduction of a
ENGLISH HISTORY
573
new Reform Bill. Accordingly, in March 1866 Gladstone, who
now led the House of Commons, introduced a measure which
proposed to extend the county franchise to 14 and the borough
franchise to 7 householders. The bill did not create much
enthusiasm among Liberals, and it was naturally opposed by
the Conservatives, who were reinforced by a large section of
moderate Liberals, nicknamed, in consequence of a phrase
in one of Blight's speeches, Adullamites. After many debates,
in which the Commons showed little disposition to give the
ministry any effective support, an amendment was carried by
Lord Uunkcllin, the eldest son of Lord Clanricarde, basing the
borough franchise on rating instead of rental. The cabinet,
recognizing from the division that the control of the House had
passed out of its hands, resigned office, and the queen was com-
pelled to entrust Lord Derby with the task of forming a new
administration.
For the third time in his career Lord Derby undertook the
formidable task of conducting the government of the country
with only a minority of the House of Commons to
support him. The moment at which he made this
third attempt was one of unusual anxiety. Abroad,
^ a j n , ost simultaneous outbreak of war between
Prussia and Austria was destined to affect the whole aspect of
continental politics. At home, a terrible murrain had fallen
on the cattle, inflicting ruin on the agricultural interest; a grave
commercial crisis was creating alarm in the city of London, and,
in its consequences, injuring the interests of labour; while the
working classes, at last roused from their long indifference, and
angry at the rejection of Lord Russell's bill, were assembling in
their tens of thousands to demand reform. The cabinet deter-
mined to prohibit a meeting which the Reform League decided
to bold in Hyde Park on the 23rd of July, and closed the gates
of the park on the people. But the mob, converging on the park
in thousands, surged round the railings, which a little inquiry
might have shown were too weak to resist any real pressure.
Either accidentally or intentionally, the railings were overturned
in one place, and the people, perceiving their opportunity, at
once threw them down round the whole circuit of the park.
Few acts in Queen Victoria's reign were attended with greater
consequences. For the riot in Hyde Park led almost directly
to a new Reform Act, and to the transfer of power from the
middle classes to the masses of the people.
Yet, though the new government found it necessary to intro-
duce a Reform Bill, a wide difference of opinion existed in the
cabinet as to the form which the measure should take.
Several of its members were in favour of assimilating
the borough franchise to that in force in municipal
elections, and practically conferring a vote on every householder
who had three years' residence in the constituency. General
Peel, however Sir Robert Peel's brother who held the seals
of the war office, objected to this extension; and the cabinet
ultimately decided on evading the difficulty by bringing forward
a series of resolutions on which a scheme of reform, might ulti-
mately be based. Their success in 1858, in dealing with the
government of India in this way, commended the decision to
the acceptance of the cabinet. But it was soon apparent that
the House of Commons required a definite scheme, and that it
would not seriously consider a set of abstract resolutions which
committed no one to any distinct plan. Hence on the 23rd of
February 1867 the cabinet decided on withdrawing its resolutions
and reverting to its original bill. On the following day Lord
Cranbome better known afterwards as Lord Salisbury dis-
covered that the bill had more democratic tendencies than he
bad originally supposed, and refused to be a party to it. On
Monday, the 25th, the cabinet again met to consider the new
difficulty which had thus arisen; and it decided (as was said
afterwards by Sir John Pakington) in ten minutes to substitute
for the scheme a mild measure extending the borough franchise
to bouses rated at 6 a year, and conferring the county franchise
on 20 householders. The bill, it was soon obvious, would be
acceptable to no one; and the government again fell back on
its original proposal. Three members of the cabinet, however,
/V17.
Lord Cranbome, Lord Carnarvon and General Peel, refused
to be parlies to the measure, and resigned office, the government
being necessarily weakened by these defections. In the large
scheme which the cabinet had now adopted, the borough franchise
was conferred on all householders rated to the relief of the poor,
who had for two years occupied the houses which gave them the
qualification; the county franchise was given to the occupiers
of all houses rated at 15 a year or upwards. But it was proposed
that these extensions should be accompanied by an educational
franchise, and a franchise conferred on persons who had paid
twenty shillings in assessed taxes or income tax; the tax-payers
who had gained a vote in this way being given a second vote
in respect of the property which they occupied. In the course
of the discussion on the bill in the House of Commons, the
securities on which its authors had relied to enable them to stem
the tide of democracy were, chiefly through Gladstone's exertions,
swept away. The dual vote was abandoned, direct payment
of rates was surrendered, the county franchise was extended
to 12 householders, and the redistribution of seats was largely
increased. The bill, in the shape in which it had been introduced,
had been surrounded with safeguards to property. With their
loss it involved a great radical change, which placed the working
classes of the country in the position of predominance which
the middle classes had occupied since 1832.
The passage of the bill necessitated a dissolution of parliament;
but it had to be postponed to enable parliament to supplement
the English Reform Act of 1867 with measures applic-
able to Scotland and Ireland, and to give time for D % U
settling the boundaries of the new constituencies P m !ai*ter.
which had been created. This delay gave the Con-
servatives another year of office. But the first place in the
cabinet passed in 1868 from Lord Derby to his lieutenant,
Disraeli. The change added interest to political life. Thence-
forward, for the next thirteen years, the chief places in the two
great parties in the state were filled by the two men, Gladstone
and Disraeli, who were unquestionably the ablest representatives
of their respective followers. But the situation was also remark-
able because power thus definitely passed from men who,
without exception, had been born in the i8th century, and had
all held cabinet offices before 1832, to men who had been born
in the igth century, and had only risen to cabinet rank in the
'forties and the 'fifties. It was also interesting to reflect that
Gladstone had begun life as a Conservative, and had only
gradually moved to the ranks of the Liberal party; while
Disraeli had fought his first election under the auspices of
O'Connell and Hume, had won his spurs by his attacks on Sir
Robert Peel, and had been only reluctantly adopted by the
Conservatives as their leader in the House of Commons.
The struggle commenced in 1868 on an Irish question. During
the previous years considerable attention had been paid to a
secret conspiracy in Ireland and among the Irish in America.
The Fenians, as they were called, actually attempted insurrection
in Ireland, and an invasion of Canada from the United States.
At the beginning of 1866 Lord Russell's government thought
itself compelled to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland;
and in 1867 Lord Derby's government was confronted in the
spring by a plot to seize Chester Castle, and in the autumn by
an attack on a prison van at Manchester containing Fenian
prisoners, and by an atrocious attempt to blow up Clerkenwcll
prison. Conservative politicians deduced from these circum-
stances the necessity of applying firm government to Ireland.
Liberal statesmen, on the contrary, desired to extirpate rebellion
by remedying the grievances of which Ireland still
complained. Chief among these was the fact that 'church
the Established Church in Ireland was the church of
only a minority of the people. In March 1868 John Francis
Maguire, an Irish Catholic, asked the House of Commons to
resolve itself into a committee to take into immediate considera-
tion the affairs of Ireland. Gladstone, in the course of the
debate, declared that in his opinion the time had come when
the Irish Church, as a political institution, should cease; and
he followed up his declaration by a scries of resolutions, which
574
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1868-1870
were accepted by considerable majorities, pledging the House to
its disestablishment. Disraeli, recognizing the full significance
of this decision, announced that, as soon as the necessary pre-
parations could be made, the government would appeal from
the House to the country. Parliament was dissolved at the end
of July, but the general election did not take place till the end
of the following November. The future of the Irish Church
naturally formed one of the chief subjects which occupied the
attention of the electors, but the issue was largely determined
by wider considerations. The country, afte.r the long political
truce which had been maintained by Lord Palmerston, was.
again ranged in two hostile camps, animated by opposing views.
It was virtually asked to decide in 1868 whether it would put
its trust in Liberal or Conservative, in Gladstone or Disraeli.
By an overwhelming majority it threw its lot in favour of
Gladstone; and Disraeli, without even venturing to meet
parliament, took the unusual course of at once placing his
resignation in the queen's hands.
The Conservative government, which thus fell, will be chiefly
recollected for its remarkable concession to democratic principles
by the passage of the Reform Act of 1867; but it
deserves perhaps a word of praise for its conduct of
sin tan . ,,
war% a distant and unusual war. The emperor of Abyssinia
had, for some time, detained some Englishmen
prisoners in his country; and the government, unable to obtain
redress in other ways, decided on sending an army to release
them. The expedition, entrusted to Sir Robert Napier, after-
wards Lord Napier of Magdala, was fitted out at great expense,
and was rewarded with complete success. The prisoners were
released, and the Abyssinian monarch committed suicide.
Disraeli whose oriental imagination was excited by the triumph
incurred some ridicule by his bombastic declaration that
" the standard of St George was hoisted upon the mountains
of Rasselas." But the ministry could at least claim that the
war had been waged to rescue Englishmen from captivity, that
it had been conducted with skill, and that it had accomplished
its object. The events of the Abyssinian war, however, were
forgotten in the great political revolution which had swept the
Conservatives from office and placed Gladstone in power. His
government was destined to endure for more than five years.
During that period it experienced 'the alternate prosperity and
decline which nearly forty years before had been the lot of the
Whigs after the passage of the first Reform Act. During its
first two sessions it accomplished greater changes in legislation
than had been attempted by any ministry since that of Lord
Grey. In its three last sessions it was destined to sink into
gradual disrepute; and it was ultimately swept away by a wave
of popular reaction, as remarkable as that which had borne it
into power.
It was generally understood that Gladstone intended to deal
with three great Irish grievances " the three branches of the
aiad- u P as tree " l ^ e re ligi us i agricultural and educa-
xtone's tional grievances. The session of 1869 was devoted
first to the first of these subjects. Gladstone introduced
ministry. & biu disconnecting the Irish Church from the state,
establishing a synod for its government, and after leaving it in
possession of its churches and its parsonages, and making ample
provision for the life-interest of its existing clergy devoting
the bulk of its property to the relief of distress in Ireland. The
bill was carried by large majorities through the House of Com-
mons; and the feeling of the country was so strong that the
Lords did not venture on its rejection. They satisfied themselves
with engrafting on it a series of amendments which, on the
whole, secured rather more liberal terms of compensation for
existing interests. Some of these amendments were adopted
by Gladstone; a compromise was effected in respect of the
others; and the bill, which had practically occupied the whole
session, and had perhaps involved higher constructive skill than
any measure passed in the previous half-century, became law.
Having dealt with the Irish Church in 1869, Gladstone turned
to the more complicated question of Irish land. So.far back as
the 'forties Sir R. Peel had appointed a commission, known
Irish
lead.
from its chairman as the Devon commission, which had recom-
mended that the Irish tenant, in the event of disturbance,
should receive some compensation for certain specified
improvements which he had made in his holding.
Parliament neglected to give effect to these recom-
mendations; in a country where agriculture was the chief or
almost only occupation, the tenant remained at his landlord's
mercy. In 1870 Gladstone proposed to give the tenant a
pecuniary interest in improvements, suitable to the holding,
which he had made either before or after the passing of the act.
He proposed also that, in cases of eviction, the smaller tenantry
should receive compensation for disturbance. The larger
tenantry, who were supposed to be able to look after their own
interests, were entirely debarred, and tenants enjoying leases
were excluded from claiming compensation, except for tillages,
buildings and reclamation of lands. A special court, it was
further provided, should be instituted to carry out the provisions
of the bill. Large and radical as the measure was, reversing many
of the accepted principles of legislation by giving the tenant a
gzm-partnership with the landlord in his holding, no serious
opposition was made to it in either House of Parliament. Its
details, indeed, were abundantly criticized, but its principles
were hardly disputed, and it became law without any substantial
alteration of its original provisions. In two sessions two branches
of the upas tree had been summarily cut off. But parliament
in 1870 was not solely occupied with the wrongs of Irish tenantry.
In the same year Forster, as vice-president of the council,
succeeded in carrying the great measure which for the first time
made education compulsory. In devising his scheme, Forster
endeavoured to utilize, as far as possible, the educational
machinery which had been voluntarily provided by various
religious organizations. He gave the institutions, which had
been thus established, the full benefit of the assistance which the
government was prepared to afford to board schools, on their
adopting a conscience clause under which the religious suscepti-
bilities of the parents of children were protected. This provision
led to many debates, and produced the first symptoms of dis-
ruption in the Liberal party. The Nonconformists contended
that no such aid should be given to any school which was not
conducted on undenominational principles. Sup-
ported by the bulk of the Conservative party, Forster Element-
was enabled to defeat the dissenters. But the victory ^a ucai j 0a ,
which he secured was, in one sense, dearly purchased.
The first breach in the Liberal ranks had been made; and the
government, after 1870, never again commanded the same
united support which had enabled it to pursue its victorious
career in the first two sessions of its existence.
Towards the close of the session of 1870 other events, for
which the government had no direct responsibility, introduced
new difficulties. War unexpectedly broke out between
France and Prussia. The French empire fell; the
German armies marched on Paris; and the Russian
government, at Count Bismarck's instigation, took advantage
of the collapse of France to repudiate the clause in the treaty of
1856 which neutralized the Black Sea. Lord Granville, who had
succeeded Lord Clarendon at the foreign office, protested against
this proceeding. But it was everywhere felt that his mere
protest was not likely to affect the result; and the government
at last consented to accept a suggestion made by Count Bismarck,
and to take part in a conference to discuss the Russian proposal.
Though this device enabled them to say that they had not
yielded to the Russian demand, it was obvious that they entered
the conference with the foregone conclusion of conceding the
Russian claim. The attitude which the government thus chose
to adopt was perhaps inevitable in the circumstances, but it
confirmed the impression, which the abandonment of the cause
of Denmark had produced in 1864, that Great Britain was not
prepared to maintain its principles by going to war. The weak-
ness of the B ritish foreign office.was emphasized by its consenting,
almost at the same moment, to allow the claims of the United
States, for the depredations of the " Alabama," to be settled
under a rule only agreed upon in 1871. Most Englishmen now
1871-1876]
ENGLISH HISTORY
575
appreciate the wisdom of a concession which has gained for them
the friendship of the United States. But in 1871 the country
resented the manner in which Lord Granville had acted. What-
ever credit the government might have derived from its domestic
measures, it was discredited, or it was thought to be, by its
foreign policy. In these circumstances legislation in 1871 was
not marked with the success which had attended the government
in previous sessions. The government succeeded in terminating
a long controversy by abolishing ecclesiastical tests at universities.
But the Lords ventured to reject a measure for the introduction
of the ballot at elections, and refused to proceed with a bill
for the abolition of purchase in the army. The result of these
decisions was indeed remarkable. In the one case, the Lords
in 1877 found it necessary to give way, and to pass the Ballot Bill,
^rhich they had rejected in 1871. In the other, Gladstone
decided on abolishing, by the direct authority of the crown,
the system which the Lords refused to do away with by
legislation. But his high-handed proceeding, though it forced
the Lords to reconsider their decision, strained the allegiance of
many of his supporters, and still further impaired the popularity
of his administration. Most men felt that it would have been
permissible for him, at the commencement of the session, to have
used the queen's authority to terminate the purchase system;
but they considered that, as he had not taken this
^rtitf course, it was not open to him to reverse the decision
of the legislature by resorting to the prerogative.
Two appointments, one to a judicial office, the other to an
ecclesiastical preferment, in which Gladstone, about the same
time, showed more disposition to obey the letter than the spirit
of the law, confirmed the impression which the abolition of
purchase had made. Great reforming ministers would do well
to recollect that the success of even liberal measures may be
dearly purchased by the resort to what are regarded as un-
constitutional expedients.
In the following years the embarrassments of the government
were further increased. In 1872 Bruce, the home secretary,
succeeded in passing a measure of licensing reform.
But the abstainers condemned the bill as inadequate;
the publicans denounced it as oppressive; and the
whole strength of the licensed victuallers was thenceforward
arrayed against the ministry. In 1873 Gladstone attempted to
complete his great Irish measures by conferring on Ireland the
advantage of a university which would be equally acceptable
to Protestants and Roman Catholics. But his proposal again
failed to satisfy those in whose interests it was proposed. The
second reading of the bill was rejected by a small majority, and
Gladstone resigned; but, as Disraeli could not form a govern-
ment, he resumed office. The power of the great minister was,
however, spent; his ministry was hopelessly discredited.
History, in fact, was repeating itself. The ministry was suffering,
as Lord Grey's government had suffered nearly forty years
before, from the effect of its own successes. It had accomplished
more than any of its supporters had expected, but in doing so it
had harassed many interests and excited much opposition.
Gladstone endeavoured to meet the storm by a rearrangement
of his crew. Bruce, who had offended the licensed victuallers,
was removed from the home office, and made a peer and president
of the council. Lowe, who had incurred unpopularity by his
fiscal measures, and especially by an abortive suggestion for
the taxation of matches, was transferred from the exchequer
to the home office, and Gladstone himself assumed the duties
of chancellor of the exchequer. He thereby created a difficulty
for himself which he had not foreseen. Up to 1867 a minister
leaving one office and accepting another vacated his seat ; after
1867 a transfer from one post to another did not necessitate a
fresh election. But Gladstone in 1873 had taken a course which
had not been contemplated in 1867. He had not been transferred
from one office to another. He had accepted a new in addition
to his old office. It was, to say the least, uncertain whether
his action in this respect had, or had not, vacated his seat. It
would be unfair to suggest that the inconvenient difficulty with
which be was thus confronted determined his policy, though he
I872~
1 ,74.
was probably insensibly influenced by it. However this may be,
on the eve of the session of 1874 he suddenly decided to dissolve
parliament and to appeal to the country. He announced his
decision in an address to his constituents, in which, among other
financial reforms, he promised to repeal the income tax. The
course which Gladstone took, and the bait which he held out
to the electors, were generally condemned. The country,
wearied of the ministry and of its measures, almost everywhere
supported the Conservative candidates. Disraeli found himself
restored to power at the head of an overwhelming majority, :md
the great minister who, five years before, had achieved so marked
a triumph temporarily withdrew from the leadership of the party
with whose aid he had accomplished such important results.
His ministry had been essentially one of peace, yet its closing
days were memorable for one little war in which a great soldier
increased a reputation already high. Sir Garnet Wolseley
triumphed over the difficulties which the climate of the west
coast of Africa imposes on Europeans, and brought a troublesome
contest with the Ashantis to a successful conclusion.
The history of Disraeli's second administration affords an
exact reverse to that of Gladstone's first cabinet. In legislation
the ministry attempted little and accomplished less.
They did something to meet the wishes of the publicans,
whosediscontenthadcontributed largely to Gladstone's
defeat, by amending some of the provisions of Bruce's
licensing bill ; they supported and succeeded in passing a measure,
brought in by the primate, to restrain some of the irregularities
which the Ritualists were introducing into public worship; and
they were compelled by the violent insistence of Plimsoll to pass
an act to protect the lives of merchant seamen. Disraeli's
government, however, will be chiefly remembered for its foreign
policy. Years before he had propounded in Tancred the theory
that England should aim at eastern empire. Circumstances in
his second term of office enabled him to translate his theory into
practice. In 1875 the country was suddenly startled at hearing
that it had acquired a new position and assumed new responsi-
bilities in Egypt by the purchase of the shares which the khcdive
of Egypt held in the Suez Canal. In the following spring a new
surprise was afforded by the introduction of a measure authoriz-
ing the queen to assume the title of empress of India. But
these significant actions were almost forgotten in the presence
of a new crisis; for in 1876 misgovernmcnt in Turkey had pro-
duced its natural results, and the European provinces of the Porte
were in a state of armed insurrection. In the presence of a grave
danger, Count Andrassy, the Austrian minister, drew up a note
which was afterwards known by his name, declaring that the
Porte had failed to carry into effect the promises of reform which
she had made, and that some combined action on the part of
Europe was necessary to compel her to do so. The note was
accepted by the three continental empires, but Great Britain
refused in the first instance to assent to it, and only ultimately
consented at the desire of the Porte, whose statesmen seem to
have imagined that the nominal co-operation of
England would have the effect of restraining the action
of other powers. Turkey accepted the note and
renewed the promises of reform, which she had so often
made, and which meant so little. The three northern powers
thereupon agreed upon what was known as the Berlin Memor-
andum, in which they demanded an armistice, and proposed
to watch over the completion of the reforms which the Porte
had promised. The British government refused to be a party
to this memorandum, which in consequence became abortive.
The insurrection increased in intensity. The sultan Abdul
Aziz, thought unequal to the crisis, was hastily deposed; he
was either murdered or led to commit suicide; and insurrection
in Bulgaria was stamped out by massacre. The story of the
" Bulgarian atrocities " was published in Great Britain in the
summer of 1876. Disraeli characteristically dismissed it as
" coffee-house babble," but official investigation proved the
substantial accuracy of the reports which had reached England.
The people regarded these events with horror. Gladstone,
emerging from his retirement, denounced the conduct of the
576
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1876-1879
Turks. In a phrase which became famous he declared that the
only remedy for the European provinces of the Porte was to
turn out the Ottoman government " bag and baggage." All
England was at once arrayed into two camps. One party was
led by Disraeli, who was supposed to represent the traditional
policy of England of maintaining the rule of the Turk at all
hazards; the other, inspired by the example of Gladstone, was
resolved at all costs to terminate oppression, but was at the same
time distrusted as indirectly assisting the ambitious views by
which the Eastern policy of Russia had always been animated.
The crisis soon became intense. In June 1876 Servia and
Montenegro declared war against Turkey. In a few months
Servia was hopelessly beaten. Through the insistence of Russia
an armistice was agreed upon; and Lord Beaconsfield for
Disraeli had now been raised to the peerage endeavoured to
utilize the breathing space by organizing a conference of the
great powers at Constantinople, which was attended on behalf
of Great Britain by Lord Salisbury. The Constantinople con-
ference proved abortive, and in the beginning of 1877 Russia
declared war. For some time, however, her success was hardly
equal to her expectations. The Turks, entrenched at Plevna,
delayed the Russian advance; and it was only towards the
close of 1877 that Plevna at last fell and Turkish resistance
collapsed. With its downfall the war party in England, which
was led by the prime minister, increased in violence. From the
refrain of a song, sung night after night at a London music hall,
its members became known as Jingoes. The government ordered
the British fleet to pass the Dardanelles and go up to Constanti-
nople; and though the order was subsequently withdrawn, it
asked for and obtained a grant of 6,000,000 for naval and mili-
tary purposes. When news came that the Russian armies had
reached Adrianople, that they had concluded some arrangement
with the Turks, and that they were pressing forward towards Con-
stantinople, the fleet was again directed to pass the Dardanelles.
Soon afterwards the government decided to call out the reserves
and to bring a contingent of Indian troops to the Mediterranean.
Lord Derby, 1 who was at the foreign office, thereupon retired
from the ministry, and was succeeded by Lord Salisbury. Lord
Derby's resignation was everywhere regarded as a proof that
Great Britain was on the verge of war. Happily this did not
occur. At Prince Bismarck's suggestion Russia consented to
refer the treaty which she had concluded at San Stefano to a
congress of the great powers; and the congress, at which Great
Britain was represented by Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury,
succeeded in substituting for the treaty of San Stefano
treaty. tne treaty of Berlin. The one great advantage derived
from it was the tacit acknowledgment by Russia
that Europe could alone alter arrangements which Europe had
made. In every other sense it is doubtful whether the provisions
of the treaty of Berlin were more favourable than those of the
treaty of San Stefano. On Lord Beaconsfield's return, however,
he claimed for Lord Salisbury and himself that they had brought
back " peace with honour," and the country accepted with wild
delight the phrase, without taking much trouble to analyse
its justice.
If Lord Beaconsfield had dissolved parliament immediately
after his return from Berlin, it is possible that the wave of
popularity which had been raised by his success would have
borne him forward to a fresh victory in the constituencies. His
omission to do so gave the country time to meditate on the con-
sequences of his policy. One result soon became perceptible.
Differences with Russia produced their inevitable consequences
in fresh complications on the Indian frontier. The Russian
government, confronted with a quarrel with Great Britain in
At han eastern Europe, endeavoured to create difficulties in
w*r*." Afghanistan. A Russian envoy was sent to Kabul,
where Shere Ali, who had succeeded his father Dost
Mahommed in 1863, was amir; and the British government,
alarmed at this new embarrassment, decided on sending a mission
to the Afghan capital. The mission was stopped on the frontier
1 Edward Henry Stanley, 15th earl of Derby, son of the Hth earl
and former prime minister.
by an agent of Shere Ali, who declined to allow it to proceed.
The British government refused to put up with an affront of
this kind, and their envoy, supported by an army, continued
his advance. Afghanistan was again invaded. Kabul and
Kandahar were occupied; and Shere Ali was forced to fly, and
soon afterwards died. His successor, Yakub Khan, came to the
British camp and signed, in May 1879, the treaty of Gandamak.
Under the terms of this treaty the Indian government undertook
to pay the new amir a subsidy of 60,000 a year; and Yakub
Khan consented to receive a British mission at Kabul, and to
cede some territory in the Himalayas which the military advisers
of Lord Beaconsfield considered necessary to make the frontier
more " scientific." This apparent success was soon followed
by disastrous news. The deplorable events of 1841 were re-
enacted in 1879. The new envoy reached Kabul, but was soon
afterwards murdered. A British army was again sent into 1
Afghanistan, and Kabul was again occupied. Yakub Khan,
who had been made amir in 1879, was deposed, and Abdur
Rahman Khan was selected as his successor. The British did
not assert their superiority without much fighting and some
serious reverses. Their victory was at last assured by the ex-
cellent strategy of Sir Donald Stewart and Sir Frederick (after-
wards Lord) Roberts. But before the final victory was gained
Lord Beaconsfield had fallen. His policy had brought Great
Britain to the verge of disaster in Afghanistan: the credit of
reasserting the superiority of British arms was deferred till his
successors had taken office.
It was not only in Afghanistan that the new imperial policy
which Lord Beaconsfield had done so much to encourage was
straining the resources of the empire. In South Africa a still
more serious difficulty was already commencing. At the time
at which Lord Beaconsfield's administration began, British
territory in South Africa was practically confined to Cape Colony
and Natal. Years before, in 1852 and 1854 respectively, the
British government, at that time a little weary of the responsi-
bilities of colonial rule, had recognized the independence of the
two Dutch republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
Powerful native tribes occupied the territory to the north of
Natal and the east of the Transvaal. War broke out between
the Transvaal Republic and one of the most powerful of these
native chieftains, Sikukuni; and the Transvaal was worsted
in the struggle. Weary of the condition of anarchy which
existed in the republic, many inhabitants of the Transvaal were
ready to welcome its annexation to Great Britain a proposal
favoured by the colonial secretary, Lord Carnarvon, who wished
to federate the South African states, after the manner in which
the North American colonies had become by confederation the
Dominion of Canada. Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who was sent
to inquire into the proposal, mistook the opinion of a party for
the verdict of the republic, anddeclared (April i877)the Transvaal
a part of the British Empire. His policy entailed far more
serious consequences than the mission to Afghanistan. The first
was a war with the Zulus, the most powerful and _ . ,
warlike of the South African natives, who under their
ruler, Cetewayo, had organized a formidable army. A dispute
had been going on for some time about the possession of a strip
of territory which some British arbitrators had awarded to the
Zulu king. Sir Bartle Frere, who had won distinction in India,
and was sent out by Lord Beaconsfield's government to the Cape,
kept back the award; and, though he ultimately communicated
it to Cetewayo, thought it desirable to demand the disbandment
of the Zulu army. In the war which ensued, the British troops
who invaded Zulu territory met with a severe reverse; and,
though the disaster was ultimately retrieved by Lord Chelmsford,
the war involved heavy expenditure and brought little credit
to the British army, while one unfortunate incident, the death
of Prince Napoleon, who had obtained leave to serve with the
British troops, and was surprised by the Zulus while reconnoitring,
created a deep and unfortunate impression. Imperialism,
which had been excited by Lord Beaconsfield's policy in 1878,
and by the prospect of a war with a great European power, fell
into discredit when it degenerated into a fresh expedition into
I-V 1".
ENGLISH HISTORY
577
Afghanistan, and an inglorious war with a savage African tribe.
A period of distress at home increased the discontent which Lord
Beaconsfield's external policy was exciting; and, when parlia-
ment was at last dissolved in 1880, it seemed no longer certain
that the country would endorse the policy of the minister, who
only a short time before had acquired such popularity. Gladstone,
emerging from his retirement, practically placed himself again at
the head of the Liberal party. In a series of speeches in Mid-
lothian, where he offered himself for election, he denounced the
whole policy which Lord Beaconsfield had pursued. His im-
passioned eloquence did much more than influence his own
election. His speeches decided the contest throughout the
kingdom. The Liberals secured an even more surprising success
than that which had rewarded the Conservatives six years before.
For the first time in the queen's reign, a solid Liberal majority,
independent of all extraneous Irish support, was returned, and
Gladstone resumed in triumph his old position as prime minister.
The new minister had been swept into power on a wave of
popular favour, but he inherited from his predecessors difficulties
in almost every quarter of the world; and his own
language had perhaps tended to increase them. He
was committed to a reversal of Lord Beaconsfield's
policy; and, in politics, it is never easy, and perhaps
rarely wise, suddenly and violently to change a system. In one
quarter of the world the new minister achieved much success.
The war in Afghanistan, which had begun with disaster, was
creditably concluded. A better understanding was gradually
established with Russia; and, before the ministry went out,
steps had been taken which led to the delimitation of the Russian
and Afghan frontier. In South Africa, however, a very different
result ensued. Gladstone, before he accepted office, had de-
nounced the policy of annexing the Transvaal; his language
was so strong that he was charged with encouraging the Boers to
maintain their independence by force; his example had naturally
been imitated by some of his followers at the general election ;
and, when he resumed power, he found himself in the difficult
dilemma of either maintaining an arrangement which he had
declared to be unwise, or of yielding to a demand which the
Boers were already threatening to support in arms. The events
of the first year of his administration added to his difficulty.
Before its dose the Boers seized Heidelberg and established a
republic; they destroyed a detachment of British troops at
Bronkhorst Spruit; and they surrounded and attacked the
British garrisons in the Transvaal. Troops were of course sent
from England to maintain the British cause; and Sir George
Colley, who enjoyed a high reputation and had experience in
South African warfare, was made governor of Natal, and en-
trusted with the military command. The events which im-
mediately followed will not be easily forgotten. Wholly mis-
calculating the strength of the Boers, Sir George Colley, at the
end of January 1881, attacked them at Laing's Nek, in the north
of Natal, and was repulsed with heavy loss. Some ten days
afterwards he fought another action on the Ingogo, and was again
forced to retire. On the 26th February, with some 600 men, he
occupied a high hill, known as Majuba, which, he thought,
dominated the Boer position. The following day the Boers
attacked the hill, overwhelmed its defenders, and Sir George
Colley was himself killed in the disastrous contest on the summit.
News of these occurrences was received with dismay in England.
It was, no doubt, possible to say a good deal for Gladstone's
indignant denunciation of his predecessor's policy in annexing
the Transvaal; it would have been equally possible to advance
many reasons for reversing the measures of Lord Beaconsfield's
ffur ffr caD ' net ' an( ' f r conceding independence to the
,,.' Transvaal in 1880. But the great majority of persons
considered that, whatever arguments might have been
urged for concession in 1880, when British troops had suffered
no reverses, nothing could be said for concession in 1881, when
their arms had been tarnished by a humiliating disaster. Great
countries can afford to be generous in the hour of victory; but
they cannot yield, without loss of credit, in the hour of defeat.
Unfortunately this rMrnjng was not suited to Gladstone's
ix. 19
temperament. The justice or injustice of the British cause
seemed to him a much more important matter than the vindica-
tion of military honour; and he could not bring himself to
acknowledge that Majuba had altered the situation, and that
the terms which he had made up his mind to concede before
the battle could not be safely granted till military reputation
was restored. The retrocession of the Transvaal was decided
upon, though it was provided that the country should
remain under the suzerainty of the queen. Even this great
concession did not satisfy the ambition of the Boers, who were
naturally elated by their victories. Three years later some
Transvaal deputies, with their president, Krugcr, came to London
and saw Lord Derby, the secretary of state for the colonies. Lord
Derby consented to a new convention, from which any verbal
reference to suzerainty was excluded; and the South African
republic was made independent, subject only to the condition
that it should conclude no treaties with foreign powers without
the approval of the crown. (For the details and disputes con-
cerning the terms of this convention the reader is referred to
the articles TRANSVAAL and SUZERAINTY.)
Gladstone's government declined in popularity from the date
of the earliest of these concessions. Gladstone, in fact, had
succeeded in doing what Lord Beaconsfield had failed to accom-
plish. Annoyance at his foreign policy had rekindled the
imperialism which the embarrassments created by Lord Beacons-
field had done so much to damp down. And, if things were
going badly with the new government abroad, matters were not
progressing smoothly at home. At the general election of 1880,
the borough of Northampton, which of late years has shown an
unwavering preference for Liberals of an advanced type, returned
as its members Henry Labouchere and Charles Bradlaugh.
Bradlaugh, who had attained some notoriety for an _
Bradlaugh.
aggressive atheism, claimed the nght to make an
affirmation of allegiance instead of taking the customary oath,
which he declared was, in his eyes, a meaningless form. The
speaker, instead of deciding the question, submitted it to the
judgment of the House, and it was ultimately referred to a
select committee, which reported against Bradlaugh's claim.
Bradlaugh, on hearing the decision of the committee, presented
himself at the bar and offered to take the oath. It was objected
that, as he had publicly declared that the words of the oath had
no clear meaning for him, he could not be permitted to take it;
and after some wrangling the matter was referred to a fresh
committee, which supported the view that Bradlaugh could not
be allowed to be sworn, but recommended that he should be
permitted to make the affirmation at his own risk. The House
refused to accept the recommendation of this committee when
a bill was introduced to give effect to it. This decision naturally
enlarged the question before it. For, while hitherto the debate
had turned on the technical points whether an affirmation could
be substituted for an oath, or whether a person who had declared
that an oath had no meaning for him could properly be sworn,
the end at which Bradlaugh's opponents were thenceforward
aiming was the imposition of a new religious test the belief
in a God on members of the House of Commons. The con-
troversy, which thus began, continued through the parliament
of 1880, and led to many violent scenes, which lowered the
dignity of the House. It was quietly terminated, in the parlia-
ment of 1886, by the firm action of a new speaker. Mr Peel,
who had been elected to the choir in 1884, decided that neither
the speaker nor any other member had the right to intervene to
prevent a member from taking the oath if he was willing to
take it. Parliament subsequently, by a new act, permitted
affirmations to be used, and thenceforward religion, or the
absence of religion, was no disqualification for a seat in the
House of Commons. The atheist, like the Roman Catholic and
the Jew, could sit and vote.
The Bradlaugh question was not the only difficulty with
which the new government was confronted. Ireland was again
attracting the attention of politicians. The Fenian move-
ment had practically expired; some annual motions for the
introduction of Home Rule, made with all the decorum of
578
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1881-1885
parliamentary usage, had been regularly defeated. But the
Irish were placing themselves under new leaders and adopting
new methods. During the Conservative government of 1874, the
Irish members had endeavoured to arrest attention by organized
obstruction. Their efforts had increased the difficulties of
Paraeii government and taxed the endurance of parliament.
These tactics were destined to be raised to a fine art
by Parnell, who succeeded to the head of the Irish party about
the time of the formation of Gladstone's government. It was
Parnell's determination to make legislation impracticable, and
parliament unendurable, till Irish grievances were redressed.
It was his evident belief that by pursuing such tactics he could
force the House of Commons to concede the legislation which
he desired. The Irish members were not satisfied with the
legislation which parliament had passed in 1869-1870. The
land act of 1870 had given the tenant no security in the case
of eviction for non-payment of rent ; and the tenant whose
rent was too high or had been raised was at the mercy of his
landlord. It so happened that some bad harvests had temporarily
increased the difficulties of the tenantry, and there was no doubt
that large numbers of evictions were taking place in Ireland.
In these circumstances, the Irish contended that the relief which
the act of 1870 had afforded should be extended, and that, till
such legislation could be devised, a temporary measure should
be passed giving the tenant compensation for disturbance.
Gladstone admitted the force of this reasoning, and a bill was
introduced to give effect to it. Passed by the Commons, it was
thrown out towards the end of the session by the Lords; and
the government acquiesced perhaps could do nothing but
acquiesce in this decision. In Ireland, however, the rejection
of the measure was attended with disastrous results. Outrages
increased, obnoxious landlords and agents were " boycotted "
the name of the first gentleman exposed to this treatment adding
a new word to the language; and Forster, who had accepted the
office of chief secretary, thought it necessary, in the presence of
outrage and intimidation, to adopt stringent measures for
enforcing order. A measure was passed on his initiation, in
1881, authorizing him to arrest and detain suspected persons;
and many well-known Irishmen, including Parnell himself and
other members of parliament, were thrown into prison. It was
an odd commentary on parliamentary government that a Liberal
ministry should be in power, and that Irish members should
be in prison; and early in 1882 Gladstone determined to liberate
the prisoners on terms. The new policy represented by what
was known as the Kilmainham Treaty led to the resignation
of the viceroy, Lord Cowper, and of Forster, and the appoint-
ment of Lord Spencer and Lord Frederick Cavendish as their
successors. On the 6th of May 1882 Lord Spencer made his entry
into Dublin, and on the evening of the same day Lord Frederick,
unwisely allowed to walk home alone with Burke, the under-
secretary to the Irish government, was murdered with his
companion in Phoenix Park. This gross outrage led to fresh
measures of coercion. The disclosure, soon afterwards, of a
conspiracy to resort to dynamite still further alienated the
sympathies of the Liberal party from the Irish nation. Gladstone
might fairly plead that he had done much, that he had risked
much, for Ireland, and that Ireland was making him a poor
return for his services.
In the meanwhile another difficulty was further embarrassing
a harassed government. The necessities of the khedive of Egypt
had been only temporarily relieved by the sale to
Lord Beaconsfield's government of the Suez Canal
shares. Egyptian finance, in the interests of the bondholders,
had been placed under the dual control of England and France.
The new arrangement naturally produced some native resentment,
and Arabi Pasha placed himself at the head of a movement
which was intended to rid Egypt of foreign interference. His
preparations eventually led to the bombardment of Alexandria
by the British fleet, and still later to the invasion of Egypt by a
British army under Sir Garnet, afterwards Lord Wolseley, and
to the battle of Tell-el-Kebir, after which Arabi was defeated
and taken prisoner. The bombardment of Alexandria led to the
immediate resignation of Bright, whose presence in the cabinet
had been of importance to the government; the occupation of
Egypt broke up the dual control, and made Great Britain
responsible for Egyptian administration. The effects of British
rule were, in one sense, remarkable. The introduction of good
government increased the prosperity of the people, and restored
confidence in Egyptian finance. At the same time it provoked
the animosity of the French, who were naturally jealous of the
increase of British influence on the Nile, and it also threw new
responsibilities on the British nation. For south of Egypt
lay the great territory of the Sudan, which to some extent
commands the Nile, and which had been added to the Egyptian
dominions at various periods between 1820 and 1875. In 1881
a fanatic sheikh known as the-mahdi had headed an insur-
rection against the khedive's authority; and towards the close
of 1883 an Egyptian army under an Englishman, Colonel Hicks,
was annihilated by the mahdi's followers. The insurrection
increased the responsibilities which intervention had imposed
on England, and an expedition was sent to Suakin to guard
the littoral of the Red Sea; while, at the beginning of 1884,
General Gordon whose services in China had gained him a high
reputation, and who had had previous experience in the Sudan
was sent to Khartum to report on the condition of affairs. These
decisions led to momentous results. The British expedition to
Suakin was engaged in a series of battles with Osman Digna,
the mahdi's lieutenant; while General Gordon, after
alternate reverses and successes, was isolated at I0nloa .
Khartum. Anxious as Gladstone's ministry was to restrict the
sphere of its responsibilities, it was compelled to send an expedi-
tion to relieve General Gordon; and Lord Wolseley, who was
appointed to the command, decided on moving up the Nile to
his relief. The expedition proved much more difficult than
Lord Wolseley had anticipated. And before it reached its goal,
Khartum was forced to surrender, and General Gordon and his
few faithful followers were murdered (January 1885). General
Gordon's death inflicted a fatal blow on the Liberal government.
It was thought that the general, whose singular devotion to
duty made him a popular hero, had been allowed to assume an
impossible task; had been feebly supported; and that the
measures for his relief had been unduly postponed and at last
only reluctantly undertaken. The ministryultimatelyexperienced
defeat on a side issue. The budget, which Childers brought
forward as chancellor of the exchequer, was attacked by the
Conservative party; and an amendment proposed by Sir Michael
Hicks-Beach, condemning an increase in the duties on spirits
and beer, was adopted by a small majority. Gladstone resigned
office, and Lord Salisbury, who, after Lord Beaconsfield's death,
had succeeded to the lead of the Conservative party, was in-
structed to form a new administration.
It was obvious that the new government, as its first duty,
would be compelled to dissolve the parliament that had been
elected when Gladstone was enjoying the popularity
which he had lost so rapidly in office. But it so happened
that it was no longer possible to appeal to the old con-
stituencies. For, in 1884, Gladstone had introduced a new
Reform Bill; and, though its passage had been arrested by the
Lords, unofficial communications between the leaders of both
parties had resulted in a compromise which had led to the
adoption of a large and comprehensive Reform Act. By this
measure, household franchise was extended to the counties.
But counties and boroughs were broken up into a number of
small constituencies, for the most part returning only one
member each; while the necessity of increasing the relative
weight of Great Britain, and the reluctance to inflict disfranchise-
ment on Ireland, led to an increase in the numbers of the House
of Commons from 658 to 670 members. This radical reconstruc-
tion of the electorate necessarily made the result of the elections
doubtful. As a matter of fact, the new parliament comprised
334 Liberals, 250 Conservatives and 86 Irish Nationalists. It
was plain beyond the possibility of doubt that the future de-
pended on the course which the Irish Nationalists might adopt.
It they threw in their lot with Gladstone, Lord Salisbury's
ittg tig*]
ENGLISH HISTORY
579
government was evidently doomed. If, on the contrary, they
joined the Conservatives, they could make a Liberal administra-
tion impracticable.
In the autumn of 1885 it was doubtful what course the Irish
Nationalists would take. It was generally understood that
Lord Carnarvon, who had been made viceroy of
Ireland, had been in communication with Parnell;
that Lord Salisbury was aware of the interviews
which had taken place; and it was whispered that Lord
Carnarvon was in favour of granting some sort of administrative
autonomy to Ireland. Whatever opinion Lord Carnarvon may
have formed and his precise view is uncertain a greater man
than he bad suddenly arrived at a similar conclusion. In his
election speeches Gladstone had insisted on the necessity of the
country returning a Liberal majority which could act indepen-
dently of the Irish vote; and the result of the general election
had left the Irish the virtual arbiters of the political situation.
In these circumstances Gladstone arrived at a momentous
decision. He recognized that the system under which Ireland
had been governed in the past had failed to win the allegiance
of her people; and he decided that it was wise and safe to
entrust her with a large measure of self-government. It was
perhaps characteristic of Gladstone, though it was unquestion-
ably unfortunate, that, in determining on this radical change
of policy, he consulted few, if any, of his previous colleagues.
On the meeting of the new parliament Lord Salisbury's govern-
ment was defeated on an amendment to the address, demanding
facilities for agricultural labourers to obtain small holdings for
gardens and pasture the policy, in short, which was described
as " three acres and a cow." Lord Salisbury resigned, and
Gladstone resumed power. The attitude, however, which
Gladstone was understood to be taking on the subject of Home
Rule threw many difficulties in his way. Lord Hart ington. and
others of his former colleagues, declined to join his administra-
tion; Mr Chamberlain, who, in the first instance, accepted
office, retired almost at once from the ministry; and Bright,
whose eloquence and past services gave him a unique position
in the House, threw in his lot in opposition to Home Rule. A
split in the Liberal party thus began, which was destined to
endure; and Gladstone found his difficulties increased by the
defection of the men on whom he had hitherto largely relied.
He persevered, however, in the task which he had set himself,
and introduced a measure endowing Ireland with a parliament,
and excluding the Irish members from Westminster. He was
defeated, and appealed from the House which had refused to
support him to the country. For the first time in the queen's
reign two general elections occurred within twelve months. The
country showed no more disposition than the House of Commons
to approve the course which the minister was taking. A large
majority of the members of the new parliament were pledged
to resist Home Rule. Gladstone, bowing at once to the verdict
of the people, resigned office, and Lord Salisbury returned to
power.
The new cabinet, which was formed to resist Home Rule, did
not succeed in combining all the opponents to this measure.
faftrf-w, Tne secessionists from the Liberal party the Liberal
Unionists, as they were called held aloof from it;
and Lord Salisbury was forced to form his cabinet out of his
immediate followers. The most picturesque appointment was
that of Lord Randolph Churchill, who was made chancellor of
the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. But
before many months were over, Lord Randolph unable to
secure acceptance of a policy- of financial retrenchment resigned
office, and Lord Salisbury was forced to reconstruct his ministry.
Though be again failed to obtain the co-operation of the Liberal
Unionists, one of the more prominent of them Goschen
accepted the seals of the Exchequer. W. H. Smith moved from
the war office to the treasury, and became leader of the House
of Commons; while Lord Salisbury himself returned to the
foreign office, which the dramatically sudden death of Lord
Iddesleigh, better known as Sir Stafford Northcote, vacated.
These arrangements lasted till 1891, when, on Smith's death,
the treasury and the lead of the Commons were entrusted to
Lord Salisbury's nephew, Mr Arthur Balfour, who had made
a great reputation as chief secretary for Ireland.
The ministry of 1886, which endured till 1892, gave to London
a county council; introduced representative government into
every English county; and made elementary education free
throughout England. The alliance with the Liberal Unionists
was, in fact, compelling the Conservative government to promote
measures which were not wholly consistent with the stricter
Conservative traditions, or wishes. In other respects, the legis-
lative achievements of the government were not great; and
the time of parliament was largely occupied in devising rules
for the conduct of its business, which the obstructive attitude
of the Irish members made necessary, and in discussing the
charges brought against the Nationalist party by The Times,
of complicity in the Phoenix Park murders. Under the new
rules, the sittings of the House on ordinary days were made to
commence at 3 P.M., and opposed business was automatically
interrupted at midnight, while for the first time a power was
given to the majority in a House of a certain size to conclude
debate by what was known as the closure. Notwithstanding
these new rules obstructive tactics continued to prevail; and,
in the course of the parliament, many members were suspended
for disorderly conduct. The hostility of the Irish members was
perhaps increased by some natural indignation at the charges
brought against Parnell. The Times, in April 1887, printed
the facsimile of a letter purporting to be signed by Parnell, in
which he declared that he had no other course open to him but
to denounce the Phoenix Park murders, but that, while he
regretted " the accident " of Lord Frederick Cavendish's death,
he could not " refuse to admit that Burke got no more than his
deserts." The publication of this letter, and later of other
similar documents, naturally created a great sensation; and
the government ultimately appointed a special commission of
three judges to inquire into the charges and allegations that were
made. In the course of the inquiry it was proved that the
letters had emanated from a man named Pigott, who had at one
time been associated with the Irish Nationalist movement, but
who for some time past had earned a precarious living by writing
begging and threatening letters. Pigott, subjected to severe
cross-examination by Sir Charles Russell (afterwards Lord
Russell of Killowen) , broke down, fled from justice and committed
suicide. His flight practically settled the question; and an
inquiry, which many people had thought at its inception would
brand Parnell as a criminal, raised him to an influence which
he had never enjoyed before. But in the same year which
witnessed his triumph, he was doomed to fall. He was made
co-respondent in a divorce suit brought by Captain O'Shea
another Irishman for the dissolution of his marriage; and the
disclosures made at the trial induced Gladstone, who was
supported by the Nonconformists generally throughout the
United Kingdom, to request Parnell to withdraw from the
leadership of the Irish party. Parnell refused to comply with
this request, and the Irish party was shattered into fragments
by his decision. Parnell himself did not long survive
the disruption of the party which he had done so a ii,"put.
much to create. The exertions which he made to
retrieve his waning influence proved too much for his strength,
and in the autumn of 1891 he died suddenly at Brighton.
ParncU's death radically altered the political situation. At the
general elections of 1885 and 1886 the existence of a strong,
united Irish party had exercised a dominating influence. As the
parliament of 1886 was drawing to a close, the dissensions among
the Irish members, and the loss of their great leader, were
visibly sapping the strength of the Nationalists. At the general
election of 1892 Home Rule was still the prominent subject
before the electors. But the English Liberals were already a
little weary of allies who were quarrelling among themselves,
and whose disputes were introducing a new factor into politics.
The political struggle virtually turned not on measures, but on
men. Gladstone's great age, and the marvellous powers which
he displayed at a time when most men seek the repose of
5 8
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1892-1897
BWi9jr. "
retirement, were the chief causes which affected the results. His
influence enabled him to secure a small Liberal majority. But
it was noticed that the majority depended on Scottish, Irish and
Welsh votes, and that England the " predominant partner,"
as it was subsequently called by Lord Rosebery returned a
majority of members pledged to resist any attempt to dissolve
the union between the three kingdoms.
On the meeting of the new parliament Lord Salisbury's
government was defeated on a vote of want of confidence, and
for a fourth time Gladstone became prime minister.
^ n t^ 6 sess i n f I ^93 he again introduced a Home
Rule Bill. But the measure of 1893 differed in many
respects from that of 1886. In particular, the Irish were
no longer to be excluded from the imperial parliament at
Westminster. The bill which was thus brought forward was
actually passed by the Commons. It was, however, rejected
by the Lords. The dissensions among the Irish themselves, and
the hostility which English constituents were displaying to the
proposal, emboldened the Peers to arrive at this decision. Some
doubt was felt as to the course which Gladstone would take in
this crisis. Many persons thought that he should at once have
appealed to the country, and have endeavoured to obtain a
distinct mandate from the constituencies to introduce a new
Home Rule Bill. Other persons imagined that he should have
followed the precedent which had been set by Lord Grey in 1831,
and, after a short prorogation, have reintroduced his measure in
a new session. As a matter of fact, Gladstone adopted neither
of these courses. The government decided not to take up the
gauntlet thrown down by the Peers, but to proceed with the rest
of their political programme. With this object an autumn session
was held, and the Parish Councils Act, introduced by Mr Fowler
(afterwards Lord Wolverhampton), was passed, after important
amendments, which had been introduced into it in the House of
Lords, had been reluctantly accepted by Gladstone. On the other
hand, an Employers' Liability Bill, introduced by Mr Asquith,
the home secretary, was ultimately dropped by Gladstone after
passing all stages in the House of Commons, rather than that an
amendment of the Peers, allowing "contracting out," should be
accepted.
Before, however, the session had quite run out (3rd March
1894), Gladstone, who had now completed his eighty-fourth
year, laid down a load which his increasing years made it im-
possible for him to sustain (see the article GLADSTONE). He was
succeeded by Lord Rosebery, whose abilities and attainments
had raised him to a high place in the Liberal counsels. Lord
Rosebery did not succeed in popularizing the Home Rule
proposal which Gladstone had failed to carry. He
Rosebery. declared, indeed, that success was not attainable till
England was converted to its expediency. He hinted
that success would not even then be assured until something was
done to reform the constitution of the House of Lords. But if,
on the one hand, he refused to introduce a new Home Rule Bill,
he hesitated, on the other, to court defeat by any attempt to
reform the Lords. His government, in these circumstances,
while it failed to conciliate its opponents, excited no enthusiasm
among its supporters. It was generally understod, moreover,
that a large section of the Liberal party resented Lord Rosebery's
appointment to the first place in the ministry, and thought that
the lead should have been conferred on Sir W. Harcourt. It was
an open secret that these differences in the party were reflected
in the cabinet, and that the relations between Lord Rosebery and
Sir W. Harcourt were too strained to ensure either the harmonious
working or the stability of the administration. In these circum-
stances the fall of the ministry was only a question of time.
It occurred as often happens in parliament on a minor issue
which no one had foreseen. Attention was drawn in the House of
Commons to the insufficient supply of cordite provided by the
war office, and the House notwithstanding the assurance of the
war minister (Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman) that the supply
was adequate placed the government in a minority. Lord
Rosebery resigned office, and Lord Salisbury for the third time
became prime minister, the duke of Devonshire, Mr Chamberlain
and other Liberal Unionists joining the government. Parliament
was dissolved, and a new parliament, in which the Unionists
obtained an overwhelming majority, was returned.
The government of 1892-1895, which was successively led by
Gladstone and Lord Rosebery, will, on the whole, be remembered
for its failures. Yet it passed two measures which have exercised
a wide influence. The Parish Councils Act introduced electoral
institutions into the government of every parish, and in 1894
Sir W. Harcourt, as chancellor of the exchequer, availed himself
of the opportunity, which a large addition to the navy invited, to
reconstruct the death duties. He swept away in doing so many
of the advantages which the owner of real estate and the life
tenant of settled property had previously enjoyed, and drove
home a principle which Goschen had tentatively introduced a few
years before by increasing the rate of the duty with the amount
of the estate. Rich men, out of their superfluities, were thence-
forward to pay more than poor men out of their necessities.
The Unionist government which came into power in 1895
lasted, with ceftain changes of personnel, till 1905, with a break
caused by the dissolution of 1900. History may hereafter
conclude that the most significant circumstance of the earlier
period is to be found in the demonstration of loyalty and
affection to which the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria's
accession led in 1897. Ten years before, her jubilee had been the
occasion of enthusiastic rejoicings, and the queen's progress
through London to a service of thanksgiving at Westminster
had impressed the imagination of her subjects and proved the
affection of her people. But the rejoicings of 1887 were
forgotten amid the more striking demonstrations ten T iubiiets
years later. It was seen then that the queen, by her
conduct and character, had gained a popularity which has had no
parallel in history, and had won a place in the hearts of her
subjects which perhaps no other monarch had ever previously
enjoyed. There was no doubt that, if the opinion of the English-
speaking races throughout the world could have been tested by a
plebiscite, an overwhelming majority would have declared that
the fittest person for the rule of the British empire was the
gracious and kindly lady who for sixty years, in sorrow and in joy,
had so worthily discharged the duties of her high position. This
remarkable demonstration was not confined to the British
empire alone. In every portion of the globe the sixtieth anni-
versary of the queen's reign excited interest; in every country
the queen's name was mentioned with affection and respect;
while the people of the United States vied with the subjects of the
British empire in praise of the queen's character and in expressions
of regard for her person. Only a year or two before, an obscure
dispute on the boundary of British Venezuela had brought the
United States and Great Britain within sight of a quarrel. The
jubilee showed conclusively that, whatever politicians might say,
the ties of blood and kinship, which united the two peoples, were
too close to be severed by either for some trifling cause; that the
wisest heads in both nations were aware of the advantages which
must arise from the closer union of the Anglo-Saxon races; and
that the true interests of both countries lay in their mutual
friendship. A war in which the United States was subsequently
engaged with Spain cemented this feeling. The government and
the people of the United States recognized the advantage which
they derived from the goodwill of Great Britain in the hour of
their necessity, and the two nations drew together as no other
two nations had perhaps ever been drawn together before.
If the jubilee was a proof of the closer union of the many
sections of the British empire, and of their warm attachment to
their sovereign, it also gave expression to the " imperialism "
which was becoming a dominant factor in British politics. Few
people realized the mighty change which in this respect had been
effected in thought and feeling. Forty years before, the most
prominent English statesmen had regarded with anxiety the
huge responsibilities of a world-wide empire. In 1897 the whole
tendency of thought and opinion was to enlarge the burden of
which the preceding generation had been weary. The extension
of British influence, the protection of British interests, were
almost universally advocated; and the few statesmen who
ENGLISH HISTORY
581
repeated in the 'nineties the sentiments which would have been
generally accepted in the 'sixties, were regarded as " Liltle
Engenders." It is important to note the consequences which
these new ideas produced in Africa. Both in the north and
in the south of this great and imperfectly explored continent,
memories still clung which were ungrateful to imperialism. In
the north, the murder of Gordon was still unavenged; and the
vast territory known as the Sudan had escaped from the control of
Egypt. In the south, war with the Transvaal had been concluded
by a British defeat; and the Dutch were elated, the English
irritated, at the recollection of Majuba. In 1896 Lord Salisbury's
government decided on extending the Anglo-Egyptian rule over
the Sudan, and an expedition was sent from Egypt under the
command of Sir Herbert (afterwards Lord) Kitchener to Khartum.
Few military expeditions have been more elaborately organized,
or have achieved a more brilliant success. The conquest of the
country was achieved in three separate campaigns in successive
yean. In September 1898 the Sudanese forces were decisively
beaten, with great slaughter, in the immediate neighbourhood of
OmduYman; and Khartum became thenceforward the
capital of the new province, which was placed under
rili< Lord Kitchener's rule. Soon after this decisive
success, it was found that a French expedition under
Major Marchand had reached the upper Nile and had hoisted the
French flag at Fashoda. It was obvious that the French could
not be allowed to remain at a spot which the khedive of Egypt
claimed as Egyptian territory; and after some negotiation, and
some irritation, the French were withdrawn. In South Africa
still more important events were in the meanwhile progressing.
Ever since the independence of the South African Republic had
been virtually conceded by the convention of 1884, unhappy
differences had prevailed between the Dutch and British
residents in the Transvaal. The discovery of gold at Johannes-
burg and elsewhere in 1885-1886 had led to a large immigration
of British and other colonists. Johannesburg had grown into
a great and prosperous city. The foreign population of the
Transvaal, which was chiefly English, became in a few years more
numerous than the Boers themselves, and they complained that
they were deprived of all political rights, that they were subjected
to unfair taxation, and that they were hampered in their industry
and unjustly treated by the Dutch courts and Dutch officials.
Failing to obtain redress, at the end of 1805 certain persons
among them made preparations for a revolution. Dr Jameson,
the administrator of Rhodesia, accompanied by some British
officers, actually invaded the Transvaal. His force, utterly
m inadequate for the purpose, was stopped by the Boers,
g mlt and he and his fellow-officers were taken prisoners.
There was no doubt that this raid on the territory of
m friendly state was totally unjustifiable. Unfortunately, Dr
Jameson's original plans had been framed at the instance of
Cecil Rhodes, the prime minister at the Cape, and many persons
thought that they ought to have been suspected by the colonial
office in London. England at any rate would have had no valid
ground of complaint if the leaders of a buccaneering force had
been summarily dealt with by the Transvaal authorities. The
president of the republic, Kruger, however, handed over his
prisoners to the British authorities, and parliament instituted an
inquiry by a select committee into the circumstances of the raid.
The inquiry was terminated somewhat abruptly. The committee
acquitted the colonial office of any knowledge of the plot; but a
good many suspicions remained unanswered. The chief actors in
the raid were tried under the Foreign Enlistment Act, found
guilty, and subsequently released after short terms of imprison-
ment. Rhodes himself was not removed from the privy council,
as his more extreme accusers demanded ; but he had to abandon
his career in Cape politics for a time, and confine his energies to
the development of Rhodesia, which had been added to the
empire through his instrumentality in 1888-1889.
In consequence of these proceedings, the Transvaal authorities
at once set to work to accumulate armaments, and they succeeded
in procuring vast quantities of artillery and military stores.
The British government would undoubtedly have been entitled to
* r '
insist that these armaments should cease. It was obvious that
they could only be directed against Great Britain; and no
nation is bound to allow another people to prepare great
armaments to be employed against itself. The criminal folly of
the raid prevented the British government from making this
demand. It could not say that the Transvaal government had no
cause for alarm when British officers had attempted an invasion
of its territory, and had been treated rather as heroes than as
criminals at home. Ignorant of the strength of Great Britain,
and elated by the recollection of their previous successes, the
Boers themselves believed that a new struggle might give them
predominance in South Africa. The knowledge that a large
portion of the population of Cape Colony was of Dutch extraction,
and that public men at the Cape sympathized with them in their
aspirations, increased their confidence. In the meantime, while
the Boers were silently and steadily continuing their military
preparations, the British settlers at Johannesburg the
Uitlanders, as they were called continued to demand considera-
tion for their grievances. In the spring of 1899, Sir Alfred
Milner, governor of the Cape, met President Kruger at
Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, and
endeavoured to accomplish that result by negotiation.
He thought, at the time, that if the Uitlanders were given the
franchise and a fair proportion of influence in the legislature, other
difficulties might be left to settle themselves. The negotiations
thus commenced unfortunately failed. The discussion, which
had originally turned on the franchise, was enlarged by the
introduction of the question of suzerainty or supremacy; and at
last, in the beginning of October, when the rains of an African
spring were causing the grass to grow on which the Boer armies
were largely dependent for forage, the Boers declared war and
invaded Natal. The British government had not been altogether
happy in its conduct of the preceding negotiations. It wascertainly
unhappy in its preparations for the struggle. It made the great
mistake of underrating the strength of its enemy; it suffered its
agents to commit the strategical blunder of locking up the few
troops it had in an untenable position in the north of Natal.
It was not surprising, in such circumstances, that the earlier
months of the war should have been memorable for a series of
exasperating reverses. These reverses, however, were redeemed
by the valour of the British troops, the spirit of the British
nation, and the enthusiasm which induced the great autonomous
colonies of the empire to send men to support the cause of the
mother country. The gradual arrival of reinforcements, and the
appointment of a soldier of genius Lord Roberts to the
supreme command, changed the military situation; and,
before the summer of 1000 was concluded, the places which had
been besieged by the Boers Kimberley, Ladysmith and
Mafeking had been successively relieved; the capitals of the
Orange Free State and of the Transvaal had been occupied ; and
the two republics, which had rashly declared war against the
British empire, had been formally annexed.
The defeat and dispersal of the Boer armies, and the apparent
collapse of Boer resistance, induced a hope that the war was
over; and the government seized the opportunity in
1900 to terminate the parliament, which had already ot'goo"
endured for more than five years. The election was
conducted with unusual bitterness; but the constituencies
practically affirmed the policy of the government by maintaining,
almost unimpaired, the large majority which the Unionists had
secured in 1895. Unfortunately, the expectations which had
been formed at the time of the dissolution were disappointed.
The same circumstances which had emboldened the Boers to
declare war in the autumn of 1899, induced them to renew a
guerilla warfare in the autumn of 1900 the approach of an
African summer supplying the Boers with the grass on which
they were dependent for feeding their hardy horses. Guerilla
bands suddenly appeared in different parts of the Orange River
Colony and of the Transvaal. They interrupted the com-
munications of the British armies; they won isolated victories
over British detachments; they even invaded Cape Colony.
Thus the last year of the century closed in disappointment
ENGLISH HISTORY
[1901-1910
and gloom. The serious losses which the war entailed, the
heavy expenses which it involved, and the large force which
it absorbed, filled thoughtful men with anxiety.
No one felt more sincerely for the sufferings of her soldiers, and
no one regretted more truly the useless prolongation of the
struggle, than the venerable lady who occupied the
throne - She had . her self lost a grandson (Prince
queen. Christian Victor) in South Africa; and sorrow and
anxiety perhaps told even on a constitution so un-
usually strong as hers. About the middle of January 1901 it
was known that she was seriously ill; on the 22nd she died.
The death of the queen thus occurred immediately after the close
of the century over so long a period of which her reign had
extended.
The queen's own life is dealt with elsewhere (see VICTORIA,
QUEEN), but the Victorian era is deeply marked in English
history. During her reign the people of Great Britain doubled
their number; but the accumulated wealth of the country
increased at least threefold, and its trade sixfold. All classes
shared the prevalent prosperity. Notwithstanding the increase
of population, the roll of paupers at the end of the reign,
compared with the same roll at the beginning, stood as 2 stands
to 3; the criminals as i to 2. The expansion abroad was still
more remarkable. There were not 200,000 white persons in
Australasia when the queen came to the throne; there were
nearly 5,000,000 when she died. The great Australian colonies
were almost created in her reign; two of them Victoria and
Queensland owe their name to her; they all received those
autonomous institutions, under which their prosperity has been
built up, during its continuance. Expansion and progress were
not confined to Australasia. The opening months of the queen's
reign were marked by rebellion in Canada. The close of it saw
Canada one of the most loyal portions of the Empire. In Africa,
the advance of the red line which marks the bounds of British
dominion was even more rapid; while in India the Punjab,
Sind, Oudh and Burma were some of the acquisitions added to
the British empire while the queen was on the throne. When
she died one square mile in four of the land in the world was under
the British flag, and at least one person out of every five persons
alive was a subject of the queen.
Material progress was largely facilitated by industry and
invention. The first railways had been made, the first steamship
had been built, before the queen came to the throne. But, so
far as railways are concerned, none of the great trunk lines had
been constructed in 1837; the whole capital authorized to be
spent on railway construction did not exceed 55,000,000; and,
five years after the reign had begun, there were only 18,000,000
passengers. The paid-up capital of British railways in 1901
exceeded 1,100,000,000; the passengers, not including season
ticket-holders, also numbered 1,100,000,000; and the sum
annually spent in working the lines considerably exceeded the
whole capital authorized to be spent on their construction in
1837. The progress of the commercial marine was still more
noteworthy. In 1837 the entire commercial navy comprised
2,800,000 tons, of which less than 100,000 tons were moved by
steam. At the end of the reign the tonnage of British merchant
vessels had reached 13,700,000 tons, of which more than
11,000,000 tons were moved by steam. At the beginning of the
reign it was supposed to be impossible to build a steamer which
could either cross the Atlantic, or face the monsoon in the Red
Sea. The development of steam navigation since then had
made Australia much more accessible than America was in 1837,
and had brought New York, for all practical purposes, nearer
to London than Aberdeen was at the commencement of the reign.
Electricity had even a greater effect on communication than
steam on locomotion; and electricity, as a practical invention,
had its origin in the reign. The first experimental telegraph
line was only erected in the year in which Queen Victoria came
to the throne. Submarine telegraphy, which had done so much
to knit the empire together, was not perfected for many years
afterwards; and long ocean cables were almost entirely con-
structed in the last half of the reign. (S. W.)
On the death of Queen Victoria, the prince of Wales succeeded
to the throne, with the title of Edward VII. (<?..). The corona-
tion fixed for June in the following year was at the
last moment stopped by the king's illness with appendi- **'*'* ' '
citis, but he recovered marvellously from the operation VIL"
and the ceremony took place in August. His excellent
health and activity in succeeding years struck every one with
astonishment. The Boer War had at last been brought to an end
in May 1902 (see TRANSVAAL), and the king had the satisfaction of
seeing South Africa settle down and eventually receive self-govern-
ment. The political history of his reign, which ended with his
death in May 1910, is dealt with in detail in separate biographical
and other articles in this work (see especially those on Lord
Salisbury, Mr A. J. Balfour, Mr J. Chamberlain, Lord Rosebery,
Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, Mr H. H. Asquith, Mr D. Lloyd
George, and on the history of the various portions of the British
Empire); and in this place only a summary need be given.
The king himself (see EDWARD VIL), who nobly earned the title
of Edward the Peacemaker, played no small part in the domestic
and international politics of these years; and contemporary publi-
cists,whohadbecomeaccustomedtoVictorian traditions, gradually
realized that, within the limits of the constitutional monarchy,
there was much more scope for the initiative of a masculine
sovereign in public life than had been supposed by the generation
which grew up after the death of his father in 1862. Edward
VII. made the Crown throughout all classes of society a popular
power which it had not been in England for long ages. And
while the growing rivalry between England and Germany, in
international relations, was continually threatening danger,
his influence in cementing British friendship on all other sides
was of the most marked description. His sudden death was
felt, not only throughout the empire but throughout the world,
with even more poignant emotion than that of Queen Victoria
herself, for his personality had been much more in the forefront.
The end of his reign -coincided with a domestic constitutional
crisis, to which party politics had been working up more and
more acutely for several years. The Tariff Reform
propaganda of Mr Chamberlain (q.v.) in 1903 convulsed
the Conservative party, and thelongperiod of Unionist
domination came to an end in November 1905. Mr
Balfour (q.v.), who became prime minister in 1902 on Lord
Salisbury's retirement, resigned, and was succeeded by Sir H.
Campbell-Bannerman (q.v.), as head of the Liberal party; and
the general election of January 1906 resulted in an overwhelming
victory for the Liberals and their allies, the Labour party (now
a powerful force in politics) and the Irish Nationalists. Just
before Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman's death in April 1908 he
was succeeded as prime minister by Mr Asquith, a leader of far
higher personal ability though with less hold on the affections of
his party. The Liberals had long arrears to make up in their
political programme, and their supremacy in the House of
Commons was an encouragement to assert their views in legisla-
tion. In several directions, and notably in administration, they
carried their policy into effect; but the House of Lords (see
PARLIAMENT) was an obvious stumbling-block to some of their
more important Bills, and the Unionist control of that House
speedily made itself felt, first in wrecking the Education Bill of
1906, then in throwing out the Licensing Bill of 1908, and finally
(see LLOYD GEORGE, D.) in forcing a dissolution by the rejection
of the budget of 1909, with its novel proposals for the increased
taxation of land and licensed houses. The Unionist party in
the country had, meanwhile, been recovering from the Tariff
Reform divisions of 1903, and was once more solid under Mr
Balfour in favour of its new and imperial policy; but the cam-
paign against the House of Lords started by Mr Lloyd George
and the Liberal leaders, who put in the forefront the necessity
of obtaining statutory guarantees for the passing into law of
measures deliberately adopted by the elected Chamber, resulted
in the return of Mr Asquith's government to office at the election
of January 1910. The Unionists came back equal in numbers to
the Liberals, but the latter could also count on the Labour party
and the Irish Nationalists; and the battle was fully arrayed for
of
AUTHORITIES)
ENGLISH HISTORY
583
a frontal attack on the powers of the Second Chamber when the
king's death in May upset all calculations. This unthought-
of complication seemed to act like the letting of blood in an
apoplectic patient.
The prince of Wales became king as George V. (?..), and a
temporary truce was called; and the reign began with a serious
attempt between the leaders of the two great parties,
by private conference, to see whether compromise was
\ Y . not possible (see PARLIAMENT). Apart from the
parliamentary crisis, really hingeing on the difficulty
of discovering a means by which the real will of the people should
be carried out without actually making the House of Commons
autocratically omnipotent, but also without allowing the House
of Lords to obstruct a Liberal government merely as the organ
of the Tory party, the new king succeeded to a noble heritage.
The monarchy itself was popular, the country was prosperous and
in good relations with the world, except for the increasing naval
rivalry with Germany, and the consciousness of imperial solidarity
had made extraordinary progress among all the dominions.
However the domestic problems in the United Kingdom might
be solved, the future of the greatness of the English throne lay
with its headship of an empire, loyal to the core, over which the
sun never sets. (H. CH.)
XIII. SOURCES AND WRITERS OF ENGLISH HISTORY
The attempt here made to combine a bibliography of English
history with some account of the progress of English historical
writing is beset with some difficulty. The evidential value of
what a writer says is quite distinct from the literary art with
which he says it; the real sources of history are not the works
of historians, but records and documents written with no desire
to further any literary purpose. Domesday Book is unique as a
sourer of medieval history, but it does not count in the develop-
ment of English historical writing. That is quite a secondary
consideration; for there was much English history before any
Englishman could write; and even after he could write, his
compositions constitute a minor part of the evidence.
Our earliest information about the land and its people is derived
from geological, ethnological and archaeological studies, from
the remains in British barrows and caves, Roman roads, walls
and villas, coins, place-names and inscriptions. The writings
of Caesar and Tacitus, and a few scattered notices in other
Roman authors, supplement this evidence. But the scientific
accuracy of Tacitus' Cermania is not beyond dispute, and that
light fails centuries before the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Great
Britain. The history of that conquest itself is mainly inferential;
there is theflebiiis narralio of Gildas, vague and rhetorical, moral
rather than historical in motive, and written more than a century
after the conquest had begun, and the narrative of the Welsh
Nennius, who wrote two and a half centuries after Gildas, and
makes no critical distinction between the deeds of dragons and
those of Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxons themselves could not
write until Christian missionaries had reintroduced the art at
the end of the 6th century, and history was not by any means
the first purpose to which they applied it. It was first used to
compile written statements of customs and dooms which were
their nearest approach to law, and these codes and charters
are the earliest written materials for Anglo-Saxon history.
The remarkable outburst of literary culture in Northumbria
during the 7th and 8th centuries produced a real historian in
Bede; Bede, however, knows little or nothing of English
history between 450 and 506, and he is valuable only for the
;th and early part of the 8th centuries. Almost contemporary
is the Vita WUJridi by Eddius, but more valuable are the letters
we possess of Boniface and Alcuin. The famous Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle was probably started under the influence of Alfred
the Great towards the end of the oth century. Its chronology
is often one, two or three years wrong even when it seems to be a
contemporary authority, and the value of its evidence on the con-
quest and the first two centuries after it is very uncertain. But
from Ecgbert's reign onwards it supplies a good deal of apparently
trustworthy information. For Alfred himself we have also
Asser's biography and the Annals of Si Neots, a very imaginative
compilation, while most of the stories which have made Alfred's
name a household word arc fabulous. Even the Chronicle
becomes meagre a few years after Alfred's death, and its value
depends largely upon the ballads which it incorporates; nor is
it materially supplemented by the lives of St Dunstan, for
hagiologists have never treated historical accuracy as a matter
of moment; and our knowledge of the last century of Anglo-
Saxon history is derived mainly from Anglo-Norman writers
who wrote after the Norman Conquest. Some collateral light
on the Danish conquest of England is thrown by the Heims-
kringla and other materials collected in Vigfusson and Powell's
Corpus Poelicum Boreale, and for the reign of Canute and his
sons there is the contemporary Encomium Emmae, which is a
dishonest panegyric on the widow of ^thelred and Canute.
For Edward the Confessor there is an almost equally biased
biography.
For the Norman Conquest itself strictly contemporary evidence
is extremely scanty, and historians have exhausted their own
and their readers' patience in disputing the precise significance
of some phrases about the battle of Hastings used by Wace, a
Norman poet who wrote nearly a century after the battle. One
version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle goes down to 1079 and
another to 1154, but their notices of current events are brief
and meagre. The Bayeux tapestry affords, however, valuable
contemporary evidence, and there are some facts related by
eye-witnesses in the works of William of Poitiers and William
of Jumieges. A generation of copious chroniclers was, moreover,
springing up, and among them were Florence of Worcester,
Henry of Huntingdon, Simeon of Durham and William of
Malmesbury. Their ambition was almost invariably to write the
history of the world, and they generally begin with the Creation.
They only become original and contemporary authorities
towards the end of their appointed tasks, and the bulk of
their work is borrowed from their predecessors. Frequently
they embody materials which would otherwise have perished,
but their transcription is marred by an amount of conscious
or unconscious falsification which seriously impairs their
value. All the above-mentioned writers lived in the half-
century immediately following the Norman Conquest, but their
critical acumen and their literary art vary considerably. William
of Malmesbury, Eadmer and Ordericus Vitalis attain a higher
historical standard than had yet been reached in England by
any one, with the possible exception of Bede. They are not
mere annalists; they practise an art and cultivate a style;
history has become to them a form of literature. They have
also their philosophy and interpretation of history. It is mainly
a theological conception, blind to economic influences, and
attaching excessive importance to the effects of the individual
action of emperors and popes, kings and cardinals. Even their
characters are painted in different colours according to their
action on quite irrelevant questions, as, for instance, their
benefactions to the monastery, to which the historian happens
to. belong, or to rival houses; and the character once determined
by such considerations, history is made to point the moral of
their fortunes, or their fate. It is regarded as the record of moral
judgments and the proof of orthodox doctrine, and it is long
before ecclesiastical historians expel the sermon from their text.
The line of monastic historians stretches out to the close of
the middle ages. Most of the great monasteries had their official
annalists, who produced such works as the Annals of Tewkesbury,
Gloucester, Burton, Waverley, Dunstable, Bermondsey, Oseney,
Winchester (see Annales Monaslici, 5 vols., ed. Luard, and other
volumes in the Rolls series). Some of them are mainly local
chronicles; others are almost national histories. In particular,
St Albans developed a remarkable school of historians extending
over nearly three centuries to the death of Whethamstede in
1465 (see Cftronica Monaslerii S. Albani, Rolls series, 7 vols.,
ed. Rilcy). Only a few of the 235 volumes published under the
direction of the master of the Rolls, and called the Rolls series,
can here be mentioned. Other medieval writers have been
ENGLISH HISTORY
[AUTHORITIES
edited for the earlier English Historical Society; some of them
have been re-edited without being superseded in the Rolls
series. For the reign of Stephen we have the anonymous
Gesla Stephani in addition to the writers already mentioned,
several of whom continue into Stephen's reign. For Henry II.
we have William of Newburgh, who reaches the highest point
attained by historical composition in the i2th century; the
so-called Benedict of Peterborough's Gesta Henrici, which Stubbs
tentatively and without sufficient authority ascribed to Richard
Fitznigel; Robert of Torigni; and seven volumes of " Materials
for the History of Thomas Becket," which contain some of the
best and worst samples of hagiological history. For Richard
and John the chronicles of Roger of Hoveden, Ralph de Diceto
(Diss), Gervase of Canterbury, Ralph of Coggeshall, and a later
continuation of Hoveden, known under the name of Walter of
Coventry, are the best narrative authorities.
With the accession of Henry III., Roger of Wendover, the
first of the St Albans school whose writings are extant, becomes
our chief authority. He was re-edited and continued after 1 236
by Matthew Paris, the greatest of medieval historians. His work,
which goes down to 1259, is picturesque, vivid, and ma-rked by
considerable breadth of view and independence of judgment.
The story is carried on by a series of jejune compilations known
as the Flares historiarum (ed. Luard). Better authorities for
Edward I. are Rishanger, Trokelowe and Blaneforde, Wykes,
Walter of Hemingburgh, Nicholas Trevet, Oxnead and Bartholo-
mew Cotton, and others contained in Stubbs's Chronicles of
Edward I. and Edward II. In the i4th century there is a
significant deterioration in the monastic chroniclers, and their
place is taken by the works of secular clergy like Adam Murimuth,
Geoffrey the Baker, Robert of Avesbury, Henry Knighton and
the anonymous author of the Eulogium historiarum. Monastic
history is represented by Higden's voluminous Polychronicon,
which succeeds the Flares historiarum. A brief revival of the
St Albans school towards the end of the century is seen in the
Chronicon Angliae and the works of T. Walsingham, which
continue into the reign of Henry V. For Richard II. we have
also Malverne and the Monk of Evesham; for the early Lan-
castrians, Capgrave, Elmham, Otterbourne, Adam of Usk;
and for Henry VI., Amundesham, Whethamstede, William of
Worcester and John Hardyng, as well as a number of anonymous
briefer chronicles, edited, though not in the Rolls series, by
J. Gairdner, C. L. Kingsford, N. H. Nicolas and J. S. Davies.
These are the principal English historical writers for the
middle ages; but as the connexion between England and the
continent grew closer, and international relations developed,
an increasing amount of light is thrown on English history by
foreign writers. Of these authorities one of the earliest is the
Histoire des dues de Normandie et des rois d'Angleterre (ed.
Michel); briefer are the Chronique de I' Anonyme de Bethune
and the Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal. A large number
of French and Flemish chronicles illustrate the history of the
Hundred Years' War, by far the most important being Froissart
(best edition by Luce, though Lettenhove's is bigger). Next
come Jehan le Bel, Waurin's Recueil, Monstrelet, Chastellain,
Juvenal des Ursins, and more limited works such as Creton's
Chronique de la traison et mart de Richard II.
Chronicles, however, grow less important as sources of history
as time goes on. Their value is always dependent upon the
absence of the more satisfactory materials known as records,
and these records gradually become more copious and complete.
They develop with the government, of whose activity and policy
they are the real test and evidence. Perhaps the most important
thing in history is the evolution of government, the development
of consciousness and a will on the part of the state. This will
is expressed in records; and, as the state progresses from infancy
through the stage of tutelage under the church to its modern
" omnicompetence," so its will is expressed in an ever widening
and differentiating series of records. The first need of a govern-
ment is finance; the earliest organized machinery for exerting
its will is the exchequer; and the earliest great record in English
history is Domesday Book. It is followed by a series of exchequer
records, called the Pipe Rolls, which begin in the reign of Henry I.,
and dating from that of Henry II. is the Dialogus de scaccario,
which explains in none too lucid language the intricate working
of the exchequer system. It was Henry II. who gave the greatest
impetus to the development of the machinery for expressing
the will of the state. He began with finance and went on to
justice, recognizing that justitia magnum emolumentum, the
administration of justice was a great source of revenue. So
national courts of law are added to the national exchequer, and
by the end of the i2th century legal records become an even
more important source of history than financial documents.
The judicial system is described by Glanvill at the end of the
1 2th, and by Bracton and Fleta in the I3th century (for the
exchequer see the Testa de Nevill and the Red Book of the
Exchequer). During that period the Curia Regis threw off three
offshoots the courts of exchequer, king's bench and common
pleas; and records of their judicial proceedings survive in the
Plea Rolls and Year Books, some of which have been edited for
the Rolls series, the Selden and other societies. Numerous other
classes of legal and administrative records gradually develop,
the Patent and Close Rolls (first calendared by the Record
Commission, and subsequently treated more adequately under
the direction of the deputy keeper of the Records), Charters
(which were first grants to individuals, then to collective groups,
monasteries or boroughs, then to classes, and finally expanded
as in Magna Carta into grants to the whole nation), Escheats,
Feet of Fines, Inquisitiones post mortem, Inquisitiones ad quod
damnum, Placita de Quo Warranto, and others for which the
reader is referred to S. R. Scargill-Bird's Guide to the Principal
Classes of Documents preserved in the Record Office (ycd. ed., 1908).
Every branch of administration comes to be represented in
records almost as soon as it is developed. The evolution of the
army which won Crecy and Poitiers is accompanied by the
accumulation of a mass of indentures and other military docu-
ments, the value of which has been illustrated in Dr Morris's
Welsh Wars of Edward I. and George Wrottesley's Crecy and
Calais from the Public Records. The growth of naval organization
is reflected in the Black Book of the Admiralty; the growth of
taxation in the Liber custumarum and Subsidy Rolls; the rise
of parliament in the Parliamentary Writs (ed. Palgrave), in the
Rotuli parliamentorum, in the Official Return of Members of
Parliament, and in the Statutes of the Realm; that of Con-
vocation in David Wilkins's Concilia. The register of the privy
council does not begin until later in the i4th century, and then
is broken off between the middle of the I5th and 1539.
Local as well as central government begets records as it grows.
From the Extenta manerii of the I2th century we get to the
Manorial Rolls of the i3th, when also we have Hundred Rolls,
records of forest courts, of courts leet and of coroners' courts,
and a variety of municipal documents, for which the reader is
referred to Dr C. Gross's Bibliography of British Municipal
History and to Mrs J. R. Green's more popular Town Life in the
Fifteenth Century. The municipal records of London, its hustings
court and city Companies, are too multifarious to describe;
some classes of these documents have been exemplified in the
works of Dr R. R. Sharpe. Ecclesiastical records are represented
by the episcopal registers (for the most part still unpublished),
monastic cartularies, and other documents rendered com-
paratively scarce by the spoliation of the monasteries, and
scattered proceedings of ecclesiastical courts. (See also the
article RECORD.)
Documents, other than records strictly so called, begin to
grow with the habit of correspondence and the necessity of
communication. A few letters survive from the time of the
Norman kings, but the earliest collection of English royal letters
is the Letters of Henry III. (Rolls series) . Contemporary are the
Letters of Grosseteste, and a little later come the Letters of Arch-
bishop Peckham and Raine's Letters from Northern Registers
(all in the Rolls series). Private correspondence appeared earlier
in the voluminous epistles of Peter of Blois, archdeacon of Bath
(ed. Giles). This is a somewhat intermittent source of history
until we come to the i5th century, when the well-known Paston
AITHORIT1ES]
ENGLISH HISTORY
5*5
Letters (ed. Gairdner) begin a stream which never fails thereafter
and soon becomes a torrent. The most important series of
official correspondence is the Papal Letters, calendared from 1 198
to 1404 in 4 vols. (ed. Bliss, Johnson and Twemlow). Subsidiary
sources are the Political Songs (ed. Wright), treatises like those
of John of Salisbury, Gerald of Wales, and, later, Wycliffe's
works, Setter's Fasciculi Zisaniorum, Gascoigne's Loci e libra
ttritalmm, Pecock's Represser, and the literary writings of
Chaucer, Langland, Gower, Richard Rolle and others.
During the 151(1 century the transition, which marks the
change from medieval to modem history, affects also the
character of historical sources and historical writing. In the first
place, history ceases to be the exclusive province of the church;
monastic chronicles shrink to a trickle and then dry up; the last
of their kind in England is the Greyfriars Chronicle (Camden
Society), which ends in 1554. Their place is taken by the city
chronicle compiled by middle-class laymen, just as the Re-
mittance was not a revival of clerical learning, but the expression
of new intellectual demands on the part of the laity. Secondly,
the definite disappearance of the medieval ideas of a cosmopolitan
world and the emergence of national states begat diplomacy, and
with it an ever-swelling mass of diplomatic material. Diplomacy
had hitherto teen occasional and intermittent, and embassies
rare; now we get resident ambassadors carrying on a regular
correspondence (see DIPLOMACY). The mercantile interests of
Venice made it the pioneer in this direction, though its representa-
tives abroad were at first commercial rather than diplomatic
agents. The Calendar of Venetian Slate Papers goes back to the
Uth century, but does not become copious till the reign of
Henry VII., when also the Spanish Calendar begins. Resident
French ambassadors in England only begin in the i6th century,
and later still those from the emperor, the German and Italian
states other than Venice. In the third place, the development
of the new monarchy involved an enormous extension of the
activity of the central government, and therefore a corresponding
expansion in the records of its energy.
The political records of this energy are the State Papers, a
class of document which soon dwarfs all others, and renders
chroniclers, historians and the like almost negligible quantities as
sources of history; but in another way their value is enhanced,
for these hundreds of thousands of documents provide a test of
the accuracy of modern historians which is imperfect in the case
of medieval chroniclers and almost non-existent in that of
ancient writers. These state papers are either " foreign " or
" domestic," that is to say, the correspondence of the English
government with its agents abroad, or at home. There is also the
correspondence of foreign ambassadors resident in England with
their governments. This last class of documents exists in England
mainly in the form of transcripts from the originals in foreign
archives, which have been made for the purpose of the Venetian
and Spanish Calendars of state papers. The Venetian Calendar
had by 1009 been carried well into the tyth century; the Spanish
(which includes transcripts from the Habsburg archives at
Vienna, Brussels and Simancas) covered only the reigns of
Henry VII. and VIII. and Queen Elizabeth. No attempt had
yet been made to calendar the French correspondence in a similar
way, though the French Foreign Office published some frag-
mentary collections, such as the Correspondance de MM. de
Cast Won et de Mar iliac and that of (Met de Selve. There arc
other collections too numerous to enumerate, such as Lcttenhove's
edition of Philip II.'s correspondence relating to the Nether-
lands, Diegerick and MUller's, Teulet's and Albert's collections,
the French Documents infdUs and the Spanish Documentos
inedilos, all containing state papers relating to England's
foreign policy in the i6th century. The Scottish and Irish state
papers are calendared in separate series and without much
system. Thus for Scottish affairs there are four scries, the
Border Papers, the Hamilton Papers, Thorp's Calendar, and,
more recent and complete, Bain's Calendar. For Ireland,
besides the regular Irish state papers, there are the Carew Papers,
almost as important. Anarchy, indeed, pervades the whole
method of publication. For the reign of Henry VII. we have,
besides the Venetian and Spanish Calendars, only three volumes
Gairdner's Letters and Papers of Richard HI. and Henry VII.
and Campbell's Materials (3 vols., Rolls series). Then with the
reign of Henry VIII. begins the magnificent and monumental
Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., the one modern series for
which the Record Office deserves unstinted praise. This is not
limited to state papers, domestic and foreign, nor to documents in
the Record Office; it calendars private letters, grants, &c.,
extant in the British Museum and elsewhere. It extends to
21 volumes, each volume consisting of two or more parts, and
some parts (as in vol. iv.) containing over a thousand pages;
it comprises at least fifty thousand documents. Its value, how-
ever, varies; the earlier volumes are not so full as the later, the
documents are not so well calendared, and some classes are
excluded from earlier, which appear in the later, volumes.
After 1547 a different plan is adopted, though not consistently
followed. Only state papers are calendared, and as a rule only
those in the Record Office; and the domestic are separated from
the foreign. The great fault is the neglect of the vast quantities
of state papers in the British Museum. The Domestic Calendar
(the first volume of which is very inadequate) extended in 1909
in a series of more than seventy volumes nearly to the end of the
1 7th century; the mass of MSS. calendared therein may be
gathered from the fact that for the reign of Elizabeth the Domestic
state papers fill over three hundred MS. volumes. The Foreign
Calendar had only got to 1582, but it occupied sixteen printed
volumes against one of the Domestic Calendar. For the masses
of MSS. uncalendared in the British Museum there is no guide
except the imperfect indexes to the Cotton, Harleian, Lansdowne,
Additional and other collections. Hardly less important than the
calendars are the reports of the Historical Manuscripts Com-
mission and the appendices thereto, which extend to over a
hundred volumes; twelve are occupied by Lord Salisbury's
16th-century MSS. at Hatfield House. The dispersion of these
state papers is due to the fact that they were in those days
treated not as the property of the state, but as the private
property of individual secretaries.
State papers represent only one side of the activity of the
central government. The register of the privy council, extending
with some lacunae from 1539 to 1604, has been printed in
thirty-two volumes. The Rotuli parliamentorum end with
Henry VII., but in 1509 begin the journals of the House of
Lords, and in 1547 the journals of the House of Commons.
These are supplemented by private diaries of members of
parliament, several of which were used in D'Ewes's Journals.
Legal history can now be followed in a continuous series of law
reports, beginning with Keilway, Staunford and Dyer, and
going on with Coke and many others; documentary records of
various courts are exemplified in the Select Cases from the
star chamber, the court of requests and admiralty courts,
published by the Selden Society; and there are voluminous
records of the courts of augmentations, first-fruits, wards and
liveries in the Record Office. For Ireland, besides the state
papers, there are the Calendars of Patents and of Fiants, and
for Scotland the Exchequer Rolls and Registers of the Privy
Council and of the Great Seal, both extending to many volumes.
Unofficial sources multiply with equal rapidity, but it is
impossible to enumerate the collections of private letters, &c.,
only a few of which have been published. The chronicles,
which in the isth century are usually meagre productions like
Warkworth's (Camden Society), get fuller, especially those
emanating from London. Fabyan is succeeded by Hall, an
indispensable authority for Henry VIII., and Hall by Grafton.
Other useful books are Wriothesley's Chronicle and Machyn's
Diary, and they have numerous successors; some of their works
have been edited for the Camden Society, which now takes the
place of the Rolls series. The most important are Holinshed,
Stow and Camden; and gradually, with Speed and Bacon, the
chronicle develops into the history, and early in the I7th cen-
tury we get such works as Lord Herbert's Reign of Henry
VIII., Hayward's Edward VI., and, on the ecclesiastical side,
Heylyn, Fuller, Burnet and Collier's histories of the church and
586
ENGLISH HISTORY
[AUTHORITIES
Reformation. Foxe, who died in 1587, included a vast and
generally accurate collection of documents in his Acts and
Monuments, popularized as the Book of Martyrs, though his own
contributions have to be discounted as much as those of Sanders,
Parsons and other Roman Catholic controversialists. Two other
great collections are the Parker Society's publications (56 vols.),
which contain besides the works of the reformers a considerable
number of their letters, and Strype's works (26 vols.). The
naval epic of the period is Hakluyt's Navigations, re-edited in 12
vols. in 1902, and continued in Purchas's Pilgrims.
In the 1 7th century the domestic and foreign state papers
eclipse other sources almost more completely than in the i6th.
The colonial state papers now become important and extensive,
those relating to America and the West Indies being most
numerous (18 vols. to 1700). Parliamentary records naturally
expand, and the journals of both Houses become more detailed.
Parliamentary diarists like D'Ewes, Burton and Walter Yonge,
only a fragment of whose shorthand notes in the British Museum
has been published (Camden Society), elucidate the bare official
statements; and from 1660 the series of parliamentary debates
is fairly complete, though not so full or authoritative as it
becomes with Hansard in the igth century. Social diarists of
great value appear after the Restoration in Pepys, Evelyn,
Reresby, Narcissus Luttrell and Swift (Journal to Stella), and
political writing grows more important as a source of history,
whether it takes the form of Bacon's (ed. Spedding) or Milton's
treatises, or of satires like Dryden's and political pamphlets like
Halifax's and then Swift's, Defoe's and Steele's. Clarendon's
Great Rebellion and Burnet's History of My Own Time are the
first modern attempts at contemporary history, as distinct from
chronicles and annals, in England, although it is difficult to
exclude the work of Matthew Paris from the category. The
innumerable tracts and newsletters are a valuable source for
the Civil Wars 'and Commonwealth period (see J. B. Williams,
A History of English Journalism, 1909), while Thurloe's,
Clarendon's and Nalson's collections of state papers deserve a
mention apart from the Domestic Calendar. There is a still
more monumental collection the Carte Papers on Irish affairs
in the Bodleian Library, where also the Tanner MSS. and other
collections have only been very partially worked. The volumes
of the Historical MSS. Commission are of great value for the
later Stuart period, notably the House of Lords MSS.
For the i8th century the only calendars are the Home Office
Papers and the Treasury Books and Papers, the further specializa-
tion of government having made it necessary to differentiate
domestic state papers into several classes. But it need hardly
be said that the bulk of correspondence in the Record Office
does not diminish. Outside its walls the most important single
collection is perhaps the duke of Newcastle's papers among the
Additional MSS. in the British Museum; the Stuart papers at
Windsor, Mr Fortescue's at Dropmore, Lord Charlemont's
(Irish affairs), Lord Dartmouth's (American affairs) and Lord
Carlisle's, all calendared by the Historical MSS. Commission,
are also valuable. Chatham's correspondence with colonial
governors has been published (2 vols., 1906), as have the Grenville
Papers, Bedford Correspondence, Malmesbury's Diaries, Auck-
land's Journals and Correspondence, Grafton's Correspondence,
Lord North's Correspondence with George HI., and other corre-
spondence in The Memoirs of Rockingham, and the duke of
Buckingham's Court and Cabinets of George III. Mention should
also be made of Gower's Despatches, the Cornwallis Correspond-
ence, Rose's Correspondence and Lord Colchester's Correspondence.
Of special interest is the series of naval records, despatches to
and from naval commanders, proceedings of courts-martial, and
logs in the Record Office which have never been properly utilized.
Among unofficial sources the most characteristic of the i8th
century are letters, memoirs and periodical literature. Horace
Walpole's Letters (Clarendon Press, 16 vols.) are the best comment
on the history of the period; his Memoirs are not so good,
though they are superior to Wraxall, who succeeds him.
Periodical literature becomes regular in the reign of Queen Anne,
chiefly in the form of journals like the Spectator; but several
daily newspapers, including The Times, were founded during
the century. The Craftsman provided a vehicle for Bolingbroke's
attacks on Walpole, while the Gentleman's Magazine and Annual
Register begin a more serious and prolonged career. Both contain
occasional state papers, and not very trustworthy reports of
parliamentary proceedings. The publication of debates was not
authorized till the last quarter of the century; parliamentary
papers begin earlier, but only slowly attain their present por-
tentous dimensions. Political writing is at its best from Halifax
to Cobbett, and its three greatest names are perhaps Swift,
" Junius " and Burke, though Steele, Defoe, Bolingbroke and
Dr Johnson are not far behind, while Canning's contributions
to the Anti- Jacobin and Gillray's caricatures require mention.
The sources for 19th-century history are somewhat similar
to those for the i8th. Diaries continue in the Creevey Papers,
Greville's Diary, and lesser but not less voluminous writers like
Sir M. E. Grant-Duff. The most important series of letters is
Queen Victoria's (ed. Lord Esher and A. C. Benson, 1908), and
the correspondence of most of her prime ministers and many of
her other advisers has been partially published. Of political
biographies there is no end. The great bulk of material, however,
consists of blue-books, Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, and
newspapers which are better as indirect than dfrect evidence.
The real truth is not of course revealed at once, and many episodes
in ipth-century history are still shrouded by official secrecy. In
this respect English governments are more cautious or reactionary
than many of those on the continent of Europe, and access to
official documents is denied when it is granted elsewhere; even
the lapse of a century is not considered a sufficient salve for
susceptibilities which might be wounded by the whole truth.
Meanwhile the igth century witnessed a great development
in historical writing. In the middle ages the stimulus to write
was mainly of a moral or ecclesiastical nature, though the
patriotic impulse which had suggested the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
was perhaps never entirely absent, and the ecclesiastical motive
often degenerated into a desire to glorify, sometimes even by
forgery, not merely the church as a whole, but the particular
monastery to which the writer belonged. As nationalism
developed, the patriotic motive supplanted the ecclesiastical,
and stress is laid on the " famous " history of England. Insular
self-glorification was, however, modified to some extent by the
Renaissance, which developed an interest in other lands, and the
Reformation, which gave to much historical writing a partisan
theological bias. This still colours most of the " histories " of
the Reformation period, because the issues of that time are
living issues, and the writers of these histories are committed
beforehand by their profession and their position to a particular
interpretation. In the I7th century political partisanship
coloured historical writing, and that, too, remained a potent
motive so long as historians were either Whigs or Tories.
Histories were often elaborate party pamphlets, and this race
of historians is hardly yet extinct. Macaulay is not greatly
superior in impartiality to Hume; Gibbon and Robertson were
less open to temptation because they avoided English subjects.
Hallam deliberately aimed at impartiality, but he could not
escape his Whig atmosphere. Nevertheless, the effort to be
impartial marks a new conception of history, which is well
expressed in Lord Acton's admonition to his contributors in the
Cambridge Modern History. Historians are to serve no cause
but that of truth; in so far even as they desire a line of investiga-
tion to lead to a particular result, they are not, maintains
Professor Bury, real historians. S. R. Gardiner perhaps attained
most nearly this severe ideal among English historians, and
Ranke among Germans. But, even when all conscious bias is
eliminated, the unconscious bias remains, and Ranke's history
of the Reformation is essentially a middle-class, even bourgeois,
presentment. Stubbs's medievalist sympathies colour his
history throughout, and still more strongly does Froude's anti-
clericalism. Freeman's bias was peculiar; he is really a West
Saxon of Godwine's time reincarnated, and his Somerset hatred
of French, Scots and Mercian foreigners sets off his robust
loyalty to the house of Wessex. Lecky and Creighton are almost
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
57
as dispassionate as Gardiner, but are more definitely committed
to particular points of views, while democratic fervour pervades
the fascinating pages of J.R. Green, and an intellectual secularism,
which is almost religious in its intensity and idealism, inspired
the genius of Maitland.
The latest controversy about history is whether it is a science
or an an. It is, of course, both, simply because there must be
science in every art and art in every science. The antithesis
is largely false; science lays stress on analysis, art on synthesis.
The historian must apply scientific methods to his materials
and artistic methods to his results; he must test his documents
and then turn them into literature. The relative importance
of the two methods is a matter of dispute. There are some who
still maintain that history is merely an art , that the best history is
the story that is best told, and that what is said is less important
than the way in which it is said. This school generally ignores
records. Others attach little importance to the form in which
truth is presented; they are concerned mainly with the principles
and methods of scientific criticism, and specialize in palaeography,
diplomatic and sources. The works of this school are little read,
but in time its results penetrate the teaching in schools and
universities, and then the pages of literary historians; it is
represented in England by a fairly good organization, the Royal
Historical Society (with which the Camden Society has been
amalgamated), and by an excellent periodical, The English
Historical Review (founded in 1884), while some sort of propa-
ganda is attempted by the Historical Association (started in
1006). Its standards have also been upheld with varying success
in great co-operative undertakings, such as the Dictionary of
National Biography, the Cambridge Modern History, and Messrs
Longmans' Political History of England.
These 19th-century products require aome sort of classification
for purposes of reference, and the chronological is the most con-
venient. Lingard's, J. R. Green's and Messrs Longmans' histories
are the only notable attempts to tell the history of England as a
whole, though Stubbs's Constitutional History (3 vols.) covers the
middle ages and embodies a political survey as well (for corrections
and modifications see Petit- Dutaillis, Supplementary Studies, 1908),
while Hallam's Constitutional History (3 vols.) extends from 1485
to 1760 and Erskine May's (3 vols.) from 1760 to 1860. Sir James
Ramsay's six volumes also cover the greater part of medieval
English history. There is no work on a larger scale than Lappenberg
and Kcmble, dealing with England before the Norman Conquest,
. L. L. f D /-__.*_ ir_L.:__ _/ i? i j I f* i _* 17 f r
though J. R. Green s \faktng of England and Conquest of England
deal with certain portions in some detail, and Freeman gives a
preliminary survey in his Norman Conquest (6 vols.). For the
monogra
(4 vols.);
succeeding period see Freeman's William Rufus, J. H. Round's
Feudal England and Geoffrey de Mandeville, and Miss Norgate's
England under the A ngevins and John Lackland. From 1 2 1 6 we ha ve
but Ramsay, Stubbs, Longmans' Political History ami
aphs (some of them good), until we come to Wy lie's Henry I V.
(4 vols.); and again from 1413 the same is true (Gairdner's Louardy
and the Reformation being the most elaborate monograph) until we
come to Brewer's Reign of Henry VIII. (2 vols.; to 1530 only),
Fronde's History (12 vols., 1520-1588) and R. W. Dixon s Church
History (6 vols., 1529-1570). from 1603 to 1656 we have Gardiner's
History (England, to vols. ; Civil War, 4 vols. ; Commonwealth and
Protectorate, 3 vols.), and to 1714 Ranke's History of England (6
vols.; see also Firth's Cromwell and Cromwell's Army, ana various
editions of texts and monographs). For Charles 1 1. there is no good
history; then come Macaulay, and Stanhope and VVyon's Queen
Anne, and for the i8th century Stanhope and Lecky (England,
7 vols,; Ireland, 5 vols.). From 1793 to 1815 is another gap only
partially filled. Spencer Walpole deals with the period from 1815 to
1880, and Herbert Paul with the years 1846-1895.
A few books on special subjects deserve mention. For legal
history see Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law (2 vols.
to Edward I.), Maitland's Domesday Book arid Beyond, and Anspn's
Law and Custom of the Constitution ; for economic history, Cunning-
ham's Growth of Industry and Commerce, and Ashley s Economic
History: for ecclesiastical history, Stephens and Hunt's series (7
vols.); lor foreign and colonial, Seeley's British Foreign Policy and
Expansion of England, and J. A. Doyle's books on the American
colonies; for military history, Fortescue's History of the British
Army, Napier's and Oman's works on the Peninsular War, and
KingUkc'n Invasion of the Crimea; and for naval history, Corbett's
Drake and the Tudor Navy, Successors of Drake, English in the Medi-
terranean and Seven Years' War, and Mahan's Influence of Sea-
Power on History and Influence of Sea- Power upon the French Revolu-
tion and Empire.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BIBLIOGRAPHIES. The sources for the middle
. have been enumerated in C. Gross's Sources and Literature of
English History ... to about 1485 (London, 1900), but there is
nothing similar for modern history. G. C. Lee's Source Book of
English History is not very satisfactory. More information can be
obtained from the bibliographies appended to the volumes in
Longmans' Political History, or the chapters in the Cambridge
Modern History, or to the biographical articles in the D.N.B. and
Enc y. Brit. A scries of bibliographical leaflets for the use of teachers
is issued by the Historical Association. For MSS. sources see
Scargill-Bird's Guide to the Record Office, and the class catalogues
in the MSS. Department of the British Museum. Lists of the state
papers and other documents printed and calendared under the din ,
tion of the master of the Rolls and deputy keeper of the Records
are supplied at the end of many of their volumes. (A. F. P.)
ENGLISH LANGUAGE. In its historical sense, the name
English is now conveniently used to comprehend the language
of the English people from their settlement in Britain to the
present day, the various stages through which it has passed being
distinguished as Old, Middle, and New or Modern English. In
works yet recent, and even in some still current, the term is
confined to the third, or at most extended to the second and third
of these stages, since the language assumed in the main the
vocabulary and grammatical forms which it now presents, the
oldest or inflected stage being treated as a separate language,
under the title of Anglo-Saxon, while the transition period which
connects the two has been called Semi-Saxon. This view had
the justification that, looked upon by themselves, either as
vehicles of thought or as objects of study and analysis, Old
English or Anglo-Saxon and Modern English are, for all practical
ends, distinct languages, as much so, for example, as Latin and
Spanish. No amount of familiarity with Modern English,
including its local dialects, would enable the student to read
Anglo-Saxon, three-fourths of the vocabulary of which have
perished and been reconstructed within ooo years; ' nor would a
knowledge even of these lost words give him the power, since
the grammatical system, alike in accidence and syntax, would
be entirely strange to him. Indeed, it is probable that a modern
Englishman would acquire the power of reading and writing
French in less time than it would cost him to attain to the same
proficiency in Old English; so that if the test of distinct lan-
guages be their degree of practical difference from each other,
it cannot be denied that " Anglo-Saxon " is a distinct language
from Modern English. But when we view the subject historically,
recognizing the fact that living speech is subject to continuous
change in certain definite directions, determined by the con-
stitution and circumstances of mankind, as an evolution or
development of which we can trace the steps, and that, owing
to the abundance of written materials, this evolution appears
so gradual in English that we can nowhere draw distinct lines
separating its successive stages, we recognize these stages as
merely temporary phases of an individual whole, and speak
of the English language as used alike by Cynewulf, by Chaucer,
by Shakespeare and by Tennyson. 1 It must not be forgotten,
however, that in this wide sense the English language includes,
not only the literary or courtly forms of speech used at successive
periods, but also the popular and, it may be, altogether unwritten
dialects that exist by their side. Only on this basis, indeed, can
we speak of Old, Middle and Modern English as the same
language, since in actual fact the precise dialect which is now
the cultivated language, or " Standard English," is not the
descendant of that dialect which was the cultivated language
or " Englisc " of Alfred, but of a sister dialect then sunk in com-
parative obscurity, even as the direct descendant of Alfred's
Englisc is now to be found in the non-literary rustic speech
of Wiltshire and Somersetshire. Causes which, linguistically
1 A careful examination of several letters of Bosworth's Anglo^
Saxon dictionary gives in 2000 words (including derivatives and
compounds, but excluding orthographic variants) 535 which still
exist as modern English words.
1 The practical convenience of having one name for what was the
same thing in various stages of development is not affected by the
probability that (E.-A. Freeman notwithstanding) Engle and Englisc
were, at an early period, not applied to the whole of the inhabitants of
Teutonic Britain, but only to a part of them. The dialects of Engle
and Seaxan were alike old forms of what was afterwards English
speech, and so, viewed in relation to it, Old English, whatever their
contemporary names might be.
588
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
considered, are external and accidental, have shifted the
political and intellectual centre of England, and along with it
transferred literary and official patronage from one form of
English to another ; if the centre of influence had happened to
be fixed at York or on the banks of the Forth, both would
probably have been neglected for a third.
The English language, thus defined, is not " native " to
Britain, that is, it was not found there at the dawn of history,
but was introduced by foreign immigrants at a date many
centuries later. At the Roman Conquest of the island the
languages spoken by the natives belonged all (so far as is known)
to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic
family, modern forms of which still survive in Wales, Ireland,
the Scottish Highlands, Isle of Man and Brittany, while one has
at no distant date become extinct in Cornwall (see CELT:
Language). Brythonic dialects, allied to Welsh and Cornish,
were apparently spoken over the greater part of Britain, as far
north as the firths of Forth and Clyde; beyond these estuaries
and in the isles to the west, including Ireland and Man, Goidelic
dialects, akin to Irish and Scottish Gaelic, prevailed. The long
occupation of south Britain by the Romans (A.D. 43-409) a
period, it must not be forgotten, equal to that from the Reforma-
tion to the present day, or nearly as long as the whole duration
of modern English familiarized the provincial inhabitants with
Latin, which was probably the ordinary speech of the towns.
Gildas, writing nearly a century and a half after the renunciation
of Honorius in 410, addressed the British princes in that
language; x and the linguistic history of Britain might have been
not different from that of Gaul, Spain and the other provinces
of the Western Empire, in which a local type of Latin, giving
birth to a neo-Latinic language, finally superseded the native
tongue except in remote and mountainous districts, 2 had not
the course of events been entirely changed by the Teutonic
conquests of the 5th and 6th centuries.
The Angles, Saxons, and their allies came of the Teutonic
stock, and spoke a tongue belonging to the Teutonic or Germanic
branch of the Indo-Germanic (Indo-European) family, the same
race and form of speech being represented in modern times by
the people and languages of Holland, Germany, Denmark, the
Scandinavian peninsula and Iceland, as well as by those of
England and her colonies. Of the original home of the so-called
primitive Aryan race (q.v.), whose language was the parent
Indo-European, nothing is certainly known, though the subject
has called forth many conjectures; the present tendency is to
seek it in Europe itself. The tribe can hardly have occupied
an extensive area at first, but its language came by degrees to be
diffused over the greater part of Europe and some portion of
Asia. Among those whose Aryan descent is generally recognized
as beyond dispute are the Teutons, to whom the Angles and
Saxons belonged.
The Teutonic or Germanic people, after dwelling together in a
body, appear to have scattered in various - directions, their
language gradually breaking up into three main groups, which
can be already clearly distinguished in the 4th century A.D.,
North Germanic or Scandinavian, West Germanic or Low and
High German, and East Germanic, of which the only important
representative is Gothic. Gothic, often called Moeso-Gothic, was
the language of a people of the Teutonic stock, who, passing
down the Danube, invaded the borders of the Empire, and
obtained settlements in the province of Moesia, where their
language was committed to writing in the 4th century; its
literary remains are of peculiar value as the oldest specimens, by
several centuries, of Germanic speech. The dialects of the
invaders of Britain belonged to the West Germanic branch, and
within this to the Low German group, represented at the present
1 The works of Gildas in the original Latin were edited by Mr
Stevenson for the English Historical Society;. There is an English
translation in Six Old English Chronicles in Bonn's Antiquarian
library.
2 As to the continued existence of Latin in Britain, see further in
Rhys's Lectures on Welsh Philology, pp. 226-227; also Dogatschar,
Lautlehre d. gr., lot. u. roman. Lehnworte im Altengl. (Strassburg,
1888).
day by Dutch, Frisian, and the various " Platt-Deutsch "
dialects of North Germany. At the dawn of history the fore-
fathers of the English appear to have been dwelling between
and about the estuaries and lower courses of the Rhine and the
Weser, and the adjacent coasts and isles; at the present day the
most English or Angli-form dialects of the European continent
are held to be those of the North Frisian islands of Amrum and
Sylt, on the west coast of Schleswig. It is well known that the
greater part of the ancient Friesland has been swept away by the
encroachments of the North Sea, and the disjecta membra of the
Frisian race, pressed by the sea in front and more powerful
nationalities behind, are found only in isolated fragments from the
Zuider Zee to the coasts of Denmark. Many Frisians accom-
panied the Angles and Saxons to Britain, and Old English was
in many respects more closely connected with Old Frisian than
with any other Low German dialect. Of the Geatas, Eotas or
" Jutes," who, according to Bede, occupied Kent and the Isle of
Wight, and formed a third tribe along with the Angles and
Saxons, it is difficult to speak linguistically. The speech of
Kent certainly formed a distinct dialect in both the Old English
and the Middle English periods, but it has tended to be assimilated
more and more to neighbouring southern dialects, and is at the
present day identical with that of Sussex, one of the old Saxon
kingdoms. Whether the speech of the Isle of Wight ever showed
the same characteristic differences as that of Kent cannot now be
ascertained, but its modern dialect differs in no respect from that
of Hampshire, and shows no special connexion with that of Kent.
It is at least entirely doubtful whether Bede's Geatas came from
Jutland; on linguistic grounds we should expect that they
occupied a district lying not to the north of the Angles, but
between these and the old Saxons.
The earliest specimens of the language of the Germanic
invaders of Britain that exist point to three well-marked dialect
groups: the Anglian (in which a further distinction may be
made between the Northumbrian and the Mercian, or South-
Humbrian); the Saxon, generally called West-Saxon from the
almost total lack of sources outside the West-Saxon domain;
and the Kentish. The Kentish and West-Saxon are sometimes,
especially in later times, grouped together as southern dialects as
opposed to midland and northern. These three groups were
distinguished from each other by characteristic points of phono-
logy and inflection. Speaking generally, the Anglian dialects may
be distinguished by the absence of certain normal West-Saxon
vowel-changes, and the presence of others not found in West-
Saxon, and also by a strong tendency to confuse and simplify
inflections, in all which points, moreover, Northumbrian tended to
deviate more widely than Mercian. Kentish, on the other hand,
occupied a position intermediate between Anglian and West-
Saxon, early Kentish approaching more nearly to Mercian,
owing perhaps to early historical connexion between the two, and
late Kentish tending to conform to West-Saxon characteristics,
while retaining several points in common with Anglian. Though
we cannot be certain that these dialectal divergences date from a
period previous to the occupation of Britain, such evidence as
can be deduced points to the existence of differences already on
the continent, the three dialects corresponding in all likelihood
to Bede's three tribes, the Angles, Saxons and Geatas.
As it was amongst the Engle or Angles of Northumbria that
literary culture first appeared, and as an Angle or Englisc dialect
was the first to be used for vernacular literature, Englisc came
eventually to be a general name for all forms of the vernacular
as opposed to Latin, &c.; and even when the West-Saxon of
Alfred became in its turn the literary or classical form of speech,
it was still called Englisc or English. The origin of the name
A ngul-Seaxan( Anglo-Saxons) has been disputed, some maintaining
that it means a union of Angles and Saxons, others (with better
foundation) that it meant English Saxons, or Saxons of England
or of the Angel-cynn as distinguished from Saxons of the
Continent (see New English Dictionary, s.v.). Its modern use is
mainly due to the little band of scholars who in the i6th and
1 7th centuries turned their attention to the long-forgotten
language of Alfred and ^Elf ric, which, as it differed so greatly from
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
589
the English of their own day, they found it convenient to dis-
tinguish by a name which was applied to themselves by those who
poke it. * To these scholars " Anglo-Saxon " and " English "
were separated by a gulf which it was reserved for later scholar-
ship to bridge across, and show the historical continuity of the
English of all age*.
As already hinted, the English language, in the wide sense,
presents three main stages of development Old, Middle and
Modern distinguished by their inflectional characteristics.
The latter can be best summarized in the words of Dr Henry
Sweet in his History of English Sounds:* "Old English is the
period of/*// inflections (nama, gifan, caru), Middle English of
IntUtd inflections (naame, given, court), and Modern English of
last inflections (name, gift, care - ndm, git, car). We have besides
two periods of transition, one in which nama and name exist side
by side, and another in which final t [with other endings] is
beginning to drop." By last inflections it is meant that only very
few remain, and those mostly non-syllabic, as the -s in stone; and
lovej, the -ed in lovcJ. the -r in their, as contrasted with the Old
English stin-oj, lufaS, \ul-od-e and \\if-od-on, \>&-ra. Each of
these periods may also be divided into two or three; but from
the want of materials it is difficult to make any such division for
all dialects alike in the first.
As to the chronology of the successive stages, it is of course
impossible to lay down any exclusive series of dates, since the
linguistic changes were inevitably gradual, and also made them-
selves felt in some parts of the country much earlier than in others,
the north being always in advance of the midland, and the south
much later in its changes. It is easy to point to periods at which
Old, Middle and Modern English were fully developed, but much
let* easy to draw lines separating these stages; and even if we
recognize between each part a " transition " period or stage, the
determination of the beginning and end of this will to a certain
extent be a matter of opinion. But bearing these considerations
in mind, and having special reference to the midland dialect
from which literary English is mainly descended, the following
may be given as approximate dates, which if they do not
demarcate the successive stages, at least include them:
Old English or Anglo-Saxon . . . to noo
Transition Old English (" Semi-Saxon ") . 1 100 to 1 150
Early Middle English ... . 1150101250
(Normal) Middle English . 1250 to 1400
Late and Transition Middle English . 1400 to 1485
Early Modern or Tudor English . . 1485101611
Seventeenth 'century transition . . 1611 to 1688
Modern or current English . . . 1689 onward
Dr Sweet has reckoned Transition Old English (Old Transition)
from 1050 to 1150, Middle English thence to 1450, and Late or
Transition Middle English (Middle Transition) 1450 to 1500.
As to the Old Transition see further below.
The OLD ENGLISH or Anglo-Saxon tongue, as introduced into
Britain, was highly inflectional, though its inflections at the date
when it becomes known to us were not so full as those of the
earlier Gothic, and considerably less so than those of Greek and
Latin during their classical periods. They corresponded more
closely to those of modern literary German, though both in
nouns and verbs the forms were more numerous and distinct;
for example, the German guten answers to three Old English
forms, godne, gddum, godan; guter to two gddre, gddra;
liebten to two, lufodon and lufedtn. Nouns had four cases,
Nominative, Accusative (only sometimes distinct), Genitive,
1 /Ethelstan in 934 calls himself in a charter " Ongol-Saxna cyning
and Brytaenwalda eallaes thyses iglandes " ; Eadred in 955 is
" Angul-seaxna cyning and casere totius Britanniae," and the name
kof frequent occurrence in documents written in Latin. These facts
ought to be remembered in the interest of the scholars of the i/th
century, who have been blamed for the use of the term Anglo-Saxon,
as if they had invented it. By " Anglo-Saxon " language they
meant the language of the people who sometimes at least called
themselves " Anglo-Saxons." Even now the name is practically
useful, when we are dealing with the subject per se, as is Old English,
on the other hand, when we are treating it historically or in con-
nexion with English as a whole.
' Transat lions of the Philological Society (1873-1874), p. 620;
new and much enlarged edition, 1888.
Dative, the latter used also with prepositions to express locative,
instrumental, and most ablative relations; of a distinct instru-
mental case only vestiges occur. There were several declensions of
nouns, the main division being that known in Germanic languages
generally as strong and weak, a distinction also extending to
adjectives in such wise that every adjective assumed either the
strong or the weak inflection as determined by associated gram-
matical forms. The first and second personal pronouns possessed
a dual number=we two, ye two; the third person had a complete
declension of the stem he, instead of being made up as now of the
three stems seen in he, she, they. The verb distinguished the
subjunctive from the indicative mood, but had only two inflected
tenses, present and past (more accurately, that of incomplete
and that of completed or " perfect " action) the former also used
for the future, the latter for all the shades of past time. The order
of the sentence corresponded generally to that of German. Thus
from King Alfred's additions to his translation of Orosius:
" Donne ]>y ylcan daege hi bine to J>aem ade beran wyllaS J>onne
todaelaS hi his feoh )>aet J>asr to lafe bi5 asfter J'sem gedrynce and
l':i-m plegan, on til oS5e syx, hwilum on ma, swa swa I'ars feos
andefn bi6 " (" Then on the same day [that] they him to
the pile bear will, then divide they his property that there to
remainder shall be after the drinking and the sports, into five or
six, at times into more, according as the property's value is").
The poetry was distinguished by alliteration, and the abundant
use of figurative and metaphorical expressions, of bold compounds
and archaic words never found in prose. Thus in the following
lines from Beowulf (ed. Thorpe, 1. 645, Zupitza 320):
.SVnrt ware *<an-fah, stig wisode
Gumum setgsedere. guS-byrne scan
Heard Aond-locen. ring-iren scir
5ong in jearwum, J>a hie to rele furSum
In hyra gry're geatwum gangan cwomon.
Trans. :
The street was stone-variegated, the path guided
(The) men together; the war-mailcoat shone,
Hard hand-locked. Ring-iron sheer (bright ring-mail)
Sang in (their) cunning-trappings, as they to hall forth
In their horror-accoutrements going came.
The Old English was a homogeneous language, having very
few foreign elements in it, and forming its compounds and
derivatives entirely from its own resources. A few Latin
appellatives learned from the Romans in the German wars had
been adopted into the common West Germanic tongue, and are
found in English as in the allied dialects. Such were strate
(street, via strata), camp (battle), casere (Caesar), mil (mile), pin
(punishment) , mynet (money) , pund (pound) ,win (wine) ; probably
also cyrite (church), biscop (bishop), laden (Latin language), else
(cheese), butor (butter), pipor (pepper), olfend (camel, elephantus),
ynce (inch, uncia), and a few others. The relations of the first
invaders to the Britons were to a great extent those of destroyers;
and with the exception of the proper names of places and promi-
nent natural features, which as is usual were retained by the
new population, few British words found their way into the Old
English. Among these are named broc (a badger) , brie (breeches) ,
clut (clout), pul (pool), and a few words relating to the employ-
ment of field or household menials. Still fewer words seem to
have been adopted from the provincial Latin, almost the only
certain ones being castra, applied to the Roman towns, which
appeared in English as castre, ceaster, now found in composition as
-caster, -Chester, -cester, and cu/ina (kitchen) , which gave cy/en(kiln) .
The introduction and gradual adoption of Christianity, brought
a new series of Latin words connected with the offices of the
church, the accompaniments of higher civilization, the foreign
productions either actually made known, or mentioned in the
Scriptures and devotional books. Such were mynster (monas-
terium), munuc (monk), nunnc (nun), maesse (mass), schol
(school), almesse (eleemosyna), candcl (candela), turtle (turtur),
fie (ficus), cedar (cedrus). These words, whose number increased
from the 7th to the loth century, are commonly called Latin
of the second period, the Latin of the first period including the
Latin words brought by the English from the continent, as well
as those picked up in Britain either from the Roman provincials
or the Welsh. The Danish invasions of the 8th and loth centuries
59
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
resulted in the establishment of extensive Danish and Norwegian
populations, about the basin of the Humber and its tributaries,
and above Morecambe Bay. Although these Scandinavian
settlers must have greatly affected the language of their own
localities, but few traces of their influence are to be found in the
literature of the Old English period. As with the greater part
of the words adopted from the Celtic, it was not until after the
dominion of the Norman had overlaid all preceding conquests,
and the new English began to emerge- irom the ruins of the old,
that Danish words in any number made their appearance in
books, as equally " native " with the Anglo-Saxon.
The earliest specimens we have of English date to the end of
the 7th century, and belong to the Anglian dialect, and particu-
larly to Northumbrian, which, under the political eminence of
the early Northumbrian kings from Edwin to EcgfriS, aided
perhaps by the learning of the scholars of Ireland and lona, first
attained to literary distinction. Of this literature in its original
form mere fragments exist, one of the most interesting of which
consists of the verses uttered by Bede on his deathbed, and
preserved in a nearly contemporary MS. :
Fore there neid faerae . naenig uuiurthit
thonc snotturra . than him tharf sie,
to ymb-hycggannse . aer his hin-iongae,
huaet his gastae . godaes aeththa ynaes,
aefter deoth-daege . doemid uueorthae.
Trans. :
Before the inevitable journey becomes not any
Thought more wise than (that) it is needful for him,
To consider, ere his hence-going,
What, to his ghost, of good or ill,
After death-day, doomed may be.
But our chief acquaintance with Old English is in its West-
Saxon form, the earliest literary remains of which date to the
pth century, when under the political supremacy of Wessex and
the scholarship of King Alfred it became the literary language
of the English nation, the classical " Anglo-Saxon." If our
materials were more extensive, it would probably be necessary
to divide the Old English into several periods; as it is, consider-
able differences have been shown to exist between the " early
West-Saxon " of King Alfred and the later language of the nth
century, the earlier language having numerous phonetic and
inflectional distinctions which are "levelled" in the later, the
inflectional changes showing that the tendency to pass from the
synthetical to the analytical stage existed quite independently
of the Norman Conquest. The northern dialect, whose literary
career had been cut short in the 8th century by the Danish
invasions, reappears in the icth in the form of glosses to the
Latin gospels and a service-book, often called the Ritual of
Durham, where we find that, owing to the confusion which had
so long reigned in the north, and to special Northumbrian
tendencies, e.g. the dropping of the inflectional n in both verbs
and nouns, this dialect had advanced in the process of inflection-
levelling far beyond the sister dialects of Mercian and the south,
so as already to anticipate the forms of Early Middle English.
Among the literary remains of the Old English may be men-
tioned the epic poem of Beowulf, the original nucleus of which
has been supposed to date to heathen and even continental
times, though we now possess it only in a later form; the poetical
works of Cynewulf ; those formerly ascribed to Caedmon; several
works of Alfred, two of which, his translation of Orosius and of
The Pastoral Care of St Gregory, are contemporary specimens
of his language; the Old English or Anglo-Saxon Chronicle;
the theological works of jElfric (including translations of the
Pentateuch and the gospels) and of Wulfstan; and many works
both in prose and verse, of which the authors are unknown.
The earliest specimens, the inscriptions on the Ruthwell and
Bewcastle crosses, are in a Runic character; but the letters used
in the manuscripts generally are a British variety of the Roman
alphabet which the Anglo-Saxons found in the island, and which
was also used by the Welsh and Irish. 1 Several of the Roman
letters had in Britain developed forms, and retained or acquired
values, unlike those used on the continent, in particular 8 p g n p Z
1 See on this Rhys, Lectures on Welsh Philology, v.
(d f g r s t). The letters q and z were not used, q being repre-
sented by cw, and k was a rare alternative to c; u or v was only
a vowel, the consonantal power of v being represented as in
Welsh by /. The Runes called thorn and wen, having the con-
sonantal values now expressed by th and w, for which the Roman
alphabet had no character, were at first expressed by th, S (a
contraction for 88 or 8h), and v or u; but at a later period the
characters ]> and p were revived from the old Runic alphabet.
Contrary to Continental usage, the letters c and g (g) had
originally only their hard or guttural powers, as in the neighbour-
ing Celtic languages; so that words which, when the Continental
Roman alphabet came to be used for Germanic languages, had
to be written with k, were in Old English written with c, as
ce = keen, cynd^kind? The key to the values of the letters,
and thus to the pronunciation of Old English, is also to be
found in the Celtic tongues whence the letters were taken.
The Old English period is usually considered as terminating
1 1 20, with the death of the generation who saw the Norman
Conquest. The Conquest established in England a foreign
court, a foreign aristocracy and a foreign hierarchy. 3 The
French language, in its Norman dialect, became the only poh'te
medium of intercourse. The native tongue, despised not only
as unknown but as the language of a subject race, was left to the
use of boors and serfs, and except in a few stray cases ceased to
be written at all. The natural results followed. 4 When the
educated generation that saw the arrival of the Norman died
out, the language, ceasing to be read and written, lost all its
literary words. The words of ordinary life whose preservation
is independent of books lived on as vigorously as ever, but the
literary terms, those that related to science, art and higher
culture, the bold artistic compounds, the figurative terms of
poetry, were speedily forgotten. The practical vocabulary
shrank to a fraction of its former extent. And when, generations
later, English began to be used for general literature, the only
terms at hand to express ideas above those of every-day life
were to be found in the French of the privileged classes, of whom
alone art, science, law and theology had been for generations /
the inheritance. Hence each successive literary effort of the t
reviving English tongue showed a larger adoption of French
words to supply the place of the forgotten native ones, till by
the days of Chaucer they constituted a notable part of the
vocabulary. Nor was it for the time being only that the French
words affected the English vocabulary. The Norman French
words introduced by the Conquest, as well as the Central or
Parisian French words which followed under the early Planta-
genets, were mainly Latin words which had lived on among
the people of Gaul, and, modified in the mouths of succeeding
generations, had reached forms more or less remote from their
originals. In being now adopted as English, they supplied
precedents in accordance with which other Latin words might
be converted into English ones, whenever required;- and long
before the Renascence of classical learning, though in much
greater numbers after that epoch, these precedents were freely
followed.
While the eventual though distant result of the Norman Con-
quest was thus a large reconstruction of the English vocabulary,
2 During the Old English period both c and g appear to have
acquired a palatal value in conjunction with front or palatal vowel-
sounds, except in the north where c, and in some cases g, tended to
remain guttural in such positions. This value was never distin-
guished in Old English writing, but may be deduced from certain
phonetic changes depending upon it, and from the use of c, cc, as
an alternative for tj (as in art Qeard, orceard = orchard, fetian, feccean =
fetch), as well as from the normal occurrence of ch and y in these
positions in later stages of the language, e.g. ci'W = child, taecean =
teach, gieWan = yell, daeQ =day, &c.
8 For a discriminating view of the effects of the Norman Conquest
on the English Language, see Freeman, Norman Conquest, ch. xxv.
4 There is no reason to suppose that any attempt was made to
proscribe or suppress the native tongue, which was indeed used in
some official documents addressed to Englishmen by the Conqueror
himself. Its social degradation seemed even on the point of coming
to an end, when it was confirmed and prolonged for two centuries
more by the accession of the Angevin dynasty, under whom every-
thing French received a fresh impetus.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
59 1
the grammar of the language was not directly affected by it.
There was no reason why it should we might almost add, no
way by which it could. While the English used their own words,
they could not forget their own way of using them, the inflections
and constructions by which alone the words expressed ideas
in other words, their grammar; when one by one French words
were introduced into the sentence they became English by the
very act of admission, and were at once subjected to all the
duties and Liabilities of English words in the same position. This
is of course precisely what happens at the present day: telegraph
and telegram make participle telegraphing and plural telegrams,
and matte the adverb naively, precisely as if they had been in the
language for ages.
But indirectly the grammar was affected very quickly. In
languages in the inflected or synthetic stage the terminations
must be pronounced with marked distinctness, as these contain
the correlation of ideas; it is all-important to hear whether a
word is bonus or bonis or bonas or bones. This implies a measured
and distinct pronunciation, against which the effort for ease and
rapidity of utterance is continually struggling, while indolence
and carelessness continually compromise it. In the Germanic
languages, as a whole, the main stress-accent falls on the radical
syllable, or on the prefix of a nominal compound, and thus at
or near the beginning of the word; and the result of this in
English has been a growing tendency to suffer the concluding
syllables to fall into obscurity. We are familiar with the cockney
winder, safer, holler, Sorer, Sunder, would yer, for window, sofu,
holla, SaruA, Sunday, would you, the various final vowels sinking
into an obscure neutral one now conventionally spelt er, but
formerly represented by final e. Already before the Conquest,
forms originally hatu, sello, lunga, appeared as hate, selle, lunge,
with the terminations levelled to obscure I; but during the
illiterate period of the language after the Conquest this careless
obscuring of terminal vowels became universal, all unaccented
vowels in the final syllable (except ') sinking into e. During
the 1 2th century, while this change was going on, we see a great
confusion of grammatical forms, the full inflections of Old English
standing side by side in the same sentence with the levelled ones
of Middle English. It is to this state of the language that the
names Transition and Period of Confusion (Dr Abbott's appella-
tion) point; its appearance, as that of Anglo-Saxon broken down
in its endings, had previously given to it the suggestive if not
logical appellation of Semi-Saxon.
Although the written remains of the transition stage are few,
sufficient exist to enable us to trace the course of linguistic
change in some of the dialects. Within three generations after
the Conquest, faithful pens were at work transliterating the old
homilies of jHfric, and other lights of the Anglo-Saxon Church,
into the current idiom of their posterity. 1 Twice during the period,
in the reigns of Stephen and Henry II., Ufric's gospels were
similarly modernized so as to be " understanded of the people." 2
Homilies and other religious works of the end of the 1 2th century *
snow us the change still further advanced, and the language
passing into Early Middle English in its southern form. While
these southern remains carry on in unbroken sequence the history
of the Old English of Alfred and jElfric, the history of the northern
English is an entire blank from the nth to the 13th century.
The stubborn resistance of the north, and the terrible retaliation
inflicted by William, apparently effaced northern English
culture for centuries. If anything was written in the vernacular
in the kingdom of Scotland during the same period, it probably
perished during the calamities to which that country was sub-
jected during the half-century of struggle for independence. In
reality, however, the northern English had entered upon its
transition stage two centuries earlier; the glosses of the loth
century show that the Danish inroads had there anticipated the
results hastened by the Norman Conquest in the south.
1 MS. Cotton Ve*p. A. 23.
GopeU in Anglo-Saxon, Ac., ed. for Cambridge Pren, by W. W.
Skeat (1871-1887), second text.
' OU Entliih Homilies of Twelfth Century, first and second scries,
ed. R. Mom (E.E.T.S.). (1868-1873).
Meanwhile a dialect was making its appearance in another
quarter of England, destined to overshadow the old literary
dialects of north and south alike, and become the English of the
future. The Mercian kingdom, which, as its name imports, lay
along the marches of the earlier states, and was really a congeries
of the outlying members of many tribes, must have presented
from the beginning a linguistic mixture and transition; and it is
evident that more than one intermediate form of speech arose
within its confines, between Lancashire and the Thames. The
specimens of early Mercian now in existence consist mainly
of glosses, in a mixed Mercian and southern dialect, dating from
the 8th century; but, in a gth-century gloss, the so-called
Vespasian Psalter, representing what is generally held to be pure
Mercian. Towards the close of the Old English period we find
some portions of a gloss to the Rushworth Gospels, namely
St Matthew and a few verses of St John xviii., to be in Mercian.
These glosses, with a few charters and one or two small fragments,
represent a form of Anglian which in many respects stands
midway between Northumbrian and Kentish, approaching the
one or the other more nearly as we have to do with North
Mercian or South Mercian. And soon after the Conquest we
find an undoubted midland dialect in the transition stage from
Old to Middle English, in the eastern part of ancient Mercia, in
a district bounded on the south and south-east by the Saxon
Middlesex and Essex, and on the east and north by the East
Anglian Norfolk and Suffolk and the Danish settlements on the
Trent and Humber. In this district, and in the monastery of
Peterborough, one of the copies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
transcribed about 1120, was continued by two succeeding hands
to the death of Stephen in 1154. The section from 1122 to 1131,
probably written in the latter year, shows a notable confusion
between Old English forms and those of a Middle English, im-
patient to rid itself of the inflectional trammels which were still,
though in weakened forms, so faithfully retained south of the
Thames. And in the concluding section, containing the annals
from 1132 to 1154, and written somewhere about the latter
year, we find Middle English fairly started on its career. A
specimen of this new tongue will best show the change that had
taken place:
1140 A.p. And * te eorl of Angaeu waerd ded, and his sune Henri
toe to Pe rice. And te cuen of France to-daelde fra l"e king, and scae
cow to Pe iunge eorl Henri, and he toe hire to wiue, and al Peitou
mid hire. Pa ferde he mid miccl faerd into Englelandandwan castles
and te king ferde agcnes him mid miccl mare ferd. PoPwaethere
fuhtten hi noht. oc ferden Pe aercebjo/> and te wise men betwux
heom, and makede that sahtc that tc king sculde ben lauerd and king
wile he liuede. and xher his d;ri ware Henri king, and he helde him
for fader, and he him for sune, and sib and saehte sculde ben betwyx
heom, and on al Englcland.'
With this may be contrasted a specimen of southern English,
from 10 to 20 years later (Hatton Gospels, Luke i. 46*) :
Da cwaeS Maria: Min saule mersed drihten, and min gast ge-
blissode on gode minen hxlcnde. For Pam Pe he geseah his ( inene
eadmodnysse. SoSlice henen-forS me eadige seggefi alle cneorncsse;
for Pam Pe me mychele Ping dyde se Pe mihtyg ys; and his name is
halig. And his mildheortnysse of cneornisse on cneornesse hine on-
draedende. 'He worhte maegne on hys earme; he to-daelde Pa
ofermode, on moda heora hcortan. He warp Pa rice of setlle, and
Pa eadmode he up-an-hof. Hyngriende he mid gode ge-felde, and
Pa ofermode ydele for-let. He afeng Israel his cniht, and gcmynde
his mildheortnysse; Swa he spraec to ure faederen, Abrahame and
his s;cde on a weorlde.
To a still later date, apparently close upon 1 200, belongs the
versified chronicle of Layamon or Laweman, a priest of Ernely
on the Severn, who, using as his basis the French Brut of Wace,
expanded it by additions from other sources to more than twice
the extent: his work or" 32,250 lines is a mine of illustration for
the language of his time and locality. The latter was intermediate
between midland and southern, and the language, though forty
years later than the specimen from the Chronicle, is much more
archaic in structure, and can .scarcely be considered even as
Early Middle English. The following is a specimen (lines
0064-0079) =
4 The article pe becomes te after a preceding / or d by assimilation.
Earle, Two of the Saxon Chronicles parallel (1865), p. 265.
'Skeat, Anglo-Saxon and Northumbrian Gospels (1874).
592
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
On Kinbelines daeie . . . Pe king wes inne Bruttene, com a
Pissen middel aerde . . . anes maidenes sune, iboren wes in BePIeem
... of bezste alre burden. He is ihaten Jesu Crist . . . Purh
Pene halie gost, alre worulde wunne . . . walden englenne; faeder
he is on heuenen . . . froure moncunnes; sune he is on eorSen
... of sele Pon maeidene, & Pene halie gost . . . haldeS mid him
seoluen.
The MIDDLE ENGLISH was pre-eminently the Dialectal period
of the language. It was not till after the middle of the i4th
century that English obtained official recognition. For three
centuries, therefore, there was no standard form of speech which
claimed any pre-eminence over the others. The writers of each
district wrote in the dialect familar to them; and between
extreme forms the difference was so great as to amount to
unintelligibility; works written for southern Englishmen had to
be translated for the benefit of the men of the north:
" In sotherin Inglis was it drawin,
And tumid ic haue it till ur awin
Langage of Pe northin lede
That can na nothir Inglis rede."
Cursor Mundi, 20,064.
Three main dialects were distinguished by contemporary
writers, as in the often-quoted passage from Trevisa's translation
of Higden's Polychronicon completed in 1387:
" Also Englysche men . . . hadde fram pe bygynnynge pre maner
speche, Souperon, Norperon and Myddel speche (in Pe myddel of
Pe lond) as hy come of Pre maner people of Germania Also
of Pe forseyde Saxon tonge, Pat ys deled a Pre, and ys abyde scars-
lyche wip feaw uplondysche men and ys gret wondur, for men of
Pe est wip men of |>e west, as hyt were under Pe same part of heyvene,
acordeP more in sounynge of speche Pan men of Pe norp wip men of
|>e soup; Perfore hyt ys Pat Mercii, Pat bup men of myddel Engelond,
as hyt were parteners of Pe endes, undurstondep betre Pe syde
longages Norperon and SouPeron, Pan NorPern and SouPern undur-
stondep oyPer oPer."
The modern study of these Middle English dialects, initiated by
the elder Richard Garnett, scientifically pursued by Dr Richard
Morris, and elaborated by many later scholars, both English and
German, has shown that they were readily distinguished by the
conjugation of the present tense of the verb, which in typical
specimens was as follows:
Southern.
Ich singe. We singeP.
POU singest. 3e singeP.
He singeP. Hy singeP.
Midland.
Ich, I, singe. We singen.
Bau singest. 3e singen.
e singeP. Hy, thei, singen.
Northern.
Ic, I, sing(e) (I Pat singes). We sing(e), We Pat synges.
PU singes. 3e sing(e), 3e foules synges.
He singes. Thay sing(e), Men synges.
Of these the southern is simply the old West-Saxon, with the
vowels levelled to e. The northern second person in -es preserves
an older form than the southern and West-Saxon -est; but the
-es of the third person and plural is derived from an older -eth, the
change of -th into -5 being found in progress in the Durham
glosses of the loth century. In the plural, when accompanied by
the pronoun subject, the verb had already dropped the inflections
entirely as in Modern English. The origin of the -en plural in the
midland dialect, unknown to Old English, is probably an instance
of form-levelling, the inflection of the present indicative being
assimilated to that of the past, and the present and past sub-
junctive, in all of which -en was the plural termination. In the
declension of nouns, adjectives and pronouns, the northern
dialect had attained before the end of the I3th century to the
simplicity of Modern English, while the southern dialect still
retained a large number of inflections, and the midland a consider-
able number. The dialects differed also in phonology, for while
the northern generally retained the hard or guttural values of
k, g, sc, these were in the two other dialects palatalized before
front vowels into ch, j and sh. Kirk, chirche or church, bryg,
bridge; scryke, shriek, are examples. Old English hw was written
in the north ?(h), but elsewhere wh, often sinking into w.
The original long 6, in start, mar, preserved in the northern stane,
mare, became o elsewhere, as in stone, more. So that the north
presented a general aspect of conservation of old sounds with the
most thorough-going dissolution of old inflections; the south, a
tenacious retention of the inflections, with an extensive evolution
in the sounds. In one important respect, however, phonetic decay
was far ahead in the north: the final e to which all the old vowels
had been levelled during the transition stage, and which is a dis-
tinguishing feature of Middle English in the midland and southern
dialects, became mute, i.e., disappeared, in the northern dialect
before that dialect emerged from its three centuries of obscuration,
shortly before 1300. So thoroughly modern had its form conse-
quently become that we might almost call it Modern English, and
say that the Middle English stage of the northern dialect is lost.
For comparison with the other dialects, however, the same
nomenclature may be used, and we may class as Middle English
the extensive literature which northern England produced
during the I4th century. The earliest specimen is probably the
Metrical Psalter in the Cotton Library, 1 copied during the reign of
Edward II. from an original of the previous century. The
gigantic versified paraphrase of Scripture history called the
Cursor Mundi,' 1 is held also to have been composed before 1300.
The dates of the numerous alliterative romances in this dialect
have not been determined with exactness, as all survive in later
copies, but it is probable that some of them were written before
1300. In the i4th century appeared the theological and
devotional works of Richard Rolle the anchorite of Hampole, Dan
Jon Gaytrigg, William of Nassington, and other writers whose
names are unknown; and towards the close of the century,
specimens of the language also appear from Scotland both in
official documents and in the poetical works of John Barbour,
whose language, barring minute points of orthography, is
identical with that of the contemporary northern English
writers. From 1400 onward, the distinction between northern
English and Lowland Scottish becomes clearly marked.
In the southern dialect one version of the work called the
Ancren RMe or " Rule of Nuns," adapted about 1225 for a small
sisterhood at Tarrant-Kaines, in Dorsetshire, exhibits a dialectal
characteristic which had probably long prevailed in the south,
though concealed by the spelling, in the use of o for /, as voile
fall, wrdonne fordo, vorto for to, veder father, worn from. Not
till later do we find a recognition of the parallel use of z for s.
Among the writings which succeed, The Owl and the Nightingale of
Nicholas de Guildford, of Portesham in Dorsetshire, before 1250,
the Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, 1298, and Trevisa's
translation of Higden, 1387, are of special importance in illus-
trating the history of southern English. The earliest form of
Langland's Piers Ploughman, 1362, as preserved in the Vernon
MS., appears to be in an intermediate dialect between southern
and midland. 3 The Kentish form of southern English seems to
have retained specially archaic features; five short sermons in
it of the middle of the I3th century were edited by Dr Morris
(1866) ; but the great work illustrating it is the Ayenbite oflnwyt
(Remorse of Conscience), 1340,* a translation from the French
by Dan Michel of Northgate, Kent, who tells us
! et Pis boc is y-write mid engliss of Kent ;
'is boc is y-mad uor lewede men,
'or uader, and uor moder, and uor oPer ken,
Ham uor to ber3e uram alle manyere zen,
Pet ine hare inwytte ne bleue no uoul wen."
In its use of v (u) and z for / and s, and its grammatical in-
flections, it presents an extreme type of southern speech, with
peculiarities specially Kentish; and in comparison with con-
temporary Midland English works, it looks like a fossil of two
centuries earlier.
Turning from the dialectal extremes of the Middle English to
the midland speech, which we left at the closing leaves of the
1 Edited for the Surtees Society, by Rev. J. Stevenson.
8 Edited for the Early English Text Society, by Rev. Dr Morris.
8 The Vision of William concerning Piers the Ploughman exists
in three different recensions, all of which have been edited for the
Early English Text Society by Rev. W. W. Skeat.
4 Edited by Rev. Dr Morris for Early English Text Society, in
1866.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
593
Peterborough Ckronitle of 1 1 54, we find a rapid development of
this dialect, which was before long to become the national
literary language. In this, the first great work is the Ormulum,
or metrical Scripture paraphrase of Orm or Ormin, written about
1200, somewhere near the northern frontier of the midland area.
The dialect has a decided smack of the north, and shows for the
first time in English literature a large percentage of Scandinavian
words, derived from the Danish settlers, who, in adopting
Rnglinh, had preserved a vast number of their ancestral forms of
speech, which were in time to pass into the common language, of
which they now constitute some of the most familiar words.
Blunt, bull, die, dwell, ill, kid, raise, same, thrive, wand, wing,
are words from this source, which appear first in the work of
Orm, of which the following lines may be quoted:
" IV Judewisshc folkess hoc
hemm aeJJde, P.itt hemm birrde
Twa bukkes samenn to Pe preost
att kirrkc-ilure brinngenn;
And ten Pa didenn bttnfi),
swa summ t*e boc hemm tahhte.
And brohhtenn twcHcnn bukkess pact
Drihhtin f .rrwipf to lakcnn.
And att * te kirrke-dure toe
Pe preost ta twcJJcnn bukkess,
And o Patt an he lejjde PUT
all peHre sake and sinne,
And Kt itt eorncnn forfwiPP all
lit inntill wikle wesste;
And toe and snap Pan of err bucc
Drihhtin PzrwiPP- to lakenn.
AU Piss wass don forr here ned,
and ec forr ure nede ;
For hemm itt hallp biforenn Godd
to clennssenn hemm of sinne;
And all swa ma}) itt hcllpenn Pi-
Jiff Patt tu wtllt [itt] foil Jhi-nn.
Jiff f.itt tu willt full innwarrdli)
wif p fulle trowwpe lefenn
All Patt tatt wass bitacnedd t.i-r.
to lefenn and to trowwenn."
Ormulum, ed. White, I. 1324.
The author of the Ormulum was a phonetist, and employed a
special spelling of his own to represent not only the quality but
the quantities of vowels and consonants a circumstance which
gives his work a peculiar value to the investigator. He is
generally assumed to have been a native of Lincolnshire or Notts,
but the point is a disputed one, and there is somewhat to be said
for the neighbourhood of Ormskirk in Lancashire.
It is customary to differentiate between east and west midland,
and to subdivide these again into north and south. As was
natural in a tract of country which stretched from Lancaster to
Essex, a very considerable variety is found in the documents
which agree in presenting the leading midland features, those of
Lancashire and Lincolnshire approaching the northern dialect
both in vocabulary, phonetic character and greater neglect of
inflections. But this diversity diminishes as we advance.
Thirty years after the Ormulum, the east midland rhymed
Story of Genesis and Exodus* shows us the dialect in a more
southern form, with the vowels of modern English, and from
about the same date, with rather more northern characteristics,
we have an east midland Bestiary.
Different tests and different dates have been proposed for
subdividing the Middle English period, but the most important
is that of Henry Nicol, based on the observation that in the
early I3th century, as in Ormin, the Old English short vowels
in an open syllable still retained their short quantity, as n&ma,
tter, milt; but by 1250 or 1260 they had been lengthened to
nd-me, 9-ter, mi-It, a change which has also taken plac^at a
particular period in all the Germanic, and even the Romanic
languages, as in bud-no for bd-num, pd-dre for pA-trem, &c. The
lengthening of the penult left the final syllable by contrast
shortened or weakened, and paved the way for the disappearance
of final e In the century following, through the stages nd-me,
1 Here, and in tatt, tu. taer, for pa. p, par/, after t, d, there is
the wme phonetic awimilation as in the last section of the Anglo-
Saxrm Chronicle above.
1 Edited for the Early English Text Society by Dr Morris (1865).
itii-mf, n<i-m', nam, the one long syllabic in ndm(e) being the
quantitative equivalent of the two short syllables in nil-mi 1 ;
hence the notion that mute e makes a preceding vowel long,
the truth being that the lengthening of the vowel led to the e
becoming mute.
After 1250 we have the Lay of Havelok, and about 1300 the
writings of Robert of Brunnc in South Lincolnshire. In the
1 4th century we find a number of texts belonging to the western
part of the district. South-west midland is hardly to be distin-
guished from southern in its south-western form, and hence texts
like Piers Plowman elude any satisfactory classification, but
several metrical romances exhibit what are generally considered
to be west midland characteristics, and a little group of poems,
Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knightc, the Pearl, Cleanness and
Patience, thought to be the work of a north-west midland writer
of the i4th century, bear a striking resemblance to the modern
Lancashire dialect. The end of the century witnessed the prose
of Wycliff and Mandeville, and the poetry of Chaucer, with
whom Middle English may be said to have culminated, and in
whose writings its main characteristics as distinct from Old and
Modern English may be studied. Thus, we find final e in full
use representing numerous original vowels and terminations as
Him thoughte that his hert wold breke,
in Old English
Him Puhte Pact his heorte wolde brccan,
which may be compared with the modern German
Ihm dauchte dass sein Herze wollte brechen.
In nouns the -es of the plural and genitive case is still syllabic
Reede as the berstl-es of a sow-es eer-es.
Several old genitives and plural forms continued to exist,
and the dative or prepositional case has usually a final e.
Adjectives retain so much of the old declension as to have -e
in the definite form and in the plural
The tend-re cropp-es and the yong-e sonne.
And smal-e fowi-es maken melodic.
Numerous old forms of comparison were in use, which have
not come down to Modern English, as herre, ferre, lenger, hexl =
higher, farther, longer, highest. In the pronouns, ich lingered
alongside of /; ye was only nominative, and you objective;
the northern thei had dispossessed the southern hy, but her and
hem (the modern 'em) stood their ground against their and them.
The verb is / lov-e, thou lov-est, he lov-eth; but, in the plural,
lov-en is interchanged with lov-e, as rhyme or euphony requires.
So in the plural of the past we love-den or love-de. The infinitive
also ends in en, often e, always syllabic. The present participle,
in Old English -ende, passing through -inde; has been confounded
with the verbal noun in -ynge, -yng, as in Modern English. The
past participle largely retains the prefix y- or -, representing
the Old English ge-, as in i-ronne, y-don, Old English zerunnen,
zedon, run, done. Many old verb forms still continued in
existence. The adoption of French words, not only those of
Norman introduction, but those subsequently introduced under
the Angevin kings, to supply obsolete and obsolescent English
ones, which had kept pace with the growth of literature since
the beginning of the Middle English period, had now reached
its climax; later times added many more, but they also dropped
some that were in regular use with Chaucer and his con-
temporaries.
Chaucer's great contemporary, William Langland, in his
Vision of William concerning Piers the Ploughman, and his
imitator the author of Pierce the Ploughman's Crede (about 1400)
used the Old English alliterative versification for the last time
in the south. Rhyme had made its appearance in the language
shortly after the Conquest if not already .known before; and
in the south and midlands it became decidedly more popular
than alliteration; the latter retained its hold much longer in the
north, where it was written even after 1500: many of the
northern romances are either simply alliterative, or have both
alliteration and rhyme. To these characteristics of northern
and southern verse respectively Chaucer alludes in the prologue
of the " Persone," who, when called upon for his tale said:
594
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
" But trusteth wel; I am a sotherne man,
I cannot geste rom, ram, ruf, by my letter,
And, God wote, rime hold I but litel better:
And therefore, if you list, I wol not glose,
I wol you tell a litel tale in prose."
The changes from Old to Middle English may be summed up
thus: Loss of a large part of the native vocabulary, and
adoption of French words to fill their place; not infrequent
adoption of French words as synonyms of existing native ones;
modernization of the English words preserved, by vowel change
in a definite direction from back to front, and from open to
close, a becoming y, original e, o, tending to ee, oo, monophthongi-
zation of the old diphthongs eo, ea, and development of new
diphthongs in connexion with g, h, and w; adoption of French
orthographic symbols, e.g. ou for u, qu, v, ch, and gradual loss
of the symbols 3, ]>, 3, P; obscuration of vowels after the accent,
and especially of final a, o, u to S; consequent confusion and loss
of old inflections, and their replacement by prepositions, auxiliary
verbs and rules of position; abandonment of alliteration for
rhyme; and great development of dialects, in consequence of
there being no standard or recognized type of English.
But the recognition came at length. Already in 1258 was
issued the celebrated English proclamation of Henry III., or
rather of Simon de Montfort in his name, which, as the only
public recognition of the native tongue between William the
Conqueror and Edward III., has sometimes been spoken of as
the first specimen of English. It runs:
" Henri tur3 godes fultiime king on Engleneloande Lhoauerd
on Yrloande. Duk on Normandie "on Aquitaine and eorl on Aniow.
Send igretinge to alle hise holde ilaerde and ileawedeon Huntendone-
schire. pxt witen 3e wel alle taet we willen and vnnen taet taet vre
raedesmen alle oter fe moare dael of heom pxt beot ichosen tur3 us
and tur3 taet loandes folk on vre kuneriche. habbet idon and schullen
don in te wortnesse of gode and on vre treowte. for te freme of te
loande. pur) pe besiste of pan to-foren-iseide redesmen. beo stedefaest
and ilestinde in alle tinge a buten aende. And we hoaten alle vre
treowe in te treowte taet heo vs o3en. pxt heo stedef aestliche healden
and swerien to healden and to werien to isetnesses taet ben imakede
and beon to makien pur3 tan to-fpren iseide raedesmen. oter turj
te moare dael of heom alswo alse hit is biforen iseid. And taet aehc
oter helpe tact for to done bi tan ilche ote a3enes alle men. Ri3t
for to done and to foaneen. And noan ne nime of loande ne of e3te.
whertur? fis besiste muse beon ilet oter iwersed on onie wise. And
3if oni oter onie cumen her on3enes,; we willen and hoaten taet al e
vre treowe heom healden deadliche ifoan. And for taet we willen
taet tis beo stedefaest and lestinde; we senden 3ew pis writ open
iseined wit vre seel, to halden amanges 3ew ine hord. Witnesse vs
seluen aet Lundene. tane E3tetente day. on te Monte of Octobre In
te Two-and-fowerti3te 3eare of vre cruninge. And tis wes idon
aetforen vre isworene redesmen. . . .
" And al on to ilche worden is isend in to aeurihce otre shcire ouer
al taere kuneriche on Engleneloande. and ek in tel Irelonde."
The dialect of this document is more southern than anything
else, with a slight midland admixture. It is much more archaic
inflectionally than the Genesis and Exodus or Ormulum; but it
closely resembles the old Kentish sermons and Proverbs of
Alfred in the southern dialect of 1250. It represents no doubt
the London speech of the day. London being in a Saxon county,
and contiguous to Kent and Surrey, had certainly at first a
southern dialect; but its position as the capital, as well as its
proximity to the midland district, made its dialect more and
more midland. Contemporary London documents show that
Chaucer's language, which is distinctly more southern than
standard English eventually became, is behind the London
dialect of the day in this respect, and is at once more archaic
and consequently more southern.
During the next hundred years English gained ground steadily,
and by the reign of Edward III. French was so little known in
England, even in the families of the great, that about 1350
" John Cornwal, a maystere of gramere, chaungede J>e lore
( = leaching) in gramere scole and construccion of [i.e. from]
Freynsch into Englysch " ; l and in 1362-1363 English by
statute took the place of French in the pleadings in courts of
law. Every reason conspired that this " English " should be
the midland dialect. It was the intermediate dialect, intelligible,
as Trevisa has told us, to both extremes, even when these failed
1 Trevisa, Translation of Higden's Polychronicon.
to be intelligible to each other; in its south-eastern form, it was
the language of London, where the supreme law courts were,
the centre of political and commercial life; it was the language
in which the Wycliffite versions had given the Holy Scriptures
to the people; the language in which Chaucer had raised English
poetry to a height of excellence admired and imitated by con-
temporaries and followers. And accordingly after the end of
the 1 4th century, all Englishmen who thought they had anything
to say to their countrymen generally said it in the midland
speech. Trevisa's own work was almost the last literary effort
of the southern dialect; henceforth it was but a rustic patois,
which the dramatist might use to give local colouring to his
creations, as Shakespeare uses it to complete Edgar's peasant .
disguise in Lear, or which igth century research might disinter
to illustrate obscure chapters in the history of language. And
though the northern English proved a little more stubborn, it
disappeared also from literature in England; but in Scotland,
which had now become politically and socially estranged from
England, it continued its course as the national language of the
country, attaining in the isth and i6th centuries a distinct
development and high literary culture, for the details of which
readers are referred to the article on SCOTTISH LANGUAGE.
The isth century of English history, with its bloody French
war abroad and Wars of the Roses at home, was a barren period
in literature, and a transition one in language, witnessing the
decay and disappearance of the final e, and most of the syllabic
inflections of Middle English. Already by 1420, in Chaucer's
disciple Hoccleve, final e was quite uncertain; in Lydgate it
was practically gone. In 1450 the writings of Pecock against
the Wycliffites show the verbal inflections in -en in a state of
obsolescence; he has still the southern pronouns her and hem
for the northern their, them:
" And here-a3ens holi scripture wole tat men schulden lacke te
coueryng which wommen schulden haue, & thei schulden so lacke bi
tat te heeris of her heedis schulden be schorne, &schulde not growe
in lengte doun as wommanys heer schulde growe. . . .
" Also here-wital into te open si3t of ymagis in open chirchis,
alle peple, men & wommen & children mowe come whanne euere tei
wolen in ech tyme of te day, but so mowe tei not come in-to te vce of
bokis to be delyuered to hem neiter to be red bifore hem; & terfore,
as for to soone & ofte come into remembraunce of a long mater bi
ech oon persoon, and also as forto make tat te mo persoones come
into remembraunce of a mater, ymagis & picturis serven in a
specialer maner tan bokis doon, pou3 in an oter maner ful sub-
stanciali bokis seruen better into remembrauncing of to same
materis tan ymagis & picturis doon; & terfore, tou3 writingis
seruen weel into remembrauncing upon te bifore seid Hngis, 3it
not at te ful: Forwhi te bokis han not te avail of remembrauncing
now seid whiche ymagis han." 2
The change of the language during the second period of
Transition, as well as the extent of dialectal differences, is
quaintly expressed a generation later by Caxton, who in the
prologue to one of the last of his works, his translation of Virgil's
Eneydos (1490), speaks of the difficulty he had in pleasing all
readers:
" I doubted that it sholde not please some gentylmen, whiche late
blamed me, sayeng, y' in my translacyons I had ouer curyous termes,
whiche coud not be vnderstande of comyn peple, and desired me to
vse olde and homely termes in my translacyons. And fayn wolde I
satysfy euery man; and so to doo, toke an olde boke and redde
therein; and certaynly the englysshe was so rude and brood that I
coude not wele vnderstande it. And also my lorde abbot of West-
mynster ded do shewe to me late certayn euydences wryton in olde
englysshe for to reduce it in to our englysshe now vsid. And cer-
taynly it was wreton in suche wyse that it was more lyke to dutche
than englysshe; I coude not reduce ne brynge it to be vnderstonden.
And certaynly, our langage now vsed varyeth ferrc from that whiche
was vsed and spoken whan I was borne. For we englysshemen ben
borne vnder the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is neuer stedfaste,
but euer wauerynge, wexynge one season, and waneth and dycreaseth
another season. And that comyn englysshe that is spoken in one
shyre varyeth from a nother. In so much that in my days happened
that certayn marchauntes were in a shipe in tamyse, for to haue
sayled ouer the sea into zelande, and for lacke of wynde thei taryed
atte forlond, and wente to lande for to refreshe them. And one of
theym named sheffelde, a mercer, cam in to an hows and axed for
mete, and specyally he axyd after eggys, And the goode wyf answerde,
that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry,
2 Skeat , Specimens o} English Literature, pp. 49, 54.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
595
for be aUo couldc speke no frrnshc. but woldc hauc hadde eggcs:
ad hr vndentode hym not. Ami tlu-nm- at lasu- a not her sayd
that he wolde haue eyrrn : then the good wyl *ayd that she vnderstod
hym wel. Lou! what sholde a man in thyae dayes now wryte,
CQM or eyrni? certaynly, it is harde to playse euery man, by
outte of dyuenite & chaunge of langage. For in these dayes, euery
man that u in ony repuucyon in his countre wy II vtter his comyny-
cacyoo and maters in suchc manors & tcrmes that fewe men shall
vnderstomlf thc\ in. And som honest and grete clerkes hauc ben
-yth me, and desired me to wryte the moste curyous termea that I
coude fynde. And thus bytwenc play n. rude and curyous, I stande
abauhrd: but in my ludgemente, the comyn tcrmes that be dayli
vcd ben lyghter to be vnderstondc than the olde and auncyent
In the productions of Cazton's press we see the passage from
Middle to Early Modern English completed. The earlier of
these have still an occasional verbal plural in -n, especially in
the word they ben; the southern her and hem of Middle English
vary with the northern and Modern English their, them. In the
late works, the older forms have been practically ousted, and
the year 1485, which witnessed the establishment of the Tudor
dynasty, may be conveniently put as that which closed the
Middle English transition, and introduced Modern English.
Both in the completion of this result, and in its comparative
permanence, the printing press had an important share. By its
exclusive patronage of the midland speech, it raised it still
higher above the sister dialects, and secured its abiding victory.
As books were multiplied and found their way into every corner
of the land, and the an of reading became a more common
acquirement, the man of Northumberland or of Somersetshire
had forced upon his attention the book-English in which alone
these were printed. This became in turn the model for his own
writings, and by-and-by, if he made any pretensions to education,
of his own speech. The written form of the language also tended
to uniformity. In previous periods the scribe made his own
spelling with a primary aim at expressing his own speech, accord-
ing to the particular values attached by himself or his con-
temporaries to the letters and combinations of the alphabet,
though liable to disturbance in the most common words and
combinations by his ocular recollections of the spelling of others.
But after the introduction of printing, this ocular recognition
of words became ever more and more an aim ; the book addressed
the mind directly through the eye, instead of circuitously
through eye and ear; and thus there was a continuous tendency
for written words and parts of words to be reduced to a single
form, and that the most usual, or through some accident the best
known, but not necessarily that which would have been chosen
had the ear been called in as umpire. Modern English spelling,
with its rigid uniformity as to individual results and whimsical
caprice as to principles, is the creation of the printing-office, the
victory which, after a century and a half of struggle, mechanical
convenience won over natural habits. Besides eventually
creating a uniformity in writing, the introduction of printing
made or at least ratified some important changes. The British
and Old English form of the Roman alphabet has already been
referred to. This at the Norman Conquest was superseded by
an alphabet with the French forms and values of the letters.
Thus k took the place of the older c before e and i; qu replaced
cu>; the Norman to took the place of the wen (p), &c. ; and hence
it has often been said that Middle English stands nearer to Old
English in pronunciation, but to Modern English in spelling.
But there were certain sounds in English for which Norman
writing had no provision; and for these, in writing English, the
native characters were retained. Thus the Old English g (g),
beside the sound in go, had a guttural sound as in German tag,
Irish mar>. and in certain positions a palatalized form of this
approaching y as in you (if pronounced with aspiration hyou or
. fhyou). These sounds continued to be written with the native
form of the letter as bur^^ow, while the French form was used
for UM sounds in go, age, one original letter being thus repre-
sented by two. So for the sounds of Ik, especially the sound in
Itet, the Old English thorn (\>) continued to be used. But as
;hese characters were not used for French and Latin, their use
even in English became disturbed towards the 151)1 century,
and when printing was introduced, the founts, cast for continental
languages, had no characters for them, so that they were dropped
entirely, being replaced, 3 by gh, yh, y, and \> by th. This was a
real loss to the English alphabet. In the north it is curious that
the printers tried to express the/orms rather than the powers of
these letters, and consequently 3 was represented by z, thc'black
letter form of which was confounded with it, while the J> was
expressed by y, which its MS. form had come to approach or in
some cases simulate. So in early Scotch books we find zcJlow, ze,
yat, yem=yellow, ye, that, them; and in Modern Scottish, such
names as Alenzies, Dalsiel, Cockenzie, and the word gaberluntie,
in which the z stands for y.
MODERN ENGLISH thus dates from Caxton. The language ha< I
at length reached the all but flectionlcss state which it now
presents. A single older verbal form, the southern -eth of the
third person singular, continued to be the literary prose form
throughout the i6th century, but the northern form in -i was
intermixed with it in poetry (where it saved a syllable), and
must ere long, as we see from Shakespeare, have taken its place
in familiar speech. The fuller an, none, mine, thine, in the early
part of the i6th century at least, were used in positions where
their shortened forms a, no, my, thy are now found (none other,
mine own = no other, my own). But with such minute exceptions,
the accidence of the i6th century was the accidence of the igth.
While, however, the older inflections had disappeared, there
was as yet no general agreement as to the mode of their replace-
ment. Hence the i6th century shows a syntactic licence and
freedom which distinguishes it strikingly from that of later times.
The language seems to be in a plastic, unformed state, and its
writers, as it were, experiment with it, bending it to constructions
which now seem indefensible. Old distinctions of case and mood
have disappeared from noun and verb, without custom having
yet decided what prepositions or auxiliary verbs shall most
fittingly convey their meaning. The laxity of word-order which
was permitted in older states of the language by the formal
expression of relations was often continued though the inflections
which expressed the relations had disappeared. Partial analogy
was followed in allowing forms to be identified in one case,
because, in another, such identification was accidentally produced,
as for instance the past participles of write and take were often
made wrote and took, because the contracted participles of bind
and break were bound and broke. Finally, because, in dropping
inflections, the former distinctions even between parts of speech
had disappeared, so that iron, e.g., was at once noun, adjective
and verb, dean, adjective, verb and adverb, it appeared as if
any word whatever might be used in any grammatical relation,
where it conveyed the idea of the speaker. Thus, as has been
pointed out by Dr Abbott, " you can happy your friend, malice
or foot your enemy, or fall an axe on his neck. You can speak
and act easy, free, excellent, you can talk of fair instead of beauty
(fairness), and a pale instead of a paleness. A he is used for a
man, and a lady is described by a gentleman as 'the fairest
she he has yet beheld.' An adverb can be used as a verb, as
'they askance their eyes'; as a noun, 'the backward and abyss
of time'; or as an adjective, a 'seldom pleasure.'" 1 For, as he
also says, " clearness was preferred to grammatical correctness,
and brevity both to correctness and clearness. Hence it was
common to place words in the order in which they came upper-
most in the mind without much regard to syntax, and the result
was a forcible and perfectly unambiguous but ungrammatical
sentence, such as
The prince that feeds great natures they will slay him.
Ben Jonson.
or, as instances of brevity,
Be guilty of my death since of my crime.
Shakespeare.
It cost more to get than to lose in a day.
Ben Jonson."
These characteristics, together with the presence of words
now obsolete or archaic, and the use of existing words in senses
1 A Shakspearian Grammar, by Dr E. A. Abbott. To this book
we arc largely indebted for its admirable summary of the characters
of Tudor English.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
different from our own, as general for specific, literal for meta-
phorical, and vice versa, which are so apparent to every reader
of the 16th-century literature, make it useful to separate Early
Modern or Tudor English from the subsequent and still existing
stage, since the consensus of usage has declared in favour of in-
dividual senses and constructions which are alone admissible
in ordinary language.
The beginning of the Tudor period was contemporaneous
with the Renaissance in art and literature, and the dawn of
modern discoveries in geography and science. The revival of
the study of the classical writers of Greece and Rome, and the
translation of their works into the vernacular, led to the introduc-
tion of an immense number of new words derived from these
languages, either to express new ideas and objects or to indicate
new distinctions in or grouping of old ideas. Often also it seemed
as if scholars were so pervaded with the form as well as the spirit
of the old, that it came more natural to them to express them-
selves in words borrowed from the old than in their native
tongue, and thus words of Latin origin were introduced even
when English already possessed perfectly good equivalents. As
has already been stated, the French words of Norman and
Angevin introduction, being principally Latin words in an altered
form, when used as English supplied models whereby other
Latin words could be converted into English ones, and it is after
these models that the Latin words introduced during and since
the 1 6th century have been fashioned. There is nothing in the
form of the words procession and progression to show that the
one was used in England in the nth, the other not till the i6th
century. Moreover, as the formation of new words from Latin
had gone on in French as well as in English since the Renaissance,
we often cannot tell whether such words, e.g. as persuade and
persuasion, were borrowed from their French equivalents or
formed from Latin in England independently. With some
words indeed it is impossible to say whether they were formed
in England directly from Latin, borrowed from contemporary
late French, or had been in England since the Norman period,
even photograph, geology and telephone have the form that they
would have had if they had been living words in the mouths of
Greeks, Latins, French and English from the beginning, instead
of formations of the ipth century. 1 While every writer was thus
introducing new words according to his notion of their being
needed, it naturally happened that a large number were not
accepted by contemporaries or posterity; a long list might be
formed of these mintages of the i6th and tyth centuries, which
either never became current coin, or circulated only as it were
for a moment. The revived study of Latin and Greek also led
to modifications in the spelling of some words which had entered
Middle English in the French form. So Middle English doute,
delte, were changed to doubt, debt, to show a more immediate
connexion with Latin dubitum, debitum; the actual derivation
from the French being ignored. Similarly, words containing a
Latin and French /, which might be traced back to an original
Greek 6, were remodelled upon the Greek, e.g. theme, throne, for
Middle English term, trone, and, by false association with Greek,
anthem, Old English antefne, Latin antiphona; Anthony, Latin
Antonius; Thames, Latin Tamesis, apparently after Thomas.
The voyages of English navigators in the latter part of the
1 6th century introduced a considerable number of Spanish
words, and American words in Spanish forms, of which negro,
potato, tobacco, cargo, armadillo, alligator, galleon may serve as
examples.
The date of 1611, which nearly coincides with the end of
Shakespeare's literary work, and marks the appearance of the
Authorized Version of the Bible (a compilation from the various
16th-century versions), may be taken as marking the close of
Tudor English. The language was thenceforth Modern in
structure, style and expression, although the spelling did not
settle down to present usage till about the revolution of 1688.
The latter date also marks the disappearance from literature of
1 Evangelist, astronomy, dialogue, are words that have so lived, of
which their form is the result. Photograph, geology, &c., take this
form as if they had the same history.
a large number of words, chiefly of such as were derived from
Latin during the i6th and ryth centuries. Of these nearly all
that survived 1688 are still in use; but a long list might be made
out of those that appear for the last time before that date. This
sifting of the literary vocabulary and gradual fixing of the literary
spelling, which went on between 1611, when the language became
modern in structure, and 1689, when it became modern also in
form, suggests for this period the name of Seventeenth-Century
Transition. The distinctive features of Modern English have
already been anticipated by way of contrast with preceding
stages of the language. It is only necessary to refer to the fact
that the vocabulary is now much more composite than at any
previous period. The immense development of the physical
sciences has called for a corresponding extension of terminology
which has been supplied from Latin and especially Greek; and
although these terms are in the first instance technical, yet, with
the spread of education and general diffusion of the rudiments
and appliances of science, the boundary line between technical
and general, indefinite at the best, tends more and more to melt
away this in addition to the fact that words still technical
become general in figurative or metonymic senses. Ache,
diamond, stomach, comet, organ, tone, ball, carte, are none the
less familiar because once technical words. Commercial, social,
artistic or literary contact has also led to the adoption of
numerous words from modern European languages, especially
French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch (these two at a less recent
period): thus from French soiree, seance, dipdt, debris, pro-
gramme, prestige ; from Italian bust, canto, folio, cartoon, concert,
regatta, ruffian; from Portuguese caste, palaver; from Dutch
yacht, skipper, schooner, sloop. Commercial intercourse and
colonization have extended far beyond Europe, and given us
words more or fewer from Hindostani, Persian, Arabic, Turkish,
Malay, Chinese, and from American, Australian, Polynesian and
African ^languages. 2 More important even than these, perhaps,
are the dialect words that from time to time obtain literary
recognition, restoring to us obsolete Old English forms, and not
seldom words of Celtic or Danish origin, which have been pre-
served in local dialects, and thus at length find their way into
the standard language.
As to the actual proportion of the various elements of the
language, it is probable that original English words do not now
form more than a fourth or perhaps a fifth of the total entries
in a full English dictionary; and it may seem strange, therefore,
that we still identify the language with that of the gth century,
and class it as a member of the Low German division. But this
explains itself, when we consider that of the total words in a
dictionary only a small portion are used by any one individual
in speaking or even in writing; that this portion includes the
great majority of the Anglo-Saxon words, and but a minority of
the others. The latter are in fact almost all names the vast
majority names of things (nouns), a smaller number names of
attributes and actions (adjectives and verbs), and, from their
very nature, names of the things, attributes and actions which
come less usually or, it may be, very rarely under our notice.
Thus in an ordinary book, a novel or story, the foreign elements
will amount to from 10 to 15% of the whole; as the subject
becomes more recondite or technical their number will increase;
till in a work on chemistry or abstruse mathematics the proportion
may be 40%. But after all, it is not the question whence words
may have been taken, but how they are used in a language that
settles its character. If new words when adopted conform them-
selves to the manner and usage of the adopting language, it makes
absolutely no difference whether they are taken over from some
other language, or invented off at the ground. In either case
they are new words to begin with; in either case also, if they are
needed, they will become as thoroughly native, i.e. familiar from
childhood to those who use them, as those that possess the longest
native pedigree. In this respect English is still the same language
it was in the days of Alfred; and, comparing its history with that
of other Low German tongues, there is no reason to believe that
1 See extended lists of the foreign words in English in Dr Morris's
Historical Outlines of English Accidence, p. 33.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
597
its grammar or structure would have been very different, however
different its vocabulary might have been, if the Norman Conqm-M
had never taken place.
A general broad view of the sources of the English vocabulary
and of the dates at which the various foreign elements flowed
into the language, as well as of the great change produced in it
by the Norman Conquest, and consequent influx of French and
Latin elements, is given in the accompanying chart. The
transverse lines represent centuries, and it will be seen how
limited a period after all is occupied by modern English, how
long the language had been in the country before the Norman
Conquest, and how much of this is prehistoric and without any
literary remains. Judging by what has happened during the
historic period, great changes may and indeed must have taken
place between the first arrival of the Saxons and the days of
King Alfred, when literature practically begins. The chart also
illustrates the continuity of the main stock of the vocabulary,
the body of primary " words of common life," which, notwith-
standing numerous losses and more numerous additions, has
preserved its corporate identity through all the periods. But
the " poetic and rhetorical," as well as the " scientific " terms
of Old English have died out, and a new vocabulary of " abstract
and general terms " has arisen from French, Latin and Greek,
while a still newer " technical, commercial and scientific "
vocabulary is composed of words not only from these, but from
every civilized and many uncivilized languages.
The preceding sketch has had reference mainly to the gram-
matical changes which the language has undergone; distinct from,
though intimately connected with these (as where the confusion
or loss of inflections was a consequence of the weakening of final
sounds) are the great phonetic changes which have taken place
between the 8th and ipth centuries, and which result in making
modern English words very different from their Anglo-Saxon
originals, even where no element has been lost, as in words like
slant, mint, doom, day, nail, child, bridge, shoot, Anglo-Saxon stdn,
tnln, dim, dag, nctgcl, cild, brycg, sctot. The history of English
sounds (see PHONETICS) has been treated at length by Dr A. J.
Ellis and Dr Henry Sweet; and it is only necessary here to
indicate the broad facts, which are the following, (i) In an
accented closed syllable, original short vowels have remained
nearly unchanged; thus the words at, men, bill, God, dust are
pronounced now nearly as in Old English, though the last two
were more like the Scotch o and North English u respectively,
and in most words the short a had a broader sound like the
provincial a in man. (2) Long accented vowels and diphthongs
have undergone a regular sound shift towards closer and more
advanced positions, so that the words thin, lurr, soece or sice, slot
(bahn or bawn, her, sdk or saik, sidle) are now bdne, hair, seek,
stool; while the two high vowels A ( = 00) and i (ee) have become
diphthongs, as hus, scir, now house, shire, though
the old sound of u remains in the north (hoose),
and the original / in the pronunciation sheer,
approved by Walker, " as in machine, and shire,
and magazine." (3) Short vowels in an open
syllable have usually been lengthened, as in
na-ma, cd-fa, now name, cove; but to this there
are exceptions, especially in the case of 1 and 6.
(4) Vowels in terminal unaccented syllables have
all sunk into short obscure (, and then, if final,
disappeared; so oxa, seo, wudu became ox-e, se-e,
wud-e, and then ox, see, wood; oxan, lufod, now
oxen, loved, lov'd; sellan, setton, later setten, setfe,
sett, now set. (5) The back consonants, c, g, sc, in
connexion with front vowels, have often become
palatalized to ch, j, sh, as circe, rycg, fisc, now
church, ridge, fish. A medial or final g has passed
through a guttural or palatal continuant to w or
y, forming a diphthong or new vowel, as in boga,
laga, dag, heg, drig, now bow, law, day, hay, dry.
W and h have disappeared before r and /, as in
write, (w)lisp, (h)ring; h final ( = gh) has become
/, k, w or nothing, but has developed the glides
or i before itself, these combining with the pre-
ceding vowel to form a diphthong, or merging
with it into a simple vowel-sound, as ruh, hoh,
boh, deah, heah, hleah, now rough, hough, bough,
dough, high, laugh = ruf, hok, bdw, do, hi, Idf. R
after a vowel has practically disappeared in
standard English, or at most become vocalized, or
combined with the vowel, as in hear, bar, more,
her. These and other changes have taken place
gradually, and in accordance with well-known
phonetic laws; the details as to time and mode
may be studied in special works. It may be
mentioned that the total loss of grammatical gender
in English, and the almost complete disappear-
ance of cases, are purely phonetic phenomena.
Gender (whatever its remote origin) was practically the use of
adjectives and pronouns with certain distinctive terminations,
in accordance with the genus, genre, gender or kind of nouns to
which they were attached; when these distinctive terminations
were uniformly levelled to final I, or other weak sounds, and thus
ceased to distinguish nouns into kinds, the distinctions into
genders or kinds having no other existence disappeared. Thus
when }><et gode hors, \>one godan hund, ]>a godan b6c, became, by
phonetic weakening, \>e gode hors, ]>e gode hownd, ]>e gode boke,
and later still the good horse, the good hound, the good book, the
words horse, hound, book were no longer grammatically different
kinds of nouns; grammatical gender had ceased to exist. The
concord of adjectives has entirely disappeared; the concord
of the pronouns is now regulated by rationality and sex, instead
of grammatical gender, which has no existence in English. The
man who lost his life; the bird which built its nest.
Our remarks from the end of the i4th century have been
confined to the standard or literary form of English, for of the
other dialects from that date (with the exception of the northern
598
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
English in Scotland, where it became in a social and literary
sense a distinct language), we have little history. We know,
however, that they continued to exist as local and popular forms
of speech, as well from occasional specimens and from the fact
that they exist still as from the statements of writers during
the interval. Thus Puttenham in his Arte of English Poesie
(1589) says:
" Our maker [i.e. poet] therfore at these dayes shall not follow
Piers Plowman, nor Gower, nor Lydgate, not yet Chaucer, for their
language is now not of use with us : neither shall he take the termes
of Northern-men, such as they use in dayly talke, whether they be
noble men or gentle men or of their best clarkes, all is a [=one]
matter; nor in effect any speach used beyond the river of Trent,
though no man can deny but that theirs is the purer English Saxon
at this day, yet it is not so Courtly nor so currant as our Southerne
English is, .no more is the far Westerne mans speach : ye shall
therefore take the usual speach of the Court, and that of London and
the shires lying about London within Ix myles, and not much above.
I say not this but that in every shyre of England there be gentlemen
and others that speake but specially write as good Southerne as we
of Middlesex or Surrey do, but not the common people of every shire,
to whom the gentlemen, and also their learned clarkes do for the
most part condescend, but herein we are already ruled by th' English
Dictionaries and other bookes written by learned men." Arber's
Reprint, p. 157.
In comparatively modern times there has been a revival of
interest in these forms of English, several of which following in
the wake of the revival of Lowland Scots in the i8th and ipth
centuries, have produced a considerable literature in the form
of local poems, tales and " folk-lore." In these respects Cumber-
land, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Devon, Somerset and Dorset, the
" far north " and " far west " of Puttenham, where the dialect
was felt to be so independent of literary English as not to be
branded as a mere vulgar corruption of it, stand prominent.
More recently the dialects have been investigated philologically,
a department in which, as in other departments of English
philology, the elder Richard Garnett must be named as a pioneer.
The work was carried out zealously by Prince Louis Lucien
Bonaparte and Dr A. J. Ellis, and more recently by the English
Dialect Society, founded by the Rev. Professor Skeat, for the
investigation of this branch of philology. The efforts of this
society resulted in the compilation and publication of glossaries
or word-books, more or less complete and trustworthy, of most
of the local dialects, and in the production of grammars dealing
with the phonology and grammatical features of a few of these,
among which that of the Windhill dialect in Yorkshire, by
Professor Joseph Wright, and that of West Somerset, by the
late F. T. Elworthy, deserve special mention. From the whole
of the glossaries of the Dialect Society, and from all the earlier
dialect works of the i8th and ipth centuries, amplified and
illustrated by the contributions of local collaborators in nearly
every part of the British Isles, Professor Joseph Wright has
constructed his English Dialed Dictionary, recording the local
words and senses, with indication of their geographical range,
their pronunciation, and in most cases with illustrative quotations
or phrases. To this he has added an English Dialect Grammar,
dealing very fully with the phonology of the dialects, showing
the various sounds which now represent each Old English sound,
and endeavouring to define the area over which each modern form
extends; the accidence is treated more summarily, without
going minutely into that of each dialect-group, for which special
dialect grammars must be consulted. The work has also a very
full and valuable index of every word and form treated.
The researches of Prince L. L. Bonaparte and Dr Ellis were
directed specially to the classification and mapping of the
existing dialects, 1 and the relation of these to the dialects of Old
and Middle English. They recognized a Northern dialect lying
north of a line drawn from Morecambe Bay to the Humber,
which, with the kindred Scottish dialects (already investigated
and classed), 2 is the direct descendant of early northern English,
1 See description and map in Trans. ofPhilol. Soc., 1875-1876, p. 570.
1 The Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland, its Pronunciation,
Grammar and Historical Relations, with an Appendix on the present
limits of the Gaelic and Lowland Scotch, and the Dialectal Divisions
of the Lowland Tongue; and a Linguistical Map of Scotland, by
James A. H. Murray (London, 1873).
and a South-western dialect occupying Somerset, Wilts, Dorset,
Gloucester and western Hampshire, which, with the Devonian
dialect beyond it, are the descendants of early southern English
and the still older West-Saxon of Alfred. This dialect must in the
I4th century have been spoken everywhere south of Thames;
but the influence of London caused its extinction in Surrey,,
Sussex and Kent, so that already in Puttenham it had become
" far western." An East Midland dialect, extending from south
Lincolnshire to London, occupies the cradle-land of the standard
English speech, and still shows least variation from it. Between
and around these typical dialects are ten others, representing the
old Midland proper, or dialects between it and the others already
mentioned. Thus "north of Trent" the North-western dialect
of south Lancashire, Cheshire, Derby and Stafford, with that of
Shropshire, represents the early West Midland English, of which
several specimens remain; while the North-eastern of Nottingham
and north Lincolnshire represents the dialect of the Lay of
Havelok. With the North Midland dialect of south-west York-
shire, these represent forms of speech which to the modern
Londoner, as to Puttenham, are still decidedly northern, though
actually intermediate between northern proper and midland, and
preserving interesting traces of the midland pronouns and verbal
inflections. There is an Eastern dialect in the East Anglian
counties; a Midland in Leicester and Warwick shires; a
Western in Hereford, Worcester and north Gloucestershire,
intermediate between south-western and north-western, and
representing the dialect of Piers Plowman. Finally, between the
east midland and south-western, in the counties of Buckingham,
Oxford, Berks, Hants, Surrey and Sussex, there is a dialect
which must have once been south-western, but of which the most
salient characters have been rubbed off by proximity to London
and the East Midland speech. In east Sussex and Kent this
South-eastern dialect attains to a more distinctive character.
The Kentish form of early Southern English evidently maintained
its existence more toughly than that of the counties immediately
south of London. It was very distinct in the days of Sir Thomas
More; and even, as we see from the dialect attributed to Edgar
in Lear, was still strongly marked in the days of Shakespeare.
In the south-eastern corner of Ireland, in the baronies of Forth
and Bargy, in county Wexford, a very archaic form of English, of
which specimens have been preserved, 3 was still spoken in the
1 8th century. In all probability it dated from the first English
invasion. In many parts of Ulster forms of Lowland Scotch
dating to the settlement under James I. are still spoken; but the
English of Ireland generally seems to represent i6th and tyth
century English, as in the pronunciation of tea, wheat (lay,
whait), largely affected, of course, by the native Celtic. The
subsequent work of the English Dialect Society, and the facts set
forth in the English Dialect Dictionary, confirm in a general way
the classification of Bonaparte and Ellis; but they bring out
strongly the fact that only in a few cases can the boundary
between dialects now be determined by precise lines. For every
dialect there is a central region, larger or smaller, in which its
characteristics are at a maximum; but towards the edges of the
area these become mixed and blended with the features of the
contiguous dialects, so that it is often impossible to define the
point at which the one dialect ends and the other begins. The
fact is that the various features of a dialect, whether its distinc-
tive words, characteristic pronunciations or special grammatical
features, though they may have the same centre, have not all the
same circumference. Some of them extend to a certain distance
round the centre; others to a much greater distance. The only
approximately accurate way to map the area of any dialect,
whether in England, France, Germany or elsewhere, is to take
a well-chosen set of its characteristic features words, senses,
sounds or grammatical peculiarities, and draw a line round the
area over which each of these extends; between the innermost
and outermost of these there will often be a large border district.
If the same process be followed with the contiguous dialects,
' A Glossary (with some pieces of Verse) of the Old Dialect of the
English Colony of Forth and Bargy, collected by Jacob Poole, edited
by W. Barnes, B.D. (London, 1867).
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
599
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE PERIODS AND DIALECTS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
CHIOMM.au ITAl NuMEMTLATVIE.
LnitAiY DEVELOPMENT or THE LKADINO DIALECTS.
D**~
SubdbUoM. :
Northern English. Midland English Southern Kngliih.
500
! r f
600
3-7
t/1 C
700
EARLY OLD ENGLISH.
IOdroon, 660.
,'*. 1 <.**S~.>.7JM.
Cyncwulf . c. 750. Beowull (
(Charter Clouts), 679-770.
(Charter Glossis),(n)*-ito.
(Laws of Ine, 700).
31
ul
800
(Charter Glosses), 805 . E
v Vespasian Pi c. 825.
z ST 1 Charters, 836-840. "j
1 Charters, 805-840.
larica Prayer.
31
r P' f
Psalm 50, c. 860.
Ob
I Lorica Glasses.
Alfred, 885.
900
TYPICAL OLD ENGLISH,
5. 6
S g
Judith, 900-910.
or
ANGLO-SAXON.
(Durham Glcssrs, 950-975. S
I.indisjame Gospel Gloss. | Rushworlh Gloss, SI. jf
( Matthew,? 975-1000. .
Poems in O. E. Chron.
937-979-
Untile ol Maldon, 993.
if'
Wulfstan, luiD.
P
O. E. Chron., Parker US. '
LATE OLD ENGLISH
ends, 1070.
and OLD ENGLISH i too
TRANSITION.
Peterborough Chronicle,
Pi
1123-31.
Chronicle, 1154.
vT
Cotton Homilies, 1160. Hatlm Gospels, 1170.
EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH. 1200
z i
Ormulum. 1200. V>
Layamon, 1203.
17
s i
1
Anrren Rivtle, 1220. *
2 I
Genesisty'Exodus,c. 1250.
/* 1 ! fl 11 f ons, 1250.
-
Cursor llundi (?).
Harrowing o\ Hell, 1280. ?;
enry ., 25 . -
Si
1300
MIDDLE ENGLISH
.
JT
5"
Robt. of Brunne, 1303-30. ^
Robt. Gloucester, 1300.
Shorcham, 1320.
UJ-,
^3
(typical).
I lam pole, 1350. ^
Pearl, Sir Gawayne. x_
Ayenbite, 1340.
11
r
Birbour. 1375. r
Wycliffe.
- ;
i
Chaucer, Gower.
Trevisa, 1187.
BB
LATE MIDDLE ENGLISH
;
\Lindtvme (Northern \-cr-
Wyntoun, 1420. (won).
Lydgate.
and MIDDLE ENGLISH
r
Ttnenley Mysteries.
TRANSITION.
llrnryson, 1470-
C.'txlnn. 1477-00.
I.) unbar, 1500 .
X
EARLY MODERN ENGLISH
(Tudor English).
-
'
Lyadrsay. c
Archbp. Hamilton, 1552.
^J
Tyndal, 1525.
Homilies, 1547-63.
Comishman in A. Boorde, S (>" Sir. T. More.)
'547- ||
Gammer Gurton, 1575. t? (Edgar in Lear, 1605.)
.
.. , .
-'
.
James VI., 1590. *.
Montgomery, c. 1600. 5'
Shakspere, 1590-161 1.
King Janus' s Bible, ibii.
if
:L (in /iirw Jonson.)
R Kentish Wooing Song,
TRANSITIONAL MODERN,
Sir VV. Mure, 1617-57.
1611.
Somersetsh, Man's Com-
Ol
or
17111 CENTURY ENGLISH.
tfjift
Yorkshire Dialogue, 1673.
Milion, 1626-71. S
playnl, c. 1645.
...2
1009-
^
y > 3 i7o.
Nairne, A'n/u* TaJn,
:"
Allan Ramsay, 1717.
Addison, 1717.
1700.
, IE
-'
D
Exmoor Scolding , 1746.
ai~
-'
Johnson. 1750.
gj
CURRENT ENGLISH. 1800
-
-_
Burn, 1790.
Colcridire, 1805.
at
Scott, 1815. ~
Macaulay, 1825.
' * "'
<
-
i,
Tennyion, 1830.
Barnra, 1844.
-
Ian Maclaren, B.irrie,
Elworthy, 1875-88.
1900
.
Crucketl, etc.
7
The vertical line* repreient the (our leading forms of English Northern, Midland, Southern, and Kentish and the names occurring down the
couraeof each are those of writers and works in that form of English at the given date. The thickness of the line shows the comparative literary
position of this form of speech at the time : thick indicating a literary language ; medium, a literary dialect ; thin, a popular dialect or patois ; a dolled
line shows that this period is unrepresented by specimens. The horizontal lines divide the periods; these (alter the first two) refer mainly to
the Midland English ; in inflectional decay the Northern English was at least a century in advance of the Midland, and the Southern nearly
asmurh behind it.
6oo
ENGLISH LAW
it will be found that some of the lines of each intersect some of
the lines of the other, and that the passing of one dialect into
another is not effected by the formation of intermediate or
blended forms of any one characteristic, but by the overlapping
or intersecting of more or fewer of the features of each. Thus a
definite border village or district may use 10 of the 20 features of
dialect A and 10 of those of B, while a village on the one side has
12 of those of A with 8 of those of B, and one on the other side
has 7 of those of A with 13 of those of B. Hence a dialect
boundary line can at best indicate the line within which the
dialect has, on the whole, more of the features of A than of B or
C; and usually no single line can be drawn as a dialect boundary,
but that without it there are some features of the same dialect,
and within it some features of the contiguous dialects.
Beyond the limits of the British Isles, English is the language of
extensive regions, now or formerly colonies. In all these
countries the presence of numerous new objects and new con-
'ditions of life has led to the supplementing of the vocabulary by
the adoption of words from native languages, and special adapta-
tion and extension of the sense of English words. The use of a
common literature, however, prevents the overgrowth of these
local peculiarities, and also makes them more or less familiar to
Englishmen at home. It is only in the older states of the
American Union that anything like a local dialect has been
produced; and even there many of the so-called Americanisms
are quite as much archaic English forms which have been lost
or have become dialectal in England as developments of the
American soil.
The steps by which English, from being the language of a few
thousand invaders along the eastern and southern seaboard of
Britain, has been diffused by conquest and colonization over its
present area form a subject too large for the limits of this article.
It need only be remarked that within the confines of Britain itself
the process is not yet complete. Representatives of earlier
languages survive in Wales and the Scottish Highlands, though
in neither case can the substitution of English be very remote.
In Ireland, where English was introduced by conquest much later,
Irish is still spoken in patches all over the country; though
English is understood, and probably spoken after a fashion,
almost everywhere. At opposite extremities of Britain, the
Cornish of Cornwall and the Norse dialects of Orkney and Shetland
died out very gradually in the course of the i8th century. The
Manx, or Celtic of Man, is even now in the last stage of dissolu-
tion ; and in the Channel Isles the Norman patois of Jersey and
Guernsey have largely yielded to English.
The table on p. 599 (a revision of that brought before the
Philological Society in Jan. 1876) graphically presents the chrono-
logical and dialectal development of English. Various names
have been proposed for the different stages; it seems only
necessary to add to those in the table the descriptive names of
Dr Abbott, who has proposed (How to Parse, p. 298) to call the
Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, the " Synthetical or Inflexional
Period "; the Old English Transition (Late Anglo-Saxon of Dr
Skeat), the " Period of Confusion "; the Early Middle English,
" Analytical Period " (1250-1350); the normal Middle English,
"National Period" (1350-1500); the Tudor English, " Period
of Licence "; and the Modern English, " Period of Settlement."!
BIBLIOGRAPHY. As the study of English has made immense
advances within the last generation, it is only in works recently
published that the student will find the subject satisfactorily handled.
Among the earlier works treating of the whole subject or parts of it
may be mentioned A History of English Rhythms, by Edwin Guest
(London, 1838); the Philological Essays of Richard Garnett (1835-
1848), edited by his son (London, 1859); The English Language, by
R. G. Latham (sth ed., London, 1862); Origin and History of the
English Language, by G. P. Marsh (revised 1885); Lectures on the
English Language, by the same (New York and London, 1863);
Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache, by C. F. Koch (Weimar,
1863, &c.) Englische Grammatik, by Eduard Matzner (Berlin, 1860-
'865), (an English translation by C. J. Grece, LL.B., London, 1874) ;
The Philology of the English Tongue, by John Earle, M.A. (Oxford,
1866, sth ed. 1892); Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon
Language, by F. A. March (New York, 1870); Historical Outlines of
English Accidence, by the Rev. R. Morris, LL.D. (London, 1873),
(new ed. by Kcllner) ; Elementary Lessons in Historical English
Grammar, by the same (London, 1874) ' The Sources of Standard
English, by T. L. Kington Oliphant, M.A. (London, 1873); Modern
English, by F. Hall (London, 1873); A Shakespearian Grammar, by
E. A. Abbott, D.D. (London, 1872); How to Parse, by the same
(London, 1875); Early English Pronunciation, &c., by A. J. Ellis
(London, 1869); The History of English Sounds, by Henry Sweet
(London, 1874, 2nd ed. 1888); as well as many separate papers
by various authors in the Transactions of the Philological Society, and
the publications of the Early English Text Society.
Among more recent works are: M. Kaluza, Historische Grammatik
der englischen Sprache (Berlin, 1890) ; Professor W. W. Skeat,
Principles of English Etymology (Oxford, 1887-1891); Johan Storm,
Englische Philolpgie (Leipzig, 1892-1896); L. Kellner, Historical
Outlines of English Syntax (London, 1892) ; O. F. Emerson, History
of the English Language (London and New York, 1894); Otto
Jespersen, Progress in Language, with special reference to English
(London, 1894) < Lorenz Morsbach, Mittelenglische Grammatik, part i.
(Halle, 1896); Paul, " Geschichte der englischen Sprache," in
Grundriss der german. Philologie (Strassburg, 1898) ; Eduard Sievers,
Angelsachsische Grammatik (3rd ed., Halle, 1898); Eng. transl. of
same (2nd ed.), by A. S. Cook (Boston, 1887) ; K. D. Bulbring, Alt-
englisches Elementarbuch (Heidelberg, 1902) ; Greenough and Kitt-
redge, Words and their Ways in English Speech (London and New
York, 1902) ; Henry Bradley, The Making of English (London, 1904).
Numerous contributions to the subject have also been made in
Englische Studien (ed. Kolbing, later Hoops; Leipzig, 1877 onward);
Anglia (ed. Wiilker, Fliigel, &c.; Halle, 1878 onward); publications
of Mod. Lang. Assoc. of America (J. W. Bright ; Baltimore, 1884 on-
ward), and A. M. Elliott, Modern Language Notes (Baltimore, 1886
onward). (J- A. H. M.; H. M. R. M.)
ENGLISH LAW (History). In English jurisprudence " legal
memory " is said to extend as far as, but no further than the
coronation of Richard I. (Sept. 3, 1189). This is a technical
doctrine concerning prescriptive rights, but is capable of express-
ing an important truth. For the last seven centuries, little more
or less, the English law, which is now overshadowing a large
share of the earth, has had not only an extremely continuous,
but a matchlessly well-attested history, and, moreover, has
been the subject matter of rational exposition. Already in
1 194 the daily doings of a tribunal which was controlling and
moulding the whole system were being punctually recorded in
letters yet legible, and from that time onwards it is rather the
enormous bulk than any dearth of available materials that
prevents us from tracirig the transformation of every old doctrine
and the emergence and expansion of every new idea. If we are
content to look no further than the text-books the books written
by lawyers for lawyers we may read our way backwards to
Blackstone (d. 1780), Hale (d. 1676), Coke (d. 1634), Fitzherbert
(d. 1538), Littleton (d. 1481), Bracton (d. 1268), Glanvill (d.
1190), until we are in the reign of Henry of Anjou, and yet shall
perceive that we are always reading of one and the same body
of law, though the little body has become great, and the ideas
that were few and indefinite have become many and explicit.
Beyond these seven lucid centuries lies a darker period.
Nearly six centuries will still divide us from the dooms of
jEthelberht (c. 600), and nearly seven from theLexSalica (c. 500).
We may regard the Norman conquest of England as marking
the confluence of two streams of law. The one we may call
French or Prankish. If we follow it upwards we pass through
the capitularies of Carlovingian emperors and Merovingian
kings until we see Chlodwig and his triumphant Franks invading
Gaul, submitting their Sicambrian necks to the yoke of the
imperial religion, and putting their traditional usages into
written Latin. The other rivulet we may call Anglo-Saxon.
Pursuing it through the code of Canute (d. 1035) and the ordi-
nances of Alfred (c. 900) and his successors, we see Ine publishing
laws in the newly converted Wessex (c. 690), and, almost a
century earlier, /Ethelberht doing the same in the newly converted
Kent (c. 600). This he did, says Beda, in accordance with
Roman precedents. Perhaps from the Roman missionaries
he had heard tidings of what the Roman emperor had lately
been doing far off in New Rome. We may at any rate notice
with interest that in order of time Justinian's law-books fall
between the Lex Salica and the earliest Kentish dooms; also that
the great pope who sent Augustine to England is one of the
very few men who between Justinian's day and the nth century
lived in the Occident and yet can be proved to have known the
ENGLISH LAW
601
Digest. In the Occident the time for the Germanic " folk-laws "
(Lefts Bartxirorum) had come, and a Canon law, ambitious of
independence, was being constructed, when in the Orient the
lord of church and state was " enucleating " all that was to live
of the classical jurisprudence of pagan Rome. It was but a
brief interval between Gothic and Lombardic domination that
enabled him to give law to Italy: Gaul and Britain were beyond
his reach.
The Anglo-Saxon laws that have come down to us (and we
have no reason to fear the loss of much beyond some dooms of
the Mercian OiT.it are best studied as members of a large Teutonic
family. Those that proceed from the Kent and VVessex of the
7th century are closely related to the continental folk- laws.
Their next of kin seem to be the Lex Saxonum and the laws of
the Lombards. Then, though the 8th and pth centuries are
unproductive, we have from Alfred (c. ooo) and his successors
a series of edicts which strongly resemble the Prankish capitularies
so strongly that we should see a clear case of imitation, were
it not that in Frankland the age of legislation had come to its
disastrous end long before Alfred was king. This, it may be
noted, gives to English legal history a singular continuity from
Alfred's day to our own. The king of the English was expected
to publish laws at a time when hardly any one else was attempting
any such feat, and the English dooms of Canute the Dane are
probably the most comprehensive statutes that were issued in
the Europe of the nth century. No genuine laws of the sainted
Edward have descended to us, and during his reign England
seems but too likely to follow the bad example of Frankland,
and become a loose congeries of lordships. From this fate it
was saved by the Norman duke, who, like Canute before him,
subdued a land in which kings were still expected to publish laws.
In the study of early Germanic law a study which now for
some considerable time has been scientifically prosecuted in
Germany the Anglo-Saxon dooms have received their due
share of attention. A high degree of racial purity may be
claimed on their behalf. Celtic elements have been sought for
in them, but have never been detected. At certain points,
notably in the regulation of the blood-feud and the construction
of a tariff of atonements, the law of one rude folk will always
be somewhat like the law of another; but the existing remains
of old Welsh and old Irish law stand far remoter from the dooms
of .-Ethelberht and Ine than stand the edicts of Rothari and
Liutprand, kings of the Lombards. Indeed, it is very dubious
whether distinctively Celtic customs play any considerable
part in the evolution of that system of rules of Anglian, Scandi-
navian and Prankish origin which becomes the law of Scotland.
Within England itself, though for a while there was fighting
enough between the various Germanic folks, the tribal differences
were not so deep as to prevent the formation of a common lan-
guage and a common law. Even the strong Scandinavian strain
seems to have rapidly blended with the Anglian. It amplified
the language and the law, but did not permanently divide the
country. If, for example, we can to-day distinguish between
Imt and right, we are debtors to the Danes; but very soon law
is not distinctive of eastern or right of western England. In the
first half of the mh century a would-be expounder of the law
of England had still to say that the country was divided between
the Wessex law, the Mercian law, and the Danes' law, but he
had also to point out that the law of the king's own court stood
apart from and above all partial systems. The local customs
were those of shires and hundreds, and shaded off into each
other. We may speak of more Danish and less Danish counties;
it was a matter of degree; for rivers were narrow and hills were
low. England was meant by nature to be the land of one law.
Then as to Roman law. In England and elsewhere Germanic
law developed in an atmosphere that was charged with traditions
of the old world, and many of these traditions had become
implicit in the Christian religion. It might be argued that all
that we call progress is due to the influence exercised by Roman
civilization; that, were it not for this, Germanic law would
never have been set in writing; and that theoretically unchange-
able custom would never have been supplemented or superseded
by express legislation. All this and much more of the same sort
might be said; but the survival in Britain, or the reintroduction
into England, of anything that we should dare to call Roman
jurisprudence would be a different matter. Eyes, carefully
trained, have minutely scrutinized the Anglo-Saxon legal texts
without finding the least trace of a Roman rule outside the
ecclesiastical sphere. Even within that sphere modern research
is showing that the church-propcrty-law of the middle ages,
the law of the ecclesiastical " benefice," is permeated by Ger-
manic ideas. This is true of Gaul and Italy, and yet truer of an
England in which Christianity was for a while extinguished.
Moreover, the laws that were written in England were, from the
first, written in the English tongue; and this gives them a
unique value in the eyes of students of Germanic folk-law, for
even the very ancienttyid barbarous Lex Salica is a Latin
document, though many old Frankish words are enshrined in it.
Also we notice and this is of grave importance that in England
there are no vestiges of any " Romani " who are being suffered
to live under their own law by their Teutonic rulers. On the
Continent we may see Gundobad, the Burgundian, publishing
one law-book for the Burgundians and another for the Romani
who own his sway. A book of laws, excerpted chiefly from the
Theodosian code, was issued by Alaric the Visigoth for his Roman
subjects before the days of Justinian, and this book (the so-called
Breviarium Alarici or Lex Rontana Visigothorum) became for a
long while the chief representative of Roman law in Gaul. The
Frankish king in his expansive realm ruled over many men
whose law was to be found not in the Lex Salica or Lex Ribuaria,
but in what was called the Lex Romana. "A system of personal
law" prevailed: the homo Romanus handed on his Roman law
to his children, while Frankish or Lombardic, Swabian or Saxon
law would run in the blood of the homo barbarus. Of all this we
hear nothing in England. Then on the mainland of Europe
Roman and barbarian law could not remain in juxtaposition
without affecting each other. On the one hand we see dis-
tinctively Roman rules making their way into the law of the
victorious tribes, and on the other hand we see a decay and
debasement of jurisprudence which ends in the formation of
what modern historians have called a Roman " vulgar-law "
( Vulgarrechl). For a short age which centres round the year 800
it seemed possible that Frankish kings, who were becoming
Roman emperors, would be able to rule by their capitularies
nearly the whole of the Christian Occident. The dream vanished
before fratricidal wars, heathen invaders, centrifugal feudalism,
and a centripetal church which found its law in the newly
concocted forgeries of the Pseudo-Isidore (c. 850). The " personal
laws" began to transmute themselves into local customs, and
the Roman vulgar-law began to look like the local custom of
those districts where the Romani were the preponderating
element in the population. Meanwhile, the Norse pirates subdued
a large tract of what was to be northern France a land where
Romani were few. Their restless and boundless vigour these
Normans retained; but they showed a wonderful power of
appropriating whatever of alien civilization came in their way.
In their language, religion and law, they had become French
many years before they subdued England. It is a plausible
opinion that among them there lived some sound traditions
of the Frankish monarchy's best days, and that Norman dukes,
rather than German emperors or kings, of the French, are the
truest spiritual heirs of Charles the Great.
In our own day German historians are wont to speak of English
law as a " daughter " of French or Frankish law. This tendency
derived its main impulse from H. Brunner's proof that the germ
of trial by jury, which cannot be found in the Anglo-Saxon laws,
can be found in the prerogative procedure of the Frankish kings.
We must here remember that during a long age English lawyers
wrote in French and even thought in French, and that to this
day most of the. technical terms of the law, more especially of
the private law, are of French origin. Also it must be allowed
that when English law has taken shape in the I3th century it
is very like one of the coutumes of northern France. Even when
linguistic difficulties have been surmounted, the Saxon Mirror
602
ENGLISH LAW
^
manage.
of Eike von Repgow will seem far less familiar to an Englishman
than the so-called Establishments of St Louis. This was the
outcome of a slow process which fills more than a century (1066-
1189), and was in a great measure due to the reforming energy
of Henry II., the French prince who, in addition to England,
ruled a good half of France. William the Conqueror seems to
have intended to govern Englishmen by English law. After
the tyranny of Rufus, Henry I. promised a restoration of King
Edward's law: that is, the law of the Confessor's time (Lagam
Eadviardi regis vobis reddo). Various attempts were then made,
mostly, so it would seem, by men of French birth,
* s t- a t e in a modern and practicable form the laga
Eadwardi which was thus restored. The result of
their labours is an intricate group of legal tracts which has been
explored of late years by Dr Liebermann. The best of these
has long been known as the Leges Henrici Primi, and aspires
to be a comprehensive law-book. Its author, though he had
some foreign sources at his command, such as the Lex Ribuaria
and an epitome of the Breviary of Alaric, took the main part of
his matter from the code of Canute and the older English dooms.
Neither the Conqueror nor either of his sons had issued many
ordinances: the invading Normans had little, if any, written
law to bring with them, and had invaded a country where kings
had been lawgivers. Moreover, there was much in the English
system that the Conqueror was keenly interested in retaining
especially an elaborate method of taxing the land and its holders.
The greatest product of Norman government, the grandest feat
of government that the world had seen for a long time past,
the compilation of Domesday Book, was a conservative effort,
an attempt to fix upon every landholder, French or English,
the amount of geld that was due from his predecessor in title.
Himself the rebellious vassal of the French king, the duke of
the Normans, who had become king of the English, knew much
of disruptive feudalism, and had no mind to see England that
other France which it had threatened to become in the days of
his pious but incompetent cousin. The sheriffs, though called
vice-comites, were to be the king's officers; the shire-moots might
be called county courts, but were not to be the courts of counts.
Much that was sound and royal in English public law was to be
preserved if William could preserve it.
The gulf that divides the so-called Leges Henrici (c. 1115)
from the text-book ascribed to Ranulf Glanvill (c. 1188) seems
at first sight very wide. The one represents a not
lusifce. easily imaginable chaos and clash of old rules and
new; it represents also a stage in the development of
feudalism which in other countries is represented chiefly by a
significant silence. The other is an orderly, rational book,
which through all the subsequent centuries will be readily under-
stood by English lawyers. Making no attempt to tell us what
goes on in the local courts, its author, who may be Henry II. 's
chief justiciar, Ranulf Glanvill, or may be Glanvill's nephew,
Hubert Walter, fixes our attention on a novel element which is
beginning to subdue all else to its powerful operation. He speaks
to us of the justice that is done by the king's own court. Henry
II. had opened the doors of his French-speaking court to the
mass of his subjects. Judges chosen for their ability were to
sit there, term after term; judges were to travel in circuits
through the land, and in many cases the procedure by way of
" an inquest of the country," which the Norman kings had used
for the ascertainment of their fiscal rights, was to be at the
disposal of ordinary litigants. All this had been done in a
piecemeal, experimental fashion by ordinances that were known
as " assizes." There had not been, and was not to be, any
enunciation of a general principle inviting all who were wronged
to bring in their own words their complaints to the king's
audience. The general prevalence of feudal justice, and of the
world-old methods of supernatural probation (ordeals, battle,
oaths sworn with oath-helpers), was to be theoretically respected;
but in exceptional cases, which would soon begin to devour the
rule, a royal remedy was to be open to any one who could frame
his case within the compass of some carefully-worded and
prescript formula. With allusion to a remote stage in the history
of Roman law, a stage of which Henry's advisers can have known
little or nothing, we may say that a " formulary system " is
established which will preside over English law until modern
times. Certain actions, each with a name of its own, are open
to litigants. Each has its own formula set forth in its original
(or, as we might say, originating) writ; each has its own pro-
cedure and its appropriate mode of trial. The litigant chooses
his writ, his action, and must stand or fall by his choice. Thus
a book about royal justice tends to become, and Glanvill's book
already is, a commentary on original writs.
The precipitation of English law in so coherent a form as that
which it has assumed in Glanvill's book is not to be explained
without reference to the revival of Roman jurisprudence in
Italy. Out of a school of Lombard lawyers at Pavia had come
Lanfranc the Conqueror's adviser, and the Lombardists had
already been studying Justinian's Institutes. Then at length
the Digest came by its rights. About the year noo Irnerius
was teaching at Bologna, and from all parts of the West men
were eagerly flocking to hear the new gospel of civilization.
About the year 1149 Vacarius was teaching Roman law in
England. The rest of a long life he spent here, and faculties of
Roman and Canon law took shape in the nascent university of
Oxford. Whatever might be the fate of Roman law in England,
there could be no doubt that the Canon law, which was crystal-
lizing in the Decrelum Gratiani (c. 1139) and in the decretals of
Alexander III., would be the law of the English ecclesiastical
tribunals. The great quarrel between Henry II. and Thomas of
Canterbury brought this system into collision with the temporal
law of England, and the king's ministers must have seen that
they had much to learn from the methodic enemy. Some of
them were able men who became the justices of Henry's court,
and bishops to boot. The luminous Dialogue of the Exchequer
(c. 1179), which expounds the English fiscal system, came from
the treasurer, Richard Fitz Nigel, who became bishop of London;
and the treatise on the laws of England came perhaps from
Glanvill, perhaps from Hubert Walter, who was to be both
primate and chief justiciar. There was healthy emulation of
the work that was being done by Italian jurists, but no meek
acceptance of foreign results.
A great constructive era had opened, and its outcome was a
large and noble book. The author was Henry of Bratton (his
name has been corrupted into Bracton), who died in
1268 after having been for many years one of Henry
III.'s justices. The model for its form was the treatise of Azo
of Bologna (" master of all the masters of the laws," an English-
man called him), and thence were taken many of the generalities
of jurisprudence: maxims that might be regarded as of universal
and natural validity. But the true core of the work was the
practice of an English court which had yearly been extending
its operations in many directions. For half a century past
diligent record had been kept on parchment of all that this court
had done, and from its rolls Bracton cited numerous decisions.
He cited them as precedents, paying special heed to the judgments
of two judges who were already dead, Martin Pateshull and
William Raleigh. For this purpose he compiled a large Note
Book, which was discovered by Prof. Vinogradoff in the British
Museum in 1884. Thus at a very early time English " common
law " shows a tendency to become what it afterwards definitely
became, namely, " case law." -The term " common law " was
being taken over from the canonists by English lawyers, who
used it to distinguish the general law of the land from local
customs, royal prerogatives, and in short from all that was
exceptional or special. Since statutes and ordinances were still
rarities, all expressly enacted laws were also excluded from the
English lawyers' notion of " the common law." The Great,
Charter (1213) had taken the form of a grant of " liberties and
privileges," comparable to the grants that the king made to
individual men and favoured towns. None the less, it was in
that age no small body of enacted law, and, owing to its import-
ance and solemnity, it was in after ages regarded as the first
article of a statute book. There it was followed by the " pro-
visions " issued at Merton in 1236, and by those issued at
ENGLISH LAW
603
Marlborough after the end of the Barons' War. But during
Henry Ill.'s long reign the swift development of English law
was due chiefly to new " original writs " and new " forms of
action " devised by the chancery and sanctioned by the court.
Bracton knew many writs that were unknown to Ulanvill, and
men were already perceiving that limits must be set to the
inventive power of the chancery unless the king was to be an
uncontrollable law-maker. Thus the common law was losing
the power of rapid growth when Bracton summed the attained
results in a book, the success of which is attested by a crowd of
manuscript copies. Bracton had introduced just enough of
Roman law and Bolognese method to save the law of England
from the fate that awaited German law in Germany. His book
was printed in 1 560, and Coke owed much to Bracton.
The comparison that is suggested when Edward I. is called
the English Justinian cannot be pressed very far. Nevertheless,
as is well known, it is in his reign (1272-1307) that English
institutions finally take the forms that they are to keep through
coming centuries. We already see the parliament of the three
estates, the convocations of the clergy, the king's council, the
chancery or secretarial department, the exchequer or financial
department, the king's bench, the common bench, the com-
missioners of assize and gaol delivery, the small group of pro-
fessionally learned judges, and a small group of professionally
learned lawyers, whose skill is at the service of those who will
employ them. Moreover, the statutes that were passed in the
first eighteen years of the reign, though their bulk seems slight
to us nowadays, bore so fundamental a character that in sub-
sequent ages they appeared as the substructure of huge masses
of superincumbent law. Coke commented upon them sentence
by sentence, and even now the merest sraatterer in English law
must profess' some knowledge of Quia emptores and De donis
conditionalibus. If some American stales have, while others
have not, accepted these statutes, that is a difference which is
not unimportant to citizens of the United States in the roth
century. Then from the early years of Edward's reign come
the first "law reports " that have descended to us: the oldest
of them have not yet been printed; the oldest that has been
printed belongs to 1292. These are the precursors of the long
series of Year Books (Edw. II. -Hen. VIII.) which runs through
the residue of the middle ages. Lawyers, we perceive, are
already making and preserving notes of the discussions that take
place in court; French notes that will be more useful to them
than the formal Latin records inscribed upon the plea rolls.
From these reports we learn that there are already, as we should
say, a few " leading counsel," some of whom will be retained
in almost every important cause. Papal decretals had been
endeavouring to withdraw the clergy from secular employment.
The clerical element had been strong among the judges of Henry
Ill.'s reign: Bracton ^was an archdeacon, Pateshull a dean,
Raleigh died a bishop. * Their places begin to be filled by men who
are not in orders, but who have pleaded the king's causes for him
his Serjeants or servants at law and beside them there are
young men who are " apprentices at law," and are learning to
plead. Also we begin to sec men who, as " attorneys at law,"
are making it their business to appear on behalf of litigants.
The history of the legal profession and its monopoly of legal aid
is intricate, and at some points still obscure; but the influence
of the canonical system is evident: the English attorney corre-
sponds to the canonical proctor, and the English barrister to
the canonical advocate. The main outlines were being drawn
in Edward I.'s day; the legal profession became organic, and
professional opinion became one of the main forces that moulded
the law.
The study of English law fell apart from all other studies, and
the impulse that had flowed from Italian jurisprudence was
ebbing. We have two comprehensive text-books from Edward's
reign: the one known to us as Fltla, the other as Britlon; both
of them, however, quarry their materials from Bracton's treatise.
Abo we have two little books on procedure which are attributed
to Chief-Justice Hengham, and a few other small tracts of an
intensely practical kind. Under the cover of fables about King
Alfred, the author of the Mirror of Justices made a bitter attack
upon King Edward's judges, some of whom had fallen into deep
disgrace. English legal history has hardly yet been purged of
the leaven of falsehood that was introduced by this fantastic
and unscrupulous pamphleteer. His enigmatical book ends that
literate age which begins with Glanvill's treatise and the trea-
surer's dialogue. Between Edward I.'s day and Edward IV. 's
hardly anything that deserves the name of book was written
by an English lawyer.
During that time the body of statute law was growing, but
not very rapidly. Acts of parliament intervened at a sufficient
number of important points to generate and maintain
a persuasion that no limit, or no ascertainable limit, '*'* * ad
can be set to the legislative power of king and parlia- ceaturk*.
ment. Very few are the signs that the judges ever
permitted the validity of a statute to be drawn into debate.
Thus the way was being prepared for the definite assertion of
parliamentary " omnicompetence " which we obtain from the
Elizabethan statesman Sir Thomas Smith, and for those theories
of sovereignty which we couple with the names of Hobbes and
Austin. Nevertheless, English law was being developed rather
by debates in court than by open legislation. The most dis-
tinctively English of English institutions in the later middle
ages are the Year-Books and the Inns of Court. Year by year,
term by term, lawyers were reporting cases in order that they
and their fellows might know how cases had been decided. The
allegation of specific precedents was indeed much rarer than it
afterwards became, and no calculus of authority so definite as
that which now obtains had been established in Coke's day, far
less in Littleton's. Still it was by a perusal of reported cases
that a man would learn the law of England. A skeleton for the
law was provided, not by the Roman rubrics (such as public
and private, real and personal, possessory and proprietary,
contract and delict), but by the cycle of original writs that were
inscribed in the chancery's Registrum Breiiium. A new form of
action could not be introduced without the authority of Parlia-
ment, and the growth of the law took the shape of an explication
of the true intent of ancient formulas. Times of inventive
liberality alternated with times of cautious and captious con-
servatism. Coke could look back to Edward Ill.'s day as to a
golden age of good pleading. The otherwise miserable time
which saw the Wars of the Roses produced some famous lawyers,
and some bold doctrines which broke new ground. It produced
also Sir Thomas Littleton's (d. 1481) treatise on Tenures, which
(though it be not, as Coke thought it, the most perfect work that
ever was written in any human science) is an excellent statement
of law in exquisitely simple language.
Meanwhile English law was being scholastically taught. This,
if we look at the fate of native and national law in Germany,
or France, or Scotland, appears as a fact of primary
importance. From beginnings, so small and formless (.
that they still elude research, the Inns of Court had
grown. The lawyers, like other men, had grouped themselves
in gilds, or gild-like " fellowships." The fellowship acquired
property; it was not technically incorporate, but made use of
the thoroughly English machinery of a trust. Behind a hedge
of trustees it lived an autonomous life, unhampered by charters
or statutes. There was a hall in which its members dined in
common; there was the nucleus of a library; there were also
dormitories or chambers in which during term-time lawyers
lived celibately, leaving their wives in the country. Something
of the college thus enters the constitution of these fellowships;
and then something academical. The craft gild regulated
apprenticeship; it would protect the public against incompetent
artificers, and its own members against unfair competition. So
the fellowship of lawyers. In course of time a lengthy and
laborious course of education of the medieval sort had been
devised. He who had pursued it to its end received a call to the
bar of his inn. This call was in effect a degree. Like the doctor
or master of a university, the full-blown barrister was competent
to teach others, and was expected to read lectures to students.
But further, in a manner that is still very dark, these societies
604
ENGLISH LAW
had succeeded in making their degrees the only steps that led
to practice in the king's courts. At the end of the middle ages
(c. 1470) Sir John Fortescue rehearsed the praises of the laws
of England in a book which is one of the earliest efforts of com-
parative politics. Contrasting England with France, he rightly
connects limited monarchy, public and oral debate in the law
courts, trial by jury, and the teaching of national law in schools
that are thronged by wealthy and well-born youths. But nearly
a century earlier, the assertion that English law affords as subtle
and civilizing a discipline as any that is to be had from Roman
law was made by a man no less famous than John Wycliffe.
The heresiarch naturally loathed the Canon law; but he also
spoke with reprobation of the " paynims' law," the " heathen
men's law," the study of which in the two universities was being
fostered by some of the bishops. That study, after inspiring
Bracton, had come to little in England, though the canonist was
compelled to learn something of Justinian, and there was a
small demand for learned civilians in the court of admiralty,
and in what we might call the king's diplomatic service. No
medieval Englishman did anything considerable for Roman
law. Even the canonists were content to read the books of
French and Italian masters, though John Acton (c. 1340)
and William Lyndwood (1430) wrote meritorious glosses. The
Angevin kings, by appropriating to the temporal forum the whole
province of ecclesiastical patronage, had robbed the decretists
of an inexhaustible source of learning and of lucre. The work
that was done by the legal faculties at Oxford and Cambridge
is slight when compared with the inestimable services rendered
to the cause of national continuity by the schools of English
law which grew within the Inns of Court.
A danger threatened: the danger that a prematurely osseous
system of common law would be overwhelmed by summary
justice and royal equity. Even when courts for all
cery ' ordinary causes had been established, a reserve of
residuary justice remained with the king. Whatever lawyers
and even parliaments might say, it was seen to be desirable that
the king in council should with little regard for form punish
offenders who could break through the meshes of a tardy pro-
cedure and should redress wrongs which corrupt and timid
juries would leave unrighted. Papal edicts against heretics had
made familiar to all men the notion that a judge should at times
proceed summarie et de piano el sine strepitu et figura justitiae.
And so extraordinary justice of a penal kind was done by the
king's council upon misdemeanants, and extraordinary justice
of a civil kind was ministered by the king's chancellor (who was
the specially learned member of the council) to those who " for
the love of God and in the way of charity," craved his powerful
assistance. It is now well established that the chancellors started
upon this course, not with any desire to introduce rules of
" equity " which should supplement, or perhaps supplant, the
rules of law, but for the purpose of driving the law through those
accidental impediments which sometimes unfortunately beset its
due course. The wrongs that the chancellor redressed were often
wrongs of the simplest and most brutal kind: assaults, batteries
and forcible dispossessions. However, he was warned off this
field of activity by parliament; the danger to law, to lawyers,
to trial by jury, was evident. But just when this was happening,
a new field was being opened for him by the growing practice
of conveying land to trustees. The English trust of land had
ancient Germanic roots, and of late we have been learning how
in far-off centuries our Lombard cousins were in effect giving
themselves a power of testation by putting their lands in trust.
In England, when the forms of action were crystallizing, this
practice had not been common enough to obtain the protection
of a writ; but many causes conspired to make it common in
the I4th century; and so, with the general approval of lawyers
and laity, the chancellors began to enforce by summary process
against the trustee the duty that lay upon his conscience. In
the next century it was clear that England had come by a new
civil tribunal. Negatively, its competence was defined by the
rule that when the common law offered a remedy, the chancellor
was not to intervene. Positively, his power was conceived as
T '
that of doing what " good conscience " required, more especially
in cases of " fraud, accident or breach of confidence." His
procedure was the summary, the heresy-suppressing (not the
ordinary and solemn) procedure of an ecclesiastical court; but
there are few signs that he borrowed any substantive rules from
legist or decretist, and many proofs that within the new field
of trust he pursued the ideas of the common law. It was long,
however, before lawyers made a habit of reporting his decisions.
He was not supposed to be tightly bound by precedent. Adapta-
bility was of the essence of the justice that he did.
A time of strain and trial came with the Tudor kings. It was
questionable whether the strong " governance " for which the
weary nation yearned could work within the limits
of a parliamentary system, or would be compatible
with the preservation of the common law. We see
new courts appropriating large fields of justice and proceeding
summarie et de piano; the star chamber, the chancery, the courts
of requests, of wards, of augmentations, the councils of the
North and Wales; a little later we see the high commission.
We see also that judicial torture which Fortescue had called the
road to hell. The stream of law reports became intermittent
under Henry VIII.; few judges of his or his son's reign left
names that are to be remembered. In an age of humanism,
alphabetically arranged " abridgments " of medieval cases
were the best work of English lawyers: one comes to us from
Anthony Fitzherbert (d. 1538), and another from Robert Broke
(d. 1558). This was the time when Roman law swept like a
flood over Germany. The modern historian of Germany will
speak of " the Reception " (that is, the reception of Roman law),
as no less important than the Renaissance and Reformation with
which it is intimately connected. Very probably he will bestow
hard words on a movement which disintegrated the nation and
consolidated the tyranny of the princelings. Now a project
that Roman law should be "received" in England occurred to
Reginald Pole (d. 1558), a humanist, and at one time a reformer,
who with good fortune might have been either king of England
or pope of Rome. English law, said the future cardinal and
archbishop, was barbarous; Roman law was the very voice of
nature pleading for " civility " and good princely governance.
Pole's words were brought to the ears of his majestic cousin, and,
had the course of events been somewhat other than it was, King
Henry might well have decreed a reception. The r61e of English
Justinian would have perfectly suited him, and there are distinct
traces of the civilian's Byzantinism in the doings of the Church
of England's supreme head. The academic study of the Canon
law was prohibited; regius professorships of the civil law were
founded; civilians were to sit as judges in the ecclesiastical
courts. A little later, the Protector Somerset was deeply in-
terested in the establishment of a great school for civilians at
Cambridge. Scottish law was the own sister of English law, and
yet in Scotland we may see a reception of Roman jurisprudence
which might have been more whole-hearted than it was, but for
the drift of two British and Protestant kingdoms towards union.
As it fell out, however, Henry could get what he wanted in church
and state without any decisive supersession of English by foreign
law. The omnicompetence of an act of parliament stands out
the more clearly if it settles the succession to the throne, annuls
royal marriages, forgives royal debts, defines religious creeds,
attaints guilty or innocent nobles, or prospectively lends the
force of statute to the king's proclamations. The courts of
common law were suffered to work in obscurity, for jurors
feared fines, and matter of state was reserved for council or
star chamber. The Inns of Court were spared; their moots and
readings did no perceptible harm, if little perceptible good.
Yet it is no reception of alien jurisprudence that must be
chronicled, but a marvellous resuscitation of English medieval
law. We may see it already in the Commentaries of Edward
Plowden (d. 1585) who reported cases at length and lovingly.
Bracton's great book was put in print, and was a key to much
that had been forgotten or misunderstood. Under Parker's
patronage, even the Anglo-Saxon dooms were brought to light;
they seemed to tell of a Church of England that had not yet been
ENGLISH LAW
605
enslaved by Rome. The new national pride that animated
Elizabethan England issued in boasts touching the antiquity,
humanity, enlightenment of English law. Resuming the strain
of Fortescue, Sir Thomas Smith, himself a civilian, wrote concern-
ing the Commonwealth of England a book that claimed the
attention of foreigners for her law and her polity. There was
dignified rebuke for the French jurist who had dared to speak
lightly of Littleton. And then the common law took flesh in
<%AJ the person of Edward Coke (1552-1634). With an
enthusiastic love of English tradition, for the sake
of which many offences may be forgiven him, he ranged over
nearly the whole field of law, commenting, reporting, arguing,
deckling, disorderly, pedantic, masterful, an incarnate national
dogmatism tenacious of continuous life. Imbued with this new
spirit, the lawyers fought the battle of the constitution against
James and Charles, and historical research appeared as the
guardian of national liberties. That the Stuarts united against
themselves three such men as Edward Coke, John Selden and
William Prynne, is the measure of their folly and their failure.
Words that, rightly or wrongly, were ascribed to Bracton rang
in Charles's ears when he was sent to the scaffold. For the
modern student of medieval law many of the reported cases of
the Stuart time are storehouses of valuable material, since the
lawyers of the i?th century were mighty hunters after records.
Prynne (d. 1669), the fanatical Puritan, published ancient
documents with fervid zeal, and made possible a history of
parliament. Selden (d. 1654) was in all Europe among the very
first to write legal history as it should be written. His book
about tithes is to this day a model and a masterpiece. When
this accomplished scholar had declared that he had laboured
to make himself worthy to be called a common lawyer, it could
no longer be said that the common lawyers were indoctissimum
genus doctistimorum hominum. Even pliant judges, whose
tenure of office depended on the king's will, were compelled to
cite and discuss old precedents before they could give judgment
for their master; and even at their worst moments they would
not openly break with medieval tradition, or declare in favour
of that " modem police-state " which has too often become the
ideal of foreign publicists trained in Byzantine law.
The current of legal doctrine was by this time so strong and
voluminous that such events as the Civil War, the Restoration
and the Revolution hardly deflected the course of
the stream. In retrospect, Charles II. reigns so soon
as life has left his father's body, and James II. ends a lawless
career by a considerate and convenient abdication. The statute
book of the restored king was enriched by leaves excerpted from
the acts of a lord protector; and Matthew Hale (d. 1676), who
was, perhaps, the last of the great record-searching judges,
sketched a map of English law which Blackstone was to colour.
Then a time of self-complacency came for the law, which knew
itself to be the perfection of wisdom, and any proposal for drastic
legislation would have worn the garb discredited by the tyranny
of the Puritan Csesar. The need for the yearly renewal of the
Mutiny Act secured an annual session of parliament. The
mass of the statute law made in the iSth century is enor-
mous; but, even when we have excluded from view such acts
as are technically called " private," the residuary matter bears
a wonderfully empirical, partial and minutely particularizing
character. In this " age of reason," as we are wont to think it,
the British parliament seems rarely to rise to the dignity of
a general proposition, and in our own day the legal practitioner
is likely to know less about the statutes of the iSth century
than he knows about the statutes of Edward I., Henry VIII.
and Elizabeth. Parliament, it should be remembered, was
endeavouring directly to govern the nation. There was little
that resembled the permanent civil service of to-day. The
choice lay between direct parliamentary government and royal
" prerogative "; and lengthy statutes did much of that work
of detail which would BOW be done by virtue of the powers that
are delegated to ministers and governmental boards. Moreover,
extreme and verbose particularity was required in statutes,
for judges were loath to admit that the common law was capable
of amendment. A vague doctrine, inherited from Coke, taught
that statutes might be so unreasonable as to be null, and any
political theory that seemed to derive from Hobbes would have
been regarded with not unjust suspicion. But the doctrine
in question never took tangible shape, and enough could be done
to protect the common law by a niggardly exposition of every
legislating word. It is to be remembered that some main features
of English public law were attracting the admiration of en-
lightened Europe. . When Voltaire and Montesquieu applauded,
the English lawyer had cause for complacency.
The common law was by no means stagnant. Many rules
which come to the front in the iSth century arc hardly to be
traced farther. Especially is this the case in the province of
mercantile law, where the earl of Mansfield's (d. 1793) long
presidency over the king's bench marked an epoch. It is too
often forgotten that, until Elizabeth's reign, England was a
thoroughly rustic kingdom, and that trade with England was
mainly in the hands of foreigners. Also in medieval fairs, the
assembled merchants declared their own " law merchant,"
which was considered to have a supernational validity. In the
reports of the common law courts it is late in the day before we
read of some mercantile usages which can be traced far back
in the statutes of Italian cities. Even on the basis of the exces-
sively elaborated land law a basis which Coke's Commentary
on Littleton seemed to have settled for ever a lofty and
ingenious superstructure could be reared. One after another
delicate devices were invented for the accommodation of new
wants within the law; but only by the assurance that the old
law could not be frankly abolished can we be induced to admire
the subtlety that was thus displayed. As to procedure, it had
become a maze of evasive fictions, to which only a few learned
men held the historical clue. By fiction the courts had stolen
business from each other, and by fiction a few comparatively
speedy forms of action were set to tasks for which they were not
originally framed. Two fictitious persons, John Doe and Richard
Roe, reigned supreme. On the other hand, that healthy and
vigorous institution, the Commission of the Peace, with a long
history behind it, was giving an important share in the adminis-
tration of justice to numerous country gentlemen who were thus
compelled to learn some law. A like beneficial work was being
done among jurors, who, having ceased to be regarded as wit-
nesses, had become " judges of fact." No one doubted that trial
by jury was the " palladium " of English liberties, and popularity
awaited those who would exalt the office of the jurors and
narrowly limit the powers of the judge.
But during this age the chief addition to English jurisprudence
was made by the crystallization of the chancellor's equity. In
the 1 7th century the chancery had a narrow escape
of sharing the fate that befell its twin sister the star
chamber. Its younger sister the court of requests perished under
the persistent attacks of the common lawyers. Having outlived
troubles, the chancery took to orderly habits, and administered
under the name of " equity " a growing group of rules, which
in fact were supplemental law. Stages in this process are marked
by the chancellorships of Nottingham (1673-1675) and Hard-
wicke ( 1 737-1 7 56) . Slowly a continuous series of Equity Reports
began to flow, and still more slowly an " equity bar " began to
form itself. The principal outlines of equity were drawn by
men who were steeped in the common law. By way of ornament
a Roman maxim might be borrowed from a French or Dutch
expositor, or a phrase which smacked of that "nature-rightly "
school which was dominating continental Europe; but the
influence exercised by Roman law upon English equity has been
the subject of gross exaggeration. Parliament and the old
courts being what they were, perhaps it was only in a new court
that the requisite new law could be evolved. The result was
not altogether satisfactory. Freed from contact with the plain
man in the jury-box, the chancellors were tempted to forget how
plain and rough good law should be, and to screw up the legal
standard of reasonable conduct to a height hardly attainable
except by those whose purses could command the constant
advice of a family solicitor. A court which started with the
606
ENGLISH LAW
Black-
stone.
idea of doing summary justice for the poor became a court which
did a highly refined, but tardy justice, suitable only to the rich.
About the middle of the century William Blackstone, then a
disappointed barrister, began to give lectures on English law at
Oxford ( 1 7 58) , and soon afterwards he began to publish
(1765) his Commentaries. Accurate enough in its
history and doctrine to be an invaluable guide to
professional students and a useful aid to practitioners, his book
set before the unprofessional public an artistic picture of the
laws of England such as had never been drawn of any similar
system. No nation but the English had so eminently readable
a law-book, and it must be doubtful whether any other lawyer
ever did more important work than was done by the first pro-
fessor of English law. Over and over again the Commentaries
were edited, sometimes by distinguished men, and it is hardly
too much to say that for nearly a century the English lawyer's
main ideas of the organization and articulation of the body of
English law were controlled by Blackstone. This was far from
all. The Tory lawyer little thought that he was giving law to
colonies that were on the eve of a great and successful rebellion.
Yet so it was. Out in America, where books were few and lawyers
had a mighty task to perform, Blackstone's facile presentment
of the law of the mother country was of inestimable value. It
has been said that among American lawyers the Commentaries
" stood for the law of England," and this at a time when the
American daughter of English law was rapidly growing in stature,
and was preparing herself for her destined march from the
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Excising only what seemed to
savour of oligarchy, those who had defied King George retained
with marvellous tenacity the law of their forefathers. Profound
discussions of English medieval law have been heard in American
courts; admirable researches into the recesses of the Year-Books
have been made in American law schools; the names of the
great American judges are familiar in an England which knows
little indeed of foreign jurists; and the debt due for the loan
of Blackstone's Commentaries is being fast repaid. Lectures on
the common law delivered by Mr Justice Holmes of the Supreme
Court of the United States may even have begun to turn the
scale against the old country. No chapter in Blackstone's book
nowadays seems more antiquated than that which describes the
modest territorial limits of that English law which was soon
to spread throughout Australia and New Zealand and to follow
the dominant race in India.
Long wars, vast economic changes and the conservatism
generated by the French Revolution piled up a monstrous arrear
Beatham work for the English legislature. Meanwhile,
Jeremy Bentham (d. 1832) had laboured for the over-
throw of much that Blackstone had lauded. Bentham's largest
projects of destruction and reconstruction took but little effect.
Profoundly convinced of the fungibility and pliability of mankind,
he was but too ready to draw a code for England or Spain or
Russia at the shortest notice; and, scornful as he was of the past
and its historic deposit, a code drawn by Bentham would have
been a sorry failure. On the other hand, as a critic and derider
of the system which Blackstone had complacently expounded
he did excellent service. Reform, and radical reform, was indeed
sadly needed throughout a system which was encumbered by
noxious rubbish, the useless leavings of the middle ages: trial
by battle and compurgation, deodands and benefit of clergy,
John Doe and Richard Roe. It is perhaps the main fault of
" judge-made law " (to use Bentham's phrase) that its destructive
work can never be cleanly done. Of all vitality, and therefore
of all patent harmfulness, the old rule can be deprived, but the
moribund husk must remain in the system doing latent mischief.
English law was full of decaying husks when Bentham attacked
it, and his persistent demand for reasons could not be answered.
At length a general interest in "law reform" was excited;
Romilly and Brougham were inspired by Bentham, and the
great changes in constitutional law which cluster round the
Reform Act of 1832 were accompanied by many measures which
purged the private, procedural and criminal law of much, though
hardly enough, of the medieval dross. Some credit for rousing
an interest in law, in definitions of legal terms, and in schemes
of codification, is due to John Austin (d. 1859) who was regarded
as the jurist of the reforming and utilitarian group. But, though
he was at times an acute dissector of confused thought, he was
too ignorant of the English.'the Roman and every other system
of law to make any considerable addition to the sum of knowledge;
and when Savigny, the herald of evolution, was already in the
field, the day for a " Nature- Right " and Austin's projected
" general jurisprudence " would have been a Nature-Right
was past beyond recall. The obsolescence of the map of law
which Blackstone had inherited from Hale, and in which many
outlines were drawn by medieval formulas, left intelligent
English lawyers without a guide, and they were willing to listen
for a while to what in their insularity they thought to be the
voice of cosmopolitan science. Little came of it all. The
revived study of Germanic law in Germany, which was just
beginning in Austin's day, seems to be showing that the scheme
of Roman jurisprudence is not the scheme into which English
law will run without distortion.
In the latter half of the ipth century some great and wise
changes were made by the legislature. Notably in 1875 the old
courts were merged in a new Supreme Court of Judi-
cature, and a concurrent administration of law and changes
equity was introduced. Successful endeavours have
been made also to reduce the bulk of old statute law, and to
improve the form of acts of parliament; but the emergence of
new forces whose nature may be suggested by some such names
as " socialism " and " imperialism " has distracted the attention
of the British parliament from the commonplace law of the
land, and the development of obstructive tactics has caused
the issue of too many statutes whose brevity was purchased by
disgraceful obscurity. By way of " partial codification " some
branches of the common law (bills of exchange, sale of goods,
partnership) have been skilfully stated in statutes, but a draft
criminal code, upon which much expert labour was expended,
lies pigeon-holed and almost forgotten. British India has been
the scene of some large legislative exploits, and in America a
few big experiments have been made in the way of code-making,
but have given little satisfaction to the bulk of those who are
competent to appreciate their results. In England there are '
large portions of the law which, in their present condition, no
one would think of codifying: notably the law of real property,
in which may still be found numerous hurtful relics of bygone
centuries. So omnipresent are statutes throughout the whole
field of jurisprudence that the opportunity of doing any great
feat in the development of law can come but seldom to a modern
court. More and more, therefore, the fate of English law depends
on the will of parliament, or rather of the ministry. The quality
of legal text-books has steadily improved; some of them are
models of clear statement and good arrangement; but no one
has with any success aspired to be the Blackstone of a new age.
The Council of Law Reporting was formed in the year 1863.
The council now consists of three ex-qfficio members the
attorney-general, the solicitor-general and the presi-
dent of the Incorporated Law Society, and ten members
appointed by the three Inns of Court, the Incorporated
Law Society and the council itself on the nomination of the
general council of the bar. The practitioner and the student
now get for a subscription of four guineas a year the reports in
all the superior courts and the House of Lords, and the judicial
committee of the privy council issued in monthly parts a king's
printer's copy of the statutes, and weekly notes, containing
short notes of current decisions and announcements of all new
rules made under the Judicature Acts and other acts of parlia-
ment, and other legal information. In addition the subscriber
receives the chronological index of the statutes published from
time to time by the Stationery Office, and last, but not least, the
Digests of decided cases published by the council from time to
time. In 1892 a Digest was published containing the cases and
statutes for twenty-five years, from 1865 to 1890, and this was
supplemented by one for the succeeding ten years, from 1891
to 1900. The digesting is now carried on continuously by means
ENGLISH LITERATURE
607
of " Current Indexes," which are published monthly and annually,
and consolidated into a digest at stated intervals (say) of five
PUTS I "' ' :i ''- ; '- '',';'' '- ~'-:iv wlllill !- lii' 1 . ri'|llin.l !i> ! hr
general practitioner, is supplied separately at one guinea a year.
In the i6th and i;th centuries the corporate life of the Inns
of Court in London became less and less active. The general
decay of the organization of crafts and gilds showed
among lawyers as among other craftsmen.
Successful barristers, sharing in the general prosperity
of the country, became less and less able and willing to devote
their time to the welfare of their profession as a whole. The Inns
of Chancery, though some of their buildings still remain
picturesque survivals in their " suburbs " ceased to be used
as places for the education of students. The benchers of the
Inns of Court, until the revival towards the middle of the
iqth century, had wholly ceased to concern themselves with the
systematic teaching of law. The modern system of legal educa-
tion may be said to date from the establishment, in 1852, of the
council of legal education, a body of twenty judges and barristers
appointed by the four Inns of Court to control the legal education
of students preparing to be called to the bar. The most im-
portant feature is the examination which a student must pass
before he can be called. The examination (which by degrees
has been made " stiller ") serves the double purpose of fixing
the compulsory standard which all must reach, and of guiding
the reading of students who may desire, sooner or later, to carry
their studies beyond this standard. The subjects in which the
examination is held are divided into Roman law; Constitutional
law and legal history; Evidence, Procedure and Criminal law;
Real and Personal Property; Equity; and Common law.
The council of legal education also appoint a body of readers
and assistant readers, practising barristers, who deliver lectures
and hold classes.
Meanwhile the custom remains by which a student reads for
a year or more as a pupil in the chambers of some practising
barrister. In the iSth century it first became usual for students
to read with a solicitor or attorney, and after a short time the
modem practice grew up of reading in the chambers of a con-
veyancer, equity draftsman or special pleader, or, in more
recent times, in the chambers of a junior barrister. Before the
modern examination system, a student required to have a
certificate from the barrister in whose chambers he had been a
pupil before he could be " called," but the only relic of the old
system now is the necessity of " eating dinners," six (three for
university men) in each of the four terms for three years, at one
of the Inns of Court.
The education of solicitors suffered from the absence of any
professional organization until the Incorporated Law Society
was established in 1825 and the following years. So far as any
professional education is provided for solicitors or required from
them, this is due to the efforts of the Law Society. As early as
1729 it was required by statute that any person applying for
admission as attorney or solicitor should submit to examination
by one of the judges, who was to test his fitness and capacity
in consideration of a fee of one shilling. At the same time
regular preliminary service under articles was required, that
is to say, under a contract by which the clerk was bound to serve
for five years. The examination soon became, perhaps always
was, an empty form. The Law Society, however, soon showed
zeal for the education of future solicitors. In 1833 lectures were
instituted. In 1836 the first regular examinations were estab-
lished, and in 1860 the present system of examinations pre-
liminary, intermediate and final came into effect. Of these
only the last two are devoted to law, and both are of a strictly
professional character. The final examination is a fairly severe
test of practical acquaintance with all branches of modern
English law. The Law Society makes some provision for the
teaching of students, but this teaching is designed solely to assist
in preparation for the examinations.
At the universities of Oxford and Cambridge there has, since
1850, been an attempt to promote the study of law. The
curriculum of legal subjects in which lectures are given and
examinations held is calculated to give a student a sound funda-
mental knowledge of general principles, as well as an elementary
acquaintance with the rules of modern English law. Juris-
prudence, Roman law, Constitutional law and International
law are taught, as well as the law of Real and Personal Property,
the Law of Contract and Tort, Criminal law, Procedure and
Evidence. But the law tripos and the law schools suffer from
remoteness from the law courts, and from the exclusively
academical character of the teaching. Law is also taught,
though not on a very large scale, at Manchester and at Liverpool.
London University has encouraged the study of law by its
examinations for law degrees, at which a comparatively high
standard of knowledge is required; and at University College,
London, and King's College, London, teaching is given in law
and jurisprudence.
AUTHORITIES. F. Licbcrmann, Die Gcsctze der Angelsachsen
(1898); K. E. Digby, History of the Law of Real Property; Sir W.
Dugdalc, Origines juridicales (1671); O. W. Holmes, The Common
Law (Boston, 1881); H. Hallam, Constitutional History; W. S.
Holdsworth, History of English Law, 3 vols. (1903-9); J. Reeves,
History of English Law, ed. W. F. Finlason (1860); T. Madox,
Holdsworth, History of English Law, 3 vols. (1903-9); j. Reeves,
History of English Law, ed. W. F. Finlason (1860); T. Madox,
History and Antiquities of the Exchequer (1769) ; C. de Franqueville,
Le Systime iudiciaire de la Grande- Bretagne (Paris, 1893) ; Sir F.
Pollock andF. W. Maitland, History of English Law (2 vols., 1898);
H. Brunncr, The Sources of the Law of England, trans, by W.
Hastie (1888); Sir R. K. Wilson, History of Modern English Law
(1875); A. V. Dicey, Law and Public Opinion in England (1905);
Sir J. F. Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England
(3 vols., 1883); W. Stubbs, Select Charters, Constitutional History;
the Publications of
Rolls Series.
the Selden Society and the Year Books in the
(F. W. M.)
ENGLISH LITERATURE. The following discussion of the
evolution of English literature, i.e. of the contribution to
literature made in the course of ages by the writers of England,
is planned so as to give a comprehensive view, the details as to
particular authors and their work, and special consideration of
the greater writers, being given in the separate articles devoted
to them. It is divided into the following sections: (i) Earliest
times to Chaucer; (2) Chaucer to the end of the middle ages;
(3) Elizabethan times; (4) the Restoration period; (5) the
Eighteenth century; (6) the Nineteenth century. The object
of these sections is to form connecting links among the successive
literary ages, leaving the separate articles on individual great
writers to deal with their special interest; attention being paid in
the main to the graduallydevelopingcharacteristicsof theproduct,
qud literary. The precise delimitation of what may narrowly be
called " English " literature, i.e. in the English language, is
perhaps impossible, and separate articles are devoted to American
literature (q.v.), and to the vernacular literatures of Scotland
(see SCOTLAND; and CELT: Literature), Ireland (see CELT:
Literature), and Wales (see CELT: Literature); see also CANADA:
Literature. Reference may also be made to such general articles
on particular forms as NOVEL; ROMANCE; VERSE, &c.
I. EARLIEST TIMES TO CHAUCER
English literature, in the etymological sense of the word, had,
so far as we know, no existence until Christian times. There is
no evidence either that the heathen English had adopted the
Roman alphabet, or that they had learned to employ their native
monumental script (the runes) on materials suitable for the
writing of continuous compositions of considerable length.
It is, however, certain that in the pre-literary period at least
one species of poetic art had attained a high degree of develop-
ment, and that an extensive body of poetry was handed down
not, indeed, with absolute fixity of form or substance from
generation to generation. This unwritten poetry was the work
of minstrels who found their audiences in the halls of kings and
nobles. Its themes were the exploits of heroes belonging to the
royal houses of Germanic Europe, with which its listeners claimed
kinship. Its metre was the alliterative long line, the lax rhythm
of which shows that it was intended, not to be sung to regular
melodies, but to be recited probably with some kind of instru-
mental accompaniment. Of its beauty and power we may judge
from the best passages in Beowulf (q.v.); for there can be little
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ENGLISH LITERATURE
[TO CHAUCER
doubt that this poem gained nothing and lost much in the process
of literary redaction.
The conversion of the people to Christianity necessarily
involved the decline of the minstrelsy that celebrated the glories
of heathen times. Yet the descendants of Woden, even when
they were devout Christians, would not easily lose all interest
in the achievements of their kindred of former days. Chaucer's
knowledge of " the song of Wade " is one proof among others
that even so late as the I4th century the deeds of Germanic
heroes had not ceased to be recited in minstrel verse. The
paucity of the extant remains of Old English heroic poetry is no
argument to the contrary. The wonder is that any of it has
survived at all. We may well believe that the professional
reciter would, as a rule, be jealous of any attempt to commit
to writing the poems which he had received by tradition or had
himself composed. The clergy, to whom we owe the writing
and the preservation of the Old English MSS., would only in rare
instances be keenly interested in secular poetry. We possess,
in fact, portions of four narrative poems, treating of heroic
legend Beowulf, Widsith, Finnesburh and Waldere. The second
of these has no poetical merit, but great archaeological interest.
It is an enumeration of the famous kings known to German
tradition, put into the mouth of a minstrel (named Widsith,
" far-travelled "), who claims to have been at many of their
courts and to have been rewarded by them for his song. The list
includes historical persons such as Ermanaric and Alboin, who
really lived centuries apart, but (with the usual chronological
vagueness of tradition) are treated as contemporaries. The
extant fragment of Finnesburh (50 lines) is a brilliant battle
piece, belonging to a story of which another part is introduced
episodically in Beowulf. Waldere, of which we have two frag-
ments (together 68 lines) is concerned with Prankish and Bur-
gundian traditions based on events of the 5th century; the hero
is the " Waltharius " of Ekkehart's famous Latin epic. The
English poem may possibly be rather a literary composition
than a genuine example of minstrel poetry, but the portions that
have survived are hardly inferior to the best passages of Beowulf.
It may reasonably be assumed that the same minstrels who
entertained the English kings and nobles with the recital of
ancient heroic traditions would also celebrate in verse the martial
deeds of their own patrons and their immediate ancestors.
Probably there may have existed an abundance of poetry
commemorative of events in the conquest of Britain and the
struggle with the Danes. Two examples only have survived,
both belonging to the loth century: The Battle of Brunanburh,
which has been greatly over-praised by critics who were unaware
that its striking phrases and compounds are mere traditional
echoes; and the Battle of Maldon, the work of a truly great poet,
of which unhappily only a fragment has been preserved.
One of the marvels of history is the rapidity and thoroughness
with which Christian civilization was adopted by the English.
Augustine landed in 597 ; forty years later was born an English-
man, Aldhelm, who in the judgment of his contemporaries
throughout the Christian world was the most accomplished
scholar and the finest Latin writer of his time. In the next
generation England produced in Bede (Baeda) a man who in
solidity and variety of knowledge, and in literary power, had
for centuries no rival in Europe. Aldhelm and Bede are known
to us only from their Latin writings, though the former is recorded
to have written vernacular poetry of great merit. The extant
Old English literature is almost entirely Christian, for the poems
that belong to an earlier period have been expurgated and
interpolated in a Christian sense. From the writings that have
survived, it would seem as if men strove to forget that England
had ever been heathen. The four deities whose names are
attached to the days of the week are hardly mentioned at all.
The names Thunor and Tiw are sometimes used to translate the
Latin Jupiter and Mars; Woden has his place (but not as a
god) in the genealogies of the kings, and his name occurs once
in a magical poem, but that is all. Bede, as a historian, is obliged
to tell the story of the conversion; but the only native divinities
he mentions are the goddesses Hrgth and Eostre, and all we
learn about them is that they gave their names to Hrethemonath
(March) and Easter. That superstitious practices of heathen
origin long survived among the people is shown by the acts of
church councils and by a few poems of a magical nature that
have been preserved; but, so far as can be discovered, the
definite worship of the ancient gods quickly died out. English
heathenism perished without leaving a record.
The Old English religious poetry was written, probably without
exception, in the cloister, and by men who were familiar with
the Bible and with Latin devotional literature. Setting aside
the wonderful Dream of the Rood, it gives little evidence of high
poetic genius, though much of it is marked by a degree of culture
and refinement that we should hardly have expected. Its
material and thought are mainly derived from Latin sources;
its expression is imitated from the native heroic poetry. Con-
sidering that a great deal of Latin verse was written by English-
men in the 7th and succeeding centuries, and that in one or two
poems the line is actually composed of an English and a Latin
hemistich rhyming together, it seems strange that the Latin
influence on Old English versification should have been so small.
The alliterative long line is throughout the only metre employed,
and although the laws of alliteration and rhythm were less
rigorously obeyed in the later than in the earlier poetry, there
is no trace of approximation to the structure of Latin verse. It is
true that, owing to imitation of the Latin hymns of the church,
rhyme came gradually to be more and more frequently used as
an ornament of Old English verse; but it remained an ornament
only, and never became an essential feature. The only poem
in which rhyme is employed throughout is one in which sense
is so completely sacrificed to sound that a translation would
hardly be possible. It was not only in metrical respects that
the Old English religious poetry remained faithful to its native
models. The imagery and the diction are mainly those of the
old heroic poetry, and in some of the poems Christ and the saints
are presented, often very incongruously, under the aspect of
Germanic warriors. Nearly all the religious poetry that has any
considerable religious value seems to have been written in
Northumbria during the 8th century. The remarkably vigorous
poem of Judith, however, is certainly much later; and the
Exodus, though early, seems to be of southern origin. For a
detailed account of the Old English sacred poetry, the reader
is referred to the articles on C^EDMON and CYNEWULF, to one
or other of whom nearly every one of the poems, except those
of obviously late date, has at some time been attributed.
The Riddles (q.v.) of the Exeter Book resemble the religious
poetry in being the work of scholars, but they bear much more
decidedly the impress of the native English character. Some of
them rank among the most artistic and pleasing productions of
Old English poetry. The Exeter Book contains also several
pieces of a gnomic character, conveying proverbial instruction
in morality and worldly wisdom. Their morality is Christian,
but it is not unlikely that some of the wise sayings they contain
may have come down by tradition from heathen times. The
very curious Dialogue of Solomon and Saturn may be regarded
as belonging to the same class.
The most original and interesting portion of the Old English
literary poetry is the group of dramatic monologues The
Banished Wife's Complaint, The Husband's Message, The
Wanderer, The Seafarer, Dear and \Wulf and Eadwacer. The
date of these compositions is uncertain, though their occurrence
in the Exeter Book shows that they cannot be later than the
loth century. That they are all of one period is at least unlikely,
but they are all marked by the same peculiar tone of pathos.
The monodramatic form renders it difficult to obtain a clear
idea of the situation of the supposed speakers. It is not improb-
able that most of these poems may relate to incidents of heroic
legend, with which the original readers were presumed to be
acquainted. This, however, can be definitely affirmed only in the
case of the two short pieces Dear and Wulf and Eadwacer
which have something of a lyric character, being the only
examples in Old English of strophic structure and the use of the
refrain. Wulf and Eadwacer, indeed, exhibits a still further
TO CHAUCER]
ENGLISH LITERATURE
609
development in the same direction, the monotony 1 of the long
line metre being varied by the admission of short lines formed
by the suppression of the second hemistich. The highly
developed art displayed in this remarkable poem gives reason
for believing that the existing remains of Old English poetry
very inadequately represent its extent and variety.
While the origins of English poetry go back to heathen times,
F.nglih prose may be said to have had its effective beginning
in the reign of Alfred. It is of course true that vernacular prose
of some kind was written much earlier. The English laws of
.-tthclbcrht of Kent, though it is perhaps unlikely that they
were written down, as is commonly supposed, in the lifetime
of Augustine (died A.D. 604), or even in that of the king (d. 616),
were well known to Bede; and even in the nth-century
transcript that has come down to us, their crude and elliptical
style gives evidence of their high antiquity. Later kings of
Kent and of Wesscx followed the example of publishing their
laws in the native tongue. Bede is known to have translated
the beginning of the gospel of John (down to vi. 9). The early
part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (</.r.) is probably founded
partly on prose annals of pre-Alfrcdian date. But although the
amount of English prose written between the beginning of the
7th and the middle of the oth century may have been consider-
able, Latin continued to be regarded as the appropriate vehicle
for works of any literary pretension. If the English clergy had
retained the scholarship which they possessed in the (lays of
AJdhelm and Bede, the creation of a vernacular prose literature
would probably have been longer delayed; for while Alfred
certainly was not indifferent to the need of the laity for instruc-
tion, the evil that he was chiefly concerned to combat was the
ignorance of their spiritual guides.
Of the works translated by him and the scholars whom he
employed, St Gregory's Pastoral Care and his Dialogues (the
latter rendered by Bishop Werferth) are expressly addressed to
the priesthood; if the other translations were intended for a
wider circle of readers, they are all (not excepting the secular
History of Orosius) essentially religious in purpose and spirit.
In the interesting preface to the Pastoral Care, in the important
accounts of Northern lands and peoples inserted in the Orosius,
and in the free rendering and amplification of the Consolation
of Boethius and of the Soliloquies of Augustine, Alfred appears
as an original writer. Other fruits of his activity are his Laws
(preceded by a collection of those of his 7th-century predecessor,
Ine of Wessex), and the beginnings of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The Old English prose after Alfred is entirely of clerical author-
ship; even the Laws, so far as their literary form is concerned,
are hardly to be regarded as an exception. Apart from the
Chronicle (see ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE), the bulk of this
literature consists of translations from Latin and of homilies
and saints' lives, the substance of which is derived from sources
mostly accessible to us in their original form; it has therefore
for us little importance except from the philological point of
view. This remark may be applied, in the main, even to the
writings of .-Elfric. notwithstanding the great interest which
attaches to his brilliant achievement in the development of the
capacities of the native language for literary expression. The
translation of the gospels, though executed in .-Klfric's time
(about 1000), is by other hands. The sermons of his younger
contemporary, Archbishop Wulfstan, are marked by earnestness
and eloquence, and contain some passages of historical value.
From the early years of the nth century we possess an
encyclopaedic manual of the science of the time chronology,
astronomy, arithmetic, metre, rhetoric and ethics by the monk
Byrhtferth, a pupil of Abbo of Fleury. It is a compilation, but
executed with intelligence. The numerous works on medicine,
the properties of herbs, and the like, are in the main composed
of selections from Latin treatises; so far as they are original, they
illustrate the history of superstition rather than that of science.
It is interesting to observe that they contain one or two formulas
of incantations in Irish.
Two famous works of fiction, the romance of Apollonius of
Tyre and the Letter of Alexander, which in their Latin form had
DC. 20
much influence on the later literature of Europe, were Englished
in the nth century with considerable skill. To the same period
belongs the curious tract on The Wonders of the East. In these
works, and some minor productions of the time, we see that
the minds of Englishmen were beginning to find interest in other
than religious subjects.
The crowding of the English monasteries by foreigners, which
was one of the results of the Norman Conquest, brought about a
rapid arrest of the development of the vernacular literature.
It was not long before the boys trained in the monastic schools
ceased to learn to read and write their native tongue, and
learned instead to read and write French. The effects of this
change are visible in the rapid alteration of the literary language.
The artificial tradition of grammatical correctness lost its hold;
the archaic literary vocabulary fell into disuse; and those who
wrote English at all wrote as they spoke, using more and more
an extemporized phonetic spelling based largely on French
analogies. The 1 2th century is a brilliant period in the history
of Anglo-Latin literature, and many works of merit were written
in French (see ANGLO-NORMAN). But vernacular literature is
scanty and of little originality. The Peterborough Chronicle,
it is true, was continued till 1154, and its later portions, while
markedly exemplifying the changes in the language, contain
some really admirable writing. But it is substantially correct to
say that from this point until the age of Chaucer vernacular
prose served no other purpose than that of popular religious
edification. For light on the intellectual life of the nation during
this period we must look mainly to the works written in Latin.
The homilies of the I2th century are partly modernized trans-
cripts from jElfric and other older writers, partly translations
from French and Latin; the remainder is mostly commonplace
in substance and clumsy in expression. At the beginning of the
I3th century the Ancren Riwle (q.v.), a book of counsel for nuns,
shows true literary genius, and is singularly interesting in its
substance and spirit; but notwithstanding the author's remark-
able mastery of English expression, his culture was evidently
French rather than English. Some minor religious prose works
of the same period are not without merit. But these examples
had no literary following. In the early i4th century the writings
of Richard Rolle and his school attained great popularity. The
profound influence which they exercised on later religious
thought, and on the development of prose style, has seldom
been adequately recognized. The A yenbite of Inwyl (see MICHEL,
DAN), a wretchedly unintelligent translation (finished in 1340)
from Frere Lorens's Somme des vices et des vertus, is valuable
to the student of language, but otherwise worthless.
The break in the continuity of literary tradition, induced by
the Conquest, was no less complete with regard to poetry than
with regard to prose. The poetry of the i3th and the latter part
of the 1 2th century was uninfluenced by the written works of
Old English poets, whose archaic diction had to a great extent
become unintelligible. But there is no ground to suppose that
the succession of popular singers and reciters was ever inter-
rupted. In the north-west, indeed, the old recitative metre
seems to have survived in oral tradition, with little more altera-
tion than was rendered necessary by the changes in the language,
until the middle of the Mth century, when it was again adopted
by literary versifiers. In the south this metre had greatly
degenerated in strictness before the Conquest, but, with gradually
increasing laxity in the laws of alliteration and rhythm, it
continued long in use. It is commonly believed, with great
intrinsic probability but with scanty actual evidence, that in
the Old English period there existed, beside the alliterative long
line, other forms of verse adapted not for recitation but for sing-
ing, used in popular lyrics and ballads that were deemed too
trivial for written record. The influence of native popular
poetic tradition, whether in the form of recited or of sung verse,
is clearly discernible in the earliest Middle English poems that
have been preserved. But the authors of these poems were
familiar with Latin, and probably spoke French as easily as their
mother tongue; and there was no longer any literary convention
to restrain them from adopting foreign metrical forms. The
6io
ENGLISH LITERATURE
[TO CHAUCER
artless verses of the hermit Godric, who died in 1170, exhibit
in their metre the combined influence of native rhythm and of
that of Latin hymnology. The Proverbs of Alfred, written about
1 200, is (like the later Proverbs ofHendyng) in style and substance
a gnomic poem of the ancient Germanic type, containing maxims
some of which may be of immemorial antiquity; and its rhythm
is mainly of native origin. On the other hand, the solemn and
touching meditation known as the Moral Ode, which is somewhat
earlier in date, is in a metre derived from contemporary Latin
verse a line of seven accents, broken by a caesura, and with
feminine end-rhymes. In the Ormulum (see ORM) this metre
(known as the septenarius) appears without rhyme, and with a
syllabic regularity previously without example in English verse,
the line (or distich, as it may be called with almost equal pro-
priety) having invariably fifteen syllables. In various modified
forms, the septenarius was a favourite measure throughout
the Middle English period. In the poetry of the i3th century
the influence of French models is conspicuous. The many
devotional lyrics, some of which, as the Luve Ron of Thomas of
Hales, have great beauty, show this influence not only in their
varied metrical form, but also in their peculiar mystical tender-
ness and fervour. The Story of Genesis and Exodus, the substance
of which is taken from the Bible and Latin commentators,
derives its metre chiefly from French. Its poetical merit is very
small. The secular poetry also received a new impulse from
France. The brilliant and sprightly dialogue of the Owl and
Nightingale, which can hardly be dated later than about 1230,
is a " contention " of the type familiar in French and Provencal
literature. The " Gallic " type of humour may be seen in various
other writings of this period, notably in the Land of Cockaigne,
a vivacious satire on monastic self-indulgence, and in the fabliau
of Dame Siviz, a story of Eastern origin, told with almost
Chaucerian skill. Predominantly, though not exclusively French
in metrical structure, are the charming love poems collected
in a MS. (Harl. 2253) written about 1320 in Herefordshire, some
of which (edited in T. Wright's Specimens of Lyric Poetry) find
a place in modern popular anthologies. It is noteworthy that
they are accompanied by some French lyrics very similar in
style. The same MS. contains, besides some religious poetry,
a number of political songs of the time of Edward II. They
are not quite the earliest examples of their kind; in the time
of the Barons' War the popular cause had had its singers in
English as well as in French. Later, the victories of Edward III.
down to the taking of Guisnes in 1352, were celebrated by the
Yorkshireman Laurence Minot in alliterative verse with strophic
arrangement and rhyme.
At the very beginning of the i3th century a new species of
composition, the metrical chronicle, was introduced into English
literature. The huge work of Layamon, a history (mainly
legendary) of Britain from the time of the mythical Brutus till
after the mission of Augustine, is a free rendering of the Norman-
French Brut of Wace, with extensive additions from traditional
sources. Its metre seems to be a degenerate survival of the Old
English alliterative line, gradually modified in the course of the
work by assimilation to the regular syllabic measure of the
French original. Unquestionable evidence of the knowledge
of the poem on the part of later writers is scarce, but distinct
echoes of its diction appear in the chronicle ascribed to Robert
of Gloucester, written in rhymed septenary measures about 1300.
This work, founded in its earlier part on the Latin historians
of the 1 2th century, is an independent historical source of some
value for the events of the writer's own times. The succession
of versified histories of England was continued by Thomas Bek
of Castleford in Yorkshire (whose work still awaits an editor),
and by Robert Mannyng of Brunne (Bourne, Lincolnshire).
Mannyng's chronicle, finished in 1338, is a translation, in its
earlier part from Wace's Brut, and in its later part from an
Anglo-French chronicle (still extant) written by Peter Langtoft,
canon of Bridlington.
Not far from the year 1300 (for the most part probably earlier
rather than later) a vast mass of hagiological and homiletic verse
was produced in divers parts of England. To Gloucester belongs
an extensive series of Lives of Saints, metrically and linguistically
closely resembling Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, and perhaps
wholly or in part of the same authorship. A similar collection
was written in the north of England, as well as a large body of
homilies showing considerable poetic skill, and abounding in
exempla or illustrative stories. Of exempla several prose collec-
tions had already been made in Anglo-French, and William of
Wadington's poem Manuel des piches, which contains a great
number of them, was translated in 1303 by Robert Mannyng
already mentioned, with some enlargement of the anecdotic
element, and frequent omissions of didactic passages. The
great rhyming chronicle of Scripture history entitled Cursor
Mundi (q.v.) was written in the north about this time. It was
extensively read and transcribed, and exercised a powerful
influence on later writers down to the end of the I4th century.
The remaining homiletic verse of this period is too abundant
to be referred to in detail; it will be enough to mention the
sermons of William of Shoreham, written in strophic form, but
showing little either of metrical skill or poetic feeling. To the
next generation belongs the Pricke of Conscience by Richard
Rolle, the influence of which was not less powerful than that of
the author's prose writings.
Romantic poetry, which in French had been extensively
cultivated, both on the continent and in England from the early
years of the I2th century, did not assume a vernacular form till
about 1250. In the next hundred years its development was
marvellously rapid. Of the vast mass of metrical romances pro-
duced during this period no detailed account need here be at-
tempted (see ROMANCE, and articles, &c. referred to; ARTHURIAN
ROMANCE). Native English traditions form the basis of King
Horn, Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hamtoun and Havelok, though
the stories were first put into literary form by Anglo-Norman
poets. The popularity of these home-grown tales (with which
may be classed the wildly fictitious Coer de Lion) was soon rivalled
by that of importations from France. The English rendering
of Floris and Blanchejlur (a love-romance of Greek origin) is
found in the same MS. that contains the earliest copy of King
Horn. Before the end of the century, the French " matter of
Britain " was represented in English by the Southern Arthur
and Merlin and the Northern Tristram and Yvaine and Gawin,
the " matter of France " by Roland and Vernagu and Otuel;
the Alexander was also translated, but in this instance the
immediate original was an Anglo-French and not a continental
poem. The tale of Troy did not come into English till long
afterwards. The Auchinleck MS., written about 1330, contains
no fewer than 14 poetical romances; there were many others
in circulation, and the number continued to grow. About the
middle of the i4th century, the Old English alliterative long line,
which for centuries had been used only in unwritten minstrel
poetry, emerges again in literature. One of the earliest poems
in this revived measure, Wynnere and Wastour, written in 1352,
is by a professional reciter-poet, who complains bitterly that
original minstrel poetry no longer finds a welcome in the halls of
great nobles, who prefer to listen to those who recite verses not
of their own making. About the same date the metre began to
be employed by men of letters for the translation of romance
William of Palerne and Joseph of Arimathea from the French,
Alexander from Latin prose. The later development of alliter-
ative poetry belongs mainly to the age of Chaucer.
The extent and character of the literature produced during
the first half of the i4th century indicate that the literary use
of the native tongue was no longer, as in the preceding age, a
mere condescension to the needs of the common people. The
rapid disuse of French as the ordinary medium of intercourse
among the middle and higher ranks of society, and the conse-
quent substitution of English for French as the vehicle of school
instruction, created a widespread demand for vernacular reading.
The literature which arose in answer to this demand, though it
consisted mainly of translations or adaptations of foreign works,
yet served to develop the appreciation of poetic beauty, and to
prepare an audience in the near future for a poetry in which the
genuine thought and feeling of the nation were to find expression.
CHAUCER TO RENAISSANCE] ENGLISH LITERATURE
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Only general works need be mentioned here.
Those cited contain lists of books (or more detailed inform, it inn.
(I) For the literature from the tx-xinnings to Chaucer: B. ten
Brink. Gesekuhte der englischrn Litteralur, vol. i. and ed., by A.
Brandt (Strasobure, 1899) (English translation from the 1st ed. of
t.y II. M. Kennedy, London. l3); The Cambridge History
of Kt(tisk Literat*rt. vol. i. (1907). (i) For the Old English period:
K. \Vulker. Grundriis sur deschichte der angelsachsischen Lilltratur
(Leipzig. 1885) ; Stopford A. Brooke, English Literature from the
Ret<**i*t to the Norman Conquest (London, 1898); A. Brunei!,
" Altengluche Littcratur." in H. Paul s Grundriss derjermanischfn
Philologil, vol. ii. (and ed.. Strassburg, 1908). (3) For the early
Middle English Period: H. Morlcy. English Writers, vol. iii.
(London. 1888; vols. i. and ii., dealing with the Old English period,
cannot be recommended); A. Brandl. " Mitti-k-nglischc Littcratur,"
in H. Paul'* Gruiidriss der germanischen Philologte, vol. ii. (1st cil.,
Strassburg, 1893); W. H. Schofield, English Literature from the
Norman Conquest to Chaucer (London, 1906). (H. BR.)
6n
II. CHAUCER TO THE RENAISSANCE
The age of Chaucer is of peculiar interest to the student of
literature, not only because of its brilliance and productiveness
but also because of its apparent promise for the future. In this,
as in other aspects, Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) is its most notable
literary figure. Beginning as a student and imitator of the best
French poetry of his day, he was for a time, like most of his
French contemporaries, little more than a skilful maker of
elegant verses, dealing with conventional material in a con-
ventional way, arranging in new figures the same flowers and
bowers, sunsets and song-birds, and companies of fair women
and their lovers, that had been arranged and rearranged by every
poet of the court circle for a hundred years, and celebrated in
sweet phrases of almost unvarying sameness. Even at this time,
to be sure, he was not without close and loving observation of
the living creatures of the real world, and his verses often bring
us flowers dewy and fragrant and fresh of colour as they grew in
the fields and gardens about London, and birds that had learned
their music in the woods; but his poetry was still not easily
distinguishable from that of Machault, Froissart, Deschamps,
Transoun and the other " courtly makers " of France. But
while he was still striving to master perfectly the technique of
this pretty art of trifling, he became acquainted with the new
literature of Italy, both poetry and prose. Much of the new
poetry moved, like that of France, among the conventionalities
and artificialities of an unreal world of romance, but it was of
wider range, of fuller tone, of far greater emotional 'intensity,
and, at its best, was the fabric, not of elegant ingenuity, but of
creative human passion, in Dante, indeed, a wonderful visionary
structure in which love and hate, and pity and terror, and the
forms and countenances of men were more vivid and real than
in the world of real men and real passions. The new prose
which Chaucer knew in several of the writings of Boccaccio
was vastly different from any that he bad ever read in a modern
tongue. Here were no mere brief anecdotes like those exempla
which in the middle ages illustrated vernacular as well as Latin
sermons, no cumbrous, slow-moving treatises on the Seven
Deadly Sins, no half-articulate, pious meditations, but rapid,
vivid, well-constructed narratives ranging from the sentimental
beauty of stories like Griselda and the Franklin's Tale to coarse
mirth and malodorous vulgarity equal to those of the tales told
later by Chaucer's Millet and Reeve and Summoner. All these
things he studied and some he imitated. There is scarcely a
feature of the verse that has not left some trace in his own;
the prose be did not imitate as prose, but there can be little
doubt that the subject matter of Boccaccio's tales and novels,
as well as his poems, affected the direction of Chaucer's literary
development, and quickened his habit of observing and utilizing
human life, and that the narrative art of the prose was in-
fluential in the transformation of his methods of narration.
This transformation was effected not so much through the
mere superiority of the Italian models to the French as through
the stimulus which the differences between the two gave to his
reflections upon the processes and technique of composition.
for Chaucer was not a careless, happy-go-lucky poet of divine
endowment, but a conscious, reflective artist, seeking not merely
for fine words and fine sentiments, but for the proper arrangement
of events, the significant exponent of character, the right tone,
and even the appropriate background and atmosphere, as
may be seen, for example, in the transformations he wrought in
the Pardoner's Tale. It is therefore in the latest and most
original of the Canterbury Tales that his art is most admirable,
most distinguished by technical excellences. In these we find
so many admirable qualities that we almost forget that he
had any defects. His diction is a model of picturesqueness, of
simplicity, of dignity, and of perfect adaptation to his theme:
his versification is not only correct but musical and varied, and
shows a progressive tendency towards freer and more complex
melodies; his best tales are not mere repetitions of the i ncient
stories they retell, but new creations, transformed by his own
imaginative realization of them, full of figures having the dimen-
sions and the vivacity of real life, acting on adequate motives,
and moving in an atmosphere and against a background appro-
priate to their characters and their actions. In the tales of the
Pardoner, the Franklin, the Summoner, the Squire, he is no less
notable as a consummate artist than as a poet.
Chaucer, however, was not the only writer of his day remark-
able for mastery of technique. Gower, indeed, though a man of
much learning and intelligence, was neither a poet of the first
rank nor an artist. Despite the admirable qualities of clearness,
order and occasional picturesqueness which distinguish his work,
he lacked the ability which great poets have of making their
words mean more than they say, and of stirring the emotions
even beyond the bounds of this enhanced meaning; and there
is not, perhaps, in all his voluminous work in English, French
and Latin, any indication that he regarded composition as an art
requiring consideration or any care beyond that of conforming
to the chosen rhythm and finding suitable rhymes.
There were others more richly endowed as poets and more
finely developed as artists. There was the beginner of the Piers
Plowman cycle, 1 the author of the Prologue and first eight
passus of the A-text, a man of clear and profound observation,
a poet whose imagination brought before him with distinctness
and reality visual images of the motley individuals and masses of
men of whom he wrote, an artist who knew how to organize
and direct the figures of his dream-world, the movement of his
ever-unfolding vision. There was the remarkable successor of
this man, the author of the B-text, an almost prophetic figure,
a great poetic idealist, and, helpless though he often was in
the direction of his thought, an absolute master of images and
words that seize upon the heart and haunt the memory. Besides
these, an unknown writer far in the north-west had, in Gawayne
and the Grene Knight, transformed the medieval romance into a
thing of speed and colour, of vitality and mystery, no less
remarkable for its fluent dcfmitcness of form than for the delights
of hall-feast and hunt, the graceful comedy of temptation,
and the lonely ride of the doomed Gawayne through the silence
of the forest and the deep snow. In the same region, by its
author's power of visual imagination, the Biblical paraphrase,
so often a mere humdrum narrative, had been transformed, in
Patience,, into a narrative so detailed and vivid that the reader
is almost ready to believe that the author himself, rather than
Jonah, went down into the sea in the belly of the great fish,
and sat humbled and rebuked beside the withered gourd-vine.
And there also, by some strange chance, blossomed, with perhaps
only a local and temporary fragrance until its rediscovery in
the ipth century, that delicate flower of loneliness and aspiration,
Pearl, a wonder of elaborate art as well as of touching sentiment.
All these writings are great, no}, only relatively, but absolutely.
There is not one of them which would not, if written in our own
time, immediately mark its author as a man of very unusual
ability. But the point of special concern to us at the present
moment is not so much that they show remarkable poetic power,
as that they possess technical merits of a very high order. And
we are accustomed to believe that, although genius is a purely
1 Pier s Plowman has been so long attributed as a whole to Lang-
land (q.v.), that in spite of modern analytical criticism it is most
conveniently discussed under that name.
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ENGLISH LITERATURE
[CHAUCER TO RENAISSANCE
personal and incommunicable element, technical gains are a
common possession; that after Marlowe had developed the
technique of blank verse, this technique was available for all ;
that after Pope had mastered the heroic couplet and Gray the
ode, and Poe the short story, -all men could write couplets and
odes and short stories of technical correctness; that, as Tennyson
puts it,
" All can grow the flower now,
For all have got the seed."
But this was singularly untrue of the technical gains made
by Chaucer and his great contemporaries. Pearl and Patience
were apparently unknown to the i5th century, but Gawayne
and P ers Plowman and Chaucer's works were known and were
influe rtial in one way or another throughout the century.
Gaivcyne called into existence a large number of romances
deal ; ng with the same hero or with somewhat similar situations,
son- e of them written in verse suggested by the remarkable verse
of their model, but the resemblance, even in versification, is
only superficial. Piers Plowman gave rise to satirical allegories
written in the alliterative long line and furnished the figures
and the machinery for many satires in other metres, but the
technical excellence of the first Piers Plowman poem was soon
buried for centuries under the tremendous social significance
of itself and its successors. And Chaucer, in spite of the fact
that he was praised and imitated by many writers and definitely
claimed as master by more than one, not only transmitted to
them scarcely any of the technical conquests he had made,
but seems also to have been almost without success in creating
any change in the taste of the public that read his poems so
eagerly, any demand for better literature than had been written
by his predecessors.
Wide and lasting Chaucer's influence undoubtedly was. Not
only was all the court-poetry, all the poetry of writers who
pretended to cultivation and refinement, throughout the century,
in England and Scotland, either directly or indirectly imitative
of his work, but even the humblest productions of unpretentious
writers show at times traces of his influence. Scotland was
fortunate in having writers of greater ability than England had
(see SCOTLAND : Literature) . In England the three chief followers
of Chaucer known to us by name are Lydgate, Hoccleve (see
OCCLEVE) and Hawes. Because of their praise of Chaucer and
their supposed personal relations to him, Lydgate and Hoccleve
are almost inseparable in modern discussions, but isth century
readers and writers appear not to have associated them very
closely. Indeed, Hoccleve is rarely mentioned, while Lydgate
is not only mentioned continually, but continually praised as
Chaucer's equal or even superior. Hoccleve was not, to be sure,
as prolific as Lydgate, but it is difficult to understand why his
work, which compares favourably in quality with Lydgate's,
attracted so much less attention. The title of his greatest poem,
De regimine principum, may have repelled readers who were
not princely born, though they would have found the work full
of the moral and prudential maxims and illustrative anecdotes
so dear to them; but his attack upon Sir John Oldcastle as a
heretic ought to have been decidedly to the taste of the orthodox
upper classes, while his lamentations over his misspent youth,
his tales and some of his minor poems might have interested
any one. Of a less vigorous spirit than Lydgate, he was, in his
mild way, more humorous and more original. Also despite his
sense of personal loss in Chaucer's death and his care to transmit
to posterity the likeness of his beloved master, he seems to have
been less slavish than Lydgate in imitating him. His memory
is full of Chaucer's phrases, he writes in verse-forms hallowed by
the master's use, and he tries to give to his lines the movement
of Chaucer's decasyllabics, but he is comparatively free from
the influence of those early allegorical works of the Master which
produced in the isth century so dreary a flock of imitations.
Lydgate's productivity was enormous, how great no man
can say, for, as was the case with Chaucer also, his fame caused
many masterless poems to be ascribed to him, but, after making
all necessary deductions, the amount of verse that has come
down to us from him is astonishing. Here it may suffice to say
that his translations are predominantly epic (140,000 lines),
and his original compositions predominantly allegorical love
poems or didactic poems. If there is anything duller than a dull
epic it is a dull allegory, and Lydgate has achieved both. This
is not to deny the existence of good passages in his epics and
ingenuity in his allegories, but there is no pervading, persistent
life in either. His epics, like almost all the narrative verse of
the time, whether epic, legend, versified chronicle or metrical
romance, seem designed merely to satisfy the desire of isth
century readers for information, the craving for facts true or
fictitious the same craving that made possible the poems on
alchemy, on hunting, on manners and morals, on the duties of
parish priests, on the seven liberal arts. His allegories, like
most allegories of the age, are ingenious rearrangements of old
figures and old machinery, they are full of what had once been
imagination but had become merely memory assisted by clever-
ness. The great fault of all his work, as of nearly all the literature
of the age, is that it is merely a more or less skilful manipulation
of what the author had somewhere read or heard, and not a
faithful transcript of the author's own peculiar sense or concep-
tion of what he had seen or heard or read. The fault is not that
the old is repeated, that a twice-told tale is retold, but that it is
retold without being re-imagined by the teller of the tale, without
taking on from his personality something that was not in it
before. Style, to be sure, was a thing that Lydgate and his
fellows tried to supply, and some of them supplied it abundantly
according to their lights. But style meant to them external
decoration, classical allusions, personifications, an inverted or
even dislocated order of words, and that famous " ornate
diction," those " aureate terms," with which they strove to
surpass the melody, picturesqueness and dignity which, for all
its simplicity, they somehow dimly discerned in the diction of
Chaucer.
Stephen Hawes, with his allegorical treatise on the seven liberal
sciences, came later than these men, only to write worse. He was
a disciple of Lydgate rather than of Chaucer, and is not only
lacking in the vigour and sensitiveness which Lydgate sometimes
displays, but exaggerates the defects of his master. If it be a
merit to have conceived the pursuit of knowledge under the form
of the efforts of a knight to win the hand of his lady, it is almost
the sole merit to which Hawes can lay claim. Two or three
good situations, an episode of low comedy, and the epitaph of
the Knight with its famous final couplet, exhaust the list of his
credits. The efforts that have been made to trace through Hawes
the line of Spenser's spiritual ancestry seem not well advised.
The resemblances that have been pointed out are such as arise
inevitably from the allegories and from the traditional material
with which both worked. There is no reason to believe that
Spenser owed his general conception to Hawes, or that the
Faery Queene would have differed in even the slightest detail
from its present form if the Pastime of Pleasure had never been
written. The machinery of chivalric romance had already been
applied to spiritual and moral themes in Spain without the aid
of Hawes.
It is obvious that the fundamental lack of all these men was
imaginative power, poetic ability. This is a sufficient reason for
failure to write good poetry. But why did not men of better
ability devote themselves to literature in this age? Was it
because of the perturbed conditions arising from the prevalence
of foreign and civil wars ? Perhaps not, though it is clear that
if Sir Thomas Malory had perished in one of the many fights
through which he lived, the chivalric and literary impulses
which he perhaps received from the " Fadre of Curteisy,"
Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, would have gone for
nothing and we should lack the M orte Darthur. But it may very
well be that the wars and the tremendous industrial growth
of England fixed the attention of the strongest and most original
spirits among the younger men and so withdrew them from the
possible attractions of literature. But, after all, whatever
general truth may lie in such speculations, the way of a young
man with his own life is as incalculable as any of the four things
which Agur son of Jakeh declared to be past finding out; local
CHAUCER TO RENAISSANCE)
ENGLISH LITERATURE
613
and special accidents rather than general communal influences
are apt to shape the choice of boys of exceptional character, and
we have many instances of great talents turning to literature
or art when war or commerce or science was the dominant
attraction of social life.
But even recognizing that the followers of Chaucer were not
men of genius, it seems strange that their imitation of Chaucer
was what it was. They not only entirely failed to sec what his
merits as an artist were and how greatly superior his mature
work is to his earlier in point of technique; they even preferred
the earlier and imitated it almost exclusively. Furthermore,
his mastery of verse seemed to them to consist solely in writing
verses of approximately four or five stresses and arranging them
in couplets or in stanzas of seven or eight lines. Their preference
for the early allegorical work can be explained by their lack of
taste and critical discernment and by the great vogue of
allegorical writing in England and France. Men who are just
beginning to think about the distinction between literature and
ordinary writing usually feel that it consists in making literary
expression differ as widely as possible from simple direct speech.
For this reason some sort of artificial diction is developed and
some artificial word order devised. Allegory is used as an
elegant method of avoiding unpoetical plainness, and is an easy
means of substituting logic for imagination. The failure to
reproduce in some degree at least the melody and smoothness
of Chaucer's decasyllabic verse, and the particular form which
that failure took in Lydgate, are to be explained by the fact
that Lydgate and his fellows never knew how Chaucer's verse
sounded when properly read. It is a mistake to suppose that
the disappearance of final unaccented e from many words or
its instability in many others made it difficult for Lydgate and
his fellows to write melodious verse. Melodious verse has been
written since the disappearance of all these sounds, and the
possibility of a choice between a form with final e and one without
it is not a hindrance but an advantage to a poet, as Goethe,
Schiller, Heine and innumerable German poets have shown by
their practice. *The real difficulty with these men was that they
pronounced Chaucer's verse as if it were written in the English
of their own day. As a matter of fact all the types of verse
discovered by scholars in Lydgate's poems can be discovered
in Chaucer's also if they be read with Lydgate's pronunciation.
Chaucer did not write archaic English, as some have supposed,
that is, English of an earlier age than his own, it would have
been impossible for him to do so with the unfailing accuracy
be shows; he did, however, write a conservative, perhaps an
old-fashioned, English, such as was spoken by the conservative
members of the class of society to which he was attached and
for which he wrote. An English with fewer final e's was already
in existence among the less conservative classes, and this rapidly
became standard English in consequence of the social changes
which occurred during his own life. We know that a misunder-
standing of Chaucer's verse existed from the i6th century
to the time of Thomas Tyrwhitt; it seems clear that it began
even earlier, in Chaucer's own lifetime.
There are several poems of the isth century which were long
ascribed to Chaucer. Among them arc: the Complaint of the
Black Knight, or Complaint oj a Lover's Life, now known to be
Lydgate's; the Mother of God, now ascribed to Hoccleve; the
Cuckoo and the Nightingale, by Clan vo we; La Belle Dame sans
merci, a translation from the French of Alain Chattier by
Richard Ros; Chaucer's Dream, or the Isle of Ladies; the
Assembly of Ladies; the Flower and the Leaf; and the Court of
Late. The two poems of Lydgate and Hoccleve are as good as
Chaucer's poorest work. The Assembly of Ladies and the Flower
and Ike Leaf are perhaps better than the Book of the Duchess,
but not so good as the Parliament of Fowls. The Flower and the
Leaf, it will be remembered, was very dear to John Keats, who,
like all his contemporaries, regarded it as Chaucer's. An addi-
tional interest attaches to both it and the Assembly of Ladies,
from the fact that the author may have been a woman ; Professor
Skeat is, indeed, confident that he knows who the woman was
and when she wrote. These poems, like the Court of Love, are
thoroughly conventional in material, all the figures and poetical
machinery may be found in dozens of other poems in England
and France, as Professor Neilson has shown for the Court of Love
and Mr Marsh for the Flower and the Leaf; but there are a fresh-
ness of spirit and a love of beauty in them that are not common;
the conventional birds and flowers are there, but they seem,
like those of Chaucer's Legend, to have some touch of life, and
the conventional companies of ladies and gentlemen ride and talk
and walk with natural grace and ease. The Court of Love is
usually ascribed to a very late date, as late even as the middle
of the i6th century. If this is correct, it is a notable instance
of the persistence of a Chaucerian influence. An effort has been
made, to be sure, to show that it was written by Scogan and that
the writing of it constituted the offence mentioned by Chaucer
in his Envoy to Scogan, but it has been clearly shown that this
is impossible, both because the language is later than Scogan's
time and because nothing in the poem resembles the offence
clearly described by Chaucer.
Whatever may be true of the authorship of the Assembly of
Ladies and the Flower and the Leaf, there were women writers
in England in the middle ages. Juliana of Norwich wrote her
Revelations of Divine Love before 1400. The much discussed
Dame Juliana Berners, the supposed compiler of the treatise
on hunting in the Book of St Allans, may be mythical, though
there is no reason why a woman should not have written such
a book; and a shadowy figure that disappears entirely in the
sunlight is the supposed authoress of the Nut Brown Maid,
for if language is capable of definite meaning, the last stanza
declares unequivocally that the poem is the work of a man.
But there is a poem warning young women against entering a
nunnery which may be by a woman, and there is an interesting
entry among the records of New Romney for 1463-1464, " Paid
to Agnes Forde for the play of the Interlude of our Lord's
Passion, 6s. 8d.," which is apparently the earliest mention of a
woman dramatist in England. Finally, Margaret, countess of
Richmond, the mother of Henry VII., not only aided scholars
and encouraged writers, but herself translated the (spurious)
fourth book of St Thomas a Kempis's Imitalio Christi, Another
Margaret, the duchess of Burgundy, it will be remembered,
encouraged Caxton in his translation and printing. Women
seem, indeed, to have been especially lovers of books and patrons
of writers, and Skelton, if we may believe his Garland of Laurel,
was surrounded by a bevy of ladies comparable to a modern
literary club; Erasmus's Suffragette Convention may correspond
to no reality, but the Learned Lady arguing against the Monk
for the usefulness and pleasure derived from books was not an
unknown type. Women were capable of many things in the
middle ages. English records show them to have been physi-
cians, churchwardens, justices of the peace and sheriffs, and,
according to a satirist, they were also priests.
The most original and powerful poetry of the 15th century
was composed in popular forms for the ear of the common
people and was apparently written without conscious artistic
purpose. Three classes of productions deserve special attention,
songs and carols, popular ballads and certain dramatic com-
positions. The songs and carols belong to a species which may
have existed in England before the Norman Conquest, but which
certainly was greatly modified by the musical and lyric forms of
France. The best of them are the direct and simple if not
entirely artless expressions of personal emotion, and even when
they contain, as they sometimes do, the description of a person,
a situation, or an event, they deal with these things so subjec-
tively, confine themselves so closely to the rendering of the
emotional effect upon the singer, that they lose none of their
directness or simplicity. Some of them deal with secular sub-
jects, some with religious, and some are curious and delightful
blcndings of religious worship and aspiration with earthly tender-
ness for the embodiments of helpless infancy and protecting
motherhood which gave Christianity so much of its power over
the affections and imagination of the middle ages. Even those
which begin as mere expressions of joy in the Yule-tide eating
and drinking and merriment catch at moments hints of higher
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joys, of finer emotions, and lift singer and hearer above the noise
and stir of earth. Hundreds of songs written and sung in the
iSth century must have perished; many, no doubt, lived only a
single season and were never even written down; but chance
has preserved enough of them to make us wonder at the age
which could produce such masterpieces of tantalizing simplicity.
The lyrics which describe a situation form a logical, if not a
real transition to those which narrate an episode or an event.
The most famous of the latter, the Nut Brown Maid, has often
been called a ballad, and " lyrical ballad " it is in the sense
established by Coleridge and Wordsworth, but its affinities are
rather with the song or carol than with the folk-ballad, and, like
Henryson's charming Robin and Mzlkin, it is certainly the
work of a man of culture and of conscious artistic purpose and
methods. Unaccompanied, as it is, by any other work of the
same author, this poem, with its remarkable technical merits,
is an even more astonishing literary phenomenon than the famous
single sonnet of Blanco White. It can hardly be doubted that
the author learned his technique from the songs and carols.
The folk-ballad, like the song or carol, belongs in some form
to immemorial antiquity. It is doubtless a mistake to suppose
that any ballad has been preserved to us that is a purely com-
munal product, a confection of the common knowledge, tradi-
tions and emotions of the community wrought by subconscious
processes into a song that finds chance but inevitable utterance
through one or more individuals as the whole commune moves
in its molecular dance. But it is equally a mistake to argue that
ballads are essentially metrical romances in a state of decay. Both
the matter and the manner of most of the best ballads forbid
such a supposition, and it can hardly be doubted that in some of
the folk-ballads of the i5th century are preserved not only
traditions of dateless antiquity, but formal elements and technical
processes that actually are derived from communal song and
dance. By the isth century, however, communal habits and
processes of composition had ceased, and the traditional ele-
ments, formulae and technique had become merely conventional
aids and guides for the individual singer. Ancient as they were,
conventional as, in a sense, they also were, they exercised none
of the deadening, benumbing influence of ordinary conventions.
They furnished, one may say, a vibrant framework of emotional
expression, each tone of which moved the hearers all the more
powerfully because it had sung to them so many old, unhappy,
far-off things, so many battles and treacheries and sudden griefs;
a framework which the individual singer needed only to fill
out with the simplest statement of the event which had stirred
his own imagination and passions to produce, not a work of
art, but a song of universal appeal. Not a work of art, because
there are scarcely half a dozen ballads that are really works of
art, and the greatest ballads are not among these. There is
scarcely one that is free from excrescences, from dulness, from
trivialities, from additions that would spoil their greatest
situations and their greatest lines, were it not that we resolutely
shut our ears and our eyes, as we should, to all but their greatest
moments. But at their best moments the best ballads have an
almost incomparable power, and to a people sick, as we are, of
the ordinary, the usual, the very trivialities and impertinences
of the ballads only help to define and emphasize these best
moments. In histories of English literature the ballads have
been so commonly discussed in connexion with their rediscovery
in the -i8th century, that we are apt to forget that some of the
very best were demonstrably composed in the isth and that
many others of uncertain date probably belong to the same time.
Along with the genuine ballads dealing with a recent event or
a traditional theme there were ballads in which earlier romances
are retold in ballad style. This was doubtless inevitable in
view of the increasing epic tendency of the ballad and the interest
still felt in metrical romances, but it should not mislead us into
regarding the genuine folk-ballad as an out-growth of the
metrical romance.
Besides the ordinary epic or narrative ballad, the isth century
produced ballads in dramatic form, or, perhaps it were better
to say, dramatized some of its epic ballads. How commonly
this was done we do not know, but the scanty records of the
period indicate that it was a widespread custom, though only
three plays of this character (all concerning Robin Hood) have
come down to us. These plays had, however, no further inde-
pendent development, but merely furnished elements of incident
and atmosphere to later plays of a more highly organized type.
With these ballad plays may also be mentioned the Christmas
plays (usually of St George) and the sword-dance plays, which
also flourished in the isth century, but survive for us only as
obscure elements in the masques and plays of Ben Jonson and in
such modern rustic performances as Thomas Hardy has so
charmingly described in The Return of the Native.
The additions which the isth century made to the ancient
cycles of Scripture plays, the so-called Mysteries, are another
instance of a literary effort which spent itself in vain (see
DRAMA). The most notable of these are, of course, the world
renowned comic scenes in the Towneley (or Wakefield) Plays, in
the pageants of Cain, of Noah and of the Shepherds. In none
of these is the i5th century writer responsible for the original
comic intention; in the pageants of Cain and of the Shepherds
fragments of the work of a i4th century writer still remain to
prove the earlier existence of the comic conception, and that it
was traditional in the Noah pageant we know from the testimony
of Chaucer's Miller; but none the less the i5th century writer
was a comic dramatist of original power and of a skill in the
development of both character and situation previously un-
exampled in England. The inability of Lydgate to develop a
comic conception is strikingly displayed if one compares his
Pageant for Presentation before the King at Hereford with the
work of this unknown artist. But in our admiration for this
man and his famous episode of Mak and the fictitious infant, we
are apt to forget the equally fine, though very different qualities
shown in some of the later pageants of the York Plays. Such,
for example, is the final pageant, that of the Last Judgment, a
drama of slow and majestic movement, to be sure, but with a
large and fine conception of the great situation, and a noble and
dignified elocution not inadequate to the theme.
The Abraham and Isaac play of the Brome MS., extant as a
separate play and perhaps so performed, which has been so
greatly admired for its cumulative pathos, also belongs de-
monstrably to this century. It is not, as has been supposed,
an intermediate stage between French plays and the Chester
Abraham and Isaac, but is derived directly from the latter by
processes which comparison of the two easily reveals. Scripture
plays of a type entirely different from the well-known cyclic
mysteries, apparently confined to the Passion and Resurrection
and the related events, become known to us for the first time in
the records of this century. Such plays seem to have been
confined to the towns of the south, and, as both their location
and their structure suggest, may have been borrowed from
France. In any event, the records show that they flourished
greatly and that new versions were made from time to time.
Another form of the medieval drama, the Morality Play, had
its origin in the isth century, or else very late in the i4th.
The earliest known examples of it in England date from about
1420. These are the Castle of Perseverance and the Pride of Life.
Others belonging to the century are Mind, Will and Understand-
ing, Mankind and Medwall's Nature. There are also parts of
two pageants in the Ludus Covenlriae (c. 1460) that are commonly
classed as Moralities, and these, together with the existence of a
few personified abstractions in other plays, have led some critics
to suppose that the Morality was derived from the Mystery by
the gradual introduction of personified abstractions in the place
of real persons. But the two kinds of plays are fundamentally
different, different in subject and in technique; and no replace-
ment of real persons by personifications can change a Mystery
into a Morality, Moreover, the Morality features in Mysteries
are later than the origin of the Morality itself and are due to the
influence of the latter. The Morality Play is merely a dramatized
allegory, and derives its characters and its peculiar technique
from the application of the dramatic method to the allegory,
the favourite literary form of the middle ages. None of the i sth
CHAUCER TO RENAISSANCE] ENGLISH LITERATURE
615
century Moralities is literature of the first rank, though both the
Castle of Perseverance and Pride of Life contain passages ringing
with a passionate sincerity that communicates itself to the
hearer or reader. But it was not until the beginning of the
ibth century that a Morality of permanent human interest
appeared in Everyman, which, after all, is a translation from
the Dutch, as is dearly proved by the fact that in the two prayers
near the end of the play the Dutch has complicated but regular
stanzas, whereas the English has only irregularly rhymed
passages.
Besides the Mysteries and Moralities, the isth century had also
Miracle Plays, properly so called, dealing with the lives, martyr-
doms and miracles of saints. As we know these only from
records of their performance or their mere existence no texts
have been preserved to us, except the very curious Play of the
Sacrament it is impossible to speak of their literary or dramatic
qualities. The M iracle Play as a form was, of course, not confined
to the 1 5th century. Not withstanding the assertions of historians
of literature that it died out in England soon after its introduction
at the beginning of the uth century, its existence can be demon-
strated from c. 1 1 10 to the time of Shakespeare. But records
seem to indicate that it tlourished especially during this period
of supposed barrenness.
What was the nature of the " Komedy of Troylous and
Pandor " performed before Henry VIII. on the 6th of January
iSrti we have no means of knowing. It is very early indeed
to assume the influence of either classical or Italian drama,
and although we have no records of similar plays from the 1 5th
century, it must be remembered that our records are scanty,
that the middle ages applied the dramatic method to all sorts of
material, and that it is therefore not impossible that secular
plays like this were performed at court at a much earlier date.
The record at any rate does not indicate that it was a new type
of play, and the Griselda story had been dramatized in France,
Italy and the Netherlands before 1500.
That not much good prose was written in the isth century is
less surprising than that so little good verse was written. The
technique of verse composition had been studied and mastered
in the preceding age, as we have seen, but the technique of prose
had apparently received no serious consideration. Indeed, it is
doubtful if any one thought of prose as a possible medium of
artistic expression. Chaucer apparently did not, in spite of the
comparative excellence of his Preface to the Astrolabe and his
occasional noteworthy successes with the difficulties of the
philosophy of Bocthius; Wycliffe ; s usually clumsy; and the
translators of Mandeville, though they often give us passages
of great charm, obviously were plain men who merely translated
as best they could. There was, however, a comparatively large
amount of prose written in the 151)1 century, mainly for religious
or educational purposes, dealing with the same sorts of subjects
that were dealt with in verse, and in some cases not distinguish-
able from the verse by any feature but the absence of rhyme.
The vast body of this we must neglect; only five writers need
be named: John Capgravc, Reginald Pecock, Sir John Fortescue,
Caxton and Malory. Capgrave, the compiler of the first chronicle
in English prose since the Conquest, wrote by preference in
Latin; his English is a condescension to those who could not
read Latin and has the qualities which belong to the talk of an
earnest and sincere man of commonplace ability. Pecock and
Fortescue are more important. Pecock (c. I395~c. 1460) was
* man of singularly acute and logical mind. He prided himself
upon his dialectic skill and his faculty for discovering arguments
that had been overlooked by others. His writings, therefore
or at least the Represser are excellent in general structure and
arrangement, his ideas are presented clearly and simply, with
few digressions or excrescences, and his sentences, though
sometimes too long, are more like modern prose than any others
before the age of Elizabeth. His style is lightened by frequent
figures of speech, mostly illustrative, and really illustrative, of
his ideas, while his intellectual ingenuity cannot fail to interest
even those whom his prejudices and preconceptions repel.
Fortescue. like Capgrave, wrote by preference in Latin, and, like
Pecock, was philosophical and controversial. But his principal
English work, the Difference between an Absolute and a Limited
Monarchy, differs from Pecock's in being rather a pleading than
a logical argument, and the geniality and glowing patriotism
of its author give it a far greater human interest .
No new era in literary composition was marked by the activity
of William Caxton as translator and publisher, though the print-
ing-press has, of course, changed fundamentally the problem
of the dissemination and preservation of culture, and thereby
ultimately affected literary production profoundly. But neither
Caxton nor the writers whose works he printed produced anything
new in form or spirit. His publications range over the whole
field of isth century literature, and no doubt he tried, as his
quaint prefaces indicate, to direct the public taste to what was
best among the works of the past, as when he printed and re-
printed the Canterbury Tales, but among all his numerous
publications not one is the herald of a new era. The only book of
permanent interest as literature which he introduced to the
world was the Morte Darthur of Sir Thomas Malory, and this is a
compilation from older romances (see ARTHURIAN LEGEND).
It is, to be sure, the one book of permanent literary significance
produced in England in the isth century; it glows with the
warmth and beauty of the old knight's conception of chivalry
and his love for the great deeds and great men of the visionary
past, and it continually allures the reader by its fresh and vivid
diction and by a syntax which, though sometimes faulty, has
almost always a certain naive charm; " thystorye (i.e. the
history) of the sayd Arthur," as Caxton long ago declared, " is
so gloryous and shynyng, that he is stalled in the first place
of the moost noble, beste and worthyest of the Crysten men ";
it is not, however, as the first of a new species, but as the final
flower of an old that this glorious and shining book retains its
place in English literature.
Whatever may have been the effect of the wars and the growth
of industrial life in England in withdrawing men of the best
abilities from the pursuit of literature, neither these causes
nor any other interfered with the activity of writers of lesser
powers. The amount of writing is really astonishing, as is also
its range. More than three hundred separate works (exclusive
of the large number still ascribed to Lydgate and of the seventy
printed by Caxton) have been made accessible by the Early
English Text Society and other public or private presses, and
it seems probable that an equal number remains as yet un-
published. No list of these writings can be given here, but it
may not be unprofitable to indicate the range of interests by
noting the classes of writing represented. The classification is
necessarily rough, as some writings belong to more than one
type. We may note, first, love poems, allegorical and un-
allegorical, narrative, didactic, lyrical and quasi-lyrical; poems
autobiographical and exculpatory; poems of eulogy and appeal
for aid; tales of entertainment or instruction, in prose and in
verse; histories ancient and modern, and brief accounts of
recent historical events, in prose and in verse; prose romances
and metrical romances; legends and lives of saints, in prose and
in verse; poems and prose works of religious meditation,
devotion and controversy; treatises of religious instruction, in
prose and in verse; ethical and philosophical treatises, and
ethical and prudential treatises; treatises of government, of
political economy, of foreign travel, of hygiene, of surgery, of
alchemy, of heraldry, of hunting and hawking and fishing, of
farming, of good manners, and of cooking and carving. Prosaic
and intended merely to serve practical uses as many of these
were, verse is the medium of expression as often as prose. Besides
this large amount and variety of English compositions, it must
be remembered that much was also written in Latin, and that
Latin and French works of this and other centuries were read by
the educated classes.
Although the intellectual and spiritual movement which we
call the Italian Renaissance was not unknown in England in the
1 4th and isth centuries, it is not strange that it exercised no
perceptible influence upon English literature, except in the case
of Chaucer. Chaucer was the only English man of letters before
6i6
ENGLISH LITERATURE
[ELIZABETHAN AGE
the i6th century who knew Italian literature. The Italians who
visited England and the Englishmen who visited Italy were
interested, not in literature, but in scholarship. Such studies
as were pursued by Free, Grey, Flemming, Tilly, Gunthorpe
and others who went to Italy, made them better grammarians
and rhetoricians, and no doubt gave them a freer, wider outlook,
but upon their return to England they were immediately absorbed
in administrative cares, which left them little leisure for literary
composition, even if they had had any inclination to write.
They prepared the way, however, for the leaders of the great
intellectual awakening which began in England with Linacre,
Colet, More and their fellows, and which finally culminated in
the age of Spenser, Bacon, Shakespeare, Jonson, Gilbert, Harvey
and Harriott.
When the middle ages ceased in England it is impossible to
say definitely. Long after the new learning and culture of the
Renaissance had been introduced there, long after classical and
Italian models were eagerly chosen and followed, the epic and
lyric models of the middle ages were admired and imitated,
and the ancient forms of the drama lived side by side with the
new until the time of Shakespeare himself. John Skelton,
although according to Erasmus " unum Britannicarum literarum
lumen ac decus," and although possessing great originality and
vigour both in diction and in versification when attacking his
enemies or indulging in playful rhyming, was not only a great
admirer of Lydgate, but equalled even the worst of his prede-
cessors in aureate pedantries of diction, in complicated im-
possibilities of syntax, and in meaningless inversions of word-
order whenever he wished to write elegant and dignified litera-
ture. And not a little of the absurd diction of the middle of the
1 6th century is merely a continuation of the bad ideals and
practices of the refined writers of the isth.
In fine, the isth century has, aside from its vigorous, though
sometimes coarse, popular productions, little that can interest
the lover of literature. It offers, however, in richest profusion
problems for the literary antiquarian and the student of the
relations between social conditions and literary productivity,
problems which have usually been attacked only with the light
weapons of irresponsible speculation, but which may perhaps
be solved by a careful comparative study of many literatures
and many periods. Moreover, although in the quality of its
literary output it is decidedly inferior to the i4th century, the
amount and the wide range of its productions indicate the gradual
extension of the habit of reading to classes of society that were
previously unlettered; and this was of great importance for the
future of English literature, just as the innumerable dramatic
performances throughout England were important in developing
audiences for Marlowe and Shakespeare and Beaumont and
Fletcher.
For bibliography see vol. ii. of the Cambridge History of Literature
(1909); and Brandl's Geschichte der mittelenglischen Literatur (re-
printed from Paul's Grundriss der germanischen Philologie). Inter-
esting general discussions may be found in the larger histories of
English Literature, such as Ten Brink's, Jusserand s, and (a little
more antiquated) Courthope's and Morley's. (J. M. MA.)
III. ELIZABETHAN TIMES
General Influences, and Prologue to 1579. The history of
letters in England from More's Utopia (1316), the first Platonic
vision, to Milton's Samson Agonistes (1671), the latest classic
tragedy, is one and continuous. That is the period of the English
Renaissance, in the wider sense, and it covers all and more of
the literature loosely called " Elizabethan." With all its com-
plexity and subdivisions, it has as real a unity as the age of
Pericles, or that of Petrarch and Boccaccio, or the period in
Germany that includes both Lessing and Heine. It is peculiar
in length of span, in variety of power, and in wealth of production,
though its master-works on the greater scale are relatively few.
It is distinct, while never quite cut off, from the middle age
preceding, and also from the classical or " Augustan " age that
followed. The coming of Dryden denoted a new phase; but it
was still a phase of the Renaissance; and the break that declared
itself about 1660 counts as nothing beside the break with the
middle ages; for this implied the whole change in art, thought
and temper, which re-created the European mind. It is true
that many filaments unite Renaissance and middle ages, not
only in the religious and purely intellectual region, but in that of
art. The matter of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the tales of Arthur
and of Troilus, the old fairy folklore of the South, the topic of
the Falls of Princes, lived on; and so did the characteristic
medieval form, allegory and many of the old metres of the I4th
century. But then these things were transformed, often out of
knowledge. Shakespeare's use of -the histories of Macbeth,
Lear and Troilus, and Spenser's of the allegoric romance, are
examples. And when the gifts of the middle ages are not trans-
formed, as in the Mirror for Magistrates, they strike us as sur-
vivals from a lost world.
So vital a change took long in the working. The English
Renaissance of letters only came into full flower during the last
twenty years of the i6th century, later than in any Southern
land; but it was all the richer for delay, and would have missed
many a life-giving element could it have been driven forward
sooner. If the actual process of genius is beyond analysis, we
can still notice the subjects which genius receives, or chooses,
to work upon, and also the vesture which it chooses for them;
and we can 'watch some of the forces that long retard but in
the end fertilize these workings of genius.
What, then, in England, were these forces ? Two of them
lie outside letters, namely, the political settlement, culminating
in the later reign of Elizabeth, and the religious
settlement, whereby the Anglican Church grew out of
the English Reformation. A third force lay within
the sphere of the Renaissance itself, in the narrower meaning of
the term. It was culture the prefatory work of culture and
education, which at once prepared and put off the flowering of
pure genius. " Elizabethan " literature took its complexion
from the circumstance that all these three forces were in operation .
at once. The Church began to be fully articulate, just when the
national feeling was at its highest, and the tides of classical and
immigrant culture were strongest. Spenser's Faerie Queene,
Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity and Shakespeare's Henry V.
came in the same decade (1590-1600). But these three forces,
political, religious and educational, were of very different
duration and value. The enthusiasm of 1590-1600 was already
dying down in the years 1600-1610, when the great tragedies
were written; and soon a wholly new set of political forces
began to tell on art. The religious inspiration was mainly
confined to certain important channels; and literature as a
whole, from first to last, was far more secular than religious.
But Renaissance culture, in its ramifications and consequences,
tells all the time and over the whole field, from 1500 to 1660.
It is this culture which really binds together the long and varied
chronicle. Before passing to narrative, a short review of each
of these elements is required.
Down to 1579 the Tudor rule was hardly a direct inspiration
toauthors. The reign -of Henry VII. was first duly told by Bacon,
and that of Henry VIII. staged by Shakespeare and p 0/ftfcs
Fletcher, in the time of James I. Sir Thomas More
found in Roper, and Wolsey in Cavendish, sound biographers, who
are nearly the earliest in the language. The later years of Henry
VIII. were full of episodes too tragically picturesque for safe
handling in the lifetime of his children. The next two reigns
were engrossed with the religious war; and the first twenty years
of Elizabeth, if they laid the bases of an age of'peace, well-being,
and national self-confidence that was to prove a teeming soil
for letters, were themselves poor in themes for patriotic art.
The abortive treason of the northern earls was echoed only in a
ringing ballad. But the voyagers, freebooters, and explorers
reported their experiences, as a duty, not for fame; and these,
though not till the golden age, were edited by Hakluyt, and
fledged the poetic fancies that took wing from the " Indian
Peru " to the " still-vext Bermoothes." Yet, in default of any
true historian, the queen's wise delays and diplomacies that
upheld the English power, and her refusal to launch on a Pro-
testant or a national war until occasion compelled and the country
ELIZABETHAN AGE]
ENGLISH LITERATURE
617
i ready, were subjects as uninspiring to poets as the burning
questions of the royal marriage or the royal title. But by 1580
the nation was filled with the sense of Elizabeth's success and
greatness and of its own prosperity. No shorter struggle and
no less achievement could have nursed the insolent, jubilant
patriotism of the years that followed; a feeling that for good
reasons was peculiar to England among the nations, and created
the peculiar forms of the chronicle play and poem. These were
borrowed neither from antiquity nor from abroad, and were
never afterwards revived. The same exultation found its way
into the current forms of ode and pastoral, of masque and
allegory, and into many a dedication and interlude of prose.
It was so strong as to outlive the age that gave it warrant. The
passion for England, the passion of England for herself, animates
the bulk of Drayton's Poly-Olbion, which was finished so late
as 1622. But the public issues were then changing, the temper
was darker; and the civil struggle was to speak less in poetry
than in the prose of political theory and ecclesiastical argument,
until its after-explosion came in the verse of Milton.
The English Reformation, so long political rather than
doctrinal or imaginative, cost much writing on all sides; but
no book like Calvin's Institution is its trophy, at once
defining the religious change for millions of later men
and marking a term of departure in the national prose.
Still, the debating weapons, the axes and billhooks, of vernacular
English were sharpened somewhat jaggedly in the pamphlet
battles that dwarfed the original energies of Sir Thomas More
and evoked those of Tyndale and his friends. The powers of the
same style were proved for descriptive economy by Starkey's
Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, and for religious appeal
by the blunt sound rhetoric and forthright jests in the sermons
of Latimer (died 1555). Foxe's reports of the martyrs are the
type of early Protestant English (1563); but the reforming
divines seldom became real men of letters even when their
Puritanism, or discontent with the final Anglican settlement
and its temper, began to announce itself. Their spirit, however,
comes out in many a corner of poetry, in Gascoigne's Steel Glass
as in Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar; and the English Reforma-
tion lived partly on its pre-natal memories of Langland as well
as of Wycliffe. The fruit of the struggle, though retarded, was
ample. Carrying on the work of Fisher and Cranmer, the new
church became the nursing mother of English prose, and trained
it more than any single influence, trained it so well, for the
purposes of sacred learning, translation and oratory, and also
as a medium of poetic feeling, that in these activities England
came to rival France. How late any religious writer of true rank
arose may be seen by the lapse of over half a century between
Henry VIII. 's Act of Supremacy and Hooker's treatise. But
after Hooker the chain of eloquent divines was unbroken for a
hundred years.
Renaissance culture had many stages and was fed from many
streams. At the outset of the century, in the wake of Erasmus,
under the teaching of Colet and his friends, there
spread a sounder knowledge of the Greek and Latin
tongues, of the classic texts, and so of the ancient life
and mind. This period of humanism in the stricter sense was far
less brilliant than in Italy and France. No very great scholar or
savant arose in Britain for a long time; but neo- Latin literature,
the satellite of scholarship, shone brightly in George Buchanan.
But scholarship was created and secured; and in at least one,
rather solitary, work of power, the Utopia (which remained in
Latin till 1551), the fundamental process was begun which
appropriates the Greek mind, not only for purposes of schooling,
but as a source of new and independent thinking. In and after
the middle of the century the classics were again put forward
by Cheke, by Wilson in his Art of Rhetoric (1553), and by Ascham
in his letters and in his Schoolmaster (1570), as the true staple
of humane education, and the pattern for a simple yet lettered
English. The literature of translations from the classics, in
prose and verse, increased; and these works, at first plain,
business-like, and uninspired, slowly rose in style and power,
and at last, like the translations from modern tongues, were
"
written by a series of masters of English, who thus introduced
Plutarch and Tacitus to poets and historians. This labour of
mediation was encouraged by the rapid expansion and reform
of the two universities, of which almost every great master except
Shakespeare was a member; and even Shakespeare had ample
Latin for his purpose.
The direct impact of the classics on " Elizabethan " literature,
whether through such translations or the originals, would take
long to describe. But their indirect impact is far
stronger, though in result the two are hard to discern,
This is another point that distinguishes the English
Renaissance from the Italian or the French, and makes
it more complex. The knowledge of the thought, art and
enthusiasms of Rome and Athens constantly came round through
Italy or France, tinted and charged in the passage with something
characteristic of those countries. The early playwrights read
Seneca in Latin and English, but also the foreign Scnecan
tragedies. Spenser, when starting on his pastorals, studied the
Sicilians, but also Sannazaro and Marot. Shakespeare saw
heroic antiquity through Plutarch, but also, surely, through
Montaigne's reading of antiquity. Few of the poets can have
distinguished the original fountain of Plato from the canalized
supply of the Italian Neoplatonists. The influence, however,
of Cicero on the Anglican pulpit was immediate as well as
constant; and so was that of the conciser Roman masters,
Sollust and Tacitus, on Ben Jonson and on Bacon. Such
scattered examples only intimate the existence of two great
chapters of English literary history, the effects of the classics
and the effects of Italy. The bibliography of 16th-century
translations from the Italian in the fields of political and moral
speculation, poetry, fiction and the drama, is so large as itself
to tell part of the story. The genius of Italy served the genius
of England in three distinctive ways. It inspired the recovery,
with new modulations, of a lost music and a lost prosody. It
modelled many of the chief poetic forms, which soon were
developed out of recognition; such were tragedy, allegory, song,
pastoral and sonnet. Thirdly, it disclosed some of the master-
thoughts upon government and conduct formed both by the old
and the new Mediterranean world. Machiavelli, the student
of ancient Rome and modern Italy, riveted the creed of Bacon.
It might be said that never has any modern people so influenced
another in an equal space of time and letters, here as ever,
are only the voice, the symbol, of a whole life and culture if
we forgot the sway of French in the later lyth and i8th centuries^
And the power of French was alive also in the i6th. The
track of Marot, of Ronsard and the Pleiad and Desportes, of
Rabelais and Calvin and Montaigne, is found in England.
Journeymen like Boisteau and Belleforest handed on immortal
tales. The influence is noteworthy of Spanish mannerists,
above all of Guevara upon sententious prose, and of the novelists
and humorists, headed by Cervantes, upon the drama. German
legend is found not only in Marlowe's Faustus, but in the by-
ways of play and story. It will be long before the rich and
coloured tangle of these threads has been completely unravelled
with due tact and science. The presence of one strand may
here be mentioned, which appears in unexpected spots.
As in Greece, and as in the day of Coleridge and Shelley, the
fabric of poetry and prose is shot through with philosophical
ideas; a further distinction from other literatures
like the Spanish of the golden age or the French , piiy.
of 1830. But these were not so much the ideas of
the new physical science and of Bacon as of the ethical and
metaphysical ferment. The wave of free talk in the circles
of Marlowe, Greville and Raleigh ripples through their writings.
Though the direct influence of Giordano Bruno on English
writers is probably limited to a reminiscence in the Faerie
Queene (Book vii.), he was well acquainted with Sidney and
Greville, argued for the Copernican theory at Greville's house,
lectured on the soul at Oxford, and published his epoch-
marking Italian dialogues during his two years' stay (1583-
1585) in London. The debates in the earlier schools of
Italy on the nature and tenure of the soul are heard in the
6i8
ENGLISH LITERATURE
[ELIZABETHAN AGE
Nosce Teipsum (1599) of Sir John Davies; a stoicism, " of the
schools " as well as " of the blood," animates Cassius and also
the French heroes of Chapman; and if the earlier drama is sown
with Seneca's old maxims on sin and destiny, the later drama,
at least in Shakespeare, is penetrated with the freer reading of
life and conduct suggested by Montaigne. Platonism with its
vox angelica sometimes a little hoarse is present from the
youthful Hymns of Spenser to the last followers of Donne;
sometimes drawn from Plato, it is oftener the Christianized
doctrine codified by Ficino or Pico. It must be noted that
this play of philosophic thought only becomes marked after 1 580,
when the preparatory tunings of English literature are over.
We may now quickly review the period down to 1 580, in the
departments of prose, verse and drama. It was a time which
left few memorials of form.
Early modern English prose, as a medium of art, was of slow
growth. For long there was alternate strife and union (ending
in marriage) between the Latin, or more rhetorical,
isso. an ^ ' ne ancestral elements of the language, and this
was true both of diction and of construction. We need
to begin with the talk of actual life, as we find it in the hands
of the more naif writers, in its idiom and gusto and unshapen
power, to see how style gradually declared itself. In state
letters and reports, in the recorded words of Elizabeth and
Mary of Scotland and public men, in travels and memoirs, in
Latimer, in the rude early versions of Cicero and Boethius,
in the more unstudied speech of Ascham or Leland, the material
lies. At the other extreme there are the English liturgy (1549,
I SS 2 > JSSQ) with the final fusion of Anglican and Puritan elo-
quence), and the sermons of Fisher and Cranmer, nearly the
first examples of a sinuous, musical and Ciceronian cadence.
A noble pattern for saga-narrative and lyrical prose was achieved
in the successive versions (1526-1540-1568) of the Hebrew and
Greek Scriptures, where a native simple diction of short and
melodious clauses are prescribed by the matter itself. Prose, in
fact, down to Shakespeare's time, was largely the work of the
churchmen and translators, aided by the chroniclers. About the
mid-century the stories, as well as the books of conduct and
maxim, drawn from Italy and France, begin to thicken. Per-
verted symmetry of style is found in euphuistic hacks like Pettie.
Painter's Palace of Pleasure (1566) provided the plots of Bandello
and others for the dramatists. Hoby's version (1561) of Castig-
lione's Courtier, with its command of elate and subtle English,
is the most notable imported book between Berners's Froissart
(1523-1525) and North's Plutarch (1579). Ascham's School-
master is the most typical English book of Renaissance culture,
in its narrower sense, since Utopia. Holinshed's Chronicle
(1577-1587) and the work of Halle, if pre-critical, were all the
fitter to minister to Shakespeare.
The lyric impulse was fledged anew at the court of Henry
VIII. The short lines and harping burdens of Sir Thomas
Wyatt's songs show the revival, not only of a love-
poetry more plangent than anything in English since
Chaucer, but also of the long-deadened sense of metre.
In Wyatt's sonnets, octaves, terzines and other Italian measures,
we can watch the painful triumphant struggles of this noble old
master out of the slough of formlessness in which verse had been
left by Skelton. Wyatt's primary deed was his gradual re-
discovery of the iambic decasyllabic line duly accented the
line that had been first discovered by Chaucer for England;
and next came its building into sonnet and stanza. Wyatt
(d. 1542) ended with perfect formal accuracy; he has the honours
of victory; and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey (d. 1547), a
younger-hearted and more gracious but a lighter poet, carried
on his labour, and caught some of Chaucer's as well as the Italian
tunes. The blank verse of his two translated Aeneids, like all
that written previous to Peele, gave little inkling of the latencies
of the measure which was to become the cardinal one of English
poetry. It was already the vogue in Italy for translations from
the classics; and we may think of Surrey importing it like an
uncut jewel and barely conscious of its value. His original
poems, like those of Wyatt, waited for print till the eve of
Verse to
IS80.
Elizabeth's reign, when they appeared, with those of followers
like Grimoald, in Tottel's Miscellany (1557), the first of many
such garlands, and the outward proof of the poetical revival
dating twenty years earlier. But this was a false dawn. Only
one poem of authentic power, Sackville's Induction (1563) to
that dreary patriotic venture, A Mirror for Magistrates, was
published for twenty years. In spirit medieval, this picture of
the gates of hell and of the kings in bale achieves a new melody
and a new intensity, and makes the coming of Spenser far less
incredible. But poetry was long starved by the very ideal that
nursed it that of the all-sided, all-accomplished "courtier"
or cavalier, to whom verse-making was but one of all the ac-
complishments that he must perfect, like fencing, or courting,
or equestrian skill. Wyatt and Surrey, Sackville and Sidney
(and we may add Hamlet, a true Elizabethan) are of this type.
One of the first competent professional writers was George
Gascoigne, whose remarks on metric, and whose blank verse
satire, The Steel Glass (1576), save the years between Sackville
and Spenser. Otherwise the gap is filled by painful rhymesters
with rare flashes, such as Googe, Churchyard and Turberville.
The English Renaissance drama, both comic and tragic,
illustrates on the largest scale the characteristic power of the
antique at this period at first to reproduce itself in
imitation, and then to generate something utterly
different from itself, something that throws the antique
to the winds. Out of the Morality, a sermon upon the certainty
of death or the temptations of the soul, acted by personified
qualities and supernatural creatures, had grown up, in the reign
of Henry VII., the Interlude, a dialogue spoken by representative
types or trades, who faintly recalled those in Chaucer's Prologue.
These forms, which may be termed medieval, continued long and
blended; sometimes heated, as in Respublica, with doctrine,
and usually lightened by the comic play of a " Vice " or in-
carnation of sinister roguery. John Heywood was the chief
maker of the pure interludes, and Bishop Bale of the Protestant
medleys; his King Johan, a reformer's partisan tract in verse,
contains the germs of the chronicle play. In the drama down to
1580 the native talent is sparse enough, but the historical interest
is high. Out of a seeming welter of forms, the structure, the
metres and the species that Kyd and Marlowe found slowly
emerged. Comedy was first delivered from the interlude, and
fashioned in essence as we know it, by the schoolmasters. Draw-
ing on Plautus, they constructed duly-knitted plots, divided
into acts and scenes and full' of homely native fun, for their
pupils to present. In Thersites (written 1537), the oldest of
these pieces, and in Udall's Ralph Roister Doister (1552 at latest),
the best known of them, the characters are lively, and indeed
are almost individuals. In others, like Misogonus (written 1560),
the abstract element and improving purpose remain, and the
source is partly neo-Latin comedy, native or foreign. Romance
crept in: serious comedy, with its brilliant future, the comedy
of high sentiment and averted dangers mingled still with farce,
was shadowed forth in Damon and Pithias and in the curious
play Common Conditions; while the domestic comedy of in-
trigue dawned in Gascoigne's Supposes, adapted from Ariosto.
Thus were displaced the ranker rustic fun of Gammer Gurton's
Needle (written c. 1559) and other labours of " rhyming mother-
wits." But there was no style, no talk, no satisfactory metre.
The verse of comedy waited for Greene, and its prose for Lyly. _
Structure, without style, was also the main achievement of the
early tragedies. The Latin plays of Buchanan, sometimes
biblical in topic, rest, as to their form, upon Euripides. But
early English tragedy was shapen after the Senecan plays of Italy
and after Seneca himself, all of whose dramas were translated by
1581. Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, acted about 1561, and
written by Sackville and Norton, and Hughes' Misfortunes of
Arthur (acted 1588), are not so much plays as wraiths of plays,
with their chain of slaughters and revenges, their two-dimensional
personages, and their lifeless maxims which fail to sweeten the
bloodshot atmosphere. The Senecan form was not barren in
tself, as its sequel in France was to show: it was only barren
[or England. After Marlowe it was driven to the study, and was
ELIZABETHAN ACE]
ENGLISH LITERATURE
619
still written (possibly under the impulse of Mary countess of
Pembroke), by Daniel and Grevillc, with much reminiscence
of the French Senecans. But it left its trail on the real drama.
It set the pattern of a high tragical action, often motived by
revenge, swayed by large ideas of fate and retribution, and told
in blank metre; and it bequeathed, besides many moral sen-
tences, such minor points of mechanism as the Ghost, the Chorus
and the inserted play. There were many hybrid forms like
Osmond of Solent, based on foreign story, alloyed with the
mere personifications of the Morality, and yet contriving, as
in the case of Promos and Cassandra (the foundation of Measure
for Measure), to interest Shakespeare. Thus the drama by 1 580
had some of its carpentry, though not yet a true style or versifica-
tion. These were only to be won by escape from the classic
tutelage. The ruder chronicle play also began, and the reigns of
John and Henry V. amongst others were put upon the stage.
Vtrse from Spenser to Donne. Sir Philip Sidney almost
shares with Edmund Spenser the honours of announcing the
new verse, for part of his Astrophel and Stella was
written, if not known in unpublished form, about
1580-1581, and contains ten times the passion and poetry of
The Shepherd's Calendar (1579). This work, of which only a
few passages have the seal of Spenser's coming power, was justly
acclaimed for its novelty of experiment in many styles, pastoral,
satiric and triumphal, and in many measures: though it was
criticized for its " rustic " and archaic diction a " no language "
that was to have more influence upon poetry than any of the
real dialects of England. Spenser's desire to write high tragedy,
avowed in his October, was not to be granted; his nine comedies
are lost ; and he became the chief non-dramatic poet of his time
and country. Both the plaintive pessimism of Petrarch and
du Bellay, with their favourite method of emblem, and the
Platonic theory of the spiritual love and its heavenly begetting
sank into him; and the Hymns To Love and To Beauty are
possibly his earliest verses of sustained perfection and exaltation.
These two strains of feeling Spenser never lost and never
harmonized; the first of them recurs in his Complaints of 1591,
above all in The Ruins of Time, the second in his Amoretli (1595)
and Colin Clout and Epitkalamion, which are autobiographical.
These and a hundred other threads are woven into The Faerie
Queene, an unfinished allegorical epic in honour of moral goodness,
of which three books came out in 1 590 and three more in 1 596,
while the fragment Of Constancy (so-called) is first found in the
posthumous fob'o of 1609. This poem is the fullest reflex, outside
the drama, of the soul and aspirations of the time. For its
scenery and mechanism the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto furnishes
the framework. In both poems tales of knightly adventure
intertwine unconfused; in both the slaying of monsters, the
capture of strong places, and the release of the innocent, hindered
by wizard and sorcerer, or aided by magic sword and horn and
mirror, constitute the quest; and in both warriors, ladies,
dwarfs, dragons and figures from old mythology jostle dreamily
together. To all this pomp Spenser strove to give a moral and
often also a political meaning. Ariosto was not a nates sacer;
and so Spenser took Tasso's theme of the holy war waged for the
Sepulchre, and expanded it into a war between good and evil,
as be saw them in the world; between chastity and lust, loyalty
and detraction, England and Spain, England and Rome, Eliza-
beth and usurpers, Irish governor and Irish rebel, right and
wrong. The title-virtues of his six extant books he affects to
take from Aristotle; but Holiness, Temperance, Chastity,
Justice, Friendship and Courtesy form a medley of medieval,
puritanical and Greek ideals.
Spenser's moral sentiments, often ethereally noble, might well
be contrasted, and that not always to their credit, with those
more secular and naturalistic ones that rule in Shakespeare
or in Bernardino Telesio and Giordano Bruno. But The Faerie
Queene lives by its poetry; and its poetry lives independently
of its creed. The idealized figures of Elizabeth, who is th,e Faerie
Queene, and of the " magnificent " Prince Arthur, fail to bind
the adventures together, and after two books the poem breaks
down in structure. And indeed all through it relies on episode
and pageant, on its prevailing and insuppressible loveliness of
scene and tint, of phrasing and of melody, beside which the inner
meaning is often an interruption. Spenser is not to be tired;
in and out of his tapestry, with its " glooming light much like
a shade," pace his figures on horseback, or in durance, with their
clear and pictorial allegoric trappings; and they go either singly,
or in his favourite mosques or pageants, suggested by emblem-
atical painting or civic procession. He is often duly praised for
his lingering and liquid melodies and his gracious images, or
blamed for their langour; but his ground-tone is a sombre
melancholy unlike that of Jaqucs and his deepest quality
as a writer is perhaps his angry power. Few of his forty and
more thousand lines are unpoetical; in certainty of style,
amongst English poets who have written profusely, he has no
equals but Chaucer, Milton and Shelley. His " artificial " diction,
drawn from middle English, from dialect or from false analogy,
has always the intention and nearly always the effect of beauty;
we soon feel that its absence would be unnatural, and it has taken
its rank among the habitual and exquisite implements of English
poetry. This equality of noble form is Spenser's strength, as
dilution and diffusion of phrase, and a certain monotonous slow-
ness of tempo, are beyond doubt his weaknesses. His chief tech-
nical invention, the nine-line stanza (ababbcbcC) was developed
not from the Italian octave (abababcc), but by adding an alexan-
drine to the eight-line stave (ababbcbc) of Chaucer's Monk's Tale.
It is naturally articulated twice at the fifth line, where the turn
of repeated rhyme inevitably charms, and at the ninth, which
runs now to a crashing climax, now to a pensive and sighing
close. In rhyming, Spenser, if not always accurate, is one of the
most natural and resourceful of poets. His power over the heroic
couplet or quatrain is shown in his fable, Mother Hubbard's Tale,
and in his curious verse memoir, Colin Clout ; both of which
are medleys of satire and flattery. With formal tasks so various
and so hard, it is wonderful how effortless the style of Spenser
remains. His Muiopolmos is the lightest-handed of mock-
heroics. No writer of his day except Marlowe was so faithful
to the law of beauty.
The mantle of Spenser fell, somewhat in shreds, upon poets
of many schools until the Restoration. As though in thanks to
his master Tasso, he lent to Edward Fairfax, the best
translator of the Jerusalem Delivered (Godfrey of
Bulloigne, 1600), some of his own ease and intricate
melody. Harington, the witty translator of Ariosto
spoilt child of the court, owed, less to Spenser. The allegorical
colouring was nobly caught, if sometimes barbarized, in the
Christ's Victory and Triumph of the younger Giles Fletcher
(1610), and Spenser's emblematic style was strained, even
cracked, by Phineas Fletcher in The Purple Island (1633), an
aspiring fable, gorgeous in places, of the human body and
faculties. Both of these brethren clipped and marred the stanza,
but they form a link between Spenser and their student Milton.
The allegoric form, long-winded and broken-backed, survived
late in Henry More's and Joseph Beaumont's verse disquisitions
on the soul. Spenser's pastoral and allusive manner was allowed
by Drayton in his Shepherd's Garland (1593), and differently by
William Browne in Britannia's Pastorals ( 1613-1616), and by
William Basse; while his more honeyed descriptions took on a
mawkish taste in the anonymous Britain's Ida and similar poems.
His golden Platonic style was buoyantly echoed in Orchestra
(1596), Sir John Davies' poem on the dancing spheres. He is
continually traceable in 17th-century verse, blending with the
alien currents of Ben Jonson and of Donne. He was edited and
imitated in the age of Thomson, in the age of William Morris,
and constantly between.
The typical Elizabethan poet is Michael Drayton; who
followed Spenser in pastoral, Daniel, Sidney, Spenser and
Shakespeare in sonnet, Daniel again in chronicle and
legend, and Marlowe in mythological story, and who D ^ to "
yet remained himself. His Endimion and Phoebe DaakL
in passages stands near Hero and Leander; his
England's Heroical Epistles (1597) are in ringing rhetorical
couplets; his Odes (1606), like the Ballad of Agincourt and the
620
ENGLISH LITERATURE
[ELIZABETHAN AGE
Virginian Voyage, forestall and equal Cowper's or Campbell's;
his Nymphidia (1627) was the most popular of burlesque fairy
poems; and his pastorals are full of graces and felicities. The
work of Drayton that is least read and most often mentioned
is his Poly-Olbion (1612-1622), a vast and pious effort, now and
then nobly repaid, to versify the scenery, legend, customs and
particularities of every English county. The more recluse and
pensive habit of Samuel Daniel chills his long chronicle poems;
but with Chapman he is the clearest voice of Stoicism in Eliza-
bethan letters; and his harmonious nature is perfectly expressed
in a style of happy, even excellence, free alike from " fine mad-
ness " and from strain. Sonnet and epistle are his favoured
forms, and in his Musophilus (1599) as well as in his admirable
prose Defence of Rhyme (1602), he truly prophesies the hopes
and glories of that illustre vulgare, the literary speech of England.
All this patriotic and historic verse, like the earlier and ruder
Albion's England (1586) of William Warner, or Fitzgeoffrey's
poem upon Drake, or the outbursts of Spenser, was written during
or inspired by the last twenty years of the queen's reign; and
the same is true of Shakespeare's and most of the other history
plays, which duly eclipsed the formal, rusty-gray chronicle poem
of the type of the Mirror for Magistrates, though editions (1559-
1610) of the latter were long repeated. Patriotic verse outside
the theatre, however, full of zeal, started at a disadvantage
compared with love-sonnet, song, or mythic narrative, because it
had no models before it in other lands, and remained therefore
the more shapeless.
The English love-sonnet, brought in by Wyatt and rifest
between 1 590 and 1600, was revived as a purely studious imitation
by Watson in his Hekatompathia (1582), a string of
translations in one of the exceptional measures that
were freely entitled " sonnets." But from the first, in the hands
of Sidney, whose Astrophel and Stella (1591) was written, as
remarked above, about 1581, the sonnet was ever ready to
pulse into feeling, and to flash into unborrowed beauty, embodying
sometimes dramatic fancy and often living experience. These
three fibres of imitation, imagination and confession are inter-
twisted beyond severance in many of the cycles, and now one,
now another is uppermost. Incaution might read a personal
diary into Thomas Lodge's Phillis (1593), which is often a
translation from Ronsard. Literal judges have announced that
Shakespeare's Sonnets are but his mode of taking exercise.
But there is poetry in " God's plenty " almost everywhere; and
few of the series fail of lovely lines or phrasing or even of perfect
sonnets. This holds of Henry Constable's Diana (1592), of the
Parthenophil and Parthenophe of Barnabe Barnes ( 1 593) , inebriate
with poetry, and of the stray minor groups, Alcilia, Licia, Caelia;
while the Caelica of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, in irregular
form, is full of metaphysical passion struggling to be delivered.
Astrophel and Stella, Dray ton's Idea (1594-1619), Spenser's
Amoretti and Shakespeare's Sonnets (printed 1609) are addressed
to definite and probably to known persons, and are charged with
true poetic rage, ecstatic or plaintive, desperate or solemn, if they
are also intermingled with the mere word-play that mocks or
beguiles the ebb of feeling, or with the purely plastic work that is
done for solace. In most of these series, as in Daniel's paler but
exquisitely-wrought Delia (1591-1592), the form is that of the
three separate quatrains with the closing couplet for emotional
and melodic climax; a scheme slowly but defiantly evolved,
through traceable gradations, from that stricter one of Italy,
which Drummond and Milton revived, and where the crisis
properly coincides with the change from octave to sestet.
The amorous mythologic tale in verse derives immediately
from contemporary Italy, but in the beginning from Ovid,
whose Metamorphoses, familiar in Golding's old version
pofms ( 1 SSS~ I SS7)) furnished descriptions, decorations and
many tales, while his Heroides gave Chaucer and
Boccaccio a model for the self-anatomy of tragic or plaintive
sentiment. Within ten years, between 1588 and 1598, during
.the early sonnet-vogue, appeared Lodge's Scillaes Metamorphosis,
Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece, Marlowe's
Hero and Leander and Drayton's Endimion and Phoebe. Shake-
Lyrk.
speare owed something to Lodge, and Drayton to Marlowe.
All these points describe a love-situation at length, and save
in one instance they describe it from without. The exception
is Marlowe, who achieves a more than Sicilian perfection; he
says everything, and is equal to everything that he has to say.
In Venus and Adonis the poet is enamoured less of love than of the
tones and poses of lovers and of the beauty and gallant motion
of animals, while in The Rape of Lucrece he is intent on the
gradations of lust, shame and indignation, in which he has a
spectator's interest. Virtuosity, or the delight of the executant
in his own brilliant cunning, is the mark of most of these pieces.
If we go to the lyrics, the versified mythic tales and the
sonnets of Elizabethan times for the kind of feeling that Moliere's
Alceste loved and that Burns and Shelley poured into
song, we shall often come away disappointed, and think
the old poetry heartless. But it is not heartless, any more
than it is always impassioned or personal; it is decorative.
The feeling is often that of the craftsman; it is not of the singer
who spends his vital essence in song and commands an answering
thrill so long as his native language is alive or understood.
The arts that deal with ivories or enamelling or silver suggest
themselves while we watch the delighted tinting and chasing,
the sense for gesture and grouping (in Venus and Adonis), or the
delicate beating out of rhyme in a madrigal, or the designing of
a single motive, or two contrasted motives, within the panel of
the sonnet. And soon it is evident how passion and emotion
readily become plastic matter too, whether they be drawn from
books or observation or self-scrutiny. This is above all the
case in the sonnet; but it is found in the lyric as well. The
result is a wonderful fertility of lyrical pattern, a wonderfully
diffused power of lyrical execution, never to recur at any later
time of English literature. Wyatt had to recover the very form
of such verse from oblivion, and this he did in the school of trans-
lation and adaptation. Not only the decasyllabic, but the lyric,
in short lines had almost died out of memory, and Wyatt brought
it back. From his day to Spenser's there is not much lyric
that is noteworthy, though in Gascoigne and others the impulse
is seen. The introduction of Italian music, with its favourite
metrical schemes, such as the madrigal, powerfully schooled and
coloured lyric: in especial, the caressing double ending, regular
in Italian but heavier in English, became common. The Italian
poems were often translated in their own measure, line by line,
and the musical setting retained. Their tunes, or other tunes,
were then coupled with new and original poems; and both
appeared together in the song-books of Dowland the lutanist,
of Jones and Byrd (1588), and in chief (1601-1619) f Thomas
Campion. The words of Campion's songs are not only supremely
musical in the wider sense, but are chosen for their singing
quality. Misled awhile by the heresy that rhyme was wrong,
he was yet a master of lovely rhyming, as well as of a lyrical style
of great range, gaily or gravely happy. But, as with most of his
fellows, singing is rather his calling than his consolation. The
lyrics that are sprinkled in plays and romances are the finest
of this period, and perhaps, in their kind, of any period. Shake-
speare is the greatest in this province also; but the power of
infallible and unforgettable song is often granted to slighter,
gentler playwrights like Greene and Dekker, while it is denied
to men of weightier build and sterner purpose like Chapman and
Jonson. The songs of Jonson are indeed at their best of absolute
and antique finish; but the irrevocable dew of night or dawn
seldom lies upon them as it lies on the songs of Webster or of
Fletcher. The best lyrics in the plays are dramatic; they must
be read in their own setting. While the action stops, they seize
and dally with the dominant emotion of the scene, and yet relieve
it. The songs of Lodge and Breton, of Drayton and Daniel,
of Oxford and Raleigh, and the fervid brief flights of the Jesuit
Southwell, show the omnipresence of the vital gift, whether
among professional writers of the journalistic type, or among
poets whose gift was not primarily song, or among men of action
and quality or men of religion, who only wrote when they were
stirred. Lullaby and valentine and compliment, and love-
plaint ranging from gallantry to desperation, are all there;
ELIZABETHAN AGE]
ENGLISH LITERATURE
621
and the Fortunate Hour, which visiU commonly only a few men
in a generation, and those but now and then in their lives, is
never far off. But the master of melody, Spenser, left no songs,
apart from his two insuperable wedding odes. And religious
lyric is rarer before the reign of James. Much of the best lyric
is saved for us by the various Miscellanies, A Handful of Pleasant
Mights (1584), the Pkornix Sest (1593) and Davison's Poetical
Rhapsody (1602); while other such collections, like England's
Heli(on(i6oo), were chiefly garlands of verse that was already in
print.
There is plenty of satiric anger and raillery in the spirit of the
time, but the most genuine pan of it is drawn off into drama.
Except for stray passages in Spenser, Drayton and others,
formal satire, though profuse, was a literary unreal thing, a pose
in the manner of Persius or Juvenal, and tiresome in expression.
In this kind only Donne triumphed. The attempts of Lodge and
Hall and Marston and John Davies of Hereford and Guilpin and
Wither are for the most part simply weariful in different ways,
and satire waited for Dryden and his age. The attempt, however,
persisted throughout. Wyatt was the first and last who suc-
ceeded in the genial, natural Horatian style.
Verse from Donne to Milton. As the age of Elizabeth receded,
some changes came slowly over non-dramatic verse. In Jonson,
as in John Donne (1573-1631), one of the greater poets
Itr of the nation, and in many writers after Donne, may
be traced a kind of Counter-Renaissance, or revulsion
against the natural man and his claims to pleasure a
revulsion from which regret for pleasure lost is seldom far.
Poetry becomes more ascetic and mystical, and this feeling takes
shelter alike in the Anglican and in the Roman faith. George
Herbert (The Temple, 1633), the most popular, quaint and
pious of the school, but the least poetical; Crashaw, with his one
ecstatic vision ( The Flaming Heart)a.nd occasional golden stanzas ;
Henry Vaughan, who wrote from 1646 to 1678, with his mystical
landscape and magical cadences; and Thomas Traherne, his
fellow-dreamer, are the best known of the religious Fantastics.
But, earlier than most of these are Lord Herbert of Cherbury,
and Habington with his Castara (1634), who show the same
temper, if a fitful power and felicity. Such writers form the
devouter section of the famous "metaphysical" or "fantastic"
school, which includes, besides Donne its founder, pure amorists
like Carew (whose touch on certain rhythms has no fellow),
young academic followers like Cartwright and Cleveland (in
whom survives the vein of satire that also marks the school),
and Abraham Cowley, who wrote from 1633 to 1678, and was
perhaps fhe most acceptable living poet about the middle of the
century. In his Life of Cowley Johnson tramples on the '" meta-
physical " poets and their vices, and he is generally right in
detail. The shock of cold quaintness, which every one of them
continually administers, is fatal. Johnson only erred in ignoring
all their virtues and all their historical importance.
In Donne poetry became deeply intellectualizcd, and in temper
disquisitive and introspective. The poet's emotion is played
with in a cat-and-mouse fashion, and he torments it subtly.
Donne's passion is so real, if so unheard-of, and his brain so
finely-dividing, that he can make almost any image, even the
remotest, even the commonest, poetical. His satires, his Val-
entine, his Litany, and his lyric or odic pieces in general, have
an insolent and sudden daring which is warranted by deep-
seated power and is only equalled by a few of those tragedians
who are his nearest of kin. The recurring contrast of " wit " or
intelligence, and " will " or desire, their struggle, their mutual
illumination, their fusion as into some third and undiscovered
element of human nature, are but one idiosyncrasy of Donne's
intricate soul, whose general progress, so far as his dateless
poems permit of its discovery, seems to have been from a pagan-
ism that is unashamed but crossed with gusts of compunction,
to a mystical and otherwordly temper alloyed with covetous
regrets. The Anatomy of the World and 'other ambitious pieces
have the same quality amid their outrageous strangeness.
In Donne and his successors the merely ingenious and ransacking
intellect often came to overbalance truth and passion; and hence
arose conceits and abstract verbiage, and the difficulty of finding
a perfect poem, however brief, despite the omnipresence of the
poetic gift. The " fantastic " school, if it contains some of the
rarest sallies and passages in English, is one of the least satis-
factory. Its faults only exaggerate those of Sidney, Greville
and Shakespeare, who often misuse homely or technical meta-
phor; and English verse shared, by coincidence not by borrow-
ing, and with variations of its own, in the general strain and
torture of style that was besetting so many poets of the Latin
countries. Yet these poets well earn the name of metaphysical,
not for their philosophic phrasing, but for the shuttle-flight of
their fancy to and fro between the things of earth and the realities
of spirit that lie beyond the screen of the flesh.
Between Spenser and Milton many measures of lyrical and
other poetry were modified. Donne's frequent use of roughly-
accentual, almost tuneless lines is unexplained and _ A <ftm
was not often followed. Rhythm in general came to
be studied more for its own sake, and the study was rewarded.
The lovely cordial music of Carew's amorous iambics, or of
Wither's trochees, or of Crashaw's odes, or of Marvell's octo-
syllables, has never been regained. The formal ode set in,
sometimes regularly " Pindaric " in strophe-grouping, sometimes
irregularly " Pindaric " as in Cowley's experiments. Above all,
the heroic couplet, of the isolated, balanced, rhetorical order,
such as Spenser, Drayton, Fairfax and Sylvester, the translator
(1500-1606) of Du Bartas, had often used, began to be a regular
instrument of verse, and that for special purposes which soon
became lastingly associated with it. The flatteries of Edmund
Waller and theOvidian translations of Sandys dispute the priority
for smoothness and finish, though the fame was Waller's for
two generations; but Denham's overestimated Cooper's Hill
(1642), Cowley's Davideis (1656), and even Ogilby's Aeneid
made the path plainer for Dryden, the first sovereign of the
rhetorical couplet which throve as blank verse declined. Sonnet
and madrigal were the favoured measures of William Drummond
of Hawthornden, a real and exquisite poet of the studio, who
shows the general drift of verse towards sequestered and religious
feeling. Drummond's Poems of 1616 and Flowers of Zion (1623)
are full of Petrarch and Plato as well as of Christian resignation,
and he kept alive the artistry of phrasing and versification in a
time of indiscipline and conflicting forms. William Browne has
been named as a Spenserian, but his Britannia's Pastorals
(1613-1616), with their slowly-rippling and overflowing couplets
which influenced Keats, were a medley of a novel kind. George
Wither may equally rank among the lighter followers of Spenser,
the easy masters of lyrical narrative, and the devotional poets.
But his Shepherd's Hunting and other pieces in his volume of
1622 contain lovely landscapes, partly English and partly
artificial, and stand far above his pious works, and still further
above the dreary satires which he lived to continue after the
Restoration.
Of poets yet unmentioned, Robert Herrick is the chief, with
his two thousand lyrics and epigrams, gathered in Hesperides
and Noble Numbers (1648). His power of song and
sureness of cadence are not excelled within his range of
topic, which includes flowers and maidens whom he treats
as creatures of the same race and the swift decay of both
their beauties, and secular regret over this decay and his own
mortality and the transience of amorous pleasure, and the virtues
of his friends, and country sports and lore, and religious com-
punction for his own paganism. The Hesperides are pure Re-
naissance work, in natural sympathy with the Roman elegiac
writings and with the Pseudo-Anacreon. Cowley is best where he
is nearest Herrick, and his posy of short lyrics outlives his " epic
and Pindaric art." There are many writers who last by virtue
of one or two poems; Suckling by his adept playfulness, Love-
lace and Montrose by a few gallant stanzas, and many a name-
less poet by many a consummate cadence. It is the age
of sudden flights and brief perfections. All the farther
out of reach, yet never wholly despaired of or un-
attempted in England, was the " long poem," heroical and noble,
the " phantom epic," that shadow of the ancient masterpieces.
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JHiltoa.
which had striven to life in Italy and France. Davenant's
Gondibert (1651), Cowley's Davideis and Chamberlayne's Pharon-
nida (1659) attest the effort which Milton in 1658 resumed with
triumph. These works have between them all the vices possible
to epic verse, dulness and flatness, faintness and quaintness and
incoherence. But there is some poetry in each of them, and in
Pharonnida there is far more than enough poetry to save it.
Few writers have found a flawless style of their own so early
in life as John Milton (1608-1674). His youthful pieces show
some signs of Spenser and the Caroline fantastics;
but soon his vast poetical reading ran clear and lay at
the service of his talent. His vision and phrasing of natural
things were already original in the Nativity Ode, written when he
was twenty; and, there also, his versification was already that
of a master, of a renovator. The pensive and figured beauty of
L' Allegro and // Penseroso, two contrasted emblematic panels,
the high innocent Platonism and golden blank verse of the
Comus (1634); the birth of long-sleeping power in the Lycidas
(!637), with its unapproached contrivance both in evolution
and detail, where the precious essences of earlier myth and
pastoral seem to be distilled for an offering in honour of the
tombless friend; the newness, the promise, the sureness of
it all amid the current schools! The historian finds in these
poems, with their echoes of Plato and Sannazzaro, of Geoffrey
of Monmouth and St John, the richest and most perfect instance
of the studious, decorative Renaissance style, and is not surprised
to find Milton's scholars a century later in the age of Gray.
The critic, while feeling that the strictly lyrical, spontaneous
element is absent, is all the more baffled by the skill and enduring
charm. The sonnets were written before or during Milton's
long immersion (1637-1658) in prose and warfare, and show the
same gifts. They are hot cast in the traditional form of love-
cycle, but are occasional poems; in metre they revert, not always
strictly but once or twice in full perfection, to the Italian scheme;
and they recall not Petrarch but the spiritual elegies or patriot
exaltations of Dante or Guidiccioni.
Milton also had a medieval side to his brain, as the History of
Britain shows. The heroic theme, which he had resolved from
his youth up to celebrate, at last, after many hesitations, proved
to be the fall of man. This, for one of his creed and for the
audience he desired, was the greatest theme of all. Its scene
was the Ptolemaic universe with the Christian heaven and hell
inserted. The time, indicated by retrospect and prophecy,
was the whole of that portion of eternity, from the creation of
Christ to the doomsday, of which the history was sacredly
revealed. The subject and the general span of the action went
back to the popular mystery play; and Milton at first planned
out Paradise Lost as such a play, with certain elements of classic
tragedy embodied. But according to the current theory the epic,
not the drama, was the noblest form of verse; and, feeling
where his power lay, he adopted the epic. The subject, therefore,
was partly medieval, partly Protestant,- for Milton was a true
Protestant in having a variant of doctrine shared by no other
mortal. But the ordering and presentment, with their overture,
their interpolated episodes or narratives, their journeys between
Olympus, Earth and hell, invocations, set similes, battles and
divine thunderbolts, are those of the classical epic. Had Milton
shared the free thought as well as the scholarship of the Renais-
sance, the poem could never have existed. With all his range
of soul and skill, he had a narrower speculative brain than any
poet of equal gift; and this was well for his great and peculiar
task. But whatever Milton may fail to be, his heroic writing
is the permanent and absolute expression of something that in
the English stock is inveterate the Promethean self-possession
of the mind in defeat, its right to solitude there, its claim to
judge and deny the victor. This is the spirit of his devils, beside
whom his divinities, his unfallen angels (Abdiel excepted), and
even his human couple with their radiance and beauty of line,
all seem shadowy. The discord between Milton's doctrine and
his sympathies in Paradise Lost (1667) has never escaped notice.
The discord between his doctrine and his culture comes out
in Paradise Regained (1671), when he has at once to reprobate
and glorify Athens, the " mother of arts." In this afterthought
to the earlier epic the action is slight, the Enemy has lost spirit,
and the Christ is something of a pedagogue. But there is a new
charm in its even, grey desert tint, sprinkled with illuminations
of gold and luxury. In Samson Agonistes (1671) the ethical
treatment as well as the machinery is Sophoclean, and the theo-
logy not wholly Christian. But the fault of Samson is forgotten
in his suffering, which is Milton's own; and thus a cross-current
of sympathy is set up, which may not be much in keeping with
the story, but revives the somewhat exhausted interest and
heightens a few passages into a bare and inaccessible grandeur.
The essential solitude of Milton's energies is best seen in his
later style and versification. When he resumed poetry about
1658, he had nothing around him to help him as an artist in
heroic language. The most recent memories of the drama
were also the worst; the forms of Cowley and Davenant, the
would-be epic poets, were impossible. Spenser's manner was
too even and fluid as a rule for such a purpose, and his power
was of an alien kind. Thus Milton went back, doubtless full of
Greek and Latin memories, to Marlowe, Shakespeare and others
among the greater dramatists (including John Ford) ; and their
tragic diction and measure are the half-hidden bases of his own.
The product, however, is unlike anything except the imitations
of itself. The incongruous elements of the Paradise Lost and
its divided sympathies are cemented, at least superficially, by
its style, perhaps the surest for dignity, character and beauty
that any Germanic language has yet developed. If dull and
pedantic over certain stretches, it is usually infallible. It is
many styles in one, and Time has laid no hand on it. In these
three later poems its variety can be seen. It is perfect in personal
invocation and appeal; in the complex but unfigured rhetoric
of the speeches; in narrative of all kinds; for the inlaying work
of simile or scenery or pageant, where the quick, pure impressions
of Milton's youth and prime possibly kept fresher by his
blindness are felt through the sometimes conventional setting;
and for soliloquy and choric speech of a might unapproachable
since Dante. To these calls his blank verse responds at every
point. It is the seal of Milton's artistry, as of his self-confidence,
for it greatly extends, for the epical purpose, all the known
powers and liberties of the metre; and yet, as has often been
shown, it does so not spasmodically but within fixed technical
laws or rather habits. Latterly, the underlying metrical ictus is
at times hard to detect. But Milton remains by far the surest
and greatest instrumentalist, outside the drama, on the English
unrhymed line. He would, however, have scorned to be judged
on his form alone. His soul and temper are not merely
unique in force. T,heir historic and representative character
ensure attention, so long as the oppositions of soul and temper
in the England of Milton's time remain, as they still are, the
deepest in the national life. He is sometimes said to harmonize
the Renaissance and the Puritan spirit; but he does not do this,
for nothing can do it. The Puritan spirit is the deep thing in
Milton; all his culture only gives immortal form to its expression.
The critics have instinctively felt that this is true; and that
is why their political and religious prepossessions have nearly
always coloured, and perhaps must colour, every judgment
passed upon him. Not otherwise can he be taken seriously,
until historians are without public passions and convictions,
or the strife between the hierarch and the Protestant is quenched
in English civilization.
Drama, 1580-1642. We must now go back to the drama,
which lies behind Milton, and is the most individual product of
all English Literature. The nascent drama of genius Drama
can be found in the " University wits," who flour-
ished between 1580 and 1595, and the chief of whom are Lyly,
Kyd, Peele, Greene and Marlowe. John Lyly is the first practi-
tioner in prose of shapely comic plot and pointed talk the
artificial but actual talk of courtly masquers who rally one
another with a bright and barren finish that is second nature.
Campaspe, Sapho and Phao, Midas, and Lyly's other comedies,
mostly written from 1580 to 1591, are frail vessels, often filled
with compliment, mythological allegory, or topical satire, and
ELIZABETHAN AGE)
ENGLISH LITERATURE
623
enamelled with pastoral interlude and flower-like song. The
work of Thomas Kyd, especially The Spanish Tragedy (written
t. 1585), was the roost violent effort to put new wine into the
old Senecan bottles, and he probably wrote the lost pro-Shake-
spearian Htimltt. He transmitted to the later drama that
subject of pious but ruinous revenge, which is used by Chapman,
Marston, Webster and many others; and his chief play was
translated and long acted in Germany. Kyd's want of modula-
tion is complete, but he commands a substantial skill of dramatic
mechanism, and he has more than the feeling for power, just as
Peele and Greene have more than the feeling for luxury or grace.
To the expression of luxury Peele 's often stately blank verse is
well fitted, and it is by far the most correct and musical before
Marlowe's, as his Arraignment of Paris (1584) and his David and
Btlhsiibe attest. Greene did something to create the blank verse
of gentle comedy, and to introduce the tone of idyll and chivalry,
in his Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1594). Otherwise these
writers, with Nashe and Lodge, fall into the wake of Marlowe.
Tamburlaine, in two pans (part i. c. 1587), The Life and
Dtatk of Doctor Faustus, Tke Jew of Malta, Edward II. (the first
-^ chronicle play of genius), and the incomplete poem
Hero and Leander are Christopher Marlowe's title-
deeds (1564-1593). He established tragedy, and inspired its
master, and created for it an adequate diction and versification.
His command of vibrant and heroic recitative should not obscure
his power, in his greater passages, describing the descent of
Helen, the passing of Mortimer, and the union of Hero and
Leander, to attain a kind of Greek transparency and perfection.
The thirst for ideal beauty, for endless empire, and for prohibited
knowledge, no poet has better expressed, and in this respect
Giordano Bruno is nearest him in his own time. This thirst is
his own; his great cartoon-figures, gigantic rather than heroic,
proclaim it for him: their type recurs through the drama, from
Richard III. to Dryden's orotund heroes; but in Faustus and in
Edward II. they become real, almost human beings. His con-
structive gift is less developed in proportion, though Goethe
praised the planning-out of Faustus. The glory and influence
of Marlowe on the side of form rest largely on his meteoric blank
lines, which are varied not a little, and nobly harmonized into
periods, and resonant with names to the point of splendid ex-
travagance; and their sound is heard in Milton, whom he taught
bow to express the grief and dctpair of demons dissatisfied with
their kingdom. Shakespeare did not excel Marlowe in Marlowe's
own excellences, though he humanized Marlowe's Jew, launched
his own blank verse on the tide of Marlowe's oratory, and
modulated, in Richard II., his master's type of chronicle
tragedy.
As the middle ages receded, the known life of man upon this
earth became of sovereign interest, and of this interest the
drama is the freest artistic expression. If Marlowe
is the voice of the impulse to explore, the plays of
Shakespeare are the amplest freight brought home
by any voyager. Shakespeare is not only the greatest but the
earliest English dramatist who took humanity for his province.
But this he did not do from the beginning. He was at first
subdued to what he worked in; and though the dry pedantic
tragedy was shattered and could not touch him, the gore and
rant, the impure though genuine force of Kyd do not seem at
first to have repelled him; if, as is likely, he had a hand in
Titus A ndronicus. He probably served with Marlowe and others
of the school at various stages in the composition of the three
chronicle dramas finally entitled Henry VI. But besides the
high-superlative style that is common to them all, there runs
through them the rhymed rhetoric with which Shakespeare
dallied for some time, as well as the softer flute-notes and deeper
undersong that foretell his later blank verse. In Richard III.,
though it is built on the scheme and charged with the style of
Marlowe, Shakespeare first showed the intensity of his original
power. But after a few years he swept out of Marlowe's orbit
into his own vaster and unretuming curve. In King John the
lyrical, epical, satirical and pathetic chords are all present, if
they are scarcely harmonized. Meantime, Lyly and Greene
IS90-
IS9S.
IS96.
1600.
having displaced the uncouther comedy, Shakespeare learned
all they had to teach, and shaped the comedy of poetic, chivalrous
fancy and good-tempered high spirits, which showed him the
way of escape from his own rhetoric, and enabled him to perfect
his youthful, noble and gentle blank verse. This attained its
utmost fineness in Richard II., and its full cordiality and beauty
in the other plays that consummate this period
A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice,
and one romantic tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. Behind
them lay the earlier and fainter romances, with their chivalry
and gaiety, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost and
The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Throughout these years blank
verse contended with rhyme, which Shakespeare after a while
abandoned save for special purposes, as though he had exhausted
its honey. The Italian Renaissance is felt in the scenery and
setting of these plays. The novella furnishes the story, which
passes in a city of the Southern type, with its absolute ruler,
its fantastic by-laws on which the plot nominally turns, and
its mixture of real life and marvel. The personages, at first
fainter of feature and symmetrically paired, soon assume sharper
outline: Richard II. and Shylock, Portia and Juliet, and Juliet's
Nurse and Bottom are created. The novella has left the earth and
taken wings: the spirit is now that of youth and Fancy (or love
brooding among the shallows) with interludes of " fierce vexa-
tion," or of tragedy, or of kindly farce. And there is a visionary
element, felt in the musings of Theseus upon the nature of poetry
of the dream-faculty itself; an element which is new, like the
use made of fairy folklore, in the poetry of England.
Tragedy is absent in the succeeding histories (1597-1509),
and the comedies of wit and romance (1590-1600), in which
Shakespeare perfected his style for stately, pensive
or boisterous themes. Falstaff, the most popular as
he is the wittiest of all imaginable comic persons,
dominates, as to their prose or lower world, the two parts of
Henry IV., and its interlude or offshoot, The Merry Wines of
Windsor. The play that celebrates Henry V. is less a drama
than a pageant, diversified with mighty orations and cheerful
humours, and filled with the love of Shakespeare for England.
Here the most indigenous form of art invented by the English
Renaissance reaches its climax. The Histories are peopled
chiefly by men and warriors, of whom Hotspur, " dying in his
excellence and flower," is perhaps more attractive than Henry
of Agincourt. But in the " middle comedies," As You Like It,
Much Ado, and Twelfth Night, the warriors are home at court,
where women rule the scene and deserve to rule it; for their
wit now gives the note; and Shakespeare's prose, the medium
of their talk, has a finer grace and humour than ever before,
euphuism lying well in subjection behind it.
Mankind and this world have never been so sharply sifted
or so sternly consoled, since Lucretius, as in Shakespeare's
tragedies. The energy which created them evades,
like that of the sun, our estimate. But they were not
out of relation to their time, the first few years of the
reign of James, with its conspiracies, its Somerset and Overbury
horrors, its enigmatic and sombre figures like Raleigh, and its
revulsion from Elizabethan buoyancy. In the same decade were
written the chief tragediesof Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Marston,
Tourneur; and The White Devil, and A Yorkshire Tragedy,
and The Maid's Tragedy, and A Woman Killed with Kindness.
But, in spite of Shakespeare's affinities with these authors at
many points, Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, with the three
Roman plays (written at intervals and not together), and the
two quasi-antique plays Troilus and Cressida, and Timon of
Athens, form a body of drama apart from anything else in the
world. They reveal a new tragic philosophy, a new poetic style,
a new dramatic technique and a new world of characters. In
one way above all Shakespeare stands apart; he not only
appropriates the. ancient pattern of heroism, of right living and
right dying, revealed by North's Plutarch; others did this also;
but the intellectual movement of the time, though by no means
fully reflected, is reflected in his tragedies far more than else-
where. The new and troublous thoughts on man and conduct
1601-
1608.
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ENGLISH LITERATURE
[ELIZABETHAN AGE
Last
period.
that were penetrating the general mind, the freedom and play
of vision that Montaigne above all had stimulated, here find
their fullest scope; and Florio's translation (1603) of Montaigne's
Essays, coming out between the first and the second versions
of Shakespeare's Hamlet, counted probably for more than any
other book. The Sonnets (published 1609) are al3O full of far-
wandering thoughts on truth and beauty and on good and evil.
The story they reveal may be ranked with the situations of the
stranger dramas like Troilus and Measure for Measure. But
whether or no it is a true story, and the Sonnets in the main a
confession, they would be at the very worst a perfect dramatic
record of a great poet's suffering and friendship.
Shakespeare's last period, that of his tragi-comedies, begins
about 1608 with his contributions to Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
For unknown reasons he was moved, about the time
of his retirement home, to record, as though in justice
to the world, the happy turns by which tragic disaster
is at times averted. Pericles, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline,
and The Tempest all move, after a series of crimes, calumnies,
or estrangements, to some final scene of enthralling beauty,
where the lost reappear and love is recovered; as though after
all the faint and desperate last partings of Lear and Cordelia,
of Hamlet and Horatio which Shakespeare had imagined, he
must make retrieval with the picture of young and happy
creatures whose life renews hope even in the experienced. To
this end he chose the loose action and free atmosphere of the
roman d'aventure, which had already been adapted by Beaumont
and Fletcher, who may herein have furnished Shakespeare with
novel and successful theatrical effects, and who certainly in turn
studied his handiwork. In The Tempest this tragi-comic scheme
is fitted to the tales brought by explorers of far isles, wild men,
strange gods and airy music. Even if it be true that in
Prospero's words the poet bids farewell to his magic, he took
part later nevertheless in the composition of Henry VIII.;
and not improbably also in The Two Noble Kinsmen. His share
in two early pieces, Arden of Fever sham (1592) and Edward HI.,
has been urged, never established, and of many other dramas
he was once idly accused.
Shakespeare's throne rests on the foundation of three equal
and master faculties. One is that of expression and versification ;
the next is the invention and presentation of human character
in action; the third is the theatrical faculty. The writing of
Dante may seem to us more steadily great and perfect, when we
remember Shakespeare's conceits, his experiments, his haste
and impatience in his long wrestle with tragic language, his not
infrequent sheer infelicities. But Dante is always himself, he
had not to find words for hundreds of imaginary persons. Balzac,
again, may have created and exhibited as many types of man-
kind, but except in soul he is not a poet. Shakespeare is a
supreme if not infallible poet; his verse, often of an antique
simplicity or of a rich, harmonious, romantic perfection, is at
other times strained and shattered with what it tries to express,
and attains beauty only through discord. He is also many
persons in one; in his Sonnets he is even, it may be thought,
himself. But he had furthermore to study a personality not
of his own fancying with something in it of Caliban, of Dogberry
and of Cleopatra that of the audience in a playhouse. He
belongs distinctly to the poets like Jonson and Massinger who
are true to their art as practical dramatists, not to the poets like
Chapman whose works chance to be in the form of plays. Shake-
speare's mastery of this art is approved now by every nation.
But apart from the skill that makes him eternally actable the
skill of raising, straining and relieving the suspense, and bringing
it to such an ending as the theatre will tolerate he played upon
every chord in his own hearers. He frankly enlisted Jew-hatred,
Pope-hatred and France-hatred; he flattered the queen, and
celebrated the Union, and stormed the house with his fanfare
over the national . soldier, Henry of Agincourt, and glorified
England, as in Cymbeline, to the last. But in deeper ways he is
the chief of playwrights. Unlike another master, Ibsen, he
nearly always tells us, without emphasis, by the words and
behaviour of his characters, which of them we are to love and
Jonson.
hate, and when we are to love and when to hate those whom we
can neither love nor hate wholly. Yet he is not to be bribed,
and deals to his characters something of the same injustice or
rough justice that is found in real life. His loyalty to life, as
well as to the stage, puts the crown on his felicity and his fertility,
and raises him to his solitude of dramatic greatness.
Shakespeare's method could not be imparted, and despite
reverberations in Beaumont, Fletcher, Webster and others he
left no school. But his friend Ben Jonson, his nearest
equal in vigour of brain, though not in poetical in-
tuition, was the greatest of dramatic influences down to the
shutting of the theatres in 1642, and his comedies found fresh
disciples even after 1660. He had " the devouring eye and the
portraying hand"; he could master and order the contents of a
mighty if somewhat burdensome memory into an organic drama,
whether the matter lay in Roman historians or before his eyes
in the London streets. He had an armoury of doctrine, drawn
from the Poetics and Horace, which moulded his creative
practice. This was also partly founded on a revulsion against
the plays around him, with their loose build and moral improb-
abilities. But in spite of his photographic and constructive
power, his vision is too seldom free and genial; it is that of the
satirist who thinks that his office is to improve mankind by
derisively representing it. And he does this by beginning with
the " humour," or abstract idiosyncrasy or quality, and clothing
it with accurately minute costume and gesture, so that it may
pass for a man; and indeed the result is as real as many a man,
and in his best-tempered and youthful comedy, Every Man in
his Humour (acted 1598), it is very like life. In Jonson's monu-
mental pieces, Volpone or the Fox (acted 1605) and The Alchemist
(acted 1610), our laughter is arrested by the lowering and
portentous atmosphere, or is loud and hard, startled by the
enormous skill and energy displayed. Nor are the joy and relief
of poetical comedy given for an instant by The Silent Woman,
Bartholomew Fair (acted 1614), or The Staple of News, still less
by topical plays like Cynthia's Revels, though their unfailing
farce and rampant fun are less charged with contempt. The
erudite tragedies, Sejanus (acted 1603) and Catiline, chiefly
live by passages of high forensic power. Jonson's finer elegies,
eulogies and lyrics, which are many, and his fragmentary Sad
Shepherd, show that he also had a free and lovely talent, often
smothered by doctrine and temper; and his verse, usually strong
but full of knots and snags, becomes flowing and graciously
finished. His prose is of the best, especially in his Discoveries,
a series of ethical essays and critical maxims; its prevalently
brief and emphatic rhythms suggesting those of Hobbes, and
even, though less easy and civil and various, those of Dryden.
The " sons " of Jonson, Randolph and Browne, Shadwell and
Wilson, were heirs rather to his riot of " humours," his learned
method and satiric aim, than to his larger style, his architectural
power, or his relieving graces.
As a whole, the romantic drama (so to entitle the remaining
bulk of plays down to 1642) is a vast stifled jungle, full of wild
life and song, with strange growths and heady perfumes,
with glades of sunshine and recesses of poisoned drama
darkness; it is not a cleared forest, where single and
splendid trees grow to shapely perfection. It has " poetry
enough for anything"; passionate situations, and their elo-
quence; and a number, doubtless small considering its mass, of
living and memorable personages. Moral keeping and construc-
tive mastery are rarer still; and too seldom through a whole
drama do we see human life and hear its voices, arranged and
orchestrated by the artist. But it can be truly said in defence
that while structure without poetry is void (as it tended at
times to be in Ben Jonson), poetry without structure is still
poetry, and that the romantic drama is like nothing else in this
world for variety of accent and unexpectedness of beauty.
We must read it through, as Charles Lamb did, to do it justice.
The diffusion of its characteristic excellences is surprising. Of
its extant plays it is hardly safe to leave one unopened, if we are
searchers for whatsoever is lovely or admirable. The reasons
for the lack of steadfast power and artistic conscience lay partly
ELIZABETHAN AGEJ
ENGLISH LITERATURE
625
in the conditions of the stage. Playwrights usually wrote
rapidly for bread, and sold their rights. The performances of
each play were few. There was no authors' copyright, and
dramas were made to be seen and heard, not to be read. There
was no articulate dramatic criticism, except such as we find
casually in Shakespeare, and in the practice and theory of Jonson,
who was deaf or hostile to some of the chief virtues of the romantic
playwrights.
The wealth of dramatic production is so great that only a
broad classification is here offered. George Chapman stands
apart, nearest to the greatest in high austerity of
sentiment and in the gracious gravity of his romantic
love-comedies. But the crude melodrama of his tragedies is
void of true theatrical skill. His quasi-historical French tragedies
on Bussy d'Ambois and Biron and Chabot best show his gift
and also his insufferable interrupting quaintness. His versions
of Homer (1598-1624), honoured alike by Jonson and by Keats,
are the greatest verse translations of the time, and the real work
of Chapman's life. Their virtues are only partially Homer's,
but the general epic nobility and the majesty of single lines,
which in length are the near equivalent of the hexameter,
redeem the want of Homer's limpidity and continuity and the
translator's imperfect knowledge of Greek. A vein of satiric
niggedness unites Jonson and Chapman with Marston and Hall,
the professors of an artificial and disgusting invective; and the
same strain spoils Mansion's plays, and obscures his genuine
command of the language of feverish and bitter sentiment.
With these writers satire and contempt of the world lie at the
root both of their comedy and tragedy.
It is otherwise with most of the romantic dramatists, who may
be provisionally grouped as follows, (a) Thomas Dekkcr and
Thomas Heywood are writers-of-all-work, the former
^**"~ profuse of tracts and pamphlets, the latter of treatises
and compilations. They are both unrhetorical and
void of pose, and divide themselves between the artless
comedy of bustling, lively, English humours and pathetic,
unheroic tragedy. But Dekkcr has splendid and poetical dreams,
in Old Fortunalus (1600) and The Honest Whore, both of luxury
and of tenderness; while Heywood, as in his English Traveller
and Woman titled with Kindness (acted 1603), excels in pictures
of actual, chivalrous English gentlemen and their generosities.
The fertility and volubility of these writers, and their modest
carelessness of fame, account for many of their imperfections.
With them may be named the large crowd of professional
journeymen, who did not want for power, but wrote usually in
partnership together, like Munday, Chettle and Drayton, or
supplied, like William Rowley, underplots of rough, lively
comedy or tragedy. (6) Amongst dramatists of primarily tragic
and sombre temper, who in their best scenes recall the creator
of Angelo, lago and Timon, must be named Thomas
Middleton (iS7o?-i6j7), John Webster, and Cyril
Wti>ft*r. Tourneur. Middleton has great but scattered force,
and his verse has the grip and ring of the best period
without a sign of the decadence. He is strong in high comedy,
like The Old Law, that turns on some exquisite point of honour
" the moral sense of our ancestors "; in comedy that is merely
graphic and vigorous; and in detached sketches of lowering
wickedness and lust, like those in The Changeling and Women
beware Women. He and Webster each created one unforgettable
desperado, de Flores in The Changeling and Bosola in The
Duchess of tfalfi (whose " pity," when it came, was " nothing
akin to him "). In Webster's other principal play, Vittoria
Corombona, or the White Devil (produced about 1616), the title-
character is not less magnificent in defiant crime than Goneril
or Lady Macbeth. The style of Webster, for all his mechanical
horrors, distils the essences of pity and terror, of wrath and
scorn, and is profoundly poetical; and his point of view seems
to be blank fatalism, without Shakespeare's ever-arching rainbow
of moral sympathy. Cyril Tourneur, in The Revenger's Tragedy,
is even more of a poet than Webster; he can find the phrase for
half-insane wrath and nightmare brooding, but his chaos of
impieties revolts the artistic judgment. These specialists,
\\hi-n all is said, are great men in their dark province, (c) The
playwrights who may be broadly called romantic, of whom
Beaumont, Fletcher and Massingcr arc the chief, while they
share in the same sombre vein, have a wider range and move
more in the daylight. The three just named left a very large body
of drama, tragic, comic and tragi-comic, in which their several
shares can partly be discerned by metrical or other tests. Beau-
mont (d. 1616) is nearest the prime, with his vein of Cervantesque
mockeryandhis pure, beautifully-broken and cadenced
verse, which is seen in his contributions to Philaster
and The Maid's Tragedy. Fletcher (d. 1625) brings us
closest to the actual gaieties and humours of Jacobean
life; he has a profuse comic gift and the rare instinct for natural
dialogue. His verse, with its flood of vehement and expansive
rhetoric, heard at its best in plays like Bonduca, cannot cheat
us into the illusion that it is truly dramatic; but it overflows
with beauty, like his silvery but monotonous versification wilh
its endecasyllabics arrested at the end. In Fletcher the decadence
of form and feeling palpably begins. His personages often face
about at critical instants and bely their natures by sudden
revulsions. Wanton and cheap characters invite not only
dramatic but personal sympathy, as though the author knew no
better. There is too much fine writing about a chastity which is
complacent rather than instinctive, and satisfied with its formal
resistances and technical escapes; so that we are far from
Shakespeare's heroines. These faults are present also in Philip
Massinger (d. 1640), who offers in substantial recom-
pense, not like Beaumont and Fletcher treasures of
incessant vivacious episode and poetry and lyric interlude,
but an often splendid and usually solid constructive skill,
and a steady eloquence which is like a high table-land without
summits. A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1632) is the most
enduring popular comedy of the time outside Shakespeare's,
and one of the best. Massinger's interweaving of impersonal or
political conceptions, as in The Bondman and The Roman Actor,
is often a triumph of arrangement; and though he wrote in the
reign of Charles, he is saved by many noble qualities from being
merely an artist of the decline, (d) A mass of plays, of which the
authorship is unknown, uncertain or attached to a mere name,
baffle classification. There are domestic tragedies,
such as Arden of Feversham; scions of the vindictive
drama, like The Second Maiden's Tragedy; historic or half-
historic tragedies like Nero. There are chronicle histories, of
which the last and one of the best is Ford's Perkin Warbeck,
and melodramas of adventure such as Thomas Heywood poured
forth. There are realistic citizen comedies akin to The Merry
Wives, like Porter's refreshing Two Angry Women of Abingdon;
there are Jonsonian comedies, vernacular farces, light intrigue-
pieces like Field's and many more. Few of these, regarded as
wholes, come near to perfection; few fail of some sally or scene
that proves once more the unmatched diffusion of the dramatic
or poetic instinct. () Outside the regular drama there are many
varieties: academic plays, like The Return from Parnassus and
Lingua, which are still mirthful; many pastoral plays or enter-
tainments in the Italian style, like The Faithful Shepherdess;
versified character-sketches, of which Day's Parliament of Bees,
with its Theocritean grace and point, is the happiest; many
masques and shows, often lyrically and scenically lovely, of
which kind Jonson is the master, and Milton, in his Comus, the
transfigurer; Senecan dramas made only to be read, like Daniel's
and Fulke Greville's; and Latin comedies, like Ignoramus.
All these species are only now being fully grouped, sifted and
edited by scholars, but a number of the six or seven hundred
dramas of the time remain unreprinted.
There remain two writers, John Ford and James Shirley,
who kept the higher tradition alive till the Puritan ordinance
crushed the theatre in 1642. Ford is another specialist,
of grave, sinister and concentrated power (reflected shirk"?
in his verse and diction), to whom no topic, the
incest of Annabella in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, or the high
crazed heroism of Calantha in The Broken Heart, is beyond
the pale, if only he can dominate it; as indeed he does, without
626
ENGLISH LITERATURE
[ELIZABETHAN AGE
complicity, standing above his subject. Shirley, a fertile writer,
has the general characteristic gifts, in a somewhat dilute but
noble form, of the more romantic playwrights, and claims honour
as the last of them.
Prose from 1579 to 1660. With all the unevenness of poetry,
the sense of style, of a standard, is everywhere; felicity is never
far off. Prose also is full of genius, but it is more disfigured
than verse by aberration and wasted power. A central, classic,
durable, adaptive prose had been attained by Machiavelli,
and by Amyot and Calvin, before 1550. In England it was only
to become distinct after 1660. Vocabulary, sentence-structure,
paragraph, idiom and rhythm were in a state of unchartered
freedom, and the history of their crystallization is not yet written.
But in more than compensation there is a company of prose
masters, from Florio and Hooker to Milton and Clarendon, not
one of whom clearly or fully anticipates the modern style, and
who claim all the closer study that their special virtues have been
for ever lost. They seem farther away from us than the poets
around ftiem. The verse of Shakespeare is near to us, for its
tradition has persisted; his prose, the most natural and noble
of his age, is far away, for its tradition has not persisted. One
reason of this difference is that English prose tried to do more
work than that of France and Italy; it tried the work of poetry;
and it often did that better than it did the normal work of prose.
This overflow of the imaginative spirit gave power and elasticity
to prose, but made its task of finding equilibrium the harder.
Moreover, prose in England was for long a natural growth, never
much affected by critical or academic canons as in France;
and when it did submit to canons, the result was often merely
manner. The tendons and sinews of the language, still in its
adolescent power and bewilderment, were long unset; that is,
the parts of speech noun and verb, epithet and adverb were in
freer interchange than at any period afterwards. The build,
length and cadence of a complex sentence were habitually
elaborate; and yet they were disorganized, so that only the ear
of a master could regulate them. The law of taste and measure,
perhaps through some national disability, was long unperceived.
Prose, in fact, could never be sure of doing the day's work in the
right fashion. The cross-currents of pedantry in the midst of
simplicity, the distrust of clear plain brevity, which was apt to be
affected when it came, the mimicries of foreign fashions, and the
quaintness and cumbrousness of so much average writing,
make it easier to classify Renaissance prose by its interests than
by its styles.
The Elizabethan novel was always unhappily mannered, and
is therefore dead. It fed the drama, which devoured it. The
The novel ta ^ es ^ Boccaccio, Bandello, Cinthio, Margaret of
Navarre, and others were purveyed, as remarked
above, in the forgotten treasuries of Painter, Pettie, Fenton
and Whetstone, and many of these works or their originals
filled a shelf in the playwrights' h'braries. The first of famous
English novels, Lyly's Euphues (1578), and its sequel
euphuism. Euphues and his England, are documents of form.
They are commended by a certain dapper shrewdness
of observation and an almost witty priggery, not by any
real beauty or deep feeling. Euphuism, of which Lyly was
only the patentee, not the*inventor, strikes partly back to the
Spaniard Guevara, and was a model for some years to many
followers like Lodge and Greene. It did not merely provide
Falstaff with a pattern for mock-moral diction and vegetable
similes. It genuinely helped to organize the English sentence,
complex or co-ordinate, and the talk of Portia and Rosalind
shows what could be made of it. By the arch-euphuists, clauses
and clusters of clauses were paired for parallel or contrast, with
the beat of emphatic alliteration on the corresponding parts of
speech in each constituent clause. This was a useful discipline
for prose in its period of groping. Sidney's incomposite and
unfinished Arcadia, written 1580-1581, despite its painful forced
antitheses, is sprinkled with lovely rhythms, with pleasing
formal landscapes, and even with impassioned sentiment and
situation, through which the writer's eager and fretted spirit
shines. Both these stories, like those of Greene and Lodge,
show by their somewhat affected, edited delineation of life and
their courtly tone that they were meant in chief for the eyes of
ladies, who were excluded alike from the stage and from its
audience. Nashe's drastic and photographic tale of masculine life,
Jack Wilton, or The Unfortunate Traveller, stands almost alone,
but some of the gap is filled by the contemporary pamphlets,
sometimes vivid, often full of fierce or maudlin declamation, of
Nashe himself by far the most powerful of the group and of
Greene, Dekker and Nicholas Breton. Thus the English novel
was a minor passing form; the leisurely and amorous romance
went on in the next century, owing largely to French influence
and example.
In criticism, England may almost be counted with the minor
Latin countries. Sidney, in his Defence of Poesy (1595, written
about 1580), and Jonson, in his Discoveries, offer a _
well-inspired and lofty restatement of the current
answers to the current questions, but could give no account
of the actual creative writing of the time. To defend the
" truth " of poetry which was identified with all inventive
writing and not only with verse poetry was saddled with the
work of science and instruction. To defend its character it
was treated as a delightful but deliberate bait to good behaviour,
a theory at best only true of allegory and didactic verse. The
real relation of tragedy to spiritual things, which is admittedly
shown, however hard its definition, in Shakespeare's plays, no
critic for centuries tried to fathom. One of the chief quarrels
turned on metric. A few lines that Sidney and Campion wrote
on what they thought the system of Latin quantity are really
musical. This theory, already raised by Ascham, made a stir,
at first in the group of Harvey, Sidney, Dyer and Spenser, called
the " Areopagus," an informal attempt to copy the Italian
academies; and it was revived on the brink of the reign of James.
But Daniel's firm and eloquent Defence of Rhyming (1602) was
not needed to persuade the poets to continue rhyming in syllabic
verse. The stricter view of the nature and classification of poetry,
and of the dramatic unity of action, is concisely given, partly
by Jonson, partly by Bacon in his Advancement of Learning and
De Augmentis; and Jonson, besides passing his famed judgments
on Shakespeare and Bacon, enriched our critical vocabulary
from the Roman rhetoricians. Scholastic and sensible manuals,
like Webbe's Discourse of Poetry and the Art of English Poesy
(1589) ascribed to Puttenham, come in the rear.
The translators count for more than the critics; the line of
their great achievements from Berners' Froissart (1523-1525)
to Urquhart's Rabelais (1653) is never broken long;
and though their lives are often obscure, their number
witnesses to that far-spread diffusion of the talent
for English prose, which the wealth of English poetry is apt to
hide. The typical craftsman in this field, Philemon Holland,
translated Livy, Pliny, Suetonius, Plutarch's Morals and
Camden's Britannia, and his fount of English is of the amplest
and purest. North, in his translation, made from Amyot's
classic French, of Plutarch's Lives (1579), disclosed one of the
master-works of old example; Florio, in Montaigne's Essays
(1603), the charter of the new freedom of mental exploration;
and Shelton, in Don Quixote (1612), the chief tragi-comic
creation of continental prose. These versions, if by no means
accurate in the letter, were adequate in point of soul and style
to their great originals; and the English dress of Tacitus (1591),
Apuleius, Heliodorus, Commines, Celestina and many others,
is so good and often so sumptuous a fabric, that no single class
of prose authors, from the time of More to that of Dryden,
excels the prose translators, unless it be the Anglican preachers.
Their matter is given to them, and with it a certain standard
of form, so that their natural strength and richness of phrase
are controlled without being deadened. But the want of such
control is seen in the many pamphleteers, who are the journalists
of the time, and are often also playwrights or tale-tellers, divines
or politicians. The writings, for instance, of the hectic, satiric
and graphic Thomas Nashe, run at one extreme into fiction, and
at the other into the virulent rag-sheets of the Marprelate
controversy, which is of historical and social but not of artistic
Trans-
lators.
ELIZABETHAN AGE)
ENGLISH LITERATURE
627
note, being only a fragment of that vast mass of disputatious
literature, which now seems grotesque, excitable or dull.
Richard Hooker's Laws of Ecdtsitislical Polity (1504-1597),
an accepted defence of the Anglican position against Geneva
Mltttr and Rome, is the first theological work of note in the
English tongue, and the first of note since Wydiffe
written by an Englishman. It is a plea for reason as one of the
safe and lawful guides to the faith ; but it also speaks with admir-
able temper and large feeling to the ceremonial and aesthetic
sense. The First Book, the scaffolding of the treatise, discusses
the nature of law at large; but Hooker hardly has pure specu-
lative power, and the language had not yet learnt to move
easily in abstract trains of thought. In its elaboration of clause
and period, in its delicate resonant eloquence, Hooker's style
is Ciceronian; but his inversions and mazes of subordinate
sentence somewhat rack the genius of English. Later divines
like Jeremy Taylor had to disintegrate, since they could not
wield, this admirable but over-complex eloquence. The sermons
(1671-1631) of Donne have the mingled strangeness and in-
timacy of his verse, and their subtle flame, imaginative tenacity,
and hold upon the. springs of awe make them unique. Though
without artificial symmetry, their sentences are intricately
harmonized, in strong contrast to such pellet-like clauses as those
of the learned Lancelot Andrewes, who was Donne's younger
contemporary and the subject of Milton's Latin epitaph.
With Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosophy began
its unbroken course and took its long-delayed rank in Europe.
a-e>fc His prose, of which he is the first high and various
master in English, was shaped and coloured by his
bent as orator and pleader, by his immixture in affairs, by his
speculative brain, and by his use and estimate of Latin. In his
conscious craftsmanship, his intellectual confidence and curiosity,
his divining faith in the future of science, and his resolve to follow
the leadings of nature and experience unswervingly; in his habit
of storing and using up his experience, and in his wide wordly
insight, crystallized in maxim, he suggests a kind of Goethe,
without the poetic hand or the capacity for love and lofty
suffering. He saw all nature in a map, and wished to understand
and control her by outwitting the " idols," or inherent paralysing
frailties of the human judgment. He planned but could not
finish a great cycle of books in order to realize this conception.
The De Augment is Scientiarum (1623) expanded from the English
Advancement of Knowledge (1605) draws the map; the Novum
Organum (1620) sets out the errors of scholasticism and the
methods of inductive logic; the New Atlantis sketches an ideally
equipped and moralized scientific community. Bacon shared
with the great minds of his century the notion that Latin would
outlast any vernacular tongue, and committed his chief scientific
writings to a Latin which is alive and splendid and his own, and
which also disciplined and ennobled his English. The Essays
(1597, 1612, 1625) are his lifelong, gradually accumulated
diary of bis opinions on human life and business. These famous
compositions are often sadly mechanical. They are chippings
and basket ings of maxims and quotations, and of anecdotes,
often classical, put together inductively, or rather by " simple
enumeration " of the pros and cons. Still they are the honest
notes of a practical observer and statesman, disenchanted
why not? with mankind, concerned with cause and effect
rather than with right and wrong, wanting the finer faith and
insight into men and women, but full of reality, touched with
melancholy, and redeeming some arid, small and pretentious
counsels by many that are large and wise. Though sometimes
betraying the workshop, Bacon's style, at its best, is infallibly
expressive; like Milton's angels, it is " dilated or condensed "
according to its purposes. In youth and age alike, Bacon
commanded the most opposite patterns and extremes of prose
the curt maxim, balanced in antithesis or triplet, or standing
solitary; the sumptuous, satisfying and brocaded period; the
movements of exposition, oratory, pleading and narrative.
The History of Henry VII. (1622), written after his fall from
office, is in form as well as insight and mastery of material the
one historical classic in English before Clarendon. Bacon's
musical sense for the value and placing of splendid words and
proper names resembles Marlowe's. But the master of mid-
Renaissance prose is Shakespeare; with him it becomes the
voice of finer and more impassioned spirits than Bacon's the
voice of Rosalind and Hamlet. And the eulogist of both men,
Ben Jonson, must be named in their company for his senatorial
weight and dignity of ethical counsel and critical maxim.
As the Stuart rule declined and fell, prose became enriched from
five chief sources: from philosophy, whether formal or un-
methodical; from theology and preaching and political dispute;
from the poetical contemplation of death; from the observation
of men and manners; and from antiquarian scholarship and
history. As in France, where the first three of these kinds of
writings flourished, it was a time rather of individual great
writers than of any admitted pattern or common ideal of prose
form, although in France this pattern was always clearlier
defined. The mental energy, meditative depth, and throbbing
brilliant colour of the English drama passed with its decay over
into prose. But Latin was still often the supplanter: the treatise
of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, De Veritate, of note in the early
history of Deism, and much of the writing of the ambidextrous
Thomas Hobbes, are in Latin. In this way Latin Hobbc*
disciplined English once more, though it often tempted
men of genius away from English. The Leviathan (1651) with its
companion books on Human Nature and Liberty, and Hobbes'
explosive dialogue on the civil wars, Behemoth (1679), have the
bitter concision of Tacitus and the clearness of a half-relief in
bronze. Hobbes' speculations on the human animal, the social
contract, the absolute power of the sovereign, and the sub-
servience owed to the sovereign by the Church or " Kingdom of
Darkness," enraged all parties, and left their track on the thought
and controversial literature of the century. With Ben Jonson
and the jurist Selden (whose English can be judged from his
Table Talk), Hobbes anticipates the brief and clear sentence-
structure of the next age, though not its social ease and amenity
of form. But his grandeur is not that of a poet, and the poetical
prose is the most distinctive kind of this period. It is
eloquent above all on death and the vanity of human
affairs; its solemn tenor prolongs the reflections of
Claudio, of Fletcher's Philaster, or of Spenser's Despair. It is
exemplified in Bacon's Essay Of Death, in the anonymous descant
on the same subject wrongly once ascribed to him, in Donne's
plea for suicide, in Raleigh's History of the World, in Drummond's
Cypress Grove (1623), in Jeremy Taylor's sermons and Holy
Dying (1651), and in SirThomas Browne's Urn*Burial (1658) and
Letter to a Friend. Its usual vesture is a long purple period,
freely Latinized, though Browne equally commands the form of
solemn and monumental epigram. He is also free from the
dejection that wraps round the other writers on the subject,
and a holy quaintness and gusto relieve his ruminations. The
Religio Medici (1642), quintessentially learned, wise and splendid,
is the fullest memorial of his power. Amongst modern prose
writers, De Quincey is his only true rival in musical sensibility
to words.
Jeremy Taylor, the last great English casuist and schoolman,
and one of the first pleaders for religious tolerance (in his Liberty
of Prophesying, 1647), is above all a.preacher; tender, j enm
intricate, copious, inexhaustible in image and Taylor.
picturesque quotation. From the classics, from the
East, from the animal world, from the life of men and children,
his illustrations flow, without end or measure. He is a master of
the lingering cadence, which soars upward and onward on its
coupled clauses, as on balanced iridescent wings, and is found
long after in his scholar Ruskin. Imaginative force of another
kind pervades Robert Burton's A nalomy of Melancholy Burton
(1621), where the humorous medium refracts and
colours every ray of the recluse's far-travelled spirit. The mass
of Latin citation, woven, not quilted, into Burton's style, is
another proof of the vitality of the cosmopolitan language.
Burton and Browne owe much to the pre-critical learning of
their time, which yields up such precious savours to their fancy,
that we may be thankful for the delay of more precise science and
Fuaenal
prate.
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ENGLISH LITERATURE
[ELIZABETHAN AGE
Clarendon.
schplarship. Fancy, too, of a suddener and wittier sort, pre-
serves some of the ample labours of Thomas Fuller, which are
scattered over the years 1631-1662; and the Lives and Compleat
Angler (1653) of Izaak Walton are unspoilt, happy or pious pieces
of idyllic prose. No adequate note on the secular or sacred
learning of the time can here be given; on Camden, with his vast
erudition, historical, antiquarian and comparatively critical
(Britannia, in Latin, 1586); or on Ussher, with his patristic and
chronological learning, one of the many savants of the Anglican
church. Other divines of the same camp pleaded, in a plainer
style than Taylor, for freedom of personal judgment and against
the multiplying of " vitals in religion "; the chief were Chilling-
worth, one of the closest of English apologists, in his Religion of
Protestants (1638), and John Hales of Eton. The Platonists, or
rather Plotinists, of Cambridge, who form a curious digression in
the history of modern philosophy, produced two writers, John
Smith and Henry More, of an exalted and esoteric prose, more
directly inspired by Greece than any other of the time; and their
champion of erudition, Cudworth, in his True Intellectual System,
gave some form to their doctrine.
Above the vast body of pamphlets and disputatious writing
that form the historian's material stands Edward Hyde, Earl of
Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, printed in 1702-
1704, thirty years after his death. Historical writing
hitherto, but for Bacon's Henry VII., had been tentative though
profuse. Raleigh's vast disquisition upon all things, The History
of the World (1614), survives by passages and poetic splendours;
gallantly written second-hand works like Knolles's History of the
Turks, and the rhetorical History of the Long Parliament by
May, had failed to give England rank with France and Italy.
Clarendon's book, one of the greatest of memoirs and most vivid
of portrait-galleries, spiritually unappreciative of the other side,
but full of a subtle discrimination of character and political
motive, brings its author into line with Retz and Saint-Simon,
the watchers and recorders and sometimes the makers of con-
temporary history. Clarendon's Life, above all the picture of
Falkland and his friends, is a personal record of the delightful
sort in which England was thus far infertile. He is the last old
master of prose, using and sustaining the long, sinuous sentence,
unworkable in weaker hands. He is the last, for Milton's
polemic prose, hurled from the opposite camp, was
written between 1643 and 1660. Whether reviling
bishops or royal privilege or indissoluble monogamy,
or recalling his own youth and aims; or claiming liberty for
print in Areopagitica (1644); in his demonic defiances, or
angelic calls to arms, or his animal eruptions of spite and hatred,
Milton leaves us with a sense of the motive energies that were to
be transformed into Paradise Lost and Samson. His sentences
are ungainly and often inharmonious, but often irresistible; he
rigidly withstood the tendencies of form, in prose as in verse, that
Dryden was to represent, and thus was true to his own literary
dynasty.
A special outlying position belongs to the Authorized Version
(1611) of the Bible, the late fruit of the long toil that had begun
The with Tyndale's, and, on the side of style, with the
Author- Wycliffite translations. More scholarly than all the
lied preceding versions which it utilized, it won its in-
""' comparable form, not so much because of the
" grand style that was in the air," which would have been
the worst of models, as because the style had been already
tested and ennobled by generations of translators. Its effect
on poetry and letters was for some time far smaller than its
effect on the national life at large, but it was the greatest
translation being of a whole literature, or rather of two
literatures in an age of great translations.
Some other kinds of writing soften the transition to Restoration
prose. The vast catalogue of Characters numbers hundreds of
titles. Deriving from Theophrastus, who was edited by Casaubon
in 1592, they are yet another Renaissance form that England
shared with France. But in English hands, failing a La Bruyere
in Hall's, in Overbury's, even in those of the gay and skilful
Earle (Microcosmographie, 1628) the Character is a mere list
Milton's
prose.
of the attributes and oddities of a type or calling. It is to the
Jonsonian drama of humours what the Pensee, or detached
remark, practised by Bishop Hall and later by Butler and
Halifax, is to the Essay. These works tended long to be common-
place or didactic, as the popular Resolves of Owen Feltham shows.
Cowley was the first essayist to come down from the desk and
talk as to his equals in easy phrases of middle length. A time of
dissension was not the best for this kind of peaceful, detached
writing. The letters of James Howell, the autobiography of
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and the memoirs of Kenelm Digby
belong rather to the older and more mannered than to the more
modern form, though Howell's English is in the plainer and
quicker movement.
IV. RESTORATION PERIOD
Literature from 1660 to 1700. The Renaissance of letters in
England entered on a fresh and peculiar phase in the third
quarter of the century. The balance of intellectual and artistic
power in Europe had completely shifted since 1580. Inspiration
had died down in Italy, and its older classics were no longer a
stimulus. The Spanish drama had flourished, but its influence
though real was scattered and indirect. The Germanic countries
were slowly emerging into literature; England they scarcely
touched. But the literary empire of France began to declare
itself both in Northern and Southern lands, and within half a
century was assured. Under this empire the English genius
partly fell, though it soon asserted its own equality, and by 1720
had so reacted upon France as more than to repay the debt.
Thus between 1660 and 1700 is prepared a temporary dual control
of European letters. But in the age of Dryden France
gave England more than it received; it gave more influence
than it had ever given since the age of Chaucer. During
Charles II. 's days Racine, Moliere, La Fontaine and Bossuet
ran the best of their course. Cavalier exiles like Waller, Cowley
and Hobbes had come back from the winter of their discontent
in Paris, and Saint-Evremond, the typical bel esprit and critic,
settled long in England. A vast body of translations from the
French is recounted, including latterly the works of the Protest ant
refugees printed in the free Low Countries or in England. Natur-
ally this influence told most strongly on the social forms of verse
and prose upon comedy and satire, upon criticism and maxim
and epigram, while it also affected theology and thought. And
this meant the Renaissance once more, still unexhausted, only
working less immediately and in fresh if narrower channels.
Greek literature, Plato and Homer and the dramatists, became
dimmer; the secondary forms of Latin poetry came to the fore,
especially those of Juvenal and the satirists, and the pedestris
sermo, epistolary and critical, of Horace. These had some direct
influence, as Dryden's translation of them, accompanying his
Virgil and Lucretius, may show. But they came commended
by Boileau, their chief modernizer, and in their train was the
fashion of gallant, epigrammatic and social verse. The tragedy
of Corneille and Racine, developed originally from the Senecan
drama, contended with the traditions of Shakespeare and
Fletcher, and was reinforced by that of the correcter Jonson, in
shaping the new theatre of England. The French codifiers,
who were often also the distorters, of Aristotle's Poetics and
Horace's Ars poetica, furnished a canonical body of criticism
on the er>ic and the drama, to which Dryden is half a disciple
and half a rebel. All this implied at once a loss of the larger and
fuller inspirations of poetry, a decadence in its great and primary
forms, epic, lyric and tragic, and a disposition, in default of such
creative power, to turn and take stock of past production. In
England, therefore, it is the age of secondary verse and of nascent,
often searching criticism.
The same critical spirit was also whetted in the fields of science
and speculation, which the war and the Puritan rule had not
encouraged. The activities of the newly-founded
Royal Society told directly upon literature, and
counted powerfully in the organization of a clear, Letters.
uniform prose the " close, naked, natural way of
speaking," which the historian of the Society, Sprat, cites as
RESTORATION PERIOD)
ENGLISH LITERATURE
629
pan of its programme. And the style of Sprat, as of scientific
masters like Newton and Ray the botanist, itself attests the
change. A time of profound and peaceful and fruitful scientific
labour began; the whole of Newton's Principle appeared in
1687; the dream of Bacon came nearer, and England was less
isolated from the international work of knowledge. The spirit
of method and observation and induction spread over the whole
field of thought and was typified in John Locke, whose Essay
((mceming Human Understanding came out in English in 1600,
and who applied the same deeply sagacious and cautious calculus
to education and religion and the " conduct of the understand-
ing." But his works, though their often mellow and dignified
style has been ignorantly underrated, also show the change in
philosophic writing since Hobbes. The old grandeur and
pugnacity are gone; the imaginative play of science, or quasi-
scicnce, on the literature of reflection is gone; the eccentrics,
the fantasts, the dreamers are gone, or only survive in curious
transitional writers like Joseph Glanvil (Scepsis scienlifica, 1665)
or Thomas Burnet (Sacred Theory of the Earth, 1684). This
change was in part a conscious and an angry change, as is clear
from the attacks made in Samuel Butler's Hudibras (1663-1668)
upon scholastic verbiage, astrology, fanatical sects and their
disputes, poetic and " heroic " enthusiasm and intellectual
whim.
Before the Restoration men of letters, with signal exceptions
like Milton and Marvell, had been Cavalier, courtly and Anglican
in their sympathies. The Civil War had scattered them
away from the capital, which, despite Milton's dream
in Areopagilica of its humming and surging energies,
had ceased to be, what it now again became, the natural
haunt and Rialto of authors. The taste of the new king and
court served to rally them. Charles II. relished Hudibras, used
and pensioned Dryden, sat under Barrow and South and heard
them with appreciation, countenanced science, visited comedies,
and held his own in talk by mother-wit. Letters became the
pastime, and therefore one of the more serious pursuits, of men
of quality, who soon excelled in song and light scarifying verse
and comedy, and took their own tragedies and criticisms gravely.
Poetry under such auspices became gallant and social, and also
personal and partisan; and satire was soon its most vital form,
with the accessories of compliment, rhymed popular argumenta-
tion and elegy. The social and conversational instinct was the
master-influence in prose. It produced a subtle but fundamental
change in the attitude of author to reader. Prose came nearer
to living speech, it became more civil and natural and persuasive,
and this not least in the pulpit. The sense of ennui, or boredom,
which seemed as unknown in the earlier part of the century as
it is to the modern German, became strongly developed, and
prose was much improved by the fear of provoking it. In all
these ways the Restoration accompanied and quickened a
speedier and greater change in letters than any political event in
English history since the reign of Alfred, when prose itself was
created.
The formal change in prose can thus be assigned to no one
writer, for the good reason that it presupposes a change of
PTM tmf 'P ^ 611 tyl* lying deeper than any personal influence.
, lllttlm If we begin with the writing that is nearest living
talk the letters of Otway or Lady Rachel Russell,
or the diary of Pepys (1630-1669) that supreme disclosure
of our mother-earth or the evidence in a state trial, or the
dialogue in the more natural comedies; if we then work upwards
through some of the plainer kinds of authorship, like the less
slangy of L'Estrange's pamphlets, or Burnet's History of My
Chen Time, a solid Whig memoir of historical value, until we reach
really admirable or lasting prose like Dryden's Preface to his
Fables (1700), or the maxims of Halifax; if we do this, we are
aware, amid all varieties, survivals and reversions, of a strong
and rapid drift towards the style that we call modern. And one
sign of this movement is the revulsion against any over-saturating
of the working, daily language, and even of the language of appeal
and eloquence, with the Latin element. In Barrow and Glanvil,
i of Taylor and Browne, many Latinized words remain,
which were soon expelled from style like foreign bodies from an
organism. As in the mid-sixteenth and the mid-eighteenth
century, the process is visible by which the Latin vocabulary
and Latin complication of sentence first gathers strength, and
then, though not without leaving its traces, is forced to ebb.
The instinct of the best writers secured this result, and secured
it for good and all. In Dryden's diction there is a nearly perfect
balance and harmony of learned and native constituents, and a
sensitive tact in Gallicizing; in his build of sentence there is the
same balance between curtness or bareness and complexity or
ungainly lengthincss. For ceremony and compliment he keeps
a rolling period, for invective a short sharp stroke without the
gloves. And he not only uses in general a sentence of moderate
scale, inclining to brevity, but he finds out its harmonies; he is
a seeming-careless but an absolute master of rhythm. In delusive
ease he is unexcelled; and we only regret that he could not have
written prose oftener instead of plays. We should thus, how-
ever, have lost their prefaces, in which the bulk and the best of
Dryden's criticisms appear. From the Essay of Dramatic Poesy
(1668) down to the Preface to Fables (1700) runs a series of essays:
On the Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy, On Heroic Plays, On
Translated Verse, On Satire and many more; which form the
first connected body of criticisms in the language, and are nobly
written always. Dryden's prose is literature as it stands, and
yet is talk, and yet again is mysteriously better than talk.
The critical writings of John Dennis are but a sincere application
of the rules and canons that were now becoming conventional ;
Rymer, though not so despicable as Macaulay said, is still
more depressing than Dennis; and for any critic at once so
free, so generous and so sure as Dryden we wait in vain for a
century.
Three or four names are usually associated with Dryden's
in the work of reforming or modifying prose: Sprat, Tillotson,
Sir William Temple, and George Savile, marquis of contrt-
Halifax; but the honours rest with Halifax. Sprat, baton to
though clear and easy, has little range ; Tillotson,though '* aew
lucid, orderly, and a very popular preacher, has little pn
distinction ; Temple, the elegant essayist, has a kind of barren
gloss and fine literary manners, but very little to say. The
political tracts, essays and maxims of Halifax (died 1605) are
the most typically modern prose between Dryden and Swift,
and are nearer than anything else to the best French writing of
the same order, in their finality of epigram, their neatness and
mannerliness and sharpness. The Character of a Trimmer and
Advice to a Daughter are the best examples.
Religious literature, Anglican and Puritan, is the chief remain-
ing department to be named. The strong, eloquent and coloured
preaching of Isaac Barrow the mathematician, who j^,^,,,
died in 1677, is a survival of the larger and older
manner of the Church. In its balance of logic, learning and
emotion, in its command alike of Latin splendour and native
force, it deserves a recognition it has lost. Another athlete of
the pulpit, Robert South, who is so often praised for his wit
that his force is forgotten, continues the lineage, while Tillotson
and the elder Sherlock show the tendency to the smoother and
more level prose. But the revulsion against strangeness and
fancy and magnificence went too far; it made for a temporary
bareness and meanness and disharmony, which had to be checked
by Addison, Bolingbroke and Berkeley. From what Addison
saved our daily written English, may be seen in the vigorous
slangy hackwork of Roger L'Estrange, the translator and
pamphleteer, in the news-sheets of Dunton, and in the satires of
Tom Brown. These writers were debasing the coinage with
their street journalism.
Another and far nobler variety of vernacular prose is found
in the Puritans. Baxter and Howe, Fox and Bunyan, had the
English Bible behind them, which gave them the best
of their inspiration, though the first two of them were prate."
also erudite men. Richard Baxter, an immensely
fertile writer, is best remembered by those of his own fold for
his Saint's Everlasting Rest (1650) and his autobiography, John
Howe for his evangelical apologia The Living Temple of Cod
630
ENGLISH LITERATURE
[RESTORATION PERIOD
(1675), Fox for his Journal and its mixture of quaintness and
rapturous mysticism. John Bunyan, the least instructed of
Banyan. tnem all > is the ' r onlv born art ist- His creed and point
of view were those of half the nation the half that
was usually inarticulate in literature, or spoke without style or
genius. His reading, consisting not only of the Bible, but of the
popular allegories of giants, pilgrims and adventure, was also
that of his class. The Pilgrim's Progress, of which the first part
appeared in 1678, the second in 1684, is the happy flowering
sport amidst a growth of barren plants of the same tribe. The
Progress is a dream, more vivid to its -author than most men's
waking memories to themselves; the emblem and the thing
signified are merged at every point, so that Christian's journey
is not so much an allegory with a key as a spiritual vision of this
earth and our neighbours. Grace Abounding, Bunyan's diary
of his own voyage to salvation, The Holy War, an overloaded
fable of the fall and recovery of mankind, and The Life and
Death of Mr Bad-man, a novel telling of the triumphal earthly
progress of a scoundrelly tradesman, are among Bunyan's other
contributions to literature. His union of spiritual intensity,
sharp humorous vision, and power of simple speech consum-
mately chosen, mark his work off alike from his own inarticulate
public and from all other literary performance of his time.
The transition from the older to the newer poetry was not
abrupt. Old themes and tunes were slowly disused, others
previously of lesser mark rose into favour, and a few
Won"; " quite fresh ones were introduced. The poems of John
verse. Oldham and Andrew Marvell belong to both periods.
Both of them begin with fantasy and elegy, and end
with satires, which indeed are rather documents than works of
art. The monody of Oldham on his friend Morwent is poorly
exchanged for the Satires on the Jesuits (1681), and the lovely
metaphysical verses of Marvell on gardens and orchards and the
spiritual love sadly give place to his Last Instructions to a
Painter (1669). In his Horatian Ode Marvell had nobly and
impartially applied his earlier style to national affairs; but the
time proved too strong for this delightful poet. Another and a
Hudibras stranger satire had soon greeted the Restoration, the
Hudibras (1663-1678) of Samuel Butler, with its
companion pieces. The returned wanderers delighted in this
horribly agile, boisterous and fierce attack on the popular party
and its religions, and its wrangles and its manners. Profoundly
eccentric and tiresomely allusive in his form, and working in
the short rhyming couplets thenceforth called " Hudibrastics,"
Butler founded a small and peculiar but long-lived school of
satire. The other verse of the time is largely satire of a different
tone and metre; but the earlier kind of finished and gallant
lyric persisted through the reign of Charles II. The songs of
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, are usually malicious, some-
Soagsters ti mes passionate; they have a music and a splendid
self-abandonment such as we never meet again till
Burns. Sedley and Dorset and Aphra Behn and Dryden are
the rightful heirs of Carew and Lovelace, those infallible masters
of short rhythms; and this secret also was lost for a century
afterwards.
In poetry, in prose, and to some extent in drama, John Dryden,
the creature of his time, is the master of its expression. He
Dryden began with panegyric verse, first on Cromwell and then
on Charles, which is full of fine things and false writing.
The Annus Mirabilis (1667) is the chief example, celebrating
the Plague, the Fire and the naval victory, in the quatrains for
which Davenant's pompous Gondibert had shown the way. The
Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668), a dialogue on the rivalries of
blank verse with rhyme, and of the Elizabethan drama with the
French, is perfect modern prose; and to this perfection Dryden
attained at a bound, while he attained his poetical style more
gradually. He practised his couplet in panegyric, in heroic
tragedy, and in dramatic prologue and epilogue for twenty
years before it was consummate: Till 1680 he supported himself
chiefly by his plays, which have not lived so long as their critical
prefaces, already mentioned. His diction and versification came
to their full power in his satires, rhymed arguments, dedications
and translations. Absalom and Achitophel (part i., 1681; part
ii., with Nahum Tate, 1682), as well as The Medal and Mac
Flecknoe, marked a new birth of English satire, placing it at
once on a level with that of any ancient or modern country.
The mixture of deadly good temper, Olympian unfairness, and
rhetorical and metrical skill in each of these poems has never
been repeated. The presentment of Achitophel, earl of Shaf tes-
bury, in his relations with Absalom Walters and Charles the
minstrel-king of Judah, as well as the portraits of Shimei and
Barzillai and Jotham, the eminent Whigs and Tories, and of the
poets Og and Doeg, are things whose vividness age has never
discoloured. Dryden's Protestant arguings in Religio Laid
(1682) and his equally sincere Papistical arguings in The Hind
and the Panther (1687) are just as skilful. His translations of
Virgil and parts of Lucretius, of Chaucer and Boccaccio (Fables,
1 700) , set the seal on his command of his favourite couplet for the
higher kinds of appeal and oratory. His Ode on Anne Killigrew,
and his popular but coarser Alexander's Feast, have a more lyric
harmony; and his songs, inserted in his plays, reflect the change
of fashion by their metrical adeptness and often thoroughgoing
wantonness. The epithet of " glorious," in its older sense of a
certain conscious and warranted pride of place, not in that of
boastful or pretentious, suits Dryden well. Not only did he
leave a model and a point of departure for Pope, but his influence
recurs in Churchill, in Gray, in Johnson and in Crabbe, where he
is seen counteracting, with his large, wholesome and sincere
bluntness, the acidity of Pope. Dryden was counted near
Shakespeare and Milton until the romantic revival renewed
the sense of proportion; but the same sense now demands his
acknowledgment as the English poet who is nearest to their
frontiers of all those who are exiled from their kingdom.
Restoration and Revolution tragedy is nearly all abortive;
it is now hard to read it for pleasure. But it has noble nights,
and its historic interest is high. Two of its species, Tragedy
the rhymed heroic play and the rehandling of Shake-
speare in blank verse, were also brought to their utmost by
Dryden, though in both he had many companions. The heroic
tragedies were a hybrid offspring of the heroic romance and
French tragedy; and though The Conquest of Granada (1669-
1670) and Tyrannic Love would be very open to satire in Dryden's
own vein, they are at least generously absurd. Their intention
is never ignoble, if often impossible. After a time Dryden went
back to Shakespeare, after a fashion already set by Sir William
Davenant, the connecting link with the older tragedy and the
inaugurator of the new. They " revived " Shakespeare; they
vamped him in a style that did not wholly perish till after the
time of Garrick. The Tempest, Troilus and Cressida, and
Antony and Cleopatra were thus handled by Dryden; and the
last of these, as converted by him into All for Love (1678), is
loftier and stronger than any of his original plays, its blank verse
renewing the ties of Restoration poetry with the great age. The
heroic plays, written in one or other metre, lived long, and
expired in the burlesques of Fielding and Sheridan. The Re-
hearsal (1671), a gracious piece of fooling partially aimed at
Dryden by Buckingham and his friends, did not suffice to kill
its victims. Thomas Otway and Nathaniel Lee, both of whom
generally used blank verse, are the other tragic writers of note,
children indeed of the extreme old age of the drama. Otway's
long-acted Venice Preserved (1682) has an almost otway
Shakespearian skill in melodrama, a wonderful tide of
passionate language, and a blunt and bold delineation of char-
acter; but Otway's inferior style and verse could only be admired
in an age like his own. Lee is far more of a poet, though less of a
dramatist, and he wasted a certain talent in noise and fury.
Restoration comedy at first followed Jonson, whom it was
easy to try and imitate; Shadwell and Wilson, whose works
are a museum for the social antiquary, photographed comedy
the humours of the town. Dryden's many comedies
often show his more boisterous and blatant, rarely his finer
qualities. Like all playwrights of the time he pillages from the
French, and vulgarizes Moliere without stint or shame. A truer
light comedy began with Sir George Etherege, who mirrored in
18TH CENTURY)
ENGLISH LITERATURE
631
his fops the gaiety and insolence of the world he knew. The
society depicted by William Wycherley, the one comic dramatist
of power between Massinger and Congreve, at first
j*-^*** 1 ^ seems hardly human; but his energy is skilful and
faithful as well as brutal; he excels in the graphic
reckless exhibition of outward humours and bustle; he scavenges
in the most callous good spirits and with careful cynicism. The
Plain Dealer (1677), a skilful transplantation, as well as a de-
pravation of Moliere's Le Misanthrope, is his best piece: he
writes in prose, and his prose is excellent, modern and lifelike.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. General Histories: Hallam, Introduction to the
Lit. of Europe (1838-1839); G. Saintsbury, Elaabethan Literature
(1890). and History of Literary Criticism, vol. ii. (1002) ; W. 1.
Courthorpe. History of English Poetry, vols. i.-v. (1895-1905);
J J. Jusscrand. Histoire litteraire du ptuple anglais, vol. ii. (1904):
T. Seccombe and J . W. Allen. The Age of Shakespeare (a vols., 1903) ;
D Hannay, The Later Renaissance (1898); H. J. C. Grierson, First
Half of /7<* Century ; O. Elton, The Augustan Ages (1899) ; Masson,
Life of Milton (6 vols., London. 1881-1894); R. Garnett, The Age
of Dry4f* (1901); W. Raleigh. The English Novel (1894); J. J.
Jusscrand. Le Roman anglais au temps de Shakespeare (1887, Eng.
tr., 1901); G. Gregory Smith, Elaabethan Critical Essays (2 vols.,
1904. reprints and introd.). Classical and Foreign Influences.
Mary A. Scott, Elaabethan Translations from the Italian (biblio-
graphy), (Baltimore, 1895); E. Koeppel, Studien tur Gesch. der ital.
NattUei.d.eng. Litteraturdes idlenjahrh. (Strasb., 1892); L. Einstein
The Italian Renaissance in England (New York, 1902); J. Erskine,
The Elaabethan Lyric (New York, 1903); J. S. Harrison, Platonism
in Eli*. Poetry of the i6lh and //<* Centuries (New York, 1903);
S. Lee, Elaabethan Sonnets (2 vols., 1904) ; C. H. Herford, Literary
Relations of England and Germany in l6lh Century; J. G. Underbill,
Spanish Ltt. in the England of the Tudors (New York, 1809) ; J. E.
Spingarn. Hist, of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (New York,
1899). Many articles in Englische Studien, A nglia, &c., on influences,
texts and source*. See too arts. DRAMA; SONNET; RENAISSANCE.
(O. E.*)
V. THE ISTH CENTURY
In the reign of Anne (1702-1714) the social changes which
had commenced with the Restoration of 1660 began to make
themselves definitely felt. Books began to penetrate
among all classes of society. The period is consequently
one of differentiation and expansion. As the practice of
reading becomes more and more universal, English writers lose
much of their old idiosyncrasy, intensity and obscurity. As in
politics and religion, so in letters, there is a great development
of nationality. Commercial considerations too for the first
time become important. We hear relatively far less of religious
controversy, of the bickering between episcopalians and non-
conformists and of university squabbles. Specialization and
cumbrous pedantry fall into profound disfavour. Provincial
feeling exercises a diminishing sway, and literature becomes
increasingly metropolitan or suburban. With the multiplication
of moulds, the refinement of prose polish, and the development
of breadth, variety and ease, it was natural enough, having regard
to the place that the country played in the world's affairs, that
English literature should make its debut in western Europe.
The strong national savour seemed to stimulate the foreign
appetite, and as represented by Swift, Pope, Defoe, Young,
Goldsmith, Richardson, Sterne and Ossian, if we exclude Byron
and Scott, the iSth century may be deemed the cosmopolitan
age, par excellence, of English Letters. The charms of i8th-
century English literature, as it happens, are essentially of the
rational, social and translatable kind: in intensity, exquisiteness
and eccentricity of the choicer kinds it is proportionately deficient.
It is pre-eminently an age of prose, and although verbal expression
is seldom represented at its highest power, we shall find nearly
every variety of English prose brilliantly illustrated during this
period: the aristocratic style of Bolingbroke, Addison and
Berkeley; the gentlemanly style of Fielding; the keen and
logical controversy of Butler, Middleton, Smith and Bentham;
the rhythmic and balanced if occasionally involved style of
Johnson and his admirers; the limpid and flowing manner of
Hume and Mackintosh ; the light, easy and witty flow of Walpole;
the divine chit-chat of Cowper; the colour of Gray and Berkeley;
the organ roll of Burke; the detective journalism of Swift and
Defoe; the sly familiarity of Sterne; the dance music and wax
candles of Sheridan; the pomposity of Gibbon; the air and
ripple of Goldsmith; the peeping preciosity of Boswell, these
and other characteristics can be illustrated in 18th-century prose
as probably nowhere else.
But more important to the historian of literature even than
the development of qualities is the evolution of types. And in
this respect the iSth century is a veritable index-museum of
English prose. Essentially, no doubt, it is true that in form
the prose and verse of the iSth century is mainly an extension
of Dryden, just as in content it is a reflection of the increased
variety of the city life which came into existence as English
trade rapidly increased in all directions. But the taste of the day
was rapidly changing. People began to read in vastly increasing
numbers. The folio was making place on the shelves for the
octavo. The bookseller began to transcend the mere tradesman.
Along with newspapers the advertizing of books came into
fashion, and the market was regulated no longer by what learned
men wanted to write, but what an increasing multitude wanted
to read. The arrival of the octavo is said to have marked the
enrolment of man as a reader, that of the novel the attachment
of woman. Hence, among other causes, the rapid decay of
lyrical verse and printed drama, of theology and epic, in ponderous
tomes. The fashionable types of which the new century was to
witness the fixation are accordingly the essay and the satire
as represented respectively by Addison and Steele, Swift and
Goldsmith, and by Pope and Churchill. Pope, soon to be
followed by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, was the first English-
man who treated letter-writing as an art upon a considerable
scale. Personalities and memoirs prepare the way for history,
in which as a department of literature English letters hitherto
had been almost scandalously deficient. . Similarly the new
growth of fancy essay (Addison) and plain biography (Defoe)
prepared the way for the English novel, the most important
by far of all new literary combinations. Finally, without going
into unnecessary detail, we have a significant development of
topography, journalism and criticism. In the course of time,
too, we shall perceive how the pressure of town life and the logic
of a capital city engender, first a fondness for landscape garden-
ing and a somewhat artificial Arcadianism, and then, by degrees,
an intensifying love of the country, of the open air, and of the
rare, exotic and remote in literature.
At the outset of the new century the two chief architects of
public opinion were undoubtedly John Locke and Joseph
Addison. When he died at High Laver in October Lodsel
1704 at the mature age of seventy-two, Locke had, AddiMoa.
perhaps, done more than any man of the previous
century to prepare the way for the new era. Social duty and
social responsibility were his two watchwords. The key to both
he discerned in the Human Understanding " no province of
knowledge can be regarded as independent of reason." But the
great modernist of the time was undoubtedly Joseph Addison
(1672-1719). He first left the I7th century, with its stiff
euphuisms, its foimal obsequiousness, its ponderous scholasticism
and its metaphorical antitheses, definitely behind. He did for
English culture what Rambouillet did for that of France, and it
is hardly an exaggeration to call the half-century before the great
fame of the English novel, the half century of the Spectator.
Addison's mind was fertilized by intercourse with the greater
and more original genius of Swift and with the more inventive
and more genial mind of Steele. It was Richard s<
Steele (1672-1729) in the Taller of 1700-1710 who
first realized that the specific which that urbane age both needed
and desired was no longer copious preaching and rigorous
declamation, but homoeopathic doses of good sense, good taste
and good-humoured morality, disguised beneath an easy and
fashionable style. Nothing cqyld have suited Addison better
than the opportunity afforded him of contributing an occasional
essay or roundabout paper in praise of virtue or dispraise of
stupidity and bad form to his friend's periodical. When the
Spectator succeeded the Taller in March 1711, Addison took a
more active share in shaping the chief characters (with the
immortal baronet, Sir Roger, at their head) who were to make
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ENGLISH LITERATURE
(I8TH CENTURY
up the " Spectator Club "; and, better even than before, he saw
his way, perhaps, to reinforcing his copious friend with his own
more frugal but more refined endowment. Such a privileged
talent came into play at precisely the right moment to circulate
through the coffee houses and to convey a large measure of French
courtly ease and elegance into the more humdrum texture of
English prose. Steele became rather disreputable in his later
years, Swift was banished and went mad, but Addison became
a personage of the utmost consideration, and the essay as he
left it became an almost indispensable accomplishment to the
complete gentlemen of that age. As an architect of opinion
from 1717 to 1775 Addison may well rank with Locke.
The other side, both in life and politics, was taken by Jonathan
Swift (1667-1745), who preferred to represent man on his unsocial
Swift. side. He sneered at most things, but not at his own
order, and he came to defend the church and the country
squirearchy against the conventicle and Capel court. To under-
mine the complacent entrenchments of the Whig capitalists at
war with France no sap proved so effectual as his pen. Literary
influence was then exercised in politics mainly by pamphlets,
and Swift was the greatest of pamphleteers. In the Journal to
Stella he has left us a most wonderful portrait of himself in turn
currying favour, spoiled, petted and humiliated by the party
leaders of the Tories from 1710-1713. He had always been
savage, and when the Hanoverians came in and he was treated
as a suspect, his hate widened to embrace all mankind (Gulliver's
Travels, 1726 ) and he bit like a mad dog. Would that he could
have bitten more, for the infection of English stylists ! In wit,
logic, energy, pith, resourcefulness and Saxon simplicity, his
prose has never been equalled. The choicest English then, it is
the choicest English still. Dr John Arbuthnot (1667-
1735) may be described as an understudy of Swift
on the whimsical side only, whose malignity, in a nature
otherwise most kindly, was circumscribed strictly by the limits
of political persiflage. Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), un-
orthodox as he was in every respect, discovered a little of Swift's
choice pessimism in his assault (in The Fable of the Bees of 1723)
against the genteel optimism of the Characteristics of Lord
Shaftesbury. Neither the matter nor the manner of the brilliant
Tory chieftain Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke
6ro*<f" (1678-1751)1 appears to us now as being of the highest
significance; but, although Bolingbroke's ideas were
second-hand, his work has an historical importance; his dignified,
balanced and decorated style was the cynosure of iSth-century
statesmen. His essays on " History " and on " a Patriot King "
both disturb a soil well prepared, and set up a reaction against
such evil tendencies as a narrowing conception of history and a
primarily factious and partisan conception of politics. It may
be noted here how the fall of Bolingbroke and the Tories in 1714
precipitated the decay of the Renaissance ideal of literary
patronage. The dependence of the press upon the House of
Lords was already an anomaly, and the practical toleration
achieved in 1695 removed another obstacle from the path of
liberation. The government no longer sought to strangle the
press. It could generally be tuned satisfactorily and at the
worst could always be temporarily muzzled. The pensions
hitherto devoted to men of genius were diverted under WalpoJe
to spies and journalists. Yet one of the most unscrupulous of
all the fabricators of intelligence, looked down upon as a huckster
of the meanest and most inconsiderable literary wares, established
his fame by a masterpiece of which literary genius had scarcely
even cognizance.
The new trade of writing was represented most perfectly by
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), who represents, too, what few writers
Delof possess, a competent knowledge of work and wages,
buying and selling, the squalor and roguery of the
very hungry and the very mean. From reporting sensations and
chronicling fails divers, Defoe worked his way almost insensibly
to the Spanish tale of the old Mendoza or picaresque pattern.
Robinson Crusoe was a true story expanded on these lines, and
written down under stress of circumstance when its author
was just upon sixty. Resembling that of Bunyan and, later,
Smollett in the skilful use made of places, facts and figures,
Defoe's style is the mirror of man in his shirt sleeves. What he
excelled in was plain, straightforward story-telling, in under-
standing and appraising the curiosity of the man in the street,
and in possessing just the knowledge and just the patience, and
just the literary stroke that would enable him most effectually
to satisfy it. He was the first and cleverest of all descriptive
reporters, for he knew better than any successor how and where
to throw in those irrelevant details, tricks of speech and circum-
locution, which tend to give an air of verisimilitude to a bald
and unconvincing narrative the funny little splutterings and
naivetes as of a plain man who is not telling a tale for effect, but
striving after his own manner to give the plain unvarnished
truth. Defoe contributes story, Addison character, Fielding the
life-atmosphere, Richardson and Sterne the sentiment, and we
have the iSth-century novel complete the greatest literary
birth of modern time. Addison, Steele, Swift and Defoe, as
master-builders of prose fiction, are consequently of more
importance than the " Augustan poets," as Pope and his school
are sometimes called, for the most that they can be said to have
done is to have perfected a more or less transient mode of poetry.
To the passion, imagination or musical quality essential to
the most inspired kinds of poetry Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
can lay small claim. His best work is contained in
the Satires and Epistles, which are largely of the
proverb-in-rhyme order. Yet in lucid, terse and pungent
phrases he has rarely if ever been surpassed. His classical fancy,
his elegant turn for periphrasis and his venomous sting alike
made him the idol of that urbane age. Voltaire in 1726 had
called him the best poet living, and at his death his style
was paramount throughout the civilized world. It was the
apotheosis of wit, point, lucidity and technical correctness.
Pope was the first Englishman to make poetry pay (apart from
patronage). He was flattered by imitation to an extent which
threatened to throw the school of poetry which he represented
into permanent discredit. Prior, Gay, Parnell, Akenside,
Pomfret, Garth, Young, Johnson, Goldsmith, Falconer, Glover,
Grainger, Darwin, Rogers, Hayley and indeed a host of others
the once famous mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease wor-
shipped Pope as their poetic founder. The second-rate wore his
badge. But although the cult of Pope was the established
religion of poetic taste from 1714 to 1798, there were always
nonconformists. The poetic revolt, indeed, was far more
versatile than the religious revival of the century. The Winter
(1726) of James Thomson may be regarded as in- _
J -p i- i j Thomson.
auguratmg a new era m English poetry. Lady
Winchilsea, John Philips, author of Cyder, and John Dyer, whose
Grongar Hill was published a few months before Winter, had
pleaded by their work for a truthful and unaffected, and at the
same time a romantic treatment of nature in poetry; but the
ideal of artificiality and of a frigid poetic diction by which English
poetry was dominated since the days of Waller and Cowley was
first effectively challenged by Thomson. At the time when
the Popean couplet was at the height of its vogue he deliberately
put it aside in favour of the higher poetic power of blank verse.
And he it was who transmitted the sentiment of natural beauty
not merely to imitators such as Savage, Armstrong, Somerville,
Langhorne, Mickle and Shenstone, but also to his
clegist, William Collins, to Gray and to Cowper, and o ra ". S '
so indirectly to the lyrical bards of 1 708. By the same
hands and those of Shenstone experiments were being made in
the stanza of The Faerie Queene; a little later, owing to the
virtuosity of Bishop Percy, the cultivation of the old English and
Scottish ballad literature was beginning to take a serious turn.
Dissatisfaction with the limitations of "Augustan" poetry was
similarly responsible for the revived interest in Shakespeare and
Chaucer. Gray stood not only for a far more intimate worship
of wild external nature, but also for an awakened curiosity in
Scandinavian, Celtic and Icelandic poetry.
To pretend then that the poetic heart of the i8th century was
Popean to the core is nothing short of extravagance. There
were a number of true poets in the second and third quarters of
i8iH CENTURY]
ENGLISH LITERATURE
633
the century to whom all credit is due as pioneers and precentors
of the romantic movement under the depressing conditions to
which innovators in poetry are commonly subject. They may
strike us as rather an anaemic band after the great Elizabethan
poets. Four of them were mentally deranged (Collins, Smart,
Cowper, Blake), while Gray was a hermit, and Shenstone and
Thomson the most indolent of recluses. The most adventurous,
one might say the most virile of the group, was a boy who died
at the age of seventeen. Single men all (save for Blake), a more
despondent group of artists as a whole it would not perhaps be
easy to discover. Catacombs and cypresses were the forms of
imagery that came to them most naturally. Elegies and funeral
odes were the types of expression in which they were happiest.
Yet they strove in the main to follow the gleam in poetry, to
reinstate imagination upon its throne, and tosubstitute the singing
voice for the rhetorical recitative of the heroic couplet. Within
two years of the death of Pope, in 1746, William Collins was
content to sing (not say) what he had in him without a glimpse
of wit or a flash of eloquence and in him many have discerned
the germ of that romantic Mosion which blossomed in Christabel.
A more important if less original factor in that movement was
Collins's severe critic Thomas Gray, a man of the widest curiosities
of his lime, in whom every attribute of the poet to which scholar-
ship, taste and refinement are contributory may be found to the
full, but in whom the strong creative energy is fatally lacking
despite the fact that he wrote a string of " divine truisms " in
his Elegy, which has given to multitudes more of the exquisite
pleasure of poetry than any other single piece in the English
language. Shenstone and Percy, Capell, the Wartons and
eventually Chattcrton, continued to mine in the shafts which
Gray had been the first to sink. Their laborious work of dis-
covery resembled that which was commencing in regard to the
Gothic architecture which the age of Pope had come to regard
as rude and barbaric. The Augustans had come seriously to
regard all pre-Drydenic poetry as grossly barbarian. One of
the greatest achievements of the mid-eighteenth century was
concerned with the disintegration of this obstinate delusion.
The process was manifold; and it led, among other things, to
a realization of the importance of the study of comparative
literature.
The literary grouping of the i8th century is, perhaps, the
biggest thing on the whole that English art has to show; but
j____j among all its groups the most famous, and probably
the most original, is that of its proto-novelists
Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne. All nations have
had their novels, which are as old at least as Greek vases. The
various types have generally had collective appellations such as
Milesian Tales, Alexandrian Romances, Romances of Chivalry,
Acta Sanctorum, Gesta Romanorum, Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles,
Romances of Roguery, Arabian Nights; but owing to the
rivalry of other more popular or more respectable or at least
more eclectic literary forms, they seldom managed to attain a
permanent lodgment in the library. The taste in prose fiction
changes, perhaps, more rapidly than that in any other kind of
literature. In Britain alone several forms had passed their
prime since the days of Caxton and his Arthurian prose romance
of Uorte d' Arthur. Such were the wearisome Arcadian romance
or pastoral heroic; the new centos of tales of chivalry like
the Seven Champions of Christendom; the Utopian, political and
philosophical romances (Oceana, The Man in the Moone) ; the
grotesque and facetious stories of rogues retailed from the
Spanish or French in dwarf volumes; the prolix romance of
modernized classic heroism (The Grand Cyrus); the religious
allegory (Bunyan's Life and Death of Mr Badman) ; the novels
of outspoken French or Italian gallantry, represented by Aphra
Behn; the imaginary voyages so notably adapted to satire by
Dr Swift; and last, but not least, the minutely prosaic chronicle-
novels of Daniel Defoe. The prospect of the novel was changing
rapidly. The development of the individual and of a large
well-to-do urban middle class, which was rapidly multiplying
its area of leisure, involved a curious and self-conscious society,
hungry for pleasure and new sensations, anxious to be told about
themselves, willing in some cases even to learn civilization from
their betters. The disrepute into which the drama had fallen
since Jeremy Collier's attack on it directed this society by an
almost inevitable course into the flowery paths of fiction. The
novel, it is true, had a reputation which was for the time being
almost as unsavoury as that of the drama, but the novel was
not a confirmed ill-doer, and it only needed a touch of genius to
create for it a vast congregation of enthusiastic votaries. In
the Taller and Spectator were already found the methods and
subjects of the modern novel. The De Covcrlcy papers in the
Spectator, in fact, want nothing but a love-thread to convert
them into a serial novel of a high order. The supreme importance
of the sentimental interest had already been discovered and
exemplified to good purpose in France by Madame de la Fayette,
the Marquise de Tencin, Marivaux and the Abb6 Prevost.
Samuel Richardson (1680-1762), therefore, when he
produced the first two modern novels of European * < ^f an '"
fame in Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1748), inherited
far more than he invented. There had been Richardsonians
before Richardson. Clarissa is nevertheless a pioneer work,
and we have it on the high authority of M. Jusserand that the
English have contributed more than any other people to the
formation of the contemporary novel. Of the long-winded,
typical and rather chaotic English novel of love analysis and
moral sentiment (as opposed to the romance of adventure)
Richardson is the first successful charioteer.
The novel in England gained prodigiously by the shock of
opposition between the ideals of Richardson and Henry Fielding
(1707-1754), his rival and parodist. Fielding's brutal /? fcMto _ *
toleration is a fine corrective to the "slightly rancid
morality of Richardson, with its frank insistence upon the
cash-value of chastity and virtue. Fielding is, to be brief,
the succinct antithesis of Richardson, and represents the opposite
pole of English character. ' He is the Cavalier, Richardson the
Roundhead; he is the gentleman, Richardson the tradesman;
he represents church and county, Richardson chapel and borough.
Richardson had much of the patient insight and intensity of
genius, but he lacked the humour and literary accomplishment
which Fielding had in rich abundance. Fielding combined
breadth and keenness, classical culture and a delicate Gallic
irony to an extent rare among English writers. He lacked the
delicate intuition of Richardson in the analysis of women, nor
could he compass the broad farcical humour of Smollett smoUett
or the sombre colouring by which Smollett produces
at times such poignant effects of contrast. There was no poetry
in Fielding; but there was practically every other ingredient
of a great prose writer taste, culture, order, vivacity, humour,
penetrating irony and vivid, pervading common sense,' and it is
Fielding's chef-d'oeuvre Tom Jones (1749) that we must regard
if not as the fundament at least as the head of the corner in
English prose fiction. Before Tom Jones appeared, the success
of the novel had drawn a new competitor into the field in Tobias
Smollett, the descendant of a good western lowland family who
had knocked about the world and seen more of its hurlyburly
than Fielding himself. In Roderick Random (1748) Smollett
represents a rougher and more uncivilized world even than that
depicted in Joseph Andrews. The savagery and horse-play
peculiar to these two novelists derives in part from the rogue
romance of Spain (as then recently revived by Lesage), and has
a counterpart to some extent in the graphic art of Hogarth and
Rowlandson; yet one cannot altogether ignore an element of
exaggeration which has greatly injured both these writers in
the estimation (and still more in the affection) of posterity. The
genius which struggles through novels such as Roderick Random
and Ferdinand Count Fathom was nearly submerged under
the hard conditions of a general writer during the third quarter
of the i8th century, and it speaks volumes for Smollett's
powers of recuperation that he survived to write two such
masterpieces of sardonic and humorous observation as his Travels
and Humphry Clinker.
The fourth proto-master of the English novel was the anti-
quarian humorist Lawrence Sterne. Though they owed a
634
ENGLISH LITERATURE
[i8TH CENTURY
Johnson.
good deal to Don Quixote and the French novelists, Fielding
and Smollett were essentially observers of life in the quick.
Sterne Sterne brought a far-fetched style, a bookish apparatus
and a deliberate eccentricity into fiction. Tristram
Shandy, produced successively in nine small volumes between
1760 and 1764, is the pretended history of a personage who is
not born (before the fourth volume) and hardly ever appears,
carried on in an eccentric rigmarole of old and new, original
and borrowed humour, arranged in a style well known to students
of the later Valois humorists nsfalrasie. Far more than Moliere,
Sterne took his literary Men wherever he found it. But he
invented a kind of tremolo style of his own, with the aid of
which, in conjunction with the most unblushingly indecent
innuendoes, and with a conspicuous genius for humorous por-
traiture, trembling upon the verge of the pathetic, he succeeded
in winning a new domain for the art of fiction.
These four great writers then, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett
and Sterne all of them great pessimists in comparison with the
benignant philosophers of a later fiction first thoroughly fer-
tilized this important field. Richardson obtained a European
fame during his lifetime. Sterne, as a pioneer impressionist,
gave all subsequent stylists a new handle. Fielding and Smollett
grasped the new instrument more vigorously, and fashioned
with it models which, after serving as patterns to Scott, Marryat,
Cooper, Ainsworth, Dickens, Lever, Stevenson, Merriman,
Weyman and other romancists of the igth century, have
still retained a fair measure of their original popularity un-
impaired.
Apart from the novelists, the middle period of the i8th century
is strong in prose writers: these include Dr Johnson, Oliver
Goldsmith, Lord Chesterfield and Horace Walpole.
The last three were all influenced by the sovereign
lucidity of the best French style of the day. Chesterfield and
Walpole were both writers of aristocratic experience and of
European knowledge and sentiment. Johnson alone was a
distinctively English thinker and stylist. His knowledge of
the world, outside England, was derived from books, he was a
good deal of a scholar, an earnest moralist, and something of a
divine; his style, at any rate, reaches back to Taylor, Barrow
and South, and has a good deal of the complex structure, the
cadence, and the balance of English and Latinistic words proper
to the 1 7th century, though the later influence of Addison and
Bolingbroke is also apparent; Johnson himself was fond of the
essay, the satire in verse, and the moral tale (Rasselas); but he
lacked the creative imagination indispensable for such work
and excelled chiefly as biographer and critic. For a critic even,
it must be admitted that he was singly deficient in original ideas.
He uphojds authority. He judges by what he regards as the
accepted rules, derived by Dryden, Rapin, Boileau, Le Bossu,
Rymer, Dennis, Pope and such " estimable critics " from the
ancients, whose decisions on such matters he regards as para-
mount. He tries to carry out a systematic, motived criticism;
but he asserts rather than persuades or convinces. We go to his
critical works (Lives of the Poets and Essay on Shakespeare) not
for their conclusions, but for their shrewd comments on life, and
for an application to literary problems of a caustic common
sense. Johnson's character and conversation, his knowledge and
memory were far more remarkable than his ideas or his writings,
admirable though the best of these were; the exceptional
traits which met in his person and made that age regard him
as a nonpareil have found in James Boswell a delineator un-
rivalled in patience, dexterity and dramatic insight. The
result has been a portrait of a man of letters more alive at the
present time than that which any other age or nation has be-
queathed to us. In most of his ideas Johnson was a generation
behind the typical academic critics of his date, Joseph and
Thomas Warton, who championed against his authority what
the doctor regarded as the finicking notions of Gray. Both of
the Wartons were enthusiastic for Spenser and the older poetry;
they were saturated with Milton whom they placed far above
the correct Mr Pope, they wrote sonnets (thereby provoking
Johnson's ire) and attempted to revive medieval and Celtic lore
in every direction. Johnson's one attempt at a novel or tale
was Rasselas, a long " Rambler " essay upon the vanity of human
hope and ambition, something after the manner of the Oriental
tales of which Voltaire had caught the idea from Swift and
Montesquieu; but Rasselas is quite unenlivened by humour,
personality or any other charm.
This one quality that Johnson so completely lacked was
possessed in its fullest perfection by Oliver Goldsmith, whose
style is the supreme expression of 18th-century clear-
ness, simplicity and easy graceful fluency. Much of
Goldsmith's material, whether as playwright, story
writer or essayist, is trite and commonplace his material
worked up by any other hand would be worthless. But, when-
ever Goldsmith writes about human life, he seems to pay it a
compliment, a relief of fun and good fellowship accompanies his
slightest description, his playful and delicate touch could trans-
form every thought that he handled into something radiant with
sunlight and fragrant with the perfume of youth. Goldsmith's
plots are Irish, his critical theories are French with a light top
dressing of Johnson and Reynolds or Burke, while his prose
style is an idealization of Addison. His versatility was great,
and, in this and in other respects, he and Johnson are con-
stantly reminding us that they were hardened professionals,
writing against time for money.
Much, of the best prose work of this period, from 1740 to 1780,
was done under very different conditions. The increase of travel,
of intercourse between the nobility of Europe, and of a sense of
solidarity, self-consciousness, leisure and connoisseurship among
that section of English society known as the governing class, or,
since Disraeli, as " the Venetian oligarchy," could hardly fail to
produce an increasing crop of those elaborate collections of
letters and memoirs which had already attained their apogee
in France with Mme de Sevigne and the due de Saint-Simon.
England was not to remain far behind, for in 1718 commence
the Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; ten years more
saw the commencement of Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Reign
of George II. ; and Lord Chesterfield and Lord Orf ord
(better known as Horace Walpole) both began their
inimi table series of ie/fery about 1740. These writings, Walpole.
npne of them written ostensibly for the press, serve to
show the enormous strides that English prose was making as a
medium of vivacious description. The letters are all the re-
creation of extensive knowledge and cosmopolitan acquirements;
they are not strong on the poetic or imaginative side of things,
but they have an intense appreciation of the actual and mundane
side of fallible humanity. Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his son
and to his godson are far more, for they introduce a Ciceronian
polish and a Gallic irony and wit into the hitherto uncultivated
garden of the literary graces in English prose. Chesterfield,
whose theme is manners and social amenity, deliberately seeks
a form of expression appropriate to his text the perfection of
tact, neatness, good order and sawirfaire. After his grandfather,
the marquess of Halifax, Lord Chesterfield, the synonym in
the vulgar world for a heartless exquisite, is in reality the first
fine gentleman and epicurean .in the best sense in English polite
literature. Both Chesterfield and Walpole were conspicuous as
raconteurs in an age of witty talkers, of whose talk R. B. Sheridan,
in The School for Scandal (1777), served up a supreme. Some of
it may be tinsel, but it looks wonderfully well under the lights.
The star comedy of the century represents the sparkle of this
brilliant crowd: it reveals no hearts, but it shows us every trick
of phrase, every eccentricity of manner and every foible of
thought. But the most mundane of the letter writers, the most
frivolous, and also the most pungent, is Horace Walpole, whose
writings are an epitome of the history and biography of the
Georgian era. " Fiddles sing all through them/wax lights, fine
dresses, fine jokes, fine plate, fine equipages glitter and sparkle;
never was such a brilliant, smirking Vanity Fair as that through
which he leads us." Yet, in some ways, he was a corrective to
the self-complacency of his generation, a vast dilettante, lover of
" Gothic," of curios and antiques, of costly printing, of old
illuminations and stained glass. In his short miracle-novel,
I8THCENTIRV]
ENGLISH LITERATURE
635
called Tke Castl* of Otranlo, he set a fashion for mystery
and terror in fiction, (or medieval legend, diablerie, mystery,
horror, antique furniture and Gothic jargon, which led directly
by the route of Anne KaiKliffe, Maturin, Vtilhek, St Leon and
t'rjnJcfrutrin, to Quetnkoo Hall, to Waverley and even to Hugo
and Toe.
Meanwhile the area of the Memoir was widening rapidly in
the hands of Fanny, the sly daughter of the wordly-wisc and
fashionable musician, Dr Burncy, author of a novel
(Evelina) most satirical and facete, writ trn m- she was
well out of her teens; not too kind a satirist of her
former patroness, Mrs Thralc (afterwards Piozzi), the
least tiresome of the new group of scribbling sibyls, blue stockings,
lady dilettanti and Delia Cruscans. Both, as portraitists and
purveyors of JoknsonUina, were surpassed by the inimitable
James Boswell, first and most fatuous of all interviewers, in
brief a biographical genius, with a new recipe, distinct from
Sterne's, for disclosing personality, and a deliberate, artificial
method of revealing himself to us, as it were, unawares.
From all these and many other experiments, a far more flexible
prose was developing in England, adapted for those critical
reviews, magazines and journals which were multiplying rapidly
to exploit the new masculine interest, apart from the schools,
in history, topography, natural philosophy and the picturesque,
just as circulating libraries were springing up to exploit the new
feminine passion for fiction, which together with memoirs and
fashionable poetry contributed to give the booksellers bigger
and bigger ideas.
It is surprising how many types of literary productions with
which we are now familiar were first moulded into definite and
classical form during the Johnsonian period. In
addition to the novel one need only mention the
economic treatise, as exemplified for the first time in
the admirable symmetry of The Wealth of Nations,
the diary of a faithful observer of nature such as Gilbert
White, the Fifteen Discourses (1769-1791) in which Sir Joshua
Reynolds endeavours for the first time to expound for England
a philosophy of Art, the historico-philosophical tableau as
exemplified by Robertson and Gibbon, the light political parody
of which the poetry of The Rolliad and Anti- Jacobin afford so
many excellent models; and, going to the other extreme, the
ponderous archaeological or topographical monograph, as
exemplified in Stuart and Revett's Antiquities of Athens, in
Robert Wood's colossal Ruins of Palmyra (1753), or the monu-
mental History of Leicestershire by John Nichols. Such works
as this last might wcD seem the outcome of Horace Walpolc's
maxim: In this scribbling age " let those who can't write, glean."
In short, the literary landscape in Johnson's day was slowly
but surely assuming the general outlines to which we are all
accustomed. The literary conditions of the period dated from
the time of Pope in their main features, and it is quite possible
that they were more considerably modified in Johnson's own
lifetime than they have been since. The booksellers, or, as they
would now be called, publishers, were steadily superseding the
old ties of patronage, and basing their relations with authors
upon a commercial footing. A stage in their progress is marked
by the success of Johnson's friend and Hume's correspondent,
William Strahan, who kept a coach, " a credit to literature."
The evolution of a normal status for the author was aided by the
definition of copyright and gradual extinction of piracy.
Histories of their own time by Clarendon and Burnet have been
in much request from their own day to this, and the first, at least,
Hiitoritmt. ** * ^ ne monument of English prose; Bolingbroke
again, in 1735, dwelt memorably upon the ethical,
political and philosophical value of history. But it was not until
the third quarter of the iSth century that English literature freed
itself from the imputation of lagging hopelessly behind France,
Italy and Germany in the serious work of historical reconstruc-
tion. Hume published the first volume of his History of England
in 1754. Robertson 'sHfory0/5c0tf<>n<f saw the light in 17 v>:md
his Charles V. in 1769; Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire came in 1776. Hume was, perhaps, the first modernist
in history; he attempted to give his work a modern interest and,
Scot though he was, a modern style it could not fail, as he knew,
to derive piquancy from its derision of the Whiggish assumption
which regarded 1688 as a political millennium. Wm. Robertson
was, perhaps, the first man to adapt the polished periphrases of
the pulpit to historical generalization. The gifts of compromise
which he had learned as Moderator of the General Assembly he
brought to bear upon his historical studies, and a language so
unfamiliar to his lips as academic English he wrote with so much
the more care that the greatest connoisseurs of the day were
enthusiastic about " Robertson's wonderful style." Even more
portentous in its superhuman dignity was the style of Edward
Gibbon, who conbined with the unspiritual optimism of Hume
and Robertson a far more concentrated devotion to his subject,
an industry more monumental, a greater co-ordinative vigour,
and a malice which, even in the i8th century, rendered him the
least credulous man of his age. Of all histories, therefore, based
upon the transmitted evidence of other ages rather than on the
personal observation of the writer's own, Gibbon's Decline and
Fall has hitherto maintained its reputation best. Hume, even
before he was superseded, fell a prey to continuations and abridge-
ments, while Robertson was supplanted systematically by the
ornate pages of W. H. Prescott.
The increasing transparency of texture in the working English
prose during this period is shown in the writings of theologians
such as Butler and Paley, and of thinkers such as Berkeley and
Hume, who, by prolonging and extending Berkeley's contention
that matter was an abstraction, had shown that mind would have
to be considered an abstraction too, thereby signalling a school of
reaction to common sense or " external reality " represented by
Thomas Reid, and with modifications by David Hartley, Abraham
Tucker and others. Butler and Paley are merely two of the
biggest amd most characteristic apologists of that day, both
great stylists, though it must be allowed that their very lucidity
and good sense excites almost more doubt than it stills, and both
very successful in repelling the enemy in controversy, though
their very success accentuates the faults of that unspiritual age
in which churchmen were so far more concerned about the title
deeds than about the living portion of the church's estate.
Free thought was already beginning to sap their defences in
various directions, and in Tom Paine, Priestley, Price, Godwin
and Mackintosh they found more formidable adversaries than in
the earlier deists. The greatest champion, however, of continuity
and conservation both in church and state, against the new
schools of latitudinarians and radicals, the great eulogist of the
unwritten constitution, and the most perfect master of emotional
prose in this period, prose in which the harmony of sense and
sound is attained to an extent hardly ever seen outside supreme
poetry, was Edmund Burke, one of the most commanding
intellects in the whole range of political letters a striking con-
trast in this respect to Junius, whose mechanical and journalistic
talent for invective has a quite ephemeral value.
From 1660 to 1760 the English mind was still much occupied in
shaking off the last traces of feudality. The crown, the parlia-
ment, the manor and the old penal code were left, Ke(urat
it is true: but the old tenures and gild-brotherhoods, aatun.
the old social habits, miracles, arts, faith, religion and
letters were irrevocably gone. The attempt of the young
Chevalier in 1745 was a complete anachronism, and no sooner
was this generally felt to be so than men began to regret that it
should so be. Men began to describe as " grand " and " pictur-
esque " scenery hitherto summarized as " barren mountains
covered in mist "; while Voltaire and Pope were at their height,
the world began to realize that the Augustan age, in its zeal for
rationality, civism and trim parterres, had neglected the wild
freshness of an age when literature was a wild flower that
grew on the common. Rousseau laid the axe to the root of
this over-sophistication of life; Goldsmith, half understanding,
echoed some of his ideas in " The Deserted Village." Back from
books to men was now the prescription from the crowded town
to the spacious country. From plains and valleys to peaks and
pinewoods. From cities, where men were rich and corrupt,
6 3 6
ENGLISH LITERATURE
[IQTH CENTURY
to the earlier and more primitive moods of earth. The breath
had scarcely left the body of the Grand Monarque before an
intrigue was set on foot to dispute the provisions of his will.
So with the critical testament of Pope. Within a few years of his
death we find Gray, Warton, Kurd and other disciples of the new
age denying to Pope the highest kind of poetic excellence, and
exalting imagination and fancy into a sphere far above the
Augustan qualities of correct taste and good judgment. De-
centralization and revolt were the new watchwords in literature.
We must eschew France and Italy and go rather to Iceland or the
Hebrides for fresh poetic emotions: we must shun academies
and classic coffee-houses and go into the street-corners or the
hedge-lanes in search of Volkspoesie. An old muniment chest
and a roll of yellow parchment were the finest incen-
chaage in tj ves t o tji e new s pi r it of the picturesque. How else
'spirit. are we to explain the enthusiasm that welcomed the
sham Ossianic poems of James Macpherson in 1760;
Percy's patched-up ballads of 1765 (Reliques of Ancient Poetry);
the new enthusiasm for Chaucer; the " black letter " school of
Ritson, Tyrrwhitt, George Ellis, Steevens, Ireland and Malone;
above all, the spurious 15th-century poems poured forth in 1768-
1 769 with such a wild gusto of archaic imagination by a prodigy
not quite seventeen years of age ? Chatterton's precocious
fantasy cast a wonderful spell upon the romantic imagination
of other times. It does not prepare us for the change that was
coming over the poetic spirit of the last two decades of the
century, but it does at least help us to explain it. The great
masters of verse in Britain during this period were the three
very disparate figures of William Cowper, William Blake and
Robert Burns. Cowper was not a poet of vivid and rapturous
visions. There is always something of the rusticating city-
scholar about his humour. The ungovernable impulse and
imaginative passion of the great masters of poesy were not his
to claim. His motives to express himself in verse came very
largely from the outside. The greater part, nearly all his best
poetry is of the occasional order. To touch and retouch, he
says, in one of his letters among the most delightful in English
is the secret of almost all good writing, especially verse. What-
ever is short should be nervous, masculine and compact. In all
the arts that raise the best occasional poetry to the
Cowper. j eve j O f greatness Cowper is supretne. In phrase-
Bufas. moulding, verbal gymnastic and prosodical marquetry
he has scarcely a rival, and the fruits of his poetic
industry are enshrined in the filigree of a most delicate fancy
and a highly cultivated intelligence, purified and thrice refined
in the fire of mental affliction. His work expresses the rapid
civilization of his time, its humanitarian feeling and growing
sensitiveness to natural beauty, home comfort, the claims of
animals and the charms of light literature. In many of his short
poems, such as " The Royal George," artistic simplicity is
indistinguishable from the stern reticence of genius. William
Blake had no immediate literary descendants, for he worked
alone, and Lamb was practically alone in recognizing what he
wrote as poetry. But he was by far the most original of the
reactionaries who preceded the Romantic Revival, and he caught
far more of the Elizabethan air in his lyric verse than any one
else before Coleridge. The Songs of Innocence and Songs of
Experience, in 1789 and 1794, sing themselves, and have a bird-
like spontaneity that has been the despair of all song-writers
from that day to this. After 1800 he winged his flight farther and
farther into strange and unknown regions. In the finest of these
earlier lyrics, which owe so little to his contemporaries, the ripple
of the stream of romance that began to gush forth in 1798 is
distinctly heard. But the first poetic genius of the century was
unmistakably Robert Burns. In song and satire alike Burns is
racy, in the highest degree, of the poets of North Britain, who
since Robert Sempill, Willy Hamilton of Gilbertfield, douce
Allan Ramsay, the Edinburgh periwig-maker and miscellanist,
and Robert Fergusson, " the writer-chiel, a deathless name," had
kept alive the old native poetic tradition, had provided the
strolling fiddlers with merry and wanton staves, and had perpetu-
ated the daintiest shreds of national music, the broadest col-
loquialisms, and the warmest hues of patriotic or local sentiment.
Burns immortalizes these old staves by means of his keener
vision, his more fiery spirit, his stronger passion and his richer
volume of sound. Burns's fate was a pathetic one. Brief,
broken glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete,
his poems wanted all things for completeness: culture, leisure,
sustained effort, length of life. Yet occasional, fragmentary,
extemporary as most of them are, they bear the guinea stamp
of true genius. His eye is unerring, his humour of the ripest,
his wit both fine and abundant. His ear is less subtle, except
when dialect is concerned. There he is infallible. Landscape
he understands in subordination to life. For abstract ideas about
Liberty and 1789 he cares little. But he is a patriot and an
insurgent, a hater of social distinction and of the rich. Of the
divine right or eternal merit of the system under which the poor
man sweats to put money into the rich man's pocket and fights
to keep it there, and is despised in proportion to the amount of his
perspiration, he had a low opinion. His work has inspired the
meek, has made the poor feel themselves less of ciphers in the
world and given courage to the down-trodden. His love of
women has inspired some of the most ardently beautiful lyrics
in the world. Among modern folk-poets such as Jokai and
Mistral, the position of Burns in the hearts of his own people is
the best assured.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. The dearth of literaryhistoryinEngland
makes it rather difficult to obtain a good general view of letters in
Britain during the l8th century. Much may be gleaned, however,
from chapters of Lecky's History of England during the i8th Century,
from Stephen's Lectures on English Literature and Society in the i8th
Century (1904), fromTaine's History of English Literature (van Laun's
translation), from vols. v. and vi. of Prof. Courthope's History of
English Poetry, and from the second volume of Chambers's Cyclo-
paedia of English Literature (1902). The two vols. dealing respect-
ively with the Age of Pope and the Age of Johnson in Bell's Hand-
books of English Literature will be found useful, and suggestive
chapters will be found in Saintsbury's Short History aflH in A. H.
Thompson's Student's History of English Literature (rtjbi). The
same may, perhaps, be said of books v. and vi. in the Bookman
Illustrated History of English Literature (1906), by the present writer.
Sidelights of value are to be found in Walter Raleigh's little book
on the English Novel, in Beljame's Le Publique et les hommes de
lettres en Angleterre au XVIII' siecle, in H. A. Beers' History of
English Romanticism in the i8th Century (1899), and above alt hi Sir
Leslie Stephen's History of English Thought during the i8th Century ;
Stephen's Hours in a Library, the monographs dealing with the
period in the English Men of Letters series, the Vignettes and
Portraits of Austin Dobson and George Paston, Elwin's Eighteenth
Century Men of Letters, and Thomas Wright's Caricature History of
the Georges, must also be kept in mind. (T. SE.)
VI. THE
CENTURY
We have seen how great was the reverence which the i8th
century paid to poetry, and how many different kinds of poetic
experiment were going on, mostly by the imitative efforts of
revivalists (Spenserians, Miltonians, SBakespeareans, Ballad-
mongers, Scandinavian, Celtic, Gothic scholars and the like),
but also in the direction of nature study and landscape descrip-
tion, while the more formal type of Augustan poetry, satire and
description, in the direct succession of Pope, was by no means
neglected.
The most original vein in the ipth century was supplied by the
Wordsworth group, the first manifesto of which appeared in the
Lyrical Ballads of 1798. William Wordsworth himself
represents, in the first place, a revolutionary movement W0 rth
against the poetic diction of study-poets since the first
acceptance of the Miltonic model by Addison. His ideal, im- ~
perfectly carried out, was a reversion to popular language of the
utmost simplicity and directness. He added to this the idea of
the enlargement of man by Nature, after Rousseau, and went
further than this in the utterance of an essentially pantheistic
desire to become part of its loveliness, to partake in a mystical
sense of the loneliness of the mountain, the sound of falling water,
the upper horizon of the clouds and the wind. To the growing
multitude of educated people who were being pent in huge cities
these ideas were far sweeter than the formalities of the old
pastoral. Wordsworth's great discovery, perhaps, was that )
popular poetry need not be imitative, artificial or condescending,
I9THCENTIRY]
ENGLISH LITERATURE
637
but that a simple story truthfully told of the passion, affliction or
devotion of simple folk, and appealing to the primal emotion, is
worthy of the highest effort of the poetic artist, and may achieve
m poetic value far in advance of conventional descriptions of
strikingly grouped incidents picturesquely magnified or rhetoric-
ally exaggerated. But Wordsworth's theories might have ended
very much where they began, had it not been for their impregna-
tion by the complementary genius of Coleridge.
Coleridge at his best was inspired by the supreme poetic gifts of
passion, imagination, simplicity and mystery, combining form
Clh|) ^ r and colour, sound and sense, novelty and antiquity,
realism and romanticism, scholarly ode and popular
ballad. His three fragmentary poems The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, Ckristabel and Kubla Khan are the three spells and
touchstones, constituting what is often regarded by the best
judges as the high-standard of modern English poetry. Their
subtleties and beauties irradiated the homelier artistic conceptions
of Wordsworth, and the effect on him was permanent. Cole-
ridge's inspiration, on the other hand, was irrecoverable; a
physical element was due, no doubt, to the first exaltation
indirectly due to the opium habit, but the moral influence
was contributed by the Wordsworths. The steady will of the
Dalesman seems to have constrained Coleridge's imagination
from aimless wandering; his lofty and unwavering self-confidence
inspired his friend with a similar energy. Away from Words-
worth after 1708, Coleridge lost himself in visions of work that
always remained to be " transcribed," by one who had every
poetic gift save the rudimentary will for sustained and con-
centrated effort.
Coleridge's more delicate sensibility to the older notes of that
more musical era in English poetry which preceded the age of
Lmm fc Dryden and Pope was due in no small measure to the
luminous yet subtle intuitions of his friend Charles
Lamb. Lamb's appreciation of the imaginative beauty inhumed
in old English literature amounted to positive genius, and the
persistence with which he brought his perception of the supreme
importance of imagination and music in poetry to bear upon some
of the finest creative minds of 1800, in talk, letters, selections and
essays, brought about a gradual revolution in the aesthetic
morality of the day. He paid little heed to the old rhetoric
and the ars pottica of classical comparison. His aim was rather
to discover the mystery, the folk -seed and the old-world element,
latent in so much of the finer ancient poetry and implicit in so
much of the new. The Essays of Elia (1820-1825) are the
binnacle of Lamb's vessel of exploration. Lamb and his great
(f ft m~ rival, William Hazlitt, both maintained that criticism
was not so much an affair of learning, or an exercise
of comparative and expository judgment, as an act of imagination
in itself. Hazlitt became one of the master essayists, a fine
critical analyst and declaimer, denouncing all insipidity and
affectation, stirring the soul with metaphor, soaring easily and
acquiring a momentum in his prose which often approximates
to the impassioned utterance of Burke. Like Lamb, he wanted
to measure his contemporaries by the Elizabethans, or still older
masters, and he was deeply impressed by Lyrical Ballads.
The new critics gradually found responsible auxiliaries, notably
Leigh Hunt, De Quincey and Wilson of Blackwood's.
;h Hunt, not very important in himself, was a
cause of great authorship in others. He increased
both the depth and area of modern literary sensibility.
The world of books was to him an enchanted forest, in which
every leaf had its own secret. He was the most catholic of
critics, but be knew what was poor at least in other people.
As an essayist he is a feminine diminutive of Lamb, excellent in
fancy and literary illustration, but far inferior in decisive insight
or penetrative masculine wit. The Miltonic quality of im-
passioned pyramidal prose is best seen in Thomas De Quincey,
of all the essayists of this age, or any age, the most diffuse,
unequal and irreducible to rule, and which yet at times trembles
upon the brink of a rhythmical sonority which seems almost to
rival that of the greatest poetry. Leigh Hunt supplies a valuable
link between Lamb, the sole external moderator of the Lake
DM
school, Byron, Shelley, and the junior branch of imaginative
Aesthetic, represented by Keats.
John Keats (1795-1821), three years younger than Shelley,
was the greatest poetic artist of his time, and would probably
have surpassed all, but for his collapse of health at KtMtt
twenty-five. His vocation was as unmistakable as
that of Chatterton, with whose youthful ardour his own had
points of likeness. The two contemporary conceptions of him
as a fatuous Cockney Bunthorne or as " a tadpole of the lakes "
were equally erroneous. But Keats was in a sense the first of
the virtuoso or aesthetic school (caricatured later by the formula
of " Art for Art's sake "); artistic beauty was to him a kind of
religion, his expression was more technical, less personal than
that of his contemporaries, he was a conscious " romantic,"
and he travelled in the realms of gold with less impedimenta
than any of his fellows. Byron had always himself to talk about,
Wordsworth saw the universe too much through the medium
of his own self-importance, Coleridge was a metaphysician,
Shelley hymned Intellectual Beauty; Keats treats of his subject,
" A Greek Urn," " A Nightingale," the season of " Autumn,"
in such a way that our thought centres not upon the poet but
upon the enchantment of that which he sings. In his three
great medievalising poems, "The Pot of Basil," "The Eve of St
Agnes " and " La Belle Dame Sans Merci," even more than
in his Odes, Keats is the forerunner of Tennyson, the greatest
of the word-painters. But apart from his perfection of loveliness,
he has a natural magic and a glow of humanity surpassing that
of any other known poet. His poetry, immature as it was, gave
a new beauty to the language. His loss was the greatest English
Literature has sustained.
Before Tennyson, Rossetti and Morris, Keats's best disciples
in the aesthetic school were Thomas Lovell Beddoes, George
Dailey and Thomas Hood, the failure of whose L ta aor
" Midsummer Fairies " and " Fair Inez " drove him
into that almost mortific vein of verbal humour which threw
up here and there a masterpiece such as " The Song of a Shirt."
The master virtuoso of English poetry in another department
(the classical) during this and the following age was Walter Savage
Landor, who threw off a few fragments of verse worthy of the
Greek Anthology, but in his Dialogues or " Imaginary Conversa-
tions " evolved a kind of violent monologizing upon the common-
place which descends into the most dismal caverns of egotism.
Carlyle furiously questioned his competence. Mr Shaw allows
his classical amateurship and respectable strenuosity of char-
acter, but denounces his work, with a substratum of truth,
as that of a " blathering, unreadable pedant."
Among those, however, who found early nutriment in Landor's
Miltonic Gebir (1798) must be reckoned the most poetical of our
poets. P. B. Shelley was a spirit apart, who fits into giieUe
no group, the associate of Byron, but spiritually as
remote from him as possible, hated by the rationalists of his age,
and regarded by the poets with more pity than jealousy. He
wrote only for poets, and had no public during his lifetime among
general readers, by whom, however, he is now regarded as the
poet par excellence. In his conduct it must be admitted that
he was in a sense, like Coleridge, irresponsible, but on the other
hand his poetic energy was irresistible and all his work is technic-
ally of the highest order of excellence. In ideal beauties it is
supreme; its great lack is its want of humanity; in this he
is the opposite of Wordsworth who reads human nature into
everything. Shelley, on the other hand, dehumanises things
and makes them unearthly. He hangs a poem, like a cobweb
or a silver cloud, on a horn of the crescent moon, and leaves it
to dangle there in a current of ether. His quest was continuous
for figures of beauty, figures, however, more ethereal and less
sensuous than those in Keats; having obtained such an idea
he passed it again and again through the prism of his mind, in
talk, letters, prefaces, poems. The deep sense of the mystery
of words and their lightest variations in the skein of poetry,
half forgotten since Milton's time, had been recovered in a great
measure by Coleridge and Wordsworth since 1798; Lamb, too,
and 'Hazlitt, and, perhaps, Hogg were in the secret, while Keats
6 3 8
ENGLISH LITERATURE
[I9TH CENTURA
Byron.
had its open sesame on his lips ere he died. The union of poetic
emotion with verbal music of the greatest perfection was the aim
of all, but none of these masters made words breathe and sing
with quite the same spontaneous ease and fervour that Shelley
attained in some of the lyrics written between twenty-four and
thirty, such as " The Cloud," " The Skylark," the " Ode of the
West Wind," "The Sensitive Plant," the "Indian Serenade."
The path of the new romantic school had been thoroughly
prepared during the age of Gray, Cowper and Burns, and it won
its triumphs with little resistance and no serious convulsions.
The opposition was noisy, but its representative character has
been exaggerated. In the meantime, however, the old-fashioned
school and the Popean couplet, the Johnsonian dignity of re-
flection and the Goldsmithian ideal of generalized description,
were well maintained by George Crabbe (1754-1832), " though
Nature's sternest painter yet the best," a worsted-stockinged
Pope and austere delineator of village misdoing and penurious
age, and Samuel Rogers (1763-1855), the banker poet, liberal
in sentiment, extreme Tory in form, and dilettante delineator
of Italy to the music of the heroic couplet. Robert Southey,
Thomas Campbell and Thomas Moore were a dozen years
younger and divided their allegiance between two schools.
In the main, however, they were still poeticisers of the orthodox
old pattern, though all wrote a few songs of exceptional merit,
and Campbell especially by defying the old anathemas.
The great champion of the Augustan masters was himself
the architect of revolution. First the idol and then the outcast
of respectable society, Lord Byron sought relief in
new cadences and new themes for his poetic talent.
He was, however, essentially a history painter or a satirist in
verse. He had none of the sensitive aesthetic taste of a Keats,
none of the spiritual ardour of a Shelley, or of the elemental
beauty or artistry of Wordsworth or Coleridge. He manages
the pen (said Scott) with the careless and negligent ease of a
man of quality. The " Lake Poets " sought to create an impres-
sion deep, calm and profound, Byron to start a theme which
should enable him to pose, travel, astonish, bewilder and confound
as lover of daring, freedom, passion and revolt. For the subtler
symphonic music that music of the spheres to which the ears
of poets alone are attuned Byron had an imperfect sympathy.
The deh'cate ear is often revolted in his poetry by the vices
of impromptu work. He steadily refused to polish, to file or to
furbish the damning, inevitable sign of a man born to wear
a golden tassel. " I am like the tiger. If I miss the first spring
I go growling back to the jungle." Subtlety is sacrificed to
freshness and vigour. The exultation, the breadth, the sweeping
magnificence of his effects are consequently most appreciated
abroad, where the ineradicable flaws of his style have no power
to annoy.
The European fame of Byron was from the first something
quite unique. At Missolonghi people ran through the streets
crying " The great man is dead he is gone." His corpse was
refused entrance at Westminster; but the poet was taken to
the inmost heart of Russia, Poland, Spain, Italy, France, Ger-
many, Scandinavia, and among the Slavonic nations generally.
In Italy his influence is plainly seen in Berchet, Leopardi,
Giusti, and even Carducci. In Spain the Myrtle Society was
founded in Byron's honour. Hugo in his Orientales traversed
Greece. Chateaubriand joined the Greek Committee. Delavigne
dedicated his verse to Byron; Lamartine wrote another canto
to Childe Harold; Merimee is interpenetrated by Byronesque
feeling which also animates the best work of Heine, Pushkin,
Lermontov, and Mickievicz, and even De Mussel.
Like Scott, Byron was a man of two eras, and not too much
ahead of his time to hold the Press-Dragon in fee. His supremacy
Criticism anc ^ ^ at ^ ^' s sa t e l'it es Moore and Campbell were
championed by the old papers and by the two new
blatant Quarterlies, whose sails were filled not with the light
airs of the future but by the Augustan " gales " of the classical
past. The distinction of this new phalanx of old-fashioned
critics who wanted to confer literature by university degree
was that they wrote as gentlemen for gentlemen: they first
gave criticism in England a respectable shakedown. Francis
Jeffrey, a man of extraordinary ability and editor of The Edin-
burgh Renew from 1803 to 1829 (with the mercurial Sydney
Smith, the first of English conversationists, as his aide-de-camp),
exercised a powerful influence as a standardizer of the second
rate. He was one of the first of the critics to grasp firmly the
main idea of literary evolution the importance of time, environ-
ment, race and historical development upon the literary land-
scape; but he was vigorously aristocratic in his preferences,
a hater of mystery, symbolism or allegory, an instinctive indi-
vidualist of intolerant pattern. His chief weapons against the
new ideas were social superiority and omniscience, and he used
both unsparingly. The strident political partisanship of the
Edinburgh raised up within six years a serious rival in the
Quarterly, which was edited in turn by the good-natured peda-
gogue William Gifford and by Scott's extremely able son-in-law
John Gibson Lockhart, the " scorpion " of the infant Blackwood.
With the aid of the remnant of the old anti-Jacobins, Canning,
Ellis, Barrow, Southey, Croker, Hayward, Apperley and others,
the theory of Quarterly infallibility was carried to its highest
point of development about 1845.
The historical and critical work of the Quarterly era, as might
be expected, was appropriate to this gentlemanly censorship.
The thinkers of the day were economic or juristic Bentham,
the great codifier; Malthus, whose theory of population gave
Darwin his main impulse to theorise; and Mackintosh, whose
liberal opposition to Burke deserved a better fate than it has
ever perhaps received. The historians were mainly of the second
class the judicial Hallam, the ornate Roscoe, the plodding
Lingard, the accomplished Milman, the curious Isaac D'Israeli,
the academic Bishop Thirlwall. Mitford and Grote may be
considered in the light of Tory and Radical historical pamphlet-
eers, but Crete's work has the much larger measure of per-
manent value. As the historian of British India, James Mill's
industry led him beyond his thesis of Benthamism in practice.
Sir William Napier's heroic picture of the Peninsular War is
strongly tinged by bias against the Tory administration of
1808-1813; but it conserves some imperishable scenes of war.
Some of the most magnetic prose of the Regency Period was
contained in the copious and insincere but profoundly emotional-
ising pamphlets of the self-taught Surrey labourer William
Cobbett, in whom Diderot's paradox of a comedian is astonish-
ingly illustrated. Lockhart's Lives of Burns and of Sir Walter
Scott the last perhaps the most memorable prose monument
of its epoch appeared in 1828 and 1838, and both formed the
subjects of Thomas Carlyle in the Edinburgh Review, where, under
the unwelcome discipline of Jeffrey, the new prophet worked
nobly though in harness.
Great as the triumph of the Romantic masters and the new
ideas was, it is in the ranks of the Old School after all that we have
to look for the greatest single figure in the literature Scott
of this age. Except in the imitative vein of ballad
or folk-song, the poetry of Sir Walter Scott is never quite first-rate.
It is poetry for repetition rather than for close meditation or
contemplation, and resembles a military band more than a full
orchestra. Nor will his prose bear careful analysis. It is a good
servant, no more. When we consider, however, not the intensity
but the vast extent, range and versatility of Scott's powers, we
are constrained to assign him the first place in his own age, if not
that in the next seat to Shakespeare in the whole of the English
literary Pantheon. Like Shakespeare, he made humour and a
knowledge of human nature his first instruments in depicting
the past. Unlike Shakespeare, he was a born antiquary, and he
had a great (perhaps excessive) belief in mise en scene, costume,
patois and scenic properties generally. His portraiture, however,
is Shakespearean in its wisdom and maturity, and, although he
wrote very rapidly, it must be remembered that his mind had
been prepared by strenuous work for twenty years as a store-
house of material in which nothing was handled until it had been
carefully mounted by the imagination, classified in the memory,
and tested by experimental use. Once he has got the imagination
of the reader well grounded to earth, there is nothing he loves
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better than telling a good story. Of detail he is often careless.
But he trusted to a full wallet, and rightly, for mainly by his
abundance he raised the literature of the novel to its highest
point of influence, breathing into it a new spirit, giving it a fulness
and universality of life, a romantic charm, a dignity and elevation,
and thereby a coherence, a power and predominance which it
never had before.
In Scott the various lines of 18th-century conservatism and
19th-century romantic revival most wonderfully converge.
His intense feeling for Long Ago made him a romantic almost
from his cradle. The master faculties of history and humour
made a strong conservative of him; but his Toryism was of
* very different spring from that of Coleridge or Wordsworth.
It was not a reaction from disappointment in the sequel of 1789,
nor was it the result of reasoned conviction. It was indwelling,
rooted deeply in the fibres of the soil, to which Scott's attachment
was passionate, and nourished as from a source by ancestral
sentiment and " heather " tradition. This sentiment made
Scott a victorious pioneer of the Romantic movement all over
Europe. At the same time we must remember that, with all his
fondness for medievalism, he was fundamentally a thorough
18th-century Scotsman and successor of Bailie Nicol Jarvie : a
worshipper of good sense, toleration, modern and expert govern-
mental ideas, who valued the past chiefly by way of picturesque
relief, and was thoroughly alive to the benefit of peaceful and
orderly rule, and deeply convinced that we are much better off
as we are than we could have been in the days of King Richard
or good Queen Bess. Scott had the mind of an enlightened
18th-century administrator and statesmen who had made a
fierce hobby of armour and old ballads. To expect him to treat
of intense passion or romantic medievalism as Charlotte Bronte
or Dante Gabriel Rosset ti would have treated them is as absurd as
to expect to find the sentiments of a Mrs Browning blossoming
amidst the horse-play of Tom Jones or Harry Lorrequer. Scott
has few niceties or secrets: he was never subtle, morbid or
fantastic. His handling is ever broad, vigorous, easy, careless,
healthy and free. Yet nobly simple and straightforward as
man and writer were, there is something very complex about his
literary legacy, which has gone into all lands and created bigoted
enemies (Carlyle, Borrow) as well as unexpected friends (Hazlitt,
Newman, Jowett); and we can seldom be sure whether his
influence is reactionary or the reverse. There has always been
something semi-feudal about it. The " shirra " has a demesne in
letters as broad as a countryside, a band of mesne vassals and a
host of Eildon hillsmen, Tweedside cottiers, minor feudatories
and forest retainers attached to the " Abbotsford Hunt." Scott's
humour, humanity and insistence upon the continuity of history
transformed English literature profoundly.
Scott set himself to coin a quarter of a million sterling out of
the new continent of which he felt himself the Columbus. He
failed (quite narrowly), but he made the Novel the
paymaster of literature for at least a hundred years.
His immediate contemporaries and successors were not
particularly great. John Gait (1779-1 839), Susan Ferrier ( 1 78 2-
1854) and D. M. Moir (1708-1851) all attempted the delineation
of Scottish scenes with a good deal of shrewdness of insight and
humour. The main bridge from Scott to the great novelists of
the 'forties and 'fifties was supplied by sporting, military, naval
and political novels, represented in turn by Surtees, Smith, Hook,
Maxwell, Lever, Marryat, Cooper, Moricr, Ainsworth, Bulwer
Lytton and Disraeli. Surtees gave all-important hints to Pick-
icick, Marryat developed grotesque character-drawing, Ainsworth
and Bulwer attempted new effects in criminology and con-
temporary glitter. Disraeli in the 'thirties was one of the fore-
most romantic wits who had yet attempted the novel. Early
in the 'forties he received the laying-on of hands from the Young
England party, and attempted to propagandize the good tidings
of his mission in Coningsby and Sybil, novels full of entratnement
and promise, if not of actual genius. Unhappily the author was
enmeshed in the fatal drolleries of the English party system,
and Lolhair is virtually a confession of abandoned ideals. He
completes the forward party in fiction; Jane Austen (1775-
1815) stands to this as Crabbe and Rogers to Coleridge and
Shelley. She represents the fine flower of the expiring iKth
century. Scott could do the trumpet notes on the organ. She
fingers the fine ivory flutes. She coinliinrs self-knowledge and
artistic reticence with a complete tact and an absolute lucidity
of vision within the area prescribed. Within the limits of a park
wall in a country parish, absolutely oblivious of Europe and the
universe, her art is among the finest and most finished that our
literature has to offer. In irony she had no rival at that period.
But the trimncss of her plots and the delicacy of her miniature
work have affinities in Maria Edgeworth, Harriet Martineau
and Mary Russell Mitford, three excellent writers of pure English
prose. There is a finer aroma of style in the contemporary
" novels " of Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866). These, how-
ever, are rather tournaments of talk than novels proper, releasing
a flood of satiric portraiture upon the idealism of the day
difficult to be apprehended in perfection save by professed
students. Peacock's style had an appreciable influence upon
his son-in-law George Meredith (1828-1009). His philosophy is
for the most part Tory irritability exploding in ridicule ; but
Peacock was one of the most lettered men of his age, and his
flouts and jeers smack of good reading, old wine and respectable
prejudices. In these his greatest successor was George Borrow
(1803-1881), who used three volumes of half-imaginary auto-
biography and road-faring in strange lands as a sounding-board
for a kind of romantic revolt against the century of comfort,
toleration, manufactures, mechanical inventions, cheap travel
and commercial expansion, unaccompanied (as he maintains)
by any commensurate growth of human wisdom, happiness,
security or dignity.
In the year of Queen Victoria's accession most of the great
writers of the early part of the century, whom we may denominate
as " late Georgian," were silent. Scott, Byron, Shelley,
Keats, Coleridge, Lamb, Sheridan, Hazlitt, Mackintosh, ^ or/
Crabbe and Cobbett were gone. Wordsworth, Southey, tra r
Campbell, Moore, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, De Quincey,
Miss Edgeworth, Miss Mitford, Leigh Hunt, Brougham, Samuel
Rogers were still living, but the vital portion of their work was
already done. The principal authors who belong equally to
the Georgian and Victorian eras are Landor, Bulwer, Marryat,
Hallam, Milman and Disraeli; none of whom, with the exception
of the last, approaches the first rank in either. The significant
work of Tennyson, the Brownings, Carlyle, Dickens, Thackeray,
the Brontes, George Eliot, Mrs Gaskell, Trollope, the Kingsleys,
Spencer, Mill, Darwin, Ruskin, Grote, Macaulay, Freeman,
Froude, Lecky, Buckle, Green, Maine, Borrow, FitzGerald,
Arnold, Rossetti, Swinburne, Meredith, Hardy, Stevenson,
Morris, Newman, Pater, Jefferies the work of these writers
may be termed conclusively Victorian; it gives the era a stamp
of its own and distinguishes it as the most varied in intellectual
riches in the whole course of our literature. Circumstances have
seldom in the world been more favourable to a great outburst of
literary energy. The nation was secure and prosperous to an
unexampled degree, conscious of the will and the power to
expand still further.. The canons of taste were still aristocratic.
Books were made and unmade according to a regular standard.
Literature was the one form of art which the English understood,
in which they had always excelled since 1579, and in which their
originality was supreme. To the native genius for poetry was
now added the advantage of materials for a prose which in
lucidity and versatility should surpass even that of Goldsmith
and Hazlitt. The diversity of form and content of this great
literature was commensurate with the development of human
knowledge and power which marked its age. In this and some
other respects it resembles the extraordinary contemporary
development in French literature which began under the reign
of Louis Philippe. The one signally disconcerting thing about
the great Victorian writers is their amazing prolixity. Not
content with two or three long books, they write whole literatures.
A score of volumes, each as long as the Bible or Shakespeare,
barely represents the output of such authors as Carlyle, Ruskin,
Froude, Dickens, Thackeray, Newman, Spencer or Trollope.
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ENGLISH LITERATURE
CENTURY
They obtained vast quantities of new readers, for the middle
class was beginning to read with avidity; but the quality of
brevity, the knowledge when to stop, and with it the older classic
conciseness and the nobler Hellenic idea of a perfect measure
these things were as though they had not been. Meanwhile,
the old schools were broken up and the foolscap addressed to the
old masters. Singers, entertainers, critics and historians abound.
Every man may say what is in him in the phrases that he likes
best, and the sole motto that compels is "every style is per-
missible except the style that is tiresome." The old models
are strangely discredited, and the only conventions which hold
are those concerning the subjects which English delicacy held
to be tabooed. These conventions were inordinately strict,
and were held to include all the unrestrained, illicit impulses of
love and all the more violent aberrations from the Christian code
of faith and ethics. Infidel speculation and the liaisons of
lawless love (which had begun to form the staple of the new
French fiction hence regarded by respectable English critics
of the time as profoundly vitiated and scandalous) had no
recognized existence and were totally ignored in literature
designed for general reading. The second or Goody-two-Shoes
convention remained strictly in force until the penultimate
decade of the igth century, and was acquiesced in or at least
submitted to by practically all the greatest writers of the Vic-
torian age. The great poets and novelists of that day easily
out-topped their fellows. Society had no difficulty in responding
to the summons of its literary leaders. Nor was their fame
partial, social or sectional. The great novelists of early Victorian
days were aristocratic and democratic at once. Their popularity
was universal within the limits of the language and beyond it.
The greatest of men were men of imagination rather than men
of ideas, but such sociological and moral ideas as they derived
from their environment were poured helter-skelter into their
novels, which took the form of huge pantechnicon magazines.
Another distinctive feature of the Victorian novel is the position
it enabled women to attain in literature, a position attained by
them in creative work neither before nor since.
The novelists to a certain extent created their own method
like the great dramatists, but such rigid prejudices or conventions
as they found already in possession they respected
without demur. Both Dickens and Thackeray write
as if they were almost entirely innocent of the existence of sexual
vice. As artists and thinkers they were both formless. But the
enormous self-complacency of the England of their time, assisted
alike by the part played by the nation from 1793 to 1815,
evangelicalism, free trade (which was originally a system of
super-nationalism) and later, evolution, generated in them a
great benignity and a strong determination towards a liberal
and humanitarian philosophy. Despite, however, the diffuseness
of the envelope and the limitations of horizon referred to, the
unbookish and almost unlettered genius of Charles Dickens
(1812-1870), the son of a poor lower middle-class clerk, almost
entirely self-educated, has asserted for itself the foremost place
in the literary history of the period. Dickens broke every rule,
rioted in absurdity and bathed in extravagance. But everything
he wrote was received with an almost frantic j.oy by those who
recognized his creations as deifications of themselves, his scenery
as drawn by one of the quickest and intensest observers that
ever lived, and his drollery as an accumulated dividend from the
treasury of human laughter. Dickens's mannerisms were severe,
but his geniality as a writer broke down every obstruction,
reduced Jeffrey to tears and Sydney Smith to helpless laughter.
The novel in France was soon to diverge and adopt the form
of an anecdote illustrating the traits of a very small group of
Thackeray P ersot * s > Dut tne English novel, owing mainly to the
' predilection of Dickens for those Gargantuan enter-
tainers of his youth, Fielding and Smollett, was to remain
anchored to the history. William Makepeace Thackeray (181 1-
1863) was even more historical than Dickens, and most of his
leading characters are provided with a detailed genealogy.
Dickens's great works, excepting David Copperfield and Great
Expectations, had all appeared when Thackeray made his
mark in 1848 with Vanity Fair, and Thackeray follows most of
his predecessor's conventions, including his conventional religion,
ethics and politics, but he avoids his worse faults of theatricality.
He never forces the note or lashes himself into fury or senti-
mentality; he limits himself in satire to the polite sphere which
he understands, he is a great master of style and possesses every
one of its fairy gifts except brevity. He creates characters and
scenes worthy of Dickens, but within a smaller range and
without the same abundance. He is a traveller and a cosmo-
politan, while Dickens is irredeemably Cockney. He is often
content to criticize or annotate or to preach upon some congenial
theme, while Dickens would be in the flush of humorous creation.
His range, it must be remembered, is wide, in most respects a
good deal wider than his great contemporary's, for he is at once
novelist, pamphleteer, essayist, historian, critic, and the writer
of some of the most delicate and sentimental tiers d'occasion
in the language.
The absorption of England in itself is shown with excep-
tional force in the case of Thackeray, who was by nature a
cosmopolitan, yet whose work is so absorbed with the
structure of English society as to be almost unintelligible
to foreigners. The exploration of the human heart
and conscience in relation to the new problems of the time had
been almost abandoned by the novel since Richardson's time.
It was for woman to attempt to resolve these questions, and with
the aid of powerful imagination to propound very different
conclusions. The conviction of Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)
was that the mutual passionate love of one man and one woman
is sacred and creates a centre of highest life, energy and joy in
the world. George Eliot (1819-1880), on the other
hand, detected a blind and cruel egoism in all such
ecstasy of individual passion. It was in the autumn
of 1847 that Jane Eyre shocked the primness of the coteries by
the unconcealed ardour of its love passages. Twelve years later
Adam Bede astonished the world by the intensity of its ethical
light and shade. The introspective novel was now very gradually
to establish a supremacy over the historical. The romance of the
Brontes' forlorn life colours Jane Eyre, colours Wulhcring
Heights -and colours Villetle; their work is inseparable from their
story to an extent that we perhaps hardly realize. George
Eliot did not receive this adventitious aid from romance, and
her work was, perhaps, unduly burdened by ethical diatribe,
scientific disquisition and moral and philosophical asides. It
is more than redeemed, however, by her sovereign humour, by
the actual truth in the portrayal of that absolutely self-centred
Midland society of the 'thirties and 'forties, and by the moral
significance which she extracts from the smaller actions and
more ordinary characters of life by means of sympathy, imagina-
tion and a deep human compassion. Her novels are generally
admitted to have obtained twin summits in Adam Bede (1859)
and Middlemarch (1872). An even nicer delineator of the most
delicate shades of the curiously remote provincial society of
that day was Mrs Gaskell (1810-1865), whose Cranford and
Wives and Daughters attain to the perfection of easy, natural
and unaffected English narrative. Enthusiasm and a picturesque
boyish ardour and partisanship are the chief features of Westward
Ho I and the other vivid and stirring novels of Charles Kingsley
(1819-1875), to which a subtler gift in the discrimination of
character must be added in the case of his brother Henry Kingsley
(1830-1876). Charles, however, was probably more Kingsley
accomplished as a poet than in the to him too exciting Troiiope.
operation of taking sides in a romance. The novels Reade.
of Troiiope, Reade and Wilkie Collins are, generally f ^^ ltt> '
speaking, a secondary product of the literary forces
which produced the great fiction of the 'fifties. The two last
were great at structure and sensation: Troiiope dogs the prose
of every-day life with a certainty and a clearness that border
upon inspiration. The great novels of George Meredith range
between 1859 and 1880, stories of characters deeply interesting
who reveal themselves to us by flashes and trust to our inspiration
to do the rest. The wit, the sparkle, the entrain and the horizon
of these books, from Richard Feverel to the master analysis of
19TMCEXTI RV]
ENGLISH LITERATURE
641
Bnwalag.
flu Egfist, have converted the study of Meredith into an exact
science. Thomas Hardy occupies a place scarcely inferior to
Meredith 'sasa stylist , a disco verer of new clementsof the plaintive
and the wistful in the vanishing of past ideals, as a depicter of
the old southern rustic life of England and its tragi-comedy, in
a aeries of novels which take rank with the greatest.
It Victorian literature had something more than a paragon
in Dickens, it had its paragon too in the poet Tennyson. The
son of a Lincolnshire parson of squirearchal descent,
Alfred Tennyson consecrated himself to the vocation
of poesy with the same unalterable conviction that had character-
ucd Milton, Pope, Thomson, Wordsworth and Keats, and that
was yet to signalize Rossetti and Swinburne, and he became
easily the greatest virtuoso of his time in his art. To lyrics and
idylls of a luxurious and exotic picturesqueness he gave a per-
fection of technique which criticism has chastened only to perfect
in such miracles of description as " The Lotus Eaters," " The
Dream of Fair Women," and " Morte d'Arthur." He received
as vapour the sense of uneasiness as to the problems of the
future which pervaded his generation, and in the elegies and
lyrics of In tltmoriam, in The Princess and in Maud he gave
them back to his contemporaries in a running stream, which
still sparkles and radiates amid the gloom. After the lyrical
monodrama of Maud in 1855 he devoted his flawless technique
of design, harmony and rhythm to works primarily of decoration
and design ( The Idylls of the King), and to experiments in metrical
drama for which the time was not ripe; but his main occupation
was varied almost to the last by lyrical blossoms such as " Frater
Ave," " Roman Virgil," or " Crossing the Bar," which, like
" Tears, Idle Tears " and " O that 'twere possible," embody the
aspirations of Flaubert towards a perfected art of language
shaping as no other verse probably can.
Few, perhaps, would go now to In Memoriam as to an oracle
for illumination and guidance as many of Queen Victoria's con-
temporaries did, from the Queen herself downwards.
And yet it will take very long ere its fascination
fades. In language most musical it re-articulates the gospel
of Sorrow and Love, and it remains still a pathetic expression
of emotions, sentiments and truths which, as long as human
nature remains the same, and as long as calamity, sorrow and
death are busy in the world, must be always repeating themselves.
Its power, perhaps, we may feel of this poem and indeed of
most of Tennyson's poetry, is not quite equal to its charm.
And if we feel this strongly, we shall regard Robert Browning
as the typical poet of the Victorian era. His thought has been
compared to a galvanic battery for the use of spiritual paralytics.
The grave defect of Browning is that his ideas, however excellent,
are so seldom completely won; they are left in a twilight, or
even a darkness more Cimmerian than that to which the worst
of the virtuosi dedicate their ideas. Similarly, even in his
' Dramatic Romances and Lyrics " (1845) or his " Men and
Women " (1855) he rarely depicts action, seldom goes further
than interpreting the mind of man as he approaches action.
If Dickens may be described as the eye of Victorian literature,
Tennyson the ear attuned to the subtlest melodies, Swinburne
the reed to which everything blew to music, Thackeray the velvet
pulpit-cushion, Eliot the impending brow, and Meredith the
cerebral dome, then Browning might well be described as the
active brain itself eternally expounding some point of view
remote in time and place from its own. Tennyson was ostensibly
and always a poet in his life and his art, in his blue cloak and
sombrero, his mind and study alike stored with intaglios of the
thought of all ages, always sounding and remodelling his verses
so that they shall attain the maximum of sweetness and sym-
metry. He was a recluse. Browning on the other hand dis-
sembled his poethood, successfully disguised his muse under the
semblance of a stock merchant, was civil to his fellowmen, and
though nervous with bores, encountered every one he met as if he
were going to receive more than he could impart. In Tennyson's
poetry we are always discovering new beauties. In Browning's
we are finding new blemishes. Why he chose rhythm and metre
for seven-eighths of his purpose is somewhat of a mystery.
IX. 21
His protest against the materialistic view of life is, perhaps, a
more valid one than Tennyson's; he is at pains to show us the
noble elements valuable in spite of failure to achieve tangible
success. He realizes that the greater the man, the greater is
the failure, yet protests unfailingly against the despondent or
materialist view of life. His nimble appreciation of character
and motive attracts the attentive curiosity of highly intellectual
people; but the question recurs with some persistence as to
whether poetry, after all, was the right medium for the expression
of these views.
Many of Browning's ideas and fertilizations will, perhaps,
owing to the difficulty and uncertainty which attaches to their
form, penetrate the future indirectly as the stimulant Ku*Ua.
of other men's work. This is especially the case with Moni*.
those remarkable writers who have for the first time Symoad*.
given the fine arts a considerable place in English Pml ' r -
literature, notably John Ruskin (Modern Painters, 1842, Seven
Lamps, 1849, Stones of Venice, 1853), William Morris, John
Addington Symonds and Walter Pater. Browning, it is true,
shared the discipleship of the first two with Kingsley and Carlyle.
But Ruskin outlived all discipleships and transcended almost
all the prose writers of his period in a style the elements of
emotional power in which still preserve their secret.
More a poet of doubt than either Tennyson or the college
friend, A. H. Clough, whose loss he lamented in one of the finest
pastoral elegies of all ages, Matthew Arnold takes xrao/rf
rank with Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne alone
among the Dii Majores of Victorian poetry. He is perhaps a
disciple of Wordsworth even more than of Goethe, and he finds
in Nature, described in rarefied though at times intensely beautiful
phrase, the balm for the unrest of man's unsatisfied yearnings,
the divorce between soul and intellect, and the sense of contrast
between the barren toil of man and the magic operancy of nature.
His most delicate and intimate strains are tinged with melancholy.
The infinite desire of what might have been, the lacrimae
rerun, inspires " Resignation," one of the finest pieces in his
volume of 1849 (The Strayed Reveller). In the deeply-sighed
lines of " Dover Beach " in 1867 it is associated with his sense
of the decay of faith. The dreaming garden trees, the full
moon and the white evening star of the beautiful English-coloured
Thyrsis evoke the same mood, and render Arnold one of the
supreme among elegiac poets. But his poetry is the most
individual in the circle and admits the popular heart never
for an instant. As a popularizer of Renan and of the view of
the Bible, not as a talisman but as a literature, and, again, as a
chastener of his contemporaries by means of the iteration of a
few telling phrases about philistincs, barbarians, sweetness and
light, sweet reasonableness, high seriousness, Hebraism and
Hellenism, " young lions of the Daily Telegraph," and " the
note of provinciality," Arnold far eclipsed his fame as a poet
during his lifetime. His crusade of banter against the bad
civilization of his own class was one of the most audaciously
successful things of the kind ever accomplished. But all his
prose theorizing was excessively superficial. In poetry he
sounded a note which the prose Arnold seemed hopelessly
unable ever to fathom.
It is easier to speak of the virtuoso group who derived their
first incitement to poetry from Chatterton, Keats and the early
exotic ballads of Tennyson, far though these yet were g ottf ai
from attaining the perfection in which they now
appear after half a century of assiduous correction. The chief
of them were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, hissister Christina, William
Morris and Algernon Charles Swinburne. The founders of this
school, which took and acquired the name Pre-Raphaelite, were
profoundly impressed by the Dante revival and by the study
of the early Florentine masters. Rossetti himself was an accom-
plished translator from Dante and from Villon. He preferred
Keats to Shelley because (like himself) he had no philosophy.
The 1 8th century was to him as if it had never been, he dislikes
Greek lucidity and the open air, and prefers lean medieval saints,
spectral images and mystic loves. The passion of these students
was retrospective; they wanted to revive the literature of a
642
ENGLISH LITERATURE
[I9TH CENTURY
Swla-
burae.
forgotten past, Italian, Scandinavian, French, above all, medieval.
To do this is a question of enthusiastic experiment and adventure.
Rossetti leads the way with his sonnets and ballads. Christina
follows with Goblin Market, though she subsequently, with a
perfected technique, writes poetry more and more confined to the
religious emotions. William Morris publishes in 1858 his Defence
of Guenevere, followed, in ten years by The Earthly Paradise,
a collection of metrical tales, which hang in the sunshine like
tapestries woven of golden thread, where we should naturally
expect the ordinary paperhanging of prose romance.
From the verdurous gloom of the studio with its mysterious
and occult properties in which Rossetti compounded his colours,
Morris went forth shortly to chant and then to narrate
Socialist songs and parables. Algernon Charles
Swinburne set forth to scandalize the critics of 1866
with the roses and lilies of vice and white death in Poems and
Ballads, which was greeted with howls and hisses, and reproach
against a " fleshly school of modern poetry." Scandalous
verses these were, rioting on the crests of some of these billows
of song. More discerning persons perceived the harmless im-
personal unreality and mischievous youthful extravagance
of all these Cyprian outbursts, that the poems were the out-
pourings of a young singer up to the chin in the Pierian flood,
and possessed by a poetic energy so urgent that it could not
wait to apply the touchstones of reality or the chastening
planes of experience. Swinburne far surpassed the promoters
of this exotic school in technical excellence, and in Atalanla in
Calydon and its successors may be said to have widened the
bounds of English song, to have created a new music and liberated
a new harmonic scale in his verse. Of the two elements which,
superadded to a consummate technique, compose the great poet,
intensity of imagination and intensity of passion, the latter
in Swinburne much predominated. The result was a great
abundance of heat and glow and not perhaps quite enough
defining light. Hence the tendency to be incomprehensible,
so fatal in its fascination for the poets of the last century, which
would almost justify the title of the triumvirs of twilight to three
of the greatest. It is this incomprehensibility which alienates
the poet from the popular understanding and confines his
audience to poets, students and scholars. Poetry is often
comparable to a mountain range with its points and aiguilles,
its peaks and crags, its domes and its summits. But Swinburne's
poetry, filled with the sound and movement of great waters,
is as incommunicable as the sea. Trackless and almost boundless,
it has no points, no definite summits. The poet never seems to
know precisely when he is going to stop. His metrical flow is
wave-like, beautiful and rather monotonous, inseparable from
the general effect. His endings seem due to an exhaustion of
rhythm rather than to an exhaustion of sense. A cessation of
meaning is less perceptible than a cessation of magnificent sound.
Akin in some sense to Jhe attempt made to get behind the veil
and to recapture the old charms and spells of the middle ages,
to discover the open sesame of the Morte D' Arthur
N a^Th*" anc ^ t ' le Mabinogion and to reveal the old Celtic and
Church. monastic life which once filled and dominated our
islands, was the attempt to overthrow the twin gods
of the 'forties and 'fifties, state-Protestantism and the sanctity
of trade. The curiously assorted Saint Georges who fought these
monsters were John Henry Newman and Thomas Carlyle. The
first cause of the movement was, of course, the anomalous
position of the Anglican Church, which had become a province
of the oligarchy officered by younger sons. It stood apart from
foreign Protestantism; its ignorance of Rome, and consequently
of what it protested against, was colossal; it was conscious of
itself only as an establishment it had produced some very
great men since the days of the non-jurors, when it had mislaid
its historical conscience, but these had either been great scholars
in their studies, such as Berkeley, Butler, Warburton, Thomas
Scott, or revivalists, evangelicals and missionaries, such as
Wilson, Wesley, Newton, Romaine, Cecil, Venn, Martyn, who
were essentially Congregationalists rather than historical
Churchmen. A new spiritual beacon was to be raised; an
attempt was to be made to realize the historical and cosmic
aspects of the English Church, to examine its connexions, its
descent and its title-deeds. In this attempt Newman was to
spend the best years of his life.
The growth of liberal opinions and the denudation of the
English Church of spiritual and historical ideas, leaving " only
pulpit orators at Clapham and Islington and two-bottle orthodox"
to defend it, seemed to involve the continued existence of
Anglicanism in any form in considerable doubt. Swift had said
at the commencement of the i8th century that if an act was
passed for the extirpation of the gospel, bank stock might decline
i %; but a century later it is doubtful whether the passing of
such a bill would have left any trace, however evanescent,
upon the stability of the money market. The Anglican via
media had enemies not only in the philosophical radicals, but
also in the new caste of men of science. Perhaps, as J. A. Froude
suggests, these combined enemies, The Edinburgh Review,
Brougham, Mackintosh, the Reform Ministry, Low Church
philosophy and the London University were not so very terrible
after all. The Church was a vested interest which had a greater
stake in the country and was harder to eradicate than they
imagined. But it had nothing to give to the historian and the
idealist. They were right to fight for what their souls craved
after and found in the Church of Andrewes, Herbert, Ken and
Waterland. Belief in the divine mission of the Church lingered
on in the minds of such men as Alexander Knox or his disciple
Bishop Jebb; but few were prepared to answer the question
" What is the Church as spoken of in England? Is it the
Church of Christ ? " and the answers were various. Hooker
had said it was " the nation "; and in entirely altered circum-
stances, with some qualifications, Dr Arnold said the same.
It was " the Establishment " according to the lawyers and
politicians, both Whig and Tory. It was an invisible and
mystical body, said the Evangelicals. It was the aggregate of
separate congregations, said the Nonconformists. It was the
-parliamentary creation of the Reformation, said the Erastians.
The true Church was the communion of the Pope; the pretended
Church was a legalized schism, said the Roman Catholics. All
these ideas were floating about, loose and vague, among people
who talked much about the Church.
One thing was persistently obvious, namely, that the national-
ist church had become opportunist in every fibre, and that it had
thrown off almost every semblance of ecclesiastical discipline.
The view was circulated that the Church owed its continued
existence to the good sense of the individuals who officered it,
and to the esteem which possession and good sense combined
invariably engendered in the reigning oligarchy. But since
Christianity was true and Newman was the one man of modern
times who seems never to have doubted this, never to have
overlooked the unmistakable threat of eternal punishment
to the wicked and unbelieving modern England, with its
march of intellect and its chatter about progress, was advancing
with a light heart to the verge of a bottomless abyss. By a
diametrically opposite chain of reasoning Newman reached
much the same conclusion as Carlyle. Newman sought a haven
of security in a rapprochement with the Catholic Church. The
medieval influences already at work in Oxford began to fan the
flame which kindled to a blaze in the ninetieth of the celebrated
Tracts for the Times. It proved the turning of the ways leading
Keble and Pusey to Anglican ritual and Newman to Rome.
This anti-liberal campaign was poison to the state-churchmen
and Protestants, and became perhaps the chief intellectual
storm centre of the century. Charles Kingsley in 1864 sought to
illustrate by recent events that veracity could not be considered
a Roman virtue.
After some preliminary ironic sparring Newman was stung
into writing what he deliberately called Apologia pro vita sua.
In this, apart from the masterly dialectic and exposition
in which he had already shown himself an adept, a
volume of autobiography is made a chapter of general current*.
history, unsurpassed in its kind since the Confessions
of St Augustine, combined with a perfection of form, a precision
"' '
I9TH CENTURY]
ENGLISH LITERATURE
643
of phrasing and a charm of style peculiar to the genius of the
author, rendering it one of the masterpieces of English prose.
But while Newman was thus sounding a retreat, louder and
more urgent voices were signalling the advance in a totally
opposite direction. The Apologia fell in point of time between
Tke Origin of Spttiej and Dtsctnt of Man, in which Charles Darwin
was laying the corner stones of the new science of which Thomas
Huxley and Alfred Russel Wallace were to be among the first
apostles, and almost coincided with the First Principles of a
synthetic philosophy, in which Herbert Spencer was formulating
a. set of probabilities wholly destructive to the acceptance of
positive truth in any one religion. The typical historian of the
'fifties, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and the seminal
"^' thinker of the 'sixties, John Stuart Mill, had as deter-
minedly averted their faces from the old conception of revealed
religion. Nourished in the school of the great Whig pamphleteer
historians, George Grote and Henry Hallam, Macaulay combined
gifts of memory, enthusiastic conviction, portraiture and literary
expression, which gave to his historical writing a resonance
unequalled (even by Michelet) in modern literature. In spite of
faults of taste and fairness, Macaulay 's resplendent gifts enabled
him to achieve for the period from Charles II. to the peace of
Ryswick what Thucydides had done for the Peloponnesian War.
The pictures that he drew with such exultant force are stamped
ineffaceably upon the popular mind. His chief faults are not of
detail, but rather a lack of subtlety as regards characterization
and motive, a disposition to envisage history too exclusively
as a politician, and the sequence of historical events as a kind of
ordered progress towards the material ideals of universal trade
and Whig optimism as revealed in the Great Exhibition of 1851.
Macaulay 's tendency to disparage the past brought his whole
vision of the Cosmos into sharp collision with that of his rival
f^-fyj. appellant to the historical conscience, Thomas Carlyle,
a man whose despair of the present easily exceeded
Newman's. But Carlyle 's despondency was totally irrespective
of the attitude preserved by England towards the Holy Father,
whom he seldom referred to save as " the three-hatted Papa "
and " servant of the devil." It may be in fact almost regarded
as the reverse or complement to the excess of self-complacency
in Macaulay. We may correct the excess of one by the opposite
excess of the other. Macaulay was an optimist in ecstasy with
the material advance of his time in knowledge and power; the
growth of national wealth, machinery and means of lighting and
locomotion caused him to glow with satisfaction. Carlyle, the
pessimist, regards all such symptoms of mechanical development
as contemptible. Far from panegyrizing his own time, he criticizes
it without mercy. Macaulay had great faith in rules and regula-
tions, reform bills and parliamentary machinery. Carlyle
regards them as wiles of the devil. Frederick William of Prussia,
according to Macaulay, was the most execrable of fiends, a
cross between Moloch and Puck, his palace was hell, and Oliver
Twist and Smike were petted children compared with his son
the crown prince. In the same bluff and honest father Carlyle
recognized the realized ideal of his fancy and hugged the just
man made perfect to his heart of hearts. Such men as Bent ham
and Cobdcn. Mill and Macaulay, had in Carlyle's opinion spared
themselves no mistaken exertion to exalt the prosperity and
happiness of their own day. The time had come to react at all
hazards against the prevalent surfeit of civilization. Henceforth
his literary activity was to take two main directions. First,
tracts for the times against modern tendencies, especially against
the demoralizing modern talk about progress by means of money
and machinery which emanated like a miasma from the writings
of such men as Mill, Macaulay, Brougham, Buckle and from the
Quarterlies. Secondly, a Cyclopean exhibition of Caesarism,
discipline, the regimentation of workers, and the convertibility
of the Big Stick and the Bible, with a preference to the Big Stick
as a panacea. The snowball was to grow rapidly among such
writers as Kingsley, Ruskin, George Borrow, unencumbered by
reasoning or deductive processes which they despised. Carlyle
himself felt that the condition of England was one for anger
rather than discussion. He detested the rationalism and sym-
Ncw
M/1UO/X.
metry of such methodists of thought as Mill, Buckle, Darwin,
Spencer, Lecky, Ricardo and other demonstrations of the dismal
science mere chatter he called it. The palliative philanthropy
of the day had become his aversion even more than the inroads
of Rome under cover of the Oxford movement which Froude,
Borrow and Kingsley set themselves to correct. As an historian
of a formal order Carlyle's historical portraits cannot bear a
strict comparison with the published work of Gibbon and
Macaulay, or even of Maine and Froude in this period, but as a
biographer and autobiographer Carlyle's caustic insight has
enabled him to produce much which is of the very stuff of human
nature. Surrounded by philomaths and savants who wrote
smoothly about the perfectibility of man and his institutions,
Carlyle almost alone refused to distil his angry eloquence and
went on railing against the passive growth of civilization at the
heart of which he declared that he had discovered a cancer.
This uncouth Titan worship and prostration before brute force,
this constant ranting about jarls and vikings trembles often on
the verge of cant and comedy, and his fiddling on the one string
of human pretension and bankruptcy became discordant almost
to the point of chaos. Instinctively destructive, he resents the
apostlcship of teachers like Mill, or the pioneer discoveries of
men like Herbert Spencer and Darwin. He remains, nevertheless,
a great incalculable figure, the cross grandfather of a school of
thought which is largely unconscious of its debt and which so
far as it recognizes it takes Carlyle in a manner wholly different
from that of his contemporaries.
The deaths of Carlyle and George Eliot (and also of George
Borrow) in 1881 make a starting-point for the new schools of
historians, novelists, critics and biographers, and
those new nature students who claim to cure those
evil effects of civilization which Carlyle and his
disciples had discovered. History in the hands of Macaulay,
Buckle and Carlyle had been occupied mainly with the bias and
tendency of change, the results obtained by those who consulted
the oracle being more often than not diametrically opposite.
With Froude still on the one hand as the champion of
Protestantism, and with E. A. Freeman and J. R.
Green on the other as nationalist historians, the school of applied
history was fully represented in the next generation, but as the
records grew and multiplied in print in accordance with the wise
provisions made in 1857 by the commencement of the Rolls
Series of medieval historians, and the Calendars of State Papers,
to be followed shortly by the rapidly growing volumes of Calendars
of Historical Manuscripts, historians began to concentrate their
attention more upon the process of change as their right subject
matter and to rely more and more upon documents, statistics
and other impersonal and disinterested forms of material. Such
historical writers as Lecky, Lord Acton, Creighton, Morley and
Bryce contributed to the process of transition mainly as essayists,
but the new doctrines were tested and to a certain extent put
into action by such writers as Thorold Rogers, Stubbs, Gardiner
and Maitland. The theory that History is a science, no less and
no more, was propounded in so many words by Professor Bury
in his inaugural lecture at Cambridge in 1903, and this view and
the corresponding divergence of history from the traditional
pathway of Belles Lettres has become steadily more dominant
in the world of Jiistorical research and historical writing since
1881. The bulk of quite modern historical writing can certainly
be justified from no other point of view.
The novel since 1881 has pursued a course curiously analogous
to that of historical writing. Supported as it was by masters
of the old regime such as Meredith and Hardy, and by ,
* The novel.
those who then ranked even higher in popular esteem
such as Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Besant and Rice,
Blackmore, William Black and a monstrous rising regiment of
lady novelists Mrs Lynn Linton, Rhoda Broughton, Mrs Henry
Wood, Miss Braddon, Mrs Humphry Ward, the type seemed
securely anchored to the old formulas and the old ways. In
reality, however, many of these popular workers were already
moribund and the novel was being honeycombed by French
influence.
644
ENGLISH LITERATURE
[19 CENTURY
This is perceptible in Hardy, but may be traced with greater
distinctness in the best work of George Gissing, George Moore,
Mark Rutherford, and later on of H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett
and John Galsworthy. The old novelists had left behind them
a giant's robe. Intellectually giants, Dickens and Thackeray
were equally gigantic spendthrifts. They worked in a state of
fervent heat above a glowing furnace, into which they flung
lavish masses of unshaped metal, caring little for immediate effect
or minute dexterity of stroke, but knowing full well that the
emotional energy of their temperaments was capable of fusing
the most intractable material, and that in the end they would
produce their great downright effect. Their spirits rose and fell,
but the case was desperate; copy had to be despatched at once
or the current serial would collapse. Good and bad had to make
up the tale against time, and revelling in the very exuberance
and excess of their humour, the novelists invariably triumphed.
It was incumbent on the new school of novelists to economize
their work with more skill, to relieve their composition of
irrelevancies, to keep the writing in one key, and to direct it
consistently to one end in brief, to unify the novel as a work
of art and to simplify its ordonnance.
The novel, thus lightened and sharpened, was conquering new
fields. The novel of the 'sixties remained not, perhaps, to win
many new triumphs, but a very popular instrument in the hands
of those who performed variations on the old masters, and much
later in the hands of Mr William de Morgan, showing a new
force and quiet power of its own. The novel, however, was
ramifying in other directions in a way full of promise for the
future. A young Edinburgh student, Robert Louis Stevenson,
had inherited much of the spirit of the Pre-Raphaelitic virtuosos,
and combined with their passion for the romance of the historic
past a curiosity fully as strong about the secrets of romantic
technique. A coterie which he formed with W. E. Henley and his
cousin R. A. M. Stevenson studied words as a young art student
studies paints, and made studies for portraits of buccaneers with
the same minute drudgery that Rossetti had studied a wall or
Morris a piece of figured tapestry. While thus forming a new
romantic school whose work when wrought by his methods should
be fit to be grafted upon the picturesque historic fiction of Scott
and Dumas, Stevenson was also naturalizing the short story of
the modern French type upon English ground. In this particular
field he was eclipsed by Rudyard Kipling, who, though less
original as a man of letters, had a technical vocabulary and
descriptive power far in advance of Stevenson's, and was able in
addition to give his writing an exotic quality derived from
Oriental colouring. This regional type of writing has since been
widely imitated, and the novel has simultaneously developed in
many other ways, of which perhaps the most significant is the
psychological study as manipulated severally by Shorthouse,
Mallock and Henry James.
The expansion of criticism in the same thirty years was not a
whit less marked than the vast divagation of the novel. In
C/iticism ^ e ear ty 'eighties it was still tongue-bound by the
hypnotic influence of one or two copy-book formulae
Arnold's " criticism of life " as a definition of poetry, and Walter
Pater's implied doctrine of art for art's sake. That two dicta
so manifestly absurd should have cast such an augur-like spell
upon the free expression of opinion, though it may of course,
like all such instances, be easily exaggerated, is nevertheless a
curious example of the enslavement of ideas by a confident clap-
trap. A few representatives of the old schools of motived or
scientific criticism, deduced from the literatures of past time,
survived the new century in Leslie Stephen, Saintsbury, Stopford
Brooke, Austin Dobson, Courthope, Sidney Colvin, Watts-
Dunton; but their agreement is certainly not greater than among
the large class of emancipated who endeavour to concentrate the
attention of others without further ado upon those branches of
literature which they find most nutritive. Among the finest
appreciators of this period have been Pattison and Jebb, Myers,
Hutton, Dowden, A. C. Bradley, William Archer, Richard
Garnett, E. Gosse and Andrew Lang. Birrell, Walkley and Max
Beerbohm have followed rather in the wake of the Stephens and
Bagehot, who have criticized the sufficiency of the titles made
out by the more enthusiastic and lyrical eulogists. In Arthur
Symons, Walter Raleigh and G. K. Chesterton the new age
possessed critics of great originality and power, the work of
the last two of whom is concentrated upon the application of
ideas about life at large to the conceptions of literature. In
exposing palpable nonsense as such, no one perhaps did better
service in criticism than the veteran Frederic Harrison.
In the cognate work of memoir and essay, the way for which
has been greatly smoothed by co-operative lexicographical
efforts such as the Dictionary of National Biography, the New
English Dictionary, the Victoria County History and the like,
some of the most dexterous and permeating work of the transition
from the old century to the new was done by H. D. Traill, Gosse,
Lang, Mackail, E. V. Lucas, Lowes Dickinson, Richard le
Gallienne, A. C. Benson, Hilaire Belloc, while the open-air
relief work for dwellers pent in great cities, pioneered by Gilbert
White, has been expanded with all the zest and charm that a
novel pursuit can endow by such writers as Richard Jefferies,
an open-air and nature mystic of extraordinary power at his best,
Selous, Seton Thompson, W. H. Hudson.
The age has not been particularly well attuned to the efforts
of the newer poets since Coventry Patmore in the Angel in the
House achieved embroidery, often extremely beautiful, ^^
upon the Tennysonian pattern, and since Edward
FitzGerald, the first of all letter-writing commentators on life
and letters since Lamb, gave a new cult to the decadent century
in his version of the Persian centoist Omar Khayyam. The
prizes which in Moore's day were all for verse have now been
transferred to the prose novel and the play, and the poets them-
selves have played into the hands of the Philistines by disdaining
popularity in a fond preference for virtuosity and obscurity.
Most kinds of the older verse, however, have been well repre-
sented, descriptive and elegiac poetry in particular by Robert
Bridges and William Watson; the music of the waters of the
western sea and its isles by W. B. Yeats, Synge, Moira O'Neill,
" Fiona Macleod " and an increasing group of Celtic bards; the
highly wrought verse of the 1 7th-century lyrists by Francis
Thompson, Lionel Johnson, Ernest Dowson; the simplicity of a
more popular strain by W. H. Davies, of a brilliant rhetoric by
John Davidson, and of a more intimate romance by Sturge
Moore and Walter de la Mare. Light verse has never, perhaps,
been represented more effectively since Praed and Calverley
and Lewis Carroll than by Austin Dobson, Locker Lampson.
W. S. Gilbert and Owen Seaman. The names of C. M. Doughty.
Alfred Noyes, Herbert Trench and Laurence Binyon were also
becoming prominent at the opening of the 2oth century. For
originality in form and substance the palm rests in all probability
with A. E. Housman, whose Shropshire Lad opens new avenues
and issues, and with W. E. Henley, whose town and hospital
poems had a poignant as well as an ennobling strain. The work
of Henry Newbolt, Mrs. Meynell and Stephen Phillips showed
a real poetic gift. Above all these, however, in the esteem of
many reign the verses of George Meredith and of Thomas Hardy,
whose Dynasts was widely regarded by the best judges as the
most remarkable literary production of the new century.
The new printed and acted drama dates almost entirely from
the late 'eighties. Tom Robertson in the 'seventies printed
nothing, and his plays were at most a timid recognition
of the claims of the drama to represent reality and
truth. The enormous superiority of the French drama as
represented by Augier, Dumas fils and Sardou began to dawn
slowly upon the English consciousness. Then in the 'eighties
came Ibsen, whose daring in handling actuality was only equalled
by his intrepid stage-craft. Oscar Wilde and A. W. Pinero were
the first to discover how the spirit of these new discoveries might
be adapted to the English stage. Gilbert Murray, with his
fascinating and tantalizing versions from Euripides, gave a new
flexibility to the expansion that was going on in English dramatic
ideas. Bernard Shaw and his disciples, conspicuous among them
Granville Barker, gave a new seasoning of wit to the absolute
novelties of subject, treatment and application with which they
ENGLISHRY ENGRAVING
645
transfixed the public which had so long abandoned thought
upon entering the theatre. This new adventure enjoyed a
iuctis dt slufifur, the precise range of which can hardly be
estimated, and the force of which is dearly by no means spent.
K^P 8 * 1 * literature in the joth century still preserves some of
the old arrangements and some of the consecrated phrases of
patronage and aristocracy; but the circumstances
JJJJ^_ of its production were profoundly changed during the
dtooM. iQth century. By 1895 English literature had become
a subject of regular instruction for a special degree at
most of the universities, both in England and America. This
has begun to lead to research embodied in investigations which
show that what were regarded as facts in connexion with the
earlier literature can be regarded so no longer. It has also brought
comparative and historical treatment of a closer kind and on
a larger scale to bear upon the evolution of literary types. On
the other hand it has concentrated an excessive attention perhaps
upon the grammar and prosody and etymology of literature, it
has stereotyped the admiration of lifeless and obsolete forms, and
has substituted antiquarian notes and ready-made commentary
for that live enjoyment, which is essentially individual and which
tends insensibly to evaporate from all literature as soon as the
circumstance of it changes. It is prone, moreover, to force upon
the immature mind a rapt admiration for the mirror before ever
it has scanned the face of the original. A result due rather to
the general educational agencies of the time is that, while in the
middle of the iqth century one man could be found to write
competently on a given subject, in 1910 there were fifty. Books
and apparatus for reading have multiplied in proportion. The
fact of a book having been done quite well in a certain way is
no longer any bar whatever to its being done again without
hesitation in the same way. This continual pouring of ink from
one bottle into another is calculated gradually to raise the
standard of all subaltern writing and compiling, and to leave
fewer and fewer books securely rooted in a universal recognition
of their intrinsic excellence, power and idiosyncrasy or personal
charm. Even then, of what we consider first-rate in the igth
century, for instance, but a very small residuum can possibly
survive. The one characteristic that seems likely to cling and
to differentiate this voluble century is its curious reticence, of
which the 20th century has already made uncommonly short
work. The new playwrights have untaught England a shyness
which came in about the time of Southey, Wordsworth and Sir
Walter Scott. That the best literature has survived hitherto
is at best a pious opinion. As the area of experience grows it is
more and more difficult to circumscribe or even to describe the
supreme best, and such attempts have always been responsible
for base superstition. It is clear that some limitation of the
literary stock-in-trade will become increasingly urgent as time
goes on, and the question may well occur as to whether we are
insuring the right baggage. The enormous apparatus of literature
at the present time is suitable only to a peculiar phasis and manner
of existence. Some hold to the innate and essential aristocracy
of literature; others that it is bound to develop on the popular
and communistic side, for that at present, like machinery and
other deceptive benefits, it is a luxury almost exclusively
advantageous to the rich. But to predict the direction of change
in literature is even more futile than to predict the direction of
change in human history, for of all factors of history, literature,
if one of the most permanent, is also one of the least calculable.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. The Age of Wordsworth and The Age
ff Tennyson in Bell's " Handbooks of English Literature " are of
special value for thU period. Prof. Dowden's and Prof. Saintsbury's
loth-century studies fill in interstice*; and of the " Periods of
European Literature," the Romantic Revolt and Romantic Triumph
are pertinent, a* are the literary chapters in voU. x. and xi. of tne
Cambridge Modem History. Of more specific books George Brandes's
Literary Currents of the Nineteenth Century, Stedman Victorian
Parti, Hotman Hunt's Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, R. H. Hutton's
Contemporary Thought (and companion volumes), Sir Leslie Stephen's
The Utilitarians, Buxton Forman's Our Living Poets, Dawson's
Victorian Netelisti. Thureau-Danein's Renaissance des idees catho-
liques en Anefeterre, A. Chevrillon Sydney Smith et la renaissance
des idffs libfroJes'jen Angteterre, A. W. Benn's History of English
Thought in the Nineteenth Century, the publishing histories of Murray,
Blackwood, Macvey Napier, Lockhart, &c., J. M. Robertson's
Modern Humanists, and the critical miscellanies of Lord Morli-y,
Frederic Harrison, W. Bagehot, A. Birrell, Andrew Lang and E.
Gosse, will be found, in their several degrees, illuminating. The chief
literary lives are those of Scott by Lockhart, Carlylc.by Froude,
Macaulay by Trevelyan, Dickens by Forster and Charlotte Bronte
by Mrs Gaskell. (T. SE.)
ENGLISHRY (Englcscherie), a legal name given, in the reign
of William the Conqueror, to the presentment of the fact that
a person slain was an Englishman. If an unknown man was
found slain, he was presumed to be a Norman, and the hundred
was fined accordingly, -unless it could be proved that he was
English. Englishry, if established, excused the hundred. Dr
W. Stubbs (Constitutional History, i. 196) says that possibly
similar measures were taken by King Canute. Englishry was
abolished in 1340.
See Select Cases from the Coroners' Rolls, 1265-1413, ed. C. Gross,
Selden Society (London, 1896).
ENGRAVING, the process or result of the action implied by'
the verb " to engrave " or mark by incision, the marks (whether
for inscriptive, pictorial or decorative purposes) being produced,
not by simply staining or discolouring the material (as with paint ,
pen or pencil), but by cutting into or otherwise removing a portion
of the substance. In the case of pictures, the engraved surface is
reproduced by printing; but this is only one restricted sense
of " engraving," since the term includes seal-engraving (where
a cast is taken), and also the chased ornamentation of plate or
gems, &c.
The word itself is derived from an O. Fr. engraver (not to be
confused with the same modern French word used for the running
of a boat's keel into the beach, or for the sticking of a cart's
wheels in the mud, from greve, Provencal grava, sands of the
sea or river shore; cf. Eng. "gravel"); it was at one time
supposed that the Gr. yp&<ptu>, to write, was etymologically
connected, but this view is not now accepted, and (together
with " grave," meaning either to engrave, or the place where
the dead are buried) the derivation is referred to a common
Teutonic form signifying " to dig " (O. Eng. grafan, Ger. graben).
The modern French graver, to engrave, is a later adoption. The
idea of a furrow, by digging or cutting, is thus historically
associated with an engraving, which may properly include the
rudest marks cut into any substance. In old English literature
it included carving and sculpture, from which it has become
convenient to differentiate the terminology; and the ancients
who chiselled their writing on slabs of stone were really " en-
graving." The word is not applicable, therefore, either strictly
to lithography (q.v.), nor to any of the photographic processes
(see PROCESS), except those in which the surface of the plate is
actually eaten into or lowered. In the latter case, too, it is
convenient to mark a distinction and to ignore the strict analogy.
In modern times the term is, therefore, practically restricted
outside the spheres of gem-engraving and seal-engraving (see
GEM), or the inscribing or ornamenting of stone, plate, glass,
&c. to the art of making original pictures (i.e. by the
draughtsman himself, whether copies of an original painting
or not), either by incised lines on metal plates (see LINE-
ENGRAVING), or by the corrosion of the lines with acid (see
ETCHING), or by the roughening of a metal surface without
actual lines (see MEZZOTINT), or by cutting a wood surface away
so as to leave lines in relief (see WOOD-ENGRAVING); the result
in each case may be called generic-ally an engraving, and in
common parlance the term is applied, though incorrectly, to
the printed reproduction or " print."
Of these four varieties of engraving line-engraving, etching,
mezzotint or wood-engraving the woodcut is historically the
earliest. Line-engraving is now practically obsolete, while
etching and mezzotint have recently come more and more to
the front. To the draughtsman the difference in technical
handling in each case has in most cases some relation to his own
artistic impulse, and to his own feeling for beauty. A line
engraver, as P. G. Hamerton said, will not sec or think like an
etcher, nor an etcher like an engraver in mezzotint. Each kind,
with its own sub-varieties, has its peculiar effect and attraction.
ENGROSSING ENIGMA
A real knowledge of engraving can only be attained by a careful
study and comparison of the prints themselves, or of accurate
facsimiles, so that books are of little use except as guides to
prints when the reader happens to be unaware of their existence,
or else for their explanation of technical processes. The value
of the prints varies not only according to the artist, but also
according to the fineness of the impression, and the " state "
(or stage) in the making of the plate, which may be altered from
time to time. " Proofs " may also be taken from the plate, and
even touched up by the artist, in various stages and various
degrees of fineness of impression.
The department of art-literature which classifies prints is
called Iconography, and the classifications adopted by icono-
graphers are of the most various kinds. For example, if a com-
plete book were written on Shakespearian iconography it would
contain full information about all prints illustrating the life and
works of Shakespeare, and in the same way there may be the
iconography of a locality or of a single event.
The history of engraving is a part of iconography, and various
histories of the art exist in different languages. In England W. Y.
Ottley wrote an Early History of Engraving, published in two volumes
4to (1816), and began what was intended to be a series of notices
on engravers and their works. The facilities for the reproduction of
engravings by the photographic processes have of late years given
an impetus to iconography. One of the best modern writers on the
subject was Georges Duplessis, the keeper of prints in the national
library of France. He wrote a History of Engraving in France (1888),
and published many notices of engravers to accompany the repro-
ductions by M. Amand Durand. He is also the author of a useful
little manual entitled Les Merveilles de la gravure (1871). Jansen's
work on the origin of wood and plate engraving, and on the know-
ledge of prints of the I5th and l6th centuries, was published at Paris
in two volumes 8vo in 1808. Among general works see Adam
Bartsch, Le Peintre-graveur (1803-1843); J. D. Passavant, Le
Peintre-graveur (1860-1864) I P- G. Hamerton, Graphic Arts (1882) ;
William Gilpin, Essay on Prints (1781); J. Maberly, The Print
Collector (1844); W. H. Wiltshire, Introduction to the Study and
Collection of Ancient Prints (1874); F. Wedmore, Fine Prints
(1897). See also the lists of works given under the separate headings
for LINE-ENGRAVING, ETCHING, MEZZOTINT and WOOD-ENGRAVING.
ENGROSSING, a term used in two legal senses: (i) the
writing or copying of a legal or other document in a fair large
hand (en gros), and (2) the buying up of goods wholesale in order
to sell at a higher price so as to establish a monopoly. The
word " engross " has come into English ultimately from the
Late Lat. grossus, thick, stout, large, through the A. Fr. engrosser,
Med. Lat. ingrossare, to write in a large hand, and the
French phrase en gros, in gross, wholesale. Engrossing and the
kindred practices of forestalling and regrating were early regarded
as serious offences in restraint of trade, and were punishable
both at common law and by statute. They were of more
particular importance in relation to the distribution of corn
supplies. The statute of 1552 defines engrossing as "buying
corn growing, or any other corn, grain, butter, cheese, fish
or other dead victual, with intent to sell the same again." The
law forbade all dealing in corn as an article of ordinary mer-
chandise, apart from questions of foreign import or export. The
theory was that when corn was plentiful in any district it should
be consumed at what it would bring, without much respect
to whether the next harvest might be equally abundant, or to
what the immediate wants of an adjoining province of the same
country might be. The first statute on the subject appears to
have been passed in the reign of Henry III., though the general
policy had prevailed before that time both in popular prejudice
and in the feudal custom. The statute of Edward VI. (1552)
was the most important, and in it the offences were elaborately
defined; by this statute any one who bought corn to sell it
again was made liable to two months' imprisonment with
forfeit of the corn. A second offence was punished by six
months' imprisonment and forfeit of double the value of the corn,
and a third by the pillory and utter ruin. Severe as this statute
was, liberty was given by it to transport corn from one part of
the country under licence to men of approved probity, which
implied that there was to be some buying of corn to sell it again
and elsewhere. Practically " engrossing " came to be considered
buying wholesale to sell again wholesale. " Forestalling "
was different, and the statutes were directed against a class of
dealers who went forward and bought or contracted for corn and
other provisions, and spread false rumours in derogation of the
public and open markets appointed by law, to which our ancestors
appear to have attached much importance, and probably in these
times not without reason. The statute of Edward VI. was
modified by many subsequent enactments, particularly by the
statute of 1663, by which it was declared that there could be no
" engrossing " of corn when the price did not exceed 485. per
quarter, and which Adam Smith recognized, though it adhered
to the variable and unsatisfactory element of price, as having
contributed more to the progress of agriculture than any previous
law in the statute book. In 1773 these injurious statutes were
abolished, but the penal character of " engrossing " and " fore-
stalling " had a root in the common law of England, as well as
in the popular prejudice, which kept the evil alive to a later
period. As the public enlightenment increased the judges were
at no loss to give interpretations of the common law consistent
with public policy. Subsequent to the act of 1773, for example,
there was a case of conviction and punishment for engrossing
hops, R. v. Waddington, 1800, i East, 143, but though this was
deemed a sound and proper judgment at the time, yet it was
soon afterwards overthrown in other cases, on the ground that
buying wholesale to sell wholesale was not in " restraint of
trade " as the former judges had assumed.
In 1800, one John Rusby was indicted for having bought
ninety quarters of oats at 415. per quarter and selling thirty of
them at 433. the same day. Lord Kenyon, the presiding judge,
animadverted strongly against the repealing act of 1773, and
addressed the jury strongly against the accused. Rusby was
heavily fined, but, on appeal, the court was equally divided as to
whether engrossing, forestalling and regrating were still offences
at common law. In 1844, all the statutes, English, Irish and
Scottish, defining the offences, were repealed and with them
the supposed common law foundation. In the United States
there have been strong endeavours by the government to suppress
trusts and combinations for engrossing. (See also TRUSTS;
MONOPOLY.)
AUTHORITIES. D. Macpherson, Annals of Commerce (1805);
J. S. Girdler, Observations on Forestalling, Regrating and Ingrossing
(1800); W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce;
W. J. Ashley, Economic History; Sir J. Stephen, History of Criminal
Law; Murray, New English Dictionary.
ENGYON, an ancient town of the interior of Sicily, a Cretan
colony, according to legend, and famous for an ancient temple
of the Matres which aroused the greed of Verres. Its site is
uncertain; some topographers have identified it with Gangi,
a town 20 m. S.S.E. of Cefalu, but only on the ground of the
similarity of the two names.
See C. Hiilsen in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie, v. 2568.
ENID, a city and the county-seat of Garfield county, Oklahoma,
U.S.A., about 55 m. N.W. of Guthrie. Pop. (1900) 3444; (1907)
10,087 (355 of negro descent); (1010) 13,799. Enid is served by
the St Louis & San Francisco, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe,
and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railways, and by several
branch lines, and is an important railway centre. It is the seat
of the Oklahoma Christian University (1907; co-educational).
Enid is situated in a flourishing agricultural and stock-raising
region, of which it is the commercial centre, and has various
manufactures, including lumber, brick, tile and flour. Natural
gas was discovered near the city in 1907. Enid was founded in
1893 and was chartered as a city in the same year.
ENIGMA (Gr. alviypa), a riddle or puzzle, especially a form
of verse or prose composition in which the answer is concealed
by means of metaphors. Such were the famous riddle of the
Sphinx and the riddling answers of the ancient oracles. The
composition of enigmas was a favourite amusement in Greece
and prizes were often given at banquets for the best solution of
them (Athen. x. 457). In France during the i7th century
enigma-making became fashionable. Boileau, Charles Riviere
Dufresny and J. J. Rousseau did not consider it beneath their
literary dignity. In 1646 the abb Charles Coder (1604-1682)
ENKHUIZEN ENNISKILLEN
647
published a Retneil dei tnigmes de ee temps. The word is applied
figuratively to anything inexplicable or difficult of understanding.
ENKHUIZBN. a seaport of Holland in the province of North
Holland, on the Zuider Zee, and a railway terminus, 1 1 J m. N.E.
by E. of Hoora, with which it is also connected by steam tramway.
In conjunction with the railway service there is a steamboat
ferry to Stavoren in Friesland. Pop. (1000) 6865. Enkhuizen,
like its neighbour Hoorn, exhibits many interesting examples
of domestic architecture dating from the i6th and i ;th centuries,
when it was an important and flourishing city. The facades of
the houses are usually built in courses of brick and stone, and
adorned with carvings, sculptures and inscriptions. Some
mined gateways belonging to the old city walls are still standing;
among them being the tower-gateway called the Dromedary
(1540), which overlooks the harbour. The tower contains several
rooms, one of which was formerly used as a prison. Among the
churches mention must be made of the Zuiderkerk, or South
church, with a conspicuous tower (1450-1 5*5); and the Wester-
kerk. or West church, which possesses a beautifully carved
Renaissance screen and pulpit of the middle of the i6th century,
and a quaint wooden bell-house (1519) built for use before the
completion of the bell-tower. There are also a Roman Catholic
church and a synagogue. The picturesque town hall (1688)
contains some finely decorated rooms with paintings by Johan
van Neck, a collection of local antiquities and the archives.
Other interesting buildings are the orphanage (1616), containing
some 1 7th and iSth century portraits and ancient leather
hangings; the weigh-house (1559), the upper story of which
was once used by the Surgeons' Gild, several of the window-
panes (dating chiefly from about 1640), being decorated with
the arms of various members; the former mint (1611); and the
ancient assembly-house of the dike-reeves of Holland and West
Friesland. Enkhuizen possesses a considerable fishing fleet and
has some shipbuilding and rope-making, as well as market
traffic.
ENNBKING, JOHN JOSEPH (1841- ), American landscape
painter, was born, of German ancestry, in Minster, Ohio, on the
4th of October 1841. He was educated at Mount St Mary's
College, Cincinnati, served in the American Civil War in 1861-
1862, studied art in New York and Boston, and gave it up
because his eyes were weak, only to return to it after failing in
the manufacture of tinware. In 1873-1876 he studied in Munich
under Schleich and Leier, and in Paris under Daubigny and
Bonnat; and in 1878-1879 he studied in Paris again and sketched
in Holland. Enneking is a " plcin-airist," and his favourite
subject is the " November twilight " of New England, and more
generally the half lights of early spring, late autumn, and winter
dawn and evening.
ENNIS (Gaelic, Innis, an island; Irish, Ennis and Inish), the
county town of Co. Clare, Ireland, in the east parliamentary
division, on the river Fergus, 25 m. W.N.W. from Limerick by
the Great Southern & Western railway. Pop. of urban district
(1901) 5093. It is the junction for the West Clare line. Ennis
has breweries, distilleries and extensive flour-mills; and in the
neighbourhood limestone is quarried. The principal buildings
are the Roman Catholic church, which is the pro-cathedral
of the diocese of Killaloe; the parish church formed out of the
ruins of the Franciscan Abbey, founded in 1240 by Donough
Carbrac O'Brien; a school on the foundation of Erasmus Smith,
and various county buildings. The abbey, though greatly
mutilated, is full of interesting details, and includes a lofty
tower, a marble screen, a chapter-house, a notable east window,
several fine tombs and an altar of St Francis. On the site of the
old court-house a colossal statue in white limestone of Daniel
O'Connell was erected in 1865. The interesting ruins of Clare
Abbey, founded in 1194 by Donnell O'Brien, king of Munster,
are half-way between Ennis and the village of Clare Castle.
O'Brien also founded Killone Abbey, beautifully situated on the
lough of the same name, 3 m. S. of the town, possessing the
unusual feature of a crypt and a holy well. Five miles N.W.
of Ennis is Dysert O'Dea, with interesting ecclesiastical remains,
a cross, a round tower and a castle. Ennis was incorporated in
1612, and returned two members to the Irish parliament until
the Union, and thereafter one to the Imperial parliament until
1885.
ENNISCORTHY. a market town of Co. Wexford, Ireland,
in the north parliamentary division, on the side of a steep hill
above the Slaney, which here becomes navigable for barges of
large size. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5458. It is 77$ m.
S. by W. from Dublin by the Dublin & South-Eastern railway.
There are breweries and flour-mills; tanning, distilling and
woollen manufactures are also prosecuted to some extent, and
the town is the centre of the agricultural trade for the district,
which is aided by the water communication with Wexford.
There are important fowl markets and horse-fairs. Enniscorthy
was taken by Cromwell in 1649, and in 1798 was stormed and
burned by the rebels, whose main forces encamped on an emi-
nence called Vinegar Hill, which overlooks the town from the
east. The old castle of Enniscorthy, a massive square pile with
a round tower at each corner, is one of the earliest military
structures of the Anglo-Norman invaders, founded by Raymond
le Gros (1176). Ferns, the next station to Enniscorthy on the
railway towards Dublin, was the seat of a former bishopric,
and the modernized cathedral, and ruins of a church, an Augus-
tinian monastery founded by Dermod Mac-Morrough about
1160, and a castle of the Norman period, are still to be seen.
Enniscorthy was incorporated by James I., and sent two members
to the Irish parliament until the Union.
ENNISKILLEN, WILLIAM WILLOUGHBY COLE, 3 KD EARL
OF (1807-1886), British palaeontologist, was born on the 25th
of January 1807, and educated at Harrow and Christ Church,
Oxford. As Lord Cole he early began to devote his leisure to
the study and collection of fossil fishes, with his friend Sir Philip
de M. G. Egerton, and he amassed a fine collection at Florence
Court, Enniskillen including many specimens that were
described and figured by Agassiz and Egerton. This collection
was subsequently acquired by the British Museum. He died on
the 2ist of November 1886, being succeeded by his son (b. 1845)
as 4th earl.
The first of the Coles (an old Devonshire and Cornwall family)
to settle in Ireland was Sir William Cole (d. 1653), who was
" undertaker " of the northern plantation and received a grant
of a large property in Fermanagh in 1611, and became provost
and later governor of Enniskillen. In 1760 his descendant John
Cole (d. 1 767) was created Baron Mountflorence, and the latter's
son, William Willoughby Cole (1736-1803), was in 1776 created
Viscount Enniskillen and in 1789 earl. The ist earl's second son,
Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole (1772-1842), was a prominent general
in the Peninsular War, and colonel of the 2 7th Inniskillings,
the Irish regiment with whose name the family was associated.
ENNISKILLEN [INNISKILLING], a market town and the county
town of county Fermanagh, Ireland, in the north parliamentary
division, picturesquely situated on an island in the river connect-
ing the upper and lower loughs Erne, 116 m. N.W. from Dublin
by the Great Northern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901)
5412. The town occupies the whole island, and is connected
with two suburbs on the mainland on each side by two bridges.
It has a brewery, tanneries and a small manufactory of cutlery,
and a considerable trade in corn, pork and flax. In 1689 Ennis-
killen defeated a superior force sent against it by James II. at
the battle of Crom; and part of the defenders of the town were
subsequently formed into a regiment of cavalry, which still
retains the name of the Inniskilling Dragoons. The town was
incorporated by James I., and returned two members to the Irish
parliament until the Union; thereafter it returned one to the
Imperial parliament until 1885. There are wide communications
by water by the river and the upper and lower loughs Erne,
and by the Ulster canal to Belfast. The loughs contain trout,
large pike and other coarse fish. Two miles from Enniskillen
in the lower lough is Devenish Island, with its celebrated monastic
remains. The abbey of St Mary here was founded by St Molaise
(Laserian) in the 6th century; here too are a fine round tower
85 ft. high, remains of domestic buildings, a holed stone and a
tall well-preserved cross. The whole is carefully preserved by
6 4 8
ENNIUS
the commissioners of public works under the Irish Church Act
of 1869. Steamers ply between Enniskillen and Belleek on the
lower lake, and between Enniskillen and Knockninny on the
upper lake.
ENNIUS, QUINTUS (239-170 B.C.), ancient Latin poet, was
born at Rudiae in Calabria. Familiar with Greek as the language
in common use among the cultivated classes of his district, and
with Oscan, the prevailing dialect of lower Italy, he further
acquired a knowledge of Latin; to use his own expression
(Gellius xvii. 17), he had three "hearts" (corda), the Latin
word being used to signify the seat of intelligence. He is said
(Servius on Aen. vii. 691) to have claimed descent from one of the
legendary kings of his native district, Messapus the eponymous
hero of Messapia, and this consciousness of ancient lineage is in
accordance with the high self-confident tone of his mind, with his
sympathy with the dominant genius of the Roman republic,
and with his personal relations to the members of her great
families. Of his early years nothing is directly known, and we
first hear of him in middle life as serving during the Second
Punic War, with the rank of centurion, in Sardinia, in the year
204, where he attracted the attention of Cato the elder, and was
taken by him to Rome in the same year. Here he taught Greek
and adapted Greek plays for a livelihood, and by his poetical
compositions gained the friendship of the greatest men in Rome.
Amongst these were the elder Scipio and Fulvius Nobilior,
whom he accompanied on his Aetolian campaign (189). Through
the influence of Nobilior's son, Ennius subsequently obtained the
privilege of Roman citizenship (Cicero, Brutus, 20. 79). He lived
plainly and simply on the Aventine with the poet Caecilius
Statius. He died at the age of 70, immediately after producing
his tragedy Thyestes. In the last book of his epic poem, in
which he seems to have given various details of his personal
history, he mentions that he was in his 67th year at the date of
its composition. He compared himself, in contemplation of
the close of the great work of his life, to a gallant horse which,
after having often won the prize at the Olympic games, obtained
his rest when weary with age. A similar feeling of pride at the
completion of a great career is expressed in the memorial lines
which he composed to be placed under his bust after death,
" Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourn-
ing; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of
men." From the impression stamped on his remains, and from
the testimony of his countrymen, we think of him as a man of a
robust, sagacious and cheerful nature (Hor. Epp. ii. i. 50;
Cic. De sen. 5); of great industry and versatility; combining
imaginative enthusiasm and a vein of religious mysticism with a
sceptical indifference to popular beliefs and a scorn of religious
imposture; and tempering the grave seriousness of a Roman
with a genial capacity for enjoyment (Hor. Epp. i. 19. 7).
Till the appearance of Ennius, Roman literature, although it
had produced the epic poem of Naevius and some adaptations
of Greek tragedy, had been most successful in comedy. Naevius
and Plautus were men of thoroughly popular fibre. Naevius
suffered for his attacks on members of the aristocracy, and,
although Plautus carefully avoids any direct notice of public
matters, yet the bias of his sympathies is indicated in several
passages of his extant plays. Ennius, on the other hand, was
by temperament in thorough sympathy with the dominant
aristocratic element in Roman life and institutions. Under his
influence literature became less suited to the popular taste,
more especially addressed to a limited and cultivated class,
but at the same time more truly expressive of what was greatest
and. most worthy to endure in the national sentiment and
traditions. He was a man of many-sided activity. He devoted
attention to questions of Latin orthography, and is said to have
been the first to introduce shorthand writing in Latin. He
attempted comedy, but with so little success that in the canon
of Volcacius Sedigitus he is mentioned, solely as a mark of respect
" for his antiquity," tenth and last in the list of comic poets.
He may be regarded also as the inventor of Roman satire, in its
original sense of a " medley " or " miscellany," although it was
by Lucilius that the character of aggressive and censorious
criticism of men and manners was first imparted to that form of
literature. The word satura was originally applied to a rude
scenic and musical performance, exhibited at Rome before the
introduction of the regular drama. The saturae of Ennius were
collections of writings on various subjects, written in various
metres and contained in four (or six) books. Among these were
included metrical versions of the physical speculations of Epi-
charmus, of the gastronomic researches of Archestratus of Gela
(Hedyphagetica), and, probably, of the rationalistic doctrines of
Euhemerus. It may be noticed that all these writers whose
works were thus introduced to the Romans were Sicilian Greeks.
Original compositions were also contained in these saturae, and
among them the panegyric on Scipio, unless this was a drama.
The satire of Ennius seems to have resembled the more artistic
satire of Horace in its record of personal experiences, in the
occasional introduction of dialogue, in the use made of fables
with a moral application, and in the didactic office which it
assumed.
But the chief distinction of Ennius was gained in tragic and
narrative poetry. He was the first to impart to the Roman
adaptations of Greek tragedy the masculine dignity, pathos and
oratorical fervour which continued to animate them in the hands
of Pacuvius and Accius, and, when set off by the acting of
Aesopus, called forth vehement applause in the age of Cicero.
The titles of about twenty-five of his tragedies are known to us,
and a considerable number of fragments, varying in length from
a few words to about fifteen lines, have been preserved. These
tragedies were for the most part adaptations and, in some cases,
translations from Euripides. One or two were original dramas,
of the class called praetextae, i.e. dramas founded on Roman
history or legend; thus, the Ambracia treated of the capture of
that city by his patron Nobilior, the Sabinae of the rape of the
Sabine women. The heroes and heroines of the Trojan cycle,
such as Achilles, Ajax, Telamon, Cassandra, Andromache,
were prominent figures in some of the dramas adapted from the
Greek. Several of the more important fragments are found in
Cicero, who expresses a great admiration for their manly fortitude
and dignified pathos. In these remains of the tragedies of Ennius
we can trace indications of strong sympathy with the nobler and
bolder elements of character, of vivid realization of impassioned
situations, and of sagacious observation of life. The frank
bearing, fortitude and self-sacrificing heroism of the best type of
the soldierly character find expression in the persons of Achilles,
Telamon and Eurypylus; and a dignified and passionate tender-
ness of feeling makes itself heard in the lyrical utterances of
Cassandra and Andromache. The language is generally nervous
and vigorous, occasionally vivified with imaginative energy.
But it flows less smoothly and easily than that of the dialogue
of Latin comedy. It shows the same tendency to aim at effect
by alliterations, assonances and plays on words. The rudeness
of early art is most apparent in the inequality of the metres in
which both the dialogue and the " recitative " are composed.
But the work which gained him his reputation as the Homer of
Rome, and which called forth the admiration of Cicero and
Lucretius and frequent imitation from Virgil, was the Annales,
a long narrative poem in eighteen books, containing the record
of the national story from mythical times to his own. Although
the whole conception of the work implies that confusion of
the provinces of poetry and history which was perpetuated by
later writers, and especially by Lucan and Silius Italicus, yet
it was a true instinct of genius to discern in the idea of the
national destiny the only possible motive of a Roman epic.
The execution of the poem (to judge from the fragments, amount-
ing to about six hundred lines), although rough, unequal and
often prosaic, seems to have combined the realistic fidelity and
freshness of feeling of a contemporary chronicle with the vivifying
and idealizing power of genius. Ennius prided himself especially
on being the first to form the strong speech of Latium into the
mould of the Homeric hexameter in place of the old Saturnian
metre. And although it took several generations of poets to
beat their music out to the perfection of the Virgilian cadences,
yet in the rude adaptation of Ennius the secret of what ultimately
ENNODIUS ENOCH
649
became one of the grandest organs of literary expression was
first discovered and revealed. The inspiring idea of the poem
was accepted, purified of all alien material, and realized in artistic
shape by Virgil in his national epic. He deliberately imparted
to that poem the charm of antique associations by incorporating
with it much of the phraseology and sentiment of Ennius.
The occasional references to Roman history in Lucretius are
evidently reminiscences of the Annalts. He as well as Cicero
speaks of him with pride and affection as " Ennius noster."
Of the great Roman writers Horace had least sympathy with
him; yet he testifies to the high esteem in which he was held
during the Augustan age. Ovid expresses the grounds of that
esteem when he characterizes him as
" Ingenio maximus, arte rudis."
A sentence of Quintilian expresses the feeling of reverence for
his genius and character, mixed with distaste for his rude
workmanship, with which the Romans of the early empire re-
garded him: " Let us revere Ennius as we revere the sacred
groves, hallowed by antiquity, whose massive and venerable
oak trees are not so remarkable for beauty as for the religious
awe which they inspire " (Inst. or. x. i. 88).
Editions of the fragments by L. Mailer (1884), L. Valmaggi
(IQOO, with notes), J. vahlen (1903); monographs by L. MiiUcr
(1884 and 1893), C. Pascal, Sludi sugli scritlori Latini (1900); see
also Mommsen. History of Rome, bk. iii. ch. 14. On Virgil's in-
debtedness to Ennius see V. Crivellari, Quae praecipue hausit Ver-
giliiu ex Naevio el Ennio (1889).
ENNODIUS, MAGNUS FELIX (A.D. 474-521), bishop of Pavia,
Latin rhetorician and poet. He was born at Art-late (Aries) and
belonged to a distinguished but impecunious family. Having
lost his parents at an early age, he was brought up by an aunt
at Ticinum (Pavia); according to some, at Mediolanum (Milan).
After her death he was received into the family of a pious and
wealthy young lady, to whom he was betrothed. It is not certain
whether he actually married this lady; she seems to have lost
her money and retired to a convent, whereupon Ennodius
entered the Church, and was ordained deacon (about 493) by
Epiphanius, bishop of Pavia. From Pavia he went to Milan,
where he continued to reside until his elevation to the see of
Pavia about 515. During his stay at Milan he visited Rome
and other places, where be gained a reputation as a teacher of
rhetoric. As bishop of Pavia he played a considerable part in
ecclesiastical affairs. On two occasions (in 515 and 517) he was
sent to Constantinople by Theodoric on an embassy to the
emperor Anastasius, to endeavour to bring about a reconciliation
between the Eastern and Western churches. He died on the
1 7th of July 521; his epitaph still exists in the basilica of St
Michael at Pavia (Corpus Inscriplionum Latinarum, v. pt. ii.
No. 6464).
Ennodius is one of the best representatives of the twofold
(pagan and Christian) tendency of sth-century literature, and
of the Gallo-Roman clergy who upheld the cause of civilization
and chi<-al literature against the inroads of barbarism. But
his anxiety not to fall behind his classical models the chief of
whom was Virgil his striving after elegance and grammatical
correctness, and a desire to avoid the commonplace have pro-
duced a turgid and affected style, which, aggravated by rhetorical
exaggerations and popular barbarisms, makes his works difficult
to understand. It has been remarked that his poetry is less
unintelligible than his prose.
The numerous writings of this versatile ecclesiastic may be divided
into ( l ) letters. (2) miscellanies, (3) discourses, (4) poems. The letters
on a variety of subjects, addressed to high church and state officials,
are valuable for the religious and political history of the period. Of
the miscellanies, the most important are: The Panegyric of Theodoric,
written to thank the Arian prince for his tolerance of Catholicism
and support of Pope Symmachus (probably delivered before the king
on the occasion of his entry into Ravenna or Milan); like all similar
works, it is full of flattery and exaggeration, but if used with caution
is a valuable authority ; The Life of SI Epiphanius, bishop of Pavia,
the best written and perhaps the most important of all his writings,
an interesting picture of the political activity and influence of the
church: Eutkaristicon de Vita Sua, a sort of "confessions," after
the manner of St Augustine; 'the description of the enfranchise-
ment of a slave with religious formalities in the presence of a bishop;
Paraenetii didaxaiiea, an educational guide, in which the claims of
grammar as a preparation for the study of rhetoric, the mother of all
the sciences, are strongly insisted mi. The discourses (Dicttones) are
sacred, scholastic, controversial and ethical. The discourse on the
anniversary of Laurentius, bishop of Milan, is the chief authority
for the life of that prelate; the scholastic discourses, rhetorical
exi-iriscs for the schools, contain eulogies of classical learning, cli>.
tinguishe<l professors and pupils; the controversial deal with
imaginary charges, the subjects being chiefly borrowed from the
Controversiae of the elder Seneca; the ethical harangues arc put
into the mouth of mythological personages (e.g. the speech of Theii*
over the body of Achilles). Amongst the poems mention may In-
made of two Itineraria, descriptions of a journey from Milan to
Brigantium (Uri.nn.oni and of a trip on the Po; an apology for the
study of profane literature; an cpithalamium, in which Love i>
introduced as execrating Christianity; a dozen hymns, after the
manner of St Ambrose, probably intended for church use; epigrams
on various subjects, some being epigrams proper inscriptions lor
tombs, basilicas, baptisteries others imitations of Martial, satirie
pieces and descriptions of scenery.
There are two excellent editions of Ennodius by G. Hartel (vol. vi.
of Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna, |H2J
and F. Vogcl (vol. vii. of Monumenta Gertnaniae historica, 1885,
with exhaustive prolegomena). On Ennodius generally consult
M. Fertig, Ennodius und seine Zeit (1855-1860); A. Dubois, La
Latinitf a' Ennodius (1903); F. Magani, Ennodio (Pavia, 1886);
A. Ebcrt, AUgemeine Geschichte der Lilt, des Mittelalters im Abend-
landf, i. (1889); M. Manitius, Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen
Poesie (1891); Teuffel, Hist, of Roman Literature, 479 (Eng. tr.,
1892). French translation by the abb S. Leglise (Pans, 1906 foil.).
ENNS, a town of Austria, in upper Austria, n m. by rail S.E.
of Linz. Pop. (1900) 4371. It is situated on the Enns near its
confluence with the Danube and possesses a i sth-century castle,
an old Gothic church, and a town hall erected in 1563. Three
miles to the S.W. lies the Augustinian monastery of St Florian,
one of the oldest and largest religious houses of Austria. Founded
in the 7th century, it was occupied by the Benedictines till the
middle of the nth century. It was established on a firm basis
in 1071, when it passed into the hands of the Augustinians.
The actual buildings, which are among the most magnificent in
Austria, were constructed between 1686 and 1745. Its library,
with over 70,000 volumes, contains valuable manuscripts and
also a fine collection of coins. Enns is one of the oldest towns in
Austria, and stands near the site of the Roman Laurcacum.
The nucleus of the actual town was formed by a castle, called
Anasiburg or Anesburg, erected in 900 by the Bavarians as a post
against the incursions of the Hungarians. It soon attained
commercial prosperity, and by a charter of 1212 was made a
free town. In 1275 it passed into the hands of Rudolph of
Habsburg. An encounter between the French and the Austrian
troops took place here on the sth of November 1805.
ENOCH (ipaq, niq, Han6kh, Teaching or Dedication), (i)
In Gen. iv. 17, 18 (J), the eldest son of Cain, born while
Cain was building a city, which he named after Enoch ; nothing
is known of the city. (2) In Gen. v. 24, &c. (P), seventh in descent
from Adam in the line of Seth; he " walked with God," and after
365 years " was not for God took him." [(i) and (2) are often
regarded as both corruptions of the seventh primitive king
Evedorachos (Enmeduranki in cuneiform inscriptions), the two
genealogies, Gen. iv. 16-24, v.' 12-17, being variant forms of the
Babylonian list of primitive kings. Enmeduranki is the favourite
of the sun-god, cf. Enoch's 365 years. 1 ] Heb. xi. 5 says Enoch
" was not found, because God translated him." Later Jewish
legends represented him as receiving revelations on astronomy,
&c., and as the first author; apparently following the Babylonian
account which makes Enmeduranki receive instruction in all
wisdom from the sun-god. 1 Two apocryphal works written in
the name of Enoch arc extant, the Book of Enoch, compiled from
documents written 200-50 B.C., quoted as the work of Enoch,
Jude 14 and 15; and the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, A.D. 1-50.
Cf. i Chron. i. 3; Luke iii. 37; Wisdom iv. 7-14; Ecclus. xliv. 16,
xlix. 14. (3) Son, i.e. clan, of Midian, in Gen. xxv. 4; i Chron.
i. 33. (4) Son, i.e. clan, of Reuben, E. V. Hanoch, Henoch, in Gen.
xlvi. 9; Exod. vi: 14; Num. xxvi. 5; i Chron. v. 3. There may
have been some historical connexion between these two clans
with identical names.
1 Eberhard Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das A.T., 3rd e<l.,
pp. 540 f.
650
ENOCH, BOOK OF
ENOCH, BOOK OF. The Book of Enoch, or, as it is sometimes
called, the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, in contradistinction to the
Slavonic Book of Enoch (see later), is perhaps the most important
of all the apocryphal or pseudapocryphal Biblical writings for
the history of religious thought. It is not the work of a single
author, but rather a conglomerate of literary fragments which
once circulated under the names of Enoch, Noah and possibly
Methuselah. In the Book of the Secrets of Enoch we have addi-
tional portions of this literature. As the former work is derived
from a variety of Pharisaic writers in Palestine, so the latter in
its present form was written for the most part by Hellenistic
Jews in Egypt.
The Book of Enoch was written in the second and first centuries
B.C. It was well known to many of the writers of the New Testa-
ment, and in many instances influenced their thought and diction.
Thus it is quoted by name as a genuine production of Enoch
in the Epistle of Jude, 14 sq., and it lies at the base of Matt.
xix. 28 and John v. 22, 27, and many other passages. It had also
a vast indirect influence on the Palestinian literature of the ist
century of our era. Like the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the
Megilloth, the Pirke Aboth, this work was divided into five parts,
with the critical discussion of which we shall deal below. With
the earlier Fathers and Apologists it had all the weight of a
canonical book, but towards the close of the 3rd and the beginning
of the 4th century it began to be discredited, and finally fell
under the ban of the Church. Almost the latest reference to it
in the early church is made by George Syncellus in his Chrono-
graphy about A.D. 800. The book was then lost sight of till
1773, when Bruce discovered the Ethiopic version in Abyssinia.
Original Language. That the Book of Enoch was written in
Semitic is now accepted on all hands, but scholars are divided
as to whether the Semitic language in question was Hebrew or
Aramaic. Only one valuable contribution on this question has
been made, and that by Halevy in the Journal Asiatique, Avril-
Mai 1867, pp. 352-395. This scholar is of opinion that the entire
work was written in Hebrew. Since this publication, however,
fresh evidence bearing on the question has been discovered in the
Greek fragment (i.-xxxii.) found in Egypt. Since this fragment
contains three Aramaic words transliterated in the Greek,
some scholars, and among them Schiirer, Levi and N. Schmidt,
have concluded that not only are chapters i.-xxxvi. derived
from an Aramaic original, but also the remainder of the book.
In support of the latter statement no evidence has yet been
offered by these or any other scholars, nor yet has there been any
attempt to meet the positive arguments of Halevy for a Hebrew
original of xxxvii.-civ., whose Hebrew reconstructions of the
text have been and must be adopted in many cases by every
editor and translator of the book. A prolonged study of the
text, which has brought to light a multitude of fresh passages
the majority of which can be explained by retranslation into
Hebrew, has convinced the present writer 1 that, whilst the
evidence on the whole is in favour of an Aramaic original of
vi.-xxxvi., it is just as conclusive on behalf of the Hebrew original
of the greater part of the rest of the book.
Versions Greek, Latin and Ethiopic. The Semitic original
was translated into Greek. It is not improbable that there were
two distinct Greek versions. Of the one, several fragments have
been preserved in Syncellus (A.D. 800), vi.-x. 14, viii. 4-ix. 4,
xv. 8-xvi. i ; of the other, i.-xxxii. in the Giza Greek fragment
discovered in Egypt and published by Bouriant (Fragments grecs
du livre d' Enoch), in 1892, and subsequently by Lods, Dillmann,
Charles (Book of Enoch, 318 sqq.), Swete, and finally by Rader-
macher and Charles (Ethiopic Text, 3-75). In addition to these
fragments there is that of Ixxxix. 42-49 (see Gildemeister in the
ZDMG, 1855, pp. 621-624, and Charles, Ethiopic Text, pp. 175-
177). Of the Latin version only i. 9 survives, being preserved in
the Pseudo-Cyprian's Ad Novatianum, and cvi. 1-18 discovered
by James in an 8th-century MS. of the British Museum (see
James, Apoc. anecdota, 146-150; Charles, op. cit. 219-222).
This version is made from the Greek.
1 The evidence is given at length In R. H. Charles' Ethiopic Text
of Enoch, pp. xxvii-xxxiii.
The Ethiopic version, which alone preserves the entire text, is
a very faithful translation of the Greek. Twenty-eight MSS.
of this version are in the different libraries of Europe, of which
fifteen are to be found in England. This version was made from
an ancestor of the Greek fragment discovered at Giza. Some
of the utterly unintelligible passages in this fragment are literally
reproduced in the Ethiopic. The same wrong order of the text
in vii.-viii. is common to both. In order to recover the original
text, it is from time to time necessary to retranslate the Ethiopic
into Greek, and the latter in turn into Aramaic or Hebrew. By
this means we are able to detect dittographies in the Greek and
variants in the original Semitic. The original was written to a
large extent in verse. The discovery of this fact is most helpful
in the criticism of the text. This version was first edited by
Laurence in 1838 from one MS., in 1851 by Dillmann from five,
in 1902 by Flemming from fifteen MSS., and in 1906 by the
present writer from twenty-three.
Translations and Commentaries. Laurence, The Book of Enoch
(Oxford, 1821); Dillmann, Das Buck Henoch (1853); Schodde, The
Book of Enoch (1882); Charles, The Book of Enoch (1893); Beer,
" Das Buch Henoch," in Kautzsch's Apok. u. Pseud, des A.T. (1900),
ii. 217-310; Flemming and Radermacher, , Das Buch Henoch (1901);
Martin, Le Livre d' Henoch (1906). Critical Inquiries. The biblio-
graphy will be found in Schiirer, Gesch. d. judischen Volkes 3 , iii.
207-209, and a short critical account of the most important of these
in Charles, op. cit. pp. 9-21.
The different Elements in the Book, with their respective Char-
acteristics and Dales. We have remarked above that the Book
of Enoch is divided into five parts i.-xxxvi., xxxvii.-lxxi., Ixxii.-
Ixxxii., lxxxiii.-xc., xci-cviii. Some of these parts constituted
originally separate treatises. In the course of their reduction
and incorporation into a single work they suffered much mutila-
tion and loss. From an early date the compositeness of this
work was recognized. Scholars have varied greatly in their
critical analyses of the work (see Charles, op. cit. 6-21, 309-31^).
The analysis which gained most acceptation was that of Dillmann
(Herzog's Realencyk. 2 xii. 350-352), according to whom the
present books consist of (i) the groundwork, i.e. i.-xxxvi.,
Ixxii.-cv., written in the time of John Hyrcanus; (2) xxxvii.-lxxi.,
xvii.-xix., before 64 B.C.; (3) the Noachic fragments, vi. 3-8,
viii. 1-3, ix. 7, x. i, n, xx., xxxix. i, 20, liv. 7~lv. 2, lx., Ixv.-lxix.
25, cvi.-cvii.; and (4) cviii., from a later hand. With much of
this analysis there is no reason to disagree. The similitudes are
undoubtedly of different authorship from the rest of the book,
and certain portions of the book are derived from the Book of
Noah. On the other hand, the so-called groundwork has no
existence unless in the minds of earlier critics and some of their
belated followers in the present. It springs from at least four
hands, and may be roughly divided into four parts, corresponding
to the present actual divisions of the book.
A new critical analysis of the book based on this view was
given by Charles (op. cit. pp. 24-33), an d further developed
by Clemen and Beer. The analysis of the latter (see Herzog,
Realencyk. 3 xiv. 240) is very complex. The book, according to this
scholar, is composed of the following separate elements from the
Enoch tradition: (i) Ch. i.-v.; (2) xii-xvi.; (3) xvii.-xix. ;
(4) xx.-xxxvi.; (5) xxxvii.-lxix. (from diverse sources); (6)
Ixx.-lxxi.; (7) Ixxii.-lxxxii. ; (8) Ixxxiii.-lxxxiv. ; (9) lxxxv.-xc.;
(10) xciii., cxi. 12-17; C 11 ) *ci. i-n, 18, 19, xcii., xciv.-cv.;
(12) cviii., and from the Noah tradition; (13) vi.-xi.; (14)
xxxix. 1-20, liv. 7-lv. 2, lx., Ixv.-lxix. 25; (15) cvi.-cvii. Thus
while Clemen finds eleven separate sources, Beer finds fifteen.
A fresh study from the hand of Appel (Die Composition des
athiopischen Henochbuchs, 1906) seeks to reach a final analysis
of our book. But though it evinces considerable insight, it
cannot escape the charge of extravagance. The original book
or ground-work of Enoch consisted of i.-xvi., xx.-xxxvi. This
work called forth a host of imitators, and a number of their
writings, together with the groundwork, were edited as a Book
of Methuselah, i.e. lxxii.-cv. Then came the final redactor, who
interpolated the groundwork and the Methuselah sections, adding
two others from his own pen. The Similitudes he worked up
from a series of later sources, and gave them the second place
ENOCH, BOOK OF
651
in the final work authenticating them with the name of Noah.
The date of the publication of the entire work Appel assigns to
the yean immediately following the death of Herod.
We shall now give an analysis of the book, with the dates of the
various sections where possible. Of these we shall deal with the
easiest first. Ckap. Ixxii.-lxxni. constitutes a work in itself, the writer
of which had very different objects before him from the writers of
the rest of the book. His sole aim is to give the law of the heavenly
bodies. His work has suffered disarrangements and interpolations
at the hands of the editor of the whole work. Thus Ixxvi.-lxxvii.,
which are concerned with the winds, the quarters of the heaven, and
certain geographical matters, and Ixxxi., which is concerned wholly
with ethical matters, are foreign to a work which professes in its
title (Ixxii. l) to deal only with OH luminaries ut iho heaven and their
laws. Finally, Ixxxii. should stand before Ixxix. ; for the opening
words of the latter suppose it to be already read. The date of this
section can be partially established, for it was known to the author
of Jubilees, and was therefore written before the last third of the
2nd century B.C.
Ckaps. Ixxxiii.-xc. This section was written before 161 B.C., for
" the great horn," who is Judas the Maccabec, was still warring when
the author was writing. (Dillmann, Schiirer and others tale the
treat horn to be John Hyrcanus, but this interpretation does
violence to the text. j These chapters recount three visions: the first
two deal with the first-world judgment ; the third with the entire
history of the world till the final judgment. An eternal Messianic
kingdom at the close of the judgment is to be established under the
Messiah, with its centre in the New Jerusalem set up by God Himself.
Ckaps. xci.-cn. In the preceding section the Maccabees were the
religious champions of the nation and the friends of the Hasidim.
Here they are leagued with the Sadducces.and arc the declared foes of
the Pharisaic party. This section was written therefore after 134 B.C.,
when the breach between John Hyrcanus and the Pharisees took
place and before the savage massacres of the latter by Jannaeus
(95 B.C.) ; for it is not likely that in a book dealing with the sufferings
of the Pharisees such a reference would be omitted. These chapters
indicate a revolution in the religious hopes of the nation. An eternal
Messianic kingdom is no longer anticipated, but only a temporary
one, at the close of which the final judgment will ensue. The
righteous dead rise not to this kingdom but to spiritual blessedness
in heaven itself to an immortality of the soul. This section also
has suffered at the hands of the final editor. Thus xci. 12-17, which
describe the last three weeks of the Ten- Weeks Apocalypse, should
be read immediately after xciii. l-io, which recount the first seven
weeks of the same apocalypse. But, furthermore, the section
obviously begins with xcii. Written by Enoch the scribe," &c.
Then comes xci. l-io as a natural sequel. The Ten-Weeks Apoca-
lypse, xciii. i-io, xci. 12-17, if 't came from the same hand, followed,
and then xciv. The attempt (by Clemen and Beer) to place the Ten-
Weeks Apocalypse before 167, because it makes no reference to the
Maccabees, is not successful ; for where the history of mankind from
Adam to the final judgment is despatched in sixteen verses, such an
omission need cause little embarrassment, and still less if the author
is the determined foe of the Maccabees, whom he would probably
have stigmatized as apostates, if he had mentioned them at all, just
as he similarly brands all the Sadduccan priesthood that preceded
them to the time of the captivity. This Ten- Weeks, Apocalypse,
therefore, we take to be the work of the writer of the rest of xci.-civ.
Chaps, t.-xxxvi. This is the most difficult section of the book.
It is very composite. Chaps, vi.-xi. is apparently an independent
fragment of the Enoch Saga. It is itself compounded of the Semjaza
and Azazel myths, and in its present composite form is already pre-
supposed by uxxviii.-lxxxix. I ; hence its present form is earlier
than 166 B.C. It represents a primitive and very sensuous view of the
eternal Messianic kingdom on earth, seeing that the righteous beget
looo children before they die. These chapters appear to be from
the Book of Noah ; for tney never refer to Enoch but to Noah only
(x. l). Moreover, when the author of Jubilees is clearly drawing on
the Book of Noah, his subject-matter (vii. 21-25) agrees most closely
with that of these chapters in Enoch (sec Charles' edition of
Jubilees, pp. Jxxi. sq. 264). xii.-xvi., on the other hand, belong to
the Book of Enoch. These represent for the most part what Enoch
saw in a vision. Now whereas vi.-xvi. deal with the fall of the
angels, their destruction of mankind, and the condemnation of the
fallen angels, the subject-matter now suddenly changes and xvii.-
xxxvi. treat of Enoch's journey ines through earth and heaven
escorted by angels. Here undoubtedly we have a series of doublets;
for xvii. -xix. stand in this relation to xx.-xxxvi., since both sections
deal with the same subjects. Thus xvii. 4-xxiii. ; xvii. 6 = xxii.;
xviii. I - xxxiv.-xxxvi. ; xviii. 6-o,-xxiv.-xxv., xxxii. 1-2; xviii.
II. xix.-xxi. 7-10; xviii. 12-16-xxi. 1-6. They belong to the
sane cycle of tradition and cannot be independent of each other.
Chap. xx. appears to show that xx.-xxxvi. is fragmentary, since only
four of the seven angels mentioned in xx. have anything to do in
xxi.-xxxvi. Finally, i.-v. seems to be of a different date and author-
ship from the rest.
Ckaps. xacfii.-lxsi. These constitute the well-known Similitudes.
They were written before 64 B.C., for Rome was not yet known to the
writer, and after 95 B.C., for the slaying of the righteous, of which
the writer complains, was not perpetrated by the Maccabean princes
before that date. This section consists of three similitudes
xxxviii.-xliv., xlv.-lvii., Iviii.-lxix. These are introduced and con-
cluded by xxxvii. and Ixx. There are many interpolations lx.,
Ixv.-lxix. 25 confessedly from the Book of Noah; most probably
also liv. 7~lv. 2. Whence others, such as xxxix. I, 2a, xli. 3-8, xliii.
sq., sprint is doubtful. Chaps. I, Ivi. 5-lvii. 30 are likewise insertions.
In R. II. Charles's edition of Enoch, Ixxi. was bracketed as an
interpolation. The writer now sees that it belongs to the text of the
Similitudes though it is dislocated from its original context. It
presents two visits of Enoch to heaven in Ixxi. 1-4 and Jxxi. 5-17.
The extraordinary statement in Ixxi. 14, according to which Enoch
is addressed as " the Son of Man," is seen, as Appcl points out, on
examination of the context to have arisen from the loss of a portion
of the text after verse 13, in which Enoch saw a heavenly being with
the Head of Days and asked the angel who accompanied him who
this being was. Then comes ver. 14, which, owing to the loss of this
passage, has assumed the form of an address to Enoch : " Thou art
the Son of Man," but which stood originally as the angel's reply to
Enoch: " This is the Son of Man," Sc. Ver. is, then, gives the
message sent to Enoch by the Son of Man. In the next verse the
second person should be changed into the third. Thus we recover the
original text of this difficult chapter. The Messianic doctrine and
cschatology of this section is unique. The Messiah is here for the first
time described as the pre-existent Son of Man (xlviii. 2), who sits on
the throne of God (xlv. 3; xlvii. 3), possesses universal dominion
(Ixii. 6), and is the Judge of all mankind (Ixix. 27). After the judg-
ment there will be a new heaven and a new earth, which will be the
abode of the blessed.
The BOOK OF THE SECRETS OF ENOCH, or Slavonic Enoch.
This new fragment of the Enochic literature has only recently
come to light through five MSS. discovered in Russia and Servia.
Since about A.D. 500 it has been lost sight of. It is cited without
acknowledgment in the Book of Adam and Eve, the Apocalypses
of Moses and Paul, the Sibylline Oracles, the Ascension of Isaiah,
the Epistle of Barnabas, and referred to by Origen and Irenaeus
(see Charles, The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, 1895, pp. xvii-xxiv).
For Charles's editio princeps of this work, in 1893, Professor
Morfill translated two of the best MSS., as well as Sokolov's text,
which is founded on these and other MSS. In 1896 Bonwetsch
issued his Das slavische Henochbuch, in which a German transla-
tion of the above two MSS. is given side by side, preceded by a
short introduction.
Analysis. -^Chzps. i.-ii. Introduction: life of Enoch: his dream,
in which he is told that he will be taken up to heaven : his admoni-
tions to his sons, iii.-xxxvi. What Enoch saw in heaven. iii.-vi.
The first heaven: the rulers of the stars: the great sea and the
treasures of snow, &c. vii. The second heaven: the fallen angels,
vjii.-x. The third heaven: Paradise and place of punishment,
xi.-xvii. The fourth heaven: courses of the sun and moon: phoe-
nixes, xviii. The fifth heaven: the watchers mourning for their
fallen brethren, xix. The sixth heaven: seven bands of angels
arrange and study the courses of the stars, &c. : others set over the
years, the fruits of the earth, the souls of men. xx.-xxxvi. The
seventh heaven. The Lord sitting on His throne with the ten chief
orders of angels. Enoch is clothed by Michael in the raiment of
God's glory and instructed in the secrets of nature and of man,
which he wrote down in 366 books. God reveals to Enoch the
history of the creation of the earth and the seven planets and circles
of the heaven and of man, the story of the fallen angels, the duration
of the world through 7000 years, and its millennium of rest, xxxviii.-
Ixvi. Enoch returns to earth, admonishes his sons: instructs them
on what he had seen in the heavens, gives them his books. Bids
them not to swear at all nor to expect any intercession of the de-
parted saints for sinners. Ivi.-lxiii. Methuselah asks Enoch's
blessing before he departs, and to all his sons and their families
Enoch gives fresh instruction. Ixiy.-lxvi. Enoch addressed the
assembled people at Achuszan. Ixvii.-lxviii. Enoch's translation.
Krjoicings of the people on behalf of the revelation given them
through Enoch.
Language and Place of Writing. A large part of this book was
written for the first time in Greek. This may be inferred from
such statements as (i) xxx. 13, " And I gave him a name (i.e.
Adam) from the four substances: the East, the West, the North
and the South." Thus Adam's name is here derived from the
initial letters of the four quarters: dvaroXij, 5(xra, &.OKTM,
lurrnuPpia. This derivation is impossible in Semitic. This
context is found elsewhere in the Sibyllines iii. 24 sqq. and other
Greek writings. (2) Again our author uses the chronology of the
Septuagint and in i, 4 follows the Septuagint text of Deutero-
nomy xxxii. 35 against tie Hebrew. On the other hand, some
652
ENOMOTO ENSCHEDE
sections may wholly or in part go back to Hebrew originals.
There is a Hebrew Book of Enoch attributed to R. Ishmael ben
Elisha who lived at the close of the ist century and the beginning
of the 2nd century B.C. This book is very closely related to the
Book of the Secrets of Enoch, or rather, to a large extent de-
pendent upon it. Did Ishmael ben Elisha use the Book of the
Secrets of Enoch in its Greek form, or did he find portions of it
in Hebrew? At all events, extensive quotations from a Book
of Enoch are found in the rabbinical literature of the middle ages,
and the provenance of these has not yet been determined. See
Jewish Encyc. i. 676 seq.
But there is a stronger argument for a Hebrew original of
certain sections to be found in the fact that the Testaments
of the XII. Patriarchs appears to quote xxxiv. 2, 3 of our author
in T. Napth. iv. i, T. Benj. ix.
The book in its present form was written in Egypt. This may
be inferred (i) from the variety of speculations which it holds in
common with Philo and writings of a Hellenistic character that
circulated mainly in Egypt. (2) The Phoenixes are Chalky dries
(ch. xii.) monstrous serpents with the heads of crocodiles are
natural products of the Egyptian imagination. (3) The syn-
cretistic character of the creation account (xxv.-xxvi.) betrays
Egyptian elements.
Relation to Jewish and Christian Literature. The existence of a
kindred literature in Neo-Hebrew has been already pointed out.
We might note besides that it is quoted in the Book of Adam and
Eve, the Apocalypse of Moses, the Apocalypse of Paul, the
anonymous work De montibus Sina et Sion, the Sibylline Oracles
ii. 75, Origen, De princip, i. 3, 2. The authors of the Ascension
of Isaiah, the Apoc. of Baruch and the Epistle of Barnabas were
probably acquainted with it. In the New Testament the simi-
larity of matter and diction is sufficiently strong to establish
a close connexion, if not a literary dependence. Thus with
Matt. v. 9, " Blessed are the peacemakers," cf. hi. n, " Blessed
is he who establishes peace ": with Matt. v. 34, 35, 37, " Swear
not at all," cf. xlix. i, " I will not swear by a single oath,
neither by heaven, nor by earth, nor by any other creature
which God made if there is no truth in man, let them swear
by a word yea, yea, or nay, nay."
Date and Authorship. The book was probably written
between 30 B.C. and A.D. 70. It was written after 30 B.C., for it
makes use of Sirach, the (Ethiopic) Book of Enoch and the Book
of Wisdom. It was written before A.D. 70; for the temple is
still standing: see lix. 2.
The author was an orthodox Hellenistic Jew who lived in
Egypt. He believed in the value of sacrifices (xlii. 6; lix. i,
2, &c.), but is careful to enforce enlightened views regarding
them (xlv. 3, 4; Ixi. 4, 5.) in the law, lii. 8, 9; in a blessed im-
mortality, 1. 2; Ixv. 6, 8-10, in which the righteous should be
clothed in " the raiment of God's glory," xxii. 8. In questions
relating to cosmology, sin, death, &c., he is an eclectic, and allows
himself the most unrestricted freedom, and readily incorporates
Platonic (xxx. 16), Egyptian (xxv. 2) and Zend (Iviii. 4-6) elements
into his system of thought.
Anthropological Views. All the souls of men were created
before the foundation of the world (xxiii. 5) and likewise their
future abodes in heaven or hell (xlix. 2, Iviii. 5). Man's name
was derived, as we have already seen, from the four quarters
of the world, and his body was compounded from seven sub-
stances (xxx. 8). He was created originally good: freewill was
bestowed upon him with instruction in the two ways of light and
darkness, and then he was left to mould his own destiny (xxx.
15). But his preferences through the bias of the flesh took an
evil direction, and death followed as the wages of sin (xxx. 16).
LITERATURE. Morfill and Charles, The Book of the Secrets of
Enoch (Oxford, 1896); Bonwetsch, " Das slavische Henochbuch,
in the Abhandlungen der koniglichen gelehrten Gesellschaft zu Got-
tingen (1896). See also Schurer in he. and the Bible Dictionaries.
(R. H. C.)
ENOMOTO. BUYO, VISCOUNT (1839-1009), Japanese vice-
admiral, was born in Tokyo. He was the first officer sent by the
Tokugawa government to study naval science in Europe, and
after going through a course of instruction in Holland he returned
in command of the frigate " Kaiyo Maru," built at Amsterdam
to order of the Yedo administration. The salient episode of his
career was an attempt to establish a republic at Hakodate.
Finding himself in command of a squadron which represented
practically the whole of Japan's naval forces, he refused to
acquiesce in the deposition of the Shogun, his liege lord, and,
steaming off to Yezo (1867), proclaimed a republic and fortified
Hakodate. But he was soon compelled to surrender. The newly
organized government of the empire, however, instead of inflict-
ing the death penalty on him and his principal followers, as
would have been the inevitable sequel of such a drama in previous
times, punished them with imprisonment only, and four years
after the Hakodate episode, Enomoto received an important
post in Hokkaido, the very scene of his wild attempt. Subse-
quently (1874), as his country's representative in St Petersburg,
he concluded the treaty by which Japan exchanged the southern
half of Saghalien for the Kuriles. He received the title of
viscount in 1885, and afterwards held the portfolios of com-
munications, education and foreign affairs. He died at Tokyo
in 1909.
ENOS (anc. Aenos), a town of European Turkey, in the vilayet
of Adrianople; on the southern shore of the river Maritza,
where its estuary broadens to meet the Aegean Sea in the Gulf
of Enos. Pop. (1905) about 8000. Enos occupies a ridge of rock
surrounded by broad marshes. It is the seat of a Greek bishop,
and the population is mainly Greek. It long possessed a valuable
export trade, owing to its position at the mouth of the Maritza,
the great natural waterway from Adrianople to the sea. But its
commerce has declined, owing to the unhealthiness of its climate,
to the accumulation of sandbanks in its harbour, which now only
admits small coasters and fishing-vessels, and to the rivalry of
Dedeagatch, a neighbouring seaport connected with Adrianople
by rail.
ENRIQUEZ GOMEZ, ANTONIO (c. i6oi-c. 1661), Spanish
dramatist, poet and novelist of Portuguese-Jewish origin, was
known in the early part of his career as Enrique Enriquez de
Paz. Born at Segovia, he entered the army, obtained a cap-
taincy, was suspected of heresy, fled to France about 1636,
assumed the name of Antonio Enriquez Gomez, and became
majordomo to Louis XIII., to whom he dedicated Luis dado de
Dios a Anna (Paris, 1645). Some twelve years later he removed
to Amsterdam, avowed his conversion to Judaism, and was
burned in effigy at Seville on the I4th of April 1660. He is
supposed to have returned to France, and to have died there
in the following year. Three of his plays, El Gran Cardenal de
Espana, don Gil de Albornoz, and the two parts of Fernan Mendez
Pinto were received with great applause at Madrid about 1629;
in 1635 he contributed a sonnet to Montalban's collection of
posthumous panegyrics on Lope de Vega, to whose dramatic
school Enriquez Gomez belonged. The Academias morales de
las Musas, consisting of four plays (including A lo que obliga el
honor, which recalls Calderon's Medico de su honra) , was published
at Bordeaux in 1642; La Torre de Babilonia, containing the
two parts of Fernan Mendez Pinto, appeared at Rouen in 1647;
and in the preface to his poem, El Samson Nazareno (Rouen,
1656), Enriquez Gomez gives the titles of sixteen other plays
issued, as he alleges, at Seville. There is no foundation for the
theory that he wrote the plays ascribed to Fernando de Zarate.
His dramatic works, though effective on the stage, are disfigured
by extravagant incidents and preciosity of diction. The latter
defect is likewise observable in the mingled prose and verse of
La Culpa del primer peregrine (Rouen, 1644) and the dialogues
entitled Politica Angelica (Rouen, 1647). Enriquez Gomez is
best represented by El Siglo Pitagdrico y Vida de don Gregorio
Guadana (Rouen, 1644), a striking picaresque novel in prose and
verse which is still reprinted.
ENSCHEDE, a town in the province of Overysel, Holland,
near the Prussian frontier, and a junction station 5 m. by rail
S.E. of Hengelo. Pop. (1900) 23,141. It is important as the
centre of the flourishing cotton-spinning and weaving industries
of the Twente district; while by the railway via Gronau and
ENSENADA ENSILAGE
653
koesfeld to Dortmund it is in direct communication with the
Westphalian coalfields. Enschede possesses several churches,
an industrial trade school, and a large park intended for the
benefit of the working classes. About two-thirds of the town
was burnt down in 1862.
ENSENADA. CENON DE SOMODEV1LLA, MARQUES DE LA
( 1701-1781), Spanish statesman, was born at Alesanco near
LogroAo on the 2nd of June 1702. When he had risen to high
office it was said that his pedigree was distinguished, but nothing
is known of his parents Francisco de Somodevilla and his wife
Francisca de Bengoechea, nor is anything known of his own
life before he entered the civil administration of the Spanish
navy as a clerk in 1720. He served in administrative capacities
at the relief of Ceuta in that year and in the reoccupation of
Oran in 1731. His ability was recognized by Don Jose Patinos,
the chief minister of King Philip V. Somodevilla was much
employed during the various expeditions undertaken by the
Spanish government to put the king's sons by his second marriage
with Elizabeth Farnese, Charles and Philip, on the thrones of
Naples and Parma. In 1736 Charles, afterwards King Charles
III. of Spain, conferred on him the Neapolitan title of Marques
de la Ensenada. The name can be resolved into the three
Spanish words " en se nada," meaning " in himself nothing."
The courtly flattery of the time, and the envy of the nobles who
disliked the rise of men of Ensenada's class, seized upon this poor
play on words; an Ensenada is, however, a roadstead or small
bay. In 1742 he became secretary of state and war to Philip,
duk< of Parma. In the following year (nth of April 1743).
on the death of Patinos's successor Campillo, he was chosen by
Philip V. as minister of finance, war, the navy and the Indies
(i.. the Colonies). Ensenada met the nomination with a becom-
ing nolo episcofari, professing that he was incapable of filling
the four posts at once. His reluctance was overborne by the
king, and he became in fact prime minister at the age of forty -one.
During the remainder of the king's reign, which lasted till the
nth of July 1746, and under his successor Ferdinand VI. until
'1754, Ensenada was the effective prime minister. His ad-
ministration is notable in Spanish history for the vigour of his
policy of internal reform. The reports on the finances and general
condition of the country, which he drew up for the new king
on his accession, and again after peace was made with England
at Aix-la-Chapelle on the i8th of October 1748, are very able and
clear-sighted. Under his direction the despotism of the Bourbon
kings became paternal. Public works were undertaken, shipping
was encouraged, trade was fostered, numbers of young Spaniards
were sent abroad for education. Many of them abused their
opportunity, but on the whole the prosperity of the country
revived, and the way was cleared for the more sweeping innova-
tions of the following reign. Ensenada was a strong partizan
of a French alliance and of a policy hostile to England. Sir B.
Keene, the English minister, supported the Spanish court party
opposed to him, and succeeded in preventing him from adding
the foreign office to others which he held. Ensenada would
probably have fallen sooner but for the support he received from
the Portuguese queen, Barbara. In 1754 he offended her by
opposing an exchange of Spanish and Portuguese colonial
possessions in America which she favoured. On the 2oth of
July of that year he was arrested by the king's order, and sent
into mild confinement at Granada, which he was afterwards
allowed to exchange for Puerto de Santa Maria. On the accession
of Charles III. in 1759, he was released from arrest and allowed
to return to Madrid. The new king named him as member of a
commission appointed to reform the system of taxation. En-
senada could not renounce the hope of again becoming minister,
and entered into intrigues which offended the king. On the
1 8th of April 1766 he was again exiled from court, and ordered
to go to Medina del Campo. He had no further share in public
life, and died on the 2nd of December 1781. Ensenada acquired
wealth in office, but he was never accused of corruption. Though,
like most of his countrymen, he suffered from the mania for
grandeur, and was too fond of imposing schemes out of all pro-
portion with the resources of the state, he was undoubtedly
an able and patriotic man, whose administration was beneficial
to Spain.
For his administration see W. Coxe, Memoirs of the Kings of Spain
of the House of Bourbon (London, 1815), but the only complete
account of Ensenada is by Don Antonio Rodriguez Villa, Don Cenon
de Somodevilla, Marques de la Ensenada (Madrid, 1878). (D. H.)
ENSIGN (through the Fr. enseigne from the Latin plural
insiKiiiti). a distinguishing token, emblem or badge such as
symbols of office, or in heraldry, the ornament or sign, such as
the crown, coronet or mitre borne above the charge or arms.
The word is more particularly used of a military or naval standard
or banner. In the British navy, ensign has a specific meaning,
and is the name of a flag having a red, white or blue ground,
with the Union Jack in the upper corner next the staff. The
white ensign (which is sometimes further distinguished by having
the St George's Cross quartered upon it) is only used in the
royal navy and the royal yacht squadron, while the blue and
red ensigns are the badges of the naval reserve, some privileged
companies, and the merchant service respectively (see FLAG).
Until 1871 the lowest grade of commissioned officers in infantry
regiments of the British army had the title of ensign (now
replaced by that of second lieutenant). It is the duty of the
officers of this rank to carry the colours of the regiment (see
COLOURS, MILITARY). In the i6th century ensign was corrupted
into " ancient," and was used in the two senses of a banner
and the bearer of the banner. In the United States navy, the
title ensign superseded in 1862 that of passed midshipman. It
designates an officer ranking with second lieutenant in the army.
ENSILAGE, the process of preserving green food for cattle
in an undried condition in a silo (from Gr. cupos, Lat. sirus,
a pit for holding grain), i.e. a pit, an erection above ground, or
stack, from which air has been as far as possible excluded.
The fodder which is the result of the process is called silage.
In various parts of Germany a method of preserving green fodder
precisely similar to that used in the case of Sauerkraut has pre-
vailed for upwards of a century. Special attention was first
directed to the practice of ensilage by a French agriculturist,
Auguste Goffart of the district of Sologne, near Orleans, who in
1877 published a work (Manuel de la culture et de ['ensilage des
mats et autres fourrages verts) detailing the experiences of many
years in preserving green crops in silos. An English translation
of Goffart's book by J. B. Brown was published in New York in
1879, and, as various experiments had been previously made
in the United States in the way of preserving green crops in pits,
Goffart's experience attracted considerable attention. The
conditions of American dairy farming proved eminently suitable
for the ensiling of green maize fodder; and the success of the
method was soon indisputably demonstrated among the New
England fanners. The favourable results obtained in America
led to much discussion and to the introduction of the system
in the United Kingdom, where, with different conditions, success
has been more qualified.
It has been abundantly proved that ensilage forms a wholesome
and nutritious food for cattle. It can be substituted for root
crops with advantage, because it is succulent and digestible;
milk resulting from it is good in quality and taste; it can be
secured largely irrespective of weather; it carries over grass
from the period of great abundance and waste to times when
none would otherwise be available; and a larger number of
cattle can be supported on a given area by the use of ensilage
than is possible by the use of green crops.
Early silos were made of stone or concrete either above or
below ground, but it is recognized that air may be sufficiently
excluded in a tightly pressed stack, though in this case a few
inches of the fodder round the sides is generally useless owing to
mildew. In America round erections made of wood and 35 or
40 ft. in depth are most commonly used. The crops suitable for
ensilage are the .ordinary grasses, clovers, lucerne, vetches, oats,
rye and maize, the latter being the most important silage crop
in America; various weeds may also be stored in silos with good
results, notably spurrey (Spergula arvensis), a most troublesome
plant in poor light soils. As a rule the crop should be mown
654
ENSTATITE ENTHYMEME
when in full flower, and deposited in the silo on the day of its
cutting. Maize is cut a few days before it is ripe and is shredded
before being elevated into the silo. Fair, dry weather is not
essential; but it is found that when moisture, natural and
extraneous, exceeds 75% of the whole, good results are not
obtained. The material is spread in uniform layers over the
floor of the silo, and closely packed and trodden down. If
possible, not more than a foot or two should be added daily,
so as to allow the mass to settle down closely, and to heat uni-
formly throughout. When the silo is filled or the stack built,
a layer of straw or some other dry porous substance may be
spread over the surface. In the silo the pressure of the material,
when chaffed, excludes air from all but the top layer; in the
case of the stack extra pressure is applied by means of planks
or other weighty objects in order to prevent excessive heating.
The closeness with which the fodder is packed determines the
nature of the resulting silage by regulating the chemical changes
which occur in the stack. When closely packed, the supply of
oxygen is limited; and the attendant acid fermentation brings
about the decomposition of the carbohydrates present into
acetic, butyric and lactic acids. This product is named "sour
silage." If, on the other hand, the fodder be unchaffed and
loosely packed, or the silo be built gradually, oxidation proceeds
more rapidly and the temperature rises; if the mass be com-
pressed when the temperature is I4o-i6o F., the action ceases
and " sweet silage " results. The nitrogenous ingredients of the
fodder also suffer change: in making sour silage as much as
one-third of the albuminoids may be converted into amino and
ammonium compounds; while in making " sweet silage " a
less proportion is changed, but they become less digestible.
In extreme cases, sour silage acquires a most disagreeable odour.
On the other hand it keeps better than sweet silage when removed
from the silo.
ENSTATITE, a rock-forming mineral belonging to the group of
orthorhombic pyroxenes. It is a magnesium metasilicate,
MgSiOs, often with a little iron replacing the magnesium: as
the iron increases in amount there is a transition to bronzite
(<?..), and with still more iron to hypersthene (q.v.). Bronzite
and hypersthene were known long before enstatite, which was
first described by G. A. Kenngott in 1855, and named from
h><jTa.rris, " an opponent," because the mineral is almost in-
fusible before the blowpipe: the material he described consisted
of imperfect prismatic crystals, previously thought to be scapolite,
from the serpentine of Mount Zdjar near Schonberg in Moravia.
Crystals suitable for goniometric measurement were later found
in the meteorite which fell at Breitenbach in the Erzgebirge,
Bohemia. Large crystals, a foot in length and mostly altered to
steatite, were found in 1874 in the apatite veins traversing
mica-schist' and hornblende-schist at the apatite mine of Kjorre-
stad, near Brevig in southern Norway. Isolated crystals are
of rare occurrence, the mineral being usually found as an essential
constituent of igneous rocks; either as irregular masses in
plutonic rocks (norite, peridotite, pyroxenite, &c.) and the
serpentines which have resulted by their alteration, or as small
idiomorphic crystals in volcanic rocks (trachyte, andesite). It
is also a common constituent of meteoric stones, forming with
olivine the bulk of the material: here it often forms small
spherical masses, or chondrules, with an internal radiated
structure.
Enstatite and the other orthorhombic pyroxenes are distin-
guished from those of the monoclinic series by their optical
characters, viz. straight extinction, much weaker double refrac-
tion and stronger pleochroism: they have prismatic cleavages
(with an angle of 88 16') as well. as planes of parting parallel
to the planes of symmetry in the prism-zone. Enstatite is
white, greenish or brown in colour; its hardness is sJ, and sp.
gr. 3-2-3-3. (L. J. S.)
ENTABLATURE (Lat. in, and tabula, a tablet), the archi-
tectural term for the superstructure carried by the columns
in the classic orders (q.v.). It usually consists of three members,
the architrave (the supporting member carried from column to
column, pier or wall) ; the frieze (the decorative member) ; and
the cornice (the projecting and protective member). Sometimes
the frieze is omitted, as in the entablature of the portico of the
caryatides of the Erechtheum. There is every reason to believe
that the frieze did not exist in the archaic temple of Diana at
Ephesus; and it is not found in the Lycian tombs, which are
reproductions in the rock of timber structures based on early
Ionian work.
ENTADA, in botany, a woody climber belonging to the family
Leguminosae and common throughout the tropics. The best-
known species is Entada scandens, the sword-bean, so called
from its large woody pod, 2 to 4 ft. in length and 3 to 4 in.
broad, which contains large flat hard polished chestnut-coloured
seeds or " beans." The seeds are often made into snuff-boxes or
match-boxes, and a preparation from the kernel is used as a drug
by the natives in India. The seeds will float for a long time in
water, and are often thrown up on the north-western coasts of
Europe, having been carried by the Gulf-stream from the West
Indies; they retain their vitality, and under favourable con-
ditions will germinate. Linnaeus records the germination of a
seed on the coast of Norway.
ENTAIL (from Fr. tattler, to cut; the old derivation from
tales haered.es is now abandoned), in law, a h'mited form of
succession (q.v.). In architecture, the term " entail " denotes an
ornamental device sunk in the ground of stone or brass, and
subsequently filled in with marble, mosaic or enamel.
ENTASIS (from Gr. kvreiveiv, to stretch a line or bend a bow),
in architecture, the increment given to the column (q.v.), to
correct the optical illusion which produces an apparent hollow-
ness in an extended straight line. It was referred to by Vitruvius
(iii. 3), and was first noticed in the columns of the Doric orders
in Greek temples by Allason in 1814, and afterwards measured
and verified by Penrose. It varies in different temples, and is not
found in some: it is most pronounced in the temple of Jupiter
Olympius, most delicate in the Erechtheum. The entasis is
almost invariably introduced in the spires of English churches.
ENTERITIS (Gr. ivnpov, intestine), a general medical term for.
inflammation of the bowels. According to the anatomical part
specially attacked, it is subdivided into duodenitis, jejunitis,
ileitis, typhlitis, appendicitis, colitis, proctitis. The chief
sympton is diarrhoea. The term " enteric fever " has recently
come into use instead of " typhoid " for the latter disease; but
see TYPHOID FEVER.
ENTHUSIASM, a word originally meaning inspiration by a
divine afflatus or by the presence of a god. The Gr. evBovmaa/MS,
from which the word is adapted, is formed from the verb
tvOoixTiafav, to be tvOtos, possessed by a god (6eos). Applied
by the Greeks to manifestations of divine " possession," by
Apollo, as in the case of the Pythia, or by Dionysus, as in the
case of the Bacchantes and Maenads, it was also used in a trans-
ferred or figurative sense; thus Socrates speaks of the inspiration
of poets as a form of enthusiasm (Plato, Apol. Soc. 22 c). Its
uses, in a religious sense, are confined to an exaggerated or
wrongful belief in religious inspiration, or to intense religious
fervour or emotion. Thus a Syrian sect of the 4th century was
known as " the Enthusiasts "; they believed that by perpetual
prayer, ascetic practices and contemplation, man could become
inspired by the Holy Spirit, in spite of the ruling evil spirit,
which the fall had given to him. From their belief in the efficacy
of prayer (fvxij) , they were also known as Euchites. In ordinary
usage, " enthusiasm " has lost its peculiar religious significance,
and means a whole-hearted devotion to an ideal, cause, study or
pursuit; sometimes, in a depreciatory sense, it implies a devotion
which is partisan and is blind to difficulties and objections.
(See further INSPIRATION, for a comparison of the religious
meanings of " enthusiasm," " ecstasy " and " fanaticism.")
ENTHYMEME (Gr. iv, 0u/i6s), in formal logic, the technical
name of a syllogistic argument which is incompletely stated.
Any one of the premises may be omitted, but in general it is
that one which is most obvious or most naturally present to the
mind. In point of fact the full formal statement of a syllogism
is rare, especially in rhetorical language, when the deliberate
omission of one of the premises has a dramatic effect. Thus the
ENTOMOLOGY
655
suppression of the conclusion may have the effect of emphasizing
the idem which necessarily follows from the premises. Far
commoner is the omission of one of the premises which is either
too clear to need statement or of a character which makes its
omission desirable. A famous instance quoted in the Port Royal
Legit, pi. iii. ch. xiv., is Medea's remark to Jason in Ovid's
Mtdea, " Sen-are potui, perdcrc an possira rogas? " where the
major premise " Qui servare, perdere possunt " is understood.
This use of the word enthymeme differs from Aristotle's original
application of it to a syllogism based on probabilities or signs
( tUbrtiiv f} OTHMUI)?), i.e. on propositions which are generally
valid (moral or on particular facts which may be held to justify
a general principle or another particular fact (Anal, prior.
ft xxvii. 70 a 10).
See beside text-books on logic. Sir \V. Hamilton's Discussions
(1547); Mansd't ed. of Aldrich, Appendix F; H W. B. Joseph,
Imtrod. to Logu, chap. xvi.
ENTOMOLOGY (Gr. l^noua., insects, and Xfryw, a discourse),
the science that treats of insects, i.e. of the animals included in
the class Hexapoda of the great phylum (or sub-phylum) Arthro-
poda. The term, however, is somewhat elastic in its current use,
and students of centipedes and spiders are often reckoned among
the entomologists. As the number of species of insects is believed
to exceed that of all other animals taken together, it is no
wonder that their study should form a special division of zoology
with a distinctive name.
Beetles (Scarabaei) are the subjects of some of the oldest
sculptured works of the Egyptians, and references to locusts,
bees and ants are familiar to all readers of the Hebrew scriptures.
The interest of insects to the eastern races was, however, ccononm,
religious or moral. The science of insects began with Aristotle,
who included in a class " Entoma " the true insects, the arach-
nids and the myriapods, the Crustacea forming another class
(" Malacostraca ") of the "Anacma" or "bloodless animals."
For nearly 2000 years the few writers who dealt with zoological
subjects followed Aristotle's leading.
In the history of the science, various lines of progress have to
be traced. While some observers have studied in detail the
structure and life-history of a few selected types (insect anatomy
and development), others have made a more superficial examina-
tion of large series of insects to classify them and determine
their relationships (systematic entomology), while others again
have investigated the habits and life-relations of insects (insect
bionomics). During recent years the study of fossil insects
(pftlacofntomology) has attracted much attention.
The foundations of modern entomology were laid by a series of
wonderful memoirs on anatomy and development published in
the 1 7th and i8th centuries. Of these the most famous are
M. Malpighi's treatise on the silkworm (1669) and J. Swammer-
dam's Bibiia naturae, issued in 1737, fifty years after its author's
death, and containing observations on the structure and life-
history of a series of insect types. Aristotle and Harvey (De
generation* animalium, 1651) had considered the insect larva
as a prematurely hatched embryo and the pupa as a second egg.
Swammerdam, however, showed the presence under the larval
cuticle of the pupal structures. His only unfortunate contribu-
tion to entomology indeed to zoology generally was his theory
of pre- format ion, which taught the presence within the egg of a
perfectly formed but miniature adult. A year before Malpighi's
great work appeared, another Italian naturalist, F. Redi, had
disproved by experiment the spontaneous generation of maggots
from putrid flesh, and had shown that they can only develop
from the eggs of flies.
Meanwhile the English naturalist, John Ray, was studying the
classification of animals; he published, in 1705, his Methodus
insectorum, in which the nature of the metamorphosis received
due weight. Ray's " Insects " comprised the Arachnids, Crus-
tacea, Myriapoda and Annelida, in addition to the Hexapods.
Ray was the first to formulate that definite conception of the
species which was adopted by Linnaeus and emphasized by his
binominal nomenclature. In 1735 appeared the first edition of
the Syttema naturae of Linnaeus, in which the " Insecta " form
a group equivalent to the Arthropoda of modern zoologists,
and are divided into seven orders, whose names Coleoptera,
Diptcra, Lcpidoptera, &c., founded on the nature of the wings
have become firmly established. The fascinating subjects of
insect bionomics and life-history were dealt with in the classical
memoirs (1734-1742) of the Frenchman R. A. F. dc Reaumur,
and (1752-1778) of the Swede C. de Geer. The freshness, the
air of leisure, the enthusiasm of discovery that mark the work of
these old writers have lessons for the modern professional
zoologist, who at times feels burdened with the accumulated
knowledge of a century and a half. From the end of the i8th
century until the present day, it is only possible to enumerate
the outstanding features in the progress of entomology. In the
realm of classification, the work of Linnaeus was continued in
Denmark by J. C. Fabricius (Systema entomologica, 1775), and
extended in France by G. P. B. Lamarck (Animauxsansvertebres,
1801) and G. Cuvier (Lemons d'anatomie comparte, 1800-1805),
and in England by W. E. Leach (Trans. Linn. Soc. xi., 1815).
These three authors definitely separated the Arachnida, Crus-
tacea and Myriapoda as classes distinct from the Insecta (see
HEXAPODA). The work of J. O. Westwood (Modern Classification
of Insects, 1830-1840) connects these older writers with their
successors of to-day.
In the anatomical field the work of Matpighi and Swammerdam
was at first continued most energetically by French students.
P. Lyonnet had published in 1760 his elaborate monograph on
the goat-moth caterpillar, and H. E. Strauss-Diirckheim in 1828
issued his great treatise on the cockchafer. But the name of
J. C. L. de Savigny, who (Mem. sur les animaux sans vertebres,
1816) established the homology of the jaws of all insects whether
biting or sucking, deserves especial honour. Many anatomical
and developmental details were carefully worked out by L.
Dufour (in a long series of memoirs from 181 1 to 1860) in France,
by G. Newport (" Insecta " in Encyc. Anal, and Physiol., 1839)
in England, and by H. Burmeister (Handbuch der Entomologie,
1832) in Germany. Through the igth century, as knowledge
increased, the work of investigation became necessarily more and
more specialized. Anatomists like F. Leydig, F. M tiller, B. T.
Lowne and V. Graber turned their attention to the detailed
investigation of some one species or to special points in the
structure of some particular organs, using for the elucidation
of their subject the ever-improving microscopical methods of
research.
Societies for the discussion and publication of papers on
entomology were naturally established as the number of students
increased. The Socie'te' Entomologique de France was founded
in 1832, the Entomological Society of London in 1834. Few
branches of zoology have been more valuable as a meeting-
ground for professional and amateur naturalists than entomology,
and not seldom has the amateur as in the case of Westwood
developed into a professor. During the pre-Linnaean period,
the beauty of insects especially the Lepidoptera had attracted
a number of collectors; and these " Aurelians " regarded as
harmless lunatics by most of their friends were the forerunners
of the systematic students of later times. While the insect
fauna of European countries was investigated by local naturalists,
the spread of geographical exploration brought ever-increasing
stores of exotic material to the great museums, and specialization
either in the fauna of a small district or in the world-wide study
of an order or a group of families became constantly more
marked in systematic work. As examples may be instanced
the studies of A. H. Haliday and H. Loew on the European
Diptera, of John Curtis on British insects, of H. T. Stainton
and O. Staudingeron the European Lepidoptera, of R. M'Lachlan
on the European and of H. A. Hagen on the North American
Neuroptera, of D. Sharp on the Dylkidae and other families of
Coleoptera of the whole world.
The embryology of insects is entirely a study of the last
century. C. Bonnet indeed observed in 1745 the virgin-repro-
duction of Aphids, but it was not until 1842 that R. A. von
Kolliker described the formation of the blastoderm in the egg
of the midge Ckironomus. Later A. Weismann (1863-1864)
6 5 6
ENTOMOSTRACA
traced details of the growth of embryo and of pupa among the
Diptera, and A. Kovalevsky in 1871 first described the formation
of the germinal layers in insects. Most of the recent work on
the embryology of insects has been done in Germany or the United
States, and among numerous students V. Graber, K. Heider,
W. M. Wheeler and R. Heymons may be especially mentioned.
The work of de Reaumur and de Geer on the bionomics and
life-history of insects has been continued by numerous observers,
among whom may be especially mentioned in France J. H. Fabre
and C. Janet, in England W. Kirby and W. Spence, J. Lubbock
(Lord Avebury) and L. C. Miall, and in the United States C. V.
Riley. The last-named may be considered the founder of the
strong company of entomological workers now labouring in
America. Though Riley was especially interested in the bearings
of insect life on agriculture and industry economic entomology
(q. v.) he and his followers have laid the science generally under
a deep obligation by their researches.
After the publication of C. Darwin's Origin of Species (1859)
a fresh impetus was given to entomology as to all branches of
zoology, and it became generally recognized that insects form a
group convenient and hopeful for the elucidation of certain
problems of animal evolution. The writings of Darwin himself
and of A. R. Wallace (both at one time active entomological
collectors) contain much evidence drawn from insects in favour
of descent with modification. The phylogeny of insects has since
been discussed by F. Brauer, A. S. Packard and many others;
mimicry and allied problems by H. W. Bates, F. Muller, E. B.
Poulton and M. C. Piepers; the bearing of insect habits on
theories of selection and use-inheritance by A. Weismann, G. W.
and E. Peckham, G. H. T. Eimer and Herbert Spencer; variation
by W. Bateson and M. Standfuss.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. References to the works of the above authors,
and to many others, will be found under HEXAPODA and the special
articles on various insect orders. Valuable summaries of the labours
of Malpighi, Swammerdam and other early entomologists are given
in L. C. Miall and A. Denny's Cockroach (London, 1886), and L.
Henneguy's Les Insectes (Paris, 1904). (G. H. C.)
ENTOMOSTRACA. This zoological term, as now restricted,
includes the Branchiopoda, Ostracoda and Copepoda. The
Ostracoda have the body enclosed in a bivalve shell-covering,
and normally unsegmented. The Branchiopoda have a very
variable number of body-segments, with or without a shield,
simple or bivalved, and some of the postoral appendages normally
branchial. The Copepoda have normally a segmented body, not
enclosed in a bivalved shell-covering, the segments not exceeding
eleven, the limbs not branchial.
Under the heading CRUSTACEA the Entomostraca have already
been distinguished not only from the Thyrostraca or Cirripedes,
but also from the Malacostraca, and an intermediate group of
which the true position is still disputed. The choice is open to
maintain the last as an independent subclass, and to follow Claus
in calling it the Leptostraca, or to introduce it among the
Malacostraca as the Nebaliacea, or with Packard and Sars to
make it an entomostracan subdivision under the title Phyllo-
carida. At present it comprises the single family Nebaliidae.
The bivalved carapace has a jointed rostrum, and covers only the
front part of the body, to which it is only attached quite in
front, the valve-like sides being under control of an adductor
muscle. The eyes are stalked and movable. The first antennae
have a lamellar appendage at the end of the peduncle, a decidedly
non-entomostracan feature. The second antennae, mandibles
and two pairs of maxillae may also be claimed as of malacostracan
type. To these succeed eight pairs of foliaceous branchial
appendages on the front division of the body, followed on the
hind division by four pairs of powerful bifurcate swimming feet
and two rudimentary pairs, the number, though not the nature,
of these appendages being malacostracan. On the other hand,
the two limbless segments that precede the caudal furca are
decidedly non-malacostracan. The family was long limited to
the single genus Nebalia (Leach), and the single species N. bipes
(O. Fabricius). Recently Sars has added a Norwegian species,
N. typhlops, not blind but weak-eyed. There are also now two
more genera, Paranebalia (Claus, 1880), in which the branchial
feet are much longer than in Nebalia, and Nebaliopsis (Sars,
1887), in which they are much shorter. All the species are
marine.
BRANCHIOPODA. In this order, exclusion of the Phyllocarida
will leave three suborders of very unequal extent, the Phyllopoda,
Cladocera, Branchiura. The constituents of the last have often
been classed as Copepoda, and among the Branchiopods must be
regarded as aberrant, since the "branchial tail" implied in the
name has no feet, and the actual feet are by no means obviously
branchial.
Phyllopoda. This " leaf-footed " suborder has the appendages
which follow the second maxillae variable in number, but all
foliaceous and branchial. The development begins with a free
nauplius stage. In the outward appearance of the adults there
is great want of uniformity, one set having their limbs sheltered
by no carapace, another having a broad shield over most of
them, and a third having a bivalved shell-cover within which the
whole body can be enclosed. In accord with these differences
the sections may be named Gymnophylla, Notophylla, Concho-
phylla. The equivalent terms applied by Sars are Anostraca,
Notostraca, Conchostraca, involving a termination already
appropriated to higher divisions of the Crustacean class, for
which it ought to be reserved.
1. Gymnophylla. These singular crustaceans have long soft
flexible bodies, the eyes stalked and movable, the first antennae
small and filiform, the second lamellar in the female, in the male
prehensile; this last character gives rise to some very fanciful
developments. There are three families, two of which form com-
panies rather severely limited. Thus the Polyartemiidae, which
compensate themselves for their stumpy little tails by having nine-
teen instead of the normal eleven pairs of branchial feet, consist
exclusively of Polyartemia forcipata (Fischer, 1851). This species
from the high north of Europe and Asia carries green eggs, and above
them a bright pattern in ultramarine (Sars, 1896, 1897). The
Thamnocephalidae have likewise but a single species, Thamnocephalus
platyurus (Packard, 1877), which justifies its title " bushy-head of
the broad tail " by a singularity at each end. Forward from the
head extends a long ramified appendage described as the " frontal
shrub," backward from the fourth abdominal segment of the male
spreads a fin-like expansion which is unique. In the ravines of
Kansas, pools supplied by torrential rains give birth to these and
many other phyllopods, and in turn " millions of them perish by the
drying up of the pools in July " (Packard). The remaining family,
the Branchipodidae, includes eight genera. In the long familiar
Branchipus, Chirocephalus and Streptocephalus the males have frontal
appendages, but these are wanting in the " brine-shrimp " Artemia,
and the same want helps to distinguish Branchinecta (Verrill, 1869)
from the old genus Branchipus. Of Branchiopsyllus (Sars, 1897) the
male is not yet known, but m his genera of the same date, the Siberian
Ariemiopsis and the South African Branchipodopsis (1898), there
is no such appendage. Of the last genus the type species B. hodgsoni
belongs to Cape Colony, but the specimens described were born and
bred and observed in Norway. For the study of freshwater Ento-
mostraca large possibilities are now opened to the naturalist. A
parcel of dried mud, coming for example from Palestine or Queens-
land, and after an indefinite interval of time put into water in
England or elsewhere, may yield him living forms, both new and old,
in the most agreeable variety. Some caution should be used against
confounding accidentally introduced indigenous species with those
reared from the importea eggs. Those, too, who send or bring the
foreign soil should exercise a little thought in the choice of it, since
dry earth that has never had any Entomostraca near it at home will
not become fertile in them by the mere fact of exportation.
2. Notophylla. In this division the body is partly covered by a
broad shield, united in front with the head; the eyes are sessile,
the first antennae are small, the second rudimentary or wanting; of
the numerous feet, sometimes sixty-three pairs, exceeding the
number of segments to which they are attached, the first pair are
more or less unlike the rest, and in the female the eleventh have
the epipod and exopod (flabellum and sub-apical lobe of Lankcster)
modified to form an ovisac. Development begins with a nauplius
stage. Males are very rare. The single family Apodidae contains
only two genera, Apus and its very near neighbour Lepidurus.
A pus australiensis (Spencer and Hall, 1896) may rank as the largest
of the Entomostraca, reaching in the male, from front of shield to end
of telson, a length of 70 mm., in the female of 64 mm. In a few days,
or at most a fortnight, after a rainfall numberless specimens of these
sizes were found swimming about, " and as not a single one was to
be found in the water-pools prior to the rain, these must have been
developed from the egg." Similarly, in Northern India Apus hima-
layanus was " collected from a stagnant pool in a jungle four days
after a shower of rain had fallen," following a drought of four months
(Packard).
ENTOMOSTRACA
3. Conchophylla. Though conn aU-cl within thr bivalved shell-
covrr, the mouth-parts arc nearly as in the Gymnophylla, but the
flexing of the caudal part is in contrast, and the biramoug second
antennae correspond with what is only a larval character in the
other phyllopods. In the male the first one or two pairs of fret
are modified into grasping organs. The small ova are crowded
beneath the dorsal part of the va'ves. The development usually
begins with a nauplius stage (,Sars, 1896, 1900). There are four
families: (a) The Limmidiidar. with teet from 18 to 32 pairs, nun-
prise four (or five) genera. Of these LimnadtUa (Girard, 1855) has
a single eye. It remains rather obscure, though the type species
originally " was discovered in great abundance in a roadside puddle
subject to desiccation." Limnadia (Brongniart, 1820) is supposed
to consist of species exclusively parthenogenetic. But when asked
to believe that males never occur among these amazons, one cannot
but remember how hard it is to prove a negative. (6) The Lynceidae,
with not more than twelve pairs of feet. This family is limited to the
specie*, widely distributed, of the single genus Lynceus, established
by O. F. Mailer in 1776 and 1781, and first restricted by Leach in
1816 in the Encyclopaedia Brilannica (art. " Annulosa," of that
edition). Leach there assigns to it the single species L. brachyurus
(Mailer), and as this is included in the genus Limtietis (Lov6n, 1846),
that genus must be a synonym of Lynceus as restricted, (c) Left-
atiterndae. Estheria (Rllppell, 1837) was" instituted for the species
dakalacensis, which Sars includes in his genus Leptestheria (1898);
but Estkfria was already appropriated, and of its synonyms Cytitus
(Audouin, 1837) is lost for vagueness, while Isaura (Joly, 1842) is
alo appropriated, so that Leptesthrria becomes the name of the
typical genus, and determines the name of the family, (d) Cydes-
tkenHae. This family consists of the single species Cyclesiheria
hiilopi (Baird), reported from India, Ceylon, Celebes, Australia, East
Africa and Brazil. Sars (1887) having had the opportunity of raising
it from dried Australian mud, found that, unlike other phyllopods,
but like the Cladocera, the parent keeps its brood within the shell
until their full development.
Cladocera. In this suborder the head is more or less distinct,
the rest of the body being in general laterally compressed and
covered by a bivalved test. The title " branching horns "
alludes to the second antennae, which are two-branched except
in the females of Holopedium, with each branch setiferous,
composed of only two to four joints. The mandibles are without
palp. The pairs of feet are four to six. The eye is single, and in
addition to the eye there is often an " eye-spot, "Monospilus
being unique in having the eye-spot alone and no eye, while
Leydigiopsis (San, 1901) has an eye with an eye-spot equal to it
or larger. The bean has a pair of venous ostia, often blending
into one, and an anterior arterial aorta. Respiration is conducted
by the general surface, by the branchial lamina (external branch)
of the feet, and the vesicular appendage (when present) at the
base of this branch. The " abdomen," behind the limbs, is
usually very short, occasionally very long. The" postabdomen,"
marked off by the two post abdominal setae, -usually has teeth or
spines, and ends in two denticulate or ciliate claws, or it may be
rudimentary, as in Polyphemus. Many species have a special
glandular organ at the back of the head, which Sida crystalline
uses for attaching itself to various objects. The Leydigian or
nuchal organ is supposed to beauditory and tocontain an otolith.
The female lays two kinds of eggs " summer-eggs," which
develop without fertilization, and " winter-eggs" or resting eggs,
which require to be fertilized. The latter in the Daphniidae are
enclosed in a modified part of the mother's shell, called the
ephippium from its resemblance to a saddle in shape and position.
In other families a less elaborate case has been observed, for
which Scourneld has proposed the term protoephippium. In
Leydigia he has recently found a structure almost as complex
as that of the Daphniidae. In some families the resting eggs
escape into the water without special covering. Only the
embryos of Leptodora are known to hatch out in the nauplius
stage. Penilia (Dana, 1849) is perhaps the only exclusively
marine genus. The great majority of the Cladocera belong to
fresh water, but their adaptability is large, since Moina rectirostris
(O. F. M tiller) can equally enjoy a pond at Blackheath, and near
Odessa live in water twice as salt as that of the ocean. In point
of size a Cladoceran of 5 mm. is spoken of as colossal.
Dr Jules Richard in his revision (1895) retains the sections pro-
posed by Sar in 1865, Calyptomera and Gymnomera. The former,
with the feet for the most part concealed by the carapace, is sub-
divided into two tribes, the Ctenopoda, or " comb-feet," in which the
six pain of similar feet, all branchial and nonprehcnsilc, are furnished
r-^brecht
\. -c^ies
_ut one \ 1 1 \
with setae arranged like the teeth of a i
varirty-feel," in which the front feet
more or less prehensile, without branchia
The Ctenopoda comprise two familie
with a solitary species, Holopedium fib...
clothed in a large gelatinous involucre,
tarns all over Europe, in large lakes of
shallow ponds and waters at sea-level ; (6) thk
involucre, but with seven genera, and rathe)
many species. Of Diaphanosoma modiglianii
different points of Lake Toba in Sumatra r
were obtained, among which he had not met y
The Anomopoda are arranged in four familie8
extensive, (a) Daphniidae. Of the seven genera, the cosmopolitan
Daphnia contains about 100 species and varieties, of which TBmnM
Scott (1899) observes that " scarcely any of the several chararti r--
that have at one time or another been selected as affording a mr;ms
for discriminating between the different forms can be refied on as
satisfactory." Though this may dishearten the systematist, Scour-
field (1900) reminds us that " It was in a water-flea that Metschni-
kpff first saw the leucocytes (or phagocytes) trying to get rid of
disease germs by swallowing them, and was so led to his epoch-
making discovery of the part played by these minute amoeboid
corpuscles in the animal body." For Scapholeberis mucronata
(O. F. Miiller), Scourfield has shown how it is adapted for movement
back downwards in the water along the underside of the surface
film, which to many small crustaceans is a dangerously disabling
trap. (6) Bosminidae. To Bosmina (Baird, 1845) Richard added
Bosminopsis in 1895. (c) Macrotrichidae. In this family Macrothrix
(Baird, 1843) is the earliest genus, among the latest being Grimaldina
(Richard, 1892) and Jheringula (Sars, 1900). Dried mud and vege-
table debris from S. Paulo in Brazil supplied Sars with representatives
of all the three in his Norwegian aquaria, in some of which the little
Macrothrix tlegans " multiplied to such an extraordinary extent as
at last to fill up the water with immense shoals of individuals."
" The appearance of male specimens was always contemporary with
the first ephippial formation in the females." For Streblocerus
pygmaeus, grown under the same conditions, Sars observes: " This
is perhaps the smallest of the Cladocera known, and is hardly more
than visible to the naked eye," the adult female scarcely exceeding
0-25 mm. Yet in the next family Alonella nana (Baird) disputes
the palm and claims to be the smallest of all known Arthropoda.
(d) Chydoridae. This family, so commonly called Lynceidae, contains
a large number of genera, among which one may usually search in
vain, and rightly so, for the genus Lynceus. The key to the riddle
is to be found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica for 1816. There, as
above explained, Leach began the subdivision of M tiller's too compre-
hensive genus, the result being that Lynccus belongs to the Phyllo-
poda, and Chydorus (Leach, 1816) properly gives its name to the
present family, in which the doubly convoluted intestine is so re-
markable. Of its many genera, Leydigia, Leydigiopsis, Monospilus
have been already mentioned. Dadaya macrops (Sars, 1901), from
South America and Ceylon, has a very large eye and an eye-spot fully
as large, but it is a very small creature, odd in its behaviour, moving
by jumps at the very surface of the water. " To the naked eye it
looked like a little black atom darting about in a most wonderful
manner."
The Gymnomera, with a carapace too small to cover the feet,
which are all prehensile, are divided also into two tribes, the Onycho-
poda, in which the four pairs of feet have a toothed maxillary
process at the base, and the Haplopoda, in which there are six pairs
of feet, without such a process. To the Polyphemidae, the well-
known family of the former tribe,
Sars in 1897 added two remarkable
genera, Cercopagis, meaning " tail
with a sling," and Apagis, " without
a sling," for seven species from the
Sea of Azov. The Haplopoda like-
wise have but a single family, the
Leptodoridae, and this has but the
single genus Leptodora (Lilljcborg,
1861). Dr Richard (1895, 1896) gives
a Cladoceran bibliography of 601
reference**
Branchiura. This term was in-
troduced by Thorell in 1864 for the
Argulidae, a family which had been
transferred to the Branchiopoda
by Zenker in 1854, though some-
times before and since united with
the parasitic Copepoda. Though FlG - 1 -~ Dolops ranarum
the animals have an oral siphon,
they do not carry ovisacs like the siphonostomous copepods,
but glue their eggs in rows to extraneous objects. Their
lateral, compound, feebly movable eyes agree with those
of the Phyllopoda. The family are described by Claus a&
656
ENTOMOSTRACA
traced -detent parasites," because when gorged they leave their
DjrM, fishes or frogs, and swim about in freedom for a con-
yiderable period. The long-known Argulus (O. F. MUller) has
the second maxillae transformed into suckers, but in Dolops
(Audouin, 1837) (fig. i), the name of which supersedes the more
familiar Gyropeltis (Heller, 1857), these effect attachment by
ending in strong hooks (Bouvier, 1897). A third genus, Chono-
peltis (Thiele, 1000), has suckers, but has lost its first antennae,
at least in the female.
OSTRACODA. The body, seldom in any way segmented, -is
wholly encased in a bivalved shell, the caudal part strongly
inflexed, and almost always ending in a furca. The limbs,
including antennae and mouth organs, never exceed seven
definite pairs. The first antennae never have more than eight
joints. The young usually pass through several stages of
development after leaving the egg, and this commonly after,
even long after, the egg has left the maternal shell. Partheno-
genesis is frequent.
The four tribes instituted by Sars in 1865 were reduced to
two by G. W. MUller in 1894, the Myodocopa, which almost
always have a heart, and the Podocopa, which have none.
Myodocopa. These have the furcal branches broad, lamellar,
with at least three pairs of strong spines or ungues. Almost always
the shell has a rostral sinus. MUller divides the tribe into three
families, Cypridinidae, Halocypridae, and the heartless Polycopidae,
which constituted the tribe Cladocopa of Sars. From the first of
these Brady and Norman distinguish the Asteropidae (fig. 3), re-
markable for seven pairs of long branchial leaves which fold over the
hinder extremity of the animal, and the Sarsiellidae, still somewhat
obscure, besides adding the Rutidermatidae, knowledge of which
is based on skilful maceration of minute and long-dried specimens.
The Halocypridae are destitute of compound lateral eyes, and have
the sexual orifice unsymmetrically placed.
Podocopa. In these the furcal branches are linear or rudimentary,
the shell is without rostral sinus, and, besides distinguishing char-
acters of the second antennae, they have always a branchial plate
well developed on the first maxillae, which is inconstant in the other
tribe. There are five families: (a) Cyprididae (? including Cypridop-
sidae of Brady and Norman). In some of the genera partheno-
genetic propagation is carried to such an extent that of the familiar
Cypris it is said, " until quite lately males in this genus were un-
known; and up to the present time no male has been found in the
British Islands " (Brady and Norman, 1896). On the other hand,
the ejaculatory duct with its verticillate sac in the male of Cypris
and other genera is a feature scarcely less remarkable, (b) Bairdiidae,
which have the valves smooth, with the hinge untoothed. (c)
Cytheridae (? including Paradoxostomatidae of Brady and Norman),
in which the valves are usually sculptured, with toothed hinge.
Of this family the members are almost exclusively marine, but
Limnicythere is found in fresh water, and Xestoleberis bromeliarum
(Fritz MUller) lives in the water that collects among the leaves of
Bromelias, plants allied to the pine-apples, (d) Darwinulidae, in-
cluding the single species Darwinula stevensoni, Brady and Robertson,
described as " perhaps the most characteristic Entomostracan of
the East Anglian Fen District." (e) Cytherellidae, which, unlike the
Ostracoda in general, have the hinder part of the body segmented,
at least ten segments being distinguishable in the female. They
have the valves broad at both ends, and were placed by Sars in a
separate tribe, called Platycopa.
The range in time of the Ostracoda is so extended that, in
G. W. MUller's opinion, their separation into the families now
living may have already taken place in the Cambrian period.
Their range in space, including carriage by birds, may be co-
extensive with the distribution of water, but it is not known
what height of temperature or how much chemical adulteration
of the water they can sustain, how far they can penetrate
underground, nor what are the limits of their activity between the
floor and the surface of aquatic expanses, fresh or saline. In
individual size they have never been important, and of living
forms the largest is one of recent discovery, Crossophorus afri-
canus, a Cypridinid about three-fifths of an inch (15-5 mm.) long;
but a length of one or two millimetres is more common, and it
may descend to the seventy-fifth of an inch. By multitude they
have been, and still are, extremely important.
Though the exterior is more uniform than in most groups of
Crustacea, the bivalved shell or carapace may be strongly calcified
and diversely sculptured (fig. 2), or membranaceous and polished,
hairy or smooth, oval or round or bean-shaped, or of some less
simple pattern ; the valves may fit neatly, or one overlap the other,
their hmge may have teeth or be edentulous, and their front part
may be excavated for the protrusion of the antennae or have no
such " rostral sinus." By various modifications of their valves
and appendages the creatures have become adapted for swimming,
creeping, burrowing, or climbing, some of them combining two or
more of these activities, for which their structure seems at the
first glance little adapted. Considering the imprisonment of the
ostracod body within the valves, it is more surprising that the
Asteropidae and Cypridinidae
should have a pair of com-
pound and sometimes large
eyes, in addition to the
median organ at the base of
the " frontal tentacle," than J
that other members of the ,
group should be limited to
that median organ of sight,
or have no eyes at all. The
median eye when present _
may have or not have a *1G. 2.Cytherns ornata (G. W.
lens, and its three pigment- Duller). One eye-space is shown
cups may be close together or above on the left -
wide apart and the middle one rudimentary. As might be expected,
in thickened and highly embossed valves thin spaces occur over
the visual organ. The frontal organ varies in form and apparently
in function, and is sometimes absent. The first antennae, according
to the family, may assist in walking, swimming, burrowing, climb-
ing, grasping, and besides they carry sensory setae, and sometimes
they have suckers on their setae (see Brady and Norman on Cypri-
dina norvegica). The second antennae are usually the chief motor-
organs for swimming, walking and climbing. The mandibles
are normally five-jointed, with remnants of an outer branch on
the second joint, the biting edge varying from strong development
to evanescence, the terminal joints or " palp " giving the organ a
leg-like appearance and function, which disappears in suctorial
genera such as Paracytherois. The variable first maxillae are
seldom pediform, their function being concerned chiefly with
nutrition, sensation and respiration. The variability in form and
function of the second maxillae is sufficiently shown by the fact
that G. W. Muller, our leading authority, adopts the confusing
plan of calling them second maxillae in the Cypridinidae (including
Asteropidae), maxillipeds in the Halocypridae and Cyprididae, and
first legs in the Bairdiidae, Cytheridae, Polycopidae and Cytherel-
lidae, so that in his fine monograph he uses the term first leg in
two quite different senses. The first legs, meaning thereby the sixth
pair of appendages, are generally pediform and locomotive, but
sometimes unjointed, acting as a kind of brushes to cleanse the furca,
while in the Polycopidae they are entirely wanting. The second legs
are sometimes wanting, sometimes pediform and locomotive, some-
times strangely metamorphosed into
the " vermiform organ, generally
long, many-jointed, and distally
armed with retroverted spines, its
function being that of an extremely
mobile cleansing foot, which can in-
sert itself among the eggs in the
brood-space, between the branchial
leaves of Asterope (fig. 3), and even
range over the external surface of
the valves. The " brush-formed "
organs of the Podocopa are medially
placed, and, in spite of their some-
times forward situation, Muller be-
lieves among other possibilities that
they and the penis in the Cypri-
dinidae may be alike remnants of a
third pair of legs, not homologous
with the penis of other Ostracoda
(Podocopa included). The furca is.
as a rule, a powerful motor-organ, M , End of adductor muscle,
and has its laminae edged with strong QC Eye
teeth (ungues) or setae orboth. The AI,' Second antenna,
young, though born with valves, M X. I, First maxilla,
have at first a nauphan body, and MX. 2, Second maxilla,
pass through various stages to p j First foot
maturity. v ; o | Vermiform organ.
Brady and Norman, in their Mono- BR, Seven branchial leaves.
graph of the Ostracoda of the North F , Projecting ungues of the
Atlantic and North-Western Europe furca.
(1889), give a bibliography of 125
titles, and in the second part (1896) they give 55 more. The
lists are not meant to be exhaustive, any more than G. W. Muller's
literature list of 125 titles in 1894. They do not refer to Latreille,
1802, with whom the term Ostracoda originates.
COPEPODA. The body is not encased in a bivalved shell;
its articulated segments are at most eleven, those behind the
genital segment being without trace of limbs, but the last
almost always carrying a furca. Sexes separate, fertilization by
spermatophores. Ova in single or double or rarely several
FIG. 3. Asterope arthuri.
Left valve removed.
ENTOMOSTRACA
659
packets, attached as ovisacsor egg-strings to the genital openings,
or enclosed in a dorsal marsupium , or deposited singly or occasion-
ally in bundles. The youngest larvae are typical nauplii. The
next, the copepodid or cyclopid, stage is characterized by a
cylindrical segmented body, with fore- and hind-body distinct,
and by having at most six cephalic limbs and two pairs of
swimming feet.
The order thus defined (see Giesbrecht and Schmeil, Das
Tierreick, 1898), with far over a thousand species (Hansen,
1900), embraces forms of extreme diversity, although, when
species are known in all their phases and both sexes, they
constantly tend to prove that there are no sharply dividing line*
between the free-living, the semi-parasitic, and those which in
adult life are wholly parasitic and then sometimes grotesquely
unlike the normal standard. Uiesbrecht and Hansen have
shown that the mouth-organs consist of mandibles, first and
second maxillae and maxillipeds; and Claus himself relinquished
his long-maintained hypothesis that the last two pairs were
the separated exopods and endopods of a single pair of append-
ages. Thorell's classification (1859) of Gnathostoma, Poecilo-
stoma, Siphonostoma, based on the mouth-organs, was long
followed, though almost at the outset shown by Claus to depend
on the erroneous supposition that the Poecilostoma were
devoid of mandibles. Brady added a new section, Chonio-
stomata, in 1894, and another, Leptostomata, in 1000, each for a
single species. Canu in 1892 proposed two groups, Monoporo-
delphya and Diporodelphya, the cppulatory openings of the
female being paired in the latter, unpaired in the former. It may
be questioned whether this distinction, however important in
itself, would lead to a satisfactory grouping of families. In the
same year Giesbrecht proposed his division of the order into
Gymnoplca and Podoplea.
In appearance an ordinary Copepod is divided into fore- and
hind-body, of its eleven segments the composite first being the
bead, the next five constituting the thorax, and the last five the
abdomen. The coalescence of segments, though frequent, does
not after a little experience materially confuse the counting.
But there is this peculiarity, that the middle segment is some-
times continuous with the broader fore-body, sometimes with the
narrower hind-body. In the former case the hind-body, con-
sisting only of the abdomen, forms a pleon or tail-part devoid of
feet, and the species so constructed are Gymnoplea, those of the
naked or footless pleon. In the latter case the middle segment
almost always carries with it to the hind-body a pair of rudi-
mentary limbs, whence the term Podoplea, meaning species
that have a pleon with feet. It may be objected that hereby the
term pleon is used in two different senses, first applying to the
abdomen alone and then to the abdomen plus the last thoracic
segment. Even this verbal flaw would be obviated if Giesbrecht
could prove his tentative hypothesis, that the Gymnoplea may
have lost a pre-genital segment of the abdomen, and the Podoplea
may have lost the last segment of the thorax. The classification
is worked out as follows:
I. Gymnoplea.. First segment of hind-body footless, bearing the
orifices of the genital organs (in the male unsymmetrically placed);
last foot of the fore-body in the male a copulatory organ; neither,
or only one, of the first pair of antennae in the male geniculating ;
cephalic limbs abundantly articulated and provided with many
plumose setae; heart generally present. Animals usually free-
living, pelagic (Giesbrecht and Schmeil).
This group, with 65 genera and four or five hundred species, is
divided by Giesbrecht into tribes: (a) Amphaskandria. In this
tribe the males have both antennae of the first pair as sensory
organ*. There is but one family, the Calanidae, but this is a very
large one, with 26 genera and more than 100 species. Among them
is the cosmopolitan Calanus Anmarchicus, the earliest described
(by Bishop Gunner in 177.) of all the marine free-swimming Cope-
poda. Among them also is the peacock Calanid, Calocatanut pavo
(Dana), with its highly ornamented antennae and gorgeous tail,
the most beautiful species of the whole order (fig. 4). (h) Heterar-
thrandria. Here the males have one or the other of the first pair of
antennae modified into a grasping organ for holding the female.
There are four families, the Diaptomidae with 27 genera, the f'onlel-
"*-* with 10, the Pteudotydopidae and Candaciidae each with one
us. The first of these families is often called Ctntroparidat,
, a* San has pointed out, Diaptomtu (Wcstwood, 1836) is the
oldest genus in it. Of 177 species valid in the family Giesbrecht
and Schmeil assign 67 to Diaptomus. In regard to one of its species
Dr Brady says:" In one instance, at least (Talkin Tarn, Cumberland)
I have seen the net come up from a depth of 6 or 8 ft. below the
FIG. 4. Calocalanus pavo (Dana).
surface with a dense mass consisting almost entirely of D. gracUis."
The length of this net-filling species is about a twentieth of an inch.
2. Poaoplea. The first segment of the hind-body almost always
with rudimentary pair of feet; orifices of the genital organs (sym-
metrically placed in both sexes) in the following segment ; neither
the last foot of the fore-body nor the rudimentary feet just men-
tioned acting as a copulatory organ in the male; both or neither of
the first pair of antennae in the male gcniculating; cephalic limbs
less abundantly articulated and with fewer plumose setae or none,
but with hooks and clasping setae. Heart almost always wanting.
Free-living (rarely pelagic) or parasitic (Giesbrecht and Schmeil).
This group is also divided by Giesbrecht into two tribes, Auiph.tr-
thrandria and Isokerandria. In 1892 he distinguished the former
as those in which the first antennae of the male nave both members
modified for holding the female, and the genital openings of the
female have a ventral position, sometimes in close proximity, some-
times strongly lateral ; the latter as those in which the first antennae
of the male are simitar to those of the female, the function of hold-
ing her being transferred to the male maxillipeds, while the genital
openings of the female arc dorsal, though at times strongly lateral.
In 1899, with a view to the many modifications exhibited by parasitic
and semi-parasitic species, the definitions, stripped of a too hamper-
ing precision, took a different form : (a) Ampharthrandria. " Swim-
ming Podoplea with geniculating first antennae in the male sex, and
descendants of such; first antennae in female and male almost
always differently articulated." The families occupy fresh water as
well as the sea. Naturally " descendants " which have lost the char-
acteristic feature of the definition cannot be recognized without
some further assistance than the definition supplies. Of the
families comprised, the Mormonillidae consist only of Mormonitta
(Giesbrecht), and are not mentioned by Giesbrecht in 1899 in the
grouping of this section. The Thaumatocssidae include Thau-
matoessa (Krdycr), established earlier than its synonym Thau-
maleus (Kroyer), or than Monstrilla (Dana, 1849). The species are
imperfectly known. The defect _of mouth-organs probably docs not
apply to the period of youth, which some of them spend parasitically
in the body-cavity of worms (Giard, 1896). To the Cychpidae six
genera are allotted by Giesbrecht in 1000. Cyclops (O. F. Miiller,
1776), though greatly restricted since M Oiler's time, still has several
scores of species abundantly peopling inland waters of every kind
and situation, without one that can be relied on as exclusively marine
like the species of Oithona (Baird). The Miiophriidae are now
limited to Misophrta (Boeck). The presence of a heart in this genus
helps to make it a link between the Podoplea and Gymnoplea, though
in various other respects it approaches the next family. The Har-
pacticidae owe their name to the genus A r pm tie us (Milne-Edwards,
1840). Brady in 1880 assigns to this family 33 genera and 81 species.
Canu (1892) distinguishes eight sub-families, Longipediinae, Pelti-
diinae, Tachidiinae, Amymoninae, Harpacticinae, layinae, Cantho-
camptinae (for which Canlhocampinae should be read), and Nanno-
pinae, adding Slenheliinae (Brady) without distinctive characters
lor it. The Ascidicolidae have variable characters, showing a gradual
adaptation to parasitic life in Tunicates. Giesbrecht (1900) con-
siders Canu quite right in grouping together in this single family
those parasites of ascidians, simple and compound, which had been
previously distributed among families with the more or less significant
names Notodelphyidae, Doropvgidae, Buproridae, Schizoproctidae,
Kossmechtridae, Enltrocolidae, Enteropsidae. Further, he includes in
it his own Enterognathus comalulai, not from an ascidian, but from
the intestine of the beautiful starfish Anttdon rosatcus. The Astero-
cheridae, which have a good swimming capacity, except in the case
of CancerMa tubttlata (Dalycll), lead a semi-parasitic life on echino-
derms, sponges, &c., imbibing their food. Giesbrecht, displacing
the older name Ascomyzontiaat, assigns to this family 21 genera
in five subfamilies, and suggests that the long-known but stillpuzz-
ling Nicothoi from the gills of the lobster might be placed in an
66o
ENTRAGUES ENTRE MINHO E DOURO
additional subfamily, or be made the representative of a closely
related family. The Dichelestiidae, on account of their sometimes
many-jointed first antennae, are referred also to this tribe by Gies-
brecht. (6) Isokerandria. " Swimming Podoplea without genicul-
lating first antennae in the male sex, and descendants of such. First
antennae of male and female almost always articulated alike." To
this tribe Giesbrecht assigns the families Clausidiidae, Corycaeidae,
Oncaeidae, Lichomolgidae, Ergasilidae, Bomolochidae, Clausiidae,
Nereicolidae. Here also must for the time be placed the Caligidae,
Philichthyidae (Philichthydae of Vogt, Carus, Claus), Lernaeidae,
Chondracanthidae, Sphaeronellidae (better known as Choniostomatidae,
from H. J. Hansen's remarkable study of the group), Lernaeopodidae,
Herpyllobiidae, Entomolepidae. For the distinguishing marks of all
these, the number of their genera and species, their habits and trans-
formations and dwellings, the reader must be referred to the writings
of specialists. Sars (1901) proposed seven suborders Calanoida,
Harpacticoida, Cyclopoida, Notodelphoida, Monstrilloida, Caligoida,
Lernaeoida.
AUTHORITIES. (The earlier memoirs of importance are cited in
Giesbrecht's Monograph of Naples, 1892); Canu, " Hersiliidae,"
Butt. Sci. France belgique, ser. 3, vol. i. p. 402 (1888); and Les
Copepodes du Boidonnais (1892); Cuenot, Rev. biol. Nord France,
vol. v. (1892) ; Giesbrecht, " Pelag. Copepoden." F. u. fl. des Golfes
von Neapel (Mon. 19, 1892); Hansen, Entomol. Med. vol. iii. pt. 5
(1892) ; I. C. Thompson, " Copepoda of Liverpool Bay," Trans.
Lii>. Biol. Soc. vol. vii. (1893) ; Schmeil, " Deutschlands Copepoden,"
Bibliotheca zoologica (1892-1897); Brady, Journ. R. Micr. Soc.
p. 168 (1894); T. Scott, " Entomostraca from the Gulf of Guinea,"
Trans. Linn. Soc. London, vol. vi. pt. I (1894); Giesbrecht, Mitteil.
Zool. Stat. Neapel, vol. xi. p. 631; vol. xii. p. 217 (1895); T. and A.
Scott, Trans. Linn. Soc. London, ser. 2, vol. vi. p. 419 (1896) ; Hansen
" Choniostomatidae " (1897); Sars, Proc. Mus. Zool. St Petersburg,
" Caspian Entomostraca (1897) ; Giesbrecht and Schmeil, " Cope-
poda gymnoplea," Das Tierreich (1898) ; Giesbrecht, " Astero-
cheriden," F. u. fl. Neapel (Mon. 25, 1899); Bassett-Smith,
" Copepoda on Fishes," Proc. Zool. Soc. London, p. 438 (1899) ;
Brady, Trans. Zool. Soc. London, vol. xv. pt. 2, p. 31 (1899); Sars,
Arch. Naturv. vol. xxi. No. 2 (1899); Giesbrecht, Mitteil. Zool. Stat.
Neapel, vol. xiv. p. 39 U9) ; Scott, " Fish Parasites," Scottish
Fishery Board, i8th Ann. Rep. p. 144 (1900); Stebbing, Willey's
Zool. Results, pt. 5, p. 664 (1900); Embleton, Journ. Linn. Soc.
London, vol. xxviii. p. 211 (1901); Sars, Crustacea of Norway,
vol. iv. (1901). (T. R. R. S.)
ENTRAGUES, CATHERINE HENRIETTE DE BALZAC D'
(1579-1633), marquise de Verneuil, mistress of Henry IV., king
of France, was the daughter of Charles Balzac d'Entragues
and of Marie Touchet, mistress of Charles IX. Ambitious and
intriguing, she succeeded in inducing Henry IV. to promise to
marry her after the death of Gabrielle d'Estrees, a promise which
led to bitter scenes at court when shortly afterwards Henry
married Marie de' Medici. She carried her spite so far as to be
deeply compromised in the conspiracy of Marshal Biron against
the king in 1606, but escaped with a slight punishment, and in
1608 Henry actually took her back into favour again. She seems
then to have been involved in the Spanish intrigues which
preceded the death of the king in 1610.
See H. de la Ferriere, Henri IV. le roi, Vamoureux (Paris, 1890).
ENTRECASTEAUX, JOSEPH-ANTOINE BRUNI D' (i739~
1793), French navigator, was born at Aix in 1739. At the age of
fifteen he entered the navy. In the war of 1778 he commanded
a frigate of thirty-two guns, and by his clever seamanship was
successful in convoying a fleet of merchant vessels from Mar-
seilles to the Levant, although they were attacked by two pirate
vessels, each of which was larger than his own ship. In 1785 he
was appointed to the command of the French fleet in the East
Indies, and two years later he was named governor of the
Mauritius and the Isle of Bourbon. While in command of the
East India fleet he made a voyage to China, an achievement
which, in 1791, led the French government to select him to
command an expedition which it was sending out to seek some
tidings of the unfortunate La Perouse, of whom nothing had been
heard since February 1788. Rear-admiral d'Entrecasteaux's
expedition comprised the " Recherche " and "L'Esperance,"
with Captain Huon de Kermadec as second in command. No
tidings were obtained of the missing navigator, but in the
course of his search Entrecasteaux made important geographical
discoveries. He traced the outlines of the eastern coast of New
Caledonia, made extensive surveys round the Tasmanian coast,
and touched at several places on the south coast of New Holland.
The two ships entered Storm Bay, Tasmania, on the 2ist of
April 1792, and remained there until the i6th of May, surveying
and naming the d'Entrecasteaux Channel, the entrances to the
Huon and Derwent rivers, Bruni Island, Recherche Bay, Port
Esperance and various other localities. Excepting the name of
the river Derwent (originally called Riviere du Nord by its
French discoverers), these foregoing appellations have been
retained. Leaving Tasmania the expedition sailed northward
for the East Indies, and while coasting near the island of Java,
Entrecasteaux was attacked by scurvy and died on the zoth of
July 1793.
ENTRE MINHO E DOURO (popularly called Minho), a former
province of Northern Portugal; bounded on the N. by Galicia
in Spain, E. by Traz-os-Montes, S. by Beira and W. by the
Atlantic Ocean. Pop. (1900) 1,170,361; area 2790 sq. m.
Though no longer officially recognized, the old provincial name
remains in common use. The coast-line of Entre Minho e Douro
is level and unbroken except by the estuaries of the main rivers;
inland, the elevation gradually increases towards the north and
east, where several mountain ranges mark the frontier. Of
these, the most important are the Serra da Peneda (4728 ft.),
between the rivers Minho and Limia; the Serra do Gerez (4357
ft.), on the Galician border; the Serra da Cabreira (4021 ft.),
immediately to the south; and the Serra de Marao (4642 ft:),
in the extreme south-east. As its name implies, the province is
bounded by two great rivers, the Douro (q.v.) on the south,
and the Minho (Spanish Mino) on the north; but a small tract
of land south of the Douro estuary is included also within the
provincial boundary. There are three other large rivers which,
like the Minho, flow west-south-west into the Atlantic. The
Limia or Antela (Spanish Linia) rises in Galicia, and reaches the
sea at Vianna do Castello; the Cavado springs from the southern
foot hills of La Raya Seca, on the northern frontier of Traz-os-
Montes, and forms, at its mouth, the small harbour of Espozende;
and the Ave descends from its sources in the Serra da Cabreira
to Villa do Conde, where it enters the Atlantic. A large right-
hand tributary of the Douro, the Tamega, rises in Galicia, and
skirts the western slopes of the Serra de MarSo.
The climate is mild, except among the mountains, and such
plants as heliotrope, fuchsias, palms, and aloes thrive in the
open throughout the year. Wheat and maize are grown on the
plains, and other important products are wine, fruit, olives and
chestnuts. Fish abound along the coast and in the main rivers;
timber is obtained from the mountain forests, and dairy -farming
and the breeding of pigs and cattle are carried on in all parts.
As the province is occupied by a hardy and industrious peasantry,
and the density of population (419-5 per sq. m.) is more than
twice that of any other province on the Portuguese mainland,
the soil is very closely cultivated. The methods and implements
of the farmers are, however, most primitive, and at the beginning
of the aoth century is was not unusual to see a mule, or even a
woman, harnessed with the team of oxen to an old-fashioned
wooden plough. Small quantities of coal, iron, antimony, lead
and gold are mined; granite and slate are quarried; and there
are mineral springs at Moncao (pop. 2283) on the Minho. The
Oporto-Corunna railway traverses the western districts and
crosses the Spanish frontier at Tuy; its branch lines give access
to Braga, Guimaraes and Povoa de Varzim; and the Oporto-
Salamanca railway passes up the Douro valley. The greater part
of the north and west can only be reached by road, and even the
chief highways are ill-kept. In these regions the principal means
of transport is the springless wooden cart, drawn by one or more
of the tawny and under-sized but powerful oxen, with immense
horns and elaborately carved yoke, which are characteristic of
northern Portugal. For administrative purposes the province is
divided into three districts: Vianna do Castello in the north,
Braga in the centre, Oporto in the south. The chief towns are
separately described; they include Oporto (167,955), one f tne
greatest wine-producing cities m the world; Braga (24,202),
the seat of an archbishop who is primate of Portugal; the sea-
ports of Povoa de Varzim (12,623) an d Vianna do Castello
(9990); and Guimaraes (9104), a place of considerable historical
interest.
ENTREPOT EOCENE
661
ENTREPOT (a French word, from the Lat. inter positum, that
which is placed between), a storehouse or magazine for the
temporary storage of goods, provisions, &c. ; also a place where
goods, which are not allowed to pass into a country duty free,
are stored under the superintendence of the custom house
authorities till they are re-exported. In a looser sense, any town
which has a considerable distributive trade is called an enlrepdt.
The word is also used attributively to indicate the kind of trade
carried on in such towns.
ENTRE RIOS (Span. " between rivers "), a province of the
eastern Argentine Republic, forming the sourthern part of a
region sometimes described as the Argentine Mesopotamia,
bounded N. by Corrientes, E. by Uruguay with the Uruguay
river as the boundary line, S. by Buenos Aires and W. by Santa
F6, the Parana river forming the boundary line with these two
provinces. Pop. (1805) 292,019; (1905, est.) 376,600. The
province has an area of 28,784 sq. m., consisting for the most part
of an undulating, well-watered and partly-wooded plain, termin-
ating in a low, swampy district of limited extent in the angle
between the two great rivers. The great forest of Monteil
occupies an extensive region in the N., estimated at nearly one-
fifth the area of the province. Its soil is exceptionally fertile
and its climate is mild and healthy. The province is sometimes
called the " garden of Argentina," which would probably be
sufficiently correct had its population devoted as much energy
to agriculture as they have to political conflict and civil war.
Its principal industry is that of stock-raising, exporting live
cattle, horses, hides, jerked beef, tinned and salted meats,
beef extract, mutton and wool. Its agricultural products are
njy important, including wheat, Indian corn, barley and fruits.
Lime, gypsum and firewood are also profitable items in its export
trade. The Parana and Uruguay rivers provide exceptional
facilities for the shipment of produce and the Entre Rios railways,
consisting of a trunk line running E. and W. across the province
from Parana to Conception del Uruguay and several tributary
branches, afford ample transportation facilities to the ports.
Another railway line follows the Uruguay from Concordia north-
ward into Corrientes. Entre Rios has been one of the most
turbulent of the Argentine provinces, and has suffered severely
from political disorder and civil war. Comparative quiet
reigned from 1842 to 1870 under the autocratic rule of Gen.
J. J. Urquiza. After his assassination in 1870 these partizan
conflicts were renewed for two or three years, and then the
province settled down to a life of comparative peace, followed
by an extraordinary development in her pastoral and agricultural
industries. Among these is the slaughtering and packing of
beef, the exportation of which has reached large proportions.
The capital is Parana, though the seat of government was
originally located at Concepcion del Uruguay, and was again
transferred to that town during Urqulza's domination. Con-
ception del Uruguay, orConcepci6n (founded 1778), is a flourish-
ing town and port on the Uruguay, connected by railway with
an extensive producing region which gives it an important export
trade, and is the seat of a national college and normal school.
Its population was estimated at oooo in 1005. Other large towns
are Gualeguay and Gualeguaychu.
ENVOY (Fr. etnoyt, " sent "), a diplomatic agent of the
second rank. The word emoyt comes first into general use in
this connexion in the i?th century, as a translation of the Lat.
atfefalus or missus (see DIPLOMACY). Hence the word envoy is
commonly used of any one sent on a mission of any sort.
ENZIO (r. 1220-1272), king of Sardinia, was a natural son of
the emperor Frederick II. His mother was probably a German,
and his name, Enzio, is a diminutive form of the German Hrin-
ridi. His father had a great affection for him, and he was
probably present at the battle of Cortenuova in 1237. In 1238
he was married, in defiance of the wishes of Pope Gregory IX.,
to Adelasia, widow of Ubaldo Visconti and heiress of Torres and
Gallura in Sardinia. Enzio took at once the title of king of
Torres and Gallura, and in 1243 that of king of Sardinia, but he
only spent a few months in the island, and his sovereignty
existed in name alone. In July 1239 he was appointed imperial
vicegerent in Italy, and sharing in his father's excommunication
ii> the same year, took a prominent part in the war which broke
out between the emperor and the pope. He commenced his
campaign by subduing the march of Ancona, and in May 1241
was in command of the forces which defeated the Genoese fleet
at Meloria, where he seized a large amount of booty and captured
a number of ecclesiastics who were proceeding to a council
summoned by Gregory to Rome. Later he fought in Lombardy.
In 1248 he assisted Frederick in his vain attempt to take
Parma, but was wounded and taken prisoner by the Bolognese
at Fossalta on the 26th of May 1 249. His captivity was a severe
blow to the Hohenstaufcn cause in Italy, and was soon followed
by the death of the emperor. He seems to have been well
treated by the people of Bologna, where he remained a captive
until his death on the i.itli of March 1272. He was apparently
granted a magnificent funeral, and was buried in the church of
St Dominic at Bologna. During his imprisonment Enzio is said
to have been loved by Lucia da Viadagola, a well-born lady of
Bologna, who shared his captivity and attempted to procure his
release. Some doubt has, however, been cast upon this story,
and the same remark applies to another which tells how two
friends had almost succeeded in freeing him from prison concealed
in a wine-cask, when he was recognized by a lock of his golden
hair. His marriage with Adelasia had been declared void by the
pope in 1243, and he left one legitimate, and probably two
illegitimate daughters. Enzio forms the subject of a drama by
E. B. S. Raupach and of an opera by A. F. B. Dulk.
See F. W. Grossman, Konig Enzio (Gottingen, 1883); and
H. Blasius, Konig Enzio (Breslau, 1884).
ENZYME (Gr. frfuM<, leavened, from kv, in, and fi^Tj,
leaven), a term, first suggested by KUhne, for an unorganized
ferment (see FERMENTATION), a group of substances, in the
constitution of plants and animals, which decompose certain
carbon compounds occurring in association with them. See also
PLANTS: Physiology; NUTRITION, &c.
EOCENE (Gr. ftis, dawn, KCUPO?, recent), in geology, the name
suggested by Sir C. Lyell in 1833 for the lower subdivision of the
rocks of the Tertiary Era. The term was intended to convey the
idea that this was the period which saw the dawn of the recent or
existing forms of life, because it was estimated that among
the fossils of this period only 3! % of the species are still living.
Since Lyell's time much has been learned about the fauna and
flora of the period, and many palaeontologists doubt if any of
the Eocene species are still extant, unless it be some of the lowest
forms of life. Nevertheless the name is a convenient one and is
in general use. The Eocene as originally defined was not long
left intact, for E. Beyrich in 1854 proposed the term " Oligocene "
for the upper portion, and later, in 1874, K. Schimper suggested
" Paleocene " as a separate appellation for the lower portion.
The Oligocene division has been generally accepted as a distinct
period, but " Paleocene " is not so widely used.
In north-western Europe the close of the Cretaceous period
was marked by an extensive emergence of the land, accompanied,
in many places, by considerable erosion of the Mesozoic rocks;
a prolonged interval elapsed before a relative depression of the
land set in and the first Eocene deposits were formed. The early
Eocene formations of the London-Paris-Belgian basin were of
fresh-water and brackish origin; towards the middle of the
period they had become marine, while later they reverted to the
original type. In southern and eastern Europe changes of sea-
level were less pronounced in character; here the late Cretaceous
seas were followed without much modification by those of the
Eocene period, so rich in foraminiferal life. In many other
regions, the great gap which separates the Tertiary from the
Mesozoic rocks in the neighbourhood of London and Paris does
not exist, and the boundary line is difficult to draw. Eocene
strata succeed Cretaceous rocks without serious unconformity
in the Libyan area, parts of Denmark, S.E. Alps, India, New
Zealand and central N. America. The unconformity is marked
in England, parts of Egypt, on the Atlantic coastal plain and
in the eastern gulf region of N. America, as well as in the marine
Eocene of western Oregon. The clastic Flysch formation of the
662
EOCENE
Carpathians and northern Alps appears to be of Eocene age in
the upper and Cretaceous in the lower part. The Eocene sea
covered at various times a strip of the Atlantic coast from New
Jersey southward and sent a great tongue or bay up the Missis-
sippi valley; similar epicontinental seas spread over parts of the
Pacific border, but the plains of the interior with the mountains
on the west were meanwhile being filled with terrestrial and
lacustrine deposits which attained an enormous development.
This great extension of non-marine formations in the Eocene of
different countries has introduced difficulties in the way of exact
correlation; it is safer, therefore, in the present state of know-
ledge, to make no attempt to find in the Eocene strata of America
and India, &c., the precise equivalent of subdivisions that have
been determined with more or less exactitude in the London-
Paris-Belgian area.
It is possible that in Eocene times there existed a greater
continuity of the northern land masses than obtains to-day.
Europe at that time was probably united with N. America
through Iceland and Greenland; while on the other side, America
may have joined Asia by the way of Alaska. On the other hand,
the great central, mediterranean sea which stretched across the
Eurasian continents sent an arm northward somewhere just east
of the Ural mountains, and thus divided the northern land mass in
Distribution of
Eocene Rocks
Mid. Eocene, Lutetian)
after At Lftppareni
* in ntch Middle Eocene Rock* are found
liNon-marFnt Eocene dtpotita of N.America
If ocene Rocks absent Of unknown
Suggested limits of tand& Sea about Mid. Eocenl time 1
that region. S. America, Australia and perhaps Africa may have
been connected more or less direclly with the Antarctic continent.
Associated, no doubt, with the crustal movements which
closed the Cretaceous and inaugurated the Eocene period,
there were local and intermittent manifestations of volcanic
activity throughout the period. Diabases, gabbros, serpentines,
soda-potash granites, &c., are found in the Eocene of the central
and northern Apennines. Tuffs occur in the Veronese and
Vicentin Alps Ronca and Spelecco schists. Tuffs, basalts
and other igneous rocks appear also in Montana, Wyoming,
California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Colorado; also in
Central America, the Antillean region and S. America.
It has been very generally assumed by geologists, mainly upon
the evidence of plant remains, that the Eocene period opened
with a temperate climate in northern latitudes; later, as in-
dicated by the London Clay, Alum Bay and Bournemouth beds,
&c., the temperature appears to have been at least subtropical.
But it should be observed that the frequent admixture of
temperate forms with what are now tropical species makes it
difficult to speak with certainty as to the degree of warmth ex-
perienced. The occurrence of lignites in the Eocene of the
Paris basin, Tirol and N. America is worthy of consideration
in this connexion. On the other hand, the coarse boulder beds
in the lower Flysch have been regarded as evidence of local
glaciation; this would not be inconsistent with a period of
widespread geniality of climate, as is indicated by the large size
of the nummulites and the dispersion of the marine Mollusca,
but the evidence for glaciation is not yet conclusive.
Eocene Stratigraphy. In Britain, with the exception of the Bovey
beds (q.v.) and the leaf-bearing beds of Antrim and Mull, Eocene
rocks are confined to the south-eastern portion of England. They
lie in the two well-marked synclinal basins of London and Hamp-
shire which are conterminous in the western area (Hampshire,
Berkshire), but are separated towards the east by the denuded
anticline of the Weald. The strata in these two basins-have been
grouped in the following manner :
London Basin.
Upper Bagshot Sands.
Middle Bagshot Beds and
Middle -j part of Lower Bagshot
Upper
Hampshire Basin.
Headon Hill and Barton Sands.
Bracklesham Beds and leaf
beds of Bournemouth and
Alum Bay.
London Clay and the equiva-
lent Bognor Beds, Woolwich
and Reading Beds.
(Part of Lower Bagshot
Beds, London Clay,
Blackheath and Old-
haven Beds, Woolwich
and ReadingBeds.Thanet
Sands.
The Thanet sands have not been recognized in the Hampshire
basin ; they are usually pale yellow and greenish sanfls with streaks
of clay and at the base; resting on an evenly denuded surface of
chalk is a very constant layer of green-coated, well-rounded chalk
flint pebbles. It is a marine formation, but fossils are scarce except
in E. Kent, where it attains its most complete development. The
Woolwich and Reading beds (see READING BEDS) contain both
marine and estuarine fossils. In western Kent, between the
Woolwich beds and the London Clay are the Oldhaven beds or
Blackheath pebbles, 20 to 40 ft., made up almost entirely of well-
rounded flint pebbles set in sand ; the fossils are marine and estuar-
ine. The London Clay, 500 ft. thick, is a marine deposit consisting
of blue or brown clay with sandy layers and septarian nodules; its
equivalent in the Hampshire area is sometimes called the Bognor
Clay, well exposed on the coast of Sussex. The Bagshot, Brackles-
ham and Barton beds will be found briefly described under those
heads.
Crossing the English Channel, we find in northern France and
Belgium a series of deposits identified in their general characters
with those of England. The anticlinal ridge of the English Weald
is prolonged south-eastwards on to the continent, and separates the
Belgian from the French Eocene areas much as it separates the
areas of London and Hampshire ; and it is clear that at the time of
deposition all four regions were intimately related and subject to
similar variations of marine and estuarine conditions. With a series
of strata so variable from point to point it is natural that many
purely local phases should have received distinctive names; in the
Upper Eocene of the Paris basin the more important formations
are the highly fossiliferous marine sands known as the " Sands of
Beauchamp ' and the local fresh-water limestone, the " Calcaire
de St Ouen." The Middle Eocene is represented by the well-known
" Calcaire grassier," about 90 ft. thick. The beds in this scries vary
a good deal lithologically, some being sandy, others marly or glau-
conitic; fossils are abundant. The Upper Calcaire grossier or
" Caillasses " is a fresh-water formation; the middle division is
marine; while the lower one is partly marine, partly of fresh-water
origin. The numerous quarries and mines for building stone in the
neighbourhood of Paris have made it possible to acquire a very
precise knowledge of this division, and many of the beds have re-
ceived trade names, such as " Rochette," " Roche," " Bane franc,"
" Bane vert," " Cliquart," " Saint Nom;" the two last named are
dolomitic. Below these limestones are the nummulitic sands of Cuise
and Soissons. The Lower Eocene contains the lignitic plastic clay
(argile plastique) of Soissons and elsewhere; the limestones of Rilly
and Se'zanne and the greenish glauconitic sands of Bracheux. The
relative position of the above formations with respect to those of
Belgium and England will be seen from the table of Eocene strata.
The Eocene deposits of southern Europe differ in a marked manner
from those of the Anglo-Parisian basin. The most important feature
is the great development of nummulitic limestone with thin marls
and nummulitic sandstones. The sea in which the nummulitic
limestones were formed occupied the site of an enlarged Mediter-
ranean communicating with similar waters right round the world,
for these rocks are found not only in southern Europe, including all
the Alpine tracts, Greece and Turkey and southern Russia, but they
are well developed in northern Africa, Asia Minor, Palestine, and
they may be followed through Persia, Baluchistan, India, into
China, Tibet, Japan, Sumatra, Borneo and the Philippines. The
nummulitic limestones are frequently hard and crystalline, especially
where they have been subjected to elevation and compression as in
the Alpine region, 10,000 ft. above the sea, or from 16,000, to 20,000
ft., in the central Asian plateau. Besides being a wide-spread
formation the nummulitic limestone is locally several thousand
feet thick.
While the foraminiferal limestones were being formed over most of
southern Europe, a series of clastic beds were in course of formation
in the Carpathians and the northern Alpine region, viz. _the Flysch
and the Vienna sandstone. Some portions of this Alpine Eocene
are coarsely conglomeratic, and in places there are boulders of
EOCENE
663
i-local rocks of enormous dimensions included in the argillaceous
or sandy matrix. The occurrence of these larxc lx>uMi;r> ti>i;r(hrr
with the scarceness of fossils has suggested a glacial origin lr tin
fi>rm.itin; t>m th<- c\iilciuv hitlu-rto n.lli-vtetl is not rondusive.
I' \\ \,m (.timbt-l has classified the Eocene of the northern Alps
(Bavaria, Ac.) as follows:
_ 1 Flysch and Vienna sandstone, with younger num-
Lpper too le J mu ij t j c beds and Haring group.
Middle Kressenberg Beds, with older nummulitic beds.
Lower Burberg Beds, Greensands with small nummulites.
The Hiring group of northern Tirol contains lignite beds of some,
importance. In the southern and S.E. Alps the following divisions
4 Macigno or Tassello Viertna Sandstone, conglo-
Lpper tocene ^ merat es, marls and shales.
Middle Nummulitic limestones, three subdivisions.
iLiburnian stage (or Proteocene), foraminifcral
limestones with fresh-water intercalations at the
top and bottom, the Cosina beds, fresh-water in
the middle of the series.
In the central and northern Apennines the Eocene strata have been
subdivided by Prof. F. Sacco into an upper Bartonian, a middle
Parisian and a lower Suessonian series. In the middle member are
the representatives of the Flysch and the Macigno. These Eocene
strata are upwards of 5500 ft. thick. In northern Africa the num-
mulitic limestones and sandstones are widely spread; the lower
portions comprise the Libyan group and the shales of Esneh on the
Nile (Flandncn), the Alveolina beds of Spkotra and others; the
Mokattam stage of Egypt is a representative of the later Eocene.
Much of the N. African Eocene contains phosphatic beds. In India
strata of Eocene age are extensively developed ; in Sind the marine
Ranikot beds, 1500 to 2000 ft., consisting of clays with gypsum and
lignite, shales and sandstones; these beds have, side by side with
Eocene nummulites, a few fossils of Cretaceous affinities. Above
the Ranikot beds are the massive nummulitic limestones and sand-
stones of the Kirthar group; these are succeeded by the nummulitic
limestones and shales at the base of the Nari group. In the southern
Himalayan region the nummulitic phase of Eocene deposit is well
developed, but there are difficulties in fixing the line of demarcation
between this and the younger formations. The lower part of the
Sirmur scries of the Simla district may belong to this period ; it is
subdivided into the Kasauli group and the Dagshai group with the
Subathu group at the base. Beneath the thick nummulitic Eocene
limestone of the Salt Range are shales and marls with a few coal
teams. The marine Eocene rocks of N. America are most exten-
sively developed round the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, whence they
spread into the valley of the Mississippi and, as a comparatively
narrow strip, along the Atlantic coastal plain to New Jersey.
The series in Alabama, which may be taken as typical of the Gulf
coast Eocene, is as follows:
Upper Jacksonian, White limestone of Alabama (and Vicksburg?).
ri -i~ i Claiborne series.
Middle Claibonuan } Buhretonc ^^
I Chickasawan Sands and lignites.
) Midwayan or Clayton formation, limestones.
The above succession is not fully represented in the Atlantic coast
On "the Pacific coast marine formations are found in California
and Oregon; such are the Tejon series with lignite and oil; the
Escondido series of S. California (7000 ft.), part of the Pascadero
series of the Santa Cruz Mountains; the Pulaski, Tyee. Arago and
Coaledo beds with coals in Oregon. In the Puget formation of
Washington we have a great series of sediments, largely of brackish
water origin, and in parts coal-bearing. The total thickness ol this
formation has been estimated at 20,000 ft. (it may prove to be less
than this), but it is probable that only the lower pjortion is of Eocene
ace The most interesting of the N. American Eocene deposits are
those of the Rocky Mountains and the adjacent western plains, in
Wyoming. Nevada, Nebraska, Colorado, &c.; they are of terrestrial,
lacustrine or aeolian origin, and on this account and because they
were not strictly synchronous, there is considerable difficulty i
placing them in their true position in the time-scale. The main
divisions or groups are generally recognized as follows:
Mammalian
Zonal Forms.
Upper Uinta Group, 800 ft. (?- Jacksonian). j Teh^totherium.
Middle 'Bridger Group, 2000 ft. (?- Clai-
bonuan) ....
) Wind River Group, 800 ft.
Wasatch Group, 2000 ft. (?- Chicka-
sawan)
n,~,l J ' To 1 } " Group, 300 ft.
" iw } Puerco Group, 500 to 1000 ft.
Uintatherium.
Batkyoptis.
Coryphodon.
Pantolambda.
Polymastodon.
South of the Uinta Mts. in Utah.
' Wind river in Wyoming.
Torrejon in New Mexico.
1 Fort Bridger Basin.
4 Wasatch Mts. in Utah.
Puerco river, New Mexico
The Fort Union beds of Canada and partsof Montana and N. Dakota
are probably the oldest Eocene strata of the Western Interior;
they are some 2000 ft. thick and possibly are equivalent to the Mid-
\\.I\.MI group. But in these beds, as in those Known as Arapahoe,
-.ivingston, Denver, Ohio and Ruby, which are now often classed
as belonging to the upper Laramie formation, it is safer to regard
them as a transitional scries between the Mesozoic and Tertiary
lystems. There is, however, a marked unconformity between the
i-'iKviii- Telluride or San Miguel and Poison Canyon formations of
Colorado and the underlying Laramie rocks.
Many local aspects of Eocene rocks have received special names,
>ut too little is known about them to enable them to be correctly
In i il in the Eocene scries. Such are the Clarno formation (late
Eocene) of the John Day basin, Oregon, the Pinyon conglomerate
of Yellowstone Park, the Sphinx conglomerate of Montana, the
VVhitctail conglomerate of Arizona, the Manti shales of Utah, the
Mojave formation of S. California and the Amyzon formation of
Nevada.
Of the Eocene of other countries little is known in detail. Strata
of this age occur in Central and S. America (Patagonia-Megcllanian
Brazil, Chile, Argentina), in S. Australia (and in the Great
Australian Bight), New Zealand, in Seymour Island near Graham
Land in the Antarctic Regions, Japan, Java, Bprneo.-New Guinea,
Moluccas, Philippines, New Caledonia, also in Greenland, Bear
Island, Spitzbcrgen and Siberia.
Organic Life of the Eocene Period. As it has been observed
above, the name Eocene was given to this period on the ground
that in its fauna only a small percentage of living species were
present; this estimation was founded upon the assemblage of
invertebrate remains in which, from the commencement of this
period until the present day, there has been comparatively little
change. The real biological interest of the period centres around
the higher vertebrate types. In the marine mollusca the most
noteworthy change is the entire absence of ammonoids, the group
which throughout the Mesozoic era had taken so prominent a
place, but disappeared completely with the close of the Cretaceous.
Nautiloids were more abundant than they are at present, but
as a whole the Cephalopods took a more subordinate part
than they had done in previous periods. On the other hand,
Gasteropods and Pelecypods found in the numerous shallow seas
a very suitable environment and flourished exceedingly, and
their shells are often preserved in a state of great perfection
and in enormous numbers. Of the Gasteropod genera Cerithium
with its estuarine and lagoonal forms Polamides, Potamidopsis,
&c., is very characteristic; Rostdlaria, Valuta, Fusus, Pleuro-
toma, Conus, Typhis, may also, be cited. Cardium, Venericardia,
Crassalella, Corbulomya, Cylherea, Lucina, Anomia, Ostrea are a
few of the many Pelecypod genera. Echinoderms were repre-
sented by abundant sea-urchins, Ectiinolampas, Linthia, Cono-
clypeus, &c. Corals flourished on the numerous reefs and ap-
proximated to modern forms ( Trochosmilia, Dendrophyllia). But
by far the most abundant marine organisms were the foramini-
fera which flourished in the warm seas in countless myriads.
Foremost among these are the Nummulites, which by their
extraordinary numerical development and great size, as well as
by their wide distribution, demand special recognition. Many
other genera of almost equal importance as rock builders, lived
at the same time: Orthophragma, Operculina, Assilina, Orbilolites,
Miliola, Alveolina. Crustacea were fairly abundant (Xanthopsis,
Portunus), and most of the orders and many families of modern
insects were represented.
When we turn to the higher forms of life, the reptiles and
mammals, we find a remarkable contrast between the fauna
of the Eocene and those periods which preceded and succeeded
it. The great group of Saurian reptiles, whose members had
held dominion on land and sea during most of the Mesozoic
time, had completely disappeared by the beginning of the
Eocene; in their place placenta) mammals made their appearance
and rapidly became the dominant "group. Among the early
Eocene mammals no trace can be found of the numerous and
clearly-marked orders with which we are familiar to-day; instead
we find obscurely differentiated forms, which cannot be fitted
without violence- into any of the modern orders. The early
placenta! mammals were generalized types (with certain non-
placcntal characters) with potentialities for rapid divergence
and development in the direction of the more specialized modern
orders. Thus, the Creodonta foreshadowed the Carnivora, the
664
EON DE BEAUMONT
Stages.
Paris Basin.
England.
Belgian Basin.
Mediterranean
regions and
Great Central
sea.
Flysch
Phase.
North America.
Bartonien. 1
Limestone of Saint-Ouen.
Sands of Mortefontaine.
Sands of Beauchamp.
Sands of Auvers.
Barton beds.
Upper Bagshot sands.
Sands of Lede.
Nummulitic limestones, sandstones
and
shales.
< &.
c <
.a
> _g
TD w'-S
c o'C
g a
-gS
x|-
E
jj e
c rt c
jhs'l
jll
Jo?
o-v-S
| S>
s &
II
Uinta Group and
Jacksonian.
Bridger Group and
Claibornian.
Wind River Group.
Wasatch Group
and
Chickasawan.
Torre j on Group
and
Midwayan.
Puerco Group.
Lutetien.
Calcaire grossier.
Bracklesham and Bourne-
mouth beds.
Lower Bagshot sands.
Laekenien.
Bruxellien.
Paniselien.
Ypresien.
Nummulitic sands of
Soissons and Sands of
Cuise and Aizy.
Plastic Clay and lignite
beds.
Alum Bay leaf beds.
London Clay.
Oldhaven beds.
Woolwich and Reading beds.
Sands of Mons en
Pevele.
Flanders Clay.
Landenien.
Sparnacien.
Upper Landenien
sands.
Sands of Ostri-
court.
Landenien tuff-
eau.
Marls of Gelinden.
Thanetien.
Limestones of Rilly and
Sezanne.
Sands of Rilly and Bra-
cheux.
Thanet sands.
Condylarthra presaged the herbivorous groups; but before the
close of this period, so favourable were the conditions of life
to a rapid evolution of types, that most of the great orders had
been clearly defined, though none of the Eocene genera are still
extant. Among the early carnivores were Arctocyon,Palaeonictis,
Ambly clonus, Hyaenodon, Cynodon, Pr owner a, Patriofelis. The
primitive dog-like forms did not appear until late in the period,
in Europe; and true cats did not arrive until later, though they
were represented by Eusmilus in the Upper Eocene of France.
The primitive ungulates (Condylarths) were generalized forms
with five effective toes, exemplified in Phenacodus. The gross
Amblypoda, with five-toed stumpy feet (Coryphodon), were
prominent in the early Eocene; particularly striking forms
were the Dinoceratidae, Dinoceras, with three pairs of horns or
protuberances on its massive skull and a pair of huge canine
teeth projecting downwards; Tinoceras, Uintatherium, Loxo-
phodon, &c.; these elephantine creatures, whose remains are so
abundant in the Eocene deposits of western America, died out
before the close of the period. The divergence of the hoofed
mammals into the two prominent divisions, the odd-toed and
even-toed, began in this period, but the former did not get beyond
the three-toed stage. The least differentiated of the odd-toed
group were the Lophiodonts: tapirs were foreshadowed by
Systemodon and similar forms (Palaeotherium, Paloplother ium) ;
the peccary-like Hyracotherium was a forerunner of the horse,
Hyrochinus was a primitive rhinoceros. The evolution of the
horse through such forms as Hyracotherium, Packynolophus,
Eohippus, &c x appears to have proceeded along" parallel lines
in Eurasia ajra America, but the true horse did not arrive until
later. Ancestral deer were represented by Dichobune, Amphi-
tragulus and others, while many small hog-like forms existed
(Diplopus, Eohyus, Hyopotamus, Homacodon). The primitive
stock of the camel group developed in N. America in late Eocene
time and sent branches into S. America and Eurasia. The
edentates were very generalized forms at this period (Gan-
1 Bartonien from Barton, England.
Lutetien Lutetia = Paris.
Ypresien Ypres, Flanders.
Landenien Landen, Belgium.
Thanetien The Isle of Thanet.
Sparnacien Sparnacum = Epernay.
Laekenien Laeken, Belgium.
Bruxellien Brussels.
Paniselien Mont Panisel, near Mons.
Other names that have been applied to subdivisions of the Eocene
not included in the table are Parisien and Suessonien (Soissons) ;
Ludien (Ludes in the Paris basin) and Priabonien (Priabona in the
Vicentine Alps) ; Heersien (Heer near Maastricht) and Wemmelien
(Wemmel, Belgium) ; very many more might be mentioned.
odonta); the rodents (Tillodontia) attained a large size for
members of this group, e.g. Tillotherium. The Insectivores had
Eocene forerunners, and the Lemuroids probable ancestors
of the apes were forms of great interest, Anaptomorphus,
Microsyops, Heterohyus, Microchaerus, Coenopithecus; even the
Cetaceans were well represented by Zeuglodon and others.
The non-placental mammals although abundant were taking a
secondary place; Didelphys, the primitive opossum, is note-
worthy on account of its wide geographical range.
Among the birds, the large flightless forms, Eupterornis,
Gastornis, were prominent, and many others were present, such
as the ancestral forms of our modern gulls, albatrosses, herons,
buzzards, eagles, owls, quails, plovers. Reptiles were poorly
represented, with the exception of crocodilians, tortoises, turtles
and some large snakes.
The flora of the Eocene period, although full of interest, does
not convey the impression of newness that is afforded by the
fauna of the period. The reason for this difference is this:
the newer flora had been introduced and had developed to a
considerable extent in the Cretaceous period, and there is no
sharp break between the flora of the earlier and that of the later
period; in both we find a mixed assemblage what we should
now regard as tropical palms, growing side by side with mild-
temperate trees. Early Eocene plants in N. Europe, oaks,
willows, chestnuts (Castanea), laurels, indicate a more temperate
climate than existed in Middle Eocene when in the Isle of Wight,
Hampshire and the adjacent portions of the continent, palms,
figs, cinnamon flourished along with the cactus, magnolia,
sequoia, cypress and ferns. The late Eocene flora of Europe
was very similar to its descendant in modern Australasia.
See A. de Lapparent, Trails de geologic, vol. iii. (5th ed., 1906),
which contains a good general account of the period, with numerous
references to original papers. Also R. B. Newton, Systematic List
of the Frederick E. Edwards Collection of British Oligocene and Eocene
Mollusca in the British Museum (Natural History) (1891), pp. 299-325 ;
G. D. Harris, " A Revision of our Lower Eocenes," Proc. Geologists'
Assoc. x., 1887-1888; W. B. Clark, " Correlation Papers: Eocene "
(1891), U.S. Geol. Survey Bull. No. 83. For more recent literature
consult Geological Literature added to the Geological Society's Library,
published annually by the society. (J. A. H.)
EON DE BEAUMONT, CHARLES GENEVIEVE LOUISE AUGUSTE
ANDR TIMOTHEE D' (1728-1810), commonly known as the
CHEVALIER o'EoN, French political adventurer, famous for the
supposed mystery of his sex, was born near Tonnerre in Bur-
gundy, on the 7th of October 1728. He was the son of an advocate
of good position, and after a distinguished course of study at the
College Mazarin he became a doctor of law by special dispensation
before the usual age, and adopted his father's profession. He
EOTVOS
665
began literary *<>* as a contributor to Frfron's Annet litterairt,
and attracted notice as a political writer by two works on
financial and administrative questions, which he published in his
twenty-fifth year. His reputation increased so rapidly that in
1755 he was, on the recommendation of Louis Francois, prince of
Conti, entrusted by Louis XV. (who had originally started his
" secret " foreign policy i.e. by undisclosed agents behind the
backs of his ministers in fa vourof the prince of Conti's ambition
to be king of Poland) with a secret mission to the court of Russia.
It was on this occasion that he is said for the first time to have
assumed the dress of a woman, with the connivance, it is sup-
posed, of the French court. 1 In this disguise he obtained the
appointment of reader to the empress Elizabeth, and won herover
entirely to the views of his royal master, with whom he main-
tained a secret correspondence during the whole of his diplomatic
career. After a year's absence he returned to Paris to be
immediately charged with a second mission to St Petersburg,
in which he figured in his true sex, and as brother of the reader
who had been at the Russian court the year before. He played
an important part in the negotiations between the courts of
Russia, Austria and France during the Seven Years' War.
For these diplomatic services he was rewarded with the decora-
tion of the grand cross of St Louis. In 1759 he served with the
French army on the Rhine as aide-de-camp to the marshal de
Broglie. and was wounded during the campaign. He had held
for some years previously a commission in a regiment of dragoons,
and was distinguished for his skill in military exercises, particu-
larly in fencing. In 176.1, on the return of the due de Nivernais,
d'Eon. who had been secretary to his embassy, was appointed his
successor, first as resident agent and then as minister pleni-
potentiary at the court of Great Britain. He had not been long
in this position when he lost the favour of his sovereign, chiefly,
according to his own account, through the adverse influence of
Madame de Pompadour, who was jealous of him as a secret
correspondent of the king. Superseded by count de Guerchy,
d'Eon showed his irritation by denying the genuineness of the
letter of appointment, and by raising an action against Guerchy
for an attempt to poison him. Guerchy, on the other hand,
had previously commenced an action against d'Eon for libel,
founded on the publication by the latter of certain state docu-
ments of which he had possession in his official capacity. Both
parties succeeded in so far as a true bill was found against
Guerchy for the attempt to murder, though by pleading his
privilege as ambassador he escaped a trial, and d'Eon was found
guilty of the libel. Failing to come up for judgment when called
on, be was outlawed. For some years afterwards he lived in
obscurity, appearing in public chiefly at fencing matches.
During this period rumours as to the sex of d'Eon, originating
probably in the story of his first residence at St Petersburg as a
female, began to excite public interest. In 1774 he published at
Amsterdam a book called Les Loisirs du Chevalier d'Eon, which
stimulated gossip. Bets were frequently laid on the subject,
and an action raised before Lord Mansfield in 1777 for the re-
covery of one of these bets brought the question to a judicial
decision, by which d'Eon was declared a female. A month after
the trial he returned to France, having received permission to do
so as the result of negotiations in which Beaumarchais was em-
ployed as agent. The conditions were that he was to deli vcr^ip
certain state documents in his possession, and to wear the dress
of a female. The reason for the latter of these stipulations has
never been clearly explained, but he complied with it to the
close of his life. In 1 784 he received permission to visit London
for the purpose of bringing back his library and other property.
He did not, however, return to France, though after the Revolu-
tion he sent a letter, usjng the name of Madame d'Eon, in which
be offered to serve in the republican army. He continued to
dre as a lady, and took pan in fencing matches with success,
though at last in 1706 he was badly hurt in one. He died in
London on the 22nd of May 1810. During the closing years of
his life he is said to have enjoyed a small pension from George III.
'But<
.: i . )
Lang's Hittorual Sfysleries, pp. 241-243, where this traeli-
unt u discoMed and rejectee!.
A post-mortem examination of the body conclusively established
the fact that d'Eon was a man.
The best modern accounts arc in the due de Broglie's Lt Secret
du rot (1888); Captain I. Buchan Telfer's Strange Career of the
Chevalier d'Eon (1888); Octave Homberg and Fernand Joussclin,
Lt Chevalier d'Eon (1904) ; and A. Lang's Historical Mysteries (1904;.
EOTVOS, J6ZSEF, BARON (1813-1871), Hungarian writer and
statesman, the son of Baron Ignacz Eotvos and the baroness
Lilian, was born at Buda on the ijth of September 1813. After
an excellent education he entered the civil service as a vice-
notary, and was early introduced to political life by his father.
He also spent many years in western Europe, assimilating the
new ideas both literary and political, and making the acquaint-
ance of the leaders of the Romantic school. On his return to
Hungary he wrote his first political work, Prison Reform; and
at the diet of 1830-1840 he made a great impression by his
eloquence and learning. One of his first speeches (published,
with additional matter, in 1841) warmly advocated Jewish
emancipation. Subsequently, in the columns of the Pesti Hirlap,
Eotvos disseminated his progressive ideas farther afield, his
standpoint being that the necessary reforms could only be
carried out administratively by a responsible and purely national
government. The same sentiments pervade his novel The
Village Notary (1844-1846), one of the classics of the Magyar
literature, as well as in the less notable romance Hungary in
1514, and the comedy Long live Equality! In 1842 he married
Anna Rosty, but his happy domestic life did not interfere with
his public career. He was now generally regarded as one of the
leading writers and politicians of Hungary, while the charm
of his oratory was such that, whenever the archduke palatine
Joseph desired to have a full attendance in the House of Mag-
nates, he called upon Edtvos to address it. The February
revolution of 1848 was the complete triumph of Eotvos' ideas,
and he held the portfolio of public worship and instruction in the
first responsible Hungarian ministry. But his influence extended
far beyond his own department. Eotvos, Deak and SzechSnyi
represented the pacific, moderating influence in the council of
ministers, but when the premier, Batthyany, resigned, Eotvos,
in despair, retired for a time to Munich. Yet, though withdrawn
from the tempests of the War of Independence, he continued to
serve his country with his pen. His Influence of the Ruling Ideas
of the igth Century on the State (Pest, 1851-1854, German editions
at Vienna and Leipzig the same year) profoundly influenced
literature and public opinion in Hungary. On his return home,
in 1851, he kept resolutely aloof from all political movements.
In 1859 he published The Guarantees of the Power and Unity of
Austria (Ger. ed. Leipzig, same year), in which he tried to arrive
at a compromise between personal union and ministerial responsi-
bility on the one hand and centralization on the other. After the
Italian war, however, such a halting-place was regarded as in-
adequate by the majority of the nation. In the diet of 1861
Eotvos was one of the most loyal followers of Deak, and his
speech in favour of the " Address " (see DEAK, FRANCIS) made
a great impression at Vienna. The enforced calm which prevailed
during the next few years enabled him to devote himself once
more to literature, and, in 1866, he was elected president of the
Hungarian academy. In the diets of 1865 and 1867 he fought
zealously by the side of Deak, with whose policy he now^com-
pletely associated himself. On the formation of the Andrissy
cabinet (Feb. 1867) he once more accepted the portfolio of public
worship and education, being the only one of the ministers of
1848 who thus returned to office. He had now, at last, the
opportunity of realizing the ideals of a lifetime. That very year
the diet passed his bill for the emancipation of the Jews; though
his further efforts in the direction of religious liberty were less
successful, owing to the opposition of the Catholics. But his
greatest achievement was the National Schools Act, the most
complete system of education provided for Hungary since the
days of Maria Theresa. Good Catholic though he was (in matters
of religion he had been the friend and was the disciple of Mont-
alembert), Eotvos looked with disfavour on the dogma of papal
infallibility, promulgated in 1870, and when the bishop of
666
EPAMINONDAS EPEE
Fehervar proclaimed it, Eotvos cited him to appear at the capital
ad audiendum iierbum regium. He was a constant defender of
the composition with Austria (Ausgleick), and during the absence
of Andrassy used to preside over the council of ministers; but
the labours of the last few years were too much for his failing
health, and he died at Pest on the and of February 1871. On the
3rd of May 1879 a statue was erected to him at Pest in the square
which bears his name.
\ Eotvos occupied as prominent a place in Hungarian literature
as in Hungarian politics. His peculiarity, both as a politician
and as a statesman, lies in the fact that he was a true philosopher,
a philosopher at heart as well as in theory; and in his poems and
novels he clothed in artistic forms all the great ideas for which
he contended in social and political life. The best of his verses
are to be found in his ballads, but his poems are insignificant
compared with his romances. It was The Carthusians, written
on the occasion of the floods at Pest in 1838, that first took the
public by storm. The Magyar novel was then in its infancy,
being chiefly represented by the historico-epics of Josika. Eotvos
first modernized it, giving prominence in his pages to current
social problems and political aspirations. The famous Village
Notary came still nearer to actual life, while Hungary in 1514,
in which the terrible Dozsa Jacquerie (see DOZSA) is so vividly
described, is especially interesting because it rightly attributes
the great national catastrophe of Mohacs to the blind selfishness
of the Magyar nobility and the intense sufferings of the people.
Yet, as already stated, all these books are written with a moral
purpose, and their somewhat involved and difficult style is,
nowadays at any rate, a trial to those who are acquainted with
the easy, brilliant and lively novels of Jokai.
The best edition of Eotvos' collected works is that of 1891, in
17 vols. Comparatively few of his writings have been translated,
but there are a good English version (London, 1850) and numerous
German versions of The Village Notary, while The Emancipation
of the Jews has been translated into Italian and German (Pest, 1841-
1842), and a German translation of Hungary in 1514, under the title
of Der Bauernkrieg in Ungarn was published at Pest in 1850.
See A. Ban, Life and Art of Baron Joseph Eotvos (Hung.) (Buda-
pest, 1902); Zoltan Ferenczi, Baron Joseph Eotvos (Hung.) (Buda-
pest, 1903) [this is the best biography]; and M. Berkovics,
Baron Joseph Eotvos and the French Literature (Hung.) (Budapest,
1904). (R. N. B.)
EPAMINONDAS (c. 418-362), Theban general and statesman,
born about 418 B.C. of a noble but impoverished family. For
his education he was chiefly indebted to Lysis of Tarentum, a
Pythagorean exile who had found refuge with his father Polymnis.
He first comes into notice in the attack upon Mantineia in 385,
when he fought on the Spartan side and saved the life of his future
colleague Pelopidas. In his youth Epaminondas took little
part in public affairs; he held aloof from the political assassina-
tions which preceded the Theban insurrection of 379. But in the
following campaigns against Sparta he rendered good service in
organizing the Theban defence. In 371 he represented Thebes
at the congress in Sparta, and by his refusal to surrender the
Boeotian cities under Theban control prevented the conclusion
of a general peace. In the ensuing campaign he commanded
the Boeotian army which met the Peloponnesian levy at Leuctra,
and by a brilliant victory on this site, due mainly to his daring
innovations in the tactics of the heavy infantry, established at
once the predominance of Thebes among the land-powers of
Greece and his own fame as the greatest and most original of
Greek generals. At the instigation of the Peloponnesian states
which armed against Sparta in consequence of this battle,
Epaminondas in 370 led a large host into Laconia; though
unable to capture Sparta he ravaged its territory and dealt a
lasting blow at Sparta's predominance in Peloponnesus by liber-
ating the Messenians and rebuilding their capital at Messene.
Accused on his return to Thebes of having exceeded the term of
his command, he made good his defence and was re-elected
boeotarch. In 369 he forced the Isthmus lines and secured
Sicyon for Thebes, but gained no considerable successes. In the
following year he served as a common soldier in Thessaly, and
upon being reinstated in command contrived the safe retreat
of the Theban army from a difficult position. Returning to
Thessaly next year at the head of an army he procured the
liberation of Pelopidas from the tyrant Alexander of Pherae
without striking a blow. In his third expedition (366) to Pelo-
ponnesus, Epaminondas again eluded the Isthmus garrison and
won over the Achaeans to the Theban alliance. Turning his
attention to the growing maritime power of Athens, Epaminondas
next equipped a fleet of 100 triremes, and during a cruise to the
Propontis detached several states from the Athenian con-
federacy. When subsequent complications threatened the
position of Thebes in Peloponnesus he again mustered a large
army in order to crush the newly formed Spartan league (362).
After some masterly operations between Sparta and Mantineia,
by which he nearly captured both these towns, he engaged in a
decisive battle on the latter site, and by his vigorous shock
tactics gained a complete victory over his opponents (see
MANTINEIA). Epaminondas himself received a severe wound
during the combat, and died soon after the issue was decided..
His title to fame rests mainly on his brilliant qualities both
as a strategist and as a tactician; his influence on military art
in Greece was of the greatest. For the purity and uprightness
of his character he likewise stood in high repute; his culture and
eloquence equalled the highest Attic standard. In politics his
chief achievement was the final overthrow of Sparta's predomin-
ance in the Peloponnese; as a constructive statesman he displayed
no special talent, and the lofty pan-Hellenic ambitions which are
imputed to him at any rate never found a practical expression.
Cornelius Nepos, Vita Epaminondae; Diodorus xv. 52-88;
Xenophon, Hellenica, vii. ; L. Pomtow, Das Leben des Epaminondas
(Berlin, 1870) ; von Stein, Geschichte der spartanischen und thebani-
schen Hegemonie (Dorpat, 1884), pp. 123 sqq. ; H. Swoboda in Pauly-
Wissowa, Realencyclopadie, \. pt. 2 (Stuttgart, 1905). pp. 2674-2707;
also ARMY: History, 6. (M. O. B. C.)
EPARCH, an official, a governor of a province of Roman
Greece, rapx s > whose title was equivalent to, or represented
that of the Roman praefectus. The area of his administration
was called an eparchy (errapxta). The term survives as one of
the administrative units of modern Greece, the country being
divided into nomarchies, subdivided into eparchies, again sub-
divided into demarchies (see GREECE: Local Administration).
" Eparch " and " eparchy " are also used in the Russian Orthodox
Church for a bishop and his diocese respectively.
EPAULETTE (a French word, from epaule, a shoulder),
properly a shoulder-piece, and so applied to the shoulder-knot of
ribbon to which a scapulary was attached, worn by members of a
religious order. The military usage was probably derived from
the metal plate (epauliere) which protected the shoulder in the
defensive armour of the i6th century. It was first used merely
as a shoulder knot to fasten the baldric, and the application of
it to mark distinctive grades of rank was begun in France at the
suggestion, it is said, of Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, due de
Belle-Isle, in 1759- In modern times it always appears as a
shoulfler ornament for military and naval uniforms. At first it
consisted merely of a fringe hanging from the end of the shoulder-
strap or cord over the sleeve, but towards the end of the i8th
century it became a solid ornament, consisting of a flat shoulder-
piece, extended beyond the point of the shoulder into an oval
plate, from the edge of which hangs a thick fringe, in the case of
officers of gold or silver. The epaulette is worn in the British
navy by officers above the rank of sub-lieutenant; in the army
it ceased to be worn about 1855. It is worn by officers in the
United States navy above the rank of ensign; since 1872 it is
only worn by general officers in the army. In most other
countries epaulettes are worn by officers, and in the French
army by the men also, with a fringe of worsted, various dis-
tinctions of shape and colour being observed between ranks,
corps and arms of the service. The " scale " is similar to the
epaulette, but has no fringe.
EPEE, CHARLES-MICHEL, ABBE DEL' (1712-1789), celebrated
for his labours in behalf of the deaf and dumb, was born at Paris
on the 25th of November 1712, being the son of the king's archi-
tect. He studied for the church, but having declined to sign a
religious formula opposed to the doctrines of the Jansenists, he
was denied ordination by the bishop of his diocese. He then
EPEE-DE-COMBAT
667.
devoted himself to the study of law; but about the time of his
admission to the bar of Paris, the bishop of Troyes granted him
ordination, and offered him a canonry in his cathedral. This
bishop died soon after, and the abW, coming to Paris, was, on
account of his relations with Soanen, the famous Jansenist,
deprived of his ecclesiastical functions by the archbishop of
Beaumont. About the same time it happened that he heard
of two deaf mutes whom a priest lately dead had been endeavour-
ing to instruct, and he offered to take his place. The Spaniard
Pereira was then in Paris, exhibiting the results he had obtained
in the education of deaf mutes; and it has been affirmed that
it was from him that Epee obtained his manual alphabet. The
abbe, however, affirmed that he knew nothing of Pereira's
method; and whether he did or not, there can be no doubt that
he attained far greater success than Pereira or any of his prede-
cessors, and that the whole system now followed in the instruction
of deaf mutes virtually owes its origin to his intelligence and
devotion. In 1755 he founded, for this beneficent purpose, a
school which he supported at his own expense until his death,
and which afterwards was succeeded by the " Institution
Nationale des Sourds Muets a Paris," founded by the National
Assembly in 1701. He died on the ajrd of December 1789.
In 1838 a bronze monument was erected over his grave in the
church of Saint Roch. He published various books on his
method of instruction, but that published in 1784 virtually
supersedes all others. It is entitled La Veritable Manitre d'in-
slruire Its sourds el mutts, confirmee par une tongue experience.
He also began a Dictionnaire general des signes, which was com-
pleted by his successor, the abbe Sicard.
fcpfcE-DE-COMBAT, a weapon still used in France for duel-
ling, and there and elsewhere (blunted, of course) for exercise
and amusement in fencing (?..). It has a sharp-pointed blade,
about 35 in. long, without any cutting edge, and the guard, or
shell, is bowl-shaped, having its convexity towards the point.
The tpte is the modern representative of the small-sword, and
both are distinguished from the older rapier, mainly by being
several inches shorter and much lighter in weight. The small-
sword (called thus in opposition to the heavy cavalry broadsword) ,
was worn by gentlemen in full dress throughout the iSth century,
and it still survives in the modern English court costume.
Fencing practice was originally carried on without the pro-
tection of any mask for the face. Wire masks were not in-
vented till near 1780 by a famous fencing-master, La Boessiere
the elder, and did not come into general use until much later.
Consequently, in order to avoid dangerous accidents to the
face, and especially the eyes, it was long the rigorous etiquette
of the fencing-room that the point should always be kept low.
In the 1 7th century a Scottish nobleman, who had procured
the assassination of a fencing-master in revenge for having had
one of his eyes destroyed by the latter at sword-play, pleaded on
his trial for murder that it was the custom to " spare the face."
Rowlandson's well-known drawing of a fencing bout, dated
1787, shows two accomplished amateurs making a foil assault
without masks, while in the background a less practised one
is having a wire mask tied on.
For greater safety the convention was very early arrived at that
no hits should count in a fencing-bout except those landing on the
breast. Thus sword-play soon became so unpractical as to lose
much of its value as a training for war or the duel. For, hits
with " sharps " take effect wherever they are made, and many
an expert fencer of the old school has been seriously wounded, or
lost his life in a duel, through forgetting that very simple fact.
Strangely enough, when masks began to be generally worn,
and the/mre* (anglice, " foil," a cheap and light substitute for
the real epee) was invented, fencing practice became gradually
even more conventional than before. No one seems to have
understood that with masks all the conventions could be safely
done away with, root and branch, and sword-practice might
assume all the semblance of reality. Nevertheless it should be
dearly recognized that the basis of modern foil-fencing was laid
with the epee or small-sword alone, in and before the days of
Angelo, of Daaet, and the famous chevalier de St George, who
were among the first toadopt the fleuret also. All the illustrious
French professors who came after them, such as La Boessiere the
younger, Lafaugere, Jean Louis, Cordelois, Grisier, Bertrand and
Robert, with amateurs like the baron d'Ezpelta, were foil-players
pure and simple, whose reputations were gained before the
modern 6p6e play had any recognized status. It was reserved
for Jacob, a Parisian fencing-master, to establish in the last
quarter of the ipth century a definite method of the dpee,
which differed essentially from all its forerunners. He was soon
Followed by Baudry, Spinnewyn, Laurent and Ayat. The
methods of the four first-named, not differing much inter se,
are based on the perception that in the real sword fight, where
hits are effective on all parts of the person, the " classical "
bent-arm guard, with the foil inclining upwards, is hopelessly
bad. It offers a tempting mark in the exposed sword-arm itself,
while the point requires a movement to bring it in line for the
attack, which involves a fatal loss of time. The ipie is really
in the nature of a short knee held in one hand, and for both
rapidity and precision of attack, as well as for the defence of the
sword-arm and the body behind it, a position of guard with the
arm almost fully extended, and (pie in line with the forearm,
is far the safest. Against this guard the direct lunge at the
body is impossible, except at the risk of a mutual or double
hit (/c coup des deux veuves). No safe attack at the face or
body can be made without first binding or beating, opposing or
evading the adverse blade, and such an attack usually involves
an initial forward movement. Beats and binds of the blade, with
retreats of the body, or counter attacks with opposition, replace
the old foil-parries in most instances, except at close quarters.
And much of the offensive is reduced to thrusts at the wrist or
forearm, intended to disable without seriously wounding the
adversary. The direct lunge (coup-droit) at the body often
succeeds in tournaments, but usually at the cost of a counter hit,
which, though later in time, would be fatal with sharp weapons.
Ayat's method, as might be expected from a first-class foil-
player, is less simple. Indeed for years, too great simplicity
marked the most successful dp6e-play, because it usually gained
its most conspicuous victories over those who attempted a foil
defence, and whose practice gave them no safe strokes for an
attack upon the extended blade. But by degrees the pists
themselves discovered new ways of attacking with comparative
safety, and at the present day a complete 6p<:e-player is master
of a large variety of attractive as well as 'scientific movements,
both of attack and defence.
It was mainly by amateurs that this development was achieved.
Perhaps the most conspicuous representative of the new school is
J. Joseph-Renaud, a consummate swordsman, who has also been
a champion foil-player. Lucien Gaudin, Alibert and Edmond
Wallace may be also mentioned as among the most skilful
amateurs, Albert Ayat and L. Bouchf as professors all of Paris.
Belgium, Italy and England have also produced cpcists quite of
the first rank
The epee lends itself to competition far better than the foil,
and the revival of the small-sword soon gave rise in France to
" pools " and " tournaments " in which there was the keenest
rivalry between all comers.
In considering the 6p6e from a British point of view, it may be
mentioned that it was first introduced publicly in London by
C. Newton-Robinson at an important assault-at-arms held in the
Steinway Hall on the 4th May 1000. Professor Spinnewyn was
the principal demonstrator, with his pupil, the late Willy
Sulzbacher. The next day was held at the Inns* of Court R. V.
School of Arms, Lincoln's Inn, the first English open epee tourna-
ment for amateurs. It was won by W. Sulzbacher, C. Newton-
Robinson being second, and Paul Ettlinger, a French resident in
London, third. This was immediately followed by the institu-
tion of the Epee Club of London, which, under the successive
residencies of a Veteran swordsman, Sir Edward Jenkinson, and
of Lord Desborough, subsequently held annual open international
tournaments. The winners were: in 1901, Willy Sulzbacher;
1002, Robert Montgomerie; 1903, the marquis de Chasseloup-
Laubat; 1904, J. J.-Renaud; 1905, R. Montgomerie. In 1906
668
EPEE-DE-COMBAT
the Amateur Fencing Association for the first time recognized
the best-placed Englishman, Edgar Seligman (who was the
actual winner), as the English epee champion. In 1907
R. Montgomerie was again the winner, in 1908 C. L. Daniell,
in 1909 R. Montgomerie.
Among the most active of the English amateurs who were the
earliest to perceive the wonderful possibilities of epee-play, it
is right to mention Captain Hutton, Lord Desborough, Sir
Cosmo Duff-Gordon, Bart., Sir Charles Dilke, Bart., Lord
Howard de Walden, Egerton Castle, A. S. Cope, R.A., W. H. C.
Staveley, C. F. Clay, Lord Morpeth, Evan James, Paul
King, J. B. Cunliffe, John Norbury, Jr., Theodore A. Cook,
John Jenkinson, R. Montgomerie, S. Martineau, E. B. Milnes,
H. J. Law, R. Merivale, the Marquis of Dufferin, Hugh Pollock,
R. W. Doyne, A. G. Ross, the Hon. Ivor Guest and Henry
Balfour.
Among foreign amateurs who did most to promote the use of
the epee in England were Messrs P. Ettlinger, Anatole Paroissien,
J. Joseph-Renaud, W. Sulzbacher, Rene Lacroix, H. G. Berger
and the Marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat.
Epee practice became popular among Belgian and Dutch
fencers about the same time as in England, and this made it
possible to set on foot international team-contests for amateurs,
which have done much to promote good feeling and acquaintance-
ship among swordsmen of several countries. In 1903 a series of
international matches between teams of six was inaugurated in
Paris. Up to 1909 the French team uniformly won the first place,
with Belgium or England second.
English fencers who were members of these international
teams were Lord Desborough, Theodore A. Cook, Bowden,
Cecil Haig, J. Norbury, Jr., R. Montgomerie, John Jenkin-
son, 'F. Townsend, W. H. C. Staveley, S. Martineau, C. L.
Daniell, W. Godden, Captain Haig, M. D. V. Holt, Edgar
Seligman, C. Newton-Robinson, A. V. Buckland, P. M. Davson,
E. M. Amphlett and L. V. Fildes. In 1906 a British epee team of
four, consisting of Lord Desborough, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon,
Bart., Edgar Seligman and C. Newton-Robinson, with Lord
Howard de Walden and Theodore Cook as reserves (the latter
acting as captain of the team), went to Athens to compete in
the international match at the Olympic games. After defeat-
ing the Germans rather easily, the team opposed and worsted the
Belgians. It thus found itself matched against the French in
the final, the Greek team having been beaten by the French
and the Dutch eliminated by the Belgians. After a very close
fight the result was officially declared a tie. This was the first
occasion upon which an English fencing team had encountered
a French one of the first rank upon even terms. In fighting off the
tie, however, the French were awarded the first prize and the
Englishmen the second.
In the Olympic games of London, 1908, the Epee International
Individual Tournament was won by Alibert (France), but
Montgomerie, Haig and Holt (England) took the 4th, sth, and
8th places in the final pool. The result of the International
Team competition was also very creditable to the English repre-
sentatives, Daniell, Haig, Holt, Montgomerie and Amphlett,
who by defeating the Dutch, Germans, Danes and Belgians took
second place to the French. Egerton Castle was captain of the
English team.
In open International Tournaments on the Continent, English
epeists have also been coming to the front. None had won such
a competition up to 1909 outright, but the following had reached
the final pool'. C. Newton-Robinson, Brussels, 1901 (loth),
Etretat, 1904 (6th); E. Seligman, Copenhagen, 1907 (2nd), and
Paris, 1909 (i2th); R. Montgomerie, Paris, 1909 (sth); and
E. M. Amphlett, Paris, 1909 (loth).
The method of ascertaining the victor in 6p6e " tournaments "
is by dividing the competitors into "pools," usually of six or
eight fencers. Each of these fights an assault for first hit only,
with every other member of the same pool, and he who is least
often hit, or not at all, is returned the winner. If the competitors
are numerous, fresh pools are formed out of the first two, three
or four in each pool of the preliminary round, and so on, until a
small number are left in for a final pool, the winner of which is
the victor of the tournament.
Epee fencing can be, and often is, conducted indoors, but one
of its attractions consists in its fitness for open-air practice in
pleasant gardens.
In the use of the epee the most essential points are (i) the
position of the sword-arm, which, whether fully extended or not,
should always be so placed as to ensure the protection of the
wrist, forearm and elbow from direct thrusts, by the intervention
of the guard or shell; (2) readiness of the legs for instant advance
or retreat; and (3) the way in which the weapon is held, the best
position (though hard to acquire and maintain) being that
adopted by J. J. Renaud with the fingers over the grip, so that
a downward beat does not easily disarm.
The play of individuals is determined by their respective
temperaments and physical powers. But every fencer should
be always ready to deliver a well-aimed, swift, direct thrust at
any exposed part of the antagonist's arm, his mask or thigh.
Very tall men, who are usually not particularly quick on their
legs, should not as a rule attack, otherwise than by direct
thrusts, when matched against shorter men. For if they merely
extend their sword-arm in response to a simple attack, their
longer reach will ward it off with a stop or counter- thrust.
Short men can only attack them safely by beating, binding,
grazing, pressing or evading the blade, and the taller fencers
must be prepared with all the well-known parries and counters
to such offensive movements, as well as with the stop-thrust
to be made either with advancing opposition or with a retreat.
Fencers of small stature must be exceedingly quick on their
feet, unless they possess the art of parrying to perfection, and
even then, if slow to shift ground, they will continually be in
danger. With plenty of room, the quick mover can always
choose the moment when he will be within distance, for an attack
which his slower opponent will be always fearing and unable to
prevent or anticipate.
It is desirable to put on record the modern form of the weapon.
An average epee weighs, complete, about a pound and a half,
while a foil weighs approximately one-third less. The epee
blade is exactly like that of the old small-sword after the abandon-
ment of the " colichemarde " form, in which the "forte " of the blade
was greatly thickened. In length from guard or shell to point
it measures about 35 in., and in width at the shell about } Jths
of an inch. From this it gradually and regularly tapers to
the point. There is no cutting edge. The side of the epee
which is usually held uppermost is slightly concave, the other is,
strengthened with a midrib, nearly equal in thickness and
similar in shape to either half of the true blade. The material
is tempered steel. There is a haft or tang about 8 in. long, which
is pushed through a circular guard or shell (" coquille ") of convex
form, the diameter of which is normally 5 in. and the convexity
if in. The shell is of steel or aluminium, and if of the latter
metal, sometimes fortified at the centre with a disk of steel the
size of a crown piece. The insertion of the haft or tang through
the shell may be either central or excentric to the extent of about
i in., for the better protection of the outside of the forearm.
After passing through the shell, the haft of the blade is in-
serted in a grip or handle (" poignet "), averaging 7 in. in length
and of quadrangular section, which is made of tough wood
covered with leather, india-rubber, wound cord or other strong
material with a rough surface. The grip is somewhat wider than
its vertical thickness when held in the usual way, and it diminishes
gradually from shell to pommel for convenience of holding.
It should have a slight lateral curvature, so that in executing
circular movements the pommel is kept clear of the wrist. The
pommel, usually of steel, is roughly spherical or eight-sided,
and serves as a counterbalance. The end of the haft is riveted
through it, except in the case of " (p(es dfmontables," which are
the most convenient, as a blade may be changed by simply un-
screwing or unlocking the pommel.
An ep6e is well balanced and light in hand when, on poising
the blade across the forefinger, about i in. in advance of the shell,
it is in equilibrium.
EPERJES EPHEBI
669
For practice, the point is blunted to resemble the flat head of a
nail, and is made still more incapable of penetration by winding
around it a small ball of waxed thread, such as cobblers use.
This is called the " button." In competitions various forms of
" boutons marqururs," all of which are unsatisfactory, are
occasionally used. The " potnlr d'arrtt," like a small tin-tack
placed head downwards on the flattened point of the p6e, and
fastened on by means of the waxed thread, is, on the contrary,
most useful, by fixing in the clothes, to show where and when
a good hit has been made. The point need only protrude
about i' f th of an inch from the button. There are several
kinds of pointes d'arrtt. The best is called, after its inventor,
the " Leon Sazie," and has three blunt points of hardened
steel each slightly excentric. The single point is sometimes
prevented by the thickness of the button from scoring a
good hit.
A mask of wire netting is used to protect the face, and a
stout glove on the sword hand. It is necessary to wear strong
clothes and to pad the jacket and trousers at the most exposed
parts, in case the blade should break unnoticed. A vulnerable
spot, which ought to be specially padded, is just under the
sword-arm.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Among the older works on the history and
practice of the small-sword, or cp6e, are the following: The Scots
Frndnf- Master, or Compleat Small-swordsman, by W. H. Gent
(Sir William Hope, afterwards baronet) (Edinburgh, 1687), and
several other works by the same author, of later date, for which see
Sckooli and Masters of Feme, by Egerton Castle; Nouveau traitr de
la perfection sur le fait del armes, by P. G. F. Girard (Paris, 1736) ;
L'Ecole des armes, by M. Angclo (London, 1763) ; L'A rt des armes, by
M. Danet (2 voU., Paris, 1766-1767); Nouveau traite de I'art des
armes, by Nicolas Demeusc (Liege, 1778).
More modern are: Traite de Part des armes, by la B6essire, Jr.
(Paris, 1818); Les Armes el le duel, by A. Grisier (2nd ed., Paris,
1847); Les Secrets de I'epte, by the baron de Bazancourt (Paris,
1862); Schools and Masters of Fence, by Egerton Castle (London,
1885) ; Le Jen de 1'epet, by J. Jacob and Emit Andre (Paris, 1887) ;
L'Escrime pratique au XIX' siecle, by Ambroise Baudry (Paris) ;
L'Escrime a Fepte, by A. Spinnewyn and Paul Manonry (Paris, 1 898) ;
The Sword and the Centuries, by Captain Mutton (London, 1901 ) ; "The
Revival of the Small-sword, by C. Newton-Robinson, in the Nine-
teenth Century and After (London, January 1905) ; Nouveau Traite
de I'rpee. by Dr Edom, privately published (Paris, 1908); and, most
important of all, Methode d'escrime a I'epee, by J. Joscph-Renaud,
privately published (Paris, 1909). (C. . N. R.)
EPERJES, a town of Hungary, capital of the county of Saros,
100 m. N.E. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900) 13,098. It is
situated on the left bank of the river Tarcza, an affluent of the
Theiss, and has been almost completely rebuilt since a great fire
in 1887. Eperjes is one of the oldest towns of Hungary, and is
still partly surrounded by its old walls. It is the seat of a Greek-
Catholic bishop, and possesses a beautiful cathedral built in the
i8th century in late Gothic style. It possesses manufactures of
cloth, table-linen and earthenware, and has an active trade in
wine, linen, cattle and grain. About 2 m. to the south is S6var
with important salt-works.
In the same county, 28 m. by rail N. of Eperjes, is situated the
old town of Bdrtfa (pop. 6008), which possesses a Gothic church
from the i4th century, and an interesting town-hall, dating from
the 1 5th century, and containing very valuable archives. In
its neighbourhood, surrounded by pine forests, are the baths of
Bart fa, with twelve mineral springs iodate, ferruginous and
alkaline used for bathing and drinking.
About 6 m. N.W. of Eperjes is situated the village of Vords-
yigis, which contains the only opal mine in Europe. The opal
was mined here 800 yean ago, and the largest piece hitherto
found, weighing 2040 carats and estimated to have a value of
175,000, is preserved in the Court Museum at Vienna.
Eperjes was founded about the middle of the I2th century by
a German colony, and was elevated to the rank of a royal free
town in 1347 by Louis I. (the Great). It was afterwards fortified
and received special privileges. The Reformation found many
early adherents here, and the town played an important part
during the religious wars of the 1 7th century. It became famous
by the so-called " butchery of Eperjes," a tribunal instituted
by the Austrian general Caraffa in 1687, which condemned to
death and confiscated the property of a great number of citizens
accused of Protestantism. During the i6th and the i7th
centuries its German educational establishments enjoyed a
wide reputation.
EPERNAY, a town of northern France, capital of an arron-
dissement in the department of Marne, 88 m. E.N.E. of Paris
on the main line of the Eastern railway to Chalons-sur-Marnc.
Pop. (1906) 20,291. The town is situated on the left bank of the
Marne at the extremity of the pretty valley of the Cubry, by
which it is traversed. In the central and oldest quarter the
streets arc narrow and irregular; the surrounding suburbs arc
modern and more spacious, and that of La Folic, on the cast,
contains many handsome villas belonging to rich wine merchants.
The town has also extended to the right bank of the Marne.
One of its churches preserves a portal and stained-glass windows
of the i6th century, but the other public buildings are modern.
Epernay is best known as the principal enlrepdt of the Champagne
wines, which are bottled and kept in extensive vaults in the
chalk rock on which the town is built. The manufacture of
the apparatus and material used in the champagne industry
occupies many hands, and the Eastern Railway Company has
important workshops here. Brewing, and the manufacture of
sugar and of hats and caps, are also carried on. Epernay is the
seat of a sub-prefect and has tribunals of first instance and of
commerce, and communal colleges for girls and boys.
Epernay (Sparnacum) belonged to the archbishops of Reims
from the 5th to the loth century, at which period it came into
the possession of the counts of Champagne. It suffered severely
during the Hundred Years' War, and was burned by Francis I .
in 1544. It resisted Henry of Navarre in 1592, and Marshal
Biron fell in the attack which preceded its capture. In 1642
it was, along with Chateau-Thierry, erected into a duchy and
assigned to the duke of Bouillon.
EPERNON, a town of northern France in the department of
Eure-et-Loir, at the confluence of the Drouette and the Guesle,
17 m. N.E. of Chartres by rail. Pop. (1906) 2370. It belonged
originally to the counts of Montfort, who, in the nth century,
built a castle here of which the ruins are still left, and granted
a charter to the town. In the I3th century it became an inde-
pendent lordship, which remained attached to the crown of
Navarre till, in the i6th century, it was sold by King Henry
(afterwards King Henry IV. of France) to Jean Louis de Nogaret,
for whom it was raised to the rank of a duchy in 1581. The new
duke of Epernon was one of the favourites of Henry III., who
were called les Mignons; the king showered favours upon him,
giving him the posts of colonel-general in the infantry and of
admiral of France. Under the reign of Henry IV. he made
himself practically independent in his government of Provence.
He was instrumental in giving the regency to Marie de' Medici in
1610, and as a result exercised a considerable influence upon the
government. During his governorship of Guienne in 1622 he
had some scandalous scenes with the parlemcnt and the arch-
bishop of Bordeaux. He died in 1642. His eldest son, Henri de
Nogaret de la Valette, duke of Candale, served under Richelieu,
in the armies of Guienne, of Picardy and of Italy. The second
son of Jean Louis de Nogaret, Bernard, who was born in 1592,
and died in 1661, was, like his father, duke of Epernon, colonel-
general in the infantry and governor of Guienne. After his
death, the title of duke of Epernon was borne by the families of
Goth and of Pardaillan.
EPHEBEUM (from Gr. ifafios, a young man), in architecture,
a large hall in the ancient Palaestra furnished with scats
(Vitruvius v. u), the length of which should be a third larger
than the width. It served for the exercises of youths of from
sixteen to eighteen years of age.
EPHEBI (Gr. trl, and <J/3ij, i.e. " those who have reached
puberty "), a name specially given, in Athens and other Greek
towns, to a class" of young men from eighteen to twenty years of
age, who formed a sort of college under state control. On the
completion of his seventeenth year the Athenian youth attained
his civil majority, and, provided he belonged to the first three
property classes and passed the scrutiny (dontucuria) as to age,
670
EPHEMERIS EPHESIANS
civic descent and physical capability, was enrolled on the register
of his deme (\riiapxu<bv fpafifiarfiov). He thereby at once
became liable to the military training and duties, which, at least
in the earliest times, were the main object of the Ephebia.
In the time of Aristotle the names of the enrolled ephebi were
engraved on a bronze pillar (formerly on wooden tablets) in
front of the council-chamber. After admission to the college,
the ephebus took the oath of allegiance, recorded in Pollux and
Stobaeus (but not in Aristotle), in the temple of Aglaurus, and
was sent to Munychia or Acte to form one of the garrison. At
the end of the first year of training, the ephebi were reviewed,
and, if their performance was satisfactory, were provided by the
state with a spear and a shield, which, together with the chlamys
(cloak) and petasus (broad-brimmed hat), made up their equip-
ment. In their second year they were transferred to other
garrisons in Attica, patrolled the frontiers, and on occasion took
an active part in war. During these two years they were free
from taxation, and were not allowed (except in certain cases) to
appear in the law courts as plaintiffs or defendants. The ephebi
took part in some of the most important Athenian festivals.
Thus during the Eleusinia they were told off to fetch the sacred
objects from Eleusis and to escort the image of lacchus on the
sacred way. They also performed police duty at the meetings
of the ecclesia.
After the end of the 4th century B.C. the institution underwent
a radical change. Enrolment ceased to be obligatory, lasted
only for a year, and the limit of age was dispensed with. In-
scriptions attest a continually decreasing number of ephebi, and
with the admission of foreigners the college lost its representative
national character. This was mainly due to the weakening of
the military spirit and the progress of intellectual culture. The
military element was no longer all-important, and the ephebia
became a sort of university for well-to-do young men of good
family, whose social position has been compared with that of the
Athenian " knights " of earlier times. The institution lasted
till the end of the 3rd century A.D.
It is probable that the ephebia was in existence in the 5th
century B.C., and controlled by the Areopagus and strategus
as its moral and military supervisors. In the 4th century their
place was taken by ten sophronistae (one for each tribe), who, as
the name implies, took special interest in the morals of those
under them, their military training being in the hands of experts,
of whom the chief were the hoplomachus, the aconlistes, the
toxotes and the aphetes (instructors respectively in the use of
arms, javelin-throwing, archery and the use of artillery engines).
Later, the sophronistae were superseded by a single official called
cosmeles, elected for a year by the people, who appointed the
instructors. When the ephebia instead of a military college
became a university, the military instructors were replaced by
philosophers, rhetoricians, grammarians and artists. In Roman
imperial times several new officials were introduced, one of special
importance being the director of the Diogeneion, where youths
under age were trained for the ephebia. At this period the college
of ephebi was a miniature city; its members called themselves
" citizens," and it possessed an archon, strategus, herald and
other officials, after the model of ancient Athens.
There is an extensive class of inscriptions, ranging from the 3rd
century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D., containing decrees relating to
the ephebi, their officers and instructors, and lists of the same, and
a whole chapter (42) of the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens is
devoted to the subject. The most important treatises on the
subject are: W. Dittenberger, De ephebis Atticis (Gottingen, 1863) ;
A. Dumont, Essai sur I'ephebie attique (1875-1876); L. Grasberger,
Erziehung und Unterricht im klassichen Altertum, iii. (Wurzburg,
1881); J. P. Mahaffy, Old Greek Education (1881); P. Girard,
L' Education athenienne au V" et IV" siede avant J.-C. (2nd ed., 1891),
and article in Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des antiquites
which contains further bibliographical references; G. Gilbert, The
Constitutional Antiquities of Athens (Eng. tr., 1895); G. Busolt,
Die griechischen Stoats- und Rechtsaltertumer (1892); T. Thalheim
and J. Ohler in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft, v. pt. 2 (1905) ; W. W. Capes, University Life
in Ancient Athens (1877).
EPHEMERIS (Greek for a " diary "), a table giving for stated
times the apparent position and other numerical particulars
relating to a heavenly body. The Astronomical Ephemeris,
familiarly known as the " Nautical Almanac," is a national annual
publication containing ephemerides of the principal or more
conspicuous heavenly bodies, elements and other data of eclipses,
and other matter useful to the astronomer and navigator. The
governments of the United Kingdom, United States, France,
Germany and Spain publish such annals.
EPHESIANS, EPISTLE TO THE. This book of the New
Testament, the most general and least occasional and polemic
of all the Pauline epistles, a large section of which seems almost
like the literary elaboration of a theological topic, may best be
described as a solemn oration, addressed to absent hearers, and
intended not primarily to clarify their minds but to stir theii
emotions. It is thus a true letter, but in the grand style, verging
on the nature not of an essay but a poem. Ephesians has been
called " the crown of St Paul's writings," and whether it be
measured by its theological or its literary interest and import-
ance, it can fairly dispute with Romans the claim to be his greatest
epistle. In the public and private use of Christians some parts
of Ephesians have been among the most favourite of all New
Testament passages. Like its sister Epistle to the Colossians, it
represents, whoever wrote it, deep experience and bold use of
reflection on the meaning of that experience; if it be from the
pen of the Apostle Paul, it reveals to us a distinct and important
phase of his thought.
To the nature of the epistle correspond well the facts of its
title and address. The title " To the Ephesians " is found in the
Muratorian canon, in Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of
Alexandria, as well as in all the earliest MSS. and versions.
Marcion, however (c. A.D. 150), used and recommended copies
with the title " To the Laodiceans." This would be inexplicable
if Eph. i.i had read.in Marcion's copies, as it does in most ancient
authorities, " To the saints which are at Ephesus "; but in fact
the words tv 'Efcay of verse i were probably absent. They
were not contained in the text used by Origen (d. 253); Basil
(d- 379) says that " ancient copies " omitted the words; and
they are actually omitted by Codices B (Vaticanus, 4th century)
and K (Sinaiticus, 4th century), together with Codex 67 (nth
century). The words " in Ephesus" were thus probably
originally lacking in the address, and were inserted from the
suggestion of the title. Either the address was general (" to
the saints who are also faithful ") or else a blank was left. In
the latter case the name may have been intended to be supplied
orally, in communicating the letter, or a different name may
have been written in each of the individual copies. Under any
of these hypotheses the address would indicate that we have
a circular letter, written to a group of churches, doubtless in
Asia Minor. This would account for the general character of the
epistle, as well as for the entire and striking absence of personal
greetings and of concrete allusions to existing circumstances
among the readers. It appears to have drawn its title, " To the
Ephesians," from one of the churches for which it was intended,
perhaps the one from which a copy was secured when Paul's
epistles were collected, shortly before or after the year too.
That our epistle is the one referred to in Col. iv. 16, which was
to be had by the Colossians from Laodicea, is not unlikely.
Such an identification doubtless led Marcion to alter the title
in his copies.
The structure of Ephesians is epistolary; it opens with the
usual salutation (1.1-2) and closes with a brief personal note and
formal farewell (vi.2i-24). In the intervening body of the epistle
the writer also follows the regular form of a letter. In an ordinary
Greek letter (as the papyri show) we should find the salutation
followed by an expression of gratification over the corre-
spondent's good health and of prayer for its continuance. Paul
habitually expanded and deepened this, and, in this case, that
paragraph is enormously enlarged, so that it may be regarded
as including chapters i.-iii., and as carrying the main thought
of the epistle. Chapters iv.-vi. merely make application of the
main ideas worked out in chapters i.-iii. Throughout the epistle
we have a singular combination of the seemingly desultory
method of a letter, turning aside at a word and straying wherever
EPHESIANS
671
the mood of the moment leads, with the firm, forward march
of earnest and mature thought. In this combination resides the
doubtless unconscious but nevertheless real literary art of the
competition.
The fundamental theme of the epistle is The Unity of Mankind
I'M CArirt, and hence the Unity and Divinity of the Church of
Christ. God's purpose from eternity was to unite mankind in
Christ, and so to bring human history to its goal, the New Man,
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Those who
have believed in Christ are the present representatives and result
of this purpose; and a clear knowledge of the purpose itself,
the secret of the ages, has now been revealed to men. This theme
is not formally discussed, as in a theological treatise, but is
rather, as it were, celebrated in lofty eulogy and application.
First, in chapters i.-iii., under the mask of a conventional
congratulatory paragraph, the writer declares at length the
privileges which this great fact confers upon those who by faith
receive the gift of God, and he is thus able to touch on the various
aspects of his subject. Then, in chapters iv.-vi., he turns, with
a characteristic and impressive " therefore," to set forth the
obligations which correspond to the privileges he has just
expounded. This author is indeed interested to prosecute
vigorous and substantial thinking, but the mainspring of his
interest is the conviction that such thought is significant for
inner and outer life.
The relationship, both literary and theological, between the
epistle to the Ephesians and that to the Colossians (g.v.) is very
close. It is to be seen in many of the prominent ideas of the two
writings, especially in the developed view of the central position
of Christ in the whole universe; in the conception of the Church
as Christ's body, of which He is the head; in the thought of
the great Mystery, once secret, now revealed. There is further
resemblance in the formal moral code, arranged by classes of
persons, and having much the same contents in the two epistles
(Eph. v. 22-vi. 9; Col. Hi. i8-iv. i). In both, also, Tychicus
carries the letter, and in almost identical language the readers
are told that he will by word of mouth give fuller information
about the apostle's affairs (Eph. vi. 21-22; Col. iv. 7-8). More-
over, in a great number of characteristic phrases and even whole
verses the two are alike. Compare, for instance, Eph. i. 7,
CoL i. 14; Eph. i. 10, Col. i. 20; Eph. i. 21, Col. i. 16; Eph. i.
22, 23, Col. i. 18, 19; Eph. ii. 5, Col. ii. 13; Eph. ii. n, Col.
ii. ii ; Eph. ii. 16, Col. i. 20; Eph. iii. 2, 3, Col. i. 25, 26, and
many other parallels. Only a comparison in detail will give a
true impression of the extraordinary degree of resemblance.
Yet the two epistles do not follow the same course of thought,
and their contents cannot be successfully exhibited in a common
synoptical abstract. Each has its independent occasion, purpose,
character and method; but they draw largely on a common
store of thought and use common means of expression.
The question of the authorship of Ephesians is less important to
the student of the history of Christian thought than in the case
of most of the Pauline epistles, because of the generalness of tone
and the lack of specific allusion in the work. It purports to be
by Paul, and was held to be his by Man ion and in the MUM
torian canon, and by Irenacus, Tertullian and Clement of
Alexandria, all writing at the end of the 2nd century. No doubt
of the Pauline authorship was expressed in ancient times; nor
is there any lack of early use by writers who make no direct
quotation, to raise doubts as to the genuineness of the epistle.
The influence of its language is probably to be seen in Ignatius,
Polycarp and Hennas, less certainly in the epistle of Barnabas.
Some resemblances of expression in Clement of Rome and in
Second Clement may have significance. There is here abundant
proof that the epistle was in existence, and was highly valued
and influential with leaders of Christian thought, about the
year too, when persons who had known Paul well were still
living.
To the evidence given above may be added the use of Ephesians
in the First Epistle of Peter. If the latter epistle could be finally
established as genuine, or its date fixed, it would give important
evidence with regard to Ephesians; but in the present state
of discussion we must confine ourselves to pointing out the fact.
Some of the more striking points of contact are the following:
Eph. i. 3, i Peter i. 3; Eph. i. 20, 21, i Peter iii. 22; Eph.
ii. 2, 3, iv. 17, i Peter iv. 3; Eph. ii. 21, 22, i Peter ii. 5; Eph.
v. 22, i Peter iii. i, 2; Eph. v. 25, i Peter iii. 7, 8; Eph. vi. 5,
i Peter ii: 18, 19. A similar relation exists between Romans and
i Peter. In both cases the dependence is clearly on the part of
i Peter; for ideas and phrases that in Ephesians and Romans
have their firm place in closely wrought sequences, are found in
/ Peter with less profound significance and transformed into
smooth and pointed maxims and apophlhegmatic sentences.
Objections to the genuineness of Ephesians have been urged
since the early part of the ipth century. The influence of
Schleiermacher, whose pupil Lconhard Usteri in his Entwickelung
der paulinischen Lehrbegriffs (1824) expressed strong doubts as
to Ephesians, carried weight. He held that Tychicus was the
author. De Wctte first (1826) doubted, then (1843) denied
that the epistle was by Paul. The chief attack came, however,
from Baur (1845) and his colleagues of the Tubingen school.
Against the genuineness have appeared Ewald, Renan, Hausrath,
Hilgenfeld, Ritschl, Pfleiderer, Weizsacker, Holtzmann, von
Soden, Schmiedel, von DobschUtz and many others. On the
other hand, the epistle has been defended by Bleek, Neauder,
Reuss, B. Weiss, Meyer, Sabatier, Lightfoot, Hort, Sanday,
Bacon, Jiilicher, Harnack, Zahn and many others. In recent
years a tendency has been apparent among critics to accept
Ephesians as a genuine work of Paul. This has followed the
somewhat stronger reaction in favour of Colossians.
Before speaking of the more fundamental grounds urged for
the rejection of Ephesians, we may look at various points of
detail which are of less significance.
(i) The style has unquestionably a slow and lumbering
movement, in marked contrast with the quick effectiveness of
Romans and Galatians. The sentences are much longer and less
vivacious, as any one can see by a superficial examination.
But nevertheless there are parts of the earlier epistles where the
same tendency appears (e.g. Rom. iii. 23-26), and on the whole
the style shows Paul's familiar traits. (2) The vocabulary is
said to be peculiar. But it can be shown to be no more so than
that of Galatians (Zahn, Einleilung, i. pp. 365 ff.). On the
other hand, some words characteristic of Paul's use appear
(notably dub, five times), and the most recent and careful
investigation of Paul's vocabulary (Nageli, Wortschatz der
paulinischen Briefe, 1905) concludes that the evidence speaks
for Pauline authorship. (3) Certain phrases have aroused
suspicion, for instance, " the devil" (vi. n, instead of Paul's
usual term "Satan"); "his holy apostles and prophets" (iii. 5,
as smacking of later f ulsomeness) ; "I Paul" (iii. i); "unto
me, who am less than the least of all the saints " (iii. 8, as ex-
aggerated). But these cases, when properly understood and
calmly viewed, do not carry conviction against the epistle. (4)
The relation of Ephesians to Colossians would be a serious diffi-
culty only if Colossians were held to be not by Paul. Those who
hold to the genuineness of Colossians find it easier to explain the
resemblances as the product of the free working of the same
mind, than as due to a deliberate imitator. Holtzmann's
elaborate and very ingenious theory (1872) that Colossians has
been expanded, on the basis of a shorter letter of Paul, by the
same later hand which had previously written the whole of
Ephesians, has not met with favour from recent scholars.
But the more serious difficulties which to many minds still
stand in the way of the acceptance of the epistle have come
from the developed phase of Pauline theology which it shows,
and from the general background and atmosphere of the under-
lying system of thought, in which the absence of the well-known
earlier controversies is remarkable, while some things suggest
the thought of John and a later age. Among the most important
points in which the ideas and implications of Ephesians suggest
an authorship and a period other than that of Paul are the
following:
(a) The union of Gentiles and Jews in one body is already
accomplished, (b) The Christology is more advanced, uses
672
EPHESUS
Alexandrian terms, and suggests the ideas of the Gospel of John
(c) The conception of the Church as the body of Christ is new.
(d) There is said to be a general softening of Pauline thought in
the direction of the Christianity of the 2nd century, while very
many characteristic ideas of the earlier epistles are absent.
With regard to the changed state of affairs in the Church, it
must be said that this can be a conclusive argument only to one
who holds the view of the Tubingen scholars, that the Apostolic
Age was all of a piece and was dominated solely by one contro-
versy. The change in the situation is surely not greater than
can be imagined within the lifetime of Paul. That the epistle
implies as already existent a developed system of Gnostic thought
such as only came into being in the 2nd century is not true,
and such a date is excluded by the external evidence. As to
the other points, the question is, whether the admittedly new
phase of Paul's theological thought is so different from his earlier
system as to be incompatible with it. In answering this question
different minds will differ. But it must remain possible that
contact with new scenes and persons, and especially such con-
troversial necessities as are exemplified in Colossiam, stimulated
Paul to work out more fully, under the influence of Alexandrian
categories, lines of thought of which the germs and origins must
be admitted to have been present in earlier epistles. It cannot
be maintained that the ideas of Ephesians directly contradict
either in formulation or in tendency the thought of the earlier
epistles. Moreover, if Colossians be accepted as Pauline (and
among other strong reasons the unquestionable genuineness
of the epistle to Philemon renders it extremely difficult not to
accept it), the chief matters of this more advanced Christian
thought are fully legitimated for Paul.
On the other hand, the characteristics of the thought in
Ephesians give some strong evidence confirmatory of the epistle's
own claim to be by Paul. (a) The writer of Eph. ii. 11-22 was
a Jew, not less proud of his race than was the writer of Rom.
ix.-xi. or of Phil. iii. 4 ff. (b) The centre in all the theology of
the epistle is the idea of redemption. The use of Alexandrian
categories is wholly governed by this interest, (c) The epistle
shows the same panoramic, pictorial, dramatic conception of
Christian truth which is everywhere characteristic of Paul.
(d) The most fundamental elements in the system of thought do
not differ from those of the earlier epistles.
The view which denies the Pauline authorship of Ephesians
has to suppose the existence of a great literary artist and pro-
found theologian, able to write an epistle worthy of Paul at his
best, who, without betraying any recognizable motive, presented
to the world in the name of Paul an imitation of Colossians,
incredibly laborious and yet superior to the original in literary
workmanship and power of thought, and bearing every appear-
ance of earnest sincerity. It must further be supposed that the
name and the very existence of this genius were totally forgotten
in Christian circles fifty years after he wrote. The balance of
evidence seems to lie on the side of the genuineness of the Epistle.
If Ephesians was written by Paul, it was during the period
of his imprisonment, either at Caesarea or at Rome (iii. i, iv. i,
vi. 20). At very nearly the same time he must have written
Colossians and Philemon; all three were sent by Tychicus.
There is no strong reason for holding that the three were written
from Caesarea. For Rome speaks the greater probability of
the metropolis as the place in which a fugitive slave would try
to hide himself, the impression given in Colossians of possible
opportunity for active mission work (Col. iv. 3, 4; cf. Actsxxviii.
30, 31), the fact that Pkilippians, which in a measure belongs to
the same group, was pretty certainly written from Rome. As
to the Christians addressed, they are evidently converts from
heathenism (ii. i, 11-13, *7 f-, Hi. i, iv. 17); but they are not
merely Gentile Christians at large, for Tychicus carries the letter
to them, Paul has some knowledge of their special circumstances
(i. 15), and they are explicitly distinguished from "all the
saints " (iii. 18, vi. 18). We may most naturally think of them
as the members of the churches of Asia. The letter is very likely
referred to in Col. iv. 16, although this theory is not wholly free
from difficulties.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. The best commentaries on Ephesians are bv
C. J. Ellicott (1855, Ath ed. 1868), H. A. W. Meyer ( 4 th ed., 1867)
(Eng. trans. 1880), T. K. Abbott (1897), J. A. Robinson (1903
2nd ed. 1904); in. German by H. von Soden (in Hand-Commentar)
(1891, 2nd ed. 1893), E. Haupt (in Meyer's Kommentar) (8th ed.,
1902). J- B- Lightfoot's commentary on Colossians (1875 3rd ed
1879) is important for Ephesians also. On the English text see
H. C. G. Moule (in Cambridge Bible for Schools) (1887). R. W. Dale
Epistle to the Ephesians; its Doctrine and Ethics (1882), is a valuable
series of expository discourses.
Questions of genuineness, purpose, &c., are discussed in the New
Testament Introductions of H. Holtzmann (1885, 3rd ed 1892)-
B. Weiss (1886, 3rd ed. 1897, Eng. trans. 1887); G. Salmon (1887,'
8th ed. 1897); A. Julicher (1894, gth and 6th ed. 1906, Eng. trans
1904); T. Zahn (1897-1899, 2nd ed. 1900); and in the thorough
investigations of H. Holtzmann, Kritik der Epheser- und Kolosser-
briefe (1872), and F. J. A. Hort, Prolegomena to St Paul's Epistles
to the Romans and the Ephesians (1895). See also the works on the
Apostolic Age of C. Weizsacker (1886, and ed. 1892, Eng trans
1894-1895); O. Pfleiderer (Das Urchristenthum) (1887, 2nd ed.
1902, Eng. trans. 1906) ; and A. C. McGiffert (1897).
On early attestation see A. H. Charteris, Canonicity (1880) and
the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford, 1905).
The theological ideas of Ephesians are also discussed in some of
the works on Paul's theology; see especially F. C. Baur, Paulus
(1845, 2nd ed. 1866-1867, Eng. trans. 1873-1874); O. Pfleiderer,
Der Paulinismus (1873, 2nd ed. 1890, Eng. trans. 1877); and in
the works on New Testament theology by B. Weiss (1868, 7th ed
1903, Eng. trans. 1882-1883); H. Holtzmann (1897), and G. B.
Stevens (1899). See also Somerville, St Paul's Conception of Christ
(1897).
For a guide to other literature see W. Lock, art. " Ephesians,
Epistle to," in Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible, the various works
of Holtzmann above referred to, and T. K. Abbott's Commentary,
PP- 35-40. (J. H. Rs.)
EPHESUS, an ancient Ionian city on the west coast of Asia
Minor. In historic times it was situate on the lower slopes of the
hills, Coressus and Prion, which rise out of a fertile plain near the
mouth of the river Cayster, while the temple and precinct of
Artemis or Diana, to the fame of which the town owed much of
its celebrity, were in the plain itself, E.N.E. at a distance of about
a mile. But there is reason to think both town and shrine had
different sites in pre-Ionian times, and that both lay farther
south among the foot-hills of Mt. Solmissus. The situation of
the city was such as at all times to command a great commerce.
Of the three great river basins of Ionia and Lydia, those of the
Hermus, Cayster and Maeander, it commanded the second, and
had already access by easy passes to the other two.
The earliest inhabitants assigned to Ephesus by Greek writers
are the " Amazons," with whom we hear of Leleges, Carians
and Pelasgi. In the nth century B.C., according to tradition
(the date is probably too early), Androclus,son of the Athenian
king Codrus, landed on the spot with his lonians and a mixed
body of colonists; and from his conquest dates the history of
the Greek Ephesus. The deity of the city was Artemis; but
we must guard against misconception when we use that name,
remembering that she bore close relation to the primitive Asiatic
goddess of nature, whose cult existed before the Ionian migration
at the neighbouring Ortygia, and that she always remained the
virgin-mother of all life and especially wild life, and an embodi-
ment of the fertility and productive power of the earth. The
well-known monstrous representation of her, as a figure with
many breasts, swathed below the waist in grave-clothes, was
probably of late and alien origin. In early Ionian times she
seems to have been represented as a natural matronly figure,
sometimes accompanied by a child, and to have been a more
typically Hellenic goddess than she became in the Hellenistic
and Roman periods.
Twice in the period 700-500 B.C. the city owed its preservation
to the interference of the goddess; once when the swarms of
;he Cimmerians overran Asia Minor in the 7th century and burnt
;he Artemision itself; and once when Croesus besieged the town
n the century succeeding, and only retired after it had solemnly
dedicated itself to Artemis, the sign of such dedication being the
stretching of a rope from city to sanctuary. Croesus was eager in
:very way to propitiate the goddess, and since about this time
ler temple was being restored on an enlarged scale, he presented
most of the columns required for the building as well as some
EPHESUS
coin of gold. That is to My, these gifts were probably paid for
out of the proceeds of the sequestration of the property of a
rich Lydian merchant, Sadyattes, which Croesus presented to
Kphcsus (Nic. Damasc. fr. 65). To counteract, perhaps, the
(rowing Lydian influence, Athens, the mother-city of Ephcsus,
despatched one of her noblest citizens, Aristarchus, to restore
law on the basis of the Solonian constitution. The labours of
Aristarchus seem to have borne fruit. It was an Ephcsian
follower of his, Hermodorus, who aided the Decemviri at Rome
in their compilation of a system of law. And in the same genera-
tion Heraclitus, probably a descendant of Codrus, quitted his
hereditary magistracy in order to devote himself to philosophy,
in which his name became almost as great as that of any Greek.
Poetry had long flourished at Ephesus. From very early times
the Homeric poems found a home and admirers there; and to
Ephesus belong the earliest elegiac poems of Greece, the war
songs of Callinus, who flourished in the 7th century B.C. and was
the model of Tyrtaeus. The city seems to have been more than
once under tyrannical rule in the early Ionian period; and it fell
thereafter first to Croesus of Lydia, and then to Cyrus, 'the
Persian, and when the Ionian revolt against Persia broke out in
the year 500 B.C. under the lead of Miletus, the city remained
submissive to Persian rule. When Xerxes returned from the
march against Greece, he honoured the temple of Artemis,
although he sacked other Ionian shrines, and even left his
children behind at Ephesus for safety's sake. We hear again of
Persian respect for the temple in the time of Tissaphernes (411
B.C.). After the final Persian defeat at the Eurymedon (466 B.C.),
Ephesus for a time paid tribute to Athens, with the other cities
of the coast, and Lysander first and Agesilaus afterwards made
it their headquarters. To the latter fact we owe a contemporary
description of it by Xenophon. In the early part of the 4th
century it fell again under Persian intluence, and was administered
by an oligarchy.
Alexander was received by the Ephesians in 334, and estab-
lished democratic government. Soon after his death the city
fell into the hands of Lysimachus, who introduced fresh Greek
colonists from Lebedus and Colophon and, it is said, by means
of an artificial inundation compelled those who still dwelt in
the plain by the temple to migrate to the city on the hills, which
he surrounded by a solid wall. He renamed the city after his
wife Arsinoi, but the old name was soon resumed. Ephesus ( was
very prosperous during the Hellenistic period, and is conspicuous
both then and later for the abundance of its coinage, which gives
us a more complete list of magistrates' names than we have for
any other Ionian city. The Roman coinage is remarkable for
the great variety and importance of its types. After the defeat
of Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, by the Romans, Ephesus
was handed over by the conquerors to Eumenes, king of Per-
gamum, whose successor, Attalus Philadelphia, unintentionally
worked the city irremediable harm. Thinking that the shallow-
ness of the harbour was due to the width of its mouth, he built
a mole part-way across the latter; the result, however, was
that the silting up of the harbour proceeded more rapidly than
before. The third Attalus of Pergamum bequeathed Ephesus
with the rest of his possessions to the Roman people, and it
became for a while the chief city, and for longer the first port,
of the province of Asia, the richest in the empire. Henceforth
Ephesus remained subject to the Romans, save for a short period,
when, at the instigation of Mithradates Eupator of Pontus, the
cities of Asia Minor revolted and massacred their Roman
residents. The Ephesians even dragged out and slew those
Romans who had fled to the precinct of Artemis for protection,
notwithstanding which sacrilege they soon returned from their
new to their former masters, and even bad the effrontery to
state, in an inscription preserved to this day, that their defection
to Mithradates was a mere yielding to superior force. Sulla,
after his victory over Mithradates, brushed away their pretexts,
and inflicting a very heavy fine told them that the punishment
fell far short of their deserts. In the civil wars of the ist century
B.C. the Ephesians twice supported the unsuccessful party,
giving shelter to. or being made use of by, first, Brutus and
DC. 33
Cassius, and afterwards Antony, for which partisanship or weak-
ness they paid very heavily in fines.
All this time the city was gradually growing in wealth and in
devotion to the service of Artemis. The story of St Paul's
doings there illustrates this fact, and the sequel is very suggestive,
the burning, namely, of books of sorcery of great value.
Addiction to the practice of occult arts had evidently become
general in the now semi-orientalized city. The Christian Church
which Paul planted there was governed by Timothy and John, and
is famous in Christian tradition as a nurse of saints and martyrs.
According to local belief, Ephesus was also the last home of the
Virgin, who was lodged near the city by St John and there died.
But to judge from the Apocalyptic Letter to this Church (as
shown by Sir W. M. Ramsay), the latter showed a dangerous
tendency to lightness and reaction, and later events show that
the pagan tradition of Artemis continued very strong and
perhaps never became quite extinct in the Ephesian district.
It was, indeed, long before the spread of Christianity threatened
the old local cult. The city was proud to be termed neocorui
or servant of the goddess. Roman emperors vied with wealthy
natives in lavish gifts, one Vibius Salman's among the latter
presenting a quantity of gold and silver images to be carried
annually in procession. Ephesus contested stoutly with Smyrna
and Pergamum the honour of being called the first city of Asia;
each city appealed to Rome, and we still possess rescripts in
which the emperors endeavoured to mitigate the bitterness
of the rivalry. One privilege Ephesus secured; the Roman
governor of Asia always landed and first assumed office there:
and it was long the provincial centre of the official cult of the
emperor, and seat of the Asiarch. The Goths destroyed both
city and temple in the year A.D. 262, and although the city revived
and the cult of Artemis continued, neither ever recovered its
former splendour. A general council of the Christian Church
was held there in 431 in the great double church of St Mary,
which is still to be seen. On this occasion Nestorius was con-
demned, and the honour of the Virgin established as Theotokus,
amid great popular rejoicing, due, doubtless, in some measure
to the hold which the cult of the virgin Artemis still had on the
city. (On this council see below.) Thereafter Ephesus seems
to have been gradually deserted owing to its malaria; and life
transferred itself to another and higher site near the Artemision,
the name of which, Ayassoluk (written by early Arab geographers
Ayathulukh), is now known to be a corruption of the title of
St John Theoldgos, given to a great cathedral built on a rocky
hill near the present railway station, in the time of Justinian I.
This church was visited by Ibn Batuta in A.D. 1333; but few
traces are now visible. The ruins of the Artemision, after serving
as a quarry to local builders, were finally covered deep with
mud by the river Cayster, or one of its left bank tributaries, the
Selinus, and the true site remained unsuspected until 1869.
Excavations. The first light thrown on the topography of
Ephesus was due to the excavations conducted by the architect,
J. T. Wood, on behalf of the trustees of the British Museum,
during the years 1863-1874. He first explored the Odeum and
the Great Theatre situate in the city itself, and in the latter
place had the good fortune to find an inscription which indicated
to him in what direction to search for the Artemision; for it
stated that processions came to the city from the temple by the
Magncsian gate and returned by the Coressian. These two gates
were next identified, and following up that road which issued
from the Magncsian gate, Wood lighted first on a ruin which
he believed to be the tomb of Androclus, and afterwards on an
angle of the peribolus wall of the time of Augustus. After
further tentative explorations, he struck the actual pavement
of the Artemision on the last day of 1869.
The Artemision. Wood removed the whole stratum of
superficial deposit, nearly 20 ft. deep, which overlay the huge
area of the temple, and exposed to view not only the scanty
remains of the latest edifice, built after 350 B.C., but the platform
of an earlier temple, now known to be that of the 6th century
to which Croesus contributed. Below this he did not find any
remains. He discovered and sent to England parts of several
674
EPHESUS
sculptured drums (columnae caelatae) of the latest temple, and
archaic sculptures from the drums and parapet of the earlier
building. He also made accurate measurements and a plan
of the Hellenistic temple, found many inscriptions and a few
miscellaneous antiquities, and had begun to explore the Precinct,
when the great expense and other considerations induced the
trustees of the British Museum to suspend his operations in 1874.
Wood made two subsequent attempts to resume work, but failed;
and the site lay desolate till 1904, when the trustees, wishing
to have further information about the earlier strata and the
Precinct, sent D. G. Hogarth to re-examine the remains. As a
result of six months' work, Wood's " earliest temple " was re-
cleared and planned, remains of three earlier shrines were found
beneath it, a rich deposit of offerings, &c., belonging to the earliest
shrine was discovered, and tentative explorations were made
in the Precinct. This deep digging, however, which reached
the sand of the original marsh, released much ground water and
resulted in the permanent flooding of the site.
The history of the Artemision, as far as it can be inferred
from the remains, is as follows, (i) There was no temple on the
plain previous to the Ionian occupation, the primeval seat of
the nature-goddess having been in the southern hills, at Ortygia
(near mod. Arvalia). Towards the end of the 8th century B.C.
a small shrine came into existence on the plain. This was little
more than a small platform of green schist with a sacred tree
and an altar, and perhaps later a wooden icon (image), the whole
enclosed in a temenos: but, as is proved by a great treasure of
objects in precious and other metals, ivory, bone, crystal, paste,
glass, terra-cotta and other materials, found in 1904-1905,
partly within the platform on which the cult-statue stood and
partly outside, in the lowest stratum of deposit, this early shrine
was presently enriched by Greeks with many and splendid
offerings of Hellenic workmanship. A large number of electron
coins, found among these offerings, and in style the earliest of
their class known, combine with other evidence to date the whole
treasure to a period considerably anterior to the reign of Croesus.
This treasure is now divided between the museums of Constanti-
nople and London. (2) Within a short time, perhaps after the
Cimmerian sack (? 650 B.C.), this shrine was restored, slightly
enlarged, and raised in level, but not altered in character. (3)
About the close of the century, for some reason not known,
but possibly owing to collapse brought about by the marshy
nature of the site, this was replaced by a temple of regular
Hellenic form. The latter was built in relation to the earlier
central statue-base but at a higher level than either of its pre-
decessors, doubtless for dryness' sake. Very little but its founda-
tions was spared by later builders, and there is now no certain
evidence of its architectural character; but it is very probable
that it was the early temple in which the Ionic order is said to
have been first used, after the colonists had made use of Doric
in their earlier constructions (e.g. in the Panionion); and that
it was the work of the Cnossian Chersiphron and his son, Meta-
genes, always regarded afterwards as the first builders of a
regular Artemision. Their temple is said by Strabo to have been
made bigger by another architect. (4) The latter's work must
have been the much larger temple, exposed by Wood, and
usually known as the Archaic or Croesus temple. This overlies
the remains of No. 3, at a level higher by about a metre, and the
area of its cello, alone contains the whole of the earlier shrines.
Its central point, however, was still the primitive statue-base,
now enlarged and heightened. About half its pavement, parts
of the cello, walls and of three columns of the peristyle, and the
foundations of nearly all the platform, are still in position. The
visible work was all of very fine white marble, quarried about
7 m. N.E., near the modern Kos Bunar. Fragments of relief-
sculptures belonging to the parapet and columns, and of fluted
drums and capitals, cornices and other architectural members
have been recovered, showing that the workmanship and Ionic
style were of the highest excellence, and that the building
presented a variety of ornament, rare among Hellenic temples.
The whole ground-plan covered about 80,000 sq. ft. The height
of the temple is doubtful, the measurements of columns given
us by later authority having reference probably to its successor,
the height of which was considered abnormal and marvellous.
Judged by the diameter of the drums, the columns of the Croesus
temple were not two-thirds of the height of those of the Hellen-
istic temple. This fourth temple is, beyond question, that to
which Croesus contributed, and it was, therefore, in process of
building about 540 B.C. Our authorities seem to be referring to
it when they tell us that the Artemision was raised by common
contribution of the great cities of Asia, and took 120 years to
complete. It was dedicated with great ceremony, probably
between 430 and 420 B.C., and the famous Timotheus, son of
Thersander, carried off the magnificent prize for a lyric ode
against all comers. Its original architects were, probably,
Paeonius of Ephe-
sus, and Demetrius,
a ttpos of the shrine
itself: but it has
been suggested that
the Blatter may have
been rather the
actual contracting
builder than the
architect. Of this
temple Herodotus
speaks as existing
in his day; and un-
less weight be given
to an isolated state-
ment of Eusebius,
that it was burned
about 395 B.C., we
must assume that it
survived until the
night when one
Herostratus, de-
sirous of acquiring
eternal fame if only
by a great crime,
set it alight. This
is said to have hap-
pened in 356 B.C. on
the- October night
on which Alexander
the Great came into
the world, and, as
Hegesias said, the
goddess herself was
absent, assisting at
the birth; but the
exactness of this
Ground plan of the6th Century ("Croesus")
chromsm makes the Temp i e at Ephesus, conjecturally restored by
date suspect. (5) It A. E. Henderson,
was succeeded by
what is called the Hellenistic temple, begun almost immedi-
ately after the catastrophe, according to plans drawn by
the famous Dinocrates the architect of Alexandria. The
platform was once more raised to a higher level, some 7
ft. above that of the Archaic, by means of huge foundation
blocks bedded upon the earlier structures; and this increase
of elevation necessitated a slight expansion of the area all
round, and ten steps in place of three. The new columns were
of greater diameter than the old and over 60 ft. high; and
from its great height the whole structure was regarded as a
marvel, and accounted one of the wonders of the world. Since,
however, other Greek temples had colonnades hardly less high,
and were of equal or greater area, it has been suggested that the
Ephesian temple had some distinct element of grandiosity, no
longer known to us perhaps a lofty sculptured parapet or
some imposing form of podium. Bede, in his treatise De sept,
mir. mundi, describes a stupendous erection of several storeys;
but his other descriptions are so fantastic that no credence can
Stale of Feet
EPHESUS, COUNCIL OF
675
be attached to this. The fifth temple was once more of Ionic
order, but the finish anil style of its details as attested by existing
remains were inferior to those of its predecessor. The great
sculptured drums and pedestals, now in the British Museum,
belong to the lower part of certain of its columns: but nothing
of its frieze or pediments (if it had any) has been recovered.
Begun probably before 350 B.C., it was in building when Alexander
came to Ephesus in 334 and offered to bear the cost of its comple-
tion. It was probably finished by the end of the century; for
Pliny the Elder states that its cypress-wood doors had been in
existence for 400 years up to his time. It stood intact, except
for very partial restorations, till A.o. 262 when it was sacked and
burned by the Goths: but it appears to have been to some
extent restored afterwards, and its cult no doubt survived till
the Edict of Theodosius closed the pagan temples. Its material
was then quarried extensively for the construction of the great
cathedral of St John Theologos on the neighbouring hill (Ayas-
soluk). and a large Byzantine building (a church?) came into
existence on the central part of its denuded site, but did not
last long. Before the Ottoman conquest its remains were already
buried under several feet of silt.
The organization of the temple hierarchy, and its customs
and privileges, retained throughout an Asiatic character. The
priestesses of the goddess were rapftvot (i.e. unwedded), and
her priests were compelled to celibacy. The chief among the
latter, who bore the Persian name of Mcgabyzus and the Greek
title Xcocorus, was doubtless a power in the state as well as a
dignitary of religion. His official dress and spadonic appearance
are probably revealed to us by a small ivory statuette found by
D. G. Hogarth in 1005. Besides these there was a vast throng
of dependents who lived by the temple and its services theologi,
who may have expounded sacred legends, hymnodi, who composed
hymns in honour of the deity, and others, together with a. great
crowd of kieroi who performed more menial offices. The making
of shrines and images of the goddess occupied many hands. To
support this greedy mob offerings flowed in in a constant stream
from votaries and from visitors, who contributed sometimes
money, sometimes statues and works of art. These latter so
accumulated that the temple became a rich museum, among
the chief treasures of which were the figures of Amazons sculptured
in competition by Pheidias, Polyclitus, Cresilas and Phradmon,
and the painting by Apelles of Alexander holding a thunderbolt.
The temple was also richly endowed with lands, and" possessed
the fishery of the Selinusion lakes, with other large revenues.
But perhaps the most important of all the privileges possessed
by the goddess and her priests was that of asylum. Fugitives
from justice or vengeance who reached her precincts were per-
fectly safe from all pursuit and arrest. The boundaries of the
space possessing such virtue were from time to time enlarged.
Mithradates extended them to a bowshot from the temple in all
directions, and Mark Antony imprudently allowed them to take
in part of the city, which part thus became free of all law, and a
haunt of thieves and villains. Augustus, while leaving the right
of asylum untouched, diminished the space to which the privilege
belonged, and built round it a wall, which still surrounds the
ruins of the temple at the distance of about a quarter of a mile,
bearing an inscription in Greek and Latin, which states that it
was erected in the proconsulship cf Asinius Callus, out of the
revenues of the temple. The right of asylum, however, had once
more to be defended by a deputation sent to the emperor Tiberius.
Besides being a place of worship, a museum and a sanctuary,
the Ephesian temple was a great bank. Nowhere in Asia could
money be more safely bestowed, and both kings and private
persons placed their treasures under the guardianship of the
The City. After Wood's superficial explorations, the city
remained desolate till 1804, when the Austrian Archaeological
Institute obtained a concession for excavation and began
systematic work. This has continued regularly ever since, but
has been carried down no farther than the imperial stratum.
The main areas of operation have been: (i) The Great Theatre.
The stage buildings, orchestra and lower parts of the cavea have
been cleared. In the process considerable additions were made
to Wood's find of sculptures in marble and bronze, and of in-
scriptions, including missing parts of the Vibius Salutaris lexis.
This theatre has a peculiar interest as the scene of the tumult
aroused by the mission of St Paul; but the existing remains
represent a reconstruction carried out after his time. (2) The
Hellenistic Agora, a huge square, surrounded by porticoes,
lying S.W. of the theatre and having fine public halls on the S.
It has yielded to the Austrians fine sculpture in marble and
bronze and many inscriptions. (3) The Roman Agora, with its
large halls, lying N.W. of the theatre. Here were found many
inscriptions of Roman date and some statuary. (4) A street
running from the S.E. angle of the Hellenic Agora towards the
Magnesian gate. This was found to be lined with pedestals of
honorific statues and to have on the west side a remarkable
building, stated in an inscription to have been a library. The
tomb of the founder, T. Julius Celsus, is hard by, and some fine
Roman reliefs, which once decorated it, have been sent to
Vienna. (5) A street running direct to the port from the theatre.
This is of great breadth, and had a Horologion half-way down
and fine porticoes and shops. It was known as the Arcadiane
after having been restored at a higher level than formerly by the
emperor Arcadius (A.D. 305). It leaves on the right the great
Thermae of Constantine, of which the Austrians have cleared
out the south-east part. This huge pile used to be taken for
the Artemision by early visitors to Ephesus. Part of the quays
and buildings round the port were exposed, after measures had
been taken to drain the upper part of the marsh. (6) The
Double Church of the Virgin " Deipara " in the N.W. of the city,
wherein the council of 43 1 was held. Here interesting inscriptions
and Byzantine architectural remains were found. Besides these
excavated monuments, the Stadion; the enceinte of fortifications
erected by Lysimachus, which runs from the tower called the
" Prison of St Paul " and right along the crests of the Bulbul
(Prion) and Panajir hills; the round, monument miscalled the
" Tomb of St Luke "; and the Gpistholeprian gymnasium near
the Magnesian gate, are worthy of attention.
The work done by the Austrians enables a good idea to be
obtained of the appearance presented by a great Graeco-Roman
city of Asia in the last days of its prosperity. It may be realized
better there than anywhere how much architectural splendour
was concentrated in the public quarters. But the restriction
of the clearance to the upper stratum of deposit has prevented
the acquisition of much further knowledge. Both the Hellenistic
and, still more, the original Ionian cities remain for the most part
unexplored. It should, however, be added that very valuable
topographical exploration has been carried out in the environs
of Ephesus by members of the Austrian expedition, and that the
Ephesian district is now mapped more satisfactorily than any
other district of ancient interest in Asia Minor.
The Turkish village of Ayassoluk (the modern representative
of Ephesus), more than a mile N.E. of the ancient city, has
revived somewhat of recent years owing to the development
of its fig gardens by the Aidin railway, which passes through the
upper part of 'the plain. It is noteworthy for a splendid ruined
mosque built by the Seljuk, Isa Bey II., of Aidin, in 1375, which
contains magnificent columns: for a castle, near which lie
remains of the pendentives from the cupola of the great cathedral
of St John, now deeply buried in its own ruins: and for an
aqueduct, Turkish baths and mosque-tombs. There is a fair
inn managed by the Aidin Railway Company.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. E. Guhl, Ephesiaca (1843) ; E. Curtius, Ephesos
(1874); C. Zimmermann, Ephesos im ersten christlichen Jahrhundert
(1874); J. T. Wood, Discoveries at Ephesus (1877); E. L. Hicks,
Anc. Greek Inscr. in the Brit. Museum, iii. 2 (1890); B. V. Head,
" Coinage of Ephesus " (Numism. Chron., 1880); J. Menadier, Qua
condicione Ephesii usi sint, &c. (1880); Sir W. M. Ramsay, Letters
to the Seven Churches (1904); O. Benndorf, R. Hcberdey, &c.,
Forschungen in Ephesos, vol. i. (1906) (Austrian Arch. Institute);
D. G. Hogarth, Excavations at Ephesus: the Archaic Artemisia, (2
void., 1908), with chapters by C. H. Smith, A. Hamilton Smith,
B. V. Head, and A. E. Henderson. (D. G. H.)
EPHESUS, COUNCIL OF. This Church council was convened
in 431 for the purpose of taking authoritative action concerning
6y6
EPHOD
the doctrine of the person of Christ. The councils of Nicaea and
Constantinople had asserted the full divinity and real humanity
of Christ, without, however, defining the manner of their union.
The attempt to solve the apparent incongruity of a perfect union
of two complete and distinct natures in one person produced
first Apollinarianism, which substituted the divine Logos for
the human wOs or TireOpia of Jesus, thereby detracting from the
completeness of his humanity; and then Nestorianism, which
destroyed the unity of Christ's person by affirming that the divine
Logos dwelt in the man Jesus as in a temple, and that the union
of the two was in respect of dignity, and furthermore that,
inasmuch as the Logos could not have been born, to call Mary
deoroKos, " Godbearer," was absurd and blasphemous. The
Alexandrians, led by Cyril, stood for the doctrine of the perfect
union of two complete natures in one person, and made dtoroicos
the shibboleth of orthodoxy. The theological controversy was
intensified by the rivalry of the two patriarchates, Alexandria
and Constantinople, for the primacy of the East. As bishop
of Constantinople Nestorius naturally looked to the emperor
for support, while Cyril turned to Rome. A Roman synod in
430 found Nestorius heretical and decreed his excommunica-
tion unless he should recant. Shortly afterwards an Alex-
andrian synod condemned his doctrines in twelve anathemas,
which only provoked counter-anathemas. The emperor now
intervened and summoned a council, which met at Ephesus
on the 22nd of June 431. Nestorius was present with an armed
escort, but refused to attend the council on the ground that the
patriarch of Antioch (his friend) had not arrived. The council,
nevertheless, proceeded to declare him excommunicate and
deposed. When the Roman legates appeared they "examined
and approved " the acts of the council, whether as if thereby
giving them validity, or as if concurring with the council, is a
question not easy to answer from the records. Cyril, the presi-
dent, apparently regarded the subscription of the legates as the
acknowledgment of " canonical agreement " with the synod.
The disturbances that followed the arrival of John, the
patriarch of Antioch, are sufficiently described in the article
NESTORIUS.
The emperor finally interposed to terminate that scandalous
strife, banished Nestorius and dissolved the council. Ultimately
he gave decision in favour of the orthodox. The council was
generally received as ecumenical, even by the Antiochenes, and
the differences between Cyril and John were adjusted (433) by
a "Union Creed," which, however, did not prevent a recrudescence
of theological controversy.
See Mansi iv. pp. 567-1482, v. pp. 1-1023; Hardouin i. pp. 1271-
1722; Hefele (2nd ed.) ii. pp. 141-247 (Eng. trans, iii. pp. 1-114);
Peltanus, SS. Magni el Ecumen. Cone. Epnesini primi Acta omnia
. . . (Ingolstadt, 1576); Wilhelm Kraetz, Koptische Akten zum
Ephes. Konzil . . . (Leipzig, 1904); also the articles NESTORIUS;
CYRIL; THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA.
The so-called " Robber Synod " of Ephesus (Latrocinium
Ephesinum) of 449, although wholly irregular and promptly
repudiated by the church, may, nevertheless, not improperly
be treated here. The archimandrite Eutyches (q.vj having been
deposed by his bishop, Flavianus of Constantinople, on account
of his heterodox doctrine of the person of Christ, had appealed
to Dioscurus, the successor of Cyril in the see of Alexandria, who
restored him and moved the emperor Theodosius II. to summon
a council, which should " utterly destroy Nestorianism." Rome
recognizing that she had more to fear from Alexandria, departed
from her traditional policy and sided with Constantinople. The
council of 130 bishops, which convened on the 8th of August
449, was completely dominated by Dioscurus. Eutyches was
acquitted of heresy and reinstated, Flavianus and other bishops
deposed, the Roman legates insulted, and all opposition was
overborne by intimidation or actual violence. The death of
Flavianus, which soon followed, was attributed to injuries
received in this synod; but the proof of the charge leaves some-
thing to be desired.
The emperor confirmed the synod, but the Eastern Church
was divided upon the question of accepting it, and Leo I. of
Rome excommunicated Dioscurus, refused to recognize the
successor of Flavianus and demanded a new and greater council.
The death of Theodosius II. removed the main support of Dios-
curus, and cleared the way for the council of Chalcedon (q.v.).
which deposed the Alexandrian and condemned Eutychianism.
See Mansi vi. pp. 503 sqq., 606 sqq. ; Hardouin ii. 71 sqq.;
Hefele (2nd ed.) ii. pp. 349 sqq. (Eng. trans, iii. pp. 221 sqq.);
S. G. F. Perry, The Second Synod of Ephesus (Dartford, 1881);
1'Abbe Martin, Actes du brigandage d'Ephese (Amiens, 1874) and
Le Pseudo-synode connu dans I'histoire sous le nom de brigandage
d'Ephese (Paris, 1875). (T. F. C.)
EPHOD, a Hebrew word (ephod) of uncertain meaning, retained
by the translators of the Old Testament. In the post-exilic
priestly writings (sth century B.C. and later) the ephod forms
part of the gorgeous ceremonial dress of the high-priest (see
Ex. xxix. 5 sq. and especially Ecclus. xlv. 7-13). It was a very
richly decorated object of coloured threads interwoven with
gold, worn outside the luxurious mantle or robe; it was kept
in place by a girdle, and by shoulder-pieces (?), to which were
attached brooches of onyx (fastened to the" robe) and golden
rings from which hung the " breastplate " (or rather pouch)
containing the sacred lots, Urim and Thummim. The somewhat
involved description in Ex. xxviii. 6 sqq., xxxix. 2- sqq. (see V.
Ryssel's ed. of Dillmann's commentary on Ex.-Lev.) leaves it
uncertain whether it covered the back, encircling the body like
a kind of waistcoat, or only the front; at all events it was not
a garment in the ordinary sense, and its association with the
sacred lots indicates that the ephod was used for divination
(cf. Num. xxvii. 21), and had become the distinguishing feature
of the leading priestly line (cf. I Sam. ii. 28).* But from other
passages it seems that the ephod had been a familiar object
whose use was by no means so restricted. Like the teraphim
(q.v.) it was part of the common stock of Hebrew cult; it is borne
(rather than worn) by persons acting in a priestly character
(Samuel at Shiloh, priests of Nob, David), it is part of the worship
of individuals (Gideon at Ophrah), and is found in a private
shrine with a lay attendant (Micah ; Judg. xvii. 5; see, however,
vv. io-i3). 2 Nevertheless, while the prophetical teaching came
to regard the ephod as contrary to the true worship of Yahweh,
the priestly doctrine of the post-exilic age (when worship was
withdrawn from the community at large to the recognized priest-
hood of Jerusalem) has retained it along with other remains of
earlier usage, legalizing it, as it were, by confining it exclusively
to the Aaronites.
An intricate historical problem is involved at the outset in the
famous ephod, which the priest Abiathar brought in his hand when he
fled to David after the massacre of the priests of Nob. It is evidently
regarded as the one which had been in Nob (i Sam. xxi. 9), and the
presence of the priests at Nob is no less clearly regarded as the sequel
of the fall of Shiloh. The ostensible intention is to narrate the
transference of the sacred objects to David (cf. 2 Sam. i. 10), and
henceforth he regularly inquires of Yahweh in his movements (i Sam.
xxiii. 9-12, xxx. 7 sq.; cf. xxiii. 2, 4; 2 Sam. ii. I, v. 19-23). It is
possible that the writer (or writers) desired to trace the earlier history
of the ephod through the line of Eli and Abiathar to the time when
the Zadokite priests gained the supremacy (see LEVITES) ; but else-
where Abiathar is said to have borne the ark (i Kings ii. 26; cf.
2 Sam. vii. 6), and this fluctuation is noteworthy by reason of the
present confusion in the text of I Sam. xiv. 3, 18 (see commentaries).
On one view, the ark in Kirjath-jearim was in non-Israelite hands
(i Sam. vii. i sq.) ; on the other, Saul's position as king necessitates
the presumption that his sway extended over Judah and Israel,
including those cities which otherwise appear to have been in the
hands of aliens (i Sam. xiv. 47 sq.; cf. xvii. 54, &c.). There are
some fundamental divergencies in the representations of the tradi-
tions of both David and Saul (qq.v.), and there is indirect and
1 Cf. the phrase " ephod of prophecy " (Testament of Levi, viii. 2).
The priestly apparatus of the post-exilic age retains several traces
of old mythological symbolism and earlier cult, the meaning of which
had not altogether been forgotten. With the dress one may perhaps
compare the apparel of the gods Marduk and Adad, for which see
A. Jeremias, Das Alte Test, im Lichte des Allen Orients, 2nd ed., figs.
33, 46, and pp. 162, 449.
1 The ordinary interpretation " linen ephod " (i Sam. ii. 18,
xxii. 18; 2 Sam. vi. 14) is questioned "by T. C. Foote in his useful
monograph, Journ. Bibl. Lit. xxi., 1902, pp. 3, 47. This writer also
aptly compares the infant Samuel with the child who drew the lots
at the temple of Fortuna at Praeneste (Cicero, De divin. ii. 41, 86),
and with the modern practice of employing innocent instruments of
chance in lotteries (op. cit. pp. 22, 27).
EPHOR
677
independent evidence which nukes I Kings ii. 26 not entirely isolated.
Here it must suffice to remark that the ark, too, was also an object
for ascertaining the divine will (especially Judg. xx. 26-28; cf. 18,23),
ad it i> far from certain that the later records of the ark (which
was too heavy to be borne by one), like thoae of the ephod, are valid
for earlier times.
For the form of the earlier ephod the classic passage is a Sam.
vi. 14, where David girt in (or with) a linen ephod dances before
the ark at its entry into Jerusalem and incurs the unqualified
contempt of his wife Michal, the daughter of Saul. Relying upon
the known custom of performing certain observances in a
practically, or even entirely, nude condition, it seems plausible
to infer that the ephod was a scanty wrapping, perhaps a loin-
cloth, and this view has found weighty support. On the other
hand, the idea of contempt at the exposure of the person, to
whatever extent, may not have been so prominent, especially
if the custom were not unfamiliar, and it is possible that the
sequel refers more particularly to grosser practices attending
outbursts of religious enthusiasm. 1
The favourite view that the ephod was also an image rests
partly upon I Sam. xxi. 9, where Goliath's sword is wrapped in
a doth in the sanctuary of Nob behind the ephod. But it is
equally natural to suppose that it hung on a nail in the wall, and
apart from the omission of the significant words in the original
Septuagint, the possibility that the text read " ark " cannot be
wholly ignored (see above; also G. F. Moore, Ency. Bib. col.
1307, n. 2). Again, in the story of Micah's shrine and the removal
of the sacred objects and the Levite priest by the Danitcs,
parallel narratives have been used: the graven and molten
images of Judg. xvii. 2-4 corresponding to the ephod and
teraphim of ver. 5. Throughout there is confusion in the use of
these terms, and the finale refers only to the graven image of
Dan (xviii. 30 sq., see i Kings xii. 28 sq.). But the combination
of ephod and teraphim (as in Hos. iii. 4) is noteworthy, since
the fact that the latter were images (i Sam. xix. 13; Gen. xxxi.
34) could be urged against the view that the former were of a
similar character. Finally, according to Judg. viii. 27, Gideon
made an ephod of gold, about 70 Ib in weight, and " put " it in
Ophrah. It is regarded as a departure from the worship of
Vahwch. although the writer of ver. 33 (cf. also ver. 23) hardly
shared this feeling; it was probably something once harmlessly
associated with the cult of Yahweh (cf. CALF, GOLDEN), and the
term " ephod " may be due to a later hand under the influence
of the prophetical teaching referred to above. The present
passage is the only one which appears to prove that the ephod
was an image, and several writers, including Lotz (Reolencyk. f.
frol. Theol. vol. v., *..), T. C. Foote (pp. 13-18) and A. Maecklen-
burg (Zeil. f. vissens. Theol., 1006, pp. 433 sqq.) find this inter-
pretation unnecessary.
Archaeological evidence for objects of divination (see, e.g.,
the interesting details in Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, the Bible
and Homer, i. 447 sq.), and parallels from the Oriental area, can
be readily cited in support of any of the explanations of the ephod
which have been offered, but naturally cannot prove the form
which it actually took in Palestine. Since images were clothed,
it could be supposed that the diviner put on the god's apparel
(cf. Ency. Bib. col. 1141); but they were also plated, and in
either case the transference from a covering to the object covered
is intelligible. If the ephod was a loin-cloth, its use as a receptacle
and the known evolution of the article find useful analogies
(Foote. p. 43 tq., and Ency. Bib. col. 1734 dD- Finally, if there
is no decisive evidence for the view that it was an image (Judg.
viii. 27), or that as a wrapping it formed the sole covering of the
officiating agent (2 Sam. vi.), all that can safely be said is that
1 It is not stated that the linen ephod was David's sole covering,
and it is difficult to account for the text in the parallel passage
I Chron. rv. 27 (where he is clothed with a robe) ; " girt, too, is
ambiguous, since the verb is even used of a sword. On the question
of nudity (cf. I Sam. xix. 24) see Robertson Smith, Rrl. Sent.' pp.
161, 450 sq. : Ency. Bib. s.w. "girdle." "sackcloth"; and M.
lastrow, Jount. Am. Or. Soc. xx. 144, xxi. 23. The significant terms
uncover." " play " (2 Sam. yi. 20 sq.), have other meanings intel-
Kfibfe to those acquainted with the excesses practised in Oriental
cult.
it was certainly used in divination and presumably did not
differ radically from the ephod of the post-exilic age.
See further, in addition to the monographs already cited, the
articles in Hustings's Dtct. Bible (by S. K. Driver), Ency. Bib.
(by G. F. Moore), and Jew. Encyc. (L. Ginsburg), and E.
Sellin, in Oriental. Studten: Tkeodor Nbldeke (ed. Bezold, 1906),
pp. 699 sqq. (S. A. C.)
EPHOR (Gr. tjxtpos), the title of the highest magistrates of
the ancient Spartan state. It is uncertain when the office was
created and what was its original character. That it owed its
institution to Lycurgus (Herod, i. 65; cf. Xen. Respub. Lacedaem.
viii. 3) is very improbable, and we may either regard it as an
immemorial Dorian institution (with C. O. MUller, H. Gabriel,
H. K. Stein, Ed. Meyer and others), or accept the tradition that
it was founded during the first Messenian War, which necessitated
a prolonged absence from Sparta on the part of both kings
(Plato, Laws, iii. 692 A; Aristotle, Politics, v. 9. i =p. 1313 a 26;
Plut. Cleomenes, 10; so G. Dum, G. Gilbert, A. H. J. Greenidge).
There is no evidence for the theory that originally the ephors
were market inspectors; they seem rather to have had from the
outset judicial or police functions. Gradually they extended
their powers, aided by the jealousy between the royal houses,
which made it almost impossible for the two kings to co-operate
heartily, and from the 5th to the 3rd century they exercised a
growing despotism which Plato justly calls a tyrannis (Laws, 692) .
Cleomenes III. restored the royal power by murdering four of
the ephors and abolishing the office, and though it was revived
by Antigonus Doson after the battle of Sellasia, and existed
at least down to Hadrian's reign (Sparta Museum Catalogue,
Int rod. p. 10), it never regained its former power.
In historical times the ephors were five in number, the first
of them giving his name to the year, like the eponymous archon
at Athens. Where opinions were divided the majority prevailed.
The ephors were elected annually, originally no doubt by the
kings, later by the people; their term of office began with the
new moon after the autumnal equinox, and they had an official
residence (i<bopeiov) in the Agora. Every full citizen was
eligible and no property qualification was required.
The ephors summoned and presided over meetings of the
Gerousia and Apella, and formed the executive committee
responsible for carrying out decrees. In their dealings with the
kings they represented the supremacy of the people. There was
a monthly exchange of oaths, the kings swearing to rule according
to the laws, the ephors undertaking on this condition to maintain
the royal authority (Xen. Resp. Laced. 15. 7). They alone
might remain seated in a king's presence, and had power to try
and even to imprison a king, who must appear before them at
the third summons. Two of them accompanied the army in the
field, not interfering with the king's conduct of the campaign,
but prepared, if need be, to bring him to trial on his return.
The ephors, again, exercised a general guardianship of law and
custom and superintended the training of the young. They
shared the criminal jurisdiction of the Gerousia and decided
civil suits. The administration of taxation, the distribution of
booty, and the regulation of the calendar also devolved upon
them. They could actually put perioeci to death without trial,
if we may believe Isocrates (xii. 181), and were responsible
for protecting the state against the helots, against whom they
formally declared war on entering office, so as to be able to kill
any whom they regarded as dangerous without violating religious
scruples. Finally, the ephors were supreme in questions of
foreign policy. They enforced, when necessary, the alien acts
(gcinjXcurfa), negotiated with foreign ambassadors, instructed
generals, sent out expeditions and were the guiding spirits of
the Spartan confederacy.
See the constitutional histories of G. Gilbert (Eng. trans.), pp. 16,
52-59; G. Busolt, p. 84 ff., V. Thumser, p. 241 ff., G. F. Schomann
(Eng. trans.), p. 236 ff., A. H. J. Greenidge, p. 102 ff. ; Szanto's
article " Ephoroi " in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopddie , v. 2860 ff. ;
Ed. Meyer, Forschungen tur alien Geschichte, i. 244 ff. ; C. O. MUller,
Dorians, bk. iii. ch. vii. ; G. Grote, History of Greece, pt. ii. ch. vi.;
G. Busolt, GriecHische Geschichte, i. 1 555 ff. ; B. Niese, Historische
Zeitschrift, Ixii. 58 ff. Of the many monographs dealing with this
subject the following are specially useful: G. Dum, Kntstehiing und
6 7 8
EPHORUS EPHRAEM SYRUS
Entwicklung des spartan. Ephorats (Innsbruck, 1878); H. K. Stein,
Das spartan. Ephorat bis auf Cheilon (Paderborn, 1870) ; K.
Kuchtner, Entstehung und urspriingliche Bedeutung des spartan.
Ephorats (Munich, 1897) ; C. Frick, De ephoris Spartanis (Gottingen,
1872); A. Schaefer, De ephoris Lacedaemoniis (Greifswald, 1863);
E. von Stern, Zur Entstehung und urspriinglichen Bedeutung des
Ephorats in Sparta (Berlin, 1894). (M. N. T.)
EPHORUS (c. 400-330 B.C.), of Cyme in Aeolis, in Asia Minor,
Greek historian. Together with the historian Theopompus he
was a pupil of Isocrates, in whose school he attended two courses
of rhetoric. But he does not seem to have made much progress
in the art, and it is said to have been at the suggestion of Isocrates
himself that he took up literary composition and the study of
history. The fruit of his labours was his 'loropicu. in 29 books,
the first universal history, beginning with the return of the
Heraclidae to Peloponnesus, as the first well-attested historical
event. The whole work was edited by his son Demophilus,
who added a 3oth book, containing a summary description of
the Social War and ending with the taking of Perinthus (340) by
Philip of Macedon (cf. Diod. Sic. xvi. 14 with xvi. 76). Each
book was complete in itself, and had a separate title and preface.
It is clear that Ephorus made critical use of the best authorities,
and his work, highly praised and much read, was freely drawn
upon by Diodorus Siculus 1 and other compilers. Strabo
(viii. p. 332) attaches much importance to his geographical
investigations, and praises him for being the first to separate
the historical from the merely geographical element. Polybius
(xii. 25 g) while crediting him with a knowledge of the conditions
of naval warfare, ridicules his description of the battles of Leuctra
and Mantineia as showing ignorance of the nature of land opera-
tions. He was further to be commended for drawing (though
not always) a sharp line of demarcation between the mythical
and historical (Strabo ix. p. 423); he even recognized that a
profusion of detail, though lending corroborative force to accounts
of recent events, is ground for suspicion in reports of far-distant
history. His style was high-flown and artificial, as was natural
considering his early training, and he frequently sacrificed truth
to rhetoric effect; but, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
he and Theopompus were the only historical writers whose
language was accurate and finished. Other works attributed to
him were: A Treatise on Discoveries; Respecting Good and
Evil Things; On Remarkable Things in Various Countries (it is
doubtful whether these were separate works, or merely extracts
from the Histories) ; A Treatise on my Country, on the history and
antiquities of Cyme, and an essay On Style, his only rhetorical
work, which is occasionally mentioned by the rhetorician Theon.
Nothing is known of his life, except the statement in Plutarch
that he declined to visit the court of Alexander the Great.
Fragments in C. W. Miiller, Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum,
i., with critical introduction on the life and writings of Ephorus;
see J. A. Kliigmann, De Ephoro historico (1860) ; C. A. Volquardsen,
Untersuchungen iiber die Quellen der gnechischen und sicilischen
Geschichten bei Diodor. xi.-xvi. (1868) ; and specially J. B. Bury,
Ancient Greek Historians (1909); E. Schwartz, in Pauly-Wissowa,
Realencyc. s.v. ; and article GREECE: History: Ancient Authorities.
EPHRAEM SYRUS (Ephraim the Syrian), a saint who lived
in Mesopotamia during the first three quarters of the 4th century
A.D. He is perhaps the most influential of all Syriac authors;
and his fame as a poet, commentator, preacher and defender of
orthodoxy has spread throughout all branches of the Christian
Church. This reputation he owes partly to the vast fertility
of his pen according to the historian Sozomen he was credited
with having written altogether 3,000,000 h'nes partly to the
elegance of his style and a certain measure of poetic inspiration,
more perhaps to the strength and consistency of his personal
character, and his ardour in defence of the creed formulated
at Nicaea.
An anonymous life of Ephraim was written not long after his
death in 373. The biography has come down to us in two
recensions. But in neither form is it free from later interpolation
and its untrustworthiness is shown by its conflicting with data
1 It is now generally recognized, thanks to Volquardsen anc
others, that Ephorus is the principal authority followed by Diodorus
except in the chapters relating to Sicilian history.
supplied by his own works, as well as by the manner in which
t is overloaded with miraculous events. The following is a
Drobable outline of the main facts of Ephraim's life. He was
)orn in the reign of Constantine (perhaps in 306) at or near
Sfisibis. His father was a pagan, the priest of an idol called
Abnil or Abizal. 2 During his boyhood Ephraim showed a
repugnance towards heathen worship, and was eventually driven
yy his father from the home. He became a ward and disciple of
;he famous Jacob the same who attended the Council of Nicaea
as bishop of Nisibis, and died in 338. At his hands Ephraim
seems to have received baptism at the age of 18 or of 28 (the
two recensions differ on this point), and remained at Nisibis till
ts surrender to the Persians by Jovian in 363. Probably in
:he course of these years he was ordained a deacon, but from his
lumble estimate of his own worth refused advancement to any
ligher degree in the church. He seems to have played an im-
jortant part in guiding the fortunes of the city during the war
aegun by Shapur II. in 337, in the course of which Nisibis was
:hrice unsuccessfully besieged by the Persians (in 338, 346 and
350). The statements of his biographer to this effect accord
with the impression we derive from his own poems (Carmina
Nisibena, 1-21). His intimate relations with Bishop Jacob were
continued with the three succeeding bishops Babu (338-7349),
Vologaeses (?349~36i), and Abraham on all of whom he wrote
encomia. The surrender of the city in 363 to the Persians
resulted in a general exodus of the Christians, and Ephraim left
with the rest. After visiting Amid (Diarbekr) he proceeded to
Edessa, and there settled and spent the last ten years of his life.
He seems to have lived mainly as a hermit outside the city: his
time was devoted to study, writing, teaching and the refutation
of heresies. It is possible that during these years he paid a visit
to Basil at Caesarea. Near the end of his life he rendered great
public service by distributing provisions in the. city during a
famine. The best attested date for his death is the 9th of June
373. It is clear that this chronology leaves no room for the visit
to Egypt, and the eight years spent there in refuting Arianism,
which are alleged by his biographer. Perhaps, as has been
surmised, there may be confusion with another Ephraim. Nor
can he have written the funeral panegyric on Basil who survived
him by three months. But with all necessary deductions the
biography is valuable as witnessing to the immense reputation
for sanctity and for theological acumen which Ephraim had
gained in his lifetime, or at least soon after he died. His bio-
grapher's statement as to his habits and appearance is worth
quoting, and is probably true: " From the time he became
a monk to the end of his life his only food was barley bread and
sometimes pulse and vegetables: his drink was water. And his
flesh was dried upon his bones, like a potter's sherd. His
clothes were of many pieces patched together, the colour of
dirt. In stature he was little; his countenance was always sad,
and he never condescended to laughter. And he was bald and
beardless."
The statement in his Life that Ephraim miraculously learned
Coptic falls to the ground with the narrative of his Egyptian visit:
and the story of his suddenly learning to speak Greek through
the prayer of St Basil is equally unworthy of credence. He
probably wrote only in Syriac, though he may have possessed
some knowledge of Greek and possibly of Hebrew. But many of
his works must have been early translated into other languages;
and we possess in MSS. versions into Greek, Armenian, Coptic,
Arabic and Ethiopic. The Greek versions occupy three entire
volumes of the Roman folio edition, and the extant Armenian
versions (mainly of N.T. commentaries) were published at
Venice in four volumes in 1836.
It was primarily as a sacred poet that Ephraim impressed
himself on his fellow-countrymen. With the exception of his
commentaries on scripture, nearly all his extant Syriac works
are composed in metre. In many cases the metrical structure
* It is true that in the Confession attributed to him and printed
among his Greek works in the first volume of the Roman edition he
speaks (p. 129) of his parents as having become martyrs for the
Christian faith. But this document is of very doubtful authenticity.
EPHRAIM EPHTHALITES
679
i of the simplest, consisting only in the arrangement of the
discourse in lines of uniform length usually heptasyllabic
t Kphraim's favourite metre) or pentasyllable. A more compli-
cated arrangement is found in other poems, such as the Carmina
!fisil>r*a: these are made up of strophes, each consisting of
lines of different lengths according to a settled scheme, with a
recurring refrain. T. J. Lamy has estimated that, in this class
of poems, there are as many as 66 different varieties of metres
to be found in the works of Ephraim. These strophic poems
were set to music, and sung by alternating choirs of girls. Accord-
ing to Ephraim's biographer, his main motive for providing
these hymns set to music was his desire to counteract the baneful
effects produced by the heretical hymns of Bardaisan and his
son Harmonius. which had enjoyed popularity and been sung
among the Edessenes for a century and a half.
The subject-matter of Ephraim's poems covers all departments
of theology. Thus the Roman edition contains (of metrical
works) exegetical discourses, hymns on the Nativity of Christ,
65 hymns against heretics, &$ on the Faith against sceptics, a
discourse against the Jews, 85 funeral hymns, 4 on free-will,
76 exhortations to repentance, 12 hymns on paradise, and 12
on miscellaneous subjects. The edition of Lamy has added
many other poems, largely connected with church festivals. It
must be confessed that, judged by Western standards, the poems
of Ephraim are prolix and wearisome in the extreme, and are
distinguished by few striking poetic beauties. And so far as
they are made the vehicle of reasoning, their efficiency is seriously
hampered by their poetic form.' On the other hand, it is fair
to remember that the taste of Ephraim's countrymen in poetry
was very different from ours. As Duval remarks: " quant a la
prolixiti de saint Ephrem que nous trouvons parfois fastidieuse,
on ne peut la condamner sans tenir compte du gout des Syriens
qui aimaient les repetitions et les developpements de la meme
pensec, et voyaient des qualites la ou nous trouvons des defauts "
(Litter, syriaque, p. ig). He is no worse in these respects than the
best of the Syriac writers who succeeded him. And he surpasses
almost all of them in the richness of his diction, and his skill in
the use of metaphors and illustrations.
Of Ephraim as a commentator on Scripture we have only
imperfect means of judging. His commentaries on the O.T.
are at present accessible to us only in the form they had assumed
in the Catena Patrum of Severus (compiled in 861), and to some
extent in quotations by later Syriac commentators. His com-
mentary on the Gospels is of great importance in connexion
with the textual history of the N.T., for the text on which he
composed it was that of the Diatessaron. The Syriac original
n lost: but the ancient Armenian version survives, and was
published at Venice in 1836 along with Ephraim's commentary
on the Pauline epistles (also only extant in Armenian) and some
other works. A Latin version of the Armenian Diatessaron
commentary has been made by Aucher and Mosinger (Venice,
1876). Using this version as a clue, J. R. Harris 1 has been able
to identify a number of Syriac quotations from or references to
this commentary in the works of Lsho'dadh, Bar-Kepha (Severus),
Bar-salibi and Barhebraeus. Although, as Harris points out,
it is unlikely that the original text of the Diatessaron had come
down unchanged through the two centuries to Ephraim's day,
the text on which he comments was in the main unaffected by
the revision which produced the Peshitta. Side by side with this
conclusion may be placed the result of F. C. Burkitt's 1 careful
examination of the quotations from the Gospels in the other works
of Ephraim; be shows conclusively that in all the undoubtedly
genuine works the quotations are from a prc-Peshitta text.
As a theologian, Ephraim shows himself a stout defender of
Nicacan orthodoxy, with no leanings in the direction of either
the Nestorian or the Monophysite heresies which arose after his
time. He regarded it as his special task to combat the views
of Marcion, of Bardaisan and of Mani.
' Fragment! of Ike Commentary of Ephrem Syria upon the Dia-
lessamn (London, 1895).
" Ephraim's Quotations from the Gospel," in Texts and Studies,
vol. vii. (Cambridge, 1901).
To the modern historian Ephraim's main contribution is in
the material supplied by the 72 hymns' known as Carmina
Nisibeita and published by G. Bickell in 1866. The first 20
poems were written at Nisibis between 350 and 363 during the
Persian invasions; the remaining 52 at Edessa between 363
and 373. The former tell us much of the incidents of the frontier
war, and particularly enable us to reconstruct in detail the
history of the third siege of Nisibis in 350.
Of the many editions of Ephraim's works a full list is given by
Nestle in Realenk. f. protest. Theol. und Kirche (3rd ed.). For
modern students the most important are: (l) the great folio edition
in 6 volumes (3 of works in Greek and 3 in Syriac), in which the text
is throughout accompanied by a Latin version (Rome, 1732-1746);
on the unsatisfactory character of this edition (which includes many
works that are not Ephraim's) and especially of the Latin version,
see Burkitt, Ephraim's Quotations, pp. 4 MJ<|.; (2) Carmina Nisibena,
edited with a Latin translation by G. Bickell (Leipzig, 1866); (3)
Hymni et sermones, edited with a Latin translation by T. J. Lamy
(4 vols., Malines, 1882-1902). Many selected homilies have been
edited or translated by Overbeck, Zingcrlc and others (cf. Wright,
Short History, pp. 35 sag.); a selection of the Hymns was translated
by H. Burgess, Select Metrical Hymns of Ephrem Syrus (1853). {
the two recensions of Ephraim's biography, one was edited in part
by J. S. Assemani (B.O. i. 26 scm.) and in full by S. E. Assemani in
the Roman edition (iii. pp. xxiii.-lxiii.) ; the other by Lamy (ii. 5-90)
and Bedjan (Acta mart, et sanct. iii. 621-665). The long poem on
the history of Joseph, twice edited by Bedjan (Paris, 1887 and 1891)
and by him attributed to Ephraim, is more probably the work of
Balai. (N. M.)
EPHRAIM, a tribe of Israel, called after the younger son of
Joseph, who in his benediction exalted Ephraim over the elder
brother Manasseh (Gen. xlviii.). These two divisions were often
known as the "house of Joseph" (Josh. xvii. 14 sqq.; Judg. i. 22;
2 Sam. xix. 20; i Kings xi. 28). The relations between them arc
obscure; conflicts are referred to in Is. ix. 2i, 4 and Ephraim's
proud and ambitious character is indicated in its demands as
narrated in Josh. xvii. 14; Judg. viii. 1-3, xii. 1-6. Thoughout,
Ephraim played a distinctive and prominent part; it probably
excelled Manasseh in numerical strength, and the name became
a synonym for the northern kingdom of Israel. Originally the
name may have been a geographical term for the central portion
of Palestine. Regarded as a tribe, it lay to the north of Benjamin,
which traditionally belongs to it; but whether the young
" brother " (see BENJAMIN) sprang from it, or grew up separately,
is uncertain. Northwards, Ephraim lost itself in Manasseh,
even if it did not actually include it (Judg. i. 27; i Chron. vii.
29); the boundaries between them can hardly be recovered.
Ephraim's strength lay in the possession of famous sites:
Shechem, with the tomb of the tribal ancestor, also one of the
capitals; Shiloh, at one period the home of the ark; Timnath-
Serah (or Heres), the burial-place of Joshua; and Samaria, whose
name was afterwards extended to the whole district (see
SAMARIA).
Shecbem itself was visited by Abraham and Jacob, and the
latter bought from the sons of Hamor a burial-place (Gen.
xxxiii. 19). The story of Dinah may imply some early settlement
of tribes in its vicinity (but sec SIMEON), and the reference in
Gen. xlviii. 22 (see R. V. marg.) alludes to its having been forcibly
captured. But how this part of Palestine came into the hands of
the Israelites is not definitely related in the story of the invasion
(see JOSHUA).
A careful discussion of the Biblical data referring to Ephraim is
given by H. W. Hogg, Ency. Bib., s.v. On the characteristic
narratives which appear to have originated in Ephraim (viz. the
Ephraimitc or Klohist source, E), see GENESIS and BIBLE: Old
Testament Criticism. See further AIUMI.I i.< n ; GIDEON ; MANASSEH ;
and JEWS: History.
EPHTHALITES, or WHITE HUNS. This many-named and
enigmatical tribe was of considerable importance in the history
of India and Persia in the 5th and 6th centuries, and was known
to the Byzantine writers, who call them 'EtftfaXtroi, EWaylroi,
Ne00aMroi or 'A/3&Xoi. The last of these is an independent
attempt to render the original name, which was probably
1 There were originally 77, but 5 have perished.
1 Inter-tribal feuds during the period of the monarchy may
underlie the events mentioned in i Kings xvi. 9 sq., 21 sq.; 2 Kings
xv. 10, 14.
68o
EPI EPICHARMUS
something like Aptal or Haptal, but the initial N of the third is
believed to be a clerical error. They were also called Aewcot
Ovvvoi. or Xouvoi, White (that is fair-skinned) Huns. In Arabic
and Persian they are known as Haital and in Armenian as Haithal,
Idal or Hepthal. The Chinese name Yetha seems an attempt
to represent the same sound. In India they were called Hunas.
Ephthalite is the usual orthography, but Hephthalite is per-
haps more correct.
Our earliest information about the Ephthalites comes from
the Chinese chronicles, in which it is stated that they were
originally a tribe of the great Yue-Chi (q.v.), living to the north
of the Great Wall, and in subjection to the Jwen-Jwen, as were
also the Turks at one time. Their original name was Hoa or
Hoa-tun; subsequently they styled themselves Ye-tha-i-li-to
after the name of their royal family, or more briefly Ye-tha.
Before the 5th century A.D. they began to move westwards, for
about 420 we find them in Transoxiana, and for the next 130
years they were a menace to Persia, which they continually and
successfully invaded, though they never held it as a conquest.
The Sassanid king, Bahrain V., fought several campaigns with
them and succeeded in keeping them at bay, but they defeated
and killed Peroz (Firuz), A.D. 484. His son Kavadh I. (Kobad),
being driven out of Persia, took refuge with the Ephthalites,
and recovered his throne with the assistance of their khan,
whose daughter he had married, but subsequently he engaged in
prolonged hostilities with them. The Persians were not quit
of the Ephthalites until 557 when Chosroes Anushirwan destroyed
their power with the assistance of the Turks, who now make their
first appearance in western Asia.
The Huns who invaded India appear to have belonged to the
same stock as those who molested Persia. The headquarters
of the horde were at Bamian and at Balkh, and from these points
they raided south-east and south-west. Skandagupta repelled
an invasion in 455, but the defeat of the Persians in 484 probably
stimulated their activity, and at the end of the sth century
their chief Toromana penetrated to Malwa in central India and
succeeded in holding it for some time. His son Mihiragula
(c. 510-540) made Sakala in the Punjab his Indian capital, but
the cruelty of his rule provoked the Indian princes to form a
confederation and revolt against him about 528. He was not,
however, killed, but took refuge in Kashmir, where after a few
years he seized the throne and then attacked the neighbouring
kingdom of Gandhara, perpetrating terrible massacres. About
a year after this he died (c. 540), and shortly afterwards the
Ephthalites collapsed under the attacks of the Turks. They
do not appear to have moved on to another sphere, as these
nomadic tribes often did when defeated, and were probably
gradually absorbed in the surrounding populations. Their
political power perhaps continued in the Gurjara empire, which
at one time extended to Bengal in the east and the Nerbudda
in the south, and continued in a diminished form until A.D. 1040.
These Gurjaras appear to have entered India in connexion with
the Hunnish invasions.
Our knowledge of the Indian Hunas is chiefly derived from
coins, from a few inscriptions distributed from the Punjab to
central India, and from* the account of the Chinese pilgrim
'Hsuan Tsang, who visited the country just a century after the
death of Mihiragula. The Greek monk Cosmas Indicopleustes,
who visited India about 530, describes the ruler of the country,
whom he calls Gollas, as a White Hun king, who exacted an
oppressive tribute with the help of a large army of cavalry and
war elephants. Gollas no doubt represents the last part of the
name Mihiragula or Mihirakula.
The accounts of the Ephthalites, especially those of the Indian
Hunas, dwell on their ferocity and cruelty. They are represented
as delighting in massacres and torture, and it is said that popular
tradition in India still retains the story that Mihiragula used to
amuse himself by rolling elephants down a precipice and watching
their agonies. Their invasions shook Indian society and institu-
tions to the foundations, but, unlike the earlier Kushans, they
do not seem to have introduced new ideas into India or have acted
as other than a destructive force, although they may perhaps
have kept up some communication between India and Persia.
The first part of Mihiragula seems to be the name of the Persian
deity Mithra, but his patron deity was Siva, and he left behind
him the reputation of a ferocious persecutor of Buddhism.
Many of his coins bear the Nandi bull (Siva's emblem), and the
king's name is preceded by the title Sahi (shah), which had
previously been used by the Kushan dynasty. Toramana's coins
are found plentifully in Kashmir, which, therefore, probably
formed part of the Huna dominions before Mihiragula 's time,
so that when he fled there after his defeat he was taking refuge,
if not with his own subjects, at least with a kindred clan.
Greek writers give a more flattering account of the Ephthalites,
which may perhaps be due to the fact that they were useful to
the East Roman empire as enemies of Persia and also not
dangerously near. Procopius says that they were far more
civilized than the Huns of Attila, and the Turkish ambassador
who was received by Justin is said to have described them as
aariKoi, which may merely mean that they lived in the cities
which they conquered. The Chinese writers say that their
customs were like those of the Turks; that they had no cities,
lived in felt tents, were ignorant of writing and practised
polyandry. Nothing whatever is known of their language, but
some scholars explain the names Toramana and Jauvla as
Turkish.
For the possible connexion between the Ephthalites and the
European Huns see HUNS. . The Chinese statement that the
Hoa or Ye-tha were a section of the great Yue-Chi, and that
their customs resembled those ofr the Turks (Tu-Kiue), is probably
correct, but does not amount to much, for the relationship did
not prevent them from fighting with the Yue-Chi and Turks, and
means little more than that they belonged to the warlike and
energetic section of central Asian nomads, which is in any case
certain. They appear to have been more ferocious and less
assimilative than the other conquering tribes. This may, how-
ever, be due to the fact that their contact with civilization
was so short; the Yue-Chi and Turks had had some commerce
with more advanced races before they played any part in political
history, but the Ephthalites appear as raw barbarians, and were
annihilated as a nation in little more than a hundred years.
Like the Yue-Chi they have probably contributed to form some
of the physical types of the Indian population, and it is noticeable
that polyandry is a recognized institution among many Himalayan
tribes, and is also said to be practised secretly by the Jats and
other races of the plains.
Among original authorities may be consulted Procopius, Menander
Protector, Cosmas Indicopleustes (trans. McCrindle, Hakluyt
Society, I 897), the Kashmir chronicle Rajatarangint (trans. Stein,
1900, and Yuan Chwang). See also A. Stein, White Huns and
Kindred Tribes (1905); O. Franke, Beitrdge aus chinesischen Quellen
zur Kenntnis der Turkvolker und Skythen (1904); Ujfalvy, Memoire
sur les Huns Blancs (1898); Drouin, Memoire sur les Huns Ephtha-
lites (1895); and various articles by Vincent Smith, Specht, Drouin,
and E. H. Parker in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Journal
asiatique. Revue numismatique, Asiatic Quarterly, &c. (C. EL.)
fiPI, the French architectural term for a light finial, generally
of metal, but sometimes of terra-cotta, forming the termination
of a spire or the angle of a roof.
EPICENE (from the Gr. errocon'os, common), a term in Greek
and Latin grammar denoting nouns which, possessing but one
gender, are used to describe animals of either sex. In English
grammar there are no true epicene nouns, but the term is some-
times used instead of common gender. In figurative and literary
language, epicene is an adjective applied to persons having the
characteristics of both sexes, and hence is occasionally used as a
synonym of " effeminate."
EPICHARMUS (c. 540-450 B.C.), Greek comic poet, was born
in the island of Cos. Early in life he went to Megara in Sicily,
and after its destruction by Gelo (484) removed to Syracuse,
where he spent the rest of his life at the court of Hiero, and died
at the age of ninety or (according to a statement in Lucian,
Macrobii, 25) ninety-seven. A brazen statue was set up in his
honour by the inhabitants, for which Theocritus composed an
inscription (Epigr. 17). Epicharmus was the chief representative
of the Sicilian or Dorian comedy. Of his works 35 titles and a
EPIC POETRY
681
few fragments have survived. In the city of tyrants it would
have been dangerous to present comedies like those of the
Athenian stage, in which attacks were made upon the authorities.
Accordingly, the comedies of Epicharmus are of two kinds,
neither of them calculated to give offence to the ruler. They are
either mythological travesties (resembling the satyric drama
of Athens) or character comedies. To the first class belong
the Bttsiris, in which Heracles is represented as a voracious
glutton; the Marriage of Hebe, remarkable for a lengthy list
of dainties. The second class dealt with different classes of the
population (the sailor, the prophet, the boor, the parasite).
Some of the plays seem to have bordered on the political, as
Tke Plundering, describing the devastation of Sicily in the time
of the poet. A short fragment has been discovered (in the
Rainer papyri) from the '(Xvoirtvt a.Mito\at, which told how
Odysseus got inside Troy in the disguise of a beggar and obtained
valuable information. Another feature of his works was the large
number of excellent sentiments expressed in a brief proverbial
form; the Pythagoreans claimed him as a member of their
school, who had forsaken the study of philosophy for the
writing of comedy. Plato (Theaetelus,i 53 E) puts him at the head
of the masters of comedy, coupling his name with Homer and,
according to a remark in Diogenes Laertius, Plato was indebted
to Epicharmus for much of his philosophy. Ennius called his
didactic poem on natural philosophy Epicharmus after the comic
poet. The metres employed by Epicharmus were iambic
trimeter, and especially trochaic and anapaestic tetrameter.
The plot of the plays was simple, the action lively and rapid;
hence they were classed among the fabulae motoriae (stirring,
bustling), as indicated in the well-known line of Horace (Epistles,
ii. i. 5):
" Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi."
Epicharmus is the subject of articles in Suidas and Diogenes
Laertiu* (vtii. 3). See A. O. Lorenz, Leben and Schriften des Koers
E. (with account of the Doric drama and fragments, 1864); J.
Cirani, Eludes sw la pofsie grecque (1884); Kaibel in Pauly-
Winpwa's Realeruydopaaie, according to whom Epicharmus was a
Sicetiot : for the papyrus fragment, Blass in Jahrbitcherjur Phiiologte,
CTTTU., 1880.
EPIC POETRY, or EPOS (from the Gr. tiros, a story, and
truant, pertaining to a story), the names given to the most
dignified and elaborate forms of narrative poetry. The word
efopee is also, but more rarely, employed to designate the same
thing, bmroiof in Greek being a maker of epic poetry, and
fToroua. what he makes.
It is to Greece, where the earliest literary monuments which we
oossess are of an epical character, that we turn for a definition
of these vast heroic compositions, and we gather that their
subject-matter was not confined, as Voltaire and the critics of
the i8th century supposed, to " narratives in verse of warlike
adventures." When we first discover the epos, hexameter verse
has already been selected for its vehicle. In this form epic poems
were composed not merely dealing with war and personal
romance, but carrying out a didactic purpose, or celebrating
the mysteries pi religion. These three divisions, to which are
severally attached the more or less mythical names of Homer,
Hesiod and Orpheus seem to have marked the earliest literary
movement of the Greeks. But, even here, we must be warned
that what we possess is not primitive; there had been unwritten
epics, probably in hexameters, long before the composition of
any now-surviving fragment. The saga of the Greek nation,
the catalogue of its arts and possessions, the rites and beliefs of
its priesthood, must have been circulated, by word of mouth,
long before any historical poet was born. We look upon Homer
and Hesiod as records of primitive thought, but Professor
Gilbert Murray reminds us that " our Iliad, Odyssey, Erga and
Theogony are not the first, nor the second, nor the twelfth of
such embodiments." The early epic poets, Lesches, Linus,
Orpheus, Arctinus, Eugammon are the veriest shadows, whose
names often betray their symbolic and fabulous character. It
h now believed that there was a class of minstrels, the Rhapso-
dists or Homeridae, whose business it was to recite poetry at
feasts and other solemn occasions. " The real bards of early
Greece were all nameless and impersonal." When our tradition
begins to be preserved, we find everything of a saga-character
attributed to Homer, a blind man and an inhabitant of Chios.
This gradually crystallized until we find Aristotle definitely
treating Homer as a person, and attributing to him the composi-
tion of three great poems, the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Margites,
now lost (see HOMKR). The first two of these have been preserved
and form for us the type of the ancient epic; when we speak of
epic poetry, we unconsciously measure it by the example of the
Iliad and the Odyssey. It is quite certain, however, that these
poems had not merely been preceded by a vast number of
revisions of the mythical history of the country, but were accom-
panied by innumerable poems of a similar character, now entirely '
lost. That antiquity did not regard these other epics as equal
in beauty to the Iliad seems to be certain ; but such poems as '
Cypria, Iliou Persis (Sack of llion) and Aelhiopis can hardly but
have exhibited other sides of the epic tradition. Did we possess
them, it is almost certain that we could speak with more assurance
as to the scope of epic poetry in the days of oral tradition, and
could understand more clearly what sort of ballads in hexameter
it was which rhapsodes took round from court to court. In the '
4th century B.C. it seems that people began to write down what
was not yet forgotten of all this oral poetry. Unfortunately,'
the earliest critic who describes this process is Proclus, a Byzantine
neo-Platonist, who did not write until some 800 years later,
when the whole tradition had become hopelessly corrupted.
When we pass from Homer and Hesiod, about whose actual
existence critics will be eternally divided, we reach in the 7th'
century a poet, Peisander of Rhodes, who wrote an epic poem,
the Heracleia, of which fragments remain. Other epic writers,
who appear to be undoubtedly historic, are Antimachus of
Colophon, who wrote a Thebais; Panyasis, who, like Peisander,
celebrated the feats of Heracles; Choerilus of Samos; and
Anyte, of whom we only know that she was an epic poetess,
and was called " The female Homer." In the 6th and sth
centuries B.C. there was a distinct school of philosophical epic,
and we distinguish the names of Xenophanes, Parmenides and
Empedocles as the leaders of it.
From the dawn of Latin literature epic poetry seems to have
been cultivated in Italy. A Greek exile, named Livius Andronicus,
translated the Odyssey into Latin during the first Punic War,
but the earliest original epic of Rome was the lost Bellum
Punicum of Naevius, a work to which Virgil was indebted. A
little later, Ennius composed, about 172 B.C., in 18 books, an
historical epic of the Annales, dealing with the whole chronicle of
Rome. This was the foremost Latin poem, until the appearance
of the Aon ill; it was not imitated, remaining, for a hundred
years, as Mr Mackail has said, " not only the unique, but the.
satisfying achievement in this kind of poetry." Virgil began
the most famous of Roman epics in the year 30 B.C., and when he
died, nine years later, he desired that the MS. of the Aeneid
should be burned, as it required three years' work to complete'
it. Nevertheless, it seems to us, and seemed to the ancient world,
almost perfect, and a priceless monument of art; it is written,
like the great Greek poems on which it is patently modelled,
in hexameters. In the next generation, the Pharsalia of Lucan,
of which Cato, as the type of the republican spirit, is the hero,
was the principal example of Latin epic. Statius, under the
Flavian emperors, wrote several epic poems, of which the'
Thcbaid survives. In the ist century A.D. Valerius Flaccus
wrote the Argonautica in 8 books, and Silius Italicus the Punir.
War, in 17 books; these authors show a great decline in taste
and merit, even in comparison with Statius, and Silius Italicus,
in particular, is as purely imitative as the worst of the epic
writers of modern Europe. At the close of the 4th century the
style revived with Claudian, who produced five or six elaborate
historical and mythological epics of which the Rape of Proserpine
was probably the most remarkable; in his interesting poetry
we have a valuable link between the Silver Age in Rome and the
Italian Renaissance. With Claudian the history of epic poetry
among the ancients closes.
In medieval times there existed a large body of narrative
682
EPICTETUS
poetry to which the general title of Epic has usually been given.
Three principal schools are recognized, the French, the Teutonic
and the Icelandic. Teutonic epic poetry deals, as a rule, with
legends founded on the history of Germany in the 4th, 5th and
6th centuries, and in particular with such heroes as Ermanaric,
Attila and Theodoric. But there is also an important group in
it which deals with English themes, and among these Beowulf,
Waldere, The Lay of Maldon and Finnesburh are pre-eminent.
To this group is allied the purely German poem of Hildebrand,
attributed to c. 800. Among these Beowulf is the only one
which exists in anything like complete form, and it is of all
examples of Teutonic epic the most important. With all its
trivialities and incongruities, which belong to a barbarous age,
Beowulf is yet a solid and comprehensive example of native epic
poetry. It is written, like all old Teutonic work of the kind,
in alliterative unrhymed rhythm. In Iceland, a new heroic
literature was invented in the middle ages, and to this we owe
the Sagas, which are, in fact, a reduction to prose of the epics
of the warlike history of the North. These Sagas took the place
of a group of archaic Icelandic epics, the series of which seems
to have closed with the noble poem of Atlamdl, the principal
surviving specimen of epic poetry as it was cultivated in the
primitive literature of Iceland. The surviving epical fragments
of Icelandic composition are found thrown together in the
Codex Regius, under the title of The Elder Edda, a most precious
MS. discovered in the i7th century. The Icelandic epics seem
to have been shorter and more episodical in character than the
lost Teutonic specimens; both kinds were written in alliterative
verse. It is not probable that either possessed the organic unity
and vitality of spirit which make the Sagas so delightful. The
French medieval epics (see CHANSONS DE GESTE) are late in
comparison with those of England, Germany and Iceland. They
form a curious transitional link between primitive and modern
poetry; the literature of civilized Europe may be said to begin
with them. There is a great increase of simplicity, a great
broadening of the scene of action. The Teutonic epics were
obscure and intense, the French chansons de geste are lucid and
easy. The existing masterpiece of this kind, the magnificent
Roland, is doubtless the most interesting and pleasing of all the
epics of medieval Europe. Professor Ker's analysis of its merits
may be taken as typical of all that is best in the vast body of
epic which comes between the antique models, which were un-
known to the medieval poets, and the artificial epics of a later
time which were founded on vast ideal themes, in imitation of
the ancients. " There is something lyrical in Roland, but the
poem is not governed by lyrical principles; it requires the
deliberation and the freedom of epic; it must have room to
move in before it can come up to the height of its argument.
The abruptness of its periods is not really an interruption of its
even flight; it is an abruptness of detail, like a broken sea with
a larger wave moving under it; it does not impair or disguise
the grandeur of the movement as a whole." Of the progress and
decline of the chansons de geste (q.v.) from the ideals of Roland
a fuller account is given elsewhere. To the Nibelungenlied (q.v.)
also, detailed attention is given in a separate article.
What may be called the artificial or secondary epics of modern
Europe, founded upon an imitation of the Iliad and the Aeneid,
are more numerous than the ordinary reader supposes, although
but few of them have preserved much vitality. In Italy the
Chanson de Roland inspired romantic epics by Luigi Pulci (1432-
1487), whose Morgante Maggiore appeared in 1481, and is a
masterpiece of burlesque; by M. M. Boiardo (1434-1494), whose
Orlando Innamorato was finished in 1486; by Francesco Bello
(i440?-i49s), whose Mambriano was published in 1497; by
Lodovico Ariosto (q.v. ) , whose Orlando Furioso, by far the greatest
of its class, was published in 1516, and by Luigi Dolce (1508-
1568), as well as by a great number of less illustrious poets.
G.G. Trissino (1478-1549) wrote a Deliverance of Italy from the
Goths in 1547, and Bernardo Tasso (1493-1569) an Amadigi in
1559; Berni remodelled the epic of Boiardo in 1541, and Teofilo
Folango (1491-1544), ridiculed the whole school in an Orlandino
of 1526. An extraordinary feat of mock-heroic epic was The
Bucket (1622) of Alessandro Tassoni (1565-1638). The most
splendid of all the epics of Italy, however, was, and remains,
the Jerusalem Delivered of Torquato Tasso (q.v.), published
originally in 1580, and afterwards rewritten as The Conquest of
Jerusalem, 1593. The fantastic Adone (1623) of G. B. Marini
(1569-1625) and the long poems of Chiabrera, close the list of
Italian epics. Early Portuguese literature is rich in epic poetry.
Luis Pereira Brandao wrote an Elegiada in 18 books, published
in 1588; Jeronymo Corte-Real (d. 1588) a Shipwreck of Sepul-
veda and two other epics; V. M. Quevedo, in 1601, an Alphonso
of Africa, in 12 books; Sa de Menezes (d. 1664) a Conquest of
Malacca, 1634; but all these, and many more, are obscured
by the glory of Camoens (q.v.), whose magnificent Lusiads had
been printed in 1572, and forms the summit of Portuguese
literature. In Spanish poetry, the Poem of the Cid takes the
first place, as the great national epic of the middle ages; it is
supposed to have been written between 1135 and 1175. It was
followed by the Rodrigo, and the medieval school closes with the
Alphonso XI. of Rodrigo Yanez, probably written at the close of
the 1 2th century. The success of the Italian imitative epics of
the isth century led to some imitation of their form in Spain.
Juan de la Cueva (i55o?-i6o6) published a Conquest of Betica
in 1603; Cristobal de Virues (1550-1610) a Monserrate, in 1588;
Luis Barahona de Soto continued Ariosto in a Tears of Angelica;
Gutierrez wrote an Auslriada in 1584; but perhaps the finest
modern epic in Spanish verse is the Araucana (1569-1590) of
Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga (1533-1595), " the first literary work
of merit," as Mr Fitzmaurice-Kelly remarks, " composed in
either American continent." In France, the epic never flourished
in modern times, and no real success attended the Franciade of
Ronsard, the Alaric of Scudery, the Pucelle of Chapelain, the
Divine Epopee of Soumet, or even the Henriade of Voltaire. In
English literature The Faery Queen of Spenser has the same
claim as the Italian poems mentioned above to bear the name
of epic, and Milton, who stands entirely apart, may be said, by
his isolated Paradise Lost, to take rank with Homer and Virgil,
as one of the three types of the mastery of epical composition.
See Bossu, Traite du poeme epique (1675); Voltaire, Sur la poesie
epique; Fauviel, L'Origine de I' epopee chevaleresque (1832); W. P.
Ker, Epic and Romance (1897), and Essays in Medieval Literature
(1905); Gilbert Murray, History of Ancient Greek Literature (1897);
W. von Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur (1879); Gaston
Paris, La Litterature frangaise au may en age { 1 890) ; Leon Gautier,
Les Epopees franQaises (18651868). For works on the Greek epics
see also GREEK LITERATURE and CYCLE. (E. Gj
EPICTETUS (born c. A.D. 60), Greek philosopher, was probably
a native of Hierapolis in south-west Phrygia. The name Epictetus
is merely the Greek for "acquired" (from briKTaadoj) ; his
original name is not known. As a boy he was a slave in the house
of Epaphroditus, a freedman and courtier of the emperor Nero.
He managed, however, to attend the lectures of the Stoic Musonius
Rufus, and subsequently became a freedman. He was lame
and of weakly health. In 90 he was expelled with the other
philosophers by Domitian, who was irritated by the support
and encouragement which the opposition to his tyranny found
amongst the adherents of Stoicism. For the rest of his life he
settled at Nicopolis, in southern Epirus, not far from the scene
of the battle of Actium. There for several years he lived, and
taught by close earnest personal address and conversation.
According to some authorities he lived into the time of Hadrian;
he himself mentions the coinage of the emperor Trajan. His
contemporaries and the next generation held his character and
teaching in high honour. According to Lucian, the earthenware
lamp which had belonged to the sage was bought by an anti-
quarian for 3000 drachmas. He was never married. He wrote
nothing; but much of his teaching was taken down with
affectionate care by his pupil Flavius Arrianus, the historian
of Alexander the Great, and is preserved in two treatises, of the
larger of which, called the Discourses of Epictetus ('Eirusrirrov
AiarpijStu) , four books are still extant. The other treatise is
a shorter and more popular work, the Encheiridion (" Hand-
book "). It contains in an aphoristic form the main doctrines
of the longer work.
EPICURUS
683
The philosophy of Epictetus is intensely practical, and exhibits
a high idealistic type of morality. He is an earnest, sometimes
item and sometimes pathetic, preacher of righteousness, who
despises the mere graces of stylo ami the subtleties of an abstruse
logic. He has no patience with mere antiquarian study of the
Stoical writers. The problem of how life is to be carried out welf
is the one question which throws all other inquiries into the
shade. True education lies in learning to wish things to be as
they actually are; it lies in learning to distinguish what is
our own from what does not belong to us. But there is only one
thing which is fully our own, that is, our will or purpose. God,
acting as a good king and a true father, has given us a will which
cannot be restrained, compelled or thwarted. Nothing external,
neither death nor exile nor pain nor any such thing, can ever
force us to act against our will; if we arc conquered, it is because
we have willed to be conquered. And thus, although we arc not
responsible for the ideas that present themselves to our conscious-
ness, we are absolutely and without any modification responsible
for the way in which we use them. Nothing is ours besides our
will. The divine law which bids us keep fast what is our own
forbids us to make any claim to what is not ours; and while
enjoining us to make use of whatever is given to us, it bids us
not long after what has not been given. " Two maxims," he
says, " we must ever bear in mind that apart from the will
there is nothing either good or bad, and that we must not try
to anticipate or direct events, but merely accept them with
intelligence." We must, in short, resign ourselves to whatever
fate and fortune bring to us, believing, as the first article of our
creed, that there is a god, whose thought directs the universe.
and that not merely in our acts, but even in our thoughts and
plans, we cannot escape his eye. In the world the true position
of man is that of member of a great system, which comprehends
God and men. Each human being is in the first instance a citizen
of his own nation or commonwealth; but he is also a member
of the great city of gods and men, whereof the city political is
only a copy in miniature. All men are the sons of God, and
kindred in nature with the divinity. For man, though a member
in the system of the world, has also within him a principle which
can guide and understand the movement of all the members; he
can enter into the method of divine administration, and thus can
learn and it is the acme of his learning the will of God, which
is the will of nature. Man, said the Stoic, is a rational animal;
and in virtue of that rationality he is neither less nor worse than
the gods, for the magnitude of reason is estimated not by length
nor by height but by its judgments. Each man has within him
a guardian spirit, a god within him, who never sleeps; so that
even in darkness and solitude we are never alone, because God
is within, our guardian spirit. The body which accompanies us
is not strictly speaking ours; it is a poor dead thing, which
belongs to the things outside us. But by reason we arc the masters
of those ideas and appearances which present themselves from
without; we can combine them, and systematize, and can set
up in ourselves an order of ideas corresponding with the order
of nature.
The natural instinct of animated life, to which man also is
originally subject, is self-preservation and self-interest. But
men are so ordered and constituted that the individual cannot
secure his own interests unless he contribute to the common
welfare. We are bound up by the law of nature with the whole
fabric of the world. The aim of the philosopher therefore is to
reach the position of a mind which embraces the whole world in
its view, to grow into the mind of God and to make the will
of nature our own. Such a sage agrees in his thought with God;
he no longer blames either God or man; he fails of nothing
which he purposes and falls in with no misfortune unprepared;
be indulges in neither anger nor envy nor jealousy; he is leaving
manhood for godhead, and in his dead body his thoughts are
concerned about his fellowship with God.
The historical models to which Epictetus reverts are Diogenes
and Socrates. But he frequently describes an ideal character
of a missionary sage, the perfect Stoic or, as he calls him, the
Cynic. This missionary has neither country nor home nor land
nor slave; his bed is the ground; he is without wife or child;
his only mansion is the earth and sky and a shabby clouk. He
must suffer stripes, and must love those who boat him as if he
were a father or a brother. He must be perfectly unembarrassed
in the service of God, not bound by the common ties of life, nor
entangled by relationships, which if he transgresses he will lose
the character of a man of honour, while if he upholds them he
will cease to be the messenger, watchman and herald of the gods.
The perfect man thus described will not be angry with the wrong-
doer; he will only pity his erring brother; for anger in such a
case would only betray that he too thought the wrong-doer
gained a substantial blessing by his wrongful act, instead of
being, as he is, utterly ruined.
The best editions of the works of Epictetus arc by J. Schweig-
hauscr (6vols., Leipzig, 1799-1800) and H. Schcnkl (Leipzig, 1894,
1898). English translations by Elizabeth Carter (London, 1758);
G. Long (London, 1848, ed. 1877, 1892. 1807); T. W. Higginson
(Boston, 1865, newed. 1 890); of the Encheiridion alone bv H. Talbot
(London, 1881); T. W. H. Rolleston (London, 1881). See A.
BonhofTer, Epiktet und die Stoo, (Stuttgart, 1890) and Die Ethik des
Sloikers Epiklet (1894); E. M. Schranka, Der Stoiker Epiklet und
seine Philosophie (Frankfort, 1885); T. Zahn, Der Stoiker Epiktet
und sein Verhottnis turn Christentum (2nd ed. Erlangen, 1895).
See also STOICS and works quoted. (W. W. ; X.)
EPICURUS (342-270 B.C.), Greek philosopher, was born in
Samos in the end of 342 or the beginning of 341 B.C., seven years
after the death of Plato. His father Neocles, a native of Gar-
gettos, a small village of Attica, had settled in Samos, not kter
than 352, as one of the cleruchs sent out after the victory of
Timotheus in 366-365. At the age of eighteen he went to Athens,
where the Platonic school was flourishing under the lead of
Xenocrates. A year later, however, Antipater banished some
12,000 of the poorer citizens, and Epicurus joined his father, who
was now living at Colophon. It seems possible that he had
listened to the lectures of Nausiphanes,a Democritean philosopher,
and Pamphilus the Platonist, but he was probably, like his father,
merely an ordinary teacher. Stimulated, however, by the perusal
of some writings of Democritus, he began to formulate a doctrine
of his own; and at Mitylene, Colophon and Lampsacus, he
gradually gathered round him several enthusiastic disciples.
In 307 he returned to Athens, which had just been restored to a
nominal independence by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and there he
lived for the rest of his life. The scene of his teaching was a
garden which he bought for about 300 (80 minae). There he
passed his days as the loved and venerated head of a remarkable,
and up to that time unique, society of men and women. Amongst
the number were Metrodorus (d. 277), his brother Timocrates,
and his wife Leontion (formerly a hctaera), Polyaenus, Her-
marchus, who succeeded Epicurus as chief of the school, Leonteus
and his wife Themista, and Idomeneus, whose wife was a sister
of Metrodorus. It is possible that the relations between the
sexes in this prototype of Rabelais's Abbey of Th61eme were
not entirely what is termed Platonic. But there is on the other
hand scarcely a doubt that the tales of licentiousness circulated
by opponents are groundless. The stories of the Stoics, who
sought to refute the views of Epicurus by an appeal to his alleged
antecedents and habits, were no 'doubt in the main, as Diogenes
Lacrtius says, the stories of maniacs. The general charges,
which they endeavoured to substantiate by forged letters, need
not count for much, and in many cases they only exaggerated
what, if true, was not so heinous as they suggested. Against
them trustworthy authorities testified to his general and remark-
able considcrateness, pointing to the statues which the city had
raised in his honour, and to the numbers of his friends, who were
many enough to fill whole cities.
The mode of life in his community was plain. The general
drink was water and the food barley bread; half a pint of wine
was held an ample allowance. " Send me," says Epicurus to a*
correspondent, " send me some Cythnian cheese, so that, should
I choose, I may fare sumptuously." There was no community
of property, which, as Epicurus said, would imply distrust of
their own and others' good resolutions. The company was held
in unity by the charms of his personality, and by the free inter-
course which he inculcated and exemplified. Though he seems
68 4
EPICURUS
to have had a warm aff action for his countrymen, it was as human
beings brought into contact with him, and not as members of a
political body, that he preferred to regard them. He never
entered public life. His kindliness extended even to his slaves,
one of whom, named Mouse, was a brother in philosophy.
Epicurus died of stone in 270 B.C. He left his property,
consisting of the garden (Krjwoi 'Eirocoupou), a house in Melite
(the south-west quarter of Athens), and apparently some funds
besides, to two trustees on behalf of his society, and for the
special interest of some youthful members. The garden was set
apart for the use of the school; the house became the house of
Hermarchus and his fellow-philosophers during his lifetime.
The surplus proceeds of the property were further to be applied
to maintain a yearly offering in commemoration of his departed
father, mother and brothers, to pay the expenses incurred in
celebrating his own birthday every year on the 7th of the
month Gamelion, and for a social gathering of the sect on the
aoth of every month in honour of himself and Metrodorus.
Besides similar tributes in honour of his brothers and Polyaenus,
he directed the trustees to be guardians of the son of Polyaenus
and the son of Metrodorus; whilst the daughter of the last
mentioned was to be married by the guardians to some member
of the society who should be approved of by Hermarchus. His
four slaves, three men and one woman, were left their freedom.
His books passed to Hermarchus.
Philosophy. The Epicurean philosophy is traditionally
divided into the three branches of logic, physics and ethics. It
is, however, only as a basis of facts and principles for his theory
of life that logical and physical inquiries find a place at all.
Epicurus himself had not apparently shared in any large or
liberal culture, and his influence was certainly thrown on the
side of those who depreciated purely scientific pursuits as one-
sided and misleading. "Steer clear of all culture" was his advice
to a young disciple. In this aversion to a purely or mainly
intellectual training may be traced a recoil from the systematic
metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, whose tendency was to sub-
ordinate the practical man to the philosopher. Ethics had been
based upon logic and metaphysics. But experience showed that
systematic knowledge of truth is not synonymous with right
action. Hence, in the second place, Plato and Aristotle had
assumed a perfect state with laws to guide the individual aright.
It was thus comparatively easy to show how the individual could
learn to apprehend and embody the moral law in his own conduct.
But experience had in the time of Epicurus shown the temporary
and artificial character of the civic form of social life. It was
necessary, therefore, for Epicurus to go back to nature to find
a more enduring and a wider foundation for ethical doctrine,
to go back from words to realities, to give up reasonings and get
at feelings, to test conceptions and arguments by a final reference
to the only touchstone of truth to sensation. There, and there
only, one seems to find a common and a satisfactory ground,
supposing always that all men's feelings give the same answer.
Logic must go, but so also must the state, as a specially-privileged
and eternal order of things, as anything more than a contrivance
serving certain purposes of general utility.
To the Epicureans the elaborate logic of the Stoics was a
superfluity. In place of logic we find canonic, the theory of
the three tests of truth and reality, (i) The only ultimate
canon of reality is sensation; whatever we feel, whatever we
perceive by any sense, that we know on the most certain evidence
we can have to be real, and in proportion as our feeling is clear,
distinct and vivid, in that proportion are we sure of the reality
of its object. But in what that vividness (evd/xyeio) consists is
a question which Epicurus does not raise, and which he would
no doubt have deemed superfluous quibbling over a matter
sufficiently settled by common sense. (2) Besides our sensations,
we learn truth and reality by our preconceptions or ideas
(irpoMi^as). These are the fainter images produced by repeated
sensations, the " ideas " resulting from previous " impressions "-
sensations at second-hand as it were, which are stored up in
memory, and which a general name serves to recall. These bear
witness to reality, not because we feel anything now, but because
we felt it once; they are sensations registered in language, and
again, if need be, translatable into immediate sensations or groups
of sensation. (3) Lastly, reality is vouched for by the imaginative
apprehensions of the mind (<t>a.vTatmj<ai ttR/SoXat), immediate
feelings of which the mind is conscious as produced by some action
of its own. This last canon, however, was of dubious validity.
Epicureanism generally was content to affirm that whatever
we effectively feel in consciousness is real; in which sense they
allow reality to the fancies of the insane, the dreams of a sleeper,
and those feelings by which we imagine the existence of beings
of perfect blessedness and endless life. Similarly, just because
fear, hope and remembrance add to the intensity of consciousness,
the Epicurean can hold that bodily pain and pleasure is a less
durable and important thing than pain and pleasure of mind.
Whatever we feel to affect us does affect us, and is therefore real.
Error can arise only because we mix up our opinions and sup-
positions with what we actually feel. The Epicurean canon is
a rejection of logic; it sticks fast to the one point that " sensation
is sensation," and there is no more to be made of it. Sensation,
it says, is unreasoning (dXoYos); it must be accepted, and not
criticized. Reasoning can come in only to put sensations to-
gether, and to point out how they severally contribute to human
welfare; it does not make them, and cannot alter them.
Physics. In the Epicurean physics there are two parts a
general metaphysic and psychology, and a special explanation
of particular phenomena of nature. The method of Epicurus
is the argument of analogy. It is an attempt to make the
phenomena of nature intelligible to us by regarding them as
instances on a grand scale of that with which we are already
familiar on a small scale. This is what Epicurus calls explaining
what we do not see by what we do see.
In physics Epicurus founded upon Democritus, and his chief
object was to abolish the dualism between mind and matter
which is so essential a point in the systems of Plato and Aristotle.
All that exists, says Epicurus, is corporeal (TO irav e<m aco/ia);
the intangible is non-existent, or empty space. If a thing exists
it must be felt, and to be felt it must exert resistance. But not
all things are intangible which our senses are not subtle enough
to detect. We must indeed accept our feelings; but we must
also believe much which is not directly testified by sensation,
if only it serves to explain phenomena and does not contravene
our sensations. The fundamental postulates of Epicureanism
are atoms and the void (arofia KO.I Ktvov). Space is infinite,
and there is an illimitable multitude of indestructible, indivisible
and absolutely compact atoms in perpetual motion in this
illimitable space. These atoms, differing only in size, figure
and weight, are perpetually moving with equal velocities, but at
a rate far surpassing our conceptions; as they move, they are
for ever giving rise to new worlds; and these worlds are per-
petually tending towards dissolution, and towards a fresh series
of creations. This universe of ours is only one section out of the
innumerable worlds in infinite space; other worlds may present
systems very different from that of our own. The soul of man
is only a finer species of body, spread throughout the whole
aggregation which we term his bodily frame. Like a warm
breath, it pervades the human structure and works with it; nor
could it act as it does in perception unless it were corporeal.
The various processes of sense, notably vision, are explained on
the principles of materialism. From the surfaces of all objects
there are continually flowing thin filmy images exactly copying
the solid body whence they originate; and these images by direct
impact on the organism produce (we need not care to ask how)
the phenomena of vision. Epicurus in this way explains vision
by substituting for the apparent action of a body at a distance
a direct contact of image and organ. But without following
the explanation into the details in which it revels, it may be
enough to say that the whole hypothesis is but an attempt to
exclude the occult conception of action at a distance, and
substitute a familiar phenomenon.
The Gods. This aspect of the Epicurean physics becomes
clearer when we look at his mode of rendering particular pheno-
mena intelligible. His purpose is to eliminate the common idea of
EPICURUS
685
divine interference. That there are gods Epicurus never dreams
of denying. But these gods have not on their shoulders the
burden of upholding and governing the world. They are them-
selves the products of the order of nature a higher species than
humanity, but not the rulers of man, neither the makers nor the
upholders of the world. Man should worship them, but hi>
worship is the reverence due to the ideals of perfect blessedness;
it ought not to be inspired either by hope or by fear. To prevent
all reference of the more potent phenomena of nature to divine
action Epicurus rationalizes the processes of the cosmos. He
imagines all possible plans or hypotheses, not actually contra-
dicted by our experience of familiar events, which will represent
in an intelligible way the processes of astronomy and meteorology.
When two or more modes of accounting for a phenomena are
equally admissible as not directly contradicted by known
phenomena, it seems to Epicurus almost a return to the old
mythological habit of mind when a savant asserts that the real
cause is one and only one. " Thunder," he says, " may be ex-
plained in many other ways; only let us have no myths of divine
action. To assign only a single cause for these phenomena, when
the facts familiar to us suggest several, is insane, and is just the
absurd conduct to be expected from people who dabble in the
vanities of astronomy." We need not be too curious to inquire
how these celestial phenomena actually do come about; we can
learn how they might have been produced, and to go further is
to trench on ground beyond the limits of human knowledge.
Thus, if Epicurus objects to the doctrine of mythology, he
objects no less to the doctrine of an inevitable fate, a necessary
order of things unchangeable and supreme over the human will.
The Stoic doctrine of Fatalism seemed to Epicurus no less deadly
a foe of man's true welfare than popular superstition. Even in
the movement of the atoms he introduces a sudden change of
direction, which is supposed to render their aggregation easier,
and to break the even law of destiny. So, in the sphere of human
action, Epicurus would allow of no absolutely controlling
necessity. In fact, it is only when we assume for man this in-
dependence of the gods and of fatality that the Epicurean
theory of life becomes possible. It assumes that man can, like
the gods, withdraw himself out of reach of all external influences,
and thus, as a sage, " live like a god among men, seeing that the
man is in no wise like a mortal creature who lives in undying
blessedness." And this present life is the only one. With one
consent Epicureanism preaches that the death of the body is
the end of everything for man, and hence the other world has
lost all its terrors as well as all its hopes.
The attitude of Epicurus in this whole matter is antagonistic
to science. The idea of a systematic enchainment of phenomena,
in which each is conditioned by every other, and none can be
taken in isolation and explained apart from the rest, was foreign
to his mind. So little was the scientific conception of the solar
system familiar to Epicurus that he could reproach the
astronomers, because their account of an eclipse represented
things otherwise than as they appear to the senses, and could
declare that the sun and stars were just as large as they seemed
to us.
Eiktts. The moral philosophy of Epicurus is a qualified
hedonism, the heir of the Cyrenaic doctrine that pleasure is
the good thing in life. Neither sect, it may be added, advocated
sensuality pure and unfeigned the Epicurean least of all. By
pleasure Epicurus meant both more and less than the Cyrenaics.
To the Cyrenaics pleasure was of moments; to Epicurus it
extended as a habit of mind through life. To the Cyrenaics
pleasure was something active and positive; to Epicurus it was
rather negative tranquillity more than vigorous enjoyment.
The test of true pleasure, according to Epicurus, is the removal
and absorption of all that gives pain; it implies freedom from
pain of body and from trouble of mind. The happiness of the
Epicurean was, it might almost seem, a grave and solemn
pleasure a quiet unobtrusive ease of heart, but not exuberance
and excitement. The sage of Epicureanism is a rational and
reflective seeker for happiness, who balances the claims of each
pleasure against the evils that may possibly ensue, and treads
the path of enjoyment cautiously. Prudence is, therefore, the
only real guide to happiness; it is thus the chief excellence, and
the foundation of all the virtues. It is, in fact, says Epicurus in
language which contrasts strongly with that of Aristotle on the
same topic " a more precious power than philosophy." The
reason or intellect is introduced to balance possible pleasures and
pains, and to construct a scheme in which pleasures are the
materials of a happy life. Feeling, which Epicurus declared to
be the means of determining what is good, is subordinated to a
reason which adjudicates between competing pleasures with the
view of securing tranquillity of mind and body. " We cannot
live pleasantly without living wisely and nobly and righteously."
Virtue is at least a means of happiness, though apart from that
it is no good in itself, any more than mere sensual enjoyments,
which are good only because they may sometimes serve to secure
health of body and tranquillity of mind. (See further ETHICS.)
The Epicurean School. Even in the lifetime of Epicurus we
hear of the vast numbers of his friends, not merely in Greece, but
in Asia and Egypt. The crowds of Epicureans were a standing
enigma to the adherents of less popular sects. Cicero pondered
over the fact; Arcesilaus explained the secession to the Epicurean
camp, compared with the fact that no Epicurean was ever known
to have abandoned his school, by saying that, though it was
possible for a man to be turned into a eunuch, no eunuch could
ever become a man. But the phenomenon was not obscure.
The doctrine has many truths, and is attractive to many in virtue
of its simplicity and its immediate relation to life. The dogmas
of Epicurus became to his followers a creed embodying the truths
on which salvation depended; and they passed on from one
generation to another with scarcely a change or addition. The
immediate disciples of Epicurus have been already mentioned,
with the exception of Colotes of Lampsacus, a great favourite
of Epicurus, who wrote a work arguing " that it was impossible
even to live according to the doctrines of the other philosophers."
In the 2nd and ist centuries B.C. Apollodorus, nicknamed
/oprorOpawos (" Lord of the Garden "), and Zeno of Sidon (who
describes Socrates as " the Attic buffoon ": Cic. De nat. deor.
' *i> 33, 34) taught at Athens. About 150 B.C. Epicureanism
established itself at Rome. Beginning with C. Amafinius or
Amafanius (Cic. Acad. i. 2, Tusc. iv. 3), we find the names of
Phaedrus (who became scholarch at Athens c. 70 B.C.) and
Philodemus (originally of Gadara in Palestine) as distinguished
Epicureans in the time of Cicero. But the greatest of its Roman
names was Lucretius, whose De rerum nalura embodies the
main teaching of Epicurus with great exactness, and with a
beauty which the subject seemed scarcely to allow. Lucretius
is a proof, if any were needed, that Epicureanism is compatible
with nobility of soul. In the ist century of the Christian era,
the nature of the time, with its active political struggles, naturally
called Stoicism more into the foreground, yet Seneca, though
nominally a Stoic, draws nearly all his suavity and much of his
paternal wisdom from the writings of Epicurus. The position
of Epicureanism as a recognized school in the 2nd century is
best seen in the fact that it was one of the four schools (the others
were the Stoic, Platonist, and Peripatetic) which were placed on
a footing of equal endowment when Marcus Aurelius founded
chairs of philosophy at Athens. The evidence of Diogenes
proves that it still subsisted as a school a century later, but its
spirit lasted longer than its formal organization as a school. A
great deal of the best of the Renaissance was founded on Epi-
cureanism, and in more recent times a great number of prominent
thinkers have been Epicureans in a greater or less degree. Among
these may be mentioned Pierre Gassendi, who revived and
codified the doctrine in the i;th century; Moliere, the comte
de Gramont, Rousseau, Fontenelle and Voltaire. All those
whose ethical theory is in any degree hedonistic are to some
extent the intellectual descendants of Epicurus (see HEDONISM).
Works. Epicurus was a voluminous writer (iroXirypa^xiroTos,
Diog. Laert. x. 26) the author, it is said, of about 300 works.
He had a style and vocabulary of his- own. His chief aim in
writing was plainness and intelligibility, but his want of order
and logical precision thwarted his purpose. He pretended to
686
EPICYCLE EPIDAURUS
have read little, and to be the original architect of his own system,
and the claim was no doubt on the whole true. But he had read
Democritus, and, it is said, Anaxagoras and Archelaus. His
works, we learn, were full of repetition, and critics speak of
vulgarities of language and faults of style. None the less his
writings were committed to memory and remained the text-
books of Epicureanism to the last. His chief work was a treatise
on nature (Ilepi <t>vo-as), in thirty-seven books, of which frag-
ments from about nine books have been found in the rolls
discovered at Herculaneum, along with considerable treatises
by several of his followers, and most notably Philodemus. An
epitome of his doctrine is contained in three letters preserved
by Diogenes.
AUTHORITIES. The chief ancient accounts of Epicurus are in the
tenth book of Diogenes Laertius, in Lucretius, and in several treatises
of Cicero and Plutarch. Gassendi, in his De vita, moribus, et
doctrina Epicuri (Lyons, 1647), and his Syntagma philosophiae
Epicuri, systematized the doctrine. The Volumina Herculanensia
(ist and 2nd series) contain fragments of treatises by Epicurus
and members of his school. See also H. Usener, Epicurea (Leipzig,
1887) and Epicuri recognili specimen (Bonn, 1880); Epicuri physica
et meteor ologica (ed. J. G. Schneider, Leipzig, 1813); Th. Gomperz
in his Herkulanische Studien, and in contributions to the Vienna
Academy (Monatsberichte), has tried to evolve from the fragments
more approximation to modern empiricism than they seem to contain.
For criticism see W. Wallace, Epicureanism (London, 1880), and
Epicurus; A Lecture (London, 1896); G. Trezza, Epicuro e V Epi-
cureismo (Florence, 1877; ed. Milan, 1885); E. Zefler, Philosophy
of the Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics (Eng. trans. O. J. Reichel,
1870; ed. 1880); Sir James Mackintosh, On the Progress of Ethical
Philosophy (4th ed.); J. Watson, Hedonistic Theories (Glasgow,
1895); J- Kreibig, Epicurus (Vienna, 1886); A. Goedeckemeyer,
Epikurs Verhdltnis zu Demokrit in der Naturphil. (Strassburg, 1897) ;
Paul von Gizycki, Uber das Leben und die Moralphilos. des Epikur
(Halle, 1879), and Einleitende Bemerkungen zu einer Untersuchung
uber den Werth der Naturphilos. des Epikur (Berlin, 1884); P.
Cassel, Epikur der Philosoph (Berlin, 1892); M. Guyau, La Morale
d' Epicure et ses rapports avec les doctrines contemporaines (Paris, 1878 ;
revised and enlarged, 1881) ; F. Picavet, De Epicuro novae religionis
sectatore (Paris, 1889); H. Sidgwick, History of Ethics (5th ed.,
1902). (W. W.; X.)
EPICYCLE (Gr. rt, upon, and KVK\OS, circle), in ancient
astronomy, a small circle the centre of which describes a larger
one. It was especially used to represent geometrically the
periodic apparent retrograde motion of the outer planets, Mars,
Jupiter and Saturn, which we now know to be due to the annual
revolution of the earth around the sun, but which in the Ptole-
maic astronomy were taken to be real.
EPICYCLOID, the curve traced out by a point on the cir-
cumference of a circle rolling externally on another circle. If
the moving circle rolls internally on the fixed circle, a point on
the circumference describes a " hypocycloid " (from wo, under).
The locus of any other carried point is an " epitrochoid " when
the circle rolls externally, and a " hypotrochoid " when the
circle rolls internally. The epicycloid was so* named by Ole
Romer in 1674, who also demonstrated that cog-wheels having
epicycloidal teeth revolved with minimum friction (see
MECHANICS: Applied); this was also proved by Girard
Desargues, Philippe de la Hire and Charles Stephen Louis
Camus. Epicycloids also received attention at the hands of
Edmund Halley, Sir Isaac Newton and others; spherical
epicycloids, in which the moving circle is inclined at a constant
angle to the plane of the fixed circle, were studied by the
Bernoullis, Pierre Louis M. de Maupertuis, Francois Nicole,
Alexis Claude Clairault and others.
In the annexed figure, there are shown various examples of the
curves named above, when the radii of the rolling and fixed circles
are in the ratio of I to 3. Since the circumference of a circle is pro-
portional to its radius, it follows that if the ratio of the radii be com-
mensurable, the curve will consist of a finite number of cusps, and
ultimately return into itself. In the particular case when the radii
are in the ratio of I to 3 the epicycloid (curve a) will consist of three
cusps external to the circle and placed at equal distances along
its circumference. Similarly, the corresponding epitrochoids will
exhibit three loops or nodes (curve b), or assume the form shown in
the curve' c. It is interesting to compare the forms of these curves
with the three forms of the cycloid (q.v.). The hypocycloid derived
from the same circles is shown as curve d, and is seen to consist of
three cusps arranged internally to the fixed circle; the corresponding
hypotrochoid consists of a three-foil and is shown in curve e. The
epicycloid shown is termed the " three-cusped epicycloid " or the
" epicycloid of Cremona."
The cartesian equation to the epicycloid assumes the form
x = (a+b)cose-bcos(a+b/b)0,y = (a+b)sine-bsin(a+blb)0,
when the centre of the fixed circle is the origin, and the axis of x
passes through the initial point of the curve (i.e. the original position
of the moving point on the fixed circle), a and b being the radii of the
fixed and rolling circles, and the angle through which the line
joining the centres of the two circles has passed. It may be shown
that if the distance of the carried point from the centre of the rolling
circle be mb, the equation to the epitrochoid is
(a+b)cosB-mb cos (a+b/b)e, y
(a+b) sin 6-mb sin
The equations to the hypocycloid and its corresponding trochoidal
curves are derived from the two preceding equations by changing
the sign of b. Leonhard Euler (Acta Petrop. 1784) showed that the
same hypocycloid can be generated by circles having radii of \(aj>)
rolling on a circle of radius a; and also that the hypocycloid formed
when the radius of the rolling circle is greater than that of the fixed
circle is the same as the epicycloid formed by the rolling of a circle
whose radius is the difference of the original radii. These pro-
positions may be derived from the formulae given above, or proved
directly by purely geometrical methods.
The tangential polar equation to the epicycloid, as given
above, is p=(a+2b) sin (a/a+2b)t, while the intrinsic equation is
s = 4(b/a)(a+b) cos (a/a+2b)t and the pedal equation is f 2 = u 2 +
(46.0 +ft)p 2 / (a+26) 2 . Therefore any epicycloid or hypocycloid may
be represented by the equations p = A sin B^ or p = A cos B^,
s = A sin Bi or s =AcosB^, or r 1 = A.+Bp 2 , the constants A and B
being readily determined by the above considerations.
If the radius of the rolling circle be one-half of the fixed circle, the
hypocycloid becomes a diameter of this circle; this may be con-
firmed from the equation to the hypocycloid. If the ratio of the
radii be as I to 4, we obtain the four-cusped hypocycloid, which has
the simple cartesian equation x?/i-{.yiu = a?' 3 . This curve is the
envelope of a line of constant length, which moves so that its ex-
tremities are always on two fixed lines at right angles to each other,
i.e. of the line x/a+y/f}= I, with the condition a?+/P = I/a, a constant.
The epicycloid when the radii of the circles are equal is the cardioid
(q.v.), and the corresponding trochoidal curves are limagons (q.v.).
Epicycloids are also examples of certain caustics (q.v.).
For the methods of determining the formulae and results stated
above see J. Edwards, Differential Calculus, and for geometrical
constructions see T. H. Eagles, Plane Curves.
EPIDAURUS, the name of two ancient cities of southern
Greece.
A maritime city situated on the eastern coast of Argolis,
sometimes distinguished as ij lepa 'EiriSavpos, or Epidaurus the
Holy. It stood on a small rocky peninsula with a natural
harbour on the northern side and an open but serviceable bay
on the southern; and from this position acquired the epithet
of Siarofios, or the two-mouthed. Its narrow but fertile territory
consisted of a plain shut in on all sides except towards the sea
by considerable elevations, among which the most remarkable
were Mount Arachnaeon and Titthion. The conterminous
states were Corinth, Argos, Troezen and Hermione. Its
proximity to Athens and the islands of the Saronic gulf, the
commercial advantages of its position, and the fame of its temple
EPIDAURUS
687
of Asclcpius combined to make Epidaurus a place of no small
importance. Its origin was ascribed to a Carian colony. \\ lu-r
memory was possibly preserved in Epicurus, the earlier nanu-
ol the city; it was afterwards occupied by lonians, and appears
to have incorporated a body of Phlegyans from Thessaly. The
lonians in turn succumbed to the Dorians of Argos, who, according 7
to the legend, were led by Deiphontes; and from that time the
city continued to preserve its Dorian character. It not only
colonized the neighbouring islands, und founded the city of Acgina ,
by which it was ultimately outstripped in wealth and power,
but also took part with the people of Argos and Troezen in their
settlements in the south of Asia Minor. The monarchical
government introduced by Deiphontes gave way to an oligarchy,
and the oligarchy degenerated into a despotism. When Procles
the tyrant was carried captive by Periander of Corinth, the
oligarchy was restored, and the people of Epidaurus continued
ever afterwards dose allies of the Spartan power. The governing
body consisted of 180 members, chosen from certain influential
families, and the executive was entrusted to a select committee
of artynttf (from aprivtui, to manage). The rural population,
who had no share in the affairs of the city, were called Kovlvodts
(" dusty-feet "). Among the objects of interest described by
Pausanias as extant in Epidaurus are the image of Athena
Cissaea in the Acropolis, the temple of Dionysus and Artemis, a
shrine of Aphrodite, statues of Asclcpius and his wife Epione.
and a temple of Hera. The site of the last is identified with the
chapel of St Nicolas; a few portions of the outer walls of the city
ran be traced; and the name Epidaurus is still preserved by the
little village of Nea-Epidavros, or Pidhavro.
The Hitron (sacred precinct) of Asclepius, which lies inland
about 8 m. from the town of Epidaurus, has been thoroughly
excavated by the Greek Archaeological Society since the year
iSSi, under the direction of M. Kawadias. In addition to the
sacred precinct, with its temples and other buildings, the theatre
and stadium have been cleared; and several other extensive
buildings, including baths, gymnasia, and a hospital for invalids,
have also been found. The sacred road from Epidaurus, which
is flanked by tombs, approaches the precinct through a gateway
or propylaea. The chief buildings are grouped together, and
include temples of Asclepius and Artemis, the Tholos, and the
Abaton, or portico where the patients slept. In addition to
remains of architecture and sculpture, some of them of high
merit, there have been found many inscriptions, throwing light
on the cures attributed to the god. The chief buildings outside
the sacred precinct are the theatre and the stadium.
The temple of Asclepius, which contained the gold and ivory
statue by Thrasymedes of Paros, had six columns at the ends and
eleven at the sides; it was raised on stages and approached by
a ramp at the eastern front. An inscription has been found
recording the contracts for building this temple; it dates from
EPIDAURUS
HIERON OF ASCLEPIUS
Erary Walker, c.
688
EPIDIORITE
about 460 B.C. The sculptor Timotheus one of those who
collaborated in the Mausoleum is mentioned as undertaking
to make the acroteria that stood on the ends of the pediments,
and also models for the sculpture that filled one of them.
Some of this sculpture has been found; the acroteria are
Nereids mounted on sea-horses, and one pediment contained
a battle of Greeksand Amazons. The great altar lay to the south
of the temple, and a little to the east of it are what appear to be
the remains of an earlier altar, built into the corner of a large
square edifice of Roman date, perhaps a house of the priests.
Just to the south of this are the foundations of a small temple
of Artemis. The Tholos lay to the south-west of the temple of
Asclepius; it must, when perfect, have been one of the most
beautiful buildings in 'Greece; the exquisite carving of its
mouldings is only equalled by that of the Erechtheum at Athens.
It consisted of a circular chamber, surrounded on the outside
by a Doric colonnade, and on the inside by a Corinthian one.
The architect was Polyclitus, probably to be identified with the
younger sculptor of that name. In the inscription recording
the contracts for its building it is called the Thymele; and this
name may give the clue to its purpose; it was probably the
idealized architectural representative of a primitive pit of
sacrifice, such as may still be seen in the Asclepianum at Athens.
The foundations now visible present a very curious appearance,
consisting of a series of concentric walls. Those in the middle
are thin, having only the pavement of the cella to support, and
are provided with doors and partitions that make a sort of
subterranean labyrinth. There is no evidence for the statement
sometimes made that there was a well or spring below the Tholos.
North of the Tholos is the long portico described in inscriptions
as the Abaton; it is on two different levels, and the lower or
western portion of it had two storeys, of which the upper one
was on a level with the ground in the eastern portion. Here the
invalids used to sleep when consulting the god, and the inscrip-
tions found here record not only the method of consulting the
god, but the manner of his cures. Some of the inscriptions
are contemporary dedications; but those which give us most
information are long lists of cases, evidently compiled by the
priests from the dedications in the sanctuary, or from tradition.
There is no reason to doubt that most of the records have at
least a basis of fact, for the cases are in accord with well-attested
phenomena of a similar nature at the present day; but there are
others, such as the miraculous mending t>f a broken vase, which
suggest either invention or trickery -
In early times, though there is considerable variety in the
cases treated and the methods of cure, there are certain character-
istics common to the majority of the cases. The patient consult-
ing the god sleeps in the Abaton, sees certain visions, and, as a
result, comes forth cured the next morning. Sometimes there
seem to be surgical cases, like that of a man who had a spear-head
extracted from his jaw, and found it laid in his hands when he
awoke in the. morning, and there are many examples resembling
those known at the present day at Lourdes or Tenos, where
hysterical or other similar affections are cured by the influence
of imagination or sudden emotion. It is, however, difficult to
make any scientific use of the records, owing to the indiscriminate
manner in which genuine and apocryphal cases are mingled,
and circumstantial details are added. We learn the practice
of later times from some dedicated inscriptions. Apparently
the old faith-healing had lost its efficacy, and the priests sub-
stituted for it elaborate prescriptions as to diet, baths and
regimen which must hav. made Epidaurus and its visitors
resemble their counterparts in a modern spa. At this time there
were extensive buildings provided for the accommodation of
invalids, some of which have been discovered and partially
cleared; one was built by Antoninus Pius. They were in the
form of great courtyards surrounded by colonnades and chambers.
Between the precinct and the theatre was a large gymnasium,
which was in later times converted to other purposes, a small odeum
being built in the middle of it. In a valley just to the south-west of
the precinct is the stadium, of which the seats and goal are well
preserved. There is a gutter round the level space of the stadium,
with basins at intervals for the use of spectators or competitors,
and a post at every hundred feet of the course, thus dividing it into
six portions. The goal, which is well preserved at the upper end,
is similar to that at Olympia ; it consists of a sill of stone sunk level
with the ground, with parallel grooves for the feet of the runners at
starting, and sockets tohold the posts that separated the spacesassigned
to the various competitors, and served as guides to them in running.
For these were substituted later a set of stone columns resembling
those in the proscenium of a theatre. There was doubtless a similar
sill at the lower end for the start of the stadium, this upper one being
intended for the start of the diaulos and longer races.
The theatre still deserves the praise given it by Pausanias as the
most beautiful in Greece. The auditorium is in remarkable preserva-
tion, almost every seat being still in situ, except a few where the
supporting walls have given way on the wings. The whole plan is
drawn from three centres, the outer portion of the curves being arcs
of a larger circle than the one used for the central portion; the
complete circle of the orchestra is marked by a sill of white lime-
stone, and greatly enhances the effect of the whole. There are
benches with backs not only in the bottom row, but also above
and below the diazoma. The acoustic properties of the theatre are
extraordinarily good, a speaker in the orchestra being heard through-
out the auditorium without raising his voice. The stage buildings
are not preserved much above their foundations, and show signs
of later repairs; but their general character can be clearly seen.
They consist of a long rectangular building, with a proscenium or
column front which almost forms a tangent to the circle of the
orchestra; at the middle and at either end of this proscenium are
doors leading into the orchestra, those at the end set in projecting
wings; the top of the proscenium is approached by a ramp, of which
the lower part is still preserved, running parallel to the parodi,
but sloping up as they slope down. The proscenium was originally
about 14 ft. high and 12 fit. broad; so corresponding approximately
to the Greek stage as described by Vitruvius. M. Kawadias,
who excavated the theatre, believes that the proscenium is contem-
porary with the rest of the theatre, which, like the Tholos, was built
by Polyclitus (the younger) ; but Professor W. Dorpfeld maintains
that it is a later addition. In any case, the theatre at Epidaurus
ranks as the most typical of Greek theatres, both from the simplicity
of its plan and the beauty of its proportions.
See Pausanias i. 20.; Expedition de la Moree, ii. ; Curtius, Pelopon-
nesus, ii. ; Transactions of Roy. Soc. of Lit., 2nd series, vol. ii. ;
Weclawski, De rebus Epidauriorum (Posen, 1854).
The excavations at the Hieron have been recorded as they went
on in the UPO.KTIK& of the Greek Archaeological Society, especially for
1881-1884 and 1889, and also in the 'E^/Kpls 'ApxaioXo-ymi, especially
for 1883 and 1885; see also Kawadias, Les Fouilles dEpidaurennA
TA 'lepdv TOV 'AincXTjvrioO kv 'EiriSabpif xalfi Sepaireia T>V &a6ti>Civ ; Def rasse
and Lechat, Epidaure. A museum was completed in 1910.
2. A city of Peloponnesus on the east coast of Laconia, dis-
tinguished by the epithet of Limera (either " The Well-havened "
or " The Hungry "). It was founded by the people of Epidaurus
the Holy, and its principal temples were those of Asclepius
and Aphrodite. It was abandoned during the middle ages; its
inhabitants took posession of the promontory of Minoa, turned
it into an island, and built and fortified thereon the city of
Monembasia, which became the most flourishing of all the towns
in the Morea, and gave its name to the well-known Malmsey or
Malvasia wine. The ruins of Epidaurus are to be seen at the place
now called Palaea Monemvasia.
A third Epidaurus was situated in Illyricum, on the site of
the present Ragusa Vecchia; but it is not mentioned till the
time of the civil wars of Pompey and Caesar, and has no special
interest. (E. GR.)
EPIDIORITE, in petrology, a typical member of a family
of rocks consisting essentially of hornblende and felspar, often
with epidote, garnet, sphene, biotite, or quartz, and having
usually a foliated structure. The term is to some extent
synonymous with " amphibolite " and " hornblende-schist."
These rocks are metamorphic, and though having a mineral
constitution somewhat similar to that of diorite, they have been
produced really from rocks of more basic character, such as
diabase, dolerite and gabbro. They occur principally among
the schists, slates and gneisses of such districts as the Scotish
Highlands, the north-west of Ireland, Brittany, the Harz, the
Alps, and the crystalline ranges of eastern N. America. Their
hornblende in microscopic section is usually dark green, rarely
brownish; their felspar may be clear and recrystallized, but
more frequently is converted into a turbid aggregate of epidote,
zoisite, quartz, sericite and albite. In the less complete stages
of alteration, ophitic structure may persist, and the original
augite of the rock may not have been entirely replaced by
EPIDOSITE EPIGONION
689
hornblende. Pink or brownisn garnets are common and may be
an inch or two in diameter. The iron oxides, originally ilmcniic,
are usually altered to sphene. Biotite, if present, is brown;
epidote is yellow or colourless; rutile, apatite and quartz all
occur with some frequency. The essential minerals, hornblende
and felspar, rarely show crystalline outlines, and this is generally
true also of the others. The rocks may be fine grained, so that
their constituents are hardly visible to the unaided eye; or may
show crystals of hornblende an inch in length. Their prevalent
colour is dark green and they weather with brown surfaces. In
many parts of the world epidiorites and the quartz veins which
sometimes occur in them have proved to be auriferous. As they
are tough, hard rocks, when fresh, they are well suited for use
as road-mending stones. (J. S. F.)
EPIDOSITE. in petrology, a typical member of a family of
metamorphic rocks composed mainly of epidote and quartz.
In colour they are pale yellow or greenish yellow, and they are
hard and somewhat brittle. They may occur in more than one
way and are derived from several kinds of rock. Some have been
epidotic grits and sandstones; others are limestones which
have undergone contact -alteration; probably the majority,
however, are allied to epidiorite and amphibolite, and arc
local modifications of rocks which were primarily basic intrusions
or lavas. The sedimentary epidosites occur with mica-schists,
sheared grits and granulitic gneisses; they often show, on
minute examination, the remains of clastic structures. The
epidosites derived from limestones may contain a great variety
of minerals such as calcite, augite, garnet, scapolite, &c., but
their source may usually be inferred from their close association
with calc-silicate rocks in the field. The third group of epidosites
may form bands, veins, or irregular streaks and nodules in masses
of epidiorite and hornblende-schist. In microscopic section
they are often merely a granular mosaic of quartz and epidote
with some iron oxides and chlorite, but in other cases they retain
much of the structure of the original rock though there has been
a complete replacement of the former minerals by new ones.
Epidosites when streaked and variegated have been cut and
polished as ornamental stones. They are translucent and hard,
and hence serve for brooch stones, and the simpler kinds of
jewelry. These rocks occasionally carry gold in visible yellow
specks. (J. S. F.)
EPIDOTE, a mineral species consisting of basic calcium,
aluminium and iron orthosilicate, Cai(AlOH)(Al,Fe) 2 (SiO 4 )i,
crystallizing in the monoclinic system. Well-developed crystals
are of frequent occurrence: they are commonly prismatic in
habit, the direction of elongation being perpendicular to the
single plane of symmetry. The faces
lettered M, T and r in the figure are
often deeply striated in the same direc-
tion: M is a direction of perfect cleavage,
and T of imperfect cleavage: crystals
are often twinned on the face T. Many
of the characters of the mineral vary
with the amount of iron present (FeiO >( 5-i7%), for instance,
the colour, the optical constants, and the specific gravity
(3'3'3'S)- Th* hardness is 6. The colour is green, grey,
brown or nearly black, but usually a characteristic shade
of yellowish-green or pistachio-green. The pleochroism is
strong, the pleochroic colours being usually green, yellow and
brown. The names thallite (from 0aXX4t, " a young shoot ")
and pistacite (from -riaTO.ua, " pistachio nut ") have reference
to the colour. The name epidote is one of R. J. HaUy's
crystallographic names, and is derived from triioau, "increase,"
because the base of the primitive prism has one side longer
than the other. Several other names (achmatite, bucklandite,
cscherite, puschkinite, &c.) have been applied to this species.
Withamite is a carmine-red to straw-yellow, strongly pleochroic
variety from Glencoe in Scotland. Fouqueite and clinozoisite
are white or pale rose-red varieties containing very little iron,
thus having the same chemical composition as the orthorhombic
mineral zoisite (q.t.).
Epidote is an abundant rock-forming mineral, but one of
secondary origin. It occurs in crystalline limestones and schistose
rocks of metamorphic origin; and is also a product of weathering
of various minerals (felspars, micas, pyroxenes, amphiboles,
garnets, &c.) composing igneous rocks. A rock composed of
quartz and epidote is known as epidosite. Well-developed
crystals are found at many localities, of which the following
may be specially mentioned: Knappenwand, near the Gross-
Venediger in the Untersulzbachthal in Salzburg, as magnificent,
dark green crystals of long prismatic habit in cavities in epidote-
schist, with asbestos, adularia, calcite, and apatite; the Ala
valley and Traversella in Piedmont; Arendal in Norway
(arcndalite) ; Le Bourg d'Oisans in Dauphinl (oisanite and
delphinite); Haddam in Connecticut; Prince of Wales Island
in Alaska, here as large, dark green, tabular crystals with copper
ores in metamorphosed limestone.
The perfectly transparent, dark green crystals from the
Knappenwand and from Brazil have occasionally been cut as
gem-stones.
Belonging tohe same isomorphous group with epidote are the
species piedmontite and allanite, which may be described as
manganese and cerium epidotes respectively.
Piedmontite has the composition Ca2(AIOH)(Fe,Mn)j(SiO 4 ),;
it occurs as small, reddish-black, monoclinic crystals in the
manganese mines at San Marcel, near Ivrea in Piedmont, and in
crystalline schists at several places in Japan. The purple colour
of the Egyptian porfido rosso antico is due to the presence of
this mineral.
Allanite has the same general formula Rj*(R'"OH)R 2 "'(SiO4)3,
where R* represents calcium and ferrous iron, and R'" aluminium,
ferric iron and metals of the cerium group. In external appear-
ance it differs widely from epidote, being black or dark
brown in colour, pitchy in lustre, and opaque in the mass;
further, there is little or no cleavage, and well-developed crystals
are rarely met with. The crystallographic and optical characters
are similar to those of epidote; the pleochroism is strong with
reddish-, yellowish-, and greenish-brown colours. Although
not a common mineral, allanite is of fairly wide distribution as
a primary accessory constituent of many crystalline rocks, e.g.
gneiss, granite, syenite, rhyolite, andesite, &c. It was first
found in the granite of east Greenland and described by Thomas
Allan in 1808, after whom the species was named. Allanite is a
mineral readily altered by hydration, becoming optically isotropic
and amorphous: for this reason several varieties have been
distinguished, and many different names applied. Orthite,
from 6p6fc, " straight," was the name given by J. J. Berzelius
in 1818 to a hydrated form found as slender prismatic
crystals, sometimes a foot in length, at Finbo, near Falun in
Sweden. (L. J. S.)
EPIOONI ("descendants "), in Greek legend, the sons of the
seven heroes who fought against Thebes (see ADRASTUS). Ten
years later, to avenge their fathers, the Epigoni undertook a
second expedition, which was completely successful. Thebes
was forced to surrender and razed to the ground. In early
times the war of the Epigoni was a favourite subject of epic
poetry. The term is also applied to the descendants of the
Diadochi, the successors of Alexander the Great.
EPIGONION (Gr. tTriy6vaov) , an ancient stringed instrument
mentioned in Athcnaeus 183 C, probably a psaltery. The
epigonion was invented, or at least introduced into Greece, by
Epigonus, a Greek musician of Ambracia in Epirus, who was
admitted to citizenship at Sicyon as a recognition of his great
musical ability and of his having been the first to pluck the strings
with his fingers, instead of using the plectrum. 1 The instrument,
which Epigonus named after himself, had forty strings. 2 It was
undoubtedly a kind of harp or psaltery, since in an instrument
of so many strings some must have been of different lengths, for
tension and thickness only could hardly have produced forty
different sounds, or even twenty, supposing that fhey were
arranged in pairs of unisons. Strings of varying lengths require
1 Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, torn. I, c. 13, p. 380;
Salomon van Til, Sing-Dicht und Spiel-Kunsl, p. 95.
* Pollux, Onomasticon, lib. iv. cap. 9, 59.
690
EPIGRAM
a frame like that of the harp, or of the Egyptian cithara which had
one of the arms supporting the cross bar or zugon shorter than
the other, 1 or else strings stretched over harp-shaped bridges
on a sound-board in the case of a psaltery. Juba II., king of
Mauretania, who reigned from 30 B.C., said (ap. Athen. I.e.) that
Epigonus brought the instrument from Alexandria and played
upon it with the fingers of both hands, not only using it as an
accompaniment to the voice, but introducing chromatic passages,
and a chorus of other stringed instruments, probably citharas, to
accompany the voice. Epigonus was also a skilled citharist and
played with his bare hands without plectrum. 2 Unfortunately we
have no record of when Epigonus lived. Vincenzo Galilei 3 has
given us a description of the epigonion accompanied by an illus-
tration, representing his conception of the ancient instrument,
an upright psaltery with the outline of the clavicytherium (but
no keyboard). (K. S.)
EPIGRAM, properly speaking, anything that is inscribed.
Nothing could be more hopeless, however, than an attempt to
discover or devise a definition wide enough to include the vast
multitude of little poems which at one time or other have been
honoured with the title of epigram, and precise enough to exclude
all others. Without taking account of its evident misapplications,
we find that the name has been given first, in strict accordance
with its Greek etymology, to any actual inscription on monument,
statue or building; secondly, to verses never intended for such
a purpose, but assuming for artistic reasons the epigraphical
form; thirdly, to verses expressing with something of the terse-
ness of an inscription a striking or beautiful thought; and
fourthly, by unwarrantable restriction, to a little poem end-
ing in a "point," especially of the satirical kind. The last of
these has obtained considerable popularity from the well-known
lines
" The qualities rare in a bee that we meet
In an epigram never should fail ;
The body should always be little and sweet,
And a sting should be left in its tail "-
which represent the older Latin of some unknown writer
" Omne epigramma sit instar apis: sit aculeus illi;
Sint sua mella; sit et corporis exigui."
Attempts not a few of a more elaborate kind have been made
to state the essential element of the epigram, and to classify
existing specimens; but, as every lover of epigrams must feel,
most of them have been attended with very partial success.
Scaliger, in the third book of his Poetics, gives a fivefold division,
which displays a certain ingenuity in the nomenclature but is
very superficial: the first class takes its name from mel, or honey,
and consists of adulatory specimens; the second from fel, or
gall; the third from acetum, or vinegar; and the fourth from
sal, or salt; while the fifth is styled the condensed, or multiplex.
This classification is adopted by Nicolaus Mercerius in his De
conscribendo epigrammate (Paris, 1653); but he supplemented it
by another of much more scientific value, based on the figures
of the ancient rhetoricians. Lessing, in the preface to his own
epigrams, gives an interesting treatment of the theory, his
principal doctrine being practically the same as that of several
of his less eminent predecessors, that there ought to be two
parts more or less clearly distinguished, the first awakening
the reader's attention in the same way as an actual monument
might do, and the other satisfying his curiosity in some unex-
pected manner. An attempt was made by Herder to increase
the comprehensiveness and precision of the theory; but as he him-
self confesses, his classification is rather vague the expository,
the paradigmatic, the pictorial, the impassioned, the artfully
turned, the illusory, and the swift. After all, if the arrangement
according to authorship be rejected, the simplest and most
satisfactory is according to subjects. The epigram is one of
the most catholic of literary forms, and lends itself to the
expression of almost any feeling or thought. It may be an
elegy, a satire, or a love-poem in miniature, an embodiment
1 For an illustration, see Kathleen Schlesinger, Orchestral Instru-
ments, part ii. " Precursors of the Violin Family," fig. 165, p. 219.
* Athenaeus, iv. p. 183 d. and xiv. p. 638 a.
3 Dialogo della musica antica e moderna, ed. 1602, p. 40.
of the wisdom of the ages, a bon-mot set off with a couple of
rhymes.
" I cannot tell thee who lies buried here;
No man that knew him followed by his bier;
The winds and waves conveyed him to this shore,
Then ask the winds and waves to tell thee more."
ANONYMOUS.
" Wherefore should I vainly try
To teach thee what my love will be
In after years, when thou and I
Have both grown old in company,
. If words are vain to tell thee how,
Mary, I do love thee now? "
ANONYMOUS.
" O Bruscus, cease our aching ears to vex,
With thy loud railing at the softer sex ;
No accusation worse than this could be,
That once a woman did give birth to thee."
ACILIUS.
" Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason?
For if it prospers none dare call it treason."
HARRINGTON.
" Ward has no heart they say, but I deny it ;
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it."
ROGERS.
From its very brevity there is no small danger of the epigram
passing into childish triviality: the paltriest pun, a senseless
anagram, is considered stuff enough and to spare. For proof
of this there is unfortunately no need to look far; but perhaps
the reader could not find a better collection ready to his hand
than the second twenty-five of the Epigrammatum centuriae of
Samuel Erichius; by the time he reaches No. n of the 47th
century, he will be quite ready to grant the appropriateness of
the identity maintained between the German Seele, or soul, and
the German Esel, or ass.
Of the epigram as cultivated by the Greeks an account is given
in the article ANTHOLOGY, discussing those wonderful collections
which bid fair to remain the richest of their kind. The delicacy
and simplicity of so much of what has been preserved is perhaps
their most striking feature; and one cannot but be surprised
at the number of poets proved capable of such work. In Latin
literature, on the other hand, the epigrammatists whose work
has been preserved are comparatively few, and though several
of them, as Catullus and Martial, are men of high literary genius,
too much of what they have left behind is vitiated by brutality
and obscenity. On the subsequent history of the epigram,
indeed, Martial has exercised an influence as baneful as it is
extensive, and he may fairly be counted the far-off progenitor
of a host of scurrilous verses. Nearly all the learned Latinists
of the i6th and i7th centuries may claim admittance into the
list of epigrammatists, Bembo and Scaliger, Buchanan and
More, Stroza and Sannazaro. Melanchthon, who succeeded in
combining so much of Pagan culture with his Reformation
Christianity, has left us some graceful specimens, but his editor,
Joannes Major Joachimus, has so little idea of what an epigram
is, that he includes in his collection some translations from the
Psalms. The Latin epigrams of Etienne Pasquier were among
the most admirable which the Renaissance produced in France.
John Owen, or, as he Latinized his name, Johannes Audoenus, a
Cambro-Briton, attained quite an unusual celebrity in this
department, and is regularly distinguished as Owen the Epi-
grammatist. The tradition of the Latin epigram has been kept
alive in England by such men as Person, Vincent Bourne and
Walter Savage Landor. Happily there is now little danger of
any too personal epigrammatist suffering the fate of Niccolo
Franco, who paid the forfeit of his life for having launched his
venomous Latin against Pius V., though he may still incur the
milder penalty of having his name inserted in the Index Ex-
purgatorius, and find, like John Owen, that he consequently has
lost an inheritance.
In English literature proper there is no writer like Martial in
Latin or Logau in German, whose fame is entirely due to his
epigrams; but several even of those whose names can perish
never have not disdained this diminutive form. The designa-
tion epigram, however, is used by earlier English writers with
excessive laxity, and given or withheld without apparent reason.
EPIGRAPHY EPILEPSY
691
The epigrams of Robert Crowlcy (1350) and of IK-nry Parrot
(i6ij) are worthless so far as form goes. John VVct-vr: '- > ullcction
(1599) is of interest mainly because of its allusion to Shakespeare.
Ben Jonson furnishes a number of noble examples in his L'nder-
wooJs; and one or two of Spenser's little poems and a great
many of Henick's are properly classed as epigrams. Cowley ,'
Waller, Dryden, Prior, Parnell, Swift, Addison, Johnson, Gold-
smith and Young have all been at times successful in their
epigrammatical attempts; but perhaps none of them has proved
himself so much " to the manner born " as Pope, whose name
indeed is almost identified with the epigrammatical spirit in
English literature. Few English modern poets have followed in
his footsteps, and though nearly all might plead guilty to an
epigram or two, there is no one who has a distinct reputation
as an epigrammatist. Such a reputation might certainly have
been Lander's, had he not chosen to write the best of his minor
poems in Latin, and thus made his readers nearly as select as
his language.
The French are undoubtedly the most successful cultivators
of the " salt " and the " vinegar " epigram; and from the i6th
century downwards many of their principal authors have earned
no small celebrity in this department. The epigram was intro-
duced into French literature by Mellin de St Gelais and Clement
Marot. It is enough to mention the names of Boileau, J. B.
Rousseau, Lebrun, Voltaire. Mormontel, Piron, Rulhicrc, and
M. J. Chlnier. In spite of Rapin's dictum that a man ought to
be content if he succeeded in writing one really good epigram,
those of Lebrun alone number upwards of 600, and a very fair
proportion of them would doubtless pass muster even with
Rapin himself. If Piron was never anything better, " pas mme
acadfmicicn." he appears at any rate in Grimm's phrase to have
been "une machine a saillies, a epigrammes, et a bons mots."
Perhaps more than anywhere else the epigram has been recognized
in France as a regular weapon in literary and political contests,
and it might not be altogether a hopeless task to compile an
epigrammatical history from the Revolution to the present time.
While any fair collection of German epigrams will furnish
examples that for keenness of wit would be quite in place in a
French anthology, the Teutonic tendency to the moral and
didactic has given rise to a class but sparingly represented in
French. The very name of SinngediclUe bears witness to this
peculiarity, which is exemplified equally by the rude priameln
or proeameln, of the i.?th and I4th centuries and the polished
lines of Goethe and Schiller. Logau published his Deutsche
Sinngetichte Drey Tausend in 1654, and Wernicke no fewer than
six volumes of Ueberschriftcn oder Epigrammata in 1697;
Kistner's Sinngcdichte appeared in 1 782, and Haug and Weissen's
Epigrammatiicke Anthologic in 1804. Kleist, Opitz, Gleim,
Hagedorn, Klopstock and A. W. Schlegel all possess some
reputation as epigrammatists; Lessing is facile prince ps in the
satirical style ; and Herder has the honour of having enriched
his language with much of what is best from Oriental and
rhuriml sources.
It is often by no means easy to trace the history of even a
single epigram, and the investigator soon learns to be cautious
of congratulating himself on the attainment of a genuine original.
The same point, refurbished and fitted anew to its tiny shaft, has
been shot again and again by laughing cupids or fierce-eyed furies
in many a frolic and many a fray. During the period when the
epigram was the favourite form in Germany, Gcrvinus tells us
how the works, not only of the Greek and Roman writers, but
of Neo-Latinists, Spaniards, Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Englishmen
and Poles were ransacked* and plundered; and the same process
of pillage has gone on in a more or less modified degree in other
times and countries. Very noticeable often are the modifications
of tone and expression occasioned by national and individual
characteristics; the simplicity of the prototype may become
common-place in the imitation, the sublime be distorted into
the grotesque, the pathetic degenerate into the absurdly senti-
mental; or on the other hand, an unpromising motif may be
happily developed into unexpected beauty. A good illustration
of the variety with which the same epigram may be translated
and travi-stii-d is afforded by a little volume published in Edin-
burgh in 1808, under the title of Lucubrations on the Epigram
El iitv 4" *a"iK A &<> raOtin,
waStiv I t'
ri Ui
The two collections of epigrams most accessible to the English
reader are Booth's Epigrams, Ancient and Modern (1863) and Dodd's
The Epigrammatists (1870). In the appendix to the latter is a pn-tty
full bibliography, to which the following list may serve as a supple-
ment : Tnomas Corraeus, De toto eo poematis genere quod epigramma
dicitur (Venice, 1569; Bologna, 1590); Cottunius, De conficiendo
epigrammate (Bologna, 1632); Vinccntius Callus, Opusculum de
epigrammate (Milan, 1641); Vavassor, De epigrammate liber (I'ari-,
1669) ; Gedanke von deutschen Epigrammattbus (Leipzig, 1698) ;
Doctissimorum noslra aetate Italorum epigrammata; Flaminii Moleae
Naugerii, Cottae, Lampridii, Sadoleti, et aliorum, cura Jo. Gagnaei
(Pans, c. 1550); Brugiere de Barantc, Recueil des plus belles (pi-
grammes des poetes franfais (2 vols., Paris, 1698); Chr. Aug. Heumann,
Anthologia Latina: hoc est, epigrammata partim a priscis partim
junioribus a poetis (Hanover, 1721); Fayolle, Acontologie ou diction-
naire d'epigrammes (Paris, 1817); Geijnbeck, Epigrammatische
Anthologie, ^auvagc, Les Guepes gauloises: petit encyclopedic des
meilleurs epigrammes, d'c., depuis Clement Marot jusqu'aux poetes
de nos jours (1859); La Recreation et passe-temps des trtstes: recueil
d'tpigrammes et de petits conies en vers . reimprime sur I' edition de
Rouen i.-w.S, &c. (Paris, 1863). A large number of epigrams and
much miscellaneous information in regard to their origin, applica-
tion and translation is scattered through .\utr\ and Queries.
See also an article in The Quarterly Review, No. 233.
EPIGRAPHY (Gr. iwl, on, and ypadxiv, to write), a term
used to denote (i) the study of inscriptions collectively, and (2)
the science connected with the classification and explanation of
inscriptions. It is sometimes employed, too, in a more con-
tracted sense, to denote the palaeography, in inscriptions.
Generally, it is that part of archaeology which has to do with
inscriptions engraved on stone, metal or other permanent
material (not, however, coins, which come under the heading
NUMISMATICS).
See INSCRIPTIONS; PALAEOGRAPHY.
EPILEPSY (Gr. M, upon, and Xaju/Sdmc, to seize), or FALLING
SICKNESS, a term applied generally to a nervous disorder,
characterized by a fit of sudden loss of consciousness, attended
with convulsions. There may, however, exist manifestations
of epilepsy much less marked than this, yet equally characteristic
of the disease; while, on the other hand, it is to be borne in
mind that many other attacks of a convulsive nature have the
term " epileptic " or " epilcptiform " applied to them.
Epilepsy was well known in ancient times, and was regarded
as a special infliction of the gods, hence the names morbus sacer,
morbus divus. It was also termed morbus Herculeus, from
Hercules having been supposed to have been epileptic, and
morbus comitlalis, from the circumstance that when any member
of the forum was seized with an epileptic fit the assembly was
broken up. Morbus caducus, morbus lunaticus aslralis, morbus
demoniacus, morbus major, were all terms employed to designate
epilepsy.
There are three well-marked varieties of the epileptic seizure;
to these the terms le grand mal, le petit mat and Jacksonian
epilepsy are usually applied. Any of these may exist alone, but
the two former may be found to exist in the same individual.
The first of these, if not the more common, is at least that wH< h
attracts the most attention, being what is generally known as an
epileptic fit.
Although in most instances such an attack comes on suddenly.
it is in many cases preceded by certain premonitory indications
or warnings, which may be present for a greater or less time
previously. These are of very varied character, and may be hi
the form of some temporary change in the disposition, such as
unusual depression or elevation of spirits, or of some alteration
in the look. Besides these general symptoms, there are frequently
peculiar sensations which immediately precede the onset of the
fit, and to such the name of aura cpilcptica is applied. In its. strict
sense this term refers to a feeling of a breath of air blowing
upon some part of the body, and passing upwards towards the
head. This sensation, however, is not a common one, and the
term has now come to be applied to any peculiar feeling which the
692
EPILEPSY
patient experiences as a precursor of the attack. The so-called
aura may be of mental character, in the form of an agonizing
feeling of momentary duration; of sensorial character, in the
form of pain in a limb or in some internal organ, such as the
stomach, or morbid feeling connected with the special senses;
or, further, of motorial character, in the form of contractions or
trembling in some of the muscles. When such sensations affect
a limb, the employment of firm compression by the hand or by a
ligature occasionally succeeds in warding off an attack. The
aura may be so distinct and of such duration as to enable the
patient to lie down, or seek a place of safety before the fit
comes on.
The seizure is usually preceded by a loud scream or cry, which
is not to be ascribed, as was at one time supposed, to terror or
pain, but is due to the convulsive action of the muscles of the
larynx, and the expulsion of a column of air through the narrowed
glottis. If the patient is standing he immediately falls, and often
sustains serious injury. Unconsciousness is complete, and the
muscles generally are in a state of stiffness or tonic contraction,
which will usually be found to affect those of one side of the body
in particular. The head is turned by a series of jerks towards
one or other shoulder, the breathing is for the moment arrested,
the countenance first pale then livid, the pupils dilated and the
pulse rapid. This, the first stage of the fit, generally lasts for
about half a minute, and is followed by the state of clonic (i.e.
tumultuous) spasm of the muscles, in which the whole body is
thrown into violent agitation, occasionally so great that bones
may be fractured or dislocated. The eyes roll wildly, the teeth
are gnashed together, and the tongue and cheeks are often
severely bitten. The breathing is noisy and laborious, and foam
(often tinged with blood) issues from the mouth, while the contents
of the bowels and bladder are ejected. The aspect of the
patient in this condition is shocking to witness, and the sight
has been known to induce a similar attack in an onlooker. This
stage lasts for a period varying from a few seconds to several
minutes, when the convulsive movements gradually subside, and
relaxation of the muscles takes place, together with partial
return of consciousness, the patient looking confusedly about him
and attempting to speak. This, however, is soon followed by
drowsiness and stupor, which may continue for several hours,
when he awakes either apparently quite recovered or fatigued
and depressed, and occasionally in a state of excitement which
sometimes assumes the form of mania.
Epileptic fits of this sort succeed each other with varying
degrees of frequency, and occasionally, though not frequently,
with regular periodicity. In some persons they only occur once
in a lifetime, or once in the course of many years, while in others
they return every week or two, or even are of daily occurrence,
and occasionally there are numerous attacks each day. Accord-
ing to Sir J. R. Reynolds, there are four times as many epileptics
who have their attacks more frequently than once a month as
there are of those whose attacks recur at longer intervals.
When the fit returns it is not uncommon for one seizure to be
followed by another within a few hours or days. Occasionally
there occurs a constant succession of attacks extending over
many hours, and with such rapidity that the patient appears as if
he had never come out of the one fit. The term status epilepticus
is applied to this condition, which is sometimes followed with
fatal results. In many epileptics the fits occur during the night
as well as during the day, but in some instances they are entirely
nocturnal, and it is well known that in such cases the disease
may long exist and yet remain unrecognized either by the
patient or the physician.
The second manifestation of epilepsy, to which the names
epilepsia mitior. or le petit mat are given, differs from that above
described in the absence of the convulsive spasms. It is also
termed by some authors epileptic vertigo (giddiness) , and consists
essentially in the sudden arrest of volition and consciousness,
which is of but short duration, and may be accompanied with
staggering or some alteration in position or motion, or may
simply exhibit itself in a look of absence or confusion, and should
the patient happen to be engaged in conversation, by an abrupt
termination of the act. In general it lasts but a few seconds, and
the individual resumes his occupation without perhaps being
aware of anything having been the matter. In some instances
there is a degree of spasmodic action in certain muscles which may
cause the patient to make some unexpected movement, such as
turning half round, or walking abruptly aside, or may show itself
by some unusual expression of countenance, such as squinting or
grinning. There may be some amount of aura preceding such
attacks, and also of faintness following them. The petit mat
most commonly co-exists with the grand mal, but has no necessary
connexion with it, as each may exist alone. According to
Armand Trousseau, the petit mal in general precedes the mani-
festation of the grand mal, but sometimes the reverse is the case.
The third manifestation Jacksonian epilepsy or partial
epilepsy is distinguished by the fact that consciousness is
retained or lost late. The patient is conscious throughout,
and is able to watch the march of the spasm. The attacks are
usually the result of lesions in the motor area of the brain, such
being caused, in many instances, by depression of the vault of the
skull, due to trauma.
Epilepsy appears to exert no necessarily injurious effect upon
the general health, and even where it exists in an aggravated
form is quite consistent with a high degree of bodily vigour. It
is very different, however, with regard to its influence upon the
mind; and the question of the relation of epilepsy to insanity
is one of great and increasing importance. Allusion has already
been made to the occasional occurrence of maniacal excitement
as one of the results of the epileptic seizure. Such attacks, to
which the name of furor epilepticus is applied, are generally
accompanied with violent acts on the part of the patient, render-
ing him dangerous, and demanding prompt measures of restraint.
These attacks are by no means limited to the more severe form
of epilepsy, but appear to be even more frequently associated
with the milder form the epileptic vertigo where they either
replace altogether or immediately follow the short period of ab-
sence characteristic of this form of the disease. Numerous cases
are on record of persons known to be epileptic being suddenly
seized, either after or without apparent spasmodic attack, with
some sudden impulse, in which they have used dangerous violence
to those beside them, irrespective altogether of malevolent
intention, as appears from their retaining no recollection what-
ever, after the short period of excitement, of anything that had
occurred; and there is reason to believe that crimes of heinous
character, for which the perpetrators have suffered punishment,
have been committed in a state of mind such as that now
described. The subject is obviously one of the greatest
medico-legal interest and importance in regard to the question
of criminal responsibility.
Apart, however, from such marked and comparatively rare
instances of what is termed epileptic insanity, the general mental
condition of the epileptic is in a large proportion of cases un-
favourably affected by the disease. There are doubtless
examples (and their number according to statistics is estimated
at less than one-third) where, even among those suffering from
frequent and severe attacks, no departure from the normal
condition of mental integrity can be recognized. But in general
there exists some peculiarity, exhibiting itself either in the form
of defective memory, or diminishing intelligence, or what is
perhaps as frequent, in irregularities of temper, the patient
being irritable or perverse and eccentric. In not a few cases
there is a steady mental decline, which ends in dementia or
idiocy. It is stated by some high authorities that epileptic
women suffer in regard to their mental condition more than men.
It also appears to be the case that the later in life the disease
shows itself the more likely is the mind to suffer. Neither the
frequency nor the severity of the seizures seem to have any
necessary influence in the matter; and the general opinion
appears to be that the milder form of the disease is that with
which mental failure is more apt to be associated. (For a
consideration of the conditions of the nervous system which
result in epilepsy, see the article NEUROPATHOLOGY.)
The influence of hereditary predisposition in epilepsy is very
EPILOGUE
693
marked. It is necessary, however, to bear in mind the point
so forcibly insisted on by Trousseau in relation to epilepsy,
that hereditary transmission may be either direct or indirect,
that is to say, that what is epilepsy in one generation may be
some other form of neurosis in the next, and conversely, nervous
<^** being remarkable for their tendency to transformation
in their descent in families. Where epilepsy is hereditary, it
generally manifests itself at an unusually early period of life.
A singular fact, which also bears to some extent upon the
pathology of this disease, was brought to light by Dr Brown
Sequard in his experiments, namely, that the young of animals
which had been artifically rendered epileptic were liable to similar
seizures. In connexion with the hereditary transmission of
epilepsy it must be observed that all authorities concur in the
opinion that this HJM^ is one among the baneful effects that
often follow marriages of consanguinity. Further, there is
reason to believe that intemperance, apart altogether from its
direct effect in favouring the occurrence of epilepsy, has an evil
influence in the hereditary transmission of this as of other
nervous diseases. A want of symmetry in the formation of the
skull and defective cerebral development are not infrequently
observed where epilepsy is hereditarily transmitted.
Age is of importance in reference to the production of epilepsy.
The disease may come on at any period of life, but it appears
from the statistics of Reynolds and others, that it most frequently
first manifests itself between the ages of ten and twenty years,
the period of second dentition and puberty, and again at or about
the age of forty.
Among other causes which are influential in the development
of epilepsy may be mentioned sudden fright, prolonged mental
anxiety, over-work and debauchery. Epileptic fits also occur
in connexion with a depraved stage of the general health, and
with irritations in distant organs, as seen in the fits occurring in
dentition, in kidney disease, and as a result of worms in the
intestines. The symptoms traceable to these causes are some-
times termed sympathetic or eccentric epilepsy; these are but
rarely epileptic in the strictest sense of the word, but rather
epileptiform.
Epilepsy is occasionally feigned for the purpose of extortion,
but an experienced medical practitioner will rarely be deceived;
and when it is stated that although many of the phenomena of an
attack, particularly the convulsive movements, can be readily
simulated, yet that the condition of the pupils, which are dilated
during the fit, cannot be feigned, and that the impostor seldom
bites his tongue or injures himself, deception is not likely to
succeed even with non-medical persons of intelligence.
The medical treatment of epilepsy can only be briefly alluded
to here. During the fit little can be done beyond preventing as far
as possible the patient from injuring himself while unconscious-
ness continues. Tight clothing should be loosened, and a cork
or pad inserted between the teeth. When the fit is of long
continuance, the dashing of cold water on the face and chest,
or the inhalation of chloroform, or of nitrite of amyl, may be
useful; in general, however, the fit terminates independently
of any such measures. When the fit is over the patient should
be allowed to sleep, and have the head and shoulders well
raised.
In the intervals of the attack, the general health of the patient
is one of the most important points to be attended to. The
strictest hygienic and dietetic rules should be observed, and all
such causes as have been referred to as favouring the develop-
ment of the disease should, as far as possible, be avoided. In
the case of children, parents must be made to realize that
epilepsy is a chronic disease, and that therefore the seizures must
not be allowed to interfere unnecessarily with the child's training.
The patient must be treated as such only during the attack;
between times, though being carefully watched, must be made to
follow a child's normal pursuits, and no distinction must be made
from other children. The same applies to adults: it is far better
for them to have some definite occupation, preferably one that
keeps them in the open air. If such patients become irritable,
then they should be placed under supervision. As regards
those who cannot be looked after at home, colonies on a self-
supporting basis have been tried, and where the supervision
has been intelligent the success has been proved, a fairly high
level of health and happiness being attained.
The various bromides are the only medical drugs that have
produced any beneficial results. They require to be given in large
doses which are carefully regulated for every individual patient,
as the quantities required vary enormously. Children take far
larger doses in proportion than adults. They are best given in
a very diluted form, and after meals, to diminish the chances
of gastric disturbance. Belladonna seems also to have some
influence on the disease, and forms a useful addition ; arsenic
should also be prescribed at times, both as a tonic, and for the
sake of the improvement it effects in those patients who develop
a tendency to acne, which is one of the troublesome results of
bromism. The administration of the bromides should be
maintained until three years after the cessation of the fits. The
occurrence of gastric pain, palpitations and loss of the palate
reflex are indications to stop, or to decrease the quantity of the
drug. In very severe cases opium may be required.
Surgical treatment for epilepsy is yet in its infancy, and it is
too early to judge of its results. This does not apply, however,
to cases of Jacksonian epilepsy, where a very large number have
been operated on with marked benefit. Here the lesion of the
brain is, in a very large percentage of the patients, caused by
pressure from outside, from the presence of a tumour or a
depressed fracture ; the removal of the one, or the elevation of
the other is the obvious procedure, and it is usually followed by
the complete disappearance of the seizures.
EPILOGUE. The appendix or supplement to a literary work,
and in particular to a drama in verse, is called an epilogue,
from trtAoyoj, the name given by the Greeks to the peroration
of a speech. As we read in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's
Dream, the epilogue was generally treated as the apology for a
play; it was a final appeal made to encourage the good-nature of
the audiences, and to deprecate attack. The epilogue should
form no part of the work to which it is attached, but should be
independent of it; it should be treated as a sort of commentary.
Sometimes it adds further information with regard to what has
been left imperfectly concluded in the work itself. For instance,
in the case of a play, the epilogue will occasionally tell us what
became of the characters after the action closed; but this is
irregular and unusual, and the epilogue is usually no more than
a graceful way of dismissing the audience. Among the ancients
the form was not cultivated, further than that the leader of
the chorus or the last speaker advanced and said " Vos valete,
et plaudite, cives " " Good-bye, citizens, and we hope you are
pleased." Sometimes this formula was reduced to the one
word, " Plaudite 1 " The epilogue as a literary species is
almost entirely confined to England, and it does not occur in the
earliest English plays. It is rare in Shakespeare, but Ben Jonson
made it a particular feature of his drama, and may almost be
said to have invented the tradition of its regular use. He
employed the epilogue for two purposes, either to assert the
merit of the play or to deprecate censure of its defects. In the
former case, as in Cynthia's Revels (1600), the actor went off,
and immediately came on again saying:
" Gentles, be't known to you, since I went in
I am turned rhymer, and do thus begin:
The author (jealous how your sense doth take
His travails) hath enjoined me to make
Some short and ceremonious epilogue,"
and then explained to the audience what an exremely interest-
ing play it had been. In the second case, when the author was
less confident, his epilogue took a humbler form, as in the
comedy of Volpone (1605), where the actor said:
" The seasoning of a play is the applause.
Now, as the Fox be punished by the laws,
He yet doth hope, there is no suffering due
For any fact which he hath done 'gainst you.
If there be, censure him; here he doubtful stands:
If not, fare jovially and clap your hands."
Beaumont and Fletcher used the epilogue sparingly, but after
EPIMENIDES EPINAY
their day it came more and more into vogue, and the form was
almost invariably that which Ben Jonson had brought into
fashion, namely, the short complete piece in heroic couplets.
The hey-day of the epilogue, however, was the Restoration, and
from 1660 to the decline of the drama in the reign of Queen Anne
scarcely a play, serious or comic, was produced on the London
stage without a prologue and an epilogue. These were almost
always in verse, even if the play itself was in the roughest prose,
and they were intended to impart a certain literary finish to the
piece. These Restoration epilogues were often very elaborate
essays or satires, and were by no means confined to the subject
of the preceding play. They dealt with fashions, or politics, or
criticism. The prologues and epilogues of Dryden are often
brilliantly finished exercises in literary polemic. It became
the custom for playwrights to ask their friends to write these
poems for them, and the publishers would even come to a
prominent poet and ask him to supply one for a fee. It gives
us an idea of the seriousness with which the epilogue was treated
that Dryden originally published his valuable " Defence of the
Epilogue; or An Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last
Age " (1672) as a defence of the epilogue which he had written
for The Conquest of Granada. In France the custom of reciting
dramatic epilogues has never prevailed. French criticism gives
the name to such adieux to the public, at the close of a non-
dramatic work, as are reserved by La Fontaine for certain
critical points in the " Fables." (E. G.)
EPIMENIDES, poet and prophet of Crete, lived in the 6th
century B.C. Many fabulous stories are told of him, and even his
existence is doubted. While tending his father's sheep, he is
said to have fallen into a deep sleep in the Dictaean cave near
Cnossus where he lived, from which he did not awake for
fifty-seven years (Diogenes Laertius i. 109-115). When the
Athenians were visited by a pestilence in consequence of
the murder of Cylon, he was invited by Solon (596) to purify
the city. The only reward he would accept was a branch of the
sacred olive, and a promise of perpetual friendship between
Athens and Cnossus (Plutarch, Solon, 12; Aristotle, Ath. Pol. i).
He died in Crete at an advanced age; according to his country-
men, who afterwards honoured him as a god, he lived nearly
three hundred years. According to another story, he was
taken prisoner in a war between the Spartans and Cnossians,
and put to death by his captors, because he refused to prophesy
favourably for them. A collection of oracles, a theogony, an
epic poem on the Argonautic expedition, prose works on purifica-
tions and sacrifices, and a cosmogony, were attributed to him.
Epimenides must be reckoned with Melampus and Onomacritus
as one of the founders of Orphism. He is supposed to be the
Cretan prophet alluded to in the epistle to Titus (i. 12).
See C. Schultess, De Epimenide Crelensi (1877); O. Kern, De
Orphei, Epimenidis . . . Theogoniis (1888) ; G. Barone di Vincenzo,
E. di Creta ele Credenze religiose de'suoi Tempi (1880) ; H. Demoulin,
Epimenide de Crete (1901); H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vor-
sokratiker (1903); O. Kern in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopadie.
EPINAL, a town on the north-eastern frontier of France,
capital of the department of Vosges, 46 m. S.S.E. of Nancy on the
Eastern railway between that town and Belfort. Pop. (1906),
town 21,296, commune (including garrison) 29,058. The town
proper the Grande Ville is situated on the right bank of the
Moselle, which at this point divides into two arms forming an
island whereon another quarter the Petite Ville is built. The
lesser of these two arms, which is canalized, separates the island
from the suburb of Hospice on its left bank. The right bank of
the Moselle is bordered for some distance by pleasant promenades,
and an extensive park surrounds the ruins of an old stronghold
which dominated the Grande Ville from an eminence on the east.
Apart from the church of St Goery (or St Maurice) rebuilt in the
i3th century but preserving a tower of the i2th century, the
public buildings of Epinal offer little of architectural interest.
The old hospital on the island-quarter contains a museum with
interesting collections of paintings, Gallo-Roman antiquities,
sculpture, &c. Close by stands the library, which possesses many
valuable MSS.
The fortifications of Epinal are connected to the southward
with Belfort, Dijon and Besancon, by the fortified line of the
Moselle, and north of it lies the unfortified zone called the Trouee
d' Epinal, a gap designedly left open to the invaders between
Epinal and Toul, another great fortress which is itself connected
by the Meuse forts d'arret with Verdun and the places of the
north-east. Epinal therefore is a fortress of the greatest possible
importance to the defence of France, and its works, all built since
1870, are formidable permanent fortifications. The Moselle
runs from S. to N. through the middle of the girdle of forts; the
fortifications of the right bank, beginning with Fort de la
Mouche, near the river 3 m. above Epinal, form a chain of de-
tached forts and batteries over 6 m. long from S. to N., and the
northernmost part of this line is immensely strengthened by
numerous advanced works between the villages of Dogneville
and Longchamp. On the left bank, a larger area of ground is
included in the perimeter of defence for the purposes of encamp-
ment, the most westerly of the forts, Girancourt, being 7 m.
distant from Epinal; from the lower Moselle to Girancourt the
works are grouped principally about Uxegney and Sarchey;
from Girancourt to the upper river and Fort de la Mouche a long
ridge extends in an arc, and on this south-western section the
principal defence is Fort Ticha and its annexes. The circle of
forts, which has a perimeter of nearly 30 m., was in 1895 re ~
inforced by the construction of sixteen new works, and the area
of ground enclosed and otherwise protected by the defences of
Epinal is sufficiently extensive to accommodate a large army.
Epinal is the seat of a prefect and of a court of assizes and has
tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade-
arbitrators, a chamber of commerce, training-colleges, a com-
munal college and industrial school, and exchange and a branch of
the Bank of France. The town, which is important as the centre
of a cotton-spinning region, carries on cotton-spinning, -weaving
and -printing, brewing and distilling, and the manufacture of
machinery and iron goods, glucose, embroidery, hats, wall-
paper and tapioca. An industry peculiar to Epinal is the pro-
duction of cheap images, lithographs and engravings. There is
also trade in wine, grain, live-stock and starch products made in
the vicinity. Epinal is an important junction on the Eastern
railway.
Epinal originated towards the end of the loth century with
the founding of a monastery by Theodoric (Dietrich) I., bishop
of Metz, whose successors ruled the town till 1444, when its
inhabitants placed themselves under the protection of King
Charles VII. In 1466 it was transferred to the duchy of Lorraine,
and in 1766 it was, along with that duchy, incorporated with
France. It was occupied by the Germans on the 1 2th of October
1870 after a short fight, and until the i$th was the headquarters
of General von Werder.
EPINAOS (Gr. ri, after, and vote, a temple), in architecture,
the open vestibule behind the nave. The term is not found in any
classic author, but is a modern coinage, originating in Germany,
to differentiate the feature from " opisthodomus," which in the
Parthenon was an enclosed chamber.
EPINAY, LOUISE FLORENCE PETRONILLE TARDIEU
D'ESCLAVELLES D' (1726-1783), French writer, was born at
Valenciennes on the nth of March 1726. She is well known on
account of her liaisons with Rousseau and Baron von Grimm,
and her acquaintanceship with Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach
and other French men of letters. Her father, Tardieu
d'Esclavelles, a brigadier of infantry, was killed in battle when
she was nineteen; and she married her cousin Denis Joseph de
La Live d'Epinay, who was made a collector-general of taxes.
The marriage was an unhappy one; and Louise d'Epinay
believed that the prodigality, dissipation and infidelities of her
husband justified her in obtaining a formal separation in 1749.
She settled in the chateau of La Chevrette in the valley of
Montmorency, and there received a number of distinguished
visitors. Conceiving a strong attachment for J. J. Rousseau,
she furnished for him in 1756 in the valley of Montmorency a
cottage which she named the " Hermitage," and in this retreat
he found for a time the quiet and natural rural pleasures he
praised so highly. Rousseau, in his Confessions, affirmed that
EPIPHANIUS EPIPHANY
695
the inclination was all on her side; but as, after her visit to
Geneva, Rousseau became her bitter CIH-MIV. little weight can be
given to his statement sun this|H>int. Her intimacy with r.rimm,
which began in 1755. marks a turning-point in her life, for under
his influence she escaped from the somewhat compromising
conditions of her life at La Chevrette. In 1757-1759 she paid a
long visit to Geneva, where she was a constant guest of Voltaire.
In Grimm's absence from France (1775-1776), Madame d'Epinay
continued, under the superintendence of Diderot, the corre-
spondence he had begun with various European sovereigns.
She spent most of her later life at La Bridie, a small house near
La Chevrette, in the society of Grimm and of a small circle of
men of letters. She died on the 171)1 of April 1783. Her
Conversations d'mUit (1774), composed for the education of her
grand-daughter, Ernilie de Bclsunce, was crowned by the French
Academy in 1783. The Mtmoires et Corrcspondance de Mme
d'Epinay, rmjrrmaitl un grand nombre de letlres inidiles de Grimm,
At Diderot, et de J.-J. Rousseau, ainsi que des details, &c., was
published at Paris (1818) from a MS. which she had bequeathed
to Grimm. The Mtmoires arc written by herself in the form of a
sort of autobiographic romance. Madame d'Epinay figures in
it as Madame de Montbrillant, and Rene is generally recognized
as Rousseau, Volx as Grimm, Gamier as Diderot. All the
letters and documents published along with the Mtmoires are
genuine. Many of Madame d'Epinay 's letters are contained
in the Corrcspondance de I'abbt Galiani (1818). Two anonymous
works, Ltttres d man fits (Geneva, 1758) and Mes moments
keureux (Geneva, 1759), are also by Madame d'Epinay.
See Rousseau's Confessions ; Lucien Percy (Mile Herpin] and Gaston
Maugras, La Jeunesse de Mme d'&pinay. Us dernieres annees de Mme
d'Efnnav (1882-1883); Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. ii.;
Edmond Scherer, ILtudes sur la litttrature contemporaine, vols. iii. and
vii. There are editions of the Memoires by L. Enault (1855) and by
P. Boitcau (1865); and an English translation, with introduction
and notes (1897), by J. H. Freese.
EPIPHANIUS. SAINT (c. 315-402), a celebrated Church Father,
born in the beginning of the 4th century at Bezanduca, a village
of Palestine, near Eleutheropolis. He is said to have been of
Jewish extraction. In his youth he resided in Egyp.t, where he
began an ascetic course of life, and, freeing himself from Gnostic
influences, invoked episcopal assistance against heretical thinkers,
eighty of whom were driven from the cities. On his return to
Palestine be was ordained presbyter by the bishop of Eleuther-
opolis, and became the president of a monastery which he founded
near his native place. The account of his intimacy with the
patriarch Hilarion is not trustworthy. In 367 he was nominated
bishop of Constantia. previously known as Salamis, the metropolis
of Cyprus an office which he held till his death in 402. Zealous
for the truth, but passionate and bigoted, he devoted himself
to two great labours, namely, the spread of the recently estab-
lished monasticism, and the confutation of heresy, of which he
regarded Origen and his followers as the chief representatives.
The first of the Origenists that he attacked was John, bishop of
Jerusalem, whom he denounced from his own pulpit at Jerusalem
(394) in terms so violent that the bishop sent his archdeacon to
request him to desist ; and afterwards, instigated by Theophilus,
bishop of Alexandria, he proceeded so far as to summon a council
of Cyprian bishops to condemn the errors of Origen. In his
closing years he came into conflict with Chrysostom, the patriarch
of Constantinople, who had given temporary shelter to four Nitrian
monks whom Theophilus had expelled on the charge of Origenism.
The monks gained the support of the empress Eudoxia, and when
she summoned Theophilus to Constantinople that prelate forced
the aged Epiphanius to go with him. He had some controversy
with Chrysostom but did not stay to see the result of Theophilus's
machinations, and died on his way home. The principal work
of Epiphanius is the Panarion, or treatise on heresies, of which
be also wrote an abridgment. It is a " medicine chest " of
remedies for all kinds of heretical belief, of which he names
eighty varieties. His accounts of the earlier errors (where he
has preserved for us large excerpts from the original Greek of
Irenaeus) are more reliable than those of contemporary heresies.
In bis desire to see the Church safely moored he also wrote the
Ancoralus, or discourse on the true faith. His encyclopaedic
learning shows itself in a treatise on Jewish weights and measures.
and another (incomplete) on ancient gems. These, with two
epistles to John of Jerusalem and Jerome, are his only genuine
remains. He wrote a large number of works which are lost. In
allusion to his knowledge of Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian, Greek and
Latin, Jerome styles Epiphanius IleirdyXtoao-os (Five-tongued);
but if his knowledge of languages was really so extensive, it is
certain that he was utterly destitute of critical and logical power.
His early asceticism seems to have imbued him with a love
of the marvellous; and his religious zeal served only to increase
his credulity. His erudition Is outweighed by his prejudice, and
his inability to recognize the responsibilities of authorship makes
it necessary to assign most value to those portions of his works
which he simply cites from earlier writers.
The primary sources for the life are the church histories of Socrates
and Sozomen, Palladius's De vita Chrysostomi and Jerome's De vir.
illust. 1 14. Petau (Pctavius) published an edition of the works in
2 vols. fol. at Paris in 1622; cf. Migne, Pair. Graec. 41-43. The
Panarion and other works were edited by F. Oehler (Berlin, 1859-
1861). For more recent work especially on the fragments see K.
Bonwetsch's art. in Herzog-Hauck's Realencyk. \. 417.
Other theologians of the same name were: (i) Epiphanius
Scholasticus, fnend and helper of Cassiodorus; (2) Epiphanius,
bishop of Ticinum (Pavia), c. 438-496; (3) Epiphanius, bishop of
Constantia and Metropolitan of Cyprus (the Younger), c. A.D. 680,
to whom some critics nave ascribed certain of the works supposed
to have been written by the greater Epiphanius; (4) Epiphanius,
bishop of Constantia in the 9th century, to whom a similar attribution
has been made.
EPIPHANY, FEAST OF. The word epiphany, in Greek,
signifies an apparition of a divine being. It was used as a
singular or a plural, both in its Greek and Latin forms, according
as one epiphany was contemplated or several united in a single
commemoration. For in the East from an early time were
associated with the feast of the Baptism of Christ commemora-
tions of the physical birth, of the Star of the Magi, of the
miracles of Cana, and of the feeding of the five thousand. The
commemoration of the Baptism was also called by the Greek
fathers of the 4th century the Theophany or Theophanies, and
the Day of Lights, i.e. of the Illumination of Jesus or of the Light
which shone in the Jordan. In the Teutonic west it has become
the Festival of the three kings (i.e. the Magi), or simply Twelfth
day. Leo the Great called it the Feast of the Declaration; Ful-
gentius, of the Manifestation; others, of the Apparition of Christ.
In the following article it is attempted to ascertain the date
of institution of the Epiphany feast, its origin, and its signifi-
cance and development.
Clement of Alexandria first mentions it. Writing c. 194 he
states that the Basilidians feasted the day of the Baptism,
devoting the whole night which preceded it to lections of the
scriptures. They fixed it in the isth year of Tiberius, on the
iSth or nth of the month Tobi, dates of the Egyptian fixed
calendar equivalent to January toth and 6th. When Clement
wrote the great church had not adopted the feast, but toward
A.D. 300 it was widely in vogue. Thus the Acts of Philip the
Martyr, bishop of Heraclea in Thrace, A.D. 304, mention the
" holy day of the Epiphany." Note the singular. Origen
seems not to have heard of it as a feast of the Catholic church,
but Hippolytus (died c. 235) recognized it in a homily which
may be genuine.
In the age of the Nicene Council, A.D. 325, the primate of
Alexandria was charged at every Epiphany Feast to announce
to the churches in a " Festal Letter " the date of the forthcoming
Easter. Several such letters written by Athanasius and others
remain. In the churches so addressed the feast of Jan. 6 must
have been already current.
In Jerusalem, according to the Epistle of Macarius 1 to the
Armenians, c. 330, the feast was kept with zeal and splendour, and
was with Easter and Pentecost a favourite season for Baptism.
We have evidence of the 4th century from Spain that a
long fast marked the season of Advent, and prepared for the
feast of Epiphany on the 6th of January. The council of
1 For its text ee The Key of Truth, translated by F. C. Conybeare,
Oxford, and the article ARMENIAN CHURCH.
6 9 6
EPIPHANY
Saragossa c. 380 enacted that for 21 days, from the zyth of
December to the 6th of January, the Epiphany, the faithful should
not dance or make merry, but steadily frequent the churches.
The synod of Lerida in 524 went further and forbade marriages
during Advent. Our earliest Spanish lectionary, the Liber
comicus of Toledo, edited by Don Morin (Anecd. Maredsol. vol. i.),
provides lections for five Sundays in Advent, and the gospel
lections 1 chosen regard the Baptism of Christ, not His Birth,
of which the feast, like that of the Annunciation, is mentioned,
but not yet dated, December 25 being assigned to St Stephen,
It is odd that for " the Apparition of the Lord " the lection
Matt. ii. 1-15 is assigned, although the lections for Advent
belong to a scheme which identified Epiphany with the Baptism.
This anomaly we account for below. The old editor of the
Mozarabic Liturgy, Fr. Antonio Lorenzano, notes in his preface
28 that the Spaniards anciently terminated the Advent
season with the Epiphany Feast. In Rome also the earliest
fixed system, of the ecclesiastical year, which may go back to 300,
makes Epiphany the caput festorum or chief of feasts. The
Sundays of Advent lead up to it, and the first Sundays of
the year are " The Sunday within the octave of Epiphany,"
" the first Sunday after," and so forth. December 25 is no
critical date at all. In Armenia as early as 450 a month of
fasting prepared for the Advent of the Lord at Epiphany, and
the fast was interpreted as a reiteration of John the Baptist's
season of Repentance.
In Antioch as late as about 386 Epiphany and Easter were
the two great feasts, and the physical Birth of Christ was not
yet feasted. On the eve of Epiphany after nightfall the springs
and rivers were blessed, and water was drawn from them and
stored for the whole year to be used in lustrations and baptisms.
Such water, says Chrysostom, to whose orations we owe the
information, kept pure and fresh for one, two and three years,
and like good wine actually improved the longer it was kept.
Note that Chrysostom speaks of the Feast of the Epiphanies,
implying two, one of the Baptism, the other of the Second
Advent, when Christ will be manifested afresh, and we with
him in glory. This Second Epiphany inspired, as we saw, the
choice of Pauline lections in the Liber comicus. But the salient
event commemorated was the Baptism, and Chrysostom
almost insists on this as the exclusive significance of the feast :
" It was not when he was born that he became manifest to all,
but when he was baptized." In his commentary on Ezekiel
Jerome employs the same" language absconditus est el non apparuit,
by way of protest against an interpretation of the Feast as that
of the Birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, which was essayed as early
as 375 by Epiphanius in Cyprus, and was being enforced in
Jerome's day by John, bishop of Jerusalem. Epiphanius
boldly removed the date of the Baptism to the 8th of November.
" January 6 " ( = Tobi n), he writes, " is the day of Christ's
Birth, that is, of the Epiphanies." He uses the plural, because
he adds on January 6 the commemoration of the water miracle
of Cana. Although in 375 he thus protested that January 6
was the day " of the Birth after the Flesh," he became before the
end of the century a convert, according to John of Nice, to the
new opinion that December 25 was the real day of this Birth.
That as early as about 385, January 6 was kept as the physical
birthday in Jerusalem, or rather in Bethlehem, we know from a
contemporary witness of it, the lady pilgrim of Gaul, whose
peregrinatio, recently discovered by Gamurrini, is confirmed
by the old Jerusalem Lectionary preserved in Armenian. 2
Ephraem the Syrian father is attested already by Epiphanius
( c - 375) to have celebrated the physical birth on January 6.
His genuine Syriac hymns confirm this, but prove that the
Baptism, the Star of the Magi, and the Marriage at Cana were
also commemorated on the same day. That the same union
prevailed in Rome up to the year 354 may be inferred from
Ambrose. Philastrius (De haer. ch. 140) notes that some
___' These are Matt. iii. i-u, xi. 2-15, xxi. 1-9; Mark i. 1-8; Luke
iii. 1-18. The Pauline lections regard the Epiphany of the Second
Advent, of the prophetic or Messianic kingdom.
Translated in Riluaie Armenorum (Oxford, 1905).
abolished the Epiphany feast and substituted a Birth feast.
This was between 370 and 390.
In 385 Pope Siricius 3 calls January 6 Natalicia, "the Birthday
of Christ or of Apparition," and protests against the Spanish
custom (at Tarragona) of baptizing on that day another proof
that in Spain in the 4th century it commemorated the Baptism.
In Gaul at Vienna in 360 Julian the Apostate, out of deference
to Christian feeling, went to church " on the festival which they
keep in January and call Epiphania." So Ammianus; but
Zonaras in his Greek account of the event calls it the day of the
Saviour's Birth.
Why the feast of the Baptism was called the feast or day of
the Saviour's Birth, and why fathers of that age when they
call Christmas the birth'day constantly qualify and add the
words " in the flesh," we are able to divine from Pope Leo's
(c. 447) i8th Epistle to the bishops of Sicily. For here we learn
that in Sicily they held that in .His Baptism the Saviour was
reborn through the Holy Spirit. " The Lord," protests Leo,
" needed no remission of sins, no remedy of rebirth." The
Sicilians also baptized neophytes on January 6, " because
baptism conveyed to Jesus and to them one and the same
grace." Not so, argues Leo, the Lord sanctioned and hallowed
the power of regeneration, not when He was baptized, but
" when the blood of redemption and the water of baptism
flowed forth from his side." Neophytes should therefore be
baptized at Easter and Pentecost alone, never at Epiphany.
Fortune has preserved to us among the Spuria of several
Latin fathers, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Maximus of
Turin, various homilies for Sundays of the Advent fast and for
Epiphany. The Advent lections of these homilists were much
the same as those of the Spanish Liber comicus; and they insist
on Advent being kept as a strict fast, without marriage celebra-
tions. Their Epiphany lection is however Matt. iii. 1-17, which
must therefore have once on a time been assigned in the Liber
comicus also in harmony with its general scheme. The psalms
used on the day are, cxiii. (cxiv.) " When Israel went forth,"
xxviii. (xxix.) " Give unto the Lord," and xxii. (xxiii.) " the
Lord is my. Shepherd." The same lection of Matthew and also
Ps. xxix. are noted for Epiphany in the Greek oration for the
day ascribed to Hippolytus, which is at least earlier than 300,
and also in special old Epiphany rites for the Benediction of
the waters found in Latin, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Syriac,
&c. Now by these homilists as by Chrysostom, 4 the Baptism
is regarded as the occasion on which " the Saviour first appeared
after the flesh in the world or on earth." These words were
classical to the homilists, who explain them as best they can.
The baptism is also declared to have been " the consecration of
Christ," and " regeneration of Christ and a strengthening of our
faith," to have been " Christ's second nativity." " This second
birth hath more renown than his first ... for now the God of
majesty is inscribed (as his father), but then (at his first birth)
Joseph the Carpenter was assumed to be his father ... he
hath more honour who cries aloud from Heaven (viz. God the
Father), than he who labours upon earth " (viz. Joseph). 6
Similarly the old ordo Romanus of the age of Pepin (given
by Montfaulcon in his preface to the Mozarabic missal in Migne,
Pair. Latina, 85, col. 46), under the rubric of the Vigil of the
Theophany, insists that " the second birth of Christ (in Baptism)
being distinguished by so many mysteries (e.g. the miracle of
Cana) is more honoured than the first" (birth from Mary).
These homilies mostly belong to an age (? 300-400) when the
commemoration of the physical Birth had not yet found its own
day (Dec. 25), and was therefore added alongside of the Baptism
on January '6. Thus the two Births, the physical and the
* Epist. ad Himerium, c. 2.
4 Horn. I. in Pentec. op. torn. ii. 458; " With us the Epiphanies is
the first festival. What is this festival's significance? This, that
God was seen upon earth and consorted with men." For this idea
there had soon to be substituted that of the manifestation of Christ
to the Gentiles.
'See the Paris edition of Augustine (1838), torn, v., Appendix,
Sermons cxvi., cxxv., cxxxv., cxxxyi., cxxxvii. ; cf. torn. vi. dial,
quaestionum, xlvi. ; Maximus of Turin, Homily xxx.
EPIPHANY
697
spiritual, of Jesus were celebrated on pne and the same day,
and one homily contains the words: " Not yet is the feast of
his origin fully completed, and already we have to celebrate the
solemn commemoration of his Baptism. He has hardly been
born humanwise, and already he is being reborn in sacramental
wise. For to-day, though after a lapse of many annual cycles,
he was hallowed (or consecrated) in Jordan. So the Lord
arranged as to link rite with rite; I mean, in such wise as to be
brought forth through the Virgin and to be begotten through
the mystery (i.e. sacrament) in one and the same season."
Another homily preserved in a MS. of the ;th or 8th
century and assigned to Maximus of Turin declares that the
Epiphany was known as the Birthday of Jesus, either because
He was then born of the Virgin or reborn in baptism. This also
was the classical defence made by Armenian fathers of their
custom of keeping the feast of the Birth and Baptism together
on January 6. They argued from Luke's gospel that the
Annunciation took place on April 6, and therefore the Birth
on January 6. The Baptism was on Christ's thirtieth birthday,
and should therefore be also kept on January 6. Cosmas Indico-
pleustes (c. 550) relates that on the same grounds believers of
Jerusalem joined the feasts. All such reasoning was of course
jfrrls coup. As late as the qth century the Armenians had at
least three discrepant dates for the Annunciation January 5,
January g. April 6; and of these January 5 and 9 were older
than April 6, which they perhaps borrowed from Epiphanius's
commentary on the Gospels. The old Latin homilist, above
quoted, hits the mark when he declares that the innate logic
of things required the Baptism (which must, he says, be any how
called a nataJor birth festival) to fall on the same day as Christmas
Ratio enim exigii. Of the argument from the 6th of April
as the date of the Annunciation he knows nothing. The I2th
century Armenian Patriarch Nerses, like this homilist, merely
rests his case against the Greeks, who incessantly reproached
the Armenians for ignoring their Christmas on December 25,
on the inherent logic of things, as follows:
' Ju*t as he was born after the flesh from the holy virgin, so he
was torn through baptism and from the Jordan, by way of example
unto us. And since there are here two births, albeit differing one
from the other in mystic import and in point of time, therefore it
was appointed that we should feast them together, as the first, so
also the second birth."
The Epiphany feast had therefore in its own right acquired
the name of ntitalis dies or birthday, as commemorating the
spiritual rebirth of Jesus in Jordan, before the natalis in carne,
the Birthday in the flesh, as Jerome and others call it, was associ-
ated with it. This idea was condemned as Ebionite in the 3rd
century, yet it influences Christian writers long before and
long afterwards. So Tert ullian says : " We little fishes (pisciculi) ,
after the example of our great fish (IxQw) Jesus Christ the Lord,
are born (gignimur) in the water, nor except by abiding in the
water are we in a state of salvation." And Hilary, like the Latin
bomilists cited above, writes of Jesus that " he was born again
through baptism, and then became Son of God," adding that
the Father cried, when he had gone up out of the water, " My
Son art tbou, I have this day begotten thee " (Luke iii. Ml.
" But this," he adds, " was with the begetting of a man who is
being reborn; on that occasion too he himself was being reborn
unto God to be perfect son; as he was son of man, so in baptism,
he was constituted son of God as well." The idea frequently
meets us in Hilary; it occurs in the Epiphany hymn of the
orthodox Greek church, and in the Epiphany hymns and homilies
of the Armenians.
A letter is preserved by John of Nice of a bishop of Jerusalem
to the bishop of Rome which attests a temporary union of both
feasts on January 6 in the holy places. The faithful, it says,
met before dawn at Bethlehem to celebrate the Birth from the
Virgin in the cave; but before their hymns and lections were
finished they had to hurry off to Jordan, 13 m. the other side
of Jerusalem, to celebrate the Baptism, and by consequence
neither commemoration could be kept fully and reverently.
The writer therefore begs the pope to look in the archives of the
Jews brought to Rome after the destruction of Jerusalem,
and to ascertain from them the real date of Christ's birth. The
pope looked in the works of Josephus and found it to be December
25. The letter's genuineness has been called in question; but
revealing as it does the Church's ignorance of the date of the
Birth, the inconvenience and precariousness of its association
with the Baptism, the recency of its separate institution, it could
not have been invented. It is too tell-tale a document. Not
the least significant fact about it is that it views the Baptism
as an established feast which cannot be altered and set on
another date. Not it but the physical birth must be removed
from January 6 to another date. It has been shown above that
perhaps as early as 380 the difficulty was got over in Jerusalem
by making the Epiphany wholly and solely a commemoration
of the miraculous birth, and suppressing the commemoration
of the Baptism. Therefore this letter must have been written
or, if invented, then invented before that date. Chrysostom
seems to have known of it, for in his Epiphany homily preached
at Antioch, c. 393 (op. vol. ii. 354, ed. Montf.), he refers to the
archives at Rome as the source from which the date December
25 could be confirmed, and declares that he had obtained it from
those who dwell there, and who observing it from the beginning
and by old tradition, had communicated it to the East. The
question arises why the feast of the Baptism was set on January
6 by the sect of Basilides ? And why the great church adopted
the date ? Now we know what sort of considerations influenced
this sect in fixing other feasts, ?o we have a clue. They fixed
the Birth of Jesus on Pachon 25 ( = May 20), the day of the Niloa,
or feast of the descent of the Nile from heaven. We should thus
expect January 6 to be equally a Nile festival. And this from
various sources we know it was. On Tobi 1 1 , says Epiphanius l
(c. 3 70), - every one draws up water from the river and stores it
up, not only in Egypt itself, but in many other countries. In
many places, he adds, springs and rivers turn into wine on this
day, e.g. at Cibyra in ( 'aria and Gerasa in Arabia. Aristides
Rhetor (c. 160) also relates how in the winter, which began
with Tobi, the Nile water was at its purest. Its water, he says,
if drawn at the right time conquers time, for it does not go bad,
whether you keep it on the spot or export it. Galleys were
waiting on a certain night to take it on board and transport it to
Italy and elsewhere for libations and lustrations in the Temples
of Isis. " Such water," he adds, " remained fresh, long after other
water supplies had gone bad. The Egyptians filled their pitchers
with this water, as others did with wine; they stored it in their
houses for three or four years or more, and recommended it the
more, the older it grew, just as the Greeks did their wines."
Two centuries later Chrysostom, as we have seen, commends in
identical terms the water blessed and drawn from the rivers at
the Baptismal feast. It is therefore probable that the Basilidian
feast was a Christianized form of the blessing of the Nile, called
by Chabas in his Coptic calendar Hydreusis. Mas'Qdi the Arab
historian of the loth century, in his Prairies d'or (Frejich trans.
Paris, 1863, ii. 364), enlarges on the splendours of this feast as
he saw it still celebrated in Egypt.
Epiphanius also (Haer. 51) relates a curious celebration held
at Alexandria of the Birth of the Aeon. On January 5 or 6
the votaries met in the holy compound or Temple of the Maiden
(Kor), and sang hymns to the music of the flute till dawn, when
they went down with torches into a shrine under ground, and
fetched up a wooden idol on a bier representing Korc, seated
and naked, with crosses marked on her brow, her hands and her
knees. Then with flute-playing, hymns and dances they carried
the image seven times round the central shrine, before restoring
it again to its dwelling-place below. He adds: " And the
votaries say that to-day at this hour Karl, that is, the Virgin,
gave birth to the Aeon."
Epiphanius says this was a heathen rite, but it rather resembles
some Basilidian or Gnostic commemoration of the spiritual
birth of the Divine life in Jesus of the Christhood, from the
older creation the Ecclesia.
The earliest extant Greek text of the Epiphany rite is in a
1 Perhaps Epiphanius is here, after his wont, transcribing an earlier
6 9 8
EPIRUS
Euchologion of about the year 795, now in the Vatican. The
prayers recite that at His baptism Christ hallowed the waters by
His presence in Jordan, 1 and ask that they may now be blessed
by the Holy Spirit visiting them, by its power and inworking, as
the streams of Jordan were blessed. So they will be able to
purify soul and body of all who draw up and partake of them.
The hymn sung contains such clauses as these:
" To-day the grace of the Holy Spirit hallowing the waters
appears (i-a-Kpaivirai , cf. Epiphany) . . . To-day the systems of
waters spread out their backs under the Lord's footsteps. To-day
the unseen is seen, that he may reveal himself to us. To-day the
Increate is of his own will ordained (lit. hath hands laid on him) by
his own creature. To-day the Unbending bends his neck to his own
servant, in order to free us from servitude. To-day we were liberated
from darkness and are illumined by light of divine knowledge.
To-day for us the Lord by means of rebirth (lit. palingenesy) of the
Image reshapes the Archetype."
This last clause is obscure. In the Armenian hymns the
ideas of the rebirth not only of believers, but of Jesus, and of
the latter's ordination by John, are very prominent.
The history of the Epiphany feast may be summed up thus :
From the Jews the Church took over the feasts of Pascha
and Pentecost; and Sunday was a weekly commemoration of
the Resurrection. It was inevitable, however, that believers
should before long desire to commemorate the Baptism, with
which the oldest form of evangelical tradition began, and which
was widely regarded as the occasion when the divine life began
in Jesus; when the Logos or Holy Spirit appeared and rested
on Him, conferring upon Him spiritual unction as the promised
Messiah; when, according to an old reading of Luke iii. 22,
He was begotten of God. Perhaps the Ebionite Christians of
Palestine first instituted the feast, and this, if a fact, must underlie
the statement of John of Nice, a late but well-informed writer
(c. 950), that it was fixed by the disciples of John the Baptist who
were present at Jesus' Baptism. The Egyptian gnostics anyhow
had the feast and set it on January 6, a day of the blessing of
the Nile. It was a feast of Adoptionist complexion, as one
of its names, viz. the Birthday (Greek yev(d\i.a, Latin Nalalicia
or Natalis dies), implies. This explains why in east and west the
feast of the physical Birth was for a time associated with it;
and to justify this association it was suggested that Jesus was
baptized just on His thirtieth birthday. In Jerusalem and
Syria it was perhaps the Ebionite or Adoptionist, we may add
also the Gnostic, associations of the Baptism that caused this
aspect of Epiphany to be relegated to the background, so that
it became wholly a feast of the miraculous birth. At the same
time other epiphanies of Christ were superadded, e.g. of Cana
where Christ began His miracles by turning water into wine and
manifested forth His glory, and of the Star of the Magi. Hence
it is often called the Feast of Epiphanies (in the plural). In the
West the day is commonly called the Feast of the three kings,
and its early significance as a commemoration of the Baptism
and season of blessing the waters has been obscured; the
Eastern churches, however, of Greece, Russia, Georgia, Armenia,
Egypt, Syria have been more conservative. In the far East it
is still the season of seasons for baptisms, and in Armenia children
born long before are baptized at it. Long ago it was a baptismal
feast in Sicily, Spain, Italy (see Pope Gelasius to the Lucanian
Bishops), Africa and Ireland. In the Manx prayer-book of
Bishop Phillips of the year 1610 Epiphany is called the " little
Nativity " (La nolicky bigge), and the Sunday which comes
between December 25 and January 6 is " the Sunday between
the two Nativities," or Jih duni oedyr 'a Nolick; Epiphany itself
is the " feast of the water vessel," lail ymmyrt uyskey, or " of the
well of water," Chibbyrl uysky.
AUTHORITIES. Gregory Nazianz., Orat. xli.; Suicer, Thesaurus,
s.v. hru^fua; Cotelerius In constit. Apost. (Antwerp, 1698),
lib. v. cap. 13; R. Bingham, Antiquities (London, 1834), bk. xx. ;
\d. Jacoby, Bericht tiber die Taufe Jesu (Strassburg, 1902); H.
, ,
(See also the works enumerated under CHRISTMAS.) (P. C. C.)
1 The same idea is frequent in Epiphany homilies of Chrysostom
and other 4th-century fathers.
EPIRUS, or EPEIRUS, an ancient district of Northern Greece
extending along the Ionian Sea from the Acroceraunian
promontory on the N. to the Ambracian gulf on the S. It was
conterminous on the landward side with Illyria, Macedonia and
Thessaly, and thus corresponds to the southern portion of Albania
(q.v.). The name Epirus ("Hrreipos) signified " mainland," and
was originally applied to the whole coast southward to the
Corinthian Gulf, in contradistinction to the neighbouring islands,
Corcyra, Leucas, &c. The country is all mountainous, especially
towards the east, where the great rivers of north-western Greece
Achelous, Arachthus and Aous rise in Mt Lacmon, the back-
bone of the Pindus chain. In ancient times Epirus did not
produce corn sufficient for the wants of its inhabitants; but it
was celebrated, as it has been almost to the present day, for its
cattle and its horses. According to Theopompus (4th cent. B.C.),
the Epirots were divided into fourteen independent tribes,
of which the principal were the Chaones, the Thesproti and
the Molossi. The Chaones (perhaps akin to the Chones who
dwelt in the heel of Italy) inhabited the Acroceraunian shore,
the Molossians the inland districts round the lake of Pambotis
(mod. Jannina), and the Thesprotians the region to the north
of the Ambracian gulf. In spite of its distance from the chief
centres of Greek thought and action, and the barbarian repute
of its inhabitants, EpiruS was believed to have exerted at an
early period no small influence on Greece, by means more especi-
ally of the oracle of Dodona. Aristotle even placed in Epirus the
original home of the Hellenes. But in historic times its part
in Greek history is mainly passive. The states of Greece proper
founded a number of colonies on its coast, which formed stepping-
stones towards the Adriatic and the West. Of these one of the
earliest and most flourishing was the Corinthian colony of
Ambracia, which gives its name to the neighbouring gulf. Elatria,
Bucheta and Pandosia, in Thesprotia, originated from Elis!
Among the other towns in the country the following were of some
importance. In Chaonia: Palaeste and Chimaera, fortified
posts to which the dwellers in the open country could retire in
time of war; Onchesmus or Anchiasmus, opposite Corcyra
(Corfu), now represented by Santi Quarante; Phoenice, still
so called, the wealthiest of all the native cities of Epirus, and
after the fall of the Molossian kingdom the centre of an Epirotic
League; Buthrotum, the modern Butrinto; Phanote, im-
portant in the Roman campaigns in Epirus; and Adrianopolis,
founded by the emperor whose name it bore. In Thesprotia:
Cassope, the chief town of the most powerful of the Thesprotian
clans; and Ephyra, afterwards Cichyrus^ identified by W. M.
Leake with the monastery of St John 3 or 4 m. from Phanari,
and by C. Bursian with Kastri at the northern end of the
Acherusian Lake. In Molossia: Passaron, where the kings
were wont to take the oath of the constitution and receive their
people's allegiance; and Tecmon, Phylace and Horreum, all
of doubtful identification. The Byzantine town of Rogus is
probably the same as the modern Luro, the Greek Oropus.
History. The kings, or rather chieftains, of the Molossians,
who ultimately extended their power over all Epirus, claimed
to be descended from Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, who, according
to legend, settled in the country after the sack of Troy, and
iransmitted his kingdom to Molossus, his son by Andromache.
The early history of the dynasty is very obscure; but Admetus,
who lived in the 5th century B.C., is remembered for his hospitable
reception of the banished Themistocles, in spite of the fact that
the great Athenian had persuaded his countrymen to refuse
the alliance tardily offered by the Molossians when victory
against the Persians was already secured. Admetus was suc-
ceeded, about 429 B.C., by his son or grandson, Tharymbas or
Arymbas I., who being placed by a decree of the people under
the guardianship of Sabylinthus, chief of the Atintanes, was
educated at Athens, and at a later date introduced a higher
civilization among his subjects. Alcetas, the next king mentioned
n history, was restored to his throne by Dionysius of Syracuse
about 385 B.C. His son Arymbas II. (who succeeded by the
death of his brother Neoptolemus) ruled with prudence and
equity, and gave encouragement to literature and the arts.
EPISCOPACY
699
To him Xenocrates of Chalcedon dedicated his four books on
the art of governing; and it is s|>ctially mentioned th;il he
bestowed great care on the education of his brother's children.
One of them, Troas, he married; Olympias, the other nieie,
was married to Philip II. of Macedon and became the mottu r ..i
Alexander the Great. On the death of Arymbas, Alexander
the brother of Olympias, was put on the throne by Philip and
married his daughter Cleopatra. Alexander assumed the new
title of king of Epirus, and raised the reputation of his country
abroad. Asked by the Tarcntines for aid against the Samnites
and Lucanians, he made a descent at 1'aestum in 332 B.C., and
reduced several cities of the Lucani and Bruttii; but in a second
attack he was surrounded, defeated and slain near Pandosia
in Bruttium.
Acacides. the son of Arymbas II., succeeded Alexander. He
espoused the cause of Olympias against Cassander, but was
dethroned by his own soldiers, and had hardly regained his
position when he fell in battle (313 B.C.) against Philip, brother
of Cassander. He had, by his wife Phthia, a son, the celebrated
Pyrrhus, and two daughters, Deidamia and Troas, of whom the
former married Demetrius Poliorceles. His brother Alcetas,
who succeeded him, continued unsuccessfully the war with
Cassander; he was put to death by his rebellious subjects in
205 B.C., and was succeeded by Pyrrhus (q.v.), who for six years
fought against the Romans in south Italy and Sicily, and gave to
Epirus a momentary importance which it never again possessed.
Alexander, his son, who succeeded in 272 B.C., attempted to
seize Macedonia, and defeated Antigonus Gonatas, but was
himself shortly afterwards driven from his kingdom by Deme-
trius. He recovered it, however, and spent the rest of his days
in peace. Two other insignificant reigns brought the family
of Pyrrhus to its close, and Epirus was thenceforward governed by
a magistrate, elected annually in a general assembly of the nation
held at Passaron. Having imprudently espoused .the cause of
Perseus (g.v.) in his ill-fated war against the Romans, 168 B.C.,
it was exposed to the fury of the conquerors, who destroyed, it
is said, seventy towns, and carried into slavery 150,000 of the
inhabitants. From this blow it never recovered. At the dis-
solution of the Achaean League (q.v.), 146 B.C., it became part of
the province of Macedonia, receiving the name Epirus Vetus,
to distinguish it from Epirus Nova, which lay to the cast.
On the division of the empire it fell to the East, and so re-
mained until the taking of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204,
when Michel Angelus Comncnus seized Aetolia and Epirus. On
the death of Michel in 1 216, these countries fell into the hands of
his brother Theodore. Thomas, the last of the direct line, was
murdered in 1318 by his nephew Thomas, lord of Zantc and
Cephalonia, and his dominions were dismembered. Not long
after, Epirus was overrun by the Samians and Albanians, and
the confusion which had been growing since the division of the
empire was worse confounded still. Charles II. Tocco, lord of
Cephalonia and Zante, obtained the recognition of his title of
Despot of Epirus from the emperor Manuel Comnenus in the
beginning of the isth century; but his family was deprived of
their possession in 1431 by Murad (Amurath) II. In 1443, Scan-
derbeg, king of Albania, made himself master of a considerable
part of Epirus; but on his death it fell into the power of the
Venetians. From these it passed again to the Turks, under
whose dominion it still remains. For modern history see
ALBA
AUTHORITIES. Nauze, " Rech. hist. iir Ics pcuplcs qui s'ctab-
lircnt tn Epirc." in Mem. de 1'Acad. des Inscr. (1729); Pouqucvillc,
Voyagfen Morie. ffc.. en Albanie (Paris, 1805) ; Hobhousc, A Journey
through Albania, ftc. (2 voU., London, 1813); Wolfe. " Ol>servations
on the ( ;iilf of Arta " in Journ. Royal Geog. Soc., 1834 : \Y. M . Lcake,
Tractlt in Northern Greece (London, 1835): Mi-rlckcr, Darstellung des
Lmitt and der Bewohner von Epeiros (Konigsberg, 1841); I. H.
Skene. " Remarkable Localities on the Coast of Epirus, in Journ.
Roy. Geog. Soe., 1848; Bowen, Mount Alhos. Thessaly and Epirus
(London, 1852); von Hahn, Atbanesische Sludien (Jena, 1854);
Bunian. Geog. ton Griechentand (vol. i., Leipzig, 1862); Sehalli,
" Versuch einer Klimatologie des Thales von Jannina," Neue
Denkickr. d. allgem. schveiter. Get. /. Naturw. xix. (Zurich, 1862);
Major R. Stuart. " On Phys. GeojjT. and Natural Resource* of
Epini." in Journ. R.G.S., 1869: fiuido Cora, in Cosmos: Dumont,
"Souvenirs de I'Adriatique, de 1'Epire, &c." in Rev. des deux
mantles (Paris, 1872); dc Gubernatis, " L'Kpiro," Bull. Soc. Geogr.
/to/, viii. (Rome, 1872^; Uozon, "Excursion en Albanie," Bull.
Soc. Geogr., 6th series; K.irupunos, Dodone et ses ruines (Paris, 1878);
Von Hcldreich, " Kin Ik-iira^ /ur I I.M.I vmi Kpirus," Verh. Hot.
Vereins Brandenburg (Berlin, 1880); Kic|K-ri, " '/.ur Kthnographie
von Epirus," Ces. Erdk. xvii. (Berlin, 1879); Zompolidcs, "Das
Land und die Bewohner von Epirus," Ausland (Berlin, 1880); A.
Philippson, Thessalien und Epirus (Berlin, 1897). (J. L. M.)
EPISCOPACY (from Late Lat. episcopates, the office of a
bishop, episcopas), the general term technically applied to that
system of church organization in which the chief ecclesiastical
authority within a defined district, or diocese, is vested in a bishop.
As such it is distinguished on the one hand from Presbyterian-
ism, government by elders, and Congregationalism, in which the
individual church or community of worshippers is autonomous,
and on the other from Papalism. The origin and development
of episcopacy in the Christian Church, and the functions and
attributes of bishops in the various churches, arc dealt with
elsewhere (see CHURCH HISTORY and BISHOP). Under the
present heading it is proposed only to discuss briefly the various
types of episcopacy actually existing, and the different principles
that they represent.
The deepest line of cleavage is naturally" between the view that
episcopacy is a divinely ordained institution essential to the
effective existence of a church as a channel of grace, and the
view that it is merely a convenient form of church order, evolved
as the result of a variety of historical causes, and not necessary to
the proper constitution of a church. The first of these views is
closely connected with the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession.
According to this, Christ committed to his apostles certain powers
of order and jurisdiction in the Church, among others that of
transmitting these powers to others through " the laying on of
hands "; and this power, whatever obscurity may surround the
practice of the primitive Church (see APOSTLE, ad fin.) was very
early confined to the order of bishops, who by virtue of a special
consecration became the successors of the apostles in the function
of handing on the powers and graces of the ministry. 1 A valid
episcopate, then, is one derived in an unbroken series of " layings
on of hands " by bishops from the time of the apostles (see
ORDER, HOLY). This is the Catholic view, common to all the
ancient Churches whether of the West or East, and it is one that
necessarily excludes from the union of Christendom all those
Christian communities which possess no such apostolically
derived ministry.
Apart altogether, however, from the question of orders,
episcopacy represents a very special conception of the Christian
Church. In the fully developed episcopal system the bishop sums
up in his own person the collective powers of the Church in his
diocese, not by delegation of these powers from below, but by
divinely bestowed authority from above. " Ecclesia est in
episcopo," wrote St Cyprian (Cyp. iv. Ep. 9); the bishop, as
the successor of the apostles, is the centre of unity in his diocese,
the unity of the Church as a whole is maintained by the inter-
communion of the bishops, who for this purpose represent their
dioceses. The bishops, individually and collectively, are thus
the essential ties of Catholic unity; they alone, as the deposi-
tories of the apostolic traditions, establish the norm of Catholic
orthodoxy in the general councils of the Church. This high
theory of episcopacy which, if certain of the Ignatian letters
be genuine, has a very early origin, has, of course, fallen upon evil
days. The power of the collective episcopate to maintain Catholic
unity was disproved long before it was overshadowed by the
centralized authority of Rome; before the Reformation, its last
efforts to assert its supremacy in the Western Church, at the
councils of Basel and Constance, had broken down; and the
religious revolution of the i6th century left it largely discredited
and exposed to a double attack, by the papal monarchy on the
one hand and the democratic Presbyterian model on the other.
Within the Roman Catholic Church the high doctrine of episco-
pacy continued to be maintained by the Gallicans and Febron-
ians (see GALLICANISM and FEBRONJANISM) as against the claims
1 See Bishop C. Gore, The Church and the Ministry (1887).
700
EPISCOPACY
of the Papacy, and for a while with success; but a system
which had failed to preserve the unity of the Church even when
the world was united under the Roman empire could not be
expected to do so in a world split up into a series of rival states,
of which many had already reorganized their churches on a
national basis. " Febronius," indeed, was in favour of a frank
recognition of this national basis of ecclesiastical organization,
and saw in Episcopacy the best means of reuniting the dissidents
to the Catholic Church, which was to consist, as it were, of a free
federation of episcopal churches under the presidency of the
bishop of Rome. The idea had considerable success; for it
happened to march with the views of the secular princes. But
religious people could hardly be expected to see in the worldly
prince-bishops of the Empire, or the wealthy courtier-prelates of
France, the trustees of the apostolical tradition. The Revolution
intervened; and when, during the religious reaction that
followed, men sought for an ultimate authority, they found it
in the papal monarch, exalted now by ultramontane zeal into the
sole depositary of the apostolical tradition (see ULTRAMONTAN-
ISM). At the Vatican Council of 1870 episcopacy made its last
stand against papalism, and was vanquished (see VATICAN
COUNCIL). The pope still addresses his fellow-bishops as
"venerable brothers"; but from the Roman Catholic Church
the fraternal union of coequal authorities, which is of the essence
of episcopacy, has vanished; and in its place is set the autocracy
of one. The modern Roman Catholic Church is episcopal, for
it preserves the bishops, whose potestas ordinis not even the
pope can exercise until he has been duly consecrated; but the
bishops as such are now but subordinate elements in a system
for which "Episcopacy" is certainly no longer an appropriate
term.
The word Episcopacy has, in fact, since the Reformation, been
more especially associated with those churches which, while
ceasing to be in communion with Rome, have preserved the
episcopal model. Of these by far the most important is the
Church of England, which has preserved its ecclesiastical organ-
ization essentially unchanged since its foundation by StAugustine,
and its daughter churches (see ENGLAND, CHURCH OF, and
ANGLICAN COMMUNION). The Church of England since the
Reformation has been the chief champion of the principle of
Episcopacy against the papal pretensions on the one hand and
Presbyterianism and Congregationalism on the other. As to the
divine origin of Episcopacy and, consequently, of its universal
obligation in the Christian Church, Anglican opinion has been,
and still is, considerably divided. 1 The " High Church " view,
now predominant, is practically identical with that of the
Galileans and Febronians, and is based on Catholic practice in
those ages of the Church to which, as well as to the Bible, the
formularies of the Church of England make appeal. So far as
this view, however, is the outcome of the general Catholic
movement of the igth century, it can hardly be taken as typical of
Anglican tradition in this matter. Certainly, in the i6th and
i yth centuries, the Church of England, while rigorously enforcing
the episcopal model at home, and even endeavouring to extend it
to Presbyterian Scotland, did not regard foreign non-episcopal
Churches otherwise than as sister communions. The whole
issue had, in fact, become confused with the confusion of functions
of the Church and State. In the view of the Church of England
the ultimate governance of the Christian community, in things
spiritual and temporal, was vested not in the clergy but in the
" Christian prince " as the vicegerent of God. 2 It was the
1 Neither the Articles nor the authoritative Homilies of the Church
of England speak of episcopacy as essential to the constitution of a
church. The latter make the three notes or marks " by which a
true church is known " pure and sound doctrine, the sacraments
administered according to Christ's holy institution, and the right use
of ecclesiastical discipline." These marks are perhaps ambiguous,
but they certainly do not depend on the possession of the Apostolic
Succession^ for it is further stated that the bishops of Rome and
their adherents are not the true Church of Christ " (Homily " con-
cerning the Holy Ghost," ed. Oxford, 1683, p. 292).
* " He and his holy apostles likewise, namely Peter and Paul,
did forbid unto all Ecclesiastical Ministers, dominion over the Church
of Christ " (Homilies appointed to be read in Churches, " The V. part
transference to the territorial sovereigns of modern Europe of
the theocratic character of the Christian heads of the Roman
world-empire; with the result that for the reformed Churches
the unit of church organization was no longer the diocese, or the
group of dioceses, but the Christian state. Thus in England the
bishops, while retaining their potestas ordinis in virtue of their
consecration as successors of the apostles, came to be regarded
not as representing their dioceses in the state, but the state in
their dioceses. Forced on their dioceses by the royal Conge
d'ttire (q.v.), and enthusiastic apostles of the High Church
doctrine of non-resistance, the bishops were looked upon as no
more than lieutenants of the crown; 3 and Episcopacy was
ultimately resisted by Presbyterians and Independents as an
expression and instrument of arbitrary government, " Prelacy "
being confounded with " Popery " in a common condemnation.
With the constitutional changes of the i8th and igth centuries,
however, a corresponding modification took place in the character
of the English episcopate; and a still further change resulted from
the multiplication of colonial and missionary sees having no
connexion with the state (see ANGLICAN COMMUNION). The
consciousness of being in the line of apostolic succession helped
the English clergy to revert to the principle Ecclesia esl in
episcopo, and the great periodical conferences of Anglican bishops
from all parts of the world have something of the character,
though they do not claim the ecumenical authority, of the general
councils of the early Church (see LAMBETH CONFERENCES).
Of the reformed Churches of the continent of Europe only the
Lutheran Churches of Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and
Finland preserve the episcopal system in anything of its historical
sense; and of these only the two last can lay claim to the
possession of bishops in the unbroken line of episcopal suc-
cession. 4 The superintendents (variously entitled also arch-
priests, deans, provosts, ephors) of the Evangelical (Lutheran)
Church, as established in the several states of Germany and in
Austria, are not bishops in any canonical sense, though their
jurisdictions are known as dioceses and they exercise many
episcopal functions. They have no special powers of order, being
presbyters, and their legal status is admittedly merely that of
officials of the territorial sovereign in his capacity as head of the
territorial church (see SUPERINTENDENT). The " bishops "
of the Lutheran Church in Transylvania are equivalent to the
superintendents.
Episcopacy in a stricter sense is the system of the Moravian
Brethren (q.v.) and the Methodist Episcopal Church of America
(see METHODISM). In the case of the former, claim is laid to the
unbroken episcopal succession through the Waldenses, and the
question of their eventual intercommunion with the Anglican
of the Sermon against Wilful Rebellion," ed. Oxford, 1683, p. 378).
Princes are " God's lieutenants, God's presidents, God's j officers,
God's commissioners, God's judges . . . God's vicegerents " (" The
II. part of the Sermon of Obedience," ib. p. 64).
3 Juridically they were, of course, never this in the strict sense in
which the term could be used of the Lutheran superintendents (see
below). They were never mere royal officials, but peers of parlia-
ment, holding their temporalities as baronies under the crown.
4 During the crisis of the Reformation all the Swedish sees be-
came vacant but two, and the bishops of these two soon left the
kingdom. The episcopate, however, was preserved by Peter Mag-
nusson, who, when residing as warden of the Swedish hospital of
St Bridget in Rome, had been duly elected bishop of the see of
Westeraes, and consecrated, c. 1524. No official record of his con-
secration can be discovered, but there is no sufficient reason to doubt
the fact ; and it is certain that during his lifetime he was acknowledged
as a canonical bishop both by Roman Catholics and by Protestants.
In 1528 Magnusson consecrated bishops to fill the vacant sees, and,
assisted by one of these, Magnus Sommar, bishop of Strengness,
he afterwards consecrated the Reformer, Lawrence Peterson, as
archbishop of Upsala, Sept. 22, 1531. Some doubt has been raised
as to the validity of the consecration of Peterson's successor, also
named Lawrence Peterson, in 1575, from the insufficiency of the
documentary evidence of the consecration of his consecrator, Paul
Justin, bishop of Abo. The integrity of the succession has, however,
been accepted after searching investigation by men of such learning
as Grabe and Routh, and has been formally recognized by the con-
vention of the American Episcopal Church. The succession to the
daughter church of Finland, now independent, stands or falls with
that of Sweden.
EPISCOPIUS EPISTLE
701
Church was accordingly mooted at the Lambeth Conference of
1908. The bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, on the
other hand, derive their orders from Thomas Coke, a presbyter
of the Church of England, who in 1784 was ordained by John
Wesley, assisted by two other presbyters, " superintendent "
of the Methodist Society in America. Methodist episcopacy
is therefore based on the denial of any special potestas
ordiitis in the degree of bishop, and is fundamentally dis-
tinct from that of the Catholic Church using this term in its
narrow sense as applied to the ancient churches of the East
and West.
In all of these ancient churches episcopacy is regarded as of
divine origin; and in those of them which reject the papal
supremacy the bishops are still regarded as the guardians of the
tradition of apostolic orthodoxy and the stewards of the gifts of
the Holy Ghost to men (see ORTHODOX EASTERN CHURCH;
ARMENIAN CHURCH; COPTS: Coptic Church, &c.). In the
West, Galilean and Febronian Episcopacy are represented by
two ecclesiastical bodies: the Jansenist Church under the
archbishop of Utrecht (see JANSKNISM and UTRECHT), and the
Old Catholics (?..). Of these the latter, who separated from
the Roman communion after the promulgation of the dogma of
papal infallibility, represent a pure revolt of the system of Epis-
copacy against that of Papalism. (W. A. P.)
EPISCOPIUS, SIMON (1583-1643), the Latin form of the
name of Simon Bischop, Dutch theologian, was born at Amster-
dam on the ist of January 1583. In 1600 he entered the uni-
versity of Leiden, where he studied theology under Jacobus
Anninius, whose teaching he followed. In 1610, the year in
which the Anninians presented the famous Remonstrance to the
states of Holland, he became pastor at Bleyswick, a small village
near Rotterdam; in the following year he advocated the cause
of the Remonstrants (q.v.) at the Hague conference. In 1612
he succeeded Francis Gomants as professor of theology at
Leiden, an appointment which awakened the bitter enmity of
the Calvinists, and, on account of the influence lent by it to the
spread of Arminian opinions, was doubtless an ultimate cause of
the meeting of the synod of Dort in 1618. Episcopius was chosen
as the spokesman of the thirteen representatives of the Remon-
strants before the synod; but he was refused a hearing, and the
Remonstrant doctrines were condemned without any explanation
or defence of them being permitted. At the end of the synod's
sittings in 1619, Episcopius and the other twelve Arminian
representatives were deprived of their offices and expelled from
the country (see DORT, SYNOD OF). Episcopius retired to
Antwerp and ultimately to France, where he lived partly at
Paris, partly at Rouen. He devoted most of his time to writings
in support of the Arminian cause; but the attempt of Luke Wad-
ding (1588-1657) to win him over to the Romish faith involved
him also in a controversy with that famous Jesuit. After the
death (1625) of Maurice, prince of Orange, the violence of the
Arminian controversy began to abate, and Episcopius was
permitted in 1626 to return to his own country. He was ap-
pointed preacher at the Remonstrant church in Rotterdam and
afterwards rector of the Remonstrant college in Amsterdam.
Here he died in 1643. Episcopius may be regarded as in great part
the theological founder of Arminianism, since he developed and
systematized the principles tentatively enunciated by Arminius.
Besides opposing at all points the peculiar doctrines of Calvinism,
Episcopius protested against the tendency of Calvinists to lay
so much stress on abstract dogma, and argued that Christianity
was practical rather than theoretical not so much a system of
intellectual belief as a moral power and that an orthodox
faith did not necessarily imply the knowledge of and assent to
a system of doctrine which included the whole range of Christian
truth, but only the knowledge and acceptance of so much of
Christianity as was necessary to effect a real change on the heart
and life
The principal works of EptKopiui are his Confessio s. declaratio
mltnhat fmtontm qui in foederat
nptrpraecif
pn confatia . ... .
completed work I*iiilutumei tkeoloticae. \ life of Epiacopiu*
fxutontm qui in fatderato BeJgio Remonitranlef tocantur
tmptr profcipuis artUuiis retitionit Ckrittianae (1621), hi* Apologia
tfesttane (1629), hi* Vena Iheolofus remonstrant, and his
was written by Philip Limborch, and one was also prefixed by his
successor, Etienne de Courcclles (Curcellaeus) (1586-1659), to an
edition of his collected works published in 2 vols. (1650-1665).
ee also article in Herzog-Hauck, Kealencykln/xiitu-.
EPISODE, an incident occurring in the history of a nation, an
institution or an individual, especially with the significance of
being an interruption of an ordered course of events, an irrele-
vance. The word is derived from a word (brtloodos) with a
technical meaning in the ancient Greek tragedy. It is defined by
Aristotle (Poetics, 12) as ppos 6\ov rpaytftias r6 jucrai>
8Xuv xopiKu)? /uXwc, all the scenes, that is, which fall between
the choric songs. euroSos, or entrance, is generally applied to the
entrance of the chorus, but the reference may be to that of the
actors at the close of the choric songs. In the early Greek
tragedy the parts which were spoken by the actors were con-
sidered of subsidiary importance to those sung by the chorus,
and it is from this aspect that the meaning of the word, as some-
thing which breaks off the course of events, is derived (see A. E.
Haigh, The Tragic Drama of the Greeks, 1896, at p. 353).
EPISTAXIS (Gr. fart, upon, and orAfeu', to drop), the medical
term for bleeding from the nose, whether resulting from local
injury or some constitutional condition. In persistent cases of
nose-bleeding, various measures are adopted, such as holding the
arms over the head, the application of ice, or of such astringents
as zinc or alum, or plugging the nostrils.
EPISTEMOLOGY (Gr. eirumi/iij, knowledge, and Xo-yos,
theory, account; Germ. Erkenntnistheorie) , in philosophy, a
term applied, probably, first by J. F. Ferrier, to that department
of thought whose subject matter is the nature and origin of
knowledge. It is thus contrasted with metaphysics, which
considers the nature of reality, and with psychology, which deals
with the objective part of cognition, and, as Prof. James Ward
said, " is essentially genetic in its method " (Mind, April 1883,
pp. 166-167). Epistemology is concerned rather with the
possibility of knowledge in the abstract (sub specie aeternilatis,
Ward, ibid.). In the evolution of thought episternological
inquiry succeeded the speculations of the early thinkers, who
concerned themselves primarily with attempts to explain
existence. The differences of opinion which arose on this
problem naturally led to the inquiry as to whether any univers-
ally valid statement was possible. The Sophists and the Sceptics,
Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans took up the
question, and from the time of Locke and Kant it has been
prominent in modern philosophy. It is extremely difficult, if not
impossible, to draw a hard and fast line between epistemology and
other branches of philosophy. If, for example, philosophy is
divided into the theory of knowing and the theory of being, it is
impossible entirely to separate the latter (Ontology) from the
analysis of knowledge (Epistemology), so close is the connexion
between the two. Again, the relation between logic in its widest
sense and the theory of knowledge is extremely close. Some
thinkers have identified the two, while others regard Epistemology
as a subdivision of logic; others demarcate their relative spheres
by confining logic to the science of the laws of thought, i.e. to
formal logic. An attempt has been made by some philosophers
to substitute " Gnosiology " (Gr. "yearns) for " Epistemology "
as a special term for that part of Epistemology which is con-
fined to " systematic analysis of the conceptions employed by
ordinary and scientific thought in interpreting the world, and
including an investigation of the art of knowledge, or the nature
of knowledge as such." " Epistemology " would thus be reserved
for the broad questions of " the origin, nature and limits of
knowledge " (Baldwin's Diet, of Philos. i. pp. 333 and 414). The
term Gnosiology has not, however, come into general use. (See
PHILOSOPHY.)
EPISTLE, in its primary sense any letter addressed to an
absent person; from the Greek word brurroMi, a thing sent on a
particular occasion. Strictly speaking, any such communication
is an epistle, but at the present day the term has become archaic,
and is used only for letters of an ancient time, or for elaborate
literary productions which take an epistolary form, that is to say,
are, or affect to be, written to a person at a distance.
702
EPISTLE
i. Epistles and Letters. The student of literary history soon
discovers that a broad distinction exists between the letter
and the epistle. The letter is essentially a spontaneous, non-
literary production, ephemeral, intimate, personal and private,
a substitute for a spoken conversation. The epistle, on the other
hand, rather takes the place of a public speech, it is written with
an audience in view, it is a literary form, a distinctly artistic
effort aiming at permanence; and it bears much the same rela-
tion to a letter as a Platonic dialogue does to a private talk
between two friends. The posthumous value placed on a great
man's letters would naturally lead to the production of epistles,
which might be written to set forth the views of a person or a
school, either genuinely qr as forgeries under some eminent name.
Pseudonymous epistles were especially numerous under the early
Roman empire, and mainly attached themselves to the names of
Plato, Demosthenes, Aristotle and Cicero.
Both letters and epistles have come down to us in considerable
variety and extent from the ancient world. Babylonia and
Assyria, Egypt, Greece and Rome alike contribute to our inherit-
ance of letters. Those of Aristotle are of questionable genuine-
ness, but we can rely, at any rate in part, on those of Isocrates and
Epicurus. Some of the letters of Cicero are rather epistles, since
they were meant ultimately for the general eye. The papyrus
discoveries in Egypt have a peculiar interest, for they are mainly
the letters of people unknown to fame, and having no thought of
publicity. It is less to be wondered at that we have a large
collection of ancient epistles, especially in the realm of magic and
religion, for epistles were meant to live, were published in several
copies, and were not a difficult form of literary effort. The
Tell el-Amarna tablets found in Upper Egypt in 1887 are a series
of despatches in cuneiform script from Babylonian kings and
Phoenician and Palestinian governors to the Pharaohs (c. 1400
B.C.). The epistles of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch,
Seneca and the Younger Pliny claim mention at this point. In
the later Roman period and into the middle ages, formal epistles
were almost a distinct branch of literature. The ten books of
Symmachus' Epistolae, so highly esteemed in the cultured circles
of the 4th century, may be contrasted with the less elegant but
more forceful epistles of Jerome.
The distinction between letters and epistles has particular
interest for the student of early Christian literature. G. A.
Deissmann (Bible Studies) assigns to the category of letters all the
Pauline writings as well as 2 and 3 John. The books bearing the
names of James, Peter and Jude, together with the Pastorals
(though these may contain fragments of genuine Pauline letters)
and the Apocalypse, he regards as epistles. The first epistle of
John he calls less a letter or an epistle than a religious tract. It
is doubtful, however, whether we can thus reduce all the letters of
the New Testament to one or other of these categories; and
W. M.. Ramsay (Hastings' Did. Bib. Extra vol. p. 401) has pointed
out with some force that " in the new conditions a new category
had been developed the general letter addressed to a whole
class of persons or to the entire Church of Christ." Such writings
have affinities with both the letter and the epistle, and they may
further be compared with the " edicts and rescripts by which
Roman law grew, documents arising out of special circumstances
but treating them on general principles." Most of the literature
of the sub-apostolic age is epistolary, and we have a particularly
interesting form of epistle in the communications between
churches (as distinct from individuals) known as the First
Epistle of Clement (Rome to Corinth) , the Martyrdom of Polycarp
(Smyrna to Philomelium), and the Letters of the Churches of
Vienne andLyons(tothe congregations of Asia Minor and Phrygia)
describing the Gallican martyrdoms of A.D. 1 7 7 . In the following
centuries we have the valuable epistles of Cyprian, of Gregory
Nazianzen (to Cledonius on the Apollinarian controversy), of
Basil (to be classed rather as letters), of Ambrose, Chrysostom,
Augustine and Jerome. The encyclical letters of the Roman
Catholic Church are epistles, even more so than bulls, which are
usually more special in their destination . In the Renaissance one
of the most common forms of literary production was that
modelled upon Cicero's letters. From Petrarch to the Epistolae
obscurorum virorum there is a whole epistolary literature. The
Epistolae obscurorum virorum have to some extent a counter-
part in the Epistles of Martin Marprelate. Later satires in an
epistolary form are Pascal's Provincial Letters, Swift's Drapier
Letters, and the Letters of Junius. The " open letter " of modern
journalism is really an epistle. (A. J. G.)
2. Epistles in Poetry. A branch of poetry bears the name
of the Epistle, and is modelled on those pieces of Horace which
are almost essays (sermones) on moral or philosophical subjects,
and are chiefly distinguished from other poems by being addressed
to particular patrons or friends. The epistle of Horace to his
agent (or villicus) is of a more familiar order, and is at once a
masterpiece and a model of what an epistle should be. Examples
of the work in this direction of Ovid, Claudian, Ausonius and
other late Latin poets have been preserved, but it is particularly
those of Horace which have given this character to the epistles
in verse which form so very characteristic a section of French
poetry. The graceful precision and dignified familiarity of the
epistle are particularly attractive to the temperament of France.
Clement Marot, in the i6th century, first made the epistle popular
in France, with his brief and spirited specimens. We pass the
witty epistles of Scarron and Voiture, to reach those of Boileau,
whose epistles, twelve in number, are the classic examples of
this form of verse in French literature; they were composed
at different dates between 1668 and 1695. In the i8th century
Voltaire enjoyed a supremacy in this graceful and sparkling
species of writing; the Epttre A Uranie is perhaps the most
famous of his verse-letters. Cresset, Bernis, Sedaine, Dorat v
Gentil - Bernard, all excelled in the epistle. The curious
" Epitres " of J. P. G. Viennet (1777-1868) were not easy and
mundane like their predecessors, but violently polemical.
Viennet, a hot defender of lost causes, may be considered the
latest of the epistolary poets of France.
In England the verse-epistle was first prominently employed
by Samuel Daniel in his " Letter from Octavia to Marcus
Antonius " (1599), and later on, more legitimately, in his
" Certain Epistles " (1601-1603). His letter, in terza rima, to
Lucy, Countess of Bristol, is one of the finest examples of this
form in English literature. It was Daniel's deliberate intention
to introduce the Epistle into English poetry, " after the manner
of Horace." He was supported by Ben Jonson, who has some
fine Horatian epistles in his Forests (1616) and his Underwoods.
Letters to Several Persons of Honour form an important section
in the poetry of John Donne. Habington's Epistle to a Friend
is one of his most finished pieces. Henry Vaughan (1622-1695)
addressed a fine epistle in verse to the French romance-writer
Gombauld (1570-1666). Such "letters" were not unfrequent
down to the Restoration, but they did not create a department
of literature such as Daniel had proposed. At the close of the
1 7th century Dryden greatly excelled in this class of poetry,
and his epistles*to Congreve (1694) and to the duchess of Ormond
(1700) are among the most graceful and eloquent that we possess.
During the age of Anne various Augustan poets in whom the
lyrical faculty was slight, from Congreve and Richard Duke
down to Ambrose Philips and William Somerville, essayed the
epistle with more or less success, and it was employed by Gay
for several exercises in his elegant persiflage. Among the epistles
of Gay, one rises to an eminence of merit, that called " Mr
Pope's welcome from Greece," written in 1720. But the great
writer of epistles in English is Pope himself, to whom the glory
of this kind of verse belongs. His " Eloisa to Abelard " (1717)
is carefully modelled on the form of Ovid's " Heroides," while
in his Moral Essays he adopts the Horatian formula for the
epistle. In either case his success was brilliant and complete.
The " Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot " has not been surpassed, if it
has been equalled, in Latin or French poetry of the same class.
But Pope excelled, not only in the voluptuous and in the didactic
epistle, but in that of compliment as well, and there is no more
graceful example of this in literature than is afforded by the
letter about the poems of Parnell addressed, in 1721, to Robert,
earl of Oxford. After the day of Pope the epistle again fell
into desuetude, or occasional use, in England. It revived in
EPISTYLE EPITAPH
703
the charming nalvetf of Cowper's lyrical letters in octosyllabics
to his friends, such as William Bull and Lady Austin (1782).
At the dose of the century Samuel Rogers endeavoured to
resuscitate the neglected form in his " Epistle to a Friend "
(1798). The formality and conventional grace of the epistle
were elements with which the leaders of romantic revival wen-
out of sympathy, and it was not cultivated to any important
degree in the loth century. It is, however, to be noted that
Shelley's " Letter to Maria Gisbornc " (1870), Keats's " Epistle
to Charles Clarke " (1816), and Lamlor's " To Julius Hare "
* (1836), in spite of their romantic colouring, are genuine Horatian
epistles and of the pure Augustan type. This type, in English
literature, is commonly, though not at all universally, cast in
heroic verse. But Daniel employs rime royal and lena rima,
while some modern epistles have been cast in short iambic
rhymed measures or in blank verse. It is sometimes not
easy to distinguish the epistle from the elegy and from the
dedication. (E. G.)
For S Paul's Epistles we PAUL, for St Peter's see PETER, for
Apocryph.il Epistles see APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE, for Plato's
see PLATO, Ac.
EPISTYLE (Gr. m, upon, and <rrv\ot, column), the Greek
architectural term for architrave, the lower member of the
entablature of the classic orders (q.v.).
EPISTYLIS (C. G. Ehrenberg), in zoology, a genus of peri-
trichous Infusoria with a short oral disc and collar, and a rigid
stalk, often branching to form a colony.
EPITAPH (Gr. fcnrdifru*, sc. X&yot, from fcri, upon, and
ratfaf, a tomb), strictly, an inscription upon a tomb, though
by a natural extension of usage the name is applied to anything
written ostensibly for that purpose whether actually inscribed
upon a tomb or not. When the word was introduced into English
in the 1 41 h century it took the form epitaphy, as well as epilaphe,
which latter word is used both by Cower and Lydgate. Many
of the best-known epitaphs, both ancient and modern, are merely
literary memorials, and find no place on sepulchral monuments.
Sometimes the intention of the writer to have his production
placed upon the grave of the person he has commemorated may
have been frustrated, sometimes it may never have existed;
what be has written is still entitled to be called an epitaph if it
be suitable for the purpose, whether the purpose has been carried
out or not. The most obvious external condition that suitability
for mural inscription imposes is one of rigid limitation as to
length. An epitaph cannot in the nature of things extend to
the proportions that may be required in an elegy.
The desire to perpetuate the memory of the dead being natural
to man, the practice of placing epitaphs upon their graves has
been common among all nations and in all ages. And the
similarity, amounting sometimes almost to identity, of thought
and expression that often exists between epitaphs written more
than two thousand years ago and epitaphs written only yesterday
is as striking an evidence as literature affords of the close kinship
of human nature under the most varying conditions where the
same primary elemental feelings are stirred. The grief and hope
of the Roman mother as expressed in the touching lines
" Lagge fili benc quiescas;
Mater tua rogat tc,
Ut me ad te rccipias :
Vale!"
find their echo in similar inscriptions in many a modern cemetery.
Probably the earliest epitaphial inscriptions that have come
down to us are those of the ancient Egyptians, written, as their
mode of sepulture necessitated, upon the sarcophagi and coffins.
Those that have been deciphered are all very much in the same
form, commencing with a prayer to a deity, generally Osiris or
Anubis, on behalf of the deceased, whose name, descent and office
are usually specified. There is, however, no attempt to delineate
individual character, and the feelings of the survivors are not
expressed otherwise than in the fact of a prayer being offered.
Ancient Greek epitaphs, unlike the Egyptian, are of great literary
interest, deep and often tender in feeling, rich and varied in
expression, and generally epigrammatic in form. They are
written usually in elegiac verse, though many of the later
i-pitaphs arc in proM-. Among the gems of the Greek anthology
familiar to English readers through translations are the epitaphs
*ipon those who had fallen in battle. There are several ascribed
to Simonides on the heroes of Thermopylae, of which the most
celebrated is the epigram
" Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
A hymn of Simonides on the same subject contains some lines
of great beauty in praise of those who were buried at Thermopylae,
and these may be regarded as forming a literary epitaph. In
Sparta epitaphs were inscribed only upon the graves of those who
had been especially distinguished in war; in Athens they were
applied more indiscriminately. They generally contained the
name, the descent, the demise, and some account of the life of
the person commemorated. It must be remembered, however,
that many of the so-called Greek epitaphs are merely literary
memorials not intended for monumental inscription, and that
in these freer scope is naturally given to general reflections,
while less attention is paid to biographical details. Many of them ,
even some of the monumental, do not contain any personal
name, as in the one ascribed to Plato
" I am a shipwrecked sailor's tomb; a peasant's there doth stand :
Thus the same world of Hades lies beneath both sea and land."
Others again are so entirely of the nature of general reflections
upon death that they contain no indication of the particular
case that called them forth. It may be questioned, indeed,
whether several of this character quoted in ordinary collections
are epitaphs at all, in the sense of being intended for a particular
occasion.
Roman epitaphs, in contrast to those of the Greeks, contained, as
a rule, nothing beyond a record of facts. The inscriptions on the
urns, of which numerous specimens are to be found in the British
Museum, present but little variation. The letters D.M.orD.M.S.
(Diis Manibus or Diis Manibus Sacrum) are followed by the
name of the person whose ashes are enclosed, his age at death,
and sometimes one or two other particulars. The inscription
closes with the name of the person who caused the urn to be made,
and his relationship to the deceased. It is a curious illustration
of the survival of traces of an old faith after it has been formally
discarded to find that the letters D.M. arc not uncommon on the
Christian inscriptions in the catacombs. It has been suggested
that in this case they mean Deo Maximo and not Diis Manibus,
but the explanation would be quite untenable, even if there were
not many other undeniable instances of the survival of pagan
superstitions in the thought and life of the early Christians. In
these very catacomb inscriptions there are many illustrations to
be found, apart from the use of the letters D.M., of the union of
heathen with Christian sentiment, (see Maitland's Church in the
Catacombs). The private burial-places for the ashes oi the dead
were usually by the side of the various roads leading into Rome,
the Via Appia, the Via Flaminia, Sic. The traveller to or from
the city thus passed for miles an almost uninterrupted succession
of tombstones, whose inscriptions usually began with the
appropriate words Siste Viator or A spice Viator, the origin doubt-
less of the " Stop Passenger," which still meets the eye in many
parish churchyards of Britain. Another phrase of very common
occurrence on ancient Roman tombstones, Sit tibi terra levis
(" Light lie the earth upon thee "), has continued in frequent use,
as conveying an appropriate sentiment, down to modern times.
A remarkable feature of many of the Roman epitaphs was the
terrible denunciation they often pronounced upon those who
violated the sepulchre. Such denunciations were not uncommon
in later times. ,A well-known instance is furnished in the lines on
Shakespeare's tomb at Stratford-on-Avon, said to have been
written by the poet himself
" Good frend, for Jesus' sake forbeare
To dige the dut enclosed heare;
Blestebe y* man y' spares thes stones,
And curst be he y' moves my bones."
The earliest existing British epitaphs belonged to the Roman
period, and are written Ln Latin after the Roman form. Speci-
mens are to be seen in various antiquarian museums throughout
704
EPITAPH
the country; some of the inscriptions are given in Bruce's Roma,
Wall, and the seventh volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum
Latinarum edited by Hiibner, containing the British inscriptions
is a valuable repertory for the earlier Roman epitaphs in Britain
The earliest, of course, are commemorative of soldiers, belonging
to the legions of occupation, but the Roman form was afterward
adopted for native Britons. Long after the Roman form wa
discarded, the Latin language continued to be used, especially for
inscriptions of a more public character, as being from its supposec
permanence the most suitable medium of communication to
distant ages. It is only, in fact, within recent years that Latin
has become unusual, and the more natural practice has been
adopted of writing the epitaphs of distinguished men in the
language of the country in which they lived. While Latin was the
chief if not the sole literary language, it was, as a matter of course
almost exclusively used for epitaphial inscriptions. The com-
paratively few English epitaphs that remain of the nth and i2th
centuries are all in Latin. They are generally confined to a mere
statement of the name and rank of the deceased following the
words " Hie jacet." Two noteworthy exceptions to this general
brevity are, however, to be found in most of the collections. One
is the epitaph to Gundrada, daughter of the Conqueror (d. 1085),
which still exists at Lewes, though in an imperfect state, two of
the lines having been lost; another is that to William de Warren,
earl of Surrey (d. 1089), believed to have been inscribed in the
abbey of St Pancras, near Lewes, founded by him. Both are
encomiastic, and describe the character and work of the deceased
with considerable fulness and beauty of expression. They are
written in leonine verse. In the isth century French began to be
used in writing epitaphs, and most of the inscriptions to celebrated
historical personages between 1200 and 1400 are in that language.
Mention may be made of those to_ Robert, the 3rd earl of
Oxford (d. 1221), as given in Weever,'to Henry III. (d. 1272) at
Westminster Abbey, and to Edward the Black Prince (d. 1376) at
Canterbury. In most of the inscriptions of this period the
deceased addresses the reader in the first person, describes his
rank and position while alive, and, as in the case of the Black
Prince, contrasts it with his wasted and loathsome state in the
grave, and warns the reader to prepare for the same inevitable
change. The epitaph almost invariably closes with a request,
sometimes very urgently worded, for the prayers of the reader
that the soul of the deceased may pass to glory, and an invocation
of blessing, general or specific', upon all who comply. Epitaphs
preserved much of the same character after English began to be
used towards the close of the i4th century. The following, to a
member of the Savile family at Thornhill, is probably even earlier,
though its precise date cannot be fixed:
" Bonys emongg stonys lys ful
steyl gwylste the sawle wan-
deris were that God wylethe "
that is, Bones among stones lie full still, whilst the soul wanders
whither God willeth. It may be noted here that the majority of
the inscriptions, Latin and English, from 1300 to the period
of the Reformation, that have been preserved, are upon brasses
(see BRASSES, MONUMENTAL). The very curious epitaph on St
Bernard, probably written by a monk of Clairvaux, has the
peculiarity of being a dialogue in Latin verse.
It was in the reign of Elizabeth that epitaphs in English began
to assume a distinct literary character and value, entitling them
to rank with those that had hitherto been composed in Latin.
We learn from Nash that at the close of the i6th century it had
become a trade to supply epitaphs in English verse. There is one
on the dowager countess of Pembroke (d. 1621), remarkable for
its successful use of a somewhat daring hyperbole. It was
written by William Browne, author of Britannia's Pastorals:
" Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse ;
Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother;
Death, ere thou hast slain another
Fair and learn'd and good as she,
Time will throw his dart at thee.
Marble piles let no man raise
To her name for after days ;
Some kind woman, born as she,
Reading this, like Niobe,
Shall turn marble, and become
Both her mourner and her tomb."
If there be something of the exaggeration of a conceit in the
second stanza, it needs scarcely to be pointed out that epitaphs,
like every other form of composition, necessarily reflect the
literary characteristics of the age in which they were written.
The deprecation of marble as unnecessary suggests one of the
finest literary epitaphs in the English language, that by Milton
upon Shakespeare.
The epitaphs of Pope are still considered to possess very
great literary merit, though they were rated higher by Johnson
and critics of his period than they are now.
Dr Johnson, who thought so highly of Pope's epitaphs, was
himself a great authority on both the theory and practice of this
species of composition. His essay on epitaphs is one of the few
existing monographs on the subject, and his opinion as to the
use of Latin had great influence. The manner in which he met
the delicately insinuated request of a number of eminent men
that English should be employed in the case of Oliver Goldsmith
was characteristic, and showed the strength of his conviction
on the subject. His arguments in favour of Latin were chiefly
drawn from its inherent fitness for epitaphial inscriptions and
its classical stability. The first of these has a very considerable
force, it being admitted on all hands that few languages are in
themselves so suitable for the purpose; the second is out-
weighed by considerations that had considerable force in Dr
Johnson's time, and have acquired more since. Even to the
learned Latin is no longer the language of daily thought and
life as it was at the period of the Reformation, and the great
body of those who may fairly claim to be called the well-educated
classes can only read it with difficulty, if at all. It seems, there-
fore, little less than absurd, for the sake of a stability which is
itself in great part delusive, to write epitaphs in a language
unintelligible to the vast majority of those for whose information
aresumably they are intended. Though a stickler for Latin,
Dr Johnson wrote some very beautiful English epitaphs, as, for
example, the following on Philips, a musician:
" Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove
The pangs of guilty power or hapless love;
Rest here, distressed by poverty no more,
Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before;
Sleep undisfurbed within this peaceful shrine
Till angels wake thee with a note like thine ! "
In classifying epitaphs various principles of division may be
adopted. Arranged according to nationality they indicate dis-
.inctions of race less clearly perhaps than any other form of
iterature does, and this obviously because when under the
nfluence of the deepest feeling men think and speak very much
n the same way whatever be their country. At the same time
he influence of nationality may to some extent be traced in
epitaphs. The characteristics of the French style, its grace,
clearness, wit and epigrammatic point, are all recognizable iri
? rench epitaphs. In the i6th century those of fitienne Pasquier
were universally admired. Instances such as " La premiere au
endez-vous," inscribed on the grave of a mother, Piron's epitaph,
written for himself after his rejection by the French Academy
" Ci-git Piron, qui ne fut rien,
Pas mgrne academicien "
and one by a relieved husband, to be seen at Pere la Chaise
" Ci-git ma femme. Ah ! qu'elle est bien
Pour son repos et pour le mien "-
might be multiplied indefinitely. One can hardly look through
a collection of English epitaphs without being struck with the
act that these represent a greater variety of intellectual and
motional states than those of any other nation, ranging through
very style of thought from the sublime to the commonplace,
very mood of feeling from the most delicate and touching to
he coarse and even brutal. Few subordinate illustrations of
he complex nature of the English nationality are more striking.
Epitaphs are sometimes classified according to their authorship
nd sometimes according to their subject, but neither division
EPITHALAMIUM EPITHELIAL TISSUES
705
b so interesting as that which arranges them according to their
characteristic features. What has just been said of English
epitaphs is, of course, more true of epitaphs generally. They
exemplify every variety of sentiment and taste, from lofty
pathos and dignified eulogy to coarse buffoonery and the vilest
scurrility. The extent to which the humorous and even the low
comic element prevails among them is a noteworthy circumstance.
It is curious that the most solemn of all subjects should have
been frequently treated, intentionally or unintentionally, in a
style so ludicrous that a collection of epitaphs is generally one
of the most amusing books that can be picked up. In this as
in other cases, too, it is to be observed that the unintended
humour is generally of a much more entertaining kind than that
which has been deliberately perpetrated.
See Weever, Ancient Funerall Monuments (1631, 1661, Tooke's
edit., 1767); Philippe Labbc, Thesaurus epittiphiorum (Paris, 1666);
Tktiitrttm funebre extructum a Dodone Richea seu Oltone Aicher
(1675); ftaclcett. Select and Remarkable Epitaphs (1757); de
Laplace, Epitaphes serieuses, badinei, satiriques et burlesques (3 vols.,
Paris, 1782); Pulleyn, Churckvard Gleanings (c. 1830); L. Lewy-
ohn, Sechsig Epilaphien von Crabsteinen d. israelit. Friedhofes zu
Worms (1855); Pettigrew, Chronicles of the Tombs (1857); S.
Tueington, Epitaphs (1857); Robinson, Epitaphs from Cemeteries
in London, Edinburgh, (ft. (1850); le Blant, Inscriptions chretiennes
de la Gaule anterieures an VI It" siecle (1856, 1865); Blommaert,
( .alliard, &c.. Inscriptions funeraires et monumentales de la prm.
de Flandrt Orient (Ghent, 1857, 1860); Inscriptions fun. et man. de
la prat. d'Amers (Antwerp, 1857-1860); Chwolson, Achtzehn
hebraische Crabschriften aus der Krim (1859); ]. Brown, Epitaphs,
6fc., in Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh (1867); H. I. Loanng,
Quaint, Curious, and Elegant Epitaphs (1872); J. R. Kippax,
Churchyard Literature, a Choice Collection of American Epitaphs
(Chicago, 1876); also the poet William Wordsworth's Essay on
Epttaphs.
EPITHALAMIUM (Gr. tiri, at or upon, and ddXajuoj, a nuptial
chamber), originally among the Greeks a song in praise of bride
and bridegroom, which was sung by a number of boys and girls
at the door of the nuptial chamber. According to the scholiast
on Theocritus, one form, the KaraH/arruc6i', was employed at
night, and another, the bieytprui&v, to arouse the bride and
bridegroom on the following morning. In either case, as was
natural, the main burden of the song consisted of invocations
of blessing and predictions of happiness, interrupted from time
to time by the ancient chorus of Hymen hymenaee. Among the
Romans a similar custom was in vogue, but the song was sung
by girls only, after the marriage guests had gone, and it contained
much more of what modern morality would condemn as obscene.
In the hands of the poets the epithalamium was developed into
a special literary form, and received considerable cultivation.
Sappho, Anacreon, Stesichonis and Pindar are all regarded as
masters of the species, but the finest example preserved in Greek
literature is the i8th Idyll of Theocritus, which celebrates the
marriage of Menelaus and Helen. In Latin, the epithalamium,
imitated from Fescennine Greek models, was a base form of
literature, when Catullus redeemed it and gave it dignity by
modelling his Marriage of Thetis and Peleus on a lost ode of
Sappho. In later times Statius, Ausonius, Sidonius Apollinaris
and Claudian are the authors of the best-known epithalamia in
classical Latin; and they have been imitated by Buchanan,
Scaliger, Sannazaro, and a whole host of modern Latin poets,
with whom, indeed, the form was at one time in great favour.
The names of Ronsard, Malherbe and Scarron are especially
associated with the species in French literature, and Marini and
Metastasio in Italian. Perhaps no poem of this class has been
more universally admired than the Epithalamium of Spenser
(i595). though he has found no unworthy rivals in Ben Jonson,
Donne and Quarles. At the close of In Memoriam Tennyson
has appended a poem, on the nuptials of his sister, which is
strictly an epithalamium.
EPITHELIAL, ENDOTHELIAL and GLANDULAR TISSUES,
in anatomy. Every surface of the body which may come into
^^^ contact with foreign substances is covered with a
ium'. ' protecting layer of cells closely bound to one another
to form continuous sheets. These are epithelial cells
(from fhj\fi, a nipple). By the formation of outgrowths or in-
growths from these surfaces further structures, consisting largely
DC. 23
or entirely of cells directly derived from the surface epithelium,
may be formed. In this way originate the central nervous
system, the sensitive surfaces of the special sense organs, the
glands, and the hairs, nails, &c. The epithelial cells possess
typical microscopical characters which enable them to be readily
distinguished from all others. Thus the cell outline is clearly
marked, the nucleus large and spherical or ellipsoidal. The
protoplasm of the cell is usually large in amount and often
contains large numbers of granules.
The individual cells forming an epithelial membrane are
classified according to their shape. Thus we find flattened, or
squamous, cubical, columnar, irregular, ciliated or
flagellated cells. Many of the membranes formed by
these cells are only one cell thick, as for instance is the case for
the major part of the alimentary canal. In other instances the
epithelial membrane may consist of a number of layers of cells,
as in the case of the epidermis of the skin. Considering in the
first place those membranes of which the cells are in a single
layer we may distinguish the following:
i. Columnar Epithelium (figs, i and 2). This variety covers
the main part of the intestinal tract, i.e. from the end of the
oesophagus to the commencement of the rectum. It is also found
lining the ducts of many glands. In a highly typical form it is
found covering the villi of the small in-
testine (fig. i). The external layer of the
cell is commonly modified to form a thin
membrane showing a number of very fine
FIG. i. Isolated
Epithelial Cellsfrom
the Small Intestine
of the Frog.
FIG. 2. Columnar
Epithelial Cells rest-
ing upon a Basement
Membrane.
FIG. 3. Mosaic
appearance of a
Columnar Epi-
thelial Surface as
seen from above.
radially arranged lines, which are probably the expression of
very minute tubular perforations through the membrane.
The close apposition of these cells to form a closed membrane
is well seen when a surface covered by them is examined from
above (fig. 3). The surfaces of the cells are then seen to form a
mosaic, each cell area having a polyhedral shape.
2. Cubical Epithelium. This differs from the former in that
the cells are less in height. It is found in many glands and ducts
(e.g. the kidney), in the middle ear, choroid plexuses of the
brain, &c.
3. Squamous or Flattened Epithelium (fig. 4). In this variety
the cell is flattened, very thin and irregular in outline. It occurs
as the covering epithelium of the
alveoli of the lung, of the kidney
glomerules and capsule, &c. The sur-
face epithelial cells of a stratified epi-
thelium are also of this type (fig. 4).
Closely resembling these cells are those
known as endothelial (see later).
4. Ciliated Epithelium (fig. 5).
The surface cells
of many epithelial
membranes are
often provided
with a number of
very fine proto-
Fio. 4. Squamous plasmic processes
Epithelial Cells from the _-;;.. Mrt mm ciliated Epithelial
Mucous Membrane of the or "'.' a - J 7 ostC01 ^' Cells from the
Mouth. nly the cells Trachea.
are columnar, but
other shapes are also found. During life the cilia are always
in movement, and set up a current tending to drive fluid
or other material on the surface in one direction along the
membrane or tube lined by such epithelium. It is found
lining the trachea, bronchi, parts of the nasal cavities and the
FIG. 5. Isolated
706
EPITHELIAL TISSUES
FIG. 6. A Stratified Epi-
thelium from a Mucous
Membrane.
uterus, oviduct, vas deferens, epididymis, a portion of the renal
tubule, &c.
In the instance of some cells there may be but a single process
from the exposed surface of the cell, and then the process is
usually of large size and length. It is then known as aflagellum.
Such cells are common among the surface cells of many of the
simple animal organisms.
When the cells of an epithelial surface are arranged several
layers deep, we can again distinguish various types:
i. Stratified Epithelium (figs. 6 and 7). This is found in the
epithelium of the skin and of many mucous membranes (mouth,
oesophagus, rectum, conjunctiva,
vagina, Sic.). Here the surface cells
are very much flattened (squamous
epithelium), those of the middle
layer are polyhedral and those of the
lowest layer are cubical or columnar.
This type of epithelium is found
covering surfaces commonly exposed
to friction. The surface may be dry
as in the skin, or moist, e.g. the
mouth. The surface cells are con-
stantly being rubbed off, and are
then replaced by new cells growing
up from below. Hence the deepest
layer, that nearest the blood supply,
is a formative layer, and in succes-
sive stages from this we can trace
the gradual transformation of these
protoplasmic cells into scaly cells,
which no longer show any sign of
being alive. In the moist mucous
surfaces the number of cells form-
ing the epithelial layer is usually
much smaller than in a dry stratified
epithelium.
2. Stratified Ciliated Epithelium.
FIG. 7. Stratified Epithel- In this variety the superficial cells
are ciliated and columnar, between
the bases of these are found fusi-
g, Stratum granulosum.
h, Horny cells.
s, Squamous horny cells.
ium from the Skin.
c, Columnar cells resting on
the fibrous true skin.
p, The so-called prickle cells. form cells and the lowest cells are
cubical or pyramidal. This epi-
thelium is found lining parts of
the respiratory passages, the vas
deferens and the epididymis.
3. Transitional Epithelium (fig. 8). This variety of epithelium
is found lining the bladder, and the appearance observed depends
upon the contracted or distended state of the bladder from
which the preparation was
made. If the bladder was con-
tracted the form seen in fig. 8 is
obtained. The epithelium is in
three or more layers, the super-
ficial one being very character-
istic. The cells are cubical and
FIG. 8. Transitional Epithel- fit over the rounded ends of the
ium from the Urinary Bladder, cells of the next layer. These
showing the outlines of the cells are pear-shaped, the points of
the pear resting on the base-
ment membrane. Between the bases of these cells lie those
of the lowermost layer. These are irregularly columnar. If
the bladder is distended before the preparation is made, the
cells are then found stretched out transversely. This is especially
the case with the surface cells, which may then become very
flattened.
Considering epithelium from the point of view of function,
it may be classified as protective, absorptive or secretory. It
may produce special outgrowths for protective or ornamental
purposes, such are hairs, nails, horns, &c., and for such purposes
it may manufacture within itself chemical material best suited
for that purpose, e.g. keratin; here the whole cell becomes
modified. In other instances may be seen in the interior of the
Glands.
cells many chemical substances which indicate the nature of their
work, e.g. fat droplets, granules of various kinds, protein, mucin,
watery granules, glycogen, &c. In a typical absorbing cell
granules of material being absorbed may be seen. A secreting
cell of normal type forming specific substances stores these in its
interior until wanted, e.g. fat as in sebaceous and mammary
glands, ferment precursors (salivary, gastric glands, &c.), and
various excretory substances, as in the renal epithelium.
Initially the epithelium cell might have all these functions, but
later came specialization and therefore to most cells a specific
work. Some of that work does not require the cell to be at the
surface, while for other work this is indispensable, and hence
when the surface becomes limited those of the former category
are removed from the surface to the deeper parts. This is seen
typically in secretory and excretory cells, which usually lie
below the surface on to which they pour their secretions. If the
secretion required at any one point is considerable, then the
secreting cells are numerous in proportion and a typical gland is
formed. The secretion is then conducted to the surface by a duct ,
and this duct is also lined with epithelium.
Glandular Tissues. Every gland is formed by an ingrowth
from an epithelial surface. This ingrowth may from the begin-
ning possess a tubular structure, but in other instances
may start as a solid column of cells which subsequently
becomes tubulated. As growth proceeds, the column of cells may
divide or give off offshoots, in which case a compound gland is
formed. In many glands the number of
branches is limited, in others (salivary,
pancreas) a very large structure is finally
formed by repeated growth and sub-
division. As a rule the branches do
not unite with one another, but in one
instance, the liver, this does occur when
a reticulated compound gland is pro-
duced. In compound glands the more
typical or secretory epithelium is found
forming the terminal portion of each
branch, and the uniting portions form
ducts and are lined with a less modified
type of epithelial cell.
Glands are classified according to their
shape. If the gland retains its shape as
a tube throughout it is termed a tubular Q ne
gland, simple tubular if there is no division glands of the stomach
(large intestine), compound tubular (fig. 9) of the dog.
if branching occurs (pyloric glands of
stomach). In the simple tubular glands the gland may be coiled
without losing its tubular form, e.g. in sweat glands. In the
second main variety of gland the secretory portion is enlarged
and the lumen variously increased in size.
These are termed alveolar or saccular glands.
They are again subdivided into simple or
compound alveolar glands, as in the case
of the tubular glands (fig. 10). A further
FIG. 9. A Com-
FIG. 10. A Tubulo-alveolar Gland. FIG. n. A Corn-
One of the mucous salivary glandsof the pound Alveolar Gland,
dog. On the left the alveoli are un- One of the terminal
folded to show their general arrange- lobules of the pancreas,
ment. d, Small duct of gland sub- showing the spherical
dividing into branches; e, f and g, form ofthe alveoli,
terminal tubular alveoli of gland.
complication in the case of the alveolar glands may occur in
the form of still smaller saccular diverticuli growing out from
the main sacculi (fig. n). These are termed alveoli.
The typical secretory cells of the glands are found lining the
EPITOME EPODE
707
terminal portions of the ramifications and extend upwards to
varying degrees. Thus in a typical acinous gland the cells are
restricted to the final alveoli. The remaining tubes arc to be
considered mainly as ducts. In tubulo-alveolar glands the
secreting epithelium lines the alveus as well as the terminal
tubule.
The gland cells are all placed upon a basement membrane. In
many instances this membrane is formed of very thin flattened
cells, in other instances it is apparently a homogeneous mem-
brane, and according to some observers is simply a modified part
of the basal surface of the cell, while according to others it is a
definite structure distinct from the epithelium.
In the secretory portion of the gland and in the smaller ducts
the epithelial layer is one cell thick only. In the larger ducts
there are two layers of cells, but even here the surface cell usually
extends by a thinned-out stalk down to the basement membrane.
The detailed characters of the epithelium of the different
glands of the body are given in separate articles (see ALIMENTARY
(CANAL, &c.). It will be sufficent here to give the more general
characters possessed by these cells. They are cubical or conical
cells with distinct oval nuclei and granular protoplasm. Within
the protoplasm is accumulated a large number of spherical
granules arranged in diverse manners in different cells. The
granules vary much in size in different glands, and in chemical
composition, but in all cases represent a store of material ready
to be discharged from the cell as its secretion. Hence the general
appearance of the cell is found to vary according to the previous
degree of activity of the cell. If it has been at rest for some time
the cell contains very many granules which swell it out and
increase its size. The nucleus is then largely hidden by the
granules. In the opposite condition, i.e. when the cell has been
actively secreting, the protoplasm is much clearer, the nucleus
obvious and the cell shrunken in size, all these changes being
due to the extrusion of the granules.
Endothtlium and Maothelium. Lining the blood vessels,
lymph vessels and lymph spaces are found flattened cells apposed
Emiuaml to one another by their edges to form an extremely
*"* thin membrane. These cells are developed from the
"***'*'" middle embryonic layer and are termed endothelium.
A very similar type of cells is also found, formed into
a very thin continuous sheet, lining the body-cavity, i.e. pleural
pericardia! and peritoneal cavities. These cells develop from
that portion of the mesoderm known as the mesothelium, and
are therefore frequently termed mesothelial, though by many
they are also included as endothelial cells.
A mesothelial cell is very flattened, thus resembling a squamous
epithelial cell. It possesses a protoplasm with faint granules
and an oval or round nucleus (fig. 12).
I The outline of the cell is irregularly
[polyhedral, and the borders may be
(finely serrated. The cells are united
to one another by an intercellular
cement substance which, however, is
very scanty in amount, but can be
made apparent by staining with silver
nitrate when the appearance repro-
duced in the figure is seen. By being
thus united together, the cells form
a continuous layer. This layer is
pierced by a number of small open-
ings, known as stomata, which bring
the cavity into direct communication
with lymph spaces or vessels lying
beneath the membrane. The stomata
are surrounded by a special layer of cubical and granular cells.
Through these stomata fluids and other materials present in the
body-cavity can be removed into the lymph spaces.
Endothelial membranes (fig. 13) are quite similar in structure
to mesothelial. They are usually elongated cells of irregular
outline and serrated borders.
By means of endothelial or mesothelial membranes the
surfaces of the parts covered by them are rendered very smooth,
FlC. 12. Mesothelial
Cells forming the Peri-
toneal SerousMembrane.
Three stomata are seen
surrounded by cubical
celt*. One of these n
closed. The light band
marks the position of a
lymphatic. (After Klein.)
FIG. 13. Endothelial
thc Interior of
so that movement over the surface is greatly facilitated. Thus
the abdominal organs can glide easily over one another within
the peritoneal cavity; the blood or lymph experiences the least
amount of friction ; or again the friction is reduced to a minimum
between a tendon and its sheath or
in the joint cavities. The cells form-
ing these membranes also possess
further physiological properties.
Thus it is most probable that they
play an active part in the blood
capillaries in transmitting substances
from thc blood into the tissue spaces,
or conversely in preventing the passage of materials from blood
to tissue space or from tissue space to blood. Hence the fluid
of the blood and that of the tissue space need not be of the same
chemical composition. (T. G. BR.)
EPITOME (Gr. IVITOHII, from brtrtnvtiv, to cut short), an
abridgment, abstract or summary giving the salient points of a
book, law case, &c., a short and concise account of any particular
subject or event. By transference epitome is also used to express
the representation of a larger thing, concrete or abstract, repro-
duced in miniature. Thus St Mark's was called by Ruskin the
" epitome of Venice," as it embraces examples of all the periods
of architecture from the loth to the igth centuries.
EPOCH (Gr. tirox^, holding in suspense, a pause, from
lirixtw, to hold up, to stop), a term for a stated period of time,
and so used of a date accepted as the starting-point of an era
or of a new period in chronology, such as the birth of Christ.
It is hence transferred to a period which marks a great change,
whether in the history of a country or a science, such as a great
discovery or invention. Thus an event may be spoken of as
" epoch-making." The word is also used, synonymously with
" period," for any space of time marked by a distinctive con-
dition or by a particular series of events.
In astronomy the word is used for a moment from which time
is measured, or at which a definite position of a body or a definite
relation of two bodies occurs. For example, the position of a
body moving in an orbit cannot be determined unless its position
at some given time is known. The given time is then the epoch;
but the term is often applied to the mean longitude of the body
at the given time.
EPODE, in verse, the third part in an ode, which followed the
strophe and the antistrophe, and completed the movement;
it was called iwt?56s irtplodos by the Greeks. At a certain
moment the choirs, which had chanted to right of the altar or
stage and then to left of it, combined and sang in unison, or
permitted the coryphaeus to sing for them all, standing in the
centre. When, with the appearance of Stcsichorus and the
evolution of choral lyric, a learned and artificial kind of poetry
began to be cultivated in Greece, a new form, the tl&os firtf&iKbv,
or epode-song, came into existence. It consisted of a verse of
trimeter iambic, followed by a dimeter iambic, and it is reported
that, although the epode was carried to its highest perfection by
Stesichorus, an earlier poet, Archilochus, was really the inventor
of this form. The epode soon took a firm place in choral poetry,
which it lost when that branch of literature declined. But it
extended beyond the ode, and in the early dramatists we find
numerous examples of monologues and dialogues framed on the
epodical system. In Latin poetry the epode was cultivated, in
conscious archaism, both as a part of the ode and as an inde-
pendent branch of poetry. Of the former class, the epithalamia
of Catullus, founded on an imitation of Pindar, present us with
examples of strophe, antistrophe and epode; and it has been
observed that the celebrated ode of Horace, beginning Quern
virum aut heroa lyra vel acri, possesses this triple character.
But the word is now mainly familiar from an experiment of
Horace in thc second class, for he entitled his fifth book
of odes Epodon liber or the Book of Epodes. He says in
thc course of these poems, that in composing them he was
introducing a new form, at least in Latin literature, and that
he was imitating the effect of thc iambic distichs invented by
Archilochus. Accordingly we find thc first ten of these epodes
EPONA EPSOM
composed in alternate verses of iambic trimeter and iambic
dimeter, thus:
" At o Deorum quicquid in coelo regit
Terras et humanum genus."
In the seven remaining epodes Horace has diversified the
measures, while retaining the general character of the distich.
This group of poems belongs in the main to the early youth of the
poet, and displays a truculence and a controversial heat which
are absent from his more mature writings. As he was imitating
Archilochus in form, he believed himself justified, no doubt, in
repeating the sarcastic violence of his fierce model. The curious
thing is that these particular poems of Horace, which are really
short lyrical satires, have appropriated almost exclusively the
name of epodes, although they bear little enough resemblance
to the genuine epode of early Greek literature.
EPONA, a goddess of horses, asses and mules, worshipped
by the Romans, though of foreign, probably Gallic, origin. The
majority of inscriptions and images bearing her name have been
found in Gaul, Germany and the Danube countries; of the
few that occur in Rome itself most were exhumed on the site of
the barracks of the equites singulares, a foreign imperial body-
guard mainly recruited from the Batavians. Her name does not
appear in Tertullian's list of the indigetes di, and Juvenal con-
trasts her worship unfavourably with the old Roman Numa
ritual. Her cult does not appear to have been introduced before
imperial times, when she is often called Augusta and invoked
on behalf of the emperor and the imperial house. Her chief
function, however, was to see that the beasts of burden were
duly fed, and to protect them against accidents and malicious
influence. In the countries in which the worship of Epona was
said to have had its origin it was a common belief that certain
beings were in the habit of casting a spell over stables during
the night. The Romans used to place the image of the goddess,
crowned with flowers on festive occasions, in a sort of shrine in
the centre of the architrave of the stable. In art she is generally
represented seated, with her hand on the head of the accompany-
ing horse or animal.
See Tertullian, Apol. 16; Juvenal viii. 157; Prudentius, Apoth.
197; Apuleius, Metam. iii. 27; articles in Daremberg a.nd Saglio's
Diet, des antiquites and Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopddie.
EPONYMOUS, that which gives a name to anything (Gr.
eiruvvnos, from 6vofia, a name) , a term especially applied to the
mythical or semi-mythical personages, heroes, deities, &c. from
whom a country or city took its name. Thus Pelops is the giver
of the name to the Peloponnese. At Athens the chief archon
of the year was known as the apx&v ejrajcujttos, as the year was
known by his name. There was a similar official in ancient
Assyria. In ancient times, as in historical and modern cases,
a country or a city has been named after a real personage, but
in many cases the person has been invented to account for the
name.
EPPING, a market town in the Epping parliamentary division
of Essex, England, 17 m. N.N.E. from London by a branch
of the Great Eastern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901),
3789. The town lies high and picturesquely, at the northern
outskirts of Epping Forest. The modern church of St John
the Baptist replaces the old parish church of All Saints in the
village of Epping Upland 2 m. N.W. This is in part Norman.
There is considerable trade in butter, cheese and sausages.
Epping Forest forms part of the ancient Waltham Forest,
which covered the greater part of the county. All the " London
Basin," within which the Forest lies, was densely wooded.
The Forest became one of the commonable lands of Royal
Chases or hunting-grounds. It was threatened with total
disafforestation, when under the Epping Forest Act of 1871 a
board of commissioners was appointed for the better manage-
ment of the lands. The corporation of the city of London then
acquired the freehold interest of waste land belonging to the lords
of the manor, and finally secured 5559$ acres, magnificently
timbered, to the use of the public for ever, the tract being
declared open by Queen Victoria in 1882. The Ancient Court
of Verderers was also revived, consisting of an hereditary lord
warden together with four verderers elected by freeholders of the
county. The present forest lies between the valleys of the Roding
and the Lea, and extends southward from Epping to the vicinity
of Woodford and Walthamstow, a distance of about 7 m. It is
readily accessible from the villages on its outskirts, such as
Woodford, Chingf ord and Lough ton, which are served by branches
of the Great Eastern railway. These are centres of residential
districts, and, especially on public holidays in the summer,
receive large numbers of visitors.
EPPS, the name of an English family, well known in commerce
and medicine. In the second half of the i8th century they had
been settled near Ashford, Kent, for some generations, claiming
descent from an equerry of Charles II., but were reduced in
circumstances, when JOHN EPPS rose to prosperity as a provision
merchant in London, and restored the family fortunes. He
had four sons, of whom JOHN EPPS (1805-1869), GEORGE
NAPOLEON EPPS (1815-1874), and JAMES EPPS (1821-1907)
were notable men of their day, the two former as prominent
doctors who were ardent converts to homoeopathy, and James
as a homoeopathic chemist and the founder of the great cocoa
business associated with his name. Among Dr G. N. Epps's
children were Dr Washington Epps, a well-known homoeopathist,
Lady Alma-Tadema, and Mrs Edmund Gosse.
E>R6MESNIL (ESPREMESNIL or EPREMENIL), JEAN JACQUES
DUVAL D' (1745-1794), French magistrate and politician, was
born in India on the 5th of December 1745 at Pondicherry, his
father being a colleague of Dupleix. Returning to France in
1750 he was educated in Paris for the law, and became in 1775
conseiller in the parlement of Paris, where he soon distinguished
himself by his zealous defence of its rights against the royal
prerogative. He showed bitter enmity to Marie Antoinette in
the matter of the diamond necklace, and on the igth of November
1787 he was the spokesman of the parlement in demanding the
convocation of the states-general. When the court retaliated
by an edict depriving the parlement of its functions, Epremesnil
bribed the printers to supply him with a copy before its pro-
mulgation, and this he read to the assembled parlement. A
royal officer was sent to the palais de justice to arrest Epremesnil
and his chief supporter Goislard de Montsabert, but the parlement
(5th of May 1788) declared that they were all Epremesnils, and
the arrest was only effected on the next day on the voluntary
surrender of the two members. After four months' imprisonment
on the island of Ste Marguerite, Epremesnil found himself a
popular hero, and was returned to the states-general as deputy
of the nobility of the outlying districts of Paris. But with the
rapid advance towards revolution his views changed; in his
Reflexions impartiales . . . (January 1789) he defended the
monarchy, and he led the party among the nobility that refused
to meet with the third estate until summoned to do so by royal
command. In the Co/istituent Assembly he opposed every
step towards the destruction of the monarchy. After a narrow
escape from the fury of the Parisian populace in July 1792 he
was imprisoned in the Abbaye, but was set at liberty before the
September massacres. In September 1793, however, he was
arrested at Le Havre, taken to Paris, and denounced to the
Convention as an agent of Pitt. He was brought to trial before
the revolutionary tribunal on the 2ist of April 1794, and was
guillotined the next day.
D'Epremesnil's speeches were collected in a small volume in 1823.
See also H. Carre, Un Precurseur inconscient de la Revolution (Paris,
1897).
EPSOM, a market town in the Epsom parliamentary division
of Surrey, England, 14 m. S.W. by S. of London Bridge. Pop.
of urban district (1901), 10,915. It is served by the London &
South- Western a.nd the London, Brighton & South Coast railways,
and on the racecourse on the neighbouring Downs there is a
station (Tattenham Corner) of the South-Eastern & Chatham
railway. The principal building is the parish church of St
Martin, a good example of modern Gothic, the interior of which
contains some fine sculptures by Flaxman and Chantrey. Epsom
(a contraction of Ebbisham, still the name of the manor) first
came into notice when mineral springs were discovered there
EPSOM SALTS EQUATION
709
bout 1618. For some time after their discovery the town
enjoyed a wonderful degree of prosperity. After the Restoration
it was often visited by Charles II., and when Queen Anne came
to the throne, her husband. Prince George of Denmark, made
it his frequent resort. Epsom gradually lost its celebrity as a
spa, but the annual races held on its downs arrested the decay
of the town. Races appear to have been established here as
early as James I's residence at Nonsuch, but they did not assume
a permanent character until 1730. The principal races the
Derby and Oaks are named after one of the earls of Derby
and his seat, the Oaks, which is in the neighbourhood. The
lat terrace was established in 17 70, and the former in the following
year. The spring races are held on a Thursday and Friday
towards the close of April; and the great Epsom meeting takes
place on the Tuesday and three following days immediately
before Whitsuntide, the Derby on the Wednesday, and the
Oaks on the Friday (see HORSE-RACING). The grand stand
was erected in 1829, and subsequently enlarged; and there
are numerous training stables in the vicinity. Close to the town
are the extensive buildings of the Royal Medical Benevolent
College, commonly called Epsom College, founded in 1855.
Scholars on the foundation must be the sons of medical men,
but in other respects the school is open. In the neighbourhood
is the Durdans, a seat of the earl of Rosebery.
EPSOM SALTS, heptohydrated magnesium sulphate,
MgSO 4 -7HjO, the magnesii sulphas of pharmacy (Ger. Bitter -
sols). It occurs dissolved in sea water and in most mineral
waters, especially in those at Epsom (from which place it takes its
name), Seidlitz, Saidschutz and Pullna. It also occurs in nature
in fibrous excrescences, constituting the mineral epsomite or
hair-salt; and as compact masses (reichardite), as in the Stassfurt
mines. It is also found associated with limestone, as in the
Mammoth Caves, Kentucky, and with gypsum, as at Mont mart re.
Epsom salts crystallizes in the orthorhombic system, being
isomorphous with the corresponding zinc and nickel sulphates,
and also with magnesium chromate. Occasionally monoclinic
crystals are obtained by crystallizing from a strong solution.
It is used in the arts for weighting cotton fabrics, as a top-
dressing for clover hay in agriculture, and in dyeing. In medicine
it is frequently employed as a hydragogue purgative, specially
valuable in febrile diseases, in congestion of the portal system,
and in the obstinate constipation of painters' colic. In the last
case it is combined with potassium iodide, the two salts being
exceedingly effective in causing the elimination of lead from the
system. It is also very useful as a supplement to mercury,
which needs a saline aperient to complete its action. The salt
should be given a few hours after the mercury, e.g. in the early
morning, the mercury having been given at night. It possesses
the advantage of exercising but little irritant effect upon the
bowels. Its nauseous bitter taste may to some extent be con-
cealed by acidifying the solution with dilute sulphuric acid,
and in some cases where full doses have failed the repeated
administration of small ones has proved effectual.
For the manufacture of Epsom gaits and for other hydrated
magnesium sulphates see MAGNESIUM.
EQUATION (from Lat. aequatio, aequare, to equalize), an
expression or statement of the equality of two quantities.
Mathematical equivalence is denoted by the sign , a symbol
invented by Robert Rccorde (1510-1538), who considered that
nothing could be more equal than two equal and parallel straight
lines. An equation states an equality existing between two
classes of quantities, distinguished as known and unknown;
these correspond to the data of a problem and the thing sought.
It is the purpose of the mathematician to state the unknowns
separately in terms of the knowns; this is called solving the
equation, and the values of the unknowns so obtained are called
the roots or solutions. The unknowns are usually denoted by
the terminal letters, . . . x, y, t, of the alphabet, and the knowns
are either actual numbers or are represented by the literals
. *, c , &c i.e. the introductory letters of the alphabet.
Any number or literal which expresses what multiple of term
occurs in an equation is called the coefficient of that term;
and the term which does not contain an unknown is called the
absolute term. The degree of an equation is equal to the greatest
indexof an unknown in the equation, or to the greatest sum of the
indices of products of unknowns. If each term has the sum of its
indices the same, the equation is said to be homogeneous. These
definitions are exemplified in the equations:
i) ox'+afrx+c-o,
(i)
M
(3)
ox*+2hxy+by>-o.
In (i) the unknown is x, and the knowns a, b, c; the coefficients
of x 1 and x are a and 26; the absolute term is c, and the degree is
a. In (2) the unknowns are x and y, and the known a; the degree
is 3, i.e. the sum of the indices in the term xy 1 . (3) is a homo-
geneous equation of the second degree in x and y. Equations of
the first degree are called simple or linear; of the second,
quadratic; of the third, cubic; of the fourth, biquadratic; of the
fifth, quintic, and so on. Of equations containing only one
unknown the number of roots equals the degree of the equation;
thus a simple equation has one root, a quadratic two, a cubic
three, and so on. If one equation be given containing two un-
knowns, as for example ax+by = c or ax 2 +by*-c, it is seen that
there are an infinite number of roots, for we can give x, say, any
value and then determine the corresponding value of y; such an
equation is called indeterminate; of the examples chosen the
first is a linear and the second a quadratic indeterminate equation.
In general, an indeterminate equation results when the number
of unknowns exceeds by unity the number of equations. If, on
the other hand, we have two equations connecting two unknowns,
it is possible to solve the equations separately for one unknown,
and then if we equate these values we obtain an equation in one
unknown, which is soluble if its degree does not exceed the fourth.
By substituting these values the corresponding values of the
other unknown are determined. Such equations are called
simultaneous; and a simultaneous system is a series of equations
equal in number to the number of unknowns. Such a system is
not always soluble, for it may happen that one equation is
implied by the others; when this occurs the system is called
porismatic or poristic. An identity differs from an equation inas-
much as it cannot be solved, the terms mutually cancelling;
for example, the expression x 2 a l =(x a)(x+a) is an identity,
for on reduction it gives 0=0. It is usual to employ the sign
to express this relation.
An equation admits of description in two ways: (i) It may be
regarded purely as an algebraic expression, or (2) as a geometrical
locus. In the first case there is obviously no limit to the number of
unknowns and to the degree of the equation; and, consequently,
this aspect is the most general. In the second case the number of
unknowns is limited to three, corresponding to the three dimensions
of space; the degree is unlimited as before. It must be noticed,
however, that by the introduction of appropriate hyperspaces, i.e.
of degree equal to the number of unknowns, any equation theoretically
admits of geometrical visualization, in other words, every equation
may be represented by a geometrical figure and every geometrical
figure by an equation. Corresponding to these two aspects, there
are two typical methods by which equations can be solved, viz.
the algebraic and geometric. The former leads to exact results, or,
by methods of approximation, to results correct to any required
degree of accuracy. The latter can only yield approximate values:
when theoretically exact constructions are available there is a source
of error in the draughtsmanship, and when the constructions are
only approximate, the accuracy of the results is more problematical.
The geometric aspect, however, is of considerable value in discussing
the theory of equations.
History. There is little doubt that the earliest solutions of
equations are given in the Rhind papyrus, a hieratic document
written some 2000 years before our era. The problems solved
were of an arithmetical nature, assuming such forms as " a
moss and its |th makes 19." Calling the unknown mass x,
we have given x+|x= 19, which is a simple equation. Arith-
metical problems also gave origin to equations involving two
unknowns; the early Greeks were familiar with and solved
simultaneous linear equations, but indeterminate equations,
such, for instance, as the system given in the "cattle problem "
of Archimedes, were not seriously studied until Diophantus
solved many particular problems. Quadratic equations arose
in the Greek investigations in the doctrine of proportion, and
yio
EQUATION
although they were presented and solved in a geometrical form,
the methods employed have no relation to the generalized
conception of algebraic geometry which represents a curve by an
equation and vice versa. The simplest quadratic arose in the
construction of a mean proportional (x) between two lines (a, b),
or in the construction of a square equal to a given rectangle ; for
we have the proportion a:x=x:b; i.e. y? = ab. A more general
equation, viz. if ax-\-d* = o, is the algebraic equivalent of
the problem to divide a line in medial section; this is solved in
Euclid, ii. ii. It is possible that Diophantus was in possession
of an algebraic solution of quadratics; he recognized, however,
only one root, the interpretation of both being first effected by
the Hindu Bhaskara. A simple cubic equation was presented
in the problem of finding two mean proportionals, x, y, between
two lines, one double the other. We have a:x=x:y=y:2a,
which gives y? = ay and xy=2a i ; eliminating y we obtain
x 3 = 20?, a simple cubic. The Greeks could not solve this equation,
which also arose in the problems of duplicating a cube and
trisecting an angle, by the ruler and compasses, but only by
mechanical curves such as the cissoid, conchoid and quadratrix.
Such solutions were much improved by the Arabs, who also solved
both cubics and biquadratics by means of intersecting conies;
at the same time, they developed methods, originated by Dio-
phantus and improved by the Hindus, for finding approximate
roots of numerical equations by algebraic processes. The
algebraic solution of the general cubic and biquadratic was
effected in the i6th century by S. Ferro, N. Tartaglia, H. Cardan
and L. Ferrari (see ALGEBRA: History). Many fruitless attempts
were made to solve algebraically the quintic equation until
P. Ruffini and N. H. Abel proved the problem to be impossible;
a solution involving elliptic functions has been given by C.
Hermite and L. Kronecker, while F. Klein has given another
solution.
In the geometric treatment of equations the Greeks and Arabs
based their constructions upon certain empirically deduced
properties of the curves and figures employed. Knowing various
metrical relations, generally expressed as proportions, it was
found possible to solve particular equations, but a general method
was wanting. This lacuna was not filled until the i7th century,
when Descartes discovered the general theory which explained
the nature of such solutions, in particular those wherein conies
were employed, and, in addition, established the most important
facts that every equation represents a geometrical locus, and
conversely. To represent equations containing two unknowns,
x, y, ne chose two axes of reference mutually perpendicular,
and measured x along the horizontal axis and y along the vertical.
Then by the methods described in the article GEOMETRY:
Analytical, he showed that (i) a linear equation represents a
straight line, and (2) a quadratic represents a conic. If the
equation be homogeneous or break up into factors, it represents
a number of straight lines in the first case, and the loci corre-
sponding to the factors in the second. The solution of simultaneous
equations is easily seen to be the values of x, y corresponding to
the intersections of the loci. It follows that there is only one
value of x, y which satisfies two linear equations, since two lines
intersect in one point only; two values which satisfy a linear
and quadratic, since a line intersects a conic in two points;
and four values which satisfy two quadratics, since two conies
intersect in four points. It may happen that the curves do not
actually intersect in the theoretical maximum number of points;
the principle of continuity (see GEOMETRICAL CONTINUITY) shows
us that in such cases some of the roots are imaginary. To repre-
sent equations involving three unknowns x, y, z, a third axis is
introduced, the z-axis, perpendicular to the plane xy and passing
through the intersection of the lines x, y. In this notation a linear
equation represents a plane, and two linear simultaneous equa-
tions represent a line, i.e. the intersection of two planes; a
quadratic equation represents a surface of the second degree.
In order to graphically consider equations containing only one
unknown, it is convenient to equate the terms to y; i.e. if the
equation be/(z) =o, we take y=f(x) and construct this curve on
rectangular Cartesian co-ordinates by determining the values of
y which correspond to chosen values of x, and describing a curve
through the points so obtained. The intersections of the curve
with the axis of x gives the real roots of the equation; imaginary
roots are obviously not represented.
In this article we shall treat of: (i) Simultaneous equations,
(2) indeterminate equations, (3) cubic equations, (4) biquadratic
equations, (5) theory of equations. Simple, linear simultaneous
and quadratic equations are treated in the article ALGEBRA;
for differential equations see DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS.
I. Simultaneous Equations.
Simultaneous equations which involve the second and higher
powers of the unknown may be impossible of solution. No general
rules can be given, and the solution of any particular problem will
largely depend upon the student's ingenuity. Here we shall only
give a few typical examples.
i. Equations which may be reduced to linear equations. Ex. To
solve *(* a) = yz, y(y b) =zx, z(z c) xy. Multiply the equations
by y, z and x respectively, and divide the sum by xyz; then
Multiply by z, x and y, and divide the sum by xyz; then
a . b . c
y+z+x=
(i).
(2).
From (i) and (2) by cross multiplication we obtain
Substituting for x, y and z in x(x a) =yz we obtain
__
\~(a*-bc)(V-ac) (c 2 - ab) '
and therefore x, y and z are known from (3). The same artifice
solves the equations x- yz = a, yxz = b, z* xy = c.
2. Equations which are homogeneous and of the same degree. These
equations can be solved by substituting y = mx. We proceed to
explain the method by an example.
Ex. Toso\ve3x 2 +xy+y' = i5,3ixy 3x^ 5^ = ^5. Substituting
y = mx in both these equations, and then dividing, we obtain
Sim 3 5m 2 = 3(3+n+n 2 )or8m 2 28m + 12=0. The roots of this
quadratic are m = j or 3, and therefore 2y=x, or y = $x.
Taking 2y = x and substituting in 3x 2 +xy+y* = o, we obtain
y(l2-|-2 + l) = l5; .'. y = l, which gives y===i, x= 2. Taking
the second value, y = 3X, and substituting for y, we obtain
* 2 (3+3+9) = l5; ' x? = i> which gives x= i, y= 3. Therefore
the solutions are x=*=2, y==I and #==*=!, y= 3. Other
artifices have to be adopted to solve other forms of simultaneous
equations, for which the reader is referred to J. J. Milne, Companion
to Weekly Problem Papers.
II. Indeterminate Equations.
1. When the number of unknown quantities exceeds the number
of equations, the equations will admit of innumerable solutions,
and are therefore said to be indeterminate. Thus if it be required
to find two numbers such that their sum be 10, we have two unknown
quantities x and y, and only one equation, viz. x+y = 10, which may
evidently be satisfied by innumerable different values of x and y, if
fractional solutions be admitted. It is, however, usual, in such
questions as this, to restrict values of the numbers sought to positive
integers, and therefore, in this case, we can have only these nine
solutions,
x = i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9;
y = 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, i;
which indeed may be reduced to five; for the first four become the
same as the last four, by simply changing x into y, and the contrary.
This branch of analysis was extensively studied by Diophantus,
and is sometimes termed the Diophantine Analysis.
2. Indeterminate problems are of different orders, according to
the dimensions of the equation which is obtained after all the unknown
quantities but two have been eliminated by means of the given
equations. Those of the first order lead always to equations of
the form
axby= =*=,
where a, 6, c denote given whole numbers, and x, y two numbers
to be found, so that both may be integers. That this condition may
be fulfilled, it is necessary that the coefficients a, b have no common
divisor which is not also a divisor of c; for if a = md and b = me,
then ax+by = mdx+mey = c, and dx +ey = c/m ; but d, e, x, y are
supposed to be whoje numbers, therefore c/m is a whole number;
hence m must be a divisor of c.
Of the four forms expressed by the equation ax*=by= ="=, it is
obvious that ax+by= c can have no positive integral solutions.
Also ax by= c is equivalent to by ax = c, and so we have only to
consider the forms ax*by = c. Before proceeding to the general
solution of these equations we will give a numerical example.
Tosolve2ac+3y = 25 in positive integers. From the given equation
EQUATION
711
e have x U5-3y)/J~ i2-y-(y~l)l3. Now, since x must be a
(y-l)/2 must be a whole number.
whole number, it follows that
where
i might be any whole number whatever, if there were no limitation
a* to the signs of x and y. But since these quantities are required
to be positive, it i- evident, from the value of y, that x must be
cither o or positive, and from the value of x, that it must be less than
4 ; hence x may have these four values, o, 1,2, 3.
If x- o, x-i, z-2, x-3;
Tk.., I*""". *-8, x-5, x-3,
Tbcn \y- . y-3. y-l y-7-
We shall now give the solution of the equation ox-iy-c in
|i-.ititf integers.
i . invert a/ft into a continued fraction, and let plq be the con-
vergent immediately preceding a/6, then aq - bp - * I (see CONTINUED
F ACTION).
(a) If aj bp- 1, the given equation may be written
ax by t(aq bp) ;
.'. o(x-j)-J(y-c/>).
Since a and ft are prime to one another, then x cq must be divisible
by 6 and y tp by a ; hence
(x-cq)!b-(y-cq)/a-t.
That is, x-bt+cq and yal+cp.
Positive integral solutions, unlimited in number, are obtained by
giving / any positive integral value, and any negative integral value,
so long as it is numerically less than the smaller of the quantities
cq b. cpa ; I may also be zero.
(j8) If oo ftp i, we obtain x ft/ cq, y atcp, from which
positive integral solutions, again unlimited in number, are obtained
by giving t any positive integral value which exceeds the greater of
the two Quantities cq b, cpfa.
If a or ft is unity, a/ft cannot be convened into a continued fraction
with unit numerators, and the above method fails. In this case the
solutions can be derived directly, for if 6 is unity, the equation may
be written y- ax- c, and solutions are obtained by giving x positive
integral values greater than c a.
4. To solve ax+byc in positive integers. Converting a/ft into a
continued fraction and proceeding as before, we obtain, in the case of
x = cq bt, y = alcp.
Positive integral solutions are obtained by giving t positive integral
values not less than cp a and not greater than cqib.
In this case the number of solutions is limited. If aq bp = l
we obtain the general solution x = ft< cq, y = cpat, which is of
the same form as in the preceding case. For the determination of
the number of solutions the reader is referred to H. S. Hall and
- R. Knight's Higher Algebra, G. Chrystal's Algebra, and other
text-books.
5. If an equation were proposed involving three unknown quan-
tities, as ox -(-fty-r-ex d, by transposition we haveax+fry =d cz.and,
putting da c', ax+byc'. From this last equation we may find
values of x and y of this form,
x-mr+nc', ymr+n'c',
or x-mr+n(d a), ym'r+n(dct);
where x and r may be taken at pleasure, except in so far as the values
of x, y, x may be required to be all positive; lor from such restriction
the values of x and r may be confined within certain limits to be
determined from the given equation. For more advanced treatment
of linear indeterminate equations see COMBINATORIAL ANALYSIS.
6! We proceed to indeterminate problems of the second degree:
limiting ourselves to the consideration of the formula y' a+bx+cx*,
where 'r is to be found, so that y may be a rational quantity. The
possibility of rendering the proposed formula a square depends
altogether upon the coefficients a, ft, c \ and there arc four cases of
the problem, the solution of each of which is connected with some
peculiarity in its nature.
fate I. Let a be a square number; then, putting g* for a, we have
y i -f+tx-fcx i . Suppose 1(f+bx+cx*)-g+mx; then g'+bx+cx 1
-g t +2gmx+m*x t , or bx+cx*-2gmx+m>x*. that is, '
*x: hence
Cau 3. Let c be a square number -g 1 ; then, putting -j (a + bx-{-
jVJ-m+fx. we find a+bx+g t x'-m*+2mgx+e*x l , or o+frx =
m'+2mgx; hence we find
C&u 3. When neither a nor c is a square number, yet if the ex-
a+frx+tx* can be resolved into two simple factors, as
+/x and k+kx, the irrationality may be taken away as follows:
Avtime V(a+ftx+ex)- V l(/+x) (*+tx)| ~m(J+gx), then
(/+*) (k+kx)-mt(J+txy, or k+kx-m*(j+gx); hence we find
and in all these formulae m may be taken at pleasure.
Case -4. The expression a+bx+cx* may be transformed into a
square as often as it can be resolved into two parts, one of which is
a complete square, and the other a product of two simple factors;
for then it has this form, p*+qr, where />, q and r are quantities
which contain no power of x higher than the first. Let us assume
V(P*+or)-p-|-mo; thus we have p*+or-p'+ 2m/>g + mV and
r aiwp+m'o, ami as this equation involves only the first power of
x, we may by proper reduction obtain from it rational values of
x and y, as in the three foregoing cases.
The application of the preceding general methods of resolution to
any particular case is very easy; we shall therefore conclude with
a single example.
_x. It is required to find two square numbers whose sum is a
given square number.
Let a 1 be the given square number, and x*, y* the numlwrs required ;
then, by the Question, x > +y*"a 1 , and y-V (a 1 -**). This equation
is evidently of such a form as to be resolvable by the method em-
ployed in case I. Accordingly, by comparing Vte'-x*) with the
general expression V (g'+bx+cx*), we have g = a, 6 = 0, c=-l, and
substituting these values in the formulae, and also -n lor +ro, we
find
If a *+i, there results x = 2n, y *-i, a = * + i. Hence if r
be an even number, the three sides of a rational right-angled triangle
are r, (Jr)'-l, (Jr)-|-l. If r be an odd number, they become
(dividing by 2) r, J(r-i), J(r+l).
For example, if r = ^, 4, 4-1, 4+1, or 4, 3, <;, are the sides of a
right-angled triangle; if r = 7, 7, 24, 25 are the sides of a right-angled
triangle.
III. Cubic Equations.
i. Cubic equations, like all equations above the first degree, are
divided into two classes : they arc said to be pure when they contain
only one power of the unknown quantity; and adfected when they
contain two or more powers of that quantity.
Pure cubic equations are therefore of the form x' = r; and hence
it appears that a value of the simple power of the unknown quantity
may always be found without difficulty, by extracting the cube root
of each side of the equation. Let us consider the equation x t -c'=o
more fully. This is decomposable into the factors x-c = o and
x*+cx+c*=o. Therootsof thisquadraticequationare J(- I V ~3)c,
and we sec that the equation x* = c* has three roots, namely, one real
root c, and two imaginary roots }( I * V 3)c. By making c equal
to unity, we observe that i( I V 3) are the imaginary cube roots
of unity, which are generally denoted by a and a?, for it is easy to
show that (J(-i-V -3))*-i(-i+V -3)-
3. Let us now consider such cubic equations as have all their terms,
and which are therefore of this form,
where A, B and C denote known quantities, cither positive or
negative.
This equation may be transformed into another in which the second
term is wanting by the substitution x = y A/3. This transformation is
a particular case of a general theorem. Let x n +Ax"" 1 +Bx"~ a . . . o.
Substitute x = y+A; then (y+h)"+A(y+h)"~ l . . . -o. Expand each
term by the binomial theorem, and let us fix our attention on the
coefficient of y"~'. By this process we obtain o = y"-f-y~ l (A-(-A) +
terms involving lower powers of y.
Now h can have any value, and if we choose it so that A-t-fc = c,
then the second term of our derived equation vanishes.
Resuming, therefore, the equation y'-f-oy+r = o, let us suppose
y = p+z; we then have y* = v*+z* + wz(v+z) =v+z+3Pzy, and the
original equation becomes *+z a + (3z-|-o)y+r = o. Now v and z
are any two quantities subject to the relation y = p+z, and if we
suppose $vz+q = o, they are completely determined. This leads to
f'+z'+r-o and SPZ+O-O. Therefore v' and z 1 are the roots of the
quadratic / l + r<-o*/27o. Therefore
- ? |-Jr-V (sV
and y-p+z-f l-ir+VGrVg' + ir')!** l-ir-
Thus we have obtained a value of the unknown quantity y, in terms
of the known quantities q and r; therefore the equation is resolved.
3. But this is only one of three values which y may have. Let us,
for the sake of brevity, put
Then, from what has been shown ( i), it is evident that v and z have
each these three values,
, , .
To determine the corresponding values of v and z, we must con-
>i<lrr that w- -ig-<(AB). Now if we observe that a/S=i, it will
immediately appear that v+z has these three values,
which are therefore the three values of y.
712
EQUATION
The first of these formulae is commonly known by the name of
Cardan's rule (see ALGEBRA: History).
The formulae given above for the roots of a cubic equation may
be put under a different form, better adapted to the purposes of
arithmetical calculation, as follows: Because vz= Jg, therefore
z= igXi/f = Jg/-?A; hence v+z = -\l A Jg/-JA: thus it appears
that the three values of y may also be expressed thus:
y= ^A
See below, Theory of Equations, 16 et seq.
IV. Biquadratic Equations.
1. When a biquadratic equation contains all its terms, it has this
form,
x i +Ax 3 +Bx 1 +Cx+D=o,
where A, B, C, D denote known quantities.
We shall first consider pure biquadratics, or such as contain only
the first and last terms, and therefore are of this form, x* = b i . In
this case it is evident that x may be readily had by two extractions of
the square root ; by the first we find oc 2 = 6 2 , and by the second x = b.
This, however, is only one of the values which x may have ; for since
x l = b t , therefore x* b < = o; but x 4 b* may be resolved into two
factors x 1 ft 2 and x i +V, each of which admits of a similar resolu-
tion; for x 2 -b 2 = (x- b) (x +b) and x t +V = (x-b^l -i)(x+6V -i).
Hence it appears that the equation x i b i = o may also be expressed
thus,
(x-b)(x+b)(x-bTJ -i)(*+6V -i)=o;
so that * may have these four values,
+b, -b, +6V-I, ' -6V -i,
two of which are real, and the others imaginary.
2. Next to pure biquadratic equations, in respect of easiness of
resolution, are such as want the second and fourth terms, and there-
fore have this form,
These may be resolved in the manner of quadratic equations ; for if
we put y = x 2 , we have
from which we find y = l{ g V (g 2 4*)!, and therefore
*=*Vi{-s*V(2 ! -4*)l.
3. When a biquadratic equation has all its terms, its resolution
may be always reduced to that of a cubic equation. There are
various methods by which such a reduction may be effected. The
following was first given by Leonhard Euler in the Petersburg
Commentaries, and afterwards explained more fully in his Elements
of Algebra.
We have already explained how an equation which is complete
in its terms may be transformed into another of the same degree,
but which 'wants the second term; therefore any biquadratic
equation may be reduced to this form,
y t +py*+qy+r=o,
where the second term is wanting, and where p, q, r denote any
known quantities whatever.
That we may form an equation similar to the above, let us assume
y=Vo+Vfr+Vc, and also suppose that the letters o, b, c denote
the roots of the cubic equation
2 3 +Pz 2 +Qz-R = o;
then, from the theory of equations we have
a+b+c=-P, ab+ac+bc = Q, abc = R.
We square the assumed formula
y=
and obtain y'
or, substituting P for a+b+c, and transposing,
Let this equation be also squared, and we have
and since ab+ac+bc = Q,
and V o'&c+V ab*c+ V o&c 2 = V abc( V o+ V 6 + V c) = V
the same equation may be expressed thus:
y+zPji 2 +P 2 = 4Q +8 V R.y.
Thus we have the biquadratic equation
one of the roots of which is y=Vn+V6+Vc, while a, b, c are the
roots of the cubic equation z > + Pz 2 +Qz R=o.
4. In order to apply this resolution to the proposed equation
y 4 +py*+qy-\-r = o, we must express the assumed coefficients P, Q, R
by means of p, q, r, the coefficients of that equation. For this pur-
pose let us compare the equations
y t +py l +qy+r=o,
and it immediately appears that
2P = p, -8VR=S, P*-4Q=r;
and from these equations we find
Hence it follows that the roots of the proposed equation are generally
expressed by the formula
where a, b, c denote the roots of this cubic equation,
But to find each particular root, we must consider, that as the square
root of a number may be either positive or negative, so each of the
quantities V a, V b, V c may have either the sign + or prefixed
to it ; and hence our formula will give eight different expressions
for the root. It is, however, to be observed, that as the product of
the three quantities Va, V6, Vc must be equal to V R or to Jg;
when g is positive, their product must be a negative quantity, and
this can only be effected by making either one or three of them
negative ; again, when q is negative, their product must be a positive
quantity ; so that in this case they must either be all positive, or
two of them must be negative. These considerations enable us to
determine that four of the eight expressions for the root belong to
the case in which g is positive, and the other four to that in which it
is negative.
5. We shall now give the result of the preceding investigation in
the forrrt of a practical rule ; and as the coefficients of the cubic
equation which has been found involve fractions, we shall transform
it into another, in which the coefficients are integers, by supposing
z = |t>. Thus the equation
becomes, after reduction,
it also follows, that if the roots of the latter equation are a, b, c, the
roots of the former are \a, \b, \c, so that our rule may now be
expressed thus:
Let y*+py*+qy+r = o be any biquadratic equation wanting its
second term. Form this cubic equation
and find its roots, which let us denote by a, b, c.
Then the roots of the proposed biquadratic equation are,
when g is negative, when g is positive,
See also below, Theory of Equations, 17 et seq.
(X.)
V. Theory of Equations.
i. In the subject " Theory of Equations " the term equation is
used to denote an equation of the form x n pix n ~ l . . . /> n = o,
where pi, p 2 . . . p n are regarded as known, and x as a quantity
to be determined; for shortness the equation is written /(*) = o.
The equation may be numerical; that is, the coefficients
Pi, Pit Pn are then numbers understanding by number a
quantity of the form a+j3i (a and P having any positive or
negative real values whatever, or say each of these is regarded
as susceptible of continuous variation- from an indefinitely large
negative to an indefinitely large positive value), and i denoting
V-i.
Or the equation may be algebraical; that is, the coefficients
are not then restricted to denote, or are not explicitly considered
as denoting, numbers.
1. We consider first numerical equations. (Real theory, 2-6;
Imaginary theory, 7-10.)
Real Theory.
2. Postponing all consideration of imaginaries, we take in the
first instance the coefficients to be real, and attend only to the
real roots (if any) ; that is, pi, pz, ... p n are real positive or
negative quantities, and a root a, if it exists, is a positive or
negative quantity such that a n pia n ~ 1 ... p n =o, or say,
/(a)=o.
It is very useful to consider the curve y=f(x), or, what
would come to the same, the curve Ay =/(*), but it is better
to retain the first-mentioned form of equation, drawing, if need
be, the ordinate y on a reduced scale. For instance, if the
given equation be x 3 6x*+iix 6-o6 = o, 1 then the curve
1 The coefficients were selected so that the roots might be nearly
i, e,3-
EQUATION
y-x-6x > +nx-6-o6 is as shown in fig. i, without any
reduction of scale for the ordinate.
It is dear that, in general, y is a continuous one-valued
function of x, finite for every finite value of x, but becoming
infinite when x is infinite; i.e., assuming throughout that the
coefficient of * is +i, then when x oo, y + 00 ; but when
x oo, then y+oo or oo, according as n is even or
odd; the curve cuts any line whatever, and in particular it cuts
the axis (of x) in at most n points; and the value of .1 . at any
point of intersection with the axis, is a root of the equation
If ft, a are any two values of z(a >ft, that is, a nearer +00),
then if /[/}),/() have opposite signs, the curve cuts the axis an
odd number of times, and therefore at least once, between the
points x-/3, jr = a; but if f(ft), /(a) have the same sign, then
between these points the curve cuts the axis an even number of
times, or it may be not at all. That is, f(ft), /(a) having opposite
signs, there are between the limits ft, a an odd number of real
roots, and therefore at least one real root; but /OS), /(a) having
the same sign, there are between these limits an even number of
real roots, or it may be there is no real root. In particular, by
giving to ft, a the values oo , + oo (or, what is the same thing,
any two values sufficiently near to these values respectively) it
appears that an equation of an odd order has always an odd
number of real roots, and therefore at least one real root; but
that an equation of an even order has an even number of real
roots, or it may be no real root.
If a be such that for*- or>a (that is, x nearer to +oo)/(x)
is always +, and ft be such that for jr = or <f) (that is, x
nearer to oo) /(x) is always , then the real roots (if any)
lie between these limits z/3, x a; and it is easy to find by
trial such two limits including between them all the real roots
(if any).
3. Suppose that the positive value 5 is an inferior limit to the
difference between two real roots of the equation; or rather
(since the foregoing expression would imply the existence of real
roots) suppose that there are not two real roots such that their
difference taken positively is or <&; then, y being any value
whatever, there is clearly at most one real root between the
limits y and y+6; and by what precedes there is such real root
or there is not such real root, according asf(y), f(y+&) have
opposite signs or have the same sign. And by dividing in this
manner the interval ft to a into intervals each of which is = or
<4, we should not only ascertain the number of the real roots
(if any), but we should also separate the real roots, that is, find
for each of them limits y, y+& between which there lies this one,
and only this one, real root.
In particular cases it is frequently possible to ascertain the number
of the real roots, and to effect their separation by trial or otherwise,
without much difficulty : but the foregoing was the general process
as employed by Joseph Louis Lagrange even in the second edition
(1806) p( the Traiti de la resolution aes equations numeriques; 1 the
determination of the limit t had to be effected by means of the
" equation of differences " or equation of the order \n(n I ), the roots
of which are the squares of the differences of the roots of the given
equation, and the process is a cumbrous and unsatisfactory one.
4. The great step was effected by the theorem of J. C. F.
Sturm (1835) viz. here starting from the function /(x), and its
first derived function/(x7, we have (by a process which is a slight
modification of that for obtaining the greatest common measure
of these two functions) to form a series of functions
/W..TW./.M /.(*)
of the degrees n,ni,n i . . . o respectively, the last term
/.(x) being thus an absolute constant. These lead to the im-
mediate determination of the number of real roots (if any)
between any two given limits ft, a; viz. supposing o>/3 (that is,
a nearer to + oo ), then substituting successively these two values
in the series of functions, and attending only to the signs of the
resulting values, the number of the changes of sign lost in passing
from ft to a is the required number of real roots between the two
1 The third edition (1826) is a reproduction of that of 1808; the
first edition has the date 1798, but a large part of the contents is
taken from memoirs of 1767-1768 and 1770-1771.
limits. In particular, taking ft, a oo , +00 respectively, the
signs of the several functions depend merely on the signs of the
terms which contain the highest powers of x, and are seen by
inspection, and the theorem thus gives at once the whole number
of real roots.
And although theoretically, in order to complete by a finite
number of operations the separation of the real roots, we still
need to know the value of the before-mentioned limit 5; yet
in any given case the separation may be effected by a limited
number of repetitions of the process. The practical difficulty
is when two or more roots are very near to each other. Suppose,
for instance, that the theorem shows that there are two roots
between o and 10; by giving to x the values i, 2, 3, ... succes-
sively, it might appear that the two roots were between 5 and 6;
then again that they were between 5-3 and 5-4, then between
5-34 and 5-35, and so on until we arrive at a separation; say it
appears that between 5-346 and 5-347 there is one root, and
between 5-348 and 5-349 the other root. But in the case in
question 5 would have a very small value, such as -002, and even
supposing this value known, the direct application of the first-
mentioned process would be still more laborious.
5. Supposing the separation once effected, the determination
of the single real root which lies between the two given limits
may be effected to any required degree of approximation either
by the processes of W. G. Homer and Lagrange (which are in
principle a carrying out of the method of Sturm's theorem), or
by the process of Sir Isaac Newton, as perfected by Joseph
Fourier (which requires to be separately considered).
First as to Horner and Lagrange. We know that between the
limits 0, a there lies one, and only one, real root of the equation;
f(ft) and /(o) have therefore opposite signs. Suppose any inter-
mediate value is 9; in order to determine by Sturm's theorem
whether the root lies between 0, 8, or between 6, o, it would be quite
unnecessary to calculate the signs of f(8), f'(ff), />(0) . . . ; only the
sign of f(8) is required; for, if this has the same sign as /(), then
the root is between ft, 8; if the same sign as /(a), then the root is
between 9, a. We want to make 8 increase from the inferior limit
0, at which f(9) has the sign of/(/8), so long as f(8) retains this sign,
and then to a value for which it assumes the opposite sign ; we have
thus two nearer limits of the required root, and the process may
be repeated indefinitely.
Horncr's method (1819) gives the root as a decimal, figure by figure;
thus if the equation be known to have one real root between o and 10,
it is in effect shown say that 5 is too small (that is, the root is between
5 and 6) ; next that 5-4 is too small (that is, the root is between 5-4
and 5-5); and so on to any number of decimals. Each figure is
obtained, not by the successive trial of all the figures which precede
it, but (as in the ordinary process of the extraction of a square root,
which is in fact Homer's process applied to this particular case)
it is given presumptively as the first figure of a quotient; such value
may be too large, and then the next inferior integer must be tried
instead of it, or it may require to be further diminished. And it is
to be remarked that the process not only gives the approximate
value a of the root, but (as in the extraction of a square root) it
includes the calculation of the function /(a), which should be, and
approximately is, =o. The arrangement of the calculations is very
elegant, and forms an integral part of the actual method. It is
to be observed that after a certain number of decimal places have
been obtained, a good many more can be found by a mere division.
It is in the progress tacitly assumed that the roots have been first
separated.
Lagrange's method (1767) gives the root as a continued fraction
a+Ti-i . . . , where a is a positive or negative integer (which
maybe = o),but6, c, . . . are positive integers. Suppose the roots
have been separated ; then (by trial if need Be of consecutive integer
values) the limits may be made to be consecutive integer numbers:
say they are o, a+i ; the value of x is therefore a + i/y, where y
is positive and greater than I ; from the given equation for x,
writing therein x a + i/y, we form an equation of the same order for
y, and this equation will have one, and only one, positive root greater
than I ; hence finding for it the limits b, b + i (where 6 is = or>i),
we have y i+l/z, where z is positive and greater than I ; and so on
that is, we thus obtain the successive denominators b, c, d . . .
of the continued fraction. The_ method is theoretically very elegant,
but the disadvantage is that it gives the result in the form of a
continued fraction, which for the most part must ultimately be con-
verted into a decimal. There is one advantage in the method, that
a commensurable root (that is, a root equal to a rational fraction)
is found accurately, since, when such root exists, the continued
fraction terminates.
6. Newton's method (171 1), as perfected by Fourier(l83l), may be
EQUATION
roughly stated as follows. If x = y be an approximate value of any
root, and y+h the correct value, thenf(y+h) =o, that is,
and then, if h be so small that the terms after the second may be
neglected, f(y)+hf (y) =o, that is, h=-f(y)lf'M, or the new approxi-
mate value is x=y-f(y)/f'(y); and so on, as often as we please.
It will be observed that so far nothing has been assumed as to the
separation of the roots, or even as to the existence of a real root;
y has been taken as the approximate value of a root, but no precise
meaning has been attached to this expression. The question arises,
What are the conditions to be satisfied by y in order that the process
may by successive repetitions actually lead to a certain real root of the
equation; or that, y being an approximate value of a certain real
root, the new value y-f(y)lf (y) may be a more approximate value.
Referring to fig. I , it is easy to see that if OC represent the assumed
value 7, then, drawing the ordinate CP to meet the curve in P, and
the tangent PC' to meet the axis in C', we shall have OC' as the new
approximate value of the root. But observe that there is here a
real root OX, and that the curve beyond X is convex to the axis;
under these conditions the point C' is nearer to X than was C ; and,
starting with C' instead of C, and proceeding in like manner to draw
a new ordinate and tangent, and so on as often as we please, we
approximate continually, and that with great rapidity, to the true
value OX. But if C had been taken on the other side of X, where the
curve is concave to the axis, the new point C' might or might not
be nearer to X than was the point C; and in this case the method,
if it succeeds at all, does so by accident only, i.e. it may haopen
that C' or some subsequent point comes to be a point C, such that
CO is a proper approximate value of the root, and then the subsequent
approximations proceed in the same manner as if this value had been
assumed in the first instance, all the preceding work being wasted.
2 MDP','3 /V'C'
FIG. i.
It thus appears that for the proper application of the method we
require more than the mere separation of the roots. In order to be
able to approximate to a certain root o, =OX, we require to know
that, between OX and some value ON, the curve is always convex
to the axis (analytically, between the two values, f(x) and f"(x) must
have always the same sign). VVhen this is so, the point C may be
taken anywhere on the proper side of X, and within the portion XN
of the axis; and the process is then the one already explained.
The approximation is in general a very rapid one. If we know for the
required root OX the two limits OM, ON such that from M to X the
curve is always concave to the axis, while from X to N it is always
convex to the axis, then, taking D anywhere in the portion MX
and (as before) C in the portion XN, drawing the-ordinates DQ,
CP, and joining the points P, Q by a line which meets the axis in D ,
also constructing the point C' by means of the tangent at P as before,
we have for the required root the new limits OD', OC'; and pro-
ceeding in like manner with the points D', C', and so on as often as
we please, we obtain at each step two limits approximating more and
more nearly to the required root OX. The process as to the point D ,
translated into analysis, is the ordinate process of interpolation.
Suppose OD = 0, OC = a, we have approximately f(f+h) =/(0) +
ft|/(n)-/(0)l whence if the root is 0+h then h = -feT^fffv
a /3 j( a )j(P)
Returning for a moment to Homer's method, it may be remarked
that the correction h, to an approximate value o, is therein found
as a quotient the same or such as the quotient /(a) -5-/'(a) which
presents itself in Newton's method. The difference is that with
Homer the integer part of this quotient is taken as the presumptive
value of h, and the figure is verified at each step. With Newton the
quotient itself, developed to the proper number of decimal places,
is taken as the value of A; if too many decimals are taken, there
would be a waste of work ; but the error would correct itself at the
next step. Of course the calculation should be conducted without
any such waste of work.
Imaginary Theory.
7. It will be recollected that the expression number and the
correlative epithet numerical were at the outset used in a wide
sense, as extending to imaginaries. This extension arises out
of the theory of equations by a process analogous to that by which
number, in its original most restricted sense of positive integer
number, was extended to have the meaning of a real positive
or negative magnitude susceptible of continuous variation.
If for a moment number is understood in its most restricted
sense as meaning positive integer number, the solution of a simple
equation leads to an extension; ax 6 = gives x = b/a, a
positive fraction, and we can in this manner represent, not
accurately, but as nearly as we please, any positive magnitude
whatever; so an equation ax+b = o gives x=b/a, which
approximately as before) represents any negative magnitude,
thus arrive at the extended signification of number as a
continuously varying positive or negative magnitude. Such
numbers may be added or subtracted, multiplied or divided
one by another, and the result is always a number. Now from
a quadric equation we derive, in like manner, the notion of a
complex or imaginary number such as is spoken of above. The
equation * 2 + i = o is not (in the foregoing sense, number = real
lumber) satisfied by any numerical value whatever of x; but
we assume that there is a number which we call i, satisfying the
equation j 2 +i=o, and then taking a and b any real numbers,
we form an expression such as a+bi, and use the expression
number in this extended sense: any two such numbers may be
added or subtracted, multiplied or divided one by the other,
and the result is always a number. And if we consider first
a quadric equation x~+px+q = o where p and q are real numbers,
and next the like equation, where p and q are any numbers
whatever, it can be shown that there exists for x a numerical
value which satisfies the equation; or, in other words, it can
be shown that the equation has a numerical root. The like
theorem, in fact, holds good for an equation of any order whatever;
but suppose for a moment that this was not the case; say that
there was a cubic equation x 3 +px 2 +qx+r = o, with numerical
coefficients, not satisfied by any numerical value of *, we should
have to establish a new imaginary.; satisfying some such equation,
and should then have to consider numbers of the form a-\-bj, or
perhaps a+bj+cf (a, b, c numbers a+/3jof the kind heretofore
considered), first we should be thrown back on the quadric
equation x 2 +px+q = o, p and q being now numbers of the last-
mentioned extended form non constat that every such equation
has a numerical root and if not, we might be led to other
imaginaries k, I, &c., and so on ad infinitum in inextricable
confusion.
But in fact a numerical equation of any order whatever has
always a numerical root, and thus numbers (in the foregoing
sense, number = quantity of the form a+/3j) form (what real
numbers do not) a universe complete in itself, such that starting
in it we are never led out of it. There may very well be, and
perhaps are, numbers in a more general sense of the term
(quaternions are not a case in point, as the ordinary laws of
combination are not adhered to), but in order to have to do with
such numbers (if any) we must start with them.
S. The capital theorem as regards numerical equations thus
is, every numerical equation has a numerical root; or for
shortness (the meaning being as before), every equation has a
root. Of course the theorem is the reverse of self-evident, and
it requires proof; but provisionally assuming it as true, we derive
from it the general theory of numerical equations. As the term
root was introduced in the course of an explanation, it will be
convenient to give here the formal definition.
A number a such that substituted for x it makes the function
xi'-piX"~ l . . . =*=/> to be =o, or say such that it satisfies the
equation f(x)=o, is said to be a root of the equation; that is, a
being a root, we have
a"-/>ia"~ 1 . . . =tp n = o, or say /(a)=o;
and it is then easily shown that x-a is a factor of the function /(*),
viz. that we have /(*) = (x-o)/i(x), where f\(x) is a function
x -i_g lX -a . . . g_, of the order n-i, with numerical co-
efficients gi, qt. . . 9n_i.
In general a is not a root of the equation/i(x) =o, but it may be so
i.e. fi(x) may contain the factor x-a; when this is so, /(*) will
contain the factor (.r-o) 1 ; writing then/(*) = (*-a) 2 / 2 (x),and assum-
ing that a is not a root of the equation / 2 (x) =o, x = a is then said to
EQUATION
be a double root of the equation /(x) o; and similarly /(.v) in.iv
contain the (actor (x a) 1 and no higher power, and x-u is then a
tripk root ; and w> on.
Supposing in general that /(x) (x o)*F(x) ( being a positive
integer which may be = I, (x o)* the highest power of x a which
divides /(x), and KU) being of course of the <>r<trr n a), then the
equation F(x) -o will have a root b which will be different from a;
z 6 will be a factor, in general a simple one, but it may be a multiple
one. of F(x), and/U) will in this case be -(x-o)(x-fr)0*(x) (0 a
positive integer which may be -I, (x 6)0 the highest power of
x b in F(x) or/(x), and *(x) being of course of the order n a ft).
The original equation /(x) - o is in this case said to have a roots each
-a._0 roots each -ft; and so on for any other factors (x c) y , &c.
\\r have thus the tkeorrm A numerical equation of the order n
has in every case < roots, viz. there exist n numbers, a, b, . . . (in
general all distinct, but which may arrange themselves in any sets
of equal values), such that /(x) (x a) (x 4) (xc) . . . identically.
If the equation has equal roots, these can in general be determined,
and the case is at any rate a special one which may be in the first
instance excluded from consideration. It is, therefore, in general
assumed that the equation /(x) o has all its roots unequal.
If the coefficients fa, fa, . . . are all or any one or more of them
imaginary, then the equation /(x) o, separating the real and imagin-
ary, parts thereof, may be written F(x)+i'*(x)-o, where F(x),
Or) are each of them a function with real coefficients; and it thus
appears that the equation /(x) o, with imaginary coefficients, has
not in general any real root ; supposing it to have a real root a, this
must be at once a root of each of the equations F(x) o and *(*) = o.
But an equation with real coefficients may have as well imaginary
as real roots, and we have further the theorem that for any such
equation the imaginary roots enter in pairs, viz. a+fti being a root,
then 0i will be also a root. It follows that if the order be odd,
there is always an odd number of real roots, and therefore at least one
real root.
9. In the case of an equation with real coefficients, the question
of the existence of real roots, and of their separation, has been
already considered. In the general case of an equation with
imaginary (it may be real) coefficients, the like question arises
as to the situation of the (real or imaginary) roots; thus, if
for facility of conception we regard the constituents a, of a
root a 4- 0< as the co-ordinates of apoinl in piano, and accordingly
represent the root by such point, then drawing in the plane any
closed curve or " contour," the question is how many roots lie
within such contour.
This is solved theoretically by means of a theorem of A. L. Cauchy
(1837}. viz. writing in the original equation x+iy in place of x, the
function /(x+iy) becomes - P+iQ, where P and Q are each of them
a rational and integral function (with real coefficients) of (x, y).
Imagining the point (x, y) to travel along the contour, and considering
the number of changes of sign from to + and from + to
of the fraction corresponding to passages of the fraction through
zero (that is, to values for which P becomes =o, disregarding those
for which Q becomes o), the difference of these numbers gives the
number of roots within the contour.
It is important to remark that the demonstration does not pre-
suppose the existence of any root ; the contour may be the infinity
of the plane (such infinity regarded as a contour, or closed curve),
and in this case it can be shown (and that very easily) that the differ-
ence of the numbers of changes of sign is n ; that is, there are within
the infinite contour, or (what is the same thing) there arc in all n roots;
thus Cauchy 's theorem contains really the proof of the fundamental
theorem that a numerical equation of the nth order (not only has
a numerical root, but) has precisely n roots. It would appear that
this proof of the fundamental theorem in its most complete form is
in principle identical with the last proof of K. F. Gauss (1849) of
the theorem, in the form A numerical equation of the nth order
has always a root. 1
But in the case of a finite contour, the actual determination of the
difference which gives the number of real roots can be effected only
in the case of a rectangular contour, by applying to each of its sides
separately a method such as that of Sturm's theorem; and thus the
actual determination ultimately depends on a method such as that
of Sturm's theorem.
Very little has been done in regard to the calculation of the
imaginary roots of an equation by approximation ; and the question
is not here considered.
10. A class of numerical equations which needs to be con-
sidered is that of the binomial equations x"-o = o(a = a+0,
a complex number).
1 The earlier demonstrations by Euler, Lagrangc. &c., relate to the
case of a numerical equation with real coefficients; and they consist
in showing that such equation has always a real quadratic divisor, fur-
mshinf two roots, which are either real or else conjugate imaginaries
+fi (see Lagrange's Equation! numrriques).
The foregoing conclusions apply, viz. there arc always n roots,
which, it may be shown, are all unequal. And these can be found
numerically by the extraction of the square root, and of an nth root,
of real numbers, and by the aid of a table of natural sines and
cosines. 1 For writing
there is always a real angle X (positive and less than 2w), such that
its cosine and sine are -^ (aM-fl 1 ) and v(a'-rfl*) respectively; that
is, writing for short ness V (a 1 +/S*)-p, we havea+0-p(cosX+j sin X),
or the equation is x"-p(cosX+* sin X); hence observing that
(cos^-Hsin-j -cosX+i sin X, a value of x is- Vp (cos--H'sin^) .
The formula really gives all the roots.'for instead of X we may write
X+Mr, l a positive or negative integer, and then we have
which has the n values obtained by giving to s the values o, I, 2 ...
n I in succession ; the roots are, it is clear, represented by points
lying at equal intervals on a circle. But it is more convenient to pro-
ceed; somewhat differently; taking one of the roots to be 9, so that
9"=- a, then assuming x = 8y, the equation becomes y" I =o, which
equation, like the original equation, has precisely n roots (one of them
being of course =i). Ana the original equation x = is thus
reduced to the more simple equation x'i =o; and although the
theory of this equation is included in the preceding one, yet it is
proper to state it separately.
The equation x'i =o has its several roots expressed in the form
i , u, ur, . . . a"" 1 , where a may be taken =cos +' sin ; in fact,
ft ft
o> having this value, any integer power <j* is = cos-^--)-t sin-^-, and
we thence have (*)" =cos 2irk+i sin 2xk, = I , that is, of is a root of
the equation. The theory will be resumed further on.
By what precedes, we are led to the notion (a numerical) of the
radical a"" regarded as an n-valued function ; any one of these being
denoted by \a, then the series of values is Va, wVa, . . . w"~'V<i;
or we may, if we please, use \a instead of a 1 /" as a symbol to denote
the n-valued function.
As the coefficients of an algebraical equation may be numerical,
all which follows in regard to algebraical equations is (with, it may
be, some few modifications) applicable to numerical equations; and
hence, concluding for the present this subject, it will be convenient
to pass on to algebraical equations.
Algebraical Equations.
n. The equation is
**-&*-++... *p*-o,
and we here assume the existence of roots, viz. we assume that
there are n quantities a, b, c ... (in general all of them different,
but which in particular cases may become equal in sets in any
manner), such that
x'-pi*~- l +.:.p,=o;
or looking at the question in a different point of view, and
starting with the roots a, b,c ...as given, we express the product
of the n factors xa, xb, ... in the foregoing form, and thus
arrive at an equation of the order n having the roots a, b,c ...
In cither case we have
pi = Za, fa - Xab, .../> -oJc ...;
i.e. regarding the coefficients pi, p t . . . p n as given, then we
assume the existence of roots a, b, c, . . . such that />i = 2a, &c.;
or, regarding the roots as given, then we write p,, p t , &c., to
denote the functions 2a, Xab, &c.
As already explained, the epithet algebraical is not used in opposi-
tion to numerical; an algebraical equation is merely an equation
wherein the coefficients are not restricted to denote, or are not ex-
plicitly considered as denoting, numbers. That the abstraction is
legitimate, appears by the simplest example; in saying that the
equation x* -px+q-o has a root x - $ \p+ V (p -49)! , we mean that
writing this value for x the equation becomes an identity, (410+
V(p'-49)l) l -*>[JI/>+Vtt>-4?)|]+?'=o; and the verification of
this identity in nowise depends upon p and q meaning numbers.
But if it be asked what 'there is beyond numerical equations included
in the term algebraical equation, or, again, what is the full extent
of the meaning attributed to the term the latter question at any
* The square root of a+fti can be determined by the extraction of
square roots of positive real numbers, without the trigonometrical
tables.
716
EQUATION
rate it would be very difficult to answer; as to the former one, it
may be said that the coefficients may, for instance, be symbols of
operation. As regards such equations, there is certainly no proof
that every equation has a root, or that an equation of the nth order
has n roots ; nor is it in any wise clear what the precise signification
of the statement is. But it is found that the assumption of the
existence of the n roots can be made without contradictory results ;
conclusions derived from it, if they involve the roots, rest on the
same ground as the original assumption; but the conclusion may
be independent of the roots altogether, and in this case it is
undoubtedly valid; the reasoning, although actually conducted by
aid of the assumption (and, it may be, most easily and elegantly
in this manner), is really independent of the assumption. In illustra-
tion, we observe that it is allowable to express a function of p and q
as follows, that is, by means of a rational symmetrical function of
a and b, this can, as a fact, be expressed as a rational function of
0+6 and ab; and if we prescribe that a+b and ab shall then be
changed into p and q respectively, we have the required function of
p, q. That is, we have F(a, /3)asa representation otf(p, 5), obtained
as if we had p = a+b, q = ab, but without in any wise assuming the
existence of the a, b of these equations.
12. Starting from the equation
w n pix*~ 1 + . . . =x a.x b. &c.
or the equivalent equations pi = 2a, &c., we find
o n -#>iO"-'+ . . . =o,
&" pifr*- l + . . . =o;
(it is as satisfying these equations that a, b . . . are said to be
the roots of x n p\x n ~ l -\- . . . = o); and conversely from the
last-mentioned equations, assuming that a, b . . . are all different,
we deduce
pi = 2a,p, = '2ab, &c.
and
x n -pix"~ l + . . . = x-a.x-b. &c.
Observe that if, for instance, a = b, then the equations
a" pia"~ 1 +. . . = o, b n pib n ~ l +. .. = o would reduce them-
selves to a single relation, which would not of itself express
that a was a double root, that is, that (* a) 2 was a factor of
x n pix n ~ 1 +, &c.; but by considering b as the limit of a+h,
h indefinitely small, we obtain a second equation
which, with the first, expresses that a is a double root; and then
the whole system of equations leads as before to the equations
pi = 2a, &c. But the existence of a double root implies a certain
relation between the coefficients; the general case is when the
roots are all unequal.
We have then the theorem that every rational symmetrical
function of the roots is a rational function of the coefficients.
This is an easy consequence from the less general theorem, every
rational and integral symmetrical function of the roots is a
rational and integral function of the coefficients.
In particular, the sums of the powers Sa 2 , Sa 3 , &c.; are rational
and integral functions of the coefficients.
The process originally employed for the expression of other functions
2o a &0, &c., in terms of the coefficients is to make them depend upon
the sums of powers: for instance, 2a a 60 = 2a a 2o0 2a a+ /*; but
this is very objectionable; the true theory consists in showing that
we have systems of equations
pi = 2a,
/>i 2 = 2a 2 +22o6,
p, =
2o6c,
where in each system there are precisely as many equations as there
are root-functions on the right-hand side e.g. 3 equations and 3
functions "Sa.bc, 2o 2 6, 2a s . Hence in each system the root-functions
can be determined linearly in terms of the powers and products of
the coefficients :
( 2o6 = pi,
) 2o 2 =pi* 2p2,
' Xabc = p>,
2o 2 ft = Pipt ZPs,
and so on. The other process, if applied consistently, would
derive the originally assumed value 2ab,=pi, from the two equa-
tions 2a = />, 2a 2 =i 2 -2pj; i.e. we have 22o6 = 2o. 2o-2a 2 , =
Pl t -(p l t -2pi),=2p t .
13. It is convenient to mention here the theorem that, *
being determined as above by an equation of the order n, any
rational and integral function whatever of x, or more generally
any rational function which does not become infinite in virtue
of the equation itself, can be expressed as a rational and integral
function of x, of the order n i, the coefficients being rational
functions of the coefficients of the equation. Thus the equation
gives x n a function of the form in question; multiplying each
side by x, and on the right-hand side writing for x" its foregoing
value, we have x" +l , a function of the form in question; and the
like for any higher power of x, and therefore also for any rational
and integral function of x. The proof in the case of a rational
non-integral function is somewhat more complicated. The final
result is of the form <b(x)/\l/(x) = !(*), or say <j>(x) \l/(x)\ (x)=o,
where <t>,&, I are rational and integral functions; in other words,
this equation, being true if only/() =o, can only be so by reason
that the left-hand side contains f(x) as a factor, or we must have
identically $(x) \]/(x)I(x) =M(x)f(x). And it is, moreover, clear
that the equation 4>(x) l^(x) = I(z)> being satisfied if only/(ac) = o,
must be satisfied by each root of the equation.
From the theorem that a rational symmetrical function of the roots
is expressible in terms of the coefficients, it at once follows that it is
possible to determine an equation (of an assignable order) having
for its roots the several values of any given (unsymmetrical) function
of the roots of the given equation. For example, in the case of a
quartic equation, roots (a, b, c, d), it is possible to find an equation
having the roots ab, ac, ad, be, bd, cd (being therefore a sextic equa-
tion) : viz. in the product
(y ab) (y ac)(y ad) (y be) (y bd) (y cd)
the coefficients of the several powers of y will be symmetrical functions
of a, b, c, d and therefore rational and integral functions of the co-
efficients of the quartic equation; hence, supposing the product so
expressed, and equating it to zero, we have the required sextic
equation. In the same manner can be found the sextic equation
having the roots (a-6) 2 , (a-c)\ (a-d)\b-cY, (b-d)\ (c-d)\ which
is the equation of differences previously referred to; and similarly
we obtain the equation of differences for a given equation of any
order. Again, the equation sought for may be that having for its
n roots the given rational functions <t>(a) ,<j>(b) , ... of the several
roots of the given equation. Any such rational function can (as
was shown) be expressed as a rational and integral function of the
order n i; and, retaining x in place of any one of the roots, the
problem is to find y from the equations x" p\x"~ l . .. =o, and
y 'MoX n ~ 1 + 'M.iX n ~ t + . .. , or, what is the same thing, from these
two equations to eliminate x. This is in fact E. W. Tschirnhausen's
transformation (1683).
14. In connexion with what precedes, the question arises as to
the number of values (obtained by permutations of the roots) of
given unsymmetrical functions of the roots, or say of a given set
of letters: for instance, with roots or letters (a, b, c, d) as before,
how many values are there of the function ab-\-cd, or better,
how many functions are there of this form? The answer is 3,
viz. ab-\-cd, ac-\-bd, ad-\-bc; or again we may ask whether, in
the case of a given number of letters, there exist functions with
a given number of values, 3-valued, 4-valued functions, &c.
It is at once seen that for any given number of letters there exist
2-valued functions; the product of the differences of the letters is
such a function; however the letters are interchanged, it alters only
its sign; or say the two values are A and A. And if P, Q are
symmetrical functions of the letters, then the general form of such
a function is P+QA; this has only the two values P+QA, P QA.
In the case of 4 letters there exist (as appears above) 3-valued
functions: but in the case of 5 letters there does not exist any 3-
valued or 4-valued function; and the only 5-valued functions are
those which are symmetrical in regard to four of the letters, and can
thus be expressed in terms of one letter and of symmetrical functions
of all the letters. These last theorems present themselves in the
demonstration of the non-existence of a solution of a quintic equation
by radicals.
The theory is an extensive and important one, depending on
the notions of substitutions and of groups (q.v.).
15. Returning to equations, we have the very important
theorem that, given the value of any unsymmetrical function of
the roots, e.g. in the case of a quartic equation, the function
ab+cd, it is in general possible to determine rationally the value
of any similar function, such as (a+6) 3 +(c+4) 3 .
The a priori ground of this theorem may be illustrated by means of
a numerical equation. Suppose that the roots of a quartic equation
are 1,2,3,4, then if it is given that ab+cd = i4, this in effect deter-
mines a, 6 to be i, 2 and c, d to be 3, 4 (viz. a = l,b = 2 or a = 2, 6 = i.
EQUATION
717
and t .v 4 -4 or c -3. 4 -4) or else a, & to be 3, 4 and c, d to be I, a ;
and it therefore in effect determines (a+fr)' + (+</)' to be 7370,
and not any other value: that is, (a+b)'+(c+d)*, as having a
tingle value, mutt be determinable rationally. And we can in the
Mine way account for cases of failure as regards particular equations ;
thus, the roots being I. >. 3, 4 as before, o'fr-2 determines a to be
l and b to be -a, but if the roots had been 1.3,4, 16 then o'fr-l6
does not uniquely determine 11,6 but only makes them to be 1,16 or
3,4 respectively.
As to the a posteriori proof, assume, for instance,
h-ob+ai. y,-(a+4)+fe-M).
It-ac+U, y,-la+c)*+(b+d\'.
b-ad+bc. y,-
then yi+yi-f y. hyi+t&i +<y,. liVi+tf* +'*? will be respectively
symmetrical functions of the roots of the quartic, and therefore
rational and integral functions of the coefficients; that is, they
will be known.
Suppose for a moment that t\, ft. t> are all known; then the
equations being linear in yi, y>, y these can be expressed rationally
in terms of the coefficients and of I,, /, t,. that is, y\, y, y t will be
known. But observe further that v. is obtained as a function of
ti. h. t t symmetrical as regards /t, It; it can therefore be expressed
as a rational function of I, and of ft+/>. Mi, and thence as a rational
function of /, and of /!+<.+<, fife+Mi+fcti. <iWi: but these last are
symmetrical functions of the roots, and as such they are expressible
rationally in terms of the coefficients; that is, yi will be expressed
as a rational function of l\ and of the coefficients; or t\ (alone, not
tt or It) being known, y\ will be rationally determined.
16. We now consider the question of the algebraical solution
of equations, or, more accurately, that of the solution of equations
by radicals.
In the case of a quadric equation r 1 ps+qo, we can by the
stance of the sign V( ) or ( )' find an expression for x as a
2 -valued function of the coefficients p, g such that substituting
this value in the equation, the equation is thereby identically
satisfied ; it has been found that this expression is
and the equation is on this account said to be algebraically solvable,
or more accurately solvable by radicals. Or we may by writing
z ty+* reduce the equation toi 1 J(^ 49), viz. to an equation
of the form z* a; and in virtue of its being thus reducible we say
that the original equation is solvable by radicals. And the question
for an equation of any higher order, say of the order n, is, can we
by means of radicals (that is, by aid of the sign 1 ? ( ) or ( )'/*, using
as many as we -please of such signs and with any values of m) find
an n-valued function (or any function) of the coefficients which
substituted for z in the equation shall satisfy it identically?
It will be observed that the coefficients p, q ... are not explicitly
considered as numbers, but even if they do denote numbers, the
question whether a numerical equation admits of solution by radicals
is wholly unconnected with the before-mentioned theorem of the
existence of the roots of -such an equation. It does not even
follow that in the case of a numerical equation solvable by radicals
the algebraical solution gives the numerical solution, but this requires
explanation. Consider first a numerical quadric equation with
imaginary coefficients. In the formula x - i |/> * V (0* 45)1, sub-
stituting for p, q their given numerical values, we obtain for x an
expression of the form z-a+0*V(Y+*), where a, 0, y, t are
real numbers. This expression substituted for x in the quadric
equation would satisfy it identically, and it is thus an algebraical
solution; but there is no obvious a priori reason why V(y+*)
should have a value c+di, where c and d are real numbers cal-
culable by the extraction of a root or roots of real numbers; however
the case is (what there was no a priori right to expect) that V (y+ti)
has such a value calculable by means of the radical expressions
V IV (7*+**) *>l : and hence the algebraical solution of a numerical
quadric equation does in every case give the numerical solution. The
case of a numerical cubic equation will be considered presently.
17. A cubic equation can be solved by radicals.
Taking for greater simplicity the cubic in the reduced form
x*+qx ro, and assuming z o+fr, this will be a solution if only
306-9 and o'-r-fr* r, equations which give (o $ fr') 1 r 1 Afl', a
quadnc equation solvable by radicals, and gi ving a* b* V (r 1 f-<?) ,
a 3-valued function of the coefficients: combining this with o' + fr 1
-r, we have o'- J|r+V(r* +r<f)\, a 2-valued function: we then
have a by means of a cube root, viz.
a 6-valued function of the coefficients; but then, writing 9 frVja, we
have, as may be shown, a+fr a 3- valued function of the coefficients;
and z-a+A is the required solution by radicals. It would have
been wrong to complete the solution by writing
for then a+b would have been given as a 9-valued function having
only 3 of its values roots, and the other 6 values being irrelevant.
Observe that in this last process we make no use of the equation
3<jfr-<7, in its original form, but use only the derived equation
370*6' q', imfilicd in, but not implying, the original form.
An interesting variation of the solution is to write x afr(o-|-fr),
giving a'fr'ta'+fr'J-r and
and consequently
-j, or say o'+fc 1 -^, o'fr'-Jo;
-!
i.e. here a 1 , fr' are each of them a 2-valued function, but as the only
effect of altering the sign of the quadric radical is to interchange
a 1 , fr', they may be regarded as each of them i-valued; a and fr
are each of them 3-valued (for observe that here only a'fr*, not ofr,
is given); and oi(o+fr) thus is in appearance a 9-valucd function;
but it can easily be shown that it is (as it ought to be) only 3-valued.
In the case of a numerical cubic, even when the coefficients are real,
substituting their values in the expression
this may depend on an expression of the form 3 (y+ti) where
y and 4 are real numbers (it will do so if r* Aq* is a negative num-
ber), and then we cannot by the extraction of any root or roots of
real positive numbers reduce 3(y+ti) to the form c+di, c and d
real numbers; hence here the algebraical solution does not give the
numerical solution, and we have here the so-called " irreducible
case " of a cubic equation. By what precedes there is nothing in
this that might not have been expected; the algebraical solution
makes the solution depend on the extraction of the cube root of
a number, and there was no reason for expecting this to be a real
number. It is well known that the case in question is that wherein
the three roots of the numerical cubic equation are all real; if the
roots are two imaginary, one real, then contrariwise the quantity
under the cube root is real; and the algebraical solution gives
the numerical one.
The irreducible case is solvable by a trigonometrical formula, but
this is not a solution by radicals: it consists in effect in reducing the
given numerical cubic (not to a cubic of the form z' = a, solvable by
the extraction of a cube root, but) to a cubic of the form 4** 3x a,
corresponding to the equation ^ cos's 3 cos 9=cos 30 which serves
to determine cos 8 when cos 36 is known. The theory is applicable
to an algebraical cubic equation; say that such an equation, if it
can be reduced to the form 4x' 3x = a, is solvable by trisection "
then the general cubic equation is solvable by trisection.
18. A quartic equation is solvable by radicals: and it is to be
remarked that the existence of such a solution depends on the
existence of 3-valued functions such as ab+cd of the four roots
(a, b, c, d): by what precedes ab+cd is the root of a cubic
equation, which equation is solvable by radicals: hence ab+cd
can be found by radicals; and since abed is a given function, ab
and cd can then be found by radicals. But by what precedes,
if ab be known then any similar function, say a+b, is obtainable
rationally; and then from the values of a+b and ab we may by
radicals obtain the value of a or b, that is, an expression for the
root of the given quartic equation: the expression ultimately
obtained is 4-valued, corresponding to the different values of the
several radicals which enter therein, and we have thus the ex-
pression by radicals of each of the four roots of the quartic
equation. But when the quartic is numerical the same thing
happens as in the cubic, and the algebraical solution does not in
every case give the numerical one.
It will be understood from the foregoing explanation as to the
quartic how in the next following case, that of the quintic, the question
of the solvability by radicals depends on the existence or non-
existence of A-valued functions of the five roots (o, fr, c, d, e) ; the
fundamental theorem is the one already stated, a rational function
of five letters, if it has less than 5, cannot have more than 2 values,
that is, there are no 3-valued or 4-valued functions of 5 letters : and
by reasoning depending in part upon this theorem, N. II. Abel (1824)
showed that a general quintic equation is not solvable by radicals;
and a fortiori the general equation of any order higher than 5 is not
solvable by radicals.
19. The general theory of the solvability of an equation by radicals
depends fundamentally on A. T. Vandermonde's remark (1770)
that, supposing an equation is solvable by radicals, and that we have
therefore an algebraical expression of x in terms of the coefficients,
then substituting for the coefficients their values in terms of the roots,
the resulting expression must reduce itself to any one at pleasure of
the roots a, fr, c . . . ; thus in the case of the quadric equation, in the
expressionz J|-r-V(p* 49) |, substituting for p and q their values,
and observing that (o-f-fr) 1 4a6 (o fr)' ( this becomes * $|a+fr-(-
V (a fr) 1 ), the value being a or fr according as the radical is taken
to be +(a fr) or (o fr).
So in the cubic equation x' px*+qx r o, if the roots are a, fr, c,
and if u is used to denote an imaginary cube root of unity, uf+u+
I o, then writing for shortness p**a+b+c, L a+ub+<*?c, M
a+tifb+uc, it is at once seen that LM , L'-f-M', and therefore also
EQUATION
(L 3 M 3 ) 2 are symmetrical functions of the roots, and consequently
rational functions of the coefficients : hence
is a rational function of the coefficients, which when these are
replaced by their values as functions of the roots becomes, according
to the sign given to the quadric radical, = L 3 or M 3 ; taking it =L 3 ,
the cube root of the expression has the three values L, wL, u 2 L;
and LM divided by the same cube root has therefore the values
M, ta'M, wM; whence finally the expression
*[/>+ ^(KL 3 +M 3 +V (L 3 -M 3 ) 2 )) +LM + ^L 3 +M 3 +V (L 3 -M 3 ) 2 )!]
has the three values
that is, these are =a, b, c respectively. If the value M 3 had been
taken instead of L 3 , then the expression would have had the same
three values a, 6, c. Comparing the solution given for the cubic
x 3 +qx r=o, it will readily be seen that the two solutions are
identical, and that the function r 2 jV? 3 under the radical sign must
(by aid of the relation p = o which subsists in this case) reduce itself
to (L 3 M 3 ) 2 ; it is only by each radical being equal to a rational
function of the roots that the final expression can become equal to
the roots a, b, c respectively.
20. The formulae for the cubic were obtained by J. L. Lagrange
(1770-1771) from a different point of view. Upon examining
and comparing the principal known methods for the solution of
algebraical equations, he found that they all ultimately depended
upon finding a " resolvent " equation of which the root is
a-\-(ab-\-uPc-\-i>?d-\- . . . , o> being an imaginary root of unity,
of the same order as the equation; e.g. for the cubic the root is
a+ub+a?c, ta an imaginary cube root of unity. Evidently the
method gives for L 3 a quadric equation, which is the " resolvent "
equation in this particular case.
For a quartic the formulae present themselves in a somewhat
different form , by reason that 4 is not a prime number. Attempt-
ing to apply it to a quintic, we seek for the equation of which the
root is (a+w&+a> 2 c+w 3 <f-i-co 4 e), a> an imaginary fifth root of
unity, or rather the fifth power thereof (a+w&+w 2 c+ 3 <f+w 4 e) 5 ;
this is a 24-valued function, but if we consider the four values
corresponding to the roots of unity co, w 2 , u 3 , w 4 , viz. the values
(a+u
,
w e) 6 ,
any symmetrical function of these, for instance their sum, is a
6- valued function of the roots, and may therefore be determined
by means of a sextic equation, the coefficients whereof are rational
functions of the coefficients of the original quintic equation; the
conclusion being that the solution of an equation of the fifth order
is made to depend upon that of an equation of the sixth order.
This is, of course, useless for the solution of the quintic equation,
which, as already mentioned, does not admit of solution by
radicals; but the equation of the sixth order, Lagrange's re-
solvent sextic, is very important, and is intimately connected
with all the later investigations in the theory.
21. It is to be remarked, in regard to the question of solv-
ability by radicals, that not only the coefficients are taken to
be arbitrary, but it is assumed that they are represented each
'by a single letter, or say rather that they are not so expressed
in terms of other arbitrary quantities as to make a solution
possible. If the coefficients are not all arbitrary, for instance,
if some of them are zero, a sextic equation might be of the
form x?+bx t +cx?+d=o, and so be solvable as a cubic; or
if the coefficients of the sextic are given functions of the six
arbitrary quantities a, b, c, d, e, f, such that the sextic is really
of the form (x*+ax+b)(x i +cx 3 +dx 2 +ex+f)=o, then it breaks
up into the equations x' 1 +ax+b = o, x t +cx 3 +dx*+ex+f=o,
and is consequently solvable by radicals; so also if the form
is (x-a)(x-b)(x-c)(x-d)(x-e)(x-f)=o, then the equation
is solvable by radicals, in this extreme case rationally. Such
cases of solvability are self-evident; but they are enough
to show that the general theorem of the non-solvability by
radicals of an equation of the fifth or any higher order does not
in any wise exclude for such orders the existence of particular
equations solvable by radicals, and there are, in fact, extensive
classes of equations which are thus solvable; the binomial
equations *" i =o present an instance.
22. It has already been shown how the several roots of the equation
x* i =o can be expressed in the form cos |- i sin , but the
question is now that of the algebraical solution (or solution by
radicals) of this equation. There is always a root = I ; if w be any
other root, then obviously a, w 2 , . . . w"" 1 are all of them roots ; x" 1
contains the factor x i, and it thus appears that w, u 2 , ... u"~ l are
the n l roots of the equation
we have, of course, a>"~ 1 +u"~ 2 + . . . +co+i =p.
It is proper to distinguish the cases n prime and n composite;
and in the latter case there is a distinction according as the prime
factors of n are simple or multiple. By way of illustration, suppose
successively n = 15 and n = 9 ; in the former case, if o be an imaginary
root of x 3 I =o (or root of x 2 +x+l =o), and ft an imaginary root
of * 6 i =o (or root of x 4 +x 3 +x*+x+l =o), then a may be taken
= aft; the successive powers thereof, aft, a 2 /? 2 , ft 3 , aft 4 , a 2 , ft, a/3 2 ,
o 2 /3 3 , ft 4 , a, a 2 /3, ft 2 , aft 3 , a*ft 4 , are the roots of x lt +x lt +. . .+*+! =o;
the solution thus depends on the solution of the equations x 3 l =o
and x 6 I =o. In the latter case, if o be an imaginary root of
x' i =o (or root of x 2 +x+i =o), then the equation x* l =o gives
** = l, o, or o 2 ; X 3 = i gives x = l, o, or a 2 ; and the solution thus
depends on the solution of the equations x 3 l = o,j; 3 a = o, x 3 a 2 = o.
The first equation has the roots I, a, a 2 ; if ft be a root of either of the
others, say if ft 3 = a, then assuming a = ft, the successive powers are
ft, ft 2 , a, aft, aft 2 , a 2 , a 2 /3, a 2 ft 2 , which are the roots of the equation
*+*'+ . . . +x+l =0.
It thus appears that the only case which need be considered is that
of M a prime number, and writing (as is more usual) r in place of u,
we have r, r 2 , r 3 , . . . r"~ l as the (n l) roots of the reduced equation
then not only r I =o, but also r n - l +r n ~ 2 + . . '. +r + i =o.
23. The process of solution due to Karl Friedrich Gauss (1801)
depends essentially on the arrangement of the roots in a certain
order, viz. not as above, with the indices of r in arithmetical
progression, but with their indices in geometrical progression;
the prime number n has a certain number of prime roots g,
which are such that g n ~ l is the lowest power of g, which is = i
to the modulus n; or, what is the same thing, that the series of
powers i, g, g 2 , . . . g"~ 2 , each divided by n, leave (in a different
order) the remainders i, 2, 3, ... n i; hence giving to r in
succession the indices i, g, g 2 , . . . g"- 2 , we have, in a different
order, the whole series of roots r, r 2 , r 3 , . . . r n ~ l .
In the most simple case, n = 5, the equation to be solved is* 4 -|-* 3 +
x 2 +*+l =o; here 2 is a prime root of 5, and the order of the roots
is r, r 2 , r 4 , r 3 . The Gaussian process consists in forming an equation
for determining the periods PI, P 2 , r-\-r 4 and r 2 +r 3 respectively,
these being such that the symmetrical functions Pi+P 2 , PiP 2 are
rationally determinate : in fact Pi+P 2 =-l, PiP 2 = (r+r 4 )(r 2 +r 3 ),
= r 3 +r 4 +r 6 +r 7 , =r 3 +r 4 +r+r*, = I. Pi, P 2 are thus the roots
of tt 2 + I =o; and taking them to be known, they are themselves
broken up into subperiods, in the present case single terms, r and r 4
for Pi, r 2 and r 3 for P 2 ; the symmetrical functions of these are then
rationally determined in terms of Pi and P 2 ; thus r+r* = Pi, r.r 4 l,
or r, r 4 are the roots of M 2 PiW+l =o. The mode of division is more
clearly seen for a larger value of n; thus, for n = ^ a prime root is
= 3, and the arrangement of the roots is r, r 3 , r 2 , r 6 , r 4 , r*. We may
form either 3 periods each of 2 terms, Pi, P 2 , P 3 = r+r*, r 3 +r 4 , r 2 +r 5
respectively; or else 2 periods each of 3 terms, Pi, P 2 = r+r 2 +r 4 ,
r 3 H-r 6 +r 6 respectively; in each case the symmetrical functions of
the periods are rationally determinable : thus in the case of the two
periods P!+P 2 =-I, PiP = 3+r+r 2 +r ! -|-r 4 -|-r 6 +r*, =2; and the
periods being known the symmetrical functions of the several terms
of each period are rationally determined in terms of the periods, thus
The theory was further developed by Lagrange (1808), who,
applying his general process to the equation in question, *"- 1 +
x"- 2 + ... +x+ 1 = o(the roots a, b, c . . . being the several powers
of r, the indices in geometrical progression as above), showed
that the function (a+ub+uPc+ . . .)""' was in this case a given
function of co with integer coefficients.
Reverting to the before-mentioned particular equation x 4 -\-x* +
x 2 +x-\-i =o, it is very interesting to compare the process of solution
with that for the solution of the general quartic the roots whereof are
a, b, c, d.
Take w, a root of the equation u 4 I =o (whence w is =l, I, ,
or i, at pleasure), and consider the expression
the developed value of this is
s c +c 3 +d 3 a) + 1 2 (a*cd +b*da +c*ab +d 1 bc) I
) +4(a>c+b 3 d+c
EQUATION
719
that is. this U a 6-valuitl function of a, 6. t. d. the root of a Kxtic
(which is. in fact, solvable by radical- . but this is not here material).
If. however, a, 6. c. d denote the roots r, r*, r 4 , r 1 of the special
equation, then the expression becomes
+ U (r+r+r'+r)
+ l)+U(r+H+r
\ ii. this is
- -l+4+l4' 1601'.
a completely determined value. That U, we have
(r+r+wr+r) - - I +4 + 14 -
which result contains the solution of the equation. If - I, we have
(r+r+r 4 +r') 4 -I.whichisright:ifu- - I.then(r4-r 4 -r 1 -r) 4 -25;
ifw-i. then we have |r-r+i(r r 1 )! 4 - Ij-j-aoi; and ifw- i,
then Ir-r 4 '(/* r*)| 4 - 15 201; the solution may be completed
without difficulty.
The result is perfectly general, thus: n being a prime number,
r a root of the equation *""'+*""*+ . . . +*+i o, <o a root of
a.- * i o, and g a prime root of g*~ l i (mod. n), then
(r +<" + . . . +w-r *-')-i
U a given function M +Mi<o . . . + M.-jw"" 1 with integer co-
efficients, and by the extraction of ( i)th roots of this and
.-imilar expressions we ultimately obtain r in terms of to, which is
taken to be known; the equation *" i o, n a prime number,
is thus solvable by radicals. In particular, if n i be a power of 2,
the solution (by either process) requires the extraction of square
roots only; and it was thus that Gauss discovered that it was
possible to construct geometrically the regular polygons of 17
sides and 257 sides respectively. Some interesting developments
in regard to the theory were obtained by C. G. J. Jacobi (1837);
see the memoir " Ueber die Kreisthcilung, u.s.w.," Crelle, t. xxx.
(1846).
The equation **"*+ . . . +1+ 1 =o has been considered for its
own sake, but it also serves as a specimen of a class of equations
solvable by radicals, considered by N. H. Abel (1828), and since
called Abclian equations, viz. for the Abelian equation of the
order n, if x be any root, the roots are x, Ox, 0*x, . . . 0*~ l x (Ox
being a rational function of x, and 0*x = x) ; the theory is, in fact,
very analogous to that of the above particular case.
A more general theorem obtained by Abel is as follows: If the
roots of an equation of any order are connected together in such
wise that all the roots can be expressed rationally in terms of
any one of them, say x; if, moreover. Ox, 9,x being any two of the
root*, we have *9i* = fliftc, the equation will be solvable algebraically.
It is proper to refer also to Abel's definition of an irreducible equation :
an equation *x = o, the coefficients of which are rational functions
of a certain number of known quantities a, b, c. .. .is called irreducible
when it is impossible to express its roots by an equation of an inferior
degree, the coefficients of which are also rational functions of a, 6, c ...
(or, what is the same thing, when x does not break up into factors
which are rational functions of a, b, c . . . ). Abel applied his theory
to the equations which present themselves in the division of the
elliptic functions, but not to the modular equations.
24. But the theory of the algebraical solution of equations
in its most complete form was established by Evariste Galois
(born October 1811, killed in a duel May 1832; see his collected
works, Liovfille, t. xl., 1846). The definition of an irreducible
equation resembles Abel's, an equation is reducible when it
admits of a rational divisor, irreducible in the contrary case;
only the word rational is used in this extended sense that, in
connexion with the coefficients of the given equation, or with the
irrational quantities (if any) whereof these are composed, he
considers any number of other irrational quantities called
" adjoint radicals," and he terms rational any rational function
of the coefficients (or the irrationals whereof they are composed)
and of these adjoint radicals; the epithet irreducible is thus taken
either absolutely or in a relative sense, according to the system of
adjoint radicals which are taken into account. For instance,
the equation x 4 +x*+j?+x+i**o; the left hand side has here
no rational divisor, and the equation is irreducible; but this
function is(x*-f Jx+i)* \&, and it cas thus the irrational
divisors x*+J('+V 5)*+ 1, x*+$(i Vs)*+i; and these, if
we adjoin the radical V 5. are rational, and the equation is no
longer irreducible. In the case of a given equation, assumed to be
irreducible, the problem to solve the equation is, in fact, that of
finding radicals by the adjunction of which the equation becum.
reducible; for instance, the general quadric equation **+/>*+
q~ o is irreducible, but it becomes reducible, breaking up into
rational linear factors, when we adjoin the radical V(i' <])
The fundamental theorem is the Proposition I. of the " M6moire
sur les conditions de rcsolubilit des equations par radicaux";
viz. given an equation of which a, b, c . . . are the m roots, there is
always a group of permutations of the letters a, b, c . . . possessed
of the following properties:
1. Every function of the roots invariable by the substitutions
of the group is rationally known.
2. Reciprocally every rationally determinate function of tin-
roots is invariable by the substitutions of the group.
Here by an invariable function is meant not only a function of
which the form is invariable by the substitutions of the group, but
further, one of which the value is invariable by these substitution--:
for instance, if the equation be <f> (x) -o, then <t>(x) is a function of tin-
roots invariable by any substitution whatever. And in saying that
a function is rationally known, it is meant that its value is expressible
rationally in termsof the coefficients and of the adjoint quantities.
For instance in the case of a general equation, the group is simply
the system of the i.2.3_. . . n permutations of all the roots, since,
in this case, the only rationally dctcrminable functions are the sym-
metric functions of the roots.
In the case of the equation x"~' . . . +5 + 1 -o, n a prime number,
a, 6, c...k*>r,n, r* . . . ri*-*, where g is a prime root of n, then the
group is the cyclical group abc ...It, be . . . ka, . . . kab . . ,j, that is,
in this particular case the number of the permutations of the group
is equal to the order of the equation.
This notion of the group of the original equation, or of the group of
the equation as varied by the adjunction of a series of radicals, seems
to be the fundamental one in Galois's theory. But the problem of
solution by radicals, instead of being the sole object of the theory,
appears as the first link of a long chain of questions relating to the
transformation and classification of irrationals.
Returning to the question of solution by radicals, it will be readily
understood that by the adjunction of a radical the group may be
diminished ; for instance, in the case of the general cubic, where the
group is that of the six permutations, by the adjunction of the square
root which enters into the solution, the group is reduced to abc,
bca, cab', that is, it becomes possible to express rationally, in terms
of the coefficients and of the adjoint square root, any function such
as a t b+b*c+c t a which is not altered by the cyclical substitution
a into 6, 6 into c, c into a. And hence, to determine whether an
equation of a given form is solvable by radicals, the course of in-
vestigation is to inquire whether, by the successive adjunction of
radicals, it is oossible to reduce the original group of the equation
so as to make it ultimately consist of a single permutation.
The condition in order that an equation of a given prime order n
may be solvable by radicals was in this way obtained in the first
instance in the form (scarcely intelligible without further explana-
tion) that every function of the roots x\, *j . . . *, invariable by the
substitutions Xai^t for Xt, must be rationally known; and then
in the equivalent form that the resolvent equation of the order
1.2 ... (n 2) must have a rational root. In particular, the condition
in order that a quintic equation may be solvable is that Lagrange's
resolvent of the order 6 may have a rational factor, a result obtained
from a direct investigation in a valuable memoir by E. Luther,
Crelle, t. xxxiv. (1847).
Among other results demonstrated or announced by Galois may
be mentioned those relating to the modular equations in the theory
of elliptic functions; for the transformations of the orders 5, 7, n,
the modular equations of the orders 6, 8, 12 are depressible to the
orders 5, 7, n respectively; but for the transformation, n a prime
number greater than II, the depression is impossible.
The general theory of Galois in regard to the solution of equations-
was completed, and some of the demonstrations supplied by E.
Betti (1852). See also J. A. Serret's Cours d'algebre superieure, 2nd
ed. (1854); 4th ed. (1877-1878).
25. Returning to quintic equations, George Birch Jerrard
(1835) established the theorem that the general quintic equation
is by the extraction of only square and cubic roots reducible to
the form af*-faar+ 6 = 0, or what is the same thing, to x 6 +x+b = o.
The actual reduction by means of Tschirnhausen's theorem was
effected by Charles Hermite in connexion with his elliptic-
function solution of the quintic equation (1858) in a very elegant
manner. It was shown by Sir James Cockle and Robert Harley
(1858-1859) in connexion with the Jcrrardian form, and by
Arthur Cayley (1861), that Lagrange's resolvent equation of the
sixth order can be replaced by a more simple sextic equation
occupying a like place in the theory.
The theory of the modular equations, more particularly for the
case =5, has been studied by C. Hermite, L. Kronecker and
F. Brioschi. In the case n 5, the modular equation of the order 6
720
EQUATION OF THE CENTRE EQUIDAE
depends, as already mentioned, on an equation of the order 5;
and conversely the general quintic equation may be made to
depend upon this modular equation of the order 6; that is,
assuming the solution of this modular equation, we can solve
(not by radicals) the general quintic equation; this is Hermite's
solution of the general quintic equation by elliptic functions
(1858); it is analogous to the before-mentioned trigonometrical
solution of the cubic equation. The theory is reproduced and
developed in Brioschi's memoir, " Uber die Auflosung der
Gleichungen vom fiinften Grade," Math. Annalen, t. xiii.
(1877-1878).
26. The modern work, reproducing the theories of Galois,
and exhibiting the theory of algebraic equations as a whole, is C.
Jordan's Traite des substitutions et des Equations algebriques (Paris,
1870). The work is divided into four books book i., preliminary,
relating to the theory of congruences; book ii. is in two chapters,
the first relating to substitutions in general, the second to substitu-
tions defined analytically, and chiefly to linear substitutions; book
iii. has four chapters, the first discussing the principles of the general
theory, the other three containing applications to algebra, geometry,
and the theory of transcendents; lastly, book iv., divided into seven
chapters, contains a determination of the general types of equations
solvable by radicals, and a complete system of classification of these
types. A glance through the index will show the vast extent which
Hesse's equation, R. F. A. Clebsch's equations, lines on a quartic
surface having a nodal line, singular points of E. E. Rummer's
surface, lines on a cubic surface, problems of contact; the applica-
tions to the theory of transcendents comprise circular functions,
elliptic functions (including division and the modular equation),
hyperelliptic functions, solution of equations by transcendents.
And on this last subject, solution of equations by transcendents,
we may quote the result " the solution of the general equation of
an order superior to five cannot be made to depend upon that of the
equations for the division of the circular or elliptic functions";
and again (but with a reference to a possible case of exception),
" the general equation cannot be solved by aid of the equations which
give the division of the hyperelliptic functions into an odd number
of parts." (See also GROUPS, THEORY OF.) (A. CA.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY. For the general theory see W. S. Burnside and
A. W. Panton, The Theory of Equations (4th ed., 1899-1901); the
Galoisian theory is treated in G. B. Matthews, Algebraic Equations
(1907). See also the Ency. d. math. Wiss. vol. ii.
EQUATION OF THE CENTRE, in astronomy, the angular
distance, measured around the centre of motion, by which a
planet moving in an ellipse deviates from the mean position which
it would occupy if it moved uniformly. Its amount is the correc-
tion which must be applied positively or negatively to the mean
anomaly in order to obtain the true anomaly. It arises from the
ellipticity of the orbit, is zero at pericentre and apocentre, and
reaches its greatest amount nearly midway between these points.
(See ANOMALY and ORBIT.)
EQUATION OF TIME, the difference between apparent time,
determined by the meridian passage of the real sun, and mean
time, determined by the passage of the mean sun. It goes
through a double period in the course of a year. Its amount
varies a fraction of a minute for the same date, from year to year
and from one longitude to another, on the same day. The follow-
ing table shows an average value for any date and for the Green-
wich meridian for a number of years, from which the actual
value will seldom deviate more than 20 seconds until after 1950.
The + sign indicates that the real sun reaches the meridian after
mean noon; the - sign before mean noon.
Table of the Equation of Time.
m. s. m. s. m. s.
Jan. I + 3 26 Mar. I +12 39 May I -2 55
6 5 45 6 n 35 6-3 27
ii 7 51 ii 10 20 II 3 40
16 9 43 16 8 58 16 -3 51
21 n 19 21 7 30 21 -3 40
26 12 36 26 5 59 26 -3 16
Feb. I +13 42 Apr. 1+4 9 J" ne ' ~ 2 32
6 14 14 6 2 40 6 -i 44
II 14 25 ii + i 15 n -o 48
16 14 17 16 - o 3 16 +o 14
21 n 52 21 - I 12 21 i 19
26 13 II 26 - 2 10 26 2 24
m. s.
July i +3 26
6 4 21
ii 5 8
16
21
26
5 44
6 8
6 18
m. s.
Sept. i + o 9
6 - i 28
ii - 3 10
16 - 4 55
216 41
26-8 25
Aug. i +6 10 Oct. i 10 5
6 5 47 6 -ii 38
ii 5 9 ii -13 2
16 4 17 16 14 14
21 3 12 21 15 ii
26 i 55 26 15 52
Nov. i -16 18
6 16 19
ii -15 58
16 -15 15
21 14 12
26 12 49
Dec. i ii 7
6-9 9
ii - 6 57
16-4 35
21-2 7
26+0 23
EQUATOR (Late Lat. aequator, from aequare, to make equal),
in geography, that great circle of the earth, equidistant from the
two poles, which divides the northern from the southern hemi-
sphere and lies in a plane perpendicular to the axis of the earth ;
this is termed the " geographical " or " terrestrial equator."
In astronomy, the " celestial equator " is the name given to the
great circle in which the plane of the terrestrial equator intersects
the celestial sphere; it is consequently equidistant from the
celestial poles. The " magnetic equator " is an imaginary line
encircling the earth, along which the vertical component of the
earth's magnetic force is zero; it nearly coincides with the
terrestrial equator.
EQUERRY (from the Fr. ecurie, a stable, through its older form
escurie, from the Med. Lat. scuria, a word of Teutonic origin for
a stable or shed, cf. Ger. Scheuer; the modern spelling has con-
fused the word with the Lat. equus, a horse), a contracted form
of " gentleman of the equerry," an officer in charge of the stables
of a royal household. At the British court, equerries are officers
attached to the department of the master of the horse, the first
of whom is called chief equerry (see HOUSEHOLD, ROYAL) .
EQUIDAE, the family of perissodactyle ungulate mammals
typified by the horse (Equus caballus) ; see HORSE. According
to the older classification this family was taken to include only
the forms with tall-crowned teeth, more or less closely allied to
the typical genus Equus. There is, however, such an almost
complete graduation from the former to earlier and more primi-
tive mammals with short-crowned cheek-teeth, at one time
included in the family Lophiodontidae (see PERISSODACTYLA),
that it has now become a very general practice to include the
whole " phylum " in the family Equidae. The Equidae, in this
extended sense, together with the extinct Palaeolheriidae, are
indeed now regarded as forming one of four main groups into
which the Perissodactyla are divided, the other groups being
the Tapiroidea, Rhinocerotoidea and Titanotheriide. For the
horse-group the name Hippoidea is employed. All four groups
were closely connected in the Lower Eocene, so that exact
definition is almost impossible.
In the Hippoidea there is generally the full series of 44 teeth,
but the first premolar is often deciduous or wanting in the lower
or.in both jaws. The incisors are chisel-shaped, and the canines
tend to become isolated so as in the now specialized forms to
occupy nearly the middle of a longer or shorter gap between the
incisors and premolars. In the upper molars the two outer
columns of the primitive tubercular molar coalesce to form an
outer wall, from which proceed two crescentic transverse crests;
the connexion between the crests and the wall being imperfect or
slight, and the crests themselves sometimes tubercular. Each
of the lower molars carries two crescentic ridges. The number of
toes ranges from four to one in the fore-foot, and from three to
one in the hind-foot. The paroccipital, postglenoid and post'
tympanic processes of the skull are large, and the latter always
distinct. Normally there are no traces of horn-cores. The
calcaneum lacks the facet for the fibula found in the Titano-
theroidea.
In the earlier Equidae the teeth were short-crowned, with
the premolars simpler than the molars; but there is a gradual
tendency to an increase in the height of the crowns of the teeth,
accompanied by increasing complexity of structure and the
filling up of the hollows with cement. Similarly the gap on each
side of the canine tooth in each jaw continues to increase in
EQUIDAE
721
length; while in all the later forms the orbit is surrounded by a
ring of bone. A third modification is the increasing length of
limb (as well as in general bodily size), accompanied by a gradual
reduction in the number of toes from three or four to one.
All the existing members of the family, such as the domesticated
horse (Equus cabalius) and its wild or half-wild relatives, the
a 5 asses and the zebras, are in-
cluded in the typical genus.
In all these the crowns of
the cheek-teeth are very tall
(fig. i, b) and only develop
roots late in life; while their
grinding-surfaces (fig. 2, b and
c) are very complicated and
have all the hollows filled
with cement. The summits of
the incisors are infolded, pro-
ducing, when partially worn,
the "mark." In the skull the
orbit is surrounded by bone,
and there is no distinct de-
FlG. I. o. Side view of second pression in front of the same.
upper molar tooth of Anchitherium Each limb terminates in one
(brachyodont form); b. com- i arge toe; tne lateral digits
fW"* ^ being represented by the
splint-bones, corresponding to
the lateral metacarpals and metatarsals of Hipparion. Not
unfrequently, however, the lower ends of the splint-bones carry
a small expansion, representing the phalanges.
Remains of horses indistinguishable from E. cabaiius occur
in the Pleistocene deposits of Europe and Asia; and it is from
them that the dun-coloured small horses of northern Europe
and Asia are probably derived. The ancestor of these Pleistocene
horses is probably E. sttnonis, of the Upper Pliocene of Europe,
which has a small depression in front of the orbit, while the skull
is relatively larger, the feet are rather shorter, and the splint-
bones somewhat more developed. In India a nearly allied
species (E. sivaltniis), occurs in the Lower Pliocene, and may
have been the ancestor of the Arab stock, which shows traces of
the depression in front of the orbit characteristic of the earlier
forms. In North America species of Equus occur in the Pleistocene
and from that continent others reached South America during
the same epoch. In the latter country occurs Hippidium, in
which the cheek-teeth are shorter and simpler, and the nasal
bones very long and slender, with elongated slits at the side.
The limbs, especially the cannon-bones, are relatively short, and
the splint-bones large. The allied Argentine Onohippidium,
which is also Pleistocene, has still longer nasal bones and slits,
and a deep double cavity in front of the orbit, part of which
probably contained a gland. Onohippidium is certainly off the
a b c
FIG. i. a. Grinding surface of unworn right upper molar tooth
of Anchitherium; b, corresponding surface of unworn molar of young
bone; c. the same tooth after it has been some time in use. The
uncoloured portions are the dentine or ivory, the shaded parts the
cement filling the cavities and surrounding the exterior. The black
line separating these two structures is the enamel or hardest con-
stituent of the tooth.
direct line of descent of the modern horses, and, on account of
the length of the nasals and their slits, the same probably holds
good for Hippidium.
Species from the Pliocene of Texas and the Upper Miocene
(Loup Fork) of Oregon were at one time assigned to Hippidium,
but this is incorrect, that genus being exclusively South American.
The name Pliohippus has been applied to species from the same
two formations on the supposition that the foot-structure was
similar to that of Hippidium, but Mr J. W. Gidley is of opinion
that the lateral digits may have been fully developed.
Apparently there is here some gap in the line of descent of the
horse, and it may be suggested that the evolution took place,
not as commonly supposed, in North America, but in eastern
central Asia, of which the palaeontology is practically unknown;
some support is given to this theory by the fact that the earliest
species with which we are acquainted occur in northern India.
Be this as it may, the next North American representatives
of the family constitute the genera Protohippus and Merychippus
of the Miocene, in both of which the lateral digits are fully
developed and terminate in small though perfect hoofs. In
both the cheek-teeth have moderately tall crowns, and in the
first named of the two those of the milk-series are nearly similar
to their permanent successors. In Merychippus, on the other
hand, the milk-molars have short crowns, without any cement
in the hollows, thus resembling the permanent molars of the
under-mentioned genus Anchitherium. From the well-known
Hipparion, or Hippolherium, typically from the Lower Pliocene
of Europe, but also occurring in the corresponding formation
in North Africa, Persia, India and China, and represented in
the Upper Miocene Loup Fork beds of the United States by species
which it has been proposed to separate generically as Neo-
FIG. 3. Successive stages of modification of the left fore-feet of
extinct forms of horse-like animals, showing gradual reduction of
the outer and enlargement of the middle toe (ill).
a, Hyracotherium (Eocene). d, Hipparion (Pliocene).
b, Mesohippus (Oligocene). e, Equus (Pleistocene).
c, Anchitherium (Miocene),
hipparion, we reach small horses which are now generally
regarded as a lateral offshoot from the Merychippus type. The
cheek-teeth, which have crowns of moderate height, differ from
those of all the foregoing in that the postero-internal pillar
(the projection on the right-hand top corner of c in fig. 2) is
isolated in place of being attached by a narrow neck to the
adjacent crescent. The skull, which is relatively- short, has a
large depression in front of the orbk, commonly supposed to
have contained a gland, but this may be doubtful. In the typical,
and also in the North American forms these were complete,
although small, lateral toes in both feet (fig. 3, d), but it is possible
that in H. antilopinum of India the lateral toes had disappeared.
If this be so, we have the development of a monodactyle foot in
this genus independently of Equus.
The foregoing genera constitute the subfamily Equinae, or
the Equidae as restricted by the older writers. In all the dentition
is of the hypsodont type, with the hollows of the cheek-teeth
filled by cement, the premolars moiariform, and the first small
and generally deciduous. The orbit is surrounded by a bony
ring; the ulna and radius in the fore, and the tibia and fibula
in the hind-limb are united, and the feet are of the types described
above. Between this subfamily and the second subfamily,
Hyracotheriinae, a partial connexion is formed by the North
American Upper Miocene genera Deunatippus and Anchippus
or Parahippus. The characteristics of the group will be gathered
from the remarks on the leading genera; but it may be mentioned
that the orbit is open behind, the cheek-teeth are short-crowned
and without cement (fig. i, a), the gap between the canine and
722
EQUILIBRIUM
the outermost incisor is short, the bones of the middle part of
the leg are separate, and there are at least three toes to each foot.
The longest-known genus and the one containing the largest
species is Anchitherium, typically from the Middle Miocene of
Europe, but also represented by one species from the Upper
Miocene of North America. The European A. aurelianense
was of the size of an ordinary donkey. The cheek-teeth are of
the type shown in a of figs, i and 2 ; the premolars, with the
exception of the small first one, being molar-like; and the lateral
toes (fig. 3, c) were to some extent functional. The summits of
the incisors were infolded to a small extent. Nearly allied is
the American Mesohippus, ranging from the Lower Miocene
to the Lower Oligocene of the United States, of which the earliest
species stood only about 18 in. at the shoulder. The incisors
were scarcely, if at all, infolded, and there is a rudiment of the
fifth metacarpal (fig. 3, b). By some writers all the species of
Mesohippus are included in the genus Miohippus, but others
consider that the two genera are distinct.
Mesohippus and Miohippus are connected with the earliest
and most primitive mammal which it is possible to include in
the family Equidae by means of Epihippus of the Uinta or Upper
Eocene of North America, and Pachynolophus, or Orohippus,
of the Middle and Lower Eocene of both halves of the northern
hemisphere. The final stage, or rather the initial stage, in the
series is presented by Hyracotherium (Protorohippus) , a mammal
no larger than a fox, common to the Lower Eocene of Europe
and North America. The general characteristics of this pro-
genitor of the horses are those given above as distinctive of the
group. The cheek-teeth are, however, much simpler than those
of Anchitherium; the transverse crests of the upper molars not
being fully connected with the outer wall, while the premolars
in the upper jaw are triangular, and thus unlike the molars.
The incisors are small and the canines scarcely enlarged; the
latter having a gap on each side in the lower, but only one on
their hinder aspect in the upper jaw. The fore-feet have four
complete toes (fig. 3, a), but there are only three hind-toes, with
a rudiment of the fifth metatarsal. The vertebrae are simpler
in structure than in Equus. From Hyracotherium, which is
closely related to the Eocene representatives of the ancestral
stocks of the other three branches of the Perissodactyla, the
transition is easy to Phenacodus, the representative of the common
ancestor of all the Ungulata.
See also H. F. Osborn, " New Oligocene Horses," Bull. Amer.
Mus. vol. xx. p. 167 (1904); J. W. Gidley, Proper Generic Names
of Miocene Horses, p. 191; and the article PALAEONTOLOGY. (R. L.*)
EQUILIBRIUM (from the Lat. aequus, equal, and libra, a
balance), a condition of equal balance between opposite or
counteracting forces. By the " sense of equilibrium " is meant
the sense, or sensations, by which we have a feeling of security
in standing, walking, and indeed in all the movements by which
the body is carried through space. Such a feeling of security
is necessary both for maintaining any posture, such as standing,
or for performing any movement. If this feeling is absent or
uncertain, or if there are contradictory sensations, then definite
muscular movements are inefficiently or irregularly performed,
and the body may stagger or fall. When we stand erect on a
firm surface, like a floor, there is a feeling of resistance, due to
nervous impulses reaching the brain from the soles of the feet
and from the muscles of the limbs and trunk. In walking or
running, these feelings of resistance seem to precede and guide
the muscular movements necessary for the next step. If these
are absent or perverted or deficient, as is the case in the disease
known as locomotor ataxia, then, although there is no loss of the
power of voluntary movement, the patient staggers in walking,
especially if he is not allowed to look at his feet, or if he is blind-
folded. He misses the guiding sensations that come from the
limbs; and with a feeling that he is walking on a soft substance,
offering little or no resistance, he staggers, and his muscular
movements become irregular. Such a condition maybe artificially
brought about by washing the soles of the feet with chloroform
or ether. And it has been observed to exist partially after
extensive destruction of the skin of the soles of the feet by burns
or scalds. This shows that tactile impulses from the skin take
a share in generating the guiding sensation. In the disease
above mentioned, however, tactile impressions may be nearly
normal, but the guiding sensation is weak and inefficient, owing
to the absence of impulses from the muscles. The disease is
known to depend on morbid changes in the posterior columns of
the spinal cord, by which impulses are not freely transmitted
upwards to the brain. These facts point to the existence of
impulses coming from the muscles and tendons. It is now
known that there exist peculiar spindles, in muscle, and rosettes
or coils or loops of nerve fibres in close proximity to tendons.
These are the end organs of the sense. The transmission of
impulses gives rise to the muscular sense, and the guiding sensa-
tion which precedes co-ordinated muscular movements depends
on these impulses. Thus from the limbs streams of nervous
impulses pass to the sensorium from the skin and from muscles
and tendons; these may or may not arouse consciousness, but
they guide or evoke muscular movements of a co-ordinated
character, more especially of the limbs.
In animals whose limbs are not adapted for delicate touch nor
for the performance of complicated movements, such as some
mammals and birds and fishes, the guiding sensations depend
largely on the sense of vision. This sense in man, instead of
assisting, sometimes disturbs the guiding sensation. It is true
that in locomotor ataxia visual sensations may take the place
of the tactile and muscular sensations that are inefficient, and
the man can walk without staggering if he is allowed to look at
the floor, and especially if he is guided by transverse straight
lines. On the other hand, the acrobat on the wire-rope dare not
trust his visual sensations in the maintenance of his equilibrium.
He keeps his eyes fixed on one point instead of allowing them to
wander to objects below him, and his muscular movements are
regulated by the impulses that come from the skin and muscles
of his limbs. The feeling of insecurity probably arises from a
conception of height, and also from the knowledge that by no
muscular movements can a"man avoid a catastrophe if he should
fall. A bird, on the other hand, depends largely on visual
impressions, and it knows by experience that if launched into
the air from a height it can fly. Here, probably, is an explanation
of the large size of the eyes of birds. Cover the head, as in hood-
ing a falcon, and the bird seems to be deprived of the power
of voluntary movement. Little effect will be produced if we
attempt to restrain the movements of a cat by covering its eyes.
A fish also is deprived of the power of motion if its eyes are
covered. But both in the bird and in the fish tactile and muscular
impressions, especially the latter, come into play in the mechanism
of equilibrium. In flight the large-winged birds, especially in
soaring, can feel the most delicate wind-pressures, both as
regards direction and force, and they adapt the position of their
body so as to catch the pressure at the most efficient angle.
The same is true of the fish, especially of the flat-fishes. In
mammals the sense of equilibrium depends, then, on streams
of tactile, muscular and visual impressions pouring in on the
sensorium, and calling forth appropriate muscular movements.
It has also been suggested that impulses coming from the ab-
dominal viscera may take part in the mechanism. The presence
in the mesentery of felines (cats, &c.) of large numbers of Pacinian
corpuscles, which are believed to be modified tactile bodies,
favours this supposition. Such animals are remarkable for the
delicacy of such muscular movements, as balancing and leaping.
There is another channel by which nervous impulses reach the
sensorium and play their part in the sense of equilibrium, namely,
from the semicircular canals, a portion of the internal ear. It is
pointed out in the article HEARING that the appreciation of sound
is in reality an appreciation of variations of pressure. The
labyrinth consists of the vestibule, the cochlea and the semi-
circular canals. The cochlea receives the sound-waves (varia-
tions of pressure) that constitute musical tones. This it accom-
plishes by the structures in the ductus cochlearis. In the vesti-
bule we find two sacs, the saccule next to and communicating
with the ductus cochlearis, and the utricle communicating with
the semicircular canals. The base of the stapes communicates
EQUINOX
723
pressures to the utricle. The membranous portion of the semi-
circular canals consists of a tube, dilated at one end into a
swelling or pouch, termed the ampulla, and each end com-
municates frct-ly with the utricle. On the posterior wall of both
the sacculc and of the utricle there is a ridge, termed in each case
the macula acustica, bearing a highly specialized epithelium.
A similar structure exists in each ampulla. This would suggest
that all three structures have to do with hearing; but, on the
other hand, there is experimental evidence that the utricle
and the canals may transmit impressions that have to do with
equilibrium. Pressure of the base of the stapes is exerted on
the utricle. This will compress the fluid in that cavity, and tend
to drive the fluid into the semicircular canals that communicate
with that cavity by five openings. Each canal is surrounded
by a thin layer of perilymph, so that it may yield a little to this
pressure, and exert a pull or pressure on the nerve-endings in
each ampulla. Thus impulses may be generated in the nerves
of the ampullae.
The three semicircular canals lie in the three directions in
space, and it has been suggested that they have to do with our
appreciation of the direction of sound. But our appreciation of
sound is very inaccurate: we look with the eyes for the source
of a sound, and instinctively direct the ears or the head, or both,
in the direction from which the sound appears to proceed. But
the relationship of the canals on the two sides must have a
physiological significance. Thus (t) the six canals are parallel,
two and two; or (t) the two horizontal canals are in the same
plane, while the superior canal on one side is nearly parallel with
the posterior canal of the other. These facts point to the two
sets of canals and ampullae acting as one organ, in a manner
analogous to the action of two retinae for single vision.
We have next to consider how the canals may possibly act in
connexion with the sense of equilibrium. In 1820 J. Purkinje
studied the vertigo that follows rapid rotation of the body in the
erect position on a vertical axis. On stopping the rotation there
is a sense of rotation in the opposite direction, and this may
occur even when the eyes are closed. Purkinje noticed that the
position of the imaginary axis of rotation depends on the axis
around which the head revolves. In 1828 M. J. P. Flourens
discovered that injury to the canals causes disturbance to the
equilibrium and loss of co-ordination, and that sections of the
canals produce a rotatory movement of a kind corresponding
to the canal that had been divided. Thus division of a mem-
branous canal causes rotatory movements round an axis at right
angles to the plane of the divided canal. The body of the animal
always moves in the direction of the cut canal. Many other
observers have corroborated these experiments. F. Goltz was
the first who formulated the conditions necessary for equilibra-
tion. He put the matter thus: (i) A central co-ordinating
organ in the brain; (2) centripetal fibres, with their peripheral
terminations in the ampullae; and (3) centrifugal fibres, with
their terminal organs in the muscular mechanisms. A lesion of
any one of these portions of the mechanism causes loss or im-
pairment of balancing. Cyon also investigated the subject, and
concluded: (i) To maintain equilibrium, we must have an
accurate notion of the position of the head in space; (2) the
function of the semicircular canals is to communicate impressions
that give a representation of this position each canal having a
relation to one of the dimensions of space; (3) disturbance of
equilibrium follows section; (4) involuntary movements follow-
ing section are due to abnormal excitations; (5) abnormal
movements occurring a few days after the operation are caused
by irritation of the cerebellum.
On theoretical considerations of a physical character, E. Mach,
Cram- Brown and Breuer have advanced theories based on the
idea of the canals being organs for sensations of acceleration of
movement, or for the sense of rotation. Mach first pointed out
that Purkinje's phenomena, already alluded to, were in all
probability related to the semicircular canals. " He showed
that when the body is moved in space, in a straight line, we are
not conscious of the velocity of motion, but of variations in this
velocity. Similarly, if a body is rotated round a vertical axis,
we perceive only angular acceleration and not angular velocity.
The sensations produced by angular acceleration last longer
than the acceleration itself, and the position of the head during
the movements enables us to determine direction." Both Mach
and Colt/, state that varying pressures of the fluid in the canals
produced by angular rotation produce sensations of movement
(always in a direction opposite to the rotation of the body),
and that these, in turn, cause the vertigo of Purkinje and the
phenomena of Flourens. Mach, Crum-Brown and Breuer ad-
vance hydrodynamical theories in which they assume that the
fluids move in the canals. Goltz, on the other hand, supports a
hydrostatical theory in which he assumes that the phenomena
can be accounted for by varying pressures. Crum-Brown differs
from Mach and Breuer as follows: (i) In attributing movement
or variation of pressure not merely to the endolymph, but also to
the walls of the membranous canals and to the surrounding
perilymph; and (2) in regarding the two labyrinths as one
organ, all the six canals being required to form a true conception
of the rotating motion of the head. He sums up the matter
thus: " We have two ways in which a relative motion can occur
between the endolymph and the walls of the cavity containing
it (i) When the head begins to move, here the walls leave
the fluid behind; (2) when the head stops, here the fluid flows
on. In both cases the sensation of rotation is felt. In the first
this sensation corresponds to a real rotation, in the second it
does not, but in both it corresponds to a real acceleration (positive
or negative) of rotation, using the word acceleration in its
technical kinematical sense."
Cyon states that the semicircular canals only indirectly assist
in giving a notion of spatial relations. " He holds that knowledge
of the position of bodies in space depends on nervous impulses
coming from the contracting ocular muscles; that the oculo-
motor centres are in intimate physiological relationship with the
centres receiving impulses from the nerves of the semicircular
canals; and that the oculomotor centres, thus excited, produce
the movements of the eyeballs, which then determine our notions
of spatial relations." These views are supported by experiments
of Lee on dog-fish. When the fish is rotated round different
axes there are compensating movements of the eyes and fins.
" It was observed that if the fish were rotated in the plane of
one of the canals, exactly the same movements of the eyes and
fins occurred as were produced by experimental operation and
stimulation of the ampulla of that canal." Sewall, in 1883,
carried out experiments on young sharks and skates with negative
results. Lee returned to the subject in 1894, and, after numerous
experiments on dog-fish, in which the canals or the auditory
nerves were divided, obtained evidence that the ampullae con-
tain sense-organs connected with the sense of equilibrium.
It has been found by physicians and aurists that disease or
injury of the canals, occurring rapidly, produces giddiness,
staggering, nystagmus (a peculiar twitching movement of the
muscles of the eyeballs), vomiting, noises in the ear and more or
less deafness. It is said, however, that if pathological changes
come on slowly, so that the canals and vestibule are converted
into a solid mass, none of these symptoms may occur. On the
whole, the evidence is in favour of the view that from the semi-
circular canals nervous impulses are transmitted, which, co-
ordinated with impulses coming from the visual organs, from the
muscles and from the skin, form the bases of these guiding
sensations on which the sense of equilibrium depends. These
impulses may not reach the level of consciousness, but they
call into action co-ordinated mechanisms by which complicated
muscular movements are effected.
Full bibliographical references are given in the article on " The
Ear " by J. G. McKendrick, in Schafer's Textbook of Physiology,
vol. ii. p. 1194. 0- G- M-)
EQUINOX (from the Lat. aequus, equal, and nox, night), a
term used to express either the moment at which, or the point at
which, the sun apparently crosses the celestial equator. Since
the sun moves in the ecliptic, it is in the last-named sense the
point of intersection of the ecliptic and the celestial equator.
This is the usual meaning of the term in astronomy. There are
724
EQUITES
two such points, opposite each other, at one of which the sun
crosses the equator toward the north and at the other toward the
south. They are called vernal and autumnal respectively, from
the relation of the corresponding times to the seasons of the
northern hemisphere. The line of the equinoxes is the imaginary
diameter of the celestial sphere which joins them.
The vernal equinox is the initial point from which the right
ascensions and the longitudes of the heavenly bodies are measured
(see ASTRONOMY: Spherical). It is affected by the motions of
Precession and Nutation, of which the former has been known
since the time of Hipparchus. The actual equinox is defined by
first taking the conception of a fictitious point called the Mean
Equinox, which moves at a nearly uniform rate, slow varying,
however, from century to century. The true equinox then moves
around the mean equinox in a period equal to that of the moon's
nodes. These two motions are defined with greater detail in the
articles PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOXES and NUTATION.
Equinoctial Gales. At the time of the equinox it is commonly
believed that strong gales may be expected. This popular idea
has no foundation in fact, for continued observations have failed
to show any unusual prevalence of gales at this season. In one
case observations taken for fifty years show that during the five
days from the 2ist to the 2sth of March and September, there
were fewer gales and storms than during the preceding and
succeeding five days.
EQUITES (" horsemen " or " knights," from equus, " horse "),
in Roman history, originally a division of the army, but subse-
quently a distinct political order, which under the empire
resumed its military character. According to the traditional
account, Romulus instituted a cavalry corps, consisting of three
centuriae (" hundreds "), called after the three tribes from
which they were taken (Ramnes, Titles, Luceres), divided into
ten turmae (" squadrons ") of thirty men each. The collective
name for the corps was celeres (" the swift," or possibly from
/ceXijj, " a riding horse "); Livy, however, restricts the term to
a special body-guard of Romulus. The statements in ancient
authorities as to the changes in the number of the equites
during the regal period are very confusing; but it is regarded as
certain that Servius Tullius found six centuries in existence, to
which he added twelve, making eighteen in all, a number which
remained unchanged throughout the republican period. A
proposal by M. Porcius Cato the elder to supplement the de-
ficiency in the cavalry by the creation of four additional centuries
was not adopted. The earlier centuries were called sex suffragia
(" the six votes "), and at first consisted exclusively of patricians,
while those of Servius Tullius were entirely or for the most part
plebeian. Until the reform of the comitia centuriata (probably
during the censorship of Gaius Flaminius in 220 B.C.; see
COMITIA), the equites had voted first, but after that time this
privilege was transferred to one century selected by lot from the
centuries of the equites and the first class. The equites then
voted with the first class, the distinction between the sex suffragia
and the other centuries being abolished.
Although the equites were selected from the wealthiest
citizens, service in the cavalry was so expensive that the state
gave financial assistance. A sum of money (aes equestre) was
given to each eques for the purchase of two horses (one for him-
self and one for his groom), and a further sum for their keep
(aes hordearium) ; hence the name equites equo publico. In later
times, pay was substituted for the aes hordearium, three times as
much as that of the infantry. If competent, an eques could retain
his horse and vote after the expiration of his ten years' service,
and (till 129 B.C.) even after entry into the senate.
As the demands upon the services of the cavalry increased,
it was decided to supplement the regulars by the enrolment of
wealthy citizens who kept horses of their own. The origin of
these equites equo private dates back, according to Livy (v. 7),
to the siege of Veil, when a number of young men came forward
and offered their services. According to Mommsen , although the
institution was not intended to be permanent, in later times
vacancies in the ranks were filled in this manner, with the result
that service in the cavalry, with either a public or a private
horse, became obligatory upon all Roman citizens possessed of a
certain income. These equites equo privato had no vote in the
centuries, received pay in place of the aes equestre, and did not
form a distinct corps.
Thus, at a comparatively early period, three classes of equites
may be distinguished: (a) The patrician equites equo publico of
the sex suffragia; (b) the plebeian equites in the twelve remaining
centuries; (c) the equites equo privato, both patrician and
plebeian.
The equites were originally chosen by the curiae, then in suc-
cession by the kings, the consuls, and (after 443 B.C.) by the
censors, by whom they were reviewed every five years in the
Forum. Each eques, as his name was called out, passed before
the censors, leading his horse. Those whose physique and
character were satisfactory, and who had taken care of their
horses and equipments, were bidden to lead their horse on
(traducere equum), those who failed to pass the scrutiny were
ordered to sell it, in token of their expulsion from the corps.
This inspection (recognitio) must not be confounded with the
full-dress procession (transvectio) on the i5th of July from the
temple of Mars or Honos to the Capitol, instituted in 304 B.C. by
the censor Q. Fabius Maximus Rullianus to commemorate the
miraculous intervention of Castor and Pollux at the battle of
Lake Regillus. Both inspection and procession were discontinued
before the end of the republic, but revived and in a manner
combined by Augustus.
In theory, the twelve plebeian centuries were open to all free-
born youths of the age of seventeen, although in practice prefer-
ence was given to the members of the older families. Other
requirements were sound health, high moral character and an
honourable calling. At the beginning of the repubh'can period,
senators were included in the equestrian centuries. The only
definite information as to the amount of fortune necessary refers
to later republican and early imperial times, when it is known
to have been 400,000 sesterces (about 3500 to 4000). The
insignia of the equites were, at first, distinctly military such
as the purple-edged, short military cloak (trabea) and decorations
for service in the field.
With the extension of the Roman dominions, the equites lost
their military character. Prolonged service abroad possessed
little attraction for the pick of the Roman youth, and recruiting
for the cavalry from the equestrian centuries was discontinued.
The equites remained at home, or only went out as members
of the general's staff, their places being taken by the equites
equo privato, the cavalry of the allies and the most skilled horse-
men of the subject populations. The first gradually disappeared,-
and Roman citizens were rarely found in the ranks of the effective
cavalry. In these circumstances there grew up in Rome a class
of wealthy men, whose sole occupation it was to amass large
fortunes by speculation, and who found a most lucrative field of
enterprise in state contracts and the farming of the public
revenues. These tax-farmers (see PUBLICANI) were already in
existence at the time of the Second Punic War; and their numbers
and influence increased as the various provinces were added to
the Roman dominions. The change of the equites into a body
of financiers was further materially promoted (a) by the lex
Claudia (218 B.C.), which prohibited senators from engaging in
commercial pursuits, especially if (as seems probable) it included
public contracts (cf. FLAMINIUS, GAIUS); (A) by the enactment
in the time of Gaius Gracchus excluding members of the senate
from the equestrian centuries. These two measures definitely
marked off the aristocracy of birth from the aristocracy of wealth
the landed proprietor from the capitalist. The term equites,
originally confined to the purely military equestrian centuries
of Servius Tullius, now came to be applied to all who possessed
the property qualification of 400,000 sesterces.
As the equites practically monopolized the farming of the
taxes, they came to be regarded as identical with the publicani,
not, as Pliny remarks, because any particular rank was necessary
to obtain the farming of the taxes, but because such occupation
was beyond the reach of all except those who were possessed
of considerable means. Thus, at the time of the Gracchi, these
EQUITES
725
ii formed a close financial corporation of about
jo. ooo members, holding an intermediate position between the
nobility and the lower classes, keenly alive to their own interests,
and ready to stand by one another when attacked. Although
to some extent looked down upon by the senate as following
a dishonourable occupation, they had as a rule sided with the
latter, as being at least less hostile to them than the democratic
party. To obtain the support of the capitalists, Gaius Gracchus
conceived the plan of creating friction between them and the
senate, which he carried out by handing over to them the
control (a) of the jury-courts, and (b) of the revenues of Asia.
(a) Hitherto, the list of jurymen for service in the majority
of processes, both civil and criminal, had been composed ex-
clusively of senators. The result was that charges of corruption
and extortion failed, when brought against members of that
order, even in cases where there was little doubt of their guilt.
The popular indignation at such scandalous miscarriages of
justice rendered a change in the composition of the courts
imperative. Apparently Gracchus at first proposed to create
new senators from the equites and to select the jurymen from
this mixed body, but this moderate proposal was rejected in
favour of one more radical (see W. W. Fowler in Classical
Review, July 1896). By the lex Sempronia (123 B.C.) the list
was to b drawn from persons of free birth over thirty years of
age, who must possess the equestrian census, and must not be
senators. Although this measure was bound to set senators
and equites at variance, it in no way improved the lot of those
chiefly concerned. In fact, it increased the burden of the luckless
provincials, whose only appeal lay to a body of men whose
interests were identical with those of the publicani. Provided
he left the tax-gatherer alone, the governor might squeeze
what he could out of the people, while on the other hand, if he
were humanely disposed, it was dangerous for him to remonstrate.
(b) The taxes of Asia had formerly been paid by the inhabitants
themselves in the shape of a fixed sum. Gracchus ordered that
the taxes, direct and indirect, should be increased, and that the
fanning of them should be put up to auction at Rome. By this
arrangement the provincials were ignored, and everything was
left in the hands of the capitalists.
From this time dates the existence of the equestrian order
as an officially recognized political instrument. When the control
of the courts passed into the hands of the property equites, all
who were summoned to undertake the duties of judices were
called equites; the ordo judicum (the official title) and the ordo
equesler were regarded as identical. It is probable that certain
privileges of the equites were due to Gracchus; that of wearing
the gold ring, hitherto reserved for senators; that of special
seats in the theatre, subsequently withdrawn (probably by Sulla)
and restored by the lex Othonis (67 B.C.); the narrow band of
purple on the tunic as distinguished from the broad band worn
by the senators.
Various attempts were made by the senate to regain control
of the courts, but without success. The lex Li via of M. Livius
Drusus (q.v.), passed with that object, but irregularly and by the
aid of violence, was annulled by the senate itself. In 82 Sulla
restored the right of serving as judices to the senate, to which
he elevated 300 of the most influential equites, whose support
be thus hoped to secure; at the same time he indirectly dealt
a blow at the order generally, by abolishing the office of the
censor (immediately revived), in whom was vested the right
of bestowing the public horse. To this period Mommsen assigns
the regulation, generally attributed to Augustus, that the sons
of senators should be knights by right of birth. By the lex
Aurelia (70 B.C.) the judices were to be chosen in equal numbers
from senators, equites and tribuni aerarii (see AERARIUM), the
last-named being closely connected with the equites), who thus
practically commanded a majority. About this time the influence
of the equestrian order reached its height, and Cicero's great
object was to reconcile it with the senate. In this he was
successful at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy, in the
suppression of which he was materially aided by the equites.
But the union did not last long; shortly afterwards the majority
ranged themselves on the side of Julius Caesar, who did away
wit h the tribuni aerarii as judices, and replaced them by equites.
Augustus undertook the thorough reorganization of the
equestrian order on a military basis. The equites equo private
were abolished (according to Herzog, not till the reign of
Tiberius) and the term equites was officially limited to the
equites equo publico, although all who possessed the property
qualification were still considered to belong to the " equestrian
order." For the equites equo publico high moral character, good
health and the equestrian fortune were necessary. Although
free birth was considered indispensable, the right of wearing
the gold ring (jus anuli aurei) was frequently bestowed, by the
emperor upon freedmen, who thereby became ingenui and eligible
as equites. Tiberius, however, insisted upon free birth on the
father's side to the third generation. Extreme youth was no
bar; the emperor Marcus Aurclius had been an eques at the age
of six. The sons of senators were eligible by right of birth, and
appear to have been known as equites illuslres. The right of
bestowing the equus publicus was vested in the emperor; once
given, it was for life, and was only forfcitablc through degrada-
tion for some offence or the loss of the equestrian fortune.
Augustus divided the equites into six lurmae (regarded by
Hirschfeld as a continuation of the sex suffragia). Each was
under the command of a sevir (Thapxos), who was appointed
by the emperor and changed every year. During their term of
command the seviri had to exhibit games (ludi sevirales). Under
these officers the equites formed a kind of corporation, which,
although not officially recognized, had the right of passing
resolutions, chiefly such as embodied acts of homage to the
imperial house. It is not known whether the lurmae contained
a fixed number of equites; there is no doubt that, in assigning
the public horse, Augustus went far beyond the earlier figure
of 1 800. Thus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus mentions 5000 equites
as taking part in a review at which he himself was present.
As before, the equites wore the narrow, purple-striped tunic,
and the gold ring, the latter now being considered the distinctive
badge of knighthood. The fourteen rows in the theatre were
extended by Augustus to seats in the circus.
The old recognilio was replaced by the probalio, conducted
by the emperor in his censorial capacity, assisted by an advisory
board of specially selected senators. The ceremony was combined
with a procession, which, like the earlier transvectio, took place
on the isth of July, and at such other times as the emperor
pleased. As in earlier times, offenders were punished by expulsion.
In order to provide a supply of competent officers, each eques
was required to fill certain subordinate posts, called militiae
equeslres. These were (i) the command of an auxiliary cohort;
(2) the tribunate of a legion; (3) the command of an auxiliary
cavalry squadron, this order being as a rule strictly adhered to.
To these Septimius Severus added the centurionship. Nomina-
tion to the militiae equestres was in the hands of the emperor.
After the completion of their preliminary military service, the
equites were eligible for a number of civil posts, chiefly those with
which the emperor himself was closely concerned. Such were
various procuratorships; the prefectures of the corn supply,
of the fleet, of the watch, of the praetorian guards; the governor-
ships of recently acquired provinces (Egypt, Noricum), the others
being reserved for senators. At the same time, the abolition
of the indirect method of collecting the taxes in the provinces
greatly reduced the political influence of the equites. Certain
religious functions of minor importance were also reserved for
them. In the jury courts, the equites, thanks to Julius Caesar,
already formed two-thirds of the judices; Augustus, by excluding
the senators altogether, virtually gave them the sole control
of the tribunals. One of the chief objects of the emperors being
to weaken the influence of the senate by the opposition of the
equestrian order, the practice was adopted of elevating those
equites who had reached a certain stage in their career to the
rank of senator by adlectio. Certain official posts, of which it
would have been inadvisable to deprive senators, could thus be
bestowed upon the promoted equites.
The control of the imperial correspondence and purse was
726
EQUITY
at first in the hands of freedme.n and slaves. The emperor
Claudius tentatively entrusted certain posts connected with
these to the equites; in the time of Hadrian this became the
regular custom. Thus a civil career was open to the equites
without the obligation of preliminary military service, and the
emperor was freed from the pernicious influence of freedmen.
After the reign of Marcus Aurelius (according to Mommsen)
the equites were divided into: (a) viri eminentissimi, the prefects
of the praetorian guard; (b) viri perfectissimi, the other prefects
and the heads of the financial and secretarial departments; (c)
viri egregii, first mentioned in the reign of Antoninus Pius, a
title by fight of the procurators generally.
Under the empire the power of the equites was at its highest
in the time of Diocletian; in consequence of the transference
of the capital to Constantinople, they sank to the position of a
mere city guard, under the control of the prefect of the watch.
Their history may be said to end with the reign of Constantine
the Great.
Mention may also be made of the equites singular es Augusti.
The body-guard of Augustus, consisting of foreign soldiers
(chiefly Germans and Batavians), abolished by Galba, was
revived from the time of Trajan or Hadrian under the above
title. It was chiefly recruited from the pick of the provincial
cavalry, but contained some Roman citizens. It formed the
imperial " Swiss guard," and never left the city except to
accompany the emperor.' In the time of Severus, these equites
were divided into two corps, each of which had its separate
quarters, and was commanded by a tribune under the orders of
the prefect of the praetorian guard. They were subsequently
replaced by the protectores Augusti.
See further article ROME: History; also T. Mommsen, Romisches
Staatsrecht, iii. ; J. N. Madvig, DieVerfassungdes romischen Staales, i.;
R. Cagnat in Daremberg and Saglio's Diclionnaire des antiquites,
where full references to ancient authorities are given in the footnotes ;
A. S. Wilkins in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
(3rd ed., 1891) ; E. Belot, Histoire des chevaliers remains (1866-1873) ;
H. O. Hirschfeld, Vntersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der romischen
Verwaltungsgeschichle (Berlin, 1877); E. Herzog, Geschichte und
System der romischen Slaatsverfassung (Leipzig, 1884-1891); A. H.
Friedlander, Sittengeschichte Roms, i. (1901); A. H. J. Greenidge,
History of Rome, i. (1904); J. B. Bury, The Student's Roman Empire
(1893): T. M. Taylor, Political and Constitutional History of Rome
(1899). Fora concise summary of different views of the sex suffragia
see A. Bouche-Leclercq's Manuel des antiquites romaines, quoted in
Daremberg and Saglio; and on the equites singulares, T. Mommsen
in Hermes, xvi. (1881), p. 458. (J. H. F.)
EQUITY (Lat. aequitas), a term which in its most general sense
means equality or justice; in its most technical sense it means a
system of law or a body of connected legal principles, which have
superseded or supplemented the common law on the ground of
their intrinsic superiority. Aristotle (Ethics, bk. v. c. 10) defines
equity as a better sort of justice, which corrects legal justice
where the latter errs through being expressed in a universal form
and not taking account of particular cases. When the law speaks
universally, and something happens which is not according to
the common course of events, it is right that the law should be
modified in its application to that particular case, as the lawgiver
himself would have done, if the case had been present to his
mind. Accordingly the equitable man ((Tritons) is he who
does not push the law to its extreme, but, having legal justice on
his side, is disposed to make allowances. Equity as thus described
would correspond rather to the judicial discretion which modifies
the administration of the law than to the antagonistic system
which claims to supersede the law.
The part played by equity in the development of law is admir-
ably illustrated in the well-known work of Sir Henry Maine on
Ancient Law. Positive law, at least in progressive societies, is
constantly tending to fall behind public opinion, and the ex-
pedients adopted for bringing it into harmony therewith are
three, viz. legal fictions, equity and statutory legislation. Equity
here is defined to mean " any body of rules existing by the side of
the original civil law, founded on distinct principles, and claiming
incidentally to supersede the civil law in virtue of a superior
sanctity inherent in those principles." It is thus different from
legal fiction, by which a new rule is introduced surreptitiously,
and under the pretence that no change has been made in the law,
and from statutory legislation, in which the obligatory force of
the rule is not supposed to depend upon its intrinsic fitness.
The source of Roman equity was the fertile theory of natural law,
or the law common to all nations. Even in the Institutes of
Justinian the distinction is carefully drawn in the laws of a
country between those which are peculiar to itself and those
which natural reason appoints for all mankind. The connexion
in Roman law between the ideas of equity, nature, natural
law and the law common to all nations, and the influence of the
Stoical philosophy on their development, are fully discussed in
the third chapter of the work we have referred to. The agency
by which these principles were introduced was the edicts of the
praetor, an annual proclamation setting forth the manner in
which the magistrate intended to administer the law during his
year of office. Each successive praetor adopted the edict of his
predecessor, and added new equitable rules of his own, until the
further growth of the irregular code was stopped by the praetor
Salvius Julianus in the reign of Hadrian.
The place of the praetor was occupied in English jurisprudence
by the lord high chancellor. The real beginning of English equity
is to be found in the custom of handing over to that officer, for
adjudication, the complaints which were addressed to the king,
praying for remedies beyond the reach of the common law. Over
and above the authority delegated to the ordinary councils or
courts, a reserve of judicial power was believed to reside in the
king, which was invoked as of grace by the suitors who could
not obtain relief from any inferior tribunal. To the chancellor,
as already the head of the judicial system, these petitions were
referred, although he was not at first the only officer through
whom the prerogative of grace was administered. In the reign
of Edward III. the equitable jurisdiction of the court appears
to have been established. Its constitutional origin was analogous
to that of the star chamber and the court of requests. The
latter, in fact, was a minor court of equity attached to the lord
privy seal as the court of chancery was to the chancellor. The
successful assumption of extraordinary or equitable jurisdiction
by the chancellor caused similar pretensions to be made by other
officers and courts. " Not only the court of exchequer, whose
functions were in a peculiar manner connected with royal
authority, but the counties palatine of Chester, Lancaster and
Durham, the court of great session in Wales, the universities,
the city of London, the Cinque Ports and other places silently
assumed extraordinary jurisdiction similar to that exercised
in the court of chancery." Even private persons, lords and
ladies, affected to establish in their honours courts of equity.
English equity has one marked historical peculiarity, viz.
that it established itself in a set of independent tribunals which
remained in standing contrast to the ordinary courts for many
hundred years. In Roman law the judge gave the preference to
the equitable rule; in English law the equitable rule was enforced
by a distinct set of judges. One cause of this separation was the
rigid adherence to precedent on the part of the common law
courts. Another was the jealousy prevailing in England against
the principles of the Roman law on which English equity to a
large extent was founded.
When a case of prerogative was referred to the chancellor in
the reign of Edward III., he was required to grant such remedy
as should be consonant to honesty (honestas). And honesty,
conscience and equity were said to be the fundamental principles
of the court. The early chancellors were ecclesiastics, and under
their influence not only moral principles, where these were not
regarded by the common law, but also the equitable principles
of the Roman law were introduced into English jurisprudence.
Between this point and the time when equity became settled as
a portion of the legal system, having fixed principles of its own,
various views of its nature seem to have prevailed. For a long
time it was thought that precedents could have no place in
equity, inasmuch as it professed in each case to do that which
was just; and we find this view maintained by common lawyers
after it had been abandoned by the professors of equity them-
selves. G. Spence, in his book on the Equitable Jurisdiction of
EQUIVALENT- -ERASMUS
727
lh< Court of CkaiKfry, quotes a case in the reign of Charles II.,
in which chief justice Vaughan said:
" I MKDiIrr to hear of citing of precedents in matter of equity, fur
it Uu-rr be equity in a case, that equity is an universal truth, and there
i-.ui tie no precedent in it ; so that in any pnvislmt that can !* pro-
duced, if it be the same with this case, the reason and equity is the
unit- in itscU; and if the precedent be not the same case with this
it i- not to be cited."
But the lord keeper Bridgeman answered:
" Certainly precedents are very necessary- and useful to us, for in
them we may find the reasons of the equity to guide us, and besides
the authority of those who made them is much to be regarded. \\ <
shall suppose they did it upon great consideration and weighing of the
matter, and it would be very strange and very ill if we should disturb
and set aside what has been the course for a long series of times and
age*."
Sclden's description is well known: " Equity is a roguish
thing. Tis all one as if they should make the standard for
measure the chancellor's foot." Lord Nottingham in 1676
reconciled the ancient theory and the established practice by
saying that the conscience which guided the court was not the
natural conscience of the man, but the civil and political con-
science oC the judge. The same tendency of equity to settle
into a system of law is seen in the recognition of its limits in
the fact that it did not attempt in all cases to give a remedy
when the rule of the common law was contrary to justice. Cases
of hardship, which the early chancellors would certainly have
relieved, were passed over by later judges, simply because no
precedent could be found for their interference. The point at
which the introduction of new principles of equity finally stopped
is fixed by Sir Henry Maine in the chancellorship of Lord Eldon,
who held that the doctrines of the court ought to be as well
settled and made as uniform almost as those of the common
law. From that time certainly equity, like common law, has
professed to take its principles wholly from recorded decisions
and statute law. The view (traceable no doubt to the Aristotelian
definition) that equity mitigates the hardships of the law where
the law errs through being framed in universals, is to be found in
some of the earlier writings. Thus in the Doctor and Student
it is said:
" Law makers take heed to such things as may often come,
and not to every particular case, for they could not though they
would: therefore, in some cases it is necessary to leave the words
of the law and follow that reason and justice requireth, and to that
intent equity is ordained, that is to say, to temper and mitigate the
rigour of the law."
And Lord Ellesmere said:
" The cause why there is a chancery is for that men's actions are
so divers and infinite that it is impossible to make any general law
which shall aptly meet with every particular act and not fail in some
circumstances."
Modern equity, it need hardly be said, does not profess to
soften the rigour of the law, or to correct the errors into which
it falls by reason of its generality.
To give any account, even in outline, of the subject matter of
equity within the necessary limits of this article would be
impossible. It will be sufficient to say here that the classification
generally adopted by text-writers is based upon the relations
of equity to the common law, of which some explanation is
given above. Thus equitable jurisdiction is said to be exclusive,
concurrent or auxiliary. Equity has exclusive jurisdiction
where it recognizes rights which are unknown to the common
law. The most important example is trusts. Equity has con-
currfni jurisdiction in cases where the law recognized the right
but did not give adequate relief, or did not give relief without
circuity of action or some similar inconvenience. And equity
has auxiliary jurisdiction when the machinery of the courts of
law was unable to procure the necessary evidence.
" The evils of this double system of judicature," says the
report of the judicature commission (1863-1867), " and the
confusion and conflict of jurisdiction to which it has led, have
been long known and acknowledged." A partial attempt to
meet the difficulty was made by several acts of parliament
(passed after the reports of commissions appointed in 1850 and
1851), which enabled courts of law and equity both to exercise
certain powers formerly peculiar to one or other of them. A more
complete remedy was introduced by the Judicature Act 1873,
which consolidated the courts of law and equity, and ordered
that law and equity should be administered concurrently accord-
ing to the rules contained in the 26lh section of the act. At the
same time many matters of equitable jurisdiction are still left
to the chancery division of the High Court in the first instance.
(See CHANCERY.)
AUTHORITIES. The principles of equity asset out by the following
writers may be consulted: J. Story, J. W. Smith, H. A. Smith and
VV. Ashburncr; and for the history see G. Spence, The Equitable
Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery (2 vols., 1846-1849); D. M.
Kerly, Historical Sketch of the Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court
of Chancery (1890).
EQUIVALENT, in chemistry, the proportion of an element
which will combine with or replace unit weight of hydrogen.
When multiplied by the valency it gives the atomic weight.
The determination of equivalent weights is treated in the article
STOICHIOMETRY. (See also CHEMISTRY.) In a more general sense
the term " equivalent " is used to denote quantities of sub-
stances which neutralize one another, as for example NaOH,
HC1, JH,SO 4 . iBa(OH),.
ERARD, SEBASTIEN (1752-1831), French manufacturer of
musical instruments, distinguished especially for the improve-
ments he made upon the harp and the pianoforte, was born at
Strassburg on the 5th of April 1752. While a boy he showed
great aptitude for practical geometry and architectural drawing,
and in the workshop of his father, who was an upholsterer, he
found opportunity for the early exercise of his mechanical
ingenuity. When he was sixteen his father died, and he removed
to Paris where he obtained employment with a harpsichord
maker. Here his remarkable constructive skill, though it
speedily excited the jealousy of his master and procured his
dismissal, almost equally soon attracted the notice of musicians
and musical instrument makers of eminence. Before he was
twenty-five he set up in business for himself, his first workshop
being a room in the hotel of the duchesse de Villeroi, who gave
him warm encouragement. Here he constructed in 1780 his
first pianoforte, which was also one of the first manufactured
in France. It quickly secured for its maker such a reputation
that he was soon overwhelmed with commissions, and finding
assistance necessary, he sent for his brother, Jean Baptiste, in
conjunction with whom he established in the rue de Bourbon,
in the Faubourg St Germain, a piano manufactory, which in a
few years became one of the most celebrated in Europe. On
the outbreak of the Revolution he went to London where he
established a factory. Returning to Paris in 1706, he soon
afterwards introduced grand pianofortes, made in the English
fashion, with improvements of his own. In 1808 he again
visited London, where, two years later, he produced his first
double-movement harp. He had previously made various
improvements in the manufacture of harps, but the new instru-
ment was an immense advance upon anything he had before
produced, and obtained such a reputation that for some time
he devoted himself exclusively to its manufacture. It has been
said that in the year following his invention he made harps to
the value of 25,000. In 1812 he returned to Paris, and con-
tinued to devote himself to the further perfecting of the two
instruments with which his name is associated. In 1823 he
crowned his work by producing his model grand pianoforte
with the double escapement. Erard died at Passy, on the 5th
of August 1831. (See also HARP and PIANOFORTE.)
ERASMUS, DESIOERIUS (1466-1536), Dutch scholar and
theologian, was born on the night of the 27/28th of October,
probably in 1466; but his statements about his age are conflicting,
and in view of his own uncertainty (Ep. x. 29: 466) and the
weakness of his memory for dates, the year of his birth cannot
be definitely fixed. His father's name seems to ^have been
Rogerius Gerardus. He himself was christened Herasmus;
but in 1503, when becoming familiar with Greek, he assimilated
the name to a fancied Greek original, which he had a few years
before Latinized into Desyderius. A contemporary authority
states that he was born at Gouda, his father's native town;
728
ERASMUS
but he adopted the style Rolterdammensis or Roterodamus, in
accordance with a story to which he himself gave credence. His
first schooling was at Gouda under Peter Winckel, who was
afterwards vice-pastor of the church. In the dull round of in-
struction in " grammar " he did not distinguish himself, and
was surpassed by his early friend and companion, William
Herman, who was Winckel's favourite pupil. From Gouda the
two boys went to the school attached to St Lebuin's church
at Deventer, which was one of the first in northern Europe to
feel the influence of the Renaissance. Erasmus was at Deventer
from 1475 to 1484, and when he left, had learnt from Johannes
Sinthius (Syntheim) and Alexander Hegius, who had come as
headmaster in 1483, the love of letters which was the ruling
passion of his life. At some period, perhaps in an interval of his
time at Deventer, he was a chorister at Utrecht under the famous
organist of the cathedral, Jacob Obrecht.
About 1484 Erasmus' father died, leaving him and an elder
brother Peter, both born out of wedlock, to the care of guardians,
their mother having died shortly before. Erasmus was eager
to go to a university, but the guardians, acting under a perhaps
genuine enthusiasm for the religious life, sent the boys to another
school at Hertogenbosch; and when they returned after two
or three years, prevailed on them to enter monasteries. Peter
went to Sion, near Delft; Erasmus after prolonged reluctance
became an Augustinian canon in St Gregory's at Steyn, a house
of the same Chapter near Gouda. There he found little religion
and less refinement ; but no serious difficulty seems to have been
made about his reading the classics and the Fathers with his
friends to his heart's content. The monastery once entered,
there was no drawing back; and Erasmus passed through the
various stages which culminated in his ordination as priest on
the zsth of April 1492.
But his ardent spirit could not long be content with monastic
life. He brought his attainments somehow to the notice of
Henry of Bergen, bishop of Cambrai, the leading prelate at the
court of Brussels; and about 1494 permission was obtained for
him to leave Steyn and become Latin secretary to the bishop,
who was then preparing for a visit to Rome. But the journey
was abandoned, and after some months Erasmus found that even
with occasional chances to read at Groenendael, the life of a
court was hardly more favourable to study than that of Steyn.
At the suggestion of a friend, James Batt, he applied to his
patron for leave to go to Paris University. The bishop consented
and promised a small pension; and in August 1495 Erasmus
entered the " domus pauperum " of the college of Montaigu,
which was then under the somewhat rigid rule of the reformer
Jan Standonck. He at once introduced himself to the distin-
guished French historian and diplomatist Robert Gaguin (1425-
1502) and published a small volume of poems; and he became
intimate with Johann Mauburnus (Mombaer), the leader of a
mission summoned from Windesheim in 1496 to reform the abbey
of Chateau-Landon. But the life at Montaigu was too hard for
him. Every Lent he fell ill and had to return to Holland to
recover. He continued to read nevertheless for a degree in
theology, and at some time completed the requirements for the
B.D. After a year or two he left Montaigu and eked out his
money from the bishop by taking pupils. One of these, a young
Englishman, William Blount, 4th Baron Mount joy (d. 1534),
persuaded him to visit England in the spring of 1499.
Being without a benefice, he had no settled income to look to,
and apart from the precarious profits of teaching and writing
books, could only wait on the generosity of patrons to supply
him with the leisure he craved. The faithful Batt had sought
a pension for him from his own patroness, Anne of Borsselen,
the Lady of Veere, who resided at the castle of Tournehem near
Calais, and whose son Batt was now teaching. But as nothing
promised at once, Erasmus accepted Mountjoy's offer, and thus
a tie was formed which led Mountjoy then or a few years later
to grant him a pension of 20 for life. Otherwise the visit to
England gave no hope of preferment; and in the summer
Erasmus prepared to leave. He was delayed, and used the
interval to spend two or three months at Oxford, where he found
John Colet lecturing on the Epistle to the Romans. Discussions
between them on theological questions soon convinced Colet
of Erasmus' worth, and he sought to persuade him to stay and
teach at Oxford. But Erasmus could not be content with the
Bible in Latin. Oxford could teach him no Greek, so away he
must go.
In January 1500 he returned to Paris, which though it could
offer no Greek teacher better than George Hermonymus, was
at least a better centre for buying and for printing books. The
next few years were spent still in preparation, supported by
pupils' fees and the dedications of books; the Collectanea-
adagiorum in June 1500 to Mountjoy, and some devotional and
moral compositions to Batt's patroness and her son. When the
plague drove him from Paris, he went to Orleans or Tournehem
or St Omer, as the way opened. From 1502 to 1504 he was at
Louvain, still declining to teach publicly; among his friends
being the future Pope Adrian VI. In January 1 504 the archduke
Philip gave him fifty livres for the Panegyric which " ung
religieuxdel'ordredeSt Augustin " had composed on his Spanish
journey; and in October, ten more, for the maintenance of his
studies.
He had been working hard at Greek, of which he now felt
himself master, at the Fathers (above all at Jerome), and at the
Epistles of St Paul, fulfilling the promise made to Colet in Oxford,
to give himself to sacred learning. But the bent of his reading
is shown by the manuscript with which he returned to Paris
at the close of 1504 Valla's Annotations on the New Testament,
which Badius printed for him in 1505.
Shortly afterwards Lord Mountjoy invited him again to
England, and this visit was more successful. He found in London
a circle of learned friends through whom he was introduced to
William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Foxe,
bishop of Winchester and other dignitaries. John Fisher
(bishop of Rochester), who was then superintending the founda-
tion of Christ's College for the Lady Margaret, took him down
to Cambridge for the king's visit; and at length the opportunity
came to fulfil his dream of seeing Italy. Baptista Boerio, the
king's physician, engaged him to accompany his two sons thither
as supervisor of their studies. In September 1506 he set foot
on that sacred soil, and took his D.D. at Turin. For a year he
remained with his pupils at Bologna, and then, his engagement
completed, negotiated with Aldus Manutius for a new edition
of his Adagia upon a very different scale. The volume of 1500
had been jejune, written when he knew nothing of Greek;
800 adages put together with scanty elucidations. In 1508 he
had conceived a work on lines more to the taste of the learned
world, full of apt and recondite learning, and now and again
relieved by telling comments or lively anecdotes. Three thousand
and more collected justified a new title Chiliades adagiorum;
and the author's reputation was now established. So secure
in public favour did the book in time become, that the council
of Trent, unable to suppress it and not daring to overlook it,
ordered the preparation of a castrated edition.
To print the Adagia he had gone to Venice, where he lived
with Andrea Torresano of Asola (Asulanus) and did the work of
two men, writing and correcting proof at the same time. When
it was finished, with an ample re-dedication to Mountjoy, a
new pupil'presented himself, Alexander Stewart, natural son of
James IV. of Scotland perhaps through a connexion formed in
early days at Paris. They went together to Siena and Rome and
then on to Campania, thirsty under the summer sun. When they
returned to Rome, his pupil departed to Scotland, to fall a few
years later by his father's side at Flodden; Erasmus also found
a summons to call him northwards.
On the death of Henry VII. Lord Mountjoy, who had been
companion to Prince Henry in his studies, had become a person
of influence. He wrote to Erasmus of a land flowing with milk
and honey under the " divine " young king, and with Warham
sent him 10 for journey money. At first Erasmus hesitated.
He had been disappointed in Italy, to find that he had not much
to learn from its famed scholarship; but he had made many
friends in Aldus's circle Marcus Musurus, John Lascaris,
ERASMUS
729
Baptist a Egnatius, Paul Bombasius, Scipio Carteromachus;
and his reception had been flattering, especially in Rome, where
cardinals had delighted to honour him. But to remain in Rome
was to sell himself. He might have the leisure which was so
indispensable, but at price of the freedom to read, think, write
what he liked. He decided, therefore, to go, though with regrets ;
which returned upon him sometimes in after years, when the
English hopes had not borne fruit.
In the autumn he reached London, and in Thomas More's
house in Bucklersbury wrote the witty satire which Milton
found "in every one's hands" at Cambridge in 1628, and which
is read to this day. The Iforiae encomium was a sign of his
decision. In it kings and princes, bishops and popes alike are
shown to be in bondage to Folly; and no class of men is spared.
Its author was willing to be beholden to any one for leisure; but
he would be no man's slave. For the next eighteen months he
is entirely lost to view; when he reappears in April 1511, he is
leaving More's house and taking the Maria to be printed privily
in Paris. Wherever they were spent, these must have been
months of hard work, as were the years that followed. His time
was now come. The long preparation and training, bought by
privation and uncongenial toil, was over, and he was ready to
apply himself to the scientific study of sacred letters. His English
patrons were liberal. Fisher sent him in August 1511 to teach in
Cambridge; Warham gave him a benefice, Aldington in Kent,
worth 33,6* .8d. a year, and in violation of his own rule commuted
it for a pension of 20 charged on the living; and the dedications
of his books were fruitful. In Cambridge he completed his work
on the New Testament, the Letters of Jerome, and Seneca; and
then in 1514, when there seemed no prospect of ampler prefer-
ment, he determined to transfer himself to Basel and give the
results of his labours to the world.
The origin of Erasmus's connexion with Johann Froben is
not clear. In 1511 he was preparing to reprint his Adagia with
Jodocus Badius, who in the following year was to have also
Seneca and Jerome. But in 1513 Froben, who had just reprinted
the Aldine Adagia, acquired through a bookseller-agent Erasmus'
amended copy which had been destined for Badius. That the
agent was acting entirely on his own responsibility may be
doubted; for within a few months Erasmus had decided to
betake himself to Basel, bearing with him Seneca and Jerome,
the latter to be incorporated in the great edition which Johannes
Amerbach and Froben had had in hand since 1510. In Germany
he was widely welcomed. The Strassburg Literary Society ffted
him, and Johannes Sapidus, headmaster of the Latin school at
Schlettstadt, rode with him into Basel. Froben received him
with open arms, and the presses were soon busy with his books.
Through the winter of 1514-1515 Erasmus worked with the
strength of ten; and after a brief visit to England in the spring,
the New Testament was set up. Around him was a circle of
students, some young, some already distinguished the three
sons of Froben's partner, Johannes Amerbach, who was now
dead, Beatus Rhenanus, Wilhclm Nesen, Ludwig Ber, Heinrich
Glareanus, Nikolaus Gerbell, Johannes Oecolampadius who
looked to him as their head and were proud to do him service.
Though from this time forward Basel became the centre of
occupation and interest for Erasmus, yet for the next few years
be was mainly in the Netherlands. On the completion of the
New Testament in 1516 he returned to his friends in England;
but his appointment, then recent, as councillor to the young
king Charles, brought him back to Brussels in the autumn. In
the spring of 1517 he went for the last time to England, about
a dispensation from wearing his canonical dress, obtained
originally from Julius II. and recently confirmed by Leo X.,
and in May 1518 he journeyed to Basel for three months to set
the second edition of the New Testament in progress. But
with these exceptions he remained in proximity to the court,
living much at Louvain, where he took great interest in the
foundation of Hieronymus Busleiden's Collegium Trilingue.
His circumstances had improved so much, by pensions, the
presents which were showered upon him, and the sale of his books,
that be was now in a position to refuse all proposals which would
have interfered with his cherished independence. The general
ardour for the restoration of the arts and of learning created
an aristocratic public, of which Erasmus was supreme pontiff.
Luther spoke to the people and the ignorant; Erasmus had the
ear of the educated Class. His friends and admirers were dis-
tributed over all the countries of Europe, and presents were
continually arriving from small as well as great, from a donation
of 200 florins, made by Pope Clement VII., down to sweetmeats
and comfits contributed by the nuns of Cologne (Ep. 666).
From England, in particular, he continued to receive supplies
of money. In the last year of his life Thomas Cromwell sent him
20 angels, and Archbishop Cranmer 18. Though Erasmus led
a very hard-working and far from luxurious life, and had no
extravagant habits, yet he could not live upon little. The
excessive delicacy of his constitution, not pampered appetite,
exacted some unusual indulgences. He could not bear the stoves
of Germany, and required an open fireplace in the room in which
he worked. He was afflicted with the stone, and obliged to be
particular as to what he drank. Beer he could not touch.
The white wines of Baden or the Rhine did not suit him; he
could only drink those of Burgundy or Franche-Comte'. He
could neither eat, nor bear the smell of, fish. " His heart,"
he said, " was Catholic, but his stomach was Lutheran." For
his constant journeys he required two horses, one for himself
and one for his attendant. And though he was almost always
found in horse-flesh by his friends, the keep had to be paid for.
For his literary labours and his extensive correspondence he
required one or more amanuenses. He often had occasion, on
his own business, or on that of Froben's press, to send special
couriers to a distance, employing them by the way in collecting
the free gifts of his tributaries.
Precarious as these means of subsistence seem, he preferred
the independence thus obtained to an assured position which
would have involved obligations to a patron or professional
duties which his weak health would have made onerous. The
duke of Bavaria offered to dispense with teaching, if he would
only reside, and would have named him on these terms to a chair
in his new university of Ingolstadt, with a salary of 200 ducats,
and the reversion of one or more prebendal stalls. The archduke
Ferdinand offered a pension of 400 florins, if he would only come
to reside at Vienna. Adrian VI. offered him a deanery, but the
offer seems to have been of a possible and not an actual deanery.
Offers, flattering but equally vague, were made from France,
on the part of the bishop of Bayeux, and even of Francis I.
" Invitor amplissimis conditionibus; offeruntur dignitates et
episcopatus; plane rex essem, si juvenis essem " (Ep. xix. 106;
735). Erasmus declined all, and in November 1521 settled
permanently at Basel, in the capacity of general editor and
literary adviser of Froben's press. As a subject of the emperor,
and attached to his court by a pension, it would have been
convenient to him to have fixed his residence in Louvain. But
the bigotry of the Flemish clergy, and the monkish atmosphere
of the university of Louvain, overrun with Dominicans and
Franciscans, united for once in their enmity to the new classical
learning, inclined Erasmus to seek a more congenial home in
Basel. To Froben his arrival was the advent of the very man
whom he had long wanted. Frobcn's enterprise, united with
Erasmus's editorial skill, raised the press of Basel, for a time,
to be the most important in Europe. The death of Froben in
1527, the final separation of Basel from the Empire, the wreck
of learning in the religious disputes, and the cheap paper and
scamped work of the Frankfort presses, gradually withdrew
the trade from Basel. But during the years of Erasmus's
co-operation the Froben press took the lead of all the presses in
Europe, both in the standard value of the works published
and in style of typographical execution. Like some other
publishers who preferred reputation to returns in money, Froben
died poor, and his impressions never reached the splendour
afterwards attained by those of the Estiennes, or of Plantin.
The series of the Fathers alone contains Jerome (1516), Cyprian
(1520), Pscudo-Arnobius (1522), Hilarius (1523), Irenaeus
(Latin, 1526), Ambrose (1527), Augustine (1528), Chrysostom
730
ERASMUS
(Latin, 1530), Basil (Greek, 1532, the first Greek author printed
in Germany) , and Origen (Latin, 1 536) . In these editions, partly
texts, partly translations, it is impossible to determine the
respective shares of Erasmus and his many helpers. The
prefaces and dedications are all written by him, and some of
them, as that to the Hilarius, are of importance for the history
as well of the times as of Erasmus himself. Of his most important
edition, that of the Greek text of the New Testament, something
will be said farther on.
In this " mill," as he calls it, Erasmus continued to grind
incessantly for eight years. Besides his work as editor, he was
always writing himself some book or pamphlet called for by the
event of the clay, some general fray in which he was compelled
to mingle, or some personal assault which it was necessary to
repel. But though painfully conscious how much his reputation
as a writer was damaged by this extempore production, he was
unable to resist the fatal facility of print. He was the object
of those solicitations which always beset the author whose name
upon the title page assures the sale of a book. He was besieged
for dedications, and as every dedication meant a present
proportioned to the circumstances of the dedicatee, there was a
natural temptation to be lavish of them. Add to this a corre-
spondence so extensive as to require him at times to write forty
letters in one day. " I receive daily," he writes, " letters from
remote parts, from kings, princes, prelates and men of learning,
and even from persons of whose existence I was ignorant."
His day was thus one of incessant mental activity; but hard
work was so far from breeding a distaste for his occupation,
that reading and writing grew ever more delightful to him
(lilerarum assiduitas non modo mihi faslidium non parit, sed
voluptatem; crescit scribendo scribendi studium).
Shortly after Froben's death the disturbances at Basel}
occasioned by the zealots for the religious revolution which was
in progress throughout Switzerland, began to make Erasmus
desirous of changing his residence. He selected Freiburg in
the Breisgau, as a city which was still in the dominion of the
emperor, and was free from religious dissension. Thither he
removed in April 1529. He was received with public marks of
respect by the authorities, who granted him the use of an un-
finished residence which had been begun to be built for the late
emperor Maximilian. Erasmus proposed only to remain at
Freiburg for a few months, but found the place so suited to his
habits that he bought a house of his own, and remained there
six years. A desire for change of air he fancied Freiburg was
damp rumours of a new war with France, and the necessity of
seeing his Ecclesiastes through the press, took him back to Basel
m J S35- H C lived now a very retired life, and saw only a small
circle of intimate friends. A last attempt was made by the
papal court to enlist him in some public way against the Reforma-
tion. On the election of Paul III. in 1534, he had, as usual,
sent the new pope a congratulatory letter. After his arrival
in Basel, he received a complimentary answer, together with the
nomination to the deanery of Deventer, the income of which
was reckoned at 600 ducats. This nomination was accompanied
with an intimation that more was in store for him, and that
steps would be taken to provide for him the income, viz., 3000
ducats, which was necessary to qualify for the cardinal's hat. But
Erasmus was even less disposed now than he had been before
to barter his reputation for honours. His health had been for
some years gradually declining, and disease in the shape of gout
gaining upon him. In the winter of 1535-1536 he was confined
entirely to his chamber, many days to his bed. Though thus
afflicted he never ceased his literary activity, dictating his tract
On the Purity of the Church, and revising the sheets of a translation
of Origen which was passing through the Froben press. His last
letter is dated the 28th of June 1536, and subscribed " Eras.
Rot. aegra manu." " I have never been so ill in my life before
as I am now, for many days unable even to read." Dysentery
setting in carried him off on the I2th of July 1536, in his yoth
year.
By his will, made on the i2th of February 1536, he left what
he had to leave, with the exception of some legacies, to Bonifazius
Amerbach, partly for himself, partly in trust for the benefit of
the aged and the infirm, or to be spent in portioning young girls,
and in educating young men of promise. He left none of the
usual legacies for masses or other clerical purposes, and was not
attended by any priest or confessor in his last moments.
Erasmus's features are familiar to all, from Holbein's many
portraits or their copies. Beatus Rhenanus, " summus Erasmi
observator," as he is called by de Thou, describes his person
thus: " In stature not tall, but not noticeably short; in figure
well built and graceful; of an extremely delicate constitution,
sensitive to the slightest changes of climate, food or drink.
After middle life he suffered from the stone, not to mention the
common plague of studious men, an irritable mucous membrane.
His complexion was fair; light blue eyes, and yellowish hair.
Though his voice was weak, his enunciation was distinct; the
expression of his face cheerful; his manner and conversation
polished, affable, even charming." His highly nervous organiza-
tion made his feelings acute, and his brain incessantly active.
Through his ready sympathy with all forms of life and character,
his attention was always alive. The active movement of his
spirit spent itself, not in following put its own trains of thought,
but in outward observation. No man was ever less introspective,
and though he talks much of himself, his egotism is the genial
egotism which takes the world into its confidence, not the selfish
egotism which feels no interest but in its own woes. He says of
himself, and justly, " that he was incapable of dissimulation "
(Ep.xxvi. 19; 1152). There is nothing behind, no pose, no scenic
effect. It may be said of his letters that in them " tola patet
vita senis." His nature was flexible without being faultily weak.
He has many moods and each mood imprints itself in turn on his
words. Hence, on a superficial view, Erasmus is set down as
the most inconsistent of men. Further acquaintance makes
us feel a unity of character underlying this susceptibility to the
impressions of the moment. His seeming inconsistencies are
reconciled to apprehension, not by a formula of the intellect,
but by the many-sidedness of a highly impressible nature. In the
words of J. Nisard, Erasmus was one of those " dont la gloire
aete de beaucoup comprendre et d'affirmer peu."
This equal openness to every vibration of his environment is
the key to all Erasmus's acts and words, and among them to the
middle attitude which he took up towards the great religious
conflict of his time. The reproaches of party assailed him in
his lifetime, and have continued to be heaped upon his memory.
He was loudly accused by the Catholics of collusion with the
enemies of the faith. His powerful friends, the pope, Wolsey,
Henry VIII., the emperor, called upon him to declare against
Luther. Theological historians from that time forward have
perpetuated the indictment that Erasmus sided with neither
party in the struggle for religious truth. The most moderate
form of the censure presents him in the odious light of a trimmer;
the vulgar and venomous assailant is sure that Erasmus was a
Protestant at heart, but withheld the avowal that he might not
forfeit the worldly advantages he enjoyed as a Catholic. When
by study of his writings we come to know Erasmus intimately,
there is revealed to us one of those natures to which partisanship
is an impossibility. It was not timidity or weakness which
kept Erasmus neutral, but the reasonableness of his nature. It
was not only that his intellect revolted against the narrowness
of party, his whole being repudiated its clamorous and vulgar
excesses. As he loathed fish, so he loathed clerical fanaticism.
Himself a Catholic priest " the glory of the priesthood and the
shame " the tone of the orthodox clergy was distasteful to him;
the ignorant hostility to classical learning which reigned in their
colleges and convents disgusted him. In common with all the
learned men of his age, he wished to see the power of the clergy
broken, as that of an obscurantist army arrayed against light.
He had employed all his resources of wit and satire against the
priests and monks, and the superstitions in which they traded,
long before Luther's name was heard of. The motto which was
already current in his lifetime, " that Erasmus laid the egg and
Luther hatched it," is so far true, and no more. Erasmus would
have suppressed the monasteries, put an end to the domination
ERASMUS
of the clergy, and swept away scandalous and profitable abuses,
but to attack the church or re-mould received theology was far
from his thoughts. And when out of Luther's revolt there arose
a new fanaticism that of evangelism, Erasmus recoiled from
the violence of the new preachers. " Is it for this," he writes to
Mi-Unchthon (>. xix. 113; 703), " that we have shaken off
bishops and popes, that we may come under the yoke of such
madmen as Otto and Karel ? " Passages have been collected,
and it is an easy task, from the writings of Erasmus to prove that
he shared the doctrines of the Reformers. Passages equally
strong might be culled to show that he repudiated them. The
truth is that theological questions in themselves had no attraction
for him. And when a theological position was emphasized by
party passion it became odious to him. In the words of Drum-
monii: " Erasmus was in his own age the apostle of common
sense and of rational religion. He did not care for dogma, and
accordingly the dogmas of Rome, which had the consent of the
Christian world, were in his eyes preferable to the dogmas of
Protestantism. . . . From the beginning to the end of his career
he remained true to the purpose of his life, which was to fight the
battle of sound learning and plain common sense against the
powers of ignorance and superstition, and amid all the con-
vulsions of that period he never once lost his mental balance."
Erasmus is accused of indifference. But he was far from
indifferent to the progress of the revolution. He was keenly alive
to its pernicious influence on the cherished interest of his life,
the cause of learning. " I abhor the evangelics, because it is
through them that literature is everywhere declining, and upon
the point of perishing." He had been born with the hopes of the
Renaissance, with its anticipation of a new Augustan age, and
had seen this fair promise blighted by the irruption of a new
horde of theological polemics, worse than the old scholastics,
inasmuch as they were revolutionary instead of conservative.
Erasmus never flouted at religion nor even at theology as such,
but only at blind and intemperate theologians.
In the mind of Erasmus there was no metaphysical inclination ;
he was a man of letters, with a general tendency to rational views
on every subject which came under his pen. His was not the
mind to originate, like Calvin, a new scheme of Christian thought.
He is at his weakest in defending free will against Luther, and
indeed he can hardly be said to enter on the metaphysical
question. He treats the dispute entirely from the outside. It is
impossible in reading Erasmus not to be reminded of the ration-
alist of the 1 8th century. Erasmus has been called the " Voltaire
of the Renaissance." But there is a vast difference in the relations
in which they respectively stood to the church and to Christianity.
Voltaire, though he did not originate, yet adopted a moral and
religious scheme which he sought to substitute for the church
tradition. He waged war, not only against the clergy, but against
the church and its sovereigns. Erasmus drew the line at the
first of these. He was not an anticipation of the iSth century;
be was the man of his age, as Voltaire of his; though Erasmus
did not intend it, he undoubtedly shook the ecclesiastical edifice
in all its parts; and, as Melchior Adam says of him, " pontifici
Romano plus nocuit jocando quam Luthems stomachando."
But if Erasmus was unlike the iSth century rationalist in that
be did not declare war against the church, but remained a Catholic
and mourned the disruption, he was yet a true rationalist in
principle. The principle that reason is the one only guide of
life, the supreme arbiter of all questions, politics and religion
included, has its earliest and most complete exemplar in Erasmus.
He does not dogmatically denounce the rights of reason, but
he practically exercises them. Along with the charm of style,
the great attraction of the writings of Erasmus is this unconscious
freedom by which they are pervaded.
It must excite our surprise that one who used his pen so freely
should have escaped the pains and penalties which invariably
overtook minor offenders in the same kind. For it was not only
against the clergy and the monks that he kept up a ceaseless
stream of satiric raillery; he treated nobles, princes and kings
with equal freedom. No iSth century republican has used
stronger language than has this pensioner of Charles V. " The
people build cities, princes pull them down; the industry of
the citizens creates wealth for rapacious lords to plunder;
plebeian magistrates pass good laws for kings to violate; the
people love peace, and their rulers stir up war." Such outbursts
are frequent in the Adagia. These freedoms arc part cause of
Erasmus's popularity. He was here in sympathy with the secret
sore of his age, and gave utterance to what all felt but none
dared to whisper but he. It marks the difference between 1513
and 1669 that, in a reprint of the Julius Exdusus published in
1669 at Oxford, it was thought necessary to leave out a sentence
in which the writer of that dialogue, supposed by the editor to
be Erasmus, asserts the right of states to deprive and punish
bad kings. It is difficult to say to what we are to ascribe his
immunity from painful consequences. We have to remember
that he was removed from the scene early in the reaction,
before force was fully organized for the suppression of the
revolution. And his popular works, the Adagia, and the Colloquia
(1524), had established themselves as standard books in the
more easy going age, when power, secure in its unchallenged
strength, could afford to laugh with the laughers at itself. At
the date of his death the Catholic revival, with its fell antipathy
to art and letters, was only in its infancy; and when times
became dangerous, Erasmus cautiously declined to venture out
of the protection of the Empire, refusing repeated invitations
to Italy and to France. " I had thought of going to Besancon,"
he said, " ne non essem in ditione Caesaris " (Ep. xxx. 74; 1299).
In Italy a Bembo and a Sadoleto wrote a purer Latin than
Erasmus, but contented themselves with pretty phrases, and
were careful to touch no living chord of feeling. In France it
was necessary for a Rabelais to hide his free-thinking under a
disguise of revolting and unintelligible jargon. It was only in
the Empire that such liberty of speech as Erasmus used \v;is
practicable, and in the Empire Erasmus passed for a moderate
man. Upon the strength of an established character for modera-
tion he enjoyed an exceptional licence for the utterance of
unwelcome truths; and in spite of his flings at the rich and
powerful, he remained through life a privileged person with them.
But though the men of the keys and the sword let him go his
way unmolested, it was otherwise with his brethren of the pen. A
man who is always launching opinions must expect to be retorted
on. And when these judgments were winged by epigram, and
weighted by the name of Erasmus, who stood at the head of
letters, a widespread exasperation was the consequence. Disraeli
has not noticed Erasmus in his Quarrels of Authors, perhaps
because Erasmus's quarrels would require a volume to themselves.
" So thin-skinned that a fly would draw blood," as the prince of
Carpi expressed it, he could not himself restrain his pen from
sarcasm. He forgot that though it is safe to lash the dunces,
he could not with equal impunity sneer at those who, though
they might not have the car of the public as he had, could yet
contradict and call names. And when literary jealousy was
complicated with theological differences, as in the case of the
free-thinkers, or with French vanity, as in that of Budacus, the
cause of the enemy was espoused by a party and a nation.
The quarrel with Budaeus was strictly a national one. Cos-
mopolitan as Erasmus was, to the French literati he was still
the Teuton. Etienne Dolet calls him " enemy of Cicero, and
jealous detractor of the French name." The only contemporary
name which could approach to a rivalry with his was that of
Budaeus (Bude), who was exactjy contemporary, having been
born in the same year as Erasmus. Rivals in fame, they were
unlike in accomplishment, each having the quality which the
other wanted. Budaeus, though a Frenchman, knew Greek well;
Erasmus, though a Dutchman, very imperfectly. But the
Frenchman Budaeus wrote an execrable Latin style, unreadable
then as now, while the Teuton Erasmus charmed the reading
world with a style which, though far from good Latin, is the
most delightful which the Renaissance has left us.
The style of Erasmus is, considered as Latin, incorrect, some-
times even barbarous, and far removed from any classical model.
But it has qualities far above purity. The best Italian Latin
is but an echo and an imitation; like the painted glass which
732
ERASTUS
we put in our churches, it is an anachronism. Bembo, Sadoleto
and the rest write purely in a dead language. Erasmus's Latin
was a living and spoken tongue. Though Erasmus had passed
nearly all his life in England, France and Germany, his conversa-
tion was Latin; and the language in which he talked about
common things he wrote. Hence the spontaneity and naturalness
of his page, its flavour of life and not of books. He writes from
himself, and not out of Cicero. Hence, too, he spoiled nothing by
anxious revision in terror lest some phrase not of the golden
age should escape from his pen. He confesses apologetically to
Christopher Longolius (Ep. iii. 63 ; 402) that it was his habit
to extemporize all he wrote, and that this habit was incorrigible;
" effundo verius quam scribo omnia." He complains that much
reading of the works of St Jerome had spoiled his Latin; but,
as Scaligersays (Scalig* 2"), "Erasmus's language is better than
St Jerome's." The same critic, however, thought Erasmus
would have done better " if he had kept more closely to the
classical models."
In the annals of classical learning Erasmus may be regarded
as constituting an intermediate stage between the humanists
of the Latin Renaissance and the learned men of the age of Greek
scholarship, between Angelo Poliziano and Joseph Scaliger.
Erasmus, though justly styled by Muretus (Varr. Lectt. 7, 15)
" eruditus sane vir, ac multae lectionis," was not a " learned "
man in the special sense of the word not an " erudit." He
was more than this; he was the " man of letters " the first
who had appeared in Europe since the fall of the Roman empire.
His acquirements were vast, and they were all brought to bear
upon the life of his day. He did not make a study apart of
antiquity for its own sake, but used it as an instrument of culture.
He did not worship, imitate and reproduce the classics, like the
Latin humanists who preceded him; he did not master them
and reduce them to a special science, as did the French Hellenists
who succeeded him. He edited many authors, it is true, but he
had neither the means of forming a text, nor did he attempt to
do so. In editing a father, or a classic, he had in view the practical
utility of the general reader, not the accuracy required by the
gild of scholars. " His Jerome," says J. Scaliger, " is full of
sad blunders" (Scalig* 2"). Even Julien Gamier could discover
that Erasmus " falls in his haste into grievous error in his Latin
version of St Basil, though his Latinity is superior to that of
the other translators " (Pref. in Opp. St. Bas., 1721). It must
be remembered that the commercial interests of Froben's press
led to the introduction of Erasmus's name on many a title page
when he had little to do with the book, e.g. the Latin Josephus
of 1524 to which Erasmus only contributed one translation of
14 pages; or the Aristotle of 1531, of which Simon Grynaeus
was the real editor. Where Erasmus excelled was in prefaces
not philological introductions to each author, but spirited appeals
to the interest of the general reader, showing how an ancient
book might be made to minister to modern spiritual demands.
Of Erasmus's works the Greek Testament is the most memor-
able. It has no title to be considered as a work of learning or
scholarship, yet its influence upon opinion was profound and
durable. It contributed more to the liberation of the human
mind from the thraldom of the clergy than all the uproar and
rage of Luther's many pamphlets. As an edition of the Greek
Testament it has no critical value. But it was the first, and it
revealed the fact that the Vulgate, the Bible of the church,
was not only a second-hand document, but in places an erroneous
document. A shock was thus given to the credit of the clergy
in the province of literature, equal to that which was given in the
province of science by the astronomical discoveries of the i7th
century. Even if Erasmus ha'd had at his disposal the MSS.
subsidia for forming a text, he had not the critical skill required
to use them. He had at hand a few late Basel MSS. , one of which
he sent straight to press, correcting them in places by collations
of others which had been sent to him by Colet in England. In
four reprints, 1519, 1522, 1527, 1535, Erasmus gradually weeded
out many of the typographical errors of his first edition, but the
text remained essentially such as he had first printed it. The
Greek text indeed was only a part of his scheme. An important
feature of the volume was the new Latin version, the original
being placed alongside as a guarantee of the translator's good
faith. This translation, with the justificatory notes which
accompanied it, though not itself a work of critical scholarship,
became the starting-point of modern exegetical science. Erasmus
did nothing to solve the problem, but to him belongs the honour
of having first propounded it.
Besides translating and editing the New Testament, Erasmus
paraphrased the whole, except the Apocalypse, between 1517
and 1524. The paraphrases were received with great applause,
even by those who had little appreciation for Erasmus. In
England a translation of them made in 1548 was ordered to be
placed in all parish churches beside the Bible. His correspond-
ence is perhaps the part of his works which has the most per-
manent value; it comprises about 3000 letters, which form an
important source for the history of that period. For the same
purpose his Colloquia may be consulted. They are a series of
dialogues, written first for pupils in the early Paris days as
formulae of polite address, but afterwards expanded into lively
conversations, in which many of the topics of the day are dis-
cussed. Later in the century they were read in schools, and some
of Shakespeare's lines are direct reminiscences of Erasmus.
His complete works have been printed twice; by the Froben
firm under the direction of his literary executors (9 vols., Basel, 1540) ;
and by Leclerc at Leiden (i I vols., 1703-1706). For his life the chief
contemporary sources are a Compendium vitae written by himself
in 1524, and a sketch prefixed by Beatus Rhenanus to the Basel
edition of 1540. Of his writings he gives an account in his Catalogus
lucubrationum, composed first in January 1523 and enlarged in
September 1524; and also in a letter to Hector Boece of Aberdeen,
written in 1530. An elaborate bibliography, entitled Bibliotheca
Erasmiana, was undertaken by the officials of the Ghent University
Library; it is divided into three sections, for Erasmus's writings,
the books he edited, and the literature about him. Listes sommaires
were issued in 1893 ; and since 1897 the completed volumes have been
appearing at intervals. There is an excellent sketch of Erasmus's
life down to 1519 in F. Seebohm's Oxford Reformers (3rd ed., 1887);
and of the many biographies those by S. Knight (1726), J. Jortin
(2 vols., 1758-1760) and R. B. Drummond (2 vols., 1873) may be
mentioned. There are also two volumes (19011904) of translations
by F. M. Nichols from Erasmus's letters down to 1517, withanample
commentary which amounts almost to a biography; and an edition
of the letters, in Latin, was begun by the Oxford University Press
in 1906 (vol. ii., 1910). (M. P.; P. S. A.)
ERASTUS, THOMAS (1524-1583), German-Swiss theologian,
whose surname was LUber, Lieber, or Liebler, was born of poor
parents on the 7th of September 1524, probably at Baden, canton
of Aargau, Switzerland. In 1540 he was studying theology at
Basel. The plague of 1 544 drove him to Bologna and thence to
Padua as student of philosophy and medicine. In 1553 he
became physician to the count of Henneberg, Saxe-Meiningen,
and in 1558 held the same post with the elector-palatine, Otto
Heinrich, being at the same time professor of medicine at Heidel-
berg. His patron's successor, Frederick III., made him (1559)
a privy councillor and member of the church consistory. In
theology he followed Zwingli, and at the sacramentarian con-
ferences of Heidelberg ( 1 560) and Maulbronn ( 1 564) he advocated
by voice and pen the Zwinglian doctrine of the Lord's Supper,
replying (1565) to the counter arguments of the Lutheran
Johann Marbach, of Strassburg. He ineffectually resisted the
efforts of the Calvinists, led by Caspar Olevianus, to introduce
the Presbyterian polity and discipline, which were established
at Heidelberg in 1570, on the Genevan model. One of the first
acts of the new church system was to excommunicate Erastus
on a charge of Socinianism, founded on his correspondence with
Transylvania. The ban was not removed till 1575, Erastus
declaring his firm adhesion to the doctrine of the Trinity. His
position, however, was uncomfortable, and in 1580 he returned to
Basel, where in 1 583 he was made professor of ethics. He died on
the 3ist of December 1583. He published several pieces bearing
on medicine, astrology and alchemy, and attacking the system of
Paracelsus. His name is permanently associated with a post-
humous publication, written in 1 568. Its immediate occasion was
the disputation at Heidelberg (i 568) for the doctorate of theology
by George Wither or Withers, an English Puritan (subsequently
archdeacon of Colchester), silenced (1565) at Bury St Edmunds
ERATOSTHENES ERBIUM
733
by Archbishop Parker. Withers had proposed a disputation
against vestments, which the university would not allow; his
thesis affirming the excommunicating power of the presbytery
was sustained. Hence the treatise of Erastus. It was published
(1589) by Giacomo Castelvetri, who had married his widow,
with the title ExplUiitio grarissimae quaeslionis utrum excom-
mmnicatio, quatenus rtligiontm intelligent et amplcxantts, a
sacromentorum tun, propter admistum facinus arcel, mandate
nitatur divine, an excogitate tit ab hominibus. The work bears
the imprint Pesdavii (.. Poschiavo in the Orisons) but was
printed by John Wolfe in London, where Castelvetri was staying;
the name of the alleged printer is an anagram of Jacobum
Castelvetrum. In the Stationers' Register (June 20, 1589)
the printing is said to have been " alowed " by Archbishop
Whitgift. It consists of seventy-five Theses, followed by a
Confirmatio in six books, and an appendix of letters to Erastus
by Bullinger and Guaither, showing that his Theses, written in
1 568, had been circulated in manuscript. An English translation
of the Theses, with brief life of Erastus (based on Melchior
Admin's account), was issued in 1659, entitled The Nullity of
Church Censures; it was reprinted as A Treatise of Excommunica-
tion (1682), and, as revised by Robert Lee, D.D., in 1844. The
aim of the work is to show, on Scriptural grounds, that sins of
professing Christians are to be punished by civil authority, and not
by withholding of sacraments on the part of the clergy. In the
Westminster Assembly a party holding this view included Selden,
Lightfoot, Coleman and Whitelocke, whose speech (1645) is
appended to Lee's version of the Theses; but the opposite view,
after much controversy, was carried, Lightfoot alone dissenting.
The consequent chapter of the Westminster Confession (" Of
Church Censures ") was, however, not ratified by the English
parliament. " Erastianism," as a by-word, is used to denote
the doctrine of the supremacy of the state in ecclesiastical causes;
but the problem of the relations between church and state is one
on which Erastus nowhere enters. What is known as " Erastian-
ism " would be better connected with the name of Grotius.
The only direct reply made to the Explicatio was the Tractatus
de vera excommunicatione (1500) by Theodore Beza, who found
himself rather savagely attacked in the Confirmatio thesium;
t.g. " Apostolum et Mosen adcoque Deum ipsum audes corrigere."
See A. Bonnard, Thomas f.raste et la discipline eccltsiastique
(1804); Caw, in AUgemeine deutsche Biog. (1877); G - V - Lechler
and R. Stahelin, in A. Hauck's Rcalencyklop. fur prot. Theol. u.
Kircht (1898). (A. Go.*)
ERATOSTHENES OF ALEXANDRIA (c. ^(>-c. 194 B.C.), Greek
scientific writer, was born at Cyrene. He studied grammar
under Callimachus at Alexandria, and philosophy under the
Stoic Ariston and the Academic Arcesilaus at Athens. He re-
turned to Alexandria at the summons of Ptolemy III. Euergetes,
by whom he was appointed chief librarian in place of Callimachus.
He is said to have died of voluntary starvation, being threatened
with total blindness. Eratosthenes was one of the most learned
men of antiquity, and wrote on a great number of subjects. He
was the first to call himself Philologos (in the sense of the " friend
of learning "), and the name Pcntathlos was bestowed upon him
in honour of his varied accomplishments. He was also called
Beta as being second in all branches of learning, though not
actually first in any. In mathematics he wrote two books
On means (Tit pi iitatrrirrtiiv) which are lost, but appear, from a
remark of Pappus, to have dealt with " loci with reference
to means." He devised a mechanical construction for two
mean proportionals, reproduced by Pappus and Eutocius (Comm.
on Archimedes). His nixjuvov or sieve (cribrum Eratosthenis)
was a device for discovering all prime numbers. He laid the
foundation of mathematical geography in his Geographica, in
three books. His greatest achievement was his measurement
of the earth. Being informed that at Syene (Assuan), on the day
of the summer solstice at noon, a well was lit up through all its
depth, so that Syene lay on the tropic, he measured, at the same
hour.the zenith distance of the sun at Alexandria. He thus found
the distance between Syene and Alexandria (known to be 5000
stadia) to correspond to jVh of a great circle, and so arrived
at 250,000 stadia (which he seems subsequently to have corrected
to 252,000) as the circumference of the earth. He is credited
by Ptolemy and his commentator Thcon with having found the
distance between the tropics to be ji rds. of the meridian circle,
which gives 23 51' 20" for the obliquity of the ecliptic. His
astronomical poem Hermes began apparently with the birth and
exploits of Hermes, then passed to the legend of his having
ordered the heavens, the zones and the stars, and gave a history
of the latter. His Erigone, of which a few fragments are also
preserved, is sometimes spoken of as a separate poem, but it may
have belonged to the Hermes, which appears also to have been
known by other names such as Catalogi. The still extant
Catasterismi, containing the story of certain stars in prose, is
probably not by Eratosthenes.
Eratosthenes was the founder of scientific chronology in his
\povoypa4>la in which he endeavoured to fix the dates of the chief
literary and political events from the conquest of Troy. An
important work was his treatise on the old comedy, dealing wilh
theatres and theatrical apparatus generally, and discussing the
works of the principal comic poets themselves. Works on moral
philosophy, history, and a number of letters were also attributed
to him.
There is a complete edition of the fragments of Eratosthenes by
Bernhardy (1822); poetical fragments, Hillier (1872); geographical,
Seidel (1799) and Berger (1880) ; <cara<rr<pur^io<, Schaubach (1795) and
Robert (1878). See Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol. i. (1906). (T. L. H.)
ERBACH, a town of Germany, in the grand-duchy of Hesse-
Darmstadt, on the Mumling, 22m. S.E. of Darmstadt. It has
cloth mills and ivory-turning, for which last branch it possesses
a technical school. Wool and cattle fairs are held twice a year.
Pop. 2800. The castle contains an interesting collection of
weapons and pictures, and in the chapel are the coffins of Einhard,
the friend and biographer of Charlemagne, and his wife, Emma.
Erbach has long been the residence of the counts of Erbach,
who trace their descent back to the i2th century, and who held
the office of cupbearer to the electors palatine of the Rhine until
1806. In 1532 the emperor Charles V. made the county a direct
fief of the Empire, on account of the services rendered by Count
Eberhard during the Peasants' War. Since 1717 the family has
been divided into the three lines of Erbach-Furstenau, Erbach-
Erbach and Erbach-SchOnberg, who rank for precedence, not
according to the age of their descent, but according to the age of
the chief of their line. In 1818 the counts of Erbach-Erbach
inherited the county of Wartenberg-Roth, and in 1903 the count
of Erbach-Schonberg was granted the title of prince. The
county was mediatized in 1806, and is now incorporated with the
duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt.
See Simon, Die Geschichte der Dynasten und Crafen zu Erbach
(Frankfort, 1858).
ERBIUM (symbol, Er; atomic weight, 165-166), one of the
metals of the rare earths. The first of the rare earth minerals
was discovered in 1794 by J. Gadolin and was named gadolinite
from its discoverer. In 1797 Ekeberg showed that gadolinite
contained another rare earth, which was given the name yttria.
Yttria is an exceedingly complex mixture, which has been
decomposed, yielding as an intermediate product terbia. This
latter substance in its turn has been split by J. L. Soret, P. T.
Clcve, Lecoq de Boisbaudran and others into erbia, holmia,
thulia and dysprosia, but it is still doubtful whether any one of
these four splitting products is a single substance. The rare
earth metals are found in the minerals gadolinite, samarskite,
fergusonite, euxenite and cerite. They are separated from the
minerals by converting them into oxalates, which by ignition
give the corresponding oxides. The oxides are then converted
into double sulphates which are separated from each other by
repeated fractional crystallization or by fractional precipitation
with ammonia or some other base. Erbium forms rose-coloured
salts and a rose-coloured oxide. The oxide dissolves slowly in
acids; it is not reduced by hydrogen and is infusible. The
salts show a characteristic absorption spectrum.
See J. F. Bahrand R. Bunsen {Ann., 1866, 137, p. i); A. v. Wels-
bach (Monats., 1883, 4, p. 641; 1884, 5, p. 508; 1885, 6, p. 477);
P. T. Cleve (Comptet rendus, 1879, 89, p. 478; 1880, 91, pp. 328,
734
ERCILLA Y ZUNIGA ERECH
381; 1882, 95, p. 1225; Butt, de la spc. Mm., 1874, 21, p. 196;
'883, 39, P- 287); C. Marignac (Ann.Chim. phys., 1849 [3] 27, p. 226);
B. Brauner (Monats., 1882, 3, p. 13); W. Crookes (Proc. Roy. Soc.,
1886, 40, p. 502); Lecoq de Boisbaudran (Comptes rendus, 1886,
102, p. 1005) ; A. Bettendorf (Ann., 1892, 270, p. 376) ; M. Muthmann
(Ber., 1898, 31, p. 1718; 1900, 33, p. 42); G. Kriiss (Zeit. f. anorg.
Ghent., 1893, 3, p. 108).
ERCILLA Y ZUNIGA, ALONSO DE (1533-1595), Spanish
soldier and poet, was born in Madrid on the 7th of August 1533.
In 1548 he was appointed page to the heir-apparent, afterwards
Philip II. In this capacity Ercilla visited Italy, Germany and
the Netherlands, and was present in 1554 at the marriage of his
master to Mary of England. Hearing that an expedition was
preparing to subdue the Araucanians of Chile, he joined the
adventurers. He distinguished himself in the ensuing campaign ;
but, having quarrelled with a comrade, he was condemned to
death in 1 558 by his general, Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza. The
sentence was commuted to imprisonment, but Ercilla was
speedily released and fought at the battle of Quipeo (i4th of
December 1558). He returned to Spain in 1562, visited Italy,
France, Germany, Bohemia, and in 1570 married Maria de
Bazan, a lady distantly connected with the Santa Cruz family;
in 1571 he was made knight of the order of Santiago, and in
1578 he was employed by Philip II. on a mission to Saragossa.
He complained of living in poverty but left a modest fortune,
and was obviously disappointed at not being offered the post
of secretary of state. His principal work is La Araucana, a
poem based on the events of the wars in which he had been
engaged. It consists of three parts, of which the first, composed
in Chile and published in 1569, is a versified narrative adhering
strictly to historic fact; the second, published in 1578, is en-
cumbered with visions and other romantic machinery; and the
third, which appeared in 1589-1590, contains, in addition to
the subject proper, a variety of episodes mostly irrelevant.
This so-called epic lacks symmetry, and has been over-praised
by Cervantes and Voltaire; but it is written in excellent Spanish,
and is full of vivid rhetorical passages. An analysis of the poem
was given by Hayley in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1782).
A good biography precedes the Morceaux choisis (Paris, 1900) by
Jean Ducamin.
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN, the joint names of two French
writers whose collaboration made their work that of, so to speak,
one personality. EMILE ERCKMANN (1822-1899) was born on
the 2oth of May 1 82 2 at Phalsbourg, and Louis GRATIEN CHARLES
ALEXANDRE CHATRIAN (1826-1890) on the i8th of December
1826 at Soldatenthal, Lorraine. In 1847 they began to write
together, and continued doing so till 1889. Chatrian died in
1890 at Villemomble near Paris, and Erckmann at Luneville in
1899. The list of their publications is a long one, ranging from
the Histoires et contes fantastiques (1849; reprinted from the
Democrate du Rhin),L'Illuslre Docteur Matheus (1859), Madame
Therese (1863), L'Ami Fritz (1864), Hisloire d'un consent de 1813
(1864), Waterloo (1865), Le Blocus (1867), Histoire d'un paysan
(4 vols., 1868-1870), L' 'Histoire du plebiscite (1872), to Le Grand-
pereLebigue (1880); besides dramas like Le Juif polonais (1869)
and Les Rantzau (1882). Without any special literary claim,
their stories are distinguished by simplicity and genuine de-
scriptive power, particularly in the battle scenes and in connexion
with Alsatian peasant life. They are marked by a genuine
democratic spirit, and by real patriotism, which developed after
1870 into hatred of the Germans. The authors attacked
militarism by depicting the horrors of war in the plainest terms.
See also J. Claretie, Erckmann-Chatrian (1883), in the series of
" Celebrites contemporaines."
ERDELYI, JANOS (1814-1868), Hungarian poet and author,
was born in 1814 at Kapos, in the county of Ungvar, and educated
at the Protestant college of Sarospatak. In 1833 he removed
to Pest, where he was, in 1839, elected member of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences. His literary fame was made by his collec-
tion of Hungarian national poems and folk-tales, Magyar
Nepkoltesi Gyiljtemeny, Ntpdalok es Monddk (Pest, 1846-1847).
This work, published by the Kisfaludy Society, was supplemented
by a dissertation upon Hungarian national poetry, afterwards
partially translated into German by Stier (Berlin, 1851). Erdelyi
also compiled for the Kisfaludy Society an extensive collection
of Hungarian proverbs Magyar Kozmonddsok konyve (Pest,
1851), and was for some time editor of the Szepirodalmi
Szemle (Review of Polite Literature). In 1848 he was appointed
director of the national theatre at Pest ; but after 1849 he resided
at his native town. He died on the 23rd of January 1868. A
collection of folklore was published the year after his death,
entitled A Nep Kolteszete nipdalok, nipmesek es kozmonddsok
(Pest, 1869). This work contains 300 national songs, 19 folk-tales
and 7362 Hungarian proverbs.
ERDMANN, JOHANN EDUARD (1805-1892),- German philo-
sophical writer, was born at Wolmar in Livonia on the i3th of
June 1805. He studied theology at Dorpat and afterwards at
Berlin, where he fell under the influence of Hegel.- From 1829
to 1832 he was a minister of religion in his native town. After-
wards he devoted himself to philosophy, and qualified in that
subject at Berlin in 1834. In 1836 he was professor-extraordinary
at Halle, became full professor in 1839, and died there on the
1 2th of June 1892. He published many philosophical text-books
and treatises, and a number of sermons; but his chief claim
to remembrance rests on his elaborate Grundriss der Geschichte
der Philosophic (2 vols., 1866), the 3rd edition of which has been
translated into English. Erdmann's special merit is that he
does not rest content with being a mere summarizer of opinions,
but tries to exhibit the history of human thought as a continuous
and ever-developing effort to solve the great speculative problems
with which man has been confronted in all ages. His chief other
works were: Leib und Seele (1837), Grundriss der Psychologie
(1840), Grundriss der Logik und Metaphysik (1841), and Psycho-
logische Briefe (1851).
ERDMANN, OTTO LINN& (1804-1869), German chemist,
son of Karl Gottfried Erdmann (1774-1835), the physician who
introduced vaccination into Saxony, was born at Dresden on the
nth of April 1804. In 1820 he began to attend the medico-
chirurgical academy of his native place, and in 1822 he entered
the university of Leipzig where in 1827 he became extraordinary
professor, and in 1830 ordinary professor of chemistry. This
office he held until his death, which happened at Leipzig on the
9th of October 1869. He was particularly successful as a teacher,
and the laboratory established at Leipzig under his direction
in 1843 was long regarded as a model institution. As an investi-
gator he is best known for his work on nickel and indigo and other
dye-stuffs. With R. F. Marchand (1813-1850) he also carried
out a number of determinations of atomic weights. In 1828,
in conjunction with A. F. G. Werther (1815-1869), he founded
the Journal fur technische und okonomische Chemie, which became
in 1834 the Journal fur praklische Chemie. He was also the
author of Uber das Nickel (1827), Lehrbuch der Chemie (1828),
Grundriss der Waarenkunde (1833), and Uber das Studium der
Chemie (1861).
EREBUS, in Greek mythology, son (according to Hesiod,
Theog. 123) of Chaos, and father of Aether (upper air) and
Hemera (day) by his sister Nyx (night). The word, which
signifies darkness, is in Homer the gloomy subterranean region
through which the departed shades pass into Hades. The
entrance to it was in the extreme west, on the borders of Ocean,
in the mythical land of the Cimmerians. It is to be distinguished
from Tartarus, the place of punishment for the wicked.
ERECH (Uruk in the Babylonian inscriptions; Gr. Orchoe),
the Biblical name of an ancient city of Babylonia, situated E.
of the present bed of the Euphrates, on the line of the ancient Nil
canal, in a region of marshes, about 140 m. S.S.E. from Bagdad
It was one of the oldest and most important cities of Babylonia,
and the site of a famous temple, called E-Anna, dedicated to the
worship of Nana, or Ishtar. Erech played a very important part
in the political history of the country from an early time,
exercising hegemony in Babylonia at a period before the time
of Sargon. Later it was prominent in the national struggles
of the Babylonians against Elam (2000 B.C. and earlier), in
which it suffered severely; recollections of these conflicts are
embodied in the Gilgamesh epic, as it has come down to us
ERECHTHEUM
735
through the library of Assur-bani-pal. Ercch enjoyed much
distinction in the later times, as a seat of learning and of the
worship of Ishtar. and Assur-bani-pal drew largely on its literary
stores for his library at Nineveh, from which we derive our
principal information concerning ancient Babylonian literature.
The inscriptions found here show that it continued in existence
through the Persian and Seleucid periods. The ruins of the
ancient site, known as Warka, which are among the largest in all
Babylonia, forming an irregular circle nearly 6 m. in circum-
ference, bounded by a wall, still standing in some places to the
height of 40 ft., were explored and partially excavated by W. K.
Loftus in 1850 and 1854. The most conspicuous ruin, now
i ailed Abu-Bcrdi, " Father of Marsh Grass," or Buwariye,
" reed matting," because of the layers of reeds between each
twelve courses of unbaked brick, is the tiggurat (tower) of the
ancient temple of E-Anna. It is about 100 ft. in height, and
strikingly resembles in general appearance the ruins of the
ziggurat of the temple of Enlil at Nippur. Second to this in size
was the ruin called Wuswas, a walled quadrangle, including an
area of more than seven and a half acres, within which was an
edifice 246 ft. long and 174 ft. wide, elevated on an artificial
platform 50 ft. in height. The south-west facade, still standing in
some places to the height of 23 ft., exhibited an interesting use
of half columns, and stepped recesses for purposes of decoration.
In another ruin Loftus found a wall, 30 ft. long, composed en-
tirely of small yellow terra-cotta nail-headed cones, such as have
been discovered in great numbers, inscribed and uninscribcd,
used for votive purposes in connexion with walls at Tello and
elsewhere in Babylonia. His excavations being superficial, the
Babylonian inscriptions found by him, about one hundred in all,
exclusive of the ancient Ur-Gur bricks from the temple, belong in
general to the neo-Babylonian, Persian and Seleucid periods.
The older remains are buried deep beneath the huge mass of
laterdebris. Loftus also discovered at Erech, almost everywhere
within and without the walls, great numbers of clay coffins,
piled one above another, to the height of over 30 ft., forming a
vast and, on the whole, well-ordered cemetery belonging to the
Persian, Parthian and later occupations of Babylonia, during
which period Erech, like other cities of the south, evidently
became a necropolis for a large extent of country. After Loftus's
time the mounds were visited by various travellers, but no further
excavations have been conducted. Work on this important part
of the site is attended with very great difficulties, owing to the
inaccessible position of the ruins, the unsettled character of the
country, the frequent sand-storms, and above all, the immense
mass of material of later periods which must be removed before a
systematic excavation of the more ancient and interesting ruins
could be undertaken. A curious feature of the Warka neighbour-
hood is the existence of conical sand-hills, rising to a considerable
height, so compact as to be almost like stone. These hills extend
from Warka northward as far as Tel Ede.
See \V. K. Loftus. ChaUaea and Susiana (1857); J. P. Peters,
.\lf>f>nr (1897) ; E. Sachau. Am Euphrat und Tigris (1900). Cf. also
NIPPI R and authorities there quoted. 0- '' '"' -J
ERECHTHEUM, a temple (commonly called after Erechtheus,
to whom a portion of it was dedicated) on the acropolis at
Athens, unique in plan, and in its execution the most refined
example of the Ionic order. There is no clear evidence as to
when the building was begun, some placing it among the temples
projected by Pericles, others assigning it to the time after the
peace of Nicias in 421 B.C. The work was interrupted by the
stress of the Peloponnesian War, but in 409 B.C. a commission
was appointed to make a report on the state of the building and
to undertake its completion, which was carried out in the follow-
ing year.
The peculiar plan of the Erechthcum has given rise to much
speculation. It may be due partly to the natural conformation
of the rock and the differences of level, partly to the necessity
of enclosing within a single building several objects of ancient
sanctity, such as the mark of Poseidon's trident and the spring
that arose from it, the sacred olive tree of Athena, and the tomb
of Cecrops. But there are some features which cannot be so
explained, and which have led Professor W. Ddrpfeld :iml
ot hers to believe that the plan, as we now have it, is a modification
or abridgment of the original design, due to the same conservative
influences as led to the curtailment of the plan of the Propylaea
The building as completed consisted of a temple of the ordinary
type, opening by a door and two windows to the east front,
before which stood a portico of six Ionic columns. This part was
the temple of Athena Polias. Adjoining it on the west was the
central chamber, on a lower level; this chamber was separated
by a partition, originally of wood and later of marble, from the
western compartment of the temple, which was of peculiar
construction. The west end was formed by a wall, on which stood
four columns between antae; but the main entrance to this
western compartment was through a large and very ornate door-
way on the north; and a large Ionic portico, consisting of four
columns in the front, and one in the return on each side, was
placed in front of this door. At the south end of the western
compartment was a smaller door, with steps leading up to the
higher level, within a projecting space enclosed by a low wall
and covered with a projecting porch carried by six " maidens "
or caryatides. The construction of the building at this south-
western corner shows that there was some sacred object that
had to be bridged over by a huge block of marble; this we know
from inscriptions to have been the Cecropeum or tomb of Cecrops.
In the north portico a square hole in the floor, with a corre-
sponding hole in the roof above it, must have given access to
another sacred object, the mark of Poseidon's trident in the rock.
The sacred olive tree probably stood just outside the temple to
the west in the Pandroseion. The Ionic order, as used in this
temple, is of the most ornate Attic type. The bases of the
columns are either reeded or decorated with a plait-pattern;
the capital has the broad channel between the volutes sub-
divided by -a carefully-profiled incision; and the top of the
shafts is ornamented by a broad band of pal met te or honeysuckle
pattern. A similar band of ornament runs round the top of the
walls outside, and at their base is a reeded torus. The frieze
consisted of white marble figures in relief, affixed to a background
of black Eleusinian stone.
The contents of the Erechtheum are described by Pausanias.
It contained the ancient image of Athena Polias, and three altars,
one to Poseidon and Erechtheus, one to Butcs and one to
Hephaestus; there were portraits of the family of the Butadae
on the walls. Within it was also the gold lamp of Callimachus,
which burnt for a year without refilling, and had a chimney in
the form of a palm-tree.
The Erechthcum was damaged by a fire, soon after its com-
pletion, in 406 B.C., but was repaired early in the following
century. The west end appears to have been damaged in Roman
times and to have been replaced by the attached columns with
ERECHTHEUS ERFURT
windows between them which appear in old drawings and are
still partially extant. It was used as a church in Christian
times, and under Turkish rule as the harem of the governor of
Athens. Lord Elgin carried off to London, about 1801-1803,
one of the columns of the east portico and one of the caryatides;
these were replaced later by terra-cotta casts. During the siege
of the Acropolis in 1827, the roof of the north portico was thrown
down and the building was otherwise much damaged. It was
partially rebuilt between 1838 and 1846; the west front was
blown down in a storm in 1852. Since 1900 the project of
rebuilding the Erechtheum as far as possible with the original
blocks has again been undertaken.
See Stuart, Antiquities of Athens; Inwood, The Erechtheum;
H. Forster in Papers of American School at Athens, i. (1882-1883);
J. H. Middleton, Plans and Drawings of Athenian Buildings (1900),
Els. xiv.-xxii.; E. A. Gardner, Ancient Athens, chap, viii.; W. Dorp-
:ld, " Der ursprungliche Plan des Erechtheion " in Mitteil. Athen.,
1904, p. 101, taf. 6; G. P. Stevens, " The East Wall of the Erech-
theum," in American Journ. Arch., 1906, pis. vi.-ix. (E. GR.)
, ERECHTHEUS, in Greek legend, a mythical king of Athens,
originally identified with Erichthonius, but in later times dis-
tinguished from him. According to Homer, who knows nothing
of Erichthonius, he was the son of Aroura (Earth), brought up
by Athena, with whom his story is closely connected. In the later
story, Erichthonius (son of Hephaestus and Atthis or Athena
herself) was handed over by Athena to the three daughters of
Cecrops Aglauros (or Agraulos), Herse and Pandrosos in a
chest, which they were forbidden to open. Aglauros and Herse
disobeyed the injunction, and when they saw the child (which
had the form of a snake, or round which a snake was coiled)
they went mad with fright, and threw themselves from the rock
of the Acropolis (or were killed by the snake). Athena herself
then undertook the care of Erichthonius, who, when he grew up,
drove out Amphictyon and took possession of the kingdom of
Athens. Here he established the worship of Athena, instituted
the Panathenaea, and built an Erechtheum. The Erechtheus
of later times was supposed to be the grandson of Erechtheus-
Erichthonius, and was also king of Athens. When Athens was
attacked by the Thracian Eumolpus (or by the Eleusinians
assisted by Eumolpus) victory was promised Erechtheus if he
sacrificed one of his daughters. Eumolpug was slain and Erech-
theus was victorious, but was himself killed by Poseidon, the
father of Eumolpus, or by a thunderbolt from Zeus. The contest
between Erechtheus and Eumolpus formed the subject of a lost
tragedy by Euripides; Swinburne has utilized the legend in his
Erechtheus. The scene of the opening of the chest is. represented
on a Greek vase in the British Museum. The name Erichthonius
is connected with xO& v (" earth ") and the representation of him
as half-snake, like Cecrops, indicates that he was regarded as one
of the autochthones, the ancestors of the Athenians who sprung
from the soil.
See Apollodorus iii. 14. 15; Euripides, Ion; Ovid, Metam. ii. 553;
Hyginus, Poet, astron. ii. 13; Pausanias i. 2. 5. 8; E. Ermatinger,
Die attische Autochthonensage (1897); article by J. A. Hild in
Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des anliqmtes; B. Powell in
Cornell Studies, xvii. (1906), who identifies Erechtheus, Erichthonius,
Poseidon and Cecrops, all denoting the sacred serpent of Athena,
whose cult she first contested, but then amalgamated with her own.
The birth of Erichthonius (as a corn-spirit) is interpreted by Mann-
hardt as a mythical way of describing the growth of the corn, and by
J. E. Harrison (Myths and Monuments of Ancient Athens, xxvii.-
xxxvi.) as a fiction to explain the ceremony performed by the, two
maidens called Arrephori. See also Farnell, Cults of the Greek States,
i. 270; and Frazer's Pausanias, ii. 169.
ERESHKIGAL, also known as ALLATU, the name of the chief
Babylonian goddess of the nether-world where the dead are
gathered. Her name signifies " lady of the nether-world."
She is known to us chiefly through two myths, both symbolizing
the change of seasons, but intended also to illustrate certain
doctrines developed in the temple-schools of Babylonia. One of
these myths is the famous story of Ishtar's descent to Irkalla
or ArSlu, as the lower world was called, and her reception by
her sister who presides over it; the other is the story of Nergal's
offence against Ereshkigal, his banishment to the kingdom
controlled by the goddess and the reconciliation between Nergal
and Ereshkigal through the latter's offer to have Nergal share the
honours of the rule over Irkalla. The story of Ishtar's descent
is told to illustrate the possibility of an escape from Irkalla,
while the other myth is intended to reconcile the existence of
two rulers of Irkalla a goddess and a god.
It is evident that it was originally a goddess who was supposed
to be in control of Irkalla, corresponding to Ishtar in control of
fertility and vegetation on earth. Ereshkigal is therefore the
sister of Ishtar and from one point of view her counterpart, the
symbol of nature during the non-productive season of the year.
As the doctrine of two kingdoms, one of this world and one of
the world of the dead, becomes crystallized, the dominions of
the two sisters are sharply differentiated from one another. The
addition of Nergal represents the harmonizing tendency to unite
with Ereshkigal as the queen of the nether-world the god who,
in his character as god of war and of pestilence, conveys the
living to Irkalla and thus becomes the one who presides over
the dead. (M. JA.)
ERETRIA (mod. Aletria), an ancient coast town of Euboea
about 15 m. S.E. of Chalcis, opposite to Oropus. Eretria,
like its neighbour Chalcis (q.v.), early entered upon a commercial
and colonizing career. Besides founding townships in the west
and north of Greece, it acquired dependencies among the Cyclades
and joined the great mercantile alliance of Miletus and Aegina.
Since the so-called Lelantine War (7th century B.C.) against
the coming league of Chalcis, it began to be overshadowed by
its rivals. The interference of Eretria in the Ionian revolt (498)
brought upon it the vengeance of the Persians, who captured
and destroyed it shortly before the battle of Marathon (490).
The city was soon rebuilt, and as a member of both the Delian
Leagues attached itself by numerous treaties to the Athenians.
The latter, through their general Phocion, rescued it from the
tyrants suborned by Philip of Macedon (354 and 341). Under
Macedonian and Roman rule Eretria fell into insignificance;
for a short period under Mark Antony, the triumvir, it became
a possession of Athens. Eretria was the birthplace of the
tragedian Achaeus and of the " Megarian " philosopher
Menedemus.
The modern village, which is sometimes called Nea Psari
because the inhabitants of Psara were transferred there in 1821,
is on unhealthy low-lying ground near the sea. The excavation
of the site was carried out by the American School of Athens
(1890-1895). At the foot of the Acropolis Hill, where the ground
begins to rise, the theatre lies; and though the material of
which this was built is rough, and only seven imperfect rows of
seats remain, a good part of the scena and of the chambers
behind it is preserved, and beneath these there runs a tunnel,
which, together with other peculiar features, has raised interesting
questions in connexion with the arrangement of the Greek
theatre, the orchestra being at present on a level about 12 ft.
below that of the rooms in the scena. Near by are the sub-
structions of a temple of Dionysus and a large altar, and also
a gymnasium with arrangements for bathing. Besides these,
in 1900 the substructions of a temple of Apollo Daphnephoros
were unearthed. Both the northern and the southern side of
the hill are flanked by walls, which seem to have reached the sea,
where there was a mole and a harbour; and the wall of the
acropolis itself remains in one part to the height of eight courses.
AUTHORITIES. Strabo x. 447 f. ; Herodotus v. 99, vi. 101 ;
Corpus Inscr. Atticarum, i. 339, iv. (2), pp. 5, 10, 22; H. Heinze,
De rebus Eretriensium (Gottmgen, 1869); W. M. Leake, Travels
in Northern Greece (London, 1835), ii. 266, 443; B. V. Head,
Historia numorum (Oxford, 1887), pp. 305-308; Papers of the
American School at Athens, vol. vi. (E. GR.)
ERETRIAN SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY. This Greek school
was the continuation of the Elian school, which was transferred
to Eretria by Menedemus. It was of small importance, and in
the absence of certain knowledge must be supposed to have
adhered to the doctrines of Socrates. (See MENEDEMUS.)
ERFURT, a city of Germany, in Prussian Saxony, on the
Gera, and the railway Halle-Bebra, about midway between
Gotha and Weimar, which are 14 m. distant. Pop. (1875)
48,025; (1905) 100,065. The city, which is dominated on the
ERGOT
737
west by the t wo citadels of Pet ei sbergand Cyriaxburg, is irregularly
built, the only feature in its plan, or want of plan, being the
Frietirich \VilhclmsplaU, a broad open space of irregular shape
abutting on the Petersberg. On the south-western side of this
square, which contains a monument to the elector Frederick
Charles Joseph of Mains (1710-1802), is the Dombcrg, an
eminence on which stand, side by side, the cathedral and the
great church of St Severus with its three spires (i4th century).
The churches are approached by a flight of forty-eight stone
steps, the grouping of the whole mass of buildings being exceed-
ingly impressive. The cathedral (Beatat Uariae Virginis) is
one of the finest churches in Germany. It was begun in the
uth century, but the nave was rebuilt in the i jth in the Gothic
style. The magnificent chancel (1340-1372), with the 14th-
century crypt below, rests on massive substructures, known as the
Cataie. The twin towers are set between the chancel and nave.
The cathedral contains, besides fine 15th-century glass, some
very rich portal sculptures and bronze castings, among others
the coronation of the Virgin by Peter Vischer. In one of its
towers is the famous bell, called Maria Gloriosa, which bears
the date 1497, and weighs 270 cwt. Besides the cathedral and
St Severus, which are Roman Catholic, Erfurt possesses several
very interesting medieval churches, now Evangelical. Among
these may be mentioned the Predigerkirche, dating from the
Utter half of the 1 2th century; the Reglerkirche, a Romanesque
building (restored in 1859) with a nth-century tower; and the
Barfusserkirche, a Gothic building containing fine 14th-century
monuments. All these were originally monastic churches. Of
the former religious houses there survive a Franciscan convent,
with a girls' school attached, and an Ursuline convent. The
Augustinian monastery, in which Luther lived as a friar, is now
used as an orphanage, under the name of the Martinsstift. The
cell of Luther was destroyed by fire in 1872. A bronze statue
of the reformer was erected in the Anger, the chief street of
the town, in 1890. At one time Erfurt had a university, of which
the charter dated from 1392; but it was suppressed in 1816,
and its funds devoted to other purposes, among these being the
endowment of an institution founded in 1758 and now called the
royal academy of sciences, and the support of the royal library,
which now contains 60,000 volumes and over 1000 manuscripts.
On the W. and S. W. extensive new quarters have grown up within
recent years, e.g. Hirschbruhl. The interior of the town hall
(1860-1875) is adorned with legendary and historical frescoes
by Kampfer and Peter Janssen. Erfurt possesses also a picture
gallery and an antiquarian collection.
The educational establishments of the town include a
gymnasium, a realgymnasium, a realschule, technical schools
for building and handicrafts, a high-class commercial school,
a school of agriculture, and an academy of music. The most
notable industry of Erfurt is the culture of flowers and of vege-
tables, which is very extensively carried on. This industry had
its origin in the large gardens attached to the monasteries.
It has also important and growing manufactures of ladies'
mantles, boots and shoes, machines, furniture, woollen goods,
musical instruments, agricultural machinery and implements,
leather, tobacco, chemicals, &c. Brewing, bleaching and dyeing
are also carried on on a large scale, and there are extensive
railway works and a government rifle factory.
Erfurt (Med. Erpesjurt, Erphorde, Lat. Erfordia) is a town
of great antiquity. Its origin is obscure, but in 741 it was
sufficiently important for St Boniface to found a bishopric here,
which was, however, after the martyrdom of the first bishop,
Adolar, in 755, reabsorbed in that of Mainz. In 805, the place
received certain market rights from the emperor Charlemagne.
Later the overlordship was claimed by the archbishops of Mainz,
on the strength of charters granted by the emperor Otto I., and
their authority in Erfurt was maintained by a burgrave and an
adtocalui, the office of the Utter becoming in the I2th century
hereditary in the family of the counts of Gleichen. In spite of
many vicissitudes (from 1 109 to 1 137, for instance, the town was
subject to the landgraves of Thuringia), and of a charter granted
in 1242 by the emperor Frederick II., the archbishops succeeded
DC. 24
in upholding their claims. In 1255, however, Archbishop
Gerhard I. had to grant the city municipal rights, the burgraviatc
disappeared, and Erfurt became practically a free town. Its
power was at its height early in the isth century, when it joined
the Hanseatic League. It had acquired by force or purchase
various countships and other fiefs in the neighbourhood, and
ruled a considerable territory; and its wealth was so great that
in 1378 it established a university, the first in Europe that em-
braced the four faculties. By the end of the century, however,
its prosperity had sunk owing to the perpetual feud with Mainz,
the internecine war in Saxony, and the consequent dwindling
of trade. By the convention of Amorbach in 1483 the over-
lordship of Erfurt was ultimately transferred by the electors of
Mainz to Saxony. The political and religious quarrels of the i6th
century still further depressed the city, in which the reformed
religion was established in 1521. Then came the Thirty Years'
War, during which Erfurt was for a while occupied by the Swedes.
After the peace of Westphalia (1648) the city was assigned by the
emperor to the elector of Mainz, and, on its refusal to submit, it
was placed under the ban of the Empire (1660). In 1664 it was
captured by the troops of the archbishop of Mainz, and remained
in the possession of the electorate till 1802, when it came into the
possession of Prussia. In 1808 it was the scene of the memorable
interview between Napoleon and the emperor Alexander I. of
Russia, at which the kings of Bavaria, Saxony, Westphalia and
Wiirttemberg also assisted, which is known as the congress of
Erfurt. Here in 1850 the parliament of the short-lived Prussian
Northern Union (known as the Erfurt parliament) held its sittings.
In 1002 the looth anniversary of the city's incorporation with
Prussia was celebrated.
Sec W. J. A. von Tettau, Erfurt in seiner Vergangenheit und
Gegenwart (Erfurt, 1880); C. Beyer, Geschichte der Stadt Erfurt
(Erfurt, 1900); and F. W. Kampschulte, Die Universittit Erfurt
in ihrem Verhaltnisse zu dent Humanismus und der Reformation
(1856-1858). For a detailed bibliography see U. Chevalier, Repertoire
del sources. Topo-bibliographit (Montebeliard, 1894-1899), s.v.
ERGOT, or SPURRED RYE, the drug ergota or Secale cornutum
(Ger. Mutterkorn; Fr. seigle ergott), consisting of the sclerotium
(or hard resting condition) of a fungus, Claviceps purpurea,
parasitic on the pistils of many members of the Grass family,
but obtained almost exclusively from rye, Secale cereale. In
the ear of rye that is infected with ergot a species of fermentation
takes place, and there exudes from it a sweet yellowish mucus,
which after a time disappears. The car loses its starch, and
ceases to grow, and its ovaries become penetrated with the white
spongy tissue of the mycelium of the fungus which towards the
end of the season forms the sclerotium, in which state the fungus
lies dormant through the winter.
The drug consists of grains, usually curved (hence the name,
from the O. Fr. argot, a cock's spur), which are violet-black or
dark-purple externally, and whitish with a tinge of pink within,
are between J and i J in. long, and from i to 4 lines broad, and
have two lateral furrows, a close fracture, a disagreeable rancid
taste, and a faint, fishy odour, which last becomes more per-
ceptible when the powder of the drug is mixed with potash
solution. Ergot should be kept in stoppered bottles in order to
preserve it from the attacks of a species of mite, and to prevent
the oxidation of its fatty oil.
The extremely complex composition of this drug has been
studied in great detail, and with such important results that
instead of giving ergot itself by the mouth in doses of 20 to 60
grains, it is now possible to obtain much more rapid and certain
results by giving one three-hundredth of a grain of one of its
constituents hypodermically. This constituent is the alkaloid
cornutine, which is the valuable ingredient of the drug. Other
ingredients are a fixed oil, present to the extent of 30%, ergotinic
acid, a glucoside, trimethylamine, which gives the drug its
unpleasant odour, and sphacelinic acid, a non-nitrogenous
resinoid body. Of the -numerous preparations only two need be
mentioned the liquid extract (dose 10 minims to 2 drachms
or more), and the hypodermic injection. The latter does not
keep well, and the best way of using ergot is to dissolve tablets
obtained from a reputable maker, and containing some of the
738
ERIC XIV.
active principles, in pure water, the solution being injected
subcutaneously.
Ergot has no external action. Given internally it stimulates
the intestinal musclesand maycause diarrhoea. After absorption
it slows the pulse by stimulation of the vagus nerves. It has
indeed been asserted that the slow pulse characteristic of the
puerperal period is really due to the common administration
of ergot at that time. This is probably an exaggeration. The
important actions of ergot are on the blood-vessels and the
uterus. The drug greatly raises the blood-pressure by causing
extreme contraction of the arteries. -This is mainly due to a
direct action on the muscular coats of the vessels, but is also
partly of central origin, since the drug also stimulates the vaso-
motor centre in the medulla oblongata. This action on the vessels
is so marked as to constitute the drug a haemostatic, not only
locally but also remotely. It may arrest bleeding from the
nose, for instance, when injected hypodermically. Nearly all the
constituents share in causing this action, but the sphacelinic
acid is probably the most potent. Ergot is the most powerful
known stimulant of the pregnant uterus. The action is a double
one. At least four of its constituents act directly on the muscular
fibre of the uterus, whilst the cornutine acts through the nerves.
Of great practical importance is the fact that the cornutine
causes rhythmic contractions such as naturally occur, whilst
the sphacelinic acid produces a tonic contraction of the uterus,
which is unnatural and highly inimical to the life of the foetus.
Ergot is used in therapeutics as a haemostatic, and is very valu-
able in haemoptysis and sometimes in haematemesis. But its
great use is in obstetrics. The drug should regularly be given
hypodermically, and it is important to note that if the injection
be made immediately under the skin, an abscess, or considerable
discomfort, may ensue. The injection should be intra-muscular,
the needle being boldly plunged into a muscular mass, such as
that of the deltoid or the gluteal region. The indications for
the use of ergot in obstetrics are highly complex and demand
detailed treatment. It can only be said here that the drug
should only in the rarest possible cases be given whilst the child
is still in utero. This rule is necessitated by the sphacelinic acid,
which causes an un natural state of the organ. When it is possible
to obtain pure cornutine, which is unfortunately very expensive,
the precautions necessary in other cases may be abrogated.
Chronic poisoning, or ergotism, used frequently to occur
amongst the poor fed on rye infected with the Claviceps. As
it is practically impossible to reproduce the symptoms of ergotism
nowadays, whether experimentally in the lower animals, or when
the drug is being administered to a human being for some thera-
peutic purpose, it is believed that the symptoms of ergotism
were rendered possible only by the semi-starvation which must
have ensued from the use of such rye-bread; for the grain
disappears as the fungus develops. There were two types of
ergotism. In the gangrenous form various parts of the body
underwent gangrene as a consequence of the arrest of blood-
supply produced by the action of sphacelinic acid on the arteries.
In the spasmodic form the symptoms were of a nervous character.
The initial indications of the disease were cutaneous itching,
tingling and formication, which gave place to actual loss of
cutaneous sensation, first observed in the extremities. Amblyopia
and some loss of hearing also occurred, as well as mental failure.
With weakness of the voluntary muscles went intermittent
spasms which weakened the patient and ultimately led to death
by implication of the respiratory muscles. The last-known
" epidemic " of ergotism occurred in Lorraine and Burgundy
in the year 1816.
ERIC XIV. (1533-1577), king of Sweden, was the only son of
Gustavus Vasa and Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg. The news of
his father's death reached Eric as he was on the point of embark-
ing for England to press in person his suit for the hand of Queen
Elizabeth. He hastened back to Stockholm, after burying his
father, summoned a Riksdag, which met at Arboga on the 1 5th
of April 1561, and adopted the royal propositions known as the
Arboga articles, considerably curtailing the authority of the royal
dukes, John and Charles, in their respective provinces. Two
months later Eric was crowned at Upsala, on which occasion
he first introduced the titles of baron and count into Sweden,
by way of attaching to the crown the higher nobility, these new
counts and barons receiving lucrative fiefs adequate to the
maintenance of their new dignities.
From the very beginning of his reign Eric's morbid fear of
the upper classes drove him to give his absolute confidence to
a man of base origin and bad character, though, it must.be
admitted, of superior ability. This was Goran Persson, born
about 1530, who had been educated abroad in Lutheran principles,
and after narrowly escaping hanging at the hands of Gustavus
Vasa for some vile action entered the service of his son. This
powerful upstart was the natural enemy of the nobility, who
suffered much at his hands, though it is very difficult to determine
whether the initiative in these prosecutions proceeded from him
or his master. Goran was also a determined opponent of Duke
John, with whom Eric in 1563 openly quarrelled, because John,
contrary to the royal orders, had married (Oct. 4, 1 562) Catherine,
daughter of Sigismund I. of Poland, engaging at the same time
to assist the Polish king to conquer Livonia. This act was a
flagrant breach of that paragraph of the Arboga articles which
forbade the royal dukes to contract any political treaty without
the royal assent. An army of 10,000 men was immediately
sent by Eric to John's duchy of Finland, and John and his
consort were seized, brought over to Sweden and detained as
prisoners of state in Gripsholm Castle. But Eric did not stop
here. His suspicion suggested to him that, if his own brother
failed him, the loyalty of the great nobles, especially the members
of the ancient Sture family, who had been notable in Sweden
when the Vasas were unknown, could not be depended upon.
The head of the Sture family at this time was Count Svante,
who had married a sister of Gustavus Vasa's second wife, and had
by her a numerous family, of whom two sons, Nils and Eric, still
survived. The dark tragedy, known as the Sture murders,
began with Eric XIV. 's strange treatment of young Count Nils.
In 1566 he was summoned before a newly erected tribunal and
condemned to death for gross neglect of duty, though not one
of the frivolous charges brought against him could be sub-
stantiated. The death penalty was commuted into a punishment
worse because more shameful than death. On the 15th of June
1566 the unfortunate youth, bruised and bleeding from shocking
ill-treatment, was placed upon a wretched hack, with a crown
of straw on his head, and led in derision through the streets of
Stockholm. The following night he was sent a prisoner to the
fortress of Orbyhus. A few days later he was appointed
ambassador extraordinary, and despatched to Lorraine to resume
the negotiations for Eric's marriage with the princess Renata.
Before he returned, however, Eric had resolved to marry Karin,
or Kitty Mansdatter, the daughter of a common soldier, who had
been his mistress since 1565. In January 1567 Eric extorted
a declaration from two of his senators that they would assist
him to punish all who should try to prevent his projected
marriage; and, in the middle of May, a Riksdag was summoned
to Upsala to judge between the king and those of the aristocracy
whom he regarded as his personal enemies. Eric himself arrived
at Upsala on the i6th in a condition of incipient insanity. On
the ipth he opened parliament in a speech which, as he explained,
he had to deliver extempore owing to " the treachery " of his
secretary. Two days later Nils Sture arrived at Upsala fresh
from his embassy to Lorraine, and was at once thrown into prison,
where other members of the nobility were already detained.
On the following day Eric murdered Nils in his cell with his own
hand, and by his order the other prisoners were despatched by
the royal provost marshal forthwith. These murders were com-
mitted so promptly and secretly that it is doubtful whether the
estates, actually in session at the same place, knew what had been
done when, on the a6th of May, under violent pressure from
Goran Persson, they signed a document declaring that all the
accused gentlemen under detention had acted like traitors, and
confirming all sentences already passed or that might be passed
upon them.
During the greater part of 1567 Eric was so deranged that a
ERICACEAE
739
committee of senators was appointed to govern the kingdom.
One oi his illusions was that not he was king but his brother John,
whom he now set at liberty. When, at the beginning of 1568,
Eric recovered his reason, a reconciliation was effected between
the king and the duke, on condition that John recognized tin-
legality of his brother's marriage with Karin Mansdatter, and
her children as the successors to the throne. A month later,
on the 4th of July, he was solemnly married to Karin at Stock-
holm by the primate. The next day Karin was crowned queen
of Sweden and her infant son Gustavus proclaimed prince-royal.
Shortly after his marriage F.rii issued a circular ordering a general
thanksgiving for his deliver)' from the assaults of the devil.
This document, in every line of which madness is legible, con-
vinced most thinking people that Eric was unfit to reign. The
royal dukes, John and Charles, had already taken measures
to depose him; and in July the rebellion broke out in Ostergdt-
land. Eric at first offered a stout resistance and won two
victories; but on the i;th of September the dukes stood before
Stockholm, and Eric, after surrendering G&ran Persson to the
horrible vengeance of his enemies, himself submitted, and re-
signed the crown. On the 301 h of September 1568 John III.
was proclaimed king by the army and the nobility; and a Riksdag,
summoned to Stockholm, confirmed the choice and formally
deposed Eric on the 25th of January 1569. For the next seven
years the ex-king was a source of the utmost anxiety to the new
government. No fewer than three rebellions, with the object
of releasing and reinstating him, had to be suppressed, and his
prison was changed half a dozen times. On the loth of March
1575, an assembly of notables, lay and clerical, at John's request,
pronounced a formal sentence of death upon him. Two years
later, on the 24th of February 1577, he died suddenly in his new
prison at Orbyhus, poisoned, it is said, by his governor, Johan
Henriksen.
See Sverires Jfistorio, vol. iii. (Stockholm, 1880); Robert Nisbet
Bain. Scandinavia, cap. 4-6 (Cambridge, 1905); Eric Tegcl, Konung
Eriks den XIV. kistoria (Stockholm, 1751). (R. N. B.)
ERICACEAE, in botany, a natural order of plants belonging
to the higher or gamopelalous division of Dicotyledons. They
are woody plants, sometimes with a slender creeping stem as
in bilberry-, Yaccinium (fig. i), or Andromeda (fig. 2), or form-
ing low bushes as in
the heaths, or larger,
sometimes becoming
tree-like, as in species
of Rhododendron.
The leaves are alter-
nate, opposite or
whorled in arrange-
ment, and in their
form and structure
show well - marked
adaptation for life
in dry or exposed
situations. Thus in
the true heaths they
are needle-like, with
the margins often
rolled back to form
a groove or an almost
closed chamber on
the under side. In
others such as Rhodo-
FIG. i. Vauinium riiis-idaeo, with leaf dendron or Arbutus
and flower, nat. size, i. Flower of V. they are often
myrtUius. cut lengthwise. 2, Fruit of same, leathery and ever-
green, the strongly
cuticularized upper surface protecting a water-storing tissue
situated above the green layers of the leaf. The flowers are
sometimes solitary and axillary or terminal as in Andromeda,
but are generally arranged in racemose inflorescences at the end
of the branches as in Arbutus and Rhododendron, or on small
lateral shoots as in Erica. They are hermaphrodite and generally
regular with parts in 4 or 5, thus: sepals 4 or 5, petals 4 or 5,
stamens 8 or 10 in two series, the outer of which is opposite the
petals, and carpels 4 or 5. The corolla is usually more or less
bell-shaped, and in the heaths persists in a dry state in the fruit.
The petals with the stamens are situated on the outer edge of a
FIG. 2. Andromeda Hypnoides, nat. size,
fruit cut across; 3, Stamen all enlarged.
I, Flower; 2, Unripe
honey-secreting disk. The anthers show a very great variety in
shape, the halves are often more or less free and often
appendaged; they open to allow the escape of the pollen by a
terminal pore or slit. The carpels are united to form a 4- to 5-
chambered ovary, which bears a simple elongated style ending
in a capitate stigma; each ovary -chamber contains one to many
ovules attached to a central placenta. The brightly coloured
FIG. 3.
1 , Flowering shoot of Erica cinerea,
about i J nat. size.
2, Flower cut lengthwise. 5,
3, Stamen showing appendages
and porous dehiscence of
anther.
4, Capsule showing the loculicidal
dehiscence; a few seeds re-
main attached to the central
axis.
Diagram of the flower having
four sepals, four divisions of
the corolla, eight stamens in
two rows, and four divisions
of the pistil.
corolla, the presence of nectar and the scent render the flowers
attractive to insects, and the projection of the stigma beyond the
anthers favours crossing. The fruit is generally a capsule con-
taining many seeds, as in Erica (fig. 3) or Rhododendron; some-
times a berry as in Arbutus.
The order falls into four distinct tribes, which are characterized
by the relative position of the ovary and by the fruit and seed.
They are as follows:
i. Rhododendron tribe, characterized by capsular fruit, seed
with a loose coat, deciduous petals and anthers without append-
ages. It consists mainly of the great genus Rhododendron (in
which Azalea is included by recent botanists), which is chiefly
740
ERICHSEN ERIDANUS
developed in the mountains of eastern Asia, many species occur-
ring on the Himalayas. Dabeocia, St l)abeoc's heath, occurs
in Ireland.
2. Arbutus Tribe. Fruit a berry or capsule, petals deciduous
and anthers with bristle-like appendages, chiefly north temperate
to arctic in distribution. Arbutus Unedo, the strawberry-tree,
so called from its large scarlet berry, is a southern European
species which extends into south Ireland. Arctostaphylos
(bearberry) and A ndromeda are arctic and alpine genera occurring
in B ritain. Epigaea repens is the trailing arbutus or mayflower of
Atlantic America.
3. Vaccinium Tribe. Ovary inferior, fruit a berry. Extends
from the north temperate zone to the mountains of the tropics.
Vaccinium, the largest genus, has four British species:
V. Myrtillus is the bilberry (<?..), blaeberry or whortleberry,
V. Vitis-Idaea the cowberry, and V. Oxycoccos the cranberry
(q.v.). This tribe is sometimes regarded as a separate order
Vacciniaceae, distinguished by its inferior ovary.
4. Erica Tribe. Fruit usually a capsule, seeds round, not
winged; corolla persisting round the ripe fruit; anthers often
appendaged. The largest genus is Erica, the true heath (q.v.),
with over 400 species, the great majority of which are confined
to the Cape; others occur on the mountains of tropical Africa
and in Europe and North Africa, especially the Mediterranean
region. E. cinerea (purple heather) and E. Tetralix (cross-leaved
heath) are common British heaths. Calluna is the ling or Scotch
heather.
ERICHSEN, SIR JOHN ERIC, Bart. (1818-1896), British
surgeon, born on the igth of July 1818 at Copenhagen, was the
son of Eric Erichsen, a member of a well-known Danish family.
He studied medicine at University College, London, and at
Paris, devoting himself in the early years of his career to
physiology, and lecturing on general anatomy and physiology
at University College hospital. In 1844 he was secretary to the
physiological section of the British Association, and in 1845 he
was awarded the Fothergillian gold medal of the Royal Humane
Society for his essay on asphyxia. In 1848 he was appointed
assistant surgeon at University College hospital, and in 1850
became full surgeon and professor of surgery, his lectures and
clinical teaching being much admired; and in 1875 he joined the
consulting staff. His Science and Art of Surgery (1853) went
through many editions. He rose to be president of the College of
Surgeons in 1880. From 1879 to 1881 he was president of the
Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society. He was created a
baronet in 1895, having been for some years surgeon-extra-
ordinary to Queen Victoria. As a surgeon his reputation was
world-wide, and he counts (says Sir W. MacCormac in his volume
on the Centenary of the Royal College of Surgeons) " among the
makers of modern surgery." He was a recognized authority on
concussion of the spine, and was often called to give evidence
in court on obscure cases caused by railway accidents, &c. He
died at Folkestone on the 23rd of September 1896.
ERICHT, LOCH, a lake partly in Inverness-shire and partly in
Perthshire, Scotland, lying between the districts of Badenoch
on the N. and Rannoch on the S. The boundary line is drawn
from a point opposite to the mouth of the Alder, and follows
the centre of the longitudinal axis north-eastwards to 56 50'
N., where it strikes eastwards to the shore. All of the lake to
the S. and E. of this line belongs to Perthshire, the rest, forming
the major portion, to Inverness-shire. It is a lonely lake, situated
in extremely wild surroundings at a height of 1153 ft. above
the sea, being thus the loftiest lake of large size in the United
Kingdom. It is over 14$ m. long, with a mean breadth of half
a mile and over i m. at its maximum. Its area amounts to some
7i sq. m., and it receives the drainage of an area of nearly 50!
sq. m. The mean depth is 189 ft., and the maximum 512 ft.
It has a general trend from N.E. to S.W., the head lying i m.
from Dalwhinnie station on the Highland railway. It receives
many streams, and discharges at the south-western extremity
by the Ericht. Salmon and trout afford good fishing. The
surrounding mountains are lofty and rugged. Ben Alder (3757
ft.) on the west shore is the chief feature of the great Corrour
deer forest. The only point of interest on the banks is the cavern,
near the mouth of the Alder, in which Prince Charles Edward
concealed himself for a time after the battle of Culloden.
ERICSSON, JOHN (1803-1889), Swedish-American naval
engineer, was born at Langbanshyttan, Wermland, Sweden, on
the 3ist of July 1803. He was the second son of Olaf Ericsson,
an inspector of mines, who died in 1818. Showing from his
earliest years a strong mechanical bent, young Ericsson, at the
age of twelve, was employed as a draughtsman by the Swedish
Canal Company. From 1820 to 1827 he served in the army,
where his drawing and military maps attracted the attention
of the king, and he soon attained the rank of captain. In 1826
he went to London, at first on leave of absence from his regiment,
and in partnership with John Braithwaite constructed the
" Novelty," a locomotive engine for the Liverpool & Manchester
railway competition at Rainhill in 1829, when the prize, however,
was won by Stephenson's " Rocket." The number of Ericsson's
inventions at this period was very great. Among other things
he worked out a plan for marine engines placed entirely below
the water-line. Such engines were made for the " Victory,"
for Captain (afterwards Sir) John Ross's voyage to the Arctic
regions in 1829, but they did not prove satisfactory. In 1833
his caloric engine was made public. In 1836 he took out a
patent for a screw-propeller, and though the priority of his
invention could not be maintained, he was afterwards awarded
a one-fifth share of the 20,000 given by the Admiralty for it.
At this time Captain Stockton, of the United States navy, gave
an order for a small iron vessel to be built by Laird of Birkenhead,
and to be fitted by Ericsson with engines and screw. This vessel
reached New York in May 1839. A few months later Ericsson
followed his steamer to New York, and there he resided for the
rest of his life, establishing himself as an engineer and a builder
of iron ships. In 1848 he was naturalized as a citizen of the
United States. He had many difficulties to contend with, and
it was only by slow degrees that he established his fame and won
his way to competence. At his death he seems to have been
worth about 50,000. The provision of defensive armour for
ships of war had long occupied his attention, and he had con-
structed plans and a model of a vessel lying low in the water,
carrying one heavy gun in a circular turret mounted on a turn-
table. In 1854 he sent his plans to the emperor of the French.
Louis Napoleon, however, acting probably on the advice of
Dupuy de Lome, declined to use them. The American Civil
War, and the report that the Confederates were converting the
" Merrimac " into an ironclad, caused the navy department to
invite proposals for the construction of armoured ships. Among
others, Ericsson replied, and as it was thought that his design
might be serviceable in inland waters, the first armoured turret
ship, the " Monitor," was ordered; she was launched on the
30th of January 1862, and on the 9th of March she fought the
celebrated action with the Confederate ram " Merrimac." The
peculiar circumstances in which she was built, the great import-
ance of the battle, and the decisive nature of the result gave the
" Monitor " an exaggerated reputation, which further experience
did not confirm. In later years Ericsson devoted himself to the
study of torpedoes and sun motors. He published Solar In-
vestigations (New York, 1875) and Contributions to the Centennial
Exhibition (New York, 1877). He died in New York on the 8th
of March 1889, and in the following year, on the request of the
Swedish government, his body was sent to Stockholm and thence
into Wermland, where, at Filipstad, it was buried on the isth
of September.
A Life of Ericsson by William Conant Church was published in
New York in 1890 and in London in 1893.
ERIDANUS, or FLUVIUS (" the river "), in astronomy, a
constellation of the southern hemisphere, mentioned by Eudoxus
(4th century B.C.) and Aratus (3rd century B.C.); Ptolemy
catalogued 34 stars in it. 8 Eridani, a fine double star of magni-
tudes 3-5 and 5-3, is now of the third magnitude. It is supposed
to be identical with the Achernar of Al-Sufi, who described it
as of the first magnitude; this star has therefore decreased in
brilliancy in historic times. The star oj Eridani (numbered 40
ERIDU ERIE
by Flamsteed) was discovered to be a ternary star group by
Herschel in 1783; it consists of a close pair, of magnitudes
9-1 and 10-9, revolving in a period of 180 years, associated with
a star of magnitude 4-5, which is distant from the pair by 82';
these Mars have an exceptionally swift proper motion, about
4* per annum. Eridanus was the ancient name of the river Po.
ERIDU. one of the oldest religious centres of the Sumerians,
described in the ancient Babylonian records as the " city of the
deep." The special god of this city was Ea (q ..), god of the sea
and of wisdom, and the prominence given to this god in the
incantation literature of Babylonia and Assyria suggests not only
that many of our magical texts arc to be traced ultimately to
the temple of Ea at Eridu, but that this side of the Babylonian
religion had its origin in that place. Certain of the most ancient
Babylonian myths, especially that of Adapa, may also be traced
back to the shrine of Ea at Eridu. But while of the first im-
portance in matters of religion, there is no evidence in Babylonian
literature of any special political importance attaching to Eridu,
and certainly at no time within our knowledge did it exercise
hegemony in Babylonia. The site of Eridu was discovered by
J. E. Taylor in 1854, in a ruin then called by the natives Abu-
Shahrein, a few miles south-south-west of Moghair, ancient Ur,
nearly in the centre of the dry bed of an inland sea, a deep valley,
15 m. at its broadest, covered for the most part with a nitrous
incrustation, separated from the alluvial plain about Moghair
by a low, pebbly, sandstone range, called the Hazem, but open
toward the north to the Euphrates and stretching southward
to the Khanega wadi below Suk-esh-Sheiukh. In the rainy
season this valley becomes a sea, flooded by the discharge of
the Khanega; in summer the Arabs dig holes here which supply
t hem with brackish water. The ruins, in which Taylor conducted
brief excavations, consist of a platform of fine sand enclosed
by a sandstone wall, 20 ft. high, the corners toward the cardinal
points, on the N.\V. part of which was a pyramidal tower of two
stages, constructed of sun-dried brick, cased with a wall of
kiln-burned brick, the whole still standing to a height of about
70 ft. above the platform. The summit of the first stage was
reached by a staircase on the S.E. side, 15 ft. wide and 70 ft.
long, constructed of polished marble slabs, fastened with copper
bolts, flanked at the foot by two curious columns. An inclined
road led up to the second stage on the N.W. side. Pieces of
polished alabaster and marble, with small pieces of pure gold and
gold-headed copper nails, found on and about the top of the
second stage, indicated that a small but richly adorned sacred
chamber, apparently plated within or without in gold, formerly
crowned the top of this structure. Around the whole tower was
a pavement of inscribed baked bricks, resting on a layer of clay
2 ft. thick. On the S.E. part of the terrace were the remains
of several edifices, containing suites of rooms. Inscriptions on
the bricks identified the site as that of Eridu. Since Taylor's
time the place has not been visited by any explorer, owing to
the unsafe condition of the neighbourhood; but T. K. Loft us
(1854) and J. P. Peters (1800) both report having seen it from
the summit of Moghair. The latter states that the Arabs at that
time called the ruin Nowawis, and apparently no longer knew
the name Abu-Shahrein. Through an error, in many recent
maps and Assy riological publications Eridu is described as located
in the alluvial plain, between the Tigris and the Euphrates. It
was, in fact, an island city in an estuary of the Persian Gulf,
stretching up into the Arabian plateau. Originally " on the
shore of the sea," as the old records aver, it is now about 1 20 m.
from the head of the Persian Gulf. Calculating from the present
rate of deposit of alluvium at the head of that gulf, Eridu should
have been founded as early as the seventh millennium B.C. It
is mentioned in historical inscriptions from the earliest times
onward, as late as the 6th century B.C. From the evidence of
Taylor's excavations, it would seem that the site was abandoned
about the close of the Babylonian period.
See I. E. Taylor, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xv. (1855) :
F. Delitzsch. Wo tag das Parodies t (1881); J. P. Peters, Nippur
(1897); M. Jastrow, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (1898);
H. V. Hilprccht. Execrations in Assyria and B
L. W. King, A History of Sumer and Akkad (1910).
. eters, ur
nd Assyria (1898);
Babylonia (1904);
0). 0- P- P*-)
ERIE, the most southerly of the Great Lakes of North America,
between 41 23' and 42 53' N., and 78 51' and 83 28' W.,
bounded W. by the state of Michigan, S. and S.E. by Ohio,
Pennsylvania and New York, and N. by the province of Ontario.
It is nearly elliptical, the major axis, 250 m. long, lying cast and
west; its greatest breadth is 60 m.; its area about 10,000 sq. m.;
and the total area of its basin 34,412 sq. m. Its elevation above
mean sea-level is 573 ft.; and its surface is nearly 9 ft. below that
of Lake Huron, which discharges into it through St Clair river,
Lake St Clair and Detroit river, and is 327 ft. above that of Lake
Ontario, this great difference being absorbed by the rapids and
falls in the Niagara river, which joins the two lakes. Lake Erie
is very shallow, and may be divided into three basins, the western
extending to Point Pelee and including all the islands, containing
about 1 200 sq. m., with a comparatively flat bottom at 5 to 6
fathoms; the main basin, between Point Pelee and the narrows
at Long Point, containing about 6700 sq. m., and having a marked
shelving bottom deepening gradually to 14 fathoms; and the
portion east of the narrows, containing about 2ioosq. m., having
a depression 30 fathoms deep just east from Long Point, with
an extensive flat of n fathoms depth between it and the main
basin. The Canadian shore is low and flat throughout, the United
States shore is low but bordered by an elevated plateau through
which the rivers have cut deep channels. The lake basin is
relatively so small that the rivers are without importance;
Grand river, on the north shore, is the largest tributary. The
flat alluvial soil bordering on the lake is very fertile, and the
climate is well adapted for fruit cultivation. Large quantities
of peaches, grapes and small fruits are grown; the islands in the
west end have a climate much warmer and more equable than the
adjoining mainland, and are practically covered with vineyards.
The low clayey or sandy shores are subject to erosion by waves.
In severe storms the water near shore is filled with sand, which is
deposited where the currents are checked around the ends of
jetties in such a way as to form bars out into the lake across
improved channels. This shoaling has rendered continuous
dredging necessary at every harbour on the lake west of Erie, Pa.
In consequence f the shallowness of the lake its waters are easily
disturbed, making navigation very rough and dangerous, and
causing large fluctuations of surface. Strong winds are frequent,
as nearly every cyclonic depression traversing North America,
either from the westward or the Gulf of Mexico, passes near
enough to Lake Erie to be felt. Westerly gales are more frequent,
and have more effect on the water surface than easterly ones,
lowering the water as much as 7 to 8 ft. at the west end and
raising it 5 to 8 ft. at the east end. The worst storms occur
in autumn, when the immense quantity of shipping on the
lake makes them specially destructive. There are no tides, and
usually only a slight current towards the outlet, though powerful
currents are temporarily produced by the rapid return of waters
after a storm, and during the height of a westerly gale there is
invariably a reflex current into the west end of the lake. There
is an annual fluctuation in the level of the lake, varying from
a minimum of 9 in. to a maximum of 2 ft., the normal low level
occurring in February and the high level in midsummer.
Standard high water (of 1838) is 575-1 1 ft. above mean sea-level,
and the lowest record was 570-8 in November 1895. The
harbours and exits of the lake freeze over, but the body of the
lake never freezes completely.
Ice-breaking car ferries run across the lake all winter. General
navigation opens as a rule in the middle of April and closes in
the middle of December. The volume of traffic is immense,
because practically all freight from the more westerly lakes
finds terminal harbours in Lake Erie. Official statistics of com-
merce passing through the Detroit river into the lake during the
season of 1906 show that 35,128 vessels, having a net register
of 50,673,897 tons, carried 63,805,571 (short) tons of freight,
valued at $662,971,053. The 1175 vessels engaged in this
business were valued at $106,223,000. Over 90% of the whole
traffic is in United States ships to United States ports. Fine
passenger steamers run nightly between Buffalo and Cleveland
and Detroit, and there are many shorter passenger routes.
742
ERIE ERIGENA
The large traffic on Lake Erie has brought into existence a
number of important harbours on the south shore, nearly all
artificially made and deepened, with entrances between two
breakwaters running into the lake at right angles to the coast
line. The principal of these are Toledo, Sandusky, Huron,
Vermilion, Lorain, Cleveland, Fairport, Ashtabula, Conneaut,
Erie (a natural harbour), Dunkirk and Buffalo, Rondeau, Port
Stanley, Port Burwell, Port Dover, Port Maitland and Port
Colborne. The Miami and Erie canal, leading from Maumee river
to Cincinnati, 2445 m., with a branch to Port Jefferson, 14 m.,
with locks 90 by 15 by 4 ft., connects with Lake Erie through
Toledo. The Erie canal leading from Buffalo to the Hudson
river at Troy, and connecting with Lake Ontario at Oswego, had
a capacity for boats 98 ft. long, 17 ft. 10 in. beam, with 6 ft.
draught, until in 1907 the State of New York undertook its
deepening to accommodate boats of 1000 tons capacity. Buffalo
from its position at the eastern limit of deep draught lake naviga-
tion is a city of first rate commercial importance. Its harbour is
formed by an artificial breakwater, built parallel with the shore
about half a mile distant from it. It receives practically all the
Lake Erie grain shipments besides large quantities of iron ore,
lumber and copper, and is a large shipping port for coal,
principally anthracite. It has over 600 m. of railway tracks to
accommodate lake freights. The Welland canal, 26! m. long,
connecting Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, with locks 270 by 45
by 14 ft., leaves Lake Erie at Port Colborne, where the Canadian
government have constructed an artificial harbour and elevators
for transhipment of grain from upper lake freighters to lighters
of canal capacity.
Fishing operations are carried on extensively in Lake Erie, the
fish being taken with gill nets, seines and pound nets. Each state
touching the lake has its own fishery regulations, which differ
amongst themselves as well as from those of the Dominion.
Both nations maintain a Fishery Protection Service, and the
fisheries are replenished from artificial hatcheries. The most
numerous and valuable fish are the lesser white fish {Coregonus
artedi, Le Sueur), pickerel (Stizosledion wtreum, Walb.), pike
(Lucius lucius, L.), and white fish (Coregonits clupeiformis,
Mitchill), in the order named. The fish caught are estimated
to be worth annually $1,000,000. They are collected in fishing
tugs and distributed by rail throughout the United States and
Canada.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Bulletin No. 17, Survey of Northern and North-
western Lakes, U.S. Lake Survey Office, War Dept. (Detroit, 1907) ;
U.S. Hydrographic Office, Publication No. io8D, Sailing Directions
for Lake Erie, &c. (Washington, 1902); Sailing Directions for the
Canadian Shore of Lake Erie, Department of Marine and Fisheries
(Ottawa, 1897) ; J. O. Curwood, The Great Lakes (New York, 1909) ;
E. Channing and M. F. Lansing, The Great Lakes (New York,
1909). (W. P. A.)
ERIE, a city, a port of entry, and the county-seat of Erie
county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on Lake Erie, 148 m. by rail
N. of Pittsburg and near the N.W. corner of the state. Pop.
(1890) 40,634; (190) 52,733, of whom 11,957 were foreign-born,
including 5226 from Germany and 1468 from Ireland, and 26,797
were of foreign parentage (both parents foreign-born), including
13,316 of German parentage and 4203 of Irish parentage;
(1910 census) 66,525. Erie is served by the New York,
Chicago & St Louis, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the
Erie & Pittsburg (Pennsylvania Company), the Philadelphia &
Erie (Pennsylvania railway), and the Bessemer & Lake Erie
railways, and by steamboat lines to many important lake ports.
The city extends over an area of about 7 sq. m., which for the
most part is quite level and is from 50 to 175 ft. above the lake.
Erie has a fine harbour about 4 m. in length, more than i m. in
width, and with an average depth of about 20 ft.; it is nearly
enclosed by Presque Isle, a long narrow strip of land of about
3000, acres from 300 ft. to i m. in width, and the national govern-
ment has protected its entrance and deepened its channel by
constructing two long breakwaters. Most of the streets of the
city are 60 ft. wide a few are 100 ft. and nearly all intersect
at right angles; they are paved with brick and asphalt, and
many in the residential quarters are shaded with fine elms and
maples. The city has four parks, in one of which is a soldiers'
and sailors' monument of granite and bronze, and not far away,
along the shore of lake and bay, are several attractive summer
resorts. Among Erie's more prominent buildings are the
United States government building, the city hall, the public
library, and the county court house. The city's charitable
institutions consist of two general hospitals, each of which has
a training school for nurses; a municipal hospital, an orphan
asylum, a home for the friendless, two old folks' homes, and a
bureau of charities; here, also, on a bluff, within a large enclosure
and overlooking both lake and city, is the state soldiers' and
sailors' home, and near by is a monument erected to the memory
of General Anthony Wayne, who died here on the i$th of
December 1796.
Erie is the commercial centre of a large and rich grape-growing
and agricultural district, has an extensive trade with the lake
ports and by rail (chiefly in coal, iron ore, lumber and grain),
and is an important manufacturing centre, among its products
being iron, engines, boilers, brass castings, stoves, car heaters,
flour, malt liquors, lumber, planing mill products, cooperage
products, paper and wood pulp, cigars and other tobacco goods,
gas meters, rubber goods, pipe organs, pianos and chemicals.
In 1905 the city's factory products were valued at $19,911,567,
the value of foundry and machine-shop products being $6,723.819,
of flour and grist-mill products $1,444,450, and of malt liquors
$882,493. The municipality owns and operates its water-works.
On the site of Erie the French erected Fort Presque Isle in 1 753,
and about it founded a village of a few hundred inhabitants.
George Washington, on behalf of the governor of Virginia, came
in the same year to Fort Le Bceuf (on the site of the present
Waterford), 20 m. distant, to protest against the French fortify-
ing this section of country. The protest, however, was unheeded.
The village was abandoned in or before 1758, owing probably
to an epidemic of smallpox, and the fort was abandoned in 1759.
It was occupied by the British in 1760, but on the 22nd of June
1763 this was one of the several forts captured by the Indians
during the Conspiracy of Pontiac. In 1764 the British regained
nominal control and retained it until 1785, when it passed into
the possession of the United States. The place was laid out as
a town in 1795; in 1800 it became the county-seat of the newly-
erected county of Erie; it was incorporated as a borough in
1805, the charter of that year being revised in 1833; and in 1851
it was incorporated as a city. At Erie were built within less than
six months most of the vessels with which Commodore Oliver
H. Perry won his naval victory over the British off Put-in-Bay
on the loth of September 1813.
ERIGENA, JOHANNES SCOTUS (c. 800 -c. 877), medieval
philosopher and theologian. His real name was Johannes
Scotus (Scottus) or John the Scot. The combination Johannes
Scotus Erigena has not been traced earlier than Ussher and
Gale; even Gale uses it only in the heading of the version of
St Maximus. The date of Erigena's birth is very uncertain, and
there is no evidence to show definitely where he was born. The
name Scotus, which has often been taken to imply Scottish
origin, really favours the theory that he was an Irishman accord-
ing to the then usage of Scotus or Scotigena. Prudentius, bishop
of Troyes, definitely states that he was of Irish extraction. The
pseudonym commonly read Erigena, used by himself in the
titles of his versions of Dionysius the Areopagite, is lerugena
(in later MSS. Erugena and Eriugena), formed apparently on
the analogy of Graiugena (" Greek-born "), which he applies
to St Maximus. There seems no reason to doubt that Eriugena
is connected with Erin, the name for Ireland, and lerugena
suggests the Greek fcp6s, tep& vrjaos being a common name
for Ireland. On the other hand, William of Malmesbury prefers
to read Heruligena, which would make Scotus a Pannonian,
while Bale says he was born at St David's, Dempster connects
him with Ayr, and Gale with Eriuven in Hereford. Some early
writers thought there were two persons, John Scotus and John
Erigena.
Of Erigena's early life nothing is known. Bale quotes the
story that he travelled in Greece, Italy and Gaul, and studied
ERIGENA
743
not only Greek, but also Arabic and Chaldaean. Since, however,
Bale describes him as " ex patricio gt-nitore n.ilus." it is a reason-
able inference (so R. L. Poole) that Bale confused him with one
John, the son of Patricius, a Spaniard, who tells much the
same story of his own travels. The knowledge of Greek displayed
in Erigena's works is not such as to compel us to conclude
that he had actually visited Greece. That he had a competent
acquaintance with Greek is manifest from his translations of
Dionysius the Areopagite and of Maximus, from the manner in
which he refers to Aristotle, and from his evident familiarity
with Neoplatonist writers and the fathers of the early church.
Roger Bacon, in his severe criticism on the ignorance of Greek
INplayed by the most eminent scholastic writers, expressly
exempts Erigena, and ascribes to him a knowledge of Aristotle
in the original.
Ann mgot her legends which have at various timesbccn attached
to Erigena are that he was invited to France by Charlemagne,
and that he was one of the founders of the university of Paris.
The only portion of Erigena 's life as to which we possess accurate
information was that spent at the court of Charles the Bald.
Charles invited him to France soon after his accession to the
throne, probably in the year 843, and placed him at the head of
the court school (sckoia p<iltitina). The reputation of this school
seems to have increased greatly under Krigena's leadership, and
the philosopher himself was treated with indulgence by the king.
William of Malmesbury's amusing story illustrates both the
character of Scotus and the position he occupied at the French
court. The king having asked, " Quid distal inter sottum ct
Scotlum ? " Erigena replied, " Mensa tantum."
The first of the works known to have been written by Erigena
during this period was a treatise on the eucharist, which has not
come down to us (by some it has been identified with a treatise
by Ratramnus, De carport el sanguine Domini). In it he seems
to have advanced the doctrine that the eucharist was merely
symbolical or commemorative, an opinion for which Berengarius
was at a later date censured and condemned. As a part of his
penance Berengarius is said to have been compelled to burn
publicly Erigena 's treatise. So far as we can learn, however,
Erigena 's orthodoxy was not at the time suspected, and a few
yean later he was selected by Hincmar, archbishop of Reims,
to defend the doctrine of liberty of will against the extreme
predestinarianism of the monk Gottschalk (Gotteschalchus).
The treatise De divina praedcstinatione, composed on this
occasion, has been preserved, and from its general tenor one
cannot be surprised that the author's orthodoxy was at once
and vehemently suspected. Erigena argues the question entirely
on speculative grounds, and starts with the bold affirmation that
philosophy and religion are fundamentally one and the same
" Conncitur inde veram essc philosophiam veram religionem,
conversimque veram religionem essc veram philosophiam."
Even more significant is his handling of authority and reason, to
which we shall presently refer. The work was warmly assailed
by Drepanius Floras, canon of Lyons, and Prudentius, and was
condemned by two councils that of Valence in 855, and that
of Langres in 859. By the former council his arguments were
described as Ptiltes Scotorum (" Scots porridge ") and commentum
diaboli (" an invention of the devil ").
Erigena's next work was a Latin translation of Dionysius the
Areopagite (see DIONYSITS AHEOPAGITICUS) undertaken at the
request of Charles the Bald. This also has been preserved, and
fragments of a commentary by Erigena on Dionysius have been
discovered in MS. A translation of the Areopagite's pantheistical
writings was not likely to alter the opinion already formed as to
Erigena's orthodoxy. Pope Nicholas I. was offended that the
work had not been submitted for approval before being given to
the world, and ordered Charles to send Erigena to Rome, or
at least to dismiss him from his court. There is no evidence,
however, that this order was attended to.
The latter pan of his life is involved in total obscurity. The
story that in 882 he was invited to Oxford by Alfred the Great,
that he laboured there for many years, became abbot at Malmes-
bury, and was stabbed to death by his pupils with their " styles,"
is apparently without any satisfactory foundation, and doubtless
refers to some other Johannes. Erigena in all probability never
left France, and Haureau has advanced some reasons for fixing
the date of his death about 877.
Erigena is the most interesting figure among the middle-age
writers. The freedom of his speculation, and the boldness with
which he works out his logical or dialectical system of the universe,
altogether prevent us from classing him along with the scholastics
properly so called. He marks, indeed, a stage of transition from
the older Platonizing philosophy to the later and more rigid
scholasticism. In no sense whatever can it be affirmed that with
Erigena philosophy is in the service of theology. The above-
quoted assertion as to the substantial identity between philo-
sophy and religion is indeed repeated almost totidem verbis by
many of the later scholastic writers, but its significance altogether
depends upon the selection of one or other term of the identity
as fundamental or primary. Now there is no possibility of mis-
taking Erigena's position: to him philosophy or reason is
first, is primitive; authority or religion is secondary, derived.
" Auctoritas siquidcm ex vcra rationc processit, ratio vero
nequaquam ex auctoritatc. Omnis cnim auctoritas, quac vcra
ratione non approbatur, infirma videtur esse. Vera autem ratio,
quum virtutibus suis rata atquc immutabilis munitur, nullius
auctoritatis adstipulatione roborari indigct " (De divisione
naturae, i. 71). F. D. Maurice, the only historian of note who
declines to ascribe a rationalizing tendency to Erigena, obscures
the question by the manner in which he states it. He asks his
readers, after weighing the evidence advanced, to determine
" whether he (Erigena) used his philosophy to explain away
his theology, or to bring out what he conceived to be the fullest
meaning of it." These alternatives seem to be wrongly put.
" Explaining away theology " is something wholly foreign to
the philosophy of that age; and even if we accept the alterna-
tive that Erigena endeavours speculatively to bring out the full
meaning of theology, we are by no means driven to the conclusion
that he was primarily or principally a theologian. He docs not
start with the datum of theology as the completed body of truth,
requiring only elucidation and interpretation; his fundamental
thought is that of the universe, nature, r6 irav, or God, as the
ultimate unity which works itself out into the rational system
of the world. Man and all that concerns man are but parts of
this system, and are to be explained by reference to it; for ex-
planation or understanding of a thing is determination of its place
in the universal or all. Religion or revelation is one element or
factor, in the divine process, a stage or phase of the ultimate
rational life. The highest faculty of man, reason, intellectus,
intdlectualis visio, is that which is not content with the individual
or partial, but grasps the whole and thereby comprehends the
parts. In this highest effort of reason, which is indeed God
thinking in man, thought and being are at one, the opposition of
being and thought is overcome. When Erigena starts with such
propositions, it is clearly impossible to understand his position
and work if we insist on regarding him as a scholastic, accepting
the dogmas of the church as ultimate data, and endeavouring only
to present them in due order and defend them by argument.
Erigena's great work, De divisione naturae, which was condemned
by a council at Sens, by Honorius III. (1225), who described it as
" swarming with worms of heretical perversity," and by Gregory
XIII. in 1585, is arranged in five books. The form of exposition
is that of dialogue; the method of reasoning is the syllogistic. The
leading thoughts arc the following. Natura is the name for the
universal, the totality of all things, containing in itself being and
non-being. It is the unity of which all special phenomena are
manifestation*. But of this nature there arc four distinct classes :
(l) that which creates and is not created; (2) that which is created
and create*; (3) that which is created and docs not create; (4)
that which neither is created nor creates. The first is God as the
ground or origin of all things, the last is C>od as the final end or goal
of all things, that into which the world of created things ultimately
returns. The second afld third together compose the created uni-
verse, which is the manifestation of God, God in processu, Theo-
pkania. Thus we distinguish in the divine system beginning, middle
and end; but these three are in essence one the difference is only
the consequence of our finite comprehension. We are compelled to
envisage this eternal process under the form of time, to apply
temporal distinctions to that which is extra- or supra-temporal.
744
ERIGONE ERINNA
The universe of created things, as we have seen, is twofold: first,
that which is created and creates the primordial ideas, archetypes,
immutable relations, divine acts of will, according to which individual
things are formed ; second, that which is created and does not create,
the world of individuals, the effects of the primordial causes, without
which the causes have no true being. Created things have no
individual or self-independent existence; they are only in God;
and each thing is a manifestation of the divine, theophania, divina
apparitio.
God alone, the uncreated creator of all, has true being. He is the
true universal, all-containing and incomprehensible. The lower
cannot comprehend the higher, and therefore we must say that the
existence of God is above being, above essence; God is above
goodness, above wisdom, above truth. No finite predicates can be
applied to him ; his mode- of being cannot be determined by any
category. True theology is negative. Nevertheless the world, as
the theophania, the revelation of God, enables us so far to under-
stand the divine essence. We recognize his being in the being of all
things, his wisdom in their orderly arrangement, his life in their
constant motion. Thus God is for us a Trinity the Father as
substance or being (oboia), the Son as wisdom (Suva/us), the Spirit
as life (ivipyaa)'. These three are realized in the universe the
Father as the system of things, the Son as the word, i.e. the realm
of ideas, the Spirit as the life or moving force which introduces
individuality and which ultimately draws back all things into the
divine unity. In man, as the noblest of created things, the Trinity
is seen most perfectly reflected; intellectus (voOs), ratio (\6yrn) and
sensus (Siavota) make up the threefold thread of his being. Not
in man alone, however, but in all things, God is to be regarded as
realizing himself, as becoming incarnate.
The infinite essence of God, which may indeed be described as
nihilum (nothing) is that from which all is created, from which all
proceeds or emanates. The first procession or emanation, as above
indicated, is the realm of ideas in the Platonic sense, the word or
wisdom of God. These ideas compose a whole or inseparable
unity, but we are able in a dim way to think of them as a system
logically arranged. Thus the highest idea is that of goodness;
things are, only if they are good ; being without well-being is naught.
Essence participates in goodness that which is good has being,
and is therefore to be regarded as a species of good. Life, again,
is a species of essence, wisdom a species of life, and so on, always
descending from genus to species in a rigorous logical fashion.
The ideas are the eternal causes, which, under the moving influence
of the spirit, manifest themselves in their effects, the individual
created things. Manifestation, however, is part of the being or
essence of the causes, that is to say, if we interpret the expres-
sion, God of necessity manifests himself in the world and is not
without the world. Further, as the causes are eternal, timeless,
so creation is eternal, timeless. The Mosaic account, then, is to be
looked upon merely as a mode in which is faintly shadowed forth
what is above finite comprehension. It is altogether allegorical,
and requires to be interpreted. Paradise and the Fall have no
local or temporal being. Man was originally sinless and without
distinction of sex. Only after the introduction of sin did man lose
his spiritual body, and acquire the animal nature with its distinction
of sex. Woman is the impersonation of man's sensuous and fallen
nature; on the final return to the divine unity, distinction of sex
will vanish, and the spiritual body will be regained.
The most remarkable and at the same time the most obscure por-
tion of the work is that in which the final return to God is handled.
Naturally sin is a necessary preliminary to this redemption, and
Erigena has the greatest difficulty in accounting for the fact of sin.
If God is true being, then sin can have no substantive existence;
it cannot be said that God knows of sin, for to God knowing and
being are one. In the universe of things, as a universe, there can
be no sin; there must be perfect harmony. Sin, in fact, results
from the will of the individual who falsely represents something as
good which is not so. This misdirected will is punished by finding
that the objects after which it thirsts are in truth vanity and empti-
ness. Hell is not to be regarded as having local existence; it is
the inner state of the sinful will. As the object of punishment
is not the will or the individual himself, but the misdirection of the
will, so the result of punishment is the final purification and redemp-
tion of all. Even the devils shall be saved. All, however, are not
saved at once; the stages of the return to the final unity, correspond-
ing to the stages in the creative process, are numerous, and are
passed through slowly. The ultimate goal is deificatio, theosis or
resumption into the divine being, when the individual soul is raised
to a full knowledge of God, and where knowing and being are one.
After all have been restored to the divine unity, there is no further
creation. The ultimate unity is that which neither is created nor
creates.
EDITIONS. There is a complete edition of Erigena's works in
T. P. Migne's Patrologiae cursus completes (vol. cxxii.), edited by
H. J. Floss (Paris, 1853). The De divina praedestinatione was pub-
lished in Gilbert Mauguin's Veterum auctorum qui nono saeculo
de praedestinatione et gratia scripserunt opera et fragmenta (Paris,
1650). The commentary (" Expositiones ") on Dionysius' Hier-
archiae caelestes appeared in the A ppendix ad opera edita ab A . Maio
(ed. J. Cozza, Rome, 1871). Of the De divisione naturae, editions
have been published by Thomas Gale (Oxford, 1681) ; C. B. Schluter
(Miinster, 1838); and in Floss's Opera omnia; there is a German
translation by Ludwig Noack, Johannes Scotus Erigena uber die
Eintheilung der Natur (3 vols., 18741876). Erigena was also the
author of some poems edited by L. Traube in Monumenta Germaniae
historica. Poetae Latini aevi Carolini, iii. (1896). A commentary on
the Opuscula sacra of Boetius is attributed to him and edited by
E. K. Rand (1906). Monographs on Erigena's life and works are
numerous; see St Rene Taillandier, Scot Erigene el la philosophic
scholastique (1843) ; T. Christlieb, Leben u. Lehre des Johannes Scotus
ngewa(Gotha,i86o) ; J. N. Huber, Johannes Scotus Erigena(M.unich,
1861); W. Kaulich, Das speculative System des Johannes Scotus
Erigena (Prague, 1860); A. Stockl, De Joh. Scoto Erigena (1867);
L. Noack, Uber Leben und Schriften des Joh. Scotus Erigena: die
Wissenschaft und Bildung seiner Zeit (Leipzig, 1876); R. L. Ppole,
Medieval Thought (1884), and article in Dictionary of National
Biography; T. Wotschke, Fichte und Erigena (Halle, 1896) ; M. Baum-
gartner in Wetzer and Welte's Kirchenlexikon, x. (1897); Alice
Gardner's Studies in John the Scot (1900) ; J. Draseke, Joh. Scotus
Erigena und seine Gewdhrsmanner (Leipzig, 1902) ; S. M. Deutsch in
Herzog-Hauck's Realencyklopadie fur protestantische Theologie, xviii.
(1906); J. E. Sandys, Hist, of Classical Scholarship (1906), pp. 491-
495. See also the general works on scholastic philosophy, especially
Haureau, Stockl and Kaulich. An admirable resume is given by
F. D. Maurice, Medieval Phil. pp. 45-79. (R. AD. ; J. M. M.)
ERIGONE, in Greet mythology, daughter of Icarius, the hero
of the Attic deme Icaria. Her father, who had been taught by
Dionysus to make wine, gave some to some shepherds, who
became intoxicated. Their companions, thinking they had been
poisoned, killed Icarius and buried him under a tree on Mount
Hymettus (or threw his body into a well). Erigone, guided by
her faithful dog Maera, found his grave, and hanged herself on
the tree. Dionysus sent a plague on the land, and all the maidens
of Athens, in a fit of madness, hanged themselves like Erigone.
Icarius, Erigone and Maera were set among the stars as Bootes
(or Arcturus), Virgo and Procyon. The festival called Aeora
(the " swing ") was subsequently instituted to propitiate Icarius
and Erigone. Various small images (in Lat. oscilla) were sus-
pended on trees and swung backwards and forwards, and offerings
of fruit were made (Hyginus, Fab. 130, Poet, astron. ii. 4;
Apollodorus iii. 14) . The story was probably intended to explain
the origin of these oscilla, by which Dionysus, as god of trees
(Dendrites), was propitiated, and the baneful influence of the
dog-star averted (see also OSCILLA).
ERIN, an ancient name for Ireland. The oldest form of the
word is Eriu, of which Erinn is the dative case. Eriu was itself
almost certainly a contraction from a still more primitive form
Iberiu or Iveriu; for when the name of the island was written in
ancient Greek it appeared as 'lovepvia (Ivernia), and in Latin as
Iberio, Hiberio or Hibernia, the first syllable of the word Eriu
being thus represented in the classical languages by two distinct
vowel sounds separated by 6-or 11. Of the Latin variants, Iberio
is the form found in the most ancient Irish MSS., such as the
Confession of St Patrick, and the same saint's Epistle to Coroticus.
Further evidence to the same effect is found in the fact that the
ancient Breton and Welsh names for Ireland were Ywerddon or
Iverdon. In later Gaelic literature the primitive form Eriu
became the dissyllable Eire; hence the Norsemen called the
island the land of Eire, i.e. Ireland, the latter word being origin-
ally pronounced in three syllables. (See IRELAND: Notices of
Ireland in Greek and Roman writers.) Nothing is known as to the
meaning of the word in any of its forms, and Whitley Stokes's
suggestion that it may have been connected with the Sanskrit
avara, meaning " western ," is admittedly no more than con-
jecture. There was, indeed, a native Irish legend, worthless
from the standpoint of etymology, to account for the origin of the
name. According to this myth there were three kings of the
Dedannans reigning in Ireland at the coming of the Milesians,
named MacColl, MacKecht and MacGrena. The wife of the
first was Eire, and from her the name of the country was derived.
Curiously, Ireland in ancient Erse poetry was often called
" Fodla " or " Bauba," and these were the wives of the other
two kings in the legend.
ERINNA, Greek poet, contemporary and friend of Sappho,
a native of Rhodes or the adjacent island of Telos, flourished
about 600 (according to Eusebius, 350 B.C.). Although she died
at the early age of nineteen, her poems were among the most
ERINYES ERITREA
745
famous of her time and considered to rank with those of Homer.
Of her best-known poem, 'llXtudnj (the Dislaff), written in a
mixture of Aeolic and Doric, which contained 300 hexameter linn-.
only 4 lines are now extant. Three epigrams in the Palatine
anthology, also ascribed to her, probably belong to a later date.
The fragments have been edited (with those of Alcacus) by J.
PtUegrino (1894).
ERINYES (Lat. Furiae), in Greek mythology, the avenging
deities, properly the angry goddesses or goddesses of the curse
pronounced upon evil-doers. According to Hesiod (Theog. 185)
they were the daughters of Earth, and sprang from the blood
of the mutilated Uranus; in Aeschylus (Eum. 321) they arc
the daughters of Night, in Sophocles ((>.('. 40) of Darkness and
Earth. Sometimes one Erinys is mentioned, sometimes several;
Euripides first spoke of them as three in number, to whom later
Alexandrian writers gave the names Alecto (unceasing in anger),
Tisiphone (avenger of murder), Megaera (jealous). Their home
is the world below, whence they ascend to earth to pursue
the wicked. They punish all offences against the laws of human
society, such as perjury, violation of the rites of hospitality, and,
above all, the murder of relations. But they are not without bene-
volent and beneficent attributes. When the sinner has expiated
his crime they are ready to forgive. Thus, their persecution of
Orestes ceases after his acquittal by the Areopagus. It is said
that on this occasion they were first called Eumenides (" the
kindly "), a euphemistic variant of their real name. At Athens,
however, where they had a sanctuary at the foot of the Areo-
pagus hill and a sacred grove at Colonus, their regular name was
Semnae (venerable). Black sheep were sacrificed to them during
the night by the light of torches. A festival was held in their
honour every year, superintended by a special priesthood, at
which the offerings consisted of milk and honey mixed with water,
but no wine. In Aeschylus, the Erinyes are represented as
awful, Gorgon-like women, wearing long black robes, with snaky
locks, bloodshot eyes and claw-like nails. Later, they are winged
maidens of serious aspect, in the garb of huntresses, with snakes
or torches in their hair, carrying scourges, torches or sickles.
The identification of Erinyes with Sanskrit Saranyu, the swift-
speeding storm cloud, is rejected by modern etymologists;
according to M . Breal, the Erinyes are the personification of the
formula of imprecation (dp), while E. Rohde sees in them the
spirits of the dead, the angry souls of murdered men.
See C. O. Mailer, Dissertations on the Eumenides of Aeschylus,
(Eng. tr. 1835); A. Rosenberg, Die Erinyen (1874); J. E. Hamson,
Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903); and Journal of
Hellenic Studies, xix. p. 205, according to whom the Erinyes were
primarily local ancestral ghosts, potent for good or evil after death,
earth genii, originally conceived as embodied in the form of snakes,
whom primitive haunt and sanctuary was the omphalos at Delphi;
E. Rohde, Psyche (1903); A. Rapp in Reseller's Lexikon der Mytho-
logie, and J. A. Hild in Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des
antiquites, *. v. F URIAH.
ERIPHYLE, in Greek mythology, sister of Adrastus and wife
of Amphiaraus. Having been bribed by Polyneices with the
necklace of Harmonia, she persuaded her husband to take part
in the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, although he knew
it would prove fatal to him. Before setting out, the seer charged
his sons to slay their mother as soon as they heard of his death.
The attack on Thebes was repulsed, and during the flight the
earth opened and swallowed up Amphiaraus together with his
chariot. His son Alcmaeon, as he had been bidden, slew his
mother, and was driven from place to place by the Erinyes,
seeking purification and a new home (Apollodorus iii. 6. 7).
ERIS, in Greek mythology, a sister of the war-god Ares (Homer,
Iliad, iv. 440), and in the Hesiodic theogony (225) a daughter of
Night. In the later legends of the Trojan War, Ens, not having
been invited to the marriage festival of Peleus and Thetis, flings
a golden apple (the " apple of discord " ) among the guests, to
be given to the most beautiful. The claims of the three deities
Hera, Aphrodite and Athena are decided by Paris in favour of
Aphrodite, who as a reward assists him to gain possession of
Helen (Hyginus, Fab. 92; Lucian, Charidemus, 17). Hesiod
also mentions (W. and D. 24) a beneficent Eris, the personification
of honourable rivalry. In Virgil (Aeneid, viii. 702) and other
Roman poets Eris is represented by Discordia.
EHITH. an urban district in the north-western parliamentary
division of Kent, England, 14 m. E. by S. of London, on the
South Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1891) 13,414; (1001)
25,296. It lies on the south bank of the Thames and extends
up the hills above the shore, many villas having been erected
on the higher ground. The park of a former seat, Belvedere,
was thus built over (c. 1860), and the mansion became a home for
disabled seamen. The church of St John the Baptist, though
largely altered by modern restoration, retains Early English to
Perpendicular portions, and some early monuments and brasses.
Erith has large engineering and gun factories, and in the neigh-
bourhood are gunpowder, oil, glue and manure works. The
southern outfall works of the London main drainage system are at
Crossness in the neighbouring lowland called Plumstead Marshes.
Erith is the headquarters of several yacht clubs. Erith, the name
of which is commonly derived from A.S. ALrra-hythe (old haven),
was anciently a borough, and was granted a market and fairs
in 1313. Down to the close of the i7th century it was of some
importance as a naval station.
ERITREA, an Italian colony on the African coast of the Red
Sea. It extends from Ras Kasar, a cape no m. S. of Suakin, in
18 2' N., as far as Ras Dumeira (12 42' N.), in the Strait of
Bab-el-Mandeb, a coast-line of about 650 m. The colony is
bounded inland by the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Abyssinia and
French Somaliland. It consists of the coast lands lying between
the capes named and of part of the northern portion of the
Abyssinian plateau. The total area is about 60,000 sq. m.
The population is approximately 450,000, of which, exclusive
of soldiers, not more than 3000 are whites.
The land frontier starting from Ras Kasar runs in a south-
westerly direction until in about 14 15' N., 36 35' E. it reaches
the river Setit, some distance above the junction of that stream
with the Atbara. This, the farthest point inland, is 198 m. S.W.
of Massawa. The frontier now turns east, following for a short
distance the course of the river Setit; thence it strikes north-
easterly to the Mareb, and from 38 E. follows that river and its
tributaries the Belesa and Muna, until within 42 m. of the sea
directly south of Annesley Bay. At this point the frontier turns
south and east, crossing the Afar or Danakil country at a distance
of 60 kilometres (37-28 m.) from the coast-line. About I22o'
N. the French possessions in Somaliland are reached. Here the
frontier turns N.E. and so continues until the coast of the Red
Sea is again reached at a point south of the town of Raheita.
In the southern part of the colony are small sultanates, such as
those of Aussa and Raheita, which are under Italian protection.
The Dahlak archipelago and other groups of islands along the
coast belong to Eritrea.
Physical Features. The coast-line is of coral formation and is,
in the neighbourhood of Massawa, thickly studded with small
islands. The chief indentations are Annesley Bay, immediately
south of Massawa, and Assab Bay in the south. The colony consists
of two widely differing regions. The northern division is part of the
Abyssinian highlands. The southern division, part of the Afar or
Danakil country, includes all the territory of the colony south of
Annesley Bay. These two regions are connected by a narrow strip
of land behind Anneslcy Bay, where the Abyssinian hills approach
close to the sea. From this bay the coast -line trends S.E. so that at
Tajura Bay the distance between the Abyssinian hills and the sea
is over 200 m. The Afar country is part of the East African
rift-valley, and in the southern parts of the valley its surface is
diversified by ranges of hills, frequently volcanic, and by lakes.
The plains, however, extend over large areas, they are generally arid
and are often covered with mimosa trees which form a kind of
jungle called by the natives khala. The torrents which descend from
the Abyssinian plateau usually fail to reach the sea. They are mostly
bordered by dense vegetation; in the dry season water is found in
pools in the river beds or can be obtained by digging. The principal
rivers enter and are lost in one or other of two salt plains or basins,
that of Asali in the north and that of Aussa in the south. The
Hawash flows through the Aussa country in a N.E. direction,
but is lost in lakes Abbebad and Aussa (see ABYSSINIA). The Raguali
and other rivers drain into the Asali basin. This basin, like that of
Aussa, is in places 200 ft. below tea-level. On the west the Asali basin
reaches to the Abyssinian foot-hills; in its southern part is the
small lake Alelbad. The eastern edge of the basin is formed by a
746
ERITREA
ridge of gypsum and on its margin grow palms. In parts the salt
lies thick on the plain, which then has the appearance of a lake
frozen over. South of Lake Alelbad is a volcano called Artali or
Erta-ale (" the smoky "), and farther to the S.E., in about 13 15' N.,
is the peak of Afdera, which was in eruption in June 1907. The hills,
1000 to 4000 ft. in height, which run more or less parallel to and a
few miles from the coast, include the volcano of Dubbi (reported
active in 1861), some 30 m. S. of the port of Edd (Eddi). In
14 52' N., 39 53' E. and near the northern end of the zone of
depression the volcano of Alid (2985 ft.) rises from the trough. Its
chief crest forms an elongated ring and encloses a crater over half
a mile in diameter and with walls 350 ft. high. North and south of
Alid extends a vast lava field. Dubbi and Alid are in Italian terri-
tory ; the greater part of Afar belongs to Abyssinia.
At Annesley Bay the narrow coast plain is succeeded by foothills
separated by small valleys through which flow innumerable streams.
From these hills the ascent to the plateau which constitutes northern
Eritrea is very steep. This tableland, which has a general elevation
of about 6500 ft., is fairly fertile despite a desert region Sheb to
the S.E. of Keren. It is characterized by rich, well-watered valleys,
verdant plains and flat-topped hills with steep sides, running in
ranges or isolated. The highest hills in Eritrean territory rise to
about 10,000 ft. The plateau is known by various names, the region
directly west of Massawa being called Hamasen. To the west and
north the plateau sinks in terraces to the plains of the Sudan, and
eastward falls more abruptly to the Red Sea, the coast plain, known
as the Samhar, consisting of sandy country covered with mimosa
and, along the khors, with a somewhat richer vegetation.
The colony contains no navigable streams. For a short distance
the Setit (known in its upper course as the Takazze), a tributary
of the Atbara, forms the frontier, as does also in its upper course
the Gash or Mareb (see ABYSSINIA). The Mareb, often dry in summer,
in the floods is a large and impassable river. Both the Setit and
Mareb have a general westerly course across the Abyssinian plateau.
The Baraka (otherwise Barka) and Anseba rise in the Hamasen
plateau near Asmara within a short distance of each other. The
Baraka flows west and then north; the Anseba, which has a more
easterly course, also flows northward and joins the Baraka a little
N. of 17 N. A few miles below the confluence the Baraka leaves
Italian territory. It is (as is the Anseba) an intermittent stream.
After heavy rain it discharges some of its water into the Red Sea
north of Tokar. The whole of the hill country north of Asmara
belongs to the drainage area of the Baraka or Anseba. Of the
numerous streams which, north of the Danakil country, run direct
from the hills to the Red Sea, the Hadas may be mentioned, as along
the valley of that stream is one of the most frequented routes to
the tableland. The Hadas, in time of flood, reaches the ocean near
Adulis in Annesley Bay.
Climate. The climate in different parts of the colony vanes
greatly. Three distinct climatic zones are found: (l) that of the
coastlands, including altitudes up to 1650 ft., (2) that of the escarp-
ments and valleys, and (3) that of the high plateau and alpine
summits. In the coast zone the heat and humidity are excessive
during most of the year, June, September and October being the
hottest months. Rams occur between November and April, during
which time the temperature is lower. In this zone malarial fevers
prevail in winter. The heat is greatest at Massawa, where the
mean temperature averages 88 F., but where, in summer, the
thermometer often rises to 120 F. in the shade. In the second
zone the climate is more temperate and there is considerable varia-
tion in temperature owing to nocturnal radiation. This zone falls
within the regime of the summer monsoon rains, while those districts
adjoining the coast zone enjoy also winter rains. August is the most
rainy and May the hottest month. On the high plateau, i.e. the
third zone, the climate is generally moderately cool. Slight rain
falls in the spring and abundant monsoon rains from June to
September. The heat is greatest in the dry season, November to
April. Above 8500 ft. the climate becomes sub-alpine in character.
Flora and Fauna. In the low country the flora differs little from
that of tropical Africa generally, whilst on the plateau the vege-
tation is characteristic of the temperate zone. The olive tree grows
on the high plateau and covers the flanks of the hills to within
3000 ft. of sea-level. The sycamore-fig tree grows to enormous
proportions in parts of the plateau. Lower down durra, maize and
bultuc grow in profusion. In the northern part of the colony,
especially along the Khor Baraka, the dom palm flourishes. The
fauna includes, in the low country, the lion, panther, elephant,
camel, and antelope of numerous species. On the plateau the fauna
is that of Abyssinia (q.v.).
Inhabitants. The inhabitants of the plains and foothills are for
the most part semi-nomad shepherds, living on durra and milk.
In the north these people are largely of Arab or Hamitic stock, such
as the Beni-Amer, but include various negro tribes. Afar and
Somali form the population of the southern regions. The inhabi-
tants of the plateau are Abyssinians. The nomads are Mussulmans
and are, as a rule, docile and pacific, though the Danakils are given
to occasional raiding. The Abyssinians are more warlike, but they
have settled down under Italian rule. Among the native industries
arc mat-weaving, cotton-weaving, silver-working and rudimentary
iron and leather working. (SeeAFARs: SoMAULANoand ABYSSINIA.)
Towns. The principal places on the coast are Massawa (q.v.),
pop. about 10,000, the chief seaport of the colony, Assab, chief town
of the Danakil region, to which converges the trade from Abyssinia
across the Aussa country, and Zula (q.v.), identified with the ancient
Adulis. The chief town in the interior is Asmara (q.v.), the capital
of the colony and under the Abyssinians capital of the province of
Hamasen, and favourite headquarters of Ras Alula (see below and
also ABYSSINIA). It is situated 7800 ft. above the sea, and has
something of the aspect of a European town. Keren, 50 m N.W. of
Asmara, is the centre for a district (Bogos) fertilized by tne upper
course of the Anseba; Agordat, on the river Baraka, on the road
from Keren to Kassala, is the centre of the Beni-Amer, Algheden
and Sabderat tribes; Mogplo, on the lower Mareb, is the rendezvous
of the Baria and Baza tribes. Towards Abyssinia the chief towns
are Saganeiti (capital of the Okule-Kusai province), Gpdofelassi
and Adi-Ugri, the two latter situated in the fertile plain of the
Serae; Adiquala, on the edge of the Mareb gorge; and Arrasa, the
centre of the districts constituting the province of Deki-Tesfa.
Agriculture and Trade. The nomads of the plains possess large
herds of cattle and camels. The low country is almost entirely
pastoral and unsuited for the cultivation of crops. On the other
hand almost all European cereals flourish in the intermediate zone
and on the high plateau, and the Abyssinian is a good agriculturist
and understands irrigation. Numbers of emigrants from Italy
possess farms on the plateau. Experiments in the cultivation of
coffee, tobacco and cotton have given good results in the inter-
mediate zone. Besides camels and oxen, sheep and goats are
numerous, and meat, hides and butter are articles of local trade.
Hides are the principal export (about 50,000 a year). Wax, gum,
coffee and ivory are also exported. Pearl fishing is carried on at
Massawa and the Dahlak islands. The annual value of the fisheries
is about 40,000 (pearls 10,000, mother of pearl 30,000). Gold
mines are worked near Asmara. Salt, obtained from the salt lakes
in the Aussa and Danakil countries, is a valuable article of commerce.
Cotton goods are the chief imports. There is a little trade with
northern Abyssinia, but it is undeveloped. For the five years
1901-1905 the average value of the external trade was 456,000 per
annum. The imports more than doubled the exports.
Communications.^, railway, 65 m. long, connects Massawa with
Asmara. An extension of the line is planned from Asmara to
Sabderat and Kassala. The whole territory is crossed by camel
and mule paths between the sea and the high plateau, and between
the various centres of population. Every valley that brings water
to the Red Sea has a route leading to the high plateau. The great
arteries, however, number three, which, starting from Massawa
by way of Asmara, run, two to Abyssinia, and one to Kassala and
Khartum. They are all more or less practicable for carts, and are
flanked by a good telegraph line as long as they lie in Italian terri-
tory. There are also two caravan 'routes from Assab Bay, across
the Danakil country to southern Abyssinia. The northern leads
by a comparatively easy ascent to Yejju, the more southern follows
the valley of the Hawash. A telegraph line 500 m. long connects
Massawa with Adis Ababa via Asmara. Massawa is also tele-
graphically connected with the outside world by a cable to Perim
via Assab. There is regular steamship communication with Italy.
Administration. Eritrea is administered by a civil governor
responsible to the ministry of foreign affairs at Rome. It is divided
into six provinces, each governed by a regional commissioner.
Some tracts of frontier territory are detached from the various
regions and entrusted to political residents, as, for instance, on the
Sudan frontier and also on the Abyssinian boundary, where strict
surveillance is necessary to repress raiding incursions from Tigre,
and where the chief intelligence department is established. The
six regions or principal provinces are: Asmara, which includes
Hamasen and other small districts; Keren, which comprises the
high territories to the north of Asmara, i.e. the Bogos country;
Massawa, extending over all the tribes between the high plateau
and the sea from the Hababs to the Danakil ; Assab, which extends
from Edd to Raheita; Okule-Kusai, the plateau country S.E. of
Asmara ; Serae, including Deki-Tesfa, the country S.W. of Asmara.
The regional commissioners and the political residents act either
by means of the village headmen (Shurn or Chicca), by the chiefs of
districts in the few localities where villages are still organized in
districts, or by the headmen of tribes, and by the councils of the
elders wherever these remain.
Revenue is derived from customs duties, direct taxation and
tribute paid by the nomad tribes. The local revenue, which for
the period 1897-1907 was about 100,000 a year, is supplemented
by grants from Italy, the total cost of the administration being
about 400,000 yearjy. Nearly half the expenditure is on the
military force maintained.
Justice. Civil justice for natives is administered, in the first
instance, by the headmen of villages, provinces, tribes, or by councils
of notables (Shumagalle) ; in appeal, by the residents and regional
tribunals, and, in the last instance, by the colonial court of appeal.
Europeans are entirely under Italian jurisdiction. Penal justice is
administered by Italian judges only. An administrative tribunal
settles, without appeal, questions of tribute, disputes concerning
family, village or tribal landmarks, as well as suits involving the
colonial government. The civil laws for the natives are those
ERITREA
747
established by local usage. European* are an^wcraMc to thr lull. in
ci\ il c.lr I S rial law > are the same as in Italy. CM cpt u here m.xli-
's local usages. Appeal in the Rome court of cassation is
a.liiiUlrd against all |>.-[>.il and civil M-mences.
neftHtt. IMciuc i> entrusted to a corps of colonial troops,
partly Italian ami partly native; to a militia (militia muhilr)
formed by natives who have already served in the colonial corps;
and to the tkiit! or general levy which, in time of war, places all
male able-bodied inhabitants under arms. The regional commis-
sioners and political residents have at their disposal some hundreds
I irregular paid soldier* under native chiefs. In war time these
irregulars form part l the colonial corps, but in time of peace serve
as frontier police. Tin- colonial corps, about 5000 strong, garrisons
the chief places of strategic importance, such as Asmara, Keren and
Saganeiti. The irregular troops, on foot, or mounted on camels,
number about 1000 men. The militia consists of 3500 men of all
arm-, and U intended in time of war to reinforce the various divisions
of the colonial corps. The chiiet yields between 3000 and 4000 men,
to be employed on the lines of communication or in caravan service.
All these troops are intended to ward off a first attack, so as to
allow lime for the arrival of reinforcements from Italy. Thecustoms
and political surveillance along the coast is entrusted, afloat, to the
Massawa naval station, and, ashore, to a coastguard company 400
strong stationed at Mcdcr, with detachments at Assab, Massawa,
Raheita. Edd and Taclai.
History. Traces of the ancient Eritrean civilization arc scarce.
During the prosperous periods of ancient Egypt, Egyptian
squadrons asserted their rule over the west Red Sea coast, and
under the Ptolemies the port of Golden Berenice (Adulis?) was
an Egyptian fortress, afterwards abandoned. During the early
years of the Roman empire, Eritrea formed part of an important
independent state that of the Axumitcs (Assamites). At the
end of the reign of Nero, and perhaps even earlier, the king of
the Axumites ruled over the Red Sea coast from Suakin to the
strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, and traded constantly with Egypt.
This potentate called himself " king of kings," commanded an
army and a fleet, coined money, adopted Greek as the official
language, and lived on good terms with the Roman empire.
The Axumitcs belonged originally to the Hamitic race, but the
immigration of the Himyaritic tribes of southern Arabia speedily
imposed a new language and civilization. Therefore the ancient
Abyssinian language, Geez, and its living dialects, Amharic and
Tigrina, are Semitic, although modified by the influence of the old
Hamitic Agau or Agao. Adulis (Adovlis), slightly to the north
of Zula (?..), was the chief Axumite port. From Adulis started
the main road, which led across the high plateau to the capital
Axomis (Axum). Along the road arc still to be seen vestiges of
cities and inscribed monuments, such as the Himyaritic inscrip-
tions on the high plateau of Kohaii, the six obelisks with a Saban
inscription at Toconda, and an obelisk with an inscription at
Amba Sait. Other monuments exist elsewhere, as well as coins
of the Axumite period with Greek and Ethiopian inscriptions.
After the rise of the Ethiopian empire the history of Eritrea is
bound up with that of Ethiopia, but not so entirely as to be
completely fused. The documents of the Portuguese expedition
of the i6th century and other Ethiopian records show that all the
country north of the March enjoyed relative autonomy under a
vassal of the Ethiopian emperor.
Michael, counsellor of Solomon, who was king of the country
north of the March, usurped the throne of Solomon during the
reign of the Emperor Atzi Jasu II. (1729-1753), and, after
proclaiming himself ras of Tigre and " protector of the empire,"
ceded the North March country to an enemy of the rightful
dynasty. Hence a long struggle between the dispossessed family
and theoccupantsof the North March throne. The coast regions
had meantime passed from the control of the Abyssinians. In
the i6th century the Turks made themselves masters of Zula,
MftSMwa, &c., and these places were never recovered by the
Abys&injans. In 1865 Massawa and the neighbouring coast was
acquired by Egypt, the khedive Ismail entertaining projects for
connecting the port by railway with the Nile. The Egyptians
took advantage of civil war in Abyssinia to seize Keren and the
Bogos country in 1872', an action against which the negus
Johannes (King John), newly come to the throne, did not at the
1 During the Second Empire unsuccessful efforts were made by
France to obtain a Red Sea port and a foothold in northern Abys-
sinia. (See SOMALILAND: French.)
time protest. In 1875 and 1876 the Egyptians, who sought, lo
increase their conquests, were defeated by the Abyssinians at
Gundct and Gura. Walad Michael, the hereditary ruler of Bogos,
fought as ally of King John at Gundct and of the Egyptians at
Gura. For two years Walad Michael continued lo harass the
border, but in December 1878 he submitted to King John, by
whose orders he was (Sept. 1879) imprisoned upon an amba, or
flat-topped mountain, whence he only succeeded in escaping
in 1890. In 1879 his territory was given by King John to Ras
Alula, who retained it until, in August 1889, the Italians occupied
Asmara (see ABYSSINIA; History).
An Egyptian garrison remained at Keren in the Bogos country
until 1884, when in consequence of the revolt of the Mahdi it
was withdrawn, Bogos being occupied by Abyssinia on the izth
of September of that year. On the 5lh of February 1885 an
Italian force, with the approval of Great Britain, occupied
Massawa, the Egyptian garrison returning to Egypt. This
occupation led to wars with Abyssinia and finally to the estab-
lishment of the colony in its present limits. The history of the
Italian-Abyssinian relations is fully told in the articles ITALY
and ABYSSINIA (history sections).
It was not, however, at Massawa that Italy first obtained
a foothold in eastern Africa. The completion of the Suez Canal
led Italy as well as Great Britain and France to seek territorial
rights on the Red Sea coasts. The purchase of Assab and the
neighbouring region for 1880, from the sultan Berehan of
Raheita for use as a coaling station by the Italian Rubattino
Steamship Company, in March 1870, formed the nucleus of Italy's
colonial possessions. This purchase was protested against by
Egypt, Turkey and Great Britain; the last named power being
willing to recognize an Italian commercial settlement, but nothing
more. (The Indian government viewed the establishment of
the Italians on the new highway to the East with a good deal of
ill-humour.) Eventually, the British opposition being overcome
and that of Egypt and Turkey disregarded, Assab, by a decree
of the sth of July 1882, was declared an Italian colony. Between
1883 and 1888 various treaties were concluded with the sultan
of Aussa ceding the Danakil coast to Italy and recognizing an
Italian protectorate over the whole of his country through
which passes the trade route from Assab Bay to Shoa.
On the ist of January 1890 the various Italian possessions on
the coast of the Red Sea were united by royal decree into one
province under the title of the Colony of Eritrea so named after
the Erythracum Mare of the Romans. At first the government
of the colony was purely military, but after the defeat of the
Italians by the Abyssinians at Adowa, the administration was
placed uponacivil basis (1898-1900). The frontiers were further
defined by a French-Italian convention (24th of January 1900)
fixing the frontier between French Somaliland and the Italian
possessions at Raheita, and also by various agreements with
Great Britain and Abyssinia. A tripartite agreement between
Italy, Abyssinia and Great Britain, dated the 151)1 of May 1902,
placed the territory of the Kanama tribe, on the north bank of
the Setit, within Eritrea. A convention of the i6th of May 1908
settled the Abyssinian-Eritrean frontier in the Afar country,
the boundary being fixed at 60 kilometres from the coast. The
task of reconstructing the administration on a civil basis and of
developing the commerce of the colony was entrusted to Signer
F. Martini, whowasgovernorfornincyears(i898-i9o6). Under
civil rule the colony made steady though somewhat slow progress.
AUTHORITIES. See B. Melli, La Colonia Eritrea dalle sue oritini al
anno tyoi (Parma, 1901) ; G. B. Penne, Per I' Italia. Africana. Studio
critico (Rome, 1906); R. Perini, Di qua dot Mareb (Florence, 1905),
a monograph on the Asmara zone ; F. Martini, Nell' Africa Italiana
(ird ed., Milan, 1891); A. B. Wylde, Modern Abyssinia, chaps, v.-ix.
(London, 1901); E. D. Schoenfeld, Erylhrda und der dgyptische
SudAn, chaps, i.-xii. (Berlin, 1904); Luigi Chiala, La Spedizione di
Massana(Turin,\HHH) ; A bysiinian Green Books published at intervals
in 1 895 a ml 1896, covering the period from 1870 to the end of the Italo
Abyssmian War; Vico MantcKazza, La Guerra in Africa (Florence,
1896); fieneral Baratieri, Memorie d' Africa (Rome, 1898); C. de
la Jonquiire, Les Italiens en Erylhrfe (Paris, i897j; G. F. H. Berke-
ley, The Campaign oj Adowa (London, 1902). For orography and
geology see an article by P. Verri in Boll. Soc. geog. italiana,
ERIVAN ERLE
1909, and for climate an article in Rivista coloniale (1906), by A.
Tancredi. A. Allori compiled a Piccolo Dizionario eritreo, italiano-
arabo-amarico (Milan, 1895).
For Afar consult W. Munzinger, " A Journey through the Afar
Country " in Journ. Royal Geog. Soc. for 1869; V. Bottego, " Nella
Terra dei Danakil," in Boll. Soc. Ceog. Italiana, 1892; Count C.
Rossini, " Al Kigali " in L'Espl. Comm. of Milan, 1903-1904; and
articles by G. Dainelli and O. Marinelli in the Riv. Geog. Italiana of
Florence for 1906-1908, dealing with the volcanic regions.
Bibliographies will be found in G. Fumagalli's Bibliografia Etiopica
(Milan, 1893) and in the Riv. Geog. Italiana for 1907.
ERIVAN, a government of Russia, Transcaucasia, having the
province of Kars on the W., the government of Tiflis on the N.,
that of Elisavetpol on the N. and E., and Persia and Turkish
Armenia on the S. It occupies the top of an immense plateau
(6000-8000 ft.). Continuous chains of mountains are met with
only on its borders, and in the E., but the whole surface is thickly
set with short ridges and isolated mountains of volcanic origin,
of which Alagoz (14,440 ft.) and Ararat (16,925 ft.) are the most
conspicuous and the most important. Both must have been
active in Tertiary times. Lake Gok-cha (540 sq. m.) is encircled
by such volcanoes, and the neighbourhood of Alexandropol is a
" volcanic amphitheatre," being entirely buried under volcanic
deposits. The same is true of the slopes leading down to the
river Aras; and the valley of the upper Aras is a stony
desert, watered only by irrigation, which is carried on with great
difficulty owing to the character of the soil. The government is
drained by the Aras, which forms the boundary with Persia and
flows with great velocity down its stony bed, the fall being 17-22
ft. per mile in its upper course, and 9 ft. at Ordubad, where it
quits the government, while lower down it again increases to
23 ft. Many of the small lakes, filling volcanic craters, are of
great depth. Timber is very scarce. A variety of useful minerals
exists, but only rock-salt is obtained, at Nakhichevan and Kulp.
The climate is extremely varied, the following being the average
temperatures and mean annual rainfall at Alexandropol (alt.
5078 ft.) and Aralykh (2755 ft.) respectively: year 42, January
12, July 65, mean rainfall 16-2 in.; and year 53, January 20-5,
July 79, rainfall 6-3 in. The population numbered 8 29, 5 78 in
1897 (only 375,086 women), of whom 82,278 lived in the towns.
An estimate in 1906 gave a total of 909,100. They consist
chiefly of Armenians (441,000), Tatars (4%), Kurds (49,389),
with Russians, Greeks and Tales. Most of the Armenians belong
to the Gregorian (Christian) Church, and only 4020 to the
Armenian Catholic Church. The Tatars are mostly ShiiteMussul-
mans, only 27,596 being Sunnites; 7772 belong to the peculiar faith
of the Yezids. While barley only can be grown on the high parts
of the plateau, cotton, mulberry, vines and all sorts of fruit are
cultivated in the valley of the Aras. Cattle-breeding is exten-
sively carried on; camels also are bred, and leeches are collected
out of the swamps and exported to Persia. Industry is in its
infancy, but cottons, carpets, and felt goods are made in the
villages. A considerable trade is carried on with Persia, but trade
with Asia Minor is declining. The government is divided into
seven districts Erivan, Alexandropol, Echmiadzin (chief town,
Vagarshapat) , Nakhichevan, Novobayazet, Surmali (chief town,
Igdyr), and Sharur-daralagoz (chief town, Norashen). The
principal towns are Erivan (see below), Alexandropol (32,018
inhabitants in 1897), Novobayazet (8507), Nakhichevan (8845),
and Vagarshapat (3400).
ERIVAN, or IRWAN, in Persian, Rewan, a town of Russia,
capital of the government of the same name, situated in 40 14'
N., 44 38' E., 234 m. by rail S.S.W. of Tiflis, on the Zanga river,
from which a great number of irrigation canals are drawn.
Altitude, 3170 ft. Pop. (1873) 11,938; (1897) 29,033. The old
Persian portion of the town consists mainly of narrow crooked
lanes enclosed by mud walls, which effectually conceal the houses,
and the modern Russian portion is laid out in long ill-paved
streets. On a steep rock, rising about 600 ft. above the river,
stand the ruins of the 16th-century Turkish fortress, containing
part of the palace of the former Persian governors, a handsome
but greatly dilapidated mosque, a modern Greek church and
a cannon foundry. One chamber, called the Hall of the Sardar,
bears witness to former splendour in its decorations. The finest
building in the city is the mosque of Hussein Ali Khan, familiarly
known as the Blue Mosque from the colour of the enamelled tiles
with which it is richly encased. At the mosque of Zal Khan
a passion play is performed yearly illustrative of the assassination
of Hussein, the son of Ali. Erivan is an Armenian episcopal see,
and has a theological seminary. The only manufactures are a
little cotton cloth, leather, earthenware and blacksmiths' work.
The fruits of the district are noted for their excellence especially
the grapes, apples, apricots and melons. Armenians, Persians
and Tatars are the principal elements in the population, besides
some Russians and Greeks. The town fell into the power of the
Turks in 1582, was taken by the Persians under Shah Abbas in
1604, besieged by the Turks for four months in 1615, and recon-
quered by the Persians under Nadir Shah in the i8th century.
In 1780 it was successfully defended against Heraclius, prince of
Georgia; and in 1804 it resisted the Russians. At length in
1827 Paskevich took the fortress by storm, and in the following
year the town and government were ceded to Russia by the peace
of Turkman-chai. A Tatar poem in celebration of the event has
been preserved by the Austrian poet, Bodenstedt, in his Tausend
und ein Tage im Orient (1850).
ERLANGEN, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria,
on a fertile plain, at the confluence of the Schwabach and the
Regnitz, 1 1 m. N.W. of Nuremberg, on the railway from Munich
to Bamberg. Pop. (1905) 23,720. It is divided into an old and
a new town, the latter consisting of wide, straight and well-built
streets. The market place is a fine square. Upon it stand the
town-hall and the former palace of the margraves of Bayreuth,
now the main building of the university. The latter was founded
by the margrave Frederick (d. 1763), who, in 1742, established
a university at Bayreuth, but in 1743 removed it to Erlangen.
A statue of the founder, erected in 1843 by King Louis I. of
Bavaria, stands in the centre of the square and faces the univer-
sity buildings. The university has faculties of philosophy, law,
medicine and Protestant theology. Connected withit are a library
of over 200,000 volumes, geological, anatomical and mineralogical
institutions, a hospital, several clinical establishments, labora-
tories and a botanical garden. Among the churches of the town
(six Protestant and one Roman Catholic), only the new town
church, with a spire 220 ft. high, is remarkable. The chief
industries of Erlangen are spinning and weaving, and the manu-
facture of glass, paper, brushes and gloves. The brewing industry
is also important, the beer of Erlangen being famous throughout
Germany and large quantities being exported.
Erlangen owes the foundation of its prosperity chiefly to the
French Protestant refugees who settled here on the revocation
of the edict of Nantes and introduced various manufactures.
In 101 7 the place was transferred from the bishopric of Wurzburg
to that of Bamberg; in 1361 it was sold to the king of Bohemia.
It became a town in 1398 and passed into the hands of the
Hohenzollerns, burgraves of Nuremberg, in 1416. There for
nearly three centuries it was the property of the margraves of
Bayreuth, being ceded with the rest of Bayreuth to Prussia in
1791. In 1810 it came into the possession of Bavaria. Erlangen
was for many years the residence of the poet Friedrich Riickert,
and of the philosophers Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich
Wilhelm von Schnelling.
See Stein and Miiller, Die Geschichte von Erlangen (1898).
ERLE, SIR WILLIAM (1793-1880), English lawyer and judge,
was born at Fifehead-Magdalen, Dorset, on the ist of October
1793, and was educated at Winchester and at New College,
Oxford. Having been called to the bar at the Middle Temple
in 1819 he went the western circuit, became counsel to the
Bank of England, sat in parliament from 1837 to 1841 for the
city of Oxford, and, although of opposite politics to Lord Lynd-
hurst, was made by him a judge of the common pleas in 1845.
He was transferred to the queen's bench in the following year,
and in 1859 came back to the common pleas as chief justice upon
the promotion of Sir Alexander Cockburn. He retired in 1866,
receiving the highest eulogiums for the -ability and impartiality
with which he had discharged the judicial office. He died at
his*estate at Bramshott, Hampshire, on the 28th of January
ERLKONIG ERMELAND
749
1880, and a monument without his name but in his memory
(sometime* erroneously supposed to mark the place where an
old gibbet was) stands on the top of Hindhead.
See E. Manson. Builders of our Law (1904).
ERLKONIG. or EKL-K.ING, a mythical character in modern
German literature, represented as a gigantic bearded man with
a golden crown and trailing garments, who carries children away
to that undiscovered country where he himself abides. There
is no such personage in ancient German mythology, and the name
is linguistically nothing more than the perpetuation of a blunder.
It first appeared in Herder's Slimmen der Vdlker (1778), where
it is used in the translation of the Danish song of the Elf-King's
Daughter as equivalent to the Danish ellerkonge, or ellekonge,
that is, elver tonge, the king of the elves; and the true German
word would have been Elbkdnig or ElbenkSnig, afterwards used
under the modified form of Elftnkdnig by Wieland in his Oberon
(1780). Herder was probably misled by the fact that the Danish
word tilt signifies not only elf, but also alder tree (Ger. Erie).
His mistake at any rate has been perpetuated by both English
and French translators, who speak of a " king of the alders,"
" un roi des aunes," and find an explanation of the myth in the
tree-worship of early times, or in the vapoury emanations that
hang like weird phantoms round the alder trees at night. The
legend was adopted by Goethe as the subject of one of his finest
ballads, rendered familiar to English readers by the translations
of Lewis and Sir Walter Scott ; and since then it has been treated
as a musical theme by Reichardt and Schubert.
ERMAN. PAUL (1764-1851), German physicist, was born in
Berlin on the 2gth of February 1764. He was the son of the
historian Jean Pierre Erman (1735-1814), author of Histoire des
rtfugits. He became teacher of science successively at the French
gymnasium in Berlin, and at the military academy, and on the
foundation of the university of Berlin in 1810 he was chosen
professor of physics. He died at Berlin on the nth of October
1851. His work was mainly concerned with electricity and
magnetism, though he also made some contributions to optics
and physiology. His son, GEORG ADOLF ERMAN (1806-1877),
was born in Berlin on the nth of May 1806, and after studying
natural science at Berlin and Konigsberg, spent from 1828 to
1830 in a journey round the world, an account of which he pub-
lished in Rrise urn die Erde durch Nordasien und die beiden
Oteane (1833-1848). The magnetic observations he made during
his travels were utilized by C. F. Gauss in his theory of terrestrial
magnetism. He was appointed professor of physics at Berlin
in 1839, and died there on the izth of July 1877. From 1841
to 1865 he edited the Archiv filr wissenschaftliche Kunde von
Russland, and in 1874 he published, with H. J. R. Petersen,
Die Grundlagen der Gauss' schen Theorie und die Erscheinungen
des Erdmagnetismus im Jahre 1829.
His son JOHANS PETER ADOLF ERMAN (1854- ), a famous
Egyptologist, was born in Berlin on the 3ist of October 1854.
Educated at Leipzig and Berlin, he became extraordinary
professor in 1883 and ordinary professor in 1892 of Egyptology
in the university of Berlin, and in 1885 he was appointed director
of the Egyptian department of the royal museum. For an
account of the Egyptological work of Erman and his school,
see EGYPT: Language.
ERMANARIC (fl. 350-376), king of the East Goths, belonged
to the A mail family, and was the son of Achiulf. His name
occurs as Ermanaricus (Jordanes), Afrmanareiks (Gothic),
Earmenric (A. Sax.), Jdrmunrek (Norse), Ennenrtch (M.H.
German). Ennanaric built up for himself a vast kingdom, which
eventually extended from the Danube to the Baltic and from
the Don to the Theiss. He drove the Vandals out of Dacia,
compelled the allegiance of the neighbouring tribes of West
Goths, procured the submission of the Herules, of many Slav
and Finnish tribes, and even of the Esthonians on the shores
of the Gulf of Bothnia. In his later days the west Goths threw
off his yoke, and, on the invasion of the Huns, rather than
witness the downfall of his kingdom he is said by Ammianus
Marrcllinus to have committed suicide. His fate early became
the centre of popular tradition, which found its way into the
narrative of Jordanes or Jornandes (De rebus geticis, chap. 24),
who compared him to Alexander the Great and certainly ex-
aggerated the extent of his kingdom. He is there said to have
caused a certain Sunilda or Sanielh to be torn asunder by wild
horses on account of her husband's traitorous conduct. Her
brothers Sarus and Ammius sought to avenge her. They
succeeded in wounding, not in killing the Gothic king, whose
death supervened in his one hundred and tenth year from the
joint effects of his wound and fear of the Hunnish invasion. This
is evidently a paraphrase of popular story which sought to supply
plausible reasons for Ermanaric's end. In German legend
Ermanaric became the typical cruel tyrant, and references to
his crimes abound in German epic and in Anglo-Saxon poetry.
He is made to replace Odoacer as the enemy of Dietrich of Bern,
his nephew, and his history is related in the Norse Vilkina or
Thidrekssagd, which chiefly embodies German tradition. His
evil genius, Sifka, Sibicho or Bicci, brings about the death of his
three sons. The Harlungs, Imbreckc and Fritile, 1 are his nephews,
whom he has strangled for the sake of their treasure, the Urlsingo
meni. Sonhild or Svanhild becomes the wife of Ermanaric,
and the motive for her murder is replaced by an accusation of
adultery between Svanhild and her stepson. The story was
already connected with the Nibclungcn when it found its way
to the Scandinavian north by way of Germany. In the Vdlsunga
Saga Svanhild is the daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun. She is
given in marriage to the Gpthic king Jormunrek (Ermanaric),
who sends his son Randver as proxy wooer in company of Bicci,
the evil counsellor. Randver is persuaded by Bicci to take his
father's bride for himself. Randver is hanged and Svanhild
trampled to death by horses in the gate of the castle. Gudrun
eggs on Sorli and Hamdir or Hamtheow, her two sons by her
third husband, Jonakr the Hun, to avenge their sister. On the
way they slay their half-brother Erp, whom they suspect of
lukewarmness in the cause; arrived in the hall of Ermanaric
they make a great slaughter of the Goths, and hew off the hands
and feet of Ermanaric, but they themselves are slain with stones.
The tale is told with variations by Saxo Grammaticus (Historia
Danica, ed. Muller, p. 408, &c.), and in the Icelandic poems, the
Lay of Hamtheow, Gudrun' s Chain of Woe, and in the prose Edda.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. W. Grimm, in Die deutsche Heldensage (2nd ed.,
Berlin, 1867), quotes the account given by .Jordanes, references in
Beowulf, in the Wanderer's Song, Exeter Book, in Parcival, in Dietrichs
Flucht, the account given in the Quedlinburg Chronicle, by Ekkehard
in the Chronicon Vrspergense, by Saxo Grammaticus, &c. See also
Vigfusson and Powell, Corpus poeticum boreale, vol. i. (Oxford, 1883),
and H. Symons, " Die deutsche Heldensage " in Paul's Crundriss
d. german. Phil. vol. iii. (Strassburg, 1900).
ERMELAND, or ERMLAND (Varmia), a district of Germany,
in East Prussia, extending from the Frisches Half, a bay in the
Baltic, inland towards the Polish frontier. It is a well-wooded
sandy tract of country, has an area of about 1650 sq. m., a
population of 240,000, and is divided into the districts of Brauns-
berg, Heilsberg, Rossel and Allenstein.
Ermeland was originally one of the eleven districts of old
Prussia and was occupied by the Teutonic Knights (Deutscher
Orden), being made in 1250 one of the four bishoprics of the
country under their sway. The bishop of Ermeland shortly
afterwards declared himself independent of the order, and became
a prince of the Empire. In 1466 Ermeland, together with West
Prussia, was by the peace of Thorn attached to the crown of
Poland, and the bishop had a seat in the Polish senate. In 1772
it was again incorporated with Prussia. Among the bishops of
the see, which still exists, with its seat in Frauenberg, may be
mentioned Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II.,
and Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius (1504-1579), the founder of the
Jesuit college in Braunsberg.
See Hipler, Lileraturgeschichte des Bisthums Ermeland (Brauns-
berg, 1873); the Monumenta historiae Warmiensis (Mainz, 1860-
1864, and Braunsberg, 1866-1872, 4 vols.) ; and Buchholz, Abriss
einer Geschichte del farmland* (Braunsberg, 1903.)
1 Emerka and Fridla (Beowulf, Quedlingburg Chron.), Aki and
Etgard (Vilkina Saga). In the original myth the Harlungs, who
are not to be confused with the Hartung brothers, were sent tobring
home SQrya, the bride of the sky-god, Irmintiu.
750
ERMELO ERNE
ERMELO, a district and town of the Transvaal. The district
lies in the south-east of the province and is traversed by the
Drakensberg. In it are Lake Chrissie, the only true lake in the
country, and the sources of the Vaal, Olifants, Komati, and
Usuto rivers, which rise within 30 m. of one another. The region
has a general elevation of about 5500 ft. and is fine agricultural
and pastoral country, besides containing valuable minerals,
including coal and gold. Ermelo town, pop. (1904) 1451, is by
rail 175 m. S.E. of Johannesburg, and 74 m. S.S.W. of Machado-
dorp on the Pretoria-Delagoa Bay railway. A government
experimental farm, with some 1000 acres of plantations, is
maintained here.
ERMINE, an alternative name for the stoat (Putorius ermineus),
apparently applicable in its proper sense only when the animal
is in its white winter coat. This animal measures roin. in length
exclusive of the tail, which is about 4 in. long, and becomes bushy
towards the point. The fur in summer is reddish brown above
and white beneath, changing in the winter of northern latitudes
to snowy whiteness, except at the tip of the tail, which at all
seasons is black. In Scottish specimens this change in winter is
complete, but in those found in the southern districts of England
it is usually only partial, the ermine presenting during winter a
piebald appearance. The white colour is evidently protective,
enabling the animals to elude the observations of their enemies,
and to steal unobserved on their prey. It also retains heat better
than a dark covering,
and may thus serve to
maintain an equable
temperature at all sea-
sons within the body.
The colour change seems
to be due to phagocytes
devouring the pigment-
bodies of the hair, and
not to a moult.
The species is a native
of the temperate and
subarctic zones of the
Old World, and is repre-
Ermine or Stoat (Putorius ermineus).
sented in America by a form which can scarcely be regarded
as specifically distinct. It inhabits thickets and stony places,
and frequently makes use of the deserted burrows of moles
and other underground mammals. Exceedingly sanguinary
in disposition, and agile in its movements, it feeds prin-
cipally on rats, water-rats and rabbits, which it pursues with
pertinacity and boldness, hence the name stoat, signifying bold,
by which it is commonly known. It takes readily to water, and
will even climb trees in pursuit of prey. It is particularly
destructive to poultry and game, and has often been known to
attack hares, fixing itself to the throat of its victim, and defying
all the efforts of the latter to disengage it. The female brings
forth five young ones about the beginning of summer. The
winter coat of the ermine forms one of the most valuable of
commercial furs, and is imported in enormous quantities from
Norway, Sweden, Russia and Siberia. It is largely used for
muffs and tippets, and as a trimming for state robes, the jet black
points of the tails being inserted at regular intervals as an
ornament. In the reign of Edward III. the wearing of ermine was
restricted to members of the royal family; but it now enters into
almost all state robes, the rank and position of the wearer being
in many cases indicated by the presence or absence, and the
disposition, of the black spots. (See also FUR.)
ERMINE STREET. Documents and writers of the nth and
succeeding centuries occasionally mention four " royal roads"
in Britain Icknield Street, Erning or Ermine Street, Watling
Street and Foss Way as standing apart from all other existing
roads and enjoying the special protection of the king. Un-
fortunately these authorities are not at all agreed as to their
precise course; the roads themselves do not occur as specially
privileged in actual legal or other practice, and it is likely that
the category of Four Roads is the invention of a lawyer or an
antiquary. The names are, however, attested to some extent
by early charters which name them among other roads, as
boundaries. From these charters we know that Icknield Street
ran along the Berkshire downs and the Chilterns, that Ermine
Street ran more- or less due north through Huntingdonshire,
that Watling Street ran north-west across the midlands from
London to Shrewsbury, and Foss diagonally to it from Lincoln
or Leicester to Bath and mid-Somerset. This evidence only
proves the existence of these roads in Saxon and Norman days.
But they all seem to be much older. Icknield Street is probably
a prehistoric ridgeway along the downs, utilized perhaps by the
Romans near its eastern end, but in general not Roman. Ermine
Street coincides with part of a line of Roman roads leading
north from London through Huntingdon to Lincoln. This line
is followed by the Old North Road through Cheshunt, Bunting-
ford, Royston, and Huntingdon to Castor near Peterborough;
and thence it can be traced through lanes and byways past
Ancaster to Lincoln. Watling Street is the Roman highway
from London by St Alban's (Verulamium) to Wroxeter near
Shrewsbury (Viroconium). Foss is the Roman highway from
Lincoln to Bath and Exeter. Hence it has been supposed, and
is still frequently alleged, that the Four Roads were the principal
highways of Roman Britain. This, however, is not the case.
Icknield Street is not Roman and the three roads which follow
Roman lines, Ermine Street, Watling Street, and Foss, held no
peculiar position in the Romano-British road system (see
BRITAIN: Roman). In later times, the names Ermine Street,
Icknield Street and Watling Street have been applied to other
roads of Roman or supposed Roman origin. This, however,
is wholly the work of Elizabethan or subsequent antiquaries and
deserves no credence.
The derivations of the four names are unknown. Icknield,
Ermine and Watling may be from English personal names;
Foss, originally Fos, seems to be the Lat. fossa in its occasional
medieval sense of a bank of upcast earth or stones, such as the
agger of a road. (F. J. H.)
ERMOLDUS NIGELLUS, or ERMOLD THE BLACK, was a monk
of Aquitaine, who accompanied King Pippin, son of the emperor
Louis I., on a campaign into Brittany in 824. Subsequently
he was banished from Pippin's court on a charge of inciting the
king against his father, and retired to Strassburg, where he
sought to regain the emperor's favour by writing a poem on his
life and deeds. About 830 he obtained his recall, and has been
identified with Hermoldus, who appears as Pippin's chancellor
in 838. Ermoldus was a cultured man with a knowledge of the
Latin poets, and his poem, In honorem Hludomci imperatoris,
has some historical value. It consists of four books and deals
with the life and exploits of Louis from 781 to 826. He also
wrote two poems in imitation of Ovid, which were addressed
to Pippin.
His writings are published in the Monumenta Germaniae historical.
Scriptores, Band 2 (Hanover, 1826 fol.); by J. P. Migne in the
Patrologia Latina, tome 105 (Paris, 1844) ; and by E. Dummler in
the Poetae Latini aevi Carolini, Band 2 (Berlin, 1881-1884). See
W. O. Henkel, Uber den historischen Werth der Gedichte des Ermoldus
Nigellus (Eilenburg, 1876); W. Wattenbach, Deutschlands Ge-
schichtsquellen, Band I (Berlin, 1904); and A. Potthast, Bibliotheca
historica, pp. 430-431 (Berlin, 1896).
ERNE, the name of a river and two lakes in the north-west of
Ireland. The river rises in Lough Gowna, county Longford,
214 ft. above sea-level, flows north through Lough Oughter
with a serpentine course and a direction generally northward,
and then broadens into the Upper Lough Erne, a shallow
irregular sheet of water 13 m. long, so beset with islands as
to present the appearance of a number of water-channels ramify-
ing through the land. The river then winds past the town of
Enniskillen on its island, and enters Lough Erne, a beautiful
lake nearly 18 m. long and 5 m. in extreme width, containing
many islands, but less closely covered with them than the upper
lough. One of them, Devenish, is celebrated for its antiquarian
remains (see ENNISKILLEN). The river then runs westward to
Donegal Bay, forming a fine fall at Ballyshannon (q.v.). Lough
Erne contains trout and pike. These waters admit of navigation
by small steamers, but little trade is carried on. The area of
ERNEST I. ERNEST II.
75 1
the Erne basin, which includes a vast number of small loughs,
U about 1600 sq. m . and it coven part of the counties Cavan,
Longford, Lcitrim, Fermanagh and Donegal. The length of
l he I r:u- valley is about 70 m.
ERNEST I. IF.KNST ANTON KARL LUDWIG), duke of Saxe-
Coburg-Gotha (1784-1844), was the son of Francis, duke of
Saxe-Coburg-Saalfcld, and was born on the 2nd of January
1784. At the time of his father's death (yth of December 1806)
the duchy of Coburg was occupied by Napoleon as conquered
territory, and Ernest did not come into his inheritance till after
the peace of Tilsit (July '807). Owing to the part he had played
in assisting the Prussians at the battle of Aucrstadt he continued
out of favour with Napoleon, and he threw himself with vigour
into the war of liberation against the French. After the battle
of Leipzig he was given the command of the V. army corps and
reduced Mainz by blockade; he also commanded the Saxon
troops during the campaign of 1815. By the congress of Vienna
he was rewarded with the principality of Lichlcnbcrg on the
left bank of the Rhine, which received a slight augmentation
after the second peace of Paris. These territories he sold to
Prussia in 1834 In 1826, in the division of the territories of the
duchy of Saxe-Gotha which followed the death of its last duke
(February 1825). he received the duchy of Got ha, ceding that of
Saalfeld to the duke of Mciningen; and he now exchanged his
style of Ernest III. of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld for that of Ernest
I. of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. In 1821 he had given a constitution
to Coburg, but he did not interfere with the traditional system
of estates at Got ha. He died on the 2gth of January 1844.
Duke Ernest, who was not only a good soldier and keen
sportsman, but an enlightened patron of the arts and sciences,
did much for the economic, educational and constitutional
development of his territories; and his advice always carried
great weight in the councils of the other German sovereigns.
It was, however, for the splendid international position attained
by the house of Coburg under him that his reign is chiefly dis-
tinguished. His younger brother Leopold (q.v.) became king of
the Belgians; his brother Ferdinand (b. 1785) married the
wealthy princess Antoinette von Kohary (1816) and was the
father of the duchess of Nemours and of the future King
Ferdinand of Portugal. Of his sisters, Antoinette (1770-1824)
married Duke Alexander of Wttrttemberg; Juliane [Alexandra
Feodorovnal (1781-1860) married the Russian cesarevich
Constantine. from whom she was, however, divorced in 1820;
and Victoria (1786-1861), wife of Edward Augustus, duke of
Kent, became the mother of Queen Victoria. Duke Emest was
twice married: (i) in 1817 to Louise, daughter of Duke Augustus
of Saxe-Gotha, whom he finally divorced in 1826; (2) in 1831 to
Maria, daughter of Duke Alexander of \Vurttemberg. Of his
sons, by his first wife, Ernest succeeded him in the duchy, and
Albert married Queen Victoria.
ERNEST II., duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1818-1893), was
born at Coburg on the 2ist of June 1818, being the eldest son of
Duke Ernest I. He enjoyed a varied education; he studied at
the university of Bonn with his brother Albert; his military
training he received in the Saxon army. The widespread
connexions of his family opened to him many courts of Europe,
and after he became of age he travelled much. The position of
his uncle Leopold, who was king of the Belgians, and especially
the marriage of his brother Albert to the queen of England, his
cousin, gave him peculiar opportunities for becoming acquainted
with the political problems of Europe. In 1840-1841 he under-
took a journey to Spain and Portugal; in the latter country
another cousin, Ferdinand, was king-consort. In 1844 he succeeded
his father. His own character and the influence of the king of
the Belgians made him one of the most Liberal princes in
Germany. He was able to bring to a satisfactory conclusion
disputes with the Coburg estates. He passed through the ordeal
of the revolution of 1848 with little trouble, for he anticipated
the demands of the people of Gotha for a reform, and in 1852
introduced a new constitution by which the administration of
his two duchies was assimilated in many points. The govern-
ment of his small dominions did not afford sufficient scope for
hi> restless and versatile ambition; his desire to play a gre:it
part in German affairs was probaily increased by the feeling
th.it, though he was the head of his house, he was to some extent
overshadowed by the younger branches of the family which
ruled in Belgium, England an. I Portugal. He was one of the
foremost supporters of every attempt made to reform the German
constitution and bring about the unity of Germany. He took
a warm interest in the proceedings of the Frankfort parliament,
and it was often said, probably without reason, that he hoped
to be chosen emperor himself. However that may be, he strongly
urged the king of Prussia to accept that position when it was
offered him in 1849; he took a very prominent part in the com-
plicated negotiations of the following year, and it was at his
suggestion that a congress of princes met at Berlin in 1850. He
highly valued the opportunities which this and similar meetings
gave him for exercising political influence, and he would have
felt most at home as a member of a permanent council of the
German princes.
Ambitious also of military distinction, and sympathizing with
the rising of the people of Schleswig-Holstein against the Danes
in 1849, Ernest accepted a command in the federal army. In
the engagement of EckernfSrde in April 1849 the troops under his
orders succeeded in capturing two Danish frigates, a remarkable
feat of which he was justly proud. His greatest services to
Germany were performed during the years of reaction which
followed; almost alone among the German princes he remained
faithful to the Liberal and National ideals, and he allowed his
dominions to be used as an asylum by the writers and politicians
who had to leave Prussia and Saxony. The reactionary parlies
looked on him with great suspicion, and it was at this time that
he formed a friendship with Gustav Freytag, the celebrated
novelist, whom he protected when the Prussian government
demanded his arrest. His connexion with the English court
gave him a position of much influence, but no one was more
purely German in his feelings and opinions. The marriage of
his niece Victoria with Frederick, the heir to the Prussian throne,
strengthened his connexion with Prussia, but caused the Con-
servative party to look with increased suspicion on the Coburg
influence. He was the first German prince to visit Napoleon III.,
and was present when Orsini made his celebrated attempt on
the emperor's life. After 1860 he became the chief patron and
protector of the National Verein; he encouraged the newly-formed
rifle clubs, andnot withstandingthestrongdisapproval of his fellow-
monarchs, allowed his court to become the centre of the rising
national agitation. Still a warm adherent of Prussia, in 1862
he set an example to the other princes by voluntarily making
an agreement by which his troops were placed in war under the
command of the king of Prussia. Like all the other Nationalist >,
he was much embarrassed by the policy of Bismarck, and the
democratic opinions of the Coburg court, which were shared
by the crown prince Frederick, were a serious embarrassment to
that minister. The opposition became more accentuated when
the duke allowed his dominions to be used as the headquarters
of the agitation in favour of Frederick, duke of Augustenburg,
who claimed the duchies of Schlcswig and Holstein, and it was
at this time that Bismarck is reported to have said that if
Frederick the Great had been alive the duke would have been in
the fortress of Spandau. In 1863 he was present at the FiirstentaK
in Frankfort, and from this time was in more frequent communica-
tion with the Austrian court, where his cousin Alexander, Count
Mensdorff, was minister. However, when war broke out in 1866,
he at once placed his troops at the disposition of Prussia;
Bismarck had in an important letter explained to him his policy
and tactics. He was personally concerned in one of the most
interesting events of the war; for the Hanoverian army, in its
attempt to march south and join the Bavarians, had to pass
through Thuringia, and the battle of Langensalza was fought
in the immediate neighbourhood of Gotha. His troops took
part in the battle, which ended in the rout of the Prussians,
the duke, who was not present during the fight, in vain attempt-
ing to stop it. He bore an important share in the negotiations
before and after the battle, and his action at this time has been
ERNEST AUGUSTUS ERNESTI, J. A.
752
the subject of much controversy, for it was suggested that while
he offered to mediate he really acted as a partisan of Prussia.
For his services to Prussia he received as a present the forest
of Schmalkalden. He was with the Prussian headquarters in
Bohemia during the latter part of the war.
With the year 1866 the political role which Ernest had played
ended. The result was perhaps not quite equal to his expecta-
tions, but it must be remembered how difficult was the position
of the minor German princes; and he quoted with great satis-
faction the words used in 1871 by the emperor William at
Versailles, that " to him in no small degree was due the establish-
ment of the empire." He was a man of varied tastes, a good
musician he composed several operas and songs and a keen
sportsman, a quality in which he differed from his brother.
Notwithstanding his Liberalism, he had a great regard for the
dignity of his rank and family, and in his support of constitutional
government would never have sacrificed the essential prerogatives
of sovereignty. He died at Reinhardsbrunn on the 22nd of
August 1893. In 1842 the duke married Alexandrine, daughter
of the grandduke of Baden; there were no children by this
marriage and the succession to Saxe-Coburg-Gotha passed
therefore to the children of his younger brother Albert. By
Albert's marriage contract the duchy could not be held together
with the English crown; thus his eldest son, afterwards Edward
VII., was passed over and it came to his second son, Alfred,
duke of Edinburgh (1844-1900). When Alfred died without
sons in July 1900 the succession to the duchy passed to a younger
brother Arthur, duke of Connaught; but the duke and his son,
Arthur, passed on their claim to Charles Edward, duke of Albany
(b. 1884), who became duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in succession
to his uncle Alfred. In 1905 Charles Edward married Victoria
Adelaide (b. 1885), princess of Schleswig-Holstein, by whom he
has a son John Leopold (b. 1906).
Duke Ernest was something of a writer. He brought out an
account of the travels in Egypt and Abyssinia which he undertook
in 1862 as Reise des Herzogs Ernst von Sachsen-Koburg-Golha
nach Agyplen (Leipzig, 1864); and he published his memoirs,
Aus meinem Leben und aus meiner Zeit (Berlin, 1887-1889).
This work is in three volumes and contains much valuable
information on a most critical period of German history; there
is an English translation by P. Andreae (1888-1890).
See also Sir T. Martin, Life of H.R.H. the Prince Consort (1875-
1880); Hon. C. Grey, Early Years of the Prince Consort (1867); A.
Ohorn, Herzog Ernst II., ein Lebensbild (Leipzig, 1894); and E.
Temoeltevi Herzoe Ernst von Koburg und das Jahr 1866 (Berlin,
1898). (J. W. HE.)
ERNEST AUGUSTUS (1771-1851), king of Hanover and duke
of Cumberland, fifth son of the English king George III., was
born at Kew on the sth of June 1771. Having studied at the
university of Gottingen, he entered the Hanoverian army, serving
as a leader of cavalry when war broke out between Great Britain
and France in 1793, and winning a reputation for bravery.
He lost the sight of one eye at the battle of Tournai in May 1794,
and when Hanover withdrew from the war in 1795 he returned
to England, being made lieutenant-general in the British army
in 1799. In the same year he was created duke of Cumberland
and Teviotdale and granted an allowance of i 2,000 a year, after
which he held several lucrative military positions in England,
and began to attend the sittings of the House of Lords and to
take part in political life. A stanch Tory, the duke objected to
all proposals of reform, especially to the granting of any relief
to the Roman Catholics, and had great influence with his brother
the prince regent, afterwards King George IV., in addition to being
often consulted by the Tory leaders. In 1810 he was severely
injured by an assassin, probably his valet Sellis, who was found
dead; and subsequently two men were imprisoned for asserting
that the duke had murdered his valet. Recovering from his
wounds, Cumberland again proceeded to the seat of war; and
having been made a British field-marshal, was in command of the
Hanoverian army during the campaigns of 1813 and 1814, being
present, although not in action, at the battle of Leipzig. In
May 1815 Ernest married his cousin, Frederica (1778-1841),
daughter of Charles II. duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and widow
of Frederick, prince of Solms-Braunfels, a union which was
very repugnant to his mother Queen Charlotte, and was disliked
in England, where the duke's strong Toryism had made him
unpopular. Parliament refused to increase his allowance from
18,000, to which it had been raised in 1804, to 24,000 a year,
and indignant at the treatment he received the duke spent some
years in Berlin. Returning to England after the accession of
George IV. in 1820, his political power was again considerable,
while deaths in the royal family made it likely that he would
succeed to the throne. Although his personal influence with the
sovereign ceased upon the death of George IV. in 1830, the duke
continued to oppose all measures for the extension of civil and
religious liberty, including the Reform Bill of 1832; and his
unpopularity was augmented by suspicions that he had favoured
the formation of Orange lodges in the army. When William IV.
died in June 1837, the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover were
separated; and Ernest, as the nearest male heir of the late king,
became king of Hanover. At once cancelling the constitution
which William had given to his kingdom in 1833, he acted as an
absolute monarch, and the constitution which he sanctioned in
1840 was permeated with his own illiberal ideas. In German
politics he was vigilant and active, and mindful of the material
interests of his country. His reign, however, was a stormy one,
and serious trouble between king and people had arisen when
he died at Herrenhausen on the i8th of November 1851 (see
HANOVER: History). In spite of his arbitrary rule and his
reactionary ideas the king was popular among his subjects,
and his statue in Hanover bears the words "Dem Land.es Voter
sein trews Volk." Ernest, who is generally regarded as the
ablest of the sons of George III., left an only child, George, who
succeeded him as king of Hanover.
See C. A. Wilkinson, Reminiscences of the Court and Times of
King Ernest of Hanover (London, 1886); von Malortie, Konig
Ernst August (Hanover, 1861); and the various histories of Great
Britain and Hanover for the period.
ERNESTI, JOHANN AUGUST (1707-1781), German theologian
and philologist, was born on the 4th of August 1707, at Tennstadt
in Thuringia, of which place his father was pastor, besides being
superintendent of the electoral dioceses of Thuringia, Salz and
Sangerhausen. At the age of sixteen he was sent to the cele-
brated Saxon cloister school of Pforta (Schulpforta). At twenty
he entered the university of Wittenberg, and studied afterwards
at the university of Leipzig. In 1730 he was made master in
the faculty of philosophy. In the following year he accepted the
office of conrector in the Thomas school of Leipzig, of which
J. M. Gesner was then rector, an office to which Ernesti succeeded
in 1734. He was, in 1742, named professor extraordinarily
of ancient literature in the university of Leipzig, and in 1756
professor ordinarius of rhetoric. In the same year he received
the degree of doctor of theology, and in 1759 was appointed
professor ordinarius in the faculty of theology. Through his
learning and his manner of discussion, he co-operated with S. J.
Baumgarten of Halle (1706-1757) in disengaging the current
dogmatic theology from its many scholastic and mystical ex-
crescences, and thus paved a way for a revolution in theology.
He died, after a short illness, in his seventy-sixth year, on the
nth of September 1781.
It is perhaps as much from the impulse which Ernesti gave to
sacred and profane criticism in Germany, as from the intrinsic
excellence of his own works in either department, that he must
derive his reputation as a philologist or theologian. With J. S.
Semler he co-operated in the revolution of Lutheran theology,
and in conjunction with Gesner he instituted a new school in
ancient literature. He detected grammatical niceties in Latin,
in regard to the consecution of tenses which had escaped preceding
critics. His canons are, however, not without exceptions. As
an editor of the Greek classics, Ernesti hardly deserves to be
named beside his Dutch contemporaries, Tiberius Hemsterhuis
(1685-1766), L. C. Valckenaer (1715-1785), David Ruhnken
(1723-1798), or his colleague J. J. Reiske (1716-1774). The
higher criticism was not even attempted by Ernesti. But to him
and to Gesner is due the credit of having formed, by discipline
ERNESTI, J. C. G. ERPENIUS
753
and by example, philologists greater than themselves, and of
having kindled the national enthusiasm for ancient learning.
It is chiefly in hermeneutics that Ernest! has any claim to
eminence as a theologian. But here his merits arc distinguished,
and, at the period when his Insiilulio Interprets .V. T. was pub-
lished (1761), almost peculiar to himself. In it we find the
principles of a general interpretation, formed without the assist-
ance of any particular philosophy, but consisting of observations
and rules which, though already enunciated, and applied in the
criticism of the profane writers, had never rigorously been
employed in biblical exegesis. He was, in fact, the founder of the
grammatico-historical school. He admits in the sacred writings
as in the classics only one acceptation, and that the grammatical,
convertible into and the same with the logical and historical.
Consequently he censures the opinion of those who in the illustra-
tion of the Scriptures refer everything to the illumination of the
Holy Spirit, as well as that of others who, disregarding all
knowledge of the languages, would explain words by things.
The " analogy of faith," as a rule of interpretation, he greatly
limits, and teaches that it can never afford of itself the explana-
tion of words, but only determine the choice among their possible
meanings. At the same time he seems unconscious of any incon-
sistency between the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible as
usually received and his principles of hermeneutics.
Among hi* works the more important are: I. In classical
literature: Initia doctrinae Solidioris (1736), many subsequent
editions; Initia rhetorica (1730); editions, mostly annotated, of
Xenophon's Memorabilia (1737), Cicero (1737-1739), Suetonius
(1748), Tacitus (1752), the Clouds of Aristophanes (1754), Homer
(1759-1764), Callimachus (1761), Polybius (1764), as well as of the
Ouaestura of Conadus, the Greek lexicon of Hedericus, and the
BMiotkeca Latino of Fabricius (unfinished); Archaeologia litteraria
(1768), new and improved edition by Martini (1790) ; Horatius Tursel-
linuf De particulis (1769). II. In sacred literature: Antimuratorius
rite confulaiio disftutalionis Muratorianae de rebus liturgicis (1755-
1758); Neue tkeolopsche BMiolkek, vols. i. to x. (1760-1769);
Imtitutio interpretis Nov. Test. (3rd ed., 1775): Neueste theohgische
BMiotiuk, vols. i. to x. (1771-1775). Besides these, he published
more than a hundred smaller works, many of which have been col-
lected in the three following publications i-^-Opuscula oratoria
(1762, 2nd ed., 1767); Opuscula philolopca et critica (1764, 2nd ed.,
1776); Opuscula theologica (1773). See Herzog-Hauck, Real-
encyUopadie; J. E. Sandys, Hist, of Class. Schol. iii. (1908).
ERNESTI. JOHANN CHRISTIAN GOTTLIEB (1756-1802),
German classical scholar, was born at Arnstadt, Thuringia, and
studied under his uncle, J. A. Ernest i, at the university of Leipzig.
On the 5th of June, 1782, he was made supplementary professor
of philosophy at his own university; and on the death of his
cousin August Wilhelm in 1801 he was for five months
professor of rhetoric. He died on the sth of June of the following
year.
His principal works are: Editions of Aesop's Fabulae (1781); of
the Glonae tacrae of Hesychius (1785) and Suidas and Phavorinus
(1786); and of Silius Italic us Punica (1791-1792); Lexicon Techno-
logist Graecorum rketoricae (1795); Lexicon ttchnologiae Latinorum
rhetoricat (1797), and Cicero's Geist und Kunst (1799-1803).
ERNST. HEINRICH WILHELM (1814-1865), German violinist
and composer, was born at Briinn, in Moravia, in 1814. He was
educated at the Conservatorium of Vienna, studying the violin
under Joseph Bohm and Joseph Mayseder, and composition
under Ignaz von Seyfried. At the age of sixteen he made a
concert tour in south Germany, which established his reputation
as a violinist of the highest promise. In 1832 he went to Paris,
where he lived for several years. During this period he formed
an intimacy with Stephen Heller, which resulted in their charming
joint compositions the Penstes fugitives for piano and violin.
In 1843 he paid his first visit to London. The impression which
be then made as a violinist was more than confirmed in the follow-
ing year, when his rare powers were recognized by the musical
pubb'c. Thenceforward he visited England nearly every year,
until his health broke down owing to long-continued neuralgia
of a most severe kind. The last seven years of his life were spent
in retirement, chiefly at Nice, where he died on the Sth of October
1865. As a violinist Ernst was distinguished by his almost
unrivalled executive power, loftiness of conception, and intensely
passionate expression. As a composer he wrote chiefly for his
own instrument, and his Elegie and Olello Fantasia rank among
the most treasured works for the violin.
ERODE, a town of British India, in the Coimbatore district
of Madras, situated on the right bank of the river Cauvery,
which is here crossed by an iron railway girder bridge of 22 spans.
Pop. (1001) 15,529. Here the South Indian railway joins the
South-Western line of the Madras railway, 243 m. from Madras.
There are exports of cotton and saltpetre; and the town has
a steam cotton press.
EROS, a minor planet discovered by Witt at Berlin on the i |t h
of August 1898, and, so far as yet known, unique in that its
perihelion lies far within the orbit of Mars.
EROS, in Greek mythology, the god of love. He is not
mentioned in Homer; in Hesiod (Theog. 120) he is one of the
oldest and the most beautiful of the gods, whose power neither
gods nor men can resist. He also evolves order and harmony
out of Chaos by uniting the separated elements. This cosmic
Eros, who in Orphic cosmogony sprang from the world-egg
which Chronos, or Time, laid in the bosom of Chaos, and which is
the origin of all created beings, degenerated in later mythology
into the capricious god of sexual passion, the son of Aphrodite
and Zeus, Ares or Hermes. He is commonly represented as
a mischievous boy, the tormentor of gods and men, even his
own mother not being proof against his attacks. His brother is
Anteros, the god of mutual love, who punishes those who do not
return the love of others, without which Eros could not thrive;
he is sometimes described as the opponent of Eros. The chief
associates of Eros are Pothos and Himeros (Longing and Desire),
Peitho (Persuasion), the Muses and the Graces; he himself
is in constant attendance on Aphrodite. Later writers (Euripides
being the first) assumed the existence of a number of Erotes (like
the Roman Amores and Cupidines) with similar attributes.
According to the philosophers, Eros was not only the god of
sexual love, but also of the loyal and devoted friendship of men;
hence the Theban " Sacred Band " was devoted to him, and the
Cretans and Spartans offered sacrifice to him before going into
battle (Athenaeus xiii. p. 561). In Alexandrian poetry Eros is
at one time the powerful god who conquers all, at another the
elfish god of love. For the Roman adaptation of Eros see CUPID,
and for the later legend of Cupid and Psyche see PSYCHE.
In art Eros is represented as a beautiful youth or a winged
child. His attributes are the bow and arrows and a burning
torch. The rose, the hare, the cock and the goat are frequently
associated with him. The most celebrated statue of him was at
Thespiae, the work of Praxiteles. Other famous representations
are the Vatican torso and Eros trying his bow (in the Capitoline
museum).
See J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion
(1903); G. F. Schomann, De Cupidine Cosmogonico (1852); E.
Gerhard, Ober den Gott Eros (1850); articles in Reseller's Lexikon
der Mytholoeie, Daremberg and Saglio's Diclionnaire des antiquiUs,
and Pauly-Wissowa's ReoJencydopddie.
ERPENIUS (original name VAN ERPE), THOMAS (1584-1624),
Dutch Orientalist, was born at Gorcum, in Holland, on the nth
of September 1584. After completing his early education at
Leiden, he entered the university of that city, and in 1608 took
the degree of master of arts. By the advice of Scaliger he studied
Oriental languages whilst taking his course of theology. He
afterwards travelled in England, France, Italy and Germany,
forming connexions with learned men, and availing himself of the
information which they communicated. During his stay at Paris
he contracted a friendship with Casaubon, which lasted during his
life, and also took lessons in Arabic from an Egyptian, Joseph
Barbatus, otherwise called Abu-dakni. At Venice he perfected
himself in the Turkish, Persic and Ethiopic languages. After a
long absence, Erpenius returned to his own country in 1612, and
on the loth of February 1613 he was appointed professor of
Arabic and other Oriental languages, Hebrew excepted, in the
university of Leiden. Soon after his settlement at Leiden,
animated by the example of Savary de Braves, who had estab-
lished an Arabic press at Paris at his own charge, he caused new
Arabic characters to be cut at a great expense, and erected a press
in his own house. In 1619 the curators of the university of Leiden
754
ERROLL ERSKINE
instituted a second chair of Hebrew in his favour. In 1620 he
was sent by the States of Holland to induce Pierre Dumoulin
or Andre Rivet to settle in that country; and after a second
journey he was successful in inducing Rivet to comply with their
request. Some time after the return of Erpenius, the states
appointed him their interpreter; and in this capacity he had the
duty imposed upon him of translating and replying to the different
letters of the Moslem princes of Asia and Africa. His reputation
had now spread throughout all Europe, and several princes,
the kings of England and Spain, and the archbishop of Seville
made him the most flattering offers; but he constantly refused
to leave his native country. He was preparing an edition of the
Koran with a Latin translation and notes, and was projecting
an Oriental library, when he died prematurely on the I3th of
November 1624.
Among his works may be mentioned his Grammatica Arabica,
published originally in 1613 and often reprinted; Rudimenta
linguae Arabicae (1620); Grammatica Ebraea generalis (1621);
Grammatica Chaldaica el Syria (1628); and an edition of Elmacin's
History of the Saracens.
ERROLL (or ERROL), FRANCIS HAY, gra EARL OF (d. 1631),
Scottish nobleman, was the son of Andrew, 8th earl, and of
Lady Jean Hay, daughter of William, 6th earl. The date of
his birth is unrecorded, but he succeeded to the earldom
(cr. 1453) in 1585, was early converted to Roman Catholicism,
and as the associate of Huntly joined in the Spanish conspiracies
against the throne of Elizabeth. A letter written by him,
declaring his allegiance to the king of Spain, having been inter-
cepted and sent by Elizabeth to James in February 1589, he
was declared a rebel by the council. He engaged with Huntly
and Crawford in a rebellion in the north of Scotland, but their
forces surrendered at Aberdeen on the arrival of the king in
April; and in July Erroll gave himself up to James, who leniently
refrained from exacting any penalty. In September of the same
year he entered into a personal bond with Huntly for mutual
assistance; and in 1590 displeased the king by marrying, in
spite of his prohibition, Lady Elizabeth Douglas, daughter of
the earl of Morton. He was imprisoned on suspicion of com-
plicity in the attempt made by Gray and Bothwell to surprise
the king at Falkland in June 1592; and though he obtained
his release, he was again proclaimed a rebel on account of the
discovery of his signature to two of the " Spanish Blanks,"
unwritten sheets subscribed with the names of the chief con-
spirators in a plot for a Spanish invasion of Scotland, to be filled
up later with the terms of the projected treaty. After a failure
to apprehend him in March 1593, Erroll and his companions
were sentenced to abjure Romanism or leave the kingdom; and
on their non-compliance were in 1594 declared traitors. On the
3rd of October they defeated at Glenlivet a force sent against
them under Argyll; though Erroll himself was severely wounded,
and Slains Castle, his seat, razed to the ground. The rebel lords
left Scotland in 1595, and Erroll, on report of his further con-
spiracies abroad, was arrested by the states of Zealand, but was
afterwards allowed to escape. He returned to Scotland secretly
in 1596, and on the aoth of June 1597 abjured Romanism and
made his peace with the Kirk. He enjoyed the favour of the
king, and in 1602 was appointed a commissioner to negotiate the
union with England. His relations with the Kirk, however, were
not so amicable. The reality of his conversion was disputed,
and on the 2ist of May 1608 he was confined to the city of Perth
" for the better resolution of his doubts," being subsequently
declared an obstinate " papist," excommunicated, deprived of
his estate, and imprisoned at Dumbarton; and after some
further vacillation was finally released in May 1611. Lord
Erroll died on the i6th of July 1631, and was buried in the church
of Slains. He married (i) Anne, daughter of John, 4th earl of
Atholl; (2) Margaret, daughter of the regent Murray; and (3)
Elizabeth, daughter of William, 6th earl of Morton. By his
third wife he had several children, of whom his eldest son,
William, succeeded him. The dispute which began in his
lifetime concerning the hereditary office of lord high constable
between the families of Erroll and of the Earl Marischal was
settled finally in favour of the former; thus establishing the
precedence enjoyed by the earls 'of Erroll next after the royal
family over all other subjects in Scotland.
See The Erroll Papers (Spalding Club Miscellany, vol. ii. 211);
Andrew Lang, Hist, of Scotland, vol. ii. ; Hist. MSS. Comm. MSS.
of Earl of Mar and Kettie; D. Calderwood's Hist, of the Church of
Scotland; John Spalding's Memorials (Spalding Club, 1850);
Collected Essays of T. G. Law, ed. by P. H. Brown (1904); Treason
and Plot, by M. A. S. Hume (1901).
ERROR (Lat. error, from errare, to wander, to err), a mistake,
a departure or deviation from what is true, exact or right. For
the legal process by which a judgment could be reversed on the
ground of error, known as a " writ of error," see WRIT and
APPEAL. The words " error excepted "or " errors and omissions
excepted " (contracted to " E.E." " E. & O.E."), are frequently
placed at the end of a statement of account or an invoice, so that
the accounting party may reserve the right to correct any errors
or omissions which may be subsequently discovered, or make
further claims in respect of them. In mathematics, " error "
is the deviation of an observed or calculated quantity from its
true value. The calculus of errors leads to the formulation of
the " law of error," which is an analytical expression of the
most probably true value of a series of discordant values (see
PROBABILITY).
ERSCH, JOHANN SAMUEL (1766-1828), the founder of
German bibliography, was born at Grossglogau, in Silesia, on
the 23rd of June 1766. In 1785 he entered the university of
Halle with the view of studying theology; but soon his whole
attention became engrossed by history, bibliography and
geography. At Halle he made the acquaintance of J. E. Fabri,
professor of geography; and when the latter was made professor
of history and statistics at Jena, Ersch accompanied him thither,
and aided him in the preparation of several works. In 1788 he
published the Verzeichnis oiler anonymischen Schriften, as a
supplement to the 4th edition of Meusel's Gelehrtes Deutscftland.
The researches required for this work suggested to him the
preparation of a Repertorium iiber die allgemeinen dentschen
Journale und andere periodische Sammlungenfiir Erdbcschreibung,
Geschichte, und die damit verwandten Wissenschaften (Lemgo,
1790-1792). The fame which this publication acquired him led
to his being engaged by Schiitz and Hufeland to prepare an
Allgemeines Repertorium der Liter atur, published in 8 vols.
(Jena and Weimar, 1793-1809), which condensed the literary
productions of 15 years (1785-1800), and included an account
not merely of the books published during that period, but also
of articles in periodicals and magazines, and even of the criticisms
to which each book had been subjected. While engaged in this
great work he also projected La France litteraire, which was
published at Hamburg in 5 vols., from 1797 to 1806. In 1795
he went to Hamburg to edit the Neue Hamburger Zeitung,
founded by Victor Klopstock, brother of the poet, but returned
in 1800 to Jena to take active part in the Allgemeine Lileratur-
zeitung. He also obtained in the same year the office of librarian
in the university, and in 1802 was made professor of philosophy.
In 1803 he accepted the chair of geography and statistics at
Halle, and in 1808 was made principal librarian. He here
projected a Handbuch der deutschen Literatur seit der Mitte des
18. Jahrh. bis auf die neueste Zeit (Leipzig, 1812-1814) and, along
with Johann Gottfried Gruber (q.v.), the Allgemeine Encyklopadie
der Wissenschaften und Kiinste (Leipzig, 1818 fig.) which he
continued as far as the 2 1 st volume. The accuracy and thorough-
ness of this monumental encyclopaedia make it still an indis-
pensable book of reference. Ersch died at Halle on the i6th of
January 1828.
ERSKINE, EBENEZER (1680-1754), Scottish divine, the
chief founder of the Secession Church (formed of dissenters from
the Church of Scotland), was born on the 22nd of June 1680,
most probably at Dryburgh, Berwickshire. His father, Henry
Erskine, who was at one time minister at Cornhill, Durham, was
ejected in 1662 by the Act of Uniformity, and, after suffering
some years' imprisonment, was after the Revolution appointed
to the parish of Chirnside, Berwickshire. After studying at
the university of Edinburgh, Ebenezer became minister of
Portmoak, Kinross-shire. There he remained for twenty-eight
ERSKINE, H. ERSKINE, R.
755
yean, after which, in the autumn of 1731, he was translated
to the West Chun-h, Stirling. Some time before this, he, along
with some other ministers, was "rebuked and admonishnl. '
by the general assembly, for defending the doctrines contained
in the JIamv of Modem Divinity (sec BOSTON, THOMAS). A
sermon which he preached on lay patronage before the synod
of Perth in 1733 furnished new grounds of accusation, and he
was compelled to shield himself from rebuke by appealing to the
general assembly. Here, however, the sentence of the synod
was confirmed, and after many fruitless attempts to obtain a
hearing, he, along with William Wilson of Perth, Alexander
Moncrieff of Abernethy and James Fisher of Kinclaven, was
suspended from the ministry by the commission in November
of that year. Against this sentence they protested, and con-
stituted themselves into a separate church court, under the name
of the associate presbytery. In 1 739 they were again summoned
before the assembly, and in their corporate capacity declined
to acknowledge the authority of the church, and were deposed
in the following year. They received numerous accessions to
their communion, and remained in harmony with each other
till 1747, when a division took place in regard to the nature of
the oath administered to burgesses. Erskine joined with the
" burgher " section, and became their professor of theology.
He continued also to preach to a numerous congregation in
Stirling till his death, which took place on the 2nd of June 1754.
Erskine was a very popular preacher, and a man of consider-
able force of character; he acted throughout on principle with
honesty and courage. The burgher and anti-burgher sections
of the Secession Church were reunited in 1820, and in 1847 they
united with the relief synod in forming the United Presbyterian
Church.
Erskine's published works consist chiefly of sermons. His Life
and Diary, edited by the Rev. Donald Fraser, was published in
1840. His Works were published in 1785.
ERSKINE. HENRY (1746-1817), lord advocate of Scotland,
the second son of Henry David, loth earl of Buchan and brother
of the lord chancellor Erskine, was born in Edinburgh on the
ist of November 1746. He was educated at the universities
of St Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and was admitted a
member of the faculty of advocates in 1768. His reputation
as a clever and fluent speaker was first made in the debates of
the general assembly, of which he had been early elected an
elder. In 1783 he was appointed to the office of lord advocate,
which he held during the brief coalition ministry of Fox and
North. In 1 785 he was elected dean of the faculty of advocates,
and was re-elected annually till 1706, when his conduct in moving
a series of resolutions at a public meeting, condemning the govern-
ment 's sedition and treason bills, brought on him the opposition
of the ministerial party, and he was deposed in favour of Robert
Dundas. On the formation of the Grenville ministry in 1806
be again became lord advocate and was returned to parliament
for the Haddington burghs, which he exchanged at the general
election of the same year for the Dumfries burghs. His tenure
of the lord advocateship ended in March 1807 on the downfall
of the ministry. In 181 1 he gave up his practice at the bar and
retired to his country residence of Almondel, in Linlithgowshire,
where he died on the 8th of October 1817.
His eldest son, Henry David (1783-1857), succeeded as I2th
earl of Buchan on his uncle's death in 1829.
Erskine's reputation will survive as the finest and most
eloquent orator of his day at the Scottish bar; added to a charm-
ing forensic style was a most captivating wit, which, as Lord
Jeffrey said, was " all argument, and each of his delightful
illustrations a material step in his reasoning." Erskine was also
the author of some poems, of which the best known is " The
Emigrant " (1783).
See Lieut. -Col. A. FergUMOfl's Henry Erskine (1882).
ERSKINE. JOHN (1721-1803), Scottish divine, son. of John
Erskine of Carnock, was born on the 2nd of June 1721. He
studied law for a time after completing his course in arts at the
university of Edinburgh, but was eventually licensed to preach
in 1743; and was successively parish minister of Kirkintilloch,
near Glasgow, Culross, in Fifeshire (1753), New Greyfriars
church in Edinburgh (1758), and Old Greyfriars church in 1768,
where he became the colleague of Principal Robertson, the
historian. Here he remained until his death, which took place
on the iQth of January 1803. Dr Erskine's writings consist
chiefly of controversial pamphlets on theological subjects. His
sermons are clear, vigorous expositions of a moderate Calvinism,
in which metaphysical argument and practical morality arc
happily blended. In church politics he was the leader of the
evangelical party; and was much beloved for his high character
and amiability.
For his life and works see Sir H. Moncreiff Wellwood, Life and
Writings of J. Erskine, D.D. (Edinburgh, 1818).
ERSKINE, JOHN, of Carnock (1695-1768), Scottish jurist,
son of Lieut.-Colonel John Erskine, was born in 1695. He was
admitted a member of the faculty of advocates in 1719. Although
he never enjoyed much practice at the bar, he acquired a high
reputation as a sound and learned lawyer, and in 1737 was
appointed professor of Scots law in the university of Edinburgh.
In 1754 he published his Principles of the Law of Scotland. He
retired from his chair in 1765; and during the remainder of
his uneventful life he occupied himself with the preparation of
his great work, the Institutes of the Law of Scotland, which he
did not live to publish. He died at Cardross, Perthshire, on the
ist of March 1768.
Erskine's Institutes, although not exhibiting the grasp of
principle which distinguished his great predecessor Lord Stair,
is so conspicuous for learning, accuracy and sound good sense,
that it has always been esteemed of the highest authority on
the law of Scotland. The first edition appeared in 1773 and
it has been many times reprinted. The Principles, although
published first, is substantially an abridgment of the larger
work, and is in some respects superior to it, being more concise
and direct. It retains its place as the text-book on Scots law,
and is frequently being re-edited.
ERSKINE, JOHN, of Dun (1509-1591), Scottish reformer,
the son of Sir John Erskine, laird of Dun, was born in 1509,
and was educated at King's College, Aberdeen. At the age of
twenty-one Erskine was the cause probably by accident of
a priest's death, and was forced to go abroad, where he came under
the influence of the new learning. It was through his agency
that Greek was first taught in Scotland by Petrus de Marsiliers
at Montrose. This fact counted for much in the progress of the
Reformation. Erskine was also drawn towards the new faith,
being a close friend of George Wishart, the reformer, from whose
fate he was saved by his wealth and influence, and of John Knox,
whose advice openly to discountenance the mass was given in
the lodgings of the laird of Dun. In the stormy controversies
of the time of Mary Stuart and James VI. Erskine was a con-
spicuous figure and a moderating influence. He was able to
soothe the queen when her feelings had been outraged by Knox's
denunciations being a man " most gentill of nature " and
frequently acted as mediator both between the catholic and
reforming parties, and among the reformers themselves. In
1560 he was appointed though a layman superintendent
of the reformed church of Scotland for Angus and Mearns, and
in 1572 he gave his assent to the modified episcopacy proposed
by Morton at the Leith convention. Though never himself
ordained, he was held in such high esteem by the leaders of the
church as to be more than once elected moderator of the general
assembly (first in 1564), and he was amongst those who in
1578 drew up the Second Book of Discipline. From 1579 he was
a member of the king's council. He died in 1591. Erskine owed
his peculiar influence among the Scottish reformers to the union
rare in those days of steadfast convictions with a con-
ciliatory manner; Queen Mary described him as "a mild and
sweet-naturcd man, with true honesty and uprightness."
See the " Dun Papers " in the Spalding Club Miscellany, vol. iv.
(1849), and the article by T. F. Henderson in the Diet. Nat. Biog.
ERSKINE, RALPH (1685-1752), Scottish divine, brother of
Ebenezer Erskine (q.v.), was born on the i8th of March 1685.
After studying at the university of Edinburgh, he was in 1711
75 6
ERSKINE, T. ERSKINE, BARON
ordained assistant minister at Dunfermline. He homologated
the protests which his brother laid on the table of the assembly
after being rebuked for his synod sermon, but he did not formally
withdraw from the establishment till 1737. He was also
present, though not as a member, at the first meeting of the
associate presbytery. When the severance took place on account
of the oath administered to burgesses, he adhered, along with his
brother, to the burgher section. He died after a short illness
on the 6th of November 1752.
His works consist of sermons, poetical paraphrases and gospel
sonnets. The Gospel Sonnets have frequently appeared separately.
His Life and Diary, edited by the Rev. D. Fraser, was published in
1842.
ERSKINE, THOMAS, of Linlathen (1788-1870), Scottish
theologian, youngest son of David Erskine, writer to the signet
in Edinburgh, and of Anne Graham, of the Grahams of Airth,
was born on the i3th of October 1788. He was a descendant of
John, tst or 6th earl of Mar, regent of Scotland in the reign of
James VI., a grandson of Colonel John Erskine of Carnock.
After being educated at the high school of Edinburgh and at
Durham, he attended the literary and law classes at the university
of Edinburgh, and becoming in 1810 a member of the Edinburgh
faculty of advocates, he for some time enjoyed the intimate
acquaintance of Cockburn, Jeffrey, Scott and other distinguished
men whose talent then lent lustre to the Scottish. bar. In 1816
he-succeeded to the family estate of Linlathen, near Dundee, and
devoted himself to theology. The writings of Erskine, especially
his published letters, are distinguished by a graceful style, and
possess originality and interest. His theological views have a
considerable similarity to those of Frederick Denison Maurice,
who acknowledges having been indebted to him for his first true
conception of the meaning of Christ's sacrifice. Erskine had
little interest in the " historical criticism " of Christianity, and
regarded as the only proper criterion of its truth its conformity
or nonconformity with man's spiritual nature, and its adapt-
ability or non-adaptability to man's spiritual needs. He con-
sidered the incarnation of Christ as the necessary manifestation
to man of an eternal sonship in the divine nature, apart from
which those filial qualities which God demands from man could
have no sanction; by faith as used in Scripture he understood
to be meant a certain moral or spiritual activity or energy which
virtually implied salvation, because it implied the existence of
a principle of spiritual life possessed of an immortal power.
This faith, he believed, could be properly awakened only by the
manifestation, through Christ, of love as the law of life, and
as identical with an eternal righteousness which it was God's
purpose to bestow on every individual soul. As an interpreter
of the mystical side of Calvinism and of the psychological con-
ditions which correspond with the doctrines of grace Erskine is
unrivalled. During the last thirty-three years of his life Erskine
ceased from literary work. Among his friends were Madame
Vernet, the duchess de Broglie, the younger Mdme de Stael
M. Vinet of Lausanne, Edward Irving, Frederick D. Maurice
Dean Stanley, Bishop Ewing, Dr John Brown and Thomas
Carlyle. His wide influence was due to his high character anc
unassuming earnestness. He died at Edinburgh on the aoth o:
March 1870.
His principal works are Remarks on the Internal Evidence for thi
Truth of Revealed Religion (1820), an Essay on Faith (1822), anc
the Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel (1828). These have al
passed through several editions, and have also been translated intc
French. He is also the author of the Brazen Serpent (1831), _ the
Doctrine of Election (1839), several " Introductory Essays " tc
editions of Christian Authors, and a posthumous work entitlec
Spiritual Order and Other Papers (1871). Two vols. of his letters
. edited by William Hanna, D.D., with reminiscences by Dean Stanlej
and Principal Shairp, appeared in 1877.
ERSKINE, THOMAS ERSKINE, IST BARON (1730-1823)
lord chancellor of England, was the third and youngest son o
Henry David, loth earl of Buchan, and was born in Edinburg]
on the loth of January 1750. From an early age he showed a
strong desire to enter one of the learned professions; but hi
father, owing to his straitened circumstances, was unable to dc
more than give him a good school education at the high schoo
A Edinburgh and the grammar school of St Andrews. In 1764
je was sent as a midshipman on board the " Tartar," but on
inding, when he returned to this country after four years'
absence in North America and the West Indies, that there was
ittle immediate chance of his rank of acting lieutenant being
onfirmed, he quitted the service and entered the army, purchas-
ng a commission in the ist Royals with the meagre patrimony
which had been left to him. But promotion here was as slow as
n the navy; while in 1770 he had added greatly to his difficulties
>y marrying the daughter of Daniel Moore, M.P. for Marlow,
an excellent wife, but as poor as himself. However, an accidental
isit to an assize court in the town in which he was quartered,
and an interview with Lord Mansfield, the presiding judge,
confirmed his resolve to quit the army for the law. Accordingly
on the 26th of April 1775 he was admitted a student of Lincoln's
nn. He also on the i3th of January following entered himself as
gentleman commoner on the books of Trinity College, Cam-
iridge, but merely that by graduating he might be called two
ears earlier.
He read in the chambers of Francis Buller (afterwards Mr
lustice Buller) and George (afterwards Baron) Wood, and was
called to the bar on the 3rd of July 1778. His success was
mmediate and brilliant. An accident was the means of giving
him his first case, Rex v. Baillie, in which he appeared for Captain
Thomas Baillie, the lieutenant-governor of Greenwich hospital,
who had published a pamphlet animadverting in severe terms
upon the abuses which Lord Sandwich, the first lord of the
admiralty, had introduced into the management of the hospital,
and against whom a rule had been obtained from the court of
king's bench to show cause why a criminal information for libel
should not be filed. Erskine was the junior of five counsel; and
it was his good fortune that the prolixity of his leaders con-
sumed the whole of the first day, thereby giving the advantage
of starting afresh next morning. He made use of this opportunity
to deliver a speech of wonderful eloquence, skill and courage,
which captivated both the audience and the court. The rule
was discharged, and Erskine's fortune was made. He received,
it is said, thirty retainers before he left the court. In 1781 he
delivered another remarkable speech, in defence of Lord George
Gordon a speech which gave the death-blow to the doctrine
of constructive treason. In 1783, when the Coalition ministry
came into power, he was returned to parliament as member for
Portsmouth. His first speech in the House of Commons was a
failure; and he never in parliamentary debate possessed anything
like the influence he had at the bar. He lost his seat at the dis-
solution in the following year, and remained out of parliament
until 1790, when he was again returned for Portsmouth. But
his success at the bar continued unimpaired. In 1 783 he received
a patent of precedence. His first special retainer was in defence
of Dr W. D. Shipley, dean of St Asaph, who was tried in 1784
at Shrewsbury for seditious libel a defence to which was due
the passing of the Libel Act 1792, laying down the principle
that it is for the jury, and not for the judge to decide the question
whether or no a publication is a libel. In 1 789 he was counsel for
John Stockdale, a bookseller, who was charged with seditious libel
in publishing a pamphlet in favour of Warren Hastings, whose
trial was then proceeding; and his speech on this occasion,
probably his greatest effort, is a consummate specimen of the
art of addressing a jury. Three years afterwards he brought
down the opposition alike of friends and foes by defending
Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man holding that an
advocate has no right, by refusing a brief, to convert himself
into a judge. As a consequence he lost the office of attorney-
general to the prince of Wales, to which he had been appointed
in 1786; the prince, however, subsequently made amends by
making him his chancellor. Among Erskine's later speeches
may be mentioned those for Home Tooke and the other advocates
of parliamentary reform, and that for James Hadfield, who was
accused of shooting at the king. On the accession of the Gren-
ville ministry in 1806 he was made lord chancellor, an office for
which his training had in no way prepared him, but which he
fortunately held only during the short period his party was in
ERUBESCITE ERYSIPELAS
757
power. Of the remainder of his life it would be well if nothing
could be said. Occasionally speaking in parliament, and hoping
that he might return to office should the prince become regent,
he gradually degenerated into a state of useless idleness. Never
conspicuous for prudence, he aggravated his increasing poverty
by an unfortunate second marriage.
His first wife had died in 1805, and he married at Gretna Green
a Miss Mary Buck. The date of this marriage is not definitely
known. Once only in his conduct in the case of Queen Caroline
does he recall his former self. He died at Almondell, Linlithgow-
shire, on the i;th of November 1823, of pneumonia, caught on
the voyage to Scotland.
Erskine's great forensic reputation was, to a certain extent,
a concomitant of the numerous political trials of the day, but
it was also due to his impassioned eloquence and undaunted
courage, which so often carried audience and jury and even the
court along with him. As a judge he did not succeed; and it
has been questioned whether under any circumstances he could
have succeeded. For the office of chancellor he was plainly unfit.
As a lawyer he was well read, but by no means profound. His
strength lay in the keenness of his reasoning faculty, in his
dexterity and the ability with which he disentangled complicated
masses of evidence, and above all in his unrivalled power of
fixing and commanding the attention of juries. To no depart-
ment of knowledge but law had he applied himself systematically,
with the single exception of English literature, of which he
acquired a thorough mastery in early life, at intervals of leisure
in college, on board ship, or in the army. Vanity is said to have
been his ruling personal characteristic; but those who knew
him, while they admit the fault, say that in him it never took
an offensive form, even in old age, while the singular grace and
attractiveness of his manner endeared him to all with whom he
came in contact.
By his first wife he had four sons and four daughters. His
eldest son, David Montagu (1776-1855), was a well-known
diplomatist; his second son, Henry David (1786-1859), was
dean of Ripon; and his third son, Thomas (1788-1864), became
a judge of the court of common pleas. By his second wife he
had one son, born in 1821.
In 1772 Erskine published Observations on the Prevailing Abuses
in Ike British Army, a pamphlet which had a large circulation, and
in later life, Armata. an imitation of Gulliver's Travels. His most
noted speeches have repeatedly appeared in a collected form. See
Campbell's Lifts of Ike Chancellors; Moore's Diaries; Fergusson's
Henry Erskine (1882); Dumerit's Henry Erskine, a Study (Paris,
1883); Lord Brougham's Memoir, prefixed to Erskine's Speeches
(1847): Romilly's Memoirs; the Croker Papers; Lord Holland's
Memoirs.
ERUBESCITE, a native copper-iron sulphide, Cu 4 FeS 4 , of
importance as an ore of copper. It crystallizes in the cubic
system, the usual form being that of interpenetrating cubes
twinned on an octahedral plane. The faces are usually curved
and rough, and the crystals confusedly aggregated together.
Compact and granular masses are of more frequent occurrence.
The colour on a freshly fractured surface is bronzy or coppery,
but in moist air this rapidly tarnishes with iridescent blue and
red colours; hence the names purple copper ore, variegated
copper ore (Ger. Bunlkupferen), horse-flesh ore, and erubescite
(from the Lat. erubescere, " togrowred "). The lustre is metallic,
and the streak greyish-black; hardness 3; sp. gr. 5-0. Bornite
(after Baron Ignaz von Born, b. 1742, d. 1791) is a name in
common use for this mineral, and it predates erubescite, the name
given by J. D. Dana in 1850, but afterwards rejected by him;
French authors use the name phillipsitc, after the English
mineralogist, R. Phillips, who analysed the mineral; both these
earlier names had, however, been previously used for other
minerals.
Owing to the frequent presence of mechanically admixed
chalcopyrite and chalcocite, the published analyses of erubescite
show wide variations, the copper, for example, varying from
50 to 70%. Even the best Cornish crystals enclose a nucleus
of chalcopyrite (CuFeS,), and an analysis of these made in 1839
led to the long-accepted formula Cu*FeS|. Recently, B. J.
Harrington has analysed carefully selected material and obtained
the formula CutFeS<.
Erubescite occurs in copper-bearing veins, and has been mined
as an ore of copper at Redruth in Cornwall, Montecatini in the
province of Pisa, Tuscany, Bristol in Connecticut, Acton in
Canada, and other localities in North America. The best
crystallized specimens are from the Cam Brca mine and other
copper mines in the neighbourhood of Redruth, and from Bristol
in Connecticut. Recently a few large isolated crystals with
the form of icositetrahcdra have been found with calcite and
albite in a gold-vein on Frossnitz-Alpe in the Gross- Venediger,
Tirol. (L. J. S.)
ERYSIPELAS (a Greek word, probably derived from IpvOptx,
red, and TtXXa, skin) synonyms, the Rose, Si Anthony's Fire
an acute contagious disease, characterized by a special inflamma-
tion of the skin, caused by a streptococcus. Erysipelas is
endemic in most countries, and epidemic at certain seasons,
particularly the spring of the year. The poison is not very
virulent, but it certainly can be conveyed by bedding and the
clothes of a third person. Two varieties are occasionally
described, a traumatic and an idiopathic, but the disease seems
to depend in all cases upon the existence of a wound or abrasion.
In the so-called idiopathic variety, of which facial erysipelas
is the best known, the point of entry is probably an abrasion by
the lachrymal duct.
When the erysipelas is of moderate character there is simply
a redness of the integument, which feels somewhat hard and
thickened, and upon which there often appear small vesications.
This redness, though at first circumscribed, tends to spread and
affect the neighbouring sound skin, until an entire limb or a
large area of the body may become involved in the inflammatory
process. There is usually considerable pain, with heat and
tingling in the affected part. As the disease advances the
portions of skin first attacked become less inflamed, and exhibit
a yellowish appearance, which is followed by slight desquamation
of the cuticle. The inflammation in general gradually disappears.
Sometimes, however, it breaks out again, and passes over the
area originally affected the second time. But besides the skin,
the subjacent tissues may become involved in the inflammation,
and give rise to the formation of pus. This is termed phleg-
monous erysipelas, and is much more apt to occur in connexion
with the traumatic variety of the disease. Occasionally the
affected parts become gangrenous. Certain complications are
apt to arise in erysipelas affecting the surface of the body, par-
ticularly inflammation of serous membranes, such as the peri-
cardium or pleura.
Erysipelas of the face usually begins with symptoms of
general illness, the patient feeling languid, drowsy and sick,
while frequently there is a distinct rigor followed with fever.
Sore throat is sometimes felt, but in general the first indication
of the local affection is a red and painful spot at the side of the
nose or on one of the cheeks or ears. Occasionally it would appear
that the inflammation begins in the throat, and reaches the face
through the nasal fossae. The redness gradually spreads over
the whole surface of the face, and is accompanied with swelling,
which in the lax tissues of the cheeks and eyelids is so great
that the features soon become obliterated and the countenance
wears a hideous expression. Advancing over the scalp, the
disease may invade the neck and pass on to the trunk, but in
general the inflammation remains confined to the face and head.
While the disease progresses, besides the pain, tenderness and
heat of the affected parts, the constitutional symptoms are very
severe. The temperature rises often to 105 or higher, remains
high for four or five days, and then falls by crisis. Delirium is
a frequent accompaniment. The attack in general lasts for a
week or ten days, during which the inflammation subsides in the
parts of the skin first attacked, while it spreads onwards in other
directions, and after it has passed away there is, as already
observed, some slight desquamation of the cuticle.
Although in general the termination is favourable, serious
and occasionally fatal results follow from inflammation of the
membranes of the brain, and in^ some rare instances sudden death
758
ERYTHRAE ERZERUM
has occurred from suffocation arising from oedema glottidis,
the inflammatory action having spread into and extensively
involved the throat. One attack of this disease, so far from
protecting from, appears rather to predispose to others. It is
sometimes a complication in certain forms of exhausting disease,
such as phthisis or typhoid fever, and is then to be regarded as
of serious import. A very fatal form occasionally attacks new-
born infants, particularly in the first four weeks of their lives.
In epidemics of puerperal fever this form of erysipelas has been
specially found to prevail.
The treatment of erysipelas is best conducted on the expectant
system. The disease in most instances tends to a favourable
termination; and beyond attention to the condition of the
stomach and bowels, which may require the use of some gentle
laxative, little is necessary in the way of medicine. The employ-
ment of preparations of iron in large doses is strongly
recommended by many physicians. But the chief point is the
administration of abundant nourishment in a light and digestible
form. Of the many local applications which may be employed,
hot fomentations will be found among the most soothing. Dusting
the affected part with powdered starch, and wrapping it in
cotton wadding, is also of use.
In the case of phlegmonous erysipelas complicating wounds,
free incisions into the part are necessary.
ERYTHRAE [mod. Litri], one of the Ionian cities of Asia
Minor, situated on a small peninsula stretching into the Bay of
Erythrae, at an equal distance from the mountains Mimas and
Corycus, and directly opposite the island of Chios. In the
peninsula excellent wine was produced. The town was said to
have been founded by lonians under Knopos, son of Codrus.
Never a large city, it sent only eight ships to the battle of Lade.
The Erythraeans owned for a considerable time the supremacy
of Athens, but towards the close of the Peloponnesian war they
threw off their allegiance to that city. After the battle of Cnidus,
however, they received Conon, and paid him honours in an
inscription, still extant. Erythrae was the birthplace of two
prophetesses one of whom, Sibylla, is mentioned by Strabo
as living in the early period of the city; the other, Athenais,
lived in the time of Alexander the Great. The ruins include
well-preserved Hellenistic walls with towers, of which five are
still visible. The acropolis (280 ft.) has the theatre on its N.
slope, and eastwards lie many remains of Byzantine buildings.
Modern Litri is a considerable place and port, extending from
the ancient harbour to the acropolis. The smaller coasting
steamers call, and there is an active trade with Chios and Smyrna.
ERYTHRITE, the name given to (i) a mineral composed
of a hydrated cobalt arsenate, and (2) in chemistry, a tetra-
hydric alcohol, (i) The mineral erythrite has the formula
Co 3 (AsO 4 ) 2 -8H 2 O, and crystallizes in the monoclinic system and
is isomorphous with vivianite. It sometimes occurs as beautiful
radially-arranged groups of blade-shaped crystals with a bright
crimson colour and brilliant lustre. On exposure to light the
colour and lustre deteriorate. There is a perfect cleavage parallel
to the plane of symmetry, on which the lustre is pearly. Cleav-
age flakes are soft (H=2), sectile and flexible; specific gravity
2-95. The mineral is, however, more often found as an earthy
encrustation with a peach-blossom colour, and in this form was
early (1727) known as cobalt-bloom (Ger. Kobaltbliithe) . Thename
erythrite, from IpvQpfa, " red," was given by F. S. Beudant
in 1382. Erythrite occurs as a product of alteration of smaltite
(CoAs 2 ) and other cobaltiferous arsenides. The finest crystallized
specimens are from Schneeberg in Saxony. The earthy variety
has been found in Thuringia and Cornwall and some other
places. (2) The alcohol erythrite has the constitutional formula
HO-H 2 C-CH(OH)-CH(OH)-CH 2 OH; it is also known as erythrol,
erythroglucin and phycite. It corresponds to tartaric acid, and,
like this substance, it occurs in four stereo-isomeric forms. The
internally compensated modification, z'-erythrite, corresponding
to mesotartaric acid, occurs free in the algae Protococcus vulgaris,'
and as the orsellinate, erythrin, C 4 H(OH) 2 (O-C 8 H7O3) 2 , in many
lichens and algae, especially Roccella montagnei. It has a sweet
taste, melts at 126, and boils at 330. Careful oxidation with
dilute nitric acid gives erythrose or tetrose, which is probably
a mixture of a trioxyaldehyde and trioxyketone. Energetic
oxidation gives erythritic acid and mesotartaric acid. i-Erythrite
and the racemic mixture of the dextro and laevo varieties were
synthesized by Griner in 1893 from divinyl.
ERZERUM, or ARZRUM (Arm. Garin), the chief town of an
important vilayet of the same name in Asiatic Turkey. It is
a military station and a fortress of considerable strategical value,
closing the roads from Kars, Olti and other parts of the frontier.
Several important routes from Trebizond and various parts of
Anatolia converge towards it from the west. It is situated at
the eastern end of an open bare plain, 30 m. long and about 12
wide, bordered by steep, rounded mountains and traversed by
the Kara Su, or western Euphrates, which has its source in the
Dumlu Dagh a few miles north of that town, which lies at an
elevation of 6250 ft. above sea-level, while the near hills rise to
10,000 ft. The scenery in the neighbourhood is striking, lofty
bare mountains being varied by open plains and long valleys
dotted with villages. Just east of the town is the broad ridge
of the Deveboyun (" Camel's Neck "), across which the road
passes to Kars. To the south is the Palanduken range, from which
emerge numerous streams, supplying the town with excellent
water. In the plain to the north the Kara Su traverses extensive
marshes which afford good wildfowl-shooting in the spring.
The town is surrounded by an earthen enceinte or rampart
with some forts on the hills just above it, and others on the
Deveboyun ridge facing east, the whole forming a position of
considerable strength. The old walls and the citadel have
disappeared. Inside the ramparts the town lies rather cramped,
with narrow, crooked streets, badly drained and dirty; the
houses are generally built of dark grey volcanic stone with flat
roofs, the general aspect, owing to the absence of trees, being
somewhat gloomy. The water-supply from Palanduken is
distributed by wooden pipes to numerous public fountains.
The town has a population of about 43,000, including about
10,000 Armenians, 2000 Persians and a few Jews. It has a
garrison in peace of about 5000 men. It is the seat of the
British consulate for Kurdistan, and there are other European
consulates besides an American mission with schools. The great
altitude accounts for very severe winter cold, occasionally 10
to 25 below zero F., accompanied by blizzards (tipi) sometimes
fatal to travellers overtaken by them. The summer heat is
moderate (59 to 77).
There are several well-built mosques (none older than the
1 6th century), public baths, and several good khans. There are
Armenian and Catholic churches, but the most beautiful building
is a medresse erected in the i2th century by the Seljuks, with
ornamental doorway and two graceful minarets known as the
Chifte Minare.
Situated on the main road from Trebizond into north-west
Persia, the town has always a large caravan traffic, principally
of camels, but since the improvement of communications in
Russia this has declined. A good carriage-road leads to the coast
at Trebizond, the journey being made in five or six days. There
are also roads to Kars, Bayazid, Erzingan and Kharput. Black-
smiths' and coppersmiths' work is better here than in most
Turkish towns; horse-shoes and brasswork are also famous.
There are several tanneries, and Turkish boots and saddles are
largely made. Jerked beef (pasdirma) is also prepared in large
quantities for winter use. The plain produces wheat, barley,
millet and vegetables. Wood fuel is scarce, the present supply
being from the Tortum district, whence surface coal and lignite
are also brought; but the usual fuel is tezek or dried cow-dung.
The bazaars are of no great interest. Good Persian carpets and
similar goods can be obtained.
Erzerum is a town of great antiquity, and has been identified
with the Armenian Garin Kalakh, the Arabic Kalikale, and the
Byzantine Theodosiopolis of the sth century, when it was a
frontier fortress of the empire hence its name Ersen-er-Rum.
It was captured by the Seljuks in 1201, when it was an im-
portant city, and it fell into Turkish possession in 1517. In July
1829 it was captured by the Russian general Paskevich, and the
ERZGEBIRGE ESAR-HADDON
759
occupation continued until the peace of Adrianople (September
iSjg). The town was unsuccessfully attacked by the Russians
on the oth of November 1877 after a victory gained by them a
short time previously on the Deveboyun heights; it was occupied
by them during the armistice (;th of February 1878) and restored
lo Turkey after the treaty of Berlin. In i8$oa severe earthquake
doiroycd much of the town, and another in November 1901
caused much damage.
The Erzerum vilayet extends from the Persian frontier at
Bayazid, all along the Russian frontier and westward into
Anatolia at Baiburt and Erzingan. It is divided into the three
sanjaks of Bayazid, Erzerum, and Erzingan. It includes the
highest portion of the Armenian plateau, and consists of bare
undulating uplands varied by lofty ranges. The deep gorges
of the Chorokh and Tortum streams north of the town alone
have a different appearance, being well wooded in places.
Both arms of the Euphrates have their rise in this country as
well as the Aras (Araxes) and the Chorokh (Acampsis). It is
an agricultural country with few industries. Besides forests,
iron, salt, sulphur and other mineral springs are found. Some
of the coal and lignite mines in Tortum have been recently
worked to supply fuel for Erzcrum. The population is largely
Armenian and Kurd with some Turks (Moslems 500,000,
Christians 140,000). (C. W. W.; F. R. M.)
ERZGEBIRGE, a mountain chain of Germany, extending
in a W.S.W. direction from the Elbe to the Elstergebirge
along the frontier between Saxony and Bohemia. Its length
from E.N.E. to W.S.W. is about 80 m., and its average
breadth about 25 m. The southern declivity is generally
steep and rugged, forming in some places an almost per-
pendicular wall of the height of from 2000 to 2500 ft.; while
the northern, divided at intervals into valleys, sometimes of
great fertility and sometimes wildly romantic, slopes gradually
towards the great plain of northern Germany. The central
pan of the chain forms a plateau of an average height of more
than 3000 ft. At the extremities of this plateau are situated
the highest summits of the range: in the south-cast the Keilbcrg
(4080 ft.); in the north-east the Fichtelbcrg (3980 ft.); and in
the south-west the Spitzberg (3650 ft.). Between the Keilberg
and the Fichtelberg, at the height of about 3300 ft., is situated
Gottesgab, the highest town in Bohemia. Geologically, the
Erzgebirge range consists mainly of gneiss, mica and phyllite.
As its name (Ore Mountains) indicates, it is famous for its mineral
ores. These are chiefly silver and lead, the layers of both of which
are very extensive, tin, nickel, copper and iron. Gold is found
in several places, and some arsenic, antimony, bismuth, man-
ganese, mercury and sulphur. The Erzgebirge is celebrated for
its lace manufactures, introduced by Barbara Uttmann in 1541,
embroideries, silk-weaving and toys. The climate is in winter
inclement in the higher elevations, and, as the snow lies deep until
the spring, the range is largely frequented by devotees of winter
sport, ski, toboganning, &c. In summer the air is bracing, and
many climatic health resorts have sprung into existence, among
which may be mentioned Kipsdorf , Barenfels and Obcrwiesenthal.
Communication with the Erzgebirge is provided by numerous
lines of railway, some, such as that from Freiberg to BrUx, that
from Chemnitz to Komotau, and that from Zwickau to Carlsbad,
crossing the range, while various local lines serve the higher
valleys.
The Elstergebirge, a range some 16 m. in length, in which the
Weisse Elster has its source, runs S.W. from the Erzgebirge to
the Fichtelgebirge and attains a height of 2630 ft.
See Grohmann, Dai Oberengebirge und seine St&dte (1903), and
S hurtz. Die Passe des Erzgebirges (1891); also Daniel, Deutsch-
lamt, vol. ii., and Gebaucr, Lander und Votkerkunde, vol. i.
ERZINGAN. or EBZINJAN (Arsingao( the middle ages), the chief
town of a sanjak in the Erzerum vilayet of Asiatic Turkey.
It is the headquarters of the IV. army corps, being a place of
some military importance, with large barracks and military
factories. It is situated at an altitude of 3900 ft., near the
western end of a rich well-watered plain through which runs the
Kara Su or western Euphrates. It is surrounded by orchards and
gardens, and is about a mile from the right bank of the river,
which here runs in two wide channels crossed by bridges. One
wide street traverses the town from cast to west, but the othersare
narrow, unpavcd and dirty, except near the new government
buildings and the large modern mosque of Hajji Izzct Pasha
to the north, which are the only buildings of note. The principal
barracks, military hospital and clothing factory are at Karatcluk
on the plain and along the foot-hills to the north 3 m. off, one
recent addition to the business buildings having electric power
and modern British machinery; some older barracks and a
military tannery and boot factory being in the town. The
population numbers about 15,000, of whom about half are
Armenians living in a separate quarter. The principal industries
are the manufacture of silk and cotton and of copper dishes and
utensils. The climate is hot in summer but moderate in winter.
A carriage-road leads to Trebizond, and other roads to Sivas,
Karahissar, Erzerum and Kharput. The plain, almost sur-
rounded by lofty mountains, is highly productive with many
villages on it and the border hills. Wheat, fruit, vines and
cotton are largely grown, and cattle and sheep are bred. Water
is everywhere abundant, and there are iron and hot sulphur
springs. The battle in which the sultan of Rum (1243) was
defeated by the Mongols, took place on the plain, and the cele-
brated Armenian monastery of St Gregory, " the Illuminator,"
lies on the hills 1 1 m. S.W. of the town.
Erzingan occupies the site of an early town in which was a
temple of Anaitis. It was an important place in the 4th century
when St Gregory lived in it. The district passed from the
Byzantines to the Seljuks after the defeat of Romanus, 1071,
and from the latter to the Mongols in 1 243. After having been
held by Mongols, Tatars and Turkomans, it was added to the
Osmanli empire by Mahommed II. in 1473. In 1784 the town
was almost destroyed by an earthquake. (C.W.W.; F. R. M.)
ESAR-HADDON [Assur-akhi-iddina, " Assur has given a
brother "], Assyrian king, son of Sennacherib; before his
accession to the throne he had also borne another name, Assur-
etil-ilani-yukin-abla. At the time of his father's murder (the
2oth of Tebct, 681 B.C.) he was commanding the Assyrian army
in a war against Ararat. The conspirators, after holding Nineveh
for 42 days, had been compelled to fly northward and invoke
the aid of the king of Ararat. On the i2th of lyyar (680 B.C.)
a decisive battle was fought near Malatia, in which the veterans
of Assyria won the day, and at the close of it saluted Esar-haddon
as king. He returned to Nineveh, and on the 8th of Sivan was
crowned king. A good general, Esar-haddon was also an able
and conciliatory administrator. His first act was to crush a
rebellion among the Chaldaeans in the south of Babylonia and
then to restore Babylon, the sacred city of the West, which had
been destroyed by his father. The walls and temple of Bel were
rebuilt, its gods brought back, and after his right to rule had been
solemnly acknowledged by the Babylonian priesthood Esar-
haddon made Babylon his second capital. A year or two later
Media was invaded and Median chiefs came to Nineveh to offer
homage to their conqueror. He now turned to Palestine, where
the rebellion of Abdi-milkutti of Zidon was suppressed, its
leader beheaded, and a new Zidon built out of the ruins of the
older city (676-675 B.C.). All Palestine now submitted to
Assyria, and 12 Syrian and 10 Cyprian princes (including
Manasseh of Judah) came to pay him homage and supply him
with materials for his palace at Nineveh. But a more formidable
enemy had appeared on the Assyrian frontier (676 B.C.). The
Cimmerii (see SCYTHIA) under Teuspa poured into Asia Minor;
they were, however, overthrown in Cilicia, and the Cilician
mountaineers who had joined them were severely punished.
It was next necessary to secure the southern frontier of the empire.
Esar-haddon accordingly marched into the heart of Arabia, to
a distance of about 900 m., across a burning and waterless desert,
and struck terror into the Arabian tribes. At last he was free
to complete the policy of his predecessors by conquering Egypt,
which alone remained to threaten Assyrian dominion in the West.
Baal of Tyre had transferred his allegiance from Esar-haddon to
the Egyptian king Tirhaka and opened to the latter the coast
y6o
ESAU ESCHATOLOGY
road of Palestine; leaving a force, therefore, to invest Tyre,
Esar-haddon led the main body of the Assyrian troops into
Egypt on the 5th of Adar, 673 B.C. The desert was crossed with
the help of the Arabian sheikh. Egypt seems to have submitted
to the invader and was divided into twenty satrapies. Another
campaign, however, was needed before it could be finally subdued.
In 670 B.C. Esar-haddon drove the Egyptian forces before him
in 15 days (from the 3rd to the i8th of Tammuz) all the way
from the frontier to Memphis, thrice defeating them with heavy
loss and wounding Tirhaka himself. Three days after Memphis
fell, and this was soon afterwards followed by the surrender of
Tyre and its king. In 668 B.C. Egypt again revolted, and while
on the march to reduce it Esar-haddon fell ill and died on
the xoth of Marchesvan. His empire was divided between his
two sons Assur-bani-pal and Samas-sum-yukin, Assur-bani-pal
receiving Assyria and his brother Babylonia, an arrangement,
however, which did not prove to be a success. Esar-haddon
was the builder of a palace at Nineveh as well as of one which he
erected at Calah for Assur-bani-pal.
AUTHORITIES. E. A. W. Budge, History of Esarhaddon (1880);
E. Schrader, Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, ii. (1889) (Abel and
ESAU, the son of Isaac and Rebecca, in the Bible, and the elder
twin brother of Jacob. He was so called because he was red
(admoni) and hairy when he was born, and the name Edom (red)
was given to him when he sold his birthright to Jacob for a meal
of red lentil pottage (Gen. xxv. 21-34). Another story of the
manner in which Jacob obtained the superiority is related in
Gen. xxvii. Here the younger brother impersonated the elder,
and succeeded in deceiving his blind father by imitating the
hairiness of his brother. He thus gained the blessing intended
for the first-born, and Esau, on hearing how he had been fore-
stalled, vowed to kill him. Jacob accordingly fled to his mother's
relatives, and on his return, many years later, peace was restored
between them (xxxii. sq.) . These primitive stories of the relations
between the eponymous heads of the Edomites and Israelites
are due to the older (Judaean) sources; the late notices of the
Priestly school (see GENESIS) preserve a different account of the
parting of the two (Gen. xxxvi. 6-8), and lay great stress upon
Esau's marriages with the Canaanites of the land, unions which
were viewed (from the writer's standpoint) with great aversion
(Gen. xxvi. 34 sq., xxvii. 46). For " Esau " as a designation of
the Edomites, cf. Jer. xlix. 8, Obad. w. 6, 8, and on their history,
see EDOM.
Esau's characteristic hairiness (Gen. xxv. 25, xxvii. n) has given
rise to the suggestion that his name is properly 'eshav, from a root
corresponding to the Arab, 'athiya, to have thick or matted hair.
Mt Seir, too, where he resided, etymologically suggests a " shaggy "
mountain-land. According to Hommel (Sud-arab. Chrestom. p. 39
sq.) the name Esau has S. Arabian analogies. On the possible
identity of the name with Usoos, the Phoenician demi-god (Philo
of Byblus, ap. Eusebius, Praep. Evang. i. 10), see Cheyne, Encyc.
Bib. col. 1333; Lagrange, Etudes sur les religions semitiques, p. 416
(Paris, 1905) ; Ed. Meyer, Israeliten, 278 sq. (and, on general ques-
tions, ib. 128 sq., 329 sqq.). (S. A. C.)
ESBJERG, a seaport of Denmark in the ami (county) of Ribe,
18 m. from the German frontier on the west coast of Jutland.
It has railway communication with the east and north of Jutland,
and with Germany. If was granted municipal rights in 1900,
having grown with astonishing rapidity from 13 inhabitants in
1868 to 13,355 in JO 01 - This growth it owes to the construction
of a large harbour in 1868-1888. It is the principal outlet
westward for S. Jutland; exports pork and meat, butter, eggs,
fish, cattle and sheep, skins, lard and agricultural seeds, and has
regular communication with Harwich and Grimsby in England.
Three miles S.E. is Nordby on the island of Fano, the northern-
most of the North Frisian chain. It is an arid bank of heathland
and dunes, but both Nordby and Sb'nderho in the south are
frequented as seaside resorts. The former has a school of navi-
gation. The fisheries are valuable.
ESCANABA, a city and the county-seat of Delta county,
Michigan, U.S.A., on Little Bay de Noquette, an inlet of Green
Bay, about 60 m. S. of Marquette. Pop. (1890) 6808; (1900)
9549, of whom 3214 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 13,194.
It is served by the Chicago & North-Western and the Escanaba
& Lake Superior railways. It is built on a picturesque pro-
montory which separates the waters of Green Bay from Little
Bay de Noquette, and its delightful summer climate, wild
landscape scenery and facilities for boating and trout fishing
make it a popular summer resort. Escanaba has a water front
of 8 m., and is an important centre for the shipment of iron-ore,
for which eight large and well-equipped docks are provided
there is an ore-crushing plant here; considerable quantities of
lumber and fish are also shipped, and furniture, flooring (especi-
ally of maple) and wooden ware (butter-dishes and clothes-pins)
are manufactured. There is a large tie-preserving plant here.
Good water power is supplied by the Escanaba river. Escanaba
was settled in 1863, was incorporated as a village in 1883, and
was first chartered as a city in the same year.
ESCAPE (in mid. Eng. eschape or escape, from the O. Fr.
eschapper, modern echapper, and escaper, low Lat. escapium,
from ex, out of, and cappa, cape, cloak; cf. for the sense develop-
ment the Gr. kSwcrflai, literally to put off one's clothes,
hence to slip out of, get away), a verb meaning to get away from,
especially from impending danger or harm, to avoid capture, to
regain one's liberty after capture. As a substantive, " escape,"
in law, is the regaining of liberty by one in custody contrary to
due process of law. Such escape may be by force, if out of
prison it is generally known as " prison-breach " or " prison-
breaking," or by the voluntary or negligent act of the custodian.
Where the escape is caused by the force or fraud of others it is
termed " rescue " (q.v.). " Escape " is used in botany of a
cultivated plant found growing wild. The word is also used of a
means of escape, e.g. " fire-escape," and of a loss or leakage of gas,
current of electricity or water.
ESCHATOLOGY (Gr. SO-XCITOS, last, and Xcryos, science; the
" doctrine of last things "), a theological term derived from
the New Testament phrases " the last day " (tt> TJ ecrxarj) rintpq.,
John vi. 39), " the last times " (eir' to~x.6.TUv T&V \povuv, i Peter
i. 20), " the last state " (TO. e<rx.a.Ta, Matt. xii. 45), a conception
taken over from ancient prophecy (Is. ii. 2; Mai. iv. i). It was
the common belief in the apostolic age that the second advent of
Christ was near, and would give the divine completion to the
world's history. The use of the term, however, has been extended
so as to include all that is taught in the Scriptures about the
future life of the individual as well as the final destiny of the
world. The reasons for the belief in a life after death are discussed
in the article IMMORTALITY. The present article, after a brief
glance at the conceptions of the future of the individual or the
world found in other religions, will deal with the teaching of the
Old and New Testaments, the Jewish and the Christian Church
regarding the hereafter.
There is a bewildering variety in the views of the future life
and world held by different peoples. The future life may be
conceived as simply a continuation of the present life in its
essential features, although under conditions more or less favour-
able. It may also be thought of as retributive, as a reversal of
present conditions so that the miserable are comforted, and the
prosperous laid low, or as a reward or punishment for good or
evil desert here. Personal identity may be absorbed, as in the
transmigration of souls, or it may even be denied, while the good
or bad result of one life is held to determine the weal or woe of
another. The scene of the future life may be thought of on
earth, in some distant part of it, or above the earth, in the sky,
sun, moon or stars, or beneath the earth. The abodes of bliss
and the places of torment may be distinguished, or one last
dwelling-place may be affirmed for all the dead. Sometimes
the good find their abiding home with the gods; sometimes a
number of heavens of varying degrees of blessedness is recognized
(see F. B. Jevons, An Introduction to the History of Religion, chs.
xxi. and xxii., 1902; and J. A. MacCulloch's Comparative
Theology, xiv., 1902).
(i) Confucius, though unwilling to discuss any questions
concerning the dead, by approving ancestor-worship recognized
a future life. (2) Taoism promises immortality as the reward of
ESCHATOLOGY
761
merit. (3) Tkt Book of the Dead* guide-book for the departed
on his long journey in the unseen world to the abode of the
blessed shows the attention the Egyptian religion
gave to the state of the dead. (4) Although the Baby-
lonian religion presents a very gloomy view of the world
of the dead, it is not without a few faint glimpses of a hope that a
few mortals at least may gain deliverance from the dread doom.
(5) A characteristic feature of Indian thought is the transmigra-
tion of the soul from one mode of life to another, the physical
condition of each being determined by the moral and religious
character of the preceding. But deliverance from this cycle of
existences, which is conceived as misery, is promised by means
of speculation and asceticism. Denying the continuance of the
soul, Buddhism affirmed a continuity of moral consequences
(Karm<i), each successive life being determined by the total
moral result of the preceding life. Its doctrine of salvation was
a guide to, if not absolute non-existence, yet cessation of all
consciousness of existence (Xirtona). Later Buddhism has,
however, a doctrine of many heavens and hells. (6) In Zoro-
ast nanism not only was continuance of life recognized, but a
strict retribution was taught. Heaven and hell were very clearly
distinguished, and each soul according to its works passed to the
one or to the other. But this faith did not concern itself only
with the future lot of the individual soul. It was also interested
in the close of the world's history, and taught a decisive, final
victory of Ormuzd over Ahriman, of the forces of good over the
forces of evil. It is not at all improbable that Jewish eschatology
in its later developments was powerfully influenced by the
Persian faith. (7) Mahommedanism reproduces and exaggerates
the lower features of popular Jewish and Christian eschatology
(see the separate articles on these religions).
In the Old Testament we can trace the gradual development
of an ever more definite doctrine of " the final condition of man
and the world." This is regarded as the last stage in
a moral process, a redemptive purpose of God. The
eschatology of the Old Testament is thus closely
connected with, but not limited by, Messianic hope, as there
are eschatological teachings that are not Messianic. As the Old
Testament revelation is concerned primarily with the elect
nation, and only secondarily (in the later writings) with the
individual persons composing it, we follow the order of im-
portance as well as of time in dealing first with the people. The
universalism which marks the promise to the seed of the woman
(Gen. iii. 15) appears also in the blessing of Noah (ix. 25). In
the promise to Abraham (xii. 3) this universal good is directly
related to God's particular purpose for His chosen people; so
also in the blessing of Jacob (xlix.) and of Moses (Deut. xxxiii.).
David's last words (2 Sam. xxiii.) blend together his desire that
his family should retain the kingship, and his aspiration for a
kingdom of righteousness on earth. The conception of the
" Day of the Lord " is frequent and prominent in the prophets,
and the sense given to the phrase by the people and by the
prophets throws into bold relief the contrast between popular
beliefs and the prophetic faith. The people simply expected
deliverance from their miseries and burdens by the intervention
of Yahweh, because He had chosen Israel for His people. The
prophets had an ethical conception of Yahweh; the sin of His
own people and of other nations called for His intervention
in judgment as the moral ruler of the world. But judgment
they conceived as preparing for redemption. The day of the
Lord is always an eschatological conception, as the term is
applied to the final and universal judgment, and not to any less
decisive intervention of God in the course of human history.
In the pre-exilic prophets the judgment of God is " primarily
on Israel, although it also embraces the nations "; during the
Exile and at the Restoration the judgment is represented as
falling on the nations while redemption is being wrought for
God's people; after the Restoration the people of God is again
threatened, but still the warning of judgment is mainly directed
towards the nations and deliverance is promised to Israel. As
the manifestation of God in grace as well as judgment, the day
of the Lord will bring joy to Israel and even to the world. As
a day of judgment it is accompanied by terrible convulsions
of nature (not to be taken figuratively, but probably intended
literally by the prophets in accordance with their view of the
absolute subordination of nature to the divine purpose for man).
It ushers in the Messianic age. While the moral issues are
finally determined by this day, yet the world of the Messianic
age is painted with the colours of the prophet's own surroundings.
Israel is restored to its own land, and to it the other nations are
brought into subjugation, by force or persuasion. The contribu-
tions of the Old Testament to Christian eschatology embrace
these features: " (i) The manifestation or advent of God; (2)
the universal judgment; (3) behind the judgment the coming
of the perfect kingdom of the Lord, when all Israel shall be
saved and when the nations shall be partakers of their salvation;
and (4) the finality and eternity of this condition, that which
constitutes the blessedness of the saved people being the Presence
of God in the midst of them this last point corresponding to
the Christian idea of heaven " (A. B. Davidson, in Hastings's
Bible Dictionary, i. p. 738)- This hope is for the people on this
earth though transfigured.
To the individual it would seem at first only old age is promised
(Is. Ixv. 20; Zech. viii. 4), but the abolition of death itself is
also declared (Is. xxv. 8). The resurrection, which appears at
first as a revival of the dead nation (Hos. vi. 2 ; Ez. xxxvii.
12-14), is afterwards promised for the pious individuals (Is. xxvi.
19), so that they too may share in the national restoration.
Only in Daniel xii. 2 is taught a resurrection of the wicked
" to shame and everlasting contempt " as well as of the righteous
to " everlasting life." It was only at the Exile, when the nation
ceased to be, that the worth of the individual came to be recog-
nized, and the hopes given to the nation were claimed for the
individual. In dealing with the individual eschatology we
must carefully distinguish the popular ideas regarding death
and the hereafter which Israel shared with the other Semitic
peoples, from the intuitions, inferences, aspirations evoked
in the pious by the divine revelation itself. The former have
not the moral significance or the religious value of the latter.
The starting-point of the development was the common belief
that the dead continued to exist in an unsubstantial mode of
life, but cut off from fellowship with God and man; but faith
left this far behind. Sheol is the common abode of the righteous
and the ungodly: life there is shadowy and feeble, but seems
to continue in a wavering and dim reflection features of this
life. As the present life is, however, determined by moral issues,
and as death does not change man's relation to God, moral
considerations could not be absolutely excluded from the future
life. A forward step had to be taken. Pious men, in fellowship
with God, when they faced the fact of death, were led either
to challenge its right, or to give a new meaning to it. Either
there was a protest against death itself, and a demand for
immortality (Ps. xvi. o-n), or death was conceived as something
different for the saint and for the sinner; fellowship with
God would not and could not be interrupted (Ps. xlix. 14, 15,
Ixxiii. 17-28). The vision of God is anticipated after death's
sleep (Ps. xvii. 15; Job xix. 25-27). This belief in individual
immortality is expressed poetically and obscurely: it is later
than the eschatology of the people. It assumes the moral
distinction of the righteous and the ungodly, and seeks a solution
for the problem of the lack of harmony of present character and
condition. Its deepest motive, however, is religious. The soul
once in fellowship with God cannot even by death be separated
from God. The individual hoped that he would live to share
the nation's good, and thus the two streams of Old Testament
eschatology at last flow together.
It is in the apocryphal and apocalyptic literature of Judaism
that the fullest development of eschatology can be traced.
Four words may serve to express the difference of the Apocry .
doctrine of these writings and the teaching of the Old
Testament. Eschatology was universalized (God was
recognized as the creator and moral governor of all
the world), individualized (God's judgment was directed, not to
nations in a future age, but to individuals in a future life),
762
ESCHATOLOGY
transcendentalized (the future age was more and more contrasted
with the present, and the transition from the one to the other
was not expected as the result of historical movements, but of
miraculous divine acts), and dogmatized (the attempt was made
to systematize in some measure the vague and varied prophetic
anticipations). Only a very brief summary of the conceptions
current in these writings can be given. The coming of the
Messiah will be preceded by the Last Woes. The Messiah is
very variously conceived: (i) "a passive, though supreme
member of the Messianic Kingdom "; (2) "an active warrior
who slays his enemies with his own hand "; (3) " one who slays
his enemies by the word of his mouth, and rules by virtue of his
justice, faith and holiness "; (4) a supernatural person, " eternal
Ruler and Judge of Mankind " (R. H. Charles in Hastings's
Bible Dictionary, i. p. 748). In some of the writings no Messianic
kingdom is looked for; in others only a temporal duration
on earth is assigned to it; in others still it abides for ever
either on earth as it is, or on earth transformed. The
dispersion among the nations is to return home. Sometimes
the Resurrection is narrowed down to the resurrection of the
righteous, at others widened out to the resurrection of all
mankind for the last judgment. A blessed immortality after
judgment, or even after death itself, is sometimes taught
without reference to any resurrection. Retribution in human
history is recognized, but attention is specially concentrated
on the final judgment, which is usually conceived as taking place
in two stages, (i) The Messianic is executed by the Messiah or
the saints by victory in war, or by judicial sentence. (2) The
final remains in God's hands; but in one writing (the Ethiopic
Enoch) is represented as Messiah's function. This judgment
either closes the Messianic age, if thought of as temporal, or
ushers it in, if conceived as eternal, or closes the world's history,
if no Messianic age is expected. The place of torment for the
wicked was called Gehenna (the valley of Hinnom or the Sons
of Hinnom, where the bodies of criminals were cast out, is
described in Is. Ixvi. 24). Here corporal as well as spiritual
punishment was endured; it was inflicted on apostate Jews
or the wicked generally; the righteous witnessed its initial
stages but not its final form. In later Judaism it was the
purgatory of faithless Jews, who at last reached Paradise, but it
remained the place of eternal torment for the Gentiles. Paradise
was sometimes regarded as the division of Sheol to which the
righteous passed after death, but at others it was conceived
as the heavenly abode of Moses, Enoch and Elijah, to which
other saints would pass after the last judgment.
The eschatology of the New Testament attaches itself not only
to that of the Old Testament but also to that of contemporary
Judaism, but it avoids the extravagances of the latter.
Not at all systematic, it is occasional, practical,
poetical and dominantly evangelical, laying stress on
the hope of the righteous rather than the doom of the wicked.
The teaching of Jesus centres, according to the Synoptists, in
the great idea of the " Kingdom of God," which is already
present in the teacher Himself, but also future as regards its
completion. In some parables a gradual realization of the king-
dom is indicated (Matt, xiii.); in other utterances its consum-
mation is connected with Christ's own return, His Parousia
(Matt. xxiv. 3, 37, 30), the time of which, however, is unknown
even to Himself (Mark xiii. 32). In this eschatological discourse
(Matt, xxiv., xxv.) He speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem
' and of the end of the world as near, and seemingly as one. This
is in accordance with the characteristic of prophecy, which sees
in " timeless sequence " events which are historically separated
from one another. While the Return is represented in the
Synoptists as an external event, it is conceived in the fourth
gospel as an internal experience in the operation of the Spirit
on the believer (John xiv. 16-21); nevertheless here also the
Parousia in the synoptic sense is looked for (John xxi. 22; cf. i
John ii. 28) . The object of the Second Coming is the execution of
judgment by Christ (Matt. xxv. 31), both individual (xxii. 1-14)
and universal (xiii. 36-42). The present subjective judgment,
in which men determine their destiny by their attitude to Christ,
New Tes-
tament.
on which the fourth gospel lays stress (John iii. 17-21, ix. 30),
is not inconsistent with the anticipation of a final judgment
(John xii. 48, v. 27). This judgment presupposes the resurrec-
tion, belief in which was rejected by the Sadducees,
but accepted by the Pharisees and the majority of the pl "f^ e s
. , | ,. j u /-M- i , and Sad-
Jewish people, and confirmed by Christ, not only as an ducees.
individual spiritual renovation (John v. 25, 26), but
as a universal physical resuscitation (28 and 29: Matt. xxii. 30).
This resurrection is of the unjust as well as the just (Matt. v.
29, 30, x. 28; Luke xiv. 14). On the Intermediate State Jesus
does not speak clearly. He uses the term Hades twice meta-
phorically (Matt. xi. 23, xvi. 18), and once in a parable, the
" Rich Man and Lazarus " (Luke xvi. 23), in which he employs
the current phrases such as " Abraham's bosom " (verse 22),
without any definite doctrinal intention, to unveil the secrets of
the hereafter by confirming with His authority the common
beliefs of His time. The term Paradise (Luke xxiii. 43) seems
to be used " in a large and general sense as a word of hope and
comfort," and we need not attach to it any of the more definite
associations which it had in Jewish eschatology. When he
speaks of death as " sleep " (Luke viii. 52; John xi. n) it is to
give men gentler and sweeter thoughts of it, not to inculcate the
doctrine of an intermediate state as an unconscious condition.
There are words which suggest rather the hope of an immediate
entrance of the just into the Father's house and glory (John xiv.
2, 3, xvii. 24). He spoke frequently and distinctly both of
final reward for the righteous and final penalty for the wicked.
" The recompense of the righteous is described as an inheritance,
entrance into the kingdom, treasure in heaven, an existence like
the angelic, a place prepared, the Father's house, the joy of the
Lord, life, eternal life and the like; and there is no intimation
that the reward is capable of change, that the condition is a
terminable one. The retribution of the wicked is described
as death, outer darkness, weeping and wailing and gnashing of
teeth, the undying worm, the quenchless fire, exclusion from the
kingdom, eternal punishment and the like " (S. D. J. Salmond
in Hastings's Bible Dictionary, p. 752). Degrees of award are
recognized (Luke xii. 47, 48). Gehenna is applied to the con-
dition of the lost (Matt, xviii. 9). Two sayings are held to point
to a terminable penalty (Matt. v. 25, 26, xii. 31, 32), but the
one is so figurative and the other so obscure, that we are not
warranted in drawing any such definite conclusion from either
of them. The finality of destiny seems to be unmistakably
expressed (Matt. vii. 23, x. 33, xiii. 30, xxv. 46, xxvi. 24; Mark
ix. 43-48, viii. 36; Luke ix. 26; John iii. 16, viii. 21, 24). No
second opportunity for deciding the issue of life or death is
recognized by Jesus.
The apostolic eschatology presents resemblance amid difference.
Jude (v. 6), as well as 2 Peter (ii. 4), refers to the judgment of the
fallen angels. 2 Peter describes the place of their detention as
Tartarus, and teaches that Christ's Parousia is to bring the whole
present system of things to its conclusion, and the world itself to
an end (iii. 10, 13). After the destruction of the existing order
by fire, " a new heaven and a new earth " will appear as the
abode of righteousness. The question of greatest interest in i
Peter is the relation of two passages in it, the preaching to the
spirits in prison (iii. 18-22) and the preaching of the Gospel to
the dead (iv. 6) to the " larger hope." Peter's discourse also-
contains a phrase which suggests the belief of a descent of Christ
into Hades in the interval between His death and His resur-
rection (Acts ii. 31). No certainty has been reached in the
interpretation of these passages, but they may suggest to the
Christian mind the expectation that the final destiny of no soul
can be fixed until in some way or other, in this life or the next,
the opportunity of decision for or against Christ has been given.
The phrase " the times of restoration of all things " (iii. 21) is
too vague in itself, and is too isolated in its context to warrant the
dogmatic teaching of universalism, although there are other
passages which .seem to point towards the same goal. While
John's Apocalypse is distinctly eschatological, the Epistles and
the Gospels often give these conceptions an ethical and spiritual
import, without, however, excluding the eschatological. Life is
ESCHATOLOGY
763
present while eternal (i John v. 12, 13), but it is also future
(ii. .'5). There is expected a future manifestation of Christ as
He is, and what the believer himself will be does not yet appear
(iii. 3). The writer speaks of the last hour (ii. 18), the Antichrist
that comcth (ii. 21, iv. 3), and the Christian's full reward (2 John
v. 8) as well as the Parousia (i John ii. 28). The Apocalypse
reproduces much of the current Jewish cschatology. A mil-
lennial reign of Christ on earth is interposed between the first
resurrection, confined to the saints and especially the martyrs,
and the second resurrection for the rest of the dead. A final
outburst of Satan's power is followed by his overthrow and the
Last Judgment.
Although Paul sometimes describes the Kingdom of God as
present iKom. xiv. 17; i Cor. iv. 20; Col. i. 13), it is usually
represented as future. The Parousia fills a large place in his
thought, and, if more prominent in his earlier writings, is not
altogether absent from his later, although the expectation of
personal survival does seem to grow less confident (cf . i Cor. xv.
51 and Phil. i. 20-24). The doctrines of the Resurrection, the
Last Judgment, the Reward of the Righteous and the Punish-
ment of the Wicked are not less distinctly expressed than in the
other apostolic writings. Peculiar elements in Paul's eschatology
are the doctrines of the Rapture of the Saints (i Thess. iv. 17)
and the Man of Sin (2 Thess. ii. 3-6), but these have affinities
elsewhere. A reference to the millennial reign of Christ in the
period between the two resurrections is sometimes sought in i
Cor. xv. 22-24; but it is not a chronology of the last things Paul
is here giving. So also a justification for the doctrine of
purgatory is sought in iii. 12-15 ; but the day and the fire
are of the last judgment. A descent of Christ into Hades,
implying an extension of the opportunity of grace such as is
supposed to be taught in i Peter, is also discovered in the obscure
statements in Rom. x. 7 (where Paul is freely quoting Deut.
xzx. 11-14), and Eph. iv. 10 (where he is commenting on Ps.
Ixviii. 18). Universal restoration is inferred from i Cor. xv.
34-28, " God all in all," Phil. ii. 10-11, every knee bowing to,
and every tongue confessing Jesus Christ, Eph. i. 9, 10, the
summing up of all things in Christ, Col. i. 20, God reconciling
all things unto Himself in Christ. These passages inspire a hope,
but do not sustain a certainty. Paul's shrinking from the
disembodied state and longing to be clothed upon at death in
2 Cor. v. 1-8, cannot be regarded as a proof of an interim body
prior to and preparatory for the resurrection body. Paul links
the human resurrection with a universal renovation (Rom. viii.
19-23). Paul's eschatology is not free of obscurities and am-
biguities; and in the New Testament eschatology generally
we are forced to recognize a mixture of inherited Jewish and
original Christian elements (see ANTICHRIST).
During the first century of the existence of the Gentile Christian
Church. " the hope of the approaching end of the world and ihe
glorious kingdom of Christ " was dominant, although warnings
had to be given against doubt and indifference. Redemption
was thought of as still future, as the power of the devil had not
been broken but rather increased by the First Advent, and the
Second Advent was necessary to his complete overthrow. The
expectations were often grossly materialistic, as is evidenced by
Papias's quotation as the words of the Lord of a group of say-
ings from the Apocalypse of Baruch, setting forth the amazing
fruitfulness of the earth in the Messianic time.
The Gnostics rejected this eschatology as in their view the
enlightened spirit already possessed immortality. Marcion
nmrti expected that the Church would be assailed by Anti-
christ; a visible return of Christ he did not teach, but
he recognized that human history would issue in a separation
of the good from the bad. Montanism sought to form a new
Christian commonwealth which, separated from the
,.'* world, should prepare itself for the descent of the
Jerusalem from above, and its establishment in the spot
which by the direction of the Spirit had been chosen in Phrygia.
While Irenaeus held fast the traditional eschatological beliefs, yet
his conception of the Christian salvation as a deification of man
tended to weaken their hold on Christian thought. The Alogi
in the 2nd century rejected the Apocalypse on account of its
chiliasm, its leaching of a visible reign of Christ on earth for
a thousand years. Montanism ulso brought these apocalyptic
expectations into discredit in orthodox ecclesiastical circles.
The Alexandrian theology strengthened this movement against
chiliasm. Clement of Alexandria taught that justice is not
merely retributive, that punishment is remedial, that probation
continues after death till the final judgment, that Christ and the
apostles preached the Gospel in Hades to those who lacked
knowledge, but whose heart was right, that a spiritual body
will be raised. Origen taught that a germ of the spiritual body
is in the present body, and its development depends on the
character, that perfect bliss is reached only by stages, that the
evil are purified by pain, conscience being symbolized by fire,
and that all, even the devil himself, will at last be saved. Both
regarded chiliasm with aversion. But in the $th century there
were rejected as heretical (i) " the doctrine of universalism, and
the possibility of the redemption of the devil; (2) the doctrine
of the complete annihilation of evil; (3) the conception of the
penalties of hell as tortures of conscience; (4) the spiritualizing
version of the resurrection of the body ; (5) the idea of the con-
tinued creation of new worlds " (A. Harnack, History of Dogma,
iii. p. 1 86).
Epiphanius, following Methodius, insisted on the most perfect
identity between the resurrection body and the material body;
and this belief, enforced in the West by Jerome, soon established
itself as alone orthodox. Augustine made experiments on the
flesh of a peacock in order to find physical evidence for the
doctrine. He held fast to eternal punishment, but allowed
the possibility of mitigations. Some believers, he taught, may
pass through purgatorial fires; and this middle class may be
helped by the sacraments and the alms of the living. " There
are many souls not good enough to dispense with this provision,
and not bad enough to be benefited by it " (op. cil. v. 233).
This doctrine was sanctioned and developed by Gregory the
Great. " After God has changed eternal punishments into
temporary, the justified must expiate these temporary penalties
for sin in purgatory " (p. 268). This view was inferred indirectly
from Matt. xii. 31, and directly from i Cor. iii. 12-15. After-
wards purgatory took more and more the place of hell, and
was subject to the control of the church. As regards the saints,
different degrees of blessedness were recognized; they were sup-
posed to wait in Hades for the return of Christ, but gradually
the belief gained ground, especially in regard to the martyrs,
that their souls at onceentered Paradise. The primitive Christian
eschatology was preserved in the West as it was not in the East,
and in times of exceptional distress the expectation of Antichrist
emerged again and again. In the middle ages there was an
extravagance of speculation on this subject, which may be seen
in the last division of Aquinas' Summa Theologiae. He proposes
thirty questions on these matters, among which are the following:
" whether souls arc conducted to heaven or hell immediately
after death "; " whether the limbus of hell is the same as
Abraham's bosom "; " whether the sun and moon will be really
obscured at the day of judgment "; " whether all the members
of the human body will rise with it "; " whether the hair and
nails will reappear "; could thought become " more lawless
and uncertain " ?
While rejecting purgatory, Protestantism took over this
cschatology. Souls passed at once to heaven or to hell; a
doctrine even less adequate to the complex quality
of human life. Luther himself looked for the passing
away of the present evil world. Socinianism taught a
new spiritual body, an intermediate state in which
the soul is near non-existence, an annihilation of the
wicked, as immortality is the gift of God. Swedenborg discards
a physical resurrection, as at death the eyes of men arc opened
to the spiritual world in which we exist now, and they continue
to live essentially as they lived here, until by their affinities
they are drawn to heaven or hell. The doctrine of eternal
punishment has been opposed on many grounds, such as the
disproportion between the offence and the penalty, the moral
7 6 4
ESCHEAT ESCHENMAYER
and religious immaturity of the majority of men at death, the
diminution of the happiness of heaven involved in the knowledge
of the endless suffering of others (Schleiermacher), the defeat
of the divine purpose of righteousness and grace that the con-
tinued antagonism of any of God's creatures would imply, the
dissatisfaction God as Father must feel until His whole family
is restored. It has been argued that the term " eternal " has
reference not to duration of time but quality of being (Maurice) ;
but it does seem certain that the writers in the Holy Scriptures
who used it did not foresee an end either to the life or to the death
to which they applied the term. The contention should not be
based on the meaning of a single word, but on such broader
considerations as have been indicated above. The doctrine of
conditional immortality taught by Socinianism was accepted by
Archbishop Whately, and has been most persistently advocated
by Edward White, who " maintains that immortality is a truth,
not of reason, but of revelation, a gift of God " bestowed only on
believers in Christ; but he admits a continued probation after
death for such as have not hardened their hearts by a rejection of
Christ. According to Albrecht Ritschl " the wrath of God means
the resolve of God to annihilate those men who finally oppose
themselves to redemption, and the final purpose of the kingdom
of God." He thus makes immortality conditional on inclusion
in the kingdom of God. The doctrine of universal restoration
was maintained by Thomas Erskine of Linlathen on the ground
of the Fatherhood of God, and Archdeacon Wilson anticipates
such discipline after death as will restore all souls to God. C. I.
Nitzsch argues against the doctrine of the annihilation of the
wicked, regards the teaching of Scripture about eternal damna-
tion as hypothetical, and thinks it possible that Paul reached
the hope of universal restoration. I. A. Dorner maintains that
hopeless perdition can be the penalty only of the deliberate
rejection of the Gospel, that those who have not had the oppor-
tunity of choice fairly and fully in this life will get it hereafter,
but that the right choice will in all cases be made we cannot
be confident. The attitude of theologians generally regarding
individual destiny is well expressed by Dr James Orr, " The
conclusion I arrive at is that we have not the elements of a
complete solution, and we ought not to attempt it. What visions
beyond there may be, what larger hopes, what ultimate harmonies,
if such there are in store, will come in God's good time; it is not
for us to anticipate them, or lift the veil where God has left it
down" (The Christian View oj God and the World, 1893, p. 397).
Although in recent theological thought attention has been
mainly directed to individual destiny, yet the other elements
of Christian eschatology must not be altogether passed over.
History has offered the authoritative commentary on the
prophecy of the Parousia of Christ. The presence and power
of His Spirit, the spread of His Gospel, the progress of His
kingdom have been as much a fulfilment of the eschatological
teaching of the New Testament as His life and work on earth
were a fulfilment of Messianic prophecy, for fulfilment always
transcends prophecy. Even if the common beliefs of the apostolic
age have not modified the evangelist's reports of Jesus' teaching,
it must be remembered that He used the common prophetic
phraseology, the literal fulfilment of which is not to be looked
for. Some parables (the leaven, the mustard seed) suggest a
gradual progressive realization of His kingdom. The Fourth
Gospel interprets both judgment and resurrection spiritually.
Accordingly the general resurrection and the last judgment may
be regarded as the temporal and local forms of thought to
express the universal permanent truths that life survives death in
the completeness of its necessary organs and essential functions,
and that the character of that continued life is determined by
personal choice of submission or antagonism to God's purpose of
grace in Christ, the perfect realization of which is the Christian's
hope for himself, mankind and the world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. In addition to the works referred to above the
following will be found useful: S. D. F. Salmond, The Christian
Doctrine of Immortality (4th ed., 1901); R. H. Charles, A Critical
History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, in Judaism, and in
Christianity (1899); L. N. Dahle, Life after Death and the Future of
the Kingdom of God (Eng. tr. by J. Beveridge, 1895); J. A. Beet,
The Last Things (new ed., 1905); W. G. T. Shedd, Doctrine of
Endless Punishment (New York, 1886); F. W. Farrar, The Eternal
Hope (1892); E. Petavel, The Problem of Immortality (Eng. J:r.
by F. A. Freer, 1892); E. White, Life in Christ (3rd ed., 1878);
also the relevant sections in books on biblical and systematic
theology. (A. E. G.*)
ESCHEAT (O. Fr. eschete, from escheoir, to fall to one's share;
Lat. excidere, to fall out), in English law, the reversion of lands
to the next lord on the failure of heirs of the tenant. " When
the tenant of an estate in fee simple dies without having alienated
his estate in his lifetime or by his will, and without leaving any
heirs either lineal or collateral, the lands in which he held his
estate escheat, as it is called, to the lord of whom he held them "
(Williams on the Law of Real Property). This rule is explained
by the conception of a freehold estate as an interest in lands held
by the freeholder from some lord, the king being lord paramount.
(See ESTATE.) The granter retains an interest in the land similar
to that of the donor of an estate for life, to whom the land reverts
after the life estate is ended. As there are now few freehold
estates traceable to any mesne or intermediate lord, escheats,
when they do occur, fall to the king as lord paramount. Besides
escheat for defect of heirs, there was formerly also escheat
propter delictum tenentis, or by the corruption of the blood of the
tenant through attainder consequent on conviction and sentence
for treason or felony. The blood of the tenant becoming corrupt
by attainder was decreed no longer inheritable, and the effect
was the same as if the tenant had died without heirs. The land,
therefore, escheated to the next heir, subject to the superior
right of the crown to the forfeiture of the lands, in the case of
treason for ever, in the case of felony for a year and a day.
All this was abolished by the Felony Act 1870, which provided for
the appointment of an administrator to the property of the con-
vict. Escheat is also an incident of copyhold tenure. Trust
estates were not subject to escheat until the Intestates' Estates
Act 1884, but now by that act the law of escheat applies in the
same manner as if the estate or interest were a legal estate in
corporeal hereditaments.
ESCHENBURG, JOHANN JOACHIM (1743-1820), German
critic and literary historian, was born at Hamburg on the 7th
of December 1743. After receiving his early education in his
native town, he studied at Leipzig and Gottingen. In 1767 he
was appointed tutor, and subsequently professor, at the Collegium
Carolinum in Brunswick. The title of " Hofrat " was conferred
on him in 1786, and in 1814 he was made one of the directors of
the Carolinum. He is best known by his efforts to familiarize
his countrymen with English literature. He published a series
of German translations of the principal English writers on
aesthetics, such as J. Brown, D. Webb, Charles Burney, Joseph
Priestley and R. Hurd; and Germany owes also to him the first
complete translation (in prose) of Shakespeare's plays (William
Shakespear's Schauspiele, 13 vols., Zurich, 1775-1782). This
is virtually a revised edition of the incomplete translation
published by Wieland between 1762 and 1766. Eschenburg died
at Brunswick on the 2gth of February 1820.
Besides editing, with memoirs, the works of Hagedorn,
Zacharia and other German poets, he was the author of a Hand-
buck der klassischen Literatur (1783); Entwurf einer Theorie und
Literatur der schonen Wissenschaften (1783); Beispielsammlung
zur Theorie und Literatur der schonen Wissenschaften (8 vols.,
1788-1795); Lehrbuch der Wissenschaftskunde (1792); and
Denkmdler altdeutscher Dichtkunst (1799). Most of these works
have passed through several editions. Eschenburg was also a
poet of some pretensions, and some of his religious hymns, e.g.
Ich will dich noch im Tod erheben and Dir trau' ich, Gott, und
wanke nicht, are contained in many hymnals to this day.
ESCHENMAYER, ADAM KARL AUGUST VON (1768-1852),
German philosopher and physicist, was born at Neuenburg in
Wurttemberg in July 1768. After receiving his early education
at the Caroline academy of Stuttgart, he entered the university
of Tubingen, where he received the degree of doctor of medicine.
He practised for some time as a physician at Sulz, and then at
Kirchheim, and in 1811 he was chosen extraordinary professor
of philosophy and medicine at Tubingen. In 1818 he became
ESCHER VON DER LINTH ESCOIQUIZ
765
ordinary professor of practical philosophy, but in 1836 he resigned
and took up his residence at Kirchhrim, where he devoted his
whole attention to philosophical studies. Eschenmayer's views
are largely identical with those of Schelling, but he differed from
him in regard to the knowledge of the absolute. He believed that
in order to complete the arc of truth philosophy must be supple-
mented by what he called " non-philosophy," a kind of mystical
illumination by which was obtained a belief in God that could not
be reached by mere intellectual effort (see Heffding, Hist, of
Mod. Pkil., Eng. trans, vol. 2, p. 170). He carried this tendency
to mysticism into his physical researches, and was led by it to
take a deep interest in the phenomena of animal magnetism.
He ultimately became a devout believer in demoniacal and
spiritual possession; and his later writings are all strongly
impregnated with the lower supernaturalism.
His principal works are Die Philosophic in ihrem Vbertange
tur Nuhtphilosophie (1803); Versuch die scheinbare Ifagie des thieri-
sehm Marnttismus aus physiol. und psyckiichen Gesetten tu erUdren
(1816); SysHm dtr Moral philosophte (1818); Psycholofie in drei
Tkeilrn. alt tmptrische, rrine. angcwandle (1817, 2nd ed. 1822);
KtmjlM tmistken Himmei und Holle, an den Damon tints btstssenen
t/Uehens beobacklet (1837); Grundriss der Nalurphiiosophie (1832);
Gntndtufe dtr chrisU. Philosophie (1840); and Bttrachtungtn ubtr
den phynsehen Wtllbau (1852).
ESCHER VON DER LINTH. ARNOLD (1807-1872), Swiss
geologist, the son of Hans Conrad Escher (1767-1823), was born
at Zurich on the 8th of June 1807. In 1856 he became professor
of geology at the Ecole Polytechnique at Zurich. His researches
led him to be regarded as one of the founders of Swiss geology.
With B. Studer he produced (1852-1853) the first elaborate
geological map of Switzerland. He was the author also of
Gtolofiscke Bemerkungen ilber das ndrdliche Vorarlberg und einige
angrentenden Gtgenden, published at Zurich in 1853. He died
on the 1 2th of July 1872.
ESCHSCHOLTZ. JOHANN FRIEDRICH (1793-1831), Russian
traveller and naturalist, was born in November 1793, at Dorpat,
where he died in May 1831. He was naturalist and physician
to Otto von Kotzebue's exploring expedition during 1815-1818.
On his return he was appointed extraordinary professor of
anatomy (1819) and director of the zoological museum of the
university at Dorpat (1822), and in 1823-1826 he accompanied
Kotzebue on his second voyage of discovery. He became
ordinary professor of anatomy at Dorpat in 1828. Among his
publications were the System der Akalephen (1829), and the
Zoologiscker Alias (1829-1833). The botanical genus Eschscholtzia
was named by Adelbert von Chamisso in his honour.
ESCHWEGB, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of
Hesse-Nassau, on the Werra, and the railway Treysa-Leinefelde,
28 m. S.E. of Cassel. Pop. (1905) 11,113. It consists of the old
town on the left, the new town on the right, bank of the Werra,
and BrUckenhausen on a small island connected with the old
and new town by bridges. It is a thriving manufacturing town,
its chief industries being leather-making, yarn-spinning, cotton-
and linen-weaving, the manufactures of cigars, brushes, liquors
and oil, and glue- and soap-boiling. It has two ancient buildings,
the Nikolai-turm, built in 1455, and the old castle. After being
part of Thuringia, Eschwege passed to Hesse in 1263. It was
recovered by the landgrave of Thuringia in 1388, but soon
reverted to Hesse, and it became the residence of one of the
branches of the Hessian royal house, a branch which died out in
1655.
ESCHWEILER. a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine
province, on the Inde, and the railways Cologne-Herbesthal
and Munich-Gladbach-Stolberg, about 8 m. E.N.E. from Aix-
la-Chapelle. Pop. (1905) 20,643. The town has an Evangelical
and four Roman Catholic churches, a gymnasium and an orphan-
age. The manufacture of iron and steel goods is carried on;
other industries include the manufacture of zinc wares, tanning,
distilling and brewing. In the neighbourhood there are valuable
coal mines.
See Koch, Gcschithle der Stadt Esckweiier (Frankfort, 1890).
ESCOBAR Y MENDOZA, ANTONIO (1580-1669), Spanish
churchman of illustrious descent, was born at Valladolid in
1589. He was educated by the Jesuits, and at the age of fifteen
took the habit of that order. He soon became a famous preacher,
and his facility was so great that for fifty years he preached
daily, and sometimes twice a day. In addition he was a volumin-
ous writer, and his works fill eighty-three volumes. His first
literary efforts were Latin verses in praise of Ignatius Loyola
(1613) and the Virgin Mary (1618); but he is best known as a
writer on casuistry. His principal works belong to the fields
of exegesis and moral theology. Of the latter the best known
are Summtda casuum conscientiae (1627); Liber theologiae
moralis (1644), and Universes f/ieologiae moralis problematic
(1652-1666). The first mentioned of these was severely criticised
by Pascal in the fifth and sixth of his Provincial Letters, as
tending to inculcate a loose system of morality. It contains
the famous maxim that purity of intention may be a justification
of actions which are contrary to the moral code and to human
laws; and its general tendency is to find excuses for the majority
of human frailties. His doctrines were disapproved of by many
Catholics, and were mildly condemned by Rome. They were
also ridiculed in witty verses by MolicTe, Boilcau and La Fontaine,
and gradually the name Escobar came to be used in France as a
synonym for a person who is adroit in making the rules of
morality harmonize with his own interests. Escobar himself
is said to have been simple in his habits, a strict observer of the
rules of his order, and unweariedly zealous in his efforts to reform
the lives of those with whom he had to deal. It has been said of
him that " he purchased heaven dearly for himself, but gave
it away cheap to others." He died on the 4th of July 1669.
ESCOIQUIZ, JUAN (1762-1820), Spanish ecclesiastic, politician
and writer, was born in Navarre in 1762. His father was a
general officer and he began life as a page in the court of King
Charles III. He entered the church and was provided for by
a prebend at Saragossa. Godoy in his memoirs asserts that
Escoiquiz sought to gain his favour by flattery. There is every
reason to believe that this is an accurate statement of the case.
The mere fact that he was selected to be the tutor of the heir-
apparent, Ferdinand, afterwards King Ferdinand VII., is of
itself a proof that he exerted himself to gain the goodwill of the
reigning favourite. In 1 797 he published a translation of Young's
Night Thoughts, which does not of itself show that he was well
acquainted with English, for the version may have been made
with the help of the French. In 1798 he published a long and
worthless so-called epic on the conquest of Mexico. Escoiquiz
was in fact a busy and pushing member of the literary clique
which looked up to Godoy as its patron. But his position as
tutor to the heir to the throne excited his ambition. He began
to hope that he might play the part of those court ecclesiastics
who had often had an active share in the government of Spain.
As Ferdinand grew up, and after his marriage with a Neapolitan
princess, he became the centre of a court opposition to Godoy
and to his policy of alliance with France. Escoiquiz was the
brains, as far as there were any brains, of the intrigue. His
activity was so notorious that he was exiled from court, but was
consoled by a canonry at Toledo. This half measure was as
ineffective as was to have been expected. Escoiquiz continued
to be in constant communication with the prince. Toledo is
close to Madrid, and the correspondence was easily maintained.
He had a large share in the conspiracy of the Escorial which
was detected on the 28th of October 1807. He was imprisoned
and sent for trial with other conspirators. But as they had
appealed to Napoleon, who would not suffer his name to be
mentioned, the government had to allow the matter to be hushed
up, and the prisoners were acquitted. After the outbreak at
Aranjuez on the lyth of March 1808, in which he had a share,
he became one of the most trusted advisers of Ferdinand. The
new king's decision to go to meet Napoleon at Bayonne was
largely inspired by him. In 1814 Escoiquiz published at Madrid
his Idea SencMa de las razones que motivaron el viage del Rey
Fernando VII. d Bayona (Honest representation of the causes
which inspired the journey of King Ferdinand VII. to Bayonne).
y66
ESCOMBE ESCORIAL
It is a valuable historical document, and contains a singularly
vivid account of an interview with Napoleon. Escoiquiz was
far too firmly convinced of his ingenuity and merits to conceal
the delusions and follies of himself and his associates. He
displays his own vanity, frivolity and futile cleverness with
much unconscious humour, but, it is only fair to allow, with
some literary dexterity. When the Spanish royal family was
imprisoned by Napoleon, Escoiquiz remained with Ferdinand
at Valengay. In 1813 he published at Bourges a translation of
Milton's Paradise Lost. When Ferdinand was released in 1814
he came back to Madrid in the hope that his ambition would
now be satisfied, but the king was tired of him, and was moreover
resolved never to be subjected by any favourite. After a very
brief period of office in 1815 he was sent as a prisoner to Murcia.
Though he was afterwards recalled, he was again exiled to Ronda,
where he died on the 27th of November 1820.
ESCOMBE, HARRY (1838-1899), South African statesman, a
member of a Somersetshire family, was born at Netting Hill,
London, on the 2$th of July 1838, and was educated at St Paul's
school. After four years in a stockbroker's office, he emigrated,
in 1859, to the Cape. The following year he moved to Natal,
and, after trying other occupations, qualified as an attorney.
He became recognized as the ablest pleader in the colony, and,
in 1872, was elected for Durban as a member of the legislative
council, and subsequently was also placed on the executive
council. In 1880 he secured the appointment of a harbour board
for Natal, and was himself made chairman. The transformation
of the port of Durban into a harbour available for ocean liners
was due entirely to his energy. In 1888-1889 he defended
Dinizulu and other Zulu chiefs against a charge of high treason.
For several years he opposed the grant of responsible government
to Natal, but by 1890 had become convinced of its desirability,
and on its conferment in 1893 he joined the first ministry
formed, serving under Sir John Robinson as attorney-general.
In February 1897, on Sir John's retirement, Escombe became
premier, remaining attorney-general and also holding the office
of minister of education and minister of defence. In the summer
of that year he was in London with the other colonial premiers
at the celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria,
and was made a member of the privy council. Cambridge Uni-
versity conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D.
The election that followed his return to Natal proved unfavour-
able to his policy, and he resigned office (October 1897).
Throughout his life he took an active interest in national defence.
He had served in the Zulu War of 1879, was commander of the
Natal Naval Volunteers and received the volunteer long service
decoration. In October 1899 he went to the northern confines
of the colony to take part in preparing measures of defence
against the invasion by the Boers. He died on the 27th of
December 1899.
The Speeches of the late Right Hon. Harry Escombe (Maritzburg,
1903), edited by J. T. Henderson, contains brief biographical notes
by Sir John Robinson and the editor.
ESCORIAL, or ESCURIAL, in Spain, one of the most remarkable
buildings in Europe, comprising at once a convent, a church,
a palace and a mausoleum. The Escorial is situated 3432 ft.
above the sea, on the south-western slopes of the Sierra de
Guadarrama, and thus within the borders of the province of
Madrid and the kingdom of New Castile. By the Madrid-Avila
railway it is 31 m. N.W. of Madrid. The surrounding country is a
sterile and gloomy wilderness exposed to the cold and blighting
blasts of the Sierra.
According to the usual tradition, which there seems no suffi-
cient reason to reject, the Escorial owes its existence to a vow
made by Philip II. of Spain (1556-1598), shortly after the battle
of St Quentin, in which his forces succeeded in routing the army
of France. The day of the victory, the loth of August 1557,
was sacred to St Laurence; and accordingly the building was
dedicated to that saint, and received the title of El real monasterio
de San Lorenzo del Escorial. The last distinctive epithet was
derived from the little hamlet in the vicinity which furnished
shelter, not only to the workmen, but to the monks of St Jerome
who were afterwards to be in possession of the monastery; and
the hamlet itself is generally but perhaps erroneously supposed
to be indebted for its name to the scoriae or dross of certain
old iron mines. The preparation of the plans and the super-
intendence of the work were entrusted by the king to Juan
Bautista de Toledo, a Spanish architect who had received most
of his professional education in Italy. The first stone was laid
in April 1563; and under the king's personal inspection the work
rapidly advanced. Abundant supplies of berroquena, a granite-
like stone, were obtained in the neighbourhood, and for rarer
materials the resources of both the Old and the New World
were put under contribution. The death of Toledo in 1567
threatened a fatal blow at the satisfactory completion of the
enterprise, but a worthy successor was found in Juan Herrera,
Toledo's favourite pupil, who adhered in the main to his master's
designs. On the i3th of September 1584 the last stone of the
masonry was laid, and the works were brought to a termination
in 1593. Each successive occupant of the Spanish throne has
done something, however slight, to the restoration or adornment
of Philip's convent-palace, and Ferdinand VII. (1808-1833) did
so much in this way that he has been called a second founder.
In all its principal features, however, the Escorial remains what
it was made by the genius of Toledo and Herrera working out
the grand, if abnormal, desires of their master.
The ground plan of the building is estimated to occupy an area
of 396,782 sq. ft., and the total area of all the storeys would form
a causeway i metre in breadth and 95 m. in length. There are
seven towers, fifteen gateways and, according to Los Santos,
no fewer than 12,000 windows and doors. The general arrange-
ment is shown by the accompanying plan. Entering by the main
entrance the visitor finds himself in an atrium, called the Court
of the Kings (Patio de los reyes), from the 16th-century statues
of the kings of Judah, by Juan Bautista Monegro, which adorn
the facade of the church. The sides of the atrium are unfortun-
ately occupied by plain ungainly buildings five storeys in height,
awkwardly accommodating themselves to the upward slope of
the ground. Of the grandeur of the church itself, however,
there can be no question: it is the finest portion of the whole
Escorial, and, according to Fergusson, deserves to rank as one
of the great Renaissance churches of Europe. It is about 340 ft.
from east to west by 200 from north to south, and thus occupies
an area of about 70,000 sq. ft. The dome is 60 ft. in diameter,
and its height at the centre is about 320 ft. In glaring contrast
to the bold and simple forms of the architecture, which belongs
to the Doric style, were the bronze and marbles and pictures
of the high altar, the masterpiece of the Milanese Giacomo
Trezzo, almost ruined by the French in 1808. Directly under the
altar is situated the pantheon or royal mausoleum, a richly
decorated octagonal chamber with upwards of twenty niches,
occupied by black marble urnas or sarcophagi, kept sacred for
the dust of kings or mothers of kings. There are the remains of
Charles V. (1516-1556), of Philip II., and of all their successors
on the Spanish throne down to Ferdinand VII., with the ex-
ception of Philip V. (1700-1746) and Ferdinand VI. (1746-1759).
Several of the sarcophagi are still empty. For the other members
of the royal family there is a separate vault, known as the Panleon
de los In/antes, or more familiarly by the dreadfully suggestive
name of El Pudridero. The most interesting room in the palace
is Philip II. 's cell, from which through an opening in the wall he
could see the celebration of mass while too ill to leave his bed.
The library, situated above the principal portico, was at one
time one of the richest in Europe, comprising the king's own
collection, the extensive bequest of Diego de Mendoza, Philip's
ambassador to Rome, the spoils of the emperor of Morocco,
Muley Zidan (1603-1628) and various contributions from con-
vents, churches and cities. It suffered greatly in the fire of 1671,
and has since been impoverished by plunder and neglect. Among
its curiosities still extant are two New Testament Codices of the
loth century and two of the nth ; various works by Alphonso
the Wise (1252-1284), a Virgil of the i4th century, a Koran of
the i sth, &c. Of the Arabic manuscripts which it contained in
the 1 7th century a catalogue was given in J. H. Hottinger's
ESCORIAL
767
CHURCH
I. Principal entrance and portico.
3. Court of the kings (Polio de lot reyes).
3. Vestibule of the church.
4. Choir of the seminarists.
5. Centre of the church and projection of the
dome.
6. Greater chapel.
7. High altar.
8. Chapel of St John.
9. Chapel of St Michael.
10. Chapel of St Maurice.
1 1. Chapel of the Rosary.
12. Tomb of Louisa Carlota.
13. Chapel of the Paired nio.
Views and Plan of the Escorial. 1
14. Chapel of the Cristo de la btirna miierte.
15. Chapel of the Eleven Thousand Virgins.
16. Former Chapel of the Patrocinio.
17. Sacristy.
PALACE
18. Principal court of the palace.
19. Ladies' tower.
20. Court of the masks.
21. Apartments of the royal children.
22. Royal oratory.
23. Oratory where Philip II. died.
SEMINARY
24. Entrance to seminary.
25. Classrooms.
26. Old philosophical hall.
27. Old theological hall.
28. Chamber of secrets.
29. Old refectory.
30. Entrance to the college.
31. College yard.
CONVENT
32. Clock tower.
33. Principal cloister.
34. Court of the evangelists.
35. Prior's cell.
36. Archives.
37. Old church.
38. Visitors' hall.
39. Manuscript library.
40. Convent refectory.
Prom frtujri urn site bibliotkeca oriental is, published at Heidelberg
in 1658, and another in the iSth, in M. Casiri's BMiotheca
ArabUo-Hispanua (2 vols., Madrid, 1 760-1 770). Of the artistic
treasures with which the Escorial was gradually enriched, it is
sufficient to mention the frescoes of Peregrin or Pellagrino Tibaldi,
Luis de Carbajal, Bartolommeo Carducci or Carducho, and Luca
Giordano, and the pictures of Titian, Tintoretto and Velasquez.
These paintings all date from the i$th or the I7th century.
Many of those that are movable have been transferred to Madrid,
and many ot hers have perished by fire or sack . The conflagrat ion
of 1671, already mentioned, raged for fifteen days, and only the
church, a part of the palace, and two towers escaped uninjured.
In 1808 the whole building was exposed to the ravages of the
French soldiers under General La Houssaye. On the night of
the ist of October 1872, the college and seminary, a part of the
palace and the upper library were devastated by fire; but the
damage was subsequently repaired. In 1885 the conventual
buildings were occupied by Augustinian monks.
The reader will find a remarkable description of the emotional
influence of the Escorial in E. Quinet's Vacances en Espagne (Paris,
1846), and for historical and architectural details he may consult
the following works: Fray Juan de San Geronimo, Memorial
sobre la fundacion del Escorial y su fabrica, in the Coleccion de
documentor ineditos para la historic de Espafta, vol. vii. ; Y. de
Herrera, Sumario y breve declaracion de los diseflos y estampas de
la fab. de S. Lorencio el Real del Escurial (Madrid, 1589); Jo<5 de
Siguenza, Historia de la orden de San Geronyno, &c. ( Madrid, 1590).
1 Reduced from a large plan of the Escorial in the British Museum,
Monasterio del Escorial, published at Madrid in 1876.
7 68
ESCOVEDO ESKER
L. de Cabrera de Cordova, Felipe Segundo (Madrid, 1619); James
Wadsworth, Further Observations of the English Spanish Pilgrime
(London, 1629, 1630) ; Ilario Mazzorali de Cremona, Le Reali
Grandezze del Escuriale (Bologna, 1648) ; De los Santos, Description
del real monasterio, &c. (Madrid, 1657) ; Andres Ximenes, Description,
&c. (Madrid, 1764); Y. Quevedo, Historia del Real Monasterio, &c.
(Madrid, 1849); A. Rotondo, Hist, artistica, . . . del monasterio de
San Lorenzo (Madrid, 1856-1861) ; W. H. Prescott, Life of Philip II.
(London, 1887); J. Fergusson, History of the Modern Styles of
Architecture (London, 1891-1893); Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell, Annals
of the Artists of Spain (London, 1891).
ESCOVEDO, JUAN DE (d. 1578), Spanish politician, secretary
of Don John of Austria, and chiefly notable as having been the
victim of one of the mysteries of the i6th century, began life
in the household of Ruy Gomez de Silva, prince of Eboli, the
most trusted minister of the early years of the reign of Philip II.
By the will of the prince he was endowed for life with the post of
Regidor, or legal representative of the king in the municipality
of Madrid. He was also associated with Antonio Perez as one of
the secretaries who acted as the agents of the king in all dealings
with the various governing boards which formed the Spanish
administration. When Don John of Austria, after the battle of
Lepanto in 1571, began to launch on a policy of self-seeking
adventure, Escovedo was appointed as his secretary with the
intention that he should act as a check on these follies. Un-
happily for himself and for Don John he went heart and soul into
all the prince's schemes. He began to disobey orders from Madrid
and became entangled in intrigues to manage or even to coerce
the king. In July 1577, and contrary to the king's orders, he
came to Spain from Flanders, where Don John was then governor.
It is said that he discovered the love intrigue between Antonio
Perez and the widowed princess of Eboli, Ana Mendoza de la
Cerda. This is, however, mere gossip and supposition. There can
be no doubt that he was a busy intriguer, or that the king, acting
on the then very generally accepted doctrine that the sovereign
has a right to act for the public interest without regard to forms
of law, gave orders to Antonio Perez that he was to be put out
of the way. After two clumsy attempts had been made to poison
him at Perez's table, he was killed by bravos on the night of
Easter Monday, the 3ist of March 1578. According to an old
tradition the murder took place outside the church of St Maria
in Madrid, which was pulled down in 1868.
See Caspar Muro, La Princesse d'Eboli (Paris, 1878) ; and W. H.
Prescott, Reign of Philip II. (1855-59).
ESCUINTLA, the capital of the department of Escuintla,
Guatemala; on the southern slope of the Sierra Madre, 45 m.
S.W. of Guatemala city. Pop. (1905) about 12, ooo. Escuintla
is locally celebrated for its hot mineral springs. It is the com-
mercial centre of a fertile district, which produces coffee, cane-
sugar and cocoa; it has also a brisk transit trade in most of the
products of Guatemala, owing to its position on the interoceanic
railway between Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic and San Jose
(30 m. S.) on the Pacific. A branch railway which goes westward
to San Augustin meets this line at Escuintla.
ESCUTCHEON (O. Fr. escucheon, escusson, modern ecusson,
through a Late Lat. form from Lat. scutum, shield), an heraldic
term for a shield with armorial bearings displayed (see HERALDRY) .
The word is also applied to the shields used on tombs, in the
spandrils of doors or in string-courses, and to the ornamented
plates from the centre of which door-rings, knockers, &c., are
suspended, or which protect the wood of the key-hole from the
wear of the key. In medieval times these were often worked
in a very beautiful manner.
ESHER, WILLIAM BALIOL BRETT, IST VISCOUNT (1817-
1899), English lawyer and master of the rolls, was a son of the
Rev. Joseph G. Brett, of Chelsea, and was born on the i3th of
August 1817. He was educated at Westminster and at Caius
College, Cambridge. Called to the bar in 1840, he went the
northern circuit, and became a Q.C. in 1861. On the death of
Richard Cobden he unsuccessfully contested Rochdale as a
Conservative, but in 1866 was returned for Helston in unique
circumstances. He and his opponent polled exactly the same
number of votes, whereupon the mayor, as returning officer,
gave his casting vote for the Liberal candidate. As this vote
was given after four o'clock, however, an appeal was lodged,
and the House of Commons allowed both members to take their
seats. Brett rapidly made his mark in the House, and in 1868
he was appointed solicitor-general. On behalf of the crown he
prosecuted the Fenians charged with having caused the Clerken-
well explosion. In parliament he took a leading part in the
promotion of bills connected with the administration of law and
justice. He was (August 1868) appointed a justice in the court
of common pleas. Some of his sentences in this capacity excited
much criticism, notably so in the case of the gas stokers' strike,
when he sentenced the defendants to imprisonment for twelve
months, with hard labour, which was afterwards reduced by
the home secretary to four months. On the reconstitution of
the court of appeal in 1876, Brett was elevated to the rank of a
lord justice. After holding this position for seven years, he
succeeded Sir George Jessel as master of the rolls in 1883. In
1885 he was raised to the House of Lords as Baron Esher. He
opposed the bill proposing that an accused person or his wife
might give evidence in their own case, and supported the bill
which empowered lords of appeal to sit and vote after their
retirement. The Solicitors Act of 1888, which increased the
powers of the Incorporated Law Society, owed much to his
influence. In 1880 he delivered a remarkable speech in the
House of Lords, deprecating the delay and expense of trials,
which he regarded as having been increased by the Judicature
Acts. Lord Esher suffered, perhaps, as master of the rolls from
succeeding a lawyer of such eminence as Jessel. He had a
caustic tongue, but also a fund of shrewd common sense, and
one of his favourite considerations was whether a certain course
was " business " or not. He retired from the bench at the close
of 1897, and a viscounty was conferred upon him on his retirement,
a dignity never given to any judge, lord chancellors excepted,
" for mere legal conduct since the time of Lord Coke." He
died in London on the 24th of May 1899.
Lord Esher was succeeded in the title by his only surviving
son, Reginald Baliol Brett (b. 1852), who was secretary to the
office of works from 1895 to 1902, but subsequently came into
far greater public prominence in 1904 as chairman of the war
office reconstitution committee after the South African War.
ESHER, a township in the Epsom parliamentary division
of Surrey, England, 145 m. S.W. of London by the London
& South Western railway (Esher and Claremont station). It
is pleasantly situated on rising ground above the river Mole,
3 m. from its junction with the Thames. To the north-west
lie the grounds of Esher Place. Of the mansion-house founded
by William of Waynflete, bishop of Winchester (c. 1450), in which
Cardinal Wolsey resided for three or four weeks after his sudden
fall from power in 1 5 29, only the gatehouse remains. It is known
as Wolsey's Tower, but is apparently part of Waynflete's founda-
tion. A new mansion was erected in 1803. To the south is
Claremont Palace, built by the great Lord Clive (1769) on the
site of a mansion of Sir John Vanbrugh. In 1816 it was the
residence of Princess Charlotte, wife of Prince (afterwards King)
Leopold. She died here in 181 7, and on the death of her husband
in 1865 the property passed to the crown. Louis Philippe, ex-
king of the French, resided here from 1848 until his death in
1850. In 1882 Claremont became the private property of Queer*
Victoria. Christ Church, Esher, contains fine memorials ol
King Leopold and others, and one of its three bells is said to
have been brought from San Domingo by Sir Francis Drake.
To the north near the railway station is Sandown Park, where
important race meetings are held. Esher is included in the
urban district of Esher and The Dittons, of which Thames
Ditton is a favourite riverside resort. The whole district is
largely residential. Pop. (1901) 9489.
ESKER (O. Irish eiscir), a local name for long mounds of
glacial gravel frequently met with in Ireland. Eskers (the
Swedish dsar) are among the occasionally puzzling relics of the
British glacial period. They wind from side to side across
glaciated country and have evidently been formed by channels
upon or under the ice. " Where streams of considerable size form
tunnels under or in the ice these may become more or less filled
ESKILSTUNA ESKIMO
769
with wmsh, and when the ice melts the aggraded channels appear
as long ridges of gravel and sand known as esters. It has been
thought that similar ridges are sometimes formed in valleys
cut in the ice from top to bottom, and even that they rise from
gravel and sand lodged in super-glacial channels. The latter
at least is probably rare, as the surface streams have usually
high gradients, swift currents and smooth bottoms, and hence
give little opportunity for lodgment. In the case of ice-sheets,
too, in which esters are chiefly developed, there is usually no
surface material except at the immediate edge, where the ice
is thin and its layers upturned " (T. C. Chamberlin and R. D.
Salisbury, Geology, Processes and their Results). Eskers are to be
distinguished from kames (?..)
ESKILSTUNA. a town of Sweden in the district (Ian) of
Sodcrmanland, on the Hjelmar river, which unites lakes Hjelmar
and Millar, 65 m. W. of Stockholm by rail. Pop. (1900) 13,663.
The place is mentioned in the i.uh century, and is said to derive
its name from F.skil, an English missionary who suffered martyr-
dom on the spot. It rose into importance in the reign of Charles
X.. who bestowed on it considerable privileges, and gave the first
impulse to its manufacturing activity. It is the chief seat in
Sweden of the iron and steel industries, its cutlery being especi-
ally noted, while damascened work is a specialty. There is
a technical school for the metal industries. There are, in the
town or its neighbourhood, great engineering, gun-making, and
rolling and polishing works and breweries. The largest mechani-
cal works are those of Munktell and Tunafors. The Karl Gustaf
Stads rifle factory was established in 1814.
ESKIMO, ESKIMOS or ESQUIMAUX (a corruption of the Abnaki
Indian Eskimantsic or the Ojibway Ashkimeq, both terms mean-
ing " those who eat raw flesh": they call themselves " Innuit,"
" the people "), a North American Indian people, inhabiting
the arctic coast of America from Greenland to Alaska, and a small
portion of the Asiatic shore of Bering Strait. On the American
shores they are found, in broken tribes, from East Greenland
to the western shores of Alaska never far inland, or south of
the region where the winter ice allows seals to congregate.
Even on hunting expeditions they never travel more than 30 m.
from the coast. Save a slight admixture of European settlers,
they are the only inhabitants of both sides of Davis Strait and
Baffin Bay. They extend as far south as about 50 N. lat. on
the eastern side of America, and in the west to 60 on the eastern
shore of Bering Strait, while 55 to 60 are their southern limits
on the shore of Hudson Bay. Throughout all this range there
are no other tribes save where the Kennayan and Ugalenze
Indians (of western America) come down to the shore to fish.
The Aleutians are closely allied to the Eskimo in habits and
language. H. J. Rink divides the Eskimo into the following
groups, the most eastern of which would have to travel nearly
5000 m. to reach the most western: (i) The East Greenland
Eskimo, few in number, every year advancing farther south, and
coming into contact with the next section. (2) The West
Greenlanders, civilized, living under the Danish crown, and
extending from Cape Farewell to 74 N. lat. (3) The Northern-
most Greenlanders the Arctic Highlanders of Sir John Ross
confined to Smith, Whale, Murchison and \Volstenholme Sounds,
north of the Melville Bay glaciers. These the most isolated
and uncivilized of all the Eskimo had no boats or bows and
arrows until about 1868. (4) The Labrador Eskimo, mostly
civilized. (5) The Eskimo of the middle regions, occupying the
coasts from Hudson Bay to Barter Island, beyond Mackenzie
river, inhabiting a stretch of country 2000 m. in length and 800
in breadth. (6) The Western Eskimo, from Barter Island to the
western limits in America. (7) The Asiatic Eskimo.
The Eskimo are not a tall race, their height varying from
5 ft. 4 in. to 5 ft. 10 in., but men of 6 ft. are met. Both men arid
women are muscular and active, the former often inclining to fat.
The faces of both have a pleasing, good-humoured expression,
and not infrequently are even handsome. The typical face is
broadly oval, flat, with fat cheeks; forehead not high, and
rather retreating: teeth good, though, owing to the character
of the food, worn down to the gums in old age; nose very flat;
IX 15
eyes rather obliquely set, small, black and bright; head largish,
and covered with coarse black hair, which the women fasten
up into a knot on the top, and the men clip in front and allow
to hang loose and unkempt behind. Their skulls are of the
mesocephalic type, the height being greater than the breadth;
according to Davis, 75 is the index of the latter and 77 of the
former. Some of the tribes slightly compress the skulls of their
new-born children laterally (Hall), but this practice is a very
local one. The men have usually a slight moustache, but no
whiskers, and rarely any beard. The skin has generally a
" bacony" feel, and when cleaned of the smoke, grease and other
dirt the accumulation of which varies according to the age of
the individual is only so slightly brown that red shows in the
cheeks of the children and young women. The hands and feet
are small and well formed. (The Eskimo dress entirely in skins
of the seal, reindeer, bear, dog, or even fox, the first two being,
however, the most common. The men's and women's dress
is much the same, a jacket suit, the trousers tucked into seal-skin
boots. The jacket has a hood, which in cold weather is used
to cover the head, leaving only the face exposed. The women's
jacket has a large hood for carrying a child and an absurd-looking
tail behind, which is, however, usually tucked up. The women's
trousers are usually ornamented with eider-duck neck feathers or
embroidery of native dyed leather; their boots, which are of
white leather, or (in Greenland) dyed of various colours, reach
over the knees, and in some tribes are very wide at the top, thus
giving them an awkward appearance and a clumsy waddling walk.
In winter two suits are worn, one with the hair inside, the other
with it outside. They also sometimes wear shirts of bird-skins,
and stockings of dog or young reindeer skins. Their clothes
are very neatly made, fit beautifully, and are sewn with " sinew-
thread," with a bone needle if a steel one cannot be had. In
person the Eskimo are usually filthy, and never wash. Infants
are, however, sometimes cleaned by being licked by their mother
before being put into the bag of feathers which serves as their
bed, cradle and blankets.
In summer the Eskimo live in conical skin tents, and in winter
usually in half-underground huts of stone, turf, earth and bones,
entered by a long tunnel-like passage, which can only be traversed
on all fours. Sometimes, if residing temporarily at a place,
they will erect neat round huts of blocks of snow with a sheet of
ice for a window. In the roof are deposited their spare harpoons,
&c.; and from it is suspended the steatite basin-like lamp, the
flame of which, the wick being of moss, serves as fire and light.
On one side of the hut is the bench which is used as sofa, seats
and common sleeping place. The floor is usually very filthy,
a pool of blood or a dead seal being often to be seen there.
Ventilation is almost non-existent; and after the lamp has blazed
for some time, the heat is all but unbearable. In the summer
the wolfish-looking dogs lie outside on the roof of the huts,
in the winter in the tunnel-like passage just outside the family
apartment. The Western Eskimo build their houses chiefly
of planks, merely covered on the outside with green turf. The
same Eskimo have, in the more populous places, a public room
for meetings. " Council chambers " are also said to exist in
Labrador, but are only known in Greenland by tradition. Some-
times in south Greenland and in the Western Eskimo country
the houses are made to accommodate several families, but as a
rule each family has a house to itself.
The Eskimo are solely hunters and fishers, and derive most
of their food from the sea. Their country allows of no cultivation ;
and beyond a few berries, roots, &c., they use no vegetable
food. The seal, the reindeer and the whale supply the bulk
of their food, as well as their clothing, light, fuel, and frequently
also, when driftwood is scarce or unavailable, the material for
various articles of domestic economy. Thus the Eskimo canoe
is made of seal-skin stretched on a wooden or whalebone frame,
with a hole in the centre for the paddler. It is driven by a bone-
tipped double-bladed paddle. A waterproof skin or entrail
dress is tightly fastened round the mouth of the hole so that,
should the canoe overturn, no water can enter. A skilful paddler
can turn a complete somersault, boat and all, through the water.
770
ESKIMO
The Eskimo women use a flat-bottomed skin luggage-boat.
The Eskimo sledge is made of two runners of wood or bone
even, in one case on record, of frozen salmon (Maclure) united
by cross bars tied to the runners by hide thongs, and drawn
by from 4 to 8 dogs harnessed abreast. Some of their weapons
are ingenious in particular, the harpoon, with its detachable
point to which an inflated sealskin is fastened. When the quarry
is struck, the floating skin serves to tire it out, marks its course,
and buoys it up when dead. The bird-spears, too, have a
bladder attached, and points at the sides which strike the
creature should the spear-head fail to wound. An effective bow
is made out of whale's rib. Altogether, with meagre material
the Eskimo show great skill in the manufacture of their weapons.
Meat is sometimes boiled, but, when it is frozen, it is often eaten
raw. Blood, and the half-digested contents of the reindeer's
paunch, are also eaten; and sometimes, but not habitually,
blubber. As a rule this latter is too precious: it must be kept
for winter fuel and light. The Eskimo are enormous eaters; two
will easily dispose of a seal at a sitting; and in Greenland, for
instance, each individual has for his daily consumption, on an
average, 25 Ib of flesh with blubber, and i Ib of fish, besides
mussels, berries, sea-weed, &c., to which in the Danish settle-
ments may be added 2 oz. of imported food. Ten pounds of
flesh, in addition to other food, is not uncommonly consumed
in a day in time of plenty. A man will lie on his back and allow
his wife to feed him with tit-bits of blubber and flesh until he is
unable to move.
The Eskimo cannot be strictly called a wandering race.
They are nomadic only in so far that they have to move about
from place to place during the fishing and shooting season,
following the game in its migrations. They have, however,
no regular property. They possess only the most necessary
utensils and furniture, with a stock of provisions for less than
one year; and these possessions never exceed certain limits
fixed upon by tradition or custom. Long habit and the necessities
of their life have also compelled those having food to share
with those having none a custom which, with others, has
conduced to the stagnant conditions of Eskimo society and to
their utter improvidence.
Their intelligence is considerable, as their implements and
folk-tales abundantly prove. They display a taste for music,
cartography and drawing, display no small amount of humour,
are quick at picking up peculiar traits in strangers, and are
painfully acute in detecting the weak points or ludicrous sides
of their character. They are excellent mimics and easily learn
the dances and songs of the Europeans, as well as their games,
such as chess and draughts. They gamble a little but in
moderation, for the Eskimo, though keen traders, have a deep-
rooted antipathy to speculation. When they offer anything for
sale say at a Danish settlement in Greenland they always
leave it to the buyer to settle the price. They have also a dislike
to bind themselves by contract. Hence it was long before the
Eskimo in Greenland could be induced to enter into European
service, though when they do they pass to almost the opposite
extreme they have no will of their own. Public licentiousness
or indecency is rare among them. In their private life their
morality is, however, not high. The women are especially erring;
and in Greenland, at places where strangers visit, their extreme
laxity of morals, and their utter want of shame, are not more
remarkable than the entire absence of jealousy or self-respect
on the part of their countrymen and relatives. Theft in Green-
land is almost unknown; but the wild Eskimo make very free
with strangers' goods though it must be allowed that the value
they attach to the articles stolen is some excuse for the thieves.
Among themselves, on the other hand, they are very honest
a result of their being so much under the control of public opinion.
Lying is said to be as common a trait of the Eskimo as of other
savages in their dealings with Europeans. They have naturally
not made any figure in literature. Their folk-lore is, however,
extensive, and that collected by Dr Rink shows considerable
imagination and no mean talent on the part of the story-tellers.
In Greenland and Labrador most of the natives have been taught
by the missionaries to read and write in their own language,
Altogether, the literature published in the Eskimo tongue is
considerable. Most of it has been printed in Denmark, but
some has been " set up " in a small printing-office in Green-
land, from which about 280 sheets have issued, beside many
lithographic prints. A journal (Atuagagldliutit nalinginarmik
tusarumindsassumik univkat, i.e. " something for reading,
accounts of all entertaining subjects ") has been published
since 1861.
The Eskimo in Greenland and Labrador are, with few excep-
tions, nominally at least, Christians. The native religion is a
vague animism, and consists of a belief in good and evil spirits,
limited each to its own sphere; in a Heaven and Hell; and a
childish faith is placed in the native wizards, who are regarded
as intermediaries between mankind and the spirit-powers.
The worship of the whale-spirit, so important a factor in their
daily economy, is prevalent.
As regards language, the idiom spoken from Greenland to
north-eastern Siberia is, with a few exceptions, the same; any
difference is only that of dialect. It differs from the whole group
of European languages, not merely in the sound of the words,
but more especially, according to Rink, in the construction.
Its most remarkable feature is that a sentence of a European
language is expressed in Eskimo by a single word constructed
out of certain elements, each of which corresponds in some
degree to one of our words. One specimen commonly given
to visitors to Greenland may suffice: Savigiksiniariartokasuar-
omaryotittogog, which is equivalent to " He says that you also
will go away quickly in like manner and buy a pretty knife."
Here is one word serving in the place of 17. It is made up as
follows: Savig a knife, ik pretty, sini buy, ariartok go away,
asuar hasten, omar wilt, y in like manner, otil thou, tog also,
og he says.
The Eskimo have no chiefs or political and military rulers.
Fabricius concisely described them in his day: " Sine Deo,
domino, reguntur consuetudine." The government is mainly a
family one, though a man distinguished for skill in the chase,
and for strength and shrewdness, often has considerable power
in the village.. No political or social tie is recognized between
the villages, though general good-fellowship seems to mark
their relations. They never go to war with each other; and
though revengeful and apt to injure an enemy secretly, they
rarely come to blows, and are morbidly anxious not to give
offence. Indeed, in their intercourse with each other, all Eskimo
indulge in much hyperbolical compliment. But they are not
without courage. On the Coppermine and Mackenzie rivers,
where they sometimes come into collision with their American-
Indian kinsmen, they fight fiercely. Polygamy is rare, but the
rights of divorce and re-marriage are unrestricted. The Eskimo
have intricate rules governing the ownership of property and
the rights of the hunter. As a race they are singularly un-
demonstrative. When they met each other they used to rub
noses together, but this, though a common custom still among
the wild Eskimo, is entirely abandoned in Greenland except
for the petting of children. There is, in Greenland at least,
no national mode of salutation, either on meeting or parting.
When a guest enters a house, commonly not the least sign is
made either by him or his host. On leaving a place they some-
times say " inuvdluaritse," i.e. live well, and to a European
" aporniakinatit," i.e. do not hurt thy head, viz. against the
upper part of the doorway. The Eskimo, excluding the few on
the Asiatic coast, are estimated at about 29,000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Dr H. J. Rink, Tales and Traditions of the
Eskimo (1875); Danish Greenland; its People and its Products
(1877); Eskimo Tribes (1887); J. Richardson, Polar Regions (1861),
Fridtjof Nansen, Eskimo Lije (1804); R. E. Peary, Northward over
the Great Ice, vol. i. appendix ii.; F. Boas, " The Central Eskimo,"
Sixth Annual Report o) Bureau of Ethnology (1884-1885); J. Murdoch,
"The Point Barrow Eskimo, Ninth Annual Report (1887-1888);
E. W. Nelson, " The Eskimo about Bering Strait," Eighteenth Annual
Report, part I (1896-1897).
ESKI-SHEHR ESPAGNOLS SUR MER
771
ESKl-SHEHR. a town of Asia Minor, in the Kutaiah sanjak of
the Brusa (Khudavendikiar) vilayet. It is a station on the
Haidar Pasha-Angora railway, 104} m. from the former and
164 m. from Angora, and the junction for Konia; and is situated
on the right bank of the Pursak Su (Tembris), a tributary of the
Sakaria, at the foot of the hills that border the broad treeless
valley. Pop. 20,000 (Moslems 15,000, Christians 5000). Eski-
Shehr, i.e. " the old town," lies about a mile from the ruins of
the ancient Phrygian Dorylaeum. The latter is mentioned in
connexion with the wars of Lysimachus and Antigonus (about
307 B.C.), and frequently figures in Byzantine history as an
imperial residence and military rendezvous. It was the scene
of the defeat of the Turks undtr Kilij-Arslan by the crusaders in
1097, and fell finally to the Turks of Konia in 1 1 76. The town is
divided by a small stream into a commercial quarter on low
ground, in which are the bazaars, khans and the hot sulphur
springs (i 11 F.) which are mentioned as early as the 3rd century
by Athenaeus; and a residential quarter on the higher ground.
The town is noted for its good climate, the Pursak Su for the
abundance of its fish, and the plain for its fertility. About 18 m.
to the E. are extensive deposits of meerschaum. The clay is
partly manufactured into pipes in the town, but the greater
proportion finds its way to Europe and especially to Germany.
The annual output is valued at 272,000.
See Murray ' Hdbk. to Asia Minor (1893); V. Cuinet, Turquie
d'Asit (Paris, 1894).
ESMARCH. JOHANNES FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON (1823-
1008), German surgeon, was born at Tim n ing, in Schleswig-
Holstein, on the gth of January 1823. He studied at Kiel and
Gbttingen, and in 1846 became B. R. K. von Langenbeck's
assistant at the Kiel surgical hospital. He served in the Schleswig-
Holstein War of 1848 as junior surgeon, and this directed his
attention to the subject of military surgery. He was taken
prisoner, but afterwards exchanged, and was then appointed
as surgeon to a field hospital. During the truce of 1849 he
qualified as Prhatdoctnl at Kiel, but on the fresh outbreak of
war be returned to the troops and was promoted to the rank of
senior surgeon. In 1854 he became director of the surgical
clinic at Kiel, and in 1857 head of the general, hospital and
professor at the university. During the Schleswig- Hoist c-in War
of 1864 Esmarch rendered good service to the field hospitals
of Flensburg, Sundewitt and Kiel. In 1866 he was called to
Berlin as member of the hospital commission, and also to take
the superintendence of the surgical work in the hospitals there.
When the Franco- German War broke out in i87ohe was appointed
surgeon-general to the army, and afterwards consulting surgeon
at the great military hospital near Berlin. In 1872 he married
Princess Henrietta of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augusten-
burg, aunt of the Empress Auguste Victoria. In 1887 a patent
of nobility was conferred on him. He died at Kiel on the 23rd
of February 1008. Esmarch was one of the greatest authorities
on hospital management and military surgery. His Handbuch
der kriegsekirurgischen Technik was written for a prize offered by
the empress Augusta, on the occasion of the Vienna Exhibition
of 1877, for the best handbook for the battlefield of surgical
appliances and operations. This book is illustrated by admirable
diagrams, showing the different methods of bandaging and
dressing, as well as the surgical operations as they occur on the
battlefield. Esmarch himself invented an apparatus, which
bean his name, for keeping a limb nearly bloodless during
amputation. No part of Esmarch's work is more widely known
than that which deals with " First Aid," his First Aid on the
Battlefield and Pint Aid to the Injured being popular manuals
on the subject. The latter is the substance of a course of lectures
delivered by him in 1881 to a " Samaritan School," the first of
the kind in Germany, founded by Esmarch in 1881, in imitation
of the St John's Ambulance classes which had been organized
in England in 1878. These lectures were very generally adopted
as a manual for first aid students, edition after edition having
been called for, and they have been translated into numerous
languages, the English version being the work of H.R.H. Princess
Christian. No ambulance course would be complete without a
demonstration of the Esmarch bandage. It is a three-sided piece
of linen or cotton, of which the base measures 4 ft. and the sides
a ft. 10 in. It can be used folded or open, and applied in thirty-
two different ways. It answers every purpose for temporary
dressing and field-work, while its great recommendation is that
the means for making it arc always at hand.
ESNA, or ESNEH, a town of Upper Egypt on the W. bank of
the Nile, 454 m. S.S.E. of Cairo by rail, the railway station being
on the opposite side of the river. Pop. (1897) 16,000, mostly
Copts. Esna, one of the healthiest towns in Egypt, is noted for
its manufactures of pottery and its large grain and live stock
markets. It formerly had a large trade with the Sudan. A
caravan road to the south goes through the oasis of Kurkur.
The trade, almost stopped by the Mahdist Wars, is now largely
diverted by railway and steamboat routes. There is, however,
considerable traffic with the oasis of Kharga, which lies almost
due west of the town. Nearly in the centre of the town is the
Ptolemaic and Roman temple of the ram-headed KhnQm,
almost buried in rubbish and houses. The interior of the pronaos
is accessible to tourists, and contains the latest known hiero-
glyphic inscription, dating from the reign of Decius (A.D. 249-251).
With Khnum are associated the goddesses Sati and Neith. In
the neighbourhood are remains of Coptic buildings, including a
subterranean church (discovered 1895) in the desert half a mile
beyond the limits of cultivation. The name Esna is from the
Coptic Sne. By the Greeks the place was called Latopolis, from
the worship here of the latus fish. In the persecutions under
Diocletian A.D. 303, the Christians of Esna, a numerous body,
suffered severely. In later times the town frequently served as a
place of refuge for political exiles. The so-called Esna barrage
across the Nile (built 1906-1908) is 30 m. higher up stream at
Edfu.
ESOTERIC, having an inner or secret meaning. This term,
and its correlative " exoteric," were first applied in the ancient
Greek mysteries to those who were initiated (ferto, within) and
to those who were not (lco, outside), respectively. It was then
transferred to a supposed distinction drawn by certain phil-
osophers between the teaching given to the whole circle of their
pupils and that containing a higher and secret philosophy which
was reserved for a select number of specially advanced or
privileged disciples. This distinction was ascribed by Lucian
(Vit. A uct. 26) to Aristotle (q.v.), who, however, uses ifartpiKoi
\ayoi. (Nic. Ethics) merely of " popular treatises." It was prob-
ably adopted by the Pythagoreans and was also attributed to
Plato. In the sense of mystic it is used of a secret doctrine of
theosophy, supposed to have been traditional among certain
disciples of Buddhism.
ESPAGNOLS SUR HER, LES, the name given to the naval
victory gained by King Edward III. of England over a Spanish
fleet off Winchelsea, on the 29th of August 1350. Spanish ships
had fought against England as the allies or mercenaries of France,
and there had been instances of piratical violence between the
trading ships of both nations. A Spanish merchant fleet was
loading cargoes in the Flemish ports to be carried to the Basque
coast. The ships were armed and had warships with them.
They were all under the command of Don Carlos de la Cerda, a
soldier of fortune who belonged to a branch of the Castilian
royal family. On its way to Flanders the Spanish fleet had
captured a number of English trading ships, and had thrown
the crews overboard. Piratical violence and massacre of this
kind was then universal on the sea. On the loth of August,
when the king was at Rotherhithe, he announced his intention
of attacking the Spaniards on their way home. The rendezvous
of his fleet was at Winchelsea, and thither the king went by land,
accompanied by his wife and her ladies, by his sons, the Black
Prince and John of Gaunt, as well as by many nobles. The
ladies were placed in a convent and the king embarked on his
flagship, the" Cog Thomas," on the 28th of August. The English
fleet did not put to sea but remained at anchor, waiting for the
appearance of the Spaniards. Its strength is not known with
certainty, but Stow puts it at 50 ships and pinnaces. Carlos
de la Cerda was obviously well disposed to give the king a meeting.
772
ESPALIER ESPARTERO
He might easily have avoided the English if he had kept well
out in the Channel. But he relied on the size and strength of
his 40 large ships, and in expectation of an encounter had
recruited a body of mercenaries mostly crossbowmen in the
Flemish ports. In the afternoon of the 2gth of August he bore
down boldly on King Edward's ships at anchor at Winchelsea.
When the Spaniards hove in sight, the king was sitting on the
deck of his ship, with his knights and nobles, listening to his
minstrels who played German airs, and to the singing of Sir
John Chandos. When the look-out in the tops reported the
enemy in sight, the king and his company drank to one another's
health, the trumpet was sounded, and the whole line stood out.
All battles at that time, whether on land or sea, were finally
settled by stroke of sword. The English steered to board the
Spaniards. The king's own ship was run into by one of the
enemy with such violence that both were damaged, and she
began to sink. The Spaniard stood on, and the " Cog Thomas "
was laid alongside another, which was carried by boarding. It
was high time, for the king and his following had barely reached
the deck of the Spaniard before the " Cog Thomas " went to
the bottom. Other Spaniards were taken, but the fight was hot.
La Cerda's crossbowmen did much execution, and the higher-
built Spaniards were able to drop bars of iron or other weights
on the lighter English vessels, by which they were damaged.
The conflict was continued till twilight. At the close the large
English vessel called " La Salle du Roi," which carried the king's
household, and was commanded by the Fleming, Robert of
Namur, afterwards a knight of the Garter, was grappled by a
big Spaniard, and was being dragged off by him. The crew
called loudly for a rescue, but were either not heard or, if heard,
could not be helped. The " Salle du Roi " would have been taken
if a Flemish squire of Robert of Namur, named Mannequin, had
not performed a great feat of arms. He boarded the Spaniard
and cut the halyards of her mainsail with his sword. The
Spanish ship was taken. King Edward is said to have captured
14 of the enemy. What his own loss was is not stated, but as
his own vessel, and also the vessel carrying the Black Prince,
were sunk, and from the peril of " La Salle du Roi," we may
conclude that the English fleet suffered heavily. There was
no pursuit, and a truce was made with the Basque towns the
next year.
The battle with " the Spaniards on the sea " is a very typical
example of a medieval sea-fight, when the ships were of the
size of a small coaster or a fishing smack, were crowded with
men, and when the personal prowess of a single knight or squire
was an important element of strength.
The only real authority for the battle is Froissart, who was at
different times in the service of King Edward or of his wife, Philippa
of Hainaut, and of the counts of Namur. He repeated what was told
him by men who had been present, and dwells as usual on the
" chivalry " of his patrons. See his Chroniques, iv. 91. (D. H.)
ESPALIER (a French word, derived from the Ital. spalliera,
something to rest the spalla or shoulder against; the word is
ultimately the same as fpauliere, a shoulder-piece), a lattice- work
or row of stakes, originally shoulder high, on which fruit trees,
shrubs and flowers, particularly roses and creepers, are trained.
Espaliers are usually made of larch or other wood, iron and metal
rails being too great conductors of heat and cold. The advantage
of this method of training is that the fruit, &c., is more easily got
at, and while protected from wind, is freely exposed to sun and
air, and not so open to extreme changes of temperature as when
trained on a wall. (See HORTICULTURE.)
ESPARTERO, BALDOMERO (1792-1879), duke of Vitoria,
duke of Morella, prince of Vergara, Count Luchana, knight of
the Toison d'Or, &c. &c., Spanish soldier and statesman, was
born at Granatulu, a town of the province of Ciudad Real, on
the 27th of February 1792. He was the ninth child of a carter,
who wanted to make him a priest, but the lad at fifteen enlisted
in a battalion of students to fight against the armies of Napoleon
I. In 1811 Espartero was appointed a lieutenant of Engineers
in Cadiz, but having failed to pass his examination he entered
a line regiment. In 1815 he went to America as a captain under
General Morillo, who had been made commander-in-chief to
quell the risings of the colonies on the Spanish Main. For eight
years Espartero distinguished himself in the struggle against the
colonists. He was several times wounded, and was made major
and colonel on the battlefields of Cochabamba and Sapachni.
He had to surrender to Sucre at the final battle of Ayacucho,
which put an end to Castilian rule. He returned to Spain, and,
like most of his companions in arms, remained under a cloud for
some time. He was sent to the garrison town of Logrono, where
he married the daughter of a rich landowner, Dona Jacinta
Santa Cruz, who eventually survived him. Henceforth Logrono
became the home of the most prominent of the Spanish political
generals of the igth century. Espartero became in 1832, on the
death of King Ferdinand VII., one of the most ardent defenders
of the rights of his daughter, Isabella II. The government sent
him to the front, directly the Carlist War broke out, as com-
mandant of the province of Biscay, where he severely defeated
the Carlists in many encounters. He was quickly promoted to
a divisional command, and then made a lieutenant-general. At
times he showed qualities as a guerillero quite equal to those of
the Carlists, like Zumalacarregui and Cabrera, by his daring
marches and surprises. When he had to move large forces he
was greatly superior to them as an organizer and strategist, and
he never disgraced his successes by cruelty or needless severity.
Twice he obliged the Carlists to raise the siege of Bilbao before
he was appointed commander-in-chief of the northern army on
the 1 7th of September 1836, when the tide of war seemed to be
setting in favour of the pretender in the Basque provinces and
Navarre, though Don Carlos had lost his ablest lieutenant, the
Basque Zumalacarregui. His military duties at the head of the
principal national army did not prevent Espartero from showing
for the first time his political ambition. He displayed such
radical and reforming inclinations that he laid the foundations
of his popularity among the lower and middle classes, which
lasted more than a quarter of a century, during which time the
Progressists, Democrats and advanced Liberals ever looked to
him as a leader and adviser. In November 1836 he again forced
the Carlists to raise the siege of Bilbao. His troops included the
British legion under Sir de Lacy Evans. This success turned
the tide of war against Don Carlos, who vainly attempted
a raid towards Madrid. Espartero was soon at his heels, and
obliged him to hurry northwards, after several defeats. In 1839
Espartero carefully opened up negotiations with Maroto and the
principal Carlist chiefs of the Basque provinces. These ended in
their accepting his terms under the famous convention of Vergara,
which secured the recognition of their ranks and titles for nearly
1000 Carlist officers. Twenty thousand Carlist volunteers laid
down their arms at Vergara; only the irreconcilables led by
Cabrera held out for a while in the central provinces of Spain.
Espartero soon, however, in 1840, stamped out the last embers of
the rising, which had lasted seven years. He was styled " El
pacificador de Espafla," was made a grandee of the first class,
and received two dukedoms.
During the last three years of the war Espartero, who had
been elected a deputy, exercised from his distant headquarters
such influence over Madrid politics that he twice hastened the
fall of the cabinet, and obtained office for his own friends.
At the close of the war the queen regent and her ministers
attempted to elbow out Espartero and his followers, but a
pronunciamienlo ensued in Madrid and other large towns which
culminated in the marshal's accepting the post of prime minister.
He soon became virtually a dictator, as Queen Christina took
offence at his popularity and resigned, leaving the kingdom
very soon afterwards. Directly the Cortes met they elected
Espartero regent by 179 votes to 103 in favour of Arguelles, who
was appointed guardian of the young queen. For two years
Espartero ruled Spain in accordance with his Radical and
conciliatory dispositions, giving special attention to the re-
organization of the administration, taxation and finances,
declaring all the estates of the church, congregations and
religious orders to be national property, and suppressing the
diezma, or tenths. He suppressed the Republican risings with
as much severity as he did the military pronunciamienlos of
ESPARTO ESPERANTO
773
Generals Concha and Diego de Leon. The latter was shot in
Madrid. Espartero crushed with much energy a revolutionary
rising in Barcelona, but on his return to Madrid was so coldly
ucKomed that he perceived that his prestige was on the wane.
The advanced Progressists coalesced with the partisans of the
ex-regent Christina to promote pronuiKi<imieniof in Barcelona
and many cities. The rebels declared Queen Isabel of age, and,
led by General Narvaez, marched upon Madrid. Espartero,
deeming resistance useless, embarked at Cadiz on the aoth of
July 1843 for England, and lived quietly apart from politics
until 1848. hcn a royal decree restored to him all his honours
and his seat in the senate. He retired to his house in LogroAo,
which he left six yean later, in 1854, when called upon by the
queen to take the lead of the powerful Liberal and Progressist
movement which prevailed for two years. The old marshal
vainly endeavoured to keep his own Progressists within bounds
in the Cortes of 1854-1856, and in the great towns, but their
excessive demands for reforms and liberties played into the
hands of a clerical and reactionary court and of the equally
retrograde governing classes. The growing ambition of General
O'Donnell constantly clashed with the views of Espartero, until
the Utter, in sheer disgust, resigned his premiership and left for
Logrono, after warning the queen that a conflict was imminent
between O'Donnell and the Cones, backed by the Progressist
militia. O'Donnell 's pronunciamitnto in 1856 put an end to the
Cortes, and the militia was disarmed, after a sharp struggle in
the streets of the capital. After 1856 Espartero resolutely
declined to identify himself with active politics, though at every
stage in the onward march of Spain towards more liberal and
democratic institutions he was asked to take a leading part.
He refused to allow his name to be brought forward as a candidate
when the Cones of 1868, after the Revolution, sought for a ruler.
Espartero, strangely enough, adopted a laconic phrase when
successive governments on their advent to power invariably
addressed themselves to the venerable champion of liberal
ideas. To all to the Revolution of 1868, the Constituent
Cones of 1869, King Amadeus, the Federal Republic of 1873,
the nameless government of Marshal Serrano in 1874, the
Bourbon restoration in 1875 he simply said: " Cumplase la
voluntad nacional " (" Let the national will be accomplished ").
King Amadeus made him prince of Vergara. The Restoration
raised a statue to him near the gate of the Retire Park in Madrid.
Spaniards of all shades, except Carlists and t'ltramontanes, paid
homage to his memory when he passed away at his Logrono
residence on the 8th of January 1879. His tastes were singularly
modest, his manners rather reserved, but always kind and con-
siderate for humble folk. He was a typical Spanish soldier-
politician, though he had more of the better traits of the soldier
born and bred than of the arts of the statesman. His military
instincts did not always make it easy for him to accommodate
himself to courtiers and professional politicians. (A. E. H.)
ESPARTO, or SPANISH GRASS, Stipa tenacissima, a grass
resembling the ornamental feather-grass of gardens. It is
indigenous to the south of Spain and the north of Africa (where
it is known as Hal/a or Alfa), and is especially abundant in the
sterile and rugged pans of Murcia and Valencia, and in Algeria,
flourishing best in sandy, ferruginous soils, in dry, sunny situa-
tions on the sea coast. Pliny (N.H. xix. 2) described what
appears to have been the same plant under the name of sfxirtum,
whence the designation campus spartarius for the region sur-
rounding New Canhage. It attains a height of 3 or 4 ft. The
stems are cylindrical, and clothed with short hair, and grow in
clusters of from i to 10 ft. in circumference; when young they
serve as food for cattle, but after a few years' growth acquire
great toughness of texture. The leaves vary from 6 in. to 3 ft. in
length, and are grey-green in colour; on account of their tenacity
of fibre and flexibility they have for centuries been employed
for the making of ropes, sandals, baskets, mats and other articles.
Ships' cables of esparto, being light, have the quality of floating
on water, and have long been in use in the Spanish navy.
Esparto leaves contain 56% by weight of fibre, or about 10%
ore than straw, and hence have come into requisition as
a substitute for linen rags in the manufacture of paper. For
this purpose they were first utilized by the 1-rrnch, and in 1857
were introduced into Great Britain. \Vhcn required for paper-
making the leaves should be gathered before they arc quite
matured; if, however, they are obtained too young, they furnish
a paper having an objectionable semi-transparent appearance.
The leaves are gathered by hand, and from 2 to 3 cwt.
may be collected in a day by a single labourer. They are
generally obtained during the dry summer months, as at other
times their adherence to the stems is so firm as often to cause
the uprooting of the plants in the attempt to remove them.
Esparto may be raised from seed, but cannot be harvested for
twelve or fifteen years after sowing.
Another grass, Lygeum Spartum, with stiff rush-like leaves,
growing in rocky soil on the high plains of countries bordering
on the Mediterranean, especially of Spain and Algeria, is also a
source of esparto.
For the processes of the paper manufacturer esparto is used in
the dry state, and without cutting; roots and flowers and stray
weeds are first removed, and the material is then boiled with
caustic soda, washed, and bleached with chlorine solution.
Sundry experiments have been made to adapt esparto for use in
the coarser textile fabrics. Messrs A. Edger and B. Proctor
in 1877 directed attention to the composition of the slag resulting
from the burning of esparto, which they found to be strikingly
similar to that of average medical bottle glass, the latter yielding
on analysis 66-3% of silica and 25-1% of alkalies and alkaline
earths, and the slag 64.6 and 27-45 % f tne same respectively.
ESPER ANCE, a small seaport on a fine natural harbour on the
south coast of West Australia, 275 m. north-east from Albany.
It is a summer resort, and in the neighbourhood are interesting
caves. Its importance as a seaport is due to its being on the high
road between the eastern states and the gold-fields, and the
nearest place for the shipment of gold from the Coolgardic fields.
ESPERANTO, an artificial international auxiliary language
(see UNIVERSAL LANGUAGES), first published in 1887, seven years
after the appearance of its predecessor VolapUk (q.v.), which it
has now completely supplanted. Its author was a Russian
physician, Dr L. Zamenhof, born in 1859 at Bielostok, where the
spectacle of the feuds of the four races each speaking different
languages which inhabit it (Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews)
at an early date suggested to him the idea of remedying the evil
by the introduction of a neutral language, standing apart from
the existing national languages. His first idea was to resuscitate
some dead language. Then he tried to construct a new language
on an a priori basis. At the same time he made what he appears
to have considered the great discovery that the bulk of the
vocabulary of a language consists not of independent roots, but
of compounds and derivatives formed from a comparatively
small number of roots.
At first he tried to construct his roots a priori by arbitrary
combinations of letters. Then he fell back on the plan of taking
his roots ready-made from existing languages, as the inventor of
VolapUk had done before him. But instead of taking them
mainly from one language, he has selected them from the chief
European languages, but not impartially. Like all inventors of
artificial languages, he is more ready to experiment with foreign
languages than with his own; and hence the Slavonic roots in
Esperanto are much less numerous than those taken from the
other European languages. Here his choice has been to some
extent guided by considerations of intcrnationality, although he
has not fully grasped the importance of the principle of maximum
intemationality, so well worked out in the latest rival of Esper-
anto Idiom Neutral (see UNIVERSAL LANGUAGES). Thus he
adopts a large number of international words generally un-
altered except in spelling such as teatr, tabak, even when it
would be easy to form equivalent terms from the roots already
existing in the language. Where there is no one international
word, he selects practically at random, keeping, however, a
certain balance between the Romance words, taken chiefly from
Latin (lamrn} and French (Irotuar), on the one hand, and the
Germanic on the other hand, the latter being taken sometimes
774
ESPINAY ESPINEL
from German (nur, " only "), sometimes from English, the words
being generally written more or less phonetically (rajt= right).
Most of the Germanic words are badly chosen from the inter-
national point of view. Thus the German word quoted above
would not be intelligible to any one ignorant of German. Indeed,
from the international point of view all specially German words
ought to be excluded, or else reduced to the common Germanic
form; thus trink ought to be made into drink, the / being a
specially German modification of the d, preserved not only in
English but in all the remaining Germanic languages. This
incongruous mixture of languages is not only jarring and repul-
sive, but adds greatly to the difficulty of mastering the vocabulary
for the polyglot as well as the monolingual learner.
The inventor has taken great pains to reduce the number of
his roots to a minimum; there are 2642 of them in his dictionary,
the Universala Vortaro (from Ger. Wort, " word "), which does
not include such international words as poezio, telefono; these
the learner is supposed to recognize and form without help.
The most eccentric feature of the vocabulary, and the one to
which it owes much of its brevity, is the extensive use of the
prefix mal- to reverse the meaning of a word, as in malamiko,
" enemy," and even malbona, " bad."
The phonology of the language is very simple. The vowels
are only five in number, a, e, i, o, u, used without any distinction
of quantity, as in Russian. There are six diphthongs, expressed
by an unnecessarily complicated notation. The consonant-
system is simple enough in itself, but is greatly complicated in
writing by the excessive and mostly unnecessary use made of
diacritical letters not only for simple sounds but also for
consonant-groups, c is used for ts, as in Polish.
The grammar is, like that of Volapuk, partly borrowed from
existing languages, partly a priori and arbitrary. The use of
the final vowels belongs to the latter category. The use of -a
to indicate adjectives and of -o to indicate nouns as in kara
amiko, " dear (male) friend," is a source of confusion to those
familiar with the Romance languages, and has proved a bar to
the diffusion of Esperanto among the speakers of these languages.
On the other hand, the following paradigm will show how faith-
fully Esperanto can reproduce the defects of conventional
European grammar:
Singular. Plural.
Nominative . . la bona patro la bonaj patroj
Accusative . . la bonan patron la bonajn patrojn.
It is difficult to see why the accusative should be kept when
all the other cases are replaced by prepositions.
The verb is better than the noun. Its inflections are -as
present, -is preterite, -os future, -us conditional, -u imperative
and subjunctive, -i infinitive, together with the following
participles:
Active. Passive.
Present . . . -onto -oto
Preterite . . . -into. -ita
Future . . . -onto -oto
The inventor has followed the good example of his native
language in using esti, " to be," as the auxiliary verb both in the
passive, where it is combined with passive participles, and in the
secondary tenses of the active (perfect, pluperfect, &c.), where it
is of course combined with the active participles. The participles
can be made into nouns and adverbs by changing the final -a
into -o and -e respectively: thus tenonto, " the future holder,"
perdinte, " through having lost."
The table of the forty-five correlative pronouns, adjectives
and adverbs is also elaborate and ingenious.
Much ingenuity is displayed in the syntax, as well as some
happy simplifications. But, on the other hand, there is much
in it that is fanciful, arbitrary and vague, as in the use of the
definite article where the author has unfortunately followed
French rather than English usage and in the moods of the verb.
The following specimens will show the general character of this
easy-flowing but somewhat heavy and monotonous language
" bad Italian," as it is called by its detractors:
Patro nia, kiu estas en la ielo, sankta estu via nomo; venu
regeco via; estu volo via, kiel en la ielo, tiel ankau sur la tero.
Panon nian fiiutagan donu al ni hodiafi; kaj pardonu al ni Suldojn
niajn, kiel ni ankau pardonas al niaj suldantoj ; kaj ne konduku
nin en tenton, sed liberigu nin de la malbono.
Estimata Sinjoro. Per tiu Si libreto mi havas la honoron prezenti
al vi la lingvon internacian Esperanto. Esperanto tutg ne havas la
intencon malfortigi la lingvon naturan de ia popolo. Gi devas nur
servi por la rilatoj internaciaj kaj por tiuj verkoj au produktoj,
kiuj interesas egale la tutan mondon.
In summing up the merits and defects of Esperanto we must
begin by admitting that it is the most reasonable and practical
artificial language that has yet appeared. Its inventor has had
the double advantage of being able to profit by the mistakes of
his predecessors, and of being himself, by force of circumstances,
a better linguist. It must further be admitted that he has made
as good a use of these advantages as was perhaps possible without
systematic training in scientific philology in its widest sense.
This last defect explains why the enthusiasm which his work
has excited in the great world of linguistic dilettantes has not
been shared by the philologists: in spite of its superiority to
Volapuk, they see in it the same radical defects. Whether they
are rash or not in predicting for it a similar fate, remains to be
seen. The Esperantists, warned by the fate of Volapuk, have
adopted the wise policy of suppressing all internal disunion by
submitting to the dictatorship of the inventor, and so presenting
a united front to the enemy. One thing is clear: either
Esperanto must be taken as it is without change, or else it
must crumble to pieces; its failure to work out consist-
ently the principle of the maximum of internationally for
its root-words is alone enough to condemn it as hopelessly
antiquated even from the narrow point of view which regards
" international " as synonymous with " European " a view
which political development in the Far East has made equally
obsolete. (H. Sw.)
ESPINAY, TIMOL^ON D' (1580-1644), French soldier, was
the eldest of the four sons of Francois d'Espinay, seigneur de
Saint Luc (1554-1597), and was himself marquis de Saint Luc.
In 1603 he accompanied Sully in his embassy to London. In
1622, in his capacity as vice-admiral of France, he gained some
advantages over the defenders of La Rochelle, obliging the
Huguenot commander, Benjamin de Rohan, seigneur de Soubise,
to evacuate the islands of Re and Oleron. In 1627 he was named
lieutenant-general of Guienne and marshal of France.
ESPINEL, VICENTE MARTINEZ (1551-1624), Spanish poet
and novelist, was baptized on the 28th of December 1551, and
educated at Salamanca. He was expelled from the university
in 1572, and served as a soldier in Flanders, returning to Spain
in 1584 or thereabouts. He took orders in 1587, and four years
later became chaplain at Ronda, absented himself from his
living, and was deprived of his cure; but his musical skill obtained
for him the post of choirmaster at Plasencia. His Diversas
Rimas (1501) are undeniably good examples of technical accom-
plishment and caustic wit. Espinel, however, survives as the
author of a clever picaresque novel entitled Relaciones de la
vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregdn (1618). It is, in many
passages, an autobiography of Espinel with picturesque embellish-
ments. Marcos is not a chivalresque " esquire," but an adven-
turer who seeks his fortune by attaching himself to great men;
and the object of the author is to warn young men against
such a life. Apart from the unedifying confessions of the hero,
the book contains curious anecdotes concerning prominent
contemporaries, and the episodical stories are told with great
spirit; the style is extremely correct, though somewhat diffuse.
Le Sage has not scrupled to borrow from Marcos de Obregdn
many of the incidents and characters in Gil Bias a circumstance
which induced Isla to give to his Spanish translation of Le Sage's
work the jesting title, Gil Bias restored to his Country and his
Native Tongue. In the 1775 edition of the Siecle de Louis XIV .
Voltaire grossly exaggerates in saying that Gil Bias is taken
entirely from Marcos de Obregdn. Espinel was a clever musician
and added a fifth string to the guitar. He revived the measure
known as decimas or espinelas, consisting of a stanza of ten
octosyllabic lines. Most of the poems which he left in manuscript
remain unpublished owing to their licentious character.
ESPIRITO SANTO ESQUIRE
775
BIBLIOGRAPHY. J. Peret de Guzman's edition- of Marcos de
O6rro (Barcelona. 1881) includes a valuable introduction; I ...
Claretie. Li Sett romancitr (Paris, 1890), discusses exhaustively
the question of Le Sage's indebtedness to Espinel. For some
previously unpublished poem* see Pedro Salva y Malign, C'aldlofo
t la btbliviei*! de SaM (Valencia, 1873).
ESPIRITO SANTO, a maritime state of Brazil, bounded N.
by Bahia. E. by the Atlantic Ocean, S. by Rio de Janeiro, and
W. by Minas Geraes. Pop. (1890) 135,097; (9<) 9. 783;
area, 17,316 sq. m. With the exception of Sergipe it is the
smallest of the Brazilian states. The western border of the state
is traversed by low ranges of mountains forming a northward
continuation of the Scrra do Mar. The longest and most
prominent of these ranges, which are for the most part the eastern
escarpments of the great Brazilian plateau, is the Serra dos
Aymores, which extends along fully two-thirds of the western
frontier. Farther S. the ranges are much broken and extend
partly across the state toward the seaboard; the more prominent
are known as the Serra do Espigao, Serra da Chibata, Serra dos
Pildes and Serra dos Purys. The eastern and larger part of
the state belongs to the coastal plain, in great part low and
swampy, with large areas of sand barrens, and broken by isolated
groups and ranges of hills. With the exception of these sandy
plains the country is heavily forested, even the mountain sides
being covered with vegetation to their summits. The northern
and southern parts are fertile, but the central districts are
comparatively poor. The coastal plain comprises a sandy,
unproductive belt immediately on the coast, back of which
is a more ferule tertiary plain, well suited, near the higher
country, to the production of sugar and cotton. The inland
valleys and slopes are very fertile and heavily forested, and
much of the Brazilian export of rosewood and other cabinet
woods is drawn from this state. There is only one good bay on
the coast, that of Espirito Santo, on which the port of Victoria
is situated. The river-mouths are obstructed by sand bars and
admit small vessels only. The principal rivers of the state are
the Mucury, which rises in Minas Geraes and forms the boundary
line with Bahia, the Itaunas, Sao Domingos, Sao Matheus, Doce,
Timbuhy, Santa Maria, Jucu, Benevente, Itapemirim, and
Itabapoana, the last forming the boundary line with Rio de
Janeiro. The Doce, Sao Matheus, and Itapemirim rise in
Minas Geraes and flow entirely across the state. The lower
courses of these rivers are generally navigable, that of the Rio
Doce for a distance of oo m. The climate of the coastal zone
and deeper valleys is hot, humid and unhealthy, malarial
fevers being prevalent. In the higher country the temperature
is lower and the climate is healthy. Espirito Santo is almost
exclusively agricultural, sugar-cane, coffee, rice, cotton, tobacco,
mandioca and tropical fruits being the principal products.
Agriculture is in a very backward condition, however, and the
state is classed as one of the poorest and most unprogressive
in the republic. The rivers and shallow coast waters are well
stocked with fish, but there are no fishing industries worthy of
mention. There are three railway lines in operation in the state
one running from Victoria to Cachoeira do Itapemirim (50 m.),
and thence, by another line, to Santo Eduardo in Rio de Janeiro
(58 m.), where connexion is made with the Leopold! rva system
running into the national capital, and a third running north-
westerly from Victoria to Diamantina, Minas Geraes, about 450111.
The chief cities and towns of the state, with their popula-
tions in 1800, are Victoria, Sao Matheus (municipality, 7761)
on a river of the same name 16 m. from the sea, Serra (munici-
pality, 6274), Guarapary (municipality, 5310), a small port S.
by W. of the capital, Conceicao da Barra (municipality, 5628),
the port of Sio Matheus and Cachoeira do Itapemirim (4049), an
important commercial centre in the south.
Espirito Santo formed part of one of the original captaincies
which were given to Vasco Fernandes Coutinho by thePortuguese
crown. The first settlement (1535) was at the entrance to the
bay of Espirito Santo.'and its name was afterwards given to the
bay and captaincy. It once included the municipality of
Campos, now belonging to the state of Rio de Janeiro.
The islands of Trinidade and Martim Vaz, which lie about
715 m. E. of Victoria, belong politically to this state. They are
uninhabited, but considerable importance is attached to the
former because Great Britain has twice attempted to take
possession of it. It rises 1200 ft. above sea-level and is about
6 m. in circumference, but it has no value other than that of
an ocean cable station. An excellent description of this singular
island is to be found in E. F. Knight's Cruise of the " Alerle "
(London, 1895).
ESPRONCEDA, JOSfc IGNACIO JAVIER ORIOL ENCAR-
NACI6N DE (1808-1842), Spanish poet, son of an officer in the
Bourbon regiment, was born at or near Almcndralejo de los
Burros on the 25th of March 1808. On the close of the war he
was sent to the preparatory school of artillery at Segovia, and
later became a pupil of the poet Lista, then professor of literature
at St Matthew's College in Madrid. In his fourteenth year
he had. attracted his master's attention by his verses, and had
joined a secret society. Sentenced to five years' seclusion in the
Franciscan convent at Guadalajara, he began an epic poem
entitled Pelayo, of which fragments survive. He escaped to
Portugal and thence to England, where he found the famous
Teresa whom he had met at Lisbon; here, too, he became a
student of Shakespeare, Milton and Byron. In 1830 he eloped
with Teresa to Paris, took part in the July revolution, and soon
after joined the raid of Chapalangarra on Navarre. In 1833 he
returned to Spain and obtained a commission in the queen's
guards. This, however, he soon forfeited by a political song,
and he was banished to Cullar, where he wrote a poor novel
entitled Sancho Saldana 6 el Castellano de Cuillar (1834). He
took an active part in the revolutionary risings of 1835 and
1836, and, on the accession to power of the Liberal party in
1840, was appointed secretary of legation at the Hague; in
1842 he was elected deputy for Almeria, and seemed likely to
play a great part in parliamentary life. But his constitution was
undermined, and, after a short illness, he died at Madrid on the
23rd of May 1842. His poems, first published in 1840, at once
gained for him a reputation which still continues undiminished.
The influence of Byron pervades Espronceda's life and work.
It is present in an ambitious variant on the Don Juan legend,
El Estudiante de Salamanca, Elvira's letter being obviously
modelled on Julia's letter in Don Juan; the Cancion del Pirata
is suggested by The Corsair; and the Byronic inspiration is not
wanting even in the noble fragment entitled /.'/ Diablo Mundo,
based on the story of Faust. But in El Mendigo, in El Reo de
Muerte, in El Verdugo, and in the sombre vehement lines, A
Jarifa en una orgla, Espronceda approves himself the most
potent and original lyrical poet produced by Spain during the
igth century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Obras poMcas y escrilos en prosa (Madrid, 1884),
edited by Blanca Espronceda de Escosura, the poet's daughter
(the second volume has not been published); E. Rodriguez Solfs,
Espronceda; su tiempo, su vida, y sus obras (Madrid, 1883); E.
Pifieyro, El Romanttcismo en Espatia (Paris, 1904).
ESQUIRE (O. Fr. escuyer, Mod. Fr. tcuyer, derived through
the form escudier from Med. Lat. scuiarius, " shield-bearer "),
originally the attendant on a knight, whose helm, shield and
lance he carried at the tournament or in the field of battle.
The esquire ranked immediately below the knight bachelor,
and his office was regarded as the apprentice stage of knighthood.
The title was regarded as one of function, not of birth, and was
not hereditary. In time, however, its original significance was
lost sight of, and it came to be a title of honour, implying a rank
between that of knight and valet or gentleman, as it technically
still remains. Thus in the later middle ages esquire (armiger)
was the customary description of holders of knight's fees who
had not taken up their knighthood, whence the surviving
custom of entitling the principal landowner in a parish " the
squire " (see SQUIRE). Camden, at the close of the i6th century,
distinguished four classes entitled to bear the style: (i) The
eldest sons of knights, and their eldest sons, in perpetual suc-
cession; (2) the eldest sons of the younger sons of peers, and
their eldest sons, in like perpetual succession; (3) esquires created
by royal letters patent or other investiture, and their eldest sons;
(4) esquires by office, e.g. justices of the peace and others who
-77 6
ESQUIROL ESSAY
bear any office of trust under the crown. To these the writer in
the 3rd edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1797) added
Irish peers and the eldest sons of British peers, who, though they
bear courtesy titles, have in law only the right to be styled
esquires. Officers of the king's courts, and of the royal house-
hold, counsellors at law and justices of the peace he described
as esquires only " by reputation "; and justices of the peace
have the title only as long as they are in commission; while
certain heads of great landed families are styled "esquires" by
prescription. " But the meaner ranks of people," he adds
indignantly, " who know no better, do often basely prostitute
this title; and, to the great confusion of all rank and precedence,
every man who makes a decent appearance, far from thinking
himself in any way ridiculed by finding the superscription of
his letters thus decorated, is fully gratified by such an address."
It is clear, however, that the title of esquire was very loosely
used at a much earlier date. On this point Selden is somewhat
scornfully explicit. " To whomsoever, either by blood, place in
the State or other eminency, we conceive some higher attribute
should be given, than that sole Title of Gentleman, knowing yet
that he hath no other honorary title legally fixed upon him, we
usually style him an Esquire, in such passages as require legally
that his degree or state be mentioned; as especially in Indict-
ments and Actions whereupon he may be outlawed. Those
of other nations who are Barons or great Lords in their own
Countries, and no knights, are in legal proceedings stiled with
us, Esquires only. Some of our greatest Heralds have their
divisions of Esquires applied to this day. I leave them as I
see them, where they may easily be found." Coke, too, says
that every one is entitled to be termed esquire who has the legal
right to call himself a gentleman (2. Institutes, 688).
At the present time the following classes are recognized as
esquires on occasions of ceremony or for legal purposes: (i) All
sons of peers and lords of parliament during their fathers' lives,
and the younger sons of such peers, &c., after their fathers'
deaths; the eldest sons of peers' younger sons, and their eldest
sons for ever. (2) Noblemen of all other nations. (3) The eldest
sons of baronets and knights. (4) Persons bearing arms and the
title of esquire by letters patent. (5) Esquires of the Bath and
their eldest sons. (6) Barristers-at-law. (7) Justices of the peace
and mayors while in commission or office. (8) The holders of
any superior office under the crown. (9) Persons styled esquires
by the sovereign in their patents, commissions or appointments. 1
(10) Attorneys in colonies where the functions of counsel and
attorney are united (in England solicitors are " gentlemen,"
not " esquires ").
In practice, however, the title of esquire, now to all intents
and purposes meaningless, is given to any one who " can bear the
port, charge and countenance of a gentleman." The word has
followed the same course as that of " gentleman " (q.v.), and for
very similar reasons. It is still not customary in Great Britain
to address e.g. a well-to-do person engaged in trade as esquire at
his shop; it would be offensive not to do so at his private
residence. In America, on the other hand, the use of the
word " esquire " is practically obsolete, " Mr " (" Mister " or
" Master," at one time the title special to a " gentleman ")
being the general form of address.
See Selden, Titles of Honor (1672); Camden, Britannia (ed.
London, 1594); Coke, Institutes; Enc. of the Laws of England, s.
" Esquire ; Du Cange, Glossarium (ed. 1886), s. " Scutarius,
" Scutifer " and "Armiger"; New English Dictionary, s.
" Esquire." (W. A. P.)
ESQUIROL, JEAN fiTIENNE DOMINIQUE (1772-1840),
French alienist, was born at Toulouse on the 3rd of February
1772. In 1794 he became a pupil of the military hospital of
Narbonne, and subsequently studied in Paris at the Salpetriere
under P. Pinel, whose assistant he became. In 1811 he was
chosen physician to the Salpe'triere, and in 1817 he began a
course of lectures on the treatment of the insane, in which he
made such revelations of the abuses existing in the lunatic
asylums of France that the government appointed a commission
1 In practice this means every one receiving such a patent, com-
mission or appointment.
to inquire into the subject. Esquirol in this and other ways
greatly assisted Pinel's efforts for the introduction of humaner
methods. The asylums of Rouen, Nantes and Montpellier were
built in accordance with his plans. In 1823 he became inspector-
general of the university of Paris for the faculties of medicine,
and in 1826 chief physician of the asylum at Charenton. He
died at Paris on the i3th of December 1840. Besides contributing
to the Dictionnaire des sciences medicales and the Encyclopedia
des gens dtt monde, Esquirol wrote Des maladies mentales, con-
sider ies sous Ies rapports medical, hygienique, et medico-legal (2
vols., Paris, 1838).
ESQUIROS, HENRI FRANCOIS ALPHONSE (1812-1876),
French writer, was born in Paris on the 23rd of May 1812. After
some minor publications he produced L' ' Eiiangile du peuple
(1840), an exposition of the life and character of Jesus as a
social reformer. This work was considered an offence against
religion and decency, and Esquiros was fined and imprisoned.
He was elected in 1850 as a social democrat to the Legislative
Assembly, but was exiled in 1851 for his opposition to the
Empire. Returning to France in 1869 he was again a member
of the Legislative Assembly, and in 1876 was elected to the senate.
He died at Versailles on the I2th of May 1876. He turned to
account his residence in England in L'Angleterre et la vie anglaise
(5 vols., 1859-1869). Among his numerous works on social
subjects may be noted: Histoire des Montagnards (2 vols.,
1847); Paris, ou Ies sciences, Ies institutions et Ies montrs au
XIX' siecle (2 vols., 1847); and Histoire des martyrs de la
liberte (1851).
ESS, JOHANN HEINRICH VAN (1772-1847), German Catholic
theologian, was born at Warburg, Westphalia, on the i5th of
February 1772. He was educated at the Dominican gymnasium
of his native town, and in 1790 entered, as a novice, the Bene-
dictine abbey of Marienmiinster, in the bishopric of Paderborn.
His Benedictine name was Leander. He was priest at Schwalen-
berg from 1799 to 1812, after which he became extraordinary
professor of theology and joint-director of the teachers' seminary
at Marburg. In 1818 he received the doctorate of theology and
of canonical law. In 1807, in conjunction with his cousin Karl
van Ess, he had published a German translation of the New
Testament, and, as its circulation was discountenanced by his
superiors, he published in 1808 a defence of his views, entitled
Auszitge aus den heiligen Vatern und anderen Lehrern der katho-
lischen Kirche tiber das nothivendige und nulzliche Bibellesen.
An improved edition of this tractate was published in 1816, under
the title Gedanken iiber Bibel und Bibellehre, and in the same year
appeared Was war die Bibel den ersten Christen? In 1822 he
published the first part of a German translation of the Old
Testament, which was completed in 1836. In 1822 he resigned
his offices at Marburg in order to devote his whole time to the
defence of his views regarding Bible reading by the people, and
to endeavour to promote the circulation of the scriptures. He
was associated first with the Catholic Bible Society of Regensburg,
and then with the British and Foreign Bible Society. He died
at Affolderbach in the Odenwald on the i3th of October 1847.
ESSAY, ESSAYIST (Fr. essai, Late Lat. exagium, a weighing
or balance; exigere, to examine; the term in general meaning
any trial or effort). As a form of literature, the essay is a com-
position of moderate length, usually in prose, which deals in an
easy, cursory way with the external conditions of a subject, and,
in strictness, with that subject only as it affects the writer.
Dr Johnson, himself an eminent essayist, defines an essay as
" an irregular, undigested piece "; the irregularity may perhaps
be admitted, but want of thought, that is to say lack of proper
mental digestion, is certainly not characteristic of a fine example.
It should, on the contrary, always be the brief and light result
of experience and profound meditation, while " undigested "
is the last epithet to be applied to the essays of Montaigne,
Addison or Lamb. Bacon said that the Epistles of Seneca were
" essays," but this can hardly be allowed. Bacon himself goes
on to admit that " the word is late, though the thing is ancient."
The word, in fact, was invented for this species of writing by
Montaigne, who merely meant that these were experiments in
ESSAY
777
new kind of literature. This original meaning, namely that
these pieces were attempts or endeavours, feeling their way
towards the expression of what would need a far wider space
to exhaust, was lost in England in the course of the eighteenth
century. This is seen by the various attempts made in the
nineteenth century to coin word which should express a still
smaller work, as distinctive in comparison with the essay as the
essay is by the side of the monograph; none of these linguistic
experiments, such as essayette, essaykiit (Thackeray)and essaylet
(Helps) have taken hold of the language. As a matter of fact,
the journalistic word article covers the lesser form of essay,
although not exhaustively, since the essays in the monthly and
quarterly reviews, which are fully as extended as an essay should
ever be, are frequently termed " articles," while many " articles"
in newspapers, dictionaries and encyclopaedias are in no sense
essays. It may be said that the idea of a detached work is
combined with the word " essay," which should be neither a
section of a disquisition nor a chapter in a book which aims
at the systematic development of a story. Locke's Essay on
the Hitman Understanding is not an essay at all, or cluster of
essays, in this technical sense, but refers to the experimental
and tentative nature of the inquiry which the philosopher was
undertaking. Of the curious use of the word so repeatedly
made by Pope mention will be made below.
The essay, as a species of literature, was invented by Montaigne,
who had probably little suspicion of the far-reaching importance
of what he had created. In his dejected moments, he turned to
rail at what he had written, and to call his essays " inepties "
and " sottises." But in his own heart he must have been well
satisfied with the new and beautiful form which he had added to
literary tradition. He was perfectly aware that he had devised
a new thing; that he had invented a way of communicating
himself to the world as a type of human nature. He designed
it to carry out his peculiar object, which was to produce an
accurate portrait of his own soul, not as it was yesterday or will
be to-morrow, but as it is to-day. It is not often that we can
date with any approach to accuracy the arrival of a new class
of literature into the world, but it was in the month of March
1571 that the essay was invented. It was started in the second
story of the old tower of the castle of Montaigne, in a study to
which the philosopher withdrew for that purpose, surrounded
by his books, close to his chapel, sheltered from the excesses
of a fatiguing world. He wrote slowly, not systematically; it
took nine years to finish the two first books of the essays. In
1574 the manuscript of the work, so far as it was then completed,
was nearly lost, for it was confiscated by the pontifical police
in Rome, where Montaigne was residing, and was not returned
to the author for four months. The earliest imprint saw the
light in 1580, at Bordeaux, and the Paris edition of 1588, which
is the fifth, contains the final text of the great author. These
dates are not negligible in the briefest history of the essay, for
they are those of its revelation to the world of readers. It was in
the delightful chapters of his new, strange book that Montaigne
introduced the fashion of writing briefly, irregularly, with
constant digressions and interruptions, about the world as it
appears to the individual who writes. The Essais were instantly
welcomed, and few writers of the Renaissance had so instant
and so vast a popularity as Montaigne. But whilethe philosophy,
and above all the graceful stoicism, of the great master were
admired and copied in France, the exact shape in which he had
put down his thoughts, in the exquisite negligence of a series of
essays, was too delicate to tempt an imitator. It is to be noted
that neither Cbarron, nor Mile de Gournay, his most immediate
disciples, tried to write essays. But Montaigne, who liked to
fancy that the Eyquem family was of English extraction, had
spoken affably of the English people as his " cousins," and it
has always been admitted that his genius has an affinity with
the English. He was early read in England, and certainly by
Bacon, whose is the second great name connected with this
form of literature. It was in 1597, only five years after the
death of Montaigne, that Bacon published in a small octavo
toe first ten of his essays. These he increased to 38 in 161 2 and
to 58 in 1625. In their first form, the essays of Bacon had
nothing of the fulness or grace of Montaigne's; they arc meagre
notes, scarcely more than the headings for discourses. It
is possible that when he wrote them he was not yet familiar
with the style of his predecessor, which was first made popular
in England, in 1603, when Florio published that translation of
the Essais which Shakespeare unquestionably read. In the
later editions Bacon greatly expanded his theme, but he never
reached, or but seldom, the freedom and ease, the seeming
formlessness held in by an invisible chain, which are the glory
of Montaigne, and distinguish the typical essayist. It would
seem that at first, in England, as in France, no lesser writer
was willing to adopt a title which belonged to so great a presence
as that of Bacon or Montaigne. The one exception was Sir
William Cornwallis (d. 1634), who published essays in 1600 and
161 7, of slight merit, but popular in their day. No other English
essayist of any importance appeared until the Restoration,
when Abraham Cowley wrote eleven " Several Discourses by
way of Essays," which did not see the light until 1668. He
interspersed with his prose, translations and original pieces in
verse, but in other respects Cowley keeps much nearer than
Bacon to the form of Montaigne. Cowley's essay " Of Myself "
is a model of what these little compositions should be. The name
of Bacon inspires awe, but it is really not he, but Cowley, who
is the father of the English essay; and it is remarkable that he
has had no warmer panegyrists than his great successors, Charles
Lamb and Macaulay. Towards the end of the century, Sir
George Mackenzie (1636-1691) wrote witty moral discourses,
which were, however, essays rather in name than form. When-
ever, however, we reach the eighteenth century, we find the
essay suddenly became a dominant force in English literature.
It made its appearance almost as a new thing, and in combination
with the earliest developments of journalism. On the izth of
April i yog appeared the first number of a penny newspaper,
entitled the Taller, a main feature of which was to amuse and
instruct fashionable readers by a series of short papers dealing
with the manifold occurrences of life, quicquid agunt homines.
But it was not until Steele, the founder of the Taller, was joined
by Addison that the eighteenth-century essay really started
upon its course. It displayed at first, and indeed it long retained,
a mixture of the manner of Montaigne with that of La Bruyi-rr,
combining the form of the pure essay with that of the character-
study, as modelled on Theophrastus, which had been so popular
in England throughout the seventeenth century. Addison's
early Tatter portraits, in particular such as those of " Tom Folio "
and " Ned Softly," are hardly essays. But Steele's " Recollec-
tions of Childhood " is, and here we may observe the type on
which Goldsmith, Lamb and R. L. Stevenson afterwards worked.
In January 1711 the Taller came to an end, and was almost
immediately followed by the Spectator, and in 1713 by the
Guardian. These three newspapers arc storehouses of admirable
and typical essays, the majority of them written by Steele and
Addison, who are the most celebrated eighteenth-century
essayists in England. Later in the century, after the publicatiojx
of other less successful experiments, appeared Fielding's essays
in the Covent Garden Journal (1752) and Johnson's in the
Rambler (1750), the Adventurer (1752) and the Idler (1759).
There followed a great number of polite journals, in which the
essay was treated as " the bow of Ulysses in which it was the
fashion for men of rank and genius to try their strength." Gold-
smith reached a higher level than the Chesterfields and Bonne!
Thorntons had dreamed of, in the delicious sections of his
Citizen of the World (1760). After Goldsmith, the eighteenth-
century essay declined into tamer hands, and passed into final
feebleness with the pedantic Richard Cumberland and the
sentimental Henry Mackenzie. The corpus of eighteenth-century
essayists is extremely voluminous, and their reprinted works
fill some fifty volumes. There is, however, a great sameness
about all but the very best of them, and in no case do they
surpass Addison in freshness, or have they ventured to modify
the form he adopted for his lucubrations. What has survived
of them all is the lightest portion, but it should not be forgotten.
778
ESSEG ESSEN
that a very large section of the essays of that age were deliberately
didactic and " moral." A great revival of the essay took place
during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and foremost
in the history of this movement must always be placed the
name of Charles Lamb. He perceived that the real business
of the essay, as Montaigne had conceived it, was to be largely
personal. The famous Essays of Elia began to appear in the
London Magazine for August 1820, and proceeded at fairly
regular intervals until December 1822; early in 1823 the first
series of them were collected in a volume. The peculiarity of
Lamb's style as an essayist was that he threw off the Addisonian
and still more the Johnsonian tradition, which had become
a burden that crushed the life out of each conventional essay,
and that he boldly went back to the rich verbiage and brilliant
imagery of the seventeenth century for his inspiration. It is
true that Lamb had great ductility of style, and that, when he
pleases, he can write so like Steele that Steele himself might
scarcely know the difference, yet in his freer flights we are
conscious of more exalted masters, of Milton, Thomas Browne
and Jeremy Taylor.. He succeeded, moreover, in reaching a
poignant note of personal feeling, such as none of his predecessors
had ever aimed at; the essays called "Dream Children" and
" Blakesmoor " are examples of this, and they display a degree
of harmony and perfection in the writing of the pure essay such
as had never been attempted before, and has never since been
reached. Leigh Hunt, clearing away all the didactic and
pompous elements which had overgrown the essay, restored it
to its old Spectator grace, and was the most easy nondescript
writer of his generation in periodicals such as the Indicator
(1819) and the Companion (1828). The sermons, letters and
pamphlets of Sydney Smith were really essays of an extended
order. In Hazlitt and Francis Jeffrey we see the form and
method of the essay beginning to be applied to literary criti-
cism. The writings of De Quincey are almost exclusively essays,
although many of the most notable of them, under his vehe-
ment pen, have far outgrown the limits of the length laid
down by the most indulgent formalist. His biographical and
critical essays are interesting, but they are far from being trust-
worthy models in form or substance. In a sketch, however
rapid, of the essay in the nineteenth century, prominence must
be given to the name of Macaulay. His earliest essay, that
on Milton, appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1825, very
shortly after the revelation of Lamb's genius in " Elia." No
two products cast in the same mould could, however, be
more unlike in substance. In the hands of Macaulay the essay
ceases to be a confession or an autobiography; it is strictly im-
personal, it is literary, historical or controversial, vigorous,
trenchant and full of party prejudice. The periodical publica-
tion of Macaulay's Essays in the Edinburgh Review went on
until 1844; when we cast our eyes over this mass of brilliant
writing we observe with surprise that it is almost wholly con-
tentious. Nothing can be more remarkable than the difference
in this respect between Lamb and Macaulay, the former for ever
demanding, even cajoling, the sympathy of the reader, the
latter scanning the horizon for an enemy to controvert. In
later times the essay in England has been cultivated in each of
these ways, by a thousand journalists and authors. The " leaders "
of a daily newspaper are examples of the popularization of the
essay, and they point to the danger which now attacks it, that
of producing a purely ephemeral or even momentary species
of effect. The essay, in its best days, was intended to be as
lasting as a poem or a historical monograph; it aimed at being
one of the most durable and precious departments of literature.
We still occasionally see the production of essays which have
this more ambitious aim; within the last quarter of the nine-
teenth century the essays of R. L. Stevenson achieved it. His
Familiar Studies are of the same class as those of Montaigne
and Lamb, and he approached far more closely than any other
contemporary !to their high level of excellence. We have seen
that the tone of the essay should be personal and confidential;
in Stevenson's case it was characteristically so. But the voices
which please the public in a strain of pure self-study are few
at all times, and with the cultivation of the analytic habit they
tend to become less original and attractive. It is possible that
the essay may die of exhaustion of interest, or may survive only
in the modified form of accidental journalism.
The essay, although invented by a great French writer, was
very late in making itself at home in France. The so-called
Essais of Leibnitz, Nicole, Yves Marie Andre and so many others
were really treatises. Voltaire's famous Essai sur les mteurs
des nations is an elaborate historical disquisition in nearly two
hundred chapters. Later, the voluminous essays of Joseph de
Maistre and of Lamennais were not essays at all in the literary
sense. On the other hand, the admirable Causeries du lundi
of Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869) are literary essays in the fulness
of the term, and have been the forerunners of a great army of
brilliant essay-writing in France. Among those who have
specially distinguished themselves as French essayists may be
mentioned Theophile Gautier, Paul de Saint- Victor, Anatole
France, Jules Lemaitre, Ferdinand Brunetiere and Emile
Faguet. All these are literary critics, and it is in the form of
the analysis of manifestations of intellectual energy that the
essay has been most successfully illustrated in France. All the
countries of Europe, since the middle of the igth century, have
adopted this form of writing; such monographs or reviews,
however, are not perfectly identical with the essay as it was
conceived by Addison and Lamb. This last, it may be supposed,
is a definitely English thing, and this view is confirmed by the
fact that in several European languages the word " essayist "
has been adopted without modification.
In the above remarks it has been taken for granted that the
essay is always in prose. Pope, however, conceived an essay
in heroic verse. Of this his Essay on Criticism' (1711) and his
Essay on Man (1732-1734) are not good examples, for they are
really treatises. The so-called Moral Essays (1720-1735), on
the contrary, might have been contributed, if in prose, either to
the Spectator or the Guardian. The idea of pure essays, in verse,
however, did not take any root in English literature. (E. G.)
ESSEG, ESSEGG or ESSEK (Hung. Esszek; Croatian Osjek), a
royal free town, municipality, and capital of the county of
Virovitica (Verocze), in Croatia-Slavonia, on the right bank
of the Drave, 9 m. W. of its confluence with the Danube, and 185
m. S. of Buda-Pest by rail. Pop. (1900) 24,930; chiefly Magyars
and Croats, with a few Germans and Jews. At Esseg the
Drave is crossed by two bridges, and below these it is navigable
by small steamers. The upper town, with the fortress, is under
military authority; the new town and the lower town, which
is the headquarters of commerce, are under civil authority.
The only buildings of note are the Roman Catholic and Orthodox
churches, Franciscan and Capuchin monasteries, synagogue,
gymnasium, modern school, hospital, chamber of commerce,
and law-courts. Esseg has a thriving trade in grain, fruit,
live-stock, plum-brandy and timber. Tanning, silk-weaving
and glass-blowing are also carried on.
Esseg owes its origin to its fortress, which existed as early
as the time of the Romans under the name of Mursia; though
the present structure dates only from 1720. At the beginning
of the Hungarian revolution of 1848 the town was held by the
Hungarians, but on the 4th of February 1849 it was taken by
the Austrians under General Baron Trebersberg.
ESSEN, a manufacturing town of Germany, in the Prussian
Rhine province, 22 m. N.E. from Diisseldorf, on the main line
of railway to Berlin, in an undulating and densely populated
district. Pop. (1849) 8813; (1875) 54,790; (1905) 229,270.
It lies at the centre of a network of railways giving it access
to all the principal towns of the Westphalian iron and coal fields.
Its general aspect is gloomy; it possesses few streets of any
pretensions, though those in the old part, which are mostly narrow,
present, with their grey slate roofs and green shutters, a pictur-
esque appearance. Of its. religious edifices (twelve Roman
Catholic, one Old Catholic, six Protestant churches, and a
synagogue) the minster, dating from the loth century, with
fine pictures, relics and wall frescoes, is alone especially remark-
able. This building is very similar to the Pfalz-Kapelle (capetta
ESSENES
779
I'M palatio) at Aix-Ia-Chapelle. Among the town's principal
secular buildings arc the new Gothic town-hall, the post office
and the railway station. There are several high-grade (classical
aad modern) schools, technical, mining and commercial schools,
a theatre, a permanent an exhibition, and hospitals. Essen
also has a beautiful public park in the immediate vicinity. The
town originally owed its prosperity to the large iron and coal
fields underlying the basin in which it is situated. Chief among
its industrial establishments are the famous iron and steel
works of Krupp (9.*.), and the whole of Essen may be said to
depend for its livelihood upon this firm, which annually expends
vast sums in building and supporting churches, schools, clubs,
hospitals and philanthropic institutions, and in other ways
providing for the welfare of its employees. There are also
manufactories of woollen goods and cigars, dyeworks and
breweries.
Essen was originally the seat of a Benedictine nunnery, and
was formed into a town about the middle of the loth century
by the abbess Hedwig. The abbess of the nunnery, who held
from 1275 the rank of a princess of the Empire, was assisted
by a chapter of ten princesses and countesses; she governed
the town until 1803, when it was secularized and incorporated
with Prussia. In 1807 it came into the possession of the grand
dukes of Berg, but was transferred to Prussia in 1814.
See Funcke, Gesckichte des FUrstenthums and der Stadt Essen
(Elberfeld, 1851); Kcllcn, Die Industriestadt Essen in Wort und
Biid (Essen, 1902); and A. Shadwell, Industrial Efficiency (London,
1906).
ESSENES, a monastic order among the Jews prior to Chris-
tianity. Their first appearance in history is in the time of
Jonathan the Maccabee (161-144 B.C.). How much older they
may have been we have no means of determining, but our
authorities agree in assigning to them a dateless antiquity.
The name occurs in Greek, in the two forms 'Etro^voi and 'Kaaaiot.
'EffCTji'oi is used by Josephus fourteen times, 'Eoxraioisix, but the
latter is theonly form used by Philo (ii. 457, 471, 632). ''Eaayvol
is also used by Synesius and Hippolytus, and its Latin equivalent
by Pliny and Solinus; 'Eaacutu by Hegesippus and Porphyry.
In Epiphanius we find the forms 'Cfoacuot, 'Oocryvoi, and 'Ittraalot.
There is a place named Essa mentioned by Josephus (Ant. xiii.
'5. 3). fr m which the name may have been formed, just as
the Christians were originally called Nof apqvoi or NafcopaToi,
from Nazara. This etymology, however, is not much in favour
now. Light foot explains the name as meaning " the silent
ones," others as meaning " physicians." Perhaps there is most
authority in favour of deriving it from the Syriac TO", which
in the emphatic state becomes ;pq, so that we have a Semitic
correspondence to both the Greek forms 'Eaa^vol and 'Yaaaloi.
This etymology makes the word mean " pious." It has also
been urged in excuse for Philo's absurd derivation from fotos.
The original accounts we have of them are confined to three
authors Philo, Pliny the Elder, and Josephus. Philo describes
them in his treatise known as Quod omnis probus liber ( 12, 13;
ii. 457-460), and also in his " Apology for the Jews," a fragment
of which has been preserved by Eusebius (Praep. Ev. viii. n, 12).
Pliny (N.H. v. 17) has a short but striking sketch of them,
derived in all probability from Alexander Polyhistor, who is
mentioned among the authorities for the fifth book of his Natural
History. This historian, of whom Eusebius had a very high
opinion (Praep. Ev. ix. 17, Ji), lived in the time of Sulla. Josephus
treats of them at length in his Jewish War (ii. 8), and more
briefly in two passages of his Antiquities (xiii. 5, 9; xviii. i, 5).
He has also interesting accounts of the prophetic powers possessed
by three individual members of the sect Judas (B.J. i. 3, 5;
Ant. xiii. n,f 2),Menahem (Ant. xv. 10, 5), and Simon (B.J.
7. i 3; A*l. xvii. 13, f 3). Besides this he mentions an Essene
Gate in Jerusalem (B.J. v. 4, $ 2) and a person called John the
Essene. one of the bravest and most capable leaders in the war
against the Romans (B.J. ii. 20, $4;iii. 2, i). Josephus himself
made trial of the sect of Essenes in his youth; but from his own
statement it appears that he must have been a very short time
with them, and therefore could not have been initiated into the
inner mysteries of the society (De vita sua, 2). After this the
notices that we have of the Essenes from antiquity are mere
reproductions, except in the case of Epiphanius (died A.M. 402),
who, however, is so confused a writer as to be of little value.
Solinus, who was known as " Pliny's Ape," echoed the words
of his master about a century after that writer's death, which
took place in A.D. 79. Similarly Hippolytus, who lived in the
reign of Commodus (A.D. 180-192), reproduced the account of
Josephus, adding a few touches of his own. Porphyry (A.D.
233-306) afterwards did the same, but had the grace to mention
Josephus in the context. Eusebius quoted the account as from
Porphyry, though he must have known that he had derived
it from Josephus (Praep. Ev. ix. 3, i, 13). But Porphyry's
name would impress pagan readers. There is also a mention of
the Essenes by Hegesippus (Eus. H.E. iv. 22) and by Synesius
in his life of Dio Chrysostom. It has been conjectured that
the Clementine literature emanated from Essenes who had
turned Christian. (See EBIONITES.)
The Essenes were an exclusive society, distinguished from
the rest of the Jewish nation in Palestine by an organization
peculiar to themselves, and by a theory of life in which a severe
asceticism and a rare benevolence to one another and to mankind
in general were the most striking characteristics. They had
fixed rules for initiation, a succession of strictly separate grades
within the limits of the society, and regulations for the conduct
of their daily life even in its minutest details. Their membership
could be recruited only from the outside world, as marriage and
all intercourse with women were absolutely renounced. They
were the first society in the world to condemn slavery both in
theory and practice; they enforced and practised the most
complete community of goods. They chose their own priests
and public office-bearers, and even their own judges. Though
their prevailing tendency was practical, and the tenets of the
society were kept a profound secret, it is perfectly clear from
the concurrent testimony of Philo and Josephus that they
cultivated a kind of speculation, which not only accounts for
their spiritual asceticism, but indicates a great deviation from
the normal development of Judaism, and a profound sympathy
with Greek philosophy, and probably also with Oriental ideas.
At the same time we do our Jewish authorities no injustice in
imputing to them the patriotic tendency to idealize the society,
and thus offer to their readers something in Jewish life that
would bear comparison at least with similar manifestations of
Gentile life.
There is some difficulty in determining how far the Essenes
separated themselves locally from their fellow-countrymen.
Josephus informs us that they had no single city of their own,
but that many of them dwelt in every city. While in his treatise
Quod omnis, &c., Philo speaks of their avoiding towns and
preferring to live in villages, in his "Apology for the Jews " we find
them living in many cities, villages, and in great and prosperous
towns. In Pliny they are a perennial colony settled on the
western shore of the Dead Sea. On the whole, as Philo and
Josephus agree in estimating their number at 4000 (Philo,
Q.O.P.L. 12; Jos. Ant. xviii. i, 5), we are justified in suspect-
ing some exaggeration as to the many cities, towns and villages
where they were said to be found. As agriculture was their
favourite occupation, and as their tendency was to withdraw
from the haunts and ordinary interests of mankind, we may
assume that with the growing confusion and corruption of Jewish
society they felt themselves attracted from the mass of the
population to the sparsely peopled districts, till they found a
congenial settlement and free scope for their peculiar view of
life by the shore of the Dead Sea. While their principles were
consistent with the neighbourhood of men, they were better
adapted to a state of seclusion.
The Essenes did hot renounce marriage because they denied
the validity of the institution or the necessity of it as providing
for the continuance of the human race, but because they had
a low opinion of the character of women (Jos. B.J. ii. 8, 2;
Philo, " Apol. for the Jews " in Eus. Praep. Ev. viii. ii, 8). They
adopted children when very young, and brought them up on
780
ESSENES
their own principles. Pleasure generally they rejected as evil.
They despised riches not less than pleasure; neither poverty nor
wealth was observable among them; at initiation every one gave
his property into the common stock; every member in receipt
of wages handed them over to the funds of the society. In
matters of dress the asceticism of the society was very pronounced.
They regarded oil as a defilement, even washing it off if anointed
with it against their will. They did not change their clothes or
their shoes till they were torn in pieces or worn completely
away. The colour of their garments was always white. Their
daily routine was prescribed for them in the strictest manner.
Before the rising of the sun they were to speak of nothing profane,
but offered to it certain traditional forms of prayer as if beseech-
ing it to rise. Thereafter they went about their daily tasks,
working continuously at whatever trade they knew till the fifth
hour, when they assembled, and, girding on a garment of linen,
bathed in cold water. They next seated themselves quietly
in the dining hall, where the baker set bread in order, and the
cook brought each a single dish of one kind of food. Before
meat and after it grace was said by a priest. After dinner they
resumed work till sunset. In the evening they had supper,
at which guests of the order joined them, if there happened to
be any such present. Withal there was no noise or confusion to
mar the tranquillity of their intercourse; no one usurped more
than his share of the conversation; the stillness of the place
oppressed a stranger with a feeling of mysterious awe. This
composure of spirit was owing to their perfect temperance in
eating and drinking. Not only in the daily routine of the society,
but generally, the activity of the members was controlled by
their presidents. In only two things could they take the initia-
tive, helpfulness and mercy; the deserving poor and the
destitute were to receive instant relief; but no member could
give anything to his relatives without consulting the heads of
the society. Their office-bearers were elected. They had also
their special courts of justice, which were composed of not less
than a hundred members, and their decisions, which were
arrived at with extreme care, were irreversible. Oaths were
strictly forbidden; their word was stronger than an oath. They
were just and temperate in anger, the guardians of good faith,
and the ministers of peace, obedient to their elders and to the
majority. But the moral characteristics which they most
earnestly cultivated and enjoined will best appear in their rules
of initiation. There was a novitiate of three years, during
which the intending member was tested as to his fitness for
entering the society. If the result was satisfactory, he was
admitted, but before partaking of the common meal he was
required to swear awful oaths, that he would reverence the
deity, do justice to men, hurt no man voluntarily or at the
command of another, hate the unjust and assist the just, and
that he would render fidelity to all men, but especially to the
rulers, seeing that no one rules but of God. He also vowed,
if he should bear rule himself, to make no violent use of his
power, nor outshine those set under him by superior display,
to make it his aim to cherish the truth and unmask liars, to be
pure from theft and unjust gain, to conceal nothing from his
fellow-members, nor to divulge any of their affairs to other men,
even at the risk of death, to transmit their doctrines unchanged,
and to keep secret the books of the society and the names of the
angels.
Within the limits of the society there were four grades so
distinct that if any one touched a member of an inferior grade
he required to cleanse himself by bathing in water; members
who had been found guilty of serious crimes were expelled from
the society, and could not be received again till reduced to the
very last extremity of want or sickness. As the result of the
ascetic training of the Essenes, and of their temperate diet,
it is said that they lived to a great age, and were superior to pain
and fear. During the Roman war they cheerfully underwent
the most grievous tortures rather than break any of the principles
of their faith. In fact, they had in many respects reached the
very highest moral elevation attained by the ancient world;
they were just, humane, benevolent, and spiritually-minded;
the sick and aged were the objects of a special affectionate
regard; and they condemned slavery, not only as an injustice,
but as an impious violation of the natural brotherhood of men
(Philo ii. 457). There were some of the Essenes who permitted
marriage, but strictly with a view to the preservation of the race;
in other respects they agreed with the main body of the society.
It will be apparent that the predominant tendency of the
society was practical. Philo tells us expressly that they rejected
logic as unnecessary to the acquisition of virtue, and speculation
on nature as too lofty for the human intellect. Yet they had
views of their own as to God, Providence, the soul, and a future
state, which, while they had a practical use, were yet essentially
speculative. On the one hand, indeed, they held tenaciously
by the traditional Judaism: blasphemy against their lawgiver
was punished with death, the sacred books were preserved and
read with great reverence, though not without an allegorical
interpretation, and the Sabbath was most scrupulously observed.
But in many important points their deviation from the strait
path of Judaic development was complete. They rejected
animal sacrifice as well as marriage; the oil with which priests
and kings were anointed they accounted unclean; and the
condemnation of oaths and the community of goods were un-
mistakable innovations for which they found no hint or warrant
in the old Hebrew writings. Their most singular feature, perhaps,
was their reverence for the sun. In their speculative hints
respecting the soul and a future state, we find another important
deviation from Judaism, and the explanation of their asceticism.
They held that the body is mortal, and its substance transitory,
that the soul is immortal, but, coming from the subtlest ether,
is lured as by a sorcery of nature into the prison-house of the
body. At death it is released from its bonds, as from long
slavery, and joyously soars aloft. To the souls of the good
there is reserved a life beyond the ocean, and a country oppressed
by neither rain, nor snow, nor heat, but refreshed by a gentle
west wind blowing continually from the sea (cf. Horn. Od. iv.
566-568), but to the wicked a region of wintry darkness and
of unceasing torment. Josephus tells us too that the Essenes
believed in fate; but in what sense, and what relation it bore
to Divine Providence, does not appear.
The above evidence has left students in doubt as to whether
Essenism is to be regarded as a pure product of the Jewish
mind or as due in part to some foreign influence. On the one
hand it might be maintained that the Essenes out-Pharisee'd
the Pharisees. They had in common with that sect their venera-
tion for Moses and the Law, their Sabbatarianism, their striving
after ceremonial purity, and their tendency towards fatalism.
But if the Pharisees abstained from good works on the Sabbath,
the Essenes abstained even from natural necessities (Jos. B.J.
ii. 8, 9); if the Pharisees washed, the Essenes bathed before
dinner; if the Pharisees ascribed some things to Fate, the
Essenes ascribed all (Jos. Ant. xiii. 5, 9). But on the other hand
the Essenes avoided marriage, which the Pharisees held in honour;
they offered no animal-sacrifices in the Temple; they refrained
from the use of oil, which was customary among the Pharisees
(Luke vii. 46); above all, they offered prayers to the sun, after
the manner denounced in Ezekiel (viii. 16). These and other
points of divergences are not explained by Ritschl's interesting
theory that Essenism was an organized attempt to carry out the
idea of " a kingdom of priests and an holy nation " (Ex. xix. 6).
Granting then that some foreign influence was at work in
Essenism, we have four theories offered to us that this influence
was Persian, Buddhist, Pythagorean, or lastly, as maintained
by Lipsius, that of the surrounding Syrian heathenism. Each of
these views has had able advocates, but it must not be supposed
that they are mutually exclusive. If we Consider how Philo,
while remaining a devout Jew in religion, yet managed to
assimilate the whole Stoic philosophy, we can well believe that
the Essenes might have been influenced, as Zeller maintained
that they were, by Neo-Pythagoreanism. But as Pythagoras
himself came from Samos, and his doctrines have a decidedly
Oriental tinge, it may very well be that both he and the Essenes
drew from a common source; for there is no need to reject, as
ESSENTUKI ESSEX, EARLS OF
781
h to commonly done, the statements of our authorities as to the
antiquity of the Essencs. This common source we may believe
with Light foot to have been the Persian religion, which we know
to have profoundly influenced that of Israel, independently
of the Essenes.
The fact that the Pharisees and Sadducees so often figure
in the pages of the New Testament, while the Essenes are never
mentioned, might plausibly be interpreted to show that the New
Testament emanated from the side of the Essenes. So far as
concerns the Epistle of St James this interpretation would
probably be correct. That work contains the doctrine common
to the Essenes with Plato, and suggestive of Persian Dualism,
that God is the author of good only. There are also certain
obvious points of resemblance between the Essenes and the
early Christians. Both held property in common; both had
scattered communities which received guests one from the
other; both avoided a light use of oaths; both taught passive
obedience to political authority. The list might be enlarged, but
it would not necessarily prove more than that the early Christians
shared in the ideas of their age. Christianity was to some extent
a popularization of Essenism, but there is little reason for
believing that Jesus himself was an Essene. De Quincey's
contention that there were no Essenes but the early Christians
is now a literary curiosity.
The original sources of our knowledge of the Essenes have been
mentioned at the beginning of this paper; the best modern dis-
cusstpns of them are to belound in such works as Teller's 1'hilu-
sopkie ttr Griechen, vol. iii.; Ewald, Geschichte d. V. Israel, Hi.
419-478; Reuss, La Tkfologie chretienne au siicle apostolique, i.
122-131; Keim, Life of Jesus of Nazara, vol. i. ; Light foot on the
Cokxnians; Lucius, Der Essenismus in seinem \ erhultniss zum
Judentkum; Wellhausen, Israelitiifke und judische Geschichte;
Ed. SchQrer, The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, div. ii.
vol. ii. i 30. The copious bibliography in Conybeare's edition of
Philo'a De vita coniemplaliva bears upon the Essenes as well as upon
the Thcrapcutes. For a specially Jewish view of the Essenes sec
Kohler's article in the Jewish Encyclopaedia. They are there re-
garded as being " simply the rightists among the Pharisees." But
we are also told that " the Pharisees characterized the Essene as ' a
fool who destroyed the world.' " (T. K.; ST G. S.)
ESSENTUKI, a watering-place of south Russia, in the govern-
ment of Terek, ii m. by rail W. from Pyatigorsk; altitude,
2096 ft. Its alkaline and sulphur-alkaline mineral waters,
similar to those of Ems, Sellers and Vichy, are much visited
in summer. The climate shows great variations in temperature.
Pop. (1897) 0974.
ESSEQUIBO, or ESSEQUEBO, one of the three settlements
of British Guiana, taking its name from the river Essequibo.
(See GUIANA.)
ESSEX. EARLS OP. The first earl of Essex was probably
Geoffrey de Mandeville (q.v.), who became earl about 1139,
the earldom being subsequently held by his two sons, Geoffrey
and William, until the death of the latter in 1189. In 1199
Geoffrey Fitzpeter or Fitzpiers (d. 1213), who was related to
the Mandevilles through his wife Beatrice, became earl of Essex,
and on the death of Geoffrey's son William in 1227 the earldom
reverted for the second time to the crown. Then the title to
the earldom passed by marriage to the Bohuns, earls of Hereford,
and before 1239 Humphrey de Bohun (d. 1275) had been re-
cognized as earl of Essex. With the earldom of Hereford the
earldom of Essex became extinct in 1373; afterwards it was
held by Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, a son of
Edward III. and the husband of Eleanor de Bohun; and from
Gloucester it passed to the Bourchiers, Henry Bourchicr (d.
1483), who secured the earldom in 1461, being one of Gloucester's
grandsons. The second and last Bourchier earl was Henry's
grandson Henry, who died early in 1540. A few weeks before
his execution in 1 540 Thomas Cromwell' (q.v.) was created earl
of Essex; then in 1543 William Parr, afterwards marquess of
Northampton, obtained the earldom by right of bis wife Anne,
a daughter of the last Bourchicr earl. Northampton lost the
earldom when he was attainted in 1553; and afterwards it
passed to the famous family of Devereux, Walter Devereux,
who was created earl of Essex in 1572, being related to the
Bourchiers. Robert, the 3rd and last Devereux earl, died in
1646. In 1661 Arthur Capcl was created earl of Essex, and the
curldom is still held by his descendants.
ESSEX. ARTHUR CAPEL, IST> EABL OF (1632-1683),
Knuli^li statesman, son of Arthur,- ist Baron Capel of Hadham
(c. 1641), executed in 1649, and of Elizabeth, daughter and
heir of Sir Charles Morrison of Cashiobury in Hertfordshire,
was baptized on the 28th of January 1632. In June 1648, then
a sickly boy of sixteen, he was taken by Fairfax's soldiers from
Hadham to Colchester, which his father was defending, and
carried every day round the works with the hope of inducing
Lord Capel to surrender the place. At the restoration he was
created Viscount Maiden and carl of Essex (2othof April 1661),
with special remainder to the male issue of his father, and was
made lord-lieutenant of Hertfordshire and a few years later of
Wiltshire.*
He early showed himself antagonistic to the court, to Roman
Catholicism, and to the extension of the royal prerogative, and
was coupled by Charles II. with Holies as " stiff and sullen men,"
who would not yield against their convictions to his solicitations.
In 1669 he was sent as ambassador to King Christian V. of Den-
mark, in which capacity he gained credit by refusing to strike
his flag to the governor of Kronborg. In 1672 he was made a
privy councillor and lord-lieutenant of Ireland. He remained
in office till 1677, and his administration was greatly commended
by Burnet and Ormonde, 1 the former describing it "as a pattern
to all that come after him." He identified himself with Irish
interests, and took immense pains to understand the constitution
and the political necessities of the country, appointing men of
real merit to office, and maintaining an exceptional independence
from solicitation and influence. He held a just balance between
the Roman Catholics, the English Church and the Presbyterians,
protecting the former as far as public opinion in England would
permit, and governing the native Irish with firmness and modera-
tion. The purity and patriotism of his administration were in
strong contrast to the hopeless corruption prevalent in that at
home and naturally aroused bitter opposition, as an obstacle
to the unscrupulous employment of Irish revenues for the satis-
faction of the court and the king's expenses. In particular he
came into conflict with Lord Ranclagh, to whom had been
assigned the Irish revenues on condition of his supplying the
requirements of the crown, and whose accounts Essex refused
to pass. He opposed strongly the lavish gifts of forfeited estates
to court favourites and mistresses, prevented the grant of Phoenix
Park to the duchess of Cleveland, and refused to encumber
the administration by granting reversions. Finally the intrigues
of his enemies at home, and Charles's continual demands for
money, which Ranelagh undertook to satisfy, brought about
his recall in April 1677. He immediately joined the country
party and the opposition to Danby's government, and on the
latter's fall in 1679 was appointed a commissioner of the treasury,
and the same year a member of Sir William Temple's new-
modelled council. He followed the lead of Halifax, who advo-
cated not the exclusion of James, but the limitation of his
sovereign powers, and looked to the prince of Orange rather
than to Monmouth as the leader of Protestantism, incurring
thereby the hostility of Shaftesbury, but at the same time
gaining the confidence of Charles. He was appointed by Charles
together with Halifax to hear the charges against Lauderdale.
In July he wrote a wise and statesmanlike letter to the king,
advising him to renounce his project of raising a new company of
guards. Together with Halifax he urged Charles to summon
the parliament, and after his refusal resigned the treasury in
November, the real cause being, according to one account, 4
a demand upon the treasury by the duchess of Cleveland for
25,000, according to another " the niceness of touching French
money," " that makes my Lord Essex's squeasy stomach that
it can no longer digest his employment." '
1 i.e. in the Capel line.
'Hist. MSS. Comm. ser.; Duke of Beaufort's MSS. 45.
'Life of Ormonde, by T. Carte, viii. 468 (1851), vol. iv. p.
'Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. app. 47?b.
*/&. 6th Rep. app. 74 ib.
529-
782
ESSEX, EARLS OF
Subsequently his political attitude underwent a change, the
exact cause of which is not clear probably a growing conviction
of the dangers threatened by a Roman Catholic sovereign of
the character of James. He now, in 1680, joined Shaftesbury's
party and supported the Exclusion Bill, and on its rejection
by the Lords carried a motion for an association to execute the
scheme of expedients promoted by Halifax. On the 25th of
January 1681 at the head of fifteen peers he presented a petition
to the king, couched in exaggerated language, requesting the
abandonment of the session of parliament at Oxford. He was
a jealous prosecutor of the Roman Catholics in the popish plot,
and voted for Stafford's attainder, on the other hand interceding
for Archbishop Plunket, implicated in the pretended Irish plot.
He, however, refused to follow Shaftesbury in his extreme
courses, declined participation in the latter's design to seize
the Tower in 1682, and on Shaftesbury's consequent departure
from England became the leader of Monmouth's faction, in
which were now included Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney, and
Lord Howard of Escrick. Essex took no part in the wilder
schemes of the party, but after the discovery of the Rye House
Plot in June 1683, and the capture of the leaders, he was arrested
at Cashiobury and imprisoned in tne Tower. His spirits and
.fortitude appear immediately to have abandoned him, and on the
1 3th of July he was discovered in his chamber with his throat
cut. His death was attributed, quite groundlessly, to Charles
and James, and the evidence points clearly if not conclusively
to suicide, his motive being possibly to prevent an attainder
and preserve his estate for his family. He, was, however, un-
doubtedly a victim of the Stuart administration, and theantagon-
ism and tragic end of men like Essex, deserving men, naturally
devoted to the throne, constitutes a severe indictment of the
Stuart rule.
He was a statesman of strong and sincere patriotism, just
and unselfish, conscientious and laborious in the fulfilment of
public duties, blameless in his official and private life. Evelyn
describes him as " a sober, wise, judicious and pondering person,
not illiterate beyond the rule of most noblemen in this age, very
well versed in English history and affairs, industrious, frugal,
methodical and every way accomplished " ; and declares he
was much deplored, few believing he had ever harboured any
seditious designs. 1 He married Lady Elizabeth Percy, daughter
of Algernon, loth earl of Northumberland, by whom, besides
a daughter, he had an only son Algernon (1670-1710), who suc-
ceeded him as 2nd earl of Essex.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. See the Lives in the Diet, of Nat. Biography and
in Biographia Britannica (Kippis), with authorities there collected;
Essex's Irish correspondence is in the Stow Collection in the British
Museum, Nos. 200-217, and selections have been published in Letters
written by A rthur Capel, Earl of Essex ( 1 770) and in the Essex Papers
(Camden Society, 1890), to which can now be added the Calendars
of State Papers, Domestic, which contain a large number of his
letters and which strongly support the opinion of his contemporaries
concerning his unselfish patriotism and industry; see also Somers
Tracts (1813), x., and for other pamphlets relating to his death the
catalogue of the British Museum.
ESSEX, ROBERT DEVEREUX, 2ND 2 EARL OF (1566-1601),
son of the ist Devereux earl, was born at Netherwood, Hereford-
shire, on the i pth of November 1 566. He entered the university
of Cambridge and graduated in 1581. In 1585 he accompanied
his stepfather, the earl of Leicester, on an expedition to Holland,
and greatly distinguished himself at the battle of Zutphen.
He now took his place at court, where so handsome a youth
soon found favour with Queen Elizabeth, and in consequence
was on bad terms with Raleigh. In 1587 he was appointed
master of the horse, and in the following year was made general
of the horse and installed knight of the Garter. On the death
of Leicester he succeeded him as chief favourite of the queen, a
position which injuriously affected his whole subsequent life, and
ultimately resulted in his ruin. While Elizabeth was approach-
ing the mature age of sixty, Essex was scarcely twenty-one.
Though well aware of the advantages of his position, and some-
what vain of the queen's favour, his constant attendance on her
1 Diary and Corresp. (1850), ii. 141, 178.
1 i.e. in the Devereux line.
at court was irksome to him beyond all endurance; and when
he could not make his escape to the scenes of foreign adventure
after which he longed, he varied the monotony of his life at court
by intrigues with the maids o honour, He fought a duel with
Sir Charles Blount, a rival favourite of the queen, in which the
earl was disarmed and slightly wounded in the thigh.
In 1589, without the queen's consent, he joined the expedition
of Drake and Sir John Norris against Spain, but in June he
was compelled to obey a letter enjoining him at his " uttermost
peril " to return immediately. In 1 590 Essex married the widow
of Sir Philip Sidney, but in dread of the queen's anger he kept
the marriage secret as long as possible. When it was necessary
to avow it, her rage at first knew no bounds, but as the earl did
" use it with good temper," and " for her majesty's better
satisfaction was pleased that my lady should live retired in her
mother's house," he soon came to be " in very good favour."
In 1 591 he was appointed to the command of a force auxiliary to
one formerly sent to assist Henry IV. of France against the
Spaniards; but after a fruitless campaign he was finally recalled
from the command in January 1592. For some years after this
most of his time was spent at court, where he held a position of
unexampled influence, both on account of the favour of the
queen and from his own personal popularity. In 1596 he was,
after a great many " changes .pf humour " on the queen's part,
appointed along with Lord Howard of Effingham, Raleigh and
Lord Thomas Howard, to the command of an expedition, which
was successful in defeating the Spanish fleet, capturing and
pillaging Cadiz, and destroying 53 merchant vessels. It would
seem to have been shortly after this exploit that the beginnings
of a change in the feelings of the queen towards him came into
existence. On his return she chided him that he had not followed
up his successes, and though she professed great pleasure at
again seeing him in safety, and was ultimately satisfied that the
abrupt termination of the expedition was contrary to his advice
and remonstrances, she forbade him to publish anything in
justification of his conduct. She doubtless was offended at his
growing tendency to assert his independence, and jealous of his
increasing popularity with the people; but it is also probable
that her strange infatuation regarding her own charms, great
as it was, scarcely prevented her from suspecting either that his
professed attachment had all along been somewhat alloyed with
considerations of personal interest, or that at least it was now
beginning to cool. Francis Bacon, at that time his most intimate
friend, endeavoured to prevent the threatened rupture by
writing him a long letter of advice; and although perseverance
in a long course of feigned action was for Essex impossible,
he for some time attended pretty closely to the hints of his
mentor, so that the queen " used him most graciously." In
1597 he was appointed master of the ordnance, and in the
following year he obtained command of an expedition against
Spain, known as the Islands or Azores Voyage. He gained some
trifling successes, but as the Plate fleet escaped him he failed
of his main purpose; and when on his return the queen met
him with the usual reproaches, he retired to his- home at
Wanstead. This was not what Elizabeth desired, and although
she conferred on Lord Howard of Effingham the earldom of
Nottingham for services at Cadiz, the main merit of which was
justly claimed by Essex, she ultimately held out to the latter the
olive branch of peace, and condescended to soothe his wounded
honour by creating him earl marshal of England. That, never-
theless, the irritated feelings neither of Essex nor of the queen
were completely healed was manifested shortly afterwards in
a manner which set propriety completely at defiance. In a dis-
cussion on the appointment of a lore! deputy to Ireland, Essex,
on account of some taunting words of Elizabeth, turned his
back upon her with a gesture indicative not only of anger but of
contempt, and when she, unable to control her indignation,
slapped him on the face, he left her presence swearing that such
an insult he would not have endured even from Henry VIII.
In 1599, while Ulster was in rebellion under the earl of Tyrone,
the office of lieutenant and governor-general of Ireland was
conferred on Essex, and a large force put at his command.
ESSEX, EARLS OFESSEX, COUNTY OF
783
Ha campaign was an unsuccessful one, and by acting in various
ways in opposition to the commands of the queen and the
council, agreeing with Tyrone on a truce in September, and
suddenly leaving the post of duty with the object of privately
vindicating himself before the queen, he laid himself open to
charges more serious than that of mere incompetency. For
these misdemeanours he was brought in June 1600 before a
specially constituted court, deprived of all his high offices, and
ordered to live a prisoner in his own house during the queen's
pleasure. Chiefly through the intercession of Bacon his liberty
was shortly afterwards restored to him, but he was ordered not
to return to court. For some time he hoped for an improvement
in his prospects, but when he was refused the renewal of his
patent for sweet wines, hope was succeeded by despair, and
half maddened by wounded vanity, he made an attempt (Feb.
7, 1601) to incite a revolution in his behalf, by parading the
streets of London with 300 retainers, and shouting, " For the
queen! a plot is laid for my life! " These proceedings awakened,
however, scarcely any other feelings than mild perplexity and
wonder; and finding that hope of assistance from the citizens
was vain, he returned to Essex House, where after defending
himself for a short time he surrendered. After a trial in which
Bacon, who prosecuted, delivered a speech against his quondam
friend and benefactor, the bitterness of which was quite un-
necessary to secure a conviction entailing at least very severe
punishment he was condemned to death, and notwithstanding
many alterations in Elizabeth's mood, the sentence was carried
out on the 25th of February 1601.
FIWT was in person tall and well proportioned, with a counte-
nance which, though not strictly handsome, possessed, on account
of its bold, cheerful and amiable expression, a wonderful power
of fascination. He was a patron of literature, and himself a
poet. His carriage was not very graceful, but his manners are
said to have been " courtly, grave and exceedingly comely."
He was brave, chivalrous, impulsive, imperious sometimes with
his equals, but generous to all his dependants and incapable
of secret malice; and these virtues, which were innate and
which remained with him to the last, must be regarded as some-
what counterbalancing, in our estimation of him, the follies
and vices created by temptations which were exceptionally
strong.
See Hon. W. B. Devereux, Lives of tlie Earls of Essex (1853) ; and
Bacon and Essex, by E. A. Abbott (1877). Also the article BACON,
FRANCIS, and authorities there.'
ESSEX. ROBERT DEVEREUX, 3RD 1 EARL OF (1591-1646),
son of the preceding, was born in 1591. He was educated at
Eton and at Merlon College, Oxford. Shortly after the arrival
of James I. in London, Essex (whose title was restored, and the
attainder on his father removed, in 1604) was placed about the
prince of Wales, as a sharer both in his studies and amusements.
At the early age of fifteen he was married to Frances Howard,
daughter of the earl of Suffolk, but she was his wife only in name;
during his absence abroad (1607-1609) she fell in love with
Sir Robert Carr (afterwards earl of Somerset), "and on her charging
her husband with physical incapacity, the marriage was annulled
in 1613. A second marriage which he contracted in 1631 with
Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Paulet, also ended unhappily.
From 1620 to 1623 he served in the wars of the Palatinate, and
in 1625 he was vice-admiral of a fleet which made an unsuccessful
attempt to capture Cadiz. In 1639 he was lieutenant-general of
the army sent by Charles against the Scottish Covenanters;
but on account of the irresolution of the king no battle occurred,
and the army was disbanded at the end of the year. Essex
was discharged " without ordinary ceremony," and refused an
office which at that time fell vacant, " all which, "says Clarendon,
"wrought very much upon his rough, proud nature, and made
him susceptible of some impressions afterwards which otherwise
would not have found such easy admission." Having taken the
side of the parliament against Charles, he was, on the outbreak
of the civil war in 1642, appointed to the command of the parlia-
mentary army. At the battle of Edgehill he remained master
1 \jt. in the Devereux line.
of the field, and in 1643 he captured Reading, and relieved
Gloucester; but in the campaign of the following year, on
account of his hesitation to fight against the king in person,
nearly his whole army fell into the hands of Charles. In 1645,
on the passing of the self-denying ordinance, providing that no
member of parliament should hold a public office, he. resigned
his commission; but on account of his past services his annuity
of 10,000 was continued to him for life. He died on the I4th
of September 1646, of a fever brought on by over-exertion in a
stag-hunt in Windsor Forest; his line becoming extinct.
See the " Life of Robert Earl of Essex," by Robert Codrinsrton,
M.A., printed in Hart. Misc.; Clarendon's History of the Rebellion;
and Hon. W. B. Devereux, Lives of the Earls of Essex (1853).
ESSEX, WALTER DEVEREUX, IST EARL OF (1541-1576),
the eldest son of Sir Richard Devereux, was born in 1541. His
grandfather was the 2nd Baron Ferrers, who was created Viscount
Hereford in 1550 and by his mother was a nephew of Henry
Bourchier, a former earl of Essex. Walter Devereux succeeded
as 2nd Viscount Hereford in 1558, and in 1561 or 1562 married
Lettice, daughter of Sir Francis Knollys. In 1569 he served
as high marshal of the field under the earl of Warwick and Lord
Clinton, and materially assisted them in suppressing Uhe northern
insurrection. For his zeal in the service of Queen Elizabeth
on this and other occasions, he in 1572 received the Garter and
was created earl of Essex, the title which formerly belonged
to the Bourchier family. Eager to give proof of " his good
devotion to employ himself in the service of her majesty," he
offered on certain conditions to subdue and colonize, at his
own expense, a portion of the Irish province of Ulster, at that
time completely under the dominion of the rebel O'Neills, under
Sir Brian MacPhelim and Tirlogh Luineach, with the Scots under
their leader Sorley Boy MacDonnell. His offer, with certain
modifications, was accepted, and he set sail for Ireland in July
IS73, accompanied by a number of earls, knights and gentlemen,
and with a force of about 1200 men. The beginning of his
enterprise .was inauspicious, for on account ofa storm which
dispersed his fleet and drove some of his vessels as far as Cork
and the Isle of Man, his forces did not all reach the place of
rendezvous till late in the autumn, and he was compelled to
entrench himself at Belfast for the winter. Here, by sickness,
famine and desertions, his troops were diminished to little more
than 200 men. Intrigues of various sorts, and fighting of a
guerilla type, followed with disappointing results, and Essex
had difficulties both with the deputy Fitzwilliam and with the
queen. Essex was in straits himself, and his offensive movements
in Ulster took the form of raids and brutal massacres among the
O'Neills; in October 1574 he treacherously captured MacPhelim
at a conference in Belfast, and after slaughtering his attendants
had him and his wife and brother executed at Dublin. Elizabeth,
instigated apparently by Leicester, after encouraging Essex
to prepare to attack the Irish chief Tirlogh Luineach, suddenly
commanded him to "break off his enterprise"; but, as she
left him a certain discretionary power, he took advantage of
it to defeat Tirlogh Luineach, chastise Antrim, and massacre
several hundreds of Sorley Boy's following, chiefly women and
children, discovered hiding in the caves of Rathlin. He returned
to England in the end of 1575, resolved " to live henceforth an
untroubled life "; but he was ultimately persuaded to accept
the offer of the queen to make him earl marshal of Ireland. He
arrived in Dublin in September 1576, and three weeks afterwards
died of dysentery. There were suspicions that he had been
poisoned by Leicester, who shortly after his death married his
widow, but these were not confirmed by the post-mortem examina -
tion. The endeavours of Essex to better the condition of Ireland
were a dismal failure; and the massacres of the O'Neills and of
the Scots of Rathlin leave a dark stain on his reputation.
See Sidney Lee's article in the Diet. Nat. Biog.; Lives of the
Devereux Earls of Essex, by Hon. Walter B. Devereux (1853);
Froude's History of England, vol. x.; J. S. Brewer, Athenaeum
(1870), part i. pp. 261, 326.
ESSEX, an eastern county of England, bounded N. by Cam-
bridgeshire and Suffolk, E. by the North Sea, S. by the Thames,
1 i.e. in the Devereux line.
7 8 4
ESSEX, COUNTY OF
dividing it from Kent, W. by the administrative county of
London and by Hertfordshire. Its area is 1542 sq. m. Its
configuration is sufficiently indicated by the direction of its
rivers. Except that in the N.W. the county includes the heads
of a few valleys draining northward to the Cam and so to the
Great Ouse, all the streams, which are never of great size, run
southward and eastward, either into the Thames, or into the
North Sea by way of the broad, shallow estuaries which ramify
through the flat coast lands. The highest ground lies conse-
quently in the north-west, between the Cam basin and the rivers
of the county. Its principal southward extension is that between
the Lea (which with its tributary the Stort forms a great part
of the western boundary) and the Roding, and east of the Roding
valley. The other chief rivers may be specified according to
their estuaries, following the coast northward from Shoeburyness
at the Thames mouth. That of the Roach ramifies among several
islands of which Foulness is the largest, but its main branch
joins the Crouch estuary. Next follows the Blackwater, which
receives the Chelmer, the Brain and other streams. Following
a coast of numerous creeks and islets, with the large island of
Mersea, the Colne estuary is reached. The Colne and Black-
water may be said to form one large estuary, as they enter the
sea by a well-marked common mouth, 5 m. in width, between
Sales Point and Colne Point. There is a great irregular inlet
(Hamford Water) receiving no large stream, W. of the Naze
promontory, and then the Stour, bounding the county on the
north, joins its estuary to that of the Orwell near the sea. There
are several seaside watering-places in favour owing to their
proximity to London, of which Southend-on-Sea above the
mouth of the Thames, Clacton-on-Sea, Walton-on-the-Naze,
and Dovercourt adjoining Harwich are the chief. These and
other stations on the estuaries are also in favour with yachtsmen.
The sea has at some points seriously encroached upon the land
within historic times. The low soft cliffs at various points are,
liable to give way against the waves; in other parts dykes and
embankments are necessary to prevent inundation. Inland, that
is apart from the flat coast-district, the country is pleasantly
undulating and for the most part well wooded. It was formerly,
indeed, almost wholly forested, the great Waltham Forest
stretching from Colchester to the confines of London. Of this
a fragment is preserved in Epping Forest (see EPPING) between
the Lea and the Roding. On the other side of the Roding
Hainault Forest is traceable, but was disafforested in 1851.
The oak is the principal tree; a noteworthy example was that
of Fairlop in Hainault, which measured 45 ft. in girth, but was
blown down in 1820.
Geology. The geological structure of the county is very simple:
the greater part is occupied by the London clay with underlying
Reading beds and Thanet sands, with here and there small patches
of Bagshot gravels on elevated tracts, as at High Beech, Langdon
Hill, Brentwood and Rayleigh; and occasionally the same beds
are represented by the large boulder-like Sarsen stones on the lower
ground. In the north, the chalk, which underlies the Tertiary
strata over the whole county, appears at the surface and forms the
downs about Saffron Walden, Birdbrook and Great Yeldham; it
is brought up again by a small disturbance at Grays Thurrock where
it is quarried on a large scale for lime, cement and whiting. Small
patches of Pleistocene Red Crag rest upon the Eocene strata at
Beaumont and Oakley, and are very well exposed at Walton-on-
the-Naze where they are very fossiliferous. Most of the county is
covered by a superficial deposit of glacial drifts, sands, gravel and
in places boulder clay, as at Epping, Dunmow and Hornchurch
where the drift lies beneath the Thames gravel. An interesting
feature in relation to the glacial drift is a deep trough in the Cam
valley revealed by borings to be no less than 340 ft. deep at Newport ;
this ancient valley is filled with drift. In the southern part of the
county are broad spreads of gravel and brick earth, formed by the
Thames; these have been excavated for brick-making and building
purposes about Ilford, Romford and Grays, and have yielded the
remains of hippopotamus, rhinoceros and mammoth. More recent
alluvial deposits are found in the valley at Walthamstow and Tilbury,
in which the remains of the beaver have been discovered.
The roads of this county with a clay soil foundation were for
generations repaired with flints picked by women and children from
the surface of the fields. Gravel is difficult of access. With the
exception of chalk for lime (mainly obtained at Ballingdon in the
north and Grays in the south), septaria for making cement, and clay
for bricks, the underground riches of the county are meagre.
Agriculture. As an agricultural county Essex ranks high.
Some four-fifths of the total area is under cultivation, and
about one-third of that area is in permanent pasture. Wheat,
barley and oats, in that relative order, are the principal grain
crops, Essex being one of the chief grain-producing counties.
The wheat and barley are in particularly high favour, the wheat
of various standard species being exported for seed purposes,
while the barley is especially useful in malting. Beans and peas
are largely grown, as are vegetables for the London market.
Hop-growing was once important. From the comparative
dryness of the climate Essex does not excel in pasturage, and
winter grazing receives the more attention. The numbers of
cattle increase steadily, and store bullocks are introduced in
large numbers from Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Ireland and Wales.
Of sheep there are but few distinct flocks, and the numbers
decrease. Pigs are generally of a high-class Berkshire type.
Other Industries. The south-west of the county, being con-
tiguous to London, is very densely populated, and is the seat of
large and varied industries. For example, there are numbers
of chemical works, the extensive engine shops and works of the
Great Eastern railway at Stratford, government powder works
in the vicinity of Waltham Abbey, and powder stores at Purfleet
on the Thames. The extensive water-works for east London,
by the Lea near Walthamstow, may also be mentioned. The
docks at Plaistow and Tilbury on the Thames employ many
hands. Apart from this industrial district, there are consider-
able engineering works, especially for agricultural implements,
at Chelmsford, Colchester and elsewhere; several silk works,
as at Braintree and Halstead; large breweries, as at Brentwood,
Chelmsford and Romford; and lime and cement works at Grays
Thurrock. The oyster-beds of the Colne produce the famous
Colchester natives, and there are similar beds in the Crouch and
Roach, for which Burnham-on-Crouch is the centre; and in the
Blackwater (Maldon).
Communications. Railway communications are supplied
principally by the Great Eastern railway, of which the main line
runs by Stratford, Ilford, Romford, Brentwood, Chelmsford,
Witham, Colchester, and Manningtree. The Cambridge and
northern line of this company, following the Lea valley, does not
touch the county until it diverges along trie valley of the Stort.
The chief branches are those to Southend and Burnham, Witham
to Maldon, Colchesterto Brightlingsea, to Clactonand to Walton,
and Manningtree to Harwich, on the coast; and Witham to
Braintree and Bishop's Stortford, and Mark's Tey to Sudbury
and beyond, inland; while there are several branch- lines among
the manufacturing and residential suburbs in the south-west,
to Walthamstow and Buckhurst Hill, Chigwell, Loughton,
Epping, Ongar, &c. The London, Tilbury & Southend railway,
following the Thames, serves the places named, and the Colne
Valley railway runs from Chappel junction near Mark's Tey by
Halstead to Haverhill.
On the Thames, besides the great docks at Plaistow (Victoria
and Albert) and the deep-water docks at Tilbury, the principal
calling places for vessels are Grays, Purfleet and Southend,
while Barking on the Roding has also shipping trade, and the
Lea affords important water-connexions. Elsewhere, the prin-
cipal port is Harwich, at the mouth of the Stour, one of the chief
ports of England for European passenger traffic. Other towns
ranking as lesser estuarine ports are: Brightlingsea and Wivenhoe
on the Colne, forming a member of the Cinque Port of Sandwich;
Colchester, Maldon on the Blackwater, and Burnham-on-Crouch.
The Stour, Chelmer, and Lea and Stort are the principal navigable
inland waterways.
Population and Administration. The area of the ancient
county is 986,975 acres, with a population in 1891 of 785,445 and
in 1901 of 1,085,771. The area of the administrative county is
970,532 acres. The county contains nineteen hundreds. It
is divided into eight parliamentary divisions, and it also includes
the parliamentary boroughs of Colchester and West Ham, the
latter consisting of two divisions. Each of these returns one
member. The county divisions are Northern or Saffron
Walden, North-eastern or Harwich, Eastern or Maldon, Western
ESSEX, COUNTY OF
785
or Epping, Mid or Chelmsford, South-eastern, Southern or Rom-
ford, South-western or Walthamstow, returning one member
each. The municipal boroughs are Chelmsford (12,580),
C\.Uhester (38,373), East Ham (06,018), Harwich (10,070),
M.ildon(ss65), Saffron \Valden(s8o6),Southend-on-Sea(j8,8s7),
and one county borough, West Ham (267,358). The following
are the other urban districts Barking Town (21,547), Braintree
(5330), Brentwood (4932), Brightlingsea (4501), Buckhurst Hill
(4786), Burnham-on-Crouch (2919), Chingford (4373). Clacton
(7456), Epping (3789), Frinton-on-Sea (644), Grays Thurrock
(13.834). Halstead (6073), llford (41,234), Leigh-on-Sea (3667),
Ley ton (08,912), Lough ton (4730), Romford (13,656), Shoebury-
ness (4081), Waltham Holy Cross (6549), Walthamstow (95,131),
Walton-on-the-Naze (2014), Wanstcad (9179), Witham (3454),
Wivenhoe (2560), Woodford (13,798). Essex is in the South-
eastern circuit, and assizes are held at Chelmsford. The boroughs
of Harwich and Southend-on-Sea have separate commissions
of the peace, and the boroughs of Colchester, Maldon, Saffron
Walden and West Ham have, in addition, separate courts of
quarter sessions. The county is ecclesiastically within the
diocese of St Albans (with a small portion within that of Ely)
and is divided into two archdeaconries; containing 452 parishes
or districts wholly or in part. There are 399 civil parishes.
There is a military station and depot for recruits at Warley,
and a garrison at Tilbury. At Shoeburyness there are a school
of gunnery and an extensive ground for testing government
artillery of the largest calibre.
History (see also below under ESSEX, KINGDOM or). Essex
probably originated as a shire in the time of /Ethelstan. Accord-
ing to the Domesday Survey it comprised nineteen hundreds,
corresponding very closely in extent and in name with those of
the present day. The additional half-hundred of Thunreslan
on the Suffolk border has disappeared; Witbrictesherna is now
Dengie; and the liberty of Havering-atte-Bower appears to
have been taken out of Becontree. Essex and Hertfordshire
were under one sheriff until the time of Elizabeth. At the time
of the Survey Count Eustace held a vast fief in Essex, and the
court of the Honour of Boulogne was held at Witham. Bentry
Heath in Dagenham, Hundred Heath in Tendring and Castle
Hedingham in Hinckford were the meeting-places of their
respective hundreds. The stewardship of the forest of Essex
was held by the earls of Oxford until deprived of it for adherence
to the Lancastrian cause. In 1421 certain parts of Essex in-
herited by Henry V. from his mother were brought under the
jurisdiction of the duchy of Lancaster.
Essex was part of the see of London from the time of the
foundation of the bishopric in the 7th century. The arch-
deaconries are first mentioned in 1108; that of Essex extended
over the south of the county and in 1 291 included eight deaneries;
the north of the county was divided between the archdeaconries
of Middlesex and Colchester, comprising three and six deaneries
respectively. Colchester was constituted a suffragan bishopric
by Henry VIII. In 1836 Essex was transferred to the diocese
of Rochester, with the exception of nine parishes which remained
in London. In 1845 the archdeacon of Middlesex ceased to
exercise control in Essex, and the deaneries were readjusted.
In 1875 Essex was transferred to the newly created diocese of St
Albans, and in 1877 the archdeaconry of Essex was subdivided
into eighteen deaneries and that of Colchester into sixteen.
Owing to its proximity to the capital Essex was intimately
associated with all the great historical struggles. The nobility
of Essex took a leading part in the struggle for the charter, and
of the twenty-four guardians of the charter, four were Essex
barons. The castles of Plesbey, Colchester, and Hedingham
were held against the king in the Barons' War of the reign of
Henry III., and 5000 Essex men joined the peasant rising of
1381. During the Wars of the Roses the Lancastrian cause was
supported by the de Veres, while the Bourchiers and Lord
Filz-Walter were among the Yorkist leaders. Several Essex
lien were concerned in the Gunpowder Plot, and in the Civil
War of the I7th century the county rendered valuable aid to
the parliament.
After the Conquest no Englishman retained estates in Essex
of any importance, and the chief lay barons at the time of the
Survey were Geoffrey de Mandeville and Aubrey de Vere. The
de Veres, earls of Oxford, were continuously connected with tin-
county until the extinction of the title two centuries ago. Pleshey
was the stronghold of the Mandevilles, and, although the house
became extinct in 1 189, its descendants in the female line retained
the title of earls of Essex. The Honour of Hatfield Peverel
held by Ranulf Peverel after the Conquest escheated to the
crown in the reign of Henry I., and in the same reign the fief
of Robert Gernon passed to the house of Mount fichet.
Essex has always been mainly an agricultural county, and
the ordinary agricultural pursuits were carried on at the time
of the Domesday Survey, which also mentions salt-making,
wine-making, bee-culture and cheese-making, while the oyster
fisheries have been famous from the earliest historic times.
The woollen industry dates back to Saxon times, and for many
centuries ranked as the most important industry. Cloth-weaving
was introduced in the i.}th century, and in the i6th century
Colchester was noted for its " bays and says." Colchester also
possessed a valuable leather industry in the i6th century, at
which period Essex was considered an exceptionally wealthy
and prosperous county; Norden, writing in 1594, describes it
as " moste fatt, frutefull, and full of all profitable things."
The decline of the cloth industry in the i?th century caused
great distress, but a number of smaller industries began to take
its place. Saffron-culture and silk-weaving were extensively
carried on in the i7th century, and the i8th century saw the
introduction of the straw-plait industry, potash-making, calico-
printing, malting and brewing, and the manufacture of Roman
cement.
The county returned four members to parliament in 1200.
From 1295 it returned two members for the county and two.
for Colchester. Maldon acquired representation in 1331 and
Harwich in 1604. Under the Reform Act of 1832 the county
returned four members in four divisions. Under the Representa-
tion of the People Act of 1868 Maldon and Harwich each lost
one member, and the county returned six members in three
divisions.
Antiquities. It is supposed by many antiquaries that Saxon
masonry can be detected in the foundations of several of the
Essex churches, but, with the exception of Ashingdon church
tower, believed to have been erected by Canute after his victory
over Edmund Ironside, there is no obviously recognizable building
belonging to that period. This is probably to be in part ascribed
to the fact that the comparative scarcity of stone and the unusual
abundance of timber led to the extensive employment of the
latter material. Several of the Essex churches, as Blackmore,
Mountnessing, Margaret ting, and South Benfleet, have massive
porches and towers of timber; and St Andrew's church, Green-
stead, with its walls of solid oak, continues an almost unique
example of its kind. Of the four round churches in England
one is in Essex at Little Maplestead; it is both the smallest and
the latest. The churches of South Weald, Hadleigh, Blackmore,
Heybridge and Hadstock may be mentioned as containing
Norman work; with the church of Castle Hedingham for its fine
Transitional work; Southchurch, Danbury and Boreham as being
partly Early English; Ingatcstone, Stebbing and Tilty for
specimens of Decorated architecture; and Messing, Thaxted,
Saffron Walden, and the church of St Peter ad Vincula at the
small town of Coggeshall, near Colchester, as specimens of Per-
pendicular. Stained glass windows have left their traces in several
of the churches, the finest remains being those of Margatctting,
which represent a tree of Jesse and the daisy or herb Margaret.
Paintings have evidently been largely used for internal decora-
tion: a remarkable series, probably of the I2th century, but
much restored in the 14th, exists in the chancel of Copford
church; and in the church at Ingatestone there was discovered
in 1868 an almost unique fresco representation of the seven deadly
sins. The oldest brasses preserved in the county are those of
Sir William Fitz-Ralph at Pebmarsh, about 1323; Richard
of Beltown, at Corringham, 1340; Sir John Gifford, at Bowers
786
ESSEX, KINGDOM OF ESSLINGEN
Gifford, 1348; Ralph de Kneyton, at Aveley, 1370; Robert de
Swynbourne, at Little Horkesley, 1391; and Sir Ingelram de
Bruyn, at South Ockendon, 1400. The brass of Thomas Heron,
aged 14, at Little Ilford, though dating only from 1517, is of
interest as a picture of a schoolboy of the period. Ancient
wooden effigies are preserved at Danbury, Little , Leighs and
Little Horkesley.
Essex was rich in monastic foundations, though the greater
number have left but meagre ruins behind. The Benedictines
had an abbey at Saffron Walden, nunneries at Barking and
Wickes, and priories at Earl's or Monk's Colne and Castle
Hedingham; the Augustinian canons had an abbey at Waltham
(see WALTHAM ABBEY; the portion remaining shows Norman
work of the finest character), priories at Thoby, Blackmore,
Bicknacre, Little Leighs, Little Dunmow and St Osyth (see
BRIGHTLINGSEA); there were Cistercian abbeys at Coggeshall,
Stratford and Tilty; the Cluniac monks were settled at Prittie-
well, the Premonstratensians at Beleigh Abbey, and the Knights
Hospitallers at Little Maplestead. Barking Abbey is said to date
its first origin from the 7th century; most of the others arose in
the 1 2th and I3th centuries. Besides the keep at Colchester
there is a fine Norman castle at Castle Hedingham, and two
dilapidated round towers still stand at Hadleigh near Southend.
Ongar, the house of the de Lacys, and Pleshey, the seat of the
earls of Essex, have left only mounds. Havering-atte-Bower,
the palace that was occupied by many queens, is replaced by a
modern house; Wickham, the mansion of the bishops of London,
no longer stands. New Hall, which was successively occupied
by Henry VIII., Elizabeth, the earl of Essex, George Villiers,
duke of Buckingham, and Cromwell, is now a nunnery of the
order of the Holy Sepulchre. Audley End, the mansion of Lord
Braybrooke, is a noble example of the domestic architecture
of the Jacobean period; Layer Marney is an interesting proof
of the Italian influences that were at work in the time of Wolsey.
Horeham Hall was built by Sir John Cutt in the reign of Henry
VII., and Gosfield Hall is of about the same date.
' See Norden, Speculi Britanniae Pars: an Hist, and Geogr. Descrip.
of the County of Essex (1594) (edited for the Camden Society by Sir
Henry Ellis, 1840, from the original MS. in the Marquis of Salisbury's
library at Hatfield); Nicholas Tindal, Hist, of Essex (1720); N.
Salmon, The Hist, and Antiq. of Essex (London, 1740) based on the
collections of James Strangman of Hadleigh (v. Trans, of Essex A rch.
Soc. vol. ii.) ; P. Morant, Hist, and Antiq. of the County of Essex
(London, 1768) ; P. Muilman, New and Complete Hist, of Essex from
a late Survey, by a Gentleman (Chelmsford, 6 vols., 17701772,
London, 1779) ; Elizabeth Ogbourne, Hist, of Essex (London, part i.,
1814); Excursions through Essex, illustrated with one hundred en-
gravings (2 vols., London, 1818) ; T. Wright, Hist, and Topography
of Essex (1831); W. Berry, Pedigrees of Families in Essex (1841);
A. Suckling, Memorials of the Antiquities, &c., of the County of Essex
(London, 1845); W. Andrews (ed.), Bygone Essex (London, 1892);
J. T. Page (ed.), Essex in the Days of Old (London, 1898); Victoria
County History, Essex; Transactions of the Essex Arch. Soc. from
1858. An account of various MS. collections connected with the
county is given by H. W. King in vol. ii. of the Transactions (1863).
ESSEX, KINGDOM OF, one of the kingdoms into which
Anglo-Saxon Britain was divided, properly the land of the East
Saxons. Of its origin and early history we have no record except
the bare statement of Bede that its settlers were of the Old Saxon
race. In connexion with this it is interesting to notice that the
East Saxon dynasty claimed descent from Seaxneat, not Woden.
The form Seaxneat is identical with Saxnot, one of three gods
mentioned in a short continental document probably of Old
Saxon origin. Bede does not mention this kingdom in his narra-
tive until 604, the year of the consecration of Mellitus to the see
of London. The boundaries of Essex were in later times the
rivers Stour and Thames, but the original limits of the kingdom
are quite uncertain ; towards the west it probably included most
if not the whole of Hertfordshire, and in the 7th century the
whole of Middlesex. In 604 we find Essex in close dependence
upon Kent, being ruled by Saberht, sister's son of .lEthelberht,
under whom the East Saxons received Christianity. The three
sons of Saberht, however, expelled Mellitus from his see, and even
after their death in battle against the West Saxons, Eadbald of
Kent was unable to restore him. In the year 653 we find North-
umbrian influence paramount in Essex, for King Sigeberht at the
instance of Oswio became a Christian and received Cedd, the
brother of St Chad, in his kingdom as bishop, Tilbury and
Ythanceastere (on the Blackwater) being the chief scenes of his
work. Swithhelm, the successor of Sigeberht, was on terms of
friendship with the East Anglian royal house, King ^Ethelwald
being his sponsor at his baptism by Cedd. It was probably
about this time that Erconwald, afterwards bishop of London,
founded the monastery of Barking. Swithhelm's successors
Sigehere and Sebbe were dependent on Wulfhere, the powerful
king of Mercia, who on the apostasy of Sigehere sent Bishop
Jaruman to restore the faith. There are grounds for believing
that an East Saxon conquest of Kent took place in this reign.
A forged grant of Ceadwalla speaks of the fall of Kent before
Sigehere as a well-known event; and in a Kentish charter dated
676 a king of Kent'called Swebhard grants land with the consent
of his father King Sebbe. In 692 or 694 Sebbe abdicated and
received the monastic vows from Waldhere, the successor of
Erconwald at London. His sons Sigeheard and Swefred suc-
ceeded him as kings of Essex, Sigehere being apparently dead.
As the laws of Ine of Wessex speak of Erconwald as " my
bishop," it is possible that the influence of Wessex for a short
time prevailed in Essex; but a subsequent charter of Swefred
is approved by Coenred of Mercia, and Off a, the son of Sigeheie,
accompanied the same king to Rome in 709. From this time
onwards the history of Essex is almost a blank. In 743 or
745 /Ethelbald of Mercia is found granting privileges at the port
of London, and perhaps the western portion of the kingdom had
already been annexed, for henceforward London is frequently
the meeting-place of the Mercian council. The violent death of
Selred, king of Essex, is mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle under
the year 746; but we have no more information of historical
importance until the defeat of the Mercian king Beornwulf in
825, when Essex, together with Kent, Sussex and Surrey, passed
into the hands of Ecgbert, king of Wessex. After 825 -we hear
of no more kings of Essex, but occasionally of earls. About the
year 870 Essex passed into the hands of the Danes and was left
to them by the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum. It was
reconquered by Edward the Elder. The [earldom in the loth
century apparently included several other counties, and its
most famous holder was the ealdorman Brihtnoth, who fell at
the battle of Maldon in 991.
The following is a list of kings of Essex of whom there is record :
Saberht (d. c. 617); three sons of Saberht, including probably
Saweard and Seaxred; Sigeberht (Parvus); Sigeberht II.;
Swithhelm (d. c. 664); Sigehere (reigned perhaps 664-689);
Sebbe, son of Seaxred (664-694); Sigeheard (reigning in 693-
694); Swefred (reigning in 693-694 and in 704); the two last
being sons of Sebbe; Swebriht (d. 738); Selred (d. 746);
Swithred, grandson of Sigeheard (succ. 746); Sigeric, son of
Selered (abd. 798); Sigered, son of Sigeric (reigning in 823).
See Bede, Hist. Eccl., edited by C. Plummer (Oxford, 1896), ii. 3, 5 ;
Saxon Chronicle (Earle and Plummer, Oxford, 1899), s.a. 823, 894,
904, 913, 921, 994; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, Rolls Series
(ed. Stubbs, 1887-1889); Simeon of Durham, s.a. 746 (ed. T. Arnold,
1882) and appendix, s.a. 738; Florence of Worcester (ed. B. Thorpe,
London, 1848-1849); H. Sweet, Oldest English Texts, p. 179
(London, 1885). (F. G. M. B.)
ESSLINGEN, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Wurttem-
berg, in a fertile district on the Neckar, 9 m. S.E. from Stuttgart,
on the railway to Ulm. Pop. (1905) 29,750. It is surrounded
by medieval walls with towers and bastions, and has thirteen
suburbs, one lying on an island in the river. On a commanding
height above the town lies the old citadel. The inner town has
an old (1430) and a new Rathaus, the latter, formerly a palace,
an exceedingly handsome edifice. The church of Our Lady
(Frauenkirche) is a fine Gothic building of the isth century, and
has a beautifully sculptured doorway and a lattice spire 240 ft.
high. The church of St Dionysius dated from the I3th century,
and possesses a fine screen and a ciborium of 1486. Esslingen
possesses several schools, a theatre and a richly endowed hospital,
while its municipal archives contain much valuable literature
bearing especially on the period of the Reformation. The town
ESTABLISHMENT
787
has railway, machine and electrical works; doth, gloves and
buttons are also manufactured here, and there are spinning-mills.
There is a large lithographic establishment, and a consider-
able trade is done in wine and fruit, the wines of Esslingen being
very famous.
Esslingen, which dates from the 8th century, became a
town in 886. It was soon a place of importance; it became a
free imperial city in 1209 and was surrounded with walls by
order of the emperor Frederick II. Its liberty was frequently
threatened by the rulers of WUrttembcrg, but it did not become
part of that country until 1802.
See K. H. S. Pfaff. Ceschiekte der Rritttsstadt Esslingen (Esslingen,
1852) ; and Strohmfcld, Esslinftn in Wort und Bild (Esslingen, 1902).
ESTABLISHMENT (O. Fr. cstablusement, Fr. ttablissement,
late Norm. Fr. eslabliskemeni, from O. Fr. tstablir, Fr. fUiblir,
Lat. sUMlire, to make stable), generally the act of establishing
or fact of being established, and so by transference a thing
established. Thus we may speak of the establishment (i.e.
setting up) of a business, the "long establishment " of a business,
and of the manager of " the establishment." In a special sense
the word is applied, with something of all the three above-
mentioned connotations, to certain religious bodies in their
relation to the state. It is with this latter that the present
article is concerned.
Perhaps the best definition which can be given, and which
will cover all cases, is that establishment implies the existence
of some definite and distinctive relation between the state and a
religious society (or conceivably more than one) other than that
which is shared in by other societies of the same general char-
acter. Of course, a certain relationship must needs exist between
the state and every society, religious or secular, by virtue of the
sovereignty of the state over each and all of its members. Every
society must possess certain principles or perform certain acts,
and the state may make the profession of such principles unlawful,
or impose a penalty upon the performance of such acts; and,
moreover, every society is liable before the law as to the fulfilment
of its obligations towards its members and the due administration
of its property should it possess any. With all this establishment
has nothing to do. It is not concerned with what pertains to
the religious society qua society, or with what is common to
all religious societies, but with what is exceptional. It denotes
any special connexion with the state, or privileges and responsi-
bilities before the law, possessed by one religious society to the
exclusion of others; in a word, establishment is of the nature
of a monopoly. But it does not imply merely privilege. The
state and the Church have mutual obligations towards one
another: each is, to some extent, tied by the existence of this
relationship, and each accepts the limitations for the sake of
the advantages which accrue to itself. The state does so in
view of what it believes to be the good of all its members; for
" the true end for which religion is established is not to provide
for the true faith, but for civil utility " (Warburton), even if
the latter be held to be implied in the former. On the other
hand, the Church accepts these relations for the facilities which
they involve, i.e. for its own benefit. It will be seen that this
definition excludes, and rightly, many current presuppositions.
Establishment affirms the fael, but does not determine the
precise nature, of the connexion between the state and the
religious society. It does not tell us, for example, when or how
it began, whether it is the result of an unconscious growth (as
with the Galilean Church previous to the French Revolution),
or of a determinate legislative act (as with the same Church
re-established by the Concordat of 1801). It does not tell us
whether an endowment of the religious society by the state
is included; what particular privileges are enjoyed by the
religious society; and what limitations are placed upon the
free exercise of its life. These things can only be ascertained
by actual inquiry; for the conditions are precisely similar in no
two cases.
To proceed to details. At the present day there is no estab-
lished religion in the United States, the German empire as a
whole, Holland, Belgium, France and Austria-Hungary (saving,
indeed, " the rights of the sovereign arising from ecclesiastical
dignity " ') ; whereas there are religious establishments in
Russia, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Prussia, 1 Spain,
Portugal and even in Italy, as well as in England and Scotland.
These, however, differ greatly amongst themselves. In Russia
the " Orthodox Catholic Eastern " is the state religion. The
emperor is, by the fundamental laws of the empire, "the sovereign
defender and protector of the dogmas of the dominant faith,
who maintains orthodoxy and holy discipline within the Church,"
although, of course, he cannot modify either its dogmas or its
outward order. Further, " the autocratic (i.e. imperial) power
acts in the ecclesiastical administration by means of the Most
Holy Ruling Synod, created by if"; and all the officers of
the Church are appointed by it. The enactments of the Synod
do not become law till they have received the emperor's sanction,
and are then published, not in its name but in his; and a large
part of the revenues of the Church is derived from state subsidies.
In Greece " the dominant religion ('H brucparoGaa 0/njoxeia)
is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ "; and although
toleration is otherwise complete, no proselytism from the Church
of Greece is allowed. The king swears to protect it, but no
powers pertain to him with regard to it such as those which the
tsar enjoys; the present king is not a member of it, but his
successors must be. In Sweden, Lutheranism was adopted
as the state religion by the synod of Upsala (Upsaia mote) in
1593, and the king must profess it. The " Lutheran Protestant
Church " retains an episcopal order, and is supported out of
its own revenues. Archbishops and bishops are chosen by the
king out of those names submitted to him, and he also nominates
to royal peculiars. The ecclesiastical law (Kyrkolag), first
constituted in 1686, is part of the law of the state, but may not
be modified or abrogated without consent of a General
Synod; and although ad interim interpretations of that law
may be given by the king on the advice of the Supreme Court,
since 1866 these have been subject to review and rejection
by the next General Synod. In Norway the " Evangelical-
Lutheran" is the " official religion," but the Church is supported
by the state, its property having been secularized. It is also
more subject to the king, who by the constitution is to " regulate
all that concerns divine service and the clergy," and to see that
the prescribed order is carried out. It is much the same in
Denmark, where, however, the " Evangelical-Lutheran Church "
has since the fundamental constitutional law of the $th of June
1849 been officially described as the National Church (Folkekirche)
instead of the State Church (Stalskirche) as formerly, and the
constitution provides for its regulation by further legislation,
which has not yet been passed. For Prussia, see under that
heading; it need only be added that self-government still tends
to increase, but that the emperor William II. has exercised
his office as summits episcopus more freely than most of his
predecessors. In Spain the " Catholic, Apostolic and Roman "
religion is that of the state, " the nation binds itself to maintain
its worship and its ministers," and the rites of any other religion
are only permitted in private. The patriarch of the Indies and
the archbishops are senators by right, and the king may nominate
others from amongst the bishops; only laymen may sit in
the chamber of deputies. Convents were suppressed, and their
property confiscated, in 1835 and 1836; in 1859 the remaining
ecclesiastical property was exchanged for untransferable govern-
ment securities and the support of the clergy of the State Church
is assured by an unrepealed law previous to the present constitu-
tion. In Portugal it is much the same, but all the home bishops
1 In effect this involves the establishment of all religious de-
nominations, for none can exist without the express authorization
of the state, and all arc subject to more or less interference on its
part. Thus the emperor-king is, in his capacity of head of the state,
technically " bishop " of the Evangelical Church, the constitution
of which was fixed by an imperial patent in 1866 and modified
by another in 1891 (see Herzog-Hauck, Realcncykl. ed. 1904, s.
" Osterreich "). [ED.)
* Also in the other German Protestant states. The relations of
the Roman Catholic Church with the various governments are
settled by separate concordats with the papacy (see CONCORDAT).
y88
ESTABLISHMENT
sit in the upper chamber as peers (Pares do Reino) by right,
and there is no restriction on membership of the chamber of
deputies. A more important point is that the king confers all
ecclesiastical benefices and nominates the bishops, instead of
their being chosen, as in Spain, by agreement between the civil
power and the papacy. In Italy, in spite of the feud between
the papacy and the civil power, the fact remains that, by the
Statute fondamentale, " the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman
religion is the sole religion of the state," and the king may
nominate " archbishops and bishops of the state " to be senators.
The Legge suite prerogative del Summo Ponlifice, &c., or " Law
of Guarantees," by which the papal prerogatives are secured,
has been declared by the Council of State to be a fundamental
law; and while many civil restrictions upon the activities of the
Church are removed by it, outside Rome and the suburbicarian
dioceses the royal exequatur is still required before a bishop
is installed. Moreover, the bulk of Church property having
been secularized, the Italian clergy receive a stipend from the
state.
Establishment is, of course, a distinctively English term, but
it implies precisely the same thing as " Staatsreligion " or " eplise
dominante " does elsewhere, neither more nor less.
Ch "f^! t It denotes the existence of a special relationship be-
antl State . . . . ,, . .
in Hritain. tween Church and state without denning its precise
nature. The statement that the Church of England
or the Scottish Kirk is " established by law " denotes that it has
a peculiar status before the law; but that is all. (a) There is no
basis whatever for the once popular assumption that the word
" established " as applied to the Church means " created," or
the like; on the contrary, the modern use of the word in this
sense is a misleading perversion. To establish is to make firm
or stable; and a thing cannot be established unless it is already
in existence. A few examples will make it clear that this is the
true sense of the word, and that in which it is used here.
" Stablish the thing, O God, that thou hast wrought in us "
(Ps. Ixviii. 28, P.B.; A.V. and R.V. "strengthen") implies
that the thing is already wrought; it could not be " stablished "
else. " Stablish your hearts " (Jas. v. 8) implies that the hearts
are already in existence. " Until he had her settled in her raine
With safe assuraunce and establishment " (Faerie Queene, v.
xi. 35) would have been impossible unless the reign had already
begun. This is the meaning of the words in many Tudor acts of
parliament, " be it enacted, ordained and established," or the
like (21 Hen. VIII. c. i; 27 Hen. VIII. c. 28, s. 9; 28 Hen.
VIII. c. 13 [Ireland]; 28 Hen. VIII. c. 18 [Ireland]; 33 Hen.
VIII. c. 27; i Eliz. c. i, ss. 15, 17; i Eliz. c. 4, s. 4); that
which is then and there enacted is to be valid for the future.
(b) Nor is it necessarily implied that establishment is a process
completed once for all. Every law touching the Church slightly
alters its conditions; everything that affects the relations of
Church and state may be regarded as a measure of establishment
or the reverse. When the two Houses of Parliament, in an
address to William III. after his coronation, spoke of their pro-
posed measures of toleration, the king said in his reply, " I do
hope that the ease which you design to Dissenters will contribute
very much to the establishment of the Church " (Cobbett, Parl.
Hist. v. 218). And Defoe (in 1702) published an ironical tract
with the title, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, or Proposals
for the Establishment of the Church, ^(c) Nor is it necessarily implied
that there was any specific time at which establishment took
place. Such may indeed be the case, as with the Kirk in Scotland;
but it certainly cannot be said that the English Church was
established at any particular time, or by any particular legislative
act. There were, no doubt, periods when the existing relations
between Church and state were modified or re-defined, notably
in the i6th and I7th centuries; but the relations themselves
are far older. In fact, they existed from the very first: the
English Church and state grew up side by side, and from the
beginning they were in close relations with one another. But
although the state of things which it represented was there from
the first, the term " established " or " established by law " only
came into use at a later date. Until there was some other religious
society to be compared with it such a distinctive epithet would
have had no point. As, however, there arose religious societies
which had no status before the law, it became more natural; and
yet more so when the formularies of the Church came to be
" established " by civil sanctions (the Books of Common Prayer
by 5 and 6 Edw. VI. c. i, s. 4, &c.; the Articles by 13 Eliz. c. 12;
the new Ordinal by 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 4, title). Accordingly
the Church itself came to be spoken of as established by law;
first, it would seem, in the Canons of 1604, and subsequently
in many statutes (Act of Settlement, 6 Anne, c. 8 and c. n, &c.).
In all such cases the Church is described as already established,
not as being established by the particular canon or statute.
In other words, the constitutional status of the Church is affirmed,
but nothing is said as to how it arose.
The legislative changes of the i6th and i7th centuries brought
" estabh'shment " into greater prominence and greatly modified
its conditions, but a' moment's thought will show that it did not
begin then. If, e.g., all post-Reformation ecclesiastical statutes
were non-existent, the relations between Church and state would
be very different, but there would still be an " establishment."
The bishops would sit in the House of Lords, the clergy would
tax themselves in convocation, the Church courts would possess
coercive jurisdiction, and so on. The present relations of Church
and state in England may be briefly summed up as follows:
(1) The personal relation of the crown to the Church, including (a)
restraints upon the action of convocation (formulated by 25
Hen. VIII. c. 19); (b) nomination of bishops, &c. (25 Hen. VIII.
c. 20); (c) power of supervision as visitor, long disused (26
Hen. VIII. c. i; i Eliz. c. i, s. 17); (d) power of receiving
appeals as the fount of civil justice (25 Hen. VIII. c. 19, &c.).
In connexion with these, it must be borne in mind that (a) the
holder of the crown receives coronation from the church and
takes an oath having reference to it (i Will. III. c. 6), and (b)
the crown is held on the condition of communion with the Church
of England (Act of Settlement; the conditions of communion are
laid down in the Prayer Book, which itself is sanctioned by law).
(2) The relation of the Church to the crown in parliament. No change
has been permitted in its doctrine or formularies without the
sanction of an act of parliament. (3) Privileges of the Church and
clergy. Of these may be mentioned (a) the coercive jurisdiction
of the Church courts; (b) the right of bishops to sit in the House
of Lords. It need hardly be said that establishment in England
does not include an endowment of the Church by the state.
Nothing of the kind ever took place on any large scale, and the
grants for Church purposes in the i8th century are comparable
with the regium donum to Nonconformists.
The position of the Church of Ireland until its disestablishment
(see below) was not dissimilar. With Scotland the case is different.
The establishment of the Kirk was an entirely new process,
carried out by a more or less definite series of legislative and ad-
ministrative acts. The Convention of Estates which met at
Edinburgh in 1 560 ordered the drawing up of a new Confession
of Faith , which was done in four days by a committee of preachers,
and on the 24th of August it passed three acts, one abolishing the
pope's authority and all jurisdiction of Catholic prelates, another
repealing the old statutes in favour of the Old Church, the third
forbidding the celebrating and hearing of mass under penalty of
imprisonment, exile and death. The intention was to make a
clean sweep of the Old Church, which was denounced as
"the Kirk Malignant." 1 The new model thus set up was
confirmed by the Scottish act of 1567, c. 6, which declared it
to be " the onely true and halie kirk of Jesus Christ within this
realme." Again, after the revolution of 1688 had put an end
to the attempts of the Stuart kings to impose the episcopal model
on Scotland, by theact of 1690, c. 5, the crown and estates " ratifie
and establish the Confession of Faith, ... as also they do es-
tablish, ratifie and confirm the Presbyterian government and
1 Andrew Lang, Hist, of Scotland, ii. p. 75 ff. Compare with this
the position of the reformers generally in England, where even so
stout a Puritan as William Harrison (Description of England, I57O)
does not dream of separating the organic life of the Church of Eng-
land from that of the pre-Reformation Church. (Ed.).
ESTABLISHMENT OF A PORT ESTATE
789
discipline." The " Act of Security " of 1703. as incorporated
in the Act of Union 1706, speaking of it " as now by law estab-
lished," says that " Her Majesty . . . doth hereby establish and
confirm " it, and finally declares this act, " with the Establishment
therein contained," to be " a fundamental and essential condition
of the Union." Nevertheless, the conditions of establishment
in the Scottish Kirk are much easier than those of the Church of
England. It is bound by the statutes sanctioning its doctrine
and order, but within these limits its legislative and judicial free-
dom is unimpaired. A royal commissioner is present at the
meetings of the general assembly, but he need not be a member
of the Kirk; and there is no constitutional tie between the
crown and the Kirk such as there is in England. There is what
may accurately be described as a state endowment, the bulk of
the property of the Old Church having been conferred upon
the Scottish Kirk.
Not unnaturally the organization of Anglican Churches in the
colonies was followed in some cases by their establishment,
which included endowment. It was so, for example,
in the East and West Indies; and the disestablishment
of the West Indian Church in 1868 was followed, in
1873. *>y a re-establishment of the Church in Barbados by the
colonial legislature. India is the only other part of the empire
(outside Great Britain) in which there is to-day a religious
establishment.
IHsntjblishmfnt is in theory the annulling of establishment ;
but since an established Church is usually rich, disestablishment
generally includes disendowment, even where there
is no state endowment of religion. It is, in short, the
abrogation of establishment, coupled with such a
confiscation of Church property as the state thinks good in the
interests of the community. The disestablishment of the West
Indian Church in 1868 has already been referred to; in 1869 the
Irish Church Disestablishment Bill was passed. Private bills
relating to Scotland have more than once been brought forward.
In 1895 the Liberal government introduced a suspensory bill,
intended as the preliminary step towards disestablishing and
disendowing the Church in Wales; it was withdrawn, however, in
the same session, and the question of Welsh disestablishment
slumbered until in 1906 a royal commission was appointed by
the Liberal government to inquire into the subject, and in 1909
a bill was introduced on much the same lines as in 1895.
The civ of the Irish Church will illustrate the process of dis-
establishment, although, of course, the precise details would vary
in other cases. The Irish Ohurch Act was passed in 1869 by
Gladstone's first government, after considerable opposition,
and provided that from January i, 1871, the union created by
statute between the Churches of England and Ireland should be
dissolved, and the Church of Ireland should " cease to be estab-
lished by Uw." Existing ecclesiastical corporations were dis-
solved, and their rights ceased, compensation being given to all
individuals and their personal precedence being secured for life.
All rights of patronage, including those of the crown, were
abolished, with compensation in the case of private patrons;
and the archbishops and bishops ceased to have the right of
summons to the House of Lords. All laws restraining the freedom
of action of the Church were repealed; the ecclesiastical law,
however, to subsist by way of contract amongst the members
of the Church (until altered by a representative body) . Provision
was made for the incorporation by charter of the representative
body of the Church, should such a body be found, with power to
hold landed property. All existing ecclesiastical property was
vested in a commission, which was to give compensation for life
interests, to transfer to the new representative body the churches,
glebe nouses, and 500,000 in compensation for endowments
by private persons since 1660, and to hold the rest for such
purposes as parliament might thereafter determine.
AUTHOMTIM. F. R. Dareste, Let Constitutions modernes (fan*
1801); H. Geffcken, Church and Stale, trans, by E. F. Taylor
(London. 1877): P. Schaff, Church and State in the United States
(Papers of the American Hirt. Association, vol. ii. No. 4). (New York
18M); L. Minghrtti. SlatoeChiesa (Milan. 1878), French translation
with Introd. by E. de Lavekye (ParU, 1882) ; C. Cadorna, Reltfione
diritto, liberta (Milan, 1893); F. Nippold, Die Theorie der Trennung
von Kircke and Stoat (Bern, 1881); W. Warburton, Alliance between
Church and State (London, 1741) (Works, vol. iv., ed. Hurd, London,
1788); Church Problems (ed. by H. H. Henson) (London, 1900);
ssays on " Establishment " and " Disendowment "; W. R. Anson,
'MW and Custom of the Constitution, vol. ii. chap. ix. ^Oxford. 1892);
'hillimore, Ecclesiastical Law (London, 1895); L S. Brewer. En-
dowments and Establishment of the Church ofEnftand (cd. by L. T
Dibdin, London, 1885); A. T. Inncs, Law of Creeds in Scotland
(Edinburgh, 1867); E. A. Freeman, Disestablishment and Dis-
by L Ayral. (W. E. Co.)
ESTABLISHMENT OF A PORT, the technical expression for
the time that elapses between the moon's transit across the
meridian at new or full moon at a given place and the time of
ligh water at that place. The interval (constant at any one place)
may vary from 6 mins. (Harwich) to n hrs. 45 mins. (North
Foreland). At London Bridge it is i hr. 58 mins. (See also TIDE.)
ESTAING, CHARLES HECTOR, COMTK i>' (1729-1794),
French admiral, was born at the chateau of Ruvcl, Auvergne,
in 1729. He entered the army as a colonel of infantry, and in
1757 he accompanied count de Lally to the East Indies, with the
rank of brigadier-general. In 1759 he was made prisoner at the
siege of Madras, but was released on parole. Before the ratifica-
tion of his exchange he obtained command of some vessels, and
conducted various naval attacks against the English ; and having,
on his return to France in 1760, fallen accidentally into their
hands, he was, on the ground of having broken his parole, thrown
into prison at Portsmouth, but as the charge could not be
properly substantiated he was soon afterwards released. In 1 763
he was named lieutenant-general in the navy, and in 1777 vice-
admiral; and in 1778 he obtained the command of a fleet intended
to assist the United States against Great Britain. He sailed on
the I3th of April, and between the nth and the 22nd of July,
blockaded Howe at Sandy Hook, but did not venture to attack
him, though greatly superior in force. In concert with the
American generals, he planned an attack on Newport, preparatory
to which he compelled the British to destroy some war vessels
that were in the harbour; but before the concerted attack
could take place, he put to sea against the English fleet, under
Lord Howe, when owing to a violent storm, which arose suddenly
and compelled the two fleets to separate before engaging in battle,
many of his vessels were so shattered that he found it necessary
to put into Boston for repairs. He then sailed for the West I ndies
on the 4th of November. After a feeble attempt to retake
Santa Lucia from Admiral Barrington, he captured St Vincent
and Grenada. On the 6th of July 1779 he fought a drawn battle
with Admiral John Byron, who retired to St Christopher.
Though superior in force, D'Estaing would not attack the English
in the roadstead, but set sail to attack Savannah. All his attempts,
as well as those of the Americans, against the town were repulsed
with heavy loss, and he was finally compelled to retire. He
returned to France in 1780. He was in command of the com-
bined fleet before Cadiz when the peace was signed in 1783; but
from that time his chief attention was devoted to politics. In
1787 he was elected to the assembly of the notables; in 1789 he
was appointed commandant of the national guard; and in 1792
he was chosen admiral by the National Assembly. Though in
favour of national reform he continued to cherish a strong feeling
of loyalty to the royal family, and on the trial of Marie Antoinette
in 1793 bore testimony in her favour. On this account, and
because of certain friendly letters which had passed between him
and the queen, he was himself brought to trial, and was executed
on the 28th of April 1794.
See Marins et soldats franc/tis en Amtrigue, by the Viscomte de
Noailles (1903); Bcatson, Naval and Military Memoirs of Great
Britain, vol. v.
ESTATE (through O. Fr. estat, mod. flat, from Lat. status,
state, condition, position, stare, to stand), the state or condition
in which a man lives, now chiefly used poetically and in such
phrases as "man's estate," or "of high estate"; "state"
has superseded most of the uses of the word except ( i ) in property
and (2) in constitutional law.
790
ESTATE
1. In the law of property the word is employed in several
senses. In the widest sense a man's estate comprises his entire
belongings; so much of it as consists of land and certain other
interests associated therewith is his " real estate "; the rest
is his " personal estate." The word is more particularly applied
to interests in land, and in popular and general use " an estate "
means the land itself. The strict technical meaning of "an
estate " is an interest in lands, and this conception lies at the
root of the English theory of property in land. " The first
thing that the student has to do," says Joshua Williams (Law of
Real Property), " is to get rid of the idea of absolute ownership.
Such an idea is quite unknown to the English law. No man is
in law the absolute owner of lands. He can only hold an estate
in them." That is, the notion of tenure, of holding by a tenant
from a lord, prevails. The last lord of all from whom all land
was ultimately held was the king. Persons holding directly
from the king and granting to others were the king's tenants
in capile, and were the mesne lords of their tenants.
Estates in land may be classified according to (i) the quantity
of their interest or duration, (2) the time of enjoyment, and
(3) the number and connexion of the tenants. According to
(i), an estate may be either a freehold of inheritance or a freehold
not of inheritance. A freehold of inheritance may be (a) an
estate in fee simple, which is the largest estate a man can hold
in English law, and comes close to the idea of absolute ownership,
repudiated by Williams; an estate in fee simple is inheritable
by a man's heirs generally, he has full powers of disposition
over it, and may alienate the whole or part, (b) It may also be
in limited fees, which are again subdivided into (i.) qualified or
base fee, (ii.) fee conditional, so called at the common law,
afterwards, on the passing of the statute De Donis Conditionalibus,
fee tail, which may be general as to the heirs of a man's body,
or special, as to the heirs male (or female) of his body. A freehold
not of inheritance may be either (i) conventional, as an estate
for life, which may be either an estate for one's own life or
for the life of another (pur autre vie); (2) legal, or created by
operation of law, as tenancy in tail after possibility of issue
extinct (i.e. where an estate is given to a man and the heirs of
his body by his present wife, and the wife dies without issue,
the husband becomes tenant in tail after possibility of issue
extinct); tenancy by curtesy (see CURTESY); tenancy in dower
(see DOWER).
Estates not of freehold or less than freehold are subdivided
into (i.) estates for years (often called estates for a term of
years, the instrument creating it being termed a lease or demise,
and the estate itself a leasehold interest); (ii.) estates at will,
that is, where lands or tenements are let by one man to another
to have and to hold at the will of the lessor; (iii.) estates at
sufferance, where one comes into possession of land under a
lawful title, and continues in possession after his title has
determined.
According to (2), estates are either in possession or in expect-
ancy. Estates in expectancy are either (a) in remainder, which
may be vested or contingent, or (b) in reversion (see REMAINDER,
REVERSION).
According to (3), estates may be either (i.) in severalty, that
is, the holding of an estate by a person in his own right only,
without any other person being joined or connected with
him in point of interest therein; (ii.) estates in joint tenancy
(see JOINT); (iii.) coparcenary (?..); and (iv.) tenancy in
common, where two or more hold the same land, by several
and distinct titles, but with unity of possession. (See also REAL
PROPERTY.)
2. In constitutional law an estate is an order or class having
a definite share as such in the body politic, and participating
either directly or by its representatives in the government.
The system of representation by estates took its rise in western
Europe during the I3th century, at a time when the feudal
system was being broken up through various causes, notably
the growing wealth and power of the towns. In the feudal
council the clergy and the territorial nobles had alone had a
voice; but the i3th century, to quote Stubbs (Const. Hist. ii.
168, ed. 1875), " turns the feudal council into an assembly of
estates, and draws the constitution of the third estate from the
ancient local machinery which it concentrates." This is, allowing
for differences of detail, true of other countries as well as England.
To the two estates already existing, clergy and nobles, is added
a third, that of the commons (burgesses and knights of the shire)
in England, that of the roturiers in France (known as the tiers
flat). This division into three estates became the norm, but it
was not universal, nor inevitable. 1 Even in England there was
a tendency to create other estates, the king for instance treating
with the merchants separately for grants of money to be raised
by taxing the general body of merchants in the country; and
there was a similar tendency on the part of the lawyers. But
for the accident of their sitting and voting together, the burgesses
and knights of the shire would also have formed separate estates.
In Aragon the cortes contained four estates (brazos or arms),
the clergy, the great barons (ricos hombres), the minor barons
(knights or infanzones), and the towns. The Swedish diet had
also four clergy, barons, burghers and peasants.
The system of estates, based on the medieval conception of
society as divided into definite orders, formed the basis of
whatever constitutional forms survived in Europe till the French
Revolution. In England, of course, it had early become ob-
scured, the House of Commons representing the whole nation
outside the narrow order of the peers. The creation of an estate
of lesser nobles or landowners had been prevented by the
fusion of the knights of the shire with the burgesses; the spiritual
estate was ruled out by the determination of the clergy to
deliberate and tax themselves in their own convocation, leaving
the bishops, as spiritual peers, to represent their interests in
parliament.
The phrase " the three estates of the realm " still survives,
but to most men it conveys no clear meaning. The erroneous
conception early arose Hallam says it was current among the
popular lawyers of the lyth century that the " three estates "
were king, lords and commons, as representing the three great
divisions of legislative authority. Such a conception might be
possible in Hungary, where the crown of St Stephen symbolizes
not so much the royal power as the co-ordination of the powers
of all the organs of the state, including the king; but in England
the king represents the whole nation and in no sense a separate
interest within it, which is the essence of an estate. The phrase
" three estates " as applied to the English constitution at
present is, in fact, misleading. It is now usually understood of
the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, and the commons.
The conception of the " three estates of the realm " as the
great divisions of legislative authority led in England to the
coining of the phrase " fourth estate," to indicate some power
of corresponding magnitude in the state distinct from them.
Fielding thus spoke of "the mob," and Hazlitt of Cobbett;
but the phrase is now usually applied to the press, a usage
originating in a speech by Burke (Ca,rlyle,Hero- i u>orship,liect.v.).
In the constitutional struggles of the European continent,
from the Revolution onward, the rival theories of representation
by estates and of popular representation have played a great
part. The crucial moment of the French Revolution was when
the vote according to " order " was rejected and the estates
of the clergy and nobles were merged with the tiers itat, the
states-general thus becoming the National Assembly. This was
the precedent followed, generally speaking, during the ipth
century in the other countries in which constitutional govern-
1 In Scotland the three estates were the prelates, the tenants-in-
chief and the burgesses, the third estate joining the others for the
first time about the beginning of the I4th century. In 1428 com-
missioners of shires, men elected by the minor tenants-in-chief, were
ordered to appear in parliament; the greater tenants-in-chief then
coalesced with the prelates and the three estates were the lords,
clerical and lay, the commissioners of shires and the burgesses.
From 1640 to 1660 parliament was reorganized, the prelates being
excluded, but at the Restoration the old order was re-established^
The Scottish parliament was accustomed to depute much of its work
to a committee, composed of members from each of the three orders,
and the committee of the estates was very prominent during the
struggle between Charles I . and his people.
ESTATE AND HOUSE AGENTS ESTATE DUTY
791
ment was established. In most of them the medieval estates
lingered on in provincial diets (Landtage) , l and the famous
Article XIII. of the Federal Act (Bundesakle) of Vienna decreed
that " assemblies of estates " should be set up, wherever not
already existing, in the German states. The efforts of Metternich
and the statesmen of his school were directed, not so much to
abolishing the constitutional model, as to establishing it, if need
were, on traditional and conservative lines. This is what was
meant by the famous reply of the emperor Francis I. to the
Magyar deputation: " All the world is playing the fool and
demanding fanciful constitutions." When the need for making
constitutional concessions became urgent, the attempt was
accordingly made to base them on the system of estates. But
the central diet convoked in 1847 by Frederick William IV. to
Berlin, technically a concentration of provincial estates, quickly
converted itself as Metternich had prophesied into a national
assembly; and precisely the same thing happened in the case
of the first Austrian parliament in 1848. In Hungary the
revolution was in some respects more conservative in character.
The March Laws of 1848 preserved the general character of the
House of Magnates, comparable to the British House of Lords,
but convened the Lower House from what was practically repre-
sentative of the estate of the lesser nobles into a national repre-
sentative assembly. Of all the sovereign states of Europe
only the grand-duchies of Mecklenburg still (1909) retain the
ancient system of estates untouched. The diet, which is common
to the two duchies, consists of the Ritterschafl, in which all
tenants in chivalry (Rittfrgutibtsitser), whether noble or non-
noble, have a voice, and the Landschaft, which consists of the
chief magistrates of the towns. The former is taken as represent-
ative of the peasant proprietors and copy-holders (Hintersassen),
the latter of the burghers.
The plural form ESTATES or STATES (Fr. (tats, Ger. SlSnde)
is the name commonly given to an assembly of estates (assemblte
da Hats, StUndetersammlung). When such an assembly is not
merely local or provincial it is called the estates-general or
states-general (Oats gfneraux), e.g. in France the assembly of
the deputies of the three estates of the realm as distinct from
the provincial estates which met periodically in the so-called
pays d'ttats.
For further details about the estates in England and elsewhere see
W. Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. ii. (1896); H. Hallam, The
Middle Ages (1855); F. W. Maitland, Constitutional History of
Entland (1908); A. Luchairc, Histoire des institutions monarchtques
de la France (1883-1885); G. Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschtchte
(Kiel, 1865-1878); and A. S. Rait, The Scottish Parliament (1901).
See also REPRESENTATION.
ESTATE AND HOUSE AGENTS. A person exercising the
calling of a house agent in England is required, under a penalty
of 20, to take out yearly a licence upon which 2 is charged
as a duty of excise, unless he is licensed as an auctioneer or
appraiser, or is an agent employed in the management of landed
estates, or a solicitor or conveyancer who has taken out his
annual certificate as such. In this connexion a person is deemed
to be a house agent if he advertises for sale or for letting, or in
any way negotiates for the selling or letting of any furnished
house or part of any furnished house (any storey or flat rated
and let as a separate tenement being for this purpose a house) ;
subject, however, to the qualification that no one is to be deemed
to be a house agent by reason of his letting, or offering to let,
or in any way negotiating for the letting of, any house the annual
rent or value of which does not exceed 25.
A bouse agent who is merely instructed to act in the usual
way of his calling has no authority to bind his employer by a
contract. His business is to endeavour to find a person willing
to become a purchaser or tenant and then to communicate his
offer to the owner. Unless express authority is given to the
agent to sell or let, and for that purpose to enter into a binding
contract, the principal reserves his right to accept or refuse the
offer. As a rule, a house or estate agent has no authority to
receive payment on behalf of the principal. Where he is em-
1 Tboe diet* are. wherever they still exist, survivals of the "parlia-
- " of teparate territorial unit*.
ployed to procure a tenant, he must use reasonable diligence
to ascertain that the person to whom the property is let through
his agency is fit to be a tenant. He does not, however, in any
way guarantee the payment of the rent. A house agent may
not, for or in expectation of payment, prepare any deed relating
to the sale or letting of real or personal estate. There is, however,
no similar prohibition as to agreements not under seal, and it is a
common practice for house agents to charge for the preparation
of them.
House agents are usually remunerated by way of commission.
The scale adopted by the Institute of Estate and House Agents
embodies the rates usually charged. In the absence of express
provision upon the subject between the principal and the agent,
commission is payable only when the latter has found a purchaser
or tenant. If, however, he had found a person willing to buy
or take property upon the terms upon which the principal
intimated to him his willingness to sell or let it, the principal
will be liable to pay the amount of the commission, even though
in fact he refuses or is unable to sell or let it. Where the agent
can show that he has brought about a sale or tenancy he will be
entitled to the commission notwithstanding the fact that another
agent has been paid, or has recovered in an action, commission
in respect of the same sale or tenancy. The agent's authority
may be revoked at any time; but, where he has already per-
formed the service for which he was employed, the principal
cannot defeat his right to be paid the amount of the commission
by subsequently revoking his authority. If the agent is unsuccess-
ful in finding a purchaser or tenant, as the case may be, he will
not, as a rule, have any right to remuneration for his efforts in
the matter.
Most auctioneers, in addition to holding auctions, carry on
the business of house and estate agency. The number of licences
issued to house agents and appraisers in England for the year
ended 3ist March 1899 was 4429, and for the year ended 3ist
March 1909, 4618. The number of licences issued to auctioneers
in England for the corresponding periods was 6389 and 6543
respectively. -(H. HA.)
ESTATE DUTY. For purposes of the national revenue in
the United Kingdom, the Finance Act 1894 imposed on all
property passing by death after the ist of August 1894 a duty
called estate duty, in lieu of certain other duties previously
payable. The objects of the act were (i) simplification of the
death duties and equalization as between real and personal
property, and (2) aggregation of all the property passing on a
death, and taxation at rates graduated according to the value
of the whole. Before the act a duty (probate duty) was taken
on the free personal property of deceased persons in the hands
of the executor or administrator, without regard to the sub-
sequent distribution. The legacy and succession duties were
levied on distribution of the property passing on the death, from
the persons taking any property under the will or intestacy of
the deceased, or under settlement, or by devolution of title on
his death. These two latter duties were mutually exclusive,
and together covered practically all property passing by death.
They were levied at rates graduated according to consanguinity.
In 1888 an attempt was made to equalize the rates of the death
duties as between property which paid the probate and legacy
duties, and property which paid succession duty only. But the
Finance Act 1894 replaced the probate duty by a duty extending
to all property real or personal passing on or by reference to death ,
whether by disposition of the deceased or not, without regard
to its tenure or destination. The Finance Acts of 1907 and 1900-
1910 increased the scale of duties laid down in 1894.
For this purpose all property passing on a death is aggregated
to form one estate, on the capital value of which the duty is
charged, at rates graduated from i to 15% according to the
aggregate value. Besides the property of which the deceased
was competent to dispose at his death, the aggregated estate
includes property in which he had an interest ceasing on his
death, from the cesser of which a benefit accrues, or which was
disposed of by him within twelve months of death, or at any
time, with reservation of an interest to himself. The extent to
792
ESTCOURT ESTE, HOUSE OF
which property is deemed to pass on the cesser of a limited
interest is measured by the proportion of the income to which
the interest extended, without regard to the tenure of the
deceased or his successor. Property may therefore be included
in the aggregate estate at its capital value owing to the passing
of a life-interest only, the property being settled so that the
absolute ownership does not pass at all. But when the duty has
once been paid on property passing under a settlement, the
property does not again become chargeable until it passes on the
death of a person who is or has been competent to dispose of it.
To compensate for this advantage, when property passing under
a settlement made after the act pays the estate duty, a further
duty of 2 % (settlement estate duty) is taken, except where the
only subsequent life-interest is that of the wife or husband of
the deceased.
The rate of duty being fixed according to the aggregate
capital value of the whole estate, the charge is distributed
according to the different modes of disposition of the property
comprised in the estate. The duty on the personalty which
passes to the executor as such is paid by him, as the probate duty
was, and comes out of the general estate. For the other property
passing, trustees, or any person to whom it passes for a beneficial
interest in possession, are made accountable, and are required
to bring in an account of the property and pay the duty. The
duty is a first charge on such property, and, when it is paid by a
person having a life-interest only, he may charge the corpus of
the property with it. The duty on real property included in
an account is payable by eight yearly or sixteen half-yearly
instalments, becoming due twelve months after the death, and
bearing interest at 3 % from that date. On other property,
except in a few special cases, the duty bears interest at 3 % from
the date of the death. When the estate duty has been paid no
further duty is chargeable on property comprised in the estate
which passes to lineal relations of the deceased. But on property
passing to collaterals or strangers legacy or succession duty,
as the case may be, is payable by the devisees or successors, at
a rate (which is the same whichever duty be payable) fixed
according to consanguinity.
For a detailed account of the provisions of the act of 1894 and
subsequent amending acts, and of the practical working of the duty,
reference is made to Austen-Cartmell, Finance Acts (1894-1907);
Hanson, Death Duties (London, 1904); Soward, Handbook to the
Estate Duty (4th ed., London, 1900); and to the reports of the
commissioners of Inland Revenue for 1894-1895 and subsequent
years.
ESTCOURT, RICHARD (1668-1712), English actor, began by
playing comedy parts in Dublin. His first London appearance
was in 1704 as Dominick, in Dryden's Spanish Friar, and he
continued to take important parts at Drury Lane, being the
original Pounce in Steele's Tender H usband (1705), Sergeant Kite
in Farquhar's Recruiting Officer, and Sir Francis Gripe in Mrs
Centlivre's Busybody. He was an excellent mimic and a great
favourite socially. Estcourt wrote a comedy, The Fair Example,
or the Modish Citizen (1703), and Prunella (1704), an interlude.
ESTE, one of the oldest of the former reigning houses of
Italy. It is in all probability of Lombard origin, and descended,
according to Muratori, from the princes who governed in Tuscany
in Carolingian times. The lordship of the town of Este was
first acquired by Alberto Azzo II., who also bore the title of
marquis of Italy 1 (d. c. 1097); he married Kunitza or Kune-
gonda, sister of Welf or Guelph III., duke of Carinthia. Welf
died without issue, and was succeeded by Welf IV., son of Kunitza,
who married a daughter of Otto II., duke of Bavaria, and who
obtained the duchy of Bavaria in 1070. Through him the house
of Este became connected with the princely houses of Brunswick
and Hanover, from which the sovereigns of England are de-
scended. The Italian titles and estates were inherited by Folco I.
(1060-1135), son of Alberto Azzo by his second wife Gersende,
daughter of Herbert I., count of Maine. 2 The house of Este
1 i.e. Margrave of the Empire (marchio Sancti Imperii) in Italy.
(See MARQUESS.)
2 Another son of Azzo and Gersende became count of Maine as
Hugh III. (d. 1131).
played a great part in the history of medieval and Renaissance
Italy, and it first comes to the front in the wars between the
Guelphs and Ghibellines; as leaders of the former party its
princes received at different times Ferrara, Modena, Reggio
and other fiefs and territories.
Obizzo I., son of Folco, was the first to bear the title of marquis
of Este. He entered into the Guelphic league against the
emperor Frederick I., and was comprehended in the treaty of
Venice of 1177 by which municipal podestas (foreigners chosen
as heads of cities to administer justice impartially) were instituted.
He was elected podesta of Padua in 1178, and in 1184 he was
reconciled with Frederick, who created him marquis of Genoa
and Milan, a dignity somewhat similar to that of imperial vicar.
By the marriage of his son Azzo to the heiress of the Marchesella
family (the story that she was carried off to prevent her marrying
an enemy of the Este is a pure legend), he came to acquire great
influence in Ferrara, although he was opposed by the hardly
less powerful house of Torelli.
Obizzo died in 1194 and Azzo V. having predeceased him,
the marquisate devolved on his grandson Azzo VI. (1170-1212),
who became head of the Guelph party, and to him the people
of Ferrara sacrificed their liberty by making him their first lord
(1208). But during his lifetime civil war raged in the city,
between the Este and the Torelli, each party being driven out
again and again. Azzo (also called Azzolino) died in 1212 and
was succeeded by Aldobrandino I., who in 1213 concluded
a treaty with Salinguerra Torelli, the head of that house, to
divide the government of the city between them. On his death
in 1215 he was succeeded by his brother Azzo VII. (1205-1264),
surnamed Novello, but Salinguerra Torelli usurped all power
in Ferrara and expelled Azzo (1222). In 1240 Pope Gregory IX.
determined on another war against the emperor Frederick II.,
but deemed it wise to begin by crushing the chief Ghibelline
houses. Thus Azzo found himself in league with the pope and
various Guelph cities in his attempt to regain Ferrara. That
town underwent a four months' siege, and was at last compelled
to surrender; Salinguerra was sent to Venice as a prisoner,
and Azzo ruled in Ferrara once more. The Ghibelline party
was annihilated, but the city enjoyed peace and happiness
within, although her citizens took part in the wars raging outside.
The Guelph cause triumphed, Frederick being defeated several
times, and after his death Azzo helped in crushing the terrible
Eccelino da Romano (q.v.) who upheld the imperial cause, at
thebattleof Cassano(i259). He died in 1 264 and was succeeded
by Obizzo II. (1240-1293) his grandson, who in 1288 received
the lordship of Modena, and that of Reggio in 1289. He was
a capable but cruel ruler, and while professing devotion to the
Guelph cause, did homage to the German king Rudolph I.
when he descended into Italy.
Obizzo II. died in 1293 and was succeeded by his son Azzo
VIII., but the latter's brothers, Aldobrandino and Francesco,
who were to have shared in the government, were expelled and
became his bitter enemies. The misgovernment of Azzo led to
the revolt of Reggio and Modena, which shook off his yoke.
Enemies arose on all sides, and he spent his last years in perpetual
fighting. He died in 1308, and having no legitimate children,
his brothers, his natural son Fresco, and others disputed the
succession. A papal legate was appointed, and though the Este
returned they were placed under pontifical tutelage.
The history of the house now becomes involved and of little
interest until we come to Nicholas III . ( 1 3 84- 1 44 1 ) , who exercised
sway over Ferrara, Modena, Parma and Reggio, waged many
wars, was made general of the army of the Church, and in his
later years governor of Milan, where he died, not without suspicion
of poison. To him succeeded Lionello (1407-1450), a wise and
virtuous ruler and a patron of literature and art; then Borso
(1413-1471), his brother, who was created duke of Modena and
Reggio by the emperor Frederick III., and duke of Ferrara by
the pope. In spite of the wars by which all Italy was torn,
Ferrara enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity under Borso;
he patronized literature, established a printing-press at Ferrara,
surrounded himseK with learned men, and his court was of
ESTE, HOUSE OF
793
unparalleled splendour. He also protected industry and com-
merce, and ruled with great wisdom. His brother Ercole I.
(1431-1505), who succeeded him in 1471, was less fortunate,
and had to engage in a war with Venice, owing to a dispute about
the salt monopoly, with the result that by the peace of 1484 he
was forced to cede the district of Polesine to the republic. But
the last years of his life were peaceful and prosperous, so that
afterwards men looked back to the days of Ercole I. as to a
golden age; his capital was noted both for its luxury and as the
resort of men eminent in literature and art. Boiardo the poet
was his minister, and Ariosto obtained his patronage.
Ercole's daughter Beatrice d'Este (1475-1497). duchess of
Milan, one of the most beautiful and accomplished princesses
of the Italian Renaissance, was bethrothed at the age of five to
Lodovico Sforza (known as U Uoro), duke of Ban, regent and
afterwards duke of Milan, and was married to him in January
1491. She had been carefully educated, and availed herself
of her position as mistress of one of the most splendid courts of
Italy to surround herself with learned men, poets and artists,
such as Niccold da Correggio, Bernardo Castiglione, Bramante,
Leonardo da Vinci and many others. In 1492 she visited
Venice as ambassador for her husband in his political schemes,
which consisted chiefly in a desire to be recognized as duke of
Milan. On the death of Gian Galeazzo Sforza, Lodovico 's
usurpation was legalized, and after the battle of Fornovo (1495)
both he and his wife took part in the peace congress of V'ercelli
between Charles VIII. of France and the Italian princes, at which
Beatrice showed great political ability. But her brilliant career
was cut short by death through childbirth, on the 3rd of January
1497. She belongs to the best class of Renaissance women, and
was one of the culture influences of the age; to her patronage
and good taste are due to a great extent the splendour of the
Castello of Milan, of the Certosa of Pavia and of many other
famous buildings in Lombardy.
Her sister Isabella d'Este ( 1474-1 539), marchioness of Mantua,
was carefully educated both in letters and in the arts like Beatrice,
and was married when barely sixteen to Francesco Gonzaga,
marquis of Mantua (1490). She showed great diplomatic and
political skill, especially in her negotiations with Cesare Borgia
(f.t.), who had dispossessed Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, duke
of Urbino, the husband of her sister-in-law and intimate friend
Elisabetta Gonzaga (1502). She received the deposed duke
and duchess, as well as other princes in the same condition,
at her court of Mantua, which was one of the most brilliant in
Italy, and like her sister she gathered together many eminent
men of letters and artists, Raphael, Andrea Mantegna and
Giulio Romano being among those whom she employed. Both
she and her husband were greatly influenced by Baldassare
Castiglione (1478-1529), author of // Cortigiano, and it was at
his suggestion that Giulio Romano was summoned to Mantua
to enlarge the Castello and other buildings. Isabella was " un-
doubtedly, among all the princessesof the 1 5th and i6th centuries,
the one who most strikingly and perfectly personified the aspira-
tions of the Renaissance " (Eugene Muntz); but her character
was less attractive than that of her sister, and in her love of
collecting works of art she showed a somewhat grasping nature,
being ever anxious to cut down the prices of the artists who
worked for her.
To Ercole I. succeeded his son Alphonso I. (1486-1534), the
husband of Lucrezia Borgia (?.*.), daughter of Pope Alexander VI.
During nearly the whole of his reign he was engaged in the Italian
wars, but by his diplomatic skill and his military ability he was
for many yean almost always successful. He was gifted with
great mechanical skill, and his artillery was of world-wide
reputation. On the formation of the league of Cambrai against
Venice in 1508, he was appointed to the supreme command of
the papal troop* by Julius II.; but after the Venetians had
sustained a number of reverses they made peace with the pope
and joined him against the French. Alphonso was invited to
co-operate in the new combination, and on his refusal war was
declared against him; but although he began by losing Modena
and Reggio, be subsequently inflicted several defeats on the
pupal troops. He fought on the side of the French at the battle
of Ravenna (1512), from which, although victorious, they
derived no advantage. Soon afterwards they retired from Italy,
and Alphonso, finding himself abandoned, tried to make his
peace with the pope, through the mediation of Fabrizio Colonnu.
He went to Rome for the purpose and received absolution, but
on discovering that Julius meant to detain him a prisoner, he
escaped in disguise, and the pope's death in 1513 gave him a
brief respite. But Leo X. proved equally bent on the destruction
of the house of Este, when he too was cut off by death. Alphonso
availed himself of the troubles of the papacy during the reign
of the equally hostile Clement VII. to recapture Reggio (1523)
and Modena (1527), and was confirmed in his possession of them
by the emperor Charles V., in spite of Clement's opposition.
He died in 1534, and was succeeded by his son Ercole II.
(1508-1559), who married Renee, daughter of Louis XII. of
France, a princess of Protestant proclivities and a friend of Calvin.
On joining the league of France and the papacy against Spain,
Ercole was appointed lieutenant-general of the French army in
Italy. The war was prosecuted, however, with little vigour,
and peace was made with Spain in 1558. The duke and his
brother, Cardinal Ippolito the Younger, were patrons of literature
and art, and the latter built the magnificent Villa d' Este at
Tivoli. He was succeeded by Alphonso II. (1533-1597), re-
membered for his patronage of Tasso, whom he afterwards
imprisoned. He reorganized the army, enriched the public
library, encouraged agriculture, but was extravagant and
dissipated. With him the main branch of the family came to an
end, and although at his death he bequeathed the duchy to his
cousin Cesare (1533-1628), Pope Clement VIII., renewing the
Church's hostility to the house of Este, declared that prince
to be of illegitimate birth (a doubtful contention), and by a
treaty with Lucrezia, Alphonso's sister, Ferrara was made over
to the Holy See. Cesare held Modena and Reggio, but with him
the Estensj cease to play an important part in Italian politics.
For two centuries this dynasty had been one of the greatest
powers in Italy, and its court was perhaps the most splendid
in Europe, both as regards pomp and luxury and on account of
the eminent artists, poets and scholars which it attracted.
The subsequent heads of the family were: Alphonso III.,
who retired to a monastery in 1629 and died in 1644; Francis I.
(1610-1658), who commanded the French army in Italy in
1647; Alphonso IV. (1634-1662), the father of Mary Beatrice,
the queen of. James II.. of England, who fought in the French
army during the Spanish War, and founded the picture gallery
of Modena; Francis II. (1660-1694), who originated the Este
library, also at Modena, and founded the university; Rinaldo
(1655-1737), through whose marriage with Charlotte Felicitas
of Brunswick-Liineburg the long-separated branches of the
house of Este were reunited; Francis III. (1698-1780), who
married the daughter of the regent Philip of Orleans. Francis
III. wished to remain neutral during the war between Spain and
Austria (1740), but the imperialists having occupied and de-
vastated his duchy, he took the Spanish side and was appointed
generalissimo of the Spanish army in Italy. He was re-established
in his possessions by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), and
on being reconciled with the empress Maria Theresa, he received
from her the title of governor of Lombardy in 1754. With his
son Ercole III. Rinaldo (1727-1803), who at the peace of Campo-
formio lost his duchy, the male line of the Estensi came to an
end. His only daughter, Marie Beatrice (d. 1829), was married
to the archduke Ferdinand, third son of the emperor Francis I.
Ferdinand was created duke of Breisgau-in 1803, and at his
death in 1806 he was succeeded by his son Francis IV. (q.v.),
to whom the duchy of Modena was given at the treaty of Vienna
in 1814. He died in 1846 and was succeeded by Francis V. (q.v.),
who lost his possessions by the events of 1859. With his death
in 1875 the title and estates passed to the archduke Francis
Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The children
of Lady Augusta Murray, daughter of the earl of Dunmore, by
her marriage with Augustus Frederick, duke of Sussex, sixth
son of George III. of Great Britain, assumed the old name of
794
ESTE ESTERHAZY
d' Este, and claimed recognition as members of the royal family;
but as the marriage was in violation of the royal marriages
act of 1773, it was declared invalid, and their claims were set
aside.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. G. Antonelli, Saggio di una bibliografia storica
ferrarese (Ferrara, 1851); L. A. Muratori, Delle antichita estensi ed
italiane (3 vols., 1717, &c.), the chief and most reliable authority on
the subject, containing a quantity of documents; A. Frizzi, Memorie
per la storia di Ferrara (2nd ed., Ferrara, 1847); A. Solerti, Ferrara
e la corte estense nella seconda meta del sec. X VI. (CittA di Castello,
1900) ; C. Antolini, II dominio estense in Ferrara (Ferrara, 1896),
which deals with the siege of 1240 and other special points; E. G.
Gardner, Princes and Poets of Ferrara (London, 1904), a bulky
volume dealing only with the Renaissance period, full of interesting
and unpublished matter, especially about the literary and artistic
associations of the house, but not well put together (contains good
bibliography) ; G. Bertoni, La Biblioteca estense e la coltura ferrarese
ai tempi del duca Ercole I. (Turin, 1903), useful for the literary
aspect of the subject ; P. Litta, Le Celebn Famiglie italiane, vol. iii.
(Milan, 1831), still a valuable work; E. Noyes, The Story of Ferrara
(London, 1904); Julia Cartwright's Isabella d' Este (London, 1903),
and Beatrice d' Este (1899), pleasantly written but amateurish
volumes based on A. Luzio's Mantova, e Urbino (Turin, 1893); A.
Luzio and R. Renier, " Delle relazioni di Isabella d' Este Gonzaga
con Lodovico e Beatrice Sforza " (Milan, 1890, Archivio Stonco
Lombardo, xvii.). (L. V.*)
ESTE (anc. Ateste, q.v.), a town and episcopal see of Venetia,
Italy, in the province of Padua, 20 m. S.S.W. of it by rail. Pop.
(1901) 8671 (town) ; 10,779 (commune). It lies 49 ft. above sea-
level below the southern slopes of the Euganean Hills. The
external walls of the castle still rise above the town on the N.,
but the interior is now occupied by the cattle-market. A frag-
ment of the once enormous Palazzo Mocenigo, of the i6th century,
is now occupied by the important archaeological museum (see
ATESTE). The cathedral was erected in 1690-1720, on the site
of an older building destroyed by an earthquake in 1688. S.
Martino is a church in the Lombard Romanesque style. The
archives in the Palazzo Comunale are important.
After the Roman period the history of Este is a blank until
the Lombard period, in which it was dependent on Monselice.
In the loth century the family of Este (see above) established
itself in the castle above the town. At the end of the i3th century
Padua, which had already captured Este more than once, became
definitely mistress of it. When the Carrara family succumbed
in 1405, Este voluntarily surrendered to Venice and was allowed
its independence, under a podesta; and thenceforth it followed
the fortunes of Venetia.
ESTEBANEZ CALDER6N, SERAFfN (1790-1867), a Spanish
author, best known by the pseudonym of " El Solitario," was
born at Malaga on the 27th of December 1799. His first literary
effort was El Listdn verde, a poem signed " Safinio " and written to
celebrate the revolution of 1820. He was called to the bar, and
settled for some time at Madrid, where he published a volume
of verses in 1831 under the assumed name of " El Solitario."
He obtained an exaggerated reputation as an Arabic scholar, and
played a minor part in the political movements of his time. He
died at Madrid on the sth of February 1867. His most interesting
work, Escenas andaluzas (1847), is in a curiouly affected style,
the vocabulary being partly archaic and partly provincial; but,
despite its eccentric mannerisms, it is a vivid record of picturesque
scenes and local customs. Est6banez Calder6n is also the author
of an unfinished history, De la conquista y perdida de Portugal
(1883), issued posthumously under the editorship of his nephew,
Antonio C&novas del Castillo.
ESTELLA, a town of northern Spain, in the province of Navarre,
on the left bank of the river Ega, ism. W.S.W. of Pamplona.
Pop. (1900) 5736. Estella, which occupies the site of a Roman
town of uncertain name, contains several monasteries and
churches, a medieval citadel, and a college which was formerly
a university. Its principal industries are the manufacture of
woollen and linen fabrics and brandy-making; and it has a
considerable trade in fruit, wine and cattle. Estella commands
several denies on the roads from Castile and Aragon, and on that
account occupies a position of considerable strategic importance.
It was long the headquarters of Don Carlos, who was proclaimed
king here in 1833. In 1873 it was the chief stronghold of the
Carlists, and in 1874, when driven from other places, they
succeeded in retiring to Estella. On the i6th of February 1876
the Carlists in the town surrendered unconditionally. For an
account of the Carlist rising see SPAIN: History.
ESTERHAZY OF GALANTHA, a noble Magyar family. Its
origin has been traced, not without some uncertainty, to Salamon
of Estoras, whose sons Peter and Illyes divided their patrimony
in 1238. Peter founded the family of Zerhazy, and Illyes that
of Illyeshazy, which became extinct in the male line in 1838.
The first member of the family to emerge definitely into history
was Ferencz Zerhazy (1563-1594), vice lord-lieutenant of the
county of Pressburg, who took the name of Esterhazy when he
was created Freiherr of Galantha, an estate acquired by the
family in 1421. His eldest son, Daniel (d. 1654), founded the
house of Czesznek, the third, Pal (d. 1641), the line of Zolyom
(Altsohl), and the fourth, Miklos, that branch of the family
which occupies the most considerable place in Hungarian
history, that of Frakno or Forchtenstein.
This MIKLOS [Nicholas] ESTERHAZY of Galantha (1582-1645)
was born at Galantha on the Sth of April 1582. His parents
were Protestants, and he himself, at first, followed the Protestant
persuasion; but he subsequently went over to Catholicism
and, along with Cardinal Pazmany, his most serious rival at
court, became a pillar of Catholicism, both religiously and
politically, and a worthy opponent of the two great Protestant
champions of the period, Gabriel Bethlen and George I.Rakoczy.
In 1611 he married Orsolya, the widow of the wealthy Ferencz
Magocsy, thus coming into possession of her gigantic estates,
and in 1622 he acquired Frakno. Matthias II. made him a
baron (1613), count of Beregh (1617), and lord-lieutenant of the
county of Zolyom and magister curiae regiae (1618). At the
coronation of Ferdinand II. , when he officiated as grand-standard-
bearer, he received the order of the Golden Fleece and fresh
donations. At the diet of Sopron, 1625, he was elected palatine
of Hungary. As a diplomatist he powerfully contributed to
bring about the peace of Nikolsburg (1622) and the peace of
Linz (1645) (see HUNGARY: History). His political ideal was
the consolidation of the Habsburg dynasty as a means towards
freeing Hungary from the Turkish yoke. He himself, on one
occasion (1623), defeated the Turks on the banks of the Nyitra;
but anything like sustained operations against them was then
impossible. He was also one of the most eminent writers of his
day. He died at Nagy-Heflan on the nth of September 1645,
leaving five sons.
See Works of Nicholas Esterhdzy, with a biography by Ferencz Toldi
(Hung.) (Pest, 1852) ; Nicholas Count Esterhazy, Palatine of Hungary
(a biography, Hung.) (Pest, 1863-1870).
His third son PAL [Paul] (1635-1713), prince palatine, founded
the princely branch of the family of Esterhazy. He was born
at Kis Marlon (Eisenstadt) on the 7th of September 1635. In
1663 he fought, along with Miklos Zrinyi, against the Turks,
and distinguished himself under Montecuculi. In 1667 he was
appointed commander-in-chief in south Hungary, where he
defeated the malcontents at Leutschau and Gyork. In 1681 he
was elected palatine. In 1683 he participated in the deliverance
of Vienna from the Turks, and entered Buda in 1686 at the head
of 20,000 men. Thoroughly reactionary, and absolutely de-
voted to the Habsburgs, he contributed more than any one else
to the curtailing of the privileges of the Magyar gentry in 1687,
when he was created a prince of the Empire, with (in 1712)
succession to the first-born of his house. His " aulic tendencies "
made him so unpopular that his offer of mediation between the
Rakoczy insurgents and the government was rejected by the
Hungarian diet, and the negotiations, which led to the peace of
Szatmar (see HUNGARY: History), were entrusted to Janos
Pallfy. He died on the 26th of March 1713. He loved the arts
and sciences, wrote several religious works, and was one of the
chief compilers of the Trophacum Domus Indytae Esloratianae.
See Lajos Merfenyi, Prince Paul Esterhdzy (Hung.) (Budapest,
1895)-
Prince PAL ANTAL, grandson of the prince palatine Pal, was a
distinguished soldier, who rose to the rank of field-marshal in
1758. On his death in 1762 he was succeeded by his brother.
ESTERS
795
Prince MiKL6s J6zsEr [Nicholas Joseph] (1714-1700), also a
brilliant soldier, is perhaps best remembered as a patron of the
fine arts. For his services in command of an infantry brigade
at Kolin (1757) he was specially mentioned by Count Daun, and
became one of the original members of the order of Maria Theresa.
In 1762 he was appointed captain of Maria Theresa's Hungarian
bodyguard, in 1764 FtlJzrugmrister, and in 1768 field marshal.
His other honours included the Golden Fleece and the grade of
commander in the order of Maria Theresa. Joseph II. conferred
the princely title, which had previously been limited to the eldest-
born of the house, on all his descendants, male and female.
Esterhixy died in Vienna on the 28th of September 1790. He
rebuilt in the Renaissance style Schloss Esterhizy, the splendour
of which won for it the name of the Hungarian Versailles. Haydn
was for thirty years conductor of his private orchestra and
general musical director, and many of his compositions were
written for the private theatre and the concerts of this prince.
His grandson, Prince MiKt6s [Nicholas] (1765-1833) was
born on the nth of December 1765. He began life as an officer
in the guards, subsequently making the grand tour, which first
awakened his deep interest in an. He quitted the army for
diplomacy after reaching the rank of Feldzeugmeistcr, and was
employed as extraordinary ambassador, on special occasions,
when he displayed a magnificence extraordinary even for the
Esterhizys. He made at Vienna an important collection of
paintings and engravings, which came into the possession of
the Hungarian Academy at Budapest in 1865. At his summer
palace of Kis Marion (Eisenstadt) he erected a monument to
Haydn. His immense expenditure on building and the arts
involved the family in financial difficulties for two generations.
When the French invaded Austria in 1707, he raised a regiment
of looo men at his own expense. In 1809, when Napoleon
invited the Magyars to elect a new king to replace the Habsburgs,
overtures were made to Prince Nicholas, who refused the honour
and, further, raised a regiment of volunteers in defence of Austrian
interests. He died at Como on the 24th of November 1833.
His son, Prince PAi. ANTAL [Paul Anthony] (1786-1866),
entered the diplomatic service. In 1806 be was secretary
of the embassy in London, and in 1807 worked with Prince
Metternich in the same capacity in Paris. In 1810 he was
accredited to the court of Dresden, where he tried in vain to
detach Saxony from Napoleon, and in 1814 he accompanied
his father on a secret mission to Rome. He took a leading part
in all the diplomatic negotiations consequent upon the wars
of 1813-1815, especially at the congress of Chatillon, and on
the conclusion of peace was, at the express desire of the prince
regent, sent as ambassador to London. In 1824 he represented
Austria as ambassador extraordinary at the coronation of
Charles X., and was the premier Austrian commissioner at the
London conferences of 1830-1836. In 1842 he quitted diplomacy
for politics and attached himself to "the free-principles party."
He was minister for foreign affairs in the first responsible Hun-
garian ministry (1848), but resigned his post in September
bcause be could see no way of reconciling the court with the
nation. The last yean of his life were spent in comparative
poverty and isolation, as even the Esterhazy-Forchtenstein
estates were unequal to the burden of supporting bis fabulous
extravagance and had to be placed in the bands of curators.
The cadet branch of the house of Frakn6, the members ofwhich
bear the title of count, was divided into three lines by the sons
of Ferencz Esterhazy (1641-1683).
The eldest of these, Count ANTAL (1676-1722), distinguished
himself in the war against Rakoczy in 1703, but changed sides
in 1704 and commanded the left wing of the Kuruczis at the
engagements of Nagyszombat (1704) and Vereskd (1705). In
1706 be defeated the imperialist general Guido Stahremberg
and penetrated to the walls of Vienna. Still more successful
were his operations in the campaign of 1708, when he ravaged
Styria. twice invaded Austria, and again threatened Vienna,
on which occasion the emperor Joseph narrowly escaped falling
into his hands. In 1709 he was routed by the superior forces
of General Sigbert Heister at Palota, but brought off the re-
mainder of his arms very skilfully. In 1710 he joined Rak6czy
in Poland and accompanied him to France and Turkey. He
died in exile at Rodosto on the shores of the Black Sea. His
son Balint J6zsef [Valentine Joseph], by Anna Maria Nigrelli,
entered the French army, and was the founder of the Hallcwyll,
or French, branch of the family, which became extinct in the
male line in 1876 with Count Ladislas.
See Count Ester kdzy's Campaign Diary (Hung.), ed. by K. Thaly
(Pest, 1901).
Count HAUNT MIKI.OS (1740-1805), son of Balint J6zsef,
was an enthusiastic partisan of the due de Choiscul, on whose
dismissal, in 1764, he resigned the command of the French
regiment of which he was the colonel. It was Esterhazy who
conveyed to Marie Antoinette the portrait of Louis XVI. on the
occasion of their betrothal, and the close relations he maintained
with her after her marriage were more than once the occasion
of remonstrance on the part of Maria Theresa, who never seems
to have forgotten that he was the grandson of a rebel. At the
French court he stood in high favour with the comte d'Artois.
He was raised to the rank of mam Hal de camp, and made
inspector of troops in the French service in 1780. At the out-
break of the French Revolution, he was stationed at Valenciennes,
where he contrived for a time to keep order, and facilitated the
escape of the French emigrts by way of Namur; but, in 1790,
he hastened back to Paris to assist the king. At the urgent
entreaty of the comte d'Artois in 1791 he quitted Paris for
Coblenz, accompanied Artois to Vienna, and was sent to the
court of St Petersburg the same year to enlist the sympathies of
Catherine II. for the Bourbons. He received an estate from
Catherine II., and although the gift was rescinded by Paul I.,
another was eventually granted him. He died at Grodek in
Volhynia on the 23rd of July 1805.
Sec Memoires, ed. by E. Daudet (Fr.) (Paris, 1905), and Lettres
(Paris, 1906).
Two other sons of Count Ferencz (d. 1685), Ferencz and
J6zsef, founded the houses of Dotis and Cseklfaz (Landschutz)
respectively. Of their descendants, Count M6mcz (1807-1890)
of Dotis, Austrian ambassador in Rome until 1856, became
in 1861 a member of the ministry formed by Anton Schmerling,
and in 1865 joined the clerical cabinet of Richard Belcredi.
His bitter hostility to Prussia helped to force the government
of Vienna into the war of 1866. His official career closed in
1866, but he remained one of the leaders of the clerical party.
See also Count Janos Esterhizy, Description of the Esterhdzy
Family (Hung., Budapest, 1901). (R. N. B.)
ESTERS, in organic chemistry, compounds formed by the
condensation of an alcohol and an acid, with elimination of water;
they may also be considered as derivatives of alcohols, in which
the hydroxylic hydrogen has been replaced by an acid radical,
or as acids in which the hydrogen of the carboxyl group has been
replaced by an alkyl or aryl group. In the case of the polybasic
acids, all the hydrogen atoms can be replaced in this way, and
the compounds formed are known as " neutral esters." If,
however, some of the hydrogen of the acid remain undisplaced,
then " acid esters " result. These acid esters retain some of the
characteristic properties of the acids, forming, for example,
salts, with basic oxides. Esters may be prepared by heating
the silver salt of an acid with an alkyl iodide; by heating the
alcohols or alcoholates with an acid chloride; by distilling the
anhydrous sodium salt of an acid with a mixture of the alcohol
and concentrated sulphuric acid; or by heating for some hours
on the water bath, a mixture of an acid and an alcohol, with
a small quantity of hydrochloric or sulphuric acids (E. Fischer
and A. Speier, Ber., 1896, 28, p. 3252).
The esters of the aliphatic and aromatic acids are colourless
neutral liquids, which are generally insoluble in water, but
readily dissolve in alcohol and ether. Many possess a fragrant
odour and are prepared in large quantities for use as artificial
fruit essences. They hydrolyse readily when boiled with solu-
tions of caustic alkalies or mineral acids, yielding the constituent
acid and alcohol. When heated with ammonia, they yield acid
amides (q.v.). They form unstable addition products with
sodium ethylate or methylate. With the Grignard reagent, they
79 6
ESTHER
form addition compounds which on the addition of water yield
tertiary alcohols, except in the case of ethyl formate, where a
secondary alcohol is obtained.
/OMgBr /OMgBr R'\
R-CO.,C 2 H 6 -> R-CfOC 2 H s H> R-Cf-R' ^R'^C-OH.
\ R < \ R , R //
/OMgBr /OMgBr ,
H-COjC,H 6 -> H-CeOC s H 5 -> H-C^-R' -> ,>CH-OH.
X R' X R'
N. Menschutkin (Ber., 1882, 15, p. 1445; Ann., 1879, 195, p. 334)
examined the rate of esterification of many acids with alcohols. It
was found that the normal primary alcohols were all esterified at
about the same rate, the secondary alcohols more slowly than the
primary, and the tertiary alcohols still more slowly. The investi-
gation also showed that the nature of the acid used affected the
result, for in an homologous series of acids it was found that as the
molecule of the acid became more complex, the rate of esterification
became less. The formation of an ester by the interaction of an acid
with an alcohol is a " reversible " or " balanced " action, for as
M. Berthelot and L. Pean de St Gilles (Ann. Chim. Phys., 1862 (3),
65, p. 385 ct seq.) have shown in the case of the formation of ethyl
acetate from ethyl alcohol and acetic acid, a point of equilibrium is
reached, beyond which the reacting system cannot pass, unless the
system be disturbed in some way by the removal of one of the pro-
ducts of the reaction. V. Meyer (Ber., 1894, 2 7< P- 5! et seq.)
showed that in benzenoid compounds ortho-substituents exert a
great hindering effect on the esterification of alcohols by acids in the
presence of hydrochloric acid, this hindering being particularly
marked when two substituents are present in the ortho positions to
the carboxyl group. In such a case the ester is best prepared by the
action of an alkyl halide on the silver salt of the acid, and when once
prepared, can only be hydrolysed with great difficulty.
Ethyl formate, H-COjCjHs, boils at 55 C. and has been used in
the artificial 'preparation of rum. Ethyl acetate (acetic ether),
CHj-COjCiHs, boils at 75 C. Isoamylisovalerate, C^o-COjCsHu,
boils at 196 C. and has an odour of apples. Ethyl butyrate,
CsHy-COjCjHs, boils at 121 C. and has an odour of pineapple. The
fats (q.v.) and waxes (q.v.) are the esters of the higher fatty acids
and alcohols. The esters of the higher fatty acids, when distilled
under atmospheric pressure, are decomposed, and yield an olefine
and a fatty acid.
Esters of the mineral acids are also known and may be prepared
by the ordinary methods as given above. The neutral esters are as
a rule insoluble in water and distil unchanged; on the other hand,
the acid esters are generally soluble in water, are non-volatile, and
form salts with bases. Ethyl hydrogen sulphate (sulphovinic acid),
C2H6-HSO4, is obtained by the action of concentrated sulphuric acid
on alcohol. The ester is separated from the solution by means of its
barium salt, and the salt decomposed by the addition of the calcu-
lated amount of sulphuric acid. It is a colourless oily liquid of
strongly acid reaction; its aqueous solution decomposes on stand-
ing and on heating it forms diethyl sulphate and sulphuric acid.
Dimethyl sulphate, (CH 3 )jSO4, is a colourless liquid which boils at
i87-l88 C., with partial decomposition. It is used as a methylating
agent (F. Ullmann). Great care should be taken in using dimethyl
and diethyl sulphates, as the respiratory organs are affected by the
vapours, leading to severe attacks of pneumonia. Ethyl nitrate,
CzHs-ONOj, is a colourless liquid which boils at 86-3 C. It is pre-
pared by the action of nitric acid on ethyl alcohol (some urea being
added to the nitric acid, in order to destroy any nitrous acid that
might be produced in secondary reactions and which, if not removed,
would cause explosive decomposition of the ethyl nitrate). It burns
with a white flame and is soluble in water. When heated with
ammonia it yields ethylamine nitrate, and when reduced with tin
and hydrochloric acid it forms hydroxylamine (q.v.) (W. C. Lossen).
Ethyl nitrite, CjH 6 -ONO, is a liquid which boils at 18 C.; the crude
product obtained by distilling a mixture of alcohol, sulphuric and
nitric acids and copper turnings is used in medicine under the name
of " sweet spirits of nitre." Amyl nitrite, CsHn-ONO, boils at 96 C.
and is used in the preparation of the anhydrous diazonium salts
(E. Knoevenagel.Ber., 1890, 23, p. 2094). It is also used in medicine.
ESTHER. The Book of Esther, in the Bible, relates how a
Jewish maiden, Esther, cousin and foster-daughter of Mordecai,
was made his queen by the Persian king Ahasuerus (Xerxes)
after he had divorced Vashti; next, how Esther and Mordecai
frustrated Haman's endeavour to extirpate the Jews; how
Haman, the grand- vizier, fell, and Mordecai succeeded him;
how Esther obtained the king's permission for the Jews to
destroy all who might attack them on the day which Haman
had appointed by lot for their destruction; and lastly, how the
feast of Purim (Lots ?) was instituted to commemorate their
deliverance. Frequent incidental references are made to Persian
court-usages (explanations are given in i. 13, viii. 8), while on
the other hand the religious rites of the Jews (except fasting),
and even Jerusalem and the temple, and the name of Israel,
are studiously ignored. Even the name of God is not once
mentioned, perhaps from a dread of its profanation during the
Saturnalia of Purim. The early popularity of the book is shown
by the interpolated passages in the Septuagint and the Old
Latin versions.
The criticism of Esther began in the i8th century. As soon
as the questioning spirit arose, the strangeness of many state-
ments in the book leaped into view. A moderate scholar of our
day can find no historical nucleus, and calls it a sort of historical
romance. 1 The very first verses in the book startle the reader
by their exaggerations, e.g. a banquet lasting 1 80 days, " 127
provinces." Farther on, the improbabilities of the plot are
noticeable. Esther, on her elevation, keeps her Jewish origin
secret (ii. 10; cf. vii. 3 ff.), although she has been taken from
the house of her uncle, who is known to be a Jew (iii. 4; cf. vi.
13), and has remained in constant intercourse with him (ii. n,
19, 20, 22; cf. iv. 4-17). We are further told that the grand-
vizier was an Agagite or Amalekite (iii. i, &c.); would the
nobility of Persia have tolerated this ? Or did Haman too keep
his non-Persian origin secret? Also that Mordecai offered a
gross affront to Haman, for which no slighter punishment would
satisfy Haman than the destruction of the whole Jewish race
(iii. 2-6). Of this savage design eleven months' notice is given
(iii. 12-14); an( i when the danger has been averted by the
cleverness of Esther, the provincial Jews are allowed to butcher
75,000, and those in the capital 800 of their Persian fellow-
subjects (ix. 6-16).
It is urged, on the other hand, that the assembly mentioned
in i. 3 may be that referred to by Herodotus (vii. 8) as having
preceded the expedition against Greece. This hypothesis, how-
ever, requires us to suppose that Xerxes had returned from
Sardis to Susa by the tenth month of the seventh year of his
reign, which is barely credible. In the reckoning of 1 2 7 provinces
(cf . Dan. vi. i ; i Esd. iii. 2) satrapies and sub-satrapies may be
confounded. It is at any rate correct to include India among the
provinces; this is justified, not only by Herodotus (iii. 94), but
by the inscriptions of Darius at Persepolis and Naksh-i-Rustam.
Herodotus again (vii. 8) confirms the custom referred to in Esth.
ii. 12. But what authority can make the conduct of Mordecai
credible ? To-day the harem is impenetrable, while " any one
declining to stand as the grand-vizier passes is almost beaten
to death." 2 This, surely, is what a real Mordecai would have
suffered from a real Haman. Even the capricious Xerxes would
never have permitted the entire destruction of one of the races
of the empire, nor would a vizier have proposed it.
Serious difficulties of another kind remain. Mordecai is
represented as a fellow-captive of Jeconiah (597 B.C.), and grand-
vizier in Xerxes's twelfth year (474 B.C.) ! This is parallel to the
strange statement in Tobit xiv. 15. And how can we find room
for Esther as queen by the side of Amestris (Herod, vii. 14, ix.
112)? How, too, can a Jewess have been a legal queen (see
Herod, iii. 84) ? Then take the supposed Persian proper names.
" Ahasuerus " may no doubt stand, but very few of the rest
(see Noideke, Ency. Bib. col. 1402). As to the style, the general
verdict is that it points to a late date (see Driver, Introd. 6 , p. 484).
Altogether, critics decline to date the book earlier than the 3rd
or even 2nd century B.C. '
So far we have only been carrying on 18th-century criticism.
In more recent years, however, new lines of inquiry have been
opened up. First of all by the great Semitic scholar Lagarde.
His thesis (seldom defended now) was that Purim corresponds
to Furdigan, the name of the old Persian New Year's and All
Souls' festival held in spring, on which the Persians were wont to
exchange presents (cf. Esth. ix. 19). In 1891 came a new
explanation of Esther from Zimmern. It is true that in its
earlier form his theory was very incomplete. But in justice to
this scholar we may notice that from the first he looked for light
to Babylonia, and that many other critics now take up the same
1 Kautzsch, Old Testament Literature (1898), p. 130.
* So Morier, the English minister to the Persian court, quoted by
Dean Stanley.
ESTHONIA
797
position. There is also another new point which has to be
mentioned, vi*. that, judging from our experience elsewhere,
the Book of Esther has probably passed through various stages
of development. Here, then, are two points which call for in-
vestigation, viz. (i) a possible mythological element in Esther,
and (*) possible stages of development prior to that represented
by the Hebrew text.
As to the first point. The Second Targum (on Esth. ii. 7)
long ago declared that Esther was so called " because she was
like the planet Venus." Recent scholars have expressed the
same idea more critically. Esther is a modification of Ishtar,
the name of the Babylonian goddess of fertility and of the planet
Venus, whose myth must have been partially known to the
Israelites even in pre-exilic times, 1 and after the fall of the state
must have acquired a still stronger hold on Jewish exiles. A
general knowledge of the myth of Marduk among the Israelites
cannot indeed be proved. Singularly enough, the Babylonian
colonists in the cities of Samaria are said to have made idols,
not of Marduk, but of a deity called Succoth-benoth l (2 Kings
xvii. 30). Nor does the Second Targum help us here; it gives a
wild explanation of Mordecai as " pure myrrh." Still it is plain
that the name of the god Marduk (Merodach) was known to the
Jews, and the Cosmogony in Gen. i. is considered by critics to
have ultimately arisen out of the myth of Marduk's conflict with
the dragon (see COSMOGONY). At any rate the name Mordecai
(the vocalization is uncertain) looks very much like Marduk,
which, with terminations added, often occurs in cuneiform
documents as a personal name.' Add to this, that, according to
Jensen, Ishtar in mythology was the cousin of Marduk, just
as the legend represents Esther as the cousin of Mordecai. 4
The same scholar also accounts for Esther's other name Hadassah
(Esth. ii. 7); kadasshatu in Babylonian means "bride," which
may have been a title of Ishtar.
But we cannot stop short here. Unless the mythological key
can also explain Haman and Vashti, it is of no use. Jensen,
now followed by Zimmern, is equal to the occasion. Haman, he
says, is a corruption of Hamman or Hum man or Uman, the name
of the chief deity of the Elamites, in whose capital (Susa) the
scene of the narrative is laid, while Vashti is Mashti (or Vashti),
probably the name of an Elamite goddess.
Following the real or fancied light of these names, Prof.
Jensen holds that the Esther-legend is based on a mythological
account of the victory of the Babylonian deities over those of
Elam, which in plain prose means the deliverance of ancient
Babylonia from its Elamite oppressors, and that such an account
was closely connected with the Babylonian New Year's festival,
called Zagmuk, just as the Esther-legend is connected with the
festival of Purim.
We are bound, however, to mention some critical objections
(i) The Babylonian festival corresponding to Purim was not the
spring festival of Zagmuk, but the summer festival of Ishtar
which is probably the Sacaea of Bcrossus, an orgiastic festiva
analogous to Purim. (2) According to Jensen's theory, Mordecai
and not Esther, ought to be the direct cause of Haman's ruin
(_j) No such Babylonian account as Jensen postulates can be
indicated. (4) The identifications of names are hazardous
Fancy a descendant of Kish called Marduk, and an "Agagitc '
called Hamman! Elsewhere Mordecai (Ezra ii. 2; Neh. vii. 7
occurs among names which are certainly not Persian (Bigvai i
no exception), and Haman (Tobit xiv. 10) appears as a nephew
of Achiachar, which is not a Persian name. Esther, moreover
ought to be parallel to Judith; fancy likening the representative
of Israel to the goddess Ishtar I
Next, as to the preliminary literary phases of Esther. Sue!
phases are probable, considering the later phases represented in
the Septuagint. There may have once existed in Hebrew :
story of the deadly feud between Mordecai (if that be the origina
1 See Zimmern, Die KeUinschriften und das Alte Test. (t \ p. 438.
' Ibid. p. 196.
'John*, Anyrian Deeds, in. 198-109; Amer. Journ. of Sent. Lan
fua t ts (April 1903), p. 158.
4 So too Zimmern, in Gunkel's Sckdpfunf und Chaos, p. 313, note 3
amc) and Haman, with elements suggested by the story of the
attle between the Supreme God and the dragon (see COSMOGONY).
\s the legend stands, Mordecai and Esther seem to be in each
ther's way. In a passage (i. 5 in LXX.) only found in the Septua-
gint, but which may have belonged to the original Esther,
eference is made to a dream of Mordecai respecting two great
ragons, i.e. Mordecai and Haman (x. 7). This seems to confirm
he view here mentioned. If so, however, there must also have
>een an Esther-legend, which was afterwards worked up with
hat of Mordecai. This is, in fact, the view of Erbt. Wincklor
akes a different line. Linguistic facts and certain points in the
ontents seem to him to show that our Esther is a work of the
ge of the Seleucidae; more precisely he thinks of the time
jf the revolt of Molon under Antiochus III. Of course there was
a Book of Esther before this, and even in its redacted form our
Esther reflects the period of three Persian kings, viz. Cyrus,
Cambyses and Darius. Lastly, Cheyne (Ency. Bib. " Purim,"
17), while agreeing with Winckler that the book is based on an
earlier narrative, holds that that earlier text differed more widely
rom the present in its geographical and historical setting than
Winckler seems to suppose. The problem of the origin of the
name Purim, however, can hardly be said to have received a final
solution.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Kuenen, History of Israel, iii. (1875), 148-153;
Lagarde, Purim (1887); Zimmern in Stade's Zeitschrift, xi. (1891),
pp. 157-169, and Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament <", 485,
(15-520, Jensen in Wildcboer's Esther (in Marti's series, 1898),
>p.i73-i75; Winckler, KeilinschriftenunddasAlte Testamenl w ,p.i8S,
Altoritntalische Forschunfen, 3rd ser. i. 1-64; Erbt, Die Punmsage
(1900) ; Ency. Biblica, articles Esther " and " Purim " (a composite
article). (T. K. C.)
ADDITIONS TO BOOK or ESTHER. These "additions" were
written originally in Greek and subsequently interpolated in
the Greek translation of the Book of Esther. Here the principle
of interpolation has reached its maximum. Of 270 verses, 107
are not to be found in the Hebrew text. These additions are
distributed throughout the book in the Greek, but in the Latin
Bible they were relegated to the end of the canonical book by
Jerome an action that has rendered them meaningless. In the
Greek the additions form with the canonical text a consecutive
history. They were made probably in the time of the Maccabees,
and their aim was to supply the religious element which is so
completely lacking in the canonical work. The first, which gives
the dream of Mordecai and the events which led to his advance-
ment at the court of Artaxerxes, precedes chap. i. of the canonical
text: the second and fifth, which follow iii. 13 and viii. 12,
furnish copies of the letters of Artaxerxes referred to in these
verses; the third and fourth, which are inserted after chap, iv.,
consist of the prayers of Mordecai and Esther, with an account of
Esther's approach to the king. The last, which closes the book,
tells of the institution of the feast of Purim. The Greek text
appears in two widely-differing recensions. The one is supported
by AB, and the other a revision of the first by codices 10,
933, io8b. The latter is believed to have been the work of
Lucian. Swete, Old Test, in Greek, ii. 755, has given the former,
while Lagarde has published both texts with critical annotations
in his Libroruat Veto-is TestameniiCanonicorum, i. 504-541 (1883),
and Scholz in his Kommentar tiber das Buck Esther ( 1 802) .
For an account of the Latin and Syriac versions, the Targums, and
the later Rabbinic literature connected with this subject, and other
questions relating to these additions, sec Fritzschc, Exeget. Hand-
buchzudenApok. (1851), i. 67-108; SchUrer^, iii. 33-332; Fuller in
Speaker's Apocr. i. 360-402; Ryssel in Kautzsch's ApoK. u. Pseud.
i. 193-212; Siegfried in Jewish Encyc. v. 237 sqq.; Swete, Introd.
to the Old Test, in Greek, 257 seq.; L. B. Paton, " A Text-Critical
Apparatus to the Book of Esther" in O.T. and Semitic Studies in
Memory of W. R. Harper (Chicago, 1908). (R. H. C.)
ESTHONIA (Gcr. Ehstland and Esthland, Esthonian Ecsti-
maa and Meie-maa, also Viroma and Rahvama; Lettish Ig^aun
Senna), a Baltic province of Russia, stretching along the south
coast of the Gulf of Finland, and having Lake Peipus and Livonia
on the S. and the government of St Petersburg on the E. An
archipelago of islands, of which Dago is the largest, belongs
to this government (Oesel belongs to Livonia). The area is
7818 sq. m., 503 sq. m. of this being insular. The surface is low,
798
ESTIENNE FAMILY
not exceeding 100 ft. in altitude along the coast and alongside
Lake Peipus, while in the interior the average elevation ranges
from 200 to 300 ft., and nowhere exceeds 450 ft. It was entirely
covered with the bottom moraine of the great ice-sheet of the
Glacial Epoch, resting upon Silurian sandstones and limestones.
In places sands and clays overlie the glacial deposits. The
principal stream is the Narova, which issues from Lake Peipus,
flows along the eastern border, and empties into the Gulf of Fin-
land. The other drainage arteries are all small, but many in
number; while lakes and marshes aggregate fully 22^% of the
total surface. The climate is severe, great cold being experienced
in winter, though moist west winds exercise a moderating in-
fluence. Nevertheless the annual mean temperature ranges
between 39 and 43 Fahr. IniSyS the nobility, mostly of German
descent, owned and farmed 52% of the land; 42% was farmed,
but not owned, by the peasants, mostly Esths or Ehsts, and only
3% was owned by persons outside the ranks of the nobility.
Since then one-fourth of the peasantry have been enabled to
purchase their holdings, more than half a million acres having
passed into their possession. Agriculture is the chief occupation,
and it is, on all the larger holdings, carried on with greater
scientific knowledge than in any other part of Russia. Of the
total area about 16-6% is under cultivation; meadows and
grass-lands amount to 41-7%; and forests cover 19%. The
principal crops are rye, oats, barley and potatoes, with large
quantities of vegetables. Cattle-breeding flourishes, and meat
and butter are constantly increasing items of export. The manu-
factories consist chiefly of distilleries (over 13,500,000 gallons
annually), cotton (at Kranholm falls on the Narova), woollen,
flour, paper and saw mills, iron and machinery works, and
match factories. Fishing is active along the coast, especially
for anchovies. The province is intersected by a railway running
from St Petersburg to Reval, with branches from the latter city
westwards to Baltic Port and southwards into Livonia, and from
Taps south to Yuryev (Dorpat). The chief seaports are Reval,
Baltic Port, Hapsal, Kunda and Dago. Esthonia is divided into
four districts, the chief towns of which are Reval (pop. in 1897,
66,292), the capital of the province; Hapsal, a lively watering-
place (3238); Weissenstein (2509); and Wesenberg (5560).
The population, which consists chiefly of Ehstes (365,959 in
1897), Russians (18,000), Germans (16,000), Swedes (5800), and
some Jews, is growing fairly fast: in 1870 it numbered 323,960,
and in 1897 413,747, of whom 210,199 were women and 76,315
lived in towns; in 1906 it was estimated at 451,700. Ninety-six
per cent, of the whole belong to the Lutheran Church. Education
is, for Russia, relatively high.
The Esths, Ehsts or Esthonians, who call themselves Tallopoeg
and Maamees, are known to the Russians as Chukhni or Chukh-
ontsi, to the Letts as Iggauni, and to the Finns as Virolaiset.
They belong to the Finnish family, and consequently to the
Ural-Altaic division of the human race. Altogether they
number close upon one million, and are thus distributed :
365,959 in Esthonia (in 1897), 518,594 in Livonia, 64,116 in the
government of St Petersburg, 25,458 in that of Pskov, and 12,855
in other parts of Russia. As a race they exhibit manifest evi-
dences of their Ural-Altaic or Mongolic descent in their short
stature, absence of beard, oblique eyes, broad face, low forehead
and small mouth. In addition to that they are an under-sized,
ill-thriven people, with long 1 arms and thin, short legs. They
cling tenaciously to their native language, which is closely allied
to the Finnish, and divisible into two, or according to some
authorities into three, principal dialects Dorpat Esthonian and
Reval Esthonian, with Pernau Esthonian. Reval Esthonian,
which preserves more carefully the full inflectional forms and pays
greater attention to the laws of euphony, is recognized as the
literary language. Since 1873 the cultivation of their mother-
tongue has been sedulously promoted by an Esthonian Literary
Society (Eesti Korjameeste Sells), which publishes Toimetused, or
" Instructions " in all sorts of subjects. They have a decided
love of poetry, and exhibit great facility in improvising verses
and poems on all occasions, and they sing, everywhere, from
morning to night. Like the Finns they possess rich stores of
national songs. These, which bear an unmistakable family
likeness to those of the great Finnish epic of the Kalevala, were
collected as the Ka'levi Poeg, and edited by Kreutswald (1857),
and translated into German by Reinthal (1857-1859) and
Bertram (1861) and by Lowe (1900). Other collections of
Esthnische Volkslieder have been published by Neuss (1850-
1852) and Kreutzwald and Neuss (1854); while Kreutzwald
(1866) and Jannsen (1888) have published collections of legends
and national tales. The earliest publication in Esthonian was
a Lutheran catechism in the i6th century. An Esthonian
translation of the New Testament was printed at Reval in 1715.
Between 1813 and 1832 there appeared at Pernau twenty volumes
of Beitriige zur genauern Kenntniss der esthnischen Sprache, by
Rosenplanter, and from 1840 onwards many valuable papers on
Esthonian subjects were contributed to the V ' erhandlungen der
gelehrten esthnischen Gesellschaft zu Dorpat. F. J. Wiedemann,
who laboured indefatigably in the registration and preservation
of matters connected with Esthonian language and lore, published
an Esthnisch-deutsches Worterbuch (1865; 2nd ed. by Hurt,
1891, &c.), and in 1903 there appeared at Reval a Deutsch-
esthnisches Worterbuch, by Ploompun and Kann.
The Esthonians first appear in history as a warlike and
predatory race, the terror of the Baltic seamen in consequence of
their piracies. More than one of the Danish kings made serious
attempts to subdue them. Canute VI. invaded their country
(1194-1196) and forced baptism upon many of them, but no
sooner did his war-ships disappear than they reverted to their
former heathenism. In 1219 Waldemar II. undertook a more
formidable crusade against them, in the course of which he
founded the town and episcopal see of Reval. By his efforts
the northern portion of the race were made submissive to the
Danish crown; but, though conquered, they were by no means
subdued, and were incessantly in revolt, until, after a great
rebellion in 1343, Waldemar IV. Atterdag sold for 19,000 marks
his portion of Esthonia in 1346, to the order of the Knights of
the Sword. These German crusaders had already, after a quarter
of a century's fighting, in 1224 gained possession of the regions
inhabited by the southern portion of the race, that is those
now included in Livonia. From that time for nearly six hundred
years or more the Esthonians were practically reduced to a
state of serfdom to the German landowners. In 1521 the nobles
and cities of Esthonia voluntarily placed themselves under the
protection of the crown of Sweden; but after the wars of Charles
XII., Esthonia was formally ceded to his victorious rival, Peter
the Great, by the peace of Nystad (1721). Serfdom was abolished
in 1817 by Tsar Alexander I.; but the condition of the peasants
was so little improved that they rose in open revolt in 1859.
Since 1878, however, a vast change for the better has been effected
in their economic position (see above). The determining feature
of their recent history has been the attempt made by the Russian
government (since 1881) and the Orthodox Greek Church (since
1883) to russify and convert the inhabitants of the province,
Germans and Esths alike, by enforcing the use of Russian in the
schools and by harsh and repressive measures aimed at their
native language.
See Merkel, Die freien Letten und Esthen (1820); Parrot, Versuch
einer Entwickelung der Sprache, Abstammung, &c., der Liwen, Ldtten,
Eesten (1839); F. Kruse, Urgeschichte des esthnischen Volksstammes
(1846); Wiedemann, Grammatik der esthnischen Sprache (1875),
and Aus dem innern und dussern Leben der Esthen (1876); Koppen,
Die Bewohner Esthlands (1847); F. M tiller, Beitrage zur Orographie
und Hydrographie von Esthland (1869-1871); Bunge, Das Herzog-
thum Esthland unter den Konigen von Ddnemark (1877); and Sera-
phim, Geschichte Liv-, Est-, und Kurlands (2nd ed., 1897) and various
papers in the Finnisch- Ugrische Forschungen.
(P. A. K.; J. T. BE.; C. EL.)
ESTIENNE (or ETIENNE; the French form of the name;
anglicized to Stephens, and latinized to Stephanus), a French
family of scholars and printers.
The founder of the race was HENRI ESTIENNE (d. 1520), the
scion of a noble family of Provence, who came to Paris in 1502,
and soon afterwards set up a printing establishment at the top
of the rue Saint- Jean de Beauvais, on the hill of Saint-Genevieve
opposite the law school. He died in 1520, and, his three sons
ESTIENNE FAMILY
799
being minors, the business was carried on by his foreman Simon
de Colines, who in 1511 married his widow.
ROBEBT ESTIENNE (1303-1559) was Henri's second son.
After his father's death be acted as assistant to his stepfather,
and in this capacity superintended the printing of a Latin
edition of the New Testament in i6mo (1523). Some slight
alterations which he had introduced into the text brought upon
him the censures of the faculty of theology. It was the first
of a long series of disputes between him and that body. It
appears that he had intimate relations with the new Evangelical
preachers almost from the beginning of the movement, and that
soon after this time he definitely joined the Reformed Church.
In 1526 he entered into possession of his father's printing estab-
lishment, and adopted as his device the celebrated olive-tree
(a reminiscence doubtless of his grandmother's family of Mont-
olivet), with the motto from the epistle to the Romans (xi. 20),
Noii altum saptre, sometimes with the addition sed time. In
1528 he married Ferret te, a daughter of the scholar and printer
Josse Bade (Jodocus Badius), and in the same year he published
his first Latin Bible, an edition in folio, upon which he had been
at work for the last four years. In 1 532 appeared his Thesaurus
linguae Latinae, a dictionary of Latin words and phrases, upon
which for two years he had toiled incessantly, with no other
assistance than that of Thierry of Beau va is. A second edition,
greatly enlarged and improved, appeared in 1536, and a third,
still further improved, in 3 vols. folio, in 1543. Though the
Thesaurus is now superseded, its merits must not be forgotten.
It was vastly superior to anything of the kind that had appeared
before; it formed the basis of future labours, and even as late
as 1734 was considered worthy of being re-edited. In 1539
Robert was appointed king's printer for Hebrew and Latin, an
office to which, after the death of Conrad Neobar in 1540, he
united that of king's printer for Greek. Ini;4ihewas entrusted
by Francis I. with the task of procuring from Claude Garamond,
the engraver and type-founder, three sets of Greek type for the
royal press. The middle size were the first ready, and with
these Robert printed the editio princeps of the Ecclesiasticae
Historiae of Eusebius and others (i 544). The smallest size were
first used for the i6mo edition of the New Testament known
as the O mirificom (1546), while with the largest size was printed
the magnificent folio of 1550. This edition involved the printer
in fresh disputes with the faculty of theology, and towards the
end of the following year he left his native town for ever, and
took refuge at Geneva, where he published in 1552 a caustic and
effective answer to his persecutors under the title Ad censuras
thtoloforum Pariiicnsium, quibus Biblia a R. Stephana, Typo-
grapko Rcgio, ex usa calumniose notarunt, eiusdem R. S. responsio.
A French translation, which is remarkable for the excellence
of its style, was published by him in the same year (printed in
Renouard's AnnaJes de I'imprimerie des Estienne). At Geneva
Robert proved himself an ardent partisan of Calvin, several
of whose works he published. He died there on the 7th of
September 1559.
It is by his work in connexion with the Bible, and especially as
an editor of the New Testament, that he is on the whole best known.
The text of his New Testament of 1550, either in its original form
or in such slightly modified form as it assumed in the Elzevir text
of 1634, remains to this day the traditional text. But this is due
rather to its typographical beauty than to any critical merit. The
readings of the fifteen MSS. which Robert's son Henri had collated
for the purpose were merely introduced into the margin. The text
was still almost exactly that of Erasmus. It was, however, the first
edition ever published with a critical apparatus of any sort. Of the
whole Bible Robert printed eleven editions eight in Latin, two in
Hebrew and one in French ; while of the New Testament alone he
printed twelve five in Greek, five in Latin and two in French. In
the Greek New Testament of 1551 (printed at Geneva) the present
division into verse* was introduced for the first time. The cditiemes
prtncipts which issued from Robert's press were eight in number,
viz. Eusefnus, including the Praeparatto ecangelica and the Demon-
stralio evanfcliea as well as the Historic ecaesiaitica already men-
tioned (1544-1546), Motchopulus (1545), Dionysius of Halicarnassus
(February 154?). Alexander Trallianus (January 1548), Din Cassius
(January 1548), Justin Martyr (1551), Xiphilinu* (1551), Appian
(1551). the last being completed, after Robert's departure from
Pans, by his brother Charles, and appearing under his name. These
editions, all in folio, except the Moschopulus, which is in 410, are
unrivalled for beauty. Robert also printed numerous editions of
Latin classics, of which perhaps the folio Virgil of 1532 is the most
noteworthy, and a large quantity of Latin grammars and other
educational works, many of which were written by Maturin Cordier,
his friend and co-worker in the cause of humanism.
CHARLES ESTIENNE (1504 or 1505-1564), the third son of
Henri, was, like his brother Robert, a man of considerable
learning. After the usual humanistic training he studied
medicine, and took his doctor's degree at Paris. He was for a
time tutor to Jean Antoine de Balf, the future poet. In 1551,
when Robert Estienne left Paris for Geneva, Charles, who had
remained a Catholic, took charge of his printing establishment,
and in the same year was appointed king's printer. In 1561 he
became bankrupt, and he is said to have died in a debtors' prison.
His principal works are Praedium Rusticum (1554), a collection
of tracts which he had compiled from ancient writers on various
branches of agriculture, and which continued to be a favourite book
down to the end of the 1 7th century; Dictipnarium historicum ac
poeticum (1553), the first French encyclopaedia; Thesaurus Ciceroni-
anus (1557), and De diisectione partium corporis human i libri Ires,
with well-drawn woodcuts (1548). He also published a translation
of an Italian comedy, Gli Ingannati, under the title of Le Sacrifice
(1543; republished as Les Abuses, 1549), which had some influence
on the development of French comedy; and Paradoxes (1553), an
imitation of the Paradossi of Ortensio Lancli.
HENRI ESTIENNE (1531-1598), sometimes called Henri II.,-
was the eldest son of Robert. In the preface to his edition of
Aulus Gellius (1585), addressed to his son Paul, he gives an
interesting account of his father's household, in which, owing to
the various nationalities of those who were employed on the
press, Latin was used as a common language. Henri thus picked
up Latin as a child, but by his own request he was allowed to
learn Greek as a serious study before Latin. At the age of
fifteen he become a pupil of Pierre Danes, at that time the first
Greek scholar in France. Two years later he began to attend
the lectures of Jacques Toussain, one of the royal professors
of Greek, and in the same year (1545) was employed by his
father to collate a MS. of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. In 1547
he went to Italy, where he spent three years in hunting for and
collating MSS. and in intercourse with learned men. In 1550
he visited England, where he was favourably received by Edward
VI., and then Flanders, where he learnt Spanish. In 1551 he
joined his father at Geneva, which henceforth became his home.
In 1554 he gave to the world, as the firstfruits of his researches,
two first editions, viz. a tract of Dionysius of Halicarnassus
and the so-called " Anacreon." In 1556 he discovered at Rome
ten new books (xi.-xx.) of Diodorus Siculus. In 1557 he issued
from the press which in the previous year he had set up at
Geneva three first editions, viz. Athenagoras, Maximus Tyrius,
and some fragments of Greek historians, including Appian's
'\vvifta\ucri, and 'IjSijpooJ and an edition of Aeschylus, in which
for the first time the Agamemnon was printed in entirety and as
a separate play. In 1559 he printed a Latin translation from
his own pen of Scxtus Empiricus, and an edition of Diodorus
Siculus with the new books. His father dying in the same year,
he became under his will owner of his press, subject, however,
to the condition of keeping it at Geneva. In 1566 he published
his best-known French work, the Apologie pour Herodole, or,
as he himself called it, L' Introduction au traitt de la conformite
des meneUles anciennes avec les modernes ou Traitt prtparatif d
I' Apologie pour Herodole. Some passages being considered
objectionable by the Geneva consistory, he was compelled to
cancel the pages containing them. The book became highly
popular, and within sixteen years twelve editions were printed.
In 1572 he published the great work upon which be had been
labouring for many years, the Thesaurus Graecae linguae,
in 5 vols. fol. The publication in 1578 of his Deux Dialogues
du nouveau jrancjns Italianize brought him into a fresh dispute
with the consistory. To avoid their censure he went to Paris,
and resided at the' French court for a year. On his return to
Geneva he was summoned before the consistory, and, proving
contumacious, was imprisoned for a week. From this time his
life became more and more of a nomad one. He is to be found
8oo
ESTON ESTOPPEL
at Basel, Heidelberg, Vienna, Pest, everywhere but at Geneva,
these journeys being undertaken partly in the hope of procuring
patrons and purchasers, for the large sums which he had spent
on such publications as the Thesaurus and the Plato of 1578 had
almost ruined him. His press stood nearly at a standstill. A
few editions of classical authors were brought out, but each
successive one showed a falling off. Such value as the later
ones had was chiefly due to the notes furnished by Casaubon,
who in 1586 had married his daughter Florence. His last years
were marked by ever-increasing infirmity of mind and temper.
In 1597 he left Geneva for the last time. After visiting Mont-
pellier, where Casaubon was now professor, he started for Paris,
but was seized with sudden illness at Lyons, and died there at
the end of January 1 598.
Few men have ever served the cause of learning more devotedly.
For over thirty years the amount which he produced, whether as
printer, editor or original writer, was enormous. The productions
of his press, though printed with the same beautiful type as his
father's books, are, owing to the poorness of the paper and ink,
inferior to them in general beauty. The best, perhaps, from a
typographical point of view, are the Poetae Craeci principes (folio,
1566), the Plutarch (13 vols. 8vo, 1572), and the Plato (3 vols. folio,
1578). It was rather his scholarship which gave value to his editions.
He was not only his own press-corrector but his own editor. Though
by the latter half of the i6th century nearly all the important
Greek and Latin authors that we now possess had been published,
his untiring activity still found some gleanings. Eighteen first
editions of Greek authors and one of a Latin author are due to his
press. The most important have been already mentioned. Henri's
reputation as a scholar and editor has increased of late years. His
familiarity with the Greek language has always been admitted to
have been quite exceptional; but he has been accused of want of
taste and judgment, of carelessness and rashness. Special censure
has been passed on his Plutarch, in which he is said to have intro-
duced conjectures of his own into the text, while pretending to have .
derived them from MS. authority. But a late editor, Sintenis,
has shown that, though like all the other editors of his day he did
not give references to his authorities, every one of his supposed
conjectures can be traced to some MS. Whatever [may be said
as to his taste or his judgment, it seems that he was both careful
and scrupulous, and that he only resorted to conjecture when
authority failed him. And, whatever the merit of his conjectures,
he was at any rate the first to show what conjecture could do towards
restoring a hopelessly corrupt passage. The work, however, on
which his fame as a scholar is most surely based is the Thesaurus
Craecae linguae. After making due allowance for the fact that
considerable materials for the work had been already collected by
his father, and that he received considerable assistance from the
German scholar Sylburg, he is still entitled to the very highest
praise as the producer of a work which was of the greatest service
to scholarship and which in those early days of Greek learning could
have been produced by no one but a giant. Two editions of the
Thesaurus were published in the I0.th century at London by
Valpy (1815-1825) and at Paris by Didot (1831-1863).
It was one of Henri Estienne's great merits that, unlike nearly all
the French scholars who preceded him, he did not neglect his own
language. In the Traite de la conformite du langage frangois avec le
Grec (published in 1565, but without date; ed. L. Feugere, 1850),
French is asserted to have, among modern languages, the most
affinity with Greek, the first of all languages. Deux Dialogues du
nouveau franc,ois italianize (Geneva, 1578; ed. P. Ristelhuber,
2 vols., 1885) was directed against the fashion prevailing in the court
of Catherine de' Medici of using Italian words and forms. The
Project du liiire intitule de la Precellence du langage franfois (Paris,
1579; ed. E. Huguet, 1896) treats of the superiority of French to
Italian. An interesting feature of the Precellence is the account
of French proverbs, and, Henry III. having expressed some doubts
as to the genuineness of some of them, Henri Estienne published, in
1594, Les Premices ou le I. livre des Proverbes epigrammatizez (never
reprinted and very rare).
Finally, there remains the Apologie pour Herodote, his most famous
work. The ostensible object of the book is to show that the strange
stories in Herodotus may be paralleled by equally strange ones of
modern times. Virtually it is a bitter satire on the writer's age,
especially on the Roman Church. Put together without any method,
its extreme desultoriness makes it difficult to read continuously, but
the numerous stories, collected partly from various literary sources,
notably from the preachers Menot and Maillard, partly from the
writer's own multifarious experience, with which it is packed, make
it an interesting commentary on the manners and fashions of the
time. But satire, to be effective, should be either humorous or
righteously indignant, and, while such humour as there is in the
Apologie is decidedly heavy, the writer's indignation is generally
forgotten in his evident relish for scandal. The style is, after all, its
chief merit. Though it bears evident traces of hurry, it is, like that
of all Henri Estienne's French writings, clear, easy and vigorous,
uniting the directness and sensuousness of the older writers with
a suppleness and logical precision which at this time were almost
new elements in French prose. An edition of the Apologie has
recently been published by Liseux (ed. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1879),
after one of the only two copies of the original uncancelled edition
that are known to exist. The very remarkable political pamphlet
entitled Discours merveilleux de la vie et actions et deportemens de
Catherine de Medicis, which appeared in 1574, has been ascribed to
Henri Estienne, but the evidence both internal and external is con-
clusive against his being the author of it. Of his Latin writings the
most worthy of notice are the De Latinitate falso suspecta (1576), the
Pseudo-Cicero (1577) and the Nizoliodidascalus (1578), all three
written against the Ciceronians, and the Francofordiense Emporium
('574)1 a panegyric on the Frankfort fair (reprinted with a French
translation by Liseux, 1875). He also wrote a large quantity of
indifferent Latin verses, including a long poem entitled Musa
monitrix Principum (Basel, 1590).
The primary authorities for an account of the Estiennes are their
own works. In the garrulous and egotistical prefaces which Henri
was in the habit of prefixing to his editions will be found many
scattered biographical details. Twenty-seven letters from Henri
to John Crato of Crafftheim (ed. F. Passow, 1830) have been printed,
and there is one of Robert's in Herminjard s Correspondence des
Reformateurs dans de pays de langue frangaise (9 vols. published
18661897), while a few other contemporary references to him will
be found in the same work. The secondary authorities are Janssen
van Almeloveen, De vitis Stephanorum (Amsterdam, 1683);
Maittaire, Stephanorum historia (London, 1709) ; A. A. Renouard,
Annales de I'imprimerie des Estienne (2nd ed., Paris, 1843); the
article on Estienne by A. F. Didot in the Nouv. Biog. gen.; Mark
Pattison, Essays, i. 67 ff. (1889); L. Clement, Henri Estienne et son
oeuvre franc, aise (Paris, 1899). There is a good account of Henri's
Thesaurus in the Quart. Rev. for January 1820, written by Bishop
Blomfield. (A. A. T.)
ESTON, an urban district in the Cleveland parliamentary
division of the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, 4 m. S.E.
of Middlesbrough, on a branch of the North Eastern railway.
Pop. (1901) 11,199. This is one of the principal centres from
which the great ironstone deposits of the Cleveland Hills are
worked, and there are extensive blast-furnaces, iron-foundries
and steam sa wing-mills in the district. Immediately W. of
Eston lies the urban district of Ormesby (pop. 9482), and the
whole district is densely populated (see MIDDLESBROUGH).
Marton, west of Ormesby, was the birthplace of Captain Cook
(17 28) . Numerous early earthworks fringe the hills to the south.
ESTOPPEL (from O. Fr. eslopper, to stop, bar; estoupe, mod.
Stoupe, a plug of tow; Lat. sluppa), a rule in the law of evidence
by which a party in litigation is prohibited from asserting or
denying something, when such assertion or denial would be
inconsistent with his own previous statements or conduct.
Estoppel is said to arise in three ways (i) by record or judg-
ment, (2) by deed, and (3) by matter in pais or conduct, (i)
Where a cause of action has been tried and final judgment has
been pronounced, the judgment is conclusive either party
attempting to renew the litigation by a new action would be
estopped by the judgment. " Every judgment is conclusive
proof as against parties and privies, of facts directly in issue in
the case, actually decided by the court, and appearing from the
judgment itself to be the ground on which it was based. "-
Stephen's Digest of the Law of Evidence, Art. 41. (2) It is one of
the privileges of deeds as distinguished from simple contracts
that they operate by way of estoppel. " A man shall always
be estopped by his own deed, or not permitted to aver or prove
anything in contradiction to what he has once so solemnly and
deliberately avowed " (Blackstone, 2 Com. 295); e.g. where a
bond recited that the defendants were authorized by acts of
parliament to borrow money, and that under such authority they
had borrowed money from a certain person, they were estopped
from setting up as a defence that they did not in fact so borrow
money, as stated by their deed. (3) Estoppel by conduct, or,
as it is still sometimes called, estoppel by matter in pais, is the
most important head. The rule practically comes to this that,
when a person in his dealings with others has acted so as to
induce them to believe a thing to be true and to act on such belief,
he may not in any proceeding between himself and them deny
the thing to be true; e.g. a partner retiring from a firm without
giving notice to the customers, cannot, as against a customer
having no knowledge of his retirement, deny that he is a partner.
ESTOUTEVILLE ESTREMADURA
801
As between landlord and tenant the principle operates to prevent
the denial by the tenant of the landlord's title. So if a person
come* upon land by the licence of the person in possession, he
cannot deny that the licenser had a title to the possession at the
time the licence was given. Again, if a man accepts a bill of
exchange he may not deny the signature or the capacity of the
drawer. So a person receiving goods as baillee from another
cannot deny the title of that other to the goods at the time they
were entrusted to him.
Estoppel of whatever kind is subject to one general rule, that
it cannot override the law of the land; for example, a corpora-
tion would not be estopped as to acts which are ultra vires.
See L. F. Everest and E. Strode, The Law of Estoppel; M. Cababe,
PrtncipUt of Eitopfxl.
ESTOUTEVILLE. GUILLAUME D' (1403-1483), French
ecclesiastic, was bishop of Angers, of Digne, of Porto and Santa
Runna, of Ostia and Velletri, archbishop of Rouen, prior of Saint
Martin des Champs, abbot of Mont St Michel, of St Ouen at
Rouen, and of Montebourg. He was sent to France as legate by
Pope Nicholas V. to make peace between Charles VII. and
England (1451), and undertook, ex offifio, the revision of the
trial of Joan of Arc; he afterwards reformed the statutes of the
university of Paris. He then went to preside over the assembly
of clergy which met at Bourges to discuss the observation of the
Pragmatic Sanction (see BASEL, COUNCIL OF), finally returning
to Rome, where he passed almost all the rest of his life. He was
a great builder, Rouen, Mont St Michel, Pontoise and Gaillon
owing many noble buildings to his initiative.
ESTOVERS (from the O. Fr. estover, estovoir, a verb used as
a substantive in the sense of that which is necessary; the word
is of disputed origin; it has been referred to the Lat. stare,
to stand, or sludere, to desire), a term, in English law, for the
wood which a tenant for life or years may take from the land he
holds for repair of his house, the implements of husbandry, and
the hedges and fences, and for firewood. The O. Eng. word for
estover was bate or boot (literally meaning " good," " profit,"
the same word as seen in " better ")- The various kinds of
estovers were thus known as housc-bote, cart or plough-bole,
hedge or hay-bole, and fire-bote respectively. These rights
may, of course, be restricted by express covenants. Copyholders
have similar rights over the land they occupy and over the waste
of the manor, in which case the rights are known as " Commons
of estovers." (See COMMONS.)
ESTRADA. LA. a town of north-western Spain, in the province
of Pontevedra, 15 m. S. by E. of Santiago de Compostela. Pop.
(1000) 23,916. La Estrada is the chief town of a densely-popu-
lated mountainous district; its industries are agriculture, stock-
breeding, and the manufacture of linen and woollen cloth.
Timber from the mountain forests is conveyed from La Estrada
to the river Ulla, 4 m. X., and thence floated down to the sea-
ports on Arosa Bay. The nearest railway-station is Requeijo,
7 m. W., on the Pontevedra-Santiago railway. There are
mineral springs at La Estrada and at Caldas de Reyes, n m.
W.S.W.
ESTRADE. a French architectural term for a raised platform
(see DAIS). In the Levant the estrade of a divan is called Sopha
(Blondel). from which comes our " sofa."
ESTRADES. GODEFROI. COMTE D' (1607-1686), French
diplomatist and marshal, was born at Agen. He was the son of
Francois d 'Est radcs (d. 1 653) , a partisan of Henry IV. , and brother
of Jean d'Estrades, bishop of Condom. He became a page to
Louis XIII., and at the age of nineteen was sent on a mission to
Maurice of Holland. In 1646 he was named ambassador extra-
ordinary to Holland, and took part in the conferences at MUnster.
Sent in 1661 to England, he obtained in 1662 the restitution of
Dunkirk. In 1667 he negotiated the treaty of Breda with the
king of Denmark, and in 1678 the treaty of Nijmwegen, which
ended the war with Holland. Independently of these diplomatic
itiMrioiH, be took part in the principal campaigns of Louis XIV.,
in Italy (1648), in Catalonia (1655), in HoUand (1672); and was
created marshal of France in 1675. He left Lettres, memoir rs
et nffodalumt en qualiti d'ambosiodeur en Hollande depuis 1663
EC. 26
jusqu' tn 1668, of which the first edition in 1709 was followed by
a nine- volume edition (London (the Hague), 1743).
Of the sons of Godefroi d'Estrades, Jean Francois d'Estrades
was ambassador to Venice and Piedmont; Louis, marquis
d'Estrades (d. 1711), succeeded his father as governor of Dunkirk,
and was the father of Godefroi Louis, comted'Estrades, lieutenant
general, who was killed at the siege of Belgrade, 1717.
See Felix Salomon, Frankreuhs aetiehungen zu dem Scottischen
Aufstand (1637-1640), containing an excursus on the falsification
of the letters of the comte d'Estrades; Philippe Lauzun, /./ Marlchal
d'Eitradts (Agen, 1896).
ESTREAT (O. Fr. estrait, Lat. extracta), originally, a true copy
or duplicate of some original writing or record; now used only
with reference to the enforcement of a forfeited recognizance.
At one time it was the practice to extract and certify into the
exchequer copies of entries in court rolls which contained pro-
visions or orders in favour of the treasury, hence the estreating
of a recognizance was the taking out from among the other
records of the court in which it was filed and sending it to the
exchequer to be enforced, or sending it to the sheriff to be levied
by him, and then returned by the clerk of the peace to the lords
of the treasury. (See RECOGNIZANCE.)
ESTREES, GABRIELLE D' (1573-1599), mistress of Henry IV.
of France, was the daughter of Antoine d'Estres, marquis of
Cceuvres, and Francoise Babou de la Bourdaisi^re. Henry IV.,
who in November 1 590 stayed at the castle of Cceuvres, became
violently enamoured of her. Her father, anxious to save his
daughter from so perilous an entanglement, married her to
Nicholas d'Amerval, seigneur de Liancourt, but the union proved
unhappy, and in December 1592, Gabrielle, whose affection for
the king was sincere, became his mistress. She lived with him
from December 1592 onwards, and bore him several children,
who were recognized and legitimized by him. She possessed
the king's entire confidence; he willingly listened to her advice,
and created her marchioness of Monceaux, duchess of Beaufort
(1597) and Etampes (1598), a peeress of France. The king
even proposed to marry her in the event of the success of his
suit for the nullification by the Holy See of his marriage with
Margaret of Valois; but before the question was settled Gabrielle
died, on the loth of April 1599. Poison was of course suspected;
but her death was really caused by puerperal convulsions
(eclampsia).
See Adrien Desclozeaux, Gabrielle d'Estrees, Marquise de Monceaux,
Sfc. (Paris, 1889).
ESTREMADURA, or EXTREMAOUKA, an ancient territorial
division of central and western Portugal, and of western Spain;
comprising the modern districts of Leiria, Santarem and Lisbon,
in Portugal, and the modern provinces of Badajoz and Caceres
in Spain. Pop. (1000) 2,095,818; area, 23,055 sq. m. The
name of Estremadura appears to be of early Romance or Late
Latin origin, and probably was applied to all the far western
lands (extrema ora) bordering upon the lower Tagus, as far as the
Atlantic Ocean. I It is thus equivalent to Land's End, or Finistcre.
In popular speech it is more commonly used than the names of
the modern divisions mentioned above, which were created in
the 1 9th century. As, however, there are many racial, economic
and historic differences between Portuguese and Spanish Estre-
madura, the two provinces are separately described below.
i. Portuguese Estremadura is bounded on the N. by Beira,
E. and S. by Alemtejo, and W. by the Atlantic Ocean. Pop.
(1900) 1,221,418; area, 6937 sq. m. The greatest length of the
province, from N. to S., is 165 m.; its greatest breadth, from E.
to W., is 72m. The general uniformity of the coast-line is broken
by the broad and deep estuaries of the Tagus and the Sado, and
by the four conspicuous promontories of Cape Carvoeiro, Cape
da Roca, Cape Espichel and Cape dc Sines. The Tagus is the
great navigable waterway of Portuguese Estremadura, flowing
from north-east to south-west, and fed by many minor tributaries,
notably the Zezere on the right and the Zatas on the left. It
divides the country into two nearly equal portions, wholly
dissimilar in surface and character. South of the Tagus the land
is almost everywhere low, flat and monotonous, while in several
places it is rendered unhealthy by undrained marshes. The
802
ESTREMOZ ESTUARY
Sado, which issues into Setubal Bay, is the only important
river of this region. North of the Tagus, and parallel with its
right bank, extends the mountain chain which is known at its
northern extremity as the Serra do Aire and, where it terminates
above Cape da Roca, as the Serra da Cintra. This ridge, which
is buttressed on all sides by lesser groups of hills, and includes
part of the famous lines of Torres Vedras (q.v.), exceeds 2200 ft.
in height, and constitutes the watershed between the right-hand
tributaries of the Tagus and the Liz, Sizandro and other small
rivers which flow into the Atlantic. On its seaward side, except
for the line of sheer and lofty cliffs between Cape Carvoeiro and
Cape da Roca, the country is mostly flat and sandy, with exten-
sive heaths and pine forests; but along the fertile and well-
cultivated right bank of the Tagus the river scenery, with its
terraced hills of vines, olives and fruit trees, often resembles
that of the Rhine in Germany. The natural resources of Portu-
guese Estremadura, with its inhabitants, industries, commerce,
communications, &c., are described under PORTUGAL; for on
such matters there is little to be said of this central and most
characteristic province which does not apply to the whole
kingdom. Separate articles are also devoted to Lisbon, the
capital, and Abrantes, Cintra, Leiria, Mafra, Santarem, Setubal,
Thomar, Torres Novas and Torres Vedras, the other chief towns.
The women of Peniche, a small fishing village on the promontory
of Cape Carvoeiro, have long been celebrated throughout Portugal
for their skill in the manufacture of fine laces.
2. Spanish Estremadura is bounded on the N. by Leon and
Old Castile, E. by New Castile, S. by Andalusia, and W. by the
Portuguese province of Beira and Alemtejo, which separate
it from Portuguese Estremadura. Pop. (1900) 882,410; area,
16,118 sq. m. Spanish Estremadura consists of a tableland
separated from Leon and Old Castile by the lofty Sierra de
Credos, the plateau of Bejar and the Sierra de Gata, which form
an almost continuous barrier along the northern frontier, with
its summits ranging from 6000 to more than 8500 ft. in altitude.
On the south the comparatively low range of the Sierra Morena
constitutes the frontier of Andalusia; on the east and west there
is a still more gradual transition to the plateau of New Castile
and the central plains of Portugal. The tableland of Spanish
Estremadura is itself bisected from east to west by a line of
mountains, the Sierras of San Pedro, Montanchez and Guadalupe
(4000-6000 ft.), which separate its northern half, drained by
the river Tagus, from its southern half, drained by the Guadiana.
These two halves are respectively known as Alta or Upper
Estremadura (the modern Caceres), and Baja or Lower Estre-
madura (the modern Badajoz). The Tagus and Guadiana flow
from east to west through a monotonous country, level or
slightly undulating, often almost uninhabited, and covered with
a thin growth of shrubs and grass. Perhaps the most charac-
teristic feature of this tableland is the vast heaths of gum-cistus,
which in spring colour the whole landscape with leagues of
yellow blossom, and in summer change to a brown and arid
wilderness.
The climate in summer is hot but not unhealthy, except in
the swamps which occur along the Guadiana. The rainfall is
scanty; dew, however, is abundant and the nights are cool.
Although the high mountains are covered with snow in November,
the winters are not usually severe. The soil is naturally fertile,
but drought, floods and locusts render agriculture difficult,
and sheep-farming is the most important of Estremaduran
industries. (See SPAIN: Agriculture.) In the igth century,
however, this industry lost much of its former importance
owing to foreign competition.
Immense herds of swine are bred and constitute a great source
of support to the inhabitants, not only supplying them with
food, but also forming a great article of export to other provinces
the pork, bacon and hams being in high esteem. The beech,
oak and chestnut woods afford an abundance of food for swine,
and there are numerous plantations of olive, cork and fruit trees,
but a far greater area of forest has been destroyed. For an
account of commerce, mining, communications, &c., in Spanish
Estremadura, with a list of the chief towns, see CACERES and
BADAJOZ. In character and physical type, the people of this
region are less easily classified than those of other Spanish
provinces. They lack the endurance and energy of the Galicians,
the independent and enterprising spirit of the Asturians, Basques
and Catalans, the culture of the Castilians and Andalusians.
Their failure to develop a distinctive local type of character and
civilization is perhaps due to the adverse economic history of
their country. The two great waterways which form the natural
outlet for Estremaduran commerce flow to the Atlantic through
a foreign and, for centuries, a hostile territory. Like other parts
of Spain, Estremadura suffered severely from the expulsion of
the Jews and Moors (149 2-1610), while the compensating treasure,
derived during the same period from Spanish America, never
reached a province so remote at once from the sea and from
the chief centres of national life. Although Cortes (1485-1547),
the conqueror of Mexico and Pizarro (c. 1471-1541), the con-
queror of Peru, were both born in Estremadura, their exploits,
far from bringing prosperity to their native province, only en-
couraged the emigration of its best inhabitants. Heavy taxation
and harsh land-laws prevented any recovery, while the felling
of the forests reduced manyfertile areas to waste land, and ren-
dered worse a climate already unfavourable to agriculture. Few
countries leave upon the mind of the traveller a deeper impression
of hopeless poverty.
ESTREMOZ, a town of Portugal, in the district of Evora,
formerly included in the province of Alemtejo; 104 m. by rail
' E. of Lisbon, on the Casa Branca-Evora-Elvas railway. Pop.
(1900) 7920. Estremoz is built at the base of a hill crowned
by a large dismantled citadel; its fortifications, which in the
1 7th century accommodated 20,000 troops and rendered the
town one of the principal defences of the frontier, are now obsolete.
There are marble quarries in the neighbourhood, and the Estremoz
bilhas, red earthenware jars, are used throughout Portugal as
water-holders and exported to Spain. At Ameixial (1188) and
Monies Claros, near Estremoz, the Spanish were severely defeated
by the Portuguese in 1663 and 1665. Villa Vicosa (3841), 10 m.
S.E., is a town of pre-Roman origin, containing a royal palace.
The altars with Latin inscriptions to the Iberian god Endo-
vellicus, found at Villa Vicosa, are preserved in the museum of
the Royal Academy of Sciences, Lisbon.
ESTUARY (from the Lat. aesluarium, a place reached by
aestus, the tide), an arm of the sea narrowing inwards at the
mouth of a river where sea and fresh water meet and are mixed,
i.e. the tidal portion of a river's mouth. Structurally the estuary
may represent the long-continued action of river erosion and
tidal erosion confined to a narrow channel, most effective where
most concentrated, or an estuary may be the drowned portion of
the lower part of a river-valley. In a map of Britain showing
sea-depths it will be observed that under the Severn estuary the
sea deepens in a number of steps descending by concentric V's
that become blunter towards deep water until the last is a mere
indentation pointing towards the long narrow termination of
the present estuary. In this and in similar cases the progress of
the estuary is indicated upon what is now the continental shelf.
The chief interest in estuarine conditions is the mingling of sea
and fresh water. Where, as in the Severn and the Thames, the
fresh water meets the sea gradually the water is mixed, and there
is very little change in salinity at high tide. The fresh water
flows over the salt water and there is a continuous rapid change
in salinity towards the sea, for the currents sweeping in and out
mix the water constantly. Where the river brings down a great
quantity of fresh water in a narrow channel, the change of
salinity at high and low water is very marked. " When, however,
the inlet is very large compared with the river, and there is no
bar at the opening, the estuarine character is only shown at the
upper end. In the Firth of Forth, for example, the landward
half is an estuary, but in the seaward half the water has become
more thoroughly mixed, the salinity is almost uniform from
surface to bottom, and increases very gradually towards the
sea. The river-water meets the sea diffused uniformly through
a deep mass of water scarcely fresher than the sea itself, so that
the two mix uniformly, and the sea becomes slightly freshened
ESZTERGOM ETAMPES
803
throughout its whole depth for many miles from land" (H. R.
Mill ,Rfolm of Nature, 1897).
ESZTERGOM (Ger. Gran; Lat. Slrigonium), a town of
Hungary, capital of the county of the same name, 36 m. N.W. of
Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900) 16,948, mostly Magyars and
Roman Catholics. It is situated on the right bank of the Danube,
nearly opposite the confluence of the Gran, and is divided into the
town proper and three suburbs. The town is the residence of the
primate of Hungary, and its cathedral, built in 1821-1870, after
the model of St Peter's at Rome, is one of the finest and largest
in the country. It is picturesquely built on an elevated and
commanding position, 215 ft. above the Danube, and its dome,
visible from a long distance, is 260 ft. high, and has a diameter
of 52 ft. The interior is very richly decorated, notably with
fine frescoes, and its treasury and fine library of over 60,000
volumes are famous. Besides several other churches and two
monastic houses, the principal buildings include the handsome
palace of the primate, erected in 1883 ; the archiepiscopal library,
with valuable incunabula and old MSS.; the seminary for the
education of Roman Catholic priests; the residences of the
chapter; and the town-hall. The population is chiefly employed
in cloth-weaving, wine-making and agricultural pursuits. An iron
bridge, 1664 ft. long, connects Esztergom with the market town
of Pirkiny (pop. 2836) on the opposite bank of the Danube.
Esztergom is one of the oldest towns of Hungary, and is famous
as the birthplace of St Stephcn.the first prince crowned " apostolic
king " of Hungary. During the early times of the Hungarian
monarchy it was the most important mercantile centre in the
country, and it was the meeting-place of the diets of 1016, mi,
1114 and 1256. It was almost completely destroyed by Tatar
hordes in 1241, but was rebuilt and fortified by King Bcla IV.
In 1543 it fell into the hands of the Turks, from whom it was
recovered, in 1595, by Carl von Mansfeld. In 1604 it reverted
to the Turks, who held it till 1683, when it was regained by the
united forces of John Sobteski, king of Poland, and Prince Charles
of Lorraine. It was created an archbishopric in 1001. During
the Turkish occupation of the town the archbishopric was re-
moved to Tyrnau, while the archbishop himself had his residence
in Pressburg. Both returned to Esztergom in 1820. In 1708
it was declared a free city by Joseph I. On the I3th of April
1818 it was partly destroyed by fire.
For numerous authorities on the see and cathedral of Esztergom
see V. Chevalier, Repertoire des sources. Topo-bibliogr. s.v. " Gran."
Of these may be mentioned especially F. Knauz, Monumenta Ecclesiae
Strifoniensis (3 vols., Eszterg, 1874); Joseph Dank6, Geschichtliches
. . . aui dem Graner Domsckatt (Gran, 1880).
ETAGERE, a piece of light furniture very similar to the English
what-not, which was extensively made in France during the
la tier part of the iSth century. As the name implies, it consists of
a series of stages or shelves for the reception of ornaments or
other small articles. Like the what-not it was very often corner-
wise in shape, and the best Louis XVI. examples in exotic woods
are exceedingly graceful and elegant.
ETAH, a town and district of British India, in the Agra
division of the United Provinces. The town is situated on the
Grand Trunk road. Pop. (1901) 8796. The district has an area
of 1737 sq. m. The district consists for the most part of an
elevated alluvial plateau, dipping down on its eastern slope
into the valley of the Ganges. The uplands are irrigated by the
Ganges canal Between the modern bed of the Ganges and its
ancient channel lies a belt of fertile land, covered with a rich
deposit of silt, and abundantly supplied with natural moisture.
A long line of swamps and hollows still marks the former course
of the river; and above it rises abruptly the original cliff which
now forms the terrace of the upland plain. The Kali Nadi, a
small stream flowing in a deep and narrow gorge, passes through
the centre of the district, and affords an outlet for the surface
drainage. Etah was at an early date the seat of a primitive
Aryan civilization, and the surrounding country is mentioned by
HsOan Tsang, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim of the yth century
A.O., as rich in temples and monasteries. But after the bloody
repression of Buddhism before the 8th century, the district
to have fallen once more into the hands of aboriginal
tribes, from whom it was wrested a second time by Rajputs
during the course of their great migration eastward. With the
rest of upper India it passed under the sway of Mahmud of
Ghazni in 1017, and thenceforth followed the fortunes of the
Mahommedan empire. At .the end of the i8th century it formed
part of the territory over which the wazir of Oudh had made
himself ruler, and it came into the possession of the British
government in 1801, under the treaty of Lucknow. During the
mutiny of 1857 it was the scene of serious disturbances, coupled
with the usual anarchic quarrels among the native princes.
In 1901 the population was 863,948, showing an increase of 23%
in the decade due to the extension of canal irrigation. It is
traversed by a branch of the Rajputana railway from Agra to
Cawnpore, with stations at Kasganj and Soron, which arc the
two largest towns. It has several printing presses, indigo
factories, and factories for pressing cotton, and there is a con-
siderable agricultural export trade.
ETAMPES, ANNE DE PISSELEU D'HEILLY, DUCHESSE
D' (iso8-c. 1380), mistress of Francis I. of France, daughter of
Guillaume de Pisseleu, sieur d'Heilly, a nobleman of Picardy.
She came to court before 1522, and was one of the maids of
honour of Louise of Savoy. Francis I. made her his mistress,
probably on his return from his captivity at Madrid (1526),
and soon gave up Madame de Chateaubriant for her. Anne was
sprightly, pretty, witty and cultured, and succeeded in keeping
the favour of the king till the end of the reign (154?)- The
liaison received some official recognition; when Queen Eleanor
entered Paris (1530), the king and Anne occupied the same
window. In 1533 Francis gave her in marriage to Jean de
Brosse, whom he created due d'Etampes. The influence of the
duchesse d'Etampes, especially in the last years of the reign,
was considerable. She upheld Admiral Chabot against the
constable de Montmorency, who was supported by her rival,
Diane de Poitiers, the dauphin's mistress. She was a friend to
new ideas, and co-operated with the king's sister, Marguerite .
d'Angoulemc. She used her influence to elevate and enrich her
family, her uncle, Antoine Sanguin (d. 1559), being made bishop
of Orleans in 1535 and a cardinal in 1539.' The accusations
made against her of having allowed herself to be won over by
the emperor Charles V. and of playing the traitor in 1544 rest on
no serious proof. After the death of Francis I. (1547) she was
dismissed from the court by Diane de Poitiers, humiliated in
every way, and died in obscurity much later, probably in the
reign of Henry III.
See Paulin Paris, Ittudes sur Francois I" (Paris, 1885).
&TAMPES, a town of northern France, capital of an arrondisse-
ment in the department of Seine-et-Oise, on the Orleans railway,
35 m. S. by W. of Paris. Pop. (1906) 8720. Etampes is a long
straggling town hemmed in between the railway on the north
and the Chalouette on the south; the latter is a tributary of
the Juine which waters the eastern outskirts of the town. A
fine view of Etampes is obtained from the Tour Guinette, a
ruined keep built by Louis VI. in the 1 2th century on an eminence
on the other side of the railway. Notre-Dame du Fort, the chief
church, dates from the nth and I2th centuries; irregular in
plan, it is remarkable for a fine Romanesque tower and spire,
and for the crenellated wall which partly surrounds it. The
interior contains ancient paintings and other artistic works.
St Basile (i2th and i6th centuries), which preserves a Roman-
esque doorway, and St Martin (lath and i3th centuries), with a
leaning tower of the i6th century, are of less importance. The
civil buildings offer little interest, but two houses named after
Anne de Pisseleu (see above), mistress of Francis I., and Diane de
Poitiers, mistress of Henry II., are graceful examples of Renais-
sance architecture. In the square there is a statue of the
naturalist, Geoff roy Saint-Hilaire, who was born in Etampes. The
subprefecture, a tribunal of first instance, and a communal college
are among the public institutions of Etampes. Flour-milling,
1 The chateau of Meudon, belonging to the Sanguin family, was
handed over to the duchesse d'Etampes in 1539. Sanguin was
translated to Limoges in 1546, and became archbishop of Toulouse
in 1550.
8 04
ETAPLES ETCHING
metal-founding, leather-dressing, printing and the manufacture
of boots and shoes and hosiery are carried on; there are quarries
of paving-stone, nurseries and market gardens in the vicinity,
and the town has important markets for cereals and sheep.
fitampes (Lat. Stampae) existed at the beginning of the 7th
century and in the early middle ages belonged to the crown
domain. During the middle ages it was the scene of several
councils, the most notable of which took place in 1130 and
resulted in the recognition of Innocent II. as the legitimate pope.
In 1652, during the war of the Fronde it suffered severely at the
hands of the royal troops under Turenne.
Lords, Counts and Dukes oftampes. The lordship of fitampes,
in what is now the department of Seine et Oise in France, be-
longed to the royal domain, but was detached from it on several
occasions in favour of princes, or kings' favourites. St Louis
gave it to his mother Blanche of Castile, and then to his wife
Marguerite of Provence. Louis, the brother of Philip the Fair,
became lord of fitampes in 1317 and count in 1327; he was
succeeded by his son and his grandson. Francis I. raised the
countship of fitampes to the rank of a duchy for his mistress Anne
de Pisseleu D'Heilly. The new duchy passed to Diane de Poitiers
( I S53) 'to Catherine of Lorraine, duchess of Montpensier (1578),
to Marguerite of Valois (1582) and to Gabrielle d'Estrees (1598).
The latter transmitted it to her son, Cesar of Vend6me, and his
descendants held it till 1712. It then passed by inheritance to
the families of Bourbon-Conti and of Orleans.
STAPLES, a town of northern France, in the department
of Pas-de-Calais, on the right bank of the estuary of the Canche,
3 m. from the Straits of Dover, 17 m. S. of Boulogne by rail.
Pop. (1906) '5136. fitaples has a small fishing and commercial
port which enjoyed a certain importance during the middle
ages. Boat-building is carried on. There is an old church with
a statue of the Virgin much revered by the sailors. The Canche
is crossed by a bridge over 1600 ft. in length. Le Touquet, in
the midst of pine woods, and the neighbouring watering-place
of Paris-Plage, 35 m. W. of fitaples at the mouth of the estuary,
are much frequented by English and French visitors for golf,
tennis and bathing, and fitaples itself is a centre for artists.
Antiquarian discoveries in the vicinity of fitaples have led to
the conjecture that it occupies the site of the Gallo-Roman
port of Quentovicus. In 1492 a treaty was signed here between
Henry VII., king of England, and Charles VIII., king of France.
ETAWAH, a town and district of British India, in the Agra
division of the United Provinces. The town is situated on the
left bank of the Jumna, and has a station on the East Indian
railway, 206 m. from Allahabad. Pop. (1901) 42,570. Deep
fissures intersect the various quarters of the town, over which
broad roads connect the higher portions by bridges and embank-
ments. The Jama Masjid (Great Mosque) is the chief archi-
tectural ornament of Etawah. It was originally a Hindu temple,
and was adapted to its present use by the Mahommedan con-
querors. Several fine Hindu temples also stand about the
mound on which are the ruins of the ancient fort. Etawah is
now only the civil headquarters of the district, the , military
cantonment having been abandoned in 1861. Considerable
trade is carried on by rail and river. The manufactures include
cotton cloth, skin-bottles, combs and horn- ware and sweetmeats.
The DISTRICT or ETAWAH has an area of 1691 sq. m. It forms
a purely artificial administrative division, stretching across the
level plain of the Doab, and beyond the valley of the Jumna,
to the gorges of the Chambal, and the last rocky outliers of the
Vindhyan range. The district exhibits a striking variety of
surface and scenery. The greater portion lies within the Doab
or level alluvial plain between the Ganges and the Jumna. This
part falls naturally into two sections, divided by the deep and
fissured valley of the river Sengar. The tract to the north-east
of that stream is rich and fertile, being watered by the Cawnpore
and Etawah branches of the Ganges canal, and other important
works. The south-western region has the same natural advan-
tages, but possesses no great irrigation system, and is con-
sequently less fruitful than the opposite slopes. Near the banks
of the Jumna, the plain descends into the river valley by a series
of wild ravines and terraces, inhabited only by a scattered race
of hereditary herdsmen. Beyond the Jumna again a strip of
British territory extends along the tangled gorges of the Chambal
and the Kuari Nadi, far into the borders of the Gwalior state.
This outlying tract embraces a series of rocky glens and mountain
torrents, crowned by the ruins of native strongholds, and inter-
spersed with narrow ledges of cultivable alluvium. The climate,
once hot and sultry, has now become comparatively moist and
equable under the influence of irrigation and the planting of trees.
Etawah was marked out by its physical features as a secure
retreat for the turbulent tribes of the Upper Doab, and it was
not till the 1 2th century that any of the existing castes settled
on the soil. After the Mussulman conquests of Delhi and the
surrounding country, the Hindus of Etawah appear to have
held their own for many generations against the Mahommedan
power; but in the i6th century Baber conquered the district,
with the rest of the Doab, and it remained in the hands of the
Moguls until the decay of their empire. After passing through the
usual vicissitudes of Mahratta and Jat conquests during the long
anarchy which preceded the British rule, Etawah was annexed by
the wazir of Oudh in 1773. The wazir ceded it to the East India
Company in 1801, but it still remained so largely in the hands of
lawless native chiefs that some difficulty was experienced in
reducing it to orderly government. During the mutiny of 1857
serious disturbances occurred in Etawah, and the district was
occupied by the rebels from June to December; order was not
completely restored till the end of 1858. In 1901 the population
% was 806,798, showing an increase of 11% in the decade. The
district is partly watered by branches of the Ganges canal, and
is traversed throughout by the main line of the East Indian
railway from Cawnpore to Agra. Cotton, oilseeds and other
agricultural produce are exported, and some indigo is made,
but manufacturing industry is slight.
ETCHING (Dutch, etsen, to eat), a form of engraving (q.v.) in
which, in contradistinction to line engraving (q.v.), where the
furrow is produced by the ploughing of the burin, the copper
is eaten away or corroded by acid.
To prepare a plate for etching it is first covered with etching-
ground, a composition which resists acid. The qualities of a
ground are to be so adhesive that it will not quit the copper when
a small quantity is left isolated between lines, yet not so adhesive
that the etching point cannot easily and entirely remove it;
at the same time a good ground will be hard enough to bear the
hand upon it, or a sheet of paper, yet not so hard as to be brittle.
The ground used by Abraham Bosse, the French painter and
engraver (1602-1676) was composed as follows: Melt 2 oz. of
white wax; then add to it i oz. of gum-mastic in powder, a
little at a time, stirring till the wax and the mastic are well
mingled; then add, in the same manner, i oz. of bitumen in
powder. There are three different ways of applying an etching-
ground to a plate. The old-fashioned way was to wrap a ball
of the ground in silk, heat the plate, and then rub the ball upon
the surface, enough of the ground to cover the plate melting
through the silk. To equalize the ground a dabber was used,
which was made of cotton-wool under horsehair, the whole
inclosed in silk. This method is still used by many artists,
from tradition and habit, but it is far inferior in perfection and
convenience to that which we will now describe. When the
etching-ground is melted, add to it half its volume of essential
oil of lavender, mix well, and allow the mixture to cool. You
have now a paste which can be spread upon a cold plate with a
roller; these rollers are covered with leather and made (very
carefully) for the purpose. You first spread a little paste on a
sheet of glass (if too thick, add more oil of lavender and mix
with a palette knife), and roll it till the roller is quite equally
charged all over, when the paste is easily transferred to the copper,
which is afterwards gently heated to expel the oil of lavender.
In both these methods of grounding a plate, the work is not
completed until the ground has been smoked, which is effected
as follows. The plate is held by a hand-vice if a small one, or if
large, is fixed at some height, with the covered side downwards.
A smoking torch, composed of many thin bees-wax dips twisted
ETCHING
805
together, is then lighted and passed repeatedly under the plate
in every direction, till the ground has incorporated enough
lampblack to blacken it. The third way of covering a plate for
etching is to apply the ground in solution as collodion is applied
by photographers. The ground may be dissolved in chloroform,
or in oil of lavender. The plate being grounded, its back and
edges are protected from the acid by Japan varnish, which soon
dries, and then the drawing is traced upon it. The best way of
tracing a drawing is to use sheet gelatine, which is employed as
follows. The gelatine is laid upon the drawing, which its trans-
parence allows you to see perfectly, and you trace the lines by
scratching the smooth surface with a sharp point. You then fill
these scratches with fine black-lead, in powder, rubbing it in
with the finger, turn the tracing with its face to the plate,
and rub the back of it with a burnisher. The black-lead from
the scratches adheres to the etching ground and shows upon
it as pale grey, much more visible than anything else you can
use for tracing. Then comes the work of the etching-needle,
which is merely a piece of steel sharpened more or less. J. M. W.
Turner used a prong of an old steel fork which did as well as
anything, but neater etching-needles are sold by artists' colour-
makers. The needle removes the ground or cover and lays the
copper bare. Some artists sharpen their needles so as to present
a cutting edge which, when used sideways, scrapes away a broad
line; and many etchers use needles of various degrees of sharp-
ness to get thicker or thinner lines. It may be well to observe,
in connexion with this part of the subject, that whilst thick lines
agree perfectly well with the nature of woodcut, they are very
apt to give an unpleasant heaviness to plate engraving of all kinds,
whilst thin lines have generally a clear and agreeable appearance
in plate engraving. Nevertheless, lines of moderate thickness
are used effectively in etching when covered with finer shading,
and very thick lines indeed were employed with good results
by Turner when he intended to cover them with mezzotint (q.v.),
and to print in brown ink, because their thickness was essential
to prevent them from being overwhelmed by the mezzotint, and
the brown ink made them print less heavily than black. Etchers
differ in opinion as to whether the needle ought to scratch the
copper or simply to glide upon its surface. A gliding needle is
much more free, and therefore communicates a greater appear-
ance of freedom to the etching, but it has the inconvenience that
the etching-ground may not always be entirely removed, and
then the lines may be defective from insufficient biting. A
scratching needle, on the other hand, is free from this serious
inconvenience, but it must not scratch irregularly so as to engrave
lines of various depth. The biting in former times was generally
done with a mixture of nitric acid and water, in equal proportions;
buf in the present day a Dutch mordant is a good deal used,
which is composed as follows: Hydrochloric acid, 100 grammes;
chlorate of potash, 20 grammes; water, 880 grammes. To make
it, heat the water, add the chlorate of potash, wait till it is
entirely dissolved, and then add the acid. The nitrous mordant
acts rapidly and causes ebullition; the Dutch mordant acts
slowly and causes no ebullition. The nitrous mordant widens
the lines; the Dutch mordant bites in depth, and does not widen
the lines to any perceptible degree. The time required for both
depends upon temperature. A mordant bites slowly when cold,
and more and more rapidly when heated. To obviate irregularity
caused by difference of temperature, it is a good plan to heat the
Dutch mordant artificially to 95 Fahr. by lamps under the bath
(for which a photographer's porcelain tray is most convenient),
and keep it steadily to that temperature; the results may then be
counted upon; but whatever the temperature fixed upon, the
results will be regular if it is regular. To get different degrees of
biting on the same plate the lines which are to be pale are
" stopped out " by being painted over with Japan varnish or
with etching ground dissolved in oil of lavender, the darkest
lines being reserved to the last, as they have to bite longest. When
the acid has done its work properly the lines are bitten in such
various degrees of depth that they will print with the degree of
blackness required; but if some pans of the subject require
to be made paler, they can be lowered by rubbing them with
charcoal and olive oil, and if they have to be made deeper they
can be rebitten, or covered with added shading. Rcbiting is
done with the roller above mentioned, which is now charged
very lightly with paste and rolled over the copper with no
pressure but its own weight, so as to cover the smooth surface
but not fill up any of the lines. The oil of lavender is then
expelled as before by gently heating the plate, but it is not
smoked. The lines which require rebiting may now be rebitten,
and the others preserved against the action of the acid by stopping
out. These are a few of the most essential technical points in
etching, but there are many matters of detail for which the reader
is referred to the special works on the subject.
There are many varieties in the processes of etching, and it is
only necessary here to indicate the essential facts. A brief
analysis of different styles may be given.
(i) Pure Lint. As there is line engraving, so there is line
etching; but as the etching-needle is a freer instrument than the
burin, the line has qualities which differ widely from those of
the burin line. Each of the two has its own charm and beauty;
the liberty of the one is charming, and the restraint of the other
is admirable also in its right place. In line etching, as in line
engraving, the great masters purposely exhibit the line and do
not hide it under too much shading. (2) Line and Shade. This
answers exactly in etching to Mantegna's work in engraving.
The most important lines are drawn first throughout, and the
shade thrown over them like a wash with the brush over a pen
sketch in indelible ink. (3) Shade and Texture. This is used
chiefly to imitate oil-painting. Here the line (properly so called)
is entirely abandoned, and the attention of the etcher is given
to texture and chiaroscuro. He uses lines, of course, to express
these, but does not exhibit them for their own beauty; on the
contrary, he conceals them.
Of these three styles of etching the first is technically the
easiest, and being also the most rapid, is adopted for sketching
#n the copper from nature; the second is the next in difficulty;
and the third the most difficult, on account of the biting, which
is never easy to manage when it becomes elaborate. The etcher
has, however, many resources; he can make passages paler by
burnishing them, or by using charcoal, or he can efface them
entirely with the scraper and charcoal; he can darken them by
rebiting or by regrounding the plate and adding fresh work;
and he need not run the risk of biting the very palest passages
of all, because these can be easily done with the dry point, which
is simply a well-sharpened stylus used directly on the copper
without the help of acid. It is often asserted that any one can
etch who can draw, but this is a mistaken assertion likely to
mislead. Without requiring so long an apprenticeship as the
burin, etching is a very difficult art indeed, the two main causes
of its difficulty being that the artist does not see his work properly
as he proceeds, and that mistakes or misfortunes in the biting,
which are of frequent occurrence to the inexperienced, may
destroy all the relations of tone.
Etching, like line engraving, owed much to the old masters,
but whereas, with the exception of Albert DUrer, the painters
were seldom practical line engravers, they advanced etching
not only by advice given to others but by the work of their
own hands. Rembrandt did as much for etching as either
Raphael or Rubens for line engraving; and in landscape the
etchings of Claude had an influence which still continues, both
Rembrandt and Claude being practical workmen in etching,
and very skilful workmen. Ostade, Ruysdael, Berghem, Paul
Potter, Karl Dujardin, etched as they painted, and so did a
greater than any of them, Vandyck. In the earlier part of the
igth century etching was almost a defunct art, except as it
was employed by engravers as a help to get faster through their
work, of which " engraving " got all the credit, the public being
unable to distinguish between etched lines and lines cut with
the burin. But from the middle of the century dates a great
revival of etching as an independent art, a revival which has
extended all over Europe.
Apart from the copying of pictures by etching which was
found commercially preferable to the use of line engraving
8o6
ETEOCLES ETHER
a number of artists and amateurs gradually practised original
etching with increasing success, notably Sir Seymour Haden,
J. M. Whistler, Samuel Palmer and others in England, Felix
Bracquemond, C. F. Daubigny, Charles Jacque, Adolphe Appian,
Maxime Lalanne, Jules Jacquemart and others on the continent,
besides that singular and- remarkable genius, Charles Meryon.
Etching clubs, or associations of artists for the publication of
original etchings, were gradually founded in England, France,
Germany and Belgium. Meryon and Whistler are two of the
greatest modern etchers. Among earlier names mention may
be made of Andrew Geddes (1783-1844) and of Sir David Wilkie
(1785-1841). Geddes was the finer artist with the needle; he it
was whom Rembrandt best inspired; his work was in the grand
manner. Of the rich and rare dry-points " At Peckham Rye "
and " At Halliford-on-Thames," the deepest and most brilliant
master of landscape would have no need to be ashamed. David
Wilkie's prints were, naturally, not less dramatic than his
pictures, but the etcher's particular gift was possessed by him
more intermittently: it is shown best in " The Receipt," a
strong and vivid, dexterous sketch, quite full of character.
J. S. Cotman's (1782-1842) etchings are also historically interest-
ing though they were " soft ground " for the most part. They
show all his qualities of elegance and freedom as a draughtsman,
and much of his large dignity in the distribution of light and
shade. T. Girtin (1775-1802), in the preparations for his views
of Paris, was notably happy. The work of Sir Francis Seymour
Haden (b. 1818) had a powerful influence on the art in England.
Between 1858 and 1879 Seymour Haden the first president
of the Royal Society of Painter Etchers produced the vast
majority of his plates, which have always good draughtsmanship,
unity of effect and a personal impression. They show a strong
feeling for nature. If, amongst some two hundred subjects,
it were necessary to select one or two for peculiar praise, they
might be the " Breaking up of the Agamemnon," the almost
perfect " Water Meadow," the masterly presentment of " Erith
Marshes," and the later dry-point of " Windmill Hill." Another
great etcher Frenchman by birth, but English by long residence
is Alphonse Legros (q.v.). Great in expression and suggestive
draughtsmanship, austere and economical in line, Legros's work
is the grave record of the observation and the fancy of an imagina-
tive mind. In poetic portraiture nothing can well exceed his
etched vision of G. F. Watts; " La Mort du Vagabond " is
noticeable for terror and homely pathos; " Communion dans
1'figlise St Medard " is perhaps the best instance of the dignity,
vigour and grave sympathy with which he addresses himself to
ecclesiastical themes. Something of. these latter qualities,
in dealing with similar themes, Legros passed on to his pupil, Sir
Charles Holroyd (b. 1861) an etcher in the true vein; whilst
an earlier pupil, prolific as himself, as imaginative, and some-
times more deliberately uncouth William Strang, A.R.A.
(b. 1859) carried on in his own way the tradition of that part of
Legros's practice, the preoccupation with the humble, for which
Legros himself found certain warrant in a portion of the great
osuwe of Rembrandt. Frank Short, A.R.A. (b. 1857), as with
the very touch of Turner, carried to completion great designs
that Turner left unfinished for the Liber studiorum. The
delicacy of " Sleeping till the Flood," the curiously suggestive
realism of " Wrought Nails "a scene in the Black Country-
entitle him to a lasting place in the list of the fine wielders of the
etching-needle. D. Y. Cameron (b. 1865) betrays the influence
of Rembrandt in a noble etching, " Border Towers," and the
influence of Meryon in such a print as that of " The Palace,
Stirling." His " London Set " is particularly fine. The individu-
ality of C. J. Watson is less marked, but his skill, chiefly in
architectural work, is noticeable. Admirers of the studiously
accurate portraiture of a great monument may be able to set
Watson's print of "St Etienne du Mont " by the side of Meryon's
august and mysterious and ever-memorable vision. Paul Helleu
(b. 1859) in his brilliant sketches, particularly of women, has
used the art of etching in a peculiarly individual and delightfu
way. Among the numerous other modern etchers only a bare
mention can be made of Oliver Hall, Minna Bolingbroke and
Elizabeth Armstrong (Mrs Watson and Mrs Stanhope Forbes),
Alfred East, Robert Macbeth, Walter Sickert, Robert Gog,
Mortimer Menpes, Percy Thomas, Raven Hill, and Prof. H. von
lerkomer, in England; in France, Roussel, J. F. Raffaelli
(b. 1850), Besnard and J. J. J. Tissot (1836-1902).
The oldest treatise on etching is that of Abraham Bosse (1645).
See also P. G. Hamerton, Etching and Etchers (1868), and Etchers'
handbook (1881); F. Wedmore, Etching in England (1895); Singer
and Strang, Etching, Engraving, frc. (1897).
ETEOCLES, in Greek legend, king of Thebes, son of Oedipus
and Jocasta (locaste). After their father had been driven out
of the country, he and his brother Polyneices agreed to reign
alternately for a year. Eteocles, however, refused to keep the
agreement, and Polyneices fled to Adrastus, king of Argos,
whom he persuaded to undertake the famous expedition against
Thebes on his behalf. The two brothers met in single combat,
and both were slain. The Theban rulers decreed that only
Eteocles should receive the honour of burial, but the decree was
set at naught by Antigone (?.f.), the sister of Polyneices. The
: ate of Eteocles and Polyneices forms the subject of the Seven
against Thebes of Aeschylus and the Phoenissae of Euripides.
ETESIAN WIND (Lat. etesius, annual; Gr. ITOS, year), a
Mediterranean wind blowing from the north and west in summer
ior about six weeks annually.
ETEX, ANTOINE (1808-1888), French sculptor, painter and
architect, was born in Paris on the 2oth of March 1 808. He first
ixhibited in the salon of 1833, his work including a reproduction
in marble of his " Death of Hyacinthus," and the plaster cast
of his " Cain and his race cursed by God." Thiers, who was at
this time minister of public works, now commissioned him to
execute the two groups of " Peace " and " War," placed at each
side of the Arc de Triomphe. This last, which established his
reputation, he reproduced in marble in the salon of 1839. The
French capital contains numerous examples of the sculptural
works of Etex, which included mythological and religious
subjects besides a great number of portraits. His paintings
include the subjects of Eurydice and the martyrdom of Saint
Sebastian, and among the best known of his architectural pro-
ductions are the tomb of Napoleon I. in the Invalides and a
monument of the revolution of 1848. Etex wrote a number of
essays on subjects connected with the arts. The last year of his
life was spent at Nice, and he died at Chaville (Seine-et-Oise)
on the I4th of July 1888.
See P. E. Mangeant, Antoine Etex, peinlre, sculpteur et architecte,
1808-1888 (Paris, 1894).
ETHER, (CjHs^O, the Aether of pharmacy, a colourless,
volatile, highly inflammable liquid, of specific gravity o- 736 at o,
boiling-point 35 C., and freezing-point n7'4 C. (K. Olszewski).
It has a strong and characteristic odour, and a hot sweetish
taste, is soluble in ten parts of water, and in all proportions in
alcohol, and dissolves bromine, iodine, and, in small quantities,
sulphur and phosphorus, also the volatile oils, most fatty and
resinous substances, guncotton, caoutchouc and certain of the
vegetable alkaloids. The vapour mixed with oxygen or air is
violently explosive. The making of ether by the action of
sulphuric acid on alcohol was known in about the i3th century;
and later Basil Valentine and Valerius Cordus described its
preparation and properties. The name ether appears to have
been applied to the drug only since the times of Frobenius,
who in 1730 termed it spiritus aethereus or vini vitriolatus. It
was considered to be a sulphur compound, hence its name
sulphur ether; this idea was proved to be erroneous by Valentine
Rose in about 1800. Ether is manufactured by the distillation
of 5 parts of 90% alcohol with 9 parts of concentrated sulphuric
acid at a temperature of i4o-i4S C., a constant stream of
alcohol being caused to flow into the mixture during the opera-
tion The distillate is purified by treatment with lime and
calcium chloride, and subsequent distillation. The mechanism
of this reaction was explained by A. Williamson in 1850. For
other methods of preparation see ETHERS.'
i See also J. v. Liebig, Ann. Chem. Pharm., 1837, 23, p. 39! l8 39i
to p 129; E. Mitscherlich, Fogg. Ann., 1836, 31, p. 273:1841, 53,
P. '95; A. W. Williamson, Phil. Mag., 1850 (3), 37, P- 35<>.
ETHEREDGE ETHERIDGE
807
The presence of so small a quantity as i % of alcohol may be
detected in ether by the colour imparted to it by aniline violet ;
if water or acetic acid be present, the ether must be shaken with
anhydrous potassium carbonate before the application of the test.
When heated with zinc dust, it yields ethylene and water.
Chromic acid oxidizes it to acetic acid and ozone oxidizes it to
ethyl peroxide. In contact with hydriodic acid gas at oC., it
forms ethyl iodide (R. D. Silva, Ber., 1875, 8, p. 903), and with
water and a little sulphuric acid at 180 C., it yields alcohol
(K. Erlenmeyer, /'/./. ckemie, iKoS.'p. 343). It forms crystalline
compounds with bromine and with many metallic salts.
Mtdieiiu. For the anaesthetic properties of ether see ANAES-
THESIA. Applied externally, ether evaporates very rapidly,
producing such intense cold as to cause marked local anaesthesia.
For this purpose it is best applied as a fine spray, but ethyl
chloride is generally found more efficient and produces less sub-
sequent discomfort. It aids the absorption of fats and may be
used with cod liver oil when the latter is administered by the skin.
If it be rubbed in or evaporation be prevented, it acts, like
alcohol and chloroform, as an irritant. Ten to twenty minims
of ether, subcutancously injected, constitute perhaps the most
rapid and powerful cardiac stimulant known, and are often
employed for this purpose in cases of syncope under anaesthesia.
Taken internally, ether acts in many respects similarly to alcohol
and chloroform, but its stimulant action on the heart is much
more marked, being exerted both reflexly from the stomach
and directly after its rapid absorption. Ether is thus the type of
a rapidly diffusible stimulant. It is also useful in relieving the
paroxysms of asthma. The dose for repeated administration
is from 10 to 30 minims and for a single administration up to a
drachm.
Chronic Poisoning. A dose of a little more than a drachm
(a teaspoonful) will produce a condition of inebriation lasting
for one-half to one hour, but the dose must soon be greatly in-
creased. The after-effects are, if anything, rather pleasant, and
the habit of ether drinking is certainly not so injurious as alcohol-
ism. The principal symptons of chronic ether-drinking arc a
weakening of the activity of the special senses, and notably
sight and hearing, a lowering of the intelligence and a degree
of general paresis (partial paralysis) of motion.
ETHEREDGE [or ETHF.RECE), SIR GEORGE (c. 1635-1691),
English dramatist, was born about the year 1635, and belonged
to an Oxfordshire family. He is said to have been educated at
Cambridge, but Dennis assures us that " to his certain knowledge
he understood neither Greek nor Latin." He travelled abroad
early, and seems to have resided in France. It is possible that
he witnessed in Paris the performances of some of Moliere's
earliest comedies; and he seems, from an allusion in one of his
plays, to have been personally acquainted with Bussy Rabutin.
On his return to London he studied the law at one of the Inns
of Court. His tastes were those of a fine gentleman, and he in-
dulged freely in pleasure.
Sometime soon after the Restoration he composed his comedy
of The Comical Revenge or Love in a Tub, which introduced him
to Lord Buckhurst, afterwards the carl of Dorset. This was
brought out at the Duke's theatre in 1664, and a few copies were
printed in the same year. It is partly in rhymned heroic verse,
like the stilted tragedies of the Howards and Killigrews, but it
Contains comic scenes that are exceedingly bright and fresh.
The sparring between Sir Frederick and the Widow introduced a
style of wit hitherto unknown upon the English stage. The
success of this play was very great, but Etheredge waited four
years before he repeated his experiment. Meanwhile he gained
the highest reputation as a poetical beau, and moved in the circle
of Sir Charles Scdley, Lord Rochester and the other noble wits
of the day. In 1668 he brought out She would if she could, a
comedy in many respects admirable, full of action, wit and
spirit, although to the last degree frivolous and immoral. But in
this play Etheredge first shows himself a new power in literature;
he has nothing of the rudeness of his predecessors or the grossness
of his contemporaries. We move in an airy and fantastic world,
where flirtation is the only serious business of life. At this time
Etheredge was living a life no less frivolous and unprincipled than
those of his Courtals and Freemans. He formed un alliance with
the famous actress Mrs Elizabeth Barry; she bore him a daughter,
on whom he settled 6000, but who, unhappily, died in her youth.
His wealth and wit, the distinction and charm of his manners,
won Etheredge the general worship of society, and his tempera-
ment is best known by the names his contemporaries gave him,
of " gentle George " and " easy Etheredge." Rochester up-
braided him for inattention to literature; and at last, after a
silence of eight years, he came forward with one more play, un-
fortunately his last. The Man of Mode or Sir Fopling Flutter,
indisputably the best comedy of intrigue written inEngland before
the days of Congrcve, was acted and printed in 1676, and enjoyed
an unbounded success. Besides the merit of its plot and wit, it
had the personal charm of being supposed to satirize, or at least
to paint, persons well known in London. Sir Fopling Flutter was
a portrait of Beau Hewit, the reigning exquisite of the hour;
in Dorimant the poet drew the earl of Rochester, and in Medley a
portrait of himself; while even the drunken shoemaker was a
real character, who made his fortune from being thus brought
into public notice. After this brilliant success Etheredge
retired from literature; his gallantries and his gambling in a
few years deprived him of his fortune, and ho looked about for a
rich match. He was knighted before 1680, and gained the hand
and the money of a rich widow. He was sent by Charles II.
on a mission to the Hague, and in March 1683 was appointed
resident minister in the imperial German court at Regensburg.
He was very uncomfortable in Germany, and after three and a
half years' residence left for Paris. He had collected a library
at Regensburg, some volumes of which are in the theological
college there. His MS. despatches are preserved in the British
Museum, where they were discovered and described by Mr Gosse
in 1881; they add very largely to our knowledge of Etheredge's
career. He died in Paris, probably in 1691, for Narcissus Luttrell
notes in February 1692 that " Sir George Etherege, the late King
James' ambassador to Vienna, died lately in Paris."
Etheredge deserves to hold a more distinguished place in
English literature than has generally been allotted to him. In
a dull and heavy age, he inaugurated a period of genuine wit and
sprightliness. He invented the comedy of intrigue, and led the
way for the masterpieces of Congreve and Sheridan. Before
his time the manner of Ben Jonson had prevailed in comedy, and
traditional " humours " and typical eccentricities, instead of real
characters, had crowded the comic stage. Etheredge paints with
a light, faint hand, but it is from nature, and his portraits of fops
and beaux are simply unexcelled. No one knows better than he
how to present a gay young gentleman, a Dorimant, " an un-
confinable roveraf ter amorous adventures." His genius is aslight
as thistle-down; he is frivolous, without force of conviction,
without principle; but his wit is very sparkling, and his style pure
and singularly picturesque. No one approaches Etheredge in
delicate touches of dress, furniture and scene; he makes the
fine airs of London gentlemen and ladies live before our eyes
even more vividly than Congreve does; but he has less insight
and less energy than Congreve. Had he been poor or ambitious,
he might have been to England almost what Moliere was to
France, but he was a rich man living at his case, and he disdained
to excel in literature. Etheredge was " a fair, slender, genteel
man, but spoiled his countenance with drinking." His con-
temporaries all agree in acknowledging that he was the soul of
affability and sprightly good-nature.
The life of Etheredge was first given in detail by Edmund Gogse
in Seventeenth Century Studies (1883). His works were edited by
A. W. Verity, in 1888. (E. G.)
ETHERIDGE, JOHN WESLEY (1804-1866), English non-
conformist divine, was born near Newport, Isle of Wight, on the
24th of February 1804. He received most of his early education
from his father. Though he never attended any university he
acquired ultimately a thorough knowledge of Greek, Latin,
Hebrew, Syriac, French and German. In 1824 he was placed on
the Wcsleyan Methodist plan as a local preacher. In 1826 his
offer to enter the ministry was accepted, and after the usual
8o8
ETHERIDGE ETHICS
probationary trial he was received into full connexion at the
conference of 1831. For two years after this he remained at
Brighton, and in 1833 he removed to Cornwall, being stationed
successively at the Truro and Falmouth circuits. From Falmouth
he removed to Darlaston, where ini838his health gave way. For
a good many years he was a supernumerary, and lived for a while
at Caen and Paris, where in the public libraries he found great
facilities for prosecuting his favourite Oriental studies. His
health having considerably improved, he became, in 1843, pastor
of the Methodist church at Boulogne. He returned to England
in 1847, and was appointed successively tothecircuitsof Islington,
Bristol, Leeds, Penzance, Penryn, Truro and St Austell in east
Cornwall. Shortly after his return to England he received the
degree of Ph.D. from the university of Heidelberg. He was a
patient, modest, hard-working and accurate scholar. He died at
Camborne on the 24th of May 1866.
His principal works are Horae A ramaicae (1843) ; History, Liturgies
and Literature of the Syrian Churches (1847); The Apostolic Acts
and Epistles, from the Peshito or Ancient Syriac (1849); Jerusalem
and Tiberias, a Survey of the Religious and Scholastic Learning of the
Jews (1856); The Tar gums of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel
(ist vol. in 1862, and in 1865). See Memoir, by Rev. Thornley Smith
(1871).
ETHERIDGE, ROBERT (1819-1903), English geologist and
palaeontologist, was born at Ross, in Herefordshire, on the 3rd
of December 1819. After an ordinary school education in his
native town, he obtained employment in a business house in
Bristol. There he devoted his spare time to natural history
pursuits, and in 1850 was appointed curator of the museum
attached to the Bristol Philosophical Institution. He also became
lecturer on botany in the Bristol medical school. In 1857,
through the influence of Sir Roderick I. Murchison, he was ap-
pointed to a post in the Museum of Practical Geology in London,
and eventually became palaeontologist to the Geological Survey.
In 1865 he assisted Prof. Huxley in the preparation of a Catalogue
of Fossils in the Museum of Practical Geology. His chief work
for many years was in naming the fossils collected during the
progress of the Geological Survey, and in supplying the lists
that were appended to numerous official memoirs. In this way
he acquired an exceptional knowledge of British fossils, and he
ultimately prepared an elaborate work entitled Fossils of the
British Islands, Stratigraphically and Zoologically arranged.
Only the first volume dealing with the Palaeozoic species was
published (1888). Etheridge also was author of several papers
on the Rhaetic Beds, and of an important essay on the Physical
Structure of North Devon, and on the Palaeontological Value
of the Devonian Fossils (1867). He edited, and in the main re-
wrote, the second part of a new edition of John Phillips' Manual
of Geology entitled Stratigraphical Geology and Palaeontology
(1885). He was elected F.R.S. in 1871, and was president of the
Geological Society in 1881-1882. In 1881 Etheridge was trans-
ferred from the Geological Survey to the geological department
of the British Museum, where he served as assistant keeper until
1891. He died at Chelsea, London, on the i8th of December
1903-
Memoir by Dr Henry Woodward (with list of works and portrait)
in Geological Magazine, January 1904; also Memoir by H. B. Wood-
ward (with portrait) in Proc. Bristol Nat. Soc. x. 175.
ETHERS, in organic chemistry, compounds of the general
formula R-O-R', where R, R' = alkyl or aryl groups. They may
be regarded as the anhydrides of the alcohols, being formed by
elimination of one molecule of water from two molecules of the
alcohols; those in which the two hydrocarbon radicals are
similar are known as simple ethers, and those in which they are
dissimilar as mixed ethers. They may be prepared by the
action of concentrated sulphuric acid on the alcohols, alkyl
sulphuric acids being first formed, which yield ethers on heating
with alcohols. The process may be made a continuous one by
running a thin stream of alcohol continually into the heated
reaction mixture of alcohol and sulphuric acid. Benzene sul-
phonic acid has been used in place of sulphuric acid (F. Krafft,
Ber., 1893, 26, p. 2829). A. W. Williamson (Ann., 1831, 77, P-
38; 1852, 81, p. 77) prepared ether by the action of sodium
ethylate on ethyl iodide, and showed that all ethers must possess
the structural formula given above (see also Brit. Assoc. Reports,
1850, p. 65). They may also be prepared by heating the alkyl
halides with silver oxide.
The ethers are neutral volatile liquids (the first member,
methyl ether, is a gas at ordinary temperature). Phosphorus
pentachloride converts them into alkyl chlorides, a similar
decomposition taking place when they are heated with the haloid
acids. Nitric acid and chromic acid oxidize them in such a
manner that they yield the same products as the alcohols from
which they are derived. With chlorine they yield substitution
products.
Methyl ether, (CH 3 ) 2 O, was first prepared by J. B. Dumas
and E. Peligot (Ann. chim. phys., 1835, [2] 58, p. 19) by heating
methyl alcohol with sulphuric acid. It is best prepared by
heating methyl alcohol and sulphuric acid to 140 C. and leading
the evolved gas into sulphuric acid. The sulphuric acid solution
is then allowed to drop slowly into an equal volume of water,
when the methyl ether is liberated (E. Erlenmeyer and A.
Kriechbaumer, Ber., 1874, 7, p. 699). It is a pleasant-smelling
gas, which burns when ignited, and may be condensed to a
liquid which boils at 23-6 C. It is somewhat soluble in water
and readily soluble in alcohol, and concentrated sulphuric acid.
It combines with hydrochloric acid gas to form a compound
(CH 3 ) 2 O-HC1 (C. Friedel, Comptes renaus; 1875, 81, p. 152).
Methyl ethyl ether, CHa-O^Hs, is prepared from methyl iodide
and sodium ethylate, or from ethyl iodide and sodium methylate
(A. W. Williamson, Ann., 1852, 81, p. 77). It is a liquid which
boils at 10-8 C.
For diethyl ether see ETHER, and for methyl phenyl ether (anisole)
and ethyl phenyl ether (phenetole) see CARBOLIC ACID.
ETHICS, the name generally given to the science of moral
philosophy. The word " ethics " is derived from the Gr. qflucos,
that which pertains to ijflos, character.
For convenience in reference, the arrangement followed in this
article may be explained at the outset :
PAGE
809
I. DEFINITION AND SCOPE
II. HISTORICAL SKETCH . . 810
A. Greek and Graeco-Roman Ethics 810
The Age of the Sophists . 811
Socrates and his Disciples 811
Plato 812
Plato and Aristotle . . 814
Aristotle .... 815
Stoicism .... 816
Hedonism (Epicurus) . 818
Later Greek and Roman Ethics 818
Neoplatonism .... 819
B. Christianity and Medieval Ethics . 820
Christian and Jewish " Law of God " 820
Christian and Pagan Inwardness . 820
(Knowledge, Faith, Love, Purity).
Distinctive Particulars of Christian Morality 821
Development of Opinion in Early Christi-
anity, Augustine, Ambrose .... 823
Medieval Morality and Moral Philosophy . 824
Thomas Aquinas 824
Casuistry and Jesuitry 826
The Reformation; and birth of Modern
Thought 826
C. Modern Ethics 827
Grotius 827
Hobbes 827
The Cambridge Moralists .... 828
(Cudworth, More)
Cumberland 829
Locke 829
Clarke 829
Shaftesbury 830
Mandeville 830
Butler 831
Wollaston 831
Hutcheson 831
Hume 832
Adam Smith 833
The Intuitional School 833
(Price, Reid, Stewart, Whewell)
The Utilitarian School 835
(Paley, Bentham, Mill)
ETHICS
809
C. Modem Ethic* <onliniud
Association and Evolution
Free-will . . ...
French Influence on English Ethics
(Helvetius, Comte)
German Influence on English Ethics
(Kant. Hegel)
D. Ethics since 1879
III. BIBLIOGRAPHY
PAGE
837
37
838
839
840
845
Section I. contains a general survey of the subject; it shows in
what sense ethics is to be regarded as a special field of philosophical
investigation its relations to other departments of thought, especi-
ally to psychology, religion and modern physical science. The
article makes no attempt to give a detailed, casuistical examination
of the matter of ethical theory. For this, reference must be made
to special articles on philosophic schools, writers and terms.
Section II. is a historical sketch in four parts tracing the main
of development in ethical speculation from its birth to the
present day. Here again it has been possible to notice only the
salient points or landmarks, leaving all detail to special articles as
above. All important writers whose names occur in this sketch
are treated in special biographical articles, and references are given
as often as possible to supplementary articles which illustrate and
explain points which cannot be fully treated here. This is especially
the case in connexion with technical terms (whose history and
meaning are inevitably taken for granted) and biographical infor-
mation about minor ethical writers.
I. DEJINITION AND SUBJECT-MATTER OF ETHICS
In its widest sense, the term " ethics " would imply an examina-
tion into the general character or habits of mankind, and would
even involve a description or history of the habits of men in par-
ticular societies living at different periods of time. Such a field
of study would obviously be too wide for any particular science
or philosophy to investigate, and moreover portions of the field
are already occupied by history, by anthropology and by the
particular sciences- (e.g. physiology, anatomy, biology), in so
far as the habits and character of men depend upon the material
processes which these sciences examine. Even philosophies
such as logic and aesthetic would be necessary for such an
investigation, if thought and artistic production are normal
human habits and elements in character. Ethics then is usually
confined to the particular field of human character and conduct
so far as they depend upon or exhibit certain general principles
commonly known as moral principles. Men in general char-
acterize their own conduct and character and that of other men
by such general adjectives as good, bad, right and wrong, and
it is the meaning and scope of these adjectives, primarily in
relation to human conduct, and ultimately in their final and
absolute sense, that ethics investigates.
A not uncommon definition of ethics as the " science of conduct "
a inexact for various reasons, (i) The sciences are descriptive
or experimental. But a description of what acts or what ends
of action men in the present or the past call, or have called,
" good " or " bad " is clearly beyond human powers. And
experiments in morality (apart from the inconvenient practical
consequences likely to ensue) are useless for purposes of ethics,
because the moral consciousness would itself at one and the same
time be required to make the experiment and to provide the
subject upon which the experiment is performed. (2) Ethics
is a philosophy and not a science. Philosophy is a process of
reflection upon the presuppositions involved in unreflective
thought. In logic and metaphysics it investigates either the
proem of apprehension itself, or conceptions such as cause,
substance, space, time, which the ordinary scientific conscious-
new never criticizes. In moral philosophy the place of the body
of science*, which philosophy as the theory of knowledge investi-
gates, is taken by the developed moral consciousness, which
already pronounces moral judgment without hesitation, and
claims authority to subject to continual criticism the institutions
and forms of social life which it has itself helped to create.
When ethical speculation first begins, conceptions such as
those of duty, responsibility, the will as the ultimate subject
of moral approbation and disapprobation, are already in existence
and already operative. Moral philosophy in a certain sense adds
nothing to these conceptions, though it sets them in a clearer
light. The problems of the moral consciousness at the time at
which it first becomes reflective are not strictly speaking philo-
sophical problems at .ill. It is occupied with just such questions
as each individual man who wishes to act rightly is constantly
called upon to answer, e.g. questions such as " What particular
action will meet the claims of justice under such and such
circumstances? " or " What degree of ignorance will excuse
this particular person in this particular case from his responsi-
bility ? " It tries to attain a knowledge as complete as possible
of the circumstances under which the^act contemplated must be
performed, the personalities of the persons whom it may affect,
and the consequences (so far as they can be foreseen) which
it will produce, and then by virtue of its own power of moral
discrimination pronounces judgment. And the ever-recurring
problem of the moral consciousness, " What ought to be done ?"
is one which receives a clearer and more definite answer as men
become more able in the course of moral experience to apply
those principles of the moral consciousness which are yet em-
ployed in that experience from the outset. Nevertheless there
is a sense in which moral philosophy may be said to originate
out of difficulties inherent in the nature of morality itself, although
it remains true that the questions which ethics attempts to
answer are never questions with which the moral consciousness
as such is confronted. The fact that men give different answers
to moral problems which seem similar in character, or even the
mere fact that men disregard, when they act immorally, the
dictates and implicit principles of the moral consciousness is
certain sooner or later to produce the desire either, on the one
hand, to justify immoral action by casting doubt upon the
authority of the moral consciousness and the validity of its
principles, or, on the other hand, to justify particular moral
judgments either by (the only valid method) an analysis of
the moral principle involved in the judgment and a demonstra-
tion of its universal acceptation, or by some attempted proof
that the particular moral judgment is arrived at by a process
of inference from some universal conception of the Supreme
Good or the Final End from which all particular duties or
virtues may be deduced. It may be that criticism of morality
first originates with a criticism of existing moral institutions
or codes of ethics; such a criticism may be due to the spon-
taneous activity of the moral consciousness itself. But when
such criticism passes into the attempt to find a universal criterion
of morality such an attempt being in effect an effort to make
morality scientific and especially when the attempt is seen,
as it must in the end be seen, to fail (the moral consciousness
being superior to all standards of morality and realizing itself
wholly in particular judgments), then ethics as a process of
reflection upon the nature of the moral consciousness may be
said to begin. If this be true it follows that one of the chief
function of ethics must be criticism of mistaken attempts to
find a criterion of morality superior to the pronouncements of
the moral consciousness itself. The ultimate superiority of the
moral consciousness over all other standards is recognized, even
by those who impugn its authority, whenever they claim that
all men ought to recognize the superior value of the standards
which they themselves wish to substitute. Similarly, their
opponents refute their arguments by showing that they are
based ultimately upon a recognition of certain distinctions
which are moral distinctions (i.e. imply a moral consciousness
capable of discriminating between right and wrong in particular
cases), and that these moral distinctions conflict with the con-
clusions which they reach.
This may briefly be illustrated by reference to some of the
great fundamental controversies of ethics. None of these
originates out of conflicting statements of the moral conscious-
ness, i.e. there is no fundamental contradiction in morality
itself. No one (if unsophisticated) ever confused the conception
of pleasure with the conception of the Good, or thought that
the claims of selfish interest were identical with those of duty
But the controversy between hedonists and antihedonists
originates as soon as men reflect that a good which is not in some
sense " my " good is not good at all, or that no act can be said
to be moral which does not satisfy " me." Or, again, the
8io
ETHICS
reflection that the mark or sign of the perfect performance of
a particular virtuous act or function is the presence of a char-
acteristic pleasure which always accompanies it, is opposed to
the reflection that it is a mark of the highest morality never to
rest satisfied, and out of these seemingly contradictory state-
ments of the reflective consciousness might arise a multitude
of controversies either concerning pleasure and duty, or the even
more difficult and complex conceptions of merit, progress, and
the nature of the Supreme Good or Final End.
When and how fresh controversies in ethics will begin it would
be impossible for any one to foretell. Sometimes the dominance
of a particular science or branch of study is the occasion
Sciences. ^ an attempt to apply to ethics ideas borrowed from
or analogous to the conceptions of that science. False
analogies drawn between ethics and mathematics or between
morality and the perception of beauty have wrought much
mischief in modern and to some degree even in ancient ethics.
The influence of ideas borrowed from biology is everywhere
manifest in the ethical speculations of modern times. Sometimes,
again, whole theories of ethics have been formulated which can
be seen in the end to be efforts to subordinate moral conceptions
to conceptions belonging properly to institutions or departments
of human thought and activity which the moral consciousness
has itself originated. Law, for instance, depends, or at least
ought to depend, upon men's need for and consciousness of
justice. And such institutions as the family and the state are
created by the social consciousness, which is the moral conscious-
ness from another aspect. Yet morality has been subordinated
to legal and social sanctions, and moral advance has been held
to be conditioned by political and social necessities which are
not moral needs. Similarly no one since civilization emerged
from barbarism has ever really been willing to yield allegiance
to a deity who is not moral in the fullest and highest sense of the
word. God is not superior to moral law. Yet there have been
/ whole systems of theological ethics which have
OKy ' attempted to base human morality upon the arbitrary
will of God or upon the supreme authority of a divinely inspired
book or code of laws. One of the greatest of all ethical contro-
versies, that concerning the freedom of the will, arose directly
out of what was in reality a theological problem the necessity,
namely, of reconciling God's foreknowledge with human freedom.
The unreflective moral consciousness never finds it difficult to
distinguish between a man's power of willing and all the forces
of circumstance, heredity and the like, which combine to form
the temptations to which he may yield or bid defiance; and
such facts as " remorse " and " penitence " are a continual
testimony to man's sense of freedom. But so soon as men
perceive upon reflection an apparent discrepancy between the
utterances of their moral consciousness and certain conclusions
to which theological speculation (or at a later period metaphysical
and scientific inquiries) seems inevitably to lead them, they
will not rest satisfied until the belief in the will's freedom (hither-
to unquestioned) is upon further reflection justified or condemned.
It is clear then that the complexity of the subject-matter of
ethics is such that no sharply defined boundary lines can be drawn
between it and other branches of inquiry. Just in so far as it
presupposes the apprehension of moral facts, it must presuppose
a knowledge of the system of social relationships upon which
some at least of those facts depend. No one, for instance, could
inquire into the nature of justice without being further compelled
to undertake an examination of the nature of the state.
It would be difficult to decide how much of the dispute between
the advocates of pleasure theories and their opponents turns
upon vexed questions of psychology, and how much is
strictly relevant to ethics. If, as has already been
said, one of the chief tasks of ethics is to'prevent the
intrusion into its own sphere of inquiry of ideas borrowed from
other and alien sources, then obviously these sources must be
investigated. One example of this necessity may be given. It
is sometimes maintained that the proper method of ethics is
the psychological method; ethics, we are told, should examine
as its subject-matter moral sentiments wherever found, without
raising ultimate questions as to the nature of obligation or
moral authority in general. Now if in opposition to such argu-
ments the ultimate character of moral obligation be defended,
it will be necessary to point out that no one feels moral sentiments
except in connexion with particular objects of moral approbation
or disapprobation (e.g. gratitude is inexplicable apart from a
particular relationship existing between two or more persons),
and that these objects are objects of the moral consciousness
alone. But such a line of argument is certain to make necessary
an inquiry into the nature of the objects of psychological study
which may produce quite unforeseen results for psychology.
Nothing therefore is to be gained by confining ethics within
limits which must from the nature of the case be arbitrary.
The defender at all events of the supremacy of moral intuitions
must be prepared to follow whither the argument leads, into
whatever strange quarters it may direct him. But this much
may be said by way of delimitation of the scope of ethics: how-
ever complicated and involved its arguments and processes of
inference may become, the facts from which they start and the
conclusions to which they point are such as the moral conscious-
ness alone can understand or warrant. (H. H. W.)
II. HISTORICAL SKETCH
A. Greek and Graeco-Roman Ethics. The ethical speculation
of Greece, and therefore of Europe, had no abrupt and absolute
beginning. The naive and fragmentary precepts of conduct,
which are everywhere the earliest manifestation of nascent
moral reflection, are a noteworthy element in the gnomic poetry
of the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. Their importance is shown
by the traditional enumeration of the Seven Sages of the 6th
century, and their influence on ethical thought is attested by the
references of Plato and Aristotle. But from these unscientific
utterances to a philosophy of morals was a long process. In the
practical wisdom of Thales (q.v.), one of the seven, we cannot
discern any systematic theory of morality. In the case of
Pythagoras, conspicuous among pre-Socratic philosophers as the
founder not merely of a school, but of a sect or order bound by a
common rule of life, there is a closer connexion between moral
and metaphysical speculation. The doctrine of the Pythagoreans
that the essence of justice (conceived as equal retribution) was a
square number, indicates a serious attempt to extend to the
region of conduct their mathematical view of the universe;
and the same may be said of their classification of good with
unity, straightness and the like, and of evil with the opposite
qualities. Still, the enunciation of the moral precepts of Pytha-
goras appears to have been dogmatic, or even prophetic, rather
than philosophic, and to have been accepted by his disciples
with an unphilosophic reverence as the ipse dixit l of the master.
Hence, whatever influence the Pythagorean blending of ethical
and mathematical notions may have had on Plato, and, through
him, on later thought, we cannot regard the school as having
really forestalled the Socratic inquiry after a completely reasoned
theory of conduct. The ethical element in the " dark " philo-
sophizing of Heraclitus (c. 530-470 B.C.), though it anticipates
Stoicism in its conceptions of a law of the universe, to which
the wise man will carefully conform, and a divine harmony, in
the recognition of which he will find his truest satisfaction, is
more profound, but even less systematic. It is only when we
come to Democritus, a contemporary of Socrates, the last of
the original thinkers whom we distinguish as pre-Socratic, that
we find anything which we can call an ethical system. The
fragments that remain of the moral treatises of Democritus are
sufficient, perhaps, to convince us that the turn of Greek philo-
sophy in the direction of conduct, which was actually due to
Socrates, would have taken place without him, though in a less
decided manner; but when we compare the Democritean ethics
with the post-Socratic system to which it has most affinity,
Epicureanism, we find that it exhibits a very rudimentary
apprehension of the formal conditions which moral teaching
must fulfil before it can lay claim to be treated as scientific.
1 This well-known phrase was originally attributed to the Pytha-
goreans.
ETHICS
811
The truth is that no system of ethics could be constructed until
attention had been directed to the vagueness and inconsistency
of the common moral opinions of mankind. For this purpose
was needed the concentration of a philosophic intellect of the
first order on the problems of practice. In Socrates first we find
the required combination of a paramount interest in conduct
and an ardent desire for knowledge. The pre-Socratic thinkers
were all primarily devoted to ontological research; but by the
middle of the $th century B.C. the conflict of their dogmatic
systems had led some of the keenest minds to doubt the possibility
of penetrating the secret of the physical universe. This doubt
found expression in the reasoned scepticism of Gorgias, and
produced the famous proposition of Protagoras, that human
apprehension is the only standard of existence. The same
feeling led Socrates to abandon the old physico-mctaphysical
inquiries. In his case, moreover, it was strengthened by a naive
piety that forbade him to search into things of which the gods
seemed to have reserved the knowledge to themselves. The regula-
tion of human action, on the other hand (except on occasions of
special difficulty, for which omens and oracles might be vouch-
safed), they had left to human reason. On this accordingly
Socrates concentrated his efforts.
Though, however, Socrates was the first to arrive at a proper
conception of the problems of conduct, the general idea did not
originate with him. The natural reaction against the
Tijthfi metaphysical and ethical dogmatisrn of the early
thinkers had reached its climax in the Sophists (}..).
Gorgias and Protagoras are only representatives of what was
really * universal tendency to abandon dogmatic theory and take
refuge in practical matters, and especially, as was natural in the
Greek city-state, in the civic relations of the citizen. The educa-
tion given by the Sophists aimed at no general theory of life,
but professed to expound the art of getting on in the world and
of managing public affairs. In their eulogy of the virtues of the
citizen, they pointed out the prudential character of justice and
the like as a means of obtaining pleasure and avoiding pain.
The Greek conception of society was such that the life of the
free-born citizen consisted mainly of his public function, and,
therefore, the pseudo-ethical disquisitions of the Sophists satisfied
the requirements of the age. None thought of a.ptrr\ (virtue
or excellence) as a unique quality possessed of an intrinsic value,
but as the virtue of the citizen, just as good flute-playing was the
virtue of the flute-player. We see here, as in other activities
of the age, a determination to acquire technical knowledge, and
to apply it directly to the practical issue; just as music was being
enriched by new technical knowledge, architecture by modern
theories of plans and T-squares (sc. Hippodamus), the handling
of soldiers by the new technique of " tactics " and " hoplitics," so
citizenship must be analysed afresh, systematized and adapted
in relation to modern requirements. The Sophists had studied
these matters superficially indeed but with thoroughness as far
as they went, and it is not remarkable that they should have
taken the methods which were successful in rhetoric, and
applied them to the " science and art " of civic virtues. Plato's
Prolagoroj claims, not unjustly, that in teaching virtue they
simply did systematically what every one else was doing at
haphazard. But in the true sense of the word, they had no
ethical system at all, nor did they contribute save by contrast
to ethical speculation. They merely analysed conventional
formulae, much in the manner of certain modern so-called
" scientific " moralists. Into this arena of hazy popular common
Tni * en * e Socrates brought a new critical spirit, showing
that these popular lecturers, in spite of their fertile
eloquence, could not defend their fundamental assumptions,
nor even give rational definitions of what they professed to ex-
plain. Not only were they thus " ignorant," but they were also
perpetually inconsistent with themselves in dealing with particular
instances. Thus, by the aid of his famous " dialectic," Socrates
arrived first at the negative result that the professed teachers of
the people were as ignorant as he himself claimed to be, and in
a measure justified the eulogy of Aristotle that he rendered to
philosophy the service of " introducing induction and definitions."
This description of his work is, however, both too technical and
too positive, if we may judge from those earlier dialogues of
Plato in which the real Socrates is found least modified. The
pre-eminent wisdom which the Delphic oracle attributed to him
was held by himself to consist in a unique consciousness of
ignorance. Yet it is equally clear from Plato that there was a
most important positive element in the) teaching of Socrates in
virtue of which it is just to say with Alexander Bain, " the first
important name in ancient ethical philosophy is Socrates."
The union of the negative and the positive elements in his work
has caused historians no little perplexity, and we cannot quite
save the philosopher's consistency unless we regard some of the
doctrines attributed to him by Xenophon as merely tentative
and provisional. Still the positions of Socrates that are most
important in the history of ethical thought not only are easy
to harmonize with his conviction of ignorance, but even render
it easier to understand his unwearied cross-examination of com-
mon opinion. While he showed clearly the difficulty of acquiring
knowledge, he was convinced that knowledge alone could be the
source of a coherent system of virtue, as error of evil. Socrates,
therefore, first in the history of thought, propounds a positive
scientific law of conduct. Virtue is knowledge. This principle
involved the paradox that no man, knowing good, would do evil.
But it was a paradox derived from his unanswerable truisms,
" Every one wishes for his own good, and would get it if he could,"
and " No one would deny that justice and virtue generally are
goods, and of all goods the best." All virtues are, therefore,
summed up in knowledge of the good. But this good is not, for
Socrates, duty as distinct from interest. The force of the paradox
depends upon a blending of duty and interest in the single notion
of good, a blending which was dominant in the common thought
of the age. This it is which forms the kernel of the positive
thought of Socrates according to Xenophon. He could give no
satisfactory account of Good in the abstract, and evaded all
questions on this point by saying that he knew " no good that
was not good for something in particular," but that good is
consistent with itself. For himself he prized above all things
the wisdom that is virtue, and in the task of producing it he
endured the hardest penury, maintaining that such life was
richer in enjoyment than a life of luxury. This many-sidedness
of view is illustrated by the curious blending of noble and merely
utilitarian sentiment in his account of friendship: a friend who
can be of no service is valueless; yet the highest service that a
friend can render is moral improvement.
The historically important characteristics of his moral philo-
sophy, if we take (as we must) his teaching and character
together, may be summarized as follows: (i) an ardent inquiry
for knowledge nowhere to be found, but which, if found, would
perfect human conduct; (2) a demand meanwhile that men
should act as far as possible on some consistent theory; (3) a
provisional adhesion to the commonly received view of good,
in all its incoherent complexity, and a perpetual readiness to
maintain the harmony of its different elements, and demonstrate
the superiority of virtue by an appeal to the standard of self-
interest; (4) personal firmness, as apparently easy as it was
actually invincible, in carrying out consistently such practical
convictions as he had attained. It is only when we keep all
these points in view that we can understand how from the
spring of Socratic conversation flowed the divergent streams
of Greek ethical thought.
Four distinct philosophical schools trace their immediate
origin to the circle that gathered round Socrates the Megarian,
the Platonic, the Cynic and the Cyrenaic. The
impress of the master is manifest on all, in spite of the
wide differences that divide them; they all agree in school*.
holding the most important possession of man to be
wisdom or knowledge, and the most important knowledge to be
knowledge of Good. Here, however, the agreement ends. The
more philosophic part of the circle, forming a group in which
Euclid of Megara (see MEGARIAN SCHOOL) seems at first to have
taken the lead, regarded this Good as the object of a still un-
fulfilled guest, and were led to identify it with the hidden secret
812
ETHICS
Aris-
lippus.
of the universe, and thus to pass from ethics to metaphysics.
Others again, whose demand for knowledge was more easily
satisfied, and who were more impressed with the positive and
practical side of the master's teaching, made the quest a much
simpler affair. They took the Good as already known, and held
philosophy to consist in the steady application of this knowledge
to conduct. Among these were Antisthenes the Cynic and
Aristippus of Cyrene. It is by their recognition of the duty of
living consistently by theory instead of mere impulse or custom,
their sense of the new value given to life through this rationaliza-
tion, and their effort to maintain the easy, calm, unwavering
firmness of the Socratic temper, that we recognize both Antis-
thenes and Aristippus as " Socratic men," in spite of the complete-
ness with which they divided their master's positive doctrine
into systems diametrically opposed. Of their contrasted prin-
ciples we may perhaps say that, while Aristippus took the most
obvious logical step for reducing the teaching of Socrates to clear
dogmatic unity, Antisthenes certainly drew the most natural
inference from the Socratic life.
Aristippus (see CYRENAICS) argued that, if all that is beautiful
or admirable in conduct has this quality as being useful, i.e.
productive of some further good; if virtuous action
is essentially action done with insight, or rational
apprehension of the act as a means to this good, this
good must be pleasure. Bodily pleasures and pains Aristippus
held to be the keenest, though he does not seem to have main-
tained this on any materialistic theory, as he admitted the
existence of purely mental pleasures, such as joy in the prosperity
of one's native land. He fully recognized that his good was
capable of being realized only in successive parts, and gave even
exaggerated emphasis to the rule of seeking the pleasure of the
moment, and not troubling oneself about a dubious future.
It was in the calm, resolute, skilful culling of such pleasures as
circumstances afforded from moment to moment, undisturbed
by passion, prejudices or superstition, that he conceived the
quality of wisdom to be exhibited; and tradition represents
him as realizing this ideal to an impressive degree. Among the
prejudices from which the wise man was free he included all
regard to customary morality beyond what was due to the
actual penalties attached to its violation; though he held, with
Socrates, that these penalties actually render conformity reason-
able. Thus early in the history of ethical theory appeared the
most thoroughgoing exposition of hedonism.
Far otherwise was the Socratic spirit understood by Antisthenes
and the Cynics (?..). They equally held that no speculative
research was needed for the discovery of good and
virtue, and maintained that the Socratic wisdom was
exhibited, not in the skilful pursuit, but in the rational
disregard of pleasure, in the dear apprehension of the intrinsic
worthlessness of this and most other objects of. men's ordinary
desires and aims. Pleasure, indeed, Antisthenes declared roundly
to be an evil; " Better madness than a surrender to pleasure."
He did not overlook the need of supplementing merely intellectual
insight by " Socratic force of soul "; but it seemed to him that,
by insight and self-mastery combined, an absolute spiritual
independence might be attained which left nothing wanting
for perfect well-being (see also DIOGENES). For as for poverty,
painful toil, disrepute, and such evils as men dread most, these,
he argued, were positively useful as means of progress in spiritual
freedom and virtue. There is, however, in the Cynic notion of
wisdom, no positive criterion beyond the mere negation of
irrational desires and prejudices. We saw that Socrates, while
not claiming to have found the abstract theory of good or wise
conduct, practically understood by it the faithful performance of
customary duties, maintaining always that his own happiness
was therewith bound up. The Cynics more boldly discarded
both pleasure and mere custom as alike irrational; but in so
doing they left the freed reason with no definite aim but its
own freedom. It is absurd, as Plato urged, to say that knowledge
is the good, and then when asked "knowledge of what ?" to have
no positive reply but "of the good"; but the Cynics do not seem
to have made any serious effort to escape from this absurdity.
The
Cynics.
The ultimate views of these two Socratic schools we shall
have to notice presently when we come to the post-Aristotelian
schools. We must now proceed to trace the fuller development
of the Socratic theory in the hands of Plato and Aristotle.
The ethics of Plato cannot properly be treated as a finished
result, but rather as a continual movement from the position
of Socrates towards the more complete, articulate
system of Aristotle; except that there are ascetic and W"**
mystical suggestions in some parts of Plato's teaching which
find no counterpart in Aristotle, and in fact disappear from
Greek philosophy soon after Plato's death until they are revived
and fantastically developed in Neopythagoreanism and Neo-
platonism. The first stage at which we can distinguish Plato's
ethical view from that of Socrates is presented in the Protagoras,
where he makes a serious, though clearly tentative effort to
define the object of that knowledge which he with his master
regards as the essence of all virtue. Such knowledge, he here
maintains, is really mensuration of pleasures and pains, whereby
the wise man avoids those rnistaken under-estimates of future
feelings in comparison with present which we commonly call
" yielding to fear or desire." This hedonism has perplexed
Plato's readers needlessly (as we have said in speaking of the
Cyrenaics) , inasmuch as hedonism is the most obvious corollary
of the Socratic doctrine that the different common notions of
good the beautiful, the pleasant and the useful were to be
somehow interpreted by each other. By Plato, however, this
conclusion could have been held only before he had accomplished
the movement of thought by which he carried the Socratic
method beyond the range of human conduct and developed it
into a metaphysical system.
This movement may be expressed thus. " If we know," said
Socrates, " what justice is, we can give an account or definition
of it "; true knowledge must be knowledge of the general fact,
common to all the individual cases to which we apply our general
notion. But this must be no less true of other objects of thought
and discourse; the same relation of general notions to particular
examples extends through the whole physical universe; we can
think and talk of it only by means of such notions. True or
scientific knowledge then must be general knowledge, relating,
not to individuals primarily, but to the general facts or qualities
which individuals exemplify; in fact, our notion of an individual,
when examined, is found to be an aggregate of such general
qualities. But, again, the object of true knowledge must be what
really exists; hence the reality of the universe must lie in general
facts or relations, and not in the individuals that exemplify
them.
So far the steps are plain enough; but we do not yet see how
this logical Realism (as it was afterwards called) comes to have
the essentially ethical character that especially interests us in
Platonism. Plato's philosophy is now concerned with the whole
universe of being; yet the ultimate object of his philosophic
contemplation is still " the good," now conceived as the ultimate
ground of all being and knowledge. That is, the essence of the
universe is identified with its end, the " formal " with the
" final " cause of things, to use the later Aristotelian phraseology.
How comes this about ?
Perhaps we may best explain this by recurring to the original
application of the Socratic method to human affairs. Since all
rational activity is for some end, the different arts or functions
of human industry are naturally defined by a statement of their
ends or uses; and similarly, in giving an account of the different
artists and functionaries, we necessarily state their end, " what
they are good for." In a society well ordered on Socratic
principles, every human being would be put to some use; the
essence of his life would consist in doing what he was good for
(his proper tpyov). But again, it is easy to extend this view
throughout the whole region of organized life; an eye that
does not attain its end by seeing is without the essence of an eye.
In short, we may say of all organs and instruments that they
are what we think them in proportion as they fulfil their function
and attain their end. If, then, we conceive the whole universe
organically, as a complex arrangement of means to ends, we shall
ETHICS
understand bow Plato might hold that all things really were, or
(as we say) " realized their idea," in proportion as they accom-
plished the special end or good for which they were adapted.
Even Socrates, in spite of his aversion to physics, was led by
pious reflection to expound a ideological view of the physical
world, as ordered in all its parts by divine wisdom for the realiza-
tion of some divine end; and, in the metaphysical turn which
Plato gave to this view, he was probably anticipated by Euclid of
Megara, who held that the one real being is " that which we call
by many names. Good, Wisdom, Reason or God," to which
Plato, raising to a loftier significance the Socratic identification
of the beautiful with the useful, added the further name of
Absolute Beauty, explaining how man's love of the beautiful
finally reveals itself as the yearning for the end and essence of
being.
Plato, therefore, took this vast stride of thought, and identified
the ultimate notions of ethics and ontology. We have now to see
what attitude he will adopt towards the practical inquiries from
which he started. What will now be his view of wisdom, virtue,
pleasure and their relation to human well-being?
The answer to this question is inevitably somewhat com-
plicated. In the first place we have to observe that philosophy
has now passed definitely from the market-place into the lecture-
room. The quest of Socrates was for the true art of conduct for
a man living a practical life among his fellows. But if the objects
of abstract thought constitute the real world, of which this world
of individual things is but a shadow, it is plain that the highest,
most real life must lie in the former region and not in the latter.
It is in contemplating the abstract reality which concrete things
obscurely exhibit, the type or ideal which they imperfectly
imitate, that the true life of the mind in man must consist; and
as man is most truly man in proportion as he is mind, the desire
of one's own good, which Plato, following Socrates, held to be
permanent and essential in every living thing, becomes in its
highest form the philosophic yearning for knowledge. This
yearning, he held, springs like more sensual impulses from a
sense of want of something formerly possessed, of which there
remains a latent memory in the soul, strong in proportion to its
philosophic capacity; hence it is that in learning any abstract
truth by scientific demonstration we merely make explicit what we
already implicitly know; we bring into dear consciousness hidden
memories of a state in which the soul looked upon Reality and
Good face to face, before the lapse that imprisoned her in an alien
body and mingled her true nature with fleshly feelings and im-
pulses. We thus reach the paradox that the true art of living
is really an " art of dying " as far as possible to mere sense, in
order more fully to exist in intimate union with absolute goodness
and beauty. On the other hand, since the philosopher must still
live and act in the concrete sensible world, the Socratic identifica-
tion of wisdom and virtue is fully maintained by Plato. Only
be who apprehends good in the abstract can imitate it in such
transient and imperfect good as may be realized in human life,
and it is impossible that, having this knowledge, he should not
act on it, whether in private or public affairs. Thus, in the true
philosopher, we shall necessarily find the practically good man,
who being " likest of men to the gods is best loved by them ";
and abo the perfect statesman, if only the conditions of his
society allow him a sphere for exercising his statesmanship.
The characteristics of this practical goodness in Plato's
matured thought correspond to the fundamental conceptions in
his view of the universe. The soul of man, in its good or
normal condition, must be ordered and harmonized
under the guidance of reason. The question then arises,
" Wherein does this order or harmony precisely consist?"
In explaining bow Plato was led to answer this question, it will
be well to notice that, while faithfully maintaining the Socratic
doctrine that the highest virtue was inseparable from knowledge
of the good, be bad come to recognize an inferior kind of virtue,
possessed by men who were not philosophers. It is plain that
if the good that is to be known is the ultimate ground of the whole
of things, it is attainable only by a select and carefully trained
few. Yet we can hardly restrict all virtue to these alone. What
Vtrtmtm
account, then, was to be given of ordinary " dvic " bravery,
temperance and justice? It seemed clear that men who did
their duty, resisting the seductions of fear and desire, must have
right opinions, if not knowledge, as to the good and evil in human
life; but whence comes this right " opinion "? Partly, Plato
said, it comes by nature and " divine allotment, " but for its
adequate devdopment " custom and practice " are required.
Hence the paramount importance of education and discipline
for dvic virtue; and even for future philosophers such moral
culture, in which physical and aesthetic training must co-operate,
is indispensable; no merely intellectual preparation will suffice.
His point is that perfect knowledge cannot be implanted in a
soul that has not gone through a course of preparation including
much more than physical training. What, then, is this prepaia-
tion? A distinct step in psychological analysis was taken when
Plato recognized that its effect was to produce the " harmony "
above mentioned among different parts of the soul, by sub-
ordinating the impulsive elements to reason. These non-rational
elements he further distinguished as appetitive (rA kviButarruabv)
and spirited (ri> Ovuotidit or 0uju&) the practical separate-
ness of which from each other and from reason he held to be
established by our inner experience.
On this triple division of the soul he founded a systematic
view of the four kinds of goodness recognized by the common
moral consciousness of Greece, and in later times known as the
Cardinal Virtues (q.v.). Of these the two most fundamental
were (as has been already indicated) wisdom in its highest form
philosophy and that harmonious and regulated activity of all
the elements of the soul which Plato regards as the essence of
uprightness in social relations (duauoabvri). The import of
this term is essentially social; and we can explain Plato's use
of it only by reference to the analogy which he drew between
the iiulividu.il man and the community. In a rightly ordered
polity social and individual well-being alike would depend on that
harmonious action of diverse elements, each performing its proper
function, which in its social application is more naturally termed
diKaioaiivrj. We see, moreover, how in Plato's view the funda-
mental virtues, Wisdom and Justice in their highest forms, are
mutually involved. Wisdom will necessarily maintain orderly
activity, and this latter consists in regulation by wisdom, while
the two more special virtues of Courage (6.vdptla) and Temper-
ance (a(ji<t>po<rvvri) are only different sides or aspects of this wisely
regulated action of the complex soul.
Such, then, are the forms in which essential good seemed to
manifest itself in human life. It remains to ask whether the
statement of these gives a complete account of human well-being,
or whether pleasure also is to be included. On this point Plato's
view seems to have gone through several oscillations. After
apparently maintaining (Protagoras) that pleasure is the good,
he passes first to the opposite extreme, and denies it (Phaedo,
Gorgias) to be a good at all. For (i), as concrete and transient,
it is obviously not the real essential good that the philosopher
seeks; (2) the feelings most prominently recognized as pleasures
are bound up with pain, as good can never be with evil; in so far,
then, as common sense rightly recognizes some pleasures as good,
it can only be from their tendency to produce some further good.
This view, however, was too violent a divergence from Socratism
for Plato to remain in it. That pleasure is not the real absolute
good, was no ground for not including it in the good of concrete
human life; and after all only coarse and vulgar pleasures were
indissolubly linked to the pains of want. Accordingly, in the
Republic he has no objection to trying the question of the intrinsic
superiority of philosophic or virtuous 1 life by the standard of
pleasure, and argues that the philosophic (or good) man alone
enjoys real pleasure, while the sensualist spends his life in oscillat-
ing between painful want and the merely neutral state of pain-
lessness, which he mistakes for positive pleasure. Still more
1 It is highly characteristic of Platonism that the issue in this
dialogue, as originally stated, is between virtue and vice, whereas,
without any avowed change of ground, the issue ultimately discussed
is between the philosophic life and the life of vulgar ambition or
sensual enjoyment.
814
ETHICS
emphatically is it declared in the Laws that when we are " dis-
coursing to men, not to gods," we must 'show that the life which
we praise as best and noblest is also that in which there is
the greatest excess of pleasure over pain. But though Plato
holds this inseparable connexion of best and pleasantest to be
true and important, it is only for the sake of the vulgar that he
lays this stress on pleasure. For in the most philosophical com-
parison in the Philebus between the claims of pleasure and wisdom
the former is altogether worsted; and though a place is allowed
to the pure pleasures of colour, form and sound, and of intellectual
exercise, and even to the " necessary " satisfaction of appetite,
it is only a subordinate one. At the same time, in his later view,
Plato avoids the exaggeration of denying all positive quality of
pleasure even to the coarser sensual gratifications; they are un-
doubtedly cases of that " replenishment " or " restoration " to
its " natural state " of a bodily organ, in which he defines pleasure
to consist (see Timaeus, pp. 64, 65) ; he merely maintains that the
common estimate of them is to a large extent illusory, or a false
appearance of pleasure is produced by contrast with the ante-
cedent or concomitant painful condition of the organ. It is not
surprising that this somewhat complicated and delicately balanced
view of the relations of " good " and " pleasure " was not long
maintained within the Platonic school, and that under Speusippus,
Plato's successor, the main body of Platonists took up a simply
anti-hedonistic position, as we learn from the polemic of Aristotle.
In the Philebus, however, though a more careful psychological
analysis leads him to soften down the exaggerations of this attack
on sensual pleasure, the antithesis of knowledge and pleasure is
again sharpened, and a desire to depreciate even good pleasures
is more strongly shown; still even here pleasure is recognized
as a constituent of that philosophic life which is the highest
human good, while in the Laws, where the subject is more
popularly treated, it is admitted that we cannot convince man
that the just life is the best unless we can also prove it to be
the pleasantest.
When a student passes from Plato to Aristotle, he is so
forcibly impressed by the contrast between the habits of
mind of the two authors, and the literary manners
Aristotle. ^ tne two philosophers, that it is easy to under-
stand how their systems have come to be popularly
conceived as diametrically opposed to each other; and the
uncompromising polemic which Aristotle, both in his ethical
and in his metaphysical treatises, directs against Plato and
the platonists, has tended strongly to confirm this view. Yet
a closer inspection shows us that when a later president of the
Academy (Antiochus of Ascalon) repudiated the scepticism which
for two hundred years had been accepted as the traditional
Platonic doctrine, he had good grounds for claiming Plato and
Aristotle as consentient authorities for the ethical position which
he took up. For though Aristotle's divergence from Plato is
very conspicuous when we consider either his general concep-
tion of the subject of ethics, or the details of his system of virtues,
still his agreement with his master is almost complete as regards
the main outline of his theory of human good; the difference
between the two practically vanishes when we view them in
relation to the later controversy between Stoics and Epicureans.
Even on the cardinal point on which Aristotle entered into direct
controversy with Plato, the definite disagreement between the
two is less than at first appears; the objections of the disciple
hit that part of the master's system that was rather imagined
than thought; the main positive result of Platonic speculation
only gains in distinctness by the application of Aristotelian
analysis.
Plato, we saw, held that there is one supreme science
or wisdom, of which the ultimate object is absolute good;
in the knowledge of this, the knowledge of all particular
goods that is, of all that we rationally desire to know is
implicitly contained; and also all practical virtue, as no one
who truly knows what is good can fail to realize it. But in spite
of the intense conviction with which he thus identified meta-
physical speculation and practical wisdom, we find in his writings
no serious attempt to deduce the particulars of human well-being
from his knowledge of absolute good, still less to unfold from it
the particular cognitions of the special arts and sciences. Indeed,
we may say that the distinction which Aristotle explicitly draws
between speculative science or wisdom and practical wisdom
(on its political side statesmanship) is really indicated in Plato's
actual treatment of the subjects, although the express recognition
of it is contrary to his principles. The discussion of good (e.g.)
in his Philebus relates entirely to human good, and the respective
claims of Thought and Pleasure to constitute this; he only refers
in passing to the Divine Thought that is the good of the ordered
world, as something clearly beyond the limits of the present
discussion. So again, in his last great ethico-political treatise
(the Laws) there is hardly a trace of his peculiar metaphysics.
On the other hand, the relation between human and divine
good, as presented by Aristotle, is so close that we can hardly
conceive Plato as having definitely thought it closer. The sub-
stantial good of the universe, in Aristotle's view, is the pure
activity of universal abstract thought, at once subject and object,
which, itself changeless and eternal, is the final cause and first
source of the whole process of change in the concrete world. And
both he and Plato hold that a similar activity of pure speculative
intellect is that in which the philosopher will' seek to exist,
though he must, being a man, concern himself with the affairs
of ordinary human life, a region in which his highest good will
be attained by realizing perfect moral excellence. No doubt
Aristotle's demonstration of the inappropriateness of attributing
moral excellence to the Deity seems to contradict Plato's doctrine
that the just man as such is " likest the gods," but here again
the discrepancy is reduced when we remember that the essence
of Plato's justice (5ucato<Ti)'7j) is harmonious activity. No doubt,
too, Aristotle's attribution of pleasure to the Divine Existence
shows a profound metaphysical divergence from Plato; but it
is a divergence which has no practical importance. Nor, again,
is Aristotle's divergence from the Socratic principle that all
" virtue is knowledge " substantially greater than Plato's, though
it is more plainly expressed. Both accept the paradox in the
qualified sense that no one can deliberately act contrary to what
appears to him good, and that perfect virtue is inseparably bound
up with perfect wisdom or moral insight. Both, however, recog-
nize that this actuality of moral insight is not a function of the
intellect only, but depends rather on careful training in good
habits applied to minds of good natural dispositions, though the
doctrine has no doubt a more definite and prominent place in
Aristotle's system. The disciple certainly takes a step in advance
by stating definitely, as an essential characteristic of virtuous
action, that it is chosen for its own sake, for the beauty of virtue
alone; but herein he merely formulates the conviction that his
master inspires. Nor, finally, does Aristotle's account of the rela-
tion of pleasure to human well-being (although he has to combat
the extreme anti-hedonism to which the Platonic school under
Speusippus had been led) differ materially from the outcome of
Plato's thought on this point, as the later dialogues present it to
us. Pleasure, in Aristotle's view, is not the primary constituent
of well-being, but rather an inseparable accident of it; human
well-being is essentially well-doing, excellent activity of some
kind, whether its aim and end be abstract truth or noble conduct;
knowledge and virtue are objects of rational choice apart from
the pleasure attending them; still all activities are attended and
in a manner perfected by pleasure, which is better and more
desirable in proportion to the excellence of the activity. He no
doubt criticizes Plato's account of the nature of pleasure, arguing
that we cannot properly conceive pleasure either as a " process "
or as " replenishment " the last term, he truly says, denotes a
material rather than a psychical fact. But this does not interfere
with the general ethical agreement between the two thinkers;
and the doctrine that vicious pleasures are not true or real
pleasures is so characteristically Platonic that we are almost
surprised to find it in Aristotle.
In so far as there is any important difference between the
Platonic and the Aristotelian views of human good, we may
observe that the latter has substantially a closer correspond-
ence to the positive element in the ethical teaching of Socrates,
KTHICS
815
though it is presented in * far more technical and scholastic
form, and involves a more distinct rejection of the fundamental
Socratic paradox. The same result appears when
we compare the methods of the three philosophers.
Although the Socratic induction forms a striking
feature of Plato's dialogues, his ideal method of ethics is
purely deductive; he admits common sense only as supplying
provisional steps and starting-points from which the mind is to
ascend to knowledge of absolute good, through which knowledge
alone, as he conceives, the lower notions of particular goods are
to be truly conceived. Aristotle, discarding the transcendental-
ism of Plato, naturally retained from Plato's teaching the original
Socratic method of induction from and verification by common
opinion. Indeed, the windings of his exposition are best -under-
stood if we consider his literary manner as a kind of Socratic
dialogue formalized and reduced to a monologue. He first leads
us by an induction to the fundamental notion of ultimate end or
good for man. All men, in acting, aim at some result, either
for its own sake or as a means to some further end; but obviously
not everything can be sought merely as a means; there must
be some ultimate end. In fact men commonly recognize such an
end, and agree to call it well-being' (cMcu/uMaa). But they
take very different views of its nature; how shall we find the
true view ? We observe that men are classified according to
their functions; all kinds of man, and indeed all organs of
man, have their special functions, and are judged as functionaries
and organs according as they perform their functions well or
ill. May we not then infer that man, as man, has his proper
function, and that the well-being or " doing well " that all seek
really lies in fulfilling well the proper function of man, that is,
in living well that life of the rational soul which we recognize
as man's distinctive attribute ?
Again, this Socratic deference to common opinion is not
shown merely in the way by which Aristotle reaches his funda-
mental conception; it equally appears in his treatment of the
conception itself. In the first place, though in Aristotle's view
the most perfect well-being consists in the exercise of man's
" divinest part," pure speculative reason, he keeps far from
the paradox of putting forward this and nothing else as human
good; so far, indeed, that the greater part of his treatise is
occupied with an exposition of the inferior good which is realized
in practical life when the appetitive or impulsive (semi-rational)
element of the soul operates under the due regulation of reason.
Even when the notion of " good performance of function " was
thus widened, and when it had further taken in the pleasure that
is inseparably connected with such functioning, it did not yet
correspond to the whole of what a Greek commonly understood
as " human well-being." We may grant, indeed, that a moderate
provision of material wealth is indirectly included, as an indis-
pensable pre-requisite of a due performance of many functions
as Aristotle conceives it his system admits of no beatitudes
for the poor; still there remain other goods, such as beauty,
good birth, welfare of progeny, the presence or absence of which
influenced the common view of a man's well-being, though they
could hardly be shown to be even indirectly important to his
" well-acting." These Aristotle attempts neither to exclude
from the philosophic conception of well-being nor to include
in his formal definition of it. The deliberate looseness which is
thus given to his fundamental doctrine characterizes more or
less his whole discussion of ethics. He plainly says that the
subject does not admit of completely scientific treatment; his
aim is to give not a definite theory of human good, but a practic-
ally adequate account of its most important constituents.
The most important element, then, of well-being or good
life for ordinary men Aristotle holds to consist in well-doing as
determined by the notions of the different moral excellences.
1 This cardinal term is commonly translated " happiness "; and
it must be allowed that it is the most natural term for what we (in
English) agree to call " our being's end and aim." But happiness
so definitely signifies a state of feeling that it will not admit the
interpretation that Aristotle (as well as Plato and the Stoics) ex-
pressly gives to ri*oi*rio ; the confusion is best avoided by render-
ing the word by the less familiar " well-being."
In expounding these, he gives throughout the pure result of
analytical observation of the common moral consciousness of
his age. Ethical truth, in his view, is to be attained by careful
comparison of particular moral opinions, just as physical truth is
to be obtained by induction from particular physical observations.
On account of the conflict of opinion in ethics we cannot hope to
obtain certainty upon all questions; still reflection will lead
us to discard some of the conflicting views and find a reconcilia-
tion for others, and will furnish, on the whole, a practically
sufficient residuum of moral truth. This adhesion to common
sense, though it involves a sacrifice of both depth and complete-
ness in Aristotle's system, gives at the same time an historical
interest which renders it deserving of special attention as an
analysis of the current Greek ideal of " fair and good life "
UaXo/vcryaOia). His virtues are not arranged on any clear
philosophic plan; the list shows no serious attempt to consider
human life exhaustively, and exhibit the standard of excellence
appropriate to its different departments or aspects. He seems
to have taken as a starting-point Plato's four cardinal virtues.
The two comprehensive notions of Wisdom and Justice (6ucau>-
ffiicij) he treats separately. As regards both his analysis leads
him to diverge considerably from Plato. As we saw, his distinc-
tion between practical and speculative Wisdom belongs to the
deepest of his disagreements with his master; and in the case
of dmaioavvTi again he distinguishes the wider use of the term
to express Law-observance, which (he says) coincides with the
social side of virtue generally, and its narrower use for the virtue
that " aims at a kind of equality," whether (i) in the distribution
of wealth, honour, &c., or (2) in commercial exchange, or (3) in
the reparation of wrong done. Then, in arranging the other
special virtues, he begins with courage and temperance, which
(after Plato) he considers as the excellences of the " irrational
element " of the soul. Next follow two pairs of excellences,
concerned respectively with wealth and honour: (i) liberality
and magnificence, of which the latter is exhibited in greater
matters of expenditure, and (2) laudable ambition and high-
mindcdness similarly related to honour. Then comes gentleness
the virtue regulative of anger; and the list is concluded by the
excellences of social intercourse, friendliness (as a mean between
obsequiousness and surliness), truthfulness and decorous wit.
The abundant store of just and close analytical observation
contained in Aristotle's account of these notions give it a per-
manent interest, even beyond its historical value as a delineation
of the Greek ideal of " fair and good " life. 2 But its looseness
of arrangement and almost grotesque co-ordination of qualities
widely differing in importance are obvious. Thus his famous
general formula for virtue, that it is a mean or middle state,
always to be found somewhere between the vices which stand
to it in the relation of excess and defect, scarcely avails to render
his treatment more systematic. It was important, no doubt,
to express the need of observing due measure and proportion,
in order to attain good results in human life no less than in
artistic products; but the observation of this need was no new
thing in Greek literature; indeed, it had already led the Pytha-
goreans and Plato to find the ultimate essence of the ordered
universe in number. But Aristotle's purely quantitative state-
ment of the relation of virtue and vice is misleading, even where
it is not obviously inappropriate; and sometimes leads him to
such eccentricities as that of making simple veracity a mean
between boostfulness and mock-modesty.*
* Aristotle follows Plato and Socrates in identifying the notions of
(taXos (" fair," " beautiful ") and iyaOAt ("good") in their application
to conduct. We may observe, however, that while the latter term is
used to denote the virtuous man, and (in the neuter) equivalent to
End generally, the former is rather chosen to express the quality of
virtuous acts which in any particular case is the end of the virtuous
agent. Aristotle no doubt faithfully represents the common sense
of Greece in considering that, in so far as virtue is in itself good to
the virtuous agent, it belongs to that species of good which we dis-
tinguish as beautiful. In later Greek philosophy the term na.\i>r
(" nones turn ") became still more technical in the signification of
" morally good."
' The above account is considerably expanded in H. Sidgwick's
Hitt. of Ethics (5th d., 1902), pp. 59-70.
8i6
ETHICS
ilonto
Stoicism.
It ought to be said that Aristotle does not present the formula
just discussed as supplying a criterion of good conduct in any
particular case; he expressly leaves this to be determined by
" correct reasoning, and the judgment of the practically-wise
man (6 <j>povinos) " .We cannot, however, find that he has
furnished any substantial principles for its determination;
indeed, he hardly seems to have formed a distinct general idea
of the practical syllogism by which he conceives it to be effected. 1
The kind of reasoning which his view of virtuous conduct requires
is one in which the ultimate major premise states a distinctive
characteristic of some virtue, and one or more minor premises
show that such characteristic belongs to a certain mode of con-
duct under given circumstances; since it is essential to good
conduct that it should contain its end in itself, and be chosen
for its own sake. But he has not failed to observe that practical
reasonings are not commonly of this kind, but are rather con-
cerned with actions as means to ulterior ends; indeed, he lays
stress on this as a characteristic of the " political " life, when he
wishes to prove its inferiority to the life of pure speculation.
Though common sense will admit that virtues are the best of
goods, it still undoubtedly conceives practical wisdom as chiefly
exercised in providing those inferior goods which Aristotle,
after recognizing the need or use of them for the realization of
human well-being, has dropped out of sight; and the result is
that, in trying to make clear his conception of practical wisdom,
we find ourselves fluctuating continually between the common
notion, which he does not distinctly reject, and the notion
required as the keystone of his ethical system.
On the whole, there is probably no treatise so masterly as
Aristotle's Ethics, and containing so much close and valid
thought, that yet leaves on the reader's mind so strong
Trans/- an impression of dispersive and incomplete work.
It is only by dwelling on these defects that we can
understand the small amount of influence that his
system exercised during the five centuries after his death, as
compared with the effect which it has had, directly or indirectly,
in shaping the thought of modern Europe. Partly, no doubt,
the limited influence of his disciples, the Peripatetics (q.v.),
is to be attributed to that exaltation of the purely speculative
life which distinguished the Aristotelian ethics from other later
systems, and which was too alien from the common moral
consciousness to find much acceptance in an age in which the
ethical aims of philosophy had again become paramount. Partly,
again, the analytical distinctness of Aristotle's manner brings
into special prominence the difficulties that attend the Socratic
effort to reconcile the ideal aspirations of men with the principles
on which their practical reasonings are commonly conducted.
The conflict between these two elements of Common Sense
was too profound to be compromised; and the moral conscious-
ness of mankind demanded a more trenchant partisanship than
Aristotle's. Its demands were met by the Stoic school which
separated the moral from the worldly view of life, with an
absoluteness and definiteness that caught the imagination;
which regarded practical goodness as the highest manifestation
of its ideal of wisdom; and which bound the common notions of
duty into an apparently coherent system, by a formula that
comprehended the whole of human life, and exhibited its relation
to the ordered process of the universe. The intellectual descent
of its ethical doctrines is principally to be traced to Socrates
through the Cynics, though an important element in them
seems attributable to the school that inherited the " Academy "
of Plato. Both Stoic and Cynic maintained, in its sharpest
form, the fundamental tenet that the practical knowledge which
is virtue, with the condition of soul that is inseparable from it,
is alone to be accounted good. He who exercises this wisdom
or knowledge has complete well-being; all else is indifferent to
1 There is a certain difficulty in discussing Aristotle's views on the
subject of practical wisdom, and the relation of the intellect to moral
action, since it is most probable that the only accounts that we have
of these views are not part of the genuine writings of Aristotle. Still
books vi. and vii. of the Nicomachean Ethics contain no doubt as pure
Aristotelian doctrine as a disciple could give, and appear to supply a
sufficient foundation for the general criticism expressed in the text.
Stoklsm.
him. It is true that the Cynics were more concerned to emphasize
the negative side of the sage's well-being, while the Stoics brought
into more prominence its positive side. This difference, however,
did not amount to disagreement. The Stoics, in fact, seem
generally to have regarded the eccentricities of Cynicism as an
emphatic manner of expressing the essential antithesis between
philosophy and the world; a manner which, though not necessary
or even normal, might yet be advantageously adopted by the
sage under certain circumstances. 2
Wherein, then, consists this knowledge or wisdom that makes
free and perfect? Both Cynics and Stoics (q.v.) agreed that the
most important part of it was the knowledge that the
sole good of man lay in this knowledge or wisdom
itself. It must be understood that by wisdom they meant
wisdom realized in act; indeed, they did not conceive the
existence of wisdom as separable from such realization. We
may observe, too, that the Stoics rejected the divergence which
we have seen gradually taking place in Platonic-Aristotelian
thought from the position of Socrates, " that no one aims at
what he knows to be bad." The stress that their psychology
laid on the essential unity of the rational self that is the source
of voluntary action prevented them from accepting Plato's
analysis of the soul into a regulative element and elements
needing regulation. They held that what we call passion is a
morbid condition of the rational soul, involving erroneous
judgment as to what is to be sought or shunned. From such
passionate errors the truly wise man will of course be free. He
will be conscious indeed of physical appetite; but he will not
be misled into supposing that its object is really a good; he
cannot, therefore, hope for the attainment of this object or fear
to miss it, as these states involve the conception of it as a good.
Similarly, though like other men he will be subject to bodily
pain, this will not cause him mental grief or disquiet, as his worst
agonies will not disturb his clear conviction that it is really
indifferent to his true reasonable self.
That this impassive sage was a being not to be found among
living men the later Stoics at least were fully aware. They faintly
suggested that one or two moral heroes of old time might have
realized the ideal, but they admitted that all other philosophers
(even) were merely in a state of progress towards it. This ad-
mission did not in the least diminish the rigour of their demand
for absolute loyalty to the exclusive claims of wisdom. The
assurance of its own unique value that such wisdom involved
they held to be an abiding possession for those who had attained
it; 3 and without this assurance no act could be truly wise or
virtuous. Whatever was not of knowledge was of sin; and the
distinction between right and wrong being absolute and not
admitting of degrees all sins were equally sinful; whoever broke
the least commandment was guilty of the whole law. Similarly,
all wisdom was somehow involved in any one of the manifesta-
tions of wisdom, commonly distinguished as particular virtues;
though whether these virtues were specifically distinct, or only
the same knowledge in different relations, was a subtle question
on which the Stoics do not seem to have been agreed.
Aristotle had already been led to attempt a refutation of the
Socratic identification of virtue with knowledge; but his attempt
had only shown the profound difficulty of attacking the paradox,
so long as it was admitted that no one could of deliberate pur-
pose act contrary to what seemed to him best. Now, Aristotle's
divergence from Socrates had not led him so far as to deny this;
while for the Stoics who had receded to the original Socratic
position, the difficulty was still more patent. This theory of
virtue led them into two dilemmas. Firstly, if virtue is know-
ledge, does it follow that vice is involuntary? If not, it must be
that ignorance is voluntary. This alternative is the less danger-
ous to morality, and as such the Stoics chose it. But they were
* It has been suggestively said that Cynicism was to Stoicism what
monasticism was to early Christianity. The analogy, however, must
not be pressed too far, since orthodox Stoics do not ever seem to have
regarded Cynicism as the more perfect way.
8 The Stoics were not quite agreed as to the immutability of virtue,
but they were agreed that, when once possessed, it could only be lost
through the loss of reason itself.
ETHICS
817
not yet at the end of their perplexities; for while they were
thus driven to an extreme extension of the range of human
volition, their view of the physical universe involved an equally
thorough-going determinism. How could the vicious man
be responsible if his vice were strictly pre-determined? The
Stoics answered that the error which was the essence of vice was
so far voluntary that it could be avoided if men chose to exercise
their reason. No doubt it depended on the innate force and
firmness 1 of a man's soul whether his reason was effectually
exercised; but moral responsibility was saved if the vicious act
proceeded from the man himself and not from any external
cause.
With all this we have not ascertained the positive practical
content of this wisdom. How are we to emerge from the barren
circle of affirming (i) that wisdom is the sole good and unwisdom
the sole evil, and (2) that wisdom is the knowledge of good and
evil; and attain some method for determining the particulars
of good conduct? The Cynics made no attempt to solve this
difficulty; they were content to mean by virtue what any plain
man meant by it, except in so far as their sense of independence
led them to reject certain received precepts and prejudices. The
Stoics, on the other hand, not only worked out a detailed system
of duties or, as they termed them, " things meet and fit "
UoOijuMTo) for all occasions of life; they were further especially
concerned to comprehend them under a general formula. They
found this by bringing out the positive significance of the notion
of Nature, which the Cynic had used chiefly in a negative way,
as an antithesis to the " consentions " (vo^ios), from which his
knowledge had made him free. Even in this negative use of the
notion it is necessarily implied that whatever active tendencies
in man are found to be " natural " that is, independent of and
uncorrupted by social customs and conventions will properly
take effect in outward acts, but the adoption of " conformity to
nature " as a general positive rule for outward conduct seems to
have been due to the influence on Zeno of Academic teaching.
Whence, however, can this authority belong to the natural, unless
nature be itself an expression or embodiment of divine law and
wisdom? The conception of the world, as organized and filled by
divine thought, was common, in some form, to all the philosophies
that looked back to Socrates as their founder, some even main-
taining that this thought was the sole reality. This pantheistic
doctrine harmonized thoroughly with the Stoic view of human
good; but being unable to conceive substance idealistically,
they (with considerable aid from the system of Heraclitus)
supplied a materialistic side to their pantheism, conceiving
divine thought as an attribute of the purest and most primary
of material substances, a subtle fiery aether. This theological
view of the physical universe had a double effect on the ethics of
the Stoic. In the first place it gave to his cardinal conviction
of the all-sufficiency of wisdom for human well-being a root of
cosmical fact, and an atmosphere of religious and social emotion.
The exercise of wisdom was now viewed as the pure life of that
panicle of divine substance which was in very truth the " god
within him "; the reason whose supremacy he maintained was
the reason of Zeus, and of all gods and reasonable men, no less
than his own; its realization in any one individual was thus
the common good of all rational beings as such; " the sage could
not stretch out a finger rightly without thereby benefiting all
other sages," nay, it might even be said that he was " as useful
to Zeus as Zeus to him." * But again, the same conception served
to harmonize the higher and the lower elements of human life.
For even in the physical or non-rational man, as originally con-
stituted, we may see dear indications of the divine design, which
it belongs to his rational will to carry into conscious execution;
indeed, in the first stage of human life, before reason is fully
developed, uncorrupted natural impulse effects what is afterwards
the work of reason. Thus the formula of " living according to
nature," in its application to man as the " rational animal,"
1 Hence some members of the school, without rejecting the de-
finition of virtue knowledge, also defined it as " strength and force."
1 It is apparently in view of this union in reason of rational beings
that friends are allowed to be " external goods " to the sage, and that
toe pomttmun of good children is also counted a good.
may be understood both as directing that reason is to govern,
and as indicating how that government is to be practically exer-
cised. In man, as in every other animal, from the moment of
birth natural impulse prompts to the maintenance of his physical
frame; then, when reason has been developed and has recognized
itself as its own sole good, these " primary ends of nature " and
whatever promotes these still constitute the outward objects
at which reason is to aim; there is a certain value (aia) in them,
in proportion to which they are " preferred " (wporryiiiva) and
their opposites " rejected " (inronrporjy^v<i) ; indeed it is only in
the due and consistent exercise of such choice that wisdom
can find its practical manifestation. In this way all or most of
the things commonly judged to be " goods " health, strength,
wealth, fame, 1 &c., are brought within the sphere of the sage's
choice, though his real good is solely in the wisdom of the choice,
and not in the thing chosen.
The doctrine of conformity to Nature as the rule of conduct
was not peculiar to Stoicism. It is found in the theories of
Speusippus, Xenocrates, and also to some extent in those of the
Peripatetics. The peculiarity of the Stoics lay in their refusing
to use the terms " good and evil " in connexion with " things
indifferent," and in pointing out that philosophers, though
independent of these things, must yet deal with them in practical
life.
So far we have considered the " nature " of the individual
man as apart from his social relations; but the sphere of virtue,
as commonly conceived, lies chiefly in these, and this was fully
recognized in the Stoic account of duties ((coflijKoira) ; indeed,
in their exposition of the " natural " basis of justice, the evidence
that man was born not for himself but for mankind is the most
important part of their work in the region of practical morality.
Here, however, we especially notice the double significance of
" natural," as applied to (i) what actually exists everywhere
or for the most part, and (2) what would exist if the original'
plan of man's life were fully carried out; and we find that the
Stoics have not clearly harmonized the two elements of the notion.
That man was " naturally " a social animal Aristotle had already
taught; that all rational beings, in the unity of the reason that
is common to all, form naturally one community with a common
law was (as we saw) an immediate inference from the Stoic
conception of the universe as a whole. That the members of
this " city of Zeus " should observe their contracts, abstain
from mutual harm, combine to protect each other from injury,
were obvious points of natural law; while again, it was clearly
necessary to the preservation of human society that its members
should form sexual unions, produce children, and bestow care
on their rearing and training. But beyond this nature did not
seem to go in determining the relations of the sexes; accordingly,
we find that community of wives was a feature of Zeno's ideal
commonwealth, just as it was of Plato's; while, again, the strict
theory of the school recognized no government or laws as true
or binding except those of the sage; he alone is the true ruler,
the true king. So far, the Stoic " nature " seems in danger of
being as revolutionary as Rousseau's. Practically, however,
this revolutionary aspect of the notion was kept for the most
part in the background; the rational law of an ideal community
was not distinguished from the positive ordinances and customs
of actual society; and the " natural " ties that actually bound
each man to family, kinsmen, fatherland, and to unwise humanity
generally, supplied the outline on which the external manifesta-
tion of justice was delineated. It was a fundamental maxim
that the sage was to take part in public life; and it does not
appear that his political action was to be regulated by any other
principles than those commonly accepted in his community.
Similarly, in the view taken by the Stoics of the duties of social
decorum, and in their attitude to the popular religion, we find
a fluctuating compromise between the disposition to repudiate
what is conventional, and the disposition to revere what is
1 The Stoics seenr to have varied in their view of " good repute,"
Mo{io; at first, when the school was more under the influence of
Cynicism, they professed an outward as well as an inward indifference
to it; ultimately they conceded the point to common sense, and
included it among
8i8
ETHICS
established, each tendency expressing in its own way the principle
of " conforming to nature."
Among the primary ends of nature, in which wisdom recog-
nized a certain preferability, the Stoics included freedom from
bodily pain; but they refused, even in this outer
court f wisdom, to find a place for pleasure. They
held that the latter was not an object of uncor-
rupted natural impulse, but an " aftergrowth " (emyevvnina).
They thus endeavoured to resist Epicureanism even on the
ground where the latter seems prima facie strongest; in its
appeal, namely, to the natural pleasure-seeking of all living
things. Nor did they merely mean by pleasure (riSovi]) the
gratification of bodily appetite; we find (e.g.)Chrysippus urging,
as a decisive argument against Aristotle, that pure speculation
was " a kind of amusement; that is, pleasure." Even the '' joy
and gladness " (xapa, fv<t>poavvi]) that accompany the exercise of
virtue seem to have been regarded by them as merely an in-
separable accident, not the essential constituent of well-being.
It is only by a later modification of Stoicism that cheerfulness
or peace of mind is taken as the real ultimate end, to which
the exercise of virtue is merely a means. At the same time
it is probable that the serene joys of virtue and the grieflessness
which the sage was conceived to maintain amid the worst tortures,
formed the main attractions of Stoicism for ordinary minds.
'In this sense it may be fairly said that Stoics and Epicureans
made rival offers to mankind of the same kind of happiness; and
the philosophical peculiarities of either system may be traced
to the desire of being undisturbed by the changes and chances
of life. The Stoic claims on this head were the loftiest; as the
well-being of their sagfe was independent, not only of external
things and bodily conditions, but of time itself; it was fully
realized in a single exercise of wisdom and could not be increased
by duration. This paradox is violent, but it is quite in harmony
with the spirit of Stoicism; and we are more startled to find
that the Epicurean sage, no less than the Stoic, is to be happy
even on the rack; that his happiness, too, is unimpaired by being
restricted in duration, when his mind has apprehended the
natural limits of life; that, in short, Epicurus makes no less
strenuous efforts than Zeno to eliminate imperfection from the
conditions of human existence. This characteristic, however,
is the key to the chief differences between Epicureanism and the
more naive hedonism of Aristippus. The latter system gave the
simplest and most obvious answer to the inquiry after ultimate
good for man; but besides being liable, when developed con-
sistently, to offend the common moral consciousness, it con-
spicuously failed to provide the " completeness " and " security "
which, as Aristotle says, " one divines to belong to man's true
Good." Philosophy, in the Greek view, should be the art as
well as the science of good life; and hedonistic philosophy would
seem a bungling and uncertain art of pleasure, as pleasure is
ordinarily conceived. Nay, it would even be found that the
habit of philosophical reflection often operated adversely to
the attainment of this end, by developing the thinker's self-
consciousness, so as to disturb that normal relation to external
objects on which the zest of ordinary enjoyment depends.
Hence we find that later thinkers of the Cyrenaic school felt
themselves compelled to change their fundamental notion;
thus Theodorus defined the good as " gladness " (xapa) depending
on wisdom, as distinct from mere pleasure, while Hegesias
proclaimed that happiness was unattainable, and that the chief
function of wisdom was to render life painless by producing
indifference to all things that give pleasure. But by such changes
their system lost the support that it had had in the pleasure-
seeking tendencies of ordinary men. It was clear that if philo-
sophic hedonism was to be established on a broad and firm basis,
it must in its notion of good combine what the plain man naturally
sought with what philosophy could plausibly offer. Such a
combination was effected, with some little violence, by Epicurus;
whose system with all its defects showed a remarkable power
of standing the test of time, as it attracted the unqualified
adhesion of generation after generation of disciples for a period
of some six centuries.
In the fundamental principle of his philosophy Epicurus
is not original. Aristippus (cf. also Plato in the Protagoras
and Eudoxus) had already maintained that pleasure B ^
is the sole ultimate good, and pain the sole evil; that
no pleasure is to be rejected except for its painful consequences,
and no pain to be chosen except as a means to greater pleasure;
that the stringency of all laws and customs depends solely on
the legal and social penalties attached to their violation; that,
in short, all virtuous conduct and all speculative activity are
empty and useless, except as contributing to the pleasantness
of the agent's life. And Epicurus assures us that he means by
pleasure what plain men mean by it; and that if the gratifica-
tions of appetite and sense are discarded, the notion is emptied
of its significance. So far the system would seem to suit the
inclinations of the most thorougn-going voluptuary. The
originality of Epicurus lay in his theory that the highest point
of pleasure, whether in body or mind, is to be attained by the
mere removal of pain or disturbance, after which pleasure admits
of variation only and not of augmentation; that therefore the
utmost gratification of which the body is capable may be pro-
vided by the simplest means, and that " natural wealth " is no
more than any man can earn. When further he teaches that the
attainment of happiness depends almost entirely upon insight
and right calculation, fortune having very little to do with it;
that the pleasures and pains of the mind are far more important
than those of the body, owing to the accumulation of feeling
caused by memory and anticipation; and that an indispensable
condition of mental happiness lies in relieving the mind of all
superstitions, which can be effected only by a thorough knowledge
of the physical universe he introduces an ample area for the
exercise of the philosophic intellect. So again, in the stress
that he lays on the misery which the most secret wrong-doing
must necessarily cause from the perpetual fear of discovery,
and in his exuberant exaltation of the value of disinterested
friendship, he shows a sincere, though not completely successful,
effort to avoid the offence that consistent egoistic hedonism is
apt to give to ordinary human feeling. As regards friendship,
Epicurus was a man of peculiarly unexclusive sympathies. 1
The genial fellowship of the philosophic community that he
collected in his garden remained a striking feature in the tradi-
tions of his school; and certa'inly the ideal which Stoics and
Epicureans equally cherished of a brotherhood of sages was most
easily realized on the Epicurean plan of withdrawing from
political and dialectical conflict to simple living and serene
leisure, in imitation of the gods apart from the fortuitous con-
course of atoms that we call a world. No doubt it was rather
the practical than the theoretical side of Epicureanism which
gave it so strong a hold on succeeding generations.
The two systems that have just been described were those
that most prominently attracted the attention of the ancient
world, so far as it was directed to ethics, from their .
almost simultaneous origin to the end of the 2nd areek
century A.D., when Stoicism almost vanishes from our phiio-
view. But side by side with them the schools of Plato s P h y-
and Aristotle still maintained a continuity of tradition,
and a more or less vigorous life; and philosophy, as a
recognized element of Graeco-Roman culture, was understood
to be divided among these four branches. The internal history,
however, of the four schools was very different. We find no
development worthy of notice in Aristotelian ethics (see PERI-
PATETICS). The Epicureans, again, from their unquestioning
acceptance of the " dogmas " 2 of their founder, almost deserve
to be called a sect rather than a school. On the other hand,
the changes in Stoicism are very noteworthy; and it is the more
easy to trace them, as the only original writings of this school
which we possess are those of the later Roman Stoics. These
changes may be attributed partly to the natural inner develop-
ment of the system, partly to the reaction of the Roman mind
1 It is noted of him that he did not disdain the co-operation either
of women or of slaves in his philosophical labours.
* The last charge of Epicurus to his disciples is said to have been,
ETHICS
819
on the essentially Greek doctrine which it received, a reaction
all the more inevitable from the very affinity between the Stoic
sage and the ancient Roman ideal of manliness. It was natural
that the earlier Stoics should be chiefly occupied with delineating
the inner and outer characteristics of ideal wisdom and virtue,
and that the gap between the ideal sage and the actual philo-
sopher, though never ignored, should yet be somewhat overlooked.
But when the question "What is man's good?" had been
answered by an exposition of perfect wisdom, the practical
question " How may a man emerge from the folly of the world,
and get on the way towards wisdom ? " naturally attracted
attention; and the preponderance of moral over scientific
interest, which was characteristic of the Roman mind, gave
this question especial prominence. The sense of the gap between
theory and fact gives to the religious element of Stoicism a new
force; the soul, conscious of its weakness, leans on the thought
of God, and in the philosopher's attitude towards external
events, pious resignation preponderates over self-poised indiffer-
ence; the old self-reliance of the reason, looking down on man's
natural life as a mere field for its exercise, makes room for a
positive aversion to the flesh as an alien element imprisoning
the spirit; the body has come to be a " corpse which the soul
sustains," 1 and life a "sojourn in a strange land";* in short,
the ethical idealism of Zeno has begun to borrow from the
metaphysical idealism of Plato.
In no one of these schools was the outward coherence of
tradition so much strained by inner changes as it was in Plato's.
The alterations, however, in the metaphysical position
/<y o/ ( tnc Academics had little effect on their ethical teach-
fttfl ing, as, even during the period of Scepticism, they
appear to have presented as probable the same general
view of human good which Antiochus afterwards dogmatically
announced as a revival of the common doctrine of Plato and
Aristotle. And during the period of a century and a half between
Antiochus and Plutarch, we may suppose the school to have
maintained the old controversy with Stoicism on much the same
ground, accepting the formula of "life according to nature,"
but demanding that the " good " of man should refer to his
nature as a whole, the good of his rational part being the chief
element, and always preferable in case of conflict, but yet not
absolutely his sole good. In Plutarch, however, we see the
tame tendencies of change that we have noticed in later Stoicism.
The conception of a normal harmony between the higher and
lower elements of human life has begun to be disturbed, and the
side of Plato's teaching that deals with the inevitable imperfec-
tions of the world of concrete experience becomes again pro-
minent. For example, we find Plutarch amplifying the sugges-
tion in Plato's latest treatise (the Laws) that this imperfection
is due to a bad world-soul that strives against the good, a
suggestion which is alien to the general tenor of Plato's doctrine,
and had consequently been unnoticed during the intervening
centuries. We observe, again, the value that Plutarch attaches,
not merely to the sustainment and consolation of rational
religion, but to the supernatural communications vouchsafed
by the divinity to certain human beings in dreams, through
qracles, or by special warnings, like those of the genius of Socrates.
For these flashes of intuition, he holds, the soul should be pre-
pared by tranquil repose and the subjugation of sensuality
through abstinence. The same ascetic effort to attain by aloof-
ness from the body a pure receptivity for supernatural influences,
is exhibited in Neo-Pythagoreanism. But the general tendency
that we are noting did not find its full expression in a reasoned
system until we come to the Egyptian Plotinus.
The system of Plotinus (205-270 A.D.) is a striking develop-
ment of that element of Platonism which has had most fascina-
^^ tion for the medieval and even for the modern mind,
mttimmtom but which had almost vanished out of sight in the
controversies of the post-Aristotelian schools. At the
same time the differences are the more noteworthy from the
reverent adhesion which the Neoplatonists always maintain to
Plato. Plato identified good with the real essence of things;
1 Epictetus. * Marcus Aurelius.
with that in them which is definitely conceivable and knowable.
It belongs to this view to regard the imperfection of things as
devoid of real being, and so incapable of being definitely thought
or known; accordingly, we find that Plato has no technical term
for that in the concrete sensible world which hinders it from
perfectly expressing the abstract ideal world, and which in
Aristotle's system is distinguished as absolutely formless matter
(fXt;). And so, when we pass from the ontology to the ethics of
Platonism, we find that, though the highest life is only to be
realized by turning away from concrete human affairs and their
material environment, still the sensible world is not yet an
object of positive moral aversion; it is rather something which
the philosopher is seriously concerned to make as harmonious,
good and beautiful as possible. But in Neoplatonism the
inferiority of the condition in which the embodied human soul
finds itself is more intensely and painfully felt ; hence an express
recognition of formless matter (CXj) as the " first evil," from
which is derived the " second evil," body (au/ta), to whose
influence all the evil in the soul's existence is due. Accordingly
the ethics of Plotinus represent, we may say, the moral idealism
of the Stoics cut loose from nature. The only good of man is the
pure existence of the soul, which in itself, apart from the con-
tagion of the body, is perfectly free from error or defect; if only
it can be restored to the untrammelled activity of its original
being, nothing external, nothing bodily, can positively impair
its perfect welfare. It is only the lowest form of virtue the
" civic " virtue of Plato's Republic that is employed in regu-
lating those animal impulses whose presence in the soul is due
to its mixture with the body; higher or philosophic wisdom,
temperance, courage and justice are essentially purifications
from this contagion; until finally the highest mode of goodness
is reached, in which the soul has no community with the body,
and is entirely turned towards reason. It should be observed
that Plotinus himself is still too Platonic to hold that the absolute
mortification of natural bodily appetites is required for purifying
the soul; but this ascetic inference was drawn to the fullest
extent by his disciple Porphyry.
There is, however, a yet higher point to be reached in the
upward ascent of the Neoplatonist from matter; and here the
divergence of Plotinus from Platonic idealism is none the less
striking, because it is a bona fide result of reverent reflection on
Plato's teaching. The cardinal assumption of Plato's metaphysic
is, that the real is definitely thinkable and knowable in proportion
as it is real; so that the further the mind advances in abstrac-
tion from sensible particulars and apprehension of real being, the
more definite and clear its thought becomes. Plotinus, however,
urges that, as all thought involves difference or duality of some
kind, it cannot be the primary fact in the universe, what we call
God. He must be an essential unity prior to this duality, a
Being wholly without difference or determination; and, accord-
ingly, the highest mode of human existence, in which the soul
apprehends this absolute, must be one in which all definite
thought is transcended, and all consciousness of self lost in the
absorbing ecstasy. Porphyry tells us that his master Plotinus
attained the highest state four times during the six years which
he spent with him.
Neoplatonism, originally Alexandrine, is often regarded as
Hellenistic rather than Hellenic, a product of the mingling of
Greek with Oriental civilization. But however Oriental may
have been the cast of mind that welcomed this theosophic
asceticism, the forms of thought by which these views were
philosophically reached are essentially Greek; and it is by a
thoroughly intelligible process of natural development, in which
the intensification of the moral consciousness represented by
Stoicism plays an important part, that the Hellenic pursuit
of knowledge culminates in a preparation for ecstasy, and the
Hellenic idealization of man's natural life ends in a settled
antipathy to the body and its works. At the same time we
ought not to overlook the affinities between the doctrine of
Plotinus and that remarkable combination of Greek and Hebrew
thought which Philo Judaeus had expounded two centuries
before; nor the fact that Neoplatonism was developed in
820
ETHICS
conscious antagonism to the new religion which had spread from
Judea, and was already threatening the conquest of the Graeco-
Roman world, and also to the Gnostic systems (see GNOSTICISM) ;
nor, finally, that it furnished the chief theoretical support in the
last desperate struggle that was made under Julian to retain
the old polytheistic worship.
B. Christianity and Medieval Ethics. -In the present article
we are not concerned with the origin of the Christian religion,
nor with its outward history. Nor have we to consider the
special doctrines that have formed the bond of union of the
Christian communities except in their ethical aspect, their bearing
on the systematization of human aims and activities. This
aspect, however, must necessarily be prominent in discussing
Christianity, which cannot be adequately treated merely as a
system of theological beliefs divinely revealed, and special
observances divinely sanctioned; for it claims to regulate the
whole man, in all departments of his existence. It was not till
the 4th century A.D. that the first attempt was made to offer a
systematic exposition of Christian morality; and nine centuries
more had passed away before a genuinely philosophic intellect,
trained by a full study of Aristotle, undertook to give complete
scientific form to the ethical doctrine of the Catholic church.
Before, however, we take a brief survey of the progress of
systematic ethics from Ambrose to Thomas Aquinas, it may be
well to examine the chief features of the new moral consciousness
that had spread through Graeco-Roman civilization, and was
awaiting philosophic synthesis. It will be convenient to consider
first the new form or universal characteristics of Christian
morality, and afterwards to note the chief points in the matter
or particulars of duty and virtue which received development
or emphasis from the new religion.
The first point to be noticed is the new conception of morality
as the positive law of a theocratic community possessing a
Christian written code imposed by divine revelation, and
and Jewish sanctioned by divine promises and threatenings. It
"lawot i s true that we find in ancient thought, from Socrates
God." downwards, the notion of a law of God, eternal and
immutable, partly expressed and partly obscured by the shifting
codes and customs of actual human societies. But the sanctions
of this law were vaguely and, for the most part, feebly imagined;
its principles were essentially unwritten, and thus referred not
to the external will of an Almighty Being who claimed un-
questioning submission, but rather to the reason that gods
and men shared, by the exercise of which alone they could be
adequately known and defined. Hence, even if the notion of
law had been more prominent than it was in ancient ethical
thought, it could never have led to a juridical, as distinct from
a philosophical, treatment of morality. In Christianity, on the
other hand, we early find that the method of moralists determining
right conduct is to a great extent analogous to that of juris-
consults interpreting a code. It is assumed that divine commands
have been implicitly given for all occasions of life, and that they
are to be ascertained in particular cases by interpretation of
the general rules obtained from texts of scripture, and by
inference from scriptural examples. This juridical method
descended naturally from the Jewish theocracy, of which
Christendom was a universalization. Moral insight, in the
view of the most thoughtful Jews of the age immediately preceding
Christianity, was conceived as knowledge of a divine code,
emanating from an authority external to human reason which
had only the function of interpreting and applying its rules.
This law was derived partly from Moses, partly from the utterances
of the later prophets, partly from oral tradition and from the
commentaries and supplementary maxims of generations of
students. Christianity inherited the notion of a written divine
code acknowledged as such by the " true Israel " now potentially
including the whole of mankind, or at least the chosen of all
nations, on the sincere acceptance of which the Christian's
share of the divine promises to Israel depended. And though
the ceremonial part of the old Hebrew code was altogether
rejected, and with it all the supplementary jurisprudence
resting on tradition and erudite commentary, still God's law
was believed to be contained in the sacred books of the Jews,
supplemented by the teaching of Christ and his apostles. By
the recognition of this law the church was constituted as an
ordered community, essentially distinct from the State; the
distinction between the two was emphasized by the withdrawal
of the early Christians from civic life, to avoid the performance
of idolatrous ceremonies imposed as official , expressions of
loyalty, and by the persecutions which they had to endure,
when the spread of an association apparently so hostile to the
framework of ancient society had at length alarmed the imperial
government. Nor was the distinction obliterated by the recogni-
tion of Christianity as the state religion under Constantine.
Thus the jural form in which morality was conceived only
emphasized the fundamental difference between it and the laws
of the state. The ultimate sanctions of the moral code were
the infinite rewards and punishments awaiting the immortal
soul hereafter; but the church early felt the necessity of with-
drawing the privileges of membership from apostates and
allowing them to be gradually regained only by a solemn
ceremonial expressive of repentance, protracted through several
years. This formal and regulated " penitence " was extended
from apostasy to other grave or, as they were subsequently
called, " deadly " sins; while for minor offences all Christians
were called upon to express contrition by fasting and abstinence
from ordinarily permitted pleasures, as well as verbally in public
and private devotions. " Excommunication " and " penance "
thus came to be temporal ecclesiastical sanctions of the moral
law. As the graduation of these sanctions naturally became
more minute, a correspondingly detailed classification of offences
was rendered necessary, and thus a system of ecclesiastical
jurisprudence was gradually produced, somewhat analogous
to that of Judaism. At the same time this tendency to make
prominent a scheme of external duties has always been counter-
acted in Christianity by the remembrance of its original antithesis
to Jewish legalism. We find that this antithesis, as exaggerated
by some of the Gnostic sects of the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D.,
led, not merely to theoretical antinomianism, but even (if the
charges of their orthodox opponents are not entirely to be dis-
credited) to gross immorality of conduct. A similar tendency
has shown itself at other periods of church history. And though
such antinomianism has always been sternly repudiated by the
moral consciousness of Christendom, it has never been forgotten
that " inwardness," Tightness of heart or spirit, is the pre-
eminent characteristic of Christian goodness. It must not, of
course, be supposed that the need of something more than mere
fulfilment of external duty was ignored even by the later Judaism.
Rabbinic erudition could not forget the repression of vicious
desires in the tenth commandment, the stress laid in Deuteronomy
on the necessity of service to God, or the inculcation by later
prophets of humility and faith. " The real and only Pharisee,"
says the Talmud, " is he who does the will of his Father because
he loves Him." But it remains true that the contrast with the
" righteousness of the scribes and pharisees " has always served
to mark the requirement of " inwardness " as a distinctive feature
of the Christian code an inwardness not merely negative,
tending to the repression of vicious desires as well as vicious acts,
but also involving a positive rectitude of the inner state of the
soul.
In this aspect Christianity invites comparison with Stoicism,
and indeed with pagan ethical philosophy generally, if we
except the hedonistic schools. Rightness of purpose, Christian
preference of virtue for its own sake, suppression of and Pagan
vicious desires, were made essential points by the lawara-
Aristotelians, who attached the most importance to "
outward circumstances in their view of virtue, no less than by
the Stoics, to whom all outward things were indifferent. The
fundamental differences between pagan and Christian ethics
depend not on any difference in the value set on Tightness of
heart, but on different views of the essential form or conditions
of this inward Tightness. In neither case is it presented purely
and simply as moral rectitude. By the pagan philosophers it
was always conceived under the form of Knowledge or Wisdom,
ETHICS
821
it being inconceivable to all the schools sprung from Socrates
that a man could truly know his own good and yet deliberately
choose anything else. This knowledge, as Aristotle held, might
be permanently precluded by vicious habits, or temporarily
obliterated by passion, but if present in the mind it must produce
lightness of purpose. Or even if it were held with some of the
Stoics that true wisdom was out of the reach of the best men
actually living, it none the less remained the ideal condition
of perfect human life. By Christian teachers, on the other hand,
the inner springs of good conduct were generally conceived as
fmM _ Faith and Love. Of these notions the former has a
somewhat complex ethical import ; it seems to blend
several elements differently prominent in different minds. Its
simplest and commonest meaning is that emphasized in the
contrast of " faith " with " sight "; where it signifies belief
in the invisible divine order represented by the church, in the
actuality of the law, the threats, the promises of God, in spite
of all the influences in man's natural life that tend to obscure
this belief. Out of this contrast there ultimately grew an
essentially different opposition between faith and knowledge
or reason, according to which the theological basis of ethics was
contrasted with the philosophical; the theologians maintaining
sometimes that the divine law is essentially arbitrary, the
expression of will, not reason; more frequently that its reason-
ableness is inscrutable, and that actual human reason should
confine itself to examining the credentials of God's messengers,
and not the message itself. But in early Christianity this latter
antithesis was as yet undeveloped; faith means simply force
in dinging to moral and religious conviction, whatever their
rational grounds may be; this force, in the Christian conscious-
ness, being inseparably bound up with personal loyalty and
trust towards Christ, the leader in the battle with evil, the ruler
of the kingdom to be realized. So far, however, there is no
ethical difference between Christian faith and that of Judaism,
or its later imitation, Mahommedanism; except that the
personal affection of loyal trust is peculiarly stirred by the
blending of human and divine natures in Christ, and the rule
of duty impressively taught by the manifestation of his perfect
life. A more distinctively Christian, and a more deeply moral,
significance is given to the notion in the antithesis of " faith "
and " works." Here faith means more than loyal acceptance
of the divine law and reverent trust in the lawgiver; it implies
a consciousness, at once continually present and continually
transcended, of the radical imperfection of all human obedience
to the law, and at the same time of the in-omissible condemnation
which this imperfection entails. The Stoic doctrine of the
worthlessness of ordinary human virtue, and the stern paradox
that all offenders are equally, in so far as all are absolutely,
guilty, find their counterparts in Christianity; but the latter
(maintaining this ideal severity in the moral standard, with an
emotional consciousness of what is involved in it quite unlike
that of the Stoic) overcomes its practical exclusiveness through
faith. This faith, again, may be conceived in two modes,
essentially distinct though usually combined. In one view it
gives the believer strength to attain, by God's supernatural aid
or "grace," a goodness of . which he is naturally incapable;
in the other view it gives him an assurance that, though he
knows himself a sinner deserving of utter condemnation, a
perfectly just God still regards him with favour on account of
the perfect services and suffering of Christ. Of these views
the former is the more catholic, more universally present in
the Christian consciousness; the latter more deeply penetrates
the mystery of the Atonement, as expounded in the Pauline
epistles.
But faith, however understood, is rather an indispensable
pre-requisite than the essential motive principle of Christian
t a e good conduct. This motive is supplied by the other
central notion, love. On love depends the " fulfilling
of the law," and the sole moral value of Christian duty that
is, on love to God, in the first place, which in its fullest develop-
ment must spring from Christian faith; and, secondly, love to
all mankind, as the objects of divine love and sharers in the
humanity ennobled by the incarnation. This derivative phil-
anthropy characterizes the spirit in which all Christian perform-
ance of social duty is to be done; loving devotion to God being
the fundamental attitude of mind that is to be maintained
throughout the whole of the Christian's life. But further, as
regards abstinence from unlawful acts and desires Purity
prompting to them, we have to notice another form
in which the inwardness of Christian morality manifests itself,
which, though less distinctive, should yet receive attention in
any comparison of Christian ethics with the view of Graeco-
Roman philosophy. The profound horror with which the
Christian's' conception of a suffering as well as an avenging
divinity tended to make him regard all condemnable acts was
tinged with a sentiment which we may perhaps describe as a
ceremonial aversion moralized the aversion, that is, to foulness
or impurity. In Judaism, as in other, especially Oriental,
religions, the natural dislike of material defilement has been
elevated into a religious sentiment, and made to support a com-
plicated system of quasi-sanitary abstinences and ceremonial
purifications; then, as the ethical element predominated in
the Jewish religion, a moral symbolism was felt to reside in the
ceremonial code, and thus aversion to impurity came to be a
common form of the ethico-religious sentiment. Then, when
Christianity threw off the Mosaic ritual, this religious sense of
purity was left with no other sphere besides morality; while,
from its highly idealized character, it was peculiarly well adapted
for that repression of vicious desires which Christianity claimed
as its special function.
The distinctive features of Christian ethics are obedience,
unworldliness, benevolence, purity and humility. _. .. ..
They are naturally connected with the more general par ticu- *
characteristics just stated; though many of them lar* of
may also be referred directly to the example and ChH *u* a
precepts of Christ, and in several cases they are clearly
due to both causes, inseparably combined.
1. We may notice, in the first place, that the conception of
morality as a code which, if not in itself arbitrary, is yet to be
accepted by men with unquestioning submission, tends naturally
to bring into prominence the virtue of obedience to authority;
just as the philosophic view of goodness as the realization of
reason gives a special value to self-determination and independence
(as we see more clearly in the post-Aristotelian schools where
ethics is distinctly separated from politics).
2. Again, the opposition between the natural world and the
spiritual order into which the Christian has been born anew led
not merely to a contempt equal to that of the Stoic for wealth,
fame, power, and other objects of worldly pursuit, but also,
for some time at least, to a comparative depreciation of the
domestic and civic relations of the natural man. This tendency
was exhibited most simply and generally in the earliest period
of the church's history. In the view of primitive Christians,
ordinary human society was a world temporarily surrendered to
Satanic rule, over which a swift and sudden destruction was
impending; in such a world the little band who were gathered
in the ark of the church could have no part or lot, the only
attitude they could maintain was that of passive alienation.
On the other hand, it was difficult practically to realize this
alienation, and a keen sense of this difficulty induced the same
hostility to the body as a clog and hindrance, that we find to
some extent in Plato, but more fully developed in Ncoplatonism,
Neopythagoreanism, and other products of the mingling of
Greek with Oriental thought. This feeling is exhibited in the
value set on fasting in the Christian church from the earliest
times, and in an extreme form in the self-torments of later
monasticism; while both tendencies, anti-worldliness and anti-
sensualism, seem to have combined in causing the preference of
celibacy over marriage which is common to most early Christian
writers. 1 Patriotism, again, and the sense of civic duty, the
most elevated of all social sentiments in the Graeco-Roman
civilization, tended, under the influence of Christianity, either
to expand itself into universal philanthropy, or to concentrate
1 E.f. Justin Martyr, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian.
822
ETHICS
Benevol-
ence.
itself on the ecclesiastical community. " We recognize one
commonwealth, the world," says Tertullian; " we know,"
says Origen, " that we have a fatherland founded by the word
of God." We might further derive from the general spirit of
Christian unworldliness that repudiation of the secular modes
of conflict, even in a righteous cause, which substituted a passive
patience and endurance for the old pagan virtue of courage,
in which the active element was prominent. Here, however,
we clearly trace the influence of Christ's express prohibition of
violent resistance to violence, and his inculcation, by example
and precept, of a love that was to conquer even natural resent-
ment. An extreme result of this influence is shown in Tertullian's
view, that no Christian could properly hold the office of a secular
magistrate in which he would have to doom to death, chains,
imprisonment; but even more sober writers, such as Ambrose,
extend Christian passivity so far as to preclude self-defence
even against a murderous assault. The common sense of
Christendom gradually shook off these extravagances; but the
reluctance to shed blood lingered long, and was hardly extin-
guished even by the growing horror of heresy. We have a curious
relic of this in the later times of ecclesiastical persecution, when
the heretic was doomed to the stake that he might be punished
in some manner " short of bloodshed." 1
3. It is, however, in the impulse given to practical beneficence
in all its forms, by the exaltation of love as the root of all virtues,
that the most important influence of Christianity on
the particulars of civilized morality is to be found;
although the exact amount of this influence is here
somewhat difficult to ascertain, since it merely carries further
a development traceable in the history of pagan morality. This
development appears when we compare the different post-
Socratic systems of ethics. In Plato's exposition of the different
virtues there is no mention whatever of benevolence, although
his writings show a keen sense of the importance of friendship
as an element of philosophic life, especially of the intense personal
affection naturally arising between master and disciple. Aristotle
goes somewhat further in recognizing the moral value of friend-
ship ($tMa); and though he considers that in its highest form
it can be realized only by the fellowship of the wise and good,
he yet extends the notion so as to include the domestic affections,
and takes notice of the importance of mutual kindness in binding
together all human societies. Still in his formal statement
of the different virtues, positive beneficence is discernible only
under the notion of " liberality," in which form its excellence
is hardly distinguished from that of graceful profusion in self-
regarding expenditure (Nic. Eth. iv. i). Cicero, on the other
hand, in his paraphrase of a Stoic treatise on external duties
(De afficiis), ranks the rendering of positive services to other
men as a chief department of social duty; and the Stoics gener-
ally recognized the universal fellowship and natural mutual
claims of human beings as such. Indeed, this recognition in
later Stoicism is sometimes expressed with so much warmth
of feeling as to be hardly distinguishable from Christian philan-
thropy. Nor was this regard for humanity merely a doctrine
of the school. Partly through the influence of Stoic and other
Greek philosophy, partly from the natural expansion of human
sympathies, the legislation of the Empire, during the first three
centuries, shows a steady development in the direction of natural
justice and humanity; and some similar progress may be traced
in the general tone of moral opinion. Still the utmost point that
this development reached fell considerably short of the standard
of Christian charity. Without dwelling on the immense impetus
given to the practice of social duty generally by the religion that
made beneficence a form of divine service, and identified " piety "
with " pity," we have to put down as def nite changes introduced
by Christianity (i) the severe condemnation and final suppres-
sion of the practice of exposing infants; (2) effective abhorrence
of the barbarism of gladiatorial combats; (3) immediate moral
mitigation of slavery, and a strong encouragement of emancipa-
tion; (4) great extension of the eleemosynary provision made
for the sick and the poor. As regards almsgiving, however
1 Citra sanguinis effusionem.
the importance of which has caused it to usurp, in modern
languages, the general name of " charity " it ought to be
observed that Christianity merely universalized a duty which
has always been inculcated by Judaism, within the limits of
the chosen people.
4. The same may be said of the stricter regulation which
Christianity enforced on the relations of the sexes; except so
far as the prohibition of divorce is concerned, and the stress
laid on " purity of heart " as contrasted with merely outward
chastity.
5. Even the peculiarly Christian virtue of humility, which
presents so striking a contrast to the Greek " highmindedness,"
was to some extent anticipated in the Rabbinic teaching. Its
far greater prominence under the new dispensation may be
partly referred to the express teaching and example of Christ;
partly, in so far as the virtue is manifested in the renunciation
of external rank and dignity, or the glory of merely secular
gifts and acquirements, it is one aspect of the unwordliness
which we have already noticed; while the deeper humility
that represses the claim of personal' merit even in the saint
belongs to the strict self-examination, the continual sense of
imperfection, the utter reliance on strength not his own, which
characterize the inner moral life of the Christian. Humility
in this latter sense, " before God," is an essential condition of
all truly Christian goodness.
We have, however, yet to notice the enlargement of the sphere
of ethics due to its close connexion with theology; for while
this added religious force and sanction to ordinary moral obliga-
tions, it equally tended to impart a moral aspect to religious
belief and worship. " Duty to God " as distinct from duty
to man had not been altogether unrecognized by pagan
moralists; but the rather dubious relations of even the more
orthodox philosophy to the established polytheism had generally
prevented them from laying much stress upon it. Again, just
as the Stoics held wisdom to be indispensable to real rectitude
of conduct, while at the same time they included under the
notion of wisdom a grasp of physical as well as ethical truth,
so the similar emphasis laid on inwardness in Christian ethics
caused orthodoxy or correctness of religious belief to be regarded
as essential to goodness, and heresy as the most fatal of vices,
corrupting as it did the very springs of Christian life. To the
philosophers (with the single exception of Plato), however, con-
vinced as they were that the multitude must necessarily miss
true well-being through their folly and ignorance, it could never
occur to guard against these evils by any other method than that
of providing philosophic instruction for the few; whereas the
Christian clergy, whose function it was to offer truth and eternal
life to all mankind, naturally regarded theological misbelief
as insidious preventible contagion. Indeed, their sense of its
deadliness was so keen that, when they were at length able to
control the secular administration, they rapidly overcame their
aversion to bloodshed, and initiated that long series of religious
persecutions to which we find no parallel in the pre-Christian
civilization of Europe. It was not that Christian writers did
not feel the difficulty of attributing criminality to sincere ignor-
ance or error. But the difficulty is not really peculiar to theology;
and the theologians usually got over it (as some philosophers
had surmounted a similar perplexity in the region of ethies
proper) by supposing some latent or antecedent voluntary sin,
of which the apparently involuntary heresy was the fearful
fruit.
Lastly, we must observe that, in proportion as the legal con-
ception of morality as a code of which the violation deserves
supernatural punishment predominated over the philosophic
view of ethics as the method for attaining natural felicity, the
question of man's freedom of will to obey the law necessarily
became prominent. At the same time it cannot be broadly
said that Christianity took a decisive side in the metaphysical
controversy on free-will and necessity; since, just as in Greek
philosophy the need of maintaining freedom as the ground of
responsibility clashes with the conviction that no one deliberately
chooses his own harm, so in Christian ethics it clashes with the
ETHICS
823
attribution of ail true human virtue to supernatural grace, as
well as with the belief in divine foreknowledge. All we can say
is that in the development of Christian thought the conflict of
conceptions was far more profoundly felt, and far more serious
efforts were made to evade or transcend it.
In the preceding account of Christian morality, it has been
already indicated that the characteristics delineated did not all
exhibit themselves simultaneously to the same extent,
or with perfect uniformity throughout the church.
Changes in the external condition of Christianity,
the different degrees of civilization in the societies
of which it was the dominant religion, and the natural
process of internal development, continually brought
different features into prominence; while again, the important
antagonisms of opinion within Christendom frequently involved
ethical issues even in the Eastern Church until in the 4th
century it began to be absorbed in the labour of a dogmatic
construction. Thus, for example, the anti-secular tendencies
of the new creed, to which Tertullian (160-420) gave violent
and rigid expression, were exaggerated in the Montanist heresy
which he ultimately joined; on the other hand, Clement of
Alexandria, in opposition to the general tone of his age, main-
tained the value of pagan philosophy for the development of
Christian faith into true knowledge (Gnosis), and the value of
the natural development of man through marriage for the normal
perfecting of the Christian life. So again, there is a marked
difference between the writers before Augustine and those that
succeeded him in all that concerns the internal conditions of
Christian morality. By Justin and other apologists the need of
redemption, faith, grace is indeed recognized, but the theological
system depending on these notions is not sufficiently developed '
to come into even apparent antagonism with the freedom of the
wflL Christianity is for the most part conceived as essentially
a proclamation through the Divine Word, to immortal beings
gifted with free choice, of the true code of conduct sanctioned
by eternal rewards and punishments. This legalism contrasts
strikingly with the efforts of pagan philosophy to exhibit virtue
as its own reward; and the contrast is triumphantly pointed
out by more than one early Christian writer. Lactantius
(circa 300 A.D.), for example, roundly declares that Plato and
Aristotle, referring everything to this earthly life, " made
virtue mere folly "; though himself maintaining, with pardon-
able inconsistency, that man's highest good did not consist in
mere pleasure, but in the consciousness of the filial relation of
the soul to God. It is plain, however, that on this external
legalistic view of duty it was impossible to maintain a difference
in kind between Christian and pagan morality; the philosopher's
conformity to the rules of chastity and beneficence, so far as
it went, was indistinguishable from the saint's. But when this
inference was developed in the teaching of Pelagius, it was
repudiated as heretical by the church, under the powerful
leadership of Augustine (354-430); and the doctrine of man's
incapacity to obey God's law by his unaided moral
energy was pressed to a point at which it was diffi-
cult to reconcile it with the freedom of the will. Augustine
is fully aware of the theoretical indispensability of maintaining
Free Will, from its logical connexion with human responsibility
and divine justice; but he considers that these latter points are
sufficiently secured if actual freedom of choice between good and
evil is allowed in the single case of our progenitor Adam.* For
since the natura stminalis from which all men were to arise
already existed in Adam, in his voluntary preference of self
to God, humanity chose evil once for all; for which ante-natal
guilt all men are justly condemned to perpetual absolute sinful-
1 To show the crudity of the notion of redemption in early Christi-
anity, it is sufficient to mention that many father* represent Christ's
ransom as having been paid to the devil ; sometimes adding that by
the concealment of Christ's divinity under the veil of humanity a
certain deceit was (fairly) practised on the great deceiver.
1 It is to be observed that Augustine prefers to use " freedom "
not for the power of willing either good or evil, but the power of
willing good. The highest freedom, in his view, excludes the possi-
bility of willing evil.
ness and consequent punishment, unless they are elected by God's
unmerited grace to share the* benefits of Christ's redemption.
Without this grace it is impossible for man to obey the " first
greatest commandment " of love to God; and, this unfulfilled,
he is guilty of the whole law, and is only free to choose between
degrees of sin; his apparent external virtues have no moral
value, since inner tightness of intention is wanting. "All that
is not of faith is of sin "; and faith and love are mutually
involved and inseparable; faith springs from the divinely
imparted germ of love, which in its turn is developed by faith
to its full strength, while from both united springs hope, joyful
yearning towards ultimate perfect fruition 'of the object of love.
These three Augustine (after St Paul) regards as the three
essential elements of Christian virtue; along with these he
recognizes the fourfold division of virtue into prudence, temper-
ance, courage and justice according to their traditional interpre-
tation; but he explains these virtues to be in their true natures
only the same love to God in different aspects or exercises.
The uncompromising mysticism of this view may be at once
compared and contrasted with the philosophical severity of
Stoicism. Love of God in the former holds the same absolute
and unique position as the sole clement of moral worth in human
action, which, as we have seen, was occupied by knowledge of
Good in the latter; and we may carry the parallel further by
observing that in neither case is this severity in the abstract
estimate of goodness necessarily connected with extreme rigidity
in practical precepts. Indeed, an important part of Augustine's
work as a moralist lies in the reconciliation which he laboured
to effect between the anti-worldly spirit of Christianity and the
necessities of secular civilization. For example, we find him
arguing for the legitimacy of judicial punishments and military
service against an over-literal interpretation of the Sermon on
the Mount; and he took an important part in giving currency
to the distinction between evangelical " counsels " and " com-
mands," and so defending the life of marriage and temperate
enjoyment of natural good against the attacks of the more
extravagant advocate of celibacy and self-abnegation; although
he fully admitted the superiority of the latter method of avoiding
the contamination of sin.
The attempt to Christianize the old Platonic list of virtues,
which we have noticed in Augustine's system, was probably
due to the influence of his master Ambrose, in whose
treatise De officiis minislrorum we find for the first
time an exposition of Christian duty systematized on a plan
borrowed from a pre-Christian moralist. It is interesting to
compare Ambrose's account of what subsequently came to be
known as the " four cardinal virtues " with the corresponding
delineations in Cicero's * De officiis which served the bishop as
a model. Christian Wisdom, so far as it is speculative, is of
course primarily theological; it has God, as the highest truth,
for its chief object, and is therefore necessarily grounded on
faith. Christian Fortitude is essentially firmness in withstanding
the seductions of good and evil fortune, resoluteness in the conflict
perpetually waged against wickedness without carnal weapons
though Ambrose, with the Old Testament in his hand, will not
quite relinquish the ordinary martial application of the term.
" Temperantia " retains the meaning of " observance of due
measure " in all conduct, which it had in Cicero's treatise;
though its notion is partly modified by being blended with the
newer virtue of humility. Finally in the exposition of Christian
Justice the Stoic doctrine of the natural union of all human
interests is elevated to the full height and intensity of evangelical
philanthropy; the brethren are reminded that the earlh was
made by God a common possession of all, and are bidden to
administer their means for the common benefit; Ambrose,
we should observe, is thoroughly aware of the fundamental
union of these different virtues in Christianity, though he does
1 Cicero's works alre unimportant in the history of ancient ethics,
as their philosophical matter was entirely borrowed from Greek
treatises now lost; but the influence exercised by them (especially
by the De officiis) over medieval and even modern readers was very
considerable.
824
ETHICS
not, like Augustine, resolve them all into the one central affection
of love of God.
Under the influence of Ambrose and Augustine, the four car-
dinal virtues furnished a basis on which the systematic ethical
theories of subsequent theologians were built. With
them the triad of Christian graces, Faith, Hope and
morality Love, and the seven gifts of the Spirit (Isaiah xi. 2)
la the were often combined. In antithesis to this list, an
" D ,, enumeration of the " deadly sins " obtained currency.
These were at first commonly reckoned as eight; but
a preference for mystical numbers characteristic of medieval
theologians finally reduced them to seven. The statement
of them is variously given, Pride, Avarice, Anger, Gluttony,
Unchastity, are found in all the lists; the remaining two (or
three) are variously selected from among Envy, Vainglory, and
the rather singular sins Gloominess (tristitia) and Languid
Indifference (acidia or acedia, from Gr. &ja]5ia). These latter
notions show plainly, what indeed might be inferred from a
study of the list as a whole, that it represents the moral experience
of the monastic life, which for some centuries was more and more
unquestioningly regarded as in a peculiar sense " religious."
It should be observed that the (also Augustinian) distinction
between " deadly " and " venial " sins had a technical reference
to the quasi-jural administration of ecclesiastical discipline,
which grew gradually more organized as the spiritual power of
the church established itself amid the ruins of the Western
empire, and slowly developed into the theocracy that almost
dominated Europe during the latter part of the middle ages.
" Deadly " sins were those for which formal ecclesiastical penance
was held to be necessary, in order to save the sinner from eternal
damnation; for " venial " sins he might obtain forgiveness,
through prayer, almsgiving, and the observance of the regular
fasts. We find that " penitential books " for the use of the
confessional, founded partly on traditional practice and partly
on the express decrees of synods, come into general use in the
yth century. At first they are little more than mere inventories
of sins, with their appropriate ecclesiastical punishments;
gradually cases of conscience come to be discussed and decided,
and the basis is laid for that system of casuistry which reached
its full development in the I4th and isth centuries. This
ecclesiastical jurisprudence, and indeed the general relation of
the church to the ruder races with which it had to deal during
this period, necessarily tended to encourage a somewhat external
view of morality. But a powerful counterpoise to this tendency
was continually maintained by the fervid inwardness of Augus-
tine, transmitted through Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville,
Alcuin, Hrabanus Maurus, and other writers of the philosophically
barren period between the destruction of the Western empire
and the rise of Scholasticism.
Scholastic ethics, like scholastic philosophy, attained its
completest result in the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. But
Medieval before giving a brief account of the ethical part of his
moral system, it will be well to notice the salient points in
tne j on g an( i ac tive discussion that led up to it. In
the pantheistic system of Erigena (q.v.) (circa 810-877)
the chief philosophic element is supplied by the influence of
Plato and Plotinus, transmitted through an unknown author
of the 5th century, who assumed the name of Dionysius the
Areopagite. Accordingly the ethical side of this doctrine has
the same negative and ascetic character that we have observed
in Neoplatonism. God is the only real Being; evil is essentially
unreal and incognizable; the true aim of man's life is to return
to perfect union with God out of the degraded material existence
into which he has fallen. This doctrine found little acceptance
among Erigena's contemporaries, and was certainly unorthodox
enough to justify the condemnation which it subsequently
received from Honorius III. ; but its influence, together with that
of the Pseudo-Dionysius, had a considerable share in developing
the more emotional orthodox mysticism of the izth and I3th
centuries; and Neoplatonism (or Platonism received through
a Neoplatonic tradition) remained a distinct element in medieval
thought, though obscured in the period of mature scholasticism
by the predominant influence of Aristotle. Passing on to Anselm
(1033-1 109), we observe that the Augustinian doctrine of original
sin and man's absolute need of unmerited grace is retained in
his theory of salvation; he also follows Augustine in denning
freedom as the " power not to sin "; though in saying that Adam
fell " spontaneously " and " by his free choice," though not
" through its freedom," he has implicitly made the distinction
that Peter the Lombard afterwards expressly draws between
the freedom that is opposed to necessity and freedom from the
slavery to sin. Anselm further softens the statement of
Augustinian predestinationism by explaining that the freedom
to will is not strictly lost even by fallen man; it is inherent in a
rational nature, though since Adam's sin it only exists potentially
in humanity, except where it is made actual by grace.
In a more real sense Abelard (1079-1142) tries to establish
the connexion between man's ill desert and his free consent.
He asserts that the inherited propensity to evil is not strictly
a sin, which is only committed when the conscious self yields
to vicious inclination. With a similar stress on the self-conscious
side of moral action, he argues that rightness of conduct depends
solely on the intention, at one time pushing this doctrine to the
paradoxical assertion that all outward acts as such are indiffer-
ent. 1 In the same spirit, under the reviving influence of ancient
philosophy (with which, however, he was imperfectly acquainted
and the relation of which to Christianity he extravagantly
misunderstood), he argues that the old Greek moralists, as
inculcating a disinterested love of good and so implicitly love
of God as the highest good were really nearer to Christianity
than Judaic legalism was. Nay, further, he required that
the Christian " love to God " should be regarded as pure only if
purged from the self-regarding desire of the happiness which
God gives. The general tendency of Abelard's thought was
suspiciously regarded by contemporary orthodoxy; 2 and the
over-subtlety of the last-mentioned distinction provoked
vehement replies from orthodox mystics of the age. Thus,
Hugo of St Victor (1077-1141) argues that all love is necessarily
so far " interested " that it involves a desire for union with the
beloved; and since eternal happiness consists in this union,
it cannot truly be desired apart from God; while Bernard of
Clairvaux (1091-1153) more elaborately distinguishes four
stages by which the soul is gradually led from (i) merely self-
regarding desire for God's aid in distress, to (2) love him for his
loving-kindness to it, then also (3) for his absolute goodness,
until (4) in rare moments this love for himself alone becomes
the sole all-absorbing affection. This controversy Peter the
Lombard endeavoured to compose by the scholastic art of
taking distinctions, of which he was a master. In his treatise,
Libri sententiarum, mainly based on Augustinian doctrine, we
find a distinct softening of the antithesis between nature and
grace and an anticipation of the union of Aristotelian and
Christian thought, which was initiated by Albert the Great and
completed by Thomas Aquinas.
The moral philosophy of Aquinas is Aristotelianism with a
Neoplatonic tinge, interpreted and supplemented by a view of
Christian dogma derived chiefly from Augustine. All
action or movement of all things irrational as well as
rational is directed towards some end or good, that
is, really and ultimately towards God himself, the ground and
first cause of all being, and unmoved principle of all movement.
This universal though unconscious striving after God, since he
is essentially intelligible, exhibits itself in its highest form in
rational beings as a desire for knowledge of him; such know-
ledge, however, is beyond all ordinary exercise of reason, and
may be only partially revealed to man here below. Thus the
summum bonum for man is objectively God, subjectively the
happiness to be derived from loving vision of his perfections;
although there is a lower kind of happiness to be realized here
1 Abelard afterwards retracted this view, at least in its extreme
form ; and in fact does not seem to have been fully conscious of the
difference between (i) unfulfilled intention to do an act objectively
right, and (2) intention to do what is merely believed by the agent
to be right.
2 He was condemned by two synods, in 1121 and 1140.
ETHICS
825
below in a normal human existence of virtue and friendship,
with mind and body sound and whole and properly trained for
the needs of life. The higher happiness is given to man by free
grace of God; but it is given to those only whose heart is right,
and as a reward of virtuous actions. Passing to consider what
actions are virtuous, we first observe generally that the morality
of an act is in part, but only in pan, determined by its particular
motive; it partly depends on its external object and circum-
stances, which render it either objectively in harmony with the
' order of reason," or the reverse. In the classification of
particular virtues and vices we can distinguish very clearly
the elements supplied by the different teachings which Aquinas
has imbibed. He follows Aristotle closely in dividing the
" natural " virtues into intellectual and moral, giving his
preference to the former class, and the intellectual again into
speculative and practical; in distinguishing within the specu-
lative class the " intellect " that is conversant with principles,
the " science " that deduces conclusions, and the " wisdom "
to which belongs the whole process of knowing the sublimest
objects of knowledge; and in treating practical wisdom as
inseparably connected with moral virtues, and therefore in a
sense moral. His distinction among moral virtues of the
justice that renders others their due from the virtues that control
the appetites and passions of the agent himself, represents his
interpretation of the tficomachean Ethics; while his account
of these latter virtues is a simple transcript of Aristotle's, just
as his division of the non-rational element of the soul into
" concupiscible " and " irascible " is the old Platonic one. In
arranging his list, however, he defers to the established doctrine
of the four cardinal virtues (derived from Plato and the Stoics
through Cicero); accordingly, the Aristotelian ten have to
stand under the higher genera of (i) the prudence which gives
reasoned rules of conduct, (2) the temperance which restrains
misleading desire, and (3) the fortitude that resists misleading
fear of dangers or toils. But before these virtues are ranked
the three " theologic " virtues, faith, love and hope, super-
naturally " instilled " by God, and directly relating to him as
their object. By faith we obtain that part of our knowledge of
God which is beyond the range of mere natural wisdom or
philosophy; naturally (e.g.), we can know God's existence, but
not his trinity in unity, though philosophy is useful to defend
this and other revealed verities; and it is essential for the soul's
welfare that all articles of the Christian creed, however little
they can be known by natural reason, should be apprehended
through faith; the Christian who rejects a single article loses
hold altogether of faith and of God. Faith is the substantial
basis of all Christian morality, but without love the essential
form of all the Christian virtues it is " formless " (informis).
Christian love is conceived (after Augustine) as primarily love
to God (beyond the natural yearning of the creature after its
ultimate good), which expands into love towards all God's
creatures as created by him, and so ultimately includes even
self-love. But creatures are only to be loved in their purity
as created by God; all that is bad in them must be an object
of hatred till it is destroyed. In the classification of sins the
Christian element predominates; still we find the Aristotelian
vices of excess and defect, along with the modern divisions into
" sins against God, neighbour and self," " mortal and venial
sins," and so forth.
From the notion of sin treated in its jural aspect Aquinas
passes naturally to the discussion of Law. The exposition of
this conception presents to a great extent the same matter
that was dealt with by the exposition of moral virtues, but in a
different form; the prominence of which may perhaps be
attributed to the growing influence of Roman jurisprudence,
which attained in the mh century so rapid and brilliant a
revival in Italy. This side of Thomas's system is specially
important, since it is just this blending of theological conceptions
with the abstract theory of the later Roman law that gave the
starting-point for independent ethical thought in the modern
world. Under the general idea of law, defined as an " ordinance
of reason for the common good, promulgated by him wh"> has
charge of the community," Thomas distinguishes (i) the eternal
law or regulative reason of God which embraces all his creatures,
rational and irrational; (2) " natural law," being that part of
the eternal law that relates to rational creatures as such ; (3)
human law, which properly consists of more particular deductions
from natural law particularized and adapted to the varying
circumstances of actual communities; (4) divine law specially
revealed to man. As regards natural law, he teaches that God
has implanted in the human mind a knowledge of its immutable
general principles; and not only knowledge, but a disposition,
to which he applies the peculiar scholastic name synderesis, 1
that unerringly prompts to the realization of these principles in
conduct, and protests against their violation. All acts of natural
virtue are implicitly included within the scope of this law of
nature; but in the application of its principles to particular
cases to which the term " conscience " should be restricted
man's judgment is liable to err, the light of nature being
obscured and perverted by bad education and custom. Human
law is required, not merely to determine the details for which
natural law gives no intuitive guidance, but also to supply the
force necessary for practically securing, among imperfect men,
the observance of the most necessary rules of mutual behaviour.
The rules of this law must be either deductions from principles
of natural law, or determinations of particulars which it leaves
indeterminate; a rule contrary to nature could not be valid
as law at all. Human law, however, can deal with outward
conduct alone, and natural law, as we have seen, is liable to be
vague and obscure in particular applications. Neither natural
nor human law, moreover, takes into account that supernatural
happiness which is man's highest end. Hence they need to be
supplemented by a special revelation of divine law. This
revelation is distinguished into the law of the old covenant and
the law of the gospel; the latter of these is productive as well
as imperative since it carries with it the divine grace that makes
its fulfilment possible. We have, however, to distinguish in the
case of the gospel between (i) absolute commands and (2)
" counsels," which latter recommend, without positively ordering
the monastic life of poverty, celibacy and obedience as the best
method of effectively turning the will from earthly to heavenly
things.
But how far is man able to attain either natural or Christian
perfection? This is the part of Thomas's system in which the
cohesion of the different elements seems weakest. He is scarcely
aware that his Aristotelianized Christianity inevitably combines
two different difficulties in dealing with this question: first, the
old pagan difficulty of reconciling the proposition that will is a
rational desire always directed towards apparent good, with the
freedom of choice between good and evil that the jural view of
morality seems to require; and, secondly, the Christian difficulty
of harmonizing this latter notion with the absolute dependence
on divine grace which the religious consciousness affirms. The
latter difficulty Thomas, like many of his predecessors, avoids
by supposing a " co-operation " of free-will and grace, but the
former he does not fully meet. It is against this part of his
doctrines that the most important criticism, in ethics, of his
rival Duns Scot us (c. 1266-1308) was directed. He af
urged that will could not be really free if it were bound scot'u*.
to reason, as Thomas (after Aristotle) conceives it;
a really free choice must be perfectly indeterminate between
reason and unreason. Scotus consistently maintained that the
divine will is similarly independent of reason, and that the
divine ordering of the world is to be conceived as absolutely
arbitrary. On this point he was followed by the acute intellect
of William of Occam (d. c. 1347). This doctrine is
obviously hostile to all reasoned morality; and in O io<xm.
fact, notwithstanding the dialectical ability of Scotus
and Occam, the work of Thomas remained indubitably the
crowning result pf the great constructive -effort of medieval
philosophy. The effort was, indeed, foredoomed to failure,
since it attempted the impossible task of framing a coherent
1 Synderesis(Gt.<n>Tlifn\aa,{rom avrriptiy,to watch closely, observe)
is used in this sense in Jerome (Com. in Ezek. i. 4-10).
826
ETHICS
Casuistry.
system out of the heterogeneous data furnished by -Scripture,
the fathers, the church and Aristotle equally unquestioned,
if not equally venerated, authorities. Whatever philosophic
quality is. to be found in the work of Thomas belongs to it in
spite of, not in consequence of, its method. Still, its influence has
been great and long-enduring, in the Catholic Church primarily,
but indirectly among Protestants, especially in England, since
the famous first book of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity is to a
great extent taken from the Summa theologiae.
Partly in conscious antagonism to the schoolmen, yet with
close affinity to the central ethico-theological doctrine which
they read out of or into Aristotle, the mystical manner
f thought continued to maintain itself in the church.
Philosophically it rested upon Neoplatonism, but
its development in strict connexion with Christian orthodoxy
begins in the 1 2th century with Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugo
of St Victor. It blended the Christian element of love with the
ecstatic vision of Plotinus, sometimes giving the former a decided
predominance. In its more moderate form, keeping wholly
within the limits of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, this mysticism is
represented by Bonaventura and Gerson; while it appears more
independent and daringly constructive in the German Eckhart,
advancing in some of his followers to open breach with the
church, and even to practical immorality.
In the brief account above given of the general ethical view
of Thomas Aquinas no mention has been made of the detailed
discussion of particular duties included in the Summa
theologiae; in which, for the most- part, an excellent
combination of moral elevation with sobriety of judgment is
shown, though on certain points the scholastic pedantry of
definition and distinction is unfavourable to due delicacy of
treatment. As the properly philosophic interest of scholasticism
faded in the i4th and isth centuries, the quasi-legal treatment
of morality came again into prominence, borrowing a good deal
of matter from Thomas and other schoolmen. One result of
this was a marked development and systematization of casuistry.
The best known Summae casuum conscientiae, compiled for
the conduct of auricular confession, belong to the i4th and isth
centuries. The oldest, the Astesana, from Asti in Piedmont, is
arranged as a kind of text-book of morality on a scholastic basis;
later manuals are merely lists of questions and answers. It was
inevitable that, in proportion as this casuistry assumed the
character of a systematic penal jurisprudence, its precise deter-
mination of the limits between the prohibited and the allowable,
with all doubtful points closely scrutinized and illustrated by
fictitious cases, would have a tendency to weaken the moral
sensibilities of ordinary minds; the greater the industry spent
in deducing conclusions from the diverse authorities, the greater
necessarily became the number of points on which doctors
disagreed; and the central authority that might have repressed
serious divergences was wanting in the period of moral weakness l
that the church went through after the death of Boniface VIII.
A plain man perplexed by such disagreements might naturally
hold that any opinion maintained by a pious and orthodox
writer must be a safe one to follow; and thus weak consciences
were subtly tempted to seek the support of authority for some
desired relaxation of a moral rule. It does not, however, appear
that this danger assumed formidable proportions until after the
Reformation; when, in the struggle made by the Catholic
church to recover its hold on the world, the principle of authority
was, as it were, forced into keen, balanced and prolonged conflict
with that of reliance on private judgment. To the Jesuits, the
Th foremost champions in this struggle, it seemed indis-
Jeiuits. pensable that the confessional should be made attrac-
tive; for this purpose ecclesiastico-moral law must be
somehow " accommodated '" to worldly needs; and the theory
of " Probabilism " supplied a plausible method for effecting
this accommodation. The theory proceeded thus: A layman
could not be expected to examine minutely into a point on which
1 The refusal of the council of Constance to condemn Jean Petit's
advocacy of assassination is a striking example of this weakness. Cf.
Milman, Lai. Christ, book xiii. c. 9.
the learned differed; therefore he could not fairly be blamed
for following any opinion that rested on the authority of even
a single doctor; therefore his confessor must be authorized to
hold him guiltless if any such " probable" opinion could be
produced in his favour; nay, it was his duty to suggest such
an opinion, even though opposed to his own, if it would relieve
the conscience under his charge from a depressing burden.
The results to which this Probabilism, applied with an earnest
desire to avoid dangerous rigour, led in the i;th century were
revealed to the world in the immortal Letlfes provinciates of
Pascal.
In tracing the development of casuistry we have been carried
beyond the great crisis through which Western Christianity
passed in the i6th century. The Reformation which
Luther initiated may be viewed on several sides, T ^ at fg a or ~
even if we consider only its ethical principles and Transition
effects. It maintained the simplicity of Apostolic to modem
Christianity against the elaborate system of a corrupt e ^'
hierarchy, the teaching of Scripture alone against the sop hy.
commentaries of the fathers and the traditions of the
church, the right of private judgment against the dictation of
ecclesiastical authority, the individual responsibility of every
human soul before God in opposition to the papal control over
purgatorial punishments, which had led to the revolting degrada-
tion of venal indulgences. Reviving the original antithesis
between Christianity and Jewish legalism, it maintained the in-
wardness of faith to be the sole way to eternal life, in contrast to
the outwardness of works ; returning to Augustine, and expressing
his spirit in a new formula, to resist the Neo-Pelagianism that had
gradually developed itself within the apparent Augustinianism of
the church, it maintained the total corruption of human nature,
as contrasted with that " congruity " by which, according to the
schoolmen, divine grace was to be earned; renewing the fervent
humility of St Paul, it enforced the universal and absolute
imperativeness of all Christian duties, and the inevitable un-
worthiness of all Christian obedience, in opposition to the theory
that " condign " merit might be gained by " supererogatory "
conformity to evangelical " counsels." It will be seen that these
changes, however profoundly important, were, ethically con-
sidered, either negative or quite general, ralating to the tone
and attitude of mind in which all duty should be done. As
regards all positive matter of duty and virtue, and most of the
prohibitive code for ordinary men, the tradition of Christian
teaching was carried on substantially unchanged by the Reformed
churches. Even the old method of casuistry was maintained 2
during the :6th and lyth centuries; though Scriptural texts,
interpreted and supplemented by the light of natural reason,
now furnished the sole principles on which cases of conscience
were decided.
In the I7th century, however, the interest of this quasi-legal
treatment of morality gradually faded; and the ethical studies
of educated minds were occupied with the attempt,
renewed after so many centuries, to find an independent y sra-
philosophical basis for the moral code. The renewal of
this attempt was only indirectly due to the Reformation; it is
rather to be connected with the more extreme reaction from the
medieval religion which was partly caused by, partly expressed in,
that enthusiastic study of the remains of old pagan culture that
spread from Italy over Europe in the isth and i6th centuries.
To this " humanism " the Reformation seemed at first more
hostile than the Roman hierarchy; indeed, the extent to which
this latter had allowed itself to become paganized by the Renais-
sance was one of the points that especially roused the Reformers'
indignation. Not the less important is the indirect stimulus
given by the Reformation towards the development of a moral
philosophy independent alike of Catholic and Protestant assump-
tions. Scholasticism, while reviving philosophy as a handmaid
to theology, had metamorphosed its method into one resembling
that of its mistress; thus shackling the renascent intellectual
1 As the chief English casuists we may mention Perkins, Hall,
Sanderson, as well as the more eminent Jeremy Taylor, whose
Ductor dubitantium appeared in 1660.
ETHICS
827
activity which it stimulated by the double bondage to Aristotle
and to the church. When the Reformation shook the traditional
authority in one department, the blow was necessarily felt in
the other. Not twenty years after Luther's defiance of the pope,
the startling thesis "that all that Aristotle taught was false"
was prosperously maintained by the youthful Ramus -before the
university of Paris; and almost contemporaneously the group
of remarkable thinkers in Italy who heralded the dawn of modern
physical science Cardanus, Telesio, Patrizzi, Campanella, Bruno
began to propound their Aristotelian theories of the con-
stitution of the physical universe. It was to be foreseen that a
similar assertion of independence would make itself heard in
ethics also; and. indeed, amid the clash of dogmatic convictions,
and the variations of private judgment, it was natural to seek for
an ethical method that might claim universal acceptance from
all sects.
C. Uodern Ethics. The need of such independent principles
was most strongly felt in the region of man's civil and political
relations, especially the mutual relations of com-
munities. Accordingly we find that modern ethical
controversy began in a discussion of the law of nature. Albericus
Gentilis (1557-1611) and Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) were the
first to give a systematic account. Natural law, according to
Grotius and other writers of the age, is that part of divine law
which follows from the essential nature of man, who is distin-
guished from animals by his " appetite " for tranquil association
with his fellows, and his tendency to act on general principles. It
is therefore as unalterable, even by God himself, as the truths
of mathematics, although its effect may be overruled in any
particular case by an express command of God; hence it is
cognizable a priori, from the abstract consideration of human
nature, though its existence may be known a posteriori also from
its universal acceptance in human societies. The conception,
as we have seen, was taken from the later Roman jurists; by
them, however, the law of nature was conceived as something
that underlay existing law, and was to be looked for through it,
though it might ultimately supersede it, and in the meanwhile
represented an ideal standard, by which improvements in
legislation were to be guided. Still the language of the jurists
in some passages (cf. Inst. of Justinian, ii. i, 2) clearly implied
a period of human history in which men were governed by
natural law alone, prior to the institution of civil society.
Posidonius had identified this period with the mythical " golden
age"; and such ideas easily coalesced with the narrative in
Genesis. Thus there had become current the conception of a
" state of nature " in which individuals or single families lived
side by side under none other than those " natural " laws which
prohibited mutual injury and interference in the free use of the
goods of the earth common to all, and upheld parental authority,
fidelity of wives, and the observance of compacts freely made.
This conception Grotius took, and gave it additional force and
solidity by using the principles of this natural law for the
determination of international rights and duties, it being obvious
that independent nations, in their corporate capacities, were
still in that " state of nature " in their mutual relations. It was
not, of course, assumed that these laws were universally obeyed ;
indeed, one point with which Grotius is especially concerned
is the natural right of private war, arising out of the violation
of more primary rights. Still a general observance was involved
in the idea of a natural law as a " dictate of right reason indicating
the agreement or disagreement of an act with man's rational and
social nature "; and we may observe that it was especially
necessary to assume such a general observance in the case of
contracts, since it was by an " express or tacit pact " that
the right of property (as distinct from the mere right to non-
interference during use) was held by him to have been instituted.
A similar " fundamental pact " bad long been generally regarded
as the normal origin of legitimate sovereignty.
The ideas above expressed were not peculiar to Grotius;
in particular the doctrine of the " fundamental pact " as the
jural basis of government had long been maintained, especially
in England, where the constitution historically established
Hobbt*.
readily suggested such a compact. At the same time the rapid
and remarkable success of Grotius's treatise (De jure belli et
pads) brought his view of Natural Right into prominence, and
suggested such questions as " What is man's ultimate reason
for obeying these laws? Wherein exactly does this their agree-
ment with his rational and social nature consist? How far, and
in what sense, is his nature really social?"
It was the answer which Hobbes (1588-1679) gave to these
fundamental questions that supplied the starting-point for
independent ethical philosophy in England. The
nature of this answer was determined by the psycho-
logical views to which Hobbes had been led, possibly to some
extent under the influence of Bacon, 1 partly perhaps through
association with his younger contemporary Gassendi, who, in
two treatises, published between the appearance of Hobbes's
De cive (1642) and that of the Leviathan (1651), endeavoured to
revive interest in Epicurus. Hobbes's psychology is in the first
place materialistic; he holds, that is, that in any of the psycho-
physical phenomena of human nature the reality is a material
process of which the mental feeling is a mere " appearance."
Accordingly he regards pleasure as essentially motion " helping
vital action," and pain as motion " hindering " it. There is no
logical connexion between this theory and the doctrine that
appetite of desire has always pleasure (or the absence of pain) for
its object; but a materialist, framing a system of psychology,
will naturally direct his attention to the impulses arising out of
bodily wants, whose obvious end is the preservation of the agent's
organism; and this, together with a philosophic wish to simplify,
may lead him to the conclusion that all human impulses are
similarly self-regarding. This, at any rate, is Hobbes's cardinal
doctrine in moral psychology, that each man's appetites or
desires are naturally directed either to the preservation of his
life, or to that heightening of it which he feels as pleasure. 1
Hobbes does not distinguish instinctive from deliberate pleasure-
seeking; and he confidently resolves the most apparently
unselfish emotions into phases of self-regard. Pity he finds to
be grief for the calamity of others, arising from imagination
of the like calamity befalling oneself; what we admire with
seeming disinterestedness as beautiful (pulchrum) is really
" pleasure in promise "; when men are not immediately seeking
present pleasure, they desire power as a means to future pleasure,
and thus have a derivative delight in the exercise of power that
prompts to what we call benevolent action. Since, then, all the
voluntary actions of men tend to their own preservation or
pleasure, it cannot be reasonable to aim at anything else; in
fact, nature rather than reason fixes this as the end of human
action; it is reason's function to show the means. Hence if we
ask why it is reasonable for any individual to observe the rules
of social behaviour that are commonly called moral, the answer
is obvious that this is only indirectly reasonable, as a means to
his own preservation or pleasure. It is not, however, in this,
which is only the old Cyrenaic or Epicurean answer, that the
distinctive point of Hobbism lies. It is rather in the doctrine
that even this indirect reasonableness of the most fundamental
moral rules is entirely conditional on their general observance,
which cannot be secured apart from government. For example,
it is not reasonable for me to perform my share of a contract,
unless I have reason for believing that the other party will per-
form his; and this I cannot have, except in a society in which
he will be punished for non-performance. Thus the ordinary
rules of social behaviour are only hypothetically obligatory;
they are actualized by the establishment of a " common power "
1 This influence was not exercised in the region ol ethics. Bacon's
brief outline of moral philosophy (in the Advancement of Learning,
ii. 20-22) is highly pregnant and suggestive. But Bacon's great taslc
of reforming scientific method was one which, as he conceived it, left
morals on one side; he never made any serious effort to reduce his
ethical views to a coherent system, methodically reasoned on an
independent basin. .The outline given in the Advancement was never
filled in, and does not seem to have had any effect on the subsequent
course of ethical speculation.
1 He even identifies the desire with the pjeasure, apparently re-
garding the stir of appetite and that of fruition as two parts of the
same motion."
828
ETHICS
that may " use the strength and means of all " to enforce on all
the observance of rules tending to the common benefit. On the
other hand Hobbes yields to no one in maintaining the para-
mount importance of moral regulations. The precepts of good
faith, equity, requital of benefits, forgiveness of wrong so far as
security allows, the prohibition of contumely, pride, arrogance,
which may all be summed up in the formula, " Do not that to
another which thou wouldest not have done to thyself " (i.e. the
negative of the " golden rule ") he still calls " immutable and
eternal laws of nature " meaning that, though a man is not
unconditionally bound to realize them, he is, as a reasonable
being, bound to desire that they should be reah'zed. The
pre-social state of man, in his view, is also pre-moral; but it is
therefore utterly miserable. It is a state in which every one has
a right to everything that may conduce to his preservation; 1
but it is therefore also a state of war a state so wretched that
it is the first dictate of rational self-love to emerge from it
into social peace and order. Hence Hobbes's ideal constitution
naturally comes to be an unquestioned and unlimited though
not necessarily monarchical despotism. Whatever the govern-
ment declares to be just or unjust must be accepted as such,
since to dispute its dictates would be the first step towards
anarchy, the one paramount peril outweighing all particular
defects in legislation and administration. It is perhaps easy to
understand how, in the crisis of 1640, when the ethico-political
system of Hobbes first took written shape, a peace-loving
philosopher should regard the claims of individual conscience
as essentially anarchical, and dangerous to social well-being;
but however strong might be men's yearning for order, a view
of social duty, in which the only fixed positions were selfishness
everywhere and unlimited power somewhere, could not but
appear offensively paradoxical.
There was, however, in his theory an originality, a force, an
apparent coherence which rendered it undeniably impressive;
in fact, we find that for two generations the efforts to construct
morality on a philosophical basis take more or less the form of
answers to Hobbes. From an ethical point of view Hobbism
divides itself naturally into two parts, which by Hobbes's
peculiar political doctrines are combined into a coherent whole,
but are not otherwise necessarily connected. Its theoretical
basis is the principle of egoism; while, for practically determining
the particulars of duty it makes morality entirely dependent
on positive law and institution. It thus affirmed the relativity
of good and evil in a double sense; good and evil, for any
individual citizen, may from one point of view be defined as
the objects respectively of his desire and his aversion; from
another, they may be said to be determined for him by his
sovereign. It is this latter aspect of the system which is primarily
attacked by the first generation of writers that replied to Hobbes.
This attack, or rather the counter-exposition of orthodox
doctrine, is conducted on different methods by the Cambridge
moralists and by Cumberland respectively. Cumberland is
content with the legal view of morality, but endeavours to
establish the validity of the laws of nature by taxing them on the
single supreme principle of rational regard for the " common
good of all," and showing them, as so based, to be adequately
supported by the divine sanction. The Cambridge school,
regarding morality primarily as a body of truth rather than
a code of rules, insist on its absolute character and intuitive
certainty.
Cudworth was the most distinguished of the little group of
thinkers at Cambridge in the I7th century, commonly known
as the Cambridge Platonists (q.v.). In his treatise on Eternal
and Immutable Morality his main aim is to maintain the
_ l In spite of Hobbes's uncompromising egoism, there is a noticeable
discrepancy between his theory of the ends that men naturally seek
and his standard for determining their natural rights. This latter is
never Pleasure simply, but always Preservation though on occasion
he enlarges the notion of " preservation " into " preservation of life
so as not to be weary of it." His view seems to be that in a state of
nature most men tinll fight, rob, &c., " for delectation merely " or
" for glory," and that hence all men must be allowed an indefinite
right to fight, rob, &c., " for preservation."
" essential and eternal distinctions of good and evil " as in-
dependent of mere will, whether human or divine. These
distinctions, he insists, have an objective reality, The
cognizable by reason no less than the relations of Cambridge
space or number; and he endeavours to refute l " onllsts >
Hobbism which he treats as a " novantique philo-
sophy," a mere revival of the relativism of Protagoras chiefly
by the following argumentum ad hominem. He argues that
Hobbes's atomic materialism involves the conception of an
objective physical world, the object not of passive sense that
varies from man to man, but of the active intellect that is the
same in all; there is therefore, he urges, an inconsistency in
refusing to admit a similar exercise of intellect in morals, and
an objective world of right and wrong, which the mind by its
normal activity clearly apprehends as such.
Cudworth, in the work above mentioned, gives no systematic
exposition of the ethical principles which he holds to be thus
intuitively apprehended. But we may supply this Mon
deficiency from the Enchiridion Ethicum of Henry
More, another thinker of the same school. More gives a list
of 23 Noemata Moralia, the truth of which will, he says, be
immediately manifest. Some of these admit of a purely egoistic
application, and appear to be so understood by the author
as (e.g.) that goods differ in quality as well as in duration, and
that the superior good or the lesser evil is always to be preferred;
that absence of a given amount of good is preferable to the
presence of equivalent evil; that future good or evil is to be
regarded as much as present, if equally certain, and nearly as
much if very probable. Objections, both general and special,
might be urged by a Hobbist against these modes of formulating
man's natural pursuit of self-interest; but the serious controversy
between Hobbism and modern Platonism related not to such
principles as these, but to others which demand from the in-
dividual a (real or apparent) sacrifice for his fellows. Such are
the evangelical principle of " doing as you would be done by ";
the principle of justice, or " giving every man his own, and
letting him enjoy it without interference "; and especially
what More states as the abstract formula of benevolence, that
" if it be good that one man should be supplied with the means
of living well and happily, it is mathematically certain that it is
doubly good that two should be so supplied, and so on." The
question, however, still remains, what motive any individual
has to conform to these social principles when they conflict with
his natural desires. To this Cudworth gives no explicit reply,
and the answer of More is hardly clear. On the one hand he
maintains that these principles express an absolute good, which
is to be called intellectual because its essence and truth are
apprehended by the intellect ' We might infer from this that
the intellect, so judging, is itself the proper and complete
determinant of the will, and that man, as a rational being,
ought to aim at the realization of absolute good for its own sake.
In spite, however, of possible inferences from his definition of
virtue, this does not seem to be really More's view. He explains
that though absolute good is discerned by the intellect, the
" sweetness and flavour " of it is apprehended, not by the intellect
proper, but by what he calls a " boniform faculty "; and it is
in this sweetness and flavour that the motive to virtuous conduct
lies; ethics is the " art of living well and happily," and true
happiness lies in " the pleasure which the soul derives from the
sense of virtue." In short, More's Platonism appears to be
really as hedonistic as Hobbism; only the feeling to which it
appeals as ultimate motive is of a kind that only a mind of
exceptional moral refinement can habitually feel with the
decisive intensity required.
It is to be observed that though More lays down the abstract
principle of regarding one's neighbour's good as much as one's
own with the full breadth with which Christianity inculcates
it, yet when he afterwards comes to classify virtues he is too
much under the influence of Platonic-Aristotelian thought to
give a distinct place to benevolence, except under the old form
of liberality. In this respect his system presents a striking
contrast to Cumberland's, whose treatise De Legibus Naturae
ETHICS
829
(1672), though written like More's in Latin, is yet in its ethical
matter thoroughly modern. Cumberland is a thinker both original
and comprehensive, and, in spite of defects in style and
clearness, he is noteworthy as having been the first to
lay down that " regard for the common good of all "
is the supreme rule of morality or law of nature. So far he may
be fairly called the precursor of later utilitarianism. His funda-
mental principle and supreme " Law of Nature " is thus stated:
" The greatest possible benevolence of every rational agent
towards all the rest constitutes the happiest state of each and
all, so far as depends on their own power, and is necessarily
required for their happiness; accordingly Common Good will
be the Supreme Good." It is, however, important to notice that
in his " good " is included not merely happiness but " perfec-
tion "; and he does not even define perfection so as to exclude
from it the notion of absolute moral perfection and save his
theory from an obvious logical circle. A notion so vague could
not possibly be used with any precision for determining the
subordinate rules of morality; but in fact Cumberland does not
attempt this; his supreme principle is designed not to rectify,
but merely to support and systematize, common morality. This
principle, as was said, is conceived as strictly a law, and therefore
referred to a lawgiver, God, and provided with a sanction in
its effects on the agent's happiness. That the divine will is
expressed by it, Cumberland, " not being so fortunate as to
pruirm innate ideas," tries to prove by a long inductive examina-
tion of the evidences of man's essential sociality exhibited in his
physical and mental constitution. His account of the sanction,
again, is sufficiently comprehensive, including both the internal
and the external rewards of virtue and punishments of vice;
and he, like later utilitarians, explains moral" obligation to lie
in the force exercised on the will by these sanctions; but as to
the precise manner in which individual is implicated with
universal good, and the operation of either or both in determin-
ing volition, his view is indistinct if not actually inconsistent.
The clearness which we seek in vain from Cumberland is
found to the fullest extent in Locke, whose Essay on the Human
Understanding (1600) was already planned when
**"* Cumberland's treatise appeared. Yet Locke's ethical
opinions have been widely misunderstood; since from a con-
fusion between " innate ideas " and " intuitions," which has been
common in recent ethical discussion, it has been supposed that
the founder of English empiricism must necessarily have been
hostile to " intuitional " ethics. The truth is that, while Locke
agrees entirely with Hobbes as to the egoistic basis of rational
conduct, and the interpretation of " good " and " evil " as
" pleasure " and " pain," or that which is productive of pleasure
and pain, he yet agrees entirely with Hobbes's opponents in
holding ethical rules to be actually obligatory independently of
political society, and capable of being scientifically constructed
on principles intuitively known, though he does not regard
these principles as implanted in the mind at birth. The aggregate
of such rules he conceives as the law of God, carefully distinguish-
ing it, not only from civil law, but from the law of opinion or
reputation, the varying moral standard by which men actually
distribute praise and blame; as being divine it is necessarily
sanctioned by adequate rewards and punishments. He docs not,
indeed, speak of the scientific construction of this code as having
been actually effected, but he affirms its possibility in language
remarkably strong and decisive. " The idea," he says, " of a
Supreme Being, infinite in power, goodness, and wisdom, whose
workmanship we are, and upon whom we depend, and the
idea of ourselves, as understanding rational beings, being such
as are clear in us, would, I suppose, if duly considered and
pursued, afford such foundations of our duty and rules of action,
as might place morality among the sciences capable of demonstra-
tion; wherein, I doubt not, but from self-evident propositions,
by necessary consequences as incontestable as those in mathe-
matics, the measure of right and wrong might be made out."
As Locke cannot consistently mean by God's " goodness "
anything but the disposition to give pleasure, it might be inferred
that the ultimate standard of right rules of action ought to be
the common happiness of the beings affected by the action;
but Locke does not explicitly adopt this standard. The only
instances which he gives of intuitive moral truths arc the purely
formal propositions, " No government allows absolute liberty,"
and " Where there is no property there is no injustice," neither
of which has any evident connexion with the general happiness.
As regards his conception of the Law of Nature, he takes it
in the main immediately from Grotius and Pufendorf, more
remotely from the Stoics and the Roman jurists.
We might give, as a fair illustration of Locke's general con-
ception of ethics, a system which is frequently represented
as diametrically opposed to Lockism; namely, that ^^
expounded in Clarke's Boyle lectures on the Being
and Attributes of Cod (1704). It is true that Locke is not particu-
larly concerned with the ethico-theological proposition which
Clarke is most anxious to maintain, that the fundamental
rules of morality ,are independent of arbitrary will, whether
divine or human. But in his general view of ethical principles as
being, like mathematical principles, 1 essentially truths of relation,
Clarke is quite in accordance with Locke; while of the four
fundamental rules that he expounds, Piety towards God, Equity,
Benevolence and Sobriety (which includes self-preservation),
the first is obtained, just as Locke suggests, by " comparing
the idea " of man with the idea of an infinitely good and wise
being on whom he depends; and the second and third are
axioms self-evident on the consideration of the equality or
similarity of human individuals as such. The principle of equity
that " whatever I judge reasonable or unreasonable for
another to do for me, that by the same I declare reasonable
or unreasonable that I in the like case should do for him," is
merely a formal statement of the golden rule of the gospel. We
may observe that, in stating the principle of benevolence, " since
the greater good is always most fit and reasonable to be done,
every rational creature ought to do all the good it can to its
fellow-creatures," Clarke avowedly follows Cumberland, from
whom he quotes the further sentence that " universal love and
benevolence is as plainly the most direct, certain and effectual
means to this good as the flowing of a point is to produce a line."
The quotation may remind us that the analogy between ethics
and mathematics ought to be traced further back than Locke;
in fact, it results from the influence exercised by Cartesianism
over English thought generally, in the latter half of the 171(1
century. It must be allowed that Clarke is misled by the analogy
to use general ethical terms (" fitness," " agreement " of things,
&c.), which overlook the essential distinction between what is
and what ought to be; and even in one or two expressions to
overleap this distinction extravagantly, as (e.g.) in saying that
the man who " wilfully acts contrary to justice wills things to be
what they are not and cannot be." What he really means is
less paradoxically stated in the general proposition that " origin-
ally and in reality it is natural and (morally speaking) necessary
that the will should.be determined in every action by the reason
of the thing and the right of the cose, as it is natural and
(absolutely speaking) necessary that the understanding should
submit to a demonstrated truth." But though it is an essential
point in Clarke's view that what is right is to be done as such,
apart from any consideration of pleasure or pain, it is to be
inferred that he is not prepared to apply this doctrine in its
unqualified form to such a creature as man, who is partly under
the influence of irrational impulses. At least when he comes to
argue the need of future rewards and punishments we find that
his claim on behalf of morality is startlingly reduced. He
now only contends that " virtue deserves to be chosen for its
own sake, and vice to be avoided, though a man was sure for
his own particular neither to gain nor lose anything by the practice
of either." He fully admits that the question is altered when
vice is attended by pleasure and profit to the vicious man, virtue
by loss and calamity; and even that it is " not truly reasonable
that men by adhering to virtue should part with their lives,
1 It should be noticed, however, that it is only in his treatment of
Equity and Benevolence that he really follows out the mathematical
analogy (cf. Sidgwick's History of Ethics, 5th ed., pp. 180-181).
8 3 o
ETHICS
Shaftes-
bury.
if thereby they deprived themselves of all possibility of receiving
any advantage from their adherence."
Thus, on the whole, the impressive earnestness with which
Clarke enforces the doctrine of rational morality only rendered
more manifest the difficulty of establishing ethics on an inde-
pendent philosophical basis; so long at least as the psychological
egoism of Hobbes is not definitely assailed and overthrown.
Until this is done, the utmost demonstration of the abstract
reasonableness of social duty only leaves us with an irreconcilable
antagonism between the view of abstract reason and the self-love
which is allowed to be the root of man's appetitive nature. Let
us grant that there is as much intellectual absurdity in acting
unjustly as in denying that two and two make four; still, if a
man has to choose between absurdity and unhappiness, he will
naturally prefer the former; and Clarke, as we have already
seen, is not really prepared to maintain that such preference is
irrational. 1
It remains to try another psychological basis for ethical
construction; instead of presenting the principle of social duty
as abstract reason, liable to conflict to any extent
with natural self-love, we may try to exhibit the
naturalness of man's social affections, and demonstrate
a normal harmony between these and his self-regarding impulses.
This is the line of thought which Shaftesbury (1671-1713) may
be said to have initiated. This theory had already been advanced
by Cumberland and others, but Shaftesbury was the first to
make it the cardinal point in his system ; no one had yet definitely
transferred the centre of ethical interest from the Reason, con-
ceived as apprehending either abstract moral distinctions or
laws of divine legislation, for the emotional impulses that prompt
to social duty; no one had undertaken to distinguish clearly,
by analysis of experience, the disinterested and self-regarding
elements of our appetitive nature, or to prove inductively their
perfect harmony. In his Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit he
begins by attacking the egoism of Hobbes, which, as we have
seen, was not necessarily excluded by the doctrine of rational
intuitions of duty. This interpretation, he says, would be true
only if we considered man as a wholly unrelated individual.
Such a being we might doubtless call " good," if his impulses
were adapted to the attainment of his own felicity. But man
we must and do consider in relation to a larger system of which
he forms a part, and so we call him " good " only when his
impulses and dispositions are so balanced as to tend towards the
good of this whole. And again we do not attribute goodness
to him merely because his outward acts have beneficial results.
When we speak of a man as good, we mean that his dispositions
or affections are such as tend of themselves to promote the good
or happiness of human society. Hobbes's moral man, who, if let
loose from governmental constraint, would straightway spread
ruin among his fellows, is not what we commonly agree to call
good. Moral goodness, then, in a " sensible creature " implies
primarily disinterested affections, whose direct object is the good
of others; but Shaftesbury does not mean (as he has been mis-
understood to mean) that only such benevolent social impulses
are good, and that these are always good. On the contrary,
he is careful to point out, first, that immoderate social affections
defeat themselves, miss their proper end, and are therefore bad;
secondly, that as an individual's good is part of the good of the
whole " self-affections " existing in a duly limited degree are
morally good. Goodness, in short, consists in due combination,
in just proportion, of both sorts of " affections," tendency to
promote general good being taken as the criterion of the right
degrees and proportions. This being established, the main aim
of Shaftesbury's argument is to prove that the same balance
of private and social affections, which tends naturally to public
good, is also conducive to the happiness of the individual in
whom it exists. Taking the -different impulses in detail, he first
shows how the individual's happiness is promoted by developing
1 It should be observed that, while Clarke is sincerely anxious to
prove that most principles are binding independently of Divine ap-
pointment, he is no less concerned to snow that morality requires the
practical support of revealed religion.
his social affections, mental pleasures being superior to bodily,
and the pleasures of benevolence the richest of all. In discussing
this he distinguishes, with well-applied subtlety, between the
pleasurableness of the benevolent emotions themselves, the
sympathetic enjoyment of the happiness of others, and the
pleasure arising from a consciousness of their love and esteem.
He then exhibits the unhappiness that results from any excess
of 'the self-regarding impulses, bodily appetite, desire of wealth,
emulation, resentment, even love of life itself; and ends by
dwelling on the intrinsic painfulness of all malevolence. 8
One more special impulse remains to be noticed. We have
seen that goodness of character consists in a certain harmony of
self-regarding and social affections. But virtue, in Shaftesbury's
view, is something more; it implies a recognition of moral
goodness and immediate preference of it for its own sake. This
immediate pleasure that we take in goodness (and displeasure
in its opposite) is due to a susceptibility which he calls the
" reflex "or" moral "sense, and compares with our susceptibility
to beauty and deformity in external things; it furnishes both
an additional direct impulse to good conduct, and an additional
gratification to be taken into account in the reckoning which
proves the coincidence of virtue and happiness. This doctrine
of the moral sense is sometimes represented as Shaftesbury's
cardinal tenet; but though characteristic and important, it is
not really necessary to his main argument; it is the crown
rather than the keystone of his ethical structure.
The appearance of Shaftesbury's Characteristics (1713) marks
a turning-point in the history of English ethical thought. With
the generation of moralists that followed, the consideration of
abstract rational principles falls into the background, and its
place is taken by introspective study of the human mind, observa-
tion of the actual play of its various impulses and sentiments.
This empirical psychology had not indeed been neglected by
previous writers. More, among others, had imitated Descartes
in a discussion of the passions, and Locke's essay had given a
still stronger impulse in the same direction ; still, Shaftesbury
is the first moralist who distinctly takes psychological experience
as the basis of ethics. His suggestions were developed by
Hutcheson into one of the most elaborate systems of moral
philosophy which we possess; through Hutcheson, if not
directly, they influenced Hume's speculations, and are thus
connected with later utilitarianism. Moreover, the substance
of Shaftesbury's main argument was adopted by Butler, though
it could not pass the scrutiny of that powerful and cautious
intellect without receiving important modifications and additions.
On the other hand, the ethical optimism of Shaftesbury, rather
broadly impressive than exactly reasoned, and connected as it
was with a natural theology that implied the Christian scheme
to be superfluous, challenged attack equally from orthodox
divines and from cynical freethinkers. Of these latter
Mandeville, the author of The Fable of the Bees, or
Private Vices Public Benefits (1723), was a conspicuous
if not a typical specimen. He can hardly be called a "moralist ";
and though it is impossible to deny him a considerable share of
philosophic penetration, his anti-moral paradoxes have not
even apparent coherence. He is convinced that virtue (where it
is more than a mere pretence) is purely artificial; but not quite
certain whether it is a useless trammel of appetites and passions
that are advantageous to society, or a device creditable to the
politicians who introduced it by playing upon the " pride and
vanity " of the " silly creature man." The view, however, to
which he gave audacious expression, that moral regulation is
something alien to the natural man, and imposed on him from
without, seems to have been very current in the polite society
of his time, as we learn both from Berkeley's Alciphron and
from Butler's more famous sermons.
The view of " human nature " against which Butler preached
was not exactly Mandeville's, nor was it properly to be called
2 Three classes of impulses are thus distinguished by Shaftesbury :
(i) " Natural Affections," (2) " Self-affections," and (3) " Un-
natural Affections." Their characteristics are further considered in
the History of Ethics, p. 186 seq.
ETHICS
831
Hobbist, although Butler fairly treats it as having a philo-
sophical basis in Hobbes's psychology. It was, so to say,
Hobbism turned inside out, rendered licentious and
anarchical instead of constructive. Hobbes had said
" the natural state of man is non-moral, unregulated; moral rules
are means to the end of peace, which is a means to the end of
elf-preservation." On this view morality, though dependent
for its actuality on the social compact which establishes govern-
ment, is actually binding on man as a reasonable being. But the
quasi -l heist ic assumption that what is natural must be reasonable
remained in the minds of Hobbes's most docile readers, and in
combination with his thesis that egoism is natural, tended to
produce results which were dangerous to social well-being. To
meet this view Butler does not content himself, as is sometimes
carelessly supposed, with insisting on the natural claim to
authority of the conscience which his opponent repudiated as
artificial; he adds a subtle and effective argument ad kominem.
He first follows Shaftesbury in exhibiting the social affections
as no less natural than the appetites and desires which tend
directly to self-preservation; then reviving the Stoic view
of the prima naturae, the first objects of natural appetites,
he argues that pleasure is not the primary aim even of the
impulses which Shaftesbury allowed to be "self-affections";
but rather a result which follows upon their attaining their
natural ends. We have, in fact, to distinguish self-love, the
" general desire that every man hath of his own happiness " or
pleasure, from the particular affections, passions, and appetites
directed towards objects other than pleasure, in the satisfaction
of which pleasure consists. The latter are " necessarily pre-
supposed " as distinct impulses in " the very idea of an interested
pursuit "; since, if there were no such pre-existing desires,
there would be no pleasure for self-love to aim at. Thus the
object of hunger is not the pleasure of eating but food; hunger
is therefore, strictly speaking, no more " interested " than
benevolence; granting that the pleasures of the table are an
important element in the happiness at which self-love aims,
the same at least may be said for the pleasures of love and
sympathy. Further, so far from bodily appetites (or other
particular desires) being forms of self-love, there is no one of
them which under certain circumstances may not come into
conflict with it. Indeed, it is common for men to sacrifice to
passion what they know to be their true interests; at the same
time we do not consider such conduct " natural " in man as a
rational being; we rather regard it as natural for him to govern
his transient impulses. Thus the notion of natural unregulated
egoism turns out to be a psychological chimera. Indeed, we may
say that an egoist must be doubly self-regulative, since rational
self-love ought to restrain not only other impulses, but itself also;
for as happiness is made up of feelings that result from the
satisfaction of impulses other than self-love, any over-develop-
ment of the latter, enfeebling these other impulses, must pro-
portionally diminish the happiness at which self-love aims. If,
then, it be admitted that human impulses are naturally under
government, the natural claim of conscience or the moral faculty
to be the supreme governor will hardly be denied.
But has not self-love also, by Butler's own account, a similar
authority, which may come into conflict with that of conscience?
Butler fully admits this, and, in fact, grounds on it an important
criticism of Shaftesbury. We have seen that in the latter 's
system the " moral sense " is not absolutely required, or at least
is necessary only as a substitute for enlightened self-regard;
since if the harmony between prudence and virtue, self-regarding
and social impulses, is complete, mere self-interest will prompt
a duly enlightened mind to maintain precisely that " balance " of
flections in which goodness consists. But to Butler's more
cautious mind the completeness of this harmony did not seem
sufficiently demonstrable to be taken as a basis of moral teaching;
he has at least to contemplate the possibility of a man being con-
vinced of the opposite; and he argues that unless we regard con-
science as essentially authoritative which is not implied in the
term " moral sense " such a man is really bound to be vicious;
: interest, one's own happiness, is a manifest obligation."
Still on this view, even if the authority of conscience be asserted,
we seem reduced to an ultimate dualism of our rational nature.
Butler's ordered polity of impulses turns out to be a polity with
two independent governments. Butler does not deny this, so
far as mere claim to authority is concerned; 1 but he maintains
that, the dictates of conscience being clear and certain, while the
calculations of self-interest lead to merely probable conclusions,
it can never be practically reasonable to disobey the former, even
apart from any proof which religion may furnish of the absolute
coincidence of the two in a future life.
This dualism of governing principles, conscience and self-love,
in Butler's system, and perhaps, too, his revival of the Platonic
conception of human nature as an ordered and governed WoUattott
community of impulses, is perhaps most nearly :i m i< i
puled in Vfotta&ton's Religion of Nature Delineated (1722). Here,
for the first time, we find "moral good " and " natural good "
or " happiness " treated separately as two essentially distinct
objects of rational pursuit and investigation; the harmony
between them being regarded as matter of religious faith, not
moral knowledge. Wollaston's theory of moral evil as con-
sisting in the practical contradiction of a true proposition, closely
resembles the most paradoxical part of Clarke's doctrine, and was
not likely to approve itself to the strong common sense of Butler;
but his statement of happiness or pleasure as a " justly desirable "
end at which every rational being " ought " to aim corresponds
exactly to Butler's conception of self-love as a naturally govern-
ing impulse; while the " moral arithmetic " with which he
compares pleasures and pains, and endeavours to make the
notion of happiness quantitatively precise, is an anticipation of
Benthamism.
There is another side of Shaftesbury's harmony which Butler
was ultimately led to oppose in a more decided manner, the
opposition, namely, between conscience or the moral sense and
the social affections. In the Sermons, indeed (1720), HutU-rseems
to treat conscience and calm benevolence as permanently allied
though distinct principles, but in the Dissertation on Virtue,
appended to the Analogy (1739), he maintains that the conduct
dictated by conscience will often differ widely from that to which
mere regard for the production of happiness would prompt. We '
may take this latter treatise as representing the first in the
development of English ethics, at which what were afterwards
called "utilitarian" and "intuitional" morality were first
formally opposed; in earlier systems the antithesis is quite
latent, as we have incidentally noticed in the case of Cumberland
and Clarke. The argument in Butler's dissertation was probably
directed chiefly against Hutcheson, who in his Inquiry Hutcllttoa .
into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue had
definitely identified -virtue with benevolence. The identification
is slightly qualified in Hutcheson's posthumously published
System of Moral Philosophy (1755), in which the general view of
Shaftesbury is more fully developed, with several new psychologi-
cal distinctions, including Butler's separation of " calm " bene-
volence as well as, after Butler, " calm self-love " from the
" turbulent " passions, selfish or social. Hutcheson follows
Butler again in laying stress on the regulating and controlling
function of the moral sense; but he still regards " kind affec-
tions "as the principal objects of moral approbation the" calm"
and " extensive " affections being preferred to the turbulent and
narrow together with the desire and love of moral excellence
which is ranked with universal benevolence, the two being
equally worthy and necessarily harmonious. Only in a secondary
sense is approval due to certain " abilities and dispositions
immediately connected with virtuous affections," as candour,
veracity, fortitude, sense of honour; while in a lower grade still
are placed sciences and arts, along with even bodily skills and
gifts; indeed, the approbation we give to these is not strictly
moral, but is referred to the " sense of decency or dignity,"
which (as well as the sense of honour) is to be distinguished from
1 In a remarkable passage near the close of his eleventh sermon
Butler seems even to allow that conscience would have to give way
to self-love, if it were possible (which it is not) that the two should
come into ultimate and irreconcilable conflict.
832
ETHICS
the moral sense. Calm self-love Hutcheson regards as morally
indifferent; though he enters into a careful analysis of the
elements of happiness, 1 in order to show that a true regard for
private interest always coincides with the moral sense and with
benevolence. While thus maintaining Shaftesbury's "harmony"
between public and private good, Hutcheson is still more careful
to establish the strict disinterestedness of benevolent affections.
Shaftesbury had conclusively shown that these were not in the
vulgar sense selfish; but the very stress which he lays on the
pleasure inseparable from their exercise suggests a subtle egoistic
theory which he does not expressly exclude, since it may be said
that this " intrinsic reward " constitutes the real motive of the
benevolent man. To this Hutcheson replies that no doubt the
exquisite delight of the emotion of love is a motive to sustain
and develop it; but this pleasure cannot be directly obtained,
any more than other pleasures, by merely desiring it; it can be
sought only by the indirect method of cultivating and indulging
the disinterested desire for others' good, which is thus obviously
distinct from the desire for the pleasure of benevolence. He
points to the fact that the imminence of death often intensifies
instead of diminishing a man's desire for the welfare of those he
loves, as a crucial experiment proving the disinterestedness of
love; adding, as confirmatory evidence, that the sympathy and
admiration commonly felt for self-sacrifice depends on the belief
that it is something different from refined self-seeking.
It remains to consider how, from the doctrine that affection is
the proper object of approbation, we are to deduce moral rules or
" natural laws " prescribing or prohibiting outward acts. It is
obvious that all actions conducive to the general good will deserve
our highest approbation if done from disinterested benevolence;
but how if they are not so done ? In answering this question,
Hutcheson avails himself of the scholastic distinction between
" material " and " formal " goodness. " An action," he says,
" is materially good when in fact it tends to the interest of the
system, so far as we can judge of its tendency, or to the good of
some part consistent with that of the system, whatever were the
affections of the agent. An action informally good when it flowed
from good affection in a just proportion." On the pivot of this
distinction Hutcheson turns round from the point of view of
Shaftesbury to that of later utilitarianism. As regards "material"
goodness of actions, he adopts explicitly and unreservedly the
formula afterwards taken as fundamental by Bentham; hold-
ing that " that action is best which procures the greatest
happiness for the greatest numbers, and the worst which
in a like manner occasions misery." Accordingly his treat-
ment of external rights and duties, though decidedly inferior
in methodical clearness and precision, does not differ in principle
from that of Paley or Bentham, except that he lays greater stress
on the immediate conduciveness of actions to the happiness of
individuals, and more often refers in a merely supplementary
or restrictive way to their tendencies in respect of general happi-
ness. It may be noticed, too, that he still accepts the "social
compact " as the natural mode of constituting government, and
regards the obligations of subjects to civil obedience as normally
dependent on a tacit contract; though he is careful to state that
consent is not absolutely necessary to the just establishment of
beneficent government, nor the source of irrevocable obligation
to a pernicious one.
An important step further in political utilitarianism was
taken by Hume in his Treatise on Human Nature (1739). Hume
concedes that a compact is the natural means of peace-
fully instituting a new government, and may therefore
be properly regarded as the ground of allegiance to it at the
outset; but he urges that, when once it is firmly established
the duty of obeying it rests on precisely the same combination of
private and general interests as the duty of keeping promises;
it is therefore absurd to base the former on the latter. Justice,
veracity, fidelity to compacts and to governments, are all co-
1 It is worth noticing that Hutcheson's express definition of the
object of self-love includes " perfection " as well as " happiness ";
but in the working out of his system he considers private good ex-
clusively as happiness or pleasure.
Hume.
ordinate; they are all " artificial " virtues, due to civilization,
and not belonging to man in his " ruder and more natural "
condition; our approbation of all alike is founded on our per-
ception of their useful consequences. It is this last position that
constitutes the fundamental difference between Hutcheson's
ethical doctrine and Hume's. 2 The former, while accepting
utility as the criterion of " material goodness," had adhered to
Shaftesbury's view that dispositions, not results of action, were
the proper object of moral approval; at the same time, while
giving to benevolence the first place in his account of personal
merit, he had shrunk from the paradox of treating it as the sole
virtue, and had added a rather undefined and unexplained train
of qualities, veracity, fortitude, activity, industry, sagacity,
immediately approved in various degrees by the " moral sense "
or the " sense of dignity." This naturally suggested to a mind
like Hume's, anxious to apply the experimental method to
psychology, the problem of reducing these different elements
of personal merit or rather our approval of them to some
common principle. The old theory that referred this approval
entirely to self-love, is, he holds, easy to disprove by " crucial
experiments " on the play of our moral sentiments; rejecting this,
he finds the required explanation in the sympathetic pleasure
that attends our perception of the conduciveness of virtue to the
interests of human beings other than ourselves. He endeavours
to establish this inductively by a survey of the qualities, com-
monly praised as virtues, which he finds to be always either
useful or immediately agreeable, either (i) to the virtuous agent
himself or (2) to others. In class (2) he includes, besides the
Benevolence of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, the useful virtues,
Justice, Veracity and Fidelity to compacts; as well as such
immediately agreeable qualities as politeness, wit, modesty and
even cleanliness. The most original part of his discussion,
however, is concerned with qualities immediately useful to their
possessor. The most cynical man of the world, he says, with
whatever " sullen incredulity " he may repudiate virtue as a
hollow pretence, cannot really refuse his approbation to " dis-
cretion, caution, enterprise, industry, frugality, economy, good
sense, prudence, discernment "; nor again, to " temperance,
sobriety, patience, perseverance, considerateness, secrecy,
order, insinuation, address, presence of mind, quickness of con-
ception, facility of expression." It is evident that the merit
of these qualities in our eyes is chiefly due to our perception of
their tendency to serve the person possessed of them; so that
the cynic in praising them is really exhibiting the unselfish
sympathy of which he doubts the existence. Hume admits
the difficulty that arises, especially in the case of the " artificial "
virtues, such as justice, &c., from the undeniable fact that we
praise them and blame their opposites without consciously
reflecting on useful or pernicious consequences; but considers
that this may be explained as an effect of " education and acquired
habits." 3
So far the moral faculty has been considered as contemplative
rather than active; and this, indeed, is the point of view from
which Hume mainly regards it. If we ask what actual motive
we have for virtuous conduct, Hume's answer is not quite clear.
On the one hand, he speaks of moral approbation as derived
from " humanity and benevolence," while expressly recognizing,
after Butler, that there is a strictly disinterested element in our
benevolent impulses (as also in hunger, thirst, love of fame and
other passions). On the other hand, he does not seem to think
that moral sentiment or " taste " can " become a motive to
action," except as it " gives pleasure or pain, and thereby
constitutes happiness or misery." It is difficult to make these
views quite consistent; but at any rate Hume emphatically
maintains that " reason is no motive to action," except so far
as it " directs the impulse received from appetite or inclination ";
' 2 Hume's ethical view was finaljy stated in his Inquiry into the
Principles of Morals (1751), which is at once more popular and more
purely utilitarian than his earlier work.
1 Hume remarks that in some cases, by " association of ideas," the
rule by which we praise and blame is extended beyond the principle
of utility from which it arises; but he allows much less scope to this
explanation in his second treatise than in his first.
ETHICS
833
and recognizes in his Liter treatise at least no " obligation "
to virtue, except that of the agent's interest or happiness. He
attempts, however, to show, in a summary way, that all the
duties which his moral theory recommends are also " the true
interest of the individual," taking into account the importance
to his happiness of " peaceful rciVi lion on one's own conduct."
But even if we consider the moral consciousness merely as a
particular kind of pleasurable emotion, there is an obvious
question suggested by Hume's theory, to which he gives no
adequate answer. If the essence of " moral taste " is sympathy
with the pleasure of others, why is not this specific feeling
excited by other things beside virtue that tend to cause such
pleasure? On this point Hume contents himself with the vague
remark that " there are a numerous set of passions and sentiments,
of which thinking rational beings are by the original constitution
of nature the only proper objects." The truth is, that Hume's
notion of moral approbation was very loose, as is sufficiently
shown by the list of " useful and agreeable " qualities which he
considers worthy of approbation. 1 It is therefore hardly surpris-
ing that his theory should leave the specific quality of the moral
sentiments a fact still needing to be explained. An original and
ingenious solution of this problem was offered by his contem-
porary Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).
M Without denying the actuality or importance of that
jja,^. sympathetic pleasure in the perceived or inferred effects
of virtues and vices he yet holds that the essential
part of common moral sentiment is constituted rather by a more
direct sympathy with the impulses that prompt to action or
expression. The spontaneous play of this sympathy he treats
as an original and inexplicable fact of human nature, but he
considers that its action is powerfully sustained by the pleasure
that each man finds in the accord of his feelings with another's.
By means of this primary element, compounded in various
ways, Adam Smith explains all the phenomena of the moral
consciousness. He takes first the semi-moral notion of " pro-
priety" or "decorum," and endeavours to show inductively that
our application of this notion to the social behaviour of another
is determined by our degree of sympathy with the feeling ex-
pressed in such behaviour. Thus the prescriptions of good taste
in the expression of feeling may be summed up in the principle,
" reduce or raise the expression to that with which spectators
will sympathize." When the effort to restrain feeling is exhibited
in a degree which surprises as well as pleases, it excites admiration
as a virtue or excellence; such excellences Adam Smith quaintly
calls the " awful and respectable," contrasting them with the
" amiable virtues " which consist in the opposite effort to
sympathize, when exhibited in a remarkable degree. From the
sentiments of propriety and admiration we proceed to the sense
of merit and demerit. Here a more complex phenomenon
presents itself for analysis; we have to distinguish in the sense
of merit (i) a direct sympathy with the sentiments of the agent,
and (2) an indirect sympathy with the gratitude of those who
receive tne benefit of his actions. In the case of demerit there is
a direct antipathy to the feelings of the misdoer, but the chief
sentiment excited is sympathy with those injured by the misdeed.
The object of this sympathetic resentment, impelling us to
punish, is what we call injustice; and thus the remarkable
stringency of the obligation to act justly is explained, since the
recognition of any action as unjust involves the admission that
it may be forcibly obstructed or punished. Moral judgments,
then, are expressions of the complex normal sympathy of an
impartial spectator with the active impulses that prompt to and
result from actions. In the case of our own conduct what we
call conscience is really sympathy with the feelings of an imagi-
nary impartial spectator.
Adam Smith gives authority to his moral system by saying
1 In earlier edition* of the Inquiry Hume expressly included all
approved qualities under the general notion of '' virtue." In later
edition* be avoided thU (train on usage by substituting or adding
" merit " in icveral pa**ages allowing that *ome of the laudable
qualities which he mentions would be more commonly called
talent*," but *till maintaining that " there is little distinction
nude in our internal estimation of " virtue* " and " talents."
IX. 31
that " moral principles are justly to be regarded as the laws
of the Deity "; but this he never proves. So Hume insists
emphatically on the " reality of moral obligation "; but is
found to mean no more by this than the real existence of thr
likes and dislikes that human beings feel for each other's qualities.
The fact is that amid the analysis of feelings aroused by the
sentimcntalism of Shaftesbury's school, the fundamental
questions " What is right?" and " Why?" had been allowed
to drop into the background, and the consequent danger to
morality was manifest. The binding force of moral rules becomes
evanescent .if we admit, with Hutcheson, that the " sense " of
them may properly vary from man to man as the palate does;
and it seems only another way of putting Hume's doctrine, that
reason is not concerned with the ends of action, to say that the
mere existence of a moral sentiment is in itself no reason for
obeying it. A reaction, in one form or another, against the
tendency to dissolve ethics into psychology was inevitable ;
since mankind generally could not be so far absorbed by the
interest of psychological hypothesis as to forget their need of
establishing practical principles. It was obvious, too, that this
reaction might take place in either of the two lines of thought,
which, having been peacefully allied in Clarke and Cumberland,
had become distinctly opposed to each other in Butler and
Hutcheson. It might either fall back on the moral principles
commonly accepted, and, affirming their objective validity,
endeavour to exhibit them as a coherent and complete set of
ultimate ethical truths; or it might take the utility or con-
duciveness to pleasure, to which Hume had referred for the
origin of most sentiments, as an ultimate end and standard by
which these sentiments might be judged and corrected. The
former is the line adopted with substantial agreement by Price,
Reid, Stewart and other members of the still existing Intuitional
school; the latter method, with considerably more divergence of
view and treatment, was employed independently and almost
simultaneously by Paley and Bentham in both ethics and politics,
and is at the present time widely maintained under the name
of Utilitarianism.
Price's Review of the Chief Questions and Difficulties of Morals
was published in 1757, two years before Adam Smith's treatise.
In regarding moral ideas as derived from the " intuition pH
of truth or immediate discernment of the nature of
things by the understanding," Price revives the general view of
Cudworth and Clarke; but with several specific differences.
Firstly, his conception of " right " and " wrong " as " single
ideas " incapable of definition or analysis the notions " right,"
"fit," "ought," "duty," "obligation," being coincident or
identical at least avoids the confusions into which Clarke
and Wollaston had been led by pressing the analogy between
ethical and physical truth. Secondly, the emotional element
of the moral consciousness, on which attention had been con-
centrated by Shaftesbury and his followers, though distinctly
recognized as accompanying the intellectual intuition, is carefully
subordinated to it. While right and wrong, in Price's view, are
" real objective qualities " of actions, moral " beauty and
deformity " are subjective ideas; representing feelings which
are partly the necessary effects of the perceptions of right and
wrong in rational beings as such, partly due to an " implanted
sense " or varying emotional susceptibility. Thus, both reason
and sense of instinct co-operate in the impulse to virtuous conduct,
though the rational clement is primary and paramount. Price
further follows Butler in distinguishing the perception of merit,
and demerit in agents as another accompaniment of the percef>-
tion of right and wrong in actions; the former being, however,
only a peculiar species of the latter, since, to perceive merit in
any one is to perceive that it is right to reward him. It is to be
observed that both Price and Reid are careful to state that the
merit of the agent depends entirely on the intention or " formal
Tightness " of his act; a man is not blameworthy for unintended
evil, though he may of course be blamed for any wilful neglect
(cf. Arist., Eth. Nic., iii. i), which has caused him to be ignorant
of his real duty. When we turn to the subject matter of virtue,
we find that Price, in comparison with More or Clarke, is decidedly
ETHICS
laxer in accepting and stating his ethical first principles; chiefly
owing to the new antithesis to the view of Shaftesbury and
Hutcheson by which his controversial position is complicated. '
What Price is specially concerned to show is the existence of
ultimate principles beside the principle of universal benevolence.
Not that he repudiates the obligation either of rational bene-
volence or self-love; on the contrary, he takes more pains than
Butler to demonstrate the reasonableness of either principle.
" There is not anything," he says, " of which we have more
undeniably an intuitive perception, than that it is ' right to
pursue and promote happiness,' whether for ourselves or for
others." Finally, Price, writing after the demonstration by
Shaftesbury and Butler of the actuality of disinterested
impulses in human nature, is bolder and clearer than Cud worth
or Clarke in insisting that right actions are to be chosen because
they are right by virtuous agents as such, even going so far
as to lay down that an act loses its moral worth in proportion
as it is done from natural inclination.
On this latter point Reid, in his Essays on the Active Powers of
the Human Mind (1788), states a conclusion more in harmony
with common sense, only maintaining that " no act
can be morally good in which regard for what is right
has not some influence." This is partly due to the fact that
Reid builds more distinctly than Price on the foundation laid
by Butler; especially in his acceptance of that duality of govern-
ing principles which we have noticed as a cardinal point in the
latter's doctrine. Reid considers " regard for one's good on the
whole " (Butler's self-love) and " sense of duty " (Butler's
conscience) as two essentially distinct and co-ordinate rational
principles, though naturally often comprehended under the one
term, Reason. The rationality of the former principle he takes
pains to explain and establish; in opposition to Hume's doctrine
that it is no part of the function of reason to determine the ends
which we ought to pursue, or the preference due to one end over
another. He urges that the notion of " good 1 on the whole " is
one which only a reasoning being can form, involving as it does
abstraction from the objects of all particular desires, and com-
parison of past and future with present feelings; and maintains
that it is a contradiction to suppose a rational being to have the
notion of its Good on the Whole without a desire for it, and that
such a desire must naturally regulate all particular appetites
and passions. It cannot reasonably be subordinated even to
the moral faculty; in fact, a man who doubts the coincidence of
the two which on religious grounds we must believe to be
complete in a morally governed world is reduced to the " miser-
able dilemma whether it is better to be a fool or a knave."
As regards the moral faculty itself, Reid's statement coincides
in the main with Price's; it is both intellectual and active,
not merely perceiving the " Tightness " or " moral obligation "
of actions (which Reid conceives as a simple unanalysable
relation between act and agent), but also impelling the will to
the performance of what is seen to be right. Both thinkers hold
that this perception of right and wrong in actions is accompanied
by a perception of merit and demerit in agents, and also by a
specific emotion; but whereas Price conceives this emotion
chiefly as pleasure or pain, analogous to that produced in the mind
by physical beauty or deformity, Reid regards it chiefly as
benevolent affection, esteem and sympathy (or their opposites),
for the virtuous (or vicious ) agent. This "pleasurable good-will,"
when the moral judgment relates to a'man's own actions, becomes
" the testimony of a good conscience the purest and most
valuable of all human enjoyments." Reid is careful to observe
that this moral faculty is not "innate" except in germ; it
stands in need of " education, training, exercise (for which
society is indispensable), and habit," in order to the attain-
ment of moral truth. He does not with Price object to its
being called the " moral sense," provided we understand by
* It is to be observed that whereas Price and Stewart (after
Butler) identify the object of self-love with happiness or pleasure,
Reid conceives this " good " more vaguely as including perfection
and happiness; though he sometimes uses " good " and happiness
as convertible terms, and seems practically to have the latter in view
in all that he says of self-love.
this a source not merely of feelings or notions, but of " ultimate
truths." Here he omits to notice the important question whether
the premises of moral reasoning are universal or individual
judgments; as to which the use of the term " sense " seems
rather to suggest the second alternative. Indeed, he seems
himself quite undecided on this question; since, though he
generally represents ethical method as deductive, he also speaks
of the " original judgment that this action is right and that
wrong."
The truth is that the construction of a scientific method of
ethics is a matter of little practical moment to Reid. Thus,
though he offers a list of first principles, by deduction from which
these common opinions may be confirmed, he does not present
it with any claim to completeness. Besides maxims relating to
virtue in general, such as (i) that there is a right and wrong in
conduct, but (2) only in voluntary conduct, and that we ought
(3) to take pains to learn our duty, and (4) fortify ourselves
against temptations to deviate from it Reid states five funda-
mental axioms. The first of these is merely the principle of
rational self-love, " that we ought to prefer a greater to a lesser
good, though more distinct, and a less evil to a greater," the
mention of which seems rather inconsistent with Reid's distinct
separation of the " moral faculty " from " self-love." The third
is merely the general rule of benevolence stated in the somewhat
vague Stoical formula, that " no one is born for himself only."
The fourth, again, is the merely formal principle that " right and
wrong must be the same to all in all circumstances," which
belongs equally to all systems of objective morality; while the
fifth prescribes the religious duty of " veneration or submission
to God." Thus, the only principle which ever appears to offer
definite guidance as to social duty is the second, " that so far
as the intention of nature appears in the constitution of man,
we ought to act according to that intention," the vagueness 2
of which is obvious. (For Reid's views on moral freedom see
A. Bain, Mental Science, pp. 422, seq.)
A similar incompleteness in the statement of moral principles
is found if we turn to Reid's disciple, Dugald Stewart, whose
Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man
(1828) contains the general view of Butler and Reid, stewart
and to some extent that of Price, expounded with
more fulness and precision, but without important original
additions or modifications. Stewart lays stress on the obligation
of justice as distinct from benevolence; but his definition of
justice represents it as essentially impartiality, a virtue which
(as was just now said of Reid's fourth principle) must equally
find a place in the utilitarian or any other system that lays
down universally applicable rules of morality. Afterwards,
however, Stewart distinguishes " integrity or honesty " as a
branch of justice concerned with the rights of other men, which
form the subject of " natural jurisprudence." In this depart-
ment he lays down the moral axiom " that the labourer is entitled
to the fruit of his own labour " as the principle on which complete
rights of property are founded; maintaining that occupancy
alone would only confer a transient right of possession during
use. The only other principles which he discusses are veracity
and fidelity to promises, gratitude being treated as a natural
instinct prompting to a particular kind of just actions.
It will be seen that neither Reid nor Stewart offers more than
a very meagre and tentative contribution to that ethical science
by which, as they maintain, the received rules of '
morality may be rationally deduced from self-evident
first principles. A more ambitious attempt in the same direction
was made by Whewell in his Elements of Morality (1846).
Whewell's general moral view differs from that of his Scottish
predecessors chiefly in a point where we may trace the influence
of Kant viz. in his rejection of self-love as an independent
rational and governing principle, and his consequent refusal
to admit happiness, apart from duty, as a reasonable end for
2 E.g. Reid proposes to apply this principle in favour of monogamy,
arguing from the proportion of males and females born; without
explaining why, if the intention of nature hence inferred excludes
occasional polygamy, it does not also exclude occasional celibacy.
ETHICS
835
the individual. The moral reason, thus left in sole supremacy,
is represented as enunciating five ultimate principles, those of
benevolence, justice, truth, purity and order. With a little
straining these are made to correspond to five chief divisions of
Jus, personal security (benevolence being opposed to the
ill-will that commonly causes personal injuries^, property,
contract, marriage and government; while the first, second
and fourth, again, regulate respectively the three chief classes
of human motives, affections, mental desires and appetites.
Thus the list, with the addition of two general principles, "earnest-
ness " and " moral purpose," has a certain air of systematic
completeness. When, however, we look closer, we find that the
principle of order, or obedience to government, is not seriously
intended to imply the political absolutism which it seems to
express, and which English common sense emphatically re-
pudiates; while the formula of justice is given in the tautological
or perfectly indefinite proposition " that every man ought to
have his own." Whewcll, indeed, explains that this latter
formula must be practically interpreted by positive law, though
he inconsistently speaks as if it supplied a standard for judging
laws to be right or wrong. The principle of purity, again, " that
the lower parts of our nature ought to be subject to the higher,"
merely particularizes that supremacy of reason over non-rational
impulses which is involved in the very notion of reasoned
morality. Thus, in short, if we ask for a clear and definite
fundamental intuition, distinct from regard for happiness, we
find really nothing in Whewell's doctrine except the single rule
of veracity (including fidelity to promises); and even of this
the axiomatic character becomes evanescent on closer inspection,
since it is not maintained that the rule is practically unqualified,
but only that it is practically undesirable to formulate its
qualifications.
On the whole, it must be admitted that the doctrine of the in-
tuitional school of the iSth and toth centuries has been developed
with less care and consistency than might have been
expected, in its statement of the fundamental axioms
or intuitively known premises of moral reasoning.
And if the controversy which this school has conducted
with utilitarianism had turned principally on the determination
of the matter of duty, there can be little doubt that it would
have been forced into more serious and systematic effort to define
precisely and completely the principles and method on which
we are to reason deductively to particular rules of conduct. 1
But in fact the difference between intuitionists and utilitarians
as to the method of determining the particulars of the moral
code was complicated with a more fundamental disagreement
as to the very meaning of " moral obligation." This Paley and
Bentham (after Locke) interpreted as merely the effect on the
will of the pleasures or pains attached to the observance or viola-
tion of moral rules, combining with this the doctrine of Hutcheson
that " general good " or " happiness " is the final end and
standard of these rules; while they eliminated all vagueness
from the notion of general happiness by defining it to consist
in " excess of pleasure over pain " pleasures and pains being
regarded as " differing in nothing but continuance or intensity."
The utilitarian system gained an attractive air of simplicity by
thus using a single perfectly clear notion pleasure and its
negative quantity pain to answer both the fundamental
questions of mortals, "What is right?" and "Why should I
do it ? " But since there is no logical connexion between
the answers that have thus come to be considered as one
doctrine, this apparent unity and simplicity has really hidden
fundamental disagreements, and caused no little confusion in
ethical debate.
1 We may observe that some recent writers, who would generally
be included in thi* Khool, avoid in various ways the difficulty of con-
Mructing a code of external conduct. Sometimes they consider moral
intuition a* determining the comparative excellence of conflicting
motives (James Martincau). or the comparative quality of pleasures
cboien (Laurie), which Menu to be the same view in a hedonistic
garb; other* hold that what is intuitively perceived is the Tightness
or wrongneM of individual act* a view which obviously renders
ethical reasoning practically superfluous.
In Paley 's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy''
(1785), the link between general pleasure (the standard) and
private pleasure or pain (the motive) is supplied by
the conception of divine legislation. To be " obliged "
is to be " urged by a violent motive resulting from the command
of another "; in the case of moral obligation, the command
proceeds from God, and the motive lies in the expectation of
being rewarded and punished after this life. The commands of
God are to be ascertained " from scripture and the light of
nature combined." Paley, however, holds that scripture is
given less to teach morality than to illustrate it by example
and enforce it by new sanctions and greater certainty, and that
the light of nature makes it clear that God wills the happiness
of his creatures. Hence, his method in deciding moral questions
is chiefly that of estimating the tendency of actions to promote
or diminish the general happiness. To meet the obvious objec-
tions to this method, based on the immediate happiness caused by
admitted crimes (such as " knocking a rich villain on the head "),
he lays stress on the necessity of general rules in any kind of
legislation; 8 while, by urging the importance of forming and
maintaining good habits, he partly evades the difficulty of cal-
culating the consequences of particular actions. In this way
the utilitarian method is freed from the subversive tendencies
which Butler and others had discerned in it; as used by Paley,
it merely explains the current moral and jural distinctions,
exhibits the obvious basis of expediency which supports most
of the received rules of law and morality and furnishes a simple
solution, in harmony with common sense, of some perplexing
casuistical questions. Thus (e.g.) " natural rights " become
rights of which the general observance would be useful apart
from the institution of civil government; as distinguished from
the no less binding " adventitious rights," the utility of which
depends upon this institution. Private property is in this
sense " natural " from its obvious advantages in encouraging
1 The originality such as it is-^of Paley's system (as of
Bentham's) lies in its method of working out details rather than in
its principles of construction. Paley expressly acknowledges his
obligations to the original and suggestive, though diffuse and
whimsical, work of Abraham Tucker (Light of Nature Pursued, 1768-
1774). In this treatise, as in Paley's, we find " every man's own
satisfaction, the spring that actuates all his motives," connected
with " general good, the root whereout all our rules of conduct and
sentiments of honour are to branch," by means of natural theology
demonstrating the " unniggardly goodness of the author of nature.
Tucker is also careful to explain that satisfaction or pleasure is
" one and the same in kind, however much it may vary in degree,
. . . whether a man is pleased with hearing music, seeing pros-
pects, tasting dainties, performing laudable actions, or making
agreeable reflections," and again that by " general good " he means
" quantity of happiness," to which " every pleasure that we do to our
neighbour is an addition." There is, however, in Tucker's theo-
logical link between private and general happiness a peculiar in-
genuity which Paley's common sense has avoided. He argues that
men having no free will have really no desert ; therefore t ne divine
equity must ultimately distribute happiness in equal shares to all;
therefore I must ultimately increase my own happiness most by
conduct that adds most to the general fund which Providence
administers.
But in fact the outline of Paley's utilitarianism is to be found a
generation earlier in Gay's dissertation prefixed to Law's edition of
King's Origin of Evil as the following extracts will show: " The
idea of virtue is the conformity to a rule of life, directing the actions
of all rational creatures with respect to each other's happiness; to
which every one is always obliged. . . . Obligation is the necessity
of doing or omitting something in order to be happy. . . . Full and
complete obligation which will extend to all cases can only be that
arising from the authority of God. . . . The will of God [so far as it
djrects behaviour to others] is the immediate rule or criterion of
virtue . . . but it is evident from the nature of God that he could
have no other design in creating mankind than their happiness;
and therefore he wills their happiness; therefore that my behaviour
so far as it may be a means to the happiness of mankind should be
such; so this happiness of mankind may be said to be the criterion
of virtue once removed."
The same dissertation also contains the germ of Hartley's system,
as we shall presently notice.
1 It must be allowed that Paley's application of this argument is
somewhat loosely reasoned, and does not sufficiently distinguish the
consequence of a single act of beneficent manslaughter from the
consequence* of a general permission to commit such acts.
8 3 6
ETHICS
labour, skill, preservative care; though actual rights of property
depend on the general utility of conforming to the law of the land
by which they are determined. We observe, however, that
Paley's method is often mixed with reasonings that belong to an
alien and older manner of thought; as when he supports the
claim of the poor to charity by referring to the intention of
mankind "when they agreed to a separation of the common
fund," or when he infers that monogamy is a part of the divine
design from the equal numbers of males and females born. In
other cases his statement of utilitarian considerations is frag-
mentary and unmethodical, and tends to degenerate into loose
exhortation on rather trite topics.
In unity, consistency and thoroughness of method, Bentham's
utilitarianism has a decided superiority over Paley's. He
,. considers actions solely in respect of their pleasurable
Beatham , . . .
and his an " painful consequences, expected or actual; and he
school. recognizes the need of making a systematic register
of these consequences, free from the influences of
common moral opinion, as expressed in the "eulogistic " and
"dyslogistic " terms in ordinary use. Further, the effects
that he estimates are all of a definite, palpable, empirically
ascertainable quality; they are such pleasures and pains as
most men feel and all can observe, so that all his political or
moral inferences lie open at every point to the test of practical
experience. Every one, it would seem, can tell what value he
sets on the pleasures of alimentation, sex, the senses generally,
wealth, power, curiosity, sympathy, antipathy (malevolence),
the goodwill of individuals or of society at large, and on the
corresponding pains, as well as the pains of labour and organic
disorders; 1 and can guess the rate at which they are valued
by others; therefore if it be once granted that all actions are
determined by pleasures and pains, and are to be tried by the
same standard, the art of legislation and private conduct is
apparently placed on an empirical basis. Bentham, no doubt,
seems to go beyond the limits of experience proper in recognizing
"religious " pains and pleasures in his fourfold division of
sanctions, side by side with the "physical, " "political," and
"moral" or "social "; but the truth is that he does not seriously
take account of them, except in so far as religious hopes and
fears are motives actually operating, which therefore admit
of being observed and measured as much as any other motives.
He does not himself use the will of an omnipotent and benevolent
being as a means of logically connecting individual and general
happiness. He thus undoubtedly simplifies his system, and
avoids the doubtful inferences from nature and Scripture in
which Paley's position is involved; but this gain is dearly
purchased. For in answer to the question that immediately
arises, How then are the sanctions of the moral rules which it
will most conduce to the general happiness for men to observe,
shown to be always adequate in the case of all the individuals
whose observance is required ? he is obliged to admit that
"the only interests which a man is at all times sure to find
adequate motives for consulting are his own." Indeed, in many
parts of his work, in the department of legislative and constitu-
tional theory, it is rather assumed that the interests of some men
will continually conflict with those of their fellows, unless we
alter the balance of prudential calculation by a readjustment of
penalties. But on this assumption a system of private conduct
on utilitarian principles cannot be constructed until legislative
and constitutional reform has been perfected. And, in fact,
"private ethics, " as conceived by Bentham, does not exactly
expound such a system; but rather exhibits the coincidence,
so far as it extends, between private and general happiness, in
that part of each man's conduct that lies beyond the range of
useful legislation. It was not his place, as a practical philan-
thropist, to dwell on the defects in this coincidence; 2 and since
what men generally expect from a moralist is a completely
1 This list gives twelve out of the fourteen classes in which Ben-
tham arranges the springs of action, omitting the religious sanction
(mentioned afterwards), and the pleasures and pains of self-interest,
which include all the other classes except sympathy and antipathy.
* In the Deontology published by Bowring from MSS. left after
Bentham's death, the coincidence is asserted to be complete.
reasoned account of what they ought to do, it is not surprising
that some of Bentham's disciples should have either ignored
or endeavoured to supply the gap in his system. One section
of the school even maintained it to be a cardinal doctrine of
utilitarianism that a man always gains his own greatest happiness
by promoting that of others; another section, represented
by John Austin, apparently returned to Paley's position, and
treated utilitarian morality 3 as a code of divine legislation;
others, with Grote, are content to abate the severity of the claims
made by "general happiness " on the individual, and to consider
utilitarian duty as practically limited by reciprocity; while
on the opposite side an unqualified subordination of private
to general happiness was advocated by J. S. Mill, who did more
than any other member of the school to spread and popularize
utilitarianism in ethics and politics.
The fact is that there are several different ways in which a
utilitarian system of morality may be used, without deciding
whether the sanctions attached to it are always varieties
adequate, (i) It may be presented as practical of utiu-
guidance to all who choose "general good " as their iarlan
ultimate end, whether they do so on religious grounds, a ctrlae -
or through the predominance in their minds of impartial sym-
pathy, or because their conscience acts in harmony with utilitarian
principles, or for any combination of these or any other reasons;
or (2) it may be offered as a code to be obeyed not absolutely,
but only so far as the coincidence of private and general interest
may in any case be judged to extend; or again (3) it may be
proposed as a standard by which men may reasonably agree
to praise and blame the conduct of others, even though they
may not always think fit to act on it. We may regard morality
as a kind of supplementary legislation, supported by public
opinion, which we may expect the public, when duly enlightened,
to frame in accordance with the public interest. Still, even from
this point of view, which is that of the legislator or social reformer
rather than the moral philosopher, our code of duty must be
greatly influenced by our estimate of the degrees in which men
are normally influenced by self-regard (in its ordinary sense of
regard for interests not sympathetic) and by sympathy or benevo-
lence, and of the range within which sympathy may be expected
to be generally effective. Thus, for example, the moral standard
for which a utilitarian will reasonably endeavour to gain the
support of public opinion must be essentially different in quality,
according as he holds with Bentham that nothing but self-regard
will "serve for diet," though "for a dessert benevolence is a very
valuable addition "; or with T. S.Mill that disinterested
11* . i i i i > . - /*o. nllll.
public spirit should be the prominent motive m the
performance of all socially useful work, and that even hygienic
precepts should be inculcated, not chiefly on grounds of prudence,
but because " by squandering our health we disable ourselves
from rendering services to our fellow-creatures."
Not less important is the interval that separates Bentham's
polemical attitude towards the moral sense from Mill's con-
ciliatory position, that " the mind is not in a state conformable
to utility unless it loves virtue as a thing desirable in itself."
Such love of virtue Mill holds to be in a sense natural, though
not an ultimate and inexplicable fact of human nature; it is
to be explained by the " Law of Association " of feelings and
ideas, through which objects originally desired as a means to
some further end come to be directly pleasant or desirable. Thus,
the miser first sought money as a means to comfort, but ends
by sacrificing comfort to money; and similarly though the
first promptings to justice (or any other virtue) spring from the
non-moral pleasures gained or pains avoided by it, through the
link formed by repeated virtuous acts the performance of them
ultimately comes to have that immediate satisfaction attached
to it which we distinguished as moral. Indeed, the acquired
tendency to virtuous conduct may become so strong that the
habit of willing it may continue, " even when the reward which
' It should be observed that Austin, after Bentham, more fre-
quently uses the term " moral " to connote what he more distinctly
calls " positive morality," the code of rules supported by common
opinion in any society.
ETHICS
837
the virtuous man receives from the consciousness of well-doing
is anything but an equivalent for the sufferings he undergoes
Of the wishes he may have to renounce." It is thus that the
iH-foir-mentioned self-sacrifice of the moral hero is conceived
by Mill to be possible and actual. The moral sentiments, on
this view, are not phases of self-love as Hobbes held; nor can
they be directly identified with sympathy, either in Hume's
way or in Adam Smith's; in fact, though apparently simple
they are really derived in a complex manner from self-love
and sympathy combined with more primitive impulses. Justice
(t.l.) is regarded by Mill as essentially resentment moralized
by enlarged sympathy and intelligent self-interest; what we
mean by injustice is harm done to an assignable individual
by a breach of some rule for which we desire the violator to be
punished, for the sake both of the person injured and of society
at large, including ourselves. As regards moral sentiments
generally, the view suggested by Mill is more definitely given
by the chief living representative of the associations! school,
Alexander Bain; by whom the distinctive characteristics of
conscience are traced to " education under government or
authority," though prudence, disinterested sympathy and other
emotions combine to swell the mass of feeling vaguely denoted
by the term moral. The combination of antecedents is some-
what differently given by different writers; but all agree in
representing the conscience of any individual as naturally
correlated to the interests of the community of which he is a
member, and thus a natural ally in enforcing utilitarian rules,
or even a valuable guide when utilitarian calculations are difficult
and uncertain.
This substitution of hypothetical history for direct analysis
of the moral sense is really older than the utilitarianism of Palcy
._ and Bentham, which it has so profoundly modified.
f/'MMMrf The effects of association in modifying mental pheno-
r.ojkrt*>. mena were noticed by Locke, and made a cardinal
point in the metaphysic of Hume; who also referred
to the principle slightly in his account of justice and other
" artificial " virtues. Some years earlier, Gay, 1 admitting
Hutcheson's proof of the actual disinterestedness of moral and
benevolent impulses, had maintained that these (like the desires
of knowledge or fame, the delight of reading, hunting and
planting, &c.) were derived from self-love by " the power of
association." But a thorough and systematic application of
the principle to ethical psychology is first found in Hartley's
Observations on Man (1748). Hartley, too, was the first to
conceive association as producing, instead of mere cohesion of
mental phenomena, a quasi-chemical combination of these into
a compound apparently different from its elements. He shows
elaborately how the pleasures and pains of " imagination,
ambition, self-interest, sympathy, theopathy, and the moral
sense " are developed out of the elementary pleasures and pains
of sensation; by the coalescence into really complex but
apparently single ideas of the " miniatures " or faint feelings
which the repetition of sensations contemporaneously or in
immediate succession tends to produce in cohering groups.
His theory assumes the correspondence of mind and body, and
is applied part passu to the formation of ideas from sensations,
and of " compound vibratiunculcs in the medullary substance "
from the original vibrations that arise in the organ of sense. 2
The same general view was afterwards developed with much
vigour and clearness on the psychical side alone by James Mill
in his Analysis of the Human Mind. The whole theory has been
persistently controverted by writers of the intuitional school,
who (unlike Hartley) have usually thought that this derivation
1 In the before-mentioned dissertation. Cf. note t to p. 835.
Hartley refer* to this treatise as having supplied the starting-point
for his own system.
1 It should be noticed that Hartley's sensationalism is far from
leading him to exalt the corporeal pleasures. On the contrary, he
tries to prove elaborately that they (as well as the pleasures of
imagination, ambition, self-interest) cannot be made an object of
primary pursuit without a loss of happiness on the whole^mc of
his arguments being that these pleasures occur earlier in time, and
" that which is prior in the order of nature is always less perfect than
that which is posterior."
of moral sentiments from more primitive feelings would be
detrimental to the authority of the former. The chief argument
against this theory has been based on the early period at which
these sentiments arc manifested by children, which hardly
allows time for association to produce the effects ascribed to it.
This argument has been met in recent times by the application
to mind of the physiological theory of heredity, according to
which changes produced in the mind (brain) of a parent, by
association of ideas or otherwise, tend to bo inherited by his
offspring; so that the development of the moral sense or any
other faculty or susceptibility of existing man may be hypo-
thctically carried back into the prehistoric life of the human
race, without any change in the manner of derivation supposed.
At present, however, the theory of heredity is usually held in
conjunction with Darwin's theory of natural selection; accord-
ing to which different kinds of living things in the course of a
series of generations come gradually to be endowed with organs,
faculties and habits tending to the preservation of the individual
or species under the conditions of life in which it is placed.
Thus we have a new zoological factor in the history of the moral
sentiments; which, though in no way opposed to the older
psychological theory of their formation through coalescence of
more primitive feelings, must yet be conceived as controlling
and modifying the effects of the law of association by preventing
the formation of sentiments other than those tending to the
preservation of human life. The influence of the Darwinian
theory, moreover, has extended from historical psychology to
ethics, tending to substitute " preservation of the race under
its conditions of existence " for " happiness " as the ultimate
end and standard of virtue.
Before concluding this sketch of the development of English
ethical thought from Hobbes to the thinkers of the ipth century,
it will be well to notice briefly the views held by different
moralists on the question of free-will, so far, that is, as
they have been put forward as ethically important. We must
first distinguish three meanings in which ." freedom " is attributed
to the will or " inner self " of a human being, viz. (i) the general
power of choosing among different alternatives of action without
a motive, or against the resultant force of conflicting motives;
(2) the power of choice between the promptings of reason and
those of appetites (or other non-rational impulses) when the latter
conflict with reason; (3) merely the quality of acting rationally
in spite of conflicting impulses, however strong, the non posse
peccare of the medieval theologians.' It is obvious that " free-
dom " in this third sense is in no way incompatible with complete
determination; and, indeed, is rather an ideal state after which
the moral agent ought to aspire than a property which the human
will can be said to possess. In the first sense, again, as distinct
from the second, the assertion of " freedom " has no ethical
significance, except in so far as it introduces a general uncertainty
into all our inferences respecting human conduct. Even in the
second sense it hardly seems that the freedom of a man's will
can be an element to be considered in examining what it is right
or best for him to do (though of course the clearest convictions
of duty will be fruitless if a man has not sufficient self-control
to enable him to act on them); it is rather when we ask whether
it is just to punish him for wrong-doing that it seems important to
know whether he could have done otherwise. But in spite of
the strong interest taken in the theological aspect of this question
by the Protestant divines of the I7th century, it does not appear
that English moralists from Hobbes to Hume laid any stress on
the relation of free-will either to duty generally or to justice in
particular. Neither the doctrine of Hobbes, that deliberation
is a mere alternation of competing desires, voluntary action
immediately following the " last appetite," nor the hardly less
decided Determinism of Locke, who held that the will is always
moved by the greatest present uneasiness, appeared to either
author to require any reconciliation with the belief in human
responsibility. Even in Clarke's system, where Indcterminism
is no doubt a cardinal notion, its importance is metaphysical
1 It may be observed that in the view of Kant and others (2) and
(3) are somewhat confusingly blended.
8 3 8
ETHICS
rather than ethical; Clarke's view being that the apparently
arbitrary particularity in the constitution of the cosmos is really
only explicable by reference to creative free-will. In the ethical
discussion of Shaftesbury and sentimental moralists generally
this question drops naturally out of sight; and the cautious
Butler tries to exclude its perplexities as far as possible from the
philosophy of practice. But since the reaction, led by Price and
Reid, against the manner of philosophizing that had culmin-
ated in Hume, free-will has been generally maintained by the
intuitional school to be an essential point of ethics; and, in fact,
it is naturally connected with the judgment of good and ill
desert which these writers give as an essential element in their
analysis of the moral consciousness. An irresistible motive, it is
forcibly said, palliates or takes away guilt; no one can blame
himself for yielding to necessity, and no one can properly be
punished for what he could not have prevented. In answer to
this argument some necessarians have admitted that punishment
can be legitimate only if it be beneficial to the person punished;
others, again, have held that the lawful use of force is to restrain
lawless force; but most of those who reject free-will defend
punishment on the ground of its utility in deterring others from
crime, as well as in correcting or restraining the criminal on
whom it falls.
In the preceding sketch we have traced the course of English
ethical speculation without bringing it into relation with con-
Pread, temporary European thought on the same subject.
influence And in fact almost all the systems described, from
on English Hobbes downward, have been of essentially native
ethics. growth, showing hardly any traces of foreign influence.
We may observe that ethics is the only department in which this
result appears. The physics and psychology of Descartes were
much studied in England, and his metaphysical system was
certainly the most important antecedent of Locke's; but
Descartes hardly touched ethics proper. So again the con-
troversy that Clarke conducted with Spinoza, and afterwards
with Leibnitz, was" entirely confined to the metaphysical region.
Catholic France was a school for Englishmen in many subjects,
but not in morality; the great struggle between Jansenists and
Jesuits had a very remote interest for them. It was not till near
the close of the i8th century that the impress of the French
revolutionary philosophy began to manifest itself in England;
and even then its influence was mostly political rather than
ethical. It is striking to observe how even in the case of writers
such as Godwin, who were most powerfully affected by the
French political movement, the moral basis, on which the new
social order of rational and equal freedom is constructed, is
almost entirely of native origin; even when the tone and spirit
are French, the forms of thought and manner of reasoning are
still purely English. In. the derivation of Benthamism alone
which, it may be observed, first becomes widely known in the
French paraphrase of Dumont an important element is supplied
. by 'the works of a French writer, Helvetius; as
Bentham himself was fully conscious. It was from
Helvetius that he learnt that, men being universally and solely
governed by self-love, the so-called moral judgments are really
the common judgments of any society as to its common interests;
that it is therefore futile on the one hand to propose any standard
of virtue, except that of conduciveness to general happiness,
and on the other hand useless merely to lecture men on duty and
scold them for vice; that the moralist's proper function is rather
to exhibit the coincidence of virtue with private happiness;
that, accordingly, though nature has bound men's interests
together in many ways, and education by developing sympathy
and the habit of mutual help may much extend the connexion,
still the most effective moralist is the legislator, who by acting
on self-love through legal sanctions may mould human conduct
as he chooses. These few simple doctrines give the ground plan
of Bentham's indefatigable and lifelong labours.
So again, in the modified Benthamism which the persuasive
exposition of J. S. Mill afterwards made popular in England, the
influence of Auguste Comte (Philosophic positive, 1820-1842,
and Systeme de politique positive, 1851-1854) appears as the chief
modifying element. This influence, so far as it has affected
moral as distinct from political speculation, has been exercised
primarily through the general conception of human
progress; which, in Comte's view, consists in the ever-
growing preponderance of the distinctively human attributes over
the purely animal, social feelings being ranked highest among
human attributes, and highest of all the most universalized
phase of human affection, the devotion to humanity as a whole.
Accordingly, it is the development of benevolence in man,
and of the habit of " living for others," which Comte takes as the
ultimate aim and standard of practice, rather than the mere
increase of happiness. He holds, indeed, that the two are in-
separable, and that the more altruistic any man's sentiments and
habits of action can be made, the greater will be the happiness
enjoyed by himself as well as by others. But he does not seriously
trouble himself to argue with egoism, or to weigh carefully the
amount of happiness that might be generally attained by the
satisfaction of egoistic propensities duly regulated; a supreme
unquestioning self-devotion, in which all personal calculations
are suppressed, is an essential feature of his moral ideal. Such a
view is almost diametrically opposed to Bentham's conception of
normal human existence; the newer utilitarianism of Mill
represents an endeavour to find the right middle path between
the two extremes.
It is to be observed that, in Comte's view, devotion to humanity
is the principle not merely of morality, but of religion; i.e. it
should not merely be practically predominant, but should be
manifested and sustained by regular and partly symbolical
forms of expression, private and public. This side of Comte's
system, however, and the details of his ideal reconstruction
of society, in which this religion plays an important part, have
had but little influence either in England or elsewhere. It is
more important to notice the general effect of his philosophy on
the method of determining the particulars of morality as well as
of law (as it ought to be). In the utilitarianism of Paley and
Bentham the proper rules of conduct, moral and legal, are
determined by comparing the imaginary consequences of
different modes of regulation on men and women, conceived as
specimens of a substantially uniform and unchanging type. It is
true that Bentham expressly recognizes the varying influences
of climate, race, religion, government, as considerations which
it is important for the legislator to take into account; but his
own work of social construction was almost entirely independent
of such considerations, and his school generally appear to have
been convinced of their competence to solve all important ethical
and political questions for human beings of all ages and countries,
without regard to their specific differences. But in the Comtian
conception of social science, of which ethics and politics are the
practical application, the knowledge of the laws of the evolution
of society is of fundamental and continually increasing import-
ance; humanity is regarded as having passed through a series of
stages, in each of which a somewhat different set of laws and
institutions, customs and habits, is normal and appropriate.
Thus present man is a being that can only be understood through
a knowledge of his past history; and any effort to construct
for him a moral and political ideal, by a purely abstract and un-
historical method, must necessarily be futile; whatever modifi-
cations may at any time be desirable in positive law and morality
can only be determined by the aid of " social dynamics." This
view extends far beyond the limits of Comte's special school or
sect, and has been widely accepted.
When we turn from French philosophy to German, we find
the influence of the latter on English ethical thought almost
insignificant until a very recent period. In the I7th a ermaa
century, indeed, the treatise of Pufendorf on the Law of influence
Nature, in which the general view of Grotius was re- " English
stated with modifications, partly designed to effect a e '
compromise with the doctrine of Hobbes, seems to have been
a good deal read at Oxford and elsewhere. Locke includes it
among the books necessary to the complete education of a gentle-
man. But the subsequent development of the theory of conduct
in Germany dropped almost entirely out of the cognizance of
ETHICS
839
Englishmen; even the long dominant system of Wolff (d. 1754)
was hardly known. Nor had Kant any serious influence in
England until the second quarter of the igth century. We find,
however, distinct traces of Kantian influence in Whewcll and
other writers of the intuitional school, and at a later date it
became so strong that its importance on subsequent ethical
thought can scarcely be over-estimated.
The English moralist with whom Kant has most affinity is
Price; in fact, Kantism, in the ethical thought of modern
Europe, holds a place somewhat analogous to that
formerly occupied by the teaching of Price and Reid
among English moralists. Kant, like Price and Reid, holds that
man as a rational being is unconditionally bound to conform to a
certain rule of right, or " categorical imperative " of reason.
Like Price he holds that an action is not good unless done from
a good motive, and that this motive must be essentially different
from natural inclination of any kind; duty, to be duty, must be
done for duty's sake; and he argues, with more subtlety than
Price or Reid, that though a virtuous act is no doubt pleasant
to the virtuous agent, and any violation of duty painful, this
moral pleasure (or pain) cannot strictly be the motive to the act,
because it follows instead of preceding the recognition of our
obligation to do it. 1 With Price, again, he holds that lightness
of intention and motive is not only an indispensable condition
or element of the rightness of an action, but actually the sole
determinant of its moral worth; but with more philosophical
consistency he draws the inference of which the English
moralist does not seem to have dreamt that there can be no
separate rational principles for determining the " material "
rightness of conduct, as distinct from its " formal " rightness;
and therefore that all rules of duty, so far as universally binding,
must admit of being exhibited as applications of the one general
principle that duty ought to be done for duty's sake. This
deduction is the most original pan of Kant's doctrine.
The dictates of reason, he points out, must necessarily
be addressed to all rational beings as such; hence, my
intention cannot be right unless I am prepared to will
the principle on which I act to be a universal law. He considers
that this fundamental rule or imperative " act on a maxim which
thou canst will to be law universal " supplies a sufficient
criterion for determining particular duties in all cases. The rule
excludes wrong conduct with two degrees of stringency. Some
offences, such as making promises with the intention of breaking
them, we cannot even conceive universalized; as soon as every
one broke promises no one would care to have promises made to
him. Other maxims, such as that of leaving persons in distress
to shift for themselves, we can easily conceive to be universal
laws, bat we cannot without contradiction will them to be such;
for when we are ourselves in distress we cannot help desiring that
others should help us.
Another important peculiarity of Kant's doctrine is his
development of the connexion between duty and free-will.
He holds that it is through our moral consciousness that we
know that we are free; in the cognition that I ought to do
what is right because it is right and not because I like it, it is
implied that this purely rational volition is possible; that my
action can be determined, not " mechanically," through the
necessary operation of the natural stimuli of pleasurable and
painful feelings, but in accordance with the laws of my true,
reasonable self. The realization of reason, or of human wills
so far as rational, thus presents itself as the absolute end of duty;
1 Singularly enough, the English writer who approaches most
nearly to Kant on this point is the utilitarian Godwin, in his Political
Juitxe. In Godwin'* view, reason is the proper motive to acts con-
ducive to general happiness: reason shows me that the happiness of
a number of other men is of more value than my own ; and the per-
ception of this truth affords me at least some inducement to prefer
the former to the latter. And supposing it to be replied that the
motive i* really the moral uneasiness involved in choosing the selfish
alternative, Godwin answers that this uneasiness, though a " con-
stant step " in the process of volition, is a merely " accidental "
step " I feel pain in the neglect of an act of benevolence, because
benevolence is judged by me to be conduct which it becomes me to
.1
and we get, as a new form of the fundamental practical rule,
" act so as to treat humanity, in thyself or any other, as an end
always, and never as a means only." We may observe, too,
that the notion of freedom connects ethics with jurisprudence
in a simple and striking manner. The fundamental aim of
jurisprudence is to realize external freedom by removing the
hindrances imposed on each one's free action through the
interferences of other wills. Ethics shows how to realize internal
freedom by resolutely pursuing rational ends in opposition to
those of natural inclination. If we ask what precisely are the
ends of reason, Kant's proposition that " all rational beings as
such are ends in themselves for every rational being " hardly
gives a clear answer. It might be interpreted to mean that
the result to be practically sought is simply the development of
the rationality of all rational beings such as men whom we
find to be as yet imperfectly rational. But this is not Kant's
view. He holds, indeed, that each man should aim at making
himself the most perfect possible instrument of reason; but he
expressly denies that the perfection of others can be similarly
prescribed as an end to each. It is, he says, " a contradiction to
regard myself as in duty bound to promote the perfection of
another, ... a contradiction to make it a duty for me to do
something for another which no other but himself can do."
In what practical sense, then, am I to make other rational beings
my ends? Kant's answer is that what each is to aim at in the
case of others is not Perfection, but Happiness, i.e. to help them
to attain those purely subjective ends that are determined for
each not by reason, but by natural inclination. He explains also
that to seek one's own happiness cannot be prescribed as a duty,
because it is an end to which every man is inevitably impelled
by natural inclination: but that just because each inevitably
desires his own happiness, and therefore desires that others
should assist him in time of need, he is bound to make the
happiness of others his ethical end, since he cannot morally
demand aid from others, without accepting the obligation of
aiding them in like case. The exclusion of private happiness
from the ends at which it is a duty to aim contrasts strikingly
with the view of Butler and Reid, that man, as a rational being,
is under a " manifest obligation " to seek his own interest. The
difference, however, is not really so great as it seems; since in
another part of his system Kant fully recognizes the reasonable-
ness of the individual's regard for his own happiness. Though
duty, in his view, excludes regard for private happiness, the
summum bonum is not duty alone, but happiness combined with
moral worth; the demand for happiness as the reward of duty
is so essentially reasonable that we must postulate a universal
connexion between the two as the order of the universe; indeed,
the practical necessity of this postulate is the only adequate
rational ground that we have for believing in the existence
of God.
Before the ethics of Kant had begun to be seriously studied
in England, the rapid and remarkable development of meta-
physical view and method of which the three chief
stages are represented by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel
respectively had already taken place; and the system of the
latter was occupying the most prominent position in the philo-
sophical thought of Germany. 1 Hegel's ethical doctrine (ex-
pounded chiefly in his Philosophic des Rechts, 1821) shows a
close affinity, and also a striking contrast, to Kant's. He holds,
Mn Kantism, as we have partly seen, the most important onto-
logical beliefs in God, freedom and immortality of the soul are
based on necessities of ethical thought. In Kichtc's system the con-
nexion of ethics and metaphysics is still more intimate; indeed, we
may compare it in this respect to Platonism; as Plato blends the
most fundamental notions of each of these studies in the one idea ot
good, so Fichte blends them in the one idea free-will. " Freedom,"
in his view, is at once the foundation of all being and the end of all
moral action. In the systems of Schelling and Hegel ethics falls
again into a subordinate place ; indeed, the ethical view of the former
is rather suggested than completely developed. Neither Fichte nor
Schelling has exercised more than the faintest and most indirect
influence on ethical philosophy in England; it therefore seems best
to leave the ethical doctrines of each to be explained in connexion
with the rest of his system.
840
ETHICS
with Kant, that duty or good conduct consists in the conscious
realization of the free reasonable will, which is essentially the
same in all rational beings. But in Kant's view the universal
content of this will is only given in the formal condition of "only
acting as one can desire all to act," to be subjectively applied
by each rational agent to his own volition; whereas Hegel
conceives the universal will as objectively presented to each man
in the laws, institutions and customary morality of the com-
munity of which he is a member. Thus, in his view, not merely
natural inclinations towards pleasures, or the desires for selfish
happiness, require to be morally resisted; but even the prompting
of the individual's conscience, the impulse to do what seems
to him right, if it comes into conflict with the common sense of
his community. It is true that Hegel regards the conscious
effort to realize one's own conception of good as a higher stage
of moral development than the mere conformity to the jural
rules establishing property, maintaining contract and allotting
punishment to crime, in which the universal will is first expressed;
since in such conformity this will is only accomplished acci-
dentally by the outward concurrence of individual wills, and is
not essentially realized in any of them. He holds, however,
that this conscientious effort is self-deceived and futile, is even
the very root of moral evil, except it attains its realization in
harmony with the objective social relations in which the individual
finds himself placed. Of these relations' the first grade is con-
stituted by the family, the second by civil society, and the third
by the state, the organization of which is the highest manifestation
of universal reason in the sphere of practice.
Hegelianism appears as a distinct element in modern English
ethical thought; but the direct influence of Hegel's system is
perhaps less important than that indirectly exercised through
the powerful stimulus which it has given to the study of the
historical development of human thought and human society.
According to Hegel, the essence of the universe is a process of
thought from the abstract to the concrete; and a right under-
standing of this process gives the key for interpreting the
evolution in time of European philosophy. So again, in his view,
the history of mankind is a history of the necessary development
of the free spirit through the different forms of political organiza-
tion: the first being that of the Oriental monarchy, in which
freedom belongs to the monarch only; the second, that of the
Graeco-Roman republics, in which a select body of free citizens
is sustained on a basis of slavery; while finally in the modern
societies, sprung from the Teutonic invasion of the decaying
Roman empire, freedom is recognized as the natural right of
all members of the community. The effect of the lectures
(posthumously edited) in which Hegel's " Philosophy of History "
and " History of Philosophy " were expounded, has extended far
beyond the limits of his special school; indeed, the predomin-
ance of the historical method in all departments of the theory
of practice is not a little due to their influence. (H. S.; X.)
D. Ethics since 1879. Ethical controversies, like most other
speculative disputes, have, during the latter part of the loth
and the beginning of the 2oth century, centred round Darwinian
theories. The chief characteristic of English moral philosophy
in its previous history has been its comparative isolation from
great movements, sometimes contemporary movements, of
philosophical or scientific thought. Ethics in England no less
than on the continent of Europe suffered until the time of Bacon
from the excessive domination of theological dogma and the
traditional scholastic and Aristotelian philosophy. But the
moral philosophy of the i8th century, freed from scholastic
trammels, was a genuine native product, arising out of the
real problem of conduct and reaching its conclusions, at least
ostensibly, by an analysis of, and an appeal to, the facts of
conduct and the nature of morality. Even at the beginning of
the ipth century, when the main interest of writers who belonged
to the Utilitarian school was mainly political, the influence of
political theories upon contemporary moral philosophy was
upon the whole an influence of which the moral philosophers
themselves were unconscious; and from the nature of things
moral and political philosophy have a tendency to become one
and the same inquiry. Mill, it is true, and Comte both encouraged
the idea that society and conduct alike were susceptible of
strictly scientific investigation. But the attempt not only to treat
ethics scientifically, but actually to subordinate the principles
of conduct to the principles of existing biological science or
group of sciences biological in character, was reserved for post-
Darwinian moral philosophers. That attempt has not, in the
opinion of the majority of critics, been successful, and perhaps
what is most permanent in the contribution of modern times to
ethical theory will ultimately be attributed to philosophers
antagonistic to evolutionary ethics. Nevertheless the application
of the historical method to inquiries concerning the facts of
morality and the moral life itself part of the great movement
of thought to which Darwin gave the chief impetus has caused
moral problems to be presented in a novel aspect; while the
influence of Darwinism upon studies which have considerable
bearing upon ethics, e.g. anthropology or the study of comparative
religion, has been incalculable.
The other great movement in modern moral philosophy due
to the influence of German, and especially Hegelian, idealism
followed naturally for the most part from the revival of interest
in metaphysics noticeable in the latter half of the ipth century.
But metaphysical systems of ethics are no novelty even in
England, and, while the increased interest in ultimate issues
of philosophy has enormously deepened and widened men's
appreciation of moral problems and the issues involved in con-
duct, the actual advance in ethical theory produced by such
speculations has been comparatively slight. What is of lasting
importance is the re-affirmation upon metaphysical grounds of
the right of the moral consciousness to state and solve its own
difficulties, and the successful repulsion of the claims of particular
sciences such as biology to include the sphere of conduct within
their scope and methods. And both evolutionary and idealistic
ethics agree in repudiatingthe standpoint of narrowindividualism,
alike insist upon the necessity of regarding the self as social in
character, and regard the end of moral progress as only realizable
in a perfect society.
It is perhaps too much to hope that the long-continued contro-
versy between hedonists and anti-hedonists has been finally
settled. But certainly few modern moral philosophers would be
found in the present day ready to defend the crudities of hedon-
istic psychology as they appear in Bentham and Mill. A certain
common agreement has been reached concerning the impossibility
of regarding pleasure as the sole motive criterion and end of
moral action, though different opinions still prevail as to the
place occupied by pleasure in the summum bonum, and the
possibility of a hedonistic calculus.
The failure of " laissez-faire " individualism in politics to
produce that common prosperity and happiness which its
advocates hoped for caused men to question the egoistic basis
upon which its ethical counterpart was constructed. Similarly
the comparative failure of science to satisfy men's aspirations
alike in knowledge and, so far as the happiness of the masses
is concerned, in practice has been largely instrumental in pro-
ducing that revolt against material prosperity as the end of
conduct which is characteristic of idealist moral philosophy.
To this revolt, and to the general tendency to find the principle
of morality in an ideal good present to the consciousness of all
persons capable of acting morally, the widespread recognition
of reason as the ultimate court of appeal alike in religion or
politics, and latterly in economics also, has no doubt .contributed
largely. In the main the appeal to reason has followed the
traditional course of such movements in ethics, and has re-
affirmed in the light of fuller reflection the moral principles
implicit in the ordinary moral consciousness. It is only in the
present day that there are noticeable signs of dissatisfaction
with current morality itself, and a tendency to substitute or
advocate a new morality based ostensibly upon conclusions
derived from the facts of scientific observation.
Darwin himself seems never to have questioned, in the sceptical
direction in which his followers have applied his principles,
the absolute character of moral obligation. What interested
ETHICS
841
him chiefly, in so far as he made a study of morality, was
the development ot moral conduct in its preliminary stages.
Oa^jfc. He was principally concerned to show that in morality,
as in other departments of human life, it was not
necessary to postulate a complete and abrupt gap between
human and merely animal existence, but that the instincts and
habits which contribute to survival in the struggle for existence
among animals develop into moral qualities which have a
similar value for the preservation of human and social life.
Regarding the social tendency as originally itself an instinct
developed out of parental or filial affection, he seems to suggest
that natural selection, which was the chief cause of its develop-
ment in the earlier stages, may very probably influence the
transition from purely tribal and social morality into morality
in its later and more complex forms. But he admits that natural
selection is not necessarily the only cause, and he refrains from
identifying the fully developed morality of civilized nations
with the "social instinct." Moreover, he recognizes that
qualities, e.g. loyalty and sympathy, which may have been of
great service to the tribe in its primitive struggle for existence,
may become a positive hindrance to physical efficiency (leading
as they do to the preservation of the unfit) at a later stage.
Nevertheless to check our sympathy would lead to the "deteriora-
tion of the noblest pan of our nature," and the question, which
is obviously of vital importance, whether we should obey the
dictates of reason, which would urge us only to such conduct
as is conducive to natural selection, or remain faithful to the
noblest part of our nature at the expense of reason, he leaves
unsolved.
It was in Herbert Spencer, the triumphant " buccinator novi
temporis," that the advocates of evolutionary ethics found
SfiifBi their protagonist. Spencer looked to ideas derived
from the biological sciences to provide a solution of all
the enigmas of morality, as of most other departments of life;
and he conceived it " to be the business of moral science to
deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of existence what
kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness and
what kinds to produce unhappiness." It is dear, therefore,
that any moral science which is to be of value must wait until
the "laws of life" and "conditions of existence" have been
satisfactorily determined, presumably by biology and the allied
sciences; and there are few more melancholy instances of
failure in philosophy than the paucity of the actual results
attained by Spencer in his lifetime in his application of the so-
called laws of evolution to human conduct a failure recognized
by Spencer himself. His own contribution to ethics was vitiated
at the outset by the fact that he never shook himself free from
the trammels of the philosophy which his own system was
intended to supersede. He began by disclaiming any affinity
to Utilitarianism on the part of his own philosophy. He pointed
out that the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest
number is a principle without any definite meaning, since men
are nowhere unanimous in their standard of happiness, but
regard the conception of happiness rather as a problem to be
solved than a test to be applied. Universal happiness would
require omniscience to legislate for it and the " normal " or, as
some would say, " perfect " man to desire it; neither of these
conditions of its realization is at present in existence. Further,
the principle that " everybody is to count for one, nobody for
more than one," is equally unsatisfactory. It may be taken
to imply that the useless and the criminal should be entitled
to as much happiness as the useful and the virtuous. While it
gives no rule for private as distinct from public conduct, it
provides no real guidance for the legislator. For neither happi-
ness, nor the concrete means to happiness, nor finally the condi-
tions of its realization can be distributed; and in the end
" not general happiness becomes the ethical standard by which
legislative action is to be guided, but universal justice." Yet
the implications of this latter conclusion Spencer never fully
thought out. He accepted bodily without farther questioning
the hedonistic psychology by which the Utilitarians sought to
justify their theory while he rejected the theory itself. Good,
e.g. defined by him " as conduct conducive to life," is also further
defined as that which is " conducive to a surplus of pleasures
over pains." Happiness, again, is always regarded as consisting
in feeling, ultimately in pleasant feeling, and there is no attempt
to apply the same principles of criticism which he had successfully
applied to the Utilitarians' " happiness " to the conception of
" pleasure." And, though he maintains as against the Utili-
tarians the existence of certain fundamental moral intuitions
which have come to be quite independent of any present conscious
experience of their utility, he yet holds that they arc the results
of accumulated racial experiences gradually organized and
inherited. Finally, side by side with a theory of the nature of
moral obligation thus fundamentally empirical and a posteriori
in its outlook, he maintains in his account of justice the existence
of the idea of justice as distinct from a mere sentiment, carrying
with it an a priori belief in its existence and identical in its
a priori and intuitive character with the ultimate criterion of
Utilitarianism itself. The fact is that any close philosophical
analysis of Spencer's system of ethics can only result in the
discovery of a multitude of mutually conflicting and for the most
part logically untenable theories. It is frequently impossible to
discover whether he wishes by an appeal to evolutionary prin-
ciples to reinforce the sanctions and emphasize the absolute
character of the traditional morality which in the main he
accepts without question from the current opinions about con-
duct of his age, or whether he wishes to discredit and disprove
the validity of that morality in order to substitute by the aid
of the biological sciences a new ethical code. The argument,
for instance, that intuitive and a priori beliefs gain their absolute
character from the fact that they are the result of continued
transmission and accumulation of past nervous modifications
in the history of the race would, if 'taken seriously, lead us to the
belief that ultimate ethical sanctions are to be sought, not by an
appeal to the moral consciousness, but by the investigation of
brain tissue and the relation of man's bodily organism to its
environment. Yet such a view would be totally at variance
with much that Spencer says (especially in his treatment of
justice) concerning the trustworthiness and inevitable character
of men's constant appeal to the intuitions of their moral conscious-
ness. Moreover, the very fact itself of the possibility of inheriting
acquired moral characteristics is still hotly debated by those
biologists with whom should rest the ultimate verdict. Again,
the argument that " conduct is good or bad according as its
total effects are pleasurable or painful," and that ultimately
" pleasure-giving acts are life-sustaining acts," seems to involve
Spencer in a multitude of unverified assumptions and con-
tradictory theories. In the first place it is never clear whether
Spencer regards the fact that a particular course of conduct is
accompanied by a feeling of pleasure as a test of its life-preserving
and life-sustaining character, or whether he wishes us to use as
our criterion of what is pleasant in conduct the fact that the
conduct in question seems conducive to the continued existence
of man's organic life. He apparently passes from one criterion to
the other as best suits the purpose of the moment. He docs
not prove the coincidence of life-sustaining and pleasant activities.
He assumes throughout that the pleasant is the opposite of what
is painful, and seems unaware of the difficulty of determining
by means of terms so highly abstract the specific character of
moral action. We find in his theory no satisfactory attempt
to discriminate between the pleasure aimed at by the altruist
and the immediate pleasure of egoistic action. Similarly he
disregards the distinction between pleasant feeling as an im-
mediate motive of conduct and the idea of the attainment of
future pleasure whether by the race or by the individual. Spencer
is involved in effect in most of the confusions and contradictions
of hedonistic psychology.
Nor is his attempt to construct a scientific criterion out of data
derived from the biological sciences productive of satisfactory
results. He is hampered by a distinction between " absolute "
and " relative " ethics definitely formulated in the last two
chapters of The Data of Ethics. Absolute ethics would deal with
such laws as would regulate the conduct of ideal man in an ideal
842
ETHICS
society, i.e. a society where conduct has reached the stage of
complete adjustment to the needs of social life. Relative ethics,
on the other hand, is concerned only with such conduct as is
advantageous for that society which has not yet reached the
end of complete adaptation to its environment, i.e. which is at
present imperfect. It is hardly necessary to say that Spencer
does not tell us how to bring the two ethical systems into corre-
lation. And the actual criteria of conduct derived from biological
considerations are almost ludicrously inadequate. Conduct, e.g.,
is said to be more moral in proportion as it exhibits a tendency
on the part of the individual or society to become more
" definite," " coherent " and " heterogeneous." Or, again, we
should recognize as a test of the " authoritative " character of
moral ideas or feelings the fact that they are complex and re-
presentative, referring to a remote rather than to a proximate
good, remembering the while that " the sense of duty is transi-
tory, and will diminish as fast as moralization increases." In
fact, no acceptable scientific criterion emerges, and the outcome
of Spencer's attempt to ascertain the laws of life and the con-
ditions of existence is either a restatement of the dictates of
the moral consciousness in vague and cumbrous quasi-scientific
phraseology, or the substitution of the meaningless test of
" survivability " as a standard of perfection for the usual and
intelligible standards of " good " and " right."
A similar criticism might fairly be passed upon the majority
of philosophers who approach ethics from the standpoint of
evolution. Sir Leslie Stephen, for instance, wishes to
'stephen substitute the conception of " social health " for that
of universal happiness, and considers that the con-
ditions of social health are to be discovered by an examination
of the " social organism " or of " social tissue," the laws_of which
can be studied apart from those laws by which the individuals
composing society regulate their conduct. " The social evolution
means the evolution of a strong social tissue; the best type is the
type implied by the strongest tissue." But on the important
question as to what constitutes the strongest social tissue, or to
what extent the analogy between society as at present con-
stituted and organic life is really applicable, we are left without
certain guidance. The fact is that with few exceptions evolution-
ary moral philosophers evade the choice between alternatives
which is always presented to them. They begin, for the most
part, with a belief that in ethics as in other departments of human
knowledge " the more developed must be interpreted by the less
developed " though frequently in the sequel complexity or
posteriority of development is erected as a standard by means
of which to judge the process of development itself. They are not
content to write a history of moral development, applying to it
the principles by which Darwinians seek to explain the develop-
ment of animal life. But the search of origins frequently leads
them into theories of the nature of that moral conduct whose
origin they are anxious to find quite at variance with current and
accepted beliefs concerning its nature. The discovery of the
so-called evolution of morality out of non-moral conditions is
very frequently an unconscious subterfuge by which the evolu-
tionist hides the fact that he is making a priori judgments upon
the value of the moral concepts held to be evolved. To accept
such theories of the origin of morality would carry with it the
conviction that what we took for " moral " conduct was in reality
something very different, and has been so throughout its history.
The legitimate inference which should follow would be the denial
of the validity of those moral laws which have hitherto been
regarded as absolute in character, and the substitution for all
customary moral terms of an entirely new set based upon
biological considerations. But it is precisely this, the only logical
inference, which most evolutionary philosophers are unwilling
to draw. They cannot give up their belief in customary morality.
Professor Huxley maintained, for example, in a famous lecture
that " the ethical progress of society depends not on imitating
the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in
combating it " (Romanes Lecture, ad fin.). And very frequently
arguments are adduced by evolutionists to prove that men's
belief in the absolute character of moral precepts is one of the
necessary means adopted by nature to carry out her designs for
the social welfare of mankind. Yet the other alternative, to
which such reasoning points, they are reluctant to accept.
For the belief that moral obligation is absolute in character,
that it is alike impossible to explain its origin and transcend
its laws, would make the search for a scientific criterion of
conduct to be deduced from the laws of life and conditions of
existence meaningless, if not absurd.
Perhaps the one European thinker who has carried evolution-
ary principles in ethics to their logical conclusion is Friedrich
Nietzsche. Almost any system of morality or im-
morality might find some justification in Nietzsche's
writings, which are extraordinarily chaotic and full of the
wildest exaggerations. Yet it has been a true instinct which has
led popular opinion as testified to by current literature to find in
Nietzsche the most orthodox exponent of Darwinian ideas in
their application to ethics. For he saw clearly that to be suc-
cessful evolutionary ethics must involve the " transvaluation of '
all values," the " demoralization " of all ordinary current
morality. He accepted frankly the glorification of brute strength,
superior cunning and all the quah'ties necessary for success in the
struggle for existence, to which the ethics of evolution necessarily
tend. He proclaimed himself, before everything else, a physio-
logist, and looked to physiology to provide the ultimate standard
for everything that has value; and though his own ethical code
necessarily involves the disappearance of sympathy, love,
toleration and all existing altruistic emotions, he yet in a sense
finds room for them in such altruistic self-sacrifice as prepares
the way for the higher man of the future. Thus, after a fashion,
he is able to reconcile the conflicting claims of egoism and
altruism and succeed where most apostles of evolution fail.
The Christian virtues, sympathy for the weak, the suffering, &c.,
represent a necessary stage to be passed through in the evolution
of the Ubermensch, i.e. the stage when the weak and suffering
combine in revolt against the strong. They are to be superseded,
not so much because all social virtues are to be scorned and re-
jected, as because in their effects, i.e. in their tendency to per-
petuate and prolong the existence of the weak and those who are
least well equipped and endowed by nature, they are anti-social
in character and inimical to the survival of the strongest and
most vigorous type of humanity. Consequently Nietzsche in
effect maintains the following paradoxical position: he explains
the existence of altruism upon egoistical principles; he advocates
the total abolition of all altruism by carrying these same egoistical
principles to their logical conclusion; he nevertheless appeals to
that moral instinct which makes men ready to sacrifice their own
narrow personal interests to the higher good of society an
instinct profoundly altruistic in character as the ultimate
justification of the ethics he enunciates. Such a position is a
reduclio ad absurdum of the attempt to transcend the ultimate
character of those intuitions and feelings which prompt men to
benevolence. Thus, though incidentally there is much to be
learned from Nietzsche, especially from his criticism of the ethics
of pessimism, or from the strictures he passes upon the negative
morality of extreme asceticism or quietism, his system inevitably
provides its own refutation. For no philosophy which travesties
the real course of history and distorts the moral facts is likely
to commend itself to the sober judgment of mankind however
brilliant be its exposition or ingenious its arguments. Finally,
the conceptions of strength, power and masterfulness by which
Nietzsche attempts to determine his own moral ideal, become,
when examined, as relative and unsatisfactory as other criteria
of moral action said to be deduced from evolutionary principles.
Men desire strength or power not as ends but as means to ends
beyond them; Nietzsche is most convincing when the Uber-
mensch is left undefined. Imagined as ideal man, i.e. as morality
depicts him, he becomes intelligible; imagined as Nietzsche
describes him he reels back into the beast, and that distinction
which chiefly separates man from the animal world out of which
he has emerged, viz. his unique power of self-consciousness and
self-criticism, is obliterated.
It was upon this crucial difficulty, i.e. the transition in the
ETHICS
43
evolution of morality from the stage of 4 purely animal and
unconscious action to specifically human action, /'.. action
T tlQmm. d"* 01 ^ by self-conscious and purposive intelligence
to an end conceived as good, that the polemic of
T. H. Green and his idealistic followers fastened. And it is
perhaps unfortunate that metaphysical doctrines enunciated
chii-tly for the purposes of criticism not in themselves vitally
necessary to the theory of morality propounded should have been
regarded as the main contribution to ethical theory of idealist
writers, and as such treated severely by hostile critics. Green's
principal objection to evolutionary moral philosophy is contained
in the argument that no merely " natural " explanation of the
facts of morality is conceivable. The knowing consciousness,
i.e. so far as conduct is concerned the moral consciousness,
can never become an object of knowledge in the sense in which
natural phenomena are objects of scientific knowledge. For such
knowledge implies the existence of a knowing consciousness as
a relating and uniting intelligence capable of distinguishing itself
from the objects to which it relates. And more particularly the
existence of the moral consciousness implies " the transition from
mere want to consciousness of wanted object, from impulse to
satisfy the want to effort for the realization of the wanted
objects, implies the presence of the want to a subject which
distinguishes itself from it." Consequently the facts of moral
development imply with the emergence of human consciousness
the appearance of something qualitatively different from the
facts with which physiology for instance deals, imply a stratum
as it were in development which no examination of animal
tissues, no calculation of consequences with regard to the pre-
servation of the species can ever satisfactorily explain. However
far back we go in the history of humanity, if the presence of
consciousness be admitted at all, it will be necessary to admit
also the presence to consciousness of an ideal which can be
accepted or rejected, of a power of looking before and after, and
aiming at a future which is not yet fully realized. But un-
fortunately the temporary exigencies of Criticism made it
necessary for Green to emphasize the metaphysic of the self,
i.e. to insist upon the necessity of a critical examination of the
pre-requisites of any form of self-consciousness and especially
of the knowing consciousness, to such an extent that critics
have lost sight of the real dependence of his metaphysic upon the
direct evidence of the moral consciousness. The philosophic
value, the sincerity, the breadth and depth of his treatment
of moral facts and institutions have been fully recognized. What
has not been adequately realized is that the metaphysical basis
of his system of ethics the argument, for example, contained
in the introduction to the Prolegomena is unfairly treated if
divorced from his treatment of morals as a whole, and that it
can be justly estimated only if interpreted as much as the con-
clusion as the starting-point of moral theory. The doctrine
of the eternity of the self, for instance, against which much
criticism (e.g. Taylor, The Problem of Conduct, chap, ii.) has
been directed, though it is chiefly expressed in the language of
epistemology, has its roots nevertheless in the direct testimony
of moral experience. For morality implies a power in the
individual of rising above the interests of his own narrower self
and identifying himself in the pursuit of a universal good with
the true interests of all other selves. Similarly the conception
of the self as a moral unity arises]naturally out of the impossibility
of finding the summum bonum in a succession of transient states
of consciousness such as hedonism for example postulates. Good
as a true universal can only be realized by a true self, and both
imply a principle of unity not wholly expressible in terms of the
particulars which it unifies. But whether the idealistic inter-
pretation of the nature of universal good be the true one, i.e.
whether we are justified in identifying that self-consciousness
which is capable of grasping the principle of unity with the
principle of unity which it grasps is a metaphysical and theistic
problem comparatively irrelevant to Green's moral theory.
It would be quite possible to accept his criticisms of naturalism
and hedonism while rejecting many of the metaphysical inferences
which he draws. A somewhat similar answer might be returned
to those critics who find Green's use of the term " self-realization "
or " self-development " as characteristic of the moral ideal un-
satisfactory. It is quite easy to exhibit the futility of such a
conception if understood formally for the practical purposes
of moral philosophy. If the phrase be understood to mean the
realization of some capacities of the self it does not appear to
discriminate sufficiently between the good and bad capacities;
while the realization under present conditions of all the capacities
of a self is impossible. And to aim so far as is possible at all-
round development would again ignore the distinction between
vice and virtue. But used in the sense in which Green habitually
uses it self-realization implies, as he puts it, the fulfilment by the
good man of his rational capacity or the idea of a best that is in
time, i.e. the distinction between the good and the bad self is
never ignored, but is the fundamental assumption of his theory.
And if it be urged that the expression is in any case tautological,
i.e. that the good is defined in terms of self-realization and self-
realization in terms of the good, it may be doubted whether any
rational system of ethics can avoid a similar imputation. Green
would admit that in a certain sense the conception of " good "
is indefinable, i.e. that it can only be recognized in the particulars
of conduct of which it is the universal form. Only, therefore,
to those philosophers who believe in the existence of a criterion
of morality, i.e. a universal test such as that of pleasure, happiness
and the like, by which we can judge of the worth of actions, will
Green's position seem absurd ; since, on the contrary, such concep-
tions as those of " self-development " or " self-realization " seem
to have a definite and positive value if they call attention to the
metaphysical implications of morality and accurately characterize
the moral facts. What ambiguity they possess arises from the
ambiguity of morality itself. For moral progress consists in the
actualization of what is already potentially in existence. The
striking merit of Green's moral philosophy is that the idealism
which he advocates is rooted and grounded in moral habits and
institutions: and the metaphysic in which it culminates is
based upon principles already implicitly recognized by the moral
consciousness of the ordinary man. Nothing could be farther
from Green's teaching than the belief that constructive meta-
physics could, unaided by the intuitions of the moral conscious-
ness, discover laws for the regulation of conduct.
But although Green's loyalty to the primary facts of the moral
consciousness prevented him from constructing a rationalistic
system of morals based solely upon the conclusions of metaphysics,
it was perhaps inevitable that the revival of interest in meta-
physics so prominent in his own speculations should lead to a
more daring criticism of ethical first principles in other writers.
Bradley's Ethical Studies had presented with great brilliancy
an idealist theory of morality not very far removed from that
of Green's Prolegomena. But the publication of Appearance
and Reality by the same author marked a great advance in
philosophical criticism of ethical postulates, and a growing
dissatisfaction with current reconciliations between moral first
principles and the conclusions of metaphysics. Appearance
and Reality was not primarily concerned with morals, yet it
inevitably led to certain conclusions affecting conduct, and it
was no very long time before these conclusions were elaborated
in detail. Professor A. E. Taylor's Problem of Conduct T jor
(1001) is one of the most noteworthy and independent
contributions to Moral Philosophy published in recent years.
But it nevertheless follows in the main Bradley's line of
criticism and may therefore be regarded as representative of
his school. There are two principal positions in Professor
Taylor's work: (i) a refusal to base ethics upon metaphysics,
and (2) the discovery of an irreconcilable dualism in the nature of
morality which takes many shapes, but may be summarized
roughly as consisting in an ultimate opposition between egoism
and altruism. With regard to the first of these Taylor says
(op. cit. p. 4) that his. object is to show that " ethics is as indepen-
dent of metaphysical speculation for its principles and methods
as any of the so-called ' natural sciences ' ; that its real basis
must be sought not in philosophical theories about the nature
of the Absolute or the ultimate constitution of the Universe,
ETHICS
but in the empirical facts of human life as they are revealed to
us in our concrete everyday experience of the world and mankind,
and sifted and systematized by the sciences of- psychology and
sociology. . . . Ethics should be regarded as a purely ' positive '
or ' experimental ' and not as a ' speculative ' science." With
regard to the second position one quotation will suffice (op. tit.
p. 183). " Altruism and egoism are divergent developments
from the common psychological root of primitive ethical senti-
ment. Both developments are alike unavoidable, and each is
ultimately irreconcilable with the other. Neither egoism nor
altruism can be made the sole basis of moral theory without
mutilation of the facts, nor can any higher category be discovered
by the aid of which their rival claims may be finally adjusted."
Professor Taylor expounds these two theories with great
brilliance of argument and much ingenuity, yet neither of them
will perhaps carry complete conviction to the minds of the
majority of his critics. It is curious, in the first place, to find
the independence of moral philosophy upon metaphysics sup-
ported by metaphysical arguments. For whatever may be the
real character of the interrelation of moral and metaphysical
first principles it is obvious that Taylor's own dissatisfaction
with current moral principles arises from an inability to believe
in their ultimate rationality, i.e. a belief that they are untenable
from the standpoint of ultimate metaphysics; and perhaps
the most interesting portion of his book is the chapter entitled
" Beyond Good and Bad," in which the highest and final form
of the ethical consciousness of mankind is subjected to searching
criticism. But further, it is becoming increasingly apparent
that psychology (upon which Taylor would base morality) itself
involves metaphysical assumptions; its position in fact cannot
be stated except as a metaphysical position, whether that of
subjective idealism or any other. And the need which most
philosophers have felt for some philosophical foundation for
morality arises, not from any desire to subordinate moral insight
to speculative theory, but because the moral facts themselves
are inexplicable except in the light of first principles which
metaphysics alone can criticize.
Taylor himself attempts to find the roots of ethics in the moral
sentiments of mankind, the moral sentiments being primarily
feelings or emotions, though they imply and result in judgments
of approval and disapproval upon conduct. But it may be
doubted whether he succeeds in clearly distinguishing ethical
feelings from ethical judgments, and if they are to be treated as
synonymous it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that the
implications of moral " judgment " must involve a reference
to metaphysics.
Moreover, it is obvious that a great part of Taylor's quarrel
with current moral ideals arises from the fact that they do not
commend themselves to the moral judgment, i.e. from the
standpoint of real goodness they are unsatisfactory, being
tainted with evil. Hence it appears difficult to reconcile what
is in effect a belief in the validity of the judgments of the moral
consciousness with a belief that the real source and justification
of that consciousness are to be found in the very sentiments
and vague mass of floating feelings upon which it pronounces.
Scepticism seems to be the only possible result of such a position.
Taylor's polemic against metaphysical systems of ethics is based
throughout upon an alleged discrepancy and separation between
the facts of moral " experience," the judgments of the moral
consciousness, and theories as to the nature of these which
the philosophers whom he attacks would by no means accept.
There is no doubt a distinction between morality as a form
of consciousness and reflection upon that morality. But such
a distinction neither corresponds to, nor testifies to, the existence
of a distinction between morality as " experience " and morality
as " theory " or " idea."
Taylor is more persuasive when he is developing his second
main thesis that of the alleged existence of an ultimate dualism
in the nature of morality. His accounts of the genesis of the
conceptions of obligation and responsibility as of most of the
ultimate conceptions with which moral philosophy deals will be
accepted or rejected to the extent to which the main contention
concerning the psychological basis of ethics commends itself to
the reader. But in his exposition of the fundamental contradic-
tion involved in morality elaborated with much care and illustra-
tive argument he appeals for the most part to facts familiar to
the unphilosophical moral consciousness. He begins by finding
an ultimate opposition between the instincts of self-assertion
and instincts which secure the production and protection of the
coming generation even in the infra-ethical world with which
biology deals. He traces this opposition into the forms in which
it appears in the social life of mankind (as, e.g., in the difficulty of
reconciling the conflicting claims of individual self-development
and self-culture and social service), and finds " a hidden root
of insincerity and hypocrisy beneath all morality " (p. 243),
inasmuch as it is not possible to pursue any one type of ideal
without some departure from singleness of purpose. And he
finds all the conceptions by which men have hoped to reconcile
admitted antagonisms and divergencies between moral ideals
claiming to be ultimate and authoritative alike unsatisfactory
(p. 285). Progress is illusory; there is no satisfactory goal to
which moral development inevitably tends; religion in which
some take refuge when distressed by the inexplicable contradic-
tions of moral conduct itself " contains and rests upon an element
of make, believe " (p. 489).
With Taylor's presentation of the difficulties with which
morality is expected to grapple probably few would be found
seriously to disagree, though they might consider it unduly
pessimistic. But when he turns what is in effect a statement
of certain forms of moral difficulty into an attack upon the
logical and coherent character of morality itself, he is not so
likely to command assent. For the difficulty all men meet with
in realizing goodness, or in being moral, is not in itself evidence
of an inherent contradiction in the nature of goodness as such.
And what perhaps would first strike an unprejudiced critic in
Taylor's examples of conflicting ideals or antagonistic yet
ultimate moral judgments would be the perception that they
are not necessarily moral ideas or judgments at all, and hence
necessarily not ultimate.
The claims of self-culture and of social service may when
considered in the abstract or in some hypothetical case appear
antagonistic and irreconcilable. But when they present them-
selves to the individual moral consciousness it may be safely
asserted (i) that there can be only one moral choice possible,
i.e. that their opposition (where they are opposed) involves no
conflict of duties; and (2) that whichever ideal is in the end
preferred, opportunities will nevertheless be provided within its
realization for the concurrent realization of activities and
capacities ordinarily associated with the ideal alleged to be
contradictory. For just as there is no self-realization which
does not involve self-sacrifice, so there is no room for that
species of egoism within the confines of morality which is in-
compatible with social service.
It will be clear from the foregoing account of Taylor's work
that the tendency of his thought, as of that of Bradley, is by no
means directed to the confirmation or re-establishment of those
principles of conduct recognized by the ordinary moral con-
sciousness. Psychology or metaphysics tend in their systems to
usurp the place of authority formerly assigned to ethics proper.
It would be true on the whole to assert that evolutionary
systems of ethics such as those of Herbert Spencer, Sir Leslie
Stephen or Professor S. Alexander (Moral Order and Martiaeau
Progress, 1899), together with the metaphysical
theories of morals of which T. H. Green and Bradley and Taylor
are the chief representatives, have dominated the field of ethical
speculation since 1870. Nevertheless it is only necessary to
mention such a work as Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory
to dispel the notion that the type of moral philosophy most
characteristically English, i.e. consisting in the patient analysis
of the form and nature of the moral consciousness itself, has given
way or is likely to give way to more ambitious and constructive
efforts. Martineau's chief endeavour was, as he himself says,
to interpret, to vindicate, and to systematize the moral senti-
ments, and if the actual exhibition of what is involved, e.g., in
HISTORY]
ETHIOPIA
845
moral choice is the vindication of morality Martincau may be
said to have been successful. It is with his interpretation and
systematization of the moral sentiments that most of Martineau's
critics have found fault. It is impossible, e.g., to accept his
ordered hierarchy of " springs of action " without perceiving
that the real principle upon which they can be arranged in
order at all must depend upon considerations of circumstances
and consequences, of stations and duties, with which a strict
intuitionalism such as that of Martincau would have no dealing. 1
Similarly the notion of Conscience as a special faculty giving its
pronouncements immediately and without reflection cannot be
maintained in the face of modern psychological analysis and
is untrue to the nature of moral judgment itself. And Martincau
is curiously unsympathetic to the universal and social aspect
of morality with which evolutionary and idealist moral philo-
sophers are so largely occupied. Nevertheless there have been
few moral philosophers who have, apart from the idiosyncrasies
of their special prepossessions, set forth with clearer insight or
with greater nobility of language the essential nature of the moral
consciousness.
Equal in importance to Martineau's work is Professor Sidg-
wick's Methods of Ethics, which appeared in 1874. The two works
r alike in loftiness of outlook and in the fact that
they are devoted to the re-examination of the nature
of the moral consciousness to the exclusion of alien branches of
inquiry. In most other respects they differ. Martineau is
much more in sympathy with idealism than Sidgwick, whose
work consists in a restatement from a novel and independent
standpoint of the Utilitarian position. And Sidgwick has been
far more successful than any other moral philosopher with the
exception of T. H. Green and Bradley in founding a school of
thought. Many of his most acute critics would be the first to
admit how much they owe to his teaching. Chief among the
more recent of these is G. E. Moore, whose book Principia Ethica
is an important original contribution to ethical thought. And
although Dr Hastings Rashdall (The Theory of Good and Evil,
Oxford, 1907) is not in agreement with Sidgwick's own particular
type of hedonistic theory in his own philosophical position, he
occupies a point of view somewhat similar to that of Sidgwick's
main attitude of Rational Utilitarianism. Rashdull's two
volumes exhibit also a welcome return on the pan of English
thought to the proper business of the moral philosopher the
examination of the nature of moral conduct. Other works, such
as Professor L. T. Hobhouse's Morals in Evolution or Professor
E. A. Westermarck's Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas,
testify to a continued interest in the history of morality and in
the anthropological inquiries with which moral philosophy is
closely connected.
Much that is of importance for moral philosophy has recently
been written upon problems that more properly belong to the
philosophy of religion and the theory of knowledge. J. F.
M'Taggart's Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, and his later work,
Some Dogmas of Religion, contain interesting contributions to
the theory of pleasure and of the problem of free will and
determinism. A notable instance of this tendency is seen in the
developments of the theory of pragmatism (q.v.). for which
F. C. S. Schiller has proposed the general term " humanism."
Such aspects as concern ethics include, for example, the limited
indcterminism involved in the theory, the attitude of the religious
consciousness expressed by William James (Will to Believe and
Pragmatism), and the pragmatic conception of the good.
And the widespread interest in social problems has produced
a revival of speculation concerning questions partly political
and party ethical in character, e.g. the nature of justice. Finally
it has become apparent that many problems hitherto left for
political economy to solve belong more properly to the moralist,
if not to the moral philosopher, and it may be confidently ex-
pected that with the increased complexity of social life and the
disappearance of many sanctions of morality hitherto regarded
as inviolable, the future will bring a renewed and practical
1 Cf. A. Seth Pringlc-PattUon, Tht Philosophical Radicals. Mar-
tineau's Philosophy, p. 93.
interest in the theory of conduct likely to lead to fresh develop-
ments in ethical speculation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. The literature of the subject is so large in alt
languages that only a small selection can be given here. For further
works reference may be made to subsidiary articles. Sec also
Baldwin's Diet, of Pnilos. and Psychol. vol. iii. (1905), pp. 812 foll^
(bibliography).
I. Historical. Sir L. Stephen, History of English Thought in
the i8th Century (1876, 3rd ed. 1892); W. E. H. Lecky, History
of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869, many
editions); works of Ed. Zcller (tf.t>.); G. H. Lewes, History oj
Philosophy (1880); W. Gass, Geschtchte der christlithen Ethik (1881);
A. VV. Bcnn, The Greek Philosophers (1882); F. Jfldl, Geschichte der
Ethik in der neueren Philos. (2 vols., 1882-1880) ; L. Schmidt, Ethik der
alien Criechen (1882); E. Howlcy, The Old Morality traced Historic-
ally (1885); J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory (Oxford, 1885,
3rd ed. 1891); Th. Ziegler, Gesch. d. christl. Ethik (1886); Cli.
:, L'Evoli
Lctourncaux, L' Evolution de la morale (1887); K. Kostlin, Gesch.
der Ethik (1887) ; C. E. Luthardt, Die antike Ethik in Hirer geschicht-
lichen Entwicklur- '-""-^ ' "-- -' **-*-^ ---- >.*-
C. M. Williams,
lichen Entwicklung (1887), and Hist, of Christian Ethics (1888);
i, A Review of the Systems of Ethics founded on the
Theory of Evolution (1893); J. Watson, Hedonistic Theories from
Aristippus to Spencer (1895); L. A. Selby-Bigge, British Moralists
(1897); R. Mackintosh, from Comte to Benjamin Kidd (1899);
S. Patten, The Development of English Thought (1899); A. B. Bruce,
The Moral Order of the World in A ncienl and Modern Thought ( 1 899) ;
Sir L. Stephen, The English Utilitarians (1901); Henry Sidgwiclc,
Outlines of the History of Ethics (sth ed., 1902); Paul Janet, History
of the Problems of Philosophy (1902-1903), Eng. trans. Ada Monahan,
vol. ii. " Ethics "; W. R. Sprlcy, Recent Tendencies in Ethics (1904).
II. Constructive and Critical. Besides the works mentioned above
the following may be mentioned : J. M. Guyau, La Morale anglaise
(1879), Education et heredite (1889; Eng. trans. Greenstreet, with
introd. by G. F. Stout, 1891), Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation
ni sanction (Eng. trans., 1898); G. H. Lewes, Problems of Life and
Mind (1879); Sir L. Stephen, Science of Ethics (1882); P. Janet,
The Theory of Morals (h.ng. trans., 1884); W. R. Sorlcy, On the
Ethics of Naturalism (1885); W. L. Courtney, Constructive Ethics
(1886); Wilson and Fowler, Principles of Morals (1886); H. Hoff-
ding, Ethik (1888), Psychologie (1882, 1892; trans. Lowndes, 1892);
W. Wundt, Ethik (1886; trans. Titchener and others, 1897);
F. Paulsen, Ethik (1889, 1893; trans. Thilly, 1899); H. Sidgwick,
Method of Ethics (1890); J. T. Bixby, The Crisis in Morals: An
Examination of Rational Ethics (1891); J. Seth, Freedom an Ethical
Postulate (1891); J. H. Muirhead, Elements of Ethics 0892); G.
Simnel, Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft (1892, 1893); T. Ziegler,
Social Ethics (1892); T. H. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics (1893);
W. Knight, The Christian Ethic (1893); J. S. Mackenzie, Manual of
Ethics (1893); F. Ryland, Ethics (1893); J. Seth. A Study of Ethical
Principles (1894, 6th ed. 1902); C. F. D'Arcy, Short Study of Ethics
(1895); J- H. Hyslop. The Elements of Ethics (1895); J. Kidd,
Morality and Religion (1895); Sir L. Stephen, Social Rights and
Duties (1896); J. M. Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations in
Mental Development (1897); Th. Ribot, Psychology of Emotions
(1897); A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, Man's Place in the Cosmos (1897);
H. R. Marshall, Instinct and Reason (1898); W. Wallace, Natural
Theology and Ethics (1898); F. Paulsen, Partei-politik und Moral
(1900); A. E. Taylor, Problem of Conduct (1901); G. T. Ladd,
Philosophy of Conduct (1902); II. Sidgwick, Ethics of Green, Spencer,
Martineau (1902); D. Irons, Study in Psychology of Ethics (1903);
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (1903) ; R. Eucken, Geistige Stromun-
gen der Gegenwarl (1904), and other works (see EUCKEN, RUDOLF);
works of A. Fouillee (q.v.); G. Santayana, Life of Reason (1005);
E. A. Westermarck, Origin and Development of Moral Ideas (1906);
George Gore, Scientific Basis of Morality (1899), and New Scientific
Basis of Morality (1906), containing an interesting if unconvincing
attempt to explain ethicson purely physical principles. (H. H. W.)
ETHIOPIA, or AETHIOPIA (Gr. AWunria), the ancient classical
name of a district of north-eastern Africa, bounded on the N. by
Egypt and on the E. by the Red Sea. 1 The application of the
name has varied considerably at different times. In the Homeric
poems the Aethiopcs arc the furthest of mankind both eastward
and westward; the gods go to their banquets and probably the
Sun sets in their country. With the growth of scientific geo-
graphy they came to be located somewhat less vaguely, and
indeed their name was employed as the equivalent of the Assyrian
and Hebrew Cush (q.v.), the Kcsh or Kkosh of the Hieroglyphics
(first found in Stele of Senwosri I.), i.e. a country extending
from about the 24th to the loth degree of N. lat ., while its limits
to the E. and W. were doubtful. The etymology of the name,
which to a Greek ear meant " swarthy-faced," is unknown, nor
can we say why in official inscriptions of the Axumite dynasty
the word is used as the equivalent of Habashat (whence the
1 For the topography and later history see SUDAN and ABYSSINIA.
ETHIOPIA
[HISTORY
modern Abyssinia), which, from the context would appear to
denote a tribe located in S. Arabia, whose 'name was rendered
by the Greek geographers as Abaseni and Abissa.
The inhabitants of Ethiopia, partly perhaps owing to their
honourable mention in the Homeric poems, attracted the atten-
tion of many Greek researchers, from Democritus onwards.
Herodotus divides them into two main groups, a straight-haired
race and a woolly-haired race, dwelling respectively to the East
and West, and this distinction is confirmed by the Egyptian
monuments. From his time onwards various names of tribes are
enumerated, and to some extent geographically located, most of
these appellations being Greek words, applied to the tribes by
strangers in virtue of what seemed to be their leading character-
istics, e.g. " Long-lived," " Fish-eaters," " Troglodytes," &c.
The bulk of our information is derived from Egyptian monu-
ments, whence it appears that, originally occupied by independent
tribes, who were raided (first by Seneferu or Snefru, first king of
the IVth or last of the IHrd Dynasty) and gradually subjected
by Egyptian kings (the steps in this process are traced by E. W.
Budge, The Egyptian Sudan, 1907, i. 505 sqq.),undertheXVIIIth
Dynasty it became an Egyptian province, administered by a
viceroy (at first the Egyptian king's son), called prince of Kesh,
and paying tributes in negroes, oxen, gold, ivory, rare beads,
hides and household utensils. The inhabitants frequently
rebelled and were as often subdued; records of these repeated
conquests were set up by the Egyptian kings in the shape of
steles and temples; of the latter the temple of Amenhotep
(Amenophis) III. at Soleb or Sulb seems to have been the most
magnificent. Ethiopia became independent towards the nth
century B.C., when the XXIst Dynasty was reigning in Egypt.
A state was founded, having for its capital Napata (mod. Merawi)
at the foot of Jebel Barkal, " the sacred mountain," which in
time became formidable, and in the middle of the 8th century
conquered Egypt; an Egyptian campaign is recorded in the
famous stele of King Pankhi. The fortunes of the Ethiopian
(XXVth) Dynasty belong to the history of Egypt (?..) After
the Ethiopian yoke had been shaken off by Egypt, about 660 B.C.,
Ethiopia continued independent, under kings of whom not a few
are known from inscriptions. Besides a number whose names
have been discovered in cartouches at Jebel Barkal, the following,
of whom all but the third have left important steles, can be
roughly dated: Tandamarie, son of Tirhaka (667-650), Asperta
(630-600), Pankharer (600-560), Harsiotf (560-525), Nastasen
(525-500). From the evidence of the stele of the second (the
Coronation Stele) and that of the fifth it has been inferred that
the sovereignty early in this period became elective, a deputation
of the various orders in the realm being (as Diodorus states),
when a vacancy occurred, sent to Napata, where the chief god
Amen selected out of the members of the royal family the person
who was to succeed, and who became officially the god's son;
and it seems certain that the priestly caste was more influential
in Ethiopia than in Egypt both before and after this period.
Another stele (called the Stele of Excommunication) records
the expulsion of a priestly family guilty of murder (H. Schafer,
Klio, vi. 287) : the name of the sovereign who expelled them has
been obliterated. The stele of Harsiotf contains the record of
nine expeditions, in the course of which the king subdued various
tribes south of Meroe' and built a number of temples. The stele of
the last of these sovereigns, now in the Berlin Museum, and edited
by H. Schafer (Leipzig, 1901), contains valuable information con-
cerning the state of the Ethiopian kingdom in its author's time.
Shortly after his accession he was threatened with invasion by
Cambyses, the Persian conqueror of Egypt, but (according to his
own account) destroyed the fleet sent by the invader up the Nile,
while (as we learn from Herodotus) the land-force succumbed
to famine (see CAMBYSES). It further appears that in his time
and that of his immediate predecessors the capital of the kingdom
had been removed from Napata, where in the time of Harsiotf
the temples and palaces were already in ruins, to Merce at a
distance of 60 camel-hours to the south-east. But Napata
retained its importance as the religious metropolis; it was thither
that the king went to be crowned, and there too the chief god
delivered his oracles, which were (it is said) implicitly obeyed.
The local names in Nastasen's inscription, describing his royal
circuit, are in many cases obscure. A city named Pnups (Hierogl.
Pa-Nebes) appears to have constituted the most northerly point
in the empire. These Ethiopian kings seem to have made no
attempt to reconquer Egypt, though they were often engaged
in wars with the wild tribes of the Sudan. For the 5th and 4th
centuries B.C. the history of the country is a blank. A fresh
epoch was, however, inaugurated by Ergamenes, a contemporary
of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who is said to have massacred the
priests at Napata, and destroyed sacerdotal influence, till then
so great that the king might at the priests' order be compelled
to destroy himself; Diodorus attributes this measure to Erga-
menes' acquaintance with Greek culture, which he introduced
into his country. A temple was built by this king at Pselcis
(Dakka) to Thoth. Probably the sovereignty again became
hereditary. Occasional notices of Ethiopia occur from this time
onwards in Greek and Latin authors, though the special treatises
by Agatharchides and others are lost. According to these the
country came to be ruled by queens named Candace. One of
them was involved in war with the Romans in 24 and 23 B.C.;
the land was invaded by C. Petronius, who took the fortress
Premis or Ibrim, and sacked the capital (then Napata); the
emperor Augustus, however, ordered the evacuation of the
country without even demanding tribute. The stretch of land
between Assuan (Syene) and Maharraka (Hiera Sycaminus) was,
however, regarded as belonging to the Roman empire, and Roman
cohorts were stationed at the latter place. To judge by the
monuments it is possible that there were queens who reigned
alone. Pyramids were erected for queens as well as for kings,
and the position of the queens was little inferior to that of their
consorts, though, so far as monumental representations go, they
always yielded precedence to the latter. Candace appears to
be found as the name of a queen for whom a pyramid was built
at Meroe. A great builder was Netekamane, who is represented
with his queen Amanetari on temples of Egyptian style at many
points up the Nile at Amara just above the second cataract,
and at Napata, as well as at Meroe, Benaga and Naga in the
distant Isle of Meroe. He belongs, probably, to the Ptolemaic
age. Later, in the Roman period, the type in sculpture changed
from the Egyptian. The figures are obese, especially the women,
and have pronounced negro features, and the royal person is
loaded with bulging gold ornaments/ Of this period also there
is a royal pair, Netekamane and Amanetari, imitating the names
of their conspicuous predecessors. In the 4th century A.D. the
state of Meroe was ravaged by the Nubas (?) and the Abyssinians,
and in the 6th century its place was taken by the Christian state
of Nubia (see DONGOLA).
Contrary to the opinion of the Greeks, the Ethiopians appear
to have derived their religion and civilization from the Egyptians.
The royal inscriptions are written in the hieroglyphic character
and the Egyptian language, which, however, in the opinion of
experts, steadily deteriorate after the separation of Ethiopia
from Egypt. About the time of Ergamenes, or (according to
some authorities) before, a vernacular came to be employed in
inscriptions, written in a special alphabet of 23 signs in parallel
hieroglyphic and cursive forms. The cursive is to be read from
right to left, the hieroglyphic, contrary to the Egyptian method,
in the direction in which the figures face. The Egyptian equiva-
lents of six characters have been made out by the aid of bilingual
cartouches. Words are divided from each other by pairs of dots,
and it is clear that the forms and values of the signs are largely
based on Egyptian writing; but as yet decipherment has not
been attained, nor can it yet be stated to what group the
language should be assigned (F. LI. Griffith in D. R. Maclver's
Areika, Oxford, 1909, and later researches).
Notices in Greek authors are collected by P. Paulitschke, Die
geographische Erforschung des afrikanischen Continents (Vienna,
1880); the inscriptions were edited and interpreted by G. Masperp,
Revue archeol. xxii., xxv. ; Melanges d'Assynologie et d'Egyptologie,
ii., iii.; Records of the Past, vi.; T.S.B.A. iv. ; Schafer, I.e., and Zeit-
schriftfiir dgyptische Sprache, xxxiii. See also J. H. Breasted, " The
Monuments of Sudanese Nubia," in American Journal of Semitic
ETHIOPIA
LITERATURE]
U*t**P* (October 1908). and the work of E. W. Budge cited above.
A description at thr chief ruins ami the results o( Dr D. R. Maclver s
mearrhe* in n,)rthi-rn Nul>u, begun in 1907, will be found under
,\: Anglo-Egyptian.
Tkt Axtimite Kingdom. About the ist century of the Christian
en a new kingdom grew up at Axum (q.v.), of which a king
Zasades is mentioned in the Periptus Moris Erylhraei. Frag-
ment* of the history of this kingdom, of which there is no
authentic chronicle, have been made out chiefly by the aid of
inscriptions, of which the following is a list: (i) Greek in-
scription of Adulis, copied by Cosmas Indicopleustes in 545,
the beginning, with the king's name, lost. (2) Sabaean inscrip-
tion of Ela Amida in two halves, discovered by J. Theodore Bent
at Axum in 1893, and completed by E. Littmann in 1906. (3)
Ethiopic inscription probably of the same king, imperfect
(Littmann). (4) Trilingual inscription of Aeizanes, the Greek
version discovered by Henry Salt in 1805, the Sabaean by Bent,
and the Ethiopic (Gee*) by Littmann. (5) Ethiopic inscription
of Aeizanes (so Littmann), son of Ela Amida, discovered by
Eduard Ruppell in 1833. (6) Ethiopic inscriptions of Hetana-
Dan'el, son of Dabra Efrem. These are all long inscriptions
giving details of wars, &c. The sixth is later than the rest,
which are to be attributed to the most flourishing period of
the kingdom, the 4th and sth centuries A.D. The fourth is pagan,
the fifth Christian, Aeizanes having in the interval embraced
Christianity. It was to this king that the emperor Constantius
addressed a letter in 356 A.D.
Aeizanes and his successors style themselves kings of the
Axumites, Homerites (Himyar), Raidan, the Ethiopians
(Habasat), the Sabaeans, Silee, Tiamo, the Bugaites (Bega) and
Kasu. This style implies considerable conquests in South
Arabia, which, however, must have been lost to the Axumites
by A.D. 378. They claim to rule the Kasu'or Meroitic Ethiopians;
and the fifth inscription records an expedition along the Atbara
and the Nile to punish the Nuba and Kasu, and a fragment of a
Greek inscription from Meroe" was recognized by Sayce as
commemorating a king of Axum. Except for these inscriptions
Axumite history is a blank until in the 6th century we find
the Axumite king sending an expedition to wreck the Jewish
state then existing in S. Arabia, and reducing that country
to a state of vassalage: the king is styled in Ethiopian
chronicles Caleb (Kaleb), in Greek and Arabic documents
El-Esbaha. In the 7th century a successor to this king,
named Abraha or Abraham, gave refuge to the persecuted
followers of Mahomet at the beginning of his career (see ARABIA:
History, ad init.). A few more names of kings occur on coins,
which were struck in Greek characters till about A.D. 700, after
which time that language seems definitely to have been displaced
in favour of Ethiopic or Geez: the condition of the script and
the coins renders them all difficult to identify with the names
preserved in the native lists, which are too fanciful and mutually
contradictory to furnish of themselves even a vestige of history.
For the period between the rise of Islam and the beginning of
the modern history of Abyssinia there are a few notices in Arabic
writers; so we have a notice of a war between Ethiopia anc
Nubia about 687 (C. C. Rossini in Giorn. Soc. Asiat. Ital. x. 141)
and of a letter to George king of Nubia from the king of Abyssinia
some time between 978 and 1003, when a Jewish queen Judith was
oppressing the Christian population (I. Guidi, ibid. iii. 176, 7).
The Abyssinian chronicles, it may be noted, attribute the
foundation of the kingdom to Menelek (or Ibn el-Hakim), son o
Solomon and the queen of Sheba. The Axumite or Menelek
dynasty was driven from northern Abyssinia by Judith, but sooi
after another Christian dynasty, that of the Zagues, obtaine(
power. In 1268 the reigning prince abdicated in favour o
YekOno Amlak, king of Shoa, a descendant of the monarch over
thrown by Judith (see ABYSSINIA).
See A. Dillman, Die Anfinge des axumiliichen Retches (Berlin
1879); E. Drouin, Revue archeol. xliv. (1882): T. Mommsen
Gesckukte der ramuchen Prminun. chap, xiii.; W. Dittenbergcr
Orientit Craeci Inicriplionei telecUu, Nos. 199, 200; Littmann u
Kroncker. Vorberithl der deuttchen Aktum-Expeditum (Berlin, 1906)
and Liftman's subsequent researches.
847
ETHIOPIC LITERATURE
The employment of the Geez or Ethiopic language for literary
>urposes appears to have begun no long lime before the introduc-
ion of Christianity into Abyssinia, and its pagan period is
epresented by two Axumite inscriptions (published by D. H.
Vluller in J. T. Bent's Sacral City of the Ethiopians, 1893), and
in inscription at Matara (published by C. C. Rossini, Rendiconti
Accad. Lincei, 1896). As a literary language it survived its
use as a vernacular, but it is unknown at what time it ceased to
jc the latter. In Sir W. Cornwallis Harris's Highlands of
Aethiopia (1844) there is a list of rather more than 100 works
xtant in Ethiopic; subsequent research has chiefly brought to
ight fresh copies of the same works, but it has contributed some
resh titles. A conspectus of all the MSS. known to exist in
Jurope (over 1200 in number) was published by C. C. Rossini
n 1899 (Rendiconti Accad. Lincei, ser. v. vol. viii.); of these
he largest collection is that in the British Museum, but others
of various sizes are to be found in the chief libraries of Europe.
R. E. Littmann (in the Zeilschrifl fur Assyriologie, xv. andxyi.)
describes two collections at Jerusalem, one of which contains
283 MSS.; and Rossini (Rendiconti, 1904) a collection of 35 MSS.
>elonging to the Catholic mission at Chcren. Other collections
exist in Abyssinia, and many MSS. are in private hands. In
1893 besides portions of the Bible some 40 Ethiopic books had
>een printed in Europe (enumerated in L. Goldschmidt's Biblio-
heca Aethiopica), but many more have since been published. .
Geez literature is ordinarily divided into two periods, of
which the first dates from the establishment of Christianity
n the sth century, and ends somewhere in the 7th; the
second from the re-establishment of the Salomonic dynasty in
1268, continuing to the present time. It consists chiefly of
translations, made in the first period from Greek, in the second
from Arabic. It has no authors of the first or even of the second
rank. Its character as a sacred and literary language is due to
its translation of the Bible, which in the ordinary enumeration
is made to contain 81 books, 46 of the Old Testament, and 35
of the New. These figures are most probably obtained by adding
to the ordinary canonical books Maccabees, Tobil, Judith,
Wisdom, Ecclesiasiicus, Baruch, Jubilees, Enoch, the Ascension
of Isaiah, Ezra IV., Shepherd of Hermas, the Synodos (Canons of
the Apostles), the Book of Adam, and Joseph Ben Gorion. For
the distinction between canonical and apocryphal appears to be
unknown to the Ethiopic Church, whose chief service to Biblical
literature consists in its preservation of various apocryphal
works which other parts of Christendom have lost or possess
only in an imperfect form (see ENOCH; JUBILEES, BOOK OF, &c.).
It should be observed that the Maccabees of the Ethiopic Bible
is an entirely different work from the books of that name included
in the Septuagint, of which, however, the Abyssinians have a
recent version made from the Vulgate; specimens of their
own Maccabees have been published by J. Horovitz in the
Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie, vol. xx. The MSS. of the Biblical
books vary very much, and none of them can claim any great
antiquity; the oldest extant MS. of the four Books of Kings
appears to be one in the Museo Borgiano, presented by King
Amda Sion (1314) to the Virgin Mary in Jerusalem (described
by N. Roupp, ibid. xvi. 296-342). Hence P. de Lagarde supposed
the Ethiopic version to have been made from the Arabic, which
indeed is in accordance with a native tradition. This opinion
is held by few; C. F. A. Dillman distinguished in the case of
the Old Testament three classes of MSS., a versio anliqua, made
from the Septuagint (probably in the Hesychian text), a class
revised from Greek MSS., and a class revised from the Hebrew
(probably through the medium of an Arabic version). An
examination of ten chapters of St Matthew by L. Hackspill
(ibid. vol. xi.) led to the result that the Ethiopic version of the
Gospels was made about A.D. 500, from a Syro-occidental text,
and that this original translation is represented by Cod. Paris.
Aeth. 32; whereas most MSS. and all printed editions contain a
text influenced by the Alexandrian Vulgate, and show traces
of Arabic. Rossini (ibid. x. 232) has made it probable that the
ETHIOPIA
[LITERATURE
Abba Salama, whom the native tradition identifies with Fru-
mentius, evangelist of Abyssinia, to whom the translation of the
Bible was ascribed, was in reality a Metropolitan of the early
i4th century, who revised the corrupt text then current. Of
the ancient translation the latest book is said to be Ecclesiasticus,
translated in the year 678. The New Testament has been
published repeatedly (first in Rome, 1548-1549; some letters
about its publication were edited by I. Guidi in the Archivio della
Soc. Rom. di Storia Pafria, 1886), and C. F. A. Dillmann edited
a critical text of most of the. Old Testament and Apocrypha,
but did not live to complete it; portions have been edited by
J. Bachmann and others.
Other translations thought to belong to the first period are
the Sher'ata Makhbdr, ascribed to S. Pachomius; the Kerilos,
a collection of homilies and tracts, beginning with Cyril of
Alexandria De recta fide; and the Physiologus, a fanciful work
on Natural History (edited by F. Hommel, Leipzig, 1877).
Of the works belonging to the second period much the most
important are those which deal with Abyssinian history. A
court official, called sahafe te ezdzenet (secretary), having under
him a staff of scribes, was employed to draw up the public annals
year by year; and on these official compositions the Abyssinian
histories are based. The earliest part of the Axum chronicle
preserved is that recording the wars of Amda Sion (1314-1344)
against the Moslems; it is doubtful, however, whether even
this exists in its original form, as some scholars think; according
to its editor (J. Perruchon in the Journ. Asial. for 1889) it is
preserved in a recension of the time of King Zar'a Ya'kub. Under
King Lebna Dengel (1508-1540) the annals of his four pre-
decessors, Zar'a Ya'kub, Baeda Maryam, Eskender and Na'od
(1434-1508) were drawn up; those of the first two were published
by J. Perruchon (Paris, 1893); in the Journ. Asiat. for 1894
the same scholar published a further fragment of the history
of Baeda Maryam, written by the tutor to the king's children,
and the history of Eskender, Amda Sion II. and Na'od as com-
piled in Lebna Dengel's time. The history of Lebna Dengel was
published by the same scholar {Journ. Scmit. i. 274) and Rossini
(Rendiconli, 1894, v. p. 617); that of his successor Claudius
(1540-1559) by Conzelmann (Paris, 1895); that of his successor
Minas (1559-1563) by F. M. E. Pereira (Lisbon, 1888); those
of the three following kings, Sharsa Dengel, Za Dengel, and
Ya'kub, by Rossini (Rcndiconti, 1893). The history of the next
king Sysenius (1606-1632) by Abba Meherka Dengel and Tekla
Shelase was edited by Pereira (Lisbon, 1892); the chronicles
of Joannes I., lyasu I. and Bakaffa (1682-1730) by I. Guidi,
with a French translation (Paris, 1903-1905); all are con-
temporary, and the names of the chroniclers of the last two
kings are recorded. Besides these we have the partly fabulous
chronicle of Lalibela (of uncertain date, but before the Salo-
monian dynasty was restored), edited by Perruchon (Paris,
1892); and a brief chronicle of Abyssinia, drawn up in the reign
of lyasu II. (1729-1753), embodying materials abridged, but
often unaltered, was published by R. Basset, in the Journ.
Asial. for 1882 (cf. Rossini in the Rendiconti, 1893-1894, p. 668),
and has since formed the basis for Abyssinian history. Many
compilations of the sort exist in MS. in libraries, and great praise
is bestowed on the one which E. Ruppell, when travelling in
Abyssinia, ordered to be drawn up for his use. It is now in the
collection of his MSS. at Frankfurt. Ethiopic scholars speak of a
special " historical style " which comes from the mixture of the
styles of different periods, and the admixture of Amharic phrases
and idioms. The historian of the wars of Amda Sion is credited
with some literary merit; most of the chroniclers have little.
The remaining literature of the second period is thought to
begin somewhat earlier than these chronicles. To the time of
King Yekuno Amlak (1268-1283) the historical romance called
Kebra Nagaset (Glory of Kings) is assigned by its editor, C.
Bezold (Bavarian Academy, 1904); other scholars gave it a
somewhat later date. Its purpose is to glorify the Salomonian
dynasty, whence, in spite of a colophon which declares it to be
a translation, it was regarded as an original work; since, how-
ever, it shows evident signs of having been translated from Arabic,
Bezold supposes that its author, Ishak, was an immigrant whose
native language was Arabic, in which therefore he would natur-
ally write the first draft of his book. To the time of Yagbea Sion
(ob. 1 294) belongs the Vision of the Prophet Habakkuk in Kartasd,
as also the works of Abba Salama, regarded as the founder of the
Ethiopic renaissance, one of whose sermons is preserved in a
Cheren MS. With his name are connected the Acts of the Passion,
the Service for the Dead and the translation of Philexius, i.e.
Philoxenus. King Zar'a Ya'kub composed or had composed for
him as many as seven books; the most important of these is the
Book of Light (Mashafa Berhan), paraphrased as Kirchenordnung,
by Dillmann, who gave an analysis of its contents (Uber die
Regicrung des Konigs Zar'a Ya'kob, Berl. Acad., 1884). He also
organized the compilation of the Miracles of the Virgin Mary,
one of the most popular of Ethiopic books; a magnificent edition
was printed by E. W. Budge in the Meux collection (London,
1900). In the same reign the Arabic chronicle of al-Makm was
translated into Geez. Under Lebna Dengel (ob. 1540), besides
the above-mentioned collection of chronicles, we hear of the
translation from the Arabic of the history and martyrdom of
St George, the Commentary of J. Chrysostom on the Epistle
to the Hebrews, and the ascetic works of J. Saba called Aragdivi
manfasdwl. Under Claudius (1540-1559) Maba Sion is said to
have translated from the Arabic The Faith of the Fathers, a vast
compilation, including the Didascalia Apostolorum (edited by
Platt, London, 1834), and the Creed of Jacob Baradaeus (pub-
lished by Cornill, ZDMG. xxx. 417-466), and to the same reign
belong the Book of Extreme Unction (Mashafa Kandll), and the
religious romance Barlaam et Joasaph also paraphrased from
the Arabic (partly edited by A. Zotenberg in Notices et Exlraits,
vol. xxviii.). The Confession of Faith of King Claudius has been
repeatedly printed. The reign of Sharsa Dengel (ob. 1595) was
marked by many literary monuments, such as the religious and
controversial compilation called Mazmura Chrestos, and the
translation, by a certain" Salik, of the religious encyclopaedia
(Mashafa Haia) of the monk Nikon; an Arab merchant from
Yemen, who took on conversion the name Anbakom (Habakkuk),
translated a number of books from the Arabic. Under Ya'kub
(ob. 1605) the valuable chronicle of John of Nikiou was translated
from Arabic (edited by A. Zotenberg with French translation in
Notices et extraits, vol. xxiv.). Under John, about 1687, the
Spiritual Medicine of Michael, bishop of Adtrib and Malig, was
translated. The literature that is not accurately dated consists
largely of liturgies, prayers and hymns; Ethiopic poetry is
chiefly, if not entirely, represented by the last of these, the most
popular work of the kind being an ode in praise of the Virgin,
called Weddase Maryam (edited by K. Fries, Leipzig, 1892).
Various hymn-books bear the names Degua, Zemmare and
Mawas'et (Antiphones) ; there is also a biblical history in verse
called Mashafa Madbal or Mestira Zamdn. Homilies also exist
in large numbers, both original and translated, sometimes after
the Arabic fashion in rhymed prose. Hagiology is naturally
an important department in Ethiopic literature. In the great
collection called Synaxar (translated originally from Arabic,
but with large additions) for each day of the year there is the
history of one or more saints; an attempt has been made by
H. Diinsing (1900) to derive some actual history from it. Many
texts containing lives of individual saints have been issued.
Such are those of Maba Sion and Gabra Chrestos, edited by Budge
in the Meux collection (London, 1899); the Acts of S. Mercurius,
of which a fragment was edited by Rossini (Rome, 1904); the
unique MS. of the original, one of the most extensive works in the
Geez language, was burned by thieves who set fire to the editor's
house. The same scholar began a series of Vitae Sanctorum
antiquiorum, while Monumenta Aelhiopiae hagiologica and Vitae
Sanctorum indigenarum have been edited by B. Turaiev (Leipzig
and St Petersburg, 1902, and Rome, 1905). Other lives have been
edited by Pereira, Guidi, &c. Similar in historical value to these
works is the History of the Exploits of Alexander, of which various
recensions have been edited by Budge (London, 1895). See
further ALEXANDER THE GREAT, section on the legends, ad fin.
Of Law the most important monument is the Fatha Nagaset
ETHNOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY
849
(Judgment of Kings), of which an official edition was issued by
I i .uiili (Rome, 1890), with an Italian translation; it is a version
probably made in the early i6th century of the Arabic code of
Ibn 'Assal, of the uth century, whose work, being meant for
Christians living under Moslem rule, was not altogether suitable
for an independent Christian kingdom; yet the need for such
a code made it popular and authoritative in Abyssinia. The
translator was not quite equal to his task, and the Brit. Mus.
MS. 800 exhibits an attempt to correct it from the original.
Science can scarcely be said to exist in dccz literature, unless a
medical treatise, of which the British Museum possesses a copy,
comes under this head. Philosophy is mainly represented by
mystical commentaries on Scripture, such as the Book of the
Mystery of Heaven and Earth, by Ba-Hailu Michael, probably of
the i sth century, edited by Perruchon and Guidi (Paris, 1903).
There is, however, a translation of the Book of the Wise Philo-
sophers, made by Michael, son of Abba Michael, consisting of
various aphorisms; specimens have been edited by Dillmann in
his Chrestomathy, and J. Cornill (Leipzig, 1876). There is also
a translation of Secundus the Silent, edited by Bachmann (Berlin,
1888). Far more interesting than these is the treatise of Zar'a
Ya'kub of Axum, composed in the year 1660 (edited by Litt-
mann, 1004), which contains an endeavour to evolve rules of
life according to nature. The author reviews the codes of
Moses, the Gospel and the Koran, and decides that all contravene
the obvious intentions of the Creator. He also gives some
details of his own life and his occupation of scribe. A less
original treatise by Walda Haywat accompanies it. Epistolo-
graphy is represented by the diplomatic correspondence of some
of the kings with the Portuguese and Spanish courts; some
documents of this sort have been edited by C. Bcccari, Documcnti
inrditi per la storia d' Etiopia (Rome, 1003); lexicography, by
the vocabulary called Sau'dseic. The first Ethiopic book printed
was the Psalter (Rome, 1513), by John Potken of Cologne, the
first European who studied the language.
See C. C. Rossini, " Note per la storia letteraria Abissina," in
Rcndiconti delta R. Accad. dei Lincei (1899); Fumagalli, Bibliografia
Etiopica (1893); Basset. Eludes sur I'histoire de I Ethiopia (1882);
Catalogues of various libraries, especially British Museum (Wright),
Paris (Zotenberg), Oxford and Berlin (Dillmann), Frankfurt (Gold-
schmidt ). Plates illustrating Ethiopic palaeography arc to be found
in Wright's Catalogue; an account of the illustrations in Ethiopic
MSS. u given by Budge in his Life of Maba Sion; and a collection
of inscriptions in the church of St Stefano dei Mori, in Rome, by
Gallina in the Architio delta Soc. Rom. di Storia Patria (1888).
(D. S. M.*)
ETHNOLOGY and ETHNOGRAPHY (from the Gr. Wvos, race,
and XOTOJ, science, or ypa.ijxu', to write), sciences which in their
narrowest sense deal respectively with man as a racial unit
(mankind), i.e. his development through the family and tribal
stages into national life, and with the distribution over the earth
of the races and nations thus formed. Though the etymology of
the words permits in theory of this line of division between
ethnology and ethnography, in practice they form an indivisible
study of man's progress from the point at which anthropology
(g.t.) leaves him.
Ethnology is thus the general name for investigations of the
widest character, including subjects which in this encyclopaedia
are dealt with in detail under separate headings, such as ARCHAE-
OLOGY, ART (and allied articles), COMMERCE, GEOGRAPHY (and
the headings for countries and tribes), FAMILY, NAME, ETHICS,
LAW, MYTHOLOGY, FOLK-LORE (and allied articles), PHILOLOGY
(and allied articles), AGRICULTURE, ARCHITECTURE, RELIGION,
SOCIOLOGY, &c., &c. It covers generally the whole history of
the material and intellectual development of man, as it has
passed through the stages of (a) hunting and fishing, (6) sheep
and cattle tending, (c) agriculture, (d) industry. It investigates
his food, his weapons, tools and implements, his housing, his
social, economic and commercial organization, forms of govern-
ment, language, art, literature, morals, superstitions and religious
systems. In this sense ethnology is the older term for what now
is called sociology. At the present day the progress of research
has in practice, however, restricted the "ethnologist" as a
rule to the stndy of one or more branches only of so wide a
subject, and the word " ethnology " is used with a somewhat
vague meaning for any ethnological study; each country or
nation has thus its own separate ethnology. It becomes more
convenient, therefore, to deal with the ethnology as a special
subject in each case. " Ethnography," in so far as it has a
distinctive province, is then conveniently restricted to the
scientific mapping out of different racial regions, nations and
tribes; and it is only necessary here to refer the reader to the
separate articles on continents, &c., where this is done. The
only fundamental problem which need here be referred to is
that of the whole question of the division of mankind into
separate races at all, which is consequential on the earlier problem
(dealt with in the article ANTHROPOLOGY) as to man's origin and
antiquity.
If we assume that man existed on the earth in remote geological
time, the question arises, was this pleistocene man specifically
one? What evidence is there that he represented in his different
habitats a series of varieties of one species rather than a series
of species? The evidence is of three kinds, (i) anatomical,
(2) physiological, (3) cultural and psychical.
i. Dr Robert Munro, in his address to the Anthropological
section of the British Association in 1893, said: " All the
osseous remains of man which have hitherto been collected and
examined point to the fact that, during the larger portion of the
quarternary period, if not, indeed, from its very commencement,
he had already acquired his human characteristics." By
" characteristics " is here meant those anatomical ones which
distinguish man from other animals, not the physical criteria of
the various races. Do, then, these anatomical characteristics
of pleistocene man show such differences among themselves and
between them and the types of man existing to-day as to justify
the assumption that there has ever been more than one species
of man?
The undoubted " osseous remains " of pleistocene man are
few. Burial was not practised, and the few bones found are for
the most part those which have by mere chance been preserved
in caves or rock-shelters. Of these the three chief " finds,"
in order of probable age, are the Trinil (Java) brain-cap, the lowest
human skull yet described, characterized by depressed cranial
arch, with a cephalic index of 70; the Neanderthal (Germany)
skull, remarkable for its flat retreating curve with an index
of 73-76; and the two nearly perfect skeletons found at Spy
(Belgium), the skulls of which exhibit enormous brow ridges
with cranial indices of 70 and 75. All these skulls, taken in
conjunction with other well-authenticated human remains such
as those found at La Naulette (Belgium), Shipka (Balkan
Peninsula), Olmo (Italy), Predmert (Bohemia) and in Argentina
and Brazil, make it possible to reconstruct anatomically the vary-
ing types of pleistocene man, and to establish the fact that in
essential features the same primitive type has persisted through
all time. The skeleton bones show differences so slight as to
admit of pathological or other explanation. What Professor
Kollmann says of man to-day was true in the remotest ages.
Referring to Cuvier's statement that from a single bone it is
possible to determine the very species to which an animal belongs,
he says, " Precisely on this ground I have mainly concluded that
the existence of several human species cannot be recognized, for
we arc unacquainted with a single tribe from a single bone of
which we might with certainty determine to what species it
belonged." Such differences as the bones exhibit are progressive
modifications towards the higher neolithic and modern types, and
are in themselves entirely incapable of supporting the theory
that the owner of the Trinil skull, say, and the ' man of Spy "
belonged to separate species. All these " osseous remains "
belong to the palaeolithic period, and from the cranial indices
it is thus clear that palaeolithic man was long-headed. Neolithic
man is, speaking generally, round-headed, and it has been urged
that round-headcdncss is entirely synchronous with the neolithic
age, and that the long-headed palaeolithic species of mankind
gave place all at once to the round-headed neolithic species.
The point thus raised involves the physiological as well as,
indeed more than, the anatomical proofs of man's specific unity.
850
ETHNOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY
2. All physiologists agree that species cannot breed with
species. Darwin himself laid it down as a fundamental principle.
If then the palaeolithic and neolithic types represented separate
species, they would be found to remain distinct through all time.
This is not the case. There is evidence that extreme dolicho-
cephaly continued into neolithic times, and was only slowly
modified into brachycephaly. In the neolithic caves of Italy,
Austria, Belgium, and the barrows of Great Britain, skulls of
all types are found. The later cave-dwellers and early dolmen
builders of Europe were at first long-headed, then of medium
type, and finally in some places exclusively round-headed. In
England the round-heads appear to be synchronous with the
metal age, as shown by the contents of the barrows, and, as on
the continental mainland, the two types gradually blended.
Permanent fertility between them in prehistoric Europe is thus
proved. And this is the case throughout the habitable globe.
An examination of the osseous remains of American man supports
the view that the human species has not varied since quaternary
times. The palaeolithic type is to be found among modern
European populations. Certain skulls from South Australia
seem cast in almost the same mould as the Neanderthal. After
thousands of years nearly pure descendants of quaternary man
are found among living races. And man's mutual fertility in
prehistoric is repeated throughout historic times: strict racial
purity is almost unknown. Thus the unity of the species man
is proved by the test of fertility.
3. The works of early man everywhere present the most
startling resemblance. The palaeolithic implements all over the
globe are all of one pattern. " The implements in distant lands,"
writes Sir J. Evans, " are so identical in form and character with
the British specimens that they might have been manufactured by
the same hands. ... On the banks of the Nile, many hundreds
of feet above its present level, implements of the European types
have been discovered; while in Somaliland, in an ancient river-
valley at a great elevation above the sea, Sir H.W. Seton-Karr
has collected a large number of implements formed of flint and
quartzite, which, judging from their form and character, might
have been dug out of the drift-deposits of the Somme and the
Seine, the Thames or the ancient Solent." This identity in the
earliest arts is repeated in the later stages of man's culture;
his arts and crafts, his manners and customs, exhibit a similarity
so close as to compel the presumption that all the races are but
divisions of one family. But perhaps the greatest psychical
proof of man's specific unity is his common possession of language.
Theodore Waitz writes : "Inasmuch as the possession of a language
of regular 'grammatical structure forms a fixed barrier between
man and brute, it establishes at the same time a near relationship
between all people in psychical respects. ... In the presence
of this common feature of the human mind, all other differences
lose their import " (Anthropology, p. 273). As Dr J. C. Prichard
urged, " the same inward and mental nature is to be recognized
in all races of men. When we compare this fact with the observa-
tions, fully established, as to the specific instincts and separate
psychical endowments of all the distinct tribes of sentient beings
in the Universe we are entitled to draw confidently the conclusion
that all human races are of one species and one family." It
has been argued that stock languages imply stock races, but
this assumption is untenable. There are some fifty irreducible
stock languages in the United States and Canada, yet, taking
into consideration the physical and moral homogeneity of the
American Indian races, he would be a reckless theorist who held
that there were therefore fifty separate human species! If it
were so, how have they descended? There are no anthropoid
apes in America, none of the ape family higher than the Cebidae,
from which it is impossible to trace men. Again, in Australia
there is certainly one stock language, yet there are not even
Cebidae. In Caucasia, there are many distinct forms of speech,
yet all the peoples belong to the Caucasic division of mankind.
Man, then, may be regarded as specifically one, and thus he
must have had an original cradle-land, whence the peopling of
the earth was brought about by migration. The evidence tends
to prove that the world was peopled by a generalized proto-
human form. Each division of mankind would thus have had
its pleistocene ancestors, and would have become differentiated
into races by the influence of climatic and other surroundings.
As to the man's cradle-land there have been many theories, but the
weight of evidence is in favour of Indo-Malaysia.
Of all animals man's range alone coincides with that of the
habitable globe, and the real difficulty of the " cradle-land "
theory lay in explaining how the human race spread to every
land. This problem has been met by geology, which proves
that the earth's surface has undergone great changes since man's
appearance, and that continents, long since submerged, once
existed, making a complete land communication from Indo-
Malaysia. The evidence for the Indo-African continent has been
summed up by R. D. Oldham, 1 and proofs no less cogent are
available of the former existence of an Eurafrican continent,
while the extension of Australia in the direction of New Guinea
is more than probable. Thus the ancestor of man was free
to move in all directions over the eastern hemisphere. The
western hemisphere was more than probably connected with
Europe and Asia, in Tertiary times, by a continent, the existence
of which is evidenced by a submarine bank stretching from
Scotland through the Faeroes and Iceland to Greenland, and
on the other side by continuous land at what is now the Behring
Straits.
Acclimatization has been urged as an argument against the
cradle-land theory, but the peopling of the globe took place in
inter-Glacial if not pre-Glacial ages, when the climate was much
milder everywhere, and thus pleistocene man met no climatic
difficulties in his migrations.
Probably before the close of Palaeolithic times all the primary
divisions of man were specialized in their several habitats by the
influence of their surroundings. The profound effect of climate
is seen in the relative culture of races. Thus, tropical countries
are inhabited by savage or semi-savage peoples, while the higher
races are confined to temperate zones. The primary divisions
of mankind, Ethiopic, Mongolic, Caucasic, were certainly
differentiated in neolithic times, and these criteria had almost
certainly occurred not consecutively in one area but simultane-
ously in several -areas. A Negro was not metamorphosed into a
Mongol, nor the latter into a White, but the several semi-simian
precursors under varying environments developed into general-
ized Negro, generalized Mongol, generalized Caucasian.
Taking, then, these three primary divisions as those into
1 Writing in the Geographical Journal, March 1894, on " Evolution
of Indian Geography," he says: "The plants of Indian and African
coal measures are without exception identical, and among the few
animals which have been found in India one is indistinguishable
from an African species, another is closely allied, and both faunas
are characterized by the very remarkable genus group of reptiles
comprising the Dicynodon and other allied forms (see Manual of
Geology of India, 2nd ed. p. 203). These, however, are not the only
analogies, for near the coast of South Africa there are developed a
series of beds containing the plant fossils in the lower part and
marine shells in the upper, known as the Uitenhage series, which
corresponds exactly to the small patches of the Rajmahal series
along the east coast of India. The few plant forms found in the
lower beds of Africa are mostly identical with or closely allied to the
Rajmahal species, while of the very few marine shells in the Indian
outcrops, which are sufficiently well preserved for identification, at
least one species is identical with an African form. These very
close relationships between the plants and animals of India and
Africa at this remote period appear inexplicable unless there were
direct land communications between them over what is now the
Indian Ocean. On the east coast of India in the Khasi Hills, and
on the coast of South Africa, the marine fossils of late Jurassic and
early cretaceous age are largely identical with, or very closely allied
to each other, showing that they must have been inhabitants of one
and the same great sea. In western India the fossils of the same age
belong to a fauna which is found in the north of Madagascar, in
northern and eastern Africa, in western Asia, and ranges into Europe
a fauna differing so radically from that of the eastern exposures
that only a few specimens of world-wide range are found in both.
Seeing that the distances between the separate outcrops containing
representatives of the two faunas are much less than those separating
the outcrops from the nearest ones of the same fauna, the only
possible explanation of the facts is that there was a continuous
stretch of dry land connecting South Africa and India and separating
two distinct marine zoological provinces."
ETHYL ETHYLENE
851
which it is most reasonable broadly to divide mankind they
may be analysed as to their racial constituents and their habitats
as follows:
1. Caucasic or White Man is best divided, following Huxley,
into (it) Xanthochroi or " fair whites " and (A) Melanochroi or
" dark whites." (a) The first tall, with almost colourless skin,
blue or grey eyes, hair from straw colour to chestnut, and skulls
varying as to proportionate width arc the prevalent inhabitants
of Northern Europe, and the type may be traced into North
Africa and eastward as far as India. On the south and west it
mixes with that of the Melanochroi and on the north and east
with that of the Mongoloids, (b) The " dark whites " differ
from the fair whites in the darkening of the complexion to
brownish and olive, and of the eyes and hair to black, while the
stature is somewhat lowerand the frame lighter. Tothis division
belong a large pan of those classed as Celts, and of the popula-
tions of Southern Europe, such as Spaniards, Greeks and Arabs,
extending as far as India, while endless intermediate grades
between the two white types testify to ages of intermingling.
Besides these two main types, the Caucasic division of mankind
has been held with much reason to include such aberrant types
as the brown Polynesian races of the Eastern Pacific, Samoans,
Hawaiians, Maoris, &c., the proto-Malay peoples of the Eastern
archipelago, sometimes termed Indonesians, represented by
the Dyaks of Borneo and the Battaks of Sumatra, the Todas
of India and the Ainus of Japan.
2. Mongolic or Yellow Man prevails over the vast area lying
east of a line drawn from Lapland to Siam. His physical charac-
teristics are a short squat body, a yellowish-brown or coppery
complexion, hair lank, straight and black, flat small nose, broad
skull, usually without prominent brow-ridges, and black oblique
eyes. Of the typical Mongolic races the chief are the Chinese,
Tibetans, Burmese, Siamese; the Finnic group of races occupy-
ing Northern Europe, such as Finns, Lapps, Samoyedes and
Ost yaks, and the Arctic Asiatic group represented by the Chukchis
and Kamchadales; the Tunguses, Gilyaks and Golds north of,
and the Mongols proper west of, Manchuria; the pure Turkic
peoples and the Japanese and Koreans. Less typical, but with
the Mongolic elements so predominant as to warrant inclusion,
are the Malay peoples of the Eastern archipelago. Lastly,
though differentiated in many ways from the true Mongol, the
American races from the Eskimo to the Fuegians must be
reckoned in the Yellow division of mankind.
3. Negroid or Black Man is primarily represented by the
Negro of Africa between the Sahara and the Cape district,
including Madagascar. The skin varies from dark brown to
brown-black, with eyes of the same colour, and hair usually
black and always crisp or woolly. The skull is narrow, with
orbital ridges not prominent, the jaws protrude,, the nose is
flat and broad, and the lips thick and everted. Two important
families are classed in this division; some authorities hold,
as special modifications of the typical Negro to-day, others as
actually nearer the true generalized Negroid type of neolithic
times. First are the Bushman of South Africa, diminutive
in stature and of a yellowish-brown colour: the neighbouring
Hottentot is believed to be the result of crossing between the
Bushman and the true Negro. Second are the large Negrito
family, represented in Africa by the dwarf races of the equatorial
forests, the Akkas, Batwas, Wochuas and others, and beyond
Africa by the Andaman Islanders, the Aetas of the Philippines,
and probably the Senangs and other aboriginal tribes of the
Malay Peninsula. The Negroid type seems to have been the
earliest predominant in the South Sea islands, but it is impossible
to say certainly whether it is itself derived from the Negrito,
or the latter is a modification of it, as has been suggested above.
In Melanesia, the Papuans of New Guinea, of New Caledonia,
and other islands, represent a more or less Negroid type, as did
the now extinct Tasmanians.
Excluded from this survey of the grouping of Man are the
aborigines of Australia, whose ethnical affinities are much
disputed. Probably they are to be reckoned as Dravidians, a
very remote blend of Caucasic and Negro man. For a detailed
discussion of the branches of these three main divisions of Man
the reader must refer to articles under race headings, and to
NEGRO; NEGRITOS; MONGOLS; MALAYS; INDIANS, NORTH
AMERICAN; AUSTRALIA; AFRICA; &c., &c.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. J.C. Prichard, Natural History of Man (London,
1843), Researches into the Physical History of Mankind (5 vols.,
1836-1847); T. II. Huxley, Man's Place in Nature (London, 1863),
and " Geographical Distribution of Chief Modifications of Man-
kind," in Journ. Anthropological Institute for 1870; Theodore Waitr,
Anthropologie der Naturvolker (1859-1871); A. de Quatrefages,
Ilistoire genfrale des races humaines (Paris, 1889); ET B. Tylor,
Anthropology (1881); Lord Avt-bury, Prehistoric Times (1865;
6th ed., 1900) and Origin of Civilization (1870; 6th ed., 1902); F.
Ratzcl, History of Mankind (Eng. trans., 1897); A. H. Kr:mr,
Ethnology (2nd ed., 1897), and Alan: Past and Present (2nd ed.,
1899); G. de Mortillet, Le Prehistorique (Paris, 1882; 3rd ed.,
1900); D. G. Brinton, Races and Peoples (1890); J. Deniker, Tht
Races of Man (London, 1900); Hutchmson's Living Races of Man-
kind (1906).
ETHYL, in chemistry, the name given to the alkyl radical
CjHj. The compounds containing this radical are treated
under other headings; the hydride is better known as ethane,
the alcohol, CjHsOH, is the ordinary alcohol of commerce, and
the oxide (CjH 6 )jO is ordinary ether.
ETHYL CHLORIDE, or HYDROCHLORIC ETHER, C 2 H,C1, a
chemical compound prepared by passing dry hydrochloric acid
gas into absolute alcohol. It is a colourless liquid with a sweetish
burning taste and an agreeable odour. It is extremely volatile,
boiling at 12-5 C. (54-5 F.), and is therefore a gas at ordinary
room temperatures; it is stored in glass tubes fitted with screw-
capped nozzles. The vapour burns with a smoky green-edged
flame. It is largely used in dentistry and slight surgical opera-
tions to produce local anaesthesia (q.v.), and is known by the
trade-name kelene. More volatile anaesthetics such as anestile
or anaesthyl and coryl are produced by mixing with methyl
chloride; a mixture of ethyl and methyl chlorides with ethyl
bromide is known as somnoform.
ETHYLENE, or ETHENE, C 2 H<, or H 2 C:CH 3 , the first repre-
sentative of the series of olefine hydrocarbons, is found in coal
gas. It is usually prepared by healing a mixture of ethyl alcohol
and sulphuric acid. G. S. Newth (Jour. Chem. Soc., 1901, 79,
p. 915) obtains a purer product by dropping ethyl alcohol into
syrupy phosphoric acid (sp. gr. 1-75) warmed to 200 C., sub-
sequently raising the temperature to 220 C. It can also be
obtained by the action of sodium on ethylidene chloride (B.
Tollens, Ann., 1866, 137, p. 311); by the reduction of copper
acetylide with zinc dust and ammonia; by heating ethyl
bromide with an alcoholic solution of caustic potash ; by passing
a mixture of carbon bisulphide and sulphuretted hydrogen over
red-hot copper; and by the electrolysis of a concentrated solution
of potassium succinate,
(CH,-CO,K),+2H,O-C,H4+2CO,+2KOH+H,.
It is a colourless gas of somewhat sweetish taste; it is slightly
soluble in water, but more so in alcohol and ether. It can be
liquefied at-i-i C., under a pressure of 42! atmos. It solidifies
at-i8i C. and melts at-i69 C. (K. Olszewski); it boils at
-105 C. (L. P. Cailletet), or-io2 10-103 C. (K. Olszewski).
Its critical temperature is 13 C., and its specific gravity is 0-9784
(air= i). The specific gravity of liquid ethylene is 0-386 (3 C.).
Ethylene burns with a bright luminous flame, and forms a very
explosive mixture with oxygen. For the combustion of ethylene
see PLAICE. On strong heating it decomposes, giving, among
other products, carbon, methane and acetylene (M. Berthelot,
Ann., 1866, 139, p. 277). Being an unsat united hydrocarbon,
it is capable of forming addition products, e.g. it combines with
hydrogen in the presence of platinum black, to form ethane,
CjH 4 , with sulphur trioxide to form carbyl sulphate, C s H 4 (SOj)i,
with hydrobromic and hydriodic acids at 100 C. to form ethyl
bromide, C 2 H 4 Br, and ethyl iodide, C 2 HJ, with sulphuric acid
at 160-170 C. to form ethyl sulphuric acid, CjHfHSOu, and with
hypochlorous acid toi form glycol chlorhydrin, Cl-CHj-CHj-OH.
Dilute potassium permanganate solution oxidizes it to ethylene
glycol, HO-CHj-CHj-OH, whilst fuming nitric acid converts it
into oxalic acid. Several compounds of ethylene and metallic
8 5 2
ETIENNE ETNA
chlorides are known; e.g. ferric chloride in the presence of ether
at 150 C. gives C 2 H4-FeCl 3 -2H 2 O (J. Kachtler, Ber., 1869, 2,
p. 510), while platinum bichloride in concentrated hydrochloric
acid solution absorbs ethylene, forming the compound C 2 H 4 -PtCl 2
(K. Birnbaum, Ann., 1868, 145, p. 69).
6TIENNE, CHARLES GUILLAUME (1778-1845), French
dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born near Saint Dizier,
Haute Marne, on the 5th of January 1778. He held various
municipal offices under the Revolution and came in 1796 to
Paris, where he produced his first opera, Le Reve, in 1799, in
collaboration with Antoine Frederic Gresnick. Although
Etienne continued to write for the Paris theatres for twenty
years from that date, he is remembered chiefly as the author
of one comedy, which excited considerable controversy. Les
Deux Gendres was represented at the Theatre Francais on the
nth of August 1810, and procured for its author a seat in the
Academy. A rumour was put in circulation that fitienne had
drawn largely on a manuscript play in the imperial library,
entitled Conaxa, ou les gendres dupes. His rivals were not slow
to take up the charge of plagiarism, to which Etienne replied
that the story was an old one (it existed in an old French fabliau)
and had already been treated by Alexis Piron in Les Fils ingrats.
He was, however, driven later to make admissions which at
least showed a certain lack of candour. The bitterness of the
attacks made on him was no doubt in part due to his position
as editor-in-chief of the official Journal de I' Empire. His next
play, L' Intrigante (1812), hardly maintained the high level of
Les Deux Gendres; the patriotic opera L'Oriflamme and his lyric
masterpiece Joconde date from 1814. fitienne had been secretary
to Hugues Bernard Maret, due de Bassano, and in this capacity
had accompanied Napoleon throughout his campaigns in Italy,
Germany, Austria and Poland. During these journeys he pro-
duced one of his best pieces, Brueys el Palaprat (1807). During
the Restoration fiticnne was an active member of the opposition.
He was seven times returned as deputy for the department of
Meuse, and was in full sympathy with the revolution of 1830,
but the reforms actually carried out did not fulfil his expectations,
and he gradually retired from public life. Among his other
plays may be noted: Les Deux Meres, Le Pacha de Suresnes, and
La Petite Ecole des peres, all produced in 1802, in collaboration
with his friend Gaugiran de Nanteuil ( 1 7 7 8-1 830) . Wit h Alphonse
Dieudonne Martainville (1779-1830) he wrote an Histoire du
Theatre Franqais (4 vols., 1802) during the revolutionary period,
fitienne was a bitter opponent of the romanticists, one of whom,
Alfred de Vigny, was his successor and panegyrist in the Academy.
He died on the i3th of March 1845.
His (Euvres (6 vols., 1846-1853) contain a notice of the author by
L. Thiesse.
ETIQUETTE, a term for ceremonial usage, the rules of be-
haviour observed in society, more particularly the formal rules
of ceremony to be observed at court functions, &c., the pro-
cedure, especially with regard to precedence and promotions
in an organized body or society. Professions, such as the law
or medicine, observe a code of etiquette, which the members
must observe as protecting the dignity of the profession and
preventing injury to its members. The word is French. The
O. Fr. estiquelte or estiquet meant a label, or " ticket," the true
English derivative. The ultimate origin is Teutonic, from
sticken, to post up, stick, affix. Cotgrave explains the word in
French as a billet for the benefit or advantage of him that receives
it, a form of introduction and also a notice affixed at the gate
of a court of law. The development of meaning in French from
a label to ceremonial rules is not difficult in itself, but, as the
New English Dictionary points out, the history has not been
clearly established.
ETNA (Gr. \lrvrj, from aWw, burn; Lat. Aetna), a volcano on
the east coast of Sicily, the summit of which is 18 m. N. by W.
of Catania. Its height was ascertained to be 10,758 ft. in 1900,
having decreased from 10,870 ft. in 1861. It covers about 460
sq. m., and by rail the distance round the base of the mountain
is 86 m., though, as the railway in some places travels high, the
correct measurement is about 91 m. The height cannot have
been very different in ancient times, for the so-called Torre del
Filosofo, which is only 1188 ft. below the present summit, is a
building of Roman date. The shape is that of a truncated cone,
interrupted on the west by the Valle del Bove, a huge sterile
abyss, 3 m. wide, bounded on three sides by perpendicular
cliffs (2000 to 4000 ft.). Its south-west portion, which is the
deepest, was perhaps the original crater. There are also some
200 subsidiary cones, some of them over 3000 ft. high, which
have risen over lateral fissures. On the slopes of the mountain
there are three distinct zones of vegetation, distinguished by
Strabo (vi. p. 273 ff.). The lowest, up to about 3000 ft., is the
zone of cultivation, where vegetables, and above them where
water is more scanty, vines and olives flourish. Owing to its
extraordinary fertility it is dense y populated, having 930
inhabitants per sq. m. below 2600 ft., and 3056 inhabitants
per sq. m. in the triangle between Catania, Nicolosi and Acireale.
The next zone is the wooded zone, and is hardly inhabited, only
a few isolated houses occurring. The lower part of it (up to
about 6000 ft.) consists chiefly of forests of evergreen pines
(Pinus nigricans), the upper (up to about 6800 ft.) of birchwoods
(Betula alba). A few oaks and red beeches occur, while chestnut
trees grow anywhere between 1000 and 5300 ft. In the third and
highest zone the vegetation is stunted, and there is a narrow zone
of sub-Alpine shrubs, but no Alpine flora. In the last 2000 ft.
five phanerogamous species only are to be found, the first three
of which are peculiar to the mountain : Senecio Etnensis (which
is found quite close to the crater), Anthemis Elnensis, Robertsia
taraxacoides, Tanacetum vulgare and Astragalus siculus. No trace
of animal life is to be found in this zone; for the greater part of
the year it is covered with snow, but by the end of summer this
has almost all melted, except for that preserved in the covered
pits in which it is stored for use for cooling liquids, &c., in Catania
and elsewhere. The ascent is best undertaken in summer or
autumn. From the village of Nicolosi, 9 m. to the N.W. of
Catania, about 7 or 8 hours are required to reach the summit.
Thucydides mentions eruptions in the 8th and sth centuries B.C.,
and others are mentioned by Livy in 1 25, 121 and 43 B.C. Catania
was overwhelmed in 1169, and many other serious eruptions are
recorded, notably in 1669, 1830, 1852, 1865, 1879, 1886, 1892,
1899 and March 1910.
According to Lyell, Etna is rather older than Vesuvius
perhaps of the same geological age as the Norwich Crag. At
Trezza, on the eastern base of the mountain, basaltic rocks occur
associated with fossiliferous Pliocene clays. The earliest erup-
tions of Etna are older than the Glacial period in Central and
Northern Europe. If all the minor cones and monticules could be
stripped from the mountain, the diminution of bulk would be
extremely slight. Lycll concluded that, although no approxima-
tion can be given of the age of Etna, " its foundations were laid
in the sea in the newer Pliocene period." From the slope of the
strata from one central point in the Val del Bue he further
concluded 'that there once existed a second great crater of
permanent eruption. The rocks erupted by Etna have always
been very constant in composition, viz. varieties of basaltic lava
and tuff containing little or no olivine the rock type known as
labradorite. At Acireale the lava has assumed the prismatic
or columnar form in a striking manner; at the rock of Aci it is
in parts spheroidal. The Grotte des Chevres has been regarded
as an enormous gas-bubble in the lava. The remarkable stability
of the mountain appears to be due to the innumerable dikes
which penetrate the lava flows and tuff beds in all directions
and thus bind the whole mass together.
From the earliest times the mountain has naturally been the
subject of legends. The Greeks believed it to be either the
mountain with which Zeus had crushed the giant Typhon (so
Pindar, Pylh. i. 34 seq.; Aeschylus, Prometheus Vinctus, 351
seq.; Strabo xiii. p. 626), or Enceladus (Virgil, Georg. i. 471;
Oppian, Cyn. i. 273), or the workshop of Hephaestus and the
Cyclopes (Cic. De divin. ii. 19; cf. Lucil., Aetna, 41 seq., Solin,
n). Several Roman writers, on the other hand, attempted to
explain the phenomena which it presented by natural causes
(e.g. Lucretius vi. 639 seq.; Lucilius, Aetna, 511 seq.). Ascents
ETNA ETON
oi the mountain were nol infrequent in those days one was
nude by Hadrian.
Sc Sartoriu-i von \\.iltcrshauscn, Atlas del Alna (Leipzig, 1880);
v iaix, C>trta \'oka*olo[ii t lopofraphicit deU'Etna (showing lava
trauni up to 1892); O. de Lorenxu, L Etna (Bergamo, 1907).
ETNA, a borough of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.,
in the western part of the state, on the \V. bank of the Allegheny
river (about 5 m. from its junction with the Monongahela),
and about 2 m. N . of the city of Pittsburg, of which it is a suburb.
Pop. (1880) 7334; (1800) 3767; (1000) 5384 (1702 foreign-born);
(1910) 5830. It is served by the Pennsylvania railway and
by electric lines. Among its industrial establishments are
rolling mills, tube and pipe works, furnaces, steel mills, a brass
foundry, and manufactories of electrical railway supplies, boxes,
asbestos coverings, enamel work and ice. The city's industrial
history dates from 1820, whena small factory for the manufacture
of scythes and sickles was set up. Natural gas, piped from
Butler county, was early used here as a fuel in the iron mills.
Etna, formerly called Steuart's Town, was incorporated as a
borough in 1869.
ETON, a town of Buckinghamshire, England, on the north
left) bank of the river Thames, opposite Windsor, within which
parliamentary borough it is situated. Pop. of urban district
(1901) 3301. It is famous for its college, the largest of the ancient
Engtish public schools. The " King's College of Our Lady of
Eton beside Windsor " was founded by Henry VI. in 1440-1441,
and endowed mainly from the revenues of the alien priories sup-
pressed by Henry V. The founder followed the model established
by William of Wykeham in his foundations of Winchester
and New College, Oxford. The original foundation at Eton
consisted of a provost, 10 priests, 4 clerks, 6 choristers, a school-
master, 25 poor and indigent scholars, and the same number
of poor men or bedesmen. In 1443, however, Henry considerably
altered his original plans; the number of scholars was increased
to 70, and the number of bedesmen reduced to 13. A con-
nexion was then established, and has been maintained ever since,
though in a modified form, between Eton and Henry's foundation
of King's College, Cambridge. One of the king's chief advisers
was William of Waynflcte. who had been master of Winchester
College, and was appointed provost of Eton in 1443. Among
further alterations to the foundation in this year was the establish-
ment of commtHiaies or commoners, distinct from the scholars;
and these under the name of " oppidans " now form the principal
body of the boys. The college survived with difficulty the un-
settled period at the close of Henry's reign; while Edward IV.
curtailed its possessions, and was at first desirous of amalgamat-
ing it with the ecclesiastical foundation of St George, Windsor
Castle. In 1506 the annual revenue amounted to 652; and
through benefactions and the rise in the value of property the
college has grown to be very richly endowed. In 1870 com-
missioners under an act of 1868 appointed the governing body
of the college to consist of the provost of Eton, the provost of
King's College, Cambridge, five representatives nominated re-
spectively by the university of Oxford, the university of Cam-
bridge, the Royal Society, the lord chief justice and the masters,
and four representatives chosen by the rest of the governing
body. By this body the foundation was in 1872 made to consist
of a provost and ten fellows (not priests, but merely the members
of the governing body other than the provost), a headmaster
of the school, and a lower master, at least seventy scholars (known
as " collegers "), and not more than two chaplains or conducts.
Originally it was necessary that the scholars should be born in
England, of lawfully married parents, and be between eight and
sixteen years of age; but according to the statutes of 107.2 the
scholarships are open to all boys who arc British subjects, and
(with certain limitations as to the exact date of birth) between
twelve and fifteen years of age. A number of foundation
scholarships for King's College, Cambridge, are open for com-
petition amongst the boys; and there are besides several other
valuable scholarships and exhibitions, most of which arc tenable
only at Cambridge, some at Oxford, and some at cither university.
The teaching embraces the customary range of classical and
modern subjects; but until the first half of the igth century
t lu- normal course of instruction remained almost wholly classical ;
and although tlu-rr wrtv nusters for other subjects, they wen-
unconnected with the general business of the school, and were
attended at extra hours.
The school buildings were founded in 1441 and occupied in
part by 1443, but the whole original structure was not completed
till fifty years later. The older buildings consist of two quad-
rangles, built partly of freestone but chiefly of brick. The outer
quadrangle, or school-yard, is enclosed by the chapel, upper and
lower schools, the original scholars' dormitory (" long chamber "),
now transformed, and masters' chambers. It has in its centre a
bronze statue of the royal founder. The buildings enclosing the
inner or lesser quadrangle contain the residence of the fellows,
the library, hall and various offices. The chapel, on the south
side of the school-yard, represents only the choir of the church
which the founder originally intended to build; but as this was
not completed Waynflete added an ante-chapel. The chapel was
built upon a raised platform of stone, as was the hall, in order
to lift it above the flood-level of the Thames. It contains some
interesting monuments of provosts of the college and others,
and at the west end of the ante-chapel is a fine marble statue of
the founder in his royal robes, by John Bacon. A chantry
contains the tomb of Roger Lupton (provost 1503-1535), whose
most notable monument is the fine tower between the school-
yard and the cloisters to the east; though other parts of his
building also remain. The space enclosed by two buttresses
on the north side of the chapel, at the point where steps ascend
to the north door, is the model of the peculiar form of court for
the game of fives which takes name from Eton, with its " but-
tress " (represented by the projecting balustrade), the ledges
round the walls, and the step dividing the floor into two levels.
From the foundation of the college the chapel was used as the
parish church until 1854, and not until 1875, after the alteration
of the ancient constitution had secularized the foundation, was
the parish of Eton created into a separate vicarage. The chapel
docs not accommodate the whole school; and a new chapel,
from the designs of Sir Arthur Blomfield, is used by the lower
school. The library contains many manuscripts (notably an
Oriental and Egyptian collection) and rare books; and there is
also a library for the use of the boys. The college in modern
times has far outgrown its ancient buildings, and new buildings,
besides the lower chapel, include the new schools, with an
observatory, a chemical laboratory, science schools and boarding-
houses. In 1908 King Edward VII. opened a fine range of build-
ings erected in honour of the Old Etonians who served in the
South African War, and in memory of those who fell there. The
architect was Mr L. K. Ball, an old Etonian. The buildings
include a school hall, a domed octagonal library, and a classical
museum.
The principal annual celebration is held on the 4th of June,
the birthday of King George III., who had a great kindness for
the school. This is the speech-day; and after the ceremonies
in the school a procession of boats takes place on the Thames.
In the sport of rowing Eton occupies a unique position among
the public schools, and a large proportion of the oarsmen in the
annual Oxford and Cambridge boat-race are alumni of the school.
Another annual celebration is the occasion of the contest between
collegers and oppidans at a peculiar form of football known as the
wall game, from the fact that it is played against a wall bordering
the college playing-field. This game takes place on St Andrew's
Day, the 3Oth of November. The field game of football commonly
played at Eton has also peculiar rules. The annual cricket
match between Eton and Harrow schools, at Lord's ground,
London, is always attended by a large and fashionable gathering.
A singular custom termed the Montem, of unknown origin, but
first mentioned in 1561, was observed here triennially on Whit-
Tuesday. The last celebration took place in 1844, the ceremony
being abolished just before it fell due in 1847. It consisted of a
procession of the boys in a kind of military order, with flags
and music, headed by their " captain," to a small mound called
Salt Hill, near the Bath road, where they levied contributions,
ETRETAT ETRURIA
or " salt," from the passers-by and spectators. The sum collected
sometimes exceeded 1000 the surplus, after deducting certain
expenses, becoming the property of the captain of the school.
The average number of pupils at Eton exceeds 1000.
See E. S. Creasy, Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, with Notices of
the Early History of the College (1850); Sketches of Eton (1873); Sir
H. C. Maxwell Lyte, History of Eton College from 1440 to 1875 (1875) ;
J. Heneage Jesse, Memoirs of Celebrated Etonians (1875) ; The Eton
Portrait Gallery, by a Barrister of the Inner Temple (1875) ; A. G.
Benson, Fasti Etonienses (1899); L. Cust, History of Eton College
(1899).
6TRETAT, a watering-place of France, in the department of
Seine-Inferieure, on the coast of the English Channel, i6j m.
N. by E. of Havre by road. Pop. (1906) 1982. It is situated
between fine cliffs in which, here and there, the sea has worn
archways, pinnacles and other curious forms. The small stream
traversing the valley, at the extremity of which Etretat lies,
flows underground for some distance but rises to the surface on
the beach. A Roman road and aqueduct and other Roman and
Gallic remains have been discovered. The church of Notre-
Dame, a Romanesque building, with a nave of the nth century
and a central tower and choir of the i3th century, is a fine example
of the Norman architecture of those periods. Fishing is carried
on, though there is no port and the fishermen haul their boats
up the beach; the old hulks (caloges) serve as sheds and even as
dwellings. Etretat sprang into popularity during the latter half
of the 1 9th century, largely owing to the frequent references to
it in the novels of Alphonse Karr.
ETRURIA, an ancient district of Italy, the extent of which
varied considerably, and, especially in the earliest periods, is
very difficult to define (see section Language). The name is the
Latin equivalent of the Greek TuppTjna or Tupenji'ia, which
is used by Latin writers also in the forms Tyrrhenia, Tyrrhenii;
the Romans also spoke of Tusci, whence the modern Tuscany
(q.v.). In early times the district appears to have included the
whole of N. Italy from the Tiber to the Alps, but by the end of
the sth century B.C. it was considerably diminished, and about
the year 100 B.C. its boundaries were the Arnus (Arno), the
Apennines and the Tiber. In the division of Italy by Augustus
it formed the seventh regio and extended as far north as the river
Macra, which separated it from Liguria.
History. The authentic history of Etruria is very meagre,
and consists mainly in the story of its relations with Carthage,
Greece and Rome. At some period unknown, prior to the 6th
century, the Etrurians became a conquering people and extended
their power not only northwards over, probably, Mantua,
Felsina, Melpum and perhaps Hadria and Ravenna (Etruria
Circumpadana), but also southwards into Latium and Campania.
The chronology of this expansion is entirely unknown, nor can
we recover with certainty the names of the cities which con-
stituted the two leagues of twelve founded in the conquered
districts on the analogy of the original league in Etruria proper
(below). In the early history of Rome the Etruscans play a
prominent part. According to the semi-historical tradition they
were the third of the constituent elements which went to form
the city of Rome. The tradition has been the subject of much
controversy, and is still an unsolved problem. It is practically
certain, however, that there is no foundation for the ancient
theory (cf. Prop. iv. [v.] i. 31) that the third Roman tribe, known
as Luceres, represented an Etruscan element of the population,
and it is held by many authorities that the tradition of the
Tarquin kings of Rome represents, not an immigrant wave,
but the temporary domination of Etruscan lords, who extended
their conquests some time before 600 B.C. over Latium and
Campania. This theory is corroborated by the fact that during
the reigns of the Tarquin kings Rome appears as the mistress
of a district including part of Etruria, several cities in Latium,
and the whole of Campania, whereas our earliest picture of re-
publican Rome is that of a small state in the midst of enemies.
For this problem see further under ROME: History, section
" The Monarchy."
After the expulsion of the Tarquins the chief events in Etruscan
history are the vain attempt to re-establish themselves in Rome
under Lars Porsena of Clusium, the defeat of Octavius Mamilius,
son-in-law of Tarquinius Superbus, at Lake Regillus, and the
treaty with Carthage. This last event shows that the Etruscan
power was formidable, and that by means of their fleet the
Etruscans held under their exclusive control the commerce of
the Tyrrhenian Sea. By this treaty Corsica was assigned to the
Etruscans while Carthage obtained Sardinia. Soon after this,
decay set in. In 474 the Etruscan fleet was destroyed by Hiero I.
(q.v.) of Syracuse; Etruria Circumpadana was occupied by the
Gauls, the Campanian cities by the Samnites, who took Capua
(see CAMPANIA) in 423, and in 396, after a ten years' siege, Veii
fell to the Romans. The battle of the Vadimonian Lake (309)
finally extinguished Etruscan independence, though for nearly
two centuries still the prosperity df the Etruscan cities far
exceeded that of Rome itself. Henceforward Etruria is finally
merged in the Roman state.
ETRUSCAN ANTIQUITIES
The large recent discoveries of Etruscan objects have not
materially altered the conclusions arrived at a generation ago.
It is not so much our appreciation of the broad lines of the
manners and arts of the Etruscans that has altered as our
understanding of the geographic and social causes which made
them what they were. One great difficulty in the study of the
remains is that a very large portion of them have been found by
unofficial excavators who have been naturally unwilling to tell
whence they came, and that certain other excavations, such as
those carried out by Comm. Barnabei for the Villa Giulia museum ,
have been carried out under conditions which help but little
towards increasing our knowledge. 1 The increase has, however,,
been steady, even if not all one could wish.
Ethnology. The origin of the Etruscans will most likely never
be absolutely fixed, 2 but their own tradition (Tacitus, Ann. iv.
55) that they came out of Lydia seems not impossible. Hero-
dotus (i. 94) and Strabo (v. 220) tell of Lydians landing at the
mouth of the Po and crossing the Apennines into Etruria. Thus
it seems certain that though the earliest immigrants, known to
the later Etruscans as the Rasena, may have come down from
the north, still they were joined by a migration from the east
before they had developed a civilization of their own, and it is
this double race that became the Etruscans as we know them in
tradition and by their works. To give a date to the migration
of the Rasena from the north, for which the only evidence is the
fact that the Etruscan language is found in various parts of
north Italy, 3 is impossible, but we can perhaps give an approxi-
mate one to the coming of the Lydians or Tyrrhenians (Thuc. iv.
109; Herod, i. 57). We know that there was a great wave of
migration from Greece to Italy about 1000 B.C., and as the earliest
imported Greek objects found in the tombs cannot be dated
many generations later than this, this year may be considered
as giving us roughly the time when the real Etruscan civilization
began.
It has been, and still is, a common mistake to speak of the
Etruscans as though they were closely confined to that part
of Italy called Etruria on the maps, but it is quite certain that
in the early stages of their development they were differentiated
from the Umbrians on the north-east and the Latins on the
south in ways due rather to the locality than to race or essential
character. 4 To primitive peoples open seas or deserts are a
greater hindrance to intercourse than mountains or rivers, and
even these did not cut off Etruria from the neighbouring regions
of Italy. The Apennines that separated her from Umbria were
not difficult to cross, and the Tiber which formed the boundary
1 For Barnabei's excavations see Fausto Benedetti, Gli Scavi di
Narce ed il Museo di Villa Giulia (1900).
1 For a further discussion see ad fin., section Language.
See Pauli, Altitalische Forschungen, vol. i.; also sect. Language
4 Cf. the contents of the graves found by Boni in the Roman
Forum (Notizie degli Scavi, 1902, 1903, 1905) with the objects repre-
sented in the plates of Montelius, La Civilisation primitive en Itahe,
pt. i. For the cemeteries at Novilara cf. Brizio, Monumenti antichi,
vol. v.
HISTORY]
ETRURIA
55
, between her and Latium has been a far greater element of
separation in the minds of modern authors than it ever was in
reality. Narrow, not particularly swift, often shallow, such a
stream can never have caused more than a moment's delay to
the hardy Etruscans. When Rome was founded, the river of
course could be used like a moat round a castle as a means of
defence, but that is very different from its being a permanent
bar to the spread of a given culture. The fact that the alphabets
used in other parts of Italy besides Etruria are derived from the
Etruscan or from similar Grecian sources, that Rome was ruled
by Etruscan kings, that the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline
was decorated by Etruscan artists (Livy x. 23; Pliny, 7/..V.
xxxv. 157), that the decorations of the temple found by Signor
Maxzoleni near Conca (Notitie degli scan, 1896) are of the same
kind as others found in Etruria, show that the influences which
grew to their clearest development in the region west of the Tiber
had a marked effect over a broader region than is usually ad-
mitted. This too was the belief of the Greek historians, many
of whom considered Rome as a Tyrrhenian city. 1
Cities and Organisation. The chief cities of Etruria proper
were Veii, Tarquinii, Falerii, Caere, Volci, Volsinii, Clusium,
Arretium, Cortona, Perusia, Volaterrae (Volterra), Rusellae,
Populonium and Faesulae. That the country was thickly
settled is made plain by the ruins that have been found. It was
governed by kings who were elected for life, but whose power
depended largely on the leaders (lucumones) of the separate
states or regions and on the aristocracy (Censorinus, De die
natali, iv. 13). Later the office of king was abolished and re-
placed by annual magistrates (Livy v. i). Below the aristocracy
came the free people, who were divided into curiae (Serv. ad Aen.
x. 201), and then the slaves. There can be little doubt that the
early organization of the people at Rome was typical of Etruria
(Niebuhr, Rom. Gesch. 2nd ed. i. 380).
A league of twelve cities is mentioned by the ancients (Livy
iv. 33), whose delegates met at the temple of Voltumna, but we
re not told which cities formed the league, and there can be
little doubt that the list changed from time to time. A glance
at the map makes clear some of the general relations of these
cities to one another and to the outer world. They are well
spread all over the country, and by no means only along the coast.
None of the important ones is among the mountains. This
means that the earliest inhabitants of the country were not
roving traders like the Mycenaean Greeks, and that the cities
drew their wealth and strength from agricultural pursuits, for
which the country was well suited, as the three rivers, Arnus,
Umbro and Tiber, with their feeders (not to mention several
lesser streams), channel it in all directions. We get a hint as
to the government of the cities from the fact that many of the
Roman forms and apanages of office were derived from the
Etruscans (Dion. Hal. iii. 61); for instance, the diadem worn
by those honoured with a triumph, the ivory sceptre and the
embroidered toga (Tertull.>eCor. 13), and so too the golden bulla
and the praetexta (Festus, s.v. " Sardi "). Such things give us
an idea as to the aristocratic basis of the government. Of the
actual laws we know something also. Cicero (Din. ii. 23) tells
the story of the miraculous uncovering by a ploughboy of a
child who had the wisdom of a sage, and how the child's words
were written down by the amazed folk, and became their archives
and the source of their law. Coming down to historic times we
find that their code, known as the libri disciplinae Elruscae,
consisted of various parts (Festus, s.v. " Ritualis "). There
were the libri karuspicini (Cic. Div. i. 33, ?*), which dealt
with the interpretation of the will of the gods by means
of sacrifice; the libri fulgurales, which explained the messages
of the gods in the thunder and lightning; and finally the
libri rilualrs. which held the rules for the conduct of daily life
how to found cities, where to place the gates, how to take
the census, and the general ordering of the people both in peace
and war.
Natural Resources and Commerce. Such was the country
1 rl,r rt Tup*' *i ruf wrrp*+tar TvppqrlSa TAXi
Dion. Hal. i. 29: but tee ect. Language for meaning of
and such the laws. The people were a warrior stock with little
commercial skill. Much of their wealth was due to trade, but
they were not the restless, conquering blood that goes in search
of new markets. They waited for the buyers to come to them.
That their wealth and consequent power were gathered con-
temporaneously with that 01 Greece is shown by various fads.
One of these is that Dionysius of Phocaea settled in Sicily after
the Ionian revolt (in which his native city took part) had been
quelled by Darius, and thence harried the Etruscans (Herod,
vi. 17). Their power is also shown by the fact that they made
an alliance with the Carthaginians, with the result that they
obtained control of Corsica (Herod, i. 166), and this union con-
tinued for many generations. 1 That this treaty was no excep-
tional one is shown by Aristotle (Pol. iii. 96, Op. ii. 261), who
says that there were numerous treatises, concerning their alliances
and mutual rights, between the two peoples. That the Greeks
held the Etruscans in; considerable dread is suggested by the
fact that Hesiod (Theog. ion foil.) names one of their leaders
Agrios, " the Wild Man," and by the fear they had of the straits
of Messina, where they imagined Scylla and Charybdis, which,
unless the whirlpools were of very different character then than
now, were as likely to be the pirate bands of Carthaginians and
Etruscans who guarded the channel. And this explanation
is strengthened by Euripides (Med. 1342, 1359), whose Medea
compares herself to " Scylla, who dwells on the Tyrrhenian
shore." The wealth that was the source of this power of the
Etruscans must in the main have been drawn from agriculture
and forestry. The rich land with its many streams could scarcely
be surpassed for the raising of crops and cattle, and the hills
were heavily timbered. That it was such material as this,
which leaves no trace with the passing of time, that they sold
cannot be doubted, for there is plenty of evidence that their
country was visited by foreign traders of many lands, and that
they bought largely of them, especially of metals. Metals also
suggest that another source of their wealth was that of the
middleman. Their towns were the centres of exchange, where
the north and west met the south and east. They had no mines
of gold or tin, but the carriers of tin, iron or amber 3 from the
north met in the markets of Etruria the Phoenician and Greek
merchants bringing gold and ivory and the other luxuries of
the East. The quantities of gold, silver and bronze found in
Etruscan tombs prove this clearly. Of these metals the only one
found in unworked form, in what are practically pigs, is bronze.
This in the form of aes rude has frequently been found in con-
siderable quantities, and the larger and better formed bits of
metals known as aes signatum are not rare. Both forms are
usually spoken of as the earliest forms of money, but as the
aes rude generally bears no marks of valuation or of any mint,
and as the aes signatum is far too large and heavy for ordinary
circulation, it is probable that these shapes of metal are not to
be considered strictly or alone as coins, but as forms given to the
alloy of tin and copper made and sold by the Etruscans to the
foreigners for purposes of manufacture. This of course does not
exclude their use as money. Where the copper for this bronze
came from is not certain, but probably a great part was from the
mines at Volaterrae. Still another proof that what the Etruscans
sold was the product of their fields or crude metals imported
from the north, is the fact that though in the museum at Carthage
and elsewhere there are a few vases and other objects which
probably come from Etruria, still such objects are extremely
uncommon. On the other hand, articles obviously imported
from the East are by no means uncommon in Etruria. Such
are the ostrich shells from Volci, 4 the Phoenician cups from
* For the wars of the Greeks against the Carthaginians and the
Etruscans see Busolt, Criechische Geschichte, ii. 218 ft.
Pliny (H.N. xxxvii. n). He says that amber was brought by
the Germans down the valley of the Po. Thence the trade-route
crossed the Apennines to Pisa (Scylax in Ceographi minores, ed.
Didot, i. p. 25). In the consideration of problems suggested by
amber it is too often forgotten that a very beautiful dark amber is
found in Sicily.
4 Montelius, Civilization primitive en Italie, u. pi. 265; cf. Petne,
Naukratis, i. pi. 20, fig. 15, and Perrot-Chipiez, ttisloire de I' art, iii.
856
ETRURIA
[RELIGION
Palestrina, 1 the Egyptian glazed vases and scarabs found on
more than one site. 2 All this goes to show that the Etruscans
lacked in their earlier days skilful workers in the arts and crafts.
Habits and Customs. The lack of literary remains of the
Etruscans does not cramp our knowledge of their habits as much
as might be supposed, owing to the numerous paintings that are
left. These paintings are on the walls of the tombs at Veii,
Corneto, Chiusi (Clusium), and elsewhere, 3 and give a varied
picture of the dress, utensils and habits of the people. The
evidence of many ancient authors cannot be questioned that
as a race the Etruscans in historic times were much given to
luxurious living. So much so in fact that Virgil (Georg. ii. 193)
speaks of the pinguis Tyrrhenus (a trumpeter at the altar)
and Catullus (xxxix. n) of the obesus Etruscus. Diodorus
(v. 40) gives a succinct account in which he says that
" their country was so fertile they derived therefrom not only
sufficient for their needs but enough to supply them with
luxuries. Twice a day they partook of elaborate repasts
at which the tables were decked with embroidered cloths
and vessels of gold and silver. The servants were numerous
and noticeable for the richness of their attire. The houses, too,
were large and commodious. In fact, giving themselves up to
sensuous enjoyments they had naturally lost the glorious
reputation their ancestors had won in war." This last remark
shows that Diodorus recognized the important difference between
the early Etruscans who built up the country and the later ones
who merely enjoyed it. Naturally courtesans flourished in such
a community. Timaeus and Theopompus tell how the women
lived and ate and even exercised with the men (Athen. xii. 14;
cf. iv. 38), habits which of course gave the Roman satirists many
openings for attack (Plaut. Cist. ii. 3. 563; cf. Herod, i. 98;
Strabo xi. 14). In dress they differed but little from the Romans,
both wearing the toga and the tunic. Hats too, often of pointed
form, were common (Serv. ad Aen. ii. 683), as the paintings show,
but it was their shoes for which they were particularly famous.
One author (Lydus, de Magistr. i. 17. 36) suggests that Romulus
borrowed from Etruria the type of shoe he gave the senators,
and this may well be true, though the form mentioned, the
kampagus, is of late origin. At any rate <ravSa.\ia TvpprjviKa are
frequently mentioned. From the pictures and remains we know
that they had wooden soles strengthened with bronze, and that
the uppers were of leather and bound with thongs.
Their occupations of trade and agriculture have been already
mentioned. For their leisure hours they had athletic games
including gladiatorial shows (Athen. iv. 153; cf. Livy ix. 40. 7;
Strabo v. 250), hunting, music and dancing. All these are shown
in the tomb pictures, and all, with the exception of the hunting,
developed first as a part of religious service, and their importance
is shown by the strictness of the rules that governed them
(Cicero, De harusp. resp. ii. 23). Did a dancer lose step, or an
attendant lift his hand from the chariot, the games lost their
value as a religious service. An idea of the splendour of the
triumphs that accompanied victorious generals and of the
parades at the games is given by Appian (De reb. Punic, viii. 66)
and Dionysius (vii. 92). The music that was an accompaniment
of all their occupations, even of hunting (Aelian, De natur.
anim. xii. 46), was mainly produced by the single or double flute,
the mastery of which by the Etruscans was known to all the
world. They also had small harps and trumpets.
For the regularization of all these duties and pleasures there
was a calendar and time-division for the day. It is noteworthy
that the beginning of the day was for them the moment when the
sun was at the zenith (Serv. ad Aen. v. 738). In this they
differed from the Greeks, who began their day with the sunset,
and the Romans, who reckoned theirs from midnight. The weeks
were of eight days, the first being market day and the day when
the people could appeal to the king, and the months were lunar.
1 Monumenti dell' Inst. Arch. Rom. x. pi. 31; Museo Etrusco
Vaticano, i. pi. 63-69; cf. Annali dell'Inst. Arch., 1896, p. 199 ff.
2 Vase with hieroglyphs found at Santa Marinella, Bollettino del-
l' Inst. Arch., 1841, p. in; Man. antichi, viii. p. 88.
1 G. Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria.
The years were kept numbered by the annual driving of a nail
into the walls of the temple of Nortia at Volsinii (Livy vii. 3. 7),
a custom later adopted by the Romans, who used the Capitoline
temple for the same purpose. In Rome this rite was performed
on the Ides of September, and it is likely that it took place in
Etruria on the same date, the natural end of the year among an
agricultural folk. A still longer measure of time wasthe.jafcj</z<w,
which was supposed to be the length of the longest life of all
those born in the year in which the preceding oldest inhabitant
died (Censorinus, Dedienatali, 17. 5; cf . Zosimus ii. i). Accord-
ing to later writers 4 the Etruscan race was to last ten saccula,
and the emperor Augustus in his memoirs (Serv. ad. Bucol. ix.
47) says that the comet of the year 44 B.C. was said by the priests
to betoken the beginning of the tenth sacculum. The earliest
saecula had been, according to Varro, 100 years long. The later
ones varied in length from 105 to 123 years. The round number
100 is obviously an ex post facto approximation, and the accuracy
of the others is probably more apparent than real, but if we
reckon back some goo years from the date given by Augustus
we arrive at just about the time when the archaeological evidence
leads us to believe that the Etruscans in Italy were beginning
to recognize their individuality.
Religion. To retrace the religious development of the
Etruscans from its mystic beginnings is beyond our power, and
it is unlikely that any future discoveries will help us much. We
are, however, able to draw a clear, if not a detailed, picture of the
worship paid to the various divinities, partly from the direct infor-
mation we have concerning them and partly from the analogies
which may safely be drawn between them and the Romans.
The frequency of sacrifice among them and their belief in the
short duration of the race 5 show clearly their belief in a good
and a bad principle, and the latter seems to have been pre-
dominant in their minds. Storms, earthquakes, the birth of
deformities, all gave evidence of evil powers, which could be
appeased sometimes only by human sacrifice. We miss here the
Greek joy in human life and the beauties of earth. The gods
(acsar) were divided into two main groups, the Dii Consentcs
and a vaguer set of powers, the Dii Involuti (Seneca, Quaest.
Nat. ii. 41), to whom even Jupiter bowed. They all dwelt in
various parts of the heavens (Martianus Capella, De nupt. Phil.
i. 41 ff.). Of the Dii Consenles the most important group
consisted of Jupiter (Tinia), Juno (Uni) and Minerva (Mennia).
In some towns, such as Veii and Falerii, Juno was the chief
deity, and at Perusia she was worshipped like the Greek Aphrodite
in conjunction with Vulcan (the Greek Hephaestus). This shows
that though in exterior form the Etruscan gods were influenced
by the Greeks, still their character and powers betoken different
beliefs. An interesting point to note about Minerva (Mennia)
is that she was the goddess of the music of flutes and horns.
The myth of Athena and Marsyas probably originated in Asia
Minor, and a Pelasgian Tyrrhenian founded in Argos the temple
of Athena Salpinx (Paus. ii. 21. 3). The evident connexion
between Asia Minor and Etruria in these facts cannot be over-
looked. Besides these deities there were Venus ( Turan) , Bacchus
(Fufluns), Mercury (Turms), Vulcan (Scthlans). Of these, Seth-
lans is in a way the most important, for he shows a connexion
in prehistoric times between Etruria and the East. 6 Other
deities of Greek origin there were Ares, Apollo, Heracles, the
Dioscuri; in fact, as the centuries passed, the Greek divinities
were adopted almost without exception. Besides these there
were also many gods of Latin or Sabine origin, of whom little is
known but their names; these may often be local appellations
for the same god. Among these were Voltumna at Volsinii and
Vertumnus at Rome, Janus, Nortia, goddess of Fortuna,
Feronia, whose temple was at a town of the same name at the
foot of Soracte, 7 Mantus, Pales, Vejovis, Eileithyia and Ceres.
* Varro ap. Serv. ad Aen. viii. 526; see Helbig, Bull, dell' Inst. Arch.
(1876), 227.
1 Censorinus, De Die Nat. 17.
See Prcllc 1 -, Rom. Myth. s.v. " Volcanus." Opposed to this see
Wissowa, Religion u. Kultus der Romer, who seems to misinterpret
the evidence.
7 Strabo v. 2. 39; cf. Livy i. 30; Dion. Hal. iii. 32.
ARCHITECTURE)
ETRURIA
Such were the leading gods; in addition there was the world
of spirits whom we know in Rome as the Manes, Lares and
Penates. The latter were of four classes, pertaining to
Jove, Neptune, the gods of the lower world, and to men. 1
The Lares too were of various sorts (ftimili>ircs, campitalts,
fialu), and with them the souls of the dead, after the performance
of due expiatory rites, took their place as Jii animiiles (Scrv.
iid ACM. iii. 168 and 30.1). The Manes arc the vaguest group of
all and were confined almost wholly to the lower world (Fcstus,
s-v. " Mundus " ; Apuleius, DC dec Sucratts). . Over all these
ruled Mantus and Mania, the counterparts of Pluto and Perse-
phone in Greece. As a result of this complete hierarchy of divine
powers the priesthood of Ktruria was large, powerful, and of
such fame that Etruscan harus pices were sent for from distant
places to interpret the sacrifices and the oracles (Livy v. i. 6,
Mtvii. 37. 6).
Art. The evidence drawn from tradition and custom which we
have so far considered in relation to the origin and beliefs of the
Ktruscans has taken us into the prehistoric times much earlier
than those when the handicrafts developed into true fine arts.
The contents of the earliest graves' show but few traces of any
feeling for art either in architecture or in the lesser forms qf
household and personal decoration. Gradually, however, as
one comes down towards the more fixed historic periods, certain
objects, obviously imported from the eastern Mediterranean,
occur, and these are the first signs of an interest in the beauty or
curiosity of things, an interest that local workmen could not yet
satisfy, but which stirred them to endeavour. It was probably
during the gth century that this began, not long after the period
hen foreign trade began to flourish.
The history of Etruscan art has usually been wrongly estimated
owing to the widespread delusion that objects found in Etruria
were in the true sense products of native artists and indicative
of native-grown culture. It is only recently, and not even yet
completely, that the term " Etruscan" has been given up as the
name for the terra-cot ta vases (which were found in the igth
century by the earlier archaeologists of the modern scientific
school in great quantities in the Etruscan tombs); these are
now known to have been made by Greek potters. There are few
books on the subject of Etruscan art. The best known is Jules
Martha's L'Art ttrusqut (2nd ed., 1889), a book which, though full
of accurate data, shows absolute lack of discrimination between
those works that are of Etruscan fabric and those that were
brought from other lands, particularly Greece and the Greek
colonies of Magna Graecia and Sicily. These latter are too
generally forgotten in the study both of Greek and of Etruscan
art. and all works which show the Greek spirit are vaguely
supposed to have been produced on the Greek mainland. As
much of the following must be to some extent controversial in
character, a concrete illustration may serve to prevent mis-
conception as to this important distinction. The beautiful
throne in the Ludovisi collection representing the birth of
Aphrodite is commonly spoken of as though made by some
sculptor in Greece. It seems at least as likely that it comes
from Sicily. Not only is the character of the modelling similar
to what we find on Sicilian sculptures and coins, and not quite
so sharp as on most works from Greece, but there is a lyrical
feeling for nature in the pose of the figures and in the pebbled
soil on which the main group stands, which seems to answer
to the Sicilian feeling as we know it in poetry rather than to the
Greek.
The houses of the earliest times were, to judge by the burial
urns known from their shape as hut-urns, small single-room
constructions of rectangular plan similar to certain
4jrMiM> typej O f tne capanne used by the shepherds to-day.
Probably the walls were wattled and the roofs were
certainly thatched, for the urns show plainly the long beams
fastened together at the top and hanging from the ridge down
each side. Tombs cut in the rock offer other and later models of
1 Nigidius Figului ap. Arnob. adv. Nat. iii. 40; cf. Nig. Fig. reli-
quiae, ed. Ant. Swoboda (1888), p. 83.
< Montclius. Cn. Prim, en Itaiie.
house construction, but give no suggestion that the Etruscans
had any artistic sense in architecture. Such tombs arc mostly
later than the 5th century B.C., and show the most simple form
of wood construction. Posts or columns hold up the walls and
the sloping roofs, the latter made of beams with boards laid
lengthwise, covered by others from ridge to cave, the intervening
space forming a coffer, sometimes decorated. Though the walls
of such tombs are often covered with paintings, the relation
of the various parts (and, let it be remembered, these tombs
represent the houses of the living) shows but the coarsest sense
of proportion. The elements of the decoration, such as capitals,
mouldings, rosettes, patterns, are borrowed from Greece, Egypt
or elsewhere, and are used redundantly and with no refinement. 1
The temples did not differ from those in Greece in any essential
principal of construction except that they were generally square,
from the desire to make them answer to the tcmplum or quadri-
partite division of the heavens elaborated by the priests. In
Roman times " Etruscan style " was the term used for colonnades
with wide intcrcolumniations, and this shows how the early
builders used wood with its possibility of long architrave beams
rather than stone as in Greece. The interior arrangements of
the temple also varied from the Grecian models, for owing to the
fact that the gods of Etruria were often worshipped in groups of
three the cclla was divided into three chambers. The decoration
metopes, friezes, acrotcria, &c. was of terra-cotta fastened
by nails to the wooden walls.
Though we know that the Etruscans were famous for their
games, 4 still there are no remains of circi, and so too, though the
salyristae were well known, 6 no theatres are left. They were
obviously a race of no literary taste or culture. The theatre at
Fiesole which is often referred to as Etruscan unquestionably
dates from Roman times.
Underground tombs have already been mentioned in their
relation to house-architecture, but there are the tumuli such as
that called la Cucumella at Volci, that of the Curiatii at Albano,
or that of Porsena at Clusium, which Pliny describes as one of
the wonders of Italy (H.N. xxxvi. 19). These great walled-in
mounds with their complex of interior chambers are interesting
as reminiscent of tombs in Lydia, but architecturally they are
barbaric and show no developed skill.
There remains one monument which has always been supposed
to show a real advance made by the Etruscans in the art of
architecture the cloaca maxima in Rome. This round-arched
drain was supposed to have been built by Etruscans, and it was
only in 1003 that Commendatore Boni in excavating the Forum
proved that the drain was originally uncovered, and that the
arch was built at the end of the Republic. Thus the honour,
not of discovering the arch, for it was known to the East, but of
popularizing its use, docs not belong to the Etruscans, though
they did use it at a comparatively late time for city gates, as at
Volterra.* The false arch and dome of the Mycenaeans seems
to have been, familiar to them, though there are but few cases of
its use on a large scale. The best-known instances are the
Tullianum or Mamcrtine prison in Rome, the Rcgulini-Galassi
tomb at Cervetri, 7 one at Sesto Fiorentino near Florence,' at
Cortona, 9 at Chiusi, and also those in Latium. 10
Although there was, therefore, but little development in
the greater arts of literature and architecture among the Etrus-
cans, it is evident enough that there was much desire to possess
the products of the lesser arts, such as sculpture, jewelry and
household ornaments. But here too the study has been made
difficult by the failure to distinguish between native and im-
ported products. Before studying the objects themselves it is
well to recall the legendary character of Etruscan chronology as
1 For an illustration of the Corncto tomb see ARCHITECTURE,
vol. ii. p. 559.
'Appian viii. 66; Tertullian, De sped. 5; Plutarch, Qu. Rom.
107.
* Dion. Hal. vii. 72.
Montelius, Civ. Prim. ii. pi. 172.
' Ib. pi. 333; cf. 343. Ib. pi. 166. Ib. pi. 173.
" Monum. Ant. xv. p. 151; Bull. d. Com. Arch, di Roma, 1898,
p. in
858
ETRURIA
[ART
reckoned in saecula. Helbig l showed that we cannot consider any
of the traditional dates as being accurate until about 644 B.C.,
the beginning, that is, of the fifth saeculum. This is probably
about one hundred years after the introduction of the Chalcidian
(Ionic) alphabet into the country. One of the earliest examples
of the use of it is on a vase found in the Regulini-Galassi tomb.
In considering the trade of the country it has been pointed out
that its chief political connexions were with Carthage, but the
artistic sense of Carthaginians or other Phoenicians was not more
developed than that of the Etruscans. They were traders, and
doubtless brought the Etruscans some of the Egyptian and
Eastern objects which have been found in their tombs, articles
that date from the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. But beside the
Phoenicians the Ionian Greeks from the pth century had been
trading and colonizing in Sicily and Italy. Herodotus (i. 163)
tells how the Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks to take long
voyages, and that they discovered the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian
seas and Iberia. Thucydldes (vi. 3.1) says that it was Chalcidians
from Euboea who first settled in Sicily. Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxv.
12. 43) writes in the same sense, for he tells of Demaratus who
came from Corinth with the artists Eucheir, Diopus, Eugrammus,
about 650 B.C., and first started sculpture in Italy. These tradi-
tions of the coming of Ionian Greeks to Italy are completely
borne out by the archaeological remains found in Ionian lands
and in Etruria, and it is agreed that a great part of what has
hitherto been considered Etruscan is no more Etruscan than the
Moorish plates of the i5th century found in Italy are Florentine.
The best works in most of the smaller arts are almost without
exception Greek, the earlier Ionian, the later Attic; the remainder
are made with the distinct intention of imitating Greek models,
and so should be considered as Greek, inasmuch as they do not
show a natural, original expression of feeling on the part of the
Etruscan workman. The Etruscans were dull artists in all lines.
They were skilful copyists, nothing more, as is absolutely proved
by the simple fact that we know of no Etruscan artist by name.
If one takes the articles which are of obviously local manufacture,
such as the burial urns 2 or the ordinary bronze mirrors, or the
pottery, it would be hard to find a similar quantity of work by
any other race so lacking in originality of conception or high
excellence of technique.
In the study of the monuments a division must be made
distinguishing between the obviously Greek works, the works
done with a desire to copy Greek models and the work of native
artists. To separate the objects in the way suggested required
a very considerable familiarity with Greek art, and though
in many cases the result may be doubtful, still so much must
be taken from the Etruscans that they are shown to have little
more artistic feeling than the Romans. In the earlier centuries
a strong eastern influence appears in the copying of sphinxes
and similar eastern motives, but this soon gave way to the
stronger Greek influence, as was natural, for the intercourse
with the Phoenicians was spasmodic whereas that with the Greeks
was constant. But even with the Greeks to kindle their imagina-
tions, the Etruscans produced no school of art; no steady
progression is traceable. In various towns there were various
fashions of pottery or jewelry, but good, bad and indifferent
constantly occur together in a way possible only among a people
who possessed no natural artistic capacities and had no wide-
spread standards of cultivated taste. The lonians have been
mentioned as having strongly affected the arts in Etruria, and,
though in the later centuries Athens undoubtedly exported
heavy consignments to Italy, the taste of the Etruscans seems
generally to have preferred the rather heavy loose style of the
lonians, even when direct contact with them was lost and its
place taken by direct relations with Athens and her colonies.
Pottery 3 practised enormously by the Etruscans shows as
clearly as possible their essential strength and weakness as
1 Annali dell' Inst. Arch., 1876, 230.
'Gerhard, Etruskische Spiegel', Korte, Rilievi delle urne Etrusche.
* See Pettier, Catalogue des vases antiques, II. L'Ecole lonienne,
Boehlau, Aus ionischen und italischen Nekropolen; Karo, De arte
vascularia antiquissima; Endt, lonische Vasenmalerei. See further
CERAMICS, Etruscan.
artists. Even the black ware called bucchero is now known to
have been manufactured in other lands and not to be an
exclusively Etruscan style. In the earlier tombs this
ware is present in greater numbers than any other,
and the vases exhibit considerable dexterity of manufacture
so far as form goes. But it is evident from comparisons with
early Ionian vases that the better proportioned of the shapes
are direct copies of the Ionian. The decoration of the bucchero
is either engraved, in which case it is almost always extremely
rude, or formed by figures modelled or pressed by a mould on
to the body of the vase. In these two last cases the figures are
often suggestive of the farther East (Egyptian and Mesopotamia) ,
but still more frequently they are taken from Greek originals,
and the natural tendency of the Etruscan artist to be a copyist
is very marked. Whence the moulds for these vases came is
not known, but analogy with other classes of work makes it
practically certain that some were imported and some made
by the imitating workmen. There are other classes of vases
which at first sight look as though they were imported from
Greece, but by the nature of their clay are recognized to be
Etruscan imitations of Greek originals. The imitation is often
very skilful, for the Etruscan artist rivalled his Grecian master in
deftness of hand, if not in imagination. Such, for instance,
are the large amphoras decorated with bands of animals in
the Corinthian style. Besides these native vases the tombs
have yielded great quantities of others which used to be called
Etruscan, but are now known to have been imported from
Greece. Until the 6th century B.C. these vases are mostly
Ionian, but at that time the trade of the Phocaeans was waning
before that of Athens, and henceforward the Athenian ware is
the commonest. Intercourse with Athens, however, came to
an end about 480, when the Sicilian Greeks mastered the trade
of the western Mediterranean, so that in the Etruscan tombs
later than this date we find fewer and fewer imported vases,
and more and more native imitations. It is generally taken for
granted that these Attic vases were brought to Etruria by Greek
traders, but considering how little the Greek historians, even
Herodotus, knew of that country, this is unlikely. Then, too,
the chief products Etruria had to give Greece were metals,
so it is more likely that it was the Etruscan traders who, having
carried metal to Greece (where Etruscan bronze was famous 4 ),
brought back the vases.
Though most collections make no distinction between Greek
and Etruscan scarabs the differences, though slight, are quite
certain, and consist in the greater elaboration of the
borders, edges and backs of the Etruscan examples.
The commonest material for these gems is red carnelian, and
agate frequently occurs. The beetle shape is undoubtedly due
to the Phoenicians, who familiarized the Etruscans with the
Egyptian scarab and with its signification as an amulet ; while
in technique they are more Greek, in use they are more Egyptian,
for they were used not only as seals but as ornaments as in
the decoration of necklaces. 6 What we learn from them merely
serves to strengthen what we learn from the pottery that the
Etruscans depended on the Greek world for their artistic concep-
tions. Though many Phoenician gems (in fact, scarcely any
other kind) have been found in Sardinia, these are comparatively
rare in Etruria, where the earliest gems occur about 650 B.C.
Some of these earliest show the Ionian influence, which is also
shown in certain gold rings, but most of them represent the Attic
style as seen on the black-figured vases of Athens. To under-
stand them one has but to know Attic sculpture, the complete
history of which is repeated in these small and beautifully
worked stones. At first one finds the single figures, awkward
in form and modelling, but full of life in composition one
finds the same mistakes in anatomy (i.e. the muscles of the
stomach); and then come the figures beautifully worked and
accurately observed, but with the slight hardness and rigidity
that belongs to all pre-Raphaelite work; and finally one sees
the figures carved with the easy assurance of the master,
4 Athen. i. 28.
6 Martha, L'Art etrusque, pi. 1,4; Bull, dell' Inst. (1837) p. 46.
AH]
ETRURIA
859
sometimes single, sometimes in groups, but always Attic in their
unrivalled representation of the beauties of the human figure,
and in the innumerable lovely scenes taken from everyday life.
Not infrequently inscriptions are cut in the gem, but these are
nut as on Greek gems the name of the carver or the owner, but
the name of the Greek hero represented. In regard to technique
one point is specially noteworthy. Many of the gems are carved
with the round drill, and the disks made by this arc not modelled
into any real semblance of a figure. This is not a sign of 'Ik-
antiquity of the gem, for there are examples in which together
with this method will be seen a figure finished with the greatest
care; it is thus evident that the gem-cutter left the marks of
his round drill because of their decorative value. This they
undoubtedly possess, and it is one of the few cases in which the
Etruscans showed any an sense.
Bronze was used extensively. Weapons of course were
fashioned of it, but these are simple in shape and decoration;
no such examples as those from Mycenae occur.
Objects of large size, as the bronze doors of Vcii, 1
the chariots of Perugia in the New York museum, or large
tripods or shields, show that the artisans had large quantities
of the material at their disposal. As with the vases or gems,
so in these metal objects the distinction must be drawn between
pure Etruscan work and the work that was done by Greek
workmen or by artisans copying the Greek style. As Etruscan
art has been wrongly estimated through forgetfulness of the
Greek influence, so Greek bronzes have possibly received credit
that does not belong to them. Etruscan candelabra and vases
were famous among the Greeks (Ath. i. 28. 6; xv. 700 c). The
chariots above mentioned and the tripods in the Harvard
museum are plainly Greek; the round shields with ornament
in bands are native. Antefixes of tombs were of bronze, and
in some cases the eyes of the figures were inlaid with glass
paste. The best-known articles of bronze are the mirrors, 2
which are very dependent on Greece for their models, though the
poor style in which the scenes that decorate them are in most
cases carved shows that these articles of common use were
produced, as was natural, mainly by ordinary workmen. In
rare cases the figures are not engraved but are given in low
relief. These mirrors seem to have been mainly intended for
women, and the scenes on them in large numbers of cases are of
such a character as to bear out this idea; for instead of scenes
of battle such as occur on the gems, scenes with satyrs and
maenads are commoner, or the story of Helen or the labours
of Hercules. So far as development goes they pass through
the same stages as the gems, though owing to their larger surface
they are more generally decorated with groups of figures. 1 An-
other well-known class of work is the cistaeor- cylindrical bronze
boxes found mostly at Praeneste, where they seem to have
been especially popular. The engraved figures on them are of
the same character as those on the mirrors, and it is noteworthy
that these figures are often better in style than the figures
modelled in the round that serve as handles, or than the legs
which also are modelled. This, taken together with the fact
that the same figures are repeated in several cases on more than
one gem or mirror, makes it probable that the workmen, like
the later potters of Arezzo, had a stock of models brought from
Greece, which they repeated and combined to suit their fancy.
The paintings and contents of the tombs have made it plain
that the wealth of the Etruscans was very considerable, and that
they spent much on jewelry, gold and silver. 4 Their
extravagance in this regard was well known, 1 and the
rings, the necklaces, the diadems, the bracelets and
the earrings show that there was a large class of well- to-do people.
The eastern and Greek influences are clearly marked in the
figures used in decoration, and in certain shapes of rings, but in
1 Plutarch, Camillas, 12.
'Gerhard, Etr. Spiegel (continued by Klugmann and Korte).
1 Mirrors of Greek style, Gerhard, in, 112, 116, 240, 305, 352;
Kluzmann-Korte. 107, 131, 160.
4 See plates in Martha and in Monumenti dell' Intl., also Man. A nt.
iv. and \f Hani's Sludie material!.
'Juvenal v. 164; Ovid, Am. iii. 13. 25 ff.
CtoUmmd
one technical matter the Etruscans seem to have made a dis-
covery: it was in the use of granulated ornament, (hat is,
ornament made by soldering on to the gold object infinitely
small globules of the same metal laid in various designs and
patterns, each globule soldered by itself. Though this style
of ornament occurs in Egypt, Cyprus, Rhodes and Magna
Graecia, nowhere is it accomplished with such extraordinary
minuteness as in Kt curia. That they should do this was natural.
The ditliculty of it seems to have pleased them, for i( is commoner
than the earlier filigree work made of wire soldered on to the gold
base. Reference has been made to the scarabs set as ornament
in the gold necklaces, and similarly we find amber used und, in
the later work, precious stones and pearls.
As in Greece the Etruscans first carved their figures out of
wood, 6 but what these figures were like we can only imagine.
The earliest known figures in the round are even less &u/ tun
successful -than the contemporary Greek work. An
early attempt at a female bust 7 is made not by casting but by
riveting plates of bronze together. A half life size bust in the
Tyszkiewicz collection* made probably about 600 B.C. is cast
solid. Later they learned the art of hollow-casting, but their
attempts to reproduce figures in the round are generally lacking
in skill. One reason for this was the lack of good marble, the
quarries at Carrara not having been used till Roman times.
Terra-cotta was the material most commonly used, and their
skill in modelling and colouring this was great. The earlier
statues of large size have perished; but there are three famous
sarcophagi which show the work of Ionian Etruscan artists;*
one is in the British Museum, one in the Louvre and one in (he
Villa di Papa Giulio at Rome. The elaborate detail and careful
work, the types of the figures and the style of their dress all point
to the same Ionic origin as that of the bronze chariots already
mentioned. The type of sarcophagus illustrated by these ex-
amples became very common, and in the figures that decorate
the covers can be traced the various influences that affected the
whole of Etruscan art. In an example from Volci 10 the later
Attic influence is strongly marked. Such work shows little
power of origination, but much of the interest taken by careful
workmen by copying carefully, and the tendency that such
workmen almost invariably display of overloading the subject
with too much ornament and detail. The small ash-urns, either
of stone or terra-cotta, are in certain ways more interesting than
the more elaborate sarcophagi, for on these urns the heads of
the figures reclining on one elbow which form the usual decoration
of the covers are often obvious attempts at portraiture. Single
busts" show this same desire for accurate likeness of the person
represented, and in this one line of art the Etruscans showed a
new feeling, one that found its finest expression in the hands of
the later Roman portraitists. The main difference between such
portraits and the Greek ones is that the Greek artist thought of
his subject as illustrating character that showed itself in ways
of repose and thought the essential, lasting individuality.
The Etruscan and Roman portraitist thought, on the other hand,
of his subject as illustrating character in ways of action; hence
pure Etruscan and Roman portraits are much more tense in
line, and the expression of the eye is not dreamy but distinctly
focussed. They are different, but, as art, one is as fine as the
other. The scenes on the sides of these urns are, as in the case of
the gems and mirrors, very frequently taken from Greek story,
and often are scenes of battle." Work in relief for the friezes and
the other decorations of temples was very common, and shows
remarkable skill in the mere processes of modelling and baking
the slabs of terra-cotta that were fastened by nails to the beams.
So far as the figures themselves are concerned, they seem to have
but little meaning in connexion with the building they decorate.
Pliny, H.N. xiv. 9; xvi. 216.
' From the Polledrara tomb at Vulci, Martha fig. 335.
Coll. Tyszkiewiez, pi. 13.
' Man. dell' Inst. vi. pi. 59, cf. Annali (1861), p. 402; Man. Ant.
viii. pi. xiii.-xiv.
1 Man. dell' Inst. viii. pi. 20; Martha p. 347.
11 Martha pp._333. 348.
11 See Korte, Rihevt dtlle urne Etrusche.
86o
ETRURIA
[LANGUAGE
Painting.
Colas.
Satyrs and maenads, chariot-races and such scenes taken over
from Greek models are perhaps the commonest. In none of the
obviously native work is there any more instinctive feeling for
the greater qualities of sculpture than in the gems. Little is
original, almost everything dependent on earlier masters. There
is no absorption of the artist by his work which produces great
work, great because the beholder thinks rather of the work pro-
duced than of the artist who produces it. For this reason such
figures as the bronze chimaera or the bronze Athena in the
Florence museum are presumably not Etruscan but Greek.
There is no evidence that the Etruscans had easel-paintings
like the Greeks, but their skill in painting is well illustrated
by the pictures with which they frequently covered
the inner walls of their tombs. The wall was prepared
with a coating of fine white stucco on which the figures were
painted with a large variety of tints. The best of them have been
found at Tarquinii, Chiusi, Volci, Caere, Veii. 1 The paintings
exhibit the usual Greek influences. They show a certain
ponderous realism, but as works of art they are of little value.
As pictures of the life and customs of the people they are of
great importance.
As works of art their coins 2 are the worst efforts of the
Etruscans. Gold, silver and bronze were used, but no examples
can be dated earlier than the beginning of the $th
century B.C. The coins are struck according to four
different standards of weight, due perhaps to different trade-
connexions. The bronze coinage shows a distinct scale of reduc-
tion in weight due to the increasing use of the precious metals.
Many examples show a design only on one side. The designs
of the majority of the types are taken from Greek models, but
strangely enough the die-cutters show no such skill as that of
the makers of gems.
Arms and Armour. In the early periods the chief weapons
(besides bows and arrows which bore flint or bronze heads) were
few and simple, and were of bronze. Iron ones have been found,
and their rarity is doubtless partly due to their having rusted
away. Spears of very various weights were common and also
swords and daggers. These latter had straight two-edged blades
with the handle either of the same piece or of some other material
fastened on with rivets. The blades of the daggers are generally
engraved with lines and zigzags. Shields were of circular and
oval shape. These two were of bronze, the round ones decorated
in Homeric fashion with concentric circles of ornament, the
motives being geometric patterns or an animal repeated endlessly.
Breastplates with overlapping shoulder-straps and belts, broader
in front than behind, with decoration of the same kind as the
bucchero vases, are not uncommon. Greaves and helmets
completed their equipment. The former seem to have been less
ornate than those the Greeks wore; the latter were of various
shapes, the commonest being round caps with a knob on the top,
or a deeper shape with a crest from front to back. Some are
shown with side-pieces raised like wings, but these are perhaps
merely cheek-pieces raised on hinges. In later times they had
trumpets and axes, and their arms became practically the same
as the Roman, as one sees from the representations in the
tombs. (R. N.)
LANGUAGE
i. By " Etruscan " is meant the language spoken by the
people called Etrusci (more commonly Tusci) by the Romans,
Turskum numen (i.e. Tuscum nomen) by their neighbours the
Umbrians of Iguvium (q.v.}, and Tvptnjvoi (later, e.g. in Strabo's
time, Tvpptjvoi) by the Greeks. Their own name for themselves
was Rasenna (or Ras6na), according to Dionysius Halic. (i. 30),
but it seems now to be fairly probable that this was no more
than the name of a leading house (represented later on in Pisa
and elsewhere) dominant at some fairly early date in some one
1 See Man. dell' Inst. i. pi. 32-33, v. 16, 17, 33, 34, vi. 30-32, 79,
viii. 36, ix. 13-15; Micali, Man. Ined. pi. 58. Cf. Helbig, Annali
(1863) p. 336, (1870) pp. 5-74; Brunn, ib. (1866), p. 442.
2 Mommsen, Rom. Mtinzwesen; G. F. Hill, Handbook of Greek
and Roman Coins; Deecke, Etruskische Forschungen; also article
NUMISMATICS.
locality (see below). Niebuhr attempted on slender grounds
(Rom. Hist., ed. 3 [Eng. trans.], i. p. 41) to distinguish between
the Tvpfnjvoi and the Tusci in order to accept the strongly
supported tradition of a Lydian origin for the " Tyrrhenes "
(see below), while rejecting it for the " Tuscans," but no one
has since attempted to maintain the distinction (Dittenberger,
Hermes, 1906, p. 85, footnote, regards the form in -rjvoi as a
" Graecized form of a local name" equivalent to Tusci), and
we now know enough of the morphology of Etruscan names to
recognize Tur-s-co- and Tur-s-eno- as closely parallel Etrusco-
Latin stems, cf. Venu-c-ius: Venu-senvs both from Etr. venu
(Schulze, Lat. Eigennamen, p. 405) and Ras-ena: Ras-c-anius
(ibid. p. 92); or Voluscus, V discus: Volusenus (where the forma-
tive suffixes in each word are Etrusco-Latin whether the root
be the same or not). But the analysis of the names cannot be
entirely satisfactory until the first syllable of Etrusci in Greek
writers sometimes "ErpowKoi, e.g. in Strabo ed. Meineke has
been explained.
2. The extent of territory over which this language was spoken
varied considerably at different epochs, but we have only a few
fixed points of chronology. From two separate sources, both
traditional and probably sound (Dion. Hal. i. 26, and Plutarch,
Sulla, 7; cf. Varro, quoted by Censorinus c. 17. 6), we should
ascribe the first appearance of the Etruscans in Italy to the 1 2th
century B.C. The intimate connexion in form between the names
Roma, Romulus and the Etruscan gentes rumate, rumulna
(Romatia, Romilia, &c.), and the fact that many of the early
names in Rome (e.g. Ratumcnna, Capcna, Titles, Luceres, Ramnes)
are characteristically Etruscan, justifies the conclusion that the
foundation of the city, in the sense at least of its earliest fortifi-
cation, was due to Etruscans (Schulze, p. 580). The most likely
interpretation of Cato's date for the Etruscan " foundation " of
Capua is 598 B.C. (Conway, Italic Dialects, pp. 99 and 83). In
524 B.C. (Dion. Hal. vii. 2) the Etruscans were defeated by
Aristodemus of Cumae, and in 474 by Hiero of Syracuse in a great
naval battle off Cumae. Between 445 and 425 (It. Dial. I.e.)
they were driven out of Capua by the Samnites, but they lingered
in parts of Campania (as far south as Salernum) till at least the
next century, as inscriptions show (ib. pp. 94 ff., 53), as at
Pracneste and Tusculum (ib. p. 310 ff.) till the 3rd century or
later. In Etruria itself the oldest inscriptions (on the stelae of
Faesulae and Volaterrae) can hardly be later than the 6th century
B.C. (C. Pauli, Allital. Forsch. ii. part 2, 24 ff.); the Romans had
become dominant early in the 3rd century (C.I.L. xi. i passim],
but the bulk of the Etruscan inscriptions show later forms than
those found in the old town of Volsinii destroyed by the Romans
in 280 B.C. (C. Pauli, ib. i. 127). In the north of Italy we find
Etruscan written in two alphabets (of Sondrio and Bozcn)
between 300 and 150 B.C. (id. ib. pp. 63 and 126). The evidence
of an Etruscan linen book wrapped round a mummy (see below)
seems to suggest that there was some Etruscan colony at Alex-
andria in the period of the Ptolemies. At least one Etruscan
suffix has passed into the Romance languages, -i6a or -ita in Etr.
lautniOa (from laulni " familiaris," or " libertus "), and Etr.-Lat.
lulitta, which became Ital. -etta, Fi.-Eng.-elte.
3. Finally must be mentioned the remarkable pre-Hellenic
epitaph discovered on the island of Lemnos in 1885 (Pauli,
Allital. Forsch. ii. i and 2), the language of which offers remark-
able resemblances to Etruscan, especially in the phrase sial\veiz
aviz (? = "fifty years old "); cf. Etr. ceal\us avils (? " twenty
years old ") ; and the pair of endings -ezi, -ale in consecutive words ;
cf. Etr. larOiale hul\niesi; the style of the sculptural figure has
also parallels in the oldest type of Etruscan monuments. The
alphabet of this inscription is identical (Kirchhoff, Stud. Griech.
Alphab., 4th cd., p. 54) with that of the older group of Phrygian
inscriptions, which mention King Midas and are therefore older
than 620 B.C. With this should be combined the fact that a
marked peculiarity of the South-Etruscan alphabet (T=/> but
earlier = the Greek digamma) has demonstrably arisen out of
9=g)on Phrygian soil, see Class. Rev. xii., 1898, p. 462. Despite
the reasonable but not unanswerable difficulty of Kretschmcr
(Einleitung in d. Geschichte d. griech. Sprache, 1896, p. 240), the
LANGUAGE]
ETRURIA
861
weight of the evidence appears to be distinctly in favour of the
Etruscan character of the language, and Pauli's view is now
generally accepted by students of Etruscan; hence the inclusion
of the inscription in the Corpus Inscc. Elruscarum.
4. The first attempt to interpret Etruscan inscriptions was
made by Phil. Buonarroti (Explic. el conject. ad monum. &c.,
Florence, 1736), who, as was almost inevitable at that epoch,
tried to explain the language as a dialect of Latin. But no real
study was possible before the determination of the alphabet by
Lepsius (Inscc. Umbr. et Oscae, Leipzig, 1841), and his discovery
that five of the Tables of Iguvium (g.v.), though written in
Etruscan alphabet, contained a language akin to Latin but
totally different from Etruscan, though some of the non-Italic
peculiarities of Etruscan had been already pointed out by
Ottfried Milller (Die Etrusker, Breslau, 1828). The earliest in-
scriptions, e.g. the terra-cotta stele of Capua of the sth century
B.C., are written in "serpentine boustrophedon," but in its
common form of the 3rd century B.C. the alphabet is retrograde,
and has the following nineteen letters.
a. c. e. v, a. h. e. i. 1. m. n. p. a', r, s. t. u. x. '
On older monuments ^ - k occurs as an archaic form of c ;
9-?; >^, a sibilant of some kind; and C -$ ( this last mostly
in foreign words. In the earlier monuments the cross-bars of e
and v and A have a more decidedly oblique inclination, and s is
often angular ( ). The mediae b, g, d, though they often occur
in words handed down by. writers as Etruscan, are never found
in the Etruscan inscriptions, though the presence of the mediae
in the Umbrian and Oscan alphabets and in the abecedaria
shows that they existed in the earliest form of the Etruscan
alphabet, is very rare. The form f (earlier ^t) = / * n
south Etruscan and Faliscan inscriptions should also be men-
tioned. Its combination with ^ h shows that it had once served
to denote the sound of digamma just as Latin F. The varieties
of the alphabet in use between the Apennines and the Alps
were first examined by Mommscn (Inschriftcn nord-etruskischen
Alphabets, 1853), and have since been discussed by Paul! (Alt-
italische F orschungen, 1885-1804, csp. vol. iii., Die Venetcr, p. 218,
where other references will be found, see also VENETI).
$. The determination of the alphabet was followed by a
large number of different attempts to explain the Etruscan
forms from words in some other language to which it was supposed
that Etruscan might be akin; Scandinavian and Basque and
Semitic have been tried among the rest. These attempts, how-
ever ingenious, have all proved fruitless; even the latest and
least fanciful (Remarqtus fur le parcnti de la langue tlrusque,
Copenhagen, 1809; Bulletin de I'Acadfmie Royale des Sciences
tides Lf tires de Danrmark, 1809, p. 373), in which featuresof some
living dialects of the Caucasus are cautiously compared by Prof.
V. Tbomsen (as independently by Pauli, see 12), is at the best
premature, and as tc the numerals probably misleading. Worst
of all was the effort of W. Corsscn (Die Sprache der Elrusker,
1875), in whom learning and enthusiasm were combined with
loose methods of both epigraphy and grammar, to revive the
view of Buonarroti. The only solid achievement in the period
of Corssen's influence (1860-1880) was the description of the
works of an (tombs, vases, mirrors and the like) from the different
centres of Etruscan population; Dennis's Cities and Cemeteries
of Etruria (ist cd., 1848; 2nd, 1878) contributes something even
to the study of thi language, because many of the figures in the
scenes sculptured or engraved bear names in Etruscan form (e.g.
mils, " sun ": or " of the sun," on the templum of Placentia;
(ufluni,, "Bacchus"; tu\ul\a, a demon or fury; see Dennis,
Cities, 2nd ed., frontispiece, and p. 354).
6. The reaction against Corssen's method was led first by
W. Deecke, Corssen und die Sprache der Etrusker (1876), Elruski-
teke Forschungen (1875-1880), and continued by Carl Pauli
at first jointly with Deecke and afterwards singly with greater
power (Etruskische Studien, 1873), Etr. Forschungen u. Studien
(Gottingcn-Stuttgart, 1881-1884), AltUalische Studien (Hanover,
1883-1887); Altitalische Forschungen (Leipzig, 1885-1804). Of
the work achieved during tho last generation by him and the
few but distinguished scholars associated with him (Danielsson,
Schaefer, Skutsch and Torp) it may perhaps be said that, though
the positive knowledge yet reaped is scanty, so much has been
done in other ways that the prospect is full of promise. In the
first place, the only sound method of dealing with an unknown
language, that of interpreting the records of the language by
their own internal evidence in the first instance (not by the use
of imaginary parallels in better known languages whose kinship
with the problematic language is merely assumed), has been
finally established and is now followed even by scholars like
Elia Lattes, who still retain some affection for the older point
of view. By this means enough certainty has been obtained on
many characteristic features of the language to bring about a
general recognition of the fact that Etruscan, if we put aside
its borrowings from the neighbouring dialects of Italy, is in no
sense an Indo-European language. In the second place, the
great undertaking of the Corpus Inscriplionum Etruscarum,
founded by Carl Pauli, with the support of the Berlin Academy,
conducted by him from 1893 till his death in 1901, and continued
by Danielsson, Herbig and Torp, for the first time provided a
sound basis for the study in a text of the inscriptions, edited
with care and arranged according to their provenance. The
first volume contains over four thousand inscriptions from the
northern half of Etruria. Thirdly, the discoveries of recent
years have richly increased the available material, especially by
two documents each of some length, (i) The sth-ccntury stele
of terra-cotta from S. Maria di Capua already cited, published
by Buecheler in Rhein. Museum, lv., 1000, p. i) and now in the
Royal Museum at Berlin, is the longest Etruscan inscription
yet found. Its best preserved part contains some two hundred
words of continuous text, and is divided into paragraphs, of
which the third may be cited in the reading approved by Daniels-
son and Torp, and with the division of words adopted by Torp
(in his Bemerkungen zur elrusk. Inschr. von S. Maria di Capua,
Christ iania, 1905), to which the student may be referred. " ilvei
tule ilucve, an pris laruns ilucuflux, nun: tiduaial xu es
xa0c(e) anulis mulu rizilc, ziz riin puiian acasri, ti-m an tule,
leflam sul; ilucu-per prij an ti, ar vus; ta aius, nunfleri."
(2) The linen wrappings of an Egyptian mummy (of the Ptolemaic
period) preserved in the Agram museum were observed to show-
on their inner surface some writing, which proved to be Etruscan
and to contain more than a thousand words of largely continuous
text (Krall, " Die etruskischen Mumienbinden des Agramer.
Museums," Denkschr. d. k. Akad. d. Wissenschajten, 41, Vienna,
1892). The writing has probably nothing to do with the mummy
as it is on the inner surface of the bands, and these are torn
fragments of the original book. The alphabet is of about the
3rd century B.C.
7. From the recurrence of a number of particular formulae with
frequent numerals at intervals, the book seems to be a liturgical
document. Torp has pointed out that the two documents have
some forty words in common, and, with Lattes (" Primi Apprenti
sulja grande iscriz. Etrusca," &c., in Rendic. d. Reale Insl. Lamb.,
scric ii. vol. xxxviii., 1900, p. 345 ff.), has shown that both contain
H-.IS of offerings made to certain gods (among them Suri, Leflam,
and Calu); and Skutsch (Rhein. Afui. 56, 1901, p. 639) has added
a plausible conjecture as to the occasions of the offerings, based on
the phrase "flerxva neflunsl " " Neptuni statua" (or " statuae pars") ;
Torp has made it very probable that the words vacl (or vacil) and
nun, which recur at regular intervals in both, mean " address,"
" recite," " pray," or the like, preceding or following spoken parts
of the ritual.
8. Along with the growth of the material, some positive increase
in knowledge of the language has been attained. Independently
of the work done upon particular inscriptions, such as that which
has just been described, a considerable addition has come from the
elaborate study of Latin proper names already mentioned by Prof.
W. Schulzc of Berlin (Zur Gtschichle lateiniscker Eigennamen, Berlin.
1004), which has incidentally embodied and somewhat extended
the points of Etruscan nomenclature previously observed. The chief
results for our purpose may be briefly stated. It will be convenient
to use the following terms:
(1) praenomm personal name of the individual.
e.g. Vet or Aar of a man, Lar9i or Sana of a woman.
(2) nomen family name.
862
ETTENHEIM
( Tile or Vipi or Tetna, of men.
at - * - - -
' g '\
e-g
Titi or Vipinei or Tetinei, of women.
(3) cognomen = additional family name.
e.g. Faru or Petru of men, Farui, Vetui of women.
(4) agnomen = special cognomen derived from the cognomen of the
father.
e.g. Hanusa (in Latin spelling Hannossa) or Pultusa (also Pultus)
of a man ; Hanunia of a woman.
All these are commonly in the " nominative " (as the examples
just quoted from Schulze, pp. 316-327) in sepulchral inscriptions.
Besides these, we have certain other descriptions used in forms
which may be called a " genitive-dative " case, or a " derivative
possessive " Adjective. These may be entitled:
(5) paternum (a) = praenomen of father, used generally after the
women of son or daughter.
e.g. arnffal " of Arn0." more commonly simply or, so Is for
Laris-al, to which clan " son," often abbreviated c, and
sex or sec (abbrev. s) " daughter," are sometimes added.
paternum (b) = nomen of father, used only after the praenomen of
a daughter (e.g. 6ana velQurnas, " Thana daughter of Velthurna"),
to which sex " daughter," often abbreviated s, is sometimes added.
(6) maternum (a) = nomen of mother.
e.g. pumpunial, " of Pumpuni " (in Lat. form Pomponia) ;
alfnal " of Alfnei " (Lat. Alfia); hetarias, " of Hetaria."
maternum (b) = cognomen of mother.
e.g. vetnal, " of Vetui," or " of Vetonia," hesual, " of Hesui."
maternum (c) = agnomen of mother.
e.g. cumerunias, " of Cumerunia," i.e. " of a daughter of the
cumeru-family."
(7) maritale (i.) nomen, or (ii.) cognomen, or (iii.) agnomen of
husband, used directly after the nomen of the wife, the word puia,
" wife," being often added.
e.g. (i.) larOi cencui larcnasa, " Larthia Cenconia, wife of a
Largena"; (ii.) larSia pulfnei spaspusa, "Larthia Pul-
fennia, wife of a Spaspo "; this form being the same as
that used for the agnomen of a man (see above) (iii.) hastia
cainei leusla, " Hastia Caia, wife of a son of a Leo "; and
with a longer and possibly not synonymous form of suffix
ffania titi latinial iec hanuslisa, " Thania Titia, daughter
of Latinia, wife of a Hanusa " these secondary deriva-
tives in -sla, &c., being an example of what is called gene-
, tivus genelivi, a characteristic Etruscan formation, not
confined to this feminine use.
These examples will probably enable the reader to interpret the
great mass of the names on Etruscan tombs. It should be added
(i) that no clear distinction can be drawn between the use of the
cognomina and the nomina, though it is probable that in origin the
cognomen came from some family connected with the geng by
marriage; and (2) that the praenomen generally comes first, but
sometimes second (especially when both nomen and praenomen are
added in the genitive to the name of a son or daughter).
9. The examples given illustrate also the few principles of in-
flexion and word-formation that are reasonably certain, for example,
the various " genitival " endings. Those in -s and -/ are also found
in dedications where in Latin a dative would be used : e.g. (mi)
duplffas alpan turce " (hoc) deae Thupelthae donum dedit," where
turce shows the only verbal inflection yet certainly known ; cf . amce,
" was," arce, " made," zilacnuce, " held the office of a Zilax,"
lupuce, " passed away." More important are the formative prin-
ciples which the proper names display. Endings -a, -u, -e and -na
are common in the " Nominative " and in Etruscan there appears
to be no distinction between this case and the Accusative of men's
names; the endings -i, -ei, -nei, -nia and -unia are among the
commonest for women's names. But no trace of gender has yet
been observed in common nouns or adjectives. Nor is it always easy
to distinguish a " Case " from a noun-stem. The women's names
corresponding to the men's names in -u are sometimes -ui, some-
times -nei, sometimes longer forms (ves-acnei, beside ves-u, hanunia
from hanu). And the so-called Genitives can themselves be inflected,
as we have seen. The form neffunsl " of Neptune," may even have
swallowed up the nominatival -s of the Italic Neptunus.
10. In view of the protracted discussion as to the numerals and
the dice on which the first six are written, it should be added that only
the following points are certain: (i) that max one; (2) that the
next five numbers are somehow represented by ci, 6u, huff, sa and
zal; (3) and the next three somehow by cezp-, sem<t>-a.nd muv; (4)
that the suffix -al\- denotes the tens, or some of them, e.g. cealx-
beside ci (? 50 and 5); (5) that the suffix -z or -5 is multiplicative
(es(a)ls from zal). It is almost certain that zal must mean either 2
or 6, and of these a stronger case can, perhaps, be made for the latter
meaning. Zathrum appears to be the corresponding ten (? 60).
Skutsch's article in Indogerm. Forschungen, v. p. 256, remains the
best account.
In close connexion with the numerals on sepulchral inscriptions
appear the words ril, " old, aged," avils, " annorum," or " aetatis,"
and livr, " month " (from tiv, " moon ").
1 1. Schulze has shown (e.g., p. 410) that a large number of familiar
endings (e.g. those which when Latinized become -acius, -alius,
-annius, -arius, -asius, -atius, -avus, -avius, -ax, and a similar series
with -o-, -ocius, &c.), and further those with the elements, -Ino-,
-lino-, -enna, -eno-, -tern-, -turn-, -trie-, &c., exhibit different methods
by which nomina were built up from praenomina in Etruscan. Finally
it is of considerable historical importance to observe that a great
mass of the praenomina used for this purpose are clearly of Italic
origin, e.g. Heliia, Barba, Vespa, Nero, Pedo, from all of which (and
many more) there are derivatives which at one stage or other were
certainly or probably Etruscan. It is this incorporation of Italic
elements into the Etruscan nomenclature itself a familiar and!
inevitable feature of the pirate-type of conquest and settlement,
under which many women who bear and nurse and first name the
children belong to the conquered race that has entrapped so many
scholars into the delusion that the language itself was Indo-European.
12. So far the language has been discussed without any
reference to ethnology. But the facts stated above in regard
to the extension of the language in space and time are clearly
adverse to the hypothesis that it came into Italy from the north,
and fully bear out Livy's account (v. 33. n) that the Etruscans
of the Alpine valleys had been driven into that isolation by the
invasion of the Gauls (beginning about 400 B.C.). And the
accumulating evidence of a connexion with Asia Minor (see e.g.
above 3) justifies confidence in the unbroken testimony of
every Roman writer, which cannot but represent the traditions of
the Etruscans themselves, and the evidence of similar traditions
from the Asiatic side given by Herodotus (i. 97) to the effect
that they came to Italy by sea from Lydia. Against this there
has never been anything to set but the silence of " the Lydian
historian Xanthus " (Dion. Hal. i. 28; cf. 30) who may have had
many excellent reasons for it other than a disbelief of the tradition,
and of whom in any case we know nothing save the vague com-
mendation of Dionysius. And it is not merely the miscellanies
of Athenaeus (e.g. xii. 519) but the "unimpeachable testimony
of the Umbrian Plautus (Cistellaria, 2. 3. 19), singularly neglected
since Dennis's day, that convicts the Etruscans of an institution
practised by the Lydians and other non-Indo-European peoples
of Asia Minor, but totally repugnant to all the peoples among
whom the Etruscans moved in their western settlement. The
reader may be referred to Dennis's introductory chapter for
a very serviceable collection of the other ancient testimony as
to their origin. In the present state of our knowledge of the
language it is best to disregard its apparent or alleged resemblances
to various features of various Caucasian dialects pointed out by
Thomsen (see above) and Pauli (Altit. Forsch. ii. 2, p. 147 ff.),
and to acquiesce in Kretschmer's (op. cit. p. 408) non liquet as
to the particular people of Asia Minor from whom the Etruscans
sprang. But meanwhile it is clear that such evidence as has been
obtained by epigraphic and linguistic research is not in any
sense hostile but distinctly favourable to the tradition of their
origin which they themselves must have maintained.
AUTHORITIES. Beside those mentioned in the text, see Professor
F. Skutsch's article " Etruskisch," in the new current (1908) edition
of Pauly-Wissowa's Encyclopaedia; A. Torp's Etruskische Beitrage,
and other shorter writings; E. Lattes's Correzioni, giunte, pastille
al C.I. Etrusc. (Florence, 1904), and his most valuable Iscriz.
paleolatine di provenienza Etrusca (1895); Schaefer's articles in
Pauli's Altitalische Studien (see above), and, with caution, Deecke's
revision of Miiller's Etrusker (Stuttgart, 1877). Some account of
the relations of Etruscans with different Italic communities will be
found in the relevant chapters of R. S. Conway's edition of the
remains of The Italic Dialects (1897). Newly discovered Etruscan
inscriptions are regularly published in the Notizie degli scavi di
antichita, the official Italian journal of excavations (published by
the Reale Accad. dei Lincei, but procurable separately). Fabretti's
Corpus Inscc. Italicarum with its supplements was formerly useful,
but in any doubtful reading its authority is worth little, and its
commentary and glossary represent the epoch of Corssen. The
regular contributions of Prof. Skutsch (under the general heading
"Lateinische Sprache") to Vollmer's Jahresbericht f. d. Fortschritte der
romanischen Sprachwissenschaft; and of Prof. Herbig to Bursian's
Jahresbericht iiber die Fortschritte der classischen Altertumswissenschaft
will both be of service. The present writer is indebted to both
Professor Skutsch and Professor Torp for valuable guidance and
instruction. (R- S. C.)
ETTENHEIM, a town of Germany, in the grand-duchy of
Baden, pleasantly situated on the Ettenbach, under the western
slope of the Black Forest, 7 m. E. from the Rhine by rail. Pop.
(1900) 3106. It has a handsome Roman Catholic church, with
ceiling frescoes, and containing the tomb of Cardinal Rohan,
the last prince bishop of Strassburg, who resided here from
1790 till 1803; a Protestant church and a medieval town-hall.
ETTINGSHAUSEN ETTY
863
Its industries include the manufacture of tobacco, soap and
leather, and there is a considerable trade in wine and agricultural
produce. Founded in the 8th century by Eddo, bishop of
Strassburg. Ettenheim remained attached to that see until 1802,
when it passed to Baden. Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon-
Condi, duke of Enghien (1772-1804), who had taken refuge here
in 1801, was arrested in Ettenheim on the 151(1 of March 1804
and conveyed to Paris, where he was shot on the 2oth of March
following. The Benedictine abbey of Ettenheimmiinster, which
was founded in the 8th century and which was dissolved in 1803,
occupied a site south of the town.
ETTINGSHAUSEN. CONSTANTIN. BARON VON (1826-1897),
Austrian geologist and botanist, was born in Vienna on the
i6th of June 1826. He graduated as a doctor of medicine in
Vienna, and became in 1854 professor of botany and natural
history at the medical and surgical military academy in that
city. In 1871 he was chosen professor of botany at Graz, a
position which he occupied until the close of his life. He was
distinguished for his researches on the Tertiary floras of various
pans of Europe, and on the fossil floras of Australia and New
Zealand. He died at Graz on the ist of February 1897.
PUBLICATIONS. Die Farnkrauler der Jctztwelt stir Untersuthung
uitj Bestimmunt der in den Formationen der Erdrinde einge-
uUossenen Cberresle von vorweltlicHen Arten diescr Ordnung nach dem
Fldcktn-Skeltl bearbeitet (1865); Physiograbhie der Afedicinat-
Pflanien (1862): A Monograph of the Bntisn Eocene Flora (with
J. Starkie Gardner), Palaeontograph. Soc. vol. i. (Filices, 1879-
i -
ETTLINGEN. a town of Germany, in the grand-duchy of
Baden, on the Alb, and the railway Mannheim-Basel, 4$ m. S.
of Karlsruhe. Pop. (1905) 8040. It is still surrounded by old
walls and ditches, and presents a medieval and picturesque
appearance. Among its more striking edifices are an old princely
residence, with extensive grounds, an Evangelical and two
Roman Catholic churches, and the buildings of a former
monastery. There are also many Roman remains, notable
among them the " Neptune " sculpture, now embedded in the
wall of the town-hall. Its chief manufactures are paper-making,
spinning, weaving and machine building. The cultivation of
wine and fruit is also largely carried on, and in these products
considerable trade is done.
The first notice of Ettlingen dates from the 8th century. It
became a town in 1227 and was presented by the emperor
Frederick II. to the margrave of Baden. In 1689 it was pillaged
by the French, and near the town Morcau defeated the archduke
Charles on the 9th and loth of July 1796.
See Schwarz. Gackickte der Stadt EUlingen (Carlsruhe, 1900).
ETTMULLER. ERNST MORITZ LUDWIG (1802-1877),
German philologist, was born at Gcrsdorf near Lobau, in Saxony,
on the $th of October 1802. He was privately educated by his
father, the Protestant pastor of the village, entered the gym-
nasium at Zittau in 1816 and studied from 1823 to 1826 at the
university of Leipzig. After a period of about two years during
which he was partly abroad and partly at Gcrsdorf. he proceeded
to Jena, where in 1830 he delivered, under the auspices of the
university, a course of lectures on the old Norse poets. Three
yean later he was called to occupy the mastership of German
language and literature at the Zurich gymnasium; and in 1863
he left the gymnasium for the university, with which he had been
partially connected twenty years before. He died at Zurich in
April 1877. To the study of English EttmUllcr contributed by
an alliterative translation of Beowulf (1840), an Anglo-Saxon
chrcstomathy entitled Engla and Seaxna scopas and boceras
(1850), and a well-known Lexicon Anglo-Saxonicum (1851),
in which the explanations and comments arc given in Latin,
but the words unfortunately are arranged according to their
etymological affinity, and the letters according to phonetic
relations. He edited a large number of High and Low German
texts, and to the study of the Scandinavian literatures he contri-
buted an edition of the Volusfta (1831), a translation of the
Litder der Eddo. von den Nibelungfn (1837) and an old Norse
reading book and vocabulary. He was also the author of a
Handbufh der deutscken LUeralurgetchichte (1847), which includes
the treatment of the Anglo-Saxon, the Old Scandinavian, and
the Low German branches; and he popularized a great deal
of literary information in his Herbstabende undWinterndchte:
Gesfirtkhe tiber Dichlungen und Dichter (1865-1867). The allitera-
tive versification which he admired in the old German poems
he himself employed in his Deutsche StammkSnige (1844) and
Das verhangnissvolle Zahnwelt, oder Karl der Grosse und der
Heilige Goar (1852).
ETTMULLER, MICHAEL (1644-1683), German physician,
was burn at Leipzig on the 26th of May 1644, studied at his
native place and at Wittenberg, and after travelling in Italy,
France and England was recalled in 1668 to Leipzig, where
he was admitted a member of the faculty of medicine in 1676.
About the same time the university confided to him the chair of
botany, and appointed him extraordinary professor of surgery
and anatomy. He died on the 9th of March 1683, at Leipzig.
He enjoyed a great reputation as a lecturer, and wrote many
tracts on medical and chemical subjects. His collected works
were published in 1708 by his son, Michael Ernst EttmUller
(1673-1732), who was successively professor of medicine (1702),
anatomy and surgery (1706), physiology (1719) and pathology
(1724) at Leipzig.
ETTRICK, a river and parish of Selkirkshire, Scotland.' The
river rises in Capel Fell (2223 ft.), a hill in the extreme S.W.
of the shire, and flows in a north-easterly direction for 32 m.
to its junction with the Tweed, its principal affluent being the
Yarrow. In the parish of Ettrick were born James Hogg, the
" Ettrick shepherd " (the site of the cottage being marked by a
monument erected in 1898), Tibbie (Elizabeth) Shiel (1782-1878),
keeper of the famous inn at the head of St Mary's Loch, both
of whom are buried in the churchyard, and Thomas Boston
(1713-1767), one of the founders of the Relief church. About
2 m. below Ettrick church is Thirlestane Castle, the seat of
Lord Napier and Ettrick, a descendant of the Napiers of
Merchiston, and beside it is the ruin of the stronghold that
belonged to John Scott of Thirlestane, to whom, in reward for
his loyalty, James V. granted a sheaf of spears as a crest, and the
motto, " Ready, aye ready." Two miles up Rankle Burn, a
right-hand tributary, lies the site of Buccleuch, another strong-
hold of the Scotts, which gave them the titles of earl (1619) and
duke (1663). Only the merest fragment remains of Tushielaw
tower, occupying high ground opposite the confluence of the
Rankle and the Ettrick, the home of Adam Scott, " King of the
Border," who was executed for his misdeeds in 1530. Lower
down the dale is Deloraine, recalling one of the leading characters
in The Lay of the Last Minstrel. If the name come from the
Gaelic dail Orain, " Oran's field," the district was probably a
scene of the labours of St Oran (d. 548), an Irish saint and friend
of Columba. It seems that Sir Walter Scott's rhythm has
caused the accent wrongly to be laid on the last, instead of the
penultimate syllable. Carterhaugh, a corruption of Carclhaugh,
occupying the land where Ettrick and Yarrow meet, was the
scene of the ballad of "Young Tamlane," and of the historic
football match in 1815, under the auspices of the duke of
Buccleuch, between the burghers of Selkirk, championed by
Walter Scott, sheriff of the Forest (not yet a baronet), and the
men of Yarrow vale, championed by the Ettrick shepherd.
ETTY, WILLIAM (1787-1849), British painter, was born at
York, on the icth of March 1787. His father had been in early
life a miller, but had finally established himself in the city of
York as a baker of spice-bread. After some scanty instruction
of the most elementary kind, the future painter, at the age of
eleven and a half, left the paternal roof, and was bound apprentice
in the printing-office of the Hull Packet. Amid many trials and
discouragements he completed his term of seven years' servitude,
and having in that period come by practice, at first surreptitious,
though afterwards allowed by his master " in lawful hours,"
to know his own powers, he removed to London.
The kindness of an elder brother and a wealthy uncle, William
Etty, himself an artist, stood him in good stead. He commenced
his training by copying without instruction from nature, models,
prints, &c. his first academy, as he himself says, being a
864
ETYMOLOGY
plaster-cast shop in Cock Lane, Smithfield. Here he made a copy
from an ancient cast of Cupid and Psyche, which was shown to
Opie, and led to his being enrolled in 1807 as student of the
Academy, whose schools were at that time conducted in Somerset
House. Among his fellow scholars at this period of his career
were some who in after years rose to eminence in their art, such as
Wilkie, Haydon, Collins, Constable. His uncle generously paid the
necessary fee of one hundred guineas, and in the summer of 1807
he was admitted to be a private pupil of Sir Thomas Lawrence,
who was at the very acme of his fame. Etty himself always
looked on this privilege as one of incalculable value, and till his
latest day regarded Lawrence as one of the chief ornaments
of British art. For some years after he quitted Sir Thomas's
studio, even as late as 1816, the influence of his preceptor was
traceable in the mannerism of his works. Though he had by
this time made great progress in his art, his career was still one
of almost continual failure, hardly cheered by even a passing
ray of success. In 1811, after repeated rejections, he had the
satisfaction of seeing his " Telemachus rescuing Antiope " on
the walls of the Academy. It was badly hung, however, and
attracted little notice. For the next five years he persevered
with quiet and constant energy in overcoming the disadvantages
of his early training with yearly growing success, and he was
even beginning to establish something like a name when in 1816
he resolved to improve his knowledge of art by a journey to
Italy. After an absence of three months, however, he was
compelled to return home without having penetrated farther
south than Florence. Struggles and vexations still continued
to harass him, but he bore up against them with patient endur-
ance and force of will. In 1820 his " Coral-finders," exhibited
at the Royal Academy, attracted much attention, and its success
was more than equalled by that of " Cleopatra's arrival in
Cilicia," shown in the following year. In 1822 he again set out on
a tour to Italy, taking Paris on his way, and astonishing his
fellow-students at the Louvre by the rapidity and fidelity with
which he copied from the old masters in that gallery. On
arriving at Rome he immediately resumed his studies of the old
masters, and elicited many expressions of wonder from his
Italian fellow-artists for the same qualities which had gained
the admiration of the French. Though Etty was duly impressed
by the grand chefs-d' 'ceuvre of Raphael and Michelangelo at
Rome, he was not sorry to exchange that city for Venice, which
he always regarded as the true home of art in Italy. His own
style as a colourist held much more of the Venetian than of any
other Italian school, and he admired his prototypes with a zeal
and exclusiveness that sometimes bordered on extravagance.
Early in 1824 he returned home to find that honours long
unjustly withheld were awaiting him. In that year he was made
an associate of the Royal Academy, and in 1828 he was promoted
to the full dignity of an Academician. In the interval between
these dates he had produced the " Combat (Woman interceding
for the Vanquished)," and the first of the series of three pictures
on the subject of Judith, both of which ultimately came into the
possession of the Scottish Academy. Etty's career was from this
time one of slow but uninterrupted success. In 1830 he again
crossed the channel with the view to another art tour through
the continent; but he was overtaken in Paris by the insurrection
of the Three Days, and was so much shocked by the sights he
was compelled to witness in that time that he returned home
with all convenient speed. During the next ten years of his life
the zeal and unabated assiduity of his studies were not at all
diminished. He was a constant attendant at the Academy Life
School, where he used to work regularly along with the students,
notwithstanding the remonstrances of some of his fellow-Acade-
micians, who thought the practice undignified. The course of
his studies was only interrupted by occasional visits to his native
city, and to Scotland, where he was welcomed with the utmost
enthusiasm, and feted with the most gratifying heartiness by
his brother-artists at Edinburgh. On the occasion of one of
these visits he gave the finishing touches to his trio of Judiths.
In 1840, and again in 1841, Etty undertook a pilgrimage to the
Netherlands, to seek and examine for himself the masterpieces
of Rubens in the churches and public galleries there. Two years
later he once more visited France with a view to collecting
materials for what he called " his last epic," his famous picture of
" Joan of Arc." This subject, which would have tasked to the
full even his great powers in the prime and vigour of manhood,
proved almost too serious an undertaking for him in his old age.
It exhibits, at least, amid great excellences, undeniable proofs of
decay on the part of the painter; yet it brought a higher price
than any of his earlier and more perfect works, 2500. In 1848,
after completing this work, he retired to York, having realized
a comfortable independence. One wish alone remained for him
now to gratify; he desired to see a " gathering " of his pictures.
With much difficulty and exertion he was enabled to assemble
the great majority of them from various parts of the British
Islands; and so numerous were they that the walls of the large
hall he engaged in London for their exhibition were nearly
covered. This took place in the summer of 1849; on the 1 3th of
November of that same year he died. He received the honours of
a public funeral in his native city.
Etty holds a secure place among English artists. His drawing
was frequently incorrect, but in feeling and skill as a colourist
he has few equals. His most conspicuous defects as a painter
were the result of insufficient general culture and narrowness of
sympathy.
See Etty's autobiography, published in the Art Journal for 1849,
and the Life of William Etty, R.A., by Gilchrist (2 vols., 1855).
ETYMOLOGY (Gr. eru/xos, true, andXo7<w, account), that part
or branch of the science of linguistics which deals with the origin
or derivation of words. The Greek word eru/tos, in so far as it
was applied to words, referred to the real underlying meaning
rather than to the origin. It was the Stoics who asserted that
the discovery of TO trvfiov would explain the essence of the
things and ideas represented by words. Plato in the Cralylus
makes a nearer approach to the modern view when he connects,
e.g. yvvr;, woman, with jovfi, seed, while he jests at such ety-
mological feats as the derivation of ovpavos, heaven, airo TOV bpav
TO. avtii, from looking at things above, or avOpuwos, man, from
6 avadpSiv a mitfirtv, he who looks up at what he sees. Until
the comparative study of philology and the development of the
laws underlying phonetic changes, the derivation of words was
a matter mostly of guess-work, sometimes right but more often
wrong, based on superficial resemblances of form and the like.
This popular etymology, to which the Germans have given the
name Volksetymologie or folk-etymology, has had much influence
in the form which words take (e.g. " crawfish " or " crayfish,"
from the French crevis, modern ecrevisse, or " sand-blind," from
samblind, i.e. semi-, half-blind), and has frequently been the
occasion of homonyms. W. W. Skeat has embodied in certain
canons or rules some well-known principles which should be
observed in giving the etymology of a word; these may be
usefully given here: " (i) Before attempting an etymology,
ascertain the earliest form and use of the word, and observe
chronology. (2) Observe history and geography; borrowings
are due to actual contact. (3) Observe phonetic laws, especially
those which regulate the mutual relation of consonants in the
various Aryan languages, at the same time comparing the vowel
sounds. (4) In comparing two words, A and B, belonging to
the same language, of which A contains the lesser number of
syllables, A must be taken to be the more original word, unless
we have evidence of contraction or other corruption. (5) In
comparing two words, A and B, belonging to the same language
and consisting of the same number of syllables, the older form
can usually be distinguished by observing the sound of the
principal vowel. (6) Strong verbs, in the Teutonic languages,
and the so-called " irregular verbs " in Latin, are commonly to
be considered as primary, other related forms being taken from
them. (7) The whole of a word, and not a portion only, ought
to be reasonably accounted for; and, in tracing changes of
form, any infringement of phonetic laws is to be regarded with
suspicion. (8) Mere resemblances of form and apparent con^
nexion in sense between languages which have different phonetic
laws or no necessary connexion are commonly a delusion, and
EU EUBOEA
865
art not to be regarded, (o) Whoa words in two different languages
are more nearly alike than the ordinary phonetic laws would
allow, there is a strong probability that one language has borrowed
the word from the other. Truly cognate words ought not to be
too muck alike. ( 10) It is useless to offer an explanation of an
English word which will not alto explain all the cognate forms "
(Introduction to Etymological Dictionary of the English Language,
898)-
An English word is either " the extant formal representative
or direct phonetic descendant of an earlier (Teutonic) word,
or it has been adopted or adapted from some foreign language,"
adoption being a popular, and adaptation being a literary or
learned process; finally, there is formation, i.e. the " combination
of existing words (foreign or native) or parts of words with each
other or with living formatives, i.e. syllables which no longer
exist as separate words, but yet have an appreciable signification
which they impart to the new product " (see Introduction to the
Oxford A'cv English Dictionary, p. xx). A further classification
at words according to their origin is that into (i) naturals, i.e.
purely native words, like " mother," " father," "house"; (2)
those which become perfectly naturalized, though of foreign
origin, like "cat," "mutton," "beef"; (3) denizens, words
naturalized in usage but keeping the foreign pronunciation,
spelling and inflections, e.g. "focus," "camera"; (4) aliens,
words for foreign things, institutions, offices, &c., for which
there is no English equivalent, e.g., menu, table d'hote, imfi. lakh,
moUah, taroush; (5) casuals, e.g., bloc, Ausgleich, sabotage, differing
only from " aliens " in their temporary use. The full etymology
of a word should include the phonetic descent, the source of the
word, whether from a native or from a foreign origin, and, if
the latter, whether by adoption or adaptation, or, if a formed
word, the origin of the parts which go to make it up. In the
present edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica such full ety-
mologies, which would be necessary and in place in an etymo-
logical dictionary, have not been given in every instance, but
brief etymological notes are appended, showing in outline the
sources and history, and in many cases the development in
meaning. (See also DICTIONARY.)
BU. a town of north-western France, in the department of
Seine-Infirieure, on the river Bresle, 64 m. N.N.E. of Rouen
on the Western railway, and 2 m. E.S.E. of Le Trdport, at the
mouth of the Bresle, which is canalized between the two towns.
Pop. (1906) 4865. The extensive forest of Eu lies to the south-
east of the town. Eu has three buildings of importance the
beautiful Gothic church of St Laurent (izth and 131(1 centuries)
of which the exterior of the choir with its three tiers of ornamented
buttressing and the double arches between the pillars of the nave
are architecturally notable; the chapel of the Jesuit college (built
about 1635), in which are the tombs of Henry, third duke of
Guise, and his wife, Katherine of Cleves; and the chateau.
The latter was begun by Henry of Guise in 1578, in place of an
older chateau burnt by Louis XI. in 1475 to prevent its capture
by the English. It was continued by Mademoiselle de Mont-
pensier in the latter half of the i;th century, and restored by
Louis Philippe who, in 1843 and 1845, received Queen Victoria
within its walls. In 1902 the greater part of the building was
destroyed by fire. The town has a tribunal of commerce and
a communal college, flour-mills, manufactories of earthenware,
biscuits, furniture, casks, and glass and brick works; the port
has trade in grain, timber, hemp,- flax, &c.
Eu (Augusta) was in existence under the Romans. The first
line of its counts, supposed to be descended from the dukes of
Normandy, had as heiress Alix (died 1227), who married Raoul
(Ralph) de Lusignan, known as the Sire d'Issoudun from his
lordship of that name. Through their grand-daughter Marie,
the countship of Eu passed by marriage to the house of Brienne,
two members of which, both named Raoul, were constables of
France. King John confiscated the countship in 1350, and gave
it to John of Artois (1352)- His great-grandson, Charles, son
of Philip of Artois, count of Eu, and Marie of Berry, played a
conspicuous part in the Hundred Years' War. He was taken
prisoner at the battle of Agincourt (1415), and remained in
DC. 28
Knglund twenty-three years, in accordance with the (lying
injunctions of Henry V. that he was not to be let go until
his son, Henry VI., was of age to govern his dominions.
He accompanied Charles VII. on his campaigns in Normandy
and Guyenne, and was made lieutenant-general of these two
provinces. It was he who effected a reconciliation between the
king and the dauphin after the revolt of the latter. He was
created a peer of France in 1458, and made governor of Paris
during the war of the League of the Public Weal (1465). He
died on the i$th of July 1472 at the age of about seventy-eight,
leaving no children. His sister's son, John of Burgundy, count
of Ncvers, now received the countship, which passed through
heiresses, in the isth century, to the house of Cleves, and to that
of Lorraine-Guise. In 1660 Henry II. of Lorraine, duke of Guise,
sold it to " Mademoiselle," Anne Marie Louise d'Orlfians,
duchesse de Montpensier (q.v.), who made it over (1682) to the
duke of Maine, bastard son of Louis XIV., as part of the price
of the release of her lover Lauzun. The second son of the duke
of Maine, Louis Charles de Bourbon (1701-1775), bore the title
of count of Eu. In 1753 he inherited from his elder brother,
Louis Auguste de Bourbon (1700-1755), prince de Dombes,
great estates, part of which he sold to the king. The remainder,
which was still considerable, passed to his cousin the duke of
Penthievre. These estates were confiscated at the Revolution;
but at the Restoration they were bestowed by Louis XVII. on
the duchess-dowager of Orleans who, in 1821, bequeathed them
to her son, afterwards King Louis Philippe. They were again
confiscated in 1852, but were restored to the Orleans family by
the National Assembly after the Franco-German War. The title
of count of Eu was revived in the ipth century in favour of
the eldest son of the duke of Nemours, second son of King
Louis Philippe.
EUBOEA (pronounced Ewia in the modern language),
EURIPOS, or NEGROPONT, the largest island of the Grecian
archipelago. It is separated from the mainland of Greece by
the Euboic Sea. In general outline it is long and narrow; it
is about oo m. long, and varies in breadth from 30 m. to 4.
Its general direction is from N.W. to S.E., and it is traversed
throughout its length by a mountain range, which forms part of
the chain that bounds Thessaly on the E., and is continued south
of Euboca in the lofty islands of Andros, Tenos and Myconos.
The principal peaks of this range are grouped in three knots
which divide the island into three portions. Towards the north,
opposite the Locrian territory, the highest peaks are Mts.
Gaetsades (4436 ft.) and Xcron (3232 ft.). The former was
famed in ancient times for its medicinal plants, and at its foot
are the celebrated hot springs, near the town of Acdepsus (mod.
Lipsos), called the Baths of Heracles, used, we are told, by the
dictator L. Cornelius Sulla, and still frequented by the Greeks
for the cure of gout, rheumatism and digestive disorders. These
springs, strongly sulphurous, rise a short distance inland at
several points, and at last pour steaming over the rocks, which
they have yellowed with their deposit, into the Euboic Sea.
Opposite the entrance of the Maliac Gulf is the promontory of
Cenaeum, the highest point (2221 ft.) behind which is now called
Lithada, a corruption of Lichades, the ancient name of the
islands off the extremity of the headland. Here again we meet
with the legends of Heracles, for this cape, together with the
neighbouring coast of Trachis, was the scene of the events
connected with the death of that hero, as described by Sophocles
in the Trachiniae. Near the north-east extremity of the island,
and almost facing the entrance of the Gulf of Pagasae, is the pro-
montory of Artemisium, celebrated for the great naval victory
gained by the Greeks over the Persians, 480 B.C. Towards the
centre, to the N.E. of Chain's, rises the highest of its mountains,
Dirphysor Dirphe,now Mount Delphi (5725 ft.), the bare summit
of which is not entirely free from snow till the end of May, while
its sides are clothed with pines and firs, and lower down with
chestnuts and planes. It is one of the most conspicuous summits
of eastern Greece, and from its flanks the promontory of Cher-
sonesus projects' into the Aegean. At the southern extremity
the highest mountain is Ocha, now called St Elias (4830 ft.).
866
EUBOEA
The south-western promontory was named Geraestus, the south-
eastern Caphareus; the latter, an exposed point, attracts the
storms, which rush between it and the neighbouring cliffs of
Andros as through a funnel. The whole of the eastern coast
is rocky and destitute of harbours, especially the part called
Coela, or " the Hollows," where part of the Perisan fleet was
wrecked. So greatly was this dreaded by sailors that the principal
line of traffic from the north of the Aegean to Athens used to
pass by Chalcis and the Euboic Sea.
Euboea was believed to have originally formed part of the
mainland, and to have been separated from it by an earthquake.
This is the less improbable because it lies in the neighbourhood
of a line of earthquake movement, and both from Thucydides and
from Strabo we hear of the northern part of the island being
shaken at different periods, and the latter writer speaks of a
fountain at Chalcis being dried up by a similar cause, and a
mud volcano formed in the neighbouring plain. Evidences of
volcanic action are also traceable in the legends connected with
Heracles at Aedepsus and Cenaeum, which here, as at Lemnos
and elsewhere in Greece, have that origin. Its northern extremity
is separated from the Thessalian coast by a strait, which at one
point is not more than a mile and a half in width. In the
neighbourhood of Chalcis, both to the north and the south, the
bays are so confined as readily to explain the story of Agamemnon's
fleet having been detained there by contrary winds. At Chalcis
itself, where the strait is narrowest, it is called the Euripus, and
here it is divided in the middle by a rock, on which formerly
a castle stood. The channel towards Boeotia, which is now
closed, is spanned by a stone bridge. The other, which is far
the deeper of the two, is crossed by an iron swing-bridge, allow-
ing for the passage of vessels. This bridge, which dates from
1896, replaced a smaller wooden swing-bridge erected in 1856.
The extraordinary changes of tide which take place in this
passage have been a subject of wonder from classical times.
At one moment the current runs like a river in one direction, and
shortly afterwards with equal velocity in the other. Strabo
speaks of it as varying seven times in the day, but it is more
accurate to say, with Livy, that it is irregular. A bridge was
first constructed here in the twenty-first year of the Pelopon-
nesian War, when Euboea revolted from Athens; and thus the
Boeotians, whose work it was, contrived to make that country
" an island to every one but themselves." The Boeotians by
this means secured a powerful weapon of offence against Athens,
being able to impede their supplies of gold and corn from Thrace,
of timber from Macedonia, and of horses from Thessaly. The
name Euripus was corrupted during the middle ages into Evripo
and Egripo, and in this latter form transferred to the whole
island, whence the Venetians, when they occupied the district,
altered it to Negroponte, referring to the bridge which connected
it with the mainland.
The rivers of Euboea are few in number and scanty in volume.
In the north-eastern portion the Budorus flows into the Aegean,
being formed by two streams which unite their waters in a small
plain, and were perhaps the Cereus and Neleus concerning which
the story was told that sheep drinking the water of the one
became white, of the other black. On the north coast, near
Histiaea, is the Callas; and on the western side the Lelantus,
near Chalcis, flowing through the plain of the same name. This
plain, which intervenes between Chalcis and Eretria, and was a
fruitful source of contention to those cities, is the most consider-
able of the few and small spaces of level ground in the island,
and was fertile in corn. Aristotle, when speaking of the aristo-
cratic character of the horse, as requiring fertile soil for its support,
and consequently being associated with wealth, instances its
use among the Chalcidians and Eretrians, and in the former
of those two states we find a class of nobles called Hippobot&e.
This rich district was afterwards occupied by Athenian cleruchs.
The next largest plain was that of Histiaea, and at the present
day this and the neighbourhood of the Budorus (Ahmet-Aga)
are the two best cultivated parts of Euboea, owing to the exer-
tions of foreign colonists. The mountains afford excellent
pasturage for sheep and cattle, which were reared in great
quantities in ancient times, and seem to have given the island
its name; these pastures belonged to the state. The forests
are extensive and fine, and are now superintended by government
officials, called ba.ao<t>v\aK.ts, in spite or with the connivance
of whom the timber is being rapidly destroyed partly from
the merciless way in which it is cut by the proprietors, partly
from its being burnt by the shepherds, for the sake of the rich
grass that springs up after such conflagrations, and partly owing
to the goats, whose bite kills all the young growths. In the
mountains were several valuable mines of iron and copper;
and from Karystos, at the south of the island, came the green and
white marble, the modern Cipollino, which was in great request
among the Romans of the imperial period for architectural
purposes, and the quarries of which belonged to the emperor.
The scenery of Euboea is perhaps the most beautiful in Greece,
owing to the varied combinations of rock, wood and water;
for from the uplands the sea is almost always in view, either the
wide island-studded expanse of the Aegean, or the succession of
lakes formed by the Euboic Sea, together with mountains of ex-
quisite outline, while the valleys and maritime plains are clothed
either with fruit trees or with plane trees of magnificent growth.
On the other hand, no part of Greece is so destitute of interest-
ing remains of antiquity as Euboea. The only site which has
attracted archaeologists is that of Eretria (<?..), which was
excavated by the American School of Athens in 1890-1895.
Like most of the Greek islands, Euboea was originally known
under other names, such as Macris and Doliche from its shape,
and Ellopia and Abantis from the tribes inhabiting it. The
races by which it was occupied at an early period were different
in the three districts, into which, as we have seen, it was naturally
divided. In the northern portion we find the Histiaei and
Ellopes, Thessalian races, which probably had passed over from
the Pagasaean Gulf. In central Euboea were the Curetes and
Abantes, who seem to have come from the neighbouring continent
by way of the Euripus; of these the Abantes, after being rein-
forced by lonians from Attica, rose to great power, and exercised
a sort of supremacy over the whole island, so that in Homer
the inhabitants generally are called by that name. The southern
part was occupied by the Dryopes, part of which tribe, after
having been expelled from their original seats in the south of
Thessaly by the Dorians, migrated to this island, and established
themselves in the three cities of Karystos, Dystos and Styra.
The population of -Euboea at the present day is made up of
elements not less various, for many of the Greek inhabitants
seem to have immigrated, partly from the mainland, and partly
from other islands; and besides these, the southern portion
is occupied by Albanians, who probably have come from Andros;
and in the mountain districts nomad Vlach shepherds are found.
History. The history of the island is for the most part that
of its two principal cities, Chalcis and Eretria, the latter of which
was situated about 15 m. S.E. of the former, and was also on
the shore of the Euboic Sea. The neighbourhood of the fertile
Lelantian or Lelantine plain, and their proximity to the place of
passage to the mainland, were evidently the causes of the choice
of site, as well as of their prosperity. Both cities were Ionian
settlements from Attica, and their importance in early times
is shown by their numerous colonies in Magna Graecia and
Sicily, such as Cumae, Rhegium and Naxos, and on the coast
of Macedonia, the projecting portion of which, with its three
peninsulas, hence obtained the name of Chalcidice. In this way
they opened new trade routes to the Greeks, and extended the
field of civilization. How great their commerce was is shown by
the fact that the Euboic scale of weights and measures was in
use at Athens (until Solon, q.v.) and among the Ionic cities
generally. They were rival cities, and at first appear to have
been equally powerful; one of the earliest of the sea-fights
mentioned in Greek history took place between them, and in
this we are told that many of the other Greek states took part.
It was in consequence of the aid which the people of Miletus
lent to the Eretrians on this occasion that Eretria sent five
ships to aid the lonians in their revolt against the Persians
(see IONIA); and owing to this, that city was the first place
EUBULIDES EUCALYPTUS
867
in Greece proper to be attacked by Datis and Artaphernes
in 400 B.C. It was utterly ruined on that occasion, and its
inhabitants were transported to Persia. Though it was restored
after the battle of Marathon, on a site at a little distance from
its original position, it never regained its former eminence, but
it was still the second city in the island. From this time its
neighbour Chalcis, which, though it suffered from a lack of good
water, was, as Strabo says, the natural capital from its com-
manding the Euripus, held an undisputed supremacy. Already,
however, this city had suffered from the growing power of Athens.
In the year 506, when the Chalcidians joined with the Boeotians
and the Spartan king Cleomenes in a league against that state,
they were totally defeated by the Athenians, who established
4000 Attic settlers (see CLEBUCHY) on their lands, and seem to
have reduced the whole island to a condition of dependence.
Again, in 446, when Euboea endeavoured to throw of! the yoke,
it was once more reduced by Pericles, and a new body of settlers
was planted at Histiaea in the north of the island, after the
inhabitants of that town had been expelled. This event is re-
ferred to by Aristophanes in the Clouds (212), where the old
farmer, on being shown Euboea on the map " lying outstretched
in all its length," remarks," I know; we laid it prostrate
under Pericles." The Athenians fully recognized its importance
to them, as supplying them with corn and cattle, as securing
their commerce, and as guaranteeing them against piracy, for
its proximity to the coast of Attica rendered it extremely
dangerous to them when in other hands, so that Demosthenes,
in the De corona, speaks of a time when the pirates that made
it their headquarters so infested the neighbouring sea as to
prevent all navigation. But in the 2ist year of the Peloponnesian
war the island succeeded in regaining its independence. After
this we find it taking sides with one or other of the leading
states, until, after the battle of Chaeronca, it passed into the
hands of Philip II. of Macedon, and finally into those of the
Romans. By Philip V. of Macedon Chalcis was called one of the
three fetters of Greece, Demetrias on the Gulf of Pagasae and
Corinth being the other two.
In modern history Euboea or Negropont comes once more
prominently into notice at the time of the fourth crusade. In
the partition of the Eastern empire by the Latins which followed
that event the island was divided into three fiefs, the occupants
of which ere long found it expedient to place themselves under
the protection of the Venetian republic, which thenceforward
became the sovereign power in the country. For more than
two centuries and a half during which the Venetians remained
in possession, it was one of the most valuable of their dependencies,
and the lion of St Mark may still be seen, both over the sea gate
of Chalcis and in other parts of the town. At length in 1470,
after a valiant defence, this well-fort ificd city was wrested from
them by Mahommed II., and the whole island fell into the hands
of the Turks. One desperate attempt to regain it was made
by Francesco Morosini (d. 1694) in 1688, when the city was
besieged by land and sea for three months; but owing to the
strength of the place, and the disease which thinned their ranks,
the assailants were forced to withdraw. At the conclusion ot
the Greek War of Independence, in 1830, the island was delivered
from the Turkish sway, and constituted a part of the newly
established Greek state. Euboea at the present time produces
a large amount of grain, and its mineral wealth is also considerable,
great quantities of magnesia and lignite being exported. In
1809 it was constituted a separate name (pop. 1007, 1 16,003).
BIBLIOGRAPHY. H. N. Ulrichs, Reiten und Forschunten in
Griechfni'ind, vol. ii. (Berlin, 1863); C. Bursian, Gtographie von
Grieckenland. vol. u. (Leipzig, 1872); C. Neumann and J. Partsch,
Physikaliscke Geographie von Griechenland (Breslau, 1885);
Baedeker's Greece (yd ed., Leipzig, 1905) ; for statistics see GREECE :
Topography. (H. F. T.)
EUBULIDES. a native of Miletus, Greek philosopher and
successor of Eucleides as head of the Megarian school. Nothing
is known of the events of his life. Indirect evidence shows that
he was a contemporary of Aristotle, whom he attacked with great
bitterness. There was also a tradition that Demosthenes was
one of his pupils. His name has been preserved chiefly by some
celebrated, though false and captious, syllogisms of which he
was the reputed author. Though mainly examples of verbal
quibbling, they serve to show the difficulties of language and of
explaining the relations of sense-given impressions. Eubulides
wrote a treatise on Diogenes the Cynic and also a number of
comedies. (See MEGARIAN SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.)
EUBULUS, of Anaphlystus, Athenian demagogue during tin-
time of Demosthenes. He was a persistent opponent of that
statesman, and was chiefly instrumental in securing the acquittal
of Aeschines (who had been his own clerk) when accused of
treachery in connexion with the embassy to Philip of Macedon.
Eubulus took little interest in military affairs, and was (at any
rate at first) a strong advocate of peace at any price. He devoted
himself to matters of administration, especially in the department
of finance, and although he is said to have increased the revenues
and to have done real service to his country, there is no doubt
that he took advantage of his position to make use of the material
forces of the state for his own aggrandizement. His proposal
that any one who should move that the Theoric Fund should be
applied to military purposes should be put to death may have
gained him the goodwill of the people, but it was not in the
true interest of the state. Later, Eubulus himself seems to have
recognized this, and to have been desirous of modifying or
repealing the regulation, but it was too late; Athens had lost
all feelings of patriotism; cowardly and indolent, she rivalled
even Tarentum in her luxury and extravagance (Theopompus
in Athenacus iv. p. 166). As one of the chief members of an
embassy to Philip, Eubulus allowed himself to be won over,
and henceforth did his utmost to promote the cause of the
Macedonian. The indignant remonstrances of Demosthenes
failed to weaken Eubulus's hold on the popular favour, and after
his death (before 330) he was distinguished with special honours,
which were described by Hypereides in a speech (Iltpi rCiv
EujSouXou ouptuv) now lost. Eubulus was no doubt a man of
considerable talent and reputation as an orator, but none of his
speeches has survived, nor is there any appreciation of them in
ancient writers. Aristotle (Rhetoric, i. 15. 15) mentions a speech
against Chares, and Theopompus (in his Philippica) had given
an account of his life, extracts from which are preserved in
Harpocration.
See Demosthenes, De corona, pp. 232, 235; De falsa legatione,
pp. 434, 435, 438; Adversus Leptinem, p. 498; In Midiatn, pp. 580,
581; Aeschines, De falsa legatione, ad fin.; Index to C. W. Mailer's
Oratores Attici; A. D. SchaTcr, Demosthenes und seine Zeil (1885).
EUBULUS, Athenian poet of the Middle comedy, flourished
about 370 B.C. Fragments from about fifty of the 104 plays
attributed to him are preserved in Athenaeus. They show that
he took little interest in political affairs, but confined himself
chiefly to mythological subjects, ridiculing, when opportunity
offered, the bombastic style of the tragedians, especially Euri-
pides. His language is pure, and his versification correct.
Fragments in T. Kock. Comicorum Atticorumfragmenta, ii. (1884).
EUCALYPTUS, a large genus of trees of the natural order
Myrtaceae, indigenous, with a few exceptions, to Australia and
Tasmania. In Australia the Eucalypti are commonly called
"gum-trees" or "stringy-bark trees," from their gummy or
resinous products, or fibrous bark. The genus, from the evidence
of leaf-remains, appears to have been represented by several
species in Eocene times. The leaves are leathery in texture,
hang obliquely or vertically, and are studded with glands which
contain a fragrant volatile oil. The petals cohere to form a cap 1
which is discarded when the flower expands. The fruit is sur-
rounded by a woody cup-shaped receptacle and contains very
numerous minute seeds. The Eucalypti are rapid in growth,
and many species are of great height, E. amygdalina, the tallest
known tree, attaining to as much as 480 ft., exceeding in height
the Californian big-tree (Sequoia giganlea), with a diameter of
81 ft. E. globulus, so called from the rounded form of its cap-
like corolla, is the blue gum tree of Victoria and Tasmania.
The leaves of trees from three to five years of age are large,
sessile and of a glaucous-white colour, and grow horizontally;
' Whence the name (t&xAAwTot, well-covered) given liy L'Hcritier,
1788.
868
EUCHARIS EUCHARIST
those of older trees are ensiform, 6-12 in. long, and bluish-
green in hue, and are directed downwards. The flowers are single
or in clusters, and nearly sessile. This species is one of the largest
trees in the world, and attains a height of 375 ft. Since 1854
it has been successfully introduced into the south of Europe,
Algeria, Egypt, Tahiti, New Caledonia, Natal and India, and has
been extensively planted in California, and, with the object of
lessening liability to droughts, along the line of the Central
Pacific railway. It would probably thrive in any situation having
a mean annual temperature not below 60 F., but it will not
endure a temperature of less than 27 F. Its supposed property
of reducing the amount of malaria in marshy districts is attribut-
able to the drainage effected by its roots, rather than to the
antiseptic exhalations of its leaves. To the same cause also is
ascribed the gradual disappearance of mosquitoes in the neigh-
bourhood of plantations of this tree, as at Lake Fezara, in Algeria.
Since about 1870, when the tree was planted in its cloisters, the
monastery of St Paolo a la tre Fontana has become habitable
throughout the year, although situated in one of the most fever-
stricken districts of the Roman Campagna. An essential oil is
obtained by aqueous distillation of the leaves of this and other
species of Eucalyptus, which is a colourless or straw-coloured
fluid when freshly prepared, with a characteristic odour and
taste, of sp. gr. 0.910 to 0.930, and soluble in its own weight
of alcohol. This consists of many different bodies, the most
important of which is eucalyptol, a volatile oil, which constitutes
about 70%. This is the portion of eucalyptus oil which passes
over between 347 and 351 F., and crystallizes at 30 F. It
consists chiefly of a terpene and cymene. Eucalyptus oil also
contains, after exposure to the air, a crystallizable resin derived
from eucalyptol. The dose of the oil is 5 to 3 minims. Eucalyptol
may be given in similar doses, and is preferable for purposes of
inhalation. The oil derived from E. amygdalina contains a large
quantity of phellandrene, which forms a crystalline nitrate, and
is very irritating when inhaled. The oils from different species
of Eucalyptus vary widely in composition.
Eucalyptus oil is probably the most powerful antiseptic of its
class, especially when it is old, as ozone is formed in it on exposure
to air. Internally it has the typical actions of a volatile oil in
marked degree. Like quinine, it arrests the normal amoeboid
movements of the polymorphonuclear leucocytes, and has a
definite antiperiodic action; but it is a very poor substitute for
quinine in malaria. In large doses it acts as an irritant to the
kidneys, by which it is largely excreted, and as a marked nervous
depressant, abolishing the reflex functions of the spinal cord
and ultimately arresting respiration by its action on the medullary
centre. An emulsion, made by shaking up equal parts of the
oil and powdered gum-arabic with water, has been used as a
urethral injection, and has also been given internally in drachm
doses in pulmonary tuberculosis and other microbic diseases
of the lungs and bronchi. The oil has somehow acquired an
extraordinary popular reputation in influenza, but there is no
evidence to show that it has any marked influence upon this
disease or that its use tends to lessen the chances of infection.
It has been used as an antiseptic by surgeons, and is an ingredient
of " catheter oil," used for sterilizing and lubricating urethral
catheters, now that carbolic oil, formerly employed, has been
shown to be practically worthless as an antiseptic. Eucalyptus
roslrata and other species yield eucalyptus or red gum, which must
be distinguished from Botany Bay kino. Red gum is very
powerfully astringent and is given internally, in doses of 2 to 5
grains, in cases of diarrhoea and pharyngeal inflammation. It
is prepared by the pharmacist in the form of tinctures, insuffla-
tions, syrups, lozenges, &c. Red gum is official in Great Britain.
E. globulus, E. resinifera, and other species, yield what is known
as Botany Bay kino, an astringent dark-reddish amorphous
resin, which is obtained in a semi-fluid state by making incisions
in the trunks of the trees. The kino of E. gigantea contains a
notable proportion of gum. J. H. Maiden enumerates more than
thirty species as kino-yielding. From the leaves and young
bark of E. mannifera and E. viminalis is procured Australian
manna, a hard, opaque, sweet substance, containing melitosc.
On destructive distillation the leaves yield much gas, 10,000
cub. ft. being obtained from one ton. The wood is extensively
used in Australia as fuel, and the timber is of remarkable size,
strength and durability. Maiden enumerates nearly 70 species
as timber-yielding trees including E. amygdalina, the wood of
which splits with remarkable facility, E. botryoides, hard, tough
and durable and one of the finest timbers for shipbuilding,
E. diversicolor or " karri," E. globulus, E. leucoxylon or ironbark,
E. marginata or " jarrah " (see JARRAH WOOD), E. obliqua,
E. resinifera, E. siderophloia and others. The timber is often
very hard, tough and durable, and useful for shipbuilding,
building, fencing, planks, &c. The bark of different species
of Eucalyptus has been used in paper-making and tanning, and
in medicine as a febrifuge.
For further details see Baron von M tiller's monograph of the genus, .
Eucalyptographia (Melbourne, 1879-1884); J. H. Maiden, Useful
Native Plants of Australia (1889).
EUCHARIS, in botany, a genus of the natural order Amaryl-
lidaceae, containing a few species, natives of Columbia. Eucharis
amazonica or grandiflora is the best-known and most gener-
ally cultivated species. It is a bulbous plant with broad
stalked leaves, and an erect scape i| to 2 ft. long, bearing an
umbel of three to ten large white showy flowers. The flowers
resemble the daffodil in having a prominent central cup or
corona, which is sometimes tinged with green. It is propagated
by removing the offsets, which may be done in spring, potting
them singly in 6-in. pots. It requires good loamy soil, with sand
enough to keep the compost open, and should have a good
supply of water and a temperature of 65 to 70 during the night,
with a rise of 8 or 10 in the day. During summer growth is
to be encouraged by repotting, but the plants should afterwards
be slightly rested by removal to a night temperature of about
60, water being withheld for a time, though they must not go
too long dry, the plant being an evergreen. By the turn of the
year they may again have more heat and more water, and this
will probably induce them to flower. After.this is over they may
be shifted and grown again as before; and, as they get large,
either be divided to form new plants or allowed to develop into
nobler specimens. With a stock of the smaller plants to start them
in succession, they may be had in flower all the year round. A
few years ago the bulbs of E. amazonica were badly inflicted
with a disease known as the Eucharis mite, and all kinds of
remedies were tried without avail, although steeping in Condy's
fluid appeared to give the best results. The disease appears to
have died out again. Other species of Eucharis now met with
in gardens are E. Bakeriana, E. Mastersii, E. Lowii and E.
Sanderii. A remarkable hybrid was raised a few years ago
between Eucharis and the allied genus Urceolina, to which the
compound name Urceocharis was given.
EUCHARIST (Gr. evxapurria, thanksgiving), in the Christian
Church, one of the ancient names of the sacrament of the Lord's
Supper or Holy Communion. The term evxapurria was at first
applied to the act of thanksgiving associated with the sacrament ;
later, so early as the 2nd century, to the objects, e.g. the sacra-
mental bread and wine, for which thanks were given; and so to
the whole celebration. The term Mass, which has the same
connotation, is derived from the Lat. missa or missio, because
the children and catechumens, or unbaptized believers, were
dismissed before the eucharistic rite began. Other names
express various aspects of the rite: Communion (Gr. Koivtavia) , the
fellowship between believers and union with Christ; Lord's
Supper, so called from the manner of its institution; Sacrament
as a consecration of material elements; the Mystery (in Eastern
churches) because only the initiated participated; the Sacrifice
as a rehearsal of Christ's passion. In this article the history of
the rite is first traced up to A.D. 200 in documents taken in their
chronological order; differences of early and later usage are
then discussed; lastly, the meaning of the original rite is examined.
St Paul (i Cor. xi. 17-34) attests that the faithful met regularly
in church, i.e. in religious meetings, to eat the dominical or Lord's
Supper, but that this aim was frustrated by some who ate up
their provisions before others, so that the poor were left hungry
EUCHARIST
869
while tin- rich got drunk; and the meetings were animated less
by a spirit of brotherhood and charity than of division ;md faction.
He directs that, when they so meet, they shall wait for one
another. Those who are too hungry to wait shall eat at home;
and not put to shame those who have no houses (and presumably
not enough food either), by bringing their viands to church and
selfishly eating them apart.
It was therefore not the quantity or quality of the food eaten
that constituted the meal a Lord's Supper; nor even the circum-
stances that they ate it " in church," as was assumed by those
guilty of the practices here condemned; but only the pervading
sense of brotherhood and love. The contrast lay between the
Dominical Supper or food and drink shared unselfishly by all
with all, and the private supptr, the feast of Dives, shamelessly
gorged under the eyes of timid and shrinking Lazarus. By way
of enforcing this point Paul repeats the tradition he had received
direct from the Lord, and already handed on to the Corinthians,
of how " the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed "
(not necessarily the night of Passover) " took bread and having
given thanks brake it and said, This is my body, which is for
your sake; this do in remembrance of me. In like manner also
the cup, after supper, sayirg, This cup is the new covenant
through my blood: this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance
of me." Paul adds that this rite commemorated the Lord's
death and was to be continued until he should come again, as
in that age they expected him to do after no long interval:
" As often as ye eat this bread and drink the cup, ye do (or ye
shall) proclaim the Lord's death till he come."
The same epistle (x. 17) attests that one loaf only was broken
and distributed: " We who are many, arc one loaf (or bread),
one body; for we all partake of the one loaf (or bread)." As a
single loaf could not satisfy the hunger of many, the rehearsal
in these meals of Christ's own action must have been a crowning
episode, enhancing their sanctity. The Fractio Panis probably
began, as the drinking of the cup certainly ended, the supper;
the interval being occupied with the common consumption by
the fart hf ul of the provisions they brought. This much is implied
by the words " after supper." If, in any case, all present had
eaten in their homes beforehand, the giving of the cup would
immediately follow on the breaking and eating of the one loaf,
but Paul's words indicate that the common meal within the
church was the norm. Those who ate at home marked them-
selves out as both greedy and lacking in charity. There is no
demand that they should come fasting, or Paul could not recom-
mend in (xi. 34) that those who were too hungry to wait until
all the brethren were assembled in church, should eat at home
and beforehand.
Mark xiv. 22-25, Matt. xxvi. 26-29, Luke xxii. 14-20, arc, in
order of time, our next accounts, Mark representing the oldest
tradition. They all in substance repeat Paul's account; but
identify the night on which Jesus was betrayed with that of the
Pascha. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus says of the bread " Take
ye it, this is my body," omitting the idea of sacrifice imported
by Paul's addition " which is for you "; but in them Jesus
enunciates the same idea when he says of the cup: " This is my
blood of the covenant which is poured out for many," Mathcw
adding " for the remission of sins," a phrase which savours of
Heb. ix. 22: " apart from the shedding of blood there is no
remission." It is a later addition, and so may be the words
" which is poured out for many." But the words which follow
have an antique ring: " Amen, I say unto you, I will no more
drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new
in the kingdom of God." For here Jesus affirms his conviction,
in view of his impending death, which unlike his disciples he
foresaw, that, when the kingdom of God is instituted on earth,
be will take his place in it. But this is the last time he will
lit down upon earth with his disciples at the table of the millcn-
arist hope. These sources do not hint that the Last Supper
is to be repeated by Christ's followers until the advent of the
kingdom. Luke's account is too much interpolated from Paul,
and the texts of his oldest MSS. too discrepant, for us to rely on
it except so far as it supports the other gospels. It emphasizes
the fact that the Last Supper was the Pascha. " With desire
have I desired to eat this Passover, before 1 suffer "; and places
the bread after the wine, unless indeed the Pauline interpolation
comprises the whole of verse 19.
The fourth gospel, written perhaps A.D. 00-100, sublimates
the rite, in harmony with its general treatment of the life of
Jesus: " I am the living bread which comcth down out of
heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die " (John vi. 51).
As in i Cor. x. the flesh of Christ is contrasted with the manna
which saved not the Jews from death, so here the latter ask:
" How can this man give us his flesh to eat? " and Jesus answers:
" Amen, Amen I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son
of Man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves. . . .
He that eatcth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me
and I in him." In an earlier passage, again in reference to the
manna, Jesus is called " the bread of God, which cometh down
out of heaven, and givcth life unto the world." They ask:
" Lord, ever more give us this bread," and he answers: " I
am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall not hunger,
and he that bclicvelh on me shall never thirst." This writer's
thought is coloured by the older speculations of Philo, who in
metaphor called the Logcs the heavenly bread and food, the
cupbearer and cup of God; and he seems even to protest against
a literal interpretation of the words of institution, since he not
only pointedly omits them in his account of the Last Supper,
but in v. 63 of this chapter writes: " It is the Spirit that
quickeneth; the flesh profitcth nothing: the words that I have
spoken unto you are spirit and are life."
In Acts ii. 46 we read that, " the faithful continued steadfastly
with one accord in the temple "; at the same time " breaking
bread at home they partook of food with gladness and singleness
of heart, praising God." All such repasts must have been sacred,
but we do not know if they included the Eucharistic rite. The
care taken in the selecting and ordaining of the seven deacons
argues a religious character for the common meals, which they
were to serve. Their main duty was to look after the duty of thq
Hellenistic widows, but inasmuch as meats strangled or conse-
crated to idols were forbidden, it probably devolved on the
deacons to take care that such were not introduced at these
common meals. The Esscncs, similarly, appointed houses all
over Palestine where they could safely eat, and priests of their
own to prepare their food. Some Christians escaped the diffi-
culties of their position by eating no meat at all. " He that is
weak," says Paul (Rom. xiv. i), " eateth herbs"; that is,
becomes a vegetarian. Rather than scandalize weaker brethren,
Paul was willing to cat herbs the rest of his life.
The travel-document in Acts often refers to the solemn
breaking of bread. Thus Paul in xxvii. 35, having invited the
ship's company of 276 persons to partake of food, took bread,
gave thanks to God in the presence of all, and brake it and
began to eat. The rest on board then began to be of good cheer,
and themselves also took food. Here it is not implied that Paul
shared his food except with his co-bclicvcrs, but he ate before
them all. Whether he repeated the words of institution we
cannot say.
In Acts xx. 7 the faithful of Troas gather together to break
bread " on the first day of the week " after sunset. After a
discourse Paul, who was leaving them the next morning, broke
bread and ate. This was surely such a meeting as we read of in
i Cor. x., and was held on Sunday by night; but long before
dawn, since after it Paul " talked with them a long while, even
till break of day." In i Cor. xvi. i Paul bids the Corinthians, as
he had bidden the churches of Galatia, lay up in store on the first
of the week, each one of them, money for the poor saints of
Jerusalem. This is the first notice of Sunday Eucharistic
collections of alms for the poor.
Here seems to belong in the order of development the Cathar
Eucharist (see CATHARS). The Cathars used only the Lord's
prayer in consecrating the bread and used water for wine.
The next document in chronological order is the so-called
Teaching of the Apostles (A.D. go-no). This assigns prayers
and rubrics for the celebration of the Eucharist:
8yo
EUCHARIST
IX.
" I. Now with regard to the Thanksgiving, thus give ye thanks.
" 2. First concerning the cup : We give thanks to thee.our Father,
for the holy vine 1 of David thy servant, which thou didst make
known to us through Jesus thy servant; 2 to thee be the glory for
ever.
" 3. And concerning the broken bread: We give thanks to thee,
our Father, for the life and knowledge which thou didst make known
to us through Jesus thy servant; to thee be the glory for' ever.
" 4. As this broken bread was (once) scattered on the face of the
mountains and, gathered together, became one, 3 even so may thy
Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy
kingdom ; for thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ
for ever.
" 5. But let no one eat or drink of your Thanksgiving (Eucharist),
but they who have been baptized into the name of the Lord; for
concerning this the Lord hath said, Give not that which is holy unto
the dogs. 4
X.
" I. Then, after being filled, thus give ye thanks:
" 2. We give thanks to thee, holy Father, for thy holy name, which
thou hast caused to dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and
faith and immortality which thou didst make known to us through
Jesus Christ thy servant ; to thee be the glory for ever.
" 3. Thou Almighty Sovereign.didst create all things forthy name's
sake, and food and drink thou didst give to men for enjoyment, that
they should give thanks unto thee; but to us thou didst of thy
grace give spiritual food and drink and life eternal through thy
servant.
" 4. Before all things, we give thee thanks that thou art mighty;
to thee be the glory for ever.
" 5. Remember, Lord, thy church to deliver it from all evil, and to
perfect it in thy love, and gather it together from the four winds, 5
the sanctified, unto thy kingdom, which thou hast prepared for it ;
for thine is the power and the glory for ever.
" 6. Come grace, and pass this world away. Hosanna to the God
of David! If any one is holy, let him come. If any one is not, let
him repent. Maranatha. 6 Amen.
" But allow the prophets to give thanks as much as they will."
From a subsequent section, ch. xiv. i, we learn that the
Eucharist was on Sunday: " Now when ye are assembled
together on the Lord's day of the Lord, break bread and give
thanks, having first confessed your transgressions, so that your
sacrifice may be pure."
The above, like the uninterpolated Lucan account, places the
cup first and has no mention of the body and blood of Christ.
But in this last and other respects it contrasts with the other
synoptic and with the Pauline accounts. The cup is not the
blood of Jesus, but the holy vine of David, revealed through Jesus;
and the holy vine can but signify the spiritual Israel, the Ecclesia
or church or Messianic Kingdom, into which the faithful are to
be gathered.
The one loaf, as in Paul, symbolizes the unity of the ecclesia,
but the cup and bread, given for enjoyment, are symbols at best
of the spiritual food and drink of the life eternal given of grace
by the Almighty Father through his servant (lit. boy) Jesus.
The bread and wine are indeed an offering to God of what is
his own, pure because offered in purity of heart; but they are
not interpreted of the sacrifice of Jesus' body broken on the
cross, or of his blood shed for the remission of sin. It is not,
as in Paul, a meal commemorative of Christ's death, nor connected
with the Passover, as in the Synoptics. Least of all is it a
sacramental eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Jesus,
a perpetual renewal of kinship, physical and spiritual, with him.
The teaching rather breathes the atmosphere of the fourth gospel,
which sets the Last Supper before the feast of the Passover
(xiii. i), and pointedly omits Christ's institution of the Eucharist,
substituting for it the washing of his disciples' feet. The blessing
of the Bread and Cup, as an incident in a feast of Christian
brotherhood, is all that the Didache has in common with Paul
and the Synoptists. The use of the words " after being filled,"
in x. i, implies that the brethren ate heartily, and that the cup
and bread formed no isolated episode. The Baptized alone are
admitted to this Supper, and they only after confession of their
sins. Every Sunday at least they are to celebrate it. A prophet
can " in the Spirit appoint a table," that is, order a Lord's
1 Ps. Ixxx. 8-19. * Acts iv. 25, 27.
1 I Cor. x. 17; Soph. iii. IO. * Matt. vii. 6.
1 Matt. xxiv. 31. * i Cor. xvi. 22.
Supper to be eaten, whenever he is warned by the Spirit to do
so. But he must not himself partake of it a very practical
rule. The prophets are to give thanks as they like at these
" breakings of bread," without being restricted to the prayers
here set forth". In xv. 3 the overseers or bishops and deacons,
though their functions are less spiritual than administrative
and economic, are allowed to take the place of the prophets
and teachers. The phrase used is XeiTou/ryeii' rrpi \tirov pyiav,
" to liturgize the liturgy." This word " liturgy " soon came to
connote the Eucharist. The prophets who normally preside
over the Suppers are called " your high-priests," and receive
from the faithful the first-fruits of the winepress and threshing-
floor, of oxen and sheep, and of each batch of new-made bread,
and of oil. Out of these they provide the Suppers held every
Lord's day, offering them as " a pure sacrifice." Bishops and
deacons hold a subordinate place in this document; but the
contemporary Epistle of Clement of Rome attests that these
bishops " had offered the gifts without blame and holily." The
word " liturgy " is also used by Clement.
Pliny's Letter (Epist. 96), written A.D. 112 to the emperor
Trajan, about the Christians of Bithynia, attests that on a
fixed day, stato die (no doubt Sunday), they met before dawn
and recited antiphonally a hymn " to Christ as to a god." They
then separated, but met again later to partake of a meal, which,
however, was of an ordinary and innocent character. Pliny
regarded their meal as identical in character with the common
meals of hetairiae, i.e. the trade-gilds or secret societies, which
were then, as now, often inimical to the government. Even
benefit societies were feared and forbidden by the Roman
autocrats, and the " dominical suppers " of the Christians were
not likely to be spared. Pliny accordingly forbade them in
Bithynia, and the renegade Christians to whom he owed his
information gave them up. These suppers included an Eucharist ;
for it was because the faithful ate in the latter of the flesh and
blood of the Son of God that the charge of devouring children
was made against them. If, then, this afternoon meal did not
include it, Pliny's remark that their food was ordinary and
innocent is unintelligible.
Ignatius, about A.D. 120, in his letter to the Ephesians, defines
the one bread broken in the Eucharist as a " drug of immortality,
and antidote that we should not die, but live for ever in Jesus
Christ." He also rejects as invalid any Eucharist not held
" under the bishop or one to whom he shall have committed
it." For the Christian prophet has disappeared, and with him
the custom of holding Eucharists in private dwellings.
In the Epistle to Diognetus, formerly assigned to Justin
Martyr, we read (. 7) that " Christians have in vogue among
themselves a table common, yet not common " (i.e. unclean).
In Justin's first apology (c. 140) we have two detailed accounts
of the Eucharist, of which the first, in ch. 65, describes the first
communion of the newly baptized:
" After we have thus washed the person who has believed and
conformed we lead him to the brethren so called, where they are
gathered together, to offer public prayer both for ourselves and for
the person illuminated, and for all others everywhere, earnestly,
to the end that having learned the truth we may be made worthy
to be found not only in our actions good citizens, but guardians
ot the things enjoined.
" We salute one another with a kiss at the end ol the prayers. Then
there is presented to the president of the brethren bread and a cup
of water (and of a mixture,) 7 and he having taken it sends up praise
and glory to the father of all things by the name of the Son and Holy
Spirit, and he offers at length thanksgiving (eucharistia) for our
having been made worthy of these things by him. But when he
concludes the prayer and thanksgiving all the people present answer
with acclamation ' Amen.' But the word ' Amen ' in Hebrew signi-
fies ' so be it.' And when the president has given thanks, and all
the people have so answered, those who are called by us deacons
distribute to each of those present, for them to partake of the bread
(and wine) 8 and water, for which thanks have been given, and they
carry portions away to those who are not present. And this food is
called by us Eucharistia, and of it none may partake save those
who believe our teachings to be true and have been washed in the
bath which is for remission of sin and rebirth, and who so live as
7 We should probably omit the words bracketed.
8 The codex Othcbonianus omits the words bracketed.
EUCHARIST
ChrUt taught. For we do not receive these things as common bread
or common drink. For a Jeu Oirit our Saviour was made flesh
by Word of God and possessed flesh and blood (or our sake ; so we
have been taught that the food blessed (lit. thanked for) by prayer
of Word spoken by him, food by which our blood and flesh are by
change of it (into them) nourished, is both flesh and blood of Jesus
so made flesh. For the apotles in the nu-mori.il- made by them,
which are called gospels, have so related it to have been enjoined
on them: to wit, that Jesus took bread, gave thanks and said:
This do ye in memory of me, this is my body, and the cup likewise
be took and gave thanks and said. This is my blood; and he dis-
tributed to them alone. And this rite top the evil demons by way
of imitation handed down in the mysteries of Mithras. For that
bread and a cup of water is presented in the rites of their initiation
with certain conclusion* (or epilogues), you either know or can
learn."
The second account, in ch. 67, adds that the faithful both of
town and country met for the rite on Sunday, that the prophets
were read as well as the gospels, that the president after the
reading delivered an exhortation to imitate in their lives the
goodly narratives; and that each brought offerings to the
president out of which he aided orphans and widows, the sick,
the prisoners and strangers sojourning . with them. These
contributions of the faithful seem to be included by Justin
along with the bread and cup as sacrifices acceptable to God.
But he also particularly specifies (Dialog. 345) that perfect and
pleasing sacrifices alone consist in prayers and thanksgivings
(Ikusia). The elements are gifts or offerings. Justin was a
Roman, but may not represent the official Roman church. The
rite as he pictures it agrees well with the developed liturgies of
a later age.
Irenaeus (Gaul and Asia Minor, before 190) in his work against
heresies, iv. 31, 4, points to the sacrament in proof that the
human body may become incorruptible :
" A bread from the earth on receiving unto itself the invocation
of God is no longer common bread, but is an Eucharist, composed
of two elements, an earthly and a heavenly, so our bodies by partak-
ing of the Eucharist cease to be corruptible, and possess the hope
of eternal resurrection."
There is a similar passage in the 36th fragment (ed. Harvey
ii. p. 500), sketching the rite and calling the elements antitypes:
" The oblation of the Eucharist is not fleshly, but spiritual and
so pure. For we offer to God the bread and the cup of blessing
8 7 ,
both the bread body of Christ and the cup the blood of Christ, that
those who partake of these antitypes (irrlrura., i.e. surrogates) may
win remission of sins and life eternal."
Here we note the stress laid on the Invocation of the Spirit
to operate the transformation of the elements, though in what
sense they are transformed is not defined. This Epiklesis sur-
vives in the Greek liturgies, but in the Roman a prayer takes
its place that the angel of the Lord may take the oblation laid
on the visible altar, and carry it up to the altar sublime into the
presence of the divine majesty. We must not forget that the
church of Irenaeus was Greek.
To the second century, lastly, belongs in part the evidence
of the catacombs, on the walls of which are depicted persons
reclining at tables supporting a fish, accompanied by one or
more baskets of loaves, and more rarely by flasks of wine or
water. The fish represents Christ; and in the Inscription of
Aberdus, bishop of Hierapolis about A.D. 160, we have this
symbolism enshrined in a literary form: " In company with
Paul I followed, while everywhere Faith led the way, and set
before me the fish from the fountain, mighty and stainless, whom
a pure virgin grasped, and gave this to friends to eat always,
having good wine and giving the mixt cup with bread." This
representation of baskets of loaves and several fishes, or of one
fish and several loaves, seems to contradict the usage of one
loaf. It may represent the agapt or Lord's Supper as a whole,
of which the one loaf and cup formed an episode. Or the entire
stock of bread may have been regarded as flesh of Jesus in
virtue of the initial consecration of one single loaf.
To the second century also belong two gnostic uses. Firstly,
that of Marcus, a Valentinian, of South Gaul about 150, whose
influence extended to Asia Minor. Irenaeus relates (Bk. I., ch. vii.
a), that this " magician " used in the Eucharist cups apparently
mixt with wine, but really containing water, and during long
invocations made them appear " purple and red, as if the universal
Grace xip*j dropped some of her blood into the cup through his
invocation, and by way of inspiring worshippers with a passion
to taste the cup and drink deep of the influence termed Chan's."
Such a rite presupposes a belief in a real change of the elements;
and water must have been used. In the sequel Irenaeus recites
the Invocation read by Marcus before the communicants:
"Grace that is before all things, that passeth understanding and
words, replenish thy inner man, and make to abound in thee the
knowledge of her, sowing in the good soil the grain of mustard
seed.
The Acts of Thomas, secondly, ch. 46, attest an Eucharistic
usage, somewhat apart from the orthodox. The apostle spreads
a linen cloth on a bench, lays on it bread of blessing (ibhoyla),
and says:
"J' e l- us ^hnst, S n f God- wno nast made us worthy to commune
in the Eucharist of thy holy body and precious blood, Lo, we venture
on the thanksgiving (Eucharistia) and invocation of thy blessed
name, come now and communicate with us. And he began to speak
and said : Come Pity supreme, come communion of the male, come
Lady who knowcst the mysteries of the Elect one, . . . come secret
mother . . . come and communicate with us in this Eucharist
which we perform in thy name and in the love (agapt) in which
we are met at thy calling. And having said this he made a cross
upon the bread, and brake it and began to distribute it. And first
he gave to the woman, saying: This shall be to thee for remission
of sins and release of eternal transgressions. And after her he gave
also to all the rest that had received the seal."
In the 2nd century the writer who nearest approaches to the
later idea of Transubstantiation is the gnostic Theodotus (c. 160) :
" The bread no less than the oil is hallowed by the power of the
name. They remain the same in outward appearance as they
were received, but by that power they are transformed into a
spiritual power. So the water when it is exorcised and becomes
baptismal, not only drives out the evil principle, but also contracts
a power of hallowing."
In the Fathers of the first three or four centuries can be
traced the same tendency to spiritualize the Eucharist as we
encountered in the fourth gospel, and in the Didache. Ignatius,
though in Smyrn. 7 he asserts the Eucharist to be Christ's
" flesh which suffered for our sins," elsewhere speaks of the blood
as being " joy eternal and lasting," as " hope," as " love incorrupt-
ible," and of the flesh as " faith " or as " the gospel." Clement
of Alexandria (c. 180) regards the rite as an initiation in divine
knowledge and immortality. The only food he recognizes is
spiritual; e.g. knowledge of the divine Essence is " eating and
drinking of the divine Word." So Origen declares the bread
which God the Word asserted was his body to be that which
nourishes souls, the word from God the Word proceeding, the
Bread from the heavenly Bread. Not the visible bread held in
his hand, nor the visible cup, were Christ's body and blood,
but the word in the mystery of which the bread was to be broken
and the wine to be poured out. " We drink Christ's blood," he
says elsewhere, " when we receive His words in which standeth
Life." So the author of the Contra Marcellum writes in view
of John vi. 63 as follows (De eccl. Theol. p. 180):
" In these words he instructed them to interpret in a spiritual
sense his utterances about his flesh and blood. Do not, he said,
think that I mean the flesh which invests and covers me, and bid
you eat that; nor suppose either that I command you to drink
my sensible and somatic blood. Nay, you know well that my words
which I have spoken unto you are spirit and life. It follows that
the very words and discourses are his flesh and blood, of which he
that constantly partakes, nourished as it were upon heavenly bread,
will partake of the heavenly life. Let not then, he says, this
scandalize you which I have said about eating of my flesh and about
drinking of my blood. Nor let the obvious and first hand meaning
of what I said about my flesh and blood disturb you when you hear
it. For these words avail nothing if heard ami understood literally
(or sensibly). But it is the spirit which quickens them that can
understand spiritually what they hear."
But these views were not those of the uninstructed pagans
who filled the churches and needed a rite which brought them,
as their old sacrifices had done, into physical contact and union
with their god. Their point of view was better expressed in
the scruples of priests, who, as Tertullian (c. 200) records (De
872
EUCHARIST
Corona, iii.), were careful lest a crumb of the bread or a drop
of the wine should fall on the ground, and by such incidents the
body of Christ be harassed and attacked!
The Eucharist as a Sacrifice. Before the 3rd century we cannot
trace the view that in the Eucharistic rite the death of Christ,
regarded from the Pauline standpoint as an atoning or redemptive
sacrifice for the sins of mankind, is renewed and repeated, though
the germ out of which it would surely grow is already present
in the words " My blood . . . which is shed for many " of Matt,
and Mark; yet more surely in Paul's " my body which is in your
behoof " and " this do in commemoration of me," where the
Greek word for do, Gr. Troietre, Lat. facile, could to pagan ears
mean " this do ye sacrifice." In the first two centuries the rite
is spoken of as an offering and as a bloodless sacrifice; but it is
God's own creations, the bread and wine, alms and first-fruits,
which, offered with a pure conscience, he receives as from
friends, and bestows in turn on the poor; it is the praise and
prayers which are the sacrifice. In these centuries baptism was
the rite for the remission of sin, not the Eucharist; it is the
prophet in the Didache who presides at the Lord's Supper, not
the Levitically conceived priest; nor as yet has the Table
become an Altar. Among Christians, prayers, supplications and
thanksgivings have taken the place of the sacrifices of the old
covenant.
In Cyprian of Carthage (c. 250) we first find the Eucharist
regarded as a sacrifice of Christ's body and blood offered by the
priest for the sins of the living and dead. We cannot drink the
blood of Christ unless Christ has been first trodden under foot
and pressed. ... As Jesus our high priest offered himself as a
sacrifice to his Father, so the human priest takes Christ's place,
and imitates his action by offering in church a true and full
sacrifice to God the Father (Ep. 63). He speaks of the dominical
host (hostia), and takes the verb to do in Paul's letter in the sense
of to sacrifice. As early as Tertullian prayers for the dead, who
were named, were offered in the rite; but there was as yet no
idea of the sacrifice of Christ being reiterated in their behalf.
After Cyprian's day this view gains ground in the West, and
almost obscures the older view that the rite is primarily an act
of communion with Christ. In harmony with Cyprian's new
conception is another innovation of his age and place, that of
children communicating; both were the natural accompaniment
of infant baptism, of which we first hear in his letters. In the
East we do not hear of the sacrifice of the body and blood before
Eusebius, about the year 300. In the Armenian church of the
1 2th century the idea of a reiterated sacrificial death of Christ
still seemed bizarre and barbarous. 1 But as early as 558 in Gaul
the bread was arranged on the altar in the form of a man, so
that one believer ate his eye, another his ear, a third his hand,
and so on, according to their respective merits! This was for-
bidden by Pope Pelagius I.; but in the Greek church the custom
survives, the priest even stabbing with " the holy spear " in its
right side the human figure planned out of the bread, by way of
rehearsing in pantomime the narrative of John xix. 34.
The change from a commemoration of the Passion to a re-
enacting of it came slowly in the Greek church. Thus Chrysostom
(Ham. 17, ad Heb.), after writing " We offer (irotovpfv) not
another sacrifice, but the same," instantly corrects himself and
adds: " or rather we perform a commemoration of the sacrifice."
This was exactly the position also of the Armenian church.
Wine or Water? Justin Martyr perhaps contemplated the
use of water instead of wine, and Tatian his pupil used it. The
Marcionites, the Ebionites, or Judaeo-Christians of Palestine,
the Montanists of Phrygia, Africa and Galatia, the confessor
Alcibiades of Lyons, c. A.D. 177 (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. v. 3. 2),
equally used it. Cyprian (Ep. 63) affirms (c. 250) that his
predecessors on the throne of Carthage had used water, and that
many African bishops continued to do so, " out of ignorance,"
he says, " and simplemindedness, and God would forgive them."
Pionius, the Catholic martyr of Smyrna, c. 250, also used water.
In the Acts of Thomas it is used. Such uniformity of language
1 See Nerses of Lambron, Opera Armenice (Venice, 1847), pp. 74,
75, lot, &c.
has led Prof. Harnack to suppose that in the earliest age water
was used equally with wine, and Eusebius the historian, who had
means of judging which we have not, saw no difficulty in identify-
ing with the first converts of St Mark the Therapeutae of Philo
who took only bread and water in their holy repast.
Abercius and Irenaeus are the first to speak of wine mixt with
water, of a krama (xpajua) or temper amentum. In the East,
then as now, no one took wine without so mixing it. Cyprian
insists on the admixture of water, which he says represented the
humanity of Jesus, as wine his godhood. The users of water were
named Aquarii or hydroparaslalae in the 4th century, and were
liable to death under the code of Theodosius. Some of the
Monophysite churches, e.g. the Armenian, eschewed water and
used pure wine, so falling under the censure of the council in
Trullo of A.D. 692. Milk and honey was added at first com-
munions. Oil was sometimes offered, as well as wine, but it
would seem for consecration only, and not for consumption along
with the sacrament. With the bread, however, was sometimes
consecrated cheese, e.g. by the African Montanists in the 2nd
century. Bitter herbs also were often added, probably because
they were eaten with the Paschal lamb. Many early canons
forbid the one and the other. Hot water was mixt with the wine
in the Greek churches for some centuries, and this custom is
seen in catacomb paintings. It increased the resemblance to
real blood.
Position of the Faithful at the Eucharist. Tertullian, Eusebius,
Chrysostom and others represent the faithful as standing at the
Eucharist. In the art of the catacombs they sit or recline in the
ordinary attitude of banqueters. In the age of Christ standing
up at the Paschal meal had been given up, and it was become
the rule to recline. Kneeling with a view to adoration of the
elements was unheard of in the primitive church, and the Ar-
menian Fathers of the I2th century insist that the sacrament
was intended by Christ to be eaten and not gazed at (Nerses, op.
cit. p. 167). Eucharistic or any other liturgical vestments were
unknown until late in the 5th century, when certain bishops
were honoured with the same pallium worn by civil officials (see
VESTMENTS).
In the Latin and in the Monophysite churches of Armenia
and Egypt unleavened bread is used in the Eucharist on the
somewhat uncertain ground that the Last Supper was the Paschal
meal. The Greek church uses leavened.
Transubstanliation. In the primitive age no one asked how
Christ was present in the Eucharist, or how the elements became
his body and blood. The Eucharist formed part of an agape
or love feast until the end of the 2nd century, and in parts of
Christendom continued to be so much later. It was, save where
animal sacrifices survived, the Christian sacrifice, par excellence,
the counterpart for the converted of the sacrificial communions of
paganism; and though charged with higher significance than
these, it yet reposed on a like background of religious usage and
beliefs. But when the Agape on one side and paganism on the
other receded into a dim past, owing to the enhanced sacro-
sanctity of the Eucharist and because of the severe edicts of the
emperor Theodosius and his successors, the psychological back-
ground fell away, and the Eucharist was left isolated and hanging
in the air. Then men began to ask themselves what it meant.
Rival schools of thought sprang up, and controversy raged over
it, as it had aforetime about the homoousion, or the two natures.
Thus the sacrament which was intended to be a bond of peace,
became a chief cause of dissension and bloodshed, and was often
discussed as if it were a vulgar talisman.
Serapion of Thmuis in Egypt, a younger contemporary of
Athanasius, in his Eucharistic prayers combines the language
of the Didache with a high sacramentalism alien to that document
which now only survived in the form of a grace used at table in
the nunneries of Alexandria (see AGAPE). He entreats " the
Lord of Powers to fill this sacrifice with his Power and Participa-
tion," and calls the elements a " living sacrifice, a bloodless
offering." The bread and wine before consecration are " like-
nesses of his body and blood," this in virtue of the words pro-
nounced over them by Jesus on the night of his betrayal. The
EUCHARIST
873
prayer then continues thus: " O God of truth, let thy holy Word
MI tie upon this bread, that the bread may become body of the
word, and on this cup, that the cup may become blood of the
truth. And cause all who communicate to receive a drug of life
for healing of every diwn? and empowering of all moral advance
and virtue." Here the bread and wine become by consecration
tenements in which the Word is reincarnated, as he aforetime
dwelled in flesh. They cease to be mere likenesses of the body
and blood, and are changed into receptacles of divine power
and intimacy, by swallowing which we are benefited in soul and
body. Cyril of Jerusalem in his catechises 5 ' enunciates the same
idea of >MrafJoXij or transformation.
Gregory of Nyssa also about the same date (in Migne, Patrolog.
Graeea, vol. 46, col. 581, oration on the Baptism) asserts a " trans-
formation " or " transelementation " GJerccmxxeifcxrtf) of the
elements into centres of mystic force; and assimilates their
consecration to that of the water of baptism, of the altar, of oil
or chrism, of the priest. He compares it also to the change of
Moses' rod into a snake, of the Nile into blood, to the virtue
inherent in Elijah's mantle or in the wood of the cross or in the
day mixt of dust and the Lord's spittle, or in Elisha's relics
which raised a corpse to life, or in the burning bush. All these,
be says, " were parcels of matter destitute of life and feeling, but
through miracles they became vehicles of the power of God
absorbed or taken into themselves." He thus views the consecra-
tion of the elements as akin to other consecrations; and, like
priestly ordination, as involving " a metamorphosis for the
better," a phrase which later on became classical. John of
Damascus (c. 750) believed the bread to be mysteriously changed
into the Christ's body, just as when eaten it is changed into any
human body; and he argued that it is wrong to say, as Irenaeus
had said, that the elements are mere antitypes after as before
consecration. In the West, Augustine, like Eusebius and
Theodoret, calls the elements signs or symbols of the body and
blood signified in them; yet he argues that Christ " took and
lifted up his own body in his hands when he took the bread."
At the same lime he admits that " no one eats Christ's flesh,
unless he has, first adored " (nisi prius adoraverit). But he
qualifies this " Receptionist " position by declaring that Judas
received the sacrament, as if the unworthiness of the recipient
made no difference.
Out of this mist of contradictions scholastic thought strove
to emerge by means of clear-cut definitions. The drawback
for the dogmatist of such a view as Serapion broaches in his
prayers was this, that although it explained how the Logos
comes to be immanent in the elements, as a soul in its body,
nevertheless it did not guarantee the presence in or rather
substitution for the natural elements of Christ's real body and
blood. It only provided an fanirvrov or surrogate body. In
830-850, Paschasius Radbert taught that after the priest has
uttered the words of institution, nothing remains save the body
and blood under the outward form of bread and wine; the sub-
stance is changed and the accidents alone remain. The elements
are miraculously recreated as body and blood. This view
harmonized with the docetic view which lurked in East and West,
that the manhood of Jesus was but a likeness or semblance
under which the God was concealed. So Marcion argued that
Christ's body was not really flesh and blood, or he could not have
called it bread and wine. Paschasius shrank from the logical
outcome of his view, namely, that Christ's body or part of it is
turned into human excrement, but Ratramnu.s, another monk of
Corbey, in a book afterwards ascribed to Duns Scotus, drew this
inference in order to discredit his antagonists, and not because
be believed it himself. The elements, he said, remain physically
what they were, but are spiritually raised as symbols to a higher
power. Perhaps we may illustrate his position by saying that
the elements undergo a change analogous to what takes place
in iron, when by being brought into an electric field it becomes
magnetic. The substance of the elements remain as well as
their accidents, but like baptismal water they gain by consecra-
tion a hidden virtue bcncfitingsoul and body. Ratramnus's view
resembled Serapion's, after whom the elements furnish
a new vehicle of the Spirit's influence, a new body through
which the Word operates, a fresh sojourning among us of the
Word, though consecrated bread is in itself no more Christ's
natural body than arc we who assimilate it. Other doctors of
the iji h century, e.g. Hincmar of Reims and Haimoof Halberstadt,
took the side of Paschasius, and affirmed that the substance of
the bread and wine is changed, and that God leaves the colour,
taste and other outward properties out of mercy to the wor-
shippers, who would be overcome with dread if the underlying
real flesh and blood were nakedly revealed to their gaze !
Berengar in the nth century assailed this view, which was
really that of transubstantiation, alleging that there is no
substance in matter apart from the accidents, and that therefore
Christ cannot be corporally present in the sacrament; because,
if so, he must be spatially present, and there will be two material
bodies in one space; moreover his body. will be in thousands of
places at once. Christ, he said, is present spiritually, so that
the elements, while remaining what they were, unremoved and
undestroyed, are advanced to be something better: omne cut
a Deo benedicatur, non absumi, non auferri, non deslrui, sed manere
et in melius quam eral necessario provehi. This was the phrase
of Gregory of Nyssa.
Berengar in a weak moment in 1059 was forced by the pope to
recant and assert that " the true body and blood are not only
a sacrament, but in truth touched and broken by the hands of
the priests and pressed by the teeth of the faithful," and this
position remains in every Roman catechism. Such dilemmas
as whether a mouse can devour the true body, and whether it is
not involved in all the obscenities of human digestive processes,
were ill met by this ruling. Each party dubbed the other
stercoranists (dung-f casters), and the controversy was often
marred by indecencies.
As in the 3rd century the Roman church decided in respect
of baptism that the sacrament carries the church and not the
church the sacrament, so in the dispute over the Eucharist it
ended, in spite of more spiritual views essayed by Peter Lombard,
by insisting on the more materialistic view at the fourth Lateran
Council in 1215, whose decree runs thus: " The body and blood
of Jesus Christ are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar
under the species of bread and wine, the bread and wine re-
spectively being transubstantiated into body and blood by
divine power, so that in order to the perfecting of the mystery
of unity we may ourselves receive from his (body) what he
himself receives from ours." In 1264 Urban IV. instituted the
Corpus Christ! Feast by way of giving liturgical expression to
this view.
Communion in One Kind. Up to about i too laymen in the
West received the communion in both kinds, and except in a
few disciplinary cases the wine was not refused. In 1099, by
a decree of Pope Paschal II., children might omit the wine and
invalids the bread. The communion of the laity in the bread
alone was enjoined by the council of Constance in 1415, and by
the council of Trent in 1562. The reformed churches of the West
went back to the older rule which Eastern churches had never
forsaken.
Mass. ThetcrmaM,whichsurvivesinCandlemas,Christmas,
Michaelmas, is from the Latin missa, which was in the 3rd century
a technical term for the dismissal of any lay meeting, e.g. of a
law-court, and was adopted in that sense by the church as early
as Ambrose (c. 350). The catechumens or unbaptized, together
with the penitents, remained in church during the Litany,
collect, three lections, two psalms and homily. The deacon
then cried out: " Let the catechumens depart. Let all cate-
chumens go out." This was the missa of the catechumens. The
rest of the rite was called missa fidclium, because only the
initiated remained. Similarly the collect with which often the
rite began is the prayer ad colleclam, i.e. for the congregation
met together or collected. The corresponding Greek word was
synaxis.
After the catechumens were gone the priest said: " The Lord
be with you, let us pray," and the service of the mass followed.
In the West, says Duchesne (Origines, p. 179), not only
8 74
EUCHARIST
catechumens, but the baptized who did not communicate left the
church before the communion of the faithful began (? after the
communion of the clergy) . In Anglican churches non-communi-
cants used to leave the church after the prayer for the Church
Militant. Ritualists now keep unconfirmed children in church
during the entire rite, through ignorance of ancient usage, in
order that they may learn to adore the consecrated elements.
For this moment of homage to material elements ritually filled
with divine potency may be so exaggerated as to obscure the
rite's ancient significance as a communion of the faithful in
mystic food.
Ideas of Reformers. The 16th-century reformers strove to
avoid the literalism of the words " This is my body," accepted
frankly by the Roman and Eastern churches, and urged a
Receptionist view, viz. that Christ is in the sacrament only
spiritually consumed by worthy recipients alone, the material
body not being actually chewed. This is seen by a comparison
of other confessions with the Profession of Catholic Faith in
accordance with the council of Trent, in the bull of Pius IV.,
which runs thus:
" I profess that in the Mass is offered to God a true, proper and
propitiatory sacrifice, for the living and the dead, and that in the
most holy sacrament oT the Eucharist there is truly really and in
substance the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that there does take place a con-
version of the entire substance of the bread into the body, and of
the entire substance of the wine into the blood, which conversion
the Catholic Church doth call Transubstantiation. I also admit
that under one of the other species alone the entire and whole
Christ and the true sacrament is received."
The 28th Article of Religion of the Church of England is as
follows:
" The Supper of the Lord . . . is a Sacrament of our Redemption
by Christ's death ; insomuch that to such, as rightly, worthily, and
with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking
of the Body of Christ, and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partak-
ing of the Blood of Christ.
"Transubstantiation . . . cannot be proved by holy writ. . . .
" The Body of Christ is given, taken and eaten, in the Supper, only
after a heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby
the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.
" The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not by Christ's ordinance
reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped."
At the end of the communion rite the prayer-book, in view
of the ordinance to receive the Sacrament kneeling, adds the
following:
" It is hereby declared, that thereby no adoration is intended,
or ought to be done, either unto the Sacramental Bread or Wine,
there bodily received, or unto any Corporal Presence of Christ's
natural Flesh and Blood. For the Sacramental Bread and Wine
remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not
be adored (for that were idolatry, to be abhorred of all faithful
Christians) ; and the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ
are in Heaven, and not here; it being against the truth of Christ's
natural Body to be at one time in more places than one."
These monitions and prescriptions are rapidly becoming a dead-
letter, but they possess a certain historical interest.
The Helvetic Confession 1 of A.D. 1566 (caput xxi. De sacra
coena Domini) runs as follows:
" That it may be more rightly and clearly understood how the
flesh and blood of Christ can be food and drink of the faithful, and
be received by them unto eternal life, let us add these few remarks.
Chewing is not of one kind alone. For there is a corporeal chewing,
by which food is taken into the mouth by man, bruised with the
teeth and swallowed down into the belly. . . . As the flesh of Christ
cannot be corporeally chewed without wickedness and truculence,
so it is not food of the belly .... There is also a spiritual chewing
of the body of Christ, not such that by it we understand the very
food to be changed into spirit, but such that, the body and blood of
the Lord abiding in their essence and peculiarity, they are spiritually
communicated to us, not in any corporeal way, but in a spiritual,
through the Holy Spirit which applies and bestows on us those
things which were prepared through the flesh and blood of the Lord
betrayed for our sake to death, to wit, remission of sins, liberation
and life eternal, so that Christ lives in us and we in him ....
" In addition to the aforesaid spiritual chewing, there is also a sacra-
mental chewing of the Lord's body, by which the faithful not only
partakes spiritually and inwardly of the true body and blood of the
Lord, but outwardly by approaching the Lord's table, receives the
1 This represents the views of Calvin.
visible sacrament of his body and blood .... But he who without
faith approaches the sacred table, albeit he communicate in the
sacrament, yet he perceives not the matter of the sacrament, whence
is life and salvation. ..."
The Augustan Confession presented by the German electors
to Charles V. in the section on the Mass merely protests against
the view that " the Lord's Supper is a work (opus) which being
performed by a priest earns remission of sin for the doer and for
others, and that in virtue of the work done (ex opere operate),
without a good motive on the part of the user. Also that being
applied for the dead, it is a satisfaction, that is to say, earns for
them remission of the pains of purgatory."
The Saxon Confession of Wittenberg, June 1551, while protest-
ing against the same errors, equally abstains from trying to
define narrowly how Christ is present in the sacrament.
Consubstanliation. The symbolical books of the Lutheran
Church, following the teaching of Luther himself, declare the
doctrine of the real presence of Christ's body and blood in the
eucharist, together with the bread and wine (con-substantiation),
as well as the ubiquity of his body, as the orthodox doctrine
of the church. One consequence of this view was that the
unbelieving recipients are held to be as really partakers of the
body of Christ in, with and under the bread as the faithful,
though they receive it to their own hurt. (Hagenbach, Hist,
of Doctr. ii. 300.)
Of all the Reformers, the teaching of Zwingli was the farthest
removed from that of Luther. At an early period he asserted
that the Eucharist was nothing more than food for the soul,
and had been instituted by Christ only as an act of commemora-
tion and as a visible sign of his body and blood (Christenliche
Ynleitung, 1523, quoted by Hagenbach, Hist, of Doctr. ii. 296,
Clark's translation). But that Zwingli did not reject the higher
religious significance of the Eucharist, and was far from degrading
the bread and wine into " nuda et inania symbola," as he was
accused of doing, we see from his Fidei ratio ad Carolum Impera-
torem (ib. p. 297).
Original Significance of the Eucharist. It is doubtful if the
attempts of reformers to spiritualize the Eucharist bring us,
except so far as they pruned ritual extravagances, nearer to its
original significance; perhaps the Reman, Greek and Oriental
churches have better preserved it. This significance remains
to be discussed; the cognate question of how far the development
of the Eucharist was influenced by the pagan mysteries is
discussed in the article SACRAMENT.
That the Lord's Supper was from the first a meal symbolic
of Christian unity and commemorative of Christ's death is
questioned by none. But Paul, while he saw this much in it,
saw much more; or he could not in the same epistle, x. 18-22
assimilate communion in the flesh and blood of Jesus, on the one
hand, to the sacrificial communion with the altar which made
Israel after the flesh one; and on the other to the communion
with devils attained by pagans through sacrifices offered before
idols. It has been justly remarked of the Pauline view, that
" The union with the Lord Himself, to which those who partake
of the Lord's Supper have, is compared with the union which those
who partake of a sacrifice have with the deity to whom the altar is
devoted in the case of the Israelites with God, of the heathen
with demons. This idea that to partake of sacrifice is to devote one-
self to the deity, lies at the root of the ancient idea of worship,
whether Jewish or heathen; and St Paul uses it as being readily
understood. In this connexion the symbol is never a mere symbol,
but a means of real union. ' The cup is the covenant ' " (Prof.
Sanday in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, 3, 149).
Paul caps his argument thus: " Ye cannot drink the cup of
the Lord and the cup of demons: ye cannot partake of the table
of the Lord and of the table of demons. Or do we provoke
the Lord to jealousy ? Are we stronger than he ? " And these
words with their context prove that Paul, like the Fathers of
the church, regarded the gods and goddesses as real living
supernatural beings, but malignant. They were the powers
and principalities with whom he was ever at war. The Lord
also is jealous of them, if any one attempt to combine their
cult with his, for to do so is to doubt the supremacy of his name
above all names. Both in its inner nature then and outward
EUCHARIST
75
effects the Eucharist was the Christian counterpart of these
two other forms of communion of which one, the heathen, was
excluded from the first, and the other, the Jewish, soon to dis-
appear. It is their analogue, and to understand it we must
understand them, not forgetting that Paul, as a Semite, and his
hearers, as converted pagans, were imbued with the sacrificial
ideas of the old world.
" A kin," remarks \V. Robertson Smith (Religion of the Semites.
1894), " was a group of persons whose lives were so bound up
together, in what must be called a physical unity, that they
could be treated as parts of one common life. The members
of one kindred looked on themselves as one living whole, a single
animated mass of blood, flesh and bones, of which no member
could be touched without all the members suffering." " In
later times," observes the same writer (op. cit. p. 313), " we
find the conception current that any food which two men partake
of together, so that the same substance enters into their flesh
and blood, is enough to establish some sacred unity of life
between them; but in ancient times this significance seems
to be always attached to participation in the flesh of a sacrosanct
victim, and the solemn mystery of its death is justified by the
consideration that only in this way can the sacred cement be
procured, which creates or keeps alive a living bond of union
between the worshippers and their god. This cement is nothing
else than the actual life of the sacred and kindred animal, which
is conceived as residing in its flesh, but specially in its blood, and
so, in the sacred meal, is actually distributed among all the
participants, each of whom incorporates a particle of it with
his own individual life."
The above conveys the cycle of ideas within which Paul's
reflection worked. Christ who knew no sin (2 Cor. v. 21) had
been made sin, and sacrificed for us, becoming as it were a new
Passover (i Cor. v. 7). By a mysterious sympathy the bread
and wine over which the words, " This is my body which is for
you," and " This cup is the new covenant in my blood," had
been uttered, became Christ's body and blood; so that by
partaking of these the faithful were united with each other
and with Christ into one kinship. They became the body of
Christ, and his blood or life was in them, apd they were members
of him. Participation in the Eucharist gave actual life, and it
was due to their irregular attendance at it that many members
of the Corinthian church " were weak and sickly and not a few
slept " (i.e. had died). -As the author already cited adds (p. 313):
" The notion that by eating the flesh, or particularly by
drinking the blood, of another living being, a man absorbs its
nature or life into his own, is one which appears among primitive
peoples in many forms."
But this effect of participation in the bread and cup was not
in Paul's opinion automatic, was no mere opus opcratum; it
depended on the ethical co-operation of the believer'who must
not eat and drink unworthily, that is, after refustrtg to share
his meats with the poorer brethren, or with any other guilt in
his soul. The phrases " discern the body " and " discern
ourselves " in i Cor. ri. 29, 31 are obscure. Paul evidently
plays on the verb, krino, diakrino, kaiakrind (Kpivw, Sicutplvw,
KarcucpiKii). The general sense is clear, that those who consume
the holy food without a clear conscience, like those who handle
sacred objects with impure hands, will suffer physical harm
from its contact, as if they were undergoing the ordeal of touching
a holy thing. The idea, therefore, seems to be that as we must
distinguish the holy food over which the words " This is my
body " have been uttered from common food, so we must
separate ourselves before eating it from all that is guilty and
impure. The food that is taboo must only be consumed by
persons who are equally taboo or pure. If they are not pure,
it condemns them.
The " one " loaf has many parallels in ancient sacrifices, e.g.
the Latin tribes when they met annually at their common
temple partook of a " single " bull. And in Greek Panegureif
or festivals the sacrificial wine had to be dispensed from one
common bowl: " Unto a common cup they come together,
and from it pour libations as well as sacrifice," says Aristides
Rhetor in his Isthmica in Ncptunum, p. 45. To ensure the con-
tinued unity of the bread, the Roman church ever leaves over
from a preceding consecration half a holy wafer, called fer-
mrntum, which is added in the next celebration.
With what awe Paul regarded the elements mystically identi-
fied with Christ's body and life is clear from his declaration in
i Cor. xi. 27, that he who consumes them unworthily is guilty
or holden of the Lord's body and blood. This is the language
of the ancient ordeal which as a test of innocence required the
accused to touch or still better to eat a holy element. A wife
who drank the holy water in which the dust of the Sanctuary
was mingled (Num. v. 17 foil.) offended so deeply against it, if
unfaithful, that she was punished with dropsy and wasting.
The very point is paralleled in the Acts of Thomas, ch. xlviii.
A youth who has murdered his mistress takes the bread of the
Eucharist in his mouth, and his two hands are at once withered
up. The apostle immediately invites him to confess the crime
he must have committed, " for, he says, the Eucharist of the
Lord hath convicted thee."
It has been necessary to consider at such length St Paul's
account of the Eucharist, both because it antedates nearly by
half a century that of the gospels, and because it explains the
significance which the rite had no less for the Gnostics than for
the great church. The synoptists' account is to be understood
thus: Jesus, conscious that he now for the last time lies down to
eat with his disciples a meal which, if not the Paschal, was any-
how anticipatory of the Millennial Regeneration (Matt. xix. 28),
institutes, as it were, a blood-brotherhood between himself and
them. It is a covenant similar to that of Exodus xxiv., when
after the peace-offering of oxen, Moses took the blood in basins
and sprinkled half of it on the altar and on twelve pillars erected
after the twelve tribes, and the other half on the people, to whom
he had first read out the writing of the covenant and said,
" Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made
with you concerning all these words."
But the covenant instituted by Jesus on the eve of his death
was hardly intended as a new covenant with God, superseding
the old. This reconstruction of its meaning seems to have been
the peculiar revelation of the Lord to Paul, who viewed Christ's
crucifixion and death as an atoning sacrifice, liberating by its
grace mankind from bonds of sin which the law, far from snap-
ping, only made more sensible and grievous. This must have been
the gist of the special revelation which he had received from
Christ as to the inner character of a supper which he already
found a ritual observance among believers. The Eucharist of
the synoptists is rather a covenant or tie of communion between
Jesus and the twelve, such as will cause his life to survive in
them after he has been parted from them in the flesh. An older
prophet would have slain an animal and drunk its blood in
common with his followers, or they would all alike have smeared
themselves with it. In the East, even now, one who wishes to
create a blood tie between himself and his followers and cement
them to himself, makes under his left breast an incision from
which they each in turn suck his blood. Such barbarism was
alien to the spirit of the Founder, who substitutes bread and
wine for his own flesh and blood, only imparting to these his own
quality by the declaration that they are himself. He broke the
bread not in token of his approaching death, but in order to its
equal distribution. Wine he rather chose than water as a
surrogate for his actual blood, because it already in Hebrew
sacrifices passed as such. " The Hebrews," says Robertson
Smith (op. cit. p. 230), " treated it like the blood, pouring it out
at the base of the altar." As a red liquid it was a ready symbol
of the blood which is the life. It was itself the covenant, for the
genitive TTJI oiaffijKrfi in Mark xiv. 24 is epexegetic, and Luke
and Paul rightly substitute the nominative. It was, as J. Wcll-
hauscn remarks, 1 a better cement than the bread, because
through the drinking of it the very blood of Jesus coursed through
the veins of the disciples, and that is why more stress is laid on it
than on the bread. To the apostles, as Jews bred and born,
the action and words of their master formed a solemn and
1 Dm Evangelium Marci, p. 121.
876
EUCHARIST
intelligible appeal. It belongs to the same order of ideas that
the headship of the Messianic ecclesia in Judea was assigned after
the death of Jesus to his eldest brother James, and after him for
several generations to the eldest living representative of his
family.
To the modern mind it is absurd that an image or symbol
should be taken for that which is imaged or symbolized, and that
is why the early history of the Eucharist has been so little
understood by ecclesiastical writers. And yet other religions,
ancient and modern, supply many parallels, which are considered
in the article SACRAMENT.
AUTHORITIES. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites; Goetz,
Die Abendmahlsfrage; G. Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen
(Gottingen, 1894); Sylloge confessionum (Oxford, 1804); Duchesne,
Origins of Christian Culture; Funk's edition of Constitutiones
Apostolicae; Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, vol. ii. ; Geo. Bickell,
Messe und Pascha; idem. " Die Entstehung der Liturgie," Ztsch. f.
Kath. Theol. iv. Jahrg. 94 (1880), p. 90 (shows how the prayers of
the Christian sacramentaries derive from the Jewish Synagogue) ;
Goar, Rituale Graecorum; F. E. Brightman, Eastern Liturgies;
Cabrol and Leclercq, Monumenta liturgica, reliquiae liturgicae
vetustissimae (Paris, 1900) ; Harnack, History of Dogma ; Jas.
Martineau, Seat of Authority in Religion, bk. iv. (London, 1890);
Loofs, art. " Abendmahlsfeier " in Herzog's Realencyklopddie (1896.)
Spitta, Urchristentum (Gottingen, 1893); Schultzen, Das Abend-
mahl im N.T. (Gottingen, 1895); Kraus, Real-Encykl. a. christl.
Altert. (for the Archaeology); art. " Eucharistic " ; Ch. Gore,
Dissertations (1895); Hoffmann, Die Abendmahlsgedanken Jesu
Christi (Konigsberg, 1896); Sanday, art. "Lord's Supper " in
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible; Th. Harnack, Der christl.
Cemeindegottesdienst. (F. C. C.)
RESERVATION OF THE EUCHARIST
The practice of reserving the sacred elements for the purpose
of subsequent reception prevailed in the church from very early
times. The Eucharist being the seal of Christian fellowship,
it was a natural custom to send portions of the consecrated ele-
ments by the hands of the deacons to those who were not present
(Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 65). From this it was an easy develop-
ment, which prevailed before the end of the 2nd century, for
churches to send the consecrated Bread to one another as a sign
of communion (the euxapuma mentioned by Irenaeus, ap. Eus.
H.E. v. 24), and for the faithful to take it to their own homes
and reserve it in arcae or caskets for. the purpose of communicat-
ing themselves (Tert. ad Uxor. ii. 5, De oral. 19; St Cypr. De
lapsis, 132). Being open to objection on grounds both of
superstition and of irreverence, these customs were gradually put
down by the council of Laodicea in A.D. 360. But some irregular
forms of reservation still continued; the prohibition as regards
the lay people was not extended, at any rate with any strictness,
to the clergy and monks; the Eucharist was still carried on
journeys; occasionally it was buried with the dead; and in
a few cases the pen was even dipped in the chalice in subscribing
important writings. Meanwhile, both in East and West, the
general practice has continued unbroken of reserving the
Eucharist, in order that the " mass of the presanctified " might
take place on certain " aliturgic " days, that the faithful might
be able to communicate when there was no celebration, and above
all that it might be at hand to meet the needs of the sick and
dying. It was reserved in a closed vessel, which took various
forms from time to time, known in the East as the &pro<j>6pioi>,
and in the West as the turris, the capsa, and later on as the pyx.
In the East it was kept against the wall behind the altar; in the
West, in a locked aumbry in some part of the church, or (as in
England and France) in a pyx made in the form of a dove and
suspended over the altar.
In the West it has been used in other ways. A portion of
the consecrated Bread from one Eucharist, known as the " Fer-
mentum," was long made use of in the next, or sent by the bishop
to the various churches of his city, no doubt with the object of
emphasizing, the solidarity and the continuity of " the one
Eucharist "; and amongst other customs which prevailed for
some centuries, from the 8th onward, were those of giving it to
the newly ordained in order that they might communicate
themselves, and of burying it in or under the altar-slab of a newly
consecrated church. At a later date, apparently early in the
i4th century, began the practice of carrying the Eucharist in
procession in a monstrance; and at a still later period, apparently
after the middle of the i6th century, the practice of Benediction
with the reserved sacrament, and that of the " forty hours'
exposition," were introduced in the churches of the Roman
communion. It should be said, however, that most of these
practices met with very considerable opposition both from
councils and from theologians and canonists, amongst others from
the English canonist William Lyndwood (Provinciate, lib. iii. c.
26), on the following grounds amongst others: that the Body of
Christ is the food of the soul, that it ought not to be reserved
except for the benefit of the sick, and that it ought not to be
applied to any other use than that for which it was instituted.
In England, during the religious changes of the i6th century,
such of these customs as had already taken root were abolished ;
and with them the practice of reserving the Eucharist in the
churches appears to have died out too. The general feeling on
the subject is expressed by the language of the 28th Article,
first drafted in 1553, to the effect that " the sacrament of the
Lord's Supper was not by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried
about, lifted up or worshipped," and by the fact that a form
was provided for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist for the
sick in their own homes. This latter practice was in accordance
with abundant precedent, but had become very infrequent, if
not obsolete, for many years before the Reformation. The first
Prayer-Book of Edward VI. provided that if there was a celebra-
tion in church on the day on which a sick person was to receive
the Holy Communion, it should be reserved, and conveyed to
the sick man's house to be administered to him; if not, the
curate was to visit the sick person before noon and there celebrate
according to a form which is given in the book. At the revision
of the Prayer-Book in 1552 all mention of reservation is omitted,
and the rubric directs that the communion is to be celebrated
in the sick person's house, according to a new form; and this
service has continued, with certain minor changes, down to the
present day. That the tendency of opinion in the English
Church during the period of the Reformation was against
reservation is beyond doubt, and that the practice actually
died out would seem to be equally clear. The whole argument
of some of the controversial writings of the time, such as Bishop
Cooper on Private Mass, depends upon that fact; and when
Cardinal du Perron alleged against the English Church the lack
of the reserved Eucharist, Bishop Andrewes replied, not that
the fact was otherwise, but that reservation was unnecessary
in view of the English form for the Communion of the Sick:
" So^that reservation needeth not; the intent is had without it"
(Answers to Cardinal Perron, &c., p. 19, Library of Anglo-
Catholic Theology). It does not follow, however, that a custom
which has ceased to exist is of necessity forbidden, nor even
that what was rejected by the authorities of the English Church
in the i6th century is so explicitly forbidden as to be unlawful
under its existing system; and not a few facts have to be taken
into account in any investigation of the question, (i) The view
has been held that in the Eucharist the elements are only con-
secrated as regards the particular purpose of reception in the
service itself, and that consequently what remains unconsumed
may be put to common uses. If this view were held (and it has
more than once made its appearance in church history, though
it has never prevailed), reservation might be open to objection
on theological grounds. But such is not the view of the Church
of England in her doctrinal standards, and there is an express
rubric directing that any that remains of that which was con-
secrated is not to be carried out of the church, but reverently
consumed. There can therefore be no theological obstacle to
reservation in the English Church: it is a question of practice
only. (2) Nor can it be said that the rubric just referred to is
in itself a condemnation of reservation: it is rather directed,
as its history proves, against the irreverence which prevailed
when it was made; and in fact its wording is based upon that
of a pre-Reformation order which coexisted with the practice
of reservation (Lyndwood, Provinciale, lib. iii. tit. 26, note q).
(3) Nor can it be said that the words of the 28th Article (see
EUCHRE
877
above) constitute in themselves an express prohibition of reserva-
i ion, strong as their evidence may be as to the practice and feeling
of the time. The words are the common property of an earlier
age which saw nothing objectionable in reservation for the sick.
(4) It has indeed been contended (by Bishop Wordsworth of
Salisbury) that reservation was not actually, though tacitly,
continued under the second Prayer-Book of Edward VI., since
that book orders that the curate shall "minister," and not
celebrate," the communion in the sick person's house. But
such a tacit sanction on the part of the compilers of the second
Prayer-Book is in the highest degree improbable, in view of
their known opinions on the subject; and an examination of
contemporary writings hardly justifies the contention that the
two words arc so carefully used as the argument would demand.
Anyhow, as the bishop notes, this could not be the case with the
Prayer-Book of 1661, where the word is "celebrate." (5) The
Elizabethan Act of Uniformity contained a provision that at
the universities the public services, with the exception of the
Eucharist, might be in a language other than English; and in
1560 there appeared a Latin version of the Prayer-Book, issued
under royal letters patent, in which there was a rubric prefixed
to the Order for the Communion of the Sick, based on that in
th first Prayer-Book of Edward VI. (see above), and providing
that the Eucharist should be reserved for the sick person if
there had been a celebration on the same day. But although
the book in question was issued under letters patent, it is not
really a translation of the Elizabethan book at all, but simply
a reshaping of Aless's clever and inaccurate translation of Edward
VI.'s first book. In the rubric in question words are altered
here and there in a way which shows that its reappearance can
hardly be a mere printer's error; but in any case its importance
is very slight, for the Act of Uniformity specially provides that
the English service alone is to be used for the Eucharist. (6)
It has been pointed out that reservation for the sick prevails in
the Scottish Episcopal Church, the doctrinal standards of which
correspond with those of the Church of England. But it must
be remembered that the Scottish Episcopal Church has an
additional order of its own for the Holy Communion, and that
consequently its clergy are not restricted to the services in the
Book of Common Prayer. Moreover, the practice of reservation
which has prevailed in Scotland for over 150 years would appear
to have arisen out of the special circumstances of that church
during the i8lh century, and not to have prevailed continuously
from earlier times. (7) Certain of the divines who took part in
the framing of the Prayer-Book of 1661 seem to speak of the
practice as though it actually prevailed in their day. But
Bishop Sparrow's words on the subject (Rationale, p. 349) are
not free from difficulty on any hypothesis, and Thorndike
(Works, v. 578, Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology) writes in
such a style that it is often hard to tell whether he is describing
the actual practice of his day or that which in his view it ought
to be. (8) There appears to be more evidence than is commonly
supposed to show that a practice analogous to that of Justin
Martyr's day has been adopted from time to time in England,
viz. that of conveying the sacred elements to the houses of the
sick during, or directly after, the celebration in church. And in
1899 this practice received the sanction of Dr Wcstcott, then
bishop of Durham. (Q) On the other hand, the words of the
oath taken by the clergy under the 36th of the Canons of 1604
are to the effect that they will use the form prescribed in the
Prayer-Book and none other, except so far as shall be otherwise
ordered by lawful authority; and the Prayer-Book does not even
mention the reservation of the Eucharist, whilst the Articles
mention it only in the way of depreciation.
The matter has become one of no little practical importance
owing to modern developments of English Church life. On the
one hand, it is widely felt that neither the form for the Com-
munion of the Sick, nor yet the teaching with regard to spiritual
communion in the third rubric at the end of that service, is
sufficient to meet all the cases that arise or may arise. On the
other hand, it is probable that in many cases the desire for
reservation has arisen, in part at least, from a wish for some-
thing analogous to the Roman Catholic customs of exposition
and benediction; and the chief objection to any formal practice
of reservation, on the part of many who otherwise would not
be opposed to it, is doubtless to be found in this fact. But
however that may be, the practice of reservation of the
Eucharist, either in the open church or in private, has become
not uncommon in recent days.
The question of the legality of reservation was brought before
the two archbishops in i8gg, under circumstances analogous to
those in the Lambeth Hearing on Incense (q.v.). The parties
concerned were three clergymen, who appealed from the direction
of their respective diocesans, the bishops of St Albans and
Peterborough and the archbishop of York: in the two former
cases the archbishop (Temple) of Canterbury was the principal
and the archbishop of York (Maclagan) the assessor, whilst in
the latter case the functions were reversed. The hearing extended
from i yth to 2oth July; counsel were heard on both sides,
evidence was given in support of the appeals by two of the
clergy concerned and by several other witnesses, lay and clerical,
and the whole matter was gone into with no little fulness. The
archbishops gave their decision on the ist of May IQOO in two
separate judgments, to the effect that, in Dr Temple's words,
"the Church of England does not at present allow reservation
in any form, and that those who think that it oughl to be allowed,
though perfectly justified in endeavouring to get the proper
authorities to alter the law, are not justified in practising reser-
vation until the law has been so altered." The archbishop of
York also laid stress upon the fact that the difficulties in the way
of the communion of the sick, when they are really ready for
communion, are. not so great as has sometimes been suggested.
See W. E. Scudamore, Notilia eucharistica (2nd cd., London,
1876); and art. "Reservation" in Dictionary of Christian Anti-
quities, vol. ii. (London, 1893); Guardian newspaper, July 19 and
26, 1899, and May 2, 1900; The Archbishops of Canterbury and York
on Reservation of the Sacrament (London, 1900); 1. S. Franey,
Mr Dibdin's Speech on Reservation, and some of the Evidence (London,
1899); F. C. Eeles, Reservation of the Holy Eucharist in the Scottish
Church (Aberdeen, 1899); Bishop J, Wordsworth, Further Con-
siderations on Public Worship (Salisbury, 1901). (W. E. Co.)
EUCHRE, a game of cards. The name is supposed by some
to be a corruption of tcartt, to which game it bears some resem-
blance; others connect it with the Ger. Juchs or Jux, a joke,
owing to the presence in the pack, or " deck," of a special card
called " the joker "; but neither derivation is quite satisfactory.
The " deck " consists of 32 cards, all cards between the seven
and ace being rejected from an ordinary pack. Sometimes the
sevens and eights are rejected as well. The "joker" is the best
card, i.e. the highest trump. Second in value is the " right
bower " (from Dutch boer, farmer, the name of the knave), or
knave of trumps; third is the " left bower," the knave of the
other suit of the same colour as the right bower, also a trump:
then follow ace, king, queen, &c., in order. Thus if spades are
trumps the order is (i) the joker, (2) knave of spades, (3) knave
of clubs, (4) ace of spades, &c. The joker, however, is not always
used. When it is, the game is called " railroad " euchre. In
suits not trumps the cards rank as at whist. Euchre can be
played by two, three or four persons. In the cut for deal, the
highest card deals, the knave being the highest and the ace
the next best card. The dealer gives five cards to each person,
two each and then three each, or vice versa: when all have
received their cards the next card in the pack is turned up for
trumps.
Two-handed Euehre. If the non-dealer, who looks at his cards
first, is satisfied, he says " I order it up," i.e. he elects to play with
his hand as it stands and with the trump suit as turned up. The
dealer then rejects one card, which is put face downwards at the
bottom of the pack, and takes the trump card into his hand. If,
however, the non-dealer is not satisfied with his original hand, he says
" I pass," on which the dealer can either " adopt, ' or " take it up,"
the suit turned up, and proceed as before, or he can pass, turning
down the trump card to show that he passes. If both players pass,
the non-dealer can make any other suit trumps, by saying " I make
it spades," for example, or he can pass again, when the dealer can
either make another suit trumps or pass. If both players pass, the
hand is at an end. If the trump card is black and either player
makes the other black suit trumps, he " makes it next " ; if he makes
8y8
EUCKEN EUCLASE
a red suit trumps he " crosses the suit " ; the same applies to trumps
in a red suit, mutatis mutandis. The non-dealer leads; the dealer
must follow suit if he can, but he need not win the trick, nor need he
trump if unable to follow suit. The left bower counts as a trump,
and a trump must be played to it if led. The game is five up. If
the player who orders up or adopts makes five tricks (a " march ")
he scores two points; if four or three tricks, one point; if he makes
less than three tricks, he is " euchred " and the other player scores
two. A rubber consists of three games, each game counting one,
unless the loser has failed to score at all, when the winner counts
two for that game. This is called a " lurch." When a player wins
three tricks, he is said to win the " point." The rubber points are
two, as at whist. All three games are played out, even if one player
win the first two. It is sometimes agreed that if a score " laps," i.e.
if the winner makes more than five points in a game, the surplus
may be carried on to the next game. The leader should be cautious
about ordering up, since the dealer will probably hold one trump
in addition to the one he takes in. If the point is certain, the leader
should pass, in case the dealer should take up the trump. If the
dealer turns it down," it is not wise to " make it," unless the odds
on getting the point against one trump are two to one. With good
cards in two suits, it is best to make it " next," as the dealer is not
likely to have a bower in that suit. The dealer, if he adopts, should
discard a singleton, unless it is an ace. If the dealer's score is three,
only a very strong hand justifies one in " ordering up." It is gener-
ally wise in play to discard a singleton and not to unguard another
suit. With one's adversary at four, the trump should be adopted
even on a light hand.
' Three-handed (cut-throat) Euchre. In this form of the game the
option of playing or passing goes round in rotation, beginning with
the player on the dealer's left. The player who orders up, takes up,
or makes, plays against the other two; if he is euchred his adver-
saries score two each ; by other laws he is set back two points, and
should his score be at love, he has then to make seven points. The
procedure is the same as in two-handed euchre.
Four-handed Euchre. The game is played with partners, cutting
and sitting, and the deal passing, as at whist. If the first player
passes, the second may say " I assist," which is the same as " order-
ing up," or he may pass. If the first player has ordered up, his
partner may say " I take it from you,' which means that he will
play alone against the two adversaries, the first player's cards being
put face downwards on the table, and not being used in that hand.
Any player can similarly play "a lone hand, his partner taking
no part in the play. Even if the first hand plays alone, the third
may take it from him. Similarly the dealer may take it from the
second hand, but the second hand cannot take it from the dealer.
If all four players pass, the first player can pass, make it, or play
alone, naming the suit he makes. The third hand can " take it '
from the first, or play alone in the suit made by the first, the dealer
having a similar right over his own partner. If all four pass again,
the hand is at an end and the deal passes. The game is five up,
points being reckoned as before. If a lone player makes five tricks
his side scores four: if three tricks, one: if he fails to make three
tricks the opponents score four. It is not wise for the first hand to
order up or cross the suit unless very strong. It is good policy to lead
trumps through a hand that assists, bad policy to do so when the
leader adopts. Trumps should be led to a partner who has ordered
up or made it. It is sometimes considered wise for the first hand to
" keep the bridge," i.e. order up with a bad hand, to prevent the other
side from playing alone, if their score is only one or two and the
leader's is four. This right is lost if a player reminds his partner,
after the trump card has been turned, that they are at the point of
bridge. If the trump under these circumstances is not ordered
up, the dealer should turn down, unless very strong. The second
hand should not assist unless really strong, except when at the point
of four-all or four-love. When led through, it is generally wise,
celeris paribus, to head the trick. The dealer should always adopt
with two trumps in hand, or with one trump if a bower is turned up.
At four-all and four-love he should adopt on a weaker hand. Also,
being fourth player, he can make it on a weaker hand than other
players. If the dealer's partner assists, the dealer should lead him
a trump at the first opportunity; it is also a good opportunity for
the dealer to play alone if moderately strong. If a player who
generally keeps the bridge passes, his partner should rarely play
alone.
Extracts from Rules. If the dealer give too many or too few cards
to any player, or exposes two cards in turning up, it is a misdeal
and the deal passes. If there is a faced card in the pack, or the
dealer axposes a card, he deals again. If any one play with the wrong
number of cards, or the dea4er plays without discarding, trumps
being ordered up, his side forfeits two points (a lone hand four
points) and cannot score during that hand. The revoke penalty is
three points for each revoke (five in the case of a lone hand), and
no score can be made that hand ; a card may be taken back, before
the trick is quitted, to save a revoke, but it is an exposed card.
If a lone player expose a card, no penalty; if he lead out of turn,
the card led may be called. If an adversary of a lone player plays
out of turn to his lead, all the cards of both adversaries can be called,
and are exposed on the table.
Bid Euchre. This game resembles " Napoleon " (q.v.). It is
played with a euchre deck, each player receiving five cards, the others
being left face-downwards. Each player " bids," i.e. declares and
makes a certain number of tricks, the highest bidder leading and
his first card being a trump. When six play, the player .who bids
highest claims as his partner the player who has the best card of
the trump suit, not in the bidder's hand: if it is among the undealt
cards, which is ascertained by the fact that no one else holds it, he
calls for the next best and so on. The partners then play against
the other four.
EUCKEN, RUDOLF CHRISTOPH (1846- ), German
philosopher, was born on the 5th of January 1846 at Aurich in
East Friesland. His father died when he was a child, and he
was brought up by his mother, a woman of considerable activity.
He was educated at Aurich, where one of his teachers was the
philosopher Wilhelm Reuter, whose influence was the dominating
factor in the development of his thought. Passing to the uni-
versity of Gottingen he took his degree in classical philology and
ancient history, but the bent of his mind was definitely towards
the philosophical side of theology. Subsequently he studied in
Berlin, especially under Trendelenburg, whose ethical tendencies
and historical treatment of philosophy greatly attracted him.
From 1871 to 1874 Eucken taught philosophy at Basel, and in
1874 became professor of philosophy at the university of Jena.
In 1908 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Eucken's
philosophical work is partly historical and partly constructive,
the former side being predominant in his earlier, the latter in
his later works. Their most striking feature is the close organic
relationship between the two parts. The aim of the historical
works is to show the necessary connexion between philosophical
concepts and the age to which they belong; the same idea is
at the root of his constructive speculation. All philosophy is
philosophy of life, the development of a new culture, not mere
intellectualism, but the application of a vital religious inspiration
to the practical problems of society. This practical idealism
Eucken described by the term " Activism." In accordance with
this principle, Eucken has given considerable attention to social
and educational problems.
His chief works are: Die Methode der aristotelischen Forschung
(1872) ; the important historical study on the history of conceptions,
Die Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart (1878; Eng. trans, by M. Stuart
Phelps, New York, 1880; 3rd ed. under the title Geistige Stromungen
der Gegenwart, 1904; 4th ed., 1909); Geschichte der philos. Ter-
minologie (1879) ; Prolegomena zu Forschungen iiber die Einheit des
Geisteslebens (1885) ; Beitrdge zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie
(1886, 1905); Die Einheit des Geisteslebens (1888); Die Lebens-
anschauungen der grossen Denker (1890; 7th ed., 1907; Eng. trans.,
W. Hough and Boyce Gibson, The Problem of Human Life, 1909) ;
Der Wahrheitsgelia.lt der Religion (1901; 2nd ed., 1905); Thomas
von Aquino und Kant (1901); Gesammelte Aufsdtze zu Philos. und
Lebensanschauung (1903); Philosophie der Geschichte (1907); Der
Kampf um einen geisiigen Lebenstnhalt (1896, 1907); Grundlinien
einer neuen Lebensanschauung (1907); Einfiihrung in die Philosophie
der Geisteslebens (1908; Eng. trans., The Life of the Spirit, F. L.
Pogson, 1909, Crown Theological Library) ; Der Sinn und Wert des
Lebens (1908; Eng. trans., 1909); Hauptprobleme der Religions-
philosophie der Gegenwart (1907). The following of Eucken's works
also have been translated into English : Liberty in Teaching in the
German Universities (1897); Are the Germans still a Nation of
Thinkers? (1898); Progress of Philos. in the iQth Century (1899);
The Finnish Question (1899); The Present Status of Religion in
Germany (1901). See W. R. Boyce Gibson, Rudolf Eucken's Philo-
sophy of Life (2nd ed., 1907), and God .with Us (1909); for the his-
torical work, Falckenberg's Hist, of Philos. (Eng. trans., 1895, index) ;
also H. Pohlmann, R. Euckens Theologie mil ihren philosophischen
Grundlagen dargestellt (1903); O. Siebert, R. Euckens Welt- und
Lebensanschauung (1904).
EUCLASE, a very rare mineral, occasionally cut as a gem-stone
for the cabinet. It bears some relation to beryl in that it is a
silicate containing beryllium and aluminium, but hydrogen is
also present, and the analyses of euclase lead to the formula
HBeAlSiOs or Be(A10H)SiO 4 . It crystallizes in the monoclinic
system, the crystals being generally of prismatic habit, striated
vertically, and terminated by acute pyramids. Cleavage is
perfect, parallel to the clinopinacoid, and this suggested to R. J.
Haiiy the name euclase, from the Greek eB, easily, and xXiiais,
fracture. The ready cleavage renders the stone fragile with a
tendency to chip, and thus detracts from its use for personal
ornament. The colour is generally pale-blue or green, though
sometimes the mineral is colourless. When cut it resembles
EUCLID
879
certain kinds of beryl (aquamarine) and topaz, from which it
may be distinguished by its specific gravity (3-1). Its hardness
(7-5) is rather less than that of topaz. Eudase occurs with topaz
at Boa Vista, near Ouro Preto (Villa Rica) in the province of
Minas Geraes, Brazil. It is found also with topaz and chryso-
beryl in the gold-bearing gravels of the R. Sanarka in the South
Urals; and is met with as a rarity in the mica-schist of the
Kauris in the Austrian Alps.
EUCLID [EUCLEIDES], of Megara, founder of the Megarian
(also called the eristic or dialectic) school of philosophy, was
born c. 450 B.C., probably at Megara, though Gela in Sicily has
also been named as his birthplace (Diogenes Lacrtius ii. 106),
and died in 374. He was one of the most devoted of the disciples
of Socrates. Aulus Gellius (vi. 10) states that, when a decree
was passed forbidding the Megarians to enter Athens, he regularly
visited his master by night in the disguise of a woman; and he
was one of the little band of intimate friends who listened to the
last discourse. He withdrew subsequently with a number of
fellow disciples to Megara, and it has been conjectured, though
there is no direct evidence, that this was the period of Plato's
residence in Megara, of which indications appear in the Theactetus.
He is said to have written six dialogues, of which only the titles
have been preserved. For his doctrine (a combination of the
principles of Parmenides and Socrates) see MEGARIAN SCHOOL.
EUCLID. Greek mathematician of the 3rd century B.C.; we
are ignorant not only of the dates of his birth and death, but also
of his parentage, his teachers, and the residence of his early years.
In some of the editions of his works he is called Mcgarcnsis, as if
he bad been born at Megara in Greece, a mistake which arose
from confounding him with another Euclid, a disciple of Socrates.
Proclus (A.D. 41 2-485), the authority for most of our information
regarding Euclid, states in his commentary on the first book of
the Elements that Euclid lived in the time of Ptolemy I., king of
Egypt, who reigned from 323 to 285 B.C., that he was younger
than the associates of Plato, but older than Eratosthenes (276-
196 B.C.) and Archimedes (287-212 B.C.). Euclid is said to have
founded the mathematical school of Alexandria, which was at
that time becoming a centre, not only of commerce, but of learn-
ing and research, and for this service to the cause of exact science
he would have deserved commemoration, even if his writings
had not secured him a worthier title to fame. Proclus preserves
a reply made by Euclid to King Ptolemy, who asked whether he
could not learn geometry more easily than by studying the
Elements " There is no royal road to geometry." Pappus of
Alexandria, in his Mathematical Collection, says that Euclid was
a man of mild and inoffensive temperament, unpretending,
and kind to all genuine students of mathematics. This being
all that is known of the life and character of Euclid, it only
remains therefore to speak of his works.
Among those which have come down to us the most remarkable
is the Elements (Sroixtta) (see GEOMETRY). They consist of
thirteen books; two more are frequently added, but there is
reason to believe that they are the work of a later mathematician,
Hypsicles of Alexandria.
The question has often been mooted, to what extent Euclid,
in his Elements, is a discoverer or a compiler. To this question
no entirely satisfactory answer can be given, for scarcely any of
the writings of earlier geometers have come down to our times.
We are mainly dependent on Pappus and Proclus for the scanty
notices we have of Euclid's predecessors, and of the problems
which engaged their attention; for the solution of problems,
and not the discovery of theorems, would seem to have been their
principal object. From these authors we learn that the property
of the right-angled triangle had been found out, the principles of
geometrical analysis laid down, the restriction of constructions
in plane geometry to the straight line and the circle agreed upon,
the doctrine of proportion, for both commensurables and in-
commensurables, as well as loci, plane and solid, and some of the
properties of the conic sections investigated, the five regular
solids (often called the Platonic bodies) and the relation between
the volume of a cone or pyramid and that of its circumscribed
cylinder or prism discovered. Elementary works had been
written, and the famous problem of the duplication of the cube
reduced to the determination of two mean proportionals between
two given straight lines. Notwithstanding this amount of dis-
covery, and all that it implied, Euclid must have made a great
advance beyond his predecessors (we arc told that " he arranged
the discoveries of Eudoxus, perfected those of Theaetetus, and
reduced to invincible demonstration many things that had previ-
ously been more loosely proved "), for his Elements supplanted
all similar treatises, and, as Apollonius received the title of " the
great geometer," so Euclid has come down to later ages as " the
elemcntator."
For the past twenty centuries parts of the Elements, notably
the first six books, have been used as an introduction to geometry.
Though they arc no,w to some extent superseded in most
countries, their long retention is a proof that they were, at any
rate, not Wisuitable for such a purpose. They are, speaking
generally, not too difficult for novices in the science; the demon-
strations are rigorous, ingenious and often elegant; the mixture
of problems and theorems gives perhaps some variety, and
makes their study less monotonous; and, if regard be had
merely to the metrical properties of space as distinguished from
the graphical, hardly any cardinal geometrical truths are omitted.
With these excellences are combined a good many defects, some
of them inevitable to a system based on a very few axioms-
and postulates. Thus the arrangement of the propositions
seems arbitrary; associated theorems and problems are not
grouped together; the classification, in short, is imperfect.
Other objections, not to mention minor blemishes, are the pro-
lixity of the style, arising partly from a defective nomenclature,
the treatment of parallels depending on an axiom/which is not
axiomatic, and the sparing use of superposition as a method of
proof.
Of the thirty-three ancient books subservient to geometrical
analysis, Pappus enumerates first the Data (^e&ofuva) of Euclid.
He says it contained 90 propositions, the scope of which he
describes; it now consists of 95. It is not easy to explain this
discrepancy, unless we suppose that some of the propositions,
as they existed in the time of Pappus, have since been split into
two, or that what were once scholia have since been erected
into propositions. The object of the Data is to show that when
certain things lines, angles, spaces, ratios, &c. are given by
hypothesis, certain other things are given, that is, are determin-
able. The book, as we are expressly told, and as we may gather
from its contents, was intended for the investigation of problems;
and it has been conjectured that Euclid must have extended
the method of the Data to the investigation of theorems. What
prompts this conjecture is the similarity between the analysis
of a theorem and the method, common enough in the Elements,
of reductio ad absurdum the one setting out from the supposition
that the theorem is true, the other from the supposition that
it is false, thence in both cases deducing a chain of consequences
which ends in a conclusion previously known to be true or false.
The Introduction to Harmony (Eiaa^oryi) apftovucli) , and the
Section of the Scale (KaTarojii) Ka.vbvas) , treat of music. There
is good reason for believing that one at any rate, and probably
both, of these books are not by Euclid. No mention is made
of them by any writer previous to Ptolemy (A.D. 140), or by
Ptolemy himself, and in no ancient codex are they ascribed
to Euclid.
The Phaenomena (4>aa>6nfva) contains an exposition of the
appearances produced by the motion attributed to the celestial
sphere. Pappus, in the few remarks prefatory to his sixth book,
complains of the faults, both of omission and commission, of
writers on astronomy, and cites as an example of the former
the second theorem of Euclid's Phaenomena, whence, and from
the interpolation of other proofs, David Gregory infers that this
treatise is corrupt.
The Optics and Catoptrics ('OjirwcA, KaTorrpucd) are ascribed
to Euclid by Proclus, and by Marinus in his preface to the Data,
but no mention is made of them by Pappus. This latter circum-
stance, taken in connexion with the fact that two of the proposi-
tions in the sixth book of the Mathematical Collection prove the
88o
EUCRATIDES
same things as three in the Optics, is one of the reasons -given by
Gregory for deeming that work spurious. Several other reasons
will be found in Gregory's preface to his edition of Euclid's works.
In some editions of Euclid's works there is given a book on
the Divisions of Superficies, which consists of a few propositions,
showing how a straight line may be drawn to divide in a given
ratio triangles, quadrilaterals and pentagons. This was supposed
by John Dee of London, who transcribed or translated it, and
entrusted it for publication to his friend Federico Commandino
of Urbino, to be the treatise of Euclid referred to by Proclus
as rd wtpl diaipiaewv fiifiXlov. Dee mentions that, in the copy
from which he wrote, the book was ascribed to Machomet of
Bagdad, and adduces two or three reasons for thinking it to be
Euclid's. This opinion, however, he does not seem to have
held very strongly, nor does it appear that it was adopted by
Commandino. The book does not exist in Greek.
The fragment, in Latin, De levi et ponder oso, which is of no
value, and was printed at the end of Gregory's edition only in order
that nothing might be left out, is mentioned neither by Pappus
nor Proclus, and occurs first in Bartholomew Zamberti's edition
of 1537. There is no reason for supposing it to be genuine.
The following works attributed to Euclid are not now extant:
1. Three books on Porisms (Ilepi rSiv Tropurfjicmav) are men-
tioned both by Pappus and Proclus, and the former gives an
abstract of them, with the lemmas assumed. (See PORISM.)
2. Two books are mentioned, named TOTTOIV irpos iirid^aveLq.,
which is rendered Locorum ad superficiem by Commandino and
subsequent geometers. These books were subservient to the
analysis of loci, but the four lemmas which refer to them and
which occur at the end of the seventh book of the Mathematical
Collection, throw very little light on their contents. R. Simson's
opinion was that they treated of curves of double curvature,
and he intended at one time to write a treatise on the subject.
(See Trail's Life of Dr Simson).
3. Pappus says that Euclid wrote four books on the Conic
Sections (/3i/3Xia reo-oapa KCOPUCWP), which Apollonius amplified,
and to which he added four more. It is known that, in the time
of Euclid, the parabola was considered as the section of a right-
angled cone, the ellipse that of an acute-angled cone, the hyper-
bola that of an obtuse-angled cone, and that Apollonius was the
first who showed that the three sections could be obtained from
any cone. There is good ground therefore for supposing that the
first four books of Apollonius's Conies, which are still extant,
resemble Euclid's Conies even less than Euclid's Elements do
those of Eudoxus and Theaetetus.
4. A book on Fallacies (Ilepi \l/tvdapiwv) is mentioned by
Proclus, who says that Euclid wrote it for the purpose of exercis-
ing beginners in the detection of errors in reasoning.
This notice of Euclid would be incomplete without some account
of the earliest and the most important editions of his works. Passing
over the commentators of the Alexandrian school, the first European
translator of any part of Euclid is Boetius (500), author of the
De consolatione philosophiae. His Euclidis Megarensis geometriae
libri duo contain nearly all the definitions of the first three books
of the Elements, the postulates, and most of the axioms. The
enunciations, with diagrams but no proofs, are given of most of
the propositions in the first, second and fourth books, and a few
from the third. Some centuries afterwards, Euclid was translated
into Arabic, but the only printed version in that language is the
one made of the thirteen books of the Elements by Nasir Al-Din Al-
TusI (ijth century), which appeared at Rome in 1594.
The first printed edition of Euclid was a translation of the fifteen
books of the Elements from the Arabic, made, it is supposed, by
Adelard of Bath (izth century), with the comments of Campanus
of Novara. It appeared at Venice in 1482, printed by Erhardus
Ratdolt, and dedicated to the doge Giovanni Mocenigo. This
edition represents Euclid very inadequately; the comments are
often foolish, propositions are sometimes omitted, sometimes joined
together, useless cases are interpolated, and now and then Euclid's
order changed.
The first printed translation from the Greek is that of Bartholo-
mew Zamberti, which appeared at Venice in 1505. Its contents
will be seen from the title: Euclidis megaresis philosophi platonici
MathematicaruQ disciplinary. Janitoris: Habent in hoc yolumine
quicuqQ ad mathematics, substantia aspirdt: elemetorum libros xiii
cu expositione Theonis insignis mathematici . . . Quibus . . . ad-
juncta. Deputatum scilicet Euclidi volume xiiii cu expositide Hypsi.
Alex. ItideqQ Phaeno. Specu. Perspe. cum expositione Theonis ac
mirandus ille liber Datorum cum expositide Pappi Mechanici una
cu Marini dialectici protheoria. Bar. Zaber. Vene. Interfile.
The first printed Greek text was published at Basel, in 1533, with
the title EiKXei6ou 1,roL\tlmv t3i[3\. ie in T&V G&OPOS tTvvovffiojv. It
was edited by Simon Grynaeus from two MSS. sent to him, the
one from Venice by Lazarus Bayfius, and the other from Paris by
John Ruellius. The four books of Proclus's commentary are given
at the end from an Oxford MS. supplied by John Claymundus.
The English edition, the only one which contains all the extant
works attributed to Euclid, is that of Dr David Gregory, published
at Oxford in 1703, with the title, EvuKtiSov ra trafopeva. Euclidis
quae supersunt omnia. The text is that of the Basel edition, corrected
from the MSS. bequeathed by Sir Henry Savile, and from Savile's
annotations on his own copy. The Latin translation, which accom-
panies the Greek on the same page, is for the most part that of
Commandino. The French edition has the title, Les (Euvres
d'Euclide, traduites en Latin et en Franqais, d'apres un manuscrit
tres-ancien qui etait reste inconnu jusqu'a nos jours. Par F. Peyrard,
Traducteur des ceuvres d'Archimede. It was published at Paris in
three volumes, the first of which appeared in 1814, the second in
1816 and the third in 1818. It contains the Elements and the Data,
which are, says the editor, certainly the only works which remain
to us of this ever-celebrated geometer. The texts of the Basel and
Oxford editions were collated with 23 MSS., one of which belonged
to the library of the Vatican, but had been sent to Paris by the
comte de Peluse (Monge). The Vatican MS. was supposed to date
from the 9th century ; and to its readings Peyrard gave the greatest
weight. What may be called the German edition has the title
EvK\fiSov Sroixf'a. Euclidis Elementa ex oplimis libris in usum
Tironum Graece edita ab Ernesto Ferdinando August. It was pub-
lished at Berlin in two parts, the first of which appeared in 1826
and the second in 1829. The above mentioned texts were collated
with three other MSS. Modern standard editions are by Dr Heiberg
of Copenhagen, Euclidis Elementa, edidit et Latine interpretatus est
J. L. Heiberg. vols. i.-v. (Lipsiae, 1883-1888), and by T. L. Heath,
The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, vols. i.-iii. (Cambridge, 1908).
Of translations of the Elements into modern languages the number
is very large. The first English translation, published at London in
1570, has the title, The Elements of Ceometrie of the most auncient
Philosopher Euclide of Megara. Faithfully (now first) translated into
the Englishe toung, by H. Billingsley, Citizen of London. Whereunto
are annexed certaine Scholies, Annotations and Inventions, of the
best Mathematiciens, both of time past and in this our age. The first
French translation of the whole of the Elements has the title, Les
Quinze Limes des Elements d'Euclide. Traduicts de Latin en Francois.
Par D. Henrion, Mathematicien. The first edition of it was pub-
lished at Paris in 1615, and a second, corrected and augmented, in
1623. Pierre Forcadel de Bezies had published at Pans in 1564 a
translation of the first six books of the Elements, and in 1565 of the
seventh, eighth and ninth books. An Italian translation, with the
title, Euclide Megarense acutissimo philosopho solo introduttore delle
Scientie Mathematice. Diligentemen'e rassettato, et alia integrita
ridotlo, per il degno professore di tal Scientie Nicolb Tartalea Brisciano,
was published at Venice in 1569, and Federico Commandino's
translation appeared at Urbino in 1575; a Spanish version, Los
Seis Libros primeros de la geometria de Euclides. Traduzidos en
legua Espanola par Rodrigo Camorano, Astrologo y Mathematico,
at Seville in 1576; and a Turkish one, translated from the edition
of J. Bonnycastle by Husain Rjfki, at Bulak in 1825. Dr Robert
Simson's editions of the first six and the eleventh and twelfth books
of the Elements, and of the Data.
AUTHORITIES. The authors and editions above referred to;
Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, vol. iv. ; Murhard's Litteratur der
mathematischen Wissenschaflen; Heilbronner's Historia matheseos
universae; Ds Morgan's article " Eucleides " in Smith's Dictionary
of Biography and Mythology; Moritz Cantor's Geschichte der Mathe-
matik, vol. i. (J. S. M.)
EUCRATIDES, king of Bactria (c. 175-129 B.C.), came to the
throne by a rebellion against the dynasty of Euthydemus,
whose son Demetrius had conquered western India. His
authority was challenged by a great many other pretenders
and Greek dynasts in Sogdiana, Aria (Herat), Drangiana
(Sijistan), &c., whose names Pantaleon, Agathocles, Anti-
machus, Antalcidas "the victorious" (myopes) , Plato,
whose unique coin is dated from the year 147 of the Seleucid
era (=166 B.C.), and others are known only from coins with
Greek and Indian legends. In the west the Parthian king
Mithradates I. began to enlarge his kingdom and attacked
Eucratides; he succeeded in conquering two provinces between
Bactria and Parthia, called by Strabo " the country of Aspiones
and Turiua," two Iranian names. But the principal opponent
of Eucratides was Demetrius (q.v.) of India, who attacked him
with a large army "of 300,000 men"; Eucratides fled with
300 men into a fortress and was besieged. But at last he beat
EUDAEMONISM EUDOCIA MACREMBOLITISSA
881
Demetrius, and conquered a great part of western India. Accord-
ing to ApolKxlorus of Artemita, the historian of the 1'arthians,
he ruled over 1000 towns (Strabozv.686; transferred toDiodotus
of Bactria in Justin 41, 4. 6); and the extent of his kingdom
over Bactria, Sogdiana (Bokhara), Drangiana (Sijistan), Kabul
and the western Punjab is confirmed by numerous coins. On
these coins, which bear Greek and Indian legends (in Kharoshti
writing, cf. BACTRIA), he is called " the great King Eucratides."
On one his portrait and name are associated on the reverse with
those of Heliocles and Laodice; Heliocles was probably his son,
and the coin may have been struck to celebrate his marriage
with Laodice, who seems to have been a Seleucid princess. In
Bactria Eucratides founded a Greek city, Eucratidcia (Strabo
li. 516, Ptolem. vi. ii. 8). On his return from India Eucratides
was (about 150 B.C.) murdered by his son, whom he had made
co-regent (Justin-4i, 6). This son is probably the Heliocles just
mentioned, who on his coins calls himself " the Just " (fla.ai\i<jx
'HAuwXtoi-s iucolov). In his time the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom
lost the countries north of the Hindu Kush. Mongolian tribes,
the Yue-chi of the Chinese, called by the Greeks Scythians, by
the Indians Saka, among which the Tochari arc the most con-
spicuous, invaded Sogdiana in 159 B.C. and conquered Bactria
in 139. Meanwhile the Parthian kings Mithradates I. and
Phraates II. conquered the provinces in the west of the Hindu
Kush (Justin 41, 6. 8) ; for a short time Mithradates I. extended
his dominion to the borders of India (Diod. 33. 18, Orosius v.
4. 16). When Antiochus VII. Sidetes tried once more to restore
the Seleucid dominion in 130, Phraates allied himself with the
Scythians (Justin 42, i. i); but after his decisive victory in 129
he was attacked by them and fell in the battle. The changed
state of affairs is shown by the numerous coins of Heliocles;
while his predecessors maintained the Attic standard, which
had been dominant throughout the Greek east, he on his later
coins passes over to a native silver standard, and his bronze
coins became quite barbarous. Besides his coins we possess
coins of many other Greek kings of these times, most of whom
take the epithet of "invincible" (ivUijros) and "saviour"
aurlfp). They are records of a desperate struggle of the Greeks
to maintain their nationality and independence in the Far East;
one usurper after the other rose to fight for the rescue of the
kingdom. But these internal wars only accelerated the destruc-
tion; about 120 B.C. almost the whole of eastern Iran was in
the bands either of a Parthian dynasty or of the Mongol invaders,
who are now called I ndo- Scythians. Only in the Kabul valley
and western India the Greeks maintained themselves about two
generations longer (see MENANDER). (Eo. M.)
EUDAEMONISM (from Or. euScujiofia, literally the state of
being under the protection of a benign spirit, a " good genius "),
in ethics, the name applied to theories of morality which find
the chief good of man in some form of happiness. The term
Eudaemonia has been taken in a large number of senses, with
consequent variations in the meaning of Eudaemonism. To
Plato the " happiness " of all the members of a state, each accord-
ing to his own capacity, was the final end of political development.
Aristotle, as usual, adopted " eudaemonia " as the term which in
popular language most nearly represented his idea and made
it the keyword of his ethical doctrine. None the less he greatly
expanded the content of the word, until the popular idea was
practically lost : if a man is to be called tvbai^v, he must have
all his powers performing their functions freely in accordance
with virtue, as well as a reasonable degree of material well-being;
the highest conceivable good of man is the life of contemplation.
Aristotle further held that the good man in achieving virtue
must experience pleasure (^fioi-ij), which is, therefore, not the
same as, but the sequel to or concomitant of eudaemonia. Sub-
sequent thinkers have to a greater or less degree identified the
two ideas, and much confusion has resulted. Among the ancients
the Epicureans expressed all eudaemonia in terms of pleasure.
On the other hand at tempts have been made to separate hedonism ,
as the search for a continuous series of physical pleasures, from
eudaemonism, a condition of enduring mental satisfaction. Such
a distinction involves the assumptions that bodily pleasures
are generically different from mental ones, and that there is in
practice a clearly marked dividing line, both of which hypo-
theses are frequently denied. Among modern writers, James Seth
(Ethical Princ., 1894) resumes Aristotle's position, and places
Eudaemonism as the mean between the Ethics of Sensibility
(hedonism) and the Ethics of Rationality, each of which over-
looks the complex character of human life. The fundametal
difficulty which confronts those who would distinguish between
pleasure and eudaemonia is that all pleasure is ultimately a
mental phenomenon, whether it be roused by food, music, doing
a moral action or committing a theft. There is a marked dis-
position on the part of critics of hedonism to confuse " pleasure "
with animal pleasure or " passion," in other words, with a
pleasure phenomenon in which the predominant feature is entire
lack of self-control, whereas the word "pleasure" has strictly
no such connotation. Pleasure is strictly nothing more than
the state of being pleased, and hedonism the theory that man's
chief good consists in acting in such a way as to bring about a
continuous succession of such states. That they are in some
cases produced by physical or sensory stimuli does not constitute
them irrational, and it is purely arbitrary to confine the word
pleasure to those cases in which such stimuli are the proximate
causes. The value of the term Eudaemonism as an antithesis
to Hedonism is thus very questionable.
EUDOCIA AUGUSTA (c. 4oi-c. 460), the wife of Theodosius
II., East Roman emperor, was born in Athens, the daughter
of the sophist Lcontius, from whom she received a thorough
training in literature and rhetoric. Deprived of her small
patrimony by her brothers' rapacity, she betook herself to
Constantinople to obtain redress at court. Her accomplishments
attracted Theodosius' sister Pulcheria, who took her into her
retinue and destined her to be the emperor's wife. After receiving
baptism and discarding her former name, Atlu-nai's, for that of
Aelia Licinia Eudocia, she was married to Theodosius in 421;
two years later, after the birth of a daughter, she received the
title Augusta. The new empress repaid her brothers by making
them consuls and prefects, and used her large influence at court
to protect pagans and 1 Jews. In 438-439 she made an ostenta-
tious pilgrimage to Jerusalem, whence she brought back several
precious relics; during her stay at Antioch she harangued the
senate in Hellenic style and distributed funds for the repair of
its buildings. On her return her position was undermined by
the jealousy of Pulcheria and the groundless suspicion of an
intrigue with her prot6g6 Paulinus, the master of the offices.
After the latter's execution (440) she retired to Jerusalem,
where she was made responsible for the murder of an officer sent
to kill two of her followers and stripped of her revenues. Never-
theless she retained great influence; although involved in the
revolt of the Syrian monophysites (453), she was ultimately
reconciled to Pulcheria and readmitted into the orthodox church.
She died at Jerusalem about 460, after devoting her last years to
literature. Among her works were a paraphrase of the Octateuch
in hexameters, a paraphrase of the books of Daniel andZechariah,
a poem on St Cyprian and on her husband's Persian victories.
A Passion History compiled out of Homeric verses, which Zonaras
attributed to Eudocia, is perhaps of different authorship.
See W. Wiegand, Eudokia (Worms, 1871); F. Grceorovius,
Athenais (Leipzig, 1892); C. Dichl, Figures byzanlines (Paris, 1906),
pp. 25-49; also THEODOSIUS. On her works cf. A. Ludwich,
Eudociac Augustae carminum reliquiae (KOnigsberg, 1893).
EUDOCIA MACREMBOLITISSA (c. 1021-1096), daughter of
John Macrembolites, was the wife of the Byzantine emperor
Constantine X., and after his death (1067) of Romanus IV.
She had sworn to her first husband on his deathbed not to marry
again, and had even imprisoned and exiled Romanus, who was
suspected of aspiring to the throne. Perceiving, however, that
she was not able unaided to avert the invasions which threatened
the eastern frontier of the empire, she revoked her oath, marrii-il
Romanus, and with his assistance dispelled the impending
danger. She did not live very happily with her new husband,
who was warlike and self-willed, and when he was taken prisoner
by the Turks (1071) she was compelled to vacate the throne in
882
EUDOXIA LOPUKHINA EUGENE OF SAVOY
favour of her son Michael and retire to a convent, where she died.
The dictionary of mythology entitled 'latvia (" Collection of
Violets "), which formerly used to be ascribed to her, was not
composed till 1543 (Constantine Palaeokappa).
See J. Flach, Die Kaiserin Eudokia Makrembolitissa (Tubingen,
1876) ; P. Pulch, De Eitdociae quod fertur Violario (Strassburg,
1880); and in Hermes, xvii. (1882), p. 177 ff.
EUDOXIA LOPUKHINA (1669-1731), tsaritsa, first consort
of Peter the Great, was the daughter of the boyarin Theodore
Lopukhin. Peter, then a youth of seventeen, married her on the
27th of January 1689 at the command of his mother, who hoped
to wean him from the wicked ways of the German suburb of
Moscow by wedding him betimes to a lady who was as pious
as she was beautiful. The marriage was in every way un-
fortunate. Accustomed from her infancy to the monastic
seclusion of the terem, or women's quarter, Eudoxia's mental
horizon did not extend much beyond her embroidery-frame or
her illuminated service-book. From the first her society bored
Peter unspeakably, and after the birth of their second, short-
lived son Alexander, he practically deserted her. In 1698 she
was unceremoniously sent off to the Pokrovsky monastery at
Suzdal for refusing to consent to a divorce, though it was not
till June 1699 that she disappeared from the world beneath the
hood of sister Elena. In the monastery, however, she was held
in high honour by the archimandrite; the nuns persisted in
regarding her as the lawful empress; and she was permitted an
extraordinary degree of latitude, unknown to Peter, who dragged
her from her enforced retreat in 1718 on a charge of adultery.
As the evidence was collected by Peter's creatures, it is very
doubtful whether Eudoxia was guilty, though she was compelled
to make a public confession. She was then divorced and con-
signed to the remote monastery of Ladoga. Here she remained
for ten years till the accession of her grandson, Peter II.,
when the reactionaries proposed to appoint her regent. She was
escorted with great ceremony to Moscow in 1728 and ex-
hibited to the people attired in the splendid, old-fashioned robes
of a tsaritsa; but years of rigid seclusion had dulled her wits,
and her best friends soon convinced themselves that a convent
was a much more suitable place for her than a throne. An
allowance of 60,000 roubles a year was accordingly assigned to
her, and she disappeared again in a monastery at Moscow, where
she died in 1731.
See Robert Nisbet Bain, Pupils of Peter the Great (London, 1895),
chaps, ii.'and iv.; and The First Romanovs (London, 1905), chaps,
viii. and xii. (R. N. B.)
EUDOXUS, of Cnidus, Greek savant, nourished about the
middle of the 4th century B.C. It is chiefly as an astronomer
that his name has come down to us (see ASTRONOMY and ZODIAC).
From a life by Diogenes Laertius, we learn that he studied at
Athens under Plato, but, being dismissed, passed over into Egypt,
where he remained for sixteen months with the priests of Helio-
polis. He then taught physics in Cyzicus and the Propontis,
and subsequently, accompanied by a number of pupils, went to
Athens. Towards the end of his life he returned to his native
place, where he died. Strabo states that he discovered that the
solar year is longer than 365 days by 6 hours; Vitruvius that he
invented a sun-dial. The Phaenomena of Aratus is a poetical
account of the astronomical observations of Eudoxus. Several
works have been attributed to him, but they are all lost; some
fragments are preserved in the extant Twv 'Aparov KCU Eu66ou
<t>cuvofitvii}v iZrwytrfuv /3i/3Xia rpla of the astronomer Hipparchus
(ed. C. Manitius, 1894). According to Aristotle (Ethics x. 2),
Eudoxus held that pleasure was the chief good, because (i) all
beings sought it and endeavoured to escape its contrary, pain;
(2) it is an end in itself , not a relative good. Aristotle, who speaks
highly of the sincerity of Eudoxus's convictions, while giving a
qualified approval to his arguments, considers him wrong in not
distinguishing the different kinds of pleasure and in making
pleasure the summum bonum.
See J. A. Letronne, Sur les ecrites et les travaux d'Eudoxe de Cnide,
d'apres L. Ideler (1841); G. V. Schiaparelli, Le Sfere omocentriche
di Eudosso (Milan, 1876) ; T. H. Martin in Academic des inscriptions,
3rd of October, 1879; article in Ersch and Gruber's Allgemeine
Encyklopddie.
EUOOXUS, of Cyzicus, Greek navigator, flourished about
130 B.C. He was employed by Ptolemy Euergetes, who sent out
a fleet under him to explore the Arabian Sea. After two suc-
cessful voyages, Eudoxus left the Egyptian service, and proceeded
to Cadiz with the object of fitting out an expedition for the
purpose of African discovery; and we learn from Strabo, who
utilized the results of his observations, that the veteran explorer
made at least two voyages southward along the coast of Africa.
There is a good account of Eudoxus in E. H. Bunbury, History
of Ancient Geography, ii. (1879); see also P. Gaffarel, Eudoxe de
Cyzique (1873).
EUGENE OF SAVOY [FRANCOIS EUGENE], PRINCE (1663-
1736), fifth son of Prince Eugene Maurice of Savoy-Carignano,
count of Soissons, and of Olympia Mancini, niece of Cardinal
Mazarin, was born at Paris on the i8th of October 1663 . Origin-
ally destined for the church, Eugene was known at court as the
petit abbe, but his own predilection was strongly for the army.
His mother, however, had fallen into disgrace at court, and his
application for a commission, repeated more than once, was
refused by Louis XIV. This, and the influence of his mother,
produced in him a lifelong resentment against the king. Having
quitted France in disgust, he proceeded to Vienna, where his
relative the emperor Leopold I. received him kindly, and he
served with the Austrian army during the campaign of 1683
against the Turks. He displayed his bravery in a cavalry fight
at Petronell (7th July) and in the great battle for the relief of
Vienna. The emperor now gave him the command of a regiment
of dragoons. At the capture of Buda in 1686 he received a
wound (3rd August), but he continued to serve up to the siege
of Belgrade in 1688, in which he was dangerously wounded.
At the instigation of Louvois, a decree of banishment from France
was now issued against all Frenchmen wfco should continue
to serve in foreign armies. " The king will see me again," was
Eugene's reply when the news was communicated to him; he
continued his career in foreign service.
Prince Eugene's next employment was in a service that
required diplomatic as well as military skill (1689). He was
sent by the emperor Leopold to Italy with the view of binding
the duke of Savoy to the coalition against France and of co-
operating with the Italian and Spanish troops. Later in 1689
he served on the Rhine and was again wounded. He returned
to Italy in time to take part in the battle of Staffarda, which
resulted in the defeat of the coalition at the hands of the French
marshal Catinat; but in the spring of 1691 Prince Eugene,
having secured reinforcements, caused the siege of Coni to be
raised, took possession of Carmagnola, and in the end completely
defeated Catinat. He followed up his success by entering
Dauphine, where he took possession of Embrun and Gap. After
another campaign, which was uneventful, the further prosecution
of the war was abandoned owing to the defection of the duke of
Savoy from the coalition, and Prince Eugene returned to Vienna,
where he soon afterwards received the command of the army in
Hungary, on the recommendation of the veteran count Riidiger
von Starhemberg, the defender of Vienna in 1683. It was about
this time that Louis XIV. secretly offered him the baton of
a marshal of France, with the government of Champagne which
his father had held, and also a pension. But Eugene rejected
these offers with indignation, and proceeded to operate against
the Turks commanded by Kara Mustapha. After some skilful
manoeuvres, he surprised the enemy (September nth, 1697) at
Zenta, on the Theiss. His attack was vigorous and daring,
and the victory was one of the most complete and important
ever won by the Austrian arms. Formerly it was often stated
that the battle of Zenta was fought against express orders from
the court, that Eugene was placed under arrest for violating these
orders, and that a proposal to bring him before a council of war
was frustrated only by the threatening attitude of the citizens
of Vienna. This story, minute in details as it is, is entirely
without foundation. After a further period of manoeuvres, peace
was at length concluded at Karlowitz on the 26th of January
1699.
Two years later he was again in active service in the War of
EUGENE OF SAVOY
883
the Spanish Succession (g.r.). At the beginning of the year
1701 he was sent into Italy once more to oppose his old
antagonist Catinat. He achieved a rapid success, crossing the
mountains from Tirol into Italy in spite of almost insurmountable
difficulties (Journal d. militaneisstmck. Verein, No. 5, 1007),
forcing the French army, after sustaining several checks, to
retire behind the Oglio, where a series of reverses equally
unexpected and severe led to the recall of Catinat in disgrace.
The incapable duke of Villeroi, who succeeded to the command
of which Catinat had been deprived, ventured to attack Eugene
at Chiari, and was repulsed with great loss. And this was only
the forerunner of more signal reverses; for, in a short time,
Villeroi wasforced to abandon the whole of the Mantuan territory
and to take refuge in Cremona, where he seems to have considered
himself secure. By means of a stratagem, however, Eugene
penetrated into the city during the night, at the head of 2000
men, and, though he found it impossible to hold the town, suc-
ceeded in carrying off Villeroi as a prisoner. But as the duke of
VendAme, a much abler general, replaced the captive, the
incursion, daring though it was, proved anything but advan-
tageous to the Austrians. The generalship of his new opponent,
and the fact that the French army had been largely reinforced,
while reinforcements had not been sent from Vienna, forced
Prince Eugene to confine himself to a war of observation.
The campaign was terminated by the sanguinary battle of
Luzzara, fought on the ist of August 1702, in which each party
claimed the victory. Both armies having gone into winter
quarters, Eugene returned to Vienna, where he was appointed
president of the council of war. He then set out for Hungary
in order to combat the insurgents in that country; but his
means proving insufficient, he effected nothing of importance.
The collapse of the revolt, however, soon freed the prince for the
more important campaign in Bavaria, where, in 1704, he made
his first campaign along with Marlborough. Similarity of tastes,
views and talents soon established between these two great
men a friendship which is rarely to be found amongst military
chiefs, and contributed in the fullest measure to the success
which the allies obtained. The first and perhaps the most im-
portant of these successes was that of Hochstadt or Blenheim
(?.v.) on the 3rd of August 1704, where the English and imperial
troops triumphed over one of the finest armies that France had
ever sent into Germany.
But since Prince Eugene had quitted Italy, Vendome, who
commanded the French army in that country, bad obtained
various successes against the duke of Savoy, who had once more
joined Austria. The emperor deemed the crisis so serious that
he recalled Eugene and sent him to Italy to the assistance of his
ally. Venddme at first opposed great obstacles to the plan which
the prince had formed for carrying succours into Piedmont;
but after a variety of marches and counter-marches, in which
both commanders displayed signal ability, the two armies met
at Cassano (August 16, 1705), where a deadly engagement
ensued, and Prince Eugene received two severe wounds which
forced him to quit the field. This accident decided the fate of
the battle and for the time suspended the prince's march towards
Piedmont. Venddme. however, was recalled, and La Feuillade
(who succeeded him) was incapable of long arresting the progress
of such a commander as Eugene. After once more passing
several rivers in presence of the French army, and executing
one of the most skilful and daring marches he had ever performed,
the latter appeared before the entrenched camp at Turin, which
place the French were now besieging with an army eighty
thousand strong. Prince Eugene had only thirty thousand men;
but his antagonist the duke of Orleans, though full of zeal and
courage, wanted experience, and Marshal Marsin, his adlatus,
held powers from Louis XIV. which could not fail to produce
dissensions in the French headquarters. With equal courage
and address, Eugene profited by the misunderstandings between
the French generals; and on the 7th of September 1706 he
attacked the French army in its entrenchments and gained a
victory which decided the fate of Italy. In the heat of the battle
Eugene received a wound, and was thrown from his horse.
His recompense for this important service was the government
of the Milanese, of which he took possession with great pomp on
the i6th of April 1707. He was also made lieutenant-general
to the emperor Joseph I.
The attempt which he made against Toulon in the course
of the same year failed completely, because the invasion of the
kingdom of Naples retarded the march of the troops which were
to have been employed in it, and this delay afforded Marshal
de Tessfe time to make good dispositions. Obliged to renounce
his project, therefore, the prince went to Vienna, where he was
received with great enthusiasm both by the people and by the
court. " I am very well satisfied with you," said the emperor,
" excepting on one point only, which is, that you expose yourself
too much." This monarch immediately despatched Eugene to
Holland, and to the different courts of Germany, in order to
forward the necessary preparations for the campaign of the
following year, 1708 (see SPANISH SUCCESSION, WAR OF THE).
Early in the spring of 1 708 the prince proceeded to Flanders,
in order to assume the command of the German army which his
diplomatic ability had been mainly instrumental in assembling,
and to unite his forces with those of Marlborough. The campaign
was opened by the victory of Oudenarde (?..), to which the
perfect union of Marlborough and Eugene on the one hand, and
the misunderstanding between Vend6me and the duke of
Burgundy on the other, seem to have equally contributed.
The French immediately abandoned the Low Countries, and,
remaining in observation, made no attempt whatever to prevent
Eugene's army, covered by that of Marlborough, making the
siege of Lille. The French governor, Boufflers, made a glorious
defence, and Eugene paid a flattering tribute to his valour in
inviting him to prepare the articles of capitulation himself, with
the words " I subscribe to everything beforehand, well persuaded
that you will not insert anything unworthy of yourself or of me."
After this important conquest, Eugene and Marlborough pro-
ceeded to the Hague, where they were received in the most flatter-
ing manner by the public, by the states-general, and above all,
by their esteemed friend the pensionary Heinsius. Negotiations
were then opened for peace, but proved fruitless. In 1 709 France
put forth a supreme effort, and placed Marshal Villars, her best
living general, in command. The events of this year were very
different to those of previous campaigns, and the bloody battle
of Malplaquet (?..), though a victory for Marlborough and
Eugene, led to little result, and this at the cost of enormous
losses. The Dutch army, it is said, never recovered from the
slaughter of Malplaquet; indeed, the success was so dearly
bought that the allies found themselves soon afterwards out
of all condition to undertake anything. Their army accordingly
went into winter quarters, and Prince Eugene returned to
Vienna, whence the emperor almost immediately despatched
him to Berlin. From the king of Prussia the prince obtained
everything which he had been instructed to require; and
having thus fulfilled his mission, he returned into Flanders,
where, excepting the capture of Douai, Bethunc and Aire, the
campaign of 1710 presented nothing remarkable. On the death
of the emperor Joseph I. in April 1711, Prince Eugene, in concert
with the empress, exerted his utmost endeavours to secure the
crown to the archduke, who afterwards ascended the imperial
throne under the name of Charles VI. In the same year the
changes which had occurred in the policy, or rather the caprice,
of Queen Anne, brought about an approximation between
England and France, and put an end to the influence which
Marlborough had hitherto possessed. When this political
revolution became known, Prince Eugene immediately repaired
to London, charged with a mission from the emperor to re-
establish the credit of his illustrious companion in arms, as well
as to re-attach England to the coalition. The mission having
proved unsuccessful, the emperor found himself under the
necessity of making the campaign of 1712 with the aid of the
Dutch alone. The defection of the English, however, did not
induce Prince Eugene to abandon his favourite plan of invading
France. He resolved, at whatever cost, to penetrate into
Champagne; and in order to support his operations by the
EUGENE
possession of some important places, he began by making himself
master of Quesnoy. But the Dutch, having been surprised and
beaten in the lines of Denain, where Prince Eugene had placed
them at too great a distance to receive timely support in case
of an attack, he was obliged to raise the siege of Landrecies,
and to abandon the project which he had so long cherished.
This was the last campaign in which Austria acted in conjunction
with her allies. Abandoned first by England and then by
Holland, the emperor, notwithstanding these desertions, still
wished to maintain the war in Germany; but Eugene was
unable to relieve either Landau or Freiburg, which were succes-
sively obliged to capitulate; and seeing the Empire thus laid
open to the armies of France, and even the Austrian hereditary
states themselves exposed to invasion, the prince counselled
his master to make peace. Sensible of the prudence of this
advice, the emperor immediately entrusted Eugene with full
powers to negotiate a treaty of peace, which was concluded at
Rastadt on the 6th of March 1714. On his return to Vienna,
Prince Eugene was employed for a time in political matters,
and at this time he exchanged the government of the Milanese
for that of the Austrian Netherlands.
It was not long, however, before he was again called on to
assume the command of the army in the field. In the spring of
1716 the emperor, having concluded an offensive alliance with
Venice against Turkey, appointed Eugene to command the army
of Hungary; and at Peterwardein he gained (5th of August
1716) a signal victory over a Turkish army of more than twice
his own strength. In recognition of this service to Christendom
the pope sent' to the victorious general the consecrated hat and
sword which the court of Rome was accustomed to bestow upon
those who had triumphed over the infidels. Eugene won another
victory in this campaign at Temesvar. But the ensuing campaign,
that of 1717, was still more remarkable on account of the battle
of Belgrade. After having besieged the city for a month Eugene
found himself in a most critical, if not hopeless situation. He had
to deal not only with the garrison of 30,000 men, but with a
relieving army of 200,000, and his own force was only about
40,000 strong. In these circumstances the only possible deliver-
ance was by a bold and decided stroke. Accordingly on the
morning of the i6th of August 1717 Prince Eugene ordered a
general attack, which resulted in the total defeat of the enemy
with an enormous loss, and in the capitulation of the city six
days afterwards. The prince was wounded in the heat of the
action, this being the thirteenth time that he had been hit upon
the field of battle. On his return to Vienna he received, among
other testimonies of gratitude, a sword valued at 80,000 florins
from the emperor. The popular song " Prinz Eugen, der edle
Ritter," commemorates the victory of Belgrade. In thef ollowing
year, 1718, after some fruitless negotiations with a view to the
conclusion of peace, he again took the field; but the treaty of
Passarowitz (July 21, 1718) put an end to hostilities at the
moment when the prince had well-founded hopes of obtaining
still more important successes than those of the last campaign,
and even of reaching Constantinople, and dictating a peace on
the shores of the Bosporus.
As the government of the Netherlands, up to 1724 held by
Eugene, had now for some reason been bestowed on a sister of
the emperor, the prince was appointed vicar-general of Italy,
with a pension of 300,000 florins. Though still retaining his
official position and much of his influence at court, his personal
relations with the emperor were not so cordial as before, and he
suffered from the intrigues of the Spanish or anti-German party.
The most remarkable of these political intrigues was the con-
spiracy of Tedeschi and Nimptsch against the prince in 1719.
On discovering this the prince went to the emperor and threatened
to lay down all his offices if the conspirators were not punished,
and after some resistance he achieved his purpose. During the
years of peace between the treaty of Passarowitz and the War of
the Polish Succession, Eugene occupied himself with the arts
and with literature, to which he had hitherto been able to devote
little of his time. This new interest led him to correspond with
many of the most eminent men in Europe. But the contest
which arose out of the succession of Augustus II. to the throne
of Poland having afforded Austria a pretext for attacking France,
war was resolved on, contrary to the advice of Eugene (1734).
In spite of this, however, he was appointed to command the army
destined to act upon the Rhine, which from the commencement
had very superior forces opposed to it; and if it could not prevent
the capture of Philipsburg after a long siege, it at least prevented
the enemy from entering Bavaria. Prince Eugene, having now
attained his seventy-first year, no longer possessed the vigour
and activity necessary for a general in the field, and he welcomed
the peace which was concluded on the 3rd of October 1735. On
his return to Vienna his health declined more and more, and he
died in that capital on the 2ist of April 1736, leaving an immense
inheritance to his niece, the princess Victoria of Savoy.
Of a character cold and severe, Prince Eugene had almost
no other passion than that of glory. He died unmarried, and
seemed so little susceptible to female influence that he was
styled a Mars without a Venus. That he was one of the great
captains of history is universally admitted. He was strangely
unlike the commanders of his time in many respects, though as a
matter of course he was, when he saw fit to follow the accepted
rules, equal to any in careful and methodical strategy. The
special characteristics of his generalship were imagination, fiery
energy, and a tactical resolution which was rare indeed in the
1 8th century. Despising the lives of his soldiers as much as he
exposed his own, it was always by persevering efforts and great
sacrifices that he obtained victory. His almost invariable
success raised the reputation of the Austrian army to a point
which it never reached either before or since his day. War was
with him a passion. Always on the march, in camps, or on the
field of battle during more than fifty years, and under the reigns
of three emperors, he had scarcely passed two years together
without fighting. Yet his political activity was not inconsiderable,
and his advice was always sound and well-considered; while in
his government of the Netherlands, which he exercised through
the marquis de Prie, he set himself resolutely to oppose the many
wild schemes, such as Law's Mississippi project, in which the
times were so fertile. His interest in literature and art has been
alluded to above. His palace in Vienna, and the Belvedere near
that city, his library, and his collection of paintings, were re-
nowned. Prince Eugene was a man of the middle size, but,
upon the whole, well made; the cast of his visage was somewhat
long, his mouth moderate and almost always open; his eyes
were black and animated, and his complexion such as became a
warrior.
See A. v. Arneth, PrinzEugen (3 vols., Vienna, 1858 ; 2nded., 1864) ;
H. v. Sybel, Prinz Eugen von Savoyen (Munich, 1868); Austrian
official history, Feldzuge des Prinzen Eugen von Savoyen (Vienna,
1876); Malleson, Prince Eugene (London, 1888); Heller, Mili-
tarische Korrespondenz des Prinzen Eugens (Vienna, 1848); Keym,
Prinz 'Eugen (Freiburg, . 1 899) ; Osterr. militarische Zeitschrift
(" Streffleur ") ; Ridler's Osterr. Archiv fur Geschichte (1831-1833);
Archivio storico Italico, vol. 17; Mitteil. des Instituts fur osterr.
Geschichtsforschung, vol. 13.
The political memoirs attributed to Prince Eugene (ed. Sartori,
Tubingen, 1812) are spurious; see Bohm, Die Sammlung der hinter-
lassenen politischen Schriften des Prinzen Eugens (Freiburg, 1900).
EUGENE, a city and the county-seat of Lane county, Oregon,
U.S.A., on the Willamette river, at the head of navigation, about
125 m. S. of Portland. Pop. (1900) 3236, of whom 237 were
foreign-born; (1910 Federal census) 9009. Eugene is served
by the Southern Pacific railroad and by interurban electric
railway. It is situated on the edge of a broad and fertile prairie,
at the foot of a ridge of low hills and within view of the peaks of
the Coast Range; the streets are pleasantly shaded with Oregon
maples. The city is most widely known as the seat of the
University of Oregon. This institution, opened in 1876 and having
95 instructors and 734 students in 1907-1908, occupies eight
buildings on a grassy slope along the river bank, and embraces a
college of literature, science and the arts, a college of engineering,
a graduate school, and (at Portland) a school of law and a school
of medicine. In the city is the Eugene Divinity School of the
Disciples of Christ, opened in 1895. Eugene is the commercial
centre of an extensive agricultural district; does a large business
EUGENICS EUGENIUS
885
in grain, fruit, hops, cattle, wool and lumber; ami has various
manufactures, including flour, lumber, woollen goods and canned
fruit. Eugene was settled in 1854, and was first incorporated
in 1864.
EUGENICS (from the Gr. ti-ytrip. well born), the modern
name given to the science which deals with the influences which
improve the inborn qualities of a race, but more particularly
with those which develop them to the utmost advantage, and
which generally serves to disseminate knowledge and encourage
action in the direction of perpetuating a higher racial standard.
The founder of this science may be said to be Sir Francis Gallon
(f.r.), who has done much to further its study, not only by his
writings, but by the establishment of a research fellowship and
scholarship in eugenics in the university of London. The aim
of the science as laid down by Gallon is to bring as many in-
fluences as can reasonably be employed, to cause the useful
classes in the community to contribute more than their proportion
to the next generation. It can hardly be said that the science
has advanced beyond the stage of disseminating a knowledge
of the laws of heredity, so far as they are surely known, and
endeavouring to promote their further study. Useful work has
been done in the compilation of statistics of the various condi-
tions affecting the science, such as the rates with which the various
classes of society in ancient and modern nations have contributed
in civic usefulness to the population at various times, the in-
heritance of ability, the influences which affect marriage, &c.
Works by Gallon bearing on eugenics are: Hereditary Genius
(2nd ed.. 1893). Human Fatuity (1883), Natural Inheritance (1889),
Huxley Lecture of the Anlhropol. Inst. on the Possible Improvement
of the Human Breed under the existing Conditions of Law and Sentiment
(tool); see also Biomelrika (a journal for the statistical study of
biological problems, of which the first volume was published in
1902).
EUGENIE [MAJUE-EuciNIE-lGNACE-AUGUSTINE DE MONTIJO]
(1826- ), wife of Napoleon III., emperor of the French,
daughter of Don Cipriano Guzman y Porto Carrero, count of
Teba. subsequently count of Montijo and grandee of Spain,
was bom at Grenada on the $th of May 1826. Her mother was
a daughter of William Kirkpatrick, United States consul at
Malaga, a Scotsman by birth and an American by nationality.
Her childhood was spent in Madrid, but after 1834 she lived with
her mother and sister chiefly in Paris, where she was educated,
like so many French girls of good family, in the convent of the
Sacrt Occur. When Louis Napoleon became president of the
Republic she appeared frequently with her mother at the balls
given by the prince president at the Elys6c, and it was here that
she made the acquaintance of her future husband. In November
1852 mother and daughter were invited to Fontaincblcau, and
in the picturesque hunting parties the beautiful young Spaniard,
who showed herself an expert horsewoman, was greatly admired
by all present and by the host in particular. Three weeks later,
on the 2nd of December, the Empire was formally proclaimed,
and during a series of fetes at Compicgne, which lasted eleven
days doth to 3Oth December), the emperor became more and
more fascinated. On New Year's Eve, at a ball at the Tuilerics,
Mdlle de Montijo, who had necessarily excited much jealousy
and hostib'ty in the female world, had reason to complain that
she had been insulted by the wife of an official personage. On
hearing of it the emperor said to her, " Je vous vcngerai ";
and within three days he made a formal proposal of marriage.
In a speech from the throne on the 22nd of January he formally
announced his engagement, and justified what some people
considered a misalliance. " I have preferred," he said, " a
woman whom I love and respect to a woman unknown to me,
with whom an alliance would have had advantages mixed with
sacrifices." Of her whom he had chosen he ventured to make a
prediction: " Endowed with all the qualities of the soul, she
will be the ornament of the throne, and in the day of danger she
will become one of its courageous supports." The marriage was
celebrated with great pomp at Notre Dame on the 3Oth of January
1853. On the i6th of March 1856 the empress gave birth to a
son, who received the title of Prince Imperial. The emperor's
prediction regarding her was not belied by events. By her
beauty, elegance and charm of manner she contributed largely
lo the brilliancy of the ini|H'rial n'j;imr, and when the end came,
she was, as the ofliciul Enqutte made by her enemies proved,
one of the very few who showed calmness and courage in face of
the rising tide of revolution. The empress acted three times as
regent during the absence of the emperor, in i8sQ, 1863 and
1870, and she was generally consulted on important questions.
When the emperor vacillated between two lines of policy she
generally urged on him the bolder course; she deprecated
everything tending to diminish the temporal power of the
papacy, and she disapproved of the emperor's liberal policy at
the close of his reign. On the collapse of the Empire she fled to
England, and settled with the emperor and her son at Chislehurst.
After the emperor's death she removed to Farnborough, whcreshe
built a mausoleum to his memory. In 1879 her son was killed
in the Zulu War, and in the following year she visited the spot
and brought back the body to be interred beside that of his father.
At Farnborough. and in a villa she built at Cap Martin on the
Riviera, she continued to live in retirement, following closely the
course of events, but abstaining from all interference in French
politics.
EUGENIUS, the name of four popes.
EUGENIUS L, pope from 654 to 657. Elected on the banish-
ment of Martin I. by the emperor Constans II., and at the height
of the Monothelite crisis, he showed greater deference than his
predecessor to the emperor's wishes, and made no public stand
against the patriarchs of Constantinople. He, however, held no
communication with them, being closely watched in this respect
by Roman opinion.
EUGENIUS II., pope, was a native of Rome, and was chosen to
succeed Pascal I. in 824. His election did not take place without
difficulty. Eugenius was the candidate of the nobles, and the
clerical faction brought forward a competitor. But the monk
Wala, the representative of the emperor Lothair, succeeded in
arranging matters, and Eugenius was elected. Lothair, however,
came to Rome in person, and took advantage of this opportunity
to redress many abuses in the papal administration, to vest the
election of the pope in the nobles, and to confirm the statute
that no pope should be consecrated until his election had the
approval of the emperor. A council which assembled at Rome
during the reign of Eugenius passed several enactments for the
restoration of church discipline, took measures for the foundation
of schools and chapters, and decided against priests wearing a
secular dress or engaging in secular occupations. Eugenius also
adopted various provisions for the care of the poor and of widows
and orphans. He died in 827. (L. D.*)
EUGENIUS III. (Bernardo Paganelli), pope from the isth of
February 1145 to the 8th of July 1153, a native of Pisa, was
abbot of the Cistercian monastery of St Anastasius at Rome
when suddenly elected to succeed Lucius II. His friend and
instructor, Bernard of Clairvaux, the most influential ecclesiastic
of the time, remonstrated against his election on account of his
" innocence and simplicity," but Bernard soon acquiesced and
continued to be the mainstay of the papacy throughout Eu-
genius's pontificate. It was to Eugenius that Bernard addressed
his famous work De consider alionc. Immediately after his
election, the Roman senators demanded the pope's renunciation
of temporal power. He refused and fled to Farfa, where he was
consecrated on the I7th of February. By treaty of December
1145 he recognized the republic under his suzerainty, substituted
a papal prefect for the " patrician " and returned to Rome.
The celebrated schismatic, Arnold of Brescia, however, put
himself again at the head of the party opposed to the temporal
power of the papacy, re-established the patricianate, and forced
the pope to leave Rome. Eugenius had already, on hearing of
the fall of Edessa, addressed a letter to Louis VII. of France
(December 1145), announcing the Second Crusade and granting
plenary indulgence under the usual conditions to those who
would take the cross; and in January 1147 he journeyed to
France to further preparations for the holy war and to seek aid
in the constant feuds at Rome. After holding synods at Paris.
Reims and Trier, he returned to Italy in June 1 148 and took up
886
EUGENOL EUHEMERUS
his residence at Viterbo. The following month he excommuni-
cated Arnold of Brescia in a synod at Cremona, and thenceforth
devoted most of his energies to the recovery of his see. As the
result of negotiations between Frederick Barbarossa and the
Romans, Eugenius was finally enabled to return to Rome in
December 1152, but died in the following July. He was suc-
ceeded by Anastasius IV. Eugenius retained the stoic virtues
of monasticism throughout his stormy career, and was deeply
reverenced for his personal character. His tomb in St Peter's
acquired fame for miraculous cures, and he was pronounced
blessed by Pius IX. in 1872.
The chief sources for the career of Eugenius III. are his letters
in J. P. Migne, Patrol. Lai., vols. 106, 180, 182, and in .Bibliotheque
de I'Ecole des Charles, vol. 57 (Paris, 1896) ; the life by Cardinal
Boso in J. M. Watterich, Ponlif. Roman, vitae, vol. 2; and the life
by John of Salisbury in Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores,
vol. 20.
See J. Langen, Geschichte der romischen Kirche von Gregor VII.
bis Innocenz III. (Bonn, 1893) ; F. Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle
Ages, vol. 4, trans, by Mrs G. W. Hamilton (London, 1900-1902) ;
K. J. von Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, Bd. 5, 2nd ed.; jaffe-Watten-
bach, Regesta pontif. Roman. (1885-1888); M. Jocham, Geschichte
des Lebens u. der Verehrung des seligen Papstes Eugen III. (Augsburg,
1873); G. Sainaci, Vita del beato Eugenia III (Pisa, 1868); J.
Jastrow and G. Winter, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Hohen-
staufen, i. (Stuttgart, 1897) ; C. Neumann, Bernhard von Clairvaux
u. die Anfange der zweiten Kreuzzuges (Heidelberg, 1882); B.
Kugler, Analekten zur Geschichte des zweiten Kreuzzugs (Tubingen,
1878, 1883). (C. H. HA.)
EUGENIUS IV. (Gabriel Condulmieri) , pope from the 3rd of
March 1431 to the 23rd of February 1447, was born at Venice
of a merchant family in 1383. He entered the Celestine order
and came into prominence during the pontificate of his uncle,
Gregory XII., by whom he was appointed bishop of Siena, papal
treasurer, protonotary, cardinal-priest of St Marco e St Clemente,
and later cardinal-priest of Sta Maria in Trastevere. His violent
measures, as pope, against the relations of his predecessor,
Martin V., at once involved him in a serious contest with the
powerful house of Colonna. But by far the most important feature
of Eugenius's pontificate was the great struggle between pope and
council. On the 23rd of July 1431 his legate opened the council
of Basel which had been convoked by Martin, but, distrustful
of its purposes and moved by the small attendance, the pope
issued a bull on the i8th of December 1431, dissolving the council
and calling a new one to meet in eighteen months at Bologna.
The council refused to dissolve, renewed the revolutionary
resolutions by which the council of Constance had been declared
superior to the pope, and cited Eugenius to appear at Basel.
A compromise was arranged by Sigismund, who had been crowned
emperor at Rome on the 3ist of May 1433, by which the pope
recalled the bull of dissolution, and, reserving the rights of the
Holy See, acknowledged the council as ecumenical (isth of
December 1433). The establishment of an insurrectionary re--
public at Rome drove him into exile in May 1434, and, although
the city was restored to obedience in the following October, he
remained at Florence and Bologna. Meanwhile the struggle
with the council broke out anew. Eugenius at length convened
a rival council at Ferrara on the 8th of January 1438 and ex-
communicated the prelates assembled at Basel. The result was
that the latter formally deposed him as a heretic on the 25th of
June 1439, and in the following November elected the ambitious
Amadeus VIII., duke of Savoy, antipope under the title of
Felix V. The conduct of France and Germany seemed to
warrant this action, for Charles VII. had introduced the decrees
of the council of Basel, with slight changes, into the former
country through the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (7th of July
1438) , and the diet of Mainz had deprived the pope of most of his
rights in the latter country (26th of March 1439). At Florence,
whither the council of Ferrara had been transferred on account
of an outbreak of the plague, was effected in July 1439 a union
with the Greeks, which, as the result of political necessities,
proved but temporary. This union was followed by others of
even less stability. Eugenius signed an agreement with the
Armenians on the 22nd of November 1439, and with a part of the
Jacobites in 1443; and in 1445 he received the Nestorians and
Maronites. He did his best to stem the Turkish advance,
pledging one-fifth of the papal income to the crusade which set
out in 1443, but which met with overwhelming defeat. His
rival, Felix V., meanwhile obtained small recognition, and the
latter's ablest adviser, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, made peace
with Eugenius in 1442. The pope's recognition of the claims to
Naples of King Alphonso of Aragon withdrew the last important
support from the council of Basel, and enabled him to make a
victorious entry into Rome on the 28th of September 1443,
after an exile of nearly ten years. His protests against the
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges were ineffectual, but by means
of the Concordat of the Princes, negotiated by Piccolomini with
the electors in February 1447, the whole of Germany declared
against the antipope. Although his pontificate had been so
stormy and unhappy that he is said to have regretted on his
death-bed that he ever left his monastery, nevertheless Eugenius's
victory over the council of Basel and his efforts in behalf of
church unity contributed greatly to break down the conciliar
movement and restore the papacy to the position it had held
before the Great Schism. Eugenius was dignified in demeanour,
but inexperienced and vacillating in action and excitable in
temper. Bitter in his hatred of heresy, he yet displayed great
kindness to the poor. He laboured to reform the monastic orders,
especially the Franciscan, and was never guilty of nepotism.
Although a type of the austere monk in his private life, he was a
sincere friend of art and learning, and in 1431 re-established
finally the university at Rome. He died on the 23rd of February
1447, and was succeeded by Nicholas V.
See L. Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. I., trans, by F. I. Antrobus
(London, 1899); M. Creighton, History of the Papacy, vol. 3 (London,
1899); F. Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle Ages, vol. 7, trans, by
Mrs G. W. Hamilton (London, 1900-1902); K. J. von Hefele,
Conciliengeschichte, Bd. 7, 2nd ed. ; H. H. Milman, Latin Christianity,
vol. 8 (London, 1896) ; G. Voigt, Enea Silvio de Piccolomini, Bd. 1-3
(Berlin, 1856); Aus den Annaten-Registern der Papste Eugen IV.,
Pius II., Paul II. u. Sixtus IV., ed. by K. Hayn (Cologne, 1896).
There is an admirable article by Tschackert in Hauck's Realency-
klopddie, 3rd ed. vol. 5. (C. H. HA.)
EUGENOL (allyl guaiacol, eugenic acid) , Ci Hi 2 2 , an odoriferous
principle ; it is the chief constituent of oil of cloves, and occurs in
many other essential oils. It can be synthetically prepared by the
reduction ofconiferylalcohol,(HO)(CH 3 O)C 6 H 3 -CH:CH-CH 2 OH,
which occurs in combination with glucose in the glucoside
coniferin, Ci 6 H 22 Og. It is a colourless oil boiling at 247 C.,
and having a spicy odour. On oxidation with potassium per-
manganate it gives homovanillin, vanillin, &c.; with chromic
acid in acetic acid solution it is converted into carbon dioxide
and acetic acid, whilst nitric acid oxidizes it to oxalic acid. By
the action of alkalis it is converted into iso-eugenol, which on
oxidation yields vanillin, the odorous principle of vanilla (?..).
This transformation of allyl phenols into propenyl phenols is
very general (see Ber., 1889, 22, p. 2747; 1890, 23, p. 862).
Alkali fusion of eugenol gives protocatechuic acid. The amount
of eugenol in oil of cloves can be estimated by acetylation, in
presence of pyridine (A. Verley and Fr. Backing, Ber., 1901, 34,
P- 3359)- Chavibetol, an isomer of eugenol, occurs in the ethereal
oil obtained from Piper belle.
The structural relations are:
OH OH OH OCHj
;OH
CH5CH:CH, CH:CH.CHs CHO CH.CH:CHj
Eugenol. Iso-eujfenol Vanillin Chavibetol
EUHEMERUS [EUEMERUS, EVEMERUS], Greek mythographer,
born at Messana, in Sicily (others say at Chios, Tegea, or Messene
in Peloponnese), flourished about 300 B.C., and lived at the court
of Cassander. He is chiefly known by his Sacred History
('lepd. aiiaypCKfrrj), a philosophical romance, based upon archaic
inscriptions which he claimed to have found during his travels in
various parts of Greece. He particularly relies upon an account
of early history which he discovered on a golden pillar in a temple
on the island of Panchaea when on a voyage round the coast of
Arabia, undertaken at the request of Cassander, his friend and
patron. There is apparently no doubt that this island is
EULENSPIEGEL EULER
887
imaginary. In this work he (or the first time systematized an
old Oriental (perhaps Phoenician) method of interpreting the
popular myths, asserting that the gods who formed the chief
objects of popular worship had been originally heroes and
conquerors, who had thus earned a claim to the veneration of
their subjects. This system spread widely, and the early Chris-
tians especially appealed to it as a confirmation of their belief
that ancient mythology was merely an aggregate of fables of
human invention. Euhemcrus was a firm upholder of the
Cyrenaic philosophy, and by many ancient writers he was
regarded as an atheist. His work was translated by Ennius
into Latin, but the work itself is lost, and of the translation only
a few fragments, and these very short, have come down to us.
This rationalizing method of interpretation is known as
Euhemerism. There is no doubt that it contains an element of
truth; as among the Romans the gradual deification of ancestors
and the apotheosis of emperors were prominent features of
religious development, so among primitive peoples it is possible
to trace the evolution of family and tribal gods from great chiefs
and warriors. All theories of religion which give prominence
to ancestor worship and the cult of the dead are to a certain
extent Euhemcristic. But as the sole explanation of the origin
of the idea of gods it is not accepted by students of comparative
religion. It had, however, considerable vogue in France. In the
1 8th century the abW Banier, in his Mytfiologie et la fable ex-
pliqutes par I'kistoire, was frankly Euhemcristic; other leading
Euhemerists were Clavier, Sainte-Croix, Raoul Rochette, Em.
Hoffmann and to a great extent Herbert Spencer.
See Raymond de Block, Evhemere, son lime el sa doctrine (Mons,
1876); G. N. Nemcthv. Euhemrri relliguiae (Budapest, 1889);
Gams, Qnaestiones Euhemereae (Kempen, 1860); Otto Sieroka,
De Euhemero (1869); Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur
t dtr AUxandrinerseit, vol. i. (Leipzig, 1891); and works on com-
parative religion and mythology.
EULENSPIEGEL [UI.KNSPIEGEL], TILL, the name of a German
folk-hero, and the title of a popular German chapbook on the
subject, of the beginning of the 1 6th century. The oldest existing
German text of the book was printed at Strassburg in 1515
(Ein kurtfweilig lesen von Dyl Vlenspiegcl geboren vss dent land zu
Brunsfwitk), and again in 1519. This is not in the original
dialect, which was undoubtedly Low Saxon, but in High German,
the translation having been formerly ascribed but on insufficient
evidence to the Catholic satirist Thomas Murner. Its heto,
Till Eulenspiegel or L'lcnspicgel, the son of a peasant, was born
at Kneitlingen in Brunswick, at the end of the nth or at the
beginning of the i-jth century. He died, according to tradition,
at Molln near LUbeck in 1350. The jests and practical jokes
ascribed to him were collected if we may believe a statement
in one of the old prints in 1483; but in any case the edition
of 1515 was not even the oldest High German edition. Eulen-
spiegel himself is locally associated with the Low German area
extending from Magdeburg to Hanover, and from LUneburg to
the Harz Mountains. He is the wily peasant who loves to
exercise his wit and roguery on the tradespeople of the towns,
above all, on the innkeepers; but priests, noblemen, even
princes, are also among his victims. His victories are often
pointless, more often brutal; he stoops without hesitation to
scurrility and obscenity, while of the finer, sharper wit which
the humanists and the Italians introduced into the anecdote,
be has little or nothing. His jests are coarsely practical, and his
satire turns on class distinctions. In fact, this chapbook might
be described as the retaliation of the peasant on the townsman
who in the Mth and isth centuries had begun to look down
upon the country boor as a natural inferior.
In spite of its essentially Low German character, Eulenspiegel
was extremely popular in other lands, and, at an early date,
was translated into Dutch, French, English, Latin, Danish,
Swedish, Bohemian and Polish. In England, " Howleglas "
(Scottish, Holliglas) was long a familiar figure; his jests were
rapidly adapted to English conditions, and appropriated in the
collections associated with Robin Goodfellow, Scogan and others.
Ben Johnson refers to him as " Howleglass " and " Ulenspiegel "
in his Masque of the Fortunate Isles, Poetaster, Alchemist and
Sad Shepherd, and a verse by Taylor the " water poet " would
seem to imply that the " Owliglosse " was a familiar popular
type. Till Eulenspiegel's " merry pranks " have been made the
subject of a well-known orchestral symphony by Richard
Strauss. In France, it may be noted, the name has given rise
to the words espiegle and espieglerie.
The Strassburg edition of 1515 (British Museum) has been re-
printed by H. Knust in the Neuarucke deutscher Literatunurrke des
16. und 17. Ja hrh. No. 55-56 ( 1 885) ; that of 1 5 1 9 by J . M . Lapjxmberg,
Dr Thomas Murners Ulenspiegel (1854). W. Scherer (" Die Anfangc
des Prosaromans in Deutschland, ' in Quellen und Forschungen,
vol. xxi., 1877, pp. 28 II. and 78 n . i has shown that there must have
been a still rurlicr High German edition. See also C. Walter in
Niederdeutsches Jahrbuch, xix. (1894), pp. i ff. Further editions
appeared at Cologne, printed by Servais Kruffter, undated (repro-
duced in photo-lithography from the two imperfect copies in Berlin
and Vienna, 1865); Erfurt, 1532, 1533-1537 and 1538; Cologne,
1539; Strassburg, 1539; Augsburg, 1540 and 1541; Strassburg,
'543; Frankfort on the Mam, 1545; Strassburg, 1551; Cologne,
I554i &c. lohann Fischart published an adaptation m verse, Der
Eulenspiegel Reimensvxii (Strassburg, 1571), K. Simrock a modern-
ization in is<>4 (2nd ed., 1878); there is also one by K. Pannier in
Reclam's Universalbibliothek (1883). The earliest translation was
that into Dutch, printed by Hoocnstraten at Antwerp (Royal Lib.,
Copenhagen) ; it is undated, but may have appeared as early as
1512. See facsimile reprint by M. Nijhoff (the Hague, 1898). This
served as the basis for the first French version: Ulenspiegel, de sa
vie, de ses centres et mcrveillcuses adventures par luy faictes ....
nouuellement translate et corrige de Flamant en rrancoys (Paris,
1532). Reprint, edited by P. Jannet (1882). This was followed by
upwards of twenty French editions down to the beginning of the
i8th century. The latest translation is that by J. C. Delepicrre
(Bruges, 1835 and 1840). Cf. Prudentius van Duyse, Etude littfraire
jr Tiel I' Espiegle (Ghent, 1858). The first complete English trans-
lation was also made from the Dutch, and bears the title: Here
beginneth a merye Jest of a man called Howleglas, &c., printed by
Copland in three editions, probably between 1548 and 1560. Re-
print by F. Ouvry (1867). This, however, was itself merely a re-
print of a still older English edition (1518?), of which the British
Museum possesses fragments. Reprinted by F. Brie, Eulenspiegel
in England (1903). In 1720 appeared The German Rogue, or the
Life and Merry Adventures of Tiel Eulenspiegel. Made English from
the High-Dutch; and an English illustrated edition, adapted by
K. R. H. Mackenzie in 1880 (2nd ed., 1890). On Eulenspiegel in
England, see especially C. H. Herford, Studies in the Literary
Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century (1888),
pp. 242 ff., and F. Brie's work already referred to. (J. G. R.)
EULER, LEONHARD (1707-1783), Swiss mathematician,
was born at Basel on the i$th of April 1707, his father Paul
Euler, who had considerable attainments as a mathematician,
being Calvinistic pastor of the neighbouring village of Riechen.
After receiving preliminary instructions in mathematics from
his father, he was sent to the university of Basel, where geometry
soon became his favourite study. His mathematical genius
gained for him a high place in the esteem of Jean Bernoulli, who
was at that time one of the first mathematicians in Europe,
as well as of his sons Daniel and Nicolas Bernoulli. Having
taken his degree as master of arts in 1723, Euler applied himself,
at his father's desire, to the study of theology and the Oriental
languages with the view of entering the church, but, with his
father's consent, he soon returned to geometry as his principal
pursuit. At the same time, by the advice of the younger Ber-
noullis, who had removed to St Petersburg in 1725, he applied
himself to the study of physiology, to which he made a happy
application of his mathematical knowledge; and he also attended
the medical lectures at Basel. While he was engaged in physio-
logical researches, he composed a dissertation on the nature
and propagation of sound, and an answer to a prize question
concerning the masting of ships, to which the French Academy
of Sciences adjudged the second rank in the year 1727.
In 1727, on the invitation of Catherine I., Euler took up his
residence in St Petersburg, and was made an associate of the
Academy of Sciences. In 1730 he became professor of physics,
and in 1733 he succeeded Daniel Bernoulli in the chair of mathe-
matics. At the commencement of his new career he enriched
the academical collection with many memoirs, which excited
a noble emulation between him and the Bernoullis, though this
did not in any way affect their friendship. It was at this time
that he carried the integral calculus to a higher degree of perfection,
invented the calculation of sines, reduced analytical operations
888
EULER
to a greater simplicity, and threw new light on nearly all parts of
pure mathematic&. In 1 73 5 a problem proposed by the academy,
for the solution of which several eminent mathematicians had
demanded the space of some months, was solved by Euler in
three days, but the effort threw him into a fever which endangered
his life and deprived him of the use of his right eye. The
Academy of Sciences at Paris in 1738 adjudged the prize to his
memoir on the nature and properties of fire, and in 1740 his
treatise on the tides shared the prize with those of Colin Maclaurin
and Daniel Bernoulli a higher honour than if he had carried
it away from inferior rivals.
In 1741 Euler accepted the invitation of Frederick the Great
to Berlin, where he was made a member of the Academy of
Sciences and professor of mathematics. He enriched the last
volume of the Melanges or Miscellanies of Berlin with five
memoirs, and these were followed, with an astonishing rapidity,
by a great number of important researches, which are scattered
throughout the annual memoirs of the Prussian Academy. At
the same time he continued his philosophical contributions to
the Academy of St Petersburg, which granted him a pension in
1742. The respect in which he was held by the Russians was
strikingly shown in 1760, when a farm he occupied near Char-
lottenburg happened to be pillaged by the invading Russian
army. On its being ascertained that the farm belonged to
Euler, the general immediately ordered compensation to be paid,
and the empress Elizabeth sent an additional sum of four
thousand crowns.
In 1766 Euler with difficulty obtained permission from the
king of Prussia to return to St Petersburg, to which he had been
originally invited by Catherine II. Soon after his return to St
Petersburg a cataract formed in his left eye, which ultimately
deprived him almost entirely of sight. It was in these circum-
stances that he dictated to his servant, a tailor's apprentice, who
was absolutely devoid of mathematical knowledge, his Anleitung
zur Algebra (1770), a work which, though purely elementary,
displays the mathematical genius of -its author, and is still
reckoned one of the best works of its class. Another task to
which he set himself immediately after his return to St Petersburg
was the preparation of his Lettres & une princesse d'Allemagne
sur quelques sujets de physique et de philosophie (3 vols., 1768-
1772). They were written at the request of the princess of
Anhalt-Dessau, and contain an admirably clear exposition of the
principal facts of mechanics, optics, acoustics and physical
astronomy. Theory, however, is frequently unsoundly applied
in it, and it is to be observed generally that Euler's strength
lay rather in pure than in applied mathematics.
In 1755 Euler had been elected a foreign member of the
Academy of Sciences at Paris, and some time afterwards the
academical prize was adjudged to three of his memoirs Concerning
the Inequalities in the Motions of the Planets. The two prize-
questions proposed by the same academy for 1770 and 1772 were
designed to obtain a more perfect theory of the moon's motion.
Euler, assisted by his eldest son Johann Albert, was a competitor
for these prizes, and obtained both. In the second memoir
he reserved for further consideration several inequalities of the
moon's motion, which he could not determine in his first theory
on account of the complicated calculations in which the method
he then employed had engaged him. He afterwards reviewed
his whole theory with the assistance of his son and W. L. Krafft
and A. J. Lexell, and pursued his researches until he had con-
structed the new tables, which appeared in his Theoria motuum
lunae (1772). Instead of confining himself, as before, to the
fruitless integration of three differential equations of the second
degree, which are furnished by mathematical principles, he re-
duced them to the three co-ordinates which determine the place
of the moon; and he divided into classes all the inequalities of
that planet, as far as they depend either on the elongation of
the sun and moon, or upon the eccentricity, or the parallax, or
the inclination of the lunar orbit. The inherent difficulties of
this task were immensely enhanced by the fact that Euler was
virtually blind, and had to carry all the elaborate computations
it involved in his memory. A further difficulty arose from
the burning of his house and the destruction of the greater part
of his property in 1771. His manuscripts were fortunately
preserved. His own life was only saved by the courage of a
native of Basel, Peter Grimmon, who carried him out of the
burning house.
Some time after this an operation restored Euler's sight; but a
too harsh use of the recovered faculty, along with some careless-
ness on the part of the surgeons, brought about a relapse. With
the assistance of his sons, and of Krafft and Lexell, however, he
continued his labours, neither the loss of his sight nor the in-
firmities of an advanced age being sufficient to check his activity.
Having engaged to furnish the Academy of St Petersburg with
as many memoirs as would be sufficient to complete its Ada
for twenty years after his death, he in seven years transmitted
to the academy above seventy memoirs, and left above two
hundred more, which were revised and completed by another
hand.
Euler's knowledge was more general than might have been
expected in one who had pursued with such unremitting ardour
mathematics and astronomy as his favourite studies. He had
made very considerable progress in medical, botanical and
chemical science, and he was an excellent classical scholar, and
extensively read in general literature. He was much indebted
to an uncommon memory, which seemed to retain every idea
that was conveyed to it, either from reading or meditation.
He could repeat the Aeneid of Virgil from the beginning to the
end without hesitation, and indicate the first and last line of
every page of the edition which he used. Euler's constitution
was uncommonly vigorous, and his general health was always
good. He was enabled tO'teontinue his labours to the very close
of his life. His last subject of investigation was the motion of
balloons, and the last subject on which he conversed was the
newly discovered planet Herschel (Uranus) . He died of apoplexy
on the i8th of September 1783, whilst he was amusing himself
at tea with one of his grandchildren.
Euler's genius was great and his industry still greater. His
works, if printed in their completeness, would occupy from
60 to 80 quarto volumes. He was simple and upright in his
character, and had a strong religious faith. He was twice
married, his second wife being a half-sister of his first, and he
had a numerous family, several of whom attained to distinction.
His eloge was written for the French Academy by the marquis de
Condorcet, and an account of his life, with a list of his works,
was written by Von Fuss, the secretary to the Imperial Academy
of St Petersburg.
The works which Euler published separately are: Dissertatw
physica de sono (Basel, 1727, in 410); Mechanica, sive motus scientia.
analytice exposita (St Petersburg, 1736, in 2 vols. 410) ; Einleitung in
die Arithmetik (ibid., 1738, in 2 vols. 8yo), in German and Russian;
Tentamen novae theoriae musicae (ibid. 1739, in 4to); Methodus
inveniendi tineas curvas, maximi minimive proprietate gaudentes
(Lausanne, 174.4, ' n 4to); Theoria motuum planetarum et cometarum
(Berlin, 1744, in 4to) ; Beantwortung, &c., or Answers to Different
Questions respecting Comets (ibid., 1744, in 8vo) ; Neue Grundsatze,
&c., or New Principles of Artillery, translated from the English ot
Benjamin Robins, with notes and illustrations (ibid., 1745, in 8vo) ;
Opuscula varii argumenti (ibid., 17461751, in 3 vols. 4to) ; Novae
et corrector tabulae ad loca lunae computanda (ibid., 1746, in 410);
Tabulae astronomicae solis et lunae (ibid., 4to) ; Gedanken, &c., or
Thoughts on the Elements of Bodies (ibid. 410) ; Rettung der gott-
lichen Offenbarung, &c., Defence of Divine Revelation against Free-
thinkers (ibid., 1747, in 410); Introductio in analysin infinitorum
(Lausanne, 1748, in 2 vols. 4to) ; Scientia navalis, seu tractatus de
construendis ac dirigendis navibus (St Petersburg, 1749, in 2 vols. 410) ;
Theoria motus lunae (Berlin, 1753, in 410) ; Dissertatio de principle
minimae actionis, una cum examine objectionum cl. prof. Koemgii
(ibid., 1753, in 8vo) ; Institutions calculi differential, cum ejus
usu in analysi Infinitorum ac doctrina serierum (ibid., 1755, in 4to) ;
Constructio lentium objectivarum, &c. (St Petersburg, 1762, in 4to) ;
Theoria motus corporum solidorum seu rigidorum (Rostock, 1765,
in 410); Institutiones calculi integralis (St Petersburg, 1768-1770, in
3 vols. 410) ; Lettres & une Princesse d'A llemagne sur quelques sujets de
physique et de philosophie (St Petersburg, 1768-1772, in 3 vols. 8vo) ;
Anleitung zur Algebra, or Introduction to Algebra (ibid., 1770, in
8vo); Dioptrica (ibid., 1767-1771, in 3 vols. 4to) ; Theoria motuum
lunae nova methodo pertractata (ibid., 1772, in 4to) ; Novae tabulae
lunares (ibid., in 8vo) ; Theorie complete de la construction et de la
manoeuvre des vaisseaux (ibid., 1773, in 8vo); Eclaircissements sur
EUMENES EUMENIUS
889
en fattur tant dts rttnti que des marts, without a
date; Opustula aitaiyUta (St Petersburg. 1783-1785, in 2 vols. 410).
See Kiulio. Leonkard Enter (Bawl. 1884); M. Cantor. C.eschichle
4m
!, the name of two rulers of Pergamum.
i. EUMXNES I. succeeded his uncle Philetaerus in 263 B.C.
The only important event in his reign was his victory near
Sardis over Antiochus Soter, which enabled him to secure
possession of the districts round his capital. (See PERGAUUU.)
i. KUMF.NES II., son of Attalus I., was king of Pcrgamum from
1 07-139 B.C. During the greater part of his reign he was a loyal
ally of the Romans, who bestowed upon him signal marks of
favour. He materially contributed to the defeat of Antiochus of
Syria at the battle of Magnesia (190), and as a reward for his
services the Thracian Chersonese and all Antiochus's possessions
as far as the Taurus were bestowed upon him, including a pro-
tectorate of such Greek cities as had not been declared free.
In his quarrels with his neighbours the Romans intervened on his
behalf, and on the occasion of his visit to Rome to complain of
the conduct of Perseus, king of Macedonia, he was received with
the greatest distinction. On his return journey he narrowly
escaped assassination by the emissaries of Perseus. Although he
supported the Romans >n the war against Macedonia, he dis-
played so little energy and interest (even recalling his auxiliaries)
that he was suspected of intriguing with the enemy. According
to Polybius there was some foundation for the suspicion, but
Eumenes declared that he had merely been negotiating for an
exchange of prisoners. Nothing, however, came of these negotia-
tions, whatever may have been their real object; and Eumenes,
in order to avert suspicion, sent his congratulations to Rome
by his brother Attalus after the defeat of Perseus (168). Attalus
was received courteously but coldly; and Eumenes in alarm set
out to visit Rome in person, but on his arrival at Brundusium
was ordered to leave Italy at once. Eumenes never regained
the good graces of the Romans, who showed especial favour to
Attalus on his second visit to Rome, probably with the object of
setting him against Eumenes; but the ties of kinship proved too
strong. The last years of his reign were disturbed by renewed
hostilities against Prusias of Bithynia and the Celts of Galatia,
and probably only his death prevented a war with Rome.
Eumenes, although physically weak, was a shrewd and vigorous
ruler and politician, who raised his little state from insignificance
to a powerful monarchy. During his reign Pcrgamum became
a flourishing city, where men of learning were always welcome,
among them Crates of Mallus, the founder of the Pergamene
school of criticism. Eumenes adorned the city with splendid
buildings, amongst them the great altar with the frieze repre-
senting the Battle of the Giants; but the greatest monument of
his liberality was the foundation of the library, which was second
only to that of Alexandria.
See Livy xxxix. 51, xlii. 11-16; Polybius xxi.-xxxii.; Appian,
Syriota; Livy, f.pit. 46; Cornelius Nepos, Hannibal, 10; A. G.
van Cappelle, Commentatio de regibus el antiquitatihus Pergamenis
(Amsterdam, 1841). For the altar of Zeus, see PERGAMUM; for
treaty with Cretan cities (183 B.C.) see Afonumenli anlichi, xviii. 177.
EUMENES (c. 360-316 B.C.), Macedonian general, was a native
of Cardia in the Thracian Chersonesus. At a very early age he
was employed as private secretary by Philip II. of Macedon,
and on the death of that prince, by Alexander, whom he accom-
panied into Asia. In the division of the empire on Alexander's
death, Cappadocia and Paphlagonia were assigned to Eumenes;
but as they were not yet subdued, Leonnatus and Antigonus
were charged by Perdiccas to put him in possession. Antigonus,
however, disregarded the order, and Leonnatus in vain attempted
to induce Eumenes to accompany him to Europe and share in
his far-reaching designs. Eumenes joined Pcrdiccas, who in-
stalled him in Cappadocia. When Cratcrus and Antipater,
having reduced Greece, determined to pass into Asia and over-
throw the power of Perdiccas, their first blow was aimed at
Cappadocia. Craterus and Neoptolemus, satrap of Armenia,
were completely defeated by Eumenes (321); Neoptolemus was
killed, and Craterus died of his wounds. After the murder of
Perdiccas in Egypt by his own soldiers, the Macedonian generals
condemned Eumenes to death, and charged Antipater and Anti-
gonus with the execution of their order. Eumenes, being de-
feated through the treachery of one of his officers, fled to Nora,
a strong fortress on the confines of Cappadocia and Lycaonia,
where he defended himself for more than a year. The death of
Antipater (319) produced complications. He left the regency
to his friend Polyperchon over the head of his son Cassander,
who entered into an alliance with Antigonus and Ptolemy
against Polyperchon, supported by Eumenes, who, having
escaped from Nora, was threatening Syria and Phoenicia. In
318 Antigonus marched against him, and Eumenes withdrew
cast to join the satraps of the provinces beyond the Tigris.
After two indecisive battles in Iran, Kumcnes was betrayed by
his own soldiers to Antigonus and put to death. He was an able
soldier, who did his utmost to maintain the unity of Alexander's
empire in Asia; but his efforts were frustrated by the generals
and satraps, who hated and despised the " secretary " and
" foreigner."
Sec Plutarch, Eumenes; Cornelius Nepos, Eumenes; Diod. Sic.
xyjii., xix. ; Arrian, Anabasis, vii. ; Ouintus Curtius x. 4. 10; Justin
xiii. 8 ; A. Vezin, Eumenes von Kardia. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte
der Diadochenteit (Miinster i. W., 1907). Also MACEDONIAN EMPIRE.
EUMENIDES (from Gr. tbntriis, kindly; 5, well, and
disposition), the " kindly ones," a euphemism for the Furies
or Erinyes (?..). They give their name to a famous play by
Aeschylus (?..), written in glorification of the old religion and
aristocratic government of Athens, in opposition to the new
democracy of the Periclean period.
EUMENIUS (c. A.D. 260-311), one of the Roman panegyrists,
was born at August odunum (Autun) in Gallia Lugdunensis.
He was of Greek descent; his grandfather, who had migrated
from Athens to Rome, finally settled at Autun as a teacher
of rhetoric. Eumcnius probably took his place, for it was
from Autun that he went to be magister memoriae (private
secretary) to Constantius Chlorus, whom he accompanied on
several of his campaigns. In 296 Chlorus determined to restore
the famous schools (scholae Maenianae) of Autun, which had been
greatly damaged by the inroads of the Bagaudae (peasant ban-
ditti), and appointed Eumenius to the management of them,
allowing him to retain his offices at court and doubling his salary.
Eumenius generously gave up a considerable portion of his
emoluments to the improvement of the schools. There is no
doubt that Eumenius was a heathen, not even a nominal follower
of Christianity, like Ausonius and other writers from Gaul.
Nothing is known of his later years; but he must have lived
at least till 311, if the Gratiarum Aclio to Constantine is by him.
Of the twelve discourses included in the collection of Panegyrici
Latini (ed. E. Bahrens, 1874), the following are probably by
Eumenius. (i) Pro restaurandis (or instaurandis) scholis,
delivered (297) in the forum at Autun before the governor of the
province. Its chief object is to set forth the steps necessary to
restore the schools to their former state of efficiency, and the
author lays stress upon the fact that he intends to assist the good
work out of his own pocket. (2) An address (297) to the Caesar
Constantius Chlorus, congratulating him on his victories over
Allectus and Carausius in Britain, and containing information
of some value as to the British methods of fighting. (3) A
panegyric on Constantine (310). (4) An address of thanks (311)
from the inhabitants of Autun (whose name had been changed
from Augustodunum to Flavia) to Constantine for the remission
of taxes and other benefits. (5) A festal address (307) on the
marriage of Constantine and Fausta, the daughter of Maximian.
All these speeches, with the exception of (i), were delivered at
Augusta Trevirorum (Tre'ves), whose birthday is celebrated in
(3). Eumcnius is far the best of the orators of his time, and
superior to the majority of the writers of imperial panegyrics.
He shows greater self-restraint and moderation in his language,
which is simple and pure, and on the whole is free from the gross
flattery which characterizes such productions. This fault is
most conspicuous in (3), which led Heyne (Opuscula, vi. 80) to
deny the authorship of Eumenius on the ground that it was
unworthy of him.
8 9 o
EUMOLPUS EUNUCH
There are treatises on Eumenius by B. Kilian (Wiirzburg, 1869),
S. Brandt (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1882), and H. Sachs (Halle, 1885) ;
see also Gaston Boissier, " Les Rheteurs gaulois du IV e siecle," in
Journal des savants (1884).
EUMOLPUS (" sweet singer "), in Greek mythology, son of
Poseidon and Chione, the daughter of Boreas, legendary priest,
poet and warrior. He finally settled in Thrace, where he became
king. During a war between the Eleusinians and Athenians
under Erechtheus, he went to the assistance of the former, who
on a previous occasion had shown him hospitality, but was slain
with his two sons, Phorbas and Immaradus. According to another
tradition, Erechtheus and Immaradus lost their lives; the Eleu-
sinians then submitted to Athens on condition that they alone
should celebrate the mysteries, and that Eumolpus and the
daughters of Celeus should perform the sacrifices. It is asserted
by others that Eumolpus with a colony of Thracians laid claim
to Attica as having belonged to his father Poseidon (Isocrates,
Panath, 193). The Eleusinian mysteries were generally con-
sidered to have been founded by Eumolpus, the first priest of
Demeter, but, according to some, by Eumolpus the son of
Musaeus, Eumolpus the Thracian being the father of Keryx,
the ancestor of the priestly family of the Kerykes. As priest,
Eumolpus purifies Heracles from the murder of the Centaurs;
as musician, he instructs him (as well as Linus and Orpheus) in
playing the lyre, and is the reputed inventor of vocal accompani-
ments to the flute. Suidas reckons him one of the early poets
and a writer of hymns of consecration, and Diodorus Siculus
quotes a line from a Dionysiac hymn attributed to Eumolpus.
He is also said to have been the first priest of Dionysus, and to
have introduced the cultivation of the vine and fruit trees (Pliny,
Nat. Hist. vii. 1 99) . His grave was shown at Athens and Eleusis.
His descendants, called Eumolpidae, together with the Kerykes,
were the hereditary guardians of the mysteries (q.v.).
See Apollodorus ii. 5, iii. 15; Pausanias i. 38. 2; Hyginus, Fab.
273; Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 476; Strabo yii. p. 321; Diod.
Sic. i. II; article " Eumolpidai," by J. A. Hild in Daremberg and
Saglio's Dictionnaire des antiquites.
EUNAPIUS, Greek sophist and historian, was born at Sardis,
A.D. 347. In his native city he studied under his relative the
sophist Chrysanthius, and while still a youth went to Athens,
where he became a favourite pupil of Proaeresius the rhetorician.
He possessed a considerable knowledge of medicine. In his later
years he seems to have resided at Athens, teaching rhetoric.
Initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, he was admitted into
the college of the Eumolpidae and became hierophant. There is
evidence that he was still living in the reign of the younger
Theodosius (408-450). Eunapius was the author of two works,
one entitled Lives of the Sophists (Biot 4>i\oaocjxi}v KO.I OO^UJTUV) ,
and the other consisting of a continuation of the history of
Dexippus (q.v.). The former work is still extant; of the latter
only excerpts remain, but the facts are largely incorporated in
the work of Zosimus. It embraced the history of events from
A.D. 270-404. The Lives of the Sophists, which deals chiefly
with the contemporaries of the author, is valuable as the only
source for the history of the neo-Platonism of that period.
The style of both works is bad, and they are marked by a spirit of
bitter hostility to Christianity. Photius (cod. 77) had before
him a " new edition " of the history in which the passages most
offensive to the Christians were omitted.
Edition of the Lives by J. F. Boissonade (1822), with notes by
D. Wyttenbach; history fragments in C. W. Miiller, Fragmenta
Hist. Graecorum, iv. ; V. Cousin, Fragments philosophiques (1865).
EUNOMIUS (d. c. 393), one of the leaders of the extreme or
"anomoean" Arians, who are sometimes accordingly called
Eunomians, was born at Dacora in Cappadocia early in the 4th
century. He studied theology at Alexandria under Aetius, and
afterwards came under the influence of Eudoxius of Antioch,
where he was ordained deacon. On the recommendation of
Eudoxius he was appointed bishop of Cyzicus in 360. Here
his free utterance of extreme Arian views led to popular com-
plaints, and Eudoxius was compelled, by command of the
emperor, Constantius II., to depose him from the bishopric
within a year of his elevation to it. During the reigns of Julian
and Jovian, Eunomius resided in Constantinople in close inter-
course with Aetius, consolidating an heretical party and con-
secrating schismatical bishops. He then went to live at Chal-
cedon, whence in 367 he was banished to Mauretania for harbour-
ing the rebel Procopius. He was recalled, however, before he
reached his destination. In 383 the emperor Theodosius, who
had demanded a declaration of faith from all party leaders,
punished Eunomius for continuing to teach his distinctive
doctrines, by banishing him to Halmyris in Moesia. He after-
wards resided at Chalcedon and at Caesarea in Cappadocia, from
which he was expelled by the inhabitants for writing against their
bishop Basil. His last days were spent at Dacora his birth-
place, where he died about 393. His writings were held in high
reputation by his party, and their influence was so much dreaded
by the orthodox, that more than one imperial edict was issued
for their destruction (Cod. Theod. xvi. 34). Consequently
his commentary on the epistle to the Romans, mentioned by
the historian Socrates, and his epistles, mentioned by Philo-
storgiusand Photius, are no longer extant. His first apologetical
work ('ATroXtrpjTiKos), written probably about 360 or 365, has
been entirely recovered from the celebrated refutation of it by
Basil, and may be found in J. A. Fabricius, Bill. Gr. viii.
pp. 262-305. A second apology, written before 379 (Tir^p
cbroXo7ias airokoyia) , exists only in the quotations given from
it in a refutation by Gregory of Nyssa. The exposition of faith
("EK0<ns TTJS Tnorecos), called forth by the demand of Theodosius,
is still extant, and has been edited by Valesius in his notes to
Socrates, and by Ch. H. G.. Rettberg in his Marcelliana.
The teaching of the Anomoean school, led by Aetius and
Eunomius, starting from the conception of God as 6 ayivvriros,
argued that between the a-yivnjTo^ and ytvvTiros there could
be no essential, but at best only a moral, resemblance. " As the
Unbegotten, God is an absolutely simple being; an act of
generation would involve a contradiction of His essence by
introducing duality into the Godhead." According to Socrates
(v. 24), Eunomius carried his views to a practical issue by
altering the baptismal formula. Instead of baptizing in the name
of the Trinity, he baptized in the name of the Creator and into
the death of Christ. This alteration was regarded by the
orthodox as so serious that Eunomians on returning to the church
were rebaptized, though the Arians were not. The Eunomian
heresy was formally condemned by the council of Constantinople
in 381. The sect maintained a separate existence for some time,
but gradually fell away owing to internal divisions.
See C. R. W. Klose, Geschichte und Lehre des Eumonius (Kiel,
1833); F. Loofs in Hauck-Herzog, Realencyk. fur prot. Theol.;
Whiston's Eunomianismus redivivus contains an English trans-
lation of the first apology. See also ARIUS.
EUNUCH (Gr.ewoDxs), an emasculated male. From remote
antiquity among the Orientals, as also at a later period in Greece,
eunuchs were employed to take charge of the women, or generally
as chamberlains whence the name ol rr\v tiivr/v txovres,
i.e. those who have charge of the bed-chamber. Their confi-
dential position in the harems of princes frequently enabled
them to exercise an important influence over their royal masters,
and even to raise themselves to stations of great trust and
power (see HAREM). Hence the term eunuch came to be applied
in Egypt to any court officer, whether a castratus or not. The
common idea that eunuchs are necessarily deficient in courage
and in intellectual vigour is amply refuted by history. We are
told, for example, by Herodotus that in Persia they were especi-
ally prized for their fidelity; and they were frequently promoted
to the highest offices. Narses, the famous general under Justinian,
was a eunuch, as was also Hermias, governor of Atarnea in
Mysia, to whose manes the great Aristotle offered sacrifices,
besides celebrating the praises of his patron and friend in a
poem (still extant) addressed to Virtue (see Lucian's dialogue
entitled Eunuchus). The capacity of eunuchs for public affairs
is strikingly illustrated by the histories of Persia, India and
China; and considerable power was exercised by the eunuchs
under the later Roman emperors. The hideous trade of castrating
boys to be sold as eunuchs for Moslem harems has continued
EUNUCH FLUTE EUPATRIDAE
891
to modern times, the principal district whence they are taken
being north-central Africa (Bagirtni, &c.). As the larger propor-
tion of children die after the operation (generally total removal)
owing to unskilful surgery, such as recover fetch at least three or
four times the ordinary price of slaves. Even more vile, as
being practised by a civilized European nation, was the Italian
practice of castrating boys to prevent the natural development
of the voice, in order to train them as adult soprano singers,
such as might formerly be heard in the Sistine chapel. Though
such mutilation is a crime punishable with severity, the supply
of " soprani " never failed so long as their musical powers were
in demand in high quarters. Driven long ago from the Italian
stage by public opinion, they remained the musical glory and
moral shame of the papal choir till the accession of Pope LeoXIII.,
one of whose first acts was to get rid of them. Mention must
here also be made of the class of voluntary eunuchs, who have
emasculated themselves, or caused the operation to be performed
on them, for the avoidance of sexual sin or temptation. This
unnatural development of asceticism appears in early Christian
ages, its votaries acting on the texts Matt. xix. 12, v. 28-30.
Origen's case is the most celebrated example, and by the 3rd
century there had arisen a sect of eunuchs, of whom Augustine
says (De kaeres. c. 37), " Valesii et seipsos castrant et hospites
suos, hoc modo existimantes Deo se debere scrvire " (see Neander,
History of Ckr. Church, vol. ii. p. 462; Bingham, Aiitiq. Chr.
Church, book iv. chap. 3.) Such practices have been always
opposed by the general body of the Christian churches, but have
not even now ceased. A secret sect of the kind exists in Russia,
whose practice of castration is expressed in their name of
Skopzi. (E. B. T.)
EUNUCH PLUTB, or ONION FLUTE (Fr. flUe cunuque, fliUe
4 I'onion, mirliton; Ger. Zwiebdfldte), a wind instrument in use
during the i6th and i;th centuries, producing music akin to the
comb-music of the nursery, and still manufactured as a toy
(mirliton). The onion flute consists of a wooden tube widening
out slightly to form a bell. The upper end of the tube is closed
by means of a very fine membrane similar to an onion skin
stretched across the aperture like the vellum of a drum. The
mouthpiece, a simple round hole, is pierced a couple of inches
below the membrane; into this hole the performer sings, his
voice setting up vibrations in the membrane, which thus in-
tensifies the sound and changes its timbre to a bleating quality.
A movable cap fits over the membrane to protect it. Mersenne 1
has given a drawing of the eunuch flute together with a descrip-
tion; he states that the vibrations of the membrane improve
the sound of the voice, and by reflecting it, give it an added
charm. There were concerts of these flutes in four or five parts
in France, adds Mersenne, and they had the advantage over other
kinds of reproducing more nearly the sound of the voice.
EUONYMUS, in botany, a genus of deciduous or evergreen
shrubs or small trees, widely distributed in the north temperate
zone, and represented in Britain by E. curopaeus, the spindle
tree, so called from its hard tough wood being formerly used for
spindles. It is a shrub or small tree growing in copses or hedges,
with a grey smooth bark, four-angled green twigs, opposite
leaves and loose clusters of small greenish-white flowers. The
ripe fruit is a pale crimson colour and splits into four lobes ex-
posing the bright orange-coloured seed. E. japonicus is a hardy
evergreen shrub, often variegated and well known in gardens.
The Greek name tuawnat, of good name, lucky, is probably a
euphemism; the flowering was said to foretell plague.
EUPALINUS, of Megara, a Greek architect, who constructed
for the tyrant Polycrates of Samos a remarkable tunnel to
bring water to the city, passing under a hill. 'I'his aqueduct
till exists, and is one of the most remarkable constructions in
Greece (see AQUZDCCT: Greek).
EUPATORIA (Russ. Etpatoria; also known as Kozlov and to
the Turks as Gain), a seaport of Russia, in the government of
Taurida, on the W. coast of the Crimea, 20 m. N.\V. of Simferopol,
on a sandy promontory on the north of Kalamita Bay, in 45 12'
N. and 33 40' E. Pop. (1871) 8294; (1897) 17,915. This number
1 L'Hmrmonie unirerselle (Paris, 1636). livre v. prop. iv. pp. 228-229.
includes many Jews, the Karaite sect having here their principal
synagogue. Here too resides the spiritual head (gakhan) of the
sect. Of its numerous ecclesiastical buildings three are of interest
the synagogue of tin- Karaite Jews; one of the mosques, which
has fourteen cupolas and is built (1552) after the plan of St Sophia
in Constantinople; and the Greek Catholic cathedral (1898).
The port or rather roadstead has a sandy bottom, and is exposed
to violent storms from the N.E. The trade is principally in
cereals, skins, cow-hair, felt, tallow and salt. Eupatoria has
some repute as a sea-bathing resort.
According to some authorities it was near this spot that a
military post, Eupalorium, was established in the ist century
A.D. by Dlbphantus, the general of Mithradates the Great, king
of Pontus. Towards the end of the :5th century the Turks
built the fortress of Gezleveh on the present site, and it became
the capital of a khanate. It was occupied by the Russians under
Marshal Mlinnich in 1736, and in 1771 by Prince Dolgorukov.
Its annexation to Russia took place in 1783. In 1854 the Anglo-
French troops were landed in the neighbourhood of Eupatoria,
and in February 1855 the town was occupied by the Turkish
forces.
EUPATRIDAE (Gr. <5, well; varitp, father, i.e. " Sons of
noble fathers "), the ancient nobility of Attica. Tradition
ascribes to Theseus, whom it also regards as the author of the
union (synoecism) of Attica round Athens as a political centre,
the division of the Attic population into three classes, Eupatridae,
Geomori and Demiurgi. The lexicographers mention as char-
acteristics of the Eupatridae that they are the autochthonous
population, the dwellers in the city, the descendants of the royal
stock. It is probable that after the time of the synoecism the
nobles who had hitherto governed the various independent
communities were obliged to reside in Athens, now the seat of
government; and at the beginning of Athenian history the noble
clans form a class which has the monopoly of political privilege.
It is possible that in very early times the Eupatridae were the
only full citizens of Athens; for the evidence suggests that they
alone belonged to the phratries, and the division into phratries
must have covered the whole citizen body. It is indeed just
possible that the term may originally have signified " true
member of a clan," since membership of aphratry was a char-
acteristic of each clan (yivos). It is not probable that the Eu-
pat rid families were all autochthonous, even in the loose sense of
that term. Some had no doubt immigrated to Attica when the
rest had long been settled there. Traces of this union of immi-
grants with older inhabitants have been detected in the combina-
tion of Zeus Herkeios with Apollo Patroos as the ancient gods
of the phratry.
The exact relation of the Eupatridae to the other two classes
has been a matter of dispute. It seems probable that the
Eupatridae were the governing class, the only recognized
nobility, the Geomori the country inhabitants of all ranks, and
the Demiurgi the commercial and artisan population. The
division attributed to Theseus is always spoken of by ancient
authorities as a division of the entire population; but Busolt
has recently maintained the view that the three classes represent
three elements in the Attic nobility, namely, the city nobility,
the landed nobility and the commercial nobility, and exclude
altogether the mass of the population. At any rate it seems
certain from the little we know of the early constitutional history
of Athens, that the Eupatridae represent the only nobility that
had any political recognition in early times. The political history
of the Eupatridae is that of a gradual curtailment of privilege.
They were at the height of their power in the period during the
limitation of the monarchy. They alone held the two offices,
those of polemarch and archon, which were instituted during
the 8th century B.C. to restrict the powers of the kings. In
712 B.C. the office of king (ficuriktvt) was itself thrown open to
all Eupatrids (see AHCHON). They thus had the entire control of
the administration,' and were the sole dispensers of justice in
the state. At this latter privilege, which perhaps formed the
strongest bulwark of the authority of the Eupatridae, a severe
blow was struck (c. 621 B.C.) by the publication of a criminal
892
EUPEN EUPHORBIACEAE
code by Draco (q.v.), which was followed by the more detailed
and permanent code of Solon (c. 594 B.C.), who further threw
open the highest offices to any citizen possessed of a certain
amount of landed property (see SOLON), thus putting the claims
of the Eupatridae to political influence on a level with those of
the wealthier citizens of all classes. The most highly coveted
office at this time was not that of BacnXew, which, like that of
the rex sacrorum in Rome, had been stripped of all save its
religious authority, but that of the Archon; soon after the legis-
lation of Solon repeated struggles for this office between the
Eupatridae and leading members of the other two classes
resulted in a temporary change. Ten archons 1 were appointed,
five of whom were to be Eupatridae, three Agroeci (i.e. Geomori),
and two Demiurgi (Arist. Ath. Pol. xiii. 2). This arrangement,
though short-lived, is significant of the decay of the political
influence of the Eupatridae, and it is not likely that they re-
covered, even in practice, any real control of the government.
By the middle of the 6th century the political influence of birth
was at an end.
The name Eupatridae survived in historical times, but the
Eupatridae were then excluded from the cult of the " Semnae "
at Athens, and also held the hereditary office of " expounder
of the law " (^7/7^17$) in connexion with purification from the
guilt of murder. The combination of these two characteristics
suggests some connexion with the legend of Orestes. Again,
Isocrates (xvi. 25) says of Alcibiades that his grandfather was a
Eupatrid and his grandmother an Alcmaeonid, which suggests
that in the 5th century the Eupatrids were a single clan, like the
Alcmaeonids, and that the name had acquired a new signification.
A pursuit of these two suggestions has established the probability
that this " Eupatrid " clan traced its origin to Orestes, and
derived its name from the hero, who was above all a benefactor
of his father. The word will well bear this sense in the two
passages in which Sophocles (Electra, 162, 859) applies it to
Orestes; and it is likely enough that after the disappearance
of the old Eupatridae as a political corporation, the name was
adopted in a different sense, but not without a claim to the
distinction inherent in the older sense, by one of the oldest of the
clans.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. G. Busolt, Die griechischen Stoats- und Rechts-
altertumer (Muller, Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft,
iv. l), pp. 127 et seq., 155 et seq., 248 (Munich, 1892); G. Gilbert,
Greek Constitutional Antiquities, p. 101 et seq. (Eng. trans., London,
'895); for Eupatridae in historical times, J. Topffer, Attische
Genealogie, p. 175 et seq. (Berlin, 1889). See also the articles AREO-
PAGUS, ARCHON. (A. M. CL.)
EUPEN (Fr. Neau), a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine
province, in a beautiful valley at the confluence of the Helle and
Vesdre, 9 m. S. of Aix-la-Chapelle by rail. Pop. (1905) 14,297.
It is a flourishing commercial place, and besides cloth and
buckskin mills it has net and glove manufactories, soapworks,
dyeworks, tanneries and breweries, and also carries on a con-
siderable trade in cattle and dairy produce. It has a Protestant
and four Roman Catholic churches, a Franciscan monastery, a
progymnasium, an orphanage, a hospital, and a chamber of
commerce. As part of the duchy of Limburg, Eupen was under
the government of Austria until the peace of Luneville in 1801,
when it passed to France. In 1814 it came into the possession
of Prussia.
EUPHEMISM (from Gr. tB^rjjtos, having a sound of good
omen; C, well, and (Hii* 1 !, sound or voice), a figure of speech
in which an unpleasant or coarse phrase is replaced by a softer
or less offensive expression. A euphemism has sometimes a
metaphorical sense, as in the substitution of the word " sleep "
for " death."
EUPHONIUM (Fr. baryton; Ger. Tenor Tube), a modern
brass wind instrument, known in military bands as euphonium
and in the orchestra as tuba. The euphonium consists of a brass
tube with a conical bore of wide calibre ending in a wide-mouthed
bell; it is played by means of a cup-shaped mouthpiece. The
sound is produced as in the bombardon, which is the bass of the
euphonium, by the varied tension of the lips across the mouth-
1 For a discussion of this see ARCHON.
piece, whereby the natural open notes or harmonics, consisting
of the series here shown, are obtained.
The intervening notes of the chromatic scale are obtained
by means of valves or pistons usually four in number, which
by opening a passage L
into additional lengths
of tubing lower the pitch (gpE:
one, half, one-and-a-half, ~JT~*^
two-and-a-half tones (see b "
BOMBARDON; TUBA;
VALVES). The euphonium gives out the fundamental, or
first note of the harmonic series, readily, but no harmonic
above the eighth. Euphoniums are made in C and in Bt, the
latter being more generally used. By means of all the valves
used at once, the Bt>, an octave below the fundamental, can
be reached, giving a compass of four octaves, with chromatic
intervals. The bass clef is used in notation. The euphonium
is treated by French and German composers as a transposing
instrument; in England the real notes are usually written,
except when the treble clef is used. The quality of tone is
rich and full, harmonizing well with that of the trombone.
The euphonium speaks readily in the lower register, but slowly,
of course, owing to the long dip of the pistons. Messrs Rudall
Carte have removed this difficulty by their patent short action
pistons, which have but half the dip of the old pistons. On
these instruments it is easy to execute rapid passages.
The euphonium is frequently said to be a saxhorn, correspond-
ing to the baryton member of that family, but the statement is
misleading. The bombardon and euphonium, like the saxhorns,
are the outcome of the application of valves to the bugle family,
but there is a radical difference in construction; the tubas
(bombardon and euphonium) have a conical bore of sufficiently
wide calibre to allow of the production of the fundamental
harmonic, which is absent in the saxhorns. The Germans
classify brass wind instruments as whole and half 1 according
to whether, having the wide bore of the bugle, the whole length
of the tube is available and gives the fundamental proper to an
organ pipe of the same length or whether by reason of the narrow
bore in proportion to the length, only half the length of the
instrument is of practical utility, the harmonic series beginning
with the second harmonic. (See BOMBARDON.) (K. S.)
EUPHORBIA, in botany, a large genus of plants from
which the order Euphorbiaceae takes its name. It includes more
than 600 species and is of almost world-wide distribution. It
is represented in Britain by the spurges small, generally
smooth, herbaceous plants with simple leaves and inconspicuous
flowers arranged in small cup-like heads (cyathia). The cyathium
is a characteristic feature of the genus, and consists of a number
of male flowers, each reduced to a single stamen, surrounding
a central female flower which consists only of a stalked pistil;
the group of flowers is enveloped in a cup formed by the union
of four or five bracts, the upper part of which bears thick, con-
spicuous, gland-like structures, which in exotic species are often
brilliantly coloured, giving the cyathium the appearance of a
single flower. Another characteristic is the presence of a milky
juice, or latex, in the tissues of the plant. In one section of the
genus the plants resemble cacti, having a thick succulent stem
and branches with the leaves either very small or completely
reduced to a small wart-like excrescence, with which is generally
associated a tuft of spines (a reduced shoot). These occur in the
warmer parts of the world as a type of dry country or desert
vegetation. The only species of note are E. fulgens and E.
jatquiniaeflora, for the warm greenhouse; E. Cyparissias (the
Cypress spurge), E. Wulfeni, E. Lathyris and E. Myrsinites, for
the open air.
EUPHORBIACEAE, in botany, a large natural order of
flowering plants, containing more than 220 genera with about
1 See Dr Schafhautl's article on " Musical Instruments " in sect,
iv. of Bericht der Beurtheilungs- Commission bei der Alle. deutschen
Industrie Ausstellung (Munich, 1854), pp. 169-170; also Fried. Zam-
miner, Die Musik und die Musikinstrumente in ihrer Beziehung zu
den Gesetzen der Akustik (Giessen, 1855).
EUPHORBIACEAE
893
4000 species, chiefly tropical, but spreading over the whole
earth with the exception of the arctic and cold alpine zones.
They are represented in Britain by the spurges (Euphorbia, </.v.)
(fig. i) and dog's mercury (Urrcurialis) (fig. 2), which are herba-
ceous plants, but the greater number are woody plants and often
trees. The large genus Euphorbia shows
great variety in habit; many species,
like the English spurges, are annual
herbs, others form bushes, while in the
desert regions of tropical Africa and
the Canary Islands species occur re-
FIG. i.
I. Shoot of Euphorbia hyperici- 8.
folia, about J nat. i
2. A partial inflorescence, cya-
thium. bearing the petaloid
glands.
3. A similar one at a later stage,
cut open to show the single-
stamened (monandrous)male
flowers and the central long-
stalked female flower.
4. A cyathium without petaloid
glandular appendages.
5. A similar one at a later stage
with nearly ripe fruit.
6. An anther dehiscing.
dehiscing and
9. Seed cut lengthwise expos-
ing the embryo.
IO. Diagram of the inflorescence
of Euphorbia, illustrating
the dichasial cymose ar-
rangement of the ultimate
branches.
b. Bract subtending the central
terminal cyathium I.
a'V, Bracteolcs of the first
order subtending the secon-
dary cyathia II.
0*6*. Bracteoles of the second
order subtending the ter-
tiary cyathia III.
7. Fruit dehiscing and expos-
ing one of the three feeds.
In the central cyathium I. arc shown the details of the arrange-
ment of the male flowers in monochasial cymes, m, and the central
female flower, /.
sembling cacti, having thick fleshy stems and leaves reduced
to spines. Another large genus, Phyllanthus, contains small
annual herbs as well as trees, while in some species the
leaves are reduced to scales, and the branches are flattened,
forming phylloclades. The leaves also show great variety
in form and arrangement, being simple and entire as in the
English spurges, or deeply cut as in Ricinus (castor-oil) (fig. 3),
and Manihol or sometimes palmately compound (Hetea).
The majority contain a milky juice or latex in their tissues
which exudes on cutting or bruising. In Herea, Manihot and
others the latex yields caoutchouc. The flowers arc unisexual;
male and female flowers are borne on the same, as in the spurges
(fig. i), or on different plants, as in dog's mercury (fig. 2). Their
arrangement shows considerable variation, but the flowers are
generally grouped in crowded definite partial inflorescences,
which are themselves arranged in spikes or stand in the axils
of the upper leaves. These partial inflorescences are generally
unisexual, the male often containing numerous flowers while the
i. in, ik flowers are solitary. The partial inflorescence (cyathium)
of Euphorbia (fig. i) resembles superficially a hermaphrodite
flower. It contains a central terminal flower, consisting of a
naked pistil; below this- arc borne four or five bracts which
unite to form a cup-shaped involucre resembling a calyx; each
of these bracts subtends a small cyme of male flowers each
consisting only of one stamen. Between the segments of the
cup are large oval or crescent-shaped glands which are often
brightly coloured, forming petal-like structures.
The form of the flower shows great variety. The most complete
type occurs in Wielandia, a shrub from the Seychelles Islands,
in which the flowers have their parts in fives, a calyx and corolla
being succeeded in the male flower by 5 stamens, in the female
by 5 carpels. Generally, however, only 3 carpels are present, as
in Euphorbia; Mercwialis (fig. a) has minute apctalous flowers
with 3 sepals, followed in the male by 8 to 20 stamens, in the
female by a bicarpellary pistil. In the large tropical genus Croton
a pentamerous calyx and corolla arc generally present, the
stamens are often very numerous, and the female flower has
three carpels. In Manihol, a large tropical American genus
to which belongs the manioc or cassava (M. utilissima), the
calyx is often large and petaloid. In a great many genera the
corolla is absent. The most reduced type of flower is that
5
FIG. 2. Dog's Mercury (Mercurialis perennis).
1. Male plant. 5. Fruit beginning to split open.
2. Female plant ; \ nat. size. 6. Seed cut lengthwise showing
3. Female flower. the embryo.
4. Male flower.
described in EUPHORBIA, where the male consists of one stamen
separated from its pedicel by a joint, and the female of a naked
tricarpellary pistil. The stamens are sometimes more or less
united (monadelphous), and in castor-oil (Ricinus) (fig. 3) are
much branched. The ovary generally contains three chambers,
and bears three simple or more often bipartite styles; each
chamber contains one or two pendulous ovules, which generally
8 94
EUPHORBIUM EUPHRATES
bear a cap-like outgrowth or caruncle, which persists in the seed
(well shown in castor oil, fig. 3).
As the stamens and pistil are borne by different flowers,
cross-fertilization is necessary. In Mercurialis and others with
inconspicuous flowers pollination is effected by the wind, but
in many cases insects are attracted to the flower by the highly-
coloured bracts, as in many Euphorbias and Dalechampia, or
by the coloured calyx as in Manihot; the presence of honey is
also frequently an attraction, as in the honey-glands on the
bracts of the cyathium of Euphorbia. The fruit is generally a
capsule which splits into three divisions (cocci), separating from
the central column, and splitting lengthwise into two valves.
In the mancinil (Hippomane mancinella) of Central America
the fruit is a drupe like a plum, and in some genera berries occur.
In the sandbox tree (Hura crepitans) of tropical America the
ovary consists of numerous carpels, and forms when mature a
capsule which splits with great violence and a loud report into a
number of woody cocci. The seeds contain abundant endosperm
and a large straight or bent embryo.
Several members of the order are of economic importance.
From Bcntley and Trimen's Medicinal Plants, by permission of J. & A. Churchill.
FIG. 3. Castor Q\\(Ricinus communis}. End of shoot with flower-
spike; about i nat. size.
1. Section of male flower, about 4. Seed.
nat. size. 5 and 6. Vertical and transverse
2. Group of stamens sections of seed showing
3. Fruit. embryo in position.
Manihot ulilissima, manioc or cassava (g.v.), is one of the most
important tropical food-plants, its thick tuberous root being
rich in starch; it is the source of Brazilian arrowroot. Caout-
chouc or india-rubber is obtained from species of Hevea, Mabea,
Manihot and Sapium. Castor oil (q.v.) is obtained from the
seeds of Ricinus communis. The seeds of Aleuriles moluccana
and Sapium sebiferum also yield oil. Resin is obtained from
species of Crolon and Euphorbia. Many of the species are
poisonous; e.g. the South African Toxicodendron is one of
the most poisonous plants known. Many, such as Euphorbia,
Mercurialis, Crolon, Jatropha, Tragia, have been, or still are,
used as medicines. Species of Codiaeum (q.v.), Crolon, Euphorbia,
Phyllanlhus, Jatropha and others are used as ornamental plants
in gardens.
The box (Buxus) and a few allied genera which were formerly
included in Euphorbiaceae are now generally regarded as
forming a distinct order Buxaceae, differing from Euphor-
biaceae in the position of the ovule in the ovary-chamber and in
the manner of splitting of the fruit.
EUPHORBIUM, an acrid dull-yellow or brown resin, consisting
of the concreted milky juice of several species of Euphorbia,
cactus-like perennial plants indigenous to Morocco. It dissolves
in alcohol, ether and turpentine; in water it is only slightly
soluble. It consists of two or more resins and a substance
euphorbone, C 2 oH 36 O or CisH 24 O. Pliny states that the name of
the drug was given to it in honour of Euphorbus, the physician
of Juba II., king of Mauretania. In former times euphorbium
was valued in medicine for its drastic, purgative and emetic
properties.
EUPHORBUS, son of Pantholis, one of the bravest of the
Trojan heroes, slain by Menelaus (Iliad, xvii. 1-60). Pythagoras,
in support of his doctrine of the transmigration of souls, declared
that he had once been this Euphorbus, whose shield, hung up
in the temple of Argos by Menelaus, he claimed -as his own
(Horace, Odes, i. 28. n; Diog. Laert. viii. i).
EUPHORION, Greek poet and grammarian, born at Chalcis in
Euboea about 275 B.C. He spent much of his life in Athens,
where he amassed great wealth. About 221 he was invited by
Antiochus the Great to the court of Syria. He assisted in the
formation of the royal library at Antioch, of which he held the
post of librarian till his death. He wrote mythological epics,
amatory elegies, epigrams and a satirical poem ('Apai, " curses ")
after the manner of the Ibis of Callimachus. Prose works on
antiquities and history are also attributed to him. Like Lyco-
phron, he was fond of using archaic and obsolete expressions,
and the erudite character of his allusions rendered his language
very obscure. His elegies were highly esteemed by the Romans;
they were imitated or translated by Cornelius Gallus and also
by the emperor Tiberius.
Fragments in Meineke, " De Euphorionis Chalcidensis vita et
scriptis," in his Analecta Alexandrina (1843); for a recently dis-
covered fragment of about 30 lines see Berliner Klassikertexte, v. I
(1907).
EUPHRANOR, of Corinth (middle of the 4th century B.C.),
the only Greek artist who excelled both as a sculptor and as
a painter. In Pliny we have lists of his works; among the paint-
ings, a cavalry battle, a Theseus, and the feigned madness
of Odysseus; among the statues, Paris, Leto with her children
Apollo and Artemis, Philip and Alexander in chariots. Un-
fortunately we are unable among existing statues to identify
any which are copies from works of Euphranor (but see a series
of attributions by Six in Jahrbuch, 1909, 7 foil.). He appears
to have resembled his contemporary Lysippus, notably in the
attention he paid to symmetry, in his preference for bodily
forms slighter than those usual in earlier art, and in his love of
heroic subjects. He wrote a treatise on proportions.
EUPHRATES (Babylon. Purattu, Heb. Perath, Arab. Frat or
Furat, Old Pers. Ufralu, Gr. Ev^pctTijs), the largest river of
western Asia. It may be divided into three divisions, upper,
lower and middle, each of which is distinguished by special
physical features, and has played a conspicuous part in the
world's history, retaining to the present day monumental
evidence of the races who have lined its banks.
Upper Division. The upper Euphrates consists of two arms,
which, rising on the Armenian plateau, and flowing west in long
shallow valleys parallel to Mount Taurus, eventually unite and
force their way southward through that range to the level of
Mesopotamia. The northern or western and shorter arm, called
by the Turks Kara Su, " black water," or Frat Su (Armenian,
Ephrdt or Yephrat; Arab. Nahr el-Furdt or Frat), well known to
occidentalists as the Euphrates, from its having been the boundary
of the Roman empire, is regarded also by Orientals as the main
stream. It rises in the Dumlu Dagh, N.N.W. of Erzerum, in a
large circular pool (altitude, 8625 ft.), which is venerated by
Armenians and Moslems, and flows south-east to the plain
of Erzerum (5750 ft.). Thence it continues through a narrow
valley W.S.W. to Erzingan (3900 ft.), receiving on its way the
Ovajik Su (right), the Tuzla Su (left), and the Merjan and Chan-
duklu (right) . Below Erzingan the Frat flows south-west through
a rocky gorge to Kemakh(Kamacha; Armenian, Gamukli) , where
it is crossed by a bridge and receives the Kumur Su (right).
At Avshin it enters a canon, with walls over 1000 ft. high,
which extends to the bridge at Pingan, and lower down it is
joined from the west by the Chalta Irmak (Lycus; Arab. Luklya),
on which stands Divrik (Tephrike). Then, entering a deep
gorge with lofty rock walls and magnificent scenery, it runs
EUPHRATES
895
south-east to its junction with the Murad Su. The FrSt, separ-
ated by the easy pass of Deve-boyun from the valley of the
Araxes (Aras), marks the natural line of communication between
northern Persia and the West a route followed by the nomad
Turks, Mongols and Tatars on their way to the rich lands of Asia
Minor. It is a rapid river of considerable volume, and below
Erangan is navigable, down stream, for rafts. The southern
or eastern and longer arm, called by the Turks Murad Su (Ar-
JUHIU.S /'/.; Armenian, AraJsjni; Arab. Nahr Arstin<is), rises
south-west of Diadin, in the northern flank of the Ala Dagh
(11,500 ft.), and flows west to the Alashgerd plain. Here it is
joined by the Sharian Su from the west, and the two valleys
form a great trough through which the caravan road from
Erzerum to Persia runs. The united stream breaks through the
mountains to the south, and, receiving on its way the Patnotz
Su (left) and the Khinis Su (right), flows south-west, west and
south, through the rich plain of Bulanik to the plain of Mush.
Here it is joined by the Kara Su (Teltboas), which, rising near
Lake Van. runs past Mush and waters the plain. The river now
runs W.S.W. through a deep rocky gorge, in which it receives
the Gunig Su (right), to Palu (where there are cuneiform inscrip-
tions); and continues through more open country to its junction
with the Frit Su. About 10 m. E.N.E. of Kharput the Murad is
joined by its principal tributary, the Peri Su, which drains the
wild mountain district, Dersim, that lies in the loop between the
two arms. The Murad Su is of greater volume than the l-'rat,
but its valley below Mush is contracted and followed by no great
road. Below the junction of the two arms the Euphrates flows
south-west past the lead mines of Keban Maden, where it is 1 20
yds. wide, and is crossed by a ferry (altitude, 2425 ft.), on the
Sivas- Kharput road. It then runs west, south and east round
the rock-mass of Musher Dagh, and receives (right) the Kuru
Chai. down which the Sivas-Malatia road runs, and the Tokhma
Su, from Gorun (Gauraina) and Darende. At the ferry on the
Malalia-Kharput road (cuneiform inscription) it flows eastwards
in a valley about a quarter of a mile wide, but soon afterwards
enters a remarkable gorge, and forces its way through Mount
Taurus in a succession of rapids and cataracts. After running
south-east through the grandest scenery, and closely approaching
the source of the western Tigris, it turns south-west and leaves
the mountains a few miles above Samsat (Samosata; altitude,
1500 ft.). The general direction of the great gorges of the
Euphrates, Pyramus (Jihun) and Sams (Sihun) seems to indicate
that their formation was primarily due to the same terrestrial
movements that produced the Jordan-' Araba depression to the
south. The length of the Frit is about 275 m.; of the Murad,
415 m.; and of the Euphrates from the junction to Samsat,
115 m.
Middle Division. The middle division, which extends from
Samsat to Hit, is about 720 m. long. In this part of its course
the Euphrates runs through an open, treeless and sparsely peopled
country, in a valley a few miles wide, which it has eroded in
the rocky surface. The valley bed is more or less covered with
alluvial soil, and cultivated in places by artificial irrigation.
The method of this irrigation is peculiar. Three or four piers or
sometimes bridges of masonry are run out into the bed of the
river, frequently from both sides at once, raising the level of the
stream and thus giving a water power sufficient to turn the
gigantic wheel or wheels, sometimes almost 40 ft. in diameter,
which lift the water to a trough at the top of the dam, whence it is
distributed among the gardens and melon patches, rice, cotton,
tobacco, liquorice and durra fields, between the immediate bed
of the river and the rocky banks which shut it out from the desert.
The wheels, called naoura, are of the most primitive construction,
made of rough branches of trees, with palm leaf paddles, rude clay
vessels being slung on the outer edge to catch the water, of which
they raise a prodigious amount, only a comparatively small pan
of which, however, is poured into the aqueducts on top of the
dams. These latter are exceedingly picturesque, often consisting
of a series of well-built Gothic arches, and give a peculiar char-
acter to the scenery; but they are also great impediments to
navigation. In some pans of the river 300 naourat have been
counted within a space of 130 m., but of late years many have
fallen into decay. By far the larger part of the valley is quite
uncultivated, and much of it is occupied by tamarisk jungles,
the home of countless wild pigs. Where the valley is still
cultivated, the /"./, a skin raised by oxen, is gradually being
substituted for the naoura, no more of the latter being con-
structed to take the place of those which fall into decay.
In this part of its course the rocky sides of the valley, which
sometimes closely approach the river, are composed of marls
and gypsum, with occasional sclenite, overlaid with sandstone,
with a topping of breccia or conglomerate, and rise at places
to a height of 200 ft. or more. At one point, however, 26 m.
above Deir, where lie the ruins of Halcbiya, the river breaks
through a basaltic dike, el-Hamme, some 300 to 500 ft. high.
On either side of the river valley a steppe-like desert, covered
in the spring with verdure, the rest of the year barren and brown,
stretches away as far as the eye can see. Anciently the country
on both sides of the Euphrates was habitable as far as the river
Khabur; at the present time it is all desert from Birejik down-
ward, the camping ground of Bedouin Arabs, the great tribe of
Anazch occupying esh-Shdm, the right bank, and the Shammar
the left bank, Mesopotamia of the Romans, now called el-
Jezlreh or the island. To these the semi-sedentary Arabs who
sparsely cultivate the river valley, dwelling sometimes in huts,
sometimes in caves, pay a tribute, called kubbe, or brotherhood,
as do also the riverain towns and villages, except perhaps the
very largest. The Turkish government also levies taxes on the
inhabitants of the river valley, and for this purpose, and to
maintain a caravan route from the Mediterranean coast to
Bagdad, maintains stations of a few zaplichs or gens d'armes,
at intervals of about 8 hours (caravan time), occupying in general
the stations of the old Persian post road. The only riverain
towns of any importance on this stretch of the river to-day are
Samsit, Birejik, Deir, 'Ana and Hit.
In early times the Euphrates was important as a boundary.
It was the theoretical eastern limit of the Jewish kingdom;
for a long time it separated Assyria from the Khita or Hittites;
it divided the eastern from the western satrapies of Persia (Ezra
iv. 17; Neh. ii. 7); and it was at several periods the boundary
of the Roman empire. Until the advent of the nomads from
central Asia, and the devastation of Mesopotamia and the
opposite Syrian shore of the river, there were many flourishing
cities along its course, the ruins of which, representing all periods,
still dot its banks. Samsat itself represents the ancient Samosata,
the capital of the Seleucid kings of Commagenc (Kumukh of
the Assyrian inscriptions), and here the Persian Royal Road
from Sardis to Susa is supposed to have crossed the river. Below
Samsat the river runs S.W. to Rum-Kaleh, or " castle of the
Romans " (Armenian, Hrhomgla). At this point was another
passage of the river, defended by the castle which gives its name
to the spot, and which stands on a high hill overhanging the
right bank, its base washed by an abundant stream, the Sanjeh
(Gr. 21770$), which enters the Euphrates on the west. From
this point the river runs rather east of south for about 25 m.
past Khalfat (ferry) to Birejik or Bir, the ancient Birtha, where
it is only no m. from the Mediterranean, the bed of the river
being 628! ft. above that sea. This was the Apamca-Zeugma,
where the high road from east to west crossed the river, and it is
still one of the most frequented of all the passages into Meso-
potamia, being the regular caravan route from Iskandcrun and
Aleppo to Urfa, Diarbekr and Mosul. From Birejik the river
runs sluggishly, first a little to the cast, then a little to the west
of south, over a sandy or pebbly bed, past Jcrablus (? Europus,
Carchcmish, the ancient Hittite capital), near which the Sajur
(Sagura; Sangar of the Assyrian inscriptions) enters from the
west, to Meskene, 2 m. southward of which arc the ruins of
Barbalissus (Arab. Balis), the former port of Aleppo, now, owing
to changes in the bed, some distance from the water. Six miles
below this the ruins of Kal'at Dibse mark the site of the ancient
Thapsacus (Tiphsah of i Kings iv. 24), the most important
passage of the middle Euphrates, where both Cyrus, on his
expedition against his brother, and Alexander the Great crossed
8 9 6
EUPHRATES
that river, and the ancient port of Syria. Here the river turns
quite sharply eastward. A day's journey beyond Meskene are
the remains of Siffin (Roman Sephe), where Moawiya defeated
the caliph Ali in 657 (see CALIPHATE), and opposite this, on the
west bank, a picturesque ruin called Kal'at Ja'ber (Dausara).
A day's journey beyond this, on the Syrian side, stand the
remains of ancient Sura, a frontier fortress of the Romans against
the Parthians; 20 m. S. of which, inland, lie the well-preserved
ruins of Reseph (Assyrian, Resafa or Rosafa). Half a day's
journey beyond Sura, on the Mesopotamian side of the river,
are the extensive ruins of Haragla (Heraclea) and Rakka, once
the capital of Harun al-Rashid (Nicephorium of Alexander;
Callinicus of the Seleucids and Romans). Here the Belikh
(Bilechas) joins the Euphrates, flowing southward through the
biblical Aram Naharaim from Urfa (Edessa) and Harran
(Carrhae); and from this point to el-Kaim four days' below
Deir, the course of the river is south-easterly. Two days' journey
beyond Rakka, where the Euphrates breaks through the basalt
dike of el-Hamme, are two admirably preserved ruins, built
of gypsum and basalt, that on the Mesopotamian side called
Zelebiya (Chanuga), and that on the Syrian, much the finer of
the two, Halebiya or Zenobiya, the ancient Zenobia. Twenty-
six miles farther down lies the town of Deir (q.v.), where the river
divides into two channels and the river valley opens out into
quite extensive plains. Here the roads from Damascus, by
way of Palmyra, and from Mosul, by way of the Khabur, reach
the Euphrates, and here there must always have been a town of
considerable commercial and strategic importance. The region
is to-day covered with ruins and ruin mounds. A little below
Deir the river is joined by the Khabur (Khaboras, Biblical
Khabor), the frontier of the Roman empire from Diocletian's
time, which rises in the Karaja Dagh, and, with its tributary,
the Jaghijagh (Mygdonius; Arab. Hirmas) flows south through
the land of Gozan in which Sargon settled the deported Israelites
in 721 B.C. At the mouth of the Khabur stood the Roman
frontier fortress of Circesium (Assyrian, Sirki', Arab. Kirkessie)
now el-Buseira. The corresponding border town on the Syrian
side is represented by the picturesque and finely preserved ruins
called Salahiya, the Ad-dalie or Dalie (Adalia) of Arabic times,
two days below Deir, whose more ancient name is as yet un-
known. Between Salahiya and Deir,|pn an old canal, known in
Arabic times as Said, leaving the Euphrates a little below Deir
and rejoining it above Salahiya, stand the almost more picturesque
ruins of the once important Arabic fortress of Rahba.
As far as the Khabur Mesopotamia seems to have been a well-
inhabited country from at least the isth century B.C., when it
constituted the Hittite kingdom of Mitanni, down to about the
1 2th century A.D., and the same is true of the country on the
Syrian side of the Euphrates as far as the eastern limit of the
Palmyrene. Below this point the back country on the Syrian
side has always been a complete desert. On the Mesopotamian
side there would seem, from the accounts of Xenophon and
Ptolemy, to have been an affluent which joined the Euphrates
between Deir and 'Ana, called Araxes by the former, Saocoras
by the latter; but no trace of such a stream has been found
by modern explorers and the country in general has always been
uninhabited. Below Salahiya the river-bed narrows and becomes
more rocky. A day's journey beyond Salahiya, on a bluff on
the Mesopotamian side of the river, are the conspicuous ruins
of el-'Irsi (Corsole?). Half a day's journey beyond, at a point
where two great wadis enter the Euphrates, on the Syrian side,
stands Jabriya, an unidentified ruined town of Babylonian type,
with walls of unbaked brick, instead of the stone heretofore
encountered. At this point the river turns sharply a little
north of east, continuing on that course somewhat over 40 m. to
"Ana, where it bends again to the south-east. Just above 'Ana
are rapids, and from this point to Hit the river is full of islands,
while the bed is for the most part narrow, leaving little cultivable
land between it and the bluffs. 'Ana itself, a very ancient town,
of Babylonian origin, once sacred probably to the goddess of the
same name, lay originally on several islands in the stream, where
ruins, principally of the Arabic and late Persian period, are
visible. Here palm trees, which had begun to appear singly at
Deir, grow in large groves, the olive disappears entirely, and we
have definitely passed over from the Syrian to the Babylonian
flora and climate. Between 'Ana and Hit there were anciently
at least four island cities or fortresses, and at the present time
three such towns, insignificant relics of former greatness, Haditha,
Alus or el-'Uzz and Jibba still occupy the old sites. Of these
Alus is evidently the ancient Auzara or Uzzan,eso_polis, the city
of the old Arabic goddess 'Uzza; Haditha, an important town
under the Abbasids, was earlier known 'as Baia Malcha; while
Jibba has not been identified. The fourth city, Thilutha or
Olabus, once occupied the present deserted island of Telbeis,
half a day's journey below 'Ana. About half-way between 'Ana
and Hit, in the neighbourhood of Haditha, the river has a breadth
of 300 yds., with a depth of 18 ft. , and a flood speed of 4 knots.
At this point we begin to encounter sulphur springs and bitter
streams redolent with bitumen, a formation which reaches its
climax at Hit (<?..), where a small stream (the " river of Ahava "
of Ezra viii. 21) enters the Euphrates from the Syrian side, on
which, about 8 m. from its mouth, stands the small town of
Kubeitha.
The middle Euphrates, from Samsat to Hit, is to-day an
avenue of ruins, of which only the more conspicuous or im-
portant have been indicated here. It was from a remote period,
antedating certainly 3000 B.C., the highway of empire and of
commerce between east and west, more specifically between
Babylonia or Irak and Syria, and numerous empires, peoples
and civilizations have left their records on its shores. Its time
of greatest prosperity and importance was the period of the
Abbasid caliphate, and Arabic geographers as late as A.D. 1200
mention an astonishingly large number of important cities
situated on its shores or islands. The Mongol invasion, in the
latter part of that century, wrought their ruin, however, and
from that time to the present there has been a steady decline
in the commercial importance of the Euphrates route, and
consequently also of the towns along its 'course, until at the
present time it is only an avenue of ruins.
Lower Division. Hit stands almost at the head of the alluvial
deposit, about 550 m. from the Persian Gulf, separated from
it by a couple of small spurs of the Syrian plateau, and may be
said to mark the beginning of the lower Euphrates. Thence the
river flows S.E. and S.S.E. to its junction with the Tigris below
Korna, through an unbroken plain, with no natural hills, except
a few sand (or sandstone ?) hills in the neighbourhood of Warka,
and no trace of rock, except at el-Haswa, above Hillah. At Hit
the river is from 30 to 35 ft. in depth, with a breadth of 250 yds.,
and a current of 4 m. an hour, but from this point it diminishes
in volume, receiving no new affluents but dissipating itself in
canals and lagoons. At Feluja, in the latitude of Bagdad,
the Euphrates and Tigris closely approach each other, and then,
widening out, enclose the plain of Babylonia (Arab. Sawdd).
Through this part of its course the current of the river, except
where restricted by floating bridges at Feluja, Mussaib, Hillah,
Diwanieh and Samawa does not normally exceed a mile an hour,
and both on the main stream and on its canals the jerd or ox-
bucket takes the place of the naoura or water-wheel for purposes
of irrigation.
In early times irrigating canals distributed the waters over
the plain, and made it one of the richest countries of the East,
so that historians report three crops of wheat to have been
raised in Babylonia annually. As main arteries for this circulation
of water through its system great canals, constituting in reality
so many branches of the river, connected all parts of Babylonia,
and formed a natural means both of defence and also of trans-
portation from one part of the country to another. The first
of these canals, taken off on the right bank of the river a little
below Hit, followed the extreme skirt of the alluvium the whole
way to the Persian Gulf near Basra, and thus formed an outer
barrier, strengthened at intervals with watch-towers and fortified
posts, to protect the cultivated land of the Sawdd against the
incursions of the desert Arabs. This gigantic work, the line
of which may still be traced throughout its course, was formerly
EUPHRATES
897
called the Kkaitdak SabAr or " Sapor's trench," being ascribed
to the Sassanian king. Shapur I. Dholahtaf, but is now known as
the C'hcrra-Saadch. and is in the popular tradition said to have
been excavated by a man from Basra at the behest of a woman
of Hit whom he desired to make his wife. How early this work
was begun is not clear, but it would appear to have been at least
largely reconstructed in the time of the great Nebuchadrezzar.
The next important canal, the Dujayl (Dojail), left the Euphrates
on the left, about a league above Ramadiya (Ar-Rabb), and
flowed into the Tigris between Ukbara and Bagdad. The 'Isa,
which is largely identical with the modern Sakhlawiya, left the
Euphrates a little below Anbar (Peruabora) and joined the Tigris
at Bagdad. This canal still carries water and was navigable for
steamboats until about 1875. Sarsar, the modern Abu-Ghurayb,
leaves the Euphrates three leagues lower down and enters the
Tigris between Bagdad and Ctesiphon. The Nahr Malk or
royal river, modern Radhwaniya, leaves the Euphrates five
leagues below this and joins the Tigris three leagues below
Ctesiphon; while the Kutha, modern Habl-Ibrahim, leaving
the Euphrates three leagues below the Malk joins the Tigris
ten leagues below Ctesiphon. In the time of the Arabs these
were the chief canals, and the cuts from the main channels of the
Nahr 'Isa, Nahr Sarsar, Nahr Malk (or Nahr Malcha), and Nahr
Kutha, reticulating the entire country between the rivers, con-
vened it into a continuous and luxuriant garden.
Just below Mussalb there has been for all ages a great bifurca-
tion of the river. The right arm was the original bed, and the
kft arm, on which Babylon was built, the artificial deviation,
as n clear from the cuneiform inscriptions. In the time of
Alexander the nomenclature was reversed, the right arm being
known as Pallacopas. Under the Arabs the old designation
again prevailed and the Euphrates is always described by the
Arabian geographers as the river which flows direct to Kufa,
while the present stream, passing along the ruins of Babylon to
Hillah and Diwanieh, has been universally known as the Nahr
Sura. Occidental geographers, however, have followed the Greek
use, and so to-day we call the river of Babylon or Nahr Sura the
Euphrates and the older westerly channel the Hindieh canal.
At the present time the preservation of the embankments about
the point of bifurcation demands the constant care of the Bagdad
government. The object is to allow sufficient water to drain
off to the westward for the due irrigation of the land, while the
Hillah bed still retains the main volume of the stream, and is
navigable to the sea. But it frequently happens that the dam
at the bead of the Hindieh is carried away, and, a free channel
being thus opened for the waters of the river to the westward,
the Hillah bed shoals to 2 or 3 ft., or even dries up alto-
gether, while the country to the west of the river is turned into
lakes and swamps. Below the bifurcation the river of Babylon
was again divided into several streams, and indeed the most
famous of all the ancient canals was the Arakhat (Archous of the
Greeks and Serrai and .\il of the Arabs), which left that river
just above Babylon and ran due east to the Tigris, irrigating all
the central pan of the Jezlreh, and sending down a branch
through Nippur and Erech to rejoin the Euphrates a little above
the modern Nasrieh. The Narss, also, the modern Daghara,
which is still navigable to Nippur and beyond, left the Sura a
little below Hillah; and at the present day another large canal,
the Kehr, branches off near Diwanieh. It is easy to distinguish
the great primitive watercourses from the lateral ducts which
they fed, the latter being almost without banks and merely
traceable by the winding curves of the layers of alluvium in the
bed. while the former are hedged in by high banks of mud,
heaped up during centuries of dredging.
Not a hundredth pan of the old irrigation system is now
in working order. A few of the mouths of the smaller canals
are kept open so as to receive a limited supply of water at the
rise of the river in May, which then distributes itself over the
lower lying lands in the interior, almost without labour on the
pan of the cultivators, giving binh in such localities to the most
abundant crops, but by far the larger portion of the region
between the riven is at present an arid howling wilderness
ix. 20
dotted with Itls or ruin-heaps, strewn in the most part with
broken pottery, the evidence of former habitation, and bearing
nothing but the camel-thorn, the wild caper, the colocynth-apple,
wormwood and other weeds of the desert. The swamps are full
of huge reeds, bordered with tamarisk jungles, and in its lower
reaches, where the water stretches out into great marshes, the
river is clogged with a growth of agrostis. To obtain a correct
idea of this region it must be borne in mind also that the course
of the river and the features of the country on both banks are
subject to constant fluctuation. The Hindieh canal and the
main stream, the ancient Sura, rejoin one another at Samawa.
Down to this point, the bed of the Euphrates being higher than
that of the Tigris, the canals run from the former to the latter,
but below this the situation is reversed. At Nasrieh the Shatt-
el-Hal, at one time the bed of the Tigris, and still navigable
during the greater part of the yeaT, joins the Euphrates. From
this point downward, and to some extent above this as far as
Samawa, the river forms a succession of reedy lagoons of the most
hopeless character, the Paludes Chaldaici of antiquity, el Batihat
of the Arabs. Along this part of its course the river is apt to
be choked with reeds and, except where bordered by lines of
palm trees, the channel loses itself in lakes and swamps. The
inhabitants of this region are wild and inhospitable and utterly
beyond the control of the Turkish authorities, and navigation
of the river between Korna and Suk-esh-Sheiukh is unsafe owing
to the attacks of armed pirates. From Garmat Ali, where the
Tigris and Euphrates at present unite, 1 under the title of Shatt-
el-Arab, the river sweeps on to Basra, 1000 yds. in width and
from 3 to 5 fathoms deep, navigable for steamers of good size.
From Korna to Basra the banks of the river are well cultivated
and the date groves almost continuous; indeed this is the
greatest date-producing region of the world. Twenty-five miles
below Basra the river Karun from Shushter and Dizful throws
off an arm, which seems to be artificial, into the Euphrates.
This arm is named the HaffSr, and at the confluence is situated
the Persian town of Muhamrah, a place most conveniently located
for trade. In this vicinity was situated, at the time of the
Christian era, the Parthian city of Spasini-Charax, which was
succeeded by Bahman Ardashir (Bamishir) under the Sassanians,
and by Moharzi under the Arabs. The left bank of the river
from this point belongs to Persia. It consists of an island
named Abbadan, about 45 m. long, formed by alluvial deposits
during the last fifteen centuries. (For the character of this
alluvium and its rate of deposit see IRAK.)
Even more than the upper and middle Euphrates the lower
Euphrates,; from Hit downward, abounds in ruins of ancient
towns and cities, from the earliest prehistoric period onward
to the close of the Caliphate (see IRAK). The fact also that many
of the most ancient of these ruins, like Ur, Lagash (Sirpurla),
Larsa, Erech, Nippur, Sippara and Babylon, were situated on
the banks of the great canals would indicate that the control
of the waters of the rivers by a system of canalization and
irrigation was one of the first achievements of civilization.
This ancient system of canalization was inherited from the
Persians (who, in turn, inherited it from their predecessors),
by the Arabs, who long maintained it in working order, and
the astonishing fertility and consequent prosperity of the country
watered by the Euphrates, its tributaries and its canals, is noticed
by all ancient writers. The land itself, an alluvial deposit, is
very fruitful. Wheat and the date palm seem to have been
indigenous, and the latter is still one of the chief poductions
of the country, but in later years rice has taken the place of wheat
as the staff of life. The decline of the country dates from the
appearance of Turkish nomads in the nth century; its ruin was
completed by the Shammar Arabs in the lyth century; but, if
the ancient system of irrigation were restored, sufficient grain
could be grown to alter the conditions of the wheat supply of
the world. At the present time, instead of the innumerable
1 The confluence for about 500 years was at Korna, over 30 m.
higher up. Sir W. Willcocks discovered (1909) that from Suk-esh-
Sheiukh the Euphrates had formed a new channel through the
marshes. (See Ceog. Journal, Jan. 1910).
EUPHRONIUS EUPHUISM
cities of former days, there is a succession of small towns along
the course of the river Ramadiya, Feluja, Mussa'ib, Hillah,
Diwanieh, Samawa, el-Khudr (an ancient daphne or sacred
grove, 31 n' 58" N., 76 6' 9" E., the only one anywhere which
preserves to this day its ancient charter of the inviolability of
all life within its precincts), Nasrieh and Suk-esh-Sheiukh by
means of which the Turkish government controls the river and
levies taxes on a small part of the adjacent territory. At such
settlements the river is lined with gardens and plantations of
palms. The greater part of the region, however, even along
the river shores, is inhabited only by roaming Bedouin or half-
savage Ma'dan Arabs (see IRAK).
Navigation. The length of the Euphrates from its source at
Diadin to the sea is about 1800 m., and its fall during the last
1 200 m. about 10 ins. per mile. The river begins to rise in the
end of March and attains its greatest height between the zist
and the 28th of May. It is lowest in November, and rocks,
shallows, and the remains of old dams then render it almost
unnavigable. In antiquity, however, it was evidently in use
for the transportation of merchandise and even of armies.
Boats built in Syrian ports were placed on the Euphrates by
Sennacherib and Alexander, and Herodotus states (i. 185) that
in his day the river was a frequented route followed by merchants
on their way from the Mediterranean to Babylon. As the most
direct line of transit between the Mediterranean and the Persian
Gulf, offering an alternative means of communication with India
not greatly inferior to the Egyptian route, the Euphrates route
early attracted the attention of the British government. During
the Napoleonic wars, indeed, and up to the time when the intro-
duction of steam navigation rendered the Red Sea accessible
at all seasons of the year, the political correspondence of the
home and Indian governments usually passed by the Euphrates
route. Various plans were suggested for the development of this
route as a means of goods as well as postal conveyance, and in
1835 Colonel F. R. Chesney was sent out at the head of an
expedition with instructions to transport two steamers from the
Mediterranean to the Euphrates, and, after putting them together
at Birejik, to attempt the descent of the river to the sea. One
of these steamers was lost in a squall during the passage down
the river near el-'Irsi, but the other performed the voyage in
safety and thus demonstrated the practicability of the downward
navigation. Following on this first experiment, the East India
Company, in 1841, proposed to maintain a permanent flotilla
on the Tigris and Euphrates, and set two vessels, the " Nitocris "
and the " Nimrod," under the command of Captain Campbell
of the Indian navy, to attempt the ascent of the latter river.
The experiment was so far successful that, with incredible
difficulty, the two vessels did actually reach Meskene, but the
result of the expedition was to show that practically the river
could not be used as a high-road of commerce, the continuous
rapids and falls during the low season, caused mainly by the
artificial obstructions of the irrigating dams, being insurmount-
able by ordinary steam power, and the aid of hundreds of hands
being thus required to drag the vessels up the stream at those
points by main force. Under Midhat Pasha, governor-general
of Bagdad from 1866 to 1871, an attempt was made by the
Turkish authorities to establish regular steam navigation on the
Euphrates. Midhat caused many of the dams to be destroyed
and for some years occasional steamers were run between Meskene
and Hillah in flood time, from April to August. But with the
transfer of Midhat this feeble attempt at navigation was aban-
doned. At the present time the river is navigated by sailing
craft of some size from Hit downward. Above that point there
is no navigation except by the native rafts (kellek), which descend
the river and are broken up on arrival at their point of destination.
There is, however, little travel of this sort on the Euphrates in
comparison with the amount on the Tigris.
When it became evident that, under present conditions at
least, the navigation of the middle Euphrates was impracticable,
attention was turned, owing to the peculiarly advantageous
geographical position of its valley, to schemes for connecting
the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf by railway as an alternative
means of communication with India, and various surveys were
made for this purpose and various routes laid out. All these
schemes, however, fell through either on the financial question,
or on the unwillingness of the Turkish government to sanction
any line not connected directly with Constantinople. With the
acquisition of the Suez Canal, moreover, the value of this route
from the British standpoint was so greatly diminished that
the scheme, so far as England was concerned, was quite
abandoned. (For further notice of the railway question see
BAGDAD.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Gen. F.R.Chesney, Euphrates Expedition (1850) ;
W. F. Ainsworth, Researches in Assyria and Babylonia (1838), and
Personal Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition (1888); A. H.
Layard, Nineveh and Babylon (1853); W. K. Loftus, Chaldaea and
Susiana (1857); Geo. Rawlinson, Herodotus, bk. I, essay ix. (1862);
A. Blunt, Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates (1873) ; Josef Cernik,
Studien-Expedition (1873); H. Kiepert, Ruinenfelder Babyloniens
(1883); Ed. Sachau, Reise in Syrien u. Mesopotamien (1883), and
Am Euphrat u. Tigris (1900); Guy Le Strange, " Description of
Mesopotamia," in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1895), and
Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate (1901); J. P. Peters, Nippur
(1897); M. v. Oppenheim, Vom Mittelmeer zum Persischen Golf
(1900); H. V. Geere, By Nile and Euphrates (1904); Baedeker,
Palestine and Syria (1906); Murray, Handbook to Asia Minor &c.
section iii. (H. C. R.; C. W. W.; J. P. PE.)
EUPHRONIUS, the most noted of the group of great vase-
painters, who lived in Athens in the time of the Persian wars, and
worked upon red-figured vases (see GREEK ART and CERAMICS).
There is a monograph by W. Klein dealing with the artist. As all
the great paintings of Greece have disappeared, we are obliged
to trust to the designs on vases for our knowledge of Greek
drawing and composition. Euphronius is stiff and archaic in style,
but his subjects are varied, his groupings original and striking,
and his mastery of the line decided. In their way, the vases
which he painted will hold their own in comparison with those
of any nation; for simplicity, truthfulness and charm they can
scarcely be matched.
EUPHROSYNE, the name of two Byzantine empresses.
1. EUPHROSYNE, a daughter of Constantine VI. Although
she had taken a monastic vow she became the second wife of
Michael II. (q.v.), a marriage which was practically forced upon
her by Michael, who was anxious to strengthen his claims to the
throne by an alliance with the last representative of the Isaurian
dynasty, and secured the compliance of senate and patriarch
with his desire. No issue was born of this union, and after the
death of her husband and accession of her stepson Theophilus
Euphrosyne again retired into a convent.
2. EUPHROSYNE, the wife of Alexius III. (?..). After securing
the election of her husband to the throne by wholesale bribery
she virtually took the government into her hands and restored
the waning influence of the monarchy over the nobles. In spite
of her talent for government she went far to hasten the empire's
downfall by her unbounded extravagance, and made the dynasty
unpopular by her open profligacy, which went unpunished but
for one short term of banishment. She followed her husband
into exile in 1 203 and died seven years later in Epirus.
EUPHUISM, the peculiar mode of speaking and writing
brought into fashion in England towards the end of the reign of
Elizabeth by the vogue of the fashionable romance of Euphues,
published in 1 578 by John Lyly. As early as 1 570 Ascham in his
Schoolmaster had said that " Euphues " (that is, a man well-
endowed by nature, from the Gr. eu, <t)vrj, well, growth) is " he that
is apt by goodness of wit, and appliable by readiness of will,
to learning, having all other qualities of the mind and parts of
the body that must another day serve learning." Lyly adopted
this word as the name of the hero of his romance, and it is with
him that the vogue of Euphuism began. John Lyly, " always
averse to the crabbed studies of logic and philosophy, and his
genie being naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poetry,"
devoted himself exclusively to the service of the ladies, a thing
absolutely unprecedented in English literature. He addressed
himself to " the gentlewomen of England," and he had the
audacity, in that grave age, to say that he would rather see
his books " lie shut in a lady's casket than open in a scholar's
study." In order to attain this object, he set himself to create a
EUPHUISM
899
superfine style in writing, and to illustrate this in his com-
positions. He undertook to produce a pleasurable literature for
the boudoir and the bower. Lyly was twenty-six when he pub-
lished in 1579 the first part of Euphues: Ike Anatomy of Wit:
a second part, entitled Euphues ami his England, appeared in
1580. His object was diametrically opposed to that of writers
who bad striven to instruct, reprove or edify their contempo-
raries. Lyly, assuming that women only will read his book,
says: " After dinner, you may overlook it to keep you from
sleep, or if you be heavy to bring you asleep, for to work upon a
full stomach is against physic, and therefore better were it to
hold Euphuts in your hands, though you let him fall when you be
willing to wink, than to sew in a closet and prick your fingers
when you begin to read." ,
For a comprehension of the nature of Euphuism it is necessary
to remember that the object of its invention was to attract and
to disarm the ladies by means of an ingenious and playful style,
of high artificiality, which should give them the idea that they
were being entertained by an enthusiastic adorer, not instructed
by a solemn pedagogue. For fifty years the romance of Euphues
retained its astonishing popularity. * As late as 1632 thepublisher
Edward Blount (i$6o?-i632), recalling the earliest enthusiasm
of the public, wrote of John Lyly, " Oblivion shall not so trample
on a son of the Muses, and such a son as they called their darling.
Our nation are in his debt for a new English which he taught
them. Euphues and his England began first that language.
All our ladies were then his scholars, and that beauty in Court,
which could not parley Euphuism, was as little regarded, as
she which, now there, speaks not French." Among those who
applied themselves to this " new English," one of the most ardent
was Queen Elizabeth herself, who has been styled by J. R. Green
" the most affected and destestable of euphuists." At the height
of the popularity of this strange dialect, it was said by William
Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetry (1386), to consist in a
combination of " singular eloquence and brave composition of
apt words and sentences, in fit phrases, in pithy sentences, in
gallant tropes, in Bowing speech," while a French poet of the
same age calls Lyly a " raffineur " of the English speech; another
panegyrist describes him as " oiler Tullius," meaning that, in
inventing Euphuism, he had introduced into English the refine-
ments of a Ciceronian style.
When we put aside these excessive compliments, and no less
the attacks from which the style suffered as soon as it began to
go out of fashion, we are able to observe merits as well as faults
in this very curious experiment. Euphuism did not attempt to
render the simplicity of nature. On the contrary, in order to
secure refinement, it sought to be as affected, as artificial, as
high-pitched as possible. Its most prominent featurewas an
incessant balancing of phrases in chains of antithesesthus:
" Though the tears of the hart be salt, yet the tears of the boar
be sweet, and though the tears of some women be counterfeit to
deceive, yet the tears of many be current to try their love ";
or this: " Reject it not because it proceedeth from one which
hath been lewd, no more than ye would neglect the gold because
it lieth in the dirty earth, or the pure wine for that it cometh
out of a homely presse, or the precious stone aetilcs which is
found in the filthy nests of the eagle, or the precious gem dracon-
ita, that is ever taken out of the poisoned dragon.']/ This second
excerpt, moreover, suggests another of the main characteristics
of Euphuism, the incessant use, for purposes of ornament, of
similes taken from fabulous records of zoology, or relating to
mythical birds, fishes or minerals. This was a feature of the
" new English " which was excessively admired, and copied
with a senseless extravagance.' Instances of it are found on
every page of Lyly's books, thus: " Although the worm
entereth almost into every wood, yet he eatcth not the cedar-
tree; though the stone cylindrus at every thunder-clap roll
from the hill, yet the pure sleek stone mountcth at the noise;
though the rust fret the hardest steel, yet doth it not eat into the
emerald; though polypus change his hue, yet the salamander
keepeth his colour "; and so on, ad infinilum. That lady was
considered most proficient in euphuism who could keep up
longest these chains of similes taken out of fabulous natural
history. Alliteration was also a particular ornament of the
euphuistic style, as : " The bavin, though it burn bright, is but
a blaze," but the use of this artifice by Lyly himself was rarely
exaggerated; for instances of its excess we have rather to turn
to his imitators. In the following passage the typical forms of
Euphuism, in its pure and original conditions, are so combined
and illustrated as to require no further commentary: " Do we
not commonly see that in painted pots is hidden the deadliest
poison ? that in the greenest grass is the greatest serpent ? in
the clearest water the ugliest toad? Doth not experience teach
us that in the most curious sepulchre are enclosed rotten bones?
that the cypress tree beareth a fair leaf, but no fruit? that the
ostrich carrieth fair feathers, but rank flesh?" and so forth.
It will be noticed that these characteristics differ in many
respects from the specimens of euphuism which are most familiar
to a modern reader, namely the extravagant speech placed in the
mouth of Sir Piercie Shafton in Sir Walter Scott's romance of
The Monastery. Scott modelled this character on what he called
that " forgotten and obsolete model of folly, once fashionable,"
Lyly's novel of Euphues, but he had not studied the original
to sufficient purpose, and the bombastic ravings of Sir Piercie,
who simply talks like a lunatic, have deceived many readers as
to the real characteristics of Euphuism. Scott betrays his own
error when he says that " the extravagance of Euphuism . . .
predominates in the romances of Calprcnde and Scuderi," in
which it is true that a tone of preposterous gallantry finds a
language of its own, but that is not the language of Euphues.
What Sir Piercie Shafton talks is a mixture of the style of
these French romances, with the ostentation of Sir Fopling
Flutter and the extravagances of the Scotch translator of
Rabelais. But these various sorts of pretentious eloquence have
little or nothing in common with the balanced and conceited
style of Euphues.
We find that the genuine sort of this kind of superfine conver-
sation was originally called " Euphues," simply, as Overbury
speaks of a man " who speaks Euphues, not so gracefully as
heartily." The earliest instance of the word " Euphuism "
which has been traced occurs in a letter, written by Gabriel
Harvey in 1592, when he speaks of a man, who would be smart,
as talking " a little Euphuism." Dekker, in the Gull's Hornbook
of 1609, uses the word as an adjective, and denounces " Euphuised
gentlewomen." When the practice was going out of fashion
we find it thus severely stigmatized by Michael Drayton, a poet
who had little sympathy with the artificial refinement of Lyly.
In an elegy, printed in 1627, Drayton refers to the merit of Sir
Philip Sidney, who recalled English prose to sanity, and
" did first reduce
Our tongue from Lyly's writings then in use,
Talking of stones, stare, plants, of fishes, flies,
Playing with words and idle similes,
As ih' English apes and very zanies be
Of everything; that they do hear and see,
So imitating, nis ridiculous tricks
They spake and writ, all like mere lunatics."
This severe censure of Euphuism may serve to remind us that
hasty critics have committed an error in supposing the Arcadia
of Sidney to be composed in the fashionable jargon. That was
certainly not the intention of the author, and in fact the publica-
tion of the Arcadia, eleven years after that of Euphues, marks
the beginning of the downfall of the popularity of the latter.
Sidney's prose, it is true, was extremely ornamented, but it was
instinct with romantic fancy, and it affected a chivalrous and
florid fulness which was artificial enough, but wholly distinct
from the more homely elegance of Euphuism as we have defined
it. The publication of the Arcadia was a severe blow to the
Euphuists. Immediately the ladies began to desert their former
favourite, 4 and the object at court became, as Ben Jonson
noted, to " observe as pure a phrase and use as choice figures
in ordinary conference as any be in the Arcadia." But, in
the meantime, Lyly had found in Greene, Lodge, Dickcnson,
Nicholas Breton and others enthusiastic disciples who had learned
all the formulas of Euphuism, and could bring them forth as
900
EUPION EURE-ET-LOIR
fluently and elegantly as he could himself. Nevertheless the
trick wore out, with the taste that it had created, and by the
close of the reign of James I. Euphuism had become a dead
language.
Critics have' not failed to insist, on the other hand, that a
species of Euphuism existed before Euphues was thought of. It
has been supposed that a translation of the familiar epistles, or,
as they were called, the " Golden Letters," of a Spanish monk,
Antonio de Guevara, led Lyly to conceive the extraordinary
style which bears the name of his hero. Between 1574 and 1578
Edward Hellowes (fl. 1550-1600) translated into a very extrava-
gant English prose three of the works of Guevara. Earlier
than this, in 1557, Sir Thomas North had published a version
of the same Spanish writer's Reloj de Principes (The Dial of
Princes), a moral and philosophical romance which is not without
a certain likeness in plan and language to Euphues. It is
extremely difficult to know to what extent these translations,
which were not strikingly unlike many other specimens of the
ornamented English prose of their period, can be said to be
responsible for the production of Euphuism. At all events no
one can doubt that it was Lyly who concentrated the peculiarities
of mannerism, and who gave to it the stamp of his own remarkable
talent.
See Landmann, Der Euphuismus (1881); Arber's edition of
Euphues (1869); R. W. Bond's Complete Works of Lyly (1902);
Hallam, Jusserand, S. Lee, passim. (E. G.)
EUPION (Gr. <5, well, TT'MV, fat), a hydrocarbon of the paraffin
series, probably a pentane, C 6 Hi 2 , discovered by K. Reichenbach
in wood-tar. It is also formed in the destructive distillation of
many substances, as wood, coal, caoutchouc, bones, resin and
the fixed oils. It is a colourless highly volatile and inflammable
liquid, having at 20 C. a specific gravity of 0-65.
EUPOLIS (c. 446-411 B.C.), Athenian poet of the Old Comedy,
flourished in the time of the Peloponnesian War. Nothing
whatever is known of his personal history. With regard to his
death, he is said to have been thrown into the sea by Alcibiades,
whom he had attacked in one of his plays, but it is more likely
that he died fighting for his country. He is ranked by Horace
(Sat. i. 4, i), along with Cratinus and Aristophanes, as the
greatest writer of his school. With a lively and fertile fancy
Eupolis combined a sound practical judgment; he was reputed
to equal Aristophanes in the elegance and purity of his diction,
and Cratinus in his command of irony and sarcasm. Although
he was at first on good terms with Aristophanes, their relations
subsequently became strained, and they accused each other,
in most virulent terms, of imitation and plagiarism. Of the
17 plays attributed "to Eupolis, with which he obtained the first
prize seven times, only fragments remain. Of these the best
known were: the Kolakes, in which he pilloried the spendthrift
Callias, who wasted his substance on sophists and parasites;
Maricas, an attack on Hyperbolus, the successor of Cleon,
under a fictitious name; the Baptae, against Alcibiades and his
clubs, at which profligate foreign rites were practised. Other
objects of his attack were Socrates and' Cimon. The Demoi
and Poleis were political, dealing with the desperate condition
of the state and with the allied (or tributary) cities.
Fragments in T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta, i. (1880).
EUPOMPUS, the founder of the great school of painting
which flourished in the 4th century at Sicyon in Greece. He
was eclipsed by his successors, and is chiefly remembered for
the advice which he is said to have given to Lysippus to follow
nature rather than any master.
EURASIAN, a term originally confined to India, where for
upwards of half a century it was used to denote children born
of Hindu mothers and European (especially Portuguese )fathers.
Following the geographical employment of the word Eurasia to
describe the whole of the great land mass which is divided
into the continents of Europe and Asia, Eurasian has come to be
descriptive of any half-castes born of parents representing the
races of the two continents. It has further an ethnological
sense, A. H. Keane (Ethnology, 1896) proposing to find in the
Eurasian Steppe the true home of the primitive Aryan groups.
Joseph Deniker (Anthropology, 1900) makes a Eurasian group
to include such peoples (Ugrians, Turko-Tatars, &c.) as are
represented in both continents. Giuseppe Sergi, in his Medi-
terranean Race (London, 1901), uses Eurasiatic to denote that
variety of man which " brought with it into Europe (from Asia
in the later Neolithic period) flexional languages of Aryan or
Indo-European type."
EURE, a department of north-western France, formed in
1790 from a portion of the old province of Normandy, together
with the countship of Evreux and part of Perche. Pop. (1906)
330,140. Area, 2330 sq. m. It is bounded N. by the department
of Seine Inferieure, W. by Calvados, S.W. by Orne, S. by Eure-et
Loir, and E. by Seine-et-Oise and Oise. The territory of Eure,
which nowhere exceeds 800 ft. in altitude, is broken up by its
rivers into well-wooded plateaus with a general inclination
from south to north. Forests cover about one-fifth of the
department. The Seine flows from S.E. to N.W. through the
E. of the department, and after touching the frontier at two or
three points forms near its mouth part of the northern boundary.
All the rivers of the department flow into the Seine, on the
right bank the Andelle and the Epte, and on the left the Eure
with its tributaries the Avre and the Iton, and the Risle with
its tributary the Charentonne. The Eure, from which the depart-
ment takes its name, rises in Orne, and flowing through Eure-et-
Loir, falls into the Seine above Pont de 1'Arche, after a course
of 44 m. in the department. The Risle likewise rises in Orne,
and flows generally northward to its mouth in the estuary of
the Seine. The climate is mild, but moist and variable. The
soil is for the most part clayey, resting on a bed of chalk, and is,
in general, fertile and well tilled. The chief cereal cultivated
is wheat; oats, colza, flax and beetroot are also grown. There
is a wide extent of pasturage, on which are reared a considerable
number of cattle and sheep, and especially those horses of pure
Norman breed for which the department has long been cele-
brated. Fruit is very abundant, especially apples and pears,
from which much cider and perry are made. The mineral
products of Eure include freestone, marl, lime and brick-clay.
The chief industries are the spinning of cotton and wool, and the
weaving, dyeing and printing of fabrics of different kinds. Brew-
ing, flour-milling, distilling, turnery, cotton-bleaching, cider-
making, metal-founding, tanning, and the manufacture of glass,
paper, iron ware, nails, pins, wind-instruments, bricks and sugar
are also carried on. Coal and raw materials for its industries
are the chief imports of Eure; its exports include cattle, poultry,
eggs, butter, grain and manufactured goods. The department
is served chiefly by the Western railway; the Seine, Eure and
Risle provide 87 m. of navigable waterway. Eure is divided into
the following arrondissements (containing 36 cantons, 700
communes) : Evreux, Louviers, Les Andelys, Bernay, and Pont-
Audemer. Its capital is Evreux, which is the seat of a bishopric
of the ecclesiastical province of Rouen. The department belongs
to the III. Army Corps and to the academic (educational division)
of Caen. Its court of appeal is at Rouen.
Evreux, Les Andelys, Bernay, Louviers, Pont-Audemer,
Verneuil, Vernon and Gisors are the principal towns of the depart-
ment. At Gaillon there are remains of a celebrated chateau of
the archbishops of Rouen (see LOUVIERS). Pont de 1'Arche has
a fine Gothic church, with stained-glass windows of the i6th
and 1 7th centuries; the church of Tillieres-sur-Arvre is a graceful
specimen of the Renaissance style. The churches of Conches
(i5th or 1 6th century) and of Rugles (i3th, isth and i6th
centuries), and the chateau of Beaumesnil (i6th century) are
also of architectural interest.
EURE-ET-LOIR, an inland department of north-western
France, formed in 1790 of portions of Orleanais and Normandy.
Pop. (1906) 273,823. Area, 2293 sq. m. It is bounded N. by the
department of Eure, W. by Orne and Sarthe, S. by Loir-et-Cher,
S.E. by Loiret, and E. by Seine-et-Oise. The Perche in the south-
west and the Thimerais in the north-west are districts of hills
and valleys, woods, lakes and streams. The region of the east
and south is a level and uniform expanse, consisting for the most
part of the riverless but fertile plain of Beauce, sometimes called
EUREKA EURIPIDES
901
the " granary of France." The northern pan of Eure-et-Loir is
watered by the Eure, with its tributaries the Vegre, Blaise and
A vre, a small western portion by the Huisne, and the south by the
Loir with its tributaries the Conic and the Oranne. The air is
pure, the climate mild, dry and not subject to sudden changes.
The soil consists, for the most part, either of day intermixed
with sand or of calcareous earth, and is on the whole fruitful.
Agriculture is better conducted than in most of the departments
of France, and the average yield per acre is greater. Cereals
occupy half the surface, wheat and oats being chiefly cultivated.
Among the other agricultural products are barley, hemp,
flax and various vegetables, including good asparagus. Wine is
not extensively produced, nor is it of the best quality; but in
some pans, especially in the Perche, there is an abundant
supply of apples, from which cider is made as the common drink
of the inhabitants. The extensive meadows supply pasturage
for a large number of cattle and sheep, and the horses raised in
the Perche have a wide reputation as draught animals. Bee-
farming is commonly prosecuted. The department produces
lime, grindstones and brick-clay. The manufactures are not
extensive; but there are flour- and saw-mills, tanneries and
leather-works, copper and iron foundries, starch-works, dye-
works, distilleries, breweries and potteries; and agricultural
implements, cotton and woollen goods, and yarn, hosiery, boots
and shoes, sugar, felt hats and paper are made. Eure-et-Loir
exports the products of its soil and live-stock; its imports
include coal, wine and wearing apparel. It is served by the rail-
ways of the Western and the Orleans Companies and by those of
the state, but it has no navigable waterways. The department
has Chart res for its capital, and is divided into the arrondisse-
ments of Chartres, Chateaudun, Dreux and Nogent-le-Rotrou
(24 cantons and 426 communes). It forms the diocese of Chartres
(province of Paris), and belongs to the academic (educational
division) of Paris and the region of the IN'. Army Corps. Its
court of appeal is at Paris.
Chartres, Dreux, Chateaudun, Nogent-le-Rotrou and Anet are
the more noteworthy places in the department (q.v.). At Bonneval
the lunatic asylum occupies the iSth-century buildings of a
former Benedictine abbey. The abbey church belonged to the
1 3th century, but only a gateway flanked by two massive
towers is left. The chateau of Maintenon dating from the i6th
and i ;th centuries was presented by Louis XIV. to Madame de
Maintenon, by whom additions were made; the aqueduct (i;th
century) in the park was designed to cany the water of the
Eure to Versailles, but was not completed. There is a fine chateau
of the late isth century, restored in modern times, at Montigny-
le-Gannelon, and another of the isth, i6th and lyth centuries,
at one time the property of Sully, at Villebon. St Lubin-des-
Joncherets has a handsome church of the nth century, in which
there are stained-glass windows dating from the i6th century.
EUREKA, a city, port of entry, and the county seat of Hum-
boldt county, California, U.S.A., on the E. shore of Humboldt
Bay. Pop. (1880) 1639; (1800)4858; (1000) 7327 (2035 foreign-
born); (1910) 11,845. It has a good harbour, greatly improved
by the National government, and is connected with San Fran-
cisco, Portland and other coast ports by steamship lines. In 1909
a railway (the Northwestern Pacific), to connect Eureka with
San Francisco, was under construction. The district owes its
reputation as a health resort to its equable climate and to the
protection afforded by the wide coast timber belt. Eureka is
the principal point for the shipment of redwood lumber, and saw-
milling is carried on here on an enormous scale. Several short
railways run from Eureka and Arcata (pop. in 1000, 952) across
the bay, into the forests, and bring lumber to the mills, most of
which are in or near Eureka. Humboldt county was organized
in 1853. Eureka was then already the centre of an important
lumber trade, principally in spars. It was incorporated in 1856,
displacing Union (now Arcata) as the county-seat in the same
year.
EUREKA SPRINGS, a city and health resort, one of the county-
seat* Benyville being the other of Carroll county, in the
extreme north-western part of Arkansas, U.S.A., in the Ozark
uplift, 1800 ft. above the sea-level. Pop. (1890) 3706; (1000)
3573 (142 of negro descent); (1910) 3228. There is a transient
population of thousands of visitors during the year. The city is
built picturesquely on the sides of a gulch, down which runs the
Missouri & North Arkansas railway. A creek running through
the city empties into the White river, only a few miles distant.
The surrounding country varies in character from mountains
to rolling prairie. The encircling hills are laden with a covering
of pine. The normal mean temperature for the year is about
59 F. (42 F. in winter, 61 F. in spring, 75 F. in summer, and
58 F. in autumn); the average rainfall, about 33 in. The
atmosphere is dry and clear. Apart from its share in the agri-
cultural interests of the surrounding region, devoted mainly to
Indian corn, small grains and fruits, the entire economy of
Eureka Springs centres in its medicinal springs, more than forty
of which, lying within the corporate limits, are held in trust by
the city for the free use of the public. The temperature of the
springs varies from about 57 F. to 64 F. Each gallon of their
waters contains about 28-5 cub. in. of gaseous matter and from
6 to 9 grains of solids held in solution. The city waterworks
are owned by the municipality. The springs have been exploited
since 1879, when the first settlement was made. The city was
chartered in 1880.
EURIPIDES (480-406 B.C.), the great Greek dramatic poet,
was born in 480 B.C., on the very day, according to the legend,
of the Greek victory at Salamis, where his Athenian parents
had taken refuge; and a whimsical fancy has even suggested
that his name son of Euripus was meant to commemorate
the first check of the Persian fleet at Artemisium. His father
Mnesarchus was at least able to give him a liberal education;
it was a favourite taunt with the comic poets that his mother
Clito had been a herb-seller a quaint instance of the tone which
public satire could then adopt with plausible effect. At first he
was intended, we are told, for the profession of an athlete,
a calling of which he has recorded his opinion with something
like the courage of Xenophanes. He seems also to have essayed
painting; but at five-and-twenty he brought out his first play,
the Peliades, and thenceforth he was a tragic poet. At thirty-
nine he gained the first prize, and in his career of about fifty
years he gained it only five times in all. This fact is perfectly
consistent with his unquestionably great and growing popularity
in his own day. Throughout life he had to compete with
Sophocles, and with other poets who represented tragedy of the
type consecrated by tradition. The hostile criticism of Aristo-
phanes was witty; and, moreover, it was true, granting the
premise from which Aristophanes starts, that the tragedy of
Aeschylus and Sophocles is the only right model. Its unfairness,
often extreme, consists in ignoring the changing conditions of
public feeling and taste, and the possibilities, changed accord-
ingly, of an art which could exist only by continuing to please
large audiences. It has usually been supposed that the unsparing
derision of the comic poets contributed not a little to make the
life of Euripides at Athens uncomfortable; and there is certainly
one passage in a fragment of the Melanippe (Nauck, Frag., 495),
which would apply well enough to his persecutors:
Lvbp&v & ToXXoi TOV yi\(jj7tn oOvtKa
ianovai x&ptrat npri^ovt' iyw tt TUT
luaw yt\oiovi, oTrircf ooQav irtpi
AxiAii-' txovai arbiia.ro..
(To raise vain laughter, many exercise
The arts of satire ; but my spirit loathes
These mockers whose unbridled mockery
Invades grave themes.)
The infidelity of two wives in succession is alleged to explain
the poet's tone in reference to the majority of their sex, and to
complete the picture of an uneasy private life. He appears to
have been repelled by the Athenian democracy, as it tended to
become less the rule of the people than of the mob. Thoroughly
the son of his day in intellectual matters, he shrank from the
coarser aspects of its political and social life. His best word is
for the small farmer (abrovpybt), who does not often come to
town, or soil his rustic honesty by contact with the crowd of the
market-place.
EURIPIDES
About 409 B.C. Euripides left Athens, and after a residence in
the Thessalian Magnesia repaired, on the invitation of King
Archelaus, to the Macedonian court, where Greeks of distinction
were always welcome. In his Archelaus Euripides celebrated
that legendary son of Temenus, and head of the Temenid dynasty,
who had founded Aegae; and in one of the meagre fragments he
evidently alludes to the beneficent energy of his royal host in
opening up the wild land of the North. It was at Pella, too,
that Euripides composed or completed, and perhaps produced,
the Bacchae. Jealous courtiers, we are told, contrived. to have
him attacked and killed by savage dogs. It is odd that the fate of
Actaeon should be ascribed, by legend, to two distinguished
Greek writers, Euripides and Lucian; though in the former case
at least the fate has not such appropriateness as the Byzantine
biographer discovers in the latter, on the ground that its victim
" had waxed rabid against the truth." The death of Euripides,
whatever its manner, occurred in 406 B.C., when he was seventy-
four. Sophocles followed him in a few months, but not before
he had been able to honour the memory of his younger rival by
causing his actors to appear with less than the full costume of
the Dionysiac festival. Soon afterwards, in the Frogs, Aristo-
phanes pronounced the epitaph of Attic comedy on Attic tragedy.
The historical interest of such a life as that of Euripides
consists in the very fact that its external record is so scanty
that, unlike Aeschylus or Sophocles, he had no place in the
public action, of his time, but dwelt apart as a student and a
thinker. He has made his Medea speak of those who, through
following quiet paths, have incurred the reproach of apathy
(f>qvfiia.v). Undoubtedly enough of the old feeling for civic life
remained to create a prejudice against one who held aloof from
the affairs of the city. Quietness (airpaf/jaa-vvr)), in this sense,
was still regarded as akin to indolence (apyia). Yet here we see
how truly Euripides was the precursor of that near future which,
at Athens, saw the more complete divergence of society from the
state.
In an age which is not yet ripe for reflection or for the subtle
analysis of character, people are content to express in general
types those primary facts of human nature which strike every
one. Achilles will stand well enough for the young chivalrous
warrior, Odysseus for the man of resource and endurance. In
the case of the Greeks, these types had not merely an artistic
and a moral interest; they had, further, a religious interest,
because the Greeks believed that the epic heroes, sprung from the
gods, were their own ancestors. Greek tragedy arose when the
choral worship of Dionysus, the god of physical rapture, had
engrafted upon it a dialogue between actors who represented
some persons of the legends consecrated by this faith. The
dramatist was accordingly obliged to refrain from multiplying
those minute touches which, by individualizing the characters
too highly, would detract from their general value as types in
which all Hellenic humanity could recognize its own image
glorified and raised a step nearer to the immortal gods. This
necessity was further enforced by the existence of the chorus, the
original element of the drama, and the very essence of its nature
as an act of Dionysiac worship. Those utterances of the chorus,
which to the modern sense are so often platitudes, were not
so to the Greeks, just because the moral issues of tragedy were
felt to have the same typical generality as these comments
themselves.
An unerring instinct keeps both Aeschylus and Sophocles
within the limits imposed by this law. Euripides was only
fifteen years younger than Sophocles. But, when Euripides
began to write, it must have been clear to any man of his genius
and culture that, though an established prestige might be main-
tained, a new poet who sought to construct tragedy on the old
basis would be building on sand. For, first, the popular religion
itself the very foundation of tragedy had been undermined.
Secondly, scepticism had begun to be busy with the legends
which that religion consecrated. Neither gods nor heroes com-
manded all the old unquestioning faith. Lastly, an increasing
number of the audience in the theatre began to be destitute of
the training, musical and poetical, which had prepared an earlier
generation to enjoy the chaste and placid grandeur of ideal
tragedy.
Euripides made a splendid effort to maintain the place of
tragedy in the spiritual life of Athens by modifying its interests
in the sense which his own generation required. Could not the
heroic persons still excite interest if they were made more real,
if, in them, the passions and sorrows of every-day life were
portrayed with greater vividness and directness? And might
not the less cultivated part of the audience at least enjoy a
thrilling plot, especially if taken from the home-legends of
Attica ? Euripides became the virtual founder of the romantic
drama. In so far as his work fails, the failure is one which
probably no artistic tact could then have wholly avoided.
The frame within which he had to work was one which could
not be stretched to his plan. The chorus, the masks, the narrow
stage, the conventional costumes, the slender opportunities for
change of scenery, were so many fixed obstacles to the free
development of tragedy in the new direction. But no man of
his time could have broken free from these traditions; in
attempting to do so he must have wrecked either his fame or his
art. It is not the fault of Euripides if in so much of his work
we feel the want of harmony between matter and form. Art
abhors compromise; and it was the misfortune of Attic tragedy
in his generation that nothing but a compromise could save it.
Two devices have become common phrases of reproach against
him the prologue and the deus ex machina. Doubtless the
prologue is a slipshod and sometimes ludicrous expedient.
But the audiences of his days were far from being so well versed
as their fathers in the mythic lore, and, on the other hand, a
dramatist who wished to avoid trite themes had now to go
into the byways of mythology. A prologue was often perhaps
desirable or necessary for the instruction of the audience. As
regards the deus ex machina, a distinction should be observed
between those cases in which the solution is really mechanical,
as in the Andromache and perhaps the Orestes, and those in
which it is warranted or required by the plot, as in the Hippolytus
and the Bacchae. The choral songs in Euripides, it may be
granted, have often nothing to do with the action. But the
chorus was the greatest of difficulties for a poet who was seeking
to present drama of romantic tendency in the plastic form
consecrated by tradition. So far from censuring Euripides on
this score, we should be disposed to regard his management of
the chorus as a signal proof of his genius, originality and skill.
Euripides is said to have written 92 dramas, including 8 satyr-
plays. The best critics-of antiquity allowed 75 as genuine. Nauck
has collected 1117 Euripidean fragments. Among these, Works
numbers 1092-1117 are doubtful or spurious; numbers
842-1091 are from plays of uncertain title; numbers 1-841 represent
fifty-five lost pieces, among which spme of the best known are the
Andromeda, Antiope, 1 Bellerophon, Cresphontes, Erechtheus, Oedipus,
Phaethon, and Telephus.
I. The Alcestis, as the didascaliae tell us, was brought out in Ol.
85. 2, i.e. at the Dionysia in the spring of 438 B.C., as the fourth play
of a tetralogy comprising the Cretan Women, the Alcmaeon at Psophis,
and the Telephus. The Alcestis is altogether removed from the
character, essentially grotesque, of a mere satyric drama On the
other hand, it has features which distinctly separate it from a Greek
tragedy of the normal type. First, the subject belongs to none of
the great cycles, but to a byway of mythology, and involves such
strange elements as the servitude of Apollo in a mortal household,
the decree of the fates that Admetus must die on a fixed day, and the
restoration of the dead Alcestis to life. Secondly, the treatment of
the subject is romantic and even fantastic, strikingly so in the
passage where Apollo is directly confronted with the daemonic
figure of Thanatos. Lastly, the boisterous, remorseful, and generous
Heracles makes, not, indeed, a satyric drama, but a distinctly
satyric scene a scene which, in the frank original, hardly bears the
subtle interpretation which in Balauslion is hinted by the genius of
Browning, that Heracles got drunk in order to keep up other people's
spirits. When the happy ending is taken into account, it is not sur-
prising that some should have called the Alcestis a tragi-comedy.
But we cannot so regard it. The slight and purely incidental strain
of comedy is but a moment of relief between the tragic sorrow and
1 A considerable fragment of the Antiope was discovered in Egypt
in the latter part of the igth century; ed. J. P. Mahaffy in vol. viii.
of the Cunningham Memoirs (Dublin, 1891); and quite recently
fragments, probably from the Hypsipyle, the Phaethon, and the
Cretans (see Berliner Klassikertexte, v. 2, 1907).
EURIPIDES
903
terror of the opening and the joy, no lew solemn, of the conclusion.
In this respect the Akeslis might more truly be compared to such
m drama as the Winter's Talf, tne loss and recovery of Hermioneby
Leontes do not form a tragi-comedy because we are amused bet ween-
whiles by Autojycus and the down. It does not seem improbable
that the AUtitii the earliest of the extant plays may represent
an attempt to nubatitute for the old satyric drama an after-piece of
a kind which, while preserving a satyric element, should stand nearer
to tragedy. The taste and manners of the day were perhaps tiring:
of the merely grotesque entertainment that old usage appended
to the tragedies; just as, in the sphere of comedy, we know from
Aristophanes that they were tiring of broad buffoonery. An original
dramatist may have seen an opportunity here. However that may
be, the Akestts has a peculiar interest for the history of the drama.
It marks in the most signal manner, and perhaps at tin- earliest
moment, that great movement which began with Euripides, the
movement of transition from the purely Hellenic drama to the
romantic.
a. The Medea was brought out in 431 B.C. with the Philoctetes,
the Dittys, and a lost satyr-play called the Reapers (Theristae).
Euripides gained the third prize, the first falling to Euphorion, the
son of Aeschylus, and the second to Sophocles. If it is true that
Euripides modelled his Medea on the work of an obscure predecessor,
Neophron, at least he made the subject thoroughly his own. Hardly
any play was more popular in antiquity with readers and spectators,
with actors, or with sculptors. Ennius is said to have translated
and adopted it. We do not know how far it may have been used by
Ovid in nis lost tragedy of the same name; but it certainly inspired
the rhetorical performance of Seneca, which may be regarded as
bridging the interval between Euripides and modern adaptations.
We may grant at once that the Medea of Euripides is not a faultless
play; that the dialogue between the heroine and Aegeus is not
happily conceived ; that the murder of the children lacks an adequate
dramatic motive; that there is something of a moral anti-climax
in the arrangements of Medea, before the deed, for her personal safety.
But the Medea remains a tragedy of first-rate power. It is admir-
able for the splendid force with which the character of the strange
and strong-hearted woman, a barbarian friendless among Hellenes,
is thrown out against the background of Hellenic life in Corinth.
3. The extant Hippolyha (429 B.C.) sometimes called Stepha-
nepkorot, the " wreath-bearer, from the garland of flowers which,
in the opening scene, the hero offers to Artemis was not the first
drama of Eunpides on this theme. In an earlier play of the same
name, we are told, he had shocked both the moral and the aesthetic
sense of Athens. In this earlier Hippolytus, Phaedra herself had
confessed her love to her step-son, and, when repulsed, had falsely
accused him to Theseus, who doomed him to death; at the sight
of the corpse, she had been moved to confess her crime, and had
atoned for it by a voluntary death. This first Hippolytus is cited
as Hippolytus Ike Veiled (xaXinrrAjMrot), either, as Toup and Wclcker
thought, from Hippolytus covering his face in horror, or, as Bentley
with more likelihood suggested, because the youth's shrouded corpse
was brought upon the scene. It can scarcely be doubted that the
chief dramatic defect of our Hippolytus is connected with the un-
favourable reception of its predecessor. Euripides had been warned
that limits must be observed in the dramatic portrayal of a morally
repulsive theme. In the later play, accordingly, the whole action
is made to turn on the jealous feud between Aphrodite, the goddess
of love, and Artemis, the goddess of chastity. Phaedra not only
shrinks from breathing her secret to Hippolytus, but destroys herself
when she learns that she is rejected. But the natural agency of
human passion is now replaced by a supernatural machinery; the
slain son and the bereaved father are no longer the martyrs of sin,
the tragic witnesses of an inexorable law; rather they and Phaedra
are alike the puppets of a divine caprice, the scapegoats of an
olympian quarrel in which they have no concern. But if the
dramatic effect of the whole is thus weakened, the character of
Phaedra is a fine psychological study; and, as regards form, the play
is one of the most brilliant. Boeckh (De tragoediae Graecae principiis,
p. 180 f.) is perhaps too ingenious in finding an allusion to the plague
at Athens (430 B.C.) in the & o*A 6nrrGH> arvytpa.1 r r6ooi of v. 177,
and in y. 209 f.; but i can scarcely be doubted that he is right in
suggesting that the closing words of Theseus (v. 1460)
X*1' "AArrwr IlaXXoJof f Ipianara, otov <rr ( p4<rt<r0' 4p*f ,
and the reply of the chorus, > rU' 4xo, &c., contain a reference
to the recent death of Pericles (439 B.C.).
4. The Hecuba may be placed about 425 B.C. Thucydidcs (iii. 104)
notices the purification of Delos by the Athenians, and the restoration
of the Parooroc festival there, in 426 B.C. an event to which the
choral passage, v. 462 f., probably refers. It appears more hazard-
ous to take v. 650 f. as an allusion to the Spartan mishap at Pylos.
The subject of the play is the revenge of Hecuba, the widowed queen
of Priam, on Polymestor, king of Thrace, who had murdered her
youngest son Polydorus. after her daughter Polyzena had already
been sacrificed by the Greeks to the shade of Achilles. The two
calamities which befall Hecuba have no direct connexion with each
other. In this sense the play tacks unity of design. On the other
hand, both events serve the same end viz. to heighten the tragic
pathos with which the poet seeks to surround the central figure of
Hecuba. The drama illustrates the skill with which Euripides.
\\luK- failing to satisfy the requirements of artistic drama, could
sustain interest by an ingeniously woven plot. It is a representative
Intrifuenstiuk. and well exemplifies the peculiar power which
recommended Euripides to the poets of the New Comedy.
5. The A ndromacne, according to a notice in the scholia Vrnrta (446),
was not acted at Athens, at least in the author's life-time; though
some take the words in the Greek argument (r6 Splina run ttvripar)
to mean that it was among those which gained a second prize. The
invective on the Spartan character which is put into the mouth of
Andromache contains the words, dJUut &TVXT P> if' 'EXX&Ja, and this,
with other indications, points to the Peloponnesian successes of the
years 434-422 B.C. Andromache, the widow of Hector, has become
the captive and concubine of Nepptolemus, son of Achilles. During
his absence, her son Molossus is taken from her, with the aid of
Menelaus, by her jealous rival Hermione. Mother and son are
rescued from death by Pclcus; but meanwhile Neoptolemus is slain
at Delphi through the intrigues of Orestes. The goddess Thetis now
appears, ordains that Andromache shall marry Hclenus, and declares
that Molossus shall found a line of Epirote kings, while Peleus shall
become immortal among the gods of the sea. The Andromache is
a poor play. The contrasts, though striking, are harsh and coarse,
and the compensations dealt out by the deus ex machina leave the
moral sense wholly unsatisfied. Technically the piece is noteworthy
as bringing on the scene four characters at once Andromache,
Molossus, Peleus and Mcnelaus (v. 545 f.).
6. The Ion is an admirable drama, tne finest of those plays which
deal with legends specially illustrating the traditional glories of
Attica. It is also the most perfect example of the poet s skill in
the structure of dramatic intrigue. For its place in the chrono-
logical order there are no data except those of style and metre.
Judging by these, Hermann would place it " neither after Ol. 89,
nor much before " i.e. somewhere between 424 and 421 B.C.; and
this may be taken as approximately correct. The scene is laid
throughout at the temple of Delphi. The young Ion is a priest in
the temple of Delphi when Xutnus and his wife Creusa, daughter
of Erecntheus, come to inquire of the god concerning their child-
lessness; and it is discovered that Ion is the son of Creusa by the
god Apollo. Athena herself appears, and commands that Ion shall
be placed on the throne of Athens, foretelling that from him shall
spring the four Attic tribes, the Teleontes (priests), Hopletes (fight-
ing-men), Argadeis (husbandmen) and Aigikoreis (herdsmen). The
play must have been peculiarly effective on the Athenian stage, not
only by its situations, but through its appeal to Attic sympathies.
7. The Suppliants who give their name to the play are Argive
women, the mothers of Argive warriors stein before the walls of
Thebes, who, led by Adrastus, king of Argos, come as suppliants to
the altar of Demeter at Eleusis. Creon, king of Thebes, has refused
burial to their dead sons. The Athenian king Theseus demands of
Creon that he shall grant the funeral rites; the refusal is followed
by a battle in which the Thebans are vanquished, and the bodies
of the Argive dead are then brought to Eleusis. At the close the
goddess Athena appears, and ordains that a close alliance shall be
formed between Athens and Argos. Some refer the play to 417 B.C.,
when the democratic party at Athens rose against the oligarchs.
But a more probable date is 420 B.C., when, through the agency of
Alcibiades, Athens and Argos concluded a defensive alliance. The
play has a strongly marked rhetorical character, and is, in fact, a
panegyric, with an immediate political aim, on Athens as the cham-
pion of humanity against Thebes.
8. The Heracleiaae a companion piece to the Suppliants, and
of the same period is decidedly inferior in merit. Here, too, there
are direct references to contemporary history. The defeat of Argos
by the Spartans in 418 B.C. strengthened the Argive party who
were in favour of discarding the Athenian for the Spartan alliance
(Thuc. v. 76). In the Heracleiaae, the sons of the dead Heracles,
persecuted by the Argive Eurystheus, are received and sheltered at
Athens. Thus, while Athens is glorified, Sparta, whose kings are
descendants of the Heracleidae, is reminded how unnatural would
be an alliance between herself and Argos.
9. The Heracles Mainomenos 1 (Hercules Furens), which, on grounds
of style, can scarcely be put later than 420-417 B.C., shares with the
two last plays the purpose of exalting Athens in the person of
Theseus. Heracles returns from Hades whither, at the command
of Eurystheus, he went to bring back Cerberus just in time to save
his wife Megara and his children from being put to death by Lycus
of Thebes, whom he slays. As he is offering lustral sacrifice after
the deed, he is suddenly stricken with madness by Lyssa (Fury),
the daemonic agent of his enemy the goddess Hera, and in his frenzy
he slays his wife and children. Theseus finds him, in his agony of
despair, about to kill himself, and persuades him to come to Athens,
there to seek grace and pardon from the gods. The unity of the plot
may be partly vindicated by observing that the slaughter of Lycus
entitled Heracles to the gratitude of Thebes, whereas the slaughter
of his own kinsfolk made it unlawful that he should remain tnere;
thus, having found a refuge only to lose it, Heracles has no hope
left but in Athens, whose praise is the true theme of the entire drama.
' (Originally nimply Heracles, the addition Mainomenos being due
to the Aldine ed.)
94
EURIPIDES
10. Iphigenia among the Tauri, which metre and diction mark
as one of the later plays, is also one of the best excellent both in
the management of a romantic plot and in the delineation of char-
acter. The scene is laid at the temple of Artemis in the Tauric
Chersonese (the Crimea) on the site of the modern Balaklava.
Iphigenia, who had been doomed to die at Aulis for the Greeks, had
been snatched from that death by Artemis, and had become priestess
of the goddess at the Tauric shrine, where human victims were
immolated. Two strangers, who had landed among the Tauri,
have been sentenced to die at the altar. She discovers in them her
brother Orestes and his friend Pylades. They plan an escape, are
recaptured, and are finally delivered by the goddess Athena, who
commands Thoas, king of the land, to permit their departure.
Iphigenia, Orestes and Pylades return to Greece, and establish the
worship of the Tauric Artemis at Brauron and Halae in Attica.
The drama of Euripides necessarily suggests a comparison with that
of Goethe; and many readers will probably also feel that, while
Goethe is certainly not inferior in fineness of ethical portraiture,
he has the advantage in his management of the catastrophe. But it
is only just to Euripides to remember that, while his competitor
had free scope of treatment, he, a Greek dramatist, was bound to the
motive of the Greek legend, and was obliged to conclude with the
foundation of the Attic worship.
11. The Troades appeared in 415 B.C. along with the Alexander,
the Palamedes, and a satyr-play, the Sisyphus. It is a picture of the
miseries endured by noble Trojan dames Hecuba, Andromache,
Cassandra immediately after the capture of Troy. There is hardly
a plot in the proper sense only an accumulation of sorrows on the
heads of the passive sufferers. The piece is less a drama than a
pathetic spectacle, closing with the crash of the Trojan towers in
name and ruin. The Troades is indeed remarkable among Greek
tragedies for its near approach to the character of melodrama. It
must be observed that there is no ground for the inference some-
times made an accusation against the poet that the choral passage,
v. 794 f., was intended to encourage the Sicilian expedition, sent
forth in the same year (415 B.C.). The mention of the " land of
Aetna over against Carthage " (v. 220) speaks of it as " renowned
for the trophies of prowess " a topic, surely, not of encouragement
but of warning.
12. The Helena produced, as we learn from the Aristophanic
scholia, in 412 B.C., the year of the lost Andromeda is not one of
its author's happier efforts. It is founded on a strange variation of
the Trojan myth, first adopted by Stesichorus in his Palinode that
only a wraith of Helen passed to Troy, while the real Helen was
detained in Egypt. In this play she is rescued from the Egyptian
king, Theoclymenus, by a ruse of her husband Menelaus, who brings
her safely back to Greece. The romantic element thus engrafted on
the Greek myth is more than fantastic: it is well-nigh grotesque.
The comic poets notably Aristophanes in the Thesmophoriazusae
felt this; nor can we blame them if they ridiculed a piece in which
the mode of treatment was so discordant with the spirit of Greek
tradition, and so irreconcilable with all that constituted the higher
meaning of Greek tragedy.
13. The Phoenissae was brought out, with the Oenomaus and the
Chrysippus, in 411 B.C., the year in which the recall of Alcibiades
was decreed by the army at Samos, and, after the fall of the Four
Hundred, ratified by the Assembly at Athens (Thuc. viii. 81, 97).
The dialogue between locaste and Polynices on the griefs of banish-
ment (rl ri> oreptfffleu TrarpWos, v. 388 f.) has a certain emphasis
which certainly looks like an allusion to the pardon of the famous
exile. The subject of the play is the same as that of the Aeschylean
Seven against Thebes the war of succession in which Argps supported
Polynices against his brother Eteocles. The Phoenician maidens
who form the chorus are imagined to have been on their way from
Tyre to Delphi, where they were destined for service in the temple,
when they were detained at Thebes by the outbreak of the war
a device which affords a contrast to the Aeschylean chorus of Theban
elders, and which has also a certain fitness in view of the legends
connecting Thebes with Phoenicia. But Euripides has hardly been
successful in the rivalry which he has even pointed by direct
allusions wjth Aeschylus. The Phoenissae is full of brilliant pass-
ages, but it is rather a series of effective scenes than an impressive
drama.
14. Plutarch (Lys. 15) says that, when Athens had surrendered
to Lysander (404 B.C.) and when the fate of the city was doubtful,
a Phocian officer happened to sing at a banquet of the leaders the
first song of the chorus in the Electra of Euripides
fl\v6ov, 'HXiitTpa, irori a&i> typorkpav
and that " when they heard it, all were touched, so that it seemed
a cruel deed to destroy for ever the city so famous once, the mother
of such men." The character of the Electra, in metre and in diction
seems to show that it belongs to the poet's latest years. If Miiller
were right in referring to the Sicilian expedition the closing passage
in which the Dioscuri declare that they haste " to the Sicilian sea
to save ships upon the deep " (v. 1347). then the play could not be
later than 413 B.C. But it may with more probability be placet
shortly before the Orestes, which in some respects it much resembles
perhaps in or about the year 410 B.C. No play of Euripides has been
more severely criticized. The reason is evident. The Choephori of
Aeschylus and the Electra of Sophocles appear to invite a direct
comparison with this drama. But, as R. C. Jebb suggested, 1 such
criticism as that of Schlegel should remember that works of art are
proper subjects of direct comparison only when the theories of art
which they represent have a common basis. It is surely unmeaning
:o contrast the elaborate homeliness of the Euripidean Electra with
:he severe grandeur of its rivals. Aeschylus and Sophocles, as dif-
erent exponents of an artistic conception which is fundamentally
the same, may be profitably compared; Euripides interprets another
conception, and must be tried by other principles. His Electra is,
in truth, a daring experiment daring, because the theme is one
which the elder school had made peculiarly its own.
15. The Orestes, acted in 408, bears the mark of the age in the
prominence which Euripides gives to the assembly of Argos which
has to decide the fate of Orestes and Electra and to rhetorical
pleading. The plot proceeds with sufficient clearness to the point
at which Orestes and Electra have been condemned to death. But
the later portion of the play, containing the intrigues for their rescue
and the final achievement of their deliverance, is both too involved
and too inconsequent for a really tragic effect. Just as in the Electra,
the heroic persons of the drama are reduced to the level of common-
place. There is not a little which borders on the ludicrous, and it
can be seen how easy would have been the passage from such tragedy
as this to the restrained parody in which the Middle Comedy de-
lighted. It is, however, inconceivable that, as some have supposed,
the Orestes can have been a deliberate compromise between tragedy
and farce. It cannot have been meant to be played, as a fourth piece,
instead of a regular satyric drama. Rather it indicates the level to
which the heroic tragedy itself had descended under the treatment
of a school which was at least logical. The celebrity of the play
in the ancient world as Paley observes, there are more ancient
quotations from the Orestes than from all the extant plays of
Aeschylus and Sophocles together is perhaps partly expjained by
the unusually frequent combination in this piece of striking senti-
ment with effective situation.
16. The Iphigenia at Aulis, like the Bacchae, was brought out only
after the death of Euripides. It is a very brilliant and beautiful
play, probably left by the author in an unfinished state, and has
suffered from interpolation more largely, perhaps, than any other
of his works. As regards its subject, it forms a prelude to the Iphi-
genia in Tauris. Iphigenia has been doomed by her father Agamem-
non to die at Aulis, as Calchas declares that Artemis claims such a
sacrifice before the adverse winds can fall.
The genuine play, as we have it, breaks off at v. 1508, when
Iphigenia has been led to the sacrificial altar. A spurious epilogue,
of wretched workmanship (v. 1509-1628), relates, in the speech of
a messenger, how Artemis saved the maiden.,
17. The Bacchae, unlike the preceding play, appears to have been
finished by its author, although it is said not to nave been acted, on
the Athenian stage at least, till after his death. It was composed,
or completed, during the residence of Euripides with Archelaus,
and in all probability was originally designed for representation in
Macedonia a region with whose traditions of orgiastic worship the
Dionysus myth was so congenial. The play is sometimes quoted
as the Pentheus, It has been justly observed that Euripides seldom
named a piece from the chorus, unless the chorus bore an important
part in the action or the leading action was divided between several
persons. Possibly, however, in this instance he may designedly
nave chosen a title which would at once interest the Macedonian
public. Pentheus would suggest a Greek legend about which they
might know or care little. The Bacchae would at once announce a
theme connected with rites familiar to the northern land.
It is a magnificent play, alone among extant Greek tragedies in
picturesque splendour, and in that sustained glow of Dionysiac
enthusiasm to which the keen irony lends the strength of contrast.
If Euripides had left nothing else, the Bacchae would place him
in the first rank of poets, and would prove his possession of a sense
rarely manifested by Greek poets, perhaps by no one of his own
contemporaries in equal measure except Aristophanes, a feeling for
natural beauty lit up by the play of fancy. R. Y. Tyrrell, in his
edition of the Bacchae, has given the true answer to the theory that
the Bacchae is a recantation. Euripides had never rejected the facts
which formed the basis of the popular religion. He had rather sought
to interpret them in a manner consistent with belief in a benevolent
Providence. The really striking thing in the Bacchae is the spirit
of contentment and of composure which it breathes, as if the poet
had ceased to be vexed by the seeming contradictions which had
troubled him before. Nor should it be forgotten that, for the Greek
mind of his age, the victory of Dionysus in the Bacchae carried
a moral even more direct than the victory of Aphrodite in the
Hippolytus. The great nature-powers who give refreshment to
mortals cannot be robbed of their due tribute without provoking
a nemesis. The refusal of such a homage is not, so the Greeks
deemed, a virtue in itself: in the sight of the gods it may be only
a cold form of 8/3p, overweening self-reliance the quality personi-
fied in Pentheus.
1 Introduction to the Electra of Sophocles, p. xiii., in Catena Classi-
corum, 2nd ed.
EURIPIDES
905
The Btttkft wa* always an exceptionally popular play partly
beamy il opportunities as a spectacle nttol it tor gorgeous repre-
sentation, and so recommended it for performance at courts and
on great public occasions. " Demetrius the Cynic " (says I. mi. in.
AJr. Indtxtum. 19) " saw an illiterate person at Corinth reading
a very beautiful poem the Kactkae of Euripides, I think it was; he
was at the place where the messenger narrates the doom of Pcmheus
and the deed of Agave. Demetrius snatched the book from him
and tore it up, saying, ' It is better for Pentiums to be torn up ut once
by me than to be mangled over and over again by you.' "
18. The Cytlops, of uncertain date, is the only extant example
of satyric drama. The plot is taken mainly from the story of
Odysseus and Polyphemus in the 9th book of the Odyssey. In order
to be really successful in farce of this kind, a poet should have a fresh
feeling for the nature of the art parodied. It is because Euripides
was not in accord with the spirit of the heroic myths that he is not
strong in mythic travesty. His own tragedies such as the Helen,
the Etetlra and the Orates had, in their several ways, contributed
to destroy the meaning of satyric drama. They had done gravely
very much what satync drama aimed at doing grotesquely. They
had made the heroic persons act and talk like ordinary men and
women. The finer side of such parody had lost its edge; only
broad comedy remained.
19. The Rluiui is still held by some to be what the didascaliac
and the grammarians call it a work of Euripides; and Palcy has
ably supported this view. But the scepticism first declared by
Valcknaer has gained ground, and the Rhesus is now almost univer-
sally recognized as spurious. The art and the style, still more evi-
dently the feeling and the mind, of Euripides are absent. If it cannot
be ascribed to a disciple of his matured school, it is still less like
the work of an Alexandrian. The most probable view seems to be
that which assigns it to a versifier of small dramatic power in the
latest days of Attic tragedy. It has this literary interest, that it is
the only extant play of which the subject is directly taken from our
Iliad, of which the tenth book the AoXuma has been followed by
the playwright with a closeness which is sometimes mechanical.
When the first protests of the comic poets were over, Euripides
was secure of a wide and lasting renown. As the old life of
Athens passed away, as the old faiths lost their meaning
and the peculiarly Greek instincts in art lost their
truth and freshness, Aeschylus and Sophocles might
cease to be fully enjoyed save by a few; but Euripides
could still charm by qualities more readily and more universally
recognized. The comparative nearness of his diction to the
idiom of ordinary life rendered him less attractive to the gram-
marians of Alexandria than authors whose erudite form afforded
a better scope for the display of learning or the exercise of in-
genuity. But there were two aspects in which he engaged their
attention. They loved to trace the variations which he had
introduced into the standard legends. And they sought to free
his text from the numerous interpolations which even then had
resulted from his popularity on the stage. Philochorus (about
306-260 B.C.), best known for his Atthis, dealt, in his treatise on
Euripides, especially with the mythology of the plays. From
300 B.C. to the age of Augustus 3 long series of critics busied
themselves with this poet. The first systematic arrangement of
his reputed works is ascribed to Dicaearchus and Callimachus
in the early part of the 3rd century B.C. Among those who
furthered the exact study of his text, and of whose work some
traces remain in the extant scholia, were Aristophanes of By-
zantium, Callistratus, Apollodorus of Tarsus, Timachidas, and
pre-eminently Didymus; probably also Crates of Pcrgamum
and Aristarchus. At Rome Euripides was early made known
through the translations of Ennius and the freer adaptations of
Pacuvius, When Hellenic civilization was spread through the
East, the mixed populations of the new settlements welcomed a
dramatic poet whose taste and whose sentiment were not too
severely or exclusively Attic. The Parthian Orodes and his
court were witnessing the Bacchae of Euripides when the Agave
of the hour was suddenly enabled to lend a ghastly reality to the
terrible scene of frenzied triumph by displaying the gory head
of the Roman Crassus. Mommsen has noted the moment as
one in which the power of Rome and the genius of Greece were
simultaneously abased in the presence of sultanism. So far as
Euripides is concerned, the incident may suggest another and a
more pleasing reflection; it may remind us how the charm of his
humane genius had penetrated the recesses of the barbarian East,
and had brought to rude and fierce peoples at least some dim
and distant apprehension of that gracious world in which the
great spirits of ancient Hellas had moved. A quaintly significant
testimony to the popularity of Euripides is afforded by the
Byzantine Xpurrot iraa\<j>v. This drama, narrating the events
which preceded and attended the Passion, is a cento of no less
than 2610 verses, taken from the plays of Euripides, principally
from the Bacchae, the Troades and the Rhesus. The traditional
ascription of the authorship to Gregory of Nazianzus is now
generally rejected; another conjecture assigns it to Apollinaris
of Laodicea, and places the date of composition at about A.D. 330.'
Although the text used by the author of the cento [may not
have been a good one, the value of the piece for the diplomatic
criticism of Euripides is necessarily very considerable; and it
was diligently used both by Valcknaer and by Porson.
Dante, who does not mention Aeschylus or Sophocles, places
Euripides, with the tragic poets Antiphon and Agathon, and the
lyrist Simonides, in the first circle of Purgatory (xxii. 106),
among those
' piue
Greci, che gia di lauro ornar la fronte."
Casaubon, in a letter to Scaliger, salutes that scholar as worthy
to have lived at Athens with Aristophanes and Euripides a
compliment which certainly implies respect for his correspond-
ent's powers as a peacemaker. In popular literature, too, where
Aeschylus and Sophocles were as yet little known, the i6th and
1 7th centuries testify to the favour bestowed upon Euripides.
G. Gascoigne's and Francis Kinwelmersh's Jocasla, played at
Gray's Inn in 1566, is a literal translation of Lodovico Dolce's
Giocasta, which derives from the Phoenissae, probably through
the Latin translation of R. Winter (Basel, 1541). Among early
French translations from Euripides may be mentioned the version
of the Iphigenia in Tauris by Thomas Sibilet in 1549, and that
of the Hecuba by Bouchetel in 1550. About a century later
Racine gave the world his Andromaque, his Iphiginie and his
Phedre; and many have held that, at least in the last-named
of these, "the disciple of Euripides" has excelled his master.
Bernhardy notices that the performance of the Hippolylus at
Berlin in 1851 seemed to show that, for the modern stage, the
Phedre has the advantage of its Greek original. Racine's great
English contemporary seems to have known and to have liked
Euripides better than the other Greek tragedians. In the Reason
of Church Government Milton certainly speaks of " those dramatic
constitutions in which Sophocles and Euripides reign "; in the
preface to his own drama, again, he joins the names of Aeschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides, " the three tragic poets unequalled
yet by any." But the Samson Agonistes itself clearly shows that
Milton's chief model in this kind was the dramatist whom he
himself has called as if to suggest the skill of Euripides in the
delineation of pathetic women " sad Electra's poet "; and the
work bears a special mark of this preference in the use of
Euripidean monodies. In the second half of the iSth century
such men as J. J. Winckelmann (1717-1768) and G. E. Lessing
(1729-1781) gave a new life to the study of the antique. Hitherto,
the art of the old world had been better known through Roman
than through Greek interpreters. The basis of the revived
classical taste had been Latin. But now men gained a finer
perception of those characteristics which belong to the Greek
work of the great time, a fuller sense of the difference between
the Greek and the Roman genius where each is at its best, and
generally a clearer recognition of the qualities which distinguish
ancient art in its highest purity from modern romantic types.
Euripides now became the object of criticism from a new point
of view. He was compared with Aeschylus and Sophocles as
representatives of that ideal Greek tragedy which ranges with
the purest type of sculpture. Thus tried, he was found wanting;
and he was condemned with all the rigour of a newly illuminated
zeal. B. G. Niebuhr (1776-1831) judged him harshly; but no
critic approached A. W. Schlegel (1767-1845) in severity of one-
sided censure. Schlegel, in fact, will scarcely allow that Euripides
is tolerable except by comparison with Racine. L. Tieck (1773-
1853) showed truer appreciation for a brother artist when he
1 (According to Karl Krumbacher, Gesch. der byz. Lit., it is an
nth-century production of unknown authorship.)
906
EUROCLYDON EUROPA
described the work of Euripides as the dawn of a romantic poetry
haunted by dim yearnings and forebodings. Goethe who,
according to Bernhardy, knew Euripides only " at a great
distance " certainly admired him highly, and left an interesting
memorial of Euripidean study in his attempted reconstruction of
the lost Phaethon. There are some passages in Goethe's conver-
sations with Eckermann which form effective quotations against
the Greek poet's real or supposed detractors. " To feel and
respect a great personality, one must be something oneself.
All those who denied the sublime to Euripides were either poor
wretches incapable of comprehending such sublimity or shame-
less charlatans who, in their presumption, wished to make more
of themselves than they were." " A poet whom Socrates called
his friend, whom Aristotle lauded, whom Alexander admired,
and for whom Sophocles and the city of Athens put on mourning
on hearing of his death, must certainly have been some one.
If a modern man like Schlegel must pick out faults in so great
an ancient, he ought only to do it upon his knees " (J. A. Sy-
monds, Greek Poets, i. 230). We yield to no one in admiration
of Goethe; but we cannot think that these rather bullying
utterances are favourable examples of his method in aesthetic
discussion; nor have they any logical force except as against
those if there be any such who deny that Euripides is a great
poet. One of the most striking of modern criticisms on Euripides
is the sketch by Mommsen in his history of Rome (bk. iii. ch. 14).
It is, in our opinion, less than just to Euripides as an artist.
But it indicates, with true historical insight, his place in the
development of his art, the operation of those external conditions
which made him what he was, and the nature of his influence on
succeeding ages.
The manuscript tradition of Euripides has a very curious and
instructive history. It throws a suggestive light on the capricious
nature of the process by which some of the greatest
Moau- literary treasures have been saved or lost. Nine plays
of Euripides were selected, probably in early Byzantine
tradition t; meS) f or popular and educational use. These were
Alcestis, Andromache, Hecuba, Hippolylus, Medea, Orestes,
Burlfiaes, p hoen i ssae> Rhesus, Troades. This list includes at least
two plays, the Andromache and the Troades, which, even in the
small number of the extant dramas, are universally allowed to be
of very inferior merit to say nothing of the Rhesus, which is gener-
ally allowed to be spurious. On the other hand, the list omits at
least three plays of first-rate beauty and excellence, the very flower,
indeed, of the extant collection the Ion, the Iphigenia in Tauris,
and the Bacchae the last certainly, in its own kind, by far the
most splendid work of Euripides that we possess. Had these
three plays been lost, it is not too much to say that the modern
estimate of Euripides must have been decidedly lower. But all the
ten plays not included in the select list had a narrow escape of
being lost, and, as it is, have come to us in a much less satisfactory
condition.
A. Kirchhoff was the first, in his editions, thoroughly to investigate
the history and the affinities of the Euripidean manuscripts. 1 All
our MSS. are, he thinks, derived from a lost archetype of the 9th
or loth century, which contained the nineteen plays (counting the
Rhesus) now extant. From this archetype a copy, also lost, was
made about A.D. 1 100, containing only the nine select plays. This
copy became the source of all our best MSS. for those plays. They
are (i) Marcianus 471, in the library. of St Mark at Venice (i2th
century): Andromache, Hecuba, Hippolylus (to v. 1234), Orestes,
Phoenissae; (2) Vaticanus 909, I2th century, nine plays; (3)
Parisinus 2712, I3th century, 7 plays (all but Troades and Rhesus).
Of the same stock, but inferior, are (4) Marcianus 468, I3th century :
Hecuba, Orestes, Medea (v. 1-42), Orestes, Phoenissae; (5) Havniensis
(from Hafnia, Copenhagen, according to Paley), a late transcript
from a MS. resembling Vat. 909, nine plays. A second family
of MSS. for the nine plays, sprung from the same copy, but
modified by a Byzantine recension of the I3th century, is greatly
inferior.
The other ten plays have cometo us only through the preservation
of two MSS., both of the I4th century, and both ultimately derived,
as Kirchhoff thinks, from the archetype of the 9th or loth century.
These are (i) Palatinus 287, Kirchhoff's B, usually called Rom. C.,
thirteen plays, viz. six of the select plays (Androm., Med., Rhes.,
Hipp., Ale., Troad.), and seven others Bacchae, Cyclops, Heracleidae,
Supplices, Ion, Iphigenia in Aulide, Iphigenia in Tauris; and (2)
Flor. 2, Elmsley's C., eighteen plays, viz. all but the Troades. This
MS. is thus the only one for the Helena, the Electra, and the Hercules
Furens. By far the greatest number of Euripidean MSS. contain
1 See also a clear account in the preface to vol. iii. of Paley's
edition.
only three plays, the Hecuba, Orestes and Phoenissae, these having
been chosen out of the select nine for school use probably in the
I4th century.
It is to be remembered that, as a selection, the nine chosen plays
of Euripides correspond to those seven of Aeschylus and those seven
of Sophocles which alone remain to us. If, then, these nine did not
include the Iphigenia in Tauris, the Ion or the Bacchae, may we not
fairly infer that the lost plays of the other two dramatists comprised
works at least equal to any that have been preserved? May we not
even reasonably doubt whether we have received those masterpieces
by which their highest excellence should have been judged?
The extant scholia on Euripides are for the nine select plays only.
The first edition of the scholia on seven of these plays (all but the
Troades and Rhesus) was published by Arsenius a schaOa
Cretan whom the Venetians had named as bishop of
Monemvasia, but whom the Greeks had refused to recognize at
Venice in 1534. The scholia on the Troades and Rhesus were first
published by L. Dindorf, from Vat. 909, in 182 1. The best complete
edition is that of W. Dindorf (1863).* The collection, though loaded
with rubbish including worthless analyses of the lyric metres by
Demetrius Triclinius includes some invaluable comments derived
from the Alexandrian critics and their followers.
EDITIONES PRINCIPES. 1496. J. Lascaris (Florence), Medea, Hip-
polylus, Alcestis, Andromache. 1503. M. Musurus (Aldus, Venice),
Eur. Tragg. XVII., to which in vol. ii. the Hercules Furens was
added as an i8th; i.e. this edition contained all the extant plays
except the Electra, which was first given to the world by P. Vic-
torius from Florentinus C. in 1545. The Aldine edition was re-
printed at Basel in 1537.
The complete edition of Joshua Barnes (1694) is no longer of
any critical value. The first thorough work done on Euripides was
by L. C. Valcknaer in his edition of the Phoenissae (1755), and his
Diatribe in Eur. perdilorum dramatum relliquias (1767), in which he
argued against the authenticity of the Rhesus.
PRINCIPAL EDITIONS OF SELECTED PLAYS. J. Markland (1763-
1771), Supplices, Iphigenia A., Iphigenia T.; Ph. Brunck (1770-
1780), Andromache, Medea, Orestes, Hecuba; R. Porson (1797-
1801), Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenissae, Medea; H. Monk (1811-1818),
Hippolylus, Alcestis, Iphigenia A., Iphigenia T.; P. Elmsley (1813-
1821), Medea, Bacchae, Heraclidae, Supplices; G. Hermann (1831-
1841), Hecuba (animadv. ad R. Porsoni notas, first in 1800), Orestes,
Alcestis, Iphigenia A., Iphigenia T., Helena, Ion, Hercules Furens;
C. Badham (1851-1853), Iphigenia T., Helena, Ion; H. Weil,
Hipp., Medea, Hec., Iph. in T., Iph. in A., Electra, Orestes (2nd ed.,
1890). It is impossible to give a list of the English and foreign
editions of single plays, but mention may be made of the Bacchae, by
J. E. Sandys (4th ed., 1900) and R. Y. Tyrrell (1892); Medea, by
A. W. VerralK 1883) ; Hippolylus, by J. P. Mahaffy (1881) ; and of the
Hercules Furens, by Wilampwitz-Mollendorff (2nd ed., 1895), with
a comprehensive introduction on the literature of Euripides. A
selected list (up to 1896) will be found in J. B. Mayor's Guide to
the Choice of Classical Books; see also N. Wecklein in C. Bursian's
Jahresbericht, xxviii. (1897), and for the earlier literature W. Engel-
mann, Scriplores Graeci (1881). The little volumes on Euripides
by J. P. Mahaffy (1879) and W. B. Donne in Blackwood's " Ancient
Classics for English Readers " will be found generally useful ; see
also P. Decharme, Euripide el I'esprit de son theatre (1893) ; A. W.
Verrall, Euripides the Rationalist (1805), and Essays on Four Plays
of Euripides (1905); N. J. Patin, Elude sur Euripide (1872); O.
Ribbeck, Euripides und seine Zeit; and (for the life of the poet)
Wilamowitz's ed. of the Hercules Furens (i. 1-42); P. Masqueray,
Euripide el ses idees (1908).
MODERN COMPLETE EDITIONS. W. Dindorf (1870, in Poet.
Scenici, ed. 5); A. Kirchhoff (1855, ed. min. 1867); F. A. Paley
(2nd ed., 1872-1880), with commentary; A. Nauck (1880^1887,
Teubner series) ; G. G. Murray in Oxford Scriptorum Classicorum
bibliolheca (1902, foil.).
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS. Among these may be noted the com-
plete verse translation by A. S. Way (1894-1898); that in prose by
E. P. Coleridge (1.896); and G. G. Murray s verse translations
(1902-1906). A literary interest attaches to Robert Browning^s
"Transcript" of the Alceslis in his Balaustion, and to Goethe's
reconstruction of Euripides' lost Phaethon in the 1840 edition of
his works, vol. xxxiii. pp. 22-43. (R- C. J. ; X.)
EUROCLYDON (Gr. eCpos, east wind; MStav, wave), a stormy
wind from the N.E. or N.N.E. in the eastern Mediterranean.
Where the Authorized Version of the Bible (Acts xxvii. 14)
mentions euroclydon, the Revised Version, taking the reading
(vpa.Kv)wv,}ia.seuraquilo, or north-easter. The word is sometimes
used for the Bora (q.v.).
EUROPA (or rather, EUROPE), in Greek mythology, according
to Homer (Iliad, xiv. 321), the daughter of Phoenix or, in a later
story, of Agenor, king of Phoenicia. The beauty of Europa fired
the love of Zeus, who approached her in the form of a white bull
and carried her away from her native Phoenicia to Crete, where
1 New ed. by E. Schwartz (1887-1891).
EUROPE
907
he became the mother of Minos, Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon.
She WM worshipped under the name of Hcllotis in Crete, where
the festival Hellotia, at which her bones, wreathed in myrtle,
were carried round, was held in her honour (Athenaeus xv. p.
678). Some consider Europa to be a moon-goddess; others
explain the story by saying that she was carried off by a king
of Crete in a ship decorated with the figure-head of a bull.
O. Gruppe (De Codmi Ftibula, 1891) endeavours to show
that the myth of Europa is only another version of the myth of
Persephone.
See Apollodorus iii. i; Ovid, Metam. ii. 833; articles by Helbig
in Rochrr' Lenkon der Mytkolcpt, and by Mild in Daremberg and
Suglio's Dtcttcmnaire tei anlimtitfs. Fig. 26 in the article GREEK
ART (archaic metope from Palermo) represents the journey of
Europa over the sea on the back of the bull.
EUROPE, the smallest of those principal divisions of the
land-surface of the globe which are usually distinguished by the
conventional name of continents.
i. GEOGRAPHY AND STATISTICS
It has justly become a commonplace of geography to describe
Europe as a mere peninsula of Asia, but while it is necessary
to be* r 'his in mind in some aspects of the geography
of the continent, more particularly in relation to the
climate, the individuality of the continent is established
in the clearest manner by the course of history and the
resultant distribution of population. The earliest mention of
Europe is in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, but there Europe
is not the name of a continent, but is opposed to the Peloponnesus
and the islands of the Aegean. The distinction between Europe
and Asia is found, however, in Aeschylus in the 5th century B.C.,
but there seems to be little doubt that this opposition was learnt
by the Greeks from some Asiatic people. On Assyrian monu-
ments the contrast between asu, " (the land of) the rising sun,"
and ereb or irib, " (the land of) darkness " or " the setting sun,"
is frequent, and these names were probably passed on by the
Phoenicians to the Greeks, and gave rise to the names of Asia and
Europe. Where the names originated the geographical dis-
tinction was clearly marked by the intervention of the sea, and
this intervention marked equally dearly the distinction between
Europe and Libya (Africa). As the knowledge of the world
extended, the difficulty, which still exists, of fixing the boundary
between Europe and Asia where there is land connexion, caused
uncertainty in the application of the two names, but never
obscured the necessity for recognizing the distinction. Even in
the 3rd century B.C. Europe was regarded by Eratosthenes as
including all that was then known of northern Asia. But the
character of the physical features and climate finally determined
the fact that what we know as Europe came to be occupied by
more or less populous countries in intimate relation with one
another, but separated on the east by unpeopled or very sparsely
peopled areas from the countries of Asia, and the boundary be-
tween the two continents has long been recognized as running
somewhere through this area. Within the limits thus marked
out on the east and on other sides by the sea " the climatic
conditions are such that inhabitants are capable of and require
a civilization of essentially the same type, based upon the cultiva-
tion of our European grains." ' Those inhabitants have had a
common history in a greater measure than those of any other
continent, and hence are more thoroughly conscious of their
dittimilarities from, than of their consanguinity with, the peoples
of the east and the south.
On the subject of the boundaries of Europe there is still
divergence of opinion. While some authorities take the line
__ _^ of the Caucasus as the boundary in the south-east,
others take the line of the Manych depression, between
the upper end of the Sea of Azov and the Caspian Sea,
nearly parallel to the Caucasus. Various limits are assigned to
the continent on the east. Officially the crest of the Caucasus
and that of the Urals are regarded in Russia as the boundaries
between Europe and Asia on the south-east and east respec-
1 H. Wagner's edition of Guthe'i Ltkrbuck der Geographic (5th ed.,
Hanover, 1882).
lively, 1 although in neither case does the boundary correspond
with the great administrative divisions, and in the Urals it is
impossible to mark out any continuous crest. Reclus, without
attempting to assign any precise position to the boundary line
between the two continents, makes it run through the relatively
low and partly depressed area north of the Caucasus and east of the
Urals. The Manych depression, marking the lowest line of this
area to the north of the Caucasus, has been taken as the boundary
of Europe on the south-cast by Wagner in his edition of Guthe's
Lthrbuch der Geographie,* and the same limit is adopted in
Kirchhoff's LUnderkunde des Erdteils Europa* and Stanford's
Compendium of Geography and Travel. In favour of this limit it
appears that much weight ought to be given to the consideration
put forward by Wagner, that from time immemorial the valleys
on both sides of the Caucasus have formed a refuge for Asiatic
peoples, especially when it is borne in mind that this contention
is reinforced by the circumstance that the steppes to the north
of the Caucasus must interpose a belt of almost unpeopled
territory between the more condensed populations belonging
undoubtedly to Asia and Europe respectively. Continuity of
population would be an argument in favour of assigning the
whole of the Urals to Europe, but here the absence of any break
in such continuity on the east side makes it more difficult to
fix any boundary line outside of that system. Hence on this side
it is perhaps reasonable to attach greater importance to the fact
that the Urals form a boundary not only orographically, but to
some extent also in respect of climate and vegetation, 6 and on
that account to take a line following the crest of the different
sections of that system as the eastern limit between the two
continents.* Obviously, however, any eventual agreement
among geographers on this head must be more or less arbitrary
and conventional. In any case it must be borne in mind that,
whatever conventional boundary be adopted, the use of the name
Europe as so limited must be confined to statements of extent or
implying extent. The facts as to climate, fauna and flora have
no relation to any such arbitrary boundary, and all statistical
statements referring to the countries of Europe must include the
part of Russia beyond the Urals up to the frontier of Siberia.
In such statements, however, in the present article the whole of
the lieutenancy of the Caucasus will be left out of account.
As to extent it is provisionally advisable to give the area of the
continent within different limits.
The following calculations in English square miles (round
numbers) of the area of Europe, within different limits, are given
in Behm and Wagner's Bevdlkerung der Erde, No. viii.
(Gotha, Justus Perthes, 1801), p. 53: Europe, within
the narrowest physical limits (to the crest of the Urals and the
Manych depression, and including the Sea of Azov, but excluding
the Caspian Steppe, Iceland, Novaya Zemlya, Spitsbergen and
Bear Island) 3,570,000 sq. m. The same, with the addition of
the Caspian Steppe up to the Ural river and the Caspian Sea,
3,687,750 sq. m. The same, with the addition of the area between
the Manych depression and the Caucasus, 3,790,500 sq. m.
The same, with the addition of territories east of the Ural Moun-
tains, the portion of the Caspian Steppe east of the Ural river
as far as the Emba, and the southern slopes of the Caucasus,
1 At the summit of each of the Trans-Ural railways (Perm-
Tyumen and Ufa-Chelyabinsk) and that of the road across the
Caucasus from Vladikavkaz to Tiflis, sign-posts, with the name
Europe on one side, Asia on the other, mark this boundary.
1 fifth edition, vol. ii. pp. 24-25. 4 Pt. i. pp. 11-12.
' Griesbach, on the strength of Middendorff s observations,
remarks that, in addition to European fruit trees, oak, maples,
elms, ashes and the black alder do not cross the Urals, while the
lime tree is reduced to the size of a shrub (La Vfgetation du globe,
translated by Tchihatchef, i. p. 181).
' On the history of the boundary between Asia and Europe see
F. G. Hahn in the Mitleilungen des Vereins fur Erdkunde zu Leipzig
(1881), pp. 83-104. Hahn, on the ground that true mountain sys-
tems must be regarded as forming geographical units, pronounces
against the practice of making natural boundaries" run along
mountain crests, and assigns the whole of the Caucasus region to
Europe as all belonging to such a system, but orographically quite
different from the Armenian plateau (p. 103). But surely it is no
leas different from the European plain.
extent.
908
EUROPE
[GEOGRAPHY
Extreme
points.
Coast-
line.
3,988,500 sq. m. The same, with Iceland, Novaya Zemlya,
Spitsbergen and Bear Island, 4,093,000 sq. m. In all these
calculations the islands in the Sea of Marmora, the Canary
Islands, Madeira, and even the Azores, are excluded, but all the
Greek islands of the Aegean Sea and the Turkish islands of
Thasos, Lemnos, Samothrace, Imbros, Hagiostrati or Bozbaba,
and even Tenedos, are included.
The most northern point of the mainland area is Cape Nordkyn
in Norway, 71 6' N.; its most southern, Cape Tarifa in Spain,
in 36 o' N. ; its most western, Cape da Roca in Portugal,
9 27' W. ; and its most eastern, a spot near the north
end of the Ural Mountains, in 66 20' E. A line drawn
from Cape St Vincent in Portugal to the Ural Mountains near
Ekaterinburg has a length of 3293 m., and finds its centre in the
W. of Russian Poland. From the mouth of the Kara to the mouth of
the Ural river the direct distance is 1600 m., but the boundary line
has a length of 2400 m.
Two of the most striking features in the general conformation of
Europe are the great number of its primary and secondary penin-
sulas, and the consequent exceptional development of
its coast-line an irregularity and development which
have been one of the most potent of the physical factors
of its history. The total length of coast-line was estimated by
Reuschle in 1869 at 19,820 m., of which about 3600 were counted as
belonging to the Arctic Ocean, 8390 to the Atlantic, and 7830 to
the Black Sea and Mediterranean. This estimate, however, does not
take into account minor indentations. Reclus's estimate, including
the more important indentations, brings the coast-line up to
26,700 m., and that of Strelbitsky up to 47,790 m. (smaller islands
not included), or I m. of coast for about 75 sq. m. of area. Rohrbach *
calculated the mean distance of all points in the interior of Europe
from the sea at 209 m. as compared with 292 m. in the case of North
America, the continent which ranks next in this respect. It must
be pointed out, however, that such calculations are apt to be very
misleading, inasmuch as the commercial value of the relations thus
determined depends not merely on the existence of natural harbours
or the presence of facilities for the construction of artificial harbours,
but also on the presence of natural facilities for communication
between such harbours and a productive interior.
The consideration just mentioned gives great significance to the
fact that while the coast-line of Europe is in its general features
very much the same as it was at the beginning of the true
Changes historic period, it has undergone a number of important
of coast- i oca i changes, some at least of which are due to causes
' that are at work over very extensive areas. These
changes may be conveniently classified under four heads: the
formation of deltas by the alluvium of rivers; the increase of the
land-surface due to upheaval; the advance of the sea by reason of
its own erosive activity; and the advance of the sea through the
subsidence of the land. The actual form of the coast, however, is
frequently due to the simultaneous or successive action of several
of the causes sea and river and subterranean forces helping or
resisting each other. That changes in the coast-line on the shores
of the Gulf of Bothnia have taken place within historical times
through elevation of the land seems now to be generally admitted.
The commune of Hvittisbofjard north of Bjorneborg on the Finland
side of that gulf gained about 2j sq. m. between 1784 and 1894, an
amount greater than could be accounted for by the most liberal
estimates of alluvial deposit, and the most careful investigation
seems to show that on the Swedish coast of that gulf a rise has taken
place in recent years on the east coast of Sweden from about
57 20' N. increasing in amount towards the north up to 62 20' N.,
where it reaches an average of about two-fifths of an inch annually. 2
Our information is naturally most complete in regard to the Mediter-
ranean coasts, as these were the best known to the first book-writing
nations. There we find that all the great rivers have been success-
fully at work more especially the Rhone, the Ebro and the Po. The
activity of the Rhone, indeed, as a maker of new land, is astonishing.
The tower of St Louis, erected on the coast in 1737, is now up-
wards of four miles inland; the city of Aries is said to be nearly
twice as far from the sea as it was in the Roman period. The present
St Gilles was probably a harbour when the Greeks founded Mar-
seilles, and Aigues Mortes, which took its place in the middle ages,
was no longer on the coast in the time of St Louis (i3th century),
but Narbonne continued to be a seaport till the I4th century. At
the mouth of the Herault, according to Fischer, 8 the coast advances
at least two metres or about 7 ft. annually ; and it requires great
labour to keep the harbour of Cette from being silted up. The Po
is even more efficient than the Rhone, if the size of its basm be taken
into account. Ravenna, which was at one time an insular city like
Venice, has now a wide stretch of downs partly covered with pine
forest between it and the sea. Aquileia, one of the greatest seaports
1 Petermanns Mitteilungen (1890), p. 91.
1 See Supan's Physische Erdkunde, 4th ed., pp. 376-377, and the
authorities there quoted.
3 " Kiistenveranderungen im Mittelmeergebiet," in Ztschr. der
Ces. fiir Erdkunde zu Berlin (1878).
of the Mediterranean in the early centuries of the Christian era, is
now 7 m. from the coast, and Adria, which gives its name to the sea,
is 13. The islands on which Venice is built have sunk about 3 ft.
since the i6th century: the pavement of the square of St Mark's
has frequently required to be raised, and the boring of a well has
shown that a layer of vegetable remains, indicating a flora identical
with that observed at present on the neighbouring mainland, exists
at a depth of 400 ft. below the alluvial deposits. A little to the south
of Rovigno on the Istrian coast on the opposite side of the Adriatic
a diver found at the depth of about 85 ft. the remains of a town,
which has been identified with the island town of Cissa, of which
nothing had been known after the year 679.* At Zara ancient
pavements and mosaics are found below the sea-level, and the
district at the mouth of the Narenta has been changed into a swamp
by the advance of the sea. A process of elevation, on the other hand,
is indicated along nearly all the coasts of Sicily, at the southern end
of Sardinia, the east of Corsica, and perhaps in the neighbourhood
of Nice, while the west coast of Italy from the latitude of Rome to
the southern shores of the Gulf of Salerno has undergone consider-
able oscillations of level within historical times. About the time
of the settlement of the Greeks the coast stood at least 20 ft. above
the level of the present day. Depression began in Roman times,
though then the land was still 16 ft. higher than now. A more rapid
depression began in the middle ages, so that the sea-level rose from
18 to 20 ft. above the present zero, and the coast began gradually
to rise again at the close of the 1 5th century. 6 Passing eastward to
the Balkan peninsula, we find considerable changes on the coast-
line of Greece; but as they are only repetitions on a smaller scale
of the phenomena already described, it is sufficient to indicate the
Gulf of Arta and the mouth of the Spercheios as two of the more
important localities. The latter especially is interesting to the
historian as well as to the geologist, as the river has greatly altered
the physical features of one of the world's most famous scenes the
battlefield of Thermopylae.
If we proceed to the Atlantic seaboard we observe, as we might
expect, great modifications in the embouchures of the Garonne
and the Loire, but by far the most remarkable variations of sea and
land have taken place in the region extending from the south of
Belgium in the neighbourhood of the Straits of Dover to the mouth
of the Elbe and the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein. Here there
has been a prolonged struggle between man and nature, in which
on the whole nature has hitherto had the best of the battle. While,
as is well known, much land below sea-level in the Low Countries
has been protected against the sea by dikes and reclaimed, and the
coast-line has been, on the whole, advanced between the Elbe and
the Eider, 6 there has been a great loss of land in the interior of Holland
since the beginning of the Christian era, and on the balance a large
loss of land north of the Eider since the first half of the I3th century. 7
In the 1st century A.D. the Zuider Zee appears to have been repre-
sented only by a comparatively small inland lake, the dimensions
of which were increased by different inroads of the sea, the last and
greatest of which occurred in 1395. Among the local changes of
European significance within this area may be mentioned the silting
up towards the end of the I5th century of the channel known as the
Zwin running north-eastwards from Bruges, which through that
cause lost its shipping and in the end all its former renown as a seat
of commerce.
The Baltic shores of Germany display the same phenomena of
local gain and loss. In the western section inroads of the sea have
been extensive: the island of Riigen would no longer serve for
the disembarkation of an army like that of Gustavus Adolphus;
Wollin and Usedom are growing gradually less; large stretches of
the mainland are fringed with submerged forests; and at intervals
the sites of well-known villages are occupied by the sea. Towards
the east the great rivers are successfully working in the opposite
direction. In the Gulf of Danzig the alluvial deposits of the Vistula
cover an area of 615 sq. m.; in the I3th century the knights of
Marienburg enclosed with dikes about 350 sq. m. ; and an area of
about 70 sq. m. was added in the course of the I4th. The Memel is
silting up the Kurisches Haff, which, like the Frisches Haff, is
separated from the open sea by a line of dunes comparable with
those of the Landes in France. The so-called strand or coast-lines
at various altitudes round the Scandinavian peninsula, though
belonging for the most part to glacial times, speak also of relative
changes of level in the post-glacial period.
The changes briefly indicated above take place so gradually for
the most part that it requires careful observation and comparison
of data to establish their reality. It is very different v kanoe
with those changes which we usually ascribe to volcanic "//""I^.
agency. Besides the great outlying ' hearth " of Iceland, jtes'
there are four centres of volcanic activity in Europe
all of them, however, situated in the Mediterranean. Vesuvius on
the western coast of Italy, Etna in the island of Sicily, and Stromboli
4 See Mitteil. der Wiener Geog. Gesellschaft (1890), p. 333.
6 See R. T. GUnther, Contributions to the Study of Earth-Movements
in the Bay of Naples (Oxford, 1903), and " Earth-Movements in the
Bay of Naples," in the Geog. Journ. vol. xxii. pp. 121-149, 269-285.
' See Petermanns Mitteil. (1891), PI. 8. ' Ib. (1893), PI. 12.
V C 15 D 10 E
1} J^ongit.East 5 of Grcm II
Drwn end F.njraved by JUBUU Prrthci
~
GEOGRAPHY]
EUROPE
909
in the Lipuri group, have been familiarly known from the earliest
historic t inn-*; but the fourth has only attracted particular attention
since the 1 8th cent ury. It lies in the Archipelago, on the sou them edge
of the Cyclades, near the little group of islets called Santorin. The
region was evidently highly volcanic at an earlier periixl, for Mil...
one of the nearest of the islands, is simply a ruined crater still present-
ing smoking solfataras anil other trace* of former .trinity. The
devastations produced by the eruptions of the European volcanoes
are usually routined within very narrow limits; and it is only at
long intervals that any part of the continent is \ i-it. .1 by a really
formidable earthquake. The only part of Europe, however, for
which there are no recorded earthquakes is central and northern
Russia; and the Alps and Carpathians, especially the intra-Car-
pathian area of depression, Greece, Italy, especially Calabria and
the adjoining part of Sicily, the Sierra Nevada ami the Pyrenees,
the Lisbon district and the rift valley of the upper Rhine (between
the Vosgr* and the Black Forest) are all regions specially liable to
earthquake shocks and occasionally to shocks of considerable in-
tensity. One well-marked seismic line extends along the south side
of the Alps from Lake Garda by Udinc and Gorz to Fiume, and
another forms a curve convex towards the south-east (Kissing first
through Calabria, then through the north-cast of Sicily to the south
of the Peloritan Mountains. 1 Of all European earthquakes in modern
times, the most destructive are that of Lisbon in 1755, and that of
Calabria in 1 783 ; the devastation produced by the former has become
a classical instance of such disasters in popular literature, and by
the Utter 100,000 people are said to have lost their lives. Calabria
again suffered severely in 1865, 1870, 1894, 1905 and 1908.
If the European mountains arc arranged according to their
greatest elevations, they rank as follows: (i) the Swiss Alps, with
u^ t f their highest peaks above 15,000 ft.; (2) the Sierra
Nevada, the Pyrenees, and Etna, about 11,000 ft.; (3)
the Apennines.! he Corsica n Mountains, the Carpathians.thc Balkans,
and the Despoto Dagh, from 8000 to 9000; (4) the Guadarrama, the
Scandinavian Alps, the Dinaric Alps, the Greek Mountains, and the
Cevennes, between 6000 and 8000; (5) the mountains of Auvergne,
the Jura, the Riesengebirge, the mountains of Sardinia, Majorca,
Minorca, and the Crimea, the Black Forest, the Vosges, and the
Scottish Highlands, from 4000 to 6000.
The following estimates are based on those contained in the fifth
edition, by Dr Hermann Wagner, of Guthe's Lehrbuch der Ceo-
frapkie. In the original the figures are given in German sq. m. and
in sq. kilometres in round numbers, and the equivalents here given
in English sq. m. are similarly treated :
Sq. m.
The great European plain in its widest sense . 2,660,000
The same exclusive of inland seas . . . 2,300,000
The same exclusive of the Scandinavian and
British lowlands. ... . 2,125,000
All other European lowlands . . . 385,000
Tht Huntartan plain . . . . 38,000
Tke Po plain . . . . . 21,000
The Scandinavian highlands . . . 190,000
The Ural Mountains ... . 127,000
The Alps. .... . . 85,000
The Carpathians .... . . 72,000
The Apennines .... . . 42,500
The Pyrenees .... . 21,500
Several estimates have been made of the average elevation of the
continent, but it is enough to give here the main results. In the
following list, where a conversion from metres into feet has been
"e of 5 ft. has been given: Humboldt,
,. Lapparent, 1 960 ft. ; Murray, 4 939 ft.;
ft.; von Tillo,* 1040 it.; Heiderich, 7 1230 ft.; Penck, 1
meat of
iht high-
necessary, the nearest multiple of 5 ft. has been given: Humboldt,
675ft-: Leipoldt,975ft.: De '
Sujpan,' 950 ft. ; von Tillo, I
1085 ft. The exceptionally high estimate of Heiderich is due to the
fact that by him Transcaucasia and the islands of Novaya Zemlya,
Spitsbergen and Iceland are reckoned as included in Europe.
Of more geographical significance than these estimates are the
facts with regard to the arrangement of the highlands of the con-
tinent. It is indeed this arrangement combined with the
form of the coast-line which has indirectly given to Europe
its individuality. Three points have to be noted under
this head: (i) the fact that the highlands of Europe
are so distributed as to allow of the penetration of westerly
winds far to the east ; (2) the fact that the principal series of high-
lands has a direction from east to west, Europe in this point resem-
bling Asia but differing from North America; and (3) that in
Europe the mountain systems belonging to the series of highlands
1 See Ed. Sues*. The Face of the Earth, translated by H. B. C.
SolUs. vol. i. (Oxford, 1904); I. Milne, Seismology (London, 1886);
R. Homes, Erdbebenkunde (Leipzig, 1893).
Die miUlere ftoke Kuropai (Plauen, 1874).
Trailf de gfolotie (Paris, 1883). Scot. Ceog. Mag. (1888), p.23-
Petermaani \fitltdunfen (1880). p. 17.
Tram. (Jtftitiya) Imp. Rus. Geog. Soc. (1889), p. 113.
Die miltleren ErketmngsTrrhdllnii$e der Erdoberflache, pt. i., in
Penck's Geofrapkiscke Abhandlungen. vol. v. (Vienna, 1891).
iforpkoingie der Erdoberflache, vol. i.
N.une of River.
Length in English Miles.
Area of Basin
in sq. m.
Strelliitsky.
(11 her
Authorities.
Strclbitsky.
Volga
1 >.uuibe
Ural
Dnieper (Dnyepr) .
Kama
Don (Russia) .
I'echora .
1977 '
1644
1446
1064
984
980
95
709
706
646
612
596
596
566
55
543
535
530
496
487
485
470
470
447
438
437
434
428
425
424
45
387
39
378
374
368
358
355
354
342
328
328
326
3I S
Jrf
308
300
300
272
270
268
268
268
268
255
249
243
242
235
224
218
218
215
212
212
209
203
189
176
159
2107 '
I477 1
1328'
IMS'
1123"
1024'
914
835 1
646'
680
507'
613'
57'
590'
537 s
477'
509*
563 s
404'
503'
447'
464
407'
352;
45'
338'
267
371'
305'
285
45 '
275|
444 1
305 1
295'
394*
563,300
315.435
96,35<J
203,460
202,615
166,125
127,225
63,265
93.205
29.675
55.340
73.905
50,555
31.865'
59.350
46,755
37.595
12,740
30,410
37.890
36,705
32,975
38,580 '
38,180
33.535
34.965
'5.745
26,225
30,030
I7.'50
21,490
23,120
6,975
46,805
2 1, 580 '
10,330
141.075
19.925
28,920 '
32,745
14.325
17.425
15.930
22,460
25,300 '
9,095
10,950
10,600
20,790
7,620 '
15.005
13.045
9.825
8,295
10,860
19,090
7,700
5.200
15.715
4.520
7,760
9.295
8,970
22,910
6,245
4.830
6,135
5.910
37.820
15.200
Rhine
Oka
Dniester (Dnycstr)
Elbe . . . . .
Vistula
Vyatka
Tagus
Theiss (Tisza) .
Loire
Save
Meuse
Mczen
Donets . . . . .
Douro
Diina (S. Dvina) . .
Ebro
Rhone
Desna . . .'.-.
Nicmen (Nyeman)
Drave
Bug (Southern)
Seine
Oder . . . . .
Kuban
Khoper .....
Maros . . . .
Pripet . . . . .
Guadalquivir . .
I'ruth (Prutu) . . .
Northern Dvina . .
Weser-Werra . ,
Po
Garonne-Gironde .
Vetluga
Pinega
Glommcn ....
Bug (Western) .
Guadiana ....
Aluta (Alt, QUO) . .
Moscl ...
Main
Maritsa
Jucar
Mologa
Tornea
Inn
Sa6ne
Moksha
Liusna
Mur
Morava, Servian .
Klar
Voronezh ....
Berezina ....
Saale
Onega
Vag (Waag) . . .
Dema
San
Moskva
Western Manych .
Klyazma ....
1 The equivalent of the figures given in Superficie de I' Europe. A
later measurement by Strclbitsky yielded a result equal to 2215
English miles.
1 General von Tillo, in Transactions (Itvestiya) Imp. Rus. Ceog. Soc.
vol. xix. (1883), pp. 160-161.
' Dr Al. Bludau in Petermanni Mitteilungen (1898), pp. 185-187,
has given new calculations of the areas of the basins of certain
European rivers, namely, the Tagus, 31,250 sq. m. ; Ebro, 32,810
sq. m.; Guadalquivir, 21,620 sq. m.; Po, 28,800 sq. m.; Guadiana,
25,810 so. m.; and Jucar, 8245 sq. m.
4 St Martin, Diet, de g(og. unit.
gio
EUROPE
[GEOGRAPHY
referred to not only have more or less well-marked breaks between
them, but are themselves so notched by passes and cut by transverse
valleys as to present great facilities for crossing in proportion to their
average altitude. The first and second of these points have special
importance with reference to the climate and will accordingly be
considered more fully under that head. The second is also of im-
portance with reference to the means of communication, to which
the third also refers, and detailed consideration of these points in
that relation will be reserved for that heading. Here, however, it
may be noted that in Europe the distribution of the natural resources
for the maintenance of the inhabitants is such that, if we leave out
of account Russia, which is almost entirely outside of the series
of highlands running east and west, the population north of the moun-
tains is roughly about 50% greater than that south of the mountains,
whereas in Asia the population north of the east and west highland
barrier is utterly insignificant as compared with that to the south.
From the table given on p. 909 (col. l) it will be seen that the most
extensive of the highland areas of Europe is that of Scandinavia,
which has a general trend from south-south-west to north-north-
east, and is completely detached by seas and plains from the highland
area to the south. There are other completely detached highland
areas in Iceland, the British Isles, the Ural Mountains, the small
Yaila range in the south of the Crimea, and the Mediterranean
islands. The connected series of highlands is that which extends
from the Iberian peninsula to the Black Sea
stretching in the middle of Germany north-
wards to about 52" N. In the Iberian peninsula
we have the most marked example of the table-
land form in Europe, and these tablelands
are bounded on the north by the Cantabrian
Mountains, which descend to the sea, and! the
Pyrenees, which, except at their extremities,
cut off the Iberian peninsula from the adjoin-
ing country more extensively than any other
chain in the continent. Between the foot-hills
of the Pyrenees, however, and those of the
central plateau of France the ground sinks in
the Passage of Naurouse or Gap of Carcassonne
to a well-marked gap establishing easy com-
munication between the valley of the Garonne
and the lower part of that of the Rhone. The
highlands in the north spread northwards and
then north-eastwards till they join the Vosges,
but sink in elevation towards the north-east
so as to allow of several easy crossings. East
of the Vosges the Rhine valley forms an
important trough running north and south
through the highlands of western Germany.
To the south of the Vosges again undulating
country of less than 1500 ft. in elevation, the
well-known Burgundy Gate or Gap of Belfort,
constitutes a well-marked break between those
mountains and the Jura, and establishes easy
communication between the Rhine and the
Sa6ne-Rhone valleys. The latter valley divides
in the clearest manner the highlands of central
France from both the Alps and the Jura, while
between these last two systems there lies the
wedge of the Swiss midlands contracting south-
westwards to a narrow but important gap at
the outlet of the Lake of Geneva. Between
the Alps and the mountains of the Italian
and Balkan peninsulas the orographical lines
of demarcation are less distinct, but on the
north the valley of the Danube mostly forms
a wide separation between the Alps and the
mountains of the Balkan peninsula on the
south and the highlands of Bohemia and
Moravia, the Carpathians and the Transyl-
vanian Alps on the north. The valleys of the
Eger and the Elbe form distinct breaks in the
environment of Bohemia, and the Sudetes on
the north-east of Bohemia and Moravia
The observations on the temperature of European rivers have been
collected and discussed by Dr Adolf E. Forster. 2 He finds that the
dominant factor in determining that temperature is the temperature
of the air above, but that rivers are divisible into four groups with
respect to the relation between these temperatures at different
seasons of the year. These groups are rivers flowing from glaciers, in
which the temperature is warmer than the air in winter, colder in
summer; rivers flowing from lakes, characterized by peculiarly
high winter temperatures, in consequence of which the mean tem-
perature for the year is always above that of the air ; rivers flowing
from springs, which, at least near their source, are more rapidly
cooled by low than warmed by high air temperatures; and rivers
of the plains, which have a higher mean temperature than the air in
all months of the year.
In various parts of Europe, more particularly in calcareous regions,
such as the Jura, the Gausses in the south-east of France, and the
Karst in the north-west of the Balkan peninsula, there are numerous
subterranean or partly subterranean rivers. Several of the more
important rivers are of very irregular flow, and some are subject to
really formidable floods. This is particularly the case with rivers a
large part of whose basin is made up of crystalline or other impervious
rocks with steep slopes, like those of the Loire in France and the
Ebro in Spain. The Danube and its tributaries, the great rivers of
Germany, above all eastern Germany, and those of Italy, are also
Name of Lake and Country.
Height
above
Sea.
Area.
Greatest
Depth.
Mean
Depth.
Volume.
Millions
of Cub. Ft.
Ft.
Sq. m.
Ft.
Ft.
Ladoga, Russia ....
15
7004
730
Onega, ....
US
3765
About 1 200
Vener, Sweden ....
H5
2149
280
Chudskoye or Peipus, Russia
100
1357 3
90
Vetter, Sweden ....
290
733
415
Saima, Russia ....
255
680
185
Pajane,
255
608
Enare, ....
490
549
Segozero, ....
481
140
Malar, Sweden ....
i-6
449
170
Byelo-Ozero, Russia
Pielis, Russia ....
400
305
434
422
35
Topozero, Russia
411
Ulea, . . . .
375
380
60
Ilmen, ,, ...
107
358
Vigozero, ...
332
Imandra, ...
329
Balaton, Hungary .
350
266
13
Geneva, France and Switzer-
land
I22O
225
1015
500
3,140,000
Kovdozero, Russia .
225
Constance, Germany and
Switzerland ....
1295
208
825
295
1,711,000
Hjelmar, Sweden
79
187
60
Neajjh, Ireland ....
48
153
H3
Kubmskoye, Russia
152
Mjosen, Norway
395
152
1485
Garda, Italy and Austria .
215
143
"35
445
1,757,000
Torne-trask, Sweden
1140
139
Neusiedler-see, Hungary .
370
137
13
Scutari, Turkey
20
About 130
33
"iaj
45,900
Siljan, Sweden ....
123
Virzjarvi, Russia
"5
107
24
Seliger, ,, ...
825
100
105
Stor Afvan, Sweden
137
92
925
Yalpukh, Russia
89
Neuchatel, Switzerland
1415
85
500
210
500,000
Ylikitkakarvi, Russia .
680
85
3
Maggiore, Italy and Switzer-
land
645
82
1 220
575
1,316,000
Corrib, Ireland ....
3
7i
152
Como, Italy
655
56
1360
even more clearly divided from the Carpathians by the valley of
the upper Oder, the Moravian Gate, as it is called, which forms the
natural line of communication between the south-east of Prussia
and Vienna.
An estimate has been made by Strelbitsky of the length and of
the area of the basins of all the principal rivers of Europe. In the
. table on p. 909 all the estimates given without any special
authority are based on Strelbitsky's figures, but it should
be mentioned that the estimates of length made by him evidently
do not take into account minor windings, and are therefore generally
less than those given by others. The authorities are separately cited
for the originals of all other figures given in the table.*
1 In other parts of this work areas of river-basins and lakes, and
other measurements, may be observed to conflict in some degree
with those given here. Various authorities naturally differ, both
in methods of estimating and in standards of precision.
notorious for their inundations. In southern Europe, where the
summers are nearly rainless, most of the rivers disappear altogether
in that season.
For many European lakes, especially the smaller ones, estimates
have been made of the mean depth and the volume. A list of all
the European lakes for which the altitude, extent, and , akes aad
greatest depth could be ascertained, compiled by Dr K.
Peucker, is published in the Geog. Zeitschrift (1896), pp. "
606-616, where estimates of the mean depth and the volume are also
given where procurable. The table given above, comprising only
the larger lakes, is mainly based on this list, where the original author-
ities are mentioned. The figures entered in the table not taken
2 Penck's Geographische Abhandlungen, vol. v. pt. tv. (Vienna,
1894); noticed in Geog. Journ. vol. vi. p. 264.
3 Including L. Pskov as well as the connecting arm known as
Teploye.
GEOLOGY]
EUROPE
911
from thi fet are after Strelbitslcy. the Gtot. VnherstUe of V. de
St Mania, or, in the case of Swedish lake*, Trom the official hand-
book of Sweden.'
The Alpine lakes break up into a southern and northern sub-
division the former consisting of the Lago Maggiore, and the lakes of
Lugano and Como, Lago disco, and Lago diGarda, all connected
by affluent* with the system of the Po; and the latter the Lake
ol Geneva threaded by the Rhone, Lakes Constance, Zurich, Neu-
chatel. Bid and other Swiss lakes belonging to the basin of the
Rhine, and a few of minor importance belonging to the Danube.
The north Russian lakes, Ladoga, Onega, &c., are mainly noticeable
as the largest members of what in some respects is the most remark-
able system of lakes in the continent the Kinno- Russian, which
consist* of an almost counties* number of comparatively small
irregular basins formed in the surface of a granitic plateau. In
Finland proper they occupy no less than a twelfth of the total area.
A few of the number are very shallow. The Neusiedlcr See, for
example (the Peiso Lac us of the Latins and Fertd-tava of the Hun-
garians), completely dried up in 1693, 1738 and 1864, and left its bed
covered for the most part with a deposit of salt.' Lakes Copaia in
Boeotia and Fucino Celano in Italy have been entirely turned into
dry land. The progress of agriculture has greatly diminished the
extent of marsh landin Europe. The Minsk marshes in Russia form
the largest area of this character still left, and on these largeencroach-
ments are gradually being made. Extensive marshes in northern
Italy have Men completely drained. The partial draining of the
Pomptine marshes in Italy made Pope Pius VII. famous in the l8th
century-, and further reclamation works are still in progress there
and elsewhere in the same country. (G. G. C.)
The geological history' of Europe* is, to a large extent, a history
of the formation and destruction of successive mountain chains.
Four times a great mountain range has been raised across
** la r- the area which now is Europe. Three times the mountain
range has given way ; portions have sunk beneath the sea, and have
been covered by more recent sediments, while other portions re-
mained standing and now rise as isolated blocks above the later beds
which surround them. The last of the mountain ranges still stands,
and is known under the names of the Alps, the Carpathians, the
Balkans, the Caucasus, &c., but the work of destruction has
already begun, and gaps have been formed by the collapse of
pans of the chain. The Carpathians were once continuous with the
Alps, and the Caucasus was probably connected with the Balkans
across the cite of the Black Sea.
These mountain chains were not raised by direct uplift. They
ffiif of crumpled and folded strata, and arc, in fact, wrinkles in
the earth's outer crust, formed by lateral compression, like the
puckers which appear in a tablecloth when we push it forward
against a book or other heavy object lying upon it. How the lateral
or tangential pressures originated is still matter of controversy, but
the usually accepted explanation is as follows. The interior of the
earth in cooling contracts more rapidly than the exterior, and, if no
other change took place, the outer crust would be left as a hollow
sphere without any internal support. But the materials of which
it is composed are not strong enough to bear its enormous weight,
and, like an arch which is too weak in its abutments, it collapses
upon the interior core. Where the crust is rigid it fractures, as an
ordinary arch would fracture; and some portions fall inward, while
other parts may even be wedged a little outward. Where, on the
other hand, the crust is made of softer rock, it crumples and folds,
and a mountain chain is produced. Such a mountain chain, for want
of a better term, is called a folded mountain chain. The folding is
most intense where a flexible portion of the crust lies next to a more
rigid pan. Where the folding has occurred, the rocks which were
once comparatively soft become hard and rigid, and the next series
of wrinkles will usually be formed beyond the limits of the old one.
This is what has happened in the European area.
The oldest mountain chain lay in the extreme north-west of
Europe, and its relics arc seen in the outer Hebrides, the Lofoten
Islands and the north of Norway. The rocks of this ancient chain
have since been convened into gneiss, and they were folded and
denuded before the deposition of the oldest known fossilifcrous
sediments. The mountain system must therefore have been formed
in Pre-Cambrian times, and it has been called by Marcel Bcrtrand
the Huronian chain. It is probable that a great land-mass lay
towards the north-west; but in the sea which certainly existed
south-east of the chain, the Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian beds
were deposited. In Russia and South Sweden these beds still lie
flat and undisturbed; but in Norway, Scotland, the Lake District,
North Wales and the north of Ireland they were crushed against the
north-western continent and were not only intensely folded but
1 Sweden, ill People and its Industry (Stockholm, 1904).
' See Ascherson, " Die Austrocknung des Neusiedler Sees," in
Z. der Get. fir Erdkunde tu Berlin (1865).
SeeSoess, The Face of Ike Eartk; M. Bcrtrand, " Sur la distribu-
tion geographique des roches eruptive* en Europe," Bull. Soc. Ciol.
France, ser. 3, vol. xvi. (1887-1888), pp. 573-617. A translation of
a lecture by Suess, giving a short summary of his views on the
structure of Europe, will be found in the Canadian Record of Science,
vol. vii. pp. 235-346.
were pushed forward over the old rocks of the Huronian chain. Thus
was formed the Caledonian mountain system of Ed. Suess, in which
the folds run from south-west to north-east. It was raised at the
close of the Silurian period.
Then followed, in northern Europe, a continental period. By the
elevation of the Caledonian chain the northern land-mass had grown
southward and now extended as far as the Bristol Channel, upon
it the Old Red Sandstone was laid down in inland seas or lakes,
while farther south contemporaneous deposits were formed in the
open sea.
During the earlier part of the Carboniferous period the sea spread
over the southern shores of the northern continent; but later the
whole area again became land and the Coal Measures of northern
Europe were laid down. Towards the close of the Carboniferous
period the third great mountain chain was formed. It lay to the
south of the Caledonian chain, and its northern margin stretched
from the south of Ireland through South Wales, the north of France
and the south of Belgium, and was continued round the Harz and
the ancient rocks of Bohemia, and possibly into the south of Russia.
It is along this northern margin, where the folded beds have been
thrust over the rocks which lay to the north, that the coalfields
of Dover and of Belgium occur. The general direction of the folds
is approximately from west to east ; but the chain consisted of two
arcs, the western of which is called by Suess the Armorican chain
and the eastern the Variscian. The two arcs together, which were
undoubtedly formed at the same period, have been named by
Bcrtrand the Hercynian chain. Everywhere the chief folding seems
to have occurred before the deposition of the highest beds of the
Upper Carboniferous, which lie unconformably upon the folded older
beds. The Hercynian chain appears to have been of considerable
breadth, at least in western Europe, for the Palaeozoic rocks of Spain
and Portugal are thrown into folds which have the same general
direction and which were formed at approximately the same period.
I n eastern Europe the evidence is less complete, because the Hercynian
folds are buried beneath more recent deposits and have in some cases
been masked by the superposition of a later scries of folds.
The formation of this Carboniferous range was followed in northern
Europe by a second continental period somewhat similar to that of
the Old Red Sandstone, but the continent extended still farther to
the south. The Permian and Triassic deposits of England and Ger-
many were laid down in inland seas or upon the surface of the land
itself. But southern Europe was covered by the open sea, and here,
accordingly, the contemporaneous deposits were marine.
The Jurassic and Cretaceous periods were free from any violent
folding or mountain building, and the sea again spread over a large
part of the northern continent. There were indeed several oscil-
lations, but in general the greater part of southern and central Europe
lay beneath the waters of the ocean. Some of the fragments of tne
Hercynian chain still rose as islands above the waves, and at certain
periods there seems to have been a more or less complete barrier
between the waters which covered northern Europe and those which
lay over the Mediterranean region. Thus, while the estuarine
deposits of the Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous were laid
down in England and Germany, the purely marine Tithonian
formation, with its peculiar fauna, was deposited in the south ; and
while the Chalk was formed in northern Europe, the Hippurite
limestone was laid down in the south.
The Tertiary period saw fundamental changes in the geography of
Europe. The formation of the great mountain ranges of the south,
the Alpine system of Suess, perhaps began at an earlier date, but it
was in the Eocene and Miocene periods that the chief part of the
elevation took place. Arms of the sea extended up the valley of the
Rhone and around the northern margin of the Alps, and also spread
over the plains of Hungary and of southern Russia. Towards the
middle of the Miocene period some of these arms were completely
cut off from the ocean and large deposits of salt were formea, as at
Wieliczka. At a later period south-eastern Europe was covered by
a series of extensive lagoons, and the waters of these lagoons gradu-
ally became brackish, and then fresh, before the area was finally
converted into dry land. Great changes also took place in the
Mediterranean region. The Black Sea, the Aegean, the Adriatic and
the Tyrrhenian Sea were all formed at various times during the
Tertiary period, and the depression of these areas seems to be closely
connected with the elevation of the neighbouring mountain chains:
Exactly what was happening in northern Europe during these
great changes in the south it is not easy to say. The basaltic flows
of the north of Ireland, the western islands of Scotland, the Fat-roe
Islands and Iceland are mere fragments of former extensive plateaus.
No sign of marine Tertiary deposits of earlier age than Pliocene
has been found in this northern part of Europe, and on the other
hand plant remains are abundant in the sands and clays interbedded
with the basalts. It is probable, therefore, that in Eocene times a
great land-mass lay to the north-west of Europe, over which the
basalt lavas flowed, and that the formation of this part of the
Atlantic and perhaps of the North Sea did not take place until the
Miocene period.
At a later date the climate, for some reason which has not yet been
fully explained, grew colder over the whole of Europe, and the
northern part was covered by a great ice-sheet which extended south-
ward nearly as far as lat. 50" N., and has left its marks over the
912
EUROPE
[METEOROLOGY
whole of the northern part of the continent. With the final melting
and disappearance of the ice-sheet, the topography of Europe
assumed nearly its present form, and man came upon the scene.
Minor changes, such as the separation of Great Britain from the
continent, may have occurred at a later date; but since the Glacial
period there have, apparently, been no fundamental modifications in
the configuration of Europe.
The elevation of each of the great mountain systems already
described was accompanied by extensive eruptions of volcanic rocks,
and the sequence appears to have been similar in every case. The
volcanoes of the Mediterranean are the last survivors of the great
eruptions which accompanied the elevation of the Alpine mountain
system. (P. LA.)
In western Europe by far the most prevalent wind is the S.W. or
W.S.W. It represents 25% of the annual total; while the N. is
only 6% the N.E. 8, the E. 9, the S. 13, the W. 17 and
Winds. tne ]Sf.\v. ii. Of the summer total it represents 22%,
while the N. is 9, N.E. 8, E. 7, S.E. 7, W. 21 and N.W. 17. In
south-eastern Europe, on the other hand, the prevailing winds are
from the N. and E. the E. having the preponderance in winter and
autumn. 1 Of local winds the most remarkable are the fohn, in the
AJps, distinguished for its warmth and dryness; the Rotenturm
wind of Transylvania, which has similar characteristics; the bora
of the Upper Adriatic, so noticeable for its violence; the mistral
of southern France; the etesian winds of the Mediterranean; and
the sirocco, which proves so destructive to the southern vegetation.
Though it is only at comparatively rare intervals that the winds
attain the development of a hurricane, the destruction of life and
property which they occasion, both by sea and land, is in the aggre-
gate of no small moment. About six or seven storms from the west
pass over the continent every winter, usually appearing later in the
southern districts, such as Switzerland or the Adriatic, than in the
northern districts, as Scotland and Denmark.
The great determining factors of the climate of Europe are these.
The northern borders of the continent are within the Arctic Circle;
the most southern points of the mainland are 13$ or
Climate. more nort h o f the Tropic of Cancer; to the east extends
for about 3000 m. the continuous land surface of Asia ; to the west
lie the waters of the north Atlantic, which penetrate in great inland
seas to the north and south of the great European peninsula; the
prevailing winds in western Europe as already stated are more or
less south-westerly; and the arrangement of the highlands is such
as to allow of the penetration of winds with a westerly element in
their direction far to the east. The first two of these factors are not
distinguishing influences. They affect the climate of Europe in the
same manner as they do that of any other land surface in the same
latitudes.
The remaining factors, however, are of the highest importance.
It is to them in fact that Europe owes in a very large measure
those physical conditions which are the basis of its recognition
as a separate continent. In estimating the value of those factors
one must bear in mind, first, that the waters of the north Atlantic
are exceptionally warm, especially on the European side of the
ocean. The Gulf Stream carries a large body of warm water
northwards to near the parallel of 40 N., and to the north of the
Gulf Stream prevailing south-westerly winds, especially during the
winter months, drift onwards to the western and northern shores of
Europe, even as far east as Spitsbergen, large bodies of water of an
exceptionally high temperature. Secondly, one must bear in mind
that these relatively high temperatures over the ocean promote
evaporation and thus favour the presence of a relatively large amount
of water-vapour in the air over those parts of the ocean which
adjoin the continent; and, thirdly, that, as the winds are the sole
means of carrying water-vapour from one part of the earth's surface
to the other, and the sole means of carrying heat and cold from the
ocean to the land, the prevailing south-westerly winds are allowed
by the superficial configuration to bring a relatively high rainfall
and a relatively large amount of heat in winter to land farther in the
interior than in any corresponding latitudes. During the summer the
winds referred to have a cooling effect, but not to the same degree
as those of winter tend to raise the temperature. From the point
of view just indicated the only part of the world that is fairly com-
parable with Europe is the west of North America ; but, as there the
outline and superficial configuration are quite different, the oceanic
influences affect only a narrow strip of seaboard and not any extent
of land which could be regarded as of continental rank. It is owing
to these influences that in the greater part of Europe there is a
more or less continuous population dependent on agriculture. On
the east side of Europe, again, the existence of the continent of Asia
has a marked effect on the climate which also aids in giving to Europe
its individual character. It is owing to that circumstance that the
south-east of the continent, which has temperatures as favourable
to agriculture as the corresponding latitudes of eastern Asia or
eastern North America, is without the copious rains which make
those temperatures so valuable, and hence forms part of the desert
that divides the populations of Europe and Asia.
i Vesselovski, as quoted by Voeikov, Die atmosphdrische Circula-
tion.
On the local distribution of rainfall and temperature, the physical
configuration of the continent has very marked effects. Here as
elsewhere there is a striking difference both in the amount
of rainfall and the temperature on the weather and lee
sides of mountains and even low hills. But with reference
to this it should not be forgotten that water-vapour, heat and cold
may be carried farther into the land by winds blowing in a different
direction from that of those by which they were introduced from the
ocean, and, with reference to rainfall, that the condensation of
water-vapour may be brought out by different winds from those
by which the water-vapour was brought to the area in which it is
condensed. Water-vapour that may have been introduced by a
south-westerly wind may be driven against a mountain side by a
northerly or easterly wind, and thus cause rain on the northern or
eastern side of the mountain. Still, any rainfall map of Europe
indicates clearly enough the origin of the water-vapour to which the
rainfall is due. Such a map, taking into account the results of more
detailed investigations of different parts of the continent, is that
of Joseph Reger. 2 This map shows the rainfall or rather total
precipitation in seven tints at intervals of 250 mm. (about 10 in.)
up to loco mm., and beyond that at intervals of 500 mm. up to
2000 mm. In some parts of the continent the limits of a rainfall
of 200 mm. and 600 mm. are also shown. The picture there given is
too complicated for brief description except by saying quite generally
that it shows on the whole a diminution in the total amount of
precipitation from west to east, and that the heaviest precipitation
is indicated on the west or south and most exposed sides of moun-
tains. The areas of scantiest rainfall lie to the north and north-west
of the Caspian Sea and in the interior of the Kola Peninsula, north-
west of the White Sea. The Stye in the English Lake District,
some 2 m. from and 650 ft. higher than Seathwaitej has long been
reputed to be the station recording the heaviest rainfall in Europe,
but it has been shown to have a rival in Crkvice, a station immedi-
ately to the north of the Bocche di Cattaro on the Dalmatian coast.
In the period 1881-1890 the average rainfall at the Stye amounted
to 177 in., in 1891-1900 that at Crkvice amounted to about 179 in.'
The amount of the snowfall as distinguished from the rest of the
precipitation is now coming to be recognized as an important
climatological element. So far, however, the only
European country in which a record of the snowfall is '
kept is Russia, but it may be pointed out that the scantiness of the
winter precipitation and accordingly of snow in the south-east of
Europe almost entirely prevents the cultivation of winter wheat,
which is thus left without the protective blanket enjoyed in some
other parts of the world with cold winters.
The important subject of the seasonal distribution of the rainfall
of Europe has received attention from Drs A. J. Herbertson, Koppen
andSupan.and Mr A. Angot. The rainfall of each month
in Europe as in the other continents is shown by Dr A. J.
Herbertson in The Distribution of Rainfall over the Land.* ""'
On plate 19 of the Atlas of Meteorology, by J. G. Bartholo- ", a , u
mew and A. J. Herbertson, Dr Koppen has furnished
maps showing the months of maximum rainfall and the seasons of
maximum and minimum rain frequency in different parts of Europe.
Mr A. Angot's work on the subject is published in two papers in the
Annales du bureau central meteor, de France, a series of memoirs in
which the rainfall observations of Europe for the thirty years 1861-
1890 are recorded and discussed. The first paper (1893, B, pp.
I57" I 94) deals with the Iberian Peninsula, the second (1895, B, pp.
155-192) with western Europe (from about 43 to 58 N. and as far
east as about 19 to 21 E.). Both papers are accompanied by maps
showing by six tints the mean rainfall for each month as well as for
the entire year; and that on western Europe, by maps extending
in the west as far south as Avila, the proportion of the rainfall
occurring during the winter, spring, autumn and summer months
respectively. But the most instructive maps on the subject embrac-
ing the whole of Europe are four maps prepared by Dr Supan 5 to
show the percentage of the total rainfall of the year occurring in
spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively. From the maps it
appears that all the southern and western coasts of Europe have a
high proportion of rain in autumn, and that this is true also of the
whole of the Italian peninsula and the islands of the western half of
the Mediterranean, of all the south-west of the Balkan peninsula,
including the Peloponnesus, of the Sa6ne- Rhone valley and both sides
of the Gulf of Bothnia, and that a high winter rainfall is characteristic
of Iceland, the extreme western coasts of Scotland, Ireland, France
and the Iberian peninsula, as well as of the greater part of the
Mediterranean region, but more particularly the south-east, while in
this region, and, again more particularly in the south-east, there is a
great scarcity of summer rains, which, on the other hand, form the
highest percentage in the interior and eastern parts of the continent.
If the year be divided into a winter and summer half, the area with a
predominance of summer rains begins in the east of Great Britain
1 Plate i in Petermanns Mitteilungen (1903).
8 See a paper on " Das regenreichste Gebiet Europas," by Prof.
Kassner, Berlin, in Petermanns Mitteilungen (1904), p. 281.
' London, 1901 (one of the publications of the Royal Geog.
Society).
6 Plate 21 in Petermanns Mitteilungen (1900).
PRODUCTS)
EUROPE
9*3
and extend* eastwards, while the Mediterranean region generally
is one of rainy winters and relatively dry summer*. The consequent r
is that with similar conditions of soil and superficial configuration
the Mediterranean region i* agriculturally much less product ive,
except where there are mean* of irrigation, than the corresponding
latitudes in the east of Asia and the cast of North America, where
there are corresponding summer temperatures but an opposite
seasonal distribution of rainfall.
In connexion with the seasonal distribution of rainfall may be
noticed the prevalence of sunshine and cloud. The map accompany-
fmmtltlft '"*> Konig's paper on the duration of sunshine 1 shows
on the whole, outside of the Mediterranean peninsulas,
an increase from north-west to south-east (Orkney Islands, 1145
hours -26% of the total possible: Sulina. 2411 hours -55%). In
the Mediterranean peninsulas the duration is everywhere great
nte*t, so far as the records go, at Madrid, 2908 hours 66 %. Dr
lu-rt >' map illustrating cloud-distribution in central Europe
embraces the region from Denmark to the basin of the Arno, and from
the confluence of the Loire and Allier to the mouths of the Danube.
The temperature of the continent has been illustrated by Dr Supan
in an interesting series of maps based on actual observations not
reduced to sea-level, and showing the duration in months
of the period* within which the mean daily temperature
lie* within certain range* (at or below 32 F. ; 50 -68 F. ;
above 68 F.).' The first of these maps strikingly illustrates the
effect on temperature of the strong westerly winds of winter, and, in
the south, that of winds from the Mediterranean Sea as well as the
protection afforded to the Mediterranean countries against cold
winds from the north by the barrier of mountains. South of the
parallel of to* there is no lowland area in the west of Europe where the
average daily temperature is at or below the freezing point for as
much as one month, and in the Mediterranean region only the higher
pans of the mountains besides the northern part of the Balkan
Peninsula are characterized by such prolonged frosts. On the other
hand, on the parallel of 50 N. the duration of such low temperatures
increases at first rapidly, afterwards more gradually, from west to
east. The second map illustrating the duration of average daily
temperature* between 50 and 68 F., that is, the temperatures
favourable to the ordinary vegetation of the temperate zone, shows
that the duration of such temperatures increases on the whole from
south to north, and that by far the greater part of the continent
south of 53 N. ha* at least six months within those limits, and
south of 58 N. at least five months. _ The third of the maps shows
that the high temperatures which it illustrates are prolonged for a
month or more throughout the Mediterranean region, but outside
of that region hardly anywhere except in the south-western plains
of France, the Rhone valley and a large area in the south-east of
Russia. Without doubt an important cause of the prolonged dura-
tion of high temperatures in this last area is the relatively long
duration of sunshine already mentioned as shown by Konig s map
to be characteristic of south-eastern Europe.
Mention should here be made also of Bruckner's remarkable
treatise on the variations of climate in time. Though it deals with such
variation* over the entire land-surface of the globe, a large proportion
of the data are derived from Europe, for which continent, accord-
ingly, it furnishes a great number of particulars with regard to
secular variations in temperature, rainfall, the date of the vintage,
the frequency of cold winters, the level of rivers and lakes, the dura-
tion of the ice-free period of rivers (in this case all Russian), and
other matters. Those relating to the date of the vintage are of
peculiar interest. They apply to 29 station* in France, south-west
Germany and Switzerland, and for one station (Dijon) go back with
few breaks to the year 1391 ; and as the variations of climate of
which they give an indication correspond precisely to the indications
derived from temperature and rainfall in those periods in which we
have corresponding data for these meteorological elements, they may
be taken as warranting conclusions with regard to these points
even for periods for which direct data are wanting. A period
of early vintages corresponds to one of comparatively scanty rains
and high temperatures. It is accordingly interesting to note that
the data referred to indicate, on the whole, for Dijon an earlier
vintage for the average of all periods of five years down to 1435
than Tor the average of the periods of the same length from 1816-
1880; but that the figure* generally show no regular retardation
from period to period, out more or less regular oscillations, differing
in their higher and lower limits in different periods of long duration.
Much light ha* been thrown on the present state of agriculture in
Europe by the publication of Engelbrecht's Landbauzonen der
austertropiscken Lander.* Of the two chief bread-plants
of Europe, wheat and rye, wheat is cultivated as far north
as about 69 N. both in Norway and Finland, but the limit
of the area in which more wheat i* cultivated than rye to the west
and south, more rye than wheat to the east and north, runs parallel
to the west coast of the Netherlands and Belgium, then strikes
1 Nora Ada Leap. Karol. d. deutscken Akad. d. Naturforscher,
vol. Ixvii. No. 3 (Halle, 1896).
Pctermanm UiUfUunfen (1890), pi. II (text pp. 137-145).
/*. (1887), pi. 10 (text pp. 165-172).
Berlin, 3 vols. (one made up of maps), 1898-1899.
south-eastwards so a* to include nearly all Germany except Alsace-
Lorraine and the south-west of WUrttcmberg, also eastern Switzer-
land, nearly all the Alpine provinces of Austria and nearly the whole
region north of the Carpathians, as well as the greater part of Bohemia
within the area in which rye predominates, while in Russia the limit
runs cast-north-east from about 44 N. in the west to about 55 N.
in the Urals. On one side of this line wheat makes up more than
>"".. of the! entire grain area' in western Rumania, in Italy and a
large pan of the south-west of France, and from 40% to 60% in
the south-east of England. Spelt is cultivated in the south-west of
Germany, Belgium and northern Switzerland, on the middle Volga
and in Dalmatia and Servia. Rye covers more than 50% of the
grain area in the east of Holland and Belgium, in the north-west of
Germany, in central and eastern Germany and in middle Russia.
Oats are more cultivated than all varieties of wheat in Ireland, in the
west and the nonhern half of Great Britain, in Finland and in the
greater part of Denmark and Schleswig-Holstcin. Barley is more
largely cultivated than oats both in the extreme north and the south
of the continent. Maize is cultivated to a great extent in the north-
west of the Iberian Peninsula, in the south-west of France, in
nonhern Italy and in the lands bordering the lower Danube; in
many pans covering an area equal to or greater than that occupied
by all grain crops. Millets (various species of panicum) are most
extensively cultivated in the south-east of Europe. The kind of
millet known as guinea-corn or durra (Sorghum vulgare Pers.), so
extensively cultivated in Africa and India, is grown to a small extent
on the east side and in the interior of I stria. Buckwheat is cultivated
in the west and east of the continent in the west from the Pyrenees
to Jutland, in the east throughout southern and middle Russia.
The potato is very largely cultivated in western, northern and
central Europe, but has made comparatively little progress in
Russia. The cultivation of lentils is most largely pursued in the
west and south-west of Germany and in the south and north of
France. That of lupines has spread with great rapidity since 1840
in the dry sandy regions of eastern Germany, where lupines have
proved as well adapted for such soils as the more widely cultivated
sainfoin has done for dry chalky and other limestone soils. Sugar
beet is most largely cultivated in the extreme north of France and
the adjoining parts of Belgium and in central Germany, to a less but
still considerable extent in south-eastern Germany, northern Bohemia
and the south-west of Russia. Flax', like other industrial plants,
shows a tendency to concentrate itself on specially favourable dis-
stricts. It is most extensively grown in Russia from the vicinity of
Riga north-eastwards, even crossing in the north-east the 7oth
parallel of latitude; but it is also an important crop in the north-cast
of Ireland, in Belgium and Holland, in Lombardy and in northern
Tirol. Hemp is more extensively cultivated in central and southern
Europe, above all in Russia. Teasels are grown in various spots in
the south-east of France and in south Germany. The cultivation of
madder is not yet extinct in Holland and Belgium, that of weld
(Reseda luteola), woad (Isatis linctoria) and saffron not yet in France.
The vine can be grown without protection in southern Scandinavia,
and has been known to ripen its grapes in the open air at Christian-
sund in 63 7'; but its cultivation is of no importance north of
47i on the Atlantic coast, $oj on the Rhine, and from 50 to 52
in eastern Germany, the limit falling rapidly southwards to the cast
of 17 E. The olive, with its double crop, is one of the principal
objects of cultivation in Italy, Spain and Greece, and is not without
its importance in Portugal, Turkey and southern Austria. Tobacco
is grown to a considerable extent in many parts of western, central
and southern Europe, for the most part under government regulation^
The most important tobacco districts are the Rhine valley in Baden
and Alsace, Hungary, Rumania, the banks of the Dnieper, Bosnia
and the south-west and other parts of France. The cultivation is
even carried on in Sweden and Great Britain, but the most northerly
area in which it occupies as much as o- 1 % of the grain area is the
Danish island of Fyen (FCinen).
Hop-growing is hardly known in the south, but forms an important
industry in England, Austria, Germany and Belgium. Among the
exotics exclusively cultivated in the south arc the sugar-cane, the
cotton plant, and rice. The first, which is found in Spam and Sicily,
is of little practical moment ; the second holds a secondary position
in Turkey and Greece; and the third is pretty extensively grown in
special districts of Italy, more particularly in the valley of the Po.
l-.vi-n pepper is cultivated to a small extent in the extreme south of
Spain. Of the vast number of fruit trees which flourish in different
parts of the continent only a few can be mentioned. Their produce
furnishes articles of export to Austria-Hungary, Germany, Prance,
Belgium, Italy and Spain. In Sardinia the acorn of the Quercus
Bauota is still used as a food, and in Italy, France and Austria the
chestnut is of very common consumption. In the Mediterranean
region the prevailing forms which the Germans conveniently sum
together in the expression Sudfruchle, or southern fruits a"re the
orange, the citron, the almond, the pomegranate, the fig and the
carob tree. The palm trees have a very limited range : the date palm
(Phoenix dactylifera) ripens only in southern Spain with careful
culture; the dwarf palm (Chamaerops Humilis) forms thickets along
By this term (GetreideflAche) Engelbrecht designates the area occu-
pied by wheat and other varieties of triticum, rye, oats and barley.
914
EUROPE
[PRODUCTS
the Spanish coast and in Sicily, and appears less frequently in
southern Italy and Greece.
Special interest attaches to the two main bread crops of Europe,
wheat and rye, the average annual production of which
in the different countries of the continent at three periods
is shown in the following tables.
Average Production of Wheat in Millions of Bushels.
Wheat
and rye.
1872-1876. '
I88I-I890. 2
1894-1903. 3
Austria-Hungary *
137
161
191
Belgium ....
22
18
15
Bulgaria 6 ...
40
36
Denmark . .
4'7
5
3-6
France
277
309
335
Germany ....
IOI
93
127
Greece
7
4
Italy
I4O
122
131
Netherlands .
6
6
6
Norway ....
0-3
o-3
0-4
Portugal ....
9
8
8
Rumania * ...
5
57
Russia 6
275
242
325
Servia '
8
ii
Spain ' . . . . .
1 68
73
IOI
Sweden ....
3
3'7
4-5
Switzerland
2
2-6
5
Turkey in Europe * .
38
18
United Kingdom .
91
78
57
Average Production of Rye in Millions of Bushels in the chief Rye-
producing Countries of Europe.*
1872-1876.
1881-1890.
1894-1903.
Austria-Hungary .
129
122
124
Belgium ....
16
17
2O
Denmark ....
15
17
22
France
69
69
73
Germany ....
209
228
368
Netherlands .
10
II
16
Russia
7i5
713
971
Spain
32
21
23
Sweden ....
18
20
27
Perhaps the most striking facts revealed by these two tables are
Acreage under Rye.
Period.
Germany.
Russia
(ex- Poland)
1881-1890
1883-1887
1899-1903
14-50
14-74
64-6
65-5
These figures show that the increased production is only in part,
in some cases in small part, attributable to increase in area, and the
following figures giving the average annual yield of wheat per acre (a)
in the period preceding 1885, and (b) generally in the period of five
years preceding 1905, shows that an improvement in yield in recent
years has been very general.
(a)
(b)
(a)
(b)
Austria
IS-8
17-3
Italy ....
12-0
12-8
Hungary .
Belgium
15-5
24-5
17-5
34-5
Netherlands
Russia ....
25-0
8-0
30-7
9-7
France ....
18-0
19-2
Poland . . .
14-8
Germany .
18-5
28-2
United Kingdom .
29
29-9
When the Aryan peoples began their immigration into Europe a
large part of the surface must have been covered with primeval
forest; for even after long centuries of human occupation p ons t s
the Roman conquerors found vast regions where the axe
had made no lasting impression. The account given by Julius
Caesar of the Silva Hercynia is well known : it extended, he tells us,
for sixty days' journey from Helvetia eastward, and it probably
included what are now called the Schwarzwald, the Odenwald, the
Spessart, the Rhon, the Thuringerwald, the Harz, the Fichtelgebirge,
the Erzgebirge and the Riesengebirge. Since then the progress of
population has subjected many thousands of square miles to the
plough, and in some parts of the continent it is only where the ground
is too sterile or too steep that the trees have been allowed to retain
possession. Several countries, where the destruction has been most
reckless, have been obliged to take systematic measures to control
the exploitation and secure the replantation of exhausted areas.
To this they have been constrained not only by lack of timber and
fuel, but also by the prejudicial effects exerted on the climate and
the irrigation of the country by the denudation of the high grounds.
But even now, on the whole, Europe is well wooded, and two or three
countries find an extensive source of wealth in the export of timber
and other forest productions, such as turpentine, tar, charcoal, bark,
bast and potash.
Acreage under Wheat. 10
Period.
United
Kingdom.
France.
Italy.
Germany.
Austria.
Hungary.
Russia
(ex- Poland).
Rumania.
Average,i88i-i88s .
,, 1886-1890 .
1891-1895 .
1896-1900 .
1901-1903 .
2-8
2-5
2-O
2-0
1-7
17-2
T 3
16-7
16-9
16-3
n-7 u
10-9 u
u-3 11
n-3"
12-0
4-6
4-8
4'9
4'9
4.4
2-6
2-8
2-7
2-6
2-6
6-5
7-1
8-3
8-2
9-0
28-9 w
32-5
36-9
42-8
3-5
3-8
3-9
these; first, that the United Kingdom is the only great wheat-
growing country which has shown a great decline in the amount of
production in two successive periods; and, second, that both
Germany and Russia show a great advance under both wheat and rye
between the last two periods. This gives interest to statistics of
acreage under these two crops, and some data under that head are
given in the adjoining tables.
1 Based on Scherzer, Das wirtschaftliche Leben der Volker, p. 12.
1 From the Fifth Report of the United States Department of Agri-
culture, Division of Statistics, Miscellaneous Series, p. 13.
* Based on the Corn Trade Year-book (1904), p. 284.
* Exclusive of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which the average
production in 1894-1903 was about 2j million bushels.
* The estimates for Bulgaria, Rumania, Servia and Turkey in
Europe for 1872-1876 are not comparable with those of the two
later periods on account of the territorial changes since that date.
Those for Bulgaria in the period 1881-1890 include Eastern Rumelia.
' Including Poland.
7 Spanish statistics very imperfect.
8 Based on the same authorities as the wheat table. Intheoriginal,
however, the figures for 1894-1903 are given in " quarters of 480
Ib," while the figures given above are calculated on an average
quarter of 462 Ib.
' Including Poland, but not Finland, in which the average pro-
duction of rye is estimated at about 1 1 ,000,000 bushels.
10 Mainly from or based on the Agricultural Returns for Great
Britain, 1905.
" Single years.
u Period 1883-1887.
The following estimates of the forest areas of European countries
are given in G. S. Boulger's Wood :
Countries.
Thousands
of Acres.
Per cent, of
Total Area.
Russia
469,500
34
Sweden .
43,000
24
Austria-Hungary .
42,624
29
France .
20,642
19
Spain
20,465
16-3
Germany
20,047
25-6
Norway .
17,290
25
Italy ....
9. 3!
18
Turkey . .
5.958
14
United Kingdom .
2,500
3-8
Switzerland .
1,905
18-8
Greece
1,886
11-8
Portugal .
1,107
5
Belgium .
1-073
12
Holland .
486
6
Denmark .
364
4-6
Horse-breeding is a highly important industry in almost all
European countries, and in several, as Russia, France, Hungary and
Spain, the state gives it exceptional support. Almost
every district of the continent has a breed of its own:
Russia reckons those of the Bashkirs, the Kalmucks, the
Don-Cossacks, the Esthonians and the Finlanders as among its best;
France sets store by those of Flanders, Picardy, Normandy .Limousin
Domestic
animals.
PRODUCTS!
EUROPE
and Auvergne; Germany by those of Hanover, Oldenburg and
Mii ktenburg, whk-h indeed rank among the most powerful in the
world ; and Great Britain by those of Suffolk and Clydesdale. The
English racers are famous throughout the world, and Iceland and
the Shetland Islands are well known for their hardy breed of diminu-
tive ponies. The an and the mule are most abundant in the southern
parts of the continent, more especially in Spain, Italy and Greece.
The camel is not popularly considered a European animal; but it is
reared in Russia in the provinces of Orenburg, Astrakhan and
Taurid, in Turkey on the Lower Danube, and in Spain at Madrid
and Cadiz; and it has even been introduced into Tuscany. A much
more important beast of burden in eastern and southern Europe is
the ox: the long lines of slow-moving wains in Rumania, for example,
are not unlike what one would expect in Cape Colony. In western
Europe it is mainly used for the plough or fattened for its flesh.
It is estimated that there are about too distinct local varieties or
breeds in Europe, and within the last hundred years an enormous
advance has been made in the development and specialization of the
finer types. The cows of Switzerland and of Guernsey may be
taken as the two extremes in point of size, and the " Durhams "
and " Devonshire* " of England as examples of the
results of human supervision and control. The Dutch
breed ranks very high in the production of milk. The
buffalo is frequent in the south of Europe, more pspeci-
ally in the countries on the Lower Danube ami in
southern Italy. Sheep are of immense economic value
to most European countries, above all to Spain and
Portugal, Great Britain, France, Hungary, the countries
of the Balkan Peninsula, the Baltic provinces of Germany
and the south-east of Russia. The local varieties are
even more numerous than in the case of the horned
cattle, and the development of remarkable breeds quite
as wonderful. In all the more mountainous countries
the goat is abundant, especially in Spain, Italy and
Germany. The pig is distributed throughout the whole
continent, but in no district does it take so high a place
as in Servia. In the rearing and management of
poultry France is the first country in Europe, and has
consequently a large surplus of both fowls and eggs.
In Pomerania, Brandenburg, West Prussia, Mecklen-
burg and \VQrttemberg the breeding of geese has
become a great source of wealth, and the town of
Strassburg is famous all the world over for its p&tfs de
foie rroi. Under this heading may also be mentioned
the domesticated insects, the silkworm, the bee and
the cantharis. The silkworm is most extensively reared
in northern Italy, but also in the southern parts of the
Rhone valley in France, and to a smaller extent in
several other Mediterranean and southern countries.
Bee-keeping is widespread. The cantharis is largely
reared in Spain, but also in other countries in southern
and central Europe.
The most important mineral products of Europe are
coal and iron ore. In order of production the leading
.j ,^^_fc coal-producing countries have long been the
"^ United Kingdom, Germany, France and
Belgium. Since 1897 Russia has held the fifth place,
followed by Austria-Hungary, Spain and Sweden. The
production in other countries is insignificant. Besides coal, lignite is
produced in great amount in Germany and Austria-Hungary, and to
a small amount in France, Italy and a few other countries. Down
to 1895 the United Kingdom stood first among the iron-ore produc-
ing countries of Europe, but since 1896 the order under this head
has been the German Customs' Union, the United Kingdom, Spain,
France, Russia, Sweden, Austria-Hungary and Belgium. By far
the most important iron-ore producing district of Europe is that which
lies on different slopes of the hills in which German Lorraine, the
grand duchy of Luxemburg and France meet, the district producing
all the ore of Luxemburg and the principal supplies of Germany
and France. Another important producing district is what is
known as the Siegerland on the confines of the Prussian provinces of
the Rhine and Westphalia. Next in importance to these are the
iron-ore deposits of the United Kingdom, the chief being those of the
Cleveland district south of the Tees, and the hematite fields of
Cumberland and Fumes*.
With regard to the mineral production of Europe generally,
perhaps the most notable fact to record is the relatively lower place
taken by the United Kingdom in the production both of coal and
iron. Here it is enough to state the mam results. In the production
of coal the United Kingdom is indeed still far ahead of all other
European countries, but notwithstanding the fact that the British
export of coal has been increasing much more rapidly than the
production, this country has not been able to keep pace with Ger-
many and Russia in the rate of increase of production. In 1878 the
production of coal in the German empire was only about 34 % of
that of the United Kingdom, but in 1906 it had grown to nearly
50%. This, top, was exclusive of lignite, the production of which
in Germany is increasing still more rapidly. It was equal to little
more than one-fourth of the coal production in 1878, but more than
two-fifths in 1906. The coal production of Russia (mainly European
Russia) is still relatively small, but it is increasing more rapidly than
that of any other European country. While in 1 878 it was little more
than 2% of that of the United Kingdom, in 1906 the correspond-
ing ratio was above 8%. In the production of iron ores the decline
in the position of the United Kingdom is much more marked. The
production.reachcd a maximum in 1882 (18,033,000 tons), and since
then it has'sunk in one year (1893) as | w - ls 11,200,000 tons, while,
on the other hand, there was a rapid increase in the production of
such ores in the German Zollverein (including Luxemburg), France,
Spain, Sweden and Russia, down to 1900, with a more progressive
movement, in spite of fluctuations, in all these countncs than in
the United Kingdom in more recent years. In the total amount of
production the United Kingdom in 1905 took the second place.
While in 1878 the production of iron ores in the German
Zollverein was little more than a third of that in the United
Kingdom, in 1905 it exceeded that of the United Kingdom by nearly
60%.
An indication of the relative importance of different European
countries in the production of ores and metals of less aggregate
value than coal and iron is given in the following tables ' :
Gold.
Silver.
Quicksilver
Ore.
Tin Ore.
kilos.
kilos.
m.t.
m.t.
Austria
German Empire
126
121
38.940
77. "83
91.494
54
134
Hungary
3.738
3.642
Italy .
80,638
Norway
6.367
t f
Portugal
29
22
Russia .
8,202
?
Spain .
United Kingdom
58
?
4,614
26,186
86
7,268*
Kilos kilograms. M.t. metric tons.
Copper Ore.
Lead Ore.
Manganese
Ore.
Zinc Ore.
m.t.
m.t.
m.t.
m.t.
Austria
20,255
19.683
'3.402
32,037
Belgium
121
1 20
3.858
Bosnia-Herzegovina
France
765
2.547
".795*
7.651
11,109
31
53,466
German Empire .
768,523
140,914
52.485
704.590
Greece
?"
10,040
26,258
Hungary
1.338
564
10,895
Italy ....
147.135
40,945
3,060
155.821
Norway
32,203
(sec zinc)
3.308
Portugal
352,689
511
22
1,267
Russia . . .
?'
?
9,612
Spain .
2,888,777 '
263,519"
62,822
170,383
Sweden
19.655
1,938*
2,680
52,552 14
United Kingdom
7.598
31.289
23,"27
23,190
M.t. -metric tons.
Platinum has hitherto been obtained nowhere in Europe except
in the auriferous sands in the Russian government of Perm. Nickel
is derived from Germany, Norway and Sweden; antimony from
Germany and Hungary; bismuth from Saxony and Bohemia.
Bauxite, which is used in the manufacture of aluminium, is obtained
from France, Styria and Ireland. In order of importance the chief
salt-producing countries are the United Kingdom (in which for some
years the amount produced has been for the most part stationary or
declining), Germany (which is rapidly increasing its production),
Russia, France, Spain, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Rumania and
Switzerland. Besides common salt Germany has for many years been
producing a rapidly increasing amount of potash salts, of which it
has almost a monopoly. Italy (chiefly Sicily) is by far the most
1 Based on Mines and Quarries: General Report and Statistics
for 1906, pt. iv. (Cd. 4145), 1908.
1 Production in the Ural districts only. ' See note 1 1 .
4 A considerable quantity of quicksilver is produced in the
government of Ekaterinoslav.
Dressed.
' Cupreous pyrites and cupreous iron pyrites, besides which a
considerable quantity of copper precipitate is produced.
7 A small quantity of copper ore is produced in Finland, but the
bulk of the Russian production is in the Asiatic provinces.
I Mainly cupreous iron pyrites. Argentiferous.
10 In 1906 Greece produced 12,308 m.t. of argentiferous pig lead.
II Of which 158,424 m.t. argentiferous.
12 A considerable quantity of manganese ore is produced in the
government of Ekaterinoslav, but the main seat of Russian pro-
duction is the Caucasus.
" Zinc and lead ore.
14 In addition to 28,891 m.t. of calcined zinc ore.
916
EUROPE
[COMMERCE
Railways
'
important producer of sulphur. Among other mineral products
may be mentioned the boric acid and statuary marble of Tuscany,
the statuary marble of Greece, the asphalt of Switzerland, Italy,
Germany and Austria-Hungary, the slates of Wales, Scotland and
France, the kaolin of Germany, England and France, and the abund-
and glass sands of Belgium, France and Bohemia.
With regard to commerce, industries and railways, as a whole,
Europe may be said to be characterized by the rapid development
of manufacturing at the expense of agricultural industry.
' With few exceptions the countries of Europe that export
agricultural products are able to spare a diminishing
proportion of the aggregate of such produce for export.
Other countries are becoming more and more dependent
on imported agricultural products. Most European countries, even
if not able to export a large proportion of manufactured articles,
are at least securing a greater and greater command of the home
market for such products. 1 Inland centres of manufacturing in-
dustry are extending the range of their markets. All these changes
have been largely, if not chiefly, promoted by the improvements
in the means of communication, and the methods of transport by sea
and land. Larger ships more economically propelled have brought
grain at a cheaper and cheaper rate from all parts of the world, and
improved methods of refrigeration have made fresh meat, butter and
other perishable commodities even from the southern hemisphere
articles of rapidly growing importance in European markets. Im-
provements in transport have likewise tended to cheapen British
coal in many parts of the mainland of Europe. On the other hand,
the extension of the railway network of the continent has brought a
wider area within the domain of the manufacturing regions associated
with the coalfields occurring at intervals in central Europe from the
upper Oder to the basin of the Ruhr, as well as some of the more
detached coalfields of Russia. As affecting the relative advantages
of different European countries for carrying on manufacturing in-
dustry, three inventions or discoveries of recent years may be
mentioned as of capital importance: (i) the invention in 1879 of
the Thomas process for the manufacture of ingot iron and steel
from the phosphoric iron ores, an invention which gave a greatly
enhanced value to the ores on the borders of Lorraine, Luxemburg
and Alsace, as well as others both in England and on the continent ;
(2) the invention of efficient machines for the application of power
by means of electricity, an invention which gave greatly increased
importance to the water-power of mountainous countries; and
(3) the discovery of the fact that from lignite an even higher grade
of producer gas may be obtained than from coal, a discovery obvi-
ously of special importance for the great lignite-producing districts
of Germany and Bohemia.
Such particulars as can be procured with regard to the utilization
few European countries are mostly based on such problematical
data that they are not worth giving. One very uncertain element in
such calculations is the amount of water-power that is capable of
being artificially created by the construction of valley-dams, such as
have been erected on a small scale in the Harz and other mining
and smelting regions of Germany from an early date, and are now
being built on a much larger scale in the Rhine region and other parts
of Europe, or is incidentally provided in the construction of canals.
The commercial history of Europe has illustrated from the earliest
times the influence of the outline and physical features in determin-
ing great trade-routes along certain lines. At all periods
land routes have connected the southern seas with the
Baltic and the North Sea, effecting the great saving of
distance more or less indicated by the following table :
_
' ra " s ' ;oam
Distance
by Sea.
Direct
Distance.
Distance
by Rail.
st. m.
m.
m.
St Petersburg-Odessa .
5240
93
1217
Riga-Odessa
4985
765
1 022
Danzig-Odessa ....
4735
745
1009
Stettin-Triest ....
4065
550
854
Lubeck-Venice ....
3920
640
871
Hamburg Triest ....
3820
560
945
Hamburg Venice ....
3805
555
886
Hamburg Genoa ....
2845
640
880
Antwerp-Venice ....
3500
515
850
Antwerp-Genoa ....
2535
515
778
Antwerp-Marseilles
2350
;>
725
Calais-Genoa ....
2400
555
780
Calais-Marseilles ....
2215
535
721
Havre-Marseilles ....
2135
475
678
Bordeaux-Cette ....
1945
227
295
Calais-Constantinople .
35io
1445
2134
Calais Salonica ....
3370
1215
1911
Christiania Stockholm
780
260
357
Lulea-Narvik (Ofotenfjord)
1970
240
295
Water ~ source of power most largely are given in the following tains. On
power - table: . the Vistula
Total Horse-
Total Horse-
Percentage
Countries.
Date.
power used in
Mechanical
power in
Hydraulic
belonging to
Hydraulic
Industry.
Installations.
Installations.
Thousands.
Thousands.
Per cent.
Germany ....
1895
3427
629
18
France j
1899
1904
2581 2
575
650 =
25
Austria-Hungary
1902
437
Italy
1899
2209
337
!5 ,
Sweden ....
1903
453
about 50*
Norway ....
1904
254
1 86
73
1895
153
88
58
i895
'53
95 4
62
1901
320
185
58
1901
320
223*
70
1905
5i6
?
?
The figures derived from the three recent industrial censuses of
Switzerland are very instructive, especially if one is justified in
including the electric among the hydraulic installations. The esti-
mates that have been made of the total available water-power in a
1 Probably the most complete synopsis of the evidence on this
point is to be found in Prince Kropotkin's Fields, Factories and
Workshops (London, 1899).
1 The total horse-power used in mechanical industries is obtained
by adding 650,000, the estimated total of horse-power in hydraulic
installations given in an article in the Annales de geographic for
January 1904, to the total steam-power in fixed engines officially
given for 1903, and accordingly excludes gas and other engines not
driven by steam- or water-power.
1 The proportion estimated in the official publication entitled
Sweden: its People and its Industry, edited by G. Sundbarg (Stock-
holm, l<)<>4).
4 Including the installations returned in the Swiss industrial
censuses as electric, most if not all of which are probably driven by
water-power.
From the form of the continent it obviously results that the farther
east the route lies the greater is the saving of distance. The precise
direction of the routes has been very largely fixed, however, by the
physical features ; by the course of the rivers where navigable rivers
formed parts of the routes; in other cases by the situation and
form of the mountains, or the direction of the river valleys which is
implied in the form of the mountains. From the Black Sea the most
convenient starting-point is obviously towards the west, and two
connecting routes with the Baltic lie wholly to the east of the moun-
tains. One route makes use of the Bug or the Dniester, the San and
the Vistula so far as possible, while another starting in the same way
proceeds round the foot-hills of the Carpathians, thus
finding easy crossing places on the head-streams of the
rivers, as far as the Oder and then down that stream.
Another route is up the Danube to the neighbourhood
of Vienna, and then north-eastwards through the open-
ing between the Carpathians and the Sudetic range to
the head-waters of the Oder, crossing a water-parting
little more than 1000 ft. in altitude. The first route
was certainly used again and again by the ancient
Greeks, starting from Olbia near the mouth of the Bug,
the objective point being the coast in the south-east of
the Baltic supplying the amber which was so important
an article of commerce in early times. This route was
again much used in the middle ages, when Visby, on
Gotland, undoubtedly selected on account of the
security afforded by an island station, was for hundreds
of years an important centre of trade both in northern
products (of which furs were the most valuable) and
those of thejEast (pepper and other spices, silks and other
costly articles). Numerous coins, Roman, Byzantine
and Arabic, found not merely in Gotland itself but also at various
points along the route indicated, testify to the long-continued
importance of this route. In the middle ages the Oder route was
also largely used whether reached by rounding the Carpathians or
ascending the Danube, and in connexion with that route the island of
Bornholm long formed a focus of commerce answering to that in
Gotland farthereast. The Danube route was also made use of farther
west, and formed a large part of a great route connecting the East
with the north-west of Europe. The valuable goods of the Orient
could be conveyed up-stream as high as Ratisbon (Regensburg),
and thence north-westward across Nuremberg to Frankfort-on-Main,
from which access was had to the Rhine gorge leading on to Cologne
and the ports of Dordrecht and Rotterdam, Bruges and Ghent;
or they could be carried still farther up-stream to Ulm, thence by a
route winding through the north of the Black Forest to Strassburg
and from that point north of the Vosges to the Marne and Seine.
Farther west use was made at an early date of passes by which
the whole system of the Alps could be crossed, or partly crossed and
partly rounded, in a single rise. The ancient Etruscans, in exchanging
their earthenware and bronzes for the amber found largely in those
EUROPE
t the nd of the
loth. Century
inh Milt*
o to too too yao 400 500
Boundary of t tit Empire.
Kingdom of Germany.. __.....
EUROPE
at the end of the i2th.Century
Engliih Milc
o 50 100 aoo 300 400 500
Boundary of thi Emplrt
Kingdom of Otrmany ...
Hark of Brandenburg ..
Duchy of Auitrta
France and Vatial States
Dominions of the Angevlnt
Venice
Roman Empire (c.1190)
RAILWAY-;
EUROPE
917
time* not only in the Baltic but also on the eastern shores of the
North Sea north of the Rhine mouths, made regular use of at li MM
three such pane*. One of those was the Brenner, the summit of
which is under 4300 ft. in height, approached on the south side by the
valley of the Adige and its tributary the Eisak, on the other side by
the Inn valley and that of its small tributary the Sill. IK this route
the Alp* at about their widest are crossed with exceptional ease;
and hence it was natural that it should have been used by the
Etruscans to reach the amber shores of the Baltic, and in all subse-
quent periods in intercourse between central Europe and northern
Italy. In their trade with the mouth of the Rhine the Etruscans
appear to have used only the passes approached by the Dora Baltoa,
which leads equally to the Little St Bernard, to the south of Mont
Blanc, and so to the I sere valley and the Rhone, and to the Great
St Bernard, to the east of Mont Blanc, and so directly to the Rhone
valley above the Lake of Geneva, by which route the remainder of
the Alps could be rounded on the west and the Rhine valley reached
by crowing the northern Jura. Roman roads were afterwards made
across all these passes, although that across the Great St Bernard
(the highest of all, above 8100 ft.) seems never to have been made
practicable for carriages. The Romans also made use of three inter-
vening passes by which in a single rise from the Po basin the heads
of valleys leading right down to the head of Lake Constance could
be reached. These were the Bernardino, SplQgcn and Septimer, to
mention them in the order from west to east. By the Romans the
Simplon was also made use of as affording the most direct connexion
between Milan and the upper Rhone valley. All these passes were
likewise in use in the middle ages when Venice and Genoa were the
great intermediaries in the trade in pepper and spices and other
Oriental products. The Brenner afforded the most direct connexion
between Venice and southern Germany, on a route leading also to
northern Germany by way of Ratisbon and afterwards the rivers
of the Elbe basin, and finally (from the end of the 141(1 century) by a
canal to Lubeck. which was the great distributing centre of these
and other products for the Baltic. To take the most direct route to
the Rhine valley and north-western Europe some other pass (the
Seefeld or the Fern) in the Bavarian Alps had to be crossed and the
Rhine valley reached by Augsburg, and thence either by way of Ulm
or Frankfort. From Genoa the routes in the early middle ages were
by way of Milan to the Lake of Constance, and thence by way of Ulm
if the Rhine valley was the goal, and by way of Augsburg if it was the
Baltic. The St Gotthard route, the most direct connexion between
Milan and the north of the Alps, was added about the end of the
1 3th century. The Mont Cenis pass from an early date afforded the
most direct connexion between Genoa and the middle Rhone valley
by way of Turin. When modern carriage roads came to be built it
was stilt the same routes that were chosen. The road across the
Brenner, completed in 1772, was the first of these. The building of the
great Swiss carriage roads across the passes in the early part of the
igth century was inaugurated by Napoleon's road across the Simplon
completed in 1805. A later paragraph will show that modern rail-
ways follow much the same, it not exactly the same, routes. On the
cany use of the SaAne-Rhone valleys, and the route between the foot-
hills of the Cevennes and the Pyrenees, it is not necessary to insist,
but it may be mentioned that English tin was sometimes conveyed to
the Mediterranean (Marseilles) by this latter route in Roman times.
Since the introduction of railways inland waterways have in most
countries taken a very inferior position as means of transport. The
articles on the different countries supply the necessary
information with respect to those
which have a purely national in-
terest, but here mention must be
of those which have significance as
belonging to trans-European routes or have
an international value. The importance of
shortening the water-route between the op-
posite sides of the great European isthmus
separating the Baltic and the Black Sea is
brought into prominence by the constant
revival of projects for a ship-canal con-
necting those coasts. A definite step taken
with a view to carrying out such a project
was the sanction given by the tsar in April
1005 for the appointment of a special
commission to inquire into the practicability
of a scheme for the excavation of a canal
about 28 ft. deep between Riga and Kher-
son, utilizing the waters of the Dflna or
western Dvina. the Berezina and Dnieper.
Since the completion in 1845 of the Ludwigs
or Danube-Main Canal, running; from the
Main near Bamberg to Kelheim on the
Danube, it has been possible to go by
water from the mouth of the Rhine to the
mouth of the Danube; but this canal has in
reality no trans-European significance. It
cannot take barges of a greater capacity than
125 tons, is not adapted for steamers, and
tarries only a very small amount of traffic.
But projects for connecting the Danube with
northern Europe by water are still entertained. Of these the most
advanced are those fur establishing connexions through Austria. On
the i ith of June 1901 the Austrian diet passed an act prescribing the
construction ol a > anal eonnei ting the (Mer with the Danube through
the Morava, and another connecting the Danube at Linz with i In-
Moldau-Elbe, and the improvement ol the navigation on the con nee ted
waterways. The Oder- Danube canal thus authorized would have to
cross a watershed of little more than looo ft. in altitude as against
'365 ft. in the case of the Ludwigs Canal ; but the Elbe- Danube Canal
would have to cross one of about 2250 ft. Under the provisions of
the act the work is to be completed by 1924. In Germany projects
J have been actively agitated for improving the Danube-Main con-
nexion either wholly or partly along the route of the present canal,
and for establishing a new connexion by means of a canal of at least
6J ft. in depth by way of the Neckar, the Rcms and the Brcnz,
joining the Danube at Lauingcn about midway Iwtwccn Ulm and
Donauwdrth. The Moldau-Elbe is itself an important international
waterway, inasmuch as it allows of steamer traffic from Prague in
Bohemia to Hamburg, and by means of a connecting canal to Lubeck.
But the most important of all international waterways in Europe
is the Rhine, on which even sea-going steamers regularly ascend to
Cologne, and an amount of traffic crosses the Dutch frontier three
or four times as great as that which makes use of the Manchester
ship-canal. The river is also navigable to Basel in Switzerland,
though above Strassburg the river is little used, being replaced
since 1834 by the Rhine and Rhone canal, which connects the two
rivers through the III and the Sadne. The Rhine is also connected
with the Seine by the Marne and Rhine canal passing north of the
Vosges, and its tributary the Moselle is also navigable from France
into Germany. The Meuse again is navigable from France through
Belgium into Holland, and is connected by more than one route
with the Seine, and in the densely peopled mining and manufacturing
country in the north of France and the adjoining parts of Belgium
numerous waterways ramify in different directions. Even in an
article on Europe the entirely French canals connecting the Seine
and Rhone (Burgundy canal, summit-level 1230 ft., completed 1832),
the Loire and Rhone (Canal du Centre, summit-level 990 ft., com-
pleted in 1793), and the Canal du Midi, connecting the Garonne at
Toulouse with Cette on the Mediterranean, may be mentioned inas-
much as they establish communication between different seas.
The last is of special interest because it is the oldest (completed in
1681), because it makes use of the lowest crossing, surmounting the
passage of Naurousc, or Gap of Carcassonne, at an altitude of 625 ft.,
and because it effects the greatest shortening of distance from sea
to sea. On this account the project of establishing a ship-canal of
modern dimensions along this route has been as often revived as that
of the Black Sea and Baltic canal. In the east of Europe the Vistula
and Mcmel are both international waterways, but they are of little
importance compared with those in the west. The Kaiser Wilhelm
or North Sea ana Baltic canal, opened in 1895, has, however, no little
international value, inasmuch as it shortens the sea-route to the
Baltic for all North Sea ports to the south of Newcastle, and affords
the means of avoiding a rather dangerous passage round the north of
Jutland. A minor degree of international interest belongs to the
ship-canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, opened on the 6th of
August 1893.
The following table gives a summary statement of the progress
of railway construction in European countries down to
the end of the igth century :
Railways in European Countries.
Hallway*.
Date of
opening of
first line.
Miles open.
1875-
1880.
Ittg.
1890.
'895-
1900.
Austria
1837
6,402
7.083
8,270
o,5<>"
10,180
11,912
Belgium
l8
2,171
2,399
2.740
2,810
2,839
2,851
Bosnia-Herzegovina .
1879
342
47'
Bulgaria
1866
535
921
Denmark .
1847
689
975
I.I95
1,217
',37'
1,809
France
1828
>3.529
'6,275
20,177
20,666
22,505
26,739
German Empire
1835
17.376
20,693
22,640
25.4' '
27.392
30.974
Great Britain .
1825
H.5'0
15.563
'6,594
17,281
18,001
18,680
Greece
1869
7
7
278
452
?
641
Hungary
1846
3.992
4.421
5.605
6,984
8,651
10,624
Ireland
34
2,148
2.370
2,575
2,792
3.'73
3.183
Italy ...
1836
4.77"
5.340
6,408
7.983
9-579
9.864
Luxemburg
l73
no
270
Netherlands
839
i, 006
I.I43
1,496
'.653
1,869
2,007
Norway
I8U
345
652
970
970
1,071
1,231
Portugal
1856
643
710
949
'.3 '6
'.336
i,346
Rumania .
iMM
766
859
1,100
'.590
1,617
1,920
Russia *
1838
12,166
14,026
'5.934
18,059
2 1 ,948
27,345
Servia
1884
'55
335
335
355
Spain ....
1848
3,801
4.550
5-547
6,211
7.483
8,206
Sweden
ifftf
2,171
3.654
4.279
4.980
6,058
7,018
Switzerland
1844
'.257
.596
'.795
2,014
2,233
2,401
Turkey
1872
727
657
657
935
Excluding Finland.
EUROPE
[RAILWAYS
The chief railways of most European countries are on the same
gauge as that originally adopted in Great Britain, namely, 4 ft.
8} in. Irish railways are, however, on the gauge of 5 ft. 3 in. The
standard gauge in Russia is 5 ft., that of Spain and Portugal about
5 ft. 6 in. The still isolated railway system of Greece is upon a narrow
gauge. The very general use of a common gauge obviously greatly
facilitates international trade. It allows, for example, of wagons
from Germany entering every country on its frontier except Russia.
It allows of German coal being carried without break of bulk to
Paris, Milan and the mainland of Denmark. By means of train-
ferries German trains can also be conveyed to Copenhagen by way
of Warnemiinde and Gjedser and then across the channel separating
Falster and Zealand ; and there is a similar means of communication
between Copenhagen and Malmo (Sweden) and between Lindau in
Bavaria on the Lake of Constance and Romanshorn on the same lake
in the Swiss canton of Thurgau. The establishment of this method
of transport between England and France has been urged in opposi-
tion to the Channel Tunnel scheme.
Of the railway systems of the mainland of Europe as a whole the
main features are these. There is a broad belt running from the
North Sea eastwards between the lines marked by Amsterdam and
Hanover on the north, and Calais, Liege, Diisseldorf and Halle on
the south, in which important lines of railway run from west to east.
About 12 E. those lines begin to converge on Berlin. This belt is
crossed in the Rhine valley by a much narrower but very important
belt running north and south, now connected with the Italian
railway system through the St Gotthard tunnel. To the south
of the west end of the west-to-east belt lies the principal railway
focus in western Europe, Paris, from which important lines radiate
in all directions; two of these radiating lines now establish com-
munication with the Italian railway system, through the Mont Cenis
and Simplon tunnels respectively, and other two connecting with the
Spanish system round the ends of the Pyrenees. Berlin in central
Europe is perhaps an even more important railway focus. Among
the chief lines radiating from it are one through Leipzig and Munich
and connecting with the Italian railway system by the Brenner route,
and another through Dresden and Prague to Vienna, and then by the
Semmering pass by one route to Triest and by another to Venice.
East of Berlin the railways of Europe begin to form wider meshes.
Two main lines diverge towards the north-east, one by Kiistrin and
Konigsberg and the other by Frankfort on the Oder and Thorn, both
uniting at Eydtkuhnen to the east of K6nigsberg before crossing
the Prussian frontier and passing on to St Petersburg. _ From Thorn
a line branches off by Warsaw to Moscow, the chief railway focus in
eastern Europe. South-east from Berlin there runs another im-
portant line through Breslau, Cracow and Lemberg to Odessa,
skirting to a large extent the foot-hills of the Carpathians like the
ancient trade route from Olbia to the Baltic. Two routes on which
there are services organized by the International Sleeping Car
Company connect London with Constantinople, and it is noteworthy
that both of these indicate the importance of the physical feature
which has determined the position of the great north-south belt of
railways above mentioned, and also of towns famous as commercial
centres in the middle ages. One of these is the route of the Orient
Express, which goes by Calais, Paris and Strassburg, then east of
Strassburg runs north in the Rhine valley for about 40 m. to Karls-
ruhe, then winds through the hilly country between the Black Forest
proper and the Odenwald to Stuttgart, proceeding thence by Ulm,
Augsburg and Munich to Linz and then by the valley of the Danube
through Vienna and Budapest to Belgrade, and thence by the valleys
of the Morava, Nishava and Maritza to Constantinople. The other
is that of the Ostend- Vienna express, going by Ostend to Brussels,
and through Aix-la-Chapelle to Cologne, then up the Rhine gorge
southwards to Bingen and eastwards to Mainz and on to Frankfort
(on the Main), thence south-eastwards by the route so celebrated
in the middle ages through Nuremberg to Regensburg (Ratisbon),
and thence down the valley of the Danube coinciding with the Orient
Express route from a point a few miles above Linz. From the Orient
Express route a branch crosses from the valley of the Morava to
that of the Vardar, establishing a connexion with Salonica.
In the development of this railway system the mountains have
proved the most formidable of natural obstacles, and at the head of
the mountains in this respect as in others stand the Alps. The first
railway to cross one of the main chains of the Alps was the Semmering
line on the route from Vienna to the Adriatic, constructed in 1848-
1854. Its summit is in a tunnel less than I m. long, 2940 ft. above
sea-level or nearly 300 ft. below the level of the pass. South of the
Semmering, however, various other passes have to be crossed, and
it was not till 1857 that the railway to Triest (by Laibach) was
completed, and not till the late seventies that the more direct route
to Venice across the Tarvis pass in Carinthia was established. Of
the route from Triest by Gorz across the Karawanken and JTauern
Alps to Salzburg and south-eastern Germany the first section was
opened only in 1906. After the Semmering the next railway to cross
the Alps was that following the Brenner route which crosses the
summit of the pass at the height of 4490 ft., and, as already stated,
is the only pass that has to be crossed on the way from Munich to
the plains of Italy. Next followed in 1871 the western route through
the so-called Mont Cenis tunnel, really under the Col de Frejus,
to the west of the Mont Cenis pass, and effecting a crossing between
the valleys of the Arc (Rhone basin) and the Dora Riparia (Po
basin) at an altitude of 4380 ft., or nearly 2500 ft. lower than the
pass previously used, but only by piercing the mountains in a tunnel
more than 7J m. long. Next in order was the St Gotthard route,
opened in 1882, the most direct route between northern Italy and
western Germany, connecting the Lake of Lucerne with the valley
of the Ticino. Here the altitude is reduced to 3785 ft., about 3150 ft.
below the sumit-level of the pass, but the tunnel length is increased
to rather more than gj m. The Simplon route opened in June 1906,
between the upper Rhone valley and the Toce valley, shortening the
route between Milan and northern France, effects the crossing at an
altitude of only 2300 ft., nearly 4300 ft. lower than the pass, but by
increasing the tunnel length to I2j m. Steps were subsequently
taken to continue the Simplon route northwards by a tunnel through
the Lotschberg in the Bernese Alps, and a project is entertained for
continuing the Vintschgau (upper Adige) railway across or under
the Reschenscheideck to the Inn valley. An important east-west
crossing of the Alps was effected when the Arlberg tunnel (6-37 m.
long, summit-level 4300 ft.) connecting the Inn valley with that of
the Rhine above the Lake of Constance was opened in 1884.
Several lines wind through and cross the Jura. That which in
1857 pierced the Hauenstein, in the north of Switzerland, attained
international importance on the opening of the St Gotthard tunnel,
inasmuch as it lies on the route thence through Lucerne to the
Rhine valley at Basel; and that which crosses the Col de Jougne
between Vallorbe and Pontarlier acquired similar importance on the
completion of the Simplon tunnel. Further projects are entertained
for shortening the connexion between this tunnel and the north of
France by making a more direct line from Vallorbe to the French side
of the Jura, or by making a railway across or under the Col de la
Faucille (4340 ft.), north-west of Geneva.
Of the two railways that pass round the extremity of the Pyrenees,
the western was the first to be constructed, the eastern was not
opened till 1878. Hitherto the intervening mountains have proved
more of a railway barrier than the mightier system of the Alps,
but in 1904 a convention was concluded between the French and
Spanish governments providing for the establishment of railway
connexion between the two countries at three points of the great
chain.
There are several railways across the Carpathians, mostly by passes
under 3000 ft. in height. The fact that the Tomos Pass, on the direct
route from Hungary through Transylvania to Bucharest, attains an
altitude of 3370 ft. was undoubtedly one reason why the railway
following this route, completed in December 1879, passing through
several tunnels, was one of the last to be constructed. But the ob-
struction of mountains has not been the only cause of delay in the
building of railways. Sparseness of population and general economic
backwardness have also proved hindrances, especially in Russia and
the Balkan Peninsula. The railways to Constantinople and Salonica
were completed only in 1888, and yet the highest altitude on the
Constantinople line is only 2400 ft., that on the Salonica line 1750 ft.
Among other important railways of recent date and of more than
merely national significance may be mentioned that bringing
Bucharest into connexion with the Black Sea port of Costantza by
means of a bridge across the Danube at Chernavoda (opened in
September 1895) ; a line across the Carpathians connecting Debreczen
with Lemberg, the continuation of the line eastwards from Lemberg
to Kiev; a network bringing the coalfield of the Donets basin into
connexion with ports on the Sea of Azov; a line in the south-east of
Russia connecting Novocherkask with Vladikavkaz, and branches
running from the same point connecting that line with Novorossiysk
on the Black Sea on the one hand, and with Tsaritsyn at the last
angle of the Volga on the other hand; a line in northern Russia
bringing Archangel into connexion with the European system at
Vologda (opened in 1898) ; a detached line in the north-east across
the Urals from Perm by Ekaterinburg (completed in 1878) to
Tyumen (completed in 1884). Chelyabinsk on the Siberian railway
has a branch running northwards to Ekaterinburg, and this line
now affords uninterrupted communication with the northern Dvina,
inasmuch as the railway which originally started at Perm has been
carried westwards through Vyatka and then northwards to Kotlas
at the point of origin of that river, to which point it was opened in
1900; and a line in the east connecting the European system at
Samara with the great mining centre at Zlatoust, already in 1890
continued across the Urals to Miyas, and since then carried farther
east as the great Siberian railway.
The result of the construction of the numerous transcontinental
railways has been to bring rail and sea-routes and ports on opposite
sides of the continents into competition with one another to a greater
degree than 'is possible in any other continent. The more valuable,
and above all perishable commodities may be sent right across the
continent even through the mountains. Even from Great Britain,
which is bound to carry on its external commerce in part by sea,
goods are sometimes sent far south in Italy by railways running
from one or other of the North Sea ports. It will hence be readily
understood that for inland trade on the mainland the competition
between ports on opposite sides of the continent and between
different railways will be very keen, greatly to the advantage of the
inland centres to which that competition extends. This competition
is inevitably all the more keen now that the trade of Europe with
ETHNOLOGY]
EUROPE
919
the East is once more carried on through the Mediterranean as it
was in ancient time* and the middle ages. The (jrvut shortening of
the lea-route in this trade at Mich ports as Marseilles, Triest, Venice
and Genoa, indicated by the figures below, goes far to counterbalance
the extra coat even of railway transport across the mountains.
London
Bremen
Hamburg .
Stettin
St Petersburg
Distance in Nautical Milts from Port Said.
3502
13M
3749
43""
M.IIM'lllc-
< CIM.I
Vrnii-e
Bnmlisi .
1506
1436
33<>
930
1130
An enormous amount of investigation with regard to European
ethnology has been carried on in recent years. These labours
nrMs-r have chiefly consisted in the study of the physical type
' of different countriesor districts, but it is not necessary
to consider in detail the results arrived at. It should, however,
be pointed out that the idea of an Aryan race may be regarded
as definitely abandoned. One cannot even speak with assurance
of the diffusion of an Aryan civilization. It is at least not certain
that the civilization that was spread by the migration of peoples
speaking Aryan tongues originated amongst and remained for a
lime peculiar to such peoples. The utmost that can be said
is that the Aryan languages must in their earliest forms have
spread from some geographical centre. That centre, however,
is no longer sought for in Asia, but in some part of Europe, so
that we can no longer speak of any detachment of Aryan-speaking
peoples entering Europe.
The most important works, summarizing the labours of a host
of specialists on the races of Europe, are those of Ripley and
Deniker. 1 Founding upon a great multitude of data that have
been collected with regard to the form of the head, face and nose,
height, and colour of the hair and eyes, most of the leading
anthropologists seem to have come to the conclusion that there
are three great racial types variously and intricately intermingled
in Europe. As described and named by Ripley, these are: (i)
the Teutonic, characterized by long head and face and narrow
aquiline nose, high stature, very light hair and blue eyes;
(2) the Alpine, characterized by round head, broad face, variable
rather broad heavy nose, medium height and " stocky " frame,
light chestnut hair and hazel grey eyes; and (3) the Mediter-
ranean, characterized by long head and face, rather broad nose,
medium stature and slender build, dark brown or black hair
and dark eyes. The Teutonic race is entirely confined to north-
western Europe, and embraces some groups speaking Celtic
languages. It is believed by Ripley to have been differentiated
in this continent, and to have originally been one with the other
long-headed race, sometimes known as the Iberian, and to the
Italians as the Ligurian race, which " prevails everywhere
south of the Pyrenees, along the southern coast of France, and
in southern Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia," and which
extends beyond the confines of Europe into Africa. The Alpine
race is geographically intermediate between these two, having
its centre in the Alps, while in western Europe it is spread most
widely over the more elevated regions, and in eastern Europe
" becomes less pure in proportion as we go east from the Car-
pathians across the great plains of European Russia." This last
race, which is most persistently characterized by the shape of
the head, is regarded by Ripley as an intrusive Asiatic element
which once advanced as a wedge amongst the earlier long-headed
population as far as Brittany, where it still survives in relative
purity, and even into Great Britain, though not Ireland, but
afterwards retired and contracted its area before an advance of
the long-headed races. Deniker, basing his classification on
essentially the same data as Ripley and others, while agreeing
with them almost entirely with regard to the distribution of the
three main traits (cephalic index, colour of hair and eyes, and
stature) on which anthropologists rely, yet proceeds further in the
subdivision of the races of Europe. He recognizes six principal
and four secondary races. The six principal races are the Nordic
(answering approximately to the Teutonic of Ripley), the Littoral
or Atlanto-Mediterranean. the Ibero-Insular, the Oriental, the
Adriatic or Dinaric and the Occidental or Cevenole.
1 See bibliography at the end of the article.
Although language is no test of race, it is the best evidence
for present or past community of social or political life; and
nothing is better fitted to give a true impression of the .
position and relative importance of the peoples of "*"*
Europe than a survey of their linguistic differences and affinities. 5
The following table contains the names of the various languages
which are still spoken on the continent, as. well as of those which,
though now extinct, can be clearly traced in other forms. Two
asterisks are employed to mark those which arc emphatically
dead languages, while one indicates those which have a kind of
artificial life in ecclesiastical or literary usage.
I. INDO-EUROPEAN.
i. I Nine branch, represented by . .
i. IIANIC branch, ., . . (
Gipsy dUletta.
) Ossetisn.
) Armenian
j. HELLENIC branch, ,, ,, . . (
) Greek.
) Romaic.
1
) Neo-Hellenic
4. ITALIC branch, (<
) Latin.
s
) Oscan.
f H
) Uml>rian, Sic.
u
D French.
<
> Walloon.
(i
) Provencal.
Italian.
\ ft'-/^iti>t * (]
Ladin (Rumonsh Kumansh
Rheto-Romanc^).
(i
) Spanish.
o
) Portuguese.
f
) Rumanian.
5. CELTIC branch, represented by . . U
i Irish.
it
) EneorGaelk.
(c
i Mmx.
I
' UYM,.
**H
) Cornish.
fy
Low Breton
6. TEUTONIC branch, represented by . (i
) Gothic.
f"P
) Norse or Old None.
(c
i Icelandic and Faerone.
Scandinavian (d
) Norwegian.
(1
i Swedish.
Danish.
'**U
) Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, or First
(*
"V
English.
) F.nglisli.
Old Saxon.
Lm German (f
Plait - Deutsch or Low
German.
a
) Flemish 1 *,,.,. ., .
a
Dutch f Netherlandish.
B
) Frisic.
) Old High German.
//if* German
Middle High German.
' It
) New High or Literary
7. SLAVONIC branch, represented by *(<i
1
! Church Slavonic.
basin,
Ruthenian, Rusniak, or Uttlc-
Kussian.
.foulk-Eatlrrn .... (rf
) White Russian or Ilirlo-
"
Russian.
(
Mulgarian.
Servo-Croatian.
1 Slovenian.
) Czech (Bohemian).
Slovaklsh.
IIV./<Tii . '('
Poltt
u
) Sorbian (Wendic, Lusatian).
Polablan
8. Li me branch, represented by . . **(o
Old Prussian.
Lettish.
ic
Lithuanian
g. UNATTACHED . . ?(
Old Dadan.
(I
Albanian.
II SEMITIC.
i. CANAANITIC branch, represented by . (a
Hebrew.
Phoenician or Punic
. AIAIIC branch, represented by . . *Ha
InU
**i6
.Mozarabic.
Maltese.
III. FINNO-TATARIC (Turanian, Ural-Altaic tor)
i. FiNNo-Uctic languages ... (a
9
JSamoyede.
Finnish or Suomi.
W
Esthonian, Livonian, VepsUh.
votlst
H
Lappish.
u
Cberemissuui
V
Mordvinbn
u
Ziryenian and Permian.
vJu
a
2. TATAI-TIIEBH languages
iM BH
Turkish.
to
Kuan Tatar, Crimean Tatar,
Bashkir, Kirghiz.
(c
Chuvmsh.
3. MONGOLIAN languages.
Ktilnnik
4. UNATTACHED.
Uasauc.
From this conspectus it appears that there are still about 60
distinct languages spoken in Europe, without including Latin,
Greek, Old Slavonic and Hebrew,which are still used in literature
* See on the whoje subject Hovclacque's Science of Language
Latham's Nationalities of Europe, and the sameauthor't Philology.
920
EUROPE
[BOUNDARIES
or ecclesiastical liturgies. Besides all those which are spoken
over extensive territories, and some even which are confined
within very narrow limits, are broken up into several distinct
dialects.
The boundaries of European countries have of course been
determined by history, and in some cases only historical events
can be held' to account for their general situation,
'bound 1 t ' le ' n ^ uence f geographical conditions being seen
artes. ' OIU V on a minute examination of details. In most
cases, however, it is otherwise. The present political
boundaries were all settled when the general distribution of
population in the continent was in a large measure determined
by the geographical conditions, and accordingly the lines along
which they run for the most part show the influence of such con-
ditions very clearly, and thus present in many cases a marked
contrast to the political boundaries in America and Australia,
' where the boundaries have often been marked out in advance of
the population. In Europe the general rule is that the boundaries
tend to run through some thinly peopled strip or tract of country,
such as is formed by mountain ranges, elevated tablelands too
bleak for cultivation, relatively high ground of no great altitude
where soil and climate are less favourable to cultivation than the
lower land on either side, or low ground occupied by heaths or
marshes or some other sterile soil; but it is the exception for
important navigable rivers to form boundaries between countries
or even between important administrative divisions of countries,
and for such exceptions a special explanation can generally be
found. Navigable rivers unite rather than separate, for the
obvious reason that they generally flow through populous valleys,
and the vessels that pass up and down can touch as easily on
one side as the other. Minor rivers, on the other hand, flowing
through sparsely peopled valleys frequently form portions of
political boundaries simply because they are convenient lines
of demarcation. A brief examination of the present political
map of Europe will serve to illustrate these rules.
The eastern frontier of the Netherlands begins
by running southwards through a marsh nearly
parallel to the Ems but nowhere touching it, then
winds south or south-westwards through a rather
sparsely peopled district to the Rhine. This river
it crosses. It then approaches but does not touch
the Meuse, but runs for a considerable distance
roughly parallel to that river along higher ground,
where the population is much more scanty than
in the valley. On the side of Belgium the Dutch
boundary is for the most part thoroughly typical,
winding between the dreariest parts of the Dutch
or Belgium provinces of North Brabant, Limburg
and Antwerp. The Scheldt nowhere forms a
boundary between countries, not even at its wide
estuary. The eastern frontier of Belgium is quite
typical both on the side of Germany and Luxem-
burg. It is otherwise, however, on the south,
there that country confines with France, and
indeed the whole of the north-east frontier of
France may be called a historical frontier, showing
the influence of geographical conditions only in
details. One of these details, however, deserves
attention, the tongue in which it advances north-
wards into Belgium so as to give to France the
natural fortress of Givet, a tongue, be it noted,
the outline of which is as typical a boundary as is
to be seen in Europe in respect of scantiness of
population, apart from the fortress.
The mountainous frontiers of France on the east
and south require hardly any comment. Only in
the Burgundy Gate between the Vosges and the
Jura has an artificial boundary had to be drawn,
and even that in a minor degree ilfustrates the
general rule. The division of the Iberian peninsula
between Spain and Portugal goes back in effect to
the Christian reaction against the Moors. The
valley of the Mino and its tributaries establishes a
natural connexion between Galicia and the rest of
Spain; but an independent crusade against the
Moors starting from the lower part of the valley
of the Douro resulted in the formation of the
kingdom of Portugal, which found its natural
eastern limit on the scantily peopled margin of
the Iberian tableland, where the rivers cease to be
navigable and flow through narrow gorges, that
of the Tagus, where the river marks the frontier, being almost
without inhabitants, especially on the Spanish side.
The greater part of the Italian boundary is very clearly marked
geographically, though we have to look back to the weakness of
divided Italy to account for the instances in which northern moun-
taineers have pushed their way into southern Alpine valleys. Even
in these parts, however, there are interesting illustrations of geo-
graphical influence in the way in which the Italian boundary crosses
the northern ends of the Lago Maggiore and the Lake of Garda,
and cuts off portions of Lake Lugano both in the east and west.
In all these cases the frontier crosses from one steep unpeopled slope
to another, assigning the population at different ends or on different
sides of the lakes to the country to which belongs the adjacent
population not lying on their shores.
Of the Swiss frontiers all that it is necessary to remark is that the
river Rhine in more than one place marks the boundary, in one,,
however, where it traverses alluvial flats liable to inundation (on the
side of Austria), in the other place where it rushes through a gorge
below the falls of Schaffhausen. The southern frontier of Germany is
almost throughout typical, the northern is the sea, except where a
really artificial boundary runs through Jutland.
In the east of Germany and the north-east of Austria the winding
frontier through low plains is the result of the partition of Poland,
but in spite of the absence of marked physical features it is for the
most part in its details almost as typical as the mountainous frontier
on the south of Germany. All the great rivers are crossed. Most of
the line runs through a tract of strikingly scanty population, and the
dense population in one part of it, where upper Silesia confines with
Russian Poland, has been developed since the boundary was fixed.
In the Balkan Peninsula the most striking facts are that the
Balkans do not, and the Danube to a large extent does form a
boundary. Geographical features, however, bring the valley of the
Maritsa (eastern Rumelia) into intimate relation with upper Bulgaria,
the connexion of which with Bulgaria north of the Balkans had long
been established by the valley of the Isker, narrow as that valley is.
On the side of Rumania, again, it is the marshes on the left bank
of the Danube even more than the river itself that make of that river
a frontier. An examination of the eastern boundary of all that is
included in Russia in Europe will furnish further illustrations of
the general rule.
Finally, on the north-west of Russia it was only natural that the
Tornea and the Tana should be taken as lines of demarcation in
that thinly peopled region, and it was equally natural that where the
Countries.
Area.
Population.
Pop. per
sq. m.
English
sq. m.
About
1880.
About
1890.
About
1900.
Austria-Hungary
241,466
37,884
41,358
45,405 "
1 88
Bosnia-Herzegovina (a) .
19,735
1,336'
i,568 12
81
Liechtenstein
61
9 7
147
Belgium ....
",373
5,520
6,069
6,694 16
589
Denmark ( 6) . . .
15-431
1,980
2,185
2,465 u
160
France ....
207,206
38,343 '
38,596
1 86
Monaco
8
, 5 13
German Empire
208,760
45,234
49,428
56,345 "
270
Luxemburg .
1,003
237"
247
Greece ....
24-974
2,187 8
2,434 li
97
Italy
110,676
28,460 '
32,450 "
293
San Marino .
23
ii"
435
Montenegro
3.500
228 16
65
Netherlands
12,741
4,oi3 3
4,5i I s
5,103 "
400
Portugal ....
34-347 w
4,160 4
4,660
5,423 "
'53
Rumania ....
50,588
5,913 "
"7
Russia ....
i,95i,249
89,685 '
103,671 18
53
Finland ....
144,255
2,176'
2,555 "
18
Servia ....
18,762
1,908 6
2,494 16
133
Spain <)
191,994
16,432
17,262
18,618 16
97
Andorra
175
5
29
Sweden ....
173,968
4,566
4,785
5,'i36 l6
30
Norway ....
126,053
2,001 7
2,231 '
18
Switzerland . . .
15,976
2,846
2,933 IC
3,314 18
207
Turkey (Europe) (e) .
66,840
5,892 ?
90
Bulgaria '/> .
37,323
2,008 2
3,154'
3,733 "
IOO
Crete . . . .
3,328
302"
304"
9i
Thasos ....
152
12?
79
United Kingdom
121,742
35,026 2
37,88i '
4i,455 14
341
<a) Annexed by imperial decree to Austria-Hungary in 1908.
"> Including Faeroe Islands.
<c> Area exclusive of Tagus and Sado inlets (together 161 sq. m.).
<<> Excluding Canary Islands. <> With Novi-bazar.
(/) Bulgaria proclaimed its independence of Turkey in 1908.
' 1885. a 1881. ' 1879. 4 1878. ' 1884. 6 1887. ' 1891.
8 1889. 'Census 1890. 10 1888. " Census 1900. " Census 1895.
'* Estimate 1897. u Census 1901. " Census 1896. "> Census 1900.
17 Census 1899. 18 Census 1897.
EUROPE
Middle of i6th.Century
e of Charles V
(*fter t****tM***S>tSiU
r, !!>,,>
EUROPE in 1715
after the Treaties of U trecht & Rastadt
Habsburg dominion*
Piedmont (Haute o
Prussia i I
Hanover (House of Brunswick)
Bavaria A the Palatinate
Venice
Boundary of the Empire
POPULATION]
EUROPE
921
boundary between Norway and Sweden descends from the fjeld in
the south it should leave to Norway both side* of the valley of the
Olommen.
The preceding table shows the area of the countries of Europe,
t with their estimated or enumerated populations in
thousands (ooo omitted) at different dates.
A noteworthy feature of the distribution of population in
Europe, especially in western, southern and central Europe, in
modern times, is the high degree of aggregation in towns, which
is exhibited in the following table 1 for the different countries or
regions of the continent :
Percentage in Towns.
All Towns
over
20,000.
Over
100,000.
From
20,000 to
100,000.
EngUnd and Wales .
34-8
23-5
5-3
Scotland ....
29-7
9'9
39-7
Ireland ....
14-2
5-3
'9-5
Norway ....
10-8
6-8
17-6
Sweden ....
8-5
2-6
II-2
Denmark ....
19-4
6-6
26-O
(k-rman Empire .
17-0
114
28-2
Netherlands
33-3
15-0
37-3
Belgium ....
18-6
12-0
30-6
France
3'7
10-3
24-0
Spain and Portugal
Bosnia. Servia and Bulgaria.
io-5
5-7
4-2
16-2
4-2
Rumania ....
4 ; 6
7'2
n-8
Hungary .
3-7
9-1
12-8
Galicia and Bukovina .
2-O
4-8
6-8
CivLeithan provinces of
Austria (exclusive of the
two latter)
12-4
5-9
18-3
Poland ....
10-6
4-2
14-8
Baltic Provinces, Russia
11-4
8-3
19-7
Moscow region 1 .
9-6
5-4
15-0
Black earth governments,
Great Russia 1 .
0-7
4.9
5-6
Governments of middle and
lower Volga' .
3-3
4-0
7-3
South Russia* .
7-0
8-5
15-5
Finland
3-8
4'3
8-1
The following table contains a list of the towns with more than
100,000 inhabitants, not in every case according to the most
recent census, but, in order to make the populations fairly com-
parable with one another, according to the nearest census or
Available estimate to 1900. Population in thousands (ooo
omitted) :
London (Greater, 1901) . 6581
London (Registration,
1901) 4536
Pan* (w. subs.) . . 2877
' (City, IQOI) . . 2661
Berlin (w. subs.) . . 2073
(iQOO) . . . 1884
Vienna (1900) . . . 1662
St Petersburg (w. sube.,
1897) .... 1267
Constantinople ( w. subs.) . 1 200
Moscow (w. tubs., 1897) . 1036
Glasgow (w. subs., 1901) . 910
Hamburg- Altona (1900) . 867
Liverpool (w. subs., 1901 ) 767
Manrhester-SsJford (1901) 765
Budapest (1900) . . 732
Warsaw (1897) . .638
tBirmingham (w. sub*.,
1901) 599
Naples (comm.. 1901) . 565
Brussels(iooi) . . .563
Madrid (1900) . . . 540
Amsterdam (1902) . . 540
Barcelona (1900) . . 533
Munich (1900) . . . 500
Marseilles (1901) . . 495
Milan (comm., 1901). . 493
Copenhagen (w. subs.,
1901) . . . -477
Rome (comm., 1901) . 463
Lyons (1901) . . . 460
l.eipzig (1900) . . -455
Leeds (w. subs., 1901) . 444
Brcslau (1900) . . . 423
Odessa (1897) . . .405
Dresden (1000) . . . 395
Edinburgh-Leith (1901) . 393
Sheffield (1901) . . .381
Dublin (w. subs., 1901) . 373
Cologne (1900) . . . 372
Lisbon (1900) . . -35
1 Taken from a paper by Professor V'oeikov on " Verteilung der
Bevolkerung auf der Erde unter dem Einfluss der Naturverhaltnissc
und der menschlichen Tatigkeit," in Petermanns Mitteil. (1906), p.
249, where corresponding figures are given for other parts of the
world.
* Kaluga, Smolensk, Tver, Moscow, Yaroslav, Kostromer and
Vladimir.
1 Kursk. Orel, Tula. Ryazan. Tambov, Voronezh and Penza.
4 Nizhniy Novgorod. Kazan, Simbirsk, Samara, Saratov and
Astrakhan.
Bessarabia. Kherson, Taurida, Ekaterinoslav and Don Province.
Belfast (1901) ... 349
Rotterdam (1902) . . 348
I mm (comm., 1901) . 335
Bristol (1901) . . . 329
Newcastle-Gateshead
(1901) .... 325
Prague (w. subs., 1900) . 317
Lodz (1897) . . .315
Palermo (comm., 1901) . 310
Stockholm (1902) . . 306
Elberfeld-Barmen (1901) 299
Bordeaux (w. subs., 1896) 289
Frankfort-on-Main . . 288
Riga (w. subs., 1897) . 283
Bucharest (1899) . . 282
Bradford (1901) . . 280
Antwerp (1901) . . 373
JWest Ham (1901) . . 267
Nuremberg (1900) . . 261
Kiev (1897) . . .247
Hull (1901) . . . 241
Nottingham (1901) . . 240
Hanover (1900) ' . . 237
Genoa (comm., 1901) . 235
Magdeburg (1900) . . 230
Christiania (1900) . . 226
The Hague (1902) . . 222
Roubaix-Tourcoing (1901) 220
Dilsseldorf (1900) . .214
Valencia (1000) . . . 214
Florence (comm., 1901) . 205
Leicester (1901) . . 212
Lille (1901) . . .211
Chemnitz (1900) . . 207
Portsmouth (1901) . . 189
Charlottcnburg (1900) . 189
K&nigsberg (1900) . .188
Triest (1900) . . . 179
Plymouth-Devonport
(1901) ....
Stuttgart (1900)
Kharkov (1897)
Bolton (1901) .
Oporto (1900) .
Cardiff (1901) .
Bremen (1900) .
Ghent (1901)
Dundee (1901) .
Vilna (1897)
Brighton-Hove (1901)
Lemberg (IQOO)
Liige (1901;
Halle a S. (1900)
Aberdeen (1901)
Comm.
177
176
174
1 68
1 68
164
163
1 62
161
1 60
1 60
160
160
157
"53
commune.
Bologna (comm., 1901)
'Venice (comm., 1901)
Catania (comm., 1901)
Messina (comm., 1901)
Salonica
Strassburg (1900)
Zurich (comm., 1900)
Seville (1900)
St Etienne (1901)
Suinlerland (1901) .
Dortmund (1900)
Danzig (1900) .
Mannheim (1900)
Stettin (1895) .
Croydon (1901).
Graz (1900)
Oli Hi. i in (lOX>l) .
Saratov (1897) .
Aachen (1900) .
Gothenburg (1902) .
Toulouse (1896)
Nantes (1901) .
Kazan (1897) .
Malaga (1900) .
Havre (1901)
Blackburn (1901)
Brunswick (1900)
Ekaterinoslav (1897)
Rostov-on-Don (1897)
Essen (1900)
Posen (IQOO)
Preston (1901) .
Astrakhan (1897)
Norwich (1901) .
Murcia (1900) .
llirki-iilir.nl (1901) .
Athens (1896) .
Tula (1897)
Briinn (1900)
Kishinev (1897)
Basel (comm., 1900)
Utrecht (1902) .
Kiel (1900)
Reims (1901)
Krefeld (1900) .
Derby (1901) .
Kassel (1900) .
Halifax (1901) .
Nice (1901) .
Southampton (1901)
Nancy (1901) .
Szeged (1900) .
Toulon (1901) .
Cartagena (1900)
w. subs. = with suburbs.
'52
152
'50
'5
'50
'50
'50
148
'47
'47
142
141
140
140
139
38
'37
'37
'35
'34
'34
'33
'32
'30
'30
128
128
121
1 20
"9
"7
"3
"3
112
112
III
III
III
no
109
109
109
108
108
107
106
1 06
'05
'05
05
'03
'03
102
100
AUTHORITIES. Elisee Reclus, vols. i. to v. of Nouvelle Geogrophie
univcrsclle (Paris, 1876-1880), translated by E. G. Ravenstein and
A. H. Keane (vol. i. Southern Europe, vol. ii. France and Switzerland,
vol. iii. Austria-Hungary, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands,
vol. iv. The British Isles, vol. v. Scandinavia, Russia in Europe,
and the European islands, translation undated); G. G. Chisholm,
" Europe " (2 vols.) in Stanford's Compendium of Geography and
Travel (London, 1899, 1902) ; Kirchhoff and others, Die Ldnderkunde
des Erdteils Europa, vols. ii. and iii. of Unser Wissen von der Erde
(comprising all the countries of Europe except Russia) (Vienna, &c.,
1887-1893); A. Philippson and L. Neumann, Europa, eine allge-
meine Ldnderkunde (Leipzig, 1895, 2nd edition by A. Philippson,
1906); Joseph Partsch, Central Europe (London, 1903) (embraces
Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Rumania,
Servia, Bulgaria and Montenegro treated from a general point of
view); Joseph Partsch, Mitteleuropa (Gotha, 1904) (the same work
in German, extended and furnished with additional coloured maps);
M. Fallex and A. Moirey, L'Europe mains la France (Paris, 1906)
(no index); A. Hettner, Europa (Leipzig, 1907) (an important
feature of this work is the division of Europe into natural regions);
Vidal de la Blache, Tableau de la gtographie de la France (Paris, 1903)
(contains a most instructive map embracing western and central
Europe to about 42 N. and 24-26 E., showing the former extent
of forest, the distribution of soils earliest fit for cultivation, of
littoral alluvium and of the mines of salt and tin which were so
important in early European commerce); H. B. George, The
Relations of Geography and History (Oxford, 1901) (deals very largely
* In 1800 only those to which an asterisk is prefixed rose above
100,000. Thirty-four out of the 144 towns enumerated in the list
above belong to the British Isles.
t The contiguous parliamentary boroughs of Birmingham and
Aston Manor.
J Part of Greater London.
922
EUROPE
[HISTORY
with Europe) ; W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe (London, 1900) ;
J. Deniker, The Races of Man (London, 1900); R. G. Latham, The
Nationalities of Europe (London, 2 vols., 1863) ; J. G. Bartholomew,
" The Mapping of Europe," in Scot. Geog. Magazine (1890), p. 293;
Joseph Prestwich, Geological Map of Europe (Oxford, 1880) ;
A. Supan, Die Bevolkerung der Erde (viii. Gotha, 1891, and x. Gotha,
1899); Strelbitsky, La Superficie de I' Europe (St Petersburg, 1882);
Oppel, " Die progressive Zunahme der Bevolkerung Europas,"
Petermanns Mitteil. (Gotha, 1886); Dr W. Koch, Handbuch fur den
Eisenbahn-Gutenerkehr (Berlin), published annually (gives railway
distances on all the lines of Europe except those of the British Isles,
Greece, Portugal and Spain); Verkehrsatlas von Europa (Leipzig),
frequently re-issued; Grosser Atlas der Eisenbahnen von Mitteleuropa
(Leipzig) ; Verlagfur Borsen and Finanzliteratur, frequently re-issued
(gives kilometric distances between a great number of places and a
great variety of other information in the text) ; K. Wiedenfeld,
Die nordwesteuropaischen Welthdfen (Berlin, 1903) (an important
work discussing the geographical basis of the commercial importance
of the seaports of London, Liverpool, Hamburg, Bremen, Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, Antwerp and Havre). Papers relating to the climate
of Europe: J. Hann, " Die Vertheilung des Luftdruckes iiber
Mittel- und Siid-Europa " (based on monthly and annual means for
the period 1851-1880), in Penck's Geograph. Abhandlungen (vol. ii.
No. 2, Vienna, 1887); A. Supan, " Die mittlere Dauer der Haupt-
Warme-perioden in Europa," Petermanns Mitteil. (1887), pi. ip,
and pp. 165-172; Joseph Reger, " Regenkarte von Europa," in
Petermanns Mitteil. (1903), pi. I ; A. Supan, " Die jahreszeitliche
Verteilung der Niederschlage in Europa," &c., ibid. (1890), pi. 21,
and pp. 296-297 ; P. Elfert, " Die Bewolkung in Mitteleuropa mit
Einschluss der Karpatenlander," ibid. (1890), pi. II and pp. 137-145;
Konig, " Die Dauer des Sonnenscheins in Europa," in Nova Acta
Leopoldina Karol. der deutschen Akad. der Naturforscher, vol. Ixvii.
No. 3 (Halle, 1896) ; E. Ihne, " Phanologische Karte des Fruhlings-
einzugs in Mitteleuropa," in Petermanns Mitteil. (1905), pi. 9, and
pp. 97-108; A. Angot, " Regime des pluies de la peninsule iberique,"
in Annales du bur. cent, meteor, de France (1893, B. pp. 157-194),
and " Regime des pluies de 1'Europe occidentale," ibid. (1895,
B. pp. 155-192); E. D. Bruckner, " Die Klimaschwankungen seit
1700," in Penck's Geographische Abhandlungen, iv. PI. 2 (Vienna,
1890) ; Supan, " Die Verschiebung der Bevolkerung in Mitteleuropa
mit Einschluss der Karpatenlander," Petermanns Mitteil. (1892);
Block, L'Europe politique et sociale (2nd ed., 1892); E. Reclus,
" Hegemonic de 1'Europe," in La Societe nouvelle (Brussels, 1894).
Publications relating to the measurement of a degree of longitude
on the parallel of 52 N. from Valentia (Ireland) to the eastern
frontier of Russia: (i) Stebnitsky, account of the Russian section
of this work in the Memoirs (Zapiski) of the Milit. Topog. Section
of the Russian General Staff, vols. xlix. and 1. (St. Petersburg, 1893)
(in Russian, see notice in Petermanns Mitteil. (1894), Litteratur-
bericht, No. 289); (2) and (3) Die europdische Ldngengradmessung
in 52 Br. von Greenwich bis Warschau; (2) Part i., Helmert, Haupt-
dreiecke und Grundlinienanschlusse von England bis Polen (Berlin,
1893); (3) Part ii., Bcrsch and Kruger, Geoddtische Linien, Parallel-
bogen, und Lothabweichungen zwischen Feaghmain und Warschau
(Berlin, 1896); J. G. Kohl, Die geographische Lage der Hauptstadte
Europas (Leipzig, 1874); Paul Meuriot, Des agglomerations urbaines
dans V Europe contemporaine (Paris, 1898) ; Scharff, The History
of the European Fauna (London, 1899). (G. G. C.)
2. POLITICAL HISTORY
The origin of the name of Europe has been dealt with above,
and the difficulty of any exact definition of the geographical
limits covered by this term has been pointed out. A similar
difficulty meets us when we come to deal with European history.
We know what we mean when we speak of European civilization,
though in its origins, as in its modern developments, this was not
confined to Europe. In one sense the history of Europe is the
history of this civilization and of the forces by which it was
produced, preserved and developed; for a separate history of
Europe could never have been written but for the alien powers
by which this civilization was for centuries confined within the
geographical limits of the European continent. Moreover,
within these geographical limits the tradition of the Roman
empire, and above all the organization of the Catholic Church,
gave to the European nations, and the states based upon them,
a homogeneity which without them could not have survived.
The name of Europe, indeed, remained until modern times no
more than " a geographical expression "; its diplomatic use,
in the sense of a group of states having common interests and
duties, is, indeed, no older than the ipth century; in the middle
ages its place was taken by the conceptions of the Church and
the Empire, which, though theoretically universal, were practic-
ally European. Yet the history of the states system of Europe,
though enormously influenced by outside forces, possesses from
the first a character of its own, which enables it to be treated as
a separate unit. This historical Europe, however, has never been
exactly commensurate with Europe considered as a geographical
division. Russia, though part of Europe geographically even
if we set the limits of Asia at the Don with certain old geographers
had but slight influence on European history until the time of
Peter the Great. The Ottoman empire, though its influence on
the affairs of Europe was from the first profound, was essentially
an Asiatic power, and was not formally introduced into the
European system until the treaty of Paris of 1856. It still
remains outside European civilization.
Europe, then, as we now conceive the term in its application
to the political system and the type of culture established in this
part of the world, may, broadly speaking, be traced to four
principal origins: (i) The Aegean civilization (Hellenic and pre-
Hellenic); (2) the Roman empire; (3) Christianity; (4) the
break-up of the Roman empire by the Teutonic invasions. All
these forces helped in the development of Europe as we now know
it. To the Aegean civilization, whether transformed by contact
with Rome, and again transformed by the influence of Chris-
tianity and the religious genius of the middle ages or re-
discovered during the classical Renaissance Europe owes the
characteristic qualities of its thought and of its expression in
literature and art. From republican Rome it largely draws its
conceptions of law and of administrative order. From the
Roman empire it inherited a tradition of political unity which
survived, in visible form, though but as a shadowy symbol,
until the last Holy Roman emperor abdicated in 1806; survived
also, more fruitfully, in the rules of the Roman lawyers which
developed into modern international law. Yet more does Europe
owe to Christianity, an Asiatic religion, but modified by contact
with Greek thought and powerfully organized on the lines of
the Roman administrative system. The Roman Church remained
a reality when the Roman empire had become little more than a
name, and was throughout the period of chaos and transforma-
tion that followed the collapse of the Roman empire the most
powerful instrument for giving to the heterogeneous races of
Europe a common culture and a certain sense of common
interests.
The history of Europe, then, might well begin with the origins
of Greece and Rome, and trace the rise of the Roman empire and
the successive influence upon it of Hellenism and Christianity.
These subjects are, however, very fully dealt with elsewhere (see
AEGEAN CIVILIZATION; GREECE; ROME; CHURCH HISTORY);
and it will, therefore, be more convenient to begin this account
with the Teutonic invasions and the break-up of the Roman
empire, events which mark the definite beginning of the modern
European states system.
In a sense the Roman empire had been already " barbarized "
before the invasions of the barbarians en masse. Land left vacant
by the dwindling of the population was colonized by immigrants,
Teutonic and other, from beyond the frontiers; the Roman
legions were largely recruited from Germans and other non-
Romans, some of whom even rose to the imperial purple. Thus,
in the end, the Roman emperor, with his guard and his household,
ruling over an empire mercilessly exploited to fill his treasury,
was essentially indistinguishable from those barbarian chiefs,
with their antrttstions and their primitive fiscal methods, who
entered into portions of his inheritance and carried on the
traditions of his rule.
The history of the Teutonic peoples prior to their organized
invasions of the empire is dealt with elsewhere (see TEUTONIC
PEOPLES). It was in the 4th century that the pressure of their
advance was first felt on the frontiers, and this led to a change
in the government of the empire which was to have notable
consequences. In A.D. 330 Constantine had transferred the
capital from Rome to Byzantium (Constantinople), but the
empire, from the Forth to the Tigris, continued to be administered
successfully from a single centre. Not, however, for long: the
increasing perils from without made a closer supervision essential,
and after the death of Theodosius I. (395) the empire was divided
HISTORY]
EUROPE
EUROPE IN THE VI CENTURY
923
im<D / f Htm** fmgirt ft tut * a/ TUndortc S3t.
' Fm+lil, Xlfd,m ctrtt 4OO
(f.jf CofHj
t/
Scale. 1:38.000,000
Boundary of the Roman fmplrt at the dealti of Juittnian SOS
Franklsli Kingdom afttr 549
Wtft Oot/o Kingdom ojttr MO.
// Kingdom afttr 588 ...I I Lombard Kmydom ajttrSSB.-
1 loo 390 looo Mile*
between emperors of the East and West. It was the beginning
not only of the break-up of the empire, but of that increasing
divergence between the eastern and western types of European
religion and culture which has continued to this day.
The pressure of the Teutonic invasions became increasingly
strong during the reigns of the emperor Valens and his successors.
These invasions were of two types, (i) migrations of whole
peoples with their old German patriarchal organization com-
plete, (2) bands, larger or smaller, of emigrants in search of land
to settle on, without tribal cohesion, but organized under the
leadership of military chiefs. The earlier invaders, Goths and
Vandals, and later the Burgundians and Lombards were of the
first type; to the second belonged the Franks, " free " men
from the Saxon plain, and the Saxon invaders of Britain. The
distinction was a vital one; for the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians
and Lombards never took root in the soil, and succumbed in
turn, while the-Frankish and Saxon immigrants, each man lord
in his own estate, not only maintained themselves, but set up at
the cost of the Roman organization and of the power of their
own kings a wholly new polity, based on the independence of
the territorial unit, which later on was to develop into feudalism.
It was owing to the pressure of Turanian invaders from the
East that the Teutonic peoples were first forced to take refuge
within the empire. In 378 the Goths defeated and
slew the emperor Valens in a battle near-Adrianoplc;
> n 4' Alaric, king of the West Goths, sacked Rome;
and shortly after his death the Goths passed into Gaul
and Spain. In 429 Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, at the invita-
tion, it is said, of the governor Bonifacius, passed over from
Spain to Roman Africa, which became the centre of another
Teutonic kingdom, soon established as a great naval power
which for a while commanded the Mediterranean and devastated
the coasts of Italy and Sicily with its piracies.
Meanwhile the Franks and Burgundians were pressing into
Germany and Gaul, while from 449 onwards the Saxons, the
Angles and the Jutes invaded and occupied Britain. For a
moment it was doubtful if the Aryan or Turanian races would be
supreme, but in 451 Attila, king of the Huns, was decisively
beaten in the battle of Chalons by a combination of Franks,
Goths and Romans, under the Roman general Aetius and
Tbeodosius, king of the Goths. This battle decided that Europe
was to be Christian and independent of Asia and Africa. In 476
the succession of Western emperors came to an end with Odoacer's
occupation of Rome, and with the decision of the Roman senate
that one emperor was enough, and that the Eastern emperor,
/.rim. should rule the whole empire. For a time Theodoric, king
of the East Goths, ruled Italy, Gaul and Spain; but after his
death in 526 the empire of the East Goths was shattered, and
changes took place which led to the rise of independent Teutonic
kingdoms in Gaul and Spain. In Gaul Clovis (d. 511), the king
of the Franks, had already established his power, and in Spain,
the West Gothic kingdom, with its capital at Toledo, now
asserted its Teutonic independence. Under the emperor
Justinian (527-565), indeed, the Roman empire seemed in a fair
way to recover its supremacy; the Vandal kingdom in Africa
was destroyed; in 555 the Byzantine general Narses finally
shattered the power of the East Goths in Italy, and the exarchate
of Ravenna was established in dependence on the Eastern
emperor; the West Goths were forced to give up the south of
Spain; and the Persians were checked. But with the death
of Justinian troubles began. In 568 the Lombards, under
Alboin, appeared in Italy, which they overran as far south as
the Tiber, establishing their kingdom on the ruins of the exar-
chate. Though in Asia the emperor Heraclius, in a series of
victorious campaigns, broke the Persian power and succeeded
even in extending the Roman dominion, Italy, save for a while-
Ravenna itself and a few scattered sea-coast towns, was thence-
forth lost to the empire of which in theory it still formed a
part.
This catastrophe produced one result the importance of which
it is impossible to exaggerate; the development of the political
power of the papacy. At the beginning of the 6th century Rome,
under Theodoric the Goth, was still the city of the Caesars,
the tradition of its ancient life was yet unbroken; at the end
of the century Rome, under Pope Gregory the Great (5907604),
had become the city of the popes. And with the city the popes
entered into some of the inheritance of the Caesars; in the
world-wide activity of Gregory we already have a foreshadowing
of universal claims, often effectively asserted, which made the
great medieval popes, in a truer sense than the medieval emperors,
the representatives of the idea of Roman imperial unity (see
ROME, sec. u. Middle Ages; PAPACY).
924
EUROPE
[HISTORY
The next event that profoundly affected the history of Europe
was the rise of Mahommedanism. In A.D. 622, sixteen years
The He- a f ter Gregory's death, occurred the flight (Hijra) of
lira, A. D. Mahomet from Mecca to Medina, which fixed the
622. Rise memorable era of the Hegira. The full force of the
m i utant religion founded by the Arab prophet was not
' felt till after his death (632). The emperor Heraclius,
the vigour of his manhood passed, was unable to mee"t this new
peril; the Arabs, strong in their hardy simplicity and new-born
religious fanaticism, and aided by the treason and cowardice of
the decadent Roman governing classes, overran Asia Minor,
conquered Egypt and the whole of northern Africa, overwhelmed
the Gothic kingdom in Spain, and even penetrated beyond the
Pyrenees to the conquest of the province of Narbonne. One of
the chief effects of these Arab conquests was that Christian
civilization became gradually confined to Europe; another was
that the trade routes to the East were closed to the Western
nations. The conquest of Narbonne marked the limit of the
advance of Islam in western Europe, for in 732 the Arabs were
overthrown by Charles Martel in the battle of Tours, and a
few years later were driven out of Gaul. In Spain, however,
they succeeded in maintaining themselves throughout the
middle ages, developing a high type of civilization which had
a considerable influence on the intellectual life of medieval
Europe; and it was not till 1494 that Granada, their last posses-
sion in the peninsula, was conquered by the Christian monarchs,
Ferdinand and Isabella.
The battle of Tours emphasized and increased the power and
reputation of Charles Martel. As a mayor of the palace to the
decadent Merovingian successors of Clovis, he was
Hngian*?" virtually ruler of the Franks, and, after his death,
the last of the rois faineants of the house of Merovech
was deposed, and Pippin, Charles's son, was elected king of the
Franks. The prestige of the Carolingian house (to give it the
name it was later known by) was increased when, at the urgent
entreaty of Pope Stephen III., Pippin marched into Italy and
saved Rome from the Lombards, who were endeavouring to
extend their power southwards. Pippin's son Charles (Charle-
magne) finally conquered the Lombards in 774 and thus added
part of northern Italy to his dominions.
In 797 an event of the highest importance to the European
world took place. The emperor Constantine VI. was deposed
The on , n . by his mother Irene, who seized the throne. Thereupon
atloa of Pope Leo and the Roman people definitely threw
Charles the off the authority of the emperors of Constantinople,
Great as on jj, e g roun( j that a woman could not hold the position
soeT" f Caesar. In 800 Leo crowned Charlemagne emperor
at Rome, and henceforth till 1453, when Constantinople
was conquered by the Turks, there was an Eastern and a Western
Charlemagne's Empire at its greatest extent.
magnet
empire. Till his death in 814 Charlemagne was king of the
Franks as well as emperor. His kingdom embraced not only all
Germany and modern France, but included a large part of
Italy and Spain as far as the Ebro. Under his rule western
Europe was united in a powerful empire, in the organization of
which the principles of Roman and Teutonic administration
were blended; and, after his death, he left to his successors,
the Prankish and German kings, the tradition of a centralized
government which survived the chaos of the period that followed,
and the prescriptive right to the title and prestige of Roman
emperors a tradition and a claim that were to exercise a
notable effect on the development of European history for
centuries to come. (See FRANCE: History and CHARLEMAGNE.)
The period from the death of Charlemagne (814) to the I2th
century is characterized in western Europe by the general
weakening of the idea of central government and by Bunpe
the rise of feudalism. During the same period the after the
East Roman or Byzantine empire escaped disruption death of
and, preserving the traditions of Roman civil and
i> t f i ff . i
military administration, formed an effective barrier
for Europe and Christendom against the advancing tide of Islam.
At the same time, however, the growing divergence between
the Eastern and Western Churches, which had been accentuated
by the iconoclastic controversy (see ICONOCLASTS), and was
destined in 1053 to culminate in a definite schism, was gradually
widening the breach between the two types of European civiliza-
tion, which came into violent conflict at the beginning of the
i3th century, when crusaders from western Europe captured
Constantinople and set up a Latin empire in the East (see
ROMAN EMPIRE, LATER; CHURCH HISTORY; CRUSADES). In
western Europe, meanwhile, the unity of the empire did not long
survive Charlemagne. Its definite break-up dates from the treaty
of Verdun (843), by which Charles the Bald received Neustria,
Aquitaine and western Burgundy, Louis the German Bavaria,
Swabia, Saxony and Thuringia, and the emperor Lothair the
middle kingdom known by his name, the regnum Lotkarii or
Lotharingia (see LORRAINE). By the partition of Mersen (870)
Lotharingia itself was divided between the West and East
Frankish realms France [and Germany, terms which from this
time begin to represent true national divisions. With the
treaties of Verdun and Mersen the history of the European state
system may be said to begin.
At first, indeed, it seemed as though the nascent states were
about to be dissolved by disruption from within and attacks
from without. All alike were subject to the attacks
of the Norse sea-rovers, hardy pirates who not only
scourged all the coasts of Europe but penetrated,
burning and harrying, far inland up the great waterways.
Meanwhile, the weakening of central government due to dynastic
The Western Empire after the Partition of Meisen Sp
Division of the Empire by
the Treaty of Verdun, 843
Charles
Lothair..,
Louis the German .1
EUROPE
in 1810
EUROPE in 1815
Knijlish MiU-
O 50 loo JOO jOO 400 500
Boundary of German Confederation
urg HES. Heiie-Darntitadt
Ntutau H.c. Heite-Caitel
ingian States L.o. Llppe-Detmolt
trr^ry Vtikcr K.
HISTORY]
EUROPE
925
I to the growth of independent or semi-independ-
ent powers within the states themselves. The Frank landowners
had successfully asserted their independence of the jurisdiction
of the king (or emperor) and his officials; the imperial officials
themselves, dukes or counts, had received grants of lands with
simil" 1 immunities (btnejicia), and these had become hereditary.
Thus sprang up a class of great territorial nobles to whom, amid
the growing anarchy, men looked for protection rather than to
the weak and remote central power; and so, out of the chaos
that followed the break-up of the empire of Charlemagne, was
born the feudal system of the middle ages (see FEUDALISM).
This organization was admirable for defence; and with its aid,
before the close of the first decade of the loth century, the
frontiers of France and Germany had been made safe against
the northern barbarians, who had either been driven off and
barriers erected against their return e.g. the marks established
by Henry the Fowler along the middle Elbe or, as in the case
of the Normans, absorbed into a system well adapted for such
a process. By the treaty of St Claire-sur-Epte (911) between
Charles the Simple and Rollo, chief of the Norsemen, the Normans
were established in the country since known as Normandy (?..),
as feudatories of the French crown. In England, by the treaty of
Wedmore (878) between Alfred and the Danish king Guthrum, the
Danes had already been established in a large part of England.
Feudalism, by the time the Northmen had been subdued by its
aid, was quite firmly established in the western part of Europe.
During the 1 1 th century it was carried by the Normans
into England, into Sicily and southern Italy, and by the
nobles of the first crusade into the newly established
kingdom of Jerusalem ( 1099). By the kings of France,
England and Germany, however, who saw themselves in danger
of being stripped of all but the semblance of power by its delega-
tion to their more or less nominal vassals, the feudal organization
was early recognized as impossible as a form of state government,
if the state was to be preserved; and the history of the three
great European powers during the succeeding centuries is mainly
that of the struggle of the sovereigns against the disruptive am-
bitions of the great feudal nobles. In England the problem was,
from the outset, simplified; for though William the Conqueror
introduced the system of feudal land tenure into England in 1066
he refused to set it up as his system of government, retaining
alongside of it the old English national policy. In France, on the
other hand, feudalism as a system of government had become
firmly established; and it was not till the days of Philip Augustus
(1180-1223) and Louis IX. (1226-1270) that the monarchy
began to get the upper hand. From this time until the 171(1
century the power of the French monarchy, in spite of occasional
lapses, grew steadily stronger. The reverse was the case with the
German kingship. Its association with the undefined claims
involved in the title of Roman emperor, traditionally attached to
it, and notably those to authority in Italy, necessitated con-
cession after concession to the feudal nobles, in order to purchase
their support for their assertion. The kingship, moreover,
became elective; the imperial title was obtainable only at Rome
at the hands of the pope; and the German kings thus became
entangled in contests, not only with their own vassals, but with
the tremendous spiritual force of the medieval papacy by
which, for its own ends, the spirit of feudal insubordination was
from time to time fomented. Thus in Germany the feudal nobles
gradually acquired a sovereign status which, in some cases, has
survived the territorial rearrangements of the ipth century and
left its mark on the federal constitution of modern Germany;
while the kingship and the imperial title grew more and more
shadowy till in 1806 it vanished altogether. (See ENGLISH
HISTORY; FRANCE: History; GERMANY: History.)
In France the process by which a strong hereditary monarchy
was established was a slow one. During the greater part of the
loth century the Carolingians, stripped of the vast
' domains which had been the basis of the power of
Pippin, owed their continued existence to the for-
bearance of Hugh the Great, count of Paris. In 987,
however, the last Carolingian king died, and Hugh Capet, son of
Hugh the Great, the most powerful of the territorial magnates,
was chosen king of France. With his election dates the real
beginning of the French monarchy, and under him and his suc-
cessors Paris became the capital of France. Hugh's election,
however, was the work of the great feudatories, and France
remained divided among a number of great fiefs, of which the
chief were Brittany, Anjou, Flanders, Vcrmandois, Champagne,
Burgundy, Aquitaine, Poitou, Gascony, Toulouse and Normandy.
While the central power in France advanced slowly but
steadily, the development of the royal authority in Germany
was in the loth and nth centuries more rapid. In
911 the German magnates had elected Conrad the
Franconian to reign over them, and in 919 Henry Otrm*ay.
" the Fowler " of Saxony, " whose reign forms one of
the great turning-points in the history of the German nation."
He defeated the Hungarians, the Slavs and the Danes, and by
encouraging the growth and development of towns he contributed
greatly to the formation of the German kingdom. His immediate
successors, Otto the Great and Otto II., continued his work,
which was only interrupted for a short time during the reign
of the idealist Otto III., whose " cosmopolitan imperialism "
brought him into collision with the German Church and to some
extent with the German nobles. Henry II. (1002-1025) asserted
with success his authority over Germany, and his successor
Conrad II., who belonged to the Salian or Franconian line, did
much to secure unity and prosperity to the Empire. His son and
successor Henry III. (1039-1056) governed Germany wisely,
and his reign witnessed the culminating point of the Holy Roman
Empire. At the time of his death it seemed probable that
Germany, like England and France, would gradually escape from
the thraldom of the great feudatories. The future of the German
monarchy depended upon the ability of future kings to suppress
the forces of feudal disintegration in Germany, and to withstand
the temptation of struggling to establish their influence over
Italy. Unfortunately for German kingship Henry IV. (1056-
1 106) was only six years old on his accession, and when he became
a man he found that the papacy under Hildebrand's influence was
practically independent of the emperor. Had Henry confined
his efforts to coercing the German barons he might, like the
Normans and Angevins in England, and like the Capctians in
France, have proved successful. Unfortunately for Germany
Henry entered upon the famous contest with the papacy under
Gregory VII. (1073-1080), which ended in the I3th century in
the defeat of the Empire in the person of Frederick II. The
struggle began in 1073 over the question of investiture (q.v.),
and widened into a duel between the spiritual and temporal
powers. During the early years of the contest the influence of
the papacy reached a high pitch and made itself felt in the crusad-
ing movement, which received its first impetus from Pope
Urban II., who appealed to Europe at the council of Clermont
in 1095 to recover the Holy Places from the Turks.
During the nth century the Eastern Empire was attacked by
the Russians, the Normans and the Seljuks. The emperor
Alexius Comnenus found himself on his accession in Thf
1081 threatened by the Seljuks (the victors in the de- enter*
cisive battle of Manzikert in 1071) and by the Sicilian Empin
Normans who in 1081 besieged Durazzo. In 1083 he f" rf '
defeated the Normans in the battle of Durazzo, and
with the death of Robert Guiscard in 1085 all danger from a fresh
Norman invasion passed away. But the first crusade brought
new anxieties to Alexius, for he feared that the crusaders might
attack Constantinople. That fear removed, he took advantage
of the increased connexion between eastern and western Europe
by bestowing commercial privileges upon the Italian trading
republics, who thus gained access to the ports of the Empire on
easy terms.
With the era of the Crusades, which lasted till the middle of
the 1 3th century, Europe entered upon a period of change, the
importance of which is realized by contrasting the condition
of western Christendom in the nth with its condition in the
I3th century. Between the opening and close of the crusading
movement Europe underwent a complete revolution. While the
926
EUROPE
[HISTORY
Crusades tended to enhance the prestige and authority of the
papacy and the power of European monarchs, they also led to
increased knowledge of the East, to the rapid de-
sadesaad velopment of commerce, to the introduction of new
the Hiide- industries, to the rapid decline of the influence of the
branding feudal nobility, and to the rapid development of town
life (see COMMUNE). At the same time the Hilde-
brandine reformation was having an immense influence
upon the intellectual condition of Europe. The I2th century
saw the establishment of many new monastic orders (see MONASTI-
CISM), and at the same time a remarkable speculative and literary
revival (see SCHOLASTICISM). This movement owed not a little
of its success to the influence of the Crusades, which stirred up
intellectual as well as commercial activity. This intellectual
activity, as well as the fruits of commercial expansion, were
since learning was still a monopoly of the clerical order weapons
in the hands of the papacy, which in the iath century attained
the height of its power, if not of its pretensions. It is, indeed,
impossible to exaggerate the influence of the Roman Church
upon the development of Europe at this period. The popes, in
fact, represented Europe in a sense that could not be predicated
of the emperors; the terror of their spiritual power, their vast
wealth derived from the tribute of all the West, their unique
experience of international affairs, and in the case of the great
popes of this epoch the superiority of their minds and characters,
made them not only the spiritual rulers of Europe, but the effec-
tive centres of whatever political unity it possessed. As a
Byzantine observer was to observe of Innocent III., they had
become the successors of the Caesars rather than of Peter (see
PAPACY).
Nowhere were the beneficial effects of the Crusades seen more
clearly than in France. The smaller fiefs were steadily absorbed
Growth of by the greater lordships, which in their turn fell
the royal victims to the royal power. It might almost be said
power/a t jj at " mo dern France is a creation of the Crusades."
France. ^^ e {j ects o f t jje crusa di n g movement were felt in
France as early as the reign of Louis VI. (1108-1137). Aided
by his able minister Suger, Louis managed before his death to
add to the possessions of his house the lie de France and a
prospective claim to Poitou and Aquitaine. Under his successor
Louis VII. (1137-1180) the consolidation movement was checked
owing to the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine (after her divorce
from Louis VII.) to Henry II. of England. By the addition of his
wife's lands (Gascony and Guienne) to those which he had already
inherited from his father and mother (Normandy, Anjou,
Touraine and Maine) Henry was enabled to form the powerful
though short-lived Angevin empire. But the lost ground was
rapidly recovered by Philip Augustus (1180-1223), who took
advantage of the weakness and folly of John of England, and
before 1215 had united firmly to France Normandy, Maine,
Anjou and Touraine. Louis VIII. and Louis IX. adhered firmly
to the policy of Philip IV., and in 1258, by the treaty of Paris,
Henry III. of England recognized the loss of Poitou. There thus
remained to England out of the vast continental domains of
Henry II. only Gascony and Guienne.
The rest of Europe was also in various degrees affected by the
Crusades. While Spain was occupied in a crusade of her own
Oeoeral against the Moors and gradually driving them into
results Granada, Germany, Italy, and to some extent England,
of the were interested in, and influenced by, the Crusades
es against the Turks. During the absence of many of the
nobles in the East the growth of towns and the development
of the mercantile class proceeded without interruption. The
trading classes demanded strong governments and equal justice,
and vigorously supported the monarchs in their suppression of
feudalism.
During the izth and I3th centuries the Crusades thus proved
a large factor in the commercial prosperity of the Italian mari-
time states, an " open door " between East and West was
secured, and reinforcements from Europe were poured into
Syria as long as the peoples of the West regarded the stability
of the Latin kingdom of Syria as a matter of prime importance.
During the crusading period a check was placed to the tide of
Mahommedan conquest, while to the caliphate the Crusades
proved a perpetual drain upon its material resources. To the
Mahommedans the possession of the Holy Places by the Chris-
tians was as great a humiliation as their desecration by the
Mahommedans was to the crusaders. Unfortunately the Cru-
sades led to a disastrous schism between the Byzantine empire
and western Christendom, which had calamitous results. The
decay of the crusading spirit was a necessary result of the growth
of the consolidation of the European nations, but the price paid
was the fall of Constantinople and the establishment of the
Turks in eastern Europe. The Crusades thus not only postponed
the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks for some two
hundred years, but led, as had already been said, to a vast
expansion of commerce, as seen in the rapid growth and develop-
ment of the Italian cities, and to a striking development of
town life.
The Crusades had enormously strengthened the power and
prestige of the papacy, and indirectly contributed to its victory
over the Empire in the person of Frederick II. From
the reign of the emperor Henry IV. to the death of rf,ggie
Frederick II. in 1250 the struggle between the Empire between
and the papacy continued, and is coincident in point the Empire
of time with the Crusades. The reign of Frederick andt ^ e
Barbarossa (1152-1 190) saw that struggle at its height, P
and during that reign it became apparent that the emperor's
efforts to unite Italy and Germany under one crown were doomed
to failure. The rise and success of the alliance of Italian republics
known as the Lombard League no doubt contributed to the
success of the papacy, but in their contest with the popes the
emperors never had any chance of gaining a permanent victory.
Frederick II. continued with great energy to attempt the hope-
less task of dominating the papacy, but his possession of Sicily
only made the popes more determined than ever to establish
their predominance in Italy. Frederick's death in 1250 marked
not only the triumph of the papacy in Italy, but also that of
feudalism in Germany. He has been called the " most dazzling
of the long line of imperial failures," and with him ends the
Empire as it was originally conceived. Henceforward the Holy
Roman Empire, which implied the unity of Italy and Germany,
and the close alliance of pope and emperor, no longer exists save
in name, and its place is taken by a glorified German kingship
presiding over a confederation of turbulent German nobles.
Thus with the later years of the I3th century Europe had
arrived at the definite close of one epoch and the beginning of
another. The period of the Crusades was over, the Euf
theory of the Holy Roman Empire had broken down, the^th"
The period from the beginning of the i4th to the close aadisth
of the 1 5th century might well be styled the latter ""turie*.
days of medieval Europe.
During the I4th and 15th centuries the idea of regarding
Europe as one state in which emperor and pope presided over
a number of subordinate kings gave way before the spirit of
nationalism and particularism. England, France and Spain were
rapidly becoming strong centralized monarchies which stood in
striking contrast to the weakened Empire. Partly no doubt
owing to the failure of the Empire and papacy to work together,
a great impetus had been given to the formation of national
monarchies. While Frederick II. had failed, Louis IX. and
Philip IV. of France, Ferdinand III. of Castile (1217-1252),
James the Conqueror, king of Aragon (1213-1276) and Edward I.
of England (1239-1307) succeeded in laying the foundations of
strong monarchies which after two centuries of struggles with
the dying efforts of feudalism were established on a firm basis.
In spite of the intellectual activity and political developments
which characterized the i3th, I4th and i5th centuries it remains
true that the later middle ages were marked by the decay of
those remarkable social and political forces which had been
such striking characteristics of the earlier period (see MIDDLE
AGES).
Thus the I4th and tsth centuries have characteristics which
differentiate them from all preceding and succeeding centuries,
HISTORY]
EUROPE
927
/<*
US4-
isn.
The triumph of the papacy over the Empire had been short -lived.
Owing to the disturbed state of Italy, Clement V. was in 1305
compelled to take refuge at Avignon, and till 1377 a
period known as the Babylonish captivity the popes
remained in France. While the Empire and papacy
steadily decline, while the Byzantine empire falls
before the Turks, strong monarchies are gradually
formed in England, France, Spain, and Portugal, and
in Italy the Renaissance movement covers the later
years of the i$th century with glory (see RENAISSANCE).
During these centuries there is common to Europe no one
principle which is to be found in all kingdoms. But while the
old system, founded on belief in the unity of Europe under the
Empire and papacy, declines amid chaos and turbulence, there
is much intellectual and political activity which portends the
appearance of an entirely new state of things. The i-jth and
15th centuries may truly be styled a period of transition.
From the death of Conrad IV., the son of Frederick II., in
1254 to 1273, when Rudolph of Habsburg became king, chaos
f^^,^^ reigned in Germany, and the period is known as the
/(* Great Interregnum. The forces of decentralization
strengthened themselves, and the emperors found that
the formation of a strong and united German kingdom
was an impossibility. Rudolph of Habsburg (1273-
1291), realizing what were the limits of his power in Germany
and the futility of attempting to establish his hold upon Italy,
began that policy of family aggrandizement which was continued
so notably by successive members of his house. His reign
witnessed the firm establishment of the house of Anjou in Naples,
and, after the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, the supremacy of the
house of Aragon in Sicily. Refusing to follow the example of
Frederick II. and to take part in distant expeditions, Rudolph
conquered Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, Vienna
became the capital of the Habsburg dominions in Germany,
and his son Albert of Austria, who was king from 1298 to
1308, was careful to continue the policy of his father. Though
no Habsburg was again elected to the imperial throne till 1438,
when the long succession of emperors began which continued
unbroken till 1742, the establishment of the Habsburgs in
Austria by Rudolph proved an event of European importance.
From that time the leading members of the Habsburg family
never lost an opportunity of aggrandizement. In 1335 they
received Carinthia, in 1363 the Tirol. While, however, the
Habsburgs, the Wittelsbachs and later the house of Brandenburg
were strengthening themselves, the Empire was steadily declining
in power and influence. The i-ith century saw Switzerland
shake itself free from the Austrian house and establish its
independence, which was, however, not formally acknowledged
till the treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
During the 1410 century the weakness of the Empire became
more and more accentuated under the weak rule of Louis IV.
On his death in 1346 his successor Charles of Luxemburg, known
as the emperor Charles IV., made a celebrated attempt to form
a strong centralized German monarchy. With that object he
issued in 1356 the Golden Bull, by which it was hoped that all
matters connected with the imperial election would be settled.
The number of imperial electors was settled, and henceforth
they were to consist of the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz and
Trier, and of the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the
margrave of Brandenburg and the count palatine of the Rhine.
Charles hoped to concentrate gradually in bis house all the
chief German provinces, and having by the Golden Bull en-
deavoured to check the growth of the towns, he expected to
establish firmly the imperial influence in Germany. But the
towns were too strong to be coerced, and during his reign the
Swabian cities formed a union; and though the marriage of his
son Sigismund to the heiress of the king of Hungary and Poland,
and the possession of Brandenburg, which fell to him in 1373,
seemed steps towards the realization of his hopes, his death in
1378 left his work unfinished. Moreover, his son and successor
Wenceslaus (1378-1400) proved, like Richard II. of England and
Charles VI. of France, unequal to the task of checking the growing
independence of the nobles and t he cit ies. The Hanseatic League
(?..) was at the height of its power, and in 1381 the Rhenish
towns formed a confederation. Wenceslaus, like Richard II.,
had fallen upon evil times. The advance westwards by the
Turks occupied the attention of his brother Sigismund, now
king of Hungary; he was himself unpopular in Bohemia, and at
the same time was exposed to the intrigues of his cousin Jobst
of Moravia, who had secured Brandenburg. In 1400 Wenceslaus
was formally deposed by the electors, and spent the rest of his
life in Bohemia, where he died in 1419. His successor Rupert
of the palatinate reigned from 1400 to 1410, and during his reign
the council of Pisa endeavoured to bring to an end the great
schism which had followed upon the return of Pope Urban VI.
from Avignon to Rome in 1377. Two popes had been elected,
one living at Rome, the other at Avignon, and Christian Europe
was scandalized at the sight of two rival pontiffs. On Rupert's
death the electors chose Sigismund the brother of Wenceslaus,
and he ruled as emperor from 1411 to 1437.
Thus at the beginning of the isth century the papacy was
seen to have fallen from the high position which it occupied at
the time of the death of Frederick II. The Avignon
captivity followed by the great schism weakened its
temporal as well as its spiritual power and prestige,
while national developments and dynastic ambitions,
such as led to the Hundred Years' War, diverted men's minds
from religious to purely temporal concerns. The work of Wy-
cliffe and Hus illustrated not only the decline of papal prestige
but also the general opinion that reform in the papacy was
necessary. Sigismund's reign as emperor was rendered s/ .
noteworthy by the part which he took in the council of mua'd,
Constance (q.v.), and by his successful efforts to sup- tmp*nr,
pressthe Hussite movement in Bohemia (see HUSSITES). M ""
That country on the death of Wenceslaus in 1419
fell to Sigismund, but it was not till 1431, after a long and
sanguinary war, that the opposition to the union of Bohemia
with the Empire was suppressed. Led by /i/k:i and other able
chiefs, the Bohemians who were Slavs utilized the Hussite
movement in a vigorous attempt to secure their independence.
In 1436 Sigismund was formally acknowledged king of Bohemia.
In 1431, the year of the final overthrow of the Bohemians and
the Hussites, he opened the council of Basel (q.v.), being
resolved to establish a religious peace in Europe and to prevent
the Hussite doctrines from spreading into Germany. In 1438
Sigismund died, leaving Germany involved in a quarrel with the
papacy, but having successfully withstood the efforts of the
Bohemians to acquire independence. Sigismund's death marks
an epoch in the history of the Empire, for his successor Albert
of Austria proved to be the first of a long line of Habsburg
emperors. Albert himself reigned only from 1438 to 1440, but
on his death the imperial dignity was conferred upon another
member of the Habsburg house, Frederick, duke of Styria and
Carinthia, known as the emperor Frederick III. With his
accession the imperial throne became practically hereditary in
the Habsburg family. Frederick's long reign, which lasted from
1440 to 1493, was of little benefit to Germany; for he showed
no administrative skill and proved a weak and incapable ruler.
Undoubtedly his lot fell upon evil days, for not only were the
Turks at the height of their power, but both Bohemia and
Hungary gave him much anxiety. The imminent fall Tht*king
of Constantinople, the last barrier of Christendom otcoa-
against Islam in the East, was a threat not only to *<"
the Empire, but to all Christian Europe. But western "h^uritt
Europe was too much occupied with internecinefcudsto
unite effectively against the common enemy. In vain the emperor
John VI. had gone in person to solicit aid at the various courts
of the West; in vain he had humbled himself to pay the price
asked, by subscribing to the abnegation of the distinctive tenets
of the Orthodox Church, which secured the ephemeral reunion of
Christendom at the council of Florence (1438). The crusading
spirit was dead; the European powers stirred no finger to save
the imperial city; and in 1453 Sultan Mahommcd II. rode
through the breach over the body of the last of the Eastern
928
EUROPE
[HISTORY
Caesars, and planted the crescent on the dome of the metropolitan
church of Eastern Christendom (see TURKEY; and ROMAN
EMPIRE, LATER).
The fall of Constantinople marked the definite establishment
on European soil of a power alien and hostile to all that was
characteristic of European civilization. It was a power, more-
over, which could live only by expanding; and for over two
hundred years to come the dread of Ottoman aggression was a
dominant factor in the politics of eastern Europe. The tide of
Turkish advance could have been arrested by a union of Europe;
but the appeals of Pope Nicholas V. fell unheeded upon a sceptical
age, intent only on its dynastic and particularist ambitions.
To the emperor the ousting of the Ottomans from the Balkan
peninsula seemed of less importance than the consolidation of
the Habsburg power in Germany, and its extension over the
neighbouring kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia. France was
exhausted by the long agony of the Hundred Years' War, which
came to an end the very year of the fall of Constantinople, and
the French kings especially Louis XI. (1461-1483) were busy
for the rest of the century crushing out the remnants of feudalism
and consolidating the power of the monarchy. As for Italy,
with its petty tyrants and its condoltieri, there was no hope of
uniting it for any purpose whatever, least of all a religious
purpose, and Spain was busy with her own crusades against the
Moors. The exploits of John Hunyadi, king of Hungary, against
the Turks, therefore, remained isolated and unsupported. In
1456 he checked their advance northwards by a brilliant victory
which led to the relief of Belgrade; but he died the same year,
and his death was followed by a struggle for the succession
between Hungarians and Bohemians. The racial and religious
quarrels of the Balkan peoples had made it possible for the Turks
to obtain a foothold in Europe; the jealousies and internecine
struggles of the Christian states made possible the vast expansion
of the Ottoman power, which in the I7th century was to advance
the frontiers of Islam to those of Germany and to reduce the
emperors, in their relations with the Porte, to the status of
tributary princes.
The victory of Ladislaus, son of Casimir, king of Poland, who
succeeded in uniting in his own person the crowns of Bohemia,
Hungary and Poland, threatened to result in the permanent
independence of those countries of the house of Habsburg.
But in 1490 Ladislaus was compelled by Maximilian, son of
Frederick III., to sign the treaty of Pressburg, providing for the
eventual succession of the Habsburgs to Hungary and Bohemia.
In other ways the reign of Frederick III. laid the foundations
of the greatness of his family. In 1477 Maximilian married Mary,
Coasoiida- duchess of Burgundy and heiress of Charles the Bold,
tloa of the and through her the Habsburgs obtained Franche
Habsburg Comte and the Netherlands. The line, Bella gerant
P wer - alii, tu felix Austria nube, well described the method
by which the house of Habsburg increased its possessions and
established its fortunes. A.E.I. O.U. (Austriae est imperare orbi
universo) was the device invented for his house at that time by
Frederick III. and it proved no idle boast. Maximilian I., the
son of Frederick III., reigned from 1493 to 1519, and during his
reign Europe passed from medieval to modern times. Some
reforms in the Empire were carried out, but the events of his
reign made it apparent that it was impossible to set up a central-
ized monarchy in Germany (see MAXIMILIAN I. ; GERMANY and
AUSTRIA: History).
Far different developments were taking place during the
I4th and isth centuries in France, Spain, the Scandinavian
France la nortn an <l m England. During the greater part of the
the 13th 1 4th century France was engaged in foreign wars and
and 14th j n internal complications, and it seemed doubtful if a
oturies. stron g centralized monarchy would be firmly estab-
lished. The failure of Philip VI/(i328-i35o) and John (1350-
1364) in their contest with England weakened the central power
in France, and, though Charles V. (1364-1389), owing to his own
sagacity and the weakness of the English government, managed
to regain for France many of her lost provinces, the French
power both at home and abroad again declined under the rule of
the incapable Charles VII. (1380-1422). In fact the year 1422
may be said to mark the lowest stage in the history of the French
monarchy. From that year an improvement gradually set in.
A national sentiment, as exemplified in the career of Joan of Arc
(q.i).), was developed; an alliance, essential for the successful
expulsion of the English from France, was made in 1435 between
the king of France and the duke of Burgundy; and in 1439 the
famous ordinance empowering the king to maintain a standing
army and to raise money for its maintenance was passed at
Orleans by the states-general. These measures proved successful ;
in 1453 the Hundred Years' War came to an end, and Louis XI.
managed between 1461 and 1483 to establish an absolutism
in France on sure foundations. Under his successor Charles VIII.
(1483-1498), Brittany was annexed, and France, secure from all
danger of a feudal reaction, entered with the invasion of Italy
in 1494 by Charles VIII. upon modern times. A similar process
is observable in England and Spain. In England the Wars of the
Roses were followed by the establishment of a strong monarchy
under Henry VII., while in Spain Ferdinand and Isabella estab-
lished in place of anarchy the royal authority, and during their
reign suppressed all attempts at provincial independence. In
1491 the consolidation of Spain was completed by the conquest
of Granada. In 1397, by the union of Calmar, the three kingdoms
of Norway, Sweden and Denmark were united under Eric XIII.
This union was, however, short-lived, and in the early years of
the 1 6th century came definitely to an end (see NORWAY;
SWEDEN; DENMARK).
The close of the middle ages and the beginning of modern
times was marked by several noteworthy events. The invention
of printing, the discovery of America and the invasion The close
of Italy by Charles VIII. all occurred before the end of the
of the i sth century, while in the early years of the i6th middle
century the ideal of civil and ecclesiastical unity was a ** s '
finally shattered by the Reformation and by the development
of the modern states system, accompanied by the prominence
henceforward attached to the question of the balance of
power.
During the whole of the isth century Europe had been affected
by what is known as the Renaissance movement, which marked
the transition from the medieval to the modern order.
This movement, caused by the growth of learning,
had its first home in Italy, which had witnessed a
marvellous revival of interest in classical antiquity, in painting
and in sculpture, accompanied by a keen intellectual activity
in religious and political, no less than in literary matters. Criti-
cism of existing beliefs was developed, knowledge became
widely diffused, and, while the way was prepared for the sub-
stitution of individualism for the old ecclesiastical system, the
development of commerce coincident with the discovery of
America and the establishment of monarchical systems destroyed
feudalism (see RENAISSANCE). The later years of the isth, and
the early years of the i6th, centuries may be described as the
transition from medievalism to modern times, from feudalism
to individualism, from the idea of a world church and a world
empire to one in which national consolidation was the chief
feature and monarchical goveriftnent a necessity.
From the beginning of the i6th century Europe entered
upon modern times. Many events marked the close of the middle
ages. The discovery of America, the decay of Venice, summary
the development of the European states system, the rise ofEun-
of diplomacy as a permanent international system (see
DIPLOMACY), the wars of religion all these are the
general characteristics of the new period upon which
Europe now enters. With the growth of monarchies arises the
belief in the divine right of kings, the development of territorial
sovereignty, and wars of ambition like those waged by Louis XIV.
With the i8th century democratic ideas first begin to appear
side by side with the rule of the enlightened despots such as
Frederick the Great, Catherine II. and Joseph II. The outbreak
of the French Revolution brings to an end the old European
system, upsets the ideas on which it was founded, and leads to
important territorial changes.
~ P
flfiliflf
HISTORY1
EUROPE
929
_
The ailvcnt of the Reformation, as has already been pointed
out, finally shattered that ideal of civil and religious unity
which had been the main characteristic of the middle
ages. Thus from the beginning of the t6th century
rM 4 Europe sees the development of the modern states
system and becomes the scene of national wars in
which the idea of the balance of power was the leading
principle (see BALANCE or POWER). That principle did
not allow of the recognition of the rights of nation-
alities, and till the wars of the French Revolution the interests
of the various European states were usually subordinated to the
dynastic aims of their rulers. During the ensuing centuries the
balance of power in Europe was seriously threatened; during
the first half of the i6th century by Charles V., during the latter
half of the same century by Philip II., in the first half of the 1 7th
century by the house of Habsburg, and in the latter half by
Louis XIV.
The close of the Seven Years' War seemed to prelude a period
of British ascendancy on the continent, but that danger passed
away with the outbreak of the war between Great Britain and
her American colonies. For a time the balance of power in
Europe was completely shattered by Napoleon's brilliant
conquests, but his fall, while to a great extent restoring the
political equilibrium, gave an opportunity to Alexander of
Russia to dominate Europe. Thus the i6th century definitely
marked the beginning of modern times both from a political as
well as from a religious point of view.
With the accession of Francis I. to the French and Charles V.
to the imperial throne began the long rivalry between France
. an d the house of Habsburg, which continued with few
iBt interruptions till 1756. In the struggle between
Charles V. and Francis I., which began in 1521, the
/C**rir former had the advantage, and the battle of Pavia
('5*5) * eernc d likely to lead to the permanent pre-
eminence of the imperial cause. But unexpected
allies were found by Francis in the German reformers and in the
Turks. The nailing by Luther of his ninety-five theses to the
door of the Wittenberg church, followed by the decisions of the
diet of Worms in 1521, led to a rapid development of Lutheran
opinions among the princes of the north of Germany. Charles
V.'s victory over France in 1525 and his reconciliation with the
papacy in 1529 seemed, however, to prelude the suppression
of the Protestant opinions. But Francis I. again took up arms,
while the invasions of Suleiman the Magnificent, during whose
reign the Turkish influence was not only felt in Hungary and
Germany but extended to the west basin of the Mediterranean,
forced Charles to temporize. When in 1544 the conclusion of
the peace of Crepy with Francis I. enabled Charles to turn his
attention to the rapid growth of Protestantism, it was too late
to adopt with any chance of success a policy of suppression.
In 1552 he found himself compelled to agree to the treaty of
Passau which implied the adoption of a policy of compromise,
and which in 1555 was followed by a definite arrangement at
Augsburg, which admitted the principle of cujus regie, ejus
religio. Till the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War in 1618,
the settlement of Augsburg tended to keep peace between the
Catholics and the Protestants. Equally unsuccessful were
Charles's later efforts against France; in 1553 he lost Mctz,
Toul and Verdun, and in 1556 he retired to Spain, leaving the
Empire to his brother Ferdinand, and Spain, the Netherlands
and his Italian possessions to his son Philip. The latter, after
winning the battle of St Quentin in 1557, made peace with
Hrrry II. of France by the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis in
I5SO-
By this peace a term was put to the struggle between France
on the one hand and the Empire and Spain on the other, and the
n, kings of France and Spain were enabled to turn their
attention to the issues raised by the immense growth
of Protestantism since 1521. While Charles V. had
been engaged in his struggles with the Turks and the
French, Protestantism had rapidly developed. In Sweden,
in Denmark, in England, in various pans of Germany, and in
DC. 30
France Protestant principles had been largely adopted (see
REFORMATION).
Though the forces of Roman Catholicism had for a time been
vanquished they had still to be counted with. From the middle
of the i6th century the growth of Protestantism began to be
checked, and a period of reaction against the Reformation set in.
For a time it seemed that the efforts of Roman Catholicism
would be successful and that the cause of Protestantism would be
permanently weakened. The papacy since the beginning of the
i6th century had reformed itself, the council of Trent (?..),
which closed its sittings in 1564, had given Roman Catholicism
a " clearly and sharply defined body of doctrine," and the
Catholic Church had become " more united, less wordly, and
more dependent on herself." In this work of reorganization
the Jesuits had played a great part, and the success of the
Counter-Reformation was largely due to their efforts (see
JESUITS). Paul III., Pius IV. and V., Gregory XIII. and
Sixtus V. are all good examples of the reforming popes of the
1 6th century. Under them the Jesuits worked; they restored
Catholicism in Poland, Bohemia and south Germany; and
supported by them the Inquisition crushed Protestantism out
of Spain and Italy.
The interest of the Counter-Reformation movement from
1559 to 1618 centres round Philip II. of Spain. While Pius V.
(1566-1372) is the best example of the Counter-
Reformation popes, Philip II. took the lead among tniUpii.
European Catholic monarchs in working for the ex-
tinction of Protestantism. His recovery of the southern Nether-
lands for the Catholic cause, his attempt to conquer England,
his intention of subjugating France, were all parts of a scheme
to advance simultaneously his own power and that of the
Counter- Reformation.
Circumstances combined to aid Philip, and while he was
endeavouring to carry out his political aims, the Jesuits were
busily occupied in winning back large portions of Europe to
allegiance to the papacy. But failure attended most of Philip's
projects. Though he succeeded in recovering the southern or
Walloon provinces of the Netherlands, he was unable to conquer
the northern provinces, which under William of Orange formed
themselves into the Dutch republic (see HOLLAND: History).
His scheme for the conquest of England failed, and the Spanish
Armada was totally defeated in 1588. Nor was his plan for the
subjection of France more successful. After a tedious civil war
between the Catholics and Huguenots, Henry of Navarre
appeared as a national leader, who, having overcome the armies
of the League with which Philip was allied, concluded the peace
of Vervins in 1398. In consenting to this treaty Philip acknow-
ledged that his schemes for the establishment of his influence
over France had failed. Thus, when the i6th century closed,
England's independence was assured, the Dutch republic was
established, the French monarchy was rapidly recovering from
the effects of the religious wars and the decadence of the
Spanish monarchy had set in. But the religious question was
still unsettled, religious passions ran high, and no satisfactory
agreement between Catholicism and Protestantism had been,
or seemed likely to be arrived at. The successes of the Counter-
Reformation under the Jesuits and such men as Ferdinand of
Styria (afterwards the emperor Ferdinand II.) and Maximilian
of Bavaria only roused strenuous opposition on the part of
Calvinist princes such as Frederick IV., the elector palatine.
Various events had indicated the approach of a final struggle
between Protestantism and Catholicism during the early years
of the 1 7th century. The seizure of Donau worth, a Tfc , ap _
town with Protestant sympathies, by Maximilian of pmuch of
Bavaria in 1607, the formation of the Protestant Union * Thirty
in 1608 and of the Catholic League in 1609, the ques- }*"'
lions raised in 1609 by the Cleves-Jtilich affair, the pre-
parations of Henry IV, of France for an anti-Habsburg campaign
all these showed that the political atmosphere was charged with
electricity. Till 1618, however, an open conflict between Protest-
antism and Catholicism in Germany was averted; in that year
the acceptance, by the Calvinist Frederick, the elector palatine,
930
EUROPE
[HISTORY
of the crown of Bohemia, proved the starting-point of the
Thirty Years' War.
Till the death of Gustavus Adolphus in 1632 that war preserved
a religious or semi-religious character. The emperor Ferdinand
II., Philip III. of Spain and Maximilian of Bavaria
undoubtedly hoped to suppress Protestantism in Ger-
War. many, while Wallenstein, the great imperialgeneral, was
prepared to conquer Denmark, Sweden and Norway,
and to convert the Baltic into an Austrian lake. Though the
resistance of Christian IV. of Denmark was vain, the jealousy felt
by the Catholic princes of Wallenstein and the skill of Gustavus
Adolphus caused the total failure of these ambitious schemes.
All hope of seeing the imperial flag waving over the Baltic was
dispelled by the victory of Breitenfeld, and that of Ltitzen
in 1632, and though Gustavus Adolphus fell in the last-named
battle, he had saved north Germany from falling into the hands
of the Jesuits.
With his death the Thirty Years' War became in the main a
political struggle between France and the Habsburgs a con-
tinuation of the wars of Francis I. and Henry II.
France tat a 8 ams t Charles V., and of the war between Henry IV.
the war. an d Philip II. Ferdinand II. had attempted to carry
back the religious history of the Empire more than
seventy years, and had failed. He had endeavoured to make the
Empire a reality and to revive and carry out the designs of
Charles V. His failure was now complete. The edict of Restitu-
tion issued in 1629 remained a dead letter, and from 1632 to
1648 he and his successor Ferdinand III. had to employ all their
energies in defending their possessions from the attacks of the
French and Swedes.
The death of Gustavus Adolphus followed in 1634 by the
assassination of Wallenstein proved an admirable opportunity
for the entry of France into the Thirty Years' War. And till
1648, in spite of occasional reverses, the French and their allies
gradually wore down their adversaries. After the death of Henry
IV. in 1610 France had temporarily retired from a foremost
place in the politics of Europe, and for some thirty years her
ministers were busy in coercing the Huguenots and establishing
the supremacy of the crown which was threatened by the nobles.
Once united at home France was ready and eager to seize the
opportunity for inflicting a severe blow upon the Habsburgs
in Spain and Austria. The time for such action was well chosen.
Austria was weakened by the war which had been waged since
1618, while Spain, exhausted by her efforts in the preceding
century, had entered upon a long period of decay, and was about
to see Portugal regain its independence. The Protestant princes
in the north of Germany were ready to ally with France and
Sweden against the emperor, even the Catholic Bavarian duke
was to prove a doubtful ally of the Habsburg house. In 1642
Richelieu and in 1643 Louis XIII. died, but though Louis XIV.
was an infant, and the French nobles by their cabals hindered
the work of the regency, Mazarin successfully carried out the
anti-Habsburg policy of his predecessors and brought the war
against Austria to a successful conclusion. (See further THIRTY
YEARS' WAR.)
The peace of Westphalia in 1648 marked the virtual close of
religious conflicts in Europe. It also marked the end of the
The peace attempts of the Habsburgs to establish a monarchical
of West- system throughout all Germany. By that peace the
practical independence of the German princes was
assured. Henceforward each prince could decide what
form of religion was to be observed in his dominions. Thus
Lutheranism, Calvinism and Cathoh'cism were alike tolerated,
and this recognition of the principle of compromise prepared the
way for a wider toleration. Moreover, the petty principalities
of the Empire, which numbered over 300, were allowed the right
of concluding alliances with any foreign power, of making their
own laws, and of carrying on war. Thus, in consequence of this
most important concession of the emperor, the Empire lost all
cohesion and became little more than a confederation. The
states had firmly established their " liberties," the princes were
now emancipated from imperial control, and it was evident that,
unless by some means the house of Austria could re-establish
its ascendancy, the eventual dissolution of the Empire must
sooner or later follow. The peace of Westphalia thus marks for
Europe, and in a special sense for Germany, the end of an
important epoch. For Germany the changes introduced into
its political life amounted to nothing Jess than a revolution, for
there " the mainspring of the national life was broken." For
Europe the Thirty Years' War brought to a close " the mighty
impulses which the great movements of the Renaissance and
Reformation had imparted to the aspirations " of men in all
parts of the western world.
It was not, however, till the treaties of the Pyrenees (1659)
and Oliva (1660) were signed that the echoes of the Thirty Years'
War died away, and Europe entered upon a period in The ^a^s
which the political ambitions of Louis XIV. threatened of the Pyre-
the interests of Europe and absorbed the attention of aees *" a
all European statesmen. During the intervening va '
years from 1648 to 1659 Spain and France continued the struggle,
while Charles X. of Sweden in 1654 entered upon a career of
aggression and conquest in the north of Europe, which was only
ended with his death on the 23rd of February 1660. Upon the
balance of power in the north of Europe the wars of Charles X.
had little permanent effect, and the peace of Oliva to a great
extent merely marked the restoration of the status quo. But the
peace of the Pyrenees was far more important. During its
struggle with France, Spain found itself also involved in hostilities
with England, and the real rottenness of the Spanish monarchy
became rapidly apparent. Any assistance which might have
been hoped for from the emperor was prevented by the formation
of leagues of German princes lay and ecclesiastical in 1657
and 1658, which had the full support of France. The effect of
the formation of the second league was at once apparent: all
hope of assistance to Spain from the emperor was seen to have
disappeared, and the conclusion of a pacific settlement between
France and Spain was at once arrived at. The peace of the
Pyrenees was a triumph for the Rheinbund, no less than for
France.
With the beginning of the personal rule of Louis XIV. in 1661,
and the return of Charles II. to England in 1660, a new period
in the history of personal monarchy in Europe began.
At the time of the peace of Westphalia the monarchy
in Europe was under a cloud. In England the cause
of Charles I. was lost tn France the Fronde was holding its
own against Mazarin; in Germany the princes had triumphed
over the emperor; even in Russia the nobles were aiming at the
curtailment of the power of the crown. But from 1660 it became
evident that these attempts to secure the curtailment of the
monarchical power were, with few exceptions, not destined to be
successful. Though all chance of the establishment of a strong
central authority in Germany had disappeared, the various states
composing the Empire now entered upon a new period in their
history and speedily formed miniature despotisms. Of these
Brandenburg, Saxony and Bavaria were the most important.
In Denmark Frederick III. made his crown hereditary, and his
establishment of an absolutism was imitated by Charles XL of
Sweden a few years later.
Thus when Louis XIV. took into his own hands the government
of France, the absolutist principle was triumphant all over
Europe. The period of his personal rule lasted from 1661 to his
death in 1715, and is known as " the age of Louis XIV." During
that period France was the leading monarchy in Europe, and the
most conspicuous not only in arms but also in all the arts of
civilization. While Turenne, Luxemburg, Villars and many
others exemplified, till the rise of Marlborough, the pre-eminence
of French generals, Pascal, Racine, Corneille, Moliere and
Fenelon testified to the commanding position taken by France
in the world of literature. The building of Versailles and the
establishment of the French court there was an event of im-
portance not only in the history of France, but also in the
history of Europe. The history of Europe may without ex-
aggeration be said during the reign of Louis XIV. to centre
round Versailles.
HISTORY]
EUROPE
During his reign France took the lead in European politics,
and established her supremacy all the more easily, owing partly
to the weakness of most of the European countries,
partly to the aggressions of the Turks, whose invasions
> / of eastern Europe occupied from 1683 to 1699 the
attention of the Poles and of the Austrians. The
weakness or neutrality of the various European states
was due to various causes. England was prevented till 1689
from taking a pan in opposing the ambitious schemes of Louis
\1Y. owing to the personal aims of Charles II. and James II.
Philip IV. and Charles II. of Spain could do nothing to resist the
growing ascendancy of France, owing to the increasing weakness
and rapid decadence of Spain, whose disappearance from the
rank of great powers was one of the most striking features in
the history of Europe during the second half of the i ;th century.
The weakness of Germany from the peace of Westphalia to the
end of the century, due partly to the establishment of the
independence of the princes of the Empire, partly to the unrest
in Hungary, partly to the aggressions of the Turks, was obviously
an immense gain to Louis XIV.
Realizing the strength of his own position and the weakness
of that of most of the European states, he entered in 1667 into
the Devolution war and secured several fortresses in
tne Spanish Netherlands. From 1672 to 1678 he was
again at war with Holland, and from 1673 with the
emperor, Spain and Brandenburg as well. At the same time the
Turks invaded Poland, but were successfully resisted by John
Sobieski. In 1676, however, they made the favourable treaty of
Zurawna, securing Kamenets and portions of Podolia and the
I'kraine. Thus, while the Turks were threatening the inde-
pendence of eastern Europe, Louis XIV. was attacking the
independence of western Europe. In 1678 he made the treaty
uf Nijmwegen, securing great advantages for France. Till the
end of the century Europe was faced with two serious problems:
Could she successfully cope with the Turks on her eastern
frontier? And could she resist the continued aggressions of
France on her western frontier ? Consequently the years from
1678 to the end of the century were of vital importance to the
European world. For during that period the French and Turks
made unceasing efforts to extend their frontiers at the expense
of Germany. Encouraged by the weakness of the chief European
states, Louis set up the Chambers of Reunion, seized Strassburg
in time of peace and attempted to annex Luxemburg. At the
same time it seemed that an independent Gallican Church would
be set up, and that Louis, like Henry VIII., would sever all
connexion with Rome. The persecution of the Jansenists and
the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685 established some-
thing akin to religious uniformity in France. Buoyed up by his
successes abroad and at home, and conscious that he had nothing
to fear from England or from Spain, Louis prepared to carry out
his schemes, with regard to the extension of his territory east-
wards, at the expense of Germany. Simultaneously with Louis'
aggressions in western Europe, the Turks had made an attempt
to capture Vienna in 1683. Fortunately the efforts of the
emperor Leopold, aided by John Sobieski, king of Poland, were
successful, and the Turkish tide of conquest was gradually but
successfully checked. It was not, however, till the accession of
William III. to the English throne that the tide of French
conquest in western Europe was in like manner successfully
resisted, and it was not till the treaty of Ryswick in 1697 that
Louis realized that Europe had set a limit to his conquests.
That treaty inflicted a blow on the prestige of France, just as the
treaty of Kariowitz, concluded in 1699, was an important step
in the decline of the Ottoman power. By that treaty, which
marks a definite beginning in the history of the Austro-Hun-
garian monarchy, the hands of the emperor were freed, and he
was able to devote his attention to the Spanish succession
question, which already engrossed the attention of all Europe.
The decadence of Spain had been obvious to all Europe since
the middle of the century, and in anticipation of the death of the
Spanish king Charles II., Louis XIV. and William III. had made
a partition treaty in October 1608, which was superseded in
March 1 700 by a second partition treaty. However, on the death
of King Charles on the ist of November 1700 Louis repudiated
the partition treaties and accepted the crown of Spain nt s
for his grandson Philip, who became Philip V. of i,hsuc-"
Spain. Not content with this success Louis committed */<
a number of aggressive acts which led to the War War '
of the Spanish Succession in 1702. That war continued till 1713,
when the treaty of Utrecht, followed in 1714 by the treaties of
Rastadt and Baden, ended a struggle which had many results of
vital importance to Europe. Great Britain, strengthened by the
possession of Gibraltar and Minorca, by her establishment in
Canada, and by trading rights in South America, henceforward
stood forth as a rising colonial power to whom the command of
the sea was essential. Austria obtained not only Belgium,
which she held till the French Revolution, but also a firm foothold
in Italy, which she maintained till 1859. To Spain the war in-
directly brought unexpected benefits. Freed from her expensive
possessions in Belgium and Italy, and now ruled by a new
dynasty, Spain, so far from meeting with the fate which later
attended Poland, entered upon a new period in her career, and
throughout the i8th century showed considerable power of
resistance to the colonial policy of Great Britain.
With all its defects the treaty of Utrecht proved in many
ways an excellent settlement. Till 1740, although a few short
wars took place, Europe as a whole enjoyed peace.
But with the settlement of Utrecht Europe seemed ^J"*
to have lost all touch with the high ideals which
occasionally, as in the career of Gustavus Adolphus, or in the
English great rebellion, or in the defence of Vienna by John
Sobieski, were met with. The i8th century was marked by
the dominance of a perverted system of the balance of power,
which regarded such acts as the Prussian seizure of Silesia and the
partition of Poland as justifiable on the ground that might is right.
Before many years had passed after the treaty of Utrecht it
became evident that two new nations were forcing themselves
into the front rank of European powers. These were European
Russia and Prussia. The treaty of Nystad in 1721 politic*
was to the north of Europe what the treaty of Utrecht ' 7 '*-
was to the western and southern nations. It marked l740 '
the decline of Sweden and the rise of Russia, which henceforth
played an important part in European 'politics. Nevertheless
till 1740 with the exception of the short Polish Succession War
I733-3S and the equally short war of 1737-39, in which Russia
and Austria fought against Turkey, no general European struggle
took place. That this was so was due in great measure to the
alliance of 1717 between Great Britain and France, to the
subsequent peace policy upheld by Walpole, Fleury, Patifio and
Horn (the English, French, Spanish and Swedish ministers), to
the hostility between the courts of Vienna and Madrid only
momentarily healed by the treaty of Vienna in 1725 and to the
uncertain character of Russian politics.
During those years from 1713 to 1740 the great powers were
slowly forming themselves into groups, bound together by
motives of interest. Thus Spain and France after 1729 began
to realize that both countries were interested in checking Great
Britain's colonial developments, while Spain was also ready to
seize every opportunity of increasing her possessions in Italy at
the expense of Austria.
With the year 1740 Europe entered upon a new epoch. The
rivalry of Austria and Prussia for the leadership of Germany
definitely began, and the struggle between Great
Britain and France for supremacy in India, Canada
and the West Indies entered upon an acute phase.
The War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) holds therefore
an important place in the history of Europe, and proved with the
Seven Years' War, which was practically a continuation of it,
of very real interest to Europe.
In April 1748 Great Britain, France and Holland signed
preliminaries of peace, which on the i8th of October became
the definitive treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. The other powers con-
cerned agreed to the treaty with reluctance, Spain on the 2oth of
October, Austria on the 8th of November, and Sardinia on the
932
EUROPE
[HISTORY
2oth of November. By the terms of the peace France and Great
Britain restored the conquests in America, India and Europe
The Treaty w ^ich each had made from the other. As regards the
ofAix-ia- other powers, the peace left serious heart-burnings.
chapeiie, Sardinia, though gaining territory in the Milanese,
1748. wag com p e ii ec i to relinquish her hold on Piacenza and
its territory, and to restore Finale to Genoa; Austria had to
yield Parma and Piacenza to Don Philip, and to recognize the
loss of Silesia to Prussia; Spain was compelled to forgo all hope
of regaining Gibraltar. The importance of the terms of this
treaty lies in the fact that they indicate not only the lines
followed by later European settlements, but also the tendency of
later European developments. To Great Britain the treaty was
only a pause in her expansion in Canada and in her advance to
the establishment of her influence over all India. To France
the treaty was equally a presage of future disasters in India and
Canada. The retention of Silesia by Prussia was a pronounce-
ment to all Europe that a new power had arisen which was
destined in 1866 to oust Austria from her dominant position in
Germany. The gains won by Sardinia, too, indicated that the
real danger to Austria's position in Italy would come from the
house of Savoy.
The Seven Years' War (1756-63) opened with a diplomatic
revolution as important as that of 1717, when France and Great
Britain made an alliance. In May 1756, as a reply
years' War to tne treat y f Westminster the Second, made in
January between Great Britain and Prussia, France
and Austria, united in the treaty of Versailles. This unexpected
union, which lasted till the French Revolution, between two
powers which had been hostile to each other from the beginning
of the i6th century, amazed all Europe. However, it had not the
results expected, for although Russia, which was allied with
Austria, sent large armies headed by capable generals to the war,
Frederick the Great remained unconquered. This result was
partly due to the English alliance, partly to the incapable French
generals, and partly to the state of internal politics in Russia.
The treaties of Paris (February 10, 1763) and Hubertsburg
(February 15) marked an important stage in the history of
Europe. By the first Great Britain emerged from the war an
imperial power with possessions all over the world, by the second
Prussia was recognized as the equal of Austria in Europe.
The period from the close of the Seven Years' War to the
French Revolution saw all the special characteristics and
tendencies of the i8th century in an accentuated form.
'the'seven Benevolent despotism found representatives not only
Kears' War in Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa, but also in
to the Joseph II., Catherine II., Charles III. of Spain, and
e ' Le P ld of Tuscany. Reforming ministers, too,
flourished in the persons of Tanucci, Turgot, Squillaci,
Florida Blanca, D'Aranda and many others. Instances, too, of the
low state of political morality are to be found. The indefensible
seizure of Silesia by Frederick the Great was followed in 1772
by the equally immoral partition of Poland, and it was clearly
apparent that monarchs, though ostensibly actuated by a desire
for the welfare of their subjects, were resolved that reforms
should come from above and not from below. The chief Euro-
pean events during these years were (i) the partition of Poland;
(2) the war of the Bavarian Succession; (3) the alliance of Russia
with Prussia in 1764 and with Austria in 1781; (4) the entry of
France and Spain into war between Great Britain and her
American colonies; (5) the combined attack of Russia and
Austria against Turkey (1787-92); (6) the Triple Alliance of 1788.
No sooner was the Seven Years' War ended than France and
Spain, having made the third family compact in 1761 (the
other two were signed in 1733 and 1743), prepared to take
revenge upon Great Britain at the first favourable opportunity.
The result of this determination, and of Great Britain's absorp-
tion in internal politics, was that Russia, Prussia and Austria
were enabled to carry out the first partition of Poland in 1772.
The entry of France into the American war of independence
rendered it impossible for Joseph II., single-handed, to carry out
his project of exchanging the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria,
and he was compelled, after a short war, to give up for the time
his project and to agree to the treaty of Teschen (1779). The
continuance of the American War proved of great value to
Russia and enhanced her position in Europe. Not only ha,d she,
together with France, brought about the treaty of Teschen, but
in 1780 she headed the league of armed neutrality, and between
1780 and 1784 annexed the Crimea. The conclusion of the war
of American Independence enabled Great Britain to regain her
influence in Europe, and when Russia and Austria combined
to attack Turkey, and when France threatened to re-establish
her influence in Holland, Pitt formed with the Prussian king
and the stadtholder the famous Triple Alliance of 1788. During
the ensuing four years the influence of that alliance made itself
felt in an unmistakable way. All hope of the establishment
of French influence in Holland was destroyed; Denmark was
forced to relinquish an attack on Sweden, then at war with
Russia; and after Leopold of Tuscany had succeeded Joseph II.
as emperor in 1 790, the revolution in the Netherlands was brought
to an end. Moreover, through the influence of Leopold the
hostility of Prussia to Austria was removed, and the two powers
in July 1790 made the treaty of Reichenbach. Great Britain,
the chief member of the Triple Alliance, had supported the pacific
solution of all these questions so menacing to European peace,
and Pitt was aided in his policy by the emperor Leopold, who in
1791 made the treaty of Sistova with the Turks. Danger to
the peace of Europe was, however, caused by the attempt of
the Spaniards to annex Nootka Sound, and by the continuance
of the war between Russia and Turkey. The former difficulty
was, however, removed in November 1790 by an agreement
between Great Britain and Spain, and in January 1792 Russia
made the treaty of Jassy with Turkey.
Instead of Europe remaining at peace the year 1792 saw the
beginning of a series *oi wars which did not come to a final
conclusion till the battle of Waterloo. While the east Prench
of Europe was engaged in war, and while the Triple Revolu-
Alliance was busy attempting to restore peace toEurope, W <> D >
the French Revolution had broken out in 1789. The 1789 '
assistance given by France to the American colonists had brought
the country to bankruptcy, and no course was left to Louis XVI.
except to summon the states-general in May 1789. In that year
a revolution against the reforms of Joseph II'. had taken place
in the Netherlands, and a revolution was being prepared in
Poland for the overthrow of the aristocratic constitution and for
the establishment of an hereditary monarchy. At first the revolu-
tion in France was entirely occupied with internal reforms, but
after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in September
1791 the Girondists, whose influence became paramount, deter-
mined by the advice of Brissot to insist upon a policy of menace
towards the Empire which would inevitably lead to war. War
would, they hoped, result in the downfall of monarchy in France.
On the other hand, Lafayette and his party advocated war on
the ground that it would strengthen the cause of monarchy.
In April 1792 war was accordingly declared upon Austria, then
in alliance with Prussia. After a short period of failure the
French in September won the battle of Valmy, and in November
the battle of Jemappes. French armies advanced to the Rhine,
Belgium was occupied, the Scheldt was declared open, and
Holland was threatened. In consequence of the danger to
Holland, Pitt adopted a warlike tone, and in February ^
1793 France declared war upon Great Britain. In i ^ a w "^.
that war Spain, Sardinia and Tuscany joined, so that between
France was practically fighting all Europe. Neverthe- Fra ^^ ai
less, owing to the want of union among the allies, to 0/ (a / a
the Polish questions which distracted Prussia and 1793.
Austria, and to the determination and patriotism of all
classes in France, the allies were discomfited and the league of
powers broken up in 1795, when the treaties of Basel were made.
Only Great Britain, Austria and Sardinia remained in arms
against France, which was till 1799 ruled by the Directory.
The next few years witnessed a series of most startling events.
The successes of Napoleon Bonaparte in th^ Italian campaigns
of 1797 and 1798 led to the peace of Cherasco with Sardinia,
HISTORY]
EUROPE
933
and the peace of Campo Fonnio with Austria. Only Great
Britain remained at war with France. In i ;QO, taking advantage
of the absence of Napoleon in Egypt, the Second
i / Coalition was formed by Russia, Great Britain and
Austria. Though the French were driven from Italy,
Massena defeated the Russians in Switzerland, ami tin-
English were forced to retire from Holland. The rot urn
of Napoleon from Egypt was followed by the establishment of the
Consulate in November 1709, by the overthrow of the Austrians
at Marengo and Hohenlinden, by the treaty of Lunevillc with
the emperor, and by the treaty of Amiens in 1802 with the
English government. (See FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS.)
Up to this point the Revolution may be said to have benefited
Europe and to have shaken to its base the 18th-century ideas of
government. During the years succeeding the peace
of Campo Formio a revolution was effected in Germany.
The Holy Roman Empire had become an anachronism,
and as soon as France became possessed of the left bank
of the Rhine it was obvious that the imperial constitution required
revision. The jealousies existing among the German princes and
the overthrow of Austria at Austcrlitz enabled Napoleon to
carry out a revolution in Germany according to his own ideas.
At first, in 1804, new arrangements were made with regard to
the character and formation of the diet. The constitution of
that assembly was so altered that a Protestant majority free
from Austrian influence was now assured. The middle states,
such as Prussia, Baden, Bavaria, Wurttemberg and Hanover,
received additions of territory, taken either from the ecclesiastical
states or from the lands belonging to the imperial knights. After
Austerlitz Napoleon in 1806 established the Confederation of the
Rhine, and the Holy Roman Empire came finally to an end.
A great European revolution had now been effected, but much
remained to be done before a feeling of nationality could be
aroused among the people of central Europe.
Already before the peace of Amiens Pitt had tried to stir up
national feeling in Austria and Prussia, the means which he
j-fc, suggested for opposing Napoleon being in great
tot measure those which were adopted in 1813 and 1814.
1 But during Pitt's lifetime central Europe was not
moved by any feeling of nationality or of patriotism.
During the war of the Second Coalition in 1 709 Austria had acted
without any regard for her allies, while Prussia, from motives of
jealousy of and from want of confidence in Austria, had refused
to move. It was not till the small states which hitherto had
formed independent units had been destroyed and Austria and
Prussia trampled under foot by Napoleon that a strong national
spirit in Germany was evoked. Until the treaty of Tilsit had
been signed in 1807 these was no visible growth of a national
uprising in any part of Europe. During the intervening years
Prussia had been crushed at Jena and her kingdom cut short
(1806), while Alexander I. of Russia, after a fierce campaign
against Napoleon, had agreed in 1807 to the treaty of Tilsit,
which apparently placed Europe at the feet of France and
Russia. Napoleon was, as he thought, now in a position to
bring about the humiliation of Great Britain. Already
ir**in November 1806, realizing that he could not ruin
1 England by direct invasion, he had issued the first
Berlin Decree, which ordered the exclusion of British
goods from the continent. The Continental System
sitated by the victory of Trafalgar was thus definitely set
up. After Tilsit he proposed to become supreme in the Baltic,
and, by securing the dependence of Spain and Portugal, to
dominate the Mediterranean, and to resume his plans for con-
quests in the East, and for the destruction of the British power
in India. Thus the effects of the British naval victories of the
Nile and Trafalgar would be completely nullified, the Mediter-
ranean would be closed to British ships, Great Britain's Indian
possessions would be lost, and Great Britain herself would be
forced by starvation into surrender. Fortunately for Europe
various circumstances hindered the realization of these ambitious
schemes. Alexander, who feared that the French emperor
desired Constantinople, never proved a very helpful ally, the
tan*
measures taken by Great Britain seriously interfered with
Napoleon's schemes, and, before he had subjugated Spain, first
Austria in 1809 and then Russia in 1812 offered an active resist-
ance to his projects. The first note of opposition to Napoleon's
plans was struck by Canning, when in 1807 he carried off the
Danish fleet to England. Then the British fleet conveyed to
Brazil in safety the Portuguese royal family when Portugal was
invaded by Junot, while the surrender of 30,000 French troops
at Baylcn in July 1808, which was followed in August by the
convention of Cintra, indicated that Spanish Patriotism was,
when roused, as effective as in the days of the Spanish Succession
War. Austria was the first country to follow the example of
Spain, and though she was defeated at Wagram and forced to
accept Napoleon's hard terms, the national feeling aroused in
Germany in 1800, rapidly developed. But Napoleon was appar-
ently unconscious of the growth and importance of a national
sentiment in any of the subject countries. In 1810 he had
married Marie Louise of Austria, on the 2oth of March 1811 a
son was born to him, and he now seems to have resolved upon
the establishment of a strictly hereditary empire with Paris
its capital and Rome its second city. In extent, his empire
would be vaster than that of Charlemagne, and the pope was to
be completely subordinate to the emperor. This conception of
the establishment of a reformed Holy Roman Empire with its
centre at Paris did not appear unrealizable in 1811 when every-
thing seemed to favour the new Charlemagne. Napoleon's
power was apparently securely established, and during the years
1 8 10 and 181 1 he was again returning to his vast oriental designs.
A sudden check, however, was about to be placed upon his
ambitious schemes.
The establishment of French influence in Italy and Germany
had stirred up in both countries a national feeling, the growth of
which was encouraged by the example of Spain. No 7-4,
greater mistake was ever made by Napoleon than triumph of
when, ignoring the strength of the.Spanish resistance, ""
and the development of a national movement in y '
Germany, he resolved to enter upon the Russian campaign and
to march to Moscow. Unconsciously Napoleon " had called
into vigorous life the forces of Democracy and Nationality in
Germany and Italy." The failure of the Moscow campaign led
at once to a national rising in Prussia, and as soon as Austria
had united her forces with those of Prussia and Russia, the over-
throw of Napoleon at Leipzig in October 1813 was the result,
and " the imperial yoke was shaken from the neck of the German
people." Napoleon's wars had roused feelings of patriotism in
Italy, Germany, Russia and Spain. It was at least realized by
the nations of continental Europe, what had long been apparent
to Englishmen, that a nation to be strong must be united. To
" the subversive cosmopolitanism " of the French Revolution
was now opposed the modern idea of nationality, against which
the Napoleonic legions hurled themselves in vain. (See
NAPOLEON I.; NAPOLEONIC CAMPAIGNS; FRENCH REVOLUTION;
ALEXANDER I., emperor of Russia; METTERNICH.) (A. HL.)
The downfall of Napoleon involved that of the political system
of Europe which he had constructed. The changes wrought by
the revolutionary period in the old states system were,
however, too profound to admit of any attempt at a *"*"*."
__ii_* e \~. MtFVCtlOlt
complete restoration, even had the interests of the fEurop.
allied powers been consistent with such a course.
The object of the four great powers in whose hands the settlement
of Europe now lay, was rather, after taking precautions to
confine France within her " legitimate boundaries," to arrange
such a " just equilibrium " in Europe that no individual state
should for the future be in a position to overset the balance of
power. The first object was to be attained by the re-establish-
ment of the ancient dynasty in France, as a guarantee to Europe
against a renewal of the revolutionary propaganda; the comgrei*
second was the work of the congress of Vienna, by orvicaa*,
which, between September 1814 and June 1815, the ''<
reconstruction of Europe was taken in hand. The '
opening of the congress, in which for the first time all Europe
seemed to be united for the friendly settlement of common
934
EUROPE
[HISTORY
interests, was hailed as the dawn of a new era. In a sense it was
so; but hardly in the manner nor to the degree that some had
hoped. In its councils the arts of the old diplomacy, still inspired
by the traditional principles or lack of principles, were directed
to the old ends; and the world, as though the popular upheaval
of the Revolution had never been, was treated as real estate
to be parcelled out by the executors of Napoleon's empire among
sovereigns by divine right, regardless of the wishes of the popu-
lations, which figured in the protocols merely as numbers to be
balanced and bartered one against the other.
This process of " dividing the spoils," as Gentz called it, was
naturally pregnant with possibilities of quarrels. Of these the
most dangerous was that provoked by the resolution of the
emperor Alexander I. at all costs to keep the former grand-duchy
of Warsaw for himself, while compensating Prussia for the loss
of some of her Polish territories by the annexation to her of all
Saxony. The deadlock caused by the stubborn insistence on
this plan, which the other great powers were equally determined
to frustrate, all but led to war, and by a secret treaty signed on
the 3rd of January 1815, Great Britain, France, and Austria
agreed to make commo'n cause in that event against Russia and
Prussia. It needed Napoleon's return from Elba (March 1815)
to remind the powers that their particular interests must still be
subordinated to those of Europe. The common peril restored the
broken harmony; and while the armies of the Alliance were
closing in for the final struggle with the French emperor, the
congress hurried on its deliberations, and on the gth of June
1815, a few days before the battle of Waterloo, by which
Napoleon's power was finally shattered, the Final Act, embodying
the treaties of Vienna, was signed.
The territorial arrangements thus effected were for half a
century the basis of the states system of Europe, and the
treaties in which they were denned the charter of
adjust- international relations. It was in central Europe,
meats ot where Napoleon's policy had most profoundly affected
the Vienna the pre-revolutionary system, that the greatest changes
were made. No attempt, indeed, was made to restore
the Holy Roman Empire, in spite of the protest of the pope
against the failure to re-establish " the centre of political unity ";
but the Confederation of the Rhine having come to an end,
Germany was reconstituted as a confederation of sovereign
states, in which all the former members of the Empire which
had survived the revolutionary epoch found a place (see GER-
MANY). Austria, in virtue of tne imperial tradition of the house
of Habsburg, received the presidency of the federal diet; but
the bulk of her territories lay outside the frontiers of the Con-
federation, and the non-German character of the Habsburg
monarchy was accentuated by the other arrangements at the
congress. In Italy Lombardo-Venetia was erected into a
kingdom under the Austrian crown; while the dynastic settle-
ments in the other Italian states tended to make Austrian
influence supreme in the peninsula (see ITALY). In return for
this, Austria surrendered her claim to her former possessions in
the Low Countries, which were annexed to the crown of Holland,
so as to form, under the title of the United Netherlands, an
efficient barrier to French aggression northwards. The function
of defender of Germany on the Rhine frontier which Austria thus
abandoned was assigned to Prussia, an arrangement pregnant
with momentous issues. In compensation for her disappoint-
ment in the matter of Saxony, half of which was ultimately
restored to the dynasty of Wettin, she received a large accession
of territory in the Rhine provinces, carved partly out of the
suppressed kingdom of Westphalia, partly out of the former
ecclesiastical states, and comprising the imperial city of Aix-la-
Chapelle and the former electorate of Cologne. To Prussia
also was conceded the right to garrison the federal fortress of
Luxemburg.
Of the other German states, Bavaria, which alone was suffi-
ciently powerful to be of any great importance in the general
affairs of Europe, reaped the reward of her timely defection
from the cause of her protector Napoleon. She had, indeed, to
restore to Austria the territories annexed to her at the expense
of the Habsburg monarchy by the French emperor: Tirol, the
Quarters of the Inn and of the Hausruck, and part of Salzburg.
But she received ample compensation elsewhere, notably the
former Bavarian Palatinate with a strip of territory to connect
it with Bavaria proper. The right to garrison the federal fortress
of Mainz was also ultimately conceded to her. Bavaria was thus
placed in a position to continue her traditional policy of aiming
at the position of a European great power and holding the
balance between Austria and Prussia (see BAVARIA: History).
The two other German states whose elevation to kingdoms had
symbolized a similar ambition, Saxony and Wiirttemberg, were
henceforth relegated to a position of third-rate importance;
Saxony depended for her very existence on the rivalry of her
more powerful neighbours: Wiirttemberg protested in vain
against the dictatorship of the great powers to which she was
forced to submit. Finally, the electorate of Hanover, partly
out of compliment to the king of Great Britain, partly because
with the abolition of the Holy Empire the title elector had fallen
obsolete, was elevated to a kingdom. The request of the elector
of Hesse for a similar concession in his case was refused by the
powers assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818.
Of great importance were the changes effected in the north
and east of Europe. The affairs of the Ottoman empire, which
the treaty of Bucharest (1812) between Russia and Turkey had
left in a very unsatisfactory condition, were not dealt with by
the congress, in spite of the efforts of Great Britain to bring them
into discussion. But the concessions made to the emperor
Alexander elsewhere represented a notable advance in the
European position of Russia. The possession of Finland,
conquered from the Swedes in 1808, was confirmed to her;
and, above all, the erection of the former grand-duchy of Warsaw
into a constitutional kingdom of Poland under the Russian crown
not only thrust the Muscovite power like a wedge into the heart
of Germany, but seemed to threaten the Polish possessions of
Austria and Prussia by setting up a quasi-independent Poland
as a centre of attraction to the scattered elements of the Polish
nation; though in the sequel the establishment of the city of
Cracow and its territory as an independent republic, to avoid the
difficult question of its assignment elsewhere, proved a more
fruitful source of nationalist unrest. In the north the settlement
confirmed by the congress marked the definite withdrawal of
the Scandinavian Powers from any active influence on the affairs
of the continent. Alone of the parvenu monarchs of the
Napoleonic age Bernadotte retained the crown of Sweden, to
which, by the treaty of Kiel, that of Norway had been added.
On the other hand, by the cession of Swedish Pomerania to
Prussia, Sweden finally withdrew from the southern shores of
the Baltic. The Scandinavian states ceased henceforth to play
any determining part in European politics. In the south, on
the other hand, the restoration of Savoy and Piedmont to Victor
Emmanuel I., king of Sardinia, and the incorporation in his
dominions of the territories of the former republic of Genoa,
were factors pregnant with mighty issues. The object of this
increase of the power of the house of Savoy was but to erect a
barrier against any possible renewal of French aggression in
Italy; in effect it established the nucleus of the power which
was to struggle successfully with Austria for the hegemony of
Italy.
The gains of Great Britain in Europe were comparatively
small, though by no means unimportant. By the retention of
Malta she secured her power in the Mediterranean, and this was
further increased by the treaty of Paris (November 5, 1815),
by which the powers recognized her protectorate over the Ionian
Islands. (See VIENNA, CONGRESS OF.)
But for the episode of the Hundred Days, France would have
emerged from the congress with recovered prestige and mistress
of at least some of the territorial gains of the revolution- The
ary wars; though Napoleon had thrown away, during power*
the negotiations at Chatillon, the chance of preserving %%.
for her her " natural frontiers " of the Rhine, the Alps
and the Pyrenees. After Napoleon's second downfall she was in
serious danger of dismemberment, for which the German powers
HISTORY]
EUROPE
935
clamoured as essential to their safety. That Louis XVIII.
continued to rule over the territories " handed down to him
by his ancestors " was due to the magnanimity, or policy, of the
emperor Alexander I. (?..), and the commonsense of Castlereagh
and Wellington, who saw well that the " just equilibrium,"
which it was their object to establish, could not be secured if
France were unduly weakened, and that peace could never be
preserved if the French people were left to smart under a sense of
permanent injury. By the second peace of Paris, signed on
the aoth of November 1815, France retained her traditional
boundaries. The unsatisfied ambition to secure her " national
frontiers " was to bear troublesome fruit later.
That the treaties embodied in the Final Act of Vienna repre-
sented a settlement of all outstanding questions was believed by
nobody. They had been negotiated for weary months in an
atmosphere of diplomatic and feminine intrigue; they had been
concluded in a hurry, under the influence of the panic caused by
Napoleon's return from Elba. To Friedrich von Gentz they were
at best but " partial arrangements," useful as forming an
authoritative basis for the establishment of a more complete
and satisfactory system. The history of the international politics
of Europe for the years immediately succeeding the congress of
Vienna is that of the attempt to establish such a system.
Alter a quarter of a century of almost ceaseless wars, what
Europe needed above all things was peace and time to recuperate.
Tnmtr *l ^' s conviction was common to all the powers who had
Nor. M. inherited Napoleon's dictatorship in Europe; but on
isis, mmt the question of the method by which peace should be
"** secured, and the principles which should guide their
* rof *' action, a fateful divergence of view soon became
apparent within their councils. All were agreed that France still
represented the storm centre of Europe; and a second treaty,
signed on the 2oth of November 1815, renewed the provisions of
the treaty of Chaumont, in view of any fresh outburst of the
French revolutionary spirit. But the new treaty went further.
By its 6th article it was declared that " in order to consolidate
the intimate tie that unites the four sovereigns for the happiness
of the world, the High Contracting Powers have agreed to renew
at fixed intervals . . . meetings consecrated to great common
objects and to the examination of such measures as at each of
these epochs shall be judged most salutary for the peace and
prosperity of the nations and for the maintenance of the peace of
Europe." This was the formal charter of the concert of the great
powers by which for the next seven years Europe was governed,
a concert to which the name " Holy Alliance " has been commonly
but erroneously applied. The Holy Alliance, drawn up
by the emperor Alexander 1^ and signed by him, the
emperor Francis, and King Frederick William III. of
Prussia on the 26th of September 1815, represented a different and
conflicting ideal. Actually it was not a treaty at all, but at best a
declaration of principles to which any Christian could subscribe.at
worst to quote Castlereagh "a piece of sublime mysticism and
nonsense " from the political point of view (see HOLY ALLIANCE).
It gained its sole political importance from the persistent efforts
of the tsar and his ministers to replace the committee of the great
powers, established by the treaty of the zolh of November, by a
" Universal Union " of all the powers, great and small, who had
signed the Holy Alliance, and thus to establish that " Confedera-
tion of Europe " of which the autocratic idealist had borrowed
the conception from the theorists of the iSth century (see
ALEXANDER I., emperor of Russia). It was clear from the first
that any attempt to set up such a central government of Europe
^ under a " universal guarantee " would imperil the
23^j,* independence of the sovereign states; and from the
Cimatt first Great Britain, represented by Castlereagh, pro-
tested against it. She would consent to take common
action on the basis of the treaties she had actually signed,
consulting with her allies on each case as it arose; but to vague
and general engagements she refused to commit herself. The
attitude of Austria and Prussia was from the outset less clear.
Metternich was torn between dread of revolution and dread of
Russia; the Holy Alliance, though essentially " verbiage,"
might be useful in holding the imperial Jacobin in check; the
" universal guarantee " could not but be discouraging to the
" sects " . on the other hand, the extreme willingness of the tsar
to march 200,000 Russians for any " European " purpose in any
direction convenient or inconvenient to Austria, was to say
the least disconcerting. Frederick William III., on the other
hand, though he too had signed the Holy Alliance with reluctance,
in moments of panic saw in the " universal guarantee " his best
defence against the renewed attack by France which was his
nightmare. In effect, owing to the firm attitude of Castlercagh
at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, " the transparent soul of the
Holy Alliance " never received a body, though attempts were
subsequently made at the congresses of Troppau, Laibach and
Verona to apply some of its supposed principles attempts
that led to the definitive breach of Great Britain with the
Alliance.
The highwater-mark of the activity of the Allies as a central
government for Europe was reached at the congress of Aix-la-
Chapelle (q.v.) in 1818. France was now admitted to coogrcs*
the Alliance, the objects of which were reaffirmed by a ofAlx-u-
public declaration to which she adhered; but at the ChaptUc,
same time a secret treaty renewed the compact of '*'*
Chaumont between the four other powers. Certain questions
outstanding from the congress of Vienna were referred for settle-
ment to a ministerial conference to meet at Frankfort in the
following year. The treaty which was the result of this con-
ference was signed on the 2oth of July 1819. The bulk of it was
concerned with territorial settlements in Germany: between
Austria and Bavaria, and Bavaria and Baden; but some of the
articles arranged for the cession of the border fortresses Philippe-
ville and Mariembourg to the Netherlands, defined the frontiers of
Savoy, and settled the reversion of the Italian duchies held by
the empress Marie Louise.
Meanwhile the balance of forces within the European concert
had shown a tendency to shift. At the outset the restless
activity of the emperor Alexander, his incalculable Alexaader
idealism, and his hardly veiled ambitions had drawn /. /
Austria and Great Britain togetherin common suspicion Russia and
of an influence that threatened to be little less disturb- Metter -
ing to the world's peace than that of Napoleon. But "**'
at Aix Metternich had begun to realize that, in the long-run,
the system of repression which he held to be essential to the
stability of the European, and above all of the Austrian, polity
would receive little effective aid from Great Britain, fettered
as she was by constitutional forms; while Alexander, alarmed
at the discovery of revolutionary plots against his person, had
already shown gratifying signs of repentance. The " Jacobin "
propaganda of the tsar's agents continued, it is true, especially
in Italy; and, in spite of the murder of the dramatist Kotzebue,
as a Russian emissary, by the fanatical " Bursche " Karl Sand,
Alexander joined with Castlereagh in protesting against the
reactionary policy embodied in the Carlsbad Decrees of October
1819. But the murder of the duke of Herri on the i^th of
February 1820 completed the Russian autocrat's " conversion."
At the congress of Troppau, which met in the autumn of the same
year, he was a " changed man," committed henceforth heart
and soul to Metternich and his policy. The outcome of this new
understanding was the famous Troppau Protocol, conmtt
published to the world on the igth of November 1820, and pro-
and signed by Austria, Prussia and Russia. The tocol of
immediate occasion of this manifesto was the military T ">PP*-
insurrection, under General Pepe, at Naples, by which IS20 '
the Spanish constitution of 1812 bad been forced on the king
(see NAPLES: History). But the protocol embodied a general
principle involving issues infinitely more important than any
arising out of this particular question. " States which have
undergone a change of government due to revolution," it de-
clared, " the results of which threaten other states, ipso facto
cease to be members of the European alliance, and remain
excluded from it till their situation gives guarantees for legal
order and stability. If, owing to such alterations, immediate
danger threatens other states, the powers bind themselves, by
93^
EUROPE
[HISTORY
peaceful means, or if need be by arms, to bring back the guilty
state into the bosom of the Great Alliance."
This was, in effect, an attempt to apply the principle of the
Carlsbad Decrees to all the world; and, had the attempt suc-
ceeded, all Europe would have been turned into a confederation
on the model of that of Germany; for a political alliance,
charged with the safeguarding of the territorial settlement
defined by treaty, would have been substituted a central diet
of the great powers, armed with undefined authority; and the
sovereign independence of the nations would have been at an
end. To any such principle, and therefore to the protocol in
which it was embodied, Great Britain offered an uncompromising
opposition. In vain Metternich urged upon Castlereagh that
the protocol was but the logical conclusion drawn from premises
to which he was already committed; for, if the alliance was to be
effective in maintaining peace, it must interfere wherever and
whenever peace should be threatened, and therefore to crush
internal revolutions which could not but have an external result.
The logic was perfect; the proposition that on which every
" project of peace " must eventually break. Castlereagh's reply
was, in brief, that Great Britain could never admit a principle
which she would not in any circumstances allow to be applied
in her own case.
The absence of the signatures of Great Britain and France
from the Troppau protocol marked the first rift in the alliance,
a rift that was soon to develop into a breach. For the
First rift time, indeed, the crack was " papered over." Castle-
aiiiaoce. reagh was prepared to leave Austria a free hand to
deal with the risings in Naples and Piedmont, since
she had treaty rights in the former case and her interests, as an
Italian power, were threatened in both. Great Britain was even
represented at the congress which reassembled at Laibach in
January 1821, though Lord Stewart, the ambassador at Vienna,
was not armed with full powers. Castlereagh had
Congress a pp rove d o { the invitation sent to the king of Naples
of Laibach, ' i ? * >>
1821. t attend the congress, as implying negotiation, an
improvement on the dictatorial attitudeof theprotocol.
But everything in the conferences tended still further to shatter
the unstable foundations of the alliance. Capo d'Istria, as though
the debates of Aix-la-Chapelle had never been, raised once more
the spectre of the " Universal Union " which Castlereagh
believed he had laid for ever. Metternich, anxious to prove to
the Italian Liberals that the tsar was no longer their friend,
welcomed the demonstration, and Prussia followed obediently
in Austria's wake. " It is clear," wrote Lord Stewart," that a
Triple Understanding has been created which binds the parties
to carry forward their own views in spite of any difference of
opinion which may exist between them and the two great
constitutional governments." (See TROPPAU and LAIBACH.)
But the narrower " Holy Alliance " of the three autocratic
monarchies, as opposed to the two western constitutional
monarchies, was not in fact destined to take shape
li ^ after tne Paris revolution f l8 3- Several factors
in Spain, delayed the process, notably the revolt of the Greeks
against the Ottoman rule, and the Spanish question,
which latter formed the main subject of discussion at the con-
gress of Verona in 1822. In the Eastern Question the interests
of Austria and Great Britain were identical; both desired to
maintain the integrity of Turkey; both saw that this integrity
was in the greatest peril owing to the possible intervention of the
Orthodox tsar in favour of his co-religionists in revolt; and both
agreed that the best means of preventing such intervention was
to bind the Russian emperor to the European concert by using
his devotion to the principles of the Holy Alliance. At Verona,
however, the Eastern question was entirely overshadowed
by that of Spain, and in this matter the views of Great
o/v>rona Britain were diametrically opposed to those of the
1822. ' other powers of the alliance. She shared indeed with
France and Austria the strenuous objection to the
emperor Alexander's proposal to march 150,000 Russians into
Piedmont in order to deal with Jacobinism whether in France or
Spain; but she protested equally strenuously against the counter-
proposal of France, which was ultimately adopted, that a French
army should march into Spain to liberate the king from his
constitutional fetters in the name of Europe. George Canning,
carrying on the tradition of Castlereagh, once more protested,
through Wellington, .as British plenipotentiary at the congress,
against the whole principle of intervention; and when, in spite
of the British protest, the other powers persisted, the breach of
Great Britain with the continental alliance was proclaimed to
all the world. When, on the yth of April 1823, the French army
under the duke of Angouleme crossed the Bidassoa, the great
experiment of governing Europe through a central committee
of the great powers was at an end. (See VERONA, CONGRESS OF;
ALEXANDER I. ; LONDONDERRY, ROBERT STEWART, 2nd marquess
of; CANNING, GEORGE.)
Henceforth, though the treaties survived, and with them the
principle of the concert on which they were based, " Europe "
as a diplomatic conception tends to sink into the back- End of the
ground and to be replaced by the old international "Contede-
anarchy of the i8th century. To Canning this develop- ration of
ment seemed wholly welcome. He applied to the Eur P e -"
rivalry of states the Liberal principle of free competition as the
sole condition of healthy growth. " Villele is a minister of thirty
years ago," he wrote to Bagot on the 3rd of January 1823, " no
revolutionary scoundrel: but constitutionally hating England, as
Choiseul and Vergennes used to hate us, and so things are
getting back to a wholesome state again. Every nation for itself,
and God for us all." But the essential difference between the
rivalries of the i8th and igth centuries was in the conception
of the " nation." To Canning, as to the diplomatists of the
congress of Vienna, " nation " was synonymous with " state, "
and national boundaries were those defined by the treaties,
which Canning was as bent on preserving as any of his
reactionary contemporaries. The conception of the p *] /nc 'P fe
divine right of every nationality to readjust political a iUy.
frontiers to suit its own ideals was as foreign to him
as to Metternich. Yet this principle of nationality, which was
destined during the igth century to wreck the political structure
consecrated at Vienna, and to leave to the succeeding age a host of
unsolved and insoluble problems, found in Canning its earliest
champion in the higher councils of Europe. The recognition of
the independence of the South American republics and of the
belligerent rights of the Greek insurgents were both in the first
instance motived by the particular interests of Great Britain;
but they were none the less hailed as concessions.to the principles
of nationality, to which they gave an impetus which was destined
to continue till the face of Europe had been transformed.
This in fact constitutes the main significance for Europe of
the War of Greek Independence, which lasted from the first
rising of the Greeks in the Morea in 1821 till the Eun
signature of the treaty of London on the 7th of May and the
1832 (see GREEK INDEPENDENCE, WAR OF; TURKEY: revolt ot
History). Its actual outcome, so far as the political Ore ece.
structure of Europe was concerned, was but to add an' insignificant
kingdom to the European states system. But its moral effect
was immense. The sacrosanctity of the status quo had been
violated, and violated with the active aid of three of the powers
of the continental alliance: Russia, France and Great Britain.
Metternich was right when he said that, in principle, there was
no difference between the Greek insurgents and any other
" rebels against legitimate authority," and the Liberals of all
Europe, forced into inactivity by the Austrian police system,
hailed in the Greeks the champions of their own cause. Phil-
hellenism, beyond its proper enthusiasm, served as a convenient
veil for agitations that had little concern with Greece. Other
forces making for political change were simultaneously at work.
The peace secured by the concert of the powers had given free
play to the mechanical and industrial innovations Coaom i c
that heralded the marvellous economic revolution of progress;
the coming age; wealth increased rapidly, and with it rise of the
the influence and the ambition of the middle classes. mlddlc
The revolution of July 1830, which established the
bourgeois monarchy in France, marked their first triumph. In
HISTORY]
EUROPE
937
countries less economically advanced, e.g. Germany and Italy,
the attempt to follow French example ended in failure; but
the revolt of the Belgians, for reasons partly economic and
partly national, against the domination of the Dutch,
resulted in the establishment of the independent king-
dom of Belgium the first actual breach in the terri-
torial settlement of 1815. In Great Britain the
agitation of the disfranchised middle classes, which seemed to
threaten a violent revolution, ended in 1832 in the passing of
the Reform Bill and their admission to political power. (See
FBANCE; GERMANY; ITALY; BELGIUM; ENGLISH HISTORY.)
The easy success of the revolutions in the west of Europe
had been due, not to any reluctance of the reactionary powers
to interfere on the basis of the old agreements, but to their
preoccupation with the national revolt in Poland (9.11.). In
view of this, and of the attitude of Great Britain, they had to
recognize the title of Louis Philippe as king of the French,
merely stipulating that he should guarantee to maintain the
treaties. In spite of the overthrow of the legitimate dynasty in
France, and of the partition of the kingdom of the Netherlands,
the territorial settlement of Vienna remained, after the revolution
of 1830, substantially intact. Outside the limits of the treaties,
however, fateful changes were in progress. These were deter-
mined, broadly speaking, by the two main questions that
dominated international politics between the years 1831 and
1841: (i) the antagonism between the western constitutional
powers, France and Great Britain, and the eastern autocratic
powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia; and (2) the crisis in the
Eastern question resulting from the revolt of Mehemet Ali,
pasha of Egypt, against the Pone.
The strained relations between Great Britain and France,
resulting from the French policy of aggression in the Spanish
peninsula, which had more than once brought the
two powers to the verge of war, had been eased before
,... the fall of the government of Charles X. The peril of
a French hegemony over the vast colonial empire of
Spain had been forestalled by Canning's recognition of the
independence of the South American republics; the intrigues
of France in favour of the partisans of Dom Miguel in Portugal
had been checkmated by a politic breach, on behalf of the
Portuguese Liberals, of the British principle of non-intervention,
and finally the chief cause of offence had been removed, in 1827,
by the withdrawal of the French army of occupation from Spain.
In the Greek question the two powers had acted cordially in
conceit ; and this good understanding even the French conquest
of Algiers in 1830, which laid the foundations of the French empire
in Africa, had not availed to shatter; for the eyes of the Tory
ministry were still fixed on France as the potential focus of
revolutionary propaganda, and any over-sea possessions she
might acquire were, in Wellington's opinion, so many hostages
for her good behaviour given to British sea-power. The results
of the July revolution in Paris were accepted by Great Britain
so soon as it became clear that Louis Philippe stood for peace and
not for revolutionary aggression; the armed intervention of
France in favour of the Belgians in August 1831 was stopped
by the firm language of Palmerston; the French occupation
of Ancona, as a countermove to Austrian aggressions in- Italy,
was accepted as " an incident of the balance of power "; and
the intention of the king of the French to abide by the treaties,
which became clearer with the consolidation of his power at
home, paved the way for that entente between the two Liberal
powers which lasted until 1840.
The cleavage between the fundamental principles of the two
groups of autocratic and constitutional powers was not only
apparent in their general attitude towards constitu-
tional and national movements, but affected also the
position taken up by them during the crisis of the
Eastern question evoked by the revolt of Mehemet
Ali, pasha of Egypt, a crisis by which between 1839
and 1841 all other diplomatic issues were overshadowed. (See
MEHEMF.T ALI.) During the Greek revolt the efforts of Austria
had been directed to preventing a Russian attack upon Turkey;
r. (*
_.
Mchemcl
All.
these efforts had failed, and Metternich's worst fears seemed to
be realized when the Russo-Turkish campaigns of 1828-29
issued in the treaty of Adrianople (September 14, 1829)
and the apparently complete vassalage of the sultan to
the tsar. But when, in 1832, Sultan Mahmud appealed wtfoa.
in his despair to the emperor Nicholas to save him
from ruin at the hands of the Egyptian rebels, and, as
the result, the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi (July 8, 1833) seemed to
place definitely in the hands of Russia the keys of the Black
Sea, it was left to France and Great Britain to give voice to
the protest of Europe. Austria, alarmed by the revolutionary
movements of 1830, accepted the fact of Russian preponderance
at Constantinople, rather than risk a breach with the autocrat
who was now the main pillar of the Holy Alliance. The emperor
Nicholas, for his part, was equally prepared to surrender some
of his ambitions in the East for the sake of the common cause,
the more so since to Russian statesmen the maintenance of
Turkey in a condition of weakness and dependence now seemed
preferable to any attempt to break it up. The result
of these dispositions was the convention of MUnchen- ^^'"f
gr&tz (September 18,1833) between Russia, Austria and MUachea-
Prussia, by which the three powers undertook to rat* and
guarantee the integrity of the Ottoman empire. In ffJ"'
the following month a secret convention was signed at
Berlin between the same powers (October 15), reaffirming the
right of the powers to intervene in the internal affairs of a
friendly state at the request of its legitimate sovereign, a right
with which no third power would be allowed to interfere, such
interference to be regarded by the three powers as an act of
hostility directed against all of them.
This reconstitution of the " Holy Alliance " on a narrower
basis was the work of the emperor Nicholas, whose masterful
personality had by this time quite overshadowed the ne Tlar
influence of Metternich in the councils of the autocratic Nicholas I.
powers. There was no formal breach of the Grand aaaPat-
Alliance; the " treaties " remained in force; but the mer * toa -
French revolution of 1830 had produced a practical disruption
which was every day accentuated by the attitude of the British
government under the influence of Palmerston. For Palmerston
had now become " the firebrand of Europe," openly proclaiming
his contempt for international law and equally openly posing as
the protector of " oppressed nationalities." " If these two
powers (France and England)," wrote the tsar to King Frederick
William of Prussia, " have the courage to profess loudly rebellion
and the overturn of all stability, we ought to have the right and
the courage to support Divine right." This deep cleavage of
principles was immediately exhibited in the attitude of the powers
towards the troubles in the Spanish peninsula. In September
1833 Ferdinand VII. of Spain died, and, under the Pragmatic
Sanction, his daughter Isabella succeeded under the
regency of Queen Christina; in July, Dom Miguel, the sp'i'aaait
absolutist pretender to the throne of Portugal, had Portugal.
made himself master of Lisbon. In Spain Don Carlos, Quadnph
Ferdinand's brother, claimed thecrownasthelegitimate - ,J?f
,. _ - !*- *" /CW
heir, and began the long agony of the Carhst wars;
in Portugal the constitutionalists upheld in arms the rights of
Queen Maria da Gloria (see SPAIN and PORTUGAL). Carlists and
Miguelists, making common cause, had the moral support of the
allies of Miinchcngratz; while France and Great Britain took
the side of the Liberals. A formal alliance between the two
western powers, proposed by Talleyrand, was indeed refused by
Palmerston, who had no wish to commit Great Britain to an
irrevocable breach with Austria and Russia, and was suspicious
of the ambitions of France in Spain; but ultimately a triple
alliance between Great Britain, Spain and Portugal with the
object of restoring order in the peninsula was converted,
under pressure from the French government, into the Quadruple
Alliance of the 22nd of April 1834.
The entente implied by this formal instrument was, however,
more apparent than real. When, in the spring of 1835, Queen
Christina applied to the Allies for help against a renewed
Carlist rising, Palmerston's suspicions were again aroused by
938
EUROPE
[HISTORY
Fnace -
the somewhat naive suggestion of Thiers that France should
once more intervene as in 1823, a suggestion that was firmly
rejected. Palmerston's counter-proposal of an English
' expedition met with as little favour in Paris. The
Britain. Anglo-French entente was proving but a " cardboard
alliance," as Wellington called it; and the emperor
Nicholas, to whom the existence of Louis Philippe as king of the
French was at once a sacrilege and a menace, began with a good
hope to work for its destruction. The fears roused by the Reform
Act of 1832 had been belied by its results; the conservative
temper of the British electorate had restored to Great Britain
the prestige of a legitimate power; and the pledge of the tsar's
renewed confidence and goodwill was the visit of the cesarevich
(afterwards the emperor Alexander II.) to the English court in
Breach of I ^ 3 ; ^his was not without its effect on the public
Anglo- sentiment; but the triumph of the tsar's diplomacy
Preach was due to fresh complications in the Eastern question,
' due to the renewed effort of Sultan Mahmud to crush
the hated viceroy of Egypt. These events will be found
outlined in the article MEHEMET ALL Here it will suffice to say
that the convention of London of the isth of July 1840, signed
by Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia without calling
France into counsel, marked the definite breach of the Anglo-
French entente, a breach which was but imperfectly healed by
the Straits' Convention signed by all the powers on the I3th of
July 1841.
The Straits' Convention was hailed by Count Nesselrode, the
Russian foreign secretary, as having re-established " the federa-
Ofeat tive system of the European states on its old basis."
Britain This was true, in so far as it created yet another
precedent for the concerted action of the European
powers, and once more consecrated the right of
" Europe " to decide in common on questions of first-rate inter-
national importance. But the divergence of interests and
principles within the concert were too great to be healed by the
settlement of a single issue, however important, and this diver-
gence increased as events moved towards the revolutionary
outbreaks of 1848. When, in 1846, the independent republic
of Cracow was suppressed by agreement of the three autocratic
powers, on the ground that it had become a dangerous centre of
revolutionary agitation, it was Great Britain and France that
protested against an arbitrary infraction of the treaties by the
very governments which had laid the greatest stress upon their
sanctity. The entente between the two Liberal powers had been
patched up after the closure of the Egyptian Question; it was
cemented by visits of Queen Victoria and the prince consort to
the Chateau d'Eu (1843 and 1845), and of King Louis Philippe
to Windsor (1844); and it survived, in spite of several causes of
friction, notably the crisis in Morocco (q.i>.), until 1846, when the
affair of the Spanish Marriages brought it to a somewhat dramatic
conclusion.
The attempt to secure the succession to the Spanish throne
for his descendants by pressing on the marriage of the duke of
Tae Montpensier with the infanta Luisa, before that of
Spanish the young queen Isabella had been proved to be fruitful
Mffm in children, was on the part of Louis Philippe more
riages.' ^ an a breach of faith with Great Britain (how deeply
it was resented may be learnt from Queen Victoria's letters);
it was a breach of faith with the revolution that had made him
king. Since 1840, indeed, the whole tendency of the king's
policy had been to revert to the traditional standpoint of the
Bourbons; internally, " resistance " to the growing claims of
the democracy; externally, dynastic ambition. But in en-
deavouring to win the goodwill of the reactionary powers he only
succeeded in losing that of the classes of his own people on which
The"Peb- ^ s authority was based. In 1847 he joined with the
nary J?e- three autocratic powers in supporting the clerical and
volution," reactionary Sonderbund in Switzerland, in defiance of
1848. tne p rotests O f Great Britain and the attitude of the
majority of Frenchmen. When, in February 1848, the revolution
broke out in Paris, the bourgeois monarchy, utterly discredited,
fell without a struggle (see FRANCE and Louis PHILIPPE).
The revolution in Paris was not the cause of the political
upheaval which in the year 1848 convulsed Europe from Ireland
to the banks of the Danube; it had indeed been pre- jj ev . /,rf/ on
ceded by the triumph of Liberalism in Switzerland, ofis-ts
by successful revolutions in Naples and Palermo, and outside
by the grant of a constitution in Piedmont; but
flaming up as it were in the revolutionary centre of Europe, it
acted as the beacon signal for the simultaneous outbreak of
movements which, though long prepared, might but for this
have been detached and spasmodic. It was this simultaneity
which gave to the revolutions of 1848 their European character
and their formidable force. They were the outcome of various,
dissimilar and sometimes contradictory impulses political,
social, racial. In France the issue resolved itself into a struggle
between the new working-class ideal of Socialism and the
bourgeois ideal of the great Revolution; in England the
Chartist movement presented, in a less degree, the same char-
acter; in Germany, in the Austrian empire, in Italy, on the other
hand, the dominant motives were constitutional and nationalist,
and of these two the latter became in the end the determining
factor. The events of the different revolutions are described
elsewhere (see FRANCE; AUSTRIA; GERMANY; HUNGARY;
ITALY). From the point of view of Europe such unity as they
possessed was due to their being, so far as Central Europe was
concerned, directed against the system of " stability " associated
with the name "f Metternich. In hatred of this system German,
Czech, Magyar, and Italian were united; Kossuth's great speech
of the 3rd of March echoed far beyond the frontiers of Hungary;
the fall of Metternich (March 13) was a victory, not only for the
populace of Vienna, but for all the peoples and races which had
worn the Austrian fetters. It was the signal for revolutions in
Hungary (the passing of the " March Laws "), in Bohemia, in
Prussia (March 15), in Milan; on the 23rd of March, Charles
Albert of Sardinia, placing himself at the head of the Italian
national movement, declared war against Austria. Against a
movement so widespread and apparently inspired by a common
purpose the governments were powerless. The collapse of the
Austrian administration, of which the inherent rottenness was now
revealed, involved that of those reactionary powers which had
leaned upon it. One by one they accepted what seemed to be
the inevitable; even Pope Pius IX. sent troops to fight under
the banner of St Peter for the Italian cause; while in Berlin
Frederick William IV., wrapped in the gold and black colours of
imperial Germany, posed as the leader of " the glorious German
revolution." When, on the i8th of May, the parliament of
United Germany was opened at Frankfort, it seemed as though
pan-German dreams were on the threshold of realization; while
in Italy, early in the same month, Lombardy, Modena, Parma
and Piacenza declared by plebiscites for incorporation in the
north Italian kingdom, Venice following suit on the 4th of June.
A profound modification of the European states system seemed
inevitable.
That, in the event, the revolutions of 1848 left the territorial
settlement of Vienna intact, was due in the main to the marvellous
resisting power of the Habsburg monarchy, the
strength of which lay in the traditional loyalty of the Jj
army and the traditional policy of balancing race O fthe
against race within the empire. The triumph of nvoto-
democracy in Germany was made possible only by the a *
temporary collapse of the Habsburg power, a collapse meats _
due to the universality and apparent unanimity of the
onslaught upon it. But it was soon clear that the unanimity was
more apparent than real. The victory of the democratic forces had
been too easy, too seemingly overwhelming; the establishment
of the constitutional principle in the main centres of autocracy
seemed to make common action against the powers of reaction
of secondary importance, and free play was allowed to the racial
and national antagonisms that had been present from the first.
The battle of German, as well as of Italian, liberty was being
fought out on the plains of Lombardy; yet the German demo-
crats, whether in Vienna or Frankfort, hailed the victories of the
veteran Radetzky as triumphs of Germanism. In Bohemia the
HISTORY]
EUROPE
939
revolution ** wrecked on the rivalry of German and Czech;
and when the Hungarians drew the sword against Austria, the
imperial government was reinforced by the hatred of the southern
Slavs for their Magyar task-masters.
Thus, from ihe chaos of warring races, the old order began
slowly to reappear. So early as the i$th of June 1848 Prince
WindischgrJUz had restored order in Prague and re-
ceived the thanks of the Frankfort parliament; on
the 2$th of July Radetzky's victory at Custozza set
free the imperialist army in Italy; on the 4th of
September JeUachich, ban of Croatia, invaded Hungary in the
name of the united empire; on the ist of November Windisch-
griu entered democratic Vienna. The alliance of the army
and the Slav races had won the victory over German democracy.
The combating of Hungarian nationalism proved a longer and a
harder task; but the Austrian victory of Kapolna (February
26-27, 1849) encouraged Schwarzenberg to dissolve the rump of
the Krifhsrath at Kremsier and proclaim a new constitution for
the whole empire, including Hungary. The Magyar victories that
followed issued in the proclamation, on the I4th of April, of the
independence of Hungary. But though the Austrian arms had
not been strong enough to crush the Hungarian revolt, they had
proved at least the vitality of the conservative principle. The
emperor Nicholas I. of Russia had watched in disgusted silence
the weak spirit of concession with which the revolutions had
been everywhere met ; so long as the sovereigns seemed to forget
their divine mission he had held rigorously aloof, and had only
broken silence to congratulate Windischgratz on his capture
of Vienna and Schwarzenberg on his reassertion of vigorous
principles. Now, however, that Divine Right was in arms
gainst the forces of disorder, he was prepared to listen to the
prayer of the emperor Francis Joseph for assistance against the
Hungarian rebels. The engagements of 1833 were remembered;
and in the brotherly spirit of the Holy Alliance, Hungary was
subdued by Russian armies and handed over, without quid pro
quo, to her legitimate king.
Gdrgei's capitulation of Vil&gos (August 14, 1849) cleared the
ground for the complete restoration of the system destroyed by
the March revolutions of the year before. The refusal
of Frederick William IV. of Prussia to accept the
imperial crown (April 21, 1849) had already advertised
the failure of the constitutional and unionist movement
in Germany; and Prussia, her military prestige re-
stored, stood once more face to face with Austria in
rivalry for the hegemony of Germany. In the diplomatic
contest that followed Prussia was worsted, her claims to an
independent supremacy in the north were defeated, and the con-
vention of Olmutz (November 29, 1850) restored the status quo
of the Confederation as established in 1815.
Within three years of the great upheaval of 1848 the forces of
revolution seemed everywhere to have been subdued, the states
system of Europe to have been re-established on the
basis of the treaties of Vienna. In reality, however,
this restoration was only on the surface; the cracks in
the structure of the European system had to use
Bismarck's phrase applied to another occasion only been
"papered over"; and soon ominous rents revealed the fact
that the forces that had threatened it with sudden ruin were
still at work. One fateful breach in the treaties had, indeed,
been accepted as beyond repair; when the dust of the revolu-
tionary turmoil was at length kid a Bonaparte was once more
firmly seated on the throne of France. The emperor Nicholas,
watching from the calm of Russia, had realized all that the
recognition of this fact would involve; he had proposed to set in
motion the somewhat rusty machinery of the Grand Alliance,
but the other autocratic powers were in no case to support a
legitimist crusade, and when Napoleon in 1852 assumed the title
of emperor, all Europe recognized his right to do so, even
Nicholas being fain to content himself with refusing to treat the
panenu monarch as his " brother," and to admit his style of
" third " Napoleon, which seemed to imply a dynastic claim.
Napoleon, indeed, was accepted by the powers, as he was wel-
PniuJ*
mid
Aottrl*.
,,oa ol
Olmmtt.
III. tad
corned by the French people, as the " saviour of society " from
the newly revealed perils of the social revolution. For new
and ominous forces had made their appearance since the revolu-
tion of 1830 had established the middle classes in power. The
industrial development had proceeded in the west of Europe
with astonishing rapidity, with its resulting concentra-
tion of vast populations in factories and factory cities;
and this " proletariat," excluded from any voice in the
government, and exposed in accordance with the prevailing
economic theories of doctrinaire Liberalism to the horrors of
unrestricted competition, had begun to organize itself in a
movement, of which the catchword was " the right to work "
and the banner the red flag of the socialist commune. The
reign of Charles X. had been the reductio ad absurdum of the
principle of legitimacy; that of Louis Philippe had discredited
for ever government based solely on the bourgeoisie; the social-
istic experiments of 1848 in Paris had collapsed amid the anarchy
and bloodshed of the June days. At this opportune moment
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed to the French
people the " Napoleonic Idea " as conceived by " The
himself. The great Napoleon had been the incarnation
of the Revolution, had " sprung armed from the
Revolution, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter"; he had
ruled because to him the people, by whom the Revolution had
been made, had delegated the duty of representing, protecting
and guiding it. Of this idea Louis Napoleon conceived himself
to be the heir; and when by a double plebiscite the French
nation had established him in supreme power, first as president
for life (1851), then as emperor (1852), he was able to claim
that he represented the people in a far more immediate sense
than could be asserted of the chance majority of any repre-
sentative assembly.
It was clear that, sooner or later, Napoleon III. would prove a
disturbing force in Europe. His title to rule was that he repre-
sented France; it followed therefore that he must be Economic
hostile to " the treaties," by which the traditional nvoiu-
aspirations of France, e.g. for her " natural boundaries " "on la
of Rhine, Alps and Pyrenees, were restrained. He Bun >P e -
reigned as "emperor of the French"; it followed that he
represented that principle of nationality which the treaties
ignored. He could not afford as Metternich had said of
Ferdinand of Naples " to treat his throne as an arm-chair ";
and any activity he might display would be almost certainly at
the expense of the established order. At the outset, indeed, it
was his policy to pose as its custodian. To conciliate the French
clericals he supported the pope against the Italian Liberals;
but otherwise he proclaimed aloud his devotion to the arts of
peace. A period of rapid material expansion succeeded the unrest
of the revolutionary years; engineers and men of science were
quickly producing a change in all the material conditions of life,
greater than could have been effected by any political revolution;
especially the face of Europe was gradually being covered with a
network of railways, which it was hoped would draw the Euro-
pean nations not only materially but morally closer together.
The first universal exhibition, opened under the auspices of
the prince consort at London in 1851, was intended to advertise
and consecrate the dawn of a new era of international peace and
goodwill. The Crystal Palace at Sydenham, once hailed as the
" bright Koh-i-nur of the West," remains the dismal monument
of a hope so soon to be belied by the hard logic of events. For no
period since 181 5 has been so occupied with wars and the rumours
of war as the twenty years that followed the opening of this
great temple of peace.
One question, that of the ultimate destination of the duchies
of Schleswig and Holstein, which threatened the tranquillity of
the West, was temporarily settled by the conference of
London in 1852 (see. ScHLESwic-HoLSTEiN QUESTION). Tl "
But about the same time anxious watchers noticed
on the political horizon in the East a cloud, no bigger
than a man's hand, that threatened a serious storm. At first
this was no more than a quarrel between Greek and Latin monks
about the custody of certain holy places and things in Palestine.
Crimean
War.
940
EUROPE
[HISTORY
It soon, however, became clear that behind these insignificant
combatants loomed the figures of the emperors of Russia and
France. The motives that induced Napoleon to take up the
cause of the rights of the Latin church in this matter were partly
political, partly personal. He resented the tsar's attitude
towards himself; he wished to gain the firm support of the
clergy for his throne; he desired to win prestige for himself
and his dynasty by reasserting the traditional influence of
France in the Ottoman empire. The events that led up to the
Crimean War, and those of the war itself, are told elsewhere (see
CRIMEAN WAR). Great Britain had been drawn into the war by
her traditional policy of preserving the Ottoman empire as a
barrier against the advance of Russia to the Mediterranean and
the consequent danger to the British empire in India. It is now
generally conceded that, so far as these objects were concerned,
the war was a tragic mistake. The hopes that were built on the
capacity of Turkey to reform itself were disappointed; the re-
strictions imposed upon Russia were repudiated at the first
opportunity, during the Franco-German War in 1870; and the
results of the Russo-Turkish War of 1876 have shown that a far
more effective barrier against Russia than the weakened Ottoman
empire has been furnished by the young and vigorous
of Paris? national states of the Balkan Peninsula. None the
1856. less, the treaty of Paris (1856), by which the war was
closed, marks an important epoch in the diplomatic
history of Europe; and it is impossible to say that the blood
spilled in the Crimea was wholly wasted. At the time the main
success of the allied powers seemed to be in the thrusting back
of Russia from the Danube by the cession of Bessarabia, the
extinction of Russian sea-power in the Black Sea, the formal
repudiation of the tsar's claim to a special right of interference
in Turkey. But the true significance of the work of the congress
of Paris lies in the impetus given by it to the development of
an effective international law. The concert of Europe was conse-
crated anew by the solemn admission of the Ottoman empire
to an equality of status with the European powers and the declara-
tion of the collective obligations of Europe towards it. The
congress, moreover, acted in some sort as the legislative body
of Europe; it established the principle of the free navigation
of the Danube and of the right of all nations to carry their
commerce into the Black Sea; by a declaration, signed by all the
powers present, it abolished the practice of granting letters of
marque to privateers in war time. The question was even dis-
cussed of establishing some sanction by which the rules of
international law agreed upon should be enforced upon recal-
citrant states; and, though nothing was settled, a vceu to this
effect was entered upon the protocol. The congress of Paris thus
set a precedent more hopeful than those of the congresses held
earlier in the century, because the issues were not confused
by the supposed necessity for upholding " legitimacy " at all
"costs; it was a stage in the progress from the ideals of the Grand
Alliance to those of the Hague Conference.
The conclusion of the Crimean War left the emperor Napoleon
the most influential personage in Europe; and Paris, the seat
of the congress, became also the centre of the diplo-
matic world. Russia had been bled almost to death
by tne war > Austria was discredited and isolated
owing to the dubious part she had played in it; Prussia
had not recovered from the humiliation of Olmutz; Great
Britain was soon plunged into the critical struggle of the Indian
Mutiny. The time was obviously opportune for the realization
of some of the aspirations implied in the Napoleonic idea.
The opportunity came from the side of Italy. By sending
Napoleon Sardinian troops to fight in a quarrel not their own,
ana itafy. alongside the Allies in the Crimea, Cavour had pur-
War ol chased for Piedmont the right to be heard in the
1859. councils of the powers a right of which he had made
use at the Paris congress to denounce before all Europe the
Austrian misrule in Italy. The Italian unionists were at one with
Napoleon in desiring to overset " the treaties "; and the Franco-
Italian alliance which, in 1859, drove the Austrians out of
Lombardy and established the nucleus of the Italian kingdom
was the beginning of a process which, within twelve years, was
to change the balance of Europe. It was ominous of the future
that it was largely the menace of Prussian intervention that
persuaded Napoleon to conclude the armistice of Villafranca
(July n, 1859), which, contrary to his agreement with Victor
Emmanuel, left Venice to the Austrians. In spite of the peace
of Zurich (November 10), indeed, the union of Italy continued
during the succeeding years, and Savoy and Nice were the reward
of the French emperor's connivance (see ITALY). France thus
once more gained her " natural frontier " of the Alps; the
question was whether she would be able to regain her other
natural frontier on the Rhine. The times were not unpropitious
for an enterprise which was undoubtedly one of the main objects
of Napoleon's policy. The European concert had ceased to
exist as an effective force; the treaties had been vio-
lated with impunity; in Germany, where the tension a ^ e
between the two great powers had not been eased by Germany.
Prussia's dubious attitude during the war, there was
little prospect of a united opposition to French aggression, and
the conditions seemed highly favourable for reviving the tradi-
tional policy of exploiting German disunion for the aggrandize-
ment of France. Prussia was arming, but her armaments were
directed not against Napoleon but against Austria; and the
beginning of the reign of William I., who had become regent in
1858 and king in 1861, pointed to the development of a situation
in which the French emperor would once again become the
arbiter of Germany. On the 29th of March 1862 Prussia signed
a commercial treaty with France on a basis that involved the
exclusion of Austria from the Zollverein, and replied to the
protests of the court of Vienna by recognizing the new kingdom
of Italy. In September of the same year King William placed
the supreme direction of Prussian policy in the hands of Otto von
Bismarck, whose views on the exclusion of Austria from Germany
were known to all the world.
The outcome of the Polish insurrection of 1863, however,
again altered the aspect of things, and in a direction unfavourable
to France (see POLAND: History). Napoleon had been
forced by French public opinion to come forward as ^ apo i eoa ' s
the protector of the Poles; but the spectacle of a influence.
Bonaparte posing as the champion of " the treaties "
was not impressive; his brave words were not translated into
action; and he only succeeded in offending Russia by his
protests and alienating Great Britain by his tergiversations.
The proffered intervention of Austria, France and Great Britain
Was rejected in a note of Prince Gorchakov to Baron Brunnow,
the Russian ambassador in London (July i, 1863); no action
followed; and the last effort to put forward the treaties of Vienna
as the common law of Europe ended in a fiasco. British ministers,
who had been made to look somewhat ridiculous, henceforth
began to be chary of active intervention in continental affairs;
Austria and France were alike discredited and isolated. Prussia
which, under Bismarck's auspices, had aided Russia in suppress-
ing the Poles (convention of February 8, 1863) alone emerged
from the crisis with increased prestige. Bismarck, indeed, was
too wary to accept the tsar's suggestion of an offensive alliance
and an immediate combined attack on Austria and France;
but in the coming struggle for the hegemony of Germany he
was assured at least of Russia's neutrality.
The final act in this long rivalry began with the opening up
of the Schleswig-Holstein question on the death of Frederick
VII. of Denmark and the accession of the " protocol-
king" Christian IX. (November 15, 1863). The
German claim to the Elbe duchies, the Danish claim to and
at least Schleswig as an integral part of the northern d"*.' rta> .
kingdom, were but subordinate issues of questions far Wo/s "^
more fateful, the developments of which once more question.
illustrated the hopeless enfeeblement of the idea of the
European concert. In the struggle for the possession of the duchies
the general sentiment of Germany was on one side, that of Europe
on the other. By the protocol of 1852 the duchies had been
treated as an integral part of Denmark, and France and Great
Britain, as signatory powers, alike protested against the action
HISTORY]
EUROPE
941
of Austria and Prussia in asserting the German claim by force of
arms. But, as in the case of Poland, protests were not followed
by action; Napoleon in the end contented himself with proposing
his favourite " Napoleonic idea " of a plebiscite, to discover the
wishes of the populations concerned; Palmerston, who realized
some of the important issues involved, allowed his warlike
attitude, under exalted influences, to evaporate in words. Thus
Great Britain earned the lasting resentment of Germans, without
succeeding in preventing the establishment of German sea-power
in the Baltic. For the Prussian war-harbour of Kiel and the Kiel
canal were in Bismarck's mind from the outset. Throughout
he intended to make the duchies a part of Prussia and
to use the whole question as a means for the solution
of that of Germany. The Austro-Prussian War of
1866 grew inevitably out of the Dano-German War of
1864; and the treaty of Prague (Aug. 23, 1866), which
excluded Austria from Germany and established the
North German Confederation under the headship of
Prussia, not only absorbed into Prussia the North German states
which had sided with Austria, but by the annexation to her of
Schleswig and Holstein laid the foundations of German power
in the North Sea, and of German rivalry with England in the
future.
More immediate were the effects of the campaign of Konig-
gratz on France. The rapid and overwhelming victory of Prussia
overthrew all the calculations of Napoleon, who had
looked to intervening as arbiter between exhausted
combatants. The sudden menace of the new German
power alarmed him, and he sought to secure the Rhine
frontier for France, by negotiations with Prussia, in the form of
" compensations " at the expense of the South German states.
He succeeded only in placing a fresh weapon in Bismarck's
hands. The communication of the French overtures to the South
German courts was enough to throw them into the arms of
Prussia; and treaties of offensive and defensive alliance were
signed in August 1866 between Prussia and Wurttemberg (3rd),
Baden (lyth), and Bavaria (22nd), by which the king of Prussia
was to receive the supreme command of the allied armies in time
of war. In vain Napoleon tried to retrieve his damaged prestige
by securing compensation elsewhere. His proposal that the
grand-duchy of Luxemburg, which had not been included in the
new German Confederation, should fall to France by agreement
with Prussia was no more successful than his other demands for
" compensation." Luxemburg was declared a neutral state by
the convention of London in 1867 (see LUXEMBURG), and the
French proposal, published by Bismarck in The Times at the
outset of the war of 1870, only damaged the French emperor's
cause in the eyes of Europe.
Meanwhile public feeling in France had become seriously
excited by this sudden menace of a hostile power on her eastern
frontier, and this excitement was raised to fever heat when it
became known that the vacant throne of Spain had been offered
to and accepted by a prince of the house of Hohenzollern.
Napoleon's policy had become hopelessly discredited by the suc-
cessive fiascos in Poland, Mexico and Germany, and even the
establishment of a liberal constitution in 1869 could not avail
to restore confidence in him. He knew the risk he ran in
challenging a conflict with a power whose military efficiency
had been so strikingly displayed; but by refusing to do so, in
the excited state of public feeling, he would have risked his
throne. He reckoned on the traditional jealously of the South
German states for Prussia and their traditional friendship with
France; he was assured, too, of the support of Austria, in the
event of a victorious opening of the campaign. On the other hand
Bismarck was bent on war, which, in accordance with his policy
of " blood and iron," he believed to be the sole effective means of
binding the heterogeneous elements of Germany into a coherent
whole. The device of the " Ems telegrams" (see BISMARCK) was
sufficient to end the hesitations of Napoleon by giving an irresist-
ible volume to the cry of the war party in France; and on the
igth of July the French emperor's declaration of war was handed
in at Berlin.
? . ft
The story of the struggle that followed is told elsewhere (see
FRANCO-GERMAN WAR). The hopes that Napoleon had based
on the action of the South German courts was belied;
and the first crushing German victories (Weissenburg,
August 4, and W6rth, August 6) not only removed all onn
chance of Austrian co-operation but brought down with
a crash the imposing facade of the Second Empire. On
the 2nd of September Napoleon surrendered, with his
army, at Sedan; and two days later the Empire was overthrown
and a provisional republican government set up at Paris. On the
igth Paris itself was invested and, after a heroic defence, capitu-
lated on the 28th of January 1871. On the i8th of January,
at the palace of Versailles, William I., king of Prussia, was pro-
claimed German emperor. On the 26th of February
were signed the preliminaries of peace, by which France owwHuT
agreed to cede to the German empire Alsace (except Bmptn.
Belfort and its territory) and German Lorraine, with
Metz and Thionville (Diedenhofen), and to pay a war indemnity
of five milliards of francs (200,000,000) in three years, to be
secured by the occupation of French territory. The definitive
treaty was signed at Frankfort -on-Main on the loth of May 1871.
The most important outcome of the events which culminated
in the Franco-German War and its result was the establishment
of a powerful German empire, which was destined to dominate
the continent for years to come, and the expansive ambitions
of which remain pregnant with menace for the future. So great
an overturn, however, involved other changes in the territorial
system, which may be briefly summarized. The most notable of
these was the reconstruction of the Austrian monarchy as a result
of the war of 1866. By the treaty of Vienna (October 3, 1866)
between Austria and Italy, Austria recognized the Italian
kingdom and ceded to it the city and territory of Venice, thus
surrendering the traditional claim of the Habsburgs to domina-
tion in Italy. This was followed in 1867 by the establishment of
the Dual Monarchy in the Habsburg dominions under Dual
the auspices of Bismarck's rival,Count Beust, Francis y*t*m la
Joseph being crowned king of Hungary, and a separate A"* trl *-
constitution being established for Hungary and the
Cis-Leithan dominions of the Austrian emperor (see AUSTRIA:
History). In Italy, meanwhile, the unification of the kingdom
had continued after the conclusion of the war of 1859 by the
treaty of Zurich. In 1860 Tuscany, Parma and Modena were
united to the monarchy of Victor Emmanuel, at the cost of the
cession of Nice and Savoy to Napoleon. In May of the same
year Garibaldi and his " Thousand " landed in Sicily, which he
reduced by the end of June; in August he crossed to the main-
land, and the capitulation of Francis II. of the Two Sicilies at
Gaeta on the I3th of February 1861 ended the Bourbon kingdom
in southern Italy. On the I7th of March Victor
Emmanuel II. was proclaimed king of United Italy.
This title, as mentioned above, was recognized by
Austria in 1866, when Italy was increased by the cession of
Venice. Finally, Rome, which had been preserved to the papacy
by Napoleon's troops, was on their withdrawal occupied by the
Italians on the 2oth of September 1870. Thus the temporal
power of the popes came to an end; and the unification of Italy
was completed (see ITALY: History).
Another significant outcome of the collapse of France was the
denunciation by Russia of the " Black Sea " clauses of the treaty
of Paris of 1856, an action rendered possible by the entente
between the governments of Berlin and St Petersburg. In the
note addressed to the signatory powers announcing that Russia
no longer felt herself bound by the clauses of the treaty limiting
her sovereign rights in the Black Sea, Prince Gorchakov wrote:
" It would be difficult to affirm that the written law founded on
the respect for treaties, as the basis of public right and rule
of the relations of states, has preserved the same moral sanction
as in former times." The action of Russia was, in fact, a practical
illustration of Bismarck's dicta that " rebus sic stantibus is
involved in all treaties that require performance " (Mem. ii.
280), and that " ultra posse nemo obligatur holds good in spite of
all treaty obligations whatsoever, nor can any treaty guarantee
942
EUROPE
[HISTORY
the discharge of obligations when the private interest of those
who lie under them no longer reinforces the text " (ib. ii. 270).
Great Britain did her best to counteract a doctrine so subversive
of international confidence. For a moment at least a diplomatic
breach with Russia seemed inevitable. At Bismarck's suggestion,
however, a conference was held at London to arrange the affair.
There was, in the circumstances, no chance of forcing Russia to
recede from her position; but in order "to reconcile facts with
principles " the conference on the I7th of January 1871 agreed
on a formula announcing that " contracting powers can only rid
themselves of their treaty engagements by an understanding with
their co-signatories." Thus the principle of the European concert
was saved. But, for the time at least, it seemed that the triumph
of Bismarck's diplomacy had re-established
. . . the simple plan
That they should take who have the power
And they should keep who can.
Beust was not far wrong when he exclaimed, " Je ne vois plus
del'Europe!" (W. A. P.)
By the Franco-German War of 1870-71 and the creation
of the German empire the political condition of Europe was
profoundly changed. Germany became for a time the leading
power on the continent of Europe, and German statesmanship
had to devise means for preventing, until the new edifice was
thoroughly consolidated, the formation of a hostile coalition
of jealous rivals. The first thing to be done in this direction
was to secure the support of Russia and Austria to the new order
of things.
With regard to Russia there was little cause for apprehension.
She had aided Bismarck to carry out his audacious schemes in
Russian tne P ast > an< ^ there was no reason to suppose that she
poiky would change her policy in the immediate future. The
towards rapprochement dated from the Polish insurrection of
Germany. 1 ^ 3> when the governments of France and England,
yielding to popular excitement, made strong diplomatic repre-
sentations to Russia in favour of the Poles, whereas Bismarck
not only refused to join in the diplomatic campaign, but made
a convention with the cabinet of St Petersburg by which the
Russian and German military authorities on the frontiers should
aid each other in suppressing the disturbances. From that time
the friendship ripened steadily. The relations between the two
powers were not, it is true, always without a cloud. More than
once the bold designs of Bismarck caused uneasiness and dis-
satisfaction in St Petersburg, especially during the Schleswig-
Holstein complications of 1864 and the Austro-Prussian conflict
of 1866; but the wily statesman of Berlin, partly by argument
and partly by dexterously manipulating the mutual trust and
affection between the two sovereigns, always succeeded in having
his own way without producing a rupture, so that during the
Franco-German War of 1870-71 Russia maintained an extremely
benevolent neutrality, and prevented Austria and Italy from
taking part in the struggle. So benevolent was the neutrality
that the emperor William at the end of the campaign felt con-
strained to write to the tsar that he owed to His Majesty the
happy issue of the campaign and would never forget the fact.
Having thus helped to create the German empire, Alexander II.
was not likely to take an active part in destroying it, and Bis-
marck could look forward confidently to a long continuance of the
cordial relations between the two courts.
The second part of the German chancellor's programme, the
permanent conciliation of Austria, was not so easily carried out.
Austrian Austria had been the great sufferer, more perhaps even
relation* than France, from Bismarck's aggressive policy. For
wHh generations she had resisted strenuously and success-
dermany. fuUy tne e g orts o f tne Hohenzollerns to play the leading
part in Germany, and she had always considered her own influence
in Germany as essential to the maintenance of her position as a
first-class power. By the disastrous campaign of 1866 and the
consequent treaty of Prague, Austria had been formally excluded
from all direct influence in German affairs. With these events
still fresh in his recollection, the emperor Francis Joseph could
hardly be expected to support the new empire created by his
rival at Austria's expense, and it was known that on the eve
of the Franco-German War he had been negotiating with the
French government for a combined attack on Prussia. To an
ordinary statesman the task of permanently conciliating such a
power might well have seemed hopeless, but Bismarck did not
shrink from it, and even before the signature of the treaty of
Prague he had prepared the way for attaining his object. " With
regard to Austria," he himself explained on one occasion, " I
had two courses open to me after her defeat, either to destroy
her entirely or to respect her integrity and prepare for our
future reconciliation when the fire of revenge had died out. I
chose the latter course, because the former would have been the
greatest possible act of folly. Supposing that Austria had dis-
appeared, consider the consequences." He then described very
graphically those probable consequences, and drew the con-
clusion: " for the sake of our own life Austria must live. I had
no hesitation, therefore, and ever since 1866 my constant effort
has been to stitch up the great torn texture and to re-establish
amicable relations with our ancient associate of the Confedera-
tion." For this purpose he tried to soothe Austrian suscepti-
bilities, and suggested confidentially that compensation for the
losses of territory, influence and prestige in Italy and Germany
might be found in south-eastern Europe, especially by the
acquisition of Bosnia and Herzegovina; but so long as his rival
Count Beust was minister for foreign affairs in Vienna, and
Austria had the prospect of being able to recover her lost position
by the assistance of Russia and France, these efforts had no
success. It was only when Prince Gorchakov had declined Count
Beust 's advances, which took the form of suggesting the abolition
of the Black Sea clauses of the treaty of Paris, and when France
had been paralysed for some years by her war with Germany,
that a rapprochement between the cabinets of Vienna and Berlin
became possible. Bismarck lost no time in making advances.
From the German headquarters at Versailles he sent a despatch
to Vienna suggesting the establishing of more cordial relations
between the two countries, and Count Beust replied in an
equally amicable tone. The emperor Francis Joseph, finding
himself isolated, had evidently accepted the inevitable with
his customary resignation, and abandoned his dreams of again
playing the leading part in Germany. As a further proof of the
change in his disposition and aims he replaced Count Beust by
Count Andrassy, who was a personal friend of Bismarck, and
who wished, as a Hungarian, to see Austria liberated from her
German entanglement, and he consented to pay a visit to Berlin
for the purpose of drawing still closer the relations between the
two governments.
Bismarck was delighted at this turn of affairs, but he advanced
with his usual caution. He gave it to be clearly understood that
improvement in his relations with Vienna must not
disturb the long-established friendship with St Peters- TheDrei-
burg. The tsar, on hearing privately of the intended buaa
meeting, gave a hint to Prince Reuss, the German
ambassador, that he expected an invitation, and was invited
accordingly. The meeting of the three sovereigns took place
at Berlin at the end of August 1872. The three ministers, Prince
Bismarck, Prince Gorchakov and Count Andrassy, held daily
conferences, on the basis that the chief aim in view should be the
maintenance of peace in Europe, and that in all important
international affairs the three powers should consult with each
other and act in concert. As a result of three days' consultation
the Three Emperor's League was founded, without any formal
treaty being signed. In this way the danger of a powerful
coalition being formed against the young German empire was
averted, for in the event of a conflict with France, Germany could
count on at least the benevolent neutrality of Russia and Austria,
and from the other powers she had nothing to fear. What
ulterior designs Bismarck may have had in forming the league,
or " Alliance " as it is often called, must be to some extent a
matter of conjecture, but we shall probably not be far wrong in
adopting the view of a competent Russian authority, who defines
the policy of the German chancellor thus: " To make Austria
accept definitively her deposition as a Germanic power, to put
HISTORY]
EUROPE
943
her in perpetual contlicc with Russia in the Balkan Peninsula,
and to found on that irreconcilable rivalry the hegemony of
Ormany."
For more than two yean there was an outward appearance
of extreme cordiality between the three powers. They acted
together diplomatically, and on all suitable occasions the three
allied monarchs exchanged visits and sent each other con-
gratulations and good wishes. There was, however, from the
beginning very little genuine confidence between them. Before
the breaking up of the conferences at Berlin, Alexander II. and
his chancellor had conversations with the French ambassador,
in which they not only showed that they had suspicions of future
aggressive designs on the pan of Germany, but also gave an
assurance that so long as France fulfilled her engagements to
Germany she had nothing to fear. A few months later, when the
emperor William paid his return visit to the tsar in St Petersburg,
a defensive convention was concluded by the two monarchs
behind the back of their Austrian ally. Without knowing any-
thing about the existence of this convention, the Austrian ally
did not feel comfortable in his new position. In Vienna the old
anti-Prussian feeling was still strong. The so-called party of
the archdukes and the military resisted the policy of Andrassy,
and sought to establish closer relations with Russia, so that
German support might be unnecessary, but as Bismarck has
himself testified, " Russia did not yet respond. The wound
caused by the conduct of Austria during the Crimean War was
not yet healed. Andrassy made himself very popular in the
court society of St Petersburg during his visit there with his
imperial master, but the traditional suspicion of Austrian policy
remained." Altogether, the new league was not a happy family.
So long as all the members of it were content to accept the
status quo, the latent germs of dissension remained hidden from
the outside world, but as soon as the temporary state of political
quietude was replaced by a certain amount of activity and initia-
tive, they forced their way to the surface. No one of the three
powers regarded the status quo as a satisfactory permanent
arrangement. In Berlin much anxiety was caused by the rapid
financial and military recovery of France, and voices were heard
suggesting that a new campaign and a bigger war indemnity
might be necessary before the recuperation was complete. In
St Petersburg there was a determination to take advantage of
any good opportunity for recovering the portion of Bessarabia
ceded by the treaty of Paris, and thereby removing the last
tangible results of the Crimean War. In Vienna there was a
desire to obtain in the Balkan Peninsula, in accordance with the
suggestion of Bismarck, compensation for the losses in Italy and
Germany. Thus each of the members of the league was hatching
secretly a little aggressive scheme for its own benefit, and the
danger for the rest of Europe lay in the possibility of their
reconciling their schemes so far as to admit of an agreement
for action in common. Fortunately for the onlookers there were
important conflicting interests, and the task of reconciling them
was extremely difficult, as the subsequent course of events
proved.
The first of the three powers to move was Germany. In
February 1875 M. de Radowitz was despatched to St Petersburg
on a secret mission in order to discover whether, in
the event of hostilities between Germany and France,
Russia would undertake to maintain a neutral attitude
as she had done in 1870-1871; in that case Germany
might be relied on to co-operate with her in her great designs
in the East. Prince Gorchakov did not take the bait with the
alacrity that was expected. Having overcome in some measure
his hatred of Austria, which had distorted for so many years his
political vision, he had come to understand that it was not for
the interests of his own country to have as neighbour a powerful
united Germany instead of a weak confederation of small states,
and be now perceived that it would be a grave error of policy
to allow Germany to destroy still more to her own advantage the
balance of power in Europe by permanently weakening France.
No doubt he desired to recover the lost portion of Bessarabia and
to raise Russian prestige in the East, but be did not wish to run the
ins.
risk of exciting a great European war, and he believed that what
he desired might be effected without war by the diplomatic skill
which had warded off European intervention during the Polish
troubles of 1863, and had recovered for Russia her freedom of
action in the Black Sea during the Franco-Prussian War of
1870-71. In reply, therefore, to M. de Radowitz's inquiries and
suggestions, he declared that the Russian court fostered no
ambitious designs in the East or in the West, and desired only
peace and the maintenance of the status quo, with possibly an
amelioration in the miserable condition of the Christian subjects
of the sultan. This rebuff did not suffice to dispel the gathering
storm. The warlike agitation in the German inspired press
continued, and the French government became thoroughly
alarmed. General Lefl6, the French ambassador in St Peters-
burg, was instructed to sound the Russian government on the
subject. Prince Gorchakov willingly assured him that Rassia
would do all in her power to incline the Berlin cabinet to modera-
tion and peace, and that the emperor would take advantage of his
forthcoming visit to Berlin to influence the emperor William
in this sense. A few days later General Lefl6 received similar
assurances from the emperor himself, and about the same time
the British government volunteered to work likewise in the
cause of peace. Representations were accordingly made by both
governments during the tsar's visit to Berlin, and both the
emperor William and his chancellor declared that there was no
intention of attacking France. The danger of war, p u siia
which the well-informed German press believed to be fad
" in sight," was thus averted, but the incident sowed
the seeds of future troubles, by awakening in Bismarck
a bitter personal resentment against his Russian colleague.
By certain incautious remarks to those around him, and still
more by a circular to the representatives of Russia abroad, dated
Berlin and beginning with the words maintenant la paix est
assurie, Gorchakov seemed to take to himself the credit of
having checkmated Bismarck and saved Europe from a great
war. Bismarck resented bitterly this conduct on the part of his
old friend, and told him frankly that he would have reason to
regret it. In the Russian official world it is generally believed
that he took his revenge in the Russo-Turkish War and the
congress of Berlin. However this may be, he has himself
explained that " the first cause of coldness " was the above
incident, " when Gorchakov, aided by Decazes, wanted to play
at my expense the part of a saviour of France, to represent me
as the enemy of European peace, and to procure for himself a
triumphant quos ego to arrest by a word and shatter my dark
designs! " In any case the incident marks the beginning of a
new phase in the relations of the three powers; henceforth
Bismarck can no longer count on the unqualified support of
Russia, and in controlling the Russo-Austrian rivalry in south-
eastern Europe, while professing to be impartial, he will lean to
the side of Count Andrassy rather than to that of Prince Gorcha-
kov. He is careful, however, not to carry this tendency so far
as to produce a rapprochement between Russia and France.
The danger of a Franco-Russian alliance hostile to Germany
is already appearing on the political horizon, but it is only a little
cloud no bigger than a man's hand.
The next move in the aggressive game was made by Austria,
with the connivance of Russia. During the summer of 1875
an insurrection of the Christian Slavs in Herzegovina, which
received support from the neighbouring principalities of Monte-
negro and Servia, was fostered by the Austrian authorities and
encouraged by the Russian consuls on the Adriatic coast. A
European concert was formed for the purpose of settling the
disturbance by means of local administrative reforms, but the
efforts of the powers failed, because the insurgents hoped to
obtain complete liberation from Turkish rule; and in the
beginning of July, with a view to promoting this solution,
Servia and Montenegro declared war against the Porte. There-
upon Russia began to show her hand more openly. The govern-
ment allowed volunteers to be recruited in Moscow and
St Petersburg, and the Russian general Chernaycv, who had
distinguished himself in Central Asia, was appointed to the
944
EUROPE
[HISTORY
Aaatro-
meat,
1876.
command of the Servian army. When the ball had thus been
set rolling, the two powers chiefly concerned considered that the
t ' me had come for embodying the result of their in-
formal confidential pourparlers in a secret agreement,
agree- which is known as the convention of Reichstadt, because
it was signed at a meeting of the two emperors in
the little Bohemian town of that name. It bore the
date of the 8th of July 1876 exactly a week after Servia and
Montenegro had declared war and it contained the following
stipulations: (i) That so long as the struggle which had just
begun remained undecided, the two sovereigns should refrain
from interference, and that in the event of the principalities
being defeated, any modification of the territorial or political
status quo ante to their detriment should be prevented; (2) that
in the event of the principalities proving victorious, and territorial
changes taking place, Austria should claim compensation in
Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Russia should demand the resti-
tution of the portion of Bessarabia which she had lost by the
Crimean War; (3) that in the event of the collapse of the
Ottoman empire, the two powers should act together to create
autonomous principalities in European Turkey, to unite Thessaly
and Crete to Greece, and to proclaim Constantinople a free town.
The contracting parties evidently expected that the two princi-
palities would be victorious in their struggle with the Porte,
and that the compensations mentioned would be secured without
a great European war. Their expectations were disappointed.
Montenegro made a brave stand against superior forces, but
before five months had passed Servia was at the mercy of the
Turkish army, and Russia had to come to the assistance of her
prot6g6. A Russian ultimatum stopped the advance of the Turks
on Belgrade, and an armistice, subsequently transformed into a
peace, was signed.
Russia and Austria had now to choose between abandoning
their schemes and adopting some other course of action, and un-
foreseen incidents contributed towards making them
Question. se l ec t the latter alternative. In June 1876 an attempt
at insurrection in Bulgaria had been repressed with
savage brutality by the Turks, and the details, as they became
known some weeks later, produced much indignation all over
Europe. In England the excitement, fanned by the eloquence of
Gladstone, became intense, and compelled the Disraeli cabinet
to take part, very reluctantly, in a diplomatic campaign, with
the object of imposing radical reforms on Turkey. In Russia the
excitement and indignation were equally great, and the tsar
gradually formed the resolution that if the powers would not act
collectively and energetically, so as to compel the Porte to yield,
he would undertake the work single-handed. This resolution
he announced publicly in a speech delivered at Moscow on the
loth of November 1876. The powers did not like the idea of
separate Russian action, and in order to prevent it they agreed
to hold a conference in Constantinople for the purpose of inducing
the Porte to introduce the requisite reforms. The Porte was at
that moment under the influence of popular patriotic excitement
which made it indisposed to accept orders, or even well-meant
advice, from governments more or less hostile to it, and the
inconsiderate mode of procedure suggested by General Ignatiev,
and adopted by the other delegates, made it still more un-
conciliatory. At the first plenary sitting of the conference
the proceedings were disturbed by the sound of artillery, and
the Turkish representative explained that the salvo was in
honour of the new Ottoman constitution, which was being
promulgated by the sultan. The inference suggested was that
as Turkey had spontaneously entered on the path of liberal
and constitutional reform for all Ottoman subjects, it became
superfluous and absurd to talk of small reforms for particular
provinces, such as the conference was about to propose. The
deliberations continued, but finally the Porte refused to accept
what the plenipotentiaries considered an irreducible minimum,
and the conference broke up without obtaining any practical
result. The tsar's Moscow declaration about employing single-
handed the requisite coercive measures now came to be fulfilled.
In order to make a successful aggressive move on Turkey,
Russia had first of all to secure her rear and flank by an arrange-
ment with her two allies. In Berlin she encountered no diffi-
culties. Bismarck had no objection to seeing Russia weaken
herself in a struggle with Turkey, provided she did not upset the
balance of power in south-eastern Europe, and he felt confident
that he could prevent by diplomatic means any such catastrophe.
He was inclined, therefore, to encourage rather than restrain the
bellicose tendencies of St Petersburg. In Vienna the task of
coming to a definite arrangement was much more difficult, and
it was only after protracted and laborious negotiations that a
convention was concluded on the isth of January 1877, and
formally signed three months later. It was a development of the
agreement of Reichstadt, modified according to the changes in
the situation, but retaining the essential principle that in the
event of the territorial status quo being altered, Russia should
recover the lost portion of Bessarabia, and Austria should get
Bosnia and a part of Herzegovina. Having made these pre-
liminary arrangements, Russia began the campaign simultane-
ously in Europe and Asia Minor, and after many reverses and
enormous sacrifices of blood and treasure, she succeeded in
imposing on the Turks the " preliminary peace " of San Stefano
(3rd March 1878). That peace was negotiated with very little
consideration for the interests of the other powers, and as soon
as the terms of it became known in Vienna and London there
was an outburst of indignation. In negotiating the
treaty General Ignatiev had ignored the wishes of stefaao.
Austria, and had even, according to the contention
of Andrassy, infringed the convention signed at the beginning
of the war. However this may be, the peace of San Stefano
brought to the surface the latent conflict of interests between
the two empires. Russia's aim was to create a big Bulgaria
under the influence of St. Petersburg, and to emancipate Servia
and Montenegro as far as possible from Austrian influence,
whereas Austria objected to the creation of any large Slav state
in the Balkan Peninsula, and insisted on maintaining her influence
at Belgrade and Tsetigne (Cetinje). In vain Prince Gorchakov
endeavoured to conciliate Austria and to extract from Count
Andrassy a clear statement of the terms he would accept. Count
Andrassy was in ho hurry to extricate Russia from her difficulties,
and suggested that the whole question should be submitted to
a European congress. The suggestion was endorsed by Great
Britain, which likewise objected to the San Stefano arrange-
ments, and Bismarck declined to bring any pressure to bear on
the cabinet of Vienna.
Deceived in her expectations of active support from her two
allies, Russia found herself in an awkward position. From a
military point of view it was absolutely necessary for her to
come to an arrangement either with Austria or with England,
because the communications of her army before Constantinople
with its base could be cut by these two powers acting in concert
the land route being dominated by Austria, and the Black Sea
route by the British fleet, which was at that time anchored
in the Sea of Marmora. As soon, therefore, as the efforts to
obtain the support of her two allies against the demands of
England had failed, negotiations were opened in London, and
on the 3Oth of May a secret convention was signed by Lord
Salisbury and Count Schuvalov. By that agreement the
obstacles to the assembling of the congress were removed. The
congress met in Berlin on the I3th of June, and after
many prolonged sittings and much secret negotiation
the treaty of Berlin was signed on the i3th of July.
By that treaty the preliminary peace of San Stefano was
considerably modified. The big Bulgaria defined by General
Ignatiev was divided into three portions, the part between the
Danube and the Balkans being transformed into a vassal princi-
pality, the part between the Balkans and the Rhodope being
made into anautonomous province, called Eastern Rumelia, under
a Christian governor named by the sultan with the assent of the
powers, and the remainder being placed again under the direct
rule of the Porte. The independence of Montenegro, Servia and
Rumania was formally recognized, and each of these principalities
received a considerable accession of territory. Rumania, however,
HISTORY]
EUROPE
945
in return for the Dobrudja, which it professed not to desire,
was obliged to give back to Russia the portion of Bessarabia
ceded after the Crimean War. In Asia Minor Russia agreed
to confine her annexations to the districts of Kars, Ardahan
and Datum, and to restore to Turkey the remainder of the occu-
pied territory. As a set-off against the large acquisitions of the
Slav races, the powers recommended that the sultan should cede
to the kingdom of Greece the greater part of Thessaly and Epirus,
under the form of a rectification of frontiers. At first the sultan
refused to act on this recommendation, but in March 1881 a
compromise was effected by which Greece obtained Thessaly
without Epirus. Bosnia and Herzegovina were to be occupied
and administered by Austria- Hungary, and the Austrian
authorities were to have the right of making roads and keep-
ing garrisons in the district of Novi-Bazar, which lies between
Servia and Montenegro. In all the provinces of European
Turkey for which special arrangements were not made in the
treaty, the Porte undertook (Art. 23) to introduce organic
statutes similar to that of Crete, adapted to the local conditions.
This article, like many of the subordinate stipulations of the
treaty, remained a dead letter. We may mention specially Art.
61, in which the Sublime Porte undertook to realize without
delay the ameliorations and reforms required in the provinces
inhabited by Armenians, and to guarantee their safety against
the Circassians and Kurds. Equally unreliable proved the scheme
of Lord Beaconsfield to secure good administration throughout
the whole of Asia Minor by the introduction of reforms under
British control, and to prevent the further expansion of Russia
in that direction by a defensive alliance with the Porte.
A convention to that effect was duly signed at Con-
stantinople a few days before the meeting of the con-
gress (4th June 1878), but the only part of it which
. actually realized was the occupation and administration of
Cyprus by the British government. The new frontiers stipulated
in the treaty of San Stefano, and subsequently rectified by the
treaty of Berlin, are shown in the accompanying sketch-map.
The secret schemes of Russia and Austria, in so far as they
were denned in the agreement of Reichstadt and the subsequent
Austro-Russian treaty of Vienna, had thus been realized. Russia
had recovered the lost portion of Bessarabia, and Austria had
practically annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, though the nominal
suzerainty of the sultan over the two provinces was maintained.
But Russia was far from satisfied with the results, which seemed
to her not at all commensurate with the sacrifices imposed on
her by the war, and her dissatisfaction led to a new group-
ing of the powers. Before the opening of the Berlin congress
Bismarck had announced publicly that he would refrain from
taking sides with any of the contending parties, and would
confine himself to playing the pan of an honest broker. The
announcement was received by the Russians with astonishment
and indignation. What they expected was not an impartial
arbiter, but a cordial and useful friend in need. In 1871 the
emperor William, as we have seen, had spontaneously declared
to the tsar that Germany owed to His Majesty the happy issue
of the war, and that she would never forget it, and we may add
that on that occasion he signed himself " Your ever grateful
Friend." Now, in 1878, when the moment had come for pay-
ing at least an instalment of this debt, and when Russia was
being compelled to make concessions which she described as
incompatible with her dignity, Bismarck had nothing better to
offer than honest brokerage. The indignation in all classes
was intense, and the views commonly held regard-
ing Bismarck's " duplicity " and " treachery " were
supposed to receive ample confirmation during the
SSI*!*, sittings of the congress and the following six months.
On the 4th of February 1879 Prince Gorchakov wrote
to the ambassador in Vienna: " Needless to say, that in our eyes
the Three Emperors' Alliance is practically torn in pieces by the
conduct of our two allies. At present it remains for us merely to
terminate the liquidation of the past, and to seek henceforth
support in ourselves alone." The same view of the situation was
taken in Berlin and Vienna, though the result was attributed, of
course, to different causes, and the danger of serious complica-
tions became so great that Bismarck concluded with Andrassy in
the following October (1879) a formal defensive alliance, which
was avowedly directed against Russia, and which subsequently
developed into the Triple Alliance, directed against Russia and
France.
The causes of the rupture are variously described by the
different parties interested. According to Bismarck the Russian
government began a venomous campaign against Germany in the
press, and collected, with apparently hostile intentions, enormous
masses of troops near the German and Austrian frontiers, whilst
the tsar adopted in his correspondence with the emperor William
an arrogant and menacing tone which could not be tolerated.
On the other hand, the Russians declare that the so-called
Press-Campaign was merely the spontaneous public expression
of the prevailing disappointment among all classes in Russia,
that the military preparations had a purely defensive character,
and that the tsar's remarks, which roused Bismarck's ire, did
not transgress the limits of friendly expostulation such as
sovereigns in close friendly relations might naturally employ.
Map to illustrate
the Treaty of Berlin (1878)
Hit (Inali o/ firiil ...<*.
y FrMfy / Sa
/ ferf
English Mil<-
Subsequent revelations tend rather to confirm the Russian view.
After an exhausting war and without a single powerful ally,
Russia was not likely to provoke wantonly a great war with
Germany and Austria. The press attacks were not more violent
than those which frequently appear in newspapers which draw
their inspiration from the German foreign office, and the accusa-
tions about the arrogant attitude and menacing tone of Alexander
II. are not at all in harmony with his known character, and are
refuted by the documents since published by Dr Busch. The
truth seems to be that the self-willed chancellor was actuated
by nervous irritation and personal feeling more than by con-
siderations of statecraft. His imperial master was not convinced
by his arguments, and showed great reluctance to permit the
conclusion of a separate treaty with Austria. Finally, with
much searching of heart, he yielded to the importunity of his
minister; but in thus committing an unfriendly act towards his
old ally, he so softened the blow that the personal good relations
between the two sovereigns suffered merely a momentary inter-
ruption. Bismarck himself soon recognized that the permanent
estrangement of Russia would be a grave mistake of policy, and
the very next year (1880), negotiations for a treaty of defensive
alliance between the two cabinets were begun. Nor did the
accession to the throne of Russia of Alexander III., who had long
enjoyed the reputation of being systematically hostile to Germans,
produce a rupture, as was expected. Six months after his
father's death, the young tsar met the old kaiser at Danzig
946
EUROPE
[HISTORY
(September 1881), and some progress was made towards a com-
plete renewal of the traditional friendship. Immediately after-
wards a further step was taken towards re-establishing the old
state of things with regard also to Austria. On his return to
St Petersburg, Alexander III. remembered that he had received
some time previously a telegram of congratulation from the
emperor Francis Joseph, and he now replied to it very cordially,
referring to the meeting at Danzig, and describing the emperor
William as " that venerable friend with whom we are united
in the common bonds of a profound affection." The words
foreshadowed a revival of the Three Emperors' League, which
actually took place three years later.
The removal of all immediate danger of a Franco-Russian
alliance did not prevent Bismarck from strengthening in other
ways the diplomatic position of Germany, and the
tire TWpfe' result of ms efforts soon became apparent in the alliance
Alliance. of Italy with the two central powers. Ever since the
Franco-German War of 1870-71, and more especially
since the congress of Berlin in 1878, the Italian government had
shown itself restless and undecided in its foreign policy. As it
was to France that Italy owed her emancipation from Austrian
rule, it seemed natural that the two countries should remain
allies, but anything like cordial co-operation was prevented by
conflicting interests and hostile feeling. The French did not
consider the acquisition of Savoy and Nice a sufficient com-
pensation for the assistance they had given to the cause of Italian
unity, and they did not know, or did not care to remember, that
their own government was greatly to blame for the passive
attitude of Italy in the hour of their great national misfortunes.
On the other hand, a considerable amount of bitterness against
France had been gradually accumulating in the hearts of the
Italians. As far back as the end of the war of 1859, popular
opinion had been freely expressed against Napoleon III., because
he had failed to keep his promise of liberating Italy "from the
Alps to the Adriatic." The feeling was revived and intensified
when it became known that he was opposing the annexation of
central and southern Italy, and that he obtained Savoy and Nice
as the price of partly withdrawing his opposition. Subsequently,
in the war of 1866, he was supposed to have insulted Italy by
making her conclude peace with Austria, on the basis of the
cession of Venetia, before she could wipe out the humiliation
of her defeats at Custozza and Lissa. Then came the French
protection of the pope's temporal power as a constant source of
irritation, producing occasional explosions of violent hostility,
as when the new Chassepot rifles were announced to have
" worked wonders " among the Garibaldians at Mentana. When
the Second Empire was replaced by the Republic, the relations
did not improve. French statesmen of the Thiers school had
always condemned the imperial policy of permitting and even
encouraging the creation of large, powerful states on the French
frontiers, and Thiers himself publicly attributed to this policy
the misfortunes of his country. With regard to Italy, he said
openly that he regretted what had been done, though he had no
intention of undoing it. The first part of this statement was
carefully noted in Italy, and the latter part was accepted with
scepticism. In any case his hand might perhaps be forced,
for in the first republican chamber the monarchical and clerical
element was very strong, and it persistently attempted to get
something done in favour of the temporal power. Even when the
party of the Left undertook the direction of affairs in 1876, the
government did not become anti-clerical in its foreign policy,
and Italian statesmen resigned themselves to a position of political
isolation. The position had its advantages. Events in the
Balkan Peninsula foreshadowed a great European war, and it
seemed that in the event of Europe's being divided into two
hostile camps, Italy might have the honour and the advantage
of regulating the balance of power. By maintaining good rela-
tions with all her neighbours and carefully avoiding all in-
convenient entanglements, she might come forward at the critical
moment and dictate her own terms to either of the contending
parties, or offer her services to the highest bidder. This Machia-
vellian policy did not give the expected results. Being friends
with everybody in a general way may be the best course for an
old, conservative country which desires merely the maintenance
of the status quo, but it does not secure the energetic diplomatic
support required by a young enterprising state which wishes to
increase its territory and influence. At the congress of Berlin,
when several of the powers got territorial acquisitions, Italy
got nothing. The Italians, who were in the habit of assuming,
almost as a matter of principle, that from all European com-
plications they had a right to obtain some tangible advantage,
were naturally disappointed, and they attributed their misfortune
to their political isolation. The policy of the free hand conse-
quently fell into disrepute, and the desire for a close, efficient
alliance revived. But with what power or powers should an
alliance be made? The remnants of the old party of action,
who still carried the Italia Irredenta banner, had an answer
ready. They recommended that alliances should be concluded
with a view to wresting from Austria the Trentino and Trieste,
with Dalmatia, perhaps, into the bargain. On the other hand,
the Conservatives and the Moderates considered that the question
of the Trentino and Trieste was much less important than that of
political influence in the Mediterranean. A strong Austria was
required, it was said, to bar the way of Russia to the Adriatic,
and France must not be allowed to pursue unchecked her policy
of transforming the Mediterranean into a French lake. Con-
siderations of this kind led naturally to the conclusion that Italy
should draw closer to the powers of central Europe. So the
question appeared from the standpoint of " la haute politique."
From the less elevated standpoint of immediate political in-
terests, it presented conflicting considerations. A rapprochement
with the central powers might prevent the conclusion of a
commercial treaty with France, and thereby increase the financial
and economic difficulties with which the young kingdom was
struggling, whereas a rapprochement with France would certainly
excite the hostility of Bismarck, who was retiring from the
Kulturkampf and journeying towards Canossa, and who might
possibly conciliate the pope by helping him to recover his temporal
sovereignty at the expense of Italy. Altogether the problem
was a very complicated one. The conflicting currents so nearly
balanced each other, that the question as to which way the ship
would drift might be decided by a little squall of popular senti-
ment. A very big squall was brewing.
During the congress of Berlin the French government was
very indignant when it discovered that Lord Beaconsfield had
recently made a secret convention with the sultan for
the British occupation of Cyprus, and in order to calm
its resentment Lord Salisbury gave M. Waddington
to understand that, so far as England was concerned, France
would be allowed a free hand in the Regency of Tunis, which she
had long coveted. Though the conversations on the subject and
a subsequent exchange of notes were kept strictly secret, the
Italian government soon got wind of the affair, and it was at first
much alarmed. It considered, in common with Italians gener-
ally, that Tunis, on the ground of historic right and of national
interests, should be reserved for Italy, and that an extension of
French territory in that direction would destroy, to the detriment
of Italy, the balance of power in the Mediterranean. These
apprehensions were calmed for a time by assurances given to the
Italian ambassador in Paris. M. Gambetta assured General
Cialdini that he had no intention of making Italy an irreconcilable
enemy of France, and M. Waddington declared, on his word of
honour, that so long as he remained minister of foreign affairs
nothing of the sort would be done by France without a previous
understanding with the cabinet of Rome. M. Waddington
honourably kept his word, but his successor did not consider
himself bound by the assurance; and when it was found that
the Italians were trying systematically to establish their influence
in the Regency at the expense of France, the French authorities,
on the ground that a Tunisian tribe called the Kroumirs had
committed depredations in Algeria, sent an armed force into
the Regency, and imposed on the bey the Bardo treaty, which
transformed Tunis into a French protectorate.
The establishment of a French protectorate over a country
am
HISTORY]
EUROPE
947
which the Italians had marked out for themselves as necessary
for the defence and colonial expansion of the kingdom had the
effect which Gambetta had foreseen it made Italy, for a time
at least, the irreconcilable enemy of France. Whilst the French
were giving free expression to their patriotic exultation, and even
Gambetta himself, in defiance of what he had said to Cialdini,
was congratulating Jules Ferry on having restored France to
her place among the nations, the Italians were trying to smother
their indignation and to discover some means of retrieving what
they had lost. The only remedy seemed to be to secure foreign
alliances, and there was now no hesitation as to where they
should be sought. Simple people in Italy imagined that if an
alliance had been concluded sooner with Germany and Austria,
these powers would have prevented France from trampling on
the sacred interests of Italy. This idea was entirely erroneous,
because Austria had little or no interest in the Tunisian Question,
and Bismarck was not at all sorry to see France embark on an
enterprise which distracted her attention from Alsace-Lorraine
and removed all danger of a Franco-Italian alliance. The illusion,
however, had a powerful influence on Italian public opinion.
The government was now urged to conclude without further delay
an alliance with the central powers, and the recommendation
was not unwelcome to the king, because most of the Italian
Gallophils had anti-dynastic and republican tendencies, and he
was naturally disposed to draw nearer to governments which
proclaimed themselves the defenders of monarchical institutions
and the opponents of revolutionary agitation. After protracted
negotiations, in which Italy tried in vain to secure protection
for her own separate interests in the Mediterranean, defensive
treaties of alliance were concluded with the cabinets of Vienna
and Berlin in May 1882. Though the Italian statesmen
did not secure by these treaties all they wanted, they
felt that the kingdom was protected against any
aggressive designs which might be entertained by
France or the Vatican, and when the treaties were renewed in
1887 they succeeded in getting somewhat more favourable
conditions.
By the creation of this Triple Alliance, which still subsists, the
diplomatic position of Germany was greatly strengthened, but
Bismarck was still haunted by the apprehension of a Franco-
Russian alliance, and he made repeated attempts to renew the
old cordial relations with the court of St Petersburg. He was
bold enough to hope that, notwithstanding the Austro-German
treaty of October 1879, avowedly directed against Russia, and
th new Triple Alliance, by which the Austro-German Alliance
was strengthened, he might resuscitate the Three Emperors'
League in such a form as to ensure, even more effectually than
he had done on the former occasion, the preponderance of
Germany in the arrangement. With this object he threw out a
hint to the Russian ambassador, M. Sabourof, in the summer of
1883, that the evil results of the congress of Berlin might be
counteracted by a formal agreement between the three emperors.
The suggestion was transmitted privately by M. Sabourof to the
tsar, and was favourably received. Alexander III. was disquieted
by the continuance of the Nihilist agitation, and was not averse
from drawing closer to the conservative powers; and as he desired
tranquillity for some time in the Balkan Peninsula, he was glad
to have security that his rival would do nothing in that part
of the world without a previous understanding. M. de Giers,
who bad now succeeded Prince Gorchakov in the direction of
foreign affairs, was accordingly despatched to Friedrichsruh to
discuss the subject with Bismarck. The practical result of the
meeting was that negotiations between the two governments
were begun, and on the list of March 1884 a formal document
was signed in Berlin. About six months later, in the month of
September, the three emperors met at Skiernevicc and ratified
the agreement. Thus, without any modification of the
i Triple Alliance, which was directed against Russia, the
old Three Emperors' League, which included Russia,
was revived. Germany and Austria, being members
of both, were doubly protected, for in the event of being
attacked they could count on at least the benevolent neutrality
/**.
of both Russia and Italy. France was thereby completely
isolated.
In drawing up the secret treaty of Skiernevicc, which may be
regarded as the ckef-d'etuvre of Bismarckian diplomacy, the
German chancellor's chief aims evidently were to paralyse
Russia by yoking her to Germany and Austria, to isolate France,
and to realize his old scheme of holding the balance between
Russia and Austria in the Balkan Peninsula. With a view to
attaining the first two objects it was stipulated that if any one
of the three powers were forced to make war on a fourth power,
the two other contracting parties should observe a benevolent
neutrality towards their ally. If we may believe a well-informed
Russian authority, Bismarck wished it to be understood that in
the event of two of the powers being at war with a fourth, the
stipulation about benevolent neutrality should still hold good,
but Alexander III. objected, on the ground that he could not
remain a passive spectator of a duel in which France would be
confronted by two antagonists. In his third object Bismarck
was successful, for it was expressly laid down that in all cases
of a disagreement between two of the parties in the affairs of the
Balkan Peninsula, the third power should decide between them.
This meant, of course, that in all discussions between Russia and
Austria, the two great rivals in the Eastern Question, Bismarck
should always have a casting vote. In return for all this, Russia
obtained two small concessions: firstly, that Germany and
Austria should seek to restrain the sultan from permitting the
passage of the Dardanelles to an English fleet, as he had done in
1878, when the Russian army was before Constantinople; and,
secondly, that they should not oppose the union of Bulgaria
and Eastern Rumelia, if it was accomplished by the force of
things and within the limits traced by the congress of Berlin.
This new form of the Three Emperors' League had all the
organic defects of its predecessor, and was destined to be still
more shortlived. The claims of Russia and Austria might be
reconcilable in theory, but in practice they were sure to conflict;
and however much Bismarck might try to play the part of an
honest broker, he was certain to be suspected of opposing
Russia and favouring Austria. It was therefore only during
a period of political stagnation in south-eastern Europe that the
arrangement could work smoothly. The political stagnation
did not last long. Prince Alexander of Bulgaria had for some
time been fretting under the high-handed interference of the
Russian agents in the principality, and had begun to oppose
systematically what the Russians considered their legitimate
influence. Relations between Sofia and St Petersburg had
consequently become strained, when a crisis was
suddenly brought about by the revolution of Philip-
popolis in September 1885. The conspirators arrested
and expelled the governor-general, who had been appointed
by the sultan with the assent of the powers, and at the same time
proclaimed the union of the autonomous province of Eastern
Rumelia with the principality of Bulgaria, in defiance of the
stipulations of the treaty of Berlin. The revolution had been
effected with the connivance and approval of the regularly
accredited Russian agents in Philippopolis, but it had not
received the sanction of the Russian government, and was
resented as a new act of insubordination on the part of Prince
Alexander. When he arrived in Philippopolis and accepted the
declaration of union, the cabinet of St Petersburg protested
against any such infraction of the Berlin treaty, and the Porte
prepared to send an army into the province. It was restrained
from taking this step by the ambassadors in Constantinople,
so that an .armed conflict between Turks and Bulgarians was
prevented; but no sooner had the Bulgarians been relieved
from this danger on their eastern frontier, than they were
attacked from the west by the Servians, who were determined
to get ample compensation for any advantage which the Bul-
garians might obtain. The Bulgarian army defeated the Servians
at Slivnitza (November 10-20, 1885), and was marching on
Belgrade when its advance was stopped and an armistice arranged
by the energetic intervention of the Austrian government.
Following the example of the Servians, the Greeks were preparing
948
EUROPE
[HISTORY
to exact territorial compensation likewise ; but as their mobiliza-
tion was a slow process, the powers had time to restrain them
from entering on active hostilities, first by an ultimatum (April
26, 1 886), and afterwards by a blockade of their ports (May 1886).
By that time, thanks to the intervention of the powers, a peace
between Bulgaria and Servia had been signed at Bucharest
(March 3); and with regard to Eastern Rumelia a compromise
had been effected by which the formal union with the principality
was rejected, and the prince was appointed governor-general of
the province for a term of five years. This was in reality union
in disguise.
The diplomatic solution of the problem averted the danger
of a European war, but it left a great deal of dissatisfaction,
which soon produced new troubles. Not only had Prince
Alexander escaped punishment for his insubordination to
Russia, but he and the anti-Russian party among the Bulgarians
had obtained a decided success. This could not well be tolerated.
Before six months had passed (August 21, 1886) Prince Alexander
was kidnapped by conspirators in his palace at Sofia and con-
veyed secretly to Russian Bessarabia. As soon as the incident
was reported to the tsar, the prince was released, and he at once
returned to Sofia, where a counter-revolution had been effected
in his favour; but he considered his position untenable, and
formally abdicated. A fortnight after his departure General
Kaulbars arrived from St Petersburg with instructions from the
tsar to restore order in accordance with Russian interests. In
St Petersburg it was supposed that the Bulgarian people were
still devoted to Russia, and that they were ready to rise against
and expel the politicians of the Nationalist party led by Stam-
bolof . General Kaulbars accordingly made a tour in the country
and delivered speeches to the assembled multitudes, but Stam-
bolof's political organization counteracted all his efforts, and on
the 2oth of November he left Bulgaria and took the Russian
consuls with him. Stambolof maintained his position, suppressed
energetically several insurrectionary movements, and succeeded
in getting Prince Ferdinand of Coburg elected prince (July 7,
1887), in spite of the opposition of Russia, who put forward as
candidate a Russian subject, Prince Nicholas of Mingrelia.
Prince Ferdinand was not officially recognized by the sultan and
the powers, but he continued to reign under the direction of
Stambolof, and the Russian government, passively accepting
the accomplished facts, awaited patiently a more convenient
moment for action.
These events in the Balkan Peninsula necessarily affected the
mutual relations of the powers composing the Three Emperors'
League. Austria could not remain a passive and disinterested
spectator of the action of Russia in Bulgaria. Her agents had
given a certain amount of support to Prince Alexander in his
efforts to emancipate himself from Russian domination; and
when the prince was kidnapped and induced to abdicate, Count
Kalnoky had not concealed his intention of opposing further
aggression. Bismarck resisted the pressure brought to bear on
him from several quarters in favour of the anti-Russian party
in Bulgaria, but he was suspected by the Russians of siding with
Austria and secretly encouraging the opposition to
% uss !* a Russian influence. This revived the hatred against
Germany. hi m which had been created by his pro-Austrian
leanings after the Russo-Turkish War. The feeling
was assiduously fomented by the Russian press, especially by
M. Katkoff, the editor of the Moscow Gazette, who exercised
great influence on public opinion and had personal relations with
Alexander III. On the 3ist of July 1886, three weeks before the
kidnapping of Prince Alexander, he had begun a regular journal-
istic campaign against Germany, and advocated strongly a new
orientation of Russian policy. M. de Giers, minister of foreign
affairs, was openly attacked as a partisan of the German alliance,
and his " pilgrimages to Friedrichsruh and Berlin " were com-
pared to the humiliating journeys of the old Russian grand-
princes to the Golden Horde in the time of the Tatar domination.
The moment had come, it was said, for Russia to emancipate
herself from German diplomatic thraldom, and for this purpose a
rapprochement with France was suggested. The idea was well
received by the public, and it seemed to be not unpalatable to
the tsar, for the Moscow Gazette was allowed to continue its
attacks on M. de Giers's policy of maintaining the German
alliance. In Berlin such significant facts could not fail to
produce uneasiness, because one of the chief aims of Bismarck's
policy had always been to prevent a Russo-French entente
cordiale. The German press were instructed to refute the
arguments of their Russian colleagues, and to prove that if
Russia had really lost her influence in the Balkan Peninsula, the
fact was due to the blunders of her own diplomacy. The con-
troversy did not produce at once a serious estrangement between
the two cabinets, but it marked the beginning of a period of vacil-
lation on the part of Alexander III. When the treaty of Skierne-
vice was about to expire in 1887, he positively refused to renew the
Three Emperors' League, but he consented to make, without the
cognizance of Austria, a secret treaty of alliance with Germany
for three years. Not satisfied with this guarantee against the
danger of a Franco-Russian alliance, Bismarck caused attacks
to be made in the press on Russian credit, which was rapidly
gaining a footing on the Paris bourse, and he imprudently showed
his hand by prohibiting the Reichsbank from accepting Russian
securities as guarantees. From that moment the tsar's attitude
changed. All his dormant suspicions of German policy revived.
When he passed through Berlin in November 1887, Bismarck
had a long audience, in which he defended himself with his
customary ability, but Alexander remained unmoved in his con-
viction that the German government had systematically opposed
Russian interests, and had paralysed Russian action in the
Balkan Peninsula for the benefit of Austria; and he failed to
understand the ingenious theory put forward by the German
chancellor, that two powers might have a severe economic
struggle without affecting their political relations. Bismarck had
to recognize that, for the moment at least, the Three Emperors'
League, which had served his purposes so well, could not be re-
suscitated, but he had still a certain security against the hostility
of Russia in the secret treaty. Soon, however, this link was also
to be broken. When the treaty expired in 1890 it was not
renewed. By that time Bismarck had been dismissed, and he
subsequently reproached his successor, Count Caprivi, with not
having renewed it, but in reality Count Caprivi was not to blame.
Alexander III. was determined not to renew the alliance, and
was already gravitating slowly towards an understanding with
France.
No treaty or formal defensive engagement of any kind existed
between Russia and France, but it was already tolerably certain
that in the event of a great war the two nations would
be found fighting on the same side, and the military Frat
authorities in both countries felt that if no arrange- entente.
ments were made beforehand for concerted action,
such arrangements having been long ago completed by the powers
composing the Triple Alliance, they would begin the campaign
at a great disadvantage. This was perfectly understood by
both governments; and after some hesitation on both sides,
Generals Vannovski and Obruchev, on the one side, and Generals
Saussier, Miribel and Boisdeffre on the other, were permitted
to discuss plans of co-operation. At the same time a large
quantity of Lebel rifles were manufactured in France for the
Russian army, and the secret of making smokeless powder
was communicated to the Russian military authorities. The
' French government wished to go further and conclude a defensive
alliance, but the tsar was reluctant to bind himself with a
government which had so little stability, and which might be
induced to provoke a war with Germany by the prospect of
Russian support. Even the military convention was not formally
ratified until 1894. The enthusiastic partisans of the alliance
flattered themselves that the tsar's reluctance had been overcome,
when he received very graciously Admiral Gervais and his officers
during the visit of the French fleet to Cronstadt in the summer of
1891, but their joy was premature. The formal rapprochement
between the two governments was much slower than the unofficial
rapprochement between the two nations. More than two years
passed before the Cronstadt visit was returned by the Russian
HISTORY]
EUROPE
949
fleet, under Admiral Avelan. The enthusiastic ovations which
the admiral and his subordinates received in Toulon and Paris
(October 189 j) showed how eager and anxious the French people
were for an alliance with Russia, but the Russian government was
in no hurry to gratify their wishes. Of the official action all we
know with certainty is, that immediately after the Cronstadt
visit in 1891 a diplomatic protocol about a defensive alliance
was signed; that during the special mission of General Boisdeffre
to St Petersburg in 1897 negotiations took place about a military
convention; that in 1804 the military convention was ratified;
that in the summer of 1895 M. Ribot, when prime minister, first
spoke publicly of an alliance; and that during the visit of the
president of the French Republic to St Petersburg, in August
1897, France and Russia were referred to as allies in the compli-
mentary speeches of the tsar and of M. Fftix Faure. Though we
are still in the dark as to the precise terms of the arrangement,
there is no doubt that dose friendly relations were established
between the two powers, and that in all important international
affairs they sought to act in accord with each other. It is equally
certain that for some years Russia was the predominant partner,
and that, in accordance with the pacific tendencies of the tsar,
she systematically exercised a restraining influence on France.
The great expectations excited among the French people by
the entente cordiale were consequently not realized, and there
appeared gradually premonitory symptoms of a re-
action in public opinion, but the alliance between the
two governments was maintained, and though the
Triple Alliance was weakened by the internal troubles
of Austria-Hungary and by a tendency on the part
of Italy to gravitate towards France, the grouping of the great
powers was not radically changed till the Russo-Japanese War
of 1904-5. By that war the balance of power in Europe was
seriously disturbed. Russia inadvertently provoked a struggle
with Japan which made such a drain on her energies and material
resources that her political influence in Europe necessarily
suffered a partial eclipse. Thus the Triple Alliance outweighed
its rival, and there was a danger of the German emperor's taking
advantage of the situation to secure for himself a diplomatic
predominance in Europe. France at once perceived that there
was a grave danger for herself, and naturally looked about for
some diplomatic support to replace that of Russia, which had
lost much of its value. From her uncomfortable isolation there
were only two possible exits a rapprochement with Germany or a
rapprochement with England. Both of these demanded sacrifices.
The former required a formal abandonment of all ideas of re-
covering Alsace and Lorraine; the latter a formal recognition
of British predominance in Egypt. Under the influence of
M. Delcasse the French government chose what seemed the lesser
of two evils, and concluded with the English foreign office in
April 1904 a general agreement, of which the most important
stipulation was that France should leave England a free hand in
Egypt, and that England in return should allow France, within
certain limits, a free band in Morocco. On that basis was effected
* rapprochement between the two governments which soon
developed into an entente cordiale between the two nations.
The efforts of the German emperor to undermine the entente
by insisting on the convocation of a conference to consider the
Morocco question caused M. Delcasse to resign, and produced
considerable anxiety throughout Europe, but the desired result
was not attained. On the contrary, the conference in question,
which met at Algecira* in January 1906, ended in strengthening
the entente and in accentuating the partial isolation of Germany.
The grouping of the great continental states into two opposite
but not necessarily hostile camps helped to preserve the balance
of power and the peace of Europe. The result was that the causes
of conflict which arose from time to time up to the end of the
iQth century were localized. Some of the principal questions
involved may be more particularly mentioned.
The Armenian Question was brought prominently before
Europe by the Rusao-Turkish War of 1877-78. In the treaties
of San Stefano and Berlin the Sublime Porte undertook " to carry
out without delay the ameliorations and reforms required by local
needs in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to
guarantee their security against the Circassians and the Kurds."
This stipulation remained a dead letter, and the . .
relations between the Armenians and the Mussulmans
became worse than before, because the protection of the powers
encouraged in the oppressed nationality far-reaching political
aspirations, and the sultan regarded the political aspirations and
the intervention of the powers as dangerous for the integrity
and independence of his empire. For some fifteen years the
Armenians continued to hope for the efficacious intervention of
their protectors, but when their patience became exhausted and
the question seemed in 'danger of being forgotten, they deter-
mined to bring it again to the front. Some of them confined
themselves to agitating abroad, especially in England, in favour
of the cause, whilst others made preparations for exciting an
insurrectionary movement in Constantinople and Asia Minor.
These latter knew very well thai an insurrection could be sup-
pressed by the Turkish government without much difficulty,
but they hoped that the savage measures of repression which
the Turks were sure to employ might lead to the active inter-
vention of Europe and ensure their liberation from Turkish rule,
as the famous " atrocities " of 1876 had led to the political
emancipation of Bulgaria. In due course 1895-1896 the ex-
pected atrocities took place, in the form of wholesale massacres
in Constantinople and various towns of Asia Minor. The sultan
was subjected to diplomatic pressure and threatened with more
efficient means of coercion. In the diplomatic campaign England
took the lead, and was warmly supported by Italy, but Germany,
Austria and France showed themselves lukewarm, not to say
indifferent, and Russia, departing from her traditional policy
of protecting the Christians of Turkey, vetoed the employment
of force for extracting concessions from the sultan. In these
circumstances the Porte naturally confined itself to making a
few reforms on paper, which were never carried out. Thus the
last state of the Armenians was worse than the first, but the
so-called European concert was maintained, and the danger of a
great European war was averted.
The next attempt to raise the Eastern Question was made by
the Greeks. In 1896 a semi-secret society called the Kthnikc
Hetairia began a Panhellenic agitation, and took cnt.
advantage of one of the periodical insurrections in
Crete to further its projects. In February 1897 the Cretan
revolutionary committee proclaimed the annexation of the island
to the Hellenic kingdom, and a contingent of Greek regular
troops landed near Canea under the command of Colonel Vassos
to take possession of the island in the name of King George.
The powers, objecting to this arbitrary proceeding, immediately
occupied Canea with a mixed force from the ships of war which
were there at the time, and summoned the Greek government
to withdraw its troops. The summons was disregarded, and the
whole of the Greek army was mobilized on the frontier of Thessaly
and Epirus. In consequence of a raid into Turkish territory
the Porte declared war on the I7th of April, and the short cam-
paign ended in the defeat of the Greeks. The powers intervened
to put an end to the hostilities, and after prolonged negotiations
a peace was concluded by which Greece had to consent to a
strategical rectification of frontier and to pay a war indemnity
of 4,000,000. Thus a second time the European concert acted
effectually in the interests of peace, but it did not stand the
strain of the subsequent efforts to solve the Cretan Question.
Finding the Turks less conciliatory after their military success,
and being anxious to remain in cordial relations with the Porte,
Germany withdrew from further co-operation with the powers,
and Austria followed her example. They did not, however,
offer anyactive opposition, and the question received a temporary
solution by the appointment of Prince George, second son of the
king of Greece, as high commissioner and governor-general of the
island. (See CRETE.)
The conflicting desires of several of the powers to obtain
colonial possessions in various parts of the world, and to forestall
their competitors in the act of taking possession, were bound
to introduce complications in which England, as the greatest
950
EUROPE
[HISTORY
of colonial powers, would generally be involved; and as the
unappropriated portions of the earth's surface at the beginning
of the period under discussion were to be found chiefly
in Africa, it was in the Dark Continent that the
conflicts of interests mostly took place. England's chief com-
petitors were France and Germany. Her traditional policy,
except in the south of the continent, where the conditions of
soil and climate were favourable to European colonists, had
been purely commercial. She had refrained from annexation of
territory, as involving too much expenditure and responsibility,
and confined her protection to the trading stations on the coast.
When France came into the field this policy had to be abandoned.
The policy of France was also commercial in a certain sense,
but the methods she adopted were very different. She en-
deavoured to bring under her authority, by annexation or the
establishment of protectorates, the largest possible extent of
territory, in order to increase her trade by a system of differential
tariffs; she encroached on the hinterland of British settle-
ments, and endeavoured to direct artificially the native inland
trade towards her own ports. A glance at the map of the African
West Coast will suffice to show the success with which this
policy was carried out. When the British government awoke to
the danger, all that could be done was to prevent further en-
croachments by likewise annexing territory. The result is shown
in the article AFRICA: 5. In her dealings with France about
the partition of Africa, England was generally conciliatory, but
she was always inflexible in guarding carefully the two entrances
to the Mediterranean. There was, therefore, a permanent danger
of conflict in Egypt and Morocco. When England in 1882 con-
sidered it necessary to suppress the Arabi insurrection, she in-
vited France to co-operate, but the French government declined,
and left the work to be done by England alone. England had no
intention of occupying the country permanently, but she had to
take precautions against the danger of French occupation after
her withdrawal, and these precautions were embodied in an
Anglo-Turkish convention signed at Constantinople in May 1887.
France prevented the ratification of the convention by the sultan,
with the result that the British occupation has been indefinitely
prolonged. She still clung persistently, however, to the hope of
obtaining a predominant position in the valley of the Nile, and
she tried to effect her purpose by gaining a firm foothold on
the upper course of the river. The effort which she made in
1898 to attain this end, by simultaneously despatching the,
Marchand mission from her Congo possessions and inciting the
emperor Menelek of Abyssinia to send a force from the east to
join hands with Major Marchand at Fashoda, was defeated by the
overthrow of the Khalifa and the British occupation of Khartum.
For a few days the two nations seemed on the brink of war, but
the French government, receiving no encouragement from St
Petersburg, consented to withdraw the Marchand mission, and
a convention was signed defining the respective spheres of
influence of the two countries.
In Morocco the rivalry between the two powers was less acute
but not less persistent and troublesome. France aspired to
incorporate the sultanate with her north African possessions,
whilst England had commercial interests to defend and was
firmly resolved to prevent France from getting unfettered
possession of the southern coast of the Straits of Gibraltar.
As in Egypt, so in Morocco the dangers of conflict were averted,
in 1904, by a general agreement, which enabled France to carry
out in Morocco, as far as England was concerned, her policy of
pacific penetration, but debarred her from erecting fortifications
in the vicinity of the straits. Germany thereafter strongly
opposed French claims in Morocco, but after a period of great
tension, and the holding of an ineffectual conference at Algeciras
in 1906, an understanding was come to in 1909 (see MOROCCO:
History).
With Germany likewise, from 1880 onwards, England had some
diplomatic difficulties regarding the partition of Africa, but they
never reached a very acute phase, and were ultimately settled
by mutual concessions. By the arrangement of 1890, in which
several of the outstanding questions were solved, Heligoland
Asia.
was ceded to Germany in return for concessions in East Africa.
A conflict of interests in the southern Pacific was amicably
arranged by the Anglo-German convention of April 1886, in
which a line of demarcation was drawn between the respective
spheres of influence in the islands to the north and east of the
Australian continent, and by the convention of 1899, in virtue
of which Germany gained possession of Samoa and renounced in
favour of England all pretensions to the Tonga Archipelago.
In Asia the tendencies of the European powers to territorial
expansion, and their desire to secure new markets for their trade
and industry, have affected from time to time their
mutual relations. More than once England and Russia
have had disputes about the limits of their respective spheres of
influence in central Asia, but the causes of friction have steadily
diminished as the work of frontier delimitation has advanced.
The important agreement of 1872-1873 was supplemented by
the protocol of the 22nd of July 1887 and the Pamir delimitation
of 1895, so that the Russo- Afghan frontier, which is the dividing
line between the Russian and British spheres of influence, has
now been carried right up to the frontier of the Chinese empire.
The delimitation of the English and French spheres of influence
in Asia has also progressed. In 1885 France endeavoured to get
a footing on the Upper Irrawaddy, the hinterland of British
Burma, and England replied in the following year by annexing
the dominions of King Thebaw, including the Shan States
as far east as the Mekong. Thereupon France pushed her Indo-
Chinese frontier westwards, and in 1893 made an attack on the
kingdom of Siam, which very nearly brought about a conflict
with England. After prolonged negotiations an arrangement
was reached and embodied in a formal treaty (January 1896),
which clearly foreshadows a future partition between the two
powers, but guarantees the independence of the central portion
of the kingdom, the Valley of the Menam, as a buffer-state.
Farther north, in eastern China, the aggressive tendencies and
mutual rivalries of the European powers have produced a problem
of a much more complicated kind. Firstly Germany, then Russia,
next England, and finally France took portions of Chinese terri-
tory, under the thin disguise of long leases. They thereby
excited in the Chinese population and government an intense
anti-foreign feeling, which produced the Boxer movement and
culminated in the attack on the foreign legations at Pekin in
the summer of 1900. . (See CHINA: History.)
In 1899-1901 the relations of the European powers were
disturbed by the Boer War in South Africa. In nearly every
country of Europe popular feeling was much excited against
England, and in certain influential quarters the idea was enter-
tained of utilizing this feeling for the formation of a coalition
against the British empire; but in view of the decided attitude
assumed by the British government, and the loyal enthusiasm
displayed by the colonies, no foreign government ventured to
take the initiative of intervention, and it came gradually to be
recognized that no European state had any tangible interest in
prolonging the independence and maladministration of the Boer
republics.
One permanent factor in the history of Europe after the war
of 1870-71 was the constant increase of armaments by all the
great powers, and the proportionate increase of taxation. The
fact made such an impression on the young emperor of Russia,
Nicholas II., that he invited the powers to consider whether
the further increase of the burdens thereby imposed on the
nations might not be arrested by mutual Agreement; and a con-
ference for this purpose as convened at the Hague (May 18-
July 29, 1899), but the desirable object in view was not attained.
(See ARBITRATION, INTERNATIONAL.) (D. M. W.)
Though neither the first Hague Conference nor the second,
which met in 1907, did much to fulfil the expectations of those
who hoped for the establishment of a system which jvo^ress oi
should guarantee the world against the disasters of the Peace
war, they undoubtedly tended to create a strong public move-
opinion in favour of peaceful methods in the solution of *"
international problems which has not been without its effect.
Any attempt to organize the concert of the powers must always
HISTORY]
EUROPE
fail, as it failed in the early part of the igth century, so long as the
spirit of national and racial rivalry is stronger than the conscious-
ness of common interests; and the early years of the 2oth century
showed no diminution, but rather an accentuation of this rivalry.
The court of arbitration established at the Hague early in IQOI
may deal effectively with questions as to which both parties desire
modus vivcndi, and the pacific efforts of King Edward VII.,
which did so much to prevent misunderstandings likely to lead to
war, resulted from 1903 onwards in a scries of arbitration treaties
between Great Britain and other powers which guaranteed the
Hague court an effective activity in such matters. But more
perilous issues, involving deep-seated antagonisms, have con-
tinued to be dealt with by the methods of the old diplomacy
backed by the armed force of the powers. How far the final
solution of such problems has been helped or hindered by the
general reluctance to draw the sword must for some time to come
remain an open question. Certainly, during the early years of
the 2oth century, many causes of difference which a hundred
years earlier would assuredly have led to war, were settled, or at
least shelved, by diplomacy. Of these the questions of Crete,
of Armenia, and of contested claims in Africa have already been
mentioned. Other questions of general interest which might have
led to war, but which found a peaceful solution, were those of the
separation of Norway and Sweden, and the rivalry of the powers
in the northern seas. In October 1005 Sweden formally recog-
nized the separate existence of Norway (see NORWAY: History
and SWEDEN: History). On the J3rd of April 1908 were signed
the " Declarations "; the one, signed by the four Baltic littoral
powers, recognized " in principle" the maintenance of the terri-
torial status quo in that sea; the other to which Great Britain,
France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Holland were the
parties sanctioned a similar principle in regard to the North
Sea. These were followed, in June of the same year, by two
agreements intended to apply the same principles to the southern
European waters, signed by France and Spain and Great Britain
and Spain respectively. Another agreement , tha t signed between
Russia and Great Britain in 1907 for the delimitation of their
spheres of influence in Persia and the northern borders of the
Indian empire, though having no direct relation to European
affairs, exercised considerable influence upon them by helping
to restore the international prestige of Russia, damaged by the
disasters of the war with Japan and the internal disturbances that
followed. The new cordial understanding between the British
and Russian governments was cemented by the meeting of King
Edward VII. and the emperor Nicholas II. at Reval in June 1908.
More perilous to European peace, however, than any of these
issues was the perennial unrest in Macedonia, which threatened
sooner or kter to open up the whole Eastern Question
once more in its acutest form. The situation was due
to the internecine struggle of the rival Balkan races
G ree fc Bulgarian, Servian to secure the right to the
reversion of territories not yet derelict. But behind these lesser
issues loomed the great secular rivalries of the powers, and beyond
these again the vast unknown forces of the Mahommedan world,
ominously stirring. The very vastness of the perils involved in
any attempt at a definitive settlement compelled the powers
to accept a compromise which, it was hoped, would restore toler-
able conditions in the wretched country. But the " Milrzsteg
programme," concerted between the Austrian and Russian em-
perors in 1003, and imposed upon the Porte by the diplomatic
pressure of the great powers, did not produce the effects hoped
for. The hideous tale of massacres of helpless villagers by
organized Greek bands, and of equally hideous, if less wholesale,
reprisals by Bulgarian bands, grew rather than diminished,
and reached its climax in the early months of 1908. The
usefulness of the new gendarmerie, under European officers,
which was to have co-operated with the Ottoman authorities
in the restoration of order, was from the outset crippled by the
passive obstruction of the Turkish government. The sultan,
indeed, could hardly be blamed for watching with a certain
cynical indifference the mutual slaughter of those " Christians "
whose avowed ideal was the overthrow of Mahommedan rule,
nor could he be expected to desire the smooth working of a system
against which he had protested as a violation of his sovereign
rights. In 1008 the powers were still united in bringing pressure
to bear on the Porte to make the reforms effective; but tin-
proposal of Great Britain to follow the precedent of the Lebanon
and commit the administration of Macedonia to a Mussulman
governor appointed by the sultan, but removable only by consent
of the powers, met with little favour cither at Constantinople
or among the powers whose ulterior aims might have been
hampered by such an arrangement.
Such was the condition of affairs when in October 1908 the
revolution in Turkey altered the whole situation. The easy and
apparently complete victory of the Young Turks, and young
the rc-establishmcnt without a struggle of the constitu- Turkish
lion which had been in abeyance since 1876, took the revolution,
whole world by surprise, and not least those who ' '
believed themselves to be most intimately acquainted with the
conditions prevailing in the Ottoman empire. The question of
the Near East seemed in fair -way of settlement by the action
of conflicting races themselves, who in the enthusiasm of new-
found freedom appeared ready to forget their ancient internecine
feuds and to fraternize on the common ground of constitutional
liberty (see TURKEY: History). By the European powers the
proclamation of the constitution was received, at least out-
wardly, with unanimous approval, general admiration being
expressed for the singular moderation and self-restraint shown
by the Turkish leaders and people. Whatever views, however,
may have been openly expressed, or secretly held, as to the
revolution so far as it affected the Ottoman empire itself, there
could be no doubt that its effects on the general situation in
Europe would be profound. These effects were not
slow in rgvealing themselves. On the $th of October
Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria proclaimed himself king
(tsar) of the Bulgarians; and two days later the emperor Francis
Joseph issued a rescript announcing the annexation of Bosnia
and Herzegovina to the Habsburg monarchy (see BULGARIA:
History and BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: History). Whatever
cogent reasons there may have been for altering the status of
these countries in view of the changed conditions in Turkey,
there could be no doubt that the method employed was a violation
of the public law of Europe. By the declaration of London of
1871, to which Austria-Hungary herself had been a principal
party, it had been laid down that " contracting powers could
only rid themselves of their treaty engagements by an under-
standing with their co-signatories." This solemn reaffirmation
of a principle on which the whole imposing structure of inter-
national law had, during the I'jth century, been laboriously
built up was now cynically violated. The other powers, con-
fronted with the/a/ accompli, protested; but the astute states-
man who had staked his reputation as foreign minister of the
Dual Monarchy on the success of this coup had well gauged the
character and force of the opposition he would have to meet.
Baronvon Aehrenthal,himself more Slavthan German, European
in spite of his name, had served a long apprenticeship criti*
in diplomacy at Belgrade and St Petersburg; he knew provoked
how fully he could rely upon the weakness of Russia, bi> ' AuttTia -
and that if Russian Pan-Slav sentiment could be cowed, he need
fear nothing from the resentment of the Servians. He was strong,
too, in the moral and in case of need the material support
of Germany. With Germany behind her, Austria-Hungary had
little to fear from the opposition of the powers of the triple
entente, Great Britain, France and Russia. This diagnosis of the
situation was justified by the event. For months, indeed, Europe
seemed on the verge of a general war. During the autumn the
nationalist excitement in Servia and Montenegro rose to fever-
heat, and Austria responded by mobilizing her forces on the
frontiers and arming the Catholic Bosnians as a precaution against
a rising of their Orthodox countrymen. Only the winter seemed
to stand between Europe and a war bound to become general,
and men looked forward with apprehension to the melting of the
snows. It is too early as yet to write the history of the diplomatic
activities by which this disaster was avoided. Their general
952
EUROPE
[HISTORY
outline, however, is clear enough. The protests of Turkey at a
violation of treaty rights, doubly resented as likely to damage the
prestige of the new constitutional regime, were sympathetically
received by the powers of the triple entente. An international
conference was at once suggested as the only proper authority
for carrying out any modifications of the treaty of Berlin necessi-
tated by the new conditions in Turkey; the right of Austria-
Hungary to act on her own initiative was strenuously denied;
Bulgarian independence and Prince Ferdinand's title of king were
meantime refused recognition. In the assertion of these principles
Great Britain, Russia and France were united. Germany, on the
other hand, maintained an attitude of reserve, though diplomatic-
ally "correct"; she accepted the principle of a conference,
but made her consent to its convocation conditional on that
of her ally Austria-Hungary. But the latter refused to agree to
any conference in which the questions at issue should be re-
opened; the most that she would accept was a conference
summoned merely to register the fait accompli and to arrange
" compensations " not territorial but financial.
For a while it seemed as though Baron Aehrenthal's ambition
had o'erleaped itself. The reluctance of the Russian government,
The conscious of its military and political weakness, to
German- take extreme measures seemed likely to be overborne
Austrian by the Pan-Slav enthusiasm of the Russian people,
victory. an( j tne Austrian statesman's policy to have placed
him in an impasse from which it would be difficult to extricate
himself, save at an expense greater than that on which he had
calculated. At this point Germany, conscious throughout of
holding the key to the situation, intervened with effect. Towards
the end of March 1909 the German ambassador at St Petersburg,
armed with an autograph letter from the emperor William II.,
had an interview with the tsar. What were the arguments he
used is not known ; but the most powerful are supposed to have
been the German forces which had been mobilized on the Polish
frontier. In any case, the result was immediate and startling.
Russia, without previous discussion with her allies, dissociated
herself from the views she had hitherto held in common with
them, and accepted the German-Austrian standpoint. All
question of a conference was now at an end; and all that the
powers most friendly to Turkey could do was to persuade her to
make the best of a bad bargain. The Ottoman government,
preoccupied with the internal questions which were to issue in
the abortive attempt at counter-revolution in April, was in no
condition to resist friendly or unfriendly pressure. The principle
of a money payment in compensation for the shadowy rights of
the sultan over the lost provinces was accepted, 1 and Bulgarian
independence under King Ferdinand was recognized on the very
eve of the new victory of the Young Turks which led to the
deposition of Abd-ul-Hamid II. and the proclamation of Sultan
Mahommed V. (see TURKEY: History).
The change made by these events in the territorial system of
Europe was of little moment. A subject principality, long
Its moral P ract i ca Uy independent, became a sovereign state;
the Almanack de Gotha was enriched with a new royal
title; the sentiment of the Bulgarian people was gratified by the
restoration of their historic tsardom. Two provinces long
annexed to the Habsburg monarchy de facto became so de jure,
and the vision of a Serb empire with a free outlet to the sea,
never very practicable, was finally dissolved. Of vastly greater
importance were the moral and international issues involved.
The whole conception of an effective concert of Europe, or of the
World, based on the supposed sacred obligation of treaties and
the validity of international law, was revealed, suddenly and
brutally, as the baseless fabric of a dream. The most momentous
outcome of the international debates caused by Austria's high-
handed action was the complete triumph of Bismarck's principle
that treaties cease to be valid " when the private interest of
those who lie under them no longer reinforces the text." Hence-
forth, it was felt, no reaffirmation of a principle of international
1 The Austro-Turkish protocol had been signed at Constantinople
on the 5th of March ; it was now ratified by the Turkish parliament
on the 5th of April.
comity and law, so successfully violated, could serve to disguise
the brutal truth that in questions between nations, in the long- -
run, might is right that there is no middle term between the
naked submission preached by Tolstoy and his disciples and
Napoleon's dictum that " Providence is with the big battalions."
In Great Britain, especially, public opinion was quick to grasp
this truth. It was realized that it was the immense armed power
of Germany that had made her the arbiter in a question vitally
affecting the interests of all Europe. Germany alone emerged
from the crisis with prestige enormously enhanced; for without
her intervention Austria could not have resisted the pressure of
the powers. The cry for disarmament, encouraged by the action
of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's government, suddenly died
down in England; and the agitation in favour of an increased
ship-building programme, that followed the revelation by the
first lord of the admiralty (April 1909) of Germany's accelerated
activity in naval construction, showed that public opinion had
been thoroughly awakened to the necessity of maintaining for
Great Britain her maritime supremacy, on which not only her
position in Europe but the existence of her over-sea empire
depended.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ALNOTE. (i)Bibliographies. Listsof the principal
works on the history of the various European countries, and of their
main sources, are given in the bibliographies attached to the separate
articles (see also those appended to the articles PAPACY; CHURCH
HISTORY; DIPLOMACY; CRUSADES; FEUDALISM, &c.). For the
sources of the medieval history of Europe see Ulysse Chevalier's
monumental Repertoire des sources historigues du moyen Age; Bio-
BibliographiA (Paris, 1877, &c.), which with certain limitations
(notably as regards the Slav, Hungarian and Scandinavian countries)
gives references to published documents for all names of people,
however obscure, occurring in medieval history. In 1894 M.
Chevalier began the publication of a second series of his Repertoire,
under the somewhat misleading title of Topo-Bibliographie, intended
as a compendious guide to the places, institutions, &c., of the middle
ages; though very useful, this is by no means so complete as the
Bio-Bibliographie. August Potthast's Bibliotheca historica medii
aevi (2nd ed., Berlin, 1895-1896) gives a complete catalogue of all
the annals, chronicles and other historical works which appeared in
Europe between the years 375 and 1500 and have since been printed,
with short notes on their value and significance, and references to
critical works upon them. See also the article RECORD. For
authorities on the history of Europe from the end of the I5th to the
igth centuries inclusive the excellent bibliographies appended to
the volumes of the Cambridge Modern History are invaluable
(2) Works. Of general works the most important are the Hisloire
generate duIV* siecle d nos jours, published under the direction of
E. Lavisse and A. Rambaud (Paris, 1894, &c.), in 12 vols., covering
the period from the 4th to the end of the igth century: Leopold
von Ranke's Weltgeschichte (Leipzig, 1881, &c.), in 9 vols., covering
(i.) the oldest group of nations and the Greeks; (ii.) the Roman
Republic; (iii.) the ancient Roman Empire; (iv.) the East Roman
empire and the origin of the Romano-German kingdoms; (v.) the
Arab world-power and the empire of Charlemagne ; (vi.) dissolution
of the Carolingian and foundation of the German empire; (vii.)
zenith and decay of the German empire; the hierarchy under
Gregory VII.; (yiii.) crusades and papal world-power (i2th and
I3th centuries); (ix.) period of transition to the modern world (i4th
and I5th centuries). To this may be added Ranke's works on special
periods: e.g. Die Fursten und Volker von Sud-Europa im l6ten und
ijten Jahrhundert (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1837-1839); Geschichten der
romanischen und germanischen Volker, 1494-1514 (2nd ed., Leipzig,
1874, Eng. trans. 1887). In English the most important general
work is the Cambridge Modern History (1903, &c.), produced by the
collaboration of English and foreign scholars, and covering the
ground from the end of the I5th to the igth century incjusive.
The Historians' History of the World, edited by Dr H. Smith Williams
(1908), is a compilation from the works of eminent historians of all
ages, and the value of its various parts is therefore that of the
historians responsible for them. Its chief merit is that it makes
accessible to English readers many foreign or obscure sources which
would otherwise have remained closed to the general reader. It
also contains essays by^ notable modern scholars on the principal
epochs and tendencies of the world's history, the texts of a certain
number of treaties, &c., not included as yet in other collections, and
comprehensive bibliographies. On a less ambitious scale are the
volumes of the " Periods of European History " series (London, 1893,
&c.)- Per. I. The Dark Ages, 476-918, by C. W. C. Oman (1893);
Per. II. The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273, by T. F. Tout (1898) ;
Per. III. The Close of the Middle Ages, 1273-1494, by R. Lodge (1901) ;
Europe in the i6th Century, 1494-1598, by A. H. Johnson (1897);
The Ascendancy of France, by H. O. Wakeman (1894); The Balance
of Power, by A. Hassal (1896) ; Revolutionary Europe, by H. Morse
Stephens (1893); Modern Europe, by W. Alison Phillips (1901,
EUROPIUM EUSEBIUS
953
5th ed.. 1908). See also T. H. Dyer. History of Modern Europe from
the fall of Constantinople, revised and continued to the end of tin-
1910 century by A. Hnttil (6 vols., London, igpi). Besides the
above may be mentioned, for European history since the outbreak
of the French Revolution, A. Sorel, L'Europe et la Revolution Fran-
n(7 vols.. Paris, 1885, &c.), a work of first-class importance;
tern. Ceschichle Eurapas seit den Wiener Vertragm von 1815
Mgart and Berlin. 1894, ftc.), based on the study of much new
material, still in progress (1908); C. Seignobos, Histoirr politiaue
dt I' Europe contemporaine (Paris, 1897), a valuable text-book with
copious bibliography lEng. trans., London, 1901); C. M. Andrews,
Histoncal development of Europe, a vols. (New York, 1806-1898).
(3) Published Documents. For the vast mass of published sources
reference must be made to the bibliographies mentioned above.
It must be borne in mind, however, that these represent but a
fraction of the unpublished material, anil that the great development
of original research is constantly revealing fresh sources, throwing
new light on old problems, and not seldom upsetting conclusions long
established as final. For these latest developments of scholarship
the numerous historical and archaeological reviews published in
various countries should be consulted : e.g. The English Historical
Review (London); The Scottish Hist. Rev. (Glasgow); The American
Hist. Rer. (London and New York) ; the Revue historique (Paris) ;
the Historische Zeitschrift (Munich). The most notable collections
of treaties: are J. Dumont's Corps diplomatique, covering the period
from A.D. 800 to 1731 (Amsterdam and the Hague, 1726-1731);
F. G. de Martens and his continuators, Recuetl des traiUs, &c.
(1791, &c ), covi-ring with its supplements the period from 1494 to
1874; F. (T. T.) de Martens, Recuetl des trailis conclus par la Russie,
Ac. (14 vols., St Petersburg, 1874, &c.) ; A. and J. de Clercq, Recueil
da traitis de la France (Paris, 1864; new ed.. 1880, &c.); L. Neu-
mann, Recuetl des traitis conclus par I'Autriche (from 1763), (6 vols.,
Leipzig, 1855); new series, by L. Neumann and A. de Plason
(16 vols., Vienna. 1877-1903); Osterreichische Staatsvertrdge (vol. i.
England. 1526-1748), published by the Commission for the modern
history of Austria (Innsbruck, 1907), with valuable introductory
notes; British and Foreign State Papers (from the termination of
the war in 1814), compiled at the Foreign Office by the Librarian
and Keeper of the Papers (London, 1819, &c.); Sir E. Hertslet,
The Map of Europe by Treaty (from 1814), (4 vols., London, 1875-
1891). See the article TREATIES. (W. A. P.)
EUROPIUM, jt metallic chemical element, symbol Eu, atomic
weight 152-0 (O=i6). The oxide Eu 7 O a occurs in very small
quantity in the minerals of the rare earths, and was first obtained
in 1896 by E. A. Demarcay from Lecoq de Boisbaudran's
samarium; G. Urbain and H. Lacombe in 1904 obtained the
pure salts by fractional crystallization of the nitric acid solution
with magnesium nitrate in the presence of bismuth nitrate.
The salts have a faint pink colour, and show a faint absorption
spectrum; the spark spectrum is brilliant and well characterized.
EURYDICB (E6pu5ui>), in Greek mythology, the wife of
Orpheus (?..)- She was the daughter of Nereus and Doris,
and died from the bite of a serpent when fleeing from Aristaeus,
who wished to offer her violence (Virgil, Georgia, iv. 454-527;
Ovid, iietam. x. i ff.).
EURYMEDON. one of the Athenian generals during the
Peloponnesian War. In 428 B.C. he was sent by the Athenians to
intercept the Peloponnesian fleet which was on the way to attack
Corcyra. On his arrival, finding that Nicostratus with a small
squadron from Naupactus had already placed the island in
security, he took the command of the combined fleet, which,
owing to the absence of the enemy, had no chance of distinguish-
ing itself. In the following summer, in joint command of the
land forces, he ravaged the district of Tanagra; and in 425 he
was appointed, with Sophocles, the son of Sostratidcs, to the
command of an expedition destined for Sicily. Having touched
at Corcyra on the way, in order to assist the democratic party
against the oligarchical exiles, but without taking any steps to
prevent the massacre of the latter, Eurymedon proceeded to
Sicily. Immediately after his arrival a pacification was con-
cluded by Hermocrates, to which Eurymedon and Sophocles
were induced to agree. The terms of the pacification did not,
however, satisfy the Athenians, who attributed its conclusion
to bribery; two of the chief agents in the negotiations were
banished, while Eurymedon was sentenced to pay a heavy fine.
In 414 Eurymedon, who had been sent with Demosthenes to
reinforce the Athenians at the siege of Syracuse, was defeated and
slain before reaching land (Thucydides iii., iv., vii.; Diod. Sic.
xiii. S. ii, 13).
EUSDEN, LAURENCE (1688-1730), English poet, son of the
Rev. Laurence Eusden, rector of Spofforth, Yorkshire, was
baptized on the 6th of September 1688. He was educated at St
Peter's school, York, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He
became a minor fellow of his college in 1711, and in the next year
was admitted to a full fellowship. He was made poet laureate in
1718 by the lord chancellor, the duke of Newcastle, as a reward
for a flattering poem on his marriage. He was rector of Coningsby ,
Lincolnshire, where he died on the 27th of September 1 730. His
name is less remembered by his translations and gratulatory
poems than by the numerous satirical allusions of Pope, e.g.
" Know, Eusden thirsts no more for sack or praise;
He sleeps among the dull of ancient days."
Dunciad, bk. i. n. 293-294.
EUSEBIUS (Gr. Eiw/3io$, from twre/Sijs, pious, cf. the Latin
name Pius), a name borne by a large number of bishops and
others in the early ages of the Christian Church. Of these the
most important are separately noticed below. No less than 25
saints of this name (sometimes corrupted into Eusogc, Euruge,
Usoge, Usuge, Uruge and St Scbis) are venerated in the Roman
Catholic Church, of whom 23 are included in the Bollandist
Ada Sanctorum; many are obscure martyrs, monks or anchorites,
but two deserve at least a passing notice.
EUSEBIUS, bishop of Vercelli (d. 371), is notable not only as a
stout opponent of Arianism, but also as having been, with St
Augustine, the first Western bishop to unite with his clergy in
adopting a strict monastic life after the Eastern model (see
Ambrose, Ep. 63 ad Vercellenses, 66). The legend that he was
stoned to death by the Arians was probably invented for the
edification of the Orthodox.
EUSEBIUS, bishop of Samosata (d. 380), played a considerable
part in the later stages of the Arian controversy in the East.
He is first mentioned among the Homoean and Homoeusian
bishops who in 363 accepted the Homousian formula at the synod
of Antioch presided over by Meletius, with whose views he seems
to have identified himself (see MELETIUS OF ANTIOCH). Accord-
ing to Theodoret (5, 4, 8) he was killed at Doliche in Syria,
where he had gone to consecrate a bishop, by a stone cast by an
Arian woman. He thus became a martyr, and found a place in
the Catholic calendar (see the article by Loofs in Herzog-
Hauck, Realencykl., ed. 1898, v. p. 620).
EUSEBIUS OF LAODICEA, though not included among the saints,
was noted for his saintly life. He was an Alexandrian by birth,
and gained so great a reputation for his self-denial and charity
that when in 262 the city was besieged by the troops of the
emperor Gallienus he obtained permission, together with Ana-
tolius, from their commander Theodotus, to lead out the non-
combatants, whom he tended " like a father and physician."
He went with Anatolius to Syria, and took part in the controversy
against Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch. He became bishop
of Laodicea, probably in the following year (263), and died some
time before 268. His friend Anatolius succeeded him as bishop
in the latter year (see the article by E. Hcnnecke in Herzog-
Hauck, v. 619).
EUSEBIUS, bishop of Rome for four months under the emperor
Maxentius, in 309 or 310. The Christians in Rome, divided on
the question of the reconciliation of apostates, on which Eusebius
held the milder view, brought forward a competitor, Heraclius.
Both competitors were expelled by the emperor, Eusebius dying
in exile in Sicily. He was buried in the cemetery of St Calixtus
at Rome; and the extant epitaph, in eight hexameter lines,
set up here by his successor Damasus, contains all the information
there is about his life.
EUSEBIUS [OF CAESAKEA] (c. t6o-c. 340), ecclesiastical
historian, who called himself Eusebius Pamphili, because of
his devotion to his friend and teacher Pamphilus, was born
probably in Palestine between A.D. 260 and 265, and died as
bishop of Caesarea in the year 339 or 340. We know little of his
youth beyond the fact that he became associated at an early day
with Pamphilus, presbyter of the Church of Caesarea, and
founder of a theological school there (see Hist. Eccl. vii. 32).
Pamphilus gathered about him a circle of earnest students who
954
EUSEBIUS
devoted themselves especially to the study of the Bible and the
transcription of Biblical codices, and also to the defence and
spread of the writings of Origen, whom they regarded as their
master. Pamphilus had a magnificent library, which Eusebius
made diligent use of, and a catalogue of which he published in
his lost Life of Pamphilus (Hist. Red. vi. 32). In the course of
the Diocletian persecution, which broke out in 303, Pamphilus
was imprisoned for two years, and finally suffered martyrdom.
During the time of his imprisonment (307-309) Eusebius dis-
tinguished himself by assiduous devotion to his friend, and
assisted him in the preparation of an apology for Origen's
teaching (Hist. Eccl. vi. 33), the first book of which survives in
the Latin of Rufinus (printed in Routh's Reliquiae sacrae, iv.
339 sq., and in Lommatzsch's edition of Origen's Works, xxiv.
p. 293 sq.). After the death of Pamphilus Eusebius withdrew to
Tyre, and later, while the Diocletian persecution was still raging,
went to Egypt, where he seems to have been imprisoned, but soon
released. He became bishop of Caesarea between 313 and 315,
and remained such until his death. The patriarchate of Antioch
was offered him in 33 1, but declined ( Vita Constantini, iii. 59 sq.).
Eusebius was a very important figure in the church of his day.
He was not a great theologian nor a profound thinker, but he
was the most learned man of his age, and stood high in favour
with the emperor Constantine. At the council of Nicaea in 325
he took a prominent part, occupying a seat at the emperor's
right hand, and being appointed to deliver the panegyrical
oration in his honour. He was the leader of the large middle party
of Moderates at the council, and submitted the first draft of the
creed which was afterwards adopted with important changes
and additions. In the beginning he was the most influential
man present, but was finally forced to yield to the Alexandrian
party, and to vote for a creed which completely repudiated the
position of the Arians, with whom he had himself been hitherto
more in sympathy than with the Alexandrians. He was placed
in a difficult predicament by the action of the council, and his
letter to the Caesarean church explaining his conduct is ex-
ceedingly interesting and instructive (see Socrates, Hist. Eccl.
i. 8, and cf. McGiffert's translation of Eusebius' Church History,
p. 15 sq.). To understand his conduct, it is necessary to look
briefly at his theological position. By many he has been called
an Arian, by many his orthodoxy has been defended. The truth
is, three stages are to be distinguished in his theological develop-
ment. The first preceded the outbreak of the Arian controversy,
when, as might be expected in a follower of Origen, his interest
was anti-Sabellian and his emphasis chiefly upon the sub-
ordination of the Son of God. In his works written during this
period (for instance, the Praeparatio evangelica and Demonstratio
evangelica), as in the works of Origen himself and other ante-
Nicene fathers, expressions occur looking in the direction of
Arianism, and others looking in the opposite direction. The
second stage began with the outbreak of the controversy in 318,
and continued until the Nicene Council. During this period he
took the side of Arms in the dispute with Alexander of Alexandria,
and accepted what he understood to be the position of Arius
and his supporters, who, as he supposed, taught both the divinity
and subordination of the Son. It was natural that he should take
this side, for in his traditional fear of Sabellianism, in which he
was one with the followers of Origen in general, he found it
difficult to approve the position of Alexander, who seemed to be
doing away altogether with the subordination of the Son. And,
moreover, he believed that Alexander was misrepresenting the
teaching of Arius and doing him great injustice (cf. his letters to
Alexander and Euphration preserved in the proceedings of the
second council of Nicaea, Act. vi. torn. 5: see Mansi's Concilia,
xiii. 316 sq.; English translation in McGiffert, op. cit. p. 70).
Meanwhile at the council of Nicaea he seems to have discovered
that the Alexandrians were right in claiming that Arius was
carrying his subordinationism so far as to deny all real divinity
to Christ. To this length Eusebius himself was unwilling to go,
and so, convinced that he had misunderstood Arius, and that
the teaching of the latter was imperilling the historic belief in
the divinity of Christ, he gave his support to the opposition,
and voted for the Nicene Creed, in which the teachings of the
Arians were repudiated. From this time on he was a supporter
of Nicene orthodoxy over against Arianism (cf., e.g., his Contra
Marcellum, De ecclesiastica theologia, and Theophania). But he
never felt in sympathy with the extreme views of the Athanasian
party, for they seemed to him to savour of Sabellianism, which
always remained his chief dread (cf. his two works against
Marcellus of Ancyra). His personal friends, moreover, were
principally among the Arians, and he was more closely identified
with them than with the supporters of Athanasius. But he was
always a man of peace, and while commonly counted one of the
opponents of Athanasius, he did not take a place of leadership
among them as his position and standing would have justified
him in doing, and Athanasius never spoke of him with bitterness
as he did of other prominent men in the party. (For a fuller
description of the development of Eusebius' Christology and of
his attitude throughout the Arian controversy, see McGiffert,
op. cit. p. ii sq.)
Eusebius was one of the most voluminous writers of antiquity,
and his labours covered almost every field of theological learning.
If we look in his works for brilliancy and originality we shall be
disappointed. He was not a creative genius like Origen or
Augustine. His claim to greatness rests upon his vast erudition
and his sound judgment. Nearly all his works possess genuine
and solid merits which raise them above the commonplace, and
many of them still remain valuable. His exegesis is superior to
that of most of his contemporaries, and his apologetic is marked
by fairness of statement, breadth of treatment, and an instinctive
appreciation of the difference between important and unimportant
points. His style, it is true, is involved and obscure, often
rambling and incoherent. This quality is due in large part to the
desultory character of his thinking. He did not always clearly
define his theme before beginning to write, and he failed to subject
what he produced to a careful revision. Ideas of all sorts poured
in upon him while he was writing, and he was not always able to
resist the temptation to insert them whether pertinent or not.
His great learning is evident everywhere, but he is often its slave
rather than its master. It is as an historian that he is best
known, and to his History of the Christian Church he owes his
fame and his famih'ar title " The Father of Church History."
This work, which was published in its final form in ten books in
324 or early in 325, is the most important ecclesiastical history
produced in ancient times. The reasons leading to the great
undertaking, in which Eusebius had no predecessors, were in
part historical, in part apologetic. He believed that he was
living at the beginning of a new age, and he felt that it was a
fitting time, when the old order of things was passing away, to
put on record for the benefit of posterity the great events which
had occurred during the generations that were past. He thus
wrote, as any historian might, for the information and instruction
of his readers, and yet he had all the time an apologetic purpose,
to exhibit to the world the history of Christianity as a proof of
its divine origin and efficacy. His plan is stated at the very
beginning of the work:
" It is my purpose to write an account of the successions of the
holy Apostles as well as of the times which have elapsed from the
day of our Saviour to our own ; to relate how many and important
events are said to have occurred in the history of the church ; and
to mention those who have governed and presided over the church
in the most prominent parishes, and those who in each generation
have proclaimed the divine word either orally or in writing. It is
my purpose also to give the names and number and times of those
who through love of innovation have run into the greatest errors,
and proclaiming themselves discoverers of knowledge, falsely so
called, have like fierce wolves unmercifully devastated the flock of
Christ. It is my intention, moreover, to recount the misfortunes
which immediately came on the whole Jewish nation in consequence
of their plots against our Saviour, and to record the ways and times
in which the divine word has been attacked by the Gentiles, and to
describe the character of those who at various periods have contended
for it in the face of blood and tortures, as well as the confessions
which have been made in our own day, and the gracious and kindly
succour which our Saviour has accorded them all."
The value of the work does not lie in' its literary merit, but in
the wealth of the materials which it furnishes for a knowledge
EUSEBIUS
955
of the early church. Many prominent figures of the first three
centuries are known to us only from its pages. Many fragments,
priceless on account of the light which they shed upon movements
of far-reaching consequence, have been preserved in it alone.
Eusebius often fails to appreciate the significance of the events
which he records; in many cases he draws unwarranted con-
clusions from the given premises; he sometimes misinterprets
his documents and misunderstands men and movements; but
usually he presents us with the material upon which to form
our own judgment, and if we differ with him we must at the same
time thank him for the data that enable us independently to
reach other results. But the work is not merely a thesaurus,
it is a history in a true sense, and it has an intrinsic value of its
own, independent of its quotations from other works. Eusebius
pomrinrrt extensive sources of knowledge no longer accessible
to us. The number of books referred to as read is enormous.
He also had access to the archives of state, and gathered from
them information beyond the reach of most. But the value of
his work is due, not simply to' the sources employed, but also to
the use made of them. Upon this matter there has been, it is
true, some diversity of opinion among modern scholars, but it is
now generally admitted, and can be abundantly shown, that he
was not only diligent in gathering material, but also far more
thorough-going than most writers of antiquity in discriminating
between trustworthy and untrustworthy reports, frank in ac-
knowledging his ignorance, scrupulous in indicating his authorities
in doubtful cases, less credulous than most of his contemporaries,
and unfailingly honest. His principal faults are his carelessness
and inaccuracy in matters of chronology, his lack of artistic
skill in the presentation of his material, his desultory method of
treatment, and his failure to look below the surface and grasp the
real significance and vital connexion of events. He commonly
regards an occurrence as sufficiently accounted for when it is
ascribed to the activity of God or of Satan. But in spite of its
defects the Ckurck History is a monumental work, which need only
be compared with its continuations by Socrates, Sozomen,
Tbeodoret, Rufinus and others, to be appreciated at its true
worth.
In addition to the Church History we have from Eusebius' pen
a Chronicle in two books (c. 303; later continued down to 325), the
first containing an epitome of universal history, the second chrono-
logical tables exhibiting in parallel columns the royal succession in
different nations, and accompanied by notes marking the dates of
historical events. A revised edition of the second book with a
continuation down to his own day was published in Latin by St
Jerome, and this, together with some fragments of the original Greek,
was our only source for a knowledge of the Chronicle until the
discovery of an Armenian version of the whole work, which was
published by Aucherin 1818 (Latin translation in Schoene's edition),
and of two Syriac versions published in Latin translation respectively
in 1866 (by Koediger in Schoene's edition) and in 1884 (by Siegfried
and Gelxer). Other historical works still extant are the Martyrs of
Palestine and the Life of Constantine. The former is an account of
martyrdom* occurring in Palestine during the years 303 to 310, of
of which Eusebius himself was an eye-witness. The work
in a longer and a shorter recension, the former in a Syriac
in (published with English translation by Cureton, 1861), the
Utter in the original Greek attached to the Church History in most
MSS. (printed with the History in the various editions). The Life
of Constantine, in four books, published after the death of the
emperor, which occurred in 337, is a panegyric rather than a sober
history, but contains much valuable material. Of Eusebius' apolo-
getic works we Mill have the Contra Hieroclem, Praeparatio evangelica,
Demonst^atio mnrtlica, and Theophania. The first is a reply to
a lost work against the Christians written by Hierocles, a Roman
governor and contemporary of Eusebius. The second and third,
taken together, are the most elaborate and important apologetic
work of the early church. The former, in fifteen books, aims to show
that the Christians are justified in accepting the sacred writings of
the Hebrews, and in rejecting the religion and philosophy oft he
Greeks. The latter, in twenty books, of which only the first ten and
fragments of the fifteenth are extant, endeavours to prove from the
Hebrew Scriptures themselves that the Christians are right in going
beyond the jews and adopting new principles and practices. The
former is thus a preparation for the latter, and the two together
constitute a defence of Christianity against all the world, heathen
as well as Jews. In grandeur of conception, comprehensiveness of
treatment, and breadth of learning, this apology surpasses all other
similar works of antiquity. The Praeparatio is also valuable because
of its Urge number of quotations from classical literature, many of
ili. in otherwise unknown to us. The Theophania, though we have
many fragments of the original Greek, is extant as a whole only in u
Syriac version first published by Lee in 1842. Its subject is the
in. iuit< M. u i. HI of Goa in the incarnation of the Word, and it aims to
give with an apologetic purpose a brief exposition of the divine
authority and influence of Christianity. Of Eusebius' dogmatic
and polemic writings, we still have two works against his contem-
porary, Marccllus, bishop of Ancyra, the one known as Contra
Miinrllum, the other as f>e theologia ecclesiastica. The former and
briefer aims simply to expose the errors of Marccllus, whom Eusebius
accuses of Sabcllianism, the latter to refute them. We also have
parts of a General Introduction ('II xoMXov nrmxuuiip tlaaywyti),
which consisted of ten books (the sixth to the ninth books and a
few other fragments still extant), under the title of Prophetical
Extracts (llpo<tnrrutal UXtryaJJ. Although this formed part of a
larger work it was complete in itself ana circulated separately. It
contains prophetical passages from the Old Testament relating to
the person and work of Christ, accompanied by explanatory notes.
Of Biblical and exegetical works we have a considerable part of
Eusebius' Commentaries on the Psalms and on Isaiah, which arc
monuments of learning, industry and critical acumen, though
marred by the use of the allegorical method characteristic of the
school of Origcn; also a work on the names of places mentioned in
Scripture, or the Onomasticon, the only one extant of a number of
writings on Old Testament topography; and an epitome and some
fragments of a work in two parts on Gospel Questions and Solutions,
the first part dealing with the genealogies of Christ given in Matthew
and Luke, the second with the apparent discrepancies between the
various gospel accounts of the resurrection. Other important works
which have perished wholly or in large part, and some orations and
minor writings still extant, it is not necessary to refer to more
particularly. (See Preuschen's list in Harnack's Alt-chrislliche
Litteraturqeschichte, i. 2, p. 55 sq. Preuschen gives thirty-eight
titles, besides orations and letters, but it is doubtful whether all of
the Commentaries mentioned really existed.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY. The only edition of Eusebius' extant works
which can lay claim even to relative completeness is that of Migne
(Patrologia graeca, torn, xix.-xxiv.). The publication of a new
critical edition was begun in 1902 in the Berlin Academy's Creek
Fathers (Die griechiscnen christlichen Schriflsteller der ersten drei
Jahrhunderte, Leipzig). Many of Eusebius' works have been
published separately. Thus the Church History, first by Stephanus
'Paris, 1554); by Valesius with copious notes, together with the
Life of Constantine, the Oration in Praise of Constantine, and the
Histories of Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, &c. (best edition that of
Reading (Cambridge, 1720), in three volumes, folio); by Heinichen
(1827, second edition 1868-1870 in three volumes, a very useful
edition, containing also the Life of Constantine and the Oration in
Praise of Constantine, with elaborate notes); by Burton (1838; a
handy reprint in a single volume by Bright, 1881), and by many
ethers. The most recent and best edition is that of Schwartz in the
Berlin Academy's Greek Fathers, of which the first half has appeared,
accompanied by the Latin version of Rufinus edited by Mommsen.
The history was early put into Syriac (edited by Bedjan, Leipzig,
1897; also by Wright, McLean and Merx, London, 1898), Armenian
(edited by Djarian, Venice, 1877), and Latin, and has been translated
into many modern languages, the latest English version being that
of McGinert, in the Ntcene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second scries,
volume i. (New York, 1890). Of the Chronicle, the best edition
is by Schoene in two volumes (Berlin, 1866-1875). The Life of
Constantine and the Oration in Praise of Constantine are published
by Valesius, Heinichen .uiil others in their editions of the Church
History, also in the first volume of the Berlin Academy's edition
(ed. by Heikel), and an English translation by Richardson in the
volume containing McGiffert's translation of the Church History.
Gaisford published the Prophetical Extracts (Oxford, 1842), the
Praeparatio evangelica (1843), the Demonstrate evangelica (1852),
and the works against Hierocles and Marccllus (1852); and the
works against Marcellus have appeared in the edition of the Berlin
Academy (vol. iv.). The Onomasticon has been published frequently,
among others by Lagarde (Gfittingen, 1870; and ed., 1887), and is
contained in the edition of the Berlin Academy (vol. iii.). The
Theophania was first published by Lee (Syriac version, 1842; English
translation, 1843). A German translation of the Syriac version, with
the extant fragments of the original Greek, is given in the edition
of the Berlin Academy (vol. iii.).
Acacius, the pupil of Eusebius and his successor in the see of
Caesarea, wrote a life of him which is unfortunately lost. His own
writings contain little biographical material, but we get information
from Athanasius, Philostnrgius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret,
Jerome's Devir. ill., and Photius. Among the many modern accounts
in church histories, histories of Christian literature, encyclopaedias,
&c., may be mentioned a monograph by Stein, Eusebius Bischof von
Caesarea (WUrzburg, 1859), meagre but useful as far as it goes;
the magnificent article by Lightfoot in the Dictionary of Chrtstian
Biography; the account by McGiffert in his translation of the Church
History; Erwin Preuschen's article in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklop.
(3rd ed., 1898); the treatment of the Chronology of Euscbius
writings in Harnack's Alt christliche Litleraturgeschichte, ii. 2,
p. 106 sq.; and Bardenhewer's Patrologie, p. 2260 f. The many
EUSEBIUS EUSTACE
special discussions of Eusebius' separate works, particularly of his
Church History, and of his character as an historian, cannot be
referred to here. Elaborate bibliographies will be found in McGiffert's
translation, and in Preuschen'sarticle in Herzog-Hauck. (A.C. McG.)
EUSEBIUS [OF EMESA] (d. c. 360), a learned ecclesiastic of the
Greek church, was born at Edessa about the beginning of the
4th century. After receiving his early education in his native
town, he studied theology at Caesarea and Antioch and philo-
sophy and science at Alexandria. Among his teachers were
Eusebius of Caesarea and Patrophilus of Scythopolis. The
reputation he acquired for learning and eloquence led to his being
offered the see of Alexandria in succession to the deposed Athan-
asius at the beginning of 339, but he declined, and the council
(of Antioch) chose Gregory of Cappadocia, " a fitter agent for
the rough work to be done." Eusebius accepted the small
bishopric of Emesa (the modern Horns) in Phoenicia, but his
powers as mathematician and astronomer led his flock to accuse
him of practising sorcery, and he had to flee to Laodicea. A
reconciliation was effected by the patriarch of Antioch, but
tradition says that Eusebius finally resigned his charge and lived
a studious life in Antioch. His fame as an astrologer commended
him to the notice of the emperor Constantius II., with whom he
became a great favourite, accompanying him on many of his
expeditions. The theological sympathies of Eusebius were with
the semi-Arian party, but his interest in the controversy was
not strong. His life was written by his friend George of Laodicea.
He was a man of extraordinary learning, great eloquence and
considerable intellectual power, but of his numerous writings
only a few fragments are now in existence.
See Migne, Patrol. Grace, vol. Ixxxvi.
EUSEBIUS [OF MYNDUS], Greek philosopher, a distinguished
Neoplatonist and pupil of Aedesius who lived in the time of
Julian, and who is described by Eunapius as one of the " Golden
Chain " of Neoplatonism. He ventured to criticize the magical
and theurgic side of the doctrine, and exasperated the emperor,
who preferred the mysticism of Maximus and Chrysanthius.
He devoted himself principally to logic. Stobaeus in the Sermones
collected a number of ethical dicta of one Eusebius, who may
perhaps be identical with the Neoplatonist.
The fragments have been collected by Mullach in his Fragmenla
Phil. Grace., and by Orelli, in Opuscula veter. grace, sentent. et moral.
EUSEBIUS [OF NICOMEDIA] (d. 341?), Greek bishop and theo-
logian, was the defender of Arius in a still more avowed manner
than his namesake of Caesarea, and from him the Eusebian or
middle party specially derived its name, giving him in return
the epithet of Great. He was a contemporary of the bishop of
Caesarea, and united with him in the enjoyment of the friendship
and favour of the imperial family. He is said to have been
connected by his mother with the emperor Julian, whose early
tutor he was. His first bishopric was Berytus (Beirut) in Phoe-
nicia, but his name is especially identified with the see of Nico-
media, which, from the time of Diocletian till Constantine
established his court at Byzantium, was regarded as the capital
of the eastern part of the empire. He warmly espoused the cause
of Arius in his quarrel with his bishop Alexander, and wrote a
letter in his defence to Paulinus, bishop of Tyre, which is pre-
served in the Church History of Theodoret. Trained in the school
of Lucian of Antioch, his views appear to have been identical
with those of Eusebius of Caesarea in placing Christ above all
created beings, the only begotten of the Father, but in refusing
to recognize him to be " of the same substance " with the Father,
who is alone in essence and absolute being.
At the council of Nicaea Eusebius of Nicomedia earnestly
opposed, along with his namesake of Caesarea, the insertion
of the Homousian clause, but after being defeated in his object
he also signed the creed in his own sense of ojuoios KO.T' ovolav.
He refused, however, to sign the anathema directed against the
Arians, not, as he afterwards explained, because of his variance
from the Athanasian theology, but " because he doubted whether
Arius really held what the anathema imputed to him " (Sozom.
ii. 15). After the council he continued vigorously to espouse
the Arian cause, and was so far carried away in his zeal against
the Athanasians that he was temporarily banished from his see
as a disturber of the peace of the church. But his alienation
from the court was of short duration. He retained the confidence
of the emperor's sister Constantia, through whose influence he
was promoted to the see of Nicomedia, and by her favour he was
restored to his position, and speedily acquired an equal ascend-
ancy over the emperor. He was selected to administer baptism
to him in his last illness. There seems no doubt that Eusebius
of Nicomedia was more of a politician than a theologian. He was
certainly a partisan in the great controversy of his time, and is
even credited (although on insufficient evidence) with having
used unworthy means to procure the deposition of Eustathius,
the " orthodox " bishop of Antioch (Theodoret i. 21). His rest-
less ambition and love of power are not to be denied. To the
last he defended Arius, and at the time of the latter's sudden
death, 336, it was chiefly through his menace, as representing
the emperor, that the church of Constantinople was thrown into
anxiety as to whether the leader should be readmitted to the
bosom of the church. The death of Constantine followed hard
upon that of Arius; and Eusebius, who was promoted in 339.
to the see of Constantinople, became the leader of the anti-
Nicene party till his own death in (probably) 341. The real
activity of Eusebius and his party must be studied in connexion
with the Arian controversy (see ARIUS).
EUSKIRCHEN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine
province, on a plateau lying to the E. of the Eifel range, at the
junction of railways from Cologne and Bonn and 10 m. W. of the
latter. Pop. (1905) 10,285. It has an Evangelical and a Roman
Catholic church, and its industries include cloth, sugar and
stocking manufactures, besides breweries and tanneries.
EUSTACE, the name of four counts of Boulogne.
EUSTACE I., a son of Count Baldwin II., held the county from
1046 until his death in 1049.
His son, EUSTACE II. (d. 1093), count of Boulogne, was the
husband of Goda, daughter of the English king ^Ethelred the
Unready, and aunt of Edward the Confessor. Eustace paid a
visit to England in 1051, and was honourably received at the
Confessor's court. A brawl in which he and his servants became
involved with the citizens of Dover led to a serious quarrel
between the king and Earl Godwine. The latter, to whose juris-
diction the men of Dover were subject, refused to punish them.
His contumacy was made the excuse for the outlawry of himself
and his family. In 1066 Eustace came to England with Duke
William, and fought at the battle of Hastings. In the following
year, probably because he was dissatisfied with his share- of the
spoil, he assisted the Kentishmen in an attempt to seize Dover
Castle. The conspiracy failed, and Eustace was sentenced to
forfeit his English fiefs. Subsequently he was reconciled to the
Conqueror, who restored a portion of the confiscated lands.
Eustace died in 1093, and was succeeded by his son, EUSTACE
III., who went on crusade in 1096, and died about 1125. On
his death the county of Boulogne came to his daughter, Matilda,
and her husband Stephen, count of Blois, afterwards king of
England, and in 1150 it was given to their son, Eustace IV.
EUSTACE IV. (d. 1153) became the heir-apparent to his
father's possessions by the death of an elder brother before 1135.
In 1137 he did homage for Normandy to Louis VII. of France,
whose sister, Constance, he subsequently married. Eustace was
knighted in 1147, at which date he was probably from sixteen to
eighteen years of age; and in 1151 he joined Louis in an abortive
raid upon Normandy, which had accepted the title of the empress
Matilda, and was now defended by her husband, Geoffrey of
Anjou. At a council held in London on the 6th of April 1152
Stephen induced a small number of barons to do homage to
Eustace as their future king; but the primate, Theobald, and
the other bishops declined to perform the coronation ceremony
on the ground that the Roman curia had declared against the
claim of Eustace. The death of Eustace, which occurred during
the next year, was hailed with general satisfaction as opening
the possibility of a peaceful settlement between Stephen and his
rival, the young Henry of Anjou. The Peterborough Chronicle,
not content with voicing this sentiment, gives Eustace a bad
EUSTATHIUS EUTIN
957
character. " He was an evil man and did more harm than
good wherever he went ; he spoiled the lands and laid thereon
heavy taxes." He had used threats against the recalcitrant
bishops, and in the war against the Angevin party had demanded
contributions from religious houses; these facts perhaps suffice
to account for the verdict of the chronicler.
See Sir James Ramsay, Foundations of England, vol. ii. (London,
1898); I. M. Lappenberg, History of England under the Norman
Kings (trail*. B. Thorpe. Oxford, 1857); and E. A. Freeman,
History of Uu Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1867-1879).
EUSTATHIUS, of Antioch, sometimes styled " the Great "
(fl. 325), was a native of Side in Pamphylia. About 320 he was
bishop of Beroea, and he was patriarch of Antioch before the
council of Nicaea in 325. In that assembly he distinguished
himself by his zeal against the Arians, though the Allocutio ad
Imperatorem with which he has been credited is hardly genuine.
His anti-Arian polemic against Euscbius of Caesarea made him
unpopular among his fellow-bishops in the East, and a synod
convened at Antioch in 330 passed a sentence of deposition,
which was confirmed by the emperor. He was banished to
Trajanopolis in Thrace, where he died, probably about 337,
though possibly not till 360.
The only complete work by Eustathius now extant is the De
E*t<utrimytko contra Origenem (ed. by A. Jahn in Texte und Unter-
tntkungen, ii. 4). Other fragments are enumerated by F. Loots
in Herzog-Hauck's RtalencyUopadie.
EUSTATHIUS, or EUMATHIUS, surnamed Macrembolites
(" living near the long bazaar "), the last of the Greek romance
writers, flourished in the second half of the 12th century A.D.
His title Protonobilissimus shows him to have been a person of
distinction, and if he is also correctly described in the MSS. as
jifryot xapro^Xai (chief keeper of the ecclesiastical archives),
he must have been a Christian. He was the author of The Story
ofHysmine and Hysminias, in eleven books, a tedious and inferior
imitation of the Cleilophon and Leitcippe of Achilles Tatius.
There is nothing original in the plot, and the work is tasteless
and often coarse. Although the author borrowed from Homer
and other Attic poets, the chief source of his phraseology was the
rhetorician Choricius of Gaza. The style is remarkable for the
absence of hiatus and an extremely laboured use of antithesis.
The digressions on works of art, apparently the result of personal
observation, are the best pan of the work. A collection of eleven
Rtidlrs, of which solutions were written by the grammarian
Manuel Holobolos, is also attributed to Eustathius.
The best edition of both romance and riddles is by I. Hilberg
(1876, who fixes the date of Eustathius between 850 and 988), with
critical apparatus and prolegomena, intruding the solutions; of the
Riddles alone by M. Treu (1893). On Eustathius generally, see
J. C. Dunlop, History of Fiction (1888, new ed. in Bonn's Standard
Liorory); t. Rohde, Der griechische Roman (1900); K. Krum-
bacher, Geschichte der bytantinischen Litteratur (1897). There are
many translations in modern languages, of which that by P. le Bas
(1835) may be recommended ; there is an English version from the
French by L. H. le Moine (London and Paris, 1788).
EUSTATHIUS, archbishop of Thessalonica, Byzantine scholar
and author (probably a native of Constantinople), flourished
during the second half of the izth century. He was at first a
monk, and afterwards deacon of St Sophia and teacher of rhetoric
in his native city. In 1174 he was chosen bishop of Myra in
Lycia, but in 1175 was transferred to Thessalonica. He was out-
spoken and independent, and did not hesitate to oppose the
emperor Manuel, when the latter desired an alteration in the
formula of abjuration necessary for converts from Mahom-
medanism. In 1185, when Thessalonica was captured by the
Normans under William II. of Sicily, Eustathius secured religious
toleration for the conquered. He died about 1193. His best
known work is his Commentary on the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer
(rapcx^oXoi. critical compilations), valuable as containing
numerous extracts from the scholia of other critics, whose works
have now perished. He also wrote a commentary on the
geographical epic of Dionysius Periegetes, in which much of
Stephanus of Byzantium and the lost writings of Arrian is pre-
served. A commentary on Pindar has been lost, with the
exception of the preface, which contains an essay on lyric poetry,
a life of Pindar, and an account of the Olympic games. A history
of the conquest of Thessalonica by the Normans, a congratulatory
address to the emperor Manuel, a plea for an improved water-
supply for Constantinople, and an extensive correspondence with
clerical and lay dignitaries, are evidence of his versatility.
He is also the author of various religious works, chiefly directed
against the prevailing abuses of his time, which almost anticipate,
though in a milder form, the denunciations of Luther; the most
important of these is The Reform of Monastic Life. A commentary
on the pcntccostal hymn of John of Damascus may also be
mentioned.
Editions: Homer Commentary, by G. Stallbaum (1825-1830};
preface^ to Pindar Commentary, by F. W. Schncidewin (1837);
pionysius Commentary in C. W. Muller, Geographies Graeci minores,
ii.; pentecostal hymn, in A. Mai, Spicilegium Romanum, v. 2 (1841).
The smaller works have been edited (1832) and the De Thessalonica
(1839) by L. F. Tafel; many will be found in J. P. Mignc, Patrolotia
Graeca, cxxxv., cxxxvi. Five new speeches have been edited Dy
W. Hegel, Fontes rerum Byzantinarum, i. (1892).
EUSTYLE (from Gr. B, well, and orCXos, column), the archi-
tectural term for the intercolumniation defined by Vitruvius
(iii. 3) as being of the best proportion, i.e. two and a half diameters
(see INTERCOLUMNIATION).
EUTAWVILLE, a town of Berkeley county, South Carolina,
U.S.A., about ss m. N.N.W. of Charleston. Pop. (1000) 305;
(1910) 403. It is served by the Atlantic Coast Line railway.
The town lies on high ground near the Santee river, in a region
abounding in swamps, limestone cliffs and pine forests. At
present its chief interest is in lumber, but in colonial days it was
a settlement of aristocratic rice planters. The neighbouring
Eutaw Springs issue first from the foot of a hill and form a large
stream of clear, cool water, but this, only a few yards away, again
rushes underground to reappear about J m . farther on. At Eutaw
Springs, on the 8th of September 1781, was fought the last battle
in the field in the Southern States during the War of American
Independence. About 2300 Americans under 'General Nathanael
Greene here attacked a slightly inferior force under Colonel
Alexander Stewart; at first the Americans drove the British before
them, but later in the day the latter took a position in a brick
house and behind palisades, and from this position the Americans
were unable to drive them. On the night of the gth, however,
Colonel Stewart retreated toward Charleston, abandoning 1000
stand of arms. The battle has been classed as a tactical victory
for the British and a strategical victory for the Americans,
terminating a campaign which left General Greene in virtual
possession of the Carolinas, the British thereafter confining them-
selves to Charleston. The Americans lost in killed and wounded
408 men (including Colonel William Washington, wounded and
captured); the British, 693.
EUTHYDEMUS, a native of Magnesia, who overturned the
dynasty of Diodotus of Bactria, and became king of Bactria
about 230 B.C. (Polyb. xi. 34; Strabo xi. 315 wrongly makes
him the first king). In 208 he was attacked by Antiochus the
Great, whom he tried in vain to resist on the shores of the river
Anus, the modern Herirud (Polyb. x. 49). The war lasted three
years, and was on the whole fortunate for Antiochus. But he
saw that he was not able to subdue Bactria and Sogdiana, and
so in 206 concluded a peace with Euthydemus, through the
mediation of his son Demetrius, in which he recognized him as
king (Polyb. xi. 34). Soon afterwards Demetrius (q.v.) began the
conquest of India. There exist many coins of Euthydemus;
those on which he is called god are struck by the later king
Agathocles. Other coins with the name Euthydemus, which
show a youthful face, are presumably those of Euthydemus
II., who cannot have ruled long and was probably a son of
Demetrius. (ED. M.)
EUTIN, a town of Germany, capital of the principality of
LUbeck, which is an enclave in the Prussian province of Schleswig-
Holstein and belongs to the grand-duchy of Oldenburg, pic-
turesquely situated on the Lake Eutin, 20 m. N. from LUbeck
by the railway to Kiel. Pop. (1905) 5204. It possesses a
Roman Catholic and two Protestant churches, a palace with a
fine park, and a monument to Weber, the composer, who was
95 8
EUTROPIUS EUYUK
born here. Towards the end of the i8th century Eutin acquired
some fame as the residence of a group of poets and writers, of
whom the best-known were Johann Heinrich Voss, the brothers
Stolberg, and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. In the neighbourhood
is a beautiful tract of country, rich in beech forests and fjords,
known as " the Holstein Switzerland," largely frequented in
summer by the Hamburgers.
Eutin was, according to tradition, founded by Count Adolf II.
of Holstein. In 1155 it fell to the bishopric of Liibeck and was
often the residence of the prelates of that see. After some
vicissitudes of fortune during the middle ages and the Thirty
Years' War, it came into the possession of the house of Holstein,
and hence to Prussia in 1866.
EUTROPIUS, Roman historian, flourished in the latter half
of the 4th century A.D. He held the office of secretary (magister
memoriae) at Constantinople, accompanied Julian on his expedi-
tion against the Persians (363), and was alive during the reign of
Valens (364-378), to whom he dedicates his history. This work
(Breviarium historiae Romanae) is a complete compendium, in
ten books, of Roman history from the foundation of the city to
the accession of Valens. It was compiled with considerable care
from the best accessible authorities, and is written generally
with impartiality, and in a clear and simple style. Although the
Latin in some instances differs from that of the purest models,
the work was for a long time a favourite elementary school-book.
Its independent value is small, but it sometimes fills a gap left
by the more authoritative records. The Breviarium was enlarged
and continued down to the time of Justinian by Paulus Diaconus
(q.v.) ', the work of the latter was in turn enlarged by Landolf us
Sagax (c. 1000), and taken down to the time of the emperor
Leo the Armenian (813-820) in the Historia Miscella.
Of the Greek translations by Capito Lycius and Paeanius, the
version of the latter is extant in an almost complete state. The best
edition of Eutropius is by H. Droysen (1879), containing the Greek
version and the enlarged editions of Paulus Diaconus and Landolf us ;
smaller critical editions, C. Wagener (1884), F. Riihl (1887). J.
Sorn's Der Sprachgebrauch des Historikers Eutropius (1892) contains a
systematic account of the grammar and style of the author. There
are numerous English school editions and translations.
EUTYCHES (c. 380-*;. 456), a presbyter and archimandrite
at Constantinople, first came into notice in A.D. 431 at the
council of Ephesus, where, as a zealous adherent of Cyril (q.v.) of
Alexandria, he vehemently opposed the doctrine of the Nestorians
(q.v.) . They were accused of teaching that the divine nature was
not incarnated in but only attendant on Jesus, being superadded
to his human nature after the latter was completely formed.
In opposition to this Eutyches went so far as to affirm that after
the union of the two natures, the human and the divine, Christ
had only one nature, that of the incarnate Word, and that there-
fore His human body was essentially different from other human
bodies. In this he went beyond Cyril and the Alexandrine school
generally, who, although they expressed the unity of the two
natures in Christ so as almost to nullify their duality, yet took
care verbally to guard themselves against the accusation of in
any way circumscribing or modifying his real and true humanity.
It would seem, however, that Eutyches differed from the Alex-
andrine school chiefly from inability to express his meaning
with proper safeguards, for equally with them he denied that
Christ's human nature was either transmuted or absorbed into
his divine nature. The energy and imprudence of Eutyches in
asserting his opinions led to his being accused of heresy by
Domnus of Antioch and Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum, at a
synod presided over by Flavian at Constantinople in 448. As
his explanations were not considered satisfactory, the council
deposed him from his priestly office and excommunicated him;
but in 449, at a council held in Ephesus convened by Dioscurus
of Alexandria and overawed by the presence of a large number
of Egyptian monks, not only was Eutyches reinstated in his
office, but Eusebius, Domnus and Flavian, his chief opponents,
were deposed, and the Alexandrine doctrine of the " one nature "
received the sanction of the church. This judgment is the more
interesting as being in distinct conflict with the opinion of the
bishop of Rome Leo who, departing from the policy of his
predecessor Celestine, had written very strongly to Flavian in
support of the doctrine of the two natures and one person.
Meanwhile the emperor Theodosius died, and Pulcheria and
Martian who succeeded summoned, in October 451, a council
(the fourth ecumenical) which met at Chalcedon (q.v.). There the
synod of Ephesus was declared to have been a " robber synod,"
its proceedings were annulled, and, in accordance with the rule of
Leo as opposed to the doctrines of Eutyches, it was declared
that the two natures were united in Christ, but without any
alteration, absorption or confusion. Eutyches died in exile, but
of his later life nothing is known. After his death his doctrines
obtained the support of the Empress Eudocia and made con-
siderable progress in Syria. In the 6th century they received a
new impulse from a monk of the name of Jacob, who united
the various divisions into which the Eutychians, or Mono-
physites (q.v.), had separated into one church, which exists at
the present time under the name of the Jacobite Church, and
has numerous adherents in Armenia, Egypt and Ethiopia.
See R. L. Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation, ii. 97 ff. ; A.
Harnack, History 0} Dogma, iv. passim; F. Loofs, Dogmengeschichte
(4th ed., 1906), 297 f., and the art. in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk. fiir
prot. Theol., with a full bibliography.
EUTYCHIANUS, pope from 275 to 283. His original epitaph
was discovered in the catacombs (see Kraus, Roma sotterranea,
p. 154 et seq.), but nothing more is known of him.
EUTYCHIDES, of Sicyon in Achaea, Greek sculptor of the
latter part of the 4th century B.C., was a pupil of Lysippus.
His most noted work was a statue of Fortune, which he made
for the city of Antioch, then newly founded. The goddess, who
embodied the idea of the city, was seated on a rock, crowned with
towers, and having the river Orontes at her feet. There is a small
copy of the statue in the Vatican (see GREEK ART). It was
imitated by a number of Asiatic cities; and indeed most statues
of cities since erected borrow something from the work of
Eutychides.
EUYUK, or EYUK (the eu pronounced as in French), a small
village in Asia Minor, in the Angora vilayet, 12 m. N.N.E. of
Boghaz Keui (Pleria), built on a mound which contains some
remarkable ruins of a large building a palace or sanctuary
anterior to the Greek period and belonging to the same civiliza-
tion as the ruins and rock-reliefs at Pteria. These ruins consist
of a gateway and an approach enclosed by two lateral walls, 1 5 ft.
long, from the outer end of which two walls return outwards at
right angles, one to right and one to left. The gateway is flanked
by two huge blocks, each carved in front into the shape of a
sphinx, while on the inner face is a relief of a two-headed eagle
with wings displayed. Of the approach and its returning walls
only the lower, courses remain: they consist of large blocks
adorned with a series of bas-reliefs similar in type to those
carved on the rocks of Boghaz Keui. Behind the gateway is
another vestibule leading to another portal which gives entrance
to the building, the lateral walls and abutments of the portal
being also decorated with reliefs much worn. These reliefs
belong to that pre-Greek oriental art generally called Hittite,
of which there are numerous remains in the eastern half of the
peninsula. It is now generally agreed that the scenes represented
are religious processions. On the left returning wall is a train of
priestly attendants headed by the chief priest and priestess
(the latter carrying a lituus), clad in the dress of the deities
they serve and facing an altar, behind which is an image of a bull
on a pedestal (representing the god); then comes an attendant
leading a goat and three rams for sacrifice, followed by more
priests with litui or musical instruments, after whom comes a
bull bearing on his back the sacred cista (?). On the lateral walls
of the approach we have a similar procession of attendants headed
by the chief priestess and priest, who pours a libation at the feet
of the goddess seated on her throne; while on the right returning
wall are fragments of a third procession approaching another
draped figure of the goddess on her throne (placed at the angle
opposite the bull on the pedestal) , the train being again brought
up by a bull.
These are all scenes in the ritual of the indigenous naturalistic
EVAGORAS EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE
959
religion which was spread, in slightly varying forms, all over
Asia Minor, and consisted in the worship of the self-reproductive
powers of nature, personified in the great mother-goddess (called
by various names Cybele, Leto, Artemis, &c.) and the god her
husband-and-son (Attis, Men, Sabazios, &c.), representing the
two dements of the ultimate divine nature (sec GREAT MOTHER
or THE Coos). Here, as in the oriental mysteries generally,
the goddess is made more prominent. Where Greek influence
affects the native religion, emphasis tends to be laid on the god,
but the character of the religion remains everywhere ultimately
the same (see Ramsay, Ciiies and Bishoprics of Pkrygia, ch. Hi.).
AUTHORITIES. Petrol, Explor. At la Galalir (1862) and Hist, de
Fart (Eng. trans., 1890); Humann anil I'mlistcin, Reiitn in Ktein-
asien . Nordsyritn (1890); Hogarth in Murray's Handbook to
Asia tfinar (1895); Chant re, Mission en Cappadoce (1898). See
abo HITTITES. (J- G. C. A.)
EVAGORAS, son of Nicocles, king of Salamis in Cyprus 410-
374 B.C. He claimed descent from Teucer, half-brother of Ajax,
son of Telamon, and his family had long been rulers of Salamis
until supplanted by a Phoenician exile. When the usurper was
in turn driven out by a Cyprian noble, Evagoras, fearing that
his life was in danger, fled to Cilicia. Thence he returned
secretly in 410, and with the aid of a small band of adherents
regained possession of the throne. According to Isocrates,
whose panegyric must however be read with caution, Evagoras
was a model ruler, whose aim was to promote the welfare of his
state and of his subjects by the cultivation of Greek refinement
and civilization, which had been almost obliterated in Salamis
by a long period of barbarian rule. He cultivated the friendship
of the Athenians, and after the defeat of Conon at Aegospotami
he afforded him refuge and hospitality. For a time he also main-
tained friendly relations with Persia, and secured the aid of
Artaxerxes II. for Athens against Sparta. He took part in the
battle of Cnidus (304), in which the Spartan fleet was defeated,
and for this service his statue was placed by the Athenians side
by side with that of Conon in the Ceramicus. But the energy
and enterprise of Evagoras soon roused the jealousy of the
Great King, and relations between them became strained.
From 391 they were virtually at war. Aided by the Athenians
and the Egyptian Hakor (Acoris), Evagoras extended his rule
over the greater part of Cyprus, crossed over to Asia Minor, took
several cities in Phoenicia, and persuaded the Cilicians to revolt.
After the peace of Antalcidas (387), to which he refused to agree,
the Athenians withdrew their support, since by its terms they
recognized the lordship of Persia over Cyprus. For ten years
Evagoras carried on hostilities single-handed, except foroccasional
aid from Egypt- At last he was totally defeated at C'itium, and
compelled to flee to Salamis. Here, although closely blockaded,
be managed to hold his ground, and took advantage of a quarrel
between the Persian generals to conclude peace (376). Evagoras
was allowed to remain nominally king of Salamis. but in reality
a vassal of Persia, to which he was to pay a yearly tribute.
The chronology of the last part of his reign is uncertain. In 374
be was assassinated by a eunuch from motives of private revenge.
The chief authority for the life of Evagoras is the panegyric of
Isocrates addressed to his son Nicocles; see also Diod. Sic. xiy. 1 15,
xv. 2-9; Xenophon, Hellenica, iv. 8; W. Judeich, KleinasiatiscHe
Studien (Marburg, 1892), and art. HELLENISM.
EVAGRIUS (c. 536-600), surnamed SCHOLASTICUS, Church
historian, was born at Epiphania in Coele-Syria. His surname
shows him to have been an advocate, and it is supposed that he
practised at Antkxrh. He was the legal adviser of Gregory,
patriarch of that city, whom he successfully defended at Constanti-
nople against certain serious charges. Through this connexion
be was brought under the notice of the emperor Tiberius Con-
stantine, who honoured him with the rank of quaestorian;
Maurice Tiberius made him master of the rolls. His influence
and reputation were so considerable that on the occasion of his
second marriage a public festival was celebrated in his honour,
which was interrupted by a terrible earthquake. Evagrius's
name has been preserved by his Ecclesiastical History in six
books, extending, over the period from the third general council
(that of Ephcsus, 431) to the year 593. It thus continues the
work of Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomcn and Thcodorct. Though
not wholly trustworthy, and often very credulous, this work is
on the whole impartial, and appears to have been compiled from
original documents, from which many valuable excerpts are
nivi-n. It is particularly helpful to the student of the history of
dogma during the 5th and 6th centuries, while the political
history of the time is by no means neglected. Evagrius made
use of the writings of Eustathius, John of Epiphania, John
Malalas, Procopius, and (possibly) Menander Protector.
The best edition of the History is that of L. Parmenticr and J.
liiiliv (London, 1898), which contains the Scholia ; it is also included
in Mignc's Patrologia Graeca, Ixxxvi. There is an English translation
in Bonn's Ecclesiastical Library. See Krumbacher, Geschichte der
bysanlinischen Litteratur (1897); F. C. Baur, Die Epochen der
kirchlichen Geschichtsschreibung (1832); L. Jeep, Quetlenunlersu-
chungeit zu den griechischen Kirchenhislorikern (1884).
EVANDER (Gr. EBoi-Spos, " good man "), in Roman legend,
son of Mercury and Carmcnta, or of Echemus, king of Arcadia.
According to the story, Evander left the Arcadian town of
Pallantion about sixty years before the Trojan War and founded
Pallantcum or Palatium on the hill afterwards called the Palatine.
This is only one of the many Greek legends adopted by the Romans
for the purpose of connecting places in Italy with others of like-
sounding name in Greece. To Evander was attributed the intro-
duction of Greek rites and customs into his new country; of
writing, music and other arts; of the worship of Pan (called
Faunus by the Italians) and the festival of Lupercalia. In
Virgil he receives Aeneas hospitably, and assists him against
Turnus. Probably Evander was identical with the god Faunus
(the " favourer "), and the tale of his Arcadian origin was due
to the desire to establish connexion with Greece; the name of
his reputed mother (or wife) Carmenta is genuinely Italian.
See Livy i. 6. 7; Ovid, Fasti, i. 471, v. 99; Dion. Halic.'i. 31-33;
Virgil, Aeneid, viii. 335.
EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE, an association of individual
Christians of different denominations formed in London in August
1846, at a conference of over 900 clergymen and laymen from all
parts of the world, and representing upwards of fifty sections of
the Protestant church. The idea originated in Scotland in the
preceding year, and was intended " to associate and concentrate
the strength of an enlightened Protestantism against the en-
croachments of popery and Puseyism, and to promote the
interests of a scriptural Christianity," as well as to combat
religious indifference. A preliminary meeting was held at
Liverpool in October 1845. The movement obtained wide
support in other countries, more especially in America, and
organizations in connexion with it now exist in the different
capitals throughout the world. The object of the alliance,
according to a resolution of the first conference, is " to enable
Christians to realize in themselves and to exhibit to others that a
living and everlasting union binds all true believers together
in the fellowship of the church." At the same conference the
following nine points were adopted as the basis of the alliance:
" Evangelical views in regard to the divine inspiration, authority
and sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures; the right and duty of
private judgment in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures;
the unity of the Godhead and the Trinity of persons therein;
the utter depravity of human nature in consequence of the fall ;
the incarnation of the Son of God, His work of atonement for
sinners of mankind, and His mediatorial intercession and reign;
the justification of the sinner by faith alone; the work of the
Holy Spirit in the conversion and sanct ideation of the sinner;
the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, the
judgment of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, with the eternal
blessedness of the righteous and the eternal punishment of the
wicked; the divine institution of the Christian ministry, and
the obligations and perpetuity of the ordinances of Baptism
and the Lord's Supper," it being understood, however, (i) that
such a summary " is not to be regarded in any formal or ecclesi-
astical sense as a creed or confession," and (2) that " the
selection of certain tenets, with the omission of others, is not to
960
EVANGELICAL ASSOCIATION
be held as implying that the former constitute the whole body
of important truth, or that the latter are unimportant."
Annual conferences of branches of the alliance are held in
England, America and several continental countries; and it is
provided that a general conference, including representatives
of the whole alliance, be held every seventh year, or oftener if
it be deemed necessary. Such conferences have been held in
London in 1851; Paris, 1855; Berlin, 1857; Geneva, 1861;
Amsterdam, 1867; New York, 1873; Basel, 1879; Copenhagen,
1885; Florence, 1891; London, 1896 and 1907. They are
occupied with the discussion of the " best methods of counter-
acting infidelity, Romanism and ritualism, and the desecration
of the Lord's Day," and of furthering the positive objects of the
alliance. The latter are sometimes stated as follows: (a) " The
world girdled by prayer "; a world- wide week of prayer is held
annually, beginning on the first Sunday in the year, (b) " The
maintenance of religious liberty throughout the world." (c)
" The relief of persecuted Christians in all parts "; the alliance
has agents in many countries to help the persecuted by distribut-
ing relief, &c., and in Russia there is a travelling agent who
endeavours to help the Stundists. (d) " The manifestation of the
unity of all believers and the upholding of the evangelical faith."
The following publications may be mentioned: The Evangelical
Alliance Monthly Intelligencer, The Evangelical Alliance Quarterly,
both published in London; A. J. Arnold, History of the Evangelical
Alliance (London, 1897); and the reports of the proceedings of the
different conferences.
EVANGELICAL ASSOCIATION of North America, a religious
denomination, founded about the beginning of the igth century
by Jacob Albright (1759-1808), a German Lutheran of Pennsyl-
vania. About 1790 he began an itinerant mission among his
fellow-countrymen, chiefly in Pennsylvania; and meeting with
considerable success, he was, at an assembly composed of ad-
herents from the different places he had visited, elected in 1800
presiding elder or chief pastor, and shortly afterwards rules of
government were adopted somewhat similar to those of the
Methodist Episcopal Church. The theological standards of the
two bodies are also in close agreement. In 1807 Albright was
appointed bishop of the community, which adopted its present
name in 1818. In 1816 the first annual conference was held,
and in 1843 there was instituted a general conference, composed
of delegates chosen by the annual conferences and constituting
the highest legislative and judicial authority in the church.
The members of the general conference hold office for four years.
In 1891 a long internal controversy resulted in a division. A
law-suit awarded the property to the branch making its head-
quarters at Indianapolis, whereon the other party, numbering
40,000, that met at Philadelphia, constituted themselves the
United Evangelical Church. The Association in 1906 had
about 105,000 members, besides some 10,000 in Germany and
Switzerland, and has nearly 2000 churches and 1200 itinerant
and other preachers. There are four bishops. It distributes
much evangelical literature, and supports a mission in Japan.
END OF NINTH VOLUME
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